Filed under: Bad news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Yahoo! (YHOO), Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS)

According to a report by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), more music listeners search for information about music acts on Wikipedia than they do on News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace site, which features media from the acts. Wikipedia is also outpacing “official band websites” as well. The difference may well be the ease of navigating a Wiki page over a MySpace page and the free, uncopyrighted content that can be offered in a Wiki. Jay Walsh, the communications manager for Wikipedia cited this exact scenario, stating that the website wasn’t preparing to add any music content, staying with “content [listeners] can use and enjoy without worrying about violating any copyrights.”

From personal experience, I see how this scenario is accurate. More often than not, a Wikipedia page is just simpler and easier to navigate since it does not require a long loading time (this might not be a major issue for some internet users though) due to a big quantity of media-related content. The pages also always seem to have better information about what albums are available and what reviews have said about those albums. MySpace pages may not feature these aspects (although some do), but more often than not it just feels hard to navigate a page because of the layout and the ads that are on the site.

Fortunately, the revelation that more fans may scour a Wikipedia page for information about a band is not as damaging to MySpace as might be believed. Both sites do exactly what they’re intended to do. At the end of the day, the MySpace page and the content provided is designed to sell the music and the band. The Wikipedia page might result in that action, but it isn’t the purpose of the page. Information about the band can be used for more than easy consumption, as it might point to a longer trajectory of how the music or the band developed style or other attributes.

As I stated, Wikipedia might be more easily navigable, but MySpace has its purpose as well and it should not suffer any detraction because fans like to gain information about the band from another site. After all, at one time or another complaints were leveled at a variety of different venues because the trade magazines no longer controlled what information was available. Why should record labels control every aspect anyway? Free content sites still contribute to the end result at some point, and they are free.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, General Motors (GM), Marketing and advertising, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM)

With people in Japan showing less and less interest for cars, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) is exploring more efficient methods to increase sales in its strong competition with rival General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) for the title of the world’s largest automaker. The attempt to boost sales has become even more difficult as, according Toyota officials, young people like spending their money on laptops or mobile phones than a automobile that could be easily replaced by public transportation.

In an attempt to reach younger people and lift vehicle sales, Toyota is opening a new mall located in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo. The new Tressa mall is pretty much like any other malls, with 220 stores and restaurants like cafes, clothing stores and even gym or games centers where people enjoy spending their time. However, in the new mall space, Toyota showrooms take center stage, placing at people’s disposal a massive variety of old and new cars models.

One thing that Toyota is aware of, and trying to improve upon, is that in Japan showrooms and TV advertising are not efficient any more in attracting people’s interest for buying automobiles. The new mall is aimed at accomplishing Toyota’s plan of global domination by providing “opportunities for people to come in contact with cars.”

For the moment, is unclear if Toyota’s plan will be successful. In addition, the Japanese automaker is showing concerns about its global sales target for this year, which was set at 9.85 million. The company is blaming both the weakening U.S. economy and higher raw material prices. In the United States, car demand has been declining, hurt by the tight credit crisis, tumbling dollar and surging crude prices that put pressure on consumer spending.

With the current market conditions, Japanese car makers are facing a tough environment as the yen has been rising against the dollar. But with this new strategy and Toyota’s ambitious plans to defeat the competition, it could be just a matter of time before it gets back people’s interest for its automobile models.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Products and services, Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and advertising, Target Corp. (TGT)

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) will soon start having its meat vendors label their products as having been treated with carbon monoxide. In general, treating fresh meat with carbon monoxide makes meat appear fresh to the shopper, much like treatment with sodium nitrite does. Both products, however, are really not something you want to ingest into your body. The only problem is that labeling laws don’t really require this information to be highlighted on meat labels.

So, Target wants to be more truthful with its customers. Remember, it’s Target’s product you’re buying — not Hormel’s or Cargill’s. Although those two companies are the main meat vendors, the last stop is Target’s shelves. Target made a very good decision. Empowering customers with information is something that retailers superior wake up to. Your competitor will if you won’t.

