But wait... NOW how much would you pay?

Today on CNBC’s Squawk Box morning show, one of the talking heads opined that the reason the stimulus package was, arguably, an unsuccessful policy (only 6% of Americans believe it was successful in creating jobs or preventing job loss) was that because it wasn’t “branded” properly, like the more ‘successful’ Cars For Clunkers campaign had been.

Political commentary aside (as there are plenty of reasons to be cynical of any government spending program), the idea that the success or failure of a public policy is effectively the result of how well branded it is seems absurd on its face. Yet as much as we may agree or disagree on matters of public policy, policy itself is effectively one of the ‘products’ of government. As such, Americans judge policy as they do any product, and therefore attach a brand message to it. The question is whether that policy’s brand is accurate or well stewarded.

Consider the State of the Union Address as simply a product pitch. As amusing as it is to equate our Congressional Leadership to housewives listening to Vince Offer go on about the ShamWow, the analogy holds.

I mentioned in a much earlier post about renowned adman Roy Spence, who once suggested the establishment of a cabinet position of Secretary of Marketing – a position that, if successful, could replace all the others.

Don’t believe it?

Maybe you are familiar with the growing group of fiscal conservative activists now shaping the dominant political parties’ messages? No? Well, perhaps you know the Tea Party Movement. Perhaps you know about the group of suburban parents whose collective core values shaped the political races in 2000? No? Well, maybe you remember the Soccer Moms. What about that politically motivated community organizer who leveraged contacts in the Chicago political machine establishment to quickly climb the political ladder? He flipped that establishment background under a convincing brand of ‘Change’ and became our current President.

So, you want to change the world? Great! Just answer me the question I ask of all my clients… what’s your branding strategy?

Top 5 Things In Marketing I’d Like To See Change In 2010

My full list of Things In Marketing I’d Like To See Change In 2010 is actually quite a bit longer than this, but I haven't an entire day to dedicate to crafting that long of a blog entry. So for now, I'll leave you with my Top 5. May we see an end to:

1. The exponential growth in Social Media 'experts'. You’re young, you’re plugged in, you’re mayor of a half-dozen Foursquare sites, and you’ve attended a keynote by Chris Brogan. This does not make you an expert. Having a Facebook page doesn’t make you an expert to anyone except your elderly great aunt. After all, I have a dog but this does not make me a veterinarian. (If you need a real SM expert, let me know. I can refer you to a great one.)
   
2. Abandoned experiments in New Media. Whether it’s a blog, a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, the Web 2.0 landscape is as littered with abandoned efforts as Mount Everest is with abandoned oxygen bottles. Honestly, know what you are getting into. Bad, but improving, efforts are laudable. Abandoned efforts just create a mess of your brand.
3. Hearing the same thing said more than twice. There is only one Seth Godin or Tom Peters. Chances are, they are not the only one who’s had the same thought, so it’s possible it’s been thought or articulated twice. But really, if you’ve read it already, rewording it doesn’t make it yours. Credit where credit’s due.
4. Marketing used as a synonym for MarCom. Marketing professionals are responsible for allowing themselves to be limited to ‘prettying up’ PowerPoint slides. There are 4 Ps in McCarthy’s model, not just one. I’d like to see more marketing departments taking the lead on more than Promotion. Marketing needs to lead in Product, Placement and Pricing as well. And it has a lot to offer in the area of People and Purpose too.
   
5. Fog over facts. There is no excuse to do anything in marketing that isn’t supporting a specific, measurable objective. If marketing professionals cannot quickly and confidently answer the question, “What is our specific objective with this initiative?” clearly and quickly if asked, then chances are it shouldn’t be done. And if no one is asking, that’s a problem in itself.

What would you like to see different in the industry in the New Year?

Is That The Best You Can Do?

A Souk in Dubai

In just the past couple of weeks, I calculate that I’ve saved roughly $400 by simply asking, “Is that the best you can do?”

It’s a standard haggler’s phrase, and I’ve grown more comfortable asking the question as time wears on. It started when I was in Dubai several years ago, when, purchasing my wife some earrings at the hotel gift shop, the clerk asked, “You’re an American, yes?” When I replied in the affirmative, he told me he was going to give me an automatic 30% discount because he understands that “Americans don’t haggle.” It was reinforced a year or so later when my dentist, realizing that I’d recently hung a shingle and therefore had decided to forego dental coverage as a cost-saving measure, quickly volunteered to take 10% off the bill. “It’s not that we necessarily mark-up for insurance, but your cash helps.” Well, I got to thinking, if there are places that voluntarily negotiate even when I don’t; well then, I should try it more often.

So, as I’ve successfully negotiated, among other things, the cost of an airsoft rifle for my son at a flea market, the number (and necessity) of expensive tests with my physician, the price of a mattress at a retail store, and successfully argued data service charges with AT&T, my family is used to my asking the question when it comes time to save a little cash.

