Marketing Guy 2.0

You Talking To Me?

2009-06-16T20:23:00.004-04:00

The hundreds of millions of computer users who visit websites every day do so through a web browser. Since the first publicly released browser, Mosaic, in 1991, there have been a few contenders and many also-rans. Browsers have improved and certainly gotten more features.

The current market leader is still Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but it has been losing share to its chief rival Firefox. These days all browsers are free for the downloading, but do we need another one? How often have you awoken in the middle of the night, worried that your browser may be suboptimal? Google seems to think so and last year launched its Chrome browser.

Google’s marketing support for Chrome has consisted primarily of quirky short videos on a channel of its popular YouTube portal. Google has extended its advertising to independent properties such as LinkedIn and plans to run ads on TV (via its own AdWords system, of course).

These ads, which can resemble mini film festivals, finesse the venerable debate about features versus benefits by ignoring both. This is a campaign targeting early adapters. The message is neither emotional nor rational but, simply tries to associate coolness with the product. These short bursts of creativity evoke the feeling of an independent film competition. If viewers already understand and care about browser issues they may get it; if not it’s interesting eye candy. This if fine if appealing to a niche, but browsers are mass market products.

To date, Chrome remains a footnote. According to data compiled by Statcounter Chrome has a market share of about 1.5%. Like many Google products, it may be forever in Beta (never formally released). The game is still early and there is no shortage of budding filmmakers with edgy ideas.

Advances in computer browsers may be secondary to the main browser war - on the phone - where most of the world will be getting its Internet. Google also has an offering here - the Android browser.

Android’s YouTube promotion is classic technology messaging - watch my benefits or sometimes features or sometimes the engineers who develop Android. Nothing artsy here. This is a market strategically important to Google.

Do you need a new computer browser? Tough to tell based on Google’s marketing, but you might find Chrome’s half minute spot diverting.

This Blog Has Moved

2009-05-20T15:04:00.002-04:00

This blog, Marketing Guy 2.0 has moved to a new home, blog.threshold-group.com. Please visit.

Running on Water or Just All Wet?

2009-05-08T21:36:00.016-04:00

Sports shoe and apparel maker Puma has been making footware since 1924. Olympic champions from Jesse Owens in 1936 to Usain Bolt in 2008 have worn its running shoes while setting world records. Yet in the race for market share, it barely wins the bronze in shoes and finishes without a medal in apparel.

What to do when competing in a crowded category during a worldwide recession? I could have imagined many initiatives from channel development to grass roots social networking to a basketball connection with a prominent amateur (think 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.).

How about joining with a number of mostly money losing companies such as Volvo in a round the world sailing competition. Apparently golf tournaments are not elitist enough. And the image portrayed in much of Puma's communication is closer to urban street kid.

In each port its racing yacht visits, it will assemble a modular performance space/nightclub/bar with built in gear store called Puma City. Puma City even has its own Facebook page. At a recent reception there, everyone seemed to be having a good time. Yet no one seemed to be patronizing the store.

Puma does make deck shoes and foul weather jackets, but their sales contribute negligibly to overall revenue. The race has eleven ports of call, only one of which is in North America, namely Boston. It’s tough to see how this will develop the market.

The race is being supported by mixed media ranging from subway placards and traditional PR in Boston to a suite of social media including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs. So far, it seems not to have a lot of traction or the internal logic of Puma’s running events and sports clinics.

Is this yet another case of let’s spend the stockholders' money on what someone in management thinks might be fun or has a suppressed desire to try? Did someone in corporate marketing read Two Years Before The Mast? Who needs ROI, when you've built the meanest looking racing yacht of the bunch?

Preserve Us From The Uncool

2009-04-19T12:37:00.020-04:00

Twitter, the once esoteric microblogging utility has "crossed the chasm." It is now popular, if not yet mainstream.

Consider:

In case you missed it, last Friday, 17 April 2009, was "Twitter Day" on Oprah. And Oprah has shown she can move markets, if not mountains. Not only is she on Twitter, but at least for Twitter Day was tweeting live on her show. Oprah herself has in a few days gone from a standing start to over 300 thousand followers. If you want the current stats on the followers, visit her Twitter page and see the block in the upper right corner.

Actor Ashton Kutcher became the first to amass a million followers on Twitter. This was not spontaneous. Rather it was the result of well orchestrated marketing campaign, including — you guessed it — Twitter.

Many radio and TV shows accept or even solicit listener input via Twitter, while businesses and organizations are actively playing with it.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, one Twitter account dominated all others. As you may have guessed this was Barack Obama’s. His campaign understood and applied social media better than any competing candidate. He currently has about 887 thousand followers.

In these depressed times, meteoric success like Twitter's cheers me up - all the more so, because it was so improbable. Who’d a thunk it? Initially the experience of most Twitter users, and I include myself, was not love at first Tweet. Gradually, we found ways of making this lightweight utility pretty darn useful. Each of us did this in different ways with different constituencies.

All is, however, not well in the Twittersphere. It is very likely that increased traffic will strain Twitter’s servers. There will be more temporary interruptions in service just as we had come to depend on Twitter.

Among certain quarters, the objections are more profound and profoundly less rational. That is, by becoming popular, Twitter will loose the cachet it had by being esoteric, counterintuitive, or to many just plain weird. As in one of Yogi’s bon mot "it’s so crowded nobody goes there."

PR maven and Twitter user Steve Rubel posits the decline of Twitter because the geeks, who were its first patrons, will desert it for the next cool thing.
Technology analyst Jeremiah Owyang, expects a backlash as Twitter approaches mainstream.
While PC Magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff laments that “Oprah and Ashton will destroy Twitter."

I don't think so. Email may be uncool, but it's not going away anytime soon. Most of those who joined Twitter only because of Oprah may drop out, unless she starts Tweeting messages relevant to them. Those who find it useful will stay, no matter how they first got there.

Social Networking Or Social Notworking?

2009-04-16T15:35:00.010-04:00

At a recent charity breakfast, the topic turned to social media such as Facebook and Twitter. My table mates were intelligent and accomplished people in a variety of careers. Their consensus was that they didn't get it and weren't sure they wanted to. They assumed that these had nothing to offer their professional or personal lives.

Here is my take on why, whatever your cause or concern, you might want to consider using social media.

Social Media - What's In It For Me

You Call This Service?

2009-03-25T21:47:00.006-04:00

Business Week's 2009 Customer Service Issue (2/19/09) names Amazon.com as the customer service champ of the year.

I’m a customer of Amazon and buy a couple of times a month through them. Still, they don’t come to mind when I hear the term "customer service." Theirs is a robotic business in which the delivery is, as much as they can make it, untouched by human hands or voices.

Is this yet another case of "Less Is More." Does it illustrate the power of invisibility? Or is it yet another case of radically reduced expectations?

Unlike a Nordstrom, LLBean, a good garage, favorite coffee shop, or the Apple store, there is no immediate experience of being served let alone well served.

"Service" for Amazon is designing processes, which are both robust and comfortable for the customer. The goal is to create reliability and reduce cost there by delivering superior value. It also teaches shoppers and changes their behavior such that both their expectations and demands are different.

An extended definition of service in Amazon's world might contain components such as:

Finding products – Here Amazon excels. Why don’t libraries allow you to find something so easily instead of merely automating the old fashioned card catalog?
Shipping – The availability of free shipping on many products could be thought of as part of the service. This is fine, yet arrival time is unpredictable.
Recommendations – The knowledgeable store clerk is increasingly rare. Amazon does make suggestions on its home page. This seems to be based on my prior searches and misses the mark by a wide margin. Its customer reviews, which are a form of social networking, can be helpful. They are a feature not found when shopping in a physical store. Indeed the potential for Amazon customers to form community offers the intriguing potential for them to transform the shopping process.
Returns – Yes you can make them, but Amazon makes you hunt and click to find out how. The return policy is an adequate standard 30 days subject to conditions. Amazon does not facilitate this, presumably by design. It pales when compared to merchants, who guarantee satisfaction by taking returns, period.
Conversation – you can exchange messages by email, chat and even phone by entering your number in a form and requesting a call back. If the shopping process is a way of connecting with people, I can recommend a great local bookstore.

Since you’re reading a blog, you’ve probably shopped at Amazon and can decide for yourself whether they are service champs. Perhaps a more significant award is that their sales continue to grow in a very poor economy. Amazon has been continuously improving its process to deliver a vast array of goods at competitive prices. Service Champ or not, its nice that so much of what we need is a click away.

Marley Brew

2009-03-18T09:21:00.010-04:00

First Music News reported that the estate of reggae singer and song writer Bob Marley may license his name and image to a range of products including snowboards, hotels, coffee, headphones, and beer. This is in part a defensive strategy to capture revenue from unlicensed use of his name or image, but is this good marketing?

Marley's music remains popular 28 years after his death. A visit to the iTune store, shows that 16 of his tunes have a popularity rating of 7 bars or more. Start searching on iTunes, YouTube, or even Google for "bob" and “bob marley" is the first suggestion. His YouTube videos such as Buffalo Soldier and No Woman No Cry have been viewed millions of times. This is brand equity.

Marley and the Marley brand are known for music and associated with Rastafarianism, Jamaica, and cannabis. He has no relation with any of the product categories he may be endorsing from the grave. Just as, say, Tiger Woods has no logical relation to the cars, watches, and consulting firms he endorses. Marley Beer looks like an extreme case of brand extension and brand extensions are often a bad idea.

There could be McDonalds headphones, Ford coffee, Apple snowboards, etc. There aren’t. These, and most other companies are very cautious about what their brands mean and what businesses they compete in. If Procter & Gamble had a new way to clean something, it would very likely launch this as a distinct brand rather than as an extension of an existing brand. Similarly, Coca Cola is in the juice and water businesses, but not under the Coca Cola brand.

Most brand extensions disappoint. They risk diluting the position of the core brand and the extensions seldom thrive. Even multi-business wizard Richard Branson has had indifferent success with his derivative brands such as Virgin Mobile and Virgin Money.

Conventional marketing wisdom is not always right. Unlike classic brand extension, no investment or market risk would be born by Marley. The brewer or snowboard maker affixes a new label to an existing product and assumes what business risk there is. None of the proposed brand extensions appears to clash with the Marley brand as perhaps a Marley breakfast cereal or motor oil might.

I'd recommend they do a deal if they have credible licensees. Excuse me, I have to don my IBM athletic shoes and get the gym.

Just What The World Needs...

2009-02-26T12:32:00.007-05:00

Most probably, the world does not need another video, whatever its content. On the other hand, your website, blog, or Facebook page may. Whatever the product or purpose behind the site, video may be better than text, colors, or static images to communicate emotion and affect.

Of course video can inform and instruct, but it can also convey what customers feel about your product. But if you make industrial solvents (or any other product not likely to be featured on Oprah). Show Customer Success. Whatever your product, customers buy it to solve a problem or obtain a benefit.

For example, your video might include engineers delighted that your ball bearings enabled then to design an engine, which powered a safer airplane. Honda’s Dream The Impossible is a current example.

Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott reports that including video content on a page tends to improve its search ranking on Google, though not on Yahoo or MSN. Moreover his research found that

"videos stand a much better chance than your text pages of being shown on the first results page."

Short form video does not have to be expensive. Some rather rough home videos, or user generated content, UGC, in current jargon, have achieved a substantial audience. If you already have too much to do, spending a few hundred to a few thousand on an experienced videographer is money well spent. If your total budget is $100, then don’t be afraid to get a basic Flip video camera and give it a try. You could also use third party content or make a video from still photos and narration.

Once you have suitable video, upload to video sharing sites such as YouTube, AOL video, Flickr, Vimeo. Video sharing sites also enable you to embed video links in rich text email. Further you can syndicate your video across multiple sharing sites through a service such as Tubemogul.

Have you budget for a director's beret?

An Unstimulating Stimulus

2009-02-16T21:17:00.004-05:00

Congress has passed a Stimulus plan. It is supposed to revive the economy and reduce unemployment by inducing people to buy more than they otherwise would in these lean times. The plan is a mixture of tax cuts and federal spending. Together they will provide more money to many consumers.

To my knowledge no marketers were consulted in assembling the stimulus, yet getting folks to buy is what we do. As a marketing strategy this Stimulus is, at best, incomplete. There are no specific incentives for consumers or businesses to spend their additional funds. Thus some will be saved, some wasted, and the rest spent.

The cumulative effects of the Stimulus related spending, do not seem to have been rigorously modeled. The desired outcome of 3.5 million jobs "saved or created" thus seems quite arbitrary. In this respect the Stimulus resembles many marketing plans we see. That is - wishful thinking.

Interestingly saving 3.5 million jobs at cost of $787 billion is about $ 225 thousand per job. This seems no bargain, even if the Stimulus works as hoped. Considering the lack of specific incentives to increase spending, this seems optimistic.

What would marketers do? Faced with flagging demand, we might:

Have a sale
Change the business or pricing model
Offer incentives - buy 2 get the 3rd free
Provide cross promotions
or premiums
Give warranties or guarantees
Strive to better understand the buying and adoption process and address causes for not buying
Solidify and reinforce the value proposition

There are analogous features, which could be part of a stimulus package.

Sales tax holidays – specifically reimbursement to states, which hold sales tax holidays, for lost revenue.
Targeted tax credits for individuals such as for cars, homes, and investment tax credits for businesses.
Subsidizing mortgage interest rates to boost housing demand and liquidity.

Doubtless, you can formulate your own list. My point is that marketing oriented programs will increase demand more than doling out money and hoping or the best.

The D Word

2009-02-08T10:31:00.002-05:00

By the time establishment economists acknowledged there was a recession, we had, according to their terms, been in one for 9 to 10 months. Nonetheless, not being in a “recession” may have made some people feel better and allow others to lie with a straight face.

For marketers and their customers, a “recession” has little to do with “two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth” or any specific formal definition. The economist’s recession is not the marketer’s and vice versa. It is a perception and more important a feeling.

The same could for the less commonly heard “depression.” Like recession, depression had its origins as a euphemism. Herbert Hoover did not like the term “panic,” which had been used to characterize earlier financial dislocations. That may have been inspired web-smithing and accurate in that panic can hardly be sustained for more than a decade as the Great Depression was.

Use what term you will, customers know what they’re experiencing. The latest (January 2009) employment report shows a loss of 598,000 jobs and that 3,200,000 jobs were lost in the last 12 months.

For most firms, this was not part of their planning assumptions. What marketing messages are we going to say to consumers and firms (including those, which used to employ some of those consumers)? In more general terms, what are we going to do for our markets, which are a lot sicker than we imagined?

Pricing does have to be realistic. Whenever I hear a supplier claim his business is recession proof I wonder how much is delusion and how much dissembling. There may be such businesses, but neither you nor I are in them. Price cutting alone won’t be enough, but be prepared for concessions.

An interesting wrinkle on this are pre-announced price freezes. Professional sports are an example. Demand is down, and not just for personal seat licenses. Demand for this years’ Superbowl tickets weakened such that in the week before the game, ticket brokers were selling some tickets at less than face value.

The response of teams such as the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox, was to announce there will be no price increases for the coming season. The market was clearly not going to support an increase, so they are trying to take credit for doing the obvious.

This is not a bad tactic, but it is not enough. Prediction: professional sports, like most other marketers will have to offer further incentives to maintain their market share. With customers feeling increasingly gloomy, we’ll need to continually reinforce how we are adding value. How do customers feel about your business or brand, such that you will not be the first one to be cut in tough times?

Short Elevator Rides

2009-02-01T12:52:00.002-05:00

A common metaphor, or cliché, is the “elevator pitch.” It seems to mean a compelling story in 30 to 60 seconds, which conveys the essence of your product, service, mission, or goal.

The classic 30 second commercial or one page magazine ad ought to be an elevator pitch. They are forced to be brief, but often fail to engage or communicate. They commonly try to cover too many points, lack focus, and contain much that is inessential or irrelevant. Even worse, they will do all of this without ever getting to the point.

I was thus intrigued, when I chanced upon a short video by artist Matt Shlian. YouTube lists this video as 9 seconds, but we could edit out the static trailing space and it would be 7 or 8 seconds. There is no text, no color, and no audio. The I comes away knowing something of Shilan’s talents and wanting to see more. Fortunately he has other short videos on YouTube. Search on Matt Shilan if interested.

What can you get across in 8 seconds?

It's Back - This Time in 3-D

2009-01-27T21:53:00.004-05:00

Superbowl XLIII is charging down upon us. We are the worst recession since this annual rite of advertising with football obbligato began. Large advertisers are writing off assets, closing facilities, firing thousands, and reporting record losses. This has caused panic - and panicking executives are even more likely to do the familiar, including the familiar, which has never been shown to work.

In particular, major advertisers have agreed to pay up to $3 million for 30 seconds of air time during the game. Of course with production, not to mention the expense of senior staff “needing” to attend the game, the total cost can be substantially higher. So we’re starting to talk about real money for a marketing expense, whose value remains to be demonstrated. Rather than worrying about the niceties of ROI, PepsiCo and DreamWorks, will try to make their Superbowl ads more memorable, by presenting them in 3-D.

Those of us old enough to remember an earlier generation of 3-D movies and comic books also remember having to wear cardboard glasses, whose right and left lenses were of different colors. The movies tended to be horror movies and westerns, in which the monster or villain, though thought dead, somehow survived to appear in a sequel.

So much for progress, the funky cardboard glasses are back. No glasses - no 3-D. Pepsi is using its considerable retail distribution to try to get 125 million pairs available to the viewing public by game day glasses. The Wall St. Journal(1/23/09, B8) reports that the glasses alone will cost about $7 million. To PepsiCo’s and DreamWorks’ credit they have gotten Intel to pay this.

What Intel gets for this another remains to be seen, but kudos to the deal makers at Pepsi. This challenge has made the commercials themselves news and DreamWorks is even advertising the commercials. Dreamworks new 3-D feature Monsters and Aliens is a major product push. Thus the game gets prime real estate on its animation site (warning - visiting this link will shift your browser to full screen).

In case you didn’t find the glasses at your local supermarket, you can get some by calling Pepsi at 1-800-646-2904.Curiously, Pepsi does not invite consumers to order online. There was no promotion of the event either during the on-hold recording (background music) or when I spoke to an attendant, who indifferently took my shipping information. The promotion is not featured on Pepsi’s or Intel’s web sites.

What does this have to do with selling SoBe Lifewater or microprocessors? Perhaps this would be clearer seen through a pair of 3-D glasses.

Where's My Cookie?

2009-01-16T11:07:00.004-05:00

Marketing should give customers something. In retail, direct mail, print, or the venerable 30 second spot, we try to show what our product does and what’s in it for the customer. Our communication and programs associate our brand with a customer goal, sometimes called a "cookie." 1 Depending on customer needs, a cookie could be information such as a product description, prices, free samples, the ability to do or buy something here and now, etc. We don’t deliberately challenge readers or viewers to work long and hard to figure out where the good stuff is. Once we’ve understand which cookie customers want, lift notes, end aisle displays, and headlines take them there.

There are some notable exceptions. If you’ve ever stayed at a Las Vegas casino hotel, you have probably had the frustrating experience of having to navigate acres of gaming tables on route to your room.

That’s Vegas. In the real world we don’t deliberately frustrate customers. What about the virtual world? After we manage to get prospects to our web site can they find their cookie? This is a four part problem:

Finding the site
Finding the relevant page
Finding the relevant content on the page
Being able to get to the next step by clicking, calling, or going somewhere

Trying to negotiate many sites feels far too often like being trapped in a labyrinth. The bounce rates on many landing pages, show that visitors get frustrated, fed up, and leave.

Far too many web sites are more concerned with design than usability. In post mortem interviews within companies having dysfunctional sites (some of which were “award winning”) we often find no consensus on what the site was supposed to do. In some cases it seems the cookies are missing altogether. Where do you hide your cookies?

1) I am indebted to Nadia Direkova of Razorfish for this metaphor.

Forecasting Season

2009-01-07T11:38:00.002-05:00

Along with post-holiday sales and carcasses of Christmas trees on the curb, this is the season of forecasts. Pundits, gurus and mavens emerge from their dens to favor the rest of us with insights about the next big thing or the soon no longer to be big thing. As with forecasts of stock markets and fashion trends this can be risky and tough to do. Forecasting does have advantages. Comedian Jay Leno summarized these when he assumed his long running late night show:

There’s no heavy lifting and nobody tells me to comeback and fix the jokes, which weren’t funny last night...

As marketers we are often asked to predict. How do we do it? Mostly badly. Do we have an alternative? I suggest following the advice of the late Peter Drucker and "predict the future, which is already happening" rather than speculate or paying others to speculate on your behalf.

What do we already know about 2009?

Consumer sentiment is negative
Real spending will decline
Commercial and consumer credit will decrease
More ad spending will be allocated to measurable media than broadcast
Your competitors will launch fewer new products
Promotional budgets will decline
You will have fewer marketing staff

For your own market and business you can extend this list and probably provide some relative quantification. This approach will save significant management and staff time. More important, it will let you focus on telling customers why your product or service is what they need even in a down economy.

Nobody gets Twitter

2008-12-30T17:58:00.004-05:00

"Nobody gets Twitter." This was the opinion of Evan Williams, Twitter cofounder and chairman. during an interview in December 2008.

He confirmed what is apparent to many of us and true for most of us - the value of Twitter is not self-evident. With use you start to get the hang of it and at some point the light bulb goes on. His observation is not restricted to Twitter or social media or even technology, though tech examples seem particularly easy to find.

First time users of word processors and spread sheets not to mention such “time savers” as content management systems are usually thwarted by their first attempts to use these technologies. “Easy to use” is easy to say. The same applies to myriads of products from digital video recorders to kitchen appliances.

I once did some field research for a maker of high end appliances. My in home investigations showed customers struggled mightily just to set them up. The manufacturer responded by including an instructional video. The video proved to be so unhelpful, that it increased the return rate. Apparently it convinced customers that the product was too difficult for home use.

Even the fabled iPhone is sufficiently non-intuitive that Apple sells supplemental training. Indeed there is a healthy market on how to use iPhone books – a search Amazon.com’s book section for “ iPhone” returns 1,613 results.

It’s not just the products. Suppliers compound the problem with opaque instruction manuals (if any at all); unsupportive product support (what easier expense to cut in tough times); and compounds these with marketing communications, which fail to communicate.

Making stuff, whether on line systems or garden tools, easier to figure out isn’t easy. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. If I were, helping customers, readers, or partners get it might be one.

The $0 Gift Card

2008-12-16T21:53:00.003-05:00

A-list blogger Chris Brogan in is involved in a controversy.

Unlike his usual commentary on marketing and media, Chris blogged about shopping at Kmart. On the shopping trip, he used a $500 gift card provided by Izea, a marketing agency retained by Kmart.

Chris began his post by stating that it was sponsored by Izea, though it was not clear that the sponsorship was his getting the $500 card.

Sponsored posts aren’t new. For example an influential blogger may be given a computer or appliance to review. Many journalists would hold this compromises independence and so decline gifts or any sort. Most bloggers, on the hand, don’t have sponsoring organizations to buy them products. They may advocate a standard of full disclosure of any gifts or compensation.

Chris could have visited Kmart without spending $500 or indeed anything at all (unlike, say, a restaurant review). His post would have been different, but it could have been done with a $0 gift card.

Fish Where The Fish Are

2008-12-15T19:09:00.006-05:00

About seven million iPhones and six million Balckberrys were sold in the third quarter of 2008. To this add a million and a half Android phones and growing “smart phone” (the dumb phone begin the one you currently have) sales from Sangsung and LG and you have a significant number accessing the online world not from the desktop or laptop but the palmtop.

How are you going to attract and retain these potential customers? You might start by trying to access your current online presence – email newsletters, web site, blog etc. – from a handset. Chances are their appearance and usability range from ungainly to unreadable. Your fancy design work just gets in the way.

