tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37433403766326142652024-03-05T10:10:52.337-08:00Here Lies MarketingMarketing the way it should be: fresh, funny, organic, and 100 percent iconoclastic.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-39780154868216753142013-11-26T14:49:00.001-08:002013-11-26T14:49:20.499-08:00A Blow To The Head<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 6pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The normal content of all of my blogs has been pre-empted by what I consider to be an essential message. If you're looking for something else, be patient and share this with your favorite athlete, and his or her parents. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My son no longer plays youth hockey, and I no longer coach youth hockey. And while I am heartbroken by this turn of events, I am totally at peace with that decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Obviously, one event precipitated the other. On Nov. 17, my son Andy suffered his third concussion in 10 months, in a B-level bantam game. The next day a neurologist – whose son was a star hockey player – recommended he give up the sport.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We didn’t argue or fight back. Instead, we accepted the recommendation with a measure of relief; at the same time, I resigned my position as an assistant coach with my son’s team.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My son was not going to be a star hockey player; he shook out as a borderline high-school varsity player. But his skills as a hockey player did not have any impact on this decision. He’s a very good B-level bantam hockey player, arguably one of the best in the state. With him on the ice, his team stood a very good chance of winning a state title. He didn’t leave a lesser team or a less meaningful situation, not that that matters or should matter. I can’t imagine any decision to leave a team could have been any more heart-wrenching even at the highest levels of the game, yet we made this decision unanimously, without compunction or remorse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Andy is walking away primarily because the doctors and his parents recommended it. I am walking away because I can no longer with a clear conscience recommend that young people play upper-level hockey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This isn’t a cause-and-effect thing; it’s not simply a case of me losing my desire to coach because my son had three concussions and had to quit hockey. Instead, this is a conclusion that I have reached after coaching more than 100 hockey games over the last four years. I can no longer convince myself that there is sufficient concern for players’ well-being coming from any sector of the sport – equipment manufacturers, sanctioning bodies and organizations, officials, coaches, parents, and other players.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the last six games I coached I saw three players on our team leave the ice with concussions or concussion-like symptoms. In less than a full season I saw six players sustain concussions and one break his collarbone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I asked Andy how many penalty minutes were doled out as the total punishment for those injuries, all of which were inflicted through illegal or borderline-illegal contact. He said six.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Six minutes: That’s a total. That’s a total for six significant brain injuries and a broken bone resulting from illegal and borderline-illegal contact. Cause injuries like that on the street and you’re spending a year in prison. Do that in high-school hockey and your team can’t play for a state championship. Do it in the NHL or NFL and you’re suspended one game minimum and fined five figures. Do that in bantam-B hockey and you spend six minutes in the box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Does this seem right to you in any way? If not, the easy way out is to blame the officials and leave it at that. They should have called the penalties. Call the penalties and none of this happens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay, but consider the officials’ situation. Most of our team’s games were officiated by children as the law defines them, 16- or 17-year-old boys looking to make a little money. For some of them, the first game they officiated was our game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It never struck me until very recently, but I am absolutely terrified by the mere idea of having a barely trained 16-year-old boy, in many cases a head-knocking product of a head-knocking hockey culture, being put into a contentious environment and charged with enforcing the rules protecting 14-year-old kids in a sport where violent high-speed collisions occur every minute. These young officials have only the most basic knowledge of the rules, are not sufficiently removed from a hockey culture that may encourage illegal contact, are easily influenced by coaches and spectators, and in no way feel empowered to make the difficult calls that need to be made to create an adequate atmosphere of safety on the ice. They’re in a no-win situation, and the game and its players suffer for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Not only do officials need to be better trained and sufficiently empowered, the rules backing them need to be stiffer. A lot stiffer. It’s okay to be draconian here, to punish player, coach, and team for hits resulting in head injuries. If USA Hockey, the Wisconsin Amateur Hockey Association, and all other hockey-sanctioning bodies wanted to remove from the game 90 percent of the hits resulting in head injuries, they could. Disqualify teams from tournaments. Suspend coaches. Suspend players. Forfeit games. Bar organizations. It’s not as if they don’t know the dangers or what’s at stake. After all, there wouldn’t be state or national titles if these bodies didn’t create them out of whole cloth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Football has taken huge steps toward criminalizing head contact. Hockey’s efforts look half-hearted by comparison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As long as we’re on the subject of sanctioning bodies and half-hearted efforts, the attempts to educate coaches on the necessity of removing the culture of violence from the game and discourage head contact come off as less than half-hearted – one-quarter-hearted, maybe. USA Hockey’s age-specific modules spend at least as much time talking about why eight-year-olds should not drink alcohol as they do avoiding the subject of head contact. (USA Hockey’s glass-half-full approach is to teach appropriate <i>body</i> contact, and avoid the subject of the head as much as possible.) Educational requirements are bare-bones for most coaches, with nothing that stresses the absolute necessity of compliance. Coaches can and do sleep through their clinic, stumble through their CE, and go right back to teaching the art of the high elbow to the jaw and the stick butt under the shoulder pads.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Somehow, someway, the head-knockers and red-bloods that are coaching kids need to be weeded out, or dialed back at the very least. I had the privilege of working under some superb coaches who truly understood the game. Jim Lawrence is a Ph. D. in chemistry who coached the club-hockey team at Purdue. Ron Dufresne played Minnesota hockey and Ivy League football. I’ve seen these highly educated men teach the game the right way practice after practice and game after game. They’ve sat kids who were improperly aggressive, dialed back the bench when they cheered a big hit, treated referees with respect, acknowledged good plays by opponents, supported kids who needed supporting, held back kids who were hurt, and shook hands at the final buzzer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Did we sometimes cheer the wrong things at the wrong times? Sure. But we never belittled a child, swore at a child, swore at an official, sanctioned players who swore at other players or officials, applauded illegal behavior, encouraged head-hunting, or raised hockey players the way NFL players raise pitbulls. We played against plenty of coaches who did, unfortunately.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“So there are bad coaches,” the red-bloods say. “Big news flash. Most coaches are good.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’d go along with that. More than half of all coaches are good. All that means is that once a week my son was facing a coach who wasn’t good, who wasn’t teaching kids the right way, who was condoning reckless, unsportsmanlike, dangerous play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All right, so one-third of coaches are bad. That means my son was being put in a dangerous situation a little less than once a week. One-quarter bad? In danger every other week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The odds really don’t ever get good. It’s not acceptable for a child’s long-term health to be put into the hands of irresponsible adults once a month, once every other month, once a year, or ever. It’s just not acceptable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> “Geez, why doncha just do away with checking altogether?” the red-bloods ask mockingly. “And then it’ll be just like girls’ hockey.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m okay with that, actually. None of the life lessons hockey teaches involve head injuries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the reasons I’d be okay with youth hockey minus checking has to do with equipment. Equipment manufacturers say that their equipment is better than ever. It is; it’s better at turning kids into high-speed battering rams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This isn’t just a hockey thing. Football is struggling with the same problem. Advancements in protective equipment for both sports do a much better job of protecting the deliverer of the blow than the receiver. There is no “concussion-proof” helmet. There is no fail-safe knee brace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The inventors of such things would enjoy untold riches through organizational endorsements and grateful-parent purchases, so I don’t necessarily think hockey parents should underwrite the development of truly safe equipment through higher fees. But if that’s the way it’s going to get done, surcharge away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I used to think better equipment was the ultimate way of making hockey safer. Now I think it’s probably the least necessary component in the equation. The ultimate answer isn’t scientific; it’s cultural.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is where we really need answers. Rules and punishments come to a dead stop when they run into the head-knocking red-bloods – parents, coaches, players, and organizational officials -- that make up an unfortunately large part of hockey culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I may not have the answers, but I have a few suggestions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Coaches need to take this stuff seriously and realize it’s not the game they played for the most part. It’s a faster, better game played by more highly skilled players. That’s the game they have to teach, and if they can’t teach it, they have to step aside in favor of someone who can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Parents need to realize the same thing, plus the following: You are not your child. Their aspirations and accomplishments are not your aspirations and accomplishments. And they are very likely not going to make the NHL regardless of how much ice time they get, how many goals they score, what the referees do or don’t do, or how many minutes they spend in the box. Also, it is not all right for your child to hit another child in the head, or from behind, or in any illegal manner, no matter how spectacularly the other kid falls. One of these times he’s not going to get up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Referees need to make the calls knowing enough to make the calls, and knowing there will be no repercussions from any quarter for making the calls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Equipment manufacturers need to step it up. Protecting young hockey players is at least as important as protecting young football players.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, the sanctioning bodies have to muzzle the red-bloods who don’t understand why squirts can’t body-check, show a little red blood of their own, and vow to eliminate head contact from the game, and do whatever – <i>whatever</i>—it takes to make that occur – up to and including removing checking from youth hockey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If checking could be removed from the game for a time, all the people who play hockey simply for the violence might leave, and then if body contact were to be gradually reintroduced commensurate with improvements in equipment, the game might eventually become what it can be – a fast, free-flowing, beautiful sport that above all rewards speed and skill. But that’s not a guarantee. It’s a pipedream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For my part, I’ll never be able to replace the thrill I got seeing my son charge like a stallion onto the ice to start his shift, the joy I felt seeing the joy he derived from the game. That’s gone forever, and whatever he does in any other sport will never replace that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the very end I come back to the story of another parent from Andy’s team, a tough little guy, brusque and abrasive but honest as the day is long, someone I like and respect. In high school this guy was one of those types who was immediately good at any sport he picked up. Hockey was his favorite sport; he played it well and played hard. He couldn’t tell me how many concussions he sustained, but he assured me it was a big number.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He has a dead spot on his brain now from too many concussions, and Parkinson’s. His last five years have been a continual series of ER visits, tests at Mayo and near-death experiences, all traceable to concussions, all traceable to hockey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He asked Andy, “How many concussions is this?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Three,” Andy answered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Take my word for it,” he replied. “The fourth one’s not worth it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s not worth it. And I can’t convince myself that a third is worth it, or a second, or even a first, and I can’t honestly tell parents or kids that it’s worth it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So my son and I are walking away from hockey, for different reasons. I know my son’s future is bright, and I’ll be okay. I’m not so sure about the sport.</span> </div>
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<i>Postscript: After I wrote this I shared it, as a whole or in condensed form, with many people whom I consider to be experts in sports medicine, hockey, or writing. Some disagreed with emphasis or wording, but no one disagreed substantially with anything presented in this piece. A hockey coach in Regina, Sask., who was one of Andy’s first coaches said “yep,” and sent me a link to a piece on young officials giving up officiating because of fan abuse. A veteran high-school and semipro hockey official said “yep.” A high-ranking official in minor-league hockey said “yep.” The local high-school hockey coach said “yep.” The former team doctor of the Boston Red Sox said “yep.” The parents of Andy’s former teammates said “yep.” A number of red-blooded hockey fans said “yep.” There’s obviously a problem. The question is whether enough people care sufficiently about a solution.</i></div>
Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-1260561800494362942013-07-19T14:18:00.001-07:002013-07-23T06:34:38.465-07:00Social Media: What A Car Wreck<span style="font-family: inherit;">My buddy Gunner wrote the worst car book ever. He wasn’t
trying to write the worst car book ever, but he was editing something called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Old Cars Weekly</i> and he had all these
pictures of car wrecks, and got the assignment of making a book out of the
old car-wreck pictures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Gunner's problem was even though his job was to make a
book of car-wreck pictures, he couldn’t suggest that car wrecks are somehow
fun, because, you know, a book full of Hupmobiles with crumpled fenders and
wayward headlights might make impressionable youth come up with the idea that
this stuff is knee-slapping funny. (The combined efforts of hundreds of Mack
Sennett two-reelers were not factored into this particular equation.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So someone’s solution – I’d like to think it wasn’t Gunner’s
– was to make a book full of car-wreck pictures but make it an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">auto-safety </i>book, a book showing what
could happen to you if you aren’t careful with your 1921 Kissel.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The car-wreck pictures are the car-wreck pictures, so the
only way Gunner could convey this message was through the cutlines. As a result,
every picture of a flattened Ford or a crushed Chrysler is captioned to the
effect of, “An almost new Model A Ford roadster ran into this seven- or
eight-year-old American LaFrance fire engine on June 29, 1930, in New Jersey.
Judging from damage to the truck, this Ford was probably a total loss. Don’t
loose [sic] your antique Ford to careless driving!”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you have trouble stomaching one of these, just think: There
are almost 250 pages of these pictures, two pictures to a page, and each
picture has a similar caption. I know the pain I’ve had reading them; I’d have
to imagine Gunner felt like he was giving birth each time he sat down at the
typewriter and tried to come up with some novel way of describing a
fender-bender involving a 1949 Plymouth and a 1950 Ford.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The trade press did not feel his pain. The description of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antique Car Wrecks</i> as the worst car book
ever is not mine; I believe it came from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Editor
and Publisher</i>, though I’ve lost the original review.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s the thing about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antique
Car Wrecks</i>: It may be the worst car book ever, but every one of those excruciating
captions would make a perfectly acceptable – even desirable – tweet or Facebook
posting for many, many legitimate companies of long and good standing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />The fact that a perfectly terrible book can make perfectly
good social media has a couple of lessons for marketers. First, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">social media is not literature and should
not be judged as such</b>. That’s fine to an extent, though it is not an excuse
for poor spelling, bad grammar, and improper usage. Social media is not
literature, but the English language is still the English language and
deserves our respect. Remember: Even if only one person in your audience is
judging you based on your use of language, why risk alienating that one person? Say it correctly and be sure.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second is that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">stupid
stuff is still stupid stuff, regardless of the channel. </b>Using pictures of
old-car wrecks is an ineffective way of encouraging auto safety, whether it’s
in a tweet, on Facebook, or in a real book. Facebook is not a license for you
to turn your brand into a never-ending string of inanities under the guise of
engagement. Real engagement, if it’s going to happen (and I have my doubts),
has to occur on a higher, more meaningful level.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A corollary of that is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">don’t use stupid stuff to build your brand. </b>I can see how a
dental-insurance company posting a picture of a cat gnawing a toothbrush with
the caption, “Caviteez – I fightz dem,” can encourage a very primal level of
interaction. I can’t see how it furthers the brand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">don’t be coy</b>.
Don’t use social media to suggest your brand is something it isn’t, or to play
pittypat with your brand attributes. Your brand is what it is, and that needs
to come across regardless of the channel, audience, or message – even if your
message is, “Postwar collector cars need good tires, too!”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Though if that is your message, I can get you Gunner’s
phone number.</span>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-66400226018394195132011-11-23T09:03:00.000-08:002011-11-23T09:04:08.383-08:00Ban The PlanIf there’s a document more frustrating to marketers than a marketing plan, I haven’t seen it. Invariably someone devotes an entire decade to writing a single year’s marketing plan, pours a vial of his blood into the ink like KISS did with its comic books, wraps himself in a nice warm iron maiden and ensconces himself in a project-manager-infested garret, and produces a veritable <em>Great Gatsby</em> of marketing plans that is promptly vilified and ignored by turns, and spends the rest of its days sopping up coffee stains on a few wayward VPs’ desks.<br />
<br />
It’s not supposed to be that way.<br />
<br />
Marketing plans are not supposed to be DOA. They’re meant to be breathing, vital documents, like Colbie Caillat songs with pie charts. The problem is that everyone has the wrong set of expectations for marketing plans.<br />
<br />
I know. I have written marketing plans that read like fiction (don’t say it) and marketing plans that read like schematics, and it really doesn’t matter. People read the wrong things into them and get the wrong things out of them, and frankly, I don’t know how to prevent that from happening. In a world where everyone thinks they’re a marketer, everyone has an idea of what should be in a marketing plan. Invariably, that boils down to: their stuff. And that is not what a marketing plan is there for.<br />
<br />
So let me give my few ground rules of marketing plans, both for the people creating the plans and the people consuming them. The people who use them to sop up coffee messes may carry on.<br />
<br />
First, for the creators of marketing plans: Stop using the marketing plan to justify your existence. <br />
<br />
There are a lot of insecure marketers out there, people who make the lead character in the <em>Diary of a Wimpy Kid</em> series look like Terrell Owens. And they view the marketing plan as their manifesto for empire-building, or empire-maintaining, or empire-not-shrinking-too-much. <em>If they read this they’ll see why we need a $5 million budget, and five new hires, and iPads all around,</em> they think, <em>and she’ll have to marry me then!</em> (Whoops; got my marketing-plan fantasies mixed up with my adolescent fantasies involving Traci Ludvik.) But the readers want none of that, especially in a marketing plan. They know why you exist. They’re not quite as dumb as you think in that regard. They want to know where you’ve been, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there. Do that well enough and you’ll get your booty.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, I’m sorry, but if you need any document to justify your existence you’re not doing your job properly. And if your document of choice is the marketing plan, you’re doubly inept. <br />
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Second, also for the creators of marketing plans: I don’t have a foolproof formula for creating a marketing plan; marketing-plan time is the season of the witch in most marketing cycles, when all the fools come out to dance beneath the full moon and eat your Life Savers. However, I do have a recipe for a virtuous marketing plan. It may not get you that unicorn, but it will accomplish its job without wasting too much of anyone’s time, leaving you that much more time to properly fashion your unicorn wishes. <br />
<br />
The recipe starts by revisiting the brand. Spend a page – no more – and state what the brand is made of, what it does, and how you define it. If you accept the idea that marketing exists to support the brand, this is the only logical way to begin. <br />
<br />
Next, outline what you’ve done over the year to support the brand. If you’ve defined the brand well and done your homework, your brand-building efforts should flow logically. State how much you spent in general terms; don’t break it down to the penny. If you feel that’s absolutely necessary, stick it in an appendix.<br />
<br />
You may have to break down this section by specific brand attributes. For instance, if you’re in the business of selling educational software and your key brand attributes are product, pricing and service, you’ll probably have to spend time and space discussing how you supported product, promoted pricing and celebrated service. That’s okay, but don’t get carried away. <br />
<br />
Just as everything you do in marketing has to support the brand and its key attributes, everything you do in the marketing plan has to support the brand and its attributes. Lose track of the brand and you’re a small boy’s idea of a marketing director, doing stuff simply because it’s cool.<br />
<br />
The next section needs to deal with the effectiveness of your efforts. Here’s where you add the measurements – but not too many. Remember, effectiveness has to be measured in context, and in support of the brands and their attributes. The measures of choice are not necessarily the number of click-throughs, the number of awards your ads win, the new places you found to spend money, or the attitudes of core audiences towards your call-center staff. <br />
<br />
Many columns ago I defined the key measurements as your budget, your sales goal and your actual sales. I’ll stand by that. I’ll add that many of the best customer-service attributes need to be measured qualitatively, maybe even anecdotally, and Facebook and Twitter can help. But those measurements, such as they are, exist to help explain sales. If you have numbers and illustrations that aren’t directly related to your budget, your sales goal or your actual sales, get them out of there.<br />
<br />
And remember once again to place sales in the context of supporting your brand. Sales are the only relevant measure of brand support, but they have to be defined that way in your marketing plan. Otherwise they’re just, you know, sales.<br />
<br />
The third section builds off the first two and a half. Because the brand is <em>x</em>, and we did <em>y</em> to support it with results <em>z,</em> next year we’re going to do<em> a</em>, <em>b, c,</em> and <em>d</em>. It has to be that clear and simple. I have been accused of being a sort of Herman Cain of marketing, simplifying complex issues down to the point of incoherence, but I think I’m okay here. <br />
<br />
Say what you’re going to do to support the brand based on what you’ve done to support the brand. Throw in sales goals for next year if you’ve got ‘em. This takes marketing out of the we’ll-make-it-up-as-we-go-along paradigm that I love nearly as much as I realize its non-sustainability. It's the only logical approach, and it also makes it loads easier to justify a reasonable budget.<br />
<br />
The last necessary component of a marketing plan is the most overlooked, and in some ways the most important. Say what you’re going to do to support the brand the year after next, and the year after that, and the year after the year after that. <br />
<br />
I know, I know. I can hear the howls from here. But tell the truth: By doing that, doesn’t the marketing plan seem more like a plan, a real-life process from getting from A to B over time? <br />
<br />
Think if other areas of the company only thought in one-year chunks. Suppose your company makes snow-throwers. Engineering might say, “Well, we’re going to make snow plows this year,” one year and, “Oh, we’re going to make snowmobiles,” the next. Packaging might wrap them in bubble wrap one year and the next forget they ever wrapped anything in bubble wrap and put the whole shebang in a packing crate. Or human resources might raise the premiums for the health plan and lower the 401(k) contribution one year, and raise the 401(k) contribution and lower the premiums the next. Only Marketing seems to want to proceed like David Byrne in a bad digital transfer of <em>Stop Making Sense</em>.<br />
<br />
I can’t guarantee this recipe for a marketing plan will work, assuming that any marketing plan can truly work. It will cut most of the fuss, feathers, positioning, and politicking, and if you’re as sick as I am of that junk messing with good marketing, then it’s worth a try.<br />
<br />
Happy Marketing-Planning. And lay off the turkey. You may be one someday.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-89580330360525854582011-11-08T05:53:00.000-08:002011-11-08T06:42:06.507-08:00Comedy Tomorrow, Stragedy TonightA friend of mine in New York got a well-deserved new job about two weeks ago, and I called him up the other day to ask how things were going.<br />
<br />
"Good," he said. "But I'm not sure about my boss."<br />
<br />
<em>Uh-oh</em>, I thought. <em>Bad moon rising</em> (or for those of you with marginal hearing, <em>bathroom on the right</em>).<br />
<br />
"What's up?" I said. <br />
<br />
"I don't think he has a handle on strategy and tactics," he answered. "Everything he thinks is strategy is tactics, and everything he thinks is tactics – well, that's tactics too. He's got a billion ways to get things done but no idea where he's come from and where he's going."<br />
<br />
Heard it. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that refrain I'd have enough for a peppermint latte at McDonald's, but only for a limited time.<br />
<br />
One of the major ailments afflicting marketing directors is their embrace of the "director" at the expense of "marketing." Along with the secret handshake and the now-obligatory iPad some marketing directors are presented with a game of Risk on their first day, one of the fancy ones that looks like your dog-eared copy of <em>New Mexico Statutes, 1956</em>, only this game has “design” and “point-of-sale” and “brand management” and “corporate communications” and “marketing research” instead of Europe and Asia and the rest of the Risk worlds to conquer. <br />
<br />
Once presented with this game, the average marketing director does about what you’d expect of it (marketing directors, like so many other people in marketing, being not awfully far down the road out of childhood): She plays with it the game all the time, like a steampunk version of Angry Birds, and draws boxes and concocts spreadsheets detailing utilization of resources – her resources, because they are her small plastic pieces – all to a near-total neglect of the actual objectives of marketing direction, which is to – say it with me – direct marketing. And that means furthering the direction of the overarching brand – corporate image, mission statement, divisional imperative, what have you – through specific substrategies, including individual brand management and marketing, and then executing those specific substrategies using a variety of tactics. <br />
<br />
It's nothing more than the old targeted application of common sense, but in the service of an overarching, all-encompassing strategy. As the master marketer Thomas Carlyle called it, “On earth, the broken arcs; in heaven the perfect sphere.” On the ground you may only see a piece of the marketing strategy, but you see the whole thing when you get far enough off the ground. The trick is to shed the lead boots of marketing administration and ascend to the realms of true marketing direction.<br />
<br />
It’s not easy. A marketing director has to know the big picture before she can tackle any of the little pictures, but when she’s thrust into the position what does she see? A whole bunch of little pictures with their mouths open, waiting for her to regurgitate dinner. The actual rising-above requires nothing more strenuous than thinking, but the thinking requires time, and there never seems to be any time whatsoever – especially when she could be playing Angry Birds. Or Risk.<br />
<br />
However, without that breath to ascend and grasp the larger picture, you are sentenced to forever matriculate at the Firesign Theater School of Marketing, whose motto is, “How can you be two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?” I know I’ve said in the past that a good marketer can be dropped into a metaphorical desert and market her way out of it (see Menard, D. L., “Wherever You Are, There You Is”), but you need a compass to get out of that particular nowhere, and that compass is called having the overall brand strategy ensconced firmly in your noggin, and letting your direction – your way out – flow from there.<br />
<br />
Without that, it’s like you’re going on a trip, and you know you’re taking a Prius because it gets 60 MPG highway and you really like the new ad jingle, and you’re riding on Goodyear Assurance TripleTreds because it might snow, and you’re going to take I-94 for a stretch because it’s really straight and the trucks stay away during the week, and then turn off on Highway 29 because it’s pretty, and stay at a Holiday Inn Express because you like the breakfast, and drive six hours before letting someone else drive six hours, and stop every four hours for gas and .. well, you know, and buy exactly 1.65 roller dogs during the trip – all without knowing where you came from and where you’re going.<br />
<br />
Choosing a road may seem like a strategy, but it’s a tactic. Knowing that you have to get from Tehachapi to Tonopah is a strategy. Once you know that, everything else is just execution and details. <br />
<br />
There’s no excuse for a marketing director – or anyone in marketing, really – not knowing overall brand direction. It tells you what to do -- down to the <em>n</em>th detail, if you let it.<br />
<br />
Look at it this way: Do you go off blithely in other facets of your life and hope you wind up somewhere appropriate? When you drive to the grocery store do you drive west hoping to find a grocery store because you like driving west, or do you drive to the grocery store? When you shave your face or your legs do you just start shaving anywhere, figuring you’ll get to the right spot in time? Completely daft, yet I can’t count the marketers who just go gaily marketing away without knowing where the merry pharalope they’re going, until they wind up in some salt marsh and have to call on sales or the CFO or someone to bail them out.<br />
<br />
If the marketing director is responsible for overall brand identity, it's her responsibility to communicate it to --and beyond that, <em>inculcate</em> it in -- her department and all regions and realms that her scepter touches, including the mail room. If the person responsible for overall brand identity resides above the marketing director but south of the mail room, it's again the director's obligation to snatch that identity and inculcate merrily once more. <br />
<br />
The real trouble starts when the neither the marketing director nor anyone at any of the layers above is thinking big brand thoughts. These cases call for a little subversive action.<br />
<br />
Someone has to think higher brand thoughts, and if the marketing director is too tied up in her game of Risk and her spreadsheet with the stages and gates done up in carmine and chartreuse to do it and a sub-direction person has to pick up the standard, then they have to carry it with all the Salvation Army tambourine-beater spirit they have in their soul. If that's you, and you have to shout it from the housetops, shout and keep shouting. If it gets you in trouble with the boss, keep shouting, If it costs you your job ... it won't cost you your job. At some point short of that the marketing director will hear all the commotion and realize she'd better get behind this or be ready to do some 'splainin', Lucy.<br />
<br />
What happens sometimes is that no one has a brand idea. Maybe a brand has been around forever and is operating in a sort of self-perpetuating catatonia, like George Will, or is functioning with a giant inflatable marketing director, like the autopilot in <em>Airplane!</em> but with prettier spreadsheets. Maybe a brand has been mandated from above to plug a perceived hole and is just commencing on a brutish life of insufficient sales and insufferable bickering about positioning. Maybe the keeper of the brand has moved on. It's not wrong to try to fill a total brand-identity vacuum, but it can't be done half-heartedly, or by substituting short-term tactical thinking for the strategy that's needed. <br />
<br />
Marketing is too important to be wasted on things that shouldn't be marketed, or sent off on summer-camp branding exercises that fade as soon as fall rolls around. The only way to maximize marketing's impact is to have a clear idea of what needs to be marketed in the first place. Is that so hard? Apparently it is.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-62194257238274726692011-09-12T18:18:00.000-07:002011-09-12T18:18:08.581-07:00If You Love Somebody, Let Them Spend Money<span style="font-family: Calibri;">With great power comes great responsibility, and with great responsibility comes a nail-chomping manager who wants to take it away from you.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s <em>Das Kapital</em> all over again, with Steve Carrell as Kap. The rank-and-file push for more unencumbered control over media and message and execution and budget, and managers hang onto those things like Cary Grant clinging to Lincoln’s nose in <em>North By Northwest</em>, claiming they’re vital to planning and predicting and managing and wheedling and cajoling and do all those things managers pinky-swear is in the job description if you pour lemon juice on it and hold it up to a strong light.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I totally get where managers are coming from. I would rather give up Diet Mountain Dew or negotiate peace between David Stern and the Tall People than willingly relinquish responsibility and control of the things I manage, especially if they contain even a molecule of cool.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“If you love somebody, set them free,” Sting sang, but Mr. Sumner never had to ride herd on a half-dozen caffeinated creatives, grooving to The Apples in Stereo and trying to build their own little Fort Sumter north-northeast of the salty-snacks machine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It got so bad for one of my manager friends that she said to me, “This is one of the most talented marketing staffs I have ever known, but it’s also one of the most exasperating. They think they’re all experts at their stuff.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And with that, my pendulum swings firmly to the proletariat. Of course they’re experts. That’s why you hired them. You wanted them because they’re good at what they do. You wouldn’t want bad people in those positions, would you? In fact, would you even want good people who don’t think they’re good?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You wanted good people and got them. You wanted good people who know they’re good, and got them. You must give them latitude. Unless you have the masochism factor of a cartoon rodent you cannot encourage them to the point where they get uncomfortably close to your kitchen and then slam the screen door in their face. You have to let them go, even if it means they fail, even – worse – if it means they succeed beyond all expectations.</span></div><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maybe the problem is in the semantics. Managing carries the connotation of controlling. Managers think they have to rule people when in reality they have to ensure production. But the reverse is also true, to an extent. Managers think they have to ensure production when in reality they have to rule.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The real reality is a combination play. Managers have to rule in such a way as to ensure individual production. Individuals produce when they feel empowered. Feeling empowered requires managers to give up some of their power, including the all-important power of the purse. And that can really hang managers up the most.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now, let's return to the manager exasperated by the talents of his stuff. How should he react? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The first thing needful is to make sure the staff knows their goals and their constraints. What are they supposed to do, and what is the size of the box around them – time, rules, culture, personalities? Next, their resources. As they play in their box, working toward their goal, what do they have to work with?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If they understand their goals, their constraints and their resources, there's really not much more for the manager to do but to clear the way occasionally, stay out of the way mostly, and answer questions when they arise. And make sure the team gets the credit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sounds so simple. So why is it so hard?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The old reasons. Power. Control. Selfishness. A lack of managerial know-how. I know lots of schools that teach management, but darn few that teach empowerment. It seems odd that control and domination need to be taught but channeling what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature" never gets taught. It's enough to make a fella want to turn big-R Red.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As for me, my hardest managerial task was trusting my staff to do it my way. But then I realized: My way might be wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what we were fighting over wasn't that big a deal.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Most of it isn't. But empowering your staff always is.</span></div>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-20996500568945395412011-06-30T11:42:00.001-07:002011-07-01T03:44:37.404-07:00archy, ayn, and amateursI bought my first book for my new iPod Touch, and it’s a business book.<br />
<br />
Sorry, it’s not <i>The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People</i>. That finished 17,168th on my list, behind <i>Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus</i> but ahead of <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>, a book I know is supposed to be great but to me is just a steaming pile of wet adjectives. (However, bonus points go to Ayn Rand for replying to an editor who wanted to cut the book, “Would you cut <i>The Bible</i>?” Often wanted to say it, never have.)<br />
<br />
The book is, naturally, <i>The Annotated archy and mehitabel</i>.<br />
<br />
You may not think of <i>The Annotated archy and mehitabel</i> as a business book. Likely you don’t even think of <i>The Annotated archy and mehitabel </i>at all, and that’s understandable, seeing as it’s a book of free verse ostensibly written by a cockroach but actually written by a semi-obscure, three-quarters-drunk and altogether brilliant newspaperman named Don Marquis.<br />
<br />
So what does free verse written by a cockroach have to do with business?<br />
<br />
Plenty. Probably the most applicable line for marketers comes in one of Marquis’ best pieces, a lament by one of the suitors of the unapologetically promiscuous feline Mehitabel, an old theater cat who decries the passing of the old ways thusly:<br />
<br />
the stage is not what it<br />
used to be tom says<br />
he puts his front paw<br />
on his breast and says<br />
they don t have it any more<br />
they don t have it here<br />
the old troupers are gone<br />
there s nobody can troupe<br />
any more<br />
they are all amateurs nowadays<br />
they haven t got it<br />
here<br />
there are only<br />
five or six of us oldtime<br />
troupers left<br />
this generation does not know<br />
what stage presence is<br />
personality is what they lack<br />
personality<br />
where would they get<br />
the training my old friends<br />
got in the stock companies …<br />
finish is what they lack<br />
finish<br />
and they haven t got it<br />
here<br />
and again he laid his paw<br />
on his breast …<br />
<br />
for two seasons i played<br />
the dog in joseph<br />
jefferson s rip van winkle<br />
it is true i never came<br />
on the stage<br />
but he knew i was just off<br />
and it helped him<br />
i would like to see<br />
one of your modern<br />
theatre cats<br />
act a dog so well<br />
that it would convince<br />
a trouper like jo jefferson<br />
but they haven t got it <br />
nowadays<br />
they haven t got it<br />
here<br />
jo jefferson had it he had it<br />
here<br />
<br />
i come of a long line<br />
of theatre cats<br />
my grandfather was with forrest<br />
he had it he was a real trouper<br />
my grandfather said<br />
he had a voice<br />
that used to shake<br />
the ferryboats <br />
on the north river<br />
once he lost his beard<br />
and my grandfather<br />
dropped from the<br />
fly gallery and landed<br />
under his chin<br />
and played his beard<br />
for the rest of the act<br />
you don t see any theatre<br />
cats that could do that<br />
nowadays<br />
they haven t got it they<br />
haven t got it <br />
here<br />
<br />
once i played the owl<br />
in modjeska s production<br />
of macbeth<br />
i sat above the castle gate<br />
in the murder scene<br />
and made my yellow<br />
eyes shine through the dusk<br />
like an owl s eyes<br />
modjeska was a real<br />
trouper she knew how to pick<br />
her support i would like<br />
to see any of these modern<br />
theatre cats play the owl s eyes<br />
to modjeska s lady macbeth<br />
but they haven t got it nowadays<br />
they haven t got it<br />
here<br />
<br />
mehitabel he says<br />
both our professions<br />
are being ruined<br />
by amateurs<br />
<br />
It’s a fact of business life that our professions are continually being ruined by amateurs. If you haven’t had your business life turned upside-down by a hotshot MBA with a Brooks Brothers suit, a Maori tattoo in an inconspicuous spot, a faintly passing knowledge of what your company does, and a Droid full of ideas for implementing Lean Six Sigma at the breakfast table, you haven’t lived, business-wise. There’s him, and the hopelessly out-of-touch Veteran of the Wars, and the metrogeek who believes all of business’ problems can be cured with a Facebook page, and the brilliant globalizer who knows English in the same way that Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann know American history, and the shakeup specialist who believes he can use mind control to change traffic lights, and all the glorious clichés. They live, and they are out to ruin your particular calling.<br />
<br />
This is never more true than in marketing, which is regarded by most businesspeople as a science softer than William Perry’s abdomen, softer even than Art Garfunkel singing a Stephen Bishop song. Everyone in business thinks they can market, right down to the person spraying Ever Clear on the tabletops, in part because they’ve been repeatedly told that they are marketers. <br />
<br />
And, you know, we as marketers are largely responsible for this. Part of plan for exploiting social media has been to open up marketing communication to the masses within the business’ walls. “Multiple communicators!” we beller. “Multiple communicators for multiple audiences!” <br />
<br />
Perhaps. But in our quest for brand interaction and the establishment of all of our people as subject-matter experts on everything, even the spraying of Ever Clear on tabletops, we’ve missed a very important point, namely: These people are amateurs. We can coach them and guide them and ghostwrite for them and do everything but be them, but they are amateurs. They know everything about how to spray Ever Clear on tabletops, and very little about how to convince people to spray Ever Clear on tabletops their way. And eventually that truth comes out. <br />
<br />
So between the executives who know nothing of marketing but think they do and the non-executives who have been drafted into marketing for their skills other than marketing, marketing is overrun with amateurs – not Olympic amateurs or NCAA amateurs or even Little League amateurs, but maybe backyard amateurs. Maybe.<br />
<br />
So how do you market around these people without winding up like Mehitabel’s suitor, clutching your brain and wailing to a very small audience, “they haven t got it here”?<br />
<br />
The first thing to do with them is to channel them and guide them to somewhere where they can’t hurt themselves. Social media is good.<br />
<br />
This is not an indictment of social media, necessarily. The marketing applications of social media are still being worked out. You can do social media completely wrong and still do it right. You can also do it right or wrong relatively inexpensively, with little cost to human marketing life. And finally, there are enough important people at higher levels of all organizations who regard social media as a sort of marketing zeppelin – you know, give it enough time and it’s going to blow up famously, and then we can all go back to watching tube TVs and dreaming about two-way wrist radios – that it’s a great place to stick the amateurs. Have them blow it up and then watch them try to explain it to management.<br />
<br />
The second and most important thing to do is to find your spot. Some people are great at this. You could stick them in a Turkish prison and they’d still be able to find a corner where they could hole up with a flea-infested blanket and a hunk of black bread as be as happy as possible, running Monty Python routines in their heads and scratching out Thurber cartoons in the filth with their fingernail.<br />
<br />
Somewhere in your amateur-infested marketing scheme there has to be a place where you can curl up and do some real marketing your way. It doesn’t have to be big; it just has to be yours. Do it your way with whatever resources you can muster, throw it out there and let it shine in comparison.<br />
<br />
Now, the problem is that the amateurs who don’t know how to market don’t know good marketing, either, so all your good work may go for naught. But keep at it. Eventually something positive will happen. A higher-up will pay attention, customers will pay attention, or the guy who sprays Ever Clear on tabletops will say to the heavily shaded fellow who talks like Charo, “Hey, this is pretty good.” And then they’ll go Panera Bread and discuss it over a bruschetta.<br />
<br />
At that point you should probably exit stage left with Mehitabel’s buddy the theater cat. They really haven t got it here. And both your professions are really being ruined by amateurs.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-85072454365525412162011-05-13T14:27:00.000-07:002011-05-14T14:22:00.535-07:00You Can't Always Get What You Want Unless You Really Don't Want ItAlmost everything I say or do bewilders someone, but one of the hardest things for some people to fathom is my explanation for why sometimes I’d rather listen to the radio than plug in my 3,000-song iPod.<br />
<br />
<br />
“I want to listen to something that I don’t know I want to listen to,” I tell them. And pennies descend from the firmament and pop into their eyes. But I stand by my words. <br />
<br />
At least 2,750 of the 3,000 songs on my iPod are arms-around-the-neck familiar. When I hear the drum roll that kicks off the Raspberries’ “I Wanna Be With You” I’m immediately struck by one of two emotions: I’m flipping triple solchows that I get to hear three minutes of cherry-soda euphoria courtesy of America’s first and best power-pop band, or I’m thinking, “Oh, man; not that again.”<br />
<br />
And the thing is, I <i>love</i> “I Wanna Be With You.” It’s in my all-time Top 10, along with Warren Zevon’s “Frank and Jesse James” and the Amazing Rhythm Aces’ “The End Is Not In Sight” and the Everly Brothers’ “On The Wings of a Nightingale,” and Graham Parker and the Rumour’s version of “I Want You Back” – and I turn off all of them from time to time when they pop up on the shuffle. <br />
<br />
(The lone exception to this on my iPod is Bob Newhart’s “Introducing Tobacco to Civilization.” I never turn it off, and I <i>always</i> laugh.)<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I can listen to campus radio plow through hour after hour of thrash and throat singing and never be tempted to reach for the dial. If you had told me before I turned on the radio that I was going to hear three hours of thrash and throat singing I would have told them what they could do with their kilohertz, but once it started I was there. And I wasn’t going anywhere.<br />
<br />
So the question is “why.” Why am I at heel with music I will tell you I despise – and I actually do despise, if willingness to purchase is a measure of likingness – and more than willing to turn up my nose at my favorite songs of all time?<br />
<br />
The answer is my explanation for why I sometimes choose the radio over the Pod: I want to listen to something I don’t know I want to listen to. I don’t want the familiar. I want the non-familiar. I want randomness beyond the proscribed randomness of the “Shuffle Songs” command on my iPod. I don’t even want the near-miss shiftiness of Pandora or the billion micro-channels offered by satellite radio. I want the sort of randomness campus radio – or just about any kind of radio, even the kind with playlists tighter than Christina Aguilera’s bustier – can provide. <br />
<br />
And here’s the deal: I’d even be willing to pay for it.<br />
<br />
Just so you know, this column is not about my willingness to pay for a radio service that figures out what kind of music I like and then plays the antithesis of that. Call it the Anti-Pandora, or maybe the PanDiego. (I’ve been to PanDiego. Have you?) <br />
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It’s about the difference between playing to your audience and giving your audience something they’d pay for.<br />
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Think about how you go about creating the products you market to your audience, or crafting the marketing approach involved in selling those products. In most cases you look at what’s been done before, what they’ve bought before, what you’ve said before, and who you talked to before.<br />
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There’s nothing wrong with that per se, as long as you don’t rely solely on those tactics moving forward or fail to ask the question: “Yeah, but what do they really need?”<br />
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The past can be very instructional. Knowing that a client hates mustard, for instance, is essential information if you’re in the mustard business. More to the point and further from the land of whimsy, selling an international penny-stock growth fund to someone whose observed risk tolerance is somewhere west of certificates of deposit is like walking on the treadmill with George Jetson. At best you’ll be one with the belt.<br />
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An even more tangible example: A former client wanted to sell a familiar consumer packaged good via an unfamiliar package-delivery vehicle. The packaged good and the delivery vehicle were positioned as having value. The downside was that the delivery vehicle had to be … oh, bugger it. A former client wanted to sell baseball cards in collectible cans. The problem was the cans had to be destroyed to get to the cards inside.<br />
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While the can was a new delivery vehicle, it was simultaneously an old commodity: a quasi-collectible. If you want to sell a quasi-collectible to collectors, there’s one big, black, and inviolable rule: don’t make them destroy the quasi-collectible. The approach was new but the lesson from the past was powerful, and the cards go where all bad cards go – either ashes or dust, doesn’t matter which.<br />
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The flip side of course is the geegaw that started this whole melty ice-cream cone of a discourse, the iPod. <br />
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No one was asking for an iPod. It was in no one’s shuffle, but it was what people wanted without knowing they wanted it. You could have done a billion focus groups or studied the past back to Plutarch without getting a lightbulb that screamed, “iPod!!!” Yet once Apple gave people an iPod, they embraced it and its descendants like they hadn’t embraced anything since television. The iPod is neck-and-neck with the cell phone as the most transformational invention of the 21st century (even though – don’t remind me – they were invented in the 20th) because they went beyond giving people what they wanted to giving them what they need.<br />
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So how’d they do it? Some of it was the inspiration of Steve Jobs and the Jobs-Ettes, no doubt. But some of it was also hinted at by the founder of another transformational enterprise, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.<br />
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“They just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things,” Zuckerberg said in talking about how Hollywood missed the point when it made <i>The Social Network</i>, and he’s right. Hollywood, that golden empire with the throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude of a life-insurance actuary, doesn’t make anything because it likes making it. It doesn’t flip the switch on a single klieg light without having it paid for in advance by some multiplex in North Platte.<br />
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Sometimes you have to make a product or make a marketing decision just because you like it. You like what it says or what it does, and you have a feeling that if you like it, other people will too. Especially these days, where cool stuff gets tossed around the web like Little League baseballs, that’s at the very least no worse a marketing strategy than doing something because it’s always been done that way. <br />
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The problem, to paraphrase Red Smith, is knowing when to stick to the book and when to play the bloody fool. The only measure I can suggest is your level of excitement over the status quo. Do you believe in what you make and what you do? Does it excite you? Does it excite others? Is it cool by any definition, by any stretch of the imagination? Is it what people say they want, or what they actually need?<br />
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Let’s go back to the cards-in-cans analogy. People didn’t say they wanted cards in cans, and that’s fine, but they also didn’t <i>need</i> cards in cans, and that’s a problem. People needed to spend $2 on something that gave them good odds of getting back something worth $5. They didn’t care much whether it was a card or a can or a card in a can. They simply wanted their $5 for $2.<br />
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Obviously my client would go broke giving everyone $5 for $2, but they made a particularly poor choice of the delivery vehicle for its version of not-quite $5 for more-than-$2. <br />
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Would something more direct would have worked? Maybe. Something less direct? Maybe. But it would have to be a little better-built than cards in cans.<br />
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Next time you’re stuck in a marketing rut, try building something, just by yourself, just because you like building things. See where it leads you. It might not take you to the next iPod, but it’ll probably take you away from your playlist. And there’s nothing wrong with that.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-76648914732971094292011-03-29T11:32:00.001-07:002011-04-21T15:40:45.822-07:00Brand Interactions: Mean, Clean, and Charlie SheenBob Garfield, the Huckleberry Finn of marketing and advertising who insists on being present at his own funeral (or at least the ongoing funeral of The Way Of Life As He Used To Know It), wrote in a columnette several days ago that no one wants to interact with a brand.<br />
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I couldn't agree more, but since I am an old-line editor I have to modify it ever-so-slightly, like so: No one that you want to interact with your brand wants to interact with your brand.<br />
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People do interact with brands. They write fan letters to the most god-awful foods, White Castles and Krispy Kremes, they compose love notes to Shout, they make movies where a stick of Old Spice is the star, and they even kidnapped Captain Crunch's Twitter account.<br />
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But these people are not all people. They're not even a significant minority of all people. They're brand groupies. If it weren't for their untoward love of Oatmeal Cream Pies, they'd be stalking Flounder from <i>National Lampoon's Animal House</i>.<br />
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Furthermore, these people love the brand so much that they would buy it without interacting with it, and in roughly the same quantities. They don't buy significantly more Mountain Dew because they entered an online sweepstakes that almost netted them a beanie. The Captain Crunch Twitterers don't eat more Captain Crunch because they have the Captain Crunch Twitter account; they eat less if anything, because they have to spend Cap'n Time actually tweeting about the stuff they used to spend that time eating.<br />
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And finally, the people who love your brand are not necessarily your best brand ambassadors. Imagine the Oatmeal Cream Pie stalker; is she your best salesperson?<br />
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None of this has really changed over the course of the modern advertising-and-marketing era. If anything, there's less of it now than before. <br />
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I'll prove it to you. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the major advertising media were the newspaper and the radio.<br />
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America was much more provincial then, and much more distrustful of any voice from outside. Getting used to the idea of a disembodied voice pouring out of a box in a living room took years; deciding to buy something because that disembodied voice told you to required another Beamonesque leap. To compensate, almost every ad sounded like an over-the-back-fence chat. Announcers stopped reading off of scripts and talked to you like a neighbor. And like a good neighbor, these new neighbors were eager to hear what you had to say about Rinso or Mum. Letters from Mrs. B.V. Mungo in West Neither, New Hampshire, peppered the airwaves. Slogan contests and jingle games filled the spaces between testimonials.<br />
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The most successful salesperson of the era, Kate Smith, pitched only the products she tried in her own home, and if they worked for her she sold 'em hard, with a Girl Scout's giddy zeal. Then if people tried the products and liked them as much as Kate they wrote her and told her, and she read the letters on the air – a double word-of-mouth whammy. Only today we call it "retweeting."<br />
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So all the hot talk in marketing circles about brand interaction is another case of old talk being run through new channels – Twitter instead of radio, Facebook instead of Life magazine. There is no evidence that the level of brand interaction has increased in any tangible form since the widespread employ of these “transformational” marketing tools. More people are not ascending from brand like to brand limerance to brand love, more brands are not getting the Kate Smith treatment, significantly more people are not communicating their brand experiences, and the people who couldn't care less ... still couldn't care less. <br />
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And the messages are absolutely unchanged. "We like you" and "give us stuff" and "you messed up" still goes up; "buy our stuff" and "tell your friends" and "we're sorry" still goes down. <br />
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As you can tell, these quasi-dialogues that form the bulk of brand interactions aren’t really conversations; they’re one-way messages passing each other. They pass each other faster than they used to, but minivans can do 85 these days without breaking a sweat. Everything moves faster.<br />
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So outside of a couple of tweaks to the sheet metal, this is your father’s Oldsmobile. Essentially the same messages are being passed back and forth by essentially the same people.<br />
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The implications for your brand are staggering. If your current strategy includes a brand-interaction component, stop. Step outside. Forget about what you want for your brand, focus on what really is happening with your brand, and ask, "Are people who wouldn't normally interact with my brand interacting with my brand because of anything I’m doing?"<br />
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The answer is probably going to be "no."<br />
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If this process of questioning makes you want to cut off Twitter and Facebook, stop that, too. That's another wrong answer. Twitter and Facebook are this era's Kate Smith. If you were Jell-O back then you needed to be there, and if you're Tide today you gotta be there, too.<br />
