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Schooled in Marketing by an Educator.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In a TED video I watched yesterday on the state of education, Sir Ken Robinson mentioned something pretty profound. He said most people are often “good at something they don’t really like doing.”  His point being, that mom-ism, “If you do something you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”  His broader point was students today are broadcast to, not engaged, and that’s why education is in such a sorry state.

Broadcast Selling.

I was mowing the lawn last night and thinking about this as it relates to advertising and marketing.  With media exploding into more and more, always-on devices (ding-a-ling, Good Will on the phone), and those devices containing advertising, the bombardment of selling is growing exponentially.  Moreover, that selling is being done by more craft-less people, creating the advertising equivalent of fast food — poorly constructed and not good for you. (Ads by SEO kids, videos by moms.) 

How to sell.

As a young ‘un in the ad business I drafted an article for Adweek that suggested people read ads to be: educated, entertained or to see something they’ve never seen before.  I think this still applies. We are so inundated with selling messages today we shut down.  Ingest too many antibiotics and you become immune.  Hear the word “quality” too many times and you become similarly immune. 

Our Job

Our job as marketers is not to say the same things with new messaging devices, it’s to educate, entertain and present the artful unseen. (In the 70’s my dad Fred Poppe used to call this “engagement.”)  Engagement starts with getting someone to let down their message defenses. My ramble.  My peace!  Happy 4th.

Brand Planning Starts with the “Is-Does.”

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Noah Brier once asked me “How do you define a brand plan?”  Everyone, he suggested, has a different view of what a brand plan is.  My ability to answer in a few words with a simple explanation impressed (I think). A brand plan is really just an organizing principle. In order to create a good brand plan, one must first get the Is-Does right.  What a brand IS and what it DOES. The Is-Does is one of the easiest and at the same time hardest exercises known to marketers. For instance, is the iPhone a phone?

Technology companies have a terrible time with the Is-Does. Here’s an Is-Does example from a website:

A global provider of digital advertising technology solutions that optimize the use of media, creative and data for enhanced performance.

Try explaining that to your great aunt.  

A video on the same website, presumably created by someone with agency chops, refers to the company this way “A global leader in digital advertising campaign management.” Much better, no? 

What Makes a Good Is-Does?

The litmus of a good Is-Does is its ability to be played back by consumers. Ask a consumer what your brand Is and what it Does and they should be in the neighborhood.  If they have to use a competing brand to define you, that’s not good.  And here’s a tip, don’t put words like “solution provider” in the Is-Does or use marketing poesy or made-up concepts.

If you have some really bad Is-Does examples (usually found on the boiler plate of press releases or the first sentence of the About section of a website) please post in the comments.

 My Is-Does? Marketing Consultant (Is) that helps companies find powerful, sales driving brand strategies (Does).  What is your company’s Is-Does? Peace!

Hubspot Spot On with Facebook.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Hubspot, in Boston, is a company  doing a very nice job marketing itself.  Their logo is pretty poor and they probably invented using the word “so” to start every sentence, but I used their free website grader a long time ago and it proved their digital marketing chops.  Some of Hubspot’s overzealousness about traditional is a bit grating but, hey, they’re selling.

 So (hee hee), Dan Zarella a real social dork (as he likes to say) put on a webinar yesterday highlighting some best practices of Facebook marketing and they were quite well done.  Dan is a social scientist, which means he really parses the data, so his insights are real.  Here is a topline:

– People have profiles, brands have pages. (Thought I’d start easy.)

– Facebook is not about making new friends, it’s about improving relationships with existing friends.

– On Facebook you are a performer – and being judged.

– Help your users look cool.

– Let your users perform in a brand-relevant way and you win!

– Women have 55% more posts on their walls than do men.

– Pages with lots of marketing buzz words don’t have as many friends, e.g., leverage, productivity, etc.

– Facebook users like food.  And they talk about it.

– Most “liked” activities: movies, books, music, TV show, television.

– Least “liked” activities: real estate, auto dealers, religion, dogs,

– Be entertaining — lay off marketing stuff.

– Social proof is big.  Lots of friends, likes, tweets, vitality wins over the opposite.

– Posts with the word “video” in them are shared more on Facebook than Twitter. Way more.

– Posts with digits (numbers) in them index high for sharing.

– Sex indexes highest for sharing. Positivity, learning, sharing, work, media and constructive are words and ideas also highly shared.

– Least shared idea: negativity.

– Write plainly and simply.  Don’t use lots of adjectives and adverbs.

– 51% of companies block Facebook.

Good stuff Dan. Peace!

Silo vs. Integrated

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In the advertising and marketing business, digital is its own channel.  Rare is the vendor that provides a truly integrated single source worldview of a brand. A really smart person once said to an important client “campaigns are overrated” which stuck me with a ferocity that shook my world, but he was right.  A campaign, when well-defined and well-equipped is a powerful selling mechanism.  It’s what people talk about. But translating campaigns across silos is not easy.  Heck, anyone who has ever worked at an ad agency knows campaigns don’t always transfer across media.  A great design-driven print campaign may not work well in radio or a murderously effective TV campaign may not work as out of home.  It’s tah-woooh.  And those silos are under one roof.    

Competing Market Forces

A bunch of hearty souls are trying to bring online and offline selling under one roof.  Yet a greater number of very skilled entrepreneurs are out there selling against the one roof approach — creating even greater and greater specialization.  A friend at CatalystSF told me that there are over 200 social media agencies in the New York area alone.  So what do you do about these two competing forces — the shops who want more pie and are trying to integrate and the shops selling best of breed, stand alone digital marketing specialties?  Well the planner in me usually starts problem solving by “following the money.”  In the case of integrated vs. stand alone I say “follow the strategy.”  

