What do you think about this?

“MARKETING STRATEGY

Friskies developed a new product innovation, Milk Essentials, to add to some of their SKUs in order to give the brand a stronger point of difference in the cluttered dry cat food arena. Milk Essentials combined the taste of milk cats love without the lactose that can give them digestion problems. It needed to be engaging and memorable, and had to be in the market in just nine weeks! “

The Global Knowledge Services Center E-Newsletter (Direct Marketing Association of America – DMA)

June 2007
Volume 6, Issue 7

I think this is not a marketing strategy. Friskies invented a product and branded it only to become a point of difference in the market? “Engaging and memorable”? “Had to be in the market in just nine weeks”? Doesn’t it look like a communication campaign? It certainly does.

This little “Marketing Strategy” paragraph describes two of my most criticized points in marketing. 1) marketing is not necessarily communication, but communication is part of marketing; 2) creating a product to have a “stronger point of difference”? Isn’t it too shameful to say “sell more”, “steal market share from the other brand” or “increase profits”?

Thanks DMA for not explaining to the poor ignorant people of the world what SKU means. For those SKU here goes a brief explanation.

SKU - A unit (part or item) of inventory that is carried as a separate identifiable unit. Eg A box of 100 ball point pens, although containing the same unit, is a different SKU from a single ball point pen.

www.tpacc.com/knowledge_base_dictionary.htm

Blogs, links and blogrolls

A couple of days ago I quickly reviewed The Marketing Consul’s link section and realized some of them are actually blogs, not only regular websites. In theory they would fit into a section commonly known within the blog world as “blogroll”. The blogroll is nothing but a specific link section for blogs. I even thought about creating one, but then started to wonder. What for?

This is connected to an ad I watched also a couple of days ago for the first time. Since I wasn’t paying too much attention, I cannot remember brands or manufacturers, only comes to my mind it was something about a shampoo. The ad played with one of the human nature’s most stupid characteristics: complicating things.

Sometimes it’s all about re-labeling. Things are sold differently so the manufacturer can add more “value” (where value doesn’t mean necessarily quality). Many times I saw a very famous and encouraging video produced by an advertising agency as part of their portfolio (Sunscreen, see on the bottom of this posting). There, one of the catches was about advice. Advice is actually a way to reshape old thoughts on a fashion way and sell them for a higher price they’re truly worth, the narrator said.

Hence I won’t create a blogroll. Links are links no matter what either they’re blogs or regular URLs. I frankly do not mind how one names them as long as they’re there for a real and useful purpose.

Measuring charlatanism

Charlatanism might be a very aggressive word, but honestly this is the way I feel about those marketers who claim to have the secret or the solution for one’s marketing needs. They don’t, as simple as that. With very few exceptions, I hated almost every single minute spent on workshops, luncheons or anything else people who are (well) paid to instruct those who pay (a lot) to receive these people’s advice.

Once I remember, among other cases, of a former HP marketing executive talking about strategies for EA sports. The content was highly sophisticated, very deep into details and the whole strategy made total sense. But please tell me how could I apply a marketing structure and resources coming from HP and EA to my “corner bakery” small employer?

If you think paying 100, 200 dollars for a day with these people will solve your marketing problems, just take a break and unwind because it won’t. They cost a hell of a lot more than that. Actually I even doubt this will some day lead to an insight.

Recently I spent some time planning a corporate blog and the publication of some articles, and it became more explicit that people who read these articles are looking for a free or at least cheap way to solve their marketing problems.

At least in some cases what is annoying can become entertaining. Last year I went to a workshop where the last speaker of the day was a major Canadian marketing and education character. The guy is really smart, and had a terrific oratory. I was even more surprised when he told all of his mental difficulties in his childhood and teens. But he prevailed after all.

I hadn’t checked the program, but at the end of his speech the host came up to the microphone and he seemed pale and very surprised. Then he said: “It wasn’t actually what we were expecting, but it was certainly interesting”.

The topic had been changed by the mental difficulties of the speaker. He was supposed to talk about customer relationship management, but ended up speaking about creativity and how the human being is losing the power to innovate.

The truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth

I’m a person who loves to criticize things, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. I’m not usually fond of commenting other people’s statements, but this one below itched me until I started writing this posting.

“The first half of 2007 has been both eventful and productive for the Canadian Marketing Association.”
(John Gustavson, President and CEO).

