Hardbat Classic Las Vegas – Please Bring it Back Budweiser!
Hardbat Classic Las Vegas – Eric Owens and Wally Green
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck
As a table tennis enthusiast I’m hoping Bud Light brings back the Big Money Hard Bat Classic Hard Bat Table Tennis Tournament they had last year across the country, with a great finale tournament in Las Vegas and then shown on ESPN.
As a marketing guy I’m sensitive to the fact this may not have had the return on investment Bud had hoped for – probably because the early promotion was too spotty. Bud may not even have realized that offering 100,000 in first prize money *alone* would bring a huge number of excellent players into the mix even as they did realize that the severe handicapping and restricted paddles would pretty much guarantee that the winner would NOT be a great player, just a “good” one. [with apologies to Jack Baker, a tennis guy with a very good game who won the tournament because he was spotted up to 17 points in matches against better players].
I think the handicapping is a great idea, though I’d recommend Bud have *two* tournaments next time – one with handicaps and one with regular paddles and rules. “Real” Table Tennis is an amazing sport, and I think part of the reason the Hardbat Classic seemed to fail to attract as much attention as it should have was that the event worked hard to perpetuate the notion that it’s a “goofy” sport. I’m not too sensitive about this (and surprisingly even many of the greats in Table Tennis are very modest about their remarkable ability) , but the two-track approach would work better where you showcased “basement style” hardbat along with the blazing spin and speed of quality sponge rubber play. The $120,000 in prize money was chump change to Bud even as it was *by far* the largest prize in US Table Tennis history and one of the largest purses in the world for this low-money sport.
Summary for Bud Light’s Marketing Benefit:
* Hold another Hardbat Classic
* Begin promotions *now* via bars and Bud regional distributors, making sure their participation matched the size and scope of the venue. Last year I think many regionals opted out due to expense, so the Vegas event was “bigger” than the collective national events. Keep Vegas the same (it was great), but make sure the national scope is much bigger than last year, even if that takes more time to promote. If necessary cut costs by halving the Las Vegas convention venue and limiting the number of “free trips” – or perhaps initiate a modest “buy in” for participants. It’s cheap to get to Las Vegas and often cheap to stay there, so the impact of this does not require a large number of free trips for players. More prize money would probably have a higher ROI than free trips. Venue could have been half that size – I never saw all the tables in action and games could have been started and run much earlier.
* Change the online marketing to be a viral, social media rather than the centralized, very weak website with limited information as before.
* Enlist the help of the many Table Tennis clubs throughout the USA, perhaps with modest stipends to help promote / run the bar tournaments. Few players in California and Oregon (areas I know pretty well) knew about this tournament, and very few bars seemed very enthusiastic about an event that – if properly promoted – would bring them some business.
* HAVE TWO tournament tracks – Hardbat Classic’s “Ping Pong” and an open division with regular paddles and players from all over the world. Bud’s big in China now, so use this as a way to promote the brand there. Even a modest first prize of 25,000 in the elite division will bring players from all over the world and provide much better chance to bring in a lot more spectator / players who are going to be interested in seeing world class play.
Wal-Mart Reviews too good to be true? UPDATE: Not enough data – I may be wrong here
Update: There are bad reviews at the site, though not as many as I would expect in an unbiased environment. The default view places top reviews first so I need more research here before jumping to any major conclusions.
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First let me say for the record that I’m a BIG FAN of Wal-Mart. They bring good products at great prices and save consumers billions compared to the prices we’d see if the world were organized as opponents of Wal Mart would like to see – as a sort of mom and pop boutique chaos of high priced, low volume, labor intensive madness. There are some advantages to neighborhood shopping but on balance …. I’ll take the extra cash, extra products, and hyper efficiency thank you very much.
HOWEVER as I searched or lamps today at Online Wal Mart I noticed a curious thing…. very curious indeed …. There don’t appear to be ANY unhappy customers – at least in terms of unhappiness with products – at Wal Mart. So far I’ve found … zero …. out of hundreds of reviews.