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How should you react? First, accept the inevitable: A desire for brand interaction fuels a tiny portion of brand encounters and brand decisions. Your fans are the fringe. Second, acknowledge that most decisions involving your brand are made not out of brand relationship, brand loyalty, or brand recognition. They’re made out of antipathy.<br />
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Brand decisions are rarely, rarely made out of burning desire. Even the brand decisions that hit closest to your heart – and I’m thinking Caribbean cruises and churches here -- are picked just as often because they’re handy as because they alone are the must-have. <br />
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The overwhelming majority of brand encounters are brief, casual, poorly thought out, and generally unimpressive. If they were human relationships, they’d make some of Charlie Sheen’s dalliances look like Paul Harvey anniversaries. Wham, bam, thank you Spam.<br />
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Making sure you get your share of these strangers-in-the-night brand interactions, then, is a matter of being there – being at the cash register, being on the shelf at eye level, being first in the search engine, being on your friend’s lips. It even includes being what you read about first on Twitter and Facebook – provided you can take these situations quickly and easily from brand talky-talk to brand action. <br />
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And as every marketer knows, actually being there, in position for the casual brand encounter, is a lot harder than being here and encouraging customers to come find you. It requires old-fashioned work with new-fashioned tools. It does not include the margin for failure built into most social-media marketing campaigns. It requires grunt work on a squillion fronts. But it works.<br />
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Ask Coke and Pepsi. Pepsi is dropping billions into conventional advertising because it slunk further behind Coke during Pepsi’s foray into social media, the Pepsi Refresh Project.<br />
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Note: I’m not blaming Pepsi Refresh for the sales decline. That could have been caused by a billion factors, including the fact that Mountain Dew Live Wire tastes like WD-40. But the people running Pepsi must think it’s Pepsi Refresh – and they also must think that conventional advertising is the cure.<br />
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We’ll see on both fronts. But whatever happens, the idea that widespread brand interaction leads to increased brand sales is lying low for a while. And that’s about right.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-13128040496612912792011-03-16T12:30:00.000-07:002011-03-16T12:32:06.547-07:00That's Balderdash, SpaldermashIf you’re old enough to remember Harry Chapin you’re old enough to have strong feelings about Harry Chapin.<br />
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If you’re not old enough to remember Harry Chapin let me give you a contemporary reference point. He’s like … well, something like … or maybe … <br />
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The fact is, Harry Chapin isn’t like any current musician except maybe Tom Waits – and not just Tom Waits, but Tom Waits if he sang like the principal soloist from the Sewage Disposal Workers’ Glee Club. And if you know Tom Waits you’re likely old enough to remember Harry Chapin, and here we are again.<br />
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(By the way, congratulations to Tom Waits, Alice Cooper, and Neil Diamond for making the Rock-‘n’-Roll Hall of Fame. Three of my favorite rock-‘n’-roll creeps enshrined at once. I haven’t been so excited about an HOF enshrinement since Whoopee John made the Polka Hall of Fame.)<br />
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Harry Chapin wrote “Cat’s in the Cradle,” which I liked ell enough when it came out until I realized that this was as light and cheery and singable as Harry Chapin got. Listening to one of his albums was like being trapped in the slow parts of<em> Les Miserables</em>—the book, not the musical.<br />
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The reason the lugubrious and overwrought Mr. Chapin is the lead subject for this week’s blog is that he did one thing very right to this listener’s way of thinking. He titled an album Verities and Balderdash.<br />
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Verities and Balderdash might be the perfect album name for marketers, because 98 percent of the time we’re dealing in one or the other. <br />
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Sometimes they’re the same, as they are in this week’s topic.<br />
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One of the verities in modern marketing is that you must communicate to people in the manner in which they are consuming information. If they live on an iPhone, in other words, you have to be at iLevel. <br />
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This is also balderdash.<br />
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Like so many things in marketing, life, and hockey, the truth lies somewhere between the poles. <br />
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It is a verity that if you communicate to someone through a channel they ignore that your message will not be heard. A tree that falls in the forest makes no sound if there is no forest. (I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I just love the zen-ness of that statement. It’s like having Buddha do your root canal. [See football-with-1-stick-gum.blogspot.com for an extra helping of Buddhist existentialist dentistry.]) <br />
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However, is there any channel left standing that people routinely ignore? They read their mail. They’d read a telegram, if such a thing can even be sent and delivered. They pick up the phone. They grab a handbill. They look up in the sky when a plane is towing a banner. They rip the hanger off the doorknob. They read a text. They glance at a billboard. They scan a newspaper. They take the piece of neon-green paper from under their windshield wiper. You shout at them, they pick their heads up. They even read the words that go, “Try this one weird trick to cut down a little of your belly every day,” though they’ve read it a zillion times before.<br />
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So the idea that people ignore channels is balderdash. <br />
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All channels are monitored, which leads to the next marketing revelation: All channels matter. It’s not about mobile. It’s really not. It’s not about being on the iPad or having a Groupon. Sure, those are great for reaching people the technological hoi palloi, but most organizations can’t make a living off those people without turning skinnier than their glasses. <br />
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Even though the phone book is going the way of the manual typewriter, you could be successful doing nothing but Yellow Pages advertising – if you did it right. You could be the Prince of Doorknob Hangers – if you owned doorknob hangers. <br />
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And the funny thing is, doorknob hangers do not have to be the A-number-one way of reaching your target audience. Maybe it is mobile – but mobile’s too crowded. Maybe it’s TV – but TV’s too expensive. Doorknob hangers are the way-back fallback. Plan N, on a good day.<br />
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So what does it take to own doorknob hangers? Well, here’s another verity: It takes hard work to own doorknob hangers. You have to know doorknob hangers, whether that involves researching doorknob hangers and the people who love them or simply having doorknob hangers entwined in your DNA right alongside the genetic code. <br />
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One reason people are so excited about mobile is that no one’s done the really hard work and converted it into a repeatable formula. You can be totally biblically bad at doing mobile and still come out fine because everyone else is getting turned into a pillar of salt, just like you. The ground rules are changing so fast that a successful mobile/social campaign might last a couple of hours, like the Old Spice viral-video campaign, and the effect on sales might be a collagen-implanted 0.01 percent. <br />
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So the next time someone – an inside semi-expert or an outside demi-consultant – tries to tell you that you need to be somewhere because everyone who buys is there, you know what to say, don’t you?<br />
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That’s right – balderdash.<br />
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And you know why, too: You don’t need to be there <em>because</em> everyone who buys is there. You’ve decided to be elsewhere because it’s ownable and figure-outable, and guess what? Everyone who buys is there, too.<br />
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And that’s the verity, Garrity.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-21064442183186940112011-02-20T20:24:00.000-08:002011-02-20T20:32:26.640-08:00The Fat Bastard Vs. Powerman And The Money-Go-RoundSo what I want to know is: Since when did a snowplow driver become a Fat Bastard?<br />
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<div></div>For those of you who don't know sports (and some of you who do) let me explain a Fat Bastard. A Fat Bastard is a player, most often a football lineman, who on the basis of one quasi-All-Pro season signs a five-year, $175 million contract, reports to camp looking like he swallowed Jonah, tweaks his hamstring in the first workout, and spends the remainder of his contract shuttling between the trainer's room and gentlemen's clubs.<br />
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Albert Haynesworth is the reigning Fat Bastard. Redskins fans hate Haynesworth because he's only in it for the money, and he quit trying once he got the money. Plus he was never that good to start with.<br />
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Somehow, astonishingly, in Wisconsin that same sort of hate is being leveled on snowplow drivers and second-grade teachers and all manner of public employees.<br />
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<div>(Yes, this is a marketing column and not a political screed. Stick with me on this.)</div><br />
<div>The attack is being led by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is sort of the Jim Rome of politicians minus the occasional zinger. His line is: </div><ol><li>Wisconsin needs to cut government spending; and</li>
<li>Breaking the public-employees' union is the way to get there. </li>
</ol>This is the simplified version. The more complicated version also involves removing the gold-plated urinals from the Black River Falls DMV office and replacing the snowplow-equipped Bugatti Veyrons with more conventional diesel-powered Macks.<br />
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<div>Walker is much loved by the Tea Party, a group that can be described as the reactionary version of Wavy Gravy coming out of retirement and organizing all the flax-weavers and organic goat farmers in support of legal mushrooms for everyone.</div><br />
Walker's line is being accepted because there is a current of society which holds to a complex belief system consisting of this: teachers make too much money.<br />
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Ever since there have been teachers there has been a segment of society claiming that teachers make too much money. When the first mother archaeopteryx nuzzled her baby archaeopteryx out of the nest and coaxed her into flight there was a equus on the ground saying, "She got two lizards for <em>that</em>?"<br />
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<div>I've seen a lot of teachers, and from what I've seen 90 percent of them do not make too much money. Their benefit packages have been brought more in line with private industry, and they'll be graded on outcomes and paid on merit within the next 10 years regardless of whether Scott Walker dons a tiara and declares himself King of Brodhead and Greater Juda. </div><br />
<div>Public employees' compensation is generally built on a formula that pays less in wages and more in benefits. As a university official told me the other day, "When we recruit we know our wages are 15 percent below the market, but we used to make up for it by saying, 'But we have a really solid benefit package.'"</div><br />
<div>Because the benefit package is really solid – really solid, mind you, not outlandish in any dimension -- it is declared to be too much (definition of "too much": anything more than what I have) by those whose self-assembled retirement package consists of a handful of acorns stuffed into a hollow tree. And a twelver of Keystone.</div><br />
<div>Gov. Walker's remedy to this problem which is not really a problem is to strip the union of its collective-bargaining rights, which is like the old Monty Python sketch that has a couple of Bruces bagging a mosquito with a bazooka.</div><br />
<div>The Tea Party's message (and here's where the marketing comes in) has been communicated very successfully through Gov. Walker and his minions (who actually are little yellow pills, just like the characters in <em>Despicable Me</em>). Then again, it ought to be, seeing as it consists of four words: Taxes are too high.</div><br />
<div>The problem is it's inaccurate – or at the very least unfair.</div><br />
<div>Railroad workers have a fabulous retirement package, mostly funded by the government -- and by extension taxpayers -- but you don't see fiscal Luddites marching on Washington, the earpieces from their transistor radios pumping Glenn Beck into their shared left brain, demanding that the railroad workers give some back. Yet just as assuredly railroad retirement is paid for by the taxpayers, and railroad workers' benefits are paid for by consumers in higher prices for everything from bouncy balls to ball bearings.</div><br />
<div>And railroad workers are just one example. Think you don't pay for the severance and retirement packages of BP executives in terms of higher gas prices? Think you aren't paying for someone's cottage in northern Wisconsin every time cable rates go up? I know of some executives in an arcane nook of the financial-services industry who just voted themselves $20 million into their 401(k) accounts. Think that has something to do with the 0.5 percent you get on your money at the local bank?</div><br />
<div>Fact is, just about everyone is paying for everyone else's retirement, Social Security notwithstanding. But when the non-union private sector does it it's all right with the TP'ers, and when a union or a public-sector group does it they howl like a wounded panther. </div><br />
<div>Okay, so what happens next?</div><br />
<div>The Tea Party and its Republican shills, as mentioned earlier, hold the marketing high ground by virtue of their simple all-purpose message. No matter the issue the answer's the same. The environment is a mess. <em>Taxes are too high.</em> Discrimination is rampant. <em>Taxes are too high.</em> Corporations are taking the incentives and offshoring anyway. <em>Taxes are too high</em>. Health insurers and drug companies are making zillions and an inner-city mom still can't get to a doctor. <em>Taxes are too high</em>. John Boehner's hair looks like it was dropped on his head from a helicopter. <em>Taxes are too high</em>. </div><br />
<div>The Democrats, in contrast, have a couple of disadvantages. Their rebuttal is shorter – <em>no, they're not</em> – but far less versatile. Also, there has not been a ripe political situation since the Great Depression that the Democratic Party has not managed to spill all over themselves. They're the Exxon Valdez of political parties: They carry a lot of important stuff, but they run aground at the most inopportune times, and cleanup's a bitch.</div><br />
<div>In essence, what we're seeing is effective marketing of a lie versus ineffective marketing of the truth. In a case like this, sorry to say, bet on the lie every time.</div><br />
<div>There is hope for the truth, however. The images from Madison, the firefighters walking through the capital rotunda, are powerful tools for an outside organization with the bucks to spew it everywhere. Social media has already proven its worth in that regard. </div><br />
<div>History has also shown that a simplistic movement like the Tea Party breaks down when presented with a situation that does not lend itself to a simple answer – "A school-choice program requires taxpayer dollars" comes to mind – but does lend itself to divisions within a previously unified movement. Also, political pendulums do swing. </div><br />
<div>The 2012 elections will be interesting. And expensive. Count on seeing the images from Wisconsin 2011 over and over again. Count on hearing the Tea Party mantra repeated like ... well, a mantra, only with fewer people reaching fiscal nirvana for the buzz. And count on seeing a new Fat Bastard crowned sometime during the process.</div><br />
<div>This time, let's hope it's a real Fat Bastard. I have a few ideas if you're interested.</div>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-53554818196286101122011-01-18T19:06:00.000-08:002011-01-18T19:09:21.896-08:00Consumers And Canteloupe, Qualitative And QuantitativePleased to meet you, Miss Five-Foot-Seven, Chai-Drinking, Coon-Cat-Loving, Versa-Driving, Hair-Dyeing “Toddlers & Tiaras” Watcher. I’m Mr. Six-Foot-One, BMW-Driving, Golden-Retriever-Petting, Downhill-Skiing, Pokemon-Watching Foreign-Currency trader. Only I’m not.<br />
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I’m not any of those things. Oh, I’ll pet a golden retriever if it’s handy, and I’d drive a BMW if my income as a blogger let me afford one, but I’m not most any of the things the ad profilers and online targeters think I am. And too bad for them, because they’re investing a whole lot of money, and a goodly chunk of the southwest Asian ex-pat community, into convincing advertisers that I am.<br />
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Let me put it another way. One of my favorite marketing quotes of all time comes from that fabled business text – you see it at Wharton and Harvard all the time, tucked inside an upstanding copy of<em> Practical Cost Accounting</em> – <em>The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, And Bubble-Gum Book</em>.<br />
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The quote goes like this: “If you’re looking to build a large cantaloupe, it’s best to start with a small cantaloupe and not a collection of cantaloupe parts.”<br />
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Are you digging the marketing connotation? If not, let me place both my hands on your back and push. If you’re looking to know your customers, it’s better to really know some of your customers and not just be a collector of customer parts.<br />
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I’m an eclectic guy. If someone were to borrow my iPod, I guarantee they wouldn’t last five songs. Maybe the grunted Bahamian gospel songs would do it, or the scratchy Hawaiian-guitar songs, or the hardcore Cajun stuff, or maybe the one-man-band recordings of my own compositions. And if by miraculous means that wouldn’t drive them over the edge, I’d tailwhack them into the abyss with a 40-ounce chunk of Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.<br />
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My whole life’s like that, and targeted ads can’t keep up. In fact, all they do is amuse me with their Mr. Magoo-like focus on what they think matters to me right now. As sharpshooters, they’re Brazilian rainforest tribesmen trying to take down stealth bombers with blowguns. I checked out all the hot hatchbacks from Mazda to Subaru and bought a van. I don’t want a McPherson guitar. They’re $9,000 and they don’t even have the soundhole in the middle of the top. Today I want the album from Nat “King” Cole’s brother; yesterday I wanted The Kooks. At no time was I even remotely contemplating the new release from Sugarland.<br />
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However, what I wouldn’t mind is a company that wants to sell me something sending a person to sit across from me and ask me what I like and don’t like, and especially what I like and don’t like as pertains to their product.<br />
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And the funny thing is, as a marketer I want the same thing. In a world where quantitative data drives Mark Zuckerberg’s limo, I would much rather have one really good piece of qualitative data, shaded and nuanced beyond measurability. I would rather truly understand one of my customers than watch the numbers of the masses pass before me like Oompa Loompas.<br />
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I was going to call this decision is a no-brainer, but actually it’s the antithesis of a no-brainer, which I suppose would make it a “brainer” if that term didn’t sound … well, like it was created by someone with no brain. Emotional connections are formed in shades and nuances, and once purchases move outside of the sustaining-basic-needs range, emotional connections are the driver.<br />
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And they’re not just the driver of a single purchase; they’re the driver of repeat purchases, which are the Treasure of the Sierra Madre to most sellers of stuff. And they’re not even just that: They’re the foundation on which Apple was built, and Starbucks, and Fender, and Gucci and Harley-Davidson and Disney and all the other brands with Fill-In-The-Blank Stores on Times Square – not to mention Times Square itself. Hey, an iPod is a limited-access hard drive in a box. Starbucks is a cup of coffee. The head says you need a cup of coffee (especially this morning); the heart says you need a Starbucks.<br />
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The problems with going qualitative are pretty obvious, and never more so than when you’re scanning the columns to either side of whatever you’re trying to read on the internet. Qualitative is pretty much numbers-proof. Hard data can’t be captured from qualitative research any better now than it could be back in the days when advertising two-stepped to the theme from “Bewitched,” less Elizabeth Montgomery and the elephants in the living room. And the major selling point of today’s fin-de-siècle media landscape is that everything can be measured.<br />
