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    Marketing Strategy

    What to Expect From Ads on Apple iPad.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Where to start?

    The ads that will adorn the Apple iPad on April 3rd are going to be pretty interesting.  First, if they are good, they’ll be more like selling applications than ads.  Those who create selling apps rather than Adobe InDesign and static display ads (iPads don’t take Flash yet) will have the early wins.   

    Selling Apps

    Selling apps that come from ad shops where the creative dept. was the lead (not the media dept.) will also win. That said, brands that team up on the selling app will do even better.  Those who team the objective, strategy, measurement, idea, creative, digital production and follow-up are more likely to have an app than an ad.   But that takes time, resolve and a new process…which is expensive.  Did I mention time?  If you started this week, you’re toast.  The best iPad selling apps won’t be the result of a great piece of “creative” or creative media buy, they will result from cross-silo efforts.

    Super Pasters

    Just being there on April 3rd will be a win for advertisers. There are currently 200,000 pre-orders for iPads. How may of those people do you think have taken the day off? Exactly.  Followers of What’s the Idea? know about Posters vs. Pasters. Well, in terms of the tech target, the first people seeing iPad ads will be Super Posters. Their blog posts, vlogs, podcasts and Tweets will abound. The iPad’s first audiences will be techies and those in creative businesses – a very viral and powerful target. And the world will be watching. Interestingly, the first big brands buying ads will be: Unilever, Toyota, Chase, Fidelity, and FedEx — not what you’d expect as a high indexing techie target. Korean Air, on the other hand, that’s a good fit. Should be very interesting. Peace!

    Data and Product Recalls.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Every product purchased in a store using price scanners creates a record. More often than not that record is tied to a credit or debit card.  Consumer products befouled in manufacturing, like liquid children’s medicines from McNeil Consumer Healthcare, or collapsing baby strollers, bad tomatoes, sticky brake pedals, etc., also create purchase records.  Why not use these records to alert purchasers to recalls. I’m no analytics nerd but this seems like a no-brainer.  

    The way recalls are handled today is messy.  And, dare I say, not particularly transparent (sorry for the markobabble).  The ability exists for marketers to do one-on-one contact with purchasers of faulty or dangerous products.  No longer is there a need to scare everybody. No longer the need to make us check our cabinets and refrigerators for lot numbers. No more hiding recall information on website FAQs pages. No more expensive newspaper ads filled with obfuscation. 

    Let’s use data collection for good, not just for cross-selling, up-selling and McPestering.  Good data.  Good boy.  Roll over.  Peace!

    What Really Matters…Is Everything.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    If I’ve read it once, I’ve read it a hundred times.  “Use service X and it will free you up to do what really matters.” 

    I first ran into this strategy when working on an AT&T Outsourcing business years ago. It was probably a precursor to hosted web services with some consulting thrown in.  A typical B2B strategy, this presumes ancillary business practices aren’t as critical as is your main business. Cheese makers make cheese, it’s their passion. Retail, shipping, human resources, marketing are plumbing; some might say secondary, and as such outsourceable. Or automatable.

    Bullshit.

    Trying to automate or outsource parts of your business so you can do something you are “good at” is a cop out. You need to be good at all parts of your business. It’s the required heavy lifting that gets you to success.  Everything is important. The entire body must work together. Every vessel. Every organ.

    Where it gets to be fun for me is when a client sees this and uses brand strategy to infiltrate each and every department. This is how to build corporate muscle. When every department is valued and working toward the same end it build antibodies, to carry the metaphor even further.

    Don’t outsource anything. Not your social media. Not your hiring. Not your financial oversight.

    Love and build your entire business.

    Peace.  

     

    Strategy or Brand Strategy. Hmmm.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    When I’m on a roll – and it’s not often, thanks to PCMS (Post Covid Malaise Syndrome), everything I see and read in the news is viewed through a strategic lens. It’s, as the kids would say, strategy fire. Today, for instance, it started with a glance about  a NYT piece on the speed with which Nokian Tyre’s changed manufacturing strategy.  With climate change, geopolitical results-driven planning and change. And they realize quick change is better than sluggish change. The new environment is the catalyst of this change, but strategy the driver.

    Notice I didn’t use the word brand one time in that paragraph.

    The brandscape was kind enough to teach me my craft yet the word “brand” diminishes what I do for a living. When I position around brand, it sounds cool, trendy and au courant, but it’s not a wining communications value. No one wakes up in the morning thinks brand strategy is the business answer.

    When I think about it I am really a strategist.  I find business-winning values, actions, tasks (read: strategies) that add money to the top line and bottom line. My work doesn’t feed the ad agency. It feeds the business and everyone in it.  Which then feeds the consumer.

    When Nokia Tyre decided to open a manufacturing plant in Hungary because of the war in Ukraine, they weren’t, per se, using a strategic road map or what I like to call “an organizing principle for product, experience and messaging.” They were looking purely at supply chain, cost of business, security, ROI timetable and investment strategy. They were blocking and tackling.  Had they an organizing principle of values to drive all decisions, before they met to solve the many layered challenges, their “time-to-solve” would have been faster and more organized. And, honestly, it was quite fast to begin with.

    Strategy would have sped up the process.

    For examples of how my strategy based upon proof has worked for other companies, write Steve at WhatsTheIdea.

    Peace.

     

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