Astonish Your Customer(s)

The recession & web excuse

It is common to hear magazines and newspapers claim that their business is suffering because the soft economy is causing businesses to spend less on advertising. Or, the web offers different and more timely ways for people to get news, which has caused readership to decline and businesses to shift advertising to the web.

Hmmm?

Here's a cure for the advertising problem: All newspapers and magazines have to do is prove that advertising in their properties actually produces a positive return on investment. If they could do that, brands would spend into infinity, right?

The headlines should read: Magazines & Newspapers Can't Prove that Advertising Works!

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

What social followers want from a brand

Deals aren't the only thing

Brand marketers want consumers to follow them to build buzz and engagement, but social media users often desire something in return. What they've come to expect is a god deal, but many consumers-including the most active users of social sites-are also interested in deeper engagement. See rest of facts herefrom eMarketer.

My take is that brands that have no compelling difference or specialness have only one bullet in their social gun and that is deals, while brands that are new, different, special and have a compelling story, have the opportunity to pursue and nurture a deeper engagement.

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

Longer is better

A few years ago I met with the senior executives of the Homedics brand. At the time, they were growing like a weed selling back massage products, heating pads and they were just expanding into new lines like spa, sensory and filters for air and water.

What was the driver of their accelerated growth? 

Homedics listened to their customers and decided to take away an annoyance. They lengthened the electrical cord on their massage and heat products. Customers hated having to find and attach an extension cord, that was often a color mis-match to the base cord. That was it. Customers rewarded them with lots of business and it opened the door for Homedics to introduce their, now satisfied, customers to a ongoing array of comfort-enhancement products.  

Some brands introduce a breakthorugh Tablet Computer and others lengthen electrical cords, both to the delight of their customers.

So, what is your "longer electrical cord" opportunity?

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

The eating diet

Subway revolutionized their business with the Jared weight loss testimonial, reinforced by their "Eat Fresh" campaign. I still don't know if that campaign makes them super-smart or super-duplicitous marketers. Maybe a more honest message would have been ... "Subway - Eat Less".

Now, some years later, Taco Bell is basically duplicating the Subway model and Applebee's is using a similar approach with their "Meals under 550 calories".

I am guessing that professional nutritionists are repulsed by these campaigns and what they suggest about the "diet/health" food that is offered by these establishments.

So, does a brand need to be a Saint in order to do good work (or, is that God's work), or is is it okay for a brand to offer a product that is less than ideal but still helpful, as long as they are truthful and transparent? 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

Magical - defined

"It's true, when something excedes your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical - and that exactly what the Apple iPad is".

"I don't have to change myself to fit the product, it fits me."

Jony Ive, SVP Design 

See the iPad Intro Video

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

Interesting Google stat

Only 15% of users of the Google search engine click on an Ad Word Advertisement (the small ads that appear on the right side of the search results page).

The Ad Words ad program generates almost 100% of Google's billions in revenue and there are millions of people/businesses that are creating viable enterprises by using the Ad Word program intelligently and persistently (test, learn, reapply - day by day) to drive their business.

Why does the law of small numbers make the Ad Words program so productive for both Google and so many other businesses?

Google - with multiple millions of searches each day and a 60% of the search engine market, Google doesn't need that many people to click to make billions of dollars (the law of both large and small numbers at work).

People/Businesses - it works because you are catching people in context (people searching for a coffee maker see coffee-related products - not life insurance), you control the cost of your advertising spend and you get smarter each day using the very intuitive Google tools to test, learn and reapply your keyword strategy.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

Stick, then Switch

Read, learn and act on the recommendations of the Heath Brothers. I read "Made To Stick" (what marketer hasn't), I read them in Fast Company magazine and I subscribe to their blog and Twitter feeds.

I just pre-ordered their new book "Switch" from Amazon after reading the insightful excerpt  in Fast Company.

My uptick: When confronting any type of problem in any setting, don't look at the just the problem, nor the enormity and complexity of the problem. Instead, zoom in, find even one thing that is going right or bucking the negative trend, ask a few simple questions about why it is going right and start cloning the positive things. In typical Heath Bros. fashion, they give practical everyday examples that show that we can indeed make it happen ourselves, in our everyday life.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.   

Market reasearch - a new model

Marketers of consumer products spends millions of dollars on research each year, often repeating research that was conducted a short time ago (by the brand manager that preceded him). The research is meant to provide insight that will help the brand please their customer, and sell more product.

The research is commissioned by smart people (brand managers and market researchers at the company) and then conducted by seasoned professional organizations (the research company). Then, the research is conducted and the research company converts the the data into conclusions. Then the research company meets with the brand manager and the market researchers to review the conclusions. The final step is to translate the conclusions into an action that will improve things for the customer and the business. And, most products and programs that brand managers launch fail - that's a failure rate over 90%. The failure rate is often due to the fact that the brands don't introduce anything that is noticeably different and demonstrably better as a result of the research, but that is not the point here.  

Who's to blame? Why does this happen? What is being done to improve or change the situation?

Maybe online advertising offers a suitable model for brands, as it relates to research. Brands demanded that the online advertising model change. Brands would no longer pay merely for eyeballs. Brands demanded that the ads produce specific results (click-thru, purchase, subscriptions, etc.). Why don't brands hold research companies similarly accountable?  

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

Are You Indispensable ?

What a question? Well, are you?

Seth Godin thinks you are and if you do not think that you are indispensable he explains in very accessible and specific terms how you can become indispensable.

I just finished his fantastic new book titled, "Linchpin - Are You Indispensable", which will be released for sale on January 26th.

Seth is many thing but one of his most outstanding attributes is that ... Seth does unto himself before he asks others to do likewise. A doer, not a talker. A prover, not a postulator. An iconoclastic teacher.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

Try to change behavior or leverage existing behavior

When I worked on REACH toothbrushes, the brand faced an ongoing dilemma - few people changed their brush as prescribed (4x per year and after an illness). The brand team obsessed about and implemented plans to change consumer behavior using education, sampling, product innovation and advertising. The price range at the time was between $1.99 and $3.29. Nothing worked.

I was at a meeting and suggested that since people were not changing behavior, maybe we should introduce a higher priced toothbrush - after all, $5.00 is not that much money and if customers were only going to buy 2.235 toothbrushes per year, might as well be a higher priced version. It was just a random comment, I had no data and no deeply held conviction about my suggestion. My suggestion was denounced as unviable as it was not aligned with the price elasticity study that had been conducted.

A few months later ORAL B, the market leader, introduced the first $5.00 manual toothbrush (the Cross-Action). It had a cool-looking design which gave it a high tech image. It was a huge hit.

I'm sure I'm the only one that remembers this story and remembers it that way but that is the way it happened.

The point - you can either try to change behavior (very, very hard) or accept it and leverage it (not easy but doable) - your choice.

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