And Another Thing!

AMEX and AFLAC Leave Me Alone!

2011-03-05T06:42:00.000-08:00

Late Friday afternoon I came back from some errands and ran into a buzzsaw of activity at work punctuated by - sigh - a call from AMEX Merchant Services. These guys call me every 3-4 weeks to "chat me up" and see if they can suck up my time trying to tell me how to use their services more (or something). It drives me fucking crazy because they don't leave a message and AMEX is very important to us and with fraud prevention I feel that I HAVE to call them back. Time after time it’s the same, “Hi Mr. Bahr, we just want to make sure that you are satisfied with our services and see if there is anything we can do to help your business grow?”

Now, usually I say something like, "increase my line of credit back up to where it was before the Great Recession of 2008," but that just leads to a greater time-suck that I know will not yield any results. (Kind of like going into your bank and they keep trying to refinance your mortgage - not hearing you when you say you are UNDER WATER). So, this time I just said, “you can help my business by not calling me each month to waste my fucking time by trying to see how else you can insidiously worm your way into my life and business. Just STOP CALLING ME!”

I won’t go into details but it was another few minutes before I just hung up. They are relentless.

Then there are those idiots at AFLAC (yes, the stupid duck people). What is AFLAC’s deal? They come into your company and offer (sell) your employees additional benefits (insurance). The pitch to the business owner is that we can claim we offer all these fabulous benefits but don’t have to pay for them nor deal with them. Of course not, the employees pay. It’s a very very clever way of simply reaching individuals and selling them insurance, under the auspices of our business.

And, about a year ago, we tried it. We gave our employees the hour off to gather in OUR conference room while the AFLAC rep pitched their products (no doubt earning our employees’ eternal gratitude). Bottom line? Could not get enough of our employees to sign up. End of story.

Except for this. AFLAC does not have their own sales force – they use outside independent reps, basically tons of fortune-seeking down-on-their-luck insurance salespeople. And they all get the same leads. (and this partially reflects the Curse of The Inc 5,000, where getting named to the list simply brings a boatload of useless sales pitches, hucksters, and boiler-room penny-stock pickers to your phone line.)

So, every 2-3 weeks someone NEW “from AFLAC” calls me.

“We already tried you and it didn’t work.”

“Well we have some NEW products! When would be best to come in, next Tuesday at 10 or at 11:30?”

“How about never? Does never work for you? Click.”

… and another thing!

So you want to explore your family tree?

2011-03-04T03:52:00.000-08:00

A good friend asked me recently:

"I have an interest in my family tree. I looked at ancestry.com and have not committed to anything yet. I did, however, start the basic family tree on the site for free. I understand you have done (extensive) research and may have some ideas and experience with web sites. When you have time, I would be interested in your feedback."

Here was my answer, with notes on software and web sites.

I am assuming you want to build/record your family tree. The best programs are Reunion on the Mac and Family Tree Maker on a Windows PC. Family Tree Maker bought ancestry.com a few years ago so they are linked and it is a powerful pitch for using FTM. FTM just (finally) came out on the Mac. I would google for reviews of Family Tree Maker on the Mac if I were to go that route.

You may or may not know or recall that the reason I threw away my Windows (Dell) PC and got a Mac 3.5 years ago was because of Family Tree Maker. Well, not exactly but close.

FTM - at least back then - had a nice feature that automatically saved your work no matter what you did - meaning, after you opened up the program, did some work on your family tree, and closed the program, all changes were automatically saved. That was good....except that the program saved the files to their own special partition on the drive - like it's own separate file cabinet. One day I got a Trojan worm that I researched and realized it would take 6-8 hours of work to get rid of. So I called in The Geek Squad. They came, recognized the problem and "blew away Windows." (reinstalled it). They saved all the files in the normal places....but not the FTM files which were hiding in their own special little spot. And so. Ten years of work down the drain. Gone. Vanished. (I did not back them up becuase...I did not know where they were) That's why I switched to a Mac - no viruses, no worms, no trojans. Ever.

So, when I did this I found that.....FTM was not available on the Mac. I researched it and found Reunion was the best Mac program. I have it and use it but sparingly. Sadly, my interest is carefully typing in all of the basic info, getting the dates right etc etc has waned. I just don't have the heart.

OK, so Ancestry.com. This site is useful but it is also a typical internet money-suck come-on huckster site. Have you ever tried to look up a person on the web? Or a phone number? The most basic info is available free. BUT the REAL stuff you want is behind a paywall! And if you pay a little, they'll show you a little more. But then if you want, say, criminal reports....you can pay more....and then.... It's like Internet porn - (or....er....so they say!!)

So....I have not used ancestry.com for a while. There is a little available for free. Then they want your money. And they will keep wanting your money, endlessly. Let's say you want the ship your great grandfather came over on....buy the Ellis Island ship registry database. They will tell you if there are people named, say, "Bill Johnson" in the database. Why yes there IS a Bill Johnson in the database....buy now! BUT is it YOUR relative??? They have no idea. Of course they are motivated to have as much info as possible and as many names as possible to suck you in.

Ancestry.com also is big on linked family trees. Let's say my mother's cousin has "done" her family tree. Well that's almost the same as mine!! That can be a big help!! BUT sometimes these are inaccurate (I should say, "usually" they are inaccurate). So you might find a gold mine, you might not.

What I would do and I am contemplating this is pick the 6-month period or one year period when I am ready to dive into this stuff again and then buy a 6-month or 1-year subscription and get taken gleefully by ancestry.com again.Go ahead and prepare to spend maybe a few hundred dollars. MUCH of the stuff they have is in the public domain, but what the heck. It gives you a huge head start in some cases. It is certainly not all bad. The Web is the best friend and worst enemy of family tree research. It offers a wealth of information (for example, there are people who go to graveyards and copy down all the info on the stones and put the info on the web - invaluable!!), but lots of the info is INACCURATE. Real family tree research involves primary records: birth, marriage, death certificates and other on PAPER official records (think Obama!). You have to have the backup. I have a large tree on my mother's side and there are plenty of places on the web where amateurs who are linked some way in my tree (strangers) have things wrong. So you have to be careful with what you find on the web - use the web as a resource that leads you to some way of verifying what you learn.

Who should care? If you get it right, future generations will thank you and it's your unique personal history, shared only by brothers and sisters. Your kids will thank you.

By the way, the best place to start is free and it's called familysearch.org This is the Mormon site. You may know that the Mormons have the largest genealogical research facility n the world out there is Salt Lake. Why? I am told that the Mormon's believe that if you convert to Mormonism, then all of your ancestors were secretly Mormons too. Therefore it was important to them to know who your ancestors were! I have not confirmed this.

Hah - Now I have:

"The Mormon interest in genealogy is closely linked to their doctrine of baptism for the dead and their belief that the family unit will continue to exist beyond mortal life. Mormons trace their family trees to find the names of ancestors who died without learning about the restored Mormon Gospel so that these relatives from past generations can be baptized by proxy in the temple. Once baptized, if the ancestor's spirit has accepted the Gospel, they will be able to be together with the rest of their baptized Mormon family in the celestial kingdom. For the Saints, genealogy is a way to save more souls and strengthen the eternal family unit."

So, to answer your question. If you just want to fool around, go to familysearch.org. If you want to build a family tree using software, try Family Tree Maker for a PC (which includes 6 months free of ancestry.com I think) (although how deep they let you go is another story), or, on a Mac either Reunion of FTM for the Mac (which again has the ancestry.com free offer). Also, once you start searching around, there are many many many places to find stuff. Ellis Island ship registers are freely available for example. You just have to google and search around a little bit.

have fun!

Overly Cheery Woman Hospitalized in Snowball Incident

2011-01-28T15:25:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK -- AP - Apparently the goodwill surrounding the month of December has worn off in this unusually snowy January. Agnes Fernbach, 62, found this out the hard way and suffered a mild concussion under a barrage of snowballs.

What started out as a rather harmless response to Ms. Fernbach’s bright outlook on the weather soon turned nasty. The baling and binding department of the Blatch Corrugated Packaging Company of East 163rd Street in the Bronx went out for it’s weekly team lunch at the Papadopolis Diner this Thursday. The team of 8 co-workers had been working together at Blatch for upwards of 30 years and the contempt bred by familiarity finally went over the top.

The New York Metropolitan area had suffered it’s seventh significant storm which left a record amount of snow on the streets. While navigating the slush and piles of snow the group began cursing winter heartily, “enough snow, ENOUGH, already…”
Fernbach, whose exceptionally cheery disposition was normally tolerated by the cynical, bitter group of crusty New Yorkers, made the mistake of retorting that she liked the snow. She was exclaiming this and looking toward the heavens saying, c’mon winter, bring it on,” when the first snowball hit her in the mouth.

The group soon piled on, sending a hailstorm of packed snow and ice toward the hapless optimist until, finally, baling foreman Bruno Roccotelli pushed her into a snowbank. The group, laughing, then trundled off to the diner, not realized that Ms Fernbach was still dazed and in need of help. Fortunately a good Samaritan saw the incident and was able to transport the injured idealist to a nearby hospital. The baling and binding group was horrified when they heard the news and offered Tylenol and flowers to Ms. Fernback while still finding a way to blame the entire incident on the “goddamned snow.”

Why The Lexus Was Hated

2010-12-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

Know me, know my car.

Many of us name our cars. Oh, we’ve had a Skip, a Haakon, and let’s see.., Nalla, Peppy, Dexter, and Declan. And then there was my most recent set of wheels, known only as “The Hated Lexus.” Why, you may ask, was this premium 2005 ES 330 despised so fervently by it’s owner? Basking in the glow reflected off the brand new Caspian Sea-blue 2011 Volvo S-80 T6 All Wheel Drive vehicle which has just replaced the Hated Lexus in my driveway, I’ll tell you.

I bought the car two years ago under duress. The previous car, Nalla, the 1997 Volvo, had swerved after hitting some debris on the Long Island Expressway and made the ultimate sacrifice of itself to keep it’s two passengers safe after smashing into the concrete divider and thankfully not getting hit by oncoming traffic. So you can say, pun intended, that I got the Hated Lexus “by accident.” My rental car while searching for a replacement was a pickup truck. Fun if you’re moving into a new apartment or have dirt bikes I suppose.

This was 2008. The Fall of 2008. The dreaded, horrible, wretched and terrifying Fall of 2008. The car was not the only thing that had crashed. The very last thing on my mind, given the state of the business and the world, was buying a new car. We hurriedly looked around and decided that the Lexus was the best bet – three years old and with about 20,000 miles on it.

Some things I noticed right away. Like the complete absence of places to put your wallet-sunglasses-pens, and other junk you bring into your car. Or the high-buffed overly glossy interior wood trim which made me feel like I should be chewing gum and wearing some gold chains. The slick steering wheel always felt vaguely greasy in my hands. There was a center console located back by my right shoulder. It consisted of a deep storage area, and a very shallow one on top of it – maybe an inch deep. The problem here was that the latch to each compartment was right next to each other so if you wanted to open the top (shallow) compartment and grabbed the wrong latch the top compartment would go vertical….and all your stuff in there would go flying.

The electric windows were overly sensitive – the slightest touch sent the window all the way up or all the way down. To open a window only partially involved a comical up-down-up-down-up progression until I finally zeroed in on what I wanted. I figured it was just a matter of time before I adjusted to it but no. This was in the minor irritation category, like the dashboard readout of time, temp, radio settings etc…. that would disappear when you put on sunglasses.

There were a number of attempts by the car to think for you that I did not enjoy. The headlights always stayed on for 20 seconds after I left the car leaving me to wonder if they would go off by themselves or if I had somehow screwed up. The trunk had no “handle” – you could only open it by pressing the key fob. Doors would automatically lock once you got moving - makes sense to an engineer but how many times do you stop to pick someone up quickly in town and don’t bother putting it in Park? Answer: a lot! And each time I would have to slap my forehead and say Oh right, I have to unlock the doors (that I did not lock)

There was no ipod connection (one year too early). The car was absolutely and inexcusably terrible in snow. There was some sort of oddball airfoil on the trunk that prevented the use of our bike rack. I asked the dealer if he could remove it. Nope. I did not trust the car dealer (who wanted to change my brake and transmission fluids for about $180 each) and they were located about 15 miles away in the other direction from my short commute.

The rain sensor was beyond annoying. Instead of a controllable intermittent wiper setting, you had no choice for intermittent except to let the car do it on it’s own with a rain sensor. At first it didn’t work at all. I even poured a bucket of water on the windshield. No reaction. Of course all the time I was trying to get this to work I was driving in rain with my windshield wipers OFF, very safe, that. I took it to the dealer and they said, oh yes, common problem and they fixed it. But now once it got going, it started going very fast. Or again not at all. It never ever worked. The Volvo has a rain sensor too but you can turn it OFF (which I DO) and use a manually adjustable intermittent wiper setting.

And so, it became The Hated Lexus. Did it drive? Yes? Good power and handling? You bet. I desperately wanted to find some way to get along with this car but it was just far too annoying on a daily basis. The Hated Lexus is no more. And symbolically, so too is the nightmare of the Fall of 2008.

Welcome, the Beloved Volvo.

Latest Assault on Guinness Record Successful

2010-09-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

LONDON – AP – The world record for Exclamatory-Remarks-Over-A-Four-Day-Period was shattered last week at Acadia National Park in Maine by a 51-year old man. What started out on the ride north up Route 1 from Brunswick as simple, but repeated comments like “look at that, isn’t that pretty,” soon gave way to incessant hyperbole once the pink granite hills of Mount Desert Island came into view.

The man, Ted Bahr, of Laurel Hollow, NY, apparently did not intend to set a record when he booked a four day trip to America’s 10th-most-visited National Park, accompanied by his 12-year-old son, Peter. But by the second day, it became clear that something was stirring in the air. With the encouragement of his enthusiastic son, the two visitors made the most of their trip, spending mornings traipsing up the coastal mountains to reveal “incredible,” views, also termed “unbelievable,” as each new treeline was crossed and more “amazing,” views came into sight.

Afternoons were spent climbing and scrambling across the coastal cliffs, over giant boulders, up rock walls and engaging in the local sport known as Acadian Parkour. By the third day, record keepers were having trouble keeping up with the stream of declarative adjectives flying out of Mr. Bahr’s mouth. The final tally, aided by an exceptionally crisp and sunny last day of the trip was 378 “fantastic’s,” 490 “incredible’s”, 503 “amazing’s,” 728, “unbelievable’s,” and a staggering 1,381 uses of the word “awesome,” for a grand total of 3,480 utterances, or, 870 per day.

The previous record for a four-day period was held by Buckwheat Stewart of Hound Corner, Alabama, who set the mark of 3,263 before, during, and right after the 2007 Daytona 500, at Daytona International Speedway in central Florida.

Two Tales Of Extreme High-Tech Evil (and yes, one is Google)

2010-05-11T06:15:00.001-07:00

In keeping with the name of this blog it is only fitting that I get around to revealing and railing against two of the more irritating business practices in the high-tech world. Unless you are a stockholder of Google or Hewlett-Packard that is!

The first practice concerns Google’s AdSense scheme. This program allows you – as a website owner – to place a small box on your website into which Google dynamically loads text (or now display or video) ads. The ads are context-sensitive, meaning if your website talks about tropical fish, Google will send tropical fish ads to your box. If someone clicks on the ad, they generate money for Google and money for you, depending on what the advertiser has been paying and other algorithms. Ahh…the famous “Google algorithms.”

Unlike virtually any other partnership known to man, Google will not reveal what percentage of the revenue they pay you. You just get a check. You got a problem wit dat, too bad. What are we, the website owners, getting? 30%? 35%, 19%? No idea. And the contract with Google plainly states that they will never ever tell you. So think of this now, you are Google with millions of clients and a month to go in the quarter. Need to increase revenue at a 100% margin? Just change the formula! Last quarter they paid the website owners 30%. This quarter they pay 29%. The math is too painful to do.

Now this is just conjecture, right? Google wouldn’t do this, after all, that would be evil. To that, all I can say is that 5 years ago we got checks in the $600-700 dollar range monthly. More recently that had trickled down to less than $100 despite having tripled our page views served. Recently we decided it wasn’t worth it and took Google AdSense off our sites. You decide.

And another thing……

How about the HP 4480 printer we (my family) bought a year or so ago that tells YOU when to replace the ink cartridges. No, not warns you. The printer demands you replace the ink cartridges NOW or it will not print. WTF?! I’ll decide when the ink is too faded thank you, after all aren’t I the one driving the car? What if I have run out of cartridges and I just need one little copy? What if I don’t care if the magenta is 10% too strong? It’s an outrageous gun-to-the-head move by HP to sell more ink - I mean who even knows how empty these things are. In the old days when HP gave you a warning, (and it was up to you what to do with it), you could get another 20-80 copies out of the cartridge. Not now. Printer won’t let you.

Nice way to juice up revenues but I’m buying a Canon or Epson today. And will never ever ever buy another HP printer again.

Harrumph!

Toyota, Lexus Management Woes Continue

2010-05-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

TOKYO, Japan - (AP)

In an embarrassing series of events that underscored the problems at the vaunted car Japanese car manufacturer, Ralleye Lexus of Glen Cove NY has apparently botched the kidnapping of a Laurel Hollow man. The owner of a 2005 Lexus ES330, Ted Bahr, 51, brought the vehicle in for a routine 45,000 mile tune-up on Thursday morning, which quickly went array.

The original plot involved Bahr bringing his car into the dealer for a brief, normal service, during which the customer would simply read magazines and attempt to ignore the 56-inch HDTV set while sitting in the waiting room. Once carless, the Lexus dealer planned to keep Bahr waiting with a series of “one-thing-after-another” repairs until he wilted and gave in to their demands (which were not known, at presstime).

Aware of the potential for this, Bahr demanded a loaner vehicle that the dealer, anxious for the plot to remain undercover, then provided. Bahr drove off in a spanking new 2010 RX 450 Hybrid, making sure to transfer anything he might need over the next several weeks into the pristine and environmentally sensitive vehicle.

