Tom Asacker

Isaac Asimov on change

"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be."

The Association of National Advertisers, a body representing 370 companies with 8,000 brands and a collective annual spend of over $100 billion (€83.13bn; £57.62bn) in marketing communications, asked members to select and prioritize their key issues from an extensive prompt list. Ranked in order of importance, these are the topics most exercising the minds of the nation's top marketers:

1. Accountability;
2. Aligning marketing organization with innovation;
3. Building strong brands;
4. Integrated marketing communications;
5. Media fragmentation;
6. Impact of technology on marketing;
7. Growth of multicultural consumer segments;
8. Attracting and retaining top talent;
9. Consumer control over how they view advertising;
10. Advertising creative that achieves business results;
11. Globalization of marketing efforts.

Finally.

Lily Tomlin on stress

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it. "

Forbes.com just published ten ways for CEO's to cut back on stress. See if you can detect the obvious problem with this list:

1. Find An Outlet - A hobby, like fishing
2. Get A Massage - And light a candle
3. Get Your Zs - Sleep helps
4. Have A Sense Of Humor - Lighten up, dude
5. Lead A Healthy Lifestyle - Exercise and eat well
6. Have An Understanding Spouse Or Partner - Manage the situation
7. Learn How To Delegate - Let it go
8. Make Money - Money calms many worries
9. Meditate - It's not just for Buddhist monks
10. Schedule Vacations - And then take them

Do you see the problem?  Exactly!  It doesn't deal with what's causing the stress. Here's my list (and Forbes? Perhaps you folks should switch from business to alternative medicine.):

1. Be passionate - About how your work improves people's lives
2. Be clear - About precisely how you provide that value
3. Stay focused - On what customers truly care about
4. Communicate unceasingly - Your passion, vision and strategy
5. Stay tuned in - To the rapid and endless changes in today's marketplace
6. Be kind - If you want your people to be kind
7. Stop lying - To your people, shareholders, customers and, especially, yourself
8. Trust others - Which is not the same as telling them what to do (see #7 above)
9. Give back - To customers, employees, the needy, and the environment
10. Take risks - Brand is a verb, not a noun

George Loewenstein on the mind

"The Platonic metaphor of the mind as a charioteer driving twin horses of reason and emotion is on the right track—except that cognition is a smart pony, and emotion a big elephant."

Is the big elephant pulling me off the track of reason?  Please let me know.

• In a BusinessWeek article in January titled, What Innovation Advantage? Chinese and Indian companies aren't leaving design to the North Americans, the really smart author, Roger L. Martin, puts it clearly:
  
  "There is a romantic notion in North American business that its future lies in design and innovation, while India and China will be the home of less skilled, lower-paying operations churning out the products and services the U.S. comes up with. It is a nifty twist on David Ricardo's seminal 19th century theory of "comparative advantage," which explained why cloudy and cool England exported woolen goods to sunny and hot Spain, which in turn exported wine to England. The problem is that the theory didn't ring true when I rode through the streets of Hyderabad, Bombay, and Bangalore on visits to major Indian companies."
  
  If indeed there is a "creative class," it lives - and moves to - where the opportunities present themselves. With all due respect to Professor Florida, it's not simply about welcoming the creative class.  It's also about offering them something compelling enough so they decide to stay. Sorry, but I see them leaving. C'est la invisible hand.

• For the record - I'm really talking to you Mary, if you were talking about me ;) - I have no problem with the "old guys," or anyone else for that matter.  Hell, I'm an old guy. It's their ideas that sometimes intellectually rub me the wrong way.  For example, Laura Ries - daughter of positioning - has a new post about Wal-Mart's venture into premium-priced goods.  Laura pontificates:
  
  "Will Wal-Mart suddenly be synonymous with everything from cheap detergent to rare Bordeaux? I think not. You can’t appeal to everybody. No brand can stand for everything. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer. They own 'low prices' in the mind.
  
  All the radical store improvements that Wal-Mart is planning in Texas go against the philosophy of being the place to save money. Fancy stores mean fancy prices. Plain stores mean cheap prices. The notion that there are two types of customers, low end and high end, is a fallacy. The same customers will shop in different stores for different things at different price points on different occasions."
  
