Being Peter Kim

iPhone: advertising and brand monitoring

The iPhone goes on sale today, which you probably knew.  Do you remember seeing any ads for it?  TV?  Print?  Banners?

I've seen some paid keywords on Google.  Given the amount of buzz, hype, anticipation around the launch - why even bother?  (unless you're marketing Blackberries.) Today I got an email with the image at left.  Search ads and email - that's it.  Compare that to the consumer-generated content around the product:  on YouTube, Flickr, and in blogs.

Here's what brand monitoring experts have to say about the launch:

- Matt Hurst at Microsoft predicts the topic will garner 1% of blog discussion today.  Looks like he's right.
- Nielsen Buzzmetrics indicates positive sentiment around features.  Relevant Noise disagrees.
- BrandIntel points out that although discussion levels are high, purchase intent remains neutral.

So it seems as if we have a Subservient Chicken question here:  lots of buzz, but what about sales?  At minimum, the iPhone is already a huge success for the Apple brand and time will tell us about the bottom line...

Why the London 2012 logo is a HUGE success

OK so the initial controversy over the London 2012 logo has died down.  Somewhat.

My feed reader is kind of quirky sometimes and I just got retreads on posts from Mack and David on the subject.

Despite all of the negative takes on the logo, I think it's a success.  Why?

1.  The event is five years away and people outside of London are buzzing about it. Since when did the general public care about the Olympics anymore?  I used to work for a sporting goods company and I remember the day that our running marketing manager gave us a hard time about this.  Unlike football (i.e. soccer), which people care about every day, all year and which gets much more funding.
2.  Can you recall what the last Olympic logo was?  Do you even remember where it was held?  Can you recall ANY Olympic logos?  I remember 1996, because I was living in Atlanta at the time.  I remember 1988, because I went to Seoul the year before.  Otherwise...?
3.  [Proper form would have me make three points to support the argument, but in this case I think the first two suffice.]

As Oscar Wilde said, "there is only only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

pinkberry!

  Pinkberry 
  Originally uploaded by roboppy.

Do you know about Pinkberry?

Aka the new crackberry, aka nogurt?

A quick look at Google Trends shows search volume spiking. BlogPulse shows that the buzz is growing as well.

A little controversy never hurts.  Neither does a catchy theme song.

Luxury, interactive agencies, and financial services

I'm about to wrap up my 2nd trip to New York in two weeks.  I've been blogging about what I've been doing here and over on Forrester's Marketing Team blog:

- The luxury marketing, Google, and Critical Mass
- Notes on luxury:  Giorgio Armani keynote
- Three things about Avenue A/Razorfish
- The company-owned store: an immersive brand experience
- Turning customer experience into a competitive weapon
- Fidelity Investments:  Moving beyond customer satisfaction
- Customer advocacy 2007:  USAA wins again
- What North American banks can learn from Europe

Thankfully I'll be at home for the next few weeks.

The company-owned store: An immersive brand experience

  M & Ms 
  Originally uploaded by Pete Kim.

Whenever I walk through Times Square, I'm amazed to see the number of brand-owned flagship stores there.  After dinner last night, I went into the M&M's store at Broadway & 48th.

This is a great example of how a brand - one that you may not think needs its own store - pulls off an immersive experience for enthusiasts and those who are just plain curious.  For example, the wall upstairs has tubes filled with M&Ms of all different colors - over 22, many of them exclusive to the store.  You pick out a bag and fill with whatever colors you want, $9/pound.  And yes, while that may be 2 - 3 times more expensive what you may pay at your local CVS...it's the experience that counts.

In a world filled with complex distribution and trade operations, the company-owned store is a manufacturer's best option to maximize presentation of a brand on its own terms.

p.s. this applies to your website, too...

Fun with Yahoo! Pipes: Brand Monitoring

Messing around with pipes for an hour this evening (morning?).  Created a mega-brand monitoring feed pipe.  Still need to tweak the filter as Max's posts seem to show up at the bottom, even though I have a sort/descending turned on (Wordpress issue?).  If anyone has suggestions, thoughts, etc let me know...

