Marketing-Fix: 100-Words-On

“So who saw Parade of the Art-imals?
None of you?  Why not?
What was missing?”

- Disney Institute Cast Member/Guide

There’s no denying the enduring legacy of Walt Disney’s creativity, Roy
Disney’s financial acumen and Michael Eisner’s “Disney Decade” of extraordinary
expansion.  They’re all visionaries.

While visiting Walt Disney World recently, the company’s devotion to execution
impressed us equally.

Three factors stood out – and seem universal to marketing success:

Perseverance – after choosing a direction, the team, or “the cast”, focuses
relentlessly on getting to market with extraordinary products.  Say, building
an amusement park in a swamp.

Evaluation – when projects launch, they review results immediately with a cool,
detached eye.  When attendance isn’t on par – they ask guests what’s missing,
like Disney characters in the Art-imals parade.

Adaption – little gets jettisoned.  Concepts get tweaked, winning ideas
re-purposed and hard assets recycled to get better results.
Why not release “The Lion King” in 3-D?

They take basic business tenets and execute superbly decade after decade.

OK Walt, we believe!

It’s a natural reaction.  We’ve all had it.  And it suggests a myopic tendency.

Before engaging an expert – who’s very possibly someone ‘just like’ you – consider two things:

Your customers probably aren’t you. How could they be?  You’re immersed in the details of telecommunications, apparel, insurance…whatever.  They’re seeking solutions not minutae.

Your customers expect you to be them. Ask questions, chat ‘em up, think like them.  Deliver what they want – concisely and fast.  They’ll be loyal customers and become fans.

With these in mind, how about finding experts at “wide-eyed innocence”? They can peer in, ask questions, focus, distill and deliver clarity.

As Roy Williams (the wizard of ads) suggests: we’re all uniquely unqualified to market ourselves.

Who’d market a product that:
“Tastes lousy! And is more filling!”?

It’s dating ourselves, but maybe Orson Wells for Paul Masson was right:  “Sell no wine before it’s time.”

What’s the obsession about rushing products to market before they’re ready?

Experts suggest: you’ve got to grab first mover advantage, defend market share or leverage an installed base.

All rationales provided for the Blackberry PlayBook – just one of many Apple iPad ‘clones.’  Universally, it’s been panned as: slower, heavier, clunkier and more limited than the iPad.

Another “Blackberry dud” many have called it.  They then lament continuing lose of share to Android devices, no new Blackberry operating system and a ‘losing management team’. OUCH!

It’s not true that all publicity is good. Recovering from a fumble is much harder than catching the leader with a better mousetrap.

Do yourself and your customers a favor – take the time to do it right!

“Listen, I know what our customers want, they’d never want [insert 'fact' here].  No offense, but that’s just a waste of time and money.”
-E Marketing Manager

“That is so…1951, and it’s 2011.”

According to Marketing Sherpa only 46% of electronic marketers actively test
emails, landing pages and such.  True or not – this amazes.

Testing’s never been easier, faster or cheaper than today. Two examples of simple, but powerful testing we’ve done recently:

* Subject-line testing limited to the difference between using ‘watch’ versus
‘see.’  Open rates improved almost 20% with ‘watch’ and click-throughs
increased 15%.

* Content-testing in retail emails that offered product details as bullets
versus paragraphs.  Conversions to sales improved 15% with using full
paragraphs – unexpected, but long a standard in ‘snail mail.’

We’re inclined to believe that we ‘know’ what works – understanding our
customers better than they do, but it’s not true.  From conducting focus groups
to quantitative research to multi-channel testing and being inquisitive wins.

P.S.  If you’re as intrigued by testing as we are check out: www.whichtestwon.com.  It’s fun, provocative and reinforces that our gut can be wrong.

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade and lemon pie”
-Anne White

Ugh, but then again…

I wonder: when problems hit, why not take quick, transparent action? Getting in front of challenges can change customer perceptions – dramatically.

This started with big problems – failing nuclear reactors – but crystallized with a minuscule one: upgrading Mac OS X knocked out our MAC-only database.

Had the vendor jumped on the problem, they’d have taken advantage of ‘sour lemons’ to look like heroes.  Their actions would have conveyed:

• We’re top of our game. Even without advance warning from Apple, when the problem arose, it would appear that they were monitoring and improving – on the spot.

• We care about our customers. They have customers’ emails.  Why not show they’ve ‘got our backs’ before we discover problems?

