Thoughts on Marketing
Advertising
Advertising includes activities where a company secures media space or time in which to publish a message on behalf of their company or product.
How To Take a Marketing Risk…Safely
013 days
Miller Lite "Man Laws"
You have seen risky marketing ads. Anything Apple does always seems like they are out on a limb. The Miller beer ads that have introduced the big, burly beer driver for Miller High Life, or the Men of the round table, certainly the 1970′s introduction of Lite as “Tastes great vs. less filling”.
Considering how overwhelmingly successful those risks can turn out, it sure makes every marketer hope for that really cool idea that can lift their brand. But stop right there.
Those risks are not risky at all. At least the successful ones aren’t. Or at least they turn out not to have been so risky. They are almost always sensible executions of sound marketing fundamentals. You can break them down by analyzing the message they convey to prove it to yourself.
Lets take the beer delivery driver. High life’s brand promise is that it is the beer for blue collar-thinking, real-life, middle class beer drinkers. So they convey that message with a blue-collar delivery driver who disallows his beer to be consumed by those who don’t fit that image.
It defines the brand and strictly identifies the audience powerfully.
Compare that to Miller Lite’s effort at “Man Laws”. It was never clear to whom the beer was targeted, if the ads were ultimately for beer at all. The agency sold the concept as “contributing to the brand currency”. Sounds like some agency B.S. Turns out it was.
The best way for you to get the most outrageously creative marketing is to test concepts against your fundamentals. Does it define your brand? Does it clarify your audience? Do they ads convey news, excitement and a strong call to action? If they do those things, by all means, don’t hold back. Make yourself nervous about what you create. If a concept doesn’t do all those things, then I don’t care how cool the creative seems, dump it.
Steve Jobs: Marketing iCon
0235 days
Peter Drucker, one of the world’s most brilliant business management experts said “Innovation and marketing produce results. All the rest are costs.”
If the head of your company respects that, you are most likely very successful. But what if the head of your company happens to be a genius at both? Then you have Steve Jobs.
When Jobs began his company in 1976, he had the vision to create a computer for daily life. At that time, no one even considered the idea. At that time the world’s most advanced computers were at NASA and the Department of Defense. Today, Jobs’ iPhone carries far more power than anything either of those entities held in 1976. His crystal clear vision was far beyond what anyone else could even imagine. His determination and success in making it happen gave proof of the value of that vision.
Then came the Macintosh in 1984 and with it, what many consider the greatest ad ever. To think it only ran one time is part of its lasting genius. But it was a unique piece of marketing that only he could have created.
Fast forward to the iPod. The mp3 player was already invented, but Jobs marketed it in a way that made it his. The iPod was an unfamiliar product with an unfamiliar interface. One would think an explanation of how it works would be in order. Not Steve Jobs, though. He never showed it, never talked about it. He only had silhouettes dance to it, earbuds in place. The iPod was instantly cool.
He later reinvented the telephone with the iPhone, reinvented the convenience of a laptop computer by removing everything mechanical from it with the Macbook Air, and now has revolutionized portable computing with the iPad.
That doesn’t even mention revolutionizing product naming by adding an “I” in front of everything…that is after he revolutionized naming by calling his products by the least obvious names imaginable. Sure the Macintosh made sense for Apple, but Apple itself makes no sense, nor does naming his progression of operating systems after predatory felines. But that kind of thinking is what you get from a genius in innovation and markeing.
The Value of QR Codes
0290 days
QR codes are a fun new outlet for creative talent. I know, people complain about the fact that the user must have a smartphone with a scanner and know how to use it, and it only works with mobile. Your laptop is unlikely to have a scanner on it.
But if your audience is smart phone friendly, it is a really cool tool to have available. I think that is true because making it effective demands some imagination.
For those who don’t know, QR codes are barcodes that are read both horizontally and vertically, unlike traditional bar codes that read only one way. Because they are read in two directions, they contain a large amount of information, and are used to send those who scan the code to a URL.
I will tell you right now, that if you are sending people to your website’s home page with your QR code, stop reading and stop working in marketing. The value of a QR code is where you send the audience. It has to be somewhere that enhances what the audience was experiencing as they came across the code. So if you make bottled water, place a QR code on the back of the water, so your audience is taken to a place that explains or demonstrates the value of your bottled water over tap water and over your competitors. Give them an instant value.
Here are some other ideas for using QR codes:
1. On your front window. Lets say people love the warm rolls from your bakery in the morning. Offer a QR code in the window that takes them to your twitter feed and let them know that you will tweet each morning the moment those rolls come out of the oven.
2. On the back of your running team Tee shirt. During the race, other racers can scan your shirt as they run. It can take them to a place that shows a fun and inspiring video of the course, the cause the race is run for, your team, etc. It is an audience that has a bit of time on its hands.
3. The hole you sponsor at a golf outing. It can be a preview of the hole, show where the traps are, and how best to approach the green.
4. As a decoration on the cake at your next company anniversary. You have done the logo before, so this is unique. It can link to a special video of your team celebrating.
5. In your corporate video. You can interrupt the video with a QR code that will take the viewer to a related site as you explain your product offerings. Many in your audience may not need additional background info, but those who do can stop the video as their smartphone brings up the new URL. They can continue the video once the side presentation ends. The your multi-media presentation will not soon be forgotten.
Bonus Suggestion:
5. On your headstone. You heard right. Visitors can scan the code that will take them on a slideshow of your life so they remember that it is a person not a grave. Go ahead and write a Go-Daddy URL into your will now.
The point is, it QR codes are not necessarily successful or unsuccessful as a tool. It is a matter of what you can come up with as a way to use them that counts.
Loyal Customers Will Buy The End of the World More Than Once
0370 days
Oh, no. May 21 turns out not to be the end of the world. Imagine my embarrassment and disappointment when I awoke to that fact sometime Sunday afternoon. Now clearly, Harold Camping, who went out on the craziest of limbs is now proven to be a lunatic…or perhaps a great marketer.
Among the ways to measure a greatest of marketing campaigns is to see if the language has changed as a result. Xerox is a classic example as is Kleenex. More recently Google and Yahoo are words to gain meanings from marketing. The “gay” lifestyle took the word for their own. It meant something different in the 1920’s, and a tweet was the sound a bird made before Twitter stole it.
Now, search the word “rapture” online. Harold Camping owns it. What is an even better piece of marketing, is that “rapture” is used as a word to describe natural disasters so bad that they kill nearly every person on earth. It takes brilliance to use a word with such a positive definition to describe the most tragic and horrible episode in human history.
Now that the world hasn’t ended, though, what is a marketer to do? Why not reschedule it. That’s right, when the end of the world is inconvenient, just click and drag it down your calendar to a more convenient date.
But it works. I guarantee his popularity increases. One other premise of marketing is never think a tightly defined audience is too small. An overwhelming majority of people think he has no credibility at all. Some are disgusted by his audacity and hold very negative feelings toward him. But why should he care about them? There will be a group to whom he appeals even more. That is his audience.
The publicity he uses to reach them is free, the billboards that triggered it should get nowhere near the views they have received. It has been masterful in that he looks ridiculous to 99% of the people. But by doing so, he can reach that 1% that is his potential audience, and he reaches nearly all of that one percent this way. The only way he doesn’t benefit from such a great marketing plan is if he turns out to be right this time.
Farewell to Lynn Hauldren, the Empire Carpet Man
0396 days
Elmer Lynn Hauldren 1922-2011
Lynn Hauldren passed away yesterday. Those in Chicago know him as the Empire Carpet guy. His famous jingle of “588-2300” can be recited by anyone who calls themselves a lifetime Chicagoan. As an advertising man, he may not be Don Draper, but he practiced what he preached.
Lynn worked on the Empire account as an account executive in 1977, and was asked by the company owner to be the face of the company when auditions failed to provide the right personality.
It is a role he held for the rest of his life. Now that is branding. Advertising experts tell companies all the time to find exactly what they do best, then permanently promote that one thing. What better example can there be, but for the advertising executive to find that one role and do nothing but that forever.
Being the Empire icon was what he did, not who he was. Among his other interests were performing and singing, particularly in a barbershop quartet called “Chordiac Arrest”. A full and successful life to be sure.
Rest in Pease Lynn. You left a fine legacy.
UPDATE – Empire Carpet was kind enough to dedicate a website to their beloved spokesman. It is an online museum that does justice to his contribution to their company as well as our community. Be sure to stop by and take a look. You will enjoy learning more about him while reliving your own memories.
Why Plan Your Marketing?
0468 days
Las Vegas as a family destination was just one marketing mistake of the 90's
Ah, marketing in the 90′s. Those were the days. Everything worked. It was just a matter of going out and marketing. Direct mail, broadcast, billboards who cares? Whatever your agency sold most profitably just so happened to be the best strategy for you. Sure, your bank’s checking accounts did best when sold via newspaper ads, but they also made money with direct mail, so who is to say which is better?
The problem is that profits were left on the table. It is impossible to know just how much, but you can guarantee that things could have been run better. When testing came, new creative was tried. Not new channels, not new messages, just a new look.
I say good riddance to those days. Branding was ignored. Strategy didn’t matter as much as a campaign did. Since everything succeeded, the industry wasn’t held to the highest standards anymore. Low standards worked well enough.
