Take It Face To Face

The first, of what will likely be a couple, branded pizza-ordering application is now available for your iPhone.  Pizza Hut has achieved the coveted “first mover” advantage into this space, with an app offering that allows users to order pizza and play the “Hut Racer” game while they wait.

Pizza Hut's iPhone application

While iPhone has only 11% of the market share, its tech savvy users are an ideal target for Pizza Hut because it’s very likely these people will actually use the application.  Using a phone application to order food creates a certain “cool” or “cutting edge” feeling that will be both contagious, and addicting, for its users.  It also gets rid of a few problems.

Ordering food happens to be one of my favorite things to do.  I would go as far as to say I’m an expert (specializing in the NW DC area).  I love to order food because it’s delicious and I don’t have to cook it for myself.  However, I also hate ordering food because it’s often difficult to communicate your order to the vendor and mistakes are sometimes made in the ordering process.  The emergence of  online ordering, and now phone application ordering, eliminates this human error (and interaction..).

Along with the application, consumers can also text and “Facebook” (verb) orders to Pizza Hut to place them.  I’ve already written about Twitter-restaurants and am sitting here wondering what the next step could possibly be.  Is there a good chance that picking up a phone to order could turn into a thing of the past?  Probably.  Unless you’re picking up the phone to order through an application, of course.

Have you been keeping up with the food-ordering trends?  Would the Pizza Hut app be something you would use?  What’s your favorite way to order?

Author’s Note:  Having been born and raised on Elmhurst’s own Roberto’s pizza, I feel bad for anybody that has to order from these chains, but this application should help ease your suffering.

Author’s Note #2:  Go Cubs.

The examples are mind-boggling: celebrities that take advantage of their fame to launch a product line. Restaurants. Perfume. Clothing. Handbags. Salad dressing. No industry has gone untouched.

The late Paul Newman (the sole food-unaffiliated celebrity I can recall to ever venture into the condiment market) turned it into an art with Newman’s Own. The company’s motto “shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good” speaks for itself.  His company didn’t take itself too seriously. If only more celebrities took a page out of Newman’s book…

Shameless exploitation is what these stars bank on. Whether simply to turn more profit, or to fulfill an alleged lifelong dream (Dear Monica Lewinsky, I’m skeptical), fans can be relied upon to pounce on whatever product their idol might choose to send their way.

It seems like a foolproof formula, but on the whole these brands don’t seem to stick around that long. They fizzle out rather quickly into relative oblivion. Remember Mariah Carey’s signature perfume? Yeah, neither do I.

The kink in the plan comes in when the products are just, well, bad. When their success hinges solely upon the popularity of the spokesperson, consumers will quickly figure out it’s not worth their money.

The onslaught of celebrities pimping out their image to sell stuff has become so intense lately that an endorsement now has the exact opposite effect of what’s intended. Oh, a celebrity developed it? It must be garbage.

A recent New York Daily News article about Justin Timberlake’s new tequila shines light on the fact. Three aficionados who pre-tasted the product were stunned, read STUNNED, that it was not only drinkable, but rather good. Said one, “it’s actually a nice product,” and another, “I gotta admit, I’m a little surprised.”

The small number of other celebrity ventures who have gotten their hooks squarely into the consumer market did so simply by proving their product was quality. Sean John, for example, doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon.  Perhaps it’s becuase the company distanced itself enough from its creator image-wise that I often forget where it came from. Good work Puffy/Diddy/whatever your name is.

Moral of the story: quality product first, PR and marketing later. We can only do so much.

What’s your favorite celebrity product? Which do you think is the worst? Tell us your thoughts.

For the last three or four years, the way I listen to music at home has undergone an overhaul. I don’t own a radio, radios are for cars. So when I get bored of my iTunes collection, I start fishing around for online radio sites.

Needless to say, there are hundreds, some better than others, most I’ve never explored. I don’t purport to know which are best. Take this, instead, as one humble listener’s journey through the mire on the quest for the perfect radio experience.

It started about three years ago with Pandora. Pick an artist you like and they’ll play similar stuff. Ban whatever you don’t like. It was great for a while, but the same hundred or so songs do, believe it or not, eventually get tiresome.

And no matter which artist I input, it always tried to make me listen to Jack Johnson. No, Pandora. Stop! I do not want to listen to Jack Johnson anymore! I could ban his songs til kingdom come, but they always came back. It was time to move on.

Enter Last.fm. You can choose the specific song you want to hear, or search for a radio station based on any key word that suits you, as users can tag songs however they see fit. Snazzy. And though it was a great way for discovering new things, it was a tad too eclectic and unfocused. Though I still head back there sometimes, the unusual offerings can be enough to make your head spin.

Next in my travels came Musicovery. Not only can you select or omit entire genres (no gospel today, thank you), but you can pick what decade you’re feeling, whether you want familiar or offbeat selections, and what mood you’re in (because heaven knows energetic, positive, rock is a far cry from calm, dark rock.)

