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Toyota to Dilute Its Brand?

By
Steve Poppe
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There’s talk in the automotive world of Toyota Motor Company spinning off the Prius brand. The Prius brand would stand alone in the U.S. market only and sell at Toyota dealerships, similar to the youth brand Scion. All cars in the line would be hybrids, with mini and maxi models in development. 

 

Not smart. The Scion brand made sense because of the different sensibility of the youth market – those unlikely to drive a Toyota. But owners of the current Prius are not so disinclined toward Toyota. They bought the Prius because it was a Toyota. Prius is addinggreat value to the Toyota brand and every day demonstrates Toyota’s branding promise “Moving Forward.”  

 

GM, Ford and Chrysler are beginning to smarten up and catch up (read Chevy Volt) and as underdogs they will begin to gain momentum and cut into Toyota’s leadership. Toyota is strong now and will remain so by staying focused. A line extension in this market will divert management, potentially move the brand backward, and hurt their eminence.  

 

 

BBH and Hand Lotion.

By
Steve Poppe
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Men are weird. You know it. I know it. There are all sorts of “man things” which are unexplainable. Odd rules.  

 

Getting men to use hand lotion is going to be tough. That said, it is a brilliant marketing opportunity for Bartle Bogle Hegarty and client Unilever. If BBH can get men to use hand lotion — Vaseline in particular — it can potentially double the size of the market. But men don’t do hand lotion. How is BBH planning to get men to change their behavior? By creating ads using manly sports figures. 

 

Right church, wrong pew. Sports figures make sense, but demonstrating and driveling on about the benefits of hand lotion in a TV spot or Internet outtake is a mistake. Sports figures need to use the product, not hawk it. 

 

When Mike Piazza walked out of the Mets dugout a few years ago with blond hair, it gave all men permission to color their hair. (A billion dollar lost opportunity for hair color companies.) Had he done an ad for hair color, it would have flopped bigger than a singing cop TV show.

 

Consumer generated creativity.

By
Steve Poppe
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I’ve been following the growing gaming category recently and was surprised to note that gamers exhibit a high degree of creativity. The litmus was a story about a game company that provided tools to its users so they could develop and share graphic creatures or machinima game elements. The expectation of the company was that by the end of the first year they would hope to have 1 million consumer-generated graphics. In fact, they had a couple million in a few weeks. Wow!

 

I’ve always felt that consumer-generated content was a nice fad, but the really creative stuff should be left to the most artistic. Now I’m having second thoughts. Not all consumer generated ads suck. Not all second tier blogs suck. Not all neighborhood YouTube videos are boring. 

 

Creativity and artistry should not just be the domain of the top 10%, but of everyone. And we should encourage consumer-generated art and creative. We all need to be more creative.

 

Marketing Palaver.

By
Steve Poppe
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Okay, I’m a little bit of a geeze but when it comes to marketing and selling I know of what I speak. In a recent email exchange with an extremely smart and successful digital age marketer, he offered:  

 

“…engaged dialog (is) needed to embrace and maintain long term customer/constituent relationships….authenticity, transparency, and existing as an instance of true core values matter most today.”

 

I wrote him that whenever I’m in a meeting and someone trots out words like “engaged, authenticity, transparency and core values,” especially all in the same sentence, I wonder if the marko-babble detector is going to go off. 

 

A Hotels.com ad in the paper today promised “Rooms that exceed expectation.” MOG (Mother of God,) who are these people talking too?

 

“Good advertising" I once read, "makes you feel something then do something.” That’s what good marketing does. Authenticity, transparency and all the other “encies” are just marketing palaver, and the price of doing business. Feel and do, that’s the key.

 

Suffolk FCU Needs Gutting

By
Steve Poppe
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I live in Suffolk County on Long Island. East of New York City, Long Island is over a hundred miles long and no more than 14 miles wide. By many accounts it is shaped like a fish. Many small businesses here use the outline of the island in their logos which gets tiresome and often creates awful signage and advertising.  But no where is this more evident than with the Suffolk Federal Credit Union. To make matters worse, since Suffolk County is one of only 4 countries on Long Island, its logo only gets to use the tail of the fish.

 

As federal credit unions become favored now that banks are collapsing and money gets tighter, it is time for Suffolk Federal Credit Union to sit at the big girl table and invest in a little artwork. It’s okay to use the fishtail in the “K” maybe, but let’s just stop it right there. 

Click here to see the logo.

