Archive for May, 2009

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Chick-fil-A 100 Hits Cincy

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Last Thursday I was driving to a client meeting in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason when I drove by a Chick-fil-A restaurant. It caught my eye for some reason; maybe it was the fact that there was a grand-opening sign but more likely because the grass around the restaurant was covered in tents. Luckily someone at the meeting I attended that morning told me about the “Chick-fil-A 100,” and I learned about yet another fantastic example of Marketing with Meaning.

If you are one of the unfortunate few who has never eaten at Chick-fil-A, let me just say you’re missing one of the greatest fast-food chains in the world. Like me, the brand grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. It began in 1967 with a killer chicken sandwich and has since spread to nearly every state and more than 1,300 locations. The brand has always retained certain eccentricities. Due to religious beliefs of the founders, Chick-fil-A is always closed on Sundays. And the brand is loved for its outdoor ads featuring cows who spell out “EAT MOR CHIKIN.”

Back in 2003 at store opening in Goodyear, Arizona, the local Chick-fil-A opened with a large parking-lot carnival. One of many promotions of the event was a promise to give the first 100 customers coupons for a free combo meal every week for a year. Since then, the company has offered a similar benefit for the first 100 at every store opening, which ends up attracting people who camp out in tents for several days and drive from hundreds of miles away. The video from a local news station below is one of many great snapshots of these events:

Chick-fil-A has discovered a very smart formula for success with these meaningful store opening events. The key business objective of any local store opening is to generate awareness and traffic as early as possible. The Chick-fil-A 100 makes for a picture-perfect local PR event. Local newspapers and TV stations can’t resist stopping in to see people waiting out all night for free meals, and the national attention and attendance from people who drive for miles to join in adds to the impact.

Aside from the initial awareness boost, Chick-fil-A benefits from the thousands of fans it creates each year through these opening-day events. Like people in London who sang together thanks to T-Mobile, those who join the opening-night experience enjoy a special moment that sticks with them forever. And, let’s face it: These experiences can really stand out as special in the rural communities and exhurbs where Chick-fil-A stores are mainly going up. No wonder that a contact of mine with a connection to Chick-fil-A told me that the brand has a higher Net Promoter Score than Apple.

The next Chick-fil-A opens in Gaffney, South Carolina, on May 28, a town also known for its large, peach-shaped water tower off I-85. Road trip, anyone?

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Posted in Connection, Experience, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Philips Wins ‘Advertising As Service’ Award

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

For the past two weeks, Advertising Age has been sharing case studies that have come out of the annual Festival of Media Awards. Last week I hammered award-winner Gatorade, which was praised by the awards jury but managed to offend gamers. But this week I’m happy to praise Philips, which found a way to add value to China’s crowded hospitals.

For more than three years, Philips has stuck with a campaign that has meaningful marketing written all over it. Dubbed “Sense and Simplicity,” Philips is investing its marketing dollars across the board to save time for and sanity of its consumers, thus earning brand respect and product interest. The campaign first got recognition when Philips paid magazines $2 million to remove the annoying subscription cards from magazines for a month and allow readers to flip straight from the cover to the table of contents. The company also has paid for free access to paid areas of ESPN.com and WSJ.com, and it bought up blocks of commercials on shows such as 60 Minutes and gave the time back to programmers.

The company later created a service called Philips Simplicity Concierge that answers texted questions from travelers in major cities. According to a 2007 article in The New York Times, Philips committed about 25% of its advertising budget to such value-added efforts.

Now Philips has applied the campaign to its medical-products business in China with a very compelling solution to the country’s notoriously crowded hospitals, where people can wait three hours to see a physician. Philips created and installed terminals in 10 major hospitals where patients can enter their phone number to reserve their place in line and get a text message when they are near the front of the line. This simple but effective tool is used by 125 people per day. In a second effort, Philips teamed up with the Public Health Bureau to drive awareness of the country’s system of smaller, newer health clinics as an alternative to hospitals. According to research from Philips, these efforts are saving the equivalent of 156 years in total waiting time per year.

What I love most about this campaign as a Marketing with Meaning case study is that it shows a killer B2B campaign. Yep, although all benefits go to consumers, the company’s efforts are actually completely targeted at the hospitals and clinics that purchase Philips MRI, ultrasound, and other products. The brand’s waiting-room texting kiosks and campaign to drive patients to community clinics are both clearly benefits to the hospitals they sell devices to. And at a time when healthcare costs are under extreme pressure around the world, these added-value services help Philips drive loyalty with hospital administrators.

Meanwhile, of course, Philips is able to deliver a valuable service to its consumer-products target market at a very meaningful time. The brand is seen as a hero when people are under stress and worried about their health. And when the time comes to look at big-screen TVs or DVD players, that positive brand experience can have a big impact on the bottom line.

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Posted in B2B, healthcare, Solution, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Selling Your Marketing—The Holy Grail

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

The most intriguing story I heard last week was that Apple has made somewhere between $20 million and $45 million in revenue from the 1 billion iPhone apps that have been downloaded from its store to date. In blog posts and Tweets about this estimate, the most common reaction was “That’s all they’ve made?” Since most apps are free, and Apple gets only a 30 percent cut of any revenue from paid-for apps, this seems like relative nickels in the grand scheme of things.

But one @reply from my Twitter feed, Rob Saker, had a great point that’s been sticking with me:

“I’d love [$20 million] with no inventory, spoilage, and few promotional costs… They may have found the Holy Grail of marketing, promotion that in itself generates revenue.”

To paraphrase Rob, Apple’s true take from the app store is much higher considering that these apps are the best marketing possible for the pricey iPhones and revenue cut from AT&T service (30 million of which are now in the market). The ulitmate test of Marketing with Meaning is when people actually pay for your marketing. And I believe marketers must set this as a new goal and revenue source for the work they do.

iPhone apps offer the perfect way for companies to create marketing that in some ways pays for itself.  Kraft’s very successful and slick iFood app is probably the best-known example. At the iMedia conference in March, the brand owner of the program, Ed Kaczmarek, said that Kraft chose to charge $.99 for the tool because they felt it was valuable, and putting a price on it actually helped communicate that value to consumers. That’s right-charging for the marketing made it even more valuable and meaningful. The result: iFood hit its three-year download goal in a matter of weeks.

At Bridge Worldwide, we’re developing a few iPhone app ideas, and my strong guidance to clients is to charge at least $.99 for them. Not only do I believe this adds to the value impression, but business managers start to get excited when new revenue comes in. Even if it doesn’t add a lot to the bottom line, the money that comes from selling apps can be directed toward further development and marketing of the app, which, in turn, can drive greater app quality and total downloads.

Another related and exciting piece of news last week was that Amazon has opened up a beta program to allow bloggers to get paid for people who subscribe to their blogs via the Kindle. Subscriptions are priced up to $1.99 per month, and the blogger gets 30 percent of the revenue. Of course, this is small beans right now, as there are likely not even 1 million Kindles on the market yet. But, again, we’re starting to see a model in which people are willing and able to spend a little for blog content. And blog content is almost always considered “marketing.”

In a recent post on his blog, John Gerzema makes a great point about consumer mentality of micropayments:

“The luxury of micropayment pricing is that a consumer can instantly make a low-risk value judgment. Limiting risk allows for product experimentation leading to little failures or successes and the consequent expansion of brand loyalty.”

It’s still too early to make this claim across the board, but I believe most iPhone and Kindle owners do not blink at being asked to spend less than a buck on impulse for a useful service. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that killer apps such as Facebook and Pandora for iPhone do not even charge a penny for their services. Both lack a viable business model today, and it’s so easy and cheap to make a buck through the app store. But I was also disappointed to see that Nationwide doesn’t charge for its very cool Car Accident Toolkit app, and Bloomberg—a company that charges thousands of dollars for its proprietary information and terminals—is giving its milk away for free as well. The industry actually needs these big players to start charging for apps in order to set the bar. Let’s not lose this opportunity to convince people that free is not the standard!

I’m very excited to see where brands play in the world of charging for their content. I’m so excited that I just signed up for the Kindle blog program, and invite those of you who are Kindle owners to subscribe to Marketing with Meaning now. I promise that every dollar that comes will be put right back into making this blog bigger and better. In fact, I will send a free Tide Loads of Hope T-shirt to the first person who subscribes and emails me the receipt!

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Posted in Marketing that Pays, mobile, Solution | 1 Comment »

Product Demos with Meaning

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

If you sell a product or service I can read your mind and know that you are spending a lot of time thinking and talking about how to improve your value equation. One of the old tools of the trade that marketers are pulling out a lot lately is the product demonstration ad. Last week a client mentioned that one of his senior managers suggested we “put some product demos online” to help move cases of product. A few members of our Strategy and Research practice at Bridge Worldwide huddled to bring some thinking to the table and I think it’s a great topic to cover in this space.

This renewed focus on product demos is based on the hypothesis that people are getting “back to basics” and want to make sure that the brands they buy work well. This is a take-off on the old value equation I wrote about a few weeks ago—that Value is a function of Product Benefit + Brand Equity divided by Price.

The challenge is while brand executives and product researchers might get excited about product demos, most people just don’t get fired up about them, especially when they are wedged into a television commercial that interrupts our favorite show. However a handful of brands have found a way to not only grab attention to killer demos, but achieve massive word-of-mouth as people share them with their friends. My team studied several of these, some clearly marketing tools and others just cool videos; here were some of our favorites (in addition to standards such as Will It Blend?, Dove Evolution, and Diet Coke + Mentos):

Water Balloon Exploding in Slow Motion: It’s not a marketing example—simply fascinating to the tune of 1.7 million views and counting.

Samsung Extreme Sheet LED Art: Samsung used sheep with LED-lighted backs to highlight the brilliant brights of its new LED televisions. Nearly 8 million people have viewed this on YouTube alone.

Heinz Talk to the Plant: This was a live, multiweek experiment to test the hypothesis that tomato plants that people spoke to (via a text-to-voice speaker device) would grow faster and taller than plants that felt no love. The Heinz team even published its research results in a six-page PDF report. It’s a great reminder that Heinz ketchup comes from real, quality tomato plants.

Putting these examples and many more together, we believe product demonstrations can be something that people choose to engage with, find entertaining to watch, and feel are worthy of forwarding to their friends—in other words, Marketing with Meaning. Laura Melin and Dan Whitmyer from Bridge Worldwide offer up the following guidelines for brands that wish to create engaging demonstrations in the digital space:

1. Start with a business strategy. Marketing is meaningless if it doesn’t deliver on business objectives.  Begin the project by laying out what you hope to achieve. Dove wanted to dramatize its core brand belief to increase loyalty. Heinz chose to reinforce its premium and natural equities. These business objectives can all be measured with pre-/post-surveys, if not actual sales changes in the market.

2. Ensure there is entertainment value. While your demonstration might be informative and end up highlighting product benefits, the only demos that win viewers and pass-along are those that tap into our desire for diversion. Will It Blend? makes us laugh, and then makes us think that Blendtec blenders must be powerful. Common entertainment elements to tap into include humor, shock, drama, reality, and nostalgia.

3. Seed it in many places. Very few people are coming to your website, digging around to see what new video demonstrations you have posted lately. Even the most successful viral demos got a quick start by going beyond YouTube to places such as Metacafe, Veoh.com, eBaum’s World, and College Humor—in some cases paying for some initial placement in prime locations.

4. Stay genuine and unscripted. Viral demos that feel too polished and perfected have less chance of catching on. Keep the production budgets low on purpose and don’t be too obvious in your selling.

5. If it works, keep going. Once you’ve got an audience engaged with a hit demo, they are highly likely to give you another look with a follow-up effort. But the sequels have to be as buzzworthy as the original. Ray-Ban is one of the leaders here, as they hit a viral home run with “Guy Catches Glasses with Face” and kept going with several other demo-like virals. My favorite new one is called Super Chameleon:

I’d love to hear your reactions and favorite examples in the comments below. We might even turn this post into a wiki page that others can add to.

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Posted in Entertainment, Solution | 3 Comments »

Gaming Product Placement Gone Wrong

Monday, May 18th, 2009

I’m starting to feel a little guilty for bashing Gatorade again on this blog. After twice firing at its “Got G?” campaign, it could look like some kind of personal vendetta. But I actually love the Gatorade brand and it is my choice for both after-hoops hydration and a drink to go with lunch at the deli. Maybe it’s because I love the brand so much that it kills me to see its marketing perform so poorly. I was actually hopeful last week when I saw the title of an article in Advertising Age about Gatorade winning an advertising award for its integration in the NBA 2K9 video game. Alas, I found the in-game placement anything but meaningful.

The product placement in question is a new addition for the annual NBA 2kX game franchise. For years, this popular NBA game with real players and teams has included advertising integration. Most of the in-game advertising mimics the real world. There are ads on and around the court, sponsored breaks in the action, and real branded clothing worn by the virtual players. I believe players accept and actually like these kinds of ads because they make the game seem more real. That said, they are pretty low on the meaning scale and likely become more wallpaper than anything.

This year the game did something new for Gatorade (at a special price, of course). It added something special, as best described in the brand’s application for a Cream award:

The Gatorade Thirst Meter [was] integrated seamlessly with the game’s artificial intelligence to recognize when a player was becoming dehydrated and losing energy. The “Gatorade Recommended Substitution” took over to designate which players should hit the bench for a quick Gatorade refill in real time. Once the player was sufficiently hydrated and his energy levels restored, he went back into the action. Dehydrated players who were not subbed out, began to show sluggish performance, indicated by a green Gatorade cup.

Marketers absolutely love this idea. Advertising Age wrote it up nicely, and it won the People’s Choice  Cream Award (those people being marketing folks) for Best Use of Gaming and Game Platforms. What’s not for a marketer to love? The brand being forced into the game play itself—that’s a high score!

Here’s where it gets interesting: Most game reviewers disliked the Gatorade integration. I searched beyond the marketers’ fawning and found some well-known reviewers who specifically pointed out Gatorade’s brand overload in both the Thirst Meter and its many other sign placements. For example:

  • “The biggest eyesore is the realistic overload of product placement. From the T-Mobile halftime report to Team Jordan player of the game to the Gatorade Thirst Meter, it gets exhausting.” —Planet Xbox 360
  • “Two things that do affect game play, however, are the Gatorade logos at the beginning of the half and the play-calling menus. Both obscure a large portion of the screen, often making it impossible to see the ball handler. This is inexcusable. —CNet Reviews
  • “NBA 2K9 features a mix of useful, interesting, and somewhat silly features. In the silly department is the Gatorade “thirst meter” icons that appear if a player is getting tired. Previous games already had fatigue meters, so this is apparently a creative way to get some extra ad revenue.” —Game Trailers.com
  • “The in-game presentation is rather well done as far as the graphical displays go, with the score and stats being easily viewed. Some advertisements, particularly the Gatorade one, block a portion of the screen.” —Total PlayStation.com

I think the big issue here is that the Gatorade Thirst Meter crosses the line because it has little to do with real-world game play. Players want realism; they want to try and feel what it is like to play in the real game. Real games do not feature the issue of hydration. Yes, players get tired and need to hit the bench for a bit. Yes, they might grab a cup of Gatorade (or whatever brand has paid millions to be the official drink of the NBA). But coaches, players, and announcers do not focus on a cup of whatever as a key part of the game.

Most gamers might tolerate this, but, as the reviews suggest, the makers of NBA 2K9 had better be very careful. Games for consoles such as Xbox and PlayStation sell for $40 to $60 a pop, while the company makes considerably less than $1 per unit from advertising integration ($1 would be a CPM of $1,000, by the way). So, just a handful of pissed-off game players could destroy the economics of these games.

There are many, many other great opportunities for brand integration into games that actually can help sell more games. My favorite examples are the bands that are providing free songs for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and I love how the movie Tropic Thunder provided an add-on scavenger hunt level for the game Rainbox 6: Vegas 2.

At the end of the day, game marketing must be completely focused on adding value to the gaming experience. Gatorade might have won over the marketing gurus, but I doubt the players came away smiling.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning | 3 Comments »

Cheerios Wakes Up to an FDA Warning

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Along with many other people in the marketing world, I was shocked to see that the FDA wrote a warning letter to General Mills, charging that it was making drug-like claims on its Cheerios brand. For two years, the brand has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV, print, packaging, and the Web to advertise the claim that “Cheerios lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks.” The Cheerios brand has been around for decades and many adults and children have been raised on the popular cereal. It has become what its agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, calls a “Lovemark.” But its words seem to have gone too far, and I believe the brand could have done more action to lower cholesterol and improve lives.

In analyzing this case, I first went to my friend and coworker, Jonathan Richman, a former pharma marketer who is now running Business Development at Bridge Worldwide. Richman recently created a new blog, Dose of Digital, where he has attracted a huge following to his posts on pharma and health care digital marketing. He provided some very compelling arguments that the FDA is doing the right thing by questioning the Cheerios claims:

This protects the public because it ensures that there is consistent enforcement of very clear rules for making medical claims in this country. If a pharma company didn’t bother to do a randomized, controlled trial and claimed that their new drug improved cholesterol, there would be an outrage in the public and the FDA would act almost instantly. Why is it different when a cereal company does it? If you let one company get away with it, you embolden others and lose all of the precedent that the FDA has carefully created over the years.”

Richman’s recommendation is for Cheerios to either drop the claim or to invest in the randomized, placebo-controlled trials with tens of thousands of people like pharma companies do. After 2 to 3 years including study time and considerable expense, the brand might have something that it can take to its advertising agency for TV and print ad production.

Richman and other experts predict that Cheerios will press the issue a bit but will eventually have to withdraw its claim and pull the heart off the box, as it should. But it didn’t have to be this way. I believe Cheerios missed an opportunity to make more of a commitment to its consumers by going beyond a claim and developing a program that can make a real, proven difference in people’s lives.

Let me share the example of one of our clients, the Glucerna brand at Abbott Nutrition. Glucerna is a brand of shakes, cereals, and bars for people with diabetes. These products offer a meal replacement or supplement for a group that has to watch its food carefully. Glucerna has a slow-absorbing carbohydrate, among other benefits, which helps avoid blood sugar spikes.

More than seven years ago, the Glucerna brand saw an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people with diabetes. In 2002, it created Diabetes Control for Life, a customizable program that helps people change their lifestyle and eat better, exercise more, and measure their blood sugar levels more often. The program does not require people to eat or drink Glucerna, but it suggests meals and snacks where its products are a good choice. Other foods can easily be substituted in the plan.

The company funded a 24-week clinical study to prove the benefits of the program, which were significant:

  • Average of 7.5% weight loss
  • 61% reported lower A1C levels.
  • 73% felt more confident in managing their disease.

Five years ago, we moved the Diabetes Control for Life program to the Web, which includes a very in-depth interactive meal and exercise tracker. We have continually added many other features to help people with diabetes, including a diabetes glossary, discussion board, and ability to IM a dietitian. Traffic continues to increase and other retailers and brands have partnered with us to expand the program.

Cheerios could have done something along these lines. A vast majority of its spending has been on traditional marketing of its claim through mass media. At Cheerios.com there are a few resources for overall cholesterol improvement, essentially a handful of articles and a printable PDF tracking sheet.

With a more comprehensive plan that offers more resources and doesn’t require Cheerios consumption, plus proven test results over many weeks, the brand might have been able to make more than a supposed 4% improvement in cholesterol levels, and it might not have the FDA breathing down its back today.

But it’s not too late! If the brand truly believes that it can make a difference and is truly committed to improving consumers’ health, it can pull back for now, and build out a bigger and better program. So, General Mills, call the lawyers back, pull the claim off the market, and drop us a line if you’re ready to embrace true marketing with meaning.

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Posted in healthcare, Marketing Without Meaning | No Comments »

T-Mobile, McDonald’s Make Memories

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

I am happy to report that two of the biggest traditional interruptive advertisers are finally getting it. This week I discovered incredible examples of how T-Mobile and McDonald’s are launching marketing that creates meaningful experiences for their target consumers. Both examples happen to take place in London; here’s hoping that their model spreads both geographically and habitually.

Over on our Marketing with Meaning community space on LinkedIn (where 367 people and counting have joined despite little promotion), Jonathan Levy shared a video of T-Mobile’s recent event in Trafalgar Square. The brand distributed 2,000 microphones, and more than 13,000 people joined to sing The Beatles’ ballad, “Hey Jude,” together. Here’s what it looked like:

This event is part of a campaign from T-Mobile called “Life’s for Sharing,” which brand representative Lysa Hardy calls, “…something that’s unexpected, wonderful, and exciting that you want to share with your friends and family.” The surprise sing-along was aired for the first time on the TV show Britain’s Got Talent last Sunday. This campaign execution follows a few months after the brand filmed a commercial in which dozens of improv dancers spontaneously appeared and performed at a Tube station in London.

After enjoying a special moment in Trafalgar Square, locals and tourists might have ventured over to Piccadilly Circus to take a picture with an entertaining digital sign from McDonald’s. No, it wasn’t another high-tech tool for ordering a Big Mac from your cell phone. Video describes it better than words:


Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Both the T-Mobile and McDonald’s examples are clearly examples of Marketing with Meaning. More specifically, they fall under what I refer to in my upcoming book as Branded Experiences. What I love about both of these campaigns is that they deliver on what the brands hope to stand for in their target consumers’ hearts and minds. T-Mobile recognizes that mobile phones are used in a very emotional way by people who want to enjoy and share life together. The McDonald’s vision statement is to make every customer smile. Instead of continuing to show us commercials that tell a story of some other people (actors) enjoying life and smiling, the brands finally understand that they have the ability to make special moments happen for consumers—through the marketing itself.

One similar example that I share in my book is that of De Beers and its “When Forever Began” event in New York City in December 2008. The brand created a romantic stage in Madison Square Park and offered kissing couples the chance to be photographed with a 360-degree camera. Instead of more staged actors and TV ad copy, this time De Beers enabled couples to experience and remember a very special moment together. The brand created real moments—through the marketing itself.

There are some downsides to both of these branded experiences. First, there were a few comments on the T-Mobile sing-along that suggested the enjoyment of the event was weakened by the fact that it was organized by and for a brand. This cheapened a special human experience for some people.

Another complaint could be that both programs are difficult to scale up to replace the millions of eyeballs that are lost when TV or print dollars are shifted to expensive events. After all, how many people were in London on April 30? How many Big Mac buyers will get to Piccadilly Circus this summer? There’s no easy answer to this complaint, but I believe such events can be very effective. First, they generate a significant amount of sharing through photos on personal networks—in effect breaking through the clutter with a trusted endorsement. The YouTube video above already has more than 200,000 views, and imagine the PR coverage that comes from taking over a global city like this. Second, I believe it can succeed by winning lifetime loyalty from a core group of consumers, rather than spreading interruption across millions of eyeballs and hoping some tiny percentage actually buys your brand (only because they were unconsciously seeded).

So here’s something to think about over the weekend: How is your marketing creating special, personal moments for your target consumers? Needless to say, 30 seconds of a canned message times a few million pairs of eyeballs won’t cut it.

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Posted in Connection, Experience, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Big Brands Borrowing Interest Everywhere

Monday, May 11th, 2009

I’ve been watching more live television than normal lately, mainly because I’ve gotten the NBA Playoffs bug. Something that has amazed me as I dip back into “normal” non-ad-skipped TV viewing is that there are a LOT of television commercials for big brands that advertise completely different products. Here are some examples:

Microsoft advertises Quiksilver. In this ad, Microsoft plays a sketchy and scratchy phone interview with Quiksilver President and CEO Bob McKnight, and we learn that “without technology, we would be nowhere.” There’s nothing in the ad about Microsoft, other than an animated, wadded-up piece of paper suggesting that Microsoft technology is “people ready.”

AT&T advertises TOMS Shoes. In the ad below, we follow the day of Blake, Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS Shoes. During a 30-second span, we learn that for every pair of shoes the company sells, it actually gives away a pair to a child in need. Blake is running around the world giving away shoes, so he depends on a global communication network that works. While his company doesn’t clearly endorse or even mention AT&T, there is a simulated, branded screen on Blake’s BlackBerry.

TrueNorth Snacks advertises Inspiration Cafe. This is one of a handful of ads in which TrueNorth (a Frito-Lay brand) highlights the story of an individual who is improving the world. The ad below (which I wrote about in this blog post a few months ago), tells the story of Lisa Nigro, who created the Inspiration Cafe to serve Chicago’s homeless population with dignity and respect.

There you have it: Three really big companies are spending millions of dollars on media and commercial production to advertise other brands. In each case, the spending brand plays a very minor part in the background of the message, somehow “powering” the featured businesses, or in TrueNorth’s case, sharing a mission to change the world.

My Takeaways:

1. Many brands are struggling to find a purpose and become meaningful. The fact that these brands cannot find a way to stand out on their own suggests a breakdown in their brand equities. I cannot fault these brands for leveraging others’ stories to break through and attempt to connect with their target customers, but I believe borrowed interest is very, very difficult to win with in today’s market. First, in a 30-second sitting when people are barely paying attention, they are lucky to recall the featured brand, much less the “sponsor” of the ad. My wife, for example, recalled everything about the TOMS Shoes commercial when the topic came up over dinner the other night, but she had no clue that AT&T was involved.

Second, people love TOMS Shoes for what it does, and likely cast aside the very weak connection to whatever global communications network the company happens to use. Further, I find it weak that none of these brands is actually doing something to be part of the mission/vision of the organizations they are borrowing interest from. AT&T is not offering free mobile service to TOMS Shoes efforts around the world, and TrueNorth is not actually helping establish new Inspiration Cafes around the country.

2. Meaningful brands attract attention, and maybe even free advertising. I tell people all of the time that there has never been a better time to launch a new brand. The costs of launching a new product are declining everywhere thanks to contract manufacturing efficiency and low-cost global marketing tools on the Web. All you need is a quality product, great story, and some fans to personally spread the buzz. Now add in the fact that big companies just might swoop in and put tens of millions of dollars of marketing support into your lap for the chance to borrow your mojo. Hell, the ads above show that your new brand doesn’t even have to explicitly endorse the big spenders.

So what should Microsoft, AT&T, and TrueNorth be doing instead? Simple: not rest until they have found a way for their brands to become cherished by their customers. Commit the entire organization to a brand purpose that resonates with the target customer, and then create marketing that itself delivers meaning.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, non-profit | 3 Comments »

Book Introduction Video Release!

Friday, May 8th, 2009

As regular readers know, my team at Bridge Worldwide and I continue to gear up for the launch of my book, to be published by McGraw-Hill in October 2009. At this point I’ve almost completed the actual writing process, and I’m now shifting to focus on the marketing of the book itself.

According to many of the successful authors I have spoken with, one of the key steps to a successful book is a strong introduction video that can be placed on the websites for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Luckily I happen to work at an incredible digital advertising agency and was able to work with a stellar team on my video. The team decided to audit several best-in-class examples and decided to aim for the top. Of course their drive and passion put me on the spot to perform as well. The shoot went very well and I think the final product turned out great.

In the video you can see a summary of the structure of the book, as well as the final title: The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning. I hope you will provide your feedback and reactions either in the comments below or on the YouTube page of the video.

Thanks for your support and encouragement and my special thanks for Alex Rolfes, Brad Lark, and James Marable for making it happen!

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Posted in book | 2 Comments »

Remaking the American Advertising Federation

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Yesterday the Cincinnati chapter of the American Advertising Federation—aka “The AdClub“—hosted a luncheon with James Edmund Datri, the new President of the AAF, and I was lucky enough to break away from the daily grind to hear from the man who represents the advertising industry in Washington, D.C. In a short but wide-ranging discussion, Datri presented himself as a strong leader who promises to help us transform into a more meaningful industry.

The title of the luncheon was “The State of the Advertising Industry,” but it actually started with a description of how the AAF itself is also working on a turnaround plan. I was surprised and impressed to hear that Datri is walking in the shoes of many business leaders by trying to cut costs in a tough economy. (He came into the role with a $500,000 budget deficit.) I was further impressed to hear that he is making some critical moves; for example, he has already downsized staff, reorganized jobs by workload (versus function), moved to a paperless office, and cut his and other executives’ salaries by 15%. Datri understands that these moves not only help close the budget gap, but show his members that their organization is sharing the pain of its constituents.

But Datri has also recognized that his organization—like the ad industry itself—must use these tough times to invest in transformation. Datri spoke of his belief that organizations that fail to invest in needed areas will miss the chance to benefit from the transformation thrust upon us.

The AAF is taking a few smart measures to become more relevant and financially stable. First, Datri is leading a charge to recruit more corporate members into his organization. New wins include Wrigley and the Jim Beam brands. Of course, with a new President and Congress, it’s a pretty compelling time for big businesses to become more active in Washington through the AAF.

I was more impressed with Datri’s drive to do more at the grassroots level through his embrace of new social networking technology. His strategy is to make the organization more valuable and better able to act on national politics by activating the 40,000 members around the country with new tools. He has already gotten the group on Facebook and Twitter (although I cannot find the Twitter account).

I asked Datri whether he was personally engaged with these tools, and he admitted that he was behind but will be making them a center of his communication plan in the weeks and months ahead. He clearly gets that these tools are not simply broadcast media, and he seemed genuinely excited about the chance to digitally network with people in AdClubs around the country when he returns from his cross-country luncheon tour.

Toward the end of his speech, Datri admitted that advertising professionals are not viewed with a great deal of respect. He specifically called out that too many people (including lawmakers) think of our industry as made up of Mad Men and pockets of elites in New York City and L.A.—completely missing the AdClub folks in places such as Houston, Minnesota, and Seattle, which are full of good people doing important work for businesses. Datri committed to driving the AAF to help rebrand our industry and show the world the value of our profession.

I just hope the AAF does more than simply telling the public we are doing good, but rather it helps its members embrace the more meaningful-marketing model that we must follow to deliver on this promise.

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