October 1, 2007 – 10:02 am
In the beginning, there was Yes, well at least for my musical awakening. And now The Onion has recognized the significance.
VATICAN CITY—In the first-ever union of the Word of God and the Synthesizer, the Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals voted unanimously Monday to incorporate the lyrics of Yes into the New Testament.
“Let us rejoice in this momentous occasion,” said Pope John Paul II in a special service at St. Peter’s. “And let no man be unmoved, remembering the words of Jesus: ‘In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky, and they stand there.’ Amen.”
Read the entire hilarity here
September 25, 2007 – 12:58 pm
Nearly every company on the planet claims appreciation for their customers and promotes the quality of their customer services policies and procedures. The best examples of true customer service are when the deeds of company employees speak stronger than any words the marketing geniuses at those companies can construct. And when the CEO acts to deliver the brand promise in spite of obvious bottom line impacts, one tends to take notice.
The hospitality and travel business has not been shy about flouting brand promises. It’s refreshing to see one company live up to the rhetoric.
The Issue: What Price Reputation?
When a misprinted fare—Fiji for $51—got snapped up by hundreds of travelers, Travelocity CEO Michelle Peluso had to decide whether to honor the fare at a cost of almost $2 million or run the risk of damaging the company’s customer-friendly branding campaign.
To read the full Business Week article and analysis, go here
September 25, 2007 – 10:17 am
Will Wright discusses the game Spore at TED, and the role of Montessori schools and their use of toys and tools for creating playspaces for learning and to how to do the same thing for adults.
In a friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces. Here Wright encourages users to create not households, as in The Sims, or cities, as in SimCity, but the entire universe, from single-celled life forms to galactic physics.
While guiding us through his mesmerizing beta, Wright shares his thoughts on Montessori schools (he went to a Montessori school in Atlanta), Darwinian theory and long-term thinking, emphasizing, throughout, that Spore is not so much a game as an opportunity for discovery — “an imagination amplifier.”
For more info, look here
September 24, 2007 – 9:23 am
In an interesting twist, or perhaps the next logical step, a number of celebrities and foundations are teaming with youth media powerhouse MTV to establish a venue for socially-conscious, online social networking. This follows MySpace’s Impact in the online space, and numerous other campaigns and events tying social good to youth.
MTV Launches Socially Conscious Networking Play
MTV Networks has recently launched a cause-conscious online community, an interesting twist on social networking. The destination, at Think.MTV.com, is being buoyed by a number of sponsoring celebrities and organizations. The supporting cast includes Bono, Pete Wentz, Shakira, Reggie Bush, Rosario Dawson, Nick Cannon, Rachel Smith (Miss USA), John Legend, Nick Lachey, Chris Rock and Steve Nash, all members of the “Think Community”. Others on board include the Case Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldhirsh Foundation and MCJ Amelior Foundation.
The community aims to energize young people around a number of important issues, including the environment, sexual health and immigration. Smartly, MTV encourages expression through videos, podcasts and blogs, and offers rewards for socially-conscious behaviors. The prize pool includes opportunities to meet with sponsoring celebrities, invitations to special MTV-led events, exposure on MTV Network channels, and various grants and scholarships.
See more about Think MTV here
September 20, 2007 – 9:14 am
Today is the first day in 2 years that New York Times online content is available free of charge to readers. The Times dropped their subscription service in favor of an ad-based revenue model (you’ll see the ad when you click the article link below). The move by the Times indicates that 1) ad-based revenue models will supplant subscription models simply because advertisers are willing to pay more for access to eyeballs than consumers are willing to pay for the access in the first place, and 2) that Rupert Murdoch threats to make Wall Street Journal online content available for free is a huge competitive attack.
It’s an interesting comment on things to come when one of the first articles I can link to in this free online content reign is an article on another huge media concern and its forays into a major content subscription service, and on the heals of another Times article on Rick Rubin where Rubin suggests subscription services could be a component of a new record business model.
Read More »
September 19, 2007 – 8:40 am
CD Baby is an independent online record store that started its life selling the CDs of independent music artists, and is now also provides those same artists a portal onto iTunes and many other virtual download stores. They just announced how well different virtual stores were doing for their artists. (CD Baby has been the primary distributer for my Sensitive Chaos and TouchXtone CDs, hence has also gotten me onto iTunes and the like. My personal experience matches these figures.)
iTunes Easily Dominates CD Baby Digital Distribution
iTunes is easily the strongest outlet for digitally-distributed CD Baby artists, according to recent figures posted by the independent and unsigned retailer. CD Baby founder Derek Sivers routinely posts sales figures online, and most recently offered a percentage breakdown of sales from its digital vendors. The distribution list is rather exhaustive, yet iTunes Stores - in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere - account for nearly 83 percent of total sales.
