Interesting times for the World Triathlon Corporation, owners of the Ironman brand. As 1) a repeat Ironman competitor myself, at both full (140.6) and 70.3 distances, 2) a professional who works with brands everyday and 3) respects the Ironman brand… although I don’t have it tattooed on me… it’s intriguing to watch the stumbles made by WTC this year.

Ironman is one of the most revered human performance brands on the planet. Not only is it an extraordinary test of individual physical achievement and endurance, it’s one of the only sports where normal people can line up alongside world champions on the starting line. Because of what it takes to just complete an Ironman, competitors are passionate about the mark, as they are about the sport of triathlon. It’s a lot more than a Sunday afternoon thumb exercise to do a triathlon. And to complete an Ironman is a huge commitment for an individual, and usually for their family. So finishers, rightfully or not, feel they own a piece of the brand, which is why you see so many M-dot tattoos on competitors. Additionally, the sport of triathlon is exploding – as these stats from usatriathlon.org show.

In 2010, in addition to launching several new full Ironman and 70.3 series events, here is what WTC has done:

• They launched a magazine, Lava. OK… with the dead tree business in decline WTC is going against the grain. How many magazines has Conde Nast, Time Warner or Hearst launched in 2010. A better question would be – how many did they fold? Look, Ironman is trying, and  I suppose WTC could know the print business better than the aforementioned publishers, however isn’t it a matter of priorities and resource management? Ironman’s website truly does not do the brand justice. Especially when you compare it to any other major sports brand such as the NBA, MLB or NHL, or even the sport’s governing body usatriathlon.org or Slowtwitch, a site that does a phenomenal job of covering the sport of triathlon. Add to that underwhelming video coverage of events, weak social network integration, no iPhone or Android Apps, no iPad App. But a magazine… ok… why was that a priority again? Ego battle with Triathlete magazine perhaps? Ironman is not in the content creation, content packaging and content distribution business – it’s a brand licensing and brand marketing business. But if you’re going to play in or make a bet in the content world – better to make that bet with a medium that is growing (mobile), rather  than contracting (print).
• 5i50 or is it 5150. I’m confused. Is that still an Ironman, or what. Ironman is a platinum brand. Diluting the brand, devaluing the brand equity correspondingly devalues the enterprise. Earlier this month, WTC announced a new series of Olympic distance races called the 5i50. Sure WTC wants a piece of the action in shorter, entry level events – what’s next, Sprint distance races? The number of triathlons in the US alone has grown from 800 per year a decade ago to over 1800 today, so inevitably some Sprint-esque WTC event series will follow the 5i50 announcement. This only serves to weaken the core Ironman brand. Maybe you’ve heard of baseball… it’s played everywhere. But there is only one World Series. Find a way to work with the shorter races – provide entries to various IM events for series winners in regions. In other words, support the feeder, aspirational races to the benefit of the IM brand. But don’t steamroll them or be threatened by them and try to own the sport entirely. Nurture and protect the Ironman brand.
• It’s evidence of a systemic problem when the three-time Kona winner speaks out against World Triathlon Corporation. Such was the case earlier this year, when Chrissie Wellington, Kona’s 2007-2009 Women’s champ wrote this thoughtful and articulate post taking WTC to task for performance levels, registration fees and prize money. Ironman made Chrissie Wellington, but now Ironman needs her to be an inspiration for others to aspire to her level of success, and WTC needs her to be a proponent of the Ironman brand, not a detractor. Good for her for speaking out.
• And lastly… Wednesday evening I received an e-mail invitation to a new Ironman “Access” program. For a $1000 annual membership, I would be given opportunities to register in advance for selected IM events, 2 VIP passes per registered event, a one year subscription to Lava magazine(!), a 2011 Lottery entry and second chance, a 2010 Kona DVD, 20% off IM merch and a membership card. I don’t need to say how I felt. Triathlon is already an expensive sport. $550 to enter an event. You typically have to sign up a year in advance of an event. There is no transfer policy or rollover policy if you can’t make a race. I was supposed to race in the Ironman at Couer d’Alene in Idaho this past June, but couldn’t because of a foot injury encountered earlier in the year. I would have given… given my registration to another athlete to enjoy but couldn’t. I’ve recovered enough to do Ironman Florida this November, but that’s beside the point. WTC is owned by Providence Equity, a Private Equity firm which purchased WTC in 2008. Like any good PE, they’re probably looking for 50-100% ROI per year, as they should… that’s their business. If it feels like WTC stands for We’ll Take (Your) Cash, that’s why. Last night, I received a second e-mail, with a link to a video from Ben Fertic, WTC’s CEO. 24 hours later, Ironman canceled Access, as a result of the howling negative reaction to the program. So did WTC float Access or test a response to the program across a group of active Ironman competitors. Was the $500K the program might have drawn in worth the beating the brand and WTC took? Wouldn’t the time developing Access have better spent working on product licensing, sponsorship, applying positive attributes to the brand through Mobile Apps,or tweaking the site perhaps??? Maybe these tactics are all in progress. If not, my company would be pleased to help.

The fact is, Ironman is not Coke. People don’t tattoo a Coke logo on their legs, arms, neck or torso. They don’t define who they are through the mark on a can of soda. But they do with the M-dot, the Ironman logo. As a brand, Ironman needs to protect the incredible equity entrenched in that logo, and bounce every dumbass idea for the growth, pimping and exploitation of the brand against a series of enshrined core values. And it’s a challenge, to Watch The Core… to preserve the core brand equity and grow the business. But then, so is 140.6 miles of swimming, biking and running.

We announced a new strategic partnership today, with Jetmind Technologies. Jetmind is a New York-based software development company, with deep expertise in iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android mobile development. Our clients and prospective clients had been looking for a trusted app developer, and we’re pleased to now offer these services. Jetmind has already done work for The Home Depot on Android, and has had a top ranking game in the App Store in Color Wars. Their dev and UI talent is best demonstrated in their content, consumer products, social network, health and financial services, sports and games apps. It aligns with our own core competencies in those sectors, and enhances our dev services already available in CMS development, PHP, JS, Flash and HTML5. Take a look at a small portfolio of their apps and if you’re looking to enter the Android or iOS mobile markets with your product, or with an app tied to your company’s services, let us show you how efficient and cost-effective Jetmind’s development resources can be for your enterprise.

Looking back

I seldom look back on a week, preferring to always look ahead to the next week. Even rarer are the occasions when I would allow the occurrences to coalesce into a posting, but in the technology world, a lot has happened – one event was substantial in scale, others… smaller but portending the development and shaping of the future, and then… there is what is ahead! So here we go…

iPhone 4 – Like many others around the globe, I stood in line a week ago Thursday (June 24th). For 13 hours… which is a long time for just about anything. Fortunately, The Apple Store’s WiFi at The Falls in South Miami was working, so my iPad was in contact with the world, Victoria Secret let me charge my iPhone, and it was largely a productive and somewhat pleasurable day. While my iPad arrived on the release day, April 3rd, direct shipped from China, the last time I’d gone to a store to buy any new product on the day of release was in 1995 – August 24th, for Windows ’95. A lot can change in 15 years in the technology world. I expected that Apple would sell 2 million phones over the 4 days from Thursday through Sunday. This week, the 1.7 million number surfaced in reference to 3 days of sales. So 2 million over 4 days is probably light, irrespective of limited stock etc. The phone is great, for me – I’m not experiencing any antenna issues. I truly can’t believe how stunning the display is. Any CD covers in the iPod section look incredible. And FaceTime is amusing.

Kin – RIP – No surprise – As I wrote in April I indicated the prospects were grim for this device before launch. And since then, Robbie Bach and Jay Allard have exited Microsoft, the device was widely criticized, and it surfaced that that factional dissent existed between the flagging Windows Mobile and Kin teams – never a positive indicator for an aligned corporate strategy or a product’s potential. We may never know how many of these devices were sold – yes, the rumors were “around” 500. Nor could we calculate how many hundreds of millions this mistake cost Microsoft in cash outlay, lost opportunities, and reputation damage.

But certainly, iPhone 4′s first weekend sales killed the Kin.

Great week for Startups!

Woot! - Woot! gets acquired by amazon. After investing several million dollars into Woot in 2008, amazon fully immersed itself in the social commerce space by acquiring Woot.

Tapulous – Disney certainly had the inside knowledge of how successful Tap Tap Revenge is, through the tight relationship with Apple. Great to see this frugally funded startup joining a company with significant investments and acquisition successes in social and mobile properties.

