Manhattan Marketing Maven

Haagen-Dass & The Honey Bees: Ruminations on Cause-Related Marketing

The mysterious disappearance of honey bee colonies threatens our food supply and is possibly both a consequence and an allegory for our systematic disregard for or destruction of carefully balanced natural ecosystems. This phenomenon caught my attention almost a year ago, and yet somehow the adoption of the beleaguered bees by Haagen-Daas' gives me a funny buzzing sensation in my head.

Honey bees pollinate almost one-third of our food supply. The rapid and unexplained disappearance of vast numbers of colonies reported in 35 US states, like the disappearance of native American colonies in the Southwest, leave behind empty shells of civilizations with scant clues to the causes for their disappearance. Its CSI meets the Nature Channel with potentially serious consequences for our food chain and the planet.

This is a fascinating story, reported on extensively by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker of 6 August 2007 and covered broadly in both the popular and the science press. At last glance, the leading theory dubbed the "colony collapse disorder" is thought to be some kind of  epidemic, though the evidence and the research into the details, the causes, the consequences or the cure are not conclusive.

Enter Haagen-Daas, a General Mills brand licensed and marketed in North America by Nestle.

The brand has aligned itself with the preservation of honey bees by creating a logo bearing a slogan ( HD Heart (graphic) HB in yellow and black bumble bee stripes), introducing a limited edition Vanilla Honey Bee Ice Cream, doling out $250,000 for bee research at Penn State and UC Davis, creating a consciousness raising  website and running a three page ad in the May edition of National Geographic.

Looking through the ad you can almost hear the brand team thinking ... ecology, earth day, leverage natural ingredients, connect with an unclaimed and unassailable good guy cause, use fruits and berries images plus the organic connection between the bees and our products to leverage the franchise and target the premium taste tree-huggers in eco-friendly magazines. For the cost of a single TV spot we can bankroll legitimizing research which can extend the brand message, focus attention on flavor advantages, and connect the brand to the hearts and minds of our customer base using PR and viral tactics.

Call me cynical or call me a practiced marketer. But I've been in a thousand of these meetings where this kind of cause-related thinking makes perfect sense and builds its own internal momentum and constituency. I could write the presentation deck in my sleep.

A huge MNC-owned brand goes back to its quirky roots to put it self on the side of the angels (or the bees), shape a brand message as eco-friendly advocacy and reach out to the public to raise the alarm and move more product by teaching consumers "how you can help." Although it gets a bit funky when one of the helpful suggestions is " Enjoy a pint of Haagen-Daas ice cream's bee dependent flavors and you'll help fund research with the goal of bringing the honey bees back." 

Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age, but this feels funny to me. I don't believe that buying and eating more super premium ice cream will save the bees. I'm creeped out by the transparency of the marketing thrust and yet I understand where its coming from. And yet I appreciate the targeting and the integration of brand advertising with bee-related content.

Maybe this is a classic example of brand-ad-content synthesis; the holy grail of integrated marketing. Or maybe its just way over the top for my tastes.   

   

Selling Uncertainty

Hiring a law firm isn't much different than hiring an ad agency or a marketing firm except for the fact that most clients think they can do advertising and marketing as well as their vendors. Yet lawyers not only leverage their positioning as licensed specialists they invoke the language and the customs of their guild to enhance the pitch process.

Both sets of professionals are retained to address uncertainties in business, usually high stakes uncertainties with many variables where some combination of skill, insight, experience and luck determine the outcome or the consequences which can be dire. Both trade on knowledge clients don't perceive themselves to have to affect future events and both offer fresh fruit and cookies in the early engagement meetings.

Having witnessed several law firms in pitch mode this week, here are the lessons they offer marketers.

1. Establish Credentials Upfront. Send preliminary materials and brochures ahead. Emphasize the practice areas most relevant to the prospective client. Be understated not over-the-top about who you are and what you can do since they are in the room because they believed the credentials you sent earlier. Don't belabor the point. Don't parade every partner or department head. Don't talk about yourself because they only care what you can do for them.

2. Connect the Dots Early and Often. Link your expertise with the prospects problem in the first 2 minutes. "You're being indicted; we're the best criminal defense guys in town." Cut to the chase early and often and zero in on the prospect's anxiety. "We got Exxon out of the same mess because we've got specialists in that area of the law and because we lobbied the regulators." Or remind them that you've done exactly what they need done zillions of times. "We were in front of the FCC just last week. We filed a motion identical to yours. In fact our partner Sally went to law school with the Chairman and our associate Bob is sleeping with him."

