Smart Car -- who's your Daddy?

What’s the best selling car in America? Not a Honda or Toyota. Or even a good, solid Ford. Nope, it’s the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. With its energetic styling, youthful target market, and extreme fuel efficiency (zero gallons per mil) it’s practically a perfect ride. So, it also shouldn’t surprise us that when they made one for grown-ups it would become popular too. At least in principle.

The Smart Car is cute. Super cute. Too cute maybe for some grown-ups, but those of us with arrested development like to put a lot of cute around us, so it’s working for lots of people. It’s crazy fuel efficient and smart in many ways other than fuel: turning radius, super cool parking ability (can park head-first in parallel spaces, but you still get a ticket if you do it), safety for size, interior detailing, etc. In fact, “smart” is derived from Swatch, Mercedes and Art, with Swatch as the initial originator of the concept. Therein lies the problem: I thought is was an alternative fuel, electric, or at least a hybrid vehicle! As in zero gallons per mile or close to it! Nope. It’s just a ridiculously tight and tiny regular car. Crap. I thought that’s what would be smart about it. Makes me feel kind dumb. I’m hanging my head in shame as I write this. But should I? What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Product Communication is what the product says about its performance via design and aesthetic elements. The Swatch-inspired styling of this car overlaps heavily with design cues that communicate alternative fuel vehicles, such as Brazil’s Obvio, a car that can burn just about anything but cigarettes: gas, ethanol, or even compressed natural gas. Upon closer inspection, the Smart Car isn’t really much smarter than the average VW. They get about the same mileage as the Jetta TDI Diesel that holds twice as many people. Okay Smart Car, who’s your Daddy?

The Data:

The Smart Car entered the HotHouse with strong awareness. More than 60% have heard of it. The trial is very low, but interest extremely high netting average Conversion potential over time. The consume and produce indices are high, but there isn’t a lot of sharing going on. Perhaps leveraging web communities could bolster this. The success index overall is positive, so I would expect it to do well.

ShamWow! Sham? or Wow!

The excitement is palpable as the kids fling water all over the kitchen – the counter, the floor, and filling several large bowls. They tear open the package of ShamWow! “towel, chamois, and sponge, all in one!” and expect to be as excited & fulfilled as the on-air talent with the fake fairgrounds microphone attached to his face.

“Wow! Mom! Look at it suck up all the water from the bowl! Just like on TV!” exclaims Gillian, age eight, as she thrusts the thirsty towel into the bowl of water, wringing it out and thrusting it in again and again. Yep, just like on TV, except a whole lot of water is spilling onto the counter and all over floor.

“Yep,” says Collin, age thirteen, as he also sucks up water here and there with the over-priced-as-seen-on-TV towel product. “It sucks – water anyway.”

But wait! There’s more! More water, everywhere! Everywhere there is a flat surface – there is a lot of water left behind! A little like wiping a surface with super-sized panty hose, there is significant moisture not absorbed. Perhaps that’s why they use bowls and carpets in the demos? And, we tried using it as a bathmat as seen on TV too, where it stuck to my foot and I dragged it around like public restroom toilet paper. Now, there’s a sham! Wow!

I’ll keep ShamWow! around for carpets and large spills, where they do the initial suckage of very large amounts of liquid quite well. But to get a perfectly dry surface, a good old fashioned paper towel is probably a more effective, if less sexy choice. And, with a paper towel, you can look at the Brawny guy and not the smarmy microphone dude. Wow!

The Data:

ShamWow! has high initial awareness at 60%, but while people think it will be popular, the interest scores are moderate overall netting a conversion just over 10%. Not great for such high awareness. Perhaps drying things is not a huge unmet need in the market?

Victoria's Secret BioFit or Xbox 360 -- which better fulfill's life's potential?

“Hello Ladies.” I say as I nestle into the Victoria’s Secret BioFit Uplift Bra, my bust shaping up like Jiffy Pop about to blow. “Well, that’s a whole new thing, eh?” I whistle at myself and plunk down the plastic, trussing up some self esteem in the process.

The BioFit is strategically engineered to enhance lesser endowed women more and more endowed women less.

“So,” I ask Steve “If the A has more padding than the B, and the B more than the C – are they trying to make all boobs in the world unite and stand as one big collection of Hershey Kisses gracing boobdom without variety in size and shape? Sounds pretty boring.”

He smiles a little and glances at me from the corner of his eye. You see, he’s driving the car and I’m test driving the bra in the car, which would be less distracting if I wasn’t hiking my shirt up to show him and he wasn’t looking at the other drivers daring them to stare too hard so he can loosen their teeth.

“I don’t see how that’s possible.” He counters “You might make an A into a B, but you can’t make an A into a C, so the Associative Property breaks down . . . or is it the Communicative Property . . .” He stammers a little as I reach in to rearrange the rack into a more prominent position.

“Okay, I buy that, but do you like it?” I ask leaning forward a little, knowing this is a no win question for him. If he likes it then I wasn’t good enough without it. If he doesn’t like it then it’s a general indictment of boobs, which is not going to toast my bread either.

“Well, it’s okay, but isn’t it a little bait & switch?”

“In what way?” I say, admiring the deft side-step answer.

“Well, you know, the street appeal is huge – or at least bigger – but then, you go under the hood and . . . I don’t know. Seems disappointing.”

Hmmm…maybe he’s right about that, at least for couples who are just getting to that under-the-hood phase of the getting-to-know-each-other thing. But, hey, after 25 years of trips under the hood, what’s to disappoint?

“Okay, but do you like it?” I ask again, meaning of course, does he like it on me? “Or, said another way, does it contribute to your life enjoyment in the same way that, say, an Xbox 360 would?”

Furrowed Brow. “What kind of question is that?

“Admittedly a poorly worded, unfair, backing-you-into-a-corner question relevant to nothing other than the fact that men in my survey believe that this bra will improve life enjoyment more than an Xbox 360.”

“Well,” He says, throwing a side long smile that slices me in two. “Maybe they haven’t been under the hood.”

“Watch it.”

The Data:

The Victoria’s Secret BioFit Bra has moderate initial awareness at 40%, with women almost twice as likely to be aware than men. Conversion rates are relatively low as well. This is a real shame given men’s interest in a product designed overtly for women – or is it? While the success index is moderate also, the intensity of scores for perception of purely physical benefits that could be experienced by using the product far surpasses the XBOX 360 among men and women alike. We see the same thing for perceived health benefits. This product also provides heightened emotional benefits with high scores for men and women (nearly twice as high as Xbox 360) for product use that improves life potential. And, that’s a pretty rousing endorsement for any new product. Awareness is probably the biggest obstacle to success here.

Xbox 360 has very high initial awareness, exceeding 90% and high initial conversion rates as well. But all other measures are moderate, indicating limited potential to connect longer term with the broad swath of consumers in the marketplace.

Guitar Hero -- rock star or dork? You decide.

When my son Collin was two years old, he was listening to a friend of mine who was sitting on the hearth and playing a beautiful rendition of Johnny Cash’s Folsom on guitar. Collin raised his arm, pointing his stubby finger at my friend and in a strong, authoritative voice, he said “That, is a piano.”

Collin started to play classical guitar at age 5, electric guitar at age 8, and now at 13 has a band, which according to Frank Portman, Author of King Dork, makes you “at least 15% more attractive to girls.” And, he’s right.

The question is – “Does Guitar Hero make you a rock star or a dork?” Or, said a different way – “Is Guitar Hero a guitar or a piano?”

After months of scoffing at advertising for Guitar Hero, Collin finally started fooling around with one on display at Best Buy. Knowledge of guitar didn’t help him build hero-level skills right away, but he actually had a blast with it and after an hour has mastered the five button version of “Woman” by Wolfmother.

I think the appeal of Guitar Hero may lie in the imagination of the player. Who doesn’t want to be a rock star or at least screw one? Hey, even I’ve been known to jump around my room and strike a stance to Foghat now and then -- OKAY -- it was the 70s not last week, so watch it! The universality of this fantasy predates air guitar and Guitar Hero is just air guitar with positive feedback. It’s air guitar you can do in front of other people and chances are only 50/50 they’ll laugh at you.

So, maybe the real question is – “Does Guitar Hero make you 15% more attractive to girls?” Give it a try and let me know the results.

The Data:

Guitar Hero entered the survey strong with 76% awareness in the first period of measurement. With 30% modeled interest and nearly a third of those surveyed having tried the product. This product is pure enjoyment, driven by very high scores in this area. The overall success measure is lower than other products, so Guitar Hero may need to innovate to fill some gaps. Innovation should focus on “producing” something with the product to broaden appeal. Perhaps this is a composition function to build original pieces, linking with others online to form virtual bands, or other things that allow people to interact and make things themselves versus playing pre-recorded music.

iPhone

The guy next to me on an early morning flight from Hartford to Atlanta probably thought I was staring at his junk. It just so happened that was where he was resting his iPhone, watching a movie, while glancing up every so often to the in-flight movie, creating his own little picture-in-picture show while also checking me out checking out his crotch, which I wasn’t, which may or may not disappoint him, but probably not because how could you be disappointed ever again if you have an iPhone? I don’t have one, so each day should be packed with disappointment. Maybe that’s the solution, the golden ticket, the magic bean, the little pill mother gives you to make it all okay or maybe just bigger. Maybe -- or maybe not or -- maybe not just yet.

A few days earlier my family and I walked into the glowing womb of the magical fruit – The Apple Store – where the shiny, cool people work who used to work at Starbucks. I want to hate it. I struggle with technology, all of its promise of enablement and glory wrapped in a web of indecipherable recipes and dog piles of rules that suffocate my very being. It’s a good thing my husband is a computer scientist because I am a heavy, heavy, super hostile user of technology that could lay waste the entire Geek Squad with my wrath about once a week. Technology eats my lunch almost every day – leaving me hungry and grumpy, like the skinny girls who never eat, only I’m not skinny. Apple should be my savior, but it scares me even more than the crippling co-dependence of my self-destructive technology partner – the PC, that I want to beat with a small club.

With an Apple, I’m afraid I’ll create a document that no one will understand, speak a language no one will know, reach out to others only to clutch at thin air and leave the party ashamed – ashamed to have thought about changing from a PC, shirking this very basis of my infrastructure. And yet, in The Apple Store everything is pulsing with life. Like Starbucks, only better. A wave of lust washes over me. It’s achy and dirty and feels so, so good.

We are ostensibly here to buy my son an iPod Touch for his birthday. We are already a 3 iPod family – this our only foray into the orchard thus far. My son is turning 13 and is my iPod manager, which is apt given his advanced relationship with technology in comparison to mine. I buy the iTunes cards and we split the funds 50/50 as payout for services rendered.

He dives head first into the Touch and minutes later is making it his bitch. I tentatively turn to a table littered with iPhone 3Gs. They murmur a soft come-on. “Try it. Just a taste. It won’t hurt you. You’ll love it. One bump. Go on . . .” All this pulses from the glowing little temple of promises. I pick it up. Lighter than I expect and smooth to the touch, it fits in my hand as if my hand were meant to grip this thing its entire life. My fingers mimic the television commercial, sliding and activating things like a calendar and clocks showing the time in places I’ve never been. My clumsy, grown-up thumbs finger out misspelled appointments I do not have. Icons flash and bloom on-screen fantasies I didn’t know I had. My nipples could cut glass. I do not blink until my husband walks up behind me.

“Buy me one of these for Christmas.” I slur, barely able to work the word center of my brain -- its capacity is so crippled by the overload.

“Why? Will you use it? It’s a great idea if it makes you more efficient.”

“Well . . . I . . .” I can feel the crush aching in my chest.

“You hate AT&T cell service. I think you threatened to loosen the teeth of the last service tech you called.”

“Yeah . . . but . . . look . . .” I poke and poke and poke the special spots and it shimmies all over. It sighs and rests in the afterglow.

“And, people will send emails when you’re out running around somewhere or using the can. That’s why you don’t have a Crackberry now.”

“Oh . . . I . . .but . . .” I feel a cold breeze blowing up my skirt. My poking slows.

“And, can you type on that?” He points to the microscopic key pad.

“Well . . . not yet . . . hmmm. . .” I let it slip from my hand. Like a pebble that was shiny in the river but just a rock when dry, it clatters to the table. People nearby suck in a breath and turn to stare. Steve gently tugs at my elbow.

