BusinessWeek‘s Michael Mandel has written several pieces highly pessimistic about consumer resilience. This week he assesses retail sales data, up 1.3% in the first quarter even after gas stations and fuel dealers are removed from the figures. (Earlier Murketing post musing on this topic here.) “Nothing,” he writes, seems to stop the U.S. consumer from spending.”
Then he makes an interesting point, something I didn’t know: Online sales from U.S.-based e-commerce sites made to foreign consumers count as part of U.S. retail sales.”
How big a deal is this? Well, e-commerce sales accounted for “roughly 36% of the increase in nonenergy retail sales” in Q1, he says. But there is apparently no data on how much of that came from abroad. Mandel offers anecdotal evidence from Blue Nile, an online jewelry seller: its sales are up 3.8% over last year and “all of that gain came from Internet sales customers outside the U.S.”
I doubt there’s enough of this sort of thing going on to cause a significant difference in overall retail sales, not enough at least to explain why consumer spending hasn’t collapsed — not yet at least — to the degree Mandel’s earlier writings have suggested they will. But he makes a good point: It would be better to have the details on this information, especially given that a weak dollar and other factors are likely to increase overseas sales.
I’ve linked to past entries in the Brand Autopsy series “Would you miss …?”
But this is the best one: Would you miss Dunder Mifflin? That’s the non-existent paper company in The Office.
Side note: Look at all this Dunder Mifflin merch!
The average American spent 127 hours of time with TV in May, up from 121 hours in May 2007.
That’s from an NYT story today about a Nielsen survey.
Can that be right? How do we do it? How can we be watching more TV?
The story says Nielsen found that 119 million Americans watched video online, spending an average of 2 hours and 19 minutes doing so in May. Not only that, an estimated 4.4 million Americans have video-ready mobile phones, and supposedly these people watch 3 hours and 15 minutes a month watching video on those phones.
What’s surprising to me at least isn’t the Web or mobile-phone figures, but that according to this study at least, somehow those numbers aren’t driving down the TV number.
I’m always at least a little skeptical of these things. But still — what does this mean for that “cognitive surplus” I’ve been hearing about?
The other day, Time writer Justin Fox (a colleague of mine at Fortune, once upon a time) had a piece titled “How To Succeed? Make Employees Happy.” It focuses on Whole Foods and The Container Store, which “pay better than most retailers, offer good benefits and entrust workers at all levels with sensitive financial data. The idea is that happy, empowered employees beget happy customers.” (Somewhat related note: July 30, 2006 Consumed on Wawa, the convenience store chain whose success is partly attributed to treating employees well.)
Maybe these companies are exceptions, but I think there’s some value in at least considering the idea that Fox is writing about. And also about the broader idea underneath it, which is one I’ve thought about a lot lately as I’ve been out and about talking to some manager-and-executive-type people about Buying In. That broader issue is that I think a lot of companies that sense the need for a change are way more focused on changing their image (via marketing) than in changing their business practices.
Recently I answered questions from readers of The Alpha Consumer, a blog associated with U.S. News & World Report, in connection with Buying In (which was picked as the first selection of the Alpha Consumer Book Club). Part one is here, and part two is here.
In relation to the above, I wanted to bring up one of the questions (and answers) here. The answer is a little long so I’ll leave it up to you if you want to follow on after the jump.
From Meg Marco of the Consumerist.com: As you point out in your book, consumers often join their identities and even sense of self with brands (such as with Apple). When consumers reach out with complaints to companies whose brands they’ve incorporated into their sense of self, they’re operating in a state of emotional pain. When a brand fails them, they seem to feel as if they’ve failed, too. What effect do you think this level of emotional participation has on a company’s customer service responsibilities? If companies are adept at selling “ideas about products,” do they need to work hard to maintain that special feeling once the honeymoon is over? Or has all the hard work been done?
This is a great question—and one I wish I would get more often from, say, marketers and business owners. Please continue…
Dedicated Murketing readers may recall my exasperation at Habitat for Humanity last year, when I wondered if all the money I donated to this organization was simply funneled directly into schemes and gimmicks related to asking me for money.
Well, on somewhat-related note, the L.A. Times looked into fundraising practices of nonprofits that hire for-profit telemarketing firms and the like and found:
hundreds of examples of charities that pocketed just a sliver of what commercial fundraisers collected in their names. Some didn’t get a dime or even lost money.
This by way of Dynamist, which points to a particularly embarrassing example not highlighted by LAT: “‘consumer advocates’ at Public Citizen … actually lost 6 percent on their telemarketing.”
Ugh.
Lately I’ve been asked repeatedly how, or whether, various ideas in Buying In (particularly the you-fill-in-the-blanks aspect of murketing) might apply to politics. Laura Miller, in a Salon essay called “Barack By The Books,” suggests that perhaps the answer yes.
Obama the symbol possesses the enviable quality that Walker calls “projectability,” and Obama himself has marveled that he often seems to be “a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” He is, in short, a cutting-edge brand. But if he does win the general election, what then? A brand can’t be president of the United States….
