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The Strategic Lessons in Groupon’s Super Bowl Fumble

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Groupon should have had one of the best Super Bowl ads during the big game last weekend. After all, the company checked off nearly all of the steps that many other advertisers have used in the past: widely known celebrities (Cuba Gooding and Timothy Hutton), a big-name director (Christopher Guest), an award-winning creative agency (Crispin Porter + Bogusky), a budget that allowed for multiple ads, and a humorous commercial concept. Unfortunately, while many other companies have taken these steps, many similarly failed to score in the Super Bowl—and there are a lot of former CMOs, sock puppets, and dead dot-com companies to prove it.

Groupon’s approach to the Super Bowl has not fared well according to however you might measure its results. For starters, one commercial stirred a controversy by poking fun of people’s support for the oppressed people of Tibet. Not only was this in poor taste to most Super Bowl viewers, but extremely risky to tweak a sensitive issue for China, where Groupon has prioritized opening up shop next.  Consumers in the USA TODAY survey ranked it near the bottom of its annual likability ranking. Nielsen pegged it outside the 10 most-recalled spots. And it didn’t make an impact in Twitter tracking.

So in what should have been its big coming-out party, Groupon made a poor first impression. The cost? Huge. The media expense of three, 30-second spots before and during the game likely ran around $7.5 million. Plus there’s the expense of producing the spots. I know from personal experience that this quality of filming, actors, and direction for three completely different commercials is probably on the order of $2.5 million in total. So that’s about $10 million in cash for a questionable return. Not to mention the fact that the company might have hurt its brand by creating controversy and looking bad in front of more than 100 million potential customers. As a famous commercial once said: You only get one chance to make a first impression.

How could things go so wrong for a company that seems to have everything going for it? Like many things in business, it comes down to the strategic choices that are made along the way. The purpose of this blog post is to shine a bright light on the lessons Groupon hopefully learned the hard way in hopes that you don’t fail as spectacularly in launching your own new product.

Lesson 1: Advertising Must Communicate the Concept of a New Product or Service

In terms of its overall company strategy, I believe Groupon has been wise to shift toward driving Awareness. Due to rising competition and a business model that is fairly simple to replicate, the company is in a race to win mind share. But when it is time to build awareness of your new product or service, the advertising must hit on the fundamentals of Concept or Copy Strategy. It must teach people what it is, how it works, and why it is right for them. And it must do so in a clear, direct way.

Groupon fell for the old advertising dogma that TV commercials—especially for the Super Bowl—must be entertaining to “break through.” You can hear this in the comments of Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason, as he explained his company’s commercial choices:

“Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different—ads are traditionally about shameless self-promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers.”

Mason does not believe that people want to hear what Groupon is, calling it “self-promotion,” and instead agreed to make fun of his company in its very first ad! In this quote he is directly calling some of his small-business customers “trivial.” And more specifically, the idea of eating at a Tibetan restaurant itself makes the service seem like a goofy, niche idea—after all, how many people in the U.S. have such cuisine within driving distance? Is this a Groupon commercial or a Saturday Night Live spoof?  UPDATE: Mason decided to take down the ads by the end of the week.

I know it might sound crazy coming from an author who promotes Marketing with Meaning in this space, but with new products and services, consumers often find the advertising interesting. That’s right. People are really interested in what’s new, and will reward advertising that teaches them what it is, how it works, and why it is right for them.

It might surprise you that infomercials are some of the least-skipped commercials in TiVo’s regular testing. I know from my own experience in launching new products such as Mr. Clean Magic Eraser that the highest-scoring commercials present the basic product concept in a clear, direct way. Or take the example of Hyundai’s Super Bowl ad in January 2009, which simply and directly described its Assurance Program. While it was dead last in the USA TODAY poll, the ad clearly described a new benefit, and the program grew sales 6% while the industry was down 19%.

Groupon could have done so much more by taking this educational route instead of relying on entertainment. For example, because the service is focused on local deals, it might have been smarter to, say, purchase local market TV time during the game and create a commercial that could be edited to show the actual, great recent deals on products and services in these markets. That’s the kind of ad that people would find relevant, informative, and compelling. Plus, you save some money on the celebrity actors and director.

(Note: My problem with most TV commercials is that they don’t contain useful information about new products, services, and benefits that people care to see. They push product improvements that have little novelty/relevance or attempt to entertain when we already are watching something entertaining.)

Lesson 2: The Super Bowl Can’t Be Your First Game

None of the football players in the big game was putting on pads for the first time. It takes years of two-a-day practices, film room time, and firsthand lessons learned from both victory and defeat. The same goes for all of the marketing executives who suit up to bring commercials to market. This is not the time nor place to first strap on a helmet.

I do not mean to question the usefulness of the Groupon service here, and I have to give the management team and its investors a ton of credit for building what has been called the fastest-growing company in history. However, this team has never been in the big advertising game before—and it showed. CEO Andrew Mason has never had a mass marketing role. There is no CMO on the company’s roster of top management or investors. Its Director of Marketing comes from a loyalty marketing background. I think these people could make a very successful company tapping into their existing skill sets, but when you jump into the Super Bowl of Advertising, you’ve got to have an expert in your corner.

I am sure that the choice to go with Crispin Porter as its advertising agency was made to overcome this lack of experience. Crispin is known for some of the most creative, award-winning advertising in the world. It has done great Super Bowl ads in the past. But there is a fundamental flaw when there is no one on the client side with experience in managing the agency. This is the play we saw again and again during the dot-bomb years: company gets crazy amounts of investor funding, is pressured to gain awareness fast, and hires a fancy ad agency—which does what it wants with little “adult supervision.”

At best, an outside agency just doesn’t have the same skin in the game as a company and its management, so it doesn’t think about the risks and issues that might arise. At worst, an agency just sees this job as an opportunity to soak its dot-com client for millions, make friends with celebrities, and win a few awards. Sorry, folks, that’s reality—and I learned this lesson myself the hard way early in my career at P&G. Being on the agency side now, I see how an experienced client partner can make sure we do our best business-building work.

One misfire does not mean the end for Groupon, however. If anything, this Super Bowl fiasco is a costly but important lesson for Groupon and its investors: It’s a big brand now, and needs to bring in more seasoned executives to help ensure that its early promise converts into long-term success. I believe that by looking into the strategic misses of the company, you, too, can take away lessons that might save you the pain of similar moves in the years ahead.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning | No Comments »

How CAPTCHA Ads Stall the Evolution of Marketing

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

In my role as strategy group leader at Bridge Worldwide, I am often asked by my team or clients to weigh in on what’s next. And in my 15 years of working in the digital marketing space, I’ve seen a lot of bad ideas. Usually the bad ideas can be picked apart strategically as an internal exercise and we move on with life. But some bad ideas not only threaten to waste clients’ dollars—they threaten the very evolutionary survival and success of the digital marketing industry. Some ideas are evil in that they wish to bring marketing back to a time when we treated people like captive cattle at the impression trough. The people working on them are not necessarily evil, but such companies need to be called out. Today I would like to share why I am firmly against “CAPTCHA Advertising”—in hopes that you help save everything we’ve worked for in the next evolution of marketing.

For background, CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test. This is a tool that websites often use to ensure that an action is completed by an actual human being, rather than a spamming bot. Here’s an example from a company called reCAPTCHA.

If you have left comments on blogs or registered for just about anything online you have likely completed a CAPTCHA. They can sometimes be difficult to read, and are made more difficult to read as spammers get better and better. But for now they are a necessary evil on the Web.

The Advertising Innovators Strike

For decades now there are many innovators and inventors in the world who dream of grabbing a piece of the multibillion-dollar advertising market by creating a new, owned “network” for marketers to hock their wares. The result is everything from advertising on airport runways to gas pumps to sheep grazing in a field. Back in 2005, Ilya Vedrashko, a marketing thinker I admire, wondered on his blog why no one had tried to turn these CAPTCHAs into an advertising medium.

A few years later Carnegie Mellon University created a system called reCAPTCHA which asked users to enter words from scanned books. This allowed the school to both block spammers and digitize many out-of-print books. It was a novel way to do something positive with a chore done by millions of people each day. In 2009, Google acquired the tool and continued to use it to digitize its book collection as well as the historic printings of The New York Times.  Another novel improvement on the CAPTCHA is something Facebook recently introduced: A test for people who lost their passwords in which you must correctly pick out a picture of a friend.

Alas, other not-so-noble ideas took hold after five years when a handful of companies began creating ad unit CAPTCHAs. Instead of deciphering a meaningless word or helping digitize a textbook, companies such as Solve Media ask consumers to write out a brand’s tag line or selling point, as in the example for Dr Pepper at the top of this page. The companies claimed that this was good for consumers, who no longer had to type in something that is often illegible; it offers advertisers a new, “captive” audience who was forced to interact with brand messaging; and it promised website owners the opportunity to further monetize content through ad revenue sharing. And in the past few months the hype around Solve Media and other CAPTCHA ad competitors is getting deafening.

I’ve been quietly ignoring these ads and pushing people away from it for some time. Until now my one public comment on the medium was in the comments of an iMedia article that claimed Solve Media as something that creates “real engagement.” But recently a client and friend of mine directly asked me for my point of view, and I put together an analysis that I would like to share with you here: The 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use CAPTCHA Advertising:

1. It’s Not Strategic

Such ad units are clearly a tactic, not a strategy, and therefore not worth much time at all for marketers to assess their value. At most, a brand manager who is running an awareness campaign online would expect that her media-buying agency is keeping an eye on the CAPTCHA ad space for really cheap CPMs. Already most marketers don’t spend enough time looking at bigger, strategic opportunities in digital through social, mobile, and CRM.

2. It’s Not Scalable

Solve Media and its competitors are targeting the big marketers who spend millions of dollars a year on mass marketing campaigns. What they fail to recognize, however, is that these companies want big numbers for their impression bucks. And the numbers on CAPTCHAs just don’t add up. Solve Media claims that there are about 300 million CAPTCHAs solved per day around the world. That’s not many impressions in a planet of 7 billion people who see about 3,000 ad impressions per day. Let’s say a full third of that comes from the U.S., so that’s 100 million CAPTCHAs per day for 100 million households in the U.S. That means most of us probably “solve” one CAPTCHA per day.

That’s right, even if 100% of these were by these ad networks, you would have one impression per household per day. Imagine if people saw one TV commercial per day, or one print/outdoor/banner ad per day. If there are a hundred total companies advertising on this medium, then your brand might only serve one ad per person per quarter. Why waste the time and energy for so little of an impact?

Ah, but Solve Media might just increase the number of CAPTCHAs that people have to solve per day! Imagine if people had to solve five or 10 of these per day?! (Step back and think of doing that! You’ve got to type in 10 brand slogans per day just to read a few articles!) But it’s still too little, and starts to anger the people who use your websites. (See below for more on that.)

3. Results Are Unproven

Marketers want to see the data and results before testing their budgets, so it was smart for Solve Media to invest in a study to gauge consumer interest and effectiveness of its new tactic. However, it is still far too early to trust in what little information has been shared so far. The company frequently quotes its “Wharton Study” that was done in summer 2010. Unfortunately this is the only data I can critique, and there are a few big issues with it.

In the study, 234 college students were asked to read an article. One leg had to sit through an interstitial ad between two pages of the article, which you might recognize as the kind of ad that you are forced to sit through before getting to content that you want to read or view. It’s so annoying that most websites won’t put it into use for fear of losing visitors. The second leg had no interstitial, but readers were asked to type in an advertising phrase in order to vote in a poll at the end of the article. By choosing interstitials as the comparison leg—one of the most annoying ad formats that exist—Solve Media stacked the deck in its favor in terms of measuring annoyance in a User Enjoyment score that came out flat between the two.

The big data quoted in the experiment is that Brand and Message Recall were much higher for those who had to type in the brand message with a CAPTCHA unit versus an interstitial. This makes sense, as people who have to write something down naturally will remember it better. But, again, there are issues: First, every new form of digital interruption I have seen has similar stronger numbers than “older” ad units, simply because people have not learned to ignore the new format. Second, the survey was given only 5 minutes after the ads, so the large Recall number does not necessarily translate to memory in the days later when someone is making a purchase at the store. Meanwhile Recall tests with TV advertising typically call people 48 hours after the survey to see if they still really remember what brand was advertised.

These are major flaws in the research, and marketers deserve more proof before handing over their shrinking budget dollars.

4. Too Little Benefit for Publishers

Solve Media and its competitors claim that this new ad format is a boon for content publishers and webmasters. They claim that their revenue sharing model is a way for people to keep getting valuable, free content. But the websites that have used these tools are seeing little benefit so far. Solve Media pays a whole 10 to 20 cents per CAPTCHA solved. Adverlab points to some interesting comments from websites that have tried the service, including:

“So, basically, if you annoy the crap out of 1000 of your visitors with these things, they’ll give you, the webmaster, 15 cents on average.”

“The payout threshold is a whopping $200…will take me 3 years to reach.”

Although the payout numbers are small for publishers, it seems that the spam rate gets a lot higher when you put Solve Media’s system into place. As one commenter in this article points out the fundamental issue: “Advertisers love clear (easy to read), consistent messaging (same answer every time). Spammers love easy to read images that always decode to the same CAPTCHA answer.”

5. The Risk of Angering Customers Is Too High

Let’s face it; our consumers have become tough and demanding, especially after surviving years of pop-ups, scam/spam email, spyware, privacy violations, and hacked laptops. They have a very low trust for advertising overall and digital “innovation” like this in particular. In fact, a recent survey by AdAge and IPSOS Observer found that digital formats take up the top four spots in consumers’ most-disliked ad platforms (in order: mobile, email, social, and websites). A very large and growing percentage of people feel that they have a right to skip pre-roll video ads and install banner ad and cookie blockers on their browsers. So a new “unbeatable” forced ad will leave a lot of people angered.

This particular ad unit feels like a punishment, and while a few marketing bloggers might say this is a clever idea, go check out some real consumers’ comments on Reddit or this take from Gizmodo. And it only takes a small amount of angry consumers to make this look like a bad idea quickly. If, say, only 10% of people decide not to buy your brand because of this kind of advertising, it might take 10 or 100 people to be slightly positively impacted enough by the CAPTCHA ad to make up for this loss.

And while these new ad companies say that they started the business in part because the old, hard-to-read CAPTCHAs were frustrating for consumers, now they are creating new, video ad units. So where you used to have to just decipher a phrase (branded or not) to comment on that article, you will increasingly have to sit through a video.

Conclusion

Along with these logical, strategic arguments against CAPTCHA Advertising, I feel compelled to add a personal point of view: This type of marketing represents everything I have worked against in my career, and it violates the Marketing with Meaning concept that I have been driving in this space for years. It treats our precious, loyal consumers as bad children who must be forced to memorize our brand assets. It seems aimed at tricking people into remembering or liking a brand rather than earning the business with great products and meaningful marketing.

We need to stand up against these kinds of advertising ideas because they lure marketers into believing that the old, interruptive, tell-and-sell ways can still work in the post-digital age.

UPDATE: Since posting this, two entrepreneurs have approached me with “better” ways of turning CAPTHCAs into advertising models and asked me for advice.  If you, too, think you have such an answer, please don’t contact me with it.  In case it was not clear above, I do not believe there is a “good” way to to advertising in this format.  Please put your great brainpower and entrepreneurial spirit into truly meaningful marketing.  Thank you!

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

How Companies Follow Process to Failure

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

When people ask me what it takes to be good marketer I always reply that a key to my success has been the ability to pay attention to how people behave and form models to explain the behavior of individuals and society. Interestingly, this is probably what it takes to be a good comedian, too. Constantly paying attention and analyzing the world is a lot of work, unfortunately, and one of the “models” of behavior I’ve noticed is that companies often resort to rules and processes to guide people’s behavior so that they have to think less. The objective of process is to improve service quality and consistency. Unfortunately by dumbing down behavior, a “good” process can prevent firms from creating a great service. Let me share one example from my experience at the Delta Sky Club last week.

I am a very frequent flyer and for years now have been paying a few hundred dollars to be a part of the Delta Sky Club, which formerly was called the Crown Room. The Sky Club is a great value for someone such as me who spends too much time in airports. It provides a place to relax, free Wi-Fi, plentiful drinks, and helpful staff. But I’ve noticed something odd in my weekly check-ins at these air travel oases. Until a few months ago, the staff at the welcome desk would scan my boarding pass and welcome me in. But recently they have also been asking for my driver’s license or passport when I hand over my boarding pass. But why?

Here’s the thing: Except for maybe one or two airports in the U.S., the Sky Club is located in the main concourse after you go through the increasingly rigorous security check. That means that a trained expert in the front lines of terrorism protection has already double-checked that your ID matches your boarding pass. So why would Delta need to do this again? In fact, the boarding pass is printed with the words “SKY CLUB” and Delta takes the additional step of scanning the boarding pass, which brings up your personal account.

When I went through this extra step last week I asked the Delta representative at the desk about the purpose of this ID check. I made sure to let her know that I was not complaining, just curious. She had no clear idea why she was doing this step hundreds of times per day. That’s always a danger sign, by the way. If the person on the front lines of customer service can’t tell the customer what’s going on you have an issue. She then vaguely recalled something and mentioned that, “We added this process because people can do things with these print-at-home boarding passes.” OK, now I’m getting nervous: The TSA is approving people who might have fake boarding passes! And people are taking the time and risk to fake boarding passes just to get a free beer and Wi-Fi at the Sky Club?!

There might very well be a logical reason for Delta’s double-check of IDs, but I doubt it. Rather, I believe this is a process that someone instituted because there was some small chance at gaming the system. Things such as this happen often in businesses that are used to a lack of competition or service quality. And most airlines fall squarely into this zone. Someone comes up with this idea in a meeting and the group approves it without talking about the fact that it is at best pointless and at worst a signal that Delta does not trust its most frequent flyers. Power corrupts absolutely.

But the other lesson here is that new processes should not be taken on lightly. When employees are told what to do and how to do it even the best of them turn off their brains and go on cruise control. It was true of factory workers at the turn of the 20th century who suffered under Taylorism, and it is true of service providers in multi-billion-dollar companies today.

Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, airlines | 1 Comment »

Goldman Sachs’s Generosity Looks Hollow

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

goldman_sachs

If there’s one profession that has probably dropped below advertisers on the respect level in the past few years, it would be investment bankers. Not only did they take their fair share of blame for the ongoing economic catastrophe, but now they are sinking to new lows in the court of public opinion thanks to the billions in bonuses that are about to be paid out. In fact, a recent WSJ study found that total compensation for bankers will be up 18% in 2009 to $145 billion—that’s amid a year that took a Fed rescue plan! One company in particular, Goldman Sachs, is facing a storm of anger as it prepares to pay out roughly $10 billion in bonuses to its bankers. That doesn’t seem right to the millions of Americans who are still struggling to pay the bills (and who didn’t have a hand in destroying the markets), and neither does Goldman’s halfhearted attempts to buy them off with charitable giving.

Let’s definitely give the brainiacs at Goldman Sachs credit for trying to defuse a public attack by creating new forms of charitable giving. In November the company set up a $500 million fund to make loans to small businesses. The fund is being overseen by Warren Buffett, who is a trusted leader but has a conflict of interest as a large Goldman shareholder. Now the company is considering a plan to require its executives and other top managers to give a percentage of their bonuses to charities. This number could also reach into the hundreds of millions.

While any money that goes away from new yachts for rich bankers and instead to small businesses and worthy charities is great, I believe Goldman Sachs will gain little from its sudden interest in generosity. The key problem is that the American people are not idiots. They can see for themselves that the giving is a drop in the multi-billion-dollar bucket. They know that the company is dreadfully fearful of government legislation that could pare back its gains—permanently. President Obama is considering a $90 billion “financial responsibility tax.” If you doubt that Congress will ever pass something like this, just ask the executives at AIG how a government pay cap feels.

On the other hand, if Goldman or some other large financial services brand had made giving part of their culture for years, there might be an opportunity to secure big bonuses and grow market share. In fact, Goldman Sachs actually has some significant giving in its company history, as its early partners backed Albert Einstein and helped establish the NAACP. Alas, those days are far away, and any company that has to force its partners to give away a percentage of outsized gains has lost any true charitable culture that ever existed.

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Posted in Cause Related, Government, Marketing Without Meaning | No Comments »

Marriott Mars Your Stay with In-Toilet Ads

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

marriott toilet ad

Every few weeks I feel compelled to share an example of how big companies are taking the marketing and advertising fields to new lows. Today’s example comes from one of my field operatives, Jonathan Richman, who spotted the advertisement for Toto toilets in his room at the Marriott Renaissance in Washington, D.C. It’s sad, but true, and a good opportunity to step back and think about the economics of this new ad space.

Let’s start with an analysis of the advertising itself. Marriott is providing a platform for the Toto brand to advertise its innovative new toilet, including the chance to learn more at cleanishappy.com. The toilet seat is a piece of visual real-estate that has been previously untapped. And people who stay at pricey hotels are likely those a brand such as Toto would love to reach. But there are a few problems here. The biggest miss is the fact that Toto is advertising its product on a toilet that is NOT a Toto. This leaves a negative impression on both Toto and Marriott. Why tease the customer and remind him that this toilet will not clean him properly? It’s like going to a restaurant and getting an ad on your table for better food at another restaurant. The second issue is that people do not like to get engaged in toilets. We want to do our business and move on, and we want to focus on hitting the “target” rather than getting distracted by ad copy.

But let’s continue by looking at the numbers behind this new advertising medium to understand the size of the prize. Heck, maybe this is a huge moneymaker for Marriott and part of the next evolution of marketing. Here’s a few things that I calculated and assumed:

  • Let’s assume that these ads were placed on every single Marriott hotel room around the world. That totals 560,000 rooms in 2008 (last numbers I could find).
  • Marriott averages 73.5% occupancy in its rooms.
  • Let’s say only 1 impression per guest per day “counts” in a toilet seat media buy.
  • Let’s assume Marriott gets a high, targeted CPM of $50. That’s $50 in revenue for every 1,000 people who view these ads each day.
  • If all of its ad space were sold, that would mean a grand total of $20,580 in toilet seat advertising revenue per year for Marriott.

So, at the end of the day, the opportunity for Marriott here is not even a rounding error on a rounding error when dropped into the company’s total annual revenue of $12.9 billion. You can stop there and wonder why the company would bother going along with this asinine idea. But let’s take it a step further: What if Marriott actually pisses people off with these advertisements and hurts its business? How many people would it take to stop choosing Marriott for their travel needs because they don’t appreciate the eyeball pollution and toilet tease. Here are some more numbers:

  • The average revenue per room per day for Marriott is $121.34.
  • It only takes 170 fewer stays (.03% of total stays) to offset the $20,580 ad revenue gain.

So if only a tiny handful of the many thousand people who see these ads are turned off, then the whole effort is worthless. Further, there’s the negative word of mouth that comes from road warriors who share this story. In Jonathan Richman’s case, this intrusive advertising reminded him of the $12.95 the hotel is charging him for Wi-Fi access (when even McDonald’s is giving it away for free). Also throw in the more than 15,000 people who have seen Jonathan’s photo when he posted it on Reddit in the past week. If “only” 15,000 people around the world get pissed off and stay one less day each, the company loses $1.8 million!

So, at minimum, Marriott really should have thought more about its overall business and more about making its guests enjoy a pleasant experience rather than slapping on some ads for a few extra bucks. And it could even turn this Toto partnership into an example of Marketing with Meaning. Why not actually install some of these whiz-bang new super-clean Toto toilets in its high-end Renaissance rooms? We’ve already seen Westin make a major brand impact by doing little things in its rooms such as the Heavenly Bed and Heavenly Shower. Why not innovate with the equivalent of a Heavenly Toilet? That would be a great trial opportunity for Toto as well as a way for Marriott to show that it is investing in a better stay experience.

Am I missing something here? Why would Marriott ever agree to this? What would it take for the company to put its toilet money where its mouth is? Does your brand preference for Marriott change in seeing this?

Posted in Marketing Without Meaning | 5 Comments »

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 »

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 »

Will “Droid Does” Be Meaningful?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009


(Today I’m turning over the keys to guest writer Marty Boyer, one of our top technology leaders here at Bridge Worldwide. Marty had some great thinking about a new campaign for Verizon that is meant to steal share from the iPhone, and I asked him to add his thinking to this space. Please also check out Marty’s blog over at Famine City.)

