Marketing Digressions

Five Things To Avoid When Developing A Brand Idea

A brand needs to be simple.  But getting to the simple idea is the hardest part.  Finding something obvious and making it evocative, compelling and relevant can be tricky.  On the other hand, if you successfully complete that task, the rest of the branding process takes on a life of its own. 

The first key step is to create an effective Brand Idea.  Once you have that, all things flow from it (positioning tag line / straps, tone, etc).  To that end, there are 5 basic things you need to avoid when developing a brand idea.   These ideas can be found in more detail in the book Brand Simple: How The Best Brands Keep It Simple and Succeed by Allen Adamson.

1. There are no magic bullets:  Just because Phillip Morris spent $300MM to market its premier smokeless cigarettes, the product flopped.  Why?  The branding could not make up for a bad idea.  Smokeless cigarettes appealed to non-smokers versus smokers. 
2. Don't get caught up in group think mentality:  David Olgivy once said, "search all your towns and cities, you will find no statues of committees."  Don't allow your bold and brilliant idea get pummeled into mediocrity.  Stick up for your idea.
3. Make sure your idea is durable:  Any brand can be a trend.  Every SUV can seat 7 now, and there are ton of MP3 players.  Your brand idea must be able to stand the test of time and stay ahead of the brand and technology curve.  Example:  "Apple.  Think Different."
4. Don't be afraid to make a clear choice:  You can't be all things to all people.  you need to focus our audience to ensure that our brand idea is relevant to the right group.  Think about Dyson.  Not everyone wants or can afford a $500 "suctionless vacuum".  But their focus allowed them to create a powerful high end brand on a key functionality.  "Others clog. Ours Doesn't."  Who does your company REALLY consider it's prime customers to be, and what is the single key value you are going to bring them?
5. Make  sure your business strategy and your brand idea are aligned:  Look at the original satellite phone from Iridium in 1998-99. Their brand idea was great ("Communicate. Anytime. Anywhere.), but the product fell short in the eyes of the customer. It was less than elegant, it was very expensive ($3000) and did not work inside buildings.  TiVo, on the other hand, was the opposite.  Their brand initially failed to evoke the life changing emotion it provided .  "TV on your terms" as a concept was underwhelming compared to what you really experienced. 

Are you keeping it simple?

Study: What Recruiters Want Today In Executive Candidates

According to the findings of the 2010 Global Career Brainstorming Day run by Blue Steps, tomorrow’s top candidates for executive positions possess the following characteristics:

• high emotional IQ
• collaborative working style
• innovative thought process
• superb communication skills
• multicultural background and experience
• bilingual language skills
• strong sense of self-awareness
• “take-ownership” attitude
• very intrapreneurial style

In addition they stated, "Perhaps even more relevant, top executive recruiters at a recent AESC meeting agreed that their client companies are seeking leaders who exhibit a 'followership' leadership style, are open to change, learn from their mistakes, and have a clear vision for the future."

Do you have these qualities?

The Future Is Demand Based Pricing - At Least For Cocktails

If you have been following the news lately in the world of media, pricing and marketing you are aware of Ticketmaster's new pricing strategy.  In short, they will allow the prices of tickets for concerts to float up and down (assuming between some minimum and maximum) based on demand.  This is basically the same system scalpers have used for years.  Ticketmaster is just putting a structure to the concept. 

This is all based on the theory of supply and demand.  As demand increases, prices increase.  As demand falls, prices fall.  One would not want prices to go to zero, or conversely astronomically high.  A minimum would protect profit margins, and a maximum would protect against the front page article that Ticketmaster was selling tickets at $4,500 a piece to a twelve year old for the next Justin Bieber concert.

but seriously, this is a model that should have been adopted long ago for this type of product.  It forces the venues and booking agents to bring top talent, and it rewards those who are producing the best product in the eyes of the customer.  So, the question now is, what other products and services would be perfect for this type of model?  Here are five quick ideas.

1) Apple iTunes: Please, not every song is worth $.99 or $1.29.  Most albums have a handful of good songs on them - if that.  Why not make this dynamic.  That hot new song could be worth half the album's price and the rest of them just a sliver of it.  Don't skoff at that.  How many times have you bought an an entire album in the past because of a few songs?   Yes, I just used the word album, which means I grew up with vinyl records.  But you get my point.  You buy the whole thing because the others may grow on you overtime, or you just want to say you have the collection of all the songs etc.

2) Movies:  Everyone has seen a movie that they knew was possibly average and then wondered why they just forked out $8.  In that same vein, many of us have decided not to see a "Part 3" comedy because we know it will stink with the exception of a few gems and its not worth the $8.  But if it was for $5 would you go?  I would say the likelihood would be MUCH higher.  This reminds me of that often spoken, yet not very intelligent saying of, "Something of something is better than nothing of nothing."

3) Restaurant Meals:  Hey, you want that great fillet everyone is getting?  Well, there is not many of them so you will have to pay if demand goes up in my little eatery tonight.   Don't want to pay that much?  Here, have the baked cod for $5.  Seriously though, I would venture you could make much more money in a restaurant by pricing your food based on this demand principal. 

4) Your local Bar or Tavern:  This would be hilarious.  Mass runs on beers and wines when their stock price drops.  Serious strategy and hedging going on from patrons.  Your best friend whispering in your ear at 10:30 pm saying, "When the Pabst Blue Ribbon hits 25 cents, I am going to kill it."  I vaguely remember someone telling me of a bar that does this today - perhaps in Manhattan.  If you know, send me a note.  I must go there.

5) Professional Athlete Salaries:  Hey, I know you think you are a stud.  Sure, you had a huge year last year.  Tell you what.  We start you off at an annual rate of $20 million.  But, if you hit 20% less home runs or score 50% less touchdowns....well, you know what that means.  Oh, and that rookie over there who just KILLED it this year.  He just bumped up to your $20 million.  No more locked in to 5 year contracts.  Pay for performance....just like the rest of us.

Hit me back with your ideas.  I think we are on to something here.

Why Hackers Are Important To The Economy

 “In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”  Hunter S. Thompson 

I chose this quote to lead off my thoughts on hackers for a very specific reason.  Hackers, in most cases, are thieves.   Yes, there are some who hack to prove a point but do not remove a thing.  Either way, a hacker shares the same trait as a thief suggested by Hunter S. Thompson.  

But, dont think that hackers are stupid.  In fact, hackers are probably far smarter and more capable from a technical standpoint than the bulk of the information technology folks with degrees sitting in companies across the world (I know I just made a few folks I know angry with that comment). 

But let me let you in on another secret.  We need hackers.   Hackers are in many ways good for the corporate, economic and social machine.

Gasp!  Blasphemy you say!  Look what they just did to Sony and the Playstation!  They took credit card data from millions of users!

Please understand that I am not suggesting that hackers are white knights.  They do horrible things.  They ruin people’s lives by stealing and selling their identity, draining their bank accounts, or stealing very important and sensitive information.  All of these things are very, very bad.    But, let’s ponder for a moment what value hackers bring to society. 

Last year, McAfee was bought by Intel for $7.86 billion.   They had generated approximately $2 billion in revenue in 2009 alone.  They had over 6,100 employees under the roof.    As yourself one simple question – would McAfee had existed in this scope and size without hackers?    Quite simply, the answer is no.  

Hackers create jobs, companies and real economic revenue.   Individuals and businesses want to be protected from the dreaded hacker or virus (BTW, I see the folks who write viruses as vigilante hackers who wish to prove a point versus steal.  Regardless, they are still creating something to break into your systems and wreak havoc).   What is more interesting is that because the average hacker is smarter than the average programmer, you need multiple programmers to work on building platforms to protect from the damage the hacker creates.  Every hacker is worth a handful of jobs when you consider programmers, project managers, middle management etc. 

