Astonish Your Customer(s)

Creating or Finding a perfect storm

Seth Godin talks about how Halloween became the monster event, seemingly all by itself, rather than as an orchestrated marketing strategy by some monolithic entity. 

He says, "You can't make a perfect storm, but you can find one". 

To me, Seth is saying that you should stop with the angst over trying to create the new or create an audience for your new thing.

Instead, find the audience that has already formed, will be there year after year, is always open to new, bigger, better ideas and give them what they might want.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Brand management for 181 years

If you are launching a new exciting brand or managing a longstanding successful brand in a big company, it is not uncommon to hear an executive pronounce that she wants the brand managers to behave in such a way to ensure the brand will be not only around but successfully growing 50+ years from now.

Fifty years seems like an eternity to a brand manager that usually spends no more than 2-3 years on a brand and sometimes much less.

The 50 year pronouncement also infers that a brand manager should build the brand with an emphasis on actions that will create value over time vs. pursuing short term gains in sales and share.

Regardless, most brand managers envision taking actions that will spike the value of the brand in the here and now - growing sales and share rapidly to make him and his resume look like a star.    

I was born and raised in Philadelphia, so Yuengling (Ying-Ling) Beer has always been around my life.

It is the oldest brewery in America, 181 years old, always privately held, family owned and family run.

Yuengling has never been in a hurry. It is only distributed in 15 states despite the fact that people clamor for it across the country. It is rock star hot right now - the brand can expand almost wherever it wants. The CEO (last name Yuengling) won't allow it. He just bought a brewery in Memphis for $20MM - the company's biggest expenditure ever. The press is aflutter speculating that the beer company will expand rapidly throughout the Mid-West and South.

According to the CEO, they will pursue their successful 181 year-old strategy of ... not-so-fast. In fact he stated, "we've been around for 181 years, we're not gonna be in a hurry now".   

Distinct product, consistent product, slow, steady, deliberate, conservative, good price/value ratio, staying power. Chasing great vs. money for money's sake and, voila, 181 years later the family still owns a successful business. 

Does the "not so fast" strategy sound like a familiar one used by the people who profess to be building a brand that will stand the test of time? 

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

Value or Volume

Polly LaBarre, co-author of the fantastically insightful and educational book, "Mavericks At Work", asks this important question that should be constantly posed by any brand steward. 

How do you grow in ways that increases VALUE, not just volume?

O.D.O.o.O.D.B. 

 

Do u kno y u buy?

Think about your thoughts?

Do you know why you buy Skippy v. Jif? Alpo v. Pedigree? Colgate v. Crest? Heinz v. Hunts? 

If your dog doesn't seem to care which brand of food you buy, why should you?

Think about your own buying decisions for consumable items.

How much of the decision for just one products you often buy is based on logic and how much is emotion?

What items are based just on logic (sandwich bags)?

If a marketer cannot even explain to herself why she buys what she buys, why does she think that a few points of data and some observations of customers at a focus group or in a store gives her clarity as to her customer's motives and decision-making criteria.

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

 

Product Spam

I'm talking about the kind you put on store shelves - yeah, Product Spam (and, I don't mean the one from Hormel).

Aren't the vast majority of line extensions just another form of spam - Product Spam? How many long lasting successes have you had with (the umpteenth) line extensions? Lots, a few, none? 

When deciding whether to proceed with a line extension or a we'll-do-it-just-because-we-can product launch, think about whether that product will feel like it is remarkable or spam to your ... customer, sales team, retailer, market researchers, brand team, R&D group, regulatory team, executives. 

If it feels like spam (not different or better, not asked for, unwanted, easy to ignore) even a little bit, it probably means that its a big piece of Product Spam.   

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

Even kids know

Ally Bank has TV commercials that are both clever and convincing, built around the concept of treating people fairly, by the Golden Rule, if you will. 

Ally uses the tag line "Even kids know it's not right to ..."

Ally's approach is good reminder for the development of products or communication. Make it so simple and fair that a kid would understand it. 

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

Your product = Toilet

"An eight year-old today sees the internet with about as much fascination as you see the toilet", says world-renowned and prolific inventor Dean Kamen. "To kids, they're the same,. Nothing magical, nothing exciting, just there when they need it. That's how quickly technology changes-and it isn't just moving fast, it's moving at an accelerated rate." 

Internet = Toilet, in the minds of kids who have never known life without the internet ... I think he is right.

Maybe we need to stop looking at our past successes with so much pride and start creating the future.

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

Find the Bright Spot(s)

In the Heath Brothers wonderful new book "Switch" they outline ways to bring change and also ways to determine solutions to problems. 

The first way to solve a problem is to find the bright spots, the areas where there are positive results or meaningful progress. They urge people to learn from the success and transplant that behavior elsewhere. 

I met with the owners of a small-ish cold & cold remedy brand yesterday. The brand's sales have dropped precipitously and the company is resource-constrained in dollars, people and time. They can't afford expensive or fancy market research to determine what the bright spots might be, so I gave some ideas about how and where to look for the bright spots (this is CPG/HBC brand sold in food, drug and discount stores). 

• People who profess love for the product (scan: Twitter, Google, Blogs, Community sites)
• If you have email or other means of speaking with your customers, ask them why they like/love the product (do those people belong to any particular group or profile that can be connected to)/
• Look for clues in the following areas: Remarks made on 1-800 customer service calls, requests for samples (what markets), information left by people on brand's web site, PR coverage (what markets, reporters, publications, web sites tend to love brand)
• Complaint letters (they often include helpful info as well)
• Retailers where brand has a positive trend 
• Flavors and sizes of product that have positive trend
• Ask employees, especially the mouthy, iconoclastic folks (in every function of company)
• Consumer Reports 
• Ask vendors and suppliers (they are working with brand for a reason other than money)
• What promotions tend to work for brand (time of year, retailer, price-off or bonus packs, etc.)
• What geographic region has the best sales record 
• Public information available about brands that are similar to your brand  
• Measure all past advertising and brand communication programs to see if you can prove a positive ROI
• Please pass along your suggestions 

Somewhere, someplace the brand/business has some bright spots. The spots can be found with little to no expense, if people are willing to look and are inquisitive and resourceful about the process.  

Last thought. Every company should put the process in place to capture formal and anecdotal evidence of bright spots (everyday).

O.D.O.o.O.D.B.  

Peril of sameness

Seth Godin just posted: "Sometimes we try to so hard to (have our product) fit in we give consumers no choice but to seek the cheapest. After all, it everything is the same, why not buy what's cheap and most readily available?" 

And then he follows that simple point of brilliance with this shot to the gut: "Easy to read this and nod your head, but... what's your resume look like?"

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

We have met the enemy and it is ... line extensions

I speak to lots of different brand marketers of CPG products and everyone is either fearful or complaining about how the major retailers are eliminating items, thus reducing shipments (sales) of the branded products.

I have yet to hear one person make the following lament: "We wouldn't be in this predicament if we didn't launch so many me-too and blah products".

It is a ton of work to launch just one size of one product, let alone a new brand - thousands of man-hours and sometimes even millions of dollars for research, legal, regulatory and the like. And, over 90% of the products fail.

It is easy for a brand to look back on the last 5 years of products a company has launched and score the items as a success or a failure - the commonalities are obvious. Sure, brands get lucky once in a while but relying on luck is not a smart strategy.

Brands need to get upstream and kill the me-too and blah stuff before too much (or any) time and dollars are spent. They need to take the time and money that is saved and take an approach that will allow them to achieve breakthrough.

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