Internet/Tech Thingys

Three cheers for Verizon.

Nader AshwayLeave a comment

I LOVE the new spot that Verizon has launched to introduce its marriage with iPhone 4.  It’s honest.  It’s simple.  And it resonates in a way that many other strategies may have missed.

For a long time, Verizon has been poking fun at iPhone, mostly because of its alliance with the AT&T network.  By mocking the rival network, it invariably knocked the phone.  The best example of this is the “Island of Misfit Toys” spot it ran more than a year ago.  Funny.  And smart.  And a great way to make the points about the phones you CAN get on Verizon’s network.

But now, the hatchet is buried.  The bygones have gone by.  And the tone is spot-on.  Using a series of images of clocks ticking and fingers tapping and eyes shifting, the spot creates tension focused on “waiting.”  The voiceover begins by addressing the audience directly: “To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come…THANK YOU.”

Cheer #1:  Good strategic approach.
How smart is this strategy?  No attacks on the “other” network.  No knocks on the device.  No more touting OTHER phone’s app capacities.  Just a simple, singular message that affectionately bonds the two companies.

Cheer #2:  Truthfulness.
The spot gets honest, and does it elegantly.  It essentially ADMITS that (despite its efforts to sell you a zillion other devices,) Verizon customers have wanted THIS phone all along.

Cheer #3:  Bonding with customers.
What’s more impactful than saying “thank you?’  How often do big corporations do that, especially when the context is “thank you for being patient, while we tried to shove other things down your throat for the last three years.”

Bonus Cheer:  Create anticipation.
By putting the forthcoming launch date as a super, the spot creates anticipation.  This is “appointment advertising” at its simple and singular (ooh, a pun!) best.

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.

Two thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking. But Why?

Nader Ashway3 Comments

A new study has been released called “Americans Reject Tailored Advertising” and it could signal a return to Capitol Hill for marketers.  Eeek.  UPenn Ph.D. Joseph Turow and four others have compiled this telemarketing study, and conclude that majority percentages of Americans are opposed to having the websites they visit track their activities.

In the summary of the study, the authors state “our findings suggest that if Americans could vote on behavioral targeting today, they would shut it down.”

But why?

Why in the world would you object to tailored ANYTHING?  If I walk into a hotel and have a choice between hearing “good morning, sir, we have a room for you,” and “good morning Mr. Ashway, we have a room for you just the way you like it – on an upper floor with a view of the city and close to the elevator,” um, I think I don’t really care how they know that.  Besides, I can always disagree.

Most of the reason we all love the web is BECAUSE it’s tailored.  BECAUSE it’s cookie’d.  That’s why Amazon is so cool:  “Welcome back.  We have recommendations for you.”  That’s why YouTube is so cool:  “Here are some videos you might like.”  If we had to wait for every site to uniquely load every component of the site every time we visited we wouldn’t want to visit anymore.  Besides, we can always disagree, and go with something other than the recommendations.

My best guess is that most Americans are fearful that their information will be misused in some way, and most likely in credit card fraud.  But that’s not the argument here.  Online tracking is not about storing or stealing, it’s about tailoring and timing.  That’s what makes web marketing what it is:  contextualized.  If we remove that, it’s just vagueness and a cacophony of undirected, irrelevant advertising noise. Yuk.

This sounds like horsehockey.  More to come on this study and this topic in the near future.

Empty promises give me the JetBlues

Nader Ashway2 Comments

I’m a JetBlue fan.  I like the brand, I like the approach, I like the planes.  Nearly everything about the way they do business has been pretty positive for me, and I fly them when I can, despite having my frequent traveler account with another airline.

This morning, JetBlue sends me an email blast promising fares as low as $49.  So I bite.  I consider taking a quick trip to Buffalo to visit an old friend who just had twins – and heck, maybe I’ll catch a Bills game while I’m there – a great way to spend a Sunday in the early fall.  It sure beats driving for all those hours.  And for $49 each way, it’s a steal!

So I click through on the email. I know I’ve landed on the vanity/landing page because the form fields are pre-populated with my departing and arriving cities, corresponding to the NYC-BUF link I clicked in the email.  (Nice work.)

However, there are NO flights for $49.  In fact, the LOWEST fare I find is $94.  That’s almost double the promised fare.  So, being a good consumer, I blame myself and think about changing my travel dates.  (Notice the ethos there?  As consumers, we always defer to the position of being wrong…it could NEVER be the brand.)

I change the dates to six weeks out.  And still, no fare under $79. It took about three revisions in the six to eight week travel window to find a one-way fare at $49.  Naturally, it included a Saturday night stay (a relic platform of the old travel industry to punish business travelers and/or encourage leisure travel,) and/or traveling at some insane hour (care to leave NYC at 10:40 pm to arrive in Buffalo after midnight?) to get that fare.  There were also very few $49 fares returning to NYC.

Marketers, listen up. When you send an email blast and brag about your new offer, like fares as low as $49, your consumers better find those fares pretty readily when they click through.  When you can’t deliver on basic promises that you prepare for promotions like an email blast, how can you expect your consumers to believe that you’ll deliver on the larger brand promises or the value proposition?

When you SAY you have this great offer, but can’t deliver on it, that’s not making a real promise to your consumers, that’s baiting someone into clicking.  Exactly what people HATE about marketing, and distrust about email marketing in particular. Each time you blow it and can’t deliver, you’re eroding trust in the brand – and that’s way harder to make up than the short term gains you hoped to realize with the promotion in the first place.

So be very careful what you promise.  Especially if you can actually deliver it. Marketing is the one arena (well, maybe politics, too) where you have to DELIVER on your promises, then POINT OUT how you delivered on your promises. The best thing that could have happened in this JetBlue scenario is that I would have clicked through, found a couple of $49 fares, and seen a star or a burst or some sort of acknowledgment that affirmed the email blast – “Here they are, those $49 fares, just as we promised!  Why not take one?”

That’s cheesy, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the letdown of finding nothing even close to the promised offer.