Archive for November, 2009

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Non-meaningful Technology Marketing

Monday, November 30th, 2009

In case you haven’t noticed, there has been a rash of new marketing activity in the realm of technology brands. Maybe they’ve been gearing up for a load of holiday shopping searches, or maybe the launch of Microsoft’s Bing search engine has prompted the marketplace to action. Either way, much of it is horrible, and I feel compelled to get on my soapbox and wag a finger at some of the biggest brands in the businesses who are heaping hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing messages on our poor eyeballs.

First up is Yahoo!, which is surely at risk of feeling the sting from Bing, and continues to lose pace with the search engine champ, Google. This fall, the company decided to respond to new innovations from Bing and continued strength from Google by, you guessed it, launching a big, expensive traditional equity campaign. Take a look for yourself:

Yahoo! is in the middle of dropping $100 million on this “It’s Y!ou” global campaign. You wouldn’t know it from this one-minute commercial, but Yahoo! has added some modest changes to its website to add personalization. But it seems to be doing little so far, as its share of search was down from 18.8% in September to 18.0% in October. That’s a withering one-month change, and makes one wonder how much farther it would fall without all of the positive impacts of this ad campaign (ahem).

Then there’s eBay, a company that is now considered a “traditional digital” business. This once-hot business is flattening as consumers have grown tired of auction-based buying and eBay’s fees. Not to fear, though—a fresh campaign will do the trick, right? Here’s a look at how eBay is trying to convince shoppers that it has the “It” they are looking for:

Finally, we come to AOL. It is another once-proud company that is really on the ropes. The company is doing everything it can to add some positive buzz as it prepares to separate from Time Warner. It first hired a charismatic CEO, Tim Armstrong, from Google, who has toured the tech conferences and marketers’ boardrooms with plenty of promises of a “new AOL.” Naturally, that includes spending millions on a new logo and branding campaign. In this case, AOL found that its brand represented more than a single logo could define (that always spells trouble on the creative brief!). So it has chosen to place its brand name over dozens of other objects and photographs, as seen below. The blogosphere’s reaction is perhaps best seen in GigaOM’s article: “AOL Reveals Lame New Look & Logo.”

aolreveals

Conclusion

It pains me to see these three once-innovative brands resort to some of the most traditional, tired marketing playbook pages. They all have bought the traditional ad-agency story that all you need is a snappy look, a cool tagline (preferably with an exclamation point), and bucket-loads of money to shove your new positioning in front of eager eyeballs. Then again, all three of these brands rose to prominence during the dot-com years of the late 1990s, when billions were blown on Super Bowl ads, sock puppets, and cannon gerbils. The lesson that they missed is that great companies don’t need to tell their customers that they are great. Instead, they need to make great products and services that people love to talk about. And they need to make meaningful marketing that people love to talk about, too.

On Wednesday, I will share the latest marketing work from a truly great technology company that continues to get it.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, Organizational Behavior, Technology | 3 Comments »

CMO.com on Marketing Evolution

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

cmo artic

It’s Thanksgiving Eve and I hope everyone is gearing up for the official start of the end-of-year holiday season. I’m “off” today at home watching the kids while my wife braves the grocery store. Therefore it’s a light blogging day. But if you’re looking for some holiday reading before you leave the office, take a peek at the article I wrote for CMO.com last week.

CMO.com is a relatively new site from Omniture, and itself a great example of meaningful marketing. Omniture created CMO.com to provide further information and guidance on trends and changes in the marketing world. I was excited to have a chance to publish what I consider a manifesto for the modern CMO. My thesis in this piece is that the #1 task of a CMO today is to shift his or her entire organization to a new marketing model—one that revolves around creating advertising that adds value to customers’ lives, and is marketing that people choose to engage with.

Take a read, let me know what you think, and I highly recommend that you sign up for CMO.com’s article alerts!

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Posted in B2B, Organizational Behavior | 2 Comments »

Healthy Choice Offers “One Little Review”

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

healthy choice review

(Today Megan West, one of our rising star strategic planners, takes over for a guest blog post about a program that she and our ConAgra Foods team at Bridge Worldwide led for the Healthy Choice brand. I think this is another example of how social media is not a strategy, but rather offers many tactics that can help deliver better results on a strong overall marketing strategy. For more examples see my previous posts on Golden Tee, Estee Lauder, and MoMA.)

In September 2009, Healthy Choice launched a new TV spot featuring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in which the main call to action was to drive consumers to the brand website to print a high-value coupon. This was a first for our Healthy Choice team, and the number of people who would actually visit the site was a complete unknown. To be clear, this wasn’t just a 3-second tag or 10-point font callout at the end of the spot, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus herself telling people to go print a coupon online.

This was big. We were going to give away massive amounts of $2 printable coupons for two Healthy Choice products. And we also saw an opportunity to capitalize on this influx of visitors by giving them an opportunity to register for the Healthy Choice relationship marketing program after they printed, which offers a promise of more offers and goodies in their inbox.