The Americans love to invent names and nicknames. I took their mania and would call this statement a “useless-silly-not-necessarily-sincere-opportunity-to-make-PR”. Think with me. Would a president of s marketing association say something different from “we had a great period” or “our activities are soaring” or “we see no limits to keep growing” or anything similar? I don’t think so. His statement can be true, but what’s the point in saying something that is so obvious?

It seems marketers have an enormous eagerness to be all the time optimistic, as if showing some restraint or mentally forbidding more complex and complicated scenarios.

The power of marketing

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Do you want to know a big mistake?

This happened twice in the same day. I visited two websites from totally distinct companies. One is a major clothing retailer in Brazil (Acostamento); the other is a powerful integrated marketing agency (Rapp Collins). What’s the resemblance between both? They care a lot about esthetic and design, but not that much about a visitor to the website. Do you know why?

Because both designs are based on swfs. Without the plug-in one cannot visualize it and that was my case. It’s very naïve to think every single computer on earth has this kind of feature. Other would say having a website totally designed in swf is a way of selecting the target. Well, I’m a person within the marketing environment and would love to get to know both companies’ work, but unfortunately had no chance at all.

Make war, make marketing

I can say marketing is something that I love, but war is a subject I idolize as something to be studied. War came first for me. I’ve been studying it since my teens and only go deeper and deeper.

After all these years reading and theorizing both subjects, it becomes quite clear for me that they’re absolutely correlated. War, just like marketing, passes through countless shifts until it reached its modern shape. And that will continue so on and so forth. The same happens for marketing. On a casual or structured way, the subject is constant development for “ages”.

Marketing and war are two competition-based competences. It looks for me that they are far more than only the “Marketing Warfare” coined by Al Ries and Jack Trout. The true marketers should treat marketing as a real battlefield, with a clear objective (to fight for the customer acquisition and loyalty) and to make use of the right means. And this is just a basic, romantic vision of mine. Wars (and marketing) are really more complicated than that. Apart from these similarities I managed to find some others:

• A marketer can fiercely combat, but “die” in the battlefield if his attention is not fully turned into the battlefield;
• Manpower is a decisive factor;
• Arrogance can bring disastrous results;
• Reckoning plays a major part;
• Creativity, resilience and perseverance should always be part of the mix;
• Logistic coordination should be carefully watched. Marketing and war require a large concentration of efforts towards moving people and equipment;
• A great deal of the success is based on the leadership. Hesitation, weakness or lack of confidence are frequently fatal;
• Like the armed forces, marketing shouldn’t be a democracy but a highly hierarchical system;
• War games (or marketing tests) are not only exercises. They can produce a lot of valuable lessons;
• Talking about lessons, the one who learns faster in the battlefield can thrive faster;

I wonder why Gareth Morgan in his Images of Organization book didn’t think about including such a metaphor system. That could be of some interest to lots of marketers (including me).

Formula to marketing

I’ve been thinking about all these people who promise to solve everyone’s marketing needs and problems or believe it’s all about a linear equation. So I’ve decided to prepare my own formula using concepts learned along the way. Bear in mind:

Marketing = Market in action

Marketing = price + product + place + promotion, hence marketing can be written as

Market in Action = price + product + place + promotion

Segment (S) = target

Target (T) = public / place

Let’s get started.

To better understand your market, divide it into segments

Market / Σ (Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3…) in action = price + product + place + promo

But segment is actually…

Market / Σ (Target 1, Target 2, Target 3 …) in action = price + product + place + promo

Target is actually…

Market / Σ (Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) in action = price + product + place + promo

Add CRM to your segments

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1 + CRM, Public 2 / Place 2 + CRM, Public 3 / Place 3 + CRM) in action = price + product + place + promo

Then it becomes

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = price + product + place + promo

If bad PR is the square of your problems, subtract it

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)²

If you want to multiply your results, call to action

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)² * call to action

At last, don’t forget to “ad” Communications and voilà! Here’s a “brand” new formula to make marketing (obviously if marketers are able to solve it).

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)² * call to action + Communications

Happy marketing

The other day I was thinking how important it is for a marketer to be confident and happy about his decisions. Many times I read about statesmen that, in time of war or peace, needed to take harsh measures against their own people.

With this thought in mind I started to idealize what would be my next great marketing employment. It would certainly need to deal with strategy and business development, always looking forward to grow and to learn. But most of all, the thing I need the most is to join the professional part of marketing (plans, budgets, media etc) with the customer side of it.

