Dunkin' Donuts spokesperson.
Yep, but how come you can't tell us your name?
Posted by Ed Cotton
The idea is the brainchild of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who's famous in Britain for his River Cottage cooking shows.
It's an idea that seems very timely and one that's an ambitious game changer.
No idea seems to exist without any brand involvement, Channel 4 who produces the River Cottage series seem to be the only ones behind the idea.
It's a great example of a big idea that a brand or agency could have got behind and created. Instead of mere talk, this is all about action and change that could make a difference.
We need more of this type of thinking in 09
Posted by Ed Cotton
The club is only open for a total of 6 months, but allows visitors to experience the Congo through its music, food (pigs trotters, goat stew and conger eels for example), and art.
To make the contrast even more striking, visitors can alternate between The Congo and more traditional/expected Western club, art and restaurant experiences.
Of course, this is to ingenious to be a truly commercial concern and instead is the result of a collaboration between Fondazione Prada and the artist Carsten Holler.
Posted by Ed Cotton
This is not a unit inside Apple responsible for updating the phone software, quite the opposite; it's a team of unpaid renegades who are tearing up the phone and hacking it to pieces. These are a group of highly motivated, unpaid folks who just love the challenge.
Here are some of the key points I took out of the piece.
1. Real time transparent communication is key
The group use IRC and file serving technologies to make sure all team members are kept in the loop
2. Intelligent groups can self-organize
The group has no need for leaders, each person is smart enough to understand their role and find one that matches their expertise.
3. The group is unified by a core motivation
"The same interest that I had with tearing apart my Speak & Spell as a kid, then my Tandy CoCo, then my Atari ST. I want to see what is inside and see if I can make it better. If I find something cool I tell other people about it."
4. The core motivation has an additional edge
The attitude of the Apple brand to the way in which it restricts the way the phone is used.
"Apple places restrictions on what you can run on the device. They impose draconian restrictions on the type of application that you can run, they don’t allow applications to run in the background and they even restrict the applications by subject matter or if they compete with their own applications."
Posted by Ed Cotton
A story "Buy a Truck, get one free- a new era of desperation marketing returns"- appeared in the International Herald Tribune yesterday and here's a quote from the piece.
"At a dealership on the outskirts of Miami, people who agree to buy one Dodge Ram truck can get a second truck or car - free. In 415 supermarkets across the Eastern United States, customers who bring in a prescription can walk out with free antibiotics. And one clothing chain, not to be outdone, has started offering three suits for the price of one.
An era of desperation marketing is at hand in the United States, with stores and automobile dealerships adopting virtually any tactic that might grab the attention of frightened consumers."
While these facts might be true, they are doing nothing to inspire positive thinking or inspire in any way.
Posted by Ed Cotton
The NYT ran a story yesterday about LG working creatively with Conde Nast to develop print advertising. While creative honchos may snub their noses and say the work sucks, they are missing the point.
Its partnership with Conde Nast makes a lot of sense; the magazine publisher has celebrity PR agents knocking on its doors 24/7, trying to get stories. There's no way the magazine can meet all these requests, but it can siphon off the good ones to its creative department and find ways to help these celebs partner with brands. It's a great use of resources and access.
Then there's the recently breaking story about the Michelle Obama fashion blog, Mrs O. Various critics seem to be up in arms that it's the work of an ad agency, in fact, a subsidiary of BBH. Who cares? If the content is good and people want to read it, does it matter who is behind it?
In 2009 and beyond, it's not about borders and boundaries, but good ideas that can appear anywhere and be created by anyone. The trouble is much of our business still lives in the past, a past that's defined by old rules and old paradigms of creativity.
It's clear that in the coming 18-24 months, those with inability to grasp the new model and seize the myriad of opportunities that now exist, will simply be left behind.
Posted by Ed Cotton
"The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was "A History of Violence" in 2006. By that point major retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart were already well on their way to evicting all the VHS tapes from their shelves so the valuable real estate could go to the sleeker and smaller DVDs and, in more recent seasons, the latest upstart, Blu-ray discs. Kugler ended up buying back as much VHS inventory as he could from retailers, distributors and studios; he then sold more than 4 million VHS videotapes over the last two years.
Those tapes went to bargain-basement chains such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General and Family Dollar, and Kugler's network of mom-and-pop clients and regional outlets, such as the Gabriel Bros. Stores in West Virginia or the Five Below chain in Pennsylvania."
Proof is ever we needed it, that trends take some time to die and that it takes a long time for technology to fully saturate.
While we all crave the new, remember there are many that can't access it.
Posted by Ed Cotton
1. Briefly describe your background and what you do now?
I’m a marketing consultant working mostly in the bicycle industry, but I’ve also had some strategy projects for social networking sites. That’s pretty much my whole work history; I started doing PR gigs at a few bike races in 2003 while I was still working at a bike shop just after college and things progressed from there.
Some stuff I’ve worked on… I was the marketing manager for the Kodak Gallery/Sierra Nevada professional team in 2005 and 2006. This year I launched a blogging and social media campaign for SRAM Corporation around their sponsored teams and athletes. I also help with the business and sponsorship side of MASH, which is basically the first action sports-style urban cycling film.
