Wall Street Journal Archives

Consumer Buying Habits Still Challenge Retailers

12/15/2015 By Jayme Soulati

Consumer buying habits remain a mystery to retailers, apparently.

Yesterday, I was at a holiday party with my tennis groupies in an affluent home with several Christmas trees and many lovely decorations admired by all. The conversation launched into the fact that there were no more cool ornaments in stores, and the selection of holiday decorating accessories is limited.

We talked about Target and Pier One as places to go on the hunt while others preferred to wait until after Christmas for the deals. Wait! We all agreed there are no more after-Christmas deals for decorating goodies; if you see them before Christmas, you have to snap them up. That is so sad. We used to be able to get really cool ornaments and now retailers are not stocking shelves. Who wants to buy ornaments online, anyway? You have to touch them already.
The fact that retailers began to limit holiday selections is not new. I noticed this trend about 2009-2010 during the last recession when no one was buying that stuff. [Read more…]

Confused Messages Driving Catch-22 Brand Marketing

10/14/2014 By Jayme Soulati

The headlines in national newspapers and trade ‘zines are a mixed bag of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Consumers are taking the biggest hit amidst the confused clutter of brands’ messages.

Let’s take a look at several finger-in-your-eye examples and see if you agree:

Price Drop Tests Oil Drillers, Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2014
In this front-page story, you already know the gist. If you’re like me, you’re likely ticked off about it, too. Consumers have not even realized the benefit of one week of under $3/per gallon of gasoline and the analysts that cover the oil industry are bitching. If oil being fracked in Bakken sells for less than $84/barrel, then fracking is uneconomical. What does that mean for consumers? Another squeeze in oil supplies due to the cease in fracking, the loss of jobs and a price increase.

It’s that supply and demand thing, and the consumer conundrum remains for marketers — do we continue to pinch the customer and force higher prices so we make our margins and keep stakeholders happy, or do we risk losing market share and influencing a nose dive in local economies dependent on the jobs created from oil exploration? The media love to report on oil companies emotions

Pay TV’s New Worry, “Shaving The Cord,” Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2014
Do you subscribe to a television provider where the most favorite and in-demand channels cost the most money? Is your bill for satellite or cable television in the hundreds of dollars monthly? YES! Consumers are looking elsewhere for entertainment to try to cut frivolous expenditures. and the pay-TV companies are none too happy. Upon further examination, consumers are not totally ditching pay TV, they are shaving dollars off the monthly fee and leaving the big channels.

What’s the impact? No surprise, it’s the brand marketers seeking the subscriber base to feed us advertisements on CNN, USA Network and ESPN. If the subscribers aren’t there, ad dollars disappear and BAM! pay TV just got pricier as there’s no one left to subsidize programming. And, who’s responsible for the story behind this headline? A research firm probably dueling as an industry analyst seeking buyers for reports like this.

Smile! Marketers Are Mining Selfies! Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2014
Ahh, the ubiquitous selfie soon to grace a Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook near you. And, if that selfie is a smiler complemented by a brand logo, then look out consumer! You’ll soon get more advertising messages from the brand that bought the image catching you in the happy moment.

Guess how? [Read more…]

How Do You Network? There’s An App For That!

03/24/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Networking is a topic everyone loves to chat about, and there’s no limit to how people claim they do it well. In an unsponsored post I wrote here about the importance of networking for young PR peeps, I commiserate with everyone about the no-fun feelings for the rubber-chicken circuit.

In this sponsored post (everyone get that?), we’re going to look at a new app called CityHour that takes networking to a new dimension. I’m jazzed about this one, too, and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

First, do you read the Wall Street Journal? I’m still a print junkie and read it daily. I was so surprised to see a story about networking featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, the social media guru and angel investor, touting the demise of the business card! Yes, another obituary!

Gary was making huge fun of the people who toss their business cards out and believe it’s networking. You know the types, right? When you’re at a tradeshow or luncheon with strangers and someone pops out a business card and deals them around to everyone whether you asked for one or not.

The CityHour App

Now we get to the juice. How often are you in a city on business and have time to kill? How about that always-customary two-hour layover in the airport? If you’re anything like me, you would prefer to use that time more wisely and meet up with someone to cultivate a bit of business.

I have never known the best way to manage that until now.

The CityHour business networking app culls contacts from your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. It searches for people within a geographic range of you as well as in similar fields.

Upon my first review of the contacts it suggested for me, everyone was brand new and there was a huge variety of people I could schedule for a networking meeting on my calendar.

It’s one of the easiest apps to work with…if you follow this blog, you would’ve seen my post called, I Am App Challenged! (LOL).

What you need to do is download the app from the iTunes app store. It’s free and installs in about one minute. You’re ready to go with a log in to either Facebook or LinkedIn, and then the fun begins!

I’m pretty excited about using my time more wisely when I’m traveling. What I’m going to check out though is whether I can also set up a business networking meeting with someone from the CityHour suggested stream and meet with them for the purpose of my second blog post in the series.

That will be my experiment, because why wouldn’t I also want to incorporate this into my weekly business development planning? Instead of a cold call or tossing a business card around the table, I can have CityHour make me a few suggestions and make a connection that way!

Stay tuned for how that works out; I’m eager to see that, too!

The Consumer Electronics Show, Cisco And AT&T

01/09/2014 By Jayme Soulati

Everywhere you look, news of the is rampant. The biggest names in sliced bread and IT will be present hawking their wares. My head is already spinning, and I’m not even there.

I’m going to predict, however, that and AT&T will steal thunder from many a company. I can promise that automobile manufacturers will have their hay day, too, as we’ve already seen new predictions about mobile computing in vehicles, new apps and email built into dashboards, self-parking cars for those who can’t parallel park, and autos that anticipate an accident before it occurs. BMW is a leader in consumer technology to elevate the status of the lowly automobile.

Cisco

In a full-page, color ad in the Wall Street Journal (yes, I’ve told you before, I read that thing in hard copy every darn day and tear out and mark up the stories I want to reference right here), Cisco published the most eye-catching ad to launch

Now as a hashtag, too, #IofE is just about every innovation bridging IT (internet technology) with consumers’ private lives, mostly in the home. Featuring sensors, apps, tags, and other IT gizmos, products and environments will turn into responsive devices.

Pill bottles will get empty and submit a refill to the pharmacist.
Clothing will detect when the kids get a fever.
Wearable tech is even now all the rage; it’s the biggest trend for the next two years hands down.
If the baseball breaks the window, an email shows up with recommendations for glass companies right in the neighborhood.

AT&T

Did you see its TV ad when the kids meet the parents at the get-away cabin? The dad asks if they locked down the house, and they said sure. When dad uses his smartphone to check, he clicks through and shuts down the lights, TV, thermostat, security system, and anything else electronically digitized. He probably closes the refrigerator door, too.

I wonder what all this innovation will do to the world? Will it create the haves and have nots, just like the current income disparity crisis in the country? Probably.

Recently, I went shopping for kidlet’s first mobile phone. There were only two models available not smartphones. Knowing those two models would soon be obsolete and I’d have to buy a smartphone anyway, I took the $.99 plunge for the iPhone 4S. Where they get you is in the data plan; that monthly fee to keep all the cell numbers functioning with Internet access.

I wonder how much it would be for me to wire up my house and connect every gizmo and gadget to AT&T. I also want to know how much Cisco is going to charge to “unlock the $19 trillion in potential opportunity.”

What do you think? Are we ready for this kind of exponential growth in smart technology to invade our homes? We may as well just turn over the keys to privacy right now; once the house is wired to a “secure” network via the behemoths, then Big Data is really going to the moon, eh?

Cisco & AT&T

I’m leaving you with this gem of a find via YouTube. I went looking for the AT&T home security commercial and look what I found? These two giants are already collaborating. As of exactly one year ago, this interview ran featuring peeps from each company. Take a look; it explains a ton about what’s happening in your home security automation.

$2.8 Billion; Ponder That Starbucks

11/14/2013 By Jayme Soulati

English: Starbucks at West Coast Plaza, Singapore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The boldest headline I’ve read in awhile shook my core.

Starbucks Fined $2.8 Billion

It’s yesterday’s news, literally; but its impact will be felt by you and me. If Starbucks doesn’t appeal the arbitrator’s judgment in its three-year battle against Kraft for trying to end a failed partnership, then the price of that $5 pumpkin spice latte will increase to $5.75.

You will pay for Starbuck’s business decision gone awry.

In the Wall Street Journal Nov. 13, 2013, the story includes a quote from a statement by Starbucks CFO Troy Alstead, “We believe Kraft did not deliver on its responsibilities to our brand under the agreement; the performance of the business suffered as a result.”

How can someone put a price tag on “performance of a brand?”

This figure is mindboggling.

With $2.8 billion dollars:

• The U.S. national debt could remove a sizeable chunk
• Every person in China would get about $2.50 (there’s something like 1 billion people in China)
• 28,000 college students could get $100,000 each to attend university
• The debt of cities like Chicago and Detroit could be wiped out
• And, on and on and on

With the current crises we’re seeing each day in the economies of the world, within P&L sheets of companies, in municipalities and how they’re run and function, in the debt acquired by young people interested in a better path after college, in the homes and families of everyone in the world, do you think that arbitrator could’ve required Starbucks to donate $1 billion to charitable causes in an endowment fund?

Further in the article, it states:

Starbucks declined to comment on a possible appeal, saying it is still reviewing the decision, but said it has adequate liquidity in the form of cash and available borrowing capacity to make the payment…

Blows your mind, doesn’t it? Starbucks posted $14.9 billion in revenue for fiscal year ending Sept. 29, and it reported $2.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Starbucks Mission Statement

Perhaps the more mature I become in age and my professional standing within my profession, I have begun to view business from a lighter perspective.

The very center and core of a business contributes to its culture, its values, mission, and vision. Take a look at the Starbucks mission statement:

Our Starbucks Mission Statement

Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.
Here are the principles of how we live that every day:

Our Coffee
It has always been, and will always be, about quality. We’re passionate about ethically sourcing the finest coffee beans, roasting them with great care, and improving the lives of people who grow them. We care deeply about all of this; our work is never done.

Our Partners
We’re called partners, because it’s not just a job, it’s our passion. Together, we embrace diversity to create a place where each of us can be ourselves. We always treat each other with respect and dignity. And we hold each other to that standard.

Our Customers
When we are fully engaged, we connect with, laugh with, and uplift the lives of our customers – even if just for a few moments. Sure, it starts with the promise of a perfectly made beverage, but our work goes far beyond that. It’s really about human connection.

Our Stores
When our customers feel this sense of belonging, our stores become a haven, a break from the worries outside, a place where you can meet with friends. It’s about enjoyment at the speed of life – sometimes slow and savored, sometimes faster. Always full of humanity.

Our Neighborhood
Every store is part of a community, and we take our responsibility to be good neighbors seriously. We want to be invited in wherever we do business. We can be a force for positive action – bringing together our partners, customers, and the community to contribute every day. Now we see that our responsibility – and our potential for good – is even larger. The world is looking to Starbucks to set the new standard, yet again. We will lead.

Our Shareholders
We know that as we deliver in each of these areas, we enjoy the kind of success that rewards our shareholders. We are fully accountable to get each of these elements right so that Starbucks – and everyone it touches – can endure and thrive.

Reaction to Starbucks Mission Statement

I read this three times; I’m seeking what’s missing from what I did see:

• Starbucks will be in the lead to set new standards (yet again), and it will be a good neighbor.
• Coffee is its business, period. And it is committed to coffee.
• Partnerships and customers are treated with respect; yet, again, it’s about work.

Nowhere in this mission do I see a commitment to giving back to nurture a community beyond being a good neighbor with its stores and to uplift the customer, which I know it does extremely well. The mission statement says it sees the potential for good, and it will be a leader (again) to set the standard for that.

Feelings from Mission Statements

I don’t know about you, but what is your reaction to the words in Starbucks’ Mission Statement? Does it leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling about this global corporation interested in nurturing, giving back, contributing and helping solve the problems of the communities in which its stores reside?
Do you get a teensy bit of arrogance from some of the word choices that fail, IMHO, to move me.

Let’s ponder this — $2.8 billion.

Kraft and Mondelez will split that. In fact, the two corporations are already sharing, in yesterday’s article, how they will spend that money. Mondelez International will buy back shares, while Kraft indicated the “arbitration’s outcome will not have material financial impact on Kraft.”

Who is responsible, accountable and interested in where the world needs to go to become a better place for our children?

Is money or love the answer? When you stand in line at your neighborhood Starbucks to spend $5 on a fat-filled dreamy drink, ponder $2.8 billion; that’s all.

Soulati-'TUDE!