Latest

    Marketing

    Some of My Favorite Bloggers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    1

    I follow lots of people but a couple of my favorites are Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim and Noah Brier. Charlene is just smart. She has morphed from a tech analyst to a social media expert to a management consultant, all within 3 years.  She’s a media darling who reinvents herself almost annually. Jeremiah Owyang, who works with Charlene at the Altimeter Group is also another schmarty pants.  He loves grids and quadrants, he loves to write, share and listen – and he loves to use technology.  Analytical with a capital A.

    Peter Kim is cut from the same cloth as Charlene and Jeremiah (all three are Forrester Research alums) but landed at the Dachis Group – a company filled with doers.  Dachis will crack the code on bringing Web 2.0 to the enterprise and make a banana boat of bucks doing so. Peter likes to mix it up a bit.  A proud man.  Then there’s Noah Brier — chief strategist at the Barbarian Group.  Like a racehorse in the paddock who you know will win the Derby someday, he’s exciting to watch.  The beauty about Noah is you just don’t know what’s next. He’s random, brilliant, a doer and he loves bounding about in that paddock.

    I wish these four blogged every day.  If they would just give me a 100-150 words (no more Jeremiah), I’d be satisfied and so, so nourished. Please hit those keys.  Peace!

    Innovation. In or out?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Clearly, innovation is always in.  Perhaps the bigger question is whether innovation should be pursued inside the company or out.  It’s happening both ways.  Innovation is big, big business. Ad agencies, digital shops and marketing companies have Chief Innovation Officers.  Lots of money is spent in internal innovation departments and outsourced innovation companies…and the crowdsourcing phenomenon is contributing.   Pepsi outsources its innovations and it has done remarkably well with it.

    Innovation is the result of hard work and serendipity. I am of the mind that it’s most likely to occur from people doing not people sitting around thinking.  The famous story of the 3M’s Post-It note resulting from a lab spill comes to mind.

    The answer to the in or out question is a little bit of both, but working together.    Inside to set the product or service stage and context — and outside for the random, unfettered thinking and consumer insights of trained selling and marketing minds.  Peace!

    Creating a Social Media Monster?

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Mission Control is a well-produced 76 second video by PepsiCo’s Gatorade ‘splaining how Gatorade marketing monitors the web for comments, chatter and potential product improvements. The “war room” at mission control is filled with AT&T NOC (network operations center) -like people in front of multiple monitors — their fingers on the pulse of Gatorade enthusiasts.  Looks like they are a busy bunch.

    Interspersed with the mission control pictures are great shots of Kobe, Serena, etc., helping viewers work up a sweat…which is what Gatorade is and should always be about.

    Right now this vid is kind of inside baseball for the marketing, advertising and social community – plus I think it’s being used in and around Cannes to round up votes. It’s a great spend, by Gatorade as they “set the stage for digital leadership.” I’ve written before that every large corporation in America will have a social media dept. and I believe it.  Smart senior agency people have nodded in agreement yet told me that the truly creative ideas and productions that hit wire/less will still come from agencies.  That, too, I believe.

    After a while though, after all marketers have jumped on this listening bandwagon and consumers are conditioned to provide product input, message input and marketing input, it will begin to dull the strategic senses. It will turn the world into a place filled with screen-scratching marketing interns, when what we really want to do is listen to the influential “Posters.” (Google whatstheidea+posters.)

     

    Let’s watch out for that monster that we are creating. Peace!

    Democratization of Information

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Back in the day, the only companies that could afford to amass and parse vast amounts of customer information – large enough to do trending and prediction – were the really big dogs.  Data and the money that purchased that data were power.  Today, not so much.  Today, if you want to open a pizza parlor in NYC, it’s not just about walking the streets, counting competitors and feeder locations (tall apartments, schools, nightclubs).  Today, there are free online tools. And more coming.   

    American Express Open.com

    American Express has helped democratize information by creating Open.com, a small business repository of data, skills refinement, community and tools which let small businesses make smarter decisions. If not now, in the future, these tools will include access to marketing data like Nielsen and MRI, so that if the pizza parlor start-up wants to know which zip codes in NYC index the highest for pizza consumption. Boom. Or he/she wanted to know what time of day those sales are most robust or weeks of the year? Boom. Might that pizza start-up want to know who serves the best pizza in that zip code according to pizza eaters? Boom. Or what are they saying about that pizza on their smart phones and tweets (Clean bathrooms, near the subway, dollar slices?). Boom.

    Today, smart companies like America Express and its Open.com and Booming programs are doing for small business what ERP did for larges businesses 15 years ago.  And there will be a wave of new cottage industries popping up to serve small business customers. ‘cause that’s what happens in a democracy. Peace!

    A View From HR

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Paul Gumbinner, a NYC recruiter, writes the great blog entitled View From Madison Avenue. He published a piece yesterday suggesting job seekers should never take career advice from parents or friends; the best advice comes people who study companies and “employee fit” for a living.  Brilliant counsel.

    As a brand planner, one trick I use to understand the market place I’m working in is to interview senior competing HR people in that category.  As Mr. Gumbinner I’m sure will attest, this technique generates lots of qualitative data about the market, the people, competitive set and chatter on the street. An HR person who interviews scores of mid-level and senior people a week in, say, the enterprise software business, tends to know who’s hot and what’s hot. You planners out there should try it. Nice shortcut. Peace!

