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    Nook, Line and Sinker.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    nook 2

    “Hi! I’m Kate. And this is my Nook.” says the pretty pitch women on a video introducing Barnes and Noble’s brand new eReader today. www.nook.com. A video I arrived at thanks to a beautiful spread page ad in The New York Times, the headline for which promised me “The World’s Most Advanced eBook Reader.” With little ad copy I had to move to the website to see why Kate’s Nook was most advanced. Print ads now make big claims and drive you to the web for the proof, which is smart (ish) — the web clearly offering a richer landscape for storytelling.

    Since usability is such an important sales science on the web, I looked at how the landing page is organized to see if it is, indeed, going to tell the “most advanced” story. To wit: We land on a nice product shot page with the most choose-able option being a 360 degree tour button. (For nerds and returnees, there are other visible options: Overview, Features, Accessories, Blog, Support.) The 360 Tour simply turns the Nook around and stands it on end. The next nav options are also quite clear…and over the fold. They’re numbered, sequenced and read left-to-right: 1. Meet nook. 2. Read clearly. 3. Get ebooks in seconds. 4. Endless shelf space. 5. Read for days. 6. Make it yours. 7. Watch video. It’s interesting that the video is last. Also smart.

    Overall, the website deserves good usability grades. It’s clean, well thought out and organized — albeit a little low key. Where it falls down is in creating muscle memory for the “most advanced” idea. And that my friends is my Nook. Peace!

    PS. Don’t be surprised if Kate’s words “and this is my Nook” find their way into the popular culture. As Kid Rock would say “or all the wrong reasons.”

    Plan It Up!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I’m reading about Apple’s amazing 47% rise in profit and realize I’m part of the story. My son went off to college this August and he talked me into buy him a MacBook.  Somewhat against it, being a price shopper and netbook fan, I gave in after lots of “beat down.”

    The whole thing got me thinking about the back-to-school timeframe, a short period during which lots of laptops are purchased, especially by entering freshmen. Knowing when someone is going to purchase lets you create a thoughtful game plan. At what points does a marketer want to connect with a 17-18 year olds when it’s known they’ll be buying a laptop in August? Using what media? And with what methods of persuasion? That’s planning. That’s what’s up.

    For expensive products like a MacBook, you can’t just send out a free-standing-insert (FSI) with a low price point in late July, though most everyone does. You need to begin the persuasion six months in advance — building to D-Day (the purchase period). Knowing the target intimately, knowing the media they use, the tools they employ, their rites of passage and their rituals – knowing all these things will help build an effective, targeted, and lower cost plan. Plan it up! Peace!

    Face Without the Book.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Have you ever been to a high school football game and watched kids walk the bottom row of the stands? It can be more fun than the game itself. Some kids parade as if it’s a Narciso runway show while others skulk, head down, hiding from the world. The paraders are filled with “hi’ and “heys,” the skulkers, not so much. It’s a matter of confidence. But now the skulkers have a tool — texting. They have a reason to avert their eyes while looking tre cool and busy.

    Subways and buses in urban centers are other places people like to hide from stares, ergo you’ll see a preponderance of iPods and texting.

    Today, technology is often a diversion, especially for kids, giving them an excuse not to socialize. Early MySpace cadets and current Facebookers called what they were doing “being social” and to an extent it is. Certainly, there are nice apps on Facebook allowing people to expand their circle and do new stuff. But let’s face it, sitting on your ass and typing to friends and neofriends smells of the letter-writing, attic-recluse types of yore.

    I’m betting the next group of cool apps will be closer to FourSquare than Facebook — helping people actually get out of their chairs and meet others with whom they are comfortable. “Likeminds” as Noah Brier and Piers Fawkes might say. There’s social and there’s social. I for one, prefer the version conducted in person. (He said typing from his chair.) Peace!

    The Usability of Advertising

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Having been steeped in the world of digital media the last couple of years and seeing how important usability is to web companies, it dawned on me that perhaps we marketers should begin to ask ourselves about the usability of advertising. I don’t mean to pile on, but I read a $20-30,000 ad in The New York Times today, the headline for which was “Excellence.” One world headlines are so awesome!

