My greatest hero growing up was not some GI: Joe or Power Ranger, it was a little VW Beetle by the name of Herbie. Herbie was a car that had a mind of his own, and along with his driver Jim Douglas was one of the world’s greatest race cars. The first movie The Love Bug debuted in 1968 and was such a worldwide success that it spawned a whole series of sequels. The movie featured everything a 5 year old boy could ever want - humor, racing, daring action stunts, with just a bit of romance thrown in. Herbie is the reason that I love cars, the reason I dream of being a race car driver, and why 53 is my lucky number.
I was suddenly brought back to my love for Volkswagens when I saw a current marketing campaign for Volkswagen. The campaign, done by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is called “I know what the people want,” and it’s actually pretty funny. It features a cute classic VW Beetle with a german accent. In the TV commercials he’s seen interviewing various people.
There’s also a viral website which is pretty funny. The idea is that it lets you vote and then displays what “The people want” while suggesting that “The people want German engineering.”
Overall I think the campaign is offbeat, it has personality, and it espouses the same positioning that has always worked for German cars - pay a premium for quality engineering and performance. I was reading another marketing blog that suggested that this is a terrible campaign because it doesn’t appeal to the cutesy flower-power hippie-loving women who buy Beetles. This is true: german guy, old car, and old college basketball coach - this is a terrible campaign if it’s intended to get my mom or sister to buy a VW. However it isn’t. This is trying to reposition the broader Volkswagen brand as a high-performance German-engineering company similar to Audi & BMW. And it’s not trying to get my sister to buy a Beetle. It’s really going after me to buy a Jetta, GTI, or even that pretty Eos convertible. They’re simply leveraging the image of their iconic original Beetle to do it. So I’d say they will get good mileage out of it.
Today Netflix announced that in additoin to LG Electronics it will announce 4 more secret partners that will enable subscribers to watch movies streamed directly from the web to their TVs. Rumors abound that one of the 3 secret partners to be announced tomorrow will be Xbox 360. According to MSNBC, there has been a string of clues to support this particular rumor. First off, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings joined the Microsoft board over a year ago. Ever since then the Digerati (and me) have been waiting for the offspring off this marriage.
Secondly, Netflix recently administered a survey to its users that popped-up on blogs. According to Kristin Kalning of MSNBC:
The headline of the survey read “Now you can watch movies from Netflix instantly by using your existing Xbox Live account.” And then, the question: “If, as part of your Netflix membership you could instantly watch movies and TV episodes on your TV with your Xbox 360, how likely would you/anyone in your household be to do that?”
Finally, Hastings’ indications that they will be big partners who already have living room presence millions-strong suggests someone big like Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, or TiVo. Kalning continues:
The announcement, if it happens, will likely take place during the keynote address at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
So I’ll be waiting, baited-breath, to see if Xbox 360 is the clear console winner or has to share the stage with PS3 & Wii.
At 9PM tonight Microsoft went public with Live Mesh – something that Ray Ozzie alluded to at the MIX conference and that the digerati have been waiting for ever since. It’s difficult to explain the value proposition that Live Mesh solves for right now, but it’s the beginning of a Web Operating System. Fundamentally it’s the concept that I as a customer should spend less time uploading files to shares and emailing them around and syncing across devices and that this should all just be seamless. That “linking, sharing, ranking, & syncing should be as familiar as File, Edit, & Print,” as Ray Ozzie suggests. Imagine an open platform that uses RSS so that an Xbox and a Windows Mobile Phone and a Vista PC and an online SkyDrive and a Mac and a 3rd party site like Twitter are all syncing and linking together. Or imagine you can use these same pipes to allow Office to communicate with SkYDrive or Twitter. That’s the vision.
This isn’t going to affect institutional customers today, but they’ll definitely be hearing about it. Microsoft is doing a technology preview right now, which means its sorta still in private beta and is is initially a consumer play. But there is a lot of potential for this platform to also enable business scenarios. I can easily see CRM applications where you are emailng, textng, and twittering with customers and all of this data is synced to form one activity-stream for each customer-relationship across every way in which you’re interacting with them. will increasingly be useful to business as well. In terms of winning hearts & minds and demonstrating real innovation this is ab big win.
Scoble points out that whereas Google Gears is Google’s attempt to make themselves relevant offline, Live Mesh is part of Microsoft’s strategy to make their desktop & device presence relevant on the web.
Here’s the video of Channel 10 for your viewing pleasure:
Picture credited to 