Ad Agencies and Innovation.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 19, 2014

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Innovation in selling has always been with us. Half driven by science, half driven by art, through the years marketers have looked for more cost-effective, efficient ways to sell product and out-sell competitors. These days the web, digital production and mobile have tossed into the innovation crucible a number of exciting new tools. It’s a new day. An example:

I saw a TV spot last night in which the screen was split into four quadrants — each had a picture of the same young lad with four different style glasses on. If you want to sell glasses, this is a very efficient way. It’s a trial application, a comparison application, and perhaps, should they put prices in each screen, a price/value application. Did someone think of this as a tool in the 80s? Probably. Could they do anything about it then? Elegantly? Nope.

This is what excites me about marketing technology or marketing tech today…the possibilities. And the ideas can come from anywhere. But my bet is that this idea came from an agency? Some shop like Anomaly, Droga5, BBH, Mother, or R/GA. It may have come from an innovation group, but my money is on a shop. Agencies have the most creative people. Innovations groups tend to have facilitators and rent-a-cops.

Agencies know the future is new marketing apps, buildables and technologies in addition to lovely advertising. Agencies, if used properly, are way more valuable than they used to was. A new whoosh is here. Let’s use it. Give your agency the opportunity.

Peace.

A Great Web Site.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 18, 2014

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I love the Red Bull web site. It’s what web sites ought to be. If good marketing makes you “feel something then do something” Red Bull gets ‘er done. Brian Solis and I agree on many things – and the sorry state of web sites as marketing tools is one of them. Web sites today are an odd admixture of corporate brochure, table of contents and, if lucky, three sliding pictures of product/service schmutz. But Red Bull cares about what customers care about and serves it up with breadth and gusto. The site doesn’t just offer lifestyle content, it delivers the Red Bull culture and experience. No “About Red Bull.” No “Tweetstream.” No cans of product.

I try to sell clients the notion that a web site is all about moving a customer closer to a sale or toward a tighter grip on loyalty. You don’t do this with wireframes and CMSs (content management systems). You do it by motivating people with interesting, customer-inspiring content and story. Magnetic, shareable story…aligned with your product or service. Hopefully, all organized under a brand strategy rubric: one idea, 3 proof planks. (E.g., Taco Bell’s “Live Mas” is an idea; I’m just not sure of its planks.) Taco Bell might borrow a page from the Red Bull playbook.

So let’s start to focus our web sites on the brand and customer story. Not SEO keywords, not the wireframe, not the 22 clickables above the fold. Find your idea, find your planks and custies will find you.

Peace.

Social Media LOI.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 17, 2014

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What is the opposite of ROI? LOI? Loss On Investment?

A retail prospect I have in my sights employs a social media manager and, according to a contact there, a social media vendor. Depending on the sophistication of the vendor the retailer is probably getting paid search with reports, a social media monitoring read-out and a by-the-pound allotment of tweets/posts. Maybe 20 a week? I follow them and the work is very common. And potentially hurtful.

By comparison, I met recently with a smart digital strategist at global digital shop iCrossing. His social media strategy group, which informs creative, media, producers and account, also has by-the-pound accountability…but you can tell they sweat the work. The client has tight rein on goals, brand and content and challenges the agency to learn, turn and tighten – which they are doing. But not without growing pains. It’s hard work.

The retailer? Not so much. The retailer is losing on its social investment because its primary tactic is promotion. 10% off. Free this. BOGO that. Free tickets. Free delivery. ON SALE! Hashtag. Marketers once knew what promotion was for. How and why to use it. But many media socialists breathe promotion like air. So not only are they failing to make deposits in the brand bank – engaging custies along brand building, brand strengthening paths — they are giving money and margin away.

Tactical social media today is often undoing great brand work. The iCrossings of the world and smart clients are learning this. Many are not. The C-suite is starting to ask questions.

If you could only post once a week and you couldn’t give things away, how would you engage customers and engender loyalty? You need a strategy.

Peace…in Iraq.

A sad sales secret.

Sales training

By

Steve Poppe

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June 16, 2014

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I was recently talking with a marketing friend from a company with $3+ billion in sales, who shared an interesting dilemma. The company is growing like a dookie yet not necessarily outperforming the category. A huge online competitor is about to unleash the wrath of its sales engine and though it is acknowledged it’s not overly concerning. (Como se dice MySpace?) When asked about brand strategy my friend defaulted to logo land and said it was not a priority. But s/he did share something that was quite interesting, saying the company salesforce was a bunch of freelancers (my words), designing their pitches to the companies upon which they were calling. “We have no value proposition. Our guys just go out and sell.”

That is something my friend acknowledged needing help with.

So where to sales people learn how to position the brand for selling? In sales training of course. Sales training without brand strategy, though, is like college without a major. You are tactically trained by not strategically trained. One can read all the Malcolm Gladwell books in the world but without an understanding of the “organizing principle” that ties what the brand does well to what consumers want most, you’re in the generic aisle.

The two most important places to share a brand strategy – providing your company has one – are: new employee orientation and sales training. Sadly, most brand strategy stays within the walls of the market dept. and is rarely shared. A sad but dirty little secret.

Peace.

Hain Celestial’s Tasty Recipe.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 13, 2014

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I was listening to Irwin D. Simon the CEO of Hain Celestial on a webcast yesterday and he mentioned a consumer insight that was both true and funny. Mr. Simon’s company is the largest natural organic food producer in the U.S. Not too long ago, said Simon, people would prefer to eat the bag over the food. Add that to the fact that natural organic products typically cost 15-20% more and you have some serious roadblocks.

Hain Celestial is doing so well these days because it is focusing on taste. For many people, when you say “nature bars” or “grain and oat cookies” the mental response is cotton-mouth. The reason obesity is pandemic in the U.S. is because sugar, salt and fat taste good. Changing the taste profile of natural food is why Hain Celestial is growing a 3 times the pace of traditional foods.

Hain Celestial’s product portfolio is growing. Their products are 99% GMO free (Genetically Modified Organisms.) And though I wouldn’t exactly put them in the craft economy category, they are getting there. BluePrint, their cold pressed juice brand, is definitely a craft product.

Keep an eye on Hain Celstial. The CEO gets consumers, product, and marketing. And that’s a tasty recipe.

Peace.

Strategy for Content Strategy.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 12, 2014

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“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Brand success is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – What’s the Idea?

Brand success was more easily managed 10 years ago before many marketers ceded control of messaging to consumers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read and heard senior marketers say “We don’t own our brands anymore, consumers do.” Hell, Google the sentence (use quotes). And the sentiment is dead wrong. Imagine saying the same thing but substituting the words “produce” or “price” or “distribute.”

And today the markobabble of the day is not authenticity or transparency, it’s content. Content marketing, more specifically. The Alitmeter Group just published some quantitative research with three key data points worth sharing. All of which don’t bode well for proper brand management in the age of social.

1. 70% of marketers surveyed lack a consistent or integrated content strategy.

2. 10% of marketers say their content marketing technologies are “fully integrated across people process and platforms.”

3. 40% of marketers surveyed say that the lack of interdepartmental coordination is leading to disparate tools used.

I love social, but it needs to be brand-managed. Not tactically managed. Done well, it helps set expectation for the brand and reinforce brand experience. Done poorly, it can undue lots of good work.

Peace.

Down with the data.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 11, 2014

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My blog and consulting company are named What’s The Idea? To creative people an idea is a campaign-able meme; something that binds creative executions together so consumers can play them back and talk about the product. Big creative ideas are what marketers are looking for and spend millions on. Mostly, marketers don’t look to digital agencies for these ideas. Friends at Razorfish once told me they didn’t get a seat at the big boy table when it came to the big idea. This is changing, but slowly. Where digital agencies are thought to operate is down with the data.

As data collection tools grow and ROI tools refined, “down with the data” is not a bad place to be. Big ideas that appeal to the masses, however, are data supported not data driven. Too much data fogs the creative mind. There’s a trend among digital agencies to seek out traditional planners for idea stim. It’s a good first step to removing the sectarian approach practiced by agencies and marketers. I think removing the barriers between traditional and digital shops is the right thing to do. Granular and macro, used together, create better results. But the big, killer idea is still the center of gravity of great marketing.

Peace.

The curation economy.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 10, 2014

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Question. Is Uber a software play or a curation play? I believe the latter. The end game is a ride from point A to point B. That’s what consumers want. Is it software enabled? Sure. But you are not getting to the airport or home from your pub crawl sitting on your iPhone. So is it in the software business? Curation business? Or transportation business. (Many would say transportation but remember, Uber doesn’t own the cars or employ the drivers.) Travis Kalanick, UberCEO, is right when he says he’s in the logistics business. His business is software-enabled and consumer-driven — but curation-based. Jeremiah Owyang calls this the sharing economy. Me thinks it’s closer to the curation economy.

Amazon started out in the ecommerce book business. Then it moved into the mass retail business. It morphed into a curation business when it allowed other retailers to use its platform. Then there’s Google. Google loves to say it’s a technology company. Most think it’s a search company. If you ask their CFO, s/he might say Google is an advertising company – that’s where the bank deposits come from. Or is it a curation company? Hmmm. Curating access to information through the algo. As my Norwegian aunt might have said “Tink about it.”

Peace.

Tchotchke Comms.

By

Steve Poppe

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June 9, 2014

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An oft-mentioned Goodby Silverstein mission suggests they focus on “making stuff people care about.” It’s not an uncommon mission these days, especially as more ad and marketing revenue is tied to buildables. For Goodby, this seems to be working as a mission. It’s fun and memorable. But the reality is, it’s the job of marketers to make stuff (products) people buy. Agencies, therefore, need to make stuff that encourage people to buy. Knowing Goodby Silverstein as I do, they get this. They get that caring is a first step toward buying. I’m not worried about them. But a cottage industry of shops has been allowed to grow up building tchotchke communications that get attention, likes and pass-alongs but are light on buy.

I love social media and digital marketing. Done well. I believe digital advertising has the potential to far outpace traditional, half duplex (one way) advertising because it puts at consumer fingertips the ability to experience all the steps to a sale in a minutes. This, thanks to devices, media twitches and mobile connectivity. But the main body of practitioners are not there yet. They are still focused on trying to make stuff people care about. And that’s a shallow view. Once they make stuff that make people buy – that’s when the whoosh is going to happen. Can’t wait. Peace.

Born Again.

Marketing

By

Steve Poppe

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June 6, 2014

0

T-Mobile and Sprint are in talks to merge. The two mobile carriers, each with 50 million U.S. subscribers, have well-established brands. What should the resulting brand be? Some might say T-Mobile has a little more cache, mostly due to smart, flashy CEO John Legere. Yet Sprint has been around for decades; America’s first all fiber optic network. Some brand and naming experts will suggest combining the two names into some clunky hybrid and go all “one plus one equals 3” on us. I say it time for a new name. A new mark. And a fresh start.

AT&T and Verizon are really strong brands. Each is spending hundreds of millions in advertising. The work is likeable, but shallow and noisy. It’s either campaign-for-campaign-sake or product showcase. People don’t love selling or advertising, they love brands. And AT&T and Verizon are missing this point.

The combined Sprint/T-Mobile brand has a chance to start from the ground up. Break the mold. Find the sweet spot customers care about and move the product and experience in that direction. Mr. Legere gets this with his moves to offer no contract mobile service. Sprint/T-Mobile should do a little brand spanking research – spank the AT&T and Verizon brands around and find some product and emotional weaknesses. Then write a killer brief and start with a new name.

Rebirth opportunities don’t come along that often. Peace.