Mashable ran this today about a woman who got sued for posting a tweet about Horizon Realty, property management company.  The Chicago Sun Times reported the original story. Horizon filed a libel lawsuit against @abonnen for tweeting this on May 12th:

“”Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.”

Horizon says that @abonnen had moved out recently so clearly there was something about the apartment that she did not like–possibly the mold? So instead of trying to find out what was the issue and looking for a way to resolve it, Horizon went the “legal” route: a $50,000 lawsuit for libel.

“We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,” he said, noting that the company manages 1,500 apartments in Chicago and has a good reputation it wants to preserve.

They are going to soon be an organization with a bad reputation for using legal muscle when someone says something unpleasant about them.

I am no lawyer but, I can’t see this having legs. Things are written about people and organizations every day on the internet through blogs, Twitter updates, Facebook udpates, etc. Are we going to file lawsuits every time someone says something we don’t like?

Whatever the legality of this is, the legal system will sort it out. I can only comment with some authority on the impact this has on Horizon’s image. No one likes a bully and this is a clear case of bullying. In this brave new world where every brand or company is going to be talked about whether they like it or not, bullying is not the best way to preserve a good reputation.

For me, I will be highly unlikely to want to rent properties under Horizon as they might try to sue me if the relationship goes sour and I write about it. We are always telling others about our experiences with companies. Good or bad. So if I have a bad experience with Horizon and then tell people that I see every day and people in my social networks, am I going to be sued for libel and slander because Horizon feels it is false?

Very few people probably saw @abonnen’s tweet about Horizon. Now that they filed an outrageous sum for a tweet, many more people have discovered it. Good job! They have now helped more people associate Horizon with moldy apartments and frivolous lawsuits.

It is nothing new for dating sites to use sex appeal to get people–mostly guys I assume–to click on their ads. When I used MySpace, True ads littered the place.  I’m sure you’ve seen the ads unless they are so well targeted that only the male audience sees them. In case you haven’t seen them, here is a sample:

I can understand these kinds of banner ads for a dating site like True. It is definitely effective as in 2006 these ads resulted in True signing 1000 new members per hour. I have no idea how useful the site is for dating but, the absolute conversions in 2006 are impressive. It would be my guess that True has a lot more guys in their database than girls. In that scenario, how long will it be before you run out of suckers?

That is one way to do dating site ads. I would think those types of ads brings in a lot of creepy guys and very few ladies. I could be completely wrong as I don’t know True’s male to female ratio but, my gut instinct is that it doesn’t work. I like Match.com’s advertising a lot better. It is classy and not all about sex.

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I finished reading Chris Anderson’s Free on Scribd for free. I thought his book was good and I am now more convinced than ever that a lot of things are going to continue becoming free. Even before I read Free I have supported the idea that certain things that we used to pay for should now be free. In fact, free might be the only price the market will bear.

I have no intention of reviewing the book. I thought it was good. That’s all.

I do want to talk about my thoughts of the price of $0. There is probably no greater incentive in all of marketing than free. How do you beat free? I guess you could pay people to take your products but, that seems highly unsustainable and perhaps stupid.

My perspective on free is one based on economics and not trends or fads or what seems popular. A price is only as good as what the market is willing to pay. I can try to sell a house for $1 million dollars but, if there are no buyers willing to pay, I will never see the $1 million dollars.

I could sit on it and wait and hope for someone to buy my house for the price I set. There are costs associated with waiting. At what point does it become counter-productive for me to continue waiting? Certainly, if I go bankrupt trying to service the payments, bills, or taxes on the house, I should have probably lowered the price.

Now, if I ran a business with a product that less and less people are willing to pay for, when should I stop trying to fight the forces of economics and find a new business model? I could try and hang on to the past and blame it on “thieves” or “pirates” stealing my product and eventually go out of business. The reality is that not enough people feel your product is worth the price you want to sell it at.

The market likes your product and will be more than happy to use it if it was at a price they feel it is worth–that price happens to be $0.

