Unfortunately It’s taking me a while to put together my A Change In the Process articles. As it goes, I’ve gotten busy with job searching these days, so the site has fallen a little by the wayside, but expect a new article by the middle of next week. I’ll keep you posted.
Also, of interest on this Hallows Eve. Honda has a interesting ad campaign running right now for the Honda Fit. There’s online ads, television commercials, a video game, and the site. Kind of fun. Check it out:
I’ve been following the American Express Members Projects on my blog over the last few weeks, and it’s been quite the race. It’s kind of fun to watch and see what people are voting for, but now it’s down to the last 5 and there are only 6 days left to vote. Unfortunately if you aren’t an American Express member, you can’t vote in the last round. Still, I encourage you to take a look and cheer them on in your hearts and minds.
I was sent an email last night from one of the finalist, and I just thought I’d pass it on.
Because you’ve written about another organization nominated for the American Express Members Projects on your blog, Henry Phish, I would like to ask for your help. My organization, International Medical Corps focuses on feeding hungry children around the world, and we are very excited to have made the final 5 nominated projects out of 1,190 worthwhile projects. “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” is now eligible to receive up to $1.5 million to help feed hungry and malnourished children and we would be thrilled if you would help us. I’ve put together this blogger friendly news release explaining everything.
The purpose of the new site is about bringing a topical slant to how big business connects with the culture at large. The site is intended to grow and change over time, and my hope is to form a community there with both common and dissenting opinions.
The origin of the site owes a lot to the growth of this blog in the last few months, and I’m hoping to duplicate that success over their with a series of quick articles that lend themselves to discussion, with the focus of the site being somewhat larger than HenryPhish.
So let me know if you like it…or if you don’t…and we’ll see how it goes.
And commenting on the articles is greatly encouraged…you’ll be required to provide an email address and handle to post a comment, but as always, I don’t use the information except as part of site maintenance.
I read an article yesterday dealing with GM’s corporate restructuring plans in liu of the pending government loan program. According to GM President and Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson, the loans wouldn’t alter their current plans to restructure the company. The statement is noteworthy in that it brings up a point of argument that I see a lot on the message boards these days: will GM file Chapter 11?
While this site is not specifically intended to be a numbers site, by design, GM is a large company with over $136 billion dollars in assets. They are a Fortune Global 500 company and are ranked 5 on the short list: Fortune 500. That said, this company brings in a lot of money.
As it sits right now, GM has been restructuring the company for the last three years, with white collar layoffs, plant closings and downsizing, new product development initiatives, improved public relations strategy, foreign market expansion, and with the bid to sell Hummer, a $51 billion dollars loss leader in the last three years, they are showing a strong business sense and a forward looking plan.
Further, in the last year and a half, the company has made a great show of its efforts to open its books and establish greater consistency in its accounting practices. Specifically with the discontinuation of its Employee Discount Program, which made GM’s accounting standards less than stellar in the past. Steps such as these show them as a company of good faith, as well as highlight their attempts to get their house in order.
With the current industrial downtrend, they are losing over $4 billion dollars a quarter in operating costs; a lot of money. Compare that to 1.6 billion a quarter the year before and you see the difference.
A company this size, however, with multiple subsidiaries, has a lot of leeway in when and how they restructure. Assets can be moved around or sold. Processes can be consolidated. Loans can be taken out as well…though the recent failure of banks makes this more difficult.
The government loan program that is mentioned above is also a strong option. With the original intent of the loans being to incentive manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles 40% by the year 2020. The loans themselves were authorized in last year’s energy bill for $25 billion, but have not been funded yet. To that end, these loans will be available to all car companies as long as they meet certain stipulations, GM included, and should go a long way toward helping car companies navigate a difficult depression in the market.
That said, the purpose of Chapter 11 is to avoid paying creditors and to give the company some leeway to restructure their operations. If they’ve done their job correctly, and up till this point it looks like they have been, they should be able to continue their rebuilding process well into the end of 2009; just in time for the Chevy Cruze to be released in the US, some new technology, and hopefully a turnaround in the economy.
With management making better decisions and beginning to show results with their restructuring plan, it behooves investors to cut them some slack and give GM the time it requires to turn itself back to profitability in the next two to three years.
In conclusion, I’ll leave you with one last article to round out this series.
CNN last year posted a list of 2006’s dumbest business blunders.
Of note is number 4, GM’s make your own commercial contest as part of their Apprentice promotion in which participants created commercials with slogans such as: “Yesterday’s technology today” and “Global warming isn’t a pretty SUV ad - it’s a frightening reality.” While a good idea, on paper, online communities have a habit of revealing your faults if you give them the chance.
Other interesting moments are number 10, Comcast repairman falls asleep waiting for customer support…the owner of the house made a video…
Long story short, when your customers have complaints, it pays to listen. They probably have a point…and eventually these things come back to bite you in the ass.
So after all the hype around Google and Chrome in the last couple of weeks, I got to thinking about Microsoft, and how they were chalking up these days. The funny thing is, they really aren’t that exciting.
A couple weeks ago they bought Bloomberg for a bunch of money just so they could get their hands on Ciao.com, which is essentially one of a thousand sites set up to drive web traffic to other peoples sites…in this case retailers, but why did Microsoft require, what amounts to a billboard on the side of a concrete wall, in order to make their brand more visible? I already know who Microsoft is…in news and media this is just another tiny mark on their earnings board.
The Less is More Philosophy at Large
Microsoft over the years has relied on quantity over quality in regards to their brand. More is better has always been their slogan. It’s a Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer tradition that has worked well for them, but with other companies entering the marketplace, such as Google, Apple, Firefox, and Blackberry; each with better brand identities and a more focused business plan, Microsoft is failing to compete.
The Perfect Example of the Microsoft Strategy…think of this as being applied whole company.
The other day I watched a news program on CNET or CNN, I can’t remember which, advertising the newest version of the Windows Mobile platform. The guy from Microsoft that introduced the product seemed uncomfortable, and honestly the interviewer wasn’t giving him much of a chance to speak, so I really can’t blame him. However, the whole interview just demonstrates the lack of esteem that Microsoft products are held in these days.
In the world of cell phones for example, the products Microsoft presents lack the luster of products such as the Blackberry with it’s proprietary OS, or Apple, with it’s scaled down version of OS X. In the Blackberry, we have a product that is ergonomic and sensible, something that makes people want to pick it up and play with it. In the IPhone, we have something that has a little flair, but is still practical enough to use from the very first moment you pick it up. What I would compare Microsoft’s products too, and honestly their marketing in general, is that hunch back with the lazy eye from Young Frankenstein; you just keep looking at it, but that eye never goes away.
Most of their products are a little ugly. A little too techie maybe. Not organic enough. Not intuitive enough. Just something isn’t right about them. It just screams, stay away from me, I don’t want you. If I saw one on the counter next to one of the other two phones, I dare say it would probably scream at me if I picked it up.
Thinking back to the monopoly lawsuits Microsoft has gone through over the years, their branching across categories and industries, strong arm tactics, guerrilla warfare tactics and the like, their products mirror their corporate philosophy. In fact, it was the simple act of Bill Gates quitting as CEO and moving into a philanthropic organization that really gave Microsoft any sympathy in the media. Let’s face it, Bill Gates is the founder, and the face of Microsoft, and what he does dictates how the company is perceived.
The Current Face Of Microsoft
Microsoft is pretty well cemented in the workplace with products such as Windows Vista and their Office line. Their real world media empire is fairly secure as well. Companies such as Bloomberg help add to this content, but the company as a whole has an image issue, and all the synergy in the world won’t change that unless the leadership at the top takes the necessary steps to kick this company into gear.
Their brand has to change with the times, and become something that people want, not just require. Microsoft has the resources to do it, but it’s going to take a lot of blood sweat and tears to change a company culture that has long been mired in making the market come to them instead of making products for the market. It’s about time they recognized that competition is good for them…it promotes innovation…and they need some.
