adamyntium

Category: marketing and advertising

  • Questioning desires and assumptions about music

    Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and no, I won’t apologize. I’ve been busy… not (just) picking my nose, but picking things to write about.

    Additionally, dear reader, I’ve been spending much of the last few weeks delving even deeper into online music services, evaluating my own music habits and interests, and planning a rather major undertaking of a site about online music services. Yes, you heard it here first ;-).

    Much of this has come about during the seemingly mundane process of ripping my 350+ CDs to digital files on my computer. Allow me to explain…

    My vast CD collection, probably like many of yours, has been sitting in the corner of my room, collecting dust and — were it to speak — would probably moan, “Adam, why hast thou forsaken me?” Indeed, until recently, I don’t think I had listened to one of my CDs in literally years, what with the proliferation of song availability via legal and :cough: questionable online music services.

    Upon ripping my CDs, I realized that I had well over 5,000 tracks, just waiting to be heard… some for the first time ever. I boggled my mind with the geeky calculation that, yes, I could listen to an album’s-worth every day, and it’d still take me more than a year to go through my existing collection.

    “What am I doing paying for two different online services,” I asked myself, “when I haven’t even listened to a fraction of the music I already own?” The fact that I now had every single one of my songs, originally on CD, now available for instant-listening on my PC intensified this soul-searching and budget-questioning.

    “Psst!” whispered the ConsumptionDevil, perched playfully on my left shoulder, “It’s just $14 or so a month for the two services, ya cheapskate. Isn’t that a small price to pay for SUCH a FABULOUS collection of music at your fingertips? Do you really want to be stuck with those musty old relics from the 80’s? And besides, you pay more for one lousy night out at the movies!”

    “But it’s not just about the money,” I argued, probably prompting my roommate to wonder why I was mumbling to myself yet again, “It’s a matter of time. Why should I spend my limited free time browsing Napster and MusicMatch, searching for tunes, making my own custom radio stations, and so on… when I can just click a few buttons and be listening to fine music I already have?”

    —

    Ah ha! I thought. Now I have him, that seemingly sly devil of consumerist greed. Always wanting more, always wanting the latest. Well, I showed him! I’m taking my life back and…

    “Not so fast, smarty!” he retorted, dismissing my arguments with a cynical glance, “If you have hopes of holding yourself out as an expert in the Digital Music arena, don’t you need to actually experience and test what you write about? Your credibility and future employment is at stake. And besides, from a pure enjoyment standpoint, aren’t you always just itching to hear what everyone’s talking about? That new record, that promising artist, the new musical you’ve read critical raves about… your old CDs tie you to the past, whereas the new music services allow you to explore the present and the future. Don’t be a luddite, Adam, for goodness sake!”

    {sigh} He had me. But I’m an exceptional case (or, as my parents would say, patting my head, “special”). What about the rest of the world?

    —

    To the normal music enthusiast, the Napsters and iTunes and all may prove initially tempting, especially as the KaZaAs of the world become increasingly risky and inconvenient. But will there come a point where these folks, too, stop and ask themselves… what *AM* I doing with 10,000 music files on my hard drive? Sure, my shiny new iPod can now hold all 10K of ’em, but so what?

    People will eventually question, I think, not whether they need to regularly acquire and own track after track, but whether the attendant hassles are really worth it. Storing, organizing, and — this is the scary part — backing up or moving to a new computer — gigs upon gigs of music… is this really any fun? With CDs, you simply boxed ’em up and took them with you. Barring scratches or theft, there wasn’t much of a worry. Your CDs would work everywhere, never expire, and always be correctly labeled.

    In contrast, your iTunes files won’t work on most Windows programs and they won’t work on any portable player except an iPod. Your Napster files will work on most (but not all) Windows programs, but won’t be playable on a Mac or on an iPod. And unless you authorize additional computers (and, if needed, de-authorize previously-used computers), you won’t be able to play ANY of your online-music-service acquired files on your friend’s laptop or your new computer at work.

    —

    When I ask my friends about music, they almost unanimously scoff at server-based solutions (such as streaming), and insist that they want “a personal copy” of any music they like. I wonder if they will always think this way. For me, at least, the thought of having someone else (whether it’s Napster, Microsoft, Apple, or another party) store ALL my music and allow me to listen to it anywhere remotely (with my choice of software, however) is increasingly tempting, especially as broadband connections become more commonplace.

    Will consumers eventually opt for convenience over ownership? Or is ownership, in fact, synonymous with overall convenience? And more philosophically, will people soon realize that what they wish for may be more than they want to handle? When “I want every song by the Beatles and ABBA and Linkin Park and… and… and…!” dovetails with free or cheap availability of music, particularly in high-bitrate-encoding, translating into a few hundred gigabytes of personal storage requirements… will people still be so keen on ‘having it all’? Or will the clutter finally catch up to them?

    I honestly can’t say.

    Then again, knowing the increasingly insatiable consumer demands to own more, newer, better… those musty CDs may indeed prove to be no match for innovation and the celestial downloadable jukebox.

    —

    What are your thoughts? And in particular, if money were no object, how would you have your music?

  • On selfishness, obsolescence, and jubilant consumers

    Several organizations are throwing up (their arms) in wild fear of their job sectors going the way of the dodo.

    For instance, unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few months, you probably already know about the new federal program which will block around 80% of telemarketing calls for those who sign up on the free national Do Not Call list.

    The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is livid. They cry that their revenues will plummet… and — surprise! — they plan to sue the government.

    Of course, the charming DMA has also been dragging its feet on spam-reform, typically complaining that bills which limit spam are violating the rights of businesses and harming first amendment issues. Besides, they argue indirectly, some people may really want, nay, NEED to know about the latest cable descrambler or debt reduction miracle!

    And these spokespeople are still able to sleep at night, or at least write their laughable press releases with a straight face? Perhaps they went to the same PR training school as Hilary Rosen of the RIAA.

    —

    What’s particularly ironic, of course, is that organizations like the DMA and RIAA aren’t just working against consumers (which is obvious), they’re counterproductively styming progress and profits in their own industries.

    Napster wasn’t the first RIAA target, you know. This same organization screamed that CD’s were going to kill off cassette tapes (well, true) and devastate the record industry. Just like the movie industry likened the VCR to the Boston Strangler and filed lawsuits to prevent the destruction of the entertainment world (yeah, right!).

    —

    So here we have the DMA wringing its hands about a program which is going to result in them learning which consumers do not wish to be solicited on the phone. In other words, the DMA is upset that they’re going to be unable to contact non-prospects! Excuse me? Shouldn’t this be a blessing for them? The federal government has created and implemented an infrastructure — at relatively little cost to the DMA — that will enable the DMA member companies to focus their time on those mutants, er, citizens who are so lonely that they WANT to be sold stuff via the telephone.

    Pre-qualified customers. What could be better?!?

    —

    Even if the DMA is right and this law reduces sales in the short term, I have two things to say to that:
    1) Diversity your marketing.
    2) I’m so sorry you’re not going to be able to make money at the expense of interrupting my dinner.

    Sponsor a ballet. Create an affiliate program. Give away freebies. Or — here’s a radical idea — go the route of the original once-scrappy Google and actually create a product or service of such quality and usefulness that no marketing is required. That’s right… think about it. Did you ever see an ad for Google’s search tool? No, you didn’t, because Google grew to 250 million queries PER DAY purely based upon word of mouth. There’s a lesson to be learned here, though I fear the DMA may be too dense to grasp it.

    —

    Of course, other industries are running scared, too. Tax preparers might have to wait tables if we ever got someone in high office bold and savvy enough to REALLY reform and simplify taxes. Gee, I wonder which lobbying organizations have been thwarting true tax reform in Washington?

    Search engine optimization folks (the people who claim to get your site listed higher in the search engines) are increasingly screaming that Google’s populist yet secretive algorithms are harming their bottom lines. Some have (gee, imagine this) filed suit against Google.

    Boo hoo, I say. Would anyone really miss the telemarketers, the tax preparers, the search engine optimization folks? At the end of the day, do they inherently make our world a better or even more useful place?

    And most importantly, isn’t it time that laws and society tilted towards the consumers’ interests and needs instead of the frantic and often misguided demands of selfish career interest groups?

  • Affiliate programs… offline? Yes!

    In the previous entry, I mentioned the hard-sell tactics that my gym uses when trying to strong arm potential members into becoming paying members.

    I’d like to suggest that my gym — and many other “non-online” entities — could greatly benefit by replacing traditional (and often annoying) selling techniques with affiliate programs.

    Yes, I’m talking about that system popularized by Amazon.com in which current members are incented to recruit new or additional business for a company in exchange for commissions. Amazon was, of course, far from the first to offer such incentives, but it has done so successfully on such a mind-boggling scale –engaging literally millions of affiliates — that it should be apparent to other companies that this strategy is worth trying out.

    After all, who is better qualified to get my friends interested in a gym membership: some slickster who lies about “last day!” opportunities (every month) and uses arguments unsurprisingly ill-received by my friends… or me — a three-year-member who enthusiastically attends gym classes at multiple locations and gets greeted like “Norm!” on Cheers… and who *gasp* knows my friends.

    In case you weren’t absolutely certain, the correct answer to the above mini-quiz is ME. Yes, yours truly. And in a larger sense, any long-time or otherwise loyal member.

