Marketing

    Circuit City Needs a Branding Idea.

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    Circuit City’s chairman, president, CEO Philip Schoonover stepped down yesterday, perhaps from the weight of all his titles. Actually, Circuit City has been performing poorly and needed a change.
     
    I’ve been in a Circuit City recently and the stores are nice. A little darker than Best Buy, but that’s soothing and makes the electronics glow a bit more. The place is not cavernous and the employees seem well-trained. Circuit City, though, does not really own a positioning the mind of the consumer.  And it could. I’m not sure Circuit City even advertises — if it does, it probably just uses circulars or price ads.
     
    The new CEO needs a smart CMO, a good agency and a clean, ownable branding idea. Best Buy is about selection and price. Radio Shack is about personal service, but the place look like a toy store. Circuit City, with its name and heritage, has the opportunity to be “expert” in electronics.  The place that explains, clarifies and recommends. Think Geek Squad for all things electronic.  Peace!
     
     

    Take Your Child to Work Day.

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    take your child to work day

    This is a story I have posted about before but it’s worth repeating. I worked as marketing director at an Ed Tech (educational technology) company a while back had to put together a talk for “Take Your Children to Work” day. The warehouse, call center, installers, professional development departments all had to do a few minutes on what mommy and daddy did. Close your eyes and imaging 60 kids sitting on a conference room floor listing to a discussion of HR. The kids were also going to tour the departments and walk through each part of the building.  A long, long day to fill.

    So how does one ‘splain marketing to a disinterested kid sitting on a floor waiting for recess or snack?

    “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a lemonade stand?”

    “Marketing is all the decisions you have to make in order to sell the lemonade. Are you going to use a package mix or real lemons?  How are you going to keep the ice cold?”  That’s Product of the “Four “Ps” of marketing. “How much are you going to charge for the lemonade?  Twenty five cents or a dollar?” Price. “What should the sign say? And where should you put the sign(s)? How big should the letters be on the sign?” Promotion. And lastly, “Where should you put your stand? In front of your house or on the corner, near two streets?” Place.

    Always know your audience and speak to them in terms they understand.  Not in terms you understand.  Okay, it’s cookie time.

    Peace.

     

    Twitter Brand Strategy.

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    Following is Jack Dorsey’s off-the-cuff articulation of Twitter’s brand strategy. “To be the fastest and best service to show what’s happening in the world.”  It was stated in a NYT article discussing the executive departure of Adam Messinger, Twitter’s chief technology officer. I very much like it. It’s focused. It’s organically tied to Twitter’s best feature. It works from a macro point of view and micro point of view.

    Twitter is like New Coke.  If it were to go away or change, there would be a revolt.

    I’m sorry to hear huge investors want more stock growth. I’m sorry senior officers want to leave. I’m sorry the leadership isn’t what it might be. But Twitter is bigger than all those things. Twitter is the world’s instant mouthpiece. In 750 years when the planet’s denizens are all speaking one language and share the same color skin Twitter will still be around. And Mr. Dorsey’s brand strategy will still hold.

    Peace.

     

     

    Sell hard, sell soft.

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    I’m always looking for consumer and marketing patterns, especially those that manifest in larger cultural happenings. I’ve written about the new health care phenomenon whereby we flip the model from treatment to prevention – the goal of the Affordable Care Act.

    Today I was reading about a new or retro law enforcement program being tested in Queens and Manhattan, moving away from “enforcement” to “prevention.”  Officers are asked to walk the beat more, spending more time talking to people in the community, learning about hot spots, pressure points, personalities and flow – hopefully before bad stuff happens. It’s similar to the healthcare model and I’m sure it will work. There will always be a need for enforcement as there will always be a need for treatment, but a few ounces of prevention — listening and learning — can go a long way.

    This got me wondering about selling. Can “hard sell” be allied with treatment and enforcement? The hard sell approach is about getting someone to do something they don’t want to do. With immediacy. Ding dong. Ring, ring. Button holing consumers on the street. Softer sell, is about preparing a consumer the time when they will be ready to buy. It works by making a positive impression. A memorable impression.

    Hard sell is expected in advertising. From people, in belly-to-belly selling situations, not so much. A key to marketing is “sell hard, in soft mode.” Effectively, preventing rejection.

    Peace.

     

    Loss On Investment. (Pt. 2)

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    I wrote a piece last week about LOI or loss on investment. There used to be only a couple of ways for brands to let consumer’s down: A bad product experience — we all know how that can get tongues wagging — and poor or offensive marketing communication, e.g., an ad. The latter rarely happens because professionals are developing those and approving those. Also, ads are often researched.

    Two ways to lose brand investment used to be the case, not today. Brands use way move channels to reach consumers. A poorly laid out website can tork off consumers. A slow or unfulfilling ecommerce experience. Some poorly thought out photos on Facebook accompanied by irate online comments. Digital and social have given consumers and poorly trained employees new hand in communications and it can dilute brand value. Undoing the good work.

    Last week a friend emailed me having received a disingenuous email from Amazon. A huge fan who has fed lots of money into the Kindle engine she was pissed because Amazon asked her to take a survey about Kindle usage. She happily agreed but then learned they were just trying to upsell her a Kindle Fire. To add insult, they asked lots of inane questions they should have known having so much data on her. Her rant to me was paragraphs. She’ll get over it, but a petal has fallen off that rose.

    The problem in brand management today is twofold. First, you actually have to have a brand strategy to manage. (One idea and three proof planks.) And second, you have to manage vigorously…with all partners, vendors, employees and publics. Find your brand strategy and feed it.

    Peace.

     

    Claim and Proof in Advertising

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    As a brand planner, whose primary concern is developing master brand strategy, my discovery phase is all about finding the right claim and the three most motivating proof planks supporting that claim.   This claim and proof framework is perhaps the simplest most easy to understand means by which to build a brand.

    Claim and proof is also a good driver for making effective advertising. Advertising, the biggest chunk of a marketing budget, is one of the weaker arrows in the marketing quiver. Why? Because it is mostly claim and very little proof. Following is an example

    UBS is a huge global financial company.  It invests billions of consumer’s retirement savings, mine included. It ran an ad in The New York Times today attempting to convince readers it is expert in the complicated Chinese market (claim). There is lots of flah flah flah about risk and reward in the copy then they break out the big and “proof” of claim: “As the first foreign bank in China…”   That’s all you got? That’s the proof of local knowledge superiority?

    Opportunity lost.

    Peace.

     

    Inspiration

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    Coming out of the advertising world I always subscribed to the axiom “It’s better to show than to tell.”  If you are selling the fun quotient at an amusement park, show the ride and the kid glee rather than read copy like “It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”
     
    Well, now that I’m on the marketing side, I realize the axiom must be expanded — showing is not enough. “Inspiring” is the key. If your marketing doesn’t inspire action or behavior change, you haven’t done your job.  Inspiration makes consumers think it’s their idea to purchase your product. As a communication form, it focuses on the customer needs and desires, not the marketer’s.   
     
    When a consumer wants to buy your product (read they are inspired to), they are already predisposed towards it. They want it to taste good, work better, or make their life better. 
     
    Marketer’s need to learn how to inspire customers and prospects, not just break through. If I read “break through the clutter” one more time in Ad Age, I’m going to “gurge” (short for regurgitate.)
     

    Drama in Prime Time TV.

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    According to Ad Age last week, TV advertising is as powerful a selling medium as ever, maybe more so. The article cited higher average sales lift per gross rating point  compared to previous studies. The research, funded by Ball State, Nielsen Co. and research firm Sequent, even indicates TV is working against teens – who index high against social media usage. Very iInteresting.

     

    Oddly, network TV stations are not making money. They’re not losing AIG money, but they are getting dinged. So networks are putting out more low-cost reality shows, moving variety talk shows into prime time (Jay Leno on NBC is the first), and flip-flopping around new drama series like hot cakes. Cable TV programming is also poaching network dollars putting the networks in a bind.

     

    Where will it go?  Movies in theaters are making a comeback, as evidenced by amazing numbers the last few months, which makes me wonder if soon we’ll be forced to get our drama from the movie theater rather than the TV? I hope not. But near term, I wouldn’t be surprised if network prime time ends at 10 o’clock, and cable prime time starts at 10. Peace!

     

    Yahoo! Treading Water.

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    Yahoo! is sitting on a bundle of cash and according to news reports stockholders are clamoring for a payout. The cash is from holdings in Alibaba which just IPO’d. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, is being pressured to not spend money on purchases of other tech companies a la the huge Tumblr purchase — stock owners want dividend checks. Can’t really blame them.

    Yahoo is a media company and a technology company. And frankly, they are not excelling at either. David Pogue is not happening. Katie Couric, not so much. The new digital food magazine is not burning down the house. And mobile first – I don’t really know what that means other than make stuff work on smaller screens and invent fun phone apps – is not delivering differentiated value at this point.

    Ms. Mayer needs to tell investors “snookie, shut up and get in your bed.” She needs to put the check book away and stop looking to buy side view mirror tech companies (companies fast approaching from behind). Yahoo’s new strategy is “be part of people’s daily habits.” A nice start. But weather, food, tech news and the Middle East have been done. Yahoo needs to invent in areas that are not saturated. And big data is a good place to mine for behaviors and habits. Focus on daily habits, innovate around them and deliver under the Yahoo brand. First understand the habits, then understand the pent up demand, then turn the engineers loose. I get the feeling the engineers are defining the need, which is backwards.

    Too much company time is spent reinventing not inventing. Peace.