Following on the tail of United Airlines and it’s Starbucks partnership, JetBlue has announced that it will be serving 10 ounce cups of coffee 30,000 feet in the air.  JetBlue has done a lot of brand positioning in terms of hooking up with other brands such as DirecTV, XM Radio and FOX.  If I only drank coffee…

Since I was young, I’ve always had an interest in marketing. Specifically, how brands relate to people and how they can influence culture. I’ve written numerous papers on this throughout my academic career and really believe that for brands to be successful, they must speak to people as another person, not just a “enterprise.” Kevin Roberts has talked about this in his fabulous read, Lovemarks. Reinier Evers has written about this in his Trendwatching.com newsletter.

I subscribe to the notion of the YOUniverse (thanks Reinier). I couldn’t agree with it any more. The universe is all about the consumer - with the consumer front and center… the way it ought to be. Today, an article came out in the International Herald talking about how Buyers Want It To Be All About ‘Me”. My question - why shouldn’t it be all about the buyers?Â

I tried to really bring this notion about the YOUniverse to the world when I launched MyPhotoAlbum.com thru FortuneCity.com. As the founder/Product Manager of MyPhotoAlbum, I realized that all our “competitors” were capitalizing on printing photographs…why not create a photoalbum that users can update/upload and share - and customize it personally at the same time. When you think about it, every single photo album is different. Why should our online photo albums deviate from this? It’s all about customization.

Just look at MySpace. I’ve got a few friends on MySpace who have customized their profiles to an extreme. It’s unbelievable what people will do to customize and exclusify (is that a word?) themselves. Why shouldn’t this world be all about me? When corporations can recognize this - they will capitalize on consumers and allow for consumers to drive their product lines and lifecycles…not the other way around.

A Look Into ZipCar – Financially Sound?

Â

I have a keen interest in the automotive and business world. When I can mix the two together, I get really excited. Being in New York City, I get to experience many startup businesses take shape and try and battle it out amongst thousands of other businesses here in the city. One of the businesses which have struck my attention is ZipCar, which is a per hour rental service. According to ZipCar’s website, it operates in Boston, New York, and Washington D.C.and is profitable in existing markets – while having 2005 revenue of $15 million. Again, according to their site, they have over 40,000 members of which many have paid annual membership fees of $50, or have agreed to spend at least $50/mo.  The typical customer tends to be dedicated urbanites who don’t need a car to commute to work (me), whilst many are under 35 (me), though some empty-nesters use the service instead of purchasing a second vehicle.

Â

Being that we just rented a ZipCar to drive to Boston yesterday, and having sat through a coffee meeting with a few friends coming up with improved and/or new business models, I’d love to explore the ZipCar metrics. According to my calculations (note, I’m not a financial wizard – I’m a marketing & strategy guy), ZipCar generates $40-45 per car per day after insurance, gas, tolls, and wear/tear. Note: this does not include lease and/or car purchase cost.

Â

I have taken today as an example, Wednesday, January 25, 2006 – and looked at 4 ZipCar locations within New York City: East 33^rd Street, Washington Sq. Village, E 79^th Street, and W 83^rd Street. Of these 4 locations, they have a combined 18 cars that were rented a total of 194.5 hours out of a possible 432 (as of 11am EST). On average, the per car revenue was $69.11. Now, it’s time to take costs out of the revenue… the incurred costs are gas & tolls, insurance, normal wear and tear, as well, as lease/downright purchase payment for the automobile.

Â

I have worked out that the gas cost is approximately $15.63 per car per day and the insurance plus wear/tear is approximately $10 per car per day. This brings the net figure down to $43.48. Since these cars aren’t the fanciest, mostly being Mazda Matrix’s, Volkswagen Jetta’s, and BMW 325’s (amongst others), I have taken the average lease cost of $360 per month and broken it down over 30 days ($12). If we deduct the $12 of the car cost from the $43.48, we have $31.48, which is the income per car per day. Since these cars are parked at garages and other locations around the city, there needs to be a flat fee paid per garage by ZipCar, OR, a revenue share per location. I’m not sure which it is, but has to be roughly 10% of the car per day, which is ~$7….so, the actual income is just over $24 per car. If we take 25 days of operating the car, we’ll see that each car generates $600 of income for ZipCar, or roughly $7,200 per year. I’ve heard rumors that ZipCar has over 400 cars, which brings their revenues in around $2.88 million per year.

Â

Since the only way that this model can scale is based on amount of cars on the road – we can see why ZipCar tapped Benchmark Capital as an investor…to the tune of $10 million dollars back in July 2005. The venture capital was used to help ZipCar expand into the western urban markets, specifically, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.

Â

I’m going to keep my eyes on ZipCar… it’s a model that I’m interested in and since it blends technology (look at its website, especially its booking system), automotive, and the business world. I’m a zipster as they are called…

Â

Â

Â

Â

Â

Â

Â

Traveling again…was out of the NY office yesterday and visiting/working with our technology team in Connecticut…and today, heading up to Boston on a business trip but will be back in the office tomorrow morning. I’ll be working on a few postings whilst laying low for the 4.5 hour trip. Will post soon!Â

I’d love to see someone innovate within the space of digital rights management (DRM) to create a universal digital media subscription or “right.� What I mean by this is the following:

Â

I have an Apple iPod (new version, sleek black)

I have a media center PC that powers a 42� LCD

I have a laptop (Sony VGN-TX670p)

I have a cellphone (Blackberry 7100)

Â

I’d like to download a song off my media center PC, that will be able to be used on my ipod. Subsequently, I want to be able to bring it to my laptop and maybe even have the shorter version of it as my ringtone or ringback. So, if I spend $0.99 cents for a song, it should come with the rights to utilize it across multiple platforms and the ease of portability between devices should allow for this. Where is this? It’s not here. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid for and downloaded songs of iTunes twice. Once on my media center pc, and once on my laptop. When I log into itunes on my media center pc, I should have the same account, library, and interface that I would have if I was on my laptop. Doesn’t happen.

