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Happy Birthday to a Renaissance Man

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Previn in younger days
Previn in younger days
andre-previn-at-801André Previn turned 80 years old earlier this month, which gives us cause to reflect on the incredible life of this highly interesting, very creative man. In his musical life, he’s demonstrated a versatility and catholicity that surpasses even Leonard Bernstein’s reputation.

Born in Germany, raised in the United States and truly a citizen of the world, Previn has lived out his life in the European capitals of London, Paris and Berlin … and here in the U.S. in places as diverse as Hollywood and Pittsburgh. A true wunderkind, he burst onto the musical scene back in the early 1950s, recording fine jazz piano arrangements that were released on 10” RCA Victor 78-r.p.m. and LP records … then soon migrated over to MGM Studios, writing musical scores for more than a dozen Hollywood films.

I own a few of Previn’s early jazz albums. His song arrangements are little gems – each one their own special musical adventure. Listen to his rendition of Stella by Starlight, for example, and you’ll immediately understand his special way with the music.

Previn’s pop music career masked the fact that he had studied classical music at the Paris Conservatory, and in San Francisco under the tutelage of the great French conductor Pierre Monteux. By the 1960s, Previn had moved from pop back to his classical roots, issuing a series of critically acclaimed recordings with the best symphony orchestras of London. His interpretations of the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Sir William Walton … along with recordings of the important British choral masterworks Belshazzar’s Feast and The Rio Grande remain touchstone performances, nearly 40 years on.

In his later years, in addition to guest-conducting the world over, Previn has penned a steady stream of memorable compositions, including several concertos for his ex-wife, the celebrated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. Even more impressive is Previn’s foray into the world of opera. His 1998 composition A Streetcar Named Desire has received more than 20 productions – an almost unheard of feat for a contemporary opera. And today, he’s busily at work writing a new work for the Houston Grand Opera to premiere next month, based on Noel Coward’s 1938 play Still Life (later made into the movie Brief Encounter).

At age 80, André Previn shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. And why should he? Musically speaking, he still has much to say … and the arts world is richer for it.

Happy Birthday, Maestro!

Twitter: The “Next Big Thing” in Marketing Research?

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By now, it’s obvious that Twitter has become the newest darling of the social marketing world. With somewhere around ten million users today and growing exponentially (there were fewer than one million just a year ago), it’s clear that Twitter has successfully made the leap from novel curiosity to mainstream communications vehicle.

Indeed, Twitter may have worthwhile applications beyond simply the ability for people to update their status information in real time from a mobile phone, computer or online portal. In fact, Silicon Alley Insider recently ran a contest inviting readers to submit their ideas for turning Twitter into a financially viable social network.

The winning entry? An idea from Chicago communications agency Denuo recommending that Twitter charge marketers for access to opted-in users willing to field an occasional research question from brands. Twitter would also charge for dashboard access to the research analytics.

I think this idea has a good deal of merit. Instead of incurring the cost to design and deploy custom research projects, simply tap into Twitter’s existing platform and huge user base to “anonymize” the data and open it up for mining.

Of course, some people voice concern that Twitter will soon be overrun by brand-related messages and advertising. That’s actually begun to happen as certain brands “follow” twitterers ad nauseum — so much it almost constitutes a form of cyber-stalking. But by offering operating an online research panel such as this, Twitter has the potential to deliver scads of valuable, actionable data at the speed of “now.”

Like YouTube, Twitter is actually going to have to figure out a way to make some money for its investors, and soon (imagine that?). So this idea bears watching.

Another Win for the Tax Man?

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The threat of collecting sales taxes for Internet-based commerce has been rumbling in the background for years. But the latest news out of Washington may mean it’s finally coming to pass. And it’s generating its share of controversy.

A bill is expected to be introduced soon in Congress that would force Amazon, Overstock and other Internet retailers to collect sales taxes from their customers who shop online or through mail order. Co-sponsored by a Republican senator and a Democratic congressperson – which means almost certain passage – the bill would require states to inform retailers whenever there is a change in their tax code. This will have the effect of simplifying the tax collection and data reconciliation process.

State officials are understandably excited over the prospects of gaining additional sales tax revenue. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, sales tax receipts have dropped off in recent months due to a general decrease in retail activity. To them, this seems like a quick and easy way to replenish their coffers.

