Pent Up Demand

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Three of my favorite brand planning words — words that let me know I’m on a roll and in a place near and dear to my marketers’ hearts — are “pent up demand.”  When a market is growing at a certain rate and product availability doesn’t meet the demand, a hungry market exists.  When consumers clearly exhibit behavior indicating dissatisfaction with a product or product category, there is pent up demand for functionality.  When Google searches are off the charts for information about a service, brand or activity…yep, mondo, unmet demand.

These are words any marketer likes to hear.  So when doing your diligence, fact-gathering and filling up the brand stockpot (before the boil down), ask yourself are there any areas of pent up demand related to your product or service that can be studied on behalf of customers or prospects. Competitors or detractors.  Opinion leaders or analysts.

It’s fertile area, planners.  Dig in then smile as you hear the words pass your lips during presentations.  Peace!

The magnetism of a freight train.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I sometimes tell people in the business how my brand strategies contain one word that company management finds objectionable.  They love the strategy — they get it and it gets them – but they say “That, one word. Do we have to use it?”  My answer is always “No, it’s a suit strategy, not a creative strategy.”  “Systematized” for a healthcare org is kind of cold.  We know where you “live” is a little creepy, for a newspaper. Stuff like that.  

Have you ever walked in a city and passed someone you couldn’t keep your eyes off of?  They’re so uniquely made-up or dressed in such a magnetic way you have to do a double or triple take.  It may be beauty, or fashion or demeanor. It may be all three.  That’s how I like my brand strategies. The claim may not be that magnetic, but the attitude, salience and three brand planks are. The gestalt of the idea and support creates a life that pulsing with “look at me.”

A brand plan is not an ad.  It is a story with organized chapters. Three chapters to be specific, but those chapters are long and lush. Well executed, a brand plan can carry serial campaigns over years. Even over ad agencies.

If you can find that word that is s branding freight train and surround it with value building supports, you will win your marketing war. Peace!

Financial marketing.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I’ve been thinking about financial services lately.  I’m sure lots of people have been.  Finances and jobs will impact how the upcoming election plays out.

Financial institutions have been vilified in the press the past 5 years, yet they are still out there hawking their wares daily in advertising.  One radio spot for a credit card sits right next to a property foreclosure spot.  We are a country with trillions in debt.  Is it any wonder many Americans have lines of credit exceeding their annual salary or credit card balances beyond monthly income?

So what have I been thinking about from a strategic standpoint?  How about a financial institution that stops building web apps, and mobile credit devices and starts sharing some best practices about saving?  Any kid with a piggy bank will tell you there is nothing like a little savings.  Any squirrel with a summer nut will chatter the same thing. Saving is healthy and life preserving.

In a sea of bank advertising, all of which is the same, what would happen if one bank decided to talk about the value of saving?  The strategy of saving? The positive community effect of saving?  I’ll tell you what would happen:  this type of straight talk – clarifying talk – would create a bank that people trusted.  Like no other.  The door is open.  Someone needs to step through.  Peace!

Passion.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Is there a word more used these days in marketing meetings than “passion?” I write and speak about marko-babble a lot — marko-babble defined as words so often used and watered down, they become meaningless. It’s like they come out of a handbook. Authenticity, transparency, ROI all come to mind. I’m not saying “passion” is marko-babble, it’s a price of entry, a means of staying  truly alive in your business category, but in brand planning, it is actually a negative word.

For less than a day, I changed my LinkedIn profile to read: “I am a passionless brand planner.  That’s right passionless.”  Passion can cloud the judgment. Parents are passionate about love of their children. Is that why many miss teenage maladaptive behaviors?  Company officers are passionate about their product and services.  Does that put a gauze over their ability to see market realities?  Brand planners must be ever-energetic in their search for insights, patterns and cultural observations surrounding commerce and purchase behavior, but passion should not enter into it. Peace!

Build or Borrow.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Brand planning is a lot like cooking. It’s all about technique, palette and ingredients.

Technique is about the where to find the inputs and how to effectively assemble them. Palette is about knowing what tastes are and meeting those tastes in a meaningful, desirable way. And Ingredients are the things of which the idea-dish is made.  Minimalism is awesome, but so is a complex sauce. Knowing what not to use is often a difference-maker.

From the palette side of the brand planning equation, let’s look at the ideas we serve up. When landing on a brand strategy, there are two approaches: build or borrow.  Build requires using words, ideas and imagery that is uniquely yours.  It’s never been done — it is a pioneering approach.  Borrowing, on the other hand, uses context of other products or culture to frame up the selling. Context borrows known messaging and repackages it.

Build is expensive. Borrow much less so. Borrow is what Samsung did with its tablet and phones. A Few Good Women, borrows from movie that has become a part of our cultural patois.  “You can’t handle the truth,” another cultural borrow from the same movie.

I love fresh. And I love build. If you have the fortitude, it’s preferred.  Marketers use famous spokespeople to embellish their brand promise, a form of borrow, because it is fast and can save a few shekels in the long run…but it is not innovative. Go forth (Levi’s), and build.

Peace!

 

The Bloated Middle of Marketing.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

Taco Bell recently sold its 200 millionth Doritos Loco Taco.  They started selling these babies in March.  That’s thinking outside the bun.  From a marketing standpoint.  Not sure whose idea this new product was, but it was marketing genius. For those who think marketing is all about promotion (We need a contest on the website!) or advertising (Let’s hire Barton Graf 9000), this new product launch shows that business building starts with product.

I joked in a Tweet yesterday (@spoppe) that the new product probably resulted from something as simple as someone spilling a bag of Dorito’s in the Yum Brands Test kitchen; the reality is, the idea to merge a Taco Bell taco and a Dorito’s shell was not even that difficult. It was product innovation based on an idea. A simple idea. (I’d be interested to monitor how sales of bags of Dorito’s go over the next few quarters, but that’s a question for a different post.)

200 million anything is a marketing woosh. I love advertising, but all those Dorito’s ads on the Super Bowl the last 10 years and all the think outside the bun and Chihuahua ads in recent memory are orchestrated noise compared to one good product idea.

Any good brand planner knows marketing starts with the product. And it ends with the consumer.  But as an industry we spend too much time in the middle – playing with tactics and ads and “likes” and dashboards.  Let’s get our focus out of the middle and back on the product. Peace! 

 

Cloudy Futures.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about the cloud. He’s at a technology company in the backup business. Backup is a simple concept that insures that data on corporate networks is recoverable in the event of disaster.  Backup is good. (I recently learned that Jewish religious scholarship is passed on orally over 7 years of study, known as the Daf Yomi, which is a form of backup. Just sayin’.)

Does cloud computing make the need for backup less important? Of course not, for cloud providers it’s requisite. But for tech companies that provide back-up solutions to corporations, does backup in the cloud become a competitor? Most certainly.  

This cloud thing, done well, will chance the tech landscape by amazing proportion.  And redistribute crazy wealth.  Recently, it was reported in The New York Times that a company spending $1M with Amazon’s cloud service to host and process its data would have had to pay $5M for all the servers and surround. Como se no brainer?  And more importantly, as we bury all the complexity in the cloud and organically move toward more open systems, will not technology become less confusing? Less elitist?  I think so. 

When that happens, out engineers will be able to start solving energy problems, space exploration, and healthcare delivery. Now whose head is in the clouds?  Peace! 

Movie Theater Marketing.

By
Steve Poppe
-
0

A long-time friend of mine is a big macher in the movie theater business. He offered up some interesting facts and market movers last week. 

The movie exhibition business – the business of the movie house, not the film business – is a crucible of marketing. It’s retail, it’s venue-marketing, it’s entertainment and it is quite competitive…not only with other movie exhibitors but with in-home entertainment centers – e.g., flatties, cable, video on demand in the den.

That said, a night at the theater is still quite an affordable night on the town.

What are marketers doing to push one theater over another?  Lots: IMAX, Wi-Fi, line-busting, reserved seating, food to the seat, new projectors, hi-def shimmering sound and loyalty programs. And they are testing live projection experiences: college sports, opera, etc. 

Theaters, like airline carriers and hotels are in the load management business; they need to put fannies in seats. They are also in the fast food business where they’re trying to get the average ticket price up (not the cost of the theater ticket but the cost of all theater purchases.)

This is a dog fight, no doubt, but my pal is getting it done.   Last year was the best year in 10. And the first quarter was the best in the last 7 years. Of course, the films are important.  In one man’s opinion the movies are getting more expensive to make yet offer less in the way of plot, cinematography and acting. Frankly, some of the best new entertainment now is on cable and there’s not much of that.

But like a meal at a great restaurant, you may remember the dish, but it’s the venue you return to. It’s the venue you give your money to.  It’s the brand you share with friends and family.  Building the experience from all angles is what makes a great theater chain. For tyro brand planners, the crucible of theater marketing is a formative one. For marketers anywhere it is a laboratory we should all pay attention to. Peace!

1...185186187...313Page 186 of 313
© Newsmag WordPress Theme by TagDiv