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Radio Advertising Today.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Yesterday while driving to work I found myself singing the Mavis Discount Tire song with the radio.  Later I heard the familiar voice of the Winthrop University Hospital announcer. My friends Mike Welch and Jack Schultheis handle that advertising, but even so, I immediately knew it was Winthrop from the music and voice.

Radio is still a powerful ad medium.  It’s a unique way, at a reasonable cost, to condition consumers to listen, associate and remember. When working on North Shore-LIJ Health System years ago, I used lots of radio to extent the TV work.  It worked brilliantly.

But while singing the Mavis Discount Tire radio song I wondered if it was a reason to buy?

I reckoned consciously I knew the price is right, thanks to the name, but with the web and search so prevalent is name awareness enough to tip the scales?  Has the ability to simply slip a phone from my pocket and say “best tire prices near me” changed the formula for advertising?   

Search changes everything in marketing. The first page web experience is critical. We “twitch to buy” today. Radio needs to recognize and account for this.

My kids are in their twenties. Both have two phones. When they sing the discount tire song are they Google searching for other tire stores? You bet they are.

Peace.

 

 

 

Brand Learners Become Brand Practicers.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A while back I spent 8 months at a K12 educational development company called Teq and it changed how I approach branding and marketing. My approach is more beholden to pedagogy than selling — though selling is still the objective.

This morning I was reading a nice piece in the NY Times about the use of technology in education. Features included Marc Benioff (software), Reed Hastings (algorithm) and Mark Zuckerburg (student-centered).  In Mr. Zuckerberg’s segment the quote “Now educators are no longer classroom leaders, but helpmates.” While this statement may be a little too “new world,” it rang a bell.    

The best brand strategies are those understood throughout a company. They can be taught but are best when learned and believed. Proper training allows every employee to be a brand learner. And more importantly, a brand practicer.

When all employees get the claim and proof planks of a brand strategy, it accelerates penetration into the consumer ethos. Talk about mission and culture in a company all you want, branding is not about memorization it’s about practice. Start with the teachers. (The more the better.) Then “helpmate” the consumers.

Peace.     

 

NYU Langone.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s no question the best advertising in NY for a health system or hospital is that of NYU Langone Medical Center. Creators Munn Rabot have been doing quality, no, expert healthcare ad craft for years and years.  The NYU TV ads are the kind that you have to stop and watch. Visually they’re cinematic. Musically they’re awakening. Copy-wise, quite strong.   All of this work, and the work Munn Rabot did for previous client NY Presbyterian, have led the category for years.

One thing they might do better, however, is tighten their brand idea. The line/strategy is “Made in New York.”  This presumes patient care and patients are different in NY. It poses the question “How does healthcare made in NY distinguish itself?”  I get the idea, but offer up the narrative is hard to deliver. They do get points for unique though (in healthcare, that is).  

Most consumers won’t cling to the need for a powerful brand idea served up daily, as I do; they just like the ads. And that should be enough. NYU Langone is back on big map. Well done.

Peace.                                                                                                          

 

Promise or Claim?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Way at the top of unpaid Google search results on brand strategy is HubSpot’s post “7 Essentials for a Strong Company Brand.”   Point one is about brand purpose and brand promise. Not bad places to start I guess, but a little too soft for me.

Brand strategy is not about a promise. It’s about a claim. A prideful statement of consumer value that “is.” Not a might be, or a try-to-be.  But a fact. A fact found at the nexus consumer care-abouts and brand good-ats.

If you have your brand claim right then everything you do in sales and marketing should be about proving it. Promise and purpose help may get you to your claim, but claim is the quintessential essential.  7 is too many essentials anyway. Water, air and food are essentials.

Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

Price as Strategy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I have this concept for a quick serve restaurant where the menu is built around a specific price point. It would offer lots of food variety but everything is priced the same.  Let’s call the place $8.99s. $8.99s is not Ben Benson’s or Le Bernadin insofar as brand names go, but it is descriptive. (Think I borrowed the idea from Steve and Barry’s.)  I ran this notion by an investor/restaurateur friend and didn’t go for it. What ever. He also didn’t want to serve breakfast burritos at his NYC chain to open up a new day part. 

Fast forward to Blue Apron, a some-assembly-required meal delivery service and the static price idea has found a proof of concept. Blue Apron probably did it to improve simplicity. Their overhead, don’t forget, includes delivery.  But for $8.99s, the idea was to own a new class of value restaurants.

The idea to offer all meals for $8.99 is a strategy. Sure, the mission statement can include words like healthy and tasty. Smiley servers. Satisfaction guarantees. But driving to a price point, rather than say a cuisine, gives form to the “product, experience and message.” It’s a brand play in addition to a category play. A category busting idea.

It will happen. Peace.   

 

 

 

Content Marketing. Fight the Power.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

People who create content for the web are its fuel. And there’s no doubt that content marketing is a powerful online business tool. But it is links that tend to be the ballast of today’s content marketing, not the words.  

One of my first memes on the web was “Posters vs. Pasters.” For those spelling challenged it’s not Pastors, those are for Sunday morning, it’s pasters like users of the glue pot. A paster is someone who spends time reading other people’s content and pasting it into links for sharing. A paster might spray a bucolic photo of an Atlantic Puffin or “Seven Rules for Higher Click Rate.” S/he is a curator, not a creator.

Sadly, the commercial web has become a miasma of paster links. And it is working. Think of the web as a federation of radio stations sharing less and less original music. Finding true posters, subject matter experts or subject matter passionates (noun), has become more difficult. But posters still drives the excitement and vitality of the web; they are just harder to find.

Digital pasting began 25 years ago when we started emailing jokes around the web. Lately, it has become a cottage industry for marketers. Fight the power of pasting. Fight the power.

Peace.

 

Brand Engineering (part 2).

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’ve met some really great brand planners over the years. I don’t like to name drop — but on this side of the ocean they constitute a Who’s Who. (Yes, I’m a bit of a star-fucker when it comes to brand planners.)  These exploratories were part of my self-taught doctorate in brand study. Interestingly, they are not all good teachers. They were great listeners though, so intuiting was how I learned the craft. Intuiting and doing.

I’ve also met a good number of average brand planners. Nice people all. They talked the talk.  Sometimes communicating in what I call marko-babble or brand-babble. They deliver strategy on a brief (platter?). They create sparks. And use some research. Not a lot of there there.

The difference between the A listers and the B listers, in my opinion, is that the former are more engineers than planners. Do you want someone who engineers your car or plans it? Do you want someone who engineers your kidney operation or plans it?

What’s The Idea? has always been about brand engineering. About creating a product, experience and messaging template that is replicable, sustainable, evolvable — but always drives codified brand value and sales.

I presented 15 plus objectives once to a client who ran marketing for a $4B health system. He told me that was way too many. “How can we accomplish all that? We set ourselves up for failure.”  He was a planner. Not an engineer.

Peace.

 

A Branding Essential.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Andy Rubin announced his new start up today, by way of a full page ad in the NYT paper paper. Essential is its (rather boring) name. My first experience with Mr. Rubin was online, on stage during the introduction of Google’s phone the Nexus One. Clearly a smart guy, and credited with helping develop the Android OS, Mr. Rubin had a global coming out party that day.

Today is his second coming out party and though the returns won’t be in for a few years, this one looks to be more successful.

According to the website, Essential is a hardware and software company, with 7o+ employees. Quite a few for a startup. So there’s money there. Big money.

The mission of Essential is grand. Make technology easier. Completely open. More pervasive (into the home) and, one might intuit, more affordable down the road. On the site one can pre-order a phone. See the specs. Read about a new 360 camera. Bathe in promises of integration of home and intuitive systems. And feast on the company’s “festo a mano.”

It’s not my favorite launch approach. I like to have real stuff. Build your brand around stuff. Not talk. I’m sure genius will come from this company.  I wish them well — we all do. But coming out of the gate with “an ad and a promise” is not the best start.

Peace.

 

 

More Proof. Less Claim.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I don’t like picking on Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s advertising.  It’s not like they have better things to do than treat cancer.  But strategy is my job.

I was reading big pop-up, take-over ad from Memorial online, which started with the words “The future of cancer care.” It dissolved to a second screen which read “Now available on Long Island,” closing with logo and tagline “More Science. Less fear.” More science, by the way, is a genius brand strategy.  But here’s the rub. And it’s a rub for the MSKCC brand managers and agency Pereira O’Dell.  Prove it.  Don’t waste your breath, pixels and budget on a claim.  If you are trying to give patients and families hope, give them proof. Where’s the science? Where’s the more science?

We are smart consumers. We can take it. Start talking science.

This digital ad is from the “We’re here” school. This is our name, we are on Long Island, buy from us.

Shallow. More homework. Less fear.

Peace.

 

 

Best Ad Agency Name Ever.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Foster Bias & Sales is an imaginary ad agency name I came up with that offers a trifecta of marketing success. These steps to a sale apply to marketing, advertising, even memo writing.

It starts by fostering a positive and receptive environment in which to communicate with customers. Product context, entertainment and/or education are all tools used to foster interest. Gather attention and predispose consumers to listen….that’s Mr. Foster.

Create bias toward your product or against a key competitor is step two. This is where marketers become competitors. Care-abouts and good-ats are what the brand planner mines and the communicator deals in here. Creating bias is not nuanced. It’s hardball.   

Sales obviously refers to action. Real purchase, decision to purchase, or predisposition to purchase. In the sales trade this is called “asking for the order.” Even if implicit. Being too pushy is not attractive, however.  You have to know how and when to ask. If you cross the line you may damage to your ability to foster a proper selling environment. Know when to walk away. Customers appreciate commitment sans the pushy hand. They may come back.        

Peace. 

 

 

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