    Yet, I’m given no incentives to sign up friends at my gym. 24 Hour Fitness instead turns my visiting friends off by often making them endure hard-sell “orientation” sessions when my friends and I simply want to make it on time to a particular kickboxing class.

    Believe me, if the gym just left them alone and let the gym sell itself, they’d piss off fewer people (members AND their friends) and they’d likely get more members.

    * * *

    How about this for a poster in my gym?

    You love this gym. Spread the love, get up to $500 in FitnessCash.

    That’s right. We appreciate your enthusiasm and loyalty of our valued members and know that it’s people like you who help make 24 Hour Fitness welcoming and successful. Therefore, we’d like to offer you five free day passes to give to any of your friends that live in the Bay Area. No hard-sell, only a short liability form for them to sign. We’re confident that after you show them around, they’ll love this gym as much as you do.

    And when one of your friends signs up for a two year contract, we’ll give you $50 to spend on anything at 24 Hour Fitness that you’d like. Massages, supplements, any service or product sold here. You can get up to $500 per year!.

    Our members make the difference. So share in the rewards — you’ve earned it!

    Two year memberships cost at least $500. That’s a 10% or smaller acquisition cost (actually much less, since the money’s getting plugged back into the gym). And probably considerably less than what the member acquisition cost is when paying the in-house sales folks. 😉

  • We’re already bombarded by too much marketing, right? But…

    Ads on buses, ads in school gyms, ads on urinals nowadays, for goodness sakes. Isn’t all the marketing and advertising a bit much sometimes?

    Yes. But yesterday, I was nonetheless thinking of missed cross-promotional opportunities. See what an MBA does?! 🙂

    Within half-a-block of one of the gyms I frequent, there’s a Jamba Juice. For those in the un-know, this is a chain that offers delightfully quick, healthy, refreshing, and yummy drinks… fruit and yogurt smoothies and the like… for about $4 each. Perfect for after a tough workout. And no, they didn’t just pay me to write that 🙂

    So anyway, as I was enjoying a particularly delicious peanut butter / banana / chocolate / yogurt / fiber smoothie (can you tell I’m hungry tonight!?) after the gym at Jamba Juice yesterday, I wondered why I didn’t see more fellow gym folks there.

    And that’s when something clicked. Wouldn’t it make sense for my gym (“24 Hour Fitness”) to do cross-promotions with Jamba Juice? Heck, one of the 24 Hour Fitness locations already has a Jamba Juice in-house; why haven’t the others made the connection?

    * * *

    At any gym, after all, you have a lot of rather health-conscious and thirsty people. At Jamba Juice, I’m sure one’d find lots of generally health-conscious folks who also like to (or at least tend to) exercise.

    And yet, I see most of the 24 Hour Fitness branches dumbly trying to go about cross-selling other stuff directly. Buy this overpriced supplement here at the gym. Check out this paltry selection of (similarly overpriced) clothing, along with a rack of stuff we’ve had to discount because it’s collected dust for 18 months.

    Wouldn’t it be smarter for my gym to offer $1 coupons to the Jamba Juice one block away, and a 10% coupon for the Nutrition/Vitamin store down the street? Heck, why not a Healthy Discounts card for members… get 10% off shoes, Powerbars, mineral water, etc…? Or, to keep it simpler, why not just cross-promote with a nearby store like Jamba Juice? Why try to (unsuccessfully) supply all of members’ needs directly in-house?

    In return in my scenario, the stores featured in the discounts would then feature corresponding marketing initiatives inviting people to check out 24 Hour Fitness. Buying some new cross-trainers at Footlocker? Wear ’em in at some great kickboxing classes at 24 Hour Fitness with this free day pass and $50 off your initiation fee. Purchasing a smoothie? Now that you’ve fueled up, clock some miles on the bikes or relax in the hot tub at the 24 Hour Fitness down the block!

    With such targeted cross-promotions, many folks would come out ahead, and of course, both 24 Hour Fitness and the participating partners would acquire quite a bit of awareness and likely new customers.

    * * *

    In contrast with the above-described cross-promotional ideas, intrusive marketing and advertising is annoying and often fruitless. All the damn mortgage telemarketing calls I regularly receive (during dinner hour, of course) are of no use to me, since I rent. And spamwise, my female roommate does NOT need a larger penis. Really.

    Unfortunately, it’s crap like this that gives the rest of marketing and advertising a bad name, even when it’s creative, innovative, and thoughtfully targeted and executed… perhaps giving some large chains like 24 Hour Fitness cold-feet when it comes to extended marketing initiatives.

    And that’s a shame. I’d much rather my gym throw some coupons at me than sic their uber-annoying sales droids at any guest I happen to bring through the door.