Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

At least for now. Only two years ago a friend of mine was completely joking when he was asked about his favorite pro basketball team (and mine) – the New York Knickerbockers when he said – you mean ‘America’s team?’ It was pretty funny at the time considering the Knicks of 2009-2010 were woeful and nearly unwatchable.

Unless you’ve been living under that proverbial rock you are no doubt somewhat aware of the NBA’s newest sensation Jeremy Lin (who is also on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week – no not the swimsuit issue although I imagine Mr. Lin would have been happy to pose with Kate Upton). The accolades are deserved and the story is irresistible (just ask anyone). However underneath it all is a very interesting development when you consider the dramatic change in the Knicks from being a bunch of guys who were on the court together at the same time, into a team that plays for each other and gives supreme effort all the time. And they play in a city that has fully and completely embraced them. Of course if they lose three in a row….the boo-birds shall return just as quickly.

New Yorkers are a hard-to-please and cynical bunch. And when it comes to basketball they know their stuff. I don’t recall ever seeing another crowd cheer defense the way they do in New York nor cheer when a point guard decides to run time off the clock by not penetrating or shooting near the end of a game rather than throw up an ill-advised shot or make a bad pass.

But it’s not only in New York that Jeremy Lin and the Knicks are causing people to pay attention. The Knicks are not only fun to watch (for the moment) and winning (seven wins in a row for a team that was languishing at 7 games under .500) they are playing with a spirit and intensity that have not been seen from them in a long time. Even more interesting is the all-for-one and one-for-all spirit that has been imbued. Lin’s teammates genuinely seem thrilled for him and are enjoying the ride nearly as much as Lin and the fans. The Asian community both in New York and around the world is nearly apoplectic in a way that was never quite the case with recently retired NBA star Yao Ming.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather’s tweet this week on Jeremy Lin – “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” was just so off base it makes him sound stupid and jealous. If Lin was black, had gone to Harvard, been undrafted, cut by two teams and then sat on the bench for over a month as a 12th man, then come into a game and turned an entire team (and city) around he would be every bit the hero he has become -not to the Asian-American community necessarily – but just about everyone else.

Lin’s humility and bemusement at the sudden turn of events over the past two weeks is endearing and genuine. That plays both in New York as well as on the national and international stage. Let’s see, an American-born Taiwanese playing in the nation’s biggest media market in the ‘World’s most famous arena’ with a team of guys both black and white that are united and (for now) indefatigable and unbeaten with a host of new fans as well as old who cannot wait to watch or listen to the next game so they can root for their newest heroes. And they seem to be having fun by working together and giving it all they’ve got.

Sounds like America’s team to me. Hey as a huge Knick fan let me dream a little longer and I hope I never wake up from this one.

If you have 4 minutes you can watch a video that outlines Lin’s development from college into a pro basketball star. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFCZ01Hiv8o&feature=player_embedded

With McDonald’s continuing to reign as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to burgers/QSR’s, the contest between Burger King and Wendy’s for second place has suddenly become more interesting. Wendy’s is about to surpass Burger King as the #2 burger chain.

Wendy’s has had its own struggles since the passing of its founder Dave Thomas. Recent improvements in product quality, product presentation (i.e. paper wrapped hamburgers) and in-store offerings have all contributed to recent growth and as marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management Tim Calkins notes it’s “a classic marketing story about brands that stumble and then get their footing back. This is about really understanding your brand, and being true to it.” http://bit.ly/Ar3mWW.

But I think it’s just as likely that the change in order is a situation created more by what Burger King is not doing as opposed to what Wendy’s is doing. After all – what is Burger King’s brand and how is BK being ‘true to it’? There has been much discussion on how Burger King’s desire to focus on young men has backfired and hurt its position. The bizarre ‘King’ campaign was just that – bizarre. The ‘Whopper Freakout’ ads were interesting and showed a little promise (at least I thought so) but they were abandoned as well.

Burger King seems to have forgotten its own USP (unique selling proposition) and POD (point of differentiation). Of the three, only Burger King broils its burgers. When’s the last time you heard anything about that? Of course BK’s problems are substantially more complicated than not having a USP or POD. Just walk into a Burger King restaurant and you will realize what I mean instantly. To me the few restaurants I’ve been in lately are dark, somewhat less than spotlessly clean and bereft of a variety of healthy choices as opposed to McDonald’s and Wendy’s.

As the Ad-Age article concluded ‘Indeed, Wendy’s has benefited from the woes at Burger King, much like Diet Coke benefited from Pepsi’s issues to become the No. 2 soda brand.

Burger King has struggled with management and ownership changes, and analysts have said the chain faltered by focusing too much of its marketing on young men, a demographic hit hard by the recession. Wendy’s seized the moment, made the right changes and zipped into the No. 2 spot.

However, Burger King is determined to rebound. Last year it hired Global CMO Flavia Faugeres (Wendy’s has been sans CMO since June), brought on McGarry-Bowen , and, “to appeal to a broader audience, traded in its King character in favor of food as the star of its advertising. A new brand campaign is also expected this year.’

McGarryBowen is a top notch shop but I think Burger King has quality perception problem that supersedes its identity problem. It won’t be an easy fix but Wendy’s has shown that good comeback stories still exist in the ultra-competitive QSR burger category.

Carol Bartz has been gone from Yahoo for nearly two months and there has been spotty news on management other than Timothy Morse being named interim CEO and Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo remaining ‘chief Yahoos’. Wednesday of this week David Kenny resigned as president and director of Akamai Technologies. Mr. Kenny is already on the board of Yahoo and there is speculation that he could possibly be the next chief executive.

