January 26, 2009 1 Comment

Buddy, Can You Spare a Car?

For awhile there I thought the word for 2009 was going to be “frugality.”

Frugal.  Being thrifty.  Back to those values that our new president spoke about last Tuesday.  Values that are not new, but old.  Most people who had Depression-era parents (like me) knows “frugal.”

But after looking at the Hyundai commercials, I’m thinking of another word.

“Resigned.”

I mean, really.

Selling someone a car and then saying that if they get fired from their job you’ll take it back?

That doesn’t makes me want to go out and buy a Hyundai!  Sounds more like a death wish.  Oh, and by the way, isn’t it when you’re out of a job that you need a car the most!  To get to the next interview?  Now that’s a campaign.  Lose your job?  We’ll loan you a Hyundai for six weeks to help you find another.  But no.  We’ll take your money first.

I’m thinking of going to clients with “Hyundai campaigns …”

  • “Nike will sell you a Sasquatch driver … and if your leg gets cut off in the next six months, they’ll take it back.”
  • “Budweiser will sell you six pack of beer … and if you die of sclerosis of the liver in the next year … it’s free!
  • “Harvard will put your child through college … and if he/she ends up in jail for a year or more before they turn 25, you’ll get your book money back!”
  • “Come see the movie Revolutionary Road … and if within the next 60 days you become a depressed alcoholic and cheat on your wife … we’ll pay for therapy!”
January 19, 2009 No comments

He Had A Dream … What is Yours?

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

And what a day it is.  Hundreds of thousands decended on The Mall in my fair city — Washington DC — yesterday to celebrate in song the upcoming inauguration of this country’s first African American president.

What a dream.

So I ask all JuiceBar readers to do two simple things.  It requires no more than 30 minutes.

First, take 15 minutes out of your day and go to MLKOnline.  Watch the video of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.”  If you’re a fan of radio (like me) or short on bandwidth simply close your eyes and click on the audio of his speech.

Imagine a world of the 1950s … of fire hoses, attack dogs, lynchings.  Of beatings.  Of hatred and bigotry.

Now think of today.  2009.  Today as the generation of Americans that came after the 1950s usher in a new era led by a black president.

All due in part because one man shared a dream with millions and millions of others, and together they were able to pass that dream on to a new generation.

Now take another 15 minutes.  Write down your dream.  Think of the wrongs that need to be righted.  Dream of what that world will be like.

And spend the rest of your life keeping that dream alive and passing it along to the next generation.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
January 1, 2009 No comments

2009: An opportunity taken … or squandered?

Hi there.

Hope you’re having (or had) a wonderful New Year’s Eve.  There’s a lot of talk about putting 2008 behind us.  Indeed, in the annals of “Auld Lang Syne” (arguably one of the world’s strangest song) our serenade to end 2008 was one of the most sincere in recent memory.

For most normal people — that is, if you are not a high-level senior executive of banks, insurance companies and auto companies making seven figure incomes while bankrupting your respective company —  2008 was a financial train wreck.

Owning a home and having a traditional 401k in 2008 was not quite the equivalent of living in downtown Manhattan on September 2001, nor was it like being on an island in the Indian Ocean on December 2004.  That said, in all three cases a significant portion of lifetime effort was swept away.

You may consider the various Bernie Madoffs of 2008 to be the equivalent of Osama Bin Laden except that that they stole wealth rather than innocent lives.  Or you may consider that 2008 was the violent correction that naturally takes place — just like a tsunami — when the basic forces of mother nature are denied over time.

In either case.  Poof!  There goes $6.9 trillion!  Trillion.  A THOUSAND billion.

Now we have talk of being prudent and frugal.  People discuss the novel idea of spending LESS than they make.  We’re going to increase transparency, enforce regulations, and make things more equitable.  We’re going to come together as a country and fix these seemingly intractable problems that face us.  And who can stop us?  We have Obama now.  Everything will be alright.

After September 11, 2001 we said we’d come together as a nation, put aside partisan differences, and start acting like a responsible, unified nation.  Everyone in the world was an American.

An global opportunity squandered.

Today in 2009 we have another opportunity to begin to get things right, this time with our fiscal and economic policies.  Everyone in the country seems to be behind a new administration’s call for change.

Let’s hope we can do better this time.

Happy New Year.
December 25, 2008 No comments

The Spirit of Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Did you get the “Christmas spirit” this year?  Yes?  Well what kind of spirit was that?  I’m just checking cause a lot of what I see out there doesn’t synch with my idea of the Christmas spirit.  So just for fun I typed in “Christmas” into Google News this morning.  Here’s a sampling of what I found:

The Queen’s annual Christmas talk was one of a “sombre” Christmas that, according to Her Majesty, conjures “feelings of uncertainty.”

“Hallelujah!” “Joy to the World!”

Paris Hilton’s Christmas spirit took the form of a pink Bentley.

“Away in a manger … no crib for a bed ..!”

According to reports, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called Jews animals will say Jesus, if alive today, would be against bullying, ill-tempered nations.  (Someone needs to tell him that Jesus was a Jew)

“Peace on earth, good will toward men.”

Google, with a gazillion dollars in market cap and sitting on billions in cash, canceled its Christmas bonus and instead will give its employees a cell phone.

“I have no gifts for him pur-um-pa-pum-pum … Me and my drum.”

The annual Disney parade will be hosted by Ryan Secrest and Matt Dallas, star of the television program in which he plays Kyle who has the 2008 version of the “virgin birth” … a boy without an umbilical cord and belly button living inside a chamber, until he woke up in the middle of a forest covered in pink fluid.”

“Oh come, let us adore him.”

There was the guy who dressed up as Santa and massacred people.  There was the WalMart shoppers who trampled to death the poor soul chosen to open the doors to the store.  And indeed, most stories were about shopping, retail, and sales.  So much that one story retold the quote from Bill O’Reilly who said in 2005 that, “Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born.  Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable.”

Not the spirit of Christmas that I know.

“Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people” … “For unto you a child is born.  Unto you a son is given.”

Have a Merry Christmas.
December 24, 2008 No comments

Watch Out … They’re Fading Fast

It is the day before Christmas and there’s still shopping to do.  What to buy?

A watch?  Huh?  I say that because I open up the Washington Post on the Monday before Christmas and every other page is a full page ad — a FULL PAGE — of nothing but watches.  OK.  A full page ad isn’t as much as it used to be.  But still.  That is some heavy spend.  All for something that fewer and fewer people seem to use.

What is it with Christmas and watches?

They still make nice gifts, right?  Ask John Mayer.  He reportedly gives Rolexes to (some) of the women he gets “romantically involved” with (I think that means he is having sex with them).

But not everyone is John Mayer.   And watches seem to be going the way of the buggy whip, particularly among young people (the object of my shopping for today).

Here’s a snippit from a story written a year ago by Martha Irvine of the Associated Press

In a survey last fall, investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. found that nearly two-thirds of teens never wear a watch — and only about one in 10 wears one every day.

Experian Simmons Research also discovered that, while Americans spent more than $5.9 billion on watches in 2006, that figure was down 17 percent when compared with five years earlier.

Why buy a watch when a cell phone will do?  Apparently it is a sentiment widely shared.  I read in the New York Times that 2009 isn’t looking good for our Swiss friends.  Is time is running out?  Will the watch make a comeback?  Will, as some claim, the watch have to turn it into some Dick Tracey type multi-function device in order to survive?

Too late!  The smart phone got there first.  I think I’ll go buy one of them.  Then again, it we are in a recession and the kids already have a phone.  I think I’ll buy (another) book.

Merry Christmas!
December 10, 2008 1 Comment

Money for nothing – CEO compensation

In John, chapter twelve, verse eight, we have the famous quote from Jesus:

“You will always have the poor with you.”

Jesus was rebuking Judas and his criticism of Mary for wasting costly perfume in the washing of Jesus feet.  (For those interested, I suggest Proseorprophet‘s analysis of the text.)   But today Jesus may just as likely have have said the same about the rich.  Specifically, about rich CEOs.  Even more specifically about rich, overpaid CEOs

“You will always have the obscenely overpaid CEOs with you.”

Yup.  Hard to argue with that one.  And in today’s bailout, bankrupt economy the CEO compensation issue is getting a lot more attention.  So it is interesting to read a spate of stories this week about CEO pay.  First, there are the stories about CEOs passing up their “bonuses.” This, reported in the Associated Press:

The chief executives of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co. are going without bonuses for a year that has seen Wall Street ravaged by staggering losses, mass layoffs and the collapse of storied firms.

Morgan Stanley’s CEO John J. Mack is giving up a bonus for the second straight year, while Merrill Lynch & Co. said its CEO John Thain also asked to go without the extra compensation for 2008 after reports surfaced he had sought as much as $10 million.

Notice anything?  They are passing up BONUSES!!  That is what you get when you do something really, really, really super good, right?  Their regular compensation?  $800k and $700k per year respectively plus perks of about half that.  Oh, and they got signing bonuses when they were hired and tens of millions of dollars in earlier bonuses along the way while managing the companies into the ground.

Still not bad for people presiding over failed institutions that nearly killed the global economy and had to be bailed out with billions American taxpayers’ money, much of which will be paid by people now in elementary school who don’t even get an allowance.

Which leads to the auto bailout and CEO compensation of the auto manufacturers.  Jonathan Macey in the Wall Street Journal, writes:

The failure of the General Motors board of directors to fire CEO Richard Wagoner provides a rare glimpse into the inner-workings of big-time corporate boards of directors. The sight is not pretty.

When Mr. Wagoner took the helm eight years ago the stock was trading at around $60 per share. The stock had fallen to around $11 per share before the current financial crisis. It’s now below $5 per share.

In 2007, Mr. Wagoner’s compensation rose 64% to almost $16 million in a year when the company lost billions. The board has been a staunch backer of Mr. Wagoner despite consistent erosion of market share and losses of $10.4 billion in 2005 and $2 billion in 2006. In 2007 GM posted a loss of $68.45 a share, or $38.7 billion — the biggest ever for any auto maker anywhere.

Ouch.  Today there’s a flurry of such chatter.  Check it out.  Go to Google News and type in “executive compensation”.  No shortage of reading material there.

I’m in the spin business.  But I’m hard pressed to see how best to spin this one.   Here’s the Juice Bar’s summary of the executive compensation pro / con argument:

  • If we don’t pay them an outrageous amount of money, they’ll leave.  To that, critics say “Great!”
  • If we don’t pay them millions, we’ll get substandard candidates.  To that, critics say “You can’t do much worse that you’ve already done!”
  • It is a ‘free market’ system and millions is the going rate for executives.  To that, critics say “If it is a free market then don’t ask the government for bailout money.  Fire the management!”

Case closed.
November 29, 2008 No comments

Redefining Consumption

In the aftermath of the trauma of 9-11, President Bush gave us this advice:

“Go shop.”

In so doing our President told us to go out and feed our nation’s greatest addiction and increasingly what many consider to be one of our last remaining economic assets:  consumption.

The ability to consume.  That is our heritage.  Damn the economy.  To heck with the environment, education, and the sinking stock market.

Our ability to — no, our NEED to consume seems to know no bounds.

Note that this is not the consumption that our forefathers celebrated the first Thanksgiving.  Back then they called consumption a disease.  Among other things, consumption was more likely known as a “progressive wasting of the body” … not picking up something at the country store.

Based on what I read in this morning’s papers, we should go back to the old meaning of “consumption” — that of a deadly disease.

It is bad enough that two people pulled out their guns and died in a shoot-out at Toys R Us after their respective female companions got engaged in a bloody brawl.

But that a crowd of shoppers would actually trample to death the poor WalMart employee who has the unfortunate job of opening the door in the morning?

This, my friends, is sick.  Shopping meets greed meets madness meets total lack of disregard for any one meets violence.

Welcome to the new Kris Kringle.

Here’s my advice.  Don’t shop.  Take a day off.  Go check out the folks at “Buy Nothing Day.”  Or at least shop online.  Apparently a lot of people of are.

I am thankful for a lot of things.

Not shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving is one of many.

Happy Holidaze.
November 16, 2008 No comments

Brand Bail Out Meets Brand Incompetence

Let’s bail out the auto industry.

We’ve done it before and it was “successful”.  Looking back at the 1979 government-sponsored bailout of Chrysler … a few surprises.

Guess who opposed bailing out the auto industry?  It was … General Motors!  Then GM Chairman Thomas Murphy condemned the Chrysler bailout in 1979 as “a basic challenge to the philosophy of America.”

That is, GM said this was darn-near unAmerican!

Another interesting point.  All of the key ingredients that Peter Cohen said made the Chrysler bailout successful — including a new plan, new management, new technology, and some serious shared sacrifice — don’t seem to be part of the current $25 billion proposal.

The oppositions to the bailout is mounting.

The problem is, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, people just don’t trust American auto makers any more.  That is, they think that auto industry management is a joke.

My favorite quote:

“There’s the feeling that next to financial services, automotive execs are the dumbest people in the world,” said Thomas Stallkamp, a former Chrysler president who worked at the car company when it received emergency government loans in 1980.

Ah, there’s the rub.  Why do people oppose the bailout?

Because people think that auto management is incompetent.

It is a bit like Bobby Jindal — the GOP’s newest and arguably smartest face — said about the Republican Party.  Why did voters reject them?  In his words, they were fired “with cause.”

People rally around brands in trouble.  And people rally around those who suffer from a brand in trouble.

But it is hard to get people to rally around brands that are just stupid.
November 9, 2008 No comments

Explaining a Brand’s Success: An Obama Case Study

Note, before reading the following you should know that I worked and voted for Barak Obama for president.  With that as an important caveat, here’s my brand lesson from the Obama victory.

JFK, the president to whom the current president-elect is most often compared, once said:

“Victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan.”

In this case, the President was talking about a defeat (The Bay of Pigs).

But let’s consider Kennedy’s quote in the context of Senator Barak Obama’s historic presidential victory over Senator McCain last November 4th.

Today there are many “fathers” being offered up explain Obama’s victory.

Most attribute the “father” of the Obama victory to history.  Specifically, the timing of the market meltdown and economic crisis.  Others say the “father” of the Obama victory was, in fact, a woman — namely, the McCain’s pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a running mate.  Still others say the “father” of the Obama victory was technology.  In this case they were talking about the incredible online money and organizing machine that the Obama campaign was able to build.

All would-be “fathers” list their reasons and point to alleged “causal” relationships between one action or development and Obama’s surge in the polls in the last 30 days.

But could the “father” of the Obama victory be simply this — of the two, he was simply found to be the better brand?

He won every debate … and by wide margins.  Could it be that people simply looked at both brands and said to themselves,

“Hmmm, I’ll take that one.”

Could the brand lesson from the Obama campaign be … start (and end) with a good product?
October 28, 2008 No comments

Video Nation and the (Large) Advertising Dwarf

If it isn’t on video, then perhaps it didn’t happen.  And if it happened … which of course it didn’t because it wasn’t videotaped … and you can’t replay it … then it surely couldn’t be important.

Put another way … if it is not on YouTube then forgetaboutit.

That could be one of many lessons from this political season.

Yes, there was traditional media.  And thanks to the generosity of millions of Americans who, despite the economy tanking, their houses being foreclosed, and their retirement funds evaporating … these same Americans seemed to have aninsatiable desire,  to sign up and happily send their hard earned money (unless, of course, they worked on Wall Street) to the Obama campaign — there was plenty of advertising.

According to David Carr at the New York Times:

By some estimates, Senator Obama will have spent $250 million on local, cable and network television in just five months, a rate of advertising that outstrips Burger King, Apple and Gap on an annualized basis. And it dwarfs the $188 million that President Bush spent in 2004.

But Ellen McGirt of Fast Company goes on to say that while the Obama ad spend dwarfed brands and Bush I, the Obama YouTube production dwarfed their dwarfing of … whatever … you get the idea.

So I went on YouTube.  The Barak Obama channel has 1,678 videos and 107,595 subscribers.  McGirt estimages that all total the campaign’s videos have had nearly 90 million views.

90 million views.  At likely a fraction of the $250 million in advertising.  And — thanks to YouTube — will stay up and available far longer than the 30-second lead-in spot to CSI.

So get out your flip video cameras, ladies and gentlemen.  Start taping.  Start uploading.  Go crazy.

And just in case … if you have a quarter of a billion lying around … buy some advertising too.

Just in case.