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It’s that magical time of the year when brand preferences are being lodged in the consumer psyche by any means necessary, be it free online shipping offers or conventional “doorbuster” style shopper stampedes. (Plus, in an admirable show of advance conditioning, there are those sidebar Four Loko-fueled parking lot brawls.)

But the romance of the brand is a notoriously ephemeral thing, as any casual survey of thrift-store Tickle-Me Elmo and Tamagotchi displays will promptly demonstrate. To do the job right, in this as in so many other realms, we would do well to heed the example of the Germans. As Bloomberg’s Chris Reiter reports, Deutschland’s Big Three automakers—BMW, Mercedes, and Audi (now a Volkswagen property)—have long been locked into a battle for the overtaxed attention spans of the youth market.

Back in February, Audi made a dramatic bid for high-end kiddie allegiance with a $13,300 model of a 1930s roadster, evidently calculating that a Weimar-era collectible is the perfect bridge to the true sturm-und-drang of a privileged adolescence. The model comes replete with “an aluminum frame, hydraulic brakes, seven speeds, leather-clad steering wheel, and oak dashboard,” and nearly sold out of its initial 500-unit manufacturing run, Reiter notes.

The idea behind such lush toy marketing, of course, is to instill intense brand-loyalty among the market’s littlest thought leaders. "Merchandising is important not because you can make huge money with it,” Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer tells Reiter, “but because it's another means of positioning your brand.” That means that Audi isn’t confining its initiatives to pint-sized drive trains, but is branching out to other durable badges of status, such as a $17,000-plus table soccer game—the idea here, evidently, being not so much to cultivate hooligan-style soccer fandom in the plutocratic young, but rather to inculcate the more genteel and respectable habit of full-scale team ownership.

It’s true that Audi isn’t neglecting more downmarket kiddie consumers in its push, with a $60 branded teddy bear and a $400 red-plastic version of the roadster; here, the functional array of model accessories include “an adjustable rollover bar, hand brake, over-sized tires with Audi-style rims, and padded seats.” But the main event is clearly the scrum for top-line market cachet, which is why Audi’s rivals are stepping up their game. Mercedes, for instance, is planning a spring rollout for “the foot-powered SLS Bobby-Benz, featuring headlights, grill, and rear end similar to those of the company's $183,000 SLS sportscar. The toy SLS features quiet-running tires, an Ackermann steering system with tight cornering for living-room maneuverability, and a steering wheel that absorbs impact to prevent injury in the event of a collision.” The model will boast a comparatively modest $120 asking price—but that loss-leader price point is a small sacrifice when you’re grooming future six-figure auto customers. "All the products have to live up to Mercedes' standards for quality and safety—especially our toys, which are all-time favorites with the next generation of Mercedes-Benz customers," reports Christian Boucke, who heads up the Benz accessories division.

BMW, meanwhile, appears to be the most horizontally minded lifestyle competitor in the luxe-branded market, brandishing a wide panoply of gear from a $460 kid-scale version of its M3 GT2 race car to a pair of $50 rain boots. The Beamer accessories division also turns a healthy 7 percentish profit—even though its brand-keepers, too, stress their real stake is in the longer-term loyalty game. “We are first and foremost a marketing initiative, and the main objectives are to broaden the brand's presence and strengthen loyalty," says Thomas Goerdt, who directs BMW’s distinctly un-German-sounding merchandising and lifestyle unit.

Still, the great risk of too-rampant accessory branding is market saturation—which is why Michel Gabriel, a branding specialist who has advised past Audi projectS, draws the line at underwear, even though “a lot of money can be made from a product” aimed at the intimate end of the brand market.

We can’t help thinking, though, that the Grosse Drei auto barons are selling short tomorrow’s financial titans with mere miniature knockoffs of luxury rides—and not just because their British competitor, Aston Martin, still owns the highest tip of the market with a Volante Junior model fetching a cool $24,000 with a devoted consumer base of young royals—who have duly gone on to modify their fullscale Astons to run on wine.

After all, the lesson of branding the world over is that a truly consummate brand eventually eclipses its mere material referent—hence the power of the glyphlike Nike swoosh (which only cost the firm $35 when design student Carolyn Davidson submitted in in 1971), or the “i”-themed Mac brand interface. Likewise, the business model for Mercedes has involved coaxing lavish multimillion-dollar subsidies from U.S. lawmakers at the same time it’s presented itself as an above-the-fray survivor of the 2008 global auto downturn.

Likewise, BMW has briskly seen to it that influential state congressional delegations have placed its own export interests ahead of the bailed-out U.S. auto industry—while Audi’s corporate parent Volkswagen has at least been candid in soliciting U.S. bailout funds, while also putting in for homeland funds to shore up its rickety loan operation. (Needless to say, this corporate pursuit of public-sector handouts doesn’t seem to have softened VW’s stand on American union drives, since like other foreign automakers, it’s expanded operations in anti-union right-to-work states to evade higher labor costs at home.) All of which is to say that, if doting plutocratic parents are looking to instill formative brand preferences this holiday season, nothing says “heed daddy’s example” like a simple, influence-subsidized government check. And Lord knows that for the properly connected family or industry, a good government kickback is about as hard to obtain as a pair BMW rain boots.

You, valued and valuable reader, are invited to join Chris Lehmann and your other fellow rich people to celebrate the publication of Rich People Things, this Thursday, December 2nd, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, from 7 to 9 p.m. There will even be a brief chit-chat with Thomas Frank and Maureen "Moe" Tkacik.

I'm exploring the site now. First impressions:

1. Promoted Tweets: "When you promote a Tweet, only the most relevant users see it—put simply, that's users that follow similar accounts to yours." OK - so Twitter has some kind of (proprietary) segmenting algorithm. Does that mean "If I'm promoting tweets about RC Cola, users following Coke and Pepsi will see it, but someone who isn't following either of them won't?" What about someone who's following a celebrity that Coke or Pepsi sponsors? I guess if I were a brand, I'd want something a little more specific than that. On Facebook, I can say, "Only 18-35 year old males who are fans of any NBA team will see ads for my basketball shoes." What's the equivalent on Twitter?

2. Promoted Trends: Yeah, Carri's right about this one *and* there's another hitch. The way this has been described, a trend has to *already* be a Trending Topic before you can promote it. That means the brand has to sit at a console, watching Twitter, or have a script watching the world-wide, local and regional trending topics. When a new trend is "born", the brand has to decide if it's relevant, compose a tweet, then hit the "Promote" button.

I've seen Promoted Trends, so they must either have had a strong clue that it was going to make it into the Trending Topics ahead of time, like a sports event or TV show, or they were camped out on a console. I know the W+K people had a whole control center for the Old Spice campaign, complete with home-brew analytics, creative and legal teams working in real time, and so on. In any event, this seems to me to be a big-brand tool only, in conjunction with mass media and real-time campaign management and lots of data integration.

There are a few other issues with Promoted Trends. Every user can choose to see "World Wide" Trending Topics, or trends from certain cities or regions. If you're promoting a Boston restaurant, I'd think you'd only want to show the Promoted button to people who were viewing Boston trending topics. Another issue is spammers. When the list of trending topics updates, there are spambots that latch on to multiple topics - if I viewed "Boston Celtics" during a basketball game, sure, I'd see a Promoted Tweet for the restaurant at the top, but right after than I'd see a bunch of garbage. Twitter needs to filter the spam out of Trending Topics before Promoted Trends will be effective. I think it's an easy piece of code to write - just ignore any tweet that matches more than one trending topic.

3. Promoted Accounts: As far as I'm concerned, I don't know that I'd buy a promoted account if Twitter was filtering who saw it. I don't think Twitter's "Who To Follow" algorithms are that good yet. For example, I followed a math teacher in the UK recently who tweeted something interesting. For *days* after that, Twitter's Who To Follow list was mostly math teachers in the UK! Either they all follow each other or Twitter is looking at the profiles. If I bought a Promoted Account I'd want to either know how many people would see it and how they were selected, or I'd just want everyone to see it. And If I only pay per follower and not per view, I think I'd insist on knowing how they were segmented - I wouldn't want to have to spend my own resources qualifying followers.

4. Analytics: I'm really glad Twitter is providing those only for advertisers, because they're going to be tweaking the algorithms for months, and that costs money. Again, though, you really need to be a big brand before you can dedicate a real-time Twitter team to a campaign.

Bottom line: even with all the issues, I think it's going to be successful for campaigns like the Old Spice campaign, major league sports, mass market movies and television shows. It's working for Conan O' Brian, it worked for Old Spice, it probably worked for Best Buy and some of the movies that used it.

But for smaller businesses, with, say, a single person at a dashboard for a local business in one of the cities where Twitter captures Trending Topics, it's going to be a bit like day trading. Eventually, you'll learn how to do it, how to follow trends, promote them, compose a tweet stream that "resonates", etc., but there won't be much "science" in it. Spammers will figure out how to game it and "black hat Twitter resonance optimizers" will appear on the scene as if by magic.

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

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Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

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Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

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Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

New Study Shows FOX <b>News</b> Viewers Are Misinformed! | PerezHilton.com

Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

New Study Shows FOX <b>News</b> Viewers Are Misinformed! | PerezHilton.com

Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

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Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

New Study Shows FOX <b>News</b> Viewers Are Misinformed! | PerezHilton.com

Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

New Study Shows FOX <b>News</b> Viewers Are Misinformed! | PerezHilton.com

Study: Some Viewers Were Misinformed by TV <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com

Fox <b>News</b> Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study

New Study Shows FOX <b>News</b> Viewers Are Misinformed! | PerezHilton.com

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