About a third of the top grossing apps in the Apple App Store are now making their money through the sale of virtual goods within the application after being free to download, according to research done by tech blog GigaOm.
The free-to-play model has so far served as a good way to entice users with free apps and then make money off the sale of virtual goods. Apple finally caved to developers and created a system to allow iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users to make purchases from within apps last fall. The design allows developers to create a free app and then get the user to purchase a very cheap virtual good, such as a better weapon in a game. It then becomes much easier to convert a non-paying user into a paying one.
Freemium applications are making a good bit of money. In January, mobile analytics firm Flurry said that the freemium games it tracked generated revenues of $9 per user per year, on average. In June, that number had risen to $14.66 per user per year. Previously, these games were generating around 99 cents to $1.99 per user per year. 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features, according to GigaOm’s report.
Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all purchases made within applications. That’s the same amount that Facebook, another large host of social games (including Zynga’s Farmville), charges its game partners.
Apple’s App Store now has around 300,000 apps for sale and for free download. And the App Store is growing by around 1,000 apps every day. The Android marketplace, which has applications for phones running on Google’s Android operating system, only has around 113,000 applications according to some metrics.
Score another one for social games developer Zynga, which first brought the freemium model to the forefront as a significant source of revenue for games and other applications. Its games have become insanely popular, and the company is now worth as much as Electronic Arts — one of the largest publishers in the world — by some metrics from its virtual good sales alone.
Next Story: Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing Previous Story: Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console’s are doing just fine
It’s that magical time of the year when brand preferences are being lodged in the consumer psyche by any means necessary, be it free online shipping offers or conventional “doorbuster” style shopper stampedes. (Plus, in an admirable show of advance conditioning, there are those sidebar Four Loko-fueled parking lot brawls.)
But the romance of the brand is a notoriously ephemeral thing, as any casual survey of thrift-store Tickle-Me Elmo and Tamagotchi displays will promptly demonstrate. To do the job right, in this as in so many other realms, we would do well to heed the example of the Germans. As Bloomberg’s Chris Reiter reports, Deutschland’s Big Three automakers—BMW, Mercedes, and Audi (now a Volkswagen property)—have long been locked into a battle for the overtaxed attention spans of the youth market.
Back in February, Audi made a dramatic bid for high-end kiddie allegiance with a $13,300 model of a 1930s roadster, evidently calculating that a Weimar-era collectible is the perfect bridge to the true sturm-und-drang of a privileged adolescence. The model comes replete with “an aluminum frame, hydraulic brakes, seven speeds, leather-clad steering wheel, and oak dashboard,” and nearly sold out of its initial 500-unit manufacturing run, Reiter notes.
The idea behind such lush toy marketing, of course, is to instill intense brand-loyalty among the market’s littlest thought leaders. "Merchandising is important not because you can make huge money with it,” Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer tells Reiter, “but because it's another means of positioning your brand.” That means that Audi isn’t confining its initiatives to pint-sized drive trains, but is branching out to other durable badges of status, such as a $17,000-plus table soccer game—the idea here, evidently, being not so much to cultivate hooligan-style soccer fandom in the plutocratic young, but rather to inculcate the more genteel and respectable habit of full-scale team ownership.
It’s true that Audi isn’t neglecting more downmarket kiddie consumers in its push, with a $60 branded teddy bear and a $400 red-plastic version of the roadster; here, the functional array of model accessories include “an adjustable rollover bar, hand brake, over-sized tires with Audi-style rims, and padded seats.” But the main event is clearly the scrum for top-line market cachet, which is why Audi’s rivals are stepping up their game. Mercedes, for instance, is planning a spring rollout for “the foot-powered SLS Bobby-Benz, featuring headlights, grill, and rear end similar to those of the company's $183,000 SLS sportscar. The toy SLS features quiet-running tires, an Ackermann steering system with tight cornering for living-room maneuverability, and a steering wheel that absorbs impact to prevent injury in the event of a collision.” The model will boast a comparatively modest $120 asking price—but that loss-leader price point is a small sacrifice when you’re grooming future six-figure auto customers. "All the products have to live up to Mercedes' standards for quality and safety—especially our toys, which are all-time favorites with the next generation of Mercedes-Benz customers," reports Christian Boucke, who heads up the Benz accessories division.
BMW, meanwhile, appears to be the most horizontally minded lifestyle competitor in the luxe-branded market, brandishing a wide panoply of gear from a $460 kid-scale version of its M3 GT2 race car to a pair of $50 rain boots. The Beamer accessories division also turns a healthy 7 percentish profit—even though its brand-keepers, too, stress their real stake is in the longer-term loyalty game. “We are first and foremost a marketing initiative, and the main objectives are to broaden the brand's presence and strengthen loyalty," says Thomas Goerdt, who directs BMW’s distinctly un-German-sounding merchandising and lifestyle unit.
Still, the great risk of too-rampant accessory branding is market saturation—which is why Michel Gabriel, a branding specialist who has advised past Audi projectS, draws the line at underwear, even though “a lot of money can be made from a product” aimed at the intimate end of the brand market.
We can’t help thinking, though, that the Grosse Drei auto barons are selling short tomorrow’s financial titans with mere miniature knockoffs of luxury rides—and not just because their British competitor, Aston Martin, still owns the highest tip of the market with a Volante Junior model fetching a cool $24,000 with a devoted consumer base of young royals—who have duly gone on to modify their fullscale Astons to run on wine.
After all, the lesson of branding the world over is that a truly consummate brand eventually eclipses its mere material referent—hence the power of the glyphlike Nike swoosh (which only cost the firm $35 when design student Carolyn Davidson submitted in in 1971), or the “i”-themed Mac brand interface. Likewise, the business model for Mercedes has involved coaxing lavish multimillion-dollar subsidies from U.S. lawmakers at the same time it’s presented itself as an above-the-fray survivor of the 2008 global auto downturn.
Likewise, BMW has briskly seen to it that influential state congressional delegations have placed its own export interests ahead of the bailed-out U.S. auto industry—while Audi’s corporate parent Volkswagen has at least been candid in soliciting U.S. bailout funds, while also putting in for homeland funds to shore up its rickety loan operation. (Needless to say, this corporate pursuit of public-sector handouts doesn’t seem to have softened VW’s stand on American union drives, since like other foreign automakers, it’s expanded operations in anti-union right-to-work states to evade higher labor costs at home.) All of which is to say that, if doting plutocratic parents are looking to instill formative brand preferences this holiday season, nothing says “heed daddy’s example” like a simple, influence-subsidized government check. And Lord knows that for the properly connected family or industry, a good government kickback is about as hard to obtain as a pair BMW rain boots.
You, valued and valuable reader, are invited to join Chris Lehmann and your other fellow rich people to celebrate the publication of Rich People Things, this Thursday, December 2nd, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, from 7 to 9 p.m. There will even be a brief chit-chat with Thomas Frank and Maureen "Moe" Tkacik.
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b> Noticias </ b> - Justin Bieber Cancela televisión alemana concierto tras Stunt sale mal <b> ...</ b> La cantante adolescente restos de su actuación después de que un hombre está gravemente herido en la popular serie de Wetten Dass .
NUEVO ABC News <b> </ b> NOMBRADO PRESIDENTE | Estudio BriefingABC ha llamado Ben Sherwood, un ex productor ejecutivo de Good Morning America, en sustitución de David Westin como presidente de ABC News. Sherwood, quien es el verdadero.
NMA <b> Noticias </ b> | Los Simpson | Los Simpson Fox <b> Noticias </ b> | NMA MediaiteTaiwan News ha dado a la batalla entre Los Simpson en la Fox Broadcasting y sus primos corporativos conservadora de Fox News , que representa tanto de los ataques recientes Simpson en la red, así como Bill O'Reilly ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
About a third of the top grossing apps in the Apple App Store are now making their money through the sale of virtual goods within the application after being free to download, according to research done by tech blog GigaOm.
The free-to-play model has so far served as a good way to entice users with free apps and then make money off the sale of virtual goods. Apple finally caved to developers and created a system to allow iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users to make purchases from within apps last fall. The design allows developers to create a free app and then get the user to purchase a very cheap virtual good, such as a better weapon in a game. It then becomes much easier to convert a non-paying user into a paying one.
Freemium applications are making a good bit of money. In January, mobile analytics firm Flurry said that the freemium games it tracked generated revenues of $9 per user per year, on average. In June, that number had risen to $14.66 per user per year. Previously, these games were generating around 99 cents to $1.99 per user per year. 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features, according to GigaOm’s report.
Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all purchases made within applications. That’s the same amount that Facebook, another large host of social games (including Zynga’s Farmville), charges its game partners.
Apple’s App Store now has around 300,000 apps for sale and for free download. And the App Store is growing by around 1,000 apps every day. The Android marketplace, which has applications for phones running on Google’s Android operating system, only has around 113,000 applications according to some metrics.
