Monthly Archives: April 2007

Imus

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I’m not a Don Imus fan but I am a listener. Opie and Anthony, please? With Howard Stern gone I turned to Imus to listen to his political guests.
 
Imus and his crew have long made me cringe because of racial undercurrents in their comments. If I can pick up on these cues, I’m sure people of color can. It’s wrong and way unnecessary for someone with a public forum to be so racially offensive. And frankly, it’s not even close to funny.
 
I love ethnic humor and off color stuff, but I don’t tell gay jokes to my gay friends or fat jokes to my overweight friends. Stereotypes and parody are great sources of humor, but name-calling is just plain lazy and juvenile.
 
Imus, and especially Bernard McGuirk who spurs him on, got caught for what they are. Insensitive louts. Does Imus donate lots of time, money, heart and soul to good causes? Yes. But I bet the world’s biggest hate mongers pet a few dogs and kissed a few kids in their day, too.  If he can’t be sensitive and exercise some self-control he should hang up his spurs. 
 
This story made it to the cover of the New York Times today. And it deserved to.
 

Passion or commitment?

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Here’s a quote from today’s New York Times by Sony Electronics new SVP of advertising “Sony’s consumer research showed that consumers had great passion for Sony but that the brand was not making an emotional connection.”
 
Could we please, please stop confusing passion for a brand with commitment? People love Sony because of amazing design and quality. Sony ads need to convey that design and quality and do so without getting in the way.  But to listen to BBDO’s David Lubars it’s all about the ads.  Said Lubars, “They make products that delight people, that are fun and entertaining, and their communications should reflect that humanness.” (I’m sure Mr. Lubars said a lot more this, but that’s all that was reported.) The Times reporter embellished, “The humorous quality of the ads was meant to make the brand feel accessible.” 
 
Passion and “feel good” are byproducts of advertising — related to tone. Commitment to purchase is what agencies need to work on. Commitment to purchase and repurchase are the rational things people conger up when being passionate. Demonstrations of product superiority and difference are the way to that grail.

The diluted talent pool.

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One of my favorite sayings in marketing is “Just when you think you know something about this business, someone comes a long to prove you wrong.” I like it because I coined it.  There are no hard and fast rules about advertising, marketing and branding. There are many good rules, but no absolutes. You have to know, in your gut, when to break the rules…and that’s the fun part!
 
Those in the business who have actually spent some real money and seen what an investment in marketing can do tend to have a pretty good handle on what works and what doesn’t. Those are the people you want to work with.
 
But today’s ROI tools have made it so easy to measure success that marketers don’t rely on “people” to predict success, they rely on the “tools.” By testing click-through rates of online messages or direct mail cell performance they let the tools decide what works and what doesn’t. This is why the advertising and marketing talent pool has become diluted.
 

Rear-view Mirror Planning

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One of my brand planning peeves is what I call rear-view mirror planning. Basically rear-view mirror planners discovery process is all about what’s happened in the past – what’s behind the brand. To take the metaphor further, there are also side-view mirror planners. Side-view planners care about what’s going on now. Which competitors are gaining? What brands, trends, and attitudes have traction today? But real genius in planning is predicting the future. Creating the future. Sound cocky? Yep.
 
Fashion designers live with this every day, as do artists, and in advertising so do the really great creative people. It requires sticking your neck out. But it’s the fastest way to success. Watch where you are going.
 

Is Starbuck’s growing too fast?

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Uncle Steve thinks so. I happened to be on the periphery of the whole Krispy Kreme collapse a couple of years ago and one thing I said at the beginning was that Krispy Kreme’s expansion plans were going to be its downfall. Adding more stores was okay up to a point, but then putting the donuts in every gas station and big box store, was a tad greedy.
 
The allure of Kripsy Kreme is that it’s a sweet treat, and too many treats are like to many creeps (Bush Tetras reference.)  Starbucks building 7 stores a day is evidence of that same insatiable build-out thing that many marketers fall prey to. It’s like a drug addiction. The company plans to build 10,000 stores over the next 4 years. I know it’s a big world, but come on. As Lou Carnesecca once told me when referring to Bobby Knight’s erratic, driven behavior “How many cars can you drive? How many steaks can you eat?  
 
Slow down, Mr. Schultz and smell the chai!

Mario Batali

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Mario Batali has been enlisted by General Mills to sell frozen dinners. My big thing in brand planning is context.  Any good creative brief asks the planner to articulate what consumers know about the product or about the competitive offerings. If your product is new or unique, context helps explain your product to consumers with understood cues and meanings, rather than having to spend precious time and energy educating them.
 
Mario Batali, for those who know his upscale restaurants or have seen him on Iron Chef America is a wonderful and creative chef. Context. If you don’t know Mario but read his name or see his picture on the box you probably note he is Italian (context) and, due to his girth, he believes in his craft (more context). Have you read of his reported dalliances with Courtney Love, you know he is famous. Again, context.
 
This endorsement and licensing deal with Mr. Batali happens to be a brilliant move for General Mills — much more so, than his endorsement of a cookware line. Mario uses cookware, but is famous for great food. He is a perfect spokesperson, licensor and launching pad for this new product line of frozen pastas.
 

The Holy Google Empire

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“For Google to maintain its current momentum, it needs to become the king of something else beyond search, or play a meaningful role in a market that is much larger than the $16B online advertising market,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Market.”
 
Take this quote from today’s New York Times and substitute the word “Rome” for “Google,” and you begin to see how voraciousness and gluttony can fuel an empire’s downfall. Google is search. That’s what it does best. What arguably makes it a good fit with YouTube is that Google allows for efficient search of videos. The Google article noted above is about Google getting into the TV ad sales business. This will work, if, and only if, Google focuses on searching for available and open TV inventory, rather than providing strategic ad sales, which goes way beyond technology.
 
Eric Schmidt, please don’t forget what happened to the Roman Empire…or any empire for that matter.  

Just Do All.

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I sit in my cube today in a red St. John’s tee-shirt, Levi’s jeans, and a pair of black high-top Chuck Taylor’s. St. John’s, my favorite college basketball team, is a university for whom I’ve done some strategy work.  Nike has also done a good deal of work for St. John’s.  In fact, their design team came up with the new sports logo. If you are in marketing you know about Nike’s brilliance. 
 
That said, today Nike is in trouble.  Remember the aforementioned Chuck Tailor’s? They squeak. When Converse was wholly owned, they didn’t squeak.  Now Nike owns “Cons.” Squeak, squeak. Nike is losing focus. They design logos for college basketball teams, re-design uniforms, and even sell golf balls. Nike is now trying to reinvent the tee-shirt, looking at 74 neck variations and changing the wicking properties so they can charge $25 per swoosh.
 
The WSJ tells us Nike is re-focusing on core, higher margin products. Here are the categories on which they are focusing: basketball, running, soccer, sports lifestyle, men’s training and women’s products.  If that’s focus, I’m Greg Oden.  Under Armour is a company with focus. They will be the next Nike.