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.

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MEETUP! Before Guy Kawasaki’s Talk This Friday…

January 15, 2007 / / 9 Comments

To everyone I know or anyone who reads this blog: meet me at the University of Minnesota McNamara Alumni Center at 11:30 am this Friday, January 19th. Let’s get to the Guy Kawasaki talk early and schmooooze!!! I blogged about the event earlier here. (It starts at 1:00 pm.) The event quickly sold-out, but I’m sure many of you already have tickets. Even if you don’t, show up anyway! You can always try for standing-room-only space, or maybe you can nab somebody’s no-show ticket. Hey, Guy’s worth it! He packs ’em in everywhere he goes. Guykawasakistanleycup

We can talk about all kinds of stuff in advance of the talk: why Guy would come from California when we’re freezin’ our asses off here right now (it’s to play in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis)….what his topic is (it’s his classic “Art of the Start” talk)….or anything else you want to talk about, including my BlogHaus experience in Vegas last week. And getting there early should help us get locked-in for the best seats, or maybe those of you who need tickets can get on the list early for the no-shows.

Should be plenty of room to gather in the lobby area that’s closest to the auditorium where Guy will speak. (Check the signage on the way in.) And maybe we can even get coffee there…

Please spread the word to your lists and communities!
Let’s show Guy we’re one great startup community here in Minnesota!!! Indicate your interest here on my blog by adding a comment, and I’ll forward the whole thing to Guy beforehand. One of my VC friends tried to get me into a special lunch being held for Guy prior to the talk, with the local U of M muckety-mucks, etc, but I missed the cut. Who cares! This meetup will be lots more fun for me — and you! And maybe we can even continue the blog comments afterwards to tell Guy what we thought of his talk… See ya Friday!

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Hello, Cingular? This is AT&T – We Just Killed Your Brand

January 12, 2007 / / 1 Comment

The new AT&T next week will start phasing out the Cingular brand it acquired full control over recently, this after several billions of investment in brand advertising over the years, a Reuters story reported last night. Attcallingcingular It quoted a highly placed AT&T official and said the process is expected to play out over the several months, with communications in the interim showing dual Cingular-AT&T identity.

So, I guess the naysayers of Cingular being the choice of carrier for the iPhone deal now have something else to talk about. The brand slate is in essence being wiped clean, with the “new” AT&T really just building its brand. That’s nice for Steve Jobs and Apple, in my opinion, being partnered with a fresh new face in the cellular brand space. What’s ironic is that Cingular actually acquired the old AT&T Wireless, which had been a good early player but began having problems with an aging network. That company, however, has no connection at all with the new AT&T — which is really the old SBC. Got that? I can personally relate to this whole thing because I was an AT&T Wireless customer for many years, then went through the changeover to Cingular, and now will go through the changeover back to the AT&T brand.

Hey, how about that AT&T? What do us round-trippers get for hanging in there all these years? How about a free iPhone? [HAH! The cellular industry treats loyal customers like trash. All they care about is sucking in new customers, offering them the world.]

But where I really relate to this story is this: I was one of four consultants involved in the Cingular name development process, hired by their branding firm — back in ’99, I believe it was. That was fun. No, Cingular wasn’t one of my name ideas. Mine were much better… 🙂 I came up with some 50 of them — all coined, clear name candidates. I originally thought the word Cingular sucked (naturally), but then absolutely loved what the company did to build meaning around the brand — which was the work of their outstanding advertising agency, the New York office of BBDO. I thought it was really stellar branding work, one of the best new brand development efforts I’d seen in years. Of course, they had the budget for it, too, and they poured on the bucks — including Super Bowl ads. It was the kind of thing I’d put in the class of Apple. And, for that reason, I wasn’t surprised to hear in Jobs’ iPhone announcement that Cingular was part of the deal. Both firms get consumer branding, bigtime. Now I guess we’ll see how much the new AT&T (nee SBC) really does.

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CES Post 8: Whoa! Cisco Sues Apple

January 10, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Well, I guess it’s one more post from the airport. Cisco just sued Apple over the iPhone name, according to this Wall Street Journal alert that just hit my in-box here in the sports bar:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT from The Wall Street Journal — Jan. 10, 2007 — Cisco sued Apple for trademark infringement over the “iPhone” name Apple chose for its new cellphone, unveiled yesterday. Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000, and had been in talks with Apple over rights to the name.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco’s general counsel. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.”

Iphonelogo_1

I was just talking about this situation with some guys last night at the Blog Business Summit party. I said Podtech had reported a source told them Apple had reached some sort of licensing agreement with Cisco for the name. Guess they were wrong!

