urban cougar

Now that El Gaffney is leaving Fallon, someone needs to continue the inbox of immaturity banner. Now I'm not totally volunteering, but I couldn't resist this.

As we enter the post Sex in the City age, someone needs to carry the banner for people like Samantha. Enter Urban Cougar , a site for the sexy 40 year old women and her prey (usually the 20 year old man). It includes stories from cougars and places where the cougars hunt. My favorite though is the nomenclature by which the hunted categorize the hunters: there are Cadillac's, Rolls Royces and Trans Ams (how typical for guys)

a vision for the PC

Witht the exception of Apple, the personal computer industry has a great deal of commodity risk. Dell has driven price competition, but the lack of innovation from manufacturers has not helped. They have relied on Microsoft and websites to provide any software utiltiy or added benefits, which is explains why they have become, literally, grey box manufacturers.

Which is why Influx Insight's reprinting of an interview with the founders of Gateway. As we can see from this quote, the vision they are developing of the PC is a more than a processing machine but as a personal networking device.

The future of the personal computer is as a tool to connect what Watts and I call "communities of strangers." These are people linked together based on common ideas and values -- shared identity -- rather than social proximity. This is an absolutely revolutionary change. By using the computer to find people who share your views, you can live in whatever kind of world you want. Reality is no longer a defined constant. It is a choice.

Once again it's time for Likemind: 8.30 am at Cafe de la Presse

See you there.

news markets

Pinch me if I'm dreaming, but I swore that few weeks I saw ABC advertising a news predication marketplace. Multiple searches have turned up nothing from ABC, but did lead me to NewsFutures . Now, I am not sure that having people try and predict the future is very useful (or accurate), but if people are willing to engage in this kind of game then shows the ability of us to predict herd thinking.

My big question is where is the marketing site that reproduces this. Where is the CPG version of Hollywood Stock Exchange? No doubt, the intractable issue is companies not being willing to put their new product ideas out into the open at a very early stage. Movies cannot be copied, line extensions can. This means this kind of marketing system would need to be closed ended (only having a few companies participating and participants having to be members). Or, companies could start making harder to replicate line extensions.

advertising as modelling

I've taken a bit of a breather on blogging right now. Not sure why - a combination of post vacation stress and nothing to say.

However, I did just finish reading Mark Earl's Herd which, as is the case with everyone else, I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

My big thought after reading it was that there is potential to see advertising in a more realistic light. Not as a tool of persuasion, but as a way of modelling and social communication. This is a thought not fully formed, but if I understood some of Mark's premises correctly, human learning is predominantly social. This is partly in order to survive: we feel me must fit in with the acceptable behavioral norms in order to be accepted as part of the/a larger group.

We have lots of culture mechanisms which are transmissions of that "correct" behavior: magazines, newspapers, TV shows, books etc. Why not advertising?

This way of looking at advertising matches up (somewhat) nicely with a few other theories or facts floating around. Ehrenburg's conclusions about advertising was that salience was the dominant factor in how it worked. This fits with a modelling view: the more salient the brand the more it is seen as an acceptable form of behavior. Another factor fitting in is the correlation between perceived quality and awareness noted by many (Aaker is just one example).

So how to consumers model when there are competing brands in the marketplace telling them different things? The obvious thing to do is to ignore the ads, listen and watch. But the other factor that come in (secondarily) might be relevance: is this ad modelling the behavior of my group?This also explains why cultural marketing can be so effective - changing the rules of culture creates new models for behavior and a different path to follow.