Things That Make You Go Hmmm....

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.

B2B Technology Marketing Blunders That Bug Me

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.

Brand Building - How the Little Things Add Up.

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:

1. 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.
2. Everything Matters:  More on this principle in a minute.
3. Surprise and Delight:  Exceeding expectations.  It gets harder and harder to do, but somehow Starbucks keeps managing.
4. Embrace Resistance:  Listen and learn from the anti-Starbucks people.
5. 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.