Steely Dan as business marketing model?

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I recently had the pleasure of taking in a Steely Dan concert at New York’s Beacon Theater. They are on tour performing alternating sets of their final three classic albums.  I opted to see “The Royal Scam,” one of their finest and most muscular records from 1976.

I was fortunate to have an excellent seat, where I could see the band, and enjoy their music.  When the band first took the stage, I was quite surprised to see the legendary guitarist Larry Carlton taking up residency on stage right. And not just for the first song…he played the entire set.

There was no mention that Carlton would be performing with the band.  But it made absolute sense, since he figured such a prominent role on “The Royal Scam,” playing memorable guitar solos throughout, (including on this night, a note-for-note reincarnation of the classic “Kid Charlemagne” solo,) all with the distinctive Carlton hollow-body sound.

This is an excellent lesson for business and consumer marketers, and how to go about your communications strategies.  A key element to connecting with an audience is relevance;  putting a message that has context in front of someone that likely wants to hear that message, while using a medium that appeals to his or her sensibilities.  But the truly memorable connections are made when you can add an element of the unexpected, some surprise or aha! moment that catches the consumer off guard.

When you deliver marketing messages that are both relevant and unexpected, it usually resonates  – right on the bottom line.

Hey Congress: your messaging strategy sucks.

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Congress weighs in on advertising again.  Clumsily, again.  In a new post on Adage.com, Nat Ives & Rich Thomaselli detail new efforts from Congress that attempt to either strip tax benefits of DTC pharma ads, or add heavier guidelines in several online and offline connection points.  The main takeaway is that there’s NO ORGANIZED APPROACH to what Congress is doing, making it less and less clear as to why they’re enacting all this “stuff” in the first place.  If it’s about consumer protection, they should say so.  If it’s about fiscal concerns, say so.  But as you read this story, it’s clear:  there’s no rhyme or reason.

What the government needs right now (aside from a vacation and a valium,) is a stronger messaging strategy.  When you’re talking about tens of millions of jobs, hundreds of billions of locally generated (and taxable) dollars, and badly-needed trillions churned in the domestic economy, you had better be on point.  And these new reports of heavier-than-usual-legislation-in-a-recessed-economy-trying-to-pull-itself-by-the-bootstraps do not produce a juicy tagline whatsoever.

On this blog, we’ve already discussed how Congress is adversely affecting the consumer in the process of all of this.  Ad targeting (online or offline) helps put marketing in context, and makes it less “noisy” for the consumer.  Putting these opt-ins and opt-outs and “are-you-sure?” buffers in between consumers and ad messages isn’t just messy, but it may ultimately cost the country billions in lost revenue.  See the post below:  Check Your Privacy – On the Floor.

This latest wave of government bureacracy is fueling the stereotype of Democratic government – we look wasteful and petty in the face of a tidal wive of really important agenda items.  The marketing community could be HELPING the cause right now in a big way by doing what it does best:  keeping the conversation on point, filtering out the noise and making a lot of this easier for American consumers to understand.  But every day Congress flings another dart in the agency world’s direction, they’re – we’re – going to be less and less inclined to do so.

Meet the new advertising. Same as the old advertising.

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This morning, I started my day by reading several articles, blog posts and emails.  And it seems that all of them were about “viral video.”  Did you see those cute little babies on roller skates?  (How did they do THAT?)  Or the naked stewardess?  How about the viral video that EXPLAINS how the Samsung viral video was filmed?  Did you hear that the ad world is anxiously awaiting new web videos from FedEx?

Viral, viral, viral.  And this stuff is way out in the open.

But here’s the thing.  It’s all been done before.

The online revolution has been a liberating force – inside and out of the marketing sphere – particularly for the information consumer.  Companies large and small cram their value propositions into an 800 pixel frame for the world to see.  Politicians can clearly (sometimes) lay out their platforms for voters.  And millions of people (including yours truly) with opinions on millions of topics, blog the days away, blasting and re-shaping the editorial and cultural landscape.

But what about advertising?  Why is it that advertising is ALWAYS about making these little movies?  In the three and a half decades since the early 1970’s, the television :30 or :60 has remained the absolute pinnacle of creative output.  TV wins the big awards.  TV drives the big budgets.  TV, TV, TV.  It puts radio and print ads and direct and outdoor and promotions out to dry.

So here comes the new new economy.  And the new new Internet.  And the new new advertising opportunities.  Anything goes, right?  Flash.  Ajax. New banner sizes. Peelbacks. Ads that “fly” across your website.  Wow.  So many possibilities for creativity.  So many opportunities for engagement.  So many ways to measure!

