The situation bears a strong resemblance to the newspaper industry, and the reason papers are in the same place as the auto industry. Let's take a look at the places where the news industry and the auto industry screwed the pooch: [...more]
GM’s NUMMI plant in Fremont was the solution to their crisis. So why did they ignore its lessons?
They don't make 'em like this any more. Even so, the rear bumper had to be reattached.
It’s about how the U.S. auto industry could have saved itself by actually paying attention to the way its business was eroding, and listening to the people who came back from Japan and transformed the Fremont plant from a place that was “like a prison … with sex, drugs and alcohol freely indulged in during the working day … where the workers maliciously sabotaged cars, and the managers didn’t care, as long as they got their bonuses for churning out pure numbers…”
The situation bears a strong resemblance to the newspaper industry, and the reason papers are in the same place as the auto industry. Let’s take a look at the places where the news industry and the auto industry screwed the pooch:
1. Starting in the 80s and going through the 90s, sales declined, as customers were turned off by the shoddy quality of the product
In the auto industry: anyone who drove a U.S.-made car in the 80s knows what I’m talking about. Everything about the cars sucked. The seats were uncomfortable to sit in, the controls made no sense and were hard to deal with. I drove a lot of rental cars in that era, and I can’t tell you how many times the A/C control knob came off in my hand. Or the windshield wiper knob was installed upside-down. In one case, the bolt holding the steering column up on a Chevy Cavalier came loose and the steering wheel dropped into my lap. Which is minor, compared to the engines seizing and misfiring, the electrical system shorting out, the windows not rolling up (or down), the doors sagging on their hinges…
In the newspaper industry: the buyouts and mergers started by the relaxation of the cross-ownership rule, caused many papers to skeletonize their staffs, and run big colorful graphics in the papers. And lots more wire copy. I worked at the Arizona Republic during this era, and I saw what they were doing on “Zone Editions.” We had the same cruddy stories for Mesa, as we did Tempe, as we did Scottsdale. They were feature stories about things like a guy with a trained parrot that would whistle and dance. We’d run it one week in the Mesa zone, and then the next week, I’d see it in the queue again for Scottsdale. Mostly, the Zone Editions were there to snarf up the advertisers in those areas, and make sure that no competition sprang up to challenge the big paper. “It doesn’t pay NOT to advertise,” was the slogan, and it was true, because of the package deals the Republic was able to offer, sucking the oxygen out of the local markets. Most papers had a monopoly position in their markets, and could pretty much be assured of making a profit, no matter what they did. Meanwhile, the readers were starting to notice that their newspapers were lacking … how shall we say this … news.
2. The workers felt ignored and belittled, so they began to act out, and a “give a shit” attitude took over
In the auto industry: the line workers had no power to offer suggestions, and indeed, were punished for speaking up. All that mattered was churning out enough cars to meet the quotas, no matter how shitty the quality. Resentfulness led to workers intentionally sabotaging cars, which led to even greater expense down the line, when the shitty cars had to be fixed by workers who really didn’t understand what was wrong with them, and just used the “bigger hammer” method to make cross-threaded bolts hold, or quarterpanels stick onto the chassis.
The sessions on social media were all packed … I’d say cheek-by-jowl, but these were marketing and advertising types, after all, and jowls were in rather short supply. It may have had something to do with the recent announcement that Facebook had surpassed Google in popularity … I’m not sure if that means that the [...] [...more]
The sessions on social media were all packed … I’d say cheek-by-jowl, but these were marketing and advertising types, after all, and jowls were in rather short supply.
It may have had something to do with the recent announcement that Facebook had surpassed Google in popularity … I’m not sure if that means that the ad budgets will be swinging Zuckerberg’s way from the Ever-Victorious Google Army, but it certainly had a lot of people buzzing. And hoping to find some magical formula for extracting value from people just, y’know, rapping. Dude.
Laura Lang, CEO of the Digitas advertising agency, opens her keynote speech at OMMA Global with some examples of why social media is important.