    The usability of this ad was close to nil. If you don’t know the company you flip the page. If you read the logo and know the company, then from a usability standpoint you must decide if you want to spend the time to find out what is excellent about the company. This presumes the company being excellent is newsworthy — meaning it is not normally excellent.  If  it simply reinforces what you already know, the ad is not useful.

    In order for an ad to have usability, it must educate, stimulate, show something never before seen, entertain (if one needs entertaining), or warm up a part of the brain that persuades. A usable ad makes you “feel something then do something.” Every maker and approver of ads should pay heed. We need to make more usable ads. Peace!

    Global Warming…the brand.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    emissions

    Today is Blog Action Day, the topic for which is the environment.

    Global warming is a horrific, long-term problem for the planet. The trapping of carbon dioxide, methane and other noxious gases is altering the planet’s flora and fauna in ways we can’t imagine in our day-to-day world view. But the brand “global warming” is in some ways even more insidious. Who ever came up with the term created a brand that’s quite a euphemism. When has the word warm really had such a bad connotation? And how about “climate change” or “greenhouse gases,” those terms shiver me spleen.

    Methane gas escaping into our atmosphere accounts for about 1/3 of all greenhouse emissions and stays there for 10 years. Carbon dioxide, the most common gaseous emission, lingers 100 plus years. Are you getting a warm feeling? Not me, I’m pissed.

    Methane, carbon dioxide and the euphemistic words used to describe the ecosystem-changing area above our planet need to be demonized. No more happy words! For a society that curses and drops the f-bomb as we do, you’d think we could come up with some more apt, creative words to describe what’s enshrouding our planet. Here are some starter words to think about: toxic, deadly, cancerous, poisonous, noxious, odious, grisly… (Please comment with your entries, I’d enjoy hearing them. Here’s one: Global Warning!)

    So on Blog Action Day I could ask you to shut off you lights, use more energy efficient appliances, stop flushing for number 1, and say “no bag please” to the deli guy, but I’d rather you change the way you refer to what happening to the planet. Let’s get more indignant. Let’s get angry! Words matter. Peace!

    (Photo by New York Times, and EPA)

    The Few, the brave, the marketers.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    I don’t know Mike Braue of David&Goliath and I haven’t seen Dave Angelo since softball in the 90s (Nice mouth, nice hands.) but I have been a fan of their work for years. Mr. Braue wrote a post for Talent Zoo this week in which he shared David&Goliath’s corporate philosophy of bravery.  I’m on board with bravery, not of the stupid, blind type that seeks to “break through the clutter” (Oh, how I loathe those words), but the bravery that makes one feel a bit uncomfortable and suggests acting with an unpredictable outcome.

    Crispin Porter (May I call them Crispin Potter? They are sort of Harry Potteresque.) has a theorem about creative that suggests good work must create conflict for the consumer; conflict being a keystone of good storytelling. Oddly, when I present a brand strategy there is typically one word that makes the CEO uncomfortable. Often it’s a critical word…a strategically pivotal word. When I hear that nervousness, I know I’ve got them. You see CEOs want to be brave, love to be brave – that’s how they got to be CEOs.

    Seeing the future and predicting the future is not for the weak kneed. Seeing and acting on the past on the other hand is the practice of 92% of marketers. The brave have been hit in the schnoz, they’ve been struck by an arrow…and lived. Stick your nose out, take an arrow. Be brave. Peace!

    You one finest, overcome excellence.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When in a fun mood, I like to speak in a dialect called angry Korean grocer, something picked up on Saturday Night Live skit. Silly I know, but it makes my wife laugh. The title of this post is not in that dialect though, it is an assemblage of 5 headlines from NYU Langone Medical Center’s latest ad campaign (the comma is mine). Each one-word headline sits atop an expensive testimonial picture and one sentence story, followed by a little sell, e.g., Scott Abrams, injured in the line of duty, walked out of our hospital, when he couldn’t walk in.”

    The campaign, for a reason unbeknownst to the reader is entitled “Any Given Moment.” Developed by Arnold NY, an agency that should know better, it is “we’re here” advertising at its worst. Lots of hospitals have taken to the papers and airwaves with new campaigns this season, but this one is pretty much idealess. Hospitals are notorious for creating badvertising, often filled with miraculous survivor stories, yet the category has been getting better. “NYU and AR-nold suffer setback. Hope they overcome.”

