Miller Lite

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miller high lifeForget Consumer Generated Content…

…agencies need to worry about marketer generated content.  Check out this Ad Age quote from the CMO of Miller Randy Ransom regarding its new in-house effort for Miller Lite:

“We are taking a ‘hard right turn’ back to the core essence of Miller Lite, which has always been about differentiating Miller Lite from competitors as a better beer.  The new ads (in-house) demonstrate our ability to move with speed and conviction. And we like the flexibility that these simple formats provide to quickly customize our messaging for a variety of mediums.”

The implication in Mr. Ransom’s quote is that agency’s cannot move with speed and conviction, are not flexible, and can’t quickly customize messages to a variety of mediums.  That’s a problem.  It’s a bigger problem than the work that got Miller Lite into this mess, which I’m sure was collaborative.

(Oh, and Alex Bogusky, strap on a pair and fire these bozos.)

Avon

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Ding Dong

One of my favorite sayings about advertising is “Just when you think you know something about this business, someone comes along to prove you wrong.” Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here after reading about Avon’s new campaign and say it’s not going to be very successful. It will have some success because they are pumping $340 million into the marketplace.

When the president of global marketing goes on record as saying “Avon is the company that best understands and empowers women” I immediately cringe and anticipate failure. That’s marko-babble. When I read further that the objectives of the ads are to improve their sales channel by recruiting doorbell ringers AND at the same time communicating that the Avon family of products prepares women for the aging process (the line is “Hello Tomorrow”) I know they are soon to be in deep doo-doo. What’s the idea?  What will consumers say about the advertising, product, and brand the day after they see the work?

And the last premise – slowing the aging process – by itself is questionable.  First of all, it targets older women and doesn’t address today’s newer buyers. Second, aging is more about genetics and lifestyle than about creams (with the exception of SPF). And third, women want to look healthy and beautiful now, not in the future. That’s why all the pictures in the ads are going to be of youngish women.  Ding dong, hello.

: Avon Products,

Simplicity out of Complexity

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I’m moving my blog over to a more grown up platform thanks to some friends at UnReal Web Marketing and one of the first posts they selected for the test site was titled “Dashboard My Ass.” Dashboards are the rage for senior executives today, putting all the important business metrics at their fingertips. And as we know, metrics are Nirvana (sorry Kurt) in marketing today.  I love metrics, don’t get me wrong, but in my work they can’t fuzzy the judgment.

 

Taking 10 or 20 sales measures off a dashboard and building market segments, salesforces, ad campaigns, and new products teams around them is complex business. At a big company, this work may take scores of people. (Think Yahoo.) But how do you make sense of all that dashboard data and product planning activity in a way that is simple, easy-to-digest, and meaningful for consumers? How do you create a simple branding idea out of all that complex data? 

 

Well, you don’t do it with a dashboard. It’s a brains and hearts thing. When the Galvanic Skin Response of the executive team starts to perk, that’s when you know you have an idea. I never saw a dashboard buy soap powder. Peace.  

Simplicity out of Complexity

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I’m moving my blog over to a more grown up platform thanks to some friends at UnReal Web Marketing and one of the first posts they selected for the test site was titled “Dashboard My Ass.” Dashboards are the rage for senior executives today, putting all the important business metrics at their fingertips. And as we know, metrics are Nirvana (sorry Kurt) in marketing today. I love metrics, don’t get me wrong, but in my work they can’t fuzzy the judgment.

Taking 10 or 20 sales measures off a dashboard and building market segments, salesforces, ad campaigns, and new products teams around them is complex business. At a big company, this work may take scores of people. (Think Yahoo.) But how do you make sense of all that dashboard data and product planning activity in a way that is simple, easy-to-digest, and meaningful for consumers? How do you create a simple branding idea out of all that complex data?

Well, you don’t do it with a dashboard. It’s a brains and hearts thing. When the Galvanic Skin Response of the executive team starts to perk, that’s when you know you have an idea. I never saw a dashboard buy soap powder. Peace.

Digital Wrongs Management

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Gordon Ramsey, of TV’s Hell’s Kitchen, may have a nasty streak but he’s doing a nice little reclamation project in my home town of Babylon, NY this week.  He is filming an episode for Fox in which he brings a restaurant back from the brink.

If I knew how to load pictures on my blog I’d put up a camera phone shot of Gordon and my son. Hopefully, I wouldn’t get sued.  Certainly my son can’t sue, he signed a waiver — as did the rest of the school kids and teachers.  Why? Because as part of the episode Gordon threw a picnic on the football field and should any of the kids or teachers likenesses be aired, the network needs signed releases.

As an added bonus, the school band was asked to perform at the picnic.  However, at the 11th hour the band had to go back to school and learn a new song, because the initial song they had prepared and practiced was “rights protected.”  (Something from the Beatles catalog, I wonder?)  Off they went to find a song that was royalty-free.  They didn’t have much time to practice, the new song just “okay,” and their collective 15 minutes of fame tarnished.  When will this madness stop?

Tags: Gordon Ramsey, Hell’s Kitchen, Digital Rights Management, Fox

The Flavor of TV

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It’s heartening to know that one of the reasons for the growth of social networking is the surfeit of drivel emanating from the TVs across America.  TV today is so bad for teens and Gen Y that they watch reruns almost as much as original programming.  How many times can you watch New York wave her hands in Flavor Flav’s face. 

This epiphany came to me while reading a Facebook blog about how its log-ons tank as soon at Grey’s Anatomy goes on air. 

Why do kids like Flav?  Because he’s entertaining.  His antics, even the third time, are better than the teen psycho-dramas of prime time television. 

Let’s improve the programming and I bet the TV numbers come back up for the young demo.  Pretty simple.

Tags: Flavor Flav, Grey’s Anatomy, Television Programming, Facebook

FoxSpace

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At a recent PSFK conference ad pundit George Parker mentioned that Rupert Murdoch was about to “f” up MySpace by covering it in Fox content.  Well, there was a link in the MediaPost today suggesting that MySpace has plans to add a news channel to MySpace. 

Jesus! MySpace already owns the “middle” of the social networking space now they want to add professional news content?  They would be better off adding a channel called people’s news, where regular people report what they see, a la, “there’s a traffic accident on Route 80.” Or, “there’s a hold-up underway in the 7-11 in Bumpus Mills.

News Corp is getting overly greedy and trying to spread its seed in too many places. This will end up being a mistake for them and will dilute their powerful MySpace franchise.

Tags: Rupert Murdoch, MySpace, PSFK, George Parker, News Corp

Apple just dinged Facebook.

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I saw a tee-shirt and have a picture of it on my Zude page that reads “I Facebooked your mom.”  I gotta get one.  Well, it looks like Steve Jobs just Facebooked Mark Zuckerberg.  Jobs and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins announced yesterday that they are setting up a $100 million fund to support software developers who create apps for the iPhone.  Okay, maybe Jobs borrowed the idea from Mr. Zuckerberg, but in a true senior moment, capitalist way, he is creating a more tangible monetary incentive for independent coders which should bring them and their sticker bedecked laptops scurrying to the iPhone. 

Put away those cow tossing apps. Put away those nuisance invitations to join the best haircut club, or the “Who has the best “gap tooth smile” group.  Now you can make some serious. Money.

Approved iPhone apps will go up on a new service called the App Store (Get it? App, as in Apple.)  Apple will keep 30% and I’m not sure if the remainder goes to the developer or if Kleiner keeps some points, but it is sure going to beat counting cows.

That’s a nice first day on the job for Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s new COO. More on her later.  Peace out from Canadian Music Week!

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Facebook, Google, Apple, App Store, Steve Jobs, Zude, application developers

Officemax elf

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Are you Elfing kidding?

Over the Christmas holidays OfficeMax and their agency Toy Inc. cobbled together a fun little creative effort to build gift sales.  Not many people go to OfficeMax to roam the store looking for Christmas/Holiday inspiration, so getting bodies into the store that time of year for anything other than pen sets and desks is probably a challenge. 

The program, a piece of branded entertainment called Elf Yourself, generated 36 million visits to the online site over 5 weeks. 

Here’s a quote from Ad Age on the program results: “It ended up with a 20% bump in online traffic during the holidays, though it’s tough to say if the web effort was responsible for a sales rise at OfficeMax.” 

Are you Elfin kidding me?

If I parse the Ad Age sentence, the quote either means that 36 million new consumer impressions did not translate into store sales, or there weren’t any increased store sales.

I certainly hope it was the former and that there were increases but management felt they couldn’t be sure they were attributable to the 36M impressions. (Must have been those holiday point of sale signs and end-caps.)  If stores sales were not up YOY, then I would call that an Elfing opportunity lost.

Dashboard my ass.

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The pop marketing term of the last couple of years has been “dashboard.”  As a brand planner who advocates “windshield” planning rather than the more common “rear view mirror planning” approach, I get the dashboard metaphor.  

The marketing dashboard contains dials and gauges that monitor the performance of marketing programs.  These metrics are valuable for sure but if one doesn’t look out the windshield and truly see what’s coming, they are driving with their head down.

Great marketers don’t wait around for consumer behaviors to be measured, great marketers decide what consumers will like…before they like it.  They see in front of the dashboard.  The future is a beautiful place.  

Tags: Marketing dashboard, brand planning