Sneaky Business

6 Brands In Need of a Money Makeover

As an ardent reader of Sneaky Business we're sure you'll need no reminder of the time value of money. It is the concept that a dollar today isn't worth a dollar tomorrow. (Or, in the hyperinflationary case of Zimbabwe, a dollar today isn't worth diddly squat tomorrow).

News from the retail world got us thinking about the potential impact of such a concept on brand names. The LA Times reported today that the 99 Cents Store, a US retail chain that prides itself on bargain basement items, is being forced to re-evaluate its pricing strategy. Faced with rising inflation and soaring food prices it is considering selling items above the one dollar bar for the first time since it opened. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 99c in 1982 (when the store began) has the same buying power as $2.26 in 2008.

This got us thinking about which other famous brands might be in need of a facelift to better represent their value today. Here's our top six.

Brand Name	Brand Item	Date Created	Revalued Name
99 Cents Store	Retail chain	1982	$2.26 Store
Dime Bar	Candy bar	1953	Eighty Two Cents Bar
The Six Million Dollar Man	TV show	1973	The Thirty Million Dollar Man
The $64,000 question	TV show	1955	The $525,000 Question
Dollar Rental Car	Car rental agency	1965	Seven Dollar Rental Car
Penny Farthing	Victorian bicycle	1870	The Thirty Five Cents Farthing

8 Disastrous Advertising Slogans

We just had to share some of these horror stories from the world of advertising. Remember; if you’re going local with your ad always test it with someone on the ground first.

• Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
• Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick".
• The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem-Feeling Free", was translated into the Japanese market as "When smoking Salem, you will feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
• Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno magazine.
• An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato" (la papa).
• In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into "Schweppes Toilet Water."
• Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave," in Chinese.
• Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "it takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."

iPhone Hacks Require Patience, Skill And A Lot Of Spare Time

What's that gentle whirring noise we can hear coming from Cupertino? Could it be the unraveling of Apple's carefully crafted iPhone business plan? Well maybe, just maybe, if teenage hacker George Hotz' crafty modifications catch on. George announced Friday that he has developed the first iPhone hack that unlocks the device from the AT&T network. Specifically it allows users to place calls across rival T-Mobile's network and, potentially, to select other network operators overseas. As PC World reported:

"One blogger, George Hotz, on Friday posted a step-by-step tutorial for unlocking the iPhone that involves both hardware and software modifications. His blog also includes photos of an iPhone he said is unlocked and shows T-Mobile USA as the service provider.  "

Not content with this one, small step, other hackers have immediately jumped into the fray. Sneaky Business, through our technology advisory board, has learned of at least three additional hacks that could further revolutionize the usefulness of Apple's svelte device:

1. Hacker diretribe's mods:  Will allow the iPhone to function on at least fifteen cellular network, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and New Brunswick Cellular. Diretribe admits that the hack requires a certain amount of skill, but should prove popular for those looking to roam freely. "You'll need to replace the motherboard, screen, casing and OS. But anyone experienced in advanced microelectronics should be able to accomplish this in around eighteen straight hours." 
2. PiratePalooza's steampunk iPhone: Hot on the heels of potential PC industry steampunk interest comes a delightful rendition of the iPhone from PiratePalooza. According to the creator, "rPhone combines three delightfully diverse products into one awkward and cumbersome handheld contraption -- a revolutionary steam-powered satellite phone, a stylish French musicbox, and a vibrasonic multi-purpose tool that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a Sonic Screwdriver."
3. Steve Pendleton's hack: Released on Sunday is said to allow the iPhone to play non-iTunes content, and to wirelessly share snippets of content with nearby users. Requires replacing the case, motherboard and memory with all major components from a Zune device. "Don't even think about calling it a ZunePhone" says Pendleton on his blog.

"ZunePhone" Not Coming To A Store Near You

A wonderful "ad" that's worth checking out if you haven't already seen it. Are they the fingers of Steve B. we can see?

Of course, such an offering could still be hampered by the iPhone business-user issues we covered in an earlier posting.

