It's Summer, So Go Ahead And Double-Dip!

We have always cautioned clients about investing too much of their equity and brand equity into spokespersons.

One reason has to do with the fact that many performers and celebrities looking for new income streams will shill for virtually anyone. Another reasons is that consumers are “on” to that kind of thing, and having a celebrity spokesperson is less engaging than it was a number of years ago. Finally, your brand may be judged by the actions of the spokesperson, which – morality clauses notwithstanding – you really can’t control. Martha Stewart is the Queen of that kind of mess, followed by the not-so-model model, Kate Moss.

Anyway, here’s a new one for our book. What do you do when your spokesperson becomes the spokesperson for your competitor? No, not an allied product or service area, but an actual competitor, selling precisely what you’re selling!

It turns out that rapper, Lupe Fiasco, signed a marketing deal with Reebok to appear in several ads for their “I am what I am” campaign. Last week, however, he was at a PUMA-sponsored event, hyping the company's new Karmaloop sneaker.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “double-dip,” doesn’t it?!

Apparently The Best Way To Ensure Engagement Is To Invent It

Management guru Peter Drucker pointed out that one of the true drivers of profitability (besides loyalty) was “innovation.” A form of marketing consonance could, therefore, exist in regard to high levels of engagement with innovation amongst people who exhibit high levels of interest in, well, innovation.

That thought came to us while looking at a new unobtrusive marketing measure – the number of patents annually issued in a particular geographic area – that were clearly a powerful indicator of where pockets of innovation resided throughout the United States. Here are the top 20 places in the US with the most annual patents overall:

1. San Jose, CA
2. Sunnyvale, CA
3. Austin, TX
4. Palo Alto, CA
5. Fremont, CA
6. San Diego, CA
7. Cupertino, CA
8. Boise, Idaho
9. Mountain View, CA
10. Santa Clara, CA
11. Houston, TX
12. San Francisco, CA
13. Portland, OR
14. Seattle, WA
15. Los Altos, CA
16. Rochester, NY
17. Plano, TX
18. Saratoga, CA
19. Menlo Park, CA
20. New York, NY

Fred Allen noted, “California is a fine place to live – if you happen to be an orange.” But on the basis of these findings, those concerned with engagement inventiveness might make note that it’s a fine place to live if you’re an innovator too.

Tearing Down Barbie's Dream House For A Hyperspace Bypass

Have you ever been in a client briefing and you can’t help but think, “Where did they get these insights from?”

That thought struck me as I read the announcement this morning that Mattel was going to introduce a new HyperScan game this Fall. It wasn’t the new product introduction that got me thinking that way – given the toy landscape it sounded like a fine idea – but a comment that was made by a Tim Kilpin, a Mattel Senior Vice President supporting the introduction.

Mr. Kilpin said, “We spend a lot of time talking to boys, and to kids in general, and we really find them migrating out of traditional toy play and into what you might call game mode.”

You think!? Find them migrating!? Somebody in the research or insights department should have pointed out that “kids in general” have already migrated into game mode and did so over a decade ago. They left traditional toys and board games and dolls behind back in the late 20th century!

So Mattel may spend “a lot of time talking to” kids, but clearly they’re not listening. It is these kinds of insights that confirm our findings that if you don’t have the tools in place to predict those value changes you end up waaay behind the curve.

And it’s comments like those of Mr. Kilpin that have us thinking that he and his other executive associates are not only producing Barbie’s Dream House, but have actually moved into it!

Eggs-aggerated Engagement

Yesterday, CBS announced that they are going to laser imprint their trademark eye insignia, as well as logos for some of its shows, on 35 million eggs. No, no, you read that correctly, eggs!

The logic and eggcitement for this promotion was – according to George Schweitzer, President of the CBS marketing group – that “it’s a great way to reach people in an unexpected form.” CBS gave lots of reasons for why this was an eggstraordinary breakthrough engagement technique, including how eggsceptionally involved consumers will be with CBS while using the product and the fact that CBS can control which zip codes actually get the eggs. I guess they want to know precisely where their logo is being smashed against the edge of a frying pan!

We know that marketing for TV networks has become more eggsasperating, but this is Six-Million-Dollar-Man-thinking! You know the logic, “we have the technology, so we can do it.” But just because you can do it doesn’t mean that you should. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t already know “CBS” or “CSI”? And I don’t know about you, but I prefer my eggs unadulterated.

Somebody should have also pointed out to Mr. Schweitzer that this is a great way for your logo to end up in the garbage of some 3 million + households, which strikes us a way to end up with egg on your face!

Bad News, Worse News, Good News

The bad news is that consumers always want more. The worse news is that there is no ceiling to their expectations. Is this fair? Not from the old mid-20th century marketing perspective of “it’s our product or service and consumers should keep their marketing smarts to themselves!” But that was then, so welcome to the 21st century!

The good news is that expectations can be managed via an archetype called “the marketing past-life.” The articulated version sounds something like this: “when I was a boy it only cost 1-cent to mail a letter.”

But it’s the unarticulated, emotionally-based marketing past-life that causes most of the problems because consumers usually don’t dig down deep enough to understand why they feel the way they do. Why should they? That’s marketing’s job.

Sometimes managing expectations involves understanding the marketing past-life and placing things in context for the consumer. Take the price of gasoline today.

Most consumers would say, “The price of gasoline is way too high. $3.00 + a gallon? Are you crazy? I expect to pay less.” And from the rational, historic perspective that would all be true. But what about an alternative view? How does gas fare in comparison to gallons of the following?

Diet Snapple - 16 oz $1.29 or $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea - 16 oz $1.19 or $9.52 per gallon
Gatorade - 20 oz $1.59 or $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray - 16 oz $1.25 or $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid - 12 oz $3.15 or $33.60 per gallon
Vick's NyQuil - 6 oz $8.35 or $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol - 4 oz $3.85 or $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout - 7 oz $1.39 or $25.42 per gallon
Scope - 1.5 oz $.99 or $84.48 per gallon
Evian water - 9 oz $1.49 or $21.19 per gallon

Begins to make gasoline seem reasonable, doesn’t it? Alexander Pope noted that “blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.”

But he was on the creative side of things, so what would you expect!?

You Think You've Got It Tough?

It’s no secret that the business of marketing products and services has gotten tougher.

More savvy consumers in an increasingly undifferentiated marketplace surrounded by a more complex media environment have made it tougher to engage and engender loyal customers. So as an industry community service, we offer the following link.

The next time you think you’ve got a tough row to hoe for your client, product, or service, click on this.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mBtKKfVpi0A

All great marketers love a challenge, but life is tough enough without challenges like this!

Figure It Out!

As we switch to our Tuesday-Thursday Summer blog schedule, we thought we’d start off July with this month’s crop of ‘excellent answers to meaningless questions,’ all appropriately dealing with summer and vacations.

17: the average annual allotment of vacation days.

33%: the number of men who can’t actually find the time to use up their vacation days.

25%: the number of people who bring work on vacation.

15%: the number of vacationers who bring their laptop computers with them!

50%: the percentage of people who will go off their diets while on vacation.

And finally, echoing Elbert Hubbard’s observations that “no man needs a vacation so much as the man who just had one,” 23% is the number of people today who come home from vacation claiming they need another vacation!

See you next Tuesday.