Archive for February, 2009
Having just spent a week in London with a quick day trip to Paris (via the Eurostar train which was a great experience) I was struck by the truly international flavor both cities exhibit. And it all seems to work so well. In fact there were several times when I thought ‘where are all the Brits?’. Everywhere we went there were people of varied descent who were working, helping and living amongst London’s 8 million citizens. I don’t know why I was so surprised at this and probably that should have not been the case.
America’s larger cities are places where diversity and people from all over the world are more likely to live and work. Once you get outside of the major cities things tend to be a little less international to be sure. The same is no doubt true in England and France as well as other countries in the EU and around the world. Both London and Paris have a large proportions of Muslims many of whom speak multiple languages and which is something not seen in the States. Made me feel very one dimensional.
But what struck me most was speaking accents that made me realize that people from all corners were coming to London (I did not spend enough time in Paris to get a really good feel) to live and work. They come from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Yes there were more than a few North Americans as well. What draws them all to London is the prospect of finding work and living in one of the world’s great cities.
Great expensive cities I should add. Being from the New York Metropolitan area I am not unaccustomed to the inherent escalated costs of a major city but even by those standards London is crazy expensive. Simple pub meals (complete with a pint or maybe even 2) are $ 25.00 per head – and I could never get the service charge thing straight whether I was over tipping or under tipping feeling like a stupid Yank often. I wondered how people could afford to work in hotels; restaurants etc. and live in even the greater London area.
We Americans have taken pride in being called the ‘melting pot’ of the world but my feeling now is we no longer own that appellation. It’s probably been that way for longer than I realize and that’s not a bad thing in any way – in fact I think it is entirely positive. I head back to Tokyo for the first time in a few years for a week in early March. The Japanese are famous for their homogeneity and I will be watching for changes there that might indicate Japan is becoming more welcoming and attracting to foreigners.
Out of stock since November Amazon was pretty slick in holding off would be buyers of the Kindle 1 by releasing the new Kindle February 9th and telling all those who ordered the new Kindle would ship to those that were on the ‘waiting list’.
And it appears that Kindle 2 will be an improvement over the current model. All the good features of the original – instant downloads, note taking, and an-easy-to-use-interface are in evidence and added to that are 16 shades of grey ink font to choose from (as opposed to one now), a joystick controller, AND Whispersync which allows users to start reading the book on their Kindle and then continue reading on another Kindle or mobile phone. Also upgraded is space to hold 1,500 books (as opposed to 200 on the current model). No color yet however and no ability to back light the display when you want it. That is an inherent problem with the e-ink display which is an asset when you want to read your Kindle in bright sunlight (no problem) but in the dark it’s as good as a paper book. Which is to say it’s not? But bestsellers will still cost $ 9.99 which is a very good thing.
In what I perceive to be the most interesting new feature – the ability of the Kindle to ‘read’ the book to you (they call it text to speech) – or not, you can apparently you can turn on and off this feature depending on your mood and desire. I have not yet heard the voice or if there is a choice of voices (I imagine having Kathleen Turner read Thomas Friedman’s ‘Hot Flat and Crowded’ might make it even more interesting) – but I doubt they will offer any voice choice. From what I can tell it seems like a computer voiced Robby the Robot type monotone will be the reader, and I wonder how long people will find that to be acceptable?
Already there has been some noise made on Amazon’s ‘right’ to have a voice program read the book or text (newspaper/magazines). Somehow I don’t think this is going to kill the audio book market as a human voice reading a novel is going to be vastly different than a computer generated voice (think the voice prompts for airlines are horrible to listen to? – this could be worse!)
So for the most part I think the new Kindle 2 will be a hit. Except for one thing that really bugs me. As an early adopter/customer I had my first Kindle within a month of the release. Well sort of. The first one did not work and I had to send it back and Amazon promptly sent me a new one. Then after nearly a year the second one died and I had to send it back and again Amazon sent me another new one – no questions asked. In both instances I returned the old one after the new one arrived in and Amazon paid the shipping. Great.
On the other hand the new Kindle is actually $ 40 less expensive than the one I bought in November 2007. Ok I can live with that. But if I want to get the Kindle 2 I get to pay the same $ 359 that everyone else does. I derive no benefit from being a previous buyer and current customer. That is a very poor example of CRM and building on a great customer relationship. I have raved about the Kindle since I got it and told MANY people of its benefits. Those like me also rave about the Kindle (just ask Oprah) – but to ignore our previous patronage of the first release and not incent previous customers to get the new one is very surprising from a company that for the most part gets it right when it comes to customer relationships.
I had lunch this week with a longtime client/associate who and unbeknownst to me his partner in Europe who somehow is also our client. They have been operating a successful business in Europe for more than ten years. We have had some minor engagements with firms in Europe but have not made it a mission. Well they have an office in Cannes and both my wife and I speak pretty good French (ok she is better than me) and the thought of doing business in a place as beautiful as the south of France is mega-intriguing.
After enjoying a very nice lunch meeting with them I left energized and motivated that what we have to offer would translate (no joke!) very well across the EU. And I also think there is much we can learn and bring back from our friends across the pond to our clients here in the U.S. The time for cross-continental collaboration (CCC of a different kind!) has arrived and my opinion is that cultural differences make marketing in the EU even more challenging than the U.S. The practice of developing messages targeted to a particular country keeps marketers sharp in a different way than segmenting messages to multicultural groups within a country like here in the States.
And there are some amazing agencies, super smart people and savvy marketers to learn from in the EU. I just want our team to have the chance to get better, learn more and help our clients and friends all at the same time.
So I am pledging here to develop our European presence. Guess I will have to get over there soon to check it out. Though Cannes has much nicer weather in June than it does in February….But call me on this if I don’t follow through!