3. Punctuate Forecasts with Bold Statements. Outline the dependencies and contingencies that could impact events. But rather than say "if this happens" or "on one hand" which makes you appear to be unsure punctuate the prophecy with bold statements on several issues (the more insignificant the better) that eliminate the perception that things are uncertain or risky. As you lay out all the likely and unlikely things that could or might happen pause dramatically and say "but no court will issue a declaratory judgment on this issue!" By signaling firm beliefs you take the edge off the murky, hazy and nasty view emerging from the crystal ball and reinforce your standing as an organization that can weather a storm.

4. Give them the Odds. Clients buy outcomes and want success. The perception of do-ability directly influences their perception of value and often determines who gets the deal. Nobody wants to hear that whatever they want can't be done. So even in situations where things look bleak, offer hope by citing  odds. Say things like " based on what we know now and on our experience in dealing with these matters, there's a 60 percent chance we can get this done in 6 to 9 months, assuming the Treasury Department doesn't do X."  Or try "there's only a 1% chance you'll be led way in handcuffs." And even though prospects know to immediately discount the quoted odds by as much as half, they take great comfort in your willingness to risk a forecast. And if you can, for good measure, throw in some guild argot or a Latin word or phrase to reinforce your expertise and general willingness to stare down the abyss. Instead of saying " there's a tiny chance" boldly assert "the risk is diminimus!"

5. Ballpark the Numbers. Tell them flat out, with as many caveats as you like, how long it will take and how much it will cost. Everybody is a price buyer on some level and prospects hate the conceit that you have to carefully scope this all out or that you are wishy-washy about money. They know that long before the meeting, you've figured out, at least provisionally, who is going to do the work, what it will entail and roughly how much you need to charge to make your margin. They also know you have several different ways of calculating costs and several pricing models. So tell them right then and there. You can always hem, haw, stammer, back track, discount and generally grovel for the business later.

An Afterthought About Inventors

Inventing is a defiant assertion of our vitality and humanity. An inventor rejects the status quo refusing to accept what is in favor of what might be. An inventor assumes there's something different and something better to come.

Inventing is an act of supreme optimism which refutes the existential notion that we are helpless creatures marooned on a rock spinning in space subject to the repetitive cycles of nature, tradition and convention. The act of invention articulates our ability to change our own lives; to make something happen rather than have things happen to us.

And while not all of us can invent things, we can all celebrate the revolutionary impulse which inspires us to think, to adapt, to experiment to build and to strive for discovery --- the driving force of our civilization.

7 Reasons Why Marketers Fail

Marketing success has much more to do with political and organizational factors than an individual's skills at the dark arts of strategy, research, positioning, messaging, advertising or sales.

That was theme of my three hour stand-up act in Professor Neil Lichtman's Strategic Marketing course for master degree students at NYU. Here, in abbreviated form, are the seven deadly sins that doom marketers and marketing initiatives.

1. BLINDNESS. Marketers and their bosses frequently have too much faith in marketing, as if clever words and images can overcome badly designed products or unwanted services. Similarly marketers overestimate the appeal and impact of their brands on customers and prospects because they don't accurately understand how their brands are perceived, sorted and filed or utilized by those most likely to respond to brand messages.

In some cases marketers get a full head of steam for a big idea and blindly ignore the reality around them or the prime motivation of most customers -- inertia. And some marketers fueled by hubris and fancy graduate degrees actually ignore the facts to serve pet theories or because they never really understand what drives awareness and how those drivers are the same or different from the factors that motivate purchases.

VISION. Too many marketers don't see the world through the eyes of the people who determine their fates; bosses and customers. They fall into fantasy traps of assuming that all-in-one appeals or goofy brand-centric notions have broad or universal appeal when they are really barely understood by those who thought them up. Too often the vision is not clearly articulated and differentiated so customers have no reason to embrace or respond to the brand.

DATA DEFICIENCIES. Campaigns and careers fail because marketers don't read the situation right, don't understand the players, the politics or the plumbing of the organizations they serve. It's easy to discard those annoying numbers when you have a brainstorm. Unfortunately often buried within those nasty numbers is the answer to the mystery; the reasons and the methods people find their way to the brand or to a purchase. Too many times the big idea or the wacky creative execution ignores the patterns of customer behavior, the organic connections between product sets, natural product cognates or the obvious reasons people want and need individual goods and services.

MISMANAGING MONEY. Loads of marketers blow the budget on flashy stuff and crap that never pays off or pays out. Some squander it on high profile sponsorships, celebrity endorsers or vacuous Superbowl spots and then wonder why they get fired. Anyone marketing today wants to see a tangible, measurable return on marketing dollars spent. The more you can connect marketing spend to purchases and profits; the better. Those marketers who ignore ROI do so at their own peril.

