NYSE's Thain To Circumvent Wall St.

NY Times ran interesting update i.e. John Thain's plan to invite institutional investors to trade directly into the NYSE--and bypass the Wall Street firms that have traditionally facilitated order execution. Not that many don't already do this via electronic trading platforms, but Thain is clearly suggesting to alter the entire landscape of the secuities industry---and cut out the middle men... wow

I said this 3 months ago! Wall Street & Casinos

Excerpt from Institutional Investor...Proud to say that I made this observation months ago...read the whole article.....No doubt fodder for George W. and wannabe's like E. Spitzer to distract everyone from real problems in society.

Led by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Fidelity, big-name financial firms have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the shares of online casinos, even though the practice is considered illegal according to U.S. law. Most of these companies trade on the London Stock Exchange and are licensed in remote locations like Malta and Antigua that are more than friendly to Internet gambling. But, most of the users are Americans. There are fees to be made, however, and that apparently trumps the other concerns.

Incentivizing Your Sales Force

Brick & Click, Brick and Mortar, B2B; B2C--its always about Sales. Always.
With that said, resident guru Jay Berkman opines " the biggest challenge every enterprise has is keeping their salespeople incentivized and inspired. The commission carrot only works so far--and if someone else is dangling a more tasty carrot in front of your sales force, you're at risk of losing a valuable foot solider."

Today's WSJ profiled Snowfly--an interesting company that provides a game-based platform to help motivate anyone whose job is based on meeting regular goals or quotas. Visit the link--but here's some advice: don't let your employees access the game platform during normal working hours--let them use it at pre-defined times (you can create the platform so that its only accessible at certain hours of the day/night)

Web 2.0 Permission-Based Marketing

Every day I talk with at least five global brand marketers; in the course of a week, I exchange emails with dozens, and in the course of a month, upwards of 300 of the most senior marketing gurus in America and their new media agency reps are telling me what their needs/goals are. This group represents a wide cross-section of industries, products and services; telecom; entertainment; financial services; media/publications.

As a result, I've become a clearinghouse of information..That's why people like to hear from me and talk with me. Everyone likes to know what their peers are thinking about or plotting.

And if you take 30 seconds to keep reading, you might think that I'm on to something..and will want to forward this to the people on your team that are overseeing Internet-related marketing/advertising.

The theme is the same; each one is looking for the 'holy grail" application---

• entertains and informs in a place and time that the recipient is most receptive
• a completely captive, but non-intrusive application
• that delivers rich media content
• incorporates a call to action that can be acted upon
• one that can deliver subliminal third-party advertising
• track-able; easy to gauge recall, performance, and ROI
• proven; other major brands have employed it, and have used it successfully. Yes, references are available--see attached.
• but most importantly--an application that the consumer has asked to receive.

On-line advertising, opt-in email newsletters, and more recently, blogs are the most favored tools that "on-line" marketers employ to drive their audience to their cash registers or info centers, whether in a real world store, or on-line.

Woo. Woo. as my 20-yr old daughter would say. Virtually all of these apps still depend on a customer drilling down to locate the specific promotion; the hot item that I'm interested in knowing about--the one that is today's most popular.

Few of those applications are customized based on demographic profile, and fewer still are delivering entertaining and informative content tailored to the recipient. Yes, many of my friends are spending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on email-centric strategies that incorporate very sophisticated, quant-based programs that are purportedly sending tailored messages based on the customer profile. Keep laughing.

Now you can stop laughing--and think about this--an application that meets all of the criteria described above, and costs a rounding point* of what you are spending to implement and deploy:

• a 'top listing' in a Google Adwords campaign
• implementing and managing an email-marketing campaign
• direct mail
• OOH mediums (from billboards to in-store, to direct mail to the wide selection of guerilla strategies)

* Rounding point means that for those spending six, seven or eight figures annually for a dedicated Internet strategy that targets tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions---this is a barely five-figure enhancement that could prove to not only complement those efforts, but can be more effective, more durable, and more long-lasting than anything you are spending on today.

What is it?

