Archive for category Spam

Office Depot Vs. Staples: How Staples Got Their Upper Hand

Mar 7

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Marketing, Spam, Technology, TiVo, TV, VOD | 3 Comments

Staples Killing Office Depot

From the first moment it was introduced, TiVo has been feared by the ad guys. For consumers it’s dramatically improves the television experience, but for content owners TiVo and other DVRs have created new challenges for them to address. For decades, Hollywood has made a killing by selling 30 second spots, but as we move to an on demand society, this new paradigm has shifted the balance of power to the consumer and has forced mainstream media to think ahead. Those who can make this adjustment will be met with success, but the advertisers and content owners who refuse to change will be left behind.

Some content owners may view fast forwarding through programs as being equivalent to stealing from the content creators, but I don’t buy that line of rubbish at all. As much as they’d like to belive it, there is no social contract when it comes to television. Viewers aren’t required to sit through the commercials, they’ve just never had an easy way to opt out before.

Advertising may help to pay for the programming, but it’s the content itself that is competing for my attention, not the ad spots. If the content owners really don’t want their customers fast forwarding through their ads, then they need to make their content compelling enough that you are willing to watch all 30 minutes of a show, instead of just the 20 minutes that actually entertains us.

Fusing edgy advertising with good content is no easy task, but the ad agencies and content owners that can pull it off, will be the real winners when it comes to marketing to an on-demand customer. The content owners may wish that the technology companies would keep their paws off of their videos, but now that the power of time shifting has been turned over to the consumer, there is no turning back.

Some ad buyers have already begun to figure out the power of product placement, but it still amazes me that we haven’t seen a single show in the industry completely abandoned the 30 second spot just yet. The first TV show to run without a single 30 second ad is certain to get a lot of buzz, but unfortunately, for far too long, the status-quo has been plauged by it’s own inertia and it’s taken an influx of new ideas and technologies in order to force Hollywood to adapt.

I can’t really speak for everyone, but I know that at least in my case, product placement is an extremely effective advertising tool for a couple of reasons. When I bought my a car a year ago, it wasn’t the Super Bowl commercials that convinced me to buy my Thunderbird, it was smart ad placement in the 2002 season of 24 that made me fall in love with that car.

One of the reasons why product placement is such a powerful marketing tool is that it actually reaches 100% of your audience. While some aren’t as aggressive about cutting out clutter from their TV viewing, I’m a power ad skipper when it comes to my TiVo. I have very little tolerance for the commercials that programmers bombard at me, so if you want to get my attention, you need to embed your commericials in the actual shows, if you even want me to watch.

Perhaps more importantly then just reaching your audience, product placement is also an effective tactic psychologically because people associate the positive feelings they get from watching a good show with the brands that show up in the program.

A good example of how influential product placement can be, is to look at the most recent marketing campaigns for where you purchase your office supplies. In one corner you have Office Depot. They’ve been using a traditional 30 second spot to try and influence people into shopping at their store. Their commercial uses every annoying marketing gimmick out there. They’ve incorporated a jingle into the spot, to ensure that it will stick inside your brain for months, they purchased massive amounts of ad time on the same programs just in case someone may have missed it the first 50 times, and they’ve run the same commercial over and over and over again so that they can beat their message into potential customer’s heads, they even threw in a freaky looking mascot in a misguided attempt to help consumers better identify their brand.

This is the old paradigm, the way things have always been done. It requires no innovative marketing strategy or a rethinking of consumer demand. It represents a general malaise and lack of respect towards the new, more sophisticated time shifting consumer.

In the other corner you Staples. I’m not sure whether or not Staples still runs 30 second ads, but I can’t remember the last time I saw one of their 30 second spots. Instead, I actually look forward to seeing their ads once a week, when I’m watching one of my favorite shows, The Office. Each week they make their “commercial” different and fresh by integrating their products into the actual storyline of each show.

In the case of Office Depot, I don’t choose to watch their ad, they thrust it on me. Normally, it’s easy enough to tune this out, but because of their jingle, everytime this commercial runs, it’s impossible to ignore and my stress-o-meter starts heading through the roof. The first time I saw their creepy little mascot hand, I was ambivalent about the spot, but after watching the same ad fifty times, I now get an irrestible urge to start stabbing that freaky thing with a dull pair of scissors, everytime it airs.

While Staples hasn’t used any annoying jingles during The Office, because their content is already engaging, when their ads do show up, it not only creates an impression, but it’s a positive impression because I’m already enjoying the show and I know that the ad is directly supporting a show I know and love. This impression can later be reinforced in a variety of clever ways. For example, after the show where Dwight Schrute “quit” his job at Staples, the company actually went so far as to release a memo announcing that they weren’t very sorry to see Dwight leave their fine company.

This was really smart on Staples part because it not only extended their marketing campaign into other forms of media, but it also reinforced their sponsorship of the show. This in turn, helps viewers to later be on the lookout for the Staple ads embedded in the program.

Now compare this with how Office Depot has supported the marketing message that they are sending. Not only can you not find toys of their creepy hand mascot at their stores, but if you go on their website, they don’t even mention the hand. Given how much money they’ve spent trying to brand this image in people’s minds, you’d think that they’d support the marketing campaign by including it in other forms of media as well.

I’m not sure how much money Staples spent in order to get their ads embedded into The Office, but compared to Office Depot’s efforts, I have to believe that this has been money well spent. Office Depot may have been more successful at getting me to notice their ad and notice it more often, but Staples has actually won my heart by partnering with programs I care about, instead of mentally assaulting me with with programming that I don’t want to opt into.

At the end of the day, by using their annoying jingle to try and force me to pay attention, Office Depot has actually created hostile feelings in me when I think about their brand. Meanwhile, Staples advertising has not only made me laugh, but it actually makes me want to spend money at their company.

When all is said and done, it will be the Staples of the world, that end up succeeding in an on-demand environment, because they don’t hold you hostage for 30 minutes in exchange for 20 minutes of content, they make every single minute count. Some content owners may not be happy with consumers having control over their television viewing, but I’m excited that TiVo is forcing this transformation, because in the end, product placement will make everyone’s television better. It will help to ensure that our favorite shows continue to stay well funded, it will challenge advertisers to think more creativity when competing for your attention, and if it’s done right, it will make your programming more engaging and entertaining.

Hollywood Killed Replay But Can They Take On Microsoft?

Feb 21

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, DRM, Media, Microsoft, Spam, Technology, TiVo, TV | 2 Comments

Shortly after I purchased my first TiVo, a friend of mine wanted to know my thoughts on whether or not he should get a DVR. Like any rabid obsessed TiVotee, I immedietely started gushing over, all of TiVo’s innovative features and about how much of a transformative effect, time shifting has played on my life.

After trying to hard sell him on a TiVo unit for over three weeks, I finally succeeded in convincing my friend to buy a DVR, but instead of going with the TiVo unit I recommended, he went with the ReplayTV 5000. I tried to talk him out of it, but no matter what I said he wouldn’t budge. I showed him the superior interface, I let him test drive my own unit, I tried pointing out that suggestions and wishlists were exclusive to TiVo, I even tried to scare him into believing that Replay would possible stop working, if the company went bankrupt. No matter how hard I tried though, I couldn’t convince him to choose TiVo over that ReplayTV 5000 unit because it had a feature no one could touch. Automatic commercial skipping.

When TiVo first launched, the movie studios completely freaked out over DVR technology. They understood early on, the impact time shifting would play on their revenues and went to great lengths to put a stop to it. Initially, TiVo wanted to partner with the studios, but instead the studios threatened to sue the company, if they even launched their product. Hollywood’s huffing and puffing turned out to be little more than hot air when it came to TiVo, but when ReplayTV had the nerve to introduce automatic commercial skipping, the studios knew they had to draw a line in the sand.

Immedietely they lashed out and sued Replay, in order to make them stop. Replay did their best to fend off their legal attack, but eventually their parent company collapsed and rather then let the courts decide the legality of the technology, Hollywood quickly settled the case and resigned themselves to having at least contained the DVR threat.

After Replay found out about automatic skipping the hard way, other companies have been understandably reluctant to provide the technology to their customers. For years, the only way to gain access to this skip technology was to buy old ReplayTV boxes off of Ebay, but thanks to the open source community, there now appears to be a way to unlock automatic commercial skip on any Media Center PC.