Demonstrating the lack of competence not to mention utter chaos reigning at Toyota and Lexus dealers, Ralleye Lexus remained oblivious to the fact that Bahr now had a much better car in his possession, and they went ahead the planned series of dispiriting phone calls to the customer with reports of one unpredictable micro-repair after another.

Bahr reported that his mood was actively lightening with each successive call that the dealer had to “wait for another part to arrive,” as a standard wheel alignment was now rumored to be taking at least two weeks. “I’ve got the good car and I’m actually getting used to it - the fools can keep the 330," laughed Bahr as he took off on an unscheduled trip to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, ME.

Reedtown Massacre Reveals the Future of the Trade Media Business

2010-04-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

The trade media business, such as it was, has been ripped apart and largely destroyed by Google. The musical chairs game that Private Equity players have been playing is finally out of seats and many household names have been left holding the bag, trying to hardball the banks into restructuring or just going bankrupt. The “strategic” multi-market players are shedding print assets like pounds in a sauna wearing a rubber suit.

And so, last week’s shocking closure of 23 titles by Reed merely underscores the evolution of our industry back into what it once was, and I will paraphrase Bill Ziff, who said,

“It used to be that our business was run by enthusiastic eccentrics - people who worked and lived day in and day out in their markets and hardly even realized that they were running a ‘business,’ in the classical sense, at all.”

The key observation above is that most trade publishers in the Old Days were single market companies – smaller nimble companies dedicated to their niche industries. The trade conglomerates that grew in the 1980’s and 1990’s benefitted handsomely from ganging printing, fulfillment and the usual assortment of backroom operations to run properties at a much lower cost, as well as the trend toward professionally managed trade shows which coined money for them back in the day.

Over time, the best managers in their market were given additional responsibilities managing other markets or being switched to other divisions ala Jack Welch’s GE. The best salespeople became Publishers. Then Group Publishers and VPs. They were promoted away from their markets, from their customers, from their street-level expertise.

This happened again and again at Reed, Advanstar, Penton, VNU, Cygnus, Miller Freeman, and at their various successor companies. Eventually, the “professional managers” of various market segments became less and less embedded in their industries, spending their days in budget and forecast meetings and battling other execs in different markets for investment and acquisition dollars.

I know the feeling. A lifelong computer and electronics industry publisher, for a time I found myself managing all sorts of alien market groups. I remember the acute embarrassment I felt at being paraded around as a high level executive at the key trade shows for these different markets when I barely has a clue what was going on in these customers’ businesses.

Of course, this alienation and lack of understanding of markets didn’t kill the business – Google and paid search killed it as identified by IDG’s Pat Kenealy 6 years ago. But now that b-to-b publishing is in tatters, a post-apocalyptic vision comes into view: small, nimble, single-market-focused companies, run by people who have labored in their markets for years, getting to know the vendors, the readers, the nuances and intricacies that can allow them to be successful, despite Google.

By shuttering 23 publications, Reed has left the door open for more than a few groups of dedicated market experts to re-colonize and emerge as the trade media companies of the future

Gates, Jobs Agree: “Back to Electronics" Movement Going Well

2010-02-14T14:23:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA (AP) --

Technology rivals Bill Gates and Steve Jobs agreed on one thing at the annual TED Conference finishing this weekend in Long Beach, California; that the “back to electronics” movement was making great strides among the nation’s youth and population in general.

“Awareness of electronic devices and the role they play in the Earth’s fragile ecosystem is at an all-time high,” said Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, “and not only that, but people are participating, getting directly involved in technology far beyond the humble PC in their study, and are literally surrounding themselves with wireless and wired devices.”

The grass-roots “Back to Electronics” movement, believed to have started shortly after the introduction of the first generation iPhone, gathered steam as waves of parental resistance to cell phones with unlimited text and data plans gradually buckled under the pressure from the nation’s youth, who can usually be counted on to spearhead such cultural shifts. Evidence of the Movement’s penetration into everyday life were cited at TED2010 with discussions of people barricading themselves inside their house for months at a time to see if they could survive “living off the Internet,” as well as groups of Apple fanatics known collectively as “iPhone-huggers.”

Movement proponents cite the many benefits of getting Back to Electronics, including evading the sun’s harmful rays, recycling of air in closed spaces, allowing animals and plants in the wild to exist without any interference from or the presence of humans, and improved thumb dexterity.

Groups of electronics activists have been camping inside bars and Starbucks coffee houses to form “flashmobs” or to participate in “tweet-ups” based on the popular Twitter platform that allows people everywhere to have instantaneous and detailed information about the status of virtually everyone else. Others have been venturing out to the more remote and desolate edges of the electronic wilderness, living for weeks at a time in virtual worlds like Second Life.

Technology advocate and dreadlock-wearing self-promoter Jaron Lanier has announced plans to take advantage of the movement by holding ChipStock, “An Electronics Exposition, 3 Days of Peace and Technology,” to be held in an empty industrial park off of Lawrence Boulevard in Santa Clara CA, as well as virtually, wherever a WiFi hotspot can be found. Lanier is also rumored to be the head of the more radical group, Electronics First!, which advocates such extreme practices as placing wireless hotspots inside churches and in otherwise pristine natural settings.

Oven, 4, Released from Prison

2010-01-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

AP – JANUARY 12, 2010

A wayward kitchen oven was restored to functionality yesterday to the great relief of the Bahr family of Laurel Hollow, NY. The appliance, a DCS 1800, was arrested in June for attempted arson when it refused to turn off and sent smoke billowing into the house. The crafty and rascally device waited until the adults of the family had left, and then dared the children of the house to stop it, a scandalous crime that rocked the Cold Spring Harbor School district and attendees of the annual spring benefit for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA).

The Oyster Bay-based Atlantic Steamer Company responded quickly and managed to thwart the plot by turning off the circuit breaker and without even having to smash all of the windows in the house. The oven had remained disabled since June, prompting a variety of novel cooking efforts by Rebecca “Martha” Bahr in the interim. Bahr taunted the nearby imprisoned oven and set a U.S. record in early December by baking 22 different types of cookies in a small toaster oven normally restricted to “Eggos,” and the occasional tuna melt.

Ted Bahr, 51, contacted the Appliance Correctional Review Board and asked that a pardon be considered after his wife set plans to cook a whole suckling pig in a crock pot, saying, “Ok, this has gone far enough, we need the damn oven back.” The ACRB released the oven under it’s own recognizance.

Robert MacKay, Executive Director of SPLIA, noted that, “there’s quite a history of ovens committing crimes on Long Island actually – beginning during the Revolutionary War when several ovens used for baking bread in Oyster Bay tried to burn down the homes of known British Loyalists….and then during the War of 1812,…..”

Am I Nuts? You Decide.

2009-11-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

I’ve been having some fun with Tony Silber, my friend and the Publisher of Folio: Magazine (the magazine about managing magazines). It seems that my blog entry titled, “I’m Not Giving an Inch,” in Folio (titled here as "Call Me Hank Stamper”) required some clarification. Tony called my position (and me) reminiscent of “The Last Samurai,” a movie where the protagonist resists progress and is ultimately crushed by it. Well I feel that is a bit of an extreme characterization of my position (and hopefully my fate), and so I responded. If you’re really bored this Thanksgiving weekend, give it a read.

Here is my original post, on Folio: http://www.foliomag.com/2009/i-m-not-giving-inch

Tony’s comments: http://www.foliomag.com/2009/last-samauri

My response: http://www.foliomag.com/2009/samurai-responds

I like the photo!

Swine Flu Outbreak Averted on JetBlue Flight

2009-11-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK – Alert passengers were lauded late last night when JetBlue Flight 672 from Los Angeles touched down at JFK International where an inflight plane-wide swine flu crisis was avoided.

The trouble began soon after the flight had taken off from Los Angeles International Airport when a man, sitting in seat 11a, coughed slightly. Passengers immediately began screaming, with cries of “run, he’s got the SWINE FLU!” Despite the seat belt light still being lit, virtually all passengers on the left side of the plane began crowding over to the right, causing the pilots to seize manual control of the aircraft to avoid going into a barrel roll.

The man, 51-year-old Ted Bahr, of Laurel Hollow, NY, reportedly jumped up, saying he didn’t have the flu but was on the tail end of a really mild cold, but this did not fool the heavily-warned travelers. According to eyewitness accounts, at that moment a woman screamed, “and,….he’s got a HANDKERCHIEF!” which apparently was the final straw for three rugby players from Ireland who made their move amid the chaos, tackling Bahr and wrestling him to the ground.

The three Dublinites then dragged the man to the back of the plane as he continued to protest and swear that there was no way he had the flu and was not contagious. Bahr was then quarantined for the rest of the flight in one of the rear cabin bathrooms and denied all forms of snacks – even the Terra Blue potato chips - by nervous flight attendants.

Center for Disease Control Director Millard Fillmore praised passengers, saying that this kind of quick thinking and reaction can prevent the epidemic from spreading, saying, “this just proves it’s not a hysteria, just a prudent response.” Eight year-old Chauncey Quinn claimed to have “nailed the guy in the face with a hand sanitizer spray as he went by,” high-fiving his father, Edward Quinn. The rest of the flight was uneventful save the continuous knocking and pleadings from the locked bathroom. At JFK, a hazmat team removed Mr. Bahr from the lavatory following a quick evacuation of all the other passengers.