• Its an application that automatically launches on your customer's desk top--when he/she has asked to receive it--or simply launched via a desktop icon.
• It occupies 75% of the user's screen, and can be closed by one click of a mouse.
• It can be easily customized (by you or by Synovativ's programmers) to look like a mini-website, a digital billboard, a static billboard, or a condensed newsletter. It can be multi-paneled, or single paneled. It can even incorporate a pre-downloaded video app--which means that the user doesn't have to launch the darn thing, wait for it to load, and than view on his/her PC etc.
• It can be updated with fresh content and automatically display once a day, twice a day, three times a day--whatever. However frequently you want to update content--and however frequently your user wants to see--he/she will set his timer accordingly. Or, the user can launch it via the desktop icon.
• Installing it takes 30 seconds. Your customers will appreciate that it won't impact any on the computer, and more importantly--he/she is assured that there are no cookies, no adware, no spyware--no gremlins running around in the background. They don't need to provide any personal information, email address in order to download it.
• Its as clean as a newborn baby's tushy.

On your side--its plug and play; uploading content is a cut and paste process. The admin module tracks viewership data, and performance links to your existing transactional platforms.

Licensing/Delivery: Customized to your needs. 6 or 12 month site licenses; capped flat rate, or based on per user. You can have a turnkey service, where the vendor takes care of everything--we drive the entire program, and you sit back and watch the viewers come to your cash register--you just upload the content. Full reporting module included.

Or you can have a self-administered agreement where you get the keys to the car and let your IT team own the entire platform. The user manual is less than 4 pages long.

This link http://www.addiem.com/download.html will allow you to download a demo application, just to get a feel for how it would work for your clients/customers.

I'm happy to facilitate a conversation to talk about how you would incorporate this.

Almost Too Good; Template TV commercials

I'm a sponge for business periodicals, whether its Forbes or Fortune, and most especially Inc.com. There's an element to print magazines that the 'Net isn't going to replace. I absorb print articles while having coffee on the deck, and when digesting a favorite bottle of wine and watching the sun set. These are quiet times that my laptop isn't designed for, and for me, never will be.

With that said, the latest edition of Inc.com includes a great profile by Darren Dahl of Spot Runner, a company that has been getting lots of traction and deserved buzz for the past year. They've built a brilliant app that any half-witted brick and mortar retailer should embrace---pre-constructed TV commercials AND a menu for media placement in local, regional and national channels, network and cable. Its the idiot's version of Register.com---and is the perfect solution for anyone that aspires to advertise their business via television. And by way---TV advertising is far from dead. TV viewership remains intact, and its going to stay that way, albeit in different structures. So, advertising on TV makes good sense. Do I need to repeat myself? NO. Am I going out on a limb and making this statement, which will be forever memoralized in the world of digital information. NO.

Run the newstand to purchase the June edition, or you can wait until the 20th to access the article on line. If you wait until the 20th, read the article by simply clicking on the link. But don't wait.

If you run a small business, brick and mortar, brick and click, or even just click..this will fit right into your marketing program. If you don't have a marketing program, this is a good way to start!..

By the way, if you get INC.com's latest edition, Norm Brodsky's commentary is inspirational.

Pay Per Call Outranks Pay Per Click on AOL

Absolutely. The internet bubble imploded back at the turn of the century simply because 999 out of the 1000 'ground breaking' companies had no idea of how important the concept of 'customer service' is.
Arguably, too many of those operating e-businesses still don't 'get it' i.e. the importance of having a means where customers can actually speak to a human being, and even more importantly, a human being that is properly trained and capable of providing that personal connection and addressing the needs of the customer ON THE PHONE.

As archaic as this idea might sound, anyone operating a business via the internet MUST build a customer service component into the business model. OK..it costs more...OK...lots of people are getting the hang of shopping carts, click to buy...yadayadayada...and just as many people are being reluctant to do exactly that because of internet security concerns. And don't discount those concerns..for every story you ready about identity theft, there are thousands..yes thousands more that go unpublished.. After all, which website or credit card company wants to publicize the fact that ID theft is a big big problem?? ...Anyway, getting back to pay per call...duh!...I'd much rather pay $1, or even $5, or depending on the price of what I am selling, $10 or $20, for the opportunity to get a trained salesperson on the phone with a customer and close the deal...as opposed to paying .25 or .50 cents to lead someone to my website and hope to God they actually make a purchase.

