Observe Business

I have an intellectual interest in airlines, car rental companies and hotels. In all cases, the companies have made huge capital investments and have to eke out a living in a very competitive environment. Getting even an extra 1% from every customer is huge for these companies.

I was making the rounds of the car rental sites and came across this link for ‘Street Fleet’. Since I am always curious about product offerings, I clicked on it. Here is what I saw:



I read this and it made no sense to me. First, we start with the misspelling of the word ‘guaranteed’.

Then, I am trying to figure out what they are offering here. If I book a ‘Street Fleet’ vehicle, apparently, I will get that vehicle when I arrive if it is available. Isn’t that how the entire rental car model works? How is this different?

I think it’s silly how they say  ’our reservable collection of makes and models’ in one sentence and then say ‘if available’. Either it can be reserved  or not.

They say they have a Cadillac CTS or a Chrysler Crossfire-that is a definitely a good value proposition. These are unusual cars.  They just have to do a much better job of selling it. You can’t call a premium purchase ‘Street Fleet’. It should be something like ‘Prestige Collection’.

Amex has a ‘Black’ card that all the rappers get giddy over. So Visa, in its attempt to move itself from Toyota Corolla status up to a BMW status, has come up with a ‘Black Card’. They call it being exclusive. How exclusive is it? Not very.

Here is the ad:

Not very exclusive...and a waste of money.

So where does the 1% come from? They promise to limit it to 1% of the USA population. That’s about 3 million people.

If they get 3 million people to accept this card, their marketing team will be garlanded in gold and bathed in caviar. It will never happen.

Why? Let’s analyze their marketing.

1. To catch your attention, they have a pretty woman say she likes being in the 1%. But she is a no-name model/actress/whatever. Her IMDB shows her as doing NOTHING. Could they not get anyone better? With better name recognition?

2. 1% of the population is 3 million. That is a huge amount for a card. It also shows that they prey on people’s ignorance to apply for this card.

3. Exclusive Rewards Program: They offer 1% cashback or airline points. Nothing exclusive about that.

4. Patent Pending Carbon Card: This is the biggest joke of all. Patent Pending means nothing, it just means someone scribbled on a sheet of paper and sent $1,800 to the patent office. Anyone who thinks this is cool is a total tool.

Anyone who ponies up $500 to get this card, should have their brain examined.

So I tried to upload a pic to my twitter account…and it says that my tiny little favicon is too big. I expected more from a company that could have squeezed half a billion out of Facebook.

MSN says someone loves me

Microsoft Messenger has always been my least favorite IM app. I hate them all actually, with their two hundred buttons, endless ads, etc. But MSN Messenger is the worst because it has no antispam protections. Everytime I log in I get one or two of these popups.