All posts tagged marketing
I recently read Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s ReWork while on a four-hour flight. Hands-down, it’s simply the best business book I’ve read in years. For one, it’s actually readable and entertaining. Even if I wasn’t trapped on a plane, it’s still a book I’d have consumed just as quickly.
Chock full of nuggets of business wisdom, disguised in part as common sense, it’s one of those books I wish I wrote myself. Some of its best insights follow below, in bold, along with my take on them.
Ignore the real world. Today, more than ever, we need to look beyond current solutions. The world of advertising is undergoing rapid change, and there are few who understand the need to rethink everything we know about marketing. The customer is king, among other shifting tides. Geo-location apps may be all the rage, but it’s what we do with that information that determines their utility for marketers, and the subsequent benefit for users.
Why grow? Size is irrelevant to success. Many would argue it could be an impediment to success in this era of ubiquitous technology-enabled channels for communication where customers can both air grievances or start positive dialogues about their interactions with products and brands. We should waste no time in learning from their experiences and opinions, and put said learning into action to make improvements. Smaller, nimbler agencies and businesses may even have the advantage here.
Be a starter. It’s no longer about entrepreneurship as we’ve known it to be. Anyone and everyone can be a starter. Content creators and curators are among the new small business owners. For traditional (read: big) business and agencies, this should be a good thing in sparking new innovations and dismantling useless, expensive infrastructures and processes where they’re no longer needed.
Start. Ideas are only as valuable as their implementation. Doing trumps strategizing. Execution can be said to be not only everything, these days, it can be the only thing. Scrap the 3-year, or even 12-month plans in favor of dynamic roadmaps that can shift direction with new customer insights and market challenges.
Draw a line in the stand. Don’t be afraid to stand behind the power of your convictions. It’s often all the momentum you need to propel your success. Wishy-washy products, services, or even points of view, rarely make waves. The most successful brands, or agencies for that matter, stand for something. They subsequently create anticipation and excitement among their customers for new products or simply the desire for repeat experiences. Or not. But they’re not afraid to lose fans as they keep their loyalists consistently delighted.
Do you really need? A budget of a half million to execute on that marketing campaign? Or would a fraction of that fee underwrite an equally, or daresay more, effective approach. Social media channels and PR are both cost-effective and better at engaging word of mouth to support your product or cause. You can’t buy that kind of credibility.
Embrace constraints. There’s nothing like smaller budgets and smaller teams to fuel renewed creativity and innovation. We get lazy otherwise. All the usual suspects in our collective pool of tried-and-true marketing tactics could use a rest in favor of fresh thinking and new ideas inspired by our digitally-engaged world and communities. And these days, we’re all working under constraints of some kind, or smart enough to plan as if we are.
Throw less at the problem. Be laser-sharp in your focus. Keep it simple so you can tell if and what is working, along with what isn’t. It’s always easier to ramp up volume and budgets when you actually know which marketing tactic or vehicle may be delivering greatest impact. Or have the option of embarking on a more effective strategy and approach without having blown your wad before you can show any ROI for the campaign.
Emulate drug dealers. Give your customers a taste of what you know will bring them back for more. If your product or service, indeed your brand, has intrinsic value, they will definitely be back for more. And you’ll have given them that initial nudge they may need to give you a try. After all, why be shy? If you don’t believe in the quality of your product or thinking and its power to sell itself, then why should anyone else?
I’ve barely uncovered the tip of the iceberg of Fried and Hansson’s powerful, yet concisely written rules for the new rule-breakers of the business world. As a small agency owner, I was both inspired and validated by my experiences. Oh, and for those of you who never read business books, this book is especially for you.
[This piece appeared in Ad Age online at http://adage.com/bookstore/post?article_id=143174 )
Paisley
Yesterday I was enthralled, as most of my geek brethren were, by the subtle announcement of the new iPod shuffle by Apple. At first, when I was watching the demo on the Apple site, I thought it was a joke. It’s ridiculously small. Like stick of Trident gum small. And I thought when I bought the very first shuffle, and it was the size of a PACK of gum, that it was astoundingly small. And even though I only used my shuffle 1.0 for a short while (I convinced myself that my first and second gen iPods were just too darn bulky to wear on my albeit short subway rides to the office), I abandoned her when her tiny offspring was born, the shuffle 2.0. The shuffle 2.0 was cute as a button when she emerged from the womb in Cupertino. You could go to any Apple Store and see crowds of men, women and children all cooing over her like new parents in a maternity ward with their faces pressed against the glass.
And she had a clip. A clip! No more lanyard that I never used. Okay, I used it a couple of times, but even that was a bit too dorky, for even me. This baby clipped right on to what you were wearing. And it came in colors. Colors! And I had to have one. I was convinced that it would make my life oh-so-unincumbered at the gym. Plus I was fed up of strapping my iPhone 1.0 to my arm band and having it slide down while running on the treadmill all the while sweat pooling up against he neoprene case. And let’s face it, everyone had stopped staring at my iPhone once more and more people started buying them. I had to have a shuffle 2.0. And as if to sweeten the deal, they had a product (RED) one. Now I HAD to have one. And so I did. And it did change my gym life—for those times when I actually went. And now it sits on my desk staring back at me just bursting with music, begging to be played. (I swear I’m going to start back at the gym any day now).
And I think that if I just had this NEW shuffle I would DEFINITELY start back at the gym. Because this one talks to you. Talks! Even if you have to go through a ridiculous pantomime of clicks and holds of the half-Chicklet-sized set of buttons on the ear buds. It’s like learning morse code. And then, this beautiful voice from 1985 says the name of your song. But wait, if you hold it down longer, it will tell you your playlist. All the while leaving you guessing if it was actually speaking English. Hell, it’s worth buying it to just hear it try to pronounce the names of your artists. I’d buy it just to hear it say “Hoobestank.” And I’m sure you’d see me flying off the back of the treadmill as I tried to remember if it’s seven clicks and then two long holds or four clicks, a short hold, and then three more longish clicks before it would tell me which song I was thinking about buying when I got home.
And like ALL Apple products, if it didn’t hook me instantly, by the time I woke up the next morning I would know I had to have it. And why is that? I’ll give you two words: Brand Allegiance. And where Apple is concerned, everyone else can just move the hell out of the way, because nobody has brand allegiance like Apple. It’s an allegiance so strong that one feels compelled to buy not only the products that you “need” but even those that you don’t!
Apple symbolizes all things cool and definitely all things visionary. And it appeals to ALL age groups, from a child getting her first shuffle to my father’s 87-year-old Godfather who bought the newest iMac and carries it in, CARRIES IT IN, to the Apple store weekly for One-on-One lessons with a genius. Now that’s genius.
Apple Newton MessagePad 110
They could have easily used several large fans that would have kept the costs down and the noise up. But that’s not Apple. That’s not smart. That’s not visionary.
So if anyone wants to come over and see my new shuffle 3.0, just wait a couple weeks for me to stop going to the gym again and you’ll find it on my desk cuddled with my red shuffle 2.0 keeping her company.
I have been listening and reading with bewildered awe the vehement anger that consumers have felt over Tropicana’s re-branding, which they debuted earlier this year. And while any discussion about Tropicana is so two weeks ago, the whole discussion has had me thinking about something all together different: Comfort Brands.
In an economic climate where fear and stress are running high and people are going back to basics in spending and consumption, I am beginning to wonder if perhaps, as marketers, we are learning a big lesson in the idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.”
I discovered an interesting post by Ernie Schenck about his idea of Creative No-Fly Zones. In this response to another blog entry about how creativity is changing, he discusses the notion that the United States is in a cultural downslide and how advertising is perhaps the biggest culprit and vehicle for the breakdown of our culture. Ernie is speaking more specifically about how, in advertising and marketing campaigns, we are trying to push buttons and gain traction by delivering bad creative that is smarmy and cheap and, while quite possibly funny at times, denigrates and erodes our culture and society.
And while I agree with his notion of Creative No Fly Zones in terms of elevating the level of work we do without resorting to cheap and gimmicky ideas, I also wonder if we need to perhaps review product categories and Comfort Brands from the sense that perhaps there too we need to establish some Creative No-Fly Zones.
I was sitting in a kick-off meeting with a client last week where we were discussing their rebranding and re-launch for 2009. As we began to brainstorm and discuss the implications of a rebrand, the whole Tropicana packaging debacle came up. I stood there stymied by what I was seeing and hearing: outrage and passion and frustration all mixed together and pouring out of 6 very well-mannered, professional people. Over orange juice packaging?
As Marty Neumeier talks about in The Brand Gap, a brand or product is not what we (the marketers, product managers, and advertisers) say it is, it is what the consumers say it is. So whether you call us all alpha consumers, brand loyalists, or product evangelists, we all have brands that we are immediately drawn to for various reasons.
Which brings me back to the notion of Comfort Brands. Clearly the Tropicana packaging held more brand equity than the product managers at PepsiCo. or the folks at The Arnell Group had tested. Is it just a sign of the times that consumers, feeling the chaos and the sea of change all around them, don’t want to see iconic brands change right now? If PepsiCo. had launched this packaging in 2007 or 2010 would the reaction have been entirely different? What if we changed the packaging for Cheerios? Pillsbury Flour? Crisco? Would people have noticed the shift?
In order to stay relevant in this ever-changing world we have begun the process of re-invention with everything we can. Are consumers coming to a place where they are tired of change so much that they are going to start dictating what marketers can and cannot manipulate for bigger market share and returns?
If a product is not what we say it is, its what the consumer says it is, are we going to begin to see and feel the pressure and opinions of consumers dictate how and what we market? Have we permeated too far into the consumer’s comfort zones? Are consumers beginning to develop Creative No-Fly Zones for us with those brands that they have (or possibly will) deem to be Comfort Brands?
