Brand Marketing Tips by Steve Poppe » promotions

Intelligent Clothes Tagging.

Steve Poppe — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:41:45 +0000

Within a couple of years many newly manufactured clothes will contain inexpensive data tags. Much like a scanner tag you find on packaged goods these tags will contain brand name, style, store and price. What will make them unique, however, is that they’ll be scannable via phone applications. See a cool pair of shoes on the street? Just point-and-click and immediately know what the item is. Think of it as a paparazzi for clothing thing. Sure it will be annoying…but we’ll live with it.

As this service gets more sophisticated and cheaper and the geo-location and privacy implications resolved, manufactures and marketers will be able to aggregate data and read that in Brooklyn, 200,000 people are walking around in Chuck Tailors on Friday but only 75,000 people on Wednesday. We’ll know black tee-shirts outnumber red 2:1 on Monday and sundresses are really worn on sunny days.

And don’t even get me started about clothing tags tied to coupons, promotions, search terms or Twitter codes. I can’t even process that. For that add two more years. Peace!

PS. This is but one chapter in my worldwide inventory theory.

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Davos for Marketers?

Steve Poppe — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:40:32 +0000

The World Economic Summit currently underway in Davos Switzerland should be recreated once a year for all the leaders of the advertising and marketing communities. We should probably throw in a few economists just to keep the event grounded; after all, the real prize is money.

The polyglot array of marketing agencies which make up client rosters today is insanely inefficient and needs to be fixed. Some big global companies have 50 plus ad agencies. Add to that public relations shops, direct marketing companies, digital, events/promotions, and the newly coined social media shops and you can begin to imagine the waste. The donut and bagel budget alone must be incalculable. And all the people needed to effectively manage these many agents is also a big honkin’ number. Plus communications, travel, entertainment, etc. Smart agencies and holding companies should take the lead on this — but that’s not likely to happen.

Davos for Marketers will, no doubt, be held in Cincinnati and it should be broken into two parts: all agencies then agencies plus marketers. No golf, no awards, no spousal programs, just hard work intended to optimize the silos, the workflow, outputs, integration, proper spending and measurement. I suspect the first year will be a mess. — metal detectors will be a good idea – but the reality is, for marketers and their agents it will be an important step toward building a more effective marketing future. Peace!

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Walgreen Falls Into Trap.

Steve Poppe — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Promotions and discounts are a trap easily fallen into, and the Walgreen Company just confirmed its stumble. Sales were up for the quarter but revenue down which according to corporate spokespeople was attributed to excessive promotions. Promotions are best used to create trial — to get people to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. When people need an incentive, promotions work.

Walgreens looked at the slowing economy and decided to cut prices and give product away as a tactical means to spark business. I am not privy to the exact product offers and have not seen the supporting communications, but will bet they did not support the core Walgreen brand idea, which if the website is accurate is “The Pharmacy America Trusts.” And even if it did support the branding idea trust is such a lazy and hard to differentiate strategy for pharmacies, it’s no wonder sales are tailing. Walgreens needs a real idea. And it’s in their storesevery day. They just have to find it. Peace!

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