Loaf of bread, container of milk, stick of butter

New Home

2010-12-07T11:07:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone who has followed my blog. I've started a new blog, and am taking this whole blog thing a lot more seriously. The new home can be found here... http://seldomtypql.com

What does Facebook betting on “groups” say about culture, the census and how we define ourselves?

2010-10-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

"When I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong…”

Ani DiFranco

As the 2010 Census is being compiled one thing that we can most certainly be assured of is that we’ll probably recognize America as considerably different then it was say 20 years ago. We will see far more examples of other races, religions and ethnicities. While the census is used for lots of very important things, in the past it has been the single greatest overall driver of marketing decisions.

This being the case we can also be assured that marketing to said demographics will become increasingly challenging as well as remarkably inefficient and hardly cost effective. This is in large part because of what I like to refer to as “cross-culturalization”. This is simply where people from multiple ethnicities, races and religions share like interests.

In the past, marketers have traditionally marketed to people by finding the most similarities possible to reach the largest swath of people generally via demographics and household income otherwise known as “buying power”. Just consider the term, “general consumer”.

Is there really still such a thing?

Furthermore how people define themselves will hardly be answered by the census.

Zuckerburg would have you believe that Facebook’s fate to continue to remain relevant rests largely with the growing of the “Groups” functionality. No doubt he’s read Seth Godin’s “Tribes”. Interestingly enough today there was an editorial in the New York Times by David Brooks about “Flock Comedies” and shows like Dick Van Dyke, The Waltons and The Cosby Show being replaced by shows such “Friends”, “Sex and the City”, “How I Met Your Mother” and “Glee”. The editorial makes the argument that these “…shows also serve one final purpose. They help people negotiate the transition between dyadic friendships and networked friendships.”

Arguably the Internet has exploited people’s ability to group themselves and congregate together well before Facebook. Following a blog might be the simplest means of identifying with an interest or a group.

One question Facebook may want to confront is whether a group’s identity or brand is diminished by it being on Facebook. By its sheer size, Facebook is the Wal-Mart of social media regardless of whether or not it cares to admit it. ASMALL WORLD would not be the brand that it is if it were on Facebook. Perhaps there could be opportunities for Facebook to private label groups able to utilize Facebook’s functionality. But, let’s be honest, one thing about associating with a certain group is the notion of exclusion and to be a part of a certain group requires a degree of legitimacy or street cred.

Then there is the very real fact that there are some groups that people don’t want to be openly associated with. Take being gay, in which Facebook was recently accused of likely “outing” gays.

One of the simplest descriptions of Facebook I ever heard was, “It’s a TV channel I can turn on to see what my friends are doing.”

So let’s run with that. One could make the assertion that Facebook is really akin to an original big three TV network before cable where at any given point a marketer can reach the largest number of people. Let’s call Google the largest of the big three. Google however will always have search relevance for its ad platform. With Facebook though it has to provide relevance by interest. And here Facebook is actually becoming cable before our very eyes with groups becoming channels such as the Disney channel or Spike or Lifetime. However the same way marketers struggle to get a relevant message across requires understanding your audience.

And this is where groups come in.

What Zuckerberg isn’t saying is that basically groups will become a giant ad serving platform. Take for example the group “Mom’s Who Need Wine” which has about 336K+ followers on Facebook. Not too shabby a number, right? And where better to offer up any number of specific offers, Groupon like capabilities and so on based on hosts of data and data mining and insights to prospective advertisers.

At its core, I think Facebook is right culturally about the concept of groups. But I think Facebook has some considerable uphill battles. One is trust. The other is why Facebook? Facebook Groups is where the wannabes will live. The legit groups will be places like ASMALLWORLD or ShredUnion. As an advertiser, do you want to be where trends begin or where trends go to die (e.g. Wal-Mart). For that I suggest you ask Grant McCracken, author of “Flock and Flow”. Furthermore, if you start a group like “Moms Who Need Wine” why should Facebook make all the revenue off a group they didn’t even start?

