Archive for the ‘Solution’ Category

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Polling Readers on a Hard Call

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

It’s time for some fun on a Thursday, folks. One of my readers, who I am choosing not to identify, pointed me to an article on Newsweek.com about the rising issue of low testosterone among men. It seems that as many as 13 million middle-aged men in the United States suffer from this issue. For some, the answer is increasingly a prescription for a steroid such as AndroGel, but new and old studies show that simply having an erection—including by watching porn—is enough to get low testosterone levels up to snuff. And so this, dear readers, is the question of the day: Should AndroGel be offering free porn on its website?

Today, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, the maker of AndroGel, is pursuing the classic strategy of driving awareness of a condition it calls “Low T” through TV advertising and a website. The company hopes that the condition is recognized by men as much as “ED” or “BPH“. If you’re male, watch sports, and haven’t seen the ads yet, you soon will.

Driving awareness of a real health issue that guys don’t talk about, and using the safety of a private website to answer questions, can be very meaningful. But I wonder if there is an opportunity for AndroGel to do more than simply motivate men to, once again, ask their doctor if a new drug is right for them. The website for AndroGel only mentions various prescription answers to low testosterone, thus missing the chance to educate men on other potential (ahem, natural) remedies.

Why not follow the path of Tylenol’s “Feel Better” campaign, which has used print and outdoor ads to educate consumers about how they can avoid headaches by eating breakfast or drinking plenty of water, and soothe muscle aches by getting a partner to massage their shoulders?

There is certainly no undersupply of adult content on the Web that men can use to raise their testosterone levels without medication. After all, Newsweek reports that:

Forty million people, most of whom are men and a large chunk of them married, visit a porn site each month. A quarter of all Internet search engine requests and 35 percent of all downloads are for porn.”

But AndroGel could do more to bring a full solution to Low T men and attract attention around the issue it solves. At minimum, the brand could provide information about how there are natural ways to increase testosterone levels. This would increase trust among patients and prescribing doctors alike that Solvay is not simply pushing pills. Thinking more creatively, AndroGel might provide tips on how men can safely enjoy adult material without encountering problems on office computers or being surprised by family members. It might seem silly, but check out (NSFW) this guy whose porn screensaver kicked in during a meeting. This might cause some “attention” in the media, but isn’t that what marketers aim for? And if the marketing is a meaningful solution to this issue, the brand is standing on firm ground.

Now, all giggles aside, I don’t seriously believe AndroGel should or will actively encourage porn viewership, but there are little things it can do to better deliver on its mission, no matter how stiff the marketing challenge.

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Posted in healthcare, Solution | 1 Comment »

Philips Wins ‘Advertising As Service’ Award

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selling Your Marketing—The Holy Grail

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Product Demos with Meaning

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Entertainment, Solution | 3 Comments »

Results Update from Previous Posts

Monday, April 27th, 2009

On Friday afternoon, I was trading blog war stories with my friend Jonathan Richman (check out his fantastic healthcare marketing blog, Dose of Digital). We agreed that it was unfortunate that some great posts that we wrote early on in our blogging days were basically unseen because they came before we had a critical mass of readers. That’s a shame because there’s some good content back there. At the same time, I don’t want to simply republish old work. But today I have a solution: I will bring new data to two older posts that can add value for recent and longtime readers alike.

Hyundai’s Assurance Program

Back in January, I wrote about Hyundai’s novel promise to allow customers to return cars if they lost their jobs during the time of a lease or loan repayment. Some of the reasons I loved the program include:

  • New and novel idea at a time when people need economic insurance the most
  • Plays on the insight that a lot of people really are delaying big purchases such as this
  • Differentiates a small player in a big market
  • Draws enormous free PR coverage
  • Builds a very positive long-term equity for Hyundai, a brand that has struggled to break through

Even within its first weeks, Hyundai spokespeople claimed that the results were encouraging and traffic to their dealer lots was up.

Today, just about everyone knows that this program has been a grand slam for Hyundai. Sales for Hyundai were up 14% in January 2009 compared to the previous year, while the entire industry’s sales are down dramatically, including GM and Ford down 32% and 42%, respectively. Meanwhile, not a single customer had returned a car through March!

