Drinking and Driving

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There were two interesting announcements today that point to trends in the marketing world and both originate in China. Tsingtao Beer profits and sales are way up, due to increased consumption of brew in China and Chinese car companies like Great Wall Motor and Cherry Automobile Co. are growing faster than expected — and not just because they are selling to a new, emerging class of Chinese with disposable income. It’s because other developing countries, such as those in Africa, are finding value in Chinese automobiles. A new car in Africa doesn’t have 10 airbags or new age catalytic converters (not that there’s anything wrong with them), so their prices are lower and they’re outselling US and European brands. China is growing, consuming and growing smart.

 
I was driving around Puerto Rico a couple of months ago and was amazed at the number of Suzuki cars on the road. They outnumbered other brands 4 to 1. Now Suzuki’s aren’t Chinese, but they are a value brand and though the Puerto Rican economy has been dinged lately, by and large it’s doing okay. Many of these Suzukis were new. Clearly, Puerto Ricans want value. And the leading local beer in Puerto Rico, by the way, is Medalla. Why does it lead the market? It tastes good and costs less.
 
As China goes on line (not online) with more and more low wage jobs pushing out mass-produced products of value, we need to carefully watch the lower end of our market. We have only scratched the surface of what’s to come from China and other foreign-based value brand marketers. If you want a case to study, check out the growth of the Hyundai automobile brand in the U.S.
 

Ugly American Brands

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A GfK Roper Consulting study just reported that American brands are taking a major image hit around the world. Iconic brands like Coke, MacDonald’s and Gillette are losing their luster, while BMW, Sony and Honda are gaining. Could this be tied to our foreign policies around the world? Of course, it is.

 
The Ugly American was once cartoonish notion of boisterous, demanding tourists. It was almost real enough to be true. Today, however, it’s different.  Abroad, American’s are being painted with a single ideological brush and, fair or not, it is rubbing off on our products. If our products are become negative symbols of America and American culture, things are starting to go downhill fast. 
 
It’s every American’s responsibility to improve our country’s image. Let take control of our image. Leadership begins at home. The home where you park your car.
 

Is Chrysler hitting the Wahl?

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Chrysler’s new Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl Meyer has been brought in to energize this bobbing-in-the-water brand. Her background with Lexus and chops in luxury marketing is supposedly her edge. If she can actually come into Chrysler and affect real change, she may be successful. But frankly, it comes down to the cars…to the design. 

 
Go into any mall parking lot in America and look around. Do the Chryslers stick out? Can you even see them or are they invisible? A Sebring may catch your eye, but that’s about it.   My 16 year old son likes the Chrysler 300, but I don’t see it. To me, it looks like every other Chrysler, only 5 inches taller.
 
As any marketer knows, marketing starts with the product. Chrysler needs a design point of view. I’d like to hear Ms. Wahl Meyer articulate a mission statement for the Chrysler brand and therefore for the design team. That would be a good start.  Marko-babble like “burnish the image,” and “understand our consumers,” and “focus our marketing approach” sounds like someone without an idea. 

Hey, Ms. Wahl Meyer. What’s the idea?

 

Kid Nations at War

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If you’ve heard about Kid Nation, the new CBS reality show beginning in September, you know it has been discussed recently in the press because of parental concerns about how the kids were treated during production. The show sounds like another installment of Survivor, this time with teens and tweens. Check out a promo video of the show at:

 
 
I may tune in, being a big Survivor fan, but it looks like a weak, predictable premise. It did, however, inspire an idea related to the war in Iraq. How about CBS stage a season of shows in which 40 kids try to solve the morass that is Iraq?   Let’s have America soldier kids get together with Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurd kids and try to find a way out of the conflict. Add to the group some America contractor kids (lots of them), a smattering of (What were they called?) coalition kids and some outside, fanatical sympathizer kids and see what they come up with as a solution?
 
It would not only be good television, we’d probably have 40 survivors and an ending.
 
Are you listening CBS?
 
 

Dumb Roll Please.

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If you play or work in or about the online advertising community you know what pre-roll is. It’s a commercial that appears before a video. There is also post-roll — a commercial that appears after the video. Now there is mid-roll. Mid-roll began when TV channels replayed their episodes online, separating viewing segments by :30 spots, as on TV.

 

Today, YouTube and Google announced a mid-roll unit that begins 15 seconds into a video, and appears silently on the bottom 20% or so of the screen as an overlay.  It is a quiet, see-through video banner ad that clicks through to a longer form selling story. Yahoo and Google have both tested the unit and predict it clicks through at rates 5-10 times higher than banner ads.    

 

To quote Zack de la Rocha “Oh sh*t I got a head rush.” This is a Pandora’s Box that is about to make serious waves in the business of social computing. It seems like an elegant solution, e.g., silent, small, short in duration, but I’m betting there will be user backlash if this approach becomes too ubiquitous — and it’s not going to be pretty for Google. Google, don’t forget from whence you came. 

Retro Geek

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I’m on a plane to San Jose, sitting next to a rather geeky young lady and she’s typing in a foreign word processing application.  I squint and squint and finally figure out it’s Notepad, or Wordpad.  Bare bones typing.  Then I show up at Dave Berlind’s Mashup Camp the next day and happen to sit next to another nerd — a consultant of some sort — and he, too, is typing in Notepad. Weird.

I’m in the heart of the tech country (Stanford, Google, etc.) and people are typing in a foreign, retro and presumably hard-to-use word processing app.  I gotta know why.  A few days later I mention it around the office, and the geeks think I’ve been smoking something, so I remain quiet.  I know what I saw.

Today, many weeks later, I decide to go to Wikipedia and look up Notepad.  You know what it said?  Notepad is a non-formatted text application that removes all tags and format from copy cut and pasted from a website. And vice versa.

Clearly, the people I espied were heavy web users/publishers and found it to be a much more facile approach.

Ergo, I am writing this document in Notepad and will paste it right into LiveJournal.  I’m betting that instead of my normal formatting problems — cutting and pasting and taking extra steps — copy will slide right in.

Of course, as the world’s worst typist, speller and editor, this excercise might be a major mistake.  Let’s see.

 

Ready, Shoot, Aim the Arrow

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What is it about this marketing stuff that is so hard? Sergio Zyman once said marketing is about “Selling more product, to more people, more times, at higher prices.” Why can’t we just focus on that?
 
The Journal today discusses how Phillips-Van Heusen is using social networking and Ellis Island in its latest marketing campaign as a way to sell more Arrow shirts. Either I’m missing something or this is a barrowed interested stunt to get visibility.  And I’m not even saying it won’t work. They may indeed get good visibility, with this tactic de jour, and sell a few cotton oxfords. I don’t see any pink polo shirts moving, but that’s just me. Long term, this is just a mistake. 
 
It’s clearly one of those programs where someone in the company, or at the agency, said “Hey, social networking is big today, let’s build a program.” Clearly the mobile marketing idea (cell phone) didn’t rise to the top of the planning session.
 
These men and women should have taken the $50M they are spending and hired a great shirt designer to invent the next belly shirt or something. Or how about men’s underwear that is “A” cup, or “B” cup. Now there’s an idea.
 
Marketing tactics without strategy dilute brands.
 

Volkswagen. Asleep at the Wheel.

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It’s never too late, but this whole fuel efficient, lower emission car thing should have been the provenance of Volkswagen. It was made to order for them.   But NOOO, they had to spend time designing the Touareg.

 
They owned both the “product” and the “consumer psyche” in this rich automotive marketing space. Moreover, as anyone who has ever written a brief for a German multinational knows, German companies gets major credit for engineering. It would have been a “can’t miss.” Yet they let the Toyota and Honda beat them.
 
In the early fall Volkswagen is launching a marketing campaign around fuel-efficient, low carbon-dioxide emitting vehicles.    Will it be too late? No. Muscle memory will help. But they clearly didn’t have enough vision, to get ahead of this one. Where’s the leadership?
 

Modernista. Rules breakers.

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M!

TIAA-CREF, which stands for TIAA-CREF, is launching a new branding idea thanks to the people at Modernista in Boston. The idea revolves around TIAA-CREF’s status as a nonprofit. Generally speaking, people know that nonprofits tend to pour money back into the organization…and the cause.

 
This branding idea is an example of where rules-breaking makes serious sense. Typically, you want to develop marketing from the consumer perspective. The old campaign did that, in fact. The old campaign celebrated TIAA-CREF’s customers, showing vignette’s of teachers, researchers and other members “doing good.” It was a bit of a pander but this type of advertising usually makes everyone feel good: company and customer alike.
 
But instead of focusing on customers, the non-profit idea focuses on TIAA-CREF. (I call this “me” advertising, which is usually a mistake.) Modernista’s creative idea positions TIAA-CREF as a .org. which as everybody knows is very different than a .com.  Implicit in this positioning is the consumer benefit. Brilliant! It’s a great way to position a benefit without being too overt or using too much chest thumping.
 
These boys and girls at Modernista got some serious game.
 

LaCrosse La Same

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According to J. D. Power a number of Buick automobiles are as reliable as those of perennial reliability winner Lexus. Surprised? Me too. Two of those cars, the Century and Regal are no longer in production, however. Ironic? You bet. Why would Buick work so hard on quality just to jettison those two cars? They weren’t selling. Their designs were tired. 

 
Enter the Buick LaCrosse.
 
The LaCrosse is a Regal with a new coat of paint. Maybe a wee bit sleeker and more  youthful but not substantially. The Regal and the Century, though kicking some major quality ass, have been dropped for an incrementally changed car with a new name. 
 
If Buick wanted to cut with the past, they needed to overhaul the designs.  Buick has been the slowest GM brand to see that design is the key to success. Name changes and marketing ideas won’t do it (Yeah, Tiger Woods drives a Buick to parties.) Buick has clearly built better cars; they just haven’t designed any new cars. They have also hired a new ad agency, so I see new commercials that talk quality story and a new song in our future.  (“If you don’t have something to say, sing it” is an old advertising maxim.) But the proof is between the bumpers and that metal looks the same.