Southern Comfort dumps old media, and pours (pun intended) their entire $8 million media budget on the Net. Letâs hope theyâll spend it smarter then they did on this ad four years ago.
Whatâs wrong with this banner? Nothing â unless you place it in context. It appeared just days after Hurricane Katrina almost wiped out New Orleans⌠which gives the words âwhere anything can happenâ a special meaning. And if you think it was just an innocent mistake, read the details here.
Related posts:
- Southern Comfort Pours Entire Media Budget Into Digital
- Southern Comfort Dumps Cable For Hulu, Facebook
- SoCo and Lime, and Facebook, and HuluâŚ
- Southern Comfort goes all in on web advertising
Tags: ads, adsense, advertising, Blogging, blogs, Hulu, marketing, southern comfort
Fiber One. Cardboard No (?) Deceptive Yes. Do They Think We’re Stupid?
Business, Marketing / PR July 19th, 2009
Fiber One has a risky tagline: Cardboard no. Delicious yes.
Why risky? Because ..well, cardboard is indeed the first word that comes to mind when I taste it. Oh, well, my Dad likes it. Lucky for him, since he needs it for health: itâs hard to find this much fiber in half a cup of breakfast cereal elsewhere. I assume thatâs the reason for this productâs popularity, not tasteâŚbut wait, building on the base productâs success, there is now a whole range of Fiber One products, cereals, breakfast bars..etc.
They went mainstream. Translation: sweet, tasty, sugary, less healthy. From 57% of your recommended daily fiber intake down to 20% in some cases. But wait.. thereâs one cereal likely a lot tastier and not that far from the original fiber content:

