Lairig Marketing

"It’s Done. It’s Done."

Qouth William Daniels as John Adams in 1776, as the vote for American independence passed the Continental Congress and the Declaration was approved.

And so say I, for the Lairig Marketing blog. Loyal readers will know this is not the first time I’ve reached this point, but finally after 12 months I see the light. What can I say - I’m a slow learner.

And an idealist.

This blog launched January 3rd, with the intent of providing perspective you couldn’t get elsewhere, the metaphor of "lairig" meaning to follow your own path, not the herd. By definition, though, that made building a sustained readership (i.e., a small herd at least) near impossible.

When it comes to Marketing, the overwhelming majority of blog readers prefer the latest digital trends, social media, meta discussions about agency sausage, and hero worship. What I offer is mundane and way off topic. It took a long time to admit it.

I’ve done everything the text books suggest to build readership, with the lone exception of mutual masturbation of fellow bloggers. To me, that stands in opposition to "following one’s own path."

Although immensely time consuming (since I strove for high quality), it was fun creating 200-some posts on topics of every stripe, and I appreciate loyal readers’ support along the way. Cheers to you for the New Year.

Marketing is a strange beast, so indulge me this parting wisdom.

Resist the tidings of “gurus” like Deutsch, Popcorn, and Passikoff, as well as the dozens upon dozens of social media yogis who are sprung on a daily basis from whole cloth. Try not to be deceived by “commentary” and blogs that are nothing more than public relations in drag. And best of luck with the TwitterNazis.

If you want a solid assessment of where things are headed, listen to customers and consumers. They get the first vote, the last vote, and all the votes in between. No one else matters.

“For if I’m the one to do it, they’ll run their quill pens through it…”

Your Obedient,

Kevin Horne

Heineken Good, Guinness Bad. No Taste Test Required.

Not sure what took so long, but after success in Europe and Asia, Heineken just opened its first branded “lounge” in a U.S. airport. God knows Newark’s Terminal C could use a distraction or two to keep passengers from realizing how small they are. The Heineken Lounge will feature free Wifi and, reportedly, “private cabanas.” Say what?

Continuing our earlier theme of experiential marketing, this is a smart marketing move by Heineken.

The Target
Yes, the brewer caught the travel industry at a bad time, but it is well documented that everyone who travels drinks. Even pilots have been known to imbibe just prior to boarding.

The Place
The only setting less uplifting than an airport terminal is a dentist’s waiting room. Heineken could have simply placed two fake palm trees around two kegs in a broom closet and improved on the sterile environment that is today’s “modern” airline terminal. Kudos to Delaware North, the company that helped Heineken pull this off.

The Customer Life Stage
OK, so this isn’t like going from marriage to retirement, but sometimes you feel as if you have passed through a life stage or two waiting and waiting and waiting for your plane. The airport experience stinks on ice, and there’s nothing better than a cold brew to mark the occasion(s). The lounge opens at 9 AM daily. QED.

The Verdict
If just 1% of the passengers who visit the lounge catch themselves the next time they’re about to order at the hometown bar and say, “wait, let me have a Heineken draft instead,” then Heineken should be doing cartwheels.

Guinness, Schmuinness
On the other hand, Guinness wins the “Tin Ear Asshat Award” for its current TV spot showing young revelers going back to work after a night at the pub and playing with the lights across the top-four floors of their office tower. Here we are in the middle of “Green” and an energy crisis, and Guinness thinks it cool to flick lights on and off.

Which goes to show ya…a funny drunk is always drunk, but not always funny.

Why The Pet Industry Is So Big - An Ode To My Little Black Cat

Ever wonder how the U.S. pet industry grew to an estimated $40 billion in annual sales? How could people spend that amount of money on food, toys, veterinary care, medicines, and other sundry items?

Because you can find a cat on the street when she’s 3-months old and make her a part of your family for 19 years.

Because even though cats sort of look and act the same, deep down each has his or her own unique personality.

Because you might get tired of your pets sometimes, but they never get tired of you.

Because a cat can recognize your footsteps coming up the lobby stairs and be at the door before you open it.

Because a cat can understand what the first twist of a can opener’s knob means.

Because some cats can learn to like a two-hour drive in the car to the country house.

Because if a cat could talk, she would say your four favorite words: “let’s take a nap.”

Because no matter how bad your day was, when you get home your cat will love you like she has everyday for 19 years.

Because a cat can make a grown man blog.

Because a cat does not go easy unto death.

Because you can wake up every morning and your cat will be right there. Until one morning when she isn’t.

Because a cat can break your heart when you first meet her, and then do it again years later when you have to let her go.

Sleep in peace, little Pua. Nineteen years go by so fast. I’ll never forget you.

That spot by the pillow will always be yours, Pua. I’ll put my hand to it every night and pretend you are there. Sweet dreams.

Old People Rule !!!

On Saturday, Floyd Norris of the New York Times looked under the hood of unemployment data. And the world’s craftiest economist hit another home run.

Norris found that joblessness in this recession discriminates by age, with younger people suffering worst. Maybe no surprise there. But what he uncovered at the high (read: old) end of the spectrum was - there are more and more older people working (as opposed to UNemployed) each month.

This confirms something I referenced when I nominated Northwestern Mutual for co-winner of worst print ad of the year. Its god-awful creative of old people fly-fishing, golfing, floating in inner tubes…ALL IN ONE PICTURE. And could there be a worse time in history, other than the Great Depression, to be running around with the tagline “Let Your Worries Go” ???

As I said then, and the data show now, people are postponing retirement because they need to get to 65, never mind live beyond it.

Here’s the simple equation, in reverse:

• Retirement
• Nest egg
• Years of saving
• Income

If you don’t have income and savings, you can’t get nest egg and retirement. Simple.

I feel sorry for all the financial managers, planners and advisors who keep pounding the table on retirement. Witness Fidelity’s promotion of a “retirement” charge card, where you can earn 2% on current purchases, and apparently have enough to retire on, years from now. Which means just to get by on year-one of retirement, I must make around $3 million worth of charges to my card, every year, starting right now.

One more interesting data point: every two minutes in this country, another 15 people turn 60-years-old.

Two minutes. Roughly the amount of time in a whole year an older person spends thinking about retirement.

The Best Mutual Fund Customer Newsletter - Baron Funds

There was little opportunity to escape the carnage this year. Investors have nearly $10 trillion in U.S. mutual funds, which own about a quarter of the shares of U.S. companies. With rare exception, investors have significantly less money on account now than at the beginning of the year.

You would expect the newsletters we receive from our fund managers to go into some detail about what’s gone wrong and what plans they have to keep our remaining money safe…and maybe even how they intend to earn some of it back.

According to a recent item on Yahoo News, you would be wrong.

Most funds are acting as if the events of 2007/2008 are the normal ups and downs of the market. The article notes that no funds have gone negative on the financial services companies that got us into this mess - no bad write-ups in their customer newsletters and certainly no use of voting power to introduce needed corporate-governance reforms.

I receive newsletters from six fund companies. Over the past year, five of them have done nothing more than advise “stay the course,” and upsell and cross-sell as if I had the desire to throw good money after bad.

But the sixth newsletter has forever marched to its own beat. Baron Funds has only seven mutual funds. Yet each quarter I get ten times the information and analysis and reassurance than from the other five combined.

Baron’s newsletter isn’t written by professional copywriters nor outsourced nor delivered on glossy paper. It is written by Ron Baron and his fund managers. It goes into detail about the companies in each fund - how it makes money, why Baron has invested, and the medium to long-term outlook.

Stories, history, cornball jokes, and completely made up rules of punctuation, grammar and syntax. Therein lies its beauty. You feel like a part of the family.

If you want to know what Ron Baron thinks about what’s gone wrong this year, you can read it yourself. Unlike other fund companies who have dodged it, Baron pre-empted his third-quarter newsletter with the transcript of his speech at Baron’s annual investors conference. It is available at baronfunds.com. You don’t even have to be a customer to get access to it.

Sounds like a throwback to a distant time, no? Sometimes that’s the best kind of marketing there is.

Train(ing) In Vain

They say marketing is the first thing cut in hard times (who are “they” anyway?). Wrong. Training is.

So I must be near-mad to endorse both at once - marketing training.

Why talk about marketing training during a recession? Because: (1) if you have a job right now, you are not in a recession; (2) it’s a requirement for success, regardless of the economic environment.

Let’s look at two recent studies. Through its Marketing Leadership Council, the Corporate Executive Board surveyed 100 different marketing functions at 130 top companies. One of the top-three drivers of "breakout" success, or market-share growth near 30%, was “marketing talent focus.” Here’s an excerpt from CEB:

“…commitment to talent, even in the face of enormous pressure to divert resources to shorter-term needs. Specifically, these organizations prioritize the hiring and development of high-caliber talent rather than over-focusing on specialized skills, such as an expertise in specific emerging media.”

Hmmmmm, I wonder if that last sentence refers to “expertise” like social media?

In addition, at the end of last year McKinsey (the consultants, not the sex doctors) reported that two of the top-three obstacles 100 leading business executives cited as hindering talent-management success were related to lack of management support for, and leadership of, employee training.

If You Are The Boss
Look around at the employees you’re keeping. When was their last review? What specific skill sets were/are inadequate? What plans did you jointly make to address deficiencies? What novel, useful, cost-effective, strategic training opportunities can you come up with in the next six months?

When the hard times end, dissatisfied employees will leave, and a high percentage will be those you don’t want to see go. The poorly trained employees who remain will limit your future business opportunities.

If You Are The Employee
Do you want to grow? Do you want to add more value? How much of your current marketing role requires or allows you to think and act strategically? Do you think “on the job” learning is going to satisfy your needs?

Recession excluded, hiring and firing decisions will be made like always - add measurable, strategic value, get hired; or don’t, and get fired.

Don’t let the train(ing) leave the station without you.

Dear CMOs - Turn In Your Stinkin’ Badges

Well, another year has passed. Another year where pundits said CMOs will prove they have what it takes to sit at the big corporate table. That they would show us all they knew how to advance their brands, create demand effectively, work collaboratively with sales to generate profitable revenue, and leverage cutting-edge technology to prove Marketing adds value to the business.

And, now at the close of 2008, we can say another year of opportunity has passed CMOs by.

Exhibit A. The latest CMO Council survey of 650 heads of Marketing across the globe. I only have access to the abstracted findings, and I am glad for that. Who would want to see the detail behind things like this:

• Only 46% said they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value
• 60% said introducing better segmentation, profiling and targeting were the top ways they are trying to better engage core audiences
• Almost 50% said they need to add or improve database marketing systems

See the pattern here? You guys are afraid of data. Unable to invest the time to partner with the CIO and build the right performance tracking systems. Unwilling to make a decision by saying “Rather than pull something out of my ass again, let me have a look at the facts and get back to you.”

No data = no measurement = no clue as to what is working and what isn’t.

And then there was this gem:

"Making communications more personal and relevant, as well as more targeted and timely, was among the top strategies for realizing greater revenue and profitability from existing customers."

That is you job description, something you should be doing every minute of every day.

This CMO study was called, oddly enough, “Routes to Revenue.”

“Groundhog Day” is more like it.

Demand Trumps Supply. Still.

On the MarketingProfs experts forum recently, someone submitted a request for advice: I’m going to “launch a new online video guide/portal website worldwide & I'm looking for a tagline/slogan/website name.”

[Aside: The number of “slashes” in a sentence is inversely proportional to the strength of the idea.]

Later in the post, the requester says, “ive noticed that theres quite a few websites online that include online video guide or online video portal [sic, all of it]…”

It might seem like I’m picking on this guy, but this pretty much passes for marketing strategy nowadays. As an example - we don’t need any more health-related websites, but that didn’t stop the recent launch of “BeWell,” whose point of differentiation will apparently be its “high-profile” doctors. Ummm, does Dr. Koop ring a bell?

Here’s how most marketing strategies seem to develop in today’s world:

• See market.
• Enter market.
• Differentiate using “catchy name.”
• Wonder why business not succeeding.

Instead, the first few steps should go like this:

• See market.
• Conduct customer research.
• Conduct competitive research.
• Establish differentiation by delivering unique value.
• If prior point not feasible, go back to step 1.

We are overrun with too many video portals, health portals, blogs, social networks, even Twitter copycats. I call it the pedicab syndrome. Walk into Central Park any warm summer’s evening, and you’ll see a line up of pedicabs like so many mothballed aircraft in the Mojave. The drivers practically tackle unsuspecting tourists trying to get them to go for a ride.

I used to call it the magazine syndrome, where we have always had about 25% more journals than we needed. But the current economy is taking care of that one, in spades.

Supply and demand is a law, like gravity. You can’t beat it, not even with a “catchy name.”

The End of Big Business Run By Arrogant White Males ?

Two things business can’t leverage in times of slack demand - scale and arrogance.

A quick skim of the business wire the last two days tells you where scale gets you:

• Sony is slashing 8,000 jobs, 4% of its workforce
• Dow Chemical is eliminating 5,000 jobs, over 10% of its workforce, and closing 20 plants
• 3M announced it will cut 1,800 jobs in the fourth quarter
• AdAge ran a story on how Chicago ad agency JWT went from some 800 employees a few years ago to a staff of just 50 today

As for arrogance, the bumbling, chowderhead CEOs of Detroit’s automakers put on quite a display the past few weeks. I swear at one point during the Congressional testimony I saw Richard Wagoner channeling Donald Rumsfeld…(“you get the auto industry you deserve” ???)

How can scale not be the answer, when the likes of Bank of America have been asked to vacuum up the pieces and save us all? Let’s take a look at BofA’s 16 board directors.

• Four females = 25%
• One African-American = 6%
• One Hispanic-American = 6%
• Average age = 63

This is not a “scalable” demographic. And PS, I’ll bet you a dozen donuts in three to five years Bank of America’s financial supermarket will have been (re)carved out.

Arrogance will be tougher to deal with. The sense of entitlement, the rigid adherence to “the way we’ve always done it,” the shutting out of new inputs and dearth of fact-based decision making, the lack of interest in updating contextual frameworks.

Even though we are much better demographically speaking, the Marketing world still has far to go vis-à-vis arrogance. The heads of marketing finally have a seat at the adult’s table and aren’t about to let go. This takes us all on a lot of wild goose chases, down a lot of blind alleys (AOR redos, Twitter campaigns, user-generated content, etc.).

There is a hopeful sign, however. Today Novellus announced, in addition to the requisite job cuts, that its CEO Richard S. Hill will take a 50% pay cut and give up his bonuses and stock option grants for 2009.

Hmmmm…white, male, but not so arrogant. I’ll take it.

Experiential Marketing - That Old Black Magic

What’s old is new again, as some marketers rekindle that personal feel with customers. Offline. Real world. Face to face.

I know, how early 90s it all is, but picture yourself inside any of these stories:

1. In early November, BSH Home Appliances opened a training center in Scottsdale that the company says represents a shift in its marketing strategy into a year-round experiential focus. The BSH Gallery immerses builders, designers, and architects with fully operational appliances in working kitchens and laundry rooms featuring culinary sessions and product demonstrations. Each brand - Thermador, Siemens, Gaggenau and Bosch - has its own tailored experience space.

2. Just after Thanksgiving, Jordan’s Furniture of Reading, Massachusetts got together to build a special space inside a Jordan’s store resembling a home setting, where consumers can test out FiOS Internet and FiOS TV projected on a 192-inch flat screen TV.

3. As a takeoff on its Brand Saver coupon program, P&G launched some pop-up stores on Black Friday to showcase certain hair care and household brands where visitors can experience things such as a CoverGirl makeover, a Clairol Virtual Hair Color consultation, an Olay skin consultation, and demonstrations of Tide and Dawn 2X.

Again, nothing new, but it‘s nice to see marketers stick to the fundamentals and get a 1+1=3 or 4 dynamic.

• Don’t do it alone - partner with other brands and/or service providers
• Target unique value - the relevance of the experience for the user
• Communicate it - here is the Jordan/Verizon announcement as an example
• Layer the excitement - sustain it with events and complementary programs (such as P&G’s ongoing couponing program)

How do I know experiential marketing is a good thing? I only need this quote from my cabbie, er, I mean Bob Passikoff from 2003 about a related strategy for Viking grills:
“The issue is creating loyalty to a brand, and I don't know that giving consumers the ability to road-test something like a range or a dishwasher makes such a large contribution in terms of loyalty…” Correct. You don’t know.

Stick with Ol’ Blue Eyes, who told you what aim experiential marketing should have, from That Old Black Magic…“the same old tingle that I feel inside.”