This all comes as a backdrop as Yahoo appears to be both on and off the market. Last week Jerry Yang Yahoo.com co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang said that while Yahoo’s board is famously exploring all its options, it’s not necessarily up for sale. “The intent going in is not to put ourselves up for sale. The intent is to look at all the options,” Yang said on stage at the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong. http://bit.ly/vGcKmQ

There are apparently many potential suitors interested in Yahoo and Yahoo’s still impressive reach. The list moves from AOL’s Tim Armstrong, to Microsoft, to Jack Ma of Alibaba.com (Yahoo owns 40% of Alibaba.com, a stake that Jack Ma had been trying to buy back from Ms. Bartz before her departure).

The real question many people (including me) are asking is, (despite what Mr. Yang is saying) does Yahoo have an independent future? Or will it need to be part of another company’s platform? In the case of Microsoft (think Bing) – Yahoo and Bing would together comprise nearly 35% of the search market (the balance is nearly all Google) and would be a formidable player in the search marketplace. I don’t see as good a fit with AOL (two somewhat tried and tired brands) or Alibaba.com but they have their reasons for wanting a piece of more than 100 million Yahoo unique monthly users (includes email).

Right now the valuation to buy Yahoo is as much as US $20 billion. The three leaders as noted above all have the wherewithal to make it happen. And of course Mr. Yang is a potential buyer himself.

How will this play out?

Companies who develop a strong Twitter following online have a better chance at increasing sales according to a recent study conducted by Constant Contact and research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey – http://bit.ly/tZIZql.

The survey studied the buying habits of fewer than 1,500 people. A fairly good-sized sample and the results were that 50% of people who follow a brand are more likely to buy that brand’s products. The article also notes however that it is not all that easy to get a Twitter user to follow a brand. I would agree with that as I am not one to follow a brand on Twitter although I have done so on Facebook to some degree. In fact only 21% of Twitter users follow brands.

Also significant was the statistic that 75% of people surveyed said the never ‘un-follow’ brands after making a ‘commitment’ to them. Although I don’t really understand how following a brand shows my commitment exactly.

Mashable lists the study’s five main reasons for following a brand on Twitter:

• 64%: I am a customer of the company
• 61%: To be the first to know information about the brand
• 48%: To receive discounts and promotions
• 36%: To gain access to exclusive content
• 28%: To receive content/information to retweet and share with others

The article also noted that Twitter’s follower numbers closely mirror a Facebook study that also found that 56% of users on Facebook who like a brand’s fan page are more likely to recommend that brand to friends while 51% of consumers who like a brand Facebook fan page are more likely to purchase that product. I expect that this comes as no surprise to anyone.

Twitter continues to evolve (check out Simon Cowell’s comments on his personal turnaround on using Twitter as a listening device in today’s New York Times http://nyti.ms/vuE6dT), and personally I find myself following fewer overall people and culling out people I am following if they don’t put out tweets of interest to me. I am following over 900 people and there’s no way for me to sift through that many people’s tweets.

Brands are doing a better job of leveraging social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. For me it starts and ends with what kind of engagement the brands offer, as well as what kinds of offers the brands offer!

But there’s still room for improvement don’t you think?

Listen to any news program on terrestrial or satellite radio recently you’ve no doubt heard a direct response commercial touting reasons to buy gold now. With the stock market as volatile as it’s ever been the pitch is aimed at nervous investors who are beside themselves with what to do next.

Gold has always had special allure for many people and it is used not only for jewelry but for many industrial applications. In fact all the gold mined in the world in history would fit in a cube 60 feet on each side, that is to say, it would fit in the space underneath the Eiffel Tower. Gold occurs as part of the earth’s crust at approximately .0025 parts per million, and is widely distributed throughout the world. Gold also occurs in seawater, to the tune of approximately 10 parts of gold per trillion parts of water, concentrations too small to profitably extract.

The price of gold spiked to nearly $ 1,800 an ounce Thursday and an opportune direct marketer had spots in the can and ready to go. I listened to it a couple of times over the past few days, the spot points out that you could have bought gold for $ 300 an ounce back in 1998 and even $ 1,200 an ounce just a couple of years ago.

There are some financial pundits that have surmised the price of gold could rise upwards of $ 2,000 an ounce on its way to $ 3,000 or even $ 4,000 an ounce. Since I am not a speculative investor I will refrain from commenting on the likelihood of that occurrence. I will note that yesterday the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) raised the margin requirements for gold futures http://nyti.ms/nfuhwg which helped knock the price of gold down 3% for the day. You have to have a strong stomach to ride that kind of drop down the tracks.

Here’s what does bother me – preying on average people’s fears and lack of knowledge when it comes to investing in general and investing in a commodity such as gold (or any precious metal for that matter). Most of the ads for investment vehicles have some sort of accompanying disclaimer about the risks of investing – right before the phone number and URL is barked several times, but this particular ad doesn’t have the disclaimer.

I guess one could be impressed with the timeliness of this advertiser in buying spot radio time during this current stock market roller coaster ride. Yet what is worrisome is the possibility or even probability that non-professional investing people do not really understand how fast the price of a precious metal like gold can drop. (And yes I realize it can also rise).

The point I am making is that a making a move into a precious metal like gold that has appreciated dramatically over the past two plus years (nearly 50%) requires careful consideration and attention both before and after the fact.

The attempted frenzy being created by the recent radio ads I refer to just seems cheesy and sleazy to me.

How about you? What do you think?