Humans behind the lights

Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke of the Lightmark Project create stunning images with long-exposure camera settings and hand-held lights. You've seen similar work in the recent Sprint branding campaign, which began with beautiful human-powered flashlight animation and came off the rails when computers took over the illumination.

Why does one design conceit work and the other fall flat? Illusion is stronger when you sense the humans that create it.

In case you missed it, Google just killed the portal

What if all those banner ads you see on web sites were little video screens, offering free TV programming that you really want to see?

Naughty, naughty Google just announced it will shake up the entire communications world this September by pushing free entertainment video instead of banner ads to hundreds of web sites as part of its AdSense network. Google will provide raucous humor clips by Seth MacFarlane, creator of TV's animated "Family Guy." The videos will include embedded ads, but the focus is on the entertainment with the ad being the trailing party.

Play this forward a few years and you may see the end of online portals altogether. Who needs ABC or iTunes or YouTube or Break.com or Hulu.com as an entry point, if personalized entertainment comes and finds you?

Photo: Joe5ho

Watching for market shifts

In our 30s we became infatuated with men's watches -- not really understanding the brand hierarchy, but feeling the pull of Patek Philippe on the high end, sometimes admiring Rolex (but knowing they were for old men), shelling out a few hundred for a Swiss Army with complications every few years, and finally settling on Breitling as an aspiration. A bit James Bond-ish, but more complex than the official Bond Omega.

It all culminated on a vacation trip at age 39, when we stumbled upon a jewelry store and began an hourlong flirtation with the young woman behind the counter (sweetie was shopping elsewhere). Italian, the woman was, and the way she presented watches led us to believe a key was being laid on the counter to a new, secret, exciting world of manhood. Every piece of titanium and crystal posed a question: Are you man enough to divine these movements?

But we walked out. Something tipped, more than the idea that a grand for a watch is way too much. We began to realize that watches may become a relic.

What happened? Cell phones, then smart phones, and now iPhones have moved us beyond watching time to connecting with photos and video and blogs and mobile text. The function of "what time is it?" has turned into a periphery, a tiny numeric display at the top right of your cell phone. We now expect our portable tools to do far more. If a watch is a knife -- even a beautiful blade -- we now need the Swiss Army model, complete with corkscrew and social media.

We're certain demand for wrist watches will continue, at least for a few decades aided by ads in the Wall Street Journal. But you can feel the shift. Market changes take time, but as SUVs are replaced by hydrogen cars, and newspapers disappear in favor of small internet screens, you have to wonder: How will the long shift of demand affect the products that you sell?

Photo: Envios

Now buy a house and get a blonde, too

Really, we can't make this up. Deven Trabosh of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is selling her house for $340,000 on eBay -- and if you pay an additional $500,000 "shipping fee," you get her too.

She tells the AP that it's all combining her hopes of selling a home and finding a mate. 500 guys, including an Italian wine taster, have expressed interest in the pay-for-marriage deal.

Which shows that (a) the internet is the perfect sorter for supply and demand, and (b) the world's oldest profession always has new twists.

John Deere saves a church

We admit. This choked us up. Brilliant video production, and John Deere, nice product placement.

Via Darryl.

Elvis teaches you the instant response

Our last few posts have featured unclothed women and erogenous fuzzy peaches, so in the spirit of fair play we now show you a young Elvis in tight leather.

Here's the point: Watch this crowd in the first instant that Joseph Hall walks on stage. They don't know if this Elvis impersonator is good, if he can dance, if he sings or screeches. But in that split second, you can feel the crowd make a flash judgment -- and tip toward a response.

Advertising is just like this. Most ad messages are developed laboriously by research, focus groups, past campaign analysis, creatives, math types with offers, and media planning. But it all must work in that first heartbeat. There is a miniscule flashpoint in which consumers decide yea or nay, move past this or digest it, turn the page or consider a response.

You have to catch the consumer in that instant. The message has to be simple and focused. The impression has to tip.

Sort of like a guy in black leather.

Philips' electronic tattoos

The body as an LED screen. Could happen.

Philips has launched a series of "design probes" that explore the merger of electronics and human form. Tattoos that grow or disappear based on touch. Jewelry that adheres to women's chests. Dresses filled with mood-shifting lights.

Unfortunately this video of teens embracing doesn’t show off the possibilities. Instead, Philips could have revealed how human-embedded electronics might revolutionize communication. Bank passcodes that light up (ink up?) when requested. User IDs for government access. Hand currency that shows current account balances. Mobile video screens that glow on your forearm. Health care monitors that ink up when blood pressure rises. Nikeplus mileage counters as you run.

But sexy young people unclothed? Well, the future might have that, too.

Found by Orange Element and Garret Ohm.

Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I'm 64?

A new PWC report shows a growing generational divide in how consumers use media. Digital and mobile distribution of "Entertainment and Media," or E&M, is expected to double from 5% of all communications in 2007 to 11% in 2012. However, this growth is driven mainly by young people. Consumers over age 50 are expected to sustain traditional media formats such as TV and radio.

A few other intriguing findings:

- Young people under age 25 account for 31% of total global population.
- However, the "youth share" is highest in many emerging markets. The under 25 set accounts for 43% of the population in Brazil and 50% in India.
- Thus digital and mobile formats may accelerate most quickly in emerging markets.
- In the U.S., the population appears headed for a split: Aging boomers who prefer traditional media are growing at 13%, but rapid growth in the under 25 crowd, especially among Hispanics and other non-Caucasians, will accelerate digital growth.

All of which creates a little cognitive dissonance in media planning. The over 50 crowd has the highest net worth and incomes. The under 25 crowd makes the most impulse purchases. Digital gets all the news, but traditional media is the path to the most money.

Your future media plan will need to address this generational divide.

Photo: Lara Jade

The truth about sexual obsession

About six years ago we got on a plane bound from Washington, D.C., to New York and settled in to a blue US Airways seat next to a consulting buddy. Our friend, Ed, tapped us on the elbow. “Look at that,” he said. We moved our eyes up slowly, a bit embarrassed that Ed was checking out a blonde, and then we realized the blonde he was checking was U.S. talk show host Katie Couric.

Katie looked pretty good. At least the back of her head did, which is all we caught as she slid into a front-row airline seat. Her hair had some sort of multifaceted, shimmering gleam, as if a dozen hair stylists had worked different layers of gold through it all at once.

Katie’s hair looked expensive.

She moved on to the evening news, where great ratings didn’t happen, and as the years passed we realized (a) we would never date Katie, because we were already married, and (b) a huge latent sexism exists in society if Katie couldn’t pull good ratings because the American public judges her on hair color and not smart journalism skills. In the end, guys on planes admired young hair, and people eating dinner wanted TV news from old men.

If the fact that we’re calling her “Katie” bothers you, congrats, you’re feeling the deep-rooted emotion of sexual response on some level -- an innate characteristic that humans all spend time trying to repress, or trying to stimulate, all while denying we are animals at heart. This thought occurs after a week in which national advertisers like J.C. Penney and Heinz caught flack for running/repudiating ads that showed teenagers stripping for sex and men kissing over kitchen counters. The sex-in-advertising thing that causes so much reaction is rooted in our hormonal foundation. To fight sexual prejudice -- the pre-judging of people based on their biological features -- is to battle a million years of evolution. Humans didn't survive without mating, so looking for mates is in our blood.

Today a friend we made on Twitter wrote,

"My sis just said that the hiring person for a job she applied to was concerned that the size of her breasts would be a 'distraction.' Srsly."

Whoa. We re-read it, and thought the appropriate response is to feel concerned for her sister. But of course, we also wondered about her sister's appearance.

And finally, we thought –- how clever. That writer on Twitter just boosted her own ratings by stimulating a response.

Photo: Fatman. (Hey, it's just a peach.)

T-Mobile tempts to lock you in

T-Mobile makes a customer entanglement play with a new campaign to provide unlimited home phone service for only $10 a month -- far below the $65 average cost for the typical U.S. consumer. Catch is, this deal is only for T-Mobile cell phone customers.

Nice maneuver. With AT&T courting new wireless subscribers as the only provider of the iPhone, and with mobile handsets getting sexier every year, sometimes the best offense is a good defense.

Poop-Freeze, the end of innovation

On Wednesday, June 25, 2008, U.S. economists finally admitted there is no remaining open market niche.

Noted by David Keifaber, Adfreak.

Orange County Register pushes editing to India. Readers yawn.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Orange County Register is trying to slash costs by outsourcing copy editing to India. We're sure English speakers in India will do a fine job with grammar and libel. And on a balance sheet, this probably frees up $300,000.

But beyond the numbers, think what this means -- an admission that local news has become a commodity, as readership plunges and publishers try to mask the numbers. Orange County, Calif., is one of the most affluent markets in the world; what does it mean if news can't be edited locally there?

1. Newspapers must be in extreme financial pain to seek editing half a globe away. Because editing takes more than spell-check; it also requires insight into the history of a local news market, the players, politicians, and past stories.

2. Unless local news coverage doesn't matter. In which case The Orange County Register becomes a shell for AP wire feeds.

3. And if the news inside a local paper really is just a wired commodity, then why bother?

To be fair, OC is outsourcing just some of the stories and layouts in a test. Be careful, OC. Slight changes in quality won't help in a world where many U.S. readers no longer want to read newsprint.

Photo: Thomas Hawk

Scott McClellan causes heartbreaking puzzlement

No political slam here. We know it's difficult to be grilled by the media. In a prior life we once had to defend energy commodity prices to irate consumer advocacy reporters, and you better believe it wasn't easy fielding every question.

So pity the White House reps trying to respond to the damning accusations in Scott McClellan's new book. They got a good playbook together, and the "puzzlement" word is a perfect response ... and then all the feeds on the internet coalesced to show how orchestrated the response really was.

That's the trouble with this transparency thing. It's getting harder for anyone to control the message. Via Andy.

J.C. Penney, you don't have to put on that red dress

Yes, it's whoops-we-really-didn't-mean-this-sexually-charged ad week. Now J.C. Penney sniffs it is outraged, outraged! that agency Saatchi may have somehow, on its own, created this spot and released it on YouTube without authorization. And somehow the unauthorized spot slipped into the 2008 International Advertising Festival at Cannes. And won an award.

J.C. Penney tells WSJ that the ad may have been filmed after hours by a producer who worked on regular Penney spots. You know ... with a full production crew, orchestrated lighting and professional teen actors.

We're going to have to start building a new line item into media plans, called Whoops Sorry About That Scandal But Hey Thanks for the PR. Via Steve Hall.

Update: Had to relink to a UK version of the video, it got pulled from YouTube. Oh, the denial continues!

Heinz men kiss, hold the mayo

Apparently in Britain Heinz Deli Mayo can turn any average "mum" into a great deli guy. Who gets kissed by dad going out the door. Which then sparks protests from TV viewers who don't get the ad. Which cause the ad to be passed all over the internet for commentary or cries of outrage.

All of which makes people talk a lot about Heinz mayo. Well played, by Heinz's new agency AMV BBDO.

Twitter now has a valuation: 72 cents per user

There’s a lot of chatter out there about what social networks are worth. But the reality is this: Twitter is worth less than a buck per user. Here's why.

Assumption 1: Value for social media will come from advertisers

Begin with a simple concept – you, dear reader, are not paying for social media, because you're used to reading stuff online for free, so advertisers must pick up the tab. The only money a social network will make, beyond angel investors, will come from marketers selling their wares through ads.

Twitter, with 1.97 million users, does not yet use advertising to draw revenue, but it could –- it already tests little helpful tips at the bottom of text messages, and those could easily be replaced by contextual ads with hyperlinks. For the sake of illustration, let's assume that eventually Twitter becomes a real business and needs real money to operate.

Money will come from advertisers. How much will they pay?

Assumption 2: Advertisers will support social media only until the break-even point

This is straightforward -- you would never logically spend $10,000 on advertising that generates only $9,000 in profit. This is also where many analysts lose track of the ball. Twitter, and social media and any bubble crazed tulip, is worth whatever people will pay ... but eventually the bubble bursts and the value falls back to a fundamental logic.

Advertisers who sponsor social media will do so only to the point where they break even; if results don't appear, advertisers quickly shift funds to other media. (See: current trends in newspaper and radio advertising.)

Assumption 3: Value of social media thus has a simple formula: ad profit tied back to users

The calculation goes like this.

SOCIAL MEDIA VALUE = maximum amount advertisers will spend

so,

MAX AD SPENDING = (number of users) * (responses) * (conversion rate to lead) * (close rate to sales) * (profit per sale).

Let's walk through the math with Twitter

The social texting site has 1.97 million users, who generate perhaps 71 billion impressions each year (100 texts a day per user). No wonder the poor system keeps crashing.

Counting impressions leads to a logical fallacy, since not every communication is actually seen by, or imprinted on, a user. So the logic must begin with the number of users.

A. Start with 1.97 million Twitter users
B. Assume that 10% of these will respond to ads in a given year (perhaps each user is exposed to 100 ad campaigns, and the average response for each campaign is 0.10%, which would work out to 10% total response of the user base)
C. That's 197,000 responses to ads per year.
D. Now, calculate an 8% conversion rate (respondents who click to a web site and then pursue further) and a 30% close rate (percent who finally purchase)
E. Twitter users thus generate 4,728 sales per year
F. Now, assume the average profit per sale is $100
G. That's $472,800 per year in profits driven by advertising -- the logical maximum advertisers will spend on Twitter ads
H. Now, let's be generous and assume Twitter users have a three-year lifespan before moving on to the next social-media craze.

Conclusion: Almost $1.5 million. Almost.

Twitter users will generate $1.418 million in profit over their three-year lifetime of use to advertisers. So advertisers will be willing to fund Twitter up to $1.418 million in value. Which works out to 72 cents per user.

Now, of course this is logical reality, and advertisers caught up in the hype of the new tool, and the potential to "go viral," may pay far more if Twitter ever does launch advertising. And who knows what investors could do to a Twitter stock?

But the reality is only a fraction of people respond, especially in a social media dynamic where users focus on creating and sharing content instead of passive reception. And to us, all that feels worth about 72 cents.

(Inspiration from Nick O'Neill. Photo: Roger Smith)

Sisyphus had nothing on this guy

Some days pushing all the various pieces of marketing and media into that little funnel called "results" feels a bit like this.

Thanks Monkeys.

IHT: All the brand that's not fit to print

The New York Times may swallow up the web site of International Herald Tribune to "expand their global reach" ... which of course has nothing to do with job cuts or declining readers.

And that's a bit sad. The Paris-based International Herald Tribune, you may recall, began life in 1887, was the first newspaper distributed by airplane, and in 1980 became the first paper to publish on both sides of the globe by sending images to Hong Kong via satellite.

The respective sites' visitors -- 7 million a month at IHT.com vs. 58 million at NYTimes.com -- suggest brand integration might make sense. But parent NYT could have fought to grow the IHT brand. And it didn't.

What does that tell you about the growing competition for news online?

Little Miss Matched, our sock drawer needs you

This original idea -- selling three socks in a box, none of which go with each other -- is more than a solution to the classic problem of getting dressed in the morning. Little Miss Matched broke away from symmetry, the basis of every design no matter how hip you think you are.

Seth notes that Little Miss Matched, which has expanded to women's clothing and skateboards, just cleared $17 million in funding and a big deal with Macy's.

Love the idea. What could YOU do to turn your own industry upside down? How could you solve needs in a new way? And can you please help us business guys get dressed too?

Bill Green's mid-day brand gap

So ad strategist Bill Green has recorded every brand he noticed for an entire day, then put it into a really cool table. His brand diary inspires a few observations:

1. Some brands have enduring touchpoints, but still fall below the radar. Bill was exposed to Cotton all day (hmm...) yet we wonder if he thought much about it. For some types of brands -- insurance, underwear, mattresses, your washing machine -- the challenge is to rise to the forefront when consumers who don't usually pay attention suddenly need to make another purchase.

2. Other brands have staccato touchpoints that require maintenance. Several brands along Bill's journey pop up, like old friends, throughout the day -- and usually he had to make a conscious choice to see them. The radio station in the morning, or the Apple iTunes cranked later, or his morning stop for beverage. But these repeat decisions create another type of brand challenge; a slight shift in a consumer's routine, and the brand has lost all the future sales. For these types of brands, multiple points of access, loyalty programs, and entangling/switching costs are good strategies. A Starbucks on every street corner with reward points that remembers how you like your coffee, for example.

3. And smack in the middle of each day is a big "brand void." The most illuminating part of this exercise is how Bill, like most professional workers, enters a brand void around 10 a.m. While mornings and evenings are chock-full of brand interceptions, mid-day work seems to close off brand exposure -- a valley in which few brands are noticed. (Or Bill, were you napping?)

This mid-day valley could be an opening for marketers. Business professionals make major decisions about investing and purchases from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Why can't advertisers figure out how to reach people then? Think of the potential. Excedrin ads on the borders of PowerPoint presentations. Voicemail recordings sponsored by Starbucks.

We jest, but only partly. There's an entire world of spending happening inside corporate and blue-collar America, and most brands have not yet found their way in.

(Photo: Jeff Wheeler. Hat tip to Jane Sample for a similar timeline.)

Don't buy. Really. Our cool product just isn't for everyone.

Ever notice the trend in advertising for anti-product messages? Like the above Anheuser-Busch Beeresponsible site warning you that your partying may need limits. Hmm. But don't these people look like they're having fun?

The idea began with noble intentions, starting with tobacco warnings from the Surgeon General that expanded to a 1998 settlement in which the big players agreed to fund $1.45 billion in public education about the health risks. (Canadian tobacco firms have it worse, being required to print graphic, full-color photos of damaged lungs on the outside of cigarette packages. Ech.)

Alcohol jumped in with public service announcements, too, but we're starting to see a new trend -- a hint at cool. The Bud site above sure looks like a good party. Taglines on the backs of beer trucks in the U.S. use modifications of the "responsible" slogan with wry twists. Cookie-makers have started an "Ad Break" flag on web sites warning kids and parents that the sites, yep, are really designed to sell cookies.

The messages seem to say, our product is so popular you may need to restrain yourself. Perhaps we should try a touch of reverse psychology ourselves. As in: Advertising: Very dangerous, and for really smart people only."

Chips Ahoy! speeds up repurchases

Taking a page from Keebler, Nabisco has redesigned its Chips Ahoy! cookie packaging to increase consumption and speed repurchases. The packages have a resealable-lift-here-flap thingy that eliminates the past barrier to eating the entire package -- you know, the fact that the cookies formerly came in two wrapped sheaths. Even a glutton who burned his way through cookie sheath A would stop and think, nah, better open the second one tomorrow.