The speech is titled: “People are expecting everything, everywhere, downloaded, uploaded, in their hands, in an instant – are marketers keeping pace?”
Best use of classic fiction and modern cross-platform multimedia: “What do Robinson Crusoe, Castaway and Lost all have in common? They all wanted off the island. Why? There weren’t enough people there to interact with. Or not the right kind of people.”
…and touchscreens up to 27 inches on the way… Not sure what to make about this notice I got out of Korea today, that said that manufacturers there just got orders for touch-sensitive displays in much larger sizes than they have ever tried to deal with before. According to Displaybank, this spring will see the [...] [...more]
…and touchscreens up to 27 inches on the way…
Not sure what to make about this notice I got out of Korea today, that said that manufacturers there just got orders for touch-sensitive displays in much larger sizes than they have ever tried to deal with before.
According to Displaybank, this spring will see the rollout of touchscreen devices in 10.1, 13.3 and even 16.1 inch diagonal sizes, and this summer will have screens in the 21.5, 23.6 and 27 inch sizes.
Of course, the other news that was interesting is the projection that within the next three years, more than 30% of the cellphones in the world will be using touchscreen technology.
That looks to be about 500 million units; as we’ve seen from the iPhone, one of the key results of having a touchscreen User Interface on mobile devices is that it makes browsing the web actually possible. Yeah, yeah, the Blackberry had the trackball, and some people still swear by it – but I’ve tried it, and it’s just not as intuitive or useful as pointing and tapping on a link, to say nothing of using the pinch/pull multitouch functions to make items contract/expand.
So having the global market expand with devices whose main strength is that they make browsing not only do-able, but fun – means that there is going to be this big & powerful driver pushing people to the mobile web in the next few years. Even more so than the “there’s an app for that” meme taking root with the public, the fact that all the other handsets are going to be iPhone-like, is going to be a huge change.
Meanwhile, I wonder if the larger die sizes for the touchscreens means that there are going to be “upgrades” to the tablet market? One of the most insightful things I heard last week at OMMA Global in San Francisco was that “it’s not the iPad itself that’s the revolutionary change – it’s the 30, 40, 50 other tablet devices that are going to follow in its footsteps that are going to be disruptors.” I can see the thinking in some quarters of unimaginative Corporate America – that they’ll be just like the iPad – ONLY BIGGER!!11!!eleven! Kinda like the Kindle DX, I guess – although I really can’t make much of a use case for hauling around a 27-inch tablet device. Damn thing would weight about 15 pounds, and the battery life would be maybe 10 minutes.
But you could watch some really nice high-def videos in that time, I guess…
Just got done with updating the case study on mobile advertising for the Newspaper Association of America — I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that market conditions had changed so very much since mid-2008. You always hear that “Internet years are like dog years,” but man, did that ever hold true. Just a few [...] [...more]
Just got done with updating the case study on mobile advertising for the Newspaper Association of America — I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that market conditions had changed so very much since mid-2008. You always hear that “Internet years are like dog years,” but man, did that ever hold true.
Just a few examples:
One of the big segments I wrote lumped Alternate Reality and Apps into the same category. This was obviously before Apple’s App store completely blew up.
QR codes were this crazy technology that strange Japanese advertisers were using. Seemed like Sea-urchin sushi. Something that would never really catch on here. Guess again, eh?
3.And the biggest one of all – mobile is now an actual line-item in marketing and advertising budgets, not just a throw-in with “digital media.”
So here’s something that I just couldn’t figure out what to do with – the touchscreen guys just pinged me last week and showed me some stuff about multitouch displays that allow you to use all ten fingers to manipulate & add things.
Now, I’m not sure – yet – if this really represents some kind of massive leap forward in getting the damn central processors to recognize input from the user … or if it’s like the ridiculous razor-blade wars, where Schick & Gillette seem locked in a strange battle to cram more blades onto a razor than you see in The Bride’s big samurai-sword fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1.
