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Microsoft. Harvest or Cut Bait!

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I think it’s time for Microsoft to go into harvest mode.  Harvest is a B- school term that identifies the last part of a company’s lifecycle.  It occurs when companies stop investing and planting seeds and simply harvest what they can while idling down.

There’s still lots of money to be made on PC operating systems and productivity software, so reap those rewards and stop wasting the profits.  Do it for shareholders.

What was the last Microsoft product or service that broke new ground?  It seems every new thing they launch has been invented before.  Yesterday’s announcement of the new operation system for mobile phones, Windows Phone 7, was a little bit late to market, no?  Like 2 years late.

There was a time when Microsoft was the shizz.  Big, powerful, filled with the smartest people in the business.  Sadly, like the punk rock band that became famous, fat and less angry, I fear Microsoft has lost its mojo.  It still has more money than G O D and, so, sustains…plodding along innovating OPS (other people’s stuff).

Microsoft, is looking through the rear view mirror.  Come on Microsoft, shake it up right now or harvest and move on. Peace!

PS. Steven Ballmer quote on Windows Phone 7, “We focused in on how real people really want to use phones when they are on the go.”  With this type of thinking how can Microsoft miss? JKJK.

PPS.  Having done some more homework on MSFT, I’m open to the idea that maybe Window Phone as a mobile OS might actually be a pretty big thing. Maybe there is some bait cutting going on after all.

Brands and Social Media Noise.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 Branding is about creating muscle memory around a selling idea. It’s not about the color of the idea. Or the smiling faces.  It’s not about the talent or the sing-songy tagline.  It about finding a powerful selling idea and organizing it in a way that consumers can play back.  It’s what good brand managers and their agents go to school for. 

What makes one hospital better than the next?  The stuff that’s been planted in your head.

Social media and its ability to make everyone a media mogul is having an impact on brand management.  The Brett Favre brand has just taken a major hit thanks to recorded cell phone conversations and some unseemly texts.  Sorry Wrangler Jeans. Social media created a torrent of unintended and, often, untended information about brands.

“Hi, I’m Amanda.  I’m from DDB Tribal. I teach clients how to use Facebook.”

As an ad agency kid in NYC I once suggested giving away free tee-shirts sporting our logo to bicycle messengers. Messengers were everywhere in NYC…in and out of some of the world’s most important marketing offices. My boss said “No, what if a bike messenger broke the law and got his picture in the paper.” Like it or not, that’s brand management.

The pop marketing psychology of the day is “Companies don’t own their brands anymore. Consumers do.”  I argued this point with the chief strategy and innovation officer at an IPG promotion agency earlier this year.  He agreed with the pop marketing thesis. I do not.  As social media allows more and more consumers to make fake ads and weigh in on products that others spend millions to build it becomes more important for brand managers to tighten up. We can’t silence the masses but we can friend them, hopefully program them toward our way of thinking, and maximize the share of message to noise.  

Find your selling idea, campaign it, refresh it, invest in it.  And manage it. Because social media for all its good can create noise that is not always brand and sales-positive.  Peace!

When is Social not Social?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It’s started.  With the (re?) introduction of Groups, Facebook has started down the path of being less social.  Those who gerrymander themselves from others on the Web are not being social, they’re being anti-social.  Okay, they are also being human.  But for me, the best of social networking is in finding likeminds around the block, country and world.  Sure, I like knowing what far off college pals are doing. And I’m okay knowing what high school classmates whose pictures I don’t recognize care about. And yes, I know it can become unmanageable if you have too many friends and followers and can’t keep up with the stream.   Manage.

Research is probably driving Facebook’s more towards Groups with members are saying I need a way to organize my friends. Yet the feature is going to narrow users’ worldviews.  They will spend more time in the Groups with less people – more insular people. It will be like going to the same bar all the time. Or eating at the same restaurant.  Or reading the same author. Again, very human traits — but traits blown up by social networking.

Facebook Groups will remove some of the serendipity built in to the application.  Like antibiotics, Groups will be a good near term salve but if overused will begin to erode the beauty of the network. My advice, don’t turn it on. Peace!

News About Online Political News.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“I want my news and I want it in my eyes now!” is a riff on something my very young daughter said when sitting at a restaurant, being told by her grandmother her tuna fish sandwich was coming. No doubt, for the 4th time.

When I was a kid, radio was the only place to get news in real time and it required having a reported on site – so it wasn’t really real time. Thanks to Twitter and video and camera phones, the news today is available in real time. And though it may not always be well-packaged, presented or analyzed, it’s available as it happens.  The news biz is a changing thanks to the web and technolo-yee.  It is always on. And way exciting.

Howard Kurtz

Howard Kurtz is a well respected political news reporter based in Washington DC.  He’s the shizz. When interesting things happen, he finds them.  Or they find him.  Mr. Kurtz is leaving The Washington Post for The Daily Beast online. Why?  You’d have to ask him, but my take is for freedom, excitement, a little bit of sexy, and the unknown that is real time reporting. His business card certainly won’t have the cachet it once did, but history is his to make…and report.

The Daily Beast, and its probable new partner Newsweek, are growing up and growing down respectively. If the two merge is should be exciting to see the morph. Were I Tina Brown (the Beast’s co-founder), the person expected to helm the combined enterprise, I’d lose the entertainment, the food and other ancillary things and go news and politics.  It’s a herd of cats that can be better managed. And a beast it will be. Peace!

Digital Agencies Less Profitable?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Twitter and Skype just made executive moves at the top in efforts to take their fast growing, oft used businesses in the direction of profitability.  Both companies are moving past their infancy. The venture partners helping drive the strategy of these two exciting, brilliant tech companies are pushing for stronger, more “grown up” management.

This makes me think about digital marketing shops — other businesses coming out of the infancy stage.  Do big holding companies like IPG, WPP, Omnicom and MDC Partners cut digital companies more slack than traditional marketing companies? My bet is they do.   The young, filled-with-promise always get the benefit of the doubt. Plus, I’m guessing the financial people at the holding companies don’t quite know how to manage profitability of digital clients just yet.  Because digital is the fastest growing sector in marketing, profit blemishes are being masked.

Digital business people grouse that they don’t get a seat at the big person table when it comes to planning. Often, the “idea” is already cooked when the didge shops are brought in — the big expensive thinking complete.  What is left is the digital translation, a degree of digital creativity and execution… much of which can be performed by lower cost worker bees. If this thesis is correct, then the per capita payroll of a digital shop is lower than that of a full-service ad shop. This is why the profit margins are lower, why digital shops don’t scale past new business, and why they are not getting a seat at the big table. This will change, but will probably lag the pace of change at companies like Twitter and Skype. Peace!

PS.  RGA does not fit into this mold. They have strong highly paid talent throughout. They are the exception.

For Profit Browser.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The online world is all abuzz about priv-ah-see. There’s a new icon that will be appearing on social sites soon that will allow visitors to turn off tracking software, making it harder for advertisers to target users based on behavior.    

Salesforce.com, a business software package growing faster than kudzu in Georgia, is an information gathering tool that lets corporations track their salesforce activity so that if a sales person leaves the company their records, communications and contacts don’t too.

Twitter.com plans to monetize by placing ads or links based on the likes and dislikes of its Tweeters. Instead of Burger King placing ads on Epicureous.com they will soon be able to place them among Twitter followers of Eddy Curry, the New York Knicks center with the penchant for caloric foods.

Research suggests that Teens, Tweens and Millennials aren’t nearly as anal about online privacy as are pundits, but that will change. There is already a cottage industry developing – advertised on radio of all places – whereby people can pay to wipe out their online doings.  We need a quick way to toggle between social and private. I think it should be a browser-based tool.  When I’m shopping, I want help. When I’m surfing, I’d prefer to be left alone.  And I might just pay for that type of browser.  Peace!

Doing Goods Work.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

We had a tragedy in NJ this week.  A Rutgers University student took his life after having an intimate relationship with another dude secretly videotaped by a roommate and posted to the web. Prior to taking his life, the young man spent some time online talking about this invasion of privacy, presumably seeking advice and counsel from other young gay men. Sadly, it did not work.

What makes the web important is that you can go online and find communities of people with whom you can open up.  Because we’re human you’ll get good advice and bad but at least you can chat with those sympathetic and experienced – and not feel alone.  Mom’s with kids with allergies, for instance. This is a very good thing and we can thank the web for it.

In the case of the Rutgers man, the online community he turned to did not change the outcome but it could have.  The web may be vilified as the place to “learn how to make a bomb” or “place for pedophiles” yet that is glass half empty stuff. (I love Danah Boyd for her undying perspective on this.) Finding and talking to likeminds privately can be a very good thing.

Teen Suicide.

If this thesis plays out, the teen suicide rate will reduce in time.  People by nature are good — even callous, hurtful teens. To those kids on the website who tried to help the Rutgers student, I applaud you. You were doing goods work. Don’t stop. Peace!

PS. “Doing Good’s Work” is a line I’m recommending to a nonprofit in Brooklyn. (No poaching please.)   Is it better with our without the apostrophe?

Aol. Off to the Races.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Aol’s purchase of TechCrunch, the world’s most authoritative tech blog, is mad proof of its brand strategy to be the web’s content leader. Tim Armstrong, Aol’s chief, gets strategy. Claim: Be the content leader.  Proof: Ellen DeGeneres, TechCruch, local news with Patch. Using a TV metaphor, Mr. Armstrong is trying to create a lineup of talent not dissimilar to NBC’s “must see TV” on Thursday night in the 90s (or whenever that was). Buy and built the best visited sites on the web. 

The Web is nothing if it is not content.  TechCruch rocks its category not because Michael Arrington is a star, but because he is focused, a great journalist, and attracts stories like white on rice…before brown rice became popular. Aol and its similarly strategied competitor Yahoo realize the ad-supported model is viable, so it is looking to cherry pick the best talent on the web in every category and corral it. Hopefully, it will keep its hands off, as if has suggested, and let TechCrunch be TechCrunch.   

Patch.com

Patch.com – Aol’s localization play – is a neat idea but I’m not sure it fits this model.  A local reporter from Bumpus Mills, TN may not raise the editorial or content bar but we’ll see. Aol is off to the races – and finally it has a race track.  Yahoo? Not so much. Peace!

Aol, Yahoo and the Devil that is Advertising.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It’s Advertising Week In NYC and Aol has launched a campaign (Product? Movement?) it hopes will make it more relevant.  I love their idea to have an idea. 

Aol’s declaimed strategy is to become a content leader on the web. Easily said. This campaign suggests they are serious.  Loosely called ProjectDevil, it is based on an insight that one-third of the web is advertising.  And poorly curated advertising at that.   A print ad in The New York Times today shows a side-by-side comparison of an old school website and a new school website.  Old is covered in ads and links, while new is elegant, clean and surprisingly magazine like.

If you go to the ProjectDevil site, which has been nicely cobbled together and targeted to an advertising audience, you get the sense that Aol is spending money, currying favor with smart digital people (a bit of a pander) and focusing on the presentation of content.  Compared to Yahoo, its closest competitor in the “content strategy’ strategy, this is a refreshing first down.

The “one third insight’ is a strong one.  The content strategy is a strong one.  If Aol gets better content and innovates with the delivery of that content, next year at Advertising Week you’ll see a very different company. Peace.

PS.  Last year I was walking around Advertising Week talking to Yahoo people who were oblivious to the awful Ogilvy work passing them by on the sides of buses.  Within weeks the account had moved to Goody Silverstein and Gareth Kay.  Yahoo is with a good shop, but their idea is still percolating.

Frank’s Red Hot Sauce

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

 

There is a radio campaign I’ve been hearing lately for Frank’s Hot Sauce – it’s actually red hot sauce, but my ears don’t hear it that way – and I absolutely love it.  There are snippets of video on the website which suggest the campaign may be on TV but I haven’t seen it.

You can’t miss the radio.  It’s typical actor product banter but punctuated by line “I put that bleep on everything.”  Whatever word you think is bleeped out is up to you, but you just know it starts the “shhh” and rhymes with “hit”.  The line is delivered by a granny-sounding actress and you can’t help but giggle (out loud). Even moms of the Southern Christian Right have to twinkle a wee bit.

The strategy is straight forward – use Frank’s on more dishes in more dayparts – but the humor is wonderfully disruptive.  It’s the best radio out there. For me, though, the jury’s still out on the TV. If the website videos are representative I think the TV will fall short.  The acting performance isn’t the same.  The surprise isn’t there.  And it almost demeans the radio. As a branding idea, I don’t see it translating in print either.  But enough darts, the radio is killer.

If you know the agency and the creative minds behind the work, please share.   I smell a Mercury Award. Peace!  

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