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Monthly Archives: October 2014

Is Chevy Missing a Golden Marketing Opportunity? And Stuff?

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If by now you aren’t aware of the awesomely awkward delivery of a (apparently recalled) Chevy truck to Madison Bumgarner last night, well here:

Instant Internet classic. Just google “Chevy Guy” and you’ll find a gold mine of funny.

And then go over to any Chevy property. Their Web site is … fine. Their twitter feed is full of … clever jokes?

Hysterical.

They should OWN this moment. The Chevy Guy Video should be front and center. Every painful line he stammered should be played UP, not hidden away. His little note card should come inside every new Chevy truck sold this year. And their web site should look like this:

technology and stuff

C’mon Chevy – grab this and RUN with it.   #TechnologyandStuff. Create a @ChevyGuy twitter account. Instachat some stuff.  Get a new commercial on air by Monday with the Chevy dude explaining technology and stuff to someone. Or hire Rob Ford to do a new one for you. Whatever – just do something!

OWN IT.

Blocking Apple Pay Won’t… Pay.

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55688263So Rite Aid and CVS have decided to block Apple Pay in their stores. I’d characterize this as short-sighted and a likely damaging mistake. It’s one thing to not rush to adopt the new platform, but to deliberately get in consumers’ way is pretty much never the right option. Once a certain technology is in enough peoples’ hands and is convenient to use and the blockade is transparent enough to regular people, they will deliberately seek out alternate solutions.

As more and more people buy NFC-enabled phones (the technology that powers Apple Pay, as well as numerous Android options as well), they’ll expect/demand the convenience. Further, considering the motives of these retailers is suspect (they have a competing solution to avoid paying as much credit card fees), these are the combinations that create long-term resentment.

The better solution for these retailers is to re-enable Apple Pay, and then present a better, viable alternative. For example through loyalty programs, or discounts, or freebies, or any other positive incentive they can offer.

Considering the relative easy with which a consumer can choose a nationwide pharmacy chain, I’m curious to see how long this blockade holds.

Nine Thoughts On An Unbundled HBO

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HBOToday HBO’s CEO Richard Plepler announced that they’d offer some form of HBO service in 2015 that doesn’t require a cable subscription. From Re/Code:

Plepler said the company will go “beyond the wall” and launch a “stand alone, over the top” version of HBO in the US next year, and would work with “current partners”, and may work with others as well. But we wouldn’t provide any other detail.

This is what we’d call “kind of a big deal.”  It’s big enough to make my head spin a little bit, so I’m going to share my thoughts in a non-“prose” fashion. So in no particular ordering, my thoughts (mostly questions really):

“Could this be the death of Pay TV as we know it?” Yes, this could easily be the canary in the coal mine. If HBO “fully” unbundles, then the combination of Netflix+Hulu+HBO as (non-sporting) Pay TV Alternative is pretty compelling. And if it works, then it’d be easy to see ESPN and others follow suit. Which then takes us to unbundled TV – and probably higher overall content costs, but a lot fewer junky channels to watch.

“What exactly are they going to offer?” I highly doubt the Unbundled HBO offering will be the exact equivalent of the current HBOGO product/service. My bet’s on a library similar to what you can find in Amazon Prime.

“Is this for the masses?” About 30-odd-million US households have HBO. That leaves 80mm as the opportunity ahead. So do these folks not have HBO today because of price, interest, accessibility, catalog, other? Curious.

“This could have no impact on Pay TV after all.” Before we run off and say Comcast and Directv are ruined here, let’s go back to that 30 million HBO subscriber number. Does it *really* drop in a meaningful way? I could easily see this as a non-predatory move.

“But then again, what about cable-delayers?” We’re clearly seeing the adoption of Pay TV shift from something 22-year-olds do when they get their first apartment to something done later in life (long term impact of this is still TBD). It’s really, really hard to go FROM a full Pay TV lineup to an all on-demand/a la carte one. But the reverse isn’t true – if you have never had 500 channels, you don’t know what, if anything, you are missing. And with an HBO service available without Pay TV, maybe this impacts that delay even more.

“How will it price-compare to iTunes and Netflix?” If I were to buy the shows I already enjoy on HBO from iTunes, it’d cost me roughly $60 this year (Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley), or $5/mo. But if I were a larger consumer of their content, let’s say 6 original shows per year, that’d be roughly $15/mo. I’m not even using any new math to figure that all out – which means anyone/everyone can do the same. Would I spend more than that for full HBOGO access today? I don’t think so, because any price point above $10-15/mo is going to cause me, and others, to do math. Which turns out to not be that hard to do. Obviously with an unknown product offering, this is hard to speculate, but again – I’m curious.

“What does Comcast think?” While I don’t know the intricacies of the distribution terms between HBO & Comcast, I do know that, for the most part, Comcast tends to have a “most favored nation” type of clause. This is what’s historically prevented new offerings (Intel Media?) from actually competing in the market, since “nobody” can get better pricing than them for a given channel. So *something* exists between HBO & Comcast to enable this new service – wondering what that looks like.

“What if there’s more to the story in terms of distribution/devices?” Maybe this is an all-Amazon deal, and Prime subs get even more HBO, and that’s it? Or if it’s unique to iPad owners? Or is only on Samsung Smart TVs? Or Google Fiber? I don’t really think any one of the above is on the money, but there could definitely be other players involved here. Further, I’d muse that this is a distinctly “not available on a TV set or connected TV device” offering – but I could even be wrong on that too.

“What if it does actually still require cable?” It’s very hard today to subscribe to basic cable + HBO in all markets. What if this is a move that requires *some* kind of cable subscription, but then unlocks the full HBO service? This would still fit in the description Mr Plepler outlined earlier.

Add your thoughts to the comments below. And for no particular reason, the Game of Thrones theme sung using nothing but Peter Dinklage’s name:

Better Hobby: Blogging or Coding?

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Between a full-time job, a family, home maintenance, and some backyard chickens, I manage to drum up about 23 minutes a week for hobby-time. I have two areas of interest I continue to explore, and curious to get some feedback “from the cloud”. Would love any opinions on…

1) Blogging

So I’ve been blogging for a decade. I enjoy the process of picking a topic, thinking on it, and writing something up. But I often find it frustrating and unrewarding. It’s frustrating because there’s a feeling of pressure to keep up a certain pace/continuity in writing. It’s also tricky as I always want this to be my personal voice, and be free to write things without tying in my employer in any way.

2) Coding

I started programming as a teenager in the Turbo Pascal era, and stopped advancing in the early days of C++ and object oriented programming. I picked up PHP and JavaScript (and Visual Basic!) over the past decade, and while I’m nowhere near the calibre of a professional developer, can certainly build a thing or two of use. I’m now following the awesome Ray Wenderlich tutorials to learn Swift, which I’m mostly enjoying. But again, lots of frustrations as I get set back by not understanding some basic/fundamentals of either XCode, Objects, or some other “simple” knowledge base that I had never picked up.

In either/both case, I also have a personal bad habit in that when I get too frustrated or hit a roadblock, it’ll tend to set me pretty far back. Something I need to work on, of course.

Reason to code more: have fun building things. Best-case scenario is make working prototypes of ideas I have.

Reason to blog more: have fun writing about things. Best-case scenario is increase visibility as an industry thought leader.

Would love to hear any feedback (if anyone’s still reading?)!