The H1N1 virus, also known as the swine flu, has killed 1,489 people over the last six months, which, despite being a far lower total than virtually any other flu strain in history, seems to have lodged in the public imagination as the Great Scourge of Our Time.

Call Me Hank Stamper

2009-11-05T12:56:00.000-08:00

Did you ever read “Sometimes a Great Notion” by Ken Kesey? Yes, the Ken Kesey with the psychedelic bus. Before the Merry Pranksters and after his successful “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Kesey penned this novel, one of the great works of American fiction, a sprawling tale of the struggles of a northwest logging family, the conflict between brothers, the small independent logging company the family owns and their fights against larger timber interests.

The most recurring metaphor in the book is fighting progress, alluded to in the form of the Stamper family home, which is built right on a bend of a great river that is constantly eroding away the property. Over the years the Stampers have built a crude series of barriers and wired posts and piers to prevent this from happening, but the river is relentless, as rivers will be. Some of the most vivid passages in the book portray the father and older brothers’ attempts to keep the river from destroying the property, typically out in the night in vicious storms, lashing the piers back together, fighting the river of progress, the river of change. The book was made into a film starring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, with the original title embodying the philosophy of Henry Stamper, “Never Give an Inch.”

Out west last week, I was pitching print advertising (along with our online properties) to marketers who thought I had landed there from another planet. To one, print was so alien that he took a genuine interest in it. It was a novelty. More and more marketers just start conversations by letting you know that they’re not doing print as a matter of fact. Many of my competitors and fellow high-tech publishers have given up, letting the river flow, and you can see the results in the steadily eroding group of high-tech titles still in print. I can’t quite explain why, but like Henry Stamper, I refuse to yield. I refuse to bend to the times, to just accept the advertiser’s misguided notions that print is dead and not even worth talking about. While I’m happy to sell a few white papers at the end of the call, most of the time I’m taking them out to the woodshed to disabuse them of their anti-print bias -- whether they buy it today or not.

It’s up to those of us in the industry to stand up passionately for what we believe in and what we know to be true. The easy days of print as an accepted medium are over. Washed well downstream. But we know people are still reading our publications, and becoming aware of and interested in companies through the print ads. It’s up to us to lash together the arguments and fight. We’re deep into contract season and I’m getting on planes to visit customers. And not giving an inch.

Man, 50, Forgets Sunglasses, Detained at LAX

2009-10-26T05:45:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES, CA, OCTOBER 26, 2009

In a case of remarkably poor judgment, a 50-year old man was detained while attempting to disembark in Los Angeles without bringing sunglasses or eyeshades of any kind.

The white male, identified as Ted Bahr from Laurel Hollow, NY, was detained by US Homeland Security forces at the Los Angeles International Airport, where the security alert was raised from Yellow to Orange for the rest of the afternoon.

“Look, I’m sorry. That’s what I get for leaving New York early in the morning – it was completely dark outside at the time,” said the man, who pleaded to be allowed through security to shop at one of the four sunglasses shops visible further down the terminal.

“Clearly this individual was either incredibly naïve, or, more likely, planning some sort of terrorist action which would involve operating only at night. I mean, nobody flies into LA without sunglasses,” explained Airport Security Chief Jon Richardson.

Bahr maintained his innocence as he was led away to a strip search, “Look I just forgot, I can’ t possibly be the first one.”

Other passengers on the short hop from Las Vegas were as surprised as airport security, “How completely uncool,” scoffed actor and avid poker player Willie Garson, “he’d never survive in this town. Being taken into custody is probably for the guy’s own good.”

Playing Newsstand Shuffle

2009-10-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

The games we play change over time. I wonder if my favorite magazine game has gone the way of stickball and “kick the can.” When I worked at Ziff-Davis in the 1980’s I was fortunate enough to be placed in a “loop course” type of specialized circulation class taught by the VP of Circulation and one of the industry’s most outrageous old school characters, Larry Sporn. Larry taught us a simple little game called “newsstand shuffle.” Basically, all you had to do was go to a newsstand, browse the magazines, and accidentally place your companies’ titles on top of your competitors’ magazines. The trick was to make sure you didn’t get caught by the newsstand manager but this wasn’t very difficult. It was a cheap thrill.

Where the game really got going though was the classic Mother of All Newsstands, that being the one at the edge of Grand Central Station, in the PanAm building (now MetLife). Here was a newsstand in the hub of The Great Commute – 108,000 people were estimated to be streaming through the building each day according to an article in the NY Times on June 18, 1984. At that point in time, the newsstand stocked more than 2,000 titles and sold 10,000 copies of magazines per week.

But volume was just half the story. This newsstand was smack in the middle of the magazine publishing AND ad agency capital of the world. Beyond just selling copies, it was critical that the hundreds of media buyers streaming by each day saw your title prominently displayed. Since so many magazine professionals walked through the station daily, Newsstand Shuffle here became a very lively game. If you stood and watched closely you could see people casually picking up an issue (or four), casually glance over their shoulder at the counter and then quickly shuffle the magazines to their favor. Sometimes competitors would be in the PanAm at the same time seeing who was willing to take a later train and get the last laugh.

Of course the next day, someone else had either fixed the stack or buried your magazine under Civil War News or something. So to win we had to compete almost every day.

Is anyone still playing?

Virgin America Announces Capital Upgrade Plan

2009-10-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 21, 2009 -- Maverick airline Virgin America announced a series of capital improvements designed to improve the passenger experience of travelers departing from it’s JFK terminal.

“We’ve selected what we call the “Virgin” segment of the flying audience and decided to maximize their interaction with our brand,” noted Virgin CEO Richard Branson, who was wearing a bra, panties , and a purple wizard’s cape as he parachuted onto the roof of Terminal 4 for an impromtu press conference.

The announcement, involving at least $46,000 of expenditures, highlighted changes in colors, scents, and overall customer ambiance.

“To start, we’ve painted all the seats a deep dark red, just like Apple’s Bono IPod,” began Branson, “and we have instituted a new policy wherein at least two out of three stewardesses will be on board with virtually no experience serving passengers so they can maintain that sexily clumsy look, evoking sympathy from our passengers and taking their mind off the abnormally long flight delays. Really quite entertaining, “ said Branson.

Another exciting development which Mr. Branson was eager to demonstrate was the attachment of small replicas of flies inside the men’s room urinals. “See isn’t this fun? Target practice, “ smiled the diminutive elfin CEO as he candidly relieved himself in front of horrified reporters.

While apparently urged to open some sort of food emporiums that would serve breakfast in Terminal Four by his American project executives, Branson dismissed the need. “One of our larger investments in T4, as we call it, is an aromatherapy device that dispenses pleasing scents throughout the terminal. Our type of flyer is typically wan and starving anyway and will appreciate our catering to his or her sensitivities. And don’t forget the hip purple lighting onboard,” boasted the bearded executive.

When interviewed, exiting passengers seem confused, “don’t asked me how the flight was,” exclaimed an angry Clem Haskins from Covington, Kentucky, “two different flight attendants spilled drinks on me and I could hardly breathe with that there perfumy smell.”

Waiting passenger Toby Babcock was seen trailing a large carry-on bag back and forth from one end of the terminal food, “it took me 2 hours to get to the airport for a 6 hour flight with no food. What the hell are these guys thinking?”

When asked about this, Branson said that in order to project the proper European image, none of the restaurants would open before ten am, known internally at Virgin as the “continental policy.” “No hip European would travel by plane before late morning at the earliest – we’re simply bringing civilization here to JFK.”

Bloomberg and Business Week: The Future of Magazines?

2009-10-14T07:58:00.001-07:00

Many years ago when I had the good fortune to work for Ziff-Davis, I read a quote from Bill Ziff about how publishing had changed. I’ve lost the quote but it went something like this:

“It used to be that our business was run by enthusiastic eccentrics - people who worked and lived day in and day out in their markets and hardly even realized that they were running a ’business,’ in the classical sense, at all.”

I brought this idea up speaking to a roomful of publishers at the Niche Magazine Conference in April – that the future may be linked to the past and that the magazines of tomorrow need to be published by independent entrepreneurs and smaller, dedicated companies.

Like Inc. Magazine, which was purchased a few years ago by Morningstar founder Joe Mansueto, Business Week under Michael Bloomberg can hopefully enjoy a life beyond the super strict demands of a publicly-held company like McGraw-Hill.

Essentially, Michael Bloomberg and Joe Mansueto can afford to ride the economic ups and downs over time and frankly, can also afford to publish at a loss. Even though someone buys a professional sports team telling themselves that they can make it profitable, we all know the real reason is that they are a fan.

If the long-term future of magazines, the short-term will still be wrenching. All the private equity-held companies are reviewing terms with their lenders realizing that these much smaller businesses cannot support the debt. And the industry sea change toward an online world continues to claim many casualties. Yesterday’s shuttering of the former Commercial Property News by Nielsen brought another shudder: at Miller Freeman this David Nussbaum-created title was one of the biggest revenue producers and year-after-year the #1 most profitable title in a field of 60 in the 1990s.

It looks like time to bring on the enthusiastic eccentrics.

