McDonald's Leverages Wi-Fi

In it's best marketing decision since Dick and Maurice McDonald put hamburgers on the menu and the Speedy Service System in place McDonald's has given America Free Wi-Fi at 11,500 of 14,000 locations ... an event equally rivaling America's first lunar landing in terms of being able to Socially Engineer or change consumer habits and practices.

McDonald's has long been the bastion of the very young (moms with kids) or the very old (on fixed incomes). It was all they can afford. Now McDonald's has become the McDonald's for "the rest of us." While the maxim CQCQ means that McDonald's will continue to consistently put out the same products, the same way, no matter where you are; free wi-fi access means it's now OK just to go there and hang out. So will you?

I stopped into a neighboring Starbucks. Six laptops paying for wi-fi access and one woman with a brand new laptop from the Best Buy next door desperately trying to log on (newbie). A gentleman delicately explained that you had to pay for the privledge here with AT&T, but the McDonald's down the street had it for free. So I had to pack up my MacBook and head down the street to see.

Yep. Same old crowd and not a laptop in sight. So I ordered a dollar McDouble, sat down and got to work while starting to observe. Within minutes the manager was out at a table (coincidence) with her charts obviously preparing for a meeting. A few minutes later the franchise owner walked in (guess I was right about the meeting - going over numbers). Beaming at me as he walked by came the question excitedly, "So how's the Wi-Fi working!?" "Excellent," I said wanting to assure the man he'd made a wise decision; or that he was lucky for having been tapped to offer free wi-fi. He proceeded with his meeting while I chilled for the next hour and a half.

Same old crowd. No laptops walked in the door, but hey! Guess I'm an early adapter this time around. Find out if McDonald's offers free wi-fi in your community. Go to McDonald's Wireless Connectivity and check it out. Nice move McDonald's. I'm lovin' it! And by the way, the ad in this post is made entirely of french fries. Courtesy of Leo Burnett?

Rave Praise for OraQuel!

Hi Martin,

This is fanatastic 12 years ago I was the Head of Marketing For Bayer Professional Dental product (now owned by Hereus Kulzer) we knew these facts then but advised people to chuck out toothbrushes etc etc. Your OraQuel products really address the problem straight on.

Your range and innovation sounds fantastic, where can we buy these products in the UK ? Are you looking for distribution here? Do heart specialists here know about the range?

Kind regards

Louise

On Corporate Creative Comas

Did you know that no one in the consumer packaged goods industry has launched a successful new product that's topped $319 million in sales (within the first year) in at least the last 30 years? I mention this particular number (for Frito-Lay's Baked Lays Potato Chips) because it is the least successful (#10) of the top 10 most successful new products of the past 57 years tracked by companies such as my own Calle & Company, IRI, NPD, ACNielsen and others.

So why do many consumer packaged goods companies miss the big ideas and consumer cultures? I mean companies like Miller Brewing, surfing upon the fame of post-High Life Lite Beer have not been able to internally develop another major brand since the introduction of Cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft - the number two brand behind Lite in their portfolio - and I assisted on the delivery of that one. And then there is Coca-Cola who can't come up with a big idea on its own to save its life. So they outsource all of their new products to mergers and acquisitions - way over paying for brands like Vitamin Water.

So here's a story called "The Smuggler" describing how easy it is for big companies to miss the big think.

A clever smuggler came to the border with a donkey. The donkey's back was heavily laden with straw. The official at the border was suspicious and pulled apart the man's bundles till there was straw all around, but not a valuable thing in the straw was found. "But I'm certain you're smuggling something," the official said, as the man crossed the border.

Now each day for ten years the man came to the border with a donkey. Although the official searched and searched the straw bundles on the donkey's back, he never could find anything valuable hidden in them.

Many years later, after the official had retired, he happened to meet that same smuggler in a marketplace and said, "Please tell me, I beg you. Tell me, what were you smuggling? Tell me, if you can."

"Donkeys," said the man.

Is This A BRIGHT IDEA?

Hi Everyone! My name is Martin Calle. I've invented a lot of successful consumer products including Baked Lays Potato Chips, Tylenol Gelcaps and Cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft. I've also turned around sleeping giant brands for companies like Procter & Gamble turning $300 million Folgers into a business worth $1.6 billion; I've also grown Pampers by $11 billion over the last 10 years. Now I've launched my own company to make ORAQUEL®. ( http://www.oraquel.com/ ) I invented the name, the concept, the formulas, the whole works. ORAQUEL® is "HEART SMART ORAL CARE" because ORAQUEL® stops "ORAL PLAQUE HEART ATTACK." That's right. The AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION has conducted studies showing that the plaque found in the arteries of 72% of heart attack victims is oral, not arterial plaque. The accumulation begins in childhood and culminates (or should I say “terminates”) when you are an adult. There are three products in the ORAQUEL® line. OraQuel® Oxygenating Toothbrush Cleaner - which "cleans toothbrushes better than water" to remove the plaque, tartar and gingivitis linked to coronary disease. And OraQuel® foams on contact to tell you it's working - an important visual reinforcement that you need to do this. There is also the fact that using OraQuel® causes children to brush their teeth 33% more often and 20% longer because they like to see it work (no parent or dentist has ever been able to accomplish that!) which is why THE GOOD HOUSEKEEPING INSTITUTE tapped OraQuel® as "THE BEST NEW PRODUCT" for "INNOVATION IN ORAL CARE" in 2004. I also manufacture OraQuelAC® After Care promoted to younger audiences passionate about tattoos, body adornment and body modification - they want to use the product to "prevent tongue piercing infections, keep their mouth clean and promote rapid healing"; and OraQuel Lypht®, "THE LIQUID TONGUE SCRAPER" to help those who gag on solid tongue scrapers. Hey! I was a skeptic too until I figured out that manufacturers actually sell enough tongue scrapers to keep them on the shelves at drug stores such as Rite-Aid, Walgreen's and CVS. My fourth product, LIQUID FLOSS® is also available now. Why did I pick oral care? Well, tobacco, alcohol and paper goods are the top three sellers in chain drug and grocery stores and their costs of entry are too high. The forth largest catergory is personal care or what used to be called health & beauty aids (H&BA). There, the top sellers are first shampoos and conditioners (of which there are too many) and oral care. The cost of entry in oral care is much lower and there are far fewer relevant competitors. The big guys like Colgate Total and P&G's Crest only focus on the five category attributes I defined for them years ago as to why we brush our teeth. (For cavity prevention, breath freshening, gum care, tartar control and whitening of course). Now I'm not big enough to compete against them so I had to find a different avenue and that route is called ORAQUEL®. Please try my products! Check out my web site http://www.oraquel.com/ - it's really different (at least when compared to every other dental and oral care site out there. Thanks!