You should try it.

But what if you also applied the question “Is that the best you can do?” to all your business encounters? What better terms, better margins, better quality, better service, or better turnaround times could you expect? And moreover, what if you applied that question to your own proposals before issuing them? How much more competitive could you be? How much happier could you make your customers?

And what if we applied the question to ourselves, perhaps as a New Year’s resolution? Commit to asking it of yourself before succumbing to every possible weakness - and the question becomes a resolution that in itself could serve to help accomplish all the others. Think about it: reaching for a cigarette? A doughnut? Sleeping in, instead of working out?

“Is that the best you can do?”

In which he foretold the future.

So, about a year ago, I posted an entry in response to a survey from Chief Executive Magazine regarding my prognostications for the year just past. I offered my learned opinion, shared it with you, and now, in the interest of full disclosure (not to mention I'm too busy and not clever enough to come up with an original end-of-year post) here's the results:

I said:

On December 31, 2009:
Dow Jones (currently at 8,932) will be at 9621 points
Oil (currently at $40.50) will be $59 per barrel
Interest Rates (the Fed Funds Rate, currently at 1.00%) will be: 1.00%

Actually, on December 28, 2009:
Dow Jones (currently at 8,932) is at 10,547 points
Oil (currently at $40.50) is at $78 per barrel
Interest Rates (the Fed Funds Rate, currently at 1.00%) is at: .50%

Prediction comments:
(I said) Uncertainty is driving the market and the economy; once some certainty arrives with new administration - for good or bad - wild swings will stabilize and the widely oversold market and general malaise will slowly lift.
What happened:
Uncertainty was driving the market and the economy; but any sliver of not-bad, or less-bad news, swung the pendulum back just as wildly as the markets moved to cover shorts and other dubious financial mechanisms. The seating of a new administration, alas, had nothing to do with it as the market didn't settle for months after the inauguration.

Confidence comments:
(I said) Business decision-makers will become comfortable de-coupling their decisions in the real world from abstractions like the Dow. But once that fog clears, the impact of government intervention on national debt and as a general signal of the new regulatory environment will be a drag on growth.
What happened:
Ooo. Seems I was on the money; particularly regarding new regulations - and predicted tax law changes. Yet something went unsaid - the new normal of a higher savings rate, less consumer spending on credit, and general 'new religion' took hold on main street.

So there you go, there's a lot more to the year past than a brief blog post, and others would question some of my inferences, but in the end I was more pessimistic than necessary - or perhaps just more realistic - about the real state of the 'main street' economy. But the reality is far more immediate than Wall Street prognostications... to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "Are you better off today than you were a year ago?"

Happy New Decade.

The price is falling! The price is falling!

Just a note for the editors of marketing pubs out there: "how to market in a sagging economy" articles have been done. To death. Okay, we get it. Preaching to the choir here. Move on.

Its a valid subject, but most of these articles are promotion-oriented. What hasn't been discussed as much is the role of price strategy in a sagging economy, and generally. This especially occurs to me today because of a current client project, where pricing strategy is the current key gating concern prior to product launch.

Obvious Secret #1: Pricing strategy, especially in a weak economic environment, has little to do with, well, price.

Even in the best of times, great products, great promotions, clever ads and a loyal base can be undone by a misguided or misapplied pricing strategy. This is because left to their own devices, finance and sales executives will see sagging demand as a numbers issue and not a brand issue. Plus, it is expedient to react instinctively with a red pen (cutting prices) when profits shrink and sales falter.

Bad plan.

Unstudied discounts are not as easily undone tomorrow as they are done today. Price cuts are a short term solution to a larger, longer term issue; that is, the product hasn't established the brand position to maintain margin in a discount environment. Understand that price cuts are welcomed by consumers but always create subtle dissonance - an inability on the part of the consumer to properly relate price to value, so when the market returns upward, as it always does, this results in a nearly Sisyphean effort to re-establish a brand position held prior to the discount. Pricing is not a cost issue - it is a value issue.

Understand the way customers make buying decisions and become far more visible, and more efficient, in delivering on these criteria; this will always be more effective in building recession-proof brands. This is because pricing is a long-term strategy, not a short term tool. When the economy sours, there are other levers to pull - operating costs, added value, extended hours, free upgrades. Think about supplier pricing and work new billing models to manage cash flow. Invest in money-saving IT investments such as Unified Communications and collaboration products. Reevaluate your market position and consider new marketing initiatives to go after markets competitors might have recently abandoned. Fire some costly customers. Adjust invoicing offers and procedures to improve cash flow and reduce defaults. These tools and others are manipulated in good times and bad with far greater flexibility than price, which can only move in two directions: up, or down.

Its easy to be Chicken Little and think in blocks of fiscal-quarter-bound panic over a current fiscal situation, but creating and applying the right principles for pricing allows for decisions that over time not only weather current storms, but position a company for consistent growth over the long haul.

Using Context in Creative - Part Two

As with my last post on the subject, here are excellent examples of understanding and leveraging the nature of the media when developing creative. Courtesy of Alltop.

On worry and inaction: The sequel

In this case, the sequel is far better than the original: Leo Babuta, of Zen Habits coincidentally posted this today: The Little Rules Of Action. Anyone who has ever worked for or with me will recognize #3. ("Progress over perfection, there's always version 2.")

On worry and inaction

Jeremy Kloubec, a former colleague of mine now with consulting organization Infosys, writes recently about the dire unrealized predictions facing the VC community just a year ago. He details the shifts in the industry and partially credits the architects of the still-nascent recovery programs.

His comments reminded me of something my mother often said: "95% of things you worry about never come to pass."

Of course, its that 5% that keep us up at night.

As it pertains to our business life, if, as Peter Drucker is credited with stating, "the best way to predict the future is to create it", then 100% of our angst can be squeezed to 5% insignificance by the simple act of doing. Dire warnings and worry generally come with the same highly unlikely assumption: "If things do not change, ..." That peculiar assumption ignores the fact that humans - particularly capitalist humans - are not given to inaction. Even our base 'fight or flight' instinct indicates an action of one type or another. Change is inevitable.

And so it is with this crisis. We're not out of it, not by a long shot, and our myriad collective and individual actions will differ in effectiveness and certainly create new crises even as they create new solutions. But our reactions to events and the actions we take are all we've got and will continue to alter the linear path.

If history is any guide, that's more than enough.

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All Work and No Play

Image via Wikipedia

Tonight, someone owes me an email and isn't delivering. And I don't really mind, because as you can tell by the dates of these posts, its been a month since I had the time to muse over a post so I'll enjoy the rare time. I've been working awfully hard lately, on an interesting but demanding project. I guess it doesn't help that I'm also battling some sort of weird respitory thing and fighting insomnia.

My candle burneth on both ends.

So that brings me to offer this public service announcement for those of you who are weary of the world of work. Yes, I know that we are glad to have a job and feel it unsympathetic to those who wish they had a job to complain about, but as a Forbes ad asked years ago: "Which is worse, to be laid off on Friday or to pick up the slack on Monday?" There's not much to be said about either.

Take a moment and review these websites... and remember to frown into the screen as you peruse these helpful sites. No, not because you'll be frustrated or angry, quite the opposite. Frown so others think you are researching something critical. Because, after all, you will be.

http://my-bad-habits.blogspot.com/ Ian Newby-Clark is a professor of psychology who studies our habits and offers interesting insights as to why we do what we do and why we don't really need to.

http://www.revrun.com/ Philospohy and wisdom from an innovator in the hip-hop movement. (Why do you look so surprised? Because Run has something to say or because I know who he is?)

http://lifehacker.com/ Simplicity for the geek in all of us.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ Author Tim Ferriss is a divisive character, but he's always good for a little wisdom or interesting story here and there.

http://zenhabits.net/ Leo Babauta says it best on his site: "Zen Habits is about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of our lives."

Do you have other insights or websites on self-improvement, life balance, or simplicity? I'd love to hear about them!

Do The Math

A common though underutilized truism in marketing is to quantify your claims whenever and wherever possible.

'Biggest', 'Better', Fastest', 'Smallest', 'Cheapest' are nice claims but of little* value. Only slightly better are percentages, useful in any circumstance when the real numbers are small to begin with ($0.04 is a penny less than $0.05, but it is also fully 20% less)

I was reminded of this point by a number** of excellent recent blog entries that are worth a read:

How to Make Your Data Matter, Fast Company, by Dan and Chip Heath - Notable insight: "...an $800 billion stimulus works out to be the rough equivalent of seven weeks' income for an American household. Is that worth it? Seven weeks' worth of work to stave off a potential depression. Or maybe you're appalled. Regardless, we can finally have a real argument, because we have a better idea of what we're arguing about."

How Comedians Clarify Brain-fuzzing Stats, again, Fast Company, by Dan Macsai - Notable Insight: "...If Rod Blagojevich winds up in jail, four of the last eight Illinois governors will have served time. Did you know -- and this is true -- that only 48% of the people who commit murder end up in jail? You are more likely to end up in jail if you become the governor of Illinois than if you become a murderer. Make the smart choice, kids. (Jon Stewart)"

What Does A Trillion Dollars Look Like?, courtesy of cnbc.com - Notable insight: "With the largest market cap among U.S. companies, Exxon Mobil’s value of publicly traded shares is over $345 billion (as of 3/31/09). If this amount was denominated in $100 bills, the block of Benjamins covering the area of a standard American football field would stack to a height of about 28.7 feet."

Ultimately if your numbers are impressive or modest, whole numbers or percentages, what matters is that your audience understands them and relates to them in clear terms that mean something to them.

(*specifically, 86% less value, that is.)
(** exactly three)

Thank you, Captain Obvious

So I just got this email... sent by a company that sells 'dashboard' marketing management software - to me, a professional marketer.

Know your product (marketing software), know your audience (marketer). So far so good.

But the first line of copy?

"Remember when marketers with the biggest budget usually got the biggest customer base? Those days are gone. Forever."

Well, first, I never recommend writing copy that opens with a rhetorical question. Because it might not be rhetorical to your target customer, and once they answer no, you've lost them. And in this case, I answer 'no'. As in, "No, I don't remember when marketers with the biggest budget usually got the biggest customer base. And neither does anyone who started practicing advertising and marketing at any point following the Johnson administration."

Second, um, huh? This is compelling copy? Do they think I - or any marketer who has reached a point in their career where they are a decisionmaker - or even an influencer regarding such software - was actually sitting at their desk, thinking, "Geez, if only I could spend more on a wildly chaotic, unstructured campaign that lacks any sense of accountability, like the guys on Mad Men"?

"What despair. I guess we'll just be second rate until I can get more money from the CFO."

Not so much.

Here's what's wrong with marketing today: Even a marketing-centric company can't piece together decent marketing copy, relying instead on empty platitudes, because they don't understand that their target audience is far more sophisticated than they give them (us) credit for.

What might be worse: Perhaps marketers still aren't all that sophisticated, and this company's copy is more on-target than even I want to admit.

Fear and the American Consumer

In a recent article in his newsletter Drum Beat News, my colleague Jack Howe writes of the death of 'conspicuous consumption':

"Luxury buying is off in a major way - reports from Neiman's, Saks, and all top brand name retails report the same cut back from their consumers. So the company that must survive is making sure they offer solid business cases with every offer. Understanding the consequence of how the CEO, at the business your selling to, gets paid can pay off for you, the seller. As consumers, we are still spending, just not in the ways we were before. It is highly unlikely, given the cost of bailing us out of our current economic situation, that we will in our life time, see a return to what we knew as conspicuous consumption."

Interesting also is his observation in the same article that the increasing homogeneity of automobile design also points to the idea that 'standing out' is 'out'.

Whether or not I agree that recent poor auto design is a sign of a larger cultural shift, the apparent death of 'conspicuous consumption' is an interesting argument and worth evaluating from a marketing perspective. Given rising national and personal debt, a worldwide credit crisis, inflationary pressures on energy and food stuffs, plus the impact of environmental awareness and regulation, comfort with high levels of consumption no longer looks - or feels- 'right'. There are even anecdotal stories of monied customers foregoing store-branded shopping bags in order to keep a lower profile on their ill-timed retail therapy.

For years many marketers have relied primarily on brand prestige (associating personal attributes onto or from a product) and constancy (that is, 'I know what I'm getting', aka 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM') to maintain market share and margins. With the new normal of a slower consumer engine on the economy, we must re-evaluate what motivates customers now. I see these four are among the leading motivators:

Value: The rise of the big box discount chains, while suspect themselves in this era of the 'new normal', provide insight into consumers desire to buy in bulk, reduce packaging, and generally 'stock up' in what is perceived to be a very volatile period in our history.

Necessity: Discretionary spending is off, minimalism is in. Name your own example: Even here in truck-crazy Texas, Hummers are criticized, while the sparse Prius hybrid is envied. Vacations are out, staycations are in.

Savings: Once arguably in negative territory, personal savings in the United States has turned to a pace not seen in years, some estimates now as high as 4%. Anti-debt radio personality Dave Ramsey has a slogan that says it best: "...the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice."

Fear: Arguably the previous three motivators are a result of fear to one degree or another. But this is a non-specific, generalized fear of a quickly shifting geo-political and economic landscape. Remember what happened to action movies after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989? Stallone had to find new enemies because the Ruskies were our pals. It was easy in an earlier era when Russians were the bad guys and we had a collective target for our enmity. But the new political environment, unnamed terrorists have exacted far more damage to our lives and psyches in the last decade than the Russians did in the prior fifty years.

Once, leveraging FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) was the last refuge of marketers unable to sell a product or solution on merits. Today, it seems to be the self-imposed primary motivation of consumers. And in a world where banks are bankrupt, car manufacturers are nationalized, real estate is no longer an inflation hedge, terrorists have us disrobing to get on an airplane, and the national debt clock needs more light bulbs, who could blame them?

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