OnLine Gambling-Las Vegas is ready to deal

duh....of course everyone was waiting for this...if you can't beat them (with lobbyists), join them and then conquer them....Let's be real--every major US casino enterprise have invested plenty of money in R&D over the past few years, and each one is ready to launch their own branded online casino...but they've been standing pat...until now.....and their opportunity is immense--for every dollar wagered on line, there are 5-10x the amount of potential players, only being held back one big concern--the integrity of the website they are gambling on...when major brand operators enter the marketplace, dozens of smaller, off-shore companies will be hit with a tsunami..bet on it and bank on it

U.S. Casinos Relax Opposition
To Gambling Over the Internet

A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
April 28, 2006 11:52 a.m.

The main trade group for U.S. casinos called for the creation of a Congressional commission to study whether the online-gambling industry should be regulated, in a move that appears to relax opposition to the practice.

The move by the American Gaming Association comes at a time when Congress is considering several bills that would explicitly ban Internet gambling. The group said that while it officially remains neutral about the pending legislation, it now "strongly supports" a one-year study that would evaluate whether legalizing and regulating the industry would be "a more viable option" than a ban.

Experiential Marketing: Microsoft Case Study

For every one that looks to poo-poo MSN--first hand knowledge of how they seamlessly and studiously executed a brilliant on-site marketing campaign (at NY Auto Show---an event that had a captive audience of 1 million+ )--here's the news flash: 200 other brand marketers had the same opportunity, but were so dysfunctional--they snoozed and MSN scored.

1. Through an alliance with the show's ticketing system vendor (WalkUp Systems) MSN Autos secured the front door at the Jacob Javits Center and had the exclusive right to place use 'human billboards'..ostensibly serving as Show Ambassords at every entrance way...and the ability to interact with the 1million+ as they were standing on line to purchase tickets.

2. Once having this strategically incomparable physical placement, they leveraged the opportunity by age-old favorite of handing out premiums with a prize element--in this case...'collectible key chains' with MSN Autos and NY Auto Show logo--driving recipients to a special website where they could enter to win a Ford Mustang.

3. Complementing the greeting and key chains, MSN Autos 'wrapped" the ticketing kiosks with billboard signage and ran a montage of MSN Autos video spots (15-second spots ran 4x every 5 minutes) on the ticketing platforms' 9ft video screens---a trifecta approach ensuring high recall and participation in the promotion.

4. Bottom Line Results: 60% of the visitors polled on exit had immediate recall i.e. "who the ambassadors at front door were representing"---and at last count, 50% of the 100,000 key chains distributed have submitted their sweepstakes entry ticket to a special web site.

5. Cost--1/2 price of one (1) 30-second commercial on SNL..

Okay, not everyone has 50k to leverage a 10-day live event with a demographically-targeted audience...but I can count off 20 companies that do have that kind of budget, (duh...Yahoo! and AOL auto divisions, but their heads are so far up their butts trying to justify the impact of highway billboards and low recall tv commercials...they just ain't getting it...yet....

Product Launch Case Study: OnLine/OnPhone

You love the net, but you embrace real-live customer interaction..your brand name isn't famous yet and you can't afford to advertise on TV.

To get the word out, this marketer put 75% of his budget into off-peak radio ads and 25% into paid search ads with Google and Yahoo.

Every single ad had to pay for itself in incoming converted sales. "We go for direct ROI measurement -- always." Brand building would be a side benefit. Click on to see the full story! Combines innovative thinking with common business sense.

Marketing Metrics --Using a Dashboard

Great article to help you determine if you need an oil change, or if you need to fill up your tank..Its about creating a dashboard...what too many people automatically interpret as a software application...but it can simply be a "thought process"..read the whole article!

oes your company suffer from any of these symptoms?

• Marketing is not seen as having a direct impact on the organization's financial performance.
• Functional silos within marketing seem to be operating independently and fighting for budget dollars and attention.
• With the swarm of marketing initiatives, no one is clear on which ones are really contributing the most to the bottom line.
• Marketing budgets are set on what was spent in the past year, not on what was achieved in the prior 12 months or on new company goals.
• Finance isn't buying into the ability of the marketing mix model to link brand attributes to revenue or profits.

If so, you might want to think about how a marketing dashboard can help build marketing's alignment with organizational goals and increase marketing's accountability to enhancing the bottom line. A good dashboard reflects what's going on in marketing, what resources are deployed, to what end, and what ROI is expected for each initiative.