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Once again, Laura Ries is wrong. This time about donuts.
0May 2, 2006 by Colin
Laura Ries thinks Dunkin’ Donuts should reposition itself as the fast alternative. That its strategy to “move out of breakfast” is misguided. That its efforts “chasing the latest trends” in bagels, sandwiches and soups will only result in “products for which they have no credibility.” In her mind, Dunkin’ Donuts should really corner the market on moving coffee – fast.
“… Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you borrow. Dunkin’ Donuts should use the same strategy that made Miller beer famous many years ago. At 5:00 p.m., after a long, hard day on the job, it’s Miller Time.
What Miller did for the evening, Dunkin’ Donuts can do for the morning. Make Dunkin’ Donuts your first stop. Your quick stop. Your only stop. …” (AdAge)
Whaaat? Credibility and food? What are we talking about here, Whole Foods? No. We’re talking about coffee and finger foods: donuts, muffins, croissants, biscotti.
Dunkin’ Donuts has a decades old reputation for delivering coffee and donuts. it’s the neighbourhood destination that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg. They had those ads, you know, the ones with the fat guy with the moustache? With the fresh donuts? What’s wrong with them making fresh sandwiches and fresh (okay, not-so-fresh) soup?
Dunkin’s marketers have your emotional heartstrings laying across the palm of their hands. All they need to do is play those heartstrings well.
Dunkin’s is the American version of Tim Hortons. Which used to be a donut store. And now sells sandwiches and soup as well as coffee and donuts. Most of its outlets do have drive-through windows, and you do get your coffee and food quickly. But their primary selling point is not “fast.”
Their selling point is fresh. And reliable. The brand has worked hard to build a reputation as a reliable neighbourhood meeting point. It’s part of Canada’s shared heritage and history. Tim Hortons and hockey. Tim Hortons and “roll up the rim.” Tim Hortons and Christmas gift sets.
And Tim Hortons is doing very well against Starbucks in Canada, thank you very much.
Fast? That I can get from the Korean grocery down the street or from the nearest gas bar.
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Moving designers offa Ramen and onto at least Chunky Soup
2March 22, 2006 by Colin
We both use pens, but to different ends. Words are our primary tool, pictures are theirs. Designers are driven crazy by frugal/cheap clients asking for “spec work” – either as part of a competitive process, or just to “give us an idea of what you’d do for us.” For public relations pros, requests for media lists, sample media plans or campaigns can be commonplace in some disciplines and some markets.
No-spec is a designer-led effort to turn these spongers away at the door. Hyperlinks, posters and logo competition protest letters are all available to help the design community wean itself from this destructive behaviour.One highlighted comment from athyrius, a design blogger tired of being asked for freebies:
“… I remember very clearly the day a fellow professional looked me in the eye and told me, “I don’t open a program without getting paid.” That day I went home, heated my Ramen and thought about it for a while before deciding he was absolutely right. …”
Ramen and designers? What an exaggeration! Or is it? Let’s close off with a backhanded smack from the Princeton Review:
” … Like other design fields (graphic design, for instance), industrial design is the unfolding of art into commodity–which is to say, a chance to work in a challenging, creative field and not eat ramen every day. Industrial designers–working with engineers, marketers, ergonomic experts, and, of course, clients–spend their time creating fresh, new or improved, user-centered products and environments that increase the aesthetic and efficiency of everyday life.”
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Add a little musical quirk to your marketing for greater retention
0March 21, 2006 by Colin
A quick bounce through the growth of “sonic branding” this month in En Route, Air Canada’s in-flight magazine.
The main tool in sonic branding is a short audio prompt inserted in a radio, tv or online ad to highlight a brand identity. Traditionally, these sonic brand triggers have been used in radio advertising, but these ear worms are increasingly being marshalled to impose a common brand-based cue to tie together large multi-channel and multimedia marketing campaigns.
Radio ads, television interstitials, animated banner ads, computer start-up sounds and ring tones: every one presents an opportunity to place a sonic brand trigger in an attempt to prompt and reinforce brand recall. They can also be rolled out as part of – god help me – an I.V.R script.
“Multitasking and endless distractions have also eroded the effectiveness of the traditional commercial, once a marketer’s dream. But a three- or four-second sonic brand is insidiously effective and can be absorbed even while channel surfing.” (En Route)
Everytime I hear one of these two, three or four tone brand signatures, I think of a movie scene – it may have been in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – where a secretary rings off the announcement tones on a small children’s xylophone.
The channel-surfing analogy is particularly apt here in Canada, where the Rogers group of companies (cable, radio, television, magazines, VOIP) has rolled out a short tonal signature to single out its various multimedia offerings.
Some examples of sonic branding from En Route:
Sounds Like a Brand
• The wacky Yahoo! yodel set to frantic banjo picking
• Lenny Kravitz’s new song “Breathe,” reflecting Absolut vodka’s “core values”
• Elwood Edwards’ chipper voice announcing to AOL users that “you’ve got mail”
• CBC’s new five-note “mnemonic” for its flagship newscasts
• T-Mobile’s cultish ringtone that has people with other phones clamouring (unsuccessfully) to download it.”Dan Jackson, of the UK agency Sonicbrand, commented on the creative process behind the tactic:
“…”If we’re creating a company theme, or brand score, we ask clients for their brand values and music that they think represents those ideas. Corporations tend to use the same words – inspiring, forward-thinking, trustworthy… so we keep tracks that represent these values in our knowledge bank. We isolate what it is that our clients like about these tunes, then we go away and use our expertise to mix the ideas together to create an original piece of music.”
For example, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”, from the Rocky soundtrack, comes up with alarming regularity. “It has a red feel to it, doesn’t it?” says Ali Johnson, Sonicbrand’s creative director. “It’s aggressive and positive. But we have to identify the element they see in that song that fits in with their brand guidelines. Is it the rock rhythm? Is it the driving guitar?”… (The Telegraph, 12/2004)
Is it the unspoken visual of the brand manager, american flag boxing shorts askew, standing over a toppled Apollo Creed?
Shout-out to AdAge for the initial pointer.
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Narnia Rap: cunning plan, or overzealous lawyers?
0February 22, 2006 by Colin
So. NBC asks YouTube to yank the Narnia Rap from their servers. Was this the product of a conscious campaign on NBC’s part to prompt a buzz spike online, as DataMining suggests? Let the video bounce around the ‘sphere for a couple of months, throw that word-of-mouth buzz into hyperdrive, then draw it back into the P&L bosom of the corporate mother ship to generate nice clean iTunes fees?
Or was Narnia simply the victim of a wide-ranging reaction from NBC’s legal team? The NYT coverage notes that NBC’s DMCA notice to YouTube covered 500 or so NBC clips. “Julie Summersgill, a spokeswoman for NBC Universal, said the company meant no ill will toward fan sites but wanted to protect its copyrights. “We’re taking a long and careful look at how to protect our content,” she said. (NYT)”
Pete Blackshaw extends the possibility that viral media could be further sandbagged by legal concerns, slowing or halting the flow of other consumer generated media like remixed or repurposed brand imagery or television commercials.
“Will lawyers apply to same content restrictions to television commercials that are shared and spread online? If networks push too aggressively on such restrictions, will brands perceive less “ROI” in their advertising potential? Under what circumstances could “repurposed” ad copy be shared? Are consumers to blame if marketers put “send this to a friend” links all over their web sites?”
Technorati: social media Narnia rap
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McDonalds – we will fight them in the alleys, we will beat them with sausages
0January 15, 2006 by Colin
McDonald’s defeated by a small town baker – in 2002. In case you missed it (and you didn’t if you read organic food blogs), the NYT essentially reprinted an article from Libération, recounting the opening of a new McDonald’s in Altamura, Italy in 2001 and its closure in 2002.
For marketers, the message is that local businesses can compete with large multinational franchises – if they compete on price AND offer a distinctive product. A touch of cultural hauteur doesn’t hurt either.
