October 7, 2007

Sunday's working fine, Ida, except that I missed last Sunday because we were [happily] computerless in the little town of Marcialla in Tuscany.

We all know about the weakness of the dollar. Dealing with it can be shocking. That 80-cent coffee is now about $1.80, not just because the dollar is weak but also because some European countries like Italy set their local-currency-to-Euros conversion at a highly inflationary rate.

One Italian friend told us that he can take his family to New York or Miami for an entire week for no more than the cost of a single weekend at the closest Italian beach resort.

Well, of course, that opens up tremendous marketing opportunities for the United States. Walk down the streets of virtually any major U.S. visitor destination (including Charleston) and you'll hear the languages of European countries, and Great Britain. (Interestingly, the Russians and English have replaced the Americans and Japanese in travels to Europe. Departures Magazine focuses its current issue on Russia. Wow, what a change over the past couple of decades!)

Any U.S. visitor destination worth its salt should be promoting itself abroad. And, of course, anyone with a product or service that might appeal to the European market should be promoting it over there. Their prices may be staggering. But ours are a steal!

Get Ready for '08 Trend Predictions

They're already popping up in the media. I just read a bunch that include integration across customer buying process, multi-touch campaigns, etc. Really nothing new, only an intensification of what we've been seeing for some time. Online ad spending - which increased about 33% this year - will continue to grow, especially with new opportunities from biggies like Google. One study predicts that 89% of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audiences. Social media will continue their rocket-fast growth, and we'll all be exploring ways to market to their members (very tricky stuff).

More choices, more complexities...more challenges, more fun!

Plane Reading

My plane reading consisted of an enormous compedium of essays called Cultural Amnesia by Clive James. He's incredibly literate. I should say he's intimidatingly literate, as he profiles more than 100 cultural icons of the last century. It has a very personal perspective and some terrific quotes from the subjects....such as this one from Coco Chanel: "Luxury is a necessity that starts where necessity stops."