Nothing Good Can Come From Pepsi's New Sizes

I was outraged the other day when I saw the following display by Pepsi.  That's right, they decided to start 

selling 1.5-Liter bottles of soda for $1.00. I know it's a rarity these days to find an entire 2-Liter bottle for $1.00, but I can I am sure you will have an even tougher time finding a sale for Pepsi products at lower prices. This whole campaign makes me angry for a few reasons.

The first being that it insults consumer intelligence. You can buy a 2-Liter for $1.25 or a 1.5-Liter for $1.00. It's not a big price difference and yet, after selling millions, it is. Of course we all know that the next step will be doing away with 2-Liters all together and suddenly a 1.5-Liter will be the same price as a 2-Liter. 

Of course, Pepsi may try to explain this away as an attempt to convince consumers to drink less soda. It is after all, so terribly bad for you. The problem I see with this, is that the new design that comes with the new size looks an awful lot like a bottle you'd just pick up and drink out of. It's slim, easy to hold and not too big. It just looks like an over-sized 24oz. plastic bottle, so I doubt anyone is going to consider drinking less soda over this new size. So what is Pepsi's motivation behind bringing out a new size soda bottle?
According to this blog about the new sizes offered by Pepsi (and Coke) the idea is to allow those who are strapped for cash more options to purchase their beverages.
 
I'll leave the comments about that up to you!

Why Pandora Shouldn't Worry About Spotify... Yet

Image courtesy of epicinfo.net.

As a frequent user of Pandora, I was excited to find an invitation to the new music service - Spotify. I started using Spotify earlier this week and found it to be a great mesh of iTunes and Pandora. I could find music and build lists similar to what I would do in iTunes or in the now defunct Winamp, but I didn't have to pay for a song just because I wanted to listen to it once.

I started off playing the suggested "USA" Spotify playlist. While most of the songs played, I had a few problems with songs that simply wouldn't load and wouldn't play, so I skipped over them. In addition, I then also had to go find new music. I was determined to stick with Spotify despite these small problems, until I added one whole album and only two of the songs in the list would play. I know of at least one other person who had this problem, so we'll see if it continues.

Beyond that, I thought Spotify had some great potential, once I took the time to build out an excellent playlist or the service becomes popular enough that I can just steal someone else's playlist. Until one or the other occurs, I've happily gone back to Pandora. Yes, Pandora, with it's sometimes crappy, but continually playing music, and it's creative advertising.

Spotify also has a problem in it's advertising model. I know it's early, but I spent two days looking at the same ad and I feel bad that my accidental click on the ad may have led someone to believe I cared about obtaining a kit used to roll ... well, legally it would be used for cigarettes.

So, while Spotify invites "are like gold," as the site claims, they still have some bugs to work out and the service is much more time consuming than the easy going Pandora. And still, while few people are a fan of ads, Pandora has done something special with their integration of their ads. Pandora's core audience, those busy professionals who don't have time to amass large playlists, will still be using Pandora.  Spotify will simply appeal to a younger audience, all of whom seem to have more time on their hands and a library-like index of music to pull from their heads. 

Foursquare Usage in Finger Lakes Wine Country

Recently we traveled to the Finger Lakes Wine Country for a weekend of wine tasting, car racing, and relaxing.  Of course during this time we checked in where we stopped using Foursquare and Facebook Places.  I really shouldn't of been to surprised to see that many of the wineries that I remembered from wine books and a from a previous visit were offering Foursquare specials.  The winery I remember most from this was Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards and their sangria wine slushies.  The prize for checkin, a sticker from the winery with purchase of a bottle of wine.  Great promotion Hazlitt, not only do you encourage people to checkin and buy, you give them a sticker to advertise your winery for you even more.  Other wineries offered free wine tasting with checkin, a free bowl of soup, or a $1 off a bottle of wine.  Great incentives for patrons of your business to advertise for you.

But quick suggestion with running FourSquare specials, also run the same special through other sites like Facebook Places.

Simple way to Improve Local Search Engine Optimization

Many people ask us how can they improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) without spending a lot of money and time.  Our most common answer to this problem is to create a Google Places Account for your business, but why stop at just Google, set up accounts on Yahoo! Local and Bing Business Portal. 

With a proper listing on these sites you will be able to improve local traffic to your website to gain business.  For most businesses doing this and following a few basic SEO strategies will help them become industry leaders in their local market. 

Thank You Teachers

Today is National Teacher Day, a day we are reminded to say thank you to the 3.2 million teachers in K-12 and 4 school personnel and higher education teachers across the country. 

Teachers create an excellent marketing demographic for many businesses.  Consider that in many areas the public school system is one of the largest employers in most counties across the country and provides an average salary of $50,000 a year.  Also, about 70% of teachers are female.  Large numbers of employees, a livable wage, and predominantly female, is this a demographic that your business wants to target? 

Many businesses like Barnes and Noble and Borders offered teachers discounts on children's books for the classroom, but I suggest going beyond that for business.  I suggest that you consider finding other ways to say Thank You to teachers beyond just providing discounts for the classroom.  Consider that teachers like many of us hate spending our own money on work, provide a deal for them in their personal lives.  Only thing you have to do is decide how to guerrilla market to get the teachers coming to your business by "thanking them" for all that they do.

Thank You to all the teachers who read this.

ThinkNear.com

I just read about a new mobile advertising group called ThinkNear that will promote flash deals similar to Groupon and Living Social are beginning to do.  There are two main differences with ThinkNear is that ThinkNear will inform cell phone users about deals through mobile ad networks and only during times when there is a need to attract customers to your business.  And the deals will change depending on how busy you are.  Watch the Youtube Commercial and let us know what you think of this idea for your business.

Think Before You Post!

I wish I could say this was an April Fools' joke, but it's not. 

Yesterday a video was posted online of an African elephant being shot and butchered.  The video starts out talking about how the elephants were damaging a crop field for the villagers, then shows darkness for a while until the elephants were spotlighted and shot in the night, after that pictures of the shooter with his trophy kill were shown. The video was concluded with locals skinning and butchering the elephant.  What made this online video so publicized?  The shooter was the CEO of GoDaddy.com and the locals butchering the elephant were wearing GoDaddy.com hats. 

While some people would feel that killing the elephants was necessary to protect the crops and that its good to use the food to feed the locals, many will not understand that stance.  African elephants are an endangered species, shooting animals at night is a form of poaching, and the CEO was pictured in many poses with his trophy kill.  Also, if you have a 43 million dollar company you can afford other ways to protect the crops from elephants without killing them. 

Many people are upset with GoDaddy.com for the decision to post this video online.  Online domain company NameCheap.com even set up a deal for people to switch their domain service from GoDaddy.com at a discounted rate and will donate a portion of the proceeds to Save the Elephants. 

Some companies love bad press and some do not.  Before you post things online, on blogs, or on other social media sites think about the possible consequences.  

 To see the video go here.