On Thursday, I had the chance to read The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, by Al and Laura Ries. Over the last few years, I've had a lot of opportunities to read technology, business and marketing-oriented books, and while most had some great qualities, there tends to either be too much fluffery without specifics, or dry tales that don't seem to relate to today's business world. In stark contrast, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR eloquently and directly stated its hypothesis and purpose, then went out and backed up the comments with detailed examples covering a wide variety of industries, from foods to automotive, through technology and the Internet.

Al and Laura, through a series of company-driven stories, explain how while much of companies' marketing budgets are allocated to wide-spread advertising campaigns that are difficult to support by real business growth, more significant results can be seen through deliberate, focused execution on public relations. They argue that public relations needs to be the first move, followed by advertising to sustain the brand, not to create the brand. Yet, advertising firms are lauded for their creativity, even when it can't be tied to business benefits, and woe be to the CEO or marketing executive who proposes unfocused advertising without first claiming success through PR. They give several examples where those who signed off on the big checks weren't there to collect their own in the end.

If you're in the business of promotion, or any business, really, the book is a great kickoff point for strategy and budgeting. Buy it on Amazon.

I have a long, sometimes painful, history of being an early technology adopter. I was using the first VisorPhone adapters with Handspring years before they introduced the Treo line of hybrid smartphones, purchased an iPod less than 12 hours after Steve Jobs introduced them, upgraded to Mac OS X Public Beta before it was available to the mass market, and was using Netscape Navigator before it was a 1.0 release.

With all that said, people expect I'd be first in line to snap up an Intel-Powered iMac or MacBook Pro. After all, didn't Steve Jobs say the new laptops, powered by Intel were 3 to 4 times as fast as the old model? Doesn't that make my 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 seem like a dinosaur in comparison? Surprisingly, no. I'm perfectly happy with my laptop, power adapter issues aside. The PowerBook has 1 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive, and is plenty fast for whatever I need to do. Also, we understand the issues with benchmarks. Vendors can run a suite of tests and announce those where they play the best. Reviews have come out saying that the new MacBook Pro is not in fact 3 to 4 times faster, and may be slower in some cases for particular activity. Besides, how fast does it need to be to read e-mail, write in Microsoft Word and surf the Web? At that point, the limiting factor with speed is your broadband connection, not the CPU.

So - add it up. You have a lack of demand, and not enough compelling reasons to take a gamble on what so far is an unproven architecture. I expect that version 1.5 and version 2.0 of the MacBook Pro will add additional speed and functionality unavailable in this first version. In fact, Apple announced this week that the first round will be even faster than originally announced. I don't see that as an accident. And this doesn't even take into account the migration of applications by developers of PowerPC apps to a Universal binary that runs equally fast on PowerPC and Intel architectures. I think I can wait until Adobe, Microsoft, and all the smaller developers I depend on for the apps that I use are ready.

There are some holidays that are huge events steeped in centuries of history and tradition - Christmas and Halloween being obvious choices, with the 4th of July and Thanksgiving making a run for it here in the US. Others are more like Hallmark holidays - you're aware of them, and have some obligation to fill, such as St. Patricks Day, Valentines Day, and Memorial Day.

But Presidents' Day is such a hodgepodge. It used to be two distinct holidays commemorating Abraham Lincoln and George Washington's birthday. When I was in elementary school, we got both of the days off, so February was a relatively easy month. Now, with it consolidated and falling on the most convenient Monday available, neither Lincoln or Washington get their due - after all, we will be working on Washington's birthday, and Lincoln's birthday was on a Sunday - where's the fun in that? And now that we're actually out of elementary school, it's not as if anybody celebrates what those two leaders did for us anyway. All it means is that the stock markets are canceled, schools get a day off, and most people don't have to go to the office. But I don't think you've given Lincoln and Washington more than a cursory thought today.

Let's scrap the idea. Either celebrate both men's birthdays individually, two weeks apart, or kill the idea, and make room for other days to be celebrated. I know I could always take my birthday off, or my wife's. That would make more sense.

As previously mentioned, the A's pitchers and catchers reported to spring training in Arizona earlier this week, and it's not too long from now before spring training games will begin, and we'll be well on our way to the regular season. It's time to start thinking baseball, and time to start thinking about the ANtics - just a small part of the great community that is Athletics Nation. More to come soon.

2005-2006 ANtics Archive