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Segmented Advertising
A few weeks ago, I saw a great advertisement for the History Channel at the movie theater. It highlighted most of their major shows and announced the new season for all of my favorite things. The unfortunate thing was that it also upset a LOT of people in the movie theater. Last season, the History Channel ran a TV special about what would happen to the planet if, suddenly, all human life vanished. What would our pets do, how would our buildings survive, and so on and so forth. One of the most interesting segments in the show was the part…
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What’s your worst table?
I was forwarded a post from Seth Godin’s blog this morning about his recent visit to a new restaurant. He reflected on the fact that, despite the relative vacancy of the dining room, his party was seated at the worst table available. The “best” tables were apparently reserved for regular customers. I worked in retail for a short time, and our largest customers (quite often on their fourth or fifth purchase visit) were always serviced by our store manager. As the “new guy,” I was resigned to help the passers-by and the “oh, I’m just looking” crowd. It’s not that…
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Organic or Synthetic?
In the human world, organic is better. In the business world, synthetic is better. Why? There are several reasons, so let me give you a high-level overview. Organic Eating serves an organic system – us. We are organic (well, most of us are…) so it is better to use organic things to sustain ourselves. Sure, “traditional” growing practices yield larger harvests at lower production costs. It even saves us a few dollars more at the grocery store. The question remains, though, is it good for us? Hundreds of people argue that organic food (grown without hormones, pesticides, or the use…
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Master Brand
By “master brand” I mean umbrella brand. The brand that covers multiple product lines that hold individual brands of their own. Take Proctor&Gamble, for example – few recognize the P&G name, but almost everyone knows Charmin, and Pepto Bismol. Understanding the attributes of your master brand is just as important as understanding those of your customer-facing ones. More often than not, someone else will be distributing Pepto Bismol – but the distributor never directly interacts with the Pepto Bismol brand. Their experience is as a customer of Proctor & Gamble, even if P&G doesn’t see it that way. If your…
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Marketing Sustainability
When I went to graduate school, I was given the opportunity to specilize in one of three fields: logistics, marketing, or sustainability. Those of you who know me can probably guess my reaction to the logistics offering – I’m fairly good at it, but I don’t enjoy all of the technical aspects that go into planning a supply chain system. Oddly enough, my reaction to marketing was pretty much the same. At the time I put marketing, sales, and advertising into the same bucket. Swimming around in the muck with them were teleMARKETERS, pyramid scheme scam artists, and a whole bunch…
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Mindshare
A lot of people tell me how funny the word “mindshare” looks. It’s a made up word that, apparently, has a completely artificial definition. I like things that way. It appeals to my deep desire for ultimate control over things (insert ominous, evil cackle). Really now, “mindshare” is one of the most valuable concepts in marketing. Everyone knows “market share.” It’s the portion of the market your brand owns. For example, Nike owns a HUGE percentage of the atheletic apparel market. The second concept of marketing is the “heart share.” While you might not be familiar with the term, I…
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YouTube
I’m a big fan of YouTube. I’ve always been impressed by the deluge of quality content put out by amateur video producers. As fun as it is, though, I never really thought about the business applications of YouTube until recently. We all loved show-and-tell in Kindergarten. We got to see what cool new toys everyone else had, and I was always excited to see the newest Transformer my friends had. It was one thing to see a picture of the robot in a magazine, but hearing about all the cool things it could do and actually seeing it transform brought…
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‘Negative’ Equity
The negative aspects of your brand are just as important as the positive ones. Marketing missteps and managerial mistakes in the past should be embraced as learning opportunities, not errors. No company can ever be perfect, and forcing a squeaky-clean image of perfection on your brand can actually kill it – no one is perfect and no one will trust anyone or anything pretending to be so. I try to refrain from discussing politics in this space, but Hillary Clinton has given us a perfect illustration of this point. Several times in the past she has referenced a trip to…
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Brand Equity
Finally, a metric for measuring the comparative equity in a brand name across markets, industries, and products. For years, people have talked about brand value and brand equity in difficult to define terms. Brand value was one of three things: 1) the current financial worth of a brand entity, 2) the future financial worth of a brand entity (valuation), or 3) the allowable premium businesses could charge for branded goods over generic goods. It is nearly impossible to have a meaningful discussion on brand without defining which brand value we’re talking about. Here is my definition: Brand Value = The…
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Fresh Marketing Theory
I never really liked the way McCarthy’s four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) were presented. It was all too theoretical and dry. Beyond that, no one seemed to care about the customer – as a customer myself, this always upset me. This morning, I got an email about a new marketing theory – the ‘five Ps’ of marketing. Someone with much more time than I have has taken it upon themselves to create a customer-focused model. I really think it’s about time, too, since we (customers) are the center of the marketing universe. Here’s a snippet of…