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JUNE 12, 2006
Volkswagen May Need More Than A Marketing Boost Crispin Porter + Bogusky have their work cut out for them ("The craziest ad guys in America" Cover Story, May 22). I own a 2002 Jetta 1.8T, which required major functional repairs after seven months and 38 months of ownership. The first repair was covered under warranty; the second was not. As a current Volkswagen owner it's my opinion that VW's top priority should be improving the reliability of their vehicles. Treating customers with respect and honoring vehicle warranties should be a close second. It's not clear to me how any advertising agency can resolve these problems. Gregory L. Opp Hudson, Mass. Good-bye TV Spots, Hello Buy-It-Now Product Placement? It's interesting that you chose American Idol as the subject of "The sound of many hands zapping" (News: Analysis & Commentary, May 22). Although time-shifting is sometimes important, the growing number of commercial interruptions and the growing amount of time consumed by them are certainly major factors in my decision to record and watch later. In the case of American Idol, this is compounded by repeats of what happened on the previous show and some fairly useless dialogue. Why watch for an hour if you only want to hear the contestants sing, or watch a half-hour voting-results show when the vote is revealed in less than a minute of real time? Allan B. Chandler Montreal On more than one occasion while watching a program, my wife would see some guy with my body type and say: "That shirt would look good on you." However, it is virtually impossible to turn that into a purchase -- how does one translate that into a particular manufacturer and retailer? A much better system would be one where my wife could hit the DVR's real-time pause button, use the cursor to click on the shirt, and access a Web site selling the product. Then she could resume the program, and the DVR would pick up where it left off. This sort of unobtrusive product placement would sell many more products in my household than the traditional three minutes of ads that no one watches. The idea is that everything the viewer sees would be "clickable." It isn't product manufacturers that have the most to lose when viewers zap commercials -- it's the institutional advertising system. As long as manufacturers give viewers what they want, they'll do just fine. The real advertising power lies in the television characters that come into our living rooms every week. Scott Nelson Patterson, Calif.   The High Price Of "Free Trade" In South America Re "Why free-trade talks are in free fall" (Global Business, May 22): South American countries lack the technological resources that would enable them to find alternatives when so-called free trade destroys their small industries. Many of them were perfectly competitive but could not sustain Chinese-subsidized exchange rates. In Argentina, thousands of people lost their jobs. The result was the present center-left government that maintains an artificially high exchange rate against the dollar, thanks to which local industry has returned to a semblance of its former self, and unemployment has fallen again to near 10%. The same has happened in Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and soon, Peru. Disappointed with the so-called liberal economy, they have moved to the left, some more than others. In any case, I don't understand this constant harping on the benefits of so-called free trade. What about the $1 billion daily subsidy the developed nations pay to maintain their agricultural economies? Is that free trade? Claude Dechamps Buenos Aires Switching To Biomass Fuel Would Create Its Own Problems In "Fill 'er up -- but with what?" (Environment, May, 22), David Welch and Adam Aston provided the most realistic assessment of the alternatives to a petroleum-based economy I have seen. What was missing, however, was even a mention of alternatives to a "high energy-consumption lifestyle" that the U.S. has become accustomed to (and that may have become the example developing countries are trying to emulate). The accompanying commentary by James E. Ellis, "No sacrifices, please," poignantly pointed out that there is no silver bullet. But it failed to mention that we have ignored opportunities to reduce consumption. By implication, you suggest that we should continue our resource-wasteful lifestyles and find alternative energy sources to make that possible. I think we need to rethink the whole subject. There are many other resources that are becoming scarce as well. One day we will find that the price of all of this may become unbearable. Fritz Saenger Jr. Columbus, Ohio There's More To Exec Coaching Than The Welches Think Re "How healthy is your company?" (The Welch Way, May 8): As a professional coach for seven years, the past two on the faculty of a coach-training organization, I am moved to respond to Jack and Suzy Welch's statement that executive coaching "is a field where there is no specific training and certainly no form of accreditation." Of the professional organizations for coaching that exist, the oldest, largest, and most respected is the International Coach Federation (coachfederation.org). The ICF has set a standard of core competencies for professional coaches (including executive and leadership coaches), available on the Web site, which help distinguish professional coaching from "teaching with enthusiasm." The gold standard for "coach-specific training" is the ICF's Accredited Coach Training Program. The site currently lists 37 of these ACTPs. D.P. Waldman Encinitas, Calif.
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