Score another one for social games developer Zynga, which first brought the freemium model to the forefront as a significant source of revenue for games and other applications. Its games have become insanely popular, and the company is now worth as much as Electronic Arts — one of the largest publishers in the world — by some metrics from its virtual good sales alone.
Next Story: Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing Previous Story: Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console’s are doing just fine
It’s that magical time of the year when brand preferences are being lodged in the consumer psyche by any means necessary, be it free online shipping offers or conventional “doorbuster” style shopper stampedes. (Plus, in an admirable show of advance conditioning, there are those sidebar Four Loko-fueled parking lot brawls.)
But the romance of the brand is a notoriously ephemeral thing, as any casual survey of thrift-store Tickle-Me Elmo and Tamagotchi displays will promptly demonstrate. To do the job right, in this as in so many other realms, we would do well to heed the example of the Germans. As Bloomberg’s Chris Reiter reports, Deutschland’s Big Three automakers—BMW, Mercedes, and Audi (now a Volkswagen property)—have long been locked into a battle for the overtaxed attention spans of the youth market.
Back in February, Audi made a dramatic bid for high-end kiddie allegiance with a $13,300 model of a 1930s roadster, evidently calculating that a Weimar-era collectible is the perfect bridge to the true sturm-und-drang of a privileged adolescence. The model comes replete with “an aluminum frame, hydraulic brakes, seven speeds, leather-clad steering wheel, and oak dashboard,” and nearly sold out of its initial 500-unit manufacturing run, Reiter notes.
The idea behind such lush toy marketing, of course, is to instill intense brand-loyalty among the market’s littlest thought leaders. "Merchandising is important not because you can make huge money with it,” Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer tells Reiter, “but because it's another means of positioning your brand.” That means that Audi isn’t confining its initiatives to pint-sized drive trains, but is branching out to other durable badges of status, such as a $17,000-plus table soccer game—the idea here, evidently, being not so much to cultivate hooligan-style soccer fandom in the plutocratic young, but rather to inculcate the more genteel and respectable habit of full-scale team ownership.
It’s true that Audi isn’t neglecting more downmarket kiddie consumers in its push, with a $60 branded teddy bear and a $400 red-plastic version of the roadster; here, the functional array of model accessories include “an adjustable rollover bar, hand brake, over-sized tires with Audi-style rims, and padded seats.” But the main event is clearly the scrum for top-line market cachet, which is why Audi’s rivals are stepping up their game. Mercedes, for instance, is planning a spring rollout for “the foot-powered SLS Bobby-Benz, featuring headlights, grill, and rear end similar to those of the company's $183,000 SLS sportscar. The toy SLS features quiet-running tires, an Ackermann steering system with tight cornering for living-room maneuverability, and a steering wheel that absorbs impact to prevent injury in the event of a collision.” The model will boast a comparatively modest $120 asking price—but that loss-leader price point is a small sacrifice when you’re grooming future six-figure auto customers. "All the products have to live up to Mercedes' standards for quality and safety—especially our toys, which are all-time favorites with the next generation of Mercedes-Benz customers," reports Christian Boucke, who heads up the Benz accessories division.
BMW, meanwhile, appears to be the most horizontally minded lifestyle competitor in the luxe-branded market, brandishing a wide panoply of gear from a $460 kid-scale version of its M3 GT2 race car to a pair of $50 rain boots. The Beamer accessories division also turns a healthy 7 percentish profit—even though its brand-keepers, too, stress their real stake is in the longer-term loyalty game. “We are first and foremost a marketing initiative, and the main objectives are to broaden the brand's presence and strengthen loyalty," says Thomas Goerdt, who directs BMW’s distinctly un-German-sounding merchandising and lifestyle unit.
Still, the great risk of too-rampant accessory branding is market saturation—which is why Michel Gabriel, a branding specialist who has advised past Audi projectS, draws the line at underwear, even though “a lot of money can be made from a product” aimed at the intimate end of the brand market.
We can’t help thinking, though, that the Grosse Drei auto barons are selling short tomorrow’s financial titans with mere miniature knockoffs of luxury rides—and not just because their British competitor, Aston Martin, still owns the highest tip of the market with a Volante Junior model fetching a cool $24,000 with a devoted consumer base of young royals—who have duly gone on to modify their fullscale Astons to run on wine.
After all, the lesson of branding the world over is that a truly consummate brand eventually eclipses its mere material referent—hence the power of the glyphlike Nike swoosh (which only cost the firm $35 when design student Carolyn Davidson submitted in in 1971), or the “i”-themed Mac brand interface. Likewise, the business model for Mercedes has involved coaxing lavish multimillion-dollar subsidies from U.S. lawmakers at the same time it’s presented itself as an above-the-fray survivor of the 2008 global auto downturn.
