Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Marketing/Branding/PR (Page 26 of 29)

CES Post 5: My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don’t Love CES

January 9, 2007 / / 1 Comment

But BlogHaus is fantastic! The PodTech people are great, and I got to meet a bunch of really nice Seagate folks last night, too — very cool. I love that company, and the great legacy they have in this industry — and in Minnesota, too, I might add (where they employs thousands). Bloghausentry

I thought for this post I’d just do the quick rundown of my day yesterday, the first official day of CES (which makes me wonder how many more of these days I can take!]…

It’s Tuesday morning now at the Haus, another beautiful, sunny day in Vegas. I was a little later getting to the suite this morning (about 8:30) — I guess because I stayed an hour later last night! (More on that in a bit.) But I was still the first blogger to arrive today….or maybe Sandira Calviac was here just ahead of me, so I defer to the lovely lady… 🙂 She’s from NY and has a cool new blog called TechAgnostic.com. But the best thing of all: she surfs! Learned in Hawaii recently, and came home and bought a wet suit so she could surf Long Island. I love it.

So, anyway, yesterday I attended the Aussie press event, as I blogged about. Being from Australia originally, I just had to… 🙂 Then I took in the Yahoo press luncheon — where I heard all about the new Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 service (now officially in beta) and the related Yahoo oneSearch — which they say together equals “the ‘Net in your pocket.” Pretty awesome demo they did. What’s the take on all this? Well, TechCrunch and others position it simply as Yahoo playing catch up to Google’s lead in mobile search. And the carriers they’ve signed up so far are all non-U.S. — so don’t get too excited yet. But one guy next to me (from a NY hedge fund!) was able to download the app quickly during the talk from his T-Mobile smart phone. Try it yourself here.

Then it was back to BlogHaus, where I hung in the conference room, blogging and chatting — mostly with PodTech folks and Lionel Menchacha, Dell’s official blogger, who’s a great guy. Been with Dell going way back.

After chatting with Linda Furrier about the how the whole BogHaus idea came about (a great story — more later), I left around 5:30 to head back to my hotel and get ready for the Showstoppers event at the Wynn Hotel. Huge crowds for this mini event, with what seemed like a hundred small booths (and killer food, drinks, and schwag). The coolest thing I saw there was the whole line of waterproof iPod cases and earphones from H2O Audio of San Diego. Pretty cool — for surfers especially, which the CEO, Kristian Rauhala, is (he surfs Black’s Beach). H2oaudiosurfer

Stayed at Showstoppers till about 8:30, then figured I’d better go grab a cab to get back for the big doin’s at the BlogHaus, with all the Seagate people showing up for a special program. Lo and behold, as I’m walking through the endless casino path through the cavernous Wynn, who do I see briskly walking by me but John Furrier. So, I yells, hey John, I’ll bet you have a limo, huh? He says yeah, wanna ride? So, I join him and Robert Scoble, who caught up with us about then, for the ride back to the Bellagio. We had some good laughs….these two guys are way fun!

Back at the animal house — I mean BlogHaus — the place is starting to rock. And a beer or so later, the Seagate folks start arriving. John does the introductions, they announce the Seagate product giveaway winners (darn, I wanted one), and I had a chance to chat with corporate communications people Brian Ziel, Woody Monroy, and Julie Still. Woody’s a surfer (great name for one! I own a woody car myself…), and he tells me there are a lot of surfers at the company, since their offices in Scotts Valley are so close to Santa Cruz. He surfs generally before work. Later, I met CEO Bill Watkins, who’s a great guy, really fun, and we chatted about Minnesota a bit. See photo below of him being interviewed by one of the vlogging crews.

Here are some of my other photos of last night’s happenings, at least the ones that didn’t start getting blurry like my eyes as the evening progressed… 🙂 Seagatepodtech
Watkinsseagate
Furrierseagate
Scobledrinking We had waaay too much fun. My favorite photo is the one of Scoble going bottom’s up — no, that’s not vodka. 🙂 Seriously, it was an awesome event, with lots of great conversation and laughs. Mega-mega thanks PodTech, and of course to Seagate for underwriting the whole thing — a real marketing and PR coup. And it’s not over yet — the suite goes 24/7 till 8:00 am Thursday…

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Predictions for Macworld

January 6, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Okay, while I’m on the plane to CES, I thought I’d write about — what else? — the next big show after this one… 🙂 It’s actually an even more significant event — in news terms, anyway. I’m of course talking about Macworld. Wish I could travel to that one, too, but I just can’t afford to be away that long from work and other matters back home. Stevejobs Nonetheless, I’m sure anxiously following all the talk about what will be announced later next week in SF by his royal supremeness, Chairman Steve. And I’m sure I’ll be spending some time in the next few days in Vegas talking with people about what they think is coming.

But my favorite prediction so far is from my longtime colleague, designer Randy Geise, who heads GeiseDesign in the Twin Cities. He’s a huge Apple follower and a fanatically loyal Mac enthusiast, and I’ve found he gets these predictions right more often than not. Here’s his take on what’s we can expect this time:

“Ok, I’m going to go out on a limb about MacWorld…

“I don’t think the iPhone will be ready and I think Jobs would more than likely do a special event for that like he did for iPod and other major hardware introductions. In addition to a whole lot of things, including software and the iTV, I’m betting he has finalized the exclusive agreement with The Beatles, and his ‘one more thing’ will be a limited edition Beatles iPod (ordered blank or pre-filled with all The Beatles’ songs, including some we haven’t heard). Like the ‘red’ iPods, where a certain amount goes to charity, this iPod will be tied into breast cancer charities (since Linda died from that). I don’t think McCartney will make a live appearance but will do a transatlantic iChat with Jobs. This will also tie into the iTV, as all the Beatles’ movies will be available on iTunes and ready to be streamed to your HDtv via iTV.”

What Randy thinks would be “the perfect MacWorld keynote” this time is the following sequence of events:
1) Numbers/performance review.
2) Updated iLife with each app getting something, especially more podcasting features.
3) Updated iWork with spreadsheet and database added (replaces Appleworks).
4) Leopard review/preview/date.
5) iTV intro, shipping now or shortly.
6) Announcement of the exclusive Beatles deal including a Beatles iPod, bare or loaded with every Beatles song ever recorded. Jobs gets McCartney on iChat for an interview.
7) He gets up, announces “one more thing,” pulls out an iPhone, continues his live video chat with Paul, where he announces that, in addition to songs, all The Beatles’ movies are now available for download and streaming over iTV.
8) He demos the phone features and announce pricing and availability.

Says Randy: “I don’t really think The Beatles thing is that far-fetched. From what I’ve read, the whole British copyright law has changed and shortened the lifespan — so, in order to monetize their portfolio, The Beatles have to get their stuff out in wide circulation before it hits the public domain. And there have been rumors, for quite some time, that Jobs has a deal.”

Hope you’re right, Randy — hey, I’m ready for some iBeatles! We’ll know in less than a week….

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Web Keeps Changing Newspaper Biz

December 27, 2006 / / 1 Comment

If you needed more confirmation the newspaper industry is undergoing fundamental change, you got it today. First, the surprising news about the Minneapolis Star-Tribune getting unloaded by a company that the WSJ.com says had been considered until now "a big newspaper believer."  Reason?  Apparently, they’re bigger believers in something else. The headline on the WSJ article tells it all: McClatchy’s Minneapolis Sale Aids Web Efforts. [This story may be behind a paywall if you aren’t a subscriber, or aren’t taking advantage right now of their free 1-month trial.]  Sure, McClatchy claims they did it for a tax benefit, and says the Strib has been profitable.  But drill a little further: print circulation has definitely been declining there.  And one wonders if their online businesses are picking up enough slack yet. I think we can assume no.  [Ed.: I’m curious what you think of their latest web efforts: Buzz.MN and Vita.MN.]

Yet all is not bad everywhere in newspaperland. On the positive side of the coin, this statement from the Wall Street Journal’s publisher earlier in the month shows that at least one property is livin’ high:

We hope to build on our recent increases in the number of individuals subscribing to the Journal, which grew more than 10% in the most recent circulation period — the fastest rate since 1980 — at a time when most newspapers and magazines experienced declines.

This quote comes from a piece explaining all the changes coming to the Wall Street Journal and its market-leading online site, WSJ.com, starting January 2.

Also, if you think newspaper readership is declining across the board, think again. Here’s one audience advertisers are hardly ignoring: Newspapers Are the Preferred Medium for Affluent Empty Nesters.

But for some great insight into the world of online journalism, and how it’s impacting the print side of the newspaper business, check out this interview Mark Glaser just did with the managing editor of the WSJ.com on his PBS.org blog, MediaShift: WSJ Gets Comfortable with Blogs, Wants to Boost Community.

Speaking of Design: This Is iPhone?

December 19, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Oh, how we’ve waited and waited, so long, for the perpetually rumored “iPhone” product from Apple. Only to read yesterday that Apple doesn’t even own the damn trademark! What a cruel hoax. Turns out it’s been owned since 2000 by Cisco, after they acquired IngoGear. [Though, for some strange reason, Apple does own the www.iPhone.org domain, which takes you to a MacBook page. What’s with that? Is Steve Jobs going weird in his old age?]

Well, anyway, you all know how into design Cisco is….[that was a joke]. Please try to stifle your oohs and aahs, friends, but here are the new models, in all their glory, as introed yesterday by the Linksys unit of Cisco:

Linksysiphones_1

Read more of the gory details here, here and here.

These things don’t even look like they come from the same company, let alone the same product family. I thought they hired some wiz-bang new senior VP of something or other there at Cisco who was gonna drag them kicking and screaming into the wonderful, design-conscious world of consumer tech products? And this is what we get? Steve Jobs must be laughing his ass off….

Bad design, bad marketing, ho-hum introduction. All attached to a name that everyone’s just been hanging on, waiting, to hear big, big things about.

Another marketing misfire. Two in one day. They’re everywhere, people….

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Sony Design: Holiday Feast

December 19, 2006 / / 0 Comments

One of the coolest, most colorful [can you say red?] holiday promotions I’ve seen this season is Sony’s Holiday 2006 campaign, featuring Michelle Wie. They pulled out all the stops on this one, even slipping in some tie-ins to the recently released Sony Pictures “007” film, Casino Royale. Sonyholiday06page

I first saw this campaign in a very nice, glossy Sunday newspaper insert, which jumped right out at me. It was a gorgeous piece. So, I just had to visit the special site they set up at “www.Sony.com/Holiday”. There’s no arguing that Sony remains a big player in design in consumer electronics. And studies rank the Sony brand among the very top recognized brands in the world, year after year. No doubt they’re pulling big traffic, and sales, with this promotion.

The coolest product I saw in this lineup was the Vaio UX Micro PC, which literally fits in a Christmas stocking! It sounds like a pretty amazing computer, despite its small size, with a full sliding keyboard. [Two photos included here.]Sonyvaiouxchristmas Street price is about $1700. For connectivity, it has both Wi-Fi and Cingular Edge Network functionality built-in (if you get an account from Cingular), the combination of which will give you Internet access just about anywhere you could ever want to work. Yes! For Windows machines, the Vaio lineup is flat-out THE most impressive of all from a hardware design standpoint, with the UX shown as the smallest (far left) in the product line diagram.

Sonyvaiofullline

Check out the colors of some other Vaio models, including the AR Series and the C Series. With certain of these, you not only can choose color or pattern, but custom engraving as well. Laptops for the upwardly mobile, tres chic, I guess! Sonyvaioarcseries
Flip one of these babies open in the airport and watch heads turn. The C Series colors include pink, green, white, or your choice of five eye-popping “Graphic Splash” limited-edition designs, which are available in Green Storm, Red Storm, Blue Streaks, Angel, and Pink Swirl. Each features a widescreen display. Sonycseries5colors

But you want more, you say? How about accessories such the Vaio speakers shown, or the “James Bond 007 TX Spy Gear bundle”….which will provide “all the tools you need on your next mission.” Sonyspeakers007 The limited-edition kit shown includes Vaio TX notebook, a privacy screen, and and Cybershot digital camera, which are all are packaged in a stylish aluminum attaché case. Get this: also included is an exclusive welcome letter and a serialized glass photo certificate verifying it’s a real Sony Vaio notebook. Hey, that glass certificate will look good as you strike a pose with your martini glass, no? Shaken, not stirred, of course… And here’s a shot of yet another James Bond/Casino Royale product bundle offered on the site, this one including the above UX Micro PC model. Sonyspygear

Now, as a good reviewer, let me tell you what I found wrong with all of this. Sony knows design, and has for a long time. I’ll give ya that. But they’re certainly no Apple (in many ways). Let’s look at a few things. First of all, what does Michelle Wie, a 17-year old golfer, have to do with all this? I don’t get it. And isn’t her last name awfully suggestive of “Wii,” a competitive product to Sony’s PSP? What’s more, the Sony site they send me to is really slow-loading….even on a good broadband connection. There’s a mysterious lag time after you click to go to a new page, which is extremely annoying. Is the site too Flash-heavy? Or maybe it has something to do with the platform it’s built on (all the URLs have “Intershop” in them). But I would ask, what does this annoyance do to the “brand promise”?

What really amazed me, however, was this: one of the coolest products featured in the Sunday supplement — right on the cover — was nowhere to be found on Sony’s site! That was the red Cybershot camera. I searched and searched, using the model number and every other method I knew. Zip. Only black or silver. No message that the red was sold out (if that could possibly be the case). Simply nothing. And this is the showcase product on the cover of the newspaper flyer! Beats the hell outta me.

Guess we’ll have to put James Bond on that one….

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