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    Clean tech. Legs, lungs and muffin top.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The next big thing is clean tech.  Why is it the next big thing?  Because it’s good for the planet and that’s good for mankind.  Foursquare and mobile devices are good for investors, technology companies and engineering schools but I don’t always like what I see when humans  over use technology.  Kids who keep their heads down when walking into a room full of peers, hiding in their devices, is not a good thing…unless they’re communicating with a friend in Tunisia.  But that’s a story for another day. Back to clean tech.

    It’s easy to blame the automobile industry and the oil industry for messing up our planet’s future.  The simple fact is, in the U.S. we’re a driven country.  And not in an entrepreneurial way.  We drive everywhere. Mostly out of habit. We drive to the store to buy bicycle riding equipment. We drive to the health club.  We drive to the organic food store. We drive to weight watchers meetings. And we will drive to our clean tech jobs. 

    Are we nucking futs?  We really are a smart country but we’re conditioned.  If we start walking, and riding and skateboarding we can begin to eradicate diabetes, circulation problems, headaches (I’m making some of this up, but go with it), sleeplessness, muffin-top and man boobs. Clean tech is coming, but let’s use out legs and lungs to get there. Peace!

    4 Ps in Marketing. A lost art?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    They used to teach the 4 Ps in marketing classes: product, price, place and promotion.  The web and venture capital money have made place and price less important. Having worked at a start-up company for two years whose monthly revenue was about $8, received in the form of Google Adwords credits, I know.    

    But Apple…Apple clearly is gets all 4 Ps and therein lies its success.  Let’s look at the iPazzle.  Apple launched this new technology last year and priced it to move.  By all accounts, the first iPad should have cost $1,199, but it retailed at more than half that. The basic iPad 2 is $499.  Samsung and Moto can’t come close (without carrier discounts). Apple is reported to be making 25% profit on the current price structure, but I suspect it is way less.  They are not only buying market share, they are creating the market and doing so with the low price point. As for place (distribution) they have stores, so margins aren’t shared with  Best Buy. iMarketing? Enough said. And product? First is first and design is king.  Money and a big war chest begets R&D, talent and more money.

    The 4P are still relevant today and that is why Apple kicks azz. Google doesn’t get all 4 of the P and  though kids love that brand, but they will be let down by it at some point. The 15-27 year olds who love free operating systems and free software are the same kids being asked to work at internships for $50 a week.  Hope they live close to the office. Were I a twenty-something, I’d make sure “my employer got me some Ps? Peas!

    Music is Dying. And the Roots Backlash.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Here’s the problem with digital music.  It’s music.  And music consumption is being replaced by the internet and messaging. 

    Daily book readership, as a percentage of leisure time spent, took a major hit when the radio came around. Radio listenership diminished with the advent of TV.  TV is fluctuating but as baby boomers go asunder it, too, will take a back seat to the growth of whatever is next.  Even today, if you look closely at ear buds they’re tethered to people staring at the screens (video) not to people with with eyes closed, boppin’ to music.

    I don’t listen to much music anymore, unless I’m in a bar. Or when Pearl Jam or X come around.  I go to see Hot Tuna (Jorma and Jack) every year but friends orchestrate that.  A road trip to Williamsburg to see someone new like Justin Townes Earle is worthy, but I stumbled upon him by accident.  The radio really sucks.  Pandora is cool, perhaps the only thing that can save music, but the model is wrong. iTunes has sold 10 billion songs since 2003, but made negligible money (on the songs) doing so.  Music in the advertising  business used to be very important.  Now, most music on TV and radio ads is created by the algorithm.

    The music business has been mismanaged and mislead. It will come back — but Lady Gaga at $.99 a song will not do it. And it will never be where it once was.  As art become replaced by engineering, we lose our humanity note by note. The roots backlash will help the arts but it could get ugly.   Peace.

    Brand Planning Tip. Hear the Energy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    Over the years I’ve found many words around which to probe when interviewing people to get to important, actionable branding insights.  “Pride” is one such word.  On the business side “tolerance” is another.  “What are some other things you are willing to tolerate if they help you make money.” For building a business plan, I have the 24 questions.  If going short form, a diff battery of questions to get at what’s what. 

    But in all frankness, it’s not the forms; they are just a starting place — a brand planner has to have a good ear. And s/he turns that ear into a microphone that plays back what it hears into further probes…creating energy. If energy or heat is generated around an opportunity or an advantage, take that path because energy begets energy.  If the probee checks his or her mobile, abort and redirect.

    As an anthropology student at Rollins College, I was once rebuked by a peer who thought as an ethnographer I needed to stay outside of the events observed. By insinuating myself into the situation I changed it, and he was quite right. But as a brand planner, people want to know you care about what they care about.  Then they open up.  I’m not talking about panelists talking about their itchy asses behind the glass, I’m talking about two people looking into one another eyes, and talking with personal energy and interest. Ask, listen, learn. Go off piste if it is where the interview goes. Probees can see your interest in your eyes. They can hear it in the timbre of your voice. If you are energized, they will deliver. Peace.

    The Is-Does and Branding Fundies.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I came up with the branding Is-Does a while back because while operating in the technology sector I realized many start-ups don’t always know what their company “is.”  Oddly, it’s also true in some Fortune 500 companies. Case in point: the CEO of the world’s largest home care company for whom I did some consulting went around the room at an executive gathering asking each officer “What business do you think we’re in?” He was referring to the managed care part of the business, but it was still a billion dollar revenue stream. And the “is” is the easy stuff. The “does” is what gives people fits.

    A chief technology officer at software company I worked for could not answer the “What the business does?” question in a half hour.   

    The Is-Does is a wonderful brand planning starting point.  It’s not a mission, or a brand promise, elevator speech or brief. It answers the question what a brand “is” and what a brand “does.”  Keith Hernandez might call them fundies. 

    I was invited into a meeting at an important non-profit.  I say important because it was a community center in a under-served neighborhood trying to save lives and build lives. The meeting had close to 25 people including a song writer, teachers, web-o-files, marketers, community advocates, nutritionists and more.  The facilitator (a branding dude) had a huge pad, a marker and as he was getting ready to lay down some marketing rhymes, you could tell he didn’t know exactly where to start.  So I suggested the Is-Does. And off we went. Peace!

    Longer Employment Contracts?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    The speed of the Internet is pretty amazing.  In an instant a great idea like, say, Carla Emil’s “One Job For America,” can go viral and change the world (let’s hope so).  Businesses such as Groupon can launch with a real monetization plan and become a billion dollar company. Businesses without a real monetization plan can launch (Twitter) and do the same.  Much of it is because of technology and the Inter-nech. 

    But commerce in this world is still driven by people, IBM’s Watson aside. And people are often a company’s biggest asset.  If you leave a company they can wipe your hard drive but not your gray matter.  Something learned at company A can be re-envisioned at company B.  There is a lot of churn today in the corporate ranks and the freelance economy is also quite viable.  But I see a change in this churn behavior when I look beyond the dashboard. The Japanese used to talk about “employees for life.”  Well, even though this behavior seems unabashedly un-American, I see us moving in this direction. I expect to see at the top and mid-top levels of American companies employment contracts of much longer durations.  Just as a baseball team wants its #1 starting pitcher around for 7 years, smart companies moving at internet speed need their key difference- makers to stick around.  Had Ray Ozzie signed a 25 year contract, would that have made a difference? How about Tim Armstrong?  

    Movement from company to company can be a healthy thing for top executives, but staying and working within the system makes the system stronger.  This I see. Peace!

    CBS. FOX and Yahoo!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    CBS is a content company. Most think of it as a TV channel…with a bit of an integration problem across the country.  Different call letters, different channel numbers, not where it’s supposed to be on the dial when you move from city to city.  (See? Platform integration has always been around, it’s not just an issue for the TechCrunch crowd.)  CBS has always been dinged for catering to the older market. Well, in today’s media world the older market watches TV. Lots of it. And CBS’s quarterly numbers are quite strong, especially for local sales.   CBS owns C|Net and ZDNet, which along with other web properties, is helping the company diversify and learn about new targets, markets and categories.  CBS has radio, outdoor, book publishing, and other web properties in addition to cable and broadcast, which positions it nicely as all media moves towards the middle.  At its very core, CBS is a content play.