This is just a jumping-off point for Miller’s piece, which delves deeply into Obama’s own writing, and covers a lot of highly interesting territory. To see where she goes from there, check out the whole piece. It’s worthwhile.
On a sort-of related note: I wrote about Barackists on Murketing.com here, and in Consumed here.
This took me by surprise, but I guess it shouldn’t have: The latest Sublime Stitching artist collaborator is none other than The Black Apple. In other words: Black Apple embroidery patterns.
Sublime Stitching of course is Jenny Hart’s company — Hart being part of the Austin Craft Mafia, and a figure in Buying In. (Post-Buying In follow-up Q&A with Hart is here.)
And The Black Apple is Emily Martin, who dedicated readers will recall from the Handmade 2.0 article as (I think this is still true) the single most popular seller on Etsy.
Both Hart & Martin are very talented and very smart — and, if you don’t mind my saying so, incredibly nice. I did not know they were acquainted, but I think it’s great they’re working together; it makes a lot of sense.
Details here and here.
“Funky Party Time ,” J.D.
“Lagos City,” Asiko Rock Group
“Turntable Jazz ,” DJ ZedVantz
“Albert Goes West,” Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
“Amarillo Highway ,” Terry Allen
No Consumed this weekend, I had a week off from the column.
As for the five or six unfinished lines of thought I’ve started on Murketing in the last two weeks, I’m going to try very hard to follow up on all of it next week.
So it’s a holiday weekend and I’d just as soon not be sitting in front the computer at all. Nevertheless. In lieu of the usual rundown of dissent, critiques, and backlashes, I offer you this one image.
Have you ever seen that T-shirt, popular on several trend-blogs, that says Design Will Save The World?
Well, Frank-c doesn’t care for it: “I think it’s misleading and primarily flawed; it’s inaction cleverly disguised as action. If you want to save the world, start by saving what’s prevalent in it: people. Help them. Love them.”
On that actually-rather-upbeat notion: Have a good weekend.
[Thx to Shawn — though please note that if this entry ticks you off, he shares no blame.]
Eyecube wonders what I will make of this Converse ad site, and, turns out, I’m taking requests.
Well, up to a point. I only watched a little bit of the material in what seems to be a pretty extensive pile of Converse mini-movies. In a way, the content echoes the brand’s earlier strategy of getting fans to make ads on the brand’s behalf — but these seem pretty obviously to be pro jobs. The one I watched some of, Out Of Your League Girl, seemed, to be honest, pretty lame. I got bored really fast. But maybe the target demo will be into this.
Who is the target demo? Please continue…
So this seems like actual New You Can Use from the NYT: The TSA has “given the go-ahead for passengers to use newly designed carry-on bags that will let them pass through security without having to take their laptops out for the X-ray inspection.”
Luggage-makers Targus and Pathfinder are “rushing to produce the new ‘checkpoint friendly’ laptop cases,” supposedly available in a few months.
I can tell you right now that as a consumer, I’m extremely interested in this. And it’s gotta be a slam dunk for these companies, right? One thing I know about airport security lines is that there are a lot of people in them, many have laptops, and all look annoyed with the process.
I’m also interested in the backstory here in terms of whatever dance went on between the TSA and the luggage makers. The article indicates that the TSA issued a request for proposals back and March; 60 luggage-makers responded to; six ended up submitting prototypes.
I’ve found a bunch of news stories and blog posts, but no prototype images. Have you seen anything? I’m really curious. Among other things, this seems like it would be a really pretty satisfying design challenge to tackle, because the designers are really solving a pervasive problem. (Okay, okay, it’s not the LifeStraw — it’s an annoyance problem instead of a mortal one, but still.)
Part of the challenge is that the TSA specified the bags should have “self-evident features” that I guess will signal the X-ray friendliness to security workers. (As I understand it, the problem with current bags/cases is that somehow security workers have trouble seeing the laptop with the x-ray, and/or there’s a problem with all the other electronic gear that often gets stuffed into the same bag. I’ll be interested to see what “self-evident features” means, but it truly is crucial, because what I’m most skepitcal of here is: Will security workers know? In my experience, it doesn’t matter what the official rules are, what matters is what the security worker thinks the rules are. I remember the period when there were “checkpoint friendly” shoes being made, and explaining that to the security worker was a waste of time, the answer was simply: Take off your shoes. (Then after the shoe bomber thing it all became irrelevant, and now people even have to take off flip-flops, which is preposterous. Then again, flip-flops are preposterous.)
Anyway it sounds like there will be a slew of these bags in a variety of styles between now and the end of the year. Great design-marketplace smackdown. Should be fun to watch.
If you’ve seen an image of any of these bags, please let me know.
Sprint is offering to bribe YouTubers to include a particular phone in their online creations. First 1,000 people to do so get $20 and a chance to win $10,000. Not surprising.
Somewhat surprising: Sprint is bragging about it.
“Shamelessly plug the Samsung Instinct into your home movie … this summer, turn your loved ones into cash with blatant product placement,” a deep-voiced male narrator calls out to viewers. “It’s the greatest product placement home movie of all time.”
Via Commercial Alert.
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