    Tactical World.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that about 90% of the workers in advertising and marketing are consumed by tactics. “I want a new website.  We need an acquisition program. Our sales force is up 8% year over year.  The innovation team is cranking out some really great ideas.”

    We build things, we buy things, we read, write and communicate.  We hire and manage, then count the metrics and the change. But are these efforts always undertaken towards a strategic purpose?  More often than not the answer is “no.” 

    Every company needs to have a strategic mission. A brand strategy. And it needs key operating principles: Brand planks. Every employee at the company needs to know the mission and the planks. Go out today and ask a worker what their company strategy is, and with the possible exception of Zappos you are likely to hear “make money” or “be more profitable.” Then probe “What are your company’s three key operating principles?” and you’ll get that look dogs give you when you put the ball behind your back. Try it. Peace!  

     

    Listen and Lead.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    In Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership (which I have not yet read, but will), one of the premises is that leaders who really listen to customers are the most informed and prepared to deal with business issues. Because of social media’s prevalence and importance, this notion suggests that leaders who use the new listening channel (the web) are better leaders.  Good advice, for sure.  Those who know the name Andy Grove may remember that the first thing he did every morning upon hitting the office was to listen in on random customer service calls to his 800 number.   It was old school technology, but it was listening.  That’s why Intel succeeded.

    General Motors (GM) brand managers and its ad agency strategists at Goodby Silverstein and Partners have decided to stop using the word Chevy in favor of the full, formal name Chevrolet.  This is a strong brand management move. I yike it, as my daughter used to say. I don’t know the Chevrolet strategy, but can imagine this nomenclature move is intended to imbue the brand with a little more up-market sensibility. As GM nameplates are jettisoned, Chevrolet will be attempting to win over consumers who once bought pricier Oldsmobiles, Hummers, Pontiacs and such. Consumers will still say Chevy, but the people managing the brand will polish it with a finer cloth. They are exercising control. They are leading.

    Pop marketing pundits are telling us consumers own the brand.  Even the youthfully exuberant at P&G and others wielding great budget power are saying so. But if we cede control of marketing, strategy and leadership to the masses, we are being lazy. Listen yes…but lead. Peace!

    Thinking Apps.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Slide 4 in Mary Meekers’s Morgan Stanley presentation entitled “Internet Trends 2010” shows the pace of mobile internet adoption.  It compares iPhone/iTouch to that of  AOL’s desktop, Netscape desktop and NTT docomo iMode; laying out growth by users, by quarter from launch.

    iPhone’s Internet access tipped 86 million users in its 11th quarter – less than 3 years.  Let’s just say the others never came close to coming close. (Check out the chart on slide 4.) Smartphone growth is hockey sticking. Motorola is starting to get it. HP bought Palm and should buy some corporate share.  Blackberry is too big and too rich to fail, even though they’re getting a little paunchy around the middle. And we haven’t even started to talk about the software guys Google (after its trivestiture), Microsoft (drawing a blank) and carrier switch provider Alcatel-Lucent.

    Ladies and germs, smartphones are the future of computing, commerce and community. They will dock next to monitors and keyboards, but they are the device.  Think about the iPhone4’s new videoconference app. Wait for fingerprint apps, and galvanic skin response apps, sobriety apps….   Cool times, these.  Marketers, put on your thinking apps (I mean caps), innovation awaits! Peace!

    Redeeming Miles (on Twitter).

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Miles Nadal is probably the biggest name on the scene today in the advertising and communications business.  His holding company MDC Partners has been the only one with a positive stock performance during the global downturn. His spending on minority positions in small and mid-size shops with great leaders is what has built this empire. While the big holding company officers are watching their stocks depreciate, debating assets to sell, and arguing of which employment contracts to void, Mr. Nadal was roaming the planet seeking out smart people. The marketing business has always been powered by smart, forward looking people.

    I’d love to go to school on Mr. Nadal and have followed him on Twitter for a while — but he is an awful Tweeter. His tweets are inspirational quotes from others.  Aristotle?  Come on Mr. Nadal!  Building a business by finding and enabling smart people is one thing, extending that into Twitter may feel an “authentic” brand play, but it’s so disappointing.  Better to quote your own hires.  Better more, quote yourself. Posting other people’s stuff is a rage but from people like you we need original thought. Personal Twitter accounts are best when steeped in one’s personality. Give us some of dat Mr. Nadal.  Peace!  

    Think Bigger.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 3 American adults is obese. Excuse the pun, but that’s a huge market.  Are airlines doing anything about it?  Yep, seatbelt extenders.  On a plane in coach when the person in front of you puts back their seat, if you have a big belly, you can’t open your laptop. You can’t open your laptop if you have a medium belly.

    Besides clothing there are a ton of products that can be redesigned to fit the big form person. Beach chairs, lawn chairs, living room chairs.  Moving theaters should provide adequate seating for larger adults. Big is big business…just ask NBC.

    Wal-Mart or JC Penny’s would be smart to create a store brand catering to the big. Peace! 

    1...129130131...207Page 130 of 207
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv