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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Uncle Ben's and Superbowl Advertising
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Uncle Ben's
Loser: Super Bowl Advertising
WINNER:
Folks, who says advertising and marketing can’t be good and do good at the same time?
Of course, it can’t be phoney and whatever the campaign –if there’s going to be a public as well as a business benefit—has to be in step with the brand itself.
That’s why Uncle Ben’s is our winner this week. Stuart Elliott, the advertising and marketing columnist at The New York Times, delivers a good synopsis of what the rice company is doing:
The Uncle Ben’s line of rice products is extending a campaign that carries the theme “Begin With Ben” to a group of consumers who, the brand hopes, are just beginning to cook.
The extension comes in the form of a competition called the Ben’s Beginners Cooking Contest. The contest, which gets under way at noon E.S.T. on Tuesday, encourages parents to cook with their children as a way to get children interested in learning about preparing meals and healthier ways of eating.
The competition is composed of traditional and contemporary elements. The tried-and-true aspects include a cash prize ($20,000) and celebrities (Angie Harmon and Rachael Ray).
One modern element is that contest entries are to be submitted in the form of video clips, which consumers will be directed to upload to a microsite, or special Web site.
And consumers will be able to vote for their favorite videos through social media, on the Uncle Ben’s Facebook fan page at facebook.com/unclebens.
A campaign to promote the contest will start this week. It includes digital ads, a video, events and a public relations initiative.
Also this:
In the video clip meant to generate contest entries, a voice-over announcer explains that “beginning with Ben is about more than just beginning with rice.”
“It’s about inspiring kids and families everywhere to make healthier choices,” the announcer says, adding: “Let’s bring excitement back into the kitchen and take kids to places they’ve never tasted before. Let’s start a movement, one that changes the way the world eats, one led by moms, dads and kids, all having fun cooking together.”
Here’s the point, this campaign makes sense for Uncle Ben’s because since it’s beginnings in the forties, this company has been the white rice with added nutrients food.
It now makes sense in the face of America’s obesity epidemic to position the brand at the center of a healthy response. But Uncle Ben’s takes it further by engaging the target market on multiple levels, getting them involved with cooking and contests. The activity that they provoke fits with the message of active healthy families eating well –while it builds good will, it also builds strong interactive identification with this great brand.One last mention, Paula Deen. Deen, the celebrity chef who loves butter and all things deep fried, recently announced that she has diabetes. Serious brand damage looked to follow since apparently she had kept quiet about it long after she knew... But now I believe she's on the right track, embracing healthy cooking and using the crisis to start publicising the problem. Stay tuned!
LOSER:
Folks, here we go again:
Super Bowl advertising is a waste of money.
Super Bowl ad buys make little sense from a practical advertising point of view because they violate the” law of frequency.” Countless studies have shown that for advertising to work it must be seen by a viewer at least five times with the optimal frequency being ten. The Super Bowl’s prohibitive advertising spot costs make this frequency unlikely.
Why do otherwise savvy marketers, who for the other 364 days of the year believe in the “law of frequency,” suddenly abandon it? There are numerous reasons: the glamour factor, the celebrity factor, the showcasing of the “creatives” at advertising agencies and the hope that a company might just hit some kind of elusive jackpot. But the jackpot never happens.
Moreover, the hope of many advertisers to create a memorable or witty spot that gets replayed in perpetuity on the Internet and thus earns back the huge Super Bowl advertising expense is misguided. Check out the YouTube viewer numbers for some of the most famous and beloved ads and you will see that they are anemic seldom exceeding one million views over four years. Super Bowl ads with an interactive component and contests can offer limited help.
The main hope for Super Bowl advertisers is the concept of adpublitizing. Adpublitizing is the creation of an advertisement for the specific purpose of creating controversy or buzz—both of which will ensure greater viewer frequency by the use of free media publicity (e.g., talk shows covering the controversy and inevitably naming the company and the product).
Fact is, a company’s best bet is to make an ad controversial in a way that doesn’t hurt the company image but causes the ad to be banned. Then the law of frequency kicks in on the publicity side and the Internet re-airing side. But this is an incredibly risky strategy that can easily see a company overshooting the mark and ending up on the wrong side of publicity.
What about advertisers previewing their ads before the game? I believe they are hoping to increase frequency. But the companies are also showing that Super Bowl advertising isn’t really about the advertising. When Anheuser-Busch did this in years past, it might very well have been about throwing a kind of appreciation “party” for its distributors who, after all, are the folks that close the sales week after week by getting the product to the shelves.
I love the ads as much as the next guy, but if I had $3 million dollars to spend, I think I'd spend it somewhere else..
Five SuperBowl Facts:
1) The most famous ad in Super Bowl history —Apple’s “1984” ad directed by Ridley Scott of Gladiator fame— became an icon and introduced so-called “event marketing.” But for Apple, it spelled the beginning of the end in its personal computer war with IBM and Windows. In fact, in the year following the big Super Bowl ad, Apple sold fewer computers than ever.
2) Not everybody watches the Super Bowl. The same money spent on Super Bowl ads, used instead to reach those watching other television programs on at the same time, could land almost double the viewers in the 18-49 demographic.
3) Why does the hype continue? Because Super Bowl advertising is great publicity for advertising agencies. (Unfortunately, it’s a poor business decision for their clients).
4) A direct marketing campaign
that invested $3 million in advertising and production costs (the rough price
tag of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial) would generate a much higher multiple
of sales.
