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Loving Wal-Mart’s Free Shipping.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“I love free shipping” was my wife’s response when I mentioned Wal-Mart’s newest offer on all website purchases this holiday season. 

eCommerce is propping up the shipping business (US Postal Service, UPS and FedEx) and dinging the oil business.  Some economics student should plot U.S. online sales increases growth to barrels of oil consumed as a thesis topic.  When a consumer says “I love __________ (fill in the blank)” you need to pay attention. The wifus loves free shipping and she loves free returns – especially so, when the return label is already in the box. 

This is how the return thing works: Outside in the garage is a second refrigerator.  On top of the fridge, spilling off in all directions, are boxes. The boxes are a few steps closer to the kitchen than the car.  To return a product, she walks to the garage, grabs a box and some Amazon bubble bags or newspaper, then returns to the kitchen where she assembles the box, labels it, grabs the packing tape out of the cupboard in the butler’s pantry – zip, zip and to the front door.  If it’s UPS or FedEx she may have to dial a telephone number or click-to-pick. Could that be any easier?  Easier than say, driving to a store, standing in line and doing the whole credit card thing?  

This “I love free shipping” behavior, even as a trial at Wal-Mart may, as The New York Times declares, deliver a “knock-out punch.”  Not to Amazon, but to a number of smaller retailers with inelastic margins who can’t play this game.  Oh, it’s here to stay. So watch out.

eCommerce makes every day Christmas day (insert your holiday here).  In store shopping, for its many positives, has more than its share of negatives; especially around the holidays. Wal-Mart is paying attention. What a marketing juggernaut. Peace!

BBH’s Vaseline Intensive Rescue Work.

By
Steve Poppe
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Unilever has launched a Vaseline Intensive Rescue campaign via Bartle Bogle Hegarty, NY.  It was conceived in a conference room, formed and nurtured through social media, and produced by a CPG company and ad agency. Excuse the pun, but BBH never uses a rough hand in its work so I’m surprised by what I’ve seen and read so far.

According to a write-up in today’s NYT, BBH employed a web monitoring company to scour blogs and social networks for women with dry hands.  Smartly, they were looking for Posters rather than Pasters and found three who like to blog about mommy stuff and seem web-o-genic. But then they trotted out camera crews, writers, producers etc., in an effort to create “authentic” spokesperson stories. I smell 15 minutes (of fame).

Social media campaigns works best when the spokesperson is not managed.  When they are real.  Melting Mama, for instance, is an example of a Poster who is real.  Kandee Johnson, make-up artist, is real.  These two have personal motivations that makes them compelling. Not a motivation, seeded, tilled and fertilized by a marketing engine.  BBH is better than this. It feels B team and formulaic. This is no “Prescribe the Nation” campaign – BBH’s brilliant work for Vaseline Clinical Therapy in 2008-9.  That was an idea with ballast. Peace!

Branding and Selling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The word “branding” means many things to many people.  To an art director it means design.  To a writer it means tag- or campaign-line. A media person sees it as threshold weights of eyes and ears. A web designer sees branding in terms of wireframes.  Digital agencies view it as the part of their portfolio that doesn’t need to be judged on click throughs.

Selling, on the other hand, is a verb and it has only one meaning.  Moving merch.  Or services.

No matter who is using or misusing the word branding, it’s important they know it means selling. Not exposure. Sadly, many feel getting the name out there is enough. When a communication is all claim and no proof it’s nothing more than “we’re here” advertising.  “We’re here” advertising simply acknowledges the category and where to buy. “If you have lung cancer, our hospital provides hope.”

Branding is about organizing proof beneath a claim.  That’s why creative briefs have a line called “reason to believe.”  If there is no reason to believe – following an organized, road-mapped, discrete plan – there is no branding. There are simply tactics.  Tactic may be the fun in the business but the revenue and earnings are in brand management. Peace!