Turning on commercial skip isn’t for the mainstream consumer yet, but for those who do spend the time figuring it out, it can add a powerful component to the Media Center experience.

The program itself is customizable and pretty robust. If you are feeling guilty about “stealing” your television, it allows you to adjust the maximum number of minutes it cuts out of each program. You can also program it to strip out commercials and then tranfer those files to a media extender or Xbox.

As it becomes more popular, it will be interesting to see how the studios will react. Suing Replay or TiVo is one thing, but taking on a legal team that has already been up against the Justice department is another matter entirely. The studio’s could always forego the legal route and try to convince Microsoft to shut the leak with more juicy IPTV contracts, but sooner or later it will become an issue that they will want to address.

Hopefully, the studios will end up ignoring it as a fringe threat and let media center fans have their fun, but given how hard they fought round 1, I’m skeptical that we’ll always see skip technology around. For now though, with the help of the open source community, Microsoft has quietely gained a key differentiator in the crowded DVR market and consumers have one more way to enhance their television experience.

Will You Be My Valentine And Help Me Sell Viagra?

Feb 14

Posted by Davis in Spam, Technology | 2 Comments

Frankly after all of the noise surrounding the original I Love You virus, I’m surprised that we haven’t seen more of this con, but it looks like someone has decided to take advantage of the Valentine’s day spirit, in order to release a nasty worm onto the internet. The subject lines in the email looks innocent enough, but when you open it blammo!, it installs a backdoor program that will turn your computer into a lean mean zombie spamming machine.

While I think it’s pretty terrible that someone would release something that is going to cause so much trouble, I will say that the social engineering on the these holiday viruses is a lot smarter then many of the threats we see. Here you are minding your own business when all of a sudden you get an email from an old flame :lol: or someone already in your existing social network. Of course you’re going to be curious as to what it says, but by looking at it, you’ve now just sent it to all of the people in your address book and they are the next to be tempted by the bait. Given the number of email addresses that most people store in their address book, even if they got a minimal response rate, this thing was destined to take off pretty fast. Hopefully, the experts will have this contained pretty quickly, but in the meantime it’s much better to stick with physical Valentines anyway, they mean a lot more and don’t send emails to your ex-girlfriends.

Dolby Turns Down The Volume On Obnoxious Advertisers

Jan 9

Posted by Davis in Media, Movies, Spam, Technology, TV | 1 Comment

iPod MiniiPod Mini Hosted on ZooomrPhoto By Thomas Hawk

Advertising is a tricky business. Marketers know that people avoid commercials, but they still have to try and capture their attention. Over the years, they’ve had pretty much free reign to do whatever they want to consumers, but with the advent of DVRs, consumers have finally started to take back control of their television sets.

One of the more obnoxious techniques that marketing companies love to use is to jack up the volume on commercial spots and then start the ad off with a phone ringing or an alarm clock going off. Even if you’ve got your trigger finger on the fast foward button, it still can be tough to avoid and is very annoying. You’ll be sitting there enjoying a show at a comfortable volume level and then the next thing you know some snake oil salesman is trying to sell you a used car at a decible level loud enough to wake up the neighbors.

Luckily, Dolby has been working on a solution to this problem and whether marketing companies like it or not, they unveiled sound leveling technology at CES called Dolby Volume, that should help to shift control of the TV volume back into the hands of the consumer. In the past we’ve seen other tech companies try to launch their own solutions to this problem, but they’ve seen varying degrees of success. Between Dolby’s audio expertise and their relationships with the TV manufactuers though, Dolby is in a good position to solve this problem for consumers. Dolby Volume will not only level the sound experience between commercial breaks, but will also ensure a consistent sound experience when you change channels as well. While the technology isn’t scheduled to be included in TV sets until the end of the year, it’s still very cool to see technology continue to give control back to the consumer.

Gotcha! – Caught In A Game Of Blogger Tag

Dec 28

Posted by Davis in Spam | 2 Comments

Thomas Hawk nailed me in a game of blog tag, so I’m supposed to tell you five things that you don’t already know about me. At first I wasn’t going to do it, but since Tom was the one who introduced me to tagging articles, photo-tagging and geo-tagging, I figure that he probably knows a thing or two about playing tag, so here goes.