5) The cost for one Super Bowl ad in 2010 (somewhere between $2.4 and 2.7
million for a 30-second spot) could buy up to 600 30-second ads in the New York
City market or 800 30-second ads in L.A.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY-- Think before advertising. Will advertising merely make you feel good or will it do your brand good?
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Kodak
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Children's Healthcare of Atlanta
Loser: Kodak
WINNER:
Recently Children's Healthcare of Atlanta in Georgia has been getting alot of criticism for an ad campaign intended to fight childhood obesity.
The campaign is called Strong4Life and features black-and-white photos of fat children with provocative taglines like: "It's hard to be a little girl if you're not" and "Why am I fat?"
Predictably, the self-esteem brigade and childhood psychology experts have come out and said that this kind of approach will only make things worse, but Children's Healthcare has fought back and refused to pull the ads.
The organization's hope is to shock people into recognizing that we have a real epidemic on our hands and the sad fact that fat kids turn into fat adults and fat adults stay fat. The more we know about the physiology of weight loss, the more we know that the overweight really have the decks stacked against them when it comes to losing that weight.
Basically, obese people are set up by their bodies to fail (for a really sobering take, read Tara Parker Pope's article in The New York Times. It's called "The Fat Trap").
Against this backdrop of reality and the fact that close to 1 million children are obese in Georgia, Strong4Life makes alot of sense.
Apparently many others think so too: the ads have received an 85% positive reaction --my guess, the target market knows better than the so-called experts that something really needs to be done for our kids and it needs to be done now.
By the way, children aren't the target market here. The target market is the parents and it will be the parents who will be shaping their children's health and future.
Bottom line, this is branding at its best: memorable, not afraid of ruffling some feathers and ultimately aiming to drive real action. My Fat Santa argument made me realize how hard it is to have people change habits and perceptions when it comes to food --it also made me realize how important it is to try.
Well done Children's Healthcare of Atlanta!
LOSER:
Folks, what in the world has happened to Kodak? How can we possibly be witnessing bankruptcy for this venerable brand, this one-time photographic pioneer and powerhouse?
What can I say: it's complacency.
No brand, no matter how venerable or how big is too big or too venerable to fail. The decline of Kodak has not been overnight --no great brand fails instantly-- but it came down to whether the company was meeting needs with its products in the face of the tidal shift to digital photography. Sadly, the answer looks like it was no.
End of story.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Brands cannot stand still. They must be adaptable.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winners and Losers of 2011
2011 WINNERS:
Amy Winehouse
There is no question that on a personal level, for her family and her friends, Ms. Winehouse’s death was utter tragedy. But just as all of us exist on a personal level, we also exist on a brand level. We are brands that are perceived a certain way by others. Ms. Winehouse was an entertainment and artistic brand. Winehouse’s tragic story of self-destruction at a young age makes her a brand winner. Why?
Simply put, Ms. Winehouse’s brand is that of a soulful, troubled, outsider of profound musical talent. She is a music brand in the mold of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain. Greatly talented, sensitive artists in the romantic tradition –all of whom, like Ms. Winehouse, died at 27. In music history this phenomenon is known as the “27 Club.”
The Winehouse brand of artist goes way back at least to the romantic poets. Keats and Shelley died young. Sylvia Plath, the young, gifted suicide, is another example. Bottom line, there’s a long tradition of people connecting a certain type of artistic genius to short, tragic lives as if their short, tragic lives were proof of their genius.
Amy Winehouse will be no exception. Amy Winehouse will sell more music because of her early death and her personal brand will become more entrenched in people’s minds as occupying a special place among musical artists.
And in terms of selling music, isn’t that what Winehouse and other artists do in order to get their art to their fans? What’s wrong with selling? Winehouse’s art will continue to live precisely because it sells.
General Motors
General Motors is a back-to-back winner (2010 and now again in 2011). In fact, the company has continued to be a winner ever since the spring of 2008 and the Federal bailout –despite all predictions to the contrary.
I don’t want to blow my own horn here and frankly I can’t because my 2008 call that GM would recover has been based on one simple and universal rule: people buy brands not companies.
Investors buy companies, but people are in a relationship with brands and General Motors is a brand company. You are a Chevy buyer, a Cadillac buyer, etc.
The $7.1 billion dollars that GM has posted in profit so far this year is the direct result of the company’s focus on its brands. That’s right, $7.1 billion dollars and the company’s also wrested the global sales lead back from Toyota. This after having lost $82 billion prior to 2008. GM is back and better than ever. End of story.
Steve Jobs
We lost the man who more than anyone shaped the technological landscape in 2011. Jobs was simply a superb man. A brand for the ages. The word genius will be thrown around a lot about him, but that word genius misses the point. Many people have genius, but few geniuses have the kind of flexibility, endurance and ability to admit wrong turns, face them and correct them. That trait, which Jobs had in spades, translated directly to Apple’s success and Pixar’s --the kind of success that required meeting not only consumers’ needs again and again but even anticipating their dreams. Jobs and Apple practiced almost a kind of symbiotic marketing –perceiving what consumers need almost before they knew and then delivering and then refining according to their consumers’ experience and input. Whether it was at Pixar or at Apple, Jobs managed to add a touch of the poet into the laser-sharp dynamism of a great marketer and innovator. That approach was a deep part of Jobs himself and the experiences that shaped him. As human beings we can learn a lot from the words that Jobs delivered as part of his commencement address to Stanford’s graduating class in 2005. Here’s the complete text.
