Monthly Archives: March 2014

Searching for the next bean or nut.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

coke

Yesterday I posted The Coca-Cola Company should head to South America looking for the next Kola nut (or coca bean), perhaps something with healthier-for-you qualities, around which they can create a new soft drink. Easy for me to say from my typing chair. “Exactly how, Mr. Poppe, should we go about this little hunt?” they might ask.

First, visit some exotic places and explore local eating and drinking habits.  Look for products and beverage that have been around for hundreds of years. Anthropologists and researchers should speak with older people who go back generations in the area, perhaps visit some museums and look at old artifacts. What did they use in the mortar and pestles?  What beads were on the necklaces?  Check out old art to see what people were consuming. Talk to botanists? Ask older physicians. (Remember the healthier for you value prop?) Gather nuts and berries, for goodness sake.  

Find the top ten ingredients from 5 or 10 countries and come home to Atlanta and start coding.  Give your chemists and beverage engineers and tasters 3 months to create some drink options. Get marketing involved at this point and leaks some information to the masses via social media. Build buzz.

We know which way beverages are moving. Why is Coca-Cola Company ceding control of product development to others?  (Why is Coca-Cola Ventures and Emerging Beverages sending MBAs across America looking for companies to buy?)  If anyone can find the next kola nut it should be Coke.  Peace.

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Go South Coca-Cola.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I tweeted to the Coca-Cola Company last week that they should begin exploring in the jungles of South America for the next cola bean – something around which they can build a new soft drink.  Coke will continue on for decades to come but it is definitely in harvest rather than growth mode (in the U.S.).  So take a million or two from the budget and go to southern climes in search of the next big ingredient.  

I suspect you should search for an ingredient that offers health qualities. Something that has a unique taste. Perhaps even an acquired taste.  Remember your first Coca-Cola?  It should also be a bit exotic and have a fun name. Or you can make the name up.

Hopefully, you’ll find the ingredient in a stable country, with a nice port nearby. Perhaps a country that is not a big fossil fuel burner or located on a seismic fault. Lot’s to think about, I know.

This approach is called a plan. Call it capacity planning. Call it load management. Call it stock holder value planning.  Right now there is a finite amount of consumer money being spent on beverages. Investments in Core Power, teas, coconut waters and the like are really just back-filling the carbonated soft drink hole that grows in the sale portfolio. Rather, you should find an elixir with some health properties to grow the overall size of the beverage market. Or if not that, at least take revenue from, say, the pharmaceutical industry.

So get out your machete’s and go south. Then report back.

Microsoft Word Edit Tracker. BAD.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was in a writers group as a kid (okay, okay stop laughing) and we followed a writing principle espoused by Peter Elbow. Basically Mr. Elbow said the best way to write, the best way to break writer’s block, is to write. Stream of consciousness. And if you can’t write for 20 minutes straight, keep writing “I can’t write, I can’t write…”  Something will pop up. Often what pops up is the beginning an idea; perhaps even the logic for an idea.

I just received a lovely piece of writing from a friend about a topic I now I’m going to love – she’s really smart and someone I admire in the brand planning space. But the writing was deliver as a Word file, with “edit tracker” lit up in its full glory. DOH.  Can’t read it. Can’t. I’ll have to force myself.

Edit tracker is the bane of my existence.  Sometimes it pops while I’m writing and I can’t figure out how to turn it off.  I cold reboot, I go to help, click in the tray.  It won’t go away. Sometimes it stays for minutes even scores of minutes. I’ve never been caught doing you-know-what by my mom as a kid, but I’m sure it’s a mood breaker. That’s what tracker is for me.

I’m all for editing, but sometimes in the creative process it’s better to scrap and start over. There’s something to be said for flow.

Lawyers and engineers may need edit tracker, but in the creative and strategy business the function needs to float away on an iceberg. Peace.

Calendar Data. For Sale?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There is talk and there are deeds.  In advertising and marketing 80% of the signal is talk. That’s why so many experiential marketing firms are gaining traction. It is true that consumers when online are sharing about product  consumption at all-time highs. “I love Rincon, Puerto Rico.”  “St. Francis is the best heart hospital.”  “Fish Taco Friday at Bubba’s is a great deal.”  This is all good, presumably business-building talk.  But are these talkers, going to Rincon, St. Francis or Bubba’s?  And if so, how will we know?  If they use location-based services like Four Square, etc. we will know. But let’s face it not everyone uses these services. Especially older, higher earners.