  Read it again: "Wal-Mart owns low prices . . . "  Exactly Laura!  That is the expectation - along with convenience - that Wal-Mart has created.  It's their "brand."  So, if consumers believe that they can get a Hermes bag for a much lower price at Wal-Mart than anywhere else (and they will certainly do their research), are you telling me that they'll forgo that decision because they want to be seen spending more at an upscale retail outlet?  C'mon. Get real.  You're not that dumb. Why do you expect them to be?

• Finally, what the hell is this? "ARF REVEALS WORKING DEFINITION OF ENGAGEMENT: In Moving From Buzzword to Industry Standard, It’s a Start"   Check it out, dog (I've been watching too much American Idol). According to AdAge.com,
  
  "Following months of trying to develop a new metric of ad effectiveness, the Advertising Research Foundation today unveiled a much awaited working definition of engagement with the hope of turning it from a buzzword to a industry-wide measurement standard.

  Here’s the definition as delivered by ARF Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer at the organization's annual conference: 'Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.'"
  
  Huh?  Sounds like a lap dance to me.  But ask any stripper what defines an effective lap dance, and listen to what she tells you.

Have a great weekend! And try to keep your mind empty, available for the entrance of new thoughts.  Unlike these overloaded vehicles (thanks, Boing Boing).

Colin Powell on ones position

“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”

That must explain why the father of positioning, Al Ries, holds on so tightly to his outmoded business concepts.  For example, in his latest Ad Age column, "CONTEMPLATING THE SORRY STATE OF GENERAL MOTORS: Will They Ever Figure Out How to Fix Their Brands?," Ries advises GM:

• Hummer: Scrap the brand. Hummer sales last year represented only 1.3% of GM's unit volume. A company GM’s size shouldn’t be marketing niche vehicles.
• Saab: Scrap the brand. Saab sales last year represented less than 1% of GM's unit volume.

He closes the article by advising GM to: "Fix the brands first. Then fix the company."

Huh? C'mon Al. Fix the brands, then the company?  They're one and the same thing. And what's a niche Al?  A niche is a special place within the scheme of things.  Here's how Wikipedia describes niche marketing:

Niche marketing is the process of finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments and designing custom-made products or services for them. For big companies those market segments are often too small in order to serve them profitably as they often lack economies of scale. Niche marketers are often reliant on the loyalty business model to maintain a profitable volume of sales.

Don't get rid of these special, profitable places in people's hearts. Create even more!  Al, this is the age of the niche. I'm sure he was overjoyed when Coke decided to scrap Diet Vanilla Coke.  Not me.  I switched to Pepsi (who, by the way, is kicking Coke's brand youknowwhat): See this recent Fortune Magazine article, "The Pepsi Machine: Sales are soaring, margins are up, and investors are cheering. How Pepsi outmaneuvered Coke by looking beyond the cola wars."

Note: Here's one revealing piece of information from the article that is a perfect account of business insanity:

"Would you believe that GM in the past decade spent $32.9 billion on advertising in the American market? Considering that the automaker had a recent market capitalization of $10.9 billion, the past decade of GM advertising cost more than three times the value of the entire company. Despite that, GM's domestic market share continues to decline, from a 1962 high of 51.9% of the market to last year’s 26.2%. (Its market share has declined 30 of the last 43 years.)."

I know far too many people like Al and the GM executives who should strongly consider Dee Hock's observation:

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.”

I wonder what Al, and the others, would have to say about the recent article "Love Your Dogs" from Strategy + Business. Here's an excerpt:

Conventional wisdom dictates that businesses invest in their best performing units, and sell, shutter, or siphon off resources from their worst performers. But what if the conventional thinking is wrong? Leading behavioral economists now believe that investing in your "dogs," or poor performing units, could bring far better returns than investing in your "stars," or best performing units. It's a counterintuitive strategy that could lead to unconventional success.

Things just continue to get more and more interesting, don't they? Enjoy your weekend. I'm off to meet my Italian friend Lou to grab a pint of Guinness.