The Royal Family
What a difference twenty years can make. Not too long ago, it was simply assumed that the British monarchy was on its way out. Prince Charles and his treatment of Diana made his potential kingship unwanted. Besides, the world seemed to be moving on and the idea of a monarchy in a modern democracy was almost embarrassing.
All that changed in 2011 with the royal wedding. The wedding was one of those seminal moments when both doubters and fans alike realized they were witnessing the re-emergence of a powerful brand. This event will be remembered as the moment the idea of British monarchy shifted from being something that people passively accepted to something that people actively embraced.
Strictly from a marketing perspective, the message couldn’t have been clearer. With the monarchy receiving a whopping 80 percent approval rating from the British people and a fundamentally enthusiastic response from the rest of the world, the House of Windsor isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
More than this, it is almost impossible to quantify the value of this several-hour long infomercial for Britain and the royal family. If thirty-seconds of the Super Bowl is worth upwards of three million dollars for advertisers and that game “only” attracts 100 million pairs of eyes –what’s the value of thirty seconds of something that grabs thirty times that audience? Excuse the math but that’s $180 million dollars a minute times 180 minutes equals almost thirty-two and a half billion dollars of unforgettable promotional material.
But let’s face it; the royal wedding is about much more than money. It is about people recognizing that they have preserved something of real value in a world where so many things just get thrown away.
McDain’s Restaurant
In July, Mike Vuick, the owner of McDain’s Restaurant and Golf Center in Monroeville Pennsylvania, decided that his customers deserved a peaceful, child-free environment. Children under six were no longer allowed.
Many people reacted to Vuick’s decision with outrage, but, fact is, he made the right decision for his restaurant’s brand. After all, he isn’t running a nursery and understands that his patrons are people who are coming there to be infant-free. Making this a policy strengthened the McDain’s brand. Vuick isn’t anti-kid, he is pro-brand and pro-civility. As he said this about kids, “[they] might be the center of their parent’s universe, as it should be, [but] they’re not the center of everyone else’s universe.”
As the great Bill Cosby said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Honorable Brand Mentions:
Taylor Swift (general brand excellence)
McDonald’s (best mature brand maintenance)
Katie Couric (best brand revival)
JetBlue (best brand responsiveness)
Tiger Woods (best continuing brand comeback)
Standard & Poor’s As you probably know, 2011 was the year that Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, downgraded U.S. debt, stripping it of its Triple A status. This had never happened before in our country’s history. It was a huge blow during these already tough times. As one government commentator observed, the S&P move was a “facts-be-damned” decision. The other ratings agencies didn’t follow suit. I would argue that this decision came directly out of S&P thinking about its own brand and deciding to use this moment in history to bolster its brand position after missing the 2008 financial debacle. Unfortunately, for the U.S. and for S&P this is terrible brand management because rash moves –even moves that seem in keeping with your brand— do damage. Let’s ask a basic question. Why has U.S. debt never been downgraded before? There’s a reason and it goes far beyond our current deficit and difficulties: we’ve always paid our debts. I’m not an economist so I won’t go too far down the road of actually assessing U.S. debt, but after World War II our debt was more than 100% of annual GDP and we still kept our Triple A. Basically, S&P has gone out on a limb and is trying to look bold, courageous and truthful. But they will probably end up looking reckless and opportunistic and very bad at math. Charlie Sheen At first it looked like Charlie Sheen might just be “winning.” The actor took his outspoken person into the Twitter-verse and across the country, publicly airing his dispute with CBS and almost everything else about himself. But he forgot something critical: no man –no matter how good an entertainer— is an island. Without a script Sheen fizzled on stage and his Internet video rants were simply embarrassing. Like a sports star without a team to play on, Sheen having lost Two and a Half Men had no platform from which to have his brand shine. 2012 might be different for the actor, but only if Sheen remembers that the whole world is not in love with him and only if the right producing and network mix comes along to support him –before there is no momentum left and not much brand left to salvage. The Soap Opera 2011 will likely be remembered as the year the Soap Opera finally died. ABC took the venerable All My Children and One Life to Live off air. Some people argue that soap operas will have a new life to live online, but I doubt that online life will ever rival the power soaps once had. To understand why, let’s take a look at the history of soap operas. Soap operas were invented to reach a specific Target Market: stay-at-home moms during the depression. The shows were designed as an innovative entertainment platform that could help Procter & Gamble sell soap and other products –that’s where the “soap” in soap opera came from. Initially soaps appeared on radio, but eventually they made the leap onto television. Penn State With legendary former football coach Joe Paterno’s grand jury admission on December 16 that he knew of Jerry Sandusky’s “inappropriate” behavior with a minor as far back as 2002, it is clear that the rot goes deep at Penn State. Radical measures are needed to restore this once great institution. They must be taken now. Bottom line? Penn State needs to change its name. A name change is rooted in the science of the brain. We know this from tests like those done at the human neuro-imaging lab at Baylor University. In the lab’s Coke-Pepsi tests, subjects were given both drinks, but those who saw the Coke logo while drinking Coke declared a preference for Coke over Pepsi (three out of four) and their brains showed a complex set of reactions that went well beyond the actual taste of what they were drinking, especially stimulating the memory areas of the brain. What this shows is that people’s reactions to a brand name are tied to complex responses related to the brand and themselves. As a result, at a certain point “Penn State” will have -- if it hasn’t already—become toxic, meaning that people will automatically, and involuntarily, experience a negative reaction whenever they encounter it. Whether the school will be a loser in 2012 depends on what they do now. Will they be bold or bury their head? Netflix In July, this otherwise successful mail and online video rental company alienated many customers by abruptly raising its prices. Since that time Netflix has lost hundreds of thousands of customers and received a lot of bad press. Then they announced a split of their DVD mail service and their streaming video service into two separate companies only to reverse that decision almost immediately. After this, the company warned that the decline in subscribers is going to continue into next year. The stock lost 15 percent in one session. Bottom line, Netflix needs to regroup and focus on their brand. Raising prices might have meant accounting sense but the way they did it made zero brand sense. Worst of all for the Netflix brand is the impression that they have forgotten their customers. The next move? Do nothing other than remember your customers and stop making any hare-brained moves. (Dis)honorable Brand Mentions: The Republicans (brand in most self-inflicted trouble) Miley Cyrus (worst brand meltdown) Bank of America (brand taking customers most for granted)
And for a very long time, things went very, very well. But times have changed. Viewer numbers have steadily fallen in the last twenty years. Not only is the Target Market for soap operas hard to pin down now, but many of the benefits that daytime soaps offered, like continuing storylines and relationship focus, have been picked up by prime time drama.