Because this campaign was about trial of the new Healthy Choice products, getting a bunch of new registrants into the database was a tertiary benefit for many of the key stakeholders on the brand. But the digital team challenged itself to make sure these new people stayed active and engaged with the brand far beyond a commercial message and coupon redemption.

The Idea: Bite-Sized Reviews

We saw an opportunity to hit our trial goals and build long-term loyalty by implementing a “Bite-Size” review program. Here’s how it works:

  • Two weeks after printing the coupon (i.e., enough time to go to the store, redeem it, and try the meal), consumers who registered for the Healthy Choice newsletter are sent a welcome email.
  • The email invites them to come give a mini-review of what they thought about the product in exchange for another coupon. We offer $1 off any two products to encourage repeat purchase of different varieties.
  • At the review site, consumers choose the product they tried, rate it, and post a 140-character or fewer review of what they think.

healthy choice review 2

They then get a preview of the review and the opportunity to share their review in real time by pushing it out via their personal Twitter or Facebook accounts. The tool makes it simple for consumers to sign into their account and update their status.

We put a lot of thought into what information we want them to be able to share via Twitter. As marketers, our immediate thought was, “Make sure to get the URL in there,” but after really thinking about the true objective of pushing out reviews (awareness for the products), we decided to leave it off to give consumers more space to write their review.

Why It’s Meaningful for Consumers:

  • It sends them an email soon after signing up, showing that the brand is going to deliver on the promise of “More Offers” and validating their reason for signing up.
  • It gives consumers a chance to post their actual thoughts about the products they tried, with no content censorship by the brand. This lets people know that the brand believes in its products and really wants to know what people think about them.

How It Delivers Marketing Results for the Brand:

  • It leverages our consumers’ social-media networks to build awareness of the brands’ products in the form of actual consumer language.
  • It keeps news registrants active and delights them with additional offers and a chance to share their thoughts, hopefully turning them into brand advocates.
  • The brand soon hopes to launch a Rating and Review section for all of the products on HealthyChoice.com (because they have recently re-launched the brand with all new food formulas and tasty new dishes!), and this helps us to build a repository of “seed” reviews that can pre-populate that section. We planned for this by asking consumers who submit reviews to agree to let Healthy Choice publish them for marketing materials later.

It’s far too early to report in results of this campaign and the specific review tool, and this gets into the area where we want to keep data confidential, anyway. But you can see for yourself the amount of reviews posted to Twitter by checking out the responses to @Healthy_Choice. As you can see, the reviews are starting to come in nicely in terms of amount and reaction. Taking just one example, @debbiemekler says: “Tried @Healthy_Choice Grilled Chicken Marinara. Tasty and well-seasoned. Would try move in the future.” This great, personal review went out to her 50 followers, who trust what she says as word of mouth, not advertising.

This goes to show that brands can benefit by finding ways to turn traditional marketing programs such as coupon offers into a way to tap into consumers’ growing desire to share socially.

healthy choice review 3

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Posted in Connection, Coupons, Social Networking, Solution | 1 Comment »

ChangeThis Manifesto: Meaningful Digital Strategy

Friday, November 20th, 2009

changethis - bob g

Way back in 2004 or 2005, I first recall coming across the concept of the ChangeThis Manifesto. It’s a concept that was first envisioned by Seth Godin as a way for passionate change agents to share their beliefs in a simple, straightforward medium. Seth and his original team created ChangeThis, a collector and distributor of killer ideas. I cannot recall which manifesto I read first, but I do remember printing off about a dozen and reusing and spreading many of the concepts that I came across. And I was immediately convinced that I had to write my own ChangeThis Manifesto someday. However the folks who run the organization are very selective, and only publish four to five manifestos per month. I decided to try to submit one around the concept of my book, while taking it in a different direction. Well, I’m proud to say that last week I achieved this goal!

For my manifesto, I chose to focus on the topic of “Meaningful Digital Strategy.” My book, The Next Evolution of Marketing, is very manifesto-like, of course, but it is a concept that includes all marketing, from digital to out-of-home to events. But I felt the need to use this soapbox as a way to focus specifically on digital. There are a few reasons for this: First, it’s what I focus on almost daily as the strategy leader at digital agency Bridge Worldwide.

But there is a second, bigger reason that I focused the manifesto on digital marketing. Frankly, I believe digital marketing is at a fork in the road, and we in the business must choose which direction we’re going to go. On one hand, there are those in the industry who believe we must adapt to the traditional, interruptive, eyeball-counting ways of the current marketing and media paradigm. They believe we can win by siphoning off TV dollars with more banners and video pre-roll.

On the other hand, a handful of us want to use the consumer/media revolution as a chance to elevate digital into something more meaningful. We want to make advertising something that people choose to engage with, and marketing that itself improves people’s lives. We love the chance to use this deeply engaging medium to help people make important decisions, have fun with friends, and maybe even change the world for the better.

So I present my ChangeThis Manifesto: Meaningful Digital Strategy, in handy 12-page quick-read form. Let me know what you think and if you like what you read and want more, check out the full book version. And if you are looking for more great ChangeThis Manifestos, I highly recommend:

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Posted in Concept, Presentations | No Comments »

Digital Agencies “Do” Think Differently

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

digital agency difference

Across the world of Twitter, Power 150 blogs, and advertising trade magazines, the marketing industry is increasingly obsessed with the question of what’s next for digital agencies. Just last week, Jacques-Herve Roubert wrote the latest salvo in Advertising Age that we digital agencies are, in fact, ready to lead. And today, the same publication asked whether or not the industry needs big digital agencies anymore. The lesser-known story is that this debate is perhaps more active in the halls of some of the biggest companies in the world. Although clients are getting that digital is important, they’re unsure who should be holding the digital reigns.

In fact, one of our big clients recently posed a question in an annual review; this is the $500 billion question, and one that clients are wrestling with intently as they try to decide whether to trust their longtime, traditional agencies with the future, or throw their lot in with the younger upstarts with less gray hair and less gray flannel. A few days ago, my fellow executive leaders at Bridge Worldwide gathered to do some thinking on the state of traditional versus digital agencies in an effort to answer our clients’ questions and examine our own place in the ad world. This post represents what we came out with: At minimum, digital agencies have a unique perspective that is worth mixing into the brand strategy process—and taken to the logical evolution of meaningful marketing, we have the only mindset that will survive.

The History of Digital Agencies

Looking back only a few years, digital agencies’ point of difference was that we could get stuff done. We brought technology know-how that allowed us to swoop in and execute in ways that the traditional agencies with only a handful of digital folks couldn’t achieve. The large AORs often screwed up important details such as Flash and SEO, and even creative hot-houses such as Crispin Porter were forced to hire The Barbarian Group to develop Subservient Chicken. This skill in “making it happen” ensured that we were kept around and had at least a partial seat at the table. Over time, we took the opportunities to move up on the food chain and help come up with big ideas at the start of the process, informing strategy versus just finishing the last mile.

But this strength in getting it done is starting to erode. Traditional agencies are getting better at getting digital “good enough” so that their clients don’t notice the little things. Clients are also getting tired of paying for multiple people at the planning table, and some of them turn a blind eye to their historic, traditional AORs’ lack of capability. Meanwhile, we’ve seen the rise of low-cost programmers based in developing nations who offer up execution at $25/hour—again, not as good as a one-stop digital shop, but good enough for a brand manager who doesn’t want to know the details. So digital agencies are under new pressure just when they should be high-fiving.

The Future of Marketing

All this pressure from the AORs and programmers happens most with the “traditional digital” work that is the first step of many brands. Basic banners, emails, and websites are all handled pretty easily by these players. Some marketers are kicking their heels up on their desks figuring that they’ve mastered the new world of digital just because they are playing their TV commercials on Hulu. This allows them to keep hitting the same old sales message to eyeballs in a new place. This might seem like a solution, but it is but a small step to where marketing is really going. Already, banner spending is declining in 2009, and there is not enough online video ad viewership to make up for people turning off their network TV stations.

In the future, interruption will get harder and be less effective. Consumer control will increase. The design of sales messages and taglines—the staple of traditional agencies for eons—will slip in significance. Instead, we are already seeing the rise of Marketing with Meaning as an entirely new way of engaging with customers. Instead of tell-and-sell messages designed in 30-second ads or 5-second banner rotations, winning brands will move to create marketing that people choose to engage with—and advertising that itself adds value to their lives.

The Difference Between Traditional and Digital Agencies

I am a firm believer that companies have a natural bias in strategy and approach to challenge and change. They continually go in the direction of their company founders and leaders. This holds true in how agencies approach their work every single day, and there is a big difference between how Traditional and Digital agencies approach the market.

Traditional agencies have always been about Declaring what a brand stands for. They are focused on the positioning of the brand, and hone in on an insight about how the consumer thinks about the category or product. They figure out this one core message, turn it into a simplified ad and tagline, and hammer it home over and over again. This is a real, legitimate skill—and in the world of three TV networks, regional (versus global) markets, and less-sophisticated consumers, it works very, very well. But the problem is that this is increasingly a less and less valuable experience for the consumer who receives this perfectly crafted sound bite. And low consumer value corresponds to low brand value. These ads just don’t have much impact on people’s lives.

Some agencies have learned to Demonstrate what a brand can do and create experiences around products. These are the event marketers and activation agencies that find ways to bring brands to life in a very real, tangible way. One of my favorite examples of this kind of agency is the folks at the agency Gigunda, who were behind the Charmin Times Square bathrooms. You have to agree that these positive, engaging brand experiences are more valuable to the consumers who interact with them; and research continually shows that more engaged, interested consumers translate to higher sales.

