In hearings on Capitol Hill today, oil executives said:
1) "We cannot change the world market. Today's high prices are linked to the failure both here and abroad to increase supplies, renewables and conservation." (Robert Malone, chairman and president of BP America Inc.)
2) "The fundamental laws of supply and demand are at work. The market is squeezed by exporting nations managing demand for their own interest and other nations subsidizing prices to encourage economic growth." (John Hofmeister, president of Shell)
This is the same old song and dance. During the past year or two, the "Oil-Industrial Complex" has reaped unprecedented profits. When the public asks why, BO representatives like those quoted above say it's the nature of the business: severe weather, wars, terrorist attacks, supply and demand. Many reasons and variables affect the bottom line.
Unlike most businesses, BO has figured out how to profit EVERY TIME from adversity, whether man-made or natural. In fact, the worse the adversity, the higher their profits.
Big Oil conglomerates like Exxon-Mobil claim they neither set prices nor control the market. That's laughable. Exxon-Mobil operates in nearly 200 countries or territories, exploring for and producing oil and gas. Exxon-Mobil's oil and gas fields, both domestic and abroad, produce more than four million oil-equivalent barrels per day in 24 countries including but not limited to the U.S., West Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Australia.
Exxon-Mobil has interest in 46 refineries in 26 countries, more than 25,000 miles of pipelines and 45,000 gas stations, under the well-known brands of Esso, Mobil and Exxon in more than 100 countries. Exxon-Mobil is simply the world's foremost manufacturer and marketer of petroleum products. From that lofty perch they cannot help but wield considerable price setting influence.
Here's a hypothetical. Pretend for a moment that with all these oil wells, refineries and pipelines around the world, Exxon-Mobil really doesn't have any significant influence. Let's look specifically at the domestic oil market.
Forty percent of the oil consumed in America comes from America. In the 1970s it was profitable for the oil companies to produce and market oil in the range of $22 per barrel. So why is it that the major oil companies were recently charging more than FOUR TIMES THAT AMOUNT per barrel for domestic oil?
America has for years been subsidizing oil wells. We pay for this up front and at the pump but the government claims this is a free enterprise and it cannot interfere.
I am as much a Capitalist as the next guy, but Big Oil is lying when they say they don't have price setting influence. Big Oil should stop hiding behind catastrophes, crises and the threat of crises, and simply say: "This is a business. America was built on business. Shareholders want more profits so we're going to give them what they want. If you don't like it, don't drive."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The Oil-Industrial Complex Strikes Again
Monday, May 19, 2008
THe PR Holy Grail: A Wall Street Journal Hit
These days in PR everyone is a-twitter about twitter, manic over microblogging, nuts over social networking and ya-ya over YouTube... but there remains no substitute for a placement in the venerable Wall Street Journal. While the venerable New York Times is adulated as the Grey Lady, serious PR pros know that getting the attention--and the incredibly valuable print or electronic real estate--of a Wall Street Journal reporter represents a jewel in the crown of a PR career.
In my career I've earned placements across all media--print, radio, TV, online--but a Journal placement had until this weekend eluded me. That changed this Sunday, when--after months of courting Carl Bialik (aka "The Number Guy") about cellphone research, polling, and other matters relating to Market Research--he covered one of my clients (the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research, CMOR) in his blog.
Here's the link: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/cellphone-surveys-get-a-boost-339/?mod=WSJBlog
Yes, PR is about knowing your media target, tenaciously pursuing him/her and following through frequently but not annoyingly. There's also a healthy dose of luck involved--in many cases a news issue will come up at the same time your voice mail or email hits the reporters' in-box. You can't predict that, but you can position your client so that the reporter knows he/she is available as an expert source. That's what I did with Mr. Bialik and CMOR, and it got CMOR a nice one-paragraph mention in Mr. Bialik's blog.
