Astonish Your Customer(s)

Infomercial success

The late Billy Mays, the god of brand building and product sales via infomercials, starred in a TV show named "Pitchmen" with Anthony Sullivan this past Spring. It was an informative and fun show.

Here's Billy's list of the critical characteristics for a product to be an infomercial success.  

1. Wow factor
2. Easily demonstrable (visually makes the sale)
3. Mass appeal
4. Provides instant gratification
5. Understand story / product in 5 seconds
6. Everyday / frequent use 
7. Easy to use
8. Cost effective 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Just one more

When I worked on REACH toothbrushes, we would lament how lax consumers were about their oral hygiene. Consumers never changed their brush as recommended - once every three months. The brand's growth and success did not hinge on switching the users of competitive brands but rather simply getting our current consumers to buy just one more brush per year.

Turns out that (food) retailers have a similar issue. Every food retailer wants one of two things. They want their customer to put one or more additional items in the cart per trip and/or make one more incremental trip per year.

Food retailers have all your past purchases in their database, courtesy of the frequent shopper card. Why don't they have a terminal at the front of the store where a customer can swipe their FS card and get a print-out of past purchases. By virtue of this list, customers would purchase at least one incremental item every trip ("Yikes, I almost forgot the butter"). Problem solved, using the assets and systems already in place and available.  

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Views and Sales

Evian just broke a Guinness Record, as the most viewed online advertisement with 45 million views. Here's the very brief article in Brand Republic, which includes the video and remark by EURO RSCG, the creator of the ad.

According to the man behind the ad, Global Creative Director, Remi Babinet, "The Evian campaign has succeeded in proving that creativity at the same time can be very qualitative and very universal."

Huh?  

Not one mention of the impact on sales, not even in some generalized way.  

What's the use of being "qualitative", "universal" and "most viewed", if it does not substantially increase sales? Don't get me wrong, I like great creative but I like advertising that pays for itself better.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Fast or Far

In late 1998, I left Johnson & Johnson, where I was a Vice President, to join Drugstore.com, an ecommerce startup in Seattle, were I was employee #15.

It was a gut-wrenching decision at the time. J&J is a great company, I was challenged, learning and contributing in my role and my wife and I had a young family and nice home in Pennsylvania. Why (self) inflict so much disruption?

After looking at my career options and doing the Ben Franklin comparison too many times, I looked at it like this. If things went bad, it would be for one of three reasons ...  1) I don't like it, 2) They don't like me, 3) I am not good at my new job.

I finally concluded that I might fall fast but it was highly unlikely that I would fall far, meaning that I was confident that I could get a comparable VP position, if the need arose. 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

You're already dead

Ever see the HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers"? It was produced by Tom Hanks and is based on Stephen Ambrose book about the Men of Easy Company during WWII, from D-Day to V-E Day. Powerful, moving, incredibly well acted.

One soldier, Capt. Ronald Speirs, was particularly tough, intimidating, menacing. He fought with reckless abandon and led his men to tough victory after tough victory and never sustained a scratch in the war. He told some quaking younger soldiers that it was easy to be unafraid, as long as you realized that "you're already dead".

My takeaway: assume the worst will happen and by accepting that, it frees you to fight for the best that can happen, because when you get careful, you get hurt. 

How is that relevant to a marketer?

Look at your career path so far and the career path of the people around you? Increasingly, you will notice that people have worked for many companies and maybe in a few different industries. This type of movement continues to accelerate and there is limited stigma, as long as you are a person with a proven track record of accomplishment - achievements that you led, were fully involved in, which were noteworthy.

So, be not afraid, you're not going to spend your life where you are now, nor the next place. Push, prod and drive yourself (first and most) and your team to create breakthrough. If you are concerned about being shown the door, be at peace with the fact that people will say that you were a person that tried to make something good happen.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Yeah, but

When Apple or Google or Southwest or Virgin or Zappos or BMW or Amazon or Target or Trader Joe's come out with a new, cool, exciting and useful product, what do you say to yourself, as a marketer?

• I'm going to buy one
• There they go again 
• I wish I worked there
• They're so smart
• How do they keep doing it
• We had that idea but never acted on it

Do you ever say, "Dammit, I'm sick and tired of wasting my time on the crap that we call product introductions, that usually don't mean anything to the customers ... I'm going to change the way I, personally, think and work; or, I'm going to do whatever it takes to make a remarkable product; or, I'm going to do whatever takes to change the way we work around here; or, I'm going to quit."

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Fact vs. Story

You know what is so great about Fed Ex? There's only two outcomes, it either gets there on time or it doesn't. No gray areas, only black or white.

What percent of Fed Ex shipments make it to the designated point of arrival on time? A lot, right. A very high percent, like over 95% or something like that, right.

Tell you the truth, I can't remember, even though I've read the stat a bunch of times.  

But I do remember this ... Fed Ex - When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.

You can almost hear the argument between the irrational agency creatives and the objective Fed Ex executives, who pride themselves on living in the real world ... People won't remember a jumbled, double-speak tag line - better to use a simple, impressive data point.

People distrust and hate data but they love stories, especially when the story matches what customers dream about and the brand lives the story consistently and transparently.    

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

Screwed

Here are a few businesses or business activities that make me feel like I am getting screwed.

Smart marketers have introduced alternate models to address these shortcomings but there is still legions of opportunity for new entrants to treat customers how they deserve to be treated.

