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Filed under: marketing
I needed a change, so I have moved to bethinkr.com. Look for me there.
Filed under: brands, marketing | Tags: Brand Tags, evil, humanizing, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods
My wife came mentioned to me the other day that food purchased at Whole Foods feels like “a treat”;—shopping their is a truly enjoyable experience; the other patrons feel like friends (well, your “granola” friends), the store is inviting, and the staff is pleasant.
She set this against here Wal*Mart (notice the asterisk—I am brand compliant), which has the unfortunate position of being considered “evil” (image links to Brand Tags, the web page which I pulled this information). To her, it is a chore—a place that she wants to leave as soon as possible.
Even in times of stress, I wonder how long we will be willing to trade a more humanizing experience simply because of low prices. It’s only so long before the store becomes a trial to be endured until some better can be afforded.
Filed under: community, marketing | Tags: Cheney, drip, Duncan Watts, Fast Company, Fox News, Gonzales, Jon Stewart, Malcolm Gladwell, Nigerian email scam, Oprah, scam, Seth Godin, The Daily Show, Tipping Point
As I was reading about the Cheney-Gonzales indictment, I saw a link this story:
Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam
She explains how she lost so much (it was not all at once):
Her family and bank officials told her it was all a scam, she said, and begged her to stop, but she persisted because she became obsessed with getting paid.
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Spears first sent $100 through an untraceable wire service as directed by the scammers. Then, more multimillion dollar promises followed so long as she sent more money.
I feel sick for her; and as I was wondering “how does some one fall for that?”, I considered the activities that I become “obsessed with” because of their “promises”. When does Seth Godin’s drip, drip, drip become a Nigerian email scam? In our projects, are we really heading toward a “Tipping Point” with a few influential “hubs”, or do we adhere to Watt’s statement that:
A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.
Watt’s has got it kind of right. There is no bunch of cool people everywhere, in every industry. But then again, we do have Oprah (from a 2005 BusinessWeek article):
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest that Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show could be No. 2 [...] But no one comes close to Oprah’s clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.
Typically, it is a drip, drip, drip—little tipping point—drip, drip, drip—little tipping point. If we don’t start to see the “promises” slowly realized, we may be putting too much hope in rewards garnered by our personal Nigerian email scam.
Filed under: brands, community, leadership, marketing, online media | Tags: BusinessWeek, CEOs, Forbes, Johnson & Johnson, Logic + Emotion, moms, Motrin, social media, TwitScoop, Twitter
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twitscoop The motrin story is1more proof brands need to monitor social
networks – the graph + reading first tweets tells it all: http://bit.ly/eR8x
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twitscoop Motrin ad makes moms mad on twitter, follow it here:
http://tinyurl.com/6khfzv #motrinmoms
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I received these Tweets yesterday. At the same time, motrin.com went down. Today, motrin.com continues to be down. It’s actually inaccessible. These same Twitter moms knocked it down (I guess they don’t like being condescended).
For more information, see Logic + Emotion—they give a nice running commentary of the “headache”.
In other news, BusinessWeek has noted that a large number of CEOs do not support social media, reasons ranging from lack of knowledge to lack of relevance. Consider this:
While 62% see social media as having an impact on a company’s reputation, only 48% say it can change sales.
Time will likely tell that Johnson & Johnson (Motrin) may disagree that perception.
Filed under: community, marketing | Tags: Bowling Alone, Chief Awesome Officer, communities, marketing, Robert Putnam, Seth Godin, tribes, Triiibes
As you can see on the sidebar, I have been reading Seth Godin’s Tribes. I vacillate between promoting books like this—books that do a good job of inciting but are more shallow on hard data—and discouraging their propagation in light of more deeply founded arguments. This moving to action that like books offer is most helpful when trying to organize a group around a core idea. And when we compare Godin to Putnam (as in the Bowling Alone author), the former is going to do a much better job of furthering the ideas in the latter’s book.
That said, Putnam’s book gives a strong foundation for understanding the cultural forces in such phenomena as a tribe, thus giving the reader and insights into steps that move beyond what is discernible in the case studies and metaphors that Godin breaks out. Tribes is the spoon full of sugar, Bowling Alone is the necessary medicine that the true marketers, managers, and strategists ought to have their organizations swallow.
It is worth reading both, but you will have much more success in passing Godin’s book to others (as I have started to do—we’ll see what our CAO thinks about it).
With that, Godin has also produced (with Triiibes) a Tribes casebook in a free ebook format. Included in this book is a case study that I wrote and I have featured here already, so there is a bit of self-promotion with my referencing this publication. If you do download it, please read the very first case study. It is remarkable.
Filed under: marketing | Tags: Apple, innovation, Motley Fool, Microsoft, I'm a Mac, I'm a PC, competition
For some reason I have been talking a lot about Macs and PCs and Microsoft lately. Well, that’s because these subjects have piqued my interest. And that’s usually what I write about. It is easier that way.
Unless you have been paying more attention today to, oh, the death of the investment bank or the multiplicity of disheartening financial news, you may have noticed a little snippet in the press about the new “I’m a PC” ads.