IGNORING SILOS. In every organization nobody owns all the key tools or key instruments. Power is diffused and competed for. If you ignore the silos and don't figure out how to make friends, allies and parry enemies you are dead. Just like understanding your target customer, understanding your colleagues and your adversaries, their power bases and their career or CYA motivations is critical to successful marketing .

ONE TRICK PONIES. There is a cadre of successful senior marketers who have one trick and bicycle it along with their personal mafias from job to job. Innocent or unobservant marketers that don't recognize this phenomena before or soon after it strikes are toast since one trick ponies quickly eliminate anyone who can see that the emperor has no clothes.

IGNORE MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS. Sometimes politically savvy marketers actually blow the craft of marketing by ignoring their customers, failing to create sharp competitive differentiation or underestimating the need for segmentation and segmented marketing tactics. Others fail to understand the necessity for framing integrated brand strategies, speaking with one voice and focusing on frequency to hammer the brand into the brains of its most likely adherents.   

Leading Marketing Successfully

Marketers fail because they try to do to too much and lose focus. The raison d'etre for marketing is to grow the business. It is the prime directive. Any CMO who doesn't address this first and foremost deserves to be fired.

Yet setting priorities while running a day-to-day business, managing up and down and putting out fires can be a serious challenge. Consider several approaches for focusing your thinking and allocating your time.

Start with the End. Determine what you want to happen. Visualize the successful outcome. Quantify and qualify the result you want. If you want to double sales, reduce costs by 50%, increase the margin 5 points or add 20,000 new customers you can't figure out how to do it until you know exactly what you want to achieve. Once the endpoint is clear you can construct the tactical plan to get there. Invest time and energy upfront to scope out the goal. 

BTW, if you are aiming to capture the brand's true authenticity, produce the next new genre of TV commercial, revolutionize how media is planned or bought, recapture the glory of "new" advertising or teach the world to sing .. don't bother ... start packing your bags.

Pick Your Shots. You can't do everything. You don't have enough time or people. And nobody has enough budget to fund every good idea. Select the projects that will drive toward the goal fastest. Do them first and best. Pick a couple of slower-moving, infrastructure building things to build your pipeline.  Then merchandise your plan and get everyone to buy in.

Set the Altitude. Business is like 3-dimensional chess. The game is simultaneously played on several levels. Get in touch with your ego and decide how you want to succeed and at what level.Then pick your level and your playing field and master the rules of that particular game. Do you want to be Buffet? Gates? Trump? Welch? Iaccoca? Each requires a different strategy and different game play.

Focus. Marketing is a dynamic game.Every day yields a hundred great ideas. You must be disciplined enough to make a plan and stick to it. There will be plenty of C level distractions to keep you interested. But you can't afford to get off your game or to be distracted by something that doesn't directly contribute to achieving your stated objective. You have to be hard-nosed about this and take your ADD meds frequently.

Marshall Your Resources.  The larger the organization, the more likely the horses pull in diffuse or even opposite directions. You must manage your players and your cash to achieve the objective. There are many synergies and two-fers along the way. Grab them and slough anything that isn't contributing to the direction or the rate of ascent. There are plenty of people within your team willing to go off on tangents, handle pet projects, dote on time-wasters or hide-out by doing "research" and endlessly exploring new options or alternatives. Reign all these guys in. Managers must manage. Here is where you draw the line and surrender your "Mr. Nice Guy" role. That means setting the direction, orienting the team and keeping the horses in-harness side-by-side running in the same direction at a matched pace.

Learn the Plumbing. God is in the details. Much of your success or failure might be as well. Too many marketers don't really understand what their firm makes, sells or distributes or exactly how these things come to be and get into the marketplace. Unless you know the details, you can;t find the inflection points or identify the factors that can be leveraged or the economies of scale that can be found or built. And unless you find and befriend the guys who've been there forever and know where the bodies are buried; the guys who instinctively understand the unstated pathways and things really get done using the informal networks and personal networks of influence, the more you'll risk having a well-placed permanent opposition ready, willing and able to undermine you.

Remember if it was a cake walk any idiot could do it!       

CMOs Whining & Dying

Reading the Marketing Outlook for 2008 from the CMO Council convinces me that they ought to change the organization's name to the Dead Men Walking Society.

The report based on a survey of 825 senior marketers, half from businesses grossing $100 million or less and half from bigger firms with revenues up to and beyond $10 billion, reveals that 54% of CMOs aren't measuring the impact or ROI of their marketing spend and 53% see quantifying and measuring the value of marketing programs as a "key challenge" yet 79% think they are making significant or reasonable progress in improving the perceived value of the marketing function.

Who are these guys kidding?

They don't track what they do and can't show how it impacts the business but somehow management is convinced that marketing is worth the strum, drang and cash? I wanna work where this kind of thinking flies!

The CMOs surveyed seem to be cryogenically frozen in 1999 trying to figure out how to structure their organizations, improve marketing accountability, figure out how the web works and allocate marketing resources efficiently. And they are investing but still bedeviled by e-mail campaign management, SEM, CRM, dashboards and working closer with the sales department. It's embarrassing how little progress top marketers are making against these issues.

And through it all 45% percent expect to ace their agency, as if this is the silver bullet. I get the impression that the survey respondents, those guys with a job tenure of 22 months or less, think they are suppose to posture better rather than actually contribute something to the bottom line. They report being frustrated by organizational culture, senior management mindsets and having more to do with less in an environment where 75 percent of all marketing budgets will vary less than 5 percent from 2007.

The plight and problems of marketers are perpetuated because they mostly talk to themselves. The top reported trusted sources for insight, information and management practices are their peers; the same clueless guys who are dazed, confused and probably on the way out. Nobody seems to rise to the creative challenge of spending less better, to getting fewer players to make a bigger impact sooner or to using digital technology to test-learn-measure and tweak the messaging and the media. Even fewer seem to want to mess with the politics and the plumbing which basically rule every enterprise.

Bottom line -- don't expect any new tricks or any startling results from CMOs anytime soon. 

Labor Day Marketing Lessons

As we grasp the last few days of the summer holidays, here are a few random observations about marketing and advertising ...

Own Your Positioning. Along with the French, I love Jerry Lewis. The schmaltz, the cheesiness, the has-been performers singing long-forgotten big-band songs, the B rolls of guys in white coats holding test tubes, the drum rolls and the tote boards heralded by the wrinkling and shrinking  Ed McMahon, the lame local anchors and the tear-wrenching appeals all signal Labor Day to me. I imagine a great national catharsis focuses on Jerry and his kids as I participate in the morbid health-watch to see which diseases and which side effects of treatments Jerry himself will display each year. Jerry and MDA have staked out a position and for 30+ years they have delivered on it and raised zillions to fight muscular diseases. There's nothing better and nothing more reliable and nothing more comforting than watching Jerry and his shtick on the Love Network at random moments during the Labor Day weekend. So don't just sit there -- dial the number on your screen and help Jerry!

Familiarity/Personalization Counts. The coffee guy at the corner of Broadway and West 35th Street sees me coming and prepares my iced coffee exactly the way I like it. He gives fast, convenient service, swiftly delivers my preferred product and makes me feel part of something much bigger than myself. Its a lesson every local candy store owner, newspaper vendor and butcher knows instinctively and one which thousands of firms struggle to incorporate into their culture and deliver using technology. In a whizzing, whirring confusing world being recognized and remembered cuts through the clutter and builds brand loyalty and repeat business.

Visuals Set Expectations. The ballet slipper shoe craze has been in full force for almost two years. The simple unstructured flats have gone from the barre to the barrio and everywhere in between. The form and design communicate simplicity, elegance and grace. I guess women have embraced them because they feel good and make your feet look smaller. That is until I saw a hot but clod-like woman bouncing down the subway steps feet splayed wearing these shoes. Watching Dumbo in ballet slippers was a great example of using visuals to set expectations and connotations yet when the experience cross-cut the expectation it made me laugh. The lesson -- if you set expectations with visuals the experience has to deliver on the expectation to build or maintain credibility.   

Recognize Rhythms. Our bodies are driven by circadian rhythms and our lives are shaped by calendars and practical and operational rhythms. Sometimes a great idea can cut across them but usually its much harder to swim against the tide. We're finishing up "Back to School" soon the stores will bring out the black and orange/gold Fall/Halloween decorations, our Fall semester of community, educational, cultural and performing events is gearing up. Much of the advertising and marketing we see are cliches tagged onto these cycles. But the underlying idea is that intersecting with the expected and aligning with the anticipated usually gets you faster more efficient access to markets, prospects and customers that trying to cross cut underlying patterns. This is not a prescription for sameness or for routine but a recognition that we need to order and structure our time and our resources and that marketing that aligns and resonates with this process generally works better.

Happy Labor Day.   

