The mission of Michael Tchong and Ubercool is to help consumers and marketers catch the next wave before it catches them.
Ubercool is a next-generation marketing services company that publishes and produces trendsetting media and entertainment properties, designed to help its target-audience constituencies leverage key market trends.
Ubercool is another idea from the fertile brain of Michael Tchong (bio below), founder of five media and technology start-ups, including MacWEEK, CyberAtlas and ICONOCAST. To familiarize yourself with Ubercool and its services, here’s a brief overview of this site:
- Ubercool blog – Our home-page blog is analyzed and written by Michael Tchong. It provides you with superior insight on all that’s, well, ubercool. Criteria for inclusion: trend-propelled phenomena that illustrate leading consumer trends. This blog also supports Michael’s speaking engagements.
- Speaking services – Michael has enlightened audiences throughout the world with his humorous, but always pointed, analysis of the hundreds of trends he tracks in more than 14 categories, ranging from automotive to lifestyle to food to marketing to technology to travel to wellness and much more.
- Mailing list – Our updates will be reactivated soon, so stay tuned.
- Events – Ubercool‘s events are by-invitation only “trend parties,” scheduled take place in San Francisco in September, then traveling to New York and Miami in late 2007, with Los Angeles, London, Shanghai and Las Vegas scheduled for next year.
Michael Tchong Bio
Michael’s insight was refined during an illustrious career that spanned such ad agency icons as Chiat/Day and Doyle Dane & Bernbach, and further enhanced by a remarkable career in software marketing, publishing and the Internet, where he helped pioneer such emerging categories as desktop publishing, personal communications and online marketing.
Michael was born on the Caribbean island of Aruba, is half-Chinese and speaks Dutch natively ― factors that have contributed to his global vision.
Prior to Ubercool, Michael founded five successful companies including:
- Trendscape, 2003-2004 ― In January 2003, Michael launched Trendscape, which published a weekly newsletter, Trendsetters.com, aimed at trend- watchers and trendsetters. In November of that year, Trendscape published its first trend report, Trendscape 2004, which documented the most important trends shaping this decade. In October 2004, Michael sold Trendsetters.com to Iconoculture, a Minneapolis-based trend consulting firm.
- ICONOCAST, 1997-2002 ― Michael’s previous start-up, ICONOCAST, a weekly online newsletter aimed at the emerging wave of Internet marketing, was sold in 1998 to Imagine Media, now part of The Future Network.
- CyberAtlas, 1994-1996 ― Realizing the potential of the Web in 1994, Michael founded Interstellar, a consulting and media company, which published CyberAtlas, the preeminent online market research site. After just four months online, CyberAtlas was acquired by I/PRO (Internet Profiles Corp.), which later on sold the brand to Mecklermedia (JupiterMedia).
- Atelier Systems, 1992-1993 ― In 1992, Michael founded Atelier Systems Inc., which targeted the nascent category of “personal communication systems.” After raising US$1.2 million in venture capital, Atelier developed Hello, an innovative personal communication manager for the Macintosh, which featured an easy-to-use graphics user interface (GUI) plus an extensible toolbar, both still trendsetting features to this day.
- MacWEEK, 1987-1991 ― His intuitive sense that the Macintosh would become the tool of choice for the graphic arts industry lifted this weekly’s annual revenues from less than US$500,000 to US$18 million in just four years. Ziff-Davis acquired the 85,000-circulation MacWEEK in 1988, a little over a year after its launch. In 1990, Advertising Age named MacWEEK one of the 10 fastest-growing publications in America. As founder and publisher, Michael gained operational experience managing a 68-person staff.
At Future Trends 2003 in Miami’s South Beach, Michael sold the first copies of Trendscape 2004, a 104-page trend report packed with more than 140 photographs that graphically portrayed the world’s most significant trends.
In 1997, Michael founded ICONOCAST, a popular 50,000-circulation weekly newsletter, which quickly became the preferred read of Internet marketers worldwide, recognized by a May 1998 Tenagra Internet Marketing Excellence award.
ICONOCAST hosted the world’s largest online marketing conference by revenue, Web Attack!, featuring Dennis Rodman, RuPaul and Cindy Margolis, the “most downloaded woman on the Internet.”
CyberAtlas, the Internet’s first broadly recognized research brand, was sold to Mecklermedia in August 1998.
Atelier Systems’ Hello used a slick interface to simplify maintaining contacts and correspondence, while offering an optional ability to seamlessly fax and e-mail address-book entries via a modular architecture. Apple’s Newton, Palm’s Pilot PDA and Microsoft Outlook all use concepts pioneered in Hello.
Michael solidified MacWEEK’s market position by inviting leading artists, such as Peter Max and Keith Haring, to create their first-ever artworks on the Macintosh. Applying early peer pressure helped the Mac become the overwhelming choice of designers it is today.
Whether personal computing, home computing, desktop publishing, personal communication, Internet publishing or online marketing, Michael has always been at the leading edge. Now you too can enjoy a unique opportunity to ride Michael’s coattails as he helps you and your audiences uncover the hidden opportunities in emerging trends.