But now, that barrier is gone! The packaging hints of the Keebler clear plastic trays that buckle when you try to push them back in, tempting you to eat more. The takeaway for your own marketing -- how can you encourage your own customers to repurchase more quickly, while making it seem like a benefit?

(The fruit on our table also has easy-open packaging, but for some reason, nature's marketing just isn't as compelling.)

And now a hit TV musical about Sears

You have to wonder how far this brand-integration-into-content thing will go. With consumers skipping TV commercials via DVRs or getting video off the internet, advertisers such as Sears are weaving their content into the program. MTV and Sears will partner on a movie musical called The American Mall on August 11, just in time for back-to-school shopping.

Brand integration can be powerful. Who can forget the 1993 Jerry Seinfeld episode in which a Junior Mint flew through the air during an operation? Brad Brown, co-founder of product-placement shop Davie Brown, told The Hollywood Reporter that the "mint" episode made brand integration hip again; "the brand become a plot point, and was so successful that they (NBC) looked the other way."

It's all nothing new. The Reporter notes Clark Gable killed sales of men's undershirts when he appeared bare-chested in "It Happened One Night"; Ray-Ban sunglasses sales took off after 1983's "Risky Business."

But at a certain point, product placement in media must have diminishing returns. James Dean made a comb look cool in "Rebel Without a Cause." But could Sears push these fashions from 1974, above, if it tried?

Samsung Instinct takes on iPhone. Video at 11.

Samsung began selling an iPhone competitor today in the U.S. complete with touchscreen, searchable voicemail, music, GPS ... and with better-than-Apple features in maps, video capture, and the ability to watch live TV.

The real story here isn't that Samsung's Instinct is $70 cheaper for a few more functions. It's video -- the ability to capture moving images that is beginning to creep into every portable handset. As the world of web and telephony converge into small glass screens, video capture is the revolution, because it is an entirely new way for people to create and share content.

What happens when everyone can broadcast images from everywhere? And what happens to advertisers who count on intercepting and interrupting current video content, when they can no longer get in the way?

What Twitter reveals about your psychology

Someday soon your job application or business proposal may get approved or rejected not by what you say, but by a background profile review of your Twitter comments.

Companies are already monitoring blogs and Twitter feeds to catch the chatter about their brands; back in April, when TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington began complaining on Twitter about a down Comcast broadband connection, he got a call from a Comcast executive 20 minutes later offering to fix the problem.

That's a nice story ... but profiling will soon go beyond catching brand complaints to assessing your inner personality. Psychologists at the University of Arizona have found they can accurately predict major personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability by asking students to type their private thoughts for 20 minutes, and then studying the writing. The study methodology mirrors Twitter's input exactly.

Which means what you type today may become your ticket to success or failure tomorrow. Business colleagues, our own Twitter secrets lie here. (Photo: Only Alice)

Why MySpace is now slathered in lipstick

MySpace hints at desperation with a new design in which more than 50% of its home page is taken over by one giant ad. We don't mean an interstitial, one of those full-page web ads that temporarily interrupt you on a site before you click through to the real site's content. We mean, most of the page is now a screaming billboard.

The redesign suggests MySpace is having a tough time making its ad inventory work. Don't trust us; Bloomberg reported in April that MySpace's abysmal financial performance had turned Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. into a toxic stock. Valleywag noted recently that MySpace click-through rates are a little better than Facebook's, but at 0.10% click-throughs, still aren't anything to write home about.

But listen, MySpace, we're trying to help. Look where your media peers have gone before. The $6 billion radio conglomerate Clear Channel once ran more than 12 minutes of radio spots per hour. Audiences began bailing, Clear Channel was forced to launch a "Less is More" campaign and reduce ad time per hour by 23% to 9 minutes and 20 seconds, and now the new Arbitron systems show that the radio audience may have slipped for good, with ratings down 30% or more in many markets.

Which brings us back to MySpace. McDonald's and other advertisers are probably delighted they can now take over the MySpace home page. But as Ian Schafer, founder of the internet strategy firm Deep Focus, just noted on his blog, social media sites and related widget applications are going to have to show they can be a viable advertising model. The root problem for social media is that users have a different modality, and while in heavy socializing mode they are less receptive to advertising messages.

All of which explains why MySpace has put on more ad makeup.

iTunes' 5 billionth hit

So Apple iTunes has sold more than 5 billion songs as of today. Was it the sexy hardware? The affluent business travelers espousing the concept on the red eye home from San Francisco? The young, poor music fans ticked off at paying $20 for CDs at Strawberries?

We could go on about impulse-purchase psychology, the clever personalized up-selling recommendations, the downstream burst in demand that accompanies every major Apple product release. We could caution movie-pushers Netflix and Blockbuster and Wal-Mart to watch out, because iTunes users are now running at 50,000 video downloads a day.

But heck. It was the pricing. What else can you buy today for a buck?

(Photo: Notic)

McDonald's growing billboards

Agency Leo Burnett gives McDonald's a fresh take on salads by actually growing lettuce on a billboard. Lucky we didn't do this; with our gardening skills the sign might have spelled "e h lads."

Thanks Maura McGreevy for the tip.

McKinsey's problem with pricing

If you got a paycheck last week, it's because the company you work for makes a margin. And that profit is tied to pricing.

Ever think about how problematic pricing is? A recent McKinsey report notes that if you charge too much, you limit demand and people won't buy ... but if you charge too little, you leave huge sums on the table. The intriguing finding from the consulting Big Boys is that MOST companies charge far too little. 80% to 90% of all "miss-priced" products or services are too low.

McKinsey suggests that most companies fail to explore the full range of pricing options:

- What is the ceiling (the highest possible price)?
- How will this limit demand?
- What is the floor ("cost plus," the lowest price for an acceptable return on investment)?
- Will the floor disrupt the market or limit future pricing?
- What is the stage of your product in the market: Revolutionary? Evolutionary? Me-too?
- How can customer segments be charged differently (recognizing that different types of customers will value your product from a unique perspective)?

None of this is easy. Consider the idea that if you price moderately, you may enter a "dead zone" where your product is perceived too cheap to be a luxury and too expensive to attract price shoppers.

The solution? Test. Conduct an annual series of focus groups with past customers, or phone surveys with unsold prospects. Find out what would motivate them. The internet provides a unique opportunity to test different price points and response rates at a low cost; for example, you could shift prices on a given day, or for every 10th customer, to monitor variances in response.

Whatever you do, make a commitment to evaluate the range of pricing options. Your margins, and your employees, are counting on you.

(Photo by Espresso Marco. McKinsey source from an old friend. Damn those guys have a good knowledge management system...)

The Think electric car: Less is the new more

Driving in this morning we realized that small cars were suddenly looking sweet. Take The Ox, a concept design by Norwegian car maker Think. The size of a Toyota Prius, this baby is pure electric, goes 0 to 60 in 8.5 seconds, and can run more than 120 miles on a single charge. The car is slated for release in two years for about $25k.

Which is curious. Why do we respond to this design and suddenly crave smaller curves of sheet metal? Does our subconscious realize that resources are scarce? Perhaps it's the vibe we get before a hot summer, when everyone wants to disrobe, go on a diet, and work on the six-pack ... because heavy consumption in times of heat just doesn't feel right.

We bet this type of efficient design will embed itself in other products, as the combined weights of recession, high energy costs, environmental guilt and consumer conversion to a very visible product -- small cars you see every morning -- make little the new big. Designers, time to go on a diet.

Back in 1969, chocolate ads were so subtle

We hear Hershey is about to increase ad spending to fight Mars-Wrigley in the new candy wars. Hershey has devised a plan with sophisticated customer segmentation, aligning chocolate products with consumers who fit the profile of "loyal indulgers" or "engaged exploring munchers."

But nothing gets noticed like this.

Tired of Nikeplus? Try Livestrong.com

Nike has won legions of new fans with Nikeplus.com, which takes data from your shoe and tracks your running progress vs. your friends. Alas, Nikeplus is a bit one-dimensional. What if you prefer to go cycling? Jump rope? Or better yet, just want more sleep?

Lance Armstrong broadens your fitness horizon with the public launch of www.livestrong.com -- a for-profit fitness site with advice, social media, and challenges open to whatever you desire. You can dare others to quit smoking, stay sober, lose weight, drink more water.

We're thinking of daring our friends to quit work early. Come on. We will if you will.

Has Feedly pushed personalized news too far?

You all recall the tales of ancient days when creatures known as Newspaper Editors roamed the land to compile stories that they thought you'd find interesting.

And then, back in the Middle Ages of the Internet, services called RSS feeds aggregated news from the dozens of web sites or blogs you preloaded as worth reading. That was a good advance, some thought, since you could get updates all on one web page from The New York Times, Wired, BusinessWeek, Brandflakes, or whatever other huge/small sources you found intriguing.

Ah, but then Feedly changed everything. Back in 2008 this service created the ultimate personalized news page -- filled with feeds from your favorite sites, and blogs, and the content your friends like. Feedly even imported the "personalization" settings you had preloaded in other sites such as Yahoo Mail.

It was a remarkable advance! We all began getting only the content we, or our close circle of friends, wanted to hear about! And Feedly had a beautiful layout. Of course, other content that was less popular faded away. Those legends remain ... of places like Africa and Pakistan and issues of economics, oil, earthquakes in China, or melting ice caps. We're certain those stories are fiction, of course. Because now they no longer appear on our news feed.

(Via Steve Hall.)

Adidas to China: It takes a team

Most U.S. sports advertisements focus on individual success -- one guy beating another running, one female tennis pro looking like a fashion model, one Tiger Woods being the Tiger. In America, we all want to be the one.

This Adidas ad in China shows the difference between U.S. and Eastern cultures. Notice the long windup, heavy on adversity and potential failure and group pressure, before the payoff in which a leaping crowd makes winning possible.

Neither approach is wrong or right. Just fascinating how different cultures view the basic idea of sports success.

A colorful look at your business future

Someone painted a fragmented rainbow in our boys' grade-school hallway. It's a little ugly, but if you snap it with a blurry cell phone camera, the evocation of hope seems to come across. This someone was pretty cheerful about the future when he or she created this.

Which reminds us of working at a media planning agency -- we're building several businesses, our own plus our clients, and the act of creation is often a messy process. The planning phase requires looking at past performance, which is often sketchy or a short timeframe, and adding in other data such as customer segmentation studies, focus groups, competitor analysis, media research.

And then, at some point, there is a leap of faith. With all the best data in the world, you still have to forecast, and that requires predicting the future. How much do you spend? Where do you invest? What will drive the most sales, most new customers, most repeat purchases?

All the science in the world can't control whether your predictions are accurate (because if you could, we'd all do nothing but start new businesses and reap the ironclad rewards). Net present value it all you want; the reality is at some point you make art -- a beautiful forecast, a dream based on reality, but really a hope that it all comes true.

Sort of like painting on grade-school walls.

We'll take the line for frantic panicked travelers, please

Maybe it's time to let your customers personalize their own experience.

Fallon Planning wrote recently about the new traveler check-in process at Orlando Airport, in which travelers choose from one of three lines -- expert, casual, or family travelers -- for different experiences. As you'd expect, expert travelers are people with small carry-on bags who whisk themselves through the metal detectors with no change in their pockets. On the other end, families struggle with many bags and crying kids. Yet, bizarrely, this process -- which was suggested to the Transportation Security Administration by focus groups -- has streamlined check-in as travelers perceive more control over the experience.

Which is all brilliant, because the TSA has pushed personalization into the control of the consumer, not computers. Back in the 1990s, the idea of personalization and 1to1 marketing was almost arrogant, in that companies assumed they could analyze your data and then use fancy "business rules" to give you the perfect, next-best offer. The idea had its roots in airline seating (high-value business up front, schmucks in the back) and financial services (if you're investing a cool mil, your broker returns your calls).

Different customers would be treated differently, but only based on predictive modeling.

The Holy Grail of personalization broke down because (a) it's really hard to understand the actual future financial value and potential needs of all your customers, (b) mass-customizing a response is almost always cost prohibitive, and (c) the theory never really translated into a competitive advantage. Personalization is only one of the value factors that consumers perceive. Brands, design, financial cost, opportunity cost, competitor entries, what your spouse will think ... all of these make personalization just one push toward the purchase.

But personalization is still important. Google has succeeded wildly by creating the most personal response of all, by simply allowing customers to ask for what they want. And now airlines are allowing customers to pick their own line, for a more positive check-in experience even if it means admitting they aren't "expert travelers."