Some web sites really get mobile. Google.com, for example, apparently senses that you’re coming from a mobile browser and serves a page formatted for a phone. This is the exception. A simpler, though workable, approach is to have a mobile presence with a different URL.

A common practice is to use the subdomain name m. For example,
m.cnn.com or m.flickr.com take you to versions of the parent site, which are much more readable on very small screen. Alternatively, some firms have created sibling web sites with the new top level domain .mobi. Working examples include time.mobi, msn.mobi, fox.mobi, hertz.mobi and zagat.mobi. Other attempts such as businessweek.mobi were less readable on my iPhone as well as having some problematic links.

For sites requiring more interactivity, special client software may be needed. For example, the full functionally of Twitter is not available through m.twitter.com, though I suspect it could be. Instead you need special client applications such as Twiterfon and Twitterberry.

What’s an over worked marketer to do? Until you can get a site designed for mobile The exercise of distilling your message, format, and content for a simplified handheld site might be just what makes your brand or products standout from the usual suspects.

When The Client Doesn’t Get It

2008-12-01T20:49:00.005-05:00

Twitter, is a light weight online service. It is limited, like text messaging, to messages of 140 characters (called Twitters or Tweets). It has the potential to afford rapid two way messaging either broadcast or personalized conversations among customers and partners.

In two years Twitter has grown from nothing to an estimated six million registered users. Other estimates are half of that. Whatever the actual number, it has moved beyond technologists and early adopters and is mentioned in mainstream publications such ad Fortune, Business Week and the Wall St. Journal. Twitter has become a channel in its own right.

The service is free to both individual and corporate users and can be accessed through the Web, mobile phones, or computer software. The potential is there to inform, intervene, monitor and connect with far less overhead and start up costs than email, web, blogging, Facebook, or other social marketing tactics. Its rapid response and low bandwidth make among the ost immediate and compelling of a new crop of mobile applications.

Yet when I suggest Twitter to marketers, who are not already users, their responses range from indifference to rejection. They are seldom even interested in trying it. Why is this?
They ask for clarification - so, what is it? And that’s the problem. It has been described as:

Light weight social networking
Micro-blogging
Instant messaging
Many to many texting

Huh?

Visiting Twitters home page and viewing the torrent of passing traffic isn’t compelling. Twitter messages, they can indeed seem like self absorbed babbling.

It doesn’t fit well in any established category
It seems at least as much abused as well used
It demands creativity and a degree of innovation from its users. Success will require experimentation and evaluation
It has the danger to degenerate into online drivel
Good business cases and “best practices” are just starting to emerge

Twitter’s business model has yet to be developed. It has yet to figure out how to make money. At present, that’s more Twitter’s problem than yours; but you don’t want to invest thought an effort into a medium if it is not like to stay around.

Our old friend ROI is hard to measure. Actually the investment in a Twitter campaign or marketing program can be trivial - no money and Much less effort than say a blogging or Facebook strategy. However it will take some thought, time, and inspiration. It you start a Twitter conversation, be prepared to maintain it.

Twitter is, of course, just one of many media. It has been used successfully by Barack Obama, but less so by Hillary Clinton, and still less by John McCain (based on followers and traffic). Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts use Twitter; Peets Coffee, Folgers, Maxwell House and many others in the category appear not to. Dell and HP use it; Lenovo, Toshiba, and Sony don’t.

Among marketers, technologists, and some media cognoscenti Twitter is cool. This of course is no reason to use it.

What to do:

See if your firm, industry, products or issues are actively discussed on Twitter by searching at search.twitter.com.

Track and follow discussions of those influential in your industry.
Respond, when you have something to contribute.

Even Twitter fans admit it may take some getting used to. It looks quite different after using it for a week or two.

Are a significant number of your customers, or those who might influence your customers using Twitter. If you don’t know, you should to try to.

If they do, Twitter is worth a try. You may gain valuable market insight, test a concept, or launch a guerilla promotion campaign.

Otherwise, you would do better to reach prospects where they are through media they are acquainted with. Leave the cool to someone with venture capital to burn. Even if you’re sure Twitter could be a useful part of the marketing mix, let it go. In the words of the late LL Bean, who left no opinion of Twitter, “Nobody ever won an argument with a customer.”

ROI Is Dead — Long Live ROI

2008-11-12T14:19:00.009-05:00

"Some things that count can't be counted;
some things that can be counted don't count" – attributed to Einstein

MBAs, accountants, financial analysts, and many others have been trained to evaluate activities by their Return on Investment (ROI). This has often been honored but ignored. Particularly in marketing initiatives such as mass media advertising. In this case, the often large expenditure is either accepted of faith or evaluated against questionable criteria such as recall.

The issue of ROI returns when asking questions such as should you mount social media initiatives such as blogs, wikis, or a presence on Twitter. The ROI question was prominent at this mornings Social Media Breakfast. The good folks at HubSpot, have provided a video of the talks.

A broader and I think more appropriate question is what is the value of a social media (or any other program)? This begs two kinds of questions – relating to benefits and costs. Some authorities such as David Scott
Wish to finesse the question entirely. At a recent seminar I attended, he asked “what’s the ROI of putting on your pants?”

I think the question or something like it deserves an answer and you should expect it to be asked.

There are a variety of conventional and emerging ways of tracking traffic, repeat visitors, time visiting, mentions, searches, etc. Of course, it always pays to ask customers how they found you. In aggregate these are more comprehensive than measures of traditional advertising, but not as compelling as measures of direct response advertising.

Costs for new media can and generally be far lower than traditional media. A viral video on YouTube need not and generally should not have the same lavish production values or costs as that for a 30 second prime time spot. The key to mew media success is rapid experimentation with low cost programs. Low cost does not mean free. The person who blogs, follows twitter, maintains your Facebook page, etc. could always be doing something else. Managers will always have to use judgment. Reasonably designed tests of social media should be cheap enough that they approach the Nike test of “just do it”.

Marketer Of The Year

2008-11-11T10:42:00.004-05:00

Marketing publication, Advertising Age, recently chose its 2008 marketer of the year. Finalists included such familiar and prodigious brands as Apple, Nike, and, for its turnaround, Coors. Accomplished as the contestants were, the winner overshadowed them. It grew his brand from obscurity to ubiquitous name recognition in the US and wide recognition globally.

We could dismiss Ad Age’s choice. What cannot be dismissed are the accomplishments of this marketer.

The product rose to category dominance over a dozen competitors, many of which were initially better known and funded.
A self financing MARCOM budget exceeding half a billion dollars
A dominant market share of 53% with November sales exceeding 65 million units.
A devoted group of product fans and evangelists.
A multi-channel affiliate network.
Integrated inbound and outbound marketing campaigns through families of web sites, blogs, text messages, newsletters and email. Online media were matched with massive national and locally targeted TV advertising (this may have appealed to Ad Age). Paid media coverage was dwarfed by news coverage of product development and launch.
Leading in every age category except for those 65 and over.
Mastery of new media, word of mouth and viral marketing as shown by having more than:

One hundred thousand followers on Twitter
150,000 results on Flickr
900,000 results on MySpace
3 million supporters on Facebook
400,000 videos on YouTube
90 million results on Google

This brand is still in the early stages of its life cycle.

If you haven't guessed already, the marketer of the year is Barack Obama

Crunchy Time — Will User Generated Commercials make The Superbowl a Winner?

2008-11-04T09:08:00.004-05:00

The Superbowl does deliver a mass audience. Nielsen estimates that TV audiences for the Superbowl game have been on the order of 90 million per game for the past decade. As in many other cases, size may not be decisive.

As regular readers of this blog may remember, I have a low opinion of advertising on mass events such as the Superbowl. They are expensive and have not been shown to be effective. Their ROI would be small, if their results were measurable at all. It is more reasonable to look at these campaigns as boondoggles. Corporate execs and key clients have a fun weekend at someone else’s expense.

An interesting case is Doritos, one of Frito-Lay’s chip brands. Not only does Doritos want you to consume more of its junk food, it also invites you to make a commercial.

There are already quite a few do it yourself video contests from Apple’s Insomnia Film Festival to freecreditrepost.com lip synch contest. Doritos differentiates its contest by offering the winning commercial to be shown during the 2009 Super Bowl and with a top prize of $ 1 million – not bad for a user generated 30 second spot. A reading of the contest rules shows that Doritos is likely to pay only $ 25,000 and a trip to the game.

Social media introduce another dimension. Their marginal cost of redirected media, including Superbowl ads, can be very small. With user produced ads, Doritos will save a bundle on creative and production costs and generate a lot of customer input. If the winning campaign goes viral in a significant way it will extend reach and frequency beyond those who saw the game and may or may not have seen the commercial.

ROI or not, the Superbowl and the ads which make it possible, will be around for a while. For those advertisers, going viral and employing user generated content should at least allow for an extra point conversion.

Driving Into A Ditch

2008-10-29T13:41:00.003-04:00

Hertz car rental joins Alamo, Enterprise, and National in raising rental by about 10%. Hmmm, we are in a recession, both business and consumer travel are decreasing. The cost of new vehicles of the type bought by rental companies are also falling as Detroit tries to unload its products.

Let's not accuse the (in this case) car rental industry of being overly alert. According to today's Wall St. Journal (10/29/08, p D5) other companies are "...going to wait and see what competitors do and then consider raising rates..."

This could be an opportune time to increase share and loyalty by keeping prices level. Speak to your customers concerns about the economy. Social networking programs would be particularly cost effective here. If your competition wishes to drive into a ditch in tandem, for example, by increasing prices at the wrong time - so much the better.

And The Real Winner Is...

2008-10-26T13:22:00.005-04:00

This November Fourth, the most expensive product launch in history will end.

The campaign has been interesting to practitioners of non-traditional media of all political persuasions. Blogs, webinars, Tweets, ‘zines, established social networks such as Facebook, as well as special purpose online communities have enabled even obscure aspirants to become contenders. For example, new media enhanced and extended the candidacy of Ron Paul. With them, he could mount a boot-strap campaign becoming better known and then raising more funds in an increasing cycle.

There has been a marked difference in effort and effectiveness of employing new media among the candidates. Obama’s campaign has been far more active and effective than McCain’s. This has propelled Obama’s advantage in fund raising and via social-networking increased his online coverage versus that of McCain.

Obama has raised over $600 million and McCain more than $ 350 million[1]. What can you do with such a marketing budget? New media are so effective and efficient, that it would be really hard to spend it in that way. Thus the campaigns are buying huge amounts of airtime. This leads to the ironic result that the real winners of 2008 are old media.

[1] There are a number of other active candidates, such as Ralph Nader. According to Federal Elections Commission data, total amount raised by all other candidates is less than 0.5% of what McCain and Obama have raised.

Going Viral

2008-10-23T15:07:00.004-04:00

As marketers, we usually have pay to say or show something. So we have budgets for advertising, promotion, PR, events, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice, if we could get others to do this for us. Not only would this amplify the reach or our message, it would increase its credibility. Those who spread our message are to some extent recommending us. Here’s where viral marketing comes it.

Viral marketing is not new (what in marketing is?), but new technologies make easier and can increase its impact. In addition to email, we have blogs, social networks, Tweets, and content sharing sites. They have the potential to launch an epidemic, which distributes our content farther and wider than we could, even if we had the budgets we wanted. It may be the latest embodiment of our eternal quest for the free lunch.

In its simplest form this means creating some communication so interesting, irritating, or attention grabbing that people will send it unsolicited and unpaid to friends and colleagues. If each recipient sends to multiple associates, you can get a hypergrowth, which resembles an epidemic hence the term viral.

Perhaps the best single example of a viral medium is YouTube. It is built to make sharing quick, easy, and free. Of course, this guarantees nothing. YouTube has not stated how many videos it hosts. Estimates are on the order of 100 million. If all you do is upload, an audience will probably not come.

Going viral is a long shot. As always, start with content. When creating something, whether for a local 30 second spot, a trade show, or a sales conference think about how it could be used or adapted as a viral communication. Reuse and mashups should be encouraged.

Marketing consultant and author David Meerman Scott cited the case of the Cadbury Gorilla http:// at the recent New Marketing Summit. David relates that Cadbury was able to reuse an existing commercial to the tune of over 3 million views on YouTube. The epidemic didn’t stop there. This video has spawned more than a dozen derivative videos, many of which have been viewed a substantial number of times. So there is a significant echo of the original message.

The video has no call to action – Cadbury can’t tell how many more chocolate bars it sold. The ROI is thus unknown. This could be a problem, but the cost of the program is negligible. In this case it amounts to the effort of monitoring viewership, links and references to the videos and to Cadbury itself.

To see what types of content are watching and more importantly sharing, consult video.google.com/videoranking

Not sure how viral fits your message and strategy or are generally uneasy about video production, you might wish to get started promoting something else. A number of firms are hosting contests. Draft a 30 to 60 second script or an idea on which to improvise and grab your home video camera. We hope to feature your video in an upcoming post.

Gary V

2008-10-16T15:22:00.005-04:00

I had the chance to spend some tome today with that New Media force of nature — Gary Vaynerchuk. For those, who haven’t seen him, Gary is a dynamic and passionate speaker. Witness, for example, his keynote performance at the recent MyWeb 2.0 conference (note: contains some strong language). But there's a key difference between Gary and a number of prominent business speakers — not only can he talk the talk, he has also launched and grown successful businesses and recently published a commendable no nonsense book on enjoying wine.

How does he do it? More important, what can we as marketers do — not to be clones of Gary — to grow our own brands and products?

As he tells it, he grows community. He uses tools such as blogs, Tweeter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, YouTube and SEO/SEM. It’s not the tools per se, but how he uses them. He is online to listen, learn, contribute. This is not just feel good marketing. It’s ROI driven and embraces measurable media such as Google AdWords over conventional pay and pray media buys.

How does this busy entrepreneur spend his time? "I read and respond to blog comments, hang out on social network groups where my customers go, and (at least try to) answer all of my email."

How have you connected with your customers today?

Not Fulfilling

2008-10-06T22:22:00.002-04:00

It usually takes a lot of work to turn a prospect into a first time buyer, let alone a customer. After all of that, why do so many organizations drop the ball at the one yard line and fail to properly fulfill the order?

Cases in point:

In the current (2008) Presidential Campaign, MoveOn.org is soliciting interest by offering free Barack Obama stickers and buttons on various web sites and search advertising. Curiously, especially for the late stages when the campaign is in high gear, the buttons come with the qualification that they will take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive. More curious, is that at the time of this posts, 10 weeks, they still haven’t arrived (If they ever do, we’ll update this posting). Neither the McCain campaign nor the Republican National Committee appear to offer anything for free, so we couldn’t go a comparable test. Clearly non-delivered buttons are not influencing undecided voters.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation, created a lot of interest and buzz, when it announced its initiative to provide cheap portable computers to children in developing countries. Its $100 computer subsequently became its $200 computer, which cost $ 400 in the US, because a buyer had to donate the value of one computer to get the second one for himself. Regardless of the price, a significant number of the computers, were frequently lost, shipped to the wrong address, or simply not delivered. OLPC’s reputation and donations suffered. (They have formally acknowledged that fulfillment is not their competence and are outsourcing this to Amazon.com.)

All of us could add to this list. What gives? From our work with direct mail catalog merchants, we’ve seen that packing, shipping, tracking, taking returns, not to mention managing inventory, are demanding yet unglamorous. When fulfillment works, we seldom reward or even acknowledge it. On my wall calendar, October 22 is unclaimed. Perhaps we can make it National Celebrate Fulfillment Day.

Off-Web Webcast

2008-09-15T13:31:00.003-04:00

When is a webcast not a webcast? Webcasts - whether videos, interactive presentations, or some other form of multimedia - are usually available to anyone with an Internet connection. They are typically “free” as long as the viewer is willing to fill out a registration form. Even though “free”, the challenge is usually to attract an audience, not mention retaining them for the length of the webcast.

Novelist Philip Roth will discuss his latest book, Indignation, in a webcast this week (7 pm, EDT, Tuesday September 16th). In my opinion, Mr. Roth is a considerable talker as well as writer, so this should be worth viewing. Yet you won’t be able to watch from your home or office computer. The event is a virtual book tour, which will take place simultaneously on the books publication date. This web cast will be private and can only be seen in fifty book stores around the country. The online world and virtual book stores, most noticeably amazon.com are not on the tour.

As with, for example, in store parties for the latest release of Harry Potter, this is an attempt to make the real world more interesting than the virtual and substitute the community of a live audience (ironically for a virtual event) for the community of a social network.

Why the Sour Face Gerry?

2008-09-07T22:57:00.004-04:00

Microsoft’s new $300 million campaign will be hard to miss. Don’t watch much TV, the ads will be on the net. You can catch them on web properties of MSN as well as YouTube.

The commercials star Gerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. As such they are newsworthy and get far more exposure than Microsoft has paid for. So far so good, but what is the message, the positioning or even the emotion Microsoft is trying to convey?

As humor, the spot is uneven. Some the dialog such as the parking lot scene where Gerry gushes a bit too reverently about mind melding of Gates’ “Jupiter sized brain” goes nowhere. In contrast to his campaign for American Express, Seinfeld seems a bit out of form.

Microsoft has long been identified with Gates, but the commercials come just as he is leaving active management of the company. Possibly it is an attempt to humanize Microsoft, often referred to by competitors and customers alike as “the evil empire”. The richest man in America is just as cheap as the rest of us, who buy shoes at a mall outlet.

Are you felling better about the Microsoft brand already?

The Fifth P

2008-08-31T16:12:00.002-04:00

Marketing text books write of the the marketing mix of four Ps. These are usually specified as product, price, place, and promotion. A fifth P belongs to this framework - passion. It or its lack often determines marketing success. A vivid though unusual case of this is given in the current movie Man on Wire.

The film chronicles acrobat Philippe Petit as he recruited, planned, organized, and ultimately succeeded at staging an event - walking on a wire between the towers of the World Trade Center.

Most such efforts, like most new products fail. What is so vivid is how Petit overcame the usual list of insurmountable obstacles by infecting the entire team with his own passion and optimism.

This contrasts painfully with the glum feelings and gallows humor we sometimes find around ailing products. Why should a customer want a product, which you or your staff can’t be passionate about?

The Texting of a President 2008

2008-08-25T21:38:00.002-04:00

The title draws from that of a book about political marketing – The Selling of a President 1968. That books author, Joe McGinnis, was upset not just with Richard Nixon (about who you can make your own judgments), but with the notion of candidates as products. Products to be marketed at that.

The candidate as product is no longer novel or controversial. Yet despite the record expenditures and length of this presidential campaign, little interesting marketing has appeared in the 2008 campaign. Enter the pregnant text message.

The Obama Campaign’s tactic of heightening interest in the vice presidential candidate by informing voters of the choice directly by text message is intriguing. It bypassed the established news media and attempts to make a connection directly with voters. The audience who signed up for this message - excluding the small percentage of media types, Republicans, and students of politics - is a potential nucleus of committed fans and product evangelists. They became a bit more involved with the product by being first, though I doubt many were at their phones at 3:00 am when the message came.

Text messaging can be a problematic medium. Spam messages are even more inconvenient on a phone than a computer. They also add injury to insult, because recipients without an unlimited message plan have to pay for the offending messages. The text message section of Obama’s website is a very good example of permission marketing. In a single page, it shows how to sign up for different levels of content from the one time to the occasional to the frequent, an assortment of free ringtones, and a simple one step procedure to unsubscribe.

The Obama text message also emphasizes a difference with John McCain, who notoriously uncomfortable with email. McCainSpace, McCain’s own social networking site is, to my eyes, less usable and engaging. McCain himself seems ill at ease in the welcome video on the home page. In my tests, the site was surprisingly sluggish.

At a dime a message, this campaign may have something for us marketers.

TV or Not TV

2008-06-23T10:53:00.002-04:00

One of our consistent themes has be lack of enthusiasm for television advertising. This is not just the curmudgeon in us. Although TV can be cost effective to reach large numbers of viewers and useful to introduce or support a brand. However, TV campaigns are usually structured so they are difficult to evaluate. The commercials can be expensive to produce and difficult to target to your market.

Traditional ad agencies have not helped and often sacrificed accountability in pursuit of creativity. Senn and Fallon’s interesting but unconvincing apology for ad creativity, Juicing the Orange, continues in the wrong direction. Fallon produced the memorable herding cats Superbowl ad a few years back. Though the production was memorable, viewers couldn’t remember the sponsor or that its business had to do with the ad.

What’s a marketer to do? An intriguing option is provided by online agency, Spot Runner. They deliver three benefits, which make TV at least worth a test – cheap yet professional production, easily targeted media buying, and convenient detailed reporting.

Spot Runner offers extremely low costs through web based automation. A full service ad agency can charge tens or hundreds of thousands for a custom produced TV commercial. With Spot Runner, you choose a generic commercial from a library of several thousand and then customize it for your product or business with your logo, graphics, offer, and a professional voice over. The result looks like the real thing rather than a homemade ready for YouTube spot. This costs all of $500 to $750 depending on the amount of customization. The ad can, and usually should, display trackable information such as a unique phone number, URL, or email address.

Once you have a commercial, where do you run it? Spot Runner has an automated media buying process, which allows targeting as precisely as individual zip codes as well as specific times. The process is roughly similar to creating ads through Google’s AdWords. Spot Runner’s appears easier for the novice TV advertiser. Unlike Google, you can call Spot Runner with questions and problems.

Does this mean that TV should be part of your marketing mix? It does mean that if you have $1500 to $2000 for production and a media buy, you can find out.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

2008-06-17T11:38:00.000-04:00

As marketers we often like to reward prospects. A venerable, if tired, trinket is a T-shirt. Rightly done, the shirt not only pleases but also advertises our brand or promise. More often, it ends up discarded or cleaning rag.

I was reminded of this waste of fabric recently by two lead generation promotions from Sprint and USPS. Both wanted to provide services to provide targeted personalize experiences to help get closer to customers. Part of the incentive for explore their offerings was a T-shirt. One even promised to be organic cotton. Both shirts were ugly. Neither of them fit. How well does that support their marketing campaigns?

Suppose the reply form had asked for size and gender and perhaps other characteristics? Questions now appropriate to provide a better fitting shirt. You’d now know more about your prospects they night now find your incentive worth something.

On demand production of shirts now makes this practical and economical. It could also reinforce an image of satisfying customer’s needs rather than our need to maintain a single bin of extra large shirts.

Meanwhile, anyone want some T-shirts?

Yodeling in Purple

2008-06-11T16:26:00.005-04:00

An advantage of direct mail, still unmatched online, is the ability to grab a customers attention with real stuff, as opposed to information, pictures, sounds, etc. Unlike the virtual world, direct mailers deal with atoms rather than bits. This can work, despite the increased cost, if you choose the right stuff and, of course, test your campaign.

These solid mailings usually get opened unless you're expecting a bomb or your company's mailroom intercepts them. The appeal of getting attention is not lost even on such a web centered company as Yahoo. I was reminded of this recently, when I received an unsolicited small plain brown square cardboard package.

The minimal label did not proclaim its contents - principally a circular purple plastic device perhaps 4" in diameter and 21/2" high. It looked like a large button. Press it and it would play Yahoo's signature yodel sound. The video below shows it in action.

The box also contained a note and small brochure proclaiming the benefits of search engine advertising through Yahoo. These were similar to other mailings I've received from Yahoo.

That's it. Not wishing to irritate my office neighbors or in need of a paper weight, I dumped it in the trash.

Questions left for the reader:

What does this have to do with search engine marketing?
Did the inclusion of the button significantly increase response rates?

Did Yahoo choose this tsatske because they thought prospects would like it or because it was not selling well on Yahoo's company store?

I am not making this up! You can actually buy one of these for only $19.00 plus shipping at the Yahoo company store.

I guess I should have sold mine on ebay.

