Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

The “American” Way

The American way of life is an expression often used to explain the freedoms we experience and our country’s principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  It is often used to describe all that we hold sacred and perserving this way of life often quoted as a reason for the actions of our leaders and government.

Last Friday, American Airlines announced that it was seeking damages from Google for selling search terms that use or were related to its name.  Capitalism is definitely part of the American way and so is greed.  While I agree to a certain extent that companies shouldn’t be able to make money from the direct use of someone else’s trademark name, I do question whether companies should be allowed to hold (or trademark) names that are as generic as American Airlines.  Apparently there has been contradicting rulings in the past to buying search terms of trademark names.  There really needs to be some standard for generic company names and genericized brand names like Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aids. Until there is clarity and a landmark ruling on this topic, I guess its the “American Way” to keep fighting for a share of the profits.

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Yahoo! Search Marketing Has No Business Sense

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?

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Google as a CRM

Did you know that when you sign up for a Google service or account, their personalized search option is automatically turned on?  What is does is it keeps a history of your search queries in order better tailor future search results.  Their goal is to give you exactly what you want when you search for it.

If you step back a second, what Google really is becoming is one big online CRM (customer relationship managment software).  You, the customer, want to find out information.  Google’s product (its search results) is providing you with that information.  By keeping tabs on search history, Google is acting as a good sales rep who enters in all of his/her notes, correspondence, and sales about its clients.  By storing all this information, Google now has data to make better informed decisions and also enables them to create a product which truly meets the needs of its customers.  This data helps them manage their customers’ wants and the relationships it has with its customers.

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Say Goodbye to the PC as We Know It

It’s interesting to think how quickly something can get replaced.  If you look over the past twenty years or so, there are many examples of dominant technology that quickly faded away due to an emerging one.

Think about typewriters and word processors and how the PC eliminated that industry. 

Think about VHS and Betamax video cassettes and now how DVDs have revolutionized home videos.

Think about how tape cassettes then CDs and now MP3s/iTunes have become the de facto music standard.

But what’s next?  Is there something that we take for granted that we use everyday that quickly might be eliminated?  A couple examples come to mind:

• Say goodbye to the PC, Microsoft Windows, and MS Office - Who needs to purchase an operating system and business tools if you can get the same functionality from online versions.  Could the future be a box or terminal that merely provides access to the web?  Google certainly sees this and thus is providing more and more online applications and storage.  The quality and functionality is getting quite good as well.  If you haven’t already, check out Google Docs & Spreadsheets and other similiar online programs — you’ll see why Microsoft is scared and falling behind.
• Landline telephones - It’s amazing how many people have cell phones today.   I remember in my undergraduate days, very few people had one.  If you did own one, they were quite bulky and expensive.  People bought them for emergencies and the convenience of not having to use a pay phone.  You never thought of not having a phone at home.  If you had asked someone to name companies that made telephones you’d get names like Panasonic, Uniden, GE, etc.  They had a stranglehold on the home phone.  Today with today’s youth, you’d be hardpressed to find aided brand recognition for these companies and phones.  In several more years will children even know what a landline is?

The key for companies today is to anticipate what might become and not be today blinded by today.  Look at the kings of industries that seemingly overnight get overthrown.  Look at history and the many examples of great leaders, dynasties, countries, etc. who lose it all because they ignore the signs.  Don’t forget that change is inevitable.

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