General Marketing Thingys

100 Years of Advertising Agency Deliverables – In Three C’s.

Nader Ashway5 Comments

The history of advertising and marketing communications – about the last 100 years or so – has constantly demanded agencies to evolve.  And the evolutionary pace is moving faster than ever, thanks to the advent of the Internet.  New media, new technology, new formats – all of these play critical roles.  But looking backward – and then forward again – this history can be described in three primary phases, each beginning with the letter C.  And if you care to read through, there’s a bonus!

The first C:  Copywriting

In the early days of advertising, say, from its provenances through the late 1950’s, businesses engaged the services of advertising agencies mostly for their superior writing skills.  Copywriters weaved dazzling tales of adventure and promise around products and services.  The primary media were radio (you had to “paint” the scene with words) and print, mostly expressed in newspapers and the burgeoning magazine business.  Consider the scheister-ism of PT Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth,” long-copy (and long-promise) miracle cure-all ads and the culmination in the late 1950’s to “E-Day” for the Edsel.  Copy carried us through two world wars.

The Second C:  Commercials

By the 1960’s, art started to capture our imagination. Helmut Krone’s 2:1 layout ratio reduced copy to a shrinking afterthought:  Think Small.  Flowery language and superspun tales gave way to big, beautiful product shots, and – gasp! – moving images on the new-fangled television thingy.  For the next 50 years or so, American advertising would become a bubbling volcanic eruption of 30- and 60-second commercinematic lava.  Rain-slicked roads for car commercials, the beckoning bubbling overflow of the beer money shot, all those great talking heads and one very large, very iconic Mean Joe Green having a Coke and a Smile.    What could possibly top that?

For the better part of five decades, commercials flourished, and made advertising a sexy career choice. And even got big-time movie directors stoked about a supershort form. But in the late 1990’s there was trouble afoot. A new and powerful medium had sprung up, and there were – gulp – NO RULES.  Heck, for a long time, with no IAB, there were no STANDARDS!  But there sure were lots of eyeballs. The Internet did change everything, especially advertising.  And you could almost see the second “C” getting desperate…trying to articulate the new medium with, of all things, ANIMALS:  sock puppets, energized bunnies, and when will cavemen and chimpanzees ever get old?  It was clearly time for a new generation.

The Third C:  Content

Like its predecessors, content will change everything about how advertising agencies go about their business, about the kinds of people they will hire and about the kind of work that will be produced.  In some ways, content is already surpassing commercials – expensive to create, produce and air – as the chief and ultra-scalable deliverable.  Today, in the social media morning of marketing history, content development is as valuable to our clients as the storyboard once was and the concept outline before it.  Programs, movements, essay-writing contests, blogs, handheld video diaries, flash mobs, tweets and check-ins:  all content, and all fueled (okay mostly fueled) by our beloved industry.  Next time you’re having lunch with your client, start talking about content.  You might see a real relationship start to bloom.

The fourth C:  I told you there was more.

Although Content has become the unobtanium of the marketing world, there is a good chance that its reign will not last nearly as long as its forebears.  In the next 10 years (yep, you heard it here first,) if agencies cannot deliver COMMUNITY to their clients, they will be as valuable as shiny, mint-condition Edsels. And we all know where they ended up.

5 Marketing Ideas for the New York Mets

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New York Mets logoThis is a collaborative post with my friend and colleague Mark Kolier.  We work together and share a passion for the New York Mets.

As a season-ticket holder, you get to see all the colorful communications the Mets have to offer. In the yearly package the Mets send out, there’s a media guide, your tickets, usually some cheesy tchotchke, and a letter or two from the owners.  They usually talk about how “this is the year,” and how they’re gearing up for another great season.  But if you look at the non-verbal cues of the Mets, and dissect some of the verbal ones, they’re kind of saying “okay, we might fail again.”   This team needs marketing help.

First and foremost the product on the field has to be improved – that goes without saying.   Second, the communications agenda is sorely lacking.  From Omar Minaya’s almost-incoherent press statements to Jay Horowitz’ message gatekeeping, there’s very little to latch onto from a fan’s standpoint.  Thankfully, the Mets continue to have the best radio and television announcers in NY or anywhere else.  It may indeed be the strongest part of their brand.

Since communications with Met fans and marketing of Met products in general are incredibly lacking, Mark and I collaborated on 5 key ideas that we would implement if we were charged with marketing the New York Mets.

1) Be honest and more transparent with your fans. Stop the double talk and try plain language.  Beltran’s knee treatment fiasco was mishandled, only to be outdone by Reyes’ thyroid condition.  Did anyone hear about K-Rod’s pinkeye?  Exactly.  The Mets surely have good doctors but somehow have turned the term ‘Mets medical staff’ into an oxymoron.

2)     Reward your loyal fans. If people are going to shell out $ 7,000 – $ 15,000 for 81 games per seat at CitiField, they should offer more than ‘access’ to clubs on different levels where you have to pay for everything anyway.   How about free parking once in a while?   Or a hot dog and soda?   It would not kill concession revenue and would create an even closer bond between fans and the team – which has not made the playoffs since 2006 in case management has forgotten.  [Oh they did “allow” us to purchase tickets first for the first game at CitiField– an exhibition game vs. the Red Sox in 2009.   It snowed and rained.  What value.]

