Dress Shoes for Tall Jewish Men to Wear on Tuesdays

Ask any good marketing person and they’ll tell you one of the most important skills in all of marketing is being able to identify the needs/desires of your target market. Before TIVO came about I always thought it was interesting to see what commercials aired during various TV shows. It lets you know who is most likely to be watching that particular TV show. As a guy you know you’re in trouble when the TV show you’re watching has a lot of women-oriented ads.

The place where I see the most ads (by far) is watching football games, though I don’t exactly understand who advertisers think are really watching football games. Based on the commercials I see on a regular basis the typical football-watching person is a guy who drinks a ton of cheap beer, drives a pick-up truck, eats at fast-food restaurants, needs financial advice and buys lots of IBM Blade Servers. Ads in football games have changed over the years, but the one constant has been the beer commercials. A rough, back-of-the-napkin calculation makes me believe that in my lifetime (just from watching NFL football games) I’ve seen about 5 whole days worth of beer commercials (figure 4 commercials/quarter = ~8 min/game x 2 games/week x 20 weeks/season x 22 seasons of football = ~5 days). Ironically I don’t drink any of the beers that are advertised in games (though I do enjoy those Coors Light ads. I want more Denny Green and Jim Mora!).

Just like any good marketing campaign, retail stores also do a lot of work in identifying their target customer base. Look at Target and Wal-Mart or Whole Foods and Safeway. My personal all-time favorite retail store (from a market segmentation standpoint) is Japanese Weekend Maternity Wear (which is right next to Ben and Jerry’s in Santana Row if you have any desire to patronize them). I’ve always liked to imagine what the conversation to select a target market went like. I bet it was something like this:

Person A: I think we should focus our new store on clothing for pregnant women
Person B: Hmmmm, that’s good idea, but it’s already a crowded space. We need to further segment our target market.
Person A: What if we focused on pregnant women who were Japanese? That’s a highly targeted and unique segment of the population.
Person B: Yeah, that’s true, but I still think it’s too broad. There are literally millions of Japanese women, and many of them get pregnant. We should segment this further.
Person A: Ok, you’re right. What if we focused solely on clothing they wear on the weekends?
Person B: So we’d focus on selling clothing that pregnant Japanese women would want to wear of the weekends?
Person A: Right
Person B: Brilliant!

Every time I pass by the store I think of the Simpson’s episode where George H.W. Bush moves in across the street. In the beginning of the episode the whole neighborhood is having a garage sale. In preparation for the garage sale Marge finds a jean jacket in the attic that Homer had made that says “Disco Stu” on it. She asks who Disco Stu is and Homer explains that he was writing “Disco Stud”, but ran out of space. The joke is completed later in the episode when we first meet the character (who has subsequently appeared in many episodes) aptly named Disco Stu. His friend advises him that he should buy that jacket, to which Disco Stu replies, “Disco Stu doesn’t advertise.” We are left to wonder what the odds are that Homer would actually have a potential customer with that exact name, but who still is uninterested in purchasing the jacket.

In the interests of full disclosure here's the real reason for the name of the store. Turns out "Japanese Weekend" is the name of a dance routine the founder created. I'll stick with my interpretation though. I like it more.

Worst Product Idea for 2007

The Comic Book Store owner from The Simpson's might be tempted to call Palm's new "smart phone companion" the Foleo the "worst product ever". That may be going too far. Worst product of 2007 seems sufficient. Why on Earth anyone would purchase this is beyond me. The Foleo connects wirelessly to your Treo so that you can use a keyboard, have a larger screen and view attachments and emails. Hmmmmm. This sounds familiar. Almost LIKE MY LAPTOP! It'd be one thing if virtually every person who carried a Treo didn't own a laptop and need to carry it around for work. However I'm guessing that cross section is above 95%. Laptops can connect to WiFi and other networks w/ optional cards. They can also EDIT attachments. The whole point of a smart phone is that you don't need your laptop. If I have my laptop out why am I using my BlackBerry (while we're on the subject the Treo is so much worse than the BlackBerry -- just had to throw that in there)? I'm on my BlackBerry mostly when taking out a laptop is inconveniet. Not to mention with the advent of a 3G, HSDPA and EVDO cards that plug into laptops the idea that you'd use you phone as a connection for a laptop like device is absurd. Even more absurd is that it's too big to carry by itself. I'd have to carry in a briefcase right next to my laptop! Seriously, who is going to buy this @ $500? Who would buy this @ $200? I'd actually pay money to not carry this.

Looking at this product reminded me of the famous Seinfeld routine about the Superman Halloween costume that he wore as a kid. Seinfeld recalls that there was a warning on the packaging that stated "do not attempt to fly wearing the Superman costume". He then says, "I'd like to meet the child dumb enough to think that they could fly wearing the Superman costume but smart enough to check for a warning label." I'm sure it's the same kid who would grow up and buy a Foleo.

It's the Little Differences

I'm on the road this week in Europe and as I sat through various stages of the travel process I started thinking of Lou's comment in "22 Short Films About Springfield" (the Pulp Fiction spoof episode on "The Simpsons" -- mainly it's the little things that make the difference (in the episode he's comparing McDonalds to Krusty Burger, I pasted a transcript below in case you don't remember it or never saw it courtesy these guys).

Anyways here are some "little differences" that made me wish I was back in the US and A:

When I landed in Frankfurt I had to make a connection through to Munich. For those of you who've ever flown through Frankfurt you're aware that it's not a simple change, the biggest pain is that you have to go back through security. In Germany (and in all airports in Europe that I've ever been to) they don't have a ramps/tables (or whatever you would call it) in front of the X-Ray machines to lay out your bin/luggage and put your stuff in it while you're waiting for the person in the front of the line. They only have table space for what amounts to one suitcase worth. This may seem insignificant, but the net effect is that each person has to wait until they get to the front of the line to take out their laptop, remove their coat and find their quart zip lock (called "zip-top" here) resulting in a much longer wait. You have to wonder though, I'm sure lots of the Europeans have been to the US. You'd think at least one of them must have noticed that the line moves faster there because they have the tables laid out. There must be some reason that all of Europe is refusing to put tables in front of the X-Ray machines, but for the life of me I don't know what it is.

The next little difference (and this one is over-reported, but I couldn't resist) is the whole situation w/ non-alcoholic drinks in Europe. For starters, no one here seems to like anything cold. Even something out of the fridge seems warm to me. If you ask for ice they give you two measly cubes. I have to explicitly state that I want an entire glass of ice (and then explain further that I'm American) to get a substantial amount of ice. I wonder how the practice evolved that Europeans don't like ice and Americans want tons of it. To make matters worse of course they're incredibly stingy with soda (or "pop" as some of you would call it). I always thought this stuff was cheap, but here's beer is cheaper (although that's a little difference I could easily get use to. The beer in the US doesn't hold a candle to Central European beers). Of course the concept of free refills is completely foreign here, and at fast food restaurants they're careful to mark a fill line on the cups that doesn't even fill the cup! To further confuse me though (back on the ice thing), Europeans do put ice in the one place where I hate ice -- juice! Every time I get breakfast here I get OJ with ice in it. Why would you serve me "pure" coca-cola, but then put ice in orange juice? That doesn't make any sense. Of course, the juice here is much worse than in the US (though that does make sense -- we have Florida close by), so I end up not having a lot of it.

The last little difference that I'll bring up today (this post is getting to long) is how Europeans will stand up while the plane is still taxing to get their bags and form a line at the door before the seatbelt light has gone off. This I don't have a problem with at all (more efficient for me, and if they get hurt it's their decision), I'm just amused by the hypocrisy of it (at least from the German standpoint). Germans have to be the most conscientious (anal?) country I've ever seen when it comes to following rules (which makes most things pretty efficient here I must say). For example, when I was in Berlin last year people refused to cross the street unless the "walk" light was illuminated (one woman wasn't paying attention and followed me halfway across the street when it said "don't want". When she looked up and realized what she'd done she scurried back to where she started to wait for a light to tell her she could walk). I just thought if you're going to follow the lights on the streets, you'd listen to the flight attendants on the plane.

Scene from 22 Short Films About Springfield
Lou: Y'know I went to the McDonalds in uh Shelbyville the other day.
Wiggum: The McWhat?
Lou: Uh, the McDonalds restaraunt. I never heard of it either but they have over 2000 locations in this State alone.
Eddie: Hmm. Must have sprung up overnight.
Lou: You know the funniest thing though? It's the little differences.
Wiggum: Example
Lou: Well at McDonalds you can buy a Krusty Burger with cheese, right, but, they don't call it a Krusty Burger with cheese.
Wiggum: Get out.. well what do they call it?
Lou: A Quarter Pounder with cheese.
Wiggum: A Quarter Pounder with cheese? Well I can picture the cheese, but... uh. Do they have 'Krusty Partially Gelagnated Non Dairy Gum Based Beverages'?
Lou: MmmHmm, they call them "Shakes".