Author: Bob Rosenbaum

Bob Rosenbaum is founder and principal of The MarketFarm, a content-oriented strategic communications firm.

How big is mobile computing? Really big.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley made the following presentation at a recent meeting of technology wizards and gurus. (Notably she got the name of the event wrong; it’s the CN Summit.)

There’s a breadth of information here, ranging from adoption of mobile technologies to the potential for mobile advertising to the investment outlook for companies in the business.

The big takeaway for me is how it underscores the increasingly reasonable-sounding claims that mobile computing will change how we think about computing; and, no less, how important it is for media companies of all sizes to recapture their audiences on the small screen.

Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research

View more presentations from CM Summit: Marketing in Real Time.

Identity theft pitch of the week

This effort to scare me into giving up the goods got caught in the spam filter this week. Except for removal of the phishing link, it’s published here exactly as it appeared:

Hello Visa Card Client ,
Your Bank Card is suspended, becaus we have noted a problem on your Card.

We have determine that someone has maybe using your card without your permission. For your protection, we have  suspended your credit card. To exercise this suspention, Click Here follow the procedure, and specify for Update your  Credit Card.

Note: If this isn’t complete 15 May 2010, we will be forced to suspend your indfiniment card, because it can be used for fraudulent

Thank you for your cooperation in this folder.

Thank You,
Customer service support.

ABC audit bureau dives into digital head first

ipad2For those – and there are many – who say the iPad won’t save publishing, here is evidence that the Little Tablet that Could might be more powerful than they expected.

ABC, the leading auditor of consumer and paid periodical circulation, has built a service that allows media to count readership across  multiple electronic platforms: apps, e-readers and mobile browsers.

Ordinarily slower than honey from the fridge, the audit bureau’s speed to provide meaningful data across the fast-emerging new-media platforms speaks to the urgency of its customers. The data means media will be able to sell advertising for new online formats almost as fast as they develop. That alone will hasten the already hurried development of unique offerings for smart phones, mobile websites and the iPad (as well as the fleet of act-alike products that others will inevitably produce).

It’s important because it’s a stay of execution for the advertising-based business model on which virtually all media rely but which has so far resisted the digital transition.

Why give the iPad credit for this? Since its introduction just a month ago, the conversation about mobile media has changed dramatically – as have reader habits.  Powered by the app, consumers are suddenly willing to buy subscriptions for online content,  Google has been declared a declining power in big media’s pursuit of traffic, and at least one of the major audit bureaus has been shaken to innovate. All because iPad provides a different user experience than any previous device.

I’m not ready to declare that the iPad is going to save publishing-as-we-know-it. But I’m pretty sure it will be right in the middle of publishing-as-it-comes-to-be.

If brand names always told the truth…

Brand names are important because, over time, they come to reflect the values of a product or service as perceived by their customers.

That’s why, when you are sending a package that absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, the first company that comes to mind is FedEx. Or if you’re looking for hard-working, reliable farm or lawn equipment, you know that nothing runs like a Deere.

But sometimes brands fail to live up to their values. Or the marketers of those brands get a little bit ahead of the curve – assigning values that the brands haven’t actually earned.

Here, as a useful example, is a list of brands – and what they would be called if they had been named by the consumer who know them best:

Spirit Airlines = Dispirit Airlines

Wal-Mart = Cheap Crap from China

Toyota = Toofasta

Chrysler Pacifica = Chrysler Pieceoshitica

Verizon Wireless = Check the Bill Carefully

Goldman Sachs = Heads I Win Tails You Lose

Outside the marketers’ echo chamber, print lives

According to B2B magazine, ABM, the trade association for the business-to-business trade press, held a series of panel discussions recently in which participants declared that print isn’t dead.

Wouldn’t we expect them to say that? Of the four pro-print souls mentioned in the article, three of them still make their living by running, editing or selling for print magazines.

I’m not arguing their point either; I believe print is a vitally important communications vehicle and somehow will remain so in the future.