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Not yet. IBM may have invented a computer that can beat Ken Jennings at “Jeopardy!”, but it has no idea how Jennings feels about that. Could be that Jennings will now devote his entire life to defeating the computer, riffing on Boris Karloff one minute and playing Rocky the next. Running up the library steps and raising your arms exultantly may take on a whole new meaning. <br />
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Qualitative also requires a different sort of front-end work. Instead of tapping the masses’ data vein and just letting it pour into a bottle, qualitative requires endless sorting through the flow to find the killer T-cell. <br />
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What’s interesting is that the electronic landscape exudes qualitative potential like Sarah Palin exudes faux compassion. And Oil of Olay. The experts and agencies who view the internet as a sea of quantitative data aren’t wrong per se; they’re just missing the ocean of qualitative data right next door. Twitter and Facebook are the keys to a qualitative castle that will not – I repeat, will not – tell you everything you need to know about your customers, but will point you in a direction where you can find everything you need to know about your customers. <br />
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It’s a fine line, I know, and the temptation to stop at Facebook and Twitter is greater than the urge to scarf a Thickburger when the rational mind says, “Salad. Ranch on the side.” But these über-destinations are the mere jumping-off points, the home of cantaloupe parts and small cantaloupes alike. It’s up to you which you choose, and what you do with them next<br />
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But leave me out of it. I don’t like cantaloupe. And I’ll bet you didn’t know that.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-78272365999746155832011-01-07T04:56:00.000-08:002011-01-07T04:57:27.747-08:00Leonardo da WHO?<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Knute Rockne would have you believe there’s a direct connection between success in football and success in business, but since he’s dead you’ll have to believe me. There is a direct connection between success in football and success in business. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">However, the direct connection is not always the one you think.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here; let me explain. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A week ago the home team, the Wisconsin Badgers, played in the Rose Bowl against the mighty Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, far be it from me to disparage the institution that brought the football world Doak Walker and Sammy Baugh (not to mention Tonsillitis Johnson and Artis Toothis from Dan Jenkins’ delightful quasi-sequel to <i>Semi-Tough, Life Its Ownself</i>). However, Wisconsin didn’t exactly put its best foot forward in Pasadena.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The mighty mighty Badgers made it to the Rose Bowl by virtue of the off-tackle play and pretty much just the off-tackle play. You can read more about that over in the football blog (football-1-stick-gum.blogspot.com), but the idea is that Wisconsin built up a Rembrandt offense – painting and only painting, and furthermore only paintings of the off-tackle play.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The problem with that is Paul Chryst, the Badgers’ offensive coordinator, wasn’t happy being Rembrandt and running a Rembrandt offense. He wanted to be Leonardo da Vinci and invent the helicopter, too. He wanted to run bubble screens and skinny posts and toss sweeps just to show he could, and he wound up losing the most important game of his life because he couldn’t just face facts and be Rembrandt.<br />
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In terms of his job, Paul Chryst makes a great Rembrandt but a lousy Leonardo, and that got me thinking: What do you do as a marketing professional when a genuine Leonardo appears in your midst?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You know the marketing type: the person who can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, the person not only equally adept at research and product design and creative, but so overdept that they’re better at all three things than any one person in your department is good at one of them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The easy answer is just to defer to them and let them do everything. That’s what I do, for I love the easy answer the way a wino loves muscatel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">However, I also acknowledge there are big problems with that, starting with the fact that letting them do everything runs like Cam Newton over every process and workflow in your organization.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now, workflows and processes and I get along about as well as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, but I have to say if you want your own personal series called <i>The Office </i>renewed it’s probably not the best idea to ignore them entirely, even in the face of greatness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The trick is to maximize use of your renaissance person’s skills without pushing aside everyone else in your department, and fostering the impression that you respect The Way Things Get Done Around Here, even if The Way Things Get Done Around Here is that nothing gets done around here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Unfortunately, there’s no shining path to enlightenment in a case like this. What you do depends on the temperament of the individual, the collective mood of the department, and the culture of the organization as a whole.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s important that the factors be considered in that order, though, starting with the individual. The No. 1 question is whether you want this person in your department long-term. I know the temptation is to say, “This person is a fargin’ genius! Why would I not want them in my department?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Because they know they’re a fargin’ genius, for one. Because their fargin’ geniusness disrupts everyone around them, for another. Because what your department and your organization needs right now is not genius but order – and there are times even an old chaos-theory guy like myself would take order over brilliance. When an advertising campaign has already been launched and simply needs to be maintained, for instance. When there’s a whole lot of gruntwork to be done and a shortage of grunts, for another. Geniuses tend to rebel at gruntwork, or do it so haphazardly you’d think it was done by a goat – and not one of the better-educated goats. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Assuming the renaissance individual is capable of working productively in a team setting, the next step is to build a department so that everyone’s happy and the best talents are best utilized.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m a big proponent of ownership. I believe an organization functions most effectively when everyone is given ownership of a piece. It can be a tiny piece, but it’s theirs and they have control over every phase of it – including deciding where the money is going to be spent. If you own the hood ornament on the company limo and you’re given the power to spend money on its upkeep, you’re going make sure it’s the best hood ornament in the universe, even better than the Petty Girl ornaments on the old Nashes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As it applies to the renaissance individual, give them a little piece of everything from your department – or better yet, give them ownership of one entire marketing program, top to bottom, start to finish. Remember Standard Oil; vertical integration can work even better than horizontal integration in the proper setting. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Organizations are sort of the anti-Paul Chryst. They refuse to acknowledge the possibility of a Leonardo in their midst. It’s understandable; organizational behavior is all about predictability, and genius is by nature unpredictable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Given that, if a master of all trades should materialize in your midst like The Last Mimzy the best approach may be to pretend to the organization that such a phenom does not exist at all. It certainly expedites things. Things have come to a pretty pass when you have to hide such a light under a bushel, but considering that most organizations operate by shoving people into silos it’s not unexpected. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So to bring it all back home, the connection between success in football and success in business is in recognizing your Rembrandts and your da Vincis, and not allowing one to be the other. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Good luck with that. And Go Badgers!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-82973467094222483332010-12-14T04:21:00.000-08:002010-12-14T04:21:27.156-08:00Here's Your Christmas BonusSorry, gang, but I'm taking a short break from <i>Here Lies Marketing</i>, both because of the holidays and because I have a kids' book that was just released titled <i>Jake The Grizz And The World's Fastest Snowboard</i> that I should probably help market. If you want to know more about the book check my LinkedIn or Facebook pages. Until the next time, thanks, and Happy Holidays!Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-18923294348561037582010-12-02T14:48:00.000-08:002010-12-02T14:51:23.496-08:00Bridge On The River Why?<div><div class="MsoNormal">Too many people confuse marketing with a nerd’s first date. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I feel I can speak for the lank and bespectacled folk of the world, the squeaky of voice and pigeon-toed of foot, having been a brother on the march with the SAT scores to prove it, and I know what some of my first dates were like. What started out semi-promising as dinner and a movie ended up in a one-sided debate on the noumenal concept in pre-Victorian English literature. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I find way too much of this spirit in much of what I read on marketing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Take this heaping helping of marketing-related letters and punctuation marks, from a recent article on MediaPost: “’Marketing tends to be preoccupied with staying on track with individual tactical executions or traditional marketing fundamentals like lead generation, campaign execution and content or creative development,’ sums up Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. ‘However, today's demand chain requires a new mix of digital, direct, and retail distribution, fulfillment, measurement and tracking capabilities to maximize customer contact, conversion and interaction.’”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That’s a whole lot of summing up there, Mr. Donovan Neale-May. I believe you and I dated, and bored, the same women. And whatever happened to the concept of marketing as the way stuff gets sold?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let’s take a giant T-Rex step backwards and try again. If marketing tends to be preoccupied with staying on track with individual tactical executions or traditional marketing fundamentals like lead generation, campaign execution and content or creative development, it’s bad marketing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not that lead generation isn’t important. If it wasn’t for lead generation I’d be four-foot-three and have the brain power of a handful of Brussels sprouts. Oops; sorry. I confused lead generation with lead poisoning. If it wasn’t for lead generation I’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now, because lead generation is one of those tasks deemed to be a little bit too creepy-close to sales for comfort. It’s like the revelation that Abraham Lincoln slept with another man in a single bed for four years before he was married. It’s factual; it’s just not appropriate. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let sales generate their own doggone leads, in other words.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Marketing turns into bad marketing when it begins obsessing on the means rather than the ends, when they wrap themselves like a ball python around the axles of campaign execution and creative development.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s fiendishly easy to do, in part because there are so many toys to do it with. When all you have is building blocks there’s no question about what you’re going to play with today. Some kids say, “Rats – blocks again,” and sulk like a wide receiver spurned. Other kids build the Eiffel Tower. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the other hand, when you have blocks and LEGOs and Barbies and Polly Pockets and K’Nex and Hot Wheels and Uno and a Leapster and Twister and Trouble and Sorry! and an iPod Touch, you’re more likely to chuck the whole lot into a corner and watch infomercials for The Perfect Brownie.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
It’s about playing, in this case. In the other case, the one over there being held by a supermodel, it’s about marketing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When you have so many ways to <i>do</i> marketing, you forget how marketing is done. Marketing is done with whatever tools are at hand to accomplish the current task, with the ultimate goal always being increasing sales, or something akin to sales, for your company.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">William Holden in <i>Bridge On The River Kwai</i> was trying to blow up a bridge, but only because he was trying to win a war. He didn’t like the sound of the blast or the thrill that comes with watching a steam locomotive plunge into a gorge. He harbored no illusions that he was going to win the war by blowing up the bridge, but he felt pretty sure he was helping the process. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The difference between that and dysfunctional marketing is that William Holden did what he did with the ultimate goal firmly understood and in sight. He also used dynamite more liberally than most marketers. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Although it’s been said many times, many ways, it needs to be said again: marketing is the targeted application of common sense. It is only about the targeted application of Twitter or metrics or Q scores or best practices or apps or widgets or digits or Donner or Blitzen when it makes sense to apply them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Put more simply, it’s not about the pencil. It’s about doing the right thing with the pencil. And you know what the right thing is.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When marketing is approached from that direction, which is approximately three degrees west of west-northwest, all the stuff that concerns Mr. Donovan Neale-May and all the stuff that Mr. Donovan Neale-May believes marketers should be doing miraculously converge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Digital media generate leads. Campaign execution is measured. Customer interaction increases.</div><div class="MsoNormal">It happens organically. It happened even when all marketers had were a wagon full of Playskool blocks and a hammer, but we’re not supposed to talk about that, since marketing has a shorter memory than Troy Polamalu after a helmet-to-helmet hit. It’s how marketers keep their jobs. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even the best marketers lose sight of the goal, which is another reason why the goal should be as crystalline as the Lake Superior sky at night. Even the best marketing chops get stiff with disuse. But marketers shouldn’t blab that fact to the world. There’s too much to fix as it is. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div></div>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-25628781356939354392010-11-15T18:20:00.000-08:002010-11-15T18:20:15.165-08:00Welcome To Heck. Here's Your Manual.A friend of mine got a new job last week, which was great. He earned it, and absolutely deserved it.<br />
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As part of the congratulatory phone call, he asked, "So you got any advice for me?", not expecting anything, because what sort of advice do you give the man who has everything, when everything in this case is a job he needed and wanted?<br />
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Well, I can't not give advice in a situation like that, not anymore, not since I've been a blogger. For better or worse, thinking I have an audience for these weekly rants has given me that awful feeling that everything I say is a pronouncement. I have to pinch myself and remind myself that I'm really still a peon, and sometimes I pinch myself because it just plain feels good.<br />
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So he asked, and I told him, "Communicate in person. Don't pick up the phone or send an e-mail for the first month unless you absolutely have to."<br />
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I've talked about the benefits of in-person communication before, and I'm going to keep talking about it until you get the idea. There is nothing that makes a better impression and carries more weight than in-person communication.<br />
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Communicate in-person with the people in the mail room, the people in maintenance, the administrative assistants and the miscellaneous service providers, and not only will they know who you are, they'll be extra-willing to help you negotiate the maze of procedures and rituals that make up a corporate culture. If you bring chocolate you may just make friends for life.<br />
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Communicate in-person with the people at your level in other departments and you start forging those cross-disciplinary ties that will help you hit the ground running and keep running, even when other new hires have hit the wall.<br />
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Communicate in-person with the people above you and they'll know who you are – and that never hurt.<br />
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You're in marketing, and marketers have two main duties: to unite disparate elements and to communicate. Supporting sales is the goal; communicating and facilitating are the ways there. The best way to get a head start on your core duties is to talk to people right out of the gate.<br />
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It doesn't have to be heavy conversation. Ask a basic question about how do do something that you know they know how to do. Establish them as an expert. Put them in a position of helping you. Almost all people in an organization, even the evil administrative assistant and the extra-evil frustrated mid-level manager, when addressed as an expert, will share what they know in a supportive manner.<br />
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One more tip: There's a branch of communication research called Uncertainty Reduction Theory which states that people will try to find common ground in a conversation because it reduces feelings of threats, and once they find that common ground, communication becomes more more effective and purposeful. Use that theory. Try to find common ground and build on it. Remember that common ground the next time you talk. You'll be amazed how quickly you get acclimated.<br />
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Don't take the expedient way out of this one. Sit down with people. Talk, and most of all listen. Oh, and good luck with the new job.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-46766524212439189482010-11-10T08:38:00.000-08:002010-11-10T19:32:22.371-08:00We Have Met The Enemy And He Is R&D. And Operations. And Finance. And IT, Too?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peanuts</i> continues its run in the newspapers for all eternity, or at least until we run out of newspapers, other funnier, more satirical and more insightful strips from the great days of newspaper comic strips get pushed by the wayside, or at best get shoveled into Fantagraphics collections (which are marvelous, by the way). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A prime example is Walt Kelly’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pogo</i>. As a kid I found <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pogo</i> tough sledding sometimes. The dialogue seemed apropos of nothing and seemed to trail off down the same hole from whence it came – and it’s still a little like that. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pogo</i> also produced one absolute freshwater pearl of a line, a line with a million uses, a line that treads on the border of cliché without ever quite crossing over.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am referring, of course, to, “Huh? Um … what? I … uh … mm.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Actually, I’m referring to – say it with me – “We have met the enemy and he is us.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s the way of it in marketing sometimes. People on the inside not only don’t approve of your efforts, they are to your marketing efforts what Sarah Palin is to the English language – an active antagonist, running around with a dynamite plunger in one hand and an internal memo in the other.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">What do you do when internal forces are hard at work tearing down your marketing efforts? I know what you want to do, and we won’t get into that. Plastic explosive does not heal all wounds, and it doesn’t even, in the marvelous words of Nick Lowe, wound all heels. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The process of not merely getting folks on the inside to buy into the plan but to keep them from tearing down the plan starts the way most marketing things do – with communication. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Number one, everyone on the inside needs to know the plan. A solid three-quarters of the opposition to Marketing comes from people not knowing what Marketing is doing or why they’re doing it. Let other departments keep their plans to themselves, as is their wont. Your marketing plan, or a version thereof, needs the widest possible circulation within your organization – because if your marketing plan is one of the good ones, it will outline the corporate mission and the on-the-ground goals and how marketing can address both.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Next, remember Dorothy Parker. “You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think,” she replied when asked to use the word “horticulture” in a sentence, and the same applies to your internal audience. Don’t assume that because they’ve been given a copy of the plan they will actually read the plan. This is like assuming that just because no one has ever escaped from Stalag 17 that no one will try. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What you as marketers need to do to keep other factions on board once they’ve been given the plan is to do a little marketing. I’m amazed at the marketers who don’t market their marketing plan. There are a million ways to do it, but why am I telling you this? You’re marketers – do what comes naturally. Keep it simple, keep it honest, use common sense, and you’ll be just fine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It goes back to what I used to hammer into the trading-card companies back when they were making money, before they jumped on the death-spiral merry-go-round: Listen, if you don’t believe your product is the best, whatever your product may be, either do what you can to make it the best it can be or don’t sell it. And marketers very often have the unique power to optimize products – especially when that product is your very own marketing plan.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But don’t stop there. The No. 1 most effective way of communicating to people is face-to-face, so as you make your rounds of the company as you as marketers do, ask people, “Did you see our latest brochure? What’d you think? Did you see the ads? What about that new product? Did you see the article?” Ask but then listen, not only to what’s being said but how it’s being said. Look for any vocal or non-verbal cues to get a feel for how your work is really being perceived, by executives and line workers alike. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Okay, so what if sharing the plan, marketing the plan, and then doing field work don’t work? Well, the plastic explosives are still a possibility, but before hauling the gelignite out of the desk drawer, try a couple more things. One is to isolate recalcitrant units and bring them into the process. Think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Producers</i>, and you’re the skinny guy. The way to get the money from the widow is to put on her show. Certainly there are pet projects favored by your antagonists that you can advance without too many barnyard odors. Ease those up the ladder and see if it makes a difference. It may not. They may be playing you. C’est la vie. Sometimes you have to rise above, even if you are a marketer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As you battle the enemy that is us, remember this: You really are the good guys. You really are trying to move the organization forward in a reasonable, well-researched fashion. If it turns out that you have to be satisfied with that, it's a lot. It can carry you through.</span></div>Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-58360989366485955352010-11-05T14:34:00.000-07:002010-11-05T14:34:42.160-07:00The Complexities Of SimpleI was going to put “Here Lies Marketing” on hiatus for the week on account of the election results, and the way that certain marketers showed themselves to be more adept at pushing night soil than I will ever be, but after a day off I started thinking again, and here I am.<br />
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The election results did stir up in me a weird convergence of Steve Jobs and H.L. Mencken.<br />
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Mencken coined the phrase, “the Booboisie,” which has never been more apt, and he also noted that “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” which could also be amended to state that, “no one ever lost an election underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”<br />
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Honestly, how else can you describe the election of, among others, a millionaire sweatshop owner with the personality of a pellet stove who captivated the populace by lobbing shibboleths like, “Let’s get America moving again”? (By all means, let’s. Let’s disconnect the ol’ tectonic plates and hook up with Europe again. It worked for the pre-Visigoths.)<br />
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Jobs’ contribution came in Apple’s early days, when its product designers were directed to wear shirts that read, “I am not the target audience.” It was an unsubtle reminder to not design a computer that causes women with a half-mile radius to spontaneously undress and requires a Rushmore-sized noggin to operate.<br />
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I was not the target audience of most of this election’s campaign ads. I have a job, an FM radio, and a brain. That would also make me uncharacteristic of the American public, which is where Mencken comes back in, and where the marketing lesson for the rest of us emerges.<br />
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It’s reasonable to assume that your marketing audience in most cases is not comprised solely of Rhodes scholars and Phi Beta Kappas. There is bound to be a George JaMarcus Walker Russell Bush in the crowd. <br />
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Given that your crowd is probably going to be a mixture of Ph. Ds and former NBA first-round picks, how do you dumb down appropriately so that you don’t lose the former New Jersey Net who happens to be your venture capitalist?<br />
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The answer is: Don’t dumb down. Simplify.<br />
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There is a difference. Dumbing down requires you to abrogate respect for your audience. Simplifying is what you should be doing all along.<br />
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I f you want to see my face turn Crayola shades, hit me with a directive to dumb something down – or its twin sister, the directive to obfuscate a product or a marketing approach.<br />
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I realize that the order to dumb down may seem as stupid as Peter Frampton’s “I’m In You” but may have a kernel of sense at its core, much like Australian Rules Football or John McCain. It may be a sign that the original approach may be unnecessarily complex. But when it’s couched in the philosophy that dumbing down or muddying up is the only way this pig is going to fly, then it’s time to play a little corporate Red Rover and call over the CMO.<br />
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You can’t run from the fact that people are afraid of simple and hide behind language to look smarter or fancier or somehow more worthy. Think of the inept mid-level manager and his 5-million-word memos. The challenge is to remove 4,999,899 of those words, get all the salient points across, and retain the proper tone.<br />
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One of the most important things you can do as a marketer is embark on an eternal quest for simple. Simple marketing materials. Simple mission statements. Simple product attributes. Simple press releases. Simple pricing. Simple Web sites. <br />
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Simple means distilling the many into the precious few. Simple means saying what you have to say and getting out. Simple equates to easy. And easy is the holy grail of marketing.<br />
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If you are always simple you’ll never have to dumb down – or if you are called to dumb-down there will be no question but that the authorities should be notified. Furthermore, simple stuff means fewer questions, less confusion, a clearer picture of what your organization is and why it’s special – the stuff many organizations go through elaborate machinations to not quite achieve. <br />
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The way to get to simple, if you’re looking for a way, is to continually ask yourself, “What am I trying to say here?” You will almost always give yourself a simple answer. That answer, polished to a dull sheen, is what you go with. <br />
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You may spend your entire marketing life on a quest for simple, because others are forever turning your simple personal computer into Brainiac VII. However, it’s a quest worth taking. And it begins with a simple step. Literally.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-74258544815684581892010-10-29T17:34:00.000-07:002010-10-29T17:34:59.257-07:00I'm A Ham? Well, You're In SalesIf you’re a regular reader of this column, you know I like music and music metaphors. If you’re an irregular reader may I suggest a sparkling glass of Sal Hepatica. <br />
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I have many favorite album titles, including <i>Anywhere You Are, There You Is</i>, which I wrote about in a column that can be accessed by engaging the down arrow like so. One of my favorite titles is from the guitarist Don Dixon, whom I should like far more than I do. <br />
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Dixon’s record starts with the artist as a very young man of about 10, arguing with his brother over music. At one point his brother accuses Dixon of being a ham, to which Dixon replies, “Yeah? Well, if I’m a ham, you’re a sausage.” And that’s the title of the album.<br />
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Believe it or not, there is application for this in the wacky world of marketing, with just a few minor changes to selected words. Instead of, “If I’m a ham, you’re a sausage,” may I suggest, “If I’m in sales, you’re in product development.”<br />
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It’s a fact. Of the two broad duties performed by many marketers, sales continually stresses to marketers that they’re in sales, while no one stresses anything to sales because sales can’t be found. Or they’re at Panera Bread for the eighth time this week. Or they’re out of range.<br />
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Okay, consider this a shot across sales’ well-dressed bow: You’re in product development. Everyone in this man’s corporate army is in product development. <br />
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The trick is engaging sales and the other non-lunching members of your organization in product development without actually having them design a product.<br />
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You want sales actually designing your product less than you want cholera. The Microsoft Kin is a perfect example of sales designing a product. It accumulated more bells than St. Mary’s and more whistles than a Brazilian thong and sold for a lot more than it should have at the start and less than it did but still too much after Microsoft had a product launch and nobody came. <br />
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You could tell this product was a technological kamikaze. No kid will buy a cell phone for kids. Kids buy adult cell phones and find new and amazing things to do with them, like use them as remote controllers for cage-fighters while simultaneously listening to the Kings of Leon and broadcasting, “I have arrived at Dairy Queen!” to the world. <br />
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Along those same lines, you do not want programmers designing a product, nor do you want call-center employees or the building-and-grounds staff.<br />
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The result would resemble the KFC Double Down sandwich, with a third piece of chicken added for the programmer in the Star Trek shirt.<br />
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So everyone’s in product development but you don’t want anyone actually developing product, huh? How do you talk your way out of this one?<br />
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It’s a simple two-stage process. First, find all the smart people. Second, give all these departments pieces without ceding control of the whole.<br />
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I know this is an amazing revelation, but not all the smart people in your organization are in marketing. Similarly amazing, not all the halfwits are in sales. <br />
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Smart people are smart people, regardless of their position. They’re like the nondescript Minneapolis musicians who backed up Bob Dylan on <i>Blood on the Tracks</i>. Just because they’re not famous big-shots doesn’t mean they’re not any good. <br />
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One of the most important internal tasks you can perform as a marketer is to use your “smart radar” and find the smart people in every department. Once you’ve done that you can use them to mobilize areas under their control and engage them appropriately in the product-development process.<br />
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Take R&D. They came up with the core idea, the basic improvement or innovation that is going to make this product sing two choruses of “California Girls” (the Katy Perry version). However, you don’t want R&D going any further than the idea stage, at least not without changing out of that shirt. You don’t give them veto power over packaging, for instance, unless you like your toaster oven wrapped in a schematic. Yet there are people in R&D who think beyond the D, who can grasp the marketing implications of what they do. Use them to communicate back to their teams ways of making what they do more marketing-friendly. I guarantee that the next time through the process will be better geared toward a marketable outcome. <br />
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Programmers and Web designers are a perfect match with call-center employees. Why? The call-center employees are most closely attuned to what’s happening on the ground; the programmer knows what can be done with the air. Left to their own devices they aren’t much; the call-center folks will refer callers to the Web for guidance, even though the Web site has been given over (by the programmers) to YouTube videos of kittens running for public office, while the Facebook page runs a guess-the-celebrity-earlobes contest. Sit down the smart programmer with the smart call-center person and watch what happens. The celebrity-earlobes contest ends sooner than expected, for one thing.<br />
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Another great match is ops and sales. Operations can figure out the processes to support the extra orders sales brings in before they happen. Imagine that. And because it’s part of the development of the overall product it falls under marketing’s purview – or at least, you can pretend it does. It’s your until they make it not yours, anyway.<br />
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Does this work? Well, at one organization I was associated with the marketing department went through a detailed internal process aimed at identifying the opinion leaders within departments, they were brought together in a room with an independent facilitator, they were encouraged to brainstorm way outside of their silos, they engaged in freeform discussions and more structured development sessions, and … nothing happened. <br />
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Nothing happened because the group had no power to make decisions or spend money, and it was controlled by its organizer, who wanted the group to rubber-stamp his ideas. <br />
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And there’s the rub in everyone-a-product-developer theory. Everyone-a-salesperson theory works because it suggests that everyone in an organization should be engaged with the outside world on behalf of that organization. The every-one-a-product-developer theory forces everyone back inside, to make what they sell more appealing to those on the outside. That threatens existing protocols and structures and makes people stiffen into organizational Republicans, vowing to fight to the death for the right to write SQL as they see fit.<br />
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It's hard to encourage people in an organization to think of themselves as product developers, but if they don't, the organization runs the risk of hitting the street with products that no one inside the organization believes is the best product possible. And believe me, you don't want that. That and cholera.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-61836520381931163782010-10-20T16:10:00.000-07:002010-10-20T16:10:35.392-07:00... And Featuring Brett Favre As Photography EditorThere was a major problem at work yesterday involving marketing. In short, we screwed up, with consequences embarrassing to the organization. Imagine Brett Favre being in charge of brochure production, and printing 50,000 copies. Or public relations taking on an alternate, much older, meaning.<br />
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It was not, as Winston Churchill said, our finest hour. We tried to fight them on the beaches only to find they were back at the hotel. It was just one more precipitous slide to death on the roller-coaster that is marketing.<br />
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Needless to say, there were some long faces among those in the department that didn’t ditch the office in favor of the ball game. But it got me to thinking: Does it have to be a darkish hour? Can marketers put a spin like a Cliff Lee curveball onto our own stupidity?<br />
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There is something that suggests we might be able to, and it comes from jazz, of all places.<br />
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The jazz guitarist Barry Galbraith once said that a jazz musician is never more than half a step away from the right note. In other words, wherever you happen to be you can get to a good place with a fairly small amount of work.<br />
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So take our faux pas (or, as a boss of mine was fond of saying, a "foopa"). How does a marketing department hey-Jude it – you know, take its sad song and make it better?<br />
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By taking a page out of Barry Galbraith's Big Book of American Standards. By taking it a half-step up.<br />
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Start by tracing the root of the problem (assuming it was a problem and not just a random act of senseless senselessness). Was it a breakdown in people or procedure? If it's a breakdown in procedure, encourage the Powers That Are to resist like Pope Benedict at a Christina Aguilera concert the overpowering urge to add more procedures to the existing procedure. <br />
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Instead, channel the late greats Tom Bosley and Barbara Billingsley (and then they kicked Florence Henderson off of <i>Dancing With the Stars</i>; have the fates – and that little Italian twip -- no respect for parental units?) and guide them gently, with pearls around your neck, toward excising the surplusage from existing procedures.<br />
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For once in your life, be a Republican. Lift the onerous yoke of excessive regulation. Let the free market rule! No taxes on incomes of $250,000 and up! Opportunity for everyone! Guns for all! And I command the sunspots that cause global warming to vanish!<br />
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Sorry. I had a Sharron Angle moment there.<br />
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Marketers are creative people. They need latitude, they tend to resist layers upon layers of documentation, but they don't shirk accountability if it's leavened with empowerment. Give them the smallest amount of procedures necessary to do the job, give them control of the money and let them sign their name to the bottom, and they'll knock it out, singing Swiss mountain-climbing songs all the way.<br />
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So take a mistake as an opportunity to re-examine what you do and make it work better – even if it means instituting less control -- and then announce it to the world as a re-examination of policies and procedures.<br />
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If it's a people problem, again use it (or suggest to your supervisors that they use it) as an opportunity to re-examine who's doing what. People need to own some facet of what they do. It needs to be wholly and totally theirs and the working world needs to know it. A mistake is a great opportunity to see if the right people are assigned to the appropriate tasks – that Chris O’Donnell is in charge of communicating to your Wiccan stakeholders, for instance.<br />
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Match the skills with the duties and see how well they line up. If some need more, give them more to own out of the pool of shared responsibilities. If some need less, construct the less out of high-profile assignments that are in their wheelhouse – and get them the training they need to do the rest.<br />
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A mistake is not just an opportunity in disguise. That’s being too kind. It’s also not one more thing to be spun. That’s too crass. A mistake is another chance to do what marketers do best: apply common sense to a situation that needs it. Even if it’s a situation of your own making.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-71430886052246494322010-10-14T05:12:00.000-07:002010-10-14T05:16:15.209-07:00The Return Of Ziggy Salesman And The Pimple-Flavored ABC GumMy friend Skip was telling me about strategic planning at his place. <br />
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You know strategic planning. That's the process you don't get to take part in because that would be the end of it right there and a million billion consultants would be out on the street, begging for your watch so they can tell you the time, at $275 an hour.<br />
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Really now: Is there anything you do in the course of carrying out your assigned marketing duties that isn't strategic planning? You're always strategically straddling departments and responsibilities and projects, and reconciling manufacturing and operations and sales, speaking pinto to the bean-counters and CAD/CAM to the engineers and faux jive to the sales dudes, and toggling between the quark-level view and the view from heaven, which provides definitive evidence that the CEO is not God.<br />
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Because you're doing strategic planning all the time I'll bet you're good at it, whereas when executives try strategic planning they look like pitchers batting, and their sessions deliver the goods about as well as amateur night at Beansnappers. <br />
