Yearly Archives: 2015

Mo-Pay.

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Mobile payment, do do do do, the next frontier. Walmart Pay is scheduled to go national early next year. Walmart decided to bypass M.C.X. the mobile pay consortium it entered with Target, CVS and 7-11, in favor of its own offering — presumably because of too many cooks. Apple Pay is having some hiccups. Google wants a piece. PayPal, debit cards, credit cards and even gift card companies are all looking to find the holy grail that will put Fort Knox and the printing arm of the U.S. Treasury on notice.

You just know this is the future; you can feel it.

Technological solutions for digital payment and tracking are our future. Ever wait on a long line at Costco or BJs to have a human check your basket against the paper receipt? Know how many minutes that adds to the shopping experience a year? Know how many purloined goods are missed? That experience is going to soon be like EZ-Pass. All UPC codes will have a tenth of a cent piece of “price and inventory” silica a reader will register as you walk by.

Moreover, when the processing fees of banks, credit cards and other money handling companies are cut from 2-3% down to less than a quarter of a cent, the market will really tip. And more people will be replaced by non-people.

Shopping lines will be no more. Theft and loss will be minimized. Big box stores and their little cousins will be more efficient. Analytics will be off the charts. It’s a winner. We’ll just need to redeploy workers in a smart way. It is the next frontier…and it will be exciting.

Could it be that Walmart will make more money on mo-pay systems than merch? Could be.

Peace.

 

An interview question never asked.

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A job interview question I like to ask is “What is your art?” It’s an open ended question that should not require clarification. When I first started posing it, I found the need to explain it. More recently I just let the person interpret it. If they have no answer, I move on. If the answer is ponderous and all over the place, it suggests a poor self-awareness. No one has ever been asked this question in an interview before so it’s a good way to see how they are on their feet.  It’s also a focus test. It’s an interpretive test. What is art to you? Is it work? Is it skill? Philosophy?

Try it out. It’s a blast.

Peace.

 

 

 

Deeds Are Key To Brand Strategy.

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I was reading an ad this morning with the headline “Deeds not words.” If any words define What’s The Idea?, they are these. Alas, it is “words” that I sell. I sell brand briefs. I sell strategic plans. Words on paper. But…

My brand planning due diligence is all about “deeds.” Deeds are the actions that yield outcomes. Outcomes are where many planners spend their time. “We’re number 1. Low cost provider. In business for 35 years.” Outcomes are fine but they are the result of deeds. Once I’ve collected enough deeds, the claim (brand promise) begins to emerge.

I’ve written before about getting to the claim by first finding the proof.  Or assembling proof clusters first. But proof can be a step removed from a deed. Proof can be an outcome or a result.  It’s better to start with deeds. Nothing in marketing (or life) starts without deeds. Physical actions, investments, actualized promises from a brand put money and psychic investment in play. It’s existential.

This is where words stop and how brands are built. Peace.

 

Advertising. Where big theater meets little theater.

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McCann-Erickson’s Robert Cohen used to be the doyen of the advertising economics business. His predictions of spending growth were industry guideposts. When computers cornered the market as presentation vehicles Mr. Cohen used to go onstage with large oak tag cue card, doing his numbers thing on the stages of some of NY’s greatest presentation venues.

During one of Mr. Cohen’s internal McCann presentations in the early nineties, while sharing how yellow page ads were sluggish, I raised my hand and in my strongest Oliver Twist plea asked “Where are the digital numbers sir?.”  Mr. Cohen said they were not large enough to track. He was not dismissive, just in the moment.

The New York Times reported today that digital advertising will pass that of TV in 2016. It took only twenty-ish years for this transformation. Who knew?

There will always be room in marketing for “big theater” advertising or selling. But data analytics and “little theater” is coming on like a dookie. Go check your Google stock.

Every marketing plan I’ve written the last 3 years has included a line item for a part or full-time data analyst hire. It’s what Bob Cohen was — it’s the future of marketing.

Peace.

Brand Strategy and Multiple Targets.

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In the part of my brand strategy presentation where I lay out my framework (1 claim, 3 proof planks), I talk about the many targets a brand must address. With B2B products, the targets tend to be job or function-related. For a healthcare service, as an example, I might want the brand to speak to patients, docs, care-givers and insurance companies. This adds complexity when it comes to finding the claim. On the consumer side of the house, the targets are often consumer segments.

starbucks machiatta

I was reading about a Starbucks barista in Williamsburg Brooklyn this morning and how he is one of group of highly skilled Howard Schultz employees, dialing up the flavor selections of artisanal brews, soon to be released under the “Roastery” name — coffee draughts which may list for as high as $10. The Williamsburg drinkers of this high-end coffee are not the bulk of the Starbucks buyers around the country; they’re not part of the double, double, half hazelnut, half vanilla, two sugars, muffin top set. A group that pays the bills.

So how does one brand cater to both targets with a single Starbucks brand? Without, sorry for the pun, diluting the brew? Well, the brand has to be future proof. It has to have a claim and proof plan array that appeals to all segments. Though I am not privy to the Starbucks brand strategy, I know it’s accommodating. It will handle the Roastery and the mixed coffee drink crowd. Starbucks has a brand strategy that encompasses. That includes. But also focuses. Starbucks has mad blending skills.

Peace.

 

 

Yahoo! Is the exclamation point a gasp?

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I talk to brand strategy clients in simple terms. Brand strategy — an organizing principle to improve product, experience and messaging — is the result of a bold down of consumer “care-abouts” and brand “good-ats.”

Looking at Yahoo, as it begins what appears to be the final stages of life as we know it, I’d like to suggest a couple of observations. Yahoo customer care-abouts include: communications, digital content (not TV content), immediacy and sports. Yahoo good-ats include: ad sales, consumer reach, brand, fantasy sports and  production.

When care-abouts and good –ats don’t align, you have product failure which leads to brand failure.

I was speaking with a start-up owner recently and told him, when dealing with brand strategy for nascent companies I “follow the patent.” For mature companies like Yahoo! with lots of twists, turns and portal creeps, I suggest go back to care-abouts and good-ats. Make tough decision. Toss a few babies out with the bathwater. And get your olfactory on. Imagine if Starbucks also served garlic bread.

Yahoo may have one last chance. If Ms. Mayer doesn’t focus, her company, a beloved company, will be sold for parts. Peace.

 

 

The Dlugacz Effect

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I wrote the brand strategy for the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System about 15 years ago and it came together thanks to the leaders at North Shore who were kind enough to allow me into their inner sanctums and learn about their rich and diverse organization. No one person helped me formulate the strategy more than Yosef Dlugacz. Yosef was the head of quality and measurement at North Shore.

It’s a rarity that any one person embodies the brand promise of an entire organization the way Dr. Dlugacz does, but it’s always worth trying to find that person. I call that the Dlugacz Effect. Many planners who work in B2B assume the CEO will provide the best brand input direction – and often they do. Oddly, I sometimes find HR people have their fingers on the pulse of the market and provide a key insight. I love talking to the top (and bottom) salespeople. But sometime, the Dlugacz Effect comes from somewhere else. The oldest employee. The busiest. The receptionist. The insight that sets the main brand claim can come from anywhere.

Brand strategists need to always keep their eyes and ears open, because when the Duglacz Effect happen you need to be ready.

Peace.

 

Product Gesture vs. Product Experience.

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Experience is hot marketing word these days. It is rooted me thinks in user experience (UX), which started in the early days of the web when sites were hard to navigate and not intuitive. Ad and digital agencies caught on to experience a few years later as a way to create new buildables (content) and garner planning fees It didn’t hurt that “customer journey” and “communications planning” were smart ideas to begin with.

Product experience, some will have you believe, starts with communications and ends with the after-sale. The experience is everything in between. A lot of product experience buildables – designed to follow the AIDA principle: Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action — are online and in-store. But product gesture is different.

Product gesture is not so much about the product journey and surround as it is the “consuming experience.” (See my last blog post.) A product gesture is the olfactory response that occurs when you drive by a Burger King. It’s why “flame broiled” is such a powerful brand asset of BK. For Coke, whose long standing brand idea is refreshment, the moment when your head snaps back after a full swig of a newly opened Coke is induced by the product gesture. Google’s product gesture occurs during search when your problem is solved, you smile and twitch to act.

Every product has a gesture. Man-made gestures like the Stella Artois pour and glass are distant seconds, but they are gestures nonetheless.

Find your product gesture and you will find marketing and branding success.

What is your product gesture?

 

Product Gestures

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Guinness for strength
Guinness for strength

I once Tweeted: “The fastest way to brand loyalty: Don’t take customers for granted and provide them with unexpected, thoughtful product gestures.”

The word in this statement that excites me is gestures. It’s easy to see what a service gesture is, that’s a manmade experience, but a product gesture? Hmm. At the time I’m sure what I meant by product gesture was “service gesture,” or “corporate gesture.” However, now I’m looking at product gesture a little differently. A little more organically.

A rough definition of gesture is: A movement or action that is expressive of an idea, opinion or emotion. So let’s look at that for a second. When you pour a beer, is the head an expression? Of course it is. But of what? Freshness, glass cleanliness, taste? And don’t all beers have head? Indeed they do. Guinness Stout has a head, however that head is richer, fuller, made up of tinier bubbles due to carbonation from nitrogen not carbon dioxide. An organic product expression.  

When brand planners look for differentiation they can start by asking product managers and consumers what gestures derive from the product. Product gestures are part of the consuming experience not the marketing experience.

Tink about it as my Norwegian aunt might say. Peace.

(More on experiences vs. gestures tomorrow.)