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    The good the bad and the good.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Lots of people like to predict the future. As someone who professes to work beyond the dashboard, here is my two cents. The following trends are business opportunities and societal movements.

    First THE BAD:

    Privacy – With the economy fueled by the purchase of lots of new internet connected devices, using few monetization models beyond advertising, more consumer data will be tracked, more ways, in more places than ever before.

    Over Medication – If you watch the evening news and are of a certain age you will see we are running out of pharmaceutical brand names. They are getting more ridiculous and unpronounceable by the hour. Don’t get me wrong, some of the work is utter genius. The rest is all about profit. When we need meds to counteract the side effects of other meds it’s time to take a breath.

    Security – With privacy compromization (Why is this not a word?) a business model, security companies will continue to grow in importance. Think over medication.

    Sedentariness — Our reliance on automobiles for short term transportation is literally killing us. And the planet. But it does give us more time to eat and relax.

     

     THE GOOD:

    Democratization – As more people around the world have a voice and governance becomes more plural, tolerance will grow and famine of the belly, soul and mind will recede.

    Craft Economy – As household members take more responsibility for the consumption patterns of their families societies will evolve away from waste. As our leisure time grows thanks to technology and we begin to focus that time on DIY projects, the purchase and creation of products that last, and living more sustainably, the ecosystem will improve.

    Learning – The web has created the ability for us to commune with and learn from other people on the planet. It is the biggest positive change in our recordable history. Once we stop trying to monetize it and focus on learning from our worldly cousins, we will heavy up the good side of the ledger.

    What have I missed? Peace.

     

    Give and Take in Content Marketing.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    There are two fundamental behavior types on the social web: giving and taking. Givers are those trying to help others, either via original thought or curation.  All those posts on Twitter that start out “7 ways to increase your…”,  those are from givers.  Takers are people looking for information. “Where is Lone Survivor playing? Who is the actress in Vampire Diaries?”  Takers are also looking to get answers to questions. Platforms like Ask, Jelly and Quora come to mind.

    If, as a brand, you look at the web from this Giver-Taker point of view it will help you with your customers. SEO people get this. The reality is, though, not a lot of people are in the market looking for brighter brights in clothes washing.  One of the guard rails in my Slideshare presentation on social media dos and don’ts is “Care about what your customers care about.”  If you understand your customers “taker” behaviors and have a brand plan (1 claim, 3 support planks), you can align your social giver content in more targeted, higher-value ways. 

    So the keys are: Know what your custies care about. And have a brand plan that gives form, relevance and meaning to your sharing. Otherwise you are just pizzling in the ether. Peace.

    El Sears.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    sears

    The saying “go big or go home” is easy to use when you’re a consultant, coach or pundit, but it often has negative repercussions.  My “go big” recommendation made to hemorrhaging Sears Holding Company nearly two years ago was to become the nation’s first Spanish language store chain.  Easy for me to say, I’m not trying to keep this huge, venerable one-time national treasure alive.  But this store is taking a pasting. All the new inventory systems, cash registers and ad campaigns in the world aren’t going to turn this brigantine ship around.

    Huge brick and mortar stores are buggy whipping. “If we take price off the table and make service our differentiator we should be okay,” say the c-level execs at most of the behemoths.  Well you can’t take price off the table when web commerce can undercut everyone for price…and convenience.

    This suggestion is a huge move and a no-brainer.  Look at the demographics. I’m no economist, but becoming the first all-Spanish language (first) national chain, catering to 55M people (projected to be 128M by 2060) is more than viable, especially based when you look at the composition of employees and customers.  With new color palettes, cultural conveniences, food courts, and technology departments in densely populated Spanish/Latin zip codes, business will hockey stick. Roll in K-Mart, rename it El Sears or something, close a number of stores, and you will be profitable, albeit smaller, in a number of quarters. Como se darlings of business press?  Sears Holding Company, can you see beyond the dashboard?  Peace.  

    Viva la diff

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    One of my mantras is “provide every company employee with an understanding of the brand strategy.” A brand strategy being the organizing principle that drives value. Bank account value. Which is fed by perceived consumer value. When employees know the brand strategy, the good ones pursue it, use it and think about it — even on weekends.

    At Zude, a start-up I was a part of in the web space, the brand strategy was “the fastest, easier way to build and manage a website.”  The CFO of Zude Jeff Finkle used to say that every employee walking to their car at night should ask his or herself “What did I do today to make Zude a faster, easier way to build and manage a website?”

    When Larry Page took over from Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google, he declared this as a company mission: “To get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and seed of a start-up.”  Not a brand strategy.  It’s an operating or operations strategy. Certainly it’s laudable and good business. Certainly employees can ask themselves as they leave the building if they passed the litmus. But it’s inward focused and brand strat needs to be outward focused.  Beware the difference. Peace.

    Business Consulting or Brand Consulting?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Bob’s Discount Furniture just received a cash infusion from Bain Capital. In other words, Bain now owns a big chunk of the company. If you were Bob, or any other  underperforming company looking to fix their business what would you do?  Before you sold out to a big fixer company like Bain, that is? Many go the root of hiring big business consulting companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting or Booz. Pricey choices. Especially for a company under duress. You certainly wouldn’t hire a brand consultant.

    But should you?

    If you were to go to Landor, Interbrand, Wolff Olins or Siegel+Gale, you’d get some really smart people supervising your business, a lot of smart designers and brand planner worker bees, resulting in a new logo, style book, positioning statement, some lessons in voice and, maybe, if they were feeling a bit feisty culture. Probably not going to fix the business.

    Were you to come to What’s the Idea?, a different kind of brand consultancy, you would get some of these things, but only after signing onto a brand plan — the foundation of which is built upon business metrics.  Business fundies. Economic success measures.

    A brand plan built upon anything else is simply storytelling. (And storytelling is the pop marketing object of the day.)  Am I suggesting an engagement with What’s The Idea? is superior to a big city business consultancy or brand consultancy?  Perhaps I am. As someone schooled in both disciplines, who works within the company to determine issues and answers, this approach is a “heal thyself” approach. It’s a learning model rather than a teaching model. Peace.

     

    iSpot is Tres Cool.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    iSpot is a new ad tracking platform that marries TV spot appearances and spending with an overlay of online sharing activity.  It’s a brilliant idea. (Oh, happy New Year’s Eve, by the way.) During my time at McCann while spending big bucks on TV advertising for AT&T, the tracking people always paired weekly spend with the revenue it generated. I always marveled at how the revenue lagged the spend by a week or two. This lag was the case for most consumer packaged goods. It’s interesting to note that according to iSpot there’s a similar lag in social sharing of TV spots.  Most shares of the Geico “Hump Day” and Samsung Galaxy Gear spots were not on the night of the ads, but a few days after. Check out the metrics.

    My problem with social, and I know it works trust me, is that what we are often measuring is divorced from sales.  Clicks. Likes. Shares. Views.  iSpot’s new platform provides data feed that should plug in nicely to sales reports. Como se holy grail?

    Readers of Whats The Idea? know about Twitch Point Planning — a twitch being a media moment when one engages a separate device for additional information, learning or sharing.  iSpot is a platform with a chance to make Twitch Point Planning a prime time tool. And vice versa. Stay tuned in 2014.

    Peace be upon you.  

    Big Plans for ExxonMobil?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    ExxonMobil was once the world’s largest grossing company.  It’s still way up there. In early 2012 they started running K-12 education advertising.  A cause marketing effort. The ads were pushing STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), which one might explain as a recruitment effort as ExxonMobil was looking toward the future — reinventing the energy business. But I think is was more post BP Gulf oil spill driven — an attempt to deflect negative oil company press. (I was working in the education space at the time and paying attention.)

    Frankly, I’m not sure what ExxonMobil is doing with their advertising these days but at least some of the latest ads involve energy, or what I call an “endemic category message.”  The new ads promote an energy quiz and use the line “Energy Lives Here.”  They have a really smart planner at BBDO working on the business (or they did as of a couple months ago) so I wonder what the problem is?  BP’s licking its wounds and rear-view mirror planning; that’s to be expected.  But ExxonMobil?  Just not sure. They have a good agency and plenty of money so I expect they’ll find their way at some point. Peace.    

     

    The Svelte Apple?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    As big as the Chinese mobile phone market is, I’m not sure Apple should be pursing its current growth plan there.  And last year Apple sold 23 million phones in China. The price of an Apple mobile in China is in the US$700 area. The price of a locally produced Android based phone US$100.

    In my view Apple should attack the Chinese market with a local start-up.  Don’t dumb down and feature down the 5Cs and 5Ss, to get the price margin better.  Leave them as they are, priced as luxury phones for the up market consumer. Start a new company to fight more fairly the Chinese manufacturers Lenovo and Huawei and South Korean behemoth Samsung.

    Keep your R&D eye on the ball in America, the ball being other internet connected devices. We forget that Apple, when not bothered by business blocking and tackling (and shareholding-focused share gain), has a history of inventing new categories.  I fear that with all this energy focused on selling iPhones in China, Apple will regress in the ROW (rest of world) and start to slide.

    Small share in PCs gave birth to the Apple of today. Stay the course. Innovate the form, the features and the software. Technological obesity in unbecoming. Especially for the svelte Apple. Peace.

    Fight the Machine.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    verisimo

    Starbucks executives, always on the lookout for ways to make more money (as they should be), have, until now, sat idly watching the growth of Nespresso and Keurig. Home and office brewing of coffee in single servings it is a hot category.  A category that follows the razor blade theory…discount the device, make money on the replenishments.

    Starbucks see this single brew trend as not going away and recognizes coffee bought in pods is not coffee bought at their retail stores. Sooo, they’ve decided to sell a coffee maker. In other words, they are betting against themselves and accelerating the single serve brew category.

    Stop it!  This is not a line extension, it’s a cannibalization. It diminishes the mission of the brand. These machines are the enemy.  The afternoon Starbucks run, the mocha, choca, locca $6.50 morning drink, the aroma of the coffee beans and din of the cool music gone. Fight it. Go all Davy Crockett on its ass. Davy may be dead but he’s alive in our hearts and minds and he defended and reshaped a country.

    Starbucks is part of the craft economy. Convenience be damned.  Starbucks needs to stand up and fight! Fight the machine. Peace this holiday season.

     

    Luxury Craft.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I love sushi but I also love money. The wifus and I debated whether or not to gift each other for Christmas two seats at a new exclusive sushi restaurant in NYC.  The per seat cost is $150. I’m assuming that doesn’t include drinks or tip and when you add a train ride to the list we’re talking mortgage payment money.  

    I read today about a cured ham from Spain branded Iberico that sells, on the hoof, for $500. One famous cutter of said ham charges about $5,000 to perform the specialized act of serving this delicacy. These are examples of the luxury economy.  They touch the craft economy in that there’s mad craftsmanship going into each piece of sushi and slice of acorn-fed pig, but in my definition these are not craft economy examples.

    The craft economy is about building and making things that are sustainable, fixable and have a low impact on the planet. It’s about saving, not wasting. There’s a place for everything in this wonderful world, but we are going to be a better place when the craft economy is more the norm. Peace!

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