Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

With Thanksgiving 2 days away, we can be sure of the flood of advertising and deals that merchants are going to broadcast. Early trips to the Mall (by my Wife) indicate that traffic is low and they are giving stuff away to clear room for the next season of merchandise.
While it is a tough environment I think it magnifies the need for creative marketing and not just fire sales.

The small 3

I really hope that the government does not bailout the small 3 car makers. The mess they are in is of their own doing and the unions. Let them go bankrupt, rewrite the contracts so they can be more competitive and which ever company survives after that so be it. Does anyone miss the air traffic control union?
bad branding, bad product development, bad channels, etc. Classic case in what NOT to do. Jim Manzi has an article and interesting article and chart comparing the foreign car makers economics to the small 3 here.

Which one is not like the other?

I had a conversation with a sales rep today about a competitor of our firm. She made the observation that a member of her team that worked at said competitor was not calling on the same level person (higher now) than she did with the other firm. This made sense given the competitors product line, but poses a challenge on how to best reach our audience and not get confused with this competitor as they are well known and the market share leader.
Our target buyer is the higher end executive and our brand/product offering match this criteria. It is a little like selling a BMW 7 series vs. a Toyota Highlander, both cars but not aimed at the same market. The challenge now is to craft this higher end message to reach the correct audience and bnot get pulled down stream to a market where the message will not resonate as well.

Back to posting

I changed jobs and took a few weeks off so no posting. Now that my brain is turned back on I will start posting some new materials.

Break on through to the other side

Interesting move by Honda buying all the online and mobile advertising space from Sony for a week. The intent is to break through all of the marketing clutter to get customers to focus exclusively (and repeatedly) on Honda's campaign. The move is bold, one that Sony hopes to replicate for other firms.
The one potential pitfall is that people will tune out this advertising as it is happening so many times and it becomes an annoyance.
I am sure other vendors will be looking at the results as marketers not only look for unique ways to be noticed but also look for ROI in this economy.

Promotions in a down economy. What works and what does not

Adage has a list of promotions that are being launched by various retail and food chains to drive purchases in this tough economy. The one that I like best is Campbell/Kraft because it ties in 2 products and it promotes cost saving without sounding desperate. All the other promos seem like "me too" (esp. the food chains) and do not do anything to cross promote their portfolio like the Campbell ad does.

Pricing in a recessionary economy

I had an interesting discussion yesterday about pricing strategies in this economy. The discussion involved mergers and pricing power.

We have seen several large scale mergers that have eliminated accounts for many firms. What do you do if you have 2 firms as clients and they merge? You went from 2 clients to now only one client. Let's say Company A and B merge. Both were clients and had similar contracts and populations, around $100k and 2,000 users. They merge and you now have one client paying $100k but potentially servicing 4,000 people. You have now gone from $50/seat to $25/seat. A substantial hit. How do you gain some of that revenue back? Not an easy answer but one that a lot of marketers are faced with today.

Can you raise prices in this environment, especially if a competitor is lowering them? I think you can always raise prices, but you need to market the value first. If you have not proved the value proposition of your product or service you will never have pricing power regardless of the economy.

I believe that both speak to knowing your customers and knowing what their pain points are and how you can relieve this pain. If anyone is looking for a good book on pricing I suggest buying "The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Growing More Profitably."

Wanted: Marketing Communication Manager

Wanted: Marketing Communication Manager
Location: Washington, DC
Reports to: Treasury Secretary
Key capabilities:

• Must be able to clearly articulate complex financial plan to Barney Frank
• Tell Nancy Pelosi to not talk through the close
  

Sponsorships: Jet Man

Remember Dan and Dave? Two athletes sponsored heavily by Reebok for the Olympics in 1992. Only problem was Dan failed to qualify, making an 8 month campaign useless. According to Sport Business Associates, global sponsorship of professional sports teams in 2006 is estimated to reach US$33.6 billion. This amount of spending certainly shows that sponsorships have become a huge venue for advertising dollars but do they always deliver?

Obviously, some sponsorships work out just fine, but for every win there is the prospect of a Dan and Dave fiasco or a Michael Landis in the Tour de France.

The impetus to write this post was Jet Man. If you did not see this, Yves Rossy strapped a 120lb winged contraption onto his back and flew across the English Channel. He was sponsored by Hublot Geneve, a high end, technically advanced watch firm. A very good fit. I went out to Hubolt's website and they have done a great job of integrating the sponsorship into their website and relating Jet Man to their brand. I can't help to think, though, what would have happened if Jet Man blew up over the English Channel?

State of the Blogosphere

Technorati put out an interesting survey on the state of the blogosphere here.

TV to Web Advertising

The Lexus ad with 4 golfers going on a race to the US Open was played over and over this weekend during the Ryder Cup (despite the fact the US Open was played in June. Another pet peeve - using outdated material. Lazy)

For those that have not seen the ad they give the initial story line and tell people to go to the Lexus website to watch the rest of the story. No desire whatsoever to do so. I would love to know the hits they got on this as well as other (BWM did one I believe) firms that have done such a campaign.

To me, they just seem too disconnected.

Friday to Monday

Let's see: you leave work on Friday as a b2b marketer at Goldman and Morgan Stanley and arrive at work on Monday as a b2c marketer.
Time to brush up on Total Value of Customer.

How to use competitive analysis

Competitive intelligence (CI) has been a prominent part of my past jobs. It seemed like every interview or first day on the job, the most common comment was " Great, we know nothing about or competitors can you go find out xyz?"

The problem with CI in most organizations is that it can be difficult to figure out how to best use the information. The difficult part is that people have their own need for particular information but when all the data is put all together it usually equals the length of Trinity and is hard to impossible to act on.

