Millenium Marketer

Zipcar, a web-based car rental company, went public on Thursday, and the company valuation crossed the $1B mark!

Although Zipcar is not quite making a profit, I like their business model. I was a member last year for about 6 months, and used it several times during that time period.

So, what’s so different about Zipcar?

1) Membership system
As a member, you get an all-inclusive per hour rental. The membership includes gas, insurance, rental, so basically everything when you need to get from point A to point B. There is no additional insurance, no necessary add-ons, no extra frills. Dead simple. You pay per hour, and that’s it.

To contrast this, I’ll share one of my personal experiences as an example. Last time I rented a car (in Europe), I booked and pre-paid a week-long car rental online. Little did I know! When I returned the car, I got a receipt that listed many other surcharges and fees that doubled the original cost of the rental! And that was without the insurance…

2) Web-based system
Zipcar’s cars are parked in various random locations, and you find them out through the web. Once the car is reserved, you just show up, swipe your card and start driving. You don’t talk to anyone. There’s no one around. It’s that simple.

Now, imagine the typical car rental agency, with offices and a private parking lot in an urban setting, where real estate is priced at a premium. They usually have a private gate, where a clerk lets you through. The guy at the counter shows you a combination of 26 different cost options for insurance and gadgets. Any value added? No, and in addition, there is a high real estate cost that is tagged on to the price of your rental ticket.

***

Zipcar started out in college campuses, where the density of potential drivers is high, and people don’t necessarily have a car. At Stanford, I suppose they were received like celebrities on the red carpet, as Stanford strongly supports alternative commutes than car. Those who take the train, then have to go run a quick errand off-campus can easily just pick up one of those Zipcars.

Then Zipcars started appearing in dense urban areas, e.g. SF / NYC, where drivers don’t necessarily want to own a car. At this point, it seems like their members are strong converts to the Zipcar business model, and that number is growing. Although they may face competition from the older companies such as Avis or Enterprise, the membership model may help them retain more customers.

Overall, I think they have an interesting model. It’s not a business travel rental car company. It’s about letting people drive without having to own and maintain a car. In an urban setting, it’s perfect. No need to find a parking spot or rent a garage spot.

As Zipcar will increase their presence, they may be able to convert more people to adopt their model. I personally stopped using it some time ago, because 1) cars weren’t close enough; I would have to drive to the nearest zipcar, so 2) I didn’t want to pay for membership if I could only seldom use it.

Looking forward, their low-cost structure may help them move past their competitors. Who knows, we may even see the Netflix /Blockbuster story repeat itself again with Zipcar…

Your opinion?

Contributed by Dany

You can laugh, if you see this, and wonder if I think this is the answer to the world’s demand, and any marketer’s problems, but actually it’s just the beginning.
I had to play a guessing game with my manager last night before leaving work.
It’s called Guess the Population. What’s the size of Tokyo? (10 million metropolitan) The size of Japan? (128 million) The size of US? (316 million or twice the size of Japan). I have to admit I had forgotten a lot of those numbers and did not play this game very well, despite the numerous places I have been and numerous people I have met.

Said the manager, “Being a good quant is about understanding populations, when you know the population size, you can estimate the market size.”

I talk a lot about the trends of certain products, often times in the tablet, mobile and hardware device market. But I haven’t said much about how big these markets really are in concrete numbers. It’s even tougher to put those numbers into a context that is understandable, so let’s put this into practice.
So, in the coming weeks, I’ll bring you on a virtual tour of the globe, offering a few key stats on the different places throw in a bit of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. We’ll have some fun.

About the chart itself, if you were to exclude Martians, the world’s population is close to 7 billion. That’s twice the size of population than it was 50 years ago.
That’s a lot of people with pains and needs. That’s market potential, only a percentage of those people own a technology device, which leaves many more who will buy one later, or those who own who will buy again in the future.

The more I look at Facebook recently, the more I see baby pictures. And when I say baby pictures, I mean newborn sons and daughters of friends who are newly parents. I browse these pictures with great interest and can see myself as a doting aunt, showering presents, organic cotton blankets, BPA free sippy cups, baby carriers or other baby things that are en vogue.

Even so, to see myself as parent is an anxious vision, a possible threat to my career and personal growth. Am I alone in this worry, I wondered. Right now, simply balancing work, writing, friends, family is difficult, more seems impossible.

I wanted to find out how others have approached work life balance with children so I took this scenario to a jury of skilled careerists: What would negatively impact your personal brand, if anything, should you choose to have children?

There was a gentle scolding for thinking about prioritizing career over children, and was reminded that children can be negatively branded too if exposed to workaholic parents: “Worrying about your personal brand while raising children causes me to question your sense of priorities.” Miri, a mother of two boys, said that it doesn’t negatively impact career, but it does change things a whole lot, “depending on the decisions you make.”

I also liked this idea from Ashley Feader, who says, “Your personal brand should reflect your values and your life as a whole – not just work.” I agree with this wholeheartedly because it is important that perception from others does not dictate how a person lives his/her life.

Even so, Raquel Elle Bell, CEO of 23 Degrees Branding, reflected my fears the best: “If I walk into a board room pregnant with a bunch of executives, usually all men, will they take me seriously?…I also wonder if people will take me seriously in being driven in my business if my focus is not 100% on building my company.”

Even now in 2011, there is a looming worry about males in the office, while politically speaking, they’d have to be understanding, you just can’t know how it impacts you in terms of missed opportunities or their perceptions. Because work and home life are still somewhat considered separate, talks at the watercooler are mostly about work or the weather, a pregnant woman in the office can do the unthinkable just by standing there, remind others that there exists a gray line between work in the office and caring for family at home.

Clearly Raquel and I, we’re not alone in this fear, according to a blog post in the Wall Street Journal. A study by McKinsey & Co. says women are less likely to believe they have opportunity to advance the more children that they have.

Disclaimer: this chart was an attempt to give you a visual, but without knowing the details of the McKinsey study, we don’t want to jump to too many conclusions

One of the reasons women could feel this way is somewhat tied to the gender gap in salary pay, because employers are more likely to perceive women as holding two shifts (work and children) and thus deserve less pay. At the same time, there were past trends during the recession indicating that there were more stay at home dads, because women could be paid slightly less than their male counterparts, and save companies money. Certainly there must be other factors at play? Would you agree/disagree that the study holds any weight at all?

As always, if you have an opinion on this topic, feel free to comment about the subject, better visuals, or more. If you have children, how has your career been impacted? And if you don’t have children, what are your hopes or fears about that coveted work-life balance?

I went to a sushi restaurant tonight. Not just any sushi restaurant, but a sushi restaurant where I had gotten a really good deal for $40 off. In fact, because we love sushi, we had bought two coupons. Unfortunately for us, tomorrow is the last day that the deal is valid and we had procrastinated, so we will be losing an opportunity on using the second deal.

Having waited until the last minute, we were competing with many other Living Social coupon customers. In fact, we could not even make a reservation because they were booked up with reservations from other Living Social fans. Not to mention the long line at the door.

The host looked very harried as he tried to balance fulfilling pre-made reservations with drop ins waiting at the door. The staff was stretched thin, and making $40 less per party. Is that a good deal for them? Questionable as to whether they are making any profit off of this venture.

So, if there is anyone that really benefits the most out of these deals, it’s probably the deal making company. If people are by default lazy, they’ll pay for their coupons and then maybe never redeem them. Unless, you just wait until the last minute to compete with other coupon buyers!

Do you buy coupons from Groupon, Daily Deals, LivingSocial or others? Are there deals you regret buying or regret that you did not redeem sooner? What are they?

What is it like in your city?
I live in Silicon Valley and it is a little bit crazy. I don’t know if there are other places like this in the world, because my other point of reference is Wales where people end the day at 4 or 5 and go straight to the pub. I know they are nothing like this. But then Hong Kong and Tokyo are a bit crazy too, and not like this. Silicon Valley’s word is Geeky. There are girl geeks here too.

Silicon Valley is like a mad scientist’s haven, everyone here is obsessed with creating or funding a new innovation or providing a service (PR, consulting, accounting, coffee houses, entrepreneur launchpads) that is the oil to keep innovation engine running.  There are engineers who spend their days dreaming of owning their own start-ups, lots of  emerging companies who want to make it big. It’s the only place I know where is possible to meet entrepreneurs as young as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, or even younger, like Mark Levie at Box.net. If you’re not working in these companies, you’re writing about them in VentureBeat, TechCrunch or ValleyWag.

We have a ton of venture capital companies here: Sequoia Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, GRP Ventures, Elevation Ventures (where Bono of U2 is a Managing Director). It’s so real that I have shaken hands with Kawasaki once at a movie theater event, met wild eyed Levie briefly, and yes, worked at hi-tech PR firm supporting an emerging VC funding start-up. I have friends who own tech start-ups, dodged the Google IPO or have experienced a start-up acquisition. It’s that real.

Housing prices can go as far as the millions, in my area, the average housing price is $2,343, 246.  Renting is cheaper than buying, a concept that profoundly confuses my Taiwanese family abroad.

It’s practically Darwinian the way we are filtering out folks who aren’t necessarily interested in this innovation madness and all this blinding brilliance. To stand out, it appears that you have to either attend Stanford to shortly quit like Page and Brin, get an MBA, learn a technical skill like Photoshop or javascript, OR tweet like mad  @SocialMediaClub.

New products start with E, like the WD e-Book or i as in iPod and iPhone.

It’s the only place I know where people will turn down an impromptu invitation to dinner because they are on leave from Google to work their side hustle, or promise to teach you to be rich. Unless, your obsession IS food and you’re cooking the latest celebrity chef dinner.

If you live in Silicon Valley, is there something else you would add?

Is it like this elsewhere?  What drives the engine of young professionals in your city?

I saw this on the GetSatisfaction blog. Some of the headlines are non-sensical (in an attempt to be funny) but unfortunately they don’t accurately describe the data below it, so I’ve pointed out a few things for you here.

• One-third of us are likely to create or contribute content to a social network online.
• 9 out of 10 will own a technology device.
• 21% or 1 in 5 are likely to purchase things online.
• In addition, Gen Y is likely to desire a connect to a brand, rather than only buy from brands they recognize.

The last point intrigues me the most. Gen Y will buy from brands that they have a personal and authentic connection. I say, absolutely right! You’ll want to use social media to talk to us about the things we care about, and not about your brand per se.

Case in point: Kristen (on my Brazen Careerist network) said in a conversation that she would only get a tattoo of the Ironman logo if she finished a triathlon. That’s interesting, because that Ironman brand would have a very personal meaning to her. I have another friend that will only buy artisanal, small producer brands because she likes the feeling of contributing to her local economy (think cheese from local Marin county or farmer’s market, etc.). Me, I love Anthropologie for communicating who I aspire to be, a free-spirt, casual, international and creative person :o)

Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love writes that every person has one single word that they live by.
I had to remind myself today that my word is not “marketer.” A little bit shocking given the name of this blog, but marketer suggests a professional or expert.
Have you ever had this experience? You’re so entrenched with reading social media blogs and are so on-trend and steeped in marketing theory, you forget to connect with your actual customers.
At least that’s what was happening to me. So I had to tell myself this.

News flash, ace, your audience is not other professional marketers, it’s people who want to be marketers.

Identifying your Influencers is a Catch Phrase
A couple of years ago, when social media was still growing, I read a lot of catchy buzz phrases through the blogosphere.
Listen to the conversation.
Identify your “influencers.”
Engage or die.
Target your key words and measure your traffic.

I have to say the messages are changing a bit, and I don’t deny that they are true in their own way. The problem is that many bloggers (including myself) have gotten in the habit of repeating these catch phrases. I’ve gotten a bit tired of experts standing on their soap box, because if you are to follow their steps, you may not get your desired result. (A while back, I took some of Chris Brogan‘s advice about blog ideas way too literally. I managed to take some pictures of my neighborhood and post them on Flickr. In hindsight it is funny to me because none of those posts resulted in any of the conversations I desired to initiate.) The point is I started following instead of reaching out to others in diverse contexts.

And, Reciprocation in “Being Social” is Not Equal
Look at Freakonomics on Twitter, how many people do you see Freaknomics following?

The All Stars are few, and the chances that I will collaborate with THEM, are very slim. I may shake hands with an All Start Social Media talking head. It will satisfy that “can I have your autograph, I’m Starstruck” impulse. Still, these are people with already busy lives, families and many other fans to tend to, and I am not writing this blog to impress them.

There are so many more of the RIGHT people who want to have their 5 minutes of fame. So many more who would love to have their say, and who want to talk back.

Truth Is, Real Connections Happen in your Target Community
I met a blogger last week. His name is Will, and he is on a blogger network called Brazen Careerist. He has an awesome blog called Peoplegogy and has been very successful at bringing in guest writers. It is pretty cool, you can see people coming from different backgrounds talking about their lives. He likes to write, and clearly has an interest in social media as a means. I don’t think he pays much attention to the talking heads, the All Stars. He focuses on his audience.

What do you think? Is connecting with your audience hard or easy? How do you initiate conversations about the things they value and want to talk about?

When choosing the name of your brand, it’s important that you know its character better than your consumers, especially in a world that is increasingly international. In business, a brand can make or break your business, no matter how good the product. (As was the case with the Chevy Nova in Latin America, as “No Va” means “No go.” Who would want to buy a car like that?)