The only downside of the program is that it was quickly copied by others. GM and Ford now have programs that match it, and Hyundai has added an Assurance Plus program that will fund your car payment for 90 days if you lose your job. Meanwhile, many other companies have been inspired by the economy and Hyundai’s example, including Pfizer, JetBlue and the Minnesota Timberwolves. And there’s now a parody ad of the Hyundai program.

Gatorade’s “Got G?” Campaign

In another post from January, I wrote against the raft of new equity campaigns from brands such as Honda and Coke—my point being that these brands under pressure are simply using the old playbook of hiring a new agency and trotting out another meaningless and interruptive TV campaign. I saved my biggest dose of venom for Gatorade, which has just launched a campaign called “Got G?” The screenshot below pretty much sums it up:

According to the Sarah Robb O’Hagan, Gatorade’s chief marketing officer, as written in Slate, “…the idea behind the new look and the new ad campaign is to make the brand feel more contemporary and to appeal to the next generation of electrolyte drinkers.”

Here’s what I disliked about the Gatorade solution to its rising challengers and a crowded market:

  • Overall, the new generation isn’t watching television, and they don’t respond to an advertiser’s slick message jammed in their faces. I believe this ad is what a group of 30-year ad-agency veterans would think that the next generation wants.
  • People won’t spend their time searching Google to figure out what your new TV campaign is about.
  • Pure equity ads that add no value won’t work anymore. You can no longer tell and sell.
  • Gatorade missed an opportunity to add value to athletes’ lives, like Nike has with Nike+ and countless events and training websites.
  • The star-studded lineup of actors in the ads signifies only that the client had a big budget; consumers see through this today.

Well, Gatorade spent millions on expensive actors, high-end commercial production, and heavy media weights during major sports events. The brand also underwent packaging changes that focused on the “G” of the brand. This was the brand’s big move to regain momentum. A second ad with Kevin Garnett and others offered a mock-up of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Again, more sizzle but no steak.

The results are now in: Gatorade sales were down 13.7% in the first quarter of 2009. Yep, that’s in a quarter in which it likely spent well north of $50 million on media and commercial production. About half of the sales decline can be attributed to a 6.3% drop in category sales, but Gatorade also lost 6.4% share. Gatorade’s only strategy now seems to be suing Powerade for product disparagement. That’s just another old-school strategy that won’t work either.

I actually like the Gatorade brand a lot as a consumer. I first got turned onto it while running 10k races as a 12-year-old in Atlanta. Back then it was really like a secret formula for athletes. Today it’s my drink of choice at the convenience store. But the brand could be so much more, and the solution is sitting in front of it in the form of case studies from brands in its own (Pepsi) holding company, such as Doritos, Mountain Dew, and SunChips. All three brands have created marketing that people choose to engage with—marketing that itself improves people’s lives. And all are seeing sales increase despite tough competitors and a sagging economy.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, Solution | 2 Comments »

A Tanning Company That Stands Out

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Last weekend when I was at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Fort Myers, Florida, I enjoyed a nice break from the cold Cincinnati winter. While I didn’t have much free time to hit the beach, it was nice to have the warm sun hitting my face for the first time in months. A reader from Canada wrote me recently to share a story of how two companies paired up to extend his Florida vacation, and it makes for an interesting Marketing with Meaning case.

Johnny (I’ll let him identify himself in the comments if he likes) lives in Winnipeg, Canada, which is also known as “Winterpeg” for the notoriously cold weather each season. He took a vacation to Mazatlan, Mexico, on Skyservice Airlines to escape the cold for at least a few days. On the return flight, where sad fellow travelers prepared to snap back into a cold reality, Johnny found his tray table decorated with an advertisement for Fabutan, a chain of 151 tanning centers located throughout Canada. He first thought, “Great, more interruptive marketing,” but then read on the advertisement that a flight attendant would come around and offer 75 minutes of free tanning so that people could “extend their vacation.”

Just as expected a few minutes later, there was an announcement that flight attendants would be passing out the free tanning vouchers. Everyone seated around Johnny was excitedly talking about the offer and grabbed the vouchers that were offered.

Johnny sent me this story and asked if it was meaningful marketing. Overall I would say it fits pretty well. It was relevant, coming when the entire flight of people is returning to the real (cold) world but wants to keep their tans and good spirits. The 75-free-minutes offer is clearly marketing that itself adds value, falling into the “free sample” camp. The tray ad and intercom announcement are a bit interruptive, so points off there. But people talking excitedly around Johnny is more evidence of meaningful marketing. Leaving discussions about the safety of tanning aside, this is a very smart way for a tanning company to target perfectly and drive visits.

Thanks to Johnny for sending in this story. I think it goes to show that once you have meaningful marketing on the brain, you begin to notice both good and bad examples more clearly. Please keep sending the stories!

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Posted in Sampling, Solution, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Marketers Aiding Consumer Responsibility

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

You can’t read a social-media consultant’s blog or attend a conference these days without hearing that we marketers must shift our messages according to the challenging economic times we’re living in today. One of the things most of us agree on is that businesses of all kinds must tone down messages that encourage extravagant living, and become more responsible in stoking the culture of wild consumerism.

Many still see advertisers as part of the problem, and that will continue to a certain extent, but most marketers understand that their job is to listen to society’s shifting sentiments and alter messages accordingly. For example, value messages are sweeping across television and print, and fancy stores on Fifth Avenue are providing plain brown shopping bags. Now, companies are even investing their marketing dollars to form more responsible product-usage habits.

The origin for this post came up a few days ago when Ian “Trey” Dahlman from our search team told me about an offer he got from Home Depot via direct mail. It was an offer to help him pay off a balance on his Home Depot credit card with a pretty unique offer: For every dollar that you pay over the minimum amount, Home Depot will take off another 20 percent from your card. For example, if your minimum payment is $50 and you pay $100, then 20 percent of that extra $50, or a total of $10, is further credited to your account. The total offer was up to $550 in credit over a four-month period. That’s a pretty incredible deal.

Home Depot is obviously acting in its self-interest as well as that of its customers; it hopes that people will pay off its balances first when all of the bills come at the same time. But I’ve heard of few other companies actually sweetening the offer and giving something big back to their customers.

About a day later I read of another example of a company that is similarly investing in helping its buyers be more responsible. Absolut vodka just launched a campaign called Recognize the Moment, which aims to help people be smarter about their alcohol consumption. A YouTube channel features people at bars talking about drinking responsibly, and its website has information about the effects of alcohol and signs that you’ve had too much. There are some good tips about how to drink water between cocktails, and I really like Absolut’s “Text the Moment” feature in which you can set a message to come to your phone to act as a sober slap in the face at 2 a.m.

Of course, no good deed goes without a cynical comment or complaint. In Absolut’s case the Center for Science in the Public Interest (a nanny-state proponent that promotes junk science claims and wants to eliminate everything “bad for you” that tastes great) calls the brand’s efforts “fluff” and suggests that any type of alcohol marketing online is evil because “the Internet is largely a youth-oriented phenomenon.”

Teaching responsible product use is not a completely brand-new trend. A few months ago I wrote about how Liberty Mutual started a campaign to teach people to take responsibility for their behavior. State Farm is investing in teen driver education programs. I would also toss in the examples of Bank of America helping its customers avoid bank fees, and Tylenol advertising that skipping breakfast can cause headaches. And then there’s the Hyundai Assurance Guarantee program, which promises to take your car back if you lose your job. It was the most boring but arguably most meaningful ad of the 2009 Super Bowl, but guess what? Sales are up 4.9 percent while overall car sales are down 40 percent—and ZERO buyers have returned their cars!

Some of these programs can actually hurt brands’ sales. People who know when to say when to a third cocktail or cut up their credit cards mean dampened profits in the short term. But the brands realize that short-term gains are not what great businesses are built on; rather, they rely on long-term loyalty beyond reason. The man who got a text-alert reminder to call a cab from Absolut and the woman who finally paid off her card thanks to Home Depot’s help will eventually spend again.

And finally, let’s not forget that there are real people living and working on the brand teams at these companies. Despite the demonization by critics at “watch groups” such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who believe we businesses people are filling conference-room whiteboards with evil schemes, most businesspeople actually do give a damn about their consumers.

Sure, there are examples of horrible practices by workers at companies from Enron to AIG, but by and large the workers of the world want to do the right thing. We don’t want our neighbors to rack up high credit-card bills or blood-alcohol levels. And as we become a closer, more caring society as a result of our economic calamity, I expect the people behind brands to lead the charge for a kind of marketing that makes a better mark on the world.

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Posted in Organizational Behavior, Solution | 2 Comments »

A ‘Meaningful’ Super Bowl Postmortem

Monday, February 16th, 2009


It is the sworn duty of every agency thought leader to play Monday morning quarterback with the annual orgy of advertising known as the Super Bowl. Yeah, I’m a little late to the conversation, mainly because the whole “building the business” thing has sucked my time away. (But, hey—we pulled out a couple of new business wins!) My tardiness actually works to my advantage, as it allows some time for the Super Bowl marketing efforts to actually start showing postgame results in the market.
So, I present the Inaugural Marketing with Meaning Super Bowl Winners and Losers!
Let me begin by laying out a bit of the criteria for selection. First, just making an ad doesn’t count. I will leave that type of ranking to an agency I recently discovered called a&g, which has been running what it calls a “most meaningful” ranking for six years. a&g has a nice idea and good ranking criteria, but its focus is only on the ad itself, rather than a complete marketing campaign. The second requirement is that the marketing campaigns must fit with our twin definitions of meaningful marketing: (1) the work is something people choose to engage with; and (2) the marketing itself adds value to people’s lives. Enough with the rules; let’s play ball:
Winners
1. Denny’s—When people heard this fading diner chain was making a play for the Super Bowl, most people figured it was quite a Hail Mary. (Sports metaphors are fun!) But we never expected that the company would use its precious time to unleash an offer of free Grand Slam breakfasts on Tuesday, February 3. A campaign that cost $5 million (including $3 million to the single commercial) led to 2 million takers in 1,500 restaurants. CEO Nelson Marchioli felt the time was right to reintroduce people to Denny’s—and instead of spending money on more interruptive, over-promising TV ads, he gave something back and reaped great rewards. The $5 million generated $50 million in PR already, and Marchioli claims that with sales of drinks and other items they probably broke even on the day. Aside from great strategy, the company was prepared for its giveaway with extra wait staff and cooks.
2. Hyundai—The brand had two ad slots, and while one was a forgettable farce around how other auto CEOs are cursing the brand, the award goes to Hyundai for the promotion of its Assurance guarantee. This clever and beneficial marketing approach provides a service for wary customers by agreeing to take back bought or leased cars in the event that the household has an unexpected financial issue: losing one’s job. I blogged about this a few weeks ago, and shared that Hyundai claims the results are strong. It’s not a funny ad and falls near the bottom of popularity polls, but by sharing truly original news of a meaningful marketing program, Hyundai has a good chance of winning market share and greater profits—while its buyers receive some extra security in these troubled times.
3. Doritos—It’s hard to believe that a brand could win both in most popular and place high in my meaningful ranking, but they really scored with this ad. The ad itself is just one leg of a now third annual consumer-generated marketing contest. For months, people have been engaged in creating and voting on videos, because the brand learned in 2005 that its young consumers love to create content and make brands their own. The output is a little juvenile, but people take it as lighthearted fun and marvel that it was created by a couple of guys with a handful of dollars.
Losers
1. Go Daddy—Everyone is having a field day hating on this brand, which continues to think that the Janet Jackson episode is still relevant humor. One might argue that the ad is meaningful to some small slice of guys, who ended up scooping up the most domain names. But the reality is that the game’s audience is much broader, and, as a&g remarks, “These days, men are as likely to be offended by ads that disrespect women.” As a father of two young daughters, I agree wholeheartedly. Enough. And Danica Patrick isn’t helping her image, either.
2. Gatorade—”What is G?” Most people really don’t care to research an advertising tagline. I wrote about this campaign a few weeks ago here. Some brands and agencies still believe that a new advertising campaign will create news and turn around share—especially if you toss in enough celebrities. But the only real news this is generating is speculation about what the heck the brand is thinking. The ad itself fell near the bottom of the popularity list. Meanwhile, Gatorade misses a huge opportunity to follow Nike’s lead and actually create events such as the Nike Women’s Marathon and Nike+ service, both of which are great examples of the brand helping people actually achieve something.
3. Any other brand that just ran an ad—It is remarkable to me that after countless case studies of brands who used an ad to start a conversation or service, so many still spend 99 percent of their time and budget on this single 30-second spot. Brands that might have won a smile or two amid so many distractions, yet failed to really capitalize, include: Budweiser, Castrol, Cheetos, CareerBuilder, Pepsi, Vizio, and H&R Block.
Special Note: Pedigree vs. Kellogg’s
A few posts ago I commented on Pedigree’s move to join the list of Super Bowl ad entries on behalf of its campaign to drive dog adoption. My point was that after amazingly meaningful marketing around this cause, Pedigree took a giant step back with a funny ad that fails to connect emotionally, and fails to do more than tell people at the end to “get a dog.” Some commenters said I was too tough on the brand and that the humor might have tugged people.
To those who think you cannot win with emotion on the Super Bowl around a cause, I direct you to Kellogg’s, which used the time to launch a campaign for rebuilding sports fields in communities around the country. The ad informs of the idea, while pulling the heartstrings of everyone who remembers those days of biking to the park and playing until our mothers called for us. But what’s really meaningful is that the ad directs viewers to get involved at frostedflakes.com. There, visitors actually can nominate and vote for a specific local park to be funded. The competition will spread over several weeks, and when you vote, Kellogg’s provides a downloadable $1-off coupon.
Congratulations to Kellogg’s, Denny’s, Doritos, and Hyundai for using the spotlight of our industry to show stellar examples of Marketing with Meaning!

