Can Anyone Explain These Crazy Things?

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.

Why Do Fashion Ads All Look Alike?

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.