Search the Archives

  • How are you getting educated?

    Posted on April 30th, 2009 by Justine and currently 5 commenting.

    When my younger brother graduated from high school, he and I had several discussions about his college choice. His top choice was Tulane. Tulane’s not just a good school - it’s a great school. And it’s hard to argue with a 21-year old that there’s a downside to spending four years in New Orleans, which makes most “college towns” look like a kiddie day care. Katrina wouldn’t hit til a year later, so that didn’t factor in. My only hesitation was the cost. Like most private schools today, Tulane is very expensive. And even though my brother qualified for an academic scholarship, it was still going to be more expensive than University of Georgia - which for him could have been free (thank you lottery players).

    My argument was simple: Tell Dad you’ll save him the tuition costs and go to UGA if he gives you $10k a year. Take the money and go each summer somewhere in the world you always wanted to go. Go see the Parthenon, Pyramids, Great Wall, instead of looking at them in a text book. Invaluable. Hell… looking at what I’ll have to save to send my kids to a private college, community college + a hefty gift certificate to EF College Break is looking like a better and better strategy.

    My husband’s a professor now and seeing a lot of kids who have spent their whole lives preparing for college, excelling in the classroom. They have all the tools, lingo, test-taking skills - what they don’t have is a fresh idea. They lack perspective, and they haven’t developed any passion for what they want to do with their lives.

    Is there a lesson in here somewhere for us marketers? Maybe it’s a stretch, but I would ask a single question: what is the best education for becoming a marketing ‘professional’? I run into a lot of marketing experts who know everything there is to know about the tools of marketing, know all the theory, boil marketing and branding down to a “science” - but have little to no understanding of basic human behavior. Maybe they have just spent too much time relying on the myriad of insight tools with “TMs” after them and not enough time outside of the marketing classroom. Not enough time making the cutstomer’s environment their office for the day.

    If all airline executives had to fly coach, do you think air travel would stay the same? If the head of every cable company in America had to call his own customer service department every day, would we still have hour long waits and disconnects? If everybody who worked on a marketing team for a consumer products company had to do a typical family’s grocery shopping every week, would they realize the insanity of a whole aisle of bread and soda options or 75 varieties of toothbrushes.

    To all you marketers out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what experience prepared you the most for your job - or gave you the best ideas and/or passion for what you do.

    Tags: , ,

  • A Brand’s Best Friend - Part 2

    Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Spike and currently 1 commenting.

    A couple of weeks ago, Geno posted a primer to his talk in San Francisco at the New Comm Forum about the new way to define brand ambassadors. And in talking to some of our clients, we’ve come to realize that the best way to really look at brand ambassadors is as a best friend. And that really got my wheels turning this week.

    From Geno’s post, he quoted Suzanne Fanning (a client and friend of ours), who said: “…and like any friendship, it is two-way.” She also said that the rules of friendship apply. Allow me to expand:

    1. Best friends don’t “use” one another. So take that word out of your vocabulary altogether. You don’t try and get your best friend to do things for you. You don’t try to manipulate your best friend. You might lean on them or ask them favors from time-to-time, but expect them to do the same.

    2. Best friends are as loyal as the day is long. No matter what. They stand beside each other in good times and in not-so-good times. But they are there. And not going anywhere.

    3. Best friends love each other despite their faults. In fact, they love each other because of their faults. Nobody is perfect. And best friends except that.

    4. Best friends keep their word. Whether it’s keeping a secret or doing what they say they will do, you can expect your best friend to be honest.

    5. Best friends value one another. They know it takes a certain kind of person to love them, so they value that special relationship and won’t forsake it for anything.

    Best friends are rare. How many “best friends” do you have? I can count mine on one hand. These are the people I would trust with my life. I have a lot of friends. But just a few I hold close. And I really believe that’s how we should look at best friends for our companies. Have a lot of friends, but keep those best friends close. Because as long as you never let them down, they’ll be sure and do the same.

    Tags: , , , ,

  • What FREE will get you

    Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Spike and currently 10 commenting.

    There’s a school of thought out there that we’re seeing more and more these days: free.

    I’ve talked about it before. (In fact, almost exactly a year a ago.)

    If you’ve been living in a hole somewhere, IHOP I mean, Denny’s has given away breakfast a couple of times this year already. And yesterday, KFC gave away grilled chicken sandwiches in hopes that people would realize that there is, in fact, something inside their doors that’s not fried.


    I won’t argue that free gets “butts in seats.” Because it does. But free doesn’t keep them there. Free used like IHOP and KFC used it is a short-term tactic that wreaks of desperation. They got a spike in mentions and sales, and then the freeloaders are out the door and on their way, looking for the next sucker who might be giving a handout.

