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    Advertising Generics

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Advertising generics in this case does not mean store brands or value brands, it refers to the selling words we use in advertising and sales.  Quality. Service. Tailored to your needs. Savings.  You’ve heard these words a million times in selling. They are the flah, flah, flah of selling.  Key words, if you will, that tell consumers you have no real message. Today, if you are selling quality, you are not selling.

    If you want to study selling go out and do some cold calling. Or telemarketing. (No don’t. You may find your way to my door.)  Advertising is a little like cold calling.  But at least many who create ads understand the notion of engagement, product benefit, value demonstration and simplicity. 

    The best advertising and cold selling does not use generics.  It uses meaningful selling ploys —  to be figured out on a case by case basis. It’s an art.

    In sales the pop technique for the past 10 years has been “solution selling.” Don’t sell the features – ask, listen, find the pain points and create the perception that your product can heal.  Solutions selling has spawned a generation of listeners.  “Hi, I know you are very busy but tell me about your company.”  Nuh, uh.  No thanks.  Busy. Buh bue. 

    Stay away from generics. Don’t sell education, sell Princeton. Don’t sell medicine, sell your branded scrip. Listen to yourself selling, experience your ads.  If you wouldn’t buy from you who would? Peace!

    RIM needs a (name) change.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Research In Motion needs a name change.  Don’t fight the people.  Change the name to Blackberry.  

    Next issue, the company needs to go on offense; it’s been playing Dee too long. Readers will know how I felt about “Love” as the branding idea for its bazillion dollar ad campaign.  Not good.

    RIM will announce quarterly results today and they are not expected to be pretty.  The worldwide smart phone market share leader, RIM is in the sights of Google’s fast growing Android operating system. And design-wise Apple iPhones have captured the imagination of the masses. So where does that leave RIM?  In a storm? Getting torched? Kind of where AOL was 8 years ago.  Or Yahoo was 3 years ago.  A leader treading water in a pool that is leaking. Leaking into a much bigger surrounding pool. RIM needs to see the future and go there. Right now it leads in business email. It leads in qwerty interface. It leads in web access, but these three things have diluted (another water metaphor) its brand idea. Hence love. 

    Come on Blackberry. Fight back. Peace!

    Cathy Horyn, Ford and Job One.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I love Fashion Week in NYC.  Not sure what it’s called this year sponsor-wise, so let’s just call it Fashion Week. One reason I like it so much is it allows me to read lots of Cathy Horyn’s fashion reviews in The New York Times.  She is one of my favorite writers. There is something intriguing about her prose.  Often I don’t even know what fabrics and garments she’s detailing, yet I’m captured by her words, descriptions and metaphors.

    Ms. Horyn is quite powerful and has been the subject of many designers’ anger and has, in fact, been banned from some tents because of her pen. It gives her more power.

    In today’s paper, she had a column about Tom Ford’s show — he of Gucci fame. The review of the show, his first with women’s clothes in 6 years, was nice and painted a wonderful picture of the “glamorous, controlled” event.  It explained the amazing presentation of his new line, but it didn’t do what Ms. Horyn normally does so well, explain the clothes.  She was so caught up in the event and Beyonce and other personalities that she forgot to strap on her editorial eye and dig into the linen.  Glad I read it. Glad she was invited. (Wish I was invited.) Hoped she has been a teeny bit less star stuck. Peace!

    The Magazine Shakeout.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    In 2009, according to David Carr in The New York Times, magazine ad revenue was down 25%.  Lots of business revenue was down 25% in 2009 so this statistic may not seem that startling.  Not unless you look at the performance of magazines over the last 7 years.  25% down in a business that’s been down by single and double digits for years and years in not good.  Reminds me of the car business. Magazines need to do something. And fast.

    The user interface of a magazine is superior to that of a Blackberry or iPhone — paper recycling aside.  Magazines are not going away. Cars aren’t going away. 

    What’s the difference between a publisher and a curator?  About a hundred grand.  Publishers are overpaid magazine dude(ttes) in a hemorrhaging business while Curators are underpaid Web content presenters in a growth business. If people with these two titles switched jobs for 6 months they might actually improve their respective lots.

    I often simplify marketing down to two factors: Claim and Proof.  For magazines (on and offline) I simplify the business down to Reporting and Presentation. Magazines, to thrive, need to find out what their Claim is, mine the Proof, have that proof Reported by experts and Present it in new and exciting ways. Peace!

    New Agency Leader Ship

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Paul Gumbinner, a friend and one of New York’s more successful advertising recruiters, wrote a post this week about how little diversity there is among agencies today.  The unique agency segments of yore are no longer apparent.  He is quite correct.  Part of Paul’s argument is that the leaders of those agencies created unique cultures.  Bill Bernbach in the 60s.  Jay Chiat in the 70s. Dan Wieden in the 80s. Donnie Deutsch in the 90s.

    Interestingly, the turn of the century brought agency start-ups and technology themed shops.  Leadership became secondary to coolness. Exciting, new brands emerged with selfless senior management: Anomaly, Barbarian Group, Razorfish, Naked, Organic, Strawberry Frog, Taxi, Renegade, Brooklyn Brothers, Mother, Droga5 (cheater) and Poke.  These leaders, smart marketers all, put their brands first. Built teams. Tried to figure out the new order and class of work, kept their heads down and promoted their brands.  It was a good strategy. BBDO, DDB, McCann went a little GM, if you will. (General Motors.)

    As all agencies (big and small) move toward the middle these days, using a complicated quiver of arrows, we’re beginning to see some new leaders emerge from this new group.  These new leaders have been playing quiet offense thus far — and as Mr. Gumbinner points out.  But the decade of 2010 is providing a fresh canvas for new leaders.  Welcome Faris. Welcome Noah. Welcome Lori.  Welcome Gareth. Peace!

    Product. Package. Brand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Product, Package and Brand are three fundamental marketing words for the 21st Century. The traditional 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion and place are still workable cornerstones but for my money consumers have evolved so far and product management has devolved so far that success can not be achieved focusing on these three alone.

    Product.

    These days a product has to be good. No longer can you spin a shizzy product or service and be successful. What constitutes a “good” product in this era though is debatable. Especially in the states. We sell a lot of cheese (poor product) here, but because the cheese is affordable and lasts a year, people buy it. The definition of good, at the lower to middle end of the market, has changed markedly. Make it good and they will come.

    Package.

    Before the web, packaging was what your product arrived in.  In 2010, with people spending billions on virtual goods, goods aren’t even goods. Packaging. Point of sale packaging is still important, don’t get me wrong, but the point of sale is different. For those who do product research online the website is the package. A lot of product website homepages are built like old school product packaging: features, bulleted copy, product shots (fail), but that’s a story for another post. These days — and they are amazingly exciting days — advertising, PR and promotion are all part of the package. Access and search have changed everything. The package is now a continuum.

    Brand.

    Whenever I hear an art director talk about branding I head for the hills. Sure, design contributes to brand development, in a very big way, but design manicures the brand it isn’t the brand.  Apple gets this. Branding is a strategy: an organizing principle that consumers and employees share. It’s a vessel in consumers’ minds filled by an idea and proof. Products may be virtual but brands shouldn’t be. Get the strategy and consumers will get you. Peace!

    PS. Anyone digging the new Google logo art on the Google home page today?

    Chase What Brand Strategy.?.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Question: What is a brand strategy? 

    Answer: A brand strategy comprises a strategic idea or claim and three support planks that vivify the claim.  Three planks, because two don’t always allow for a complete, differentiated story. Getting the idea right is key. Selling it to consumers day after day is the heavy lifting…called brand management.

    Chase What Matters.

    JPMorgan Chase has a very identifiable idea: “Chase what matters.”  It’s a consumer directive from a very big company that knows how to make, save and invest money. Something they already get credit for.  The idea has ballast, but so far it is only an idea. Banks have been making promises without backing them up for decades. I’m not getting a read on the Chase support planks yet – the planks that allow me to believe Chase “knows what matters” to me and that they are the bank best equipped to deliver.   

    One of Chase’s neater tactical ideas lately is the “Chase Loan For Hire” program, through which it decreases small business loans by a quarter point for every new employee hired, up to three. Though I have no idea what Chase’s planks are, forensically, I might assume this tactic supports a plank titled “Meaningful borrowing matters.”  I’m not talking buy a hot tub meaningful, I’m talking something that relates to what popular culture views as meaningful. Today that’s jobs.  Nice touch.

    Banking is a tough category. In my bones I feel Chase has an idea, but the jury is still out on the organization of the proof.  I’ll continue to map its planks as they become evident and share them here at What’s The Idea? Peace!

    Let’s Not Call it Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    (A self-absorbed poem about brand strategy.)

    My paper is power.

    My paper is freeing.

    My paper creates tension.

    My paper doesn’t need pictures.

    My paper is musical.

    My paper creates language.

    My paper is rose-colored.

    Always rose-colored.

    My paper creates feelings.

    My paper encourages doing.

    My paper is your paper.

    My paper quickens.

    If you fight the paper…you are fighting paper.

    My paper is the idea to have an idea.

    Snitkered by the FTC.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Reverb Communications, a PR firm based in California that was writing fake product reviews on behalf of clients and publishing them on iTunes, became the first company “snitkered” by the Federal Trade Commission.  Tracie Snitker is an executive at Reverb and was the one person sanctioned for the practice, though no fine was levied. Hence the new verb.

    It’s not every day you get to come up with a new word, but there it is.  Though my work here is never done, I will Peace Out and move on with my Friday. And whatever you do, you social media agents of change, don’t get caught snitkering. It can get kind of sticky.

    The Journalism Conundrum.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    Here’s the problem with newspapers.  Ready?  Who is your favorite newspaper journalist?  Quick!  Okay, who is your second favorite?  Now, who is your favorite blogger?  Much easier, no? 

    There was a time when journalists and news reporters were heroes…a time when they were huge personalities.  They wrote with panache, shared ideas and commentary that struck a chord with America.  Their ability to turn a phrase captivated us and the masses loved them.  Journalists were the rock stars of the day.  After a while, though, newspapers started to think these writers were getting too big for their britches – bigger than the newspaper brands they wrote for — and decided to turn down the dial.  “If Jimmy Breslin becomes bigger than the Daily News, what happens if he leaves?”

    Journalism became antiseptic. Lifeless. It lost a great deal of its humanity. When was the last time you cried after reading a piece in the paper (online or paper paper.)

    Blogs to the Rescue.

    Enter the blog.  No bosses. No editors. No sponsors.  Just peeps talking to peeps. Readers get the straight shot. Today’s most impressive, unadulterated journalists are bloggers. Ironically, when bloggers get big, big media tries to hire them.  Like punk rockers that have a hard time mixing art and success, this can alter the work product of the blogger.  The Conundrum.  Newspapers are losing money because their writers churn out auto text.  Journalism needs more heroic personalities. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Peace.

    PS.  My favorite journalists?  Nicholas Kristof, Dexter Filkins, Cathy Horyn, Robert Scoble

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