John Winsor

The Personal Touch

Radar is situated just east of the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado. For many years, Starbucks was the closest place to get a cup of coffee. So, as the neighborhood has gotten more popular a couple of new coffee joints, Allison's and The Laughing Goat, have opened up. Both places have a distinctive local feel, where the owner is the barista, and have gotten a lot of support.

Well, one of my co-workers told me a great story the other day. He was walking out to get coffee at Allison's when he saw a guy starting to drive off with a Starbucks' coffee cup on top of his car. My fellow Radarite whistled at the guy who promptly thanked him and got out of the car to hand him a coupon to Starbucks.

It seems that instead of unintentionally forgetting the coffee cup it was an act in the effort to promote Starbucks.

Great brands, like Starbucks, take it to the street to stay in touch with their customers.

Co-Creation Rules!

Check out Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff's Change This Manifesto, entitled Co-Creation Rules! Great job, Johnnie and James. Keep inspiring the rest of us!

Have a Viral Christmas

OfficeMax gets in the holiday spirit with Elf Yourself, a brilliant example of the power of viral marketing.

The Power of the Package

When 74,000 people watch someone unbox a Playstation 3 and a blog exists called Unbox.it, featuring photos and videos of people opening new products, it reveals the power of package branding.

How much energy do you put into your product packaging? Would someone make a video of opening it and share it on YouTube?

The Future of Advertising?

Is this the future of advertising?

In Britain, the growth of Internet ads seems to be bringing down the amount of money spent in the overall advertising market as well. Growth in spending on advertising and marketing services is set to slow to 0.3 percent this year, according to Group M, after growth of 4.3 percent last year and 6.7 percent in 2004. To many ad executives, this makes sense: online ads are generally much cheaper.

Good Behavior?

Marketplace on American Public Radio has a nice little story on how behavioral economics is effecting finance. Here's what they have to say:

More and more hedge fund firms are using psychological theories to pick what they invest in. Amy Scott explains how "behavioral finance" works.

The story is worth a listen.

Is the SAV the new SUV?

As the SUV category cools down it's time for a new category. So, will the SAV (Sports Activity Vehicle) replace the SUV? While the name might be new, is the vehicle any different? Take BMW's X5.

The Downside of Outsourcing

I got a call last night to verify a credit card purchase from Visa. Visa has always been great to work with but I had an experience last night that effected the way I look at the Visa brand. When I returned the call a very nice women answered the phone and asked me to answer a series of multiple choice questions to verify my identity for the purchase. It was a big purchase and I was happy to see that Visa wanted to verify it. Yet, the problem was the Visa operator couldn't speak English well enough for me to understand the questions. I had to ask her to repeat the questions several times.

Maybe it's my own experience of once mis-answering a security question only to spend hours on the phone trying to correct my mistake that made me sensitive to the Visa operator's language skills. Yet, I had to wonder if Visa's outsourced operators literally couldn't speak my language, what other short-cuts had they taken in back room operations and what kind of security did my financial information really have.

A brands value resides in the mind of the customer and the value of Visa, in my mind, slid.

Hidden Costs

I was blown away when I read this quote in the New York Times:

This year, two nutritional scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rachel N. Close and Dale A. Schoeller, took a unique twist on the calculations to determine what “supersizing” a fast-food meal costs society. Paying 67 cents to supersize an order — 73 percent more calories for 17 percent more money — adds an average of 36 grams of adipose tissue. The future medical costs for that bargain would be $6.64 for an obese man and $3.46 for an obese woman. “The hidden financial costs associated with weight gain from upsizing a value meal may help convince people it is not a bargain,” Mr. Schoeller said.

It makes you think about the hidden costs in all of our activities, as consumers. For instance, the cost of violence in the Mid-East fueled by our appetite for oil in the United States. There's been a saying I've written about that strikes a cord with me, "Do Well by Doing Good." That could be tweaked to "Do Well by Using Less."

Demonstrating the Product

The Internet is changing the way products can show their stuff. I love this quote from the New York Times today: "We can start a conversation with the consumer,” said Doug Andersen, president of Triumph Boats in Durham. The future is a dialogue.