Boston TV station disrupts Camco police system
A Boston-area TV station's new 24-hour-a-day digital signal is disrupting Camden County's police communications system, threatening public safety by drowning out calls from officers to central dispatch in certain kinds of weather.
Well, this could certainly cause some serious problems as the switch to digital TV moves along. Seems as though the assigning of the new digital signals was not thought through enough to account for these problems.
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A very insightful article concerned with the slowing growth of Internet penetration written by a blog buddy of mine.
U.S. Internet Growth Rate Coming to an End?
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Amazon will now sell clothes. Pretty cool.
It's called Ruby.
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Apparently, the California Milk Processors Board has a new promotion to get a town to rename itself Got Milk? The town, in exchange, would be come the genesis for a national campaign and would also receive all sorts of bribes...I mean freebies such as new computers for the schools and new parks.
So who out there wants to be Masingil, CA or Depends, IL or PreparationH, CO?
It's a little crazy.
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There is an interesting and new brand analysis model reported in eMarketer and put forth by Cisco VP, Ron Ricci in his new book called Momentum. In the book, he posits that the elements of brand value can be linked to the variables in the definition of the physics term: momentum:
Momentum = Mass x Speed x Direction
Breaking this down further and relating it to marketing, the book defines this as:
Brand Mass: relevance of value proposition (the importance of the brand's promise to its target audience), ecosystem potential (how the product and category help other companies achieve success), category leadership (product's dominance in a category and how well it solves customers' problems)
Brand Speed: market agility (how well the company creates/manages fluxes in the market)
Brand Direction: brand integrity (the company's trustworthiness, how well it follows through on promises), management vision (executives' skill at making their company impact the market and at evangelizing vision of market's future)
And in speaking with more then 20,000 customers, Ricci and Volkmann were able to assign levels of importance to each variables and calculate their impact on purchase intent. In the chart to the left, it all comes together.
This model allows the marketer to position themselves against competitors by identifying areas of strength and weakness which provides valuable direction on how marketing can address both the company's and competitors strengths and weaknesses.Explaining this further, Ricci says:
"If you were sitting over at a Juniper or, say, Gateway versus Dell, it's more important to know where your competitors are weak on the six forces and then to use that to attack them. What Juniper did so well against Cisco is that on market agility and category leadership, they combined those two and said, "We're going to show customers that we are ahead of Cisco on the innovation curve." And for a 12 to 18 month period, they succeeded against it.
He goes on to tell eMarketer that this model provides a vocabulary for aiding in the differentiation of brands. Yes, there are many models out there that have to do with the development of a brand but I find this one an interesting addition to the tool kit.
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Image of Accused Sniper Appears in Ad
From CNN:
"The commercial opens with a newspaper photo of Muhammad, who faces charges in the shooting deaths that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area this month. That fades to the image of a barrel of a gun on one side of the screen and a picture of Garrett (running against Ann Summers for an open house seat) on the other."
A politician has actually used the Sniper in ad ad to atack the gun control position of her opponent.
Combine this with the sickening babble and childish catfighting in the Massachusetts Governors race and many other political races for that matter and you begin to wonder if advertising like this should be permitted.
It's really no wonder why voter turnout is so low. No one wants to hear this crap. It is unimportant. We want to hear the issues discussed in a mature and considerate way. The mudslinging an negative advertising trend has simply gone too far.
It wouldn't be perfect but I'd be all for a ban on all political advertising thus having politicians have to fight it out editorially. Say what you will about the media, but news editors still have a far better objective handle on things then campaign management.
Infringement of free speech? Sure it is. A radical suggestion? Of course it is. But do you really like listening to ads speaking half truths about politicians? Of course we'll still hear the half truths in debates but at least there will be some modicum of control.
Think about it.
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In the post below, I make mention of national newspaper companies creating versions to target the Gen Y audience. A recent study reported on Yahoo by 360 Youth states that college students still look to their college newspaper for daily news and information. From the study:
Despite the impressive connectedness of the youth sector, students continue to read their campus newspaper on a regular basis, making it a highly targeted means for marketers to reach this age group. In fact, a study conducted by Student Monitor found that students prefer their print editions over the online versions, reporting only 8% visited their newspaper websites over the course of a month, while 45% of students had read at least 3 out of the last 5 issues of their campus paper and spend an average of 19 minutes with each issue. The College Explorer study found that 75% of all students read their campus newspaper, finding 25% have read all 5 of the last 5 issues.
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As Gen Y uses the Internet more and more in their daily lives, they seem to have lost the need for the good old newspaper. Several newspapers, in an attempt to stave off decline in readership, are launching editions written specifically for the younger reader.
Whether this is successful or not, it makes all the sense in the world for newspapers to try. Interestingly, there is not much talk about creating supporting Internet versions of these endeavors. Sure, go ahead and attempt to keep readers but also go where the readers are: online.
Read more on MediaPost.
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Yes, this has been reported everywhere, the fridge with built in PC and internet browser. In it's present form, the company will sell very few units. Unless you are rich, no one is going to spend much more then $1,000 on a fridge. Do we need it to tell us when food is bad? Maybe. Emailing and calendaring are the two most useful aspects of this device. It would be better if it had a fold down keyboard so you could actually respond to the email. And, if it was a TV as well, you wouldn't miss anything when you got up to go to the kitchen for a snack. Of course, we will all have VOD and Tivo like technology so missing a show will become a non-issue.
The price of this thing is ridiculous. You could mount a flat screen monitor and a keyboard on a regular fridge and get all the same functionality for one third the price!
An "internet fridge" is really just another access point inside the home. Just like the TV will be and the embedded screen in your bathroom mirror. They will all be wired (wirelessly most likely) together to feed you whatever you want whenever you want in whatever format you want. It's all about the proliferation of connectedness.
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From MediaPost:
"A leading TV research analyst says it's time for ad agencies to embrace the concept of PVRs and �proactive TV� as a revolutionary force in the media business."
I have written several posts on the topic of PVR's and the "time shifting" of media. It amazes me how so many people are still trying to stand by the old traditions of media. They are dying if not dead. We need to move on. Change is coming and rather then complain about it, let's embrace it.
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