C is Just a Letter

I’m looking forward to this

Ann — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:40:43 +0000

VW has posted a teaser for their new Super Bowl ad. If you loved what they did last year this should be good!

Triangulate the Truth

Ann — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:49:57 +0000

One of the most powerful ideas I know in marketing is to make people comfortable with the idea that no one market research study, no one gut call, no one secondary research study, no one of anything can answer challenging business and marketing questions.

Only with lots of information and lots of insight, can you “triangulate the truth”. This isn’t my phrase, its the brainchild of Dr. Barb Watts, who I worked with on some research studies at Dairy Queen. While trying to explain this concept to students, I realized it needed to be visual as well as explained, and one of my talented students undertook the challenge of making this concept come to life. If you wanted or needed one visual about how to understand your brand or know how to become a good marketer, this is it: ambiguity rules, best combatted by finding the information to allow you to Triangulate the Truth.

The death of cable TV

Ann — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:00:49 +0000

Hello Netflix, Hulu, general streaming. Goodbye cable.

That is the premise of today’s article in the WSU by Kevin Sintumuang entitled ”Cutting the Cord on Cable”

While Kevin may have beaten me to publish, this has been on my topic list for 2 months. Cable is gone. Let me share with you my proof.

As many of you know, I teach students at UBC in Vancouver, BC and WWU in Bellingham WA. Last semester a UBC student shared a terrific ad they had seen on a piped-in US show. We pulled it up on YouTube, and it ended up being a great shared learning moment.

The next day down at WWU I asked if anyone had seen the same ad. The students looked at me oddly. I explained further that I knew for a fact it had been on the West Coast feed two nights before. The students still looked at me oddly. Finally one student said “I think you’re confused about how we watch TV. We don’t watch it live.”

Well that’s a conversation stopper. So I asked the room how they watched “TV”. They Tivo’d, they Hulu’d, and the Netflixed. They didn’t “watch”. They knew what they wanted to see, and they watched it when it was convenient to them.

I asked further how many had cable. There were 10 of 40 who had cable, and in all of those cases it was that someone else in their living situation – parent, partner, friends – who insisted on the cable connection.

“Live” is viewed via smartphone. Everything else is accessed via “service of choice”.

For readers in Canada, where Hulu is blocked and cell plans are much more expensive, this snapshot of behavior is perhaps a bit premature. But for the United States, cable is gone. Much like long distance plans and land lines, there will be a long tail of residual income…but from a planning and marketing perspective, media planners would be well-served to put a fork in this longterm staple “meal” – its done! – and move on to the future.

image credit http://www.wilsonelectronics.com/

Tebow Marketing

Ann — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:20:04 +0000

Alternately titled “what Tim Tebow teaches us about marketing”.

I’m sure there are a few of you out there unaware of Tim Tebow. He is the “unofficial starting quarterback” of the Denver Broncos, a team in Denver, CO who plays American Football.

Tebow is a new from college quarterback, and according to people who know such things, not very good at it. There is a brilliant article from sportswriter Cam Cole in the Vancouver Sun that articulates the characteristics of Mr. Tebow’s football capabilities both better than I could and far more entertainingly.

I’m a marketing person, and Tim Tebow interests me as a marketer. Mr. Tebow exhibits a particular attribute which most marketers could learn from: he believes in himself and in his teammates.

Tebow not only believes in himself but is self-depricating when confronted with his shortcomings. As Mr Cole cites amusingly in his article, when confronted with the indisuptable numbers that he is at best an average quarterback Mr Tebow responds that he needs to practice more. With good humor, by the way. Which means he knows what he does well, knows what he doesn’t do well, and is willing to admit he needs more work on the “doesn’t do well” stuff.

Learning #1 for marketers – believe in your skills and capability yet be everpresent to the opportunity to learn and improve.

Far more importantly to me is Mr Tebow’s boundless and vocal support of his team. The guy who booted home an improbable 61 yard field goal in the waning moments of the surprising game for Denver was interviewed after the game. My paraphrasing of that reply is this “Tim told me that when it counted I’d get the job done. He told me that weeks ago. So I figured he knew something and believed it.”

Learning #2 for marketers (and dare I suggest humans in total): believe in your teammates. Tell them so every day. Reward them and heap praise on them when they do great, remind them of your faith in them even when they fail.

What Mr Tebow reminds all of us as marketers is to believe in our own gifts and believe perhaps even more in the gifts of others. Teams that believe they are good are good.

Marketing is never a solo effort. It always happens in teams. All too often a hotshot “player” thinks they can “go it alone”. They can’t. They need to first learn that teams matter, and then learn from Mr Tebow’s: BELIEVE.

That is the official end of this insight. I will continue, however, for those who are wondering if the real issue at hand isn’t whether or not Mr Tebow believes in HIM. Much of the buzz about Tim Tebow is that he is an expressive person with his faith. He believes that anything he does comes from God, and is open, frank, and expressive with his thanks when he believes HE has had a role in his performance.

My contention is this: the source of Mr Tebow’s belief in himself is irrelevant. His belief system is part of the magic that makes him Tim Tebow and not anyone else. Mr Tebow’s belief in his teammates comes from a deep seated innate sense of teamwork and belief in his fellow humans and teammates. If that is rooted in his beliefs about HIM or his beliefs about coffeetables isn’t relevant either.

A health idea we can all endorse

Ann — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:56:11 +0000

I was very excited to read today from Springwise about a mobile phone based ultrasound device selling in the “just under $8,000 range”. It was developed for “the developing world” in terms of their needs.

I think that is a marketing mistake. I think this should be for “every world”.

Right now we are fixated in our health care world at getting a bigger/better MRI or bigger/better whatever diagnostic tool is under scrutiny. These product enhancements are based on two flawed thoughts

there is infinite flexibility in pricing of medical services
that knowing about smaller and smaller medical “things” will improve people’s health

Pricing should be encouraged to go down. Diagnostic tools which cost less should be what insurers and governments are supporting. According eHow this morning MRI machines cost $300,000 for extremity only and $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 for broad range capability. $8,000 gets a lot of the work done! YES develop for Docs in remote villages, but YES develop for Docs in Manhattan. We don’t need million dollar machines everywhere – send people who have been pre-screened to those machines with more delicate or challenging images. Bring down the cost of an average visit!

As for screening smaller and smaller things for diagnostic information? Its good, and vital in some instances. However, we all know of someone we know, love, and care for who is challenged with a health situation but who also perhaps smokes, eats to much, or hasn’t worked out in a long time. The biggest opportunity for marketers is to make salads, yoga classes, and general healthy living sexy and desireable. We live that way, we as a population get healthy.

It is both ironic and fabulously encouraging to discover that C.K. Prahalad’s most enduring legacy of “The Botton of the Pyramid” may not be just that by doing so you can raise standards of living in poorer areas, but that the creativity and innovation developed and applied to a “wealthy nation” serves an equally impactful good.

Help doesn’t need help!

Ann — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:38:17 +0000

What a fun concept this is. Help

born of the idea that drugs should be drugs and do just what they say – and not anything else or add anything else to them – help takes their simplistic “helpful” nature into a full participative feel with options that take you to more than just their products. Their product descriptions are great, their fun other elements are terrific, and I wasted more time than I care to admit looking at a site that sells things for $4. That means its working!

And because I’m also sure you can’t live – as I can’t – without seeing what they do with some of these fun ideas, here is what happens when you click on your cat as a supermodel (its a video, this is a screenshot. The music is, well, what you’d expect – catty!)

Leadership Qualities @ Crotonville

Ann — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:16:11 +0000

During my MBA program I had the good fortune to work as a Research Assistant for Noel Tichy, who amongst many things was/is a Professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan as well as the head of GE’s Crotonville School of Leadership.

In the October 13 issue of the Financial Times, a peek at the updated curriculumn was shared at this famous school which works at training the future leadership of GE globally. I thought their list of skills -not what I would have learned in the 80′s during my scholarship, and not what I learned during my various updates of leadership during the 90′s and the past decade – provacative. They are:

external focus
clear thinking
imagination and courage
inclusiveness
expertise

Lacking any further insight into these skills, I have put my own spin on them here:

external focus: recognizing that the business, customers, and perceptions are build outside the company’s “walls”, and then conducting all business and interactions balancing the core strategies with the willingness to see everything you say or imply as a 160 character tweet
clear thinking: learning the skill of assimilation – taking disparate information, recognizing trends, and then being able to communicate those findings to others
imagination and courage: I’m disappointed to see these combined, in this context I’m guess it means the creativity to vision a new future and the strength of character to pursue that vision
inclusiveness: recognizing that teams and customers will be of all walks of life, and that valuing each human for the characteristics they uniquely bring, not those inherent to their culture, gender, age, or life path they are on.
expertise: at the end of the day, know something, know it deeply and well, and share that knowledge freely with others

If that is what they meant, its a pretty fine list. One to consider on this Friday soon to be afternoon!

visual credit: http://www.iedp.com/Blog/GE_Crotonville_and_Susan_Peters an interesting article on its own!

Canadian Thanksgiving

Ann — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:06:24 +0000

Freshbooks has a terrific overview, irrererently written, of the differences between US and Canadian Thanksgiving. For those interested, its a good read.

From a marketing perspective, its a big deal that those to the north celebrate today and those to the south celebrate at the end of November. Up here there is no Black Friday, and the Christmas shopping season is more mellow and extends roughly from mid-November to Christmas. For those of you who have connections in both places, understanding the ebb and flow of these subtle but important changes is part of what marketers do – although I’m constantly surprised by those who miss this point!

By the way – Freshbooks has been a huge find for me this year. Its a free or subscription online accounting tool, in my case completely removing my Quick Books usage. I use the free version and use it to track my teaching, writing, and consulting hours. The interface is terrific, and it makes invoicing or “fake invoicing” in the case of teaching hours a snap. For clients the billing process is simpler, for my own learning of the hours I’m putting in by class for teaching, prep, grading, and the like has allowed me to reconsider my course designs with data instead of “boy, that class felt like a lot of work but I don’t know what that means!”.

It turns out Freshbooks has a referral program – if you want to give it a try, here’s a link. Since I’m using free and you likely will too, it isn’t much of a gain, but hey, we’ll give it a try.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone.

Michael! Michael!

Ann — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:43:05 +0000

Some readers will not get this post. That is your warning.

Some readers will be mildly impressed that I saw this. It was only posted October 5th,when I first watched it, and I’m writing this at 9pm PDT on the 6th. In case you’re interested, it already has 3,520,956 views.

Have a look:

To assist the non-gamers, this long play homage is filled with characters who are unique to Sony Playstation games. By having the hero be a gamer – well, having had a couple of gamers explain this to me already – its the ultimate in fan love.

And that makes it brilliant marketing. It takes the unique branding elements and makes the consumer the hero.

Think to yourself, all you brand folks out there – aside from beer ads, and a few sports ads, have you ever made it about your fans? Maybe you should.

Sports, concussions, and Marketing

Ann — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:41:48 +0000

Marketing is intimately involved with sports, well beyond the phenomenon of Air Jordan shoes. Marketing provides the impetus for many team fans to come to the game, watch the game, buy the merchandise. Marketing buys the ads on TV, in the stadiums and on the ticket stubs. Marketing is at the tailgaters and Super Bowl parties, and marketing sponsors the Little League teams and soccer camps.

Let’s take it as a given that sports and marketing are involved – so much so that when sports is in trouble, marketing folks had better be very much in the loop on what is up.

The realization that many of our most treasured sports that include contact and jostling of the head, the NHL and NFL among them, have the unintended but undisputed impact of diminishing the lives of many of the participants is an important moment for all marketers.

This is not just the sport’s problem. You think when your brand appears on the Jumbotron of Sports Stadium PDQ that the average fan thinks the two are disassociated? The fans think its all linked, it IS all linked, and yes, that means the brands have to worry about the health and safety of the players.

Some day there will be “The Hit”. It will be worse than what happened to Sidney Crosby, and it will leave that person permanently damaged. It could be any sport, any athlete. The last thing you want is to be the brand “on the boards” of that game, with your brand forever associated with the tragedy.

So what role does a marketing person play? This is what you do:

Learn the issues and potential solutions. I just finished this piece, written by Ken Dryden, a legend in the world of hockey. I think it is brilliantly written and lays out many of the next steps that must be considered.
Get on the phone with the sports you support. Let them know that the athletes deserve to live out their natural life with their brains intact, and that the fans deserve to know that the league/team/ownership is committed to this end. Make it clear that your continued relationship depends on it.
Get on the phone with the media buys you make in all channels. Make it clear that your brand cares, and that you want to see that station, website, or media company care about player health; and that your buys are contingent on seeing that opinion expressed publicly.
If appropriate for your brand positioning and strategy, be more active. If you are a painkiller, align with safety and rehabilitation groups that work in the sports of choice. If you are Gatorade, be public with your support of the sport’s changes, and support those stricken with health issues because of their participation. What could be better than the “Powerade Chair for concussion and sports injury research” at a world-renowned medical program? And yes make a big deal of that donation and support!

Marketers, this is our job: to the athletes, to the fans, to our societies. Do it now.