Saucy Ads Don’t Build Brands

What is advertising? It is communication with a target market with end goals of building a brand advancing a business. Any investment in advertising should be undertaken with this basic concept in mind. Or, if you a prefer a what-advertising-is-not definition, simply reference a recent commercial by Ragu. Unilever’s spaghetti sauce brand is running a campaign called “Long Day of Childhood.” One of the spots shows a boy coming into his house after school calling “mom, mom.” He finds her and realizes why she did not answer: Mom is “busy” in the bedroom. Although we do not see what the boy sees, his face says it all! See the commercial below.

The commercial is a YouTube hit with more than 1.4 million views. Ragu has three other commercials from the same campaign posted on its YouTube page, none of which have more than 100,000 views. Unfortunately for Ragu, views of a humorous commercial will not translate into more customers. Although Ragu is the market leader in spaghetti sauces, its market share has slipped. Brand awareness is not an issue, so what Ragu needs is to connect with consumers in ways that make Ragu more relevant in their lives. While some adults may be able to relate to the boy in the commercial, does the spot draw people closer to the Ragu brand? Probably not.

Thanks for the laugh, Ragu. I like a brand that does not take itself too seriously. Ultimately, brand marketers will be evaluated on whether their efforts resulted in higher sales and profits. I am not convinced this campaign will make that happen.

Ad Age – “Ragu Explains the Ad Where the Kid Walks in on His Parents”

Build business or build brand? Yes.

Retail icon JC Penney (make that JCP) is under scrutiny by investors and the retail industry as it attempts to pull off a radical makeover. CEO Ron Johnson’s vision for JCP is to create a totally new shopping experience in stores. A major element in his marketing strategy was to introduce “fair and square” pricing. The plan called for substantial reductions in promotional pricing and accompanying newspaper advertising. Instead, shoppers would be able to buy products at everyday low prices. The response has been less than enthusiastic as evidenced by same-store sales declining 22% and Internet sales plunging 33% in the second quarter. Ouch!

JCP’s actions are curious in that management seems to have taken an either-or approach to marketing. The first months of Mr. Johnson’s tenure as CEO saw a pronounced shift toward brand building. The emphasis was on shaping perceptions and image of JCP. This emphasis occurred at the expense of tactics that were effective for generating store traffic. The result was a redefined brand but fewer shoppers in JCP stores. Now, the pendulum is swinging back the other way as business building is pushed to the forefront.

Now to address the question in the headline – should marketers focus on building their business? Yes. Should they focus on building their brands? Yes. It is unnecessary to choose one emphasis over the other. Such an approach will prove to be disastrous long-term. Different people in your target market are at different points in their relationship with you. Brand building is needed for customer acquisition, attracting new buyers to your products or services. Business building is important for retaining customers. JCP assumed its existing customers would stay with them after implementing the new pricing program, but many of them failed to see adequate value compared to the previous promotion-oriented pricing model. Thus, a dual focus is needed for marketing to concurrently build business and the brand.

Advertising Age – “JC Penney Looks to Newspapers in Revamped Marketing Push”

The Upside of Killing off Marketing

Another day, another provocative title for a blog post that stirred the passions of marketers across the globe. The most recent button-pusher was Bill Lee, marketing consultant and author, who boldly declared in a Harvard Business Review blog post that “Marketing is Dead.” If you work in marketing, teach marketing, or otherwise have any connection to the profession, such a proclamation gets your attention. The title and accompanying article stimulated discussion ranging from Mr. Lee is correct to Mr. Lee is pathetic, and many opinions in between.

The heart of Mr. Lee’s position is that traditional marketing – advertising, public relations, branding, and corporate communications – is outdated in today’s social media environment. One-way communication has been overtaken by an emphasis on community building around a brand, its advocates, customers, and the general public. Groundswell from product users and fans has supplanted marketer-controlled messages as the driver of choice to build brand credibility.

Now back to the praise and bashing of Bill Lee – opinions about Mr. Lee’s position varied, but there is a benefit arising from his pronouncement that “marketing is dead,” even though I disagree with the statement taken literally. Marketers need the smelling salts of provocation that are delivered in a piece like the one written by Bill Lee. It is useful to be reminded that we operate in a very dynamic environment and that the role of traditional marketing certainly has changed. While advertising still plays a role in building a brand, it complements community-building efforts. The challenge for marketers is to find the balance in the respective roles played by traditional marketing and social media in nurturing customer relationships.

