Monthly Archives: July 2012

The Farewell Idea.

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“Farewell, My Queen” is a movie I really want to see.  I love historical pieces with great attention to detail.  It’s transporting and a great way to learn.  The movie focuses on three days during the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution, from the point of view of those in Versailles, specifically Marie Antoinette.

If you have ever been to Versailles, you know it alone is worth a movie.  Add the French Revolution, the amazingly complicated, interpreted and storied Marie Antoinette and you have a golden opportunity.  But cast Lea Seydoux in the lead and make us dive into what it must be like to know a country is coming for you, and you have drama in capital letters.

This movie was based upon a book, but the idea at the heart of it was quite simple: What must it have been like for Marie Antoinette during the storming of the Bastille? Every great piece of art and selling idea with ballast is born of an idea. What is your idea?  Peace.

Extract This…About Naming.

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So yesterday I suggested that Starbuck’s misnamed its new fruit flavored iced coffee product Refreshers, jumping straight to the benefit in the name, and not necessarily an uncommon benefit at that. Starbucks missed an opportunity.  Here is link to the video explaining how Refreshers are made. Green coffee extract is the secret to the new product.  Three words that together don’t particularly make the mouth water.  No wonder they called them Refreshers.

Here are a couple ideas and words that may have been overlooked in the naming meeting. Words that don’t deliver the benefit, but work to explain the new product.  The  Is of the Is-Does, as it were.

-Pre-roasted

– Natural state beans

– Pure caffeine

– Arabica beans

-Young, you get the idea.

Naming is hard.  Think Apple.  Brand are empty vessels into which marketers pour meaning. But consumers extract meaning from brands and the first experience in the name. Make it a good one. Peace. 

Starbucks Refreshers Poorly Named.

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Refreshers is the brand name of a clear, cool new summer drink being offered up by Starbucks.  The two flavors are Cool Lime and Very Berry Hibiscus.  Were I the type to leave the office mid-afternoon and drive for a cool drink I’d def try one. The drinks are colorful and contain real pieces of fruit. Since they come from Starbucks they’ are “refreshers” and not at all to be confused with tea.  Just like Dunkin Donut’s Coolatas (am I spelling that right?).

What makes these tea or ade look-alikes uniquely Starbucks is they contain “natural energy from green coffee extract.”  Very interesting.  If you’d like to try one, free 12 oz. samples will be offered this Friday between the hours of noon and 3 P.M. at Starbucks stores. (In NY, but most likely nationwide.)

The print ads look nice. And the energy thing makes a smart point, but the name is pretty goofy. If this product launch is an attempt to open up a new category – and I think it is – it really needs a product name that better reflects the “Is” not the “Does.”   Naming is an art. I’m betting this product will be a modest success, but the name will be a hindrance.  Some words in advertising and marketing are radioactive in their ability to turn off consumers. Radioactive in their ability to create consumer passivity. Unless you are Coca Cola, refresh is one such. Peace.   

 

An interesting sales training technique.

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A friend of mine has been in the car business all her life. As a teen, then a showroom manager and, finally an owner. The economy and “the life” caused her to change careers recently. She is now selling insurance for a large company.  Once a salesperson, always a salesperson I guess.  She passed her insurance tests, learned the products and services, contacted a lot of friends and rolodex contacts and is now onto what she believes a demeaning chapter in this job evolution.  She goes to malls, sets up a table, blows up balloons and fingerprints children as a service to parents. “May I have a smaller balloon… and this time yellow? And can you make it so my hair stands up?”

I’m sure she is going through the 5 stages of grief.

I’m not sure how common mall sales training lessona are in the insurance business, but with the right mindset, I bet it’s great a learning ground. You have to engage customers who otherwise don’t want to be engaged, for starters.  Then you must undertake meaningful conversation about something about which customer cares deeply — their child.  Then introduce a negative concept into the selling process…child danger. And then talk about mortality on the off chance someone might be ready to buy life insurance.  “Balloon anyone?”

If you can learn from all this activity, even if you don’t sell a policy, I bet you will emerge a stronger sales person. Peace! 

 

Indispensable.

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According to the Radicati Group market research firm, in 2010, 107 trillion e-mails were sent. Today there are 3.1 billion active email accounts and corporate employees send and receive 105 million e-mails a day. When we don’t have anything to do, rather than smelling roses, we check our cellies. They have become indispensable.  Or have they?

One of the goals I have for my company is to make its website an indispensable source of content for the K12 education community. Indispensable is a very high goal.  The thought is, if teachers and school administrators could visit only one website each day to get some good .edu nuggets, whose would it be? Not a nice place to visit. Or a valuable and meaningful website.  An indispensable site. That’s a strategy. 

Many view their sites as places to share product and service information.  Good idea. Others see them as a way to cut down customer inquiry. Others yet view their sites as places to sell.  Or places to get prospects ready to buy.  All good goals.  For me “indispensable” is where it’s at.  It is a constant strategic motivator.  Try it. Peace.

Stones. Stone. And Stoners.

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Oliver Stone goes big.  He pushes the truth and sometimes creates his own truth. In his review of Mr. Stone’s “Savages” today A.O. Scott called Stone’s body of work “sumptuous.”  Rich cinematography, larger than life characters and just plain juicy film-making. I am on a Don Winslow (writer of Savages) jag now, and readers might even see a tiny bit of influence in this blog. I’m also a Blake Lively fan. (Not dead yet.) It’s a trifecta for me.

Marketers and ad peeps should study Mr. Stone.  He finds topics that have gravitational pull, he used great images and sounds to capture them, and he steeps the content in sumptuousness.  Even the Times’A.O. Scott digs this kind of film making.  Go see Savages. It will beat your average Vampire vamp and scare-fest. Oliver it up. Peace!

 

Fresh.

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“The hardest thing to realize in fashion is that the future lies in the past.  The second hardest thing is to forget the past.”    Cathy Horyn, NYT 7/5/12

These words are true for branding and advertising as well. Creative ideas that break through must be new and unique. Retreads are boring.  Yet, it’s important for ideas to offer some attendant context. It’s easier to remember numbers in patterns; the same is true for ideas.  That’s why alliterations are common idea conventions. ZDNet’s original strategy “content, commerce and community,” for instance.

How does one explain the Higgs boson (creating matter out of nothing) without some context?  Not very easily. Same thing with string theory.  These are some of the world’s most heady concepts. They need context.  Conversely, how do you give life to a new lemonade that is less sweet, or a cookie dough that is more natural?  As Cathy Horyn suggests “forget the past.”  Find context for selling premise (create bias toward purchase) then be fresh. Really fresh. Uncomfortably fresh.

Either Walter Weir or John Caples (godfathers of copywriting) once said “good copy sounds like copy.”  That was then.  Seventeen billion words of copy ago. Today fresh wins the day.  Peace.  

An important brand planning question.

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The secret sauce of the What’s the idea? brand planning rigor (WTI is my blog, but also a brand consultancy I had for 3 years prior to coming on board at Teq) is the battery of questions I use when interviewing company stakeholders. Finding out what a company does best and matching it with what the market wants most is the goal.  I may have just found a new question.  The inspiration was an amazing story today in The New York Times of Lonnie G. Thompson, a man in search of proof that global temperatures are rising.

The secret sauce question is most powerful when asked of an individual, yet it can be altered to apply to a company. Let’s stay with the individual, for simplicity’s sake:  

What is your life’s work?

Not an easy question to answer.  Or is it? Most will probably say something like “Be a good parent.”  Or “Be a good spouse.”  Maybe “Leave the world a little better place.” Perhaps “Be a better person.”  Following up these answers with probes will get you to the meat of the discussion. Using the question with a company, however, may get bogged down in “mission statement miasma,” but don’t let it.  A “life’s work” has to have import. If a company has a hard time answering, it likely will have a have a hard time branding it.

As my Norwegian aunt Inga might have said “Tink about it.” Peace.       

The games marketers play.

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Is it better to gamify learning or learnify gaming? Is if better to gamify war or warify games? Perhaps I just enjoy being contrarian but I’m growing a bit tired of the gamify word.  Games are contests…with winners and losers.  Not everything in life needs to be so.  Art isn’t a game.  Science isn’t a game. Business isn’t a game.

Gaming is a trend that marketers are grabbing hold of and early returns are positive, but the reality is gaming in marketing is really about gaming the consumer into learning about and buying products.  And that will get old.  You know when you are watching a movie and stop paying attention for a moment to ask “Was that a product placement?”  It messes with the art.  Good promotional games are and can be successful, but I fear  turning loose coders and web marketers with hi-def gaming assignments will more often than not, detract from brand building. What would a Geico game look like? Exactly. Peace.