Monthly Archives: November 2010

A Sign of Economic Life.

By
Steve Poppe
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It’s been a couple of years since Bernie Madoff pounded the NYC elite, making off with their summer homes — and until now, you could feel it in the pages of The New York Times.  Lots of ads disappeared. Then more ads. And finally more ads.  There was a big reduction in luxury goods advertising and the pages of the Times were no longer filled with Avedon-type photographs of beautiful men and women dressed and accoutered to die for.  Photos and ads were under-produced and unbecoming. Well, the ads in the Times are coming back — in number and refinement. And though some promise 30 and 40% off, advertisers are beginning to pump it up.

I know, I know, it’s almost holiday season but you can smell change in the luxury goods market. Could it be the leadership shuffle in Washington and the wishful thinking of the tax-burdened?  Or has the string of Bernie been salved over?  How about the quarterly reports from retirement accounts reclaiming lost ground? Yes, yes and yes.  I’m no economist and I’m certainly not counting truck drivers in the truck stops along the highway, but at least in The New York Times the pages are beginning to show a bit more smile.  Peace.

Loving Wal-Mart’s Free Shipping.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“I love free shipping” was my wife’s response when I mentioned Wal-Mart’s newest offer on all website purchases this holiday season. 

eCommerce is propping up the shipping business (US Postal Service, UPS and FedEx) and dinging the oil business.  Some economics student should plot U.S. online sales increases growth to barrels of oil consumed as a thesis topic.  When a consumer says “I love __________ (fill in the blank)” you need to pay attention. The wifus loves free shipping and she loves free returns – especially so, when the return label is already in the box. 

This is how the return thing works: Outside in the garage is a second refrigerator.  On top of the fridge, spilling off in all directions, are boxes. The boxes are a few steps closer to the kitchen than the car.  To return a product, she walks to the garage, grabs a box and some Amazon bubble bags or newspaper, then returns to the kitchen where she assembles the box, labels it, grabs the packing tape out of the cupboard in the butler’s pantry – zip, zip and to the front door.  If it’s UPS or FedEx she may have to dial a telephone number or click-to-pick. Could that be any easier?  Easier than say, driving to a store, standing in line and doing the whole credit card thing?  

This “I love free shipping” behavior, even as a trial at Wal-Mart may, as The New York Times declares, deliver a “knock-out punch.”  Not to Amazon, but to a number of smaller retailers with inelastic margins who can’t play this game.  Oh, it’s here to stay. So watch out.

eCommerce makes every day Christmas day (insert your holiday here).  In store shopping, for its many positives, has more than its share of negatives; especially around the holidays. Wal-Mart is paying attention. What a marketing juggernaut. Peace!

BBH’s Vaseline Intensive Rescue Work.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Unilever has launched a Vaseline Intensive Rescue campaign via Bartle Bogle Hegarty, NY.  It was conceived in a conference room, formed and nurtured through social media, and produced by a CPG company and ad agency. Excuse the pun, but BBH never uses a rough hand in its work so I’m surprised by what I’ve seen and read so far.

According to a write-up in today’s NYT, BBH employed a web monitoring company to scour blogs and social networks for women with dry hands.  Smartly, they were looking for Posters rather than Pasters and found three who like to blog about mommy stuff and seem web-o-genic. But then they trotted out camera crews, writers, producers etc., in an effort to create “authentic” spokesperson stories. I smell 15 minutes (of fame).

Social media campaigns works best when the spokesperson is not managed.  When they are real.  Melting Mama, for instance, is an example of a Poster who is real.  Kandee Johnson, make-up artist, is real.  These two have personal motivations that makes them compelling. Not a motivation, seeded, tilled and fertilized by a marketing engine.  BBH is better than this. It feels B team and formulaic. This is no “Prescribe the Nation” campaign – BBH’s brilliant work for Vaseline Clinical Therapy in 2008-9.  That was an idea with ballast. Peace!

Branding and Selling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The word “branding” means many things to many people.  To an art director it means design.  To a writer it means tag- or campaign-line. A media person sees it as threshold weights of eyes and ears. A web designer sees branding in terms of wireframes.  Digital agencies view it as the part of their portfolio that doesn’t need to be judged on click throughs.

Selling, on the other hand, is a verb and it has only one meaning.  Moving merch.  Or services.

No matter who is using or misusing the word branding, it’s important they know it means selling. Not exposure. Sadly, many feel getting the name out there is enough. When a communication is all claim and no proof it’s nothing more than “we’re here” advertising.  “We’re here” advertising simply acknowledges the category and where to buy. “If you have lung cancer, our hospital provides hope.”

Branding is about organizing proof beneath a claim.  That’s why creative briefs have a line called “reason to believe.”  If there is no reason to believe – following an organized, road-mapped, discrete plan – there is no branding. There are simply tactics.  Tactic may be the fun in the business but the revenue and earnings are in brand management. Peace!