Plus, some brick-and-mortar retailers are surely happy about having a more level playing field. No longer will they have to compete at a disadvantage against online retailers that are saving their customers 6% or 7% sales tax on every purchase.

Of course, sales tax regulations have long been a thicket of complexity. In fact, a tidy number of sales tax collection software/service companies have sprung up over the years to help retailers make sense of it all. Not only are a myriad of different sales taxes set by individual states, but cities and other municipal entities within states can also set their own sales taxes as well.

To add even more to the potential confusion, each state has its own individual laws regarding what type of merchandise is taxable, or whether things like shipping expenses are taxable. So collecting the correct figure is often a tricky business, even for large online retailers.

As for sellers having multiple physical locations in addition to their online presence, depending on where those business locations are in relation to the online consumer’s place of residence can make for an even more complicated picture.

Are we having fun yet?

It’s no wonder online retailers intensely dislike playing the role of tax collector for the states. On the other hand, government officials absolutely love the idea that they can collect new funds without actually having to raise taxes.

And that’s what’s so interesting about this latest maneuver. No one is talking about an official change in tax law. Technically, online shoppers have always been required to keep their receipts and pay tax funds to their home state when filing the yearly state tax return. But be honest … do you know anyone who’s actually ever done that?

UPDATE (4/28/09): BusinessWeek is reporting that the particulars of the legislative bill are still being drafted. Of course, this isn’t the first time movement on a bill has been delayed in Congress. The magazine is also reporting that the bill’s passage is not a foregone conclusion … although opposition in this Congress appears to be lower than in previous ones. We shall see.

Is “Pay to Play” the Future of the Web?

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More than a few feathers were ruffled by Kodak’s announcement that the multiple millions of users of the company’s Kodak Gallery online photo-storage service may have their photos subject to deletion if they don’t begin paying an annual service charge ranging from $5 to $20.

Is this the beginning of a trend? Some web observers seem to think so. David Lazarus, in his recent Los Angeles Times business column, draws a parallel to automated teller machines that were introduced by the banking industry back in the late 1970s. At first, there were no service charges assessed when using ATMs. The banks wanted their customers to start using ATMs, thus helping to reduce the demand for more labor-intensive (read: expensive) teller stations.

Then, after a number of years of free service the banks began charging ATM service fees for out-of-network transactions and even some in-network ones. The idea was now that consumers had become comfortable with the technology and the “24/7/365” convenience of the machines, they would accept the fees without resistance.

“Why should the Internet be any different,” Mr. Lazarus asks?

I think the comparason isn’t totally apt. It’s true that there is a cost for Kodak or others to maintain the infrastructure (hardware and software) to provide archiving and other web-based services. But the fact is, those costs are not nearly as high as the “brick-and-mortar” expense of building an ATM system.

What’s more, the banks were in a stronger position to move en masse toward charging fees. After all, they operate under a government-issued charters. The barriers to entry – both regulatory and financial – are far more onerous than anything in cyberspace.

Anyone ever heard of Flickr?

And that’s the real challenge today. Who is going to be the first to jump into the fee-based waters? And will anyone else follow? Put it another way: will others follow the leader … only to find themselves drowning in a sea of new, free alternatives that spring up in response?

Just ask the newspaper industry how simple it is to successfully implement fee-based services on the web. There’s your answer as to how easy “pay to play” will be to implement.

No froth in the beer industry …

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Can it be possible? The Beer Institute trade association is reporting that U.S. beer sales are actually declining.

Chalk up one more piece of evidence showing that this economic downturn is a vastly different animal. In previous periods of recession, beer sales did not really suffer. Perhaps that’s because it’s been a relatively inexpensive discretionary item. If you’re feeling down about the economy or your personal finances, why not drown your sorrows in a nice cold one?

Not so this time around. The Beer Institute reports that domestic brew sales have declined 4% in the first two months of 2009 compared to the same period last year, while import beer sales are off a whopping 19%. Not only that, foreign beer sales registered a decline for the entire year of 2008 as well.

Shipments from Mexico have fallen nearly 14% so far this year compared to last, led by Corona. But Corona is still America’s top-selling foreign brew, beating Heineken by a long shot. Speaking of which … beer sales from Holland have declined by an even bigger percentage (more than 25%).

What should we make of these statistics? Are Americans now tightening their belts on absolutely everything?

