Grey’s Anatomy’s Droopy iPad App.

By
Steve Poppe
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There is an iPad app for fans of Grey’s Anatomy, says CIO Magazine, developed by TV rating company Nielsen, that offers interactive social activities to viewers tied to events in the program. These events are “watermarked” to the show dialogue.  I’m interested.  Coolness.  I am always on the lookout for “1 plus 1 equals 3” mashups of media that go beyond the expected. That tread new ground.

And then I read that the Grey’s Anatomy app pops up questions like “What do you think will happen next in the plot?” “Or tweet this to a friend.”  Droop.  The app also offers character info, games and quizzes. Droopier. 

It sounds as if the media socialists on the show are making the app an extension of a fan club when there were so many other ways to go. The show is about medicine and doctors and hospitals, why not go that route?  Why not inform, educate, surprise?  Or how about offering up some type of production notes about the cast and the scene?  I’ll bet if the app developers actually listened to the audience in real time, without a social media engagement agenda, they might hear insights they hadn’t expected. Go deep. Think deeply. Think about strategy not tactics. Don’t extend, invent. Peace!

Brand Strategy. Now, with feeling.

By
Steve Poppe
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There is this odd phenomenon that occurs when I present a branding brief to a client. 

My brand brief contains a definition of the living, breathing target (not a demographic), an articulation of the target’s key care-about, the role of the product in delivering on that care-about. It covers the key market sensibility related to the product or category, and any enduring attitudes about the brand that might rise to the top. Not atypical stuff.  Of course it’s what you do with all that stuff that makes a brand strategy great.  When everything has been gathered and funneled down to a simple, no comma, no conjunction idea — when all the effluvium has been boiled away — what remains is a single declarative statement of brand intention.  That is the moment of truth.    

When I present that statement and I’ve my job right, the client lights up like a Christmas tree. We are brothers and sisters. We are from the same parents.  We are friends. But then…then, the odd phenomenon begins to creeps in. You can feel a loving “but” coming on.  This is when they say: “I absolutely love it, it’s perfect, but do we have you use the word_____.  And it’s the pivotal word.  That’s when I know I’ve got them.

Just like great creative, a great brand strategy has to take a client out of his/her comfort zone. It has to feel like work. It has to make clients and consumers emote. A brand strategy must aspire.  Campaigns come and go, but a powerful brand strategy is indelible. Peace!

Social Media. Quiet is the new black.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I was watching an NCAA Tournament game the other day and with 13 minutes to go in an Sweet 16 game, the announcer was apoplectic. He announced each pass as if it would be the game’s last.  I can understand if we were in the finals and it was under 2 minutes, but phewwww. It seems the game for some announcers isn’t enough, it’s the delivery that creates excitement.  Like a laugh track on a sitcom. If everything is screamed and hyper- exciting, how are we to know when the truly amazing happens?  It’s like reading a two paragraph email typed in all caps.

One of the reasons social media has taken off so nicely, in this world of many product choices, is because friends and members of your social graph tend not to sell when they are talking up a product.  Well they sell, but from the gut and heart, not from the wallet. Paid marketing agents, on the other hand, are compensated to make you buy. 

Metaphorically, paid marketing agents shout while friends quietly discuss. Friends modulate. Friends offer no agenda.  I think it was Benjamin Palmer of the Barbarian Group who said at Social Media Week this February that commercial social media is most effective when it is “brands letting their hair down.” And he’s right.   When a brand is not in billboard mode, or advertising or coupon mode – not shouting every possible user benefit like the NCAA announcer – it has a chance to quietly and meaningfully build a case in a unique, human way.  Social is a new channel. Not an old channel repurposed. Peace.

The biggest wealth exchange in history.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Sorry for the late post but I was at the monthly meeting of the Social Media Club of Long Island. Great stuff.  It started a little slowly in that the speaker Constance Korol did the typical context-setting commercial but it really picked up and ended being quite thought provoking.   (In this “fast twitch media world” had I not been in a seat, I might have clicked through. Glad I didn’t.)

The topic was social media in China and its use for commercial purposes.  Sina Weibo is the social network of choice in China.  Sina numbers only 100 million registered users.  Did I just say “only 100 million?”  China is big, in other words.  And as a social media market it is going to get crazy bigger.  In fact, when Nokia and Microsoft figure out how to create a US $49 smartphone, that hundred million number is going to jump…creating the single largest wealth exchange in the history of mankind.

The thing about China is…it’s China.  You can learn by friending people through cracks in the firewall, but to really learn you need to have feet on street.  The country is so closed off and so monitored only hacks will get you through.  But what a country in terms of marketing opportunity!  What a laboratory.

Everywhere is not America.  To see the world through American glasses is ethnocentric.  If we open our eyes and learn about other cultures we have a chance transnationally.   As Waylon says “Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do sometimes won’t know how to take him. He ain’t wrong, he’s just different…” (Human rights, is a topic for another day.) Peace.

Like, I’d like to like it, but like…

By
Steve Poppe
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0

It may be a New York thing, but get in a car with a bunch of teens or young 20-somethings and count the likes.  It’s the new um.  Liking is a thing on Facebook and now +1 is a the new like on the Google platform.  

Public Displays of Like (PDL)

There is a time and place for liking.  Public displays of like, though, are becoming annoying. And with +1 they’ll get worse.  The presumption is that Likes and +1 are food for the hungry consumer, but not everyone on the web wants to transact business.  Not everyone on the web is looking to buy something.  Fotchbook (an Italian pronunciation) did not grow to the size it has by  feeding the commercial needs of the people, it created a means to connect and network new and old friends.

Not everything on the web is a product. Just as I need to get out of the car when the teens and 20-somethings start the like talk, Ima need to jump off the web for a few hours when the Likes and +s abound. Careful Google. Careful Facebook. Peace (especially you know where) !

L.L. Bean. Fast Twitch Media. And Storytelling.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I went off a little yesterday on Twitter about all the crazy titles people are putting on their business cards in the marketing services world. Here’s one: Chief Storyteller, Apprentice Zen Teacher.  Come se what?

Storytelling is big business today.  Why?  Because video is such an important communications device – and it’s billable. But before everybody and her brother could make a crappy video and tell a crappy narrative, the art of storytelling required discipline – the thoughtfulness and restraint to tell stories with fewer pictures and words.  

Now digital and ad agencies talk about story telling all the time.  First we must understand the brand story.  Then we must be able to translate the brand story and articulate into business strategy for management.  Only then can we tell the story to consumers.  And now, pray tell, thanks to social media, the story goes both ways now.  Around the brand campfire we listen to consumers tell our story… and we encourage them to tell it to others.

The real story on story.

Sorry to go all geeze on you but I saw a wonderful print ad in The New York Times paper paper today.  It wasn’t anything X 768 — it was two honking color half pages by L.L. Bean at opposite corners of a spread folio.  The headline was “gear that stands the test of time” (left) “now ships free all the time” (right).  The left page showed a close up of the heels of two Bean boots.  Since the story was about product durability and free shipping, the picture of the boots was amazingly rich. Shot by the Annie Leibovitz of boot photographers, the color, patina, texture and composition of the boots said “wear.” The shot also said tear, but not too much.  The heels weren’t too worn, the settle of the leather not too weighted.    The cant of one boot to the other, like a kiss.

The picture reminded me on a pair of my father’s L.L. Bean boots. It captured me. It helped me tell my own story. Sometimes the best storytelling in marketing communications is not explicit.  It’s provocative. In this “fast twitch media” world, I don’t have time to sit through a mini-movie on the durability of a boot, made by an NYU film student at $35 an hour. Don’t tell me the story, remind me, incite me, coddle me into my own story. Bravo L.L. Bean.  Ship me a pair of my daddy’s boots.  (Actually, I think I still have them.  Maybe I’ll just put ‘em bad boys on.) Peace!

Foster, Bias & Sales.

By
Steve Poppe
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I had a good day yesterday.  Meetings in SoHo, Union Square Park and Park Avenue South.  All the smart people I spoke with and listened to were in the selling business. One gentleman sold brand strategy and ideas, though he had a hard time telling me what his functional title was. Another couple of guys were in the “experience” business, with those experiences spanning online, offline and inline media. They, too, agreed it was hard to explain their company Is-Does. And the last group, a panel at the Brandhackers Meetup, was all about digital advertising: media planning, research, analytics automation, and creative.

What was interesting to me, fascinating really, was that they all understood and agreed with the Foster, Bias & Sales model of marketing. Their tools and areas of marketing influence may have been different, but everyone understood that marketing is about creating a positive atmosphere for healthy growth (Foster), establishing a predisposition toward the product or service (positive Bias) and creating action (Sales).  Sure, the digital ad people at Brandhackers may have peppered their talk with KPIs (key performance indicators) and soft mealy measures, but they had all been around the block enough to know that Sales is da monies.

I always wanted to open an ad agency called Foster, Bias and Sales.  It was a great strategy.  The Problem was, and is, that ad agencies are not best at providing the Foster, Bias & Sales continuum. Integrated shops are. The tool kit is overflowing and very exciting.  Clients were the first to see it…they just don’t know how to manage it.  Now agencies need to deliver. Peace!

A Corporate Recruiting Lesson.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I’m a big college basketball junkie; specifically a St. John’s fan. Otherwise I roll with the Big East. I’m not alone. Men’s college hoops is big business. Big squared. College recruiters start the ”watch and wait process” when kids are in eighth grade. The good news is at that age, the parents are training their future stars-to-be so the kids are fairly easily found. They play school ball but also can be found in AAU, police leagues and even church ball. You can’t teach tall, so that is one of the things recruiters look for. Also dribbling skills, fast twitch movement, hops, balance and let’s not forget shooting.

Over the weekend I was reading about how the best computer engineers at Stanford are often recruited and signed by corporations during the fall semester of their senior year. The fall semester. Of their senior year. Any college basketball recruiter will tell you anyone left unsigned at that time in high school isn’t worth too much. In the marketing business, some smart companies do a tour of college campuses with a card table, a sleeve of pamphlets and a PPT show. Our business could learn a thing from the college basketball recruiters. Home visits, texts, phone calls, nice letters to momma – a shmear every once in a blue moon.

If the marketing feeder system were run better, marketers and agencies would be a lot more effective and profitable. Peace.

NY Mets Need a Strategy Shift.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I am a NY Mets fan.  Saw their first ever World Series home game. Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan pitched. A great catch in the outfield.  When the Mets were bad, I’d read every NY daily newspaper after a win and only one after a loss. When a 20 something in NYC without any dough, I’d listen to the games on the radio and keep a score card in lined yellow legal pads I’d borrowed from work. 

The Mets are going to win the pennant this year, and people will look back and call me prescient.  But this year they are the poor, poor Mets.  Messrs. Wilpon and Saul Katz have developed a case of stinky which has attached to their suites and pressed shirt and it’s now passed on to the franchise.  The Mets have allowed the mainstream press to load up on the clubs financial troubles and it now defines them. Wait till 60 Minutes and Morley Safer gets after it.

New Yorkers are a very resilient group.  We love what’s ours. Don’t read on us. I don’t begin to know the intricacies of their business dealings with Madoff, but the Wilpons need to play some ball. They’ve got to stop being tofu in this media maelstrom.  Their strategy has to be “play to the kids and adults will follow.”  They should cancel the last few games of pre-season, come back to New York and barnstorm. Get the players to sign balls at malls, tweet their butts off, visit little league fields. Don’t just show up at Cohen’s Children’s hospital for a photo op. Take some grounders in Massapequa Park. Be heroic.  Remind us that they are just kids playing a kids game.  People are tired of money woes, it’s so last year.  Let’s play some baseball. (The $10 tickets, by the way, was a good start.) Peace.

Electronic Payment Futures.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Okay, check it out.  Credit and debit card purchases work like this: you buy a $100 dinner and the restaurant gets $97, the card issuer (Visa, Amex) gets $2 and the restaurant’s bank takes $1.  On a per transaction basis it doesn’t sounds so onerous; credit cards are complicated, bankers have to make a buck, restaurants love the convenience and so long as there isn’t any technological fallout (sorry) everyone is happy.  But this whole electronic payment thing reminds me of the landline telecommunications industry.  To make a long distance phone call you have to pay your local telephone company, the long distance carrier, and the local telephone company on the terminating end.  ‘spensive.

Rethinking Mobile Electronic Payment

It doesn’t take an MIT grad to see that there are some inefficiencies in the current tripartite payment system, especially since nothing but data is changing hands.  So who is going to remove the first and last mile of money transactions as we move to smartphone payment technology? Google is thinking about it.  JPMorgan Chase is debating it.  Mr. Zuckerberg wonders. Verizon, too, has dreams. (Phone companies billing systems are very bank-like in their complexity.)  Don’t forget, American Airlines once made more money on its first-to-market reservation system than it did flying planes.

This electronic wallet, direct from consumer payment system is a comin’.  Question is: Who will be the winner? Thoughts?

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