The problem is that even if the Target Market still exists, can you still reach them profitably?
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Happy New Year!
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Ford and RIM (Blackberry)
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Ford
Loser: RIM (Blackberry)
WINNER:
Folks, a few weeks ago our winner was General Motors. Now, it’s Ford.
Once again a powerful principle has been vindicated: People buy brands not companies.
Ford’s U.S. retail sales rose 20% in November. Part of the reason is that Ford predicted and was able to meet a big uptick in demand for fuel efficient cars.
But another part of the picture is that Ford has become brand savvy.
Look what they just announced. Ford, aiming to bring it’s Lincoln brand back to life, has launched an ad agency specifically focused on the Lincoln brand.
The goal will be to underscore the luxury component of the Lincoln brand. The agency will have 45 people devoted to this brand mission.
Ford clearly gets it. Just like it’s decision to end it’s small truck brand the Ranger probably makes brand sense. With increasing fuel-efficiency, it’s larger F-150 trucks are now very competitive for the kinds of people once drawn to Rangers.
Again, the takeaway is clear: focus on the brand and things will usually work; focus on the company image . . . and fuggedaboutit.
LOSER:
Folks, Research In Motion, the maker of Blackberry, is in trouble. In fact it has the look of a company that’s on its last legs being brought down by products that are not yet brands and a brand, the BlackBerry, that has lost its target market.
Here’s the story.
As everyone knows Apple has been eating RIM’s lunch for well over two years. RIM’s share of the smartphone dropped to 9.2% in the third quarter from 24% last year.
In the end, RIM just couldn’t compete with the speed and other advantages of the iPhone and Android devices. Not only that, its attempt to compete by launching a tablet the Playbook (a product not quite a brand) and, more important, new radically re-designed phones has been hampered by serious delays.
And that’s the takeaway. Almost all brands will be faced with significant competition at some point. Sometimes this competition will prove life-threatening to the brand. But what will ultimately kill a brand isn’t competition but the inability to respond to the competition by delivering real solutions to the target market's needs.
Timeliness to market with these solutions is critical –a solution is worthless if it doesn’t reach those who need to be reached when they need to be reached.
It's sad to see a once great brand die, but it's even sadder when you consider that failing wasn't inevitable -- for a good illustration of what happened to RIM, take a look at Herb Greenberg's post on his one-time love affair with Blackberry and why it went sour.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Once again, people really do buy brands, not companies.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Alec Baldwin and Penn State
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Alec Baldwin
Loser: Penn State
WINNER:
Folks, Alec Baldwin gets a lot of heat just for being Alec Baldwin.
Someone else might have gotten angry on a plane or left an ugly message on a message machine and the world would have moved on…
Of course, the world would never have heard of it. Alec Baldwin knows that the world is watching and the logic goes that Alec has a responsibility to be on his very best behavior at all times, because. . .
Here’s the part where the logic falls down. In fact, it makes zero sense from a branding perspective.
Why should Alec Baldwin care? He is an artist –whether you want to scoff at that word or not.
Not only is he an artist, but Baldwin is an artist with a long history of not being warm and fuzzy. He’s known to be tempermental in part because he’s also known to be a pretty bright fellow, one of the sharpest tools in Hollwood’s shed.
He doesn’t suffer fools and his temperement gets the better of him. So what? Since when did we stop being able to give certain people a wide berth or cut creatives some slack?
Unfortunately, since a long time. At least since the 24/7 news cycle has made everyone an arbiter of human behavior and a fierce judge of character.
Bottom line, Baldwin shouldn’t care. His brand is the brand that we saw in the American Airlines incident, but it’s also the brand we’ve seen talking intelligently about a range of issues and generally caring about our society in far deeper ways than most celebrities.
And, most of all, the Baldwin brand can take care of itself. His brilliant spoof of the American Airlines debacle on Saturday Night Live showed the airline up and should have reminded everyone that like it or not the goody two shoes expectations just don’t and shouldn’t ever apply to Mister Alec Baldwin.
That’s what’s meant by being true to your brand. Alec Baldwin isn’t for everyone and to be successful he shouldn’t try to be –luckily, he doesn’t.
LOSER:
Sometimes a good brand suffers so much damage or does itself so much damage that radical action is necessary.
That’s the case with Penn State, folks.
In short, with the arrest of Jerry Sandusky and the still unfolding scandal being inflicted on the school, the university must do something revolutionary.
Bottom line? Penn State needs to change its name.
Plenty of great universities have. Princeton used to be the College of New Jersey. The University of Pennsylvania used to be the College of Pennsylvania.
Penn State already has a good option: PSU.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is almost always shortened to MIT. It’s time that Penn State did the same and actively began the effort to refer to itself and have the public refer to it as PSU.
This isn’t just superficial. It will mark the beginning of a new era in the school’s history, especially if the school commits to a new way of doing business that will prevent the kinds of wrongs that have occurred from happening again.
In other words, the name change will mark a point where there is a distinct before and after and it will represent deep cultural change, not just image adjustment.
Such a move will help the school embrace its future. It won’t provide a clean slate, but it will at least give the university a place to start from.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Not all brands work for all people and that's a good thing.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Amazon Kindle Fire and The New York Times
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Amazon Kindle Fire
Loser: The New York Times
WINNER:
Folks, almost twenty-five years ago, Apple made a mistake that led them into the wilderness for almost fifteen years. The mistake was to maintain strict control over their product lines and reject licensing of their technology.
The result was the rise of the PC and Microsoft as the vast majority of consumers –the ones who weren’t the earlier adopters— went for the lower price point. Software developers focused their attention on the PC and the rest was history: the incredible expansion of desktop computing around the world and the increasingly narrow market for Apple devices.
Now I’m not saying that the same thing is happening to Apple today. After all, the company is much more powerful than it was back then and it has also likely learned a lot from that first experience.
But, that said, you can’t underestimate the fact that while Apple evokes fierce devotion to its products, bottom line, it’s a competitive world and many people are going to be drawn to other devices, especially if the price is right.
That’s why Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is our winner of the week.
Amazon announced that it’s sales of Kindle Fire quadrupled year-over-year on Black Friday.
Amazon has never announced actual unit sales numbers, but it’s likely that Amazon will have sold somewhere between 3 and 5 million by the time 2011 closes out.
Apple is still clearly a leader. The company has sold over 39 million tablets since the iPad was launched in 2010, but they better be watching the rise of Amazon’s Kindle Fire.
Sure, there are other tablets out there, but the brand lesson with this kind of technology is that at a certain point the majority of consumers –the one’s who haven’t gotten on board yet— enter the market and these are the people who balance the perceived value of a brand with the sticker price.
That’s where companies like Dell took off during the PC boom. They were able to compete on price but also offer clear brand equity. That mixture is unbeatable.
Amazon is in a similar position. They’re not just producing a generic tablet, they’re producing a branded tablet at prices much closer to a generic tablet.
That’s the trick and my guess is that we’re going to see a lot more growth for Amazon in this area and shrinkage for Apple unless they decide to begin to compete head-to-head (something they didn’t do long ago and haven’t really done lately).
LOSER:
I’ve written about the problems newspapers have been facing for a long time. Here’s a sample with some links.
Bottom line, newspapers have been struggling for a long time. Margins have been shrinking, readership declining and staff facing layoffs. Many newspapers have stopped printing physical copies and gone completely online, while others have simply gone out of business.
The biggest problem has been that digital dimes don’t replace paper dollars –in other words, the advertising rates online simply aren’t able to replace the printed advertising revenue. In other words, the old business model is in a lot of trouble.
To counter this, the biggest newspapers have worked hard to create online experiences that can generate subscription revenue and advertising revenue through huge online traffic.
The New York Times has a paywall and has also been working hard on creating a social media “community” of readers. To say I’m uncertain about how “community” will work to save newspapers is to really understate things.
Fact is, while it’s popular to jump on the social media bandwagon and believe that somehow social media will save the day moneywise, it goes against the basic purpose, history and even business model of almost all newspaper brands.
Newspapers weren’t meeting places, they were information sources and gateways to high-end analysis and entertainment. In other words, their value came from distilling information and thought into something that was special and had authority. Because this service could predictably generate a large readership (all looking at the same space everyday), advertisers could be assured that they had a specific audience they could deliver their messages to.
Here’s the point: social media is much more like the community bulletin board than it is a professionally shaped (and most important) finite location. In other words, how do you stand out in social media if everyone else is trying to stand out and trying to communicate.
Newspapers, traditionally, were a one-way street with the writers writing and the readers reading (was letters to the editor ever anything more than half a page or a page?).
So already, I wasn’t so sure that the move by The New York Times and other media over the past few years to have comments on stories makes all that much sense (doesn’t that undermine this writer to reader relationship?).
But now The Times has decided to do something I know is a mistake. They’re tying themselves into Facebook.
Basically, right now all of the readers’ comments on The Times are moderated. But soon the paper is going to give certain readers preferred or “trusted” status so they will be able to post without being moderated.
But there’s a catch. Those preferred readers have to have Facebook accounts or else they will be excluded.
Wow. What a bad idea! Nothing like exclusion to alienate your customers.
Recently, I wrote about Facebook and how its attitude toward privacy has begun to turn off users. No surprise that the reaction from many Times’ readers to the paper’s move has been one of outrage. Readers also said that labeling some readers “trusted” implies that other readers are not “trusted.” A built-in insult.
If they’re smart the paper will backpedal and figure out another way. If they’re even smarter, they might even reconsider this idea of social media when it comes to their content. After all, isn’t content really king? Do hundreds of comments that are often of poor quality add or dilute the newspaper experience online? Also, should journalists and editors, already hard-pressed for time, be forced to interact more with readers in these forums?
These are uncertain times for newspapers and, folks, I don’t pretend to have any answers. But I do know that brands live and die on being consistently true to themselves and their business models –in other words, they live by providing a benefit to their customers.
The New York Times and others should pause here. Before they fit into social media, they really need to consider whether social media fits into them.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - One of the worst things a brand can do is make the mistake of doing something new and different simply because it is a trend. The key is to ask how the trend fits your business. A trend is a tool.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Tiger Woods and Hyundai
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Tiger Woods
Loser: Hyundai
WINNER:
Folks, there’s nothing more satisfying than being reminded of marketing’s power as a predictive tool.
Tiger Woods is our winner this week. And his “winning” is more confirmation of a trend we have watched and been able to predict from his very dark days in 2008.
The New York Times tells the story here.
Here’s the scoop in a nutshell: Tiger’s back on the playing front and his sponsorship power is growing in lockstep.
Rolex is the latest high profile sponsor to get back on the Tiger wagon and, of course, some of his long-term sponsors, like Nike, wisely never left.
Bottom line, when things were looking bleak for Tiger, the marketing lens told us a different story. Since Tiger, like all athletes, is a performance brand, the marketing lens showed that if he continued to perform well as a golfer, he would remain strong as a brand. The reason for this is that while the general public might be forever switched off to Tiger, the general public was never his Target Market. Golf fans were. Secondly, many of these fans looked on the scandal differently and were more apt to give him a pass –as long as he continued to perform.
Well, for a while he struggled on the golf course, but even then there were signs that Woods was rebuilding, now this trend seems to be clear.
I wrote what’s below in April, but I’ll repost because I think it fleshes out this idea pretty well:
Schwartzel won the Masters; but it was Tiger Woods’ strong finish that will be seen as a historic turning point. Woods came back from a big deficit to reach the top of the leader board. By doing so, he confirmed what I’ve been predicting: the Tiger brand is coming back.
Last summer Tiger surprised everyone by ranking as the most popular athlete in the United States. What I wrote then looks even more true now:
Bottom line, Tiger Woods is a performance brand. It’s what he does on – not off — the golf course that matters. It’s the same for all athletic brands. If you win, you will be liked (except for those rare cases in which you win but are really, really hard to like).
Tiger might not win every tournament he is in, but in golf no one ever does –so despite what non-golfers might be saying, Tiger really is excelling on the green. The point is consistency, and dogged improvement, which he’s displaying. People who know golf know that Tiger Woods is coming back impressively and much sooner than anyone expected.
The bigger point here is that what matters as a predictor of a sport brand’s ultimate success isn’t the inevitable media uproar –it’s the ability of the performance brand to continue to win and to appeal to his customers and fans.
For Tiger Woods, this means appealing to men between the ages of 18-44 who are sports enthusiasts; enjoy golf; and are more forgiving of male indiscretions even if they’re repugnant. It is this group that is the most important to Tiger and his marketing team. And he hasn’t lost them –not by a long shot.
Many of the public relations people turn to the standard playbook when a crisis like Tiger’s erupts. They seem to think the old mea culpas to everyone must be given and that from some public relations disasters there is simply no recovery
Again, for Tiger and golf stars in general, winning means being consistent. The golf Target Market, its fans and customers, understands that inconsistency is a key factor in this arduous game and that most lose in this sport because they fail at being consistent. Golf is simply different from all other sports and this will continue to work in Tiger’s favor since his legendary consistency is definitely intact.
And now, he's getting the sponsors and was a key factor in the Americans winning the Australian Open. Yep, Tiger's back.
LOSER:
Folks, the Superbowl approaches. Yes, the Superbowl. Advertisements are being shot. Ad dollars are preparing to be wasted.
All of us love the ads, but do they work, are they a wise ad buy for the companies that participate, is there a better way to promote a product or service?
Almost certainly!
Here’s a link to my position and the few times when Superbowl advertisers come close to winning.
The key problems with Superbowl advertising is this: 1) it disregards the law of frequency (i.e., that you need to get your message in front of the consumer multiple times for recognition to happen) and 2) it usually forgets about the Target Market since (the audience for the Superbowl is so huge and diverse that you’re basically getting everybody).
But there is only one thing that makes a Superbowl advertisement even less worthwhile: the corporate feel good spot.
In the corporate feel good spot, the company has decided to do a commercial that makes everyone at the company feel good and forgets completely about any benefits for the company’s customers.
Unfortunately, that is what Hyundai looks to be doing this year. The fast-growing car company has decided to go the feel-good route and shoot a 60-second spot with hundreds of employees on film. Here’s the story.
We’ll see what they do. Maybe if the emphasis is on how the employees support great cars all is not lost, but, frankly, people buy brands, not companies and there are many better ways of spending several million dollars.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - The test of great marketing is not that it feels good.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: Katie Couric and Facebook
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: Katie Couric
Loser: Facebook
WINNER:
Not too long ago I argued that Katie would never be the next Oprah and that she should stick to morning chat and steer clear of both afternoons and any serious news duties. Here’s that post.