If you find a potential partner with a sense of business strategy that transcends tactical discussions, listen. Business strategy first. Marketing strategy second. Message strategy third and tactical fourth.  I don’t care if its RGA or TBWA. Peace it up! 

Some of My Favorite Bloggers.

By
Steve Poppe
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1

I follow lots of people but a couple of my favorites are Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Noah Brier. Charlene is just smart. She has morphed from a tech analyst to a social media expert to a management consultant, all within 3 years.  She’s a media darling who reinvents herself almost annually. Jeremiah Owyang, who works with Charlene at the Altimeter Group is also another schmarty pants.  He loves grids and quadrants, he loves to write, share and listen – and he loves to use technology.  Analytical with a capital A.

Peter Kim is cut from the same cloth as Charlene and Jeremiah (all three are Forrester Research alums) but landed at the Dachis Group – a company filled with doers.  Dachis will crack the code on bringing Web 2.0 to the enterprise and make a banana boat of bucks doing so. Peter likes to mix it up a bit.  A proud man.  Then there’s Noah Brier — chief strategist at the Barbarian Group.  Like a racehorse in the paddock who you know will win the Derby someday, he’s exciting to watch.  The beauty about Noah is you just don’t know what’s next. He’s random, brilliant, a doer and he loves bounding about in that paddock.

I wish these four blogged every day.  If they would just give me a 100-150 words (no more Jeremiah), I’d be satisfied and so, so nourished. Please hit those keys.  Peace!

Innovation. In or out?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Clearly, innovation is always in.  Perhaps the bigger question is whether innovation should be pursued inside the company or out.  It’s happening both ways.  Innovation is big, big business. Ad agencies, digital shops and marketing companies have Chief Innovation Officers.  Lots of money is spent in internal innovation departments and outsourced innovation companies…and the crowdsourcing phenomenon is contributing.   Pepsi outsources its innovations and it has done remarkably well with it.

Innovation is the result of hard work and serendipity. I am of the mind that it’s most likely to occur from people doing not people sitting around thinking.  The famous story of the 3M’s Post-It note resulting from a lab spill comes to mind.

The answer to the in or out question is a little bit of both, but working together.    Inside to set the product or service stage and context — and outside for the random, unfettered thinking and consumer insights of trained selling and marketing minds.  Peace!

Creating a Social Media Monster?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Mission Control is a well-produced 76 second video by PepsiCo’s Gatorade ‘splaining how Gatorade marketing monitors the web for comments, chatter and potential product improvements. The “war room” at mission control is filled with AT&T NOC (network operations center) -like people in front of multiple monitors — their fingers on the pulse of Gatorade enthusiasts.  Looks like they are a busy bunch.

Interspersed with the mission control pictures are great shots of Kobe, Serena, etc., helping viewers work up a sweat…which is what Gatorade is and should always be about.

Right now this vid is kind of inside baseball for the marketing, advertising and social community – plus I think it’s being used in and around Cannes to round up votes. It’s a great spend, by Gatorade as they “set the stage for digital leadership.” I’ve written before that every large corporation in America will have a social media dept. and I believe it.  Smart senior agency people have nodded in agreement yet told me that the truly creative ideas and productions that hit wire/less will still come from agencies.  That, too, I believe.

After a while though, after all marketers have jumped on this listening bandwagon and consumers are conditioned to provide product input, message input and marketing input, it will begin to dull the strategic senses. It will turn the world into a place filled with screen-scratching marketing interns, when what we really want to do is listen to the influential “Posters.” (Google whatstheidea+posters.)

 

Let’s watch out for that monster that we are creating. Peace!

Democratization of Information

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Back in the day, the only companies that could afford to amass and parse vast amounts of customer information – large enough to do trending and prediction – were the really big dogs.  Data and the money that purchased that data were power.  Today, not so much.  Today, if you want to open a pizza parlor in NYC, it’s not just about walking the streets, counting competitors and feeder locations (tall apartments, schools, nightclubs).  Today, there are free online tools. And more coming.   

American Express Open.com

American Express has helped democratize information by creating Open.com, a small business repository of data, skills refinement, community and tools which let small businesses make smarter decisions. If not now, in the future, these tools will include access to marketing data like Nielsen and MRI, so that if the pizza parlor start-up wants to know which zip codes in NYC index the highest for pizza consumption. Boom. Or he/she wanted to know what time of day those sales are most robust or weeks of the year? Boom. Might that pizza start-up want to know who serves the best pizza in that zip code according to pizza eaters? Boom. Or what are they saying about that pizza on their smart phones and tweets (Clean bathrooms, near the subway, dollar slices?). Boom.

Today, smart companies like America Express and its Open.com and Booming programs are doing for small business what ERP did for larges businesses 15 years ago.  And there will be a wave of new cottage industries popping up to serve small business customers. ‘cause that’s what happens in a democracy. Peace!

A View From HR

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Paul Gumbinner, a NYC recruiter, writes the great blog entitled View From Madison Avenue. He published a piece yesterday suggesting job seekers should never take career advice from parents or friends; the best advice comes people who study companies and “employee fit” for a living.  Brilliant counsel.

As a brand planner, one trick I use to understand the market place I’m working in is to interview senior competing HR people in that category.  As Mr. Gumbinner I’m sure will attest, this technique generates lots of qualitative data about the market, the people, competitive set and chatter on the street. An HR person who interviews scores of mid-level and senior people a week in, say, the enterprise software business, tends to know who’s hot and what’s hot. You planners out there should try it. Nice shortcut. Peace!

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