So, Netflix, Amazon, and all you other collaborative filtering tell-us-what-we-want recommendation systems: We love the kindness. But sometimes, maybe you can just ask us what we'd like instead.

(Photo: United terminal at O'Hare by Ken Douglas)

Forget video this weekend. Record a comic strip.

You must be tired. This week we covered economics, pricing, fonts, politics and outer space. We even used a graph.

So as a reward we show you Comeeko, a new service that allows you to turn your photos into comic strips. No marketing strategy here. It's just friggin' cool.

McCain pimps his ride

Senator John McCain's Straight Talk Express bus has 550 horsepower, a 36-inch flat panel TV, a refrigerator filled with water and Coke (no booze), a shower that no one has used, and TV production lighting around a picnic table in back. We know, because the videos on his web site are giving behind-the-scenes looks at the campaign.


It's intriguing positioning, with a young spokesperson over a hip-hop back beat talking up engine size, video tech, and rolling comfort, sure to appeal to all the guys ready to roll their Harleys or yo their Accords this weekend.


We'd show you the clip, but McCain's campaign disabled the embed function, so his supporters can't pass this message along. (Memo to McCain team: Set the message free.) You can find the clip on his site today, but it may be gone soon.

Obama's anti-anti-message web site

We hate to replay a blog post from Darryl Ohrt at Plaid, because he's a much wittier writer than us, but his take on Barack Obama's new microsite FighttheSmears.com is intriguing. Obama has launched a one-stop shop to counter every negative attack from his opponents. Imagine the collective weight of this a few months from now, when hundreds of "smears" are tallied, and how that becomes an anti-position for John McCain.

Whatever your politics, the idea of using a microsite to gather all the negativity about your brand and then respond like a boomerang is brilliant. Even if something really true and nasty comes up, who will believe it if the prior 300 accusations are false?

PS Someone is about to launch www.stopthesmears.com. Welcome to the ping-pong match of politics.

Via Make the Logo and Brandflakes.

Pacific Airlines sells air

Or, if economics isn't your thing, you could always try brilliant billboard creative. By Saatchi & Saatchi, Vietnam, via Ads of the World.

Pushing demand to push up your price (or why iPods are getting cheap)

Remember that classic old supply-and-demand curve in Econ 101?

We've been thinking recently that marketers are in a constant battle with consumers over where the demand curve falls. At any given supply (shown above by the vertical line), marketers want demand to be higher (and thus be able to sell products at higher prices). At the same given supply, consumers are constantly evaluating other choices, which could shift demand (and thus prices) lower.

A classic example is land; they aren't making any more of it. So marketers could push property in Florida to raise demand and prices, or consumers could realize the real estate bubble has burst and avoid land in Florida, pushing down demand and prices. Supply is what it is; the demand curve shifts, and prices must follow.

The role of marketers is to attempt to shift the demand curve at any given supply quantity.

This dynamic is especially at play in the release of new technology gadgets such as the Apple iPhone, or the GPS devices now being affixed to car windshields, or flat-panel TVs. These new products emerge with no real competitors; producers plan to ship a set amount; marketers therefore send out messages to try to manipulate where the demand curve falls.

What's interesting about this push-and-pull is that eventually consumers wake up, realize the new product isn't that special, and the entire demand curve shifts downward at any given quantity. The Motorola Razr phone launched in 2004 and people were willing to pay $800 (the initial price without a service agreement). Now, the Razr is fading out. Same phone. Same features. Same quantity on the shelves. But marketing could only keep the shift of the demand curve at bay for a little while.

Why does the demand curve shift down for technology? We think it is perceived scarcity. When a new gadget appears, the marketing message is this is special, rare, and thus scarce. Perceived scarcity drives up the demand curve. Eventually, consumers begin to view the "new thing" as a commodity, say, just another cell phone, and the perceived rarity/scarcity goes away. Demand then falls down at any given supply.

Really, the current consumer mania over technology is just bubbles of perceived scarcity floating over our innate demand. What today looks hyper-cool, special and scarce tomorrow looks like just another computer or cell phone. The scarcity bubble always bursts, and the marketers of technology then blow more.

Interesting lesson for your own business. What will you do to make your product appear more rare? And how will your marketing keep the demand curve up, to support prices and margins, while consumers gathering intelligence constantly begin to push it back down?

Cable's Project Canoe could tip ad spending over

Cable systems Brighthouse, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner have been in talks for more than a year to launch a unified ad targeting system. "Project Canoe" would use details on viewer demos to customize ads; if you have a pet, you'd see dog food commercials; if your neighbors have girls, they would be served ads for Barbie Dolls while watching exactly the same channel.

But this week, as the first details emerged, one interesting point came up: If advertisers can improve targeting, might that lead them to reduce their overall media spend?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch noted in March that the effort is a ploy by cable companies to (a) combat Google TV, which offers detailed viewer profiling and targeting, and (b) to boost their share of the overall TV ad pie from $5 billion to $15 billion a year. (Most of the $70 billion spent on television ads in the U.S. goes to local spots.) But it could backfire. Once marketers realize which half of their TV advertising has been wasted, they may not want to spend that half at all.

Fonts drive profits?

A new study finds the ease or difficulty of reading a font changes consumers' perceptions of how complex your service is -- and what they are willing to pay. The University of Michigan study found that customers who read instructions in sans-serif Arial (a very clean typeface) are more likely to think putting furniture together was easy; fancy fonts make the project seem more difficult. Conversely, businesses who wish to charge more would use harder-to-read fonts which convey complexity and value.

Which explains why we can never understand those menus at French restaurants.

(Photo: Margolove)

The moon launch of customer response

It's amazing how little we know about the universe. Cosmologists are having difficulty grasping why the universe continues to expand, and in fact, recently found far away galaxies are accelerating away from us. Looking backward in time the best scientists came come up with is a "Big Bang." The laws that govern gravity and magnetism and atomic particles are well documented, but don't line up with each other. Physicists are painting over the gaps with silly theories about "dark energy" (stuff we can't see) that makes up most of the universe and somehow exerts forces on the rest of us.

And creationists and intelligent designers and scientists all scuffle with each other without realizing that their combined search for the story of a beginning and where we are going has more in common than they think.

