Using demos to plan your ad buy?

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Taste test

Mad Men, Episode 8. 

Who invented the personal computer?

Xerox Alto, with mouse and Rolodex, early seventies.

Who came up with the first personal computer?  The first graphic interface?  The first computer mouse?  The first ethernet network?  Was it Steve Jobs?  Bill Gates?  A team of  faceless Japanese engineers?  No, it was formerly Rochester, NY based Xerox Corporation.

In the sixties and seventies Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Company (PARC) invented just about everything you can imagine. That includes what was recognized as the first true PC – The Xerox Alto… This sucker had everything, Ethernet networking, graphical user interface, icons, bit mapping, scalable type, a mouse, the world’s first laser printer, hot and cold running water, a back scratcher (OK, just kidding on the last two.)

So why didn't we ever see Altos in every business, school, house, tent and mud hut aound the globe, like the more successful "micro computers?" we've come to know and love?  George Parker explains:

It was years ahead of its time. So what did Xerox management do with it? Not a god damn thing. They were too busy counting the money rolling in every time someone used a 914, ‘cos you couldn’t buy one, you had to lease it and pay for every copy you made. The thing was a gold mine for years until the patents finally ran out.

As everyone knows, the main beneficiary of all the incredible stuff coming out of PARC was Steve Jobs, ‘cos in its infinite wisdom, Xerox gave the King of Apple a conducted tour of PARC, showing him everything they were up to, even watching him as he made notes of everything he was shown. Within months he had hired away some of PARCS top talent and instituted a program that resulted in the Lisa, the forerunner of the Mac, which I worked on before most of you were born!

The "914" was an early Xerox office copy machine, which generated so much revenue that Xerox saw no reason to exploit its later invention.  Why, that sounds just like that another Rochester industrial giant, now bankrupt, which invented digital photography - Eastman Kodak.

Mad Men: Season 5

Mad Men's long delayed Season 5 returns to AMC with a 2 hour special on Sunday, March 25, at 9:00 eastern.  NCAA basketball scheduling may conflict, so be sure to set your DVR.

Microsoft axes marketers

Former Microsoft marketers pursue other options

Old time software giant Microsoft Corporation is loosing some of its core corporate business to hip young competitors like Google and Apple.  What can the industry dinosaur, which spent $13.9 billion on sales and marketing in fiscal 2011, do to stop the bleeding?  Cut the marketing department, of course.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is making plans for a companywide restructuring of its marketing operations, a move that may include hundreds of job cuts, according to people familiar with the matter...

Changes may include shifting some of the more technical marketing workers to engineering groups, cutting employees who don’t have needed skills or whose work is duplicated by other workers, and revamping how marketing groups are organized and where they fit into the rest of the company, the people said.

In what some might see as a desperate attempt to stay relevant,  the smokestack-era coding shop is looking to play some diaper dandies.

A former Microsoft exec tells us Microsoft had made it a criterion of their annual review to recruit a set number of students straight out of college. He reckons Microsoft last year let go the bottom 10 to 20 per cent of its staff, kept the top 20 per cent and made life "uncomfortable" for the 60 per cent in between. "The plan is to hire in people fresh out of college to get new talent and make Microsoft cool again. It's pretty broad within the company," he says.

Blue screen of death, perhaps?  Bold added.

Marketers target fast growing economy...

 

...in Brazil.

Brazil's fast-growing economy and emerging middle class are placing it squarely in the sights of global marketers, who are now starting to tap into Brazilians' appetite for online video to introduce products and drive awareness of their brands. 

Brazilians are crazy for YouTube, and American consumer products marketers are happy to oblige.

Visa is among the marketers to be making a conspicuous push with online video in Brazil. It launched a campaign earlier this month for Visa Platinum with a series of travel videos shot in Europe and used YouTube's TrueView ad formats -- where an advertiser only pays if a user opts to watch the video -- to seed them on the web and jump-start organic viewership. The first two videos generated about 3 million views, with six left to launch.

According to Luis Cassio de Oliveira, director of marketing for Visa do Brasil, there are plans in the works for four more campaigns with YouTube in 2012: one pegged to the Olympics and three tied to the idea of "conversion," or convincing customers of the merits of using credit cards, geared toward Brazil's growing "C Class" middle class.

As broadband spreads to a larger part of the Brazilian population, YouTube ad spending will increase.  At one time, marketers could serve a growing middle class right here in the USA.

For bonus points:  Can you locate a tambourine player in the Brasil 66 video at the top of this post?

SDL buys remains of Alterian

British software house SDL has finalized its takeover of floundering marketing services provider Alterian.  The acquisition follows the closing of Alterian's Chicago office last month. 

Sucessful entrepreneur Al Swearengen  offers some advice to the 75 former Alterian Chicago staffers:

Alterian lays off 75

As Obama's "Recovery Summer" enters its second winter, we learn that consumer marketing services provider Alterian will close its Chicago office.  As a result, 75 consumer marketing professionals will join the army of the unemployed.

The London-based CRM company's restructuring follows a poor fiscal 2011. Alterian's revenue decreased from $53.3 million in the 2010 fiscal year, which ended March 31 of that year, to $52 million in the 2011 fiscal year.

As part of the restructuring plan, Alterian will make “substantial cuts to its operational cost base and initiated reviews of revenue recognition, and goodwill and other intangible assets,” the company said in an Oct. 27 investor statement. The company identified $14.3 million in operating cost cuts.

Part of the cost-savings plan includes reducing the staff from 450 employees worldwide to approximately 260, the company said in the statement. The company would not confirm whether the Chicago office closing is part of this strategy.

Alterian is currently in takeover talks with  British software shop SDL.  As the world's consumer markets flounder, the market analytics function is becoming just another generic web application.

Get ready for clown cars

We bet most Americans have no idea what the new Obama CAFE standards will mean in the real world.  In order to double US automakers' average fuel economy, we'll be paying more for the privilege of driving three cylinder cars.

Carmakers have spent the past few years aggressively downsizing engines throughout their lineups to meet increasingly tight fuel-economy regulations. But with the sole exception of the three-cylinder Smart Fortwo, four cylinders is as low as carmakers have expected Americans to go. Three-cylinders are common in Europe but have been scorned in the U.S., where they’re tainted by association with claptrap cars like the mousy Geo Metro. Now, with fuel-economy standards set to rise as high as 56.2 mph by 2025, Ford is planning to bring the three-cylinder to the American mainstream.

These roller skates will provide a challenge to the marketing deaprtments and ad agencies who will be asked to convince Mr. and Mrs. America that they want the micro-rides.  Fortunately, Iowahawk's crack creative team recently gave a helping hand to those puzzled corporate communications MBAs: