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    One More Social Media Don’t.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I posted a presentation on SlideShare called “Social Media Guard Rails,” that was created for a Social Media Club of Long Island in 2011. Its subtitle was “14 Dos and Don’ts.” Good strategy work is timeless and future proof, but only a fool would say things don’t change. As I reread the 14 points I stick by them all.  There is one new “Don’t” I’d like to add at this point which was born out of the law profession:

    “Don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to.”

    Many managers of social media programs like to engage audiences by asking questions. Ask a good, funny, category-endemic question, the logic goes, and you’ll engage people. You’ll start a conversation.  When Ronzoni asks “What’s your favorite healthy pasta dish?,” the sharers will share and you get some SoMe traction.  By caring about what customers care about, you’re in a positive ballpark.

    But if the questions are too open-ended you may get McDonalded. They asked followers to tell stories about McDonalds using hashtag #McDStories — and it didn’t work out so well.

    McDStories

    If you have a brand strategy (One claim, 3 proof planks), and manage your social media program with the intent of putting deposits in the brand bank, you should be okay. Then, you will be asking questions you know the answers to (ish).

    Peace.

    Insight mining.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    In advertising the real money maker is the creative. That’s what everyone talks about. That’s what marketers spend most of their money on. Creative creates most of the wealth in marketing and all of the wealth on the agencies side. The fuel for great creative is consumer insight. Notice I didn’t say insights. Lo, there are many insights to clog the mind of the brand or account planner. Many insights to confound the creative director or creative content builder.

    mining tools

    The role of the brand planner is to find a single insight that can be leveraged into a compelling selling proposition. Rosser Reeves can call it a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), Al Ries can call it positioning, any goober with a WordPress account can call it what they like (me included), but great creative doesn’t start until a single, powerful, clean insight is unearthed and frees the creative mind.

    A powerful insight is pregnant with creative possibility. It can help organize an army of sellers. It can brainwash the tired huddled masses. It can launch an organizing principle that redistributes marketing wealth, unlike any TV commercial ever has. Apple’s 1984 included.

    So you unsung insight miners take heart. Keep shoveling, mine till your fingers hurt, then cull, cull, cull until you find that emerald. It is so worth it.

    Peace.

     

    The paper paper is here to stay.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I love technology. I understand its transformative power but also its ability to alter the future tense. The future we can’t see. I say this so you won’t think me a geeze.  newspaper I was on train last week with some neighbors and we were talking about reading the news on iPads. The neighbors liked reading on their tablets. I am a fan of the paper paper. I’ve had this discussion before but never really thought about my side of the argument. Sure the paper paper uses natural resources. Sure you can bookmark and word-search on a tablet. The paper paper is unwieldy to some. But one thing you can do with the paper paper that you can’t with an electronic story is see a thousand words of the story in one huge folio view. With a broadsheet paper like The New York Times, I can go back to a piece of data or a person’s name without missing a beat. Muscle memory reminds me where on the page the content was, e.g., lower left, mid-right, previous page. That’s hard to do with a tablet. Tablets are so linear. Paper papers or a bit more for how people really read. Reading news and analysis is more chaotic. It’s more twitchy. (Google Fast Twitch Media.)

    The reading experience is different using a paper paper. By tearing out passages or pages and leaving them in piles on my desk, in the bottom of my backpack or on my dresser, it reduces my footprint of digital notes, URLs, tags and logs…of which there are many. For me, the usability of the paper paper — crumbs, coffee spills, folding routines and all – provides a richer experience. A different experience. For me, a better experience. I think the paper paper is here to stay. #justme. Peace.

    Mommy, what’s a radio?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Last Christmas I went into a Radio Shack looking to buy a good FM radio. I was trying to get my mother to listen to NPR in her kitchen where she can only get A.M. radio and has had to listen to a station (WOR) targeting the older set with let’s just say less than stimulating programming.  I asked the salesperson where the radios were (at Radio Shack) and the she directs me to two possible areas, one of which was correct. As far from the front door as you could get.

    The selection was horrendous. Two brands — none of which I was familiar with. No Sony. No GE.  Pathetic. I left and went to Best Buy and found one Sony model. Don’t buy radio station stock is the moral to this story.

    As Radio Shack tries to organize its way out of insolvency, with a hedge fund at the helm, one of the questions posed is “Should we rebrand?” “Should we hold onto the old name?” AT&T used to be America Telephone and Telegraph…someone smart over there decided telegraph was not a technology forward name and opted for change. So the answer to the new guard at Radio Shack is a resounding “yes.”  A new name is in order. And let’s look beyond the dashboard for a name shall we?

    I should add a very big good luck. From what I’m reading of some of the partner decisions so far, they’re going to need it. Peace.

     

    McDonald’s New Man of Action.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Steve Easterbrook, McDonald’s new CEO is fighting a battle on two fronts. One franchisee, quoted in today NYT, said store sales have been “horrible.” Overall, for stores opened at least one year, February sales were down 4% (February, remember, is a short month). In addition to poor sales, McDonald’s has been dinged in the media for paying low wages.

    Mr. Easterbrook, who recently started his new job as CEO, has come out with guns blazing. Ballsy. And needed. He’s raising wages and adding benefits at corporate stores, putting pressure on franchise stores to do so. He has extended breakfast all day (couple of bumps in that road) and decided to use artisanal bread on the grilled chicken sandwich. He has also stopped serving food with maltodextrin (that must be good). He’s shooting in many directions; directions that purport to hurt profit. And it feels a little disorganized…but times are tough. Were he to simply fix the menu, it might not be enough. Were he to correct wages, not enough. Improve corporate responsibility, not enough.

    McDonald’s, to steal a phrase, is too big to fail. It’s not too big to have some tough times though. Mr. Easterbrook is scrambling a bit, but will find his way. He’s certainly not a man of inaction. Peace.  

    OrderNet of Things

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Yesterday I tweeted about the OrderNet of Things. The phase is obviously borrowed from the Internet of Things, aka IoT. It refers to Amazon’s Dash Button. I thought the button was either named after the P&G detergent, but oops that’s Tide…not Dash. (Dash was discontinued in 1992. Brain fart). I also wondered if it was named after Anil Dash, the social media and technology commentator. Again, prob wrong.

    dash button

    No matter, the dash button is a little USB sized button, attached to the internet that allows one to replenish stores as quickly as Amazon can deliver. The Tide button can be affixed to the washing machine. The Pampers button to the baby’s diaper pail.

    The OrderNet of Things – things being consumables — may be the killer app of the IoT.  Yet the big winner will be delivery services. Perhaps the U.S. Postal Service will make a comeback. Maybe Amazon will buy FedEx.

    Groceries and consumable need to get into the house. One-at-a-time, these deliveries don’t make sense from an environmental stand point, but American’s love to push buttons. I see this as a cool fad. The idea to have an idea. It’s certain to be more of a luxury purchase until we figure out how to scale it, find economies and waste less gas. It’s still cool. The OrderNet of Things.

    Peace.

     

    Brand Strategy Warranty.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Brand strategies for my clients come with a lifetime warranty. That is to say, if a client takes a strategy to an agency to execute “buildables,” I am always available to provide feedback as to whether the work is “on” or “off” idea. Brand strategies at What’s The Idea are one idea, three proof planks, an organizing principle that allows brand managers to look at work and quickly tell if it makes a deposit or withdrawal in the brand bank. 

    Agencies (ad, digital, social, other) are notorious for doing their own thing. For creating their own logic that supports the work. Once it starts, it seeps into all the marketing and dilutes the plan.

    Campaigns and agencies come and go, but a powerful brand strategy is indelible. And defensible. My warranty.

    Peace.

    American Luxury Car Brands.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The Ford Motor Company is reviving the Lincoln Continental, a car it discontinued producing in the U.S. in 2002. Last fall the Lincoln Continental begin selling in China and seems to be doing well.

    The Cadillac family of luxury cars has long eschewed the use of brand names in favor of numbers and letter. A sad branding mistake. I tried hard to think of a Cadillac brand but couldn’t. STS comes to mind, but in my mind’s eye I’m not even sure what one looks like. A Lady Gaga shoe perhaps? So I Googled Cadillac brand names and Wikipedia brought me to a page filled with numbers and letter and only a couple of names: the Fleetwood (in the 50s), Coupe DeVille (60s) and the El Dorado (80s). How quickly we forget.

    The alphabet soup of model names Cadillac uses is, I suspect, intended to shine the light on the master brand.  It’s not a good move.  The Escalade was a great brand name, so we know they can do it. Maybe they’re waiting for a really nice car design before launching a new brand name?

    Moving the Cadillac corporate offices to SOHO in NYC was a good first move. I’m thinking some nice designs and names aren’t too far away. Peace.  

    PS.  The current Lincoln names are no better, MKC, MKS, MKK. Oy. At least they have the Continental brand to work with.

    A Tip for Heinz and Kraft.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The Kraft Heinz merger being orchestrated by 3G and Warren Buffet is a financier’s dream. Lot of money to work with. Kraft, a stalwart in the US. Heinz a global consumer goods company. A number of billion dollar brands to work with – brands like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Heinz Ketchup. Lots of room to make big topline money and big bottom line cost cuts.

    The only downside we’re hearing about is the fact that processed foods, high in sugar, salt and other less than healthy additives, are supposedly under consumer attack. And those are the sweetspot of Kraft. Certainly we’re reading about Millennials trying to eat healthier. Darren Seifer, analyst at market research company NPD says this trend toward healthier eating will be slow in coming. The word he used was “tectonic.” I beg to differ. Consumption patterns, can change at the drop of a hat with good reasoning. Once we get the lobbying money out of the way, and consumers understand the health risks of carbonated soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup and processed food stuffs, consumption habits will change.

    And then, to adapt, R&D will change leading to reformulations. Were I Warren Buffet or Jorge Paulo Lemann, I’d take some of my hard earned and invest it in next generation, healthier-for-you food products today. Look at the growth of Hain Celestial. Last I looked their portfolio was growing by double digits. Peace.

     

     

    Live Mas Indeed.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    In marketing there are “does” and “talkers.” You can’t become a talker without first doing but after you get your talker stripes it becomes easy to go on the speakers’ circuit. One of my favorite brand and marketing “doers” is Taco Bell’s CMO Chris Brandt.

    biscuit taco

    First off, he gets branding. He understands when you have a powerful brand idea, in his case “Live Mas”, you need to articulate and share it. Everywhere.  By enculturating it inside a company, it then seeps out every pore. Next you need to innovate. Innovation provides learning.  And marketing is nothing if not constant learning. With all deference to the people selling agile this and agile that, you also need to know when to pull the plug – as Mr. Brandt has with the waffle breakfast taco. This time last year it was touted as the company’s largest new product launch. Today it has morphed into a Biscuit Taco. (Maybe use a little American maze in the recipe?) The point is, Mr. Brandt’s engine is always running. Good thing because he’s in the retail fast food business.  Next to selling door to door, retail offers the most immediate response to effective marketing. One year of waffles and Mr. Brand knew he had to make a move.

    Lastly, Mr. Brand is using a hot ad agency, Deutsch-LA. These Westies are doing some great work. Traditional and digital. They may not get branding strictures with the vigor of Mr. Brandt, but they don’t have to. As long as they have him to drive the taco bus. Peace!

     

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