Forget the standard industry trick that the new box contains only 14.25 ounces instead of the original 16.2 for the same price⌠itâs almost as healthy and likely tastes better. Letâs check the small print:
At first glance the two products are close: 14g vs. 13g fiber. But how come the tastier version is listed with 42g Carbs while the original had only 25?  And 160 Calories vs. 60?
Oh, thereâs the trick: the ingredients are listed as per serving. However, the original serving size was half a cup, while the tastier Honey Clustersâ serving size is 1 cup.  I repeat:
General Mills, makers of Fiber One is using (almost) double the serving size to compare fiber content. The true comparison would be on the same serving basis, which would show a drop from 51% fiber content to roughly 25%.
This is an outrage: while technically correct, it gives false impression, especially since these products are typically placed right next to each other on supermarket shelves â and on the companyâs website, for that matter.
Shame on you, General Mills for treating us as if we were stupid.
Tags: carbs, cereal, consumerist, deceptive marketing, fiber content, fiber one, general mills, grocery shrink ray, health, marketing, nutrition
Promoting SaaS on eBay?
Humor, Personal Productivity, SaaS June 23rd, 2009
This listing on eBay is hilarious, almost makes me wonder if itâs a true listing or carefully planted advertising for Google Apps (and SaaS in general). But the seller appears to be real, has been on eBay for ten years⌠Here we go, get Microsoft Office w. Outlook for $75, because:
It’s brand new and never been opened. My boss bought it right before I moved the whole company over to Google Apps.
We never looked back, but here’s your opportunity to live it up, 90’s style, with this great, retro piece of Microsoft 2007 software.
Read moreâŚ
Tags: auction, eBay, google apps, marketing, microsoft, ms office, Outlook, SaaS, xref
Atlassian $timulus Package Inching Towards Finish Line
Collaboration, Marketing / PR, Startups April 24th, 2009
Quick update on the Atlassian $timulus drive I previously reported about: at 2pm on the last day of the promotion, they are at $93K â the $100K donation is realistic⌠but they may need a little push.
So I decided to put my money (well, a little) where my mouth is and have just purchased 10 5-person licences of Confluence, the market leading enterprise wiki. Not that I can use them all â so I will find a way to give them away in the future.
If you want to help them donate $100K to Room to Read, you can do your part easily ⌠and just as a reminder, youâre buying a $1,200 licence for $5.  What a bargain to close out the week.
Update: With 3 hours to go Atlassian is just $2.5K short of reaching the target. See coverage map at Mike’s blog.
Update #2: Ah, the drama of the last minutes:
$640 short of $100k… with 20 minutes to go, my maths says we’re just going to miss!
$590 short. Need $30/minute now… at least we did $35 last minute!
Just tipped $99,510… I wonder if we should just leave it up for 10 minutes extra, or does that seem dodgy?
Well… computer says it’s…over $100k!!
Woo! Woo!!! Dancin’ around the room. Atlassian Stimulus Package 400% of $25k goal. What a week. Simply staggering. THANK YOU EVERYBODY!
Atlassian Stimulus Package (preliminary) final total – $100,350 for Room To Read in 120 hours from 7284 _awesome_ startups and teams!!
Tags: atlassian, charity, Collaboration, confluence, donations, Enterprise Software, jira, marketing, room to read, stimulus, wiki
Atlassian $timulus Package Supports Charity. Two Days Left To Get Your (Almost) Free Confluence or Jira Licence.
Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Marketing / PR, Startups April 23rd, 2009
This must be do-good-week. Amongst all the talk about Ashton Kutcherâs challenge to CNN, how the follow-on Oprah show pushed Twitter to never-seen height, little attention was paid to the small fact that this initiative generated over $1 Million donations to Malaria No More. Ashton started with his $100,000 check and was soon joined by Demi Moore, Ted Turner, Oprah and I donât even know who else .. I lost count at $1M.  Hype aside, this is a major contribution to a good cause.
This week weâre also seeing a for-profit company, Atlassian drive to raise $100,000K for the benefit of Room to Read, an organization that builds schools, libraries in rural communities in Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Laos, Zambia âŚetc. Doing good is in Atlassianâs DNA, likely coming from the co-Founder, who is a major Kiva Supporter. His company had set up the Atlassian Foundation which donates basically 1% of everything:
- 1% of company and employee time to Foundation projects
- 1% of company equity to the Foundation
- 1% of our products to non-profit groups
But wait! This isnât a post about charity only. Thereâs a Deal in it for you!
The Atlassian $timulus package is a 5-day drive, during which you can get either Confluence, the excellent Enterprise Wiki, or Jira, the issue tracker â Atlassianâs first product thatâs still an IT favourite for $5 for 5 users.
Now I hear you ask: is that $5 per person per month? That would by typical (actually low) pricing for most SaaS offerings.  NO! It is:
- A five-user licence (ie. $1 per person)
- For a full year
- For the full-featured entrerprise strenght products
My only regret is that it does not involve the hosted versions of these products.  But if itâs the downloadable, installable version, whatâs this per year licence? Most enterprise software is sold with a perpetual licence: you can use it forever. But then the vendor pushes the (almost) mandatory maintenance fees to the tune of 20-25%, and major new releases every 4-5 years.
Atlassian does not play such games, their philosophy is transparency and simplicity. Software should be easy to learn, easy to use and easy to buy. Hence the annual licence whish involves support. (Update: I misunderstood this part: the licence is a perpetual one, the additioal annual fees are for maintenance / support, and the are optional.) And for comparison, the minimum annual licence for both Confluence and Jira is $1,200.
So Atlassian is essentially giving away $1,200 licences for free â but itâs actually a lot more. This isnât just your introductory price. Customers who purchase during the $timulus week (only two days left) are locked in to their $1 per user price for the lifetime of the product, and those fees will be donated as well.  That goes way beyond giving up revenue â they canât possibly provide support for $1 a year, so Atlassian is reaching into their pockets big time for years to come.
The initiative appears to be more wildly popular than they expected. The initial goal was to raise $25,000 for Room to Read, and they exceeded that target on the first day â hence the new objective of $100,000K.
Early this morning they were at 66% of the increased target:
Now, before someone thinks I am doing a paid commercial here: I am not receiving any form of compensation or incentive from Atlassian. I simply like what they are doing. A lot.
But Iâm not naive. This isnât just charity. Itâs damned good marketing â in more ways then one. First, as you may suspect is Brand recognition.
The second is perhaps less obvious: Atlassianâs initial product, Jira took several years to take off â the second, Confluence had much faster growth. Part of their secret sauce has always been relying on a very loyal, very satisfied customer base, mostly IT-types who buy additional products from their trusted vendor.
So yes, Atlassian is seeding their market with thousands of free customers this week. Which is fine, Iâve said before: you donât have to be purely altruistic to do good.
Update: The Atlassian $timulus Package is now listed in Consumerist’s Morning Deals, along with Blu-Ray Discs and Casio Cameras
(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)
Tags: @aplusk, altruism, ashton kutcher, atlassian, charity, Collaboration, confluence, donations, Enterprise Software, jira, kiva, marketing, oprah, philantropy, room to read, stimulus, Twitter, wiki
Why Asus Beats Apple…
Humor, Technology March 3rd, 2009
⌠and all the boring Win brands. Which one would you choose?
Yes, (she is) truly inspiring ![]()
Related posts:
Under the Radar: Call for Startups in Cloud Computing & Business Applications
Business, Collaboration, SaaS, Startups January 12th, 2009
Under the Radar is the Silicon Valleyâs most established startup debut platform: a conference series organized by Dealmaker Media, covering business applications, social media, entertainment, mobility..etc.
The 11th Under the Radar conference in Mountain View, CA on April 24, 2009 will focus on Cloud Computing and Business Applications and the organizers have issued a CALL FOR COMPANIES to present.
The general criteria for all UTR events:
- Unique value proposition
- Ability to monetize product/business
- Large market opportunity
- Must still be considered "under the radar" – launched in 2008
- Company must be an actual startup – not a new product from a large company
Typically 32 finalists are selected, who will present in a rapid-fire format – they are grouped in categories of 4 each, in two parallel tracks and each presenter has about 15 minutes. They get grilled by the judges and audience, and at the end of the conference the winners of each category are announced. Categories for the April event are:
- Cloud Infrastructure
- Platforms
- Virtualization
- Saas
- Mashups
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Business Apps
- Development Tools (Utilities, OS, etc…)
- Mobile Office
- Semantics
- Commerce
- Social software/ networks
- Sync (online/offline)
If youâre building a startup, meet the criteria above, will have a real product / service out by April, donât hesitate: APPLY.
See you in April!
(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here)
Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, DealMakerMedia, entrepreneurship, glue, IBDNetwork, marketing, mashups, networking, SaaS, startup pitch, Startups, Under the Radar, UtR, vc Funding, venture Capital
Corporate Logos Reflect Recession
Business, Humor December 22nd, 2008

From Flickr, originally published by Business Pundit, and re-discovered by Jeff Nolan. (Oh, yeah, I did my not-so-artistic-but-realistic rendering of the Apple logo a year ago.)
Update:Â Will some of these Web 2.0 logos change in 2009?



Zoli Erdos