A Trip to the Newsstand

2009-10-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

Lunchtime brought me to the newsstand at my local independent bookstore to see firsthand what the magazine landscape was looking like. There were far fewer titles than in past years, this fact poorly masked by stacking survivors directly over themselves in three rows. But some magazines were still going strong.

The latest issue of Brides Magazine topped out at about 496 pages. Now wait a minute – didn’t they…. Something is certainly badly wrong in Conde Nast-ville if they can’t bring expenses in line on this title, which as we all know is all advertising anyway. 500 pages and this is the off-season for bridal titles! Are all those ad pages really going to go into Modern Bride which wasn’t even ON my newsstand? No. Some will go to competitors while others will sadly just vanish.

Hemming Motor News was almost 600 pages. This is getting out of hand. Hemmings is almost all classified advertising for classic cars - the type of product that the Internet was personally hand-crafted to disintermediate entirely? How does this title keep thriving in print?!!

Another magazine bucking the trend was High Times. The venerable how-to guide for stoners was a beefy 138 pages with more growing lights, pipes, scales, soda-can safes, and “Indoor Hydro Superclosets,” than certainly I ever dreamed even existed. I guess there is still a decent market for, er, highly-focused niche titles, including this new one I noticed, “A Bear’s Life,” which is targeted at large, bearded gay men. Now that is a niche magazine!

B-to-B Media: In the Recession’s Winter

2009-10-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

It’s very quiet now, as the snow falls across the recessionary landscape. Though it’s only Fall outside, inside the B-to-B media business feels like winter. The private-equity players that got caught when the music ended with no chairs left to sit on or Greater Fools around to buy their roll-ups are sitting in workout meeting after workout meeting with the banks and other lenders trying to scale back their debt and cut their losses.

The CEO’s and top managers of these companies are gamely pulling in the remaining revenues for 2009. The cuts they made probably won’t be the last but the Fall usually brings a few pleasant surprises, a few surplus budgets willing to spend. But they know what’s coming. We all know what’s coming. The turn of the year. Contract time. We all have No Idea What Will Happen. Customers are being coy, playing their hands close, bravely saying they’ll be in next year but…we just don’t know. They see the media businesses are weak, reeling, ready to be taken advantage of. It’s the very quiet elephant in the room. Next year’s business.

Gone is the talk of Second Life, podcasts, video and vertical search and all of the other Next Digital Upsides. Yes we may all be doing some of these things and indeed online revenues are becoming a growing percentage of our businesses – but they’re smaller businesses. It’s quiet, cold and quiet, across the snowfields. We’re hunkered down. Waiting.

My faint hope is that the next 12 months will be the winter of our recession and that Spring begins to emerge for the survivors. But right now, looking to the November and December contract season for 2010 it’s very uncertain. And it gives me shivers to think about.

Street-Level View of the Economy, By Gerry the Tailor

2009-10-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

Gerry is not actually my tailor, but a guy I buy suits from at the local high-end men's store. Needless to say, I have not been a recent customer, but there he was, walking down the street and we called to each other by name. I told him why I hadn't been in since last crazy Fall and asked him how his business was doing. So here you go, from the ground floor.

Gerry said their business tanked in the Fall of '08 and the 3-store men's chain laid off 60 people in January - a massive number. Everyone took 20% cuts and they braved it through the winter and thus far 2009 with a target through September that was 30% lower than originally planned. But they made it, he said, finishing at down 24%. He beamed. Their 20% pay cuts were being restored next week.

Nice. Maybe I'll even visit him again in a few months.

Google to Increase Revenue for Publishers - What a Crock

2009-09-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

The news that Google will now broker display ads much as it does text ads is positioned by the company as being a way for publishers to make more money by selling remnant banner space. Here is a link to the article in the WSJ: http://bit.ly/W5UEJ

I have a few issues. First of all, many vertical niche publishers already have relationships in place with ad networks that suck up and sell all of their remnant space. For example we partner with IDG Technetwork and are generally happy. There are hundreds of other networks like this. But our experience and what I have heard from others is that the revenues from these source just keep on dropping as inventory increases and advertisers demand more services for less cost-per-impression and cost-per-click. As I have said before, the media business is suffering from not so much "dollars into dimes" but "dollars into pennies."

So first, Publishers are NOT going to make any significant money from this. (4 years ago we made $600-700 per month from Google adwords. more recently, it dropped to less than $100 per month. We have removed them from our site).

This experience, which is pretty universal unless your ad page view growth outstrips Google's decreasing returns, means that web publishers like us will tell Google to "take a hike."

I've also heard from customers - advertisers - that they are growing increasingly suspect of their Google adwords investments. As such, I don't even know if the idea will fly for Google. Not everything they do works.

Maybe by placing display ads on the blogs of individuals with day jobs who currently get no revenue for their efforts - maybe they will be satisfied with a few hundred dollars per month versus nothing. But for professional web publishers, for certain, the idea that Google is now going to make us rich is a joke.

End of the Recession – is it just Me?

2009-09-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or was the Sunday Times packed with ads this weekend?

No one can predict the future. But the collective efforts of pundits media-wide generally get it right. In 2008, by April, news media outlets were falling all over themselves trying to use more catastrophic terms for the coming apocalypse - but did we pay attention?

Of course not. We are too wedded to the current trends and since the trends had been up up up at that point, to call the top of the market was just hubris. I wish I had some of that hubris. But here’s my point: it’s human nature to try and read the tea leaves and follow the path that has gone before. Which brings me to the current recession (you remember, the worst since the Great D). Most of you are still thinking things are bad - real bad. And maybe they are (take employment for example).

But the signs that this recession is swinging upward are surrounding us. So the question is….how long will it be before YOU accept this and get on board? One thousand and one studies have shown that aggressive marketers during recessions emerge with greater market share and sales and profits. You’ve been through this before too. You’ve seen it before. How much more time will you wait on the sidelines? When it feels safe, it’s too late. Is it just me?

Neat Digital Ad

2009-08-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

Now THIS is cool. Above is a snapshot of weather.com at about 4:45pm. The ad on the right, for Cuervo Gold Tequila, has sucked out the current temperature and the location I had looked up and put that info IN THE AD. I am sorry, I am impressed.

Of course this ad is running during happy hour too.

Trying to find out who the agency is that is responsible but too much noise on google. Can't wait to show our IT director this one! (you think you have it rough, try to do this!!)

Print Mags Going out of Business - Let's Get on With It!

2009-08-12T07:59:00.000-07:00

I had drinks the other night with a buddy who is the CEO of a 4th generation firm that manufactures assembly line products for food industries. His eyes lit up when he talked about how they were e-mailing interactive PDF “specials” to his customer list. The cost was nothing, and he could track hits and links and they even made a sale from this (a sales for him is a big ticket).

He scoffed and said he was never going to buy a print ad again. I asked why and he said because you can’t track it. So we talked for a while about how e-mailing your customer base was not defining his brand or introducing his company to any NEW prospects. By the time we were done he had agreed to buy 8 4-color full pages in the most dominant of the three publications serving his industry. (I have to look up that publisher – they owe me one!)

But my friend mentioned that the other two publications were getting thinner, there was no good editorial in them etc. etc…. My advice to those publications is to get it over with and go out of business. Companies still need to do print advertising for many reasons, but just not as much as they used to. A few strong publications will survive, let’s get on with it.

The Return of the Maiden Name

2009-08-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

A bit off-topic but here is an observation. For 30-40 years there has been a question when a woman gets married. What to do with her name. In my wife's family we have most of the options on display:

My wife took my last name and the kids have my name

One sister did the hyphenation for her, her spouse and the kids (Meyer-Idzik)

Her brother's wife kept her name, and they merged names for the kids (he reamins Idzik, she remained Miller and the kids were: Miller + Idzik = Midzik)

The other sister did a full merger, she, spouse and kids are all the same: (Smith + Idzik = Smidzik)

There are alot of choices. But what is interesting is the alumni directories and now FaceBook especially (this is for the people in their 30s or older who are using Facebook to catch up with old acquaintances) - many of the women are listing their names as Mary Jones Smith - so people can find them. I have many married friends who took their husband's name at least outside of work, and now through FaceBook I am suddenly learning their maiden names. I don't know the point here except that it is intersting. What does this mean for future generations of kid-naming? Nothing perhaps, but I always wondered what happens when hyphenated-named kids marry other hyphenated-named kids - do they just keep it going??

This mattered alot more to me before delving heavily into my family geneaology a few years back, when I realized that blood is blood no matter what the name is.

Randomly,

ted

The Race to the Bottom

2009-08-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

It seems to me as if media companies are falling all over one another in a race to price themselves out of business. First, print, with a few exceptions such as SD Times, is in a death spiral. We know that many many publications are on their way out. But it seems that media companies in jumping on the online bandwagon are so desperate for sales – any sales – that they are pricing themselves into oblivion.

Because there are very low barriers to entry on the Internet there are often dozens or even hundreds of places that an advertiser MIGHT find a buyer. Which websites are best?? Dunno, wonders the ad buyer, who then concludes that it must be the ones that generate the most clicks or have lower prices.

What about the hundreds of blogs or websites that might mention your product or be “on topic?” The popular solution has become the so-called Ad Network, which acts like a broker. Advertisers can place one banner with an Ad Network, and it’ll appear on hundreds of websites. At the opposite end of the business, website owners can sell their “inventory” of banner spots via the Ad Network with no effort – especially leftover, or remnant, space.

Sound like win-win? It’s not. It’s lose-lose.

When websites – with their carefully crafted content, expensive designs and unique readers – become just another member of an Ad Network, do you know what they are? A commodity. An eyeball aggregator. Nothing more.

When you’re part of an Ad Network, a click is a click is a click and the lowest price wins every time. Therefore, the Ad Networks, with the willing cooperation of publishers and advertisers, are slashing prices in an effort to compete with one another. A network I use recently told me their standard CPM (cost per thousand impression) for remnant space was dropping to 50 CENTS. That’s one million impressions generating $500 in revenue. Who can stay in business for that? (We told them they were not to sell any remnant space on our site.)

Plus, the Ad Networks are now being asked to serve up certain sections, pages, niches within their website. Slicing and dicing. This means that a network advertiser will buy fewer impressions – less money for publishers – as it cherry-picks only specific parts of websites. Where does this end?

Maybe Rupert Murdoch has figured this out as he brashly said today, “ENOUGH,” we’re not giving our content away for free anymore: http://bit.ly/14o03e. It’s like a take-off on the New Hampshire state motto: “Give Free and Die” Oh I know, everyone says lead-gen is the answer – I don’t think so. Stay tuned.

EchoSign - Please Advertise to me!

2009-05-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

I got a cold call today from a salesperson at Echosign - a company that enables digital signatures online so that a client doesn't have to "print out, sign and fax back" a contract. This solves a major problem we have encountered and I reference in my blog entry, The Seven Levels of Approval Hell (http://tinyurl.com/cuo9ee).

I asked the caller some questions and told him I was HIGHLY INTERESTED and to please take me to the next step which involved him having another person call me next week. I agreed to this but then thought of all the companies out there that call me – about 20 per week – that I have never heard of. I began to worry, what happens if I forget who these guys are? I’ve never heard of Echosign. Never seen their ads. Never even seen a logo to visualize. I know nothing about them, their product, what they stand for, how long they have been in business etc….

For 19 out of these 20 cold calls I receive per week I hang up briskly after the hapless rep asks, “have you heard of us?” Poor guys. “NO I have NOT heard of you. Would you like to know WHY? Because your CEO and CFO don’t do print advertising.” If you want to do business with me you will first advertise in INC Magazine, which I read to learn about how to improve my business. And I look at ALL the ads (some longer than others, of course). By the time I do a google search, it's too late. More on that in Part 2.

That is how I learn of what bank I am going to switch to. What software and hardware solutions are out there. Whether to use some wacky AdminiTempHealthPackageSoft product. What needs can be solved by this product or that. I come to learn who the players are, who the leaders are - whose phone call I should return! On my own time, in a place on my choosing, I will get to know you.

I told the EchoSign rep to go talk to his CEO and CFO. No, not the Marketing director – that’s not where the problem lies. The CEO and CFO think that if something isn’t measurable, it serves no purpose. I guarantee that if Echosign advertised in INC Magazine and Sales & Marketing Management for 9 months and THEN rented their lists and telemarketed that their hit rate would jump from 1 in 20 to 3 in 10 - or more. They don’t need to advertise everywhere. Just pick a core magazine or two and brand your company and product.

I can’t stand companies that just call me out of the blue. It’s so ignorant and, frankly, rude. It’s like going up to someone and just asking them to sleep with you. Excuse me??? Who are YOU? Do I KNOW YOU?

Think about it.

How the Jolt Awards Got Their Name

2009-03-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Jolt Awards were named after Jolt Cola ("twice the caffeine and twice the sugar") of course...but why? If you must know, it followed the publication in the April 1989 issue of Computer Language Magazine containing the product comparison article I wrote about Caffeinated Soft Drinks. This tongue-in-cheek article was alot of fun to write in the "compiler product review" language of the day and we got as many letters back from readers as any other article we published.

Now, the article pointed out that these sodas (3 types of Coke, Jolt, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew) were in fact, "programmer productivity tools," and as the psuedo Ad Sales Director I realized that Jolt Cola was wasting their money marketing to college kids studying for exams and instead should be targeting programmers and running ad campaigns aimed at nerds.

So I called up the President of Jolt and got a meeting with him at his offices, somewhere outside of Buffalo. I couldn't get him to advertise - I mean they were committed enough to the college market to even have Jolt-logo-ed jock straps - but he did agree to supply cases and cases and cases of Jolt Cola to the SD West Show where these productivity awards were being given. A thick Lucite coating later for the trophies and the famed Jolt awards were born.

Ironically, Jolt hadn't even won the shootout in the article. The reviewer named Mountain Dew as the winner.

I'll find the article.

The Seven Levels of Approval Hell

2009-03-23T14:16:00.000-07:00

By Ted “Dante” Bahr

First Level: Customer agrees with your proposal, is excited, but needs the price lowered. With that negotiation settled, both parties are ready to go.

Second Level: You send proposal exactly as agreed. Client goes dark. Radio silence. Nothing. This can last weeks.

Third Level: Response! Excited. Has proposal. Foresees no problems with it!... Just has to get boss to approve...

Fourth Level: Potential silence for long period of time. Then… customer surfaces! Ready to go! Boss has approved!! Send the insertion order!

Fifth Level: Received Insertion order. Looks good. No problems. Really committed to the program. They’re definitely doing this and... just need to get the BOARD of DIRECTORS to approve.

Sixth Level: Won’t respond. Won’t send back the order. Customer frequently said they tried to fax it once….but now… at a trade show…. and then on vacation. Happy to confirm that they DO have the IO…. (this too can last weeks).

Seventh Level: Faxed insertion order in hand! Sale is done, handed over to traffic production teams. Bombay sapphire martinis at Abel Conklin’s until…… client hasn’t sent creative. No ad. No white Paper. It’s not done yet. “We really want to use the NEW CREATIVE.” Should be ready…. At…. the…. end…. of….. this…… week…… Take the order back off the books…

And that’s just for a customer who wants to buy!

Straight Shooter Optimistic About Mag Industry

2008-04-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite people in the industry is straight-shooter Jack Semler, President of the Readex Corporation. Readex is best known for ad readership studies (like Starch and Harvey) although they also do a healthy business in more general subscriber studies and other types of research. In any case, WE publishers are their customers. If WE are really worried about business next year, we will do fewer paid outside studies and Readex's forward business outlook for 2008 should be down.

Well, here's what Jack said; "As for our indicators, we are kicking butt right now. The ad effectiveness study count will be up and the number of proposals we are writing for custom studies is above average. IF all holds up and doesn't crash under the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' weight of the media reporting 'Recession,' then we will be running at an 18%-20% increase over 2007."

Gosh, I hope Jack is right and that this IS a leading indicator for all of us. The tea leaves for my business are spread before me and, well, it kinda depends how you arrange them! Forward contracts were flat, but followed a 35% increase the year before. Business at the end of December - a flurry of activity in 2006, was this year, like Old Marley, "dead as a door-nail." But it has picked up noticeably in January as marketers realize that the sky has not quite fallen. Yet, anyway.

So call Jack Semler a positive leading indicator. For me it's still cautious optimism. With heavy emphasis on the cautious.

Will CSO Magazine Follow in CMO’s Footsteps?

2008-04-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

If anyone needs more proof of the declining value of high quality editorial, this could be it.

CSO Magazine, winner of the most recent Grand Neal award for editorial quality, is in trouble. Now, I know nothing about this directly, but I have this old fashioned habit I can’t get rid of. I count ad pages. And from my hand counts, advertisers could care less about editorial quality.

You may remember the story of IDG’s CMO Magazine. Lots of fanfare, seemingly invincible target along with the side benefit of having the advertiser base as part of the readership. And it immediately sashayed its way into multiple Neal Award nominations in 2006. Only problem was, IDG had already shuttered it, due to lack of interest by advertisers. (ABM scrambled and at least did not let them win any awards.)

The April issue of CSO was down to 5 paid ad pages (6, if you count association pages or trade shows—I don’t) and the total folio was a slender 40 pages. There were 10 ad pages in March, coinciding with a major industry show issue, but only 6 pages the month before. December’s total was 15.3. October 2007—with a redesign—totaled 14.3. In healthier times, October 2006, they sold 29.5 pages.

So what’s happening? Could be that that the sales team has conceded the fight for print and is selling online products harder? I have no doubt that CSO has a robust online business. It may even keep the magazine alive for a while. But what of editorial quality? Do advertisers care anymore?

UPDATE: Just got a call from Bob Bragdon, publisher of CSO, and he assures me the franchise is doing very well (with the robust online activity I had guessed at) and that the print product is indeed profitable. That's good. I too want to see good print titles survive. I'll write about this later but an implied point is that we as an industry have got to figure out how to sell print's unique benefits so that a great editorial product like CSO is rewarded. That's the challenge.

