Alsop's Small Thoughts

My very first smart card

I got my very first smart card today, with a real chip in it and everything! The card is a parking meter card that stores $50 of value in it. As you can see from the back side photo I took, the card has a chip you can see. I can use it, as instructed, to increment the parking meter by 25 cents a time. This is incredibly important in a city where the parking meters use 6-12 quarters an hour, depending on the neighborhood.

The funny thing is that the city of San Francisco seems fairly tentative about the whole project, even though it installed 23,000 new parking meters -- ones that can read these cards -- in 2003. The cards are issued under a pilot program; I don't know when the pilot started or what the reason for going slow is. But they're only are sold at a grand total of 31 places  in San Francisco, a mixture of city agencies, liquor and hardware stores and other retail locations. You can only pay cash. It almost feels like the city has decided to keep the existence of the cards a virtual secret for  three years.

I only heard about them by happenstance, when my lunch date on Friday mentioned that he had managed to buy one and was using it to keep his meter fed while we were eating. Anyway, I'm feeling pretty special -- I not only have a real smart card but I must be one of the first in the whole city to have found out how to get one! (And now I don't have to load up on quarters.)

He's my man

Big news: I'm a pretty conservative person.

For me, it's been fairly discouraging recently and not because the Republican party has been wobbling around. I don't really care much for political parties, either one. But it has become clear that Hillary Clinton is the most likely individual to become the next President of the United States. And I just plain don't believe that her election would be a good thing for the United States, even though it would be cool to have a woman get elected.

The problem is alternatives: Who else to be President? John McCain? Sorry. Don't trust the guy any more than I did John Dean. Rudy Guiliani? Nice job in New York after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and other places. But I don't think he can lead the country. And he's not likely to run anyway.

I got the chance to hang out a little with Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts, the other day. I paid for the opportunity, $2,000. (Another topic: Why is it that election reform means that actually seeing a presidential candidate in person is on the other side of a $1,000 or $2,000 check?) He's smart, articulate, good looking, accomplished. In other words, he seems very electable. He did manage to get elected as a Republication to be governor of Massachusetts, for gosh sake! Remember "Don't Blame Us"?

Most important of all, his positions seem to line up with mine. He's not like all these liberal (and conservative) wimps who seem to think that war is a political position that you can adopt or reject based on how likely it appears that we might win. He talks about how we might need to commit more resources to Iraq before we can even consider getting out. He talks about how the United States is a smaller country in a world where China and India are our economic competitors and we could lose if we don't show leadership. In other words, he's not afraid to think that we might need to project our power rather than trying to pretend otherwise.

The man speaks sense to my ears. It's early days yet, but Mitt Romney made me think, for the first time, that we could have a real race. An experienced, battle tested politician like Hillary Clinton versus an articulate, visionary executive like Mitt Romney.

I'm not mad at JetBlue

The Wall Street Journal reports today that JetBlue is in trouble because it didn't tell its passengers that it was testing longer work hours for its pilots. Odds on I was one or more of those passengers. I like flying JetBlue. I started flying JetBlue in early 2005, when they were running the experiment, to Boston and Washington and New York. And I'm not mad.

People seem to feel that you are bad if you take any risk whatsoever in an airplane. I wrote in my Fortune column once that I don't turn my iPod off on takeoff and landing. I got letters from people saying I was endangering the lives of hundreds of people. Uh-huh. I admit now right here that I don't turn my cell phone off until we get to about 10,000 feet and it loses the signal. Still here to tell the tale.

I applaud JetBlue for being creative in testing work schedules and trying to be more efficient. Thank you for letting me participate in the test!

Restaurant Funnies

Sometimes it feels like restaurants can't get out of their own way. I'm in New York and wanted to make a reservation at Tabla, apparently a hot new restaurant, for when I return in December. Not allowed! I can't make a reservation more than 30 days in advance, so I have to wait until midnight on Saturday night to make an online reservation or call at noon (New York time, of course) the next day. Tabla must be a very hot restaurant, if they need to make it more difficult for customers to make reservations in advance!

I just made another reservation for lunch today at Country, another trendy restaurant, and got this message: "ALL RESERVATIONS MADE ONLINE WILL BE SEATED IN THE CAFE." Like what, online reservations aren't as good as telephone reservations?

And the classic: When I called Tulips in Santa Fe to make a reservation, I got a message saying that because I had my caller ID blocked, the restaurant would not accept my phone call. I had to hang up, the message said, and call back from a phone with caller ID. Huh? First, I had actually called 411 and asked Sprint to dial the number for me, which is why my caller ID didn't show up (since I don't block caller ID). Second, the restaurant would prefer to have fewer reservations just because they can't see the caller's phone number? (When we did go to the restaurant, we were one of two parties having dinner, clearly not an overly popular restaurant.)

What is it about restaurants that leads to such an anti-customer kind of attitude?

Who got fired?

Normally, I don't stop to read advertising in a magazine but I couldn't help but notice this headline: "Everyone likes spinach in their omelettes, except people who don't." Of course, I instantly thought of the replacement, "Everyone likes spinach in their omelettes, except people who died."

It's on page 32 of the September 18 issue of Fortune. The Federal Drug Administration first issued a warning about e coli in spinach on September 14. So there's no way that you could blame anyone involved in the production of the ad for using spinach in an advertisement. But the interesting thing is try to relate the headline to a marketing message and figure out who the advertiser is. Commenters can reveal the answer to that question below if you want to, but feel free to guess if you don't go and figure it out first. I'll add the answer to this post in a few days. And then you'll see whether someone should have been fired for the entire ad campaign and it's complete irrelevance to the brand!

Numero Uno In San Francisco

I am Number One to get a new 2007 Mini Cooper S when they start to arrive in San Francisco next spring. Number One. Numero Uno.

Isn't it amazing that I feel that way about getting a new car? First, I love my 2002 Mini. It's an amazing car: fun to drive, cute, well designed for people. I love the fact that pretty girls turn their heads when I drive by, since I have fantasies that it's actually me they're looking at. I love the way the radio controls work on the steering wheel, the way the GPS announcer is a British lady, very polite. I even love the way Mini advertises the car and does customer service (when they aren't overwhelmed, which they have been in the past).

I got a letter from MiniSF (the BMW dealer that has the Mini franchise here in San Francisco; BMW actually owns the Mini) that said they needed used Minis like mine and that they could do a deal to get me into a 2006 for little or no cash. That made me feel good about my car! (I bought my Mini used on eBay in early 2004.) So I had some time to kill yesterday morning and dropped by MiniSF after my workout. There I met Allison, the Mini Motoring Advisor. She told me that I had missed the program and that they had sold all their 2006 models. (It turns out that Allison moved to San Francisco recently; she's a Mini owner herself and decided that she would like nothing better than to also sell Minis!) We reviewed the incoming models, but I learned that the new 2007 is coming in February or March and that they had just opened the list for people to put their names on it. For $1,000 fully refundable, I'm now Number One on the list.

While we were reviewing the 2006 models, I learned that Mini didn't offer a yellow version in 2006. My used Mini is a "Liquid Yellow" with a white top, as you can see from the photo. Since Mini isn't offering that color anymore, I'm reasonably sure that the value of my Mini is actually enhanced. Allison thinks I can sell my Mini for $20,000; I paid $23,000 for it more than two years ago. Now I'm feeling REALLY good about my Mini!

I hope Harvard Business School has done a study on how the Mini Cooper company has designed and developed their customer loyalty programs!

PS 10-10: It turns out that Mini's marketing has gotten pretty good coverage in business publications. This interview in Business Week is particularly relevant and the author even concludes with exactly the same sentiment I express above, while revealing that the marketing guy at Mini, Jim McDowell, graduated from Harvard.