Facebook Instagram X Youtube
    Latest

    Marketing

    Publicis, Slinging the Hashtag.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I love Twitter and have long said it is a very important media. Global, real-time news with attachments. In a presentation first given to the Long Island Social Media Club, I shared a slide entitled “rock the hashtag.” (Sorry, it was a while ago.)  I encouraged people to be inventive with the hashtag and suggested that in the future marketers would find unique and exciting ways to be promotional with it.   

    publicis logo

    Publicis, an advertising and holding company has just announced a R&D labs with Twitter to help consumers use Twitter thusly.  Right now, they’re focused on marrying Twitter with TV programming which is just a sign of the times; the times being there is a lot of poor television around…and more channels on which to watch them. (Psst, TV Program Creators — the idea is to not bore your audience into using second screens.) Anyway, the labs will no doubt come up with some interesting ideas and twists, which will give birth to new ideas, twists and forms of technology.  Publicis may have just hit a home run here.

    Twitter is about much more than just the hashtag – but the hash is a transformative tool. Hopefully, mid-level marketing managers won’t be at the controls and brand managers will keep an eye on what is going on. Poorly executed programs will have the potential to do more harm than good…rocking that hashtag.  Peace. #merleFest

    Re-racking Rackspace.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Rackspace has a great name.  It is endemic to the cloud-based hosting category, it’s easy to repeat and understand for the lay person.  It’s descriptive and mellifluous.  Rackspace hired Robert Scoble to help put them on the map and make the brand more relevant a few years ago and it has paid great dividends. Now the company is one of the top players, along with Amazon, Microsoft and Google.  But this rentable web platform space is about a couple of things: trust, cost and functionality. Trust that the platform and systems stay up. Cost because you are buying bandwidth and processing power by the pound. And functionality because technology is always about functionality.

    The current Rackspace name does not do the brand justice. It smacks of raw, bare bones, generic computing power. His is where I might suggest – and you can bet the corporate officers are thinking the same way – that the company be renamed. Renamed to deliver more of a technically forward punch. But names are money. And I think the Rackspace name can be evolved.  If the brand plan begins to define space and as outer space, with endless possibilities they will be on to something.  The final frontier, indeed. As companies grow, so can their brands.

    Love the name, but in 2013 and beyond, it needs a bit of a facial.  Peace.

    Report Card From a Father.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I’m going off piste, not writing about branding today, because my son graduates one month from today and I’d like to give him a father’s report card.

    I’m sure you have friends who go on about the successes of their children: honor society, leading scorer, singing at the county recitals, internship at a big accounting firm in the city, etc.  Then there are “listener” and “nodder” parents. Those who listen and nod because their children aren’t on the dean’s list, they text with misspellings, need to be prodded to do chores, tend to be more rebellious.  The listener and nodders are the ones at parties who say things like “our job as parents is to get the ready for the real world, give them a good sense of what is right and wrong.”

    With my son being one month away from graduating, here is his fatherly report card. And, as a listener/nodder I say this with great and deep pride.

    It took him a good while to take advantage of his college education. Let’s call it holistic education rather than an intense, 4 year academic one. With one month to go, he can reason. He can organize thoughts into supported positions. His world view could be greater (had be studied and read more) but he can array his supports around fact, not just opinion. He’s always known how to be convincing and logical but is now moving closer to capturing that skill on paper. He understands bias and though not always easy, he recognizes how it contributes to unfairness.

    This is a young man that will not endanger others. Or let others endanger others. He understands what is lawful and what is not.  He is beginning to “get” consequences, even though his father has tried to shield him from them for years.

    Always independent, he is learning to understand the importance of community and consensus.  He is beginning to really see what love is about. And how powerful and compelling an emotion it can be.   And I believe he is seeing that humor has its place but also its translations.  

    Has he read Keirkegaardt?  Maybe not. Will he land on his feet? Always has. Will he get along with all kinds of people as a post grad? I’m betting so.  

    With one month out, in the last mile of his college education, I believe my boy is ready.  He may own a pair of sticky soled party sneakers, but he knows when to put them away and when to wear adult hiking boots. The boots he will use on the trail toward his exciting, fruitful future.