See for yourself by checking out the Wal Mart reviews page: http://reviews.walmart.com/1336/142/category.htm
From Sour Cream to Soup to Speakers to Spring Valley Fish Supplements, Wal Mart scores a very consistent…. perfect review score of 5 out of 5 stars by every reviewer! ? ! ?
I”m still looking for bad ones and will update this if I find enough to suggest there’s nothing fishy going on here …. just a moment…. I’ve found a paltry 3 star review! It’s for …. ewwww Stool Softener?!
Sorry Wal-Mart online shoppers but I don’t think this disproves my hypothesis. That’s one out of over a hundred perfect products.
Faking reviews seems very odd in the wake of all the bad PR they got from the the “RV Across America” scandal. Something I felt was way overblown. See here for the blog post defending Wal- Mart
But faking product reviews – if indeed these are fake – is bad business – an abuse of social media marketing. I’d guess Edelman – Wal Mart’s PR firm – is not involved in this, rather there is probably a firm that was hired to get reviews going and figured “hey, let’s really make them great!”….
In any case the story is still fresh and I’ll be following up at Technology Report after I get word from Edelman about what appears to be a case of obvious and opportunistic manipulation of the facts …
Are you practicing censorship? Yes. Just ask Caesar.
I also would say that if one narrows things to the censorship protections defined by free speech provisions of US Constitution the game changes since the supreme court generally argues that for legal purposes we are generally concerned with political censorship and not commercial speech or “hate” speech. Both of those are legally (and I think usually appropriately) censored.
Your definition of censorship is too narrow, a common frustration of mine. This lets people argue – totally speciously – that THEY don’t ever censor but OTHER people do.
Virtually everybody believes in some censorship – in fact I would argue emphatically that “zero censorship” is a sociopathic condition (e.g. child pornographers should be shot or imprisoned, people who routinely shout loud obscenities in public should generally be stifled).
1 : a person who supervises conduct and morals: as a : an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter b : an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered sensitive or harmful
2 : one of two magistrates of early Rome acting as census takers, assessors, and inspectors of morals and conduct
Press Release Primer for CES Exhibitors
As we gear up to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week over at Technology Report my email box is simply flooded with PR pitches from hundreds of the thousands of companies that will be exhibiting at the show.
The pitches vary in size and scope but most share a pretty common and I think a very uninspired format along the lines of “You will want to check out our products” ”We have extraordinary innovation in … iPOD accessories (!) ” ”Would you like to interview our product manager?”
Here are my three PR tips for the firms that … well … maybe ought to be doing something else:
1. Personalization Matters. I’d guess the response to personalized emails is at least twice that of a simple canned message, even when it’s just a name from the Press database but ideally where you’ve bothered to figure out where the person is writing. This is one of the best PR opportunities of the year, so it seems you should at least target a handful of bloggers who write specifically about your stuff. Challenge them a bit to critique the product. Consider going for several “smaller” blogs rather than trying to get lucky with a feature in Engadget or Gizmodo, where the whim of an angry review alone could hurt your products reputation. If your product is great they’ll get around to it eventually, and if the smaller guys don’t like it you probably need improvements before the big time anyway.
2. Parties matter. It’s not fair but neither is the world. Certainly business in general isn’t fair. So if you want some attention and you’ve already invested tens of thousands in staff and exhibits you probably should follow the lead of the big CES *playaas* and at least throw a small party. What would be a clever time for this party? Monday night before CES, when a lot of folks have come into town but generally there are *no* parties yet. Tuesday after CES Unveiled (the big press event) and Wednesday night are also generally pretty open for many press attendees who tend to get into town a few days early for the Press events. The *bad* night is Friday, when your little party will have to compete with the big ticket gigs like the Monster concert and several other parties thrown that night that attract most of the bloggers and press. I think my favorite event at all of CES was a small poker party at Hard Rock Casino, thrown by SONY to launch the game “Pirates of the Burning Sea”. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap – probably ran them perhaps $100+ per person for perhaps 100 people who attended, but it was a superb venue to generate the positive buzz they needed for the game. $10,000 is chump change by SONY standards yet they captured attention of a lot of media for the entire evening.
Getting attention early gets you pre-CES buzz in the search rankings to boot, because by Saturday your product announcement – no matter how big – is going to be drowned out by the 1000 other announcements coming out of the show.