Â

A buddy of mine has a Sprint cellphone (Samsung) and has the opportunity to download a ringtone for $2.50. That’s pretty high….but it only lasts for 90 days! WOW. What’s going on here?

Â

Â

Â

Â

Â

There is much speculation of satellite radio becoming the next Betamax. As a current shareholder of Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), this scares me. The power of hearing that ubiquitous Wifi/WiMax is coming to the USA within the next 2-3 years can essentially put satellite radio out of business…why? If you can get wireless internet access within your automobile within any state, highway, town, city, etc - why do you need satellite radio? Programming and running the operations of a satellite media company are extremely expensive, as is launching satellites into orbit. For Internet radio such as Live365.com or Apple ITunes, you can listen to any one of their stations while traveling in your car…and it’s just like listening to Internet radio.

Now, the quality of satellite radio over FM radio is not even comparable. However, if we have ubiquitous wifi or wimax, the speeds of the broadband will hopefully be fast enough that we can have the least loss-less compression available for the best sound quality. As a shareholder of SIRI and also a subscriber of XM Radio, I’d like to see what the satellite providers will do to protect their positioning. Thoughts?

I’m currently reading The Future of Music by David Kusek and Gern Leonhard as I’m extremely fascinated by the digital music space. I dabbled in the digital music downloading space back in 2001 when Dynamify Records setup our own indie-distribution label and provided forth our own payment systems and DRM. After 6 months running Dynamify Records as a distribution only service, we shut it down due internal re-organization.

Â

Â

So, I’m back taking a look at the space and see many applications for it. Growing up, we had Hotwire, Morpheus, Kazaa, eDonkey, EasyNews, and many other P2P and usenet programs that allowed the very simple downloading of whatever type of file you can imagine.

Â

Today, some of these services still exist, but organizations like the RIAA are going after users with lawsuits if they are illegally downloading owned IP. In the music industry, this is a very big deal as Britney Spears and Eminem have publicly said that illegal downloading is wrong – whereas, The Greatful Dead and Franz Ferdinand have publicly said it’s beneficial for the bands.

Â

Â

One of the points the book brings up is that content is not king. Anyone has access to content. Kusek and Leonhard argue that the customer is King Kong and service is Godzilla. Interesting notion.Â

Â

ITunes is successful because it has the hardware and software that allows for the distribution of media efficiently. Services like Rhapsody and Napster don’t have the same simple process as Apple for downloading and storing on a portable media consumption device and thus are runners up to iTunes. When you own both the hardware (iPod) and software (iTunes), you can become a lot more effective in the distribution of your music than just owning one end of the value chain.

Â

Â

It’s my belief that iTunes will convert to a hybrid payment model that will include subscription and pay-per-download to compete with Napster and all of the other subscription services. It is not cost beneficial to fill up your ipod with $10,000 worth of AAC files. Way too expensive. I’d be one of the first subscribers to their catalog if they would offer a subscription service…why not? It’s coming….

awApple’s done it! They’ve gone to the darkside. Well, I believe this dark side will be very fruitful for Apple’s market share position. Apple currently has around a 2% share of the computer market and moving over to Intel based chips, it’ll allow them to improve the speed, architecture, as well, as develop applications that will compete with the PC marketplace. The folks who need to watch out now are our friends at Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, and other major market players.

Apple shocked the world today as well with a $5.7billion sales quarter, up almost $900million from analyst predictions. They also shipped 14 million Ipods in Q4 of last year which was up 3 million from analyst predictions. Great job Apple!

Today was a major press day as I was featured as the spotlight interview on the release of Adotas.com. The interview can be found here. If you read the article, I dont know how much I look like Pete Sampras, but as a major tennis fan and coming from a tennis family, I highly respect it. Also, IGA Partners was written up in Crains New York Business Journal [subscription required] and Clickz.com. Lots of amazing press and a lot more to follow shortly.

I’ll be back in NYC on Friday and will be back to posting regularly then. Hang tight. (currently in Los Angeles and Santa Monica)

Â

Just finished watching the XBOX 360 portion of the Microsoft keynote speech at CES 2006. Even with being within the industry (IGA Partners), the numbers are startling. Microsoft predicts that 4.5-5.5 million Xbox 360s will be sold by June 2006. Currently, they have launched the game console within 30 different countries, with the first one being the USA on November 28, 2005. Xbox Live Marketplace is the area of which you can buy game assets, and within the first 90 days since launch, there have been over 4 million downloads. Epic Records and film studios have launched campaigns to release assets into the Xbox Live Marketplace. One of the larger advertising deals cut into Xbox Live interface is that of Paramount’s Mission Impossible III (MI:3) which is a movie trailer promotion. In terms of internet connectivity, 10% of the initial Xbox’s were connected online where as over 50% of the Xbox 360s are being connected. On average, 4 games are being sold per Xbox 360 with over 2 peripherals per console. Numbers are doubled from the original Xbox. Great job Microsoft - looking forward to the future.

Â