A Branded Way To “React” To Online Content

Likes, Favorites and Up/Down votes are all different way of registering one’s approval, or disapproval, of what we read, see and encounter online. 

This morning, after reading a story on Buzzfeed, I encountered a new way in which readers and viewers can “react” to online content – one that lets you shoot a short “Vine”-like “Selfie”. And, as you can see in the picture above, it offers brands and companies an opportunity to make yet another (more sticky?) impression.

But will it catch on? 

Maybe, but I am just not too sure…because, while clicking on a button is one thing, putting up your moving mug shot, in all its unblemished glory for the world to judge, is completely different (and just a bit intimidating). 

What do you think?

Nestle’s Resource: Differentiation Via Electrolytenment

Bottled water is one of those things that you want and need when you travel. At all other times, tap water is almost always just as good, at least in the developed world.

Given that, how do you introduce yet another brand and differentiate yourself to the point that consumers are willing to pay more, on a per gallon basis, for your “still” water, than they would, for gas?

You endow it with “Electrolytenment”, despite this: 

As for promoting electrolytes, David G. Schardt, a senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, noted that Resource stopped short of explicitly claiming they benefit health.

“They’re trying to stay away from F.D.A. interference but it also allows them to leave it up to the consumer to imagine the benefits that might come from electrolytes,” Mr. Schardt said.

With the exception of distilled water, all water contains some naturally occurring electrolytes like sodium and potassium, he said, adding that the added electrolytes in sports drinks are necessary only for extreme exertion.

“Replacing your electrolytes is only an issue for endurance athletes sweating for hours, not a jogger going out for a half-hour,” Mr. Schardt said.

Andrew Adam Newman writes elsewhere in the article I excerpted that snippet from that the only concrete positive about Resource is that the bottles are made with 50% recycled plastic. Which is great and I wish that all other plastic bottle makers emulate them or do better.

But still (an unintended pun), tap water uses no plastic at all, yes?

Crowdsourced TV Ads – The Future?

TV Advertising is a business that is very well suited for crowd-sourcing. 

That’s because traditional Ads take time and money to shoot. And then when that is done and you start putting it up on TV, you don’t know how the crowds will react.

So by  tapping into the masses directly, companies and brands gain speed, save money by shifting the costs to fans and maximize the chances that what the crowd makes, the crowd loves. 

Brian Hall, writing in Read Write (!) notes that the benefits spill over into branding as well

Big brands use the crowd not just for ideas, talent and inspiration, but to help generate brand awareness – even at the ad concept stage.

Pizza Hut, for example, encouraged football fans to submit videos incorporating the idea of quarterbacks shouting “hut” to hike the ball. Along with many great entries received, the campaign itself was a clever means of increasing brand awareness long before any finished advertisement even made it onto the television screen.

While Pizza Hut selected the finalists in its crowdsourced challenge, a popular vote was used to decide which ad made it to the Super Bowl.

IMO, what’s going to happen (if it doesn’t already happen) is that these (mass produced?) ads will probably first find a home on the Web…and then based on “viral”-ness and views, migrate to TV.

That way, big brands can use the crowds once again – this time, to minimize risk.

How To Compete With Amazon – From Bonobos’ Founder-CEO, Andy Dunn

Every once in a while you run into an article or a post online that is deeply insightful and is just perfect in different ways. One such thing that I just read is called “E-Commerce is a Bear“. Andy Dunn, Bonobos’ Founder-CEO wrote it.

The problem with such articles though is that you just don’t know what to excerpt…Naturally, having said that, a couple of excerpts for those in a rush:

1. Amazon’s Competitors – The Track Record:

Only two start-ups have properly challenged Amazon over the past decade: Zappos and Diapers. Amazon, shrewdly, acquired them both. Both companies faced long roads to generating profits in the ferocious low-cost game of competing with Amazon, and both decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Having spent time with Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin, the leadership duo who built Zappos, and Marc Lore and Vinit Bharara, the founders of Diapers, I can tell you: these are intense competitors who recognized the best outcome was to join forces with the industry leader.

