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Marketers and “How-To” Videos.

By
Steve Poppe
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I learned to make risotto last night. My first time. I’d made paella before which uses the same rice and I’d read a bunch of recipes, but it wasn’t until I actually watched someone make it on a video that I tried.

How-to videos are big business. And getting bigger.

Reading a recipe and seeing it done in living color with a voiceover are two completely different experiences. That’s why cooking shows are so popular. Someone I was chatting with last week used YouTube to learn how to set up his son’s Xbox. Want to make up some cement to patch your driveway? There’s a video for that. Videos are so cheap to make these days that they’re starting to flood the web. The key for marketers is finding the right instructors and making sure the videos reside on their sites. Marketers can’t cede education to the generic channels of the world.

It will not be long now before all marketing websites have “How-To” tabs chock full of videos. And if properly cast, these How-To personalities will play an important role as brand ambassadors. The Future. Peace!

Branding and the Is-Does.

By
Steve Poppe
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When I say I like Good and Plenty, it really means I like licorice. When I say I like Budweiser, it means I like beer. Granted there are lots of flavors of licorice and beer but the point is one doesn’t have an innate, built-in need for brands. (I said innate.) If I like Maytag, it means I like clean clothes. The iPhone? Staying in touch…with everything.

Some of us in marketing forget this, spending too much time on a distended version of the brand story. (“We must break though the clutter!”)  But it is a product we are selling, not the story.

The way out this trap is by focusing on a product’s Is-Does: what a brand Is and what a brand Does. I came upon this notion when reading some branding literature while at McCann-Erickson. Eric Einhorn created a document exploring what a brand is and what it means. I rolled the “means” over on its side to make it more concrete. 

For me the pursuit of the Is-Does became particularly necessary when planning in the tech sector where chief technologists have a hard time explaining their products in less than 50 words. Was Apple’s iPhone really a phone? For most marketers and planners, the heavy lifting is in the Does, but even here one can go off track. Does Coke really provide happiness (today’s strategy) or Does it provide refreshment ( real strategy).  Find the right Is-Does and you tell better stories, create more loyalty, and sell more shtuff. Peace!

Search and the Art of Selling.

By
Steve Poppe
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Miguel Helft, a writer for The New York Times, is quickly becoming “a person of interest” in the technology opinion leader space, cranking out good analysis for a couple of years now. His column “Ping” in the Sunday Business section is definitely worth the read. This week he wrote “…search advertising is probably the most effective form of marketing ever invented.” Remove the word “probably” and you have a serious declaration.

Search has changed the world. If the Internet is the game-changing technology, search is certainly the killer application. That’s why Google is making da monies. Yeah, Google says they’re all about organizing the world’s information, but organizing it is the how— search is the what.

As search becomes more complicated, and it will, too much information will make it harder for consumers to pull the trigger on brands. This is the crux of Microsoft’s Bing campaign which discusses information overload positions Bing as the decision engine. As algorithms help us shop and compare and as we become more loyal to the search tools than the brands, the art of selling becomes less artful. We’re seeing the beginnings of that today. Peace!

Bad Experiment Starbucks.

By
Steve Poppe
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starbucks via

VIA ™ is a new instant coffee product sold by Starbucks and though they probably won’t ever use the word “instant” in its description that’s what it is. You make it by simply adding water – hot or cold. VIA comes in a little beef jerky size packet and it is a horrendously bad idea! If Starbucks doesn’t take VIA off the market soon I’m afraid it will have a long term, devastating effect on the brand. And please don’t write me saying how strong last week’s sales were. Creating an instant Starbucks experience is counter to what the brand stands for. This move is akin to the failed over-exposure of Krispy Kreme… selling old donuts in gas stations.

Most everyone has been to a Starbucks and knows its sounds and smells. Some of the sounds, unfortunately, have been removed thanks to the addition of time-saving espresso machines. Another mistake. (Remember the jarring thump thump the barista made as s/he settled your ground coffee into the metal espresso vessel?)