Back in January, responding to a column in which he covered the polling industry’s debate over dialing cellphones, I sent The Numbers Guy an MRA press release on polling and pollsters. When polling or surveying issues arose in the ensuing months, I followed up with several voice mails in which I referred him to CMOR’s work in this area. My PR savvy paid off on Sunday with the blog entry.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Happy 15th Birthday, Internet!
Last month, the Internet turned 15 years old. To refresh your memory, it was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (NOT Al Gore), who invented the "web" idea. The Internet as we know it today (from the mid-1990s) has its roots in a Defense Department project in 1969. The subject of the project was wartime digital communications.
The decision to make the code underlying the web free and available to all was perhaps one of the most momentous in recent business and social history.
As much as the Internet progressed technically in the 1990s, it revolutionized human communication and interaction. In just 15 years, the Internet has become part of the international vocabulary and is clearly destined for even greater prominence. It has been accepted by the business community, with a resulting explosion of service providers, consultants, books, and TV coverage.
Here are 20 “facts” that demonstrate the growing power and pervasiveness of the WWW. Caveat emptor: Each “fact” is subject to a great deal of discussion and argument so I welcome your research-based corrections.
1. Twenty percent of the world’s population, 1.17 to 1.33 billion people, use the Internet. North America (72%) has the highest penetration; Africa (5%) the lowest.
2. Only 30% (380 million) of Internet users are English-speaking, 14% (180 million) speak Chinese, 9% (113 million) speak Spanish. 46 million Internet users speak Arabic.
3. China’s Internet population increased by a third in 2006. According to state news agency Xinhua, the total number of Internet users in China has reached 132 million, of which 52 million have broadband connections. [Source: Guardian, December 2006]
4. Google’s market capitalization is around $180 billion, nearly three times the size of News Corporation. Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon are all in the Fortune 150 list.
5. According to Zenith Optimedia, between 2007 and 2010, Internet ad spending will increase by 69% and raise its market share from 8.1% to 11.5%. About $36 billion will be spent on Internet advertising globally in 2008, an increase of 24%.
6. YouTube is the world’s third largest site, behind Google and Yahoo. One in five of the world’s Internet users visit YouTube each day. Nearly half of US Internet users report visiting a video-sharing site like YouTube at least once.
7. Britney Spears was the most sought after celebrity on Google in 2007 and pilates was the most popular search in the fitness category. The most popular who, what and how queries were ‘Who is God’, ‘What is Love’ and ‘How to Kiss’.
8. Social networking is the fastest growing part of the Internet. There are 70 million active users on Facebook (the 8th most popular site in the world), more than 14 million photos are uploaded daily. The fourth most popular country for Facebook is Turkey with 3.3% of users. Australia is 6th with 2.7%. A Sophos poll of 600 workers found that 43% were unable to access Facebook at work, while an additional 7% reported that use of the site was restricted.
9. In 2007, global digital music sales rose 40% to $2.9 billion, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Downloaded music now makes up 15% of the recording industry’s sales.
10. Movie downloads could grow tenfold by 2012 and reach $6.3 billion worldwide during that period, according to a 2007 report by British market research firm Informa Telecoms & Media.
11. The iTunes store was launched on 28 April 2003; it has since sold more than four billion tracks and over 125 million TV episodes worldwide. It now rivals Wal-mart to be the biggest music retailer in the US. 150 million iPods have been sold worldwide since the device first appeared in October 2001. Nearly 40% of Americans now own an iPod or other mp3 player.
12. Wikipedia is the world’s 7th most popular Web site. The English version of Wikipedia has more than 2.3 million articles. Over a third of online US adults consult Wikipedia.
13. There are over 100 million Web sites, of which 74% are in the commercial or .com domain.
14. Total e-commerce sales in the US for 2007 were estimated at $136.4 billion, an increase of 19% from 2006. Total retail sales in 2007 increased 4% from 2006. E-commerce sales in 2007 accounted for 3.4% of total sales. E-commerce sales in 2006 accounted for 2.9% of total sales.
