Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Does this company respect me? The sticker test

From Signal v. Noise:

Here’s a great way to find out if a company that makes physical products respects their products and their customers: if there’s a sticker on the product, and it peels off cleanly (and without tearing), then they’re a respectful company. If it tears or leaves sticky residue that you need to scrape off with a razor, then they don’t.

It’s that simple.

Apparently, the Chevy Tahoe really does have guts

The big marketing story of the day is how GM, coming off of an episode of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice where the contestants were asked to create ads for the Chevy Tahoe, launched a website where anybody could edit together video, audio and text into their very own Chevy Tahoe ad. This is a groovy marketing story in and of itself, but what happened next is even more interesting--as is the way what happened next was reported, i.e., innacurately referring to the campaign as a flop. Why? Because some of the 21,000 people who created ads used the format to say critical things about global warming, Iraq, and, well, the Chevy Tahoe. CNET announced shrilly today that:

"Viral marketing” is the current buzzword used by advertisers to describe the way a message can spread among Internet users. Much has been written about attempts by corporations to tap into this phenomenon, but the GM contest is an example of how such efforts can backfire.

A statement that directly contradicts another paragraph in the same article, by the same reporter:

The contest is a success as a marketing campaign, according to Melisa Tezanos, a GM spokeswoman. Consumers have submitted more than 21,000 ads and have e-mailed commercials over 40,000 times, she said. Chevyapprentice.com has generated 2.4 million page views, and the average visit to the site lasts more than 9 minutes. The company anticipated before launching the contest that it may see some negative ads, but Tezanos noted that more than 80 percent of the commercials depict the Tahoe in a favorable light.

2.4 million page views. Hmmm, yes, that is a disaster. As a journalist, I always cringe when web people call journalists dumb--but even if I weren’t a recovering journo, I’d feel humiliated just by having read this unfortunate muddle of an article. And CNET is supposed to be one of those news sources for and by people who know about ‘puters. Heh.

These must be the same people who think you can catch the bird flu by eating a McNugget.

TechDirt got the story right, of course. The right story is that GM gets it. Their being brave and hip enough to take their lumps indicates that they’ve actually shown up for the conversation. As for GM’s detractors, I’d venture to guess that 98% of them would never have considered buying anything but a used Volvo anyway. You’d never catch me in a Tahoe, probably because it reminds me too much of Marge’s fictional SUV on the The Simpsons ("Can you name the truck with four wheel drive, Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five? Canyonero! Canyonero!"). But I’m impressed enough that I’d definitely consider mashing up an ode to my fugly little gray Pontiac should GM decide to extend the invitation....

Hacking a Manifesto

A lot of people are wondering the extent to which online publishing is going to disrupt traditional publishing. Unfortunately, they tend to wonder aloud in fancy language and without much substance. Which is why it’s refreshing to listen to Robbie Allen, a technical book author and MIT student who has started a book publishing company, NetAware Media, that promises to re-tool the print publishing process to reflect the advances and advantages of what we’ve learned online. His blog, Publishing Hacks, contains a highly readable Internet Publishing Manifesto that includes the following “items”:

1. Content not limited by the pages of a book
2. Content when and how you want it
3. Text, audio, video–integrated
4. Apply advances in software development to content development
5. Continual development
6. Release incrementally
7. Update regularly; improve based on feedback
8. Leverage the community
9. Usability on par with books
10. Learning by doing
11. Improve the author experience

Now, I happen to have an abiding interest in New Media, so I find Robbie’s manifesto heartily rewarding and inspiring. But the primary value here is in the form, not the content--just reading this list, whatever business you’re in, you can see that he’s being both aggressively innovative and expansively thoughtful. This is why, even if your sole ambition in the world of business is to farm turnips for root vegetable ravioli, you should have a manifesto. Read Robbie’s to see exactly how it’s done (hint: a blog came in extremely handy).