92 SKUs (What you say? I’m not askin’)

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 22, 2015

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I was in BJs the other day by the HP ink cartridge area. I counter 92 SKUs for OfficeJet Printers. And OfficeJet is only one brand of HP printers. There’s OfficeJet, LaserJet, DeskJet and more. There were more OfficeJet options than types of gum at a candy store. While doing fieldwork at BJ’s I observed very few people buying HP ink products. Maybe one or two an hour. And you wonder why HP needs to fix itself?

It wasn’t that long ago when HP was the number one PC manufacturer and killing it at earnings time. Now the company will be split so it can retrench, focus and hit some numbers. Sad, really.

There’s not a person in America (not working at HP) who thinks printer ink for the home is fairly priced. So there’s an opportunity. Develop a new way to transfer words onto paper, or some other surface, that is legible and low cost. A cost that makes consumers smile. Right now it might feel to HP like eating the children, but it’s a smart future play. And one that will restore some luster and earnings potential. Como say patent?

Come on HP. Peace.

Coming soon. Mass Communications Atomize.

Advertising

By

Steve Poppe

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May 21, 2015

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There’s a nice piece in the NYT today by Farhad Manjoo about the evolution of luxury apps to apps that end up being affordable over time once scale is created. One example cited is Munchery, who with enough orders and resources, hopes to deliver healthier food to consumers close to the cost of junk food. Ish. The ability for scale to reduce cost is a promise of the interwebs.

In this world, we resource and massify what is produced, yet individualize what is delivered. At scale. Logistics, as Uber likes to say, is a nice living.

Mass communications have for decades been produced and sold in bulk. Direct marketing tried to individualize, but really only segmented. The creators of advertising have never really tried to individualize marketing communications, yet today data collection and analysis and digital content are bringing us many steps closer. The individualized creative product is still pretty awful and way too expensive. Even at retail, belly to belly selling is static; a couple of selling points used for every customer.

We have a long way to go. With new tools like NFC (check out the promise of Invisible Media) and single user identifier not too far away, personalized selling will improve greatly. Then, so will creative. Ad agencies will have to become more fluid.

As this happens selling will atomize – and brand strategy become more important. An organizing principle for a brand built upon what a product does well and what a customer wants most, will be the only staple.

Peace.

Anal about Analytics.

marketing analytics

By

Steve Poppe

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May 20, 2015

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Here’s a marketing infographic without the graphic. And without serious paragraphing. The early 1990s: computers and clunky email clients. The late 90s: laptops, infant web, networked software, and bad banner ads. The early 00s: search, ecommerce catalogs, bad leaderboard ads. Mid 00s: web communes, multimedia handhelds, entrepreneurship. Late 00s: content, thin things from Apple, cheesing the SEO system, Google Adwords. Early teens: apps, streaming, millennials, pay walls for heretofore free stuff. 2014: applications that solve real problems, meaningful use of the web, 3 mobile devices in every house. 2015 and beyond: ANALYTICS.

We are all going to be very anal about analytics; be they used to map the DNA gene sequence of cancer or Alzheimer’s, single user identifier of consumer digital behavior, or the most effective protocols and treatments for wellness and healthcare. Why? Because we can.

The data nerds are coming. It’s what’s next. Marketers and brand planners can smell it.

Peace.

Coca-Cola’s Only Brand Strategy.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 19, 2015

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“I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company” were the words Bill Backer scribbled on a napkin during an unscheduled stop in Ireland one morning. Those words eventually gave birth to one of the world’s most memorable TV commercials: Hilltop. In today’s NYT, Mr. Backer recounted the basic idea “to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be – a liquid refresher – but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples (angry travelers in an airport), a universally liked formula that would help keep them company for a few minutes.”

An equally powerful Coke commercial, remembered simply as “Mean Joe Greene,” sees an injured, tired, defeated and grumpy football player consoled by a little kid with a Coke. It does not play Mr. Backer’s “company” card. He doesn’t need company, he’s limping to the locker room.

The fact is, both of these spots have plots. Both use different strategies. What they share, whether solving the world’s ills or an individual’s is the need to refresh. The current iteration of Coke advertising, by Wieden+Kennedy, is the “happiness” campaign. It’s some really great work. But happiness is an outcome of refreshment. Coca-Cola is not pot. It’s not Xanax.

Coke ad strategies have changed over time according to its ad agents. According to its taglines. But the brand strategy remains the same: refreshment. There is no escaping it. Don’t reinvent it, embrace it.

Peace.

The future of daily news.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 18, 2015

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The Daily News newspaper is up for sale. It is a money losing effort and has been for years but is one of the greatest NYC brands. Sadly, what it means to be a newspaper man has changed over the last two decades. The web has trumped the paper’s ability to share fresh news. Papers have become what old people consume, while young people read and watch digital media. And $.75 for an individual size serving of news isn’t a commercially forward idea anymore.

The Daily News has a lot going against it, related to this contextual point and time in the business. What is shouldn’t lose sight of, however, is the fact that news is still in demand. As is great writing, analysis and curation. The Daily News has to forget about is paper legacy and revert to some killer news collection, reporting and investigating work. Have you seen what passes for entertainment these days on TV and movies? We certainly have the appetite for crime, corruption and mystery.

The Daily News needs to find 10 brilliant news junkies, embedded in the cultures of today, and turn them into journalistic celebrities. Let everyone else at the paper learn from them. And publish. Don’t worry about ink and paper, worry about news content. Who knows a daily paper paper may still work.

This is the craft economy. Great journalism is a craft. The Daily News’ new owner needs to find some new blood for this new age and move the brand forward. It’s new school journalism. But it’s still the news. And in NYC it’s on every corner.

Peace.

Brand Strategy and Segmentation.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 15, 2015

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There is no segmentation in brand strategy. There are segments. There are segment priorities.

This I learned from Peter Kim, while he was the strategy head at McCann-Erickson in the 90s. On the iteration of the brief he pulled together at the time – which I still use today – Mr. Kim talked about understanding all target audiences. As we know, it’s a big world out there and many targets purchase and influence purchase. In Mr. Kim’s rigor, once you understood all the different targets, it was time to “remassify” them into one target. From that one mass target he asked you to determine a shared attitude or care-about all would agree upon.

One might think this could create an opportunity to water down the care-about. And it may…but only if you let it. Brand planners have to prioritize at this point. They may have to hold one part of the target more sales-sacred. Brands touch everyone. No one should be left behind.

Segmentation studies make it so one focuses the brand claim on the most likely buyer. But in branding we try to speak to the masses. Segmentation comes later once the brand strategy is cooked.

Peace.

Up frontin’…the Single User Identifier.

By

Steve Poppe

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May 14, 2015

0

Whoever comes up with a single user identifier as an advertising tool will revolutionize the ad market. A single user identifier is a one-of-a-kind login (such as social security number) that identifies a device user no matter the advertising medium. Let’s assume your mobile phone number is your single user identifier; when you are watching television the TV can read it. Or if you are listening to digital radio, it senses you are listening. A cross platform cookie, if you will.

So what can one do with this information? Well, it can allow a sales story to device hop from one media to the next in a linear fashion. The old ad maxim about message frequency goes out the window. No message repeats, just message builds. If big data knows you saw an awareness ad in the morning, the advertiser can serve you an “interest” ad in the late morning, a “desire” ad in the afternoon and a “purchase” or transaction ad after dinner – no matter the device. It’s not farfetched. It’s near field fetched.

Storytelling, using this approach, can be serialized. Selling with advertising will change altogether. And it will become way more effective. All because of a single user identifier. Tink about it, as my Norwegian Aunt used to say.

Come on ad nerds. You know, you know I’m not up-frontin’. Peace.

Two Unexpected Outcomes of Verizon and AOL.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 13, 2015

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I posted yesterday about Verizon’s purchase of AOL and how it begged the need for a “single user identifier” to maximize ad revenue across devices. A mobile phone number is an individual identifier, but it doesn’t integrate cleanly with that individual’s IP address or cable TV account number. I wrote a futures piece for Microsoft a few years ago in which I talked about the “Logged and Tagged Society.” Well, consumers are certainly tagged, but their log-ins are all screwed up. An analog for this is electronic medical records in the healthcare world. Also all screwed up. In the future each person will have a single user identifier and when that comes about, the ad platform people will have more context for smart sales than ever before.

An article in the NYT today quoted Facebook’s Andrew Bosworth (note to self, follow him on Twitter) saying “Are ads even relevant now? Do they even make sense on mobile? If all information is indexable and searchable, then what purpose does an ad serve?” He’s partly correct. But with a single user identifier in a logged and tagged society, ad serving will be more contextual and so much more powerful. Sadly, the nerds will take over and the creative people will be pushed aside to a degree. Creative selling is still a fundie of marketing and may take a hit in this mobile ad served/cookied era. But is will be back. We are not droids.

Peace.

The Real Verizon-AOL Rationale.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 12, 2015

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BAM! (And I’m not talking Brooklyn Academy of Music.) Verizon has agreed to buy AOL for $4.4B and AOL’s stock price has jumped like a marlin. Here’s the quote announcing the deal from Verizon’s CEO:

“AOL has once again become a digital trailblazer, and we are excited at the prospect of charting a new course together in the digitally connected world,” Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said in the statement.

A digital trailblazer? I haven’t seen a lot of trailblazing going on in 15 years. The purchase of TechCrunch was blaze-y enough, I guess, but that brand has laid fallow since Michael Arrington was moved aside. The story in Ad Age suggests a big part of the purchase rationale is AOL’s content, yet the real story is in the ad platform. Specifically, AOL’s ability to track users from desktop to mobile device. And now Verizon offers AOL the ability to collect data from mobile devices like few others. Also Verizon knows where you go on your desktop…and soon may integrate your TV.

The key to being able to do something smart with all of this data is having a single user identifier. A social security number, if you will, for each person on the web. My wife pays the Verizon bill and when I use my mobile to make business calls, her name comes up – so they have a long way to go.

Make no mistake, this deal isn’t about the content, that’s secondary. It’s about advertising and data and analytics. Good work Verizon, this is a nice start. But don’t turn to AOL for you vision. Nuh uh!

Peace.

Apps that Behave…your change (phonetic).

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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May 11, 2015

0

Behavior change start-ups (as opposed to technology start-ups) are really moving the VC market. Twenty years ago if you wanted to start a new commercial venture you needed real estate, manufacturing equipment, people to run stuff, a banker, insurance and office equipment. That’s where the money went. These days, a smart entrepreneur can develop a behavior changing business, using apps and software, in his/her home. (S/he doesn’t even need to move to the garage.)

Uber is one such behavior-changing company. It doesn’t own cars or a drivers. Sure it has insurance and some office workers, but the “there there” is pretty thin. It’s all software. People bring the demand for cheaper transportation and they use their own devices. It is a logistics business, as Elon Musk says.

The best new products and services meet pent up consumer demand. When marketers find the pent up need and can use apps to deliver it, it doesn’t require a huge up-front cost. All you need is an idea, a couple of football fields worth of code, some Rackspace or Amazon cloud services and a VC with a little love.

Behavior changing start-ups are the haps now. Just ask Netflix. When you a launching one of these companies, ask yourself the marketing question “Who is going to lose the sale I am winning? And better yet, “What behavior am I changing that consumers are desiring?”Behavior changing start-ups are the haps now. Just ask Netflix. When you a launching one of these companies, ask yourself the marketing question “Who is going to lose the sale I am winning? And better yet, “What behavior am I changing that consumers are desiring?”

Peace.