Best of all, it draws a colorful roadmap detailing the play list to come. This computerized selection, though, too came a little bit repetitive. The program is all but convinced that Kelly Clarkson is the only dark pop artist to ever walk the earth.

Innumerable accolades to Blip.fm for reviving me as a consumer of online music. This combination social media site lets users “blip” whatever song strikes them onto their own radio station. The twitter-like setup allows new djs to add commentary to their plays or chat with others. Others, user or not, can listen to you in real time or whenever else it’s convenient.

Find a dj, or 50, whose style you like on Blip.fm, and you’ll never be bored again. And really, it’s just a lot of fun, putting your favorite songs out there for others to pick up on.

So yeah, those computerized radio programs of the past were great and all. But social media, it’s the wave of the future.

Have you checked out Blip.fm? How does is compare to these other sites? Which do you like to use? Tell us your thoughts.

How many distinct uses are there for Twitter?

On the most basic level, you can keep tabs on your friends, stalk celebrities, and read up on blogs and news feeds of interest.

But beyond these most common utilities, Twitter can serve as a tool for connecting with others with similar interests. The day after I wrote a post debating whether to enroll in a Gay and Lesbian Documentary course, “LogoChannel” (whose biography describes it as “a television channel for the LGBT community), began following my tweets. Side note: Though I did enroll in the class, I must say that the content of my posts has likely been disappointingly irrelevant since.

Beyond personal ventures, however, Twitter has inevitably evolved into a powerful direct marketing tool. Case in point: last week, my coworker Anthony tweeted that he was, “hanging shelves tonight.” Shortly thereafter, he received a direct reply from another Twitter account stating, “dont forget to use [brand name] anchor to hang up your friends shelf. Go to [company’s web address] use coupon code twitter1 for 10% off.”

Well, there you have it. Who can be more effectively convinced to buy shelf hanging products (at a discount, no less!) than a person who has just admitted they’ll be performing that very activity in the near future? Probably no one.

A glance at the latest string of tweets from this user demonstrates that the account exists for the sole purpose of direct marketing. And because a Twitter account is free, this targeted coupon distribution costs only the manpower (or computer program power, as the case may be) to hunt down these relevant entries and fire a pre-written pitch in their direction.

The effectiveness of this technique, in both cost and reach, will likely lead to its widespread promulgation. As of now, a user’s only real defense against such marketers is to make their updates private. Doing so, however, has the simultaneous effect of cutting off much of Twitter’s utility as a networking service. What is the unhappily targeted consumer to do?

After its initial growth spurt, Facebook began a policy of forcibly shutting down fictional profiles, particularly those created in the name of celebrities and fictional characters (though this did have the unfortunate side effect of barring from the site all the real life Yodas and Batmans of the world). Perhaps a policy of monitoring Twitter accounts for similar dissenters is not far off.

As a consumer, do you find this marketing approach desirable because of the relevant discount offers that it’s likely to include, or is it just pesky and intrusive? How would you feel if Twitter implemented a policy that forbade accounts designed solely for marketing purposes? Tell us your thoughts.

It’s the last day of March, and that means only one thing. No, you’re right, it means several things. It means it’s spring now. It also means the Cherry Blossom Festival is almost upon us. But the one I was really going for is that it means tomorrow is April Fool’s Day.

What a strange pastime: people going to great pains to confuse, trick and embarrass their friends and family. But whereas simple pranks like short-sheeting beds and strategically placing whoopee cushions lying about used to do the trick, the holiday has, of late, transcended its humble origins into something of a nationwide warfare.

More and more each year, corporations are getting in on the act, taking their crack at pulling the wool over the eyes of the surprisingly unsuspecting public. Google, for one, is obsessed with the idea. Since 2000, they’ve attempted something almost every year, from an article divulging pigeons as the workers responsible for ranking search results to reports about an upcoming intelligence-boosting Google soft drink.

The two greatest corporate gags that come to my mind both took place over a decade ago. The first occurred in 1996 when Taco Bell had thousands of New York Times readers convinced that Philadelphia’s great icon had been renamed the Liberty Taco Bell. The second took place in 1998, when a Burger King advertisement that ran in USA Today duped customers into ordering specially designed left-handed Whoppers.

For whatever reason, people fell for these things, and therein lies their hilarity. But since then, no April Fool’s Day stunts have really impressed themselves upon my memory. I’d like to hope this is because people are getting smarter. More likely, though, these tricks have simply become so commonplace that everyone is on the lookout.

And how do these fake campaigns figure into the marketing mix? Is Taco Bell at risk for losing favor from people who really believe they bought out the Liberty Bell? Are Whopper lovers going to spite Burger King for making them look like utter fools in public?

Oh, I really hope not. April Fool’s Day is just too much fun. And even if they fail occasionally, I hope corporations keep trying, because it’s fabulous to watch the confusion that ensues when they actually hit the mark.

What’s the best April Fool’s Day prank someone ever pulled on you? Think these campaigns would’ve convinced you? Tell us your thoughts.