Hemmings Motors Along

2008-01-09T23:03:00.000-08:00

I was idling around the newsstand at lunch and was surprised to see the December issue of Hemmings Motor News sitting there, weighing in at 696 pages. Hemmings is basically an antique car and car parts directory. Looking for an antenna for that 1964 Corvair? Find it in Hemmings.

The curious thing is why the print publication is still thick as a phone book. If ever there was a publication to become disintermediated by the Internet, this is it. Hemmings is a place where you go to find things you are looking for, not for random discovery. And, in fact, it has a robust Web site, claiming to be the “world's most comprehensive and informative web site of its kind, featuring over 30,000 searchable cars-for-sale ads, 10,000 Car Club listings,” etc.

Maybe it’s because car collectors are old and don’t use the internet. Nope, we know that all age groups are active users of the Web. Maybe the Hemmings brand is so strong that they can REQUIRE classified advertisers to use print if they want to advertise online. Not so—you can advertise online exclusively. I just don’t get it. Why is their print edition so robust? Any ideas?

'Why Don’t You Just Advertise to Me?'

2008-01-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

I must be on some list or in some business databases. As the president of a small company, there are some weeks when I get three or four calls a day from salespeople trying to sell me HR services, healthcare plans, consulting services, etc. ... This induces cruelty to telemarketers, which I have been known to practice. It’s very annoying and I don’t feel good about myself afterwards.

Increasingly, I find myself chanting some variation of the mighty McGraw-Hill advertisement known as the “Man in the Chair,” perhaps the greatest ad for business-to-business advertising ever created. "I don’t know your company. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know you." Until ... "Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?”

Now, I do buy HR services. I have a healthcare broker, a 401K advisor, a bank, all of these things. I would love to learn about alternate vendors. But I don’t want to be bothered or harassed by a stranger on the telephone. I read Inc. magazine and New York Enterprise Report (great magazine – full of tips). And I read the ads. I rip the ads out and put them in folders. I refer to them and I will contact YOU when I am ready to switch.

This little story illustrates the potential of print advertising versus the hideous “lead generation,” currently the rage in the IT market. I am not a lead, don’t call me. Advertise to me and I will call you when I am ready to buy.

Stop the Insanity!

2007-12-19T12:22:00.000-08:00

I’m given to rail against the state of the world in terms of the overreaction in favor of online marketing methods over print advertising. As with any sea change in the sales end of our industry, there are multiple players (publishers, clients, ad agencies) and plenty of blame to go around. A frequent target for publishers is ad agencies. Part of this is historical, as an agency can stand between the publisher and his/her client. And part of it is structural. Clients squeeze ad agencies, who have to run leaner and often assign inexperienced media buyers to select media.

Today, there are two beefs we have with ad agencies: one is the “RFP due by the end of the day.” The other is “we’re only buying online.” Clearly, there is pressure from clients on both fronts, but the hope is that the ad agencies—who are supposed to be guiding the client’s marketing efforts—would make a greater effort to help stop the insanity.

But I’ve discovered hope recently in the form of two of the most influential high-tech ad agencies, Just Media and Mindshare.

Just Media, in Berkeley, California, has a whole pile of accounts including EMC, the red-hot VMware, Quest, Fujitsu, McAfee, and others. Recently, CEO Dick Reed told me of the battles they are pitching to get these clients to truly embrace integrated marketing—with the print part of the equation being the biggest challenge. It was Dick that told me about ROMO—"Return on Marketing Objective"—and how his agency is using it to convince clients to use print in the mix. Dick also told me about having lunch with Pat McGovern this summer and railing on him about shutting down InfoWorld. A far cry from a 23-year-old media planner plunking numbers into a spreadsheet, this is the kind of involved, opinionated and non-isolationist ad agency we need.

Another agency that gets it is Mindshare, working with IBM. Experienced associate media director Larry Meisel is out on the front lines with publishers, pushing, cajoling and preaching about what IBM needs in print. And he is almost single-handedly keeping the IT newsweeklies alive. (A quick hand-count of 12/17 issues reveals: Computerworld, 21.5 ad pages, 4 from IBM; Network World, 19.5 pages, 6 from IBM; eWeek, 37.5 ad pages, 9 from IBM.)

They are out there. Find those ad agencies that get it. And let’s get them more business.

'ROMO': Better ROI for Marketers

2007-12-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

Several days ago I wrote about the desire for marketers to distill their art down to a science in the crucible of online marketing metrics. In it, I suggested publishers ask questions and flesh out whether your client is really doing the work to analyze the effectiveness of their online marketing or whether they were just using online because it could Cover Their Ass ("CTA") if called upon to prove ROI.

So, now what?

Suggest that there are other metrics beyond ROI that they should consider using. The term I heard a few weeks ago was ROMO, or, Return on Marketing Objective. This has broader application than ROI but it both encourages measurement as well as the idea that strict return on investment may not have to be the ONLY thing one should evaluate. So you can begin to discuss what other sort of marketing objectives one might have and how to measure them. For example, brand awareness and buyer preference–those mysterious forces that make someone click on your Adwords ad instead of a lesser-known company’s.

Why not suggest print (oh there I go again) to raise awareness and preference using a pre-campaign and post-campaign study to measure the improvement? And then analyze changes in click-thrus, click-through rates and conversion rates of online efforts during the campaign (across the same audience–it’s called integrated marketing). Who says you cannot measure this?

We had an account that ran regular e-newsletter sponsorships. In the middle of that two-year run of online advertising, they ran some print: full and half pages, 17 times across a 22-issue span (we are 24 a year). The marketing objective was to try and increase awareness five percentage points. While they were running the print ads, they averaged 155 online leads. During the period before and after the print, they averaged 61 leads. The increase lowered the cost per lead even after factoring in the entire cost of the print advertising. That means the nine point increase in awareness they achieved over the period was in effect free. They achieved both a ROMO and ROI.

That is obviously a showcase example and your mileage may vary. But to summarize, don’t get put off by ROI. Suggest ROMO as an equally valuable metric. And then figure out how to measure that ROMO, with awareness and brand preference studies. You’ll like the ROI.

(Note: My source for the term “ROMO” told me he had heard it from Tech Target–kudos are due to TT, or whoever invented it.)

Do Marketers Want ROI or Just CYA?

2007-12-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

This entry is for PWLA (people who like acronyms). Many marketers (at least in tech, when I am) chant "R-O-I, R-O-I, R-O-I" whenever a salesperson is present. And woe to the salesperson that wants to talk about PRINT! They claim to need Return On Investment, and of course the only way to provide that is with online marketing (measuring clicks, click-thru percentage and lead generation). Marketers want a Silver Bullet–something that turns their art into a science. They think they’ve found it. Until you start asking questions.

Remember good-ole Bingo cards? Oh, I meant “Reader Service Cards." How did we handle claims that another magazine outpulled ours? You broke them down with questions. What is the quality of the leads? How closely do they track results? If someone calls in six months later, do they link that back to the Bingo lead? In 90 percent of the cases, the marketers did not track leads adequately.

Same is true today with online marketing–at least with smaller or medium-sized companies. They don’t track whether the clicks became leads. Or later, sales. Their salespeople only follow-up on a lead once. The leads don’t get followed up on at all. Nowadays, many marketers simply have a number of leads they must generate per quarter. Period. If those leads don’t turn into sales, well, that’s the sales team’s fault. So, many times, when they tell you they want ROI all they really want you is CYA (Cover Your Ass). You should call them on it. And when you do, you can introduce another acronym to them that will also open the door for you to sell them badly needed print advertising. It’s ROMO, and we’ll talk more about that in the next post.

Magazine Metrics: Make the Punishment Fit the Crime

2007-12-04T18:01:00.000-08:00

I just returned from a sales trip on the West Coast. I am always looking for ways to keep fighting the wacky perception that print is dead, as is regularly reported in print media-Doh! One of the problems was typified by a large client who said he wants to measure the success of a marketing effort on the very next day, and since you could not do that with print, he was only using online media.

Now there are many things one can respond to here, but I want to focus on the metrics. It is very difficult to measure the results of a print ad campaign in a trade publication on a daily basis. It's not how they work. You don't measure the speed of a glacier moving in miles per hour. You measure glaciers in inches per year. Similarly, you have to measure print campaign benefits in longer-term metrics like "increase in awareness over six months, change in brand perception or brand preference" over a longer period of time.

If you are not offering the kind of research that measures these kinds of metrics right now, you need to be. Print cannot be measured with clicks but it doesn't produce that type of impulsive result. That doesn't mean that what we do produce-awareness, brand preference and sales-cannot be measured. They can be, quite easily with pre-and post-campaign studies. There are many quick-and-dirty online research sites out there (www.surveymonkey.com is one) where you can do a study for less than $20.

You should also be using Harvey, Readex or Starch to independently measure the perception of an advertiser's creative as well as the creative of every other advertiser in the issue. This sort of research- common in print for years-is very rare in the online world. When I mention the breadth and depth of these studies to the new online buyers they are amazed.

Don't give in to demands for online metrics that don't make sense for print. There are ways to measure print's effectiveness. Educate your customers and use them.

The New York Times’ (and Your) Secret Weapon

2007-12-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

I looked at NYTimes.com briefly this morning before leaving for work. Nothing interesting. Some bishops.

