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I'm planning my first trip to London in late-April and will have a couple of free days. Can anyone recommend a good mid-priced hotel that's near all the action? Also, any interesting things to do other than the obvious stuff and favorite pubs/restaurants would be great. Thanks.
Today Burger King unveiled its new Enormous Omelet Sandwich breakfast offering containing one sausage patty, two eggs, two American cheese slices and three strips of bacon weighing-in at 730 calories and 47 grams of fat. Needless to say, the press and critics are having a field day. I can only imagine Burger King is following the Hardees Monster Thickburger trend of going to the extreme opposite of the low-carb, low-fat craze in hopes of finding a market with people who just want to eat big.
What stuck me most though was a quote by a Burger King spokesperson who cited that this sandwich has virtually the same calories and fat as many offerings at local diners and restaurants. They cited Denny's Grand Slam breakfast which has 665 calories and 49 grams of fat with the implication being that no one is screaming about that. According to the Denny's website (in the Breakfast Menu #1 PDF), that stat is accurate and it got me thinking about the perception of all this. No one raises hell over good ol' Denny's and their Grand Slam breakfast, but when Burger King takes essentially the same food and puts it in a bun, watch out! So, it's not as much about the food, calories or fat as it is about the perception of what restaurant (or what type of restaurant) is making it available. Why is that?
For more on the appeal of the whole "extreme food" thing, I previously turned to Laura Ries. Here's what she had to say.
In 2001, Kodak acquired Ofoto and recently announced that they are changing the name to Kodak EasyShare and ofoto.com is becoming kodakgallery.com. I'm sure this was done for both brand consistency and to leverage Kodak's strong name association with photography. But, Ofoto is a cool name that is short, easy to type and easy to remember. Kodak EasyShare and kodakgallery.com are none of those things. In a world where they are competing with the likes of Flickr, who goes from Ofoto to Kodak EasyShare?
If you are new to The Long Tail principle, read this to get up to speed. Then, read about the Long Tail of television and the ratio of content produced versus content available to the average viewer. Fascinating.
For the last month or so, Verizon Wireless has been advertising the Treo 600 for $199 after instant and mail-in rebates (I've only seen the ad in print or else I'd link to it). That's a great deal considering the regular price is $350 (excuse me, $349.99). So, last week I visited my local VZW store and the catch is, the deal is for new customers only. Since I have been a Verizon Wireless customer for just over a year, I am not eligible for the deal. Once I hit two years, I will be eligible for a trade-up credit toward a new phone, but that's it.
So, my options are:
Option #3 sounds pretty good to me right now except that I'm locked into my two-year contract with VZW. So, they got me for two years (to which I happily committed) and, for being such a great customer, won't let me have the screamin' deal they're offering to new customers.
I realize the economics of the wireless industry is such that they offer low prices on hardware to lock you into service and it's all based on a maximum of one great deal on hardware per customer every two years. Trading out customers' phones more often than that would throw things out of whack. The problem is, now we can take our numbers with us and I'm pissed. So, when my two years are up, am I going to get a new phone with Verizon Wireless or switch to another provider that has not yet pissed me off? Not sure, but I'm thinking about it and that's not something I was doing last week.
Any business model that dangles great deals in front of existing customers, but only offers them to new customers, is deeply flawed, especially considering how much more it costs to earn a new customer than keep an existing one. In this case, rework the model to allow anyone to take advantage of these deals, require I extend my contract with them for another two-years from this point (thus locking me in as a longer-term customer every time I trade-up) and make me happy!
According to this article in The New York Times, advertisers are turning to recurring ensemble casts for TV spots in hopes people "...will look forward to the ads, wondering when and how the cast will turn up."
Couldn't Adweek have come up with a more creative name for its new alternative advertising publication than Other Advertising? According to Adrants, Other Advertising "will cover non-traditional advertising categories it defines as mass transit, sports stadiums, in-store, product placement, cinemas, elevators, cell phones, guerrilla marketing. Content will include business news, case studies, profiles and guest editorials." I just wish an advertising publication could have come up with a better, less on-the-nose, name.
And while I'm ranting, how about the new A Diamond Is Forever tag line: I Forever Do??? Whereas "I Forever Do" sounds silly and grammatically incorrect, "I Do...Forever" would have been a much classier and less silly way to convey the same message. Just my two-cents.