2. What’s the story behind the current urban biking movement and what forms is it taking?
Utilitarian urban bicycling - as opposed to the recreational bicycling that most people in the US are used to - has always been a part of life in lots of places around the world, from China to Holland. In this country, the two most visible stories in urban bicycling right now are bike commuting and fixed-gear/track bike culture.
The use of bicycles for commuting and alternative transportation is benefiting from some extremely powerful societal and cultural trends. Environmental values have become mainstream. People are concerned about health and fitness. When gas prices were high and now that the economy is bad, the fact the bikes are an inexpensive form of transportation has become more relevant. Finally, urban living with a European sensibility is very much in style.
On the other hand, the fixed-gear culture started with bike messengers but it has inspired a much larger trend of people riding any sleek, fast, skinny-tire bike in the city. Not many are riding true track bikes without brakes, but lots of people ride a fixed-gear bike with brakes, a single-speed, or just a road bike. This culture combines the benefits of alternative transportation with action sports, style, and youth culture. When MASH came out, they had premiers all over the world, were featured in all these fashion magazines, and blew up in Japan. Nothing like that had ever happened with bicycles before.
(definitions of fixed-gear and track bikes at http://sheldonbrown.com/fixed.html)
3. How do you see this evolving in 2009?
No matter what happens with the economy, more people will have more reasons to ride their bikes to work and around town in 2009 than they did in 2008. But that doesn’t mean that the bike industry is recession-proof since most bicycling is still about recreation. Still, strong bike shops are doing better than most retailers right now.
One evolution that you’ll see in 2009 is bike-sharing programs rolled out in more major cities. They’re like Zipcar for bikes, except that some of them let you have a certain amount of time for free before they charge you. Paris’ “Velib” program is the gold standard, and DC started the first for a major US city this year. Honolulu, Minneapolis, and a few others are on tap for next year.
You’ll also see more celebrities on bikes and the general “fashionization” of bicycles. I recently interviewed the CMO of Puma for my blog about how they’ve made bikes a part of their strategy, and you’ll see more non-bicycle brands doing the same thing in 2009.
4. Who are the companies and organizations that are supporting this movement, it seems to have its own ecosystem?
For something so big, there’s very little hierarchy. It’s really just a chain of communities sharing ideas and learning best practices from each other. Cicolvia program for car-free days in city centers, started in Bogota and spread to other cities in Colombia, then around the world.
Generally, you see the most progress in terms of bike lanes, bike racks on transit vehicles, car-free days, and generally safer streets for bicyclists in cities with strong bicycle advocacy organizations and pro-bike mayors. London’s Ken Livingstone is a great example. In San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition just passed 10,000 members and they’re a significant political force in the city.
The bike industry itself was fairly slow to react to the growth of urban cycling. Until two or three years ago, there were road bikes, mountain bikes, and lounge chairs on wheels. Now there’s an “urban” category of bikes that are designed for fast, efficient city riding. Bike companies are giving more money to advocacy organizations, although it’s likely that the industry as a whole still spends more on sponsoring professional racing than on promoting urban bicycling.
5.Is it possible with a renewed focus on alternative forms of transportation that biking will see a resurgence, if not, what is required to make this happen?
This is already happening, but mostly in denser cities and metro areas with political climates that are more progressive on environmental issues. In many places, the bicycle is not the most practical means of transportation, but we can’t just tear up the sprawl and start over. That’s why people in the bicycle advocacy community are starting to talk about bicycling not just on its own, but also as part of a system of alternative transportation. Instead of “ride your bike to work”, the messaging is expanding to include “ride your bike to transit” and “ride your bike to carpool”. Bicycling and other forms of group transportation go hand in hand.
Practicality is only part of the story; fixed-gear culture will play a role by changing the image of the urban bicyclist. It used to be that dorky guy in your office building who’d get on the elevator still wearing his helmet and reflective strap on his pants. Now it’s actually cool to be a bicyclist, which is an amazing thing.
As a final note… thanks to all the little line items that were included to pass the second version of the Bailout, you’ll be eligible in 2009 for up to $20/month of tax-free reimbursement of bike commuting expenses. Subtract $240 per year, and riding to work is almost free!
"Lets see, is there anything more idiotic than spending more than 100k dollars on a full page ad “thanks for letting me waste your money ” ad ? Does it make it worse that its a business publication where the readers might just recognize the stupidity of wasting money on ad dollars that doesn’t even try to sell the product ? How does it make the next unemployed Chrysler worker feel that their entire year’s salary just went for a single, ridiculous ad ?"
The ad thanks the American public for their help and support.
Cuban has a good point, but I wonder if there's something deeper here?
The American public doesn't read the WSJ, but business and opinion leaders do.
Isn't this just a PR spin to make Chrysler appear grateful, especially given its private ownership status? If so, this might be money well spent.
Then again, if this story spins out of control and reaches the broader media, the company could look as foolish as Cuban suggests.
Posted by Ed Cotton
(1) A look inside hedge funds from Marketplace on Vimeo.
Posted by Ed Cotton