I still stand by many of my points in that piece, but, folks, here’s the thing with personality brands: the “person” in the personality makes all the difference.
In an effort to re-introduce Katie Couric to the audience and generate buzz, ABC is basically conducting a traditional sampling approach. We’re seeing Katie pop up on different shows, doing different segments –the intent is to remind the viewers how good she is.
And, wow, is she good! That’s my point and why she’s our winner of the week.
There was something that made her such a valuable TV personality and professional and that something is still there in spades.
The network will definitely have to help build an audience, but let me revise my earlier opinion: Couric will never be Oprah, she will always be Couric, but Couric is back and she's about to prove it.
LOSER:
Folks, with the company’s IPO rumored to happen next year, but it’s “stock” falling on private markets, Facebook is our loser of the week –but not because of fickle market estimates and speculation, but because of a single profound marketing miscalculation.
And, folks, you’ve heard it hear first: forget the 1 billion users, forget the traffic, unless Facebook changes course we may very well be witnessing the beginning of the end for this social media company.
Why?
We’ve explored it here, not too long ago, but now we are beginning to see the effects. The effects of what? The effects of a company being driven by an internal vision, in this case Zuckerberg’s Law, instead of what its customers/users want.
Zuckerberg’s Law is essentially an informal but pretty rigid idea that total personal transparency is the way of the future and that the more sharing of tastes, habits, beliefs and behavior the better.
Of course, this conveniently fits the company’s rich data-mining revenue generating model, but, put that aside, and the real problem is that this philosophy, implemented the way Facebook now has dope it, especially through its Timeline feature, which curates the lives of its users, probably does not align with the tastes, desires or interests of its users.
Let me give you an example. Someone I know second-hand, a journalist, was shocked last week when the web-reading behavior of another journalist, and Facebook friend, started popping up for him to see. The journalist was shocked because a) he had not requested or sought in any way to see this information and b) the journalist doing the web-reading had not intentionally shared his behavior, it had all happened automatically. The point was that the “sharing” journalist was a pretty conservative fellow looking at some pretty racy material –he could have been doing this for work, of course— and this was going out to everyone he knew.
That’s the anecdote. Now for the technical appraisal from leading consumer computing site CNet.
Reporter, Molly Wood, has followed Facebook closely and believes that the company and its Open Graph plan (which is essentially about making Zuckerberg’s Law a reality) is consciously determined to “quantify everything you do on Facebook.”
But Molly’s real gripe –and it’s on the money— is that automatic sharing, privacy issues aside, actually hurts social networking. Her story is here, by the way, but it’s worth re-posting some of her thoughts:
Sharing is the key to social networking. It's the underlying religion that makes the whole thing work. "Viral" is the magic that every marketing exec is trying to replicate, and Facebook is seriously messing with that formula. Plus, it's killing the possibility of viral hits by generating such an overwhelming flood of mundane shares.
Let's say all of us jump on the Open Graph bandwagon and allow app after app to passively post our every Web move. We'll simply have opened the door to a horde of zombie posts that will overwhelm our interest and deaden us to the possibility of organic discovery.
Sharing and recommendation shouldn't be passive. It should be conscious, thoughtful, and amusing--we are tickled by a story, picture, or video and we choose to share it, and if a startling number of Internet users also find that thing amusing, we, together, consciously create a tidal wave of meme that elevates that piece of media to viral status. We choose these gems from the noise. Open Graph will fill our feeds with noise, burying the gems.
The point is that Facebook has made a very serious decision with consequences that are just too difficult for them to predict.
What we do know from almost two hundred years of marketing and about social media in particular is this: when you ignore your customer, you lose. It happened to MySpace and it could happen again.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Even if you think you have the most brilliant plan in the world –especially if you think this— take a serious step back and think through just how it will affect your customers and potential customers.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: GM and (Re)Brand USA
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: GM
Loser: (Re)Brand USA
WINNER:
Folks, General Motors is our winner this week. The company has continued to be a winner ever since the spring of 2008 and the Federal bailout –despite all predictions to the contrary.
I don’t want to blow my own horn here and frankly I can’t because my correct call on GM all the way back to that point has been based on one simple and universal rule: people buy brands not companies.
Investors buy companies, but people are in a relationship with brands and General Motors is a brand company. You are a Chevy buyer, a Cadillac buyer, etc.
The $7.1 billion dollars that GM has posted in profit so far this year is the direct result of the company’s focus on its brands. That’s right, $7.1 billion dollars. End of story.
We’re talking about a company that prior to 2008 had lost $82 billion and the global sales lead –well, it’s also wrested that lead back from Toyota.
Here’s a earlier take on GM. I think in light of this past week’s news, it is definitely still worth a read.
LOSER:
When you’ve got one of the most recognizable flags in the world with bright, definitive colors and a deep, resonant history, it’s hard to understand why you’d want to create a generic-looking logo populated by dark and light blue dots.
But that’s exactly what the Corporation for Travel Promotion’s rebrand of the United States of America as Brand USA has done.
This really is crazy –another astounding example of: if it ain’t broke let’s do something to break it.
Sometimes no action is better than the wrong action and, boy, do I wish that these folks hadn’t taken any action at all. One of their slogans “Discover the United States of Awesome” doesn’t really do it for me.
