Branding Case Study: Paris Hilton vs Kim Kardasian

While celebrities and celebrity culture is a topic usually best left for the tabloids, gossip blogs, and SEO link-bait, sometimes celebrities and their media entourage provide good case studies in modern media communications and PR. For example, I still hold some sense of shock and amazement over learning that Kim Kardasian was using Twitter for sponsored tweets as $10K a tweet.

Setting the Stage for a Branding Case Study
Apparently, Paris Hilton appeared on Good Morning America recently and was asked (more or less), "aren't your 15 minutes up?" She walked off the set. Keeping in mind that both Paris Hilton and Kim Kardasian launched their brand at a similar time and through a similar path, it's an interesting comparative analysis between the two celebs and their brands:

• Why is one still viable while the other has jumped the shark? 
• Are there differences in programs and practices that have driven the success of one or the failure of the other? 
• Are there specific PR or branding blunders that stand out? 

Anyway, that's enough celebrity culture for me...

Techcrunch Redesign: Yet Another Reason Why Some People Think All Marketing Is BS

So I was running through my Twitter feed, scanning for potentially interesting reading. I happened across a Techcrunch post on their site redesign, so I thought I might dive in and see if I could get more of an explanation.

Based on the content from this post, Redesigning TechCrunch: We Picked This Logo Just to Piss You Off by Dave Feldman, this redesign was largely dictated by AOL's office of consumer experience. Really.

Check out a couple of these quotes from his post:

TechCrunch is bold. It’s raw. It’s fast-paced.

I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to the recent Gawker redesign — mostly fear that we’d follow their lead. I think we’re all too hard on Gawker: they saw shortcomings in the traditional blog format and decided to try something new, something app-like. They got a lot of things wrong. But the core idea is an intriguing one, and I applaud them for taking the risk. That said, the Gawker approach wasn’t right for TechCrunch. If they ran away from the blog format we doubled down, addressing those same shortcomings by refining and extending it.

The overall look & feel reflects the bold, sometimes irreverent nature of TechCrunch. It doesn’t hold tea parties in the backyard or hang out with the black turtleneck crowd at the hippest art galleries. It’s a design that breaks more news than its competitors, that loves the code junkies working 22-hour days to build world-changing products.

It's a good thing he sold me on the lifestyle connection to the look and feel, otherwise I might have just gone with my gut reaction that it sucks. Instead we get an Arty Fufkin / Social Network mash-up explanation of how craptacular design is the new black -- or something.

The New Techcrunch Site Layout is Awful

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been busy with a couple of big projects, so I haven't had much time for online reading. As a result, I'm not sure about the exact date when they rolled it out, but -- in case you might have missed it -- Techcrunch has redesigned their site. As my old friends in the south might say, it's godawful.

There are so many aspects of this design that Fail. While I can appreciate the hipster sensibilities that bring us retro 8-bit icons and imagery, design is closely coupled with functionality. In this case, Techcrunch has gone from a site design that made news and content very accessible to one that has become virtually unreadable. If I didn't know better, I might suspect that the real driver behind the redesign was a desire to sabotage the property and the AOL portfolio. Unless, of course, the design originated from within the AOL group, which one also might suspect of being capable of something so bad.

Seriously though, when I first started reading it, I first thought that the site problems might be a result of using an old version of Firefox and html 5. Sadly, all of the modern-standard upgrades couldn't rescue it from the craptacularly awful. You really have to ask yourself, does this signal the death of tech blogs and online media as the go-to news source?

Amazon Cuts Affiliate Programs As California Enacts Stupid Anti-Affiliate Internet Tax Law

Last week I received an email from Amazon notifying me that they would be ending their affiliate programs for any publisher that resides in California. If you haven't been following this issue, you might be surprised by the news surrounding this story. For me, the biggest surprise is that the State of California, home of Silicon Valley and the heart of Internet innovation, could find itself going down such an idiotic path.

What's Behind the Anti-Affiliate Tax Law
In theory, sales tax rules are supposed to be pretty simple -- if you buy something from someone, then the state gets the merchant to collect a percentage based on that sale. Of course, the actual laws are much more nuanced than that, but that's the principle in a nutshell. When it comes to buying stuff on the Internet companies like Amazon have essentially said, "we don't have any operations in the state, so we're not going to collect sales tax on sales that get shipped to states that we don't have operations in." In that way, Amazon and many Internet businesses have used operational location and sales tax to strategically eek out some competitive pricing advantages.

As states like California find themselves sinking deeper into a revenue hole, victims of the crappy economy and the economic catastrophe macro forces, they're scrambling around looking for any sort of revenue life raft that they can cling to and might float politically. It's worth noting that this whole situation is exacerbated by the anti-tax Republicans and their jihad against government -- they've taken the ship of state hostage and will blow it up unless we all fly to anti-tax fantasy land.

The Challenge of Taxing Internet Sales
Over the past ten years, more and more people buy stuff over the Internet. Often, people will go to brick and mortar retailers, look at products, then price-shop to find the lowest price and order it online. That includes no sales tax and free shipping. It's unfair to local merchants and it's just one of the reasons why we've watched local specialty retailers become an endangered species. But the problem isn't Amazon or the Internet, it's that as the world grows flat, interstate and international commerce lines become incentive zones.

The problem isn't the Internet. The problem is that now, for many items that you purchase, the point of sale approach to tax has undergone the same transformation as local newspaper classified ads. In short, it doesn't make sense as an instrument of revenue generation. Instead, it becomes a disincentive for businesses to attempt to compete in brick and mortar businesses in local markets unless there is an inescapable local component to the product or transaction. This legislation is like trying to tax Craig's List in order to subsidize the world's local newspapers.

Since businesses like Amazon don't have operations in the state, the state decided to change it's tax code to consider Affiliate marketers to be "operations" any money paid out as a sales commission, as though, by publishing links to Amazon products for sale, we bloggers and web site publishers are suddenly different from publications that run print advertising. Consider, what's the difference between a print advertisement and an affiliate advertisement except compensation at a Pay Per Click level instead of what's basically a PPM advertising model in the print world?

By attempting to use affiliate marketing as the lever into online transactions, California closed the books on the Amazon affiliate program -- and anyone in California who received income from this (and payed corresponding state income tax based on this revenue). Essentially, they just killed some number of Internet-based jobs. And they knew that it wouldn't work. Prior to California signing this into law, Amazon has actually shut down the Associates program in Illinois, Hawaii, Connecticut and North Carolina because of similar legislation.

The Heart of the Problem
While the anti-tax Republicans might want to look at this and wave it as a "taxes are job killers" bloody shirt, the real root of the problem goes back to this Republican anti-tax anti-government jihad. California has been in this budgetary hole for many years. From the state's education system to our social infrastructure, we watched as so many of the institutions that were the gold standard for the US and the world deteriorate under the influence of the greed-heads that only want to ask, "why should I have to pay for that?"

In this case, it didn't matter that the law doesn't work because California state government can't discuss possible solutions that might work. They can't negotiate raising revenue with the anti-tax terrorists. Instead, this budget driven law was more like Maxwell Smart trying to balance the budget and stop the impending explosion with yet another attempt to push out the problem a bit longer. "Would you believe several hundred million dollars in tax revenue from internet sales tax on Amazon? Would you believe several million Farmville bucks? How about a couple of free items in World of Warcraft?"

Quick Posts: Recent News

I'm buried with a couple of big time-sensitive projects right now so I haven't had time to put the finishing polish on a couple of longer posts that I've been working on. However, I wanted to share a few interesting bits of news that I came across recently.

Apple Wins Patent On Multi-Touch Interface - Macrumors posted this news. It's an interesting development in the world of tablet and smart phone interface.

Judge is Skeptical of Apple's Trademark Claims in 'App Store' Case Against Amazon - This case (whether Apple can trademark App Store and prevent other companies from using the term) is ongoing, but there was an interesting bit of news from the case posted on Macrumors. Essentially, the judge is having a difficult time finding how Amazon's use of 'App Store' might confuse Apple customers. If trademarks are all about helping your customers differentiate between your brand and a generic version of the item, then this can help give you some insight into trademarks and the idea of confusion.

Often, in the world of marketing, we have to deal with people who want to trademark anything and everything. Here is a case where, even backed by a strong legal time, protecting a phrase like this may not be possible.

An Interesting Series of Posts on Daily Deal sites like Groupon

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/14/why-daily-deal-hate/Recently, Techcrunch has been running a series of posts on Groupon and daily deal sites. As a consumer I don't use Groupon and as a marketer I've questioned some of the strategy behind daily deals, so initially this series didn't interest me very much.

However, as this Techcrunch series by Rocky Agrawal has evolved, it really opened my eyes to some serious issues with these sites and their programs. As a professional marketer, you should read this series, even if you don't use Groupon personally or as a program.

Here are the links:

Why Daily Deals Are Becoming A Raw Deal
Groupon Was “The Single Worst Decision I Have Ever Made As A Business Owner”
Google Offers Is A Cheap Knockoff
Why I Want Google Offers And The Entire Daily Deals Business To Die
Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse
Why All The Daily Deal Hate?
Daily Deal Providers May Be Violating Consumer Protection Laws

Emerging Tech Trends: The Internet of Things

This last weekend, I was listening to music while cleaning my apartment. The music, a digital audio file, was playing in iTunes, stored on the laptop in my bedroom. The music was routed across my local network to two Apple Airport Express wireless units connected to separate stereo systems, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, enabling me to play music simultaneously in both rooms. I also use the Apple Remote application, enabling me to manage what's playing on iTunes remotely with my iPhone. Multiple rooms, multiple devices, and many packets of data flowing back and forth, harmoniously working together to create an enhanced user experience. Sadly, my stereo receivers are old and dumb, so I have to manage them using traditional IR remotes.

The Smart Home Evolved
Years ago, when I worked in the DSL industry and we were watching the emergence of broadband, people talked a lot about the Smart Home. Refrigerators and ovens connected to the Internet, your television as a conduit to the Information Superhighway -- you remember the buzz. We've come a long way since that time: home networks are as common as cordless phones and many of our media devices are Internet enabled. And with Apple's iPhone and the success of the iOS platform, component vendors have been freed from competing on the central management unit -- now, they can build a management app for iOS or Android and reach a large, established user base.

Still, you don't see a lot of smart refrigerators or other appliances. Part of the reason behind this has been the challenges involved in adding this kind of intelligence. Several years ago, while I was working with a team on an industrial control device, I repeatedly suggested adding a web-based management interface option for the device. At the time, the project engineer's response was that it was too complicated. In addition to the physical interface, we would have needed an additional processor to handle the network management and another layer of software for the entire process -- it wasn't simply an additional PHY.

On the product side of things, anyone that was considering developing or adding a Smart Home interface needed to take into account many factors:

• What network would it connect to (protocol, interface, etc)?
• How sophisticated did you need to make your on-board network/management unit?
• What would you want to do to the product through that network interface?

As technologies have evolved, it's easy to overlook how technological evolutions have changed these factors. Imagine trying to connect all your smart appliances using Ethernet cords. Think back ten years ago and reflect on the smallest Internet-enabled device -- imagine if every smart appliance needed to have a hard drive and run a version of Microsoft Windows. And when you get down to the question of what would you want to do, remember that many traditional analog systems don't have intelligence -- there's no log file for your stove or your microwave oven.

The IR Remote Control: Yesterday's iPhone
For many years now, device manufacturers have enabled us to manage systems using IR remotes. These devices offered many advantages for manufacturers, but probably the biggest was simply knowing that it would work from a technology standpoint. The network wasn't a limitation and if you wanted additional functionality, you could just add a button or a menu-driven interface. The remote and the appliance didn't really need to worry about anything else on the network, there was no need to worry about communication standards or APIs, it just worked. And that's part of the reason why we wind up with so many remote controls, all with different buttons and different keyboard layouts.

Now, you're seeing more and more entertainment system manufacturers offering management interfaces for the iPhone or iOS devices. Some AV Receivers offer iPhone adapters or applications that enable you to use your phone like a remote. The dedicated IR remote may not be dead, but it's days are numbered.

The Internet of Things: Moving Beyond the Media Center
Adding Internet to your media center is an easy sell: you already have cables running to it, you interact with it, it probably has a display that you can use. What happens when you move outside of that world and into your other appliances? As noted, three of the big challenges are network access and utilization, system sophistication, and application layer functionality, but many of these issues are being addressed through the evolution of the market, advances in technology, and increasingly sophisticated SoCs and IC functionality.

With the widespread use of WIFI, appliance manufacturers can now make some positive assumptions as to the available network access. Bluetooth is also available as a potential protocol for a management interface. Recently, I've also seen announcements about an Android-powered mesh network for LED lightbulbs. In short, these LED bulbs can talk to one another in order, enabling monitoring, management, and potential savings in power and operational costs.

The junction between increasingly sophisticated processing capabilities like you find in smart phones and tablets, and the streamlined functionality of open-source and embedded software is making network functionality more accessible than ever before. As many of these approaches bring common Unix/Linux architectures to embedded software development, many of the common network and application-level programming aspects become more universal and web-ready.

What's more, at a recent Embedded Systems Conference, one company rolled out a series of products for embedded cloud services. Now, instead of having to develop build some application-layer functionality on the device, you can build those applications in the cloud. While the ICs handle the network connectivity, application functionality is provided through remote servers in the cloud. As more and more ICs integrate this kind of functionality, you can expect to see increasingly sophisticated functionality moving into the embedded world.

From firewalls and security to a cloud-enabled application stack, as more and more network intelligence gets integrated on chip and into the embedded world, the more our world -- and our relationships with our devices -- will evolve. The Internet of Things is coming online.