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The marketing director’s job.

By
Steve Poppe
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Living in the now is what marketing directors are hired to do.  There is nothing more stimulating for a marketer than watching the orders come in. Units, dollars, cases…these are the things that generate wood. Behind the arrow. 😉  Sales are the real data. Being able to interpret feeder data and relate it to sales is important, but sales are the business.

Strategy is the landscape that surrounds sales; the lens through which we see and interpret them. Yet sales-driven organizations don’t always care about strategy, they care about the now.  They live in the now.  A good part of my brand planning rigor is devoted to tracking the sales and selling experience.  It feeds the strategy.  But sales and sales tactics that live in the now without a paean to strategy become easily tired.

Marketing directors need to balance the now with the long term. Slow and steady do not get marketing directors to the head of the line.  Meg Whitman, CEO of HP is no marketing director (Oh yes she is) but she’s being given time to turn HP around. Slow and steady.  Marketing directors don’t have that luxury; especially with dashboard jockeys on every horizon.  

The key for any new marketing director or CMOs over their first 100 days is to learn the business, properly cultivate the marketing department, quickly plant seeds, and share successes. With a plan, with a strategy, all tactics become accountable.  Good sales and bad sales become obvious. Now. Then. And when. Peace.

 

Google and Mobile Apps

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Google’s brand strategy used to be “organizing the world’s information” or putting the “world’s information one click away.”  Larry Page, seeing that his market share slipped 1.2% last year has decided to change that. He’s renamed the search division the knowledge division.  This, ironically, is the Microsoft Bing strategy – so eloquently presented in the “information overload” campaign developed by JWT a couple of years ago.  The difference between “information” and “knowledge” being that the latter takes you closer to a decision — closer to a sale.  This is a mistake.  The strategy did not move the market significantly for Bing and won’t for Google.  Google needs to stick to owning search and leave our brains to us.

cave art

What has disrupted search on the web is the smart phone. (See cover story in the NYT today for excellent piece on this.) Mobile phones are not built for full screen search, so app developers and VCs have set their sights on specialized, robust search and retrieve mobile experiences that remove the chaff and get us to information right away.  These apps, by specializing and using geo-location, trump Google and search on mobiles. They are hot — but proper monetization still isn’t happening. Ads on mobiles are still cave art.

Let’s solve the mobile ad thing by 2015.  Any ideas?   Peace.

Planners bones.

By
Steve Poppe
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The best part about being a brand planner is that it puts you on the trail of goodness.  The world can be turbulent (as seen on TV) or it can be graceful, when grace is defined as “elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action” (thanks dictionary.com).

bones

It may be the aging process that makes me look out the window more during a country drive analyzing what I see, or it may be the planner in me.  I choose to think the latter.

Planners need to be extroverts so people will share important feelings, not just what they think we want to hear. Planners must be introverts at times, so people feel comfortable sharing…believing marketers won’t use the information to do evil. But most important planners need an ear attuned to goodness.

There was a time in my life when making fun of things, people and behavior was humorous.  And humor is something most relish. But planning has tamed this in me. I try to see more deeply into people. I look for the good. It has changed me. My son is graduating college this year. A political science major at Plattsburgh. Sometimes when we talk politics he gears up against what is unjust – what he sees as bad. Perhaps he needs a little planners bone in his exoskeleton.   Peaceful are the planners.    

Brand planning tip number 1.

By
Steve Poppe
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 It seems lots of social headlines start with 3 steps, 7 tips and 6 critical somethings…so a number it is. Feed the social serpent hee hee.

I write briefs for a living. To get to a brief, I do lots of interviews.  It’s my secret sauce.  But the sauce changes from time to time to meet the evolving culture of buying and selling and here’s a brand new path of inquiry: arrogance.

Apple got tangled up in China recently for what the Chinese government referred to as arrogant  policies and behaviors and the word, often repeated in the reporting, got me thinking of ways to use it in planning.   “If your company was publically accused of arrogance,” one might ask a C-level, “to what would might they be referring?”  Or a questions to a salesperson, “When selling against your key competitor, what might you be arrogant about?”  Perhaps a question to a consumer “When brand X is being arrogant, what are they likely doing?”

Yes arrogance is a dirty word but it is quite pregnant with meaning. Remember, this is strategy, not creative.  I’m not suggesting being arrogant, I’m suggesting we probe it. Peace!

DTC Web Businesses.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a new class of company out there which uses ecommerce to provide higher value products at lower prices.  The entrepreneurs behind this phenomenon believe by producing products in China and distributing them directly via the web, they remove the middle man/middle men from the equation, thereby charging less and making greater margin.  The problem is, they are also responsible for developing their own brands. (Another middleman cost.) And as we’ve seen with tech companies, where the brand building is often left to the chief technology officer or VC partner, it’s done poorly. For every Facebook, there are sixty Zudes.

Another problem with this DTC (direct to consumer) start-up brand approach is that they ascribe part of brand value to cost – one of the key benefits of the new model. We get it.  A no middle man, ecomm product ordered from the web is cheaper (plus delivery). But price, as a brand cornerstone is not a great long-term play. It’s a promotional play. And while this landscape is developing they are parity plays.

The web has changed retail forever. And its brilliant. Eight years ago I blogged about how a good business to be in would be the secure oversized mail box business.  Members of this new class of ecomm businesses needs to spend a couple two tree dollars on their brand plan.  Even before the go to China. Peace!

Social Media is not for advertising.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Period.  Sound odd from a man who makes a living selling OP (other people’s) stuff? 

Sadly, once something new gets good and helpful and cool, entrepreneurs try to monetize it.  Case in point: When a kid in the ad business in the 70s or 80s I wondered why there weren’t large ads on the risers of the steps leading out of Penn Station. Today there are. Who thinks like that?  We want to cover everything in ads.  In social media there has been a massive redistribution of wealth in marketing because of this push to monetize. It’s inuring us to the tool that is social.  

Advertising is impacting social media the way pesticides are killing off the honey bee population.

For marketers, social media has but one function. One.  To predispose consumers toward your brand. How does it do that?  By driving them closer to a sale.  How does it do that? In many cases, by driving them to content on your web site. Not Mr. Zuckerberg’s web site.

Good psychotherapist knows that observations, insights and decisions patients make on their own are the ones that turn lives around.  Not the lessons taught. Allow a consumer to come to the conclusion that your product is better — of their own volition — and you have a custie for life.

So, social media is to engage, assist, and even subconsciously gain favor among your audience. This is done without selling. And, if done with a tight brand strategy you’ll out-perform all comers.

Joseph Jaffe writes about “Flipping the funnel.” I say use the funnel – and don’t put ads on it.  Peace!

 

Marketing’s Recycling Plant

By
Steve Poppe
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This morning I was reading how Fair Oaks Dairy in Indiana is using cow manure to fuel not only its milking operations but also its fleet of truck by turning waste into natural gas.  Talk about sustainability! In my mind the natural cycle of life is one in which we don’t just consume but replenish.  Recycling is a brilliant idea. Unless we’re talking about advertising and marketing.

dairy cow

I did a little mock interview with a tyro marketer last night and much of what I got out of our discussion was plumbing: the process, the tools, the operations. “I am responsible for this, I am responsible for that…”  It is expected at the entry level, but it also plagues many ad and marketing operations today because it trickles up to senior management.  The tactics lead the march. Companies feel the need outperform the market in “search,” “awareness,” “click-through,” “loyalty,” etc.   But we are counting bodies, but not winning the war.

In essence, these companies are recycling marketing tactics. The ads I read in the 90s are back. The TV spots from last year are the same this year, just with different actors. In this business the familiar is not the best way to predispose someone toward a sale. With a tight brand plan the goal is always first. Not the recycled tactic.  “We need to Facebook more.  Let’s get a team together and brainstorm.”  Peace.

 

Data dashboard engineers.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

engineers hat

Date-driven is the other new thing.  Find a business category and put the words “data-driven” in front and you have an new and fertile business. Data-driven Social Marketing Solutions for the Dachis Group.  Data-driven instruction for Teq, Inc. and educational development company. Data-driven decision making. Data-drive fill in the blank.

When has any field of endeavor not been data driven?   Data has successfully driven businesses for time immemorial. Como se Sears catalog?

Today, however the web has enabled us to be awash in data. And it is a good thing. Enter the Haggis.  I mean, enter the dashboard. The dashboard has a way of keeping us sane. Then there is the dashboard engineer: the person responsible for looking at all the dials and doing something smart with it. The dashboard engineer will be the new social media manager. A data nerd who reports data, reports patterns and trends, but may not see the bigger marketing picture.

Mark my words, on the job boards of the future we will see data engineer and dashboard engineer titles aplenty. Then the fill in the blank will come before the title.  Peace. 

Broadcast Vs. Personal

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Big data in marketing now is not only a thing, it’s a big thing.  Smart companies are parlaying all the information we leave around the web, in stores and on our credit cards to learn about our proclivities. Our likes. Tastes. And timings. This “parlay” is then given to corporate data nerds, supervised by a marketing officer who oversees budgets, big deals and the national TV campaign — but who may not spend a lot of time looking into the eyes of customers and prospects. The result of this big data?  Newish forms of broadcast. Email newsletters to existing customers. A national promotion for a chance to spend a day with an ex- Disney girl. Online ad exchanges.

Brand planners are good at what they do because they look consumers in the eye. They deal in feelings; feelings that are best shared or observed one on one. The problem with marketing today is that technology has given us tools to do one on one things via broadcast. Dear “loyal customer” Vs. Dear “Steve.”  Sales calls are automated. Robo calling with personal names and account numbers.  Mail run off on a printing press. It’s not personal when it’s mass produced and modular.

Readers know I talk about the roots movement in our culture. Well roots will come back to marketing soon.  Even forward thinker Faris Yakob is reading The Benevolent Dictators, a book about the titans of the ad industry.

The best ideas in marketing come from personal, individual insights and discussions. Then we turn them into big data and broadcast them. Let’s slow down the broadcast. Peace.

The brand plan test.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Hey marketers and marketing agents, take this test.  Answer these questions in the form of fill in the blank quiz:

My brand strategy statement is: __________________________________.  (This is not a ponderous mission statement cover all business possibilities, it’s a single statement with no conjunctions or commas. If you do not have this statement, but do have a tagline, use it.)

The three elements of my business formula than make me different and better are:

__________________

__________________

__________________

These elements, which I call brand planks, must support the strategy statement. So the statement needs to relate to the planks. Similar to colors in a room, the planks and strategy must be familiar and provide tight linkage.      

Please take this test and send me the results. The reality is, when you see what you’ve written (or not written) you will be well on your way to fixing your business and brand woes. If you can’t articulate this stuff, how will your customers be able to? Peace.

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