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    The Samsung Leash.

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    Social Web Usability

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    Inline Advertising

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    Marketing

    AIDA

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    Steve Poppe
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    AIDA. Not the opera, steps to a sale. Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. That’s what marketing is all about. If you are hiking and come off the trail parched and hit a roadside store for water this process goes very quickly in the water section. If you’re shopping for a car, it goes much more slowly and thoughtfully.

     
    Targeted selling has changed through history. Not to go all pony express on you, but from storefront to catalog, to door-to-door and print media, then electronic, DR and now online — things keeping creeping toward targeting perfection. As the large cable companies get together through Project Canoe trying to figure out a way to maximize ad serving on TV, the business is on the verge of another whoosh in ad ROI.
     
    We at Zude (the social computing platform I work for) have in our future an even greater plan for targeting ads. Each Zude page contains a multitude of objects. Text is an object, pictures are objects, video, audio, etc.  By knowing what these objects are and analyzing them, we can serve up pretty tight ads. An example: if you have a Zude page with lots of hiking pictures (many labeled “trail”) we might serve up a tent ad. We promise to make it non-obtrusive and welcome.  More efficient ad serving, shrinks the AIDA process down, and gets consumers to Action faster.
     

    Brand. Brand Strategy. And Science.

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    Steve Poppe
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    Branding at the hands of most practitioners is 85% emotional.  That is to say, names, colors, shapes and taglines associated with a “brand,” are usually dictated by a few decision makers who either feel it or they don’t. Emotion is not unimportant, but often it’s way too important. There needs to be a lot more science in branding. Especially in brand strategy. A brand, i.e., logo, is not a brand strategy. A brand strategy is an organizing principle; one that allows brand managers and stakeholders to make marketing decisions. Marketing decisions that create everlasting value for a product or service.

    While the physical brand or mark is what helps people identify a product or service, the brand strategy helps with deeper cognition.  With reasons to consider, like, prefer, buy and recommend. For these qualities we must turn to science. Brand strategy is about tangible evidence of preference. “I liked the ceviche because it was sweet. Because the salmon tasted buttery. Because of the perfect helping of herbs.”  Not because it tasted good.

    Look at your brand strategy. Explore the science. Omit the fluff words: Quality, innovative, best, better. Mine the science.

    Peace.

     

    Evidence Based Brand Strategy.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The difference between brand planners can be found in their respective abilities to do something “smart” with the info and data they collect during discovery. One planner’s questions will differ from then next, as will their observation techniques and data sources. Yet once all the hunting and gathering is done, it’s time for all planners to think. And apply. To fill out the brief, as it were.

    My framework is different than that of some brand planners and the same as others. I use one claim and three proof planks as the organizing principle.  How I get to the one and three model, however, is through an exploration of “evidence.”  Evidence is not hearsay. It’s not marko-babble. It stuff. Actions.  Existential results. Proof.

    When Eva Moskowitz stands on the steps of city hall, alone or with thousands, that’s evidence. When a prepubescent cancer patient has part of her ovary preserved in liquid nitrogen at age 9 so that 15 years later she can gave birth, that’s evidence.

    I’ve read hundreds of brand strategy documents from so-called brand planners and am appalled by how few are evidence based. Tring to change that one brand at a time.

    Peace.                 

     

    Better Rhythm for Google AdWords

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    Steve Poppe
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    There’s a little rift going on at Google over ad revenue: One faction feels that more ads should be served while the other faction wants less. The “more” group thinks ad revenue would have been higher this last report had they their way. The “less” people feel fewer, more highly targeted ads will bring out advertisers willing to pay higher prices.  
     
    I have been managing an Adwords campaign through Google for a while now and beautiful algorithm aside, I get the sense that there are some human decisions taking place there that have been shutting down my keywords. There are times when Google says a particular keyword should cost me $4.00 which I am not willing to pay. So I get shut out.  I wouldn’t be upset if I searched that keyword and there were lots of other advertisers there but sometimes there aren’t. I smell a brain. A capitalist brain. 
     
    Let’s give Google Adwords back to the algorithm.
     

    Reverse Supply and Demand

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    Steve Poppe
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    DentBetty.com is an exciting example of supply and demand in reverse. Car owners post dent and ding photos to the site so car repair shops can provide competitive estimates. Ain’t the Web grand? When body shops compete, you win! (DentBetty is in Beta and not available everywhere, but has bust-a-move upside.)  Currently free until they prime the user pump, DentBetty has a business model that will be mimicked across the Web benefiting both consumers and wired entrepreneurs.  As my kids used to say “I yike it.”

     

    Which brings us to AOL.  Huh? AOL’s new shtick is to become the single greatest source of advertising supported content on the Web. (They should leave off the advertising supported part of their mission; it’s irrelevant and brand-limiting.) You might think being a content provider is being in the supply business — and it is — but as AOL uses that content to analyze and learn about online behaviors, it will find itself in a better positionto create new, un-thought of content. And if it develops new online inventions and conventions, like DentBetty, will attain revenue heights not yet seen. Content is king for sure, but it is not always one way.  User generated content isn’t just text and party pics. Peace!

    Ding Dong

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    One of my favorite sayings about advertising is “Just when you think you know something about this business, someone comes along to prove you wrong.” Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here after reading about Avon’s new campaign and say it’s not going to be very successful. It will have some success because they are pumping $340 million into the marketplace.
     
    When the president of global marketing goes on record as saying “Avon is the company that best understands and empowers women” I immediately cringe and anticipate failure. That’s marko-babble. When I read further that the objectives of the ads are to improve their sales channel by recruiting doorbell ringers AND at the same time communicating that the Avon family of products prepares women for the aging process (the line is “Hello Tomorrow”) I know they are soon to be in deep doo-doo. What’s the idea?  What will consumers say about the advertising, product, and brand the day after they see the work?
     
    And the last premise – slowing the aging process – by itself is questionable.  First of all, it targets older women and doesn’t address today’s newer buyers. Second, aging is more about genetics and lifestyle than about creams (with the exception of SPF). And third, women want to look healthy and beautiful now, not in the future. That’s why all the pictures in the ads are going to be of youngish women.  Ding dong, hello?
     

    Brand Glossary

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    Steve Poppe
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    I started my first big boy job at a top advertising agency in NYC, McCann-Erickson. Working on AT&T. While most of the team was handling TV work and producing print ads for The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Time Magazine, I was hired to do the technical products: data lines, network management and software defined networks. I was the B2B guy, which suited me. It’s from whence I came. But AT&T and McCann were the real deal and I was scrambling.

    At my first meeting in Bridgewater, NJ, I became inundated with acronyms and telecom terms I’d never heard before.  It was like moving to the Ukraine.  My head spun.  I had to quickly invent a game plan in the pre-internet era.  Laptops were few and far between. First step was to create an acronym glossary. One based upon AT&T jargon. When complete the glossary was probably 20 pages long filled with paragraphs of arcane descriptions. I brought that baby with me everywhere. As my team grew, it became a shared resource.

    When the Bell Labs and AT&T marketing people saw me with my glossary they giggled but appreciated that I cared. I asked lots of questions; they never held back.

    I write a lot about learning the language of the target. In account or project management, learning the language of the client is the first step. Only then can you translate that into the consumer dialect.

    Peace.

     

    Let’s Not Call it Strategy.

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    Steve Poppe
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    (A self-absorbed poem about brand strategy.)

    My paper is power.

    My paper is freeing.

    My paper creates tension.

    My paper doesn’t need pictures.

    My paper is musical.

    My paper creates language.

    My paper is rose-colored.

    Always rose-colored.

    My paper creates feelings.

    My paper encourages doing.

    My paper is your paper.

    My paper quickens.

    If you fight the paper…you are fighting paper.

    My paper is the idea to have an idea.

    Coke. Care-Abouts and Good-Ats.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Coca-Cola’s key good-at is “refreshment.” There are few, few things better than a cold Coke on a warm day after a workout.  And when the consumer care-about is refreshment, a great product choice is Coke. Remember, brand strategy is about good-ats and care-abouts. 

    Refreshment, rather than, longtime advertising attribute “happiness,” is an experiential, product-based proof. It’s a product reality. Coke’s current advertising tagline (brand line) is “Taste The Feeling.” An amalgam of cheerleading and emotion.   It is not a product based care-about or good-at. It’s advertising based.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love advertising. Dave Trott teaches me the way to do it well it to connect. But connecting with the art is not the same as connecting with the product. Of course it’s harder to create compelling stories and poetry around products – but that’s the job.    

    Brand planners need to focus the work on product-based care-abouts and good-ats. Coke should know better.

    Peace.          

     

    John Battelle’s Little Secret

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Have you heard the expression “To a hammer everything looks like a nail?” Well, I’m of the mind that to conversational media companies, say Federated Media, all marketing looks like a conversation. Thanks to Dave Knox and his blog HardKnoxLife, I watched a video of John Battelle’s introductory remarks his recent CM Summit. CM stands for Conversational Media. Mr. Battelle is CEO of Federated Media.

     

    Mr. Battelle is a brilliant marketer, but if his platform for conversational marketing — Federated Media — was a conversation and not a well-managed brand, it wouldn’t be the successful property it is today. You see, Mr. Battelle has created and managed a brand with the help of great writers, terrific targeting, innovative positioning and a strong revenue model. He did it. The conversation may have been his inspiration, but mark my words, he created and nurtured it.

     

    Content creators are still the life source of his business. Communing participants may be the blood, but they are not the brand. In my ebook, what Mr. Battelle is doing – and doing well – is brand management. He may not admit it, but he knows full-duplex marketing is a mistake. Good marketers need to manage the hen house.  Peace!

     

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