Monthly Archives: April 2011

Smarter Planet?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

IBM keeps selling solutions for a smarter planet.  Watson, the computer that won Jeopardy, they say, is the way to a smarter planet. I’m not so sure. Is a kid who breaks his front teeth stumbling over a fire hydrant texting “K” a denizen of a smarter planet? Is a gardener who uses the Web to find out Dawn and vinegar gets rid of mites smarter than someone who figures it out on his/her own?

Is the massive computing power in our pockets and backpacks and on our laps and desktops making us smarter?  “Mom, how long do you boil an egg?” Are social networks forming our “likes” for us?  Is this fingertip world making our bones weak and our sinew stingy? Let’s ask Quora.

Dude, I’m not going all Ted on you. Ted K, that is.  I’m just pointing out a trend we will all be seeing a lot more of as we leap forward in Moore’s Law chunks of time. It’s called roots. Etsy.com is a good example of the roots phenomenon; people making stuff with their hands.  Gardening. Cooking. Traditional music and art. DIY home improvements. These are all examples of the roots phenomenon.  Any neurologist or physical anthropologist will tell you that the way to exercise the brain is to use it. The way to a smarter planet is not to rely on computers for everything.  That’s a way to sell more computers. Peace.

Geico burnout vs. new paradigm churn-out.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Here’s a fresh idea for bold national TV advertisers.  One and done.  Okay, maybe five and done is better.  Create and run TV spots 5 times then take them off the air and move them to the web.  A question many large agencies asked back in the day of the $385,000 TV commercial and still ask is “What is the burn out rate”?  How many times can a consumer can see a TV spot before his/her eyes start to bleed.

In today’s fast twitch media, where clicking is a sport, the burn out factor has grown even more sensitive. This is why sooner or later Geico is going to need to chill.  I was reading today about The Gap and its desire to become more relevant to the younger set – more relevant is a euphemism for sell more – and I’ve also been reading about Denny’s, similarly strategized.  The former will do nice ads and burn, burn, burn them.  The latter is running ads only a few times, then driving people to the web to watch them on-demand, on-desire, in longer form. Denny’s and Gotham get the target’s media habits and will save money. Gap and Ogilvy will not…unless.

Unless they use the new “five and done” model.  Should Ogilvy decide to turn itself into a crafty, creative TV production studio for the Gap it will have a chance. Buy high profile mass reach media and run their ads only a handful of times.  Then move on. Lots of freshies. Story-tell with lots of chapters, a la James Patterson. And it shouldn’t necessarily be a serial story, just a gestalt-y all around the brand strategy story.

Smart shops can create spots at low costs these days. Fast twitch ads, not burn out campaigns, are what the daring will do. That’s what the youth market wants. Peace.

The Muddled Middle.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In the tech category, moving to the middle is what the revenue hungry do. Rather than perfect what they are, they see money and desire an expansive make-over.  Google’s culture of technological obesity has driven it to invest $100 million dollars in new content for YouTube.  Being king of search is not enough; now it wants to be the next video TV station.  Google suspects there will be licensing issues for playing other people’s content and so wants to create and enable new video content to drive traffic.  As we all know, public access programming and 9.5 out of 10 consumer generated videos are deathly boring.  $100M should help bring in some creativity and will work for a while, but is a poor investment.

Case two: Twitter is talking about creating brand fan pages so they can hit some of that advertising revenue.  Misfire.  They, too, are moving toward the muddled middle; a place Facebook with its fan pages and Likes is filling. Twitter needs to let brands Tweet their stories and value, leaving the undifferentiated fan pages to others.

The thing that made the iPhone take off is application developers.  What will make Twitter accelerate is also application developers – but marketing application developers, and here’s a secret: Twitter is so easy to use and so much of the work is done (read hashtags) that non-coders will be the app developers on Twitter.  Twitter will win many of the marketing wars, it just has to stop moving toward the middle and let the apps evolve.

Why do all technology companies covert thy neighbor’s partner? Love the one your with.  Peace!

 

Grey’s Anatomy’s Droopy iPad App.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There is an iPad app for fans of Grey’s Anatomy, says CIO Magazine, developed by TV rating company Nielsen, that offers interactive social activities to viewers tied to events in the program. These events are “watermarked” to the show dialogue.  I’m interested.  Coolness.  I am always on the lookout for “1 plus 1 equals 3” mashups of media that go beyond the expected. That tread new ground.

