Norm's Blog

This posting is courtesy of one of my co-workers who made a nice posting on my MySpace profile yesterday. She being a MySpace novice asked if it was ok to not include Tom, the ever present creator of MySpace, as a friend.

This question actually made me wonder about net etiquette for two reasons. The first was because when I signed up for MySpace I didn't realize that you had the option to not include him as a friend. It seems like a logical conclusion that you don't have to, but at the same point why wouldn't you? The second reason startled me even more, why would I want to include him as my 'friend' and how many other people do I not really want to include as my friend. After some careful thought and a couple hours of looking through all the social networking sites and buddy lists I have realized that there are a lot of people listed as my 'friend' that I can't figure out why they are still there or why they were there in the first place.

This brought me to the conclusion that all of my social networking sites are suffering from information overload. The big question is how do you trim back the list of friends without seeming rude? Until I figure out a polite way to remove people from my list, I must admit it is comforting to sign online and know that there is always someone online to talk to.

A few months ago one of my friend's told me that he was going to replace his very normalNissan with a Scion. Even though the brand is apparently four years old, I had to laugh at him because all I could think of when he said it was that horribly boxy xB. As the Financial Times described it "...the xB minivan - sometimes compared to a shoebox or microwave oven on wheels... (Financial Times, Wednesday, April 26, 2006, Page 11)."

Now don't get me wrong, my opinion of the xB has not changed but I do have to admit that recently my perception of the Scion brand has changed. I was compelled to re-evaluate their brand, not because I ran across an ad they ran or even because I drive by a Toyota/Scion dealership on my way into the office every morning, but because their grass roots marketing campaign hit me, like a runaway truck.

On mother's day weekend I was going through a pile of stuff that I had pulled from the Financial Times to read more thoroughly at a later date and I ran across an article by Bernard Simon on Marketing Position entitled "Scion brand greases the wheels for Toyota" that discussed the premise behind this four year old brand. Toyota like many other car makers is realizing that the customers purchasing their product are skewing towards the older side. They were missing out on the younger generation so they launched the Scion brand in an effort to gain a foothold with an influential market.

What made me really take notice on that fateful mother's day weekend was actually a generation that makes me look old at the age of 25. I teach swim lessons to several young kids on Sunday mornings. On this particular morning one of my lessons showed up with a glossy book of Scion cars and all their options that he, at the tender age of four, had picked up somewhere along the line. Immediately after his lesson ended my next lesson came in and promptly told me that his mom had gotten a new car for mother's day, the previously mentioned xB. Later that week my co-worker, whose son happens to be the proud owner of the Scion book, pried the DVD out of his son's hands so I could have a look.

I figured that since I had been surrounded, it was worth taking a look at the brand. The grass roots marketing for the Scion brand is something to be commended. Without running any television or print campaigns in the mainstream press they managed to sell around 160,000 cars, last year, and hope to sell that many this year. I am happy to have run across this unique brand, although it will not send me running to purchase the microwave on wheels. You can visit and even purchase a Scion at www.scion.com.

Media Post brought to light an excellent point this afternoon in one of the numerous updates I receive from them on a daily basis. What will ABC and the other nightly news programs do now that they are losing their news icons? I would like to hope that they will find people of equal character to inform and stand with us.

I have heard it several times in the past couple days starting when I heard it in the movie Deep Impact, which was on CBS Sunday night. At one point during the movie Vaness Redgrave, who played the mother of Tea Leoni, turned and said that people need continuity, that they basically need to be comforted in times of crisis by hearing a familiar voice to lead them through. I think that this is what Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, etc. represented to the American people.

With any luck ABC will find a new anchor to lead their ship as well as Jennings did.

I just wanted to acknowledge the loss of a great person and television personality today.

I grew up watching Peter Jennings deliver the news to us each evening, his loss is a great tragedy to his family and to the entire world of professional journalism.

My condolences to the entire Jennings family.

I just wanted to do a little advertisering for one of my professors from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Shani Orgad, who completed her PhD last year, recently had her book Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet published.

It is being printed by Peter Lang Publishers in New York and is currently available at Amazon.com.

