Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Pay By Touch PKV Racing Screensaver and Bah-bye


What a nice looking car. Click the picture for a high resolution larger picture. (1600 x 1067)

It's Touch and Go

By the way, I'm hearing from my grapevine that John Costello, who, in my humble opinion has been a bust at Pay By Touch, (maybe he couldn't quite put a finger on how to market biometrics) is taking a CEO and director position at a hearing aid company. "Zounds" good to me!

How can someone with the contacts he supposedly has not bring in business? I don't remember blogging anything about Sears or Home Depot piloting Pay By Touch, both companies where he had (at one time) a lot of pull. With all due respect to Mr. Costello, I'm extremely miffed in his lack of performance. I can't believe I'm alone, because if I am, then I'm even more miffed that he took the position for only a few months until a CEO position presented itself. Who the heck is Zounds anyway. Zounds like Pay By Touch helped him save face and asked him quietly to resign. My common sense dictates that someone of his background and reputation, would NOT have planned on this.

If that's not the case, then I would think that if a CEO position is the only thing that satisfies his ego, then he should have considered having waited for one to present itself instead of using and stringing along PBT until he "heard" about one. Either way, this is NOT Hall of Fame Marketing behavior.

Hears to ya at your new job. Wish he could've lived up to expectations (and reputation) at Pay By Touch, but either nobody heard what he had to say, they weren't listening, or he believes in the "softer side" of getting the job done. Regardless, a hearing aid company sounds like a good fit for a "senior" executive. What a disappointment! Hall of Fame? Heck, he didn't even hit the Mendoza line with Pay By Touch, and not a single home run to boot.

Frankly, I had my doubts about Mr. Costello, when he had sports legends/icons Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and John Elway behind him (along with millions of their dollars) during the dotcom heyday and he could NOT make MVP.com work. How does that happen?

Now, that the naked emperor who has no close has been exposed, let's bring in someone who knows how to market this company...internationally. This company should be tearing it up. They have an unmatched patent portfolio virtually no competition and a free product for consumers that saves retailers tons of cash. Oh, and it's more secure than existing payment mechanisms. Doesn't sound like a hard sell to me. Marketing has always been overrated when compared to sales. Branding is for cattle. Sales make the world go round.