15. Core search engines Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask.com collectively increased 15% in December 2007 in searches performed, compared to a year earlier, serving 9.6 billion searches in December 2007.
16. Since the beginning of 2007, Sen. Obama has raised more than $100 million online from Americans contributing $200 or less at a time, according to data compiled by the Campaign Finance Institute (Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2008)
17. In 2006, the average corporate email user received 126 messages a day, up 55% from 2003, according to the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto market research firm. By 2009, workers can expect to spend 41% of their time just managing emails. (Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2007)
18. More books are sold on the Internet than any other product and the number is increasing, research suggests. Polling company Nielsen Online surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries. 41% of internet users had bought books online, it said. The largest percentage of people buying books in any country was South Korea at 58%. Twenty percent of US book sales and 17 percent of UK book sales are now made online.
19. Nielsen says more than eight out of ten Internet users purchased something in the last three months. That is a 40% increase on two years ago, to about 875 million shoppers. (BBC, January 21, 2008)
20. Newspapers’ online audiences are rising at twice the rate of the general Internet audience. Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66.4 million unique visitors on average (40.7% of all Internet users) in the first quarter of 2008, a record number that represents a 12.3% increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
On this Earth Day, Here is an post regarding "Green Marketing"
Green Marketing: What it is and how to do it.
By Laura Briere & Bruce Mendelsohn
Consumers expect to double their spending on green products and services in the next year, totaling an estimated $500 billion annually or $43 billion per month, according to new findings from the 2007 ImagePower Green Brands Survey, conducted by WPP’s Landor Associates, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates and Cohn & Wolfe.
The survey also found that consumer perceptions of green continue to change according to various collective definitions and contribute directly to buying decisions.
Green marketing is the responsible way to market your products/services by using technology, conservation and minimizing waste. If you haven’t started green marketing, the information below will help you on your way.
Going green, after all, is just a matter of changing your perception from focusing only on “tried and true” to the creative “let’s try something different.” What used to work still can, but the modern green revolution has opened up a whole new realm of opportunity for new marketing.
Some examples of great new technologies include blogs, social networking, e-newsletters, and online advertising. These complement the “tried and true” methods of public relations, cause marketing, viral marketing, and other activities that leverage the power of the media, word of mouth marketing and human interest.
The easiest way to get started with green marketing is to take a step back from your business and perform a brief green marketing audit. You should already have many of the answers, but it’s in your best interest to ask yourself again and step outside of your comfort zone. You may find it beneficial to consult a qualified marketing professional who can help expose you to a whole new world of green marketing options.
Create your green marketing plan:
- Perform a market analysis and establish your “ground.”
- Where is your company in the market?
- What is your competition doing?
- Segment your business offerings by “who buys what.”
- What do your customers have in common?
- Are you offering too much?
- Are you trying to be everything to everyone?
- Determine your product/service market.
- Is it priced appropriately?
- Does it cost enough? Too much?
- Identify your core “green” messages.
- What green messages are you trying to convey to your customers?
- What is the basic POINT behind your messages? (Note: These are NOT your taglines
Outline what your core green “brand elements” should be/are.
- What does green marketing specifically look like as applied to your company?
- How do you want your customers to perceive your green marketing initiatives?
- Determine if your web site is in line with your marketing objectives and target markets.
- Is it up to date?
- Does it offer the latest technologies?
- Can you manage it yourself?
- Is it up to the highest standards in technology?
- Can you leverage the latest and greatest tools in new media?
- What can you change?
- Align your “green marketing plan” with your overall marketing objectives and target markets.
- Where possible, use metrics to align the two plans.
- Does your green marketing plan take advantage of the latest technologies?
- Can you manage it yourself?
- Determine the promotional areas in which you can get really creative/green.
- Can you leverage your commitment to green to help you spread your message?
- Which segments are going to care about your green marketing efforts?
- How much money can you save?
- How much money can you reallocate from previous methods to green and new freed-up opportunities?
Plan for feedback.
- How do you plan to get it?
- What will you do with it once you get it?
With so much focus on green marketing, many companies try to hop on the bandwagon by launching green initiatives that are in essence “greenwashing” or “green sheen.” These terms are generally used when companies spend significantly more money or time advertising being green (that is, operating with consideration for the environment), rather than investing resources on genuinely environmentally sound practices.
Consumers are increasingly knowledgeable of the difference between “real green” and “green sheen”; companies that invest resources in the latter risk significant negative PR when their greenwashing efforts are exposed.
In December 2007, environmental marketing company TerraChoice gained national press coverage for releasing a study called “The Six Sins of Greenwashing,” which found that 99% of 1,018 common consumer products randomly surveyed for the study were guilty of greenwashing. According to the study, the six sins of greenwashing are:
- Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: e.g. “Energy-efficient” electronics that contain hazardous materials. 998 products and 57% of all environmental claims committed this Sin.
- Sin of No Proof: e.g. Shampoos claiming to be “certified organic,” but with no verifiable certification. 454 products and 26% of environmental claims committed this Sin.
- Sin of Vagueness: e.g. Products claiming to be 100% natural when many naturally-occurring substances are hazardous, like arsenic and formaldehyde (see appeal to nature). Seen in 196 products or 11% of environmental claims.
- Sin of Irrelevance: e.g. Products claiming to be CFC-free, even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago. This Sin was seen in 78 products and 4% of environmental claims.
- Sin of Fibbing: e.g. Products falsely claiming to be certified by an internationally recognized environmental standard like EcoLogo, Energy Star or Green Seal. Found in 10 products or less than 1% of environmental claims.
- Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: e.g. Organic cigarettes or “environmentally friendly” pesticides, This occurred in 17 products or 1% of environmental claim
Laura Briere is CEO & Founder of Vision Advertising, a marketing communications firm based in Worcester, MA. She is also head of the World Green Business Association.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Engaging a Booth Visitor
Working the Booth at ARF's Conference in NYC
I use expansive hand gestures, a wide smile, and small talk to engage a visitor, and gradually go into a soft sales approach. Only after I know the visitor's name, their company and some of their unique business challenges do I pose my organization as a potential solution.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Next Brilliant Marketing Idea: Official Dirt
While on a recent Southwest flight, I set down my latest read (The Coldest War, by David Halberstam) in favor of Southwest's entertaining in-flight magazine. In an article about St. Patrick's Day I read about a new product available for Irish people who miss the Old Country: Official Irish Dirt.
You can check out their web site at http://www.officialirishdirt.com/, and there for $20 purchase four small bags of official Irish dirt, shamrock seeds, and get free shipping.
The concept of Official Irish Dirt got me thinking about other official dirt-selling opportunities, which I have listed below:
- Official West Bank Dirt: For the Palestinian in All of Us
- Official Afghanistan Dirt: When You Miss Your Taliban Roots
- Official Iraq Dirt: Nothing grows in it, but under it you may find WMD
- Official D.C. Dirt: (So many directions to take with this one--it's just too easy)
- Official New Orleans Dirt: Comes with official sea water, so you can submerge it
- Official French Dirt: Start Your Own Vineyard
- Official Ukraine Dirt: Invade it, Rebuild It, Contaminate It
- Official Green Bay Dirt: Maybe Brett Favre Will Come Back, After All
- Official North Korea Dirt: No Matter What You Do, Nothing Grows in It
- Official German Dirt: Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles in der Welt
- Official Saudi Arabia Dirt: Dig Deeply Enough and You May Strike Oil
In so many ways, official Dirt is a brilliant product for the sole reason that even as our attachments to each other become more electronic, we remain nostalgic for physical places--to have a sense of place. With Official Dirt we can take that place with us wherever we go.
I think I am going to buy some DC Dirt right now: Maybe I can get some from near the Mayflower Hotel and see what pops up.
