Monthly Archives: February 2013

Be fresh.

By
Steve Poppe
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So I’m reading an article this morning in USA Today featuring interviews with some top hospitality CEOs, and their answers are peppered with language like: “price of entry,” “customer-for-life,” “providing value” and “surprise and delight.” A marko-babble fest.  Not implying these aren’t smart people, they clearly are. What I’m saying is marketing has become filled with terms of art that are nice on the ear but meaningless. 

Do a Google or Bing search of “whatstheidea+surprise and delight” and if this blog pops up, break out a can of whoop ass. Jargon may be acceptable in meetings but it is the antichrist in external communications. It was copywriting great Walter Weir, I think, who said “if it sounds like copy, it’s good copy.”  Dear old Walter was born in ’06.  The industry has published 10 trillion words copy since then. There is an entire class of ad agencies called “creative hot shops” whose sole reason for being is to break away from Mr. Weir’s premise.

So what should we do?  Drop the babble.  Invent your own selling premise and selling language. Be fresh. Freshies (Sorry, racing a storm to Whiteface today.) And it is okay to be a little fresh in a non-puritanical sense.  We are at 10 trillion words and counting. There are only so many pairings – as Google will tell you. Peace!

Cloud brand planning,

By
Steve Poppe
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0

clouds

Are brand planner’s heads always up in the clouds?  Are they trying to solve the world’s ills though advertising and marketing? In the last year alone, I’ve figured out how to fix education and correct the obesity problem.  I’ve spoken to experts in both fields, immersed myself in data and tools of the trade, studied the science and landed upon rough strategies for positively, demonstratively impacting both. Will it take time and lots of money?  Oh yeah. Will systemic change and cultural change be required? Absolutely.

Now, does someone interested is getting 100,000 hits to a website care about the ills of the world? Does someone trying to fill up Salesforce.com with leads care about the global big picture? Probably not.  But when brand planners are allowed to do their “cloud work” first, and apply that learning, positioning and organizing principle to the tactics required to move the sales dial (the micro measures), that’s when great brands are built. Start with the micro tasks first and it makes the job much more difficult. Go big first and you have a chance.  This is the word of the planner. Peace.

A brand builder.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a neat article in the NYT about cable TV channel FX. John Landgraf, president and general manager of FX Network, is given a good deal of credit for the channel’s recent success. This guy is building a brand. He has a strategy and over time is implementing it. It is his brand strategy that guided the decision to greenlight shows like Justified and Sons of Anarchy.  It is this brand strategy that helps his people cast shows stars, name show characters and create program titles.

The brand strategy is what is providing consumers with the ability to articulate what the channel stands for. There is a vision here and it’s a vision in rarified air when it comes to TV. This is Steve Jobs stuff. Mr. Landgraf (land grab?) is not allowing focus groups plumbed from American Demographics magazine to decide his programming, he is using data smartly, but allowing his gut and (brand) vision to help consumers toward what’s next in programming.

FX has an idea. Brands need an idea.  Without, they are water lapping the shore. Peace!  

The New Lincoln Mishegas.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Would you like to be confused?  Click through to “Steer The Script” the new Lincoln Motor Company something or other. I’m not sure what it is, hence the something or other.  It’s is not a campaign so much as a weak federation of ads. Or not. The only thing I can say for sure is it has something to do with Twitter.  The ideas the drive the comms have been solicited from Twitter and conveyed by Twitter users. Then Lincoln’s agency started writing, directing and filming this Mishegas which I think we will see in :30 or :60 form on the Super Bowl.

I must admit, the new car (can’t remember its name…it has an M in it) is pretty cool looking. And it has a retractable roof – the whole roof, I think.

In an earlier post about Lincoln I made fun of a poorly constructed print ad introducing the New Lincoln Motor Company.  Next they did some advertising on TV with Abraham Lincoln, now this. I’m not sure who is running the show over at Lincoln, but their head must be on a swivel.

This is indeed a “new” Lincoln Motor Company.  And it does sell cars. Luxury cars that are designed for people. People? Other than that, mishegas (Yiddish). Peace in Syria.

  

 

 

 

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