Back the Bid, did you?

So today, if you haven't already heard, Britain won the bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

As a British citizen I think this is awesome news, it's about time London got to have recognition for something other than a good royal sex scandel.

So I think Britain did this right. Their campaign didn't focus on perks and lavish gifts for the IOC but instead focused on very public support that was proof the citizens and corporate infrastructure of London / Britain were behind the bid. This was the well publicized "Back the Bid" campaign.

When visiting the UK (something I have done too much this year) there is nowhere you could go without seeing the "Back the Bid" slogan. When a country gets together and collectively works for one goal, the results are amazing. There wasn't a place in London you couldn't go where you didn't hear, see, or ESP sense the "Back the Bid" slogan.

I give advertisers and mass marketers a lot of grief, but the folks running the Back the Bid campaign should feel proud of their accomplishment. You know you are moving the masses when you get both Virgin Atlantic (the first backer) and British Airways (the second backer) to publically back the bid and then paint it on their planes.

It would be like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spending a week together fishing and hunting in Wyoming, sure it could happen but you need to smoke alot of &*#&@ before you could actually believe it.


Good job London, see you in 2012!

The real money is in the printer cartridges

So next week I am heading to NYC for some meetings with my favorite group of customers (the people with real $$). As these meetings were all scheduled for a Monday morning, I saw this as a good excuse to enjoy a weekend in NYC. It ends up being cheaper for the company (someday airlines need to get rid of Saturday night stay requirements) and I get to burn some hotel points and hang out with friends.

For my spring break I purchased a Canon Powershot SD-300 camera to record all the "memories", unfortunately I forgot to bring it with me on most of the adventures I took. Keep in mind that this is the 3rd digital camera I have owned, so my goal of using it is now mostly about satisfying my economic sensibility.

So I have an awesome camera, an awesome memory card (1GB) and all the cool toys except the crucial accessory (the one they included and I lost) ... a battery charger.

So today I hit the friendly Amazon.com and spent through $56.97 picking up the battery charger. So doing a little math, this represents almost 15% of the total purchase price. Wow, I love being shafted on Independence day!

So being the CKO I am, I thought about ways to solve this problem and I think I figured it out...but I want all of you smart EE types to break my logic.

Why can't we all be like RIM and have USB be the power for accessories? Imagine if you didn't have an adapter for everything? When you pack for a trip you shouldn't have to find 30 different power adapters for your Blackberry, cell phone, electric shaver, portable ECT device (just kiddin), iPod..etc..

I have a feeling that the reason companies are doing this is simply profit protection. There seems to be good margin in the "accessory" devices and it serves as a way for them to lock in users. The more differentiated the product and its tangled accessories, the more a customer buys into that specific value proposition.

The question really isn't why they do it, but how long it will take them to realize that customers want easier solutions and don't want to be locked in.

You can bet that the next time I sink $349.99 into a camera, I am going to be looking for one with USB power, or even batteries.