If you are going to call out the iPhone for its shortcomings, you better bring a great product and the marketing cavalry. Unfortunately, I have to say that while the technology might deliver on the brand promise for Android, the “Droid Does” campaign is not delivering on meaningful marketing quite yet.

As a technologist, I was very excited to see Verizon’s Droid Does campaign surface on television a couple weeks ago. Finally, competition that is so confident about its product that it is directly taking on the iPhone. Though I own an iPhone, I also own a G1—the first release of the Android phone. The first release of the Android phone wasn’t exactly a consumer-ready device. However, with the release of the Droid Does campaign and Android 2.0, I was anticipating some strong competition for Apple, which needs a strong competitor to hasten upgrades to the iPhone. I was assured through the bold statements and the nature of the commercial that this device is ready to deliver.

Then I visited droiddoes.com, the call to action on the television spot. Verizon piqued my interest, I came to its website, and I was fully engaged. I’m the exactly the visitor Verizon wants blogging about the next release of the Android platform. I was hoping for something meaningful. But…

Verizon did not deliver anything meaningful. When I visited the site, there was an email sign-up box, circa 2000, to get updates on availability. DroidDoes.com missed the opportunity to send me wistfully into their purchasing funnel. I committed my time to visiting their site and even signed up for the newsletter, but was underwhelmed from the marketing experience. I wanted to be sold. I wanted something meaningful.  To be competitive in this space, brands must remember that they are trying to attract converts and early adopters. So what might a meaningful effort have looked like in this space?

Provide the opportunity to join a revolution.

The iPhone isn’t simply a phone; it’s a cultural icon. From the headphones on down, it is an absolute status symbol. There are many buyers who want another option—a better option for their specific needs. Help us believe, Verizon. We want to be part of an early-adoption revolution. Allow us to take a blog badge, join a Facebook group, or leave a comment about what I want by joining the Android revolution. As I am writing this post, a tweet came across from Adam Kmiec, “So want a Palm Pre or Pixi. Wish Palm had a program for people to trade in their iphones for a pre/pixi.” We all want options and an alternative to the iPhone; capitalize on it.

Use all of the energy and comments in the social-media space to share features about the Android.

Alternatively, allow iPhone users to download an iPhone app that posts what they want from the Android. Solicit feedback about what people are really looking forward to from the Google product to help build buzz and then share this content out to social networks. The people who are visiting Droid Does are early adopters and converts, but there is not a method to harness their energy to build Android momentum.

Show the anatomy of a “Droid.”

I can easily Google “Android phone” and find video, features, functions, and more content than is delivered on the website. Verizon has an opportunity to show us the latest, greatest, and best of its product offering, yet it has given the responsibility over to other consumers. If we have to rely on other consumers more than the brand itself for product information, then there’s work to do. Again, the company has not delivered a meaningful experience or even (simply) information. At this same time I might recommend that Verizon use the opportunity to clear up why its service is different than T-Mobile’s G-Phone product. Consumers in the United States (unless you are an iPhone user) tend to shop by carrier first, and phone second. This is more FAQ content and does not even really engage the user, but is a step toward being useful, if not meaningful.

To quote Jim Croce, “You don’t step on Superman’s cape.” You are calling Apple into the fight. You are telling the world you are better. If you are better, you have to deliver. Every phase of your plan must be on point, meaningful, and executed to take on a market leader. At some point, the Google phone will make inroads into the Apple iPhone’s world. At minimum, I am expecting some of the market forces to hasten upgrades to the iPhone itself. If you are going to compete with Apple, your products better deliver on the brand promise and start with meaningful marketing experiences.

Marty Boyer is an Associate Director of Technology at Bridge Worldwide. He leads interactive solutions for his P&G brand efforts. Outside of work you will find him engaged in the social-media space, blogging, and in the Twitter-verse.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, Uncategorized, mobile | 1 Comment »

BlackBerry Loves U2: Who Cares?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

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Over the weekend my wife and I took a break from everyday life to head out to Las Vegas for a long weekend featuring the U2 concert on Friday night. Your dedicated blogger took the opportunity to spend a little time sampling BlackBerry’s enormous sponsorship of the band’s 360 Tour, and what I found is Marketing Without Meaning.