General Motor's Cultural Autism and Intimacy-Deficiency Disorder

Is it any wonder that General Motors so dutifully displays it's intimacy-deficiency syndrome in ads for the Buick LaCrosse that claim IT is another reason for Lexus' relentless pursuit of perfection? Do you also find it laughingly unbelievable that Howie Long can schill for Chevy then throw in that in comparisons to Hondas Chevy doesn't make lawnmowers? Not to GM: When you are so far down a hole you have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom you don't go around parading your cultural autism: a complete disregard for the consumer's cultural intelligence. Socially awkward does not even begin to describe General Motor's turnaround face. Chevy's still called "the volume" brand with no hope of catching the brands that so better move consumer culture into and back out of their organization. General Motors was and is the kid in school everyone percieved to be an outcast. Mean yes. True? We'll, their the ones with the self-inflicted wounds. As GM sheds brands GM remains...completely delusional in the way it views itself.

I find the concept of Cultural Autism in business interesting. And with Google returning only 4,500 some odd results on the topic, it is not very well explored. With Grant McCracken's release of his new book, Chief Culture Officer, no book or subject could be more timely for GM.

I found this webcast on cultural autism. I hope it provides food for thought in your own business. Today human interaction has been reduced to text messages, Facebook pages, computer screens, and mindless television. Parents are merely chauffeurs for their children’s endless activities away from home. Neighbors are strangers on the other side of a high, strong fence. Many families don’t even share meals together. What is the price of this modern living? The price is deep loss -- of real connecting intimacy, of family cohesion, of social graces, of a sense of community. These are fading away into the distant memory of our collective psyche, replaced by sterile cultural autism (disregard for external reality), masquerading as genuine intimacy. We will be discussing the emotional deficiency disorder at the heart of our high-tech culture-- lack of deep, profound relating with one another.

Will the androids running GM ever feel real?

Move Over George Winston, Windam Hill. Make Room for Shannon Stephens.

Over at indie artist music site stereogum you'll not only find great free mp3 music downloads, you'll also find artsist Shannon Stephens and she's good. Really good. Like Carly Simon good. Like Carole King good. Like Joni Mitchell good. If you're in to artists like George Winston, especially his Autumn album and the entire Windam Hill record label Shannon Stephens is, was and forever will be one of your favorite artists. She's spent time in Holland, MI, like me. And I wonder if she's ever been to Pentwater? From The Breadwinner album on Asthmatic Kitty Records video by: Zack Bent additional support: Gala Bent featuring: Jillia Pessenda & Jim Bovino. Her release, In Summer In The Heat is what they say is to die for. Good stuff. Here it is. Courtesy of YouTube.

The World's Most Successful Marketer

He's not Bill Gates. He's not Steve Jobs. He doesn't even work for Procter & Gamble. But the world's most successful marketer thinks a lot like the executives at The Coca-Cola Company and Pepsi. The one thing these companies abhor is excess capacity. If you leave a bottler or fountain account with excess capacity your rival will rush in to fill it. And that's where the bulk of Coca-Cola and Pepsi's business lives. So sometime after WWII someone figured out that non-working housewives represented excess economic capacity. Potential wage earners that could, if nudged, dramatically increase the size of the US consumer economy. Ultimately, to migrate from a cash/gold standard based economy to one in which we lived on something yet introduced to be called "credit." Was the world's most successful marketer a politician, a staffer or a Madison Avenue guru? No one knows, but one thing's for sure. He or she was one smart cookie. In 1958 Diner's Club cards got a wobbly start then American Express checked into the market with a gold card that became the first green card - giving consumers permission, like a visa, to live beyond their means.

The tool? Slick positioning. The feminist movement. By mobilizing women out of the home children no longer had a strong family base. We called them latch key kids and consoled ourselves with advertising to women that said "I can bring home the bacon and cook it too." No. You couldn't. Divorce rates hit 50%. School performances dropped. Gangs rose. Families crumbled. Dual income families didn't raise..."families." Now we have single mothers. Things called alternative families. Made politically correct by children's shows such as Sesame Street. Worse. It's not right.

So who is the world's most successful marketer? Who is the man or woman responsible for Socially Engineering of the demise of American families and values? Who was it that could not leave well enough alone? Who was it who had to have America's excess capacity go to work (now, just to make ends meet)?

The world's most successful marketer brought on the financial crisis. The world's most successful marketer drove Wall Street to financial excess and put pressure on the short term gain. What did regular marketers do? They followed. They adapted to trends. They did not stand up and represent themselves. They bent. And helped the world's most successful marketer promote his or her evil. And so the world's most successful marketer launched a top-two box intent to purchase new product that brought America to its knees.

So who is the world's most successful marketer? Drop the blame on anyone you want here.