3) Listen & Engage. The best marketers listen to their customers, and develop products and programs to serve them.  In some categories, the consumer feedback can be instrumental in product development.  The Mets could use a series of focus groups with fans to understand their frustrations, their hopes, their desires.  Not only would it help make the team better from the inside out, it would likely put more asses in the seats – you’d go if you were invested on that level.

4) Learn from past mistakes. If you were a product manufacturer, and your 2009 product wasn’t working so well, and your customers were grumbling and revenues weren’t promising you’d probably FIX the product, and FAST.  (Um, Toyota?) Although 2009 was a strange injury-plagued year, the Mets did only a cursory once-over in improving their product by adding Jason Bay to the roster.  If the Mets could learn from history, they would know that pitching is the key to winning – and right now, they haven’t done anything to shore up the starting rotation for 2010.

5) Give us a message to hold on to. We know it’s marketing fluff, but the fans want it anyway.  Remember “ya gotta believe” from the late great Tug McGraw?  It was (and still is) a rallying cry for a generation who actually believed we could win.  How about “The Magic is Back?” (Thanks to Jerry Della Femina.)  This year, the internal message the team is receiving is “Prevention & Recovery.”  I’m not kidding – look it up.  Seriously, these guys need a more spirited rallying cry than “don’t get hurt.”  These guys need a marketing company!

Oh and Let’s go Mets!

Is your brand full of potholes?

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Last night, I was driving down an avenue near my home.  It’s a popular connecting road, a long-ish street that runs nearly the whole width of two populous towns that has several schools on it, and a few traffic lights.  On one area, near the intersection of the two towns, there is a horrendously bumpy stretch that has hundreds of filled in potholes and can really make for an unpleasant ride.

When a roadway gets a pothole in it, it’s usually because there’s either a structural deficiency in a particular part of the road, or a repetitively trafficked area simply fatigues over time.  In most populous areas, these holes are promptly “filled in” with more asphalt creating a “potfill.”  Potfills are quickly deployed, and quite cost-effective.  Remember, paving a road is not an inexpensive undertaking.  Unfortunately, however, most potfills are rarely 100% smooth, and almost always create a new small bump in the road, because the new asphalt doesn’t quite bind with the existing asphalt.  And I guess most people prefer a small bump over a potentially car-injuring pothole.  But after a while, (as in the case in my town,) these hundreds of potfills –and some fresh potholes yet to be filled – are a landscape of past failures, and the original roadway can hardly be seen.

Naturally, this reminds me of marketing.

For many small to midsize companies, marketing is a challenge similar to keeping a paved road smooth.  After a certain amount of time and wear, holes in the marketing tend to become noticeable, and even conscientious marketers scramble to create brand potfills. But similar to the roadways, these random and uncoordinated “fixes” are rarely as smooth as intended and can damage the customer experience over time, rather than yielding the intended results. Let’s examine.

How does a brand get “worn” over time?
Brands are tough to manage, and even more difficult to measure.  But you can certainly examine the marketing strategies that are supporting your brand and your day to day tactics to get a sense of where things are.  Some questions you should ask:  when was the last time you reviewed your web copy?  Or your whole website for that matter?  How often are you upgrading/improving your basic offering?  Are you adding services on a regular basis?  What’s the messaging strategy?  Are you still as differentiated as you were when you launched?  When was the last time you asked your customers how they’re doing?  And what about your logo?  Is it a symbol of consistency, or has it been evolving over time?  And your service standards?  Are there standards at all?  Is your brand a bumpy proposition for prospects, or a smooth and enjoyable thoroughfare of commerce and interaction?

Patch a hole, or ditch the entire thing and start over?
In some cases, it clearly makes sense to execute a “quick fix” for your brand.  Maybe you got some bad press and quickly ditched your value prop in favor of emergency communications.  Maybe you merged with another company and didn’t want to spend a lot of money for new identity standards, so you slapped a new tagline on an old logo. Maybe you’ve got your hands on six sets of customer data, but you can’t find the time or the resources to integrate them.  It’s okay, as long as it doesn’t damage the day-to-day interactions and the long term perceptions.  But if your company can hardly be recognized as a result of years of quick-fixes, maybe it pays to strip the whole thing down and start over.  It’ll cost a few bucks, and it may even force you to re-route some transactions for a while, but it’s almost always worthwhile in the long run.  It shows you care about your customers.  It demonstrates a willingness to re-evaluate and the guts to develop something new.  And for every new customer that goes for a spin with your company, it’ll really have that “new brand smell.”

Understand your connection points and the concept of traction.
Let’s understand a key concept about roads.  They are engineered and built for the ONE connection point they have with the world:  tires.  It’s not some cars, or a lot of cars…EVERY car uses tires to connect with the roadway.  With brands, the key connection is with perceptions.  But instead of only four connection points, companies have an advantage with multiple channels, with frequency and with various forms of deployment.  So the entire stretch of your brand – every ad, every page of your website, every online checkout, every customer service call – is about making a smooth and consistent connection with your client’s or prospect’s perceptions.

