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A storied approach,

By
Steve Poppe
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Dan Pink is an author with a great thesis for today’s marketers. It’s his contention that right-brainers will soon rule the marketing world. I fancy myself a right-brainer and am, therefore, quite happy.

 
Here’s a quote from Mr. Pink’s book “A whole new mind.”
 
“In the age of abundance, appealing only to rational, logical and functional needs is woefully insufficient. Engineers must figure out how to get things to work. But if those things are not also pleasing to the eye or compelling to the soul, few will buy them. There are too many options. Mastery of design, empathy, play and other seemingly “soft” aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace.”
 
I’m a particularly big fan of Dan’s notion that the best way to sell is to do so through storytelling. Today some really smart larges corporations are teaching employees not through manuals and rote memorization, but through storytelling. The best ads communicate using stories…and the best brands build relevance through the same mechanism. Don’t recite product function or benefit, embed it in a story.
 

Raymond Carver would love Second Life.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
 
I love the way Linden Labs Second Life users are referred to as gamers.
 
I’m going to share some quotes from a fascinating Wall Street Journal article that appeared today, written by Alexandra Alter. It’s about a man, Mr. Hoogestraat and his wife of 7 months. The Hoogestrads met in an online chatroom.  
 
According to the Journal Mr. Hoogestraat’s real wife (he has Second Life wife too) “pays the household bills, cooks, does family laundry, takes care of the three dogs and empties ashtrays around the house while her husband spends hours designing outfits for virtual strippers and creating labels for virtual coffee cups.”
 
Her response to all this so-called gaming? She “joined an online support group for spouses of obsessive online gamers called EverQuest Widow.” Oye. Cut to the living room:
 
“From the kitchen Mrs. Hoogestraat asks if he wants breakfast. He doesn’t answer. She sets a plate of breakfast pockets on the computer console and goes to the living room to watch television. For two hours, he focuses intently on building a coffee shop for the mall. Two other avatars gather to watch as builds stairs and counters, using his cursor to resize wooden planks.” 
 
Two hours later, “Mrs. Hoogestraat pauses on her way to the kitchen and glances at the screen. ‘You didn’t eat your breakfast,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see it there,” He responds.
 
“They probably won’t taste any good now, she says, taking the plate.”
 
What a world!
 

Business 3.0

By
Steve Poppe
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Prediction Time.

 
As Jerry Seinfeld might say “So what’s up with Rupert Murdoch?” News Corp has four parts to its business: 20th Century Fox Films (underperforming,) Television (performing moderately well), Newspapers (holding their own in a tough market,) and Other which comprises Fox Interactive and MySpace (doing quite nicely.) Rupert’s latest two pursuits, MySpace and Dow Jones, are the source of my prediction.
 
Coming to a computer near you will be a new online business network that will be an amalgam of LinkedIn, Monster, Ning, Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal. Think the three martini lunch meets Red Bull. 
 
This new entity, launching in 2008, will be like nothing we’ve ever seen in the business world. I’m still trying to figure out who will run the show. When I figure that one out, I’ll post it. Who do you think it should be?
 
 

Offshore versioning Part. 2

By
Steve Poppe
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In my last post I mentioned how digital agencies are offshoring video production work to make it affordable to version TV and Internet ads for multiple target audiences — a strategy that mirrors direct marketers one-to-one mantra.  Versioning may be lucky enough to have some successes but on balance it is a flawed strategy.

 

Good brand planning attempts to find a single voice and idea for its selling stories.  Coke is refreshment.  MySpace is friends. Corona is about kicking back.  In order to develop this type of overarching idea, planners need to evaluate what appeals to the most people in the brand target.  To find what the target shares in common. As Peter Kim of McCann-Erickson and JWT used to say, the target needs to be broken down into its pieces, understood, then “remassified” into a single entity.  When we find a shared care-about that our brands can fulfill, then we can develop smart communications.

 

The fact that a TV commercial costs over $350,000 to make today, makes it an imperative that marketers and ad agencies agree on a single selling idea.  L’Oreal hair care used to take close to a full year to prepare a TV ad with Heather Locklear. The dress had to be perfect, the staircase just right, etc.  Ads, in many cases, were works of art. But with 20+ versions of an ad running, the quality of the idea must suffer.

 

Developing versioned ads, the production of which is handled offshore, with multiple scripts written by God knows whom and casting handled by committee, spells disaster.

 

Video Versioning Offshore

By
Steve Poppe
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Publicis Groupe, the French advertising holding company, is doing some of today’s most forward thinking and, in my view, has jumped over the other holding companies in terms of trailblazing this digital adventure we’ve embarked upon.

 

One of the Publicis companies, Digitas, is doing some curious things in terms of targeting broadcast.  They are offshoring production work to Asia to create versions of TV ads that are viewer specific.  (By one estimate noted in the New York Times today, an advertiser has created over 4,000 versions of a single ad.)  This approach is intended to increase ad relevance which will increase the power to motivate sale.

 

If we can somehow identify a digital fingerprint for each viewer and serve them up a tailored ad, we have achieved the holy grail of the ad biz.  The copy would change based upon the age and education of the viewer. The visuals might change based upon the address of the viewer. Price, promotion and even product could be tied to income level.

 

But let’s face it, video editing and content versioning of all this stuff will take thousands of hours, and though offshoring it to a workforce making $5 a day sounds appealing, who will be the exercising creative oversight? The first wave of this stuff will be nasty bad.  The good news?  You may only see that nasty commercial once, thanks to digital tracking.  Stay tuned for more discussion of digital and 3-D targeting.

 

Reality TV Must Go

By
Steve Poppe
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Whenever I start a post with the words “Okay, so I’m…” you know you are in for a rant. Or as an ex-boss used to call it a screed. 

 
Okay, so I’m flipping through the channels last night, waiting for the Mets to come on, and as I often do I stop by the Food Network to see what Emeril’s cooking and I see some cake baking contest. Men and women are baking cakes in the shape and costume of Disney characters—not that there’s anything wrong with it, if you catch my drift.
 
One woman is in tears because her character does not look life-like enough. The drama builds when one man’s cake, in the form of The Little Mermaid (Do I have to TM that?), has a sagging issue. The mermaid’s head was beginning to droop and was in jeopardy of– Are you sitting down?– falling off.
 
Now I like reality TV as much as the next person, but I’m beginning to favor my reality live. I know I can’t stage a Survivor, or Hell’s Kitchen, but come on?  Aren’t we getting a little carried away with all this drivel?   The networks love it because it doesn’t cost much to produce. No writers, not too many art directors, prop people or writer residuals. After cakes, what’s next? It can only go downhill from here.
 

Complexly Kohl’s

By
Steve Poppe
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Kohl’s department stores (Are they still called department stores?) is attempting to upscale it image and bring in new customers with some branded clothing lines. Tony Hawk and Elle Magazine have clothing in Kohl’s now and those brands are making a difference. New this fall, Vera Wang will be launching a line at Kohl’s called Simply Vera which has raised more than a few eyebrows.

 
Research suggests that 70% of Kohl’s shoppers have heard of Vera Wang, so they are clearly betting that having a high fashion brand in the store – albeit one of a “simpler,” less expensive design — will generate major buzz among the “back to school/work” crowd.  
 
Kohl’s is s little late to the party with this tactic, but it’s a good deal fro both parties. “Mom, but this Vera bubble skirt, is sooooo hot!” The big questions is will Ms. Wang’s foray into the mass retail stores mar her runway image?  I suspect it will.  But you are only as good as your designs, and Vera’s got game. If there’s a blip in her up-market sales, it will only make her work harder and she will prevail. Oh yeah, the McCann-Erickson advertising idea sounds like it will work big time. That’s key.
 
I predict success all around.
 
 

Papa’s gotta brand new bag.

By
Steve Poppe
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William L. McComb, the new chief executive officer at Liz Claiborne, arrived on the scene from J&J eight months ago. He is both a marketer and shrewd business person. Liz Claiborne had become so bloated, after a slew of acquisitions that it lost its drive and focus. Enter Mr. McComb.

 
According to the New York Times, Mr. McCombs, shortly after arriving, sent out a missive to 200 senior Claiborne managers asking them to identify their biggest business impediments. The problems identified were two: bureaucracy and lack of design.
 
His solution? He has jettisoned a number of lesser performing brands, reduced bureaucracy, dialed up design and marketing spending and has taken control of distribution by planning to open hundreds of stores dedicated to key keeper brands: Juicy Couture, Kate Spade, Lucky Brands and Mexx.
 
The kicker in all of this is that during Mr. McCombs initial planning, Macy’s decided to cut Liz Claiborne orders significantly because Claiborne decided to private label a clothing line for J.C. Penney. This fortuitous indiscretion on Claiborne’s part may have put them over the top in deciding to take control back of all 4 Ps.  
 
Liz Claiborne and the fittest surviving brands are going places.
 

Newspapers

By
Steve Poppe
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I’m a newspaper guy; not by trade, by practice. I just love reading newspapers. I love the interface. You can read standing on line, in a subway, on a plane, in the car. Obviously, they are not for real-time news – not like the Internet and radio — but they are my news medium of choice. 
 
News flash: the newspaper business is hurting.  Today’s New York Times had only 3 full-page ads in its first section. The Wall Street Journal had 4. That’s scary. Two of these ads were by Verizon for cell service and one spread was by FedEx/Kinkos. The business plan is teetering, it seems to me.
 
Newspapers have always been about the writing. Bylined writers sell papers, but many papers have stopped promoting their writers because they don’t want them to be bigger than the “paper.” They don’t want sub-brands outshining the master brand. Mistake.
 
Newspapers better get on the stick and start promoting the personalities who bring us the news and their craft, or these smart writers will continue to migrate to the blogosphere with AdSense accounts and kill the business completely. Newspaper writers and news photographers are a unique lot. Let make them important again.
 

Do, do, do, do.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
It took me a number of years in the business to figure out advertising. After reading all the books, years of practice, and lots of scar tissue from practitioners good and bad, I realized one simple rule: there’s showing and there’s telling. Showing works best.
 
If you look at advertising that is demonstrating a value proposition rather than explaining a value proposition you are more likely to buy.
 
Along came the Web and Web 2.0 which have added another component to selling: doing.  You can’t always “do” on the Internet, certainly not in terms of ingesting consumables or trying on clothes, but smart web marketers are finding ways to get customers and prospects to do something with their products. I can’t get you to try on a new style of sunglasses, but I can get you to play with them, put them on an avatar, change the colors. Do, in other words.
 
In my business, social computing, it’s even easier to get people to do. Of course, I can tell them, Zude is the “fastest, easiest away to build and manage a website,” and I can show them the same in a flash demo, but until I let them put their hands on the controls and do (in consumer marketing this is called sampling) they aren’t really sold.
 
Prior to the Web, “doing” was always the domain of promotion not advertising. Not anymore. 
 
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