Today the marketing plan is back. Brand strategy matters. We can’t afford to just market lazily, because we are no longer going to be profitable if we don’t do it right. So be sure to do these basics, before asking a creative to rework your website. Don’t print a brochure unless you plan its use. Know what motivates your audiences, and here is a hint. The features in your product do not.
- TOWS analysis. Sure it is a SWOT analysis, just backwards, because backwards makes more sense. Measure your Threats, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Strengths.
- Find out from your audience, not your management just what they understand your brand to be.
- Articulate your brand through a written statement that is superlative, important, believable, memorable and tangible.
- Boil that short statement down to a single word or phrase.
- Understand your audience is a subset of who you think it is. Break them down to as small, not large, a statement as possible.
Make sure every message you send to your audience contains news, excitement and a strong call to action.
Don’t try to expand the audience, but communicate that message frequently to that core audience.
Now, the hard part. Consciously deliver this message with every communication for the next few years, so they will get used to it.
Marketers Are So Good, They Can Even Sell Santa Claus
0521 days
Hard to steer at these speeds
Normally, a marketer is asked to take an indistinguishable product, and bring it to life by accentuating its minor differentiations from competitors. Occasionally, they are asked to do the opposite and make the unrealistic believable. It can be said that Santa Claus has become an advertising icon for the holiday, created by generations of great marketing. Just take a look at what marketers were asked to work with in bringing the Santa Claus brand to life.
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop our of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh an move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 time the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, the conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload -not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
The Better Mousetrap Myth
0615 days
The saying goes “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door”. It may be the worst advice ever to be passed as common knowledge.
The fact is, mousetraps currently work just fine. More importantly, everyone knows how to set one, and despite the danger in doing so, it is familiar. Everyone knows that when the trap has been successful, you will be left with a dead mouse at best, and a dying one at worst. But you know what to expect.
You may come up with a much better alternative. Certainly, there is plenty of room for improvement in the current industry leader, but the world knows what to expect from it, and understands how to use it. They will be reluctant to learn a new mouse catching system, no matter how much better the results promise to be.
So if you have a better mousetrap, you may not want to tout its great new features. You may want, instead, to make extra certain that you apply strong marketing fundamentals.
Start a new category: Mousetraps that work silently or without unseemly cleanup perhaps.
Push the category: Mousetraps startle you at night, or their use spreads disease. They cause insomnia, or family dangers. Be sure to stress the problem that exists right now. That way, if the problem is of significance to any portion of the audience, that portion will be sympathetic to your message.
Finally, introduce your mousetrap as the champion of the category: Here is a mousetrap that you won’t hear, or that contains and disposes of the mouse without spreading its germs.
All you need to do now is to focus your message on the mouse infested audience that is most likely to be concerned about that category.
This TV Icon Should Create Icons
1672 days
Even the show itself has an advertising icon.
Here we are with another season of Mad Men. Of course I enjoy the show. How could I not? I live it here, right down to smoking in the office (don’t tell the city please). We even have a retro martini bar that is our favorite stop after work.
But there is one thing about the show that bugs me. In advertising, the era of the 60s was famous for its use of advertising icons. In fact, many of those icons have endured until today. Tony the Tiger, The Green Giant and Mr. Whipple were but a few still in use. But Josephine the Plumber, the Ajax White Knight and the Frito Bandito were all icons created in the Sixties as well.
So why do we never see Don Draper pitching the use of an icon in the show? It almost seems deliberate that they ignore that part of 1960s advertising. Perhaps an episode that showed Don Draper pitching Cap’n Crunch would be bad for his image. More likely, creating an advertising icon is a lot more work than can be whipped out in a show that has enough realism on its plate to begin with. Either way, to me it is the most glaring omission in an otherwise wonderfully realistic show.
In case you wonder just how prevalent these icons were in that era, here is a list of some that were either created or had their most popular days in that era.
Tony the Tiger Norelco Santa NBC Peacock
Jolly Green Giant The Pillsbury Dough Boy Speedy Alka-Seltzer
Marlboro Man Aunt Jemima Betty Crocker
Madge from Palmolive Josephine the Plumber Mr. Clean
Cap’n Crunch Count Chocula Quisp and Quake
Frankenberry White Knight from Ajax Frito Bandito
Hawaiian Punchy Mr. Whipple Maytag Repairman
Juan Valdez Mr. Peanut Campbell Kids
Charlie Tuna Elsie the Borden Cow Lucky Charm Leprechaun
Sonny of Cocoa Puffs Toucan Sam Cornelius the Kellogs Corn Flakes Rooster
Trix Rabbit Geoffery The Giraffe Mrs. Olson
Raisin Bran Sun Quaker Oats Man Ronald McDonald
Wendy of Wendy’s Morris the Cat Choo-Choo Charlie
