April 2007 Archive
Since development has been indefinitely postponed on the Lee Simmons Action Figure™ (press credentials and hair sold separately), I’ve been attempting to learn how other celebrities are branding themselves these days. I need not remind you, faithful reader, that branding is big business. The International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association estimates that celebrity branding raked in $3.5 billion last year alone.
When it comes to capturing market share, companies are more and more willing to put starpower behind new product launches. Here’s but a sampling of some of the more recent (and odd) deals:
Targeting the tween set: Punk(y Brewster) singer Avril Lavigne has become the first music act to have her name and image grace the pages of Stardoll, an online avatar-based community aimed at teen and tween girls. In addition to being able to buy Avril’s albums and view upcoming tour dates, girls can create personalized avatars called “MeDolls” and purchase virtual fashions with which to dress them.
Sears hunk: Ty Pennington, host of TV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, is Sears’ newest name brand. The Ty Pennington Style collection slaps the hunk’s name on everything from Fuji dressers to cosmopolitan wine goblets.
Trump Home: No stranger to the world of celebrity branding, Donald Trump recently unveiled his new line of furniture under a licensing arrangement with Lexington Furniture Co. Trump Home includes case goods and upholstery that offers “affordable opulence.”
Thrilla in vanilla: In January boxing icon Muhammad Ali released a line of health snacks with names like “Thrill-A-Dilla” and “Holy Guacamole.” The geniuses behind M&Ms are making them. Oh, and they’re shaped like boxing gloves, medicine balls, and speed bags.
The odd bouquet department: What do Mike Ditka and the rock band KISS have in common? It hurts me to say it, but they’ve both released their own wine. Mike Ditka Kick Ass Red features a Zinfandel/Syrah/Petite Syrah blend sure to make any superfan pour his Budweiser into the dog’s water bowl on Sunday afternoons. Meanwhile, KISS THIS – Well, you just have to see (and taste) it to believe it.
Remember when Google launched Froogle? Stockholders kept an eye on Google shares in anticipation of the company’s clean sweep over eBay as the Froogle checkout system gave PayPal a run for its money. It’s almost like they expected the product to be so revolutionary that the e-commerce market would implode instantly upon launch. Five years later, Google has dumped the Froogle name for the less whimsical “Google Product Search“ title, and eBay and PayPal have held their ground.
After reading Pro PayPal E-Commerce by Damon Williams, manager of PayPal’s Developer Program, I see clearly how PayPal has remained vital. While Google sticks with its clean and minimal approach to business, PayPal has proven that, when it comes to merchant services, developer tools are the trick.
According to a conversation with Williams, “PayPal’s developer community is a key factor in the growth of our off-eBay business. We not only give developers the technical tools they need to successfully integrate PayPal payments, but we also educate them on the business benefits that PayPal provides so that they know why it’s a great idea to build PayPal into any e-commerce website.”
PayPal has also partnered with various software providers to help out its small- and mid-sized-business customers. Transactions can be automatically fed through products like Microsoft’s Office Accounting, Intuit’s Quickbooks, and Blinksale. PayPal’s customer-friendly way of doing business has also made online commerce painless for businesses like Harrods, DHL, Pixmania, Meetic, and Boots Retail, and has led to an international expansion that has 35 million European customers.
During round two of the fight between Google and Yahoo!, PayPal stepped into Yahoo!’s corner to help the yodeling titan launch a product to rival Google’s checkout system. Merchants that offer transactions through Yahoo! Checkout get discounts on their Yahoo! Search Marketing costs and free payment processing services from PayPal through the end of the year. The deal places Yahoo! on even ground with its competition while allowing PayPal to add to the already 1.3 million transactions it processes each day. Cha-ching!
For Google to dominate the online transaction market, it may need to look into switching to a customer-focused development team that can deliver widget-styled tools, especially tools that don’t require users to be advertising clients. For now, PayPal still leads the pack. Its partnership with Yahoo! adds to the list of reasons merchants would pass on Google’s online e-commerce offering.
Paul Wolfowitz is no banker and, truth be told, the World Bank is not really a bank. But both have been in the news a lot lately because of the bank president’s relationships with a former bank employee and President Bush.
As a recent New Yorker article notes, Wolfowitz either hasn’t had the time or, perhaps, the management skills to develop, communicate, and carry out a clear strategic plan for the bank (barring the recurring themes of debt cancellation in Africa and an anti-corruption drive).
If Wolfowitz’s relationship with Shaha Ali Raza takes him down (as it could), history will never know if he could have built a legacy to rival those of two of his predecessors, Jim Wolfensohn (president from 1995 to 2005) and Robert McNamara (1968-1981). Wolfensohn was known for his reform measures at the bank; McNamara (who like Wolfowitz, came to the bank from the Defense Department) transformed the World Bank into an institution focused on improvements in the developing world.
The cooperatively owned World Bank’s mission to help reduce world poverty is bolstered by a stricture against the bank’s interfering in politics. Detractors have accused Wolfowitz of playing politics through some of the anti-corruption/pro-governance actions taken under his watch, even before he was accused of meddling in the pay-and-promotion package for his girlfriend Raza. Others have expressed fears that he is using the job to promote the foreign-policy objectives of the Bush administration.
The bank is actually made up of two entities — the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association — and is owned by the 185 member countries that provide its financial backing. It was formed after WWII for rebuilding efforts and has since evolved to become the world’s premiere financial aid source, providing funding for such projects as infrastructure, economic development, and social programs.
The World Bank has an important role to play in shaping and funding the world economy. Whether Wolfowitz remains long enough to create a lasting legacy, or (more likely) someone else takes over the presidency mid-term, the World Bank still has plenty of work to do.
San Francisco’s recent ban on standard plastic grocery bags has set off another flurry of debates about whether paper or plastic is the bigger environmental no-no.
The state of New York and cities such as Austin and LA are considering bans or reduction programs, although locales such as Houston (home to #2 US plastic bagmaker Advanced Polybag) are more lukewarm. San Francisco’s initiative comes after global actions including a highly successful bag tax in Ireland and outright bans in Bangladesh and South Africa.
A million plastic bags take 430,000 gallons of petroleum to make, and the US alone consumes billions. The bags that litter our streets and clog our landfills take an estimated 1,000 years to decompose. Top plastic bag manufacturers like Sigma Plastics, Inteplast, and Hilex Poly can’t be happy with the spreading bans, but the paper bag industry may not exactly boom as a result. Paper not only depletes forest resources but also requires more energy to produce and recycle.
San Francisco and advocates of similar plans allow for alternatives including the use of recycled paper bags, degradable plastic bags (made from starches), or (the most logical and yet least likely alternative) bringing your own canvas bag. I predict a spike in reusable shopping bag promotions from the likes of GreenSak and Enviro-Tote. But, as in previous shopping bag revolutions, I doubt that the majority of shoppers will cross over.
It’s no secret in this age of instant information that when awful things happen, such as last week’s shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, the media not only report the story, they often become the story.
Two days after Cho Seung-Hui murdered 32 people at the campus, NBC News received a package that included photographs of Cho posing with weapons and videos of his rambling, hate-filled rants against his perceived oppressors. NBC News executives claim they debated all day whether to air it.
They eventually released the material, and a statement from the company contends: “We believe it provides some answers to the critical question, ‘why did this man carry out these awful murders?’ The decision to run this video was reached by virtually every news organization in the world, as evidenced by coverage on television, on Web sites and in newspapers.”
With all due respect to NBC News, that’s garbage. The only “answer” you arrive at after watching the material is that Cho was a lunatic, a fact already apparent from the massacre itself. The second justification, that other news organizations covered it as well, is just a weak version of the old “Everyone else did it, too” argument that never convinced my parents.
Now I’m not saying that NBC had no right to air it, I just wish they could be honest about why they did. Keith Olbermann hit on the true motivation on his MSNBC program when he asked an FBI profiler, “Is there anything … that will be of value, or does this become, to some degree, purely voyeuristic on the rest of our parts?” And that’s really it. The networks count on the general public finding the material fascinating even as it disgusts us.
People clearly have strong opinions on NBC’s actions. A poll on the ABC News website asks the question, “Airing Killer’s Tape — Too Much?” As of this writing there were more than 36,000 votes, with 66% answering, “The media are glorifying Cho, and the video opens up the door to copycats.” The site’s message boards are also loaded with negative responses. While far from scientific, these reactions do tend to reinforce the notion that the media often doesn’t give the public what it wants.
Why do they do it? Simple, they have too much airtime and too many pipes to fill with information. The need for the scoop drives the cable networks to air wall-to-wall coverage that reduces events to tidy programming blocks with foreboding titles and endless interviews with experts, who have no direct knowledge of the events, pontificating on everything from gun control to the effects of violent video games on America’s youth. And on and on it goes until the next tragedy takes its place.