Hawaii has "The Curse of a Strong Brand" ... What to do?

I recently spoke at the Heritage Tourism Conference in Hawaii ... talking about why the destination needs to move beyond Mai Tais and Sun tans and promote its heritage and culture.  Here's a video of the presentation given by my and Dr. Jerry Agrusa of Hawaii Pacific University on the subject. 

(Ignore the fact that I was mis-identified as Peter Shaindlin, the Chief Operating Officer of the Halekulani Hotel).

Click here or on the image to watch the video.

The Death of Marketing as We Know It

Pelin Thorogood just posted a great article on the Cornell Enterprise blog titled ...

The Birth of “Customer 2.0”
and the Death of Marketing As We Know It:

Adapting Marketing to Changing Customer Behaviors and Demands

(click above to see the whole article).

The article is highly relevant (and recommended!).

When a newspaper once erroneously reported the death of Mark Twain, he immediately wired them with the message "the reports of my death are highly exaggerated."  The implied "death of marketing" is certainly exaggerated.  The death of "marketing as we know it" is spot on, though.  

Like any discipline, marketing is subject to Darwin's law of evolution:  adapt or die.  I'm sure that when radio came on the marketing scene there were those who said it was the death of marketing as we know it.  Ditto for television.  Ditto the internet.  In fact when Gutenberg invented movable type, I'm sure that there were monks huddled over their illuminated manuscripts lamenting the "death of publishing as we know it."  

While the conventional wisdom ... the things we "know" about marketing ... change constantly, the fundamental philosophy of marketing does not.  Marketing is about creating value for the customer and the brand by providing a benefit or solving a problem.  Movable type, radio, television and the internet changed the way we communicate, but not the basic idea of communication.  The exciting thing about marketing with the birth of "customer 2.0" is the power that the consumer now has ... and how that better enables the creation of value.

What is changing in a big way is the way we relate to the newly empowered customer.  These days, it is less about finding and connecting with the customer ... and more about enabling the customer to find and connect with us.  Marketers ignore this tectonic shift at their peril.  

Thorogood cites Marsall McLuhan's famous declaration the "the medium is the message."  That was true for movable type, radio, television, the internet and every advancement in technology.  The message about the rise of "customer 2.0" means that old assumptions about marketing tactics are, indeed, dead.  But the changes we're seeing give rise to an era when we can use marketing in a brand new way to do what it always set out to do:  create value for the customer by providing benefits or solving problems.  

Uncommon Common Sense (Once Again)

With the seemingly uncontrollable outbreak of the ebola virus in Africa, the media in the United States has been focused on the story.  One outcome from the presence of the disease has been an emphasis on sanitation procedures and training in U.S. hospitals.

I recently had the occasion to visit someone in the hospital and discovered prominent placards in the entry

and in the elevators informing visitors of the symptoms of ebola and advising them to seek medical help if they displayed the symptoms and had been out of the country in the last few weeks.

The only problem:  the placards were in English and Spanish.  That's ok as far as it goes.  But in Guinea, one of the countries in the epicenter of the outbreak, and in Cote D'Ivoire nearby, the predominant language is French.  Common sense says: check out the basics on how best to communicate with your target audience. 

Selling "What's Good for You"

You may have seen this sixty second ad already (it has more than five million views on YouTube).  Budweiser could have done its "drink responsibly" message in all kinds of clunky ways, but they produced a classic. Click here to view. 

Leveraging Popular Culture

Screen Grab from Ikea's New Catalog Spot (the Book Book)

This clever ad (click here) for Ikea's new catalog maximizes interest and attention by leveraging the familiar images and tone of an Apple product introduction.  This is "borrowed interest"  in the best sense of that term.  Brilliant. 

When to Pull the Plug on a Brand

I'm working on a business plan for a client.  As a marketer, I've spent a lot of time and energy working on new initiatives to turn their business around.  For the past few years, performance has been abysmal and the organization has been eating into its reserves to stay afloat. 

As I was reviewing the plan (with all of its bright and shiny initiatives) I had a conversation with a board member who essentially said:  "It looks good.  But where is the worst case scenario?  When do we pull the plug?"  Being the optimist that I am, I was a little taken aback.  But, the question is a good one. 

Too often we get so invested in a brand that we can't see the writing on the wall that says "this brand isn't going to make it."  Early in my career I worked on a new Procter & Gamble product that was a financial disaster.  The product was a toilet bowl cleanser named Aerex and it was positioned directly against the category leader, Lysol. There were a lot of reasons that Aerex failed (the product was so-so, the price was too high, the advertising wasn't great), but the the real story is that the managers at Procter & Gamble didn't see disaster coming.  They were definitely wearing their rose colored glasses.  If the research showed that consumers were indifferent, they blamed the research.  If the sales force said that major accounts were not stocking the product, they blamed the sales force.  In the end I saw something I have never seen before:  negative shipments.  The stores were shipping the product back faster than P&G was making it. 


It's interesting to see that P&G now has a different view of culling its under-performing brands.  In early August, "The Street" ran this story:

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Procter & Gamble Co.  (PG_) are up $1.01% to $82.61 after it was reported that the company is working with advisers including Goldman Sachs Group (GS_) as it reviews up to 100 underperforming brands for potential divestiture, sources told Reuters. 

By dumping under-performing brands, the company can concentrate its resources on developing its winners and finding new products.  Since the early August announcement the market continues to react positively to P&G's new philosophy.  The value of the company stock continues to climb as investors see the value of shedding losers.

As for the business plan I'm working on, we're going to launch some new initiatives to turn things around because I believe the marketing execution in the last few years has been ineffective.  But, there's a catch.  If the financials don't hit a target by the end of eighteen months, we go to the worst case scenario and stop the losses. 

Tcao Bell's Foray Into Fine(r) Dining

Taco Bell, the butt of many a joke about poor food quality, is testing a new concept called The U.S. Taco Company (click for more information). 

It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off successfully.  If I were giving them advice, here's what I

Some of the new US Taco menu items

would say:

• Stay a million miles away from the Taco Bell name.  Taco Bell is all about feeding your face, not dining. 
• Don't assume that what made you successful as Taco Bell is transferable to the new concept.  The demographics will be different ... the service levels will be different ... the operational controls will be different.  
• In fact, don't re-assign any of your existing management to the new concept.  They will only screw it up.  

When I worked as director of marketing for a Pizza Hut franchisee, I constantly reminded management that our expertise was not food ... but rather multi-unit operations and standardized procedures.  A real restaurant is a very different animal.