Consumer Passion

Pet Food Recall Expanded

Experts say they found a chemical used in rat poison, aminopterin, in studies of several cans of recalled wet food manufactured and distributed by Menu Foods.   The company expanded the recall to include all brands of its "cuts and gravy" style pet food after the FDA reported that some retailers had not removed the originally recalled items from store shelves.   Details at CNN Money.  Read the FDA's take here.   

Parents Of Tweens, Pay Attention

Your pre-teenage child(ren), at least the girl variety, in all likelihood have March 20th marked with a big calendar splotch, because this Tuesday marks the launch of Hannah Montana's 2-Disc Special Edition Soundtrack.  Adults and too-cool teens and kids might chuckle a "so what" ... but here are the stats on Miss Montana, who for the uninitiated, is the stage character of 14 year old Miley Cyrus (on the Walt Disney TV show, she plays a middle schooler by day, and after adding a blond wig, pop star Montana by night;  real life parents:  Tish and Bill Ray ... yes ... he sang Achey Breaky Heart) :

In November 2006, the original Hannah Montana Soundtrack became the first-ever TV soundtrack to debut at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, finishing as the #8 best-selling album (went double platinum less than two months after release) of the year.  Additionally, Miley Cyrus (performing as Hannah Montana) was the opening act for the first 20 sold-out dates of The Cheetah Girls' "The Party's Just Begun" tour, one the most successful concert tours of 2006.  On March 4 of this year, Miss Cyrus (again performing in character) headlined the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo at Reliant Stadium where her event debut led to the highest paid attendance record in the rodeo's 75-year history, with an audience of more than 73,200.

The Hannah Montana series can be seen on Disney Channels and on DisneyChannel.com.  In 2006, it was the #1 series on basic cable in the U.S. among Kids 6-11 and Tweens and, across all TV, was second only to American Idol in those key youth demographics.  Bottom line:  zillions of kids are zonkers over this talented gal, her music, and her TV show, all of which project a wholesome, fun-loving goofiness.  Which is why parents should NOT be concerned if their kids are Hannah-crazy come Tuesday.   

When Passion For Baseball Is A Matter For Life And Death

Eternal Image, a company that designs, manufactures and markets brand image caskets and urns, announced at the end of last week that it had nearly sold-out its first run of Major League Baseball urns through pre-orders by distributors and funeral homes.

The current urn line includes eight MLB clubs: Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, and St. Louis Cardinals.  The other 22 teams will be offered beginning later this year and into 2008.  A line MLB caskets will be offered in the near future as well.

In addition to the MLB line, Eternal Image's 'brand image funerary' product offerings include Precious Moments and the Vatican Library Collection, as well as pet urns featuring the American Kennel Club and the Cat Fanciers' Association. 

Remember When ...

Your brand new personal computer came with a whopping 4 gigabyte hard drive?  I think my Gateway PC, circa 1997 and fresh out of the then-cool cow spotted box, had about that much storage.  Can't remember the RAM specs.  But oh how exciting it was to slow-cruise the young internet via that 28K modem and prehistoric Pentium processor. 

Fast foward a decade, and Dell is now offering the first consumer hard drive with one terabyte (TB) capacity, or ten times the storage of that 100 Gigabyter that comes standard with most PCs.  Dell's 1TB offering is limited to consumers purchasing select Alienware gaming desktop PCs.  You can cram 4 of the hard drives, from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, into a gaming PC, for a combined 4TB worth of space. With one terabyte, you'd have enough space to store a million photos, 16 days of DVD quality video or a million minutes of music.  I wonder when the first petabyte (PB) hard drive will be offered ...

Zero Passion

I gave up soda for about two years, unable to stomach the diet versions, and unwilling to continue a decades-long love affair with Coca Cola, my first soda love and the hard liquor of pop in my opinion.    Love the taste, just not the overly full feeling from gobs of high fructose corn syrup and whatever ingredients give it the ability to fizz away dried car battery acid.   

Then I discovered Coke Zero.  Already a fan of Splenda, I jumped at the chance to sample a zero-calorie Coke that uses the Yellow Packet, which means it doesn't taste like Diet Coke.  And sure enough, it tastes enough like regular Coke, even better in my humble opinion, that I stock Y2K quantities at home.  Unfortunately, a majority of 7-Elevens on my commute route haven't received the passion memo yet.  They stock plenty of Cherry Coke (never see anyone actually purchasing it), Vanilla Coke, and the ubiquitous regular and diet versions.  But alas, not the illusive Zero, so I carry my own with me wherever I go.  Makes a nice 'cool liquid' compliment to coffee, caffeine included.    

Some interesting user-interactivity at Coke web properties.  Worth a zip to the Coke Zero website.  Try to Unlock The Secret.  The blow torch and cutting tool are a hoot.  The main Coke site offers several user generated  'challenges', including your chance to create a company Theme Song or Character.  Perhaps I should enter a mash-up pic of my little herding dog Lucy with a Coke Zero barrel under her collar, ready to come to my rescue with some fresh, tasty, less filling soda pop.   

Score One For Consumers

Dell on Tuesday says it's considering offering Linux as an alternative to the ubiquitous Windows operating system.  The announcement follows a virtual landrush of consumer postings on the company's new IdeaStorm website.  The most popular thread by far is a February 16 request for the top three versions of Linux to be offered as a free pre-installation on all Dell PCs.  The request has been 'promoted', or given a thumbs up, by more than 100,000 people.  104,396 to be exact, as of this writing.   

DellIdeaStorm.com (slogan:  Where Your Ideas Reign) is a great opportunity for Dell to blaze a new Web 2.0 trail with its customers.  The company says it hopes "this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas.  Our commitment is to listen to your input and ideas to improve our products and services, and the way we do business."  So far, an open invite and an open display of consumer opinion seems to be having an effect on the once mighty but battered Dell.  No firm committment to Linux yet.  If you hear that Dell PCs are "going open source" ... then you'll know for sure IdeaStorm is more than just a surface effort at public relations. 

Product Passion is the Best Advertising

Companies shell out billions to ad agencies and various media platforms so their products and services are paraded before ... and trumpeted to ... as many consumer ears and eyeballs as possible.  But the web in general, and social networking in specific, prove that if something catches the fancy of someone, and he or she passes it on (think Digg, Reddit, etc.), and others are also impressed, then that something can spread like wildfire.  Some products are like a flashlight thrown into a pile of dry tenderbrush.  Others, a lighted match.   A creative ad does the throwing, but it does not determine whether the product itself will fire up consumers.      

A BusinessWeek article, called Burito Buzz - And So Few Ads, really caught my fancy today, and it's a great case in point about the power of Passion to propel a product or service.  Writer Michael Arndt spotlights Chipotle Mexican Grill, not that I needed a spotlight to know about this food paradise.  I've been a regular customer for several years, and I count myself among those Arndt writes about, a legion of love-struck fans whose word of mouth burrito babbling enable the company to spend far less than industry average on advertising. 

Trust me, if you haven't eaten at this joint, find one and try it.  Once you get over the shock of staring at a three pound burrito with leg-size circumference, you'll find yourself unable to speak during the meal.  Why?  Because your mouth will be too full, as you'll be unable to stop cramming shark-size bite after bite of the freshest, most mouth-watering fast food you can imagine. For about six bucks, you get a monster burrito, and can eat it in a clean, mod atomosphere with toe tapping background music.

We want to share great products and places with people.  We get excited when a company 'gets it', both with a product and the way they deliver that product.  Maybe it's because so few seem to really get it, and by sharing our experience we want to reward a company with more and more business.  That way, they'll stay open forever.  Because I can't imagine life without my Chipotle veggie bowl, with the black beans, juicy green peppers, grilled onions, the mild, medium AND hot sauces ... and a gentle sprinkling of cheese and lettuce.  A meal at Chipotle is one of the products I'm passionate about.  Others include my Subaru Outback, Mayorga Coffee, Kashi Bars and Coke Zero.   What products are you in love with???

Instant Technology Relief

That's the promise from Support.com, which just added two new services targeting frustrated digital camera and/or MP3 player users.  "We've heard too many stories of consumers with hundreds of photos sitting idle on the digital camera, or music CDs stacked up and waiting to be loaded on a digital music player," says Anthony Rodio, chief marketing officer for Support.com. "Getting the most enjoyment, value and use out of digital cameras and MP3 players goes well beyond hooking them up to a computer."   I think I hear some Amens out there. 

