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Apple…Coolest Brand on the Planet.

By
Steve Poppe
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Apple’s App Store is the most successful store ever built. It’s exciting because it was built without hammer and nail, it’s only 9 months old, has 1 billion downloads, and is really just a drooling, cooing infant.  I remember posting 10 months ago that Facebook had better watch out for the App Store because all developers writing apps for Facebook (for free) were going to drop it like a bad habit in favor of the App Store, where they would be able to make some Benjamins.

 

The App Store doesn’t have many employees — thank you software — and is the source of the most exciting innovation in all the world. If Apple isn’t the coolest brand on the planet, I don’t know what is. No sugar water here.  Peace!   

 

Art Director Day

By
Steve Poppe
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I’m shallow. I realized it yesterday after seeing a pretty, smiling, curvy lass in a clothing ad.  It stopped me dead.  I wondered to myself whether I would have stopped and read the ad had the model been plain. The answer was no, ergo shallow.  But later after being directed to a retail site selling hand bags, I was once again smitten. Smitten by a picture of bags: colorful, beautifully designed, magnetic. Apple profits just rose by 15% thanks to the iPhone. See any commonalities? I do. Beauty, art and design.

 

What art directors know and many marketing people don’t, is that art and design sell. Make something pretty, design it brilliantly, don’t clutter it up, and people will pay attention. One of the problems with advertising and marketing today is the loss of art. I love strategy – the science of marketing – but without art marketing is lost.

 

Today, the day after Earth Day, I’d like to suggest we all pay thanks to great art directors: the creators of style, design and visual beauty.  As we move farther into the digital age let’s not forget the art director, without whom marketing becomes just a bunch of digits (1s and 0s and fingers).  Still shallow? Yeah, probably. Peace!

 

 

 

 

Brand Spanking

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Some years ago I was doing focus groups in the tech sector trying to find a way to displace Cisco Systems the market share lion in corporate switches and routers. On the creative brief I referred these Cisco buyer panelists and their brethren as “market share hounds,” people who bought from the leader just because they were the leader. Something interesting happened in one group that got me thinking that people, by nature, need something to kvetch about. Even among the most committed market share hounds, there was dissatisfaction.

 

Microsoft, also a market share leader at the time, had its fair share of detractors, and in other groups I would often hear the excitement in their voices as they piled on ther negatives. So I decided that for challenger brands, using research to spank the market leader was a good way to its soft underbelly. Brand spanking as a research methodology was born.

 

Once you get people kvetching, the stories come out…and the insights fly. For challenger brands, funneling the discussion in a way that uncovers these anger provoking insights is a great way to identify leverage-able brand values. Spank away. Peace.

 

Communications Integrators.

By
Steve Poppe
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Back in the day in the technology business, before we got smart and evolved, there was a group known as systems integrators. System integrators were an outside resource whose sole job was to help companies make all technology systems work together: software, hardware, and communications.  This interoperability void caused corporations to lose millions and spawned a whole new class of technology and services. There is an interesting corollary in the advertising and marketing business today as big marketers — defined as those with hundred million dollar budgets — are losing money thanks to silo’ed, out-of-harmony communications.  

 

The advertising and marketing holding companies see the need for integration, but they can’t make it happen through all the the politics and revenue protection. The marketers see the need, but the job is too immense and not their competency.

 

The marketing services business is at an inflection point…and it will change. First mid-size agencies will fill the void, thanks to their nimbleness and ability to orchestrate under one roof.  Then the holding companies will create their own systems integrator function (Saatchi is already playing here) but it will not work as the function will be viewed as are the “internal affairs” people in the police dept. So outside communications integrators will win the day. And that’s going to be too bad.  

Offense and defense in social media.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In social media today there is offense and defense. 

 

Defense is what Domino’s did last week when two employees had a little fun at the brand’s expense. Defense is what a branded hand cream containing palm oil from denuded Indonesian forests does when called on the carpet. Though the brand will get some stink on in, this defense is played by corporate business leaders and PR professionals. It’s not brand work…it’s business work.  It needs to be handled quickly, succinctly and aggressively.  

 

Offense, in social media, is about creating memorable sight, sound, and mind experiences which create predisposition to a sale.  These experiences and participations must surround strategic demonstrations of product superiority and value.  If online consumers don’t agree with your demonstrations, take the bullet and move on — at least you are forming the dialogue. Not everyone is going to like you and your product but with good brand management they will know who you are and for what you stand.

 

YouTube 2.0?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Google is making beau coup bucks because the search algorithm is done and it doesn’t take a lot of overhead to serve up a page with search results on it. These pages are richly monetized with advertising.   YouTube, a Google property, is not profitable (according to Credit Suisse it will lose $470M this year) because servers, bandwidth and other software required to serve the world’s videos are stiflingly expensive. 

 

The New York Times reports today “YouTube would continue to embrace content created users, even if it was not easy to earn revenue from it, because that content was essential to the popularity of the site.” Said Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, “Usage drives revenue opportunities. Usage always comes first at Google.”

 

Google is trying to monetize YouTube but floundering.  I don’t have a good feeling about YouTube adding TV programs and movies to compete with Hulu and earn some jing. If they do go that route, which will be even more expensive than serving user-generated 2 minute videos, they should go the brand extension route or, better yet, come up with a new and unique pay-for brand. Peace!  

 

 

The Domino’s Effect

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

The Domino’s Pizza prank that hit YouTube this week, showing two 30 year olds snotting up some pizzas, points to the need for stronger, not weaker, brand management in today’s digital world.  I’ve been ranting a little lately about ceding control of brands to consumers, the result of heightened attention (by consumers and marketers) to social media, and this example explains why.  When the video hit the ether and Domino’s became aware, someone said “Let’s wait and see if it dies down.” Mistake.

 

Good brand management dictates something needs to be done immediately. Take control of the facts. Take control of the dialogue. Take control of the brand. It seems the right things were done by Dominos, but they were just done too late — in days not hours. No longer do the PR people need “go bags” filled with tooth brushes and clean business wear, they need a tripod, digital video camera and a videographer.  And they need some online warriors who can begin to turn the negatives into positives – 24 X 7. 

 

As Zack de la Rocha says, you’ve “Got to take the power back.” Brands and brand-negative events need to be managed. In the digital world they need to be managed quickly. Peace!

 

Strategy vs. Tactics During a Recession

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

Marketing is hard work. You have to get off your ass and talk to customers. Watch customers. Listen to customers. Get out of the building. Ask customers to spank you a little (I call this brand spanking.)

 

A number of smart marketers and ad types were quoted in Ad Age this week in a recession advice column telling us to “be strong,”  “market aggressively,” “do more with less.”  Not bad advice, but it might be construed as giving marketers a pass to change strategy. Don’t do it. And don’t go overly tactical. Now is a great time to see if your brand strategy is right. If your strategy delivers when the market is soft, it’s a good one. If it only works while the money is flowing freely, it’s not.  Now is the time to get closer to your customers, not farther away. Listen to them using social media, in quantitative studies, qualitative gatherings. Listen, learn and put tactics on the back burner for while. Playing the tactical shell game will only cloud the waters.   

 

 

Inline Advertising

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

There is a crack between the online and offline ad agencies and million of dollars are slipping through. Though the crack is getting smaller every day as mid-size shops create competencies in both areas and the holding companies try to align silo shops, bringing them into the same room, the rift exists.

 

While with a marketing boutique not long ago I tried to get the partners to embrace the view of one approach to online and offline marketing. I called it “inline,” where all communications: PR, promotion, advertising, direct and web are the result of one brief, one brand plan, one idea. I hadn’t heard it before, it sounded differentiated and unique. 

 

One comment I heard at out little shop was that “inline” sounded archaic. Inline, I was told, suggested newspaper column inch imagery. Dooh. In Ad Age this week, Philip H. Geier Jr. ex- chairman of IPG, wrote this about marketing in a recession “Integrate your campaigns to connect with consumers on TV, online, in print and OOH. Build campaigns around one, big, central idea – and push the same message through all marketing “pipes.” Inline it is.

 

    

Product Placement Finesse.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

I’ll soon be sending my son off to college and he has no real reading skills. Were college conducted as a videogame he’d be golden.  Some college kids in journalism class, by a show of hands, have never read a newspaper. Magazines for teens, tweens and millennials…well you get my drift.

 

TV, computer and mobile phones are the media of choice for kids.  Product placement on those screens is a viable investment for marketers. But product placement is a funny thing; it can be amazingly persuasive or it can fall flat. When well integrated into a story it’s a beautiful, ferociously effective selling tactic. Yet when slapped into a story without finesse, it just lies there like a stanky flip-flop. If a cast member of Gossip Girl drinks a bottle of Honest Tea, it’s “passive” and smart. When the Celebrity Apprentice builds a project around, say, a Maybelline cosmetic, it’s “active” and weak. 

 

Forced product placement sticks out and everyone recognizes it. It just doesn’t feel right. As marketers we need to minimize that smelly flip-lop or we’ll alienate consumers young and not so.

 

 

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