When marketing and superstision collide
It was announced today that the Seahawks are retiring their lime jerseys. If you don’t follow the Seahawks, live in Seattle, or critique jerseys (uniwatchblog.com) you might not have even realized that these jerseys were actually worn. These jerseys were worn in one game, a humiliating defeat, and have now been put on the shelf er, taken off the shelf… presumably until the NFL wants a new marketing gimmick (see this years AFL jerseys).
I’m not necessarily a fan of the jerseys myself, but I have been intrigued by the newly found revenue stream of teams and leagues, the third jersey. Teams have found that if they wear a throwback jersey, introduce a new color jersey, or even re-brand their entire uniform that people will buy the jerseys and that these jersey sales are big money. Look at a team like the University of Oregon (Yes, it took alot for me to capitalize that) and the 5 jerseys their football team has worn this year.
However, with the Seahawks wearing the jerseys only once and announcing that they won’t wear them again, this third jersey may have been a Marcus Tubbs sized flop (I’m talking about the fact that we drafted him one pick before Steven Jackson). Around Seattle there have been billboards, bus ads, newspaper ads, basically a jailhouse blitz of advertising dedicated to these new jerseys. Without the Hawks wearing the jerseys I’m sure the sales will be drastically falling off and I wonder how long it will be until the only place to find your “Green with envy” jerseys will be the half-off rack.
I don’t have any numbers, but it appears that this third jersey may have been the first major failure in the “buy our new jersey” revenue stream. I doubt that the amount of money spent on advertisement has even been recouped in the few weeks since the jerseys were worn until today when they are retiring cutting the jerseys. You also have to consider the amount that Reebok spent to produce and distribute these jerseys (I wonder if the Hawks have a contract with Reebok into how much they have to wear a third jersey as players cannot change their name or number during the season unless they’re traded).
I’d imagine there were many meetings taking place after practices that involved the football operations saying that they don’t like the look and that the jerseys were bad (They were 0-1 in them) and the marketing department was saying that the team should wear them at least one more game to help recoup the costs. At the least I’m surprised the fact that the jerseys were being retired came out before Christmas and I’m sure the marketing team is not that pleased with Jim Mora for eating into the “Green for the Holidays” jersey sales. The advertising push, mixed with selling these jerseys off the sales rack ($25), rather than as one off authentic customized jerseys ($259-$309) is not a winning combination for anyone involved and I’m sure it will cause teams to take a longer time deciding which third/throwback jersey to wear, produce and sell.
Bringing the blog back
Out with some friends the other night I had a friend wish me the unfortunate anniversary of the death of my blog. She had actually left a comment, but as I was receiving alot of spam comments on the old posts I had missed her comment. I was shocked. Had it really been a year since I had last updated the blog?
Looking at the last posts, wow this site is dated. It’s really quite embarrassing. The Starbucks Gold Card program is now coming to a close “evolving” a little over a year later. There is a new iPhone out. And all in all, the posts before those are almost a year and a half old.
As someone who owns my own domain, you have to wonder, what is the point if you’re not keeping it current. Does this site really reflect what I’m keeping up on, what interest me, and what I’m learning. The answer is clearly no.
Therefore, I’m working on updating the site and figuring out what I will be writing on to keep the site current. I still don’t know what that will look like, but you’ll know in less than a year.
Starbucks Gold Card review
I’ve had the new Starbucks Gold card for a few weeks now and alot of people have been asking me what I think about it and how I got in. I figured a blog entry would be good to catch people up and since I have been in charge or a rewards program before, maybe I can add a few tips for Starbucks.
I was invited into the program early, before it was open to the public, and for free. Great! I love being an early adopter, I love Starbucks, and I’m not going to lie, I like being “that guy” who the baristas say “Ohh, this is a Gold Card.”