And from management’s perspective, we bet it would be cost-effective. Aren’t spikes in customer service needs disruptive and expensive?

Sigh. Gotta love that lemon pie!

P.S. Kudos to the service wizards at Philadelphia’s Springboard Media who fixed the ‘glitch’ in a flash.

“I don’t believe in yesterday.”

-John Lennon

but then again…

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

-Yogi Berra

Exceptional therapist and relationship expert Maya Kollman has wise thoughts about the past, present and future.  Pundits often suggest we focus on only one.

Kollman proposes that  to succeed, we all need to live in all three places.  Her reasoning:

• Living in the past keeps us from changing and growing.

• Living in the present prevents us from preparing for what’s coming next.

• Living in the future inhibits us from experiencing the present and adding to our knowledge.

Our thoughts:

• Mine the past. It’s full of lessons and examples.

• Stay attentive to the present. Observe what’s happening.  Use that to shape decisions.

• Dream big about the future. There’s no better way get where you want to go – in life or business – than stretching.

Here’s to a successful 2011.

“Great. For the price of good.”
-Volkswagen Passat billboard

We loved this headline for the new VW Passat. Hall-of-Fame worthy in our book – but why you might ask?

• It celebrates the product as better and different. Sometimes what we’re selling might not be objectively the best.  But a marketer’s job is buffing and polishing product benefits until there’s a reason to buy.

• It ignores the competition. Just up I-95 from the Passat billboard we saw this: “Mazda 323. What a Corolla wants to be.”  Ugh.  If the Mazda’s better – tell me; don’t even suggest I drive by a Toyota showroom and compare.

• It’s bold. The headline is catchy and concise.  And, it says the Passat is unequivocally fantastic and suggests that if I’m a savvy shopper – regardless of price point – I should consider a Passat..

Bottom line: The ad is Great… for the price of good.

“Kirk, we read these 100 words, but what do you do – exactly?”

OK, that smarted.

Then we wondered: How can businesses avoid being inward-focused self-referential when marketing themselves?

• Be Clear – be concise. We read by scanning, think in sound bites and write with tweets.  Marketing ‘targeted solutions’ with a dense 6-panel brochure or a
  website with 12 options isn’t targeted.

• Be Clear – avoid jargon. Explain what you mean.  DRIPs can be dividend or direct-mail programs.  VPVH – ‘viewers-per-viewing-household’ confused even our CMO friends.  And, they’re chief marketing officers – not chief merchandising officers.

• Be Clear – deliver specific benefits. Generalities tempt, but ‘easy and
  elegant’ could apply to an algebra proof, a casserole or – yes, a hotel.  Does
  ‘providing intelligent cost solutions’ mean anything?  Or just sound good?  Why not say: ‘We deliver cost savings. Guaranteed.’

Back to me, I’m a ‘marketing troubleshooter with a creative bent.’  Hope that’s clear.

Seen on a large billboard on I-76:

“We guarantee you top results for every search engine…

Call us at…”

Our first reaction was—huh?

Outdoor advertising has its place for many campaigns.  But to sell expertise in Search Engine Optimization, it seems dubious.

Three thoughts struck us:

• If we were looking for an SEO expert, we’d contact a pro, like Michael Stalbaum @ createtraffic.com—if not we’d be online googling various search terms.

• We’d want a strategic marketer. Using billboards to sell search doesn’t feel smart.  Billboards are broad-based and consumer-focused.

• We’d want a partner that optimizes our spend and ROI. Outdoor on a major highway can’t do that—it’s expensive and hard to measure.

Our take away:

Think smart.  Act smart.  Look smart. Accentuate and amplify what you’re great at before jumping into the unknown.

“Whatever.”

Colleague and wise art director Nick Mitchell suggested the phrase ‘emotional retirement’ describes those in business who’ve checked out long before official retirement age.

Symptoms of emotional retirement include:

• Dismissing possible success before investigating the facts—“our customers would never go for that.”

• Focusing on the downside before trying to succeed—“what if too many people respond and overwhelm the call centers?”

• Giving exactly what’s required or just a little less—“my work week is 38 hours. That’s it.”

There’s probably no simple cure, but we’d ask:

• Does criticism come from a constructive place? Or from approaching emotional retirement?

• Do others around sense this?

And most importantly:

• Everyone has enthusiasms how can we get them to bring those to work?