Finally we come to Digital agencies, which have always lived in the world of Doing. We digital geeks got into this business because we saw the possibilities of software early on. When we first logged onto AOL or programmed in PERL we realized that we could do things for consumers by creating tools and services. We realized early on that we couldn’t force people to subscribe to our emails or visit our websites; instead, we had to attract them by doing something positive. Our focus has been on figuring out how to invent a “thing” that brings the brand to life and personally adds value to consumers’ lives. I believe the “Do” offers the highest consumer value, and thus greatest return on marketing investment.

Where Digital Agencies Are Leading

If you take in this model and begin to apply it across some of the biggest agencies and most talked-about work in the marketing world, I think it starts to make a lot of sense. For example, only a digital doer such as R/GA would have been able to conceive what became Nike+. Only a digital agency such as AKQA would have thought you could launch Halo 3 by creating a future military museum. Only my team at Bridge Worldwide could have launched a new Healthy Choice product by creating a live, lunchtime improv show. Or take Razorfish, which had the lead on Best Buy’s launch of a musical instrument business. Its Chairman, Clark Kokich, said, “They could have just run ads telling people that Best Buy now sells instruments… [but] we wanted to become a partner in helping people rediscover their love for music.”

It’s also little wonder that the agencies that are leading the dialogue around Marketing with Meaning all come from this “digital doing” perspective. Aside from us at Bridge Worldwide, there’s The Barbarian Group, who came up with the idea of “Branded Utility,” and Renegade, which coined the term “Marketing as Service.” Let me also say that we digital agencies are already leading in new realms such as social media, without having to “prove” that we now “get it.” I find it interesting that PR agencies are trying to recast themselves as those who “deserve” this important new work, even though they have ignored digital tools for years and are used to pushing a single, simplified message on reporters.

It’s also not hard to pick out the brands that have cast their lot with the big, tell-and-sell, “Declare” model of traditional agencies. There’s the Gatorade “Got G” campaign that I’ve picked apart multiple times for trying to coin a catchphrase that no one bothered to waste time on. Sadly, once innovative companies such as eBay (“eBay it!“) and Yahoo! (“It’s Y!ou“) have turned the advertising keys over to big, sexy campaigns that offer nothing more than a tagline. And in one interesting battle between the past and future, Visa has gone to a celebrity laden, single-word declaration of “Go,” while MasterCard is now advertising a free, value-added iPhone app that helps people discover priceless places.

Where We Go from Here

Agencies will be what agencies will be. Those who are good at Declaring will continue to do so, while we who have grown up in the business of Doing will keep marching down that road. The choice is up to you Brand Marketers out there. You must decide whether to cast your lot in one direction or the other, or keep both on hand and do the hard work of balancing their perspectives (and egos). If you think the world will continue to be ruled by clever interruption and one-word taglines, then please don’t waste your time and money dealing with leading digital agencies. But if you believe that the future is about creating true connections with your customers by adding value to their lives, then go ahead and give any one of us a call. We’re standing by and ready to help Lead and Do.

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Posted in Agency Marketing, Concept, Organizational Behavior | 3 Comments »

Inside the First Google and WPP Research Awards

Monday, November 16th, 2009

wpp google logos

I recently got to sit in on the first presentation of results from a joint research program between Google and my holding company, WPP. At the Google office in NYC on November 3, a handful of people got the chance to see what a group of professors from around the world were able to do thanks to receiving data from the Google vaults. It was a great time-out from the day-to-day, and I hope the first of many more experiments and presentations in the years ahead as we all try to figure out how to best deploy digital marketing.

The Google and WPP Marketing Research Awards Program was first announced last fall as a way for these two advertising giants to crack the code with the help of university professors. A group of more than 100 professors, corporate marketers, and agency strategists applied for 25 grants in the range of $50,000 to $80,000 each. The key topic areas for the research focused on understanding online advertising and the link between offline and online.

Let me first say that I think this is a very meaningful partnership between Google and WPP. The two companies coexist as what WPP’s leader, Sir Martin Sorrell, calls “frenemies.” That’s a combination of “friend” and “enemy” in case you missed it, and it shows how in business today—and especially in new ground such as digital marketing—the rules are undefined, and your customers are often your competitors as well. The idea to sponsor a joint research program came out of friendly discussions aimed at helping build a stronger understanding, if not a trusting relationship, between the two heavyweights.

I learned a few interesting nuggets from the research presentations that are worth sharing here in summary. But stay on the lookout for the full research reports, which both companies promised to share publicly soon:

  • It can be more effective to give users of Google Maps fewer options (i.e., for resizing, zooming, sorting), suggesting that they will spend too much time “fiddling with the knobs” and missing their core goal.
  • Chinese consumers who are exposed to more display ads for brands shift their search habits toward more brand search over category search.
  • Display advertising can be much more effective if you are able to learn about the reason/motivation behind individual users’ website visits (but the challenge lies in understanding their motivation).
  • Brain scanning suggests that written copy can be more emotionally engaging than photos and video, as people likely internalize the written word more.

