Lairig Marketing

Arm & Hammer Throws a BYOW Party

If any company had a perfect set-up for being “green,” it is Arm & Hammer. As a civilization, if we were told we could have food, water and only one other thing, we’d be wise to choose Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. From what I hear, it has more uses than a collateralized debt obligation or even a credit default swap. And it is good for the environment.

The company can’t play that fact up too much though, lest it hurt sales of its liquid-based cleaning products. To that end, Arm & Hammer created a microsite “Jill’s Secret Solutions,” with the requisite perky housewife-type showing all the things its product suite can do.

[As an aside, 5 cents to anyone who can solve these riddles: (1) Why would the “Jill’s Secret Solutions” microsite have a url that looks like something NASA created, http://armandhammer.com/default.aspx?ITEMID=4 ??? (2) Parent company Church & Dwight has its own Jill, with “Jill’s Cleaning Secrets” at
http://www.greatcleaners.com/cleaning-secrets.html. What the hell?]

All that baking soda must have caused Arm & Hammer’s other product managers to think, “Hey, what if we took the liquid out of our products, sold the base chemicals, and let the consumers add water at home?”

Bam!, as Emeril would say. Look soon for Arm & Hammer Essentials, an empty lighter-weight trigger-spray bottle and a cartridge you toss in. Just add water. (You also get a refill cartridge.) The product line entails a multisurface cleaner, a degreaser, and a glass cleaner.

It is rare to see any company understand what a customer value proposition really is, as well as to successfully put one together in the packaged goods space. A value proposition is more than having a set of product features - it is about addressing a meaningful need by delivering compelling benefits in a differentiated way.

Arm & Hammer Essentials nails the value proposition. By letting the consumer go BYOW, it delivers lower cost, which in the current economic environment speaks for itself. It also delivers a green solution, by reducing packaging and eventual landfill waste.

The idea is not entirely new - refills for many products have been sold in a concentrated version for years. But to start this way is a bit of twist. And it will be a hurdle, certainly, to get consumers to change traditional buying behavior.

That hurdle might be knocked down. The Essentials line is being aggressively backed by Wal-Mart in-store and online. Bam, Bam, Bam.

When Analytics and Creative Collide, Do Good Things Happen?

Let’s give Targetbase and Claydon Heeley a pass for believing they have invented sliced bread. This is not the first time someone has tried to package rich customer data into a creative brief, but merging these two entities signals a significant commitment to the idea.

Either agency, top of the heap in their respective countries, could have survived alone. Someone in the halls of parent Omnicom, though, convinced them to serve as the prototype for bringing left-brain and right-brain thinking into a single discussion.

Targetbase is regarded for its aptitude with numbers - “analytics” in the direct marketing world. Creatives are right-brained, and hate numbers. So translation is key. But output will be key-er. Will the message, positioning, layout, imagery, call-to-action, etc. be better?

On its new website, TCH says “It’s a bit like planning on steroids.” I’d challenge that, and say “It’s a bit like planning with facts.”

[Bonus website quote: “…if it’s useful to involve our clients, we’ll invite them too.” ZING!]

One example Targetbase gives for how this might work is with car leasing. If its customer analytics shows that a specific segment of lessees requires seven months of direct marketing prior to lease renewal, the creative agency should do more than it might normally do without these new insights, which is create one direct mail piece for contacting the customer just a couple weeks before the lease is up.

This is a major challenge. This isn’t the “one big idea” creatives are known for generating; rather it’s a series of ideas that build in a sequence. M-A-J-O-R challenge.

Targetbase has stated it will form more partnerships of this type. Before it gets too far ahead of itself, let’s see an example or two of how this helped Claydon Heeley’s creative output. Solve this riddle - how much help did Claydon Heeley really need in the first place?

For now, they’ve branded the new entity by jamming two well-respected names together. Any wager that in a year’s time we’ll see a rebrand to a funny latin-sounding name beginning with the letter “A” (Anfatico?).

Peanut butter and chocolate, or oil and water?
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JUST WONDERING…How did Right Guard become the official deodorant of the National Basketball Association? I thought Will Ferrell had the inside track with his knee-slapping ads for Old Spice?

Happy Holidays - If You Think Outside The Gift Box

Maybe the retail analysts and economists will be right about the coming holiday season. At least on paper, sales might grow at a slower rate than years past, or even decline. But I think there will be a lot of “hidden” spending on gifts this year, with traditional retailers bypassed.

This Christmas (or insert your favorite end-of-year holiday), I believe, will be about gifts people can use or consume, not things people can wear or look at (who needs another picture frame?). With that, I give you my “Great Gift Ideas for Christmas 2008” list.

• Booze, and lots of it - examples: flavored vodka, boxes of wine
• Entertainment - examples: restaurant coupons, theater tickets
• Personal Services - examples: hair salon visits, one-time maid service

Am I telling you this so you can start your shopping now? No. I’m telling you this in case you are a marketer for a discretionary product, or an agency exec who works with one. In the next three months, holiday shopping will comprise a large portion of discretionary sales. Get your share.

Don’t rely on gift cards, which are fast becoming a drag for the giver and the recipient alike. Make it easy and fun for consumers. Be as flexible as you can with pricing, selection and timing.

Here are two illustrations; enough, hopefully, to get your creative juices flowing.

Casual restaurant
Make up a nicely done index-card-size piece that says something like “Take the pressure off this shopping season. Treat your loved ones to a meal at (name of your restaurant). Purchase before December 1st, and get 10% off your selected gift price!” Attach this card to every guest check the server drops on his or her table, starting tomorrow.

Garden supply center
Avoid the ho-hum gift card scenario. Make up point-of-sale or end-aisle displays that list five top sellers for the spring season (potting soil, lawn fertilizer, etc.), saying something like “Give the gardener in the family something to look forward to this spring. Purchase now, get 5% off, and we’ll deliver it free when you tell us to.”

This can work online also, but the idea here is to grab the captive customer (without paying extra costs for traffic).

Wish lists are long, but shopping lists aren’t. Find a way to get on them.
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JUST WONDERING…How much of Nexium’s record-setting “purple pill” website traffic was due to men actually looking for the “blue pill”? And why do they spell NEXIUM in caps on the site but not on the pill itself?

Worst Print Ads of 2008

My June post on Vanguard’s excellent print advertising efforts gets so many search hits, I thought it might be wise to show the other side of the ledger.

I came across two candidates for “worst print ad of 2008.” Both suffer from the same fatal flaw - messaging that does not reflect the essential needs of the customer base. If the award were a real artifact, it would be an ear made out of tin.

First up, the National Payroll Association (NPA). To promote annual Payroll Week, NPA created this.

Two things in the messaging stand out. (A) A tagline that violates the “as opposed to…?” test. As in: “Payroll Professionals. Paying America. One Paycheck at a Time.” As opposed to two, or three? Checks have been handed out once per pay period since Fred Flintstone.

(B) The main message is worse. Above a clever image of a road sign with a directional arrow squiggling all over the place, we get “Life takes many twists and turns…the one thing you can count on is your paycheck.”

We have been through NINE straight months of job loss - the latest government report showing a net reduction of 159,000 jobs in September. If any department should know this, it’s the guys and gals in Payroll with a much-reduced workload.

Our second award winner is Northwestern Mutual, backslapping itself on its “Let Your Worries Go” campaign. (If you have time to kill, go to www.letyourworriesgo.com ).
Here is a version of the print related to this effort (note: image might take a few seconds to download).

In a 4th-grade collage-like photo, a giant man kneels over miniature “retirees,“ who are golfing, fishing, bird watching, and (cliché of all clichés) floating on inner tubes. The message begins with “Retirement should be something to look forward to, not fear.”

I’m not sure where these guys have been for the last, oh, 12 months. Let’s see what retirees have to say when month-end IRA statements come out. They won’t be booking many fishing trips anytime soon. According to the Bureau of Labor, the number of employed people age 65+ doubled from 1977 to 2007. 56% of older workers now work full time, up from 44 % ten years ago.

Not exactly vintage Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton material here…
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YEP THEY SAID IT…Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is leaving "to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite, along with a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web from the ground up.” In English, please?

WaMu - You Bastards

“The largest bank failure in the nation’s history.” As a Washington Mutual shareholder, I’m unfortunately getting no help from the Chase acquisition. I’ve just ridden another stock into the dirt. My “largest” one yet.

WaMu used to be the only reason to open my brokerage statement, bouncing up and down in a tight range around $50, with a nice quarterly dividend. How did I not react when it dropped and stalled at $35? Then, again at $15? And then $10? And then $5?

I didn’t have a plan. There’s a fairly easy method I could have adopted, that I didn’t for some reason. I’ll post about this method and its application for Marketing next week.

In the meantime, I took a look at the WaMu website for some solace.

Not a whiff about its troubles or its retail branch takeover by Chase. (!!!)

On a whim, I decided to look at the websites of some other retail banks and brokerages to see what they were communicating to their customers in this unprecedented financial crisis (crises?).

Bank of America? Too busy “pac manning” up everyone else to discuss it.

Citi/Smith Barney? You have to dig around the site, only to find dated information (current events require DAILY updates, at a minimum - duh).

Wachovia & Wachovia Securities? Just another day at the office/website for both.

Fidelity? A nice barker on the home page stating “In markets like these, Fidelity can help.” The “Learn More“ link takes you to a page, though, that is basically one big sales pitch.

Vanguard? In “Vanguard Views - Keeping recent market events in perspective…” there is daily commentary and a video of its CEO on “recent” market events - dated September 19th. Time to load another tape, guys.

Schwab? The best one I found, with nice commentary touching on all the recent events and a calming letter from “talk to me” Chuck himself.

Ameritrade? An easy-to-miss link to some real quirky takes on the current situation. Plus a link to a Chief Investment Officer letter from September 18th. A week ago? Hello???

E*Trade? No recognition of market events. These guys are in the midst of a major push for its high-volume trader products, including a TV spot with a hyped up day trader surrounded by ten trading screens, who tellingly at the end of the commercial decides to play a video game.

The worst (or best?) timing goes to Zurich Financial, in the midst of a brand relaunch with the tagline, “Delivering When It Really Matters.”

I bet Zurich didn’t think we’d hit the top end of the “Really Matters” scale so soon.

CMO Council: Sales Hates Marketing, Part #514

Long-time readers should be familiar with the CMO Council, since I have featured its studies many times. While the Council’s analysis of its ongoing surveys often leaves a lot to be desired, we can at least give it credit for keeping an eye on the divide between the Sales and Marketing functions.

The CMO Council’s most recent effort reveals that, unlike Republican and Democrat presidential candidates, Sales and Marketing never suspend the debate over which one is more valuable (P.S. would or would not McCain’s speech this morning at the Clinton Global Initiative be considered campaigning?).

“Scenarios and Solutions: Mapping the Sales Effectiveness Traps and Gaps,” shows the war between Sales and Marketing shall rage on, forever. After interviewing 100 or so global marketing and sales executives, the CMO Council found two very distinct camps.

Over there in the left corner wearing white shorts:
“…most sales professionals view up to 90% of sales materials created by marketing as valueless.”

Over there in the right corner wearing red shorts:
“…the majority of marketers view most sales-created content as diluting their brands or inaccurately positioning products.”

I’ve often wondered why someone would take a job in Marketing that included assisting Sales with its collateral. Talk about a thankless task. Most marketers would say it is the right thing to do though, because Sales “will say anything to a customer to close a deal” and thus go “off message” and therefore “off brand.”

There are only two solutions to this conundrum from Marketing’s standpoint. The first is to give up. Walk away from the collateral-creation process. The customers will let you know how “bad” the resulting sales materials are by how many make a purchase.

The second option is to get the CMO and VP of Sales (ever notice that Sales doesn’t need a CSO?) to agree, from the top down, to “legislate” that Marketing must vet all sales collateral.

Given that CMOs have a tenure about one-tenth that of the head Sales guys and gals, I think it’s time to go with the first option.

Let’s end the collateral damage.
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YEP THEY SAID IT…from AdAge.com: “The typical U.S. mobile subscriber sends and receives more text messages than phone calls.” No shite Sherlock. It’s called a C-O-N-V-E-R-S-A-T-I-O-N.

MicroSeinGates & The Marketing Cycle

As if the world needs one more post about the current Microsoft TV ad campaign…comments ranging from “what a waste of money” to “I didn’t think it was funny.” Even the world’s #1 marketing blogger used it as a way to press his mantra that companies should stop all traditional marketing (to wit: advertising can’t fix what’s wrong with Microsoft).

Here are two things I haven’t seen discussed at all.

The Agency

If you were familiar with Microsoft’s advertising agency for this campaign, you would know this sort of “what the F?” thing is par for the course. Crispin Porter & Bogusky takes the position that a company must first grab attention, even if the attention it gets is confusion or anger or discomfort.

The CPB strategy has worked magic for Burger King (see Subservient Chicken, among other things). On the other hand, the idea to bring Orville Redenbacher back from the dead cost Crispin that account.

You might say “wow what a lot of money to spend to get attention” for the part of the campaign now underway (“I’m a PC”). Divide it by $60 billion in annual revenues, and you’ll see it is not.

The Marketing Cycle
I’ve posted this before, but I’ll say it again: no awareness, no sale. Think about the beer you drank while lounging on the couch watching the Yankees or the Buccaneers yesterday. You made a choice about the beer. And the couch. And the television. What car did you drive to work this morning? Where did you stop for coffee? Choices you made.

All day long we make choices, some conscious some not. A company must make you aware it exists before it can hope to get your money. That’s part of marketing. You can skip it if you want - you can also kiss your ass goodbye at the same time.

Everyone, of course, is aware that Microsoft exists. The hard work now, with Crispin Porter’s help, is telling you what it stands for. And, by the way, it isn’t going for “cool.”

Microsoft proved that by squandering six months of its business life chasing Yahoo.
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YEP, THEY SAID IT…"The nature of the Web allows us to deliver topical social currency in real-time," said Brian Citron, senior brand director for Heineken Premium Light…DOOD, SPEAK ENGLISH!!!

Who Is Seth Godin And Why Is He Saying All These Things?

Let’s start with this statement from the #1 marketing blog on earth, posted on September 15th: “Hint: They started Google in the middle of the dot com [sic] melt down [sic].”

Hint: no they didn’t.

The dot-com meltdown I lived through and worked through and remember ran from late 2000 until around mid-2003. So the “middle” would be mid-2001. But let‘s be generous and say it was 2000.

Now, let’s go to the source - Google’s own version of its history. “Started” in 1996, named “Google” in 1997.

This is the second time, at least, Seth Godin has made this claim. I would guess there are likely more instances. Unchallenged.

There are factual errors, and then there is pretzel logic. Here is an example of the latter, posted August 27th.

“Radio ads used to be live, personal and spoken by an individual. TV ads used to feature actual people, demonstrating something, usually live….”

Some of them used to be. Some still are. And we used to make fire by rubbing sticks in a cave. We have evolved.

“One by one, the mass marketers have insisted on robocalling, spamming, jingling and lying their way into our lives.”

Not really. You might not have heard of the do-not-call list, but it has been very effective in reducing cold calls. And spamming is the domain of individual rogues and hackers, not mass marketers. Unless you are referring to the spam text ads that surround my e-mail screen, courtesy of those heroes from Google (see lead paragraph).

“The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with more leverage) to corporatize and anonymize the interactions.”

For the first part of that sentence, do a search on “number of Facebook and MySpace members.” For the second, search “targeted marketing.”

“The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.”

That wouldn’t be ironic. Based on the way this argument is laid out, it would be required. Although I’m not sure what “guts” has to do with it. “Strategy” is more appropriate.

Anyway, it‘s what marketers have been trying to do these past several years. Since shortly after the dot-com meltdown.

You can flee, but you can’t hide.
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FUNNY STUFF…New York Life just closed a user-generated contest and will pick ten submitted ads as winners to be used on its website. The ten winners receive NOTHING.

Adobe’s “User Generated Content”

Nope, that headline is not a duplicate from yesterday. It is a complete fluke that 12 hours after posting “OnStar’s User Generated Content,” I came across another example.

The good news for Adobe is that the maker of design software did not have to spend a dime to ask customers for some “content” on how they feel about the Adobe brand. Without being asked, Adam Meisel and Erik Frick launched a site called DearAdobe.

The site is beautiful in its simplicity, albeit a bit buggy. A visitor can click through a random series of “gripes” previously submitted by others and, in a manner of speaking, vote it up or down, or flag it for correction/clarification. Anyone can add a new gripe about Adobe software performance, pricing, updates and so on. As of Tuesday night, the top-ranked complaint - “Why does the Acrobat Reader take two minutes to launch, and require updates twice a month, just to display PDF pages?” - had 225 votes.

At first blush, if you were in Adobe’s marketing department, you’d think “uh oh I’m dead meat.” But then you see that Meisel and Frick are actually pro-Adobe and are trying to do a little crowdsourcing. On the site’s blog they ask:

“Why not create a forum for people to vent? Who knows, maybe Adobe will listen.”

And?

“The site hadn’t been up for 48 hours when staff from Adobe first contacted us and the response has been very positive. We’re currently in touch with a couple of people at Adobe and working with them to craft all the gripes here into something they can use and hopefully take to heart.”

I have two predictions:
1) Adobe management will resist the temptation to try and commandeer the Dear Adobe website.
2) By Friday, ten braindead CMOs will have asked their underlings “how can we build one of those sites?”

In the meantime, Web 2.0 giveth, and Web 2.0 taketh away. And sometimes you get lucky, like Adobe, and it giveth back again.
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MORE DATA YOU SHOULD KNOW…By 2005, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found the average American worker born in the later years of the baby boom had worked for 10.5 different employers by age 40.

OnStar’s “User Generated Content”

It seems we are finally on the backside of the tidal wave of advertisers asking consumers to contribute content to their marketing campaigns. In the past 18 months or so, seemingly every brand or product has run some sort of promotion asking consumers to put a video or song together - a Super Bowl Doritos commercial (footnote - 2007 winners weren‘t fans at all, but rather professional content designers), a Swiffer dance, a McDonald’s rap song, zzzzzzz.

Other than doing it because everyone else was, it’s hard to know what marketers were aiming for and if they achieved anything of value. That’s a part of the story we seldom hear anything about (and why Sales hates Marketing).

And if this is the best a country of 305 million people can do to impersonate John McCain for a Denny’s promotion, our future does indeed look bleak (paging Frank Caliendo!).

A common marketing question is “how do I best use customer testimonials or case studies?” Letting prospects hear (or read) experiences from actual customers is a variant of “word of mouth,” one of the strongest influences in marketing. Lame promotions and silly contests don’t come close to what is required.

Reading a recent story about OnStar, GM’s in-vehicle navigation and safety system, I was struck by how powerful testimonials can be - if they are used properly.

During the remarkably organized exodus from the Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Gustav,
“OnStar…increased staff at its three call centers, where 500 people were taking calls from drivers. In addition to computerized maps and information on hotel vacancies, the service offer[ed] information on locations of Red Cross shelters. Because of the emergency, OnStar offered its higher service-level package to all customers free of charge.”

Given the call volume, OnStar must have dozens if not a hundred or more compelling customer stories. Not throwaway comments, or a bunch of “I really love OnStar” mugshots (see current Netflix television campaign).

Rather, real product usage, from beginning to end, with a customer problem solved, and the value of the solution made clear as a bell.

For a company handling over 11,000 emergency calls and 27,000 roadside assistance calls PER MONTH, OnStar certainly has excellent material to mine for some real user-generated content.
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MORE DATA YOU SHOULD KNOW…Of the 250 million cars and light trucks on the roads in the U.S., 30% are 15 years or older.