1.) The best prize I ever won was a free Turkey. At the time I thought I would get a live one, but sadly my bird was frozen, yet still quite tasty.

2.) I once actually attended clown school

3.) The first time I served Jury Duty, I volunteered to be the foreman and we spent three days arguing over a fender bender before we hopelessly deadlocked.

4.) I used to have a pet goat. It would eat anything.

5.) At one time in my life, I worked as a butler.

Since Alex Raiano is itching to get tagged, I’ll tag him, Jose Alvear, Dale Dietrich, Jason Unger & Julio Ojeda-Zapata.

The Cyberslums Face Labor Shortage

Dec 9

Posted by Davis in Spam, Technology | Comments off

As more and more criminals have discovered how lucrative cyber crime can be, it’s causing a shortage of tech talent for the crime lords who run the digital sewer. In a fascinating article, the BBC reports that these gangs are starting to go to increasingly desperate measures in order to recruit hackers into their criminal underworlds. To a certain extent, this shouldn’t really be all that surprising. People love using technological advancements, but there are only so many people who really actually understand how the infrastructure works and more importantly to the criminals, how to get around the safeguards that companies build.

At the same time, crime is easy. Anyone can steal, getting away with it’s the hard part and with the digital transition, it creates opportunities that many two bit theives want to cash in on even though they lack the skills to do this themselves. The problem is though, like any case where demand exceeds supply, there are only so many criminals who are willing to work in the cyberslums. As a result criminal enterprises have started paying for students to get technlogy degrees and have started recruiting kids who dabble in hacking into their gangs.

While I can understand the appeal of a rebel hacker gang to teenagers, this trend is really very frightening. Criminals aren’t the sort of people who make investments in human capital and then just let them walk away. If someone is going to blow $100K on an education, you have to expect that they’re going to want to make that money back, plus a lot of profit for the risks they are taking. With cyber crime having become even more sophisticated, these recruitment efforts are a natural way for these gangs to fill their need for quality tech people. With so many legitimate opportunities out there in life, it’s sad to think that people are trapping themselves in lives of crimes just so that they can spam the internet and run con jobs. Hopefully, this trend won’t turn out to be a long term development for the tech industry because there are already enough problems trying to stop the people who don’t know what their doing, let alone the ones who get training.

Why Is Netflix Supporting A Penny Stock Touter?

Nov 21

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Netflix, Spam | 8 Comments

Last year, I saw that Steve Swasey, Netflix’s Director of Corporate Communications, granted an interview with an investment website named WallSt.net. At the time, the site had erroneously claimed that Netflix was planning on unveiling a movie download service “shortly”, when Netflix had in fact, just told investors that they were scrapping their plans for a Netflix / TiVo service for the indefinite future.

When I pointed out the error in the company’s reporting, rather then making a public correction and admiting that they were wrong, they instead silently changed the story to remove the language that was in the original article.

Being interested in Netflix, I had registered with WallSt.net, in order to listen to the interview. Unfortunately, I quickly found the email address that I had used was overrun with penny stock spam. While I have no way of knowing whether or not WallSt.net was behind the spam, I did find it interesting to note that several of the companies that pay them to promote their stocks were included in these emails.

Regardless of whether or not WallSt.net was responsible for sending out the penny stock spam though, it’s clear that the company uses press releases as a tactic to tie legitimate companies to illiquid penny stocks that they have a financial interest in promoting. At the time of their first Netflix interview, they had issued a press release that appeared on the Netflix business wire, that included a mention of Teleplus Enterprises (TLPE.OB) in the headline. Since that date, Teleplus has lost over 52% of their value.

A few days later, WallSt.Net issued another press release on the Netflix business wire, promoting their Netflix interview yet again and this time referencing a company named Securac Corp. (SECU.OB) and China Mobility Solutions (CHMS.OB). Since that time Securac has lost 91% of their market value and China Mobility has lost 80%.

