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    Open Your Eyes Chrysler Fiat.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Quick, close your eyes. Conjure up an image of a Chrysler car. Got it? Now, next to it, plop down a Fiat. (Is it red?) Okay using your brain processor, morph the two cars together. Not a bad car.

    Wipe that image clean and think of a typical GM car. Put an Opel next to it. (Is the Opel lime green?) Okay morph the two together. A little funkier, but probably no worse than a Hyundai. (Did you know Hyundai sales are up 49%?)

    This simple  exercise demostrates what is happening in the auto world today. GM decided to keep Opel and Chrysler is hoping its takeover by Fiat will create some compelling new cars designs. These aren’t marriages of geography or global penetration, they’re about big cars vs. little cars. These big car-little car discussions should have been taking place 5 years ago.

    The combination of Chrysler and Fiat has great design and engineering upside. Fuel efficient, sporty, Italian-influenced designs make a nice brand bed for the combined company to lie in. Build the new brand around these qualities (think baby Sebring rag top not Town and Country) and you begin to see some serious light. Meep meep. Open your eyes now. Peace!fiat-linea-titel

    ROS

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    scaleROS stands for Return on Strategy. It’s a chop block on the pop marketing term ROI which stands for Return On Investment (for members of the clan of the cave bear).  ROI is an important marketing measure but way more tactical and transitory than ROS. ROI without a strong understanding of Return On Strategy can do more harm than good – prolonging a misguided marketing plan. (“Weeee, our cost per customer is down!”)

    In order to measure marketing strategy one must first have a strategy. Make more money is not a marketing strategy, nor is sell more products. For a hospital system, I once arrayed a number of measures that would positively impact the bottom line: patients per year, percentage of beds occupied, recruitment of excellent physicians, reduction in number of in-hospital infections, out-migration to the city, consumer perception of clinical excellence. The marketing director and even the ad agency principals pushed back “Advertising can’t do all these things.”

    My response? “Sure it can — if we articulate the right strategy.” One needs to know all the important measures of success before developing a brand or marketing strategy. The next step is to prioritize those measures. Some will be at odds with others and decisions must be made. Others will be tougher to move based on competitor entrenchment. However, once all of the key performance indicators (KPI) or measures are known and prioritized based on product and marketing realities and brand vision, the strategy can be determined. And over time — measured. That’s the real weeee. Peace!

    Personal Brand Journalism.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    People read blogs for the same reason they read magazines. Good content. The best place to find good reporting, news and analysis used to be in newspapers and magazines. If you could write, that’s what you wanted to be. A journalist. If you could think, analyze and persuade, journalism was your career path.

    A few years ago a new class of journalist entered the scene: the blogger. Many started on LiveJournal as public diarists then branched out posting about what they loved: music, technology, sports, etc.   Lo and behold they developed followings. Even without formal journalism training, these bloggers connected with readers. The language used in these blogs changed — got more fun and conversational — and newspaper columns slowly began to followed suit. (No rolling over Mr. Safire.) This new class of journalism became a popular, free and immediate option for readers.

    And now with newspaper and magazines closing bureaus and shedding writing staff, where are all the once-bylined writers going? To the web. To their own branded sites. And once they smell the success of their own personal brands, once they start fielding speaking engagement requests, once they have their million hit days, there will be no going back. Personal brand journalism is here to stay.

    The Ford Story

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    ford

    Ford Motor Company does not really have a campaign today. An old mentor of mine, Peter Kim (now deceased), once told a very important client that “campaigns are overated.” The Ford story is not a “Drive One” campaign story – it’s a lot of little ones.

    It’s social media stories curated by Ford’s Scott Monty. It’s leadership demonstrations by CEO Alan Mulally. It’s smart marketing directed toward millennials, the next generation of car buyers. It’s a promotion where a 100 cars not yet available in the U.S. are given to average Joe and Jane bloggers to drive for a year. And for the tech-savvy it’s a cool product like v.2 Sync the in-car software that in the future will have the ability to shut down texting while the car’s in motion. For motor heads, how about a newly engineered engine that offers V8 power with V6 fuel efficiency. Or the Edge that goes beep-beep when you are about to back into a fire hydrant?

    This is a car company that smelled the Starbucks and decided to do something. A lot of somethings. This is a car company that is showing, not telling. Ford is rebuilding an American car company with good product, forward product development and no campaign. The story is a wee bit disorganized, but the gestalt is that this company is beginning to win – on many fronts. And Bill Ford deserves credit for getting out of the passing lane for a few miles. Go Ford Go. Peace!

    Curators Wanted.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Two disruptive trends one can observe on many a marketing street corner these days are “user generated content” and “crowdsourcing.” Like them or not, they’re here. Everyone knows what user generated content is – the creation and sharing of online media content (text, pics, song and video) – but crowdsourcing is a little more inside. Crowdsourcing is the practice of offering up a creative assignment to many, who work for free (or a pittance) in the hope of having their work selected for a one-time fee.

    People who participate in either of these areas are your more creative types. Crowdsourcers are often freelancers, tyros, or out-of-work, and on the UGC side the net gets wider – some of the people more creatively challenged. Both these marketing practices create the need for another function: Curation.

    I once created a contest for ZDNet in which 23,000 50-word essays needed to be read and judged. “Who gonna do that?” Exactly. We hired temps for the initial culling of the herd. For a crowdsourced logo design competition with 600 entries who will evaluate the work? For an online newspaper with, 175 local stories send in my citizen reporters, who is going to decide what publishes? A curator.