So how do we capture deeds?  Credit card activity is a good way. Retail and grocery store data another.  But one overlooked opportunity zone is the hosted calendar.  I went to see my urologist this week for my annual visit; it’s on my Outlook calendar. It’s not in the cloud but easily could be. Lots of people use their calendars to do everything from scheduling meetings and vacations to alert themselves to call family.  Is some of this stuff private? Sure.  

What if a data analytics company like BlueKai or Marin Software hooked up with a calendar provider and mined opt-in calendar data? And what if they found a way to pay consumers for it?  Something to think about, no?

Deeds vs. talk. The deeds have it. Peace.

 

A hashtag a day.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s lots of talk these days about content strategy and content marketing. It’s a big practice and bigger business. In fact, data analysis tools supporting these efforts is may have surpassed the billion dollar mark. Yet for a business with so much cachet, it is surprising there is so little in the way of real, innovative social sharing on the topic.  I’m not talking about the “7 ways to increase belly fat (I mean) social media engagement” kind if posts – those are a dime a dozen.  I’m talking about innovative, doable, free suggestions.

Here’s one.  Every social media team should be testing one new hashtag a day. Those hashtags should adhere to the brand strategy (one claim, three proofs planks), of course.  This regiment will provide multiple learning moments for the content marketing people daily. Moreover, it will create a new discipline for brand adherence. The team can meet before the day begins to discuss the daily hashtag and also what worked and didn’t the previous day.

Every day you are not learning about your brand, is a day it lies fallow. Eyes off the blinking dashboard lights for a moment sirs and ladies, let’s feed the marketing beast with real time analysis and learning, e.g., “What in the news of the day made people twitch to our hashtag?” 

Stay tuned for more social tips. Or visit “Social Media Guard Rails.” Not a book.  

Peace. 

 

Offline Retail Sales are Dying.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Who is the Mark Zuckerberg of retail?  Who is the David Droga of retail? (You never heard Mr. Droga ask the question “How big can we get before we suck?)  Is it Jeff Bezos? Where is the vision in retail?  Who is going to makeover Sears as the first national Spanish language seller of goods and services?

Radio Shack lost $120M last quarter. Sears, J.C. Penny, Best Buy are hemorrhaging or are under pressure. Penny’s brought in a visionary retail guy — from Apple. Off the shelf vision?  Didn’t work.  

All those marketing folk with their PowerPoints talking about “disruption” and “market discontinuities” aren’t making any money by changing retail, they are getting honorariums and speaking in front of pop-up tables topped with water cruets and note pads. The seminar circuit.

Where’s the vision?

Some kid is going to have an epiphany while in a college books store and it is going to lead to real idea.  That kid just might have the huevos to turn things upside down.  Perhaps a free retail channel powered by advertising. Or the opposite — a high cost, high touch, high value, all-in subscription approach.

This is one ripe category. And there are a few dollars at stake.

Peace.

A Business Meme: The Craft Economy.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

A little bit of a 4-trick pony when I land on a market insight, I ride it and ride it and milk it in What’s the Idea? Todays trick is The Craft Economy.  Words are important, brand planner agree, and the word “craft,” according to Jeremiah Owyang, may not do my craft economy business meme justice. Jeremiah feels it may suggest more “arts and crafts” than I intend. Michaels Stores kind of things.  The reality is, the word was borrowed more from craft beer than the ribbon and button set.

To me the craft economy is about craftsmanship. It’s about building things that last. Physical things that can be passed down through generations – not thrown into the landfill.  Things we repair. In my current Henning Mankel book, a character suggested civilization took a turn for the worse when we stopped darning our or socks.

As technological advances create more leisure time for Americans and Europeans we need to find more life-positive things to do with our hands and minds.  The TV, eating, drinking are not the best of pastimes.  By focusing on save-the-planet activities we will save ourselves.  That’s the craft economy. And maybe there is some art in that.

Peace.  

 

Product Before Story.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I have mad respect for Seth Godin. He’s a hero. And he’s great for the economy. Anyone who can help marketers focus — and improve product and product delivery is someone worth paying attention to. That’s what Seth does. So you can imagine my dismay this weekend when reading this quote from him in an article about Coca-Cola: “Coke is not in the sugary water business, they are in the storytelling business.”

Coke is in the Coke business. The business of product. Every marketer is in the business of product. It’s ground zero for marketers. Storytellers are in the storytelling business. Creative people are in the story telling business.

It’s not a story hurting Coke sales, it’s high fructose corn syrup. As our brains continue to get bigger (according to evolutionary physical anthropologists) we will continue to learn how to prolong our lives – through better living. Products that get in the way of this will wane. The craft economy is taking hold.

Anyone who suggests stories not products are shaping the marketing future, is spending too much time in tactics land. Mr. Godin gets a mulligan; his product is too strong. Peace.

 

 

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