An interesting, albeit short, news piece about Googles ten year run to becoming the worlds leading search engine. The piece also covers growing issues such as monopoly concerns with their Yahoo deals, growing competition among rivals and the like.
Like I mentioned last week in The Search For Google Alternatives, with the release of Chrome web browser, as well as the Android mobile operating system, Google has positioned itself as the dominant brand on the internet, well ahead of past contenders such as Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, etc. According to one statistic posted on a Microsoft blog, Google currently makes up 70% of all web searches on the web. With the addition of Yahoo to their advertising stable, this statistic grows considerably. So essencially what the news piece is saying is that Google has become a vertical advertising monopoly.
To be honest, Google doesn’t really control the internet. I can go to any site I want regardless of weather Google wants me there or not. I can pick any advertisers I want on my site including Amazon, Google, and currently Yahoo, and the only stipulation I have is that they provide relevant advertising and hopefully…and I said hopefully…some money. The thing that makes their advertising better than others is brand recognition, since people can advertise through any service they so choose. Technically it’s up to individual sites to choose whom they use as advertising, and if Firefox or Microsoft came up with a better system of advertising then I’d use that. If Cuil.com decides one day to make an advertising program based on onomatopoeia and fuzzy logic, then I’ll use them too. As far as Yahoo plastering their site with Google ads, so be it, they have the authority to do so. The case itself is kind of crazy, and the fact that everyone loves to hear about the Google success story, and the fact they do well enough at matching ads to content, are the only two reasons they don’t have much competition.
Just remember how it works though…if they ever do become evil, there will be ten companies trying to pick up the slack…and six of them will be run by former Google employees, two from Linux Redhat, one from Firefox, and one from some guy in a bar that wrote his idea on a napkin and someone gave him a bunch of money for it. Googles going to be screwed.
A few of the products were quite ingenious, such as a Finding Dulcinea.com, where web editors actually search for the best web sites to visit in order to answer questions and only give you the best twenty results…it sort of reads like an encyclopedia of web browsing.
Another example is Cluuz.com which gives site searches based on symantics…it reads like a dictionary.
Finally, Cuil.com, which says it has access to more sites than Google. That may mean they turned some of the porn filters off, or it may mean that they are developing a site using fuzzy logic search rather than popularity metrics.
According to the site:
Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.
As it were, I’m just beginning to think that Google is nearing that place in their career where they may just be brushing up against outsider status.
With new companies beginning to find niches and developing ways to do things that are different than the preconceived, it’s only a matter of time before one or two make a break from the pack and try for a spot at the top.
Further, with Google breaking into markets such as Google Android, Google Doc, and Google Chrome, it’s not long to wait before we see an operating system with Googles name on it butting up against Windows and MacOS; vying for global supremacy. They have a few tickets for the big games now, and that’s just why Microsoft offed Netscape ten years ago.
I’m not saying that Google is Microsoft and that they’ve reached some pinnacle and are going to knock down anyone who climbs a bit too high. At this point they are noted for being the nicest kid on the playground, but it’s interesting to think that they might just have matured enough to be the elder statesman in the development community, and it should be fun to see how this progresses.
Here’s a neat ad depicting how Google Earth is expected to look by the year 2020. I have no doubt it will probably look a lot better than this…and will obviously work on my phone with my GPS.
In the last few years, Google has pushed further and further into not only the realms of the popular internet but into the realm of brick and mortar companies as well. Sites such as Google Earth, Google Book Search, and acquisitions such as Youtube and Google Finance show Google as a significant force in media, while software additions such as Android and their numerous investment activities such as financing geothermal energy research continue to demonstrate them as a forward thinking company that is just beginning to stretch out into the world.
In paraphrase of their founder, first we’ll figure out how to do it, then we’ll figure out how to make the money.
Google has made huge strides in creating innovative methods for content distribution, and with the advent of Google Android, the company has taken this innovation to the streets. While Microsoft and Apple remain significant competitors, the content Google provides puts them in a serious advantage position. As I’ve said before, people demand to be less constrained by physical limitations such as computers, and the Android software is a good step toward obtaining this goal for their customers.
For a brief history of the rise of Google, check out the video below:
