Yearly Archives: 2012

Google as advertiser.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Google is advertising now.  On TV, in The New York Times.  Using BBH. On the Super Bowl.  Hmm….this advertising stuff must work.  Oh yeah, that’s where most of their money comes from.  Money they will soon be throwing into a dark hole known as the hardware business (Motorola purchase).  Hopefully, the hole won’t be too deep so it can learn, correct and prosper.

I often write “Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible,” which makes people think I don’t like campaigns. I do.  Campaigns are organizing principles.  Google, a company that has made bazillions on a search algorithm that is an organizing principle, has finally come off its slightly elevated soap box and decided to advertise.  But it’s relatively new to the practice. Luckily, it has the aforementioned ad agency BBH to guide it.

The TV is emotional and beautiful.  The print is whimsical, fun and smart.  I’m not feeling a campaign idea as yet and, frankly, that’s quite fine.  This is new territory for Google. And for BBH and its labs. There will be some reinvention going on here no doubt. And one day (before trivestiture) Google will become a top 10 advertising spender.  Zero to 60 in…  Peace!

Find or Form

By
Steve Poppe
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0

In brand planning there are typically two approaches.  Find  the brand Idea, which is a bit like a truffle hunt or form the brand idea, more akin to gestation. They are both fun and both hard. 

Find usually takes the planner through the grasses and woodlands of the brand’s past. Readers know I’m not a rearview mirror planner, but the past contains many clues. Hard and soft.  It helps to know where you’ve trod in order to know where you are going. But going forward you are. Understand the product, people, place, price and promotion fore and aft – and those of competitors — and you should be able to locate a brand idea that suits your business strategy.

Form focuses on new products and services; those that have never seen the light of day. Form brand ideas require mad context.  Who, with what, and where will this new product be competing?  If in a completely a new category, what person, place or thing will this new product replace?  A rich new rich jungle tea might, for instance, compete with coffee not other teas.

And remember be it find or form, your idea needs organized support planks — planks that prove the idea.  Lastly, do not confuse a brand idea with a campaign.  As we all know, campaigns come and go. Peace!

A Moment of Silence.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

“I’m so sorry for your loss” is what most people say at funerals to bereaved family members.  We say it because it works for people we’re close to and also for people we don’t know well.  Sometimes, though, words are weak — especially words everyone says.  Gestures, on the other hand, are strong.  A silent hug. A sympathetic frown. A teary, quarter smile. These things often say much more.

Words are not feelings.

As marketers, we often live our lives through words.  We type, we text, we speak, we present. The words we create are used to develop pictures, videos, audio and interactive media.  But often they are still just words. I’ve noticed a trend in TV drama lately where the best shows cut down on the number of words.  Shows where the white space between the words is amplified.  It makes our minds work harder. Anticipate. Ruminate. Feel.

Good marketing and marketing communications do not heavy up on useless chatter. Great art director know this. I believe it was James Farley of Ford who said “Great advertising makes you feel something then do something.” Word! (Oops)  Peace. 

Storify

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Ads are not stories.

And that’s the problem.  Ads are selling schemes.  They are attention grabbers first — at least those coming from good agencies.  (But many ads fall into the “We’re here!” category, simply telling people what the product does and where to buy it.)  After grabbing attention, most ads tout claims: “me, me, me, me.”  The claims tend to emanate from the executive suite and marketing department.  If the ad creator is any bit the craftsman the ad will also contain some sense of consumer insight.  But you’ll really have to dig for it.  Often it remains on the brief.

Were ads stories, they would have a beginning, middle and end.  A plot, storyline and moral. There would be a harmony of parts and characters.  And that’s a good thing. People hang around for stories. People remember stories. And though sometimes people remember ads, more often than not they don’t recall the products accurately.  If you are a category leader and a competitor does a great ad, many times you get credit for it.

So let’s story it up Dan Draper. Everything  — that’s everything — can be storified. Peace!

Microsoft Tiles

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The more I see and hear about the Windows 8 Operating System by Microsoft, the more I realize Steven Sinofsky should have named it “Tiles.”   Language is a funny thing.  Market research is great, ideation is great but user ballast is greater.  We don’t really have the foresight sometimes to see the words the general population will adopt surrounding a product, so we try to force language on them.  But organic user language, the linguists will tell you, trumps marketing.

I believe in this name so completely, I predict it will be adopted by Microsoft and replace Windows as perhaps the most known brand names in technology. (And BTW, Stop Brand Diaspora!)

Short post. Big claim. Peace.

The R Word.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Windshield time is a great way to learn from the people who make sales happen — to travel with sales people and see how they sell and customers buy.  Everyone in a company would benefit from exposure to this type of “belly to belly” selling.

I’ve used the windshield time over much of my career: with light bulb manufacturers, telephone companies, hardware and healthcare providers. Invariably, when you ask sales people what makes them great or what makes the company great they all agree on one thing:  It’s about relationships. Okay, maybe price too…but relationships are most talked about.