    Love you Biggie. Peace! 

    PS. Thanks to all the Plattsburgh professors who joined in this journey.

    The Marketing Deficit.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Ads are money. At least they cost money. But many people don’t always think of them that way CFOs do. CEOs do…sorta. Ad agents and marketing managers think of budgets as the invisible air they breathe, not as the life sustain force. Not as money. What am I getting at? We have to start treating advertising and marketing related expenses as the money it is. Make that money accountable. What is working? And by what measurable quantification?

    When a family goes broke, the debt that keeps getting added to the credit card and credit line, stops. Mommy or daddy cuts up the credit cards. When Social Security and Medicare trend toward an unsustainable level, we need to make changes. We are often operating at a marketing deficit.

    We can’t take the art out of advertising and marketing. But let’s remember, branding is not design. And a Super Bowl ad than makes us giggle but sells a competitor’s product is a blight. We can start to treat advertising like the business tool it is. (The web too, for that matter.) These are tactics that need to move consumer closer to a sale – if not directly to a sale. On the show Top of the Lake on The Sundance Channel one of the characters beats himself with a belt before his mother’s grave to rid himself of guilt. Maybe we marketers should smack ourselves around a touch to remind us of our real business purpose. Peace.

    Downtime as Up Time

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Think of all the places you go and have to wait.  The places to which you bring a book.  Or if you aren’t prepared, places where you have to entertain yourself with your mobile or thumbing through magazine. Perhaps people watching. These are fertile marketing opportunities.

    What does every airline have in common? Waiting areas near the gate.  Doctor’s offices? Motor vehicle? They all have chairs and TVs. Waiting and TVs are happy bedfellows. Good marketers should look to trump the TV and the romance novel as pass times in places where consumers are bored and waiting. And they should do so with relevant, brand endemic experiences. If you are waiting to get your car fixed at Toyota, forced to watch Good Moring America, what might Toyota do to better entertain you?  Perhaps provide a car service seminar or a change-your-own-oil video? How about at the doctor’s office, a free consultation on nutrition or a free yoga demonstration by a local gym.

    We are a Fast Twitch society and it is getting worse. Running a Zen clinic in the US wouldn’t be a growth industry. Everybody always needs to be doing something.  Experiential marketing ideas, with on-brand product demonstrations, is a wonderful technique. If we look at consumer downtime as it relates to our products and think about ways to move them closer to a sale, (see also see Twitch Point Planning), we are competing on a level most marketers are not. What would Charlie Sheehan say? 

    Peace.

    The marketing director’s job.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Living in the now is what marketing directors are hired to do.  There is nothing more stimulating for a marketer than watching the orders come in. Units, dollars, cases…these are the things that generate wood. Behind the arrow. 😉  Sales are the real data. Being able to interpret feeder data and relate it to sales is important, but sales are the business.

    Strategy is the landscape that surrounds sales; the lens through which we see and interpret them. Yet sales-driven organizations don’t always care about strategy, they care about the now.  They live in the now.  A good part of my brand planning rigor is devoted to tracking the sales and selling experience.  It feeds the strategy.  But sales and sales tactics that live in the now without a paean to strategy become easily tired.

    Marketing directors need to balance the now with the long term. Slow and steady do not get marketing directors to the head of the line.  Meg Whitman, CEO of HP is no marketing director (Oh yes she is) but she’s being given time to turn HP around. Slow and steady.  Marketing directors don’t have that luxury; especially with dashboard jockeys on every horizon.  

    The key for any new marketing director or CMOs over their first 100 days is to learn the business, properly cultivate the marketing department, quickly plant seeds, and share successes. With a plan, with a strategy, all tactics become accountable.  Good sales and bad sales become obvious. Now. Then. And when. Peace.

     

    Brand planning tip number 1.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

     It seems lots of social headlines start with 3 steps, 7 tips and 6 critical somethings…so a number it is. Feed the social serpent hee hee.

    I write briefs for a living. To get to a brief, I do lots of interviews.  It’s my secret sauce.  But the sauce changes from time to time to meet the evolving culture of buying and selling and here’s a brand new path of inquiry: arrogance.

    Apple got tangled up in China recently for what the Chinese government referred to as arrogant  policies and behaviors and the word, often repeated in the reporting, got me thinking of ways to use it in planning.   “If your company was publically accused of arrogance,” one might ask a C-level, “to what would might they be referring?”  Or a questions to a salesperson, “When selling against your key competitor, what might you be arrogant about?”  Perhaps a question to a consumer “When brand X is being arrogant, what are they likely doing?”

    Yes arrogance is a dirty word but it is quite pregnant with meaning. Remember, this is strategy, not creative.  I’m not suggesting being arrogant, I’m suggesting we probe it. Peace!

    DTC Web Businesses.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    There’s a new class of company out there which uses ecommerce to provide higher value products at lower prices.  The entrepreneurs behind this phenomenon believe by producing products in China and distributing them directly via the web, they remove the middle man/middle men from the equation, thereby charging less and making greater margin.  The problem is, they are also responsible for developing their own brands. (Another middleman cost.) And as we’ve seen with tech companies, where the brand building is often left to the chief technology officer or VC partner, it’s done poorly. For every Facebook, there are sixty Zudes.

    Another problem with this DTC (direct to consumer) start-up brand approach is that they ascribe part of brand value to cost – one of the key benefits of the new model. We get it.  A no middle man, ecomm product ordered from the web is cheaper (plus delivery). But price, as a brand cornerstone is not a great long-term play. It’s a promotional play. And while this landscape is developing they are parity plays.

    The web has changed retail forever. And its brilliant. Eight years ago I blogged about how a good business to be in would be the secure oversized mail box business.  Members of this new class of ecomm businesses needs to spend a couple two tree dollars on their brand plan.  Even before the go to China. Peace!

    Social Media is not for advertising.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Period.  Sound odd from a man who makes a living selling OP (other people’s) stuff? 

    Sadly, once something new gets good and helpful and cool, entrepreneurs try to monetize it.  Case in point: When a kid in the ad business in the 70s or 80s I wondered why there weren’t large ads on the risers of the steps leading out of Penn Station. Today there are. Who thinks like that?  We want to cover everything in ads.  In social media there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in marketing because of this push to monetize. It’s inuring us to the tool that is social.  

    Advertising is impacting social media the way pesticides are killing off the honey bee population.

    For marketers, social media has but one function. One.  To predispose consumers toward your brand. How does it do that?  By driving them closer to a sale.  How does it do that? In many cases, by driving them to content on your web site. Not Mr. Zuckerberg’s web site.

    Good psychotherapist knows that observations, insights and decisions patients make on their own are the ones that turn lives around.  Not the lessons taught. Allow a consumer to come to the conclusion that your product is better — of their own volition — and you have a custie for life.

    So, social media is to engage, assist, and even subconsciously gain favor among your audience. This is done without selling. And, if done with a tight brand strategy you’ll out-perform all comers.

    Joseph Jaffe writes about “Flipping the funnel.” I say use the funnel – and don’t put ads on it.  Peace!

     

    Marketing’s Recycling Plant

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    This morning I was reading how Fair Oaks Dairy in Indiana is using cow manure to fuel not only its milking operations but also its fleet of truck by turning waste into natural gas.  Talk about sustainability! In my mind the natural cycle of life is one in which we don’t just consume but replenish.  Recycling is a brilliant idea. Unless we’re talking about advertising and marketing.

    dairy cow

    I did a little mock interview with a tyro marketer last night and much of what I got out of our discussion was plumbing: the process, the tools, the operations. “I am responsible for this, I am responsible for that…”  It is expected at the entry level, but it also plagues many ad and marketing operations today because it trickles up to senior management.  The tactics lead the march. Companies feel the need outperform the market in “search,” “awareness,” “click-through,” “loyalty,” etc.   But we are counting bodies, but not winning the war.

    In essence, these companies are recycling marketing tactics. The ads I read in the 90s are back. The TV spots from last year are the same this year, just with different actors. In this business the familiar is not the best way to predispose someone toward a sale. With a tight brand plan the goal is always first. Not the recycled tactic.  “We need to Facebook more.  Let’s get a team together and brainstorm.”  Peace.

     

    1...99100101...208Page 100 of 208
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv