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Curing Cancer on the Weekends.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

lab equipment

I attended a free webinar sponsored by the Altimeter Group (thank you Charlene Li and crew) and Ray Wang said something that really stuck. He said all the innovation in technology over the last couple of years , certainly on the Web, has come on the consumer or user side – not from the enterprise. With the exception of Apple, this is pretty dead on. I’m no Faith Popcorn, but in my view this is due to something I call the webertarian ethos – the need for people and in this case developers, to be free of corporate chains when they create.

I’ve written before that I think the Dachis Corporation and its Social Business Design concept will accelerate the cure for cancer. When we get a world of scientists and physicians working together on a project we are likely to get some serious innovation, logic disruption, and progress. Even if they work together only on weekends. Social Business Design products and their free cousins will provide a webertarian-like platform over which meaningful global change will happen. And on that happy note, I bid you… Peace!

Brandhackers and Brand Tags

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I went to a Brandhackers Meetup last night in NYC with my friend Chong Na to see a presentation by Noah Brier, creator of BrandTags.net .  It was held at Dewey’s Flatiron in midtown south which, BTW, has very cool ceilings.

Brand Tags is part consumer game, part brand planner research tool. On the site, a logo pops up and you are asked to enter one word in a data box as a stream-of-consciousness, word association. The words are collected and a tag cloud created. (In a tag cloud, the type size of the word displayed indicates the word’s frequency or importance.) For BMW the tag cloud displayed “asshole” in rather large type. Presumably that’s not an engineering fix, but it does point out an addressable brand issue.

My bud Chong asked if this was just a planners playground and Mr. Brier admitted it might be (lately). Though at the time of launch when the first wave of publicity hit, visitors flocked to the site from all walks of life.  There are 1.8M tags today.  Brand Tags is a cool app and will be even cooler if users can sort the data temporally – in “way back” mode before a campaign ran. You can pay for this type of data today but free would really make the app sizzle. As would the very sort that allows users to see how quickly a tag is typed. Those who tag a brand in under 7 seconds are way more committed to their decision than are those who type it in over 7 seconds. Cool stuff. Check it. Peace!

What Men Want.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

mens fashion nyt

It’s Fashion Week in NYC and I love it. I read every word of Cathy Horyn the New York Times style editor and when it’s all over I wait until next season. Ms. Horyn is a wonderful writer and certainly has an opinion. Some designers won’t let her in their tent.

I always enjoy looking at the pictures of the men and women strolling down the runway, but today noticed something that has finally sunk in. The best new clothes and designs are for women. The men and their clothes just look goofy. Is anyone designing for men anymore? Red shorts and blue pork pie hats? Stupid loopy sweaters and lame diapers? Pants that show ankles and Capri pants? Come on! Close you eyes and squint…and you can see how these clothes might look good on a woman, but a dude?

We’re getting short shrift here men. Does anyone know what men want? I think not. Maybe next year. Peace!

GM. Come on down!

By
Steve Poppe
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0

gm whitacre

A new General Motors ad campaign is breaking Monday and it will star the company’s “untainted” Chairman Edward Whitacre, Jr. Says Bob Lutz, GM’s new chief marketing officer, Mr. Whitacre isn’t sullied the way other executives who went through the chapter 11 process are. Mr. Whitacre, for all his folksiness and warm southern manner is, I’m sure, a very nice person but he was also the CEO of AT&T. I repeat AT&T. That makes him untainted? That makes him believable? Plus, he’s only been on the job for a cup of coffee.

The problem with GM for the last 7 years has been leadership. No one looked around and noticed we needed to move America toward a smaller generation of cars. Management sat 40 floors up in Detroit and couldn’t see the street. So rather than highlight a past GM ivory tower spokesperson, the ad agency or Mr. Lutz decided to use a “phone” guy to deliver the message. Absurd!

These ads will appeal to corporate turn-around artists with million dollar salaries, all 40 of them, but not to the man or woman on the street. The new ads and the very smart “money back guarantee” should have been delivered by a line worker; someone we could empathize with. Someone with skin in the game…with a blood-pumping heart. Someone from down on the street. GM marketing is still fairy well out of touch. Come on down!

Burger King Vs. McDonald’s

By
Steve Poppe
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0

McDonald’s just reported sales and they are up 2.2% worldwide, missing analysts’ targets. Sales in the US were expected to be up 2.8% and came in at 1.7%. Value meal wars were partly to blame, but if you ask me the whole McCafe product extension is the cause. The New York Times reported the story – not a big one I might add – and nowhere is there a mention of the McCafe coffee line. I didn’t like the gourmet coffee move when I first read about it, and I don’t like it now. It’s not core.

Burger King, on the other hand, which for all its strategic and tactical ups and sideways owns the idea of “flame broiled,” decided not long ago it wanted to upgrade stores with state-of-the-art broilers. If memory serves, they’re supposed to be installed pretty soon. (I’ll have my fact checker get on it.) This is Russ Klein’s major stroke of genius. Crispin Porter, his agency, does great work and the King is the King, but flame broiling is what sets BK apart — and what should help them take a big chunk out of McDonald’s market share. Peace!

Twitter and Consumer Journalism

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I love Twitter. When I try to convince friends of its breakthrough nature I often refer to the Iran post-election tweets that broke the story with pictures, video and real-time observations. The morning of revolt, I put my New York Times aside to patina (vb.) and read Tweets in rapt attention for 2 hours straight.

Today, I awoke to helicopters overhead, streets closed and sirens blaring. My wife who rode her bike through town after yoga told me there was a sheet on the sidewalk, which suggests badness. I tweeted. I hag-tagged my towns name. I @signed my local newspaper. Uun-gots.

Newsday.com did break the story, but close to 3 hours later. A women was hit by a car and heli-vaced to a trauma center. (Not sure how she made out, but my thoughts and prayers are with her.) The whole episode got me thinking though about how Twitter can help with stories like this and, perhaps, even assist in police work. As a form of consumer journalism it is certainly fraught with accuracy issues, but is a hella cool medium for real-time info. It will become a news medium, the question is when. Stay tuned. Peace!

twitter-logo

Body Wash Category Lacks Leadership.

By
Steve Poppe
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2

axe-skin-contactAxe has 7% share of the men’s body wash category and it is the market leader. Old Spice is in second place with 6%. This category is ripe from leadership. As an ad-rat and someone who loves Bartle Bogle Hegarty, I’ve watched with great interest the Axe advertising phenomenon. But here’s the deal, 7% market share? Please.

Body wash isn’t even a new category anymore. An opportunity has been lost here. Unilever has to decide if it wants to own body gel or OWN body gel. If it’s the latter, they need to step up and spend some dough. BBH has been doing a good job of getting Axe on the map, but they’ve been diddling around with fun, yet small targeted programs. Lot’s of little stuff doesn’t compare with a big idea and a big spend. Old Spice and Nivea should not even be in the picture.

This category is ready to for a leader to emerge, but it needs some investment spending. Unilever has to start throwing some serious body punches. All it’s been doing to date is tickling. Men don’t like to be ticked. Peace!

Newsday.com Disappoints.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

I am so disappointed in Newsday’s redesigned website I could yak. It looks like they took the old site, put it into a cocktail shaker, added blue dye and poured it into a smaller glass.

 

Earlier this year Newsday went on record as saying it was going to charge users for its website content. A bold, smart and edgy move. In order to charge, though, it needed to create a site that offered readers and users real value. Because Newsday is owned by Cablevision, it actually has the resources to put together a paid for service of unparalleled proportion. Instead, it acted like a newspaper. Cablevision sells Long Islander more forms of media and entertainment than I can even list here. With a little cross-silo vision it could have reinvented Newsday.com, creating a revenue stream that would dwarf the paper paper.

 

Not this year. I guess they’ll wait for Rupert Murdoch to do it first. Or, one of his kids. Peace!

Tweeting the Corporation.

By
Steve Poppe
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1

 

Who should tweet the corporate Twitter account? Should it be one person or a pack? The CEO? CMO? A wired newbie?  And if the tweets are more than just customer care, which is so 2009, what should that person tweet about? Regarding the “what,” use the brand plan as your guide.  All 140 characters of every corporate Tweet should be on plan. 

 

For example, a protein drink whose brand idea is “uncovering the taste of pure protein” and whose planks are tastes better, digests easier, and improves health — should only allow these messages to market. Every tweet should push these planks.  Metaphorically speaking, these messages are deposits in the brand bank. When you know what your “brand money” is and organize it with a brand plan marketing success is just around the corner.  And as to who should Tweet the corporate account, if you follow the plan it doesn’t matter. Peace!

Go Daddy

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Go Daddy.

Whether you agree with Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy.com, or not, you have to admire his tactics. Here’s a man who knows how to use advertising.  It is “we’re here” advertising, which in my book is lazy but people are noticing it. And they certainly know what his company does. (My PR firm, just yesterday, used GoDaddy to buy a URL.) For those unfamiliar, GoDaddy places most all of its advertising energy behind one provocative Super Bowl spot.

According to Parsons, while there are over 800 domain name registry companies out there, consumers can recall the names of only two or three — GoDaddy being one of them. Though it may be a low-interest category, 10% of Americans have Web sites, so the domain name registry business it is not an un-trivial business.   

If I saw GoDaddy Girl on the street I wouldn’t know her from Eve, but put her in that flowing white blouse, let her stare into the camera with those pouting eyes on Super Sunday and I’m ready to register…a domain.

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