    And in a new media world where everyone’s a publisher therefore no one’s a publish, CBS continues to crank out content people want to watch, hear, and read.  This content strategy is also the strategy of AOL and Yahoo!.  Oddly, they are all competitors.  I know AOL and Time Warner didn’t make it, but that was then.  WABC (Disney) and WNBC (Comcast) have too much baggage.  Fox has the stomach for it (read MySpace), so I predict Yahoo!, or less likely AOL, will be purchased by Mr. Murdoch and FOX.  This would be the year to do it, too.   Peace!

    Innovation in Branding?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Innovation is a word I hear in brand planning meetings all the time.  Executives, brand managers and marketing partners love to camp out on it claiming its importance to their brands. If you don’t count technology, two categories come to mind as the primary innovation hounds: healthcare and banks.  In healthcare, marketers and their agents scurry around the hospital looking for innovation under every bed and when found hit publish.  Right next to their awards ad.  Banks are so mired a commodity status (TD Bank’s only claim to fame is the color green) that they create innovation just so they have something to say other than rate and service.   

    News flash!  Innovation is not a brand plank.  It’s lazy, fleeting and often a refundable deposit in the brand bank. Even Apple doesn’t get caught up in the innovation game. Their schtick is design. They innovate but don’t talk about it, showing design and apps.  If you did a tag cloud of every piece of copy Apple has run on TV over the last 15 years, I bet the other “i” word would turn up in only 4 point type.  Lee Clow, you on the tag cloud thing?

    Innovation is the price of doing business —  it’s not a branding value. Coddle it, couch it and canoodle it into your story but don’t try to be the Innovation company.  Peace@\!

    Shit My Brand Planner Says

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    A good brand planner has to love his or her brands. With that love in hand the planner can spend enough time and mental capital to really get close.  Past the label. Past the brand manager’s bias.   That means seeing a brands warts. Knowing the warts and working around them are the goal.  Consumers at their very core love patterns and predictability, but they also like new and optimism.  Have you ever tasted lettuce grown in your own garden?  It tastes better, no?  That because you want it to taste better. Optimism.

    In the advertising business there are a lot of people who live on snark.  Creatives don’t like clients who don’t buy their work.  Managers don’t like people who can’t make decisions or won’t follow directions. No one likes those who are focused on the broken not the fix.  Have you ever read the comments following an Adweek story?  There is so much envy and loathing it’s scary.  

    But brand planners have a nice job. A Zen job. To do it well  they need to like consumers  — to watch and listen. To find the love.  But don’t advertising it.  Are you listening Blackberry and Subaru.  Peace!

    Pepsi Earnings and Pepsi Refresh

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Here I go again about Pepsi Refresh.  Broken record,  I know. And please don’t think me a geeze for seemingly dis’ing media socialists and their heartfelt efforts to do good’s work on behalf of brands. (Liberal I am.)  But count the likes and clicks and friends and authenticity and opacity and, and, and in the soda category this week and two numbers stick out: Coke’s North American volume is up 3% and Pepsi’s is up 1%.  2 percentage points in market research may not seem like a lot, but in a billion dollar consumer business that some serious.  Especially in the much attacked sugar water marekt. Right Michelle?

    Coke’s earning, announced this week, were kicking on all cylinders. First time in a long time. And Pepsi’s were down, overall.  No wonder Pepsi chief Indra K. Nooyi took a couple on the chin in the analysts call.   To be read in a whining voice “Commodity prices, really killed us. Considering the economy we did gre- ate.”  Well watch Mad Men.  Commodity prices have always been a problem for which one must be prepared.  Playing with pop marketing tactics, not well integrated into your core value prop or linked to an ersatz brand plank, do not a great earnings report make.  Head down. Sell soda. Peace!

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