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And guess whose recommendations get served up to the CEO on a silver tray? Certainly not the recommendations of the guy who just played the role of the cheek-biting native girl in <i>The Man Who Would Be King</i>.<br />
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(Spoiler alert: The cheek-biting native girl draws blood, thereby proving that Sean Connery is not God. Connery is pitched off a cliff. No comment on real-life applications of this information.)<br />
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That's neither here nor there, but in the immortal words of The Ol' Duke, it does get to sticking in your crawl after a while.<br />
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So anyway, my buddy Skip relates that part of his company's strategic-planning process involved role-switching. The head of operations became a designer, and the head engineer became a customer-service chief, and his boss got to deal with IT and the HR director became a salesperson.<br />
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On one level it was no sweat for these highly trained executives, because they could simply tell their subordinates to do what needs to be done, just like back in their own cozy departments.<br />
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On a different level, Skip reports, it was far more interesting, primarily when it came to other departments' perceptions of how money actually comes in the door.<br />
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The predominant perception was that products dropped from the sky like frozen turkeys in an episode of <i>WKRP In Cincinnati</i>, and money flowed up to the sky on an electron beam, at which point it condensed and fell back to earth, where it was sucked up by bankers carrying large gasoline-powered contraptions that resembled Rush Limbaugh.<br />
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In other words, there was no disconnect quite like the disconnect between the stuff and the sale of stuff. <br />
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Distribution force? Forget it. They might as well be the Power Rangers Strike Force? Third-party resellers? You mean, like H. Ross Perot back when he was running for president with that senile Army guy?<br />
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Companies that ultimately have to sell things often forget the most basic premise of their operation: that things actually get sold. And the burden for educating them falls, like all burdens, upon marketing.<br />
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Why marketing? Because marketing, rightly or wrongly, is positioned as the mouthpiece of sales. Sales is the New Headshrinkers; marketing is Captain Lou. <br />
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So what can marketing do to bridge such a basic knowledge-and-reasoning gap?<br />
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First, get other areas of the organization involved in the sales process. Start by having executives from other areas of the organization accompanying the sales force on calls. <br />
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Oh, yeah. I can hear the howling from here. Sounds like Hüsker Dü. The executives aren't going to understand why and the sales force is going to flat-out hate it. Anything that brings home-office staff into a salesperson's territory is going to get the same rousing reception as a Barack Obama appearance at a National Association of Loudmouthed Chuckleheads convention. <br />
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They way to handle that situation is with some strategic planning. While good salespeople believe they could sell anything, even pimple-flavored ABC gum, they don't mind having better products to sell and a more compelling story to tell. Sending people from other areas on sales calls will at the very least give the salespeople more stories to tell. Most of them will be flat-out lies about how they licked IT or Operations with one hand tied behind their back, but fine. That's how salespeople manage to work up enthusiasm for the latest piece of industrial hot lunch foisted upon them.<br />
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You would hope on the other side that the ops person would come away with a firm knowledge of how money actually comes in the door, but don't be too sure. You may also hear something like, "Well, all they did was talk." Yeah, it's nowhere near as substantial as clicking and dragging a trapezoidal shape, but it'll pass.<br />
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It's never stated in your job description, but an essential part of your job is making sure all the silos in your organization share the corn. Sometimes you have to physically haul it from one silo to another. But the payoff in understanding is worth the effort.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-60701225556192606422010-10-07T18:34:00.000-07:002010-10-07T18:50:41.620-07:00How To Communicate Practically Anything To Practically Anybody. For Less Than $100,000. Guaranteed.The shrink was in yesterday, talking about personality styles and what they mean, and the tactics a good and faithful employee needs to employ to communicate successfully with the people around you. This information was filed dutifully with the last go-round from this particular shrink, and the Watson-Glaser results, and the Meyers-Briggs, and the Good Whale guy, and the Five Love Languages, and the Flag Page dude, and the Women Are From Mars, Men Are From Venus schtick, and the lessons learned at the fall-backwards-I’ll-catch-you workshop (lesson No. 1: don’t fall backwards), and the reams of academic stuff from grad school, and the proposal for a dreamstorming session at church involving large Post-In Notes and a potluck, and the last missive from my wife wondering why I don’t listen better.<br />
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How can I listen? I’m way too busy trying to figure out what to say and how to say it.<br />
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Not only are the hills alive with the sound of music, they’re alive with the peripatetic movements of communication consultants brandishing their valid and reliable instruments and practically giving away the secrets of how your employees can talk more gooder at only $100,000 per secret. But only if you act now.<br />
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There’s an academic term for this: ick. That money should by all rights be going to you, because you know how people can communicate more effectively, and if you don’t now you will soon, because I’m going to tell you.<br />
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There’s no discounting the importance of good communication. Good marketing is based on consistently effective communication. Unless you’re selling Lady Gaga on a stick you can’t just hold up your product and have people flocking to you waving fistfuls of cash. You have to tell them something about your product in such a way that they want your product. And that goes whether you’re indoors, in the friendly confines of your office, doing reenactments of <i>Care Bears </i>episodes with the folks from Operations, or outside, making sales calls. <br />
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Okay, so what’s good communication? <br />
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Good communication successfully delivers all dimensions of a message successfully to its intended recipient. So in order to make that work you need to understand all the dimensions of a message and how they’ll be perceived by the person on the other end. And in those two components you can find all the contents of the highfaluting theories being peddled by so-called communication consultants. <br />
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Or, simply, think before you speak.<br />
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Think about what you want to say, boil it down to one or two essential truths, and then think about how to say it in such a way that those essential truths come across unsullied.<br />
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One of the reasons bombshells are so heavy is so that the explosive will explode when it’s supposed to. Yes, the shell makes a fine crackling noise when it explodes, and the boiling-hot, deadly shrapnel is a huge bonus, but it’s all about the gelignite, and getting that to go when and where it’s supposed to. <br />
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Think of your communication acts as bombshells. I realize it’s almost illogical flattery to think that a memo informing the design team that lines 12 and 13 have to be moved a eighth of an inch would be a bombshell, but the person who put lines 12 and 13 there <i>for a reason </i>would like to see you outside. And bring your playbook.<br />
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Something is always going to be offensive to someone. Ham it up and a vegetarian sees red. But if you enter into your communications knowing there’s a risk of offense you can plan a defense. It might be for you to tell them to – in one of my favorite phrases of all time, courtesy of the Canadian parliament – go forth and multiply themselves. If the essential truth you want communicated is, “You’re an idiot,” and you decide upon careful consideration of all alternatives that saying, “Go forth and multiply yourself” is the best alternative, then by all means, be my guest. Here are your white gloves and opera hat. But leave me out of it.<br />
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So step one is understanding that your message is the chocolate that melts in their mouth, and the medium and the words chosen are the candy shell that guarantees the chocolate melts in their mouth and not in their hand. Step two is realizing that some people don’t like brown M&Ms.<br />
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The shrink would tell you some people don’t like brown M&Ms because their brains are wired to not like brown M&Ms, and you have to avoid brown-M&M-speak when talking to these people. I’m telling you that there isn’t some sort of psychiatric field hospital where you can tie these people down and perform a Meyers-Briggs with the spring from a ballpoint pen and some dental floss. You have to communicate on the fly to a broad spectrum of M&M lovers, and you have to push the chocolate through the candy shell, regardless of its color. <br />
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Understanding that someone will invariably misunderstand your intent and your content, here’s what you do: Use short sentences. Avoid adjectives. Eschew surplusage. Offer to show your work, but don’t show your work. Stress tangible outcomes. And always communicate via the richest media channel available.<br />
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Media-richness theory is one of the pet concepts I got out of grad school in exchange for $20,000 and a permanent case of writer’s cramp. It basically states that certain communication channels can carry more information than others, and that a key to effective communication is choosing the appropriate channel to carry the message.<br />
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Simple, but I can eschew even more surplusage: Say it face-to-face whenever possible. Walk down the hall and talk to people. Don’t send an e-mail. Don’t pick up the phone. Don’t hide behind convenient media because they’re convenient. Do the hard work, take the extra step, and you’ll be rewarded for it. <br />
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Face-to-face is not a panacea. One of my clients could reduce a Harvard MBA to a plate of aspic in face-to-face settings, and he knew it. But those people are far between, and the alternative is often worse. <br />
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So there you go. Say it in person, keep it short, emphasize the bottom line, offer more. Do that and you can communicate professionally with just about anyone. <br />
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Try it, and if it works, don’t thank me. Just send me the hundred grand you don’t send the communication consultant. Heck, I’ll settle for fifty.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-20187503118869474092010-09-30T15:48:00.000-07:002010-09-30T15:48:54.166-07:00Reinventing Reinventing The WheelThe problem I have with most of the marketing blogs I read is that they seem to be geared for a marketing department whose CMO is Tinker Bell. And Ms. Bell must be in a bit of a rut, because she keeps touting the same solutions to all the world’s marketing problems.<br />
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For instance, “Anyone can use social media to build their brand – any brand -- into a powerhouse.” Oh, yeah? Start tweeting about Hardrock natural-gas nipples and see if anyone shows up but the crowd from outside FAO Schwanz.<br />
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Or here’s another one: “The key to effective marketing is to turn your best customers into brand evangelists.” Really? If a guy buys a million cubic yards of black dirt from me he’s going to become an Al Sharpton of my black dirt, and he’s going to tell all his competitors, who would disembowel him as much as look at him, to buy my black dirt, and they’re actually going to do it? Maybe if they’re just coming off of an acid trip, but otherwise they’re going to tell Rev. Al what he can do with his black dirt, and it’s going to be a stretch to fit a million cubic yards of topsoil in there.<br />
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Either that or the solutions sound like they were taken from that Monty Python sketch on how to rid the world of all known diseases: “Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again.” I can make a lot of marketing problems disappear by throwing a million dollars at them, but I guarantee the mill will disappear faster than the problem. <br />
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Where’s the real-world stuff – besides here, of course? Well, no matter, because it’s here and it’s going to stay here. <br />
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Now here’s a real real-world question: When is the right time to start from scratch?<br />
You know what I mean. The workaday marketing challenges have nothing to do with the launch of an epochal new product, backed by barcode scans and mobile ads and celebrity appearances and product placement on Regis and Kelly and pre-rolls on YouTube and Super Bowl ads and ooh look skywriting. Instead, they’re questions like, “How do I communicate this subtle product change to a niche audience using the least amount of time and money?”<br />
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The easiest way is to rely on the past. If you communicated the change from a 1/8-inch flange to a 3/16-inch flange using a modified sell-sheet and an e-mail blast, chances are you can communicate the change from a ¾-inch washer to a 25/32-inch washer the same way. You can probably even use the same sell-sheet and e-mail templates. The world will forgive you for not hiring Cameron Diaz to get this point across.<br />
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However, overreliance on this tactic is a trap. If you treat nothing as truly special and new, eventually your audiences will get the idea that there is nothing special and new about you, that you are the K mart of your particular market and you deserve the K mart treatment, which ranges between derisive scorn and leper-like screaming avoidance. Unless chocolate-covered cherries are on sale.<br />
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The answer to this question is obviously somewhere between never reinventing and constantly reinventing, but the real answer is tied in with the answer to this rhetorical question: If you don’t believe in your product, how can you expect the outside world to believe?<br />
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I was the defacto marketing department for a company trying to build its cash coffers in advance of an IPO. As a green-grabbing tactic it was flooding the market with products that, in Dave Barry’s immortal words, were “clearly an industrial prank. It was all the people on the assembly line could do to not shoot rivets into each other, they were laughing so hard.” <br />
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When we rolled out the latest batch of sheet-iron one-liners to the sales force with all the straight faces and go-get-‘em enthusiasm we could muster on a weekly retainer, we were greeted with a universal message: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Only they didn’t say “kidding.”<br />
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The products were worse than molybdenum on a stick. We knew it, but we had to put give them to the sales force anyway. The sales force knew it, and they had to put on their best sales face (i.e., lie) and tell their customers that these were the best thing since chocolate-covered bacon on a stick.<br />
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You can only ask your sales force to sell (i.e., lie) so much, and this was too much. This was lying of an immense scale not seen since the ads in this morning’s local newscast. Though the spirit was willing the flesh was weak, the products tanked, the company filed Chapter 11, and we moved on to a different weekly retainer called unemployment.<br />
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I’m not saying that none of this would have happened if the sales force had believed the howling mongrels we gave them were presents from Santa. I’m saying you need to market to maximize everyone’s belief in what you’re marketing.<br />
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So the answer to the question is a question: When do you reinvent the wheel? When it’s necessary for everyone to believe that this product or change or report or brochure really is special and important. <br />
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Let’s be honest: If you make embroidery floss, there’s not a lot that you can do to your product to make it more special and important, unless you put a vial of KISS blood in every red dye-lot. The status quo will probably do just fine. <br />
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However, there will come a time when sales have plateaued and enthusiasm likewise and you need to give the product a kick in the slats. That’s the time to put on the creativity hat, reach for the magic wand (I have one at my desk – doesn’t everyone?) and change things around. <br />
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Similarly, there are a number of reports I produce every year. They’re basic research that outlines our market, its demographics and competitors. <br />
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For four years I used one basic format for the reports, and things trucked along swimmingly. No one had any complaints, nor would they have if I had replaced all content back of the table of contents with plain paper. <br />
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This year I totally redid the format and went the extra step of replacing all content back of the table of contents with plain paper. And you should have heard the complements roll in. <br />
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Obviously, the crack about replacing content with plain paper is a lie – rather, a sales tool. But the rest is true. The content of the reports changed only in the sense that there was less of it. In the delightful phrase coined by the auto industry, the reports were decontented. However, they looked much more special and were treated that way by their audience. <br />
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There are many legitimate reasons for letting the status quo rule: time, money, marketing objectives, sales goals, even inertia. Understanding when those are no longer reasonable excuses requires sensitivity to organizational culture and external needs. Good marketers are doing that already.<br />
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The real marketing world is about nothing so much as decisions. What gets the attention, and what goes begging? The good news is that if you didn’t before, you now know the questions to ask to make your decisions. Now, good luck explaining that to your boss.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-91514807388686973052010-09-23T16:54:00.000-07:002010-09-24T17:49:17.456-07:00Le ROI Has No ClothesLike everyone else in this wide wired world I spend a lot of time reading marketing blogs. Now I realize that reading marketing blogs is, to paraphrase the comedian Lewis Black, like videotaping yourself spewing about marketing in front of a mirror so later you can spew about marketing while watching the video (he didn't say "marketing" but something very close to marketing), but I do it anyway. It gives my boss something to hold against me at evaluation time.<br />
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Okay, so yesterday I was reading something that came through the marvelous life-giving portal known as adage.com which stated that marketers now have so many things they can measure to prove ROI that they can't prove ROI because they can't figure out which numbers are meaningful.<br />
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Well, whaddya know? Here’s the very quote:<br />
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"’What's making everything much more murky is the amount of data that's available today,’ said media consultant Erwin Ephron. ‘It just blows the mind. It's very hard to think constructively about media planning when you have 500 different research sources telling you what's going on, because you can prove anything you want. We need to get back to a simple set of measurements that in fact identify response.’” <br />
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And furthermore, “A fundamental problem across all metrics is settling for what actually can be measured rather than measuring what actually contributes to the ultimate goal: sales, Mr. Ephron said.”<br />
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Hear that? That's the sound of the pendulum swinging the other way.<br />
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You knew this was going to happen. You knew that the rise of Barack Obama would spawn the anti-Obama(s), you knew the NBA would jerry-rig the free-enterprise system until it resembled Baksheesh Sunday in Monrovia so that three of its biggest superstars would wind up on the gateway team to the largest international market in the Western Hemisphere, and you knew, you just knew that as soon as a marketing universe was created where everything could be measured someone would come along and say that none of it meant anything. It was as obvious as the repartee in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.<br />