What’s notable in this discussion is the reasoning offered by the fourth panelist, Bob Drake, who runs Drake Creative agency. He said that a recent ad campaign that included a print component succeeded. He’s quoted by B2B as saying, “It goes against everything we’re hearing, but we can engage people for a long period of time (in print) and they stay engaged.”

I don’t know Bob Drake, and I don’t mean to pick on him. But if he’s hearing that print doesn’t work, then he’s talking to other marketers and not to marketees.

Marketers are abandoning print because it’s harder to measure as a marketing vehicle than Internet-based technologies. This is undeniably true. But at some point, that legitimate objection got simplified to the assumption that print is broken, which has been simplified even further to the notion that print is dead.

But if you ask readers, that’s not even close to the truth. The same article cited a poll by Roads & Bridges magazine (conducted by Internet, ironically enough) that indicated a strong preference among its audience for getting information via print. This is consistent with every bit of research and opinion I’ve ever seen. People prefer reading words on paper  – especially glossy paper with charts and pictures.

The point? Like everyone else, marketers are susceptible to the echo-chamber effect. Print isn’t in trouble because it doesn’t work; it’s in trouble because shorthand communications of marketers obscure the nuance that is the truth.

Sailing and business: #2

Win your side.

On days when the wind is shifty, the winner of a race usually comes from one side of the course our the other; rarely from the middle.

That means you have to choose which side you’re going to sail. No remorse allowed. Eventually, you may realize you’ve picked the wrong side; the winner is going to come from the other side.

What do you do? Experience teaches you not to cross the course and get to the other side. In doing so, you’ll probably end up as the last-place boat on the right side of the course.

Instead, focus on winning your side. If you do, the worst you’ll end up is in the middle of the fleet. And often, the winners on the wrong side still finish better than the losers of the right side. So there’s plenty of upside potential in just winning your side.

How does it translate to business? Back in the ’80s, IBM and Apple took opposite sides of the race course – IBM choosing a common platform (MS-DOS) on which to build its computers, and Apple choosing its own proprietary operating system.

IBM chose what turned out to be the right side, allowing it to build computers for the largest share of the desktop/portable computer market.

Since that decisive moment, dozens of companies on both sides of the platform debate have fallen away; even IBM has exited the PC businesss. Apple, meanwhile, won its side; it became the best among proprietary operating platforms.

As a result of its earliest decision, Apply may never become the largest producer of computers. But because it concentrated at winning its side, Apple today has one of the most admired brands – and P&L statements – in the business.

Sailing and business: #1

nice-start-reducedNever chase the wind.

In many racing conditions the wind is always changing – in both velocity and speed. The boats that are winning are probably those that find themselves in the best patches of wind.

When things aren’t going so well, it’s usually because you’re not in the good air. But if you see another part of the course where the wind looks better, it will invariably be gone by the time you get there.

The lesson is to find your way to the part of the course where the wind is going to be – not where it is now.

It’s the same in business. When your toughest competitors leap ahead of you, you can’t catch up by simply doing what they’re doing.

Instead you need to figure out the next thing a good company should be doing. When you figure it out, you don’t need to set your course for where your competitors already are; you can set it for where you want to be.

In praise of the external combustion engine

The Tata Nano is billed as the world’s cheapest car. But not, apparently, when you 24-tatanano-fire200consider the cost per mile to operate it. In the photo at left, a Nano finds a spectacular way to say “Ta-ta” to its owner: bursting into flames on the way home from the dealership where it had just been purchased.

As seen in this article from OneIndia.in, the Indian press is taking it seriously – this being at least the third reported incident of the Tata’s external combustion engine.

Back in the USA, there’s a lot to learn from the issue. For instance, here’s how it could appear in standardized testing:

Tata is to Toyota as:

  1. the Cleveland Browns are to the Cleveland Indians;
  2. Jesse James is to Tiger Woods;
  3. Tiger Woods is to David Letterman;
  4. “Hey look, a blimp” is to “What did you do with my investments, Mr. Madoff?”