Most popular

    Wu hoo…activism.

    Steve Poppe -
    0

    Google Reason.

    Steve Poppe -
    0

    A Clear Brand Idea.

    Steve Poppe -
    0

    Marketing

    The Future of Marketing Analytics.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I wrote a piece a few years back foretelling the government’s breakup of Google. I predicted a Google trivestiture giving birth to a pure analytics company – to which marketers and ad agencies would pay lots of money. Well, the breakup hasn’t happened yet but Facebook may have just stepped into the analytics breach. Facebook is launching a new advertising platform, using all the data it collects about us, to sell ad space. And not all the ad space will be on Facebook. Many ads will appear on mobile sites, apps and other things digital.

    This is going to be big. I repeat, from a revenue standpoint this is going to be big.

    I’m afraid Facebook will have first mover market position on Google here and because it is a social network not a search company the government will allow it.  Google, I suspect, is going to want to tap into this new analytics revenue stream and siphon off a big chuck — and that may be where trivestiture kicks in. That said, by allowing Facebook first mover status it may prolong the period before trivestiture. Smart move.

    Who else wants a piece of this analytics pie? Amazon. And Apple with its bold new ApplePay program.

    Fasten your seatbelts errybodies, this is going to be fodder for some serious red state/blue state discussion over the next 10 year. Peace.

    we’re number ONE.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0
    U.S.News and World Report has ranked Cleveland Clinic #1 in America for heart care, 13 years in a row.
     
    One of my pet advertising peeves is award ads. They are done often and they are done awfully.  Every once in a while a smart ad person (not like those on A&E’s “Mad Men’) gets the assignment and does a great job. They make it simple: put the word out and don’t over embellish it or dial up the self-importance. They just give the facts in an elegant creative envelope.
     
    Cleveland Clinic’s full-page print ad had the first sentence of this post as its headline. Beneath it was a picture of U.S.News and World Report standing up, folded all the way open at the center spread until the pages touched at the bottom, forming the shape of a heart. You can read the title of the magazine, see a picture of a physician, and read the words from the cover “America’s Best…”
     
    The “#1” isn’t laid out in huge type, no bombast, everything is classy and factual. Just like you’d want your heart surgery. The Cleveland Clinic is doing more to revitalize Cleveland (the brand) than the Tribe and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame combined.    
     

    What’s the idea with IBM.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     

    I blasted Enfatico and Dell yesterday for a campaign idea that isn’t…and today I see one that is. It’s from IBM. Both campaigns operate in a similar space. Dell is teaching us that individuals can make a difference in business by “taking their own path.” IBM, with its new campaign, teaches us that people can make a difference on the planet by assembling and using data in smart ways, under the rubric "think."  The Dell approach uses borrowed interest while IBM’s uses core brand values. The way technology insinuates itself into these stories will impact the companies respective bottom lines.

     

     IBM highlights global problems like healthcare, drinking water, traffic, congestion – all fixable with smart data analysis and machines. Dell uses warm and fuzzyish people stories outlining personal and professional change, which even in India where the campaign is breaking, is just not right for the times.

     
    I wonder if IBM regrets selling the ThinkPad brand? When this campaign works and if IBM steps up, Lenovo might just be back in the fold before you know it. Think.

     

     

     

    Yahoo’s Growing Pains.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     I’m pulling for Yahoo and I’m pulling for Carol Bartz, its new CEO. Anyone worth his or her salt (whatever that means) has had some tough years. Yahoo is no different. Internetly speaking, Yahoo’s a geezer. So is AOL. At beer parties the technorati are embarrassed to say they work at AOL. And at MIT graduations, kids don’t toss their caps in the air screaming “Yahoo.”

    Now that the venture dudes are feeling the pain, they’re spending hundreds more hours focusing on corporate leadership and strategy.  And — check it out — even TechCrunch has grown a whisker. The best businesses have always been built upon the fundamentals: leadership, strategy and revenue generation. Even creatively-driven businesses like advertising have always been built upon solid business fundamentals.   

    Yahoo is going to focus. It is going to make big money. It is going to re-gather itself and command tech respect. It was a leader…and will be again. Just consider these growing pains. Peace!

    What’s the Expression?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     

    In a brief created earlier in the year for a social media music product I wrote “a musician is never more in touch with his or her art than when performing on stage, looking into the eyes of fans.” You’ve heard the expression “You feel me?,” well, unless their vision sucks (physically or metaphorically) artists should be able to look into the eyes of fans and tell if the song is any good.  If it’s connecting. Even with an audience of suburban white kids, many of whom couldn’t find the beat in a James Brown song, an artist can tell.

    This ability to “watch” the target is missing from much of marketing today. If creative teams, as they are coming up with words and pictures, envision the facial expressions of consumers hearing or seeing their messages, it will help them sell. It’s a projection exercise.  The strategic ideas (science) are hard enough to come up with, but the creative ideas that actually touch peoples’ souls (art) are where the money is. 

    While I do my strategic rant about “What’s the idea?,” creative people should be asking themselves “What’s the expression?” And if they can’t visualize consumers’ responses to their selling messages — if it’s too hard — then they are writers and designers, not communicators. 

     

     

    Yahoo’s Bold, Expensive Move.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Yahoo is buying Associated Media and its federation of 380,000 writers (Posters) who according to ComScore generate 16M monthly uniques.  Yahoo is paying $100 million for the ability to advertise to Associated’s audience and the deal also includes some technology which allows for the monitoring and prediction of reader content proclivities. This is a big move for Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO, and shows she is putting money into the content strategy.

    I look at content portals like Yahoo and AOL a little bit like big retail malls. A good portal, like a good mall, has lots of tenants but there is always what is called an anchor tenant — a big store that draws in lots of people.  In my view, this $100 million play is more about finding an “anchor” tenant (or ten) among Associated Media’s writers who will propel Yahoo’s numbers upward, rather than a crowd sourcing effort to generate mass.  It’s like putting a seine net in the ocean to catch krill but finding some big fish.  Yahoo needs next generation big fish. Big Posters. It’s a very expensive move, but should work for them.  The portal story, IMHO, is about quality not quantity.  But that’s just me.  Peace!

    Twitter…Still a Fetus.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     

    Twitter is big today and will be bigger tomorrow. We just haven’t really figured out how to use it yet. This week and last there have been a number of stories about Twitter topping out. Even Ofrah (sic) is tired of Twitter. I don’t think anything could be farther from the truth.

     

    The Epicurious application on iPhone is a very cool app that lets you graze at the grocery store and when you see a wonderful product access great recipes for that product in real time. Twitter offers the same type of solution opportunity, but from live people. A number of computer start-ups were built not too long ago whereby people could pay for answers online.  The main problem with those services was many questions come up while away from the computer.  Pay-for solution providers for mobile consumers will be a cool new application and one for which Twitter seems a perfect medium. Cha-ching.

     

     

    Apple’s Laborious Day.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0



    I have long been a supporter of Steve Jobs and Apple. With their market-changing introduction of the iPod, I really jumped on board, but this whole pricing debacle with the iPhone was foreseeable…and avoidable.

     
    Everybody knew the price was going to drop, but to do it so soon after launch sent a couple of really stupid messages to the market. The first messages, reported by the business press, was “Apple earnings must be off for such a reactive price drop.”  The second message, this one to Apple’s most passionate and loyal fans was “If you stood on line for days, were among the first to buy an iPhones and then ran around doing free demos for all your friends, you were a sap.”
     
    This was a no-brainer. Everyone in the world expected the price cut to happen prior to the Christmas/Chanukah holidays, but Labor Day? Someone was out to lunch on that decision.
     

    I’m really stupid.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     

     
    All along I’ve been thinking that the gia-normous profits the oil companies are making have been the result of corporate avarice, and that ExxonMobil and the like are making billions at the hands of poor schlubs like me who are spending at the pump liked never before.
     
    I was so wrong.
     
    Exxon/Mobil isn’t the enemy, it’s saving the planet. At least so says their new ad campaign. While waiting on line at the local falafel store a TV commercial on cable news told me so — as did a series of expensive spread ads in the New York Times. The new campaign has a lovely little blue graphic depicting some sort of blue liquid chemical construct, reminding me that ExxonMobil is big into R&D. And the ads educate me that ExxonMobil has people working really hard to solve next generation energy problems. Real people — I’ve read their names and titles. Lastly, ExxonMobil has developed a new exciting separator film for lithium ion batteries “to be” used in hybrid cars. (Did you know hybrid cars lower emissions?)
     
    I’m so glad ExxonMobil is spending $50-100 million on advertising to educate me as to what a helpful company they are. Without that I might have thought them in it for the money. I’m so stupid.
     

    The Web’s Specialty.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    There’s a cool story in today’s New York Times about single-food restaurants. It stands to reason that enterprises of this type can only thrive if the food is excellent and the stores located in highly populated areas.  In NYC you can take out and, in some cases, eat in at a Mac and Cheese store or a meatball store. There are places that sell only mussels, only rice pudding, and only fried chicken. It’s a growing phenomenon. Specialization suggests focus; a focus on quality, ingredients, product and knowledge.

    In mid-town Manhattan, where there are probably a half million lunches served within walking distance of any high-rise, there are lots of options. So why not go to the best option; the place that specializes? The place that eats, breathe and sleeps its specialty. Forget me not that this type of store can scale well and have a supply chain with amazingly fat margin opportunities. That’s gravy at the gravy store.

    This is a key chapter in the story of the Web — and where the web is going.

    I’ve written before about “worldwide pricing” and the ability to search the world for the best prices.  Well, how about searching the world for the best quality? The ability to do so is a web app. And specialization and focus are the tools of that trade.

    We are bound by product and service mediocrity because of geographic and time limitations. And because of supply and demand.  Well, say buh-bye to these barriers.  Ima stop there and let you entrepreneurs ponder that for a while. Ponder, Ponder.  Peace!

    123...207Page 2 of 207
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv