Tag: marketing

Living by Joe Wilcox
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Do It, Dunkin’

Some adversarial-marketing opportunities are just too tasty to ignore. Are you listening, Dunkin’? Starbucks has presented its rival grand opportunity to tap into longstanding stereotypes about cops and donuts in a positive way. Hey, Dunkin’, put potential slogans into a dozen box and eat up the green-and-white logo demon by giving it a bigger boot-in-the-butt than it gave some of Arizona’s finest.

The Tempe Officer’s Association took to Twitter to explain the incident I allude to: “On Independence Day, six Tempe police officers stopped by the Starbucks at Scottsdale Road and McKellips for coffee. The officers paid for their drinks and stood together having a cup of coffee before their long 4th of July shift. They were approached by a barista, who knew one of the officers by name, because he is a regular at that location. The barista said that a customer ‘did not feel safe’ because of the police presence. The barista asked the officers to move out of the customer’s line of sight or to leave. Disappointed, the officers did in fact leave. This treatment of public safety workers could not be more disheartening”.

For sure!

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Mobility by Joe Wilcox
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Google’s Newest Pixel Phone Color: Not White

Perhaps you know that the newest Google Phones come in “Not Pink”, as a third color choice. I discovered a fourth today when receiving a Pixel 3 XL “Just Black” instead of the smaller Pixel 3 “Clearly White”. Three support calls—spanning more than two hours—later, Google Store specialists struggled to resolve the order error. In their database, my “Not White” XL shows up as a retail model, based on the IMEI, which in no way resembles the number for the device supposedly shipped (and, of course, wasn’t). I did receive Pixel Stand, as expected, so that’s something right.

There is an absurdity about Google making me prove the error by providing photos of the shipping label, phone, and product box because they’re “vital for our investigation”. I obliged about the label, because the correct order number is on it. Request for phone pic came later, and to that I balked. The IMEI should identify model and color, but the image is necessary to truly confirm color is black—or in Joe’s new parlance “Not White”—a store shipping specialist explained. That’s not my problem. Truth will be confirmed when the phone is received, right? Wrong. 

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Living by Joe Wilcox
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LaCroix Sticker Shock Gives Me Nose Bleeds

What a difference branding makes for sale-pricing. Before LaCroix became a posh, bubbly brand for environmentally-minded, organic-obsessed, uncompromising-to-spend-less Whole Foods sundry shoppers, my wife and I regularly purchased the seltzer. We preferred the no-flavor water for its effervescence and low-sodium content. I remember when, going back just five years, the local Ralph’s sold cases of 24 12-oz cans for $4.99 during summer months.

But now that LaCroix is the Apple of bubbly waters, those cans cost lots more. Today, in the same Ralph’s the exact quantity deeply discounted is twice as much—and that’s helluva savings when one case of eight typically sells for what I used to pay for 24. 

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Apple by Joe Wilcox
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The Most Natural User Interface is You

It’s April Fools’ Day, and I’m not joking. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun, by comparing and contrasting Apple old with Apple new. 🙂 Last night I posted to Betanews: “What 1984 Macintosh marketing reveals about iPad,” which is based in part on my April 2006 post “When Magazines Mattered,” about Apple buying all the ad pages—39 of them—in the Newsweek 1984 election issue. Magazines mattered to Apple for promoting Macintosh during its launch year. Now iPad matters to magazines, for which some publishers hope to turnaround sagging readership (and ad revenues). Ha, who’s paying whom now?

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Living by Joe Wilcox
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What Will Be the Returns?

Today’s New York Times column “An iPhone Changed My Life (Briefly)” hits at the device’s fundamental problem: Hype. There was too much of it—and not really from Apple—that may have over-raised many people’s expectations. The issue Michelle Slatalla raises is one of returns. Will she return her iPhone? She writes, “I have started thinking seriously about returning the $599 phone, despite a 10 percent restocking fee. It hasn’t really changed my life in the ways I’d hoped”.

But she may have started with overly unrealistic expectations, which the runaway hype helped foster. The name includes “phone” for a reason. Apple didn’t promise a device that would cure cancer or feed the starving. 

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