After using the card for a few weeks I wanted to give some early feedback, and maybe some information for anybody that is thinking about buying one when they become available November 4th. Starbucks, if you want to hire me for these insights, feel free. :)
Previously to being invited to join the Starbucks Gold Card program I had been a registered Starbucks Card holder since they started giving you free syrups and milks and had been using a Starbucks Card for much longer than that. In fact I have been using the Ichiro card that came out over three years ago until I got the new, slick looking, Gold Card. All that being said, yes, I go to Starbucks a good amount.
So what does the Starbucks Gold card get you? So far it has gotten me 10% off my drinks and food. They say there will be other benefits given online over time, but I haven’t seen anything in the past few weeks. You get 10% off of other products as well and a free drink on your birthday.
Over the last few weeks I have probably earned 2 free drinks (based on saving 10% a drink). To make things easy, let’s say I buy a grande Americano everyday (which I don’t, although I do buy Americanos not the expensive drinks). That would cost me apx. $890 over the year, and with the Starbucks Gold card I would save apx. $89, or roughly 36 free grande Americanos. That’s quite the savings if you ask me, and for a free card (or even a $25 card) it is well worth it. Factor in buying for other people, snacks, gifts, and you could be making back 10X your investment fairly quickly. Sounds great, it is…but is it could easily be better.
Here are the knocks I have with the card;
- You don’t get refills, even though it is a registered card.
- You don’t get free Soy or Syrups, even if you have registered the card.
I guess those are the only two knocks that I have on the Gold card, but trying to be an elite or somewhat exclusive program they should take care of these benefits that they already offer to other “registered” card holders.
What does this mean on your bottom line? If you buy Soy drinks of any size, get coffee refills, or buy tall or short drinks with syrups the registered card, as opposed to the Gold Card, is actually is a better deal. For me, being an Americano drinker who likes refills it has actually led to me having to carry two Starbucks cards. To save money on the Americano I use the Gold Card, then when it’s time for my refill I use the registered card. You can call me cheap if you’d like, but if you know me you know it comes down to the principal of the program and the benefits.
Why doesn’t Starbucks just let the registered Gold Card members get free syrups, milk upgrades, and of course the refills? Obviously the Gold Card members are loyal and with the special invites going out Starbucks wants these card carriers them feel valued. Not taking care off these small details will hurt the overall experience for those who buy the Gold Card and make them question if they should join, or if joining was the right choice.
Overall I love the program, but would love these small changes made. Not only to save me the hassle and the money but to also make me, as a Gold Card member, feel just that much more exclusive than I was as a regular “registered” Starbucks Card holder.
Brad Steven’s giving Starbucks Ideas a sneak peek
The iPhone 3G will make YOU money!
iPhone 3G will MAKE YOU MONEY.
So as has been pointed out by a commenter’s (“the vis”) on a previous video, the iPhone 3G will actually cost more over 2 years than the original iPhone’s. The math goes like this, $399 for the original 8GB iPhone +$20/mo for the data plan (on top of your voice plan)= $879. The new iPhone 3G (8GB version) will retail for $199 (half the price) but will cost $30/mo for the data plan= $919 (I won’t tell you that to get 500 text messages a month it will be an additional $5/month as that will go against my argument.. wait I just wrote that, whoops).
So we’re looking at the new iPhone 3G costing $40 more than the current iPhone and much more than a baseline cell phone. So the question posed by “the vis” was, is there a way the new iPhone can pay for itself over the two years of your contract? I don’t think you can have the iPhone “pay for itself over two years, but I do think that there will be some great ways of saving money over the two years you have your new iPhone 3G, and let’s just see how much money we could potentially save with the new iPhone.
Free GPS
I feel that I know the city of Seattle fairly well, and that at most I may need to go onto google maps to figure out where something is located in Seattle. However, if last Christmas proved anything, people love in car GPS units (along with digital picture frames, which I guess you could use your iPhone for as well). When you’re in an unfamiliar city, is there anything better than having someone guide you, turn by turn, through directions. Well the new iPhone should be able to do that with it’s GPS. The savings right there is apx $150 if you were to buy a new one on sale, and $10/day for each day you may rent a car on vacation. Let’s call this a savings of $200 over two years.