I’m not sure how much of an impact it’ll have on the cellphone market, but I can certainly see a day when having enhanced touch for iPad-like devices really makes working with photos, video or database navigation that much more intuitive. Get me my mirrorshades!
Thanks to Eric Schwartzel at the Post-Gazette for sending me this great, funny video. The P-G has rolled out 2D barcodes (aka QR codes) in their print product that are designed to be used by smartphones. I’m all in favor of videos like this, that guide our readers/users through the process of learning what 2D [...] [...more]
Thanks to Eric Schwartzel at the Post-Gazette for sending me this great, funny video. The P-G has rolled out 2D barcodes (aka QR codes) in their print product that are designed to be used by smartphones.
I’m all in favor of videos like this, that guide our readers/users through the process of learning what 2D barcodes are all about, and how to use them. I’d like to see a little more of an explanation of what these codes do, to make the case to the readers as to why they should use them. One of the real interesting possibilities is using these codes alongside of reviews of concerts or movies to take the readers to m-commerce sites, where the paper will get a slice of the ticket sales.
Of course, that’s going to take some time/development money, but for an industry looking for a viable business model to replace the dwindling dead-tree advertising revenues, shifting towards a more PPC-like biz model makes a lot of sense.
Not sure what this all means – it’s a fight on an Oakland transit bus that has morphed into something of an online cultural phenomenon, now chronicled by this two-part documentary. Part 1: Part 2: The “star” of the show is Thomas Bruso, now known as “Epic Beard Man.” He has a long and somewhat [...] [...more]
Not sure what this all means – it’s a fight on an Oakland transit bus that has morphed into something of an online cultural phenomenon, now chronicled by this two-part documentary.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The “star” of the show is Thomas Bruso, now known as “Epic Beard Man.” He has a long and somewhat tangled history – he’s apparently the unruly fan who got tasered at an Oakland A’s game last summer (he tells the story in Part 1, to the rather disturbing approval of the little gang gathered around him in his tiny apartment).
I can’t quite decide if this guy is a rambling nutcase who should be incarcerated before he goes off with his homemade “shank” on some random individual – or just a deeply damaged burnout, blinking in the unexpected glare of internet celebrity. The stories he tells about his past make it clear that his life has been no bed of roses, but the rapid-fire aggression of his half-yelled stories are immediately recognizable to anyone who’s spent time among hair-trigger tweakers. Maybe he is actually a Vietnam vet, and that’s why he’s always yelling. Maybe he’s just a delusional pathological liar. Maybe all of the above.
But the thing to pay attention to, is the technical skill and obvious love that went into making these short films. The camerawork, the original music, the multiple locations and moving camera — this ain’t just a kitty dancing on a piano. This is at least as good as 90% of the indie documentaries I’ve seen in theaters, shot on 35mm film with a crew. This was shot with a Canon 7D, and the distortions from the fisheye lenses used in the establishing shots really make you feel the queasy hyper-reality of the world this guy exists in. I gotta say that the sound quality is not all that bad; they must’ve been using some sort of external recorder, though, because the mike on these SLRs is still pretty vestigial.
As with most pointless & inexplicable internet memes, this one started out on 4chan.org and then to a wiki page where all sorts of pencilnecks & assorted anonymous cretins poured out the ugly dregs of their racial hate. I won’t do those pages the favor of linking to them; if you really want to see them, do a search for “Epic Beard Man Wiki,” which brings up a page with the flashing read warning “This page is a WARZONE.”
When analysts start the joints-after-midnight pontificating about the “emerging visual language” of the internet, I think that the the Epic Beard Man meme is the kind of thing that they mean – but that, were they to actually dive deep into what’s going on, would make their hair pretty much fall out. It doesn’t take much to figure out that outside of the well-policed & civilized areas like the discussion boards on The Daily Beast and Huffington Post, the reality that is emerging on the net is raw, disturbing and in yer face.
Because surfing the Internet is like drinking from a firehose, David LaFontaine braves the torrent to tell you what trends and technologies to gulp down, swirl in your mouth, or spit out.