At the time, I had dismissed the interview as an honest mistake by Swasey and had assumed that Netflix would not have initially provided them with the interview, had they known about WallSt.net’s penny stock tactics beforehand. After seeing them abuse their coverage of their initial interview to tout these penny stocks, I had assumed that Netflix would cut off communication with their firm, yet earlier this week, I was suprised to find out that Steve Swasey has yet again, given another interview to WallSt.net and this morning, surprise surprise, WallSt.net issued another press release to the business newswires, reminding investors that they have an update on Checkpoint, Netflix and a company named Infinix Corp (INXR.PK). Infinix is a penny stock that trades on the pink sheets that has convienently agreed to pay WallSt.Net $3,150 for “media and advertising services.”

Now I don’t know anything about Infinix or their business model, but I do know that because they trade on the pink sheets, it which means that they are exempt from providing regulatory filings that legitimate public companies have to maintain. Investors don’t get quarterly financial reports, an accurate view of the number of shares outstanding, or any other important information that one needs to make informed decisions.

Why Netflix would allow their good corporate reputation to be sullied by these cheap carnival barkers is beyond me, but I find their continued support of the company to be truly disturbing. Considering, that after covering every single intimate detail about Netflix for nearly three years, that I can’t even get Netflix’s PR department to respond to a single email from me, I’m amazed that this site has been able to get not one, but two opportunities to muddy Netflix’s financial reputation. Had Netflix investors fallen for WallSt.net’s press release touting scheme last year, it would have cost them dearly and yet a year later, Steve Swasey is more then happy to publically discuss Netflix from a financial perspective on their site. Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice shame on Netflix.

Life In The Longtail – Surely Make You Lose Your Mind

Nov 16

Posted by Davis in Disclosure - I own stock in co. mentioned, Marketing, Netflix, Spam | 1 Comment

If there was ever a poster child for the longtail, I would be it. Every movie I rent from Netflix is from their archived content, when I search for music online it is always for indie bands, I even bought my car through an internet site that gave me more flexibility then a traditional dealership. I’m not sure that I can pinpoint the exact appeal of the longtail, but part of it, is that I like being able to support the underdog.

Whether it’s choosing a small club over a stadium concert or prefering a new restaurant over an old favorite, I’m the sort of person who will only bet on the underdog when I go to Las Vegas. It could be the demographic I’m in, it could be my natural affinity for innovation, or it may just be that I like having lots and lots of choices, but when it comes to choosing between the longtail or the short head, I’ll pick the longtail 95% of the time.

Given my natural bent towards longtail preferences, it came as no surprise, that when I needed to find new furniture for my place, I naturally turned towards the internet. This wasn’t my first move though, in fact I spent several Saturdays picking through local furniture stores, but everything I found was either generic or extremely expensive. It wasn’t until I turned to the net, that I realized I could not only save 50%, but that I could also increase my choices by expanding my search beyond the few local shops in my neighborhood, and into the thousands of local businesses across the entire US.

At first the choice was almost overwhelming, but finally I came across a store named Everything Furniture that seemed to have what I needed. Not only did they offer me a diverse and unique selection to choose from, but I found a number of positive reivews online as well.

While initially I had intended on writing a glowing review on the company by using them as an example of the benefits of living in the longtail, unfortunately my experience didn’t allow me to score this transaction as a victory for my longtail lifestyle. Yes, they delivered the furniture and yes it was much less expensive then purchasing furniture using a more traditional route, but there were several obstacles I had to overcome along the way.

The first was actually receiving the furniture itself. The delivery took longer then expected and while I didn’t mind waiting, I was disappointed when the shipping firm that they outsourced my order to, tried to extort me when it did arrive. Basically, my shipper flat out refused to move any of my furniture beyond the front door of my apartment building, despite there being an oversized elevator designed for just such a delivery.

When I protested that he he was leaving me with a lot of cargo and without any means of getting it to my apartment, I was told that for $20 (wink wink nudge nudge) he’d bend the “insurance” rules and bring the cargo to my front door. While I wouldn’t have minded paying an extra $20 for shipping, I did mind that this was never disclosed upfront and that the shipper was willing to break the rules as long as I slipped him a Lincoln. When I refused he left me to transport several large boxes on my own, without the proper equipment.

Once I managed to drag the boxes into my apartment, I quickly discovered that one of the pieces had been damaged during the shipping. I contacted Everything Furniture and they agreed to ship out a replacement piece, but it meant I had to wait another 2 – 3 weeks before completing my purchase.

