When Lance Armstrong signed up with Radio Shack for a new cycling team, it seemed like a match of convenience. Being a cycling fan that puts in the hours watching Versus, I’ve learned that there are only a few marketers that seem to care to advertise to our quirky US niche audience (not to mention that Ford considering dropping Mercury leaves a big hole in the ad line up!).

That said, this ad campaign that Radio Shack has created is about as fantastic as it gets on all levels.

First, Lance is on par with Peyton Manning in his ability to deliver a jovial and credible persona. Second, the whole idea that Lance is the lead of Mobility, Radio Shack’s main profit driver, connects the man, what he’s known for and the brand he’s pitching seamlessly.

On track.

Is it too late for the Detroit 3 to tune up its marketing strategy? In good times and bad, having Unique Selling Propositions (USP’s) are important part of maintaining and growing share. USP’s create a reason to talk to consumers via advertising. In bad times, brand campaigns for the sake of brand recognition die, but ad campaigns that talk about products that are different need to keep on talking.

Unit volume declines for US auto sales are off by so much that I’m not sure you can advertise a way out of it. The New York Times reports that unit volumes may be headed for a new low normal level which means people will be buying less cars, less often. What a company under stress does shows its character, and Ford is hinting that its stripes are in listening to its consumers and adding features that enhance the user experience. (See: the F-150)

While a frustrating time, and a reason for GM and Chrysler to pull back. Ford is running a solid F-150 advertising campaign that makes me think that it is the one of the D3 that will do better through the recovery than the others.

By comparison GM is further piercing the corporate veil of its brands, thus reducing each brand’s uniqueness.

GM will have to ask itself if GM will be its master brand for national advertising while Saturn, Buick, etc. will end up being sub-brands. Are they unique anymore? Once brands start getting presented on the same web page and TV screen, they start to be considered replaceable which doesn’t create uniqueness.

Back to Ford: On track and nice work.

A bit of optimism goes a long way in getting a new project off the ground. I guess folks that start businesses and new projects run at a 10 out of 10 on the optimism scale (which is hard in times like these).

The other part of writing up a plan is the need to see the world differently. While jargon doesn’t help anyone, complex problems need to be dialed down to short words/phrases to act as stand ins for larger concepts (e.g. freemium). BTW, that’s how we felt all along the development cycle with Invequity and PatentMonkey (now Patents.com).

Try following Umair’s presentation on consumers of digital media from a couple years back and you’ll see that the learning curve is steep, but once you’re up it you can see how he views the world. [Too bad Umair seems to want to write/consult more than do a start up or be a VC, cause he'd be great.]

Today, I got this note from the customer service team after buying some shoes:

Dear Cory,

Good news!

Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shipping and handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order. Your order will ship out Monday, April xx, 2008 and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!

Please note that this is being done at no additional cost to you. It is simply our way of saying thank you for being our customer…

If you’ve enjoyed your experience with us, please tell your friends and family about Zappos.com!

Thank you!

——————————–
Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team

Actually, I bought a couple things today, and Zappos.com was the one that went above and beyond. I know where I’ll go next time I need to buy something, that’s for sure.

Zappos.com turns a nice idea into great execution and as a result I’m blogging it up.

Update: The Zappos folks have a twitter page? This is quite a statement about ‘people representing the company’ and customers interacting with a retailer. Two words: forward thinking.

Sorting through StumbeUpon, I came across AdobeCards.com, impressive little interactive ad. Well done, Adobe, right when I thought no one was doing anything interesting. If only it were a value priced creative license because Photoshop is no cheap date.

Disney has been a master of using limited offers to foster demand. They did it with VHS, they did it again with with DVD’s by using limited offerings “from the vault”. We had to scour the market for a Pixar Toy Story 2 DVD which we paid a hefty premium for because it was no longer being produced.

Disney gets a double bang from limited offerings:

1. The offer has a floor downside if the promotion is not successful. This is especially important as any product launch has a cost, and having the ability to withdraw the message and offer allows Disney to pull back any combination of promotion, media vehicle and breadth of offer to the market as needed.

2. The offer creates a fixed quantity of supply, even when unlimited supply could be made available. Disney mastered the idea that restricting supply allowed them to keep desirable content from becoming overwhelmingly saturated. This has been part of the company’s marketing mystique worth learning.

Many web companies have adopted a similar practice of scarcity marketing (e.g. Google/start up Beta launches) which allow the same upside. Why don’t more product companies employ this model? With dropping capital costs and products becoming far more variable, I’d expect to see more soft launches of “first run” concepts to occur in the future.

Disney’s marketing control of ‘Montana’ franchise pays big [Knoxnews.com]

Nice job, Comcast, on providing a novel product offering + entertainment (instead of either one or the other, but not both).

Nokia has lined up a combo one-two-three-four punch in the past month in response:
1. Buys Navteq to not only be focused on GPS services, but rather to be squarely in the center of converging GPS/cellular services. The following battle over Tele Atlas has immediately proven just how valuable that deal was.
2. Announces in response to Google Android that it supports open devices and will work with the initiative.
3. In partnership with Verizon/Vodafone, Nokia endorses the emerging LTE standard that will be Verizon’s North American competitive response to AT&T with broad global support.
4. In partnership with Universal, adopts a new market model to offer unlimited access to Universal music for a year on its N-Series phones, which can be kept after the trial period.

Finally, much like Motorola that is trying to get focus on consumer interests (instead of technical ones), Nokia has transformed its organization and research on emerging trends and how it can be positioned to capitalize on them.

To do all of this and achieve 20% Operating Margins will be an impressive feat. Things will continue to change quickly and many of these initiatives have a long road of execution, but lining up a vision and the right assets to support them is the first few steps. Well played.

Let’s keep it up on more of the post parties, and bring this kind of power to the TV spots and you’re on to something. Could use a bit more flavor and zip in the copy, but the direction is far closer to the target.

Wheels on, with a couple of wheels still off.

Insanely high worldwide demand causing short supply on the Wii until 2009, admissions by video game producers that they are missing the boat and outstanding price/product proposition all add up to the propping up of a great brand. Good for you, Nintendo.