Wow, In 10 More years Or So The Industry Might Figure Out What They Have
Saw this wonderful item in the Chicago Sun-Times today. Really makes me wonder what the US GPS industry is thinking. But actually, it points up to me that it is not slow uptake of GPS technology as much as it is a nation with a near ignorance of maps … how to use them … what can be done with them … and most importantly for the bottom line, how you can make money off them.
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter
When you’re a stranger in a strange land, it can be hard to find the franchises you depend on, from pharmacies, department stores and hotels, to java shops, gas stations and bank ATMs.
In a battle of the maps, Cobra Electronics, the Chicago maker of GPS navigators, and Navteq, the Chicago digital mapmaker, are offering, or soon will, solutions — maps with product logos on them.
Last fall, Cobra, working with its mapping partner Tele Atlas of Lebanon, N.H., introduced My Favorite Brands feature on Cobra’s NavOne GPS system. The application enables users to pick their favorite brands of gas station, fast-food chain, coffee shop and the like, overlaying them on the screen.
Dave Marsh, director of mobile navigation at Cobra, which is incorporating the brands feature in all new models, said using the logos makes it easier for consumers to find the locations of the brands to which they are loyal …
More than 10 years ago I went to Japan to work for a few years. GPS car navigation was just catching on there then … it hadn’t even got on the radar of companies here in the US at that time. And since I drove an older, used car or a US government vehicle when I drove I never had a car navigator there. But I did have maps. Lovely maps, normally in much finer detail than one finds in the US. And what was always on the maps? Logos representing the locations of every gas station, fast food restaurant and department store. Pretty important navigation landmarks … especially in a country which doesn’t believe in street numbers in addresses.
Even more important, fast food restaurants were needed because McDonald is your friend, it’s the only place you can be sure to find a decent restroom with heated seats, toilet paper and free coffee refills in a land of $4 cups of coffee.
Department stores are very important too, because they are one of the few places you might be able to park.
But from a business standpoint these logos are important because A., they drive business and B., they are an important source of revenue to the map makers. Hmmm, income for putting something on a map … now that’s an idea.
For some time I sold a line of commercial GPS tracking units that used Microsoft’s MapPoint to provide the maps where the vehicle data was plotted. If you use MapPoint or its junior brother, Streets and Trips you know that they have many businesses shown, often by their logo on the map. Apparently, Microsoft just put them on there as an afterthought and considers them a necessary evil .. part of the overhead of the mapping business.
I was trying to close a deal with a nation-wide service firm which had more than 25,000 dealer locations around the US. My prospective decision person in the company said, “I’ll buy the system if you get me a map with all our locations shown automatically so I don’t have to put all of them on by hand.”
Piece of cake, thought I … I’m sure Microsoft will want some money to put them on the next edition of the map but the client’s marketing folks were more than willing to pay some reasonable fee for the exposure. Kill two birds with one stone I thought.
Well, as you might have guessed, I don’t know Microsoft and I don’t know people’s reluctance to even think about maps. nearly two months later the whole deal was called off, because no one in Microsoft could even come up with a procedure, let alone a price to put my prospect’s locations on the map. Microsoft MapPoint 2006 has now long shipped without my client’s logos, Microsoft didn’t make a sale, I didn’t make a sale and more importantly, the thousands and thousands of folks who got to my prospect’s outlets every day have one less way to find them.
I’m happy to see some of the industry waking up to this problem, but really and truly it’s a sad commentary on technology, America and maps.