Mencius on evil

"What is evil to one at one time, becomes good at another time to somebody else."

Consumerist.com has its own March Madness going on that has nothing to do with basketball: an online tournament for the worst company in America. I've included the Tier 2 results to the left (click to enlarge). The "final four" competition begins today.

Did they miss anyone? Get it off your chest and sound off in the comments.

Mark Twain on blogging

"I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts."

Neither are most bloggers. Let's quickly explore the red hot "be remarkable" and "employ word of mouth marketing" memes, shall we?

A few days ago George Silverman, of Word-of-Mouth Marketing fame, posted a rebuttal to Jack Trout's recent Forbes.com harangue, "Is Word Of Mouth All It's Cracked Up To Be?" Here are two excerpts from George's post:

In a dazzlingly out-of-touch article for forbes.com, Jack Trout has attacked word-of-mouth marketing. This probably means that word-of-mouth marketing is now a big enough threat to the establishment that it is worthy of attack. It's rather sad to see such a venerable old-line marketer so out of touch. It's also sad to think that a lot of old-line companies are going to listen to him.

In bare-bones summary, he [Trout] writes:

Things are out of hand. WOM is nothing new. The only thing new is digital communications with much more noise (he says that's good news, for some reason). People don't really want to "chatter" about products. WOM is sometimes negative, destroying the product. Wom can't be controlled. It's just another tool in your arsenal. You're going to have to continue to use advertising because you can't buy mouths. People stop talking about you once the next big thing comes along.

Note: For an excellent summary of the blogosphere's take on all of this, visit the Corante Marketing Hub.

For the record, I too have riffed about Trout and Ries being out of touch.  And I also believe that the traditional top down, persuade and control advertising model is broken.  That being said, I'm not one to giddily jump on the remarkable/word-of-mouth bandwagon.  And it all comes down to simple facts.

Let's take a look at some of those facts. Indeed, word-of-mouth is the most credible form of communication assuming, of course, that one trusts the source of said information.  It is also true that people will talk about "remarkable" stuff (gee, isn't that the definition of remarkable?), assuming, of course, that said stuff interests them and, more importantly, that talking about said stuff serves their self-interest (e.g. appear in the know, conversation starter, get a laugh, etc.).

Take a look through the top A-lister blogs over the past six months (and I hope we can agree that A-listers are "sneezers." They like to learn about - and talk about - the new.)  What do they sneeze about? Typically, what interests them (a.k.a. what serves their self interest). Do the math. Record the number and type of "brand" buzzes. Don't count the bitching about bad commercial experiences. People are natural born bitchers. Instead, look for the Holy Grail WOM everyone is buzzing about.

Yes, Seth Godin posts frequently about "remarkable" products and services. But he does so because he's the originator - and thus benefits - from spreading the remarkable meme (very smart). Hugh, Gaping Void, Macleod, blogs about "remarkable" stuff too: the stuff he gets paid to blog about (and there's nothing wrong with that). The rest blog, primarily, about Internet-related stuff: new applications, how to be a good, little blogger, big buyouts, etc.

Where's all of the commercial WOM? Are there no remarkable products and services? Are there only a handful, and thus, to blog about them brings one little social capital? What's going on? Here's my cut: the world is full of products and services that are simply "good enough" for most people.  And "good enough" is a choice. Most people could care less about remarkable soap, toilet paper, Manila file folders, or salad greens.

Don't get me wrong. If you provide superior value - e.g. bagged salad greens - people will certainly try it and perhaps even adopt it, but for cripes sake, stop trying to figure out how to get them to tell all of their friends about it.  "Hey guys.  Have you tried that new hemorrhoid cream?" Instead, figure out how to get them to try it! Discover the desire. Develop something that satisfies that desire.  Elevate their expectation for your brand by creatively communicating its uniqueness and benefit. Become a valued part of their social and/or avocational network (If you fit into one. If not, create one).

George . . . Jack . . . can't we all just get along? As marketing gurus, aren't our jobs glaringly similar? To help organizations understand the evolving nature of customer value - from the customer's perspective - and then to help them best communicate and deliver that value over time (and make a profit doing it). If I'm missing something here, do please let me know (which I'm sure you will).

Eric Schmidt on strategy

"Our business strategy is not to compete."

Question: Who is the US's largest television advertiser?

Answer: General Motors.

Question: Do any of General Motors' products appear in US Consumer Report's list of the top 10 Best Cars of 2006?

Answer: No. For the first time ever, the list doesn't feature a single U.S. brand. All 10 top picks are Japanese, even the full-sized pickup truck.

Question: Is this a result of poor "little m" marketing (e.g. positioning, creative, media placement, etc.)?

Answer: Puh-lease!

For the record, I believe in advertising. I believe in the power of advertising to:

1. Introduce people to new products and services; and

2. Differentiate, and thus increase sales of, commodity products and services. Because whether we want to believe it or not, most of us certainly do wear, eat and drink the brand-meaning created by the advertising of certain products, or use the brand as a proxy to avoid analysis and decision-making for stuff that appears to be "good enough."

That's it! I do not believe that advertising (or publicity, for that matter) can get people to adopt inferior brands.  Try them? Yes.  Stay with them over time in the face of evidence - either experiential or word-of-mouth - of something demonstrably better. No. And neither should GM, United, and the more than 150 other major corporations teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

People are awash in new products, information and ideas, and therefore are less likely to stay focused for any length of time on one message or one product. And in this supersaturated economy, sustained audience attention is the foundation of brand endurance. So what's a marketer to do? First, here's what NOT to do:

From iMedia Editor Peter Sealey's Ten Trends article:

"I was having dinner at General Motors and the chairman told me a story. He said, "I am sitting in my office, my manufacturing people come in and say, 'we can build an automatic transmission at GM for 700 dollars. It costs the Ford Motor Company 800 dollars to build that same transmission.' I say, 'Congratulations. Fantastic job. Keep up the good work.' Then, my marketing guy comes in and says, 'we are spending 700 dollars per car in advertising in GM, and Ford is spending eight hundred. We have to increase our spending to 800 dollars.' What is wrong with this equation?" He is right.

Instead of agency lapdogs, marketers must become innovators.  They must work like hell to get sustained attention by focusing on and delivering the value desired by their audience. Forget about competing. Forget about positioning. Yes, you read me right. These old school notions of business success are obsolete.

While in Hawaii last week (mahalo again my friends), I read a post at tompeters.com titled "Competition," which ended with this statement: "Know the competition and engage the team in beating them." Bad, bad advise.  That's exactly why the GM guy was looking for an increase in ad spending.

And I read this gem in Chief Marketer in an article titled, "The Value of Marketing":

"Tom Lueker, chief marketing officer/cofounder of WebSurveyor Corp., is a self-described fan of Ries and Trout's work on positioning. 'I think it's everything,' he says of positioning.

WebSurveyor, a provider of online survey software and services, was not the first in its market. The company followed Ries's advice and found something that it could be first in, by using an application service provider model. Today, says Lueker, 'we're number one in online surveys for a midmarket product for people who want to do it themselves and who want service.' Now that’s positioning.

Lueker says that the company positioned as the leader gets about 50% of the market, number two gets 25%, number three gets 12.5%, and the rest of the competitors split the remaining 12.5%. 'I would never sell [WebSurveyor’s number-one position] unless I was selling the company, because that is the company,' he says.

What's my point? Fortune 500 or Inc. 500, positioning adds value to a company. Marketers are responsible for positioning, and if companies value it, they should value the practice and process that creates and maintains it."

What a bunch of mumbo jumbo, circular reasoning. Here's what really happened, which has nothing to do with Ries' positioning principle. Lueker created a new business model (online ASP survey creation), which potential customers valued more than competitive offerings. That marketplace innovation drove WebSurveyor Corp. to a leadership position in its defined space. End of that chapter of Lueker's story.

Marketing isn't a complex process with complex solutions. It’s simple. Not easy mind you, but simple nonetheless. Develop something that people value enough to trade their time, attention and/or money for, and do it at a profit. Simple. The challenge is to continuously change and innovate, and achieve this simple concept over time.   And that challenge, my marketing friends, is your job.