thanks again soccer.com!

Just checked my facebook account and got the following status update from the folks at soccer.com: "Reading this on the go? Head over to MOBILE.SOCCER.COM and check out our site, specially formatted for your hand-held device."

As I recently documented, the mobile site had been the source of some consternation for me. Lo and behold, though, my HTC phone running a Windows-based system now works on the mobile.soccer.com site! Yippee skippee!

Still not happy the site wasn't ready for "my phone" initially, but better late than never.

The Tops Listing Cavalcade

I just did it. I read my first "Top 50" list looking back at 2010. I picked one posted on Monkey See and was delighted by the read... No oil spill, no war, no tragedies at all. As a starting point goes, I'm happy to have picked one called "50 Wonderful Things from 2010".

Given the time of year, this is merely the kick-off of what I'm now calling the TLC or "Tops Listing Cavalcade". I should trademark the term, as it's the first time I recall getting a "no results found" message from Google in response to a search.

What is the TLC? It's the swelling, stupefying, sometimes scintillating assortment of lists of top songs, shows, stories, social movements, and so forth which springs forth in the run up to x-mas and won't peter out until a few weeks into the new year. Lists of the tops of everything you could imagine. It happens every year. I just decided to brand it. Please use the term frequently, as I aspire to making either the Top Words or the Top Viral Products list next year.

I know it's the early phases of the TLC, because some participants are just building their lists. Case in point? The Huffington Post's Cutest Pets of 2010 contest was still seeking submissions this month, although the HuffPo is taking on the folks at cutestpetcontest.com. Perhaps we need to build a list of the Best Cute Pet Lists of 2010... Hmmm...

What are your favorite lists to review each year? Share'em here. Share'em with family. Share'em with strangers, if you're comfortable with that kind of thing. I'll put a List of Top Lists together, so you can share that list, too! All part of the the Tops Listing Cavalcade... Though maybe I should restage the brand to improve its appeal. Perhaps "Mega Cool Tops Listing Cavalcade of Joy and Power" is better... It just might get me on to the Top 10 Most Ludicrous Things Named in 2011 list!

Soccer.com & Redemptive Customer Support

My relationship with soccer.com is complex.

On the one hand, I'm a fan of Eurosport - the retailer one finds at soccer.com. The firm's catalog contains a healthy dose of retailtainment in print form, enough to be a constant on my nightstand or - dare I say it? - the magazine rack near a certain porcelain bathroom fixture. It's my wishbook for all things soccer: shoes, uniforms, videos, and so forth... The sale section gets special focus.

I am a long-time member of the Goal Club, the brand's frequent buyer group, and periodically I'll splurge my accrued points on the best sale items I can find. I've purchased apparel, uniforms for teams, shoes for myself, shoes for others, highlight videos, and more from Eurosport. I'm loyal, almost to a fault.

Which brings me to "the other hand"... Soccer.com is a clunky website. Periodically, it causes me such fits that I consider leaving it. Like a grumpy girlfriend, it refuses to talk to me, not allowing me to log in. Or, when I try to put that special something in my cart, it tells me I've selected an "invalid item" - though it may have actually placed the item appropriately and simply decided to have a bit of fun by telling me it didn't.

Recently, I had two bouts of frustration which brought me closer to a painful break-up than ever before. The first resulted from a lovely email announcement: "We're Mobile! Find us at MOBILE.SOCCER.COM". O Joy! I picked up the message on my smartphone, only to find I couldn't click through to the mobile site. The only link in the message actually went to the standard URL. Grrrr...

Not to be denied, I punched in the http://mobile.soccer.com/ address and hopped excitedly as the new site loaded. Loading done, I could see the new site but I couldn't use it. Once again, the only link that seemed to work took me back to the base URL. Double Grrrr... I tried again from my newer, touchscreen featured other smartphone... Denied.

It seems my Windows-based system wasn't good enough for mobile.soccer.com. A friend with a Droid confirmed it. The mobile site worked for that phone. But, how many potential customers out there were stymied by the botched implementation?

Which brings us to my latest challenge: my seeming inability to sign in as a Goal Club member over the past week or so. Over and over and over, what had always worked failed. I'd input my username and password, only to be told I needed to input my password. Huh? I clicked "Forget your username/password", got a reset on the password, and tried again. By now, you've figured it out - I had gone crazy, trying the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome.

Incredulity took hold... "How could this be?" "This has never happened before!" "There's got to be a mistake!" I sent a note to Customer Service and stewed. Customer Service sent me a very nice note back to inform me that they'd checked, and nothing was amiss with my account. Really? Really?!?!

"Can't you see I can't get in?" I thought as loudly as possible. Nobody heard, so I tried a different approach. I contemplated my own assumptions, and lo and behold, one BIG one jumped out at me. I'd assumed that soccer.com would react to all browsers the same way, which of course I should have realized wasn't too bright on my part given the previous challenges with the mobile site. What if I were to head to the site using a browser other than my standard, Google Chrome?

I fired up Internet Explorer. I typed the soccer.com URL. I held my breath. I clicked "Sign In". I entered my username and password. I waited. By now, I was noticing how long my breath had been held; my mind wandered to thoughts of "Shouldn't I be able to hold my breath longer? I should work out more..." and then it happened: I was in (again)! All it took was for me to switch browsers. Whew! Soccer.com was still there for me... but wait a minute!

Why should I have to troubleshoot and switch browsers just to get to stuff I might want to buy??? I mean Chrome doesn't have the greatest market share among browsers, but it's up around 10% these days. Imagine a normal retailer telling every 10th potential customer, "No thanks, you can't come in... Don't like the car you drive, so you're not welcome." It makes no sense.

At a minimum, I wish I'd been told of the incompatibility. Who knows, in the case of the mobile site I may have concluded that it was time for an iPhone or a Droid... Instead, I felt spurned. I wasn't happy. I was gonna do something about it, too, except...

Except...

Except that the Customer Support people at Eurosport are fantastic. Whether because their bosses create so many problems for them to solve, great training, or inherent good Samaritanism, it doesn't actually matter. They rock. During my trials and tribulations, they kept up a constant friendly dialog with me.

They offered to send me gift card for my troubles. They apologized for the fact that I was having trouble. They reminded me, ever so politely, that I could always call when I had an issue; a real human being would be happy to confirm my membership and place an order. They thanked me for my feedback. They thanked me for my loyalty over the years. They simply did everything right.

Know what? It worked. Remember the girlfriend I mentioned before? We made up. She's got her faults. She's actually got quite a few of them. But deep down, her heart is pure. She wants to do the right thing. She knows she's not the best at what she does, but she's trying hard to do it well.

Eurosport, I'll be back to soccer.com. Please keep sending me your catalog. And, at this busy time of year for all e-tailers, hug your Customer Support team. Hug'em from me, too!

I'm baaaack...

Hi Folks! Yes, it's been a while, and here's the scoop. As some or all of you may know, I work for a company that dealt with significant challenges during the spring and summer of 2010: bp. I'll be honest, blogging wasn't at the top of my priority list.

Our work at bp isn't done - not by a long shot - but the nature of it is changing, evolving. I think it's time I get my blog on (again).

If you're looking for any inside scoop on the happenings over the summer, don't look here. I don't think this is the proper forum for a blow-by-blow. If, however, you're curious about my perspective on working at the firm, why I remain so engaged with the company, the emotions associated with events of the past months, what it's meant to me personally, well then this is a dandy spot for that dialog.

And, rest assured, I will still find plenty of time for shiny objects, life's challenges (e.g. my war with small furry critters), and the craft of marketing. It's nice to be back, and I hope to delight!

Tweet! Twitter Ads!

It's happened. Twitter has decided to introduce advertising to its service. At one point, leadership of the firm called an ad-based revenue model "boring", but prudence seems to have won out over monotony.

