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Sir Ken Robinson, in a TED video I watched yesterday on the state of education, mentioned something pretty profound. He said most people are often “good at something they don’t really like doing.” His point being, that mom-ism, “If you do something you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” His broader point was students today are broadcast to, not engaged, and that’s why education is in such a sorry state.
Broadcast Selling.
I was mowing the lawn last night and thinking about this as it relates to advertising and marketing. With media exploding into more and more, always-on devices (ding-a-ling, Good Will on the phone), and those devices containing advertising, the bombardment of selling is growing exponentially. Moreover, that selling is being done by more craft-less people, creating the advertising equivalent of fast food — poorly constructed and not good for you. (Ads by SEO kids, videos by moms.)
How to sell.
As a young ‘un in the ad business I drafted an article for Adweek that suggested people read ads to be: educated, entertained or to see something they’ve never seen before. I think this still applies. We are so inundated with selling messages today we shut down. Ingest too many antibiotics and you become immune. Hear the word “quality” too many times and you become similarly immune.
Our Job
Our job as marketers is not to say the same things with new messaging devices, it’s to educate, entertain and present the artful unseen. (In the 70’s my dad Fred Poppe used to call this “engagement.”) Engagement starts with getting someone to let down their message defenses. My ramble. My peace! Happy 4th.
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Tags: adweek, education, engagement, fred poppe, good will, marketing, seo, sir ken robinson, ted, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Noah Brier once asked me “How do you define a brand plan?” Everyone, he suggested, has a different view of what a brand plan is. My ability to answer in a few words with a simple explanation impressed (I think). A brand plan is really just an organizing principle. In order to create a good brand plan, one must first get the Is-Does right. What a brand IS and what it DOES. The Is-Does is one of the easiest and at the same time hardest exercises known to marketers. For instance, is the iPhone a phone?
Technology companies have a terrible time with the Is-Does. Here’s an Is-Does example from a website:
A global provider of digital advertising technology solutions that optimize the use of media, creative and data for enhanced performance.
Try explaining that to your great aunt.
A video on the same website, presumably created by someone with agency chops, refers to the company this way “A global leader in digital advertising campaign management.” Much better, no?
What Makes a Good Is-Does?
The litmus of a good Is-Does is its ability to be played back by consumers. Ask a consumer what your brand Is and what it Does and they should be in the neighborhood. If they have to use a competing brand to define you, that’s not good. And here’s a tip, don’t put words like “solution provider” in the Is-Does or use marketing poesy or made-up concepts.
If you have some really bad Is-Does examples (usually found on the boiler plate of press releases or the first sentence of the About section of a website) please post in the comments.
My Is-Does? Marketing Consultant (Is) that helps companies find powerful, sales driving brand strategies (Does). What is your company’s Is-Does? Peace!
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Tags: Brand Planning, Brand Strategy, Is-Does, marketing consultant, noah brier, whats the idea, whatstheidea
I follow lots of people but a couple of my favorites are Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Noah Brier. Charlene is just smart. She has morphed from a tech analyst to a social media expert to a management consultant, all within 3 years. She’s a media darling who reinvents herself almost annually. Jeremiah Owyang, who works with Charlene at the Altimeter Group is also another schmarty pants. He loves grids and quadrants, he loves to write, share and listen – and he loves to use technology. Analytical with a capital A.
Peter Kim is cut from the same cloth as Charlene and Jeremiah (all three are Forrester Research alums) but landed at the Dachis Group – a company filled with doers. Dachis will crack the code on bringing Web 2.0 to the enterprise and make a banana boat of bucks doing so. Peter likes to mix it up a bit. A proud man. Then there’s Noah Brier — chief strategist at the Barbarian Group. Like a racehorse in the paddock who you know will win the Derby someday, he’s exciting to watch. The beauty about Noah is you just don’t know what’s next. He’s random, brilliant, a doer and he loves bounding about in that paddock.
I wish these four blogged every day. If they would just give me a 100-150 words (no more Jeremiah), I’d be satisfied and so, so nourished. Please hit those keys. Peace!
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Tags: altimeter group, barbarian group, blogging, charlene li, dachis group, forrester research, jeremiah owyang, noah brier, peter kim, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Clearly, innovation is always in. Perhaps the bigger question is whether innovation should be pursued inside the company or out. It’s happening both ways. Innovation is big, big business. Ad agencies, digital shops and marketing companies have Chief Innovation Officers. Lots of money is spent in internal innovation departments and outsourced innovation companies…and the crowdsourcing phenomenon is contributing. Pepsi outsources its innovations and it has done remarkably well with it.
Innovation is the result of hard work and serendipity. I am of the mind that it’s most likely to occur from people doing not people sitting around thinking. The famous story of the 3M’s Post-It note resulting from a lab spill comes to mind.
The answer to the in or out question is a little bit of both, but working together. Inside to set the product or service stage and context — and outside for the random, unfettered thinking and consumer insights of trained selling and marketing minds. Peace!
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Tags: chief innovation officer, innovations, marketing, outsourcing, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Mission Control is a well-produced 76 second video by PepsiCo’s Gatorade ‘splaining how Gatorade marketing monitors the web for comments, chatter and potential product improvements. The “war room” at mission control is filled with AT&T NOC (network operations center) -like people in front of multiple monitors — their fingers on the pulse of Gatorade enthusiasts. Looks like they are a busy bunch.
Interspersed with the mission control pictures are great shots of Kobe, Serena, etc., helping viewers work up a sweat…which is what Gatorade is and should always be about.
Right now this vid is kind of inside baseball for the marketing, advertising and social community – plus I think it’s being used in and around Cannes to round up votes. It’s a great spend, by Gatorade as they “set the stage for digital leadership.” I’ve written before that every large corporation in America will have a social media dept. and I believe it. Smart senior agency people have nodded in agreement yet told me that the truly creative ideas and productions that hit wire/less will still come from agencies. That, too, I believe.
After a while though, after all marketers have jumped on this listening bandwagon and consumers are conditioned to provide product input, message input and marketing input, it will begin to dull the strategic senses. It will turn the world into a place filled with screen-scratching marketing interns, when what we really want to do is listen to the influential “Posters.” (Google whatstheidea+posters.)
Let’s watch out for that monster that we are creating. Peace!
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Tags: at&t, Cannes, digital leadership, gatorade, Gatorade mission control, google, Kobe, marketing, pepsico, Posters, Serena, social media monster, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Paul Gumbinner, a NYC recruiter, writes the great blog entitled View From Madison Avenue. He published a piece yesterday suggesting job seekers should never take career advice from parents or friends; the best advice comes people who study companies and “employee fit” for a living. Brilliant counsel.
As a brand planner, one trick I use to understand the market place I’m working in is to interview senior competing HR people in that category. As Mr. Gumbinner I’m sure will attest, this technique generates lots of qualitative data about the market, the people, competitive set and chatter on the street. An HR person who interviews scores of mid-level and senior people a week in, say, the enterprise software business, tends to know who’s hot and what’s hot. You planners out there should try it. Nice shortcut. Peace!
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Tags: Brand Planning, HR, paul Gumbinner, view form Madison avenue, whats the idea, whatstheidea
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that about 90% of the workers in advertising and marketing are consumed by tactics. “I want a new website. We need an acquisition program. Our sales force is up 8% year over year. The innovation team is cranking out some really great ideas.”
We build things, we buy things, we read, write and communicate. We hire and manage, then count the metrics and the change. But are these efforts always undertaken towards a strategic purpose? More often than not the answer is “no.”
Every company needs to have a strategic mission. A brand strategy. And it needs key operating principles: Brand planks. Every employee at the company needs to know the mission and the planks. Go out today and ask a worker what their company strategy is, and with the possible exception of Zappos you are likely to hear “make money” or “be more profitable.” Then probe “What are your company’s three key operating principles?” and you’ll get that look dogs give you when you put the ball behind your back. Try it. Peace!
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Tags: Advertising, brand planks, Brand Strategy, marketing, tactical world, whats the idea, whatstheidea, zappos
In Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership (which I have not yet read, but will), one of the premises is that leaders who really listen to customers are the most informed and prepared to deal with business issues. Because of social media’s prevalence and importance, this notion suggests that leaders who use the new listening channel (the web) are better leaders. Good advice, for sure. Those who know the name Andy Grove may remember that the first thing he did every morning upon hitting the office was to listen in on random customer service calls to his 800 number. It was old school technology, but it was listening. That’s why Intel succeeded.
General Motors (GM) brand managers and its ad agency strategists at Goodby Silverstein and Partners have decided to stop using the word Chevy in favor of the full, formal name Chevrolet. This is a strong brand management move. I yike it, as my daughter used to say. I don’t know the Chevrolet strategy, but can imagine this nomenclature move is intended to imbue the brand with a little more up-market sensibility. As GM nameplates are jettisoned, Chevrolet will be attempting to win over consumers who once bought pricier Oldsmobiles, Hummers, Pontiacs and such. Consumers will still say Chevy, but the people managing the brand will polish it with a finer cloth. They are exercising control. They are leading.
Pop marketing pundits are telling us consumers own the brand. Even the youthfully exuberant at P&G and others wielding great budget power are saying so. But if we cede control of marketing, strategy and leadership to the masses, we are being lazy. Listen yes…but lead. Peace!
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Tags: andy grove, brand management, charlene li, Chevrolet, chevy, general motors, goodby silverstein partners, Hummer, Intel, oldsmobile, open leadership, P&G, Pontiac, whats the idea, whatshteidea
Slide 4 in Mary Meekers’s Morgan Stanley presentation entitled “Internet Trends 2010” shows the pace of mobile internet adoption. It compares iPhone/iTouch to that of AOL’s desktop, Netscape desktop and NTT docomo iMode; laying out growth by users, by quarter from launch.
iPhone’s Internet access tipped 86 million users in its 11th quarter – less than 3 years. Let’s just say the others never came close to coming close. (Check out the chart on slide 4.) Smartphone growth is hockey sticking. Motorola is starting to get it. HP bought Palm and should buy some corporate share. Blackberry is too big and too rich to fail, even though they’re getting a little paunchy around the middle. And we haven’t even started to talk about the software guys Google (after its trivestiture), Microsoft (drawing a blank) and carrier switch provider Alcatel-Lucent.
Ladies and germs, smartphones are the future of computing, commerce and community. They will dock next to monitors and keyboards, but they are the device. Think about the iPhone4’s new videoconference app. Wait for fingerprint apps, and galvanic skin response apps, sobriety apps…. Cool times, these. Marketers, put on your thinking apps (I mean caps), innovation awaits! Peace!
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Tags: alcatel-lucent, AOL, apple, blackberry, docomo, google, hp, iphone4, marketing, mary meeker, morgan Stanley, motorola, netscape, ntt, smartphone marketing, thinking apps, whats the idea, whatstheidea
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