Jan 15, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing
Low interest and confronting categories present problems for marketers.
It is relatively easy to generate interest in a new beer, a car, fashion item, but what about insurance, toilet cleaner, and petrol?
Typically we frame communications in the context of a problem to be solved, a tried and true method, but it means always coming at the product from a negative perspective, “you have a problem, here is the solution”. The marketing focus is on the happy smiling person who has solved their cleaning problem, the financially saved flood survivor, and the cleaner injectors in your car from “Factor X” in their petrol. The approach works well, but it often seems that the ad we end up with is a compromise, the best of a modest lot.
The marketing challenge is that the fake happy consumer depicted in the advertising always comes at the product from the point of view of the problem, and whilst it is nice to solve the problem, the context is still one of a problem, and the smile is still fake.
The better way is to concentrate on the person, rather than the problem, make the owner of the problem feel better, even happy. Change the context from the problem to the person who owns the problem, and be human in the way the problem is discussed. This great post by Barry Feldman, one of the great contemporary copywriters, demonstrates how with a collection of poop campaigns, a confronting topic we all face. Make sure you watch the video.
It takes some magic to make a boring or confronting product sufficiently fun, engaging, informative and interesting to enable a piece of communication to work, but it can be done with imagination and some marketing courage. The age of social media offers a new array of tools, but there is no substitute for being brave, and stepping beyond the boundaries of the norm.
Jan 14, 2014 | Branding, Marketing, Sales
Perhaps following on from the success of McDonalds “Angus” strategy, Domino’s has launched a “Wagyu Pizza” for our indulgence.
I like a pizza as much as the next bloke, but it is not one of the major food groups, just an occasional easy cholesterol hit. Being asked to pay 3 times the going rate is asking a bit, even if a bit of a Wagyu does inhabit the topping somewhere, and the packaging is a bit fancy.
Wagyu is a term used to describe a small number of Japanese cattle breeds that deliver a high level of fat marbling, creating a soft, juicy and flavoursome steak. In addition there is the banding mystique that comes from the stories of individual animals being looked after like kings, massaged, fed specific diets including beer, and generally leading an exercise free and indulged life, until the chop.
In Australia, Wagyu cattle are usually grass fed and just finished on grain, but are increasingly just grass fed, keeping costs down, but compromising the marbling, and I presume the tenderness and flavour.
But the “Wagyu” brand remains strong, and combined with the scarcity, attracts a premium in fine dining locations.
However, I wonder what a pizza does to the Wagyu brand story? Not much I suspect.
Is anyone getting a Royalty? Is this the beginning of the end for exclusive Wagyu?
Dec 25, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
It is Christmas day, my adult children are off doing stuff, my wife is working for the man, so I am left with my thoughts, the prospect of a late, and very big lunch, accompanied by perhaps a few too many sherbets, and this blog.
It seems to me that the basic purpose of Christmas is to provide an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of family and the relationships that exist in our lives. However, we have been hi-jacked by commerce, self interest and marketing at its most venal.
Christmas has become a commercial day, even my Jewish friends get caught up in the frenzy, and I am almost ashamed to admit, I have no Muslim friends with whom I have felt sufficiently comfortable to have a philosophical discussion about Christmas, and the personification, indeed branding of it as” Santa Day”.
So, hug your kids, embrace your friends, smile, and remember that it is us that has allowed Santa to become a brand, so it can also be us that steps above the commerce and get back to the real meaning.
Merry Christmas, and thanks for engaging with my variable musings throughout the 5 years of this blog, I hope to have scratched your brain from time to time.
Dec 16, 2013 | Branding, Governance, Management, Strategy
For perhaps the 1,000th time last week I heard the “strategy” question asked. It comes in many forms:
What is your customer strategy?
What is your google strategy?
What is your social media strategy? and so on.
All are valid questions, but the implication is that there is a different strategy for every bloody thing that is faced by a business, which to my mind is a degradation, perhaps commoditisation of the meaning of the word as it should (in my view) be practised. This type of usage is about the implementation of strategy, the manner in which you go about achieving the strategic outcomes desired, not about the formulation of the drivers of performance over the long term.
Equally, having an annual “strategic workshop” that sets strategy for the year is a nonsense, well, at best a budgeting session by another name.
“Strategy” is at once simpler, and more complicated than that, and comes down to five really challenging questions that must be lived, every day, by all in the enterprise. They are not the subject of some crappy off-site gab-fest in the slow sales period of the year if you are serious.
- What is the business we are in? (the old are we selling drills, or 20mm holes question, probably the most undervalued, and original marketing question)
- What does the enterprise do to add value?
- What are the behavioural drivers of the primary customers we are seeking to service
- What is our value proposition to these customers and potential customers?
- What capabilities are crucial, now and into the future, and how do we develop them to be differentiated?
When was the last time you seriously asked yourself any of these?
Dec 11, 2013 | Branding, Change, Collaboration, Leadership, Marketing
In some circumstances, “collective clarity” may be a synonym for alignment, but in others it is an entirely different beast.
Currently I am involved in a project that aims to bring together a small group of specialist growers and retailers into a collaborative framework that delivers fresh Sydney basin produce to consumers, and contributes to the building of a brand. “Sydney Harvest“, if successful in pilot, offers the opportunity for commercial sustainability to both Sydney basin farmers and specialist retailers. In the process of developing this project, which seeks to re-engineer the supply chain in response to the economy wide trends that are placing huge pressure on the viability of agriculture in urban proximity, the differences have become stark.
Alignment is typically sought inside a commercial entity, all employees, and stakeholders having a clear understanding of the enterprises direction, priorities, and resources availabilities so each can see the bigger picture, beyond just their area of operation, and act accordingly.
Collective clarity, by contrast, is a term I have started to use to describe the necessity of having a common view of the end point of a collaborative project amongst all collaborators, as well as of the key project collaborative points along the way. This is external to any of the individual enterprises.
By its nature, a collaboration is not subject to the same management thinking that prevails in commercial enterprises, as collaborators are all independent, and sometimes competitive businesses. It therefore requires that they all recognize that their individual best interests are best served by serving the best interests of the collaboration, a big ask.
This Collective clarity is required amongst collaborators for a successful collaboration, alignment as commonly articulated as being internal, is not.
Each individual business will still be managed independently, in their own way. The processes that impact on the collective operations will usually be only a small part of the overall, and so will often require a different perspective, and explicit management, and leadership to be effective.
I would welcome feedback on this idea, as I have not seen it articulated before.
Dec 10, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Sales
Recognising better is really hard when all offerings in the market appear similar. It follows then that you also must be different.
This brings in another challenge, being different is not enough, you also have to deliver. Being different just offers the opportunity to be seen, and perhaps to deliver, that you would not have had otherwise.
Take Seth Godins Purple Cow example. If you had rushed out and bought a purple cow thinking purple milk would be cool, then all you got was the same white milk that you could get from any old cow, then you would be disappointed. The “purple” did not deliver on the promise of the purple cow to be different, It got noticed, chosen once, but did not deliver.
Classic case, Red Bull is a beverage, a crappy tasting, caffeinated, cocktail of chemicals, and Co2, selling at a premium. Yet look at their website, they do not sell the product, there is almost nothing about the product on it, the site is all about the brand ,the excitement, the story, updated in close to real time, and tailored to your location. It is a storytelling masterpiece, one that almost all marketers would be well advised to understand.
Storytelling is more than a core skill of marketing, it is the critical ingredient, without which, your marketing will be hollow. To be sustainably successful, however, you need to live the story, do it, not just tell it. Steve Goldners post on the best facebook page ever eloquently makes the case.