And then I read that the Grey’s Anatomy app pops up questions like “What do you think will happen next in the plot?” “Or tweet this to a friend.”  Droop.  The app also offers character info, games and quizzes. Droopier. 

It sounds as if the media socialists on the show are making the app an extension of a fan club when there were so many other ways to go. The show is about medicine and doctors and hospitals, why not go that route?  Why not inform, educate, surprise?  Or how about offering up some type of production notes about the cast and the scene?  I’ll bet if the app developers actually listened to the audience in real time, without a social media engagement agenda, they might hear insights they hadn’t expected. Go deep. Think deeply. Think about strategy not tactics. Don’t extend, invent. Peace!

Brand Strategy. Now, with feeling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There is this odd phenomenon that occurs when I present a branding brief to a client. 

My brand brief contains a definition of the living, breathing target (not a demographic), an articulation of the target’s key care-about, the role of the product in delivering on that care-about. It covers the key market sensibility related to the product or category, and any enduring attitudes about the brand that might rise to the top. Not atypical stuff.  Of course it’s what you do with all that stuff that makes a brand strategy great.  When everything has been gathered and funneled down to a simple, no comma, no conjunction idea — when all the effluvium has been boiled away — what remains is a single declarative statement of brand intention.  That is the moment of truth.    

When I present that statement and I’ve my job right, the client lights up like a Christmas tree. We are brothers and sisters. We are from the same parents.  We are friends. But then…then, the odd phenomenon begins to creeps in. You can feel a loving “but” coming on.  This is when they say: “I absolutely love it, it’s perfect, but do we have you use the word_____.  And it’s the pivotal word.  That’s when I know I’ve got them.

Just like great creative, a great brand strategy has to take a client out of his/her comfort zone. It has to feel like work. It has to make clients and consumers emote. A brand strategy must aspire.  Campaigns come and go, but a powerful brand strategy is indelible. Peace!

Social Media. Quiet is the new black.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was watching an NCAA Tournament game the other day and with 13 minutes to go in an Sweet 16 game, the announcer was apoplectic. He announced each pass as if it would be the game’s last.  I can understand if we were in the finals and it was under 2 minutes, but phewwww. It seems the game for some announcers isn’t enough, it’s the delivery that creates excitement.  Like a laugh track on a sitcom. If everything is screamed and hyper- exciting, how are we to know when the truly amazing happens?  It’s like reading a two paragraph email typed in all caps.

One of the reasons social media has taken off so nicely, in this world of many product choices, is because friends and members of your social graph tend not to sell when they are talking up a product.  Well they sell, but from the gut and heart, not from the wallet. Paid marketing agents, on the other hand, are compensated to make you buy. 

Metaphorically, paid marketing agents shout while friends quietly discuss. Friends modulate. Friends offer no agenda.  I think it was Benjamin Palmer of the Barbarian Group who said at Social Media Week this February that commercial social media is most effective when it is “brands letting their hair down.” And he’s right.   When a brand is not in billboard mode, or advertising or coupon mode – not shouting every possible user benefit like the NCAA announcer – it has a chance to quietly and meaningfully build a case in a unique, human way.  Social is a new channel. Not an old channel repurposed. Peace.

The biggest wealth exchange in history.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Sorry for the late post but I was at the monthly meeting of the Social Media Club of Long Island. Great stuff.  It started a little slowly in that the speaker Constance Korol did the typical context-setting commercial but it really picked up and ended being quite thought provoking.   (In this “fast twitch media world” had I not been in a seat, I might have clicked through. Glad I didn’t.)

The topic was social media in China and its use for commercial purposes.  Sina Weibo is the social network of choice in China.  Sina numbers only 100 million registered users.  Did I just say “only 100 million?”  China is big, in other words.  And as a social media market it is going to get crazy bigger.  In fact, when Nokia and Microsoft figure out how to create a US $49 smartphone, that hundred million number is going to jump…creating the single largest wealth exchange in the history of mankind.

The thing about China is…it’s China.  You can learn by friending people through cracks in the firewall, but to really learn you need to have feet on street.  The country is so closed off and so monitored only hacks will get you through.  But what a country in terms of marketing opportunity!  What a laboratory.

Everywhere is not America.  To see the world through American glasses is ethnocentric.  If we open our eyes and learn about other cultures we have a chance transnationally.   As Waylon says “Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him. He ain’t wrong, he’s just different…” (Human rights, is a topic for another day.) Peace.

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