A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted

‘Tis the season to be jolly…. and very stupid, apparently.

At a time when 10% of the American population is unemployed and formerly middleclass kids and families are sleeping in cars and homeless shelters, scrambling for their next meal, there’s are whole new world being created that is the antithesis of our value driven society – it’s a nothing for something world where people are forgoing their daily Starbucks fix for, um, nothing.

Virtual gifts, the gifts that do not keep on giving are popping up everywhere, reports the New York Times. For a couple of bucks, daft people are paying online companies to send their loved ones pixilated images of the gifts they choose to send. Not a real gift, just a picture of it. I’m sure it goes something like this:

Abbey, the gift receiver:
“Really Dick, you shouldn’t have gone to sooooooooooooo much trouble on my birthday. The picture of these beautiful black dahlias are so lifelike, really! And I didn’t know dahlias came in black – what a double surprise. I’ll cherish this jpeg for all eternity.”

Dick, the cheapskate:
“Np sweets. You already have so much ****ing crap all over your apartment, I didn’t want to waste my money, I mean your space on something…. um, superficial. This virtual gift transcends our innate desire to have tangible things to show for our hard-earned money. Down with shallow consumerism. Will you sleep with me now?”

Although little money changes hand per transaction and there is no actual product being delivered, the virtual gift giving business is proving to be a very big deal indeed. Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Jerry Liew has invested $10 million in virtual gift giving. The marginal cost for each transaction is zero, so these companies are reaping unheard of profit margins – 100%. More fool us.

In the US this year – a year of widespread economic failures and foreclosures - it’s estimated that $1 billion dollars will have be spent on sweet nothings – and $5 billion worldwide! $5 billion dollars, come on people! How can we whine about the cost of healthcare and bank bailouts when we’re squandering $1billion dollars on absolutely nothing. There is no stimulus or jobs creation going on here, that is for sure.

One rather sad shopper who plays Pet Society on Facebook with her sons used a credit card to buy $20 worth of the game’s currency. She spent it on a “virtual haunted mirror and a potion that helped their pet, Demon Baby, grow bat wings.” She explained that it was cheaper than taking the kids to Target and buying them actual toys. Can anyone tell me what is so dreadfully wrong with this picture? I promise I won’t buy you a day-pass to Playfish if you do.

Maybe it’s me who is wrong? Perhaps this is a godsend for Christmas shoppers who have weathered a disastrous year and genuinely can’t afford to shop at Macy’s or Penney’s for everyone on their list?

On second thoughts, I don’t buy it. Anyone wanting to send a gift to me this year had better make it real – even if it’s a homemade cookie or a collage of embarrassing photos from school days I’d rather forget. To me, that says you’re not a fool and that you really do care, ticket price notwithstanding.

Better still, save your dollars and send them to someone who could truly use them – like those families that have nowhere to live, instead of the VC groups laughing at you all the way to the bank.

Having Your Cake and Eating It, AIG Style

In an ideal world, we get to have our cake and eat it - every last calorie-laden crumb. But in the real world we live in today where business giants have been allowed to gorge on their proverbial cake (read: taxpayer dollars), there comes a price for having it all. AIG, the great American Insurance GIANT that was not allowed to fail, is up in arms about pay czar Kenneth Feinberg’s strict anti-bonus diet.

Poor AIG leaders. Where else can you lose billions of dollars, stick your hand out for $170+ billion and then retreat quietly back to your boardroom in anticipation of your $3 million year-end bonus.

Threatening to quit after just three months at the helm, AIG’s recently appointed chief executive Robert Benmosche backed down and scurried back to AIG’s Ivory Tower. Coward. The FT reports that around a dozen top level executives and business managers have left AIG in the past few months.

If those “executives and business managers” were in involved with the massive scourge that AIG has left behind for American taxpayers to swallow, I sincerely hope that they're working three jobs at minimum wage or digging holes in our roads right now.

And for those who didn’t know it, having your cake and it eating is a fairy tale. Somebody somewhere has to pay the price for someone’s mistake. AIG seems to be learning that the hard way.

Thanks to Francesco Guerrera of the FT for his excellent reporting on AIG.

What Are Words For?

From my column on Marketing Daily's "Beyond The Press Release" 11/11/09

What are words for, when no one listens anymore?" Do you remember that song? It came out during the same era of "Video killed the radio star." Okay, so I'm a child of the late 70s/early '80s, that prehistoric time when TVs had no remotes, when a huge VCR (remember the Betamax?) sat in the Hi-Fi center along with ABBA and Dr. Hook LPs, and a computer was something on which you played Atari Tennis or Pac-man.