She spent 4 years studying how women throughout Europe and the United States have used the internet and online chat rooms to research and find comfort as they battled with breast cancer. The stories that she shared with us in class while I was at the LSE were enlightening and inspiring.

I ran across an interesting statisic from McKinsey Quarterly this morning in my e-mail.

In the new report Retailing: What's Working Online they talk about online retailers who operate physical stores in addition to their online operations.

We found that direct retailers with physical stores captured 52 percent of Internet sales in 2003, while those without stores garnered just 31 percent

I found this interesting because it illustrates, in my mind, that people are not going into these retail locations to make purchases. Instead they are using these retail locations as a place to experience the products and then go home to make their purchases. It will be interesting to see if retailers move towards stocking a limited supply in the store and promoting more online ordering or if retailers take the opposite approach and diversify the product offering and increase the size of their store.

Last week as I was telling one of my colleagues (www.mason23.com/jack) about a trip I was planning to New York, I let it slip that I was going to my favorite place in the city (or at least my favorite place that doesn't serve food). As I waxed poetic about the Apple Store in New York, which is located in an old post office at the corner of Prince and Greene Streets in SoHo, my colleague asked me to take some photos so he too could see what I loved some much about my experience.

As it happened I ended up getting a little more involved in the project than I thought I would. The photos are posted here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/normmorneau). This is the first trip I have made back to the Apple Store since I joined Mason, Inc. four months ago. This is important to note because we are spending a lot of time learning and promoting alternative media and brand trial. It made me think about my previous experiences at the Apple Store in New York and why I loved it so much. What follows is the story of what prompted me to go in the first place and why I still love it every time I go back.

Growing up my family used the IBM PC (with a beautiful green screen that I stared at for hours). When I was in 7th grade though things changed we got new computers in my school but we never really used them. Instead I remember using the librarian's computer to do research projects. Her computer was a beautiful Macintosh (the model escapes me) that was an all-in-one unit with a brillant display screen and a cd-rom drive. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, or I would have if I had been a little more cognizant of what was happening around me. Instead I went to highschool and got drawn into the magical world of Windows, please forgive me but Windows 95 had just come out and I thought that it trumped everything else I had ever used. I became a Windows addict that I wouldn't take word processing in highschool because they were being taught on Apple II's (I still wonder whether or not this was a mistake). As I progressed through highschool we used Windows almost exclusively except to run the school newspaper. I still didn't appreciate the sheer beauty of the Mac or its operating system at this point. Finally it came time to apply to college and my decision eventually hinged on whether to go to a Windows or a Mac based school. Unfortunately I chose the Windows based school and that started my love affair with Apple.

In college we were given Windows based laptops (which was really cool, don't get me wrong) but when I joined the school newspaper my sophomore year the Mac offered so much more. It was a nicer case, ran software better, and just made more sense to me. Finally, just before my senior year in college the Apple Store in SoHo opened. At this point I had already decided that I didn't enjoy my Windows experiences and that the Mac was a better product. When I walked into the store in the Fall of 2002 I was awestruck. This store was like a candy shop, except it was better because it won't rot your teeth and actually makes you productive.

When Apple created the store in SoHo they did a spectacular job. The outside of the building (except for the window advertisements) has been unchanged except for the addition of what I would consider a beacon of hope, an Apple logo cut out of black metal hanging above massive glass doors. You walk through the front doors and you are greeted by a soaring ceiling that holds all the electronic toys you could possibly imagine. There are stations to play with the latest and greatest Apple products. There is an area for education (the second floor theatre where they offer free wifi and demo software products all day). They offer software and peripherals and even their infamous Genius Bar where you can get those difficult questions answered. It is not just the beauty of the store that makes it the greatest place in the world for me though. The people make it an even better experience. Apple has staffed out the store to the gills, there are always people on hand in every department to answer all of your questions or direct you to someone who does know (although I have found that most of the people know the answers to questions you didn't even realize you wanted to ask). These are just the people on staff though, the patrons are about as ecletic as they come even for SoHo, there are computer geeks; jocks; the elderly; young students; professionals and tourists. Everyone has been drawn in either by the brand (in which case they already knew it was going to be an experience to remember) or by the wonderful exterior.

Overall, the experience at the Apple Store in unmatched by any other store that I have visited.