Dubai Sidesteps National Law And Bets Big On Vegas

In one of those stories that begs the question "How did they get away with that?", Dubai's state-controlled investment vehicle announced a $5B deal with MGM Mirage. This is despite the fact that gambling is officially banned in the emirate. As reported in the Guardian:

"Dubai World, which is controlled by the Middle Eastern emirate's government, is putting $2.7bn into a 76-acre resort on the Las Vegas Strip and will buy up to $2.4bn worth of MGM shares. Although an Islamic nation, Dubai is renowned for its liberal policies. But while alcohol is tolerated, gambling is strictly forbidden for the emirate's 1.4 million residents.

Dubai World's chairman, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, brushed aside questions about the apparent conflict of attitudes by pointing out that the company had long owned a small stake in Kerzner International - the owner of the Bahamas' Paradise Island casino.

"Through our Kerzner investment we're already into gambling, so this shouldn't come as a surprise," he told the newswire service Bloomberg."

So do business relationships get much more curious than this?

Well, staying on the oil-revenue theme, here's one that should raise some eyebrows:

 

US Dependency On Foreign Oil:

Check out the most recent US government data from this year:

Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries) (Thousand Barrels per Day) Country Jun-07 May-07 YTD 2007 Jun-06 Jan - June 2006 CANADA 1,852 1,821 1,843 1,799 1,763 SAUDI ARABIA 1,501 1,574 1,419 1,427 1,423 MEXICO 1,392 1,461 1,456 1,734 1,679 VENEZUELA 1,098 1,232 1,103 1,008 1,156 NIGERIA 893 882 1,021 996 1,111 IRAQ 573 341 477 617 547 ALGERIA 504 496 497 491 297 ANGOLA 502 680 568 525 448 KUWAIT 263 162 196 201 163 ECUADOR 166 201 195 288 280 LIBYA 144 33 66 110 54 COLOMBIA 143 104 108 211 169 UNITED KINGDOM 127 165 114 185 132 BRAZIL 121 152 162 107 109 GABON 101 93 72 89 52

It's good to see our American neighbors sitting pretty in the top three. And of course the UK gets some benefit from the "special relationship" - lifting it just above that oil industry powerhouse of Gabon.

But Venezuela, the well known supporter of the "devilish" Mr. Bush sitting at number 4 on the list? And how about those bastions of democracy - Angola and Libya?

Just goes to show that in a perfect market money talks louder than politics.

Don't Like Search Results? Try Suing Google

American Airlines is disappointed with the sponsored links appearing next to searches for some of its products - so it has decided to sue Google over the practice.

According to Time Magazine:

"A Google visitor who enters certain words or phrases that American trademarked — for example, Aadvantage, the name of its frequent-flier program — will get links to American's Web site but also its rivals under "sponsored links" — targeted ads that appear alongside the regular search results. Google makes most of its money from such keyword ads.

"When done right, search is a great tool, but we have a problem with this part of their business," said Billy Sanez, a spokesman for American. Sanez said the results could confuse consumers and divert customers away from American's own site."

This is not the first time that an unhappy vendor has attempted such a move. Geico made a similar claim which Google settled out of court in 2005. It is perhaps no surprise that Google has lost similar cases in France (no names available).

So where will this all end?

We performed our own search for "Sneaky Business" and were bitterly disappointed by the outcome- absolutely no sponsored links suggestions appeared. We are considering the best course of legal action to rectify this result.

Missing Lord Lucan discovered – wrong age and shorter

The news business, as we all know, can be a cyclical beast. On a daily basis fluctuations abound, but at a macro level the quantity and quality of stories ebbs and flows on a rather predictable basis. Mid-summer usually marks a lull in the proceedings – and is more commonly known as the "silly season".

Stark evidence of this calming influence can be found today on the front page of the BBC News website. Under the title of "Has missing aristocrat been found in New Zealand", the BBC reports a story that, by all accounts, has absolutely zero credibility. If it wasn't mid August then this would probably never make it to press.

The story concerns the potential whereabouts of Lord Lucan – a member of Britain's aristocracy who famously disappeared in 1974 after the murder of his children's nanny in London. The search for Lucan has reached an almost mythical status in the British media. Perhaps encouraged by the outing of Fake Steve Jobs in the US, the BBC decided it was time to unmask the true Lord Lucan. Good idea – except their story almost certainly does not do this. Judge for yourselves from the excerpts below:

A Briton living in New Zealand in an old car, with a pet possum, has denied he is missing aristocrat Lord Lucan. Neighbors became convinced homeless Roger Woodgate was the vanished peer because of his "upper-class" English accent and "military bearing". But he says he is a former photographer who happened to move to New Zealand in the same year Lord Lucan went missing.