Likewise, BMW has briskly seen to it that influential state congressional delegations have placed its own export interests ahead of the bailed-out U.S. auto industry—while Audi’s corporate parent Volkswagen has at least been candid in soliciting U.S. bailout funds, while also putting in for homeland funds to shore up its rickety loan operation. (Needless to say, this corporate pursuit of public-sector handouts doesn’t seem to have softened VW’s stand on American union drives, since like other foreign automakers, it’s expanded operations in anti-union right-to-work states to evade higher labor costs at home.) All of which is to say that, if doting plutocratic parents are looking to instill formative brand preferences this holiday season, nothing says “heed daddy’s example” like a simple, influence-subsidized government check. And Lord knows that for the properly connected family or industry, a good government kickback is about as hard to obtain as a pair BMW rain boots.
You, valued and valuable reader, are invited to join Chris Lehmann and your other fellow rich people to celebrate the publication of Rich People Things, this Thursday, December 2nd, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, from 7 to 9 p.m. There will even be a brief chit-chat with Thomas Frank and Maureen "Moe" Tkacik.
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
<b>News</b> - Justin Bieber Cancels German TV Gig After Stunt Goes Awry <b>...</b>
The teen singer scraps his performance after a man is severely injured on the popular series Wetten Dass.
NEW ABC <b>NEWS</b> PRESIDENT NAMED | Studio Briefing
ABC has named Ben Sherwood, a former executive producer of Good Morning America, to replace David Westin as president of ABC News. Sherwood, who is the very.
NMA <b>News</b> | Simpsons | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Taiwan's NMA News has taken on the battle between The Simpsons over at Fox Broadcasting and their conservative corporate cousins at Fox News, depicting both of The Simpsons recent attacks on the network as well as Bill O'Reilly's ...
bench craft company rip off
About a third of the top grossing apps in the Apple App Store are now making their money through the sale of virtual goods within the application after being free to download, according to research done by tech blog GigaOm.
The free-to-play model has so far served as a good way to entice users with free apps and then make money off the sale of virtual goods. Apple finally caved to developers and created a system to allow iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users to make purchases from within apps last fall. The design allows developers to create a free app and then get the user to purchase a very cheap virtual good, such as a better weapon in a game. It then becomes much easier to convert a non-paying user into a paying one.
Freemium applications are making a good bit of money. In January, mobile analytics firm Flurry said that the freemium games it tracked generated revenues of $9 per user per year, on average. In June, that number had risen to $14.66 per user per year. Previously, these games were generating around 99 cents to $1.99 per user per year. 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features, according to GigaOm’s report.
Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all purchases made within applications. That’s the same amount that Facebook, another large host of social games (including Zynga’s Farmville), charges its game partners.
Apple’s App Store now has around 300,000 apps for sale and for free download. And the App Store is growing by around 1,000 apps every day. The Android marketplace, which has applications for phones running on Google’s Android operating system, only has around 113,000 applications according to some metrics.
Score another one for social games developer Zynga, which first brought the freemium model to the forefront as a significant source of revenue for games and other applications. Its games have become insanely popular, and the company is now worth as much as Electronic Arts — one of the largest publishers in the world — by some metrics from its virtual good sales alone.
Next Story: Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing Previous Story: Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console’s are doing just fine
It’s that magical time of the year when brand preferences are being lodged in the consumer psyche by any means necessary, be it free online shipping offers or conventional “doorbuster” style shopper stampedes. (Plus, in an admirable show of advance conditioning, there are those sidebar Four Loko-fueled parking lot brawls.)
But the romance of the brand is a notoriously ephemeral thing, as any casual survey of thrift-store Tickle-Me Elmo and Tamagotchi displays will promptly demonstrate. To do the job right, in this as in so many other realms, we would do well to heed the example of the Germans. As Bloomberg’s Chris Reiter reports, Deutschland’s Big Three automakers—BMW, Mercedes, and Audi (now a Volkswagen property)—have long been locked into a battle for the overtaxed attention spans of the youth market.
Back in February, Audi made a dramatic bid for high-end kiddie allegiance with a $13,300 model of a 1930s roadster, evidently calculating that a Weimar-era collectible is the perfect bridge to the true sturm-und-drang of a privileged adolescence. The model comes replete with “an aluminum frame, hydraulic brakes, seven speeds, leather-clad steering wheel, and oak dashboard,” and nearly sold out of its initial 500-unit manufacturing run, Reiter notes.