    The trouble with Coke and Pepsi.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    coca beans

    Rant time. My bad, it’s Friday. Pepsi’s sales, it was reported yesterday, were weaker-than-expected caused by lower soft drink sales in North America. Interestingly, Pepsi Cola just finished a big brand redesign which was well received by the design, advertising and brand planning communities; the latter community acknowledging the work at the recent Jay Chiat Awards in NYC. I am a dissenter when it comes to this new Pepsi strategy, which revolves around the idea “Refresh.” Pepsi’s strategy celebrates refresh more for the computer definition than the thirst-quenching definiton. Hello? Is anyone paying attention? Refreshment is Coke’s strategy.

    Anyway, both Coke and Pepsi — but Coke in particular — need to focus advertising not on culture but on the ability for colas to truly quench a thirst. Nothing in the world can quench a thirst like a Coke. It creates a jolt, a satisfying, smile-provoking recoil for the thirsty drinker. Here’s a test strategic account planners: get out of the building and walk a trail in the hot sun for 8 hours. Have someone meet you at the trail’s end with a Coke in one hand a Gatorade in the other. See which your arm reaches for. (Only physicists will grab a Gatorade.)

    Colas are under fire from waters, energy drinks and teas. They need to fight back. And fight back with all the syrupy, coca-ey, carbonation demonstrations at their disposal. Cola growth in the third world is strong because those consumers know that Coke and Pepsi refresh like nothing else. In the US we’ve lost sight of that. Come on people, stop over-thinking this stuff. Cultural refresh indeed! Peace.

    Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business Study” Boil.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The just published Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business” study positions them as a leader in this very fertile space — certainly as a leader among the big consulting companies. Here’s a boildown on the findings.

    Telling enterprises to build “communities” or “social networks” within the company is a hard sell. The words here matter and currently connote the wrong things.

    The people most comfortable with current enterprise “worker nets” are the Millennials and mega nerds. Some successes in terms of efficiency improvements are being recorded by these companies but the clean-up batters aren’t really participating and that is the tipping point challenge.

    American enterprise and individualism is keeping people from sharing, for fear that others will take credit and they will not benefit financially or career-wise. “Me first, company second.”  This needs to change.

    Social Business Design (coined by the Dachis Group) is the best definition I’ve heard so far for this technology and behavior pursuit – a pursuit that will alter business as we know it. It may not be long before Social Business Design becomes an acronym. (A shame said the junior high kid within.)

    These are exciting times, and I’m glad Deloitte is doing good research work here, with this second study on the topic. Tomorrow, tune in for some ideas about how to get the clean-up hitters involved. Peace!

    Trademarkia.com A Path Thru the Trademark Jungle.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    trademarkia

    What happens when you put a lawyer and marketer in a room together? A lot of quiet. What happens when you put a lawyer and a small business marketer in a room? Nothing, it doesn’t happen. The same is often true for mid-size marketers because like Ocean Beach, NY, long known as the “land of no,” small businesses operate by a don’t ask don’t tell ethos – and they don’t want to pay lawyer fees either.

    Enter Trademarkia.com, a company with a great name which combines “trademark” and “Wikipedia.” The name passes the Is-Does test – a big plus for start-up businesses. Trademarkia CEO, Raj Abhyanker, also a patent and IP attorney, realized that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and patent attorneys have not yet caught the Web 2.0 train. Furthermore he realized that there are millions of expired company names, logos and slogans in the morgue, all of which are marketable.

    Mr. Abhyanker’s press releases refer to Trademarkia as the “freshest, easiest way to create a Brand” and though that goes beyond just the Wikipedia metaphor, it does capture the essence and functionality of the site. One can go to Trademarkia and for about $159, buy an expired mark and secure it. Or search for a never been used mark through the Trademarkia database and secure that.  The searching part is free. (Trademarkia was a TechCrunch50 participant this year.)

    Trademarkia does a lot of other things like send competitive alerts but its single biggest breakthrough is creating a place filled with lay explanations and search tools, to help business owners and marketers chop through the jungle that has to date been the expensive provenance of trademark lawyers. Peace!

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