A non-rhetorical question.
Archives for 2010
What If Obama Was A Telco?
Nothing stupider than a telco. The secret handshake of the nascent phreaker/hacker movement in the San Francisco area and peninsula in the early 1970s. Captain Crunch using a cereal whistle to get free calls from Ma Bell. Jobs and Wozniak were making and selling phreaking equipment before they glommed onto the whole personal computer thing. But everyone agreed, ‘Nothing stupider than a telco’.
Remarkably it’s one of those truisms that remains valid 35 years later. (Disclosure – we’ve represented and worked closely with RBOCs and IXCs (long distance carriers) at the VP and in one case CEO level. So we can tell you it ain’t no lie). We must add, of course, cable companies. Now, it’s true that when Wired magazine was WiReD and truly hip say circa 1994/95, they did put John Malone of the cover as a Mad Max Road Warrior digital hero. They also sucked up to Ray Smith of Bell Atlantic at the time. Stupidity is contagious.
Consider Black Water. Murder? Fraud? Corruption? Indictments? Well, become Xe. There ya go, a new logo. Fresh start, right? Comcast is doing the same thing. Buy a failing network. Why get a new name and logo. Xfinity! Same cable service! Same cable culture! Now with an oddly pharmaceutical sounding name. (Warning, Xfinity may cause vomiting, nausea, kidney failure, dizziness and nose, throat and ear bleeding).
AT&T (the re-assembling of several regional bell operating companies in the theory that clueless + clueless + dullard = super genius) quite rightly is being hammered for an inferior wireless network among other things. In many cases, AT&T’s woes aren’t just low cell tower population for scant coverage area. That’s commodity technology. More like CAPEX lacking. Worse, the ‘back haul’ connection to the network backbone from a cell tower is often miniscule: a piece of yarn, silly string or in better situations, a straw. So all that 3G speed when you get it? Pushed along from the cells like an old 300 baud Hayes modem. To the end user it doesn’t matter. Calls are dropped, mobile Internet a joke, and sexting problematic.
How embarrassing to sext someone on AT&T in say San Francisco or New York. An intrepid customer unleashes their glorious image into the ether and . . . it actually arrives 10 years later. A once svelte, good looking person’s picture matched up with the now aged sender sporting that unmistakable botox rictus grin. Cruel, cruel telco.
So what does AT&T do? They take a page from Comcast. Just create a new marketing campaign. Same weak network. But with new commercials and jingles.
Obama could learn something. Comcast and AT&T likely will do OK. Sheople today are enthusiastic about being fodder for someone else’s business model. They boast of their allegiance by clicking on ‘like’ and ‘fan’ on various lowest common denominator social websites thronging with ephemeral chit chat. Or if they are hard core, line up for hours to buy a gizmo of dubious distinction wearing their Uggs and faux Lance Armstrong ‘cycling’ outfits with stretch spandex.
As a total non-sequitor, the Stiftung merely goes bike riding. Not the rest of D.C. They ‘cycle,’ dropping $1,000 on custom wind-friendly ‘cycling outfits’ and another $1,000 on a *bike* merely to strike a pose for 2 miles along the flat pedestrian Crescent trail here in D.C. Ending the farce by hurrying back to the sofa for a Big Mac and ‘Hardball’.
But we digress. What are Obama’s branding problems? What can he learn from Xfinity and AT&T? He’d probably like to address the ‘oh God, another rhetoric filled speech followed by Bush-lite action’ problem. Going to Wall Street? Posing at its shallowest. Everyone there knows the legislation is weak beyond the telling of it. Yet isn’t that what he did on health care? And Iraq? And Afghanistan? And torture investigations? And surveillance? [Fill in the rest, here].
Advertising and branding campaigns want to turn a weakness into a strength. Or deflect attention. Xfinity — for all its if it lasts longer than four hours call your doctor vibe — is a far cry from a company selling pipes to the home. So what can Obama do to be like Nixon in ’68, calling himself the ‘New Obama’. Any ideas? Names? Slogans? Logos? What are your ideas for an Obama makeover?
Blast From The Past: Pet Sock Puppets, Windows ’98 And Dick Clarke On Cyber Apocalypse
Wired has it about right re Clarke’s new book on our looming cyber Pearl Harbor. We’ve mentioned before our work on these issues including with industry. Clarke then was the Cyber Czar on the Clinton Administration NSC staff (and again when he asked Cher Condi to move from terrorism back to cyber issues).
We winced back in the early/mid 2000s when Clarke temporarily became a liberal lion (in the sense that Wilkerson clings to even today, with baffling success). True, he offered useful testimony about the regime’s incompetence. At a time when Everyone Knew that Bush was steely eyed tough, ably assisted by the chic Warrior Princess. But those who worked on issues involving him before in polite company quietly would hear or mutter the word ‘eccentric.’ After some tequila, it became flat out ‘ain’t right.’ Even close colleagues.