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Mr. Ephron is a smart man. His blog (ephrononmedia.com) is one of my favorites. And he cuts like Dr. Kildare to the heart of the matter, which is: It’s about sales. It’s not about measuring the amount of oxygen consumed by consumers watching videos of focus groups discussing tweets related to your product. It’s not measuring the space in hectares occupied by all your Web pages printed out and laid end-to-end. It’s about figuring out what people want to buy and selling it to them.<br />
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And here’s the kicker to that, previously mentioned but worth repeated nonetheless: You know the lion’s share of that, without measuring as much as a single click-through.<br />
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In almost every case you know more about your business, and selling, than you give yourself credit for, in part because you’ve been conditioned to believe that if you can’t quantify it, it doesn’t exist. <br />
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If you know about your business and think about your business – the two aren’t the same -- you develop hunches, and you can’t quantify a hunch any more than you can quantify what makes my son love applesauce on his spaghetti. But <i>your hunches are valid</i>. Much as the numerologists would prefer otherwise, you know things about your business that defy quantification and measurement. <br />
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The problem is that someone at a level of biological development rivaling the slime mold will eventually demand that quantification and measurement, and when you say, “I know because I know the market,” they will tell you it’s not good enough and boot you down the stairs with their prehensile foot.<br />
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This has to stop, and if Mr. Ephron is right it will stop. People who know their business, their products and their markets need to once again be given credit for their knowledge. The outsourcing of credibility to a cockeyed phrenologist who claims to be able to establish a movable concept called “ROI” must stop. <br />
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After all, what is a reasonable return on investment? What constitutes a return? All sales, or only profitable sales? Sales plus inquiries? Increases in name recognition or brand awareness? A swell in social-media volume? Any and all of them have been measured under the guise of ROI – but are they equally valid?<br />
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And here we go again: What constitutes an investment? Spending of dollars? Expending of resources? Thought time? An idea might have percolated in someone’s brain for a decade before exiting relatively full-blown and ready for the market. How do you measure that as an investment?<br />
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And to paraphrase Bill Clinton, what do we mean by “on”?<br />
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Have an aspirin; it’s good for your heart. And while it’s dissolving, a story.<br />
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My pal Carmen told me about a meeting she had with a marcomm manager/client that was looking for help launching a slightly modified version of one of its least popular products. Carmen told her, “The first thing we need to do is come up with internal and external communications plans for the product launch.”<br />
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The manager/client blanched –parboiled, maybe – and said, “Well, what’s the sales goal for that? There has to be something we can measure with this, if we’re going to do it.”<br />
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Carmen said, “It’s just a plan to create materials for a product launch. There’s nothing to measure. If the product takes off, is it because we did good telling your internal people what we’re going to say and who we’re going to say it to? It’s the things you do that matter, not the things you say you’re going to do.”<br />
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“Yeah, but how much more are we going to sell if we do this?” She still didn’t get it.<br />
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Let me make it easy for you. The three things you need to keep track of are your budget, your sales goal – overall, if you please -- and your actual sales. What are you spending money on? Does it line up with what and where you’re selling? And does what and where you’re selling line up with what and where you were planning on selling?<br />
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A budget tracks dollars, not time, and that’s as it should be. Everyone spends time on something at work – your projects, other people’s projects, eating, the Internet, Facebook, phone pranks, something. But fewer projects usually mean more time spent on each one, doing the same things to achieve the same end.<br />
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In other words, time is elastic. Dollars aren’t.<br />
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Even though sales goals may be created in a place somewhere south of Gumdrop Valley, they’re a number as firm as the calves of a Dancing With The Stars partner. Actual sales are harder than the payments on a BMW 7-series. And it’s easy to tell where sales are coming from. <br />
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So here you go: Three hard numbers that line up if things behave the way you think they should and don’t line up if they don’t behave. Measure away. And think of all the actual work you can do in the time you’re not spending measuring all that other junk. <br />
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Once you get off of Facebook, that is.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-66238752717594898952010-09-16T04:07:00.000-07:002010-09-16T04:09:51.810-07:00Which Came First: The Chicken, Or The Budget For The Chicken?Every Monday I scratch my head and wonder what I’m going to write about this week, and usually by Tuesday it’s figured out for me.<br />
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This week no sooner had I raked the dandruff from my scalp when a marketing pal came despairing my way, crawling barelegged through the berber, his personal electronics trailing behind him, clutching his bewhiskered throat and gasping for air.<br />
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“Marketing-plan time again?” I asked, and he nodded. His throat and tongue were too parched and swollen for him to speak. <br />
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I gave him a swig of Diet Mountain Dew and he perked up imperceptibly. “What is it now?” I asked. “Budgets?” He nodded. “Projects – to-do list?” He nodded again. “Sales – as in, how does all this mesh with what sales wants to do?” He nodded one more time.<br />
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“Sit down,” I said, though he preferred to remain in a fetal position on the floor. “I know just what you’re going though.” And from there I proceeded to enlighten him thuswise:<br />
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Marketing plans are bigger minefields than the Afghan interstate system. They are the no-win document to end all no-win documents. If they’re detailed, they’re unreadably long. If they’re kept short, they’re vague and unsubstantiated. If they involve other departments they’re too ambitious. If they stick to marketing-department actions they ignore the intertwined reality. If they only focus on marketing tactics to achieve sales goals they ignore the broader picture. If they speak too much to achieving the corporate mission they ignore sales. If they’re designed to function within a budget they lack vision and creativity. If they reach for the moon they’re dismissed as pie-in-the-sky twaddle. And you’re gonna be held to what you say, unless we decide to hold you to something else – but if we do decide to hold you to something else, we’re not going to tell you. <br />
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And not only does a marketing department need to have one of these delightful documents, they need it done and on the CEO’s desk by Monday.<br />
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Here’s the deal: You’re not going to win with a marketing plan. You just aren’t. Five people are going to complain about strategy, three are going to rip on tactics, accounting is absolutely going to lay one down over the budget, and at least one yabbo is going to grouse over the cover design. <br />
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Confronted with all that, what do most marketing directors do? They say, “To heck with it,” and call in their cum laude graduate of the Garden Party School of Marketing (motto: “You can’t please everyone, so you gotta please yourself”) to do the marketing plan. <br />
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Bad wrong, or as they say in Australia, wrong bad. <br />
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Okay, the first part is right. The essential first step in creating a minimally unsuccessful marketing plan is acknowledging that a marketing plan exists so people who aren’t in marketing can hold you accountable for things you shouldn’t be held accountable for. The success or failure of a product, for instance. Now, marketing is at the locus of taking a product from the lab to the market, but if the product is bad when R&D says it’s good, is it marketing’s fault? If the sales force treats the product the way a threatened senator treats a presidential visit, is it marketing’s fault?<br />
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You know the answer to this question. It is: Yes. You should have seen it coming. Acknowledge it and move on. <br />
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The second imperative is to treat the relationship among budget, tactics, and outcomes like you really understand it. Essentially, a marketing plan says, “I plan on doing x, costing y, to achieve z.” At some point you’ll be asked to defend each component as well as the logical string, and the circumstances which made this necessary in the first place, but that’s no surprise. You simply have to be prepared to answer the questions -- and it’s your choice whether you do it inside or outside of the marketing plan. <br />
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The nice thing about intertwining budget, tactics, and outcomes in a marketing plan is that you acknowledge that marketing costs money (which accounting loves), and that expenditures and tactics – “hard” tactics like products and “softer” ones like press releases – are going directly toward outcomes, which sometimes go by the sobriquet of “sales.” This makes Sales happy, though Sales is easily pleased. In the corporate menagerie Sales is the Poky Little Puppy.<br />
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To justify the title, this approach acknowledges that if you want a chicken you have to budget for one. You can’t simply hope that Product Development lays an egg.<br />
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The third point, which is less an imperative than a really strong suggestion, is to minimize numbers everywhere in a marketing plan, forward and background, hard numbers and projections, dollars and units. You can hide behind numbers; I get that. And so does everyone else. Besides, marketing departments come in two flavors: the kind where they believe your numbers and the kind where they don’t. If they believe your numbers you don’t have to put them in the marketing plan because if people believe your numbers they believe most everything else you say. If they don’t believe your numbers all you do by putting numbers in the marketing plan is open yourself up to ridicule. <br />
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You’re going to be questioned, so you might as well say, “This is the way it is,” using <i>words</i> (revolutionary, I know), and then haul up your numbers to answer a specific question. <br />
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I know it seems counterintuitive in the age of MEM (Measuring Everything Marketing) to eschew numbers in a marketing plan, but a marketing plan isn’t about hitting numbers; it’s about employing strategies to get to a point where the numbers will occur. It’s about doing to achieve; costs are a throughput. In the movie <i>Chicken Run</i> the nutty prisoner professor chicken lays out the mathematical case for a chicken flying, but when they actually launch the chicken according to the numbers, what happens? Chicken splat. The chickens don’t get off the ground until they ditch the math and devise strategies for getting off the ground.<br />
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Sweet philosophy, but you can’t abandon numbers entirely in a marketing plan. However, if you save the stats for costs and outcomes and let your vendors supply the former and Sales the latter, you can keep building the road. Math will tell you how fast to go in the corners.<br />
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Employ this strategy and you can get through a marketing plan in five pages – 10, tops. If you’re not there, try axing the season recap and the eight pages of market-share pie charts and the Post-It budget and five years of sales numbers and the SWOT analyses of competitors’ janitorial services and see where you are. You are not your organization’s Homer. You are not writing the definitive history of Wiffman’s Waffles. You’re starting at a spot and moving forward in a tightly defined direction, and describing the path as succinctly as possible. <br />
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“Yes,” my parched friend croaked. “Yes, but – what do you do when what you say you’re going to do next year doesn’t line up with what you’re doing now?”<br />
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“Choose,” I said. “Actually, you have to build in a change of direction, wrap up what you’re doing now if you need to, and then lay out where you need to go from there. You can’t ignore the present, but you also can’t spend so much time and effort documenting what got you to the present that you lose sight of what’s going to make for a better future.<br />
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“That do it for you?” I asked, but my friend, still curled in the fetal position, was unresponsive. Dead – or worse. <br />
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“Plumb tuckered out,” I whispered, leaving the office and closing the door softly behind me. “And the CEO <i>still</i> needs a plan on his desk by Monday.”Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743340376632614265.post-90265539165917432010-09-09T17:39:00.000-07:002010-09-09T17:39:54.467-07:00Tomorrow's Media TodayAs Ira Gershwin noted, things have come to a pretty pass. My technologically backward friend Jim who would not tweet if his life were dependent on his being able to say “Help!” in less than 140 characters now has a blog. <br />
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Actually, it’s a sort of a blog. It’s blogesque, a demiblog. It may just be other people doing his blogging for him, if Jim’s first post is any indication. It’s a call for all his friends to submit their thoughts on the future of media. <br />
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In the words of Texas-swing fiddler Johnny Gimble, “Well, wind me up.” I haven’t written out much on the future of media, though it’s a subject that’s dear to my heart – and wallet. I used to make my living through the media and would like again to make my living through the media, in one form or another. I even have a plan in mind of how this might occur, which I am not sharing with anyone who is not willing to pay me for it, and the chances of that are less than the chances of me dressing up like Prince and playing a guitar shaped like an Egyptian fertility symbol. In church.<br />
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This is a synopsis of what I wrote for Jim (which I haven’t written yet, but not for lack of want-to), spun towards marketing. Because while marketing is not media – a fact of which I must be continuously reminded – marketing cannot exist without media providing the conduits of information from seller to buyer (and, don’t forget, buyer to seller).<br />
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When considering the future of media, remember that media don’t die. True, the telegraph is dead, and there’s not a lot of traffic in jungle drums and smoke signals. But those media channels were highly content-poor and technologically backward, and there are modern channels that do what they do better. Text messaging, for instance. <br />
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So, in other words, in five years we will still have the opportunity to consume every form of media we currently consume. All the talk of media going away is hoohah. That’s not the way we behave. When it comes to communication we’re a civilization of ragpickers. We take what we like from here and there and build a sort of media lean-to that serves as our communication structure. I just bought a new turntable so I can record my vinyl onto a CD, which I send via USB to my phone, where I can share it via Facebook – though I may then turn around and write about the experience for a magazine.<br />
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What media could go away?<br />
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Not the magazine. The magazine will survive. An iPad app may offer more interactivity, but a printed magazine is a more engaging sensory experience. I read The Complete New Yorker on my computer, but I also check out the back issues from the library. The completeness of the DVDs is a plus, but the computer is unable to duplicate the experience of reading an actual 80-year-old magazine. <br />
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The newspaper will survive, but not all newspapers will survive. Most current newspapers sell a sort of immediacy, with a lack of interactivity, eye appeal, reporting depth, and writing skill as a tradeoff. That’s not good enough. For a newspaper to survive in print it’ll have to be better-looking and better-written than its online competition – more like a highly local magazine, in other words.<br />
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Television will survive as one of many screens. I ascribe to the theory that visual content will become more and more standardized and only the size of the screen will change. The distribution channels are working their kinks out, but how could you not bet on Apple, Amazon, and Google/YouTube being the winners, with Facebook coming up hard on the rail? <br />
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Media savants NRBQ are fond of reminding us that there ain’t no free, and we are bound to learn that all over again in the next five years. iTunes showed the way for iTV, and with a little help from Amazon and Microsoft the market has been established. Songs cost 99 cents. TV shows cost 99 cents. Books are $10 and the book reader is $100 and falling. It won’t be long before long-form journalism articles from content providers like nytimes.com are 99 cents, and a full magazine for the iPad stabilizes at around $3. Cats riding skateboards may still be free, but enjoy free concert footage, movie clips, and TV shows while you can. They’re not long for this world. <br />
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But what about the savior of us all, the game-changer of the epoch, user-generated content?<br />
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User-generated content is hardly a new thing. And not only that, but the readership numbers for old-school user-generated content are hardly worse than the numbers for new-school content. Blogs, tweets, texts, uploads, and postings are the new letters, sent to slightly more people with slightly less personalization, and with the middleman – the post office -- cut out. Bad time to be a mailman, business as usual for everyone else.<br />
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With blogs on the periphery and 90 percent of consumed content coming through controlled (and metered) channels, the crackpots are reduced to the status of crank letters, which is about where they are now, only we don’t see them that way because we’re so consumed by the newness of form that we miss the oldness of content. As the channels consolidate the need diminishes for search as we know it. Each channel will have its own dedicated search, and if it’s not coming through one of those tubes you probably don’t want it.<br />
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Advertising has a place because there will always be some organization wanting to own a piece of one or another channel and disinclined to believe it’s a total waste of money.<br />
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That leaves marketing. Marketing uses advertising as one of many tool groups, with each group made up of specific tools. Think of advertising as, oh, the chisels. What kinds of chisels – I mean, advertising – do I like? Pre-roll ads. Mobile ads. Crawls and banners on TV shows. Interstitials in e-books. Outdoor. In-hand. (Basically, anything you can hold in your hand.) <br />
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Then there’s public relations. There’s an article in today’s New York Times that public relations is more important than ever. I don’t doubt it. It ought to be.<br />
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Then there are the wide range of materials aimed at augmenting face-to-face meetings. More important than ever. As people consume more media and are increasingly bombarded with marketing messages as a result, the face-to-face meeting gains importance as an oasis of interpersonal interaction.<br />
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If my crystal ball shows the media model returning to a conventional form where a few big players control the most important channels, it does not show that it’s Turn Back The Clock Night all over the media firmament. Things have changed. Marketing through media has changed. But the advantage to the savvy marketer is in understanding how it’s changed.Kit Kieferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06554571052867151147noreply@blogger.com0