Da Monies. Da dashboard.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

Here’s a marketing dashboard for you: A daily view of money coming in and a daily view of money going out.  As they say on the Long Island Rail Road “Please watch the gap.”  Cursor over the money coming in and it should be able to show drop downs of the various expenses by category. Cursor over the money going out, the same.  If you can’t parse the ins and outs by day, look at the data by week or in three week rolling averages. That’s Da Monies.

Factors Influencing Revenue.

Money going in and out is a nice start but tying actual tactics and events to spikes and dips is what is exciting.  Pumping GRPs of TV into the market should create revenue lift.  Promotions the same.  A big bad news story in St. Louis might create a dip. As might a poor earnings reports.  Careful monitoring and modulation of marketing dollars, based on a game plan and strategy, introduces a higher level of accountability to marketing. But it’s not often happening.  In healthcare, there are chief quality officers, who own the data.  When physician mistakes are up or when hospital born infections trend high, the average patient discharge rate slows down. Where is this type oversight in marketing? With the CMO?

The Opportunity.

I’m sure P&G has some dashboard jockeys.  One of them will be a millionaire soon if s/he figures out a marketing dashboard application that ties Da Monies to the marketing.  With precision. Elegance. And with standardization.  Coming to an iPhone near you. Peace!

Me too. Three, Four, Five.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Twitter owned real time updates. Facebook mirrored it. AOL owned chat. Facebook copied it. Google owned search.  Facebook morphed it.  Foursquare developed check-ins.  Facebook parroted it. And Groupon owned coupon search. Facebook Places has mimicked it. 

I worked at a social media start-up (Zude) for a tech savant who wanted to out-YouTube YouTube, out-DoubleClick DoubleClick and out-MySpace MySpace. What he had – what we had – was the “fastest, easiest way to build and manage a website,” supported by a unique drag-and-drop technology.  Sadly, the CTO didn’t want to perfect usability, rather, he wanted to be the best at everything. Hence, we were the best at nothing. 

I’ve written about Google and its “culture of technological obesity” and it seems Facebook now is sharing that affliction.  You can’t be everything to everybody.  Do something well, stick to it, prefect it, then evolve it. But don’t keep stealing other people’s cheese.

The more Facebook moves toward the middle of “all” web functionality the more overweight it becomes. My advice: Focus…and let other companies play too. Peace!

Measuring ROS on the Web.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I haven’t written about ROS (return on strategy) for a while but on the heels of my empanelment at OMMA Performance this week I’ve given it some more thought.  One of the good things heard discussed at OMMA was the metric “intent to purchase.”  As one person said, however, I may walk around the Jaguar dealership with an intent to purchase, but without consummation (check writing) it doesn’t makes the commerce world go round.

Another important metric discussed was the Net Promoter Score – scoring one consumer’s willingness to recommend a product.  These  two metrics are moving in the right direction and are good dashboard measures. Time on site, bounce rate, “like,” page views, are nice directional metrics but can’t always be attributed to a sale. The quants may disagree.

ROS

If you can’t create a value for an action, how are you going to create a value for a strategy?  The strategy for a billion dollar health system was built upon the following brand planks: leading edge treatments and technology, information and resource sharing, and community integration.  Combined, these 3 consumer care-abouts were projected as the business-winning marketing strategy. How do you measure the effectiveness of that strategy? Consumer attitude studies tying the brand plank metrics to KPIs such as beds filled, procedures completed, re-admits, profitability are certainly doable.  But how might one measure the strategy effectiveness using the web?  Thoughts?  Einsteins?

Datapalooza.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday, I was on a panel at OMMA Performance in NYC called “The dream of the Digital Dashboard.”  (OMMA stands for Online Media Marketing and Advertising.) The program, curated by Cory Treffiletti — president of Catalyst S+F, a great digital strategy shop — was quite good. (One of the speakers was from Tynt.com, check it out.)

On my panel I mentioned that tactics-palooza has created the need for dashboards and one of my panel mates, Marc Kiven, repurposed the sound bite into datapalooza, which had some serious ballast with the audience.  Nice ear Marc. (Sorry, had to say that.)

Datapalooza reminded me of a meeting I attended a while ago in which someone from AT&T network management said “We need to collect all this performance data, then do something smart with it.”  It’s a word string, I never forgot. Today digital marketers are so covered in data it has become harder and harder to do something smart.  One reason is interoperability.  Most reports capture time on site, links clicked, referrals, browser type, geography, device, bounce, last page visited — times a hundred. And even though we’re in the age of open standards I sense many of these data points remain in unique software homes…not portable to other behavioral data sources and feeds.

This interoperability issue reminds me of voice mail.  Have you ever moved from one job to another and had to learn new voice mail prompts?  What a pain.  If we are to improve the performance of digital performance, the industry needs to think about some basic standards. Perhaps that will transform datapalooza into a more sonorous environment.  Peace!

Derivatives in Marketing

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m not sure I know what derivatives are in financial markets, but I sure know what they are in marketing…and there are two kinds: derivative creative and derivative context.  

Derivative creative feels like an idea stolen. When you see or hear the idea, you think of another brand.  That’s bad. When an idea has a conscience tied to one brand, you must stay away.  Hack creatives make a living on this type of stuff. It smells like something bad in the fridge.

Then there is derivative context.  This is smart creative.  It’s not as smart as something absolutely clean and un-owned, but it is smart nonetheless and doesn’t require bazillions to seed the idea with consumers. It’s smart because the idea comes pregnant with meaning the marketer doesn’t need to build.  If I say “Hot Tomato” is sounds like “Hot Potato” and contextualized makes one think of something too hot to hold.  (Okay, bad example, but it’s early in the morning.)

Derivative creative bad. Derivative context good. Next! Peace.

Eating Right is Big Business.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

You can tell the vitality of a marketing category by its advertising — and right now the retail grocery business is heating up.  With 17 percent of all US adolescents obese and the likelihood that for the first time in the history of our country children will grow up less healthy than their parents, the retail grocery business is finally beginning to innovate and in the right direction.

Thumb through the ads in Progressive Grocer and you will see some with real claims. Real proof.  It’s easy to do good advertising when you have real innovation to sell.  Yeah, yeah there are still some charts and an ad or two with cheesy headlines (Hershey’s “Delivering Innovations Shopping Solutions”), but unlike the ads in a recent copy of CIO Magazine, crafted with stock art by internal market departments, the grocery trades are cranking out work with real stories. And you can tell that the ConAgra’s of the world are excited to be introducing lines of healthy steamed entrees.

Feeding America more healthy, more affordable food (not usually used in the same sentence) is driving “what’s up” in the grocery business. It may not be a sexy category, like social media, or mobile phones, but it’s important and growing.  And in a few months all this trade advertising will move into the general media markets and feed (sorry) the general advertising business. Exciting!  Peace!

MSG Does it Again.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Poor, poor New York Knicks.  They own and play in the world’s most famous arena.  They’re backed by a smart company that has more money and love (for them) than are most sports franchises, but when it comes to marketing they can’t find their fanny with their hands.

 

Co:, a new marketing company formed by Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan, most recently of JWT, touted the Knicks as one of their first clients.  How’s that coffee smell y’all?  What a mess they stepped into.  Today’s New York Times reports the new Knicks adverting effort is a five agency ass-grab, sans an idea.  Co: has really taken a small role, according to the article, with only a limited mention.  Stuart Elliot, the Times advertising writer, suggests the idea is “You. Us. We. Now.”  Is that an idea…or four? Is there an acronym for Cry Out Loud? 

Everyone interviewed in the article says the wrong thing. The story suggests tactics-palloza  — and there is a focus on “fan engagement” that is well-intended but laughable.

Declare

Last year the Knicks idea was “Declare.”  What they meant to say was “Represent” but that, I’m sure, was a bit too urban.  How can you be urban and not urban in one word?  

The creative this year focuses on the players because they are all new. Lazy. It should be focusing on the basketball void that has been NYC for years. Hear that sucking sound?  If you want some hoops in NYC this year get your shoes out to Carnesecca Arena. Peace!

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