    You know, the most respected brands out there don’t do FREE. Because they don’t need to. They value their brand and value their product and have some freakin’ respect for who they are and what they deliver. When you offer free, you are automatically devaluing yourself. When you give away 1.5 million products, are you really building a relationship? Are you really connecting with your customers? Free holds no value - literally.

    So leave free alone. Use it as a surprise and delight to those customers who are your brand’s friends. Create value WITH free, not throw it away because of free. Because free can be your friend, but it can also send you to the depths.

    *Image credit to anika, via Flickr.

    Tags:     , , , ,

  • What will it take to think long term?

    Posted on April 27th, 2009 by Justine and currently 6 commenting.

    It’s pretty easy to get down on marketing as a discipline. You don’t have to read many blogs these days to hear a litany of frustrations about marketing’s short-sightedness - from its reluctance to recognize consumers as people to its unfortunate habit of quickly relaxing back into decisions driven by immediate ROI rather than long-term significance.

    I’m guessing I’m not the only one who occasionally feels a pang of guilt for playing a role in what has become a highly intrusive and overwhelming enterprise. Half of my mail is complete junk advertising that never gets looked at once. I can’t enjoy any semi-organized event without seeing sponsors’ logos plastered everywhere. Then there’s the fact that it takes me 5 minutes to find the plain old peanut butter that I like on the shelf because there’s about 100 choices and the labels seem to change every week. And then the reality that even after looking for 5 minutes I get home and half the time I still have the wrong kind.

    My personal belief is that marketing bears a heavy responsibility for contributing to our culture of (over)consumption. It’s also really hard to justify helping people sell something that is bad for you or just wasteful, whether that’s cigarettes, sugar-laden drinks or even just a crappy plastic toy that’s going to break and get thrown away. And there’s no doubt in my mind that marketing works subliminally meaning that you’re going to be influenced whether you want to or not.

    So maybe it’s just the Catholic in me, but I do feel guilty every now and then. Few of us would argue that marketing needs a paradigm shift - a big one. If you’re reading this blog you’re probably a kindred spirit who isn’t very passionate about doing traditional marketing. It lacks meaning. And its only purpose is to sell, sell, sell. So why does it seem like we spend so much time beating our heads against the wall to get people to see a bigger long-term vision?

    I once asked a colleague of mine who used to direct marketing for Coca-Cola why they came out with a new flavor every few months. His answer was pretty direct - it was the easiest way to get a bump in sales to hit their quarterly numbers. I wouldn’t try to imply that this is a conscious strategy for Coke, but it did make me think about what would it take for marketing to think long-term. It made me realize that what we really need to change is the whole way that businesses operate. As long as companies are driven by short-term stock price, the dynamic isn’t going to change and marketing is (understandably) going to follow suit.

    So what is the paradigm shift for the corporate sector? Is it about being driven by a higher purpose rather than just profit? Is it even possible for capitalism to co-exist with the idea of foregoing short-term profit for long-term relationships? I’d like to think that there is a model where the objective isn’t to get as rich as possible, but just make enough money to be a healthy enterprise, giving back everything else to the community - including giving me back my time by making a conscious choice NOT to market something to me just because you can potentially make a little bit more money off of it.

    Love to hear your thoughts…

    Tags: , ,

  • Fast Food vs. Home Cooked Meals (in Marketing)

    Posted on April 24th, 2009 by Spike and currently 2 commenting.

    Ah, fast food. Every once in a blue moon I’ll crave it. Go get it. And then pay for it dearly by feeling like crap for the rest of the day.

    And then there’s home cooking. Yummy. We all have our own stories of what mom or grandma or dad or Aunt Gertrude used to make that we loved so much. And those memories are powerful. A lot more powerful than what you got a Burger King last month.

    You know why?

    Fast food is convenient. Home cooking is labor intensive.
    Fast food is last minute. Home cooking is planned.
    Fast food is mindless. Home cooking is thoughtful.
    Fast food is mass produced and you’ll get the exact same thing the customer in front of you got and the same thing the customer behind you will get. Home cooking is different every. Single. Time. Because it’s made specifically for you and your tastes.
    Fast food is easy. Home cooking is hard.
    Fast food comes in little paper wrappers and you eat it in the car. Home cooking has leftovers that last for the week.

    I know we live in a convenience-driven world, but does that have to go for marketing as well? Do you really want an agency drive-up window that will give you exactly what they gave the client before you - and you’ll have to come back tomorrow for more?

    Home cooking in marketing beats fast food any day of the week. But it takes time. It’s unique to you. And last, but not least, it’s always, always worth it.

    Tags: , ,
« Older Entries