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    Tundra bad. Prius Good.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Toyota got caught up in the American car debacle at the same time as it was doing some amazing things with the Prius. I was down in TX last year and promotion for the Toyota Tundra was everywhere. The gas-guzzling truck, positioned for the good ol’ boys, sucked lots of money out of the Toyota coffers and contributed to a worldwide loss of $4.4B (sounds very GM-like). Since its inception, the Prius, now in its third generation, has sold only 1.2 million vehicles. That number could have been multiplied by 10 had Toyota not gone all pick-up truck on us.

     

    That said, the latest Prius has one thing that sets it apart form the new Honda Insight, a competing hybrid priced to move: solar cells on the roof.  This cool differentiating technology will help power an advanced new ventilation system that is pure marketing genius. Marketing and branding are all about “claim” and “proof.” And whether the solar thingies works or not – and I’m sure they will – it is yet more proof that Prius is a technological leader in fuel efficient cars.  Toyota needs to follow the example of Ichiro and keep its eye on the ball. Peace!

     

    Influence Factor in Social Media

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    Steve Poppe
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    Charles Buchwalter, svp at Nielsen, believes that over the next 12 months a social media advertising model will emerge acknowledging and presumably charging for reaching online influencers. Social media that reaches influencers, so the logic goes, should beable to charge higher rates.  The “influence factor” he calls it.  Readers of this blog know that “Posters” tend to be the thought leaders and taste makers, while Pasters, though important, are less so. Reach one queen bee in the fashion world and you may convert thousands.

     

    In traditional media, Posters and Pasters co-mingle, but only in online can the algorithm truly identify a sale and track it back to a Poster’s site.  Using the print model, think of this as paying a premium for positioning.  I’m not sure this is a good thing because Posters who earn more will get tainted and start to post differently — like the angry punk rock band that makes it big and moves to the suburbs. Anyway, that said, I believe Mr. Buckwalter is correct. Peace!

     

     

     

    College Branding

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    College and university advertising is generally pretty bad. The budgets are small so they don’t use good agencies and when they do use good agencies the academicians often get in the way which tends to watered down the work. Quick – think of a good college ad campaign.

     

    UCLA ran a print campaign this week that I actually took the time to read. The tagline was “UCLA, unabashed.” Ads were in the form of first person storytelling by various alumni, appearing two per day on consecutive right hand pages.  The campaign objectives were hard to figure at first but by the end of the week I got it: UCLA is a great place for “achievers” to start their lives and UCLA needs private funding.

     

    Good college advertising makes the consumer think. If it can’t, then why would we assume the college can make the student think?  Selling doesn’t work in this type of advertising; making the synapses fire does. 

     

    I’ve heard college kids say “as soon as I drove through the front gate I knew it was the school for me.”  Is that packaging (nice gate) or branding (predisposition to a sale)?

     

    Creating a great brief for a college or university is very heavy lifting. I’ve done it before and it’s a real test. But when you nail it, you know. I’d like to see the UCLA brief, because they nailed it. (If you like to see a good college brief, write me and I’ll forward one.)

    Marketing to Millennials.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    According to Harvard’s Dr. Urs Glasser, “By age 20, kids will have spent 20,000 hours online – the same amount of time a professional piano player would have spent practicing.” Were one to calculate all the television children of the 80s and 90s watched, I’m sure we’d see a comparable number. That said, TV is one-way (inbound) and online is two-way (read-write) and therefore a little healthier.

     

    Regular readers know I have dumbed-down Forrester Research’s Technographic segmentation study into two simple groups “Posters” and “Pasters.” According to Forrester and a couple of other sources only 8% of social media users are “posters,” or original content creators.  But, according to the Book “Born Digital” written by John Palfrey and Dr. Glaser, 35% of millennial girls and 20% of boys in the U.S. are blogging, meaning these so-called “digital natives” index very high as Posters. As such, they need to be treated differently. 

     

    While writing my anthropology thesis in college, I sent out letters to leading professors around the country asking for input. It took months and lots of effort on everyone’s part to gather, process and exchange all the info. Today, using email, the net, and links, I could have done this work in a day. (Digital Natives get this in ways others don’t.)

     

    As a brand and communications planner, understanding this culture and how Millennials buy and are sold is going to be quite a fun ride. Peace!

     

    Selling. There’s an app for that.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Selling product is a complex application. It first requires awareness. Then interest, preference and, lastly, action. These 4 steps to a sale are time-tested and when handled properly and thoughtfully can create a customer for life. Just as good technology is built on decisions (ons and offs or 1s and 0s) a selling application requires good logic and pathways.

     

    Online selling, which occasionally is done correctly, sometimes scrambles the steps to a sale. Technology hubs do a good job of covering the bases: they provide prices, democratic ratings, reviews, pictures, names specs, etc. but many online sites short circuit the selling app allowing people to buy things before they are properly “sold.” Marketers who jump to transact business without selling are providers of malware, if I might stretch the analogy. Marketers and consumers beware. Peace!       

     

    Automation vs. Curation

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Google recently was dinged by an ex-worker for its data-driven design approach. The not-so-disgruntled worker suggested Google tests everything before making any firm design changes — the hue of the blue, for instance. If dark blue clicks through better than sky blue, dark is published.

     

    Marketing is about “science” and “art.”  Finding the right mixture is the key. Creative directors hate focus groups and research that dictates what form the art will take. And data geeks feel the creative people are self-absorbed megalomaniacs. Automation vs. curation is what we’re talking about here in the digital age. There’s no formula for the perfect combination of these dueling approaches but they must both sit at the table.  Art and science. Left brain, right brain.

     

    The best marketing shops are those that thrive in this coexistence. It’s not peaceful coexistence and it shouldn’t be, but it must be respectful. Burger King’s CMO Russ Klein might say this coexistence should be a couple of baby steps from “conflict.” Peace!

     

    Proud to be an Ad Guy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    For years I have read the results of polls placing advertising people and lawyers at the bottom of the image totem poll. It seems like American’s think ad people are not trustworthy and therefore hold us in low esteem.

     

    Well, I’m here to tell you that we may remain low in the esteem polls moving forward, but we are not draining the economy the way some industries are. I haven’t heard about any bailouts of Interpublic or Omnicom, have you?  And if ad agencies and agency holding companies were managed like Bank of America, GM or Chrysler, I haven’t read about it. Who says agency people are too creative to be good business people?

     

    I am proud to be in advertising. Yeah, we tell off color jokes. We may index high for drinking and smoking. Our music may not be mainstream and our shoes are expensive, but by God, we know about business. And as an industry we know how to pay bills and stay on the right side of the ledger. Be proud ad wo|men. Be proud. As my Norwegian grandfather might have said “Poles. What do they know!" Or was that “polls?” Peace!

     

    Ear buds

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    When I was a pup, sometime after everyone was wearing fedora hats and the world was black and white, if you went on the subway you saw people with their faces buried in newspapers. Go on the NYC subway today or a bus in Chattanooga and you won’t see a paper — but you will see ear buds. Everywhere. They’re attached to phones, MP3 players and iPods and they are pumping out music.

     

    Earbuds are the new paper. Digital (music), the new media. I’ve been writing Cablevision and Newsday (local Long Island businesses) trying to get them to see that if they marry the earbud with news and entertainment they will take a giant step ahead in the business of news delivery. (They aren’t really taking my call.) You see, making podcasts easy and fast is a major opportunity for original content providers. It therefore is a major opportunity for journalism and news organizations. Someone will win here, I’d love it to be Newsday. Peace!

     

     

    Meep meep.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Chrysler’s reorg may reduce their number of models from 32 to 13 according to The New York Times, so what do you think that says about GM? Washington didn’t listen to my Detroit Bailout Challenge idea, suggesting a jump ball/winner-take-all approach to the big three bail out, so the car companies will be left to their own devices. 

     

    One such device will be to lose car brands (buh-bye Saturn, Pontiac, maybe Buick) and car models. As you drive around the streets and highways today, take a look to the left, right, fore and aft and know that one of those American models will be gone by the summer of 2010.

     

    America’s highways are going to look and sound differently very soon. Lighter cars, egg-beater sounding engines, meep meep horns. Closed, rusting gas stations will dot the highways. Can’t wait!       

     

    Intel vs. McDonald’s

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The new Intel campaign by Venables Bell and Partners sounds a bit unfocused. The idea behind the campaign “Sponsors of Tomorrow” sounds good enough, though a couple of years ago the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) did something similar through Toy-NY which was a bit trite. Intel’s campaign, according to reports, has three different executional ideas which makes it messy:  Portraying Intel R&D people as rock stars, comparing the Intel culture to popular culture ("our clean room isn’t like your clean room"), and showing what the future will be like thanks to Intel (a digital campaign). That’s three ideas, one tagline.  

     

    The new McDonald’s McCafé advertising from DDB, Chicago, on the other hand, is based on a very tight idea. And a powerful idea. When you buy a McCafé beverage, it transforms wherever you are into a café, highlighted by a visual accent popping up on the “e” of the location name. (A commute turns into a commuté, for instance.) Pairing this graphic idea with amazingly lush film of the coffee takes the viewer out of greasy burger heaven and into – in the mind at least — an aromatic French café. Simple. Focused. Evocative. About the product. Peace.   

     

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