Brand USA is said to be the first “coordinated global marketing effort dedicated to welcoming international travelers to the United States.” The CEO of the effort, Jim Evans, says that it is necessary because the U.S. “lost its way” over the past decade
Apparently, there’s been a drop in the number of U.S. bound tourists. According to Evans, 78 million people haven’t visited the U.S. in the last ten years who were originally predicted to.
Also, the rebranding group’s research has shown that many tourists think of the U.S. negatively, labeling inhabitants as “brash and arrogant.” Megan Kent, global business director at JWT, the international advertising agency, is excited about the chance to “launch a country.”
Hold on a sec! That’s exactly the problem. The U.S. shouldn’t be launched, relaunched or, for that matter, rebranded. Why? Because it can’t be.
What you can do is to underscore what’s great about the U.S. and what you hear back from potential tourists. . . things that the branding group is discovering, like our reputation for pop culture and the diversity of our geography.
By all means stress these positives and –another smart initiative by the branding group— try to make tourists’ logistical experience as easy as possible (one idea is to make a “trusted traveler” line to help tourists move through immigration faster).
But the bottom line is this, you shouldn’t spend good money on a bad idea. Red, white and blue are the colors. They’re established. Just like America is established. Some of the travel trends are no doubt economic and the result of globalisation which has made non-USA destinations more accessible and attractive.
There’s nothing wrong with a coordinated tourism campaign –the US hasn’t had one. Not only that, but the average overseas visitor spends $4000 on goods and services each trip –so it’s worth promoting this for the sake of American jobs.
But my sense is that rather than spend the estimated $200 million a year that this new initiative plans to spend on blue pixels and social media ambassadors give 100 good old American dollars to every single international traveller stepping off that plane.Believe me, word of mouth will do the rest.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Brands must be supported by consistent action over the long-term.
Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week: J&J and Fracking
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Marketing Doctor John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week
Winner: J&J
Loser: Fracking
WINNER:
Sometimes you can do everything right and still become the target of bad press.
This is basically what has happened to Johnson & Johnson in the last few weeks regarding its legendary baby shampoo.
Folks, the media loves nothing less than finding that particular story which is counter-intuitive. You know the story: vitamins are bad for you, seatbelts hazardous for your health, etc.
That’s why when a health advocacy group decided to focus their attention on the fact that J&J’s famous baby shampoo contained small traces of Quaternium-15, a formaldehyde releaser, it became a big news story.
Fact is, these formaldehyde releasers are in almost every cosmetic product out there and have been for decades. There are also no regulations against their use even though some of them might be carcinogenic in certain quantities.
Bottom line, J&J faced a problem. On the one hand, the objective truth is that their baby shampoo and their manufacturing techniques are probably as baby safe as you are going to get. After all, formaldehyde isn’t only present in so many cosmetics, it is even found in the air we breath.
On the other hand, unfortunately, the message of the health advocates is a very simple one: formaldehyde has no place in baby products. That message resonates and it immediately challenges (on the surface at least) the image of J&J’s shampoo as a baby safe product.
J&J’s message in defense of its practices is complex, too complex for the marketplace. For better or for worse, in consumer branding you only have a limited space to get your message across and the more contradictory information –and, folks, isn’t that what scientific analysis is often about? — the worse for the brand message.
So even if J&J had right on its side, which I think they probably did, the company realized that the best thing to do was simply accede to health advocates’ demands and announce that they would be eliminating the ingredient.
Done. End of story because without the ingredient the story goes away. The kind of prolonged debate that could have damaged the brand is short-circuited.
Still, you have to wonder how good it is for long-term brand health, especially in pharmaceuticals and health-care products, when the authority, in this case J&J, with the data on their side has to give in just because the risks are too great if they don’t.
LOSER:
Folks, fracking, the process of releasing natural gas trapped in coal, hasn’t been in the news much except for the occasional shrill news story about water tables supposedly being poisoned or the process causing earthquakes.
Here’s the issue and why fracking is the loser.
According to Daniel Yergin, the well-regarded expert on all things energy history, fracking is the energy game changer that we’ve all been waiting for in the United States and the world.
In the last ten years, the proportion of natural gas supply in the United States produced by the process has risen from 1% to 30%.
David Brooks at The New York Times says that fracking is near miraculous since the economics of fracking will lower electricity prices dramatically and supply enough energy for 100 years.
Brooks’ point in his column was this: in any other time, Americans and the world in general would be singing the praises of fracking. Headlines would be written proclaiming the new energy era. Almost everyone would be united in supporting the new technology.
That, of course, isn’t happening and that’s why fracking is the brand loser this week.
A little like the J&J story above, the science of fracking and its benefits are fighting against a tide of negative public opinion.
Basically, the extreme environmentalists have really taken the wind out fracking’s sails.
What’s unfortunate is that fracking should have an exciting, hopeful and environmentally-positive brand image.
So what has to happen?
Well, fracking probably has a long road ahead of it, but the companies behind it need to begin to actively get their message to the reasonable middle ground who know that the cost (minimum environmental impact) and benefits (lower electricity costs and American energy independence) are genuinely exciting and ought to be celebrated.
Again, this is branding that will take time, but as the fracking industry gets up to speed and people start seeing the advantages, the messages should speak for themselves.
And remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY - Brands must be supported by consistent action over the long-term.