johnny won

I honestly thought this would be a bullshit post but I was totally wrong. 

Marketing+APIs+Doing it

This really is a great case study and without a doubt, marketers suck at understanding how to promote through APIs. 

Things To Consider Before Saying “I Do” To Investors | TechCrunch

Nice acronym to keep memorized. 

Quite a good opinion piece in the New York Times about the day after North Korea falls. The question of when North Korea falls is insignificant when rebuilding North Korea will take decades upon decades. Shin Dong-hyuk’s “Escame from Camp 14” only touches upon the incredibly alien existence of North Korea. 

Dubin wrote the spot last October and shot it with his good friend and co-director, Lucia Aniello. It cost about $4,500 and the team managed to bang it out in a single day, shooting on location at the actual factory warehouse, at their fulfillment center in Gardena, California. (via A Startup Ad Pivot: Behind The Dollar Shave Club Promo | Co.Create: Creativity \ Culture \ Commerce)

Now this is a startup video. 

(via Apple Wins Patent for iWallet: The one that will rule the World - Patently Apple)

Apple’s iWallet patent shows exactly what Apple could do. This is why I’m excited:

Read this patent for Apple’s iPhone integrating NFC for mobile payments with the iTunes Store. 

Now look at $AAPL. 

The general theory in mobile+NFC has been this: the moment Apple’s iPhone has NFC for mobile payments, the entire world will embrace NFC. Literally, it’ll be almost over night. Like how Apple made smartphones with keyboards completely irrelevant or an iPad to be the standard for tablets; I think this will change everything. 

I believe this will happen for several reasons: 

• The iPhone’s overall position as a smartphone sales leader places it either number one or number two in whatever available ranking. An iPhone 5/5s/6 would be able to immediately make a dent in the market. 
• The hundreds of millions of credit card accounts tied to an iTunes/App Store account let this feature work immediately out of the box. Setup would be blindingly simple. 
• Merchants with NFC swipe capable credit card readers would have to do nothing. 
• Apple’s marketing genius (ie: running tons of TV ads showing a product demo) would make understanding how this works ubiquitous. 

The hundred billion dollar wrinkle of all this is simple but crazy. If Apple let users put in their bank information into iTunes, Apple will have invented a better debit card.

Of course, it’s actually way more complicated than that but  Apple could offer merchants a lower fee to process the transaction (let’s say Apple takes 2% to Visa’s 3.5%), the user doesn’t have to pay anything extra and iTunes would show a charge that would be pulled at little cost from the bank (credit card fees > debit card fees > direct debit payments).  

Users would love the superior experience. Merchants would relish a new competitor to the Mastercard, Visa, American Express card fee oligopoly. And Apple would be able to profit on every transaction.

I don’t think Apple is thinking about a NFC payment system, an Apple iPhone enabled NFC payment system will happen and it’s only a matter of time (this year’s 5 or ‘13’s 5s is my bet). The 2nd part that I wrote about, the disruption to the credit card fee oligarchs, is more of an if but I believe Apple’s interests are strong enough that it will absolutely happen. If this is the case, Apple’s stock is worth billions more than what it is today.

Lastly, it’s important to note a final point about Apple. Apple doesn’t go into markets because money can be made. They go into markets because they can make the experience significantly better than the status quo and find healthy profits. Mobile payments as an industry right now is a total mess (Isis, Google Wallet, Wal-Mart+Target) and the credit card fees charged on merchants make no one happy (take a guess what Apple pays out to credit card fees, this can be calculated). This is why the “iWallet” patent is so exciting, a completely better experience is around the corner. 

— Jeffrey Dachis

What’s Holding Back Mobile-Ad Spending? | Digital - Advertising Age

Hmmm. Something worth thinking about. 

By far one of the best things I’ve read in the past week. Jay Caspian Kang had a bit of a different childhood than what I experienced but an outstanding essay about the state of the current issues facing Asian Americans. It’s a good place and a weird place. 

In their book “Freakonomics,” Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt explain, among other things, the odd economic behavior that guides many drug dealers. In one gang they described, the typical street-corner guy made less than minimum wage but still worked extremely hard in hopes of some day becoming one of the few wildly rich kingpins. This behavior isn’t isolated to illegal activity. There are a number of professions in which workers are paid, in part, with a figurative lottery ticket. The worker accepts a lower-paying job in exchange for a slim but real chance of a large, future payday.

This more or less explains Hollywood. 

This more or less explains Advertising.