I Tawt I Thaw A Twitter

2008-06-04T15:11:00.003-04:00

When I first heard of Twitter a year or two ago; its concept, as I understood it at the time, left me unmoved. It seemed to be a service which let you send short messages to anyone who chose to sign up to receive them. Rather than just going to the gym, mowing the lawn, or waiting for a root canal; you could inform at least some part of the world while you were doing so. The messages could be SMS text messages, Instant messaging, or via a web page.

These messages or “twits” differ from email, blogs, or conventional web pages. They are short and generally spontaneous - even in real time. Like so many media, Twitter has evolved other uses and applications. Even if you don’t feel the need to be advised every time a friend takes a coffee break, your organization could use twitter as a light weight way to keep in touch with key audiences. These could be sales, product launches, service announcements, or anything of real time interest. Twitter is only sent to those choose to subscribe (“follow” in Twitter speak) so this is not a spammers medium.

Messages can be no more than 140 characters – little more than fits in a fortune cookie or a Google text ad – so getting to the point is key. Twitter can readily be added to a blog or web page. This enables micro-blogging or very short spontaneous posts. Scroll down this page to see an example of this in the right sidebar.

If you're really having a tough time getting started on your company blog, this just might be the way to go.

How Social Are Your Bookmarks

2008-05-31T16:23:00.007-04:00

The concept of "social bookmarking" probably isn't yet mainstream marketing. I was reminded of this recently when talking to a class of graduate business students. Most of them were unacquainted with the concept and unfamiliar with its leading plaftforms such as del.icio.us, digg, and stumble upon.

With social bookmarking, you can embed links such as this

on your blog or website. It allows visitors to bookmark, tag, comment upon, rate and share your site with a single click. They thus become a very inexpensive (as in free) way to help get your site noticed and increase its search engine rankings. If you want your site noticed add buttons like the one above to your sites.

Lee Lefever provides a clear, concise, and amusing explanation of social bookmarking on his excellent site, commoncontent.com:

Fries With That Book?

2008-05-31T12:24:00.002-04:00

Clients of The Threshold Group and regular readers of this blog, know that we are not big fans of mass media advertising. This is not an aesthetic judgment. Rather it is because that 30 second spot on the local news is difficult to evaluate.

Of course, any marketing campaign in any medium can be problematic to track if we fail to add both tagging and defined goals.

Case in point - MacDonald's campaign to defend its share of lunch and extend its share of breakfast with the launch of “southern style chicken sandwich” and “southern style chicken biscuit for breakfast.” As usual, there is significant mass media support. What’s not usual is a massive distribution of coupons for free sandwiches in purchases form Amazon.com.

Amazon has a broad market in categories such as consumer electronics, fashion goods, home furnishings, watches and CDs/DVDs as well as books. The three packages received from Amazon this week all contained coupons for the sandwiches. Although Amazon has excellent database marketing capabilities, this is not a targeted promotion. There is nothing about our demographics, psychographics, or purchase history to flag us as prime McDonald's prospects, other than that our office is within half a mile of a McDonald's outlet.

Incredibly, the coupons are not coded. There are no barcodes, key codes, or other ways, which would enable McDonald's to at least gage the redemption rate from the “Amazon channel”. More interesting tracking would be to tag coupons by product category, geocode, purchase volume on many other attributes. McDonald's might then, to take a simple example, buy banners on Amazon’s pages for the most successful categories.

Without coding, it can only determine how many of the coupons were ultimately redeemed. Such a measure won’t even tell, if the promotion recruited new customers. Come to think of it though, the coupons make fair bookmarks for the new books from Amazon.

Your Web Site Won An Award. And ...

2008-05-26T16:31:00.003-04:00

Recently, and on more than one occasion, a client has proclaimed that it has an "award winning" web site. Is this a good thing? Should winning a web award be one of your marketing goals? Aside from bragging rights or a bumper sticker, should you care?

The criteria for granting awards seem as obscure as the sites receiving them. Often this winning site has significant problems ranging from low traffic, to lack of focus, to low conversation rates, to poor usability, to being incomprehensible. The result of an award is often instant oblivion.

There is no shortage of web awards or those granting them. A search on Google for this phrase finds 46 million results. After a few pages of browsing the search results, I gave up tallying the unknown organizations, which grant these awards. Can't find an award for your obviously cool site? For the cost of a domain name, you can start your own award granting body.

One of the best known award sites is that of the Webby Awards. Its recipient sites, seem to be highly designed – some would say artistic. Webby lists lots of awards and finalists (the award for not winning an award?) in many categories. What award do you want your site, ad, or campaign to win?

Hollywood seems to care about Oscars - they believe an Academy award will boost attendance. I’ve seen no evidence that having an award winning web site boosts either awareness or sales. When looking for awards forget the trophy. Strive for a site, which increases one of the three Cs – customers, conversions, or cash.

No Time To Add Content To Your Website - Let Your Visitors Do It

2008-05-16T12:29:00.004-04:00

Your company has a web site, but few visitors. You’re hardly alone, but what are you going to do about it?

This is not a post about the finer points of search engine optimization. Rather it’s about one straight forward step you can take to boost traffic. Google and other search engines look for relevant terms a.k.a. key words. More relevant key words help the rank of your web site. If your company sells ball bearings, your site will have a higher rank if it contains lots of information about ball bearings.

How do you credibly add key words to your site? You could, of course, write lots of to the point content about your products, services, and industry. Many high ranking sites do this. It pays, but it can be a lot of work. Recently, one of our clients lamented the modest traffic on his fledgling web site. Still he despaired of adding content, because it would be too much work for his start up company.

There is another way - let your customers do some of it for you. You can do this through easy to add components such as blogs, public wikis, and product reviews. This user generated content is at the heart of Web 2.0. Yes, it does mean you give us a measure of control along with a lot of labor.

You can and should filter offensive content, but this is uncommon. If your product gets an unfavorable review, you’re more likely to learn about in time. Reviews also give insight into what customers like about current products and what enhancements they want. Just let your visitors do the typing.

Too Much Video

2008-05-13T21:19:00.000-04:00

Podcasting – audio programs, played on a website or downloaded to a player such as an iPod – can be an effective way to tell your story. Listening to a 10 to 30 minute podcast is generally easier than plowing through a white paper and the podcast may peak the interest, which makes them want to read your white paper or consider your offerings.

Because of the popularity of portable MP3 players, including many of the newer mobile phones, podcasts can connect with an audience commuting, at the health club, doing chores, and in other situations where TV, the Web, and print do not.

Podcasts are definitely not just for technology companies. Nor do you need technical skills to create them. All you need is a computer, an inexpensive microphone, and some free podcasting software. Once you have created a podcast, you can syndicate it for free through a number of services including iTunes.

Originally podcasts were just audio. The simplicity and portability of sound is one of their key strengths. More recently podcasters have added video. One reason is that video is now cheap. A decent handheld video cameras such as the popular Flip can be had for about $ 150. If that’s too much, you might get by with a $ 30 web cam. Now you too can create limitless amounts of video. But should you?

I am somewhat surprised to find that a few of the podcasts I (used to) subscribe to have changed to videocasts. This change has not been an improvement. True, most of the new portable players have small (mostly 2” or less) screens. They can play video including video podcasts. But too many of the videocasts are just talking heads and shrunken heads at that, when watched on a pocket sized player. Often video subtracts rather than adds value.

Video files are much larger than audio, so videocasts take much longer to download. On the mobile phone or solid state players such as the iPod nano, video also consumes scarce storage space. The viewing experience is often awkward and bloated. If you have important video content, such as demos or product training, by all means show it on your website. Let’s leave the podcasts alone.

Yahoo Says No

2008-05-04T13:46:00.002-04:00

Lust, Greed, Intrigue and high drama worthy of a spy novel. These were all in the courtship of Yahoo by Microsoft. Their dance ended shortly before the alter. This deal generated lots of news coverage and buzz, buy why should you care?

The collapse of this deal leaves Google, perhaps more than ever, the undisputed king of on-line advertising. If you want one source to place pay per click, banner, or web video ads, it’s Google. Yes, you can cobble together on-line ad programs with Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing. However, they don’t have the features, flexibility, analytics, and above all the audience of Google’s AdWords platform. And this doesn’t even include Google’s ad brokerage through its Double Click subsidiary.

So what’s not to like? We use AdWords more than Yahoo or Microsoft, because of its features and because it often yields better conversion and higher ROI. Google also continues to invest in and enhance it ad capabilities more rapidly than its competition.

But campaigns don’t always go well. If you are a small or medium sized business spending a few hundred to a few thousand a month and you have a question, problem, or issue – good luck. Google likes the self service model of support via automated reports, blogs, grudging email, and even more grudging account reps. For clients spending thousands not hundreds of thousands monthly they can be surprisingly unhelpful.

Competition or rather lack of credible competition may be the problem. A Yahoo acquisition, if successful, offered the hope of a rival, which would make Google more responsive and improve the on-line channel for all marketers. In the meantime, we’ll have to search for something else.

We Tube -They Tube - You Tube

2008-04-26T09:48:00.004-04:00

Suppose you make a video at little or no expense and transfer it to a video sharing site such as Peekvid, Ourmedia, Yahoo Video or, of course, YouTube. This video might be crude or in questionable taste. It might only be a long form commercial or shameless plug. So far you’ve got company – lots of it. There are dozens of such sites hosting millions of videos. Let’s stick with YouTube. It has not only the brand recognition but also the audience. Nielsen estimated over 66 million unique visitors in January 2008.

Now the hard part – getting someone other than friends and family to view and respond to your latest media marvel. The double appeal of YouTube is a potentially large audience combined with a low price. On line videos have the potential to become an epidemic as friends email links to friends, who in turn mail to their friends and so fourth.

A now classic case is that of Blendtec and its series of “Will It Blend” videos. For example, the industrial strength blender shows it can, for example, reduce a garden hose or a small appliance to granular residue. The company reports substantially increased site traffic and conversion to sales of its blenders, the least expensive of which is $ 399.95.

The Blendtec videos vividly illustrate the products value while providing amusement and a viral tidbit, easily emailed to a friend. Such cases are also quite rare – the fate of most online videos is instant oblivion. Still, online video is certainly worth a test, as long as you control costs. Two current distinct YouTube campaigns come to mind.

To promote its budget priced Corolla brand, Toyota sponsored a YouTube video contest http://www.youtube.com/sketchies2. This seems ideal for the younger budget oriented market. The contest videos have attracted an audience. The top 10 finalists combined have been viewed about 408 thousand views in the past month.

This is good traffic, but much of it by passes Toyota’s YouTube site (its so called channel) and goes directly to the entries. The Sketchies II channel received only 84 thousand visits in the past month. It also seems not to have helped Toyota’s own site, which curiously contains no references to Sketchies.

Regardless of how well you like the entries, they seem unrelated to Toyota or its Corolla. They neither tell nor show the benefits of Corolla, nor do they promote association to its brand.

This still might have made sense as an experiment. Have an idea – spend a few bucks and test it. The automotive category is crowded and boring. There are far too many shots of similar looking cars traversing similar mountain roads. The problem is that Toyota is reported to have spent $ 4,000,000 (Wall St. Journal, 3/10/08) on the campaign. This is not a lot compared with Toyota’s total marketing spending, but it’s a lot for a promotion which doesn’t promote.

GetSmartContest

Boomers, students of TV history, and fans of re-reruns may remember Get Smart – the 60’s comedy series about the misadventures of clueless counterspy Maxwell Smart – starring the late comedian Don Adams. A key prop of the series was the, for the time, futuristic shoe phone. This was a mobile phone before its time imbedded in a shoe. Max had to remove his shoe to use it, and it usually rang at an inopportune time.

To promote it release of an upcoming feature movie version of Get Smart, Warner Brothers sponsored a YouTube video contest. Unlike Sketchies, the demands of this contest are slight – 20 seconds using a shoe as a phone. This should increase participation. Heck, I might make an entry using the webcam built into my laptop.

