Skechers on the Heelys of a Takeover

By
Steve Poppe
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Skechers shoes is trying to buy Heelys.   It is another example of a billion dollar company trying to improve its lot by taking over a hundred million dollar specialty company and I hope the sale doesn’t go through.  Skechers is a nice brand that had some focus and momentum but lately has been trying to find its way; it is now less about the shoes and more about style, fashion and yesterday’s stars. The ads on the Skechers website are pathetic. I guess they can’t afford a good idea or good production, while paying all those celebrity endorsers. 
 
Heelys on the other hand is focused. They have a sizable consumer target, unique product and though it appears things have slowed for them somewhat, a tight business idea.  If Heelys dilutes its core idea and tries to expand to older kids or allows Skechers to take them over and taint the product waters, they are finished. As in buh-bye finished!
 
 

Branded Entertainment Finesse.

By
Steve Poppe
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Branded entertainment is a form of advertising that showcases products, in theory, in a less-intrusive way, but I have rarely seen it done so. Navistar International is sponsoring a documentary called “Drive and Deliver,” intended to help push the new Lonestar truck and according to Stuart Elliot in his New York Times column today the rough cut still has a few too many close-ups of the truck.  That said, with proper editing this film by Fathom Communications might just sell some serious trucks. It’s a unique enough subject to create a cult following, but more importantly the target of the effort, truck buyers, are crazy-passionate about their rigs and their craft. (Ever hear a trucker talk about his/her Peterbilt?) Anyway, the casting looks right, let’s just hope the story-telling is too.
 
Those who have watched the reality show “Deadliest Catch” and not wondered what an Alaskan King Crab tastes like may not agree, but I’m betting this effort will demonstrate that the marketing industry is beginning to acquire more finesse when it comes to branded entertainment. Peace!
 

R/GA Brand Design.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

R/GA is getting into the branding business. It’s about time. I’m sure they say “we’ve been doing branding for a while,” but now they can actually get paid for it.  
 
At shops like R/GA, digital branding has basically meant riding herd on the branding idea and message planks as they pop out of the  creative department — an account planning function, if you will. But upon further thought, the efforts of R/GA’s new practice, R/GA Brand Design, should go way beyond that. Crucial brand insights are more likely to emerge in the digital space — especially though the use of branded social nets such as Nike Plus http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/. Branded social nets will be the next big thing because they provide living breathing research labs for brand geeks. 
 
I’m guessing R/GA Brand Design will now have a seat at the “adult table” when it comes to large corporate planning meetings. They’ll have to remember to leave the tactical suitcase at home, though.
 

Behavioral Targeting Pitfalls.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
 
One day I’m going to start an ad agency called Foster, Bias & Sales. Foster, Bias & Sales will succeed because it understands the following marketing truism:  In order to get to a sale, you must first foster awareness and positive feeling, then create bias toward your product.
 
Behavioral targeting in online media is an emerging media tool moving in the right direction.  If marketers and media buyers use behavioral targeting as a way to jump right to sales, though, they will only have incremental success.  If they use behavioral targeting to foster preference and create bias first, then the selling will be easier – and will allow higher margins. (Markets like that.)  A consumer who strides briskly into Best Buy with a specific branded product in mind always walks out with a smile on his/her face. The consumer who meanders into the store looking for a salesperson to help them decide, typically walks out feigning a smile and staring at the bag a lot.
 
As we move into the era of behavioral targeting, let us not forget Ms. Foster and Mr. Bias.
 

“Hey, go get Arrington.”

By
Steve Poppe
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0
 
Zude.com is a social computing platform that allows anyone – grandmas to geeks – to build and manage a website. Our tagline is “feel free” which implies Zude’s limitless web publishing promise. This grandmas to geeks idea was created by our PR agency Spector and Associates. The suit strategy was “the fastest, easiest way to build and manage a website.

Our CEO and CTO were demoing Zude at Web 2.0 Expo in 2006 for Robert Scoble , who was broadcasting live over the Interent with some sort of hat-cam, when in the middle of the demo he yelled to a friend, “Hey, go get Arrington, he’s got to see this.” It was a validation of the Zude strategy. A “peak experience” in marketing as Maslow might say.
 
I was just reading the back story about Piers Fawkes creative consultancy, PSFK (www.psfk.com), and realized his defining moment came when Anheuser Busch called for some advice.  These signal moments are what marketers live for. They are why we get up in the morning. They are proof, of has “an idea.”
 

Bottle of pop? Or culture?

By
Steve Poppe
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Okay, I’m reading about Coke today and get the sense that someone at the top is starting to pay attention. Here are some of the moves Coke is making: A new campaign out of the U.K., code-named Pemberton, that attempts to win back some water and tea drinkers by alerting the public that Coke has “no added preservatives or artificial flavors.” Research indicated consumer didn’t know this. Another campaign also begun in England called “Intrinsics” is all about taste. (Were you brought kicking and screaming to the table, Dan Wieden?)
Mother has also gotten in to the act creating some :05 ditties called “blipverts,” which I don’t have to see to know I like. Their titles are: “Cap”, “Fizz,” “Ice,” and “Pour.” Were I to add the next one I’d call it “Bottle Sweat.”
Here’s where Coke has gone wrong and it’s embodied by a quote from an Interbrand consultant in today’s NY Times: Coke is “taking a risk by deviating from its long history of very entertaining,aspirational advertising. People rely on Coke to produce commercials that influence pop culture.” Yeah, that’s what people are doing. Thirsty as hell…and looking for a bottle of pop culture.

Politics and brew, common sense?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 

Miller High Life’s Common Sense Platform campaign will be interesting to follow. There are no inherent product qualities used in the work other than value. And if you go too heavy on the value message it can imply poor quality, which in the beer category means taste.
 
The Common Sense campaign follows a Miller delivery guy around while he puts forth his views on what constitutes common sense: fair price, sensible product, no fru-fru. Though the work is entertaining, it lacks brand ballast. Leveraging politics in a campaign year seems like a sensible tactic but Miller High Life has been so underfunded and invisible, I’m not sure this is a sustainable adverting idea for them. Sales are up 1%, but that is more the economy than the idea.
 
Were it my brand I’d create a uniquely today advertising idea that tied living the high life to the sharp, quenching taste of that amber brew seen through that beautiful, sweaty clear bottle and leave the politics to the politicians. 
 
P.S. If you’d like to hear the world’s greatest beer campaign idea, for Miller Genuine Draft, shoot me an email at steve@whatstheidea.com.
 

Get well soon Mr. Freeman.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

 


A few years ago my ad agency was pitching a TV campaign to the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. In the room were the two top officers of the system, some board members and the marketing director. The work was about cancer care. The CEO of North Shore had most recently been a senior director at Goldman Sachs.
 
We showed the storyboard, which was great, and then we broke out the big guns: a voiceover by Morgan Freeman. Since first listening to the narrative style of Mr. Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption, I had always wanted to use him as a voiceover. We mashed up some of his lines from the movie and played them for the room to set the tone — then read the script. It was healthcare at its most poignant. You know what it feels like when your body goes a tingle?
 
When the silence was finally broken and feeling returned to our bodies one of the board members asked “What will he cost,?” to which the CEO by way of Goldman Sachs responded reaching for his wallet “I don’t care, I’ll pay for him out of my pocket.”
 
Prayers and props to Morgan Freeman. Please get well sir.
 
 

Bravo Visiting Nurse Service!

By
Steve Poppe
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“Your husband is ready to leave the hospital. The tubes in his chest are coming with him. Now what?” For people of a certain age this question is pretty scary. And real. It is the headline of an ad in a brilliant new marketing campaign by the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. 
 
Category leaders educate the market (Are you listening Gentiva?) and the VNS is doing just that with this new effort. The advertising speaks to consumers in a straightforward, empathic voice and, more importantly, isn’t asking rhetorical marketing questions. These questions make consumers feel something.  More questions and answers can be found on the website http://www.vnsny.org/answers or their toll-free number. Unlike Geico, which promises savings after 15 minutes, VNS makes no promises and smartly doesn’t ask for an email address. They act like a leader.
 
I’ve been following the VNS marketing for a couple of years and it has been so-so at best. “We bring the caring home” was their tagline — a what we do line – and since their name tells the story the line has been a lost opportunity. The new line “The Right Care Now” seems a bit weak, but may work depending on the brand planks. The new logo is “bookish” and old school, which may work for boomers but certainly not for their caregiver children.  Overall, however, the new campaign is very smart and well-integrated with the web. Not gratuitously integrated with the web.  
 
Any good doctor or nurse will tell you that listening is an important part of a good bedside manner. VNS is asking the right questions, listening and providing good counsel. Bravo VNS of NY. 
 
 

The Noxious Olympic Games

By
Steve Poppe
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0
 
Historically, the Summer Olympic Games create one lasting image that is remembered globally for years and years. Jesse Owens in Berlin in ’36. The ’68 games in Mexico City with Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their black power salute. Nadia Comaneci’s dismount pose in Montreal ’76. The Munich Olympics with masked terrorists on the balcony.
 
It is my hope that the one picture we all remember from the upcoming Olympics is the picture of an athlete in a gauze mask, beneath a gunmetal gray, iodine-infused sky.  This lasting image of the pollution in Beijing might just wake up enough citizens of the world so that we unite and act to reduce pollution and global warming. The image of the earth’s most finely tuned physical machines, our athletes, rejecting the noxiousness that is Beijing is a fitting symbol and that change is sorely needed.  
 
I pray for poor weather so that the smog does not blow away and the world can really see — in hi-def — what we are doing to the environment. Peace!
 
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