Random

    Marketing

    The power of girl talk.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    lulu

    An ex-CFO colleague of mine just joined a web startup called Lulu. It’s a mobile app for girls and, smartly, anyone who wants to be.  Check out the video to see what it’s all about. It’s kind of sexually charged and hook-up focused.  

    I often write about the branding Is-Does — what a brand is and what a brand does. The ability for start-ups to articulate the Is-Does is often a deal breaker – especially for VCs. You may be a great technologist but if your packaging and marketing acumen are lacking, it’s hard to get traction.

    The reason videos are so prevalent in web marketing today is they’re a good way to stuff 10 lbs. of shizz in a 5 lb. bag. Back in the day, the montage was the art form of choice: We do this, this, this and this.

    It’s a rarity that a tagline can capture the Is-Does in one line. “The power of girl talk” is just that line. (If not Lulu’s tag, it should be.) So good job on the app and the Is-Does Lulu!

    One of my joke lines as a kid was that I always wanted to experience real girl talk. I said, as a kid. Girl talk is a thing.  And Lulu, it’s developers and biz people get it.

    Lulu is going to be big.  Peace!  

    Meep Meep!

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    When I drive my Prius into a gas station and start pumping behind a big American car that is already pumping, I get a look of acknowledgement. Not positive or negative, just a look. When I pull away before they’ve finished fueling the look turns a hint envious.  They get. And some of these big car people aren’t even filling up…they’re just getting $20 worth.
     
    Remember how you could always tell a European movie by the size of the cars in the street and the high pitch of their horns? Meep meep! Well we are getting very close to that environment here in the States. The tipping point is here. The day of the huge car is really over. Pickup truck sales are down, SUVs are down and new cars are getting smaller and smaller. It has taken a while, but most of the size queens are starting to realize they look a silly driving around in big, gluttonous vehicles.
     
    The energy and resource consumption of the average American is 30-times that of a person in an emerging country. Marketers who recognize the future before consumers will be the winners. Toyota did. 
     

    The Rending of HP.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Meg Whitman, who is the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, it seems to me, doesn’t have a marketing bone in her body. She is amazingly successful and a brand unto herself, but marketing is not a major care-about for her. If she cared she would have fought harder to keep HP together and invest into the PC and printer businesses. (Are you reading this on a PC? Is it 6 feet from your HP printer?)  Instead she split the company and took control of something called Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a huge battleship of a company with a stodgy, clunky brand, positioned around an idea “Accelerating Next.” Como se 1990s?

    Of the two diverged companies I’m kind of liking the PC and printer business, branded HP Inc. Its new CEO Dion Weisler seems a marketeer. He understands it all starts with a product and has smartly dialed up R&D resulting in some laptop forms that are beginning to create excitement. His printers are offering up consumer care-abouts like lower cost ink and faster printing. It also appears he’s a bit of a showman — introducing some laptops inside one another, as with nested Russian dolls.   

    When you think about it, Mr. Whitman got the business brands and Mr. Weisler got the consumer brands which was probably a good plan.

    That said, I always bet on a business person with marketing chops.  Let’s see what the future of these two brands bring.

    Peace.

     

    A New Model for Messaging

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Innovation in product and service marketing has redistributed wealth for ages. Yet one area where innovation has completely stagnated is messaging. The ads and sales copy developed in the 1880s by Lord and Thomas are the same as today.  Words like “sale, quality, buy, and new” were commonly used then and now.

    Why can’t we innovate the message? Sure, we can sing it, animate it, give it life with video. And tomorrow we’ll add more dimension and experiential verve with virtual reality.  But the real innovation in messaging will not be in copy, art or delivery but in how we craft behavioral cognition.  Rather than tell someone what to do, we need to help them conclude they want to do it. Make if feel more like their choice. Facilitate and stimulate the behavior.

    The old AIDA principle of selling: awareness, interest, desire and action is still a valid construct. Yet most messaging today concerns itself only with the last step action.  Innovations like Twitch Point Planning and other customer journey approaches account for all steps to a sale. Let’s court our consumers appropriately.

    Peace.

     

     

    Fashion in Reverse.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    Fashion-forward people are those who hack away at the kudzu of current trends in an attempt to break new ground.  By the time the fashion-forward see an uptick on what they’re wearing, it’s time to move on.   The group who follow the fashion-forward, let’s call them the fashion advanced guard, don’t really have the stomach to lead, but do have the confidence to be early adopters.  Together, these two groups move markets.

    Some websites have begun to help clothes buyers find ropa selected specifically for them based upon logged style preferences, no doubt informed by body type and income.  Some of these choices are branded and/or endorsed by celebrities giving them a little extra cachet. If done well, these sites also offer fashion tips for accessorizing..  My reading tells me these algorithmic recommendations require a monthly service fee. (I wouldn’t want to play with that “P”.)

    I see this bandwagon as smart and viable, but suggest a new approach. The contrarian in me would take the model  — the gathering of fashion “likes” and spitting out recommendations — and invert it.  When a user presses enter, I would offer up the complete opposite of the fashion indicated. Call it Oppsy.com. If you really want to make a fashion statement and command attention, there is no better way than to repel the expected. It’s a dirty little secret Cathy Horyn and students of fashion use in front of the mirror daily. Peace!

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