What I have found most useful is to approach CI in the following ways:
1. Agree on a competitive set to benchmark as well as a format in which the reports will be delivered. Most firms have their own way of communicating information so it does no good to introduce a new format that will require a learning curve as this will impede the adoption of the intelligence.
2. Do relatively in depth profiles on agreed upon areas such as pricing, partners, customers, go to market model, financial benchmarks, etc. These documents should be updated on a quarterly basis and serve as a primer for people interested in certain firms as well as provides the CI analyst with a good understanding of the landscape that can be used for other ad hoc requests and briefs.
3. Lastly, I have found that short 1 page briefs on an announcement from a competitor such as an acquisition, partnership or new product release will provide people with just enough information to keep them up to date in a highly digestible format. These briefs are also useful "trial balloons" to determine what is important to look at more deeply based upon the response of your readers.

CI is an important tool but like anything else it has to be delivered in a way that is useful, easily digestible, and actionable.

How far can you extend your brand?

I was involved in an interesting analysis with an unusual conclusion. The outcome was not one that I had not thought of during the analysis but upon reflection it made perfect sense. I was a market strategy analyst at a one time Fortune 500 and one of the better known tech brands that had fallen on hard times. (Think big red N).

I had a project that was tasked with looking at the different markets that the firm was competing to determine a 3-5 year plan based upon market share, new growth opportunities, barriers to entry, competitive set, etc. The analysis was fairly straight forward in all but one market. The firm had bought a small start up that, at the time, had the hot technology du jour. The market was large and growing at a decent clip given the size. We had the right technology, in some cases better technology than a lot the better known competitors, yet we continued to lose share. The recommendation was to invest more or to fold the cards and integrate the technology into other existing solutions.

The question was: If we have strong technology, we are priced competitively, we are well known, and the market is growing why are we losing share?

The conclusion: Even though we had all of the above that would seem to put us in good position to compete, the feedback from customers was that they did not even think about us when they put out RFP's. In other words, our brand had zero currency in this market because it was not what the customer associated us with being good at and offering. Eventually the technology was folded into other solutions, but I suspect the ROI on the acquisition never came close to the plan.

Just because you have good/great brand equity in one market, does not mean that you can enter any market you see as an opportunity.

Are you really what you think you are?

A few years ago I joined a small team at Polaroid to try and set up a corporate venture fund to incubate new digital businesses. These new services would help diversify the firms revenue stream away from film sales and help take advantage of the emerging SaaS and other Internet business models. Our focus was primarily on the commercial side, a division that produced over $1b in revenue in its hey day.

It sounds like a good match; Polaroid and the web. Both instant and sharable. However, Polaroid did not understand that they were a workflow company. For example, P&C insurers were big customers as they would use Polaroid film to document damage, staple it to a form, and mail it in to be processed. We propposed that this workflow was undergoing a shift to digital, with digital forms and pictures streamlining the process and Polaroid was well positioned with compression technogy, digital image knowledge, and a giant customer base with real contacts and brand equity.

Despite these advantages, the recurring refrain at the executive level was: "But, where is the print.?"
Just because you were something yesterday does not mean it is what you will be or need to be tomorrow.

Ramifications of Wall Street

Besides the hit to everyone's 401k, what does the consolidation and meltdown of major financial institutions mean to marketers?

• The obvious is less firms to sell products too. As a result, a marketers value proposition is going to have to be honed as they will absolutely need to prove value/ROI in this tight budget environment.

• All the people you worked with before at these firms, be it on direct marketing lists or tried to sell to, they may all be gone now. Where are they and how do you make up for this volume?
  

• A positive may be that their are very good marketers looking for jobs right now. Ones with extensive B2C experience that may have never thought they would be in the position they are now today. If you need to fill some roles, find them and reach out (est. 50k in layoffs between ML and Lehman alone).

• What does this mean to your budgets and marketing mix? Can you still justify the plan from the beginning of the year or does this money need to be shifted to other methods or put away for a better day?

Unfortunately, the mess is not over and may prolong the economic downturn, despite lower oil prices. As a result, it is time to revisit your plans given the new micro and macro environments. As a friend of mine who works on Wall St. said in an email to my question to see if ML, AIG, and Lehman (and Fannie/Freddie) was the bottom or more bad to follow: "Not good."

Time to start thinking as it will effect everyone from established firms with healthy cash hoards/flow to start-ups that were hoping for that next round for growth.

Permission marketing

I certainly understand the concept and utility of permission marketing, but I ma somewhat suspect on how you can actually build a big enough crowd that gives you permission to market to them and stays around long enough before getting bored.

I have signed up for countless email newsletters, deals, etc. but eventually I grow tired of them (usually very quickly) as diminishing returns comes into play quickly. I like this definition/example of diminishing returns as I think it comes into play with marketing and permission based marketing:

Much of human economic activity suffers from diminishing returns. For example, in farming, the farmer will first farm the most fertile land with the most valuable crops. To expand the farm's business, the farmer will have to cultivate progressively less fertile land and will have to grow less valuable crops (once the demand for the most valuable crop has been met). In general, the bigger a business gets, the less optimal its last venture. Assuming that a manager is good at picking the most promising business opportunities to do first, it would seem that diminishing returns are a fundamental law of doing business: the first few deals skim the cream and subsequent ones have progressively less value.

So the question is how do you continually find and farm fertile land and keep those early "crops" interested?

First Post

I am a product marketing manager at Web 2.0 company. I have recently taken over the majority of the business functions thus having to learn a lot on the fly. I thought this would be a good place to share some successes, failures, and questions.
The hardest thing to date has been figuring out how to better target our end users with direct email. Subject, content, value prop, call to action. One big puddle that has to be contained.