No one can run a business solely on giving things away. Businesses need to make money. The question is how do you make money if the market value of your product is $0?

The catch with all this is that no one has a concrete answer and it varies by industry and product. I work in the video game industry and it is different than the music industry or the movie industry. We are all considered entertainment but, what works for music might not work for games.

I feel it is just a matter of time before people feel that the market value of games should be $0. Right now, people still pay for big titles and games on mobile devices. When is that going to stop? There is a whole market of online games that are completely free and monetizing these games have become more and more difficult for smaller companies.

The one law of business that people tend to forget is that the consumer is the one in control. This law gets distorted with government intervention but, the main idea is still the same. Businesses exist to serve the customers. We cannot demand customers to do what we want, they are our masters. Those who don’t serve the market disappear unless a rich uncle keeps them around.

Not to long ago AT&T was trending on Twitter due to people complaining about the upgrade prices for the iPhone 3G S. I didn’t think it was so terrible. You knowingly went into a contract with AT&T when you got your other phone so this is no surprise. The low prices for the iPhone can only be achieved by AT&T subsidizing the costs and recouping it in the contract. So as far as I could tell, all is fair.

Nonetheless, the people didn’t like this and made their voice heard on Twitter. I followed the trend for a little bit that day and found that AT&T was responding to the uproar. I thought AT&T was doing a pretty good job explaining to people the pricing structure and the facts about early upgrades.

@ATTNews couldn’t make any changes to prices so they did their best job to provide information straight from the horses mouth. They also made sure to note that they were listening to what the people were saying.

Now, a few days later, AT&T informs us that they are going to offer iPhone 3G owners who have a contract expiring in July, August, or September the best upgrade price on June 18th. This is AT&T listening to its customers and responding to their concerns. I thought AT&T was doing a great job by just listening and providing clear information. Making the best upgrade price available to existing customers whose contract is almost about to end is something they didn’t need to do.

Good job AT&T! I will still have to wait until July to get my iPhone 3G S as I don’t have an iPhone 3G contract about to expire. I just assume I will able to avoid the hysteria by the time mid July rolls around.

I am an advocate of Cold-Eeze. I have been one for a long time without knowing it. On a recurring basis, some of my friends on Facebook update their statuses about being sick. I tend to assume it is a cold so I always comment and recommend Cold-Eeze. Whenever someone gets sick, I recommend them to get Cold-Eeze. If I am sick at the same time, I will share some of mine–I’m nice!

The question a marketer would ask is: how did Cold-Eeze sell me on their product? That’s the kind of thing we like to know. I did some brief research into the marketing efforts of Cold-Eeze and the financial statements of the Quigley Company–they make Cold-Eeze–to find the answer.

Get Well Sooner Campaign

I have personally never seen an advertisement for Cold-Eeze. If I have, I certainly don’t remember it. The first time that I came into contact with Cold-Eeze was at Duane Reade and their packaging touted the product’s ability to cut the length of the common cold. Who doesn’t want a cold to go away faster?! It was also the most expensive product of its kind but, I bought it anyway–I actually didn’t buy it the first time around because of the price.

Cold-Eeze has employed some advertising–I was able to locate some ads and the Get Well Sooner campaign by Merkley + Partners. The campaign was estimated to cost between $6 - $10 million. Based on the Merkley + Partners website, their Cold-Eeze work consisted of print, TV, and interactive. However, the web is most amazed with the billboards that Merkley + Partners are noted to be responsible for but, they do not take claim to it on their website.

There are other forms of print ads and commercial storyboards that I came across but, they don’t really tie to any agency or campaign. It could possibly be work that was never used. The print and TV ads for Get Well Sooner can be viewed on agency’s website–their site is in flash so I can’t directly link to the specific sections.

The interactive part of the campaign consisted of a website and some banner ads. The website is still live on a different address. It isn’t a specific online campaign or landing page. I used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and found out that the website was the official Cold-Eeze website for a couple of years. The current website is different.

Some of the features from the old website is on the new website and on Quigley’s ColdFight360 website. Reusing parts and pieces certainly makes sense!

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