Then I got to the Cold Spring Harbor Deli and glanced at the physical print edition of the Times and was surprised to see the headlines on Iran’s nuclear program screaming out at me. READ ME, it said. This is IMPORTANT!

And I did read it. And it was important. If I only read the Times online, it would have just flown right by. Print is really good at providing context. The Internet is not.

If you are selling print, you need to pay attention to these examples as they come up and use them to hammer home the unique benefits of print.

I’m not against online – we sell tons of online products. I just feel the jump to online marketing has gone overboard and there are few voices reminding us why and how print still works.

Maybe Branding Isn’t Dead

2007-11-20T14:46:00.000-08:00

In the wake of all the noise about everything going digital, everything being measurable on the Internet and demands for accountable ROI comes this story via the Wall Street Journal: "Starbucks Posts Decline in U.S. Store Traffic, Plans Ad Campaign."

An ad campaign. To increase awareness. How retro! They're going to use TV ads-you know, mass market, branding, all that. Sheesh, why aren't they grinding out interstitial EyeBlaster BrainBurst SoulSucker pop-up ads on all the kewl internet video sites?

Isn't that what everyone is supposed to do? Apparently not.

Maybe we're ready to move beyond the "Revenge of the Sock Puppet" phase of anti-branding. You remember the sock puppet mascot for pets.com? The lesson absorbed by VCs and CFOs everywhere in 2001 was, "Don't do anything even resembling branding, look what followed in the wake of the Super Bowl advertising for pets.com." Of course, it had nothing to do with their business model or the recession. Lots of targeted branding efforts were just thrown out with the bathwater. Branding somehow meant "Super Bowl ads." For years afterwards I met with marketers who said either the venture capitalists or their CFO said, "Yes you can spend millions of dollars, but don't you dare advertise for awareness or brand-building." I wonder if the marketers would ever turn around and say to the CFO, "you can run A/P and A/R but don't you dare use a spreadsheet!"

In this case, it appears as if Starbucks CEO Jim Donald is letting the marketers do what they were hired to do: marketing. As quoted in the Journal, Donald says Starbucks is getting into television advertising because "as we grow our stores, we're trying to reach out to this broader audience that maybe [has] not had a chance to experience Starbucks." I call that building awareness. The old-fashioned way.

Mary Berner

2007-09-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Nice article in October Folio: on Mary Berner, new CEO of Reader's Digest. Among the sacred cows she has slain is a ban on back cover advertising on Reader's Digest itself (I wouldn't know, tending to read about the latest celebrity suicide/20 pounds gained/bad haircut/breakup/hookup/20 pounds lost/new baby news in People when standing at the checkout line).

Reader's Digest with no back cover ad??? What WERE they thinking. Mary Berner had the reader's surveyed - predictably, they could care less. That's gotta be $2 million/year easy.

And come to think of it, what about all those midwestern Reiman publications with NO ads in them! Would the readers mind if a few ads for cranberry sauce or Jolly Green Giant peas were tossed in there. By golly, no!!

What do you think?? $50-75 million in two years?

What sacred cows do YOU have in your company? My favorite I hear these days is "we don't use print!" (Hah, you wondered how long it would take me to get onto THIS subject!).

as John Cleese says to the pet store owner in The Dead Parrot Sketch

"WHAT KIND OF TALK IS THAT?!!"

Why don't you use print?

Did it suddenly stop working?

Did someone tell you awareness and brand preference and demand don't matter anymore???

More (lot's more) on this later

But meanwhile, on Reader's Digest:

Way to go Mary Berner!

The US Open and Media

2007-09-12T11:12:00.001-07:00

Ok Ok so I know what you're asking: what does the last post have to do with anything beyond the fact that Ted is an avid tennis player/fan? Here's the point:

Brands get all the breaks.

Federer, by far the world's biggest and most imposing tennis-playing "Brand," is said to win some matches in the locker room - meaning, the opponent concludes before even walking out on the court that they have no chance. Or when faced with the prospect of beating Federer, one chokes. Federer gets the break.

For years, McGraw-Hill got the break. Then Cahners. Then it was Ziff-Davis, IDG and CMP. People defer to brands and icons. Faced with the terrifying choice between an icon like Dr. Dobbs and the merely 7-year old SD Times, some buyers just buy the more well-known entity.

Which means we have to be better - much better - than well-known companies like CMP, Z-D and IDG. Got a long way to go, but each year we get a few more breaks (like how about those Puerto Rico Industrial Relations Board ads.....).

IMS figures just came out. August SD Times ad pages were up 16 over last year. Dobb's was flat.

this was a bit more ramble-y than it started out to be.

US Open Final Notes

2007-09-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

"Choke-ovich"

Yes I made that up probably with about 500 other people independently.

Poor Novak was cruising with the confidence of a 20 year-old who knew no fear. But then when he was up 40-0 with three set points the Fed Factor crept in. Filled with the enormity of the situation and steady play by Federer (note to Tennis Week: please limit your description of him as "the Swiss stylist" to once per article) and he wilted.

And that's why we watch. While they play the game at a higher level.....they're just like us

Farms and Non-farms

2007-04-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

Item in the WSJ today (pushed to me by e-mail, btw):

WSJ NEWS ALERT: Nonfarm Payrolls Surge by 180,000 in March; Jobless Rate Falls

"U.S. payrolls surged by 180,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, increasing the chance of consumer-driven ecomnomic growth and lowering the likelihood of any near-term cut in interest rates. Outside of manufacturing, payroll gains were broadly based, with construction and services posting healthy increases. Previous months' employment increases, meanwhile, were revised up."

This is a number to watch - at conference for trade show CEOs I attended last month an economist with an impressive 20-year track record compared leading indicators and this one - along with availablity of credit - is one of the most relaible for projecting the strength of the economy over the next 6 months - a forward indicator

So, the economy looks good for next 6 months! (But, couldn't we kinda feel that anyway?)

Snarky comment:

Now....aren't virtually all payrolls "nonfarm" these days? If non-farm is meant to remove seasonality I wonder if they also remove "non-retail" in December, when temp payrolls surge.

Farms.

Snort.

The Process of Mulling

2007-04-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

I like to mull things over. There are the urgent things which must be done right away or "today." Or this week, at least. Then there are The Important. These are things that are really important (hence the name) but since they are not urgent, they often never get done. When they do get done, typically you have to sweep all the urgent things off the desk and go into a cone of silence to focus on the Important Task. On my Important list is learning how to make cooler powerpoint presentations - has been for years.

There is another even more important category of things to do and these I call Background Tasks and I mull them over. These are things like what next market to attack, or, should we renew our lease, or should I commit to playing the guitar again. Broadly, this is a category of directional impulses and things I might want to do later (thus moving onto a list) or...might not. I'm mulling them over.

The process of mental cud-chewing is greatly aided by reading print magazines and newspapers. They expose me to things that are not urgent, and maybe not even important - YET.

This morning I was reading Inc. Magazine and read an article on expanding globally - what to do and what not to do when opening a global office. I ripped it out and brought it to work and put it in a file. We have no intention of opening offices overseas today and have barely discussed it. BUT someday we may. And if so I will go find that article.

Now, Joel Sposky would say that when deciding to open an office in Bangalore I can just google for info at that point. And I am sure I would. BUT, what reading that article gave me was an idea - the article told of 6 different ways to open an office internationally - maybe it's not that hard after all....something to think about....to mull.

I would never ever have gotten this idea from the Internet. Never ever. I wouldn't look for it. So, I wouldn't find it. Internet is for "search. Print is for "find"

All us old-timers are realizing the discovery-power of print and are talking about it. I wonder when the younger generation will figure that out?

Why Print Matters - NY Times Coverage of "Democrat" win

2006-11-10T07:39:00.000-08:00

Check out the the "above the fold" half of the NY Times yesterday and you'll see something you'll never get from the Internet - nor should you expect to. It's a "picture" in words, type size and photo of what happened yesterday and what it means. Look at the carefully chosen, examined, edited and finally selected-for-press WORDS. Look at the subheads. Each word has been CRAFTED in terms of selection, emphasis, placement, meaning, position etc to convey a statement - to convey meaning. Even WHICH stories are here, above the fold make a statement of emphasis. "Democrats Turn War Into an Ally" - Beautiful.

It's synthesis, selection, prioritization, distillation. It's meaning.

This is not the purpose nor the ability of the Internet. The Internet is the world's greatest directory. If you know what you want...you can search and find it. Unless you want insight and interpretation. Unless you think there just may be some value in "discovering" something you didn't know you were looking for....

As for news, the Internet has to be constantly updating itself - that's what it's for and there is value there. Instead of interpretation we get blurt-ation. The facts unfold more quickly than anywhere unless you want to stay glued to the tube as they follow OJ's white bronco. The Internet news sites are not going to leave the important stories "in place" like the printed Times above becuase the Internet is about the now. The next story comes in and * poof * the other sotries fade real quick (unless you know what you want and use a search engine)

But that constant updating does not give us persepective. It's all served up with equal gravitas - no BIG HEADLINE. No stand-back and take-it-all-in understanding. Sure there are columns and blogs and words on The Internet. But a search engine is not an editor. The Internet is not for browsing, for discovery, for insight and understanding.

Harrumph.