Neighbor Margaret Harris said she became convinced he was Lord Lucan after seeing a picture of the peer in an old magazine. She told TVNZ: "I spotted this piece and I thought 'oh my God, don't tell me that's who he is? I'm sure that is who he is because he is trying to make out he's a very poor man; poor my foot."

Woodgate, however, quickly denied he was hiding a secret identity. He was, he said, a former photographer who once worked for the Ministry of Defense and left the UK five months before Lord Lucan went missing. Mr. Woodgate also pointed out he was five inches shorter than Lord Lucan and, at 62, is 10 years younger than the aristocrat would be now.

[The full BBC article can be found here.]

Tired of shopping? Try in-store sleeping

Trust those crafty Swedes to push the boundaries of shopping one step further. Sneaky Business was impressed by the following story that came to us via the Associate Press:

Home furnishing company IKEA offered customers a full shop-till-you-drop experience this week — letting them spend the night at a Norway store. Hundreds of applications came from people wanting to stay at the IKEA Furuset "hostel" near Oslo, Frode Ullebust, a spokesman for the Swedish company, said Friday.

Shoppers from all over the world came to the warehouse during the week, slumping into one of 30 free beds and trying meatballs and salmon on offer at the bedroom section and canteen. In addition to a dormitory, the hostel was equipped with a bridal suite, a luxury suite, as well as family and tourist rooms, Ullebust said.

The idea for the hostel experiment, which ended Friday, came from customers themselves, said IKEA spokesman Christen Roehnedak.

"But they haven't been able to sleep much," Roehnedak said, noting a majority of the guests stayed awake to watch the night workers refill the shelves, while others did some midnight shopping.

Check-in for the hostel began at 10 p.m., while check-out was at 11 a.m. — one hour after the store opened. "So you've had to be prepared to be woken up by other shoppers," Roehnedak said.

Source: Associated Press

How to hide bad news - one press release at a time

A press release is usually timed for maximum impact. Unless, of course, it happens to come from a catastrophically struggling sub-prime mortgage lender on the brink of implosion. Sneaky Business awards maximum marks for effort (though none for style) to American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation. Reuters Dealzone Blog reports that:

"The mortgage lender's shares plummeted 40 percent on Monday morning, after the company put out a press release at 10:19 p.m. EDT on Friday saying that it was writing down assets and receiving margin calls on credit facilities."

The company is clearly ruing the fact that timing is not in fact everything when it comes to press releases.

Now slipping a press release out late at night is one way to reduce coverage. There are other more advanced tactics, as Sneaky Business has determined through a series of informal discussions:

• The news-sandwich. Bury the bad news deep within a dry, feature-rich release on, for example, the role of local channel partners in the Black Sea region.
• The Cheney-stratagem: Circulate the press release with minimal effort to ultra-local news organizations, and hope that it never goes further.
• The Orkneys-approach: Release the news to a little known overseas news organization, preferably in a rarely-used local language.
• The thermo-cline tactic: Submerge the press release on a day of intense media coverage of another breaking story. Hope that your information remains hidden from the prying, but otherwise overworked, eyes of the media.

Perhaps if American Home Mortgage survives long enough they will be able to employ such tactics in the future.

Leaking Harry Potter set to make a splash

Harry Potter VII is upon us, whipping up the media into a frothing frenzy. This time around, however, internet leaks threatened to spoil the surprise for millions. JK Rowling, sensing lost sales and diminished profits, encouraged readers to stay well clear of such scurrilous sites.

There is absolutely no doubt that this book will be big, indeed massive. However, this week's shenanigans raise the broader issue of content security in an age of online pilfering. A McBainsey study discovered that over 40% of company presentations are revealed to meeting attendants ahead of time. (Interestingly, the study itself was leaked onto the internet by a burned-out analyst).

Now relief may be to hand. Smear Systems, an Oakland-based startup, is offering next generation auto-redaction services across a variety of media. Their software provides a rules-based system for redacting not only documents and emails, but also corporate video and voicemails. "Our system learns with you", explains CTO Jeff Marsh, "You can even specify levels of redaction for particularly annoying individuals that you work with". The software makes keywords in text unreadable, and places white-noise, or other user-specified MP3 files over specified phrases.

The software is available for download for $1,500 at www. ***&&&!!.com.