While these issues were minor obstacles for me to deal with, the one that made me never want to do business with Everything Furniture again, was what happened after I completed my purchase. Shortly after receiving my furniture, I began to receive, at least, 2 catalogs a day from countless mail order companies. Over the last month, I’ve called 2 dozen companies and have asked to be taken off of their mailing lists, yet everyday I seem to get another catalog from a different company, which necessitates another telephone call on top of a 90 day waiting period, before they actually stop sending me anything. While I understand that Everything Furniture needs to turn a profit, they never asked my permission to sell my name and address to a catalog spam list and receiving junk mail is something that I’m particularly sensitive to.

We have laws against unsolicited phone calls, rules pertaining to spam and prohibitions against junk faxes, yet there is little that I can do to prevent being bombarded with one Christmas catalog after another.

I’ve never purchased anything from a catalog in my life and I don’t intend to start now. By quickly glancing over many of these mailings, I can tell that the prices are outrageous and that they are wasting their postage by sending them to me. While the discount on the furniture was nice, I would have picked another company to do business with, in a heartbeat, had I known that the cost of my purchase would be death by mail.

My experience isn’t likely to change my outlook on the longtail, but it does serve as a good warning on the dangers of living in the longtail. With many choices comes many risks and while I may have been smart enough to make sure that I wasn’t going to be ripped off by Everything Furniture, I never thought to research their business practices before placing my order. While the abundance of choice can be a good thing, something can also be said for sticking with brands that have established reputations as being good corporate citizens. Everything Furniture may have fulfilled their contractual obligation with me, but the experience now serves as an important reminder to be more careful when doing business with companies I’ve never heard of.

HD-DVD – Now With Even More Ads

Nov 7

Posted by Davis in DVDs, HDTV DVDs, Marketing, Spam | 2 Comments

Studio executives would like you to believe that HD-DVD and Blu-ray represent the future of the DVD, but according to Ad-Jab it also represents the future of advertising. In a move sure to infuriate fans everywhere, HD-DVD is going to start including enhanced advertising content on the extra space that HD-DVD discs allow for.

The only thing more controversial then the ads that the studios make you watch when you buy a DVD are the ads that movie theaters force on you when you go see a film. The advertisments that you can opt out of, or skip past don’t bother me quite as much, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rented a movie and have then been forced to sit through some lousy spot that I have no interest in.

It would be one thing if the DVD was free, but when I’m paying hard earned cash for premium content, it’s just not right double dip into adverstising as well.

The HD-DVD and Blu-ray has been celebrated for their higher disc capacity, but if the studios plan on filling up that capacity with a bunch of spammy ads, it’s going to give consumers one more reason to take a pass on the technology. The strategy for HDTV DVDs has been a failure from the start and if the HD-DVD and Blu-ray camps can’t figure a way out of their stalemate, they risk being made largely irrelvent by video on demand. With the Xbox 360 now offering HDTV downloads, it is only a matter of time before we see VOD technology more broadly adopted.

It’s already a tough sell to get someone to pay up the big bucks for access to HDTV DVD technology, but if they are now going to including ads, after early adopters have shelled out $1,000 for what could possibly be obsolete technology, you can bet that there will be a backlash. Hopefully, the studios will realize that they need to do something fast because everyday that delays the implementation of HDTV DVD technology is one less day that the studios will be able to justify charging $15 – $20 for a movie.

Note To Self: Don’t Piss Off Washington

Aug 16

Posted by Davis in Spam | 1 Comment

I only lived in Seattle for three years, but it was long enough to get a sense of the pride that the Evergreen state takes in their sense of privacy. Washington was one of the first states to pass laws combatting spam and they’ve taken an aggressive stance against online marketing abuses that occur within in their state. In their latest move to combat spyware, Washington state has sued Movieland.com for alleging offering a “free three day trial” and then spamming users with pop ups saying that they owed them money.

I hope that Movieland gets buried by this lawsuit. If what is being alleged is true, they deserve to have an example made out of them. I understand that it’s tempting to use slime ball tactics to make money, but with so many opportunities out there, it’s really not necessary to try and scam people in order to make a living. Pop ups are bad enough, but to tell people that they owe money for a free trial is even worse.