Yearly Archives: 2012

Apple should retire the iPad2.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Technology marches on and that was evident yesterday in San Francisco when Apple announced “the new iPad” (not iPad3 as some expected it to be called). Taking the hottest product on the market and improving it almost before it has had a chance to massify is an exciting Apple tactic.  That’s vision stuff — without the vision marko-babble, i.e., doing rather than saying.  But here’s the rub – and it’s a little rub.  Apple should retire the second generation iPad which it is now pricing at $399. That would be very Jobsian if you ask me.

Innovation and design should never be put on hold – for a company like Apple it’s a step backward.  A second best iPad priced a hundred dollars lower encourages consumers toward the wrong behavior. Yes, it gets more people into the market and increases market share, but it’s a marketing tactic for challenger brands not leaders.

My 2 cents.  Peace!

Papa John’s. Better ingredients, better ads.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It’s time to retire John Schnatter from the Papa John’s advertising.  The founder of Papa John’s, the number 3 national pizza chain in America, has long been the focal point of its advertising.  The only other constant has been the line “better ingredients, better pizza”  Not a bad strategy but an unrequited strategy if you ask me.

Better ingredients do make a better pizza, when properly cooked and assembled — with meticulous attention to cooking detail. But all we get is Papa John talking to the director behind the camera on a football field somewhere with a forced smile and a few red tomatoes flopping around the screen.  The dude is a great business man, but has an almost Mark Cuban-like need for air time.

Please sir, go to Italy and cut a deal on some mountain grown olive oil or hand milled flour and get us better ingredients. Better ingredients, better story, better pizza. Peace! 

The Craft Economy

By
Steve Poppe
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0

One of my first insights as a young planner while working at Poppe Tyson on a brand called Ravensburger, maker of wooden puzzles and educational games, was the insight that competitors who were flooding the market with what we called “junk games” borrowed from the term junk food. 

Some might disagree with me on this, but I’m afraid a good deal of the products we consume today can be classified as junk. Products for most of the populace are not build to last. Clothes, sneakers, outerwear purchased for under ten dollars at discount stores start unraveling on the way home. But what the heck, they didn’t cost anything.

Carlota Perez, an economist interviewed by Fred Wilson at Web 2.0 last year, says the way forward for our planet is to make products that use less raw material, last a long time and can be serviced by real people earning a wage. This mentality is what I’m calling the Craft Economy.

If we make and consume craft products, we’ll take better care of them.  Craft beer isn’t swilled the way mass market pasteurized beer is.  It’s savored.  Refrigerators that last 25 years, a pair of shoes that are resoled rather than tossed – these are the things of a craft economy. Let’s lose disposable everything. Razor blades. Paper towels. Let’s use more natural products and think sustainability.

The craft economy is coming. And as a trend it will grow faster as economists start building cases for the inherent savings. More Etsy, less junk. Peace!

Google and Facebook Stank.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Google and Facebook are beginning to get a little stink on them due to all this privacy talk in the press and social web.   It’s like a drum beat.  The latest chatter is about the ability for geo-tagged personal photos be crawled and shared on the web without permission, thanks a to some hacks, apps and data scavenging.  It is also happening on Apple iPhones (according to today’s NYT) but Apple’s privacy rep is too strong, and they will do something about quickly.

As Facebook and Google stay reactive to this type of thing, rather than be proactive or preemptive, their images stain.  Blackberry, on the other hand, focuses on privacy; its geo-tagging photo app is a bit more transparent (Do I smell an ad?).

Priv-acy (love the Brits) is topical because it is a very human value.  The social web is helping us realize privacy is over-rated and that’s pretty that’s cool but it’s still something we need to control and protect.  If the target of this privay news was Microsoft the market would go ballistic. Because it’s Google, not so much.  But they (and Facebook) had better clean the smelly stuff off their sneakers quickly. Peace!

Facebook Advertising and Creativity.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Facebook had a big marketing day in NYC yesterday at the American Museum of Natural History.  They shared how they’re going to garner big excitement in the advertising world by creating new opportunities for marketers and their agents who advertise on Fotch-book. Advertiser pages will have special functionality, new ad positions will open up, mobile ads will be more something and, of course, data and ad tailoring will improve and be revolutionary.

This is Facebook’s post IPO.

The problem with all these announcements is two-fold.  People don’t like ads, because most of them are poorly constructed, and people don’t like those who profit excessively from anything.  Jeremy Lim anybody?

So if Facebook and marketers are going to make this work, the ads (20-30 words though they may be) are going to need to be better. On a NYT cover story today, it was mentioned that 250 millisecond load time is competitive advantage for a website. That being said, do you think a crappy ad in your load or stream is going to be welcome?  And if the universe of unique daily ads goes from 500,000 to 10 million, are those ads likely to be good, creative and engaging?  Creativity will be at a premium. This is going to be a wild ride. Peace.

Visuals.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There is subtext in every marketing piece.  For instance, today there is a big hubbub (and rightfully so) about a Mad Men outdoor billboard showing Don Draper in free-fall high atop a building on the West Side of Manhattan.  (The board is 95% white space.) To show watchers it’s an iconic visualization of the show and Don Draper’s life.  To New Yorkers and others who lost friends and loved ones 9/11, it’s an insensitive punch in the como se llama. 

Visuals, more than words, tell immediate stories. We need to be mindful.  Pictures that show danger may be eye-catching but convey danger which research shows can transfer that feeling subconsciously to the brand.  Imagery that conveys happy (Coke’s happiness factory) can transmute smiles.  Visuals that depict chaos or disorganization similarly hurt an organization story.

Ergo, think before you select a visual.  Not everyone sits around a computer for hours trying to select a visualization to match a brief.  Most pass marketing pieces with nary a glance.  So look up. Stay true. Be sensitive. Peace.

Advertising’s Drivel Fest.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I enjoy simplification.  Almost daily I refer to marketing and branding as consisting of claim and proof. Organized proof. Why is it that so many marketers don’t use proof – preferring platitude?  Health care organizations that can cut your brain open, re-jigger the synapses, cauterize a bleeder but only capture that in an ad with some drivel about “uncompromising care” or “unparalleled treatment?”

Most advertising today is a drivel-fest.  Who is writing this stuff?  Who is approving it? Is an algorithm doing it?  Ads used to make you feel.  Now they inform and if we’re lucky make us laugh. But they do very little else. 

I learned a lesson at AT&T in the 90s.  Build a book of proof.  Find the proof that is most evocative and convincing and celebrate it.  If we find our claim, organize the proof and acculturate it into the company, drivel is easily illuminated and becomes quite unacceptable.  Peace.

 

Context in Marketing and Planning

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Ben Benson’s Steak House is a classic New York steakhouse.  Meat, potatoes, spinach and big drinks.  In the 80s I used to do some fun advertising for Ben, when the “steakhouse wars” were the rage. Lots of creative print advertising in the city with Poppe Tyson, my dad’s agency, and creative director Fergus O’Daly in the bull’s eye.

One of my best marketing ideas at the time, which I pitched to Ben, was to offer captains of industry who frequented the establishment on rainy days a free Ben Benson golf umbrella, if they left theirs at the office. Follow the color scheme, make the logo big but delicate and provide best customers with a meaningful spiff.  Oh, and the advertising walking around midtown wouldn’t hurt. I could get the umbrellas for about $19 a piece, printed. 

“You know how many steaks I have to sell to pay for one of those umbrellas?” asked Ben.   “My sirloins (remember, if was the 80s) retail for $24 and cost me $18.   I’d have to sell 3 steaks to pay for one umbrella.”  This, from a guy running a multi-million dollar steakhouse with a $100,000 ad budget. Still, in Ben’s mind steaks jumping across plates was context.  Understand the context of your customer before you sell them and you have a higher chance of success. Peace.

(Psst Ben.  Your sirloins are $50 today and an umbrella is still about $19 – just sayin’.)

 

Sears Big Opportunity

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m no demographer but it doesn’t take a numbers nerd to know that a growing and sizeable portion of America is populated by Hispanics and Latinos.  Name a national retail store brand that caters to this group?  In NY we have independent bodegas, but that’s about it.  Among the retailers that index high for the Hispanic and Latino communities, the one I think should attempt to corner the market is Sears. 

The company is talking about selling off its most profitable stores to generate cash but the bold move – the future-forward move – would be to go “all Spanish all the time.”  Find the high density markets, tailor the skews, hire the right sales associates, alter the layout and colors.  Celebrate Spanish culture in a store retrenchment that will not only save the company but make it thrive. The Sear Roebuck Catalog was a cornerstone of America marketing. Sears can create another transformational marketing moment by following our changing demographics. Be bold, be brave… as they might say at David & Goliath.

Peace (in Syria)!

Promises vs. Deeds

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m all about the deeds.  In marketing, promises are like air. Deeds on the other hand are few and far between. Okay, bringing coffees to a sale call is a deed. So is lunch.  But they are not brand-meaningful deeds. For a great reference on meaningful marketing check out Bob Gilbreath’s bookThe Next Evolution of Marketing.  Deeds are about putting your money where your mouth is.  About delivering proof that you care. Words are important. Deeds are marketing currency.  Deeds make one believe the words.

The first print ads were no doubt all type.  Words. Then came the ability to reproduce pictures in ads so marketers could pair products and usage with the words. Advertising now is in end-benefit land.  Yet it still feels like “me” advertising not “you” advertising. When we market through deeds rather than promises we connect.  We create muscle memory for our brand ideas.

One good deed can support months and months of promises. And I meaningful it.  Hee hee. Peace!

 

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