Marketing Sanity

Why Is Most B2B Advertising So Awful?

2009-09-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

If you don't work for a B2B company, this blog may not mean much to you. Unless you've ever picked up one of those B2B targeted magazines and had a chance to check out the ads in them.

Most are strategically confused, poorly targeted, graphically sloppy and loaded with jargon and techno-babble. Or, they adopt another tried and true B2B ad tactic. They feature a really pretty woman who has absolutely nothing to do with the product, service or company running the ad (Think "GoDaddy.com" and you'll have the idea).

There are an assortment of reasons for this huge waste of money.

1. Most B2B companies do not have a CEO who understands marketing. They are usually either operations types or they've come up through finance or sales.

2. Consequently, most B2B companies do not have a trained marketing person in the CMO job. It's usually someone who has somehow demonstrated a bit of creativity in some other corporate job and that has qualified them to run marketing as far as the CEO is concerned. The CEO has no idea that the person running marketing is really clueless about marketing because the CEO is equally clueless.

3. These clueless people then think they're being frugal by developing their marketing plans and programs in-house. They don't hire marketing consultants or agencies that can help them. They use an in-house graphics team to do their ads or find a cheap freelance source that is often someone's relative.

4. They think that their product or service is much more interesting, relevant and important than it really is. They've drunk so much of their own Kool-Aid that they've lost touch with their customers. Instead of building advertising that is customer-focused, they build advertising that is self-focused. Blah blah blah blah about them and their products and their services. Marketing 101: You must focus on your customers and what they think, what they need, and what they want.

5. Some only want their ads to get attention. Those are the ones who tend to adopt the "let's just put a hot babe in the ads" approach. Silly and embarrassing and a stupid waste of money. How do Boards of Directors look the other way when this is going on. Hello???

6. They never develop long term campaigns or treat marketing like an investment. They create ad-hoc one-shot ads and manage marketing like it's only a cost-center.

7. They think that unless you're an expert in their product or service, that you can't possibly market it effectively. This leads to industrial inbreeding (only hiring or promoting from within that industry) and the inevitable retardation that follows. It stifles creativity and prevents progress.

The good news is that whenever a B2B company comes to its senses and brings in a real marketing pro from "outside", the improvements are dramatic, fast and easy to make. The bad news is that so many B2B companies don't have the sense to do this. If you're in one of those B2B companies and the top marketing person is not a true marketing pro, but a marketing amateur who's faking it for a CEO who's "marketing-challenged" then you need to think about heading elsewhere.

Hyundai - Give Them a Round of Applause!

2009-08-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed how many smart things Hyundai has been doing over the past year or so? They are on fire!

First, their product line-up (job #1 for any automobile company) is outstanding. Every vehicle they offer is a high quality option in the segment in which it competes. And they are all priced intelligently. Each model is selling at a great "value" price versus its more entrenched competition. Hyundai's market share has got to be skyrocketing.

Second, a few months ago, Hyundai breaks new ground with a promise to "forgive" missed payments from newly unemployed Hyundai owners. Instead of being the bad guy creditor breathing down a distressed unemployed person's neck, Hyundai positions themselves as an understanding and sympathetic friend. What a brilliant way to earn customers for life. This was an incredibly innovative offer that was timed to perfection.

Lately, Hyundai's new promotion is to guarantee a low gas price of $1.49/gallon for a year to new Hyundai buyers. I don't know exactly how they are fulfilling this offer or making it work, but it is another smartly innovative and distinctive promotion that is punching through the clutter of other automotive marketing.

In a few short years, Hyundai has grown from a fringe brand without much perceived quality to a major competitor in the US market. Great products. Value priced. Backed by savvy, distinctive, gutsy marketing.

Hyundai is a textbook example of how to market smartly. I'm looking forward to see what they do next because they are on a roll.

Radio Shack Becoming "The Shack"

2009-08-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I blogged on Kentucky FRIED Chicken spending millions to reposition the brand as the place for UNFRIED chicken.

It's always sad to see a brand come to the realization that their name is WRONG. Clearly. "Fried" has not been exactly a desirable food attribute for about the last ten years or so. So what else was KFC to do? They first tried to get us used to calling it "KFC" instead of" Kentucky Fried Chicken." They spent years on that. Now, they've actually changed the product offering, too. I haven't been to a KFC in years, and I doubt that the allure of their now unfried chicken is going to get me in the door. If I do get the urge to visit a KFC, it's going to be because I have a craving for their good old fried chicken. I guess they must have data that convinces them that new customers will come in now that they are offering unfried chicken. Seems to me that it will just be the same customers who simply end up cannibalizing fried chicken sales in order to try/buy the unfried chicken. Time will tell.

Now, in today's news there is another retailer who has finally realized that their name is part of their problem. It's Radio Shack. They are about to launch a massive marketing effort to get us to think of them as "The Shack." But according to what I've read, they are not officially changing their name. They are still "Radio Shack."

OK. I agree that the "Radio" in "Radio Shack" is a big problem. Not contemporary and no longer relevant. It's all about cool wireless gizmos now. I just don't understand this half-pregnant move they are making. Why not go all the way? If the name is wrong, bite the bullet and change it. I suspect they are being overly cautious and that an actual name change is probably being planned as Part II of this effort. Name changes are expensive propositions. It's probably hundreds of millions of dollars just in signage alone. But the fact remains. If the name is wrong (and clearly the Radio Shack name is now definitely wrong), you have to face up to that fact and change it. Why fool around with this "half-change?" My message to Radio Shack is to have the courage to do what's needed. And if it's needed, it's needed right now. Timidity is not a winning strategy.

Dos Equis - What Are They Thinking?

2009-07-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

Since Obama is having his Beer Summit today, I think a blog on beer is appropriate.

Have you seen the Dos Equis campaign featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World"?

I saw it one too many times last night and I have to call them out on the silliness of their advertising.

First, beer is consumed mostly by young men (under 30). The Dos Equis guy is like 65 if he's a day. He's a geezer. Way outside the age range of beer's core demographic. What's up with that? I don't believe that this guy is a beer drinker for one second. He's more the scotch type. Definitely!

Second, the guy is a pretentious sleaze bag. He's hanging out with women at least half his age. The only way this happens in real life is if the guy has oodles of money. Old guys with fat wallets can attract young women. Old guys who are simply "interesting" are not chick magnets.

Third, (this is subjective I admit) the guy is doing weird stuff in these ads, not interesting stuff. He's rescuing a fox during a fox hunt! Has anyone outside of British gentry ever even been on a fox hunt? And why would this guy be out there hugging a fox and keeping it away from the dogs, horses and the folks "riding to the hounds"? Beyond silly. This is stupid. Do you think Mr. American Bubba Beer Drinker can relate? No way, Jose.

I'll give Dos Equis some points for trying to stand out and be different. But his campaign can't be working, can it? It's wrong on way too many levels.

Some TV Ads That I Like

2009-07-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of the ads that run on TV are forgettable, boring and unpersuasive.

That's one reason why the good ones stand out and work so well, because they're surrounded by so many poor ones.

There have been a couple of really good new TV ads that have caught my attention over the past week that I'd like to single out for well-deserved praise.

Omega Watches

They're doing a wonderful job of capitalizing on the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing. In a riveting spot that opens with President Kennedy's speech about going to the moon and includes footage of the Apollo launch, moon landing and first walk on the moon, Omega reminds us that they are the only watch that's ever been on the moon. The spot is wonderfully edited and Omega has done a smart job of capitalizing on all the attention that has been generated by the 40th Anniversary of the first Moon Landing. Well done!

Mercedes Benz

They're launching a beautiful new coupe with a series of dramatic TV ads that put Mercedes Benz back where it used to be at the apex of automotive brand imagery. The spots feature a dramatic sequence where the new car appears to literally crash through a large glass wall in Mercedes' ultra modern office building in Germany. The car and its entrance both make quite a statement. I hope Mercedes is finally getting its ad mojo back, because for a long time, they seemed to have lost it.

Two "I Told You So" Ad Changes That I've Also Noticed

Geico

They have finally started to use the Gecko to tell their "value" story rather than that ill-advised stupid wad of cash with hooky glasses. I criticized them a few months ago and wondered why they weren't leveraging their two strong ad assets (the gecko and the cavemen) instead of creating a new (and BAD) third icon.

Budweiser

"Drinkability" seems to have finally bitten the dust. They wasted millions on this bad idea. I criticized them for this awful strategy months ago and I think they have finally dropped it. At least I hope that's what they've done. I haven't seen any of those dreadful "drinkability" spots lately but it may just be wishful thinking to hope that they have done away with it for good.

Grocery Stores - Customer Service? Low Prices? Or What?

2009-07-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

There are "Grocery Wars" going on in my neighborhood. Some are slowly sliding out of business, new ones are opening and some established ones are clearly headed for trouble.

We've got Market Street, Whole Foods and Central Market occupying the high end in my area of the world. Each is different and each has their advocates and loyal shoppers. But what they all share in common is that they are focussed on customer service, selection, and creating a wonderful in-store experience for their shoppers.

At another extreme is Costco and Sam's. They also occupy a solid niche. Value. You've got to buy in bulk but you get great pricing.

The competitors I can't figure out are all the "traditional" grocery store brands. I visited a Kroger this morning (we'd run out of milk and you can't have breakfast without some milk) and here's what happened.

I was greeted by a giant display on the way in the store for Vitamin Water (normally $1.59/bottle, selling for $.99). I put eight different flavors in my cart and headed for the milk section. So far, so good. They got me to make an incremental purchase, one I was not intending to make.

The problem came at check out. Kroger has implemented these self-service check out lines which I normally avoid like the plague. This morning, I had no choice. It was early and these self-service check outs were the only ones open. I think these self-service check outs are a really bad marketing idea. Kroger makes you do the scanning and bagging yourself, so they make the shopping experience harder (not easier). They also remove the one opportunity they have for you to interact with a Kroger employee, which could be a nice branding opportunity for them. That would all be bad enough, but those self-scanning systems never seem to be working right. So instead of speeding up the check out process (which might actually appeal to some people), Kroger usually creates an additional hassle when you have to track someone down to come over and solve a problem you're having with their system.

That's what happened to me this morning. Six of my eight Vitamin Waters scanned correctly but two failed to ring up the correct price (I was paying attention because I KNOW this self-scanning system is full of bugs.) We're talking a $1.20 here. Not a lot of money, but it was the principle of the thing. It took two different Kroger employees and about 10 minutes to straighten this out. So, instead of a nice and quick "in and out" shopping stop this morning (along with maybe a pleasant "hello" or "how are you" from an employee), I got an impersonal, needlessly delayed, flawed and aggravating shopping experience.

Why should I ever go to this Kroger again? I have other better options that are just literally a few minutes further away. Whole Foods is right across the street. Market Street is two blocks down.

Kroger and many other of their traditional grocery store competitors are in the unenviable position of being stuck in the middle. They are outflanked at the high end by service oriented options and they are outflanked at the low end by Costco. When you're positioned in the middle of the road like this, you only get run over. Nothing good happens when you occupy this grey middle of the market.

We've recently lost an Albertson's in the neighborhood. I'm betting that this Kroger is next. There's a Tom Thumb just a block away but I think they'll hold out longer. They still scan and bag your groceries for you.

Michael Jackson was a Purple Cow

2009-07-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was one of those people who was stunned by the recent death of Michael Jackson. Whatever else you may have thought about him, he was a pop icon right up there with Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. As Yoda might have said, I felt a "disturbance in the force" when I learned he had so unexpectedly died.

First of all, from a marketing perspective, Michael Jackson was a one-of-a-kind brand, a purple cow. His uniqueness started with his incredible ability to sing and dance as a precocious young child. Rather than fade away as so many child stars do, Michael Jackson exploded into a mega-star fueled by incredible music, incredible videos and incredible dancing. The first time he moonwalked was one of TV's most electrifying moments. It was other worldly. It seemed impossible for anyone to move like that. His videos broke new ground and rewrote the music video business.

His uniqueness unfortunately spun off into tragedy. His plastic surgeries turned a handsome young man into a freak. His fixation on re-capturing his own lost childhood led to an unhealthy attraction to young boys that may or may not have been sexual. His success led to wealth that led to ridiculous and offensive extravagance. His desire to have children and appear more normal led to "marriages" that were obviously farces. His fame led to reclusiveness and he all but disappeared from the public eye. He seemed to have flamed out.

But a few months ago, he announced a "This is it" comeback. A "final" series of live performances in London that he was preparing for up until his death. Would he have electrified us again? We'll never know.

The lesson for marketing people in Michael's life is that distinctiveness wins. We may not like it, but it's undeniably memorable and it makes us pay attention. And when it disappears, we feel a sense of loss because we cared. Because something that was special is now gone and we're sad that we may never have anything like that again.

Yes, Michael Jackson was very weird. But so was Elvis. I suspect that Michael Jackson's estate will reap the same kind of long term rewards that Elvis' estate has. There will always be a market for something that is brilliantly original.

Automated Phone Answering Systems - Worst Possible Way to Communicate with Your Customers

2009-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Why have virtually all of America's larger companies adopted these absolutely horrible and hugely frustrating automated phone answering systems to deal with their customers when they call?

I don't know a single person who likes to deal with those stupid automated systems.

When you call a company with a question or a concern or an issue of any sort, YOU WANT TO TALK TO A REAL PERSON. Yet, you're forced to go through a long and usually frustrating list of "menu options" before you finally navigate your way to a real live human being. The message being sent is "We really don't want to talk to you. Please go away." Is this smart marketing?

I don't believe in these systems for any company, but companies that are in any kind of customer service business are really shooting themselves in the foot when they adopt these systems. The phone is still an important customer contact tool. It always will be. Why lose the opportunity to personalize this point of contact and use it to differentiate your service and make your company stand out? Automated phone systems are dehumanizing and impersonal. Are those attributes desirable ones for your brand?

I once worked with a mobile phone company that wanted to differentiate itself. At the time, all the competitors were dong "me too" advertising featuring the latest hot rate package (this many minutes for this much money). We did some research and consumers told us that the single biggest thing that this company could do to differentiate their service was to have "live" operators instead of an automated system. You'd think this would be a no-brainer for a phone company. NOT! They ignored the research results and adopted another differentiation strategy instead.

This opportunity remains low hanging fruit for any service oriented company. When people call you, have a real person answer the phone. Train your people to deliver consistently pleasant "on strategy" brand and service experiences to these callers. Your own people can be your most powerful marketing tools and they can make a strongly positive first impression if you let them. Don't let "operational efficiency" mislead you into making a foolish marketing mistake.

General (Government) Motors - A No Win Situation

2009-06-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

As GM reorganizes and survives on bailout money, they are faced with the marketing challenge of how best to support the brands that will be the future of the company.

One brand that is receiving relatively heavy marketing support right now is Cadillac. They're launching a new model, called the CTS Sport Wagon. It's basically a station wagon.

There are three things fundamentally wrong with this. All of these are symptomatic of why GM is in trouble in the first place.

1. Their timing is awful: Launching a new model NOW? Right in the teeth of all the negative publicity they are receiving related to going bankrupt? Tell me how this makes any sense.

2. The new model is a STATION WAGON! Station wagons haven't been popular since SUV's took over that market niche. After working pretty successfully for years to modernize the Cadillac image and make the brand younger, they decide to go retro with a station wagon? You've got to be kidding.

3. The splashy spending is no longer perceived as GM's marketing investment but as a wasteful use of taxpayer bailout money. Our tax dollars are being spent by GM to advertise an ill-advised new model being launched at the worst possible time. A really bad way to spend our money (it's not their money anymore.)

Cadillac should probably never have conceived and launched this model in the first place. I'll be amazed if it succeeds. Cadillac and all the other GM divisions should not be doing splashy big money marketing right now. They should be using PR tactics, not advertising, to set the stage for the relaunch of the entire company once the reorganization is complete. That's when they'll need to stun us with great new advertising that makes us truly believe that there is indeed a new smarter and better General Motors.

What they're doing now just looks like "same old same old." In fact, it strikes me as even stupider than some of the moves that got them to bankruptcy court in the first place.

How'd You Like to Have Any of These Marketing Challenges?

2009-06-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Think your job is tough? What would you do if you were the top marketing person responsible for any of the following - all of which would be contenders for "toughest marketing jobs of 2009- 2010."

1. Chinese Hummers

Not only are Hummers suffering from the double whammy of being gas guzzlers (swimming upstream against both the Green Movement AND higher gas prices) and being built by now bankrupt General Motors, but Hummer is now owned by a Chinese company that has never built cars and that nobody in our country has ever heard of.

2. Un-fried Chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken

Here's a brand that's been selling "Fried" to America for about the last 50 years. Now they're trying to get people to overlook that and drop in for grilled chicken. You know things are bad when you have to ask consumers to ignore your name as part of your ad message.

3. General Motors Cars

Bankrupt company being run by the government asking consumers to trust them and still buy their cars. My hunch is that most of us are taking a wait and see attitude about GM and its cars right now. They've got a big opportunity to re-invent the company, but will they? And even if they do, will we believe that they have? How can they convince us?

4. Playboy Magazine

Hugh Hefner is now like 100 years old and is no longer an icon for the brand. He's a joke. The Internet has completely filled the "need" for the cheesecake that once drove the brand. Magazines, in general, are in trouble. What was once "cutting edge" and "cool" (at least to guys) is now hopelessly "old fashioned" and very "uncool."

5. Arnold Schwarzenegger

California's economy and state budget are a disaster. The former Mr. Universe is looking more like Mr. Whimpy. He's a Republican in an Obama Democratic dominated political landscape. The Terminator is almost certainly going to get terminated when he's up for re-election. He's too old to go back to being a movie hunk. Senator Schwarzenegger? Not likely. Talk show host? Who can understand that accent?

6. Blockbuster

Going to a brick and mortar store to rent a movie or video game is now completely unnecessary. Technology and the Internet and NetFlix have made the movie rental retail store concept obsolete. Blockbusters customers are gradually deserting them for these more convenient and more immediate options. What can they do to reverse this trend? How can they re-invent themselves?

Every job has its challenges, but these are a few of the marketing challenges that may all border on the impossible. But it's going to be fun to see what happens. It will take some very shrewd marketing (and probably some good old fashioned luck) to turn these lemons into lemonade.

Look Who's At War: McDonald's vs. Starbucks and Banks vs. All of Us

2009-05-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, you may have noticed that McDonald's has declared war on Starbucks.

Here's a quote from one of the stories. "The coffee war is on, and the spoils are big: 57 percent of American adults drink coffee every day. And as CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports, McDonald's is taking aim at Starbucks and making its biggest menu addition in three decades. Cappuccinos, blended coffees and pastries are traditionally Starbucks' ground. But, now, McDonald's wants a shot at the espresso market, too. Famous for the Big Mac, the fast food chain has brewed up a plan to add high-end coffees and bottled beverages to their menu. By doing so, they hope also to add a billion dollars to their bottom line."

If I were doing a positioning map, I wouldn't have Starbucks and McDonald's anywhere near one another. Would you? So this strikes me as a very interesting and curious move. Does McDonald's really think that a lot of Starbucks customers are going to be easily persuaded to abandon their daily Starbucks fix and visit a McDonald's instead? I'm sure that the wizards at McDonald's have researched this up the ying yang, but it seems to me that the in-store experience at Starbucks is a big part of the whole Starbucks attraction. In no way does McDonald's come close to matching this experience. Maybe McDonald's is going to focus on all those people who are drive-thru customers of Starbucks. Since they never get out of their car, they don't get the whole Starbucks experience and might be more easily swayed to drive thru at the nearby McDonald's instead. This battle will be interesting to watch, but my money is on Starbucks to weather this storm.

Earlier today, there was another marketing war that got some publicity.

Here's a quote on that battle. "Banks Have Declared War – On You. Changes are coming fast to the credit card world, and you can expect your bank to raise rates, slash credit limits, add fees and cut rewards. Consumers, brace yourselves, MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston says." Now here's a battle that makes even less sense. The banking industry is generating tremendous negative publicity on itself by actions that are obviously being taken with no regard for their marketing impact. Banks are quickly becoming a universally recognized "business bad guy" in America. I have blogged on this subject in the past and I remain flabbergasted at the marketing ignorance being demonstrated by our banks. Their disregard for their own customers and their willingness to alienate them is stupendously short-sighted.

There is going to be a huge opportunity for one of them to wake up and really differentiate themselves from the banking pack by doing the most basic and simplest thing in marketing.....siding with their own consumers - duh.

Sports Marketing - Objective Investment or Fantasy Fulfilled?

2009-05-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a sports nut. I love to watch and I love to play, so I'm one of those people who gets exposed quite often to how companies use sports to market themselves. When I ran Coca-Cola's U.S. marketing, we were deeply engaged in sports marketing of all sorts - from The Olympics to NASCAR to the NFL/NBA/NHL to MLB to World Cup Soccer. So I know something about this.

If you market sports equipment or sports related clothing, it would be awfully dumb if you didn't associate your brand with your sport. Nike markets using sports. Under Armor uses sports. So does Gatorade. Duh.

It's more interesting to look at the companies that aren't directly related to sports and consider why they are using sports to market themselves and is this smart business. In some cases, it is. In other cases, you've got a CEO who loves a sport (say golf or tennis or NASCAR for instance) and who makes more of a personal decision to invest marketing money in a sport they happen to love. It's certainly a nice executive perk to be treated like a big shot at some major sports event while entertaining company or customer VIPs. But is it really justifiable from a marketing ROI standpoint?

It is rare to find a non-sports company investing in sports marketing if the top executives aren't big fans. I'll bet if you took a survey of all the companies that buy naming rights to major sporting events, 95% of them have top executives who are gigantic fans of that sport. They can use their company's money to buy an association that allows them to fulfill a dream.

The biggest sports investments of all are the deals to acquire the naming rights to a new stadium. These are $100 million deals and more, depending on the stadium. Is this EVER a smart investment? I think not. Remember Enron Field? Enron spent a fortune on that deal. Was that the best place for them to invest that money? Of course not. But those jail bird top Enron executives sure got their egos stroked whenever they went to games.

When times were rosy, companies could get away with doing these deals. Today, it looks ridiculous to invest money this way. Jerry Jones wants HUGE money for the naming rights to the new Cowboys Stadium. In this economy, it isn't going to happen. Jerry is going to bide his time. The new stadium will simply be Cowboys Stadium...for now. Visions of a stupendous naming rights deal are still dancing in Jerry's head. He's just waiting for the economy to turn around. Some company with a CEO who's a lifetime Dallas Cowboys fan will eventually get suckered into a deal.

Associating your brand or company with a sport makes sense when the demographics are right and when the imagery of the sport is reinforcing of the imagery you want associated with your brand/company. But the approach to analyzing these deals should be no different from analyzing what TV shows to advertise on. You'd never advertise on a TV show just because you were fan of a certain actor or actress. In the same way, companies need to objectively analyze any association with any sport to make sure that it is a financially sound way to build your brand equity and create sales.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm....

2009-05-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

The most recent ads for Las Vegas

The originals were brilliant. Adult. Sophisticated. Clever. Engaging. The ones they're doing now are awful. Silly and stupid. What went wrong? Are the same people still in charge? How does a great campaign go so bad so fast? Too bad!

Fast Company List of "The 100 Most Creative People in Business"

Two advertising agency people are listed. Has there ever been a more loud and clear warning signal for an entire industry? The agency model is in very serious trouble. This is not a business that you want your son or daughter to get into. Trust me.

FiOS TV

Just got it. Verizon has hounded me for weeks to sign up. I finally succumbed (shows you again how important it is to be persistent in your marketing). It was a good call. Beats regular cable and satellite by a mile. And it costs less! You need to check it out. Why didn't the cable companies do this first?

Star Trek Movie

OK. I'm a closet Trekkie. Have been since high school. But the PR and marketing build up to the movie's release was brilliant and then the movie lived up to the hype. Kudos to the marketing team. Of course, brilliant products are always the easiest to market. But it's also a huge danger to over promise and under deliver. They got it right with this movie.

Retro Pepsi

Real sugar instead of corn syrup. What if the world likes it better? Can they really go back to the modern version? This will be interesting to watch. Could be a brilliant move or could be a major marketing blunder. Time will tell.

Fiat and Chrysler

Did you ever think you'd see the day when Fiat ("Fix it again, Tony") would be the savior of one of America's major automobile manufacturers? Will Fiat save Chrysler or will Chrysler ruin Fiat? If Mercedes couldn't fix Chrysler, why do we think Fiat can?

Cheerios and Cholesterol

How many of you ever really believed that eating Cheerios in the morning would lower your cholesterol? I guess they forgot to tell us that it only works if you substitute the Cheerios for the cheese omelet with bacon and sausage and buttered toast that you were eating.

Microsoft and Apple

Why doesn't Microsoft make Apple versions of all their software? Do they really think this is going to hurt Apple? Microsoft is simply missing an opportunity. It's time this silly practice comes to an end.

A Simple Thing That's Been Brilliantly Marketed - M and M's

2009-05-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Over the past decade, the folks at Mars have done an absolutely brilliant job of transforming M and M's (this blog won't let me use an ampersand, so the brand purists our there will have to tolerate this incorrect usage) from an ordinary candy to an icon brand - as powerful as any brand in the world.

They've done it using every weapon in the modern marketing arsenal. But it's really a story of crafty and consistent marketing investment behind one truly BIG IDEA that has been brilliantly executed and extended for many many years.

Here are just some of the things they've done that have leveraged the brand shrewdly.

1. Creating the animated characters: They gave the brand personality, charm and dramatically enhanced its distinctiveness. The team that originated the characters created a BIG idea that has made billions for Mars.

2. Leveraging the characters consistently over the years. They recognized a good thing and had the good sense to "keep on keeping on" despite what has probably been dozens of different executives managing the business over the years.

3. Using the power of licensing. Once the characters had established their appeal, Mars began cleverly licensing their use to build even greater brand ubiquity.

4. Opening Retail Stores. NYC has a great one. So does Las Vegas. Check one out the next time you have a chance. The NYC store is particularly brilliant due to the tremendous digital outdoor signage that is part of it and how that signage is being used to enhance the brand and draw people into the store.

5. Marketing product news on a regular basis. New colors. New things printed on the candy. Customizable candy. A "Premium" version of the basic product. The latest is Disney characters on the candy. Fun stuff that keeps the brand interesting.

6. Using NASCAR. The M and M Racing Team helps broaden the brand's appeal even further.

7. Investing in all the basics. TV. Print. Internet. They continue to throw gasoline on the fire. Smart!

I remember the brand before it became supercharged. It has taken Mars decades, but they have done a stupendous job of transforming a simple candy into an American icon brand. Kudos to everyone involved over the years!

YouTube & Domino's: It Could Happen to You

2009-04-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Last week, Domino's had to deal with a PR nightmare when two of their employees filmed a disgusting prank and then posted it online. In a few days, the prank had circulated widely over the Internet and Domino's was dealing with a potential marketing and PR disaster.

We all understand the world's greatest intellects are not likely to be found working in the back room kitchens of places like Domino's. We also understand that every restaurant chain in America does the best they can to hire and train good people and then provide them with the tools and systems to generate consistent meals that will satisfy their customers. Lastly, we also understand that things can go wrong in those kitchens and that no system is ever going to be perfect. Mistakes can happen and, while we don't like it when they do, we can also be understanding, especially if they are dealt with in a very positive way. In fact, sometimes, dealing with a mistake in an exceptional way can create one of the most positive brand experiences possible.

What we don't understand is when idiots decide to do something incredibly stupid, record it, and then, thinking it's incredibly funny, they decide to post it on the Internet for the world to see. That's what happened to Domino's. It's bad enough that these videos get exposed so easily on places like YouTube, but they eventually generate millions of PR impressions when the story hits the newspaper and the network news programs. TV news, in particular, can't resist showing us videos like these, because they are both disgusting and fascinating at the same time. And, then it becomes a spectator sport to see how the targeted company responds.

Domino's seems to have responded quickly and well to this episode but the damage was done. What are the implications for marketers everywhere because every one of us is vulnerable to something like this? You're especially vulnerable if you manage a highly visible, familiar consumer brand like Domino's.

First, realize that YouTube can be your enemy just as much as it can be your friend. Yes, you can post your own marketing messages out there, but the images that interest people the most are not these packaged corporate communications. It's the underground "behind the scenes" scandalous images that capture attention, become viral and get widely circulated. As a marketer, you must image your worst PR nightmare and then develop a marketing and PR contingency plan to deal with it. You must be ready because if something like this occurs to your brand, its impact moves at the speed of light and you can't take days to figure out how to respond and what to do. What is the worst possible thing that could show up on YouTube that could severely damage your brand or your company? Are you ready to deal with it?

Second, shouldn't YouTube be more accountable for episodes like this? As marketers, shouldn't we be talking to the YouTubes of the world about what can be done to protect businesses from this type of damage to their reputations. Do we really think it's right that two idiot employees can have this kind of impact on a company? Is YouTube doing an adequate job policing the videos that are posted to their site?

Third, anyone who knowingly inflicts this kind of harm on a company should be legally liable for their actions. It's not enough to simply fire an employee for this kind of damage. It should be illegal. That would go a long way to discourage these malicious acts.

Signs of the Times

2009-04-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Consumers everywhere are in a serious "recession mind frame." They're delaying purchases or deciding simply to forego things that they would ordinarily be buying. It's a scary time if you're a trying to market anything that's not pretty much an absolute necessity. If it's a "nice to have" thing but not a "must have" thing, then you are definitely feeling the impact of this recession mindset that gripping most Americans.

Here are a few things that illustrate how bad this recession mindset has become and how lasting its impact may be.

1. The Cute Puppy No One Wanted

I attended a charity event recently that I've attended for the last three years. The event includes both silent and live auctions to raise money for the charity. In prior years, the highlight of the event is the live auctioning of a cute puppy. The biding is spirited and the puppy generates a multiple thousand dollar contribution for the cause. This year, when the puppy went up for auction, no one bid. It was sad and embarrassing. The puppy was as cute as ever, but this year, no one wanted to come home with a new puppy. Another mouth to feed? Vet bills? Buying a new puppy in this economy? It was a sobering moment, because this was a relatively wealthy crowd. It really brought home how bad things have gotten.

2. Outrage at Excessive Executive Compensation

No matter how well a company is performing, it is now PR poison to grant large bonuses and multi-million dollar compensation packages to top executives. When so many are out of work, forced to cut back and losing their savings, it does seem ridiculous and unfair to read of CEO "Mr Big Shot" and his $25 million bonus. I think we've gotten to a point where this type of compensation is no longer routinely accepted. I think the press will now focus on these types of comp packages and report on them and that Board of Directors will be forced to react. Is it more important to keep a few top execs fat and happy or is it more important to protect the public reputation and image of the corporation? It will be interesting to keep an eye on this issue and see if it goes away once the economy returns to health. I suspect we may have experienced a watershed moment that could forever change the excessive compensation earned by a select few.

3. GM Headed for Chapter 11

An American Icon company looks like it is about to declare bankruptcy. Any guess on how the stock market will react to this event if it happens? Can you imagine what it must be like to be a GM Dealer these days? How many of them are about to go out of business, too? Last night a friend told me he just bought a new GM car and got $17000 off the list price. How desperate did that dealer have to be to unload a new car at that steep a discount? GM is trying hard but everything positive that they do right now is overshadowed by the mass of negative publicity they're getting.

4. Banks Only Want to Lend Money to People Who Don't Need to Borrow

Isn't one function of the banking industry supposed to be to loan money to entrepreneurs and aspiring small business owners so that they can create new businesses, employ more Americans and fuel the overall economy? This financial crisis has made banks so conservative in their lending that the only people who can get money now are those that don't need it. Banks want to make money and they want to minimize bad loans, but don't banks also have a social responsibility to help create more jobs and grow the economy?

There is a lot of ill will being created right now by many American businesses. I'm not sure that this recession will be like the other ones I've live through. The impact of this one feels like it will be more permanent. My dad grew up during the The Great Depression and his outlook on life and money and business was fixed during that era. I suspect that many Americans are being affected just as deeply now by what we are experiencing. The impact on marketing will likely be permanent and immense.

Can Anyone Explain These Crazy Things?

2009-03-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

I admit that it's easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback. But there are some things in the world of business and marketing that just seem so hard to understand when you first see or hear about them that you've got to wonder "what were they thinking?"

Here are a few recent examples:

1. AIG

How could they have not known that passing out bonuses using government bailout money would finish off the company's reputation permanently and forever kill the AIG brand? There is no way that AIG as a brand can survive now and I doubt that any attempt to rename the company and continue in business will succeed either. The leaders of AIG have got to be the all-time biggest business boneheads in history. Are we going to put even more bailout money into this disastrously mismanaged company? I sure hope not. What were they thinking?

2. Gatorade

An old colleague of mine responded to one of my recent postings where I criticized Coca-Cola for some of their latest brand positioning moves with a right-on comment about Gatorade's recent re-branding. For now, they're still calling themselves "Gatorade", but the brand name has disappeared from the front of their packaging. We now see nothing but a big ugly generic-looking capital "G". Why on earth did they do that? How did they convince themselves that it made sense and was a wise thing to do? Are we about to start hearing them call the brand "G"? What were (are) they thinking?

3. MSNBC

They decided to air a segment that attacked consumers suffering with "underwater" houses due to the mortgage lending/housing market crisis. There may be a few scrooge-like ultra right wingers out there that have no sympathy for fellow Americans having to deal with this crisis, but that is not exactly the prevailing sentiment. MSNBC rightfully got taken to the woodshed by John Stewart of Comedy Central and then the media circus was on. An avalanche of negative publicity for MSNBC ensued. How could MSNBC have lost touch with their viewers and American public opinion that badly? Fat cat on-air announcers with big-money contracts who are not feeling any financial pain are not representative of the average American. What were they thinking?

I'd love to hear from anyone out there who doesn't think that each of these things are crazy-headed "what were they thinking" examples of pure marketing insanity.

Direct Response TV - When "FREE" doesn't really mean "free" and other bogus practices

2009-03-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

There is a subset of marketing people, agencies and production companies that specialize in a unique form of American marketing collectively called DRTV (direct response TV).

These are those generally awful ads selling products you can't buy in stores but are only available through these "amazing" and "incredible" and "fantastic" tv offers. It's the closest marketing comes to the old wild west huckster selling magic elixir out of the back of his covered wagon.

Cable broadcasters air these DRTV ads when they have no real honest-to-goodness paying advertisers. So rather than fill commercial time with dead air or a barrage of network promos (neither of which generate any revenue for the broadcaster), cable networks assault us with these hard-sell intrusive long-form (usually 60 seconds or more) ads. They give away the air time for nothing. All you need to be in this business is a slick selling spot that gets gullible viewers to call that number and order that gizmo. Cable networks play along because if you're sucker enough to call those on-screen numbers and actually order something, the cable network shares in the revenue. Hey, it's better than earning nothing for that ad time. Right?

Wrong. And here's why.

Most of these ads use tried and true DRTV practices that are at best "unethical" and at worst "outright fraud." Here are some of the "Hall of Shame" tactics that are their standard tools.

1. "It's FREE". No it's not. Check out the shipping and handling fees. Those more than pay for the cost of the item and provide a profit margin to the seller, too.

2. "Act now and we'll double the offer." All that means is that the price they're charging is more than enough to give them comfortable margins even if they supply you with two instead of one, four instead of two...you get the idea.

3. "Not sold in any stores!" That's turning a negative into a positive. There's no place to take this back if you don't like it or it doesn't perform as advertised. And that number you called to order.... it's a call center. It's not any kind of company HQ. Good luck getting a refund if you call back with a complaint or because you're dissatisfied. And if they really were selling some sort of truly amazing product, why wouldn't they be selling it by the millions through conventional retail channels instead of one at a time over the TV?

The cable TV networks that broadcast these deceitful ads are valuing a few dollars of incremental revenue over their own ethical standards. As a paying advertiser, I certainly wouldn't want any of my spots anywhere near these sleazy DRTV ads. These ads tend to sully the reputation of all ads and all marketers. They aren't doing anything to enhance the image of the cable network airing the ads either.

I'd like to see the cable networks implement higher standards in determining which DRTV ads they agree to run. If they don't police themselves, it's time that the FCC get involved and put an end to these shamefully misleading ads. They don't entertain. They don't enlighten. They just try to trick you into ordering something that probably doesn't work.

Coke's Brand Strategy for Colas - How Times Have Changed!

2009-03-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

Here's an opening disclaimer: I used to be in charge of cola marketing at The Coca-Cola Company back in the late 80"s and early 90's. I helped make Diet Coke the success it was in the early 80's when I managed its advertising while at one of Interpublic's agencies. Therefore, I'm probably not completely objective about what Coke is doing these days, but I also know a lot more about their brands than the Average Joe.

Here are some of the things that puzzle me about what Coke is doing.

1. Coke Zero is directly positioned against brand Coke.

The Coke Zero ads feature two bogus brand managers who try to be funny while communicating the message that Coke Zero has stolen Coke's taste. The target of the advertising seems to be Coke drinkers who they are trying to switch to Coke Zero. Huh? Unless the brand economics make Coke Zero a lot more profitable than Coke, why would Coca-Cola want to introduce a brand with the apparent purpose of simply cannibalizing the mother lode? What happened to competing with Pepsi? I don't get it.

2. Diet Coke has become what Tab used to be.

Now that Coke Zero is on the scene, Diet Coke has ben re-positioned squarely and only against women. Diet Coke became a success by breaking the "Diet" stigma and convincing cola drinkers that it tasted good enough for everybody - men and women. It was launched "Just for the Taste of It" with advertising that was broadly targeted and definitely NOT diet focussed. Coke invested in that strategy for about 20 years. They must have spent a billion dollars on it, literally. In the last few years, it's "never mind." What a titanic waste of money! As someone who devoted years of their life to building the Diet Coke brand, I REALLY don't get it.

3. Coke's advertising is a mess.

Is it my imagination or does every single Coca-Cola ad now try to equate the brand with lofty things like "goodness"and the environment and education? The brand is taking itself so darn seriously now that it's no fun. It's become this pompous overblown brand that relies on high tech animation techniques and other whiz-bang effects because it is without a core brand idea that is fun and relevant. Every so often they stumble onto something that people like (remember the Polar Bears) but that's been more luck than strategic marketing acumen. Pepsi has finally got it right again, returning to the basic Pepsi Generation positioning that makes that brand young and fresh and fun and relevant. Coke's advertising is bloated, too self-important and increasingly irrelevant (and Coke Zero is helping this happen!).

Over the years, I've watched Coke be a revolving door for marketing people and advertising agencies and brands. The guys at the top find scape goats and they dodge the bullets and continue to blunder along. Coke is still one of America's great brands in spite of all the recent incompetence. Maybe, one of these days, they'll figure things out and get the brand back on track.

Some Thoughts on Marketing's Role in Today's Depressed Economy

2009-02-24T07:26:00.000-08:00

The economic news continues to be bleak with no upturn in sight. Layoffs are continuing. The stock market continues to decline. Every night, the network news is loaded with stories of corporate and human distress. The marketing fundamentals of our economy may be undergoing permanent change. How should your marketing team respond?

I'll start with a principle that needs to shape your marketing actions: Marketing can't make anyone do anything that they don't want to do.

So, in this economy, if most of your customers don't want to spend money right now to buy whatever it is you're selling, what should you be doing? The correct "marketing mindset" for your company should be "how can I help (not sell) my customers in the short term in order to gain even more of their business in the long term."

There are many companies that are responding to today's economic conditions with deep discounts and deals and special offers to try to get reluctant customers to buy NOW. No doubt, some customers will respond to this. But most will not. However, they will remember the special deal price and when the time comes that they are ready to buy, they will not be happy about the return of "regular" pricing. Discounting is generally a one-way street. When you set a new lower price, it usually very quickly becomes the price that your customers expect to pay from that point on. So discounting may generate a short term lift, but the long term impact on future revenue and profits will be significant. Beware!

Smarter companies are shifting their marketing tactics without resorting to cutting their prices. One interesting example is Hyundai. They are promoting a "Forgiveness" plan that promises that if you buy a new Hyundai and then find yourself in economic distress and unable to make your payments, that they will simply allow you to return the car, without all the ugliness that is normally associated with that type of situation. Hyundai could easily have been investing the same marketing resources into promotions and discounts in order to sell more Hyundais RIGHT NOW. This softer approach is much more compelling and. I bet, more effective for them.

Other companies are recognizing that their customers simply want to exercise more buying caution in these uncertain times. Caution means "slow down" and "learn more" and "be sure." So the tone and style of your marketing should reflect that. You should expect longer sales cycles and be creating marketing materials that will gently push your customers along, providing the information they need and providing it with more frequency than in the past. The information you're providing may need to be more detailed and the after-the-sale service may need to be more robust (and less expensive). You're financing options may need to be expanded, with more options offered. Your guarantees may need to be strengthened or promoted more aggressively. All of these tactics will reflect your customer's mindset and, as a result, be more effective.

Marketing is about understanding your customers and communicating with them in ways that demonstrate understanding and provide compelling information that motivates them to do business with you. If your marketing shows that you don't understand the economic realities facing your customers today, then you're not doing a smart job of marketing.

Marketing with Music - Not What It Should Be

2009-02-13T13:51:00.000-08:00

There's rarely a TV commercial that gets produced today that doesn't use music in some way. Yet most marketers are getting far less brand impact from the music they use than they should be. Music can be so much more than an underlying soundtrack to the words and pictures of a TV ad. Music can be brand cement. It can be a marketing communication tool that enables you to plant a brand message in a viewer's head FOREVER.

Here are some great examples of branded music that many of us can probably not only remember, but most likely still sing along with.

Almond Joy/Mounds - "Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut"
Meow Mix - "Meow Meow Meow Meow"
Roto-Rooter - "Away Go Troubles Down the Drain"
US Army - "Be All You Can Be"
Alka Seltzer - "Plop Plop Fizz Fizz"
Chili's - "Baby Back Ribs"
Oscar Meyer - "I Wish I Was an Oscar Meyer Weiner"
Campbell's Soup - "M'm! M'm! Good!"
Hertz - "Let Hertz Put You in the Driver's Seat"

There's another really good way to use music and really BRAND it. That's to steal a song that's become a hit on its own and apply it to your brand in such a strong way for such a long time that it's impossible to hear the song any more without thinking of the brand it has now become associated with. Here are a couple great examples of that.

Chevy - "Like a Rock"
Heinz Ketchup - "Anticipation"
California Raisins - "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"

Another approach that also works is the short musical button that ends a spot and becomes an instantly recognizable element of the brand. Two examples of this are:

Mennen - "By Mennen"
Intel - "Intel Inside"

Today, music in marketing has essentially become a throw-away. Part of this is because so few marketers are now committing themselves to long-term campaigns, which is a requirement if you want to establish any branded music. It's a shame because music can and should be a powerful branding weapon.

Does it really make sense to pay for the rights to use the music of some hot recording artist only in one spot for only a limited period of time? Almost never! Unless you're Apple marketing the iPod, in which case using interesting new music is a big part of what the brand is all about. But exceptions like this are rare and only prove the rule. Don't invest big money in music UNLESS you're committed to making the music a big part of your brand identity for a substantial period of time - like FOREVER.

The Obligatory Super Bowl Advertising Review

2009-02-04T07:13:00.000-08:00

It was a great game. Certainly one of the best Super Bowls ever.

One of the unique aspects of The Super Bowl is that the "day after" evaluation of the ads has become such a part of the game itself. It's one of the reasons why advertisers invest in those high-priced ads. They command the attention of everyone and the one exposure the advertiser pays for in the game itself is multiplied many times over with the "day after" exposure that each of the ads invariably receives.

By now, you'll have formed your own opinions about the ads, read what others think and probably debated the merits of the ads with relatives, friends and co-workers. Rather than bore you with just another opinion on all those ads, I'll take a slightly different approach. I'll take issue with some of the ads that most reviewers are praising and support one of the ads that most of the reviewers are criticizing.

Were These Ads Really Any Good?

1. Doritos "Office Ball": Isn't a guy getting nailed in his family jewels the oldest and stalest slapstick gag in the world? Aren't great ads supposed to be original?

2. Coke Zero "Polamalu": Ripping off the classic Mean Joe Greene ad was another example of failed creativity. The original ad generated powerful and sweet emotion. This one went for silly slapstick humor and just ended up cheapening the original.

3. Coke "Bugs": Wonderful animation, but what else was there in this spot? Using fabulous production technique does not mean that you don't still need a core selling idea. And bugs are not nearly as cute as polar bears.

4. Cash4Gold.com: Some reviewers actually liked this ad. Unbelievable! It was sad seeing winners who are now losers (Ed McMahon and MC Hammer) depicted in such chessy desperate fashion.

Was This Ad Really That Bad?

1. Heineken "Vanguard": John Turturro is a great actor and not just a pretty face. The copy was intelligent and Turturro's direct to camera reading was riveting. Was he too old and too pretentious? Maybe. But I paid attention and it was definitely distinctive from other beer ads.

I Agree That These Ads Were Terrific

1. Bridgestone "Potato Heads" and "Jump Around"
2. Budwesier "Clydesdale Plays Fetch"
3. E-trade "Babies"
4. Pepsi "Forever Young"
5. Monster.com "Moose"
6. CareerBuilder.com "It's Time"
7. Denny's "Wise Guys"

I Agree that These Ads Were Terrible

1. Bud Light "Skiier" (Drinkability MUST go!)
2. GoDaddy.com "Enhanced"
3. SoBe "Ballet"
4. Pepsi "MacGruber" (Beyond bad. Embarrassingly awful.)

The Top Dog as Talking Head

2009-01-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

Are you a fan of those TV commercials that feature the CEO as the company's spokesperson?

Over the last few decades, there have been some notable marketing successes using this approach. The ones that come immediately to mind are Orville Redenbacher, Frank Perdue, and Dave Thomas (Wendy's). I think what made each of these campaigns work was that each spokesperson/CEO was an original. Quirky and believable and amusing. They were execs that didn't take themselves too seriously and they allowed their agencies to use them in light-hearted ways. Over time, they became rather endearing and that helped make us pay attention to their marketing messages.

In today's economic climate, CEOs are generally getting bad press. They're in the news either for laying people off, needing bail outs or posting poor results. I don't think that most Americans are predisposed to like CEOs right now, so it's a particularly dicey time to use one as the centerpiece of your marketing campaign.

Here are a few companies using their CEOs as their TV spokesman today and, without fail, I think these approaches are not working.

Sprint: We see the CEO (Dan Hesse) in dark, nearly black and white, spots as he casually strolls through various Manhattan settings and tells us how cool Sprint is and invites us to join him and his company on the mobile technology highway. Nothing charming or interesting or endearing about these spots. In fact, the CEO just comes across as an egotistical guy who seems to think he's persuasive and cool. Is anyone switching to Sprint based on this campaign? I doubt it.

Community Coffee: The young fourth generation CEO of his family tells us why Community Coffee is so good. The idea here seems to be "trust me. I'm so sincere. Buy my family's coffee." I always find myself wondering, "would this guy be the CEO if his great grandfather, grandfather and Dad hadn't just handed the company over to him?" A distracting thought that definitely gets in the way of me being persuading to buy the coffee.

Papa John's Pizza: The CEO has been their spokesperson for many years. He's always been very stiff on camera. Not a natural who looks like he actually enjoys being the spokesperson. I find the spots always awkward to watch and I'm always distracted by the poor acting ability of the CEO.

I've never been personally involved in a CEO As Spokesperson campaign, but I can imagine how awkward they must be to develop and produce. If it's the CEO's idea, how do you gracefully advise him/her against the idea and keep your job? If it's your idea and the CEO turns out to be an on-camera stiff, how do you persuade him/her to give up the newly found TV fame and return to being just the behind-the-desk CEO? Difficult issues and it's got to be hard for everyone involved to maintain objectivity and do the right thing.

My advice... unless you've got a Frank Perdue or an Orville Redenbacher as your CEO, develop your marketing campaigns without using your top dog as your talking head.

B2B Technology Marketing Blunders That Bug Me

2009-01-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

Blunder #1: B2B Web Sites That Fail to Communicate Clearly.

Have you ever visited a technology company's web site, studied the home page, browsed around a little and still had no idea what the company does/makes or why you should do business with them?

It happens to me all the time. I'm a smart guy, but I'm definitely not a technocrat. I want to understand the technology that I'm considering buying without being dazed, confused or intimidated by it.

Most technology companies are loaded with techno-geeks who all speak the unique language of that particular technology. It's often an impenetrable argot of acronyms and arcane language that only fellow geeks in that particular technology will understand. When these people are in charge of an important marketing tool, like the company's web site, bad things start to happen. While the technocrats can communicate with each other, they leave the majority of us in the dark. This is NOT communication. It's obfuscation. That's why it's a terrible marketing blunder to let technocrats be in charge of B2B company web sites. The only time it makes any sense is if the only people who will have anything to do with buying your techno-product or service are all fellow geeks. In my experience, this is almost never the case.

The art of brilliant marketing communication is to take a product or service that is potentially complex and confusing and present it so that it seems clear and relatively simple. Most IT-oriented people simply don't understand this basic truth. They embrace technological complexity and thrive on it. They think everyone shares their desire to dive deeply into the details. Apple is an example of a technology company that has mastered the art of brilliant and eloquently simple product communication. Apple is a rare and wonderful exception in the world of technology marketing.

A former colleague once told me "the confused mind says no." "No" is not a good word when it comes to marketing or selling. If you want to get more "yeses" let your marketing people translate your technology into language that will communicate rather than obfuscate.

Blunder #2: Wasting Money on B2B TV Advertising.

I am almost always puzzled when I see a B2B ad on TV. Why do some B2B companies think it's smart to invest millions of dollars reaching tens of millions of people who will never have anything to do with purchasing their product or service?

The creative people who work in advertising agencies love to develop and produce TV ads. But how does this ever make media sense when your target audience can be so precisely defined and reached directly with much more targeted communications? I have no logical explanation for this, but I have three remedies for this foolhardiness.

First, cut the marketing budget so that all temptation to spend lavishly and wastefully will be eliminated.

Second, measure the impact and effectiveness of what you're doing and force B2B TV ads to be completely and utterly justified by rigorous ROI analysis relative to other uses of those same marketing resources.

Third, hire more outside-the-box thinkers to lead your marketing teams. Throwing money at TV ads is about the least creative marketing idea that anyone can have these days.

Following Up on Previous Blogs: Credit Card Companies, Budweiser and Dr Pepper

2009-01-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah!

The Federal government has finally outlawed some of the most onerous practices of the credit card industry. I blogged (ranted) on these practices back on 11/18 and was thrilled to read yesterday that many of these practices will no longer be allowed. Starting in July 2010 (why we have to wait so long is beyond me), credit card companies will not be allowed to change the APR they are charging on existing balances. They will be allowed to raise your APR if you are late (more than 30 days) but this new APR can not be retroactively applied to existing balances. It will only apply to your new balances. WOW! Finally some fairness in financial marketing. Better late than never.

But wait a minute. How are the credit companies responding now that they have almost 18 months to get ready for this new fairer reality? You guessed it. They're going to shaft us as much as they can between now and then. Many have already started to raise their rates to squeeze their customers as hard as they can between now and when the new regulations go into effect. Boneheaded, short-sighted marketing thinking if you ask me.

Wouldn't it be cool if just one of these credit card companies finally wised up and took advantage of the situation to implement the new policies NOW - way ahead of the deadline? Imagine the marketing power of positioning your company as leading and embracing this change. It's a major opportunity for someone in the industry that has the guts to step forward and outdistance the competition. Will it happen? Probably not.

Moving on to the world of beverages......

In my blog on 11/25, I chastised Bud and Dr Pepper for wrong-headed communication strategies on two of their brands - specifically the "drinkability" strategy that Bud is trying to leverage and the "complex flavor/drink it slow" strategy that Dr Pepper is using.

Well, Bud is now on its third campaign trying to bring this weak "drinkability" strategy to life. I assume they've probably looked at dozens of others that have been rejected. What a titanic waste of time and money! Bud is normally an exceptionally savvy marketer, so this is out of character for them. I'm betting that we won't see a fourth iteration of this failed strategy and that something new will be with us by The Super Bowl, when Bud always seems to make a big splash with something new and wonderful.

Unfortunately, Dr Pepper shows no sign of wising up. The wrong-headed campaign that I want to comment on today is for Diet Dr Pepper. The gist of the strategy is that Diet Dr Pepper tastes too sweet to be called "Diet." Spots show a six pack marching down the candy aisle in a grocery store and being hailed by sugary treats as one their own. This strategy is wrong for two reasons. First "sweetness" is relative. What tastes sweet to me, may not taste sweet to you. Second, "sweetness" is not universally positive. I may like sweet things but you may not. What is "too sweet" to me is not going to be "too sweet" for you. Diet Coke broke diet soft drink tradition when it was launched over 25 years ago with a "Just for the Taste of it" brand positioning that was brilliant. It was the first "diet" soft drink that said nothing about dieting or calories in its advertising. It focussed on great taste and fun and refreshment. This Diet Dr Pepper advertising team needs to study the early work on Diet Coke. This "sweetness" strategy they're currently following is all wrong.

I predict that Bud will be back on track a lot sooner than Dr Pepper. The fact that Bud is moving from campaign to campaign shows that they know they have a problem. Dr Pepper seems oblivious.

Geico: Hit, Hit, But Now a Whiff

2009-01-05T09:24:00.000-08:00

Geico is an interesting advertiser to watch.

First, they created their Gecko campaign, which was a very memorable and distinctive way to capture attention, create brand recognition and get people to listen to Geico's marketing messages. Then, Geico topped themselves with the wildly successful Caveman campaign (Geico.com: So Simple a Caveman Could Do It). I don't think any other advertising campaign has ever been so successful that Hollywood made a sitcom out of it. Well-deserved congratulations are due to everyone at Geico and their agency for these two advertising home runs.

Unfortunately, Geico has just launched a third campaign that's a dud. It's focussed on how much money you can save with Geico. Not a bad message in this time of economic distress, but why did Geico think they needed a third campaign to deliver this message? Couldn't the Gecko or the Cavemen have communicated this message? Yet Geico went to the time and expense of creating a third campaign. Not only has this cost them time and money, but it has diminished their focus on two proven campaigns.

I'm sure the logic behind this move had something to do with Geico wanting to keep the other two campaigns' messages "pure" and feeling that they needed a new campaign to focus on what Geico must believe is a very important "value" message that's obviously extremely relevant right now.

I could ALMOST agree with this logic if Geico's third campaign weren't so poorly executed. It features a stack of money with some weird looking eyeball type of thing sitting on top of the pile of cash. This money/eyeball thing shows up unexpectedly to the background tune of "Who's Watching Me" and puzzles people (including viewers in my opinion) who wonder what the heck this stack of bills with the odd peepers is all about. That's when the Geico value message kicks in.

On the plus side, the new campaign has the same quirky brand personality of the other two Geico campaigns. However, it lacks the appeal and humanity of the Gecko and the Cavemen. As viewers, we LIKE the gecko and the cavemen. There is nothing to like about this odd stack of money with the creepy eyeballs. The casting of the spots is equally puzzling. The people in them aren't funny or amusing or even appealing. They're all kind of clueless, much like I have been every time I see one of these new ads.

No one hits a home run every time. Geico's ad and marketing people have certainly performed far better than most. They have two campaigns to be proud of. I think the "marketing sanity" thing to do would be to retire this new effort sooner rather than later. I hope Geico gives us more of their two powerhouse campaigns. More of the gecko! More cavemen!

I HOPE that this new effort does not signal that Geico is getting tired of their gecko or getting bored with their cavemen. They've got two thoroughbred campaigns. They ought to ride them until they drop. And both still look pretty darn fresh to me.

Why Do Fashion Ads All Look Alike?

2008-12-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

As Christmas approaches and gift giving is on our mind, I've been paying a little more attention to the perfume, cosmetic and jewelry ads that dominate all the women's fashion magazines. You know the ads I'm talking about. The ones that feature the world's highest priced models (or major Hollywood stars) photographed by the world's most expensive photographers advertising the world's most overpriced women's products.

These ads follow a different school of thought about marketing and brand positioning than all of us non-fashion marketers have been trained to believe in. The main thing that always strikes me is that in the world of fashion marketing, it is OK for your ads to look the same (practically identical) to your competition's ads. It's not only OK, it seems to be a requirement.

Is this simply something that's just accepted dogma in the world of fashion marketing or is it something that they know for a fact actually works for them?

Before writing this entry, I opened up the December issue of Vogue to find some examples of what I mean. Spread before me are perfume ads from Estee Lauder, Dior, Dolce Gabbana and Versace. These ads have virtually identical layouts. I really mean IDENTICAL. Not only are the layouts all the same, but none of the ads have anything remotely approaching "an idea." Each ad is "pretty face (come hither look) , big bottle, logo." No headlines, no copy, no ideas.

In any other marketing category (with the possible exception of automotive where almost all of the print ads look like the same art director put them together, too) having a print campaign that was identical to a competitor's campaign would be considered a problem. Not in the world of fashion. I wonder why.

Don't the same laws of marketing apply to these products? Isn't it just as important to stand out in the world of fashion and have a unique identity that differentiates your brand from those you compete with? Isn't it just as important to have a campaign concept with an idea behind it? A pretty super model simply isn't an idea.

I think most fashion marketers are guilty of assuming that just because their super model and their perfume bottle is different from the competition's super model and bottle that consumers will see the difference between the brands.

Maybe women who read the fashion magazines religiously understand and appreciate the subtle brand differentiation that is in these ads. However, my hunch is that they don't and that most fashion marketers are kidding themselves. I recommend that they wake up and smell the perfume. What they're doing now strikes me as marketing insanity.

Chicago Tribune Files for Bankruptcy - Why Are Newspapers in Trouble?

2008-12-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

I may be "old school" but I have to have my morning newspaper. Wherever I've lived, I've subscribed to the local paper, The New York Times and The Wall St. Journal. When I travel, I love to pick up USA Today. But I'm apparently unusual. Newspapers are quickly losing readers and advertisers. The current recession is making matters worse as most advertisers are cutting back. Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune made news by filing for bankruptcy.

There are many younger Americans who now find newspapers irrelevant and hopelessly old fashioned. They consume their news digitally. They can get the news they want (and only what they want) on their PDAs immediately when the news is happening. Why should they buy a printed newspaper that is out of the date and behind on breaking news events the minute it's printed? Besides, that old printed thing has all sorts of stuff in it that they're not interested in reading, including most of the ads. And, on top of everything else, newspapers create waste and they aren't as environmentally friendly as other ways to get the news.

With both technological and environmental trends solidly against them, are newspapers doomed? Maybe. What should marketing sanity look like to today's struggling newspapers? What should they be doing? If you were in charge of one, what would you be doing?

Job 1: Hold on to your current subscribers. Are newspapers reaching out to their readers with special offers, services and new product features that will preserve their loyalty? Or are they milking their customer base? Is sending that monthly or quarterly bill the only time they communicate?

Job 2: Product development. What can newspapers do to become relevant to the digital generation? Are they developing and testing new ideas with a sense of urgency? Are they trying to find ways to become Purple Cows (see my earlier blog on this topic). Or are they resigned to having lost this audience forever?

Job 3: Diversification and alliances. The engine of every newspaper is news gathering and reporting. These are assets that are valuable and unique. How can these assets be fully leveraged with other businesses that need and value the content and information that is being created? Similarly, how can newspapers do a better job of bundling the advertising impressions they deliver by partnering with other media? What unique advertiser synergies can be created?

I think that the newspaper business has been too insular for too long. Insular industries only hire from within. The old ways are accepted as gospel. "Experience" is more valuable than innovation. New people with fresh ideas aren't recruited. New ideas aren't developed and those that are have difficulty taking root and gaining advocacy. These industries become inbred which is one short step away from becoming extinct. The auto industry has certainly been guilty of this and I suspect the newspaper business is similarly guilty.

Learn a lesson from these industries that are now struggling so mightily to survive. Routinely recruit new people from outside the company and outside your industry. They will come with fresh new ideas that are needed in every company. Listen. Test. Implement. Change. Don't ever become satisfied with the status quo.

Selling vs Service. Does Your Company Need an Attitude Adjustment?

2008-12-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

Do you work for a company where there is intense pressure to sell?

These kind of companies typically demonstrate an overriding executive level fixation on financial performance instead of customer service. Financial success is driven by two things: growing revenues and cutting costs. When these tasks become the overwhelming fixation of senior executives, your company may be in need of a serious attitude adjustment. When executives create a corporate culture where there is this intense pressure to sell in order to sustain revenue growth, they are almost certainly also creating a corporate culture where customer service takes a back seat.

When companies lose focus on customer service and only look upon their customers as an entity that you sell things to, it's a problem. They've lost sight of why customers are doing business with them in the first place and they're on the road to ruin. These companies need to undergo a major attitude adjustment from Selling to Service. Here's why.

No one likes to be sold. Not in their personal life and not in a business context either. When you sense that you are "being sold", what happens? Your barriers go up and the skeptical listening center of your brain goes into full gear. We instinctively don't trust someone who is trying to sell us something. It's takes hard work and artful salesmanship to overcome those barriers and actually sell anything.

On the other hand, everyone likes to be helped. It's why you're greeted in a store with "How can I help you, today?" When was the last time anyone greeted you with "What can I sell you today?" When we think someone is trying to help us, our barriers disappear and we usually experience gratitude rather than skepticism. Over time, gratitude grows into trust. And trust creates customers for life. This seems like a total no-brainer to me. Why would any company want potential customers to feel skeptical (ie- always be in selling mode) when they can choose to make them feel grateful and trustful (ie- by being in service mode)?

If your company is always stuck in selling mode, it needs an attitude adjustment. The primary focus of any company should be on service as opposed to selling. If the executives are only looking at sales metrics and not service metrics, something is wrong. When you're successful at service, sales follow. When you stink at customer service, you will soon stink at sales, too.

Budweiser and Dr Pepper Both Need to Lighten Up

2008-11-25T07:34:00.000-08:00

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?

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?
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

2008-11-19T07:22:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-11-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

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.

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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Brand Building - How the Little Things Add Up.

2008-10-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

I confess. I'm pretty much a Starbucks junky.

It's hard for me to walk past one without wanting to go in and get a fix. Partly, it's the coffee. But a lot of the explanation for why I'm addicted to Starbucks is that I admire the way they've built their brand and I love to look for the new little things that they keep adding to the in-store experience. Over the years, Starbucks has carefully and intelligently cultivated their brand and invested in it and built it one brick at a time. It's now one of the most formidable and valuable brands on the planet. Marketeers can all learn from observing Starbucks and watching not only what they do but how they do it.

Starbucks is a great real world example of "Purple Cow" thinking (a topic of an earlier Marketing Sanity blog posting). "The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary" is a good book that outlines the guiding principles of the Starbucks brand. The principles are:

Make It Your Own: Are you old enough to remember when Maxwell House and Folger's owned the coffee business? Starbucks re-invented it and has never looked back.
Everything Matters: More on this principle in a minute.
Surprise and Delight: Exceeding expectations. It gets harder and harder to do, but somehow Starbucks keeps managing.
Embrace Resistance: Listen and learn from the anti-Starbucks people.
Leave Your Mark: Be a great corporate citizen. Give back. Care.

Two recent developments at Starbucks have really caught my attention and both are great examples of both "Everything Matters" and "Surprise and Delight."

The first and biggest is their strategic alliance with Apple and iTunes. Every week at Starbucks you can collect a "Pick of the Week" card good for a free download of a song by a featured artist. That's a $.99 value. How cool is that? Soon, you'll be able to do a one click download in the store onto your iPhone or iPod. Hear something you like while you're enjoying your mocha? Instant gratification. Download it then and there. This alliance is an obvious win-win for both companies on many levels. It is definitely delighting in my book as a customer of both brands.

The second example is smaller but also surprising and delightful. Recently, Starbucks has started a partnership with "Good" and begun distributing a weekly "Good Sheet". Each weekly sheet is sponsored (so the cost to Starbucks is probably close to nil) and each features intelligent information about a thought provoking important issue of the day. Just the thing to make me and a friend spend an extra few minutes in the store looking it over, discussing the issue and maybe ordering that second latte.

These two new additions to the Starbucks brand are polar opposites from a technology standpoint: one is digital and one is newsprint. Yet they both enhance the Starbucks brand and the in-store experience.

As you're taxed with building your brand, in addition to all the big "important" things like ads and packaging and PR, think about all the little things you can do to surprise and delight your customers. Then do them. Commit to them. Add them to your brand's experience. Collectively, they will turn your brand into something unique and wonderful and very very valuable.

Microtargeting - Political Marketing Tool That's Either Creepy or Cool - Decide for Yourself

2008-10-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Our national elections are less than three weeks away and we're all being bombarded with political marketing messages.

I've you're like me, you find most of these highly packaged and super slick messages that are being pushed at us to be a terrible way to elect our leaders. The issues of the day are highly complex and none of them have simple solutions. If they did, they wouldn't still be issues would they? They'd have been solved long ago. No politician has all the answers even though they all claim that they do. In the real world, no one likes or trusts a know-it-all. Why do politicians think they need to pretend they have all the answers and then claim that their opponent is a clueless idiot? One day a really honest straight-talking politician will hit the scene and take the country by storm.

I want a politician who will tell me what they believe and how they think. I don't want a spin-sensitive, word-smithing, equivocating, double-talker who's just looking to tell me what he or she thinks I want to hear.

The October 2008 issue of "Fast Company" reports on the state-of-the-art marketing tool being used today by all the sophisticated campaign managers and politicians. It's called microtargeting. It's a database tool that enables campaign managers to identify undecided voters, learn what is important to them and then target specific messages that will sway them to vote for their candidate.

Here's a quote from the "Fast Company" story: "We've come up with 30 major DNA strands within the electorate, such as soccer moms, Nascar dads, evangelical earth stewards, country-club Republicans, married-to-their mortgage families. Then we say, 'These people need war-on-terror messages, these people need education messages, these people need tax messages.'"

This is just good old marketing 101, right? Identify your target market, learn what's important to them and then deliver a product that satisfies their needs. Nothing wrong with that. Or is there?

Maybe I'm too old school, but I'm bothered by the idea of candidates as "products" with features that can be manipulated depending on what microtargeting dictates. I'd like to think I'm electing someone with principles and ideals that will drive the decisions they make and what they do while they're in office. How can I determine what a candidate is really all about when they're using microtargeting to tell me just what I want to hear? It's hard enough to cut through all the bologna in election campaigns as it is.

If a candidate is trying to cater messages to all 30 of these "major DNA strands" how can I understand their real priorities? Maybe this is just smart modern day political marketing. Or maybe this is one of the things that's now fundamentally wrong with the way we elect our political leaders.

What do you think?

The Marketing Bull's-Eye

2008-10-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

There's an amazing lack of continuity in most marketing campaigns today. Instead of running for years and building equity and gaining power with repeated exposure, most of today's "campaigns" seem to be as perishable as yesterday's fresh cut flowers. It's dumb marketing because it turns those marketing dollars from "investment" into "cost." And in today's environment, every good senior executive is looking to cut costs. The result? Good-bye marketing.

Why aren't more marketing campaigns developed and used for the long-term?

One reason is the incredible turnover in senior level marketing executives today. The new sheriff in town almost always feels compelled to do their own thing and re-invent the wheel. After all, the old marketing person was more than likely fired, so why stick with anything they developed?

But there's another reason why marketing campaigns don't last. It's because they're not properly "sold in" to all of the important brand stake holders. Broad-scale ownership of the campaign is not created and company-wide "buy in" is not achieved. It becomes "the marketing department's campaign" instead of the company's campaign and that's usually the kiss of death.

Think of all of the brand's stake holders as concentric rings of an expanding circle - like a bull's-eye. As you create and develop a new campaign, you must persuade an ever growing list of brand stake holders that the campaign is excellent enough to earn their support and long-term commitment.

Let's start at the center of the bull's-eye and move out.

The first stake holder that you need to convince is yourself. Is this campaign good enough that you're willing to bet your job on it? To advocate it to all the other brand stake holders and put your neck on the block if it doesn't work? Can you sell it to others with passion and conviction? Is it right for the company and the brand and does it represent a "BIG IDEA" that can last and last and last?

The next group of stake holders (the second ring of the bull's-eye) is the rest of the marketing team (including your agency partners). Do they share your conviction? Are they behind the campaign, too? If not, why not? Do they have real reasons that need to be addressed or bogus reasons because they're simply too whimpy to take a stand? Addressing real concerns will strengthen the idea further and make it better and that's what you need to do. You'll generate idea ownership and you can then move out to the next stake holder ring of the marketing bull's-eye.

It's the sales organization - both your internal sales team and your distributors and channel partners. Their enthusiasm is priceless. Their apathy is death. Do not understate the need to win this group over. Do not wait to involve them in the campaign until it's too late to change it. Your mindset needs to be that every stake holder group can add value and help strengthen the idea. When they help create the final campaign, they own it and that ownership helps give the idea the power to last.

The next stakeholder ring is the rest of your co-workers. The sell-in should not stop with sales and marketing. Every other department in your company should ideally be enthusiastic about the campaign. Take the time to turn everyone in your company into brand and campaign ambassadors.

Only after this "internal" sell-in process is complete are you really ready to take your campaign to its intended target. Make sure you have your measurement tools in place and as you identify ways you need to improve the initial campaign, celebrate that learning as a good thing. No one should expect immediate perfection. A great campaign will be a growing living thing. Strong at birth but a behemoth after a few years of TLC and fine-tuning.

The CMO's role is to evaluate all campaign input along the way, weed out the bad from the good, keep the BIG IDEA from being watered down and turned to mush, but be open-minded enough to recognize when good input is received and then courageous enough to embrace it and implement it. The result will be a campaign that your entire business enterprise "owns" and an invaluable long-term business investment for your company. Not to mention job security and enhanced market value for you. Being the originator of a well-recognized and highly successful long-term marketing campaign is one of the most powerful career enhancers you'll ever have. You will have hit the Marketing Bull's-eye!

Two Books All Marketing People Need to Read

2008-10-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here are two books that I think every marketer should not only read but have on their desks as every day references.

The first is "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin.

The premise of Seth's great little book is that in today's world, you're either remarkable or you're invisible. It's not enough to take some product or service, slap some marketing lipstick on it and consider the job done. Marketing people must be engaged deeply in the product, packaging and service development process to insure that something about the product, packaging or service is TRULY and REALLY remarkable. If marketing is brought in after these things are already finalized, your product development process is broken and needs to be fixed.

We all know that most new products fail. The reason is not usually poor marketing. The real reason is that the new product is simply not remarkable enough to make it. How high is the new product bar at your company? Are you shooting for "remarkable'? Are your new products buzzworthy? REALLY buzzworthy? If not, you've got a real uphill battle on your hands to achieve new product success.

Are you also developing remarkable marketing programs for these hopefully remarkable products and services? Or are you doing the same old tired things and hoping for the best? Unless you have a track record of remarkable new products launched with remarkable marketing, you need to get way outside your usual comfort zone and challenge everyone involved to adopt "Purple Cow" thinking as an integral part of your product development and marketing process.

The second book is "Jeffrey Gitomer's Sales Bible."

Marketing people work with sales people for their entire career. In many companies, there's a friction between the two functions. Typically, this is because the leaders of the functions aren't working well as teammates and, as a result, the people in each area don't fully understand the mutual dependency that exists. Each group blames the other for any lack of success and each group thinks they are more important or superior to the other.

Jeffrey Gitomer's fun book is a must read for all marketing people. You will come away from his book with not only a much deeper understanding and appreciation of the sales function but also a much improved understanding about how to improve your own personal selling skills. You'll also learn a tremendous amount about what makes great sales people great. You'll learn how to recognize the great ones that work with you and, hopefully, you'll also learn how to help the not-so-great ones get better.

Google Seth Godin and Jeffrey Gitomer. Sign up for their newsletters. Read their books. You'll be delighted by the fresh insight each provides. And...you'll become a better marketer in the process.

Changing a Brand: Usually a Very Bad Idea

2008-09-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

This blog entry is about the foolhardiness of deciding you need to fundamentally change the identity of a strong brand. By "strong" I mean a brand that has managed to stand for something distinctive and unique, even if that "something" may be polarizing or limiting in some way.

The bogus logic behind deciding to change strong brands usually goes something like this.

* "The Brand is strong but we need to broaden it in order to capture new markets/new customers that are not part of the brand's audience today." This is the GREED reason.
* "The Brand has new competitors that are more broadly positioned and those competitors are growing faster than we are. We need to respond." This is the FEAR reason.
* "The Brand is not relevant to enough people today. What was OK once is not OK now." This is the COP OUT reason.

First of all, if you're fortunate enough to be managing a strong brand, give thanks to the Career Gods. Strong brands are rare as diamonds and just as valuable. If you inherent one, your job is to nurture and protect it. Your job is definitely NOT to change it. The change agents will be everywhere. Your job is to fight them off. Why? Because the absolutely hardest thing to do in marketing is to change someone's mind. If I think "X" and you try to convince me of "Y", good luck to you. Maybe a friend or someone I really trust and respect MIGHT be able to get me to change my mind. But doing it with an ad or some other marketing tool? Not a chance.

Let's say the strong brand you're managing has acquired its identity over 20, 30 or maybe even 50 or 100 years. That's a lot of accumulated marketing that you're now going to try to "change." The only way you're going to be successful is if your company is prepared to keep with the "change" program for the next 10 or 20 years.

The most likely outcome in these situations is that you muddle your brand's previously precise and strong identity, begin to confuse and alienate your brand loyalists, waste a lot of money and time, and (more than likely) experience worsening business results followed by unemployment.

There is almost NEVER a good reason to change a strong brand in any fundamental way. The GREED and FEAR reasons are both lazy marketing solutions to the need to introduce a new brand or brands designed to broaden your company's overall business. The COP OUT reason is really just an acknowledgment that your recent marketing of your strong brand has probably sucked.

Here are two examples of brands that have been working hard at changing; Mercedes Benz and Gold's Gym. I content that both are worse off now than before.

Mercedes fell prey to the GREED reason. They extended the brand into lower priced cars to broaden it and increase its overall market share. The result? Lexus has surpassed Mercedes in both perceived and ACTUAL quality.

Gold's Gym fell prey to GREED, FEAR and COP OUT reasons. New competitors had more all-family and female appeal than the hardcore serious fitness image that Gold's Gym owned. Rather than respond with a new brand, they decided to change Gold's, even going so far as considering dropping the "Gym" from its name. The result? An increasingly muddled image and a me-too fitness club experience.

The only success that I can think of is Cadillac. GM had successfully changed the brand's image by making fundamental changes in the Cadillac products, in its target market and in its marketing AND, it has taken years and lots and lots of money. This is the exception that proves the rule.

If you've got the money and the will and the time (and the product news) to be like Cadillac, go for it! If not, resist the urge to change. Make the most of what you've got. If you need more, create and build new brands that get the job done. Don't wreck the good thing that you already have.

Your Brand Could Be Hijacked - Get Ready!

2008-09-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

In the good old days, when your company inadvertently disenfranchised a customer by some tacky bit of poor service or poor product performance, there wasn't much they could do. The really angry customers would simply stop doing business with you. If you were lucky, an aggravated customer would send a complaint letter or email or make a call to your customer service desk. Customers like these were providing both incredibly valuable feedback to your business as well as giving you a chance to remedy their problem so they could continue to do business with you. If you mishandled this golden opportunity, only the disgruntled customer generally knew about it and the worse that could happen is that you lost them as a customer.

In today's world, the downside of creating angry disgruntled poorly-handled customers is much greater. That's because it's not just between you and them anymore. Now, customers have the power and the ability to literally inform the world about how poorly your company or one of your brands has performed and how badly your people have responded.

In today's world, BEWARE THE TECH-SAVVY DISGRUNTLED CUSTOMER! They can hijack your brand. They can dominate the Internet conversation about your brand. All it takes is one really angry and highly motivated tech-savvy brand pirate and your goose could be cooked.

The Internet is the tool. Anti-brand blogs and text messaging can be powerful but the real brand killer is video.

Image the following marketing nightmare. One of your customers records and uses their cell phone to video tape a particularly idiotic and callous encounter between them and someone from your company. The video (because it's either funny or outrageous) finds its way on to YouTube and then starts showing up on emails and on other social networking sites. People who may have had similar experiences with your company appear out of the woodwork and jump into the exploding and negative Internet conversation that's happening about your brand. Your brand is being "flamed." Are you paying attention? Are you aware this is even happening? Are you prepared to do something about it? Or are you asleep at the switch as millions of dollars of your marketing investment go up in smoke?

Even if you don't experience this type of brand nightmare, there is still an Internet conversation going on about your brand. It's happening right now. Are you plugged into it? Are you tracking it and using it to understand what is being said and thought about your brand? Are you using it to gain brand insight?

You must recognize and embrace the idea that you are no longer in complete control of your brand. Viral transmission and re-transmission of messages can propagate negative information FAST. Is your company ready to deal quickly with information like this that gets out there? Do you have a company blog that you can use as a communication tool to combat this kind of thing? Do you have a PR response plan ready to implement? Is your marketing team empowered to respond FAST when these situations occur?

If you don't, you've got a time bomb on your hands. The clock is ticking. What are you waiting for?

Marketing Metrics - Meaning vs. Misery

2008-09-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

It's amazing to me how many otherwise intelligent companies don't invest any money to adequately measure the impact of their marketing programs. The logic goes something like this....the marketing budget is too small to enable us to afford any marketing research...we need to put all our money to work on programs and not waste it on research...we've never done research like this in the past and we don't need it now....there are too many other important things that we need to fund in this year's budget....we don't need this type of research because we use our sales results (or input from our sales force) to determine if our marketing programs are working.

Sound familiar? If so, it's more marketing insanity at work.

The result of this type of thinking is an often catastrophic situation where someone's "opinion" (usually a heavy breather like the CEO or CFO) determines what marketing programs get funded. These same C-level opinionators (I know there's no such word) also determine whether the top marketing exec is doing a good job or not. If you happen to be that top marketing person, you are in big trouble. You better measure or you're headed for misery.

In today's metrics-management business world, it is imperative that marketing metrics be clearly defined and measured with regularity. The information needs to be relevant and useful so that marketing programs can be evaluated and fine-tuned (or scrapped) based on what is learned.

It's Marketing 101. Start by clearly defining the objectives of your marketing efforts. Define these objectives in terms of the things that marketing can directly impact. For example in a B2B company, marketing has an indirect impact on sales, but it has a very direct impact on leads generated (both quantity and quality). It also has a very direct impact on the awareness of your company and its products and services among with your target audience(s). It has a direct impact on the perception and attitudes that prospects hold. (Your customers opinions and perceptions are the result of first hand experience with your company but your prospects have opinions and perceptions based largely on your marketing).

It's very possible that marketing is working great (generating high-quality leads, increasing awareness, moving perceptions in a positive direction) but that something else inside the company is falling short and THAT is the reason why sales aren't improving. Maybe the sales team is dropping the ball. Or the products or pricing are flawed in some way. Can you tell? Do you know? Or is it "opinion time" when the executive team sits around and tries to figure out what is going on?

Most marketing people love to create programs and they want to spend their time doing that, but it's the road to marketing misery. You've got to fight to measure the impact of your programs. Even if your overall budget is small. I would argue ESPECIALLY if your marketing budget is small.

Measuring your programs creates meaning and purpose and effectiveness and accountability and (if they're working) some measure of job security. Failure to measure is insanity, leading to finger-pointing, guesswork, ignorance and probably unemployment.

Stop Thinking Like an Advertiser and Start Thinking Like a Brand Programmer

2008-09-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

The classic ad model is quickly dying.

Cable TV started to kill it by dramatically increasing our viewing options and making it easy to zap ads and switch channels. The Internet is finishing off the job because TV is no longer the only place you can use video to communicate about your brand. Everyone now has the web. It's easy to use video on your brand's web site. In fact, you can create whatever web programming you want. You're not interrupting anything with an ad. You're now conveying information (or branded infotainment) that people have surfed their way to your web site to find. You are no longer an advertiser. You are now a brand programmer. Big difference!

As a brand programmer you're free from all those constraints that "advertisers" face. The big one being the limitation to thirty seconds (or sixty if you've got the big bucks). Hey, it's your web site. Those videos can be any length you want. But long videos cost too much money to produce I hear someone saying. Not necessarily. You can spend a fortune or you can spend almost nothing. That's a marketing decision based on what you think your brand requires. The most popular viral videos from the web are home-made and that's a big part of their charm. They are not slick and they are not overly produced and people can't get enough of them. They're real and that makes them believable and (potentially) persuasive.

Research techniques that play a large role in shaping TV ads at many companies are not relevant for web-based video. The research tools that have been used for years to measure and evaluate TV ads don't apply to web-based brand video. All those research-driven "do's and don'ts" can be tossed right out the window, too. How liberating for brand communicators! And how scary. No rules. No road maps. A blank palette where brilliant creativity can flourish and where lame creativity has no excuse to exist.

But this new world requires a new mindset among marketers and "advertisers." An ad created for traditional TV is not likely to work on the web. New thinking and new approaches are required. Similarly, if you've never been a TV-driven marketing company, you now need to move into the world of video production and become a brand programmer for your web site. There are many small B2C and many B2B companies that have NEVER considered video as a brand communication tool. Today, this is just silliness. If you've got a web site, you've got a platform to use brand video as a marketing tool.

The Secret Weapon of All Smart Marketing Companies - Their People

2008-08-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

How many times have you personally been snagged by some marketing campaign or another only to walk away without buying anything because when you actually came into personal contact with the company, you were turned off or disappointed by the experience?

You call a phone number and get one of those maddeningly impersonal phone trees that make all of us want to hang up. You walk into a store and the sales people either ignore you, act like they're angry about something or they know nothing about what you're interested in. You send an email and no one responds or the response is not helpful.

Earlier in my career when I was in the agency business, we did a research project for a client that was desperately seeking some way to differentiate themselves from bigger competitors with stronger national customer service reputations. We uncovered a gem for them. The single best thing they could do to stand out, according to their prospects, was to eliminate their automated phone answering system and move to live operators. The client choose not to listen to the research. Why?

Because the phone system, despite it being the most intense customer contact tool they had, was not considered "marketing." The phone system and everything to do with it was part of "operations." It was cheaper NOT to have live operators. It was also insane marketing.

The best ads, web sites, promotions, direct marketing and PR can all be undone by one knucklehead on the phone or in the store. Conversely, mediocre traditional marketing can be overcome with great personal service. Word-of-mouth is the best advertising. And the best way to generate it is with incredible personal one-to-one service.

The smartest marketers realize that and they make sure that the marketing team is either in charge of or deeply involved with all decisions related to any type of customer contact. It's marketing insanity to consider your customer contact people and systems "operations." Your people can and should be the most important marketing tool your company has. If you're not thinking this way, it's time to start.

All your customer contact people should be Brand Ambassadors, capable of preaching the marketing gospel of your brand to anyone they come into contact with. It's not that hard. It only takes the right kind of recruiting (are you listening HR?) and the right kind of ongoing training, reward and retention system. For models, look at companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Nordstrom's.