And yet what is the new new advertising form?  The teacher’s pet of them all?  TV spots, disguised as “viral” videos!

Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.

A smart channel choice doesn’t have to be online.

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An article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses how some movie studios are a little miffed with Redbox, the hot rent-a-movie-for-a-buck-from-a-kiosk-at-your-local-grocery-store distribution vehicle that has taken the nation by storm.

There are about 17,000 such kiosks across the country, and they all feature scores of new movie titles that are either hard to find or harder to get via the DVD rental channel (e.g. Blockbuster,) or more expensive via the direct-to-consumer channel (as in Netflix or several carrier on-demand programs.)  For instance, my wife and I just watched “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” via our programming carrier’s onDemand option.  It cost us five bucks to watch it on the spot with a few clicks of our remote.  We had a 24-hour window in which to view the film.  (Helpful, since it runs nearly three hours.)  For $1, I could have driven two blocks to the grocery store and rented it for the same 24-hour period.  I could also opt for additional 24-hour periods, each at a $1 increment.

Needless to say, Redbox represents a smart and tidy little distribution channel for entertainment, and a super-convenient choice for consumers.  And imagine this:  it’s NOT online!  And yet, some movie studios are griping about the channel, claiming that it’s cannibalizing sales that it could otherwise realize.

When a consumer rents a DVD via Redbox instead of Blockbuster (for instance,) the studio is losing commission.  This is simply based on different channel revenue models.  Blockbuster has a deal that pays the studio a percentage of EACH rental fee.  The Redbox model acts like a more independent intermediary:  it buys the title at face value ONCE, and then recoups that expense and realizes a profit as the film is rented multiple times. (It even gets bulk rates on some titles from some studios, so they may pay even less than face value.)

Movie studios need to learn a lesson from their music studio colleagues.  When the RIAA tried to block new channel choices for consumers (heck, the recording industry even tried to get a percentage of sales from cassette tapes, claiming that they were being used to duplicate music without authorization!) it blew up in their faces.  Out of the ashes of the Napster and Limewire explosions rose iTunes, a new channel that provided great value and convenience to the consumer and worked a good backroom deal for the recording institutions.

Today, movie studios need to realize that Redbox is a channel choice that’s really good for consumers, too.  Instead of blocking and litigating (which is what Universal is doing right now with Redbox,) they should embrace and engage.  There may be smart and very creative marketing angles that studios can take using ONLY the Redbox channel.  Imagine that – a new marketing plan that drives people OFFLINE.  What is the world coming to?

Microsoft advertising is HELPING Apple

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Microsoft is pretty happy with their new ad campaign from Crispin Porter & Bogusky.  After all, what could be better than pairing one of the biggest and most venerated technology brands on the planet with the creative weirdos who brought us “subservient chicken?”

In a survey of some of the recent ads in the PC Hunter campaign, “Lauren” says “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.”  “Giampaolo,” a tech-savvy and demanding user, says “I don’t want to pay for the brand, I want to pay for the computer.” “Sheila,” a filmmaker, says “this Mac only comes with 2GB of RAM.”

So, what’s the big deal?  First of all, they’re factually inaccurate, but that’s never been a huge concern in television advertising anyway.  In fact, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner is now confirming a rumour that Apple called Microsoft and threatened legal action if they don’t pull the spots, based on some erroneous lines.

Second, someone should probably tell these “users” that in all of the Microsoft empire, you won’t find a single laptop being produced.  Not one.  Not anywhere.  But I suppose that an ad campaign comparing operating systems would be a bit much for the prime time audience, even coming from Crispin.

Okay, enough about the spots.  What about the marketing behind them? It seems like Crispin is doing more for Mac than they are for Microsoft in this very un-Crispin-type campaign. First of all, they’re positioning apples (nice pun, eh) against oranges…Microsoft is an OS only, Apple actually MANUFACTURES and BUILDS laptops and desktops. It’s like comparing GoodYear Tires with BMW cars and then bragging that the tires are cheaper.

But of all the marketing strategies that were considered, and for all the aura and creative mystique of the agency, and all the inherent attributes of the Microsoft brand – and its history of success – that were laid on the table, they went to war with a “we’re cheaper” strategy? Wow. Suddenly those old ads from Mc-Cann Erickson – the ones with the kids and the drawn-in rocketships – look really good right now.