Archive for January, 2011

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That sound you don’t hear is the rush to electric cars …

January 6, 2011

Interesting article in Business Week titled “Electric Cars Get Charged for Battle” … worth reading.

Here are a couple of points that caught my eye …

P.S. Is it just me, or has Business Week been swinging left since being bought by Bloomberg?

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After 10 years as the world leader in hybrids, Toyota has never sold more than 187,000 Priuses in the U.S. in a year.

  • Prius sales peaked in 2007, just before the financial meltdown, and have dropped since then as fuel prices retreated.

Nissan manufactures its own batteries in a joint venture with NEC, and they account for roughly half the cost of the car,

78% of drivers go less than 40 miles daily; 95% drive fewer than 100 miles a day.

The best guess  is that 80 percent of charging will take place at home.

  • Charging an electric car with a standard 120-volt outlet can take up to 18 hours; 5 to 8 hours to charge one with a more powerful 240-volt outlet.
  • But, buying a 240-volt charger requires contacting a utility to see if the neighborhood transformer can handle the load, getting a contractor to install the 240-volt charger in your garage, and having the city inspect it.
  • It can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $3,000 and take a month or two.

There are 106,000 gas stations coast to coast in the U.S. … 13,000 public chargers are expected to be in the ground by the end of 2011;

  • Cracker Barrel restaurant chain recently announced that it would install chargers at 24 of its interstate locations
    Question: Think Cracker Barrel & electric cars attract the same demongraphics?* 

Nissan sorted potential launch markets according to three main criteria.

  • (1) places that had EV incentives left over from the late 1990s-early 2000s.
  • (2) places with a high density of hybrid customers. (Of the early Leaf buyers, almost half have owned Priuses.)
  • (3) states where the local utilities were willing to upgrade their grids if needed.

Wave One: Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Tennessee, Texas, and Hawaii.

Business Week, Electric Cars Get Charged for Battle, December 29, 2010
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_02/b4210048400234.htm

* Thanks to JMH for question

Posted in Autos - Travel | Leave a Comment »

New Year’s resolutions spells trouble for at least one business …

January 6, 2011

From the Leno monologue …

The top things people give up for the new year are junk food, alcohol, smoking, and gambling.

So basically, people are giving up on 7-Eleven.

Posted in Laughs | Leave a Comment »

Facebook overtakes Google

January 6, 2011

TakeAway: What once seemed improbable became inevitable in 2010: Facebook is more popular than Google.

While search engines like Google aren’t going away anytime soon, Facebook will become more than a secondary component of many marketing strategies.

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Excerpted from Washington Post, “Facebook passes Google as most popular site on the Internet, two measures show,” by Ylan Mui and Peter Whoriskey, December 28, 2010

This may go down as the year that social networking trumped searching as America’s favorite online pastime.

In 2010, Facebook pushed past Google to become the most popular site on the Internet for the first time … It … marks another milestone in the ongoing shift in the way Americans spend their time online, a social change that profoundly alters how people get news and interact with one another …

According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook jumped to the top spot after spending last year in third place and the year before ranked ninth. The company found that 8.9 percent of unique online visits were to Facebook this year, compared with Google’s 7.2 percent. Meanwhile, ComScore, another firm that calculates Web traffic, said Facebook is on track in 2010 to surpass Google for the first time in number of pages viewed. Each unique visit to a site can result in multiple page views. …

Consumers use Google to get to other places, but they log on to Facebook to stay. That helped Facebook account for roughly a quarter of online page views in November, significantly outpacing Google, Hitwise said.

But there is one key area in which Facebook has yet to surpass Google: revenue. The search giant recorded nearly $24 billion in sales this year. Several news reports put Facebook’s revenue at $800 million in 2009, and the company is expected to bring in about a billion dollars this year – though how profitable Facebook is remains in question. …

Edit by DMG

 

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Full Article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/30/AR2010123004645.html

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Posted in Internet - Soc Networking, Internet Marketing - eCommerce - | Leave a Comment »

‘‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act’’

January 5, 2011

Weighing in about 2,500 pages shorter than the ObamaCare monstrosity, the Congressional bill to repeal ObamaCare – called the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act – is 2 pages long and is posted for public viewing already – a week before the vote.

Pretty catchy name …

Posted in ObamaCare | Leave a Comment »

In the cross hairs: Private-sector union workers aiming at public employee unions …

January 5, 2011

Punch line: Private-sector union workers are beginning to notice that their job prospects are at risk from public-employee union contracts

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Excerpts from WSJ: Labor’s Coming Class War, Jan. 4, 2011

Some may be missing the first stirrings of a true American class war: between workers in government unions and their union counterparts in the private sector.

In this recession, for example, construction workers are suffering from unemployment levels roughly double the national rate. They are relearning, the hard way, that without a growing economy, all the labor-friendly laws and regulations in the world won’t keep them working.

What’s more, “blue-collar union workers are beginning to appreciate that the generous pensions and health benefits going to their counterparts in state and local government are coming out of their pockets …  they are beginning to understand the dysfunctional relationship between collective bargaining for government employees and their own job prospects.”

  • In NJ, 40% of  iron workers are out of work—and they know that unless the high-tax state gets its fiscal house in order, the only work they’ll find will be in Texas.
  • In NY, the unemployment rate for members of the  Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York is running at 20%.

In some ways, this new appreciation for the private sector is simply back to the future. FDR, for example, warned in 1937 that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

These days the two types of worker inhabit two very different worlds.

In the private sector, union workers increasingly pay for more of their own health care, and they have defined contribution pension plans such as 401(k)s. In this they have something fundamental in common even with the fat cats on Wall Street: Both need their companies to succeed.

By contrast, government unions use their political clout to elect those who set their pay: the politicians.

In exchange, these unions are rewarded with contracts whose pension and health-care provisions now threaten many municipalities and states with bankruptcy.

In response to the crisis, government unions demand more and higher taxes. Which of course makes people who have money less inclined to look to those states to make the investments that create jobs for, say, iron workers, electricians and construction workers.

Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576060092978223976.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Posted in Unemployment, Unions - UAW | 1 Comment »

Corn flakes, floating soap, disposable handkerchiefs, potato chips and …

January 5, 2011

TakeAway: Some of today’s most common products became hits because their manufacturers, or in many cases ordinary consumers, noticed unplanned uses for them.

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Excerpted from Forbes, “Inventions That Were Accidents” By Elaine Wong, December 23, 2010

They say that necessity is the mother of invention. But sometimes pure chance is.

  • Kellogg’s Corn Flakes came about when two brothers forgot to properly store wheat and then noticed that it came out as flakes when later processed. They soon applied the same procedure to other types of grain. 
  • Procter & Gamble, which started as a candle- and soap-making company, discovered by chance that its Ivory soap could be made to float – a quality that somehow communicated “clean” to consumers – when an employee left the mixture for it churning and went to lunch. Air seeped in, but the resulting cakes of soap were shipped out anyway. Americans loved the new, floating cleanser. 
  • Kleenex was originally developed for removing cold cream. Ernest Mahler, the head of research at Kimberly-Clark, had hay fever and started using the tissue as a disposable handkerchief. The consumer goods company then began advertising it as “the handkerchief you can throw away.” Sales doubled, and Kleenex went on to become, and remain, the world’s top facial tissue.
  • Sometimes, inventions arise in a moment of frustration or anger. That happened when George Crum, a restaurant cook, sliced up potatoes as thin as possible to serve to a customer displeased with the way his spud was cooked. The result was the world’s first potato chip.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/ten-accidental-inventions-leadership-cmo-network-common.html

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Posted in Mktg - Product & Innovation | Leave a Comment »

Companies & the market are doing fine, but employment is stalled … here’s one explanation.

January 4, 2011

Punch line: Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. But, companies aren’t hiring.

Here’s one theory of the case… they are — but not in the U.S.

Excerpted from AP, Where are the jobs? For many companies, overseas, Dec 29, 2010

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn’t anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are — they’re hiring overseas, where sales are surging. Sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically. Demand has grown dramatically this year in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil.

The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, even though companies are performing well and the stock market is booming.

But the jobs are going elsewhere. American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S.