When a road is bumpy, the tires lose traction with the pavement, and it makes for a treacherous drive.  Motorists will come to dread the experience, or figure out a way to avoid it altogether.  When your marketing is bumpy, perceptions are similarly jarred and your clients – and far worse, your prospects – will either dread the experience or figure out a way to avoid you altogether.

A sticking point on the subject of “stickiness”

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Yesterday, I spilled coffee in the cupholder of my car.  No big deal.  But today, it revealed a curious discovery about an important aspect of modern marketing:  the phenomenon known as “stickiness.”  We’ve all heard this term in the last several years, probably in many different contexts.  But what’s really happening in a “sticky” exchange, and is there something tangible for us to take away?  The coffee spill in my car provided one ineluctable clue.

First, let’s review what “stickiness” is.  This term came of age about the time websites and web development began standardization discussions. Sticky sites are those that have the ability to attract repeat visits, or to keep visitors there longer, by virtue of content or customization or both.  Basically, just about every website WANTS to be sticky, but not all of them are. Malcolm Gladwell, in his paradigm-defining book The Tipping Point, quantified the “stickiness factor” as the informational content and packaging of a marketing message. He argued that some messages are sticky (and therefore remain active in the consumer/recipient’s mind,) and others simply are not (and thereby forgotten, or worse, not transmitted or spread.)

These are both helpful clues, but they may leave out one critical factor.  In my opinion (as evidenced by the coffee spill I mentioned above,) stickiness is not as much a phenomenon as it is a process.  And it’s really a TWO-PART process. (And someday, these two parts may be managed by Chief Stickiness Officers popping up at forward-thinking organizations.  Yeah, no…that’s probably taking it too far.)  Part 1 is creating stickiness.  That’s the more obvious and relatively easy part.  Part 2 – the much more difficult aspect – is what I’ll call the “hardening.”

You see, anything that’s truly sticky tends to go through a transformational process from sticky/gooey phase to hard/fixed state.  Think about it…drop a dab of honey on your kitchen counter…all sticky and gooey, right?  Leave it there for a few hours or even a day, and it hardens at the edges – you’ll need a spoon to wrestle it away from the counter.  Same with glue.  It goes on sticky, but the real work isn’t done until the glue hardens.  And in some cases (depending on the glue,) that hardening could permanently affix two or more items. The process bears true for most sticky substances, like chewing gum (if left somewhere) and even a bit of spilled coffee in the cupholder of one’s car.

You certainly need assistance in getting something to coat the surface – that’s where a sticky/gooey texture comes in very handy.  (And probably a feasible budget.)  But the real value of anything sticky is that the substance is given what it needs to harden in place.

Let this be the beginning of a new understanding for anyone involved in the marketing process.  Messages are simply more effective – and if you buy Gladwell’s theory, they’re ONLY effective – if they’re sticky.  And an oooey-gooey texture will help initiate the process.  But for your messages to be truly memorable and worth spreading – to be clinically sticky – they must be given the time and the ingredients and the environment to harden in place.  How do we manage that?  Tune in for follow-up posts on this topic.

Bring Direct and Digital Marketing Together

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This is a MarketingThingy guest post by Mark Kolier, president of CGSM in Wilton, CT.

The Internet may well be the most powerful and effective direct marketing medium in history. This is hardly a secret to marketers: It offers very granular targeting and segmentation, is highly measurable, and offers lightning-fast response.

Far too often, however, a disconnect exists between the use of “traditional” direct marketing tactics (like direct mail and direct response television), and their online counterparts. Far too many marketers neglect to consider how prospects and customers search for more information related to a marketing effort.

Here’s some advice on how to successfully bridge this gap:

1. Give them a good landing. Every promotion should be tied to a campaign landing page. It should have a unique identifier relevant to the particular offer.

2. Make me an offer. Make your offer again on the landing page, and sweeten it further via a premium or bonus for visiting.

3. Get their info. Use the landing page to collect the e-mail address of the visitor. If you are running a sweepstakes or offering a special premium or prize, you are much more likely to get the landing page visitor to enter this information.

4. Look the same online as offline. The look and feel of the landing page should mimic the campaign, so the prospect has a sense of familiarity and continuity with the original promotion.

5. Show them you know them. Collect the data, and be sure to acknowledge the site visitor by name the next time they log in. It’s amazing how many companies miss this one. People love to see their names.

6. Give them a soft landing. Allow the visitor to easily enter the Website from the landing page. Keep it simple.

7. Ask them for feedback. Consider adding a small comments and suggestions box to more deeply engage the visitor. You might be very surprised by the feedback you receive. 

Landing pages are easy to set up within your site structure, and needn’t necessarily be hosted by your site. Third parties can host, track, and forward all data back in real time. Once the campaign is over, the landing page can be taken down.

Running campaign landing pages offers immediate, measurable feedback on your promotions and is one of the best investments available. Put this technique in your marketing toolbox, and start using it as soon as possible.