Da Monies. Da dashboard.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

Here’s a marketing dashboard for you: A daily view of money coming in and a daily view of money going out.  As they say on the Long Island Rail Road “Please watch the gap.”  Cursor over the money coming in and it should be able to show drop downs of the various expenses by category. Cursor over the money going out, the same.  If you can’t parse the ins and outs by day, look at the data by week or in three week rolling averages. That’s Da Monies.

Factors Influencing Revenue.

Money going in and out is a nice start but tying actual tactics and events to spikes and dips is what is exciting.  Pumping GRPs of TV into the market should create revenue lift.  Promotions the same.  A big bad news story in St. Louis might create a dip. As might a poor earnings reports.  Careful monitoring and modulation of marketing dollars, based on a game plan and strategy, introduces a higher level of accountability to marketing. But it’s not often happening.  In healthcare, there are chief quality officers, who own the data.  When physician mistakes are up or when hospital born infections trend high, the average patient discharge rate slows down. Where is this type oversight in marketing? With the CMO?

The Opportunity.

I’m sure P&G has some dashboard jockeys.  One of them will be a millionaire soon if s/he figures out a marketing dashboard application that ties Da Monies to the marketing.  With precision. Elegance. And with standardization.  Coming to an iPhone near you. Peace!

Me too. Three, Four, Five.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Twitter owned real time updates. Facebook mirrored it. AOL owned chat. Facebook copied it. Google owned search.  Facebook morphed it.  Foursquare developed check-ins.  Facebook parroted it. And Groupon owned coupon search. Facebook Places has mimicked it. 

I worked at a social media start-up (Zude) for a tech savant who wanted to out-YouTube YouTube, out-DoubleClick DoubleClick and out-MySpace MySpace. What he had – what we had – was the “fastest, easiest way to build and manage a website,” supported by a unique drag-and-drop technology.  Sadly, the CTO didn’t want to perfect usability, rather, he wanted to be the best at everything. Hence, we were the best at nothing. 

I’ve written about Google and its “culture of technological obesity” and it seems Facebook now is sharing that affliction.  You can’t be everything to everybody.  Do something well, stick to it, prefect it, then evolve it. But don’t keep stealing other people’s cheese.

The more Facebook moves toward the middle of “all” web functionality the more overweight it becomes. My advice: Focus…and let other companies play too. Peace!

Measuring ROS on the Web.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I haven’t written about ROS (return on strategy) for a while but on the heels of my empanelment at OMMA Performance this week I’ve given it some more thought.  One of the good things heard discussed at OMMA was the metric “intent to purchase.”  As one person said, however, I may walk around the Jaguar dealership with an intent to purchase, but without consummation (check writing) it doesn’t makes the commerce world go round.

Another important metric discussed was the Net Promoter Score – scoring one consumer’s willingness to recommend a product.  These  two metrics are moving in the right direction and are good dashboard measures. Time on site, bounce rate, “like,” page views, are nice directional metrics but can’t always be attributed to a sale. The quants may disagree.

ROS

If you can’t create a value for an action, how are you going to create a value for a strategy?  The strategy for a billion dollar health system was built upon the following brand planks: leading edge treatments and technology, information and resource sharing, and community integration.  Combined, these 3 consumer care-abouts were projected as the business-winning marketing strategy. How do you measure the effectiveness of that strategy? Consumer attitude studies tying the brand plank metrics to KPIs such as beds filled, procedures completed, re-admits, profitability are certainly doable.  But how might one measure the strategy effectiveness using the web?  Thoughts?  Einsteins?

Datapalooza.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday, I was on a panel at OMMA Performance in NYC called “The dream of the Digital Dashboard.”  (OMMA stands for Online Media Marketing and Advertising.) The program, curated by Cory Treffiletti — president of Catalyst S+F, a great digital strategy shop — was quite good. (One of the speakers was from Tynt.com, check it out.)

On my panel I mentioned that tactics-palooza has created the need for dashboards and one of my panel mates, Marc Kiven, repurposed the sound bite into datapalooza, which had some serious ballast with the audience.  Nice ear Marc. (Sorry, had to say that.)

Datapalooza reminded me of a meeting I attended a while ago in which someone from AT&T network management said “We need to collect all this performance data, then do something smart with it.”  It’s a word string, I never forgot. Today digital marketers are so covered in data it has become harder and harder to do something smart.  One reason is interoperability.  Most reports capture time on site, links clicked, referrals, browser type, geography, device, bounce, last page visited — times a hundred. And even though we’re in the age of open standards I sense many of these data points remain in unique software homes…not portable to other behavioral data sources and feeds.

This interoperability issue reminds me of voice mail.  Have you ever moved from one job to another and had to learn new voice mail prompts?  What a pain.  If we are to improve the performance of digital performance, the industry needs to think about some basic standards. Perhaps that will transform datapalooza into a more sonorous environment.  Peace!

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