    Don’t be surprised to see the word curator appear more and more on Craigslist and business cards. Peace!

    Marketers and “How-To” Videos.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I learned to make risotto last night. My first time. I’d made paella before which uses the same rice and I’d read a bunch of recipes, but it wasn’t until I actually watched someone make it on a video that I tried.

    How-to videos are big business. And getting bigger.

    Reading a recipe and seeing it done in living color with a voiceover are two completely different experiences. That’s why cooking shows are so popular. Someone I was chatting with last week used YouTube to learn how to set up his son’s Xbox. Want to make up some cement to patch your driveway? There’s a video for that. Videos are so cheap to make these days that they’re starting to flood the web. The key for marketers is finding the right instructors and making sure the videos reside on their sites. Marketers can’t cede education to the generic channels of the world.

    It will not be long now before all marketing websites have “How-To” tabs chock full of videos. And if properly cast, these How-To personalities will play an important role as brand ambassadors. The Future. Peace!

    Branding and the Is-Does.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I say I like Good and Plenty, it really means I like licorice. When I say I like Budweiser, it means I like beer. Granted there are lots of flavors of licorice and beer but the point is one doesn’t have an innate, built-in need for brands. (I said innate.) If I like Maytag, it means I like clean clothes. The iPhone? Staying in touch…with everything.

    Some of us in marketing forget this, spending too much time on a distended version of the brand story. (“We must break though the clutter!”)  But it is a product we are selling, not the story.

    The way out this trap is by focusing on a product’s Is-Does: what a brand Is and what a brand Does. I came upon this notion when reading some branding literature while at McCann-Erickson. Eric Einhorn created a document exploring what a brand is and what it means. I rolled the “means” over on its side to make it more concrete. 

    For me the pursuit of the Is-Does became particularly necessary when planning in the tech sector where chief technologists have a hard time explaining their products in less than 50 words. Was Apple’s iPhone really a phone? For most marketers and planners, the heavy lifting is in the Does, but even here one can go off track. Does Coke really provide happiness (today’s strategy) or Does it provide refreshment ( real strategy).  Find the right Is-Does and you tell better stories, create more loyalty, and sell more shtuff. Peace!

    Search and the Art of Selling.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Miguel Helft, a writer for The New York Times, is quickly becoming “a person of interest” in the technology opinion leader space, cranking out good analysis for a couple of years now. His column “Ping” in the Sunday Business section is definitely worth the read. This week he wrote “…search advertising is probably the most effective form of marketing ever invented.” Remove the word “probably” and you have a serious declaration.

    Search has changed the world. If the Internet is the game-changing technology, search is certainly the killer application. That’s why Google is making da monies. Yeah, Google says they’re all about organizing the world’s information, but organizing it is the how— search is the what.

    As search becomes more complicated, and it will, too much information will make it harder for consumers to pull the trigger on brands. This is the crux of Microsoft’s Bing campaign which discusses information overload positions Bing as the decision engine. As algorithms help us shop and compare and as we become more loyal to the search tools than the brands, the art of selling becomes less artful. We’re seeing the beginnings of that today. Peace!

    Bad Experiment Starbucks.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    starbucks via

    VIA ™ is a new instant coffee product sold by Starbucks and though they probably won’t ever use the word “instant” in its description that’s what it is. You make it by simply adding water – hot or cold. VIA comes in a little beef jerky size packet and it is a horrendously bad idea! If Starbucks doesn’t take VIA off the market soon I’m afraid it will have a long term, devastating effect on the brand. And please don’t write me saying how strong last week’s sales were. Creating an instant Starbucks experience is counter to what the brand stands for. This move is akin to the failed over-exposure of Krispy Kreme… selling old donuts in gas stations.

    Most everyone has been to a Starbucks and knows its sounds and smells. Some of the sounds, unfortunately, have been removed thanks to the addition of time-saving espresso machines. Another mistake. (Remember the jarring thump thump the barista made as s/he settled your ground coffee into the metal espresso vessel?)

    The store, the cup, the cardboard cup insulator, beans and music — the starched baristas all contribute to the rich coffee experience. Instant Starbucks removes it all. Thousands of consumers will pour the VIA granules into their chipped Dodgers cups tainted by a hints of soap and say “Hmm, tastes like Folgers.” Lose the VIA, Howard Schultz…and fast. Bad experiment. Peace!

    Left Turn for Microsoft

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    I love reading about campaigns and commenting before I see them. It’s a practice that can result in serious egg-on-face but it’s fun nonetheless. So here’s my take on the new Microsoft Window’s 7 ads  — a campaign that conveys Microsoft listened to user complaints about Vista and fixed them.  Sorry, not a fan. 

    Microsoft made its bed releasing a sluggish, over-engineered, buggy product (Vista) and now is doing a campaign built on a mea culpa.  Okay, they’re manning up… but using the new work to put the responsibility of product development on the consumer?  I don’t think so.  If anything goes wrong, will it be our fault?  (Can you say scar tissue?)

    The process of listening to consumers and giving them what they want should not the subject of advertising – even if the company has a bad rep. It’s rearview mirror stuff.  The “I’m a PC” work by Crispin Porter Bogusky is really great work. Warm, forward looking, communal. It is user-focused advertising yet doesn’t make the user product manager.

    I’m a PC is a campaign that may go down as a Harvard Business Review case. “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea” on the other hand is a left turn that goes off road. Hope they find the highway again. Egg or no egg?  Peace!

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