Marketing is far from dead, but it has undergone a radical makeover in recent years. Just as people experiment with different hairstyles, fashions, and hobbies to shape their identity, marketers must be open to redefining how brands and relationships are built. Social media is not a fad; specific platforms might come and go (e.g., MySpace) but user-driven communications are here to stay.

How to Raise Price without Raising a Ruckus

Death and taxes may be the only certain things in our lives, but Ben Franklin apparently overlooked price increases on the products and services we buy and use when compiling his list. Businesses are squeezed from a variety of sources as costs are increasing for ingredients, parts, labor, insurance – you name it and it is probably going up. Price increases roll downhill, or more appropriately down distribution of channels. The stopping point: The end user.

We do not like paying more for products and services, but when price increases are needed they can be implemented in a way that is palatable to customers. In a recent interview with MediaPost’s Marketing Daily, Jean-Manuel Izaret, a partner with Boston Consulting Group’s San Franciscooffice, acknowledged that raising prices can be tricky in an environment in which disgruntled customers can take to social media to stir a backlash against increases. Price increases by Netflix and fee increases by banks led to a scathing response in social media that contributed to Netflix’s massive subscriber loss and a retreat on planned bank fee increases.

According to Mr. Izaret, two keys to successfully raising prices in a turbulent customer environment are:

  1. Offer a range of price points with varying value propositions for customers. If a single price point is increased, customers might view the increase as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition and opt to leave.
  2. Position the price increase as a necessary step, not for the company but to benefit the customer. An increase might be necessary to address a business problem, but the problem needs to be expressed in terms of how it impacts customers (e.g., convenience of product delivery despite rising fuel costs). 

I have never heard of a business receiving a “thank you” for a price increase, and such displays of gratitude are unlikely to begin anytime soon. However, if a price increase is accompanied with a commitment to maintaining value for customers it may be understood and accepted.

Marketing Daily – “Pricing and Social Media: Can Brands Push Back, Too?”

Plan for Failure

Murphy’s Law – you’ve heard of it, know it, and probably even lived it at one time or another. “If anything can go wrong, it will” is more than a lament; it is a call for managers to think about what can go wrong and how an organization will respond to adversity.

A reminder of the need to plan for a surprise visit by Murphy can be taken away from Southwest Airlines’ botched Facebook promotion last Friday. A 50% off fare sale intended to celebrate Southwest reaching 3,000,000 fans on Facebook blew up as a technology glitch caused some customers to be charged as many as 35 times for the same transaction. The company known by many as LUV was not feeling a lot of from irate customers.

What will be the response when Murphy sets up shop in your department or company? Most strategic planning focuses on how to achieve success – meet objectives, reach goals, and advance the business. Planning should include failure, too. The nature of the planning differs as it is not about how to achieve failure but rather how to mitigate it when it occurs. Examples of areas to address in failure planning include:

  1. Customer service response
  2. Public relations response
  3. Social media response
  4. Leadership response

It is impossible to plan specifically for failure as there are so many ways Murphy can invade your organization. But some essential considerations are:

  • How will a failure situation be handled – Within functional silos or by a cross-functional crisis management team?
  • Who are the key personnel that should be involved in resolving a failure situation?
  • What are acceptable benchmarks for delivering a response for each of the four areas (customer service, PR, social media, and leadership)?

Failure is inevitable, so is the need to plan for failure. How an organization responds when things go bad can either build trust with customers or destroy it. In Southwest’s case, it appears to be working diligently to refund all affected customers quickly. While relationships with some customers have likely been irreparably harmed, Southwest’s response will be a starting point for making amends with impacted customers.

Marketing Daily – “Southwest Facebook Promo Hits Turbulence”

Build Trust to Build a Following

I see many similarities in social media marketing of 2012 with Internet marketing circa 2000. At the heart of the similarities is a notion among many businesses that they need to have a presence because that is where their customers are. Another similarity I have observed is that many marketers do not have a clue what to do once they get there. “Let’s set up a Facebook page” may be a great idea, but why should anyone other than employees and relatives follow your business? To build a following, you must first build trust with people so that they believe your brand is worth following and justifies their implied endorsement.

A study conducted earlier this year by About.com found that consumers expect transparency from businesses on social media. People want access to user reviews and comments, including ones that do not reflect positively on the company or product. In terms of content, social media marketing should reduce emphasis on sales-oriented messaging. People are not interested in social networking sites becoming one more place where they are bombarded with “buy now” messages. “Like” trumps buy as the desired audience response.

Among findings in the About.com survey concerning liked content:

  • 33% said seeing a like or recommendation from a friend built their trust in a brand
  • 25% said the number of likes a piece of content received influenced brand trust

 Use social media content to build trust, and the sales will follow. The verbs of social media marketing are:

  • Listening
  • Sharing
  • Telling
  • Selling

Manage your social media sites as a place for customers and others to gather around your brand, not as an alternative to paid mass media for delivering sales messages. Do not ignore selling opportunities presented by social media, but those opportunities have to be earned by gaining the trust of your following.

eMarketer – “To Build Trust, Reviews are the Key”

Prime Time is Real Time, Unless You are NBC

The London Olympics are the talk of the sports world, if not the entire world. A glance at trending topics according to Trendsmap.com shows Olympic-related hashtags are prevalent around the globe. Social media and mobile technology combine to make the 2012 Summer Olympics a new consumption experience as we can follow events in real time. Unfortunately, we cannot watch some of them in real time. In the U.S., marquee events are saved by NBC for broadcast in prime time. If you do not want to know the outcome of a medal race in swimming or gymnastics competition, stay off social media during the day. Also, it may be a good idea to avoid watching NBC promos for the Today Show as they could leak the outcome of the event you are about to watch.

We have become accustomed to on-demand access to information and entertainment. NBC seems to be stuck in the TV-dominated media generation, building its broadcasts around prime time hours. Although it should be noted that there is quite a bit of live event programming broadcast each day on NBC-owned channels, airing prime time events that have already occurred just does not fit today’s media culture. However, there is a good explanation for NBC’s approach to broadcasting major events on a delayed basis in prime time: We are not the customer, so it does not matter what we want.

The customers that NBC must satisfy are its advertisers and by extension, Olympic sponsors. Corporate partners want to achieve the greatest reach possible via TV. The time frame in which that is most likely to happen is prime time. The largest number of eyeballs will be watching during that time regardless of whether events or live or recorded. The Olympics are essentially a two-week mini-series for NBC. Its aim is to maximize viewership of the mini-series. Given the realities of the 9-5 American work life, prime time is when the most people will be watching… even if they are watching what amounts to a re-run.

Why Good Grammar is Good for Your Personal Brand

A blog post with a provocative title caught my eye recently. A Harvard Business Review post by Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and founder of Dozuki, was titled “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar Here’s Why.” Wiens uses a grammar test to screen potential employees at his companies. Writing is central to effective performance at both firms – Wiens describes iFixit as “the world’s largest online repair manual” and Dozuki helps clients write product documentation such as user manuals. For Wiens, proper grammar usage is not about achieving perfection as much as it is about demonstrating professionalism.

Response to Wiens’ post was surprising. Although many people agreed with Wiens’ stance that good grammar is good business, many people critiqued his use of grammar and questioned his audacity to have what he described as a zero tolerance policy against grammar mistakes. Interestingly, some of the more than 2,300 comments devolved into evaluation of grammar usage in other persons’ comments. The Grammar Police had a mighty presence on Wiens’ blog post!

The article resonated with me as I see firsthand the effects of poor spelling and grammar on the quality of students’ written communications. A correlation exists between grammar skills and perceived credibility of the communicator. For Kyle Wiens’ companies, the quality of his brands hinges on proper presentation of information. He cannot afford to take a laissez-faire approach to his employees’ writing craft. Nor can you or I. Our written and oral communication is a part of our product. Inferior product quality of our personal brand is not an option in a highly competitive market.

Command of spelling and grammar has three benefits:
1. It demonstrates a commitment to learning. Kyle Wiens says if a person has not mastered spelling and grammar after 20 years is it indicative of his or her learning curve in general?

2. It reveals attention to detail. Good grammar usage sends a positive signal about the communicator, just as poor grammar raises questions about the communicator’s message quality and even credibility.

3. It can be a source of competitive advantage. Commit to sharpening this element of your personal brand. Think about how many job announcements seek a candidate with outstanding communication skills. Make it a point to stand out in this area.

You do not have to be an English professor to use grammar effectively. You only have to adopt a mindset of continuous improvement, pushing yourself to become more skilled at communication. Make your communications skills a strength that gets you hired or promoted, not allow it to be a liability that holds you back.

Let the Games (and Stories) Begin

In a few hours, the 2012 London Olympics will officially begin. For the next 17 days, the world’s top athletes will take to a global stage. Intense competition and drama make the Olympics must-see TV regardless of how many time zones you are away from the action. And, buzz about the Olympics has migrated to social media, creating real time discussion of the Games. But, the most enduring aspect of Olympic competition is the stories of the athletes. Event broadcasts are complemented with profiles of the personalities, going beyond the uniformed competitors to give us glimpses of the people participating in the games.

Stories define athletes perhaps even more than their performances. Their Olympic moments are influential in shaping their personal brand stories. I will never forget speed skater Dan Jansen’s valiant performance at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Jansen competed through the grief of his sister dying and experienced disappointment when he fell during a race. He experienced more disappointment at the 1992 Games before finally winning a gold medal at the 1994 Olympics. Frankly, I could not recall Jansen’s medal count (he only one a single medal in three Olympics). It does not matter – his story eclipses his performances.

Sports marketing expert Jonathan Norman says that an Olympian’s “back story” plays a major role in determining his or her suitability as a product endorser. Brands are comprised of back stories, too, so the more that an athlete’s story resonates with a brand’s values, the more effective the athlete can be as a brand ambassador. Note that while being a gold medalist helps an athlete’s marketability as an endorser, it is not a prerequisite for being a valuable brand asset.

I am eager for the London Olympic Games to begin, not only to watch elite athletes compete for medals but to learn more about the stories of the competitors regardless of whether they medal. A small number of athletes will win gold medals, and an even smaller group of athletes will win marketing gold as their stories attract companies that desire to associate their brands with them. Enjoy the Games!

A Tipping Point for Social Media Marketing Education

Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point is one of my favorites. It examines how ideas, practices, and products gain traction and acceptance. The catalyst to adoption is a tipping point, a trend or development that “tips” behavior. When I first read the book I thought to myself that it would be great to witness a tipping point and recognize it as such. I had such an experience last Friday when a blog post written by a recent college graduate became the tipping point for advancing social media marketing as a distinct sub-discipline in marketing education.

Cathryn Sloane, a recent University of Iowa graduate, suggested in a post on the blog NextGen Journal that every social media manager should be under 25. Her premise was that people her age have grown up using social media and because of their familiarity with Facebook, Twitter, and other sites from an early age they are best equipped to work in the social media industry. Sloane’s position is summarized by saying:

“No one else will ever be able to have as clear an understanding of these services, no matter how much they may think they do.”
Reaction to Sloane’s post from the marketing community was swift, generally negative, and in some cases, vicious. Critics dismissed the post as ill-informed and showing a lack of understanding how social media is used for business purposes. Some people painted with a broader brush, saying that Ms. Sloane’s view was representative of a sense of entitlement held by many Millennials. Of course, much of the castigation of Ms. Sloane was coming from the over-25 crowd she suggested was less qualified to work in social media.
Add me to the list of over-25s that disagreed with Ms. Sloane’s take that people her age are best qualified to be social media managers. I see where she is coming from, but using similar logic I would make a great general manager for the Atlanta Braves because I watched a lot of Braves games on WTBS in my high school and college years. Despite my differing opinion, I see a positive arising from the flames thrown Ms. Sloane’s way. Her view of what it takes to work in social media marketing brings out the need to develop curriculum to prepare future social media managers. 
Like most cutting-edge business practices, academia lags behind industry when it comes to social media marketing. The time has come to give social media its rightful place alongside other marketing platforms studied in business school: Advertising, public relations, professional selling, and direct marketing. Academics must collaborate with the professional community to identify the skill sets needed to train social media marketers. Sloane’s post and the immense response it elicited are evidence of the need to integrate social media in the marketing curriculum.