Stop the Bandwagon, I Want to Get Off

Marketing is becoming ever more complicated.  In addition to worrying about demographics, psychographics and the other traditional ways of understanding consumer behavior, we are now faced with understanding the impact of the technology revolution.  In fact, in a seminal book titled Groundswell the authors coined a new term:  technographics.  The point is that different people have different degrees of technology savvy. 

By the way, embracing technology is not perfectly correlated with age.  There are boomers who are tech savvy and boomers who are tech clueless.  There are grandmothers who embrace technology when the use Skype to see the grand-kids or enrich their retirement with Facebook postings.  Even among the "digital natives" (those born since the development of the Internet) there are degrees of tech savvy-ness.  

Marketers have to understand that there is no longer a common denominator when it comes to technology IQ.  Marketing messages probably need to be delivered through different media to reach the variety of technographic groups out there. 

 

 I was recently at a meeting at Hawaii Public Radio where volunteers were being briefed on the upcoming fund drive.  One of the volunteers - a tech savvy digital native - let loose with an indictment of how everything has been done in the fund drive.  She had been invited to the meeting by a snail mail letter.  A letter!  She said "no one reads letters anymore."  She noted that in the on-air drive, the telephones ring with a conventional ring tone.  She said "no phones sound like that anymore."  She went on and on.  Everything that was old technology was anathema and should be dumped. There was general agreement.  "Yes!  We need to change everything." 

But wait a minute.  The speaker's technographic category was very high-tech media savvy.  A lot of the Public Radio audience probably isn't.  So, if Public Radio dumped all of its existing approaches to fundraising, it would be very relevant for a highly engaged technographic group - and puzzling (at best) to technographic neophytes. 

Marketing has become very complicated.  In this instance, Public Radio needs separate strategies for different technographic groups. 

Nobody said this is easy. 

Passion and Dispassion: The Ying and Yang of Marketing Success

Some marketers fail because they are so passionate about their product or service that they can't see marketplace danger looming in front of them.  "Everyone should buy my product because it's wonderful."  Many a brand has sunk beneath the waves because of marketing hubris.

Some marketers fail because they are too dispassionate.  They don't take risks.  They don't value creativity.  They make lookalike products.  And they are outflanked and out-marketed by those who develop new and innovative solutions to customer needs and wants. 

The very best marketers are left-brain, right-brain folks.  Ying and Yang.  Passionate, but real.  It's hard to find that balance, but essential for success in the marketplace. 

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds?

Someone once described consistency as "the hobgoblin of little minds."  The point, I suppose, is that slavish consistency stifles creativity.  And that's true.  However, for marketers, once the creative process has taken place and we've selected a preferred position for our product or service ... consistency is a good thing.  The consumer is not sitting around thinking about us all day, so consistency helps reinforce the creative position that we've selected. 

The very best marketers are, indeed, very consistent.  taglines, type fonts, colors, tone, training, etc., etc. are all consistent with the image that we want to convey to our publics.  Bad marketers, on the other hand, are all over the place. 

I was watching a Subaru television commercial recently which ended with the announcer delivering the line:  Love ... It's what makes a Subaru a Subaru.  Now, I'm not bowled over by that line (I'm not exactly sure what it means), but the commercial was generally about a loving relationship and I took the line to be Subaru's tagline and I expected to see that line come up under the logo at the end of the spot.  Surprise.  It isn't the tagline at all.  At the end of the spot the logo came up with the tabline:  Subaru.  Confidence in Motion.  I'm not bowled over by that line, either, but the spot didn't have anything to do with confidence in motion.  And having two different lines is just confusing.  What is Subaru all about, anyway?  Love?  Or, Confidence. 

So consistency isn't the hobgoblin of little minds when it comes to clear communications. 

Marketing is MUCH more than promotion ...

I'm back after an August blogging break (too much going on before school reopens).

Over the summer, one of the big stories was the bankruptcy filing for the city of Detroit.  That reminded me of an incident when I was teaching a masters level marketing class. 

The assignment was to "reposition" a product or service.  Repositioning is usually done when you have a troubled product and you use all of the marketing tools to "reposition" it to make it vibrant and relevant again.  One of the first assignments in my career was to work on a Procter & Gamble product that had just been "repositioned."  Cheer detergent went from being a product that specialized in "whiteness" to an all temperature product that worked on a whole array of laundry needs.  Cheer's business doubled.  Do I believe in repositioning?  You bet.

I asked for the students in my class to identify the product or service they planned to reposition.  One of the students chose Detroit.  (She was from there).  Great, I thought, what a terrific challenge.  Her paper, however, fell well short of what was needed for repositioning.  She developed a series of taglines and advertising and some media strategies that were her solution to Detroit's marketing needs.  The problem is that Detroit needs much more than a clever tagline to reposition itself.  She ignored the need to fix the product, and no amount of advertising will address that. In fact there's a famous marketing saying that the best way to kill a bad product is great advertising. 

Can Detroit be turned around?  A very difficult challenge, but yes.  Other cities have done it. 

I lived in Cleveland during my high school years - when pollution was so bad that the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire.  The city has cleaned up its act.  In fact, the area by the river (called "the flats") has been transformed from a gritty industrial slum to a trendy bar and restaurant scene.  The city attracted the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Nearby Canton has the NFL Hall of Fame.  And, while Cleveland isn't as vibrant as some other cities, it's come a long, long way from being the city where the river caught fire. 

San Diego transformed itself from a one industry (navy) town to a center for biotech research. 

Sante Fe, New Mexico has become an arts mecca. 

Ogden, Utah (of all places) is a high tech center. 

Detroit can turn itself around, but it will have to look into its own soul and find out what the city can change to make it relevant and attractive.  Then - and only then - can it blow its horn with clever advertising. 

My student, unfortunately, didn't get a very good grade on her paper.  But, it had lots of notes in the margin.