TESLA – TESLA IPO’s – Behold the new Tesla Roadster. Stunning, quick, and green. Congratulations on being the first American automotive manufacturer to IPO in 54 years – not since Ford in 1956 has there been a new public company creating cars here. If only Silicon Valley’s speed of innovation had once been embraced by others in the automotive sector.

BuyWidget – One of our apps, BuyWidget, got mentioned in Billboard this week. As the music biz saying goes, you’re not a hit until you’re a hit in Billboard. Thanks for the mention! Thanks also to the many, many new sites who signed up for BuyWidget this week. Among them, one took me back a few years. Steve Kilbey was the unmistakable voice of The Church, whose big hit “Under The Milky Way” is still alluring, even a “few” years after it was first released. Steve has teamed up with Australian Martin Kennedy and has made some great new music. Check out their site, and this performance clip to hear what they’re creating.

Canada Day - Canada Day was July 1st. So, a belated Happy Canada Day to all my friends and family.

Looking ahead

July 3rd

I’m not much of a fan of Wimbledon, and the World Cup holds only a passing interest for me. But starting tomorrow I’ll undoubtedly be mesmerized for three weeks by the Tour de France. This year there are four strong teams in contention – Astana, Radio Shack, Saxo Bank and Cervelo – all with great riders, and the potential for great stories and drama. As I wrote a year ago, Lance Armstrong remains the story, but there are significant sidebars to be found along every mile of the ride. the race is defined in the Time Trials and mountain stages, so with the Prologue on the 3rd, mountains starting on the 8th, and final TT on the 24th, it will be an epic tour.

4th of July – Have a safe and enjoyable Independence Day!

I was buried in a project yesterday and didn’t come up for air until late at night, when I realized it was April 12th – the day MSFT was set to reveal their new mobile devices. From the few things I’ve seen so far, it looks like the reviews were written before the products were revealed, then an image was added and writers clicked Publish, or Send, or whatever. I hope this works for Microsoft and the device division isn’t shown to be a one-hit (XBox) wonder.

The thing is, they’re so late to the market at this point, that it feels like Zune all over again. When Zune was launched in 2006, Apple had a 5 year head start. That wasn’t like Apple were the pioneers who got the arrows, while Zune could be the metaphorical settlers and get the land. Apple had settled, planted and harvested the land, built the infrastructure, opened the stores and couldn’t keep enough of their product on the shelves. Zune was dead late and dead out of the gate. Consumers were on their second or third iPod at that point – and instead of marketing to where there was a slight opportunity – adults 25+, parents, people who had trusted and were familiar with MSFT and Windows and to whom Apple was still an outlier – MSFT went after the 18-24s with Zune – the early adopters who were entrenched in their gen 2 or 3 iPod, and for whom MSFT was decidedly uncool. So Apple continued to sell between 11 and 15 million iPods per quarter, while Zune took over 2 years to sell 1 million units.

Now its Q2, 2010 and Apple has had close to 3 years of selling the iPhone, with over 50 million units in the market and a situation that is eerily familiar. The wind is at Apple’s back. Enterprises have abandoned the once widely used Windows Mobile platform for the Blackberry platform, leaving Microsoft with market challenges in consumer, and professional use of mobile devices. And then there’s that little company called Google and their aspirations for Android’s mobile platform. It doesn’t leave much space for a new platform, tied to a low-ranking manufacturer. And again, MSFT is chasing the teens and early adopters with the Kin 1 and Kin 2 – the demo that only wants iPhones, iTouches and apps. Instead of Microsoft relying on their pre-existing trusted relationships in enterprise and the recollection of the versatility of Windows Mobile by corporate IT departments everywhere.

I hope they Kin make this work… but what they need to do, what they’ve needed to do all along, is to take a wheelbarrow full of cash up to Waterloo, Ontario, kiss Jim Balsalie’s ring, and return to Redmond as the owner of RIMM.

Apple’s Q3 results were announced after the market close yesterday.

For a company that traditionally softpedals its projections, this was a blowout quarter for 3 reasons. 1. We were in a recession at the start of the quarter and 2. We were in a recession at the end of the quarter and 3. The days in between weren’t exactly great either. Trailing GDP numbers may show that technically the recession ended in March, but consumer sentiment was brutal for April – June 2009 – a quarter that kicked off only 24 days after the NASDAQ scraped the bottom. All the more amazing then, that Apple should sell 5.2 million iPhones in those 3 months. 5.2 million. In 2008, in a very different economic climate, the company sold 717,000 iPhones in the same quarter. That’s an increase of 625.4% year over year. In the most challenging economy in decades. 57,000 phones per day globally, with US unemployment above 9%, and even higher rates outside the US.