That said, as being very much Taiwanese American, I couldn’t help but rant when I came across a few words in Mandarin while watching an episode of Top Chef.
Often, when a chef is talking about their experience in the competition, their name will come up on screen with their restaurant name.
Angelo Sosa, Xie Xie.

[I should also couch this in terms of while I can absolutely respect Mr Sosa for trying to cook and win. I respect the trials and travails of what it takes to make food that people love. This is not a personal analysis or a stab at Sosa, but rather an attempt at constructive criticism of his brand. I have never tried the food, so no complaints there.]

The bottom line:
1) Create intentional positive associations for your brand.
2) Do your research: if you are going to stray away from what you know, make sure you become absolutely wrapped up in the character of the brand you want to create.
3) Be real: the story that you make can and should in many ways embody its owners.
Continue reading

Recently, I’ve been writing more for TriplePundit. It’s forcing me to think really critically about business and sustainability. I love the feeling of talking to people about the subjects that matter, too.

If you want to find my old articles you can go to the Triple Pundit website and click my name. but before that check out this article I wrote about Starbucks.

I wrote about Starbucks just a few weeks ago, questioning whether America’s best loved coffeehouse is greenwashing. My opinion is a little more middle of the road now.

“We’re aggressively pursuing strategies that address this problem to mitigate and reduce the impact of our global environmental footprint,” Hanna tells TriplePundit, (because climate change poses a threat to their coffee business.) While I admire Starbucks for being so vocal about what they are doing…no one can deny that Starbucks is the 800 pound gorilla in the room…The Cup Summit was a fascinating case study with lots of academic talk about “systems thinking,” but let’s get serious: a company like Starbucks with so much power has huge potential to do better.

4/29/2010 UPDATE: The article was featured on the Starbucks Gossip blog. One comment on the subject: “Just from purely financial and stocking point of view this is a waste, How often in the summer do you call around to find Iced Venti cups?”
Also interesting: some baristas point out that baristas are also partly responsible for this waste because their free drinks on breaks are also in paper and plastic.

3P got 24 tweets on this particular subject. That’s a lot of eyeballs and I’m humbled to be part of such a network.

Also: interesting perspective FOR Starbucks on a blog about accountability and profitability.

Well, I’ve been out of commission for a while now, so to speak. I got married which quite frankly threw me off schedule in the blogging world.

Well, while I’ve been away and letting the weeds grow on my blog, I’ve been learning a few important lessons about starting an entrepreneurial venture such as hosting your own wedding. As an aside, it’s almost a logistical impossibility to be both the main organizer of the event and the star of the show, so that’s really where the stress comes in. At some point, you just have to let go and allow the work to be delegated elsewhere. (This is also true for managers of small companies, I believe–you can’t be the one doing all the work and running the operations of the business).

On a market level, though, there is one mantra that wedding vendors want you to believe: Vendors know best and they can influence market prices (in other words, drive UP prices) as they please, because the consumer is most likely not going to protest.

It’s too “risky” to pay less, the vendors will say, on the most important day of your life. It’s a special occasion, a once in a lifetime event, pay them what they deserve to make it your special day. (I call this fear marketing, which marketers shouldn’t be allowed to do. The same goes for other everyday products, such as acne: “if you don’t buy our product, you’re going to suffer with acne for the rest of your life!”) It’s inducing fear into you that your wedding will a) be a disaster or b) be the most amazing time in your life because the vendors have ensured that it would be so.

One word for you: ridiculous. First of all, as a consumer, your first defense against this fear mechanism is research. Especially in a recession, I think you can find that there are many creative solutions to the “traditional” wedding vendor. In the end, it’s the people who are there with you that matter more than the decor.

And negotiate where you can, because they will create all sorts of conditions that lean on the side of creating a false monopoly or oligopoly (that is, where all their circle of friends in the wedding business agree on a set price and then relay that false information to you about how much it will really cost!)

On the marketing side, fear marketing is unethical. In fact, it’s not really marketing. It’s a hard sell, and the same sell a real estate agent might make when they say a house on the market will be swiped up fast by someone else, so you better get it now.

My dealings with the wedding industry got me thinking about how people fell for Madoff and for the subprime mortgage scheme. (Not to mention that neither is good for the overall well-being of the community that participates in the economy.)

Maybe, we just have become lazy about thinking critically. There are so many possibilities rather than what the market wants to tell you is the ONLY possibility. Is this because people have become accustomed to following the flock in exchange for more comfort, convenience or some other type of instant gratification? I think it might be, but you can certainly disagree.

What are your thoughts? Who is to blame? The consumer? The marketer?