UPDATE: Here’s another very good post-mortem with consistent themes from Joseph Jaffe.

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Posted in Achievement, Cause Related, Connection, Contests, Marketing Without Meaning, Solution | 3 Comments »

Content Aggregation for Legal Help

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

I love it when readers share stories and examples of meaningful marketing. Last week I discovered a pretty interesting new way for lawyers to promote their services in a meaningful way; it’s an interesting concept that represents a big opportunity to move toward a new model of content aggregation.

Emilie Cole at LaunchSquad, a PR firm focused on new products and services, emailed me about her client, JD Supra, which is hoping to provide a way to serve useful information to people in a way that helps build the businesses of law firms. At JDSupra.com, lawyers can upload articles, court papers, legal briefs, and other documents so that they can be read by visitors to the site. The general idea is that people who are in the market for legal services will do some online research before hiring representation. If they find something useful at JD Supra, they may be especially inclined to hire the firm that uploaded said document. (See the nice coverage from The New York Times.)

Cole makes a great point about how this might revolutionize the way lawyers advertise their services:

[In the old model] they have a website… and maybe a terrible phone book ad. Part of their problem is that they can yell about how great they are until they’re blue in the face, but that still doesn’t convince you or me that we should seek their services. And how would we know if they’re any good anyway?”

Overall, this concept fits very well under what we call Solution marketing, which happens when brands find a way to provide some kind of value-added information for consumers, which is related to the brand or category itself. Anytime a brand creates an article or a consultant writes a blog (such as this!) we are marketing in this way. We all hope that by providing useful information, customers will repay us with their business.

But JD Supra creates further value through its content aggregation service. The problem with blogs and websites is that they live on isolated islands and depend almost entirely on personal networks and their position in Google searches for visitors. Brands have a hard time standing out, and consumers often don’t find the best information on Google. A growing trend is to aggregate content under a semi-walled garden, where higher-quality information is stored and well-tended. Wikipedia is a great example, as are Squidoo and Alltop. Search engines such as Google actually send more traffic to content aggregators, in turn, because they provide more of what the user is looking for.

WebMD is a kind of content aggregator as well, and it clearly has succeeded as a first-search source for millions of people. The downside of WebMD, though, is that it is a fully closed information marketplace. The company “owns” all of the content, which means huge cost, complexity, and lack of outside voices.

I had a chance to speak with the founder of JD Supra, Aviva Cuyler, as well. She started the firm after working for 12 years as a litigator and realizing that fellow attorneys were drafting the same documents over and over again. She pointed out that with so many legal services becoming commoditized, this service can help law firms work more efficiently so that they can cut costs and spend more time on value-added advice. Cuyler described four key business benefits of the service to contributors:

  1. Attracts clients who are searching for information and end up impressed by the expertise of contributing firms
  2. Improves networking, as lawyers search for specialists in specific areas, who they may hire to help out on a specific issue or refer business their way
  3. Gains attention from the media, which is increasingly subscribing to JD Supra’s feeds and using the site for their own research. Reporters are starting to reach out to law firms that are submitting documents, and by quoting them, might generate further business.
  4. Drives strong search results (SEO), as each uploaded document means another link back to the law firm from a trusted, valuable, high-traffic source

The service is expanding its usefulness by embracing the latest social networking tools as well. A Facebook app that it created allows members to show their contacts whenever they have uploaded a new document to JD Supra. And it has several specific Twitter feeds with news around topics such as Tech Law and Banking Law.

JD Supra even has a business model: While contribution is free, lawyers who submit documents must pay anywhere from $450 to $750 per year to add links to their profiles, websites, and email addresses. Hey, that’s less than a couple hours of work billed for most of the lawyers I know! So even one client landed through this effort could pay out this investment very quickly. The business model element helps ensure that the folks behind JD Supra keep improving the service continually.

I’d love to see something like this in the marketing world. There are countless agencies, consultants, and bloggers such as us out there talking to a relatively small audience. We all hope that some article is read by the right person with a huge following who, in turn, links to us. Instead, it would be incredible to have a central place where marketing experts could leave articles around specific topics. Readers would find and rate the articles, and the best thinkers and writers (rather than the best networkers) would see their work rise to the top.

Until then, I’ll keep doing my best to keep you coming back here, dear readers!

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Saved by Hyundai

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

A few weeks ago I wrote one of our most visited posts about the lameness of Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” television advertising campaign. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past three months, you’ve got to recall Toyota’s annoying use of The Fixx’s song and the promise of 0% interest rates. Some of you might have even joined the Facebook protest of this campaign, which now, thankfully, seems off the air.  According to Toyota’s spokesperson, the purpose of the campaign was to remind people that loans were still to be had (at great rates) in these troubled economic times.

But today one of our Search gurus, Ian “Trey” Dahlman, pinged me to let me know that Hyundai was doing something remarkably different. It seems the brand has launched the “Hyundai Assurance Guarantee.” The straightforward program promises to let people return their cars if they lose their jobs. That’s right, “if you cannot make a payment because of a covered life-changing event, we’ll allow you to return your vehicle and walk away from your loan obligation-and in most cases we will cover most, if not all of the difference.”

It’s a pretty dramatic offer, which is very meaningful coming at a time of dramatic economic risk. Hyundai realizes the main dynamic in the auto industry today-that people are holding off on making purchases because they are afraid of what will happen next. The reality is that a lot of these people do need new wheels, and most will retain employment. Hyundai’s downside is relatively small, while the upside is a strong differentiation in the marketplace and the chance to close some sales.

Hyundai’s killer idea obviously comes from honing in on understanding the needs of its target customer, and figuring out what its marketing could do to address the issue. And in this case, it didn’t take months of focus groups or $300,000 omnibus studies-but rather some old-fashioned common sense and human understanding.

Early proof of the meaning and effectiveness of this promotion is seen in the (free) news coverage it has already spawned. A quick Google news search shows several stories from media both small and large.  This free advertising means that Hyundai’s campaign will be even more successful. The only news coverage of Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” campaign was that of its annoyance factor.

According to Hyundai, the campaign is already driving positive business results. The company says it has gotten hundreds of phone calls to inquire about the offer, and showroom traffic is up considerably.

Long-term, Hyundai could reap some great brand equity builds out of a campaign like this-first, with buyers who feel that the company is looking out for them. Even those not in the market who are simply exposed to the message likely forge a more positive opinion of the brand.

I’ll keep an eye on the brand’s progress and track results over time. This should be an interesting case to watch!

UPDATE: Jonah Bloom, Advertising Age Editor has a nice article on the program, which ended up featuring it in a SuperBowl spot on February 1.

UPDATE 2: Here’s an article about other companies in other categories that are similarly aiding people who are out of work.  And, through March, not a single car buyer has returned a car!

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