Starbucks has an iconic cup design that is a major part of their brand identity. Even still, they want to figure out a way to reduce the use of their cup and move towards a day where all cups are reusable, recyclable or compostable. And they’re backing that desire up with some cash. They co- sponsored a competition to come up with eco-friendly alternatives.
The winner, Karma Cup, has an absolutely brilliant plan: put up a chalkboard in the store and mark off every time someone uses their own reusable cup. Every 10th person will get a free cup of coffee. Genius! You’ll want to encourage your friends to do it because the more people do it, the more opportunities you have to win a free cup. The chalkboard is a great reinforcement tool. Read all about the contest and the great runner up ideas at FastCompany.
How could you use something like this in your own business? This goes beyond a personal frequent shopper card because it enlists your customer in actively recruiting other customers. Is there a product or service that you’d like to encourage the use of? Maybe it’s new and unproven and you could use a similar technique to motivate sampling.
Yikes! Chevrolet in its pursuit of marketing excellence, has decided that they want their cars to be called “Chevrolets” and not “Chevys.” As if they have any say in what the consumer will call them. I can only imagine the board room discussions about brand consistency and how that will help them . . . help them what? Sell more cars? DON’T THEY KNOW THEY ALREADY HAVE A WELL-KNOWN BRAND NAME? AND IT HAPPENS TO BE . . . CHEVY?
Idiots.
Quick. Anybody remember the name of the electric car they’ve been working on and touting for years? Oh yeah, it’s the CHEVY Volt. Not the Chevrolet Volt. Or for that matter, nobody even calls it just the “Volt.” It’s the Chevy Volt, period.
<sigh> The brand police at Chevy, er, Chevrolet have gone so far as to issue a memo to its employees instructing them to stop referring to the brand by its nickname and instead, use its proper name. They’ve even – and I am not making this up – put little cuss jars up and have encouraged employees to put a quarter in the jar every time they slip and use the word “Chevy” instead of “Chevrolet.”
They cite great brands like Coke and Apple as models of smart, consistent branding. They did this without any apparent hint of irony because Coke is, after all, short for “Coca-Cola” and when was the last time you called your iPod an Apple anything?
OK so the lesson here is if you have a brand name that your customers use and it has positive associations, then be happy. Leave well enough alone.
As always, Seth Godin is a step ahead in understanding how product markets work and he is generous with his ideas. If I were Jeff Bezos, I’d pay attention. Godin’s underlying assumption is that whoever sells the most e-reader devices will control the publishing industry. So Amazon needs to drop the price of the Kindle and do whatever it takes to push the iPad out of the e-book reader market. He has some novel ideas such as:
Sign up to get a Kindle book of your choice every month for 12 months and get a free Kindle. Amazon presents you with ten book choices, and since the cost of delivering it is zero, there’s plenty of margin for all…
He has several more ideas so surf on over and check them out. It’s a smart, aggressive strategy. I hope Amazon is paying attention. I might add an idea or two of my own such as partnering with universities and textbook manufacturers.
What do you think? Is the Kindle going the way of the 8-track? Is Steve Jobs about to do it again?
Have you seen these pictures making their way around the Internets?
Yeah, I know it’s childish of me to pile on but this is the kind of thing that spreads faster than strep. The days of protecting your image and brand are OVER. Not just for BP, but for all of us. You can’t protect it; you have to sit up, take your lumps like a man (pardon the sexism), own what you did if you screwed up, do everything you can to make it right. Don’t take shortcuts or b.s. your customer (I’m talking to you, Toyota and you, Sigg, and you, BP) because we’re onto you and we will tell all our friends who will tell their friends and so on and so on and so on.
And you will live in infamy forever.
I still have businesses tell me they don’t want a Facebook page or a blog because they’re afraid they’ll get negative comments. Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about? The COMMENTS? How about the actual issues your customers have? Address them. And you know what? When you address them forthrightly in a public forum, most people will forgive you and even reward you for doing the right thing.
Having said that, I think it’s too late for BP. What do you think? Any shot of damage control here or are they done?
What you would give to a client, you should always give to yourself first.
I’m standing in a Mexican supermarket choosing pastries called besos, empanadas de crema and tabasqueños. No, I wasn’t grocery shopping (well, maybe a little), I was working.
New Thought Marketing was putting together a Cinco de Mayo gift box for clients. And we wanted to include some delicious Mexican pastries. If the boxes were long enough I’d just include the churros from my favorite stand and call it a day… after I tested them one more time of course.
But the box wasn’t long enough. So there I was on my grand pastry expedition. The first sweets I tried were frankly just okay. If I got these in a box, I’d think the idea was cool, but I wouldn’t be excited.
Off to the next place where the empanadas were soft, fresh and delicious, with a light dusting of sugar on top. Perfect. Two bakeries and six pastry tastings: It was a difficult job, but someone had to do it.
So the moral of the story (and yes there is one) is test your marketing promotions in order to give away value. It may be just a 10-cent pen. But if it has your name on it, it represents your brand. So it had better be a good pen, one that you’d like someone to give to you, not one that you have to shake to get to work (don’t you hate that).
At New Thought Marketing, we will often take a client to a promotional items showroom. Not only does this allow our clients to discover new promotional ideas, it allows them to test the quality. As much as you can, try to think about what a customer would be excited to receive, instead of what you are willing to give away.
Sometimes the answer will surprise you… and can actually be cheaper. For example, a major long distance company (I leave which one to your imagination) was offering 30 free minutes, 60 free minutes or a free long distance call of any length to new calling card customers.
Not only did the free long distance call win more new customers, it was also the cheapest, costing about $2.95 on average vs $11.50 for the 60 free minutes and $5.75 for the 30 free minutes. Without testing or putting themselves in the customers’ shoes, the company would have lost potential new customers.
Which one would you have chosen? Think about it: What is 30 minutes or even 60 minutes worth to you? It’s a little too nebulous to wrap your mind around. But a free long distance call…well, that’s a free call to your mother to say everything you need to say. And it doesn’t matter how long it takes. A conversion is ultimately more valuable than free minutes.
In the end, I hope our clients found the pasties delicious…I know I did. Too bad I didn’t have the pleasure of searching for the perfect margarita mix!
My husband and I have Sigg water bottles. Have you heard of the brand? It’s what all the cool kids use to cart around their water. Better for the environment than plastic bottles and better than a lot of sports bottles because they’re BPA-free. BPA, or Bisphenol-A, is considered toxic by some countries (Canada has banned it) and is a source of controversy here in the States. Nevertheless, the environmentally conscious, and certainly Sigg’s consumers, are all about BPA-free bottles. So Sigg promoted themselves as BPA-free and they basically lied. It turns out their liners do contain small amounts of BPA. They did a little verbal sleight-of-hand by saying that their bottles didn’t “leach” BPA in tests.
They knew what they were saying. They knew it was dishonest. That they didn’t know they’d get caught is shocking and stupid.
I honestly don’t think there’s enough BPA in the bottles for it to be a problem. But I’m pissed that they lied and I, like millions others, will never buy another Sigg bottle again. This is a bummer. I liked them so much I’ve blogged about them on my personal blog. Even bought a cute custom wrap for my husband’s bottle.
And the CEO of Sigg does not seem to know a lick about damage control. Sure, he claims to be reading and responding to emails personally. But then he goes and says stupid things like, “if retailers keep our old bottles on the shelf, there’s nothing we can do about that.” (I’m paraphrasing slightly.) Dude! You should be out front, apologizing, replacing bottles like crazy, getting independent testing to verify that your bottles and liners are now 100% BPA-free, etc. Actually, you should resign and let someone else clean up your mess. Because you lied. You double downed on your lie when questioned about it, and you’ve broken the consumer’s trust. That’s hard to win back. And since nobody will trust a word you say, you should step aside and let someone else try to mend the fences.
I would not want to be this guy’s PR firm.
I once worked for a guy who asked me to lie to the media. I looked at him like he had two heads and refused. He told me that I was his Vice President, that I was playing in the big leagues, and that I needed to do what was expected of me. Regrettably, I didn’t tell him to go f-himself. Fortunately, the magazine did not pick up the story and none of us had to decide whether we were going to do as we were told or risk losing our jobs.
If Sigg’s CEO had really come clean and reached out as I described above, his customers might be forgiving. As it is, he just handed his competitors several market share points. Kleen Kanteen, here I come!
Footnote: I tried to link to Sigg’s Facebook page but it’s disappeared. Is some ticked off fan messing with them? Or are they shutting down their community to avoid letting people have a place to post negative messages? Do they actually think the conversation will stop? No, it’ll just move on to someplace else where they won’t get to insert their voice . . . like Twitter or blogs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’m reading this NYTimes piece on Ford’s use of “guiding personalities” (what we at NTM call “customer personae) to inform and shape their new car design. Ford gets this half-right. At NTM, we use personae all the time to help our clients focus on their core customer’s needs and wants.