What other product, if any, can claim year-over-year growth like the iPhone in the same 2008-2009 quarter. None that I can think of immediately, at least as a purchased consumer product. There hasn’t been a Crocs of 2009 yet, probably because the consumer is cautious, which means it hasn’t been a great year to launch products – except the iPhone 3GS, apparently. Twitter, I suppose. Up 1900% in visitors from June 2008 (1 million visitors) to June 2009 (20 million visitors). Meteoric in its own right, but hardly in the same category –  no commercial strings attached for the user – free, just tweeting time.

625.4% growth – what a phenomenon…

It’s hard to consign a once vibrant and innovative company to the technology graveyard, but Motorola is clearly in a death spiral. The company that brought us the StarTAC and DynaTAC cell phones, 6800 and 68000 series microprocessors that powered early Apple, Atari, and Amiga personal computers, invented Six Sigma quality standards, introduced the first high powered germanium transistor, not to mention key developments in television, satellite and space technology is marching toward its inevitable demise.Let’s look at its business units:

Home & Networks Mobility

An entrenched customer base in Cable MSOs, but slow development and long time horizons for installed cable boxes mean that there is not significant demand for product innovation by the cable operators or consumers, and during the downturn, cable is likely to work harder to hold customers, while having a harder time upselling new features such as DVRs etc. Motorola is clearly several generations behind any comparable home entertainment technology standard. Compare the sophistication of a Motorola to AppleTV, a product that, with its peerless DNA, has still struggled to find relevance. I have a Comcast set top box made by Motorola, with a DVR, deployed last August. It sits in a room on top of an 8 year old Sony Home Entertainment DVD/Surround Sound System. 20 feet away, on my stereo rack is a 3 year old Roku Soundbridge. The Motorola box works, but it can’t compete with the Sony or Roku for refinement or product maturity. Any of the display commands on the STB (Play, Pause) are truncated to PLA or PAU – again, this is a 2008 device. Meanwhile the Sony system has a clear, bright, and fully informative display, as does the Roku, where the florescent readout is one of the most elegant in the CE sector… from a company whose market cap is a rounding error in comparison to Motorola.

Enterprise Mobility Solutions

A possible bright spot – less commoditization, and a moat around the core business, but if the housing downturn affects municipality tax bases, then upgrades to police, fire and EMT services will be few and far between – meaning more mileage for the Crown Victoria fleets, and more hours on the existing Motorola scanners. RFID segments could be an opportunity. As the NFL season starts, we’ll be able to again see the ubiquitous Motorola logo on the coaches headsets on the sidelines, reinforced with the company name on the mic. A reassurance that there is, for the moment a pulse in Schaumberg.

Mobile Devices

As Apple and Research In Motion surf the tsunami of smartphone popularity, Motorola’s ship has sunk. Yes, the DynaTAC started the mobile phone revolution, yes, the StarTAC and RAZR were two of the most popular mobile devices of all time. But in Q4 of 2008, Motorola’s market share collapsed by 50%, now down to about 8.7% of the market. The halo around the iPhone and the Blackberry, the momentum of HTC, LG and Samsung will only serve to drive their share even lower in upcoming quarters. Even the Android OS is unlikely to help – cell phones, some 25 years into their lifespan are valued in the consumer market for the form of the device, function follows form. Further, most of the thought leadership that brought the RAZR to market has moved on, and with their market share decimated, Motorola will struggle to find the resources to innovate in R&D. And while Motorola has profited through divestiture of its divisions in the past, they will likely have to pay to unload the mobile unit.

Lastly, much has been made of Sanjay Jha’s compensation package as co-CEO – roughly $104 million, with 103.5 of that tied to equity, bonuses. I applaud the weighting of the compensation toward the success of the company, but imagine that having a co-CEO who is on a package at 25% of Jha’s will inevitably be a cause for turmoil.

With 32 teams in the NFL, you have to ask, just how many headsets would you need to sell to cover 125 million in CEO compensation?