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.  

When a Minute Isn't (Anywhere Near) Sixty Seconds

I was really hoping to find some examples of great marketing to blog about.  I feel bad that many recent posts have been about marketing and promotion that just doesn't get it.  Unfortunately, I guess, there is much more of bad marketing out there than good marketing.

Case in point.

A big drug chain has just gotten into the market for walk-in clinical services.  That's good ... more convenience for the customer ... more points of distribution.  I needed a vaccination and so I decided to utilize the new service rather than scheduling a visit to my doctor.  So far, so good.  The sign at the door said that the clinic handled routine physicals, minor ailments and vaccinations. 

The name of the clinic is "Minute Clinic."  Also not bad.  In fact, the premise (and the promise) sound really good.  Convenience.  No hassle. 

The concept is good, though, only as long as the brand lives up to the promise.  And that's where the problem starts.

I arrived at the clinic at about 11:45 a.m.  There was a sign on the door stating that the clinician was on a "mandatory" one hour lunch break and would return about noon.  In the meantime, I was invited to enter all of my patient information onto a very awkward touch screen system.  It would have been much easier to fill in a piece of paper.  Once I filled in all of the information the screen indicated that I would be the next patient and the wait time would be fifty minutes.  Since I had to wait, I left the store and came back fifty minutes later.  Upon my return, the clinic was open ... but the clinician was handling another customer.  The screen indicated my wait time would be thirty-five minutes.   So at this "Minute Clinic" I waited eighty five minutes for service.  When I finally saw the clinician, he asked what type of vaccination I needed ... and when I told him he said that he didn't handle that ... and that I had to go to the pharmacy counter (and wait in line) to get vaccinated. 

I left without getting vaccinated ... and I don't have a good feeling about the "Minute Clinic" brand.

The lesson here is to be careful about the brand promise.  Only promise what you can deliver.  And deliver it. 

Promotional Backfire

A friend of mine posted a message on her Facebook page about a shopping experience.  She went into a store and purchased more than $50 in merchandise.  On her way out the door, she saw a poster that said customers would get a free tee shirt with purchases over $50.  So, not surprisingly, she went back into the store and asked for the tee shirt, but was told that they were out of stock.

Her Facebook post included a sad face and a message to her many friends about her negative experience with the store.  So, while the store intended the promotion to generate good will, mishandling the promotion caused it to backfire.

Some lessons:

- The Internet can make a bad customer experience a very public event
- Make sure that promotional material clearly communicates the terms of the offer ("while supplies last")

The really simple lesson:  Store personnel need to pay attention to what's going on in the store.  When the tee shirts were out of stock, it would have been very easy to take the sign down.  

AT&T Offends Half Its Audience

Click Here to See the Ad

AT&T's Mobile Share program is designed for small business.  That's cool.  The television ad that they have created depicts staff of a realty company asking questions and getting answers about the service.  That's cool, too.  Four of the five of the actors are female.  Also cool.

What's not cool is the fact that the single male portrayed in the spot is cast as a total idiot.  He plays an insecure and bumbling counterpoint to confident and assertive women.  I understand the value of humor in advertising, but why would you create humor that is potentially offensive to half of the population of small business operators?

Here's a test to see whether this situation is offensive or not.  What if the roles were reversed?  What if the ad featured four confident and assertive men along with a woman who is an insecure and bumbling idiot?  I bet AT&T would be swamped with complaints.  Humor shouldn't insult the audience.  Shame on AT&T for insulting a significant portion of its target audience.