The Quisenblog

If you heard that a TV spot for a fashion discounter was banned by some stations, you’d be excused for thinking it was because it was deemed a bit too sexually suggestive.

However, stations in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Baton Rouge, Birmingham and Seattle (Seattle?) rejected this spot from K&G Fashion Superstore for being a parody of a 911 call:

My question is, how can you not tell it’s a put-on? The transcript running over the call and the over-the-top pitch of the caller’s voice are dead giveaways. And when she pleads “He took my money and all I got was this dress,” I mean, come on.

The fact that these TV stations took it upon themselves to censor this ad because of their fear that “some folks out there won’t get it or might be offended” is a classic example of the “30% Rule” I blogged about a few months back (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102586). In their attempts to protect “some of us,” the stations made a decision for all of us to “opt out” of this communication.

Sure, some folks might not get it or think it’s in bad taste. (If that’s the only criteria stations used, they could justifiable ban every beer, pharmaceutical and weight loss spot out there, not to mention some of what shows up on the evening news).

I’m not defending the spot on the age-old “slippery slope” grounds, or even because I think it’s a worthwhile concept. Rather, I’m bringing it up because actions like this run totally contrary to the transparency demanded by today’s media consumer.

The Internet has retrained all of us to understand that the consumer is in control. And any attempt at controlling the communication (and censorship is the ultimate means of trying to control the communication) isn’t kosher in this day and age.

Like it or not, the viewer is in control. Let her decide what’s appropriate. If she doesn’t get it or is upset by it (and some will be), let her take whatever action is deemed appropriate. But minus some sort of tangible violation of decency standards, don’t make the decision for her.

Or she might just ban you.

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Mickey Uncategorized 911, advertising, censorship, consumer control, K&G, marketing, Media, parody, TV

Hi everyone,

Here is an article I thought you might find interesting, regarding engaging moms online.

Have a great day,

Mickey

The Church-State Divide

by Cheryl Wilbur

A hot topic among editors and publishers both cyber and paper these days is how the traditional lines between content and ad messaging are being blurred. While the American Society of Magazine Editors polices the separation of the two in the magazine world, it’s been a little more like the Wild West online.As digital content matures and attracts broader audiences, increasing shares of marketing budgets and more frequent requests from advertisers for content integration, pressure is on for similar restrictions on the Web. Why? To protect the consumer, of course; to make it clear to her when she is reading “unbiased” editorial content versus “paid” and therefore slanted messaging.

Is this necessary?

When it comes to moms, the answer is, not so much. Moms pride themselves on being savvy consumers who can sniff out a poseur brand. Remember how your mom always seemed to know when you were being less than truthful? And how she said you had to behave in a trustworthy manner if you wanted more freedom? Those rules apply now that you’re all grown up and trying to sell stuff to her. You can use content to engage her, with the following caveats:

1. Don’t be a name dropper

Moms give more cred to advice from marketers than that from celebrity moms. Be the conduit for information from other moms and from your own experts, but be wary of relying on star power.

Q: How interested are you in tips and ideas for moms from the following sources online? (Answering extremely or somewhat interested):

Other moms like me, 92%
Authorities and experts, 82%
Marketers of products I buy, 49%
Celebrity moms, 19%

2. Do stick to your knitting

The marketers that have her trust have worked to earn it, by making good products, offering relevant advice within their area of expertise, and ideas that she can access on their websites. Don’t try to be the voice of authority in areas where she’s not used to seeing you.

Q: How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (Answering agree strongly or somewhat):

There are some companies who have earned my trust as a source of information, 83%
I’ll use advice and tips from marketers as long as they stick to their knitting; diaper companies can tell me about potty training, formula companies about nutrition, etc., 67%

3. Don’t play coy

Moms welcome tips and ideas from you, so you needn’t don sheep’s clothing to deliver them. Reach out to her with a taste of this content through appropriate web channels and leave your calling card. She’s confident in her ability to decide whether to take your advice, in fact only 9% of moms told us they tune out sponsored content.

Q: How do you feel about articles you find online that are “brought to you by” a marketer?

I’m ok with this, as long as the source is clear, so I can decide how much credence to give it, 47%
I’m wary, but if it’s on a Web site I trust, then I might read it, 17%
I’m fine with this from marketers who I know and trust, 14%
I’m happy to consider input from any and all sources , 13%
I tune out as soon as I see that it’s sponsored information, 9%

The bottom line: It’s about relevance and transparency

There is huge opportunity for marketers to share the role of content providers in the mom space — by talking about what they know best and clearly identifying themselves. Respect her, know her, earn her trust, and you’ll pass the sniff test.

The Parenting Group “gets” moms in part from an ongoing dialogue through our proprietary MomConnection® panel (www.momconnection.com), an online research community built in 2003, that goes beyond reader panels to offer insights representative of the full mom market.

The Web site serves as a 24/7 resource and “home” for 5,000 panel members, with survey results, a bulletin board, chats, press pickups of surveys and site updates. MomConnection’s vibrant online community has yielded insights leveraged by TPG, clients and agencies in over 200 surveys and polls since its inception.

Link to Article:  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103978

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Mickey Ramblings advertising, marketing, MediaPost, selling

When I say “beverage bottle,” you no doubt have an image that comes to mind. Maybe it’s clear. Maybe it’s colored. Maybe it is plastic, or maybe it’s glass. Maybe it holds 12 oz. or 24 oz. But chances are you see the same basic shape and form as everyone else.

Everyone except for Stephan Linfoss, that is.

Linfoss is an entrepreneur in Finland who is having us rethink what a bottle is all about. And by rethinking the bottle, we’re forced to rethink everything associated with it—from what goes in it to how it is disposed to what its role is in our lives.

Linfoss describes his bottle as being “bagel shaped.” It is round, made of clear environmentally-friendly plastic and is reusable. Plus, it functions in ways ordinary bottles cannot. It can be stacked in the refrigerator, saving space. It can be attached to a belt or purse. But the most compelling feature of the Linfoss bottle is how it connects with people.

People are drawn to it. People want to touch it, inspect it, and see how it works. It puts a smile on people’s faces. And they can’t wait to show it to others.

If I were Coca Cola, I’d buy Linfoss’s design in a New York minute, no matter what the cost. Because as soon as consumers see that cool bottle at the point of sale or in the cold box, it’s game over. This bottle could do more to affect the sales of Coke (or whatever new product the beverage maker chose to put in it) than a $20 million ad campaign.

This design is a wonderful lesson in approaching a situation with a “beginner’s mind.” Linfoss points out that specialization and insider knowledge can be the enemies of breakthrough thinking. “You don’t want to have too much knowledge of the industry as a designer,” he says. “(Knowledge) prevents you from flying high enough.”

The bottle as we know it has existed pretty much in its current form for more than 150 years. If it didn’t exist in its current form today, we very well would approach the problems of “creating a commercial beverage container” quite differently. Given the technologies and materials available today, if you were asked to design a container from the ground up, you could easily arrive at the conclusion a bagel-bottle would be far more functional than a standard shaped bottle.

If something as simple and ubiquitous as a bottle can be “evolutionized,” then you have to accept the possibility that almost anything can be. And that—the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there is another, better, more engaging way of providing the most mundane piece of our offerings—is the whiff of possibility that gives us permission to dream about what would happen if we “set our conventions and knowledge aside” and truly created.

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Mickey Uncategorized advertising, creativity, ideas, marketing, product package, radically unique

You’re not in the business of selling a product or service. You’re in the business of creating stories. The stories of customers who do business with you. Stories they can take with them and remember the next time your name is mentioned.

Long after the purchase is over and the reason they decided to buy your product, use your service or shop your establishment is long forgotten, one thing won’t be forgotten: the story. How did they feel when they did business with you? Was it an experience that stood out for them? Was there something there that made them feel special? That made them feel like you got them?

The thing is, stories happen whether you intend them to or not (we can all recall disappointing stories, right?). So why not think ahead and see if there’s something you can do to create a story that is not only unique, but will have the customer talking about it in her circle for days, months or years afterward.

Here’s an example of helping to create a memorable story:

It is a video of a flight attendant named David who works for Southwest Airlines. He was able to take that boiler-plate boarding announcement we all try to ignore on every flight, and turn it into an opportunity for engagement with the airline, and a story that will be remembered by passengers and passed on to others.

If you want confirmation that this created a memorable story, just check how often this video was viewed on YouTube. Or, simply just check out the burned out businessmen in the front rows joyfully participating in the rhythm section.

Southwest didn’t script David. Nor did they tell him he had to do this. But here’s what the airline’s execs did do: they understood that their real business wasn’t the airline business. It was the hospitality business. They might not be able to control departure and landing times, weather delays, FAA requirements and the surly TSA folks who make you take off your shoes and dump out your shampoo. About the only control the airline does have is what it does to engage passengers while they’re held captive in a metal tube 35,000 feet in the air. As such, they hire the most outgoing, entertaining, people-loving folks they can find, teach them a little about running an airliner, then set them loose to surprise and delight.

And create stories.

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Mickey On Customers, Ramblings advertising, customer service, marketing, selling, Southwest, Spokane

What could be more ironic than this? A so-called digital media “expert,” who when sent to present to a Fortune 500 company on social media, gets bit on the butt by…you guessed it…social media.

It happened recently when an executive named James Andrews from Ketchum in New York posted an unflattering Twitter entry while en route to present to the worldwide communications group at FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee. Andrews tweeted:

No doubt Mr. Andrews was playing to his buddies back in New York. But this particular microblog blew up in his face. Turns out a FedEx employee found it online and forwarded it up the ladder to much of the FedEx corporate brass. The shake out was swift and sure. To say Mr. Andrews presentation was not well received would be an understatement. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this 24 word entry costs Ketchum a major piece of business. At the very least, it would make any thinking executive question the agency’s “expert status” when it comes to social media.

This is a great lesson on the power of social media and the Internet. Once you put something out there, it’s out there, for all eternity. It’s sorta like being overheard at a cocktail party, except there are 80 million people who might have heard you, and your conversation is recorded for all future guests, in case they missed it.

These days, anything you say online (or anything that is said about you online) is a simple Google search away from everyone. And we mean everyone. Your customers. Your employees. Your co-workers. Your boss. That account you just pitched. That employer you just interviewed with. Your second grade teacher. Your cousin in Wenatchee. Everyone.

So maybe you oughta think twice before putting those drunken photos from Cabo on Facebook. Or sending that vitriolic rant to the local paper in support of marijuana decriminalization. Or, in Mr. Andrews case, making disparaging remarks about the hometown of one of your key clients.

To sum it all up, you are what you post.

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Mickey New Media advertising, marketing, microblog, Social Media, Spokane, Twitter

One of the things I love about technology is that every so often, you’ll come across something so amazing, intuitive and unique that adds real value to your life. I came across one of those things last week, in the form of a web site called Tabbloid.

If you’re like me, you probably subscribe to a number of interesting blogs and e-newsletters. Problem is, after a while, my inbox gets a little unruly, and it’s a challenge to keep organized or make sure I haven’t missed anything. Hence Tabbloid. Tabbloid is a way to manage your incoming blogs, e-newsletters and other RSS feeds. You just type in the URL, set the intervals you’d like to receive them (you can even specify the exact time of day) and Tabbloid emails you a customized PDF of the most recent editions of your favorite blogs, organized much like a newspaper. You can read it on your computer screen (with the embedded links still live) or you can print it out for on-the-go reading.

So who is responsible for Tabbloid? None other than Hewlett-Packard. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? HP, whose core competency is printing the written word, coming out with a great reason to print the written word. Is Tabbloid going to be responsible for the sales of thousands of more laser jets? It’s debatable. But what it does do is give users a very good reason to acknowledge that paper is still an imperative part of the office environment, regardless of all the talk of the “paperless office.”

An ongoing challenge in marketing is to continually find interesting, unique, surprising ways to execute your Brand Vision. Sort of like HP did with Tabbloid.

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Mickey Uncategorized advertising, marketing, print, RSS, Social Media, Spokane, Tabbloid

Hey, every business has customers they would like to churn out. Sometimes these customers cost too much to maintain. Other times, they just don’t purchase. Either way, you’d prefer it if they just went away. But what do you do about them?

Usually, you have two choices. You can do nothing, in which case the customer will keep bleeding you unless by some miracle he drops off on his own. Or, you can show her the exit, usually by adding some sort of “pain point” that makes it too expensive or too much of a hassle to continue. In either case, you’re not exactly creating a good “story” for the customer to tell later.

American Express, though, is trying something all together different. The company is actually paying some customers to cancel their credit cards. No kidding. The company announced plans to pay some cardholders $300 to leave (these are their least profitable customers). The company could have canceled the cards on its own. Or it could have raised its fees to the point where these customers would scream foul and take off. But execs at American Express figured those options didn’t really jibe with the company’s core values and its Brand Vision.

Paying customers to leave may cost the company money in the short run, but it is creating good will and upholding an image American Express has spent several decades crafting. Coldly firing customers with no thought or consolation was a story American Express didn’t want told about itself.

To me, this is an example of extending a Brand Vision into areas you wouldn’t originally think of. The most optimal use of a Brand Vision is to use it as a “filter” through which to pass not only marketing and communication issues, but operational concerns as well. This ensures you “walk the talk.” And American Express is walking it in style.

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Mickey On Customers advertising, American Express, brand vision, customer service, marketing, Spokane

I had one of those “ah-ha” moments a few weeks back. You know, one of those little gems that when taken out of context has an almost existential impact on you.

I was reading a story in the newspaper about some fraternity buddies who fell out of touch with one another. The article’s author wrote about how he had known of one of his fraternity brothers’ cancer for a few years, but didn’t contact him because he had no idea what to say after such a long absence and felt awkward. At that point, another frat brother chastised him with this comment: “Let the mistakes we make be mistakes of action, not mistakes of non-action.”

That got me to thinking: how many of the mistakes we make in marketing are due to inaction? How many promising ideas or initiatives did we back off from? This is a business that is supposed to be about “bold ideas,” yet often we’re far too comfortable with the status quo, or too cautious to weather a challenge, to act on them. Then, in a few months, we may read how one of our competitors just did such-and-such, and we moan, “Hey, we had that idea last year!”

Ideas without action are like a kite without wind. No matter how pretty they look, you’ll never know what their true potential is.

So this year, as a belated New Year’s resolution, I invite you to join me in taking the pledge to “be bold.” To act. To acknowledge that I am going to make mistakes, but at least they will be mistakes of action.

You know it’s the right thing to do. But (here’s the irony of it) will you act on it?

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admin Ramblings advertising, ideas, marketing, mistakes, Spokane

The biggest upset at the Super Bowl? No, it wasn’t the Arizona Cardinals beating the spread. To me, it was that the top-rated commercial during the broadcast was created not by some hotshot creative team at some gargantuan Omnicom agency. But rather by a couple of brothers from Batesville, Indiana.

Joe Herbert and his brother Dave are living the ultimate ad guy dream. The spot they submitted to Doritos for their “Crash the Super Bowl” contest not only won $25,000 for being one of five finalists picked by Doritos to air during the Super Bowl. It also scored the brothers Herbert a cool million dollars for coming out on top in USA Today’s annual Super Bowl “Ad Meter.” (USA Today’s 2009 Ad Meter: Best Super Bowl Commercials) The self-produced spot beat out 10-year incumbent Budweiser for top honors.

The spot purportedly was produced for less than $2,000 and was shot at a local YMCA.

How refreshing! It renews my faith in this business when two guys with a simple, well-produced idea can whup star creative teams from global agencies with all their focus groups, big name Hollywood directors, mega-million dollar effects budgets and PR hype machines.

Of course, Doritos scored big, too. The attention the client garnered by sponsoring the contest along with the post Super Bowl ad reviews gave the client a great return on its investment.

Thank you, Joe and Dave, for reminding us that in marketing, great ideas rule. And such things as big names, big budgets and big egos really mean very little.

Just don’t come to our office expecting free Doritos.

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admin Media Ad Meter, advertising, Doritos, marketing, Spokane, Super Bowl, TV

Back when I was just starting out in this business back in the 1980s, I started a file of interesting articles and ads I’d come across. Over the years, I’ve updated it often. The other day, I was going through it, and found a yellowed, tattered page I stuffed in there some 20 years ago. It was an ad that ran in Adweek magazine. The ad was for an agency called Kresser & Robbins and was written by one of the agency’s principals, Bud Robbins. I kept that ad because of the story it told. I find it as relevant today as it was back in the days before 500 channels, the Internet, social media and viral buzz. With appreciation to Bud Robbins, I’d like to reprise it here. It’s a little long, but I believe you’ll find it worth your time.

“Looking for the Capo d’astro bar.”

By Bud Robbins

Back in the sixties, I was hired by an ad agency to write copy on the Aeolian Piano Company account. My first assignment was for an ad to be placed in The New York Times for one of their grand pianos. The only background information I received was some previous ads and a few faded close-up shots…and of course, the due date.

The Account Executive was slightly put out by my request for additional information and his response to my suggestion that I sit down with the client was, ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those? Can’t you just create something? We’re up against a closing date!’

I acknowledged his perception that I was one of those, which got us an immediate audience with the head of our agency.

I volunteered I couldn’t even play a piano let alone write about why anyone would spend $5,000 for this piano when they could purchase a Baldwin or Steinway for the same amount.

Both allowed the fact they would gladly resign the Aeolian business for either of the others; however, while waiting for the call, suppose we make our deadline.

I persisted and reluctantly, a tour of the Aeolian factory in Upstate New York was arranged. I was assured that ‘we don’t do this with all our clients’ and my knowledge as to the value of company time was greatly reinforced.

The tour lasted two days and although the care and construction appeared meticulous, $5,000 still seemed to be a lot of money.

Just before leaving, I was escorted into the showroom by the National Sales Manager. In an elegant setting sat their piano alongside the comparably priced Steinway and Baldwin.

‘They sure look alike,’ I commented.

‘They sure do. About the only real difference is the shipping weight—our is heavier.’

‘Heavier?’ I asked. ‘What makes ours heavier?’

‘The Capo d’astro bar.’

‘What’s a Capo d’astro bar?’

‘Here, I’ll show you. Get down on your knees.’

Once under the piano, he pointed to a metallic bar fixed across the harp and bearing down on the highest octaves. ‘It takes 50 years before the harp in the piano warps. That’s when the Cap d’astro bar goes to work. It prevents warping.’

I left the National Sales Manager under his piano and dove under the Baldwin to find a Tinkertoy Capo d’astro bar at best. Same with the Steinway.

‘You mean the Capo d’astro bar really doesn’t go to work for 50 years?’ I asked.

‘Well, there’s got to be some reason why the Met uses it,’ he casually added.

I froze. ‘Are you telling me that the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City uses this piano?’

‘Sure. And their Capo d’astro bar should be working by now.’

Upstate New York looks nothing like the front of the Metropolitan Opera House where I met the legendary Carmen, Rise Stevens. She was now in charge of moving the Metropolitan Opera House to the Lincoln Center.

Ms. Stevens told me, ‘About the only thing the Met is taking with them is their piano.’

That quote was the headline of our first ad.

The result created a six-year wait between order and delivery.

My point is this. No matter what the account, I promise you, the Capo d’astro bar is there.”

Bud’s right, every product has its Capo d’astro bar. And if it doesn’t, you must create it. Not in an ad, a jingle or a tag line. But in the value you add for your customer. It needs to be something that makes your offerings unique, meaningful and real. Something that separates you from your commodity competition. That adds customer value in a way that others have yet to think of.

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admin Media, Ramblings advertising, Bud Robbins, customer value, marketing, Spokane