The store, the cup, the cardboard cup insulator, beans and music — the starched baristas all contribute to the rich coffee experience. Instant Starbucks removes it all. Thousands of consumers will pour the VIA granules into their chipped Dodgers cups tainted by a hints of soap and say “Hmm, tastes like Folgers.” Lose the VIA, Howard Schultz…and fast. Bad experiment. Peace!

Left Turn for Microsoft

By
Steve Poppe
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I love reading about campaigns and commenting before I see them. It’s a practice that can result in serious egg-on-face but it’s fun nonetheless. So here’s my take on the new Microsoft Window’s 7 ads  — a campaign that conveys Microsoft listened to user complaints about Vista and fixed them.  Sorry, not a fan. 

Microsoft made its bed releasing a sluggish, over-engineered, buggy product (Vista) and now is doing a campaign built on a mea culpa.  Okay, they’re manning up… but using the new work to put the responsibility of product development on the consumer?  I don’t think so.  If anything goes wrong, will it be our fault?  (Can you say scar tissue?)

The process of listening to consumers and giving them what they want should not the subject of advertising – even if the company has a bad rep. It’s rearview mirror stuff.  The “I’m a PC” work by Crispin Porter Bogusky is really great work. Warm, forward looking, communal. It is user-focused advertising yet doesn’t make the user product manager.

I’m a PC is a campaign that may go down as a Harvard Business Review case. “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea” on the other hand is a left turn that goes off road. Hope they find the highway again. Egg or no egg?  Peace!

Nook, Line and Sinker.

By
Steve Poppe
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nook 2

“Hi! I’m Kate. And this is my Nook.” says the pretty pitch women on a video introducing Barnes and Noble’s brand new eReader today. www.nook.com. A video I arrived at thanks to a beautiful spread page ad in The New York Times, the headline for which promised me “The World’s Most Advanced eBook Reader.” With little ad copy I had to move to the website to see why Kate’s Nook was most advanced. Print ads now make big claims and drive you to the web for the proof, which is smart (ish) — the web clearly offering a richer landscape for storytelling.

Since usability is such an important sales science on the web, I looked at how the landing page is organized to see if it is, indeed, going to tell the “most advanced” story. To wit: We land on a nice product shot page with the most choose-able option being a 360 degree tour button. (For nerds and returnees, there are other visible options: Overview, Features, Accessories, Blog, Support.) The 360 Tour simply turns the Nook around and stands it on end. The next nav options are also quite clear…and over the fold. They’re numbered, sequenced and read left-to-right: 1. Meet nook. 2. Read clearly. 3. Get ebooks in seconds. 4. Endless shelf space. 5. Read for days. 6. Make it yours. 7. Watch video. It’s interesting that the video is last. Also smart.

Overall, the website deserves good usability grades. It’s clean, well thought out and organized — albeit a little low key. Where it falls down is in creating muscle memory for the “most advanced” idea. And that my friends is my Nook. Peace!

PS. Don’t be surprised if Kate’s words “and this is my Nook” find their way into the popular culture. As Kid Rock would say “or all the wrong reasons.”

Plan It Up!

By
Steve Poppe
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I’m reading about Apple’s amazing 47% rise in profit and realize I’m part of the story. My son went off to college this August and he talked me into buy him a MacBook.  Somewhat against it, being a price shopper and netbook fan, I gave in after lots of “beat down.”

The whole thing got me thinking about the back-to-school timeframe, a short period during which lots of laptops are purchased, especially by entering freshmen. Knowing when someone is going to purchase lets you create a thoughtful game plan. At what points does a marketer want to connect with a 17-18 year olds when it’s known they’ll be buying a laptop in August? Using what media? And with what methods of persuasion? That’s planning. That’s what’s up.

For expensive products like a MacBook, you can’t just send out a free-standing-insert (FSI) with a low price point in late July, though most everyone does. You need to begin the persuasion six months in advance — building to D-Day (the purchase period). Knowing the target intimately, knowing the media they use, the tools they employ, their rites of passage and their rituals – knowing all these things will help build an effective, targeted, and lower cost plan. Plan it up! Peace!

Face Without the Book.

By
Steve Poppe
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Have you ever been to a high school football game and watched kids walk the bottom row of the stands? It can be more fun than the game itself. Some kids parade as if it’s a Narciso runway show while others skulk, head down, hiding from the world. The paraders are filled with “hi’ and “heys,” the skulkers, not so much. It’s a matter of confidence. But now the skulkers have a tool — texting. They have a reason to avert their eyes while looking tre cool and busy.

Subways and buses in urban centers are other places people like to hide from stares, ergo you’ll see a preponderance of iPods and texting.

Today, technology is often a diversion, especially for kids, giving them an excuse not to socialize. Early MySpace cadets and current Facebookers called what they were doing “being social” and to an extent it is. Certainly, there are nice apps on Facebook allowing people to expand their circle and do new stuff. But let’s face it, sitting on your ass and typing to friends and neofriends smells of the letter-writing, attic-recluse types of yore.

I’m betting the next group of cool apps will be closer to FourSquare than Facebook — helping people actually get out of their chairs and meet others with whom they are comfortable. “Likeminds” as Noah Brier and Piers Fawkes might say. There’s social and there’s social. I for one, prefer the version conducted in person. (He said typing from his chair.) Peace!

The Usability of Advertising

By
Steve Poppe
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Having been steeped in the world of digital media the last couple of years and seeing how important usability is to web companies, it dawned on me that perhaps we marketers should begin to ask ourselves about the usability of advertising. I don’t mean to pile on, but I read a $20-30,000 ad in The New York Times today, the headline for which was “Excellence.” One world headlines are so awesome!

The usability of this ad was close to nil. If you don’t know the company you flip the page. If you read the logo and know the company, then from a usability standpoint you must decide if you want to spend the time to find out what is excellent about the company. This presumes the company being excellent is newsworthy — meaning it is not normally excellent.  If  it simply reinforces what you already know, the ad is not useful.

In order for an ad to have usability, it must educate, stimulate, show something never before seen, entertain (if one needs entertaining), or warm up a part of the brain that persuades. A usable ad makes you “feel something then do something.” Every maker and approver of ads should pay heed. We need to make more usable ads. Peace!

Global Warming…the brand.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

emissions

Today is Blog Action Day, the topic for which is the environment.

Global warming is a horrific, long-term problem for the planet. The trapping of carbon dioxide, methane and other noxious gases is altering the planet’s flora and fauna in ways we can’t imagine in our day-to-day world view. But the brand “global warming” is in some ways even more insidious. Who ever came up with the term created a brand that’s quite a euphemism. When has the word warm really had such a bad connotation? And how about “climate change” or “greenhouse gases,” those terms shiver me spleen.

Methane gas escaping into our atmosphere accounts for about 1/3 of all greenhouse emissions and stays there for 10 years. Carbon dioxide, the most common gaseous emission, lingers 100 plus years. Are you getting a warm feeling? Not me, I’m pissed.

Methane, carbon dioxide and the euphemistic words used to describe the ecosystem-changing area above our planet need to be demonized. No more happy words! For a society that curses and drops the f-bomb as we do, you’d think we could come up with some more apt, creative words to describe what’s enshrouding our planet. Here are some starter words to think about: toxic, deadly, cancerous, poisonous, noxious, odious, grisly… (Please comment with your entries, I’d enjoy hearing them. Here’s one: Global Warning!)

So on Blog Action Day I could ask you to shut off you lights, use more energy efficient appliances, stop flushing for number 1, and say “no bag please” to the deli guy, but I’d rather you change the way you refer to what happening to the planet. Let’s get more indignant. Let’s get angry! Words matter. Peace!

(Photo by New York Times, and EPA)

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