What are your expectations of ads in Twitter? Expect it to be disruptive? Distracting? Detrimental? Personally, I await the evolution and further monetization efforts.

Twitter, like other services before it (hello, Pandora...), must try to make money to stave off a "cool but unprofitable" demise. The irony? Monetization efforts like advertising erode the desirability of the service for some users. It feels like Twitter is just entering the awkward adolescent stage of its business development: still cool, but getting pimples. We'll see how it looks when it's all grown up.

iPad is Here... Has the World Been Saved?

"It's here! It's here!" chant the legions of Apple fans. The much awaited "Jesus Tablet" has arrived in stores. Despite gloomy economic times, folks are still lining up in front of Apple stores in the hope of being the first among their friends to fork over wads of cash for the shiny new toy.

WIRED perpetuated the hype last week with its article on "How the Tablet Will Change the World", and NPR today interviewed giddy iPad buyers in Apple's New York store. My favorite quote from the NPR story? "I'm going to use my iPad to play games!" As if we've been waiting since the discovery of fire for the breakthrough that would let us play games... Yay!

Don't get me wrong, I'm stoked about the new device from Jobs & Co., but I'm not yet ready to put it in the category of world-changing, epiphany-granting religious icon. I have already classified it as a Kindle-killer and money maker.

Apple is hot and not promising to have enough inventory to satisfy demand (thereby keeping prices high). AT&T is cashing in at $30/month for the iPad data plan. And people will buy, buy, buy. A great business initiative? Yup. Messiah as device? TBD.

Happy Birthday .com!

That's right, .com, you are 25 years old! Wahoo! 80 million sites use you, and 100,000 more are registered each day... Who'd have guessed at your popularity way back in the 1980s? Enjoy your day and then get back to work!

30 Days Later: Remember the Super Bowl Ads?

Here we are, 30 days removed from the Super Bowl... You remember the game, right? Thrilling see-saw battle that resulted in the Saints finally winning a championship. It was epic.

Remember the ads? At something like $3 million for a :30 spot, one would hope so. Off the top of my head, I could only describe three of them in any detail. There were two other brands I could identify as having aired ads, but beyond that it was all a blur. One would hope for the millions invested, the ads would have had a bit more staying power, right?

Which ads stuck out? VW's "Slug Dub", the Dodge Charger "Man's Last Stand" spot, and the NFL.com promo spot with Arcade Fire as a soundtrack. The other two I recalled more generally were from e-Trade and Hyundai. The last two came with distinct emotional reactions: e-Trade = annoying and Hyundai = appreciative.

I'm tired of the e-Trade baby, who by all rights should be celebrating his graduation from kindergarten by now, but is actually still sucking a bottle and pooping his pants. C'mon e-Trade... You want us to believe you're still cutting edge and good for our investments, but your spokeskid hasn't developed one bit in years. Tsk tsk!

As for Hyundai, well, I just recall feeling good about the value + quality message their ads delivered. Not sure of the specific executional elements, but I still feel good about them.

Having confirmed that I couldn't recall most of the ads I saw, I pulled out my notes on the full slate of spots run. Yes, I'm that big of a marketing geek; I took notes on Super Bowl ads. Guess what, I liked a lot of them at the time! Funny how the response of the moment faded, or perhaps not. In any case, by checking the notes, I got a few pleasurable "oh yeah!" moments.

How could I have forgotten Kia's Sorento ad and its Vegas road-tripping toy posse?! Or Emerald Nuts and PopSecret's "Human Dolphins" lunacy? Or Audi's "Green Police" spot? They all make me smile even now, just looking back on them... Whereas GoDaddy, Taco Bell, and the aforementioned e-Trade spots simply make me grumpy.

I'll riff soon on the five things I believe ads should do... Until then, take a look back at the crop of this year's Super Bowl ads and consider which you think made most effective use of its media spend: http://www.cbssports.com/video/player/superbowlcommercials