Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for June, 2010

It’s not been a great week for La Belle France. First their World Cup Soccer team – champions in 1998, (or Futbol as it is there) was unceremoniously dispatched from the tournament in the preliminary round. It was a major slap in the face to the loyal fans of Les Bleus.

Then American ‘Marathon Man’ John Isner outlasted French hope Nicolas Mahut 70-68 in the fifth set of a 3 day match that lasted more than 11 hours.

But outside the sporting world there is a strike going on in France this week, http://bit.ly/cb8kYk in which trains stood still, children stayed home from school, and post offices were closed. The strikes were a result of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to raise the retirement age to 62 years old.

France apparently has one of Europe’s lowest retirement ages – allowing workers to retire at age 60 in most sectors. My visceral reaction was that France is doomed. As of 2008 France was the 9th ranked country in the world for life expectancy with a person born that year expected to live to 80.87 years. It’s not a stretch to assume someone who has made it to 60 already would live past 80 into their 80’s even if they were born in 1950.

Retiring at 60? What are these people going to do for the next 25 plus years? I am guessing that most French people (like Americans and virtually peoples of all nations) don’t have extensive retirement funds they have squirreled away to last 25 years or more. France is a country struggling with a huge labor problem, an aging population and an economy that has weathered the storm better than many but still has suffered from the overall global economic downturn.

Taking to the streets to protest the unfairness of President Sarkozy’s proposal to help cut back on public debt is selfish and I daresay even foolish. It is also in contrast to what seems to be an emerging strength in technology in the French economy. There are a good number of up and coming companies that contribute greatly to both the French and world economy. I guess the people are protesting that they cannot sit around and sip wine and eat cheese whenever they want.

Full disclosure -I like to sip wine and eat cheese as much as anyone. And my wife and I have had great times in France and we both kind of speak French. (She better than me).

The United States has an even larger and ever- increasing public debt problem. Americans also seem to count down the days to retirement although many now are forced to continue to work in some capacity even after they have left their more ‘traditional’ jobs. That makes sense to me on many levels. When people who are turning 60 in the United States this year were born, the life expectancy was 68.2 years. If they have made it to 60 they are more than likely to live well past 80.

If you were born in 1942 for instance, your life expectancy at birth was about 68 years. But the good news is that you didn’t die of infectious diseases when young, car accidents, or anything else. The average 65-year-old today can expect to live another 18.4 years. So your life expectancy now is not the same as it was at your birth. It is 5.9 years longer than the current life expectancy figure (which is for people born in 2006) or 83.4 years.

Simply put the economics of retirement make it extremely difficult to retire at age 60 unless one is independently wealthy. If France (or the U.S. for that matter) goes down the road it is on people may be able to retire at age 60 but there won’t be places to buy the wine or cheese since nobody will be around to work in the shop.

I’ve thought about this for a long time. Is working until age 70 a horrible thing? Maybe if you grew up thinking you’d be done at 62 or 65 but people are healthier and more vital in their increasing age than ever before in human history. Sorry folks you will have to grind it out a few more years for your own good and the collective good of your country. Vive la France! And Go U.S.A. But keep on working.

Think I am nuts here?

In case you are wondering the photo is of Ivan Pavlov.

Like most of us email flows into my inbox and my PDA at all hours of the day and night. At times I feel I am drowning in a sea of both relevant and irrelevant emails. But when I come into the office I open my MS Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, (and a couple of other sites just to check and see what’s been going on since I last looked). Recently I worked out getting those same things on my PDA.

Aside from the fact that the above makes me into some type of information junkie and perhaps even zombie, I do like the ability to monitor my own dashboard of what is going on.

But as I sat in a long meeting yesterday and my phone was buzzing with emails, texts and even a call or two (I can tell the difference by how many buzzes) I resisted the temptation to look at my PDA. And it was ok. I have been going out of my way to not look at it in meetings, at lunches or dinners, or even with my family (probably I am worst to them about that) trying to espouse the philosophy to be in the moment and that in person contact is far superior to electronic contact.

I read an article this week that many people have become so in tune with their devices that they actually to a degree get a rush of dopamine when they receive a message from someone. And some people even get more out that contact than they do a physical one.

I get the idea although I feel in my case the reason is more Pavlovian. Ring that bell and I begin to salivate perhaps? I want to deny this.

I’m going away for a few days next week for a short and needed break. I will have my PDA and my laptop to check things – but I won’t be doing it regularly. In fact I will turn it off after the morning check and not check again until the end of the day. I find that when I do that there is almost nothing that cannot wait 8 hours or so. Also almost universally whatever seems critically important and blazing seems less so with the passage of time.

So I’m going to turn it off for a bit. Can you? Will you?

Since the iPhone remains on the AT & T platform I am just not interested in experiencing the vagaries of AT & T service. That’s why I decided on sticking with BlackBerry in the first place.

My first BB Storm (got it in January of 2009) worked well – for about fourteen months. Then the crashing began. It was as if it was tired of being on all the time, which in my case it is. To me there’s no point in having a phone that you turn on and off to save battery life. The touch screen was a bit finicky but I adapted and did not have a problem – until the 14 month mark.

After dealing with the slow spiral downward for two months and having to reboot the phone three times or more a DAY, I finally capitulated and sprang for a new phone even before my contract was up (November – I was trying hard to hold out). Now that I have the BB Storm 2 I wonder why I waited so long! It is a waaay better machine.

The BB Storm had limited space for applications. The Storm 2 has well over 100MB of space for apps which is something like 8 times more than before. The touch screen works much better with a nearly audible click when you type – a bit off putting at first but now strangely reassuring. Phone service is excellent (it was before) and 3G internet browsing and Wi-Fi are added features – and really good ones. The digital camera is still one of the best around and shooting video is a good experience as well.

