Random

    Marketing

    Shanzhai Agencies.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     

    The “shanzhai” phenomenon in China — flooding the market with low-cost counterfeit mobile phones — is big business. In the U.S. we also have a shanzhai phenomenon but it’s tied to small and mid-size advertising and marketing agencies who pretend to be digital marketing experts.

     

    It usually starts with building a client website, then it extents to creating and placing display ads and email marketing. These shanhzai pretenders are going to school on unsuspecting marketers and it’s creating problems for everyone.

     

    Websites are built in Flash and are, therefore, not searchable. Emails are created that look like brochures with hundreds of words of copy. Online ads aren’t linked to landing pages and website navigation doesn’t come close to reflecting any standard of reasonable usability. The pretenders aren’t getting rich on this stuff either. It’s a disease.

     

    One way to make sure you don’t fall into this shanzhai digital trap is to check the shop’s website. Is it impressive? Logical? Does it load quickly? Does it excite? “Google” them and see if they show up. Do they have a blog? Check out their digital work and contact their digital clients. Ask if the people are on staff or freelance. Don’t buy counterfeit goods. Peace!

    A Healthy Brand Planning Question.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    There is a battery of questions I use when doing brand discovery; questions I ask of senior executives at the client company.  One such has to do with product or service roadmap. Today I’m thinking the question should be focused to probe around “consumer health.” Past road map questions may have prompted answers about efficiency or lower cost but as many markets are moving toward healthier life choices it makes sense to ping this way.

    “What are you doing with your product or service that will promote healthier consumers or a healthier planet?”

    When Tyson Chicken invests in Beyond Meat, it is making a bet on healthy. When Campbell Soup Company bought Bolthouse Farms Juices, it was a bet on healthy.  When fast food companies stop frying French fries in trans fats, it was investing in healthy. These are telling moves and important investments. They undergird brand strategy and must be understood.

    A brand with a conscience is a brand that sleeps well at night. And sleep is not an over-rated activity.

    Peace.                                                                          

     

    When is funny not funny?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0
    Was there one Super Bowl commercial  (Am I allowed to use the word Super Bowl without paying a licensing fee?) that wasn’t designed to make people laugh? It seemed that every marketer cared only about creating a humorous imprint on consumers rather than selling a little product. Don’t get me wrong, I love humor. But in the comedy club that has become the Super Bowl I’m afraid consumers are beginning to judge the work, rather than respond to it. The messages are getting lost in the humor.
     
    The ad I remember most over the last couple of Super Bowls was the one in which soldiers returning home from Iraq were met with spontaneous applause in the airport. That was powerful. And though I’m not 100% sure it was Budweiser, I’m going to give them credit. While I’m giving Bud (not Bud Light) credit, I’m going to like them a little more as a company, albeit not in any thirst-quenching manner. 

    On what is supposed to be advertising’s finest day, I think we’re losing our way.

    Product Gestures

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0
    Guinness for strength
    Guinness for strength

    I once Tweeted: “The fastest way to brand loyalty: Don’t take customers for granted and provide them with unexpected, thoughtful product gestures.”

    The word in this statement that excites me is gestures. It’s easy to see what a service gesture is, that’s a manmade experience, but a product gesture? Hmm. At the time I’m sure what I meant by product gesture was “service gesture,” or “corporate gesture.” However, now I’m looking at product gesture a little differently. A little more organically.

    A rough definition of gesture is: A movement or action that is expressive of an idea, opinion or emotion. So let’s look at that for a second. When you pour a beer, is the head an expression? Of course it is. But of what? Freshness, glass cleanliness, taste? And don’t all beers have head? Indeed they do. Guinness Stout has a head, however that head is richer, fuller, made up of tinier bubbles due to carbonation from nitrogen not carbon dioxide. An organic product expression.  

    When brand planners look for differentiation they can start by asking product managers and consumers what gestures derive from the product. Product gestures are part of the consuming experience not the marketing experience.

    Tink about it as my Norwegian aunt might say. Peace.

    (More on experiences vs. gestures tomorrow.)

    Crispin and Microsoft Should Play Offense

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Crispin Porter is a very, very good ad agency. I don’t always agree with their creative, but more often than not it has a positive effect. As they get bigger, though, they run into client issues, category issues, and problems they haven’t seen before, making it hard to succeed all the time.
     
    One issue they are currently addressing with the new Microsoft advertising is the corner they have been painted into by TBWA/Chiat Day’s “I’m a PC” campaign for Apple. The campaign uses a Bill Gates-like nebbishey figure to represent the PC and he is never as cool or consumer-friendly as the Apple figure. Moreover, he takes shots like a hockey goalie.
     
    Crispin Porter has done a campaign that plays defense against the Apple campaign, in a sense whining about being mistreated and made into a “stereotype.” This defensive position is a mistake and very un-Crispin-like. They are best when on offense. Secondly, the genius of the Apple work is not in dis-ing Microsoft so much as it dis-ing the PC. Microsoft has taken the bait…focusing on the PC not the software. Microsoft needs its own idea. About software. And “Life without walls.” (the new line) isn’t it.
     

    Brand Craft.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    carbonsPlease don’t kill me for this poor metaphor, but China is pumping 1 million more tons of carbon into the atmosphere than previously reported. And Greenland is melting. It’s worth a big fat ulcer. And we’d better do something about it.