“Come on. Let’s go. Easy now. There’s a Starbucks around the corner. You’ll feel better. It’s cool enough.”

I stagger, mute, into the mall traffic gripping this arm that’s given me strength to resist temptation a thousand times. My tether to the earth, manifest in a man of towering strength. I glance over my shoulder at my children, laughing, backlit by the soft glow of the future – one furtive glimpse before they are eclipsed by the Apple Genius going in for the kill. Let’s face it, they never had a chance.

The data:

The iPhone was one of the strongest items to enter the hothouse in terms of awareness, scoring 90% in its first period of measurement. The conversion score is also high with conversion potential near one third of the total. While the overall domino scores are average, the produce score is driven by highly practical things you do with the device and very high life enjoyment drivers. Let's face it, the thing's a grown up toy that has a useful.

Ped Egg

I grasp the white orb in my right hand and take a good look at my left foot. I’ve had two glasses of wine and think my foot looks exactly like a hoof, rough and time worn, having crossed many miles in too many pounds to be forgiving. The Ped Egg is in my hand and I’m ready to assault the beachhead of my life’s mileage with this quasi cheese grater.

Sort of.

You’ve seen the commercial. You know, the one where a little vomit creeps up the back of your throat when the smiling talent made oh-so-cheerful by a good old fashioned foot flaying dump the skin shavings in to the trash can.

Ack.

But, I have to say, this product works pretty well. It’ll take a few hundred uses to make my tired dogs look like the happy feet of a toddler, but even after a couple of uses there is a noticeable improvement. I’m even inspired to paint my toenails hooker red, which is an even more noticeable change, but perhaps not an actual improvement depending on your perspective. Now, if they could just scrape away the memory of that commercial! That would be true innovation.

The Data: Ped Egg scored well for awareness garnering 59% in its first measurement period. Conversion potential is relatively low and the success index is average driven by average scores on all measures. So, “as seen on TV” may be a pretty good way to drive fast awareness capture sales commensurate with interest measured.

Tide with Dawn Stainscrubbers

Crowded around the kitchen sink filled with grease-slicked water, my mom said “now watch” and grasped the squeeze bottle of mysterious blue stuff, letting drip just one tiny drop of liquid wonder – Dawn – onto the surface. We all sucked in a breath as the grease snapped to attention and scuttled away, recoiling up the sides of the sink like a lobster trying to scramble from the pot. It was 1973 and it seemed like a miracle to a ten year old consigned to do the family dishes just one year earlier.

Many years of Dawn use later, I was excited to see this kitchen miracle and popular party trick expand into another room in the home—the laundry room. Tide with Dawn Stain Scrubbers dares to attack food stains with the power of Dawn. So says the bottle.

Not to be outdone by a detergent, I gave it a military strength test. I take a pillow case and stain it with stripes of ketchup, mustard and barbecue sauce – just like a kid or a drunk 27 year old would by rubbing his tired face into the pillow.

Then the games begin.

I cut the cloth into four equally stained segments and treat each differently:

1) Tide with Dawn in the washer as usual.
2) Tide with Dawn pretreated with Tide with Dawn, then wash as usual.
3) Trader Joe Detergent that smells really cool of lavender and righteousness.
4) Trader Joe pretreated with Trader Joe, which sounds just a little kinky if you ask me.

Now, Trader Joe is not exactly a stalwart of the stain-killing variety. And, my test results indicate that neither is Tide with Dawn, at least not under these torturous conditions. Tide with Dawn did kick the pants off Trader Joe (wonder what he wears under those pants). But it did not return the pillow case to its original pre-stained splendor. Nope, Tide with Dawn wouldn’t remove the stain from my reputation it I put that pillow case back on the bed, but hey since I’d torn it to shreds it’s no longer suitable for toddlers or 27 year olds anyway. So, it’s about as good as any other Tide but certainly no party trick.

The Data: Tide with Dawn has a strong success index at 123, but awareness and conversion potential are both on the low side. The success index is driven by high sharing scores indicating that the idea has talk value. Perhaps raising awareness would help maximize penetration by making those who are interested aware of the product.