Back then, we all learned to write in the same cursive script. At my school, we used a fountain pen with blue-ink cartridges that leaked all over your fingers, a constant reminder of the toils of the written word: Grammar was sacrosanct and there were no distractions in the classroom with iPhones, texts or IMing, only boys and passed notes. Back then, we didn't mess around with language to create new "isms" to suit a campaign or a whole new line of marketing buzzwords that would eventually be so passé, they became offensive.

It was a simple time, I admit, but we communicated with clarity. Real words, devoid of BS and convoluted meanings. We didn't have to create a paradigm shift to evangelize the next generation of social media influencers who would start deploying SMM platforms to strategically position thought leaders to take it to the next level. We didn't need to apply a holistic approach to Web 2.0 enhancements that would enable enablers to join the conversation and engage their audience by retweeting and Digging. We didn't even need to realign ourselves with a new media landscape to garner attention, augment a comprehensive results-oriented process that would deliver stellar ROI and increased awareness on a sentiment index to measure positive feelings out there in the blogosphere.

Nope, back then we didn't have to worry about using forward-thinking, innovative, disruptive technological advancements to deliver increased brand affinity and build synergistic partnerships that would transcend the status quo and bring about a sea change in performance-driven, cutting-edge, high-impact, integrated solutions with location-aware abilities to deliver best-in-class results. And we never once worried about the power of integrating scalable platforms to stimulate online conversations led by social media disciples who were eternally cautious practitioners of pre-populating devices and dashboards to solidify infrastructural advancements that would engender loyalty and strategic alliances.

We didn't even have to think outside the box to break through the clutter.

Know what I mean?

What I actually mean is that we're losing the meaning of our words. From the sublime to the ridiculous, truly. Our parlance is being reduced to symbols, acronyms and a series of hyphenated verbs-come-adjectives, as more people forget the communications basics: Say what you mean with clarity, brevity and intelligence. Instead, we've worked ourselves into a frenzied mash-up and indeed breakdown of "impressive" words.

Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest?

At the heart of every sales pitch, press release or marketing campaign is a message, one that is supposed to communicate an inherent and useful value for a product or service. For many, this act of communicating now requires oral gimmickry or just plain stupidness. Shame on us. It's taken thousands of years to create such a complex linguistic machine, and less than 30 to kill it.

It's not just English, or Americanese, however. The Real Academia Española is also facing challenges as the Spanish language adapts itself to absorb global language trends and cultural changes.

I agree that verbose writing is just as much of a turnoff in any language, but in our quest to sound more clevererer, bang out more messages faster, tweet and Facebook ourselves to oblivion, and send out communiqué littered with grandiose-sounding words, we've both devalued our language and the meaning of the words we use. And become a lot more brainless in the process. When we've reduced any number of words to WTF, OMG and LMFAO, which have entered a multi-generational lexicon and are creeping into regular business correspondence, what's left?

Anyone got a new word for that? Perhaps you'll find one in a game I recently updated called B#$%S^$T Bingo.

Feel free to send me your suggestions, too.

Don’t Mess With My Vegemite, Mate!

The NYT recently ran a story about a campaign by the Kraft Corporation in Australia, looking for a name to brand their new Vegemite/creamcheese concoction. As I’m an Aussie, I have a special affinity for Vegemite - the rest of you think it’s vile, I know.

But Kraft’s marketing department went where angels fear to tread. They messed with our sacred Vegemite, STRUTH! They combined the Aussies’ rich gooey staple with cream cheese and sent it out with a no-name label inviting the Australian public to create a name for this very, um, unique spread.

The initial winner? Vegemite iSnack 2.0, which was met by public outrage. Vegemite-lovers from Hobart to Woop Woop voiced their indignation, and went straight to social media as their squawk box. They twittered, and blogged, and created websites dedicated to re-naming the spread. In the land of down-under, like AFL (Australian Football League) and Swan Draught (beer), Vegemite is something you don’t screw with.

One person suggested that the 27-year-old designer who’d submitted the winning name be smeared with Vegemite and forced to run naked through the streets of Sydney “as retribution for his cultural crime.” Others called the name “uStupid 1.0” and “un-Australian.”

Nuff said. Four days later and Kraft caved in. A new vote was cast and a new name settled upon - Cheesybite.

To be fair, Kraft’s research showed that Aussies wanted a more spreadable version of their beloved Vegemite and the product per se has met with great success. Kraft’s failing was not in the product extension, it was its deafness and inability to act appropriately – it had not chosen the winner by popular vote.

The moral to this story? Don’t underestimate the power of social media. It’s become an enabler for voicing our passion and displeasure en masse. iSnack 2.0 (which is a dreadful name, besides) proved that consumers will use social media (and whatever tools they have at their disposal) to spread their messages like bushfires.

By the way, Vegemite sales have not slowed since the introduction of Cheesybite. Aussies know which side of the bread is buttered.