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    Marketing Strategy

    Category Experience Can Be Bull Shite.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I can count on 10,000 fingers the number of times I’ve come across hiring scenarios where people are looking for category experience. Steeped, repetitive, ingrained category experience is drawing the life out of innovation. That’s why the web and app-based tech sector is so vibrant. It’s only a few years old.

    I have a really smart friend with lots of marketing muscle who owns a consulting business. She is employing a team of business development “hunters” to grow business by targeting certain categories: healthcare, tech, automotive, etc.

    But what if she took a different tack? What if she looked at the business problem from the perspective of prospects? What if the hunters were organized not by business category, but by growth category? For instance, companies growing by 100% a year, companies growing by double digits, companies growing by single digits. Or how about companies holding at zero growth, or losing revenue by double digits?

    Then allow the hunters to devise strategies tailored to these segments. The marketing tactics for the high growth companies are immensely different than those of no growth companies. The strategies for single-digit growers differ broadly for single digit losers.

    The fact that a company is in a category presents neither a problem or an opportunity, so why do marketing consultants roll that way? Revenue growth and the speed of revenue growth are what companies need to learn about and affect. Freshies.

     

    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!

    Sears Spanish Inquisition

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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.   

    Strategy or Brand Strategy. Hmmm.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    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.

     

    Black Eyed Peas for Volkswagen.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Pop quiz.  You are thinking of buying a new car.  A Volkswagen Beetle is among your choices. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say you are 25 years old.  Here’s a marketing multiple choice:

    A.     You’re invited to a special free concert with the black Eyed Peas performing. There are Volkswagen Beetles positioned at the entry points to the concert.  There is mad signage and car pictures projected on screen throughout the concert but the performers never mention the words Beetle or Volkswagen.

    B.     You like the Black Eyed Peas and buy a ticket to their concert. At the show there are no physical cars on display, but there are large display ads tastefully arrayed around the concert space showing car, brand and promise.

    C.     Fergie, in workout clothes, is photographed leaving the gym of her personal trainer. She looks particularly aglow and has a hand darting around her bag looking keys — about to get into her new black Volkswagen Beetle.

    I can tell you what an event marketing company would pick. And charge. I can suggest what a typical social media company would select (all three, they rarely care.) And I can tell you what a PR company would prefer. Heavy on one, but all three would generate fees.  There is only one true answer here. And that answer is fundamental to marketing. And you all know which one it is. Marketing is hard. Peace!

    PS. Answer “A” actually happened… and it’s not correct.

     

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