Aside from this specific research, I also learned a little about how Google is constantly experimenting on its own search platform. During his opening keynote, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian mentioned that the staff at the company is constantly tinkering with the user experience of the site to improve results. He said, “Every time you use Google there are six to 10 experiments that you are participating in.” That adds up to about 11,000 experiments a year. This attitude of constant improvement is something pretty typical of strong e-commerce sites, where you can actually see the cash register ring instantly when you test something new, and have a strong incentive to roll out the improvement quickly. But the scale of Google’s experiments was staggering. This philosophy of constant improvement suggests that any challenger will not only have to do something different initially, but keep upgrading continuously to make a difference. I doubt that Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing are even close in this regard.

Applications for the 2nd annual round of research are coming in now, and there are already more applications than last year. In fact, my Analytics & Measurement team here at Bridge Worldwide just applied with a client of ours. We hope to receive funding so that we can run a test of the ROI on social sharing from a brand website. Fingers are crossed that we make the cut.

On a final note, I just found out that I have been invited to forge another WPP/Google bond—albeit a more modest one—by speaking at Google’s office on December 8 as part of its Authors@Google program. I’ve always wanted to catch a glimpse of the company’s West Coast HQ and it will be an honor to follow in the footsteps of some amazing speakers who have come through the program. Stay tuned for more on this in a month.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

My Visit to the VCU Brandcenter

Friday, November 13th, 2009

vcu brandcenter

For well over a year I’ve been hearing great things about a special program at Virginia Commonwealth University called “The VCU Brandcenter.” My friends Jim Stengel and David Knox both told me about their visits to the school and suggested that it would be a great place to recruit from. About a month ago I got connected with Ashley Sommardahl, the Assistant Director of the program, and I decided to take a day trip to Richmond, Virginia, to meet some students and faculty.

Overall, I have to say that I was really impressed by many aspects of the VCU Brandcenter. But first, the details: The school was founded as the “Adcenter” in 1996. It is a two-year graduate degree program with about 100 students in each class and is part of VCU but occupies its own space. The school moved into a new building in 2008, designed by world-renowned architect Clive Wilkinson, and it looks and feels like a cutting-edge advertising agency. It was built within the old brick carriage house of a nearby historic home, and is filled with open space, bright light, and plenty of room for individual and team work.

The Students

I got to speak to a group of about 70 first-year students at an informal pizza lunch in the afternoon. I gave a quick overview of our agency, and then introduced the concept of Purpose Brands, and then talked about how our company had discovered our Purpose: to create Marketing with Meaning for our clients and drive this as the next evolution of the marketing model. This allowed me to segue into sharing the Marketing with Meaning concept.

I have spoken with undergraduate and graduate programs at a handful of top universities, including NYU (where I got my MBA), Duke (my undergrad school), Harvard, and Miami University. What I found interesting about the Brandcenter students is that they seemed to be the most informed about the latest concepts and case studies in marketing and advertising. It was obvious that they’re knee-deep into the craft already, and concepts and examples that I usually have to explain were easily registered by this group.

The students asked me more questions than I usually hear, and they all seemed to be people who looked at the world a little differently. The fact that they chose a less-traveled master’s degree suggests that they want to carve a more unique path than the typical MBA. And companies such as Nike, Martha Stewart Living, and Mars are snapping them up.

The Faculty

When I walked into the second-floor faculty office environment, I was surprised to see students walking around and using the meeting rooms. Usually the faculty area at a university is closed off and cut into many offices with doors. At the Brandcenter, they have gone to the open office environment, and I saw students mingling freely and meeting with professors throughout the floor. I got to speak to a few of the professors, including the Director of the school, Rick Boyko, who came over after leading giant-agency Ogilvy as Chief Creative Officer and Co-President. I was specifically blown away by Rick’s passion for making the school great. His current focus (and very obvious passion) is on expanding opportunities for the school’s Creative Brand Management graduates, which is in direct competition with the MBA degree.

In talking with the group I was surprised to learn that they do not have formal research requirements as part of their jobs, and that most do not have a Ph.D. This flies in the face of university dogma, but the Brandcenter believes it is more important to bring in people who have real-world experience and can focus on teaching and developing students. Because these professors come in with connections and are encouraged to keep growing them, the students benefit from a broad range of industry speakers and recruiting opportunities. For example, Sir Ken Robinson stopped by to speak only a few days before, and the list of board members for the school is a Who’s Who of the ad-agency business.

Conclusion

A common theme in my discussions with students and faculty revolved around the VCU Brandcenter’s positioning against MBA programs. While the school is growing and graduates are getting placed at a high rate, the program bumps up against some major marketing firms that want the traditional MBA course credentials. After seeing the school, meeting the students, and comparing their classwork to my experience in the real world along with my own MBA education, I came away with the feeling that the Brandcenter is on to something special.

The major MBA programs and the students they graduate tend to follow a set process and formula. The classes are fairly standard, professors have been teaching and researching the same things for years, and the “real world” lies a step or two outside of the campus environment. This model produces marketing graduates who have great training in textbook theory and process, but I have feared for a long time that these lessons are much less useful in today’s rapidly changing economy.

Today, we need new hires who are innovative, creative, and keeping one foot in the cutting edge of the real world. We don’t need marketers who can follow old rules that no longer work; we need those who have a hunger to define the new rules. While some traditional recruiters at big companies will pass on Brandcenter graduates, I believe they are the kinds of students who we desperately need on both the agency and client side. We’ll do our part by trying to bring a couple over to Bridge Worldwide this summer for internships. I suggest you take a look, too.

My many thanks to Ashley for putting together a great visit for me!

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Posted in Organizational Behavior, education | 1 Comment »

Survive Breast Cancer, Get a Free Bloomin’ Onion

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

bloomin onion breast cancer

Well, not exactly, but bear with me and read on if you don’t mind, because I do have an important point here and I sincerely need your help in figuring out the meaning of this marketing.

It all started over the weekend when I was catching some college football on good old-fashioned network television. I was actually getting ready to head out and was coming out of the shower when I heard the Australian voice from the Outback TV commercials in a very serious tone. This surprised me because the guy is usually full of “We’ll put a shrimp on the bar-bie for ya!” optimism and excitement. I listened as the voice explained that Outback was a proud supporter of the brave men and women who risk our lives to protect our freedom on Veterans Day, November 11. And to show this pride and support the troops, any veterans and active-duty military personnel who visit Outback on this day will receive… a free Bloomin’ Onion (regular price, $6.25)!

Something in my gut didn’t feel good. No, it wasn’t memories of the last time I downed nearly an entire Bloomin’ Onion by myself. Rather, I felt that Outback’s promotion was self-serving and potentially insulting to our military men and women.

Now, I’m a big fan of Marketing with Meaning, as regular readers know. And anytime a brand provides a free product or sample to its customers, there’s a good chance it’s meaningful marketing. Denny’s, for example, earned a rave review in my book for its wildly successful free Grand Slam giveaway after this year’s Super Bowl. Such giveaways grab customers’ attention and hit the “free” value button we all have programmed into our heads, which is especially sensitive in this economy. Such offers bring people who are attracted to the freebie, and they end up spending a lot more on full meals and beverages for themselves and the rest of their family members.

Several other restaurants are also getting in on the free food for veterans act. According to an article in Slashfood, Applebee’s and McCormick & Schmick’s are both providing free entrees, and Krispy Kreme is offering free donuts on Veterans Day. And the benefits are extending beyond casual dining; for example, both Lowe’s and Home Depot are offering 10% discounts to military men and women.

The issue I see is that a free Bloomin’ Onion seems so petty for something as meaningful as military service at a time when we are actively losing men and women amid war. What’s worse is seeing this “offer” plastered across our mass-media TV screens in a blatant attempt to convince the majority, non-military personnel that Outback is doing the right thing for real American heroes. Toss in the odd fact that Outback, which aspires to be an “Australian” steakhouse, is honoring American military personnel.

It just feels to me that military service is far too serious a sacrifice to be linked to free appetizers at a restaurant chain. Let’s compare this to the recent cause-related marketing around National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the pink ribbons that have been everywhere from soup cans to NFL players’ gloves. What if Outback ran commercials that said, in a serious Australian accent:

“You’re a survivor. You’ve beaten breast cancer, and are a hero to us all. So we salute you by offering you a free Bloomin’ Onion.”

Ridiculous, right? Or am I wrong? And how is risking one’s life in military service any less odd to reward with a delicious onion app?

Restaurants such as Outback are well-known for one-time gimmicks to lure people into their restaurants, and as a longtime advertising watcher it made me cringe. On the other hand, I do believe restaurants can win by doing more over a longer term. Serving a full meal or entree, like some of the examples above, is a step in the right direction. I do have to give Outback credit for sending some of its employees to Afghanistan to provide meals to the troops, but this is not mentioned in its mass marketing. I think the company should take a lesson from Golden Corral.

Golden Corral is hosting its 9th annual Military Appreciation dinner on Monday, November 16. The company moved its event to this day because it knows that many people have other plans for the holiday itself. And it is offering complete buffet meals for military visitors. Not only is this a real commitment to the troops, but it’s a better brand fit, as most military men and women are on tight budgets and cannot afford the $100 or more it can cost to visit an Outback with their families. Golden Corral is a budget-friendly brand.

Now, this is one of those blog posts where I have a strong opinion, but I am willing to admit that I could be wrong. It is hard to chastise a company when they are doing something with some kind of customer benefit for an important cause. What do you think?

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Posted in Cause Related, Marketing Without Meaning, Sampling | 1 Comment »

AT&T Tries to Reach the “Minority Report” Mobile Future

Monday, November 9th, 2009

One of my favorite things to do in presentations about mobile and the future of marketing is to replay the scene above from the movie Minority Report (play above), in which Tom Cruise walks through a subway station and is bombarded with personalized 3-D ad units that scan his pupils and attempt to entice him to buy one of many products. Director Steven Spielberg actually got help from the MIT Media Lab to come up with the advertising concepts used in the movie. The movie was set in 2054, but here, today, aggressive companies want to make it a reality now. They dream of a world where our mobile devices are alerted to coupons, deals, and promotions as we walk by store fronts. Last week AT&T showed off such a mobile couponing concept at its Tech Showcase. But here’s the reality for today and tomorrow: These ideas will fail completely.

At the link below you can see a very short video of the AT&T concept, which is consistent with an idea that dozens of futurists, entrepreneurs, and big marketers hope will come true one day:

Next time you hear someone claim that this is the future of advertising, kindly beg to differ. The big problem with this concept is that people don’t like to be interrupted by advertising! I know, I know; it’s hard for us lifelong marketers to deal with, but it is absolutely true. To put this in perspective, let’s imagine that you could give out your home phone number to any number of marketers, and when these marketers have a “great deal” for you, they could call your home phone and speak to you when you answer, or leave you a voice mail message. Sounds great, right? Not really. In fact, more than 76% of Americans have registered their home phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, which shows two problems with this future scenario.

First, the telephone is a very personal tool that people are extremely protective of. We look at the phone as our window to the world, our way of communicating with the people who we want to talk to. We own our phones and our numbers; we even pay to keep these numbers by moving them from phone to phone and address to address. It is literally a lifeline in some cases. When Congress overwhelmingly passed the Do Not Call Registry legislation, they established the fact that a telephone line is something that the homeowner “owns,” rather than a public space such as the street in front of your house. And this and other laws have ingrained the “right to phone control” in people’s lives.

The second major issue is the fact that when we let marketers start sending “valuable” messages, it’s highly likely to be completely irrelevant and annoying. Let’s use email as the analogy in this case. Soon after marketers gained the ability to send email to customers and prospects, they discovered that they could reach many, many people at the push of a button and at near zero cost. When you have freedom to advertise at no cost, the result is unbridled junk. And despite great data about the value of personalization, most marketers are lazy and would rather just spam millions and hope that some small percentage opens the email and buys a product. And I’m talking about big, reputable marketers here, not just the common spammers.

Doubt me? Well, take a read of my post on how Banana Republic is sending me emails about women’s boots. In this Minority Report world, why would Banana Republic do anything differently? In this AT&T future, when I walk by its store in the mall they will send me the same irrelevant offers that they’re sending me now. And it will take only a handful of these lazy, valueless messages before I unsubscribe to this entire mobile marketing app or end my contract with whatever mobile service is pushing it on me. And even if they do something personalized (say for men’s shirts), the chances that I will be in the mood to stop in the store when I am going about my life and trying to get things done is extremely small. Sure, one walk by out of 100 might find me in the buying mood, but that means 99 messages will simply annoy me.

This brings me to some of the special reasons that mobile is the last place such a service could succeed. The mobile phone is even more personal and private, and people are scared to death that it will be taken over by marketers. A few data points from recent studies by ACNielsen:

  • Mobile marketing was judged to be the “least trusted” form of advertising by consumers in 47 countries.
  • Only 10% of people responded to ads in a test.
  • 67% of people found it unacceptable to have ads on their mobile device.

We consumers really shouldn’t worry about the interruptive mobile future, because it faces two giant barriers. First, the mobile-service providers know that it would be suicide to force such an advertising medium on their customers. Thankfully, we have several choices in which company we go with for service. If any one of them starts spamming, then the move to alternatives would be swift. And there’s just not a ton of money for the AT&Ts of the world to reap from advertising, either. They make $50 to $100 per month on service. But at even a CPM rate of $100 for this “high quality impression,” you would have to hit people with many, many ads for this to earn a few bucks per month.

The second barrier to this future is the highly likely legislation that governments would pass to prevent this from happening. The Do Not Call Registry was the biggest slam-dunk bill passed during George Bush’s eight years. Congress loves to pick on advertisers because their constituents are sick of 3,000 ad interruptions per day, and very few people are going to defend the rights of a group that is respected at about the level of used-car salesmen.

Finally, let’s remember the barrier to all of the greatest ideas in the present and future of marketing: It takes forever for businesses to try something new. People envision a service like this to be a boon to small businesses, but here’s the reality: Small businesses don’t have a lot of marketing dollars, and they are the last to try new marketing. I love how one sandwich place near our office started using Facebook to spread the news of its daily specials. But these are few and far between. Not to mention the fact that they have been using a very, very low-tech way to share offers and promotions with people as they walk by: the sign!

So as much as we marketing geeks think it would be cool to intercept potential customers as they stroll by our stores, this idea is DOA. I think the only possibility for it to work is for services that are completely opt-in. Foursquare is one company that hopes people who have time to kill and want to see some offers will open its app. This is going in the much more meaningful direction, as it means the consumer is choosing to engage. That said, this is an idea on the small side. A store might get one person a week who has the app, logs into the app, sees a special he likes, walks in, and decides to buy.

I’m an enormous believer in the potential for mobile to connect customers and marketers in meaningful ways. But let’s file the Minority Report future somewhere along flying cars and remember to put ourselves in the customers’ mindset first.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, mobile, small business | 1 Comment »

Golden Tee Video Game Extends Experience with YouTube

Friday, November 6th, 2009

golden tee youtube

A few weeks ago I was having a beer with a friend at a local watering hole, and something caught my eye in the background. It was a YouTube logo that flashed on the screen of the Golden Tee virtual golf video game machine behind our table. Being a passionate meaningful marketer and always on the lookout for a new blog entry, I ran over to the game to check it out. I discovered a very cool add-on to this ever-popular bar game.

One of my personal goals in my job as head of strategy at digital agency Bridge Worldwide is to convince my clients that they don’t necessarily need a “social-media strategy.” Yes, heretical as it might sound, social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all important and offer great marketing opportunities, but that does not necessitate a specific “strategy.” Rather, we should stick to strong overall marketing strategies, and discover ways in which new social-media tools might fulfill a need or take advantage of an opportunity. A few months ago I made this point here and used an example from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to show how great social-media ideas can deliver on a solid marketing strategy. Let me try that exercise again here in an effort to continue to make my case.

Background

Golden Tee is a coin-operated (i.e., arcade-style) golfing game that was introduced in 1989 . The game is produced by Incredible Technologies, the largest producer of these types of games in the world. Golden Tee is its biggest platform, and there is an update to the game system each year. Just like producers of home sports games such as Madden NFL and Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Golden Tee must add must-have features to its game system each year in order to keep players and bars interested.

Business Objective

Like real-world golf, Golden Tee (GT) is not for everyone. It is played in bars, standing up, with loud music in your ears. It takes some time and skill to master the roller ball used to hit the ball. It also sucks a lot more quarters from your pocket than what casual users are used to. In my personal experience, it normally attracts two or three guys who spend hours at a time on the machine pumping dollars into it.

My assumption would be that the company has a very thin number of customers who are responsible for a vast majority of the playing time. So GT’s business objective is likely something close to: Increase the playing time and occasions among regular customers. This puts more dollars into the machines for GT, and bars love their share of the cut and added drink and food sales, ensuring that they make the move to the annual game upgrade. And it is a business objective that is very easy to measure.

Customer Insights

First, these regular players are very competitive. They spend hours on the game going against close friends, and I’ve seen rampant wagering (often for the next round of brews). There is even a national tournament for GT players. One thing you have to know about competitive players of ANY game is that they love to remember and share the stories of their greatest feats. Basketball players remember their greatest shots. Regular golfers love to talk about their longest drive or first birdie. I will never forget taking the lead for my team at 5 a.m. in the Bourbon Chase run a few weeks ago. That’s the key insight for passionate players of any game or sport. The more we remember and share, the more the game becomes a special part of our lives, and the more we will (pay to) play.

Strategy/Execution

Put these together and the strategy is simple: Find ways to help regular users remember and share their greatest shots. But how do we deliver on this idea? Back in my days of playing at arcades this would be a real head-scratcher. The closest thing I can remember from those days was that Activision had a program in which if you got a certain high score on one of its Atari 2600 games, you could take a photo, develop it, and mail a copy to the company, and months later they would send you a commemorative patch. I still have a towel that I sewed all my patches on somewhere (unless my mom or wife has disposed of it by now).

Here’s where digital and social media come in: They give marketers unprecedented tools that allow them to deliver on strategies in amazingly rich and cost-effective ways. Golden Tee now flags certain “Great Shots” in the game (holes in one, for example) and provides players with a code that they can use to see and save a replay of the shot on their computers back at home. GT uses YouTube, a free, ubiquitous service that allows the company to organize all of its videos and provides players with a way to share them on their personal websites and social-networking profiles. Here’s one completely random example of a Great Shot from a player named “sixfootsixbrad”:

Results

The folks at Golden Tee have not shared results that I can find about the program or how it has affected their sales, but that won’t stop me from trying to measure it. On the Golden Tee YouTube channel, more than 58,000 videos have been uploaded by players. Most videos have anywhere between a handful and 100 views, and the most-viewed one has more than 7,000. My guess would be that there have been at least 1 million collective views of these user-generated videos in the year or so that the tool has been in use. If this is compared to the many other user-generated video contests, it would be at or near the top in terms of total participation and views. Not bad at all.

More evidence of success of the program is seen in the recent upgrade to Golden Tee 2010. Now the game maker has added the ability to update your Facebook status through the game itself.

The Lesson

The folks at Golden Tee might or might not have gone through my specific steps to come up with the idea of integrating with YouTube. However, I would bet a lot of quarters that they also didn’t pay an agency to “come up with a social-media strategy.” The company might very well have simply come up with this idea out of the blue, but it was a deep understanding of their marketing strategy and consumer needs that led them in this direction.

Brand managers don’t need a social-media strategy. They need to understand what social media is and what it can do for brands and their customers. Then, by laying out strong marketing strategies, they might find new and powerful ways to deliver on them.

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Posted in Connection, Contests, Experience, Games, Social Networking | 3 Comments »

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