What’s a customer persona? It’s a mini-profile, a biography that fleshes out your target demographic. When you have people from all over your company focused on your customer, it’s a lot easier for them to understand who “Bob” is if you’ve provided details of Bob’s life, then it is to understand that the target customer is a “male, 25-54 years old, with an average HH income of $75,000.” Much better to describe Bob:
Bob is a 40 year old middle manager at a logistics company. He’s married to Cheryl, who works part-time at a bank and shuttles their two kids (10 and 6 years old) around. Bob drives a Ford SUV. He wears clothes his wife bought him at Kohl’s and Old Navy. Suits aren’t required at his office; Bob wears the typical business casual uniform of khakis and a golf shirt. The family vacations in Florida each summer, often with another family. For fun, Bob likes to watch NASCAR and college football, especially UGA, his alma mater.
Get the idea? Now contrast Bob with Chris, in the same target demo as Bob.
Chris is an environmental engineer, 30 years old. He got his master’s degree in civil engineering and has been on the job for just three years. He’s engaged to Ashley, a public relations executive. Chris drives a Prius and shops for himself at Macy’s and specialty men’s boutiques in the mall. He has a killer margarita recipe, fancies himself a decent cook, and likes to entertain.
Both these men are 25-54 years old; both make $75,000, but they couldn’t be further apart. Fleshing them out, giving them a story, helps your employees visualize. So if they’re working on a product feature, they can ask themselves, “would this appeal to Bob?” (When we develop customer personae for our clients, we like to clip magazine photos to realize the profile more fully.)
OK, so how is it that Ford only gets this half right? According to the article, they’ve created Antonella, a 28-year old Italian living in Rome, to guide the design of the Ford Fiesta. Their thinking being that party girls are the same no matter what country they live in, and that Italians are experts when it comes to small car driving. That may be true, but the people designing and building the Fiesta are Americans who may or may not be able to relate to this young Italian donna. The whole purpose of creating the persona is so that your team can understand and relate to the person. It should be someone they instinctively “get” or know.
So kudos to Ford for trying. And hey, who am I to tell them what they’re doing wrong? But I sure would’ve used Ashley, a 28-year old living in Chicago, if I were developing their profiles.
We previously blogged about how the new Pepsi logo reminded us of the Obama logo. What we didn’t know then is how much time and money went into their new design. This article links to the leaked creative brief for the logo design. It’s painful to read. Pompous and ridiculous and symbolic of what I hate about marketing. They are making way too much of this. A logo can’t do everything. And it certainly isn’t worth the lofty comparisons the agency makes.
Quote from the article:
The presentation, by the Arnell Group (also responsible for the botched design of the Tropicana orange juice carton) contains visual representations of and comparisons with the following: the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, the Gutenberg Bible, the earth and its magnetic fields, and the solar system/universe. None of these things have anything to do with soda.
Give me a break. Look, what we do is important, but it isn’t rocket science. Our job is to help you (our client) sell more of what you make. Generally, we don’t need to create the next Mona Lisa to do it.
Our new president is known for a lot of things — hope, change and all that — but the marketing community has long been impressed with his branding ability. He stuck with one slogan (more or less) throughout his campaign. He has a visual brand that is clear and easily identifiable. And now he’s brought that design sensibility to the White House web site. To my eye, it’s clean, modern (without being young/edgy), easy to navigate and interesting. There are interactive elements and multi-media. There is a blog, which is a nice start, but it’s not very bloggy in practice. Looks more like press releases inserted as blog posts to me. I assume it’s a work in progress.
Is it just me or does this new Pepsi logo look like the Obama logo turned sideways? Besides that, why are they changing their logo? They claim it’s to infuse some excitement into the brand during a recession. Look, we do logo redesigns all the time — usually for companies who never had a professionally designed logo in the first place. And changing logos can give you an excuse to reach out and touch your customers, or just fire up the troops internally. So I can’t make a blanket statement and say this is a bad idea. What I can say, is how much did this cost? How much will it cost to re-brand the trucks, bottles, all the packaging, etc.? How else could they have spent the money? Maybe with some kick-ass contests (people love those any time, but especially in a recession). Or some big, attention-getting marketing stunts at cities throughout the country. Or college campuses.
We're the brains behind New Thought Marketing, a consulting firm based in Atlanta. When it comes to marketing, we know how to push the envelope and we know when to keep it simple. If you need assistance in strategic thinking, contact us. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy our blog.