Radio's Silence Stunt Redux

Les Luchter a longtime media reporter announced the "National Day of Silence" stunt on Mediapost.  Created by the SaveNet Radio coalition and slated for July 15th, the unified industry-wide action is designed to call attention to web radio and fight increases in copyright royalty payments. Higher payments will jeopardize the financial viability of many sites.

What Les didn't report was that the commercial radio industry did the same thing under the auspices of the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) back in 1993. At 7:53am at the height of morning drive on June 23rd, 1993 seventy-five percent of commercial stations in the United States plus a few in Canada ands Mexico went off the air for 60 seconds to call attention to the value of radio advertising. The stunt delivered on the RAB tag line at the time, "Radio. What Would Life Be Without It?"  (I still have a few commemorative mugs if you collect media memorabilia)

The attendant publicity --both pro and con -- gave the RAB a month's woth of buzz and a huge opening to Madison Avenue. It also gave participating national, regional and local radio groups a water-coller event and a rational/emotional talking point to intensify their pitches to advertisers and agencies . Jocks like Howard Stern criticized the stunt, His refusal to participate, which sparked selected copycat reactions around the country, called even more attention to the stunt.

So it looks like the digital decendents of radio guys have picked a tried and true tactic. But the real questions for Yahoo, MTV Online, Accuradio, Pandora and the thousands of participating sites are:

1. Will anyone notice or care?

2. Will the absence of net radio service motivate listeners to become advocates? If so, how will they channel or marshal the anxiety to lobby the copyright commision or affect change?

3. Is there a downside to a marketplace with fewer net radio options? Does anyone really mainstream net radio? And does anyone really think that the big guys will be killed off by having to pay artists more to play their songs?

Marketing Lessons from Miss Ann

After waiting 7 hours on the line on three separate occasions, I finally scored a world famous Ghetto Burger at Ann's Snack Bar on a low-rent stretch of Memorial Drive in Atlanta.

Declared the best burger in the USA by the Wall Street Journal and recognized by the Food Network, this 8 stool "hole-in-the-wall" burger joint has gone from neighborhood favorite to national cult status in record time. Why? Partly because the two-patty cheeseburger tricked out with bacon, chili, ketchup, mustard, tomato,lettuce and cayenne-tinged seasoned salt tastes incredibly good, even if you cannot hold it in your hand or get your mouth around it. And partly because Miss Ann, a masterful 70-ish short order cook and persnickety proprietress does every single step herself by-hand as she carries on a sassy and sometimes salty repartee with regular and new customers.

Patrons speculate widely on the secret to her success. During my 3 visits, I heard a veritable greek chorus of regulars discuss the relative and incremental contributions of meat, the seasoning, the 36x24 inch grill, Miss Ann's body chemistry and her utensils to the burger's taste. Each ingredient and process step was carefully analyzed, debated and considered.

I also took in the scene as a community of eager eaters wait their turn outside on the screened porch scrutinizing the collection of aging 8x10 cop portraits and Miss Ann's 8 rules of conduct that are prominently displayed. Miss Ann, not unlike Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" rigorously enforces her rules and routinely puts miscreants out. Her "no cursing" rule does not apply to her. But watching her work, eating her food and soaking in the Miss Ann gestalt reminds me of two fundamental marketing principles:

1. The best brands combine products and experience. It's the burger and the show. It's the meat and the love Miss Ann puts into it. Customers want the experience. Those who do will brag about it and become brand advocates.

2. Differentiation matters. There's only one Miss Ann. She moves at her pace, follows her own rules and she does things her way. This isn't a mass-produced meal. It's a slow ritual; the ghetto equivalent of a Kyoto tea ceremony. If something is different, unique and hard to get people will come from far distances, wait for their turn and endure even a torturous the process because they sense it's worth it.

Do You Write Like A Girl?

Howard Kaplan made this taunt on his blog which got me thinking about gender influence on perception and led me to a fun online tool.

If male and female brains are wired differently and subsequently influenced by gender-tinged nurturing tactics and gender-specific educational practices and subject matter, it logically follows that men and word use words differently and that the differences in usage can be identified and tracked.

This is the logic that led Israeli professors Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University and Shlomo Argamon of the Illinois Institute of Technology to create an algorithm that analyzes a writing sample and predicts the author's gender based on word use.

You submit a text of 500+ words. The tool identifies the words used, assigns point values based on the frequency of use by each gender and then calculates the total number of masculine and feminine words used to predict the gender of the writer. For English speakers where words have no natural gender classification its a surprising exercise.

And since you're wondering ... In a 528 word blog piece, I had a female index of 474, a male index of 705 and the Gender Genie thought I was male. Check it out!