I’ve used an iPhone and acknowledge how good the technology, design and interface is. The iPhone is pretty good for email (not as good as a Blackberry but still ok), really good for web browsing and the phone service is lacking. The BB Storm 2 is a big upgrade from the BB Storm 1 but I am left with the idea that the entire BlackBerry touch screen platform should be revamped and have its own unique features that are different from the iPhone. I have heard that it is in development and I am eagerly awaiting that release. If the BB platform does not further differentiate itself my next mobile device will be an iPhone.

One can only be a resistor for so long.

I just could not let it go. The DMA bought the trade show DMDays NY (DMDNY) several years ago. Not a bad move and it sort of made sense as a replacement for the now defunct DMA spring show. I’ve been in and around the direct marketing industry long enough to remember that it was once DM Day (singular). In recent years the show had moved to the cavernous Jacob Javits Center where it was one of at least two or three shows going on simultaneously, and even with that it was gobbled up by the immense expanse of the Javits.

Prior to the past several years the DMDNY show was at the NY Hilton. My associate Mickey Alam Khan – editor of Mobile Marketing Daily, put it best when he noted that the show at the Hilton promoted ‘butt-brushing’ since spaces were tight and people actually and literally ran into each other. That was a good thing! So after spotty attendance at least year’s show at the Javits the DMA decided to move the show back to the Hilton. Great move right? Well yes and no.

Well yes since it was always a giant pain to get over to lunch dates from the Javits. Restaurants abound near the NY Hilton and combined with the great Hilton bar, (where MANY meetings took place and where business really got done), made the Hilton a great choice. They got that right.

But the show itself? As my soon-to-be 17 year old daughter would note OMG! She could easily add WTF? Of course I discourage her from using that type of language. But she’d be so right. Digital Marketing Days. WTF? The name is changed but it was the same tired old show – no, it was more tired.

I readily acknowledge that the education tracks were much more shifted to digital marketing (social media, analytics, PPC, SE0/SEM) more than ever before. So some effort was made to change the tone. Yet in walking around the two floors of the exhibits it was sad, gray and depressing. Most of the people I talked to at the booths were disappointed in the turnout to put it mildly. And digital it was not. There were virtually no mobile marketing demos, and for whatever reason some printers and related companies. I could go on but you get the idea. Maybe those printers had a few digital presses, but it was not exactly what crossed my (or the people I talked to) mind when I thought of Digital Marketing Days. The show is for the most part irrelevant. There some good people speaking but for the most part you can get the tracks and discussion at a myriad of other conferences.

I insinuated in a post after the DMA annual conference last fall (held in San Diego) that AdTech had eaten the DMA’s lunch. Well to me now it looks like it’s only gotten worse. In contrast I had a very nice evening at the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation Rising Stars event down at Bridgewater’s at South Street Seaport. The DMEF is a great part of the DMA and its mission of helping promote and attract young talent to direct (and digital) marketing is right on. It’s uplifting to see young talent want to be involved in our business although after being at Digital Marketing Days I would wonder why.

Were you there? What did you think?

When a company even half the size of British Petroleum has a big problem how they respond to the problem can go a long way toward determining its future. In 1982 Johnson and Johnson had a major problem with Tylenol and ended up pulling all Tylenol products off the shelves. It was a massive undertaking but today is lauded as the poster child on how a major business ought to handle a disaster. The handling of the 2010 Tylenol recall has not gone nearly as well.

1984 Union Carbide had a tragic and well documented industrial gas leak disaster at its plant in Bhopal, India. Now owned by Dow Chemical, Union Carbide continues to deny allegations against it on its website dedicated to the tragedy claiming it was an accident as a result of sabotage AND it had adequate safety systems in place at the time. But the Union Carbide Brand – strong at the time was never the same in large part due to the mishandling of a terrible tragedy.

Most people are aware that Exxon had its own disaster in Prince William Sound Alaska with the grounding of the Valdez in 1989 and the subsequent massive oil spill. It was one of the largest oil spills ever and perhaps one of the most devastating ones in terms of its environmental impact. Years and years of cleanup and millions of dollars were spent by Exxon and the company was subject to punitive damages in excess of $ 5 billion which was reduced to $ 2.5 billion upon Exxon’s appeal. At the time there were those that speculated that Exxon might even be taken over by another oil company or put out of business altogether. We all know how that worked out.

BP is the behind the worst corporation caused environmental disaster in history. It is a tragedy unfolding seemingly in slow motion with constant video of oil continuing to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken standpipe. The advance of the leaking oil is charted on a daily, if not hourly basis as residents of the Gulf Coast brace for an impact that will last for a generation or more. There is no spin, angle or message of any kind that can help bring BP any kind of public sentiment.

BP is the fourth largest company in the world and now the one Americans have come to hate. What can Americans do? Boycott BP gas stations? That will have little or no impact since BP owns few stations on their own, and all that will do is penalize the poor guy who is operating a station that happens to have a BP logo outside. What did the BP gas station owner do to deserve everyone’s rage and vitriol?

There are many that are surmising this might be the end of BP, but I’m not one of them. Yes there were some egregious errors made by BP and its subcontractors – shortcuts and the ignoring of important and now seemingly obvious safeguards. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg noted in defense of BP CEO Mike Hayward he ‘didn’t’ exactly blow up the well.’ And while that’s true, by not attending to the details he may have blown up the company.

The best thing BP can do now is continue to do everything it can to cap the Deepwater Horizon well, clean up the mess as quickly and efficiently as possible, help the suffering residents of the Gulf Coast and continually say they are sorry – and mean it. This is not a time for marketing – this is a time for action.