Which brings us to marketers and their customers. It's so easy to focus short-term, to launch campaigns intent on trigger and response. But we're beginning to realize that customers are like elementary particles, or planets, with their own trajectories and outside gravitational influences that are hard to change. Your advertising could have the best targeting, most efficient media, compelling offer, and brilliant creative, and customers may not respond if their orbit swings far outside your own gravitational pull. The new iPhone, for example, may be the most brilliant, sexy, useful, and desirable object ever created ... but we just told our significant other we'd cut back on spending, and gas prices are high, and our current smart phone is only three months old, so we'll hold off for now, thank you.

It's a question that almost never comes up in planning meetings. What is the current trajectory of our customers? And how will our marketing plan adjust their course?

Entropy is the law of the universe. Things move to disorder, no matter how hard you try, and your coffee will never unblend with the milk no matter how much you wish it. Marketers can't manage the outside tides of gravity, or the movement of customers among these fragmenting and distracting forces, but they better seek to understand them. Because your customers will never respond. If you are lucky, they may just adjust their orbit to come in line with your own.

Google hints Obama will win. What about your brand?

If you haven't already played with Google Trends, you're missing a free tool to assess the market for your business. TechCrunch notes that the Google tool indicates many more internet searches for Obama than McCain -- not a clear indicator of who will win, since Obama's supporters skew younger and thus more tech-savvy, but an indicator nonetheless.

See what Google has to say about your industry or service here.

In France vs. Romania, Toyota says small is cool

With the price of diesel now over $10 a gallon in Europe, advertisers there are pushing harder that small is the new cool. This spot focuses more on the personality of the driver than the Toyota, reframing the sex appeal of cars from sheet metal to soccer.

Nice. Expect to see a lot of this in the U.S. soon.

Stop & Shop's solution to our lack of standards

What does this photo tell you?

1. A marketing manager at U.S. grocery chain Stop & Shop believes she can increase customer satisfaction by offering some shoppers a "child friendly" checkout aisle that masks all those 57 hot forbidden sex secrets in popular magazines.

2. This is because the migration of content to the internet, where there are no filters and porn can be found as easily as Disney.com, has removed all traditional editorial guardians and left it to consumers to police themselves.

3. This is turn has led to more provocative, sexual, unclothed and violent content across all media formats, including movies, TV shows, video games, and magazines, as each tries to compete with the growing popularity of risqué content on the internet.

4. All this content has become increasingly wild because that is what consumers really want, and in the absence of group standards (network censors etc.) peering over our shoulders, we have pushed provocation.

5. So the only hopes of policing all this is for individuals to turn it off themselves. A fair choice. Which might require putting a sign over your computer, like the ones found at the grocery store.

The iPhone lesson in boosting margins

Forget the new iPhone's sexy tech. Watch Apple's pricing for the real show in town.

For a year now, Apple has toyed with transaction utility, the juice you get from buying a product, to stoke demand for iPhones and boost margins. The fancy term simply means the perceived value you derive from a purchase, calculated as a reference price minus the actual cost.

A simple way to think of this is the classic item "on sale." If you saw a shirt on sale for $50, usually $150, you'd think you're saving $100. The $150 "reference price" is often fiction, but it creates a starting point for you to assume value. People want to buy things if they perceive a good deal.

The concepts of "reference price" (starting point) and "transaction utility" (good deal) were popularized in 1985 by economist Richard Thaler, who realized that consumers make calculations in their heads every time they buy something. Which brings us back to Apple.

How has Apple played this pricing game?

1. First, optimize margins based on (margin per product x total sales). In simple terms, you can either sell a few products with huge margins, or sell many products with lower margins. Apple in effect did both, by launching the original iPhone with a $599 price tag, taxing early adopters, then sliding the scale down to $399 and now $199 to reach more of the masses.

2. Then, if possible, obscure the reference price altogether. Thaler noted that most people buy a car, or a suit, or candy in a movie theater by comparing it to what they think "a fair price" is. Sometimes a clever marketer can obscure this reference price. Candy in movie theaters comes in really strange, large boxes -- boxes that you won't find anywhere else. The reason? You can't really calculate whether $4 for an oversized box of candy is a good deal.

Steve Jobs obscured the reference price with an iPhone design that didn't look like anything else.

3: Third, work to increase the reference price. By comparing the new $199 iPhone to the $599 original phone, Steve Jobs is in essence competing with his prior self -- and winning. The $400 in savings is fiction, but it feels like a good deal.

4: Bundle price components to mask what you can. The iPhone generates revenue for Apple not just from the $199 sales price, but from hundreds of dollars in hidden data fees paid to AT&T (and then to Apple) and all the iTunes songs you download. Data fees are bundled with the AT&T separate bill. ITunes fees are grouped into your personal music account. The total is again obscured, because each bundle is treated separately in the consumer's mind.

There you have it, marketers. The Apple four-step program to increasing your margins: find the right balance or transition between high margins and high volumes, then increase the reference price, obscure it, or bundle the pricing. If it works, customers will line up at your door.

(UPDATE: BusinessWeek notes that the new 3G iPhone doesn't include a cut of carrier revenue for Apple. Instead, carriers such as AT&T subsidize the price of the phone; but the downstream music and video revenue still hold.)

(Photo: Kruggg6)

Chrysler blurs the lines

How do you advertise a new Chrysler with a 431 horsepower engine? With brilliant outdoor creative hung at the street level. It takes guts to promote a car by not showing the car. By Y&R, São Paulo, Brazil, via I Believe.

Philips' window on the future

What will happen to communications when every wall, window and countertop is a computer screen?

Andy up in Vancouver points out Philips, mentioned in our last post, has even more super-cool technology that turns clear glass panels into video screens. So, for example, you can turn a window into the illusion of a shade tree growing outside. By waving your hands.

Freaky. Cool. And details in Spanish, but you'll get the drift.

Honey, call home and set the light bulbs to blue

We'll miss you, Mr. Edison.

Old light bulbs are going out, because they use way too much juice. Home lighting eats up about 20-25% of a typical home's electric bill, and environmental advocates and Wal-Mart are pushing new, more efficient lighting.

Yet you know those new energy-efficient fluorescents Al Gore wants you to buy are, well, a little cold. Kind of like having a mini-operating table lamp casting sterile blue-white rays over your kitchen. Sometimes the new fluorescents flicker and shudder. Ouch.

Now, NYT says the next generation of home lighting is coming, L.E.D.'s that -- like a TV screen -- can emit any color of the rainbow. They're digital, they're wired, and you can call home to reset the colors.