During my years as a marketer, just one job didn’t offer me the opportunity to meet and talk to the final customer. Believe me, I felt it hard not to deal directly with those we really work for. It’s not that much about the business side of it and generating more revenue, increasing the company’s database or anything like that. It’s more about the experiences an individual that has no idea about marketing can involuntarily teach a professional marketer. It’s fun, more relaxed and easier to absorb than any given theory can explain.

Interestingly my best moments dealing with real and final customers came from telemarketing. Almost 6 months on a daily routine still make me think and laugh of some pretty good moments. As when a former friend and colleague of work decided to put down on a paper a list of weird names we could collect. He reached the 130^th before leaving the company. Or when I talked to a woman called Miss (“Excuse me Miss Miss”). There was also a drunken guy decided to apply for a credit card almost 11 p.m. He was drunk, spent 45 minutes talking to me and in the end invited me to go to his fabulous mansion in the beach to have a barbecue. At least he ended up applying for the credit card and I achieved my daily goal.

Live Earth on a marketing perspective – a.k.a. “Harry Potter is our saviour”

Reading an entry from the Canadian Marketing Association blog I felt a frustration that can be compared to a PhD student having its thesis and PowerPoint slides eaten by a beaver a couple of minutes before the presentation. The subject is the Live Earth event that happened on July 7, 2007. It was definitely something to be remembered in the next years given the magnitude of it. I totally support it.

Fine, but then I started to wonder about the whole essence of the event, its consequences and results on a marketing perspective. I’ll start with the numbers and facts, like I always rather do; then we move to the questions, assumptions and end up with conclusions. Well, here it goes.

There were 100 musicians, from major popular artists of the entertainment industry to locals

• 24-hour marathon
• The main hosts were: Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and New York;
• Organizers said almost 2 billion people watched or followed the event
• More than 10,000 ‘friends of live earth’ events are now registered in 129 countries (source: Live Earth website on July 9th).

On a marketing perspective I asked myself

• Price and place: Rio de Janeiro had free concerts paid for by the local city hall on a beach that hosted almost 500,000 people. Wembley Stadium in London was really empty, absolutely empty compared to Queen’s concert 21 years ago. Wouldn’t it be smarter and more impacting to use Rio de Janeiro’s formula of price and place to all events? What’s the point? Raising money or creating awareness? I know they want to raise money to foundations to fight global climate change, but how come the artists were being (well) paid. What happened to the Live Aid philosophy of the 80s?
• Tracking: this is perhaps the most intriguing point. From a promotional point of view it was fantastic. A mega-coordinated event around the world. But honestly, can you see any value marketing-wise? Can they actually track the results? How the organizers will possibly count the percentage of people that

1) Absorbed the messages?

2) “Bought” the messages?

3) Will continue to “buy” the messages (means become greener or adopt tips to reduce the global climate change effect)?

Another point is tracking. It’s been more than five years now I see researches constantly showing marketers and corporate managers/director/VPs do not know or do not track results of a campaign. This is one of the most fundamental steps to take care of these days.

And that makes me think about the “10,000 Live Earth friends” (source: Live Earth website on July 9). This number is 0.0005% of the total people that watched the event. You have more people pre-ordering Harry Potter on a single day than this. Do you know what this means? Does it mean that people believe Harry Potter will be the savior of the planet, so much faith and attention are given to him. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Really, didn’t you expect a little bit more of marketing effort instead of a campaign highly turned to PR and awareness of artists and a foundation? I would expect so. Sometimes buzz only is not enough. You can have Pele and Payton Manning playing for your team and yet not be champion.

What about a little marketing exercise? The continuity of a campaign is also crucial. Al Gore’s been started with a much-publicized documentary that won an Oscar (and gave him 3 minutes of worldwide comedy exposition), he’s on TV everywhere, but frankly let’s talk about continuity and recall. But is it the right message really being passed on? Or is it just show business again?

If you answer the questions below without help then it’s because the marketing cause of this whole thing is not lost. Answers will come in a future posting.

- What’s the name of Al Gore’s Foundation?

- What’s the name of the other guy who co-signed Live Earth’s event (also an active activist)?

- What’s the name of the documentary mentioned above?

- What are they fighting for?

Ok, now try these

- Name three artists that played on Live Earth

- Name three cities that hosted Live Earth

- How did you hear about Live Earth?