Is it smarter to spend more of your budget on more marketing stuff? Or is it smarter to spend more of your budget training (and then retaining) your customer contact people to be the best brand ambassadors they can be?

Olympic TV Ads: The Gold Medals and the Insanity Awards

2008-08-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you've been spending quite a bit of time watching the Beijing Olympics, from the incredible opening ceremony to Michael Phelps amazing eight gold medals to Dana Torres (at 41) competing with swimmers half her age to the Dream Team to the Chinese gymnasts (some of those girls were definitely under age!) to the lightening fast Usain Bolt from Jamaica. All this Olympic wonderfulness is brought to us courtesy of those wealthy companies with enough money to run their TV ads during the games. And since my last blog was about the importance of brilliance if you're going to invest in TV ads, I thought it might be fun to take a few minutes to assess some of those ads we've all been watching during the games.

Gold Medal Winners

Audi: They illustrate their "Progress is Beautiful" theme in a visually compelling way by transfixing us on a living room as it evolves and changes and grows more beautiful over the years. The final touch that makes the ad brilliant is the pan to the driveway where a Mercedes "progresses" into a new Audi A4.
Nationwide: Their "Accident Forgiveness" message is cleverly reinforced by showing an older couple who are on the wrong end of a parking lot mishap being VERY unforgiving to the poor young guy who accidentally and gently side-swipes their old car. The old lady beats the snot out of the guy with her purse while her husband eggs her on. "Hit him in the head, Rose." Too funny. However, I have to give Nationwide serious style point deductions for over-running this one spot. Way too much of a good thing. Especially considering the core idea of this ad lends itself to so many other situations.
Budweiser: They've been running lots of different spots but only one really stands out. The Dalmation training the rejected Clydesdale so he can earn a spot on the team next year. The Rocky theme music is used perfectly and the payoff is great. Fantastically clever way to put their tried and true brand icons to work and generate a major warm & fuzzy feeling for the brand.

Silver Medal Winners

Target: Catchy spot with two college roommates decorating their dorm room with stuff bought at Target. Cool music and both girls dance great. Impossible to not watch. Fun and the back-to-school timing of the Olympics is perfect for the message.
VISA: Their understated but very elegant "Go World" spots do a great job of capturing the emotional specialness that is the Olympics. They also have done a number of spots timed exactly to the events of that Olympic day. The timeliness makes the spots all the more compelling.
Chevy/GM: Like Bud, they've been running lots of ads and most are very mediocre and easily forgettable. However, one truly stands out. It's called "Progress" and it illustrates the evolution of a gas station (and the Chevy cars and trucks that use it) in a pristine mountain setting. The spot ends where it starts - with no gas station and just the pristine setting. The reason? Chevy is developing a car for the future called the Volt that won't need gas. More ads like this and GM might not be in such trouble.
GE: I found three of their ads memorable and compelling. The first was the "eco-imagination" ad that focused on GE's jet engines using amazing imagery of island birds, with the cute trick of having them lined up runway style waiting for a parade of baby sea turtles to cross on their way to the ocean. The next two both had to do with GE's healthcare products. One was a wonderful little love story between a young handsome Chinese street vendor and the pretty intern. The second was another nice story featuring an Indian doctor delivering care to a remote village thanks to GE products.

The Insanity Award Winners (So Bad That Someone Needs to Lose Their Job)

Lenovo: A series of spots that are utterly unrelated to their product. The one that is the most interesting to watch features hundreds of sumo wrestlers coming together in the street, assuming the shape of a plane, picking up speed as they march down the street and then taking off. Every time I see it, I'm thinking "what airline is this for" and then there's some inane Lenovo message at the end that I still haven't heard or understood.
Subway: A promotion spot for their Scrabble game that shows people getting so excited that they spill their soft drinks on everyone else at the restaurant. Yeah. Right. How dumb is this? Nothing fun about this. Just stupid.

The Mediocrity Awards

There are lots of other Olympic advertisers who are spending seriously big bucks to get noticed and who are running ads that are plain vanilla - not awful but definitely not brilliant. Just so middle of the road that it's sad. It's a shame that all these smart companies couldn't do better. Here's my list: McDonald's, J&J, AT&T, Nissan, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, VW, ExxonMobil, Home Depot, United and Hilton.

Brilliant athletic performance like we get to see during the Olympics ought to be supported by brilliant advertising performance, too.

Brilliance: The Only TV Advertising Strategy That Makes Sense

2008-08-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've been in the advertising and marketing communications profession my entire adult life, so I should be more attuned than your average joe to the ads that are running on TV these days. So how come I have such a hard time remembering even one or two TV ads (any ads!) that I saw on the tube last night? I'm not alone in this. I often ask people two questions to see how much impact the latest crop of TV spots are having on them: 1) did you watch any TV last night? and 2) if so, can you recall any of the ads (just one) that you saw? Most people CAN'T RECALL EVEN ONE AD!! Yikes.

We all know why this is happening. Viewing options have exploded. Zapping commercials is easier than ever. And, let's be honest, the ads are usually either not personally relevant (so why pay attention?) or they are just plain uninteresting, boring or too obtuse to make their point in a memorable way.

If you're an advertiser spending the big bucks on a national TV schedule, this means you have three choices: 1) spend your marketing money some other way, 2) pony up enough bucks so that your media frequency is high enough that you can pound your mediocre TV ads into our brains (who other than the Pharma companies have this kind of money today?) or 3) put on your big boy pants and demand that your marketing and advertising team create nothing short of BRILLIANT TV ads before you commit to a TV-driven national media plan.

Brilliant TV ads are uncommon for a reason. Even the best and brightest advertising pros in the world typically only have a FEW examples of true brilliance in their portfolios. Why is that? Brilliant TV ads require insightful innovative strategies (rare) executed by creative people who are capable of developing BIG IDEAS (even rarer), a client who is capable of recognizing a potentially brilliant idea and has the guts to go for it without researching it to death and watering it down (rarer still), AND exceptional production (casting, direction, editing, etc) to bring it to life (also rare). The odds are not good. 99% of the time, all of this doesn't happen and we get what we have today: communication mediocrity that is wasting a huge amount of money.

So, is it marketing insanity to shot for TV brilliance? Maybe. But when it does happen, you will have created something with magical marketing power. Brilliant TV ads not only work now, they work FOREVER. People remember brilliance for the rest of their lives. What kind of marketing ROI is that? Off the charts!

If you're going to do TV, in today's media world you've got to go for BRILLIANCE unless you're Pharma rich and can afford to pound it out. Be aware of what it takes and how hard it is to achieve. Hire the best. Listen to what they say. Hold them accountable. And set the bar high. Let them know only BRILLIANCE will make you happy.

All Those Unmanaged Web Sites Out There

2008-08-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

Is there anyone in business today who disagrees that having a vibrant appealing web site is now an absolute "Must Have"?

It's the first place a potential prospect or employee or strategic business partner goes to learn about a company. It's the first place they go to evaluate you versus your competition. Remember that old saying "You only have one chance to make a good first impression"? Well, today, that first impression is made by your web site. In fact, today, I'd argue that it's your web presence OVERALL and not just your web site that is making that critical first impression. Your company is being googled and whatever shows up on that first page of a google search represents your company in today's digital interconnected universe.

When is the last time you googled your own company or brand? Try it. Be a secret shopper for an afternoon and pretend you know next to nothing about your company and/or brand. Google it. Do you like what you see? Do you see things that you'd like to change and improve? Is your SEM and SEO what it should be?

Now, here's the $64,000 question....do you have anyone in your organization whose primary job is to manage the internet presence of your company and/or brand? If not, WHY NOY? How easy is it for you to make changes to your web site and actively manage your web presence? Companies and their senior executives generally get all hot and bothered about building or rebuilding a web site and then they check it off the "to do list" and move on to the next project. That's insanity. Whenever I revisit a web site and see that it is exactly the way it was the last time I looked, I conclude two things: 1)no one is paying attention and 2) this company doesn't get it. They are not a sophisticated marketing communicator and probably not a very well run business. In some cases these are probably erroneous perceptions, but perception is reality. The point is that if you, as a senior marketing or corporate executive, are ignoring your web presence or attending to it only periodically, you are ignoring a critically vital aspect of your company.

Your web presence is NOT a project or a part-time job. It is a strategically vital dynamic communication platform that is probably more important than every other communication tool in your marketing arsenal. It merits full time attention . It is never "DONE". It is a work in progress that should be evaluated, measured and managed every single day.

If your company is not paying enough attention to its web presence, shame on you. Start! It's marketing insanity not to.

How's Your Company's Marketing IQ?

2008-07-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

The economy really sucks. Stock prices are way down. Fuel prices are way up. And this guy Obama looks like he's going to be our next President. CEOs are scared. Their personal portfolios are suffering. The Board is antsy. Revenues and profits are down. What's a CEO to do? Why, fire people, of course, and cut costs like crazy. Here's a typical CEO thought bubble "The future be damned. I've got to save myself NOW." Here's a novel idea that rarely seems to occur to our titans of industry: cut costs somewhere OTHER THAN marketing. Rather than marketing being the first department to take the hit, the sagest executives should view marketing as the last place they want to cut.

Too many supposedly savvy CEOs fall prey to the same disease when times are tough. It's called Slashitis. Its symptoms are a panicky need to slice costs right NOW in order to preserve: 1) company EBITDA and 2) the CEO's own personal continued employment (hate to see those big paychecks stop showing up in the bank account). In many companies, a good dose of cost-cutting is often good medicine. It's easier for an organization to get fat and complacent when things are going well. Tough times force companies to take a hard look at their cost structure and make "adjustments" that are often overdue. It's business Darwinism - mutate or become extinct. It's survival of the fittest.

But too often, the marketing department and its budgets are wrongly targeted for the most drastic cuts. Generally, a cutback in marketing doesn't hurt you today or even tomorrow. Just like it takes time for marketing to work. It takes time for the lack of marketing to hurt. If your company has a well-managed marketing department, your marketing investment (notice the word investment) should be laying the foundation for future success and prosperity. Marketing's mission is to build brand preference, create a predisposition to buy and generate prospects for the sales team. All are absolutely core tasks in any well run company. Under what economic conditions (short of imminent collapse of the entire enterprise) does it ever make sense to NOT be doing these things?

If marketing is viewed as only a cost (not an investment) then it is far easier and far more justifiable to cut its budgets and its people. Marketing should never be just a cost. If it's viewed that way, it's for two reasons. Either the CMO has done a poor job of developing marketing metrics that document the effectiveness of the company's marketing programs OR the CEO is simply out-to-lunch when it comes to understanding how imperative marketing is to a healthy well-run business.

This later statement may seem extreme, but I have seen many companies where the CEO is literally clueless about marketing. You've seen these companies, too. Here are seven deadly signs of a company (and a CEO) with low Marketing IQ.

A history of non-marketing executives in the CMO job. If the CMO role is routinely being filled by a sales exec or an operations exec or (heaven help it) a finance exec, you know this is likely to be a company with low Marketing IQ.
A history of no one at all in the CMO role. Duh.
A lack of even the most basic marketing metrics. What are they measuring? If they're not measuring it, you know no one is really managing it. Another sure sign of low Marketing IQ.
A marketing staff that has no idea how to set objectives, develop plans and measure progress. If everyone is focussed on a marketing task or two, but no one can define overall objectives or show you an overall plan, this is another sign of low Marketing IQ.
A total DIY marketing mentality. If everything has always been done "in house" you better look out. Another sign of low Marketing IQ.
No customer or product research. This is like trying to drive a car blindfolded. No information is another sign of low Marketing IQ.
Dull middle-of-the-road boring totally forgettable marketing communication materials. "Safe" is the riskiest marketing approach of all. If the company is not doing anything that stands out, it's another sure sign of low Marketing IQ.

I hope your company is different and shows none of these signs. I hope you've got a marketing savvy CEO with a high Marketing IQ who's hired a strong CMO. I hope that this rotten economy is not causing your company to abandon marketing in the interest of short term profit. If not, my advice is to polish up that resume because you're on a losing team.