A cyber book makes sense for Clarke seeking to rebuild a marketable brand. He’s on the outside even with a Democratic Administration. His anti-terrorism perspective is considerably less vital today, two administrations later. His access? Not quite meh. Neither is it white card (carte blanche) unique. The tech industry, by contrast, self renews through Moore’s Law/software innovation. And other nations are and will continue to catch up to American technical expertise. Together it’s a much more verdant environment for cultivating clients. With terrorism, in some quarters he’s radioactive. With cyber it’s more on the ‘eccentric’.
The book reads like a geek ‘bodice ripper’. Or a self-branding business development exercise. Everyone in D.C. does that so he’s mainstream there. It’s just odd to hear in 2010 what he was saying 100% verbatim in 1998 with the same certainty of imminent doom. When AOL was king and everyone had dial-up.
Why Goldman Has Contempt For Obama And The Imperial City
Josh Marshall sums up why Goldman and Wall Street look at Obama and D.C. in general as mosquitos. It’s not about regulation or banking reform but the broader question of ‘who, whom.’ The City has always looked down on D.C. as uncouth, a rustic, non-cosmopolitan do-nothing. As Josh notes it’s about broader sociology; always has been. The latest round of Goldman bonuses just another signal for the hired help to remember who’s upstairs and who’s downstairs.
The City’s economy, however notional in the bubble years, is far more ‘tangible’ than the turgid federales and their politically hamstrung procedure. Sure, many on Wall Street may not understand their own ‘products’ (we loved hearing that for the first time when we were there years ago, along with the notion that mounds of documents were ‘technology’). But then *no one* in D.C. understands the federal economy, budget or even how to run a small business. The most famous and vociferous D.C. bloviators on cable re the ‘miracle’ of American enterprise wouldn’t know a revolving credit agreement from a post office mailbox lease. In the time it took Goldman to overinflate and then rape Greece Congress might have begun organizing a hearing on Athenian financial assistance.
Goldman and the rest intend to survive. Not only Obama but the eclipse of Wal-Mart America. Despite all the political posturing, Dodd’s feckless and weak ‘reform bill’ is almost entirely acceptable to the broader financial services industry. Dodd and Obama put the fear in no one — again, as Josh notes, recall when Goldman blew off meeting the president before. It’s one reason we tune out alot of the current posing on both sides. The congressional and Administration penny stock players in D.C. are like – to switch analogies – concierges who overstep their bounds and attempt familiarity while holding open the door.
D.C. long ago gained the reputation in the City as ‘rubes – we’ve established who you are, we are just haggling price’. So when the strumpets turned up with convenient cash in 2008 all well and good. A steady hand back from self-induced vertigo. Still hired help remains just that. Perhaps a little extra for them year-end for alacrity. In no way did a sociological paradigm change occur in the City, acknowledging D.C.’s primacy over the City’s cosmopolitan captains. AIG’s lock, stock and barrel ownership by the U.S. government really is a side issue – few on Wall Street ever understood AIG, find insurance dreadfully dull, and never liked AIG anyway. Greenberg’s legal travails elicit little sympathy at all.
Wall Street epitomizes the City’s condescension to the poorly paid government street walkers in D.C. But its soft presence permeates its arts, media, industry, cultural icons such as museums, etc. In a way, the U.S. Government may have been too successful in averting a major depression. Slightly humbled, barely chastened and unbowed, Wall Street (and the City) only flirted with real consequences (Lehman, Bear Stearns) of collapse unlike most of America. Isn’t the Dow back? This Goldman saga is a chapter in the ongoing tale of two cities. The book will not end with a character named Obama.
SEC Scrambles For Relevance Via Goldman
Henry Blodget (yes, that Henry of the you’re-so-fired-for-a-tech-bubble-scam) is now a cited blogger on business matters. He speculates that the SEC surprise, unannounced suit against Goldman was timed and framed to obscure a scathing internal SEC review of its failure to act or investigate documented ponzi schemes going back to 1997. Speculative. But such craven, self-serving actions are a commonplace in D.C.
Reuters doesn’t go that far but also declares the SEC is using Goldman. They note clumsy efforts to scramble after the meltdown and pursue firms have been swatted down by courts and judges. Some judicial dismissals of SEC’s after-the-act ham fisted enforcement are scathing.
Pundits intone that SEC’s Goldman suit will bolster significantly Dodd’s the toothless and greatly watered down ‘financial reform’ bill. Republicans didn’t get the memo and have better focus group research. There’s always a tension in cynical D.C. between doing something or doing just enough to keep an issue alive for the next campaign. In our current meme environment, it’s even more stark. Actual achievement in any legislation is irrelevant to the perception in hyper-real twit-like consumptions. Thus, the astoundingly weak Dodd bill is already being amped up like a HiWatt stack as radical, massive ‘reform.’
Of all the people forced to chow down on that thin gruel, how bitter it must taste to the Left [sic], Progressives and Others Who Know Better. Again.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- …
- 31
- Next Page »