3. Products matter. For some of you some product humility is more likely to win supporters than product hype. It’s laughable when an overzealous PR person waxes poetically, capturing your attention for a moment until you realize they’ve penned an ode to a cheap plastic cartoon iPhone case or the equivalent. Nothing wrong with those products – they represent an extraordinarily large market – but your time is probably better spent targeting buzzworthy folks and sending them samples or … throwing a party … rather than trying to explain why bloggers should be scrambling to do a feature about your plastic cartoon iPod case.
Louis Vuitton iPod Case: $280
OMG I’m writing about iPod Cases!
See you at CES!
Changing the world, one PR firm at a time
The CES 2010 pitches are coming in strong now as John and I get ready to cover the year’s biggest technology event over at Technology Report.
I was so happy today to see one of them signing off saying they were a proud supporter of the Room to Read Project, which is a major effort to work towards world wide literacy and education. Readers of this blog know I’m a huge fan of that kind of project, and one of the reasons I’m very optimistic about the world’s future is that for I think the first time in history it’s become very, very “fashionable” to support global poverty reduction efforts in even the strongest bastions of capitalism (e.g. big time PR firms).
Now, cynics will suggest – correctly to some extent – that part of the motivation when capitalists support charity is to benefit from the positive buzz. However I’m fine with that, and furthermore I’m *glad* to see potential win-win economic relationships develop around charities like this.
Google Adwords: All Your Advertising Base are Belong to GOOGLE!
I’m firing up an Adwords campaign to support our CES 2010 Coverage over at Technology Report and … ummm… I am NOT enjoying revisiting the frustration of working with the world’s most sophisticated advertising monopoly.
I really would NOT complain that much if Google’s silly “ad diagnosis tool” said something like this:
“Dear Joe, we noticed you wanted to run some advertising on our blank results pages. Although we realize your content is very relevant to users and there is low competition for the space we are going to gouge you on pricing … why Joe? BECAUSE WE CAN YOU SUCKER!”
I really would chuckle and appreciate the honesty. In my view Google does not have an obligation to me with respect to pricing ads. They can do as they please and let the market decide.
BUT … they do have an obligation to be more honest than they are with Adwords comments and as usual the recommendations take the ridiculous forms as they do wth organic search problems where Google is often vague or non-responsive. Why am I saying they aren’t being honest? Although it’s true that there appear to be ways to increase your chances of appearing without paying more, the notion that the quality of the keywords and what you pay are unrelated is preposterous. In fact it clearly defies the claim of “user centric” so often heard from Google.
What can I do?
There are several ways to improve the quality of your keywords, thus decreasing your advertising costs. Learn how to build a more effective keyword list, and take advantage of our campaign optimization tips. You can also raise your bid. See the ‘Quality Score’ tab for recommendations.
So yes Google I will pay more to show up, but it would be nice if you’d at least make it clear that the reason irrelevant ads are trumping others is that they *make more for Google*, not because they are better for users.
What, you wanted an example of pay to play clear irrelevancy? Here’s ONE among what I’d estimate are millions of inferior ads running at Google at higher rates than more relevant ads:
Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show Online.
Free Shipping on 100,000+ Products!
www.Target.com
Disclaimer: Hey, on other websites I make money from Google Adwords via Adsense. I am thus one of the *beneficiaries of this process. So, why am I biting the hand that feeds me? Because ya gotta calls ‘em like ya sees ‘em.
Auth Code Help. Authorization Code Instructions for Domain Name Transfers from Godaddy, Moniker, and more.
Skip to highlighted text below for Auth Code Instructions
Even after thousands of domain name transactions over the years I’m always pulling my hair out with domain name transfer process which, like many mixtures of bureaucratic bungling and private sector greed, is about as frustrating, cumbersome, and potentially catastrophic. You can even lose domain names – a key hallmark of many businesses – to scammers, inept registrars, or simple bad luck. This post will be my attempt to help people figure out some of the quirks in the process.
First, recognize that you should not be paying more than about $10 per year for registration unless you are ALSO getting some local help/service/ etc from a webmaster. I use GoDaddy but there are many others that have reasonable fees.
Second, if you have a domain name(s) for your business or other valuable names you should register them for at least 5 years to decrease the chance you’ll lose the name. Also, some believe search algorithms like to see longer registration times as a sign of authenticity, meaning it might help you rank a bit better all other things equal.
Third, BEWARE of the letters in the mail trying to pretend you need to renew a domain name that are really attempts to get you to switch to that registrar. These are often legal forms of scams where they are a real service but are not the registrar you have now.
Generally you will find it easy to initiate a TRANSFER IN to an account, and hard to nearly impossible to TRANSFER OUT. Registrars generally make it very, very difficult to figure out the transfer out process because this will help keep people with them and even if you get angry they are losing your money and business anyway.
Unfortunately you’ll often need to do BOTH of these procedures to move a domain name from one registrar to another. If you focus on the “TRANSFER OUT” and the required “AUTH CODES” and you’ll probably have success.
GODADDY Auth Codes:
Godaddy’s process is cumbersome but fairly straightforward. Full details here from Godaddy. Short version:
- Log in to your GoDaddy Account Manager.
- In the My Products section, click Domain Manager.
- Click the domain for which you want to retrieve the authorization code.
- In the Authorization Code field, click the Send by Email hyperlink.
- Click OK.
- Click OK again.
Moniker Auth Codes.
Moniker is the current front runner in my “diabolically difficult” online routine contest. However once you know the secret you’ll be fine. Be sure to put away ANY guns you have in the house before using their online help system or you’ll be using one on yourself.
The secret: You obtain the Moniker Auth code to do external transfers as follows:
1. Log into your Moniker Account, select ”my domains”.
2. Now check the domain(s) you want to transfer out and click “transfer out”
3. Complete the “transfer out” dialog.
4. You should very shortly receive two emails. You want the one that looks like the one below with domain name followed by a comma and a string that is the Auth code for that domain for the next 10 days.
5. If the process fails you may have to repeat this again (and again!) until the transfer “takes”. Often if you purchase a domain from a third party they have *recently* registered that name and you won’t be able to transfer it for 60 days. You’ll thus need to mark your calendar and start the process then as well as make sure the domain is registered at least through the transfer date (usually it will be as a year is usually added during the new registration)
THIS IS ONLY half the transfer process, now you’ll need to follow the instructions from your new registrar to transfer the domain *IN*, but those are usually straightforward if you have the Auth Code.
Example Moniker Tranfer Out email:
[NOTICE] Account: 99999 Requesting Domains For Transfer Away From Moniker
As part of our standard transfer-out procedure, a notification has been submitted to Moniker notifying us of an intent to transfer the following domain(s) away from Moniker
This email serves as confirmation that we have received your notification.
This request will be valid for 10 days (240 hours).
The Reason Given For Transfer Was: changeOwnership
Domain Name,Epp AuthInfo (if applicable)
———– —————————-
2ILLINOIS.COM, 9999999CDC9
2MISSISSIPPI.COM, 9A9999B999EE
How to find your Enom Auth Code:
How to obtain the authorization code and unlock a domain name on eNom
Log in.
In the “Registered domains” row, click “Manage Domains”.
Click the domain you want to unlock.
In the “Manage Domain” menu, click “General Settings”.
To retrieve the EPP key, click “Email Auth Code to Registrant”.
A message confirms that the authorization code has been emailed.
To unlock the domain, go to the “Registrar-Lock” row and select “Disable”, and then click “save”.
A message confirms that the update was successful.
Bud Light Hardbat Classic at The Venetian in Las Vegas
The Hardbat Classic Table Tennis Ping Pong rumors are not only true, they are truly Table Tennis and it’s going to be Vegas, baby!
I’ll be competing in the Bud Light Hardbat Classic which starts this Friday at the spectacular Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Top prize is … wait for it … $100,000.00 That’s enough money to pay the interest on our blossoming national debt for … well…. a couple of seconds. But never mind that….
I’ll try to keep up with some real time reporting via Twitter or here at the blog, though this may depend on data access at the venue and my own good or bad luck in the tournament.