The idea behind such lush toy marketing, of course, is to instill intense brand-loyalty among the market’s littlest thought leaders. "Merchandising is important not because you can make huge money with it,” Audi sales chief Peter Schwarzenbauer tells Reiter, “but because it's another means of positioning your brand.” That means that Audi isn’t confining its initiatives to pint-sized drive trains, but is branching out to other durable badges of status, such as a $17,000-plus table soccer game—the idea here, evidently, being not so much to cultivate hooligan-style soccer fandom in the plutocratic young, but rather to inculcate the more genteel and respectable habit of full-scale team ownership.
It’s true that Audi isn’t neglecting more downmarket kiddie consumers in its push, with a $60 branded teddy bear and a $400 red-plastic version of the roadster; here, the functional array of model accessories include “an adjustable rollover bar, hand brake, over-sized tires with Audi-style rims, and padded seats.” But the main event is clearly the scrum for top-line market cachet, which is why Audi’s rivals are stepping up their game. Mercedes, for instance, is planning a spring rollout for “the foot-powered SLS Bobby-Benz, featuring headlights, grill, and rear end similar to those of the company's $183,000 SLS sportscar. The toy SLS features quiet-running tires, an Ackermann steering system with tight cornering for living-room maneuverability, and a steering wheel that absorbs impact to prevent injury in the event of a collision.” The model will boast a comparatively modest $120 asking price—but that loss-leader price point is a small sacrifice when you’re grooming future six-figure auto customers. "All the products have to live up to Mercedes' standards for quality and safety—especially our toys, which are all-time favorites with the next generation of Mercedes-Benz customers," reports Christian Boucke, who heads up the Benz accessories division.
BMW, meanwhile, appears to be the most horizontally minded lifestyle competitor in the luxe-branded market, brandishing a wide panoply of gear from a $460 kid-scale version of its M3 GT2 race car to a pair of $50 rain boots. The Beamer accessories division also turns a healthy 7 percentish profit—even though its brand-keepers, too, stress their real stake is in the longer-term loyalty game. “We are first and foremost a marketing initiative, and the main objectives are to broaden the brand's presence and strengthen loyalty," says Thomas Goerdt, who directs BMW’s distinctly un-German-sounding merchandising and lifestyle unit.
Still, the great risk of too-rampant accessory branding is market saturation—which is why Michel Gabriel, a branding specialist who has advised past Audi projectS, draws the line at underwear, even though “a lot of money can be made from a product” aimed at the intimate end of the brand market.
We can’t help thinking, though, that the Grosse Drei auto barons are selling short tomorrow’s financial titans with mere miniature knockoffs of luxury rides—and not just because their British competitor, Aston Martin, still owns the highest tip of the market with a Volante Junior model fetching a cool $24,000 with a devoted consumer base of young royals—who have duly gone on to modify their fullscale Astons to run on wine.
After all, the lesson of branding the world over is that a truly consummate brand eventually eclipses its mere material referent—hence the power of the glyphlike Nike swoosh (which only cost the firm $35 when design student Carolyn Davidson submitted in in 1971), or the “i”-themed Mac brand interface. Likewise, the business model for Mercedes has involved coaxing lavish multimillion-dollar subsidies from U.S. lawmakers at the same time it’s presented itself as an above-the-fray survivor of the 2008 global auto downturn.
Likewise, BMW has briskly seen to it that influential state congressional delegations have placed its own export interests ahead of the bailed-out U.S. auto industry—while Audi’s corporate parent Volkswagen has at least been candid in soliciting U.S. bailout funds, while also putting in for homeland funds to shore up its rickety loan operation. (Needless to say, this corporate pursuit of public-sector handouts doesn’t seem to have softened VW’s stand on American union drives, since like other foreign automakers, it’s expanded operations in anti-union right-to-work states to evade higher labor costs at home.) All of which is to say that, if doting plutocratic parents are looking to instill formative brand preferences this holiday season, nothing says “heed daddy’s example” like a simple, influence-subsidized government check. And Lord knows that for the properly connected family or industry, a good government kickback is about as hard to obtain as a pair BMW rain boots.
You, valued and valuable reader, are invited to join Chris Lehmann and your other fellow rich people to celebrate the publication of Rich People Things, this Thursday, December 2nd, at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, from 7 to 9 p.m. There will even be a brief chit-chat with Thomas Frank and Maureen "Moe" Tkacik.
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