Archive for May 7th, 2009

G.M. Seeking Stake in Fiat … huh ?

May 7, 2009

Ken’s Take: Let me be sure that I got this right: Chrysler is bankrupt and in bankruptcy proceedings.  GM is bankrupt but is trying to duck bankruptcy proceedings. Fiat gets a part of Chrysler without paying a dime for it.  GM snags a part of Fiat.  So, one bankrupt company is bailing another, using an Italian auto juggernaut as the conduit.

I must be missing something

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From the NY Times:

Four years after paying $2 billion to extricate itself from a partnership with Fiat, General Motors is seeking a stake in the Italian automaker …

G.M., despite its precarious financial position, now feels it has a bargaining chip with its Latin American unit, and is negotiating with Fiat over what it might get in return. G.M. executives are holding out for at least 30 percent of the Fiat Auto Group.

Fiat and G.M. frequently clashed during their five-year partnership, which began in 2000. Fiat engineers said G.M. was too cautious and unwilling to embrace new technology that would have created cleaner, more fuel-efficient engines. In Germany, meanwhile, Opel engineers became convinced that Fiat didn’t share its focus on detail or quality standards.

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/business/global/07auto.html?scp=1&sq=gm%20fiat&st=cse

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Posted in Autos - Travel | Leave a Comment »

The Next Big Thing … Ping Pong?

May 7, 2009

Excerpted from WSJ, “Anheiser Gets Set to Play a Whole New Game,” By Matthew Futterman, Apr 27, 2009

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A group of sports and entertainment marketers is betting ping pong will be the next game to sweep the nation, and Anheuser-Busch InBev’s U.S. unit is getting into the action.

Anheuser-Busch … has signed on as the lead sponsor of the Bud Light Hard Bat Ping Pong Tournament, which started last month.

The big brewer is backing Robert Friedman, president of media and entertainment for New York commercial-production company @Radical Media, and several major partners, who think ping pong could be the next Texas Hold ‘Em, the card game featured in the highly successful World Series of Poker.

The nostalgia factor, made keener by the recession, is one reason they are confident of ping pong’s appeal. “This is about the residual goodwill we all feel for the better times we grew up with,” says Mr. Friedman. “This conjures up family.”

As the idea for the new tourney began to jell, Anheuser-Busch was re-evaluating, and even shedding, several longtime deals with athletes and major sports teams … In came ping pong. With exclusive sponsorships for mainstream teams and sports becoming ever more expensive, Anheuser-Busch needed to strike a balance …

The organizers know they have to come up with an innovative approach to televising a game that in the past has been hard to follow because of the speed and the size of the ball. Even if they can, could this really be the next poker?

Poker already had a long-established mystique, built on images of high rollers in deluxe Las Vegas hotel suites, before Internet gambling and the World Series of Poker inspired a wider appreciation of the mental calculations taking place around the table behind low-brimmed caps and sunglasses.

Ping pong, by contrast, is more closely associated with suburban basements and harsh fluorescent lights. Even so, the International Olympic Committee says table tennis is the world’s leading participation sport, with 40 million competitive players world-wide and tens of millions more playing for fun …

Competition started in March, with local Anheuser-Busch distributors supplying Bud Light-branded ping pong tables to some 4,600 bars where regional competitions are under way. Winners can land an invitation to the tournament finals and play for the $100,000 prize in Las Vegas in late June …

That event, which will also include professionals, will be the focus of a two-hour television special that the organizers plan to air on Walt Disney’s ESPN in September.

Mr. Friedman and Jordan Wynn, executive of Mark Gordon Co., say they noticed ping pong re-emerging in popular culture over the past year. The posse on the HBO series “Entourage” played during an episode, for example, and hip-hop star 50 Cent had a ping-pong theme at his birthday party.

“The question was could we take this game out of the basement and the cluttered garages,” says Mr. Friedman. “We think the timing is just right.”

Mr. Wynn goes so far as to suggest ping pong has sex appeal. “It’s taking on this cool cultural space of short-shorts and retro headbands, and it’s kind of goofy, but it’s also got people who take it very seriously,” Mr. Wynn says. “It’s poker eight years ago.”

Edit by SAC

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Full Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124078190514657141.html

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Posted in Mktg - Promotion, Sports & Athletics, Sports - Games - Recreation | Leave a Comment »

Twitter Loses Touch … Fritters Away SUbscribers

May 7, 2009

Excerpted from Ad Age, “Why Twitter’s Reach Is Limited” By Abbey Klaassen, April 28, 2009

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Over the past few weeks we’ve seen countless stories about the “Oprah effect” on Twitter — TechCrunch suggested more than one million people signed up and many a blog linked to Hitwise data that suggested the talk-show doyenne’s endorsement of the service led to a 43% spike in Twitter traffic.

While those numbers are important, the breathless reports have not accounted for what people do after they sign up for a Twitter account. Creating a Twitter account doesn’t equal becoming an uber-user, or even a casual user, of the micro-blogging site. Nielsen Online data suggest more than 60% of people who sign up for Twitter abandon the service.

David Martin, VP-primary research at Nielsen Online, posted the data on the company’s blog, noting that Twitter’s retention rate — the percentage of a given month’s audience that comes back the following month — hovers around 40%. So that means only 40% of the people who visited Twitter last month will come back this month. However, that number is slightly higher than the 30% retention rate Twitter saw before Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement

One problem, Mr. Martin noted, is that it’s very hard to grow reach when that much of your audience fails to return month after month. He plotted the reach and retention rates of the major websites Nielsen follows and came up with an audience curve that suggests that at Twitter’s current retention rate, it will only reach about 10% of online consumers …

“Twitter has really big hype — it’s the hype that much bigger sites like MySpace or Facebook had when they were coming up … But it’s just not going to live up to that hype in the long run, audience-wise, if it can’t get retention up.”

He also looked at MySpace and Facebook’s retention in their first few years, when their reach looked more like Twitter’s current reach. Even then, the two larger social networks had steadily growing retention rates of more than 40%, which moved closer to 60% as time went on. Twitter’s retention rates, on the other hand, have fluctuated without passing 40%.

Twitter’s user interface can be confusing to people who aren’t familiar with the service, from the hard-to-follow conversation threads to the codes for direct messaging, “retweeting” and “hashtags.” … On the flip side, said Mr. Martin, to “keep people engaged there has to be interesting content. And Oprah, to a large number of Americans, is interesting content. If people continue to stay engaged and are compelled to stay on the site, there’s no reason that engagement shouldn’t go up. But it’s yet to be seen.”

Edit by SAC

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Full Article:
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=136318

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