There will be about a thousand players of all skill levels competing – many after winning their regional bar tournaments held around the USA over the past several months. Even though I won our local tournament it wasn’t a qualifier for the big one, so I’m making my own way there after they opened it up to everybody.
There are also brackets for a special group of “stars” chosen by the Hardbat Tournament, another for walk in players, and one for “pros” who have a rating or have played in USTTA tournaments over the years. Although I haven’t played in tournaments recently I was actually the USTTA National Table Tennis Champ in the “1300″ rating category in 1992 (ratings in Table Tennis are kind of like handicapping in golf).
The Bud Tournament is “over handicapped” , meaning that the very best players will have to spot a lot of points to lower ranked players – as many as 17 out of 21. My take on this tournament is that it will tend to favor unrated players who are very experienced with the “pips out” type of rubber required at the Hardbat Classic.
Hardbat Classic Official Website
Follow the Tournament on Twitter
Follow the Killerspin Team on Twitter
Blogs are talking about the HardBat Classic in Las Vegas at the Venetian:
Social Word of Mouth Marketing
As social networking explodes on the scene I’m wondering about legitimate vs questionable marketing tactics that involve one’s social network. Here at the JoeDuck blog I’ve avoided advertising (though I have taken a few liberties with posts that help rank other sites or promote friends, etc).
At my commercial sites I’m more aggressive with advertising and find it’s very hard to decide what levels of advertising are best suited to all the factors that come into play such as generating revenue, being honest, keeping Google happy, etc. Although I increasingly buy into the idea that “user friendliness” is a good guideline I don’t think it’s the best one from a revenue standpoint. Even Google, which I think built a grand online empire partly on the basis of limiting the advertisements around search, has very gradually increased the aggressiveness of their advertising at some “user centric” expense such as the ads that appear on top of the organic listings. Although Google insists they are clear about identifying advertising the proof is in the perception and many people still do not understand the difference between clicks when Google is getting paid and when they are not.
I don’t object to Google’s current standards which I think are more than reasonable, though it’s always annoying to hear them pretend (or think delusionally) that their only consideration is optimizing the *user experience* without regard to revenues. That would not be good business and arguably would deprive them of revenue they can use to provide the raft of great free services we enjoy from Google like blogger, search, mail, maps, and more.
But the real point here is to find a balance between social networking and marketing. I certainly don’t want to pester people with advertising after they have nicely come to Twitter or the blog to “interact” about politics, technology, or travel. But are there appropriate advertisements that do not offend people?
More importantly, how should one handle paid or unpaid endorsements of businesses? Over at Technology-Report we are now sponsored by Ipswitch Imail Server, an Enterprise email system. What’s really intriguing me is at what point one crosses the line between using and abusing the relationship you have with people to promote your business “allies”. The link I just provided helps them. I think that’s fine but some might say it’s using the blog inappropriately. Adding “nofollow” to the link would tell Google not to consider the link as an endorsement of the company but I’m happy to endorse them – they are smart enough to sponsor our Tech blog so they must be good, right?
I think the best working rule here at the blog is transparency, where people know the money relationships between you and those you talk about. For stocks I use a disclosure blip, for companies an explanation of the relationship. However for websites I’m not as transparent and I think I need to reconsider that and provide more disclosure than I have in the past to help combat the growing “economy of lies” that is far more pervasive than we tend to think.
From bank lending and “promotional offers” with fine print that traps even savvy borrowers to blatant phone credit card ripoffs that prey on the gullible to the Madoff stock scandal to bogus “get rich quick” training programs, the “economy of lies” is everywhere. Online, it becomes even more difficult to check credentials and make sure an offer is real.
Then there are the “somewhat misleading special offers” which I think may be impossible or even undesirable to combat. For example I’m shopping for Las Vegas hotels, flights, and show tickets and notice there are often dozens of offers for the same rooms, each with different rates. Although the conditions vary a bit, basically these are marketing experiments designed to optimize revenues and collect information for the future. Not perfectly “honest”, but not scams. I’ll talk about this more at my Las Vegas Travel blog. Hey, see, there’s a tiny SEO helpful pitch for my own site – is that legitimate?