Sivers characterized the results as “interesting, but not surprising,” though the disclosure reflects the dominance that iTunes carries both on popular and more obscure content. Interestingly, eMusic ranked a distant fifth in the ranking with a sales percentage of 2.3 percent.
In total, Sivers counted revenues of $21,236,344, a cumulative figure. In terms of other retailers, Rhapsody ranked second with 4.0 percent of the pie, while Napster ranked third with 3.4 percent. MusicNet rounded fourth with 2.3 percent.
September 18, 2007 – 1:55 pm
This Paleo-Future blog looks at predictions from 1900 of what life was to be like in 2000 and beyond. Some of it is strikingly spot on and some of it is just hilarious. The author of the forecast, none other than John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., seems to have an obsession with the not-so-imminent “gigantic foods” craze
My favorite quote, regarding what would become “radio”:
Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented.
What he fails to foresee is that there would be a lack of talent on both ends of the airwaves!
So I’m curious - what do you think life will be like in one hundred years?
Salt water for car fuel?
Evolved “green” practices?
Holideck?
September 18, 2007 – 12:31 pm
As time shifting becomes the norm for television viewers, the need for “great creative” is falling away, and the placement strategy for ads now becomes paramount. It’s no longer about getting your ad on the most popular show, it’s getting your ad on the show with the most live viewership. It should be interesting to see how programming and advertising react to this change in viewer behavior. What to choose; shows that encourage live viewership, or shows that encourage lots of viewership?
TiVo Release Another Wave of StopWatch Data
None of Most-Watched Ads Ran in Top-Ranked Shows
By Megan McIlroy
Published: September 17, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — None of the most-watched commercials by TiVo viewers in July appeared in top-ranking programs, according to results from TiVo’s StopWatch feature.
Photo Credit: AP
Todd Juenger, VP-general manager of TiVo Audience Research and Measurement, said, that in a DVR world, it’s better to have good placement than killer creative, noting that brands such as AIG Life Insurance and Tax Masters Tax Service broke into the top five spots for most-viewed commercials.
Read the article here
September 18, 2007 – 8:33 am
As online sales and reservations contribute more revenue to hospitality, travel, and other physical presence businesses (businesses whose connection to consumers occurs at a physical experience point rather than virtually), immature companies without a balanced scorecard approach to overall success may mistake the boom in online sales with a signal to reduce expenditures in traditional customer channels. When metrics like share pricing and margin trump metrics like call times, abandonment rates, opportunity costs, and customer loyalty, the gains from online success may be short lived.
Bloomberg reports on recent online gains by Marriott over third party competitors:
Marriott Seizes Bookings From Expedia to Boost Share Price
By Oliver Staley
Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — Marriott International Inc., the world’s largest hotel operator, has battled back against online travel agents such as Expedia.com to become the eighth-biggest Internet retailer by sales. That’s one of the reasons investors should buy the stock even after a 10 percent tumble this year.
Through Marriott.com, the Bethesda, Maryland-based lodging company sold $3.7 billion worth of rooms in 2006, more than doubling revenue from the site in 2004. For the first half of 2007, Web sales for Marriott hotels, which range from luxury Ritz-Carltons to lower-priced Fairfield Inns, were up almost 25 percent.
Read more here
September 17, 2007 – 9:00 am
The New York Times Sunday Travel section had an article on Arcosanti, where I’ll spend a week next month performing as part of the Different Skies 2007 Electronic Music Festival. The reporter really “got” the place as far as I’m concerned, recognizing the potential and realities of the place.
I love this opening…
I’d stopped to use the bathroom at the McDonald’s three miles from Arcosanti, the famously never-finished experimental city in the Arizona desert. This is cactus country, an arid hour north of Phoenix, and the McDonald’s and Arcosanti were the most prominent outposts of civilization for miles. I asked the woman at the register what she’d heard of the place.
“Very bad, very bad. The people there …” she trailed off, searching for a word that might capture the terribleness. “I’ve heard it’s a cult.”
Sold.
Read the whole article here