Yes!  A Northeast favorite is finally going to be available on the west side.  In a distribution deal with P&G, Dunkin’ Donuts packaged coffee will begin this month selling in Wal-Marts, Krogers, and CVS around the country.  This looks like a smart move for Dunkin’ Donuts who can create more brand awareness to the rest of the country as they begin to expand westward. 

Dunkin’ Donuts has great word-of mouth potential for the rest of the country.  If you are from the Northeast (like myself) you probably have heard and enjoyed a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and doughnut.  In fact, each time I go back home I make sure to visit a store and buy some packaged coffee to bring back with me.  It’s becomes a distinctly East Coast/West Coast conversation starter and can spur debates on which is better Dunkin Donuts or Krispy Kreme. 

I look forward to buying up the packaged coffee in my local store and hope that the donuts are not too far behind…mmm strawberry frosted with sprinkles.

For paid search campaigns (those ads on the top of your search engine results), a company would bid on keywords so that their ad would appear for those search results.  Active companies bid on multiple keywords and various concatenations of keywords.  Usually their portfolio of keywords they are bidding on are in the tens of thousands. 

Keyword portfolios are managed through paid search advertising arms of the various search engines, with the big 3 as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  In order to bid on keywords, one can either manually enter in each word and group them by campaigns or ad groups.  If you had a small search campaign with few words, it would be easy to do this online.  But, what if you had to create a campaign of 10,000 words?  Would this be feasible doing it one by one?  Of course not.  Google has an easy to use downloaded application where you can cut and paste keywords in bulk.  MSN is more personalized where you can email a spreadsheet to your account rep to upload.  Yahoo!, on the other hand, has a bulk import feature but it is not active for all customers.

Pause for a second and consider this.  Why in the world would Yahoo! disable this functionality for some customers?  They have a minimum monthly spend requirement before turning this feature on.  This to me makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever.  Yahoo! wants its advertisers to bid on as many keywords as possible.  The reason?  If you click on an ad, then the advertiser must pay Yahoo! for that click.  You would assume that Yahoo! would want its customers to be able to bid on as many keywords as possible and have as many ads out there as possible to get clicked on.

However if you are starting a new campaign from stratch, there is no way to meet the minimum monthly spend requirement to enable the bulk import feature.  So instead of having the ability to try and spend more on advertising, you are limited from the beginning.  I even called customer service to ask about the policy and was told there was nothing they could do about it.  I asked if I could pay a fee to have it activated.  Again, the answer was no.  The customer service rep admitted that she’s heard this time and time again from people calling in on the absurdity of it all. 

Yahoo! needs to stand back and examine its business practices.  While Yahoo! is a technology and content provider, they need to step into its advertisers shoes and realize who is paying the bills.  Google understands this and makes it extremely easy.  Any guesses to who has the majority of online ad revenue?

The New Chrysler has dubbed its new slogan as “Get Ready for the Next Hundred Years.”  It has brought back its old ‘Pentastar’ logo.  Following the outdated trend of bringing back the past to save the future, Chrysler is already one step behind.  The logo might have significance and recognition but is it the image the Chrysler really wants to promote?  I think most people in my generation view Chryslers as just another struggling American car company.  People equate German cars as performance, Japanese cars as quality, and American cars as has-beens.

On their website, Chrysler claims that they have always believed that they were the most customer-focused car company on planet.  They might believe it but obviously they haven’t delivered.  Sales show this.  Customer satisfaction surveys show this.  Awards and accolades show this.

It might be the New Chrysler but to me it looks like the same old thing.

Too often, you see work being done that is not quite up to par.  I believe in 3 mantras that will help facilitate success:

1. Do it well (the first time) – Put out high quality work from the beginning.  This will save you from wasting time fixing your mistake.  This will let you concentrate on continual improvements and thinking ahead versus always looking at fixing the past.
2. Be timely – There’s something to be said to providing something when someone wants it.  Also, if you are offering something that’s the same as everyone else, you’re already late.
3. Be authentic – If you try to be something you are not, people can see through it.  Don’t be the sleazy used car salesman.  Do your best and build up your reputation through honest hardwork.

These mantras can and should be applied to your daily work, future marketing campaigns, etc..  If you look at successful products in the marketplace today, do they satisfy these mantras?  I would guess that they all do.

One of my new favorite websites is Steepandcheap.com.  They are owned by Backcountry.com and their tagline is “One killer gear deal, one item at a time until it’s gone.”  Backcountry.com is an Internet retailer specializing in outdoor gear and apparel.  I love the concept of steepandcheap for 3 reasons:

1. Encouraging the “buy now” urge – By offering only 1 item at a time, the product sells pretty quickly.  There is a status bar showing the amount of product left which causes consumers to make decisions in a quicker timeframe. This leads to more impulse buying.
2. Reduction of clearance inventory – While Backcountry.com has an sister outlet site where it peddles its discountinued merchandise, product can often languish there unnoticed.  By offering an even further reduced price on steepandcheap.com, Backcountry is able to reduce its inventory a lot quicker for specific items.
3. Creating traffic – Since deals are continuous, meaning as soon as one deal is sold out another one is posted, there is a tendency to check the site multiple times during the day.  The traffic they receive could lead to another source of revenue through selling advertising space.  They already promote their other sites.  According to Alexa.com, steepandcheap.com is already ranked 21,538 for overall web traffic.