So if Amazon is the low cost winner of selling brands online, if they are acquiring their best competitors, and if their everyday low prices are available to the entire country via a mechanical turk algorithm which is guaranteed to beat you, how do you compete?

2. Four Strategies To Compete With Amazon

…four strategies in the marketplace to deal with Amazon’s incumbency: proprietary pricing, proprietary selection, proprietary experience, and proprietary merchandise.

(You really MUST read the full article to find out more…Andy helpfully provides examples of upstarts and players in eCommerce that are successfully executing on each of those.)

3. There is little to no EBITDA in eCommerce. Even for Zappos:

Zappos is often given as an example of why e-commerce is awesome. Zappos was awesome for consumers. From what I’ve heard, and I can’t confirm this, at the time of the sale Zappos was generating about $10 million of EBITDA on $1 billion of gross revenue. Assume net revenues were in the $650 million range (~35% return rate), and you have 2% EBITDA margins.

The sale of Zappos to Amazon happened because it had to: it wasn’t a company that was generating enough EBITDA margin to be a viable public company. It didn’t have to happen right then or to Amazon as the buyer, but barring a radical change to the financial reality of that business, it had to happen.

Go ahead. Block off 10m of your time and read the whole thing. Totally worth it. 

Is Tiffany’s The Kleenex Of Diamonds?

Does “Tiffany’s” connote an exclusive, luxury product? Or does it refer to the company Tiffany & Co.?

That, is at the heart of a lawsuit, writes Claire Suddath, on Bloomberg Businessweek.

One of the interesting excerpts from the article is around the “true value” of the diamonds sold in both stores:

Meanwhile, that Costco diamond might actually be worth more than its price tag. In 2005, Good Morning America, appraised both a Tiffany diamond and a Coscto diamond. As it turned out, the $16,600 Tiffany cut was 58 percent more expensive than its $10,500 value, while the $6,600 Costco version was actually 17 percent under its appraised value of $8,000. On the WeddingBee.com blog, several women admitted to having Costco rings and said that when they had them appraised, every single ring was worth more than they paid, sometimes by thousands of dollars.

Of course, a diamond is just a piece of coal subject to super high pressure and temperature. But if you still attach intrinsic value to it, perhaps a diamond from Costco is not such a bad deal after all.  

OK, So Foxconn IS Going To Launch Its Own Brands

Back in February, when Foxconn announced a hiring freeze, sage pundits (ahem…) prophesied that this could actually foreshadow Foxconn-branded electronics. And that, in doing so, it would just be the latest contract manufacturer to want to move up the value chain. 

Well, guess what?

Foxconn appears to have already tested the waters with low-priced 60-inch TVs (back in November 2012?!!). And, writes Lin Yang on The New York Times (definitely a NYT thing going on today on this blog), it may be getting ready to make a much more aggressive push on this front. 

While Lin attributes this to Foxconn wanting to “move out of Apple’s shadow”, I suspect, and the comments from a Foxconn VP in the article echo this, that this is really more of a increased-value-capture-via-vertical-integration strategy. And the first step in that direction was a 9.9% investment in Japan’s Sharp corporation, in exchange for USD $840m. 

But, as Lin notes, the global demand for TVs – LCD and non-LCD – is declining. And this may be a problem for Foxconn. This, despite the fact that Foxconn may be mitigating the brand-building problem, at least for now, by selling TVs in China under the RadioShack brand and in the US under the Vizio brand. This, also despite the creative financing strategies it is using to both get its TVs into consumers homes more easily and not dissing its upstream contract-manufacture partners. 

Still, this is a long-game. Mr Gou, Foxconn’s CEO, is tenacious and quite shrewd, as any number of profiles have described him. Ten years ago, most Americans didn’t even know who LG and Samsung were, leave alone buying their appliances and electronics. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we are buying Foxconn branded electronics a decade from now.