   

I'm not a technical illiterate, but I've found myself on numerous occasions (getting both a MacBook and an HP laptop to talk to my wireless router for one, finessing a  printer/fax/copier/scanner/dishwasher into the network family another) confounded to the point of machine violence by what should be a simple-to-solve bump in the road.  Instruction manuals/DVDs and "Easy Set-up" sheets for anything computer-related, seem to be the product of too much geek ... and too little average/end-user/consumer in mind. 

I have not used Support.com's services, but I'm impressed by the site's simplicity and and up front, reasonable pricing.  Fees for phone or internet-connect diagnosis and resolution range from $29 to $99, and many will jump at the chance to interact with "friendly, U.S. based, highly trained Solutions Engineers".  For the record, I'm not anti-outsourcing, and I have nothing against someone in New Delhi who earns a living trying to solve technology nightmares.  I spent two sessions with Cisco-owned Linksys tech support (wireless router issue), and each time I was talking to a real, albiet 'out of country' techie within a minute of dialing. And although I did have to burn extra concentration cells filling in accent gaps, I came away from both experiences A) with my problem solved  B) with my dignity intact, and C) impressed with their patience, friendliness, and training. 

Think of Support.com in the same terms as Geeks On Call, without the geek actually showing up at your door, and with what looks like a lighter hit to your wallet.  Might be worth a try next time you find yourself tangled in CAT5, confounded by Ethernets, and wondering why you can't just take the dang thing out of the box, plug it in, and enjoy all the promises of this new digital age.

Cisco, Social Networking, and What Everyone's Missing

Lots of interesting chatter about networking equipment giant Cisco Systems buying its way into the hot-and-happening social networking club.  The New York Times is reporting that Cisco is absorbing social network website Tribe.net.  Om Malik is an unimpressed club bouncer in his GigaOM post, calling a Cisco/Tribe pairing "as odd as the relationship between Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton, aka Fembot and the Freak. That didn’t work out, and neither will this." 

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch says "there's bound to be a few snickers around the valley as Cisco dips its toes in this new business."  Snicker away, but follow the point about Cisco hoping to help its clients build their own social networks, using technology from Tribe and Five Across, acquired by Cisco two weeks ago.  Arrington wisely notes Reuters' announcement that it's planning to launch its own version of MySpace this year, targeting fund managers, traders and analysts instead of teenagers.

Then you have the recently re-launched Ning, led by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, offering tools for any person or company or organization to set up a community site.  Andreessen tells the Times that existing social networks are "fantastic", but they "put users in a straightjacket".  That's where Ning comes in, freeing up average Joes in a quest to make social networks as ubiquitous as regular websites. 

Defining The Wal-Mart Customer

Are you a Brand Aspirational ... a Price Sensitive Affluent ... or a Value Price Shopper?  Wal-Mart's chief marketing and merchandising officers tell the New York Times that after a year of intense research, the world's largest retailer and king of discounts sees a majority of its 200 million customers belonging to one of these three groups.

The new categories are significant, notes today's article, "because for the first time, Wal-Mart thinks it finally understands not just how people shop at its stores, but why they shop the way they do."  The company hopes new insights into shopper motivation will reverse lackluster sales trends at its 4000 stores. 

Brand Aspirational shoppers have light wallets, but don't let that stop their quest for brand names.  Price Sensitive Affluents have fat wallets, but love a good deal.  Value Price shoppers are thankful to have a wallet, and consider price the main issue.  The common factor:  people want deals, but not cheap goods.  Wal-Mart's new strategy will focus on five 'power' product categories (food, entertainment, apparel, home goods, pharmacy), offering more big names for not so big bucks. 

The company considers merchandise and marketing its biggest priority in 2007.  Other efforts at improvement already in play include a store remodeling campaign, and changing how employees are scheduled, to beef up customer service during busy times of the day.  I hope Wal-Mart puts more energy and effort into those two areas.  I'm not a Wal-Mart basher ... I think the massive, politically-driven campaign to smear the company relies on distorted facts and double standards.  But the bottom line will not improve on the back of low prices and quality merchandise alone.  If I'm consistently navigating dirty, lifeless, cramped aisles ... and stand in one of three long lines while the other thirteen lie dormant, I'm going to pass on Sam Walton's baby and drive the extra miles to the nearest Target.