The New, New Frugality.

Once again, an opinion in an earlier blog entry was reinforced through research from Booz, Allen and Company. In this report, Booz suggests that the age of frugality in America is a permanent state, much like I suggested here. The reason I bring this up is because, frankly, I like to be right. I also bring it up because I am in the middle of a project for a client who has historically marketed their products on the promise of more for less.

Besides the suggestions I laid out in the earlier post on frugality among consumers, the latest Booz report reminds me that as more marketers get on the bandwagon of frugality, marketing messages and product development, even merchandising and certainly pricing strategy will again equivocate as all marketers take such positioning and make it so much table stakes. So for my client and others like them who applied a value message as a key brand value, it becomes less and less of an effective differentiator.

Note that the New Frugality doesn't mean that everyone is looking for the lowest price, or even the best value. What it does mean is that consumers - including businesses - are looking for reasons to defend the purchases they do make, whether to colleagues, bosses... or themselves.

As marketers, that's the job New Frugality requires of us. Defending our brand and its market positioning. Just like the good ol' days. Again.

How to BP (Be Proactive) helping gulf restoration

This is, of course, ostensibly a marketing blog, so my thoughts and comments thus far (my last blog post, in fact) have focused on the PR/brand implications of BP’s pathetic PR response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Since I posted that blog entry last week nothing has changed. In fact a few days ago, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward hit a new low by saying that he “…wants this to be over so I can get my life back…” as if he was more impacted by the disaster than the eleven men killed in the explosion and the thousands of gulf residents who have subsequently seen the destruction of their livelihoods.) It’s taken a little time for it to come ashore, but on Friday Pensacola, Florida residents saw the first tar balls wash up on shore, and of course Louisiana – and their state bird, the once – and now once again – endangered Brown Pelican, have been effected the worst.

PR aside, at some point we have to step in where BP's platitudes do not. However, not all of us can race to the gulf to wash birds with Dove detergent, but alternatively, here are a few links that will accept your donations:

• Adopt a pelican International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC)
• Donate to gulf restoration through the NWF (National Wildlife Federation)
• Help fishermen and the Louisiana seafood industry via protect our coastline.org: Also donate by texting ‘gulf’ to 77007

Oh, and one last thing: In spite of media coverage to the contrary, no one wants your hair: So you can keep your locks, Repunzel.

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• Pelicans, Back from Brink of Extinction, Face Threat From Oil Spill (nytimes.com)

Because Results Matter

Because Results Matter. I own that phrase as a domain. It is the Strategy180 slogan, and more than that, its the way we approach clients and projects. It is also the way that I think that all agencies - and their marketer clients - should view their relationships.

But they don't, and in the process, lower the bar of expectations and underestimate the value and influence of marketing.

And now the King himself - the Burger King - must understand that 'visibility' and 'mindshare', even 'frequency' and 'reach' are tools and metrics, not goals. This article in Ad Age indicates that the award-winning Burger King campaign is failing to gain ground - even cedeing it - to that ubiquitous clown and his league of banal but effective advertising and market positioning. When the much-lauded ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) is in negative territory, even today's stock market looks like a better bet.

Because Results, after all, Matter.

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• What were you thinking Burger King? (petpeeving.com)

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce

This, from the New York Times:

"...nearby was Anton Zimin, 26, an advertising copywriter, who said he was quite familiar with (a recently deceased novelist, radical, and historian) but doubted that others in his generation were. He said people his age have lost touch with the struggles of their parents and grandparents.

"The problem is that now, it's all about consumption - this spirit that has engulfed everybody," Mr. Zimin said. "People prefer to consume everything, the simplest things, and the faster, the better."

The radical author to which the 26 year old refers is Solzhenitsyn. The consumerism he laments is not American, as the young copywriter is Russian. He speaks of the consumerism of Russia.

In this age of instant gratification and the global village of modern communication, what it took America to bring upon itself in 50 years of mass consumerism, Russia has done in half the time. In the dog years that technology offers, I figure they'll be mirroring our insurmountable national debt, credit crisis and housing crunch by next May. Sarcasm aside, there have always been those who looked to burgeoning economies abroad and spoke of the opportunities to be had there - and these still exist. Moreover, so do opportunities to do it better this time, correct old mistakes, and find new solutions. Unfortunately, between China's dismal environmental record and Russia's corruption, this opportunity may already passed for those countries' leaders, but not yet for the companies looking to build a better world there, and back here at home.

And now for something completely different.

Unrelated to my usual marketing rants, here's a little something we may want to think about next time we reach for a bottle of water (credit Arthur Caplan, PhD):

1. Water bottles are of plastic or glass. Both are heavy and costs a bundle in oil to ship
2. About 2 million tons of plastic was used to make bottles for water last year (Plastic is a petroleum product)
3. In the U.S., billions of bottles a year get thrown out. Even if recycling, it costs bundles in gas to haul old bottles to recycling facilities
4. Bottled water is being promoted by global sugar water concerns and boutique outfits who are leveraging our thirst for purity to offset losses in soda
5. According to Beverage Marketing Corp., bottled water consumption has doubled in the US in the past decade. Americans now drink more water from bottles overall than any other nation. Note, however, that we are only tenth among the 'enlightened' nations of the world in drinking bottled water per capita, trailing Italy, Mexico, Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland

Okay, so you aren't a lefty enviromentalist and are far more pragmatic and rational than your left-coast Hollywood elite types who worship at Al Gore's pennyloafers. Then think of this: Why pay dollars per gallon for bottled water packaged with a cool logo when you can get pure tap water for pennies? This ain't Mexico City.

In other words, if you want to do something to really reduce global warming and cut down the earth’s pollution burden, or even lower our dependence on foreign oil, stop buying bottled water.