An interesting idea – though bureaucracy alerts are kind of sounding for me now – might be to create some sort of volunteer disclosure standard that was monitored by a third party. For example no site could endorse more than one product of the same kind. Sites that abided by those rules would be listed and allowed to slap up a logo, those that did not would not. Policing this probably could be done via an online “complaint” system, and the neat part would be to help screen out the huge number of junky sales sites that have no content of value and offer dubious offers.
Still, that option does not really seem workable on a grand scale because too few would participate.
The Stupid File: Twitter as Cult, destroyer of moral compasses. BALONEY!
One of the most intriguing and most frustrating aspects of the “new media” is how foolish the stories become as writers search for meaning amidst the ocean of change and sea of drivel that makes up the modern information infrastructure aka “Them Dang Interwebs”.
Today’s foolishness takes the form of Jeremy Toeman’s article “It’s Official, Twitter is a Cult” where Jeremy manages to mangle the meaning of a cult about as many times as he invokes it in criticizing Twitter. Another article actually suggests Twitter is wreaking havoc with moral compasses but I’m not sure I’ll even dignify that nonsense with a read, especially because I find Twitter to be the *least morally offensive* of the many internet venues where I hang out.
Yo TwitterCritterCizers, when is the last time a group of your friends drilled a bunch of wells to give extremely poor people in Africa water? On Twitter the answer is “Last Saturday “, when the Charity:Water effort, funded by hundreds of thousands of small donations from Twitter folks, began a project to bring clean water to Africa. This act alone defies much of the cult charge since it is clearly benefitting people who are far outside the “Twitter” network and represents the opposite of a totalitarian, elitist approach to social interaction. But let’s go through the “Cult” charges one by one to note how backwards this analysis really is.
I’m harping on this partly becuase I’m a twitter fan / evangelist but also because the promise of social media is absolutely spectacular, and I think Twitter may come the closest to realizing that promise for a mass audience. Twitter and most other social media experiments represent humankind’s best effort to date to create broad based, non-elitist, participatory democracies and social networking infrastructures. Twitter *defies* the cult and elitist mentality that is still pervasive in legacy human interaction, especially in religion and politics where money, charisma, and connections completely trump solid qualifications and personal virtues.
At the risk of falling into Jeremy’s trap and talking about a stupid article, I really think its’ a good idea to debunk this mythology before the world comes to an end and only me and the glorious Twitter people survive the apocalypse , whoops…. I mean before it gets out of hand.
- It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members
Nope, in fact it’s hard to even talk about Twitter to friends, relatives, or readers of this blog who mostly think it’s silly. I like to evangelize blogging but don’t do that much with Twitter, and in Twitter land Twitter rejection is expected and OK. No cultishness in the “coercion” department. - It forms an elitist totalitarian society
Ummmm. No. There are no real “kingpins” on Twitter. In fact the founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, are not even the most followed and don’t participate in Twitter all that actively with comments. Both are pretty mild mannered geeky guys who live modest lifesyles and largely shun the fame and personal power Twitter could bring to them with the simple act of more postings and calls to action. Furthermore, on Twitter you can follow anybody you care to, and many will probably follow you back if you don’t annoy them with appeals to buy things. This is called an “egalitarian society” and is the opposite of a totalitarian one. - Its founder/leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma. Even the author of the article states this one is “a stretch”. A stretch to utter nonsense.
- It believes ‘the end justifies the means’ in order to solicit funds/recruit people
Huh? Twitter does not solicit funds or actively recruit people. It is free, it is open, you can leave, join, participate at your own whim. - Its wealth does not benefit its members or society
First, it has little wealth at this time. Twitter’s looking to monetize its spectacular success and most folks hope they can do it, but one thing that is clear is that unlike cults Twitter won’t ask the members for anything – not even active participation. More importantly Twitter’s is getting used to generate a lot of money for *charities* and good works like the Charity:Water project listed above.
Conclusion: Twitter is not a cult, it’s a minor social miracle.
PS To avoid an untimely demise pass this Twitter propaganda on to 1000 of your closest friends and relatives and follow @joeduck at Twitter
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