Yearly Archives: 2014

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.

 

 

Sears Spanish Inquisition

By
Steve Poppe
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0

sears

“All Spanish all the time” is the business strategy I have recommended to Sears in this blog a number of times. Once again, quarterly earnings are out for the Sears Holding Company (owner of Kmart) showing it is hemorrhaging money. You can’t continue to lose a billion plus a year and stay a viable business (listening Blackberry?).

Think about the country. Think about the state of retailing…with more and more sales conducted online and delivered via the mail and package carriers. Where does this leave Sears? And all retailers, for that matter.  In need of bold moves. All Spanish speaking today, is a first-mover strategy. And frankly a no-brainer. If it doesn’t happen in 2014 it will happen at some point. If not Sears or Kmart, someone. The purchasing power of Spanish speaking Americans is too great. The growth rate of this segment of the pop. too great. 

Sure stores will have to close. But the idea is solid. The market is solid and the move will have unexpected positive impact not only on the expense side of the ledge, but also the growth side…with new opportunities for other services hitting this massive part of the economy.

Edward S. Lampert, CEO, pull that Band Aid off right now. I smell a Fortune (cover) in it for you. Peace.   

Posters Get Short End.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There’s a neat media newsletter service I’ve used a number of times in marcom plans called SmartBriefs.  It’s an aggregator of articles, sorted by topic, sent to subscriber email boxes.  It is a great one-stop free-shop. One such newsletter I subscribe to deals with social media.  The ironic thing about this one is that very few of the articles it highlights points to actual social media posts, meaning blogs.  They are mostly items from USA Today, Washington Post, WSJ, Adweek, etc.  They hit the occasional Mashable piece but do not do a good job or finding true web Posters. Posters are original content creators and bloggers whose love of the topic goes way beyond a job.

Posters may be good writers or bad and may not have made it through journalism school, but they are the backbone of the web. As a brand planner, I’m always on the lookout for big time posters in the categories I study.  They engender loyalty and lots of comments. They are analytical and love to share the goodness that is their area or interest.

Poster beget Pasters (curators and info sharers), ergo community.   

I’d love to see an aggregator service that only focused on blogs. Craft economy people in the woodworking business like the Wood Whisperer. Melting Mama for the overweight and obese. Boogie2988 for gamers.  Kandee Johnson for the young fashion conscious. Emo Girl. There are thousands of them out there.  An occasional snark would be fine too, but the more positive the better.

This is the future of the web. Where there is avoid there is an opportunity.  Maybe SmartBrief will start one. Peace.

 

Thoughts on Purchase Vs. Rent.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

disney image

The jury’s still out on the age old conundrum should I buy or should I rent.  Disney’s announcement yesterday that they will sell digital copies of their movies when added to recent statistics showing higher growth rate of digital movie purchases (compared to rentals) suggests a directional winner. But the digital thing adds to the texture of this divide.  Where does one store the digits?  In the home? On a device or end point? Or, in the cloud? And if the latter, is it really owned? Because it takes plumbing to get to it.

Music on ipods and iphones are clearly purchased, even though they are in the cloud and on the device. Netflix is an aggregator and renter, with plumbing required to access the assets. Books on a Kindle are purchased and device bound. They become part of a family’s digital library, bought one volume at a time. The ability to share digital books, unlike paper books, is harder but not impossible. (Stay tuned.) I believe the purchase model will win out over the rented model. I believe the cloud will continue on as a big thing but so will end-point and device storage. Each home will have a Teraflop or beyond to hold for its pictures, home vids, purchased movies and medical records. The back-up and syncing businesses will also be quite viable. Digital assets will be contested in divorce – another thing for lawyers to study.

How will all this affect marketing and branding? Digital things are harder to classify, find and remember. Less visual muscle memory. Less context. Branding in the digital world will become more important but way harder to do. The future. Peace.   

A Rant About Authenticity.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Brands are authentic. It’s the people who manage them who are not. So let’s stop trying to find the “authenticity” for goodness sake.  (It’s like all those people talking about ROI. Guess what? They aren’t getting any.)

I suspect the reason the word authentic has been used and abused (Walt Clyde Frasier) to excess is because of social media — where anyone and her cousin are allowed to post on behalf of brands; mostly, tyro community managers fresh out of school with dexterous social fingers. (Interview question: “How many Facebook friends do you have?”). If social media were medicine, pre-meds students would be treating patients and everyone would be coughing and wheezing. Ever hear of an inauthentic doctor?

I’m not going all old school on you or anti-digital native; there are a number of smart young community managers out there learning their craft on the job and applying thoughtful analytics to social media. But the winners understand brand strategy, not just tactics.  And you won’t find them spouting off about authenticity.  They are more likely to be talking about specific expressions of brand fundies (1 idea 3 planks), things the brand is good at and things consumers want. 

Social media is an important component of the marketing mix; never more so. So let’s use it correctly and it will lift the craft.

Peace.

Birth of a Strategic Tweet.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Every once and a while I send a Tweet based upon something I’ve read and reacted to, that excites me.  (A blind squirrel…) As it rolls of the keys it just feels right. Almost poetic. Not to poets but to those in the brand business.  Here’s one such:

“Brand ideals” cobbled together by a design firm are not brand strategy.

Let’s parse the statement. “Brand ideals” are real things. Understandable things.  And though the words may be a little unfamiliar, the meaning makes sense. The problem is ,there may be a number of brand ideals. (In the lobby of Adecco’s US headquarters I once noted its brand ideals on a wall. Fifty of them. Professionalism, honesty…you get the idea.

The word “cobbled” is a nice word, suggesting put together with some craftsmanship…but not that much. Not like engineered. Cobbled might connote put together with tacks and a few swift strokes.   

A “design firm” is a specific organization. Artists, creators, some thinkers arrayed in colorful offices, wearing fashionably unfashionable clothes. An artful charm pervades a design firm. McKinsey doesn’t come to mind, but design firms with names like Frog and Idea do offer panache.  

And “not a brand strategy” is, contextually, the mother lode. Very few can succinctly articulate what a brand strategy is. Many can define brand. Few can define a branding. Fewer still brand strategy.  And when people try the halls fill with marko-babble.  Stuff like “brand ideals.” And here we come full circle.

This tweet, these 12 words, captures attention, takes a little swipe at a big segment of the branding market and highlights a shared information problem in brand planning – the lack of understanding. The implication of the tweet is a not-too-professorial suggestion that the tweeter has the answer. Back pat, back pat.  Peace.

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