We also must consider another multiplier effect.  There is not a major industry today that has not been attacked by one type of hacker or another.  The frequency of attacks has become ferocious.  But this increase in proliferation and sophistication has created a similar expansion in the technology to protect against it.  Why is that important?

Businesses today put in systems to protect their databases even if they have never been attacked.  They are preventative.  The depth and breadth of protection created and deployed in the market today is breathtaking.   The systems an individual uses at home today are factors beyond what a large company would have deployed just 10 years ago.  What does this all mean?

We are better prepared and safer now than ever before from hackers.  Think about this, if there were just a few good hackers, would our technology be as good and as wide spread as it is today?  No.  Therefore, most businesses and industries we would have been more vulnerable to attack by a small band of hackers.  They could feast for years on our information before a ground swell became large enough to build a massive industry to defend against them. 

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but the same thing can be said for a military force.  If you have two armies, one that has simply trained but rarely fought (say the Brazilian Army), versus one that has been at war constantly (say the Israeli Army), which one is better suited to protect and fight?  The choice is obvious.  You must have the experiences to learn from to be best equipped to defend. 

So lets turn back to the Sony story.  Sony will now go back and harden the Playstation system.  They will innovate and build.  They will possibly create a security platform that will be copied by the industry.  In the end, they world will be a better place after they do this. 

I know this post may upset some folks out there.  But the reality is that Hackers have created billions of dollars of commerce and entire industries that employ tens of thousands of people.  Without them, a good piece of today’s U.S. service economy would exist.   Sad but true.   

So I leave you with this final quote.  This one is also sad but true. 

“Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. “  Gilbert K. Chesterton

Agencies should embrace crowdsourcing

So the argument about crowdsourcing has been going on since 2009.  Will it kill the agency?  Back in 2009, the big worry was what would happen to the large full service brand and design agencies.  Would they lose tons of revenue?  Would branding become commoditized and bland?  Crispin Porter Bogusky’s Colin Drummond even went so far as to say that crowdsourcing would commoditize creativity.  He wrote in a blog post to his associates in the agency, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

So, now that we are in 2011, was this fear for real?  I think it was too generalized.  I also think crowdsourcing was approached with fear instead of the more appropriate alternative - embracing it.  Large agencies loose more business because they are too big and lack the ability to service every client well enough.  Every big agency loses an account regularly because the client realizes they have the “C” team versus the “A” team because their retainer fees are just too small to matter to Acme.Inc on Madison Ave.   I dont see crowdsourcing being a greater threat to large agencies than losing talent to competitors or poor management. 

I think the big questions that should have been asked, and must be asked now, is if crowdsourcing will help or hurt the SMALL agency.  The answer is, it depends.  I recently had a great conversation about just this topic with a good friend of mine who owns a small agency in Ohio.  His business fits your classic regional / vertical niche agency with a handful of employees and clients.  In short, it’s a nice lifestyle business.

I mentioned to him about some work I was aware that was being done for branding by a CEO of a small start up in DC.  I suggested he look at some of the crowdsourcing sites out there (I told him to look at 99designs specifically), and ask himself how he could integrate them into his business model.

If you have ever done a project on these sites, you know it takes a ton of work and input.  You can post one job for a fee of $750 and you will get 1,500 responses you have to sift through.  Most are junk, but there are some darn good designers on those sites that produce some gems.   As you identify them during your process, you must provide timely feedback so they can evolve t heir design to what you have asked them to achieve in your brief.  This is not unlike how you manage between a client and your design team in the agency. 

But, a small agency can actually reduce one of its chief vulnerabilities by leveraging a crowdsourcing site behind the scene.  All small agencies are hit and miss on their creative because they usually only have one or two designers on staff.   If one or both of those designers have a bad day, the agency itself risks missing the mark with client.  Also, the agency can only generate so much output from those creative employees.  They can only hire so many free lancers to augment that work.

Small agencies should embrace crowdsourcing as a staff augmentation model.  It’s easier to sift through submissions for a brand logo that can yield 10 different options for a client from very different perspectives than creating 5 options from one designer who has a tough time breaking out from their own style.  The client does not need to know – nor would they care.  What is important is that they get the final product they expected. 

New Guy. New Digressions. Same Blog.

So I am back from myself imposed sabbatical from blogging (not that anyone shed a tear or waited with baited breath).  It was just something I had to do.  Needed time to clear the mind, stand back from things and think.   It was good.  I was able to throw myself back into life and not worry about posting.   I have a ton of inventory now.  I am ready to roll.  Stay tuned.

The Art Of Web Conversion: Persuasion Architecture

Sure, I know what you are thinking.  Persuasion Architecture is just some new lame marketing term.  No, not really.  It is what Information Architecture was intended to accomplish but never did.  This is because information architecture is more like the Dewy Decimal System - or at least it is treated as such.  Things are sorted into logical buckets and dumped into a set of wire frames that are then coded into a flashy website with cool colors and flash. 

What is wrong with that you say?  Well, for one thing, it never really solves the problem optimally.  It is not just about making things easy to find in a logical manner, its also about driving action and interaction.  Its about engaging the user and prompting them via a good design to make a decision or take an action. 

Now think about how architecture - GOOD architecture, works.  Whether its landscape architecture or brick and mortar based, the best architects know how to combine form and function optimally.  They create a design that forces you to subtly discover things that they intended for you to stumble upon.  As you walk down the hall you are presented a cubby with a striking piece of art that forces you to stop and stare.  You then turn left and step into what seems to be a secrete nook that opens up into a library that you must investigate.  Every room, hall and space are treated as a way to entice the "user" to interact with the design.  Its about creating a world of planned discovery.

So, as you approach your next web project ask yourself, are you going to just plant grass between the pathway?

Public Relations 2.0

Are you wired into PR 2.0?  If not, here is a quick list of the sites that should be on your radar:

• Newsvine
• News Gator
• Google News
• Yahoo News
• Businesswire
• PR Newswire
• Topix

Get your message out there......

Stumbleupon.com

Have you ever wondered how big the web really is?  Are you curious to what in the world could be filling up all of those vast corners of the internet?  Look no further.  Take a ride on www.stumbleupon.com.  This cool invention will bring you the nooks and crannies of the web.  Here is how it works:

"Using a combination of human opinions and machine learning to immediately deliver relevant content, StumbleUpon presents only web sites that have been suggested by other like-minded Stumblers. Each time the 'Stumble' button is clicked, the user is presented with a high quality web site based on the collective opinions of other like-minded web surfers."

You can personalize your browsing or you can just freely stumble (my preference).  I dare you to give it a try.  You will find yourself addicted in no time at all.  Happy stumbling.

Six Rules of an Effective Sales Person

I have carried a bag to earn a commission, and I have also managed sales teams as an executive.  In both experiences,I can honestly say that there are six basic things a sales person needs to follow to be successful.  So, beyond the old adage from Thomas Edison of "the harder you work the luckier you get", here is what I would suggest that every sales expert should try to adhere to.

• Your quota is not your goal.  It is what you need to attain to maintain your employment.  Your goal should be what you want to make financially – which should be well above your quota.

• There are no cold calls – only warm ones.  You need to do your homework on the client before you call them.  There are a ton of resources these days – from hoovers.com to linkedin.com.  If they exist, they are online.  Find out about them and determine your conversational path BEFORE you call.

• Understand who you are speaking to and craft your value proposition accordingly.  A CFO wants to know about ROI.  A COO wants to know about efficiencies and production.  A CMO wants to know about return on marketing dollars spent. 

• Know the answers and the questions for every objection.  You should be able to concisely reply to any issue in a relaxed and convincing manner.

• Be an expert of your territory / segment.  You should be up to speed on every customer in your market, and be ready for any inquiry from a superior or competitor. 

• Sell like a consultant, not like a car salesman.  You must establish credibility first.  From there you can develop a true business relationshion.  From that point, you can earn trust - and you can't sell effectively without trust.