The new labeling will read “Color is not an accurate indicator of freshness. Refer to use or freeze by date.” Just like food coloring is used to spruce up pre-packaged and processed foods, the inclusion of carbon monoxide in fresh meats (well, not that fresh) is something many customers want to know about. Next up, we’ll see if Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) responds to Target’s initiative and requires the same labeling changes from its pre-packaged meat vendors.

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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Freeware

Fireworks, parades, unicorns made of ice cream, pleasant leprechauns doing amusing jigs; these things are fun. Backing up files is not. If you disagree with this you may be a loser. Check that, you’re a loser. Or a network admin. Wait, that should read AND a network admin. Boring network geeks aside, backing up files is important. Much like prostate exams. Important, but painful. If you’re not backing up files at home, here’s a free tool that you can use to get on board the fun bus.

AutoVer is about as straight forward as it gets. Simple to install and use, and does everything you’ll need it to do. Plus some advanced features sure to keep the die-hards interested, such as version controlling. It’s obviously not really something you’d want to use in a huge scale work environment, but if you’re to forgetful/lazy/narcoleptic to manually back up files on your home personal, it’s worth a look at. Once you have it set up, it runs pretty well on it’s own, and handles errors smoothly. It doesn’t explode if your back up drive fails, or any of that fun stuff, and works with flash drives and the like. And the price is perfect. Mmmmfree.

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Filed under: Deals, Management, Marketing and advertising, Entrepreneurs, Eastern Europe

This post is one of several on business heirs apparent. Let us know in the comments whether you think Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken’s heir should take up the reigns of Heineken, and be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

It was Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken’s dad, Alfred “Freddie” Heineken, who built the family business from a small Dutch brewer into Europe’s largest brewing empire. A well-known bon vivant, he was friendly with the Dutch royal family, and his sense of humor didn’t abandon him even after a three-week kidnapping ordeal in 1983: he claimed that his kidnappers tortured him by making him drink Carlsburg.

On Freddie’s death in 2003, his heir apparent and only child, Charlene, became the wealthiest woman in the Netherlands, now worth more than $7 billion. She lives a more low-key life in London with her five kids and stock broker, and former Olympic skier, husband. She continues to hold the controlling stake in Heineken, though she hasn’t been as involved in the company day-to-day as her father was. She told a family biographer that she intends to keep the business together until her heir apparent, her eldest son, is old enough to take on the mantle.

Heineken hasn’t been running on cruise control, however. It just announced a plan to build a brewery in South Africa and has continued its expansion into central and eastern Europe by acquiring Romanian Brewer Bere Mures. But the biggest news recently is Heineken’s joint venture with Carlsberg to buy up and break apart British brewer Scottish & Newcastle, a deal which was just approved by EU regulators. Under the terms of the deal, Heineken will take control of S&N’s British, Belgian, and Indian operations, while Carlsburg gets those in Russia, Greece, and China.

Unless something unexpected happens, when Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken passes the reins to her son, he’ll be taking over a brewing company larger than Anheuser-Busch Cos. (NYSE: BUD). In the meantime, the Heineken company retains a sense of humor, at least as far as its advertising goes:

Also be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

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Filed under: Management, Marketing and advertising, Estee Lauder (EL), Entrepreneurs

This post is one of several on business heirs apparent. Let us know in the comments whether you think Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer should take up the reigns of Estee Lauder, and be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

A cosmetics empire might seem the ultimate in puffery, the very materialization of vanity. But the venerable empire built by Estee Lauder and her powerhouse son, Leonard, has turned makeup into a very real financial juggernaut. And Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Leonard’s niece, is not only the public face of the company but also the considerable creative brain of its marketing soul.

As granddaughter of the company’s founder, Aerin is surely far-removed from the hardscrabble life that was The Estee Lauder Companies Inc (NYSE: EL) beginnings. She is a child of great wealth and, as such, is the inheritor not just of money and corporate responsibility but also of appearances. Aerin is not just the face of the company, but of a certain sense of style; her choices, from her cutlery to the clothing her two boys wear to (of course) her lip gloss, are signals to a certain subset of the fashion world. Aerin isn’t just the harbinger of styles, she is a style.

Can one go from being the face of a company to its head? If anyone is positioned to do so, it’s Aerin. She didn’t just grow up in the center of the fashion world, but in the center of the “old American money” world; her best friends are Lauren duPont and Renee Rockefeller, and they’ve been teaching her the ways of the powerful since she was a child.

And as head of Global Advertising for Estee Lauder, Aerin has demonstrated a knack for creating a unified brand image, as well as controlling the details and delivering the corp-speak when required. Her public sound bites always come off perfectly, much like her society photographs, always with perfect skin and a glowing smile.

While perfect skin might not be a resume requirement for most corporations, for Estee Lauder, nothing could be more important. Having publicly stated that she, like her grandmother, doesn’t believe in research or focus groups, Aerin must be the customer (or, more to the point, be the person the customer wants to be). So maybe her relative youth is an asset? It’s certainly the message the Estee Lauder corporate communication folk seem to be delivering. And the media seems to be licking it up like a child wearing a thick application of fruit-flavored lip gloss.

Also be sure to check out the other heir apparent posts.

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Filed under: Newspapers, Marketing and advertising, Tribune Co. (TRB), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

To the surprise of no one, the newly private Tribune Co. is probably going to sell Newsday. The once-venerable New York paper, like all metro dailies, has fallen on hard times and Tribune’s new CEO and owner Sam Zell has got a mountain of debt to pay down.

According to The Wall Street Journal . Long Island-based Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) and New York’s Daily News as potential buyers. Rupert Murdoch probably would love to buy Newsday and combine it with News Corp’s (NYSE: NWS) New York Post, but I’m not sure whether the antitrust regulators would grant it. He is trying to merge everything but the editorial staffs of the Post — never a hugely profitable enterprise — with Newsday to save money in a joint operating agreement, the Journal states.

After spending $5 billion for Dow Jones, Murdoch needs to pick all of the low-hanging fruit he has the ability to. I anticipate this deal to happen. Maybe it will lead to others for papers that buyers are eager to unload. Perhaps, Murdoch might buy other Tribune papers from Zell such as The Baltimore Sun or Los Angeles Times. As the Australian tycoon showed in chasing Dow Jones, influence matters as much to him as profits. Gaining more massive papers furthers that goal at the expense of shareholders.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Best Buy (BBY)

When Toshiba announced over a month ago that it would cease making and marketing HD DVD players, all the retailers that sold those types of players and associated movies in the HD DVD format had pretty much already announced that they’d started scaling down HD DVD inventory. To early adopter consumers who had already purchased expensive HD DVD players, this was the price of admission: not knowing whether that format or the competing Blu-ray format would win.

HD DVD eventually bit the dust, and for consumers who purchased HD DVD equipment at Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY), the taste was probably quite sour. As in, “what do I do with this $300 player now?” Following competitor Circuit City Stores, Inc. (NYSE: CC), Best Buy is now helping consumers with the frustration. Instead of giving customers a complete credit for the purchase of an HD DVD player like Circuit City is doing (if bought in the last 90 days), Ideal Purchase is doing something less interesting but with more oomph — as in, free $50 gift cards.

This will cost Best Purchase an estimated $10 million, and by many accounts it’s worth each penny. The move has been classified as “brilliant” from just about every corner I have the ability to find. The reason? It will bring foot traffic into stores (that’s half the battle of retail) while building loyalty to those consumers that HD DVD left in the cold. In other words “Best Purchase cares,” in a manner of talking. And, no action is required; the cards will be mailed out proactively to those customers Best Purchase has identified as having purchased an HD DVD player. Talk about a major marketing campaign here. And, from my perspective, this is actually better than just giving a full refund to customers who ask (ala, Circuit City). Again, it seems that Ideal Purchase has an innovative angle here that should continue making it the first destination for consumer electronics buys among the electronics early adopter crowd.