Pointing out some technical tweaks

I'm certainly not a technical genius, but I've performed some minor tweaks to this blog that might give you some ideas for your own:

• Expanded the width of the middle column to fit a 1024 x 768 screen, no white space
• Domain:  using domain mapping for "www.beingpeterkim.com" to "beingpeterkim.typepad.com"
• Connected Flickr to blog photos directly
• Feeds:
  • Added a comments feed to more easily track conversations
  • Paying for Feedburner's MyBrand to rename my feed; changed autodiscovery too
• Search:
  • Reinstalled Google search, this time via Google Co-op
  • The reason Google search works this time is because of Google Sitemaps
  • And the search results go straight to a site page, a newer Typepad feature

If I had any design skills, I would have redone the header and CSS by now...but for now, I'm done geeking out!  (At least until I catch something else that's cool.)

Windorphins.com

This afternoon on the subway, the car I was in had been taken over by different executions of windorphins ads.

Read about the guy who gave the domain back to eBay - seems like for free - despite the big bucks being put into a nationwide ad campaign this summer.  Now he says "eBay stole my windorphins."

Honestly, my first reaction when I saw the ads?  It was a Microsoft campaign to give Vista some momentum.  (starts with windows without the 2nd "w")

Anyone know if the "it" campaign is done?  I thought it was pretty much spot on - whenever I need to buy anything online, I look in three places:  Amazon, eBay, and the brand website.

Notes on Luxury - Giorgio Armani keynote

I was in New York this week for a couple of events related to the Luxury Interactive conference.  This morning's keynote address was delivered by Bridget Ryan Berman, CEO of Giorgio Armani.  Her message to the audience:  "Customers are in control."  It's a mantra that most of us have bought into (well, more or less) - but it's one thing to hear from the CEO of a FMCG company and quite surprising to hear this from the CEO of one of the world's preeminent luxury brand portfolios.

Berman's draws on experience from Federated/May, Ralph Lauren, Apple, and Armani:

- Federated:  You must be on the retail selling floor.  It gives you the opportunity to speak directly to the source - an unfiltered pipeline to consumers.

- Ralph Lauren:  A brand that brings experience to life.  The intent: to evoke an emotional response to detail, e.g. Ralph designed it or has the piece in his own home.  Backbone of customer intimacy and authenticity.

- Apple:  Dedicated store space to customer activities, instead of traditional product-focused merchandising.  Lets customers experience products for themselves - empowers them, gives them control.

- Armani: Mining global customer CRM; tons of existing data that had never been used.  Enhancing the retail experience by focusing on physical space and customer/associate interaction.  Aligning brand and customer perception.

Berman says she realizes that the next generation are quickly becoming "power consumers" and has started setting up the company for future success.

IBM lost records: Part 2

OK, so it was nice of IBM to send a letter to former employees as a heads up and offer a year of credit monitoring service.

But does it change your opinion if you know that:
- they sent the letter seven weeks after mainstream media reported on it?
- they sent letters to other former employees weeks before you?
- the tapes were not stolen or lost, but fell off a truck?

Happy Father's Day

  Bonds 748 on the way 
  Originally uploaded by Pete Kim.

To all the fathers out there - hope you had a great one.

I was at Fenway today for the Giants vs. Red Sox.  The white dot in the picture is the baseball about to become Barry Bonds' 748th career home run.

IBM loses employee records: Is ignorance bliss?

A friend of mine got a letter this week from IBM, where he worked over a decade ago.  The letter reads:

"We are writing because of an incident that has resulted in the loss of information relating to your IBM employment, and we wanted to inform you about what happened and explain steps IBM is taking to help protect you.

Recently data tapes were lost while being transported by a vendor.  Those tapes contained primarily archival IBM employment-related information, including Social Security numbers.  After a thorough investigation...we have concluded the tape loss was inadvertent and not associated with theft or any other unlawful activity."

The letter goes on to explain that no one has reported identity theft and the tapes can't be read by a personal computer.  But the Q&A gives more details; namely that the tapes were lost on February 23, 2007 and they not only have SSNs but also birthdays, contact information, and work history.