Or maybe we’re doing for our health what we’re also doing for our personal savings rate. Perhaps switching to something better than brewskies – like heart-healthy red wine? We’ll have to wait for the latest statistics from the National Association of American Wineries to find out.

What is YouTube’s Business Model?

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The information is starting to trickle out. YouTube is hemorrhaging red ink. Credit Suisse estimated recently that YouTube will make approximately $240 million in advertising revenue – revenue that has come from a cavalcade of different forms of advertising, licensing and partnership deals.

Balance that income against estimated costs of over $700 million and you get a loss of more than $450 million.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Advertising Age magazine has just reported that YouTube is now selling advertising against 9% of its video views. That’s up from 6% a year ago. But those figures are still paltry. And it’s really no surprise since so much of YouTube’s content is user-generated, devoid of any significant interest and thus not really “monetizable” for advertising purposes.

No one – not even parent company Google, with a market capitalization of over $100 billion – is going to put up with such a scenario forever. The question is whether YouTube will ever be able to generate enough ad revenue to offset the huge bandwidth and storage costs associated with managing a humongous repository of video material. It’s a question that, even if Google’s own senior management doesn’t ask, the company’s shareholders should.

Paid subscriptions, anyone?

Holy Smoke! Social Marketing Gets Religion

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As if we needed further proof that today’s social marketing phenomenon is seeping into every corner of people’s lives … faith-based web sites are now embracing the latest social techniques full-on.

One such example is Tangle, a site that provides family-friendly content and forums with a Christian perspective. Since merging with GodTube earlier this year, Tangle has experienced rapid growth. Particularly popular is the site’s interactive “prayer wall,” a kind of cyber equivalent to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall where members can post prayers and petitions to the Almighty.

But in a 21st century twist, other members can comment on those prayers, a kind of running commentary from the spiritual side chamber. Talk about spilling the beans! It’s certainly a far cry from the Holy Week tradition of private auricular confession to a priest.

Not all of the action is on the Christian side of the ledger, either. Our Jewish Community, a project of Cincinnati’s Congregation Beth Adam, provides information, insights and discussion points related to Passover and other Jewish holidays – complete with blog entries and Twitter feeds.

These social marketing initiatives, in combination with the proliferation of faith-based informational web sites, prove yet again that old-time faith is flourishing in new-world cyberspace. Indeed, the web has provided the most effective means yet for like-minded, smaller or geographically far-flung religious communities such as Eastern Orthodox Christians, Traditional Anglicans/Episcopalians and Sephardic Jewish communities to find themselves and nurture their shared beliefs and culture. Hey, more power to them.

Now, before we get too breathless about the mobile media revolution …

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For those of us in the communications field or otherwise on the bleeding edge of communications, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that the rest of the world isn’t all that engaged with (or even interested in) many of the communications techniques and gadgets that so absorb us.

To underscore this point, a study published recently by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that only about one-third of the adult U.S. population finds mobile Internet communications to be particularly interesting or attractive to them. And, horror of horrors, the remaining two-thirds aren’t being pulled by mobility further into the digital world.

The Pew study categorizes information and communication technology users into different sub-groups that have been given catchy descriptive names. Five of them, labeled “digital collaborators,” “media movers,” “roving nodes,” “ambivalent networkers” and “mobile newbies” collectively make up just over one third of the population. The study combines these groups together as people who are “motivated by mobility.”

On the other hand, a clear majority of people fall into a second segment dubbed the “stationary media majority.” Sub-groups within this segment include “desktop veterans,” “drifting surfers,” the “information encumbered,” the “tech indifferent,” and those who are just simply “off the network.”

While it may be tempting to assume that the ranks of the “motivated by media” segment will continue to grow at the same rapid pace (or even faster) going forward, the Pew study throws cold water on such a notion. Indeed, it finds that the “stationary media majority” segment, far from becoming more comfortable or accepting of cell phones and other mobile devices, is actually displaying increasingly more negative attitudes about them.

Maybe it’s an understandable reaction to the relentless press of new technology for people to push back like this. And we’ve seen it before – back in the 1970s and ’80s with the high-tech/high-touch phenomenon when desktop computers were being introduced in a big way into the office environment.

People do come around eventually, of course. But it takes longer than many would expect. And it’s really too bad when some early adopters respond with impatience and exasperation. Instead, why not just chill and give the rest of the world a chance to catch up?

Even better, let them do it on their own terms and at their own pace.

Conference Centers to the Fore

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What a difference a few months make. “Way back” in 2008, high-end resort properties in exotic locations were doing a healthy business hosting corporate events. Large corporations have long been a core resort customer segment that has delivered volume business year after year – major contributors to the bottom line even as resorts have also attracted their share of weddings and other smaller events.

The economic meltdown has now brought hugely negative publicity to corporate events held at resorts, the result of news reports that federal government bailout money has gone to pay for them. These events have been described by politicians and the press as “outrageous,” “excessive,” “junkets” and “boondoggles” – places where well-heeled business types get to wine and dine and cavort in the sun on the taxpayer’s dollar.

Even the AFL-CIO union hasn’t been immune to the criticism, coming under fire for holding its annual convention at the exclusive Fontainbleau Hilton resort property in Miami Beach.

While one can certainly fault these companies and organizations for being politically tone-deaf, the fact is that business does get carried out at these events. Even in today’s electronic age, it is still important to organize face-to-face get-togethers on a regular basis.

Enter the Conference Center. This corner of the hospitality industry, long relegated to backwater status, has consistently labored under the image of being far less impressive and exciting than the resort segment. Now, sensing an opening, conference centers are making their move. They’re promoting themselves as a preferred location for serious business events – far away from tourist attractions or white sand beaches, extreme recreation or other distractions (the ubiquitous golf being the exception).

Properties like the Marriott Aspen Wye Conference Center in Maryland and the Wyndham Princeton Forrestal Conference Center in New Jersey are stepping up promotion, as is the International Association of Conference Centers. The basic message is that conference center properties are the places where productive meetings take place, free of distractions. “Serious-minded meetings are in … posh or over-the-top venues are out” is the order of the day.

Plus, right now it just sounds a lot better from a PR standpoint if you can report that your corporate event is being held in a location five miles from Trenton, New Jersey.

Skyscraper Graveyard

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apartment-buildingBook TowerOn a trip to Detroit a few days ago, my family and I stayed downtown in one of the city’s newly renovated grande dame hotels. The 1920s-era Fort Shelby Hotel, now part of the Doubletree chain, reopened last December after being closed for more than 25 years. It’s a jewel of a property stuck in the middle of one of the most depressed cities in America. Reportedly, a whopping $80 million was spent on its renovation.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just up the street is the even more palatial Westin Book-Cadillac, which was the world’s largest hotel when it first opened in 1924. It, too, stood vacant starting in the early 1980s, miraculously avoiding the wrecking ball before being rescued in a $200 million+ renovation and reopening this past October.

So what will help fill the rooms of these showcase hotel properties? If a flood of reservations actually materializes, it will be for the myriad lawyers, accountants and government officials descending on the city to pick apart General Motors and Chrysler Corporation.

The city of Detroit can’t seem to catch a break. First, there’s the real estate crisis that has seen property values plunge even faster than the national average. Today, the city’s median home sales price is below $10,000, which has to be the record low for a major U.S. city.

Next up, the spectacle of dilapidated infrastructure, a dysfunctional school system plus governmental corruption, nepotism and favoritism run amok – all culminating in Detroit’s mayor being sent to prison.

Now comes the implosion of Detroit’s auto industry that has sparked the nation’s renewed attention on the crumbling city, including human-interest television reporting and lurid photo essays like the one just published in Time magazine.

Sadly, this is Detroit. Riding the People Mover, the 2.5-mile monorail system that loops the perimeter of downtown, one can peer into the second-story levels of building after vacant building. It’s truly a metaphor for the entire city … and a peepshow for the rest of the nation.

Is there a natural bottom? The investors in Detroit’s old hotels seem to think so. But you have to wonder, would those investors have moved forward with these initiatives knowing what they know today?

It was photographer and social commentator Camilo Jose Vergara who suggested more than ten years ago that the empty skyscrapers of downtown Detroit be preserved in their current state as a memorial and monument to a vanishing industrial age. Of course, the city government leaders were horrified at the idea and objected loudly. But really, what other use could they possibly come up with for these relics – silent and stark reminders that a city once the nation’s fifth largest has shrunk in under 50 years to less than half its former size.