It seems that the images were made on a Mac. Not so surprising, considering that Macs are prevalent throughout the creative industry. A little unwise, considering that these are responses to “I’m a Mac”, but I haven’t been as up in arms about this little revelation as others.
What is interesting to me is the fact that the mouthpiece for the PC is Microsoft. Yeah, they have been for years, but Macs now run both. Even though the ability for Macs to run both makes it possible for Microsoft to continue to succeed, they are fighting against the diffusion of this machine. The likely reasons for this are related: first, the near OS (and other software) monopoly is broken up for Microsoft when consumers can easily chose; second, they know that they can’t really compete with Apple’s OS and other software.
So what strategy should they chose: compete better or fight the transition so you don’t have to compete so directly?
What is good news is that competition like this is ultimately good for consumers and companies. This isn’t a price war, which, of course, leads to no real winners on the business side. This is a market-driven battle that lends to greater innovation and real and better benefits. For the retail consumer—this is a sign of good things to come.
Filed under: marketing | Tags: Apple, Ben McConnell, Bill Gates, Church of the Customer, Jerry Seinfeld, marketing, Microsoft
In light of the previous post’s comments on Apple, it is interesting to examine the Seinfeld and Gates videos from Microsoft. Ben McConnell from the Church of the Customer Blog writes:
There sure are a lot of “I don’t get it” comments out there about Microsoft’s ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates . . . The comments are everywhere . . . Which is part of the point . . . Microsoft is in the process of reframing the discussion about Microsoft. It is building a new persona.
At our place, the skits have generated a lot of, “huhs.” But they are totally watched with lively discussion afterward. We laugh a little, but mostly furrow our brows and discuss, “what is Microsoft trying to say?” “What are they trying to sell?”
Which is remarkable. Microsoft is now, again, a part of the discussion. This is a risky and sometimes gutsy strategy. They won’t be able to point to a definite ROI, but they have been oft-maligned over the last years, so it necessitates that it is time for them to become again a part of the discussion.
Features and benefits are important, but conversation is vital. What is most remarkable with their campaign is that that is what they have become. That is—they are worth, once again, talking about. Even if we don’t get it completely now, they have our attention and can, as McConnell points out, reframe our perceptions.
And now they have a bit more of a chance to win the perception battle.
UPDATE 9/19/2008: Second update today. I guess there has been an update on these ads. I really don’t believe either side (media or corporation) completely, but we are paying attention now.
Filed under: marketing | Tags: baby, birth, LDS Hospital, marketing, Portrait Studio, Sears
One month ago I talked about being in right place at the right time. This last weekend, I saw this forcefully and not-so-forcefully in action (but neat for the advertisers, nonetheless).
On Saturday, August 23rd, I took my wife to the hospital. She was well into labor and I was about to embark on one of my biggest life-changing experiences. It was around 4 am when we finally got to LDS Hospital, and she and I were quite tired, excited, nervous, and I, who, in my fatherly role, was about to leave my soon-to-be child and the love of my life into the capable hands of the nurses, doctors, and staff at this institution—I was quite unsure and honestly scared. I brought her to the front of the hospital so she could start the admittance process and I went to park the car. While hurrying back from the parking lot, I stopped to notice a sign above the entrance door.
It says:
We’ve been named a top hospital by U.S. & World Report. Again.
They may be named for being a top hospital for appendectomies, I don’t know. But to read that, at a fearful time, at 4 am, right before you know that they will be treating your wife and bringing your child into the world, I cannot express how much that message at that place at that time meant to me.
5 hours, 23 minutes later, we welcomed our little one.
When I brought her and him home yesterday, I took a little time to grab our mail when I had a few free seconds (turns out, there is not often now that I have a few seconds). In the mail was a mailing from Sears Portrait Studio that read, “congratulations. your new baby is here.” and then offered a free portrait and sitting. Not as emotionally needed as the hospital validation, but it was perfectly timed and is now not sitting in the trash as is most of the direct mail pieces sent to our home.
Filed under: innovation, marketing | Tags: Apple, execution, Flickr, Google, marketing, Microsoft, perceptions, PhotoSynth
Yesterday Microsoft Live Labs did a consumer release for PhotoSynth, a cool photo, combining software. If you haven’t heard of it, it “stitches” images together
allowing users to create their own virtual scene from a series of 20 to 300 pictures (source: Wired).
As I started to try it out, I thought, “Is this really Microsoft?” I mean, this sort of innovation seems more like Apple, Flickr, or Google. I was pretty impressed with the concept, especially that Microsoft had come out with it.
And then I actually used it. I gave it an easy task: put three pictures of adjacent areas in a park near my home together.After crashing my application twice so far, and now still “in process” with my “synth”, I saw that Microsoft’s personality has come through; I am unsure if my project is in process or just stuck (there is no status bar).
Fair enough that they are probably overwhelmed (they have mentioned that a few times today), and I should give them some more time to work out the bugs. The concept is very cool, they simply weren’t ready for people to really try. It’s too bad; it really has lowered Microsoft’s chance to become a more creative company in consumers’ eyes. First impressions are important but not absolute—confirmations of previous perceptions are much more dangerous.
As much as we talk about mindshare and positioning and other high level strategies, proper execution is tantamount to success.