    The state of the advertising and marketing business is not much better. We are pumping billions of dollars into the advertising atmosphere, filled with not much more than “we’re here ads” and other cultural blather. “We’re here” advertising works when awareness is all that is needed to stim a sale but its poor tradecraft. Blather is not only poor tradecraft, it creates a pool of murky water through which consumers cannot see the good work. It uses and re-uses words like “quality” and “innovation” and “best” to the point where advertising is melting. This is exacerbated by online messaging.

    Great brand strategy creates a map of acceptable “good ats” and “care abouts.” It organizes them in such a way that the collective story stands out. A brand strategy is easy to follow. You are either on strategy (one claim, three proof planks) or you are not. When the brand craft is good, the advertising tradecraft is good. Even if part blather. Let’s start practicing brand craft to improve our tradecraft.

    Peace.

     

    The next selling app.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    In Berlin, they are taking the car-rental-on-demand thing to the next level. In Berlin you can use a smart phone app to find a car near you, drive it where you want to go and leave it — for an annual fee and a per minute charge.  The logistics are handled by the app.  (In the future, the renting companies may contribute to the logistics by moving cars around in response to expected demand, but for now it seems to be working fine as is.)

    Big picture.  Cities have too many cars. Too much carbon.  Lots of cars with one person in them. Limited parking spaces. This is a solution. Brilliant. (Though walking and bicycling would be better.)  In the article I read about this program someone was quoted saying this couldn’t have happened in the 90s. Smarties, GPS and apps make it happen today. This is beyond the dashboard stuff.

    It’s how marketers need to think. How do we take inefficiency out of the marketing process.  Price shopping is easy. Geo-pricing and deals are easy. Inventory is easy-ish. But how about creating preference?  We haven’t really cracked the code on that one. Sure we have friend recos, likes and reviews. We also have videos to see products in action.  But we haven’t killed that visceral selling thing yet –the moving of customers closer to a sale through unexpected. exciting means. I’m guessing this task will fall to artists — enabled by technologists. It will be born of Twitch Point Planning, but with a poetic, artful and multidimensional twist.  I’ll share as I get closer. Hope you do too. Peace.

    If I did a TED Talk.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    If invited to do a TED Talk, I’m sure it would be about branding. In an age where 70% of college educated kids start sentences off with “Me and Jessica are…”, where athletes refer to themselves as brands, entertainment shows dumb down baby and couple names into syllables, and Twitter handles are more globally recognized than Hollywood names, the person-as-brand is not too far-fetched.

    Well, I’m not going there. I’m a purist. I am still debating whether a service can be a brand. Or a company. My brands are consumables. So shoot me.

    Now Branding, brand with a ding on the end, that I can talk about. How to create a brand in the minds of consumers.  It is an act. A pursuit. And pursuits need plans. Branding is “an organizing principle, anchored to an idea.” Everything starts with the product. Then the product features and benefits. Wash those with consumer care-abouts – the most important first. Then combine what the product does well with the most compelling needs of the consumer and create a claim and proof of claim array (4 things). These are the things that drive perception and memory. Branding is not a song. But a tune may contribute. It’s not a color but may be a feeling.

    The longer the “what is a brand debate goes on” the more brand planners will be in business. And the more TED Talks there will be on the subject.  Brands may be misunderstood but making them doesn’t have to be.

    Is North Korea a brand? They follow an organizing principle. Hmmm.

     

    Manual Labor. New School.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Here’s a marketing practice we might be seeing a lot more — new products shipping without manuals.  The new Orb, a TV recording device written up by David Pogue in The New York Times today, does not come with directions. Pogue lambasts the company for this because the Orb requires a fairly complicated set up. He said the Orb is not ready for primetime but tres cool, by the way.

    This “no manual” approach wasn’t an omission, it was a smart tactic – one that insures new customers must visit the website.   

    It’s a sustainable practice, which is forward-looking, unless you print out 50 single sheets of paper from your HP Laserjet, and it offers up some significant marketing surround.  Though the Orb people haven’t executed it well (see screen grab of homepage below), this OOB (out of box) experience, makes buyers visit the website where it can continue the selling process and provide a video set-up tute (That’s short for tutorial, Bronwen). It’s a great place to get an email address and product registration info and also a chance to cross- or up-sell – an especially important step for ecommerce customers who may not have had an opportunity to speak with a salesperson.

     

    No manual. I yike it!  Peace.

    Disaster Brands.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    If I say Las Vegas shooting you know what I mean. If I type “Las Vegas sh..” into Google, it auto defaults. In 5 years if I say Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino are you likely to think of the same carnage? Hopefully not.

    The words “nine one one” have a very different meaning than the words “nine eleven.” Words high-jacked by violent human and natural disasters affectively become brands. Disaster brands. There aren’t going to be a lot of babies named “Sandy,” for instance, on the south shore of Long Island for a long while. Columbine, Pulse Nightclub, the list goes on.

    Disasters are happening more and more in our society. And how they are propagated and recorded in history are mostly determined by the media. If the media overuses Mandalay Bay as shorthand for the Las Vegas massacre, it will completely ruin that brand. As of now, it’s still a tossup whether Mandalay Bay can last as a brand.

    Media people tend to favor location-based naming. Yet even that can put a blight on a community, read “Amityville, Horror.” Sandy Hook has etched it name into our collective minds…and the school was torn down. Newtown, CT the location of the school is slowly healing as a disaster brand. 

    I don’t know the answer. I just want to suggest a more sensitive approach to creating names for these violent disasters.  

    Any thoughts?

    Peace.

     

    1...197198199...207Page 198 of 207
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv