Lairig Marketing

Facebook Home Validates The Ol’ Portal – In Two Ways

Many, many Internet years ago, a few companies established websites chock-a-block full of different types of content. AOL, Yahoo and the like perfected what was then called a "portal." It meant exactly what it sounded like.

The portal circa-1998 was the Internet user's "way in," the first thing she passed through on her way to wherever she was going on the Web. It went by other names such as "home page" or "start page" or "launch page."

The word "portal" fell out of favor fairly quickly, even though the concept has been essential all along, for example, to Yahoo's ability to survive. In fact, if you said portal out loud during a meeting today, in a serious way, you would be laughed out of the room.

Yet, in a funny way, Facebook’s recent introduction of Home validates the strength of the portal concept. Different device this time, but same intent – you must “pass through” Home (or “suffer through,” based on the early reviews) to get to where you are going on your smartphone. From what we understand, Facebook executives did not use the term “portal” – lest they be bum-rushed off the stage.

Now, a couple of weeks post-launch of Facebook Home, we learn that a half-million people downloaded the “launcher app” (at least the word “launch” is still considered cool). On an absolute basis, that is a “wow” number. But relative to the 1 billion Facebook members, it is a “bow wow” number (0.05 %, if you are keeping score at home).

Which takes us to the second “way” of the portal alluded to in our headline: Facebook needs to get its user base to the Home portal/door. To accomplish that, it needs to give substantially more “ways in” to the “way in.”

This is the forgotten “Place” of the “4 Ps” of Marketing. Many think of it only as communications touch points. But Place also includes distribution – the method for physically getting your product in front of potential consumers.

The initial distribution of Home via pre-load on HTC hardware is a strong first step. Making it generally available as an Android app is a weak second step. It essentially equates to a “hit and hope” strategy, dependent on spreading via word of mouth.

Ask any of the hundreds of thousands of mobile app developers how likely that is.

A distribution strategy is essential for any product launch. You can try and build your strategy over time, but you will find many of the portals – your “ways in” to reach prospects – will long be closed off.

Should Target’s 2013 Target Be Your Target? (Part 2)

Here we are, a day late with Part 2 of our three-part series on Target’s business and marketing strategies for 2013. (See Part 1 here.) As a reminder, the underlying theme of this series is the advantage a strategist gets from reading a company’s quarterly earnings transcript.

It would be a definite advantage if you took a look at an article on Ad Age yesterday, in which some daft woman recommended that bricks and mortar retailers institute a Black Friday EVERY DAY so they can survive. Target’s recent earnings call reveals such advice as idiotic (unless a retailer was looking to go out of business as quickly as possible).

“Whoa,” you might say, “didn’t Target just announce it would 'match any price' - even of some online retailers (read: Amazon)? Isn’t that an indication it will take the daily-Black-Friday race to the bottom?"

Yes. And no. Dig this part of the earnings transcript:

“…that [price match] is such a very low portion of the total transactions…”

Stunner, eh? To think that very few customers, according to Target, actually force the issue on price at the register.

So, there goes your “showrooming” bullsh&t right with it. But we’re not done. Here was a bonus “showroom killer” comment:

“…following the launch of free wireless in all of our stores in the fourth quarter, Target.com was, by far, the site most commonly accessed by guests while they were shopping in our stores.”

Ponder that one, showroomers. Not Amazon.com. Not BigAssDealOfTheDay.com. Target.com

Better yet, Target understands the in-store experience is, will, and has to be, its competitive advantage over Amazon, et al. Again, to the earnings transcript we turn:

“…[we are] ending our current relationship with Radio Shack in our mobile phone business, and begin working with Brightstar…as our new in-store labor partner; demonstrates our continued commitment to mobile as a key element of our electronics offering, and we believe it will enhance Target’s position in the wireless retail marketplace.”

How come people don’t buy their new smartphones online? Where’s the showrooming there? Why aren’t we reading about “The End Of The Apple Store”? Ha. F&cking. Ha.

And even more:
“…last October we launched a test with Geek Squad to provide in-store service agents in 20 Denver Target stores. Based on positive feedback from our guests, Target expanded this test by offering Geek Squad service and replacement plans in 20 stores in Kansas City beginning February 17.”

Genius! Target takes the only thing Best Buy has going for it!

So take that, digital digerati. We say Target has taken the “showrooming” target off its back.

The Death of Ecommerce

Just for fun, we thought we’d write one of those foolish link-baiting headlines so popular nowadays (see content farms such as Business Insider, Mashable, Motley Fool and LinkedIn). But there are some valid reasons to consider how much more room ecommerce really has to run.

As much as we hate research that tracks behavior through consumer surveys (versus just tallying up real data that exists), we found this one interesting:

“Although online shopping has leveled off overall, the boomer generation has increased their online purchases – up 4.5% since 2011 – while millennials’ online purchase behavior has declined 7% from that time.”

Let us repeat that last bit:

“…millennials’ online purchase behavior has declined 7%...”

This comes to us from “ongoing shopper behavior” research conducted by The Integer Group (capital “T,” mind you) and M/A/R/C Research (slashes in between letters, mind you). Not top-of-mind sources, but solidly reputable. Their output also included this gem:

“Since January 2012…the percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds who say they've purchased any products online, even once, has dropped in all categories except books, music and tickets.”

It would be hard to argue that this is nothing but an economic outcome. Millenials have been particularly crushed in the current environment – no or low-paying jobs, living in Mum’s basement, drowning in school loans.

But since there is no relief in sight, and because they overindex as a percent of the total U.S. population, Millenials could be the future depressors of commerce generally, and ecommerce specifically.

One other data point to consider that we’ve not heard anyone bring up yet. From age 30 and up, there are lots more women than men in this country. But from the Millenials on down, each “year” has about 100,000 more males than females. That translates to 3 million more male shoppers than female shoppers, a shift of 2.4%.

To restoke the online fires, retailers might want to start thinking about some he-commerce strategies.

Bid Farewell To Forrester Research

Another week, another “the marketing funnel is dead” article. This time, it comes from the increasingly disappointing Forrester Research, filled to the brim with inexperienced analysts who pretty much cut and paste two-year-old blog posts from colleagues. We can at least give them credit for stealing and plagiarizing from within the family only.

Last week, MediaPost ran a stinky piece from Forrester titled “Bid Farewell To The Marketing Funnel.” The Forrester analyst credited for the article conveniently forgot to mention that its core content was also published by Forrester:

>In October of 2010, by Steven Noble; “It’s Time To Bury The Marketing Funnel”
>In February of 2011, by Steven Noble; “Make The Switch To The Customer Lifecycle”
>In February of 2011, by Luca Paderni; “Customer Life-Cycle Marketing Demands New Metrics” (note different spelling of lifecycle in this case)
>In September of 2011, by Mike Gilpin; “Understand The Requirements Of The Customer Life Cycle” (note another different spelling of lifecycle in this case)
>In February of 2012, by Luca Paderni; “Four Steps To Tackle The Switch To The Customer Life Cycle”

We should just stop here, and let this tired dog die on its own (after all, the MediaPost column in which the latest “dead funnel” piece ran received just one comment). But in case there’s anyone left to fall for this awful logic, here are some quick counters.

1. Per the Forrester analyst, the marketing funnel “Is too linear…digital devices and channels have fragmented the journey.” The marketing funnel has never been about the media or channel journey. It has always been about the state of mind a customer must pass through to get to purchase.

No one has yet been able to disprove the theory that a customer must know a product exists before she can buy it.

2. Per the Forrester analyst, “Marketing activities come before customer behaviors…Awareness, Consideration, Preference, and Purchase…are outcomes that marketing seeks to drive, rather than activities to address with customers.” Seems like someone forgot to define marketing to this analyst.

Awareness, et al. are outcomes marketing seeks to influence through marketing activities. The funnel is pure gold when viewed in this proper, nonconvoluted manner.

3. Per the Forrester analyst, “There is no one-size-fits-all way to approach marketing.” If she had written “execute” rather than “approach” she would have been correct.

But without a framework or approach as solid as the funnel (so solid, in fact, that other Forrester analysts make constant and positive reference to it in other writings), what you execute will be a random set of “hope and pray” events.

Upon examination of the background of the Forrester analyst who authored “Bid Farewell To The Marketing Funnel,” we now know why it stunk on ice.

>>> Years of work experience: 3.
>>> Companies worked for other than Forrester: 0.
>>> Real marketing experience: None.
>>> Degree: B.A. in political science and Hispanic studies.

That background makes us even more comfortable in stating that the marketing funnel is not dead. Forrester’s credibility, however, just died a little bit more last week.

Step #1 To Debt Reduction – Eliminate The USDA

In his inauguration speech yesterday, President Obama said, in so many words, he was all for deficit reduction, but not at the expense (pun!) of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Allow us then, to point the way. Meet the United States Department of Agriculture, an agency that costs taxpayers $155 billion per year, currently putting on its best bureaucratic face to keep Greek yogurt off U.S. citizens’ plates.

The Greek yogurt phenomenon will spawn more than a dozen Harvard Business case studies, we predict. Future MBAs and Master’s will examine the ins and outs of marketing in an industry that grows at triple digits, years on end.

But the case studies might not include this embarrassing little sideshow:
The USDA, the agency that spent God knows how much to decide the food pyramid should be reshaped into a plate, does not recognize Greek yogurt as a food.

Congressmen and women from around the country are challenging the USDA’s “sounds like Greek to me” position:

“A standard serving of Greek yogurt has more protein than an equivalent portion of beans, yet it is not included in the list of protein sources in current USDA nutrition materials, nor is it recognized as a type of yogurt on the dairy page,” the lawmakers wrote.

By sleeping at its $155-billion wheel, the USDA doesn’t classify Greek yogurt as (a) yogurt, nor (b) protein. We will guess the agency was fooled by the “Greek” part and went with choice “c” – international food.

The USDA kills two birds here, since it also regulates what is permitted under the National School Lunch Program. So no Greek yogurt for you!, kids. (Instead, just watch those new Coke “obesity” TV spots.)

Therefore, Mr. President, Lairig Marketing humbly submits that we disband the USDA and immediately take $155 billion to the country’s bottom line. Greek yogurt for all !

And if you want something for the revenue side, you can toss in a tax of four drachmas per cup.

Where Did All The “Showrooming” Go ?

Another tortured and misunderstood marketing meme we’ve been tracking is that of “showrooming,” which took on momentum in 2012 due to the supposed proliferation of mobile shopping. We shall paraphrase the definition of showrooming as:

“Brick-and-mortar stores are getting wiped out because consumers are walking in to shops, kicking the tires on the displayed merchandise, then whipping out their smartphones to order the same product for less from some online merchant such as Amazon.”

In typical marketing-meme fashion, writing and reading about it means it must be true. (Google the term “showrooming,” and you’ll get over a half-million results.)

We even got one of those “surveys of STATED behavior” at the end of 2012, with a Harris Interactive poll finding that 40% of U.S. shoppers say they already “do” showrooming.

We’d bet less than 40% of U.S. shoppers have any idea what the f&ck showrooming is. And we don’t think showrooming is a retail crisis.

Exhibit A – Best Buy Stores
If any retailer should have had a terrible 2012 holiday season, even with no showrooming, it should have been Best Buy, who we discussed here last Christmas. Now with showrooming taking hold, Best Buy should have been crushed, no?

No.

Best Buy reported last week that U.S. same-store sales held flat over the 2012 holidays, and we quote, “helped by sales of tablets and mobile phones” – the exact type of products one would think would have been showroomed to death.

“Flat” was a major improvement for Best Buy, by the way, given its decline in holiday sales last year. Quite honestly, it was a miracle.

Exhibit B – Best Buy ONLINE
Best Buy also reported a 10% increase in U.S. online sales. “See,” you say, “Best Buy is even showrooming ITSELF!”

Except that in the 2011 holiday season, Best Buy’s online sales grew a much, much higher 26%. Slower online sales results this year blow the showrooming thesis out the store window.

Best Buy isn’t struggling because of showrooming. Circuit City, which fell in 2008, didn’t die because of showrooming. There is a glut of electronics…at ever-falling price points…with nearly annual upgrade cycles…driving retailers into a highly transactional business.

You don’t really need a whole lot of showrooms for that.

Twitter Hits Reverse Tipping Point?

Allow us to paraphrase something social media gurus have stated in (so many) other words (so often) the past two years: “OK, so Twitter stinks for social media ROI, but at least it is an excellent way to provide customer service.”

We now have evidence indicating the sand might be slipping from under the second part of that claim. In December, cable-TV provider Charter Communications announced it would stop responding to subscribers that use Twitter to communicate with it.

[In a cruel twist of the social media knife, Charter announced this…on Twitter !!!]

This is not a small potatoes event. For one thing, Charter is the seventh-largest pay-TV provider in the U.S. Secondly, as an industry whose service is hated more than lawyers for God’s sake, cable has been touting its “Twitter customer care” leadership since, well, pretty much since Twitter was invented (Google “Frank Eliason”).

The sad truth is that helping customers remotely is a nasty business. Moving some of that burden to Twitter can claim the following as key accomplishments:

• Raises the bar on customers’ expectations for response turnaround time over the moon
• Makes customers nastier than they would be if it were phone or face-to-face (i.e., “personal”) communication
• Airs all the dirty laundry publicly, a feeding-frenzy sh*tstorm just waiting to be unleashed

Here are examples from Comcast customers late on New Year’s Day, six consecutive tweets directed to @comcast (shown here as is, with no corrections to grammar, punctuation, etc.):

- Comcast is forever out of touch with their customers. And competence.
- Can you at least let me know you got my email, and when ill get a response? Thanks
- Your Internet service is slow and doesn’t seem to work consistently. This is not acceptable.
- Business class, you suck. Seriously. I can do more with residential than with BC.You can take my bandwidth, not my money!
- Terrorist company
- I feel like any tweet that @comcast gets hassss to be about how much people hate them

Should a company be required to respond to village idiot vitriol? Charter Communications, at least, says “no."

Now, here are examples from the Comcast Cares side of Twitter. Five consecutive tweets in response to complaining Comcast subscribers, from “Comcast Bill,” one more in a long line of customer-service worker-bees turned into pseudo-famous, um, worker-bees. Check out the typos, punctuation and grammar from Mr. Bill, again presented as is:

- I can arrnage, when works?
- I think we can send a tech onsite.
- I do apologize, that’s something i cannot change.
- What error message are you getting?

Should a company’s customer service be fast and cheap, but not good? Charter Communications, at least, says “no."

For Charter’s decision to shift the tide, executives will need to abandon shop-worn maxims such as “the customer is always right,” “the customer is not a moron,” and “more communications are better than quality communications with customers.”

Put together, those three maxims oddly clock in at exactly 140 characters. Yet all that…and who…Twitters might not be gold.

Marketing’s Four Questions For 2013 – Part 1

We know it is Hanukkah season, but heck, Passover 2013 is right around the corner, a mere three months, to the day, from Christmas. Why not start preparations for the Four Questions?

OK, not THOSE four questions. Instead, let’s look at the four questions smart marketers will be asking as they turn the final page on an abysmal 2012, and plan for what will be an even more abysmal 2013 (for the first six months of the year, at least).

The First Marketing Question For 2013 goes like this:

For our 2013 media mix, paid and owned, why would we think of changing a single thing from 2012?

As a Lairig Marketing bonus, we’ll even give you the answer:

We wouldn’t.

That is the only correct answer, because you don’t have positive and/or satisfactory solutions for these “subquestions”:

>>> What data have we collected in 2012 that proves any one channel or touch point worked better than any other?

>>> Why would we believe some biased blogger or “guru” who touts a single channel as the “killer app” (see mobile advertising, The Year of Mobile – Part 7) and says it is the one we should move most, if not all, of our investment toward?

>>> What recent, relevant and comprehensive research have we done to understand just exactly which communications channels our target customers use to find out about us, shop for our products, make purchase decisions, and stay loyal to us?

>>> Where are the volumes of case studies we must have in order to understand the true and relative ROI of “emerging channels” like Pinterest?

The answer to the First Marketing Question of 2013 – why would we change our media mix? – is easy. We wouldn’t. So we won’t.

“Who” and “What” are going to require all hands on deck in 2013. “Where” will be the least of your worries.

Staying put will keep you from getting lost in the (media) mix.

What If We Are Already At Media Steady State ?

“OTT Video Views Explode On Multiple Screens,” an article headline screamed last Tuesday.

The story, essentially a warmed-over press release, revealed results from another dopey survey, from another bunch of talking hacks. “We are seeing a seismic shift in consumer viewing habits,” declared the TH at Accenture’s Media & Entertainment group, as if we didn’t know.

Based on asking random people in the survey if “they HAD EVER watched TV programming on a laptop or mobile device," Accenture concluded…something so crazy, we will give it its own paragraph:

“Half of U.S. consumers now view over-the-top (OTT) video through broadband connections on their TVs…”

Note the reference to “on their TVs.” A hook-up that is beyond the technical capability of 80% of Americans. And a data point completely at odds to the continuing INCREASE in the amount of time people watch “normal” TV (see Nielsen, comScore, et al.).

[And, irony of ironies – not one of 40 Millenials in last night’s marketing class had any idea what the reference to "OTT" was…]

Want more bullsh&t? Here:

“Domestically, 32% of all U.S. consumers watch AT LEAST A QUARTER of their video over-the-top.” That figure is so high that it has to include at least one of your parents and one of your grandparents. Ask them.

Bonus bullsh&t? Here:

“49% of U.S. consumers subscribe to a range of video delivery services. In the U.S., 27% of those surveyed subscribe to OTT services such as Netflix Instant Streaming…”

This we know is a flat-out lie because 27% of 315 million equals 85 million. Netflix has 27 million streaming subscribers. Amazon’s Prime streaming subscriber numbers are so bad the company doesn’t report them – but analysts estimate something less than 5 million. Hulu Plus claims around 2 million users.

That’s all a long way from 85 million, never mind 155 million (the 49% reference above).

With all these “exploding” and “seismic” numbers, it seems preposterous to ask, but we will anyway: What if the media-consumption transformation is close to where it is going to end up?

What if the mixed consumption we saw on the subway this morning isn’t going to change? The 25-year-old man, clutching an old paperback book. Why wasn’t he using a Kindle? The man holding his folded newspaper, staring at the Sudoku, afraid to make his first entry. Why wasn’t he using a Sudoku app? Ditto the woman and her hardcopy crossword puzzle.

And what will be the impact of the 11,000 people laid off from Citibank this morning? And the many thousands more to be laid off elsewhere before year-end? (In the thick of the NRF’s supposed double-digit shopping season, mind you.)

No one – NO ONE – is prepared for a “settling in” of our media behavior. The implications for Marketing are “seismic.”

No one is talking about it now. But we think they will in 2013.

Right around the time when marketers realize just how “over the top” the research on media consumption has become.

Creative That Falls Apart At The Seamless.com

Déjà vu all over again. A little more than a year ago, we were accosted on the subway by a horrific bit of campaigning by the folks at Budweiser. It happened again last night.

The concise copy on the poster-sized advert for successful online-food-ordering provider Seamless.com declared, “Your 7th floor walkup doesn’t have an elevator. Order food without leaving home.”

It hurt our brain.

“Your 7th floor walkup doesn’t have an elevator.”

STOP!

The definition of a walkup (correct spelling = “WALK-UP,” by the way) is a building with NO ELEVATOR. Seamless.com was essentially saying something like, “Your convertible has no roof.”

Never mind that, according to PropertyShark.com, there are fewer than 100 seven-story-plus walk-ups remaining in New York City. (Else this is the most micro-targeted out-of-home campaign in history!)

Moving on…”Order food without leaving home.” What does that have to do with the first line? New Yorkers already know how to do this – see “call take-out place for delivery.”

Seamless.com has done interesting work in the past (such as its “Happiness Is” effort), but this current effort is atrocious. When attempting humor, ads should be relevant or ironic or at least FUNNY. This Seamless.com work hits none of those requirements. And the food in the accompanying imagery is puzzling: a bird’s-eye view of who knows what.

Seamless.com’s “stairs are inconvenient / remote ordering is convenient” dynamic is the age-old “problem – solution” model of messaging: The marketer highlights a common pain point the consumer has, and reveals its solution to take that pain away.

The “problem – solution” here, however, just doesn’t add up. For New Yorkers, the problem of “too many stairs” ranks probably 26th in a list of problems that delivered food solves for. Seamless.com’s strong online benefits don’t even come into play in the “stairs” scenario.

At bottom (no pun intended), this effort is copycat and derivative. Subway riders know exactly who Seamless.com is ripping off - a local company that has perfected humorous “problem – solution” messages to New Yorkers for many, many years.

See Manhattan Mini Storage. Which is where Seamless.com should put its current campaign.