This YouTube event may or may not help the movie. Its incremental cost is slight and it is a potentially effective way to recruit a new generation of Get Smart fans. Its You Tube channel has received over 610,335 views this month. Excuse me, my shoe phone is ringing.

Confessions of a Control Freak

2008-04-08T10:47:00.002-04:00

Those Who Can Do
- the rest give seminars

Rather than rail against the legions of puny pundits, who can give marketing advise but can’t really market; I’d like to acknowledge one who really can. He is Alan Rosenspan. Alan is a veteran copywriter and marketing strategist, who now runs his one marketing agency (www.alanrosenspan.com).

I recently stumbled upon his book, Confessions of a Control Freak. It’s 324 pages consist of bite sized cases and highly actionable examples across many markets. The title refers to control, as in comparing new programs and promotions with a prior performance benchmark. The goal is to appropriately measure outcome and beat the control.

The book’s perspective is direct mail. His cases and advice, especially in copy and offer development, translate easily into on-line media and integrated programs. No Olympian perspective here, the advice is concrete and specific. I found it definitely a good read. You can find more it at alanrosenspan.com/control_freak.html

Super Bowl Redux

2008-02-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl 2008 set records – most of them off the field. $ 2.7 million for 30 seconds of air time was one; (estimated) “viewership” of 97.5 million was another.

Add production costs and that most advertisers ran more than one 30 second spot and this starts to involve real money. These costs don’t include extras such as “business travel” by senior management to the game, presumably to see how the commercials look on the large high definition monitors in their sky boxes.

Undoubtedly the Super Bowl delivers the largest mass audience of any domestic medium. Viewers are not restricted to youth, men, or even sports fans. For this event at least, advertisers can reach most of their market. Actually, none of the Super Bowl advertisers from Audi to GoDaddy to Budweiser to eTrade to Garmin sells to so broad a market. As with all mass media, marketers have to buy more exposure than they can use in an attempt to cover a market.

In addition, the Bowl ads have a following and life of their own. They are covered by business and news media and are replayed on sites such as YouTube. This secondary and sometimes even tertiary exposure is free.

What do they get for 3 or 5 or 10 $ million? It gets fuzzy here. For example, IAG Research ranked ads by most liked and most recalled. The implicit assumption is that better recall and higher preference for an ad lead to more effectiveness. If this means higher sales, of which they present no data, how much is a likability point worth?

The “research” seems to decline from there. Internet tracking firm ComScore asked 1139 respondents two questions:

1) Which of this year’s Super Bowl advertisers’ ads would you like to see again? (Select 3)

2) Which Super Bowl advertisers’ ads improved or damaged your impression of the brand in any way?

Notably, their research did not try to track purchase behavior.

More substantial data are available from web traffic measurement firm HitWise. It reports that of the 32 Bowl advertisers, 9 had traffic increases to their site of 25% or more compared with the previous day while 10 of the advertisers actually had decreased traffic. Comparisons with the day before the game are not the most relevant. A better comparison might have been with the final playoff game two weeks prior, but HitWise does not volunteer these data.

Of course, a visit to a web site is hardly equivalent to buying a product, especially one not sold online. Indeed most of the advertisers sell nothing online. If the Super Bowl ads were an exercise to drive web traffic, they start to look a bit pricy.

What we haven’t seen are Bowl advertisers specifying the incremental sales of these campaigns. In some cases they may not know. Their ads generally didn’t include trackable URLs, phone numbers, coupon codes, etc. An impartial observer might wonder if these advertisers did not really want their Bowl campaigns evaluated.

What the heck, those chips taste really crunchy in the Sky Box.

Hit ‘Em Where They Ain’t – Trying To Imitate An Entrenched Competitor Is Risky

2007-12-02T11:46:00.001-05:00

A few years ago, I managed a field marketing program for one of the (at the time) major maker of MP3 players. The client, whom I’ll call Xco. was a multiproduct company known for computer accessories. It’s early music players had achieved some success, though they were a minor business for the company. These players were light, compact, relatively inexpensive, flash memory devices which used a replaceable standard AA battery.

That year the iPod was hot and it grew the category as it expanded its own business. The iPod featured an ability to hold a large collection of tunes made possible by a micro hard drive and came in an elegant polished metal case. It was the most expensive player, but it held the most tunes.

Xco and several competitors launched similar products – MP3 players with small hard drives. Xco’s product lacked the polished design of the iPod, but was serviceable and easy to use. To try to secure a beach head, Xco priced its players 10% to 15% below Apple’s. Not surprisingly, this wannabe product a – poor cousin at a slightly lower price – failed. Xco eventually exited entirely from the category.

There were a number of reasons for failure, but poor marketing strategy was significant. In effect, Xco tried to position itself as a parity product against the category leader with no positive differentiation except a small price discount. Since my research showed 80% to 90% of consumers preferred the look and feel of the iPod, the product was not perceived as competitive even at the lower price. Xco’s product was doomed.

What might Xco have done? Instead of trying to be an iPod, it could have built on the demonstrated market success of its initial products. Customers liked its solid state players, which were smaller, lighter and fit comfortably in the hand or pocket, in contrast to the bulkier and heavier iPod. Moreover, the ability to replace the battery with an inexpensive standard battery, satisfied a perceived need, which Apple still has not adequately addressed.

This compact light weight inexpensive player with replaceable batteries could effectively have positioned Xco against Apple given that Apple would have had no comparable product (with or without replaceable batteries) for two years. Thus with proper execution, Xco might have defended and grown its solid state player business.

This is not to predict that Xco could have indefinitely withstood Apple as it broadened its product line. At the least, that would have required continued innovation. But by avoiding a “me too” strategy, it would have likely earned a far better return on its business.

Extra Bases in Boston

2007-10-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

Boston Baseball Fans and some normally indifferent to the game are even more enthusiastic leading up to the 2007 World Series. The reason – not just the Sox’ chance or a second title in three years – but furniture.

Those who bought sofas, dining room sets, etc. last spring at Jordan’s Furniture, a group of four retail stores near Boston, stand to have their full purchase price (up to $2,500) refunded if the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

This promotion created news coverage at the time and thus amplified Jordan’s own marketing of the event. The press also reported that sales volume was substantially above the prior period and that during the last week of the event the store was “mobbed.” Jordan’s hedged their expense of the promotion through an insurance policy.

What does this have to do with the furniture business or yours? Why is Jordan’s so much more successful than most furniture retailers?

Sports relates sales promotions are common. But this one was unique. It was not a ho-hum official sponsor of, hire an endorsement from a particular sports figure, or buy and be entered in a drawing for World Series tickets.

A key question for any marketer is or ought to be what business are we in. For Jordan’s, the answer appears to be show business. The thought of dragging your family to look at mattresses, living room ensembles, and dining tables is not appealing. It becomes a chore to be avoided.

But if you could see first movies on a giant Imax screen, have free popcorn, and have a year-round Mardi Gras. In short be entertained and while your at get that desk and filing cabinet, you’ve been wanting for your home office. Going to Jordan’s during this promotion was participating in an event

Barry and Eliot, Jordans’ top executives and spokesmen, have long used entertainment to position their company as a venue as well as a furniture store.

All of this adds perceived value to what could seem like a boring commodity, encourages shoppers, and engages customers.

You don’t have to swing for the fences the way Jordan’s has, but what are you doing to get past first base with your customers?

The Blog Turns 10

2007-09-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

The Blog turned 10 this summer. Aside from disappointment that you missed the party, why should you care? Should you join scores of millions of organizations, pundits, and malcontents in creating a blog for your business, hobby, or cause?

I’ve not seen a really good definition of blog. I’d characterize it as organized web content, such as by date and subject, which is very easy to update. You as a blogger don’t have to know more than how to type or cut and paste and click a button or two. Blogs can be far more elaborate with graphics, audio, and full motion video; but in general, you need no more than an Internet connection and an idea. Far too many blogs seem to dispense with this second ingredient.

As marketers, we like to experiment. Blogs can be quick experiments. They do not require significant investment. If your blog is getting bogged down in design reviews and policy meetings, stop. Your blog doesn’t have to be ugly, but its purpose is to dispense content. As in so much of marketing, the KISS principal (Keep It Simple Stupid) applies.

What can a blog do for you? Occasionally blogs become a hit and get lots of traffic. When that happens you can profit by selling ads through programs such as Google’s Adsense. This does happen, but is as optimistic as panning for gold in your bath tub – not the basis for a business plan.

Blogging systems typically allow readers to comment, though this option can be turned off. If you enable this, a blog can be useful source of customer information and an early alert to problems. It’s also a way to engage customers, especially those who care about the product. These engaged customers could be the basis of a community of users.

Even unhappy customers have value. They could signal perceived or real problems you ought to know about, and the blog can be a vehicle to directly reach and respond to them.

Any visitor to the blog can comment, so a rude, lewd, or overly persistent commentator can be a problem. There are ways to deal with these such as moderating your blog, but they add complexity and labor to what is supposed to be an essentially simple system.

The key reason we recommend blogs is to keep adding new content to your site. Blogs are an almost spontaneous way for you to add relevant information, without another web design cycle. Indeed some blog software, WordPress comes to mind, could be used as a full blown web publishing and content management system. Having a blog can help your site’s search rankings. Because blog content can be readily refreshed and enhanced, it’s a reason for visitor’s to keep returning.

Because of their informal style, blogs can also be a window on the personality of your brand or products; and so a way to get closer to your customers. If you’ve got something to say, get a blog.

TNAR

2007-07-28T23:37:00.000-04:00

Professor Robert Sutton’s latest book is short and easily readable in a few evenings. It’s provocative title is *The No Asshole Rule (Random House, 2007). It’s content is relevant to your business.

The book focuses on the disfunctions of teams and organizations caused by bullies, jerks, and “assholes”. The book is commendable in its cases, descriptions, and prescriptions for alleviating some of the damage caused by these toxic people.

In essence, the Rule is:

Avoid hiring them, even if they have other desirable skills. If need be include this formally in your job search requirements.

Failing this -

Find them. That is, diagnose and distinguish between the aberration and the occasional bad behavior, most of us occasionally commit, from the true chronic, certified jerk.

Fix them. This is problematic but sometimes possible. If an outright cure is not feasible, perhaps these bozos can be assigned a role, which best uses his strengths while insulating the rest of group from him.

Fire them. This can be tough to do. Very tough in some organizations. The result justifies the effort.

Sutton’s specialty is management not marketing, but his ideas are directly relevant. As marketers, we occasionally have these types as customers. The Rule should apply here as well. We’re not talking about simply difficult or demanding customers. We get paid to satisfy them. Their complaints and criticisms may improve our business.

What we don’t get paid for is dealing with tainted customers and prospects. Even if they’re “profitable”, and often they are not, they are not worth it. Even customer sovereign organizations, such Nordstrom and LL Bean, have come to recognize this. Ideally a CRM system would flag such individuals. In the real world, we shouldn’t be afraid to apply TNAR to our customers and if necessary fire them.

What Are Your Colors?

2007-06-27T10:24:00.000-04:00

"The Customer Can Have Any Color He Wants So Long As It's Black" – Henry Ford

There is some dispute whether Ford actually said this. Regardless it has become a truism, whose influence persists. The message is also, if you don’t like our products, tough! Long after the decline both of Ford and his company, black is the one color in which virtually every model automobile is available.

Similarly, major appliances such as refrigerators and washers still tend to come in white and now a quite limited assortment of other colors. While consumer electronics and small appliances often come in metallic silver, white or black. This begs the question – why are developers of products from plumbing fixtures to household implements to tee shirts color blind?

Colors in product design are, subject to fashion. Remember the blizzard of beige a few years ago? Novel products used to be able to get away with superficial sameness but as product categories from mobile phones to sporting goods have become commodities similarity has become dangerous.

Those of you who stage shows and events as part of your promotional mix may have used tchotchkes such tee shirts. All too often they are white or black in size extra large. As a result, they often end up in trade show dumpsters.

The temptations, which attracted Ford, are still with us. Of course, it’s easier to have one or a small number of colors, flavors, or other features. One of our key missions as marketers is to differentiate our products favorably. We should also do this inexpensively. Here color can work, especially in the face of monochrome monotonous competition.

An interesting case is Dell. Personal computers are as much a commodity as any consumer product. Indeed computer “manufacturers” make none of the major components. Instead they assemble their products from standard parts produced by others.

Dell’s key differentiator had long been to compete on price – the typical strategy in a commodity business. Dell played that game for too long. Competitors caught up leaving Dell with neither cost leadership not profitability.

They have recently made radical changes from management to sales channels to marketing. And they’ve discovered color. Dell notebook computers now come in a choice of eight colors (7 plus black). The color option consists of replacing the top of the case with a plastic panel in one of the colors. This increases Dell’s bill of materials, but with it’s build to order products, it does not increase the number of SKUs. This feature is probably profitable.

Customers pay an extra $20 for color. As long as colored computers are unusual, this means the Dell logo is displayed on the top of an eye catching background. This not only polished the brand image, it builds a ruby, evergreen, gold, or azure box, which for now, is not a commodity.

Scientific Marketing

2007-06-04T19:21:00.001-04:00

A recent commercial for Ocean Spray diet cranberry drink was, according to the Wall St. Journal (6/4/07 Page B8), created with the aid of “lab-coat-wearing scientists as it seeks to get deeper into the heads of consumers.” You can see the ad (along with another commercial) at here

The article goes on to describe that the agency, which created to ad, employs an individual with a Ph.D. in cognitive science. The ad superficially looks like an ordinary consumer spot, however the “scientist” is credited with changing the ad’s content to be less confusing and facilitate better information processing by the ad’s audience.

Should you add a cognitive scientist or any other scientist to your marketing team or is this a case buzz word invasion in marketing. For the commercial in question, we cannot yet say.

Physicist Richard Feynman, in his perennially interesting Feynman Lectures On Physics, characterized science as the discipline in which disputes are decided by experiment. Yet for the Ocean Spray commercial, data on outcomes, such as sales, are noticeably absent. Until they are included, I’ll go light on the diet cranberry drink.

Give Your Communications A Basque Treatment

2007-05-17T12:20:00.000-04:00

After a recent trip to see a client in Northern Spain, we spent a few days traveling in Basque country and neighboring La Rioja. Here the road signs are in bilingual in Basque and Spanish. They also tend to be in large letters in a highly readable sans-serif type. Our Spanish is so-so and our Basque, that unique language unrelated to anything else, non-existent. We were, however, better able to navigate the roads than in US cities we don’t know.

Where it’s important, such as entrances to traffic circles and narrow unlighted mountain tunnels, the signs are vivid graphical icons. We had never seen some of these, such as those for dimming lights, but we understood immediately.

Can you say the same about your package design, web pages, and ad layout? If not, we suggest giving your communications the Basque treatment. Think about what it would take to deliver a single message to prospects, who often don’t already know who you are and why they must have your products.

Looks Like They Forgot To Add Marketing

2007-03-22T09:32:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has been a marketing focused company for most of its history. Independent of the merits of its products, it has often excelled in both marketing strategy and tactics. It is hardly a coincidence that its current CEO, Steve Ballmer, began his career at Proctor and Gamble. Thus it seems particularly puzzling that for its latest and most ambitious product ever – Windows Vista, marketing appears an afterthought. Sales of what Microsoft expects to be a blockbuster are off to a slower start then predicted. The Vista products have received mixed reviews, but it’s the marketing that hurts.

Microsoft can commit marketing sins the rest of us cannot get away with, because over 90% of new PCs automatically come with Vista. The marketing opportunity is with the tens of millions of computers running one of the versions older than Vista. When the choice is to stay with the older product for free or pay for Vista, marketing is crucial. So what’s wrong with Vista’s marketing?

Too Many Products With Indistinct Positioning.

Vista is not a single product. It exists in five (count’em 5) versions each at different price points. The products homepage (www.windowsvista.com) is longer on animation than substance. One clicks, waits for icons to dance around the screen, clicks again and gets a paragraph, which claims but neither shows nor convinces why this is for me. These are somewhat ordered on a continuum perhaps from simple to sophisticated or home to business, or clueless to tech-savvy. The positioning is not clear and that’s a problem

Unclear Benefit Proposition.

"Easier, Safer, More Entertaining, Better Connected" says the web site.

This smacks of “new and improved” from the bad old days out of the marketing museum. Want to know more, download the product guide. This guide may need a guide. Depending on its format, it weighs in at from 24 Mb to 61 Mb. The formats are not what computer users have been taught to expect. There is no Word document or Adobe pdf collateral for Vista. Rather the guides come in new proprietary formats, which require you to first download and install viewer software.

Vague Claims and What Seems Like Mere Puffery.

Clicking further does not always yield more information or enlightenment. Consider this description of the Vista Business version. Often hyperbole substitutes for demonstration. Why spend $99.50 for Vista Home Basic when for $ 159.00 or so, you can get Vista Home Premium with an “Elegant Windows Aero desktop experience”. Experience is getting expensive, but I guess you have to be there to appreciate it. The page depicting this is neither elegant nor an experience though it tells us:

"Windows Vista Business is the first Windows operating system designed specifically to meet the needs of small businesses. You'll empower your entire business to work more efficiently …"

Curiously Vista is subordinated on Microsoft’s own home page, not only to the new version of its office software, but even a to a fix for the new onset of daylight saving time. This last, some days after the time change, when you had either manually changed your clock or decided you didn’t care what time your computer claimed was.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is well known and for a businessman fairly recognizable. The site depicts him much younger and with a beatific smile that participants in an informal poll I conducted found unsettling.

Vista may be a fine product, but until Microsoft tells and shows what’s in it for customers and there by return to its roots, sales are likely to lag.

Your Sugar Mama

2007-02-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

There are so many bad marketing campaigns, we like to salute one when we find it.

Campaign: Sugar Mama

Sponsor: Virgin Mobile

(http://www.virginmobileusa.com/stuff/sugarmama.do)

Offer: Reward Mobil customers with extra minutes in return for

Watching online videos
Receiving text messages
Filling out surveys

Details: Exactly how program works stated clearly and concisely on a answers page.

Execution: If you still have questions, there is an email address. And someone actually responds to the email with explicit answers within a day.

This is permission marketing as it ought to be. Customers can opt in and opt out at any time. Their participation is acknowledged with a simple token reward – for every minute you view our content, we give you a minute of airtime.

As a rate of pay this is way below minimum wage, but that beside the point. It is an acknowledgement and appreciation of the customer. When is the last time you got that as a consumer?

This straight forward clarity runs throughout. It’s easy to see what you get, what that costs, and what to do if you want to change your plan.

This shouldn’t be a big deal, but compared with the major communications carriers and cable system operators it is. It is the difference between earning customers and trapping them.

Best Practices – Do Not Make Perfect

2007-02-20T19:26:00.000-05:00

Many of our clients assume that if a marketing stratagem or tactic is used by a major player it ought to be good. If a small to mid-sized firm can afford to, they’d do well to mount a similar program. “If (fill in the name of a feared or admired organization) does it, why don’t we?”

Consider the following. A major bank and credit card issuer sends multiple envelopes to arrive on the same day. One is a statement and with it the usual detritus of untargeted offers such as those blank checks allowing you to get cash at very high interest. The second package is more of the same, without the statement. Why do major firms clog your physical and electronic inboxes with multiple offers and why do they present the same or similar offers to customers, who over the years have shown no interest?

The cost to print, process, and mail offer, when you have scores of millions of customers is low. The return on those unfortunate folks who, for whatever reason, use those checks is high. Whether these programs have a high or even a positive ROI is tough to tell from outside the organization. Whatever the believed ROI, it is probably exaggerated, because it ignores several costs. These include:

The cost in time and potential irritation and confusion to the customer of overlapping offers.
The opportunity cost when customers perceive your company as inept and are less likely to buy other services from you.
The avoidable waste of communications sent to customers, who by their history, have shown they are not interested in a product.

Of course, we should always be willing to test offers, but the offer above, was dead on arrival. Next time you get a communication from one of the big guys, don’t consider it an example of a best practice. You can do better.

Will The Cat Drool?

2007-01-26T14:31:00.000-05:00

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, A currently popular marketing book, makes much of the differences between cats and dogs. Not the obvious differences. Dogs are a metaphor for customers of yore. Cats are the new non-compliant customer. The authors go on to make a specious case that Pavlov, the Russian physiologist of salivation dog fame, is no longer relevant.

Essentially Pavlov showed that merely the (almost) simultaneous pairing of two stimuli results in the learning that these are associated. The classic case is pairing of a sound with food, such that hearing the sound produces salivation. The effect is powerful and ubiquitous and applies to you and me as well as dogs and cats.

So what? You might well ask. Pavlov’s model was and is the prevailing one for marketing communications. A product may have a complex, systematic and rational value proposition, yet most attempts to enlist customers are Pavlovian.

Marketers try to induce interest or favorable perception by pairing the product or brand with something else the prospect perceives favorably or associate its absence with something unfavorable. Favorable stimuli include sex, safety, children, money, admiration, food, affiliation, and domination.

This attempted association or “conditioning” to use Pavlov’s term, is easy to spot in broadcast advertising, but is common in print, direct mail, email and web sites as well as tactics derived from these such as viral marketing campaigns.

Consider this next time you watch the Super Bowl, read a direct mail piece from Dell computer or brows banner ads for on-line gaming.

AOL Is Dead - (Not So) Long Live AOL

2006-09-03T21:46:00.000-04:00

AOL was not the first online service though it did predate the commercial Internet. It grew and grew and prospered whereas Compuserv, Prodigy, and numerous others are forgotten.

It was not a technology leader. That was not its value and its market was not technophiles. It was a service, which provided content, connectivity, and community before the Internet and during itsgrowth spurt. Even after the Internet was common, AOL offered a comprehensive service, which attracted and retained tens of millions of users. For millions AOL was the Internet.

What set AOL apart and made it preeminent was marketing. Not hyperbolic like Apple nor solid like IBM, nor memorable in creative or execution. As was said of Coca Cola in its glory days, AOL strategy was to be within an arm’s length of desire.

AOL diskettes and later CDs were in the mail, in magazines, at libraries, convenience stores, and post offices. They included a “free” trial and a competitive price. It was easy to join and not so easy to quit. If you had access to a telephone and $20/month you were in. So were 25 million others, at its zenith, circa 2000.

In the days before standard email addresses, AOL was easily the largest community of online users. An AOL screen name was, like a well known address, something people were reluctant to change. Rather like mobile phone numbers before mandated portability.

What happened? How did so dominant market player loose its market?

AOL was king of dialup and its market allowed it to prevail over competitors with lower prices and different offerings. Dial up is dying and the fortunes of the king declined with his domain.

This leaves AOL with millions of customers and increasingly less to offer them or make them stay. Its portal, content, free email, and other services delivered on an advertising pays the bills model looks, feels and smell sort of like Yahoo, MSN, or a number of others. If it controls costs, witness its recent layoff of 5000, it can survive for quite a while as one of many web media properties. As a key player, it’s gone.

RIP

Phonak Phonak

2006-08-01T09:54:00.000-04:00

Quick, what’s a Phonak? Readers of sports news might recall that the winner of this year’s Tour de France, Floyd Landis, rode for the team sponsored by Phonak. The team is multinational, the company is Swiss, and Landis happens to be American.

Landis’ win propels Team Phonak to fourth place in 2006 ProTour ranks. Estimated cost of this sponsorship – at least 11 million Euros or slightly more than 14 million dollars.

Not insigficant for a $700 million (867 million CHF) company. And that doesn’t include Phonak’s sponsorship of America’s cup yacht racing.

What do you get for 14 big ones? Apparently not that much even with a winner. Phonak has already decided to abandon its marquee position. Next season, the team will be named for iShares. So much for a consistent branding message.

As of this writing, there’s a significant chance that will be the first Tour de France champion to be disqualified. Landis’ picture has been quietly removed from Phonak Cycling’s home page. If Phonak didn’t benefit from the win would they still be tarnished by the disqualification?

Getting back to our lead question, Phonak is a manufacturer of hearing aids and instruments. It markets its products under a variety of brands (micorSavia, Eleva, and eXtra), but does not appear to have products bearing the Phonak brand.

Accouding to its collateral,

“Phonak Hearing Systems is Main Sponsor of the Phonak Cycling Team and counts on the Cycling Team to carry the message of better hearing into the world.”

“Phonak supports the Phonak Cycling Team in 2006 for the seventh consecutive year. Phonak is convinced that hearing fosters communication among people around the globe and counts on its Cycling Team to draw attention to the topic of better hearing.”

“We race for better hearing”

One could imagine a campaign promoting athletes in need of hearing aids or one showing how these devices help people be more active, or many other posibilities at lower costs with positive ROI. As for this one. We’re listening but we’re not hearing this it!

Measurement Meanderings

2006-06-24T16:32:00.000-04:00

Who sponsors:

MLB?

The NFL?

The World Cup

The US Open golf tournament

The recent Winter Olympics

The last NBA game you watched? (now that the season is mercifully over)

What is the official car, boat, deodorant or cereal of (supply the name of your favorite team)

What does Tiger Woods endorse?

What doesn’t he?

What events do Pepsi Cola, Verizon, and Coors respectively underwrite?

As marketers and students of advertising, we might know some of this if we like to play trivia games. My research strongly suggests that consumers in general (as well as most marketers and sports fans) do not. Nor have the sponsors or their agencies shown that endorsements and sponsorships increase sales.

Undaunted by such details Relay, sports-marketing unit owned by major ad agency Publicis Groupe has announced a “service” to evaluate the value of sports marketing programs. Relay’s primary business is sponsorship and event marketing, so one might question their independence as evaluators of such programs. Here’s what they Claim.

Mind you Relay doesn’t measure sales or even consumer perception but what they assert is a better measure of exposure. The real problem with relay’s evaluation, like much traditionally done by agencies, is that it measures output by input. That is, it adds up screen exposure using a proprietary methodology and presents the total as value regardless of whether the audience sees, remembers, or most importantly acts on what is displayed.

For example, their analysis concludes that Honda received the highest value of any of the sponsors of the latest Indy 500 race. Since auto racing has nothing to do with Honda’s brand image or its principal products. Where is the value.

Honda’s executives and large dealers may have been able to park their Civics and Fits and tool around the track wearing spandex suites in fulfillment of latent fantasies, but let’s not call this marketing.

Can Superman Handle the Pepsi Challenge?

2006-06-09T23:11:00.000-04:00

Recently Pepsico has been running banner ads on Yahoo promoting a contest connected with the soon to be released summer movie – Superman Returns.

The promotion is an ambitious integrated marketing program combining point of purchase, special packaging, event marketing such as the Pepsi 400 stock car race, merchandising of toys from Mattel, and a video game from Electronic Arts. The promotion is further complicated by inclusion of Pepsi’s brand portfolio including Mountain Dew and Lay’s potato chips. Not content with empty calories, the man of steel’s return will also be promoted by Pepsi’s Quaker and Tropicana products such as (and I am not making this up) Superman Crunch: Cap'n Crunch cereal with Superman shield shapes that turn milk blue and four cheese pasta Superman limited edition Pasta Roni.

Executing such a program may indeed require super powers, but will its effects founder on the kryptonite of confusion?

Of course, if the movie is a hit it would help clear the end aisle displays coming to a WalMart near you. Superman in formats ranging from comic books to multimedia has proven to be a durable franchise. The promotion could thus be viable independent of the success of the movie. It’s less plausible that the product promotion will help the movie.

What in the long run (let’s say the fourth quarter) does this do for the brands involved? How durable is the effect of being Superman’s official high fructose or diet or low trans-fat or high soluble fiber snack? Can Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Sierra Mist and Mountain Dew all be super quenchers? What about Gatoraid?

We suspect the campaign may have a positive ROI but not a positive EROSI (enduring return on sweat invested). Once the sweep stakes are over and the action figures are gathering dust, the market and mind shares of Pepsi’s brands will not have grown.

When Talk is Really Cheap

2006-05-23T16:01:00.000-04:00

It has for some time been technically possible to talk over the Internet for “free” as marketers might say or for “no additional cost” as students of marketing might observe. This so called IP telephony used to come with many restrictions and inconveniences, ranging from poor sound quality to the need to call from one computer to another. These barriers have fallen dramatically.

Recently Skype, www.skype.com, the Internet telephony company now owned by eBay, has changed the game by offering free calls to regular phones throughout the US and Canada. You can also use Skype for international calls, but they might set you back $0.02 a minute. The quality of the call has also improved – in our experience it’s usually better than a calling on a mobile phone.

The technology aside, what does it mean to your business when talk is as cheap as email?

To us it makes it that much easier to do what marketing should be about – having a conversation with customers. This does mean yakking because you can. With cost no longer a factor even for the smallest business.

A) Manage your contacts
B) Establishing trust: remember why there is a do not call list
C) Keep it touch
D) View conversations as opportunities to get closer to your customers not just expenses avoid or reasons to move your call center to India.
E) Refining your message – what are you going to say after you say hello?
F) KISS (keep it simple stupid, as well as short) As with email, post, or any other medium; don’t try to bore your customers into submission.
G) Be available – how many businesses go to great lengths to hide phone numbers from customers.

When’s the last time you had a real conversation with a customer?

Close But No, I Don't Want To Shave My Cigar

2006-05-13T21:23:00.000-04:00

Philips, maker of many things electric, wants men to shave where no shaver has before by buying its new bodygroom shaver.

They're trying not only to revive a moribund product group (electric shavers) but to create a new category of product. A long shot for any marketer, Philips has created news-worthy if not ad-worthy a campaign. Rather than spending heavily for TV, philips has created a long-form web video. You can find it at http://www.shaveeverywhere.com.

The video itself has become news and the source of word of mouth/word of email buzz. Thus it has received vastly more traffic than could be expected. Such great exposure seems a marketers dream - Great exposure for a low expenditure.

Its lack of taste notwithstanding, I find the commercial quite weak; a solution looking for a problem and not a convincing remedy for any of problems it hopes it can convince the viewer he ought to worry about.

If this is so, the the very buzz and exposure will stall the product before it can get started. High exposure is not what you want before you have your marketing message and programs debuged. If on the other hand, Philips wants an inexpensive way to test marketing a concept and a cheap way to see if buzz = no sale; they have pulled off a very smooth move.

Who Let These Dogs Out?

2006-05-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

An early truism of the web – “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog” remains essentially true. I was painfully reminded of this after booking a hotel room online recently.

In e-business this translates to: there are plenty of bad deals on the web and potential customers know this. What are you doing about it?

The problem is not new, but the conventional solutions are more convention than solution. Let’s review some of the common ones.

Web authentication – does the site indeed represent the business or organization it claims as opposed to being a fraudulent front end. E.g. VeriSign, Thawte.

Certification bodies, e.g. BBBOnline

Review sites, e.g. Bizrate, igougo

Privacy guarantees - trustE

Network sponsor (Amazon marketplace, eBay)

Your own guarantee

Implicitly and often explicitly you’re just saying trust me. All of these have some merit, though for some customers they do not have much currency and fail to reassure. Indeed too many logos on the page can evoke the resistance they’re trying to overcome (as well as making you look like a NASCAR wanabee).

Trust is a key component of your brand. A trusted brand like LLBean had a ready transition to ebusiness. But what if your brand is little known? Realize that you are part of the product. Service, support, or whatever else is key to the value you add is clear, explicit, and up front. Not buried, hidden in small type and legalese, or missing. Yes, you will get some “buyers”, who will inappropriately and unreasonably demand a refund. Far more importantly, you will create some long term repeat purchase customers and build a your brand.

The iconic cartoon can be seen at

Filenes RIP

2006-04-16T15:10:00.000-04:00

About this time every year along with the new baseball season, the end of skiing, and the sighting of the first mosquito comes the annual hit parade of brands. The usual suspects (Coke, BMW, Microsoft, ...) appear. Top brands have great value.

More remarkable is the brand, which falls into a black hole - not because of an disastrous event such as a tainted product, which harms customers (Bausch & Lomb will likely survive despite the response of its clueless management), or slow erosion from years of mis-marketing (any number of the brands of yesteryear, say Westinghouse).

Such an implosion of brand equity seems to have happened to long time Boston retailer Filene's. After its acquisition by Federated, its tangible assets are being sold or redeployed into other brands such as Macy's. Thus Filenes and what it stood for is valued at bubkas.

As marketers one of the reasons for care and feeding of our brands is the value they add to the whole enterprise. Filene's and it's indistinct value proposition seems to forgotten this.

Massachuestts to require medical insurance

2006-04-09T18:59:00.000-04:00

This requirement is supposed to address the problem of there being a population of uninsured by assuming that “affordable” policies will forthcoming. Without debating the merits of the new law, what perspective can we as marketers add?

Consider a content analysis of direct mail, telesales attempts (including those which flaunt the do not call registry) and email (that which bypasses your spam filters and is noticed before being deleted), let’s say over the past year.

This should vary depending on life status and demographics. The relative frequencies of promotions for insurance and insurance like services which came to our collective inboxes are listed below.

Retirement vehicles such as IRAs
Auto
Life
College Savings (essentially a kind of insurance)
Extended product warranty
Disability
Mortgage
Trip and Travel
Long Term Care
Pet Care
Funeral

Notably absent were any promotions for health insurance. What’s wrong with this picture? Are the insured not interested in coverage at prevailing market rates, or are providers not interested in marketing policies to individuals?

The law does is not in effect until July 2007. By then your inbox should have some new occupants.

Stick With Your Brand

2006-03-31T16:35:00.000-05:00

Memoirist, talker, and serial publishing hit Frank McCourt had a big idea: A happy childhood don’t do no good. He converted his unhappy into a vivid and successful, both commercially and atristicly, personal history, Angela’s Ashes. (It should not be confused with the ponderous movie made from it.)

As a successful new brand, had a license to try again. His next book, ‘Tis, was literally more of the same. Some filling in of the original story and more about young Frank in the new world. Not as vivid, forceful, or fresh as its predecessor, but still echoed and reinforced the brand proposition of a man with whom you’d like to share a pint of Guinnesss and shoot the breeze.

At this point, the McCort brand has critical mass. He’s on talk shows, celebrated at writers workshops, has won a Pulitzer Prize. He can take disparate ramblings, which didn’t make the previous books, and sweep them into yet a third book, Teacher Man. This last, limps along as packaged product. It seems dictated in a few sittings rather than written.

Had it appeared first, I doubt McCourt would have asked to write more. Yet it is on target and on message for the brand. The quality of the work notwithstanding (still acceptable for popular non-fiction), the brand is strengthened by bite sized vignettes. The New State Writers Institute asserts that McCourt is “one of the master storytellers of American literature.”

So far, he has not succumbed into risky brand extensions such as McCourt Ale or Stout.

Contrast this with a somewhat better known brand – Coca Cola. It has been loosing share and sales as it muddles through different campaigns, images, executives and value propositions. The last often unstated.

Coke has real problems. Its traditional markets are less interested in high fructose corn syrup, additives, and gratuitous caffeine. Unlike McCourt, Coke seems confused about the benefits of its own brand.

Ten Deadly Sins of Marketing

2005-01-02T16:41:00.000-05:00

Phillip Kotler is the venerable author of the long running (both lenght and lognevity) marketing tomb (or bomb, or classic), Marketing Mangement. In 2004, he attached his name to a slim volume -- Ten Deadly Sins of Marketing.

It's a slim volume of 152 small pages, large type, and ample margins. One could read it less than two hours. Don't . There's scant substance within. Rather it is a stale stage for cliches.

Readers will learn that they should, for example,

"Improve brand building strategies..." and
"Shift money into those marketing instruments that show increasing effectiveness."

How to do these is left as an exercise for some other forumn.

Moral: don't dilute brand equity (in this case Kotler's) with a low quality extension.