If 50% of sales energy is invested in relationships, I say we are leaving an awful lot of product sell on the table. I’m not saying relationships aren’t important: “Hey, want to go to a Knick game?” I’m saying relationships are the price of business.  Being able to communicate, be friendly, and provide empathy (the basis of relationship-building) is not a sales strategy. 

A sales rep who only gives good lunch is not the SME (subject matter expert) I want to have a business-building relationship with. Again, I’m not saying a sales person cannot be a friend. I’m saying relationships are not brand building blocks – the are the air surrounding those building blocks.  When brand planning, you must push past relationship speak. Peace! 

Clint, Chrysler and Sales.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Full disclosure: I’m an ad-rat and therefore not your average Super Bowl commercial watcher. Also a liberal, I’m a fan of lifting up the bottom and tamping down the top.

Watching the ads during the game the NY Jets did not play on Sunday, I was taken aback by the black and white Chrysler ad.  Though the sound wasn’t great because of all the chatter in the room, I immediately knew it was part two of Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” campaign by Wieden +Kennedy.  Not sure if the music bed was similar to last year’s brilliant Eminem spot or what it was but I could tell it was a Chrysler spot way before the logo cameup.

I was ready to enjoy it, but sadly, didn’t.  It felt derivative.

Perhaps not the uber target for the ad, though certainly closer in age to Clint than Marshall, I felt the crusty, just-under-the-skin angry tone (a Clint specialty) lacked the energy and visceral side of last year’s heroic spot.  I’m sure the script was good, the film and editing certainly were, but it didn’t make me want to jump up and buy a Chrysler. Or move to Detroit. Or buy American everything the way the original ad did.

Karl Rove over the weekend said the ad was a big pay-back to president Obama for the government bail-out of Chrysler. I doubt there was any agenda, yet if there was  (even a hint) the best payback would have been to move some cars.  And though this year’s spot was probably better than 90% of the other pap, I’m not sure as many cars will be driving off the lots this month as were last February. Peace!

What is the plural of “new”?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I saw Jonah Peretti speak at a social media conference a year ago and though I had heard of BuzzFeed was not aware it was his baby. He co-founded the Huff Post, by the way. Mr. Peretti is a didge native and gets the whole Poster Vs. Paster thing.  His content is king school is the approach I believe Yahoo and AOL need to jump their sites forward.  AOL bought some serious properties to make me think they were on the right path, but fumbled them and weren’t able to jump on the ball.   Yahoo didn’t even try, it seemed.

Mr. Peretti has two marvelous quotes in today’s New York Times – quotes that media properties in the digital world should heed:

“There is nothing more viral than news that no one else has.”  

And “News is the killer app and does not depend on search optimization.”

The common denominator here is news.  Not everything is news. That’s why there is SEO. But as we hunt and peck our way to site traffic gains, we need to think about news. And what is new. 

Today in marketing and advertising, 90% of everything is old. Perhaps served up with a new color, a new flavor, a new voice – but  old it is.  As Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg infuse our digital worlds with more and more marketing and crowd noise, as the buzz gets louder as something akin to a scene out of The Hunger Games, it would be smart for marketers to be chase new. Think new. And sell new. Peace.

Brand planning. Soft claim, hard proof.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The best definition for brand planning I’ve come up with is “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.”

The way I organized a brand plan is with one claim and three proof planks. The support or proof planks must be connected and prop up the claim.  Interestingly, the support planks don’t have to be in harmony…and often aren’t.  For instance, if one plank is “brilliantly engineered” and another is “competitively priced” those two things are often at odds. But that’s a different story.

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the brand claim or promise, as some call it, needs to be soft.  When soft it can cover a lot of ground — meaning nuanced things to different people. A good soft claim is friendly, strong and conveys approachable meaning.  Product cheer leading is not appropriate, but cheer leading may be. A good soft claim is like an emollient.  It should offer a bit of whimsy.

Proof, on the other hand, must be hard.  Oak hard. Because these are the things that drive product development, company behavior and consumer perception. They are the reasons to believe the claim. They are hard because when you conceive and array demonstrations beneath each proof plank there should be no room for interpretation. They are either “on plan” or “off.”

One soft claim, three hard proofs.  This is how we do–oo it.  Peace!

 

Leave custies asking for more.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There was a time not long ago when the only people who could sit in a chair all day with eyes glued to a monitor were video game players. Not any more.  TV show creators and licensors have found that if they sell box sets of TV shows, by season, there is a big market. 

I know — my daughter has been watching “Modern Family” for weekends.  Seasons of “24,” “The Sopranos.” “Deadwood” and “Breaking Bad” are making the rounds and being consumed in in fairly short timeframes across the country. People are binging.

Selling these box sets makes near-term economic sense but does not create the kind of traction serialized, once a week viewership does.  As a very young ‘un, strawberry shortcake was my favorite confection.  Until one was left in the refrigerator and I had my way with it. All of it.

Box sets kill water cooler time. They create burn-out. And even expose warts. I really want to buy the box set of Showtimne’s “Homeland” but will wait until I can have it meted out in smaller gulps.  Marketers should always leave custies asking for more. Peace!

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