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Video
Games - Not Just a Time-Killer for Kids
By
Charles Delvalle
While
everybody in the financial media is telling you to follow
the boomers, it can be just as rewarding to take a look at
what your own kids are up to. How so? The video games they're
playing may give you a chance to double or triple your money.
According
to a new AP/AOL poll, 4 out of 10 Americans - 120 million
people - play video games like Quake, Pac-Man, and Halo 3
on a daily basis. And it's not just the kids. Nineteen percent
of those 120 million gamers are adults over the age of 50!
Worldwide
video gaming sales have grown 16 percent since last year,
representing over $8 billion in revenues in the U.S. alone.
And with the upcoming release of the latest versions of the
consoles used to play the games, the gaming market is set
for another surge in profitability.
When
investing in the gaming boom, check out video game makers
that have been around for years, make quality games, and
are set to release a bunch of new titles to complement the
new consoles coming out this year. Konami (KNM) and Electronic
Arts (ERTS) are two that fit those criteria.
[Ed.
Note: Charles Delvalle is the Managing Editor of ETR's investment
newsletter, Money
Insight.]
"Bring
me a beaker of wine, so I may wet my mind and say something
clever"
-
Aristophanes
A
Vintner's Secret Weapon: Guilt Marketing
By
John Forde
I've got wine on my mind.
Not literally, mind you.
As I write this, it's not even 10:00 a.m., for God's sake.
No. I'm thinking about wine thanks to two articles I've just
read, both of which might interest any student of marketing
who also has an affinity for the grape. (There are a few of
us, I imagine.)
So, which two articles?
First, one from the BBC reporting a "new wine for men" that's
in development by a California vintner.
Yep. Bordeaux for the Budweiser set.
Says a Ray's Station rep, this is wine for guys who like to
fish, hunt, and watch Nascar. Married with kids and settled.
But not into white wines or even softer reds like Pinot Noir.
These are, as labeled, "Hearty red wines for men."
If this gives you an idea, there's a galloping stallion on
the label.
Is
gender-targeting for wines a new thing? Nope, not at all.
Last year, says the BBC article, another vintner came out
with a wine especially for women. It's called, and I'm not
making this up, "Mad Housewife."
Sounds like a couple of fun copywriting gigs, writing for those
two vintners, eh?
Still, the real reason I had the idea to write about wine today
was a second article that hit a little closer to home...
See, here in the Paris office where I sometimes set up shop,
there works wine-making royalty: the daughter of California
vintner Manfred Esser. Recently, she brought each of us a bottle
of her father's wine. My wife and I drank ours with dinner
that night.
Good stuff.
After sampling the wine, I looked up the wine master on the
Web. Per an article I found in the Beverage News, it turns
out Esser's talent is not just in making a good wine, which
he does. It's also in applying new marketing principles that
I think we could all afford to study.
Esser, who's German and a Harvard grad, took over the Cuvaison
Winery in Napa Valley. It was 1986, and the vineyard was headed
south faster than a goose in February.
Yet, within two years, Esser had turned it around. Not only
was Cuvaison suddenly breaking even, they had cornered 25 percent
of the export market. And they were selling as many as 70,000
cases of their top-end wine every year.
Twelve years later, Esser sold his partnership in Cuvaison
and launched his own label.
Now, Esser Vineyards is one of California's newest hot contenders.
Despite competition with, as Esser himself puts it, "about
80,000 different competitors."
How does he do it?
Esser calls it "guilt marketing."
"You treat your customers so well," says Esser, "that
you create a sense of obligation to come back to your product
or service. And, even more than that, to actually become ambassadors
for your company. They actually feel guilty if they forget
about you."
Sound familiar?
He's not recommending tricks or jingles or cleverness or high-pressure
selling to turn a buck. He's recommending a quality product.
And quality service. At a good price.
It's relationship building.
In other words, the same marketing secret so many new Web businesses
took a few years to "discover" ... happens to sell
wine, too. And it happens to do so extremely well.
Esser's done this before.
In his early career, he took a Chicago-based wine-importing
firm from nothing to a multimillion-dollar business. Per Beverage
News, by the time he left the firm, it had 500 employees, 30
sales offices, and helped sell wines from all over the world.
It starts with the retailers, distributors, and restaurant
owners. "During harvest," Esser told the Milwaukee
Journal, "we go in the vineyard and cut a bunch of grapes
and tissue-wrap them. Then we send them to important people
- FedEx it overnight, with a note - 'We thought you might be
interested in the new vintage.'"
This kind of treatment, Esser noted, is the kind of thing you'd
see at places like the Ritz-Carlton, where a customer's every
whim is anticipated and over-met.
Then there's the label on the bottle. Simple, elegant, expensive-looking.
