Latest

    Marketing

    The Real “Situation.”

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Before SI meant Sports Illustrated it meant Situationist International, a European movement intended to create social change through loud, startling political events.  Anyone familiar with the punk movement knows Malcolm McLaren (RIP).  Mr. McLaren sired the Sex Pistols, practiced SI and was a huge music and cultural catalyst.  In the 50-70s the Situationists were angry and focused on political change. When Mr. McLaren introduced punk to the world and NYC in the 70s he was angry but he was a lot more.

    Just as Greenwich Village called to America’s gay and lesbian communities back in the day, punk placed a call to the country’s disaffected youth in search of their own Woodstock… and they came to downtown NYC in droves.  It was an interesting time, with lots of layered social texture. Mr. McLaren was a big part of this movement.

    Marketing Situation.

    A handful of marketing companies today attempt to acculturate products into our lives. Strawberry Frog, for one, is very vocal about creating “cultural movements.”  Experiential marketing companies such as Momentum look to jump-start change in new and unique product-centric ways thought events and promotions.  As the internet, mobile and geo-location grow in marketing stature we will begin to have more and more fun using these tools to drive sales — but let us remember Mr. McLaren: All tool and no movement can make for a soft, smarmy effort. Peace!

    Important! Brand Names.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    What’s in a name?  Everything.  Would Tiger Woods have attracted the same attention (hmm, hmm) had his name been Frederick?  Would McDonald’s have enticed as many coffee drinkers had they named it McCoffee?  Would the iPhone had the same penetration with the name Nexus?  Hee hee. 

    Your brand name is your package…without the package.  A good brand name is critical.  I love my brand “What’s the Idea”? It’s active. It challenges thought. Has a bit of a NY edge. As a brand planner, it defines what I do: Find the business building brand idea. 

    Zude vs. Mashpan

    If brands are empty vessels into which marketers pour meaning, then colorful descriptive vessels have a head start.  I worked for a very cool web property called Zude.  The CTO used to say “dude” a lot and no one owned the Zs so that’s what we went with. Doh. Zude was the world’s first drag-and-drop, free form social computing property.  I used to say “If you can drag and drop and type, you can have a website.” There were very few objects on the web you couldn’t drag onto your Zude page.  I lobbied for the name Mashpan.  “Mash” being shorthand for mash-up and “Pan” meaning everyone, everywhere, everything. (Mashpan also sounds like a home brewer’s tool…and I like beer.)  Zude vs. Mashpan may have been a billion dollar decision.

    Hey start-ups, sweat the name. And for those of you thinking about changing your name? Should you have a nice pour in your vessel already, think twice. Peace!

    Digital Black Eye.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Last week a VP of human resources was telling me about a “digital strategist” position he was trying to fill. His was a digital shop whose roots were in SEO and SEM.  The client roster was a veritable Who’s Who and they were growing like a dookie but wanted to expand in the direction of web and application development and better compete against the likes of Razorfish, Big Spaceship, and R/GA.

    Again, the job was “digital strategist.” Listen to what he had to say and I paraphrase: “Our digital strategists are hybrids and kind of hard to find.  They are part account manager, part technologist, ideation generator, account planner and handler of analytics.” Pause for effect.

    First of all, this person doesn’t exist except maybe at the highest level of a company.  Good shops need 5 departments to do all this well. These disciplines are so different my head is spinning.  Here’s a technology word for this shop “scalability.”  And here’s a prediction: There won’t be any Cannes Cyber Lions or 4As Jay Chiat Awards in this shop’s reception area any time soon.  Worse, this approach will give digital shops a black eye. You might be able to search for these keywords online, but not on street.  OMG. Peace!

    Meaningful Memorable Context.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Product placement is a funny thing; more often than not when you see a brand in a movie or a TV reality show it’s been placed there at a price.  Most of the time, those placements are heavy-handed and disruptive — not a good thing.  If a viewer feels the product has been curated into a story it suspends belief.  Kind of like bad acting.

    When discussing commercial social media I often refer to the need for the brand poster – the person posting on behalf of the brand — to create a persona, complete with a tangible, obvious motivation.  For Zude.com, for instance, “Tip-Z” was created as a roving help person.  She assisted people with the drag and drop application, but she did so as a bit of a tippler. Hic.  So some of her help came out a bit garbled, goofy and funny.  Personality flaws aside, it made Tip-Z real.

    Product placement on TV that doesn’t fit or social media personalities that lack personality underachieve. Content may be king but context is key.  One way around what Steve Rubel calls “The Attention Crash” is to create muscle memory for brands.  While others are out there shamelessly hawking product and services one on top of the other, smart brands are standing out because they create memorable context. Meaningful, memorable context. Peace!

    CNN and Militiagan.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    CNN is tanking.  Its ratings are down. Its ad revenue is down. Fox News is eating its dinner. When I think of CNN I think Wolf freakin’ Blitzer.  Ask a middle age woman in the grocery store about CNN and she’ll likely say “Oh, that Anderson Copper.”  Ask your parents?  Larry King.  Ask a kid and the response will be “Isn’t that the Vampire Diaries channel?

    CNN is at its best during crisis.  It is where people turn for the best coverage. That is where I went to watch the Tsunami not bear down on Hawaii.  CNN is the place for serious news, yet it has seemingly lost its way.   It must stop playing around with Twitter and touch screens and interactive maps. Most of its reporting takes place in the studio.  CNN needs some youthful exuberance. If Mark Zuckerberg can help found a bazillion dollar company, CNN can find some young interesting news junkies to rove the planet and kick up a story or two.

    The Fix.

    Here’s what management needs to do. Conduct market research among the next generation of news consumers –twenty- and thirty-somethings. Find out what they want, and don’t tell me a mobile news app.  Search for some rock star passionate journalism school kids hungry to make a better world.  Give them jobs.  Don’t go the eye candy route, that is so 1970s.  Hire Nicholas Kristof as a consultant then shutter the studio for 3 weeks and take CNN on the road.  Set up a remote desk on the back roads of Militiagan or Lubyanka subway station in Moscow. Fire a suit and hire a camera person.  Fire an accountant and hire a sound person.  Find the news to make the news. Take back what you once so proudly owned.   Peace!

    Ogilvy, clams and uncle Carl.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Oglivy is running a contest in search of the world’s best salesperson.  The contest has its own YouTube channel and with lot of kids graduating in few weeks it is likely to generate lots of entries.  The winner gets a 3-month stint at Ogilvy One.

    David Ogilvy started his illustrious career by selling vacuums door-to-door.  He once said, and I paraphrase, “Our business is infected by people who have never sold a thing in their lives.”  His point being, until you look a consumer in the eye while trying to convince them to part with their money, you haven’t practiced the craft.  Copywriters, art directors, coders need to leave the building in other words.

    Clams

    As a kid growing up on Long Island, I would never eat a hard shell clam.  Buried in the mud, looming like viscera on the shell, briny and showing an otherworldly rainbow of colors, clams weren’t happening here. Not until uncle Carl came in from the West coast, that was.  The rapture with which Uncle Carl slathering these babies onto his tongue, the giggles of enjoyment, the satisfaction in his eyes were not normally reserved for food.  His smile, conquest-like, following the downing of his hard shelled bounty were for me life changing. I was a convert within minutes. And I’ve never looked back.

    Salesmanship

    What does it take to “turn” someone from a hater to a fan? Salesmanship. That’s People, Place and Thing.  The People are believable spokespeople — an expert or someone really trusted.  Place has to do with context. Corona sells better on the beach. And Thing, the Thing is the tangible reason to believe. The Thing isn’t someone “telling you to buy” it’s the unique good the product offers when purchased or used.  In uncle Carl’s case the Thing was his palpable rapture.  Get all three right and you are selling.  Otherwise, you are just broadcasting. Peace!

    An Unexpected Show of Caring.

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    My wife does Yoga at Fitness Incentive in Babylon a couple of mornings a week and she just retuned asking if I would smell her.  The instructor, you see, had sprayed some lavender on her at the end of today’s session, saying something about its soothing properties.  This was an unexpected show of caring on the part of the instructor. 

    Marketers would do well to learn from the instructor and offer unexpected demonstrations of caring to customers.  Bob Gilbreath, chief marketing strategist at Bridge Worldwide, is building a brand and a movement around Marketing with Meaning.  Is an unexpected show of caring marketing with meaning?  Most certainly.  

    Expected

    When leaving a store and someone says “thank you for shopping at ____” it’s nice, but not unexpected.  While at a restaurant with spoon to mouth and the proprietor sticks his smiling face in asking “Everything alright?” — this may be unexpected but it is not a real show of caring. While at Mary Carrol’s Pub and the bartender buys back after your third quaff, unexpected?  Not really. Good business, yes, but not necessarily a show of unexpected or caring. 

    Caring and thank you are two different things.  The latter requires thought; it’s a skill actually. Twitter can be used as an example of unexpected caring, used correctly.  A coupon dispenser is not caring.  Customer service is not caring, it’s the price of doing business. When Steve Jobs, as was reported in the news yesterday, answers an email to a customer it is unexpected. And it’s caring.   

    Let’s get on with it marketers!  When you leave the building each day ask yourself “What did I do to show a customer – not every customer – I care about them in a surprising way. Lavender anyone?

    Optimism vs. Other

    By
    Steve Poppe
    -
    0

    Let’s face it, it’s been a crazy tough economy for everyone.  Especially marketers and those in advertising related businesses. Were it not for internet search and social media (ways to keep moving at reduced costs) things would have been even worse.

    When money is tight people fall into two distinct categories: optimists and pessimists. The whole pessimism thing is easy to diagnose and figure out.  It is an alterable condition cured by the passage of time.  The optimism thing is harder to understand. And in business it’s less prevalent.  Is it tied to a special neural gene?  One thing that goes hand-in-hand with optimism in my view is the ability to view things not just in the here and now but with a historic perspective. Time passes.  There is a now, a future and a past. Optimists tend to see them all.

    New York University

    New York University is an example of an institution surrounding itself with optimism. NYU has grand plans to grow the school’s footprint, stature and academic standing over the next 20 years.  They will succeed because of optimism and planning.  Do you think the day after healthcare passes and a huge part of the populace is angry is a good time to talk about this huge investment – probably not.  That’s optimism.

    When you meet marketers and corporate leaders you can often tell immediately which camp they fall into. And trust me it’s always best to do business with optimists. Not those of the “head in the clouds” variety but realists who are builders and forward lookers.  Brands, businesses, organizations and departments need good leadership. Optimism and a positive view forward are cornerstones. Steve Jobs?  Optimist.  Peace it up!

    1...132133134...207Page 133 of 207
    © Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv