Listening Starts at Home

By
Steve Poppe
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listening

So (today everyone starts their pontifications with the word “so”) the talk on the marketing street these days is all about “starting the conversation” and “being a good listener.” These are axiomatic teachings of the social media movement.  I appreciate this view and love listening to consumers, but I’d like to throw a trump card on the pile: Listening to employees. What is often forgotten in the social media world today is the role and input of employees.  Employees touch customers.  Lots of them. Employees know the product inside and out (if the company is well led). Employees have a stake in the performance of the product. Companies need to mine their own people for product and selling insights, because employees are the aggregators of smart marketing intelligence.

New Product Ideas

If you look back through time, I’d bet that 75% of all new product improvements, line extensions and new product ideas have come from within the company. Add to that all the new ideas and suggestions made off-the-cuff by employees that never saw the light of day and you begin to see a bigger opportunity.

Smart social media software companies, building enterprise 2.0 applications through which employees share, commune and contribute business building ideas, are what’s up in 2010. Listening to employees through social media will be a marketing breakthrough to Tweet about. Peace!

Sharing the Brand Plan.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

sharing

When I worked on the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System business with Welch Nehlen Groome, system CEO Michael Dowling would meet every Monday morning with new employees and welcome them. The system employed about 30,000 people so Mr. Dowling had an opportunity to go really viral with his mission.

At face value the mission, embodied in the tagline “Setting New Standards in Healthcare,” didn’t sound like much.  Operationalized, it was a brand game-changer.

The brand planks supporting the strategy were unassailable and uniquely North Shore – creating tremendous wealth for the brand. Yet what was missing from the equation and where I didn’t do a good job as brand planner was getting senior management to acculturate the brand plan through the employee world. Had every Monday morning Mr. Dowling shared the brand strategy with his impressionable new employees, imagine how much stronger his brand would be today.

People think health systems are about saving money. Done correctly, they are about redistributing healthcare wealth (clinical and economic).  North Shore had a system for doing this.  It was, and is, its secret sauce.

All companies, big or small, need to share their unique brand strategies with employees. Otherwise, every employee at every company is driven by the same strategy: earn a paycheck.

Worldwide Inventory

By
Steve Poppe
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0

barcode

Google built a business, quite well I might add, on perfecting search and search usability. They funded the business with advertising.  The brand play was not to be the world’s greatest advertising platform (something Yahoo and AOL didn’t understand), it was all about search. 

Back in the day (last week, hee hee) Google search was all about the Web.  Finding things digital.  This week, it’s about seeing and searching for digital things in the physical world.  So mobile apps and navigation are the rage. Google hasn’t led the way here, Apple has, but Google wasn’t first in search either.

What’s next?

What’s next is search for physical things in the physical world. Call it worldwide inventory. What is worldwide inventory and how will it work?  Not sure, but this cantaloupe sized brain of mine says it may have to do with barcodes.  Now you can’t put a bar code on an $11,000 hip replacement in Mexico (You can’t?) but you can put one on a $12.00 case of Honest Tea with torn labels. The ability for mankind to find real things, in proximity, with their smart phones is what Google will be doing over the next decade. And that hip replacement or $6,000 valve bypass in China will be something worth searching  for. Stay with search Google — it will soon be atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

Worldwide Inventory may sound like a Pearl Jam song but it’s an Eric Schmidt song.  Peace!

A Monster Idea.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I read a lot of books about branding and marketing. One thing about which they all agree is “read lots of books.”  But these books tend to cite similar case studies — especially the new ones trying to make a buck off of social media.  One case study you’ll read a good deal about is Monster.com 

Leaders lead and Monster is a brand that has done a pretty good job of leading.  I’ve spent some time on Monster but honestly, have never used any of the features bloggers and book authors discuss as builders of loyalty and value. Resume writing, dressing for success, etc. have not bound me to Monster one bit.  It has always been about the search and user interface. Plus they were first.

Then I took my son to college orientation earlier this year and one the big group presentations was a data party put on by Monster.  Smart. The speaker was from Monster, as was the literature and much of the advice. The point of the event was “Here’s what you need to do at school to succeed and get a good job.” They made great points: grades matter, it’s not hard to allocate 2 hours a day to studying, go to class, it will be competitive when you get out.  This is a wonderful marketing strategy; beyond wonderful.  It was forward-looking, targeted, important, agenda-neutral and believable.

I don’t know where Monster will be in 4 years but I do know where my son will be.  And if Monster keeps up with this type of marketing, he will definitely be touched by their brand. When cause marketing is personal it’s a winner. Peace!

Happy New Year!

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Be safe. Be good. Share and prosper in 2010.

Predicktions[sic].

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I came across a great 2010 predictions article this morning, though I had to find it by reading John Durham’s wall on Facebook (John is a principle of Catalyst:SF a haps dig. co.), which pointed me to a IAB SmarBriefs piece, that directed me to, of all places, Adweek. Can you say circuitous? Here’s the piece.

Anyway, it made me think about doing a couple of predictions of my own.  (RIP William Safire…I loved your yearly predictions with the multiple choice answers.)

 Here are my predicktions:

  •  The Dachis Group will be purchased by a big consulting company. Capgemini perhaps.
  • Razorfish will snap out of its post-Microsoft “Where are my stock options?” malaise and see mad growth fueled by traditional brand business.
  • Iran will continue to revolt and the Iranian gov’t will buy Twitter.
  • Pete Doherty will clean up, become a father and get hit by a bus of tourists.
  • Gareth Kay’s name will make it to Goodby’s stationery.
  • BBH will lose the Cadillac pitch because of a dream someone at GM had.
  • The economy will show signs of real life by the time the leaves pop.
  • Brand strategy will make a comeback following tactics-palooza.  
  • A teenage with a vowel in her name will emerge as the next Mark Zuckerberg.

 Peace it up!

AT&T Vs. Verizon

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Coverage

In my mind Verizon is putting a beat down on AT&T when it comes to the wireless wars. By now everyone knows 3G is the network that runs iPhones and smartphones.  Most also know that iPhone coverage over the AT&T network is pretty poor, with dropped called aplenty.  If you know someone with an iPhone, you’ve heard the complaints.

Advertising

Then there’s the advertising.  Every day I open my paper paper to find three successive full page, all type, orange ads with B- headlines such as “Don’t dumb down your smart phone” or “Is AT&T Better? Appsolutely” or “When you compare, there’s no comparison.” Today’s investment in The New York Times alone probably cost north of $200,000.  These ads which have been running every day for weeks create no muscle memory for AT&T. Together they tout what I’m sure research indicates is AT&T’s 4 key customer advantages: “faster, simultaneous talk and web, most apps, and most popular.”  They package these 4 things under the line “a better 3G experience.” Too much.

Verizon on the other hand and its “phone wars” tested ad agency McCann-Erickson are pushing one primary idea: 3G coverage.  The brilliant TV ad where the kid’s dense Verizon map blocks out the football game creates a memorable game-changing branding idea.  Coverage.  It’s smart on so many levels. Coverage = no dropped calls = good sound quality = fast.  AT&T and BBDO need an idea (as in one) or it may soon be a TKO. Peace!

Paid vs. Free Media.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

There are big discussions these days about whether or not media properties will continue to offer their products for free over the internet.  Will newspapers begin charging for daily news? Will magazines require subscriptions for articles and analysis? Will TV programming sites like Hulu submit to a fee structure?  There’s no question in my mind they will, so enjoy the free ride while it lasts.

 Citizen journalism will continue to grow and be free. It will be localized, time sensitive and a very vibrant source of news.  #carcrashamityville will turn up a story beating the local newspaper filings by hours. Blogger journalism and analysis will continue to be free but subsidized by book sales and speaking engagements. (When music piracy became a thing and musicians could make a living selling CDs, they acknowledged da monies was in concerts and merchandise sales.) Back in the day, valuable analyses and insight was sold in the form of paid newsletters, but that’s another business that has been drained.

Professional journalism and media production (audio and video) will have to be paid. Why?  Because it will come with a branded, marketing infrastructure that requires upkeep. And though ad revenue will help, it can’t cover all the expenses. Peace!

Beyond the Dashboard.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

dashboard 

The dashboard metaphor came to me recently when looking for the antithesis of what I have long been calling “rearview mirror” marketing strategy. Those who look through the rearview and side view mirrors to guide marketing decisions are likely to make only incremental advances.  This school of marketers asks questions such as “Where have our sales come in the past? Where have our competitors’ sales come from in the past? Who is gaining marketshare and what is their strategy?”  I’m a fan of history but I don’t advise clients to be stifled by it.

The Marketing Dashboard

The dashboard is something you hear about repeatedly in corporate management circles.  Data a la carte.  A single computer interface with dollar sales, unit sales, segment sales, regional sorts, YOY, month over month, sale by channel, A to S ratio, cost per click, etc. The dashboard can be mesmerizing, but what lies ahead of the dashboard?  The answer is the future. The horizon. And, more importantly, what’s beyond the horizon.  Can you say iPod?

 Incrementalists

I’m not going to go all Henry Ford on you but the future is where the big money is. Doing what everyone else does, even in messaging, is where the incrementalists play. Don’t be an incrementalist.  Look forward. People are people and their needs are predictable. Don’t over think. Understand simplicity, usability, and human nature…and you should be able see beyond the dashboard.  

Happy Holidays and a big fat PEACE!

Water Your Body.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

crystal light

“Water your body” is a smart new campaign for Crystal Light, owned by Kraft. The work comes from McGarryBowen, Chicago.  Consumer research indicates that women who consume powder-flavored water drink 20% more of it than women who drink plain water.  Since we all know that water and hydration is a good thing (leveraging a well-known fact) the claim is pregnant with positive information and imagery. Water is good for your skin. Water is good for your muscles. Water is good for organs below the belly button. Water is good for hair and nails, etc. 

Sure, some people will see the ads and go to the tap or grab a plastic bottle of Poland Springs but the reality is the flavored stuff tastes better and is an inducement to drink more. The leap then becomes “Is Crystal Light water?” Kraft and McGarryBowen say yes.

 The biggest part of this market is not sports enthusiasts who crave water, it is the more sedentary women (and men) who know water is healthy — even if it contains 5 calories. Water your body is the creative idea…and a good one. “Flavor your water with Crystal Light and you’ll drink more” is the branding idea. Peace!

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