I said I still didn’t understand why Cisco did a PR announcement of their iPhone line a few weeks ago, if they were in fact negotiating with Apple to let them have the name. One guy I was talking with last night said the December announcement was obviously them posturing to pressure Apple in paying more for the name — that is, to actually raise a higher awareness of the name being associated with Cisco, in an attempt to hold up Apple for more bucks. I said back in late December that I thought it was a really lame, kind of rushed-looking marketing intro. But, at that moment last night, I thought that guy might be onto something. He said they probably reached some 11th-hour agreement with Jobs since then for Apple to buy the rights to the name. But then I still wondered how Cisco would retract, or correct, that recent introduction of their iPhone product line…

Alas, this guy’s conjecture was wrong, too! The parties obviously didn’t reach any agreement at all. And it just amazes me that His Royal Steveness would have the cajones to go on stage yesterday and tout this name as his own! But, then, I guess I shouldn’t be. He’s basically just saying, “Screw you guys, then — sue me.” Obviously, he knows the market wants Apple to have this name, feels it’s theirs, and somehow this overwhelming force will overcome all.

This will get interesting, for sure. Unfortunately, we may never know how much he pays Cisco to give up the name. But I am definitely NOT betting against Jobs prevailing here.

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CES Post 7: Winding Down

January 10, 2007 / / 1 Comment

This will be my final post from the BlogHaus, at about 11:00 am on Wednesday. It’s been great. Now sitting here with Tom Hawk of Zooomr and Andru Edwards of Gear Live and some of his people, who are all busy publishing. (Tom told me he won’t make his 1000 photo upload goal, but he’s halfway there. He only uploads really, really nice pix, though. Somebody else just said there are 30,000 photos now up in Flicker tagged CES 2007. Yikes! I did a bunch myself, mostly of the BlogHaus.)

Had a great time last night at the Blogger Business Summit party — met a lot of interesting folks. Then back to the BlogHaus, which was going at full capacity, Robert Scoble holding court in one corner, pizza in another. And lots in between. One new person I met was a guy who’s launching the first trade show for the the blog world….called, guess what? BlogWorld! Sounds like a serious endeavor, from a guy who’s run lots of successful shows — Rick Calvert is his name. It’s scheduled for November — in Vegas! Don’t know if there’s a site up yet, but looks like it’ll be at www.BlogWorldExpo.com.

Anyway, I’m going off to some other business soon here, then heading for the airport about 3:00. Just picked up all my email, and learned I missed the cut for a lunch with Guy Kawasaki in Minneapolis on the 19th, before his big talk at the U of MN. Apparently there were only 7 slots at the table, and my friend Gary Smaby tried to get me on the list, but too many muckety-mucks already, I guess… 🙂 [Thanks for trying, anyway, Gary.] But I’ll sure be there for the talk following, which is already sold out.

Guy should be very happy the temps are finally dropping in Minnesota (lows below zero this weekend, I hear) — because, as you may recall, what got him to our state in January was the National Pond Hockey Championships, which are held on one of our city lakes. And people were getting real nervous they wouldn’t have ice, with our temps hovering around 40 for so long. Sounds like the ice will be real hard by the time Guy gets here! Anyway, looking forward to seeing Guy again, hearing his talk, and seeing him play hockey.

Cheers from Vegas! It was a good trip…

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CES Post 6: Apple Fever Takes Over

January 9, 2007 / / 1 Comment

Apple has sucked all oxygen out of the consumer electronics space again today, with an absolutely over-the-top keynote by Steve Jobs. It was fun sitting here at the BlogHaus this morning and following along with it all of it at MacRumorsLive and Engadget — which were the only good ways to do it, since Apple doesn’t do any live video or audio feed. Iphone_1 I was sitting next to Andru Edwards, the CEO of GearLIve Media of Seattle, who’s been updating his very impressive site all morning, while he has about five people continuously roaming the show for the news. He and one of his guys and myself were commenting as the keynote went along. Big fun. We can’t wait to get our hands on that iPhone! PodTech reports in a post today that the product will, in fact, be called by that name after Cisco does some sort of licensing deal with Apple, allowing it to use their trademark. (See my previous post on that.)

What struck me about sitting here in the BlogHaus conference room this morning — enjoying this big pipe we’re all on and following along with every word Jobs says — was the weird timing of the Bill Gates keynote from yesterday running in silence on the large screen in the next room. Interesting juxtaposition: two keynotes, world’s apart…. 🙂

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