THINKing

Forgotten Gems

Through no fault of their own, sometimes really good posts just get overlooked. Here are a few forgotten gems you may have missed.

Grandma Says -  Southern grandmothers have often said, “there are only three times a respectable person’s name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die.” This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers.

Brand Euthanasia -  Some brands should be allowed to die, or if that fails, then we owe it to them to kill them.

New Business Tip: Do Great Work For Current Clients -My marketing mentor, Bill Loeffler, once said the the best new business program is doing great work for current clients. He was right.

The Value Of Connections – As we have discussed before, the value of connections in business cannot be underestimated. I’m talking primarily about tight connections that you use ruthlessly to help you achieve your personal and professional goals.

To Market, To Market… -  What does buying a fat pig have to do with your business? Stick with me and all will be revealed.

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Dead Brands

2008 was the 100th anniversary of Hydrox, a creme-filled chocolate cookie whose name sounded like bad-tasting medicine. We wrote about the cookie back then because its latest owner, Kellogg’s, was using the anniversary in an attempt to resuscitate the brand. Bring on the CPR!

At the time, we predicted that this was a brand which would not be successful. Sadly, we were right. Kellogg’s just didn’t give it the resources or attention it needed to take on the knock-off that became the number 1 creme-filled cookie, Oreo.  The brand disappeared in 2009.

Although Hydrox had a small, but fanatical following, plus a unique story and point of differentiation, Kellogg’s – I believe – thought that its distribution muscle and PR would win the day.

As a PR guy, I would love for this to have been the case. But in a fight like this, you must advertise, and that’s primarily where Kellogg’s marketing effort failed. Distribution and PR can take down a #2 brand, but when you are trying to supplant a #1, you must dominate advertising and your campaign must have high frequency.

Kellogg’s tried simple CPR when it really needed the defibrillator. Result: a dead brand.

Are there any dead brands you’d like to see brought back to life?

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Plan? We Don’t Need No Stinking Plan!

Now that technology has rendered every moment a marketing moment, how do you develop a plan in which you can have any confidence? That’s the question posited by colleague Scott Hepburn recently and I thought it was a good subject for this blog to tackle.

I’ll admit to you that I am a planner. I believe in setting strategy first and then letting the strategy dictate the tactics. I believe that if you have done the thinking upfront, you’ll be ready for serendipity or crisis if they arise.

Or as General Dwight D. Eishenhower once said, “plans are nothing; planning is everything.” What I believe Eisenhower was saying is that you must plan your attack but once the shooting starts you must have the flexibility to handle the unexpected. So, I’m on the same page with him, as is Rodger Johnson, who says, “focus on the important interactions and let research reveal those.”

Jason Falls appends Eisenhower’s thoughts, “hire smart people who can make plan-based decisions on the fly.”

“A marketing plan is built around a sustainable, true brand,” says Jay Ehret. “Trying to build a marketing plan that accounts for every interaction is sure to lead to a convoluted, cumbersome plan with a heavy reliance on tactics. However, if you build a plan around being and living your brand, then you are prepared for every interaction, because you are being the brand you promised to be.”

According to Tom Pick,  social media and marketing are distinctly different. “Marketing plans are for marketing.  Social media guidelines are for providing basic guidance for interactions from other functional groups.”

That’s what we say. What do you think?

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We Care. No, Really!

Listening to the radio today I heard an ad that actually said “because we care.” That was their brand promise. I hear or see lame marketing statements like this too often.

Truth is that company on the radio does not care. If it really cared, they’d spend enough time thinking about why people should do business with them and then develop a brand promise around that.

You can tell me that you care until the cows come home and I won’t believe you. It’s empty chest-thumping. But I know caring when I see it. If you and your people demonstrate to me that they care, then I’ll spread the message for you and it will become part of your brand promise.

Take the time to do the research, define your audience, hone your message and then develop relevant, impactful and original advertising and marketing programs to spread the word. Otherwise, it is clear to all that you just don’t care.

What do you think?

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Listen Up

Last week digital colleague Jay Ehret asked me to participate in his weekly Marketers  Roundtable podcast along with Bill Schley and Denise Lee Yohn.  We batted around integration, messaging in social media, brand leverage and listening to customers. So, give us a listen here. 

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Top Content 2009 Edition

In case you missed some of our most read content this year, below is a sample of the top posts of 2009. Is your favorite here?

Twittering Journalists

Customer Retention Strategies

When Billboards Go Bad

Twitter: Time Waster Or Cool Tool?

Branding Lessons From Santa

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Of Spokesmen & Sluts

I would never recommend that a client select a celebrity to be a spokesman for its products. Period. End of story. I know the potential benefits of using the right celebrity to draw attention to your company, product or service. I just don’t think it is worth the possible problems.

Celebrities often seem to have more than their share of moral failings. So, when they fall off the straight and narrow path, the accompanying crash is louder than it would be for you or me.

Whether it’s a pro golfer running around with porn stars and sluts, an angelic faced Ivory Snow pitchwoman who turns out to be a porn star or the world’s best swimmer taking hits off a bong,  if you align your brand too closely with a celebrity, you are asking for trouble. You are ceding the brand to someone over whom you have no control.

I’d rather tie my brand to a brand promise  – the statement I make to customers that spells out what they should expect in interactions with me, my people, as well as my products and services. Here, I have some control.

Then, there’s the whole question of whether the celebrity overshadows the brand. Can you name a celebrity and correctly identify the companies for which he or she speaks? It’s like beer commercials that rely on humor to get your attention but once they are over, you can’t name the brand because the commercial didn’t tether the humor to the brand promise.

What do you think about the value of celebrity spokesmen?

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Be Relevant

It comes as no surprise to me that Americans are trying harder than ever to avoid advertising. According to a new study by Synovate,

More than four in 10 US consumers said they were skipping ads on TV and the radio as well as avoiding Websites with intrusive ads more in 2009 than they were the year before.

Why, you ask? Because advertising is increasingly less relevant. We’ve discussed this before: advertising needs to be relevant, original and impactful or consumers will avoid it like the plague. And they certainly won’t share the ad with their friends.

When asked about positive ad-related activities, such as searching for advertisements online, sharing and discussing ads with friends, or following brands on Facebook and Twitter, responses were in the single digits. Most consumers reported never doing any such activities.

Relevant ads get shared. But most ads aren’t relevant because the advertiser hasn’t done the hard part: determining who his target audience is from a demographic and psychographic perspective. The more you know about the customer, the easier it is for your creatives to develop relevant, original and impactful messages, and to determine the best ways and vehicles through which to disseminate your messages.

But I’m not letting the agencies off the hook here either. Too often, the agency goes for the easy, humorous approach because they know that using humor increases likeability of the brand. Here’s the problem with that: they inject the humor but leave the brand message out of the equation. How many times have you laughed at a beer commercial only to say after it was over, “whose ad was that?”

Remember, understand your customer and ensure your agency is developing relevant, original and impactful ads for you, or save your money for something besides advertising.

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The Forgotten P

Graduates of Marketing 101 all know about the Four Ps of marketing – product, placement and promotion seem to be top of mind. But the forgotten P – in my opinion – is price. Pricing can be an excellent way to differentiate yourself. I’m not talking about low-balling your competitors either. I’m talking about using pricing strategically to address consumer pain.

Consider how airlines price tickets and then charge you what in essence are nuisance fees. They charge you extra for bags. They charge you for food and drink. These fees are all part of pricing and when done incorrectly can really hurt your brand. Jackie Huba has a good post on this topic.

Here at My Creative Team, we decided at the outset that we would price our work on a per project basis. As long as the scope of the project doesn’t change, we don’t charge a client any more than we quoted them initially.  It is harder to set pricing when you are using freelancers, but it is worth it. Our clients love the fact that they know how much something is going to cost them.

Most agencies and web design firms give you a rough estimate and then keep hitting you with extra hours to complete the project. This hurts your brand. So, pricing is just one of the ways – but a very important one – that we have used to differentiate ourselves. In everything we do, we try to make sure we live out our brand promise: We Make You Look Good.

Have you forgotten pricing, or are you using it effectively? Let us know.

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Zigging

Back in the 20th Century when I first went into marketing, my mentor told me that when everyone else is zigging, you should consider zagging. Good advice now, as it was then. I got to thinking about this today as I was having lunch with a colleague I worked with back in that other century. More on that in a minute.

Think about what’s happening in marketing and advertising right now. Every brand is rushing to social media and converting every message into a digital one. Well, if you are going to zagnow, whatwould you do?

I’m not saying to stop social media and go totally old school from a communications perspective. What I am promoting is some old school tactics that help bring the brand to life.

My lunch companion works in events and sponsorships. Now is the time to do events. Many brands – particularly those in NASCAR – have gotten out of the events and sponsorship business recently. This means that you can do events for less money now. Why would you want to, you ask?

Whether your audience is allies, employees or customers, events – done correctly – are a great way to bring the brand to life. An event allows you the unique opportunity to inform, educate or entertain your audience. I’m not talking about a trade show. I’m talking proprietary events.

Research shows that  proprietary events are:

- rated more highly in terms of meeting the particpant’s needs than a trade show

-  more than twice as likely to result in sales compared to a trade show

- more likely to draw C-level attendees

We’ll be talking more about zagging in the days ahead. What are your thoughts on the subject?

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