 

Kid Rock Blowin’ Smart Bubbles

By
Steve Poppe
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Kid Rock is an American treasure. The real deal. Whether raunchy or mellifluous (listen to “Picture" with Sheryl Crow,) Kid sings his ass off. He also cares about and understands the music business. Read some of his exchanges with noted music blogger Bob Lefsetz as proof. Yesterday Kid ended his long hold-out allowing Rhapsody to sell his music digitally. Until this deal, you had to buy Kid Rock music … bawitdaba da bang a dang diggy diggy… on CDs.  

 

One provision of the the deal is that you must buy full albums. Very smart. The single cut is killing artist loyalty.  If you don’t listen to a whole album you can’t truly get an artist. Plus burn-out on a song and artist is more likely when listening only to select cuts.  The single digital download why more and more one-hit-wonders are emerging. Kid Rock knows this. Peace!

 

  

For Dell it’s all about the Demonstration.

By
Steve Poppe
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Demonstrations in marketing are key. Dell just launched a portable projector, the model M109S, which sells for $500. The picture of the unit is not much to look at but when you hear that it fits in the “palm of your hand” it engenders the big aha. The M109S does not offer breakthrough clarity of picture but, I repeat, it fits in the palm of your hand. The hand demonstrates the “portable.”

 

Marketing is filled with claims: tastes great, fast and easy, light weight, low cost. And ads are filled with these claims which, like water, run off the backs of consumers. Demonstrations, on the other hand, create muscle memory for communications. They are simple, memorable and sell.

Demonstration names are also a good idea. How about calling this unit the “Peanut” rather than the M109S?

 

   

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=M109S&cat=all

HSBC and JWT Doing Good Work.

By
Steve Poppe
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HSBC is a bank about which I have written a number of times. Bank advertising is horrible and often idea-less.  HSBC ads from JWT, though sometimes uneven, are really quite good. JWT’s account planners have given their creative teams an idea to work with.   

 

The tagline “The world’s local bank,” which suggests big but caring, circles what I believe to be the branding idea but it doesn’t quite nail it. That’s because most big banks have used the caring thing or a facsimile thereof for years.  It’s not differentiated.

 

HSBC’s branding idea is to prove better service by conveying in the advertising that they attempt to really understand consumers. Their heady campaign about perceptions (Is sushi mouthwatering or nasty?) is brilliant. And the new small business work in which they coin the acronym RAQs (rarely asked questions) is a great creative hook to earn them muscle memory for the bank’s desire to get better answers. Better answers result in better, more tailored solutions. RAQs is an idea worth pursuing.

 

Watch out for HSBC. If they stay the course and, more importantly, operationalize the strategy into their business they will emerge as a market leader in the eyes of consumers.

 

Walgreen Falls Into Trap.

By
Steve Poppe
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Promotions and discounts are a trap easily fallen into, and the Walgreen Company just confirmed its stumble.  Sales were up for the quarter but revenue down which according to corporate spokespeople was attributed to excessive promotions. Promotions are best used to create trial — to get people to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. When people need an incentive, promotions work. 

 

Walgreens looked at the slowing economy and decided to cut prices and give product away as a tactical means to spark business. I am not privy to the exact product offers and have not seen the supporting communications, but will bet they did not support the core Walgreen brand idea, which if the website is accurate is “The Pharmacy America Trusts.”  And even if it did support the branding idea trust is such a lazy and hard to differentiate strategy for pharmacies, it’s no wonder sales are tailing.  Walgreens needs a real idea. And it’s in their storesevery day. They just have to find it. Peace!

 

Big Box vs. Mom and Pop

By
Steve Poppe
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0

  

What has driven the amazing growth of the big box concept in retailing? Selection? Price? Volume? Yes three times. Yet as we watch the demise and troubles of many smaller local venues (read about the Jefferson Market, in the NY Times online), it is obvious what we are missing when we frequent the big boxes: personal service. I’m not talking about Customer Care served up by a corporate training video, I’m talking about service by someone who knows you by face, perhaps name, and past purchase context. 

 

Mom and Pop shops are owned and operated by neighbors. To succeed they have to pay attention. Mom and Pops are people not interchangeable sales automatons, they are good listeners and recommenders and in an emergency they are there for you. Mom and Pops are the fabric of America’s commercial strength. 

 

As we begin to bail out the Lehmans and the AIGs, let’s remember the local mom and pop stores in our communities. Peace!      

  

 

 
 

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