“Then there is the local food – cheap and overwhelmingly good – and the people who have eaten it for centuries and consider it as much their tradition as their history. Odd as it might seem in a corporate boardroom, they put no value on a McDonald’s in Altamura.
“The majority couldn’t imagine McDonald’s becoming an integral part of their lives,” said Patrick Girondi, 48, an entrepreneur from Chicago who has lived here for 15 years. “McDonald’s didn’t get beat by a baker. McDonald’s got beat by a culture.”
The NYT accompanies their translation with a slide show of happy Altamurans picking up their fresh foccacia (looks quite good, actually).
If you want to get the story with more of an antiglobalization, anti-industrial food preparation bent, be sure to read the original article in french: Libération.
“De nombreux mois ont passé depuis cette retraite en rase campagne de la grande multinationale américaine, mais Onofrio Pepe en rit encore :«Avec son mât comme totem, McDonald’s pensait nous assiéger ! Mais c’est nous qui les avons encerclés et bombardés coups de saucisses, de fouaces et de pain local. Nous sommes parvenus les repousser.»”
Technorati: community building artisinal McDos
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Pierce Brosnan, movie trailers and my mis-spent youth
1January 8, 2006 by Colin
I don’t know whether to be flattered or dismayed that Pierce Brosnan’s new buddy/murderer flick features The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” (video) – especially in the trailer. I mean, does this mean my teenage years spent chasing down limited edition vinyl have now been validated, or should I feel that my teenage memories are being heartlessly exploited by saavy film marketers?
Or should I just damn Paul Weller for selling out?
More information on movie trailers from the LA Times.
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Catalog marketers: despoilers of the earth
0January 4, 2006 by Colin
Good commentary on the impact of mass distribution catalogs over at Church of the Customer:
“… And that’s where the soup boils. The marketers who bombard us with unwanted catalogs are convinced their “good ideas” are just what we want. But like gang members caught in a turf war, they show little concern for the collateral damage of spray-and-pray. They’re driven by numbers, not relationships. The effects of deforestation and landfill usage don’t impact quarterly numbers. Instead, these marketers are just soul-less cogs in the business thresher machines whose ultimate customer is Wall Street and shareholders, not the rest of the world.
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Brandweek’s opinions about marketing in 2005 … and blogs
0December 20, 2005 by Colin
Out yesterday, BrandWeek’s “Best and Worst Marketing Ideas of 2005.”
“Hit: KFC’s 99-cent chicken Snacker sandwiches. Launched in March, they scored as the best sandwich launch in the chain’s history.”
I have to think that any major restaurant chain could launch a 99-cent sandwich and see immediate take-up. KFC’s sales weren’t prompted by additional flavour attributes: they were driven by the value proposition. This is not a case of admen moving product or masterful brand management.
Oh yeah – BrandWeek also doesn’t like blogs.
“BLOGS: Blogs provide almost no new information. They’re frequently inaccurate. They contribute to the hysterical polarization of our nation’s political discourse. And they’re often written by people who can’t, you know, write. So naturally marketers have flocked to associate their brands with them. Seriously, it’s not entirely clear why so many marketers have rushed to get themselves name-dropped in one of the most unreliable media environments yet invented, but we’re sure there’s a PowerPoint presentation on their ROI being prepared as we write this.
Inaccurate? Sure. Hysterical polarization? Maybe. Unreliable, huh? I’ll cop to that.
Nevertheless, with that one paragraph, BrandWeek really comes down on the side of crotchety old-school admen in the ongoing debate about the impact of online media.
And I really think they’ve got it wrong about TiVo Ad Search. Go see for yourself (hint: “expect to see more TV spots to look like infomercials”), and compare to my recent post on TiVo Ad Search.
Technorati: brandweek KFC best and worst brand
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Word-of-mouth advertising takes one in the ‘nads
0December 14, 2005 by Colin
The Onion hits the nail on the head once again, this week skewering word of mouth marketing:
I’d Love This Product Even If I Weren’t A Stealth Marketer
Seriously, it’s an honor to subtly plug something I actually believe in for once. I’m so in love with this one-of-a-kind soda, I want to shout its product name from the rooftops of a lower-to-middle-class neighborhood! Preferably one with an elementary school nearby, where consumers are still young enough that their brand loyalty is not yet fully established. I know it sounds crazy, maybe even a little scary, but honestly, True Blue is just that good.