Location Based To-Do Lists
Omnidrive will be offering location based to-do lists on the new iPhone, and so as “the vis” suggested, this will dramitically cut down on the ammount of gas you use running your errands. One of the main ways people are suggesting saving money with today’s high gas prices is to make all your errands in one run. Rather than taking many short runs, making one big loop will save you much more time, mileage, and money. Omnidrive’s location based to-do list will help guide these errands, and make sure that you remember what to do, and also show you the closest place to take care of each task. Very cool and if you figure it can save you even 10 miles a week, that is 1000 miles over 2 years, at $4/gal. and to make it easy on the math let’s say you get 25mi./gal that adds up to $160 over two years.
GPS traffic maps
Google offers traffic maps for their mobile maps, and although you can access these maps on other phones, the iPhone will make these maps much more accessible and much more widely distributed (at least I hope that they will). As Minneapolis has shown us, idling your car for even three minutes will kill the earth, and also cost you money. Something like half a gallon of gas per hour. With these mobile traffic maps you’ll be able to see what roads are backed up with traffic and avoid many hours of being stuck in traffic. So, if you’re able to avoid even 11 minutes of traffic a week, you’re looking at saving 1200 minutes over two years, which would be another $40 in savings.
Scanned Membership Cards
Lifehacker layed out a great idea for how to carry many store membership and reward cards with you by scanning them, saving them as a picture on your iPhone, and then presenting them to get your savings at your local store. Rather than having to worry about holding onto all of these cards, and packing them all in your wallet for every trip out of the house, just take your iPhone and present your scanned card. I recently went on a trip to California, and was able to signup for a Ralph’s card to save $15 in a single shopping trip. I have no idea where this card is, and won’t use it again, unless I were to signup for yet another card to save $10 or more on my next trip to California. If you didn’t want to take the time to signup for the card more than once, you’d be able to save say $50 a year on club cards that you don’t normally carry with you per year. Over two years that’s another $100 in savings.
Coupons and Special offers from Location Based ads
Through Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, as I talked about in a recent video, I expect that we will start recieiving special offers for restaurants and stores that will be of more interest to us. Based on our location and our friends recommendations and behavior we will get much more targeted offers that will bring more value than today’s google adwords ads. If you get an offer for a free appetizer or drink and use the offer every other week, that could be $ every other week, would be about $400 in savings over two years!
Having the same phone for 2 years
Most people get a new cell phone every 18 months. Since the iPhone is so revolutionary, it will be a much easier phone to hold onto for the extra 6 months than your run of the mil Motorola phone. Yes , there will be a new iPhone out before the two year contract is up, but it still won’t be a necessity to buy as, the 3rd generation iPhone will probably only add a better camera, video conferencing, and maybe some new colors. Holding onto a phone for 6 months will save you the equivalent of $20 in that amount of time.
Add up all of those costs and you have saved $920 over two years! Actually giving you an extra $1 over the course of two years! Yes, the iPhone will pay for itself through the amount of money it saves you. It’s just like Steve Jobs is paying you $1 to use the iPhone!
Yes, I know these are stretches, but it was a fun list to put together and it does show that the iPhone will actually be able to help you save money over the life of it’s contract, even if it’s not THIS much.
So everyone, does this math make you want to get to your nearest Apple Store or ATT store come July 11th? I’ll see you all there.
Starbucks happy hour becomes a reality
A sign from the Willowbrook Starbucks in Houston, TX.
Starbucks finally listened to me!*
Back on December 12 of last yearI wrote a piece in response to an Ad Age article that was sent to me by faithful commenter TD. As I said at the time, I think Starbucks should offer a happy hour. It would help their stock bounce back as it would lure a new audience at a slow time of their business. Simply offer discounted drinks from 5-6:30 to get people to stop by Starbucks rather than a bar to catch up after work and before dinner.
Well, last week “kyle” commented on that post saying that there is a store in Houston that is offering a happy hour of kinds.
“This just in… There is one Starbucks in Houston actually doing a happy hour. I know this to be true, because I work at it. In the Northwest Part of Houston, in the Willowbrook area Starbucks has Happy Hour between 5pm-7pm EVERYDAY (yes Sat and Sun, too). All Frappuccinos are 50% off!
Address 7606 FM 1960W Houston TX 77070″
Luckily, a good friend of mine, and fellow Starbuck’s fan lives in Houston and was able to go check out what “kyle” had reported on this here site. For the full report checkout Lach’s post here. As Lach did some investigative reporting this is brief report on if this was a test market, or what was going on with this new Starbucks happy hour.
“The employees working there said it was this store only, and not a push from corporate. They just printed the signs and started selling half off frapps during happy hour that Monday. They did seem nervous about all my questions, but they should be. The Mother Ship will not be pleased. They run a tight ship and don’t generally give stores flexibility over pricing.”
Well, we’ll see how long THAT happy hour lasts. I doubt that the Starbucks Support Center will be a fan of hearing about a rouge Starbucks offering half price drinks. I bet it’s working out well for “Frap” sales as well as overall store sales, but unless they have phenomenal numbers, I have a feeling this is going to go the way of the Iced Coffee’s in stores.
Thanks for the tip kyle and the follow up Lach! Howard, please bring this offer to the masses!
*Starbucks probably did not listen to me in particular.
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An Intersting Campaign Tactic
Gordon Smith’s TV Spot (suspiciously duck green and yellow)
Alright, now that I have your attention. No, I’m not going to give any endorsements here. I know how things can turn if I bring up politics. However, this article I came across was just to weird to me to leave it alone.
Gordon Smith who is a Republican Senator from Oregon has recently started his campaign for re-election. I don’t know anything about Smith other than the fact that he is a Republican that somehow got elected in Oregon. So what caught my eye about this campaign, when I don’t even live in Oregon anymore?
Smith, it appears, is campaigning hard for the Oregon Duck fan votes. Look at the image above and to the right. The above image which has a simple logo of Smith’s may catch some people as having a very familiar font. Yes, it’s the exact same font as the Oregon Ducks have been using for a few years. Then in a screen-shot from his tv spot, Smith uses the appealing to hippie colors of green and yellow.
Gordon Smith’s intersting choice in a font (and colors)
It seems very strange to me that a politician running for office in Oregon would choose to so closely tie himself (at least in appearance) to one of the three major sports teams and two major universities in Oregon. Does he figure he has the more right leaning (not by much) Oregon State vote? Does his campaign manager figure this will be a good way to get a republican voted for by the heavy left leaning Univeristy of Oregon fans, alum, and students? Also, from his wikipedia entry, I learned he is a BYU alum. Not long ago BYU and Oregon almost got into a little bit of a street fight in Las Vegas after Oregon taking exception to BYU performing the Haka at their own event.
What do you guys think? Is this going to work? Will it eliminate Beaver fans (like me, if I were an Oregon voter)? Is it just a play for the Oregon fans, or what?
Blogging, getting easier and easier…
I’m not saying that I will be updating more and more, but there are becoming more tools to make the process easier to complete. I’ve read many stories about how long blog posts take for the more professional sites, such as TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, etc. Now I don’t spend as long as they do on writing each post, but each post does take a little while to complete. Through adding pictures, finding links, deciding what to write, and making sure it’s all setup right, it takes longer than I first though.
Well today I just started using Zemanta and it seems to be speeding up the process quite a bit. It reads my post as I write it, and automatically finds links, pictures, suggests tags, and other stories for me to look into. This is only the second post I’ve written with Zemanta, but it seems to be very useful so far (unfortunately there are no good picture recommendations for this post), and hopefully it will make it easier for me to continue to write more blog posts down the road. With the addition of video, I am focusing more on that and less on the writing, but I hope to continue to post thought provoking, informative pieces here.
