Adver-Whatever

90's flashback

So, did you know that there are still retail companies out there that don’t have their products available for sale online? Because I had no idea. I thought that selling things online was such a basic Web 1.0, 1990’s concept, that it would be impossible for any national retailer to have missed that trend altogether and just decided that their randomly scattered “stores” would be enough to meet demand.

World, meet Express Fashion. It comes from a dark, pre-internet era where people have to take the time to physically drag their bodies away from a computer and into a brick and mortar “store” where piles upon piles of goods must be searched through for the right color, size, and style before they can be purchased.

As if this weren’t bad enough, their stores are not located conveniently enough for me. Back in the shopping paradise that is California, I never had this problem, but right now, I am in Ithaca, New York. For the 5.999 billion people in the world who have never heard of it, I believe I have finally found a place that can correctly be called “The middle of freaking nowhere”. Ithaca itself may be a bustling metropolis (by upstate New York standards), but it is surrounded on every side by approximately 50 miles of NOTHING. Possibly needless to say, there is not an Express “store” in Ithaca. (Despite the population of about 30 thousand college students, who would all love one.) The nearest “store” is in Syracuse, exactly 62.79 miles away.

My favorite pair of black pants got torn yesterday, and because they were such fabulously comfortable, stylish pants, that lasted me nearly two years, I would really really like to get another pair.

Thank you, Express, for making that entirely impossible.

*Update from Express:
Thank you for contacting Express, we are excited that you are interested in purchasing merchandise from our website.  What you are seeing online right now is phase 1 of our work to build you a website that will fulfill online sales.
The launch of the site will be Fall ’08 and will initially only ship merchandise within the continental U.S.
To be one of the first to know when we go live, visit email sign up at Expressfashion.com and submit your information.
Again, thank you for your interest in Express, we value your business.


*My response:
You should have had this up and running either before or shortly after Y2K. Still angry.

Third Time's a Charm

I'm way behind the ball on this one because well, I've been busy. But I'm sure a little continued buzz never hurt anything. The Age of Conversation bumrush is officially (finally) back on the calendar. The book has been made available to a wider audience through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com, and since things have actually been worked out with Amazon, they won't be canceling this one at the last moment (we hope). To reiterate the point of the whole thing, bumrush the charts efforts have been attempted, to the best of my knowledge, three times before, all with great success. It works very well as a way to get people involved around a product, to create and enlarge a community, and at least for one day, to boost sales significantly. Essentially, it's a day-long event where everyone who was going to buy the book does it all on the same day to make the product's sales ranking increase much faster than it otherwise would, getting it more attention, and then more sales. It's fun to watch, and more fun to get involved with.

So, here are the details:

• Buy the book here on March 29 (THIS Saturday)

That's it! Plus, of course, anything that you can do to spread the word to make this a successful event is also good. I'm just glad to see that after two failed attempts this event is finally getting off the ground!

AOL is at it again...

As if to prove what I said about the company's entire business strategy yesterday, they have gone and bought another company, Beebo. Watch as this previously popular social networking site languishes into oblivion as AOL does absolutely nothing to either market the site, or integrate it in with it's brand as a whole. AKA: Userplane.

Desperate Company Uses Free Student Work: Eh, nothing new

So AOL, that company that is perhaps best known as the one that gave us Instant Messenger and truck-loads of wasted CD's, is going to hell in a hand basket. That's not really news, but according to today's NY Times, "Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, acknowledged weakness in the business and said he was open to combining AOL with another company." Their entire business strategy at this point is to sell advertising on all of their extremely disjointed websites, by buying up and rolling together 7 different advertising companies that previously had nothing to do with each other. They are calling this random mash-up "Platform A." Randy Falco, the chief executive of AOL, says that The management changes were necessary to be able to move quickly. "After spending dearly to amass assets, the trick was to get them working together and integrated in a very meaningful way.”

The problem is, their strategy of just buying up random companies and hoping that it will all somehow work together is pretty much all that they have been doing since the 90's, and it hasn't been going very well for them. Anyone ever heard of AIM Pages? How about AIM Groups? Userplane? People Connection? The list goes on for about, well, forever. Every time something new and interesting comes out, such as social networking sites like Myspace, AOL's reaction is to buy another company, and then let it sit, just hoping that it will catch on. Now, AOL’s Web sites may attract 112 million visitors a month, but if you consider the sheer number of websites that they have, plus the fact that one pops up every time you open AIM, it's really not that impressive and is no indication that they have a healthy, thriving business on their hands.

The reason why this sad story caught my interest is because I (as part of a team of 22 senior marketing majors at Ithaca College) am participating in this years AAF National Student Advertising Competition, and the sponsor for the year happens to be none other than AOL. So while AOL employees hold "screaming matches" in their offices about how to get their company off the ground, hundreds of college students from around the country are busy trying to fix this mess (and don't get me wrong, despite screaming matches of our own, it's a lot of fun).

Look for our brilliant solutions this June, at the NSAC finals in Atlanta.

The Problem with Mobile Ads

...Everything.

My phone beeps at me - I've gotten a text message. 9 times out of 10, that will be my boyfriend saying something sweet, or a friend from home updating me on a new game release. Or...Carrie asking me if I have an orange... But no, this time it's an ad. I'm not 100% sure, but I may have just had to actually pay 10 cents for some jibberish text message that not only did I delete immediately on principle, but which I never read. I'll be annoyed at the world of advertising for the rest of the day. That's right, mobile advertisers - you have successfully ruined my day. And because of this, I never buy the product or service that you are physically shoving into my pocket, and you can be 100% assured that whatever you spent on getting my personal telephone number, writing the ad, and sending it has been utterly wasted. Congratulations.

I am very much not alone in my undiluted hatred of  having marketing messages sent to my phone. According to the honorable New York Times, about 13 percent of people said they they would be open to ads if they improve the mobile content available, while about 14 percent said they were open to ads as long as they were relevant to their interests, the survey found. So, a resounding 87% of people DO NOT want to see mobile advertising, even if it meant that it would improve the content available, and 86% of people don't want to see it even if it is relevant to their interests.

By the way - the ads that I have been receiving have absolutely nothing to do with my interests, and in no way improve my mobile content, as I don't use the internet on my phone. I don't have any statistics about how many people want to see ads that don't relate to their interests, and give them absolutely nothing in return, but I'm going to guess that it's somewhere down around 0%. When I'm watching television, I can accept the commercials, because they are sponsoring the program I'm watching. The same is true of online ads, for the most part. But these mobile ads are not bringing me anything - in fact, they are actually making me pay for them - and that's what is so unacceptable.

But does it matter that so few people want to see these things on their phones? No - of course not. Mobile ads are on the rise! About 23% of U.S. mobile phone users have seen advertising on their cell phones in the last 30 days, which is up by 38%! About 11% of people even responded to these ads. (89% did not.) The Times says Service providers such as AT&T Inc <T.N> and

Sprint Nextel Corp

<S.N> have long-discussed the concept of augmenting revenue with mobile phone ads and have been easing into the market slowly for fear of bombarding customers. Be prepared for bombardment in the coming months.