Archive for the Event Category

So what were the big stories at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas?

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Overwhelmingly everyone was talking about Apps. For those of you not yet addicted to your Apple iPhone, and increasingly the BlackBerry, Apps are simple software applications designed to run on your smart phone and specifically to fulfill a single requirement. You download them from the Internet. Apple has a whole App Store with thousands available. Be it ordering a pizza, checking your stock prices or using Twitter and Facebook from your smart phone, there is an App for just about everything. In fact, someone told me about an App called DrunkDial, (I think that’s what it was called). You install it on your phone and connect it to the phone numbers of friends you have a tendency to call when you’ve had one too many and potentially embarrass or compromise yourself. Launch DrunkDial when you hit the bar and bingo, it stops you dialing those unfortunate friends.

Another story was of the two software engineers who had developed an App called The Moron Test in their spare time – it lets you know how stupid you really are! Now it’s generating enough monthly revenues to allow them to quit their jobs.

Apps are big business. Some are free, some you pay for and there’s a whole industry developing them for the iPhone. BlackBerry are fast trying to catch up and were showing there Alliance Portal at the show (developed for BlackBerry by Grass Roots I hasten to add). The Portal is a social network type environment where developers can share ideas and link to BlackBerry to promote their Apps and wares to the growing army of BlackBerry users. I read that Steve Jobs of Apple was not that enthusiastic about Apps when the iPhone was launch a few years ago – now Apps form a central plank to the Apple iPhone strategy as it fights for dominance with BlackBerry, the emergence of Google Android and the entrance of players such as Microsoft and Dell into the smart phone market.

I read in a recent Financial Times article that they estimate that there are currently over 100,000 people trying to develop an App. Obviously some of them will be huge successes. Others will fall by the wayside unnoticed. I was pondering this new world and it took me back to my teens. As a teenager, I was obsessed by pop music. In those days, the 45rpm single was king and any connected teenager could tell you what was number 1 in the charts and which was this weeks fastest mover or highest new entry. Back then in the UK, always a hot bed for new talent, as many 600 singles were released a week by aspiring rock stars. Most never even made it to a play on the radio, some were the launch pads for great British acts such as Tears for Fears, the Clash and the Pet Shop Boys, (depending on your musical taste, of course). I suppose Apps could be seen as the current day pop singles. Toggling through my iPod as I sit on my flight back from Las Vegas to find something to listen to I can’t help feeling that in 20 plus years time, my kids will not be toggling through their smart phones to find that classic App from their teens! A sign of the disposable world we live in.

So where does that leave the motivation and incentives industry? For me, the core of any successful incentive or loyalty program has to be the communications. If you go back to the roots of our industry in direct marketing, think about the process that you as consumers are engaged. I often use what I call the ‘cornflake packet’ example. You get up in the morning, sit down for breakfast and you choose cornflakes. As you work your way through your serving, you glance at the packet on the table. There’s an offer flashed on the front so you pick the packet up and turn it around to read more about the offer. It could be a free flight, a two for one offer or in today’s world maybe a free App. You read about how you participate. If we haven’t got it in 20 or 30 seconds, we’re back working on the bowl of cornflakes in front of us.

That’s the challenge faced by any incentive program, be it for employees, the channel or consumers. The boom in social networking – MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest, offers us a huge opportunity to improve the way we use communications as part of these programs. With these new technologies, our program participants are now quickly accessible in a very cost effective and personal way. At Grass Roots we’ve already started experimenting how we can link these applications to the programs we run for our clients. The BlackBerry Alliance Portal is just one example and we’re getting interesting and very encouraging results.

So are Apps the new pop charts? Well all I know that is if you love great music with a great bass line as I do try the new Dr Dre headphones launched by Monster at 2010 CES. http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/review-beats-by-dr-dre-headphones-20080730/.

Rock n roll!

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in Event, Incentive, Recognition | No Comments »

What shape is the economic recovery – at CES 2010 this week

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

This time last year Grass Roots attended the International Consumer Electronics Show 2009 in Las Vegas. As acknowledged leaders in developing and managing incentive programs for the channel, particularly in the tech and telecoms space, attending CES is a good opportunity for the Grass Roots team to meet up with clients and network with the industry for new opportunities.

In fact, from the CES newspaper which is published daily during the show, we identified that Grass Roots works with 29 of the Top 50 electronics brands at CES 2009. I’m on my way to 2010 CES 2010 now and it will be interesting to see how we do this year.

In 2009, CES contained the normal hype of new launches and industry announcements together with exhausting rounds of “after show” parties hosted by the big brands. There were a few black clouds in the normally clear Nevada skies because as we now know, we were at the depths of the worst recession most of us have seen in our living memories.

It was the most frightening time I’ve experienced in my career having travelled through at least two previous downturns – in the final quarter of 2009, clients literally cancelled programs at a moments notice, put them on indefinite hold or commenced major supplier reviews and supplier rationalisation processes. They were black days indeed and I must admit I did not shed a tear at the turn of the year. It was good riddance to 2009!

That said, what does 2010 hold for us all? The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies with the exception of Russia seem to be recovering strongly if they went into recession at all. The US economy seems to be staggering into recovery but the huge levels of national debt are worrying pundits. The Eurozone seems to be recovering although Greece and Ireland face serious financial challenges and there are worrying noises about the state of public finances in the UK.

In our line of business I’ve always had the advantage of being able to talk to senior people in business that are at the coal face of industry. I’ve found that you can get a good view of how things are doing “from the horse’s mouth” if you ask the right questions.

In that polite banter we all undertake in business, I always try and ask the question: “How’s business?” People are always happy to talk about their own businesses and the answers are always insightful. Here are two contradicting examples which might indicate what we are in for in 2010:

In December I was travelling on a flight from the US to the UK and was sat next to a gentleman who was a senior manager at one of the world’s biggest container port operators. You couldn’t get a better indicator of global trade than container traffic movements so I posed the “How’s business?” question. His answer was startling.

His view was that at the depths of the recession in October and November 2009, container traffic volumes had “fallen off a cliff” declining some 30% to 40%. Since then, things had plateaued but now, in December 2009, volumes were falling dramatically again. “So we are in for the double dip recession then?” I responded. His response was even more alarming. His view was that we were on a “department store” shaped recession – you go down one floor on the elevator and walk around at bit at that level, travel down to the next floor and walk around a bit, then down again and so on to the ground floor! I relayed the gloomy story to my Board colleagues back in the UK.

A couple of weeks later I was at a conference in New York. I got chatting to a Senior VP at a global package and freight shipper we will all have almost certainly used at some point. Another great barometer of business activity, I thought and promptly asked her the “How’s business?” question. Her story paralleled the container story at first – volumes had fallen off a cliff in late 2009 and then plateaued. Now however, volumes were recovering strongly and investment plans that had been put on hold were coming back on stream.

Apart from the obvious conclusion about the world economy being an unpredictable beast, where does this story leave us? I’m not sure but I will keep asking the question of the people I meet at CES 2010.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags:
Posted in Event, General | No Comments »