Filed under: Products and services, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising

In the wake of his nasty divorce, Paul McCartney and his management are in the process of planning a massive world tour for next fall including shows in the United Says. According to British newspaper NME, McCartney is also preparing to debut a big amount of new material on the tour, which will undoubtedly also feature material from his most recent album Memory Nearly Full after McCartney played only limited venues last summer for its promotion. The pending tour will be the largest of its size for McCartney in almost three years, after he toured in promotion of his 2006 Grammy Award winning album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.

The announcement that a tour is in the planning stages comes nearly a month after a British court awarded McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills a nearly $49 million divorce settlement, granting her about $34,000 a day for their marriage. McCartney’s separation from Mills began in the summer of 2006, and the divorce included security matters and details related to the pair’s daughter.

There should be no surprise that McCartney would start to plan a massive world tour, especially given that he was unable to do one after Memory Almost Full was released last summer and he has a history of going on the road after each new album in current years. Some may question the timing given how current his divorce was finalized. Regardless, the prospect of new material is very exciting and may indicate that the tour isn’t in promotion of a past album, but of one to come. If that’s the case then attendees and listeners will be in for a treat since no new album has even been hinted at or mentioned aside from long term deals with Starbucks’ (NASDAQ: SBUX) Hear Music.

That prospect, combined with the success McCartney has enjoyed with Hear Music could mean that a new album would fare very well. Time and a tour will only tell that outcome though.

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Filed under: Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising

Internet retailer Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) is following Ideal Purchase Inc.’s (NYSE: BBY) lead and is now supplying $50 gift certificates to those customers who purchased a now-obsolete HD DVD player on the e-tailer’s website prior to February 23. Customers who bought an HD DVD player before that date have until April 9, 2009 to contact Amazon.com and claim their $50 credits (limit of 10).

It’s good that Amazon.com is finally doing this — but why did it take so long? The pioneering e-tailer didn’t lead the charge on this one, and left that task to brick-and-mortar retailer Ideal Purchase. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) followed shortly behind and then a month later, Amazon.com joins the fray? Generally, Amazon.com is the leading trendsetter — but not this time.

So, Amazon.com is giving previous HD DVD unit customers a $50 credit on anything else available for sale while pitching some great offers on the format winner Blu-ray format (always have to work an upsell in there). It would be great if every retailer who sold HD DVD players would follow along Best Buy’s lead and provide $50 credits to customers as a future business retention tool, but that probably won’t happen. The lack of that action, though, shows just who is in tune with customers and who could care less.

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Filed under: Products and services, Law, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising, Verizon Communications (VZ), Time Warner Cable (TWC)

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) says that Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) is lying in its advertising. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Verizon states that Time Warner Cable’s ad implies FiOS requires a satellite dish for TV service and that it isn’t able to bundle together high-speed Internet, video and phone calls.”

The problem, of course, is much deeper than one ad. Verizon has spent $23 billion to put fiber in front of its 18 million customer homes. In the process it hopes it can take TV and high-speed Internet customers away from cable companies and satellite TV firms. If the product does not do well, there will be hell to pay in the Verizon executive suite.

Cable company stocks have fallen over the last three quarters, to a large extent due to the fear that they now have real competition for packages for voice, TV, and broadband, known fondly as the “triple play”. Verizon does not have to get a huge number of cable customers to switch to do some real P&L damage. Early indications are that consumers like the fiber service. Because it can deliver more bandwidth it can offer larger numbers of HD channels.

The court fight over the ad makes for nice newspaper copy, but the real fight ends up being one for shareholder value. Time Warner Cable’s stock is down 30% in the last year.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Marketing and advertising, McDonald’s (MCD), Battle of the Brands

Earlier this morning, I was looking through some news items from the past several days when I encountered one at Brandweek that both interested and delighted me. The article concerned an on the internet survey done at teen social networking site Habbo. Teenagers between the ages of 11 and 18 named some of their favorite brands. Companies like McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) and Nike (NYSE: NKE) did very well in the poll. But the company that delighted me that also was a winner in the survey was Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO).

One of the reasons why I was so happy can be found in the disclosure at the bottom of this piece — I own shares of the beverage icon in my long-term portfolio. I suppose that would be the top reason, but here’s the thing — it’s been my experience that the youth of America don’t like Coca-Cola that much. Well, I should say that the youth that I know don’t respect Coke (and they should, it’s a delicious, refreshing experience that has no equal!). When it comes to soda, PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) unfortunately seems to be the brand of choice among the younger folk in my area (don’t take this as any sort of statistically scientific statement, please). Come to think of it, even older people that I know seem to like Pepsi. It really is a disconcerting situation. Coca-Cola stockholders realize that young people must be marketed to in a powerful manner so that future returns on invested capital in Coke’s flagship brands can help drive value. And let’s not forget that Red Bull wants to enter the cola wars — see Zac Bissonnette’s post about this bubbly new development.

Of course, as the article implies, the survey results don’t necessarily translate into buying trends — the survey, simply put, was checking on how well-known certain brands are among this specific demographic. Nevertheless, it’s important for Coca-Cola to be known — that’s winning a big part of the battle for future perpetual customer loyalty. Coca-Cola still has a long way to go, in my view, in terms of instilling a “cool factor” into its famous trademark sodas. Like I say, it’s been my perception that the younger a beverage consumer is, the more likely stated beverage consumer is to like Pepsi. I don’t like that, certainly (I did, however, like this survey!).

Disclosure: I own shares in Coca-Cola; positions can change at any time.

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