Budweiser and Dr Pepper Both Need to Lighten Up

I've spent a lot of years in the beverage business, so I pay more attention to what all the major players are doing with their marketing and advertising than the average Joe.  I'm more likely to notice when any of them do something particularly clever or when any of them do something that seems boneheaded.

In general, I am a huge fan of how Budweiser handles its marketing and advertising investment, but their new "Drinkability" strategy for Bud Light strikes me as completely ridiculous.  Who are they talking to?  

1. Are they trying to persuade competitive beer drinkers to switch to Bud Light because it is somehow easier to drink?  Do they think that someone is finding their current brand of suds hard to drink?  Do they think that any beer drinker needs permission to drink more beer?  
   
2. Are they talking to current Bud Light drinkers to persuade them to stay with the brand because it is more "drinkable", whatever the heck that means? 

Target audience issues aside, what makes Budweiser think that they can leverage "drinkability" in the first place?  It's a silly concept that has no universal meaning.  What's drinkable to me may not be drinkable to you.  There is no objective standard that defines "drinkability."  When you watch the ads, you see that they struggle to explain the term and then they try to convince you that Bud Light has more of it.  This is a recipe for advertising disaster and all the ads that I've seen stink.  They are so tragically beneath the high standard that Budweiser has established for its advertising that it makes you wonder "what is wrong at Bud HQ these days?"  I predict sanity will soon reign again at Bud and that this direction for them will be very short-lived.

The other beverage company that has puzzled me in the last year with the strategic direction of their advertising is Dr Pepper.  The first misstep was trying to persuade people that 7 Up was "natural."  It's a soft drink for crying out load!  There is practically nothing more unnatural.  This strategy was an insult to our collective intelligence.  7 Up is "The Uncola" and why they have abandoned that fundamentally sound brand positioning is beyond me.

Dr Pepper has recently launched a new strategy for the mother brand, Dr Pepper.  The brand has traditionally been positioned around user imagery - specifically the individuality of Dr Pepper drinkers compared to cola drinkers.  "Be a Pepper" was a delightful expression of that and it worked for the brand for years.  Now, they're trying to persuade me that Dr Pepper should be my soft drink because of its more complex flavor - specifically that is made up of 23 different flavors.  Am I the only one who finds this not only hard to believe but completely irrelevant?  Since when was buying a soft drink about something so esoteric as its flavor recipe?  Why should I care that is has 23 different flavors?  The only imagery it brings to my mind is that of the pretentious wine drinker who sniffs and sips and then pronounces that the wine has "a note of blackberries and a slight aroma of cherries."  Dr Pepper isn't wine.  It's a soft drink.  

Both Budweiser and Dr Pepper need to lighten up.  Beers and soft drinks are supposed to be about fun, good times and sociability.  It's not rocket science.  It's not about complex concepts like "drinkability" and "23 flavors." It's about simple physical and emotional refreshment.   

How to be Terrible at Customer Service - Copy Credit Card or Cable TV Companies

I don't think I'm alone in having had terrible customer service experiences with my credit card and cable TV providers.  I'm not talking about one time, either.  I'm talking about nightmares that have occurred repeatedly over the years with a number of different providers of each type of service.

I've switched around in response and I'm still looking for a provider that really understands what excellent customer service means and how to deliver it.  

Here's the main thing that each of them do wrong.

Credit card companies lure you in with offers of low interest rates.  They run promotions to get you to transfer balances to their cards at low interest rates.  They do all they can to get you to run up a high balance on their cards.  Then, they lower the boom.  They find an excuse to jack up the interest rate by an astronomical amount.  Maybe one of your payments arrived two days late.  Oops.  You've violated your agreement and opened the door for them to raise their rates. This is just plain sleazy and I hope our new Congress finally addresses this abuse.  All of a sudden that manageable balance at the original interest rate becomes an impossible to pay off balance at the new interest rate.  GOTCHA!  

If any of the existing credit card companies would swear off this practice, they'd either immediately dominate the market or force all the others to follow them.  If a customer's credit standing dictates a higher interest rate, make that new rate apply only to new balances incurred AFTER they have been notified of a rate hike.  Allowing these companies to retroactively apply a much higher interest rate to balances that were created with the understanding that the rate was much lower is just WRONG.  The credit card company immediately becomes your enemy instead of being your friend.  It's the worst possible way to deal with your customers.

Cable TV companies are renown for awful customer service.  The satellite TV providers and now the phone companies (Fios) have responded and what was once a comfortable monopoly is now doggedly competitive.  My experience is that whenever anything goes wrong with your cable TV service, it can take weeks for someone to get to your house to deal with the problem. The other public utilities (electric, gas, phone) understand that they need to deal with service problems immediately.  The cable TV industry never learned that lesson.  They cheap out on having enough service people.  One year, my service went down about two weeks before the Super Bowl.  I couldn't get a service appointment until after the big game.  ARGGH!

The other thing that the cable TV companies all seem to do is miss these long awaited appointments or show up hours later than promised.  Nothing better than having to take time off from work, then wait around the house for an expected on-time serviceman only to have the guy show up either not at all or hours late.  

I've relocated for business a number of times and each time I've tried the local cable TV company, thinking "this time it will be different."  Maybe in this city, the cable TV company will be better.  NOT!  Each time I've switched away from them to another TV provider - usually satellite.

These two different industries do not treat their customers like customers.  Once they've got you, they adopt a "you need us more than we need you" attitude and it permeates everything they do that touches their customers.  They focus on getting your business but once they have it, they take advantage of you rather than service you.

As you evaluate your company's customer service efforts, learn from the grossly unacceptable practices of the credit card and cable TV people.  Never play GOTCHA with your customers. Treat them just as importantly AFTER you have them as when you're trying to win their business.

Are You Doing Enough to Nurture Your Sales Leads?

I'm familiar with a number of B2B companies that do a terrible job managing sales leads once they get them. The focus of the marketing team is almost exclusively on generating leads that can be passed on to the sales team. Generating leads is clearly a key marketing task in B2B enterprises, but if your marketing team is spending most of its time generating leads instead of managing leads, you're in trouble.

Most sales teams are expected to convert leads into sales RIGHT NOW. This month and this quarter. The sales team is probably operating with monthly and quarterly quotas that directly impact their paychecks. It is not reasonable to expect the sales team to have a long-term focus, which is what is required to nurture and develop sales leads and eventually turn them into customers. If the marketing team hands 100 leads to the sales team and only 20 of those leads are ready to buy RIGHT NOW, what happens to the other 80?

If I'm a sales guy, I want more of those "RIGHT NOW" leads. The heck with those 80 that need nurturing and time to develop. I've got my monthly quota and that mortgage payment I need to make.

It's the job of your marketing team to "own" those 80 leads that need to be nurtured. If your marketing team is not actively managing those 80 leads, you're missing a huge opportunity AND you're wasting a lot of time and money. Do you have marketing campaigns designed to nurture these 80 leads and develop them to the point where they are ready to buy RIGHT NOW? If your marketing team is not developing, testing, measuring and implementing programs designed to nurture existing leads, shame on you! If they are spending all their time generating those 100 leads, just so 80 of them can be ignored, shame on you! That's marketing insanity.  You're effectively wasting 80 cents of every dollar you're investing in lead generation activities.

In today's economic climate, when many purchase decisions are being postponed or scrutinized more carefully than ever, it is especially important to have an active and effective Nurturing Effort in place. If I've told you I'm a potential customer and you then ignore me to chase after only RIGHT NOW prospects, the odds are that you will NEVER get my business.  

Pay attention to those 80 leads now, when they're not quite ready to buy, but when they still need and want help in making their purchase decision.  Nurture them.  You'll benefit later.

Marketing Lessons from the Obama Campaign

Today we have a new president-elect.  

What marketing lessons can we learn from Obama's victory?   One disclaimer is in order:  I consider myself politically independent.  I've voted for Democrats and Republicans, so I've go no political axe to grind.  These are simply the opinions of an interested observer who happens to know something about smart marketing.

1. Have a Purple Cow product:  Has there ever been a more unique candidate for the Presidency?  No one needed to invent or "spin" or convince anyone of Obama's uniqueness.  Some embraced it and some feared it.  But all recognized it.  He was a Purple Cow (see my earlier blog on Purple Cow thinking).
2. Identify a strong strategy and stick with it:  The Obama team had a very simple and easy to understand positioning strategy represented by one word:  CHANGE.  His campaign hammered the theme consistently and they didn't let Hillary Clinton or John McCain usurp it even though both tried.  His sub-theme "YES WE CAN"  conveyed optimism and self-confidence at a time when those qualities were exactly what the majority of Americans needed and wanted to feel.
3. Packaging is critical:  Obama always staged his major speeches and TV ads in settings that made him look "Presidential."  Regardless of whether you supported him, the staging of his Victory Speech last night was impressive.  He only won 51% of the popular vote yet it looked like he won a gigantic and overwhelming landslide.   Brilliant Packaging.
4. Re-position your competition:  Bush's current unpopularity was a huge problem for McCain.  He did all he could to distance himself from the President.  The Obama campaign  never conceded that issue and kept linking McCain to Bush, forcing McCain to be on the defensive and prove his independence.  You can't win by playing defense.  You need to score.
5. Seize opportunities quickly:  The economic crisis turned the campaign from a referendum on the War in Iraq to a Debate about Economic Recovery.  Bad luck for McCain, who had an advantage on foreign policy experience.  But the Obama campaign had the good sense to keep the debate focussed on the economy and McCain's depth of foreign policy experience became relatively unimportant.
6. Invest in marketing:  No matter how great your product is and how brilliantly it's positioned in the market, you won't succeed if you don't invest in marketing.

I hope that Obama's skills as a smart marketer foreshadow the skills he will show as our President.  If he's as good at running the country as he was at running his marketing campaign, we'll be in capable hands.  Let's all wish him well at this difficult time when our country needs exceptional leadership.