IBM has also included a year of free credit monitoring, just in case.

So:  it's bad that the tapes were lost.  It's good that they didn't wait a year like TJX to identify the problem and alert consumers.  But in this case, does ignorance = bliss?  I'm not a PR/crisis management type; this was certainly a proactive move by IBM.  However, another strategy would be to have a quick response prepared in case signs of trouble pop up (e.g. using brand monitoring tools).

Any thoughts on what IBM's "right" move would be in this situation?

UPDATE:  See this Consumerist post about the GAO and data breach notification...

Thomas and Friends recall: Lead Paint

If you have kids, or friends/relatives with kids, and they play with Thomas the Tank Engine trains, please read and forward this information:

1.5 million 'Thomas & Friends' toys recalled (MSNBC)

The RC2 website has specific information, including a poster with pictures of the recalled toys, in case you can't remember everyone's names.  Looks like items with red paint in particular are involved.

First dog food, then toothpaste, now toys.  What's next, sneakers?

links for 2007-06-13

• The BuzzMonitor
  Free brand monitoring software from the World Bank
  (tags: brandmonitoring)

A little more Mac for your PC

I'm a pretty big Firefox fan.  But today Apple announced that the Safari web browser is now available for PC's, with claims of better performance than IE, Firefox, and Opera.

Worst case scenario, PC users can pretend they're Mac users when browsing the web, just like when using iTunes.

Behind The Chicken with Barbarian Group

At the IHAF spring meeting on Friday, Rick Webb from Barbarian Group spoke about creativity.  If you didn't know, this is the company that built Subservient Chicken.  Two of Rick's favorite commands:  "build a tent" and "make a sandwich".

Also, check out some free stuff from Barbarian:  magnetosphere, an iTunes visualiser; and grass, an interactive application.

Creativity: Lobotomize your rational mind

At the In-House Agency Forum Spring 2007 conference today.  On the tail end of Tom Monahan's opening was this way to come up with some great ideas.  Say you're a designer or product developer.  Tom's example - let's say you do stoves.  For cooking.

- First, think of all the ways it could be designed impossibly wrong.  Get crazy.  No door?  No off switch?

- Then, build off of those and think about how to make the stove better.  Fix what you just created.

- Now:  would you have thought of those new ideas if you hadn't first thought about how to make it bad?

That's a way to start a 180 degree shift in thinking - first forget about what you know.

links for 2007-06-08

• MediaPost - Consumers Like 30-Second Pre-Rolls, OPA Study Finds
  If you have to take medicine, which flavor do you want: castor oil or cherry?
  (tags: pressquote)

2 June 2007: Yankees vs. Red Sox

  Pre-game scoreboard 
  Originally uploaded by Pete Kim.

Last time I saw the Yankees play the Red Sox at Fenway, the home team hit 4 home runs in a row.  Not the same drama today, but we took a park tour before the game and got some great views of the Park.

For views from on top of the Green Monster, the $150 State Street Pavilion, and detail on the scoreboard's morse code tribute, check out my set on Flickr.

links for 2007-06-02

• Investor's Business Daily: Web Sites' Discovery: Cash Talks
  article on a new wave of sites that are trying to acquire customers by sharing the wealth
  (tags: pressquote)

Pyongyang, North Korea

  Kim Il Sung statue 
  Originally uploaded by Pete Kim.

I just got around to converting some old film to digital and uploading to Flickr.  In August 1998, I visited China and North Korea.  I ended up with fewer pictures than I thought, but most of the pictures you see on Flickr today show Pyongyang pretty much the same as it was nine years ago.

Some of the most interesting and surreal images I remember from my week there were tributes to the "Great Leader" where taking pictures was forbidden.  In the picture here, you can barely see some heads at the bottom - about as big as a button on the statue's jacket.

links for 2007-06-01

• RED HERRING | Radian6 Tracks $4M
  Article mentioning Radian6, Visible Technologies, BuzzLogic
  (tags: pressquote brandmonitoring)