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Filed under: Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware

Cayra is a mind mapping and concept-planning application for Windows that lets you create graphical representations of thought processes and ideas like brainstorms, family trees, and product-release schedules.

The program lets you label link paths and change the colors of links and nodes. You can also add images, hyperlinks, dates, and yes/no fields to nodes. FreeMind and MindManager file imports are supported.

The Cayra team is working on a web-based Flash version of their product that can be used on any platform and will support map exchanging. The current Windows version requires .NET framework 3.0.

For mind mapping on Mac OS X, try MindNode.

[Thanks commenter upsilamba!]

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Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and advertising, Time Warner Cable (TWC), Chasing Value

If you are a longtime shareholder of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), you are very patient indeed. You can count me among you, and you can count a thousand times we’ve had carrots dangled in front of us that gave us hope we would see some nice gains in our shares.

I am pondering why I am still hanging on. My cost basis was $12.10 and we sold half our shares in the low $20’s amid the flurry of news about Carl Icahn buying back shares and breaking up the company. I sold some stock and he sold some stock, I kept some shares and he kept some shares. Mine are of little consequence except to me. His are of the utmost importance to everyone.

As long as Carl still has some hope, should we? TWX is trading around $14 these days. This is a story of a company going nowhere fast. It has been improving AOL over the past few years and the site is very good in my estimation. But that does not seem to be producing much growth.

As AOL improves, so do the competitors and to a large part the status quo continues. From my perspective, the Web business is just a spending game where the stakes keep increasing but the rewards are not always tangible. (Disclosure: AOL is the mothership for BloggingStocks.com which by many metrics has been very successful, but our success has limited impact on AOL’s overall revenue).

The cable division is larger now after completing the acquisition of Adelphia Communications, but this has not produced the intended results either. TWX is a major player in cable — for now, that’s a large so what?

Warner Brothers Studios has had some massive hits, including the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which released its third motion picture in the series last year to great enthusiasm. The problem is that the motion picture business is hit or miss. Fewer photos are getting made, the stakes are ever increasing, and the industry has not been pegged for major growth for a decade.

The magazine business has been pegged for negative growth with the advent of the World wide web. Based on what I pay for most of my subscriptions, I think that they’re just covering the printing and shipping costs, and like so many of their enterprises, are 99% advertising dependent. They’ve sold off many titles and streamlined the business. This is true of nearly all the Time Warner divisions.

Time Warner has done a lot of clean-up. New CEO Jeff Bewkes has been a leader in this regard and continues to seek constant mission improvement from everything I can see. But that does not mean there will be strong revenue growth if the economy continues to weaken.

Look at it this way: If you are a teacher or a construction worker, no matter how hard you work and how good a job you do, you will only earn so much money. If you are an investment banker, bond trader or hedge fund manager, you can get a million dollar bonus in a year that you and the company (and shareholders) were losers. Perhaps just a smaller bonus. Bewkes and his team can play the hand they were dealt perfectly and still not win anything.

By that measure I agree with Carl Icahn that Time Warner needs to be split up by creating independent operating companies. Notice I did not state sold off, even though if I was on the inside I would certainly look at all the options.

I have thought for a long time that TWX is a conglomerate with many entities that don’t have to be united, and derive little of the promised synergies. I would prefer they change the model and spin out all of the divisions and make TWX a holding company, each division to sink or swim on it’s own.

If you own Time Warner, you own a media index fund, and it has been performing like one. It will probably be a safe place for your money, but unless it changes the model, I do not have much faith left that it will make you a lot of money in the near future.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the design and research principal for an architecture and planning firm. He writes Chasing Value and Serious Money columns. Disclosure: I’m a shareholder in TWX.

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