In recent years, though, those jobs have become more sophisticated — think semiconductors and software, not toys and clothes.

“Companies will go where there are fast-growing markets and big profits.”

With the future looking brighter overseas, companies are building there, too.

  • Caterpillar, maker of the signature yellow bulldozers and tractors, has invested in three new plants in China in just the last two months to design and manufacture equipment.
  • DuPont — known as one of the most innovative American companies of the 20th century –now sells less than a third of its products in the U.S.
  • Coca-Cola — of Coke’s 93,000 global employees, less than 13 percent were in the U.S. in 2009, down from 19 percent five years ago.

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. He says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.

Other economists, like Columbia University’s Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising.

Full article:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFY0R9agrMVljqtaB6ccsILSKd3Q?docId=771fbe245e624cbd95ab5a49122dd701

Thanks to SMH for feeding the lead

Posted in Employment - Jobs | 1 Comment »

Wanna be a CMO? … Then, start crafting your ‘mosaic’

January 4, 2011

TakeAway: One of the major trends among global top marketing talent is that the concept of traditional brand marketers is giving way to an emerging breed of “mosaic” marketers. 

The mosaic marketer may be someone who has worked in several international markets or across different marketing or functional disciplines such as classical brand management, customer/channel marketing, retail, luxury and customer relationship management.

Focus on the P&L…sound familiar, Advance Mark Strat guys?

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Excerpted from AdAge, “How to Become a CMO” By Marie Han Silloway, December 8, 2010  

Given this new reality, we believe there are seven critical competencies necessary for CMOs to succeed in this playing field:

1. Be a visionary, creative thinker
See what others don’t see, resulting in a stronger consumer and commercial proposition.

Example: When P&G launched one of their shampoo brands for women in China in the early 1990’s, the brand director was agile enough to launch single use sachets (trial size packages) in addition to regular bottles. They understood that female consumers holding down blue collar jobs in factories did not want to buy large amounts of shampoo. Typically, the factories had common shower facilities and they did not want to share their ‘good’ shampoo with others. Hence the sachets were not only affordable, but removed the embarrassment of refusing to share their nice shampoo.

2. Communicate effectively in and out of the region

Example: Dermot Boden, CMO of LG Electronics, is a 23-year veteran from the consumer healthcare world who’s worked across 20 countries, such as the U.K., the Philippines, U.S., Brazil  and Japan. LG wanted someone from a different industry, but with some Asia experience, and Dermot’s mandate was to work with the team to establish and elevate the marketing to world class levels. to shift the focus from product to consumer, and to lead the way to building a stronger relationship with consumers.  It was actually a huge change-management agenda requiring Dermot to understand the state of LG’s marketing across all of their global markets and know how to communicate effectively, respectfully and with finesse about raising the marketing bar.

3. Handle a complex portfolio across diverse markets
A diverse brand portfolio requires thoughtful investment strategies that take into account operational needs and restrictions of the market. As a result, the new breed of CMOs must be visionary but also able to balance innovation with commercial practicalities.

4. Focus on the P&L
Marketing will receive more and more operational and bottom line targets.

5. Be organizationally savvy
In a common pitfall, executives don’t invest enough time building “bridges” within the organization. In the field, it’s the relationships that lead to trust that will get you the test market you want or the focus that you need to make an initiative successful. At headquarters, it’s the relationship and trust that gets the budget approved or the KPI blessed.

6. Develop talent
The CMO needs to develop a culture that values talent and must know how to build a flexible team that can anticipate rapid market changes. Marketing is one of the hardest functions to develop competencies for because of the depth and breadth of strategy, innovation, lateral thinking and international perspective required.  In particular, exposure to international markets, growth markets, mature markets, religious and culturally diverse markets.

7. Speak another language
Some clients have recognized the role that Asia plays in leading innovation in certain categories and have built global R&D centers to drive innovation out of Asia in cosmetics, personal care products, food and beverage, apparel design and even sports such as Badminton.  Speaking the local language enables one to connect with the local market and teams in a way that no other can.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:
http://adage.com/print?article_id=147510 

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Posted in Management - General, Mktg - Careers | Leave a Comment »

Why the flap over end-of-life consultations?