Don’t tell my bosses, but I enjoy True Blue so much, I sometimes stealth market it well outside PepsiCo’s target demographic. Maybe it’s wrong of me to sit in on the senior center’s weekly square-dance classes while chugging True Blue, but the rush I get from inconspicuously getting the word out about this tremendous new product is nearly impossible to find anywhere else.”
Technorati: stealth marketing WOMMA word of mouth
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Big pharma custom-orders medical journal articles?
0December 14, 2005 by Colin
Nice piece in the WSJ yesterday on the relationships between big pharma companies, researchers, medical writers and medical journals. Turns out scientists (and the big pharma companies that sponsor their research) sometimes turn to specialist medical writers to actually produce papers to be published in distinguished journals.
That isn’t much of a surprise to us communications professionals, who are called upon to ghostwrite materials everyday.
Luckily for us, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette ran most of the article today.
The WSJ rightly questions the relationship between pharma marketers, medical writers and academic researchers who seem too preoccupied to thoroughly vet a ghost-written article. To me, it’s not the process of preparing the document that seems suspicious: it’s the apparent willingness of participants to bow to big pharma’s marketing needs.
Some excerpts from the documents used to develop the reporting are avaliable at WSJ/OnlineToday.
BTW – the American Medical Writer Association seems to be torn about its own nomenclature :the AMWA Code of Ethics refers to biomedical communicators, not medical writers. I understand there may be a legitimate distinction between the terms, but I always thought a biomedical communicator is what Dr. Bones used when treating the crew of the old Star Trek.
Technorati: pharma medical writer ethics medical research
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Brand Sluts, Ford and Kevin Federline
0December 7, 2005 by Colin
Forget K. Fed. “Wiggers” has long been a term thrown around by trend experts to describe Vanilla ice, Marky Mark, and other “D” celebrities far more talented than Mr. Spears.
Marian Salzman, a global exec at JWT, is largely given credit for popularizing the term “wiggers.” The new term fashionable in the JWT’s offices is “”Brand Slut”:
“The term “brand slut” is a play not only on the penchant among marketers for using sexy imagery in ads but also the “language of courtship” e.g., consumer loyalty, brand fidelity, etc. they often use in describing their relationship with customers. ….
Salzman said her reaction to the research made her realize “people are really a whole lot more slutty about brands than we realized.”(NYPost)
A better description, however, appeared in the Telegraph more than a week ago: From Rob Long, in an opinion piece:
“According to market research, at a certain age – they peg it, I think, at 35 – a person just suddenly knows who he is. What he likes to eat. Which beer he prefers to drink. What car he wants to drive, which paste he wants to brush his teeth with, and how he wants his underarms to smell. So after about 35, the average consumer is unreachable.
No matter how much money a company spends trying to convince him to smell spicier or sexier, he’s unlikely to change.
But the 18 to 34 crowd, apparently, are disloyal brand sluts. They hop and whore around the place, trying this new beer or that new car or body sprays and tooth whiteners: they can be bought, in other words. And that makes them desirable.”
So where does this leave Ford, the motor company? They announced yesterday that they would be pulling advertising for their Jaguar and Land Rover brands from gay-themed and gay-focused magazines. This may have something to do with a threatened boycott from “family values”groups.
Volvo, it seems, still has a market and a strategy for this demographic.
Now – which is worse: consumers that are brand sluts, or brands that are sluts to interest groups? You be the judge.
Technorati: trend wigger JWT Ford brand slut
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Direct marketing, consumer targeting and Jello Biafra
1November 19, 2005 by Colin
Trying to drive sales? Haymarket’s Marketing Direct just took a look at the techniques British agencies and mailhouses have been using to optimize their mail lists (sub. req.).
One program that caught my eye was the new Lifetime Value Score from Expeian, which develops:
“… detailed profiles of each prospect and customer from its unique lifestyle, demographic, transactional, consumer classification and permissible credit data. Experians consumer scoring model ranks each prospect and customer to identify their future lifetime value against each brand offered by the client.”
Wonderful use of mailing lists, consumer data and quant brainpower. As a marketer, I can only admire the professed breadth and depth of the data analysis available.
As a consumer, I can tell you these programs are the reason I make sure to lie at every chance possible when providing information while shopping. Phone number? I’ll give you the pet shelter number, just don’t cross-compare my purchases. Contest entry require purchasing intentions? Why, I plan to buy several consumer durables during the next six months, and I always look for more Arnold Palmer clothing in the store. Do you have five minutes to complete this important survey? Sure – as long as you don’t mind me assuming the identity of a pre-op transgendered Republican fishetarian.
I mustn’t be the only one feeding inaccurate data into the machine. Still, I’m not exactly shouting from the rooftops about the corporate hand sneaking into my wallet and making copies of my receipts. To quote “Love me, I’m a liberal!” originally by Phil Ochs, covered by Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon:
- So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal
I go to pro-choice rallies
Recycle my cans and jars
I’ll honk if you love the Dead
Hope those funny grunge bands become stars
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far…
Once I was young and had an attitude
Stickers covered the car I drove in
Even went on some direct actions
When there weren’t rent-a-cops to be seen
Ah, but now I’ve grown older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal …”
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Banner Ad on Yahoo? That’ll be 4,000,000 quarters.
0November 16, 2005 by Colin
Remember how cheap online advertising used to be? You could pay for those banner ads with a paypal account, or with change from the little dish on your dresser? Not any more. The prime real estate on major portals is so rare, placement costs on MSN, AOL and Yahoo are skyrocketing.
This from the WSJ today:
” … Yahoo said last month that prices increased by “double digits” in the third quarter from a year earlier, while AOL says prices for some ad units have increased as much as 20% since January.
MSN says it currently charges between several hundred thousand dollars and $1 million for a prime, 24-hour ad spot on its home page. That’s up from about $25,000 to $50,000 four years ago.
… By contrast, the average price of a 30-second TV ad for last February’s Super Bowl was $2.4 million, while a full-page color ad in People magazine costs $228,275. A 30-second spot on this week’s episode of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” which had 26.5 million viewers, cost $574,504, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.” (WSJ)
It’s important to note that this rising market does not reflect a stampede to all things digital, as happened in 1998 and 1999. Rather, “In 1999, there was no research and people were chasing fear and greed,” says Greg Stuart, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “Now there’s good data, plus marketers with their own real experience.”
In fact, the smaller, more specialized, sites have seen increases more in the range of 3% – their advertising real estate isn’t as limited, giving advertisers more choice and more negotiating power.
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Pharma’s big Jedi Mind Trick
0August 12, 2005 by Colin
Am I the only one who feels slightly icky when reading that pharma marketers are learning to “position a condition”? That’s right – not a product, not a brand, not a benefit – a condition.
“… Pharmacia, for example, developed OAB as a condition,
because women found it hard to identify with urinary incontinence. … Pfizer succeeded in developing an ED condition where previously, there had been only impotence.”That’s from PharmaExec, but the article isn’t online yet.
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NASCAR, podcasting and the tipping point
2August 7, 2005 by Colin
Well, if Michele Rahal is pushing the podcast of Race Day on Fox – even if he can’t quite explain how the process works – then the technology really has hit the mainstream.
I mean, a fifty year-old former racecar driver (and experienced marketer), pushing podcasting to an audience of race fans?
Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data, management, government and oddities … written in Canada!
Tumblr Goodness
Blood Stains from the slaine Monks of Lindisfarne in the Viking attack of 793AD. Folios 191v and 192r of the Lindisfarne Gospels - written and illuminated by the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Eadfrith in 698AD.
Liber generationis Jesu Christi
“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria
Images: British Library
I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was “pocket sized” - Joel Jewitt, discussing the invention of the Palm Pilot
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130408043926-7298-early-employees-joel-jewitt-palm
Before I discovered the Internet
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