ON ADVERTISING
Marketing Myths – 3 OF 7
The Marketing Dashboard Will Guide Us
Consider Sweeps for Loyalty Programs
Building Brand Passion – 3 OF 3
Communicating the Allure
Warning Signs of Hack Marketing Consultants
MARKETING MYTHS – 3 OF 7
THE MARKETING DASHBOARD WILL GUIDE US
"If we can just get some of that marketing automation, that'll solve our problems."
Companies seem to operate in one of two extremes.
The younger, scrappier companies (or the older companies that have never taken marketing very seriously) invest very little in technology to support their marketing. The cost is poor resource utilization and lost opportunity.
On the other side of the corral are the tech savvy companies that treat automation as the panacea to all of their marketing department ills.
It's hard to say which extreme is worse. But from a risk and hard cost standpoint, companies that make poor investments in automation are more exposed. Marketing automation is just a tool. If you have to change your entire company to run the tool, you've made the wrong investment. Your people will revolt. And your technology investment will be largely wasted. Marketing automation should help you to run your company, not the other way around.
We’ll take aim at the “metrics” myth in our next On Advertising newsletter. Return to top.
– January 2010
MARKETING TO RECESSION MOMS
This recession is deeply and directly affecting women with children. Yet, like Rosie the Riveter from WWII, the modern American mom is a strong woman doing what she always does in a time of crisis: take a hard look at things, freak out in her head for a minute or two, and then move on, creatively working through it, around it, and within it.
She has become a realist. Companies that have traditionally played more at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid (connecting emotionally with consumers) need to recognize that consumers today have moved down the pyramid and place more focus on physiological, safety, and social needs (food, shelter, and protection).
Marketers need to take the perceived risk out of purchases and encourage trying new things by offering money-back guarantees, showing the versatility of their product across categories (e.g. cornflakes are great as cereal, but also on potatoes, fish, and veggies), and increasing product sampling.
Especially in trying economic times, moms are much like CEOs, managing what’s within their control and opting for what’s out there that is best for their families. Return to top.
– January 2010
CONSIDER SWEEPS FOR LOYALTY PROGRAMS
Merchandise and trips are still effective ways to recruit new members and add excitement to standard loyalty programs. They catch consumers' attention and allow other materials time to educate them about the benefits of the loyalty program.
However, traditional collect-and-earn-points programs that allow members to redeem points for rewards are proving less attractive than programs that allow members to use their points to enter a drawing to win bigger prizes.
Miller's High Life Extras program, for example, added the option of redeeming points for a chance to win a bigger prize. As a result, their Lucy Bicycle Multi-Sweepstakes contest was the most redeemed item. Overall the program saw nearly twenty times more points being redeemed and 43 percent of the redeemers were first timers. Return to top.
– January 2010
BUILDING BRAND PASSION – 3 OF 3
COMMUNICATING THE ALLURE
The passion brands rarely target consumers in a traditional way. More often, they identify shared values about their world and how it works and then illustrate how their brand shares that vision. Nike taps into the universal aversion to whiners with their “Just Do It” branding. Apple connects with the anti-establishment value to promote their products.
Nothing brings a brand down more quickly than an “interchangeable parts” philosophy in the recruitment, hiring, and rewarding of your line staff. Careerists who jump from company to company may be building their own brand, but they will neither feel nor fuel passion. It takes true evangelists to ensure that your brand continues to grow and evolve in relevant ways.
In a world jammed full of commodity products and services, passion can be a defining quality to lift your brand above the competition for the long haul. Did you miss parts one and two? You can find them here. Return to top.
– January 2010
WARNING SIGNS OF HACK MARKETING CONSULTANTS
Presenting stale ideas as breathtaking breakthroughs.
The hot concept of branding is nothing new, just its name and technology. Marketing, unique selling proposition, integrated marketing communications, positioning, and unique value proposition are all basically the same thing when done right.
Naming model clients.
The gurus routinely ignore such basic precautions as providing a control group. Five years after In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters came out, a third of his ballyhooed companies were in trouble. Andrew Henderson of the University of Texas recently subjected “excellence studies” to rigorous statistical analysis and concluded that luck is just as plausible an explanation of their success as excellence.
Extolling “core competences.”
As Henry Ford pointed out, if he had only listened to his customers, he would have built a better horse and buggy.
Stoking demand for their services.
If marketing could indeed be reduced to a few simple principles, then we would have no need for thinking, researching, or testing. But the very fact that it defies easy solutions, leaving marketers in a perpetual state of angst, means that there will always be demand for consultants. Return to top.
– January 2010