By now you have probably seen BlackBerry’s splashy, sexy TV commercials featuring U2 and the tagline “BlackBerry Loves U2.” The concert arena in Las Vegas had plenty of banners put up (like the above) announcing the brand’s love for the band. BlackBerry reportedly paid up to $150 million for the rights to love U2 in public and brag about it in a massive advertising campaign. Here’s the thing: Who cares if BlackBerry loves U2?

For one thing, let’s take a step back and think about how the tables have completely turned in the sponsorship world. Today, celebrities are in so much demand by desperate brands that they don’t even have to really support the products that pay them! It’s not “U2 loves BlackBerry,” but the other way around. Heck, I love U2 and I didn’t have to pay anything more than $200 for a concert ticket. This reminds me of a raft of other examples that I wrote about a few months ago; for example, the AT&T commercials with TOMS Shoes in which the guy from TOMS never once praises or mentions AT&T.

There are also lots of issues around BlackBerry trying to gain popular acceptance and credibility with a wider audience by borrowing interest. Slate magazine does a great job of hacking away at the brand’s strategy, suggesting that it’s much better off sticking to its positioning as a more serious business tool, rather than trying to become as cool as Apple.

BlackBerry did create one piece of meaningful marketing as part of its U2 tie-in: The U2 Mobile Album, an app for BlackBerry only that includes music, videos, news, and a way to see where other app users are at a concert. It’s interesting but not exactly a news-maker. I believe that it was a mistake to not create the app for the iPhone platform as well as its own. It might seem odd to do something for competing phone owners, but by doing this BlackBerry could show iPhone users that it has cool apps, too, and win over some who are tired of AT&T’s poor service, for example.

It looks like a big waste of money, and the early results suggest this is in fact the case. In parent company Research In Motion’s 2nd quarter financial report in September, sales came in weaker than expected and the company might now have to cut prices.

So now that we’ve established that BlackBerry is pursuing a meaningless path, let’s turn the tables and examine how U2 is fairing from the deal. Financially it’s difficult to argue that this was anything less than genius in the short term. The band pocketed many millions in sponsorship dollars and every ad featuring the band was more free marketing for its music and concerts.

But many seem to believe that U2 is taking a brand equity hit from “selling out” to a brand that doesn’t build the U2 equity. Most of the doubts and complaints come from the band’s technology partnership switch from Apple to BlackBerry. The Apple tie-ins, which helped in the launch of the iPod, felt good on all sides: a great, creative band and a great, creative brand to match. The co-branded U2 iPod was a coup, and Steve Jobs and Bono are buddies; it was a great match. But by switching to BlackBerry, a brand most popular with financial types, felt like U2 was just selling out to the new highest bidder. The lack of anything very interesting and positive for the U2 fans from BlackBerry makes this connection even weaker.

That said, band brand fans are pretty forgiving, and the incredible music and history of the group will likely overcome any short-term dint from this tie-in. I will conclude by adding that I enjoyed how U2 allowed its concert fans to take unlimited pictures, video, and audio of the show. Last year I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert in Cincinnati and the bouncers were pulling camera phones out of people’s hands like they used to pull lit joints away years ago. I’m not sure if this was an official U2 acceptance policy or if we’ve reached a point in society that you just cannot prevent people from pulling out their phones. Either way, it gave me and the other 40,000-plus fans a chance to take away a few visual memories to share with friends.

UPDATE: Over Halloween weekend I turned on my TiVo and saw that I could watch the band’s Rose Bowl show, which took place a few days after the Vegas one.  After walking my kids around the neighborhood for trick-or-treating I settled in and watched this entire show for free on my TiVo thanks to YouTube and U2.  Very, very cool!  And many other people found it cool, too, as there were as many as 10 million streams of the concert on YouTube as of October 29.  If this were a TV show, it would have been a top 8 rated program in terms of number of viewers.

In that spirit, check out a few photos that I snapped (with my iPhone) during the show, including one of my wife and me having a blast. Thanks, U2.

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u2 vegas ticket

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Posted in Entertainment, Event, Marketing Without Meaning | 5 Comments »

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