Imagine turning up the mood-blue lighting, or switching to yellow for sunlight warmth, or kicking back in a dark-red glow for the glass of wine on a Friday night. The future is coming. The bulbs use just a trickle of electricity. Too bad the bulbs still cost about $90 and you have to fly to Europe to get the coolest, but we hear the price and supplies are moving our way.

Philips shows off the possibilities here.

Tossing pumpkins at technology

So last Christmas we bought a high-end digital camcorder that is gradually collecting dust as we try to decipher how to convert and edit the video. And our friends over at Plaid have a simple $150 Flip camera that, well, actually makes it easy to record life. Like their agency creatives chucking pumpkins off a roof (we heard they were really, really angry at a client).

This points out two trends in technology -- on one end, we get higher orders of complexity, of computer operating systems such as Vista that do everything but don't quite work, of bloated software, 1,000 cable channels, BMW iDrives, overwhelming us with choice. On the other, we get simple tools downstream, like the camera on your cell phone that you actually use, or the sweet little Twitter that suddenly connects you to the world.

We're going to buy a Flip. Lesson learned. Now will someone please simplify our damn TV remote.

ObamaHillary.com: No takers?

The Internet 2.0 bubble is cresting. We can tell, because cyber-squatter Don Bowman is ending a five-day auction of the sweet URL www.obamahillary.com tonight. Entry bid is only $5,000. And with less than two hours left, there are no takers.

Cyber-squatting, as you recall, was hot back in 1998 right before Nasdaq went off a cliff into jagged rocks above shark-infested waters. People snatched up whacky dot-com names, hoping to resell the addresses for millions, on their way to investor meetings with PowerPoints about their unique CRM software solutions. ("Our spreadsheet will manage customer relationships!") Fast forward to this month, June 2008, and a new URL designation called dot-me (as in www.believe.me, www.marry.me, you get the idea) is attracting more bids at domain registration sites such as godaddy.com.

Good luck with all that. If people won't bet $5k that www.obamahillary.com is worth something, the bubble is over. Or ... hmm ... perhaps the wisdom of crowds is thinking there is no way Obama will take her on as VP.

(If you want to jump in, cruise to eBay by 12 midnight EST tonight.)

Oh, blank off

Nice work by Budweiser on another "viral" video that, after more than a year, is still going strong. Television/video advertising is developing two very different standards; the relatively tame spots still used on traditional broadcast and cable, and edgier online spots that cut closer to vulgarity or nudity. Over time, the popularity of racy online spots will put pressure on traditional broadcasters to loosen the rules.

Soon, over dinner, you'll be hearing more ads that tell you to blank off.

Thanks to Katie Krum for the tip.

Olivieri gets saucy. Nice.

Bill Green over at Make the Logo Bigger has an excellent review of the PR behind this "viral" spot. If you write press releases, you must read Bill's analysis of how to do it right. Seriously. The guy is smarter than he looks.

Hat tip to Olivieri Fresh Pasta and Sauces for cheeky creative.

The Rutledge Inn is gone. Totally gone.

We took a road trip last weekend to our teenage haunts, and on a whim drove past a country inn about 10 miles from the old home, on the edge of a Vermont lake, where we spent two summers working to save money for college. It was a magical resort, the location of early romances (the inn had more than a dozen waitresses compared to us few "handymen"), and had the old-fashioned entertainment that once ruled vacation spots in New England. Boat rides. Shuffleboard. Thursday evening picnic and talent show by the staff. Necking on the shore.

Trouble is, the inn is gone. The main building has been razed, the dance hall removed, and in their place is an empty lawn on one side of the lake road and a new McMansion on the other.

We drove back to reality and Googled "Rutledge Inn, Vermont," to try to find a record or photos of what we remembered. A big wraparound porch. A dozen cottages hidden in the trees. A laundry outbuilding out back that once caught fire, and made us a modest hero for seeing the blaze and rushing in to stop it.

Nothing.

All of this made us realize how new today's information nimbus of the internet is. In 2008, you can find almost anyone or anything of note online, with reviews, photos, histories of communications, an entire wikipedia on almost any topic. But that all began back in about 1999, and before then, anything you remembered either made a book, or hopefully a few photos in a cupboard.

Anything before the internet is fragile and fading fast. The Rutledge Inn stood for about a century, generated untold love tangles and perhaps a few children, and Google has barely a whiff of its passing. Some engineer named Paul mentions it briefly on his cycling blog, but that's it.

We wonder if today's blogs and electronic records will really be more lasting than old photos a few decades from now. We also wonder if Paul dated the same waitress.

Discovery launches Planet Green with $100 million muscle

Discovery launches Planet Green tonight at 6 p.m., the first cable network devoted entirely to eco-friendly messaging. Big advertisers such as GM have jumped aboard, and the 250 hours of original programming will have a decidedly popcorn-friendly twist. No Love Your Mother fluff here: instead, monster trucks compete with each other (showcasing big rigs with hybrid engines), investors flip property for profit (showcasing green redesign), and homeowners compete to see who can wring the most juice out of the sun (showcasing solar tech).

Discovery is betting huge, putting $100 million into the idea that consumers will want to be entertained with a green vibe. We sense a hit. With Prius sales over 1 million and consumers reluctantly walking away from Ford F-150s, Discovery combines Americans' concerns over the environment with our lust for power and aggression.

Program details here, channel finder here.

(Photo: Dark Patator)

If Playboy can't stimulate demand, how can you?

Whatever you think about porn, it's a leading indicator of where your business is going.

This week both Playboy and the distributor of Penthouse U.S. video got hammered in the business press for lackluster results. The Street.com downgraded Playboy stock to a sell, and Motley Fool said New Frontier was having trouble pitching its X-rated movies because, well, too many sites give porn away for free.

The irony of all this is brand porn names led the way to the web. Then, information moved to the free, competitors gave away better content, and the old business models faltered. Purveyors of porn are now being followed off the online cliff by newspapers, magazines, the recording industry and TV broadcasters. Who will follow?

In the past businesses made a profit by removing friction. In essence, a huge rocky expanse lay between where goods began (say, risqué photos or news from India) and where consumers consumed them. If you could bridge that gap, you made money.

We know what the internet did to content models. So here's a test. What about your business? Can any parts of it be made purely digital and easily created, duplicated or copied? And if someone does, and gives that away for free, what will happen to your profits?

(Photo: Playboy cover from 1966.)