January 3, 2011

Last week’s disclosure that MediCare will now gladly reimburse doctors for annual chats with patients re: the desirability calling it a day and heading for heaven has revived the death panel uproar.

Why?

First, to put the flap in context: ObamaCare doesn’t fundamentally restructure healthcare delivery  …  it just rearranges the flow of money and patients.

  • Folks who are already covered by insurance plans will pay higher premiums to cover the costs of folks on the margin who were previously denied coverage (pre-conditions, adult children)
  • Healthy folks (mostly young adults) who previously opted to self-insure (i.e. to not buy insurance because they are health & cocky and conclude that they don’t need health insurance), will be forced to buy insurance that they will underutilize (because they are healthy) …  to subsidize high cost, unhealthy insurance plan members (who will take out more than they put in).
  • Healthcare will be throttled to old folks –- who consume a lot of healthcare in their last years — to save MediCare $$$ that will fund healthcare for the folks who are currently uninsured.

The current uproar revolves around the latter provisions.

While end of life consultations don’t really represent death paneling, they are a significant step in that direction — they are a form of soft rationing that – in concept — allows patients to voluntarily opt out of end of life medical services. 

Some argue that’s a slippery slope.

What if doctors are incentivized by the Feds to skew the conversations towards terminal strategies? Or, what if doctors are incentivized to hush-up available life prolonging options?

Then, the soft rationing begins to harden. 

Can you imagine the Feds incentivizing doctors to promote terminal treatment options or the gov’t refusing to reimburse for near end of life procedures for certain ‘unworthy’ patients.  Hmmm.

To some people, that starts to sound like death panels.

And, that’s why there’s an uproar.

Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance | 1 Comment »

Target Gets Fresh with Mommies

January 3, 2011

TakeAway: Target has been aggressively marketing its fresh food offerings this year in a major nationwide campaign, which includes direct mail, billboards, television, radio and vehicle wraps, among other elements.

The ads focus in part on the three daily meals that could be put together with a trip to the store, and the company hopes its efforts will resonate with mothers, who are a prime target of the campaign.

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Excerpted from NYTimes, “Shopping at Target?  Now You Can Pick Up a Dozen Eggs” By Tanzina Vega, December 16, 2010

While Target has carried snack foods like potato chips and soft drinks for years, the company has expanded to include fresh groceries like steak, chicken, eggs and apples. So far, 350 of the 1,752 Target stores nationwide have been reformatted to include the new food layout, and the company expects to add the arrangement to additional stores at the rate of about 400 a year.

While the fresh food offerings will include items similar to what a customer can find in a grocery store, “The concept is built around the notion of fill-in trips and convenience trips. There’s a real need for convenient and affordable grocery options.”

Target stocked fresh food items alongside local products like Turkey Hill ice cream, Ellio’s Pizza and Herr’s potato chips.

To market the concept, the company ran ads in local newspapers, used direct mail and placed door hangers on homes. It also used “guerrilla tactics,” like distributing 10,000 samples of produce on the streets of Philadelphia using branded bicycles and trucks with the Target bull’s-eye logo and “Get Fresh Philadelphia!” messages.

The look of the campaign incorporates Target’s bold red lettering against a white background with fruits and vegetables splashed across the layout.

Edit by AMW

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Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/business/media/17adco.html?_r=2&ref=media

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Posted in Mktg - Consumer Behavior, Retailing | 1 Comment »

Perspective on Federal revenues (aka “taxes) …

January 3, 2011

Interesting chart from Heritage, referenced in a Forbes article …

Couple of takeaways:

As the headline says, Fed revenues have tripled since 1965 … that’s about 3% per annum … pretty much in line with GDP growth.

No big news there.

I added the line connecting 1965 and 2010 … note the 2 recent bulges above the long-term trend line … the first courtesy of the Clinton tax hikes and the dot-com bubble …  the 2nd courtesy of the Bush tax cuts and the housing bubble.

What’s common?

Fed revs jumped during the bubbles … but, rather than the Feds treating the inflows as “found money”, they treated it as a permanent change in the revenue stream and poured it into spending programs … all of which are now apparently untouchable.

Hmmm.

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