Which matters for a wine that, hopefully, will land on lots
of restaurant tables. Esser spent two years finding that look.
And consider that world-honored wine maven Robert Parker has
ranked Esser's wine as top-notch eight years running. Yet,
this isn't $100 hooch. Or even $50, like you might expect to
pay for some of California's other top - and not-so-top - offerings.
In fact, most of Esser's wines won't set you back more than
about $10 to $12. Per Parker's review, "This winemaker
knows how to make popular, high quality wines that sell for
a song."
Imagine ...
Step one: Build a business based on the quality and affordability
of what you sell.
Step two: Make THAT your marketing hook.
Is this strategy new or reckless or revolutionary? No, quite
the opposite. It's old school, time-tested, and one of the
safest business plans anyone could imagine. And wouldn't it
be nice if more businesses today took it up again?
Cheers to that.
[Ed Note: John Forde is an AWAI board member. To get his sharp
insights into the world of copywriting, sign up for his free
weekly e-zine Copywriter's
Roundtable.]
Today's
Action Plan
John
Forde makes a good case for "guilt marketing" -
a strategy you ought to seriously consider. But, hey! This
is a holiday! So go ahead and put it on your "to-do" list
for tomorrow - and just enjoy being with your friends and
family today.
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The
Quotable Mr. Franklin: On Celebrating Independence Day
...
"When
I read in all the papers of the extravagant rejoices every
4th of July, the day on which we signed the declaration of
independence, thereby hazarding our lives and fortunes, I
am convinced of the universal satisfaction of the people
with the revolution and its grand principles."
(Source: The
Compleated Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin, compiled
and edited by Mark Skousen)
Candy
for Breakfast?
By
Al Sears, MD
Which
would you call more fattening - a chocolate and caramel Snickers
bar or a bowl of whole-grain Grape-Nuts cereal? If you guessed
the Snickers bar, you'd be wrong. They both have about the
same number of calories but the glycemic index of the Snickers
bar is 41, while Grape-Nuts is 75. [Ed. Note: We've talked
about the glycemic index before in ETR. To refresh your memory,
it ranks foods that contain carbohydrates according to how
much they raise blood sugar levels in the body.]
Does
that really translate into being more fattening? I say it
does. Here's why:
Their
glycemic indices show that the Grape-Nuts produce nearly
twice as much blood sugar as the Snickers bar. This, in turn,
will trigger the production of more insulin. Higher insulin
will signal your body to convert a higher percentage of calories
consumed into stored body fat. Since the calories are the
same, you will build more fat from the Grape-Nuts.
Did
I slant the playing field and choose an unusually low-glycemic
candy bar? Not really. In fact, if you add more fat or more
chocolate, or substitute almonds or walnuts for the peanuts
in the candy bar, its glycemic index gets even lower. Are
Grape-Nuts unusually fattening for a cereal? Actually, it's
one of the less glycemic. Total, much touted as healthy,
scores 76, Rice Chex scores 89, and corn flakes is a whopping
92.
So
am I telling you to eat more candy bars? No. I'm saying that
unless you are going to burn lots of calories soon after
eating cereal, consider it to be an indulgence like candy.
It is definitely not your staple breakfast for good health
as so many have claimed.
Tomorrow,
I'll tell you about a common problem with glycemic index
lists ... and how you can use their real lesson to get lean
fast.
[Ed.
Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The
Doctor's Heart Cure, is a leading authority on longevity,
physical fitness, and heart health.]
Notes
From Asia: China's View of the U.S.
By
Michael Masterson
While
traveling around China, the four of us wondered how the Chinese
government talks about the U.S. The answer surprised us.
Although our Beijing guide admitted that the Chinese government
doesn't like the USA generally and the Bush administration
in particular, all three guides said that the official propaganda
about America is generally positive.
"We
want to have good business with you in the future," Roger
from Shanghai said.
Which
brings me back to wondering: How will China's inevitable
rise to the top of the world's economic food chain affect
the U.S. and other top economies? Will we end up weaker and
poorer, as my friend Allie fears? Or will it mean a bigger
world economy and more and better financial opportunities,
as I am inclined to think?
Today,
after visiting a silk factory in Suzhou, Roger asked me how
many employees I had. "I don't really have employees," I
said. "I'm a consultant."
"I
think you are not giving me a straight answer for my question," he
replied. "I know from your friend that you have employees.
So how many?"
"Well," I
stammered. "The answer to that depends on which of my
companies you are asking about," I told him.
"All
of them," he said.
"Well,
if you count everything all together, the number is probably
more than a thousand," I admitted.
"A
thousand," he said, rubbing his chin. "Maybe your
company should come here and invest in China."
"Maybe
we should," I replied, smiling.
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