1. Car dealers - long process & then try to change deal at last minute
2. Cable companies - not enough choice, forced into bundled packages
3. Wireless phone companies - penalize most loyal and active customers; rigid, hardball rules 
4. Airlines
5. Government - super inefficient, all about job security, never about saving the public money or time  
6. Politicians - all about me, no concept or care for the reality of John Q. Public 
7. Customer service - not showing respect for customers as the phone tree clearly demonstrates
8. Plumbers, Electricians, Contractors - baffle you with techno-babble and B.S. to keep the rate high
9. Car repairs - dealers charging $90+ an hour for a mechanic   
10. Real estate agents - do so little for a huge fee
11. Professional sports teams - so expensive (ticket, food, park, merchandise, $8.00 beer)
12. Retail salespeople - often know less than the customer
13. "All you can eat" offers - unlimited usually means low quality
14. Self-Help gurus & programs - buy now, buy more, keep buying from me
15. Chuckie Cheese "toys n trinkets" - total crap
16. Time share sales pitches
17. Recruiters - lack basic professional business courtesy  
18. Coupons - quick expiration or includes fine print that diminishes the offer    
19. Produce - 30% or more of every purchase is rotten or sub-par
20. Performance reviews - just a doable HR induced activity not built to really help anyone
21. Return policies - too restrictive or contain too many hoops  
22. Public schools - almost impossible for parents to institute change 
23. Credit card companies - hidden fees, change rate
24. Online processing fee - is there really any cost for an online transaction
25. Bank's insufficient fund fee - why is the fee $35 no matter the size of the insufficient funds
26. College tuition - how can so many middling private schools justify charging 90% of what Harvard charges  
27. Free credit reports

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Two approaches

Russell Ackoff, a management thinker on par with Peter Drucker, has died at the age of 90. He long worked with Anheuser-Busch. While studying the A-B marketing strategy he concluded that increasing advertising budgets had little effect on sales. Neither did the taste of beer, he found through blind taste tests.

Marketing spending was passed onto the consumer in the form of better prices, making Bud inexpensive compared with local brands that had dominated the market. His findings and recommendations gave A-B the confidence to keep its marketing budget flat from 1961-1976 (flat, for 15 years!). The result, A-B quadrupled sales. In 30 years of working with A-B, beginning in 1960, market share grew from 7% to 40%.

Novartis is launching Prevacid OTC this week. The product was a monster Rx drug with $3.1B in sales last year but lost patent protection. The product is entering a very crowded OTC field and one that includes an identical product from P&G, which has the same claims and a slightly lower price. The market also includes a host of other brands and generics with similar claims and a lower price. 

How does Novartis plan to win? With a $200 MM ad spend. TV ads will show people with heartburn unable to enjoy themselves - at a restaurant, at a comedy club, while sleeping. Original? Compelling? With no positioning, performance nor price advantage, Novartis is not going to win, nor is it even likely to generate sales to equal the planned ad spend. At the least, Novartis should focus like a laser on one or two segments of the user population where it can realistically be the first choice - e.g. diabetics with heartburn - and build from there. Novartis should take lots of the ad money and devote it to sampling - touch people in real life to stimulate immediate use of the product to link cause and effect. This late in the game, Novartis needs to either forgo the market or take the long view.   

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.

(TY: Wall Street Journal)

Best selling story ever

I sold Anacin when it was a top ranked pain reliever, neck and neck with Tylenol. The product that was most fun to sell was the highly ranked metal tin of 12 tablets - the one you'd typically see near the register in convenience stores, gas stations, drug stores and sometimes in food stores.

In the late 80s, we wanted to sell more tins to food stores because food stores had the most customers (pre Walmart dominance). How to do it? Ronnie Ayers, a crafty 'ol boy from Texas, created the following story to sell the tins to food retailers (cost $.80, price $1).

You began by asking the buyer a question: Do you think you could sell just one piece per day, per register - just one? 

What salesperson ever leads a sales presentation with a question, let alone a question that goads a buyer by asking if they can achieve an anemic sales goal like one piece per day? The buyers would say, "Of course", and then you'd show the math.   

Place one dispenser at each register in each store in the chain (500 stores x 6 registers per store = 3,000 placements). If you sell just one piece per register, per day Mr. Retailer, you'll sell 3,000 pieces per day, generate $3,000 in sales and $600 in profit. Multiplied by 365 days = $1,095,000 in sales and $219,000 in profit, while taking up virtually zero selling space.

The buyer would snap the worksheet out of your hand and compute the numbers for himself. Usually he'd do it twice. They couldn't believe it - how does 1 add up to $1,000,000? They all loved the idea and most of them made the same remarks. They loved the product, the simple story, the low pressure sales technique, the simple math and the simplicity of the execution. Most of the major chains bought the product and executed the plan and the company sold millions of Anacin tins. And, no chain ever met the sales goal of one piece, per register, per day - not even close. Did the buyers get mad? Did they penalize us on the next sales proposal? No.

Why? The story made sense, it was a reasonable goal and they were completely bought in, not strong armed, pressured or fooled into doing it - they were partners in the plan, and the failure.

This story will always remind me that telling a story is better than making a pitch. That simple is better than complex. That even if the product is well liked by consumers and retailers and the plan is executed to perfection, it can be hard as hell to meet even the lowest of sales expectation.  

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.