Zuckerburg and the team at Facebook will position groups as what Facebook users want. And truth be told, that’s a load of crap. Groups is a way to make money. In interviews with Facebook staffers, nobody talks about the needs or wants of consumers… they talk about not being “… surprised if only 5% or 10% create groups,” noting “that’s 25 to 50 million people — not a small number by any standard.” Those are Nielsen numbers. Another factor to consider is what are real groups such as “Mom’s Who Need Wine” versus fad groups such as "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag" which currently has more than 51,000 friends.

So the question is what consumers do. And that, as I think we’re readily aware by this point, is anyone’s guess.

Is "Customer Service," Marketing?

2010-10-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok.

So this is hardly a new topic but I thought I’d throw my two cents in there after an experience at an AT&T store the other day.

I was in need of a new phone but I had been avoiding going to AT&T because I wasn’t sure if I was eligible for an upgrade and didn’t want to pay full price for a phone. I was avoiding the store because I didn’t want to have a fight about being an AT&T customer for the better part of 12 years and why couldn’t they give me the promotional price for a new BlackBerry Torch.

I was avoiding the store to AVOID customer service.

However being at my wits end with my failing phone, I put my head down and headed in. Fortunately I was eligible for an upgrade and actually had a very good customer experience.

The same can’t be said for the lady next to me however. This poor woman was from another state visiting a sick relative in the hospital. Her phone died and being unable to fix it and having no contact with home she came into the store. The staff at the store was also unable to fix it and said she would need a new phone but she was two months and a day away from being eligible for an upgrade and thus would have to pay full price ($220) to replace her phone.

As my lovely sales agent was getting me all set with my new phone I stood there and listened to this woman exasperated deal with two sales agents and one customer service representative on the phone to lobby to be granted an exclusion to get a new phone. Ultimately she was given a new phone with a new contract but what it took to get there seems preposterous.

I went into the AT&T store fully ready to take my business to Verizon and although I left moderately pleased, I still left with an overall negative impression.

Folks. Customer service IS your brand.

Is “customer service,” marketing? You’re damn right it is.

The Best Love Letter to a Company Ever (And one of the best online portfolios you should be advertising on but probably aren’t)

2010-05-20T13:12:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine, Joe Cronin, owns a company called Edvisors.com (@edvisors). It’s a college student marketing company.

(Full disclosure: Joe is a close personal friend and my company sub-leases space from him)

Joe started the company about 12 years ago by buying up just about every URL related to education and student loans and has built it into a nicely profitable business that employs about 12 people and has its own corporate foundation. The business is essentially an intermediary between college students and service providers. Joe is one of the nicest guys on the planet. His company doesn’t deal with shady lenders and a great deal of his sites are dedicated to helping people navigate the college universe.

He’s got a database of about 2 million students and pulls in about 150,000 new users each month. His site is the epitome of the little engine that could.

Early on when we moved into his office space we were in the kitchen and I noticed a lined piece of notebook paper on the fridge. I took a look and it was a handwritten, single spaced, double-sided letter from a college Sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering from Texas Tech University. He was writing to say thank-you.

First of all… who hand writes letters anymore? Let alone thank-you letters? To companies? Let alone college Sophomores?

This letter in particular was addressed to ScholarshipPoints.com. The way it works is simple.

1) Sign-up to ScholarshipPoints.com

2) Earn points by completing simple, fun activities (surveys, etc). Each point you earn is worth one entry into the free scholarship of your choice.

3) Enter your points into multiple scholarships, or use all of your points towards one free scholarship to increase your chance of winning.

The site has more than one million members and is growing at about a rate of 100,000 members a month. In 4 years they’ve given away more than 60 scholarships between $1,000 and $10,000.

I’ll share with you a few excerpts from this letter…

“Dear ScholarshipPoints.com management,

Though I had no specific individual to whom I could address this letter, I am hoping all of you have the chance to read it because I intend it for all of you. I am continually thankful for and impressed by Scholarship Points! The site is such a generous philanthropic venture… I hope to be a winner at Scholarship Points one day also, but I am most thankful for the incredible information provided on the site.

I have been “money-conscious” since early high-school, but Scholarship Points’ articles, which I discovered late in my first year of college, were the catalyst to my becoming money-responsible! The site is the reason I got my first credit card (Citi Dividends!) and a large contributing reason to my use of ING Direct Orange Savings. The resources on your site sparked my investment in myself and personal finance and this new learning is inspiring me to pay off my loans while in school and graduate debt free. I’m finally taking real responsibility for my money and am so thankful for the resources and encouragement I found at Scholarship Points.”

He then goes on to very graciously ask several questions about entrepreneurship. The folks at Edvisors did answer him back.

He closes by saying…

“I wish the very best for the Scholarship Points program and the various sister sites united under the Edvisors banner. I am incredibly grateful for all I’ve learned there and I hope to become a scholarship recipient. I know the others probably expressed gratitude for your program by which this short letter is overshadowed! I hope to hear back from you and until then, I am

Sincerely yours,

Dunte”

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best love letters to a company I’ve ever seen and the guy hasn’t even won a scholarship yet. That it comes from a Sophomore in college gives me hope for the future. But in all seriousness it demonstrates a few very powerful dynamics:

1) The power of a good idea and sound business strategy will win most of the time. @edwardboches had this to say in one of his recent blogs about Panera's new non-profit endeavor, “This week's Fast Company declared that the most important leadership quality a CEO can possess is creativity. Not operations. Not finance. Not management. Creativity. Creativity means breaking with the status quo, trying things that have never been done, innovating on a regular basis.”

2) Having a company with good core values will win most of the time and it starts with the leadership. Of course Joe desires to make money but it’s clear a greater motivation is to provide avenues for more kids to be able to have access to higher education. For the record, Joe’s dad was once a state secretary of education and a president of a local university. Education is in Joe’s DNA.

3) Consistently providing valuable, relevant and meaningful content will allow for a strong and meaningful relationship with the consumer.

4) You can do well by doing good.

Yet Another Example of Not Getting It

2010-05-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Cadillac broke new work today by BBH. All I have to say is, why?

This work is no better than the last few rounds of work by Modernista! or the work of their previous agency. I will give Modernista! props for the “My Cadillac Story” effort but Cadillac a thumbs down for abandoning it.

The line “Mark of Leadership” is meaningless especially when they’ve been playing catch-up to the Europeans, Japanese and now Korean’s (Hyundai Genesis) when it comes to quality. Simply saying it does not make it so. Sure the blokes at Top Gear found new love for the second generation CTS-V but they weren’t making apples-to-apples comparisons to other Euro (M5,RS4, C63)/Japanese (IS-F). The comments in the AdAge article are all sadly accurate. Probably the best comment was about the tagline being “destined for the ‘one year and out’ dumpster.”

Most importantly what this shows me is that what Cadillac nor BBH seems to understand is that :30 spots aren’t necessarily the name of the game anymore. Start with a great product and build compelling content around that product at strategic touch-points. It’s great that Cadillac has a YouTube channel but judging from the total views of all of the work on their channel (885,329) the “content” is hardly compelling. You want compelling content? Have a look at Ken Block’s DC Shoes/Monster Energy Drink/Subaru“infomercial” which is at 14 million views and counting. The aggregate of the DCShoesFilm Channel is at 34 million views and counting.

Cadillac has a great story to tell. Did you know the gear shift pattern/pedal configuration as we know it is courtesy of Cadillac? It’s unfortunate that no one is able to help Cadillac try to tell it.

What Sex Toy Parties Might Tell Us About Race/Ethnicity, Culture, Socio-Economics and Birth Order

2010-03-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

Before you all start think this is going to be some freaky NSFW blog post, I assure you that’s not the case.

I will offer a disclosure that there are links to fun pop culture points of reference that might be deemed offensive. If you’re averse to strong language or content that might be deemed offensive, don’t click on them.

Lastly, I’m sure there will be plenty who will accuse this post of being simplistic, racist, enforcing stereotypes, short-sighted and I’m sure the list will go on. To you, I urge you to comment and make your case. What I can tell you for certain is that this post will pose far more questions than it answers but I look forward to a lively debate. And away we go…

Several years ago my wife had an opportunity to go two sex toy parties.

The first was a portion of a bachelorette party among a group of women who were white and from well-to-do backgrounds. Picture the scene from the movie Old School with Andy Dick (except sans Andy Dick). Regardless, it was shall we say, tempered and at times awkward.

The second was among a very diverse group of women. One is the wife of a good friend who’s a local creative director. We’ll call her Allie. She’s Puerto Rican and Jewish and grew up on Manhattan’s lower East Side well before it was a fashionable place to be. She’s stunningly attractive and smart as a whip and has a mouth that would make a sailor blush. She could go to a Lisa Lampanelli show (strong language/content) and if Lampanelli started to give her the business as comedians are wont to do, Lampanelli would get it right back and the show would end with the two of them best friends. Allie is one of the funniest people I know by far. Among the other women at the party were a few women that I worked with and much like Allie would routinely make the guys in the agency feel like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas when he enlists the services of Elizabeth Shue and she describes what she’s willing to do (strong language/content). There were also a handful of other women of various ethnicities, mostly Black and Hispanic and none afraid to make their opinions known.

My understanding about this second sex toy party was that it was remarkably graphic, honest and funny to the point that more than one woman had to excuse themselves to relieve themselves lest they soil a couch from laughing so hard.

What I find most interesting about the foray into this topic is that most will fail to ask the question, “Yes, but why?”

I met a sociology professor a few years ago and we were talking about a variety of things and I posed the question to him of “Why Jews were so intent on dating/marrying/procreating only other Jews?” I had dated a couple of Jewish women during college and after and was curious why they seemed doom to fail. I naively believed what popular culture had told me. Nice Jewish boys want to marry their moms and nice Jewish girls want to be provided for the way their fathers had provided for them. The professor smirked and then provided a much simpler and enlightening answer. “If your race were almost systematically eliminated by a single force of evil and tyranny, wouldn’t you do anything in your power to restore the foundation of the lineage?”

I won’t digress into a debate of interracial dating in which all trends point to a ridiculous literal melting pot but I got his point. The insight was a much deeper understanding of what drove the behavior. And if I were tasked with creating advertising for a Jewish personals web site, that insight would no doubt influence the creative, perhaps not explicitly but at the very least tonally.

So my question about the sex toys party is yes, but why? Why was there such a remarkable difference?

Was it race, socio-economics, culture, birth order, a combination? Are white upper-class folks really so uptight and can’t let it all hang out? Are they inherently repressed? (strong language)

Are the Tyler Perrys or Tracy Morgans or Mo’Niques truly representative of black folks? I will say, put a bunch of black folks on a dance floor and we’ll make this summer’s most popular line dance look good. Still the question is valid, have black folks gotten white folks to chill out perhaps as Sin LaSalle played by Cedric the Entertainer from the movie “Be Cool” might suggest (strong language)?

To further confuse things, for the purposes of this post, let’s use the formal definitions of culture as:

“the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.”
“Anthropology. the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.”

In other words I’m not solely limiting culture to say that of say “country of origin” which I believe is highly limiting. I myself would say that I’m defined by at least 10 different cultures/sub-cultures built up throughout my exposure to a variety of people and experiences throughout my life. This would include, Black culture specifically as it relates to the Civil Rights movement, Beat Generation writers, 60s drug culture, 80s preppy culture, 80s punk culture, early action sports culture, traditional sports culture, feminist culture, Italian-American culture, Higher Ed Academia and so on.

My wife was raised Catholic, the youngest of four kids. While young she knew modest beginnings having grown up in central Massachusetts to fiscally conservative parents. Her mom can reuse a sheet of tinfoil longer than anyone. As she got older however she became accustomed to a very fortunate lifestyle and was exposed to yacht clubs and country clubs. While she graduated from a regional high school outside of Worcester, MA, she summered on the Cape and graduated from the best private undergraduate and graduate schools and is considerably well travelled. She’s also highly philanthropic and having done Teach For America and continues work as a guidance counselor at a struggling high school in a neighboring town that would literally qualify as “the other side of the tracks”. My wife has the gift of being universally and unconditionally accepting and accepted and can float from class sphere to class sphere effortlessly.

Knowing this let’s look at some similar themes of the two groups:

The first group was predominantly white women from the more insular communities my wife was a part. It’s accurate to say that this community represents the top five percent of the country from a socio-economic perspective. This is a group where I can attest first hand that there is a degree to what is deemed acceptable behavior/conduct.

If the second group was unified by any one thing, it is likely socio-economic. Not necessarily by current status but by background. Almost everyone in the group despite their current status came from relatively humble beginnings. Additionally, I suspect in some cases, birth order and gender played a role among several of the women in the second group as well including my wife. If you look at each of my wife’s siblings starting from the oldest, they are each more relaxed than the next with my wife being the most relaxed and most influenced (socially) by her older brother closest in age. Call it a stereotype but the most crass women I’ve ever known almost unanimously have at least one older brother.

Are there anomalies? Of course. Fellas, if you were going to Vegas for a guy’s weekend would you prefer to go with Clarence Thomas or Tracy Morgan. Ladies would you prefer a Vegas weekend with Condoleeza Rice or Mo’Nique? The former in each case have no doubt been taught and have continued to elect to conform to elite societal norms.

Maybe that’s my problem is my reluctance to conform to societal norms. But I digress.

As I said, this post creates far more questions than it answers and here’s short list of mine. Feel free to add, answer, debate.

As a universal culture, are we becoming more relaxed and less pressured by societal constraints of certain etiquette?
What are the drivers of relatively newfound acceptance or the ability to feel less uncomfortable at things that a mere 10 years ago would make most squirm? Is it the effect of media in popular culture? Reality television?
As a result of the impending Census outcome, how will we define cultural groups especially from a marketing perspective?
There are no clear cut means of segmentation. There are always anomalies. Every segmentation is meant to ensure capturing the greatest number of people (customers) as possible. Will it be defined by country of origin? Generation? Race? Socio-economics?
Will marketing segmentation exacerbate a class war, pitting the Wal-Marts against The Nordstrom's?
Will there be such a thing as “class acculturation” the way the there are degrees of acculturation among Asians and Hispanics?
Will America be divided by level of educational attainment, as some suggest?

I'm not sure about the answers to all of the questions. I have a hypothesis or two but much remains to be seen about how nimble large corporations will be.

In any event, to pile on to the “stereotypes” as Mike Myers would say in his SNL “Coffee Talk” skits as Linda Richman…

“Discuss.”

Looking at the Past to Arrive at the Future

2010-02-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

I’m an adviser to a start-up agency called Pomegranate.

Like many of my brethren in the industry, we're working hard to address the question of the business model as well as the compensation model. I think plenty of agencies have tried to address the compensation model (which in some instances led to huge industry shifts e.g. the segregation of media) but few have tackled the actual business model.

We’re not necessarily sure we’re going to create the template for the “agency of the future” but we’re certainly hoping to not look anything like a “traditional” agency. This is probably easier said than done but we’ll die trying and hopefully all remain housed, fed and clothed in the process.

Our bet is that it will look something like what Joseph Jaffe proposed which is sort of a hybrid model. Incidentally, Bud Caddell did a great blog post rounding up the latest and greatest pontifications on what the “agency of the future” will look like.

One of our key goals is to address the issue of extensive overhead. And not necessarily so we can put it back into our own pockets. Of course we’d like to make a nice living but don’t feel a need to be obscene.

In any event one of the first people recruited was a CFO. He’s hardly the CFO type actually but his acuity with all things dollars and cents (and other things too) is astounding. We also wanted someone from outside of the ad/marketing business. This was very much by design.

In recruiting someone with no real marketing experience let alone advertising experience required me giving him a sort of Agency 101 tutorial. This was a wonderfully helpful exercise for me because looking at the model of yesterday really got me to think about how and why we will do it differently today.

I’d love to get feedback and encourage discussion about what’s missing or am I completely off my rocker?

What drives costs at agencies is overhead. Space and people. Roughly 6-10% of an agency’s revenue goes to space. Every big agency is in A-class space and spends a boatload on it. Then it’s people who drive costs and everything essentially boils down to billable hours. (New business pitches drive costs as well but that's a whole other blog post.)

Agencies have traditionally been built based on mediums (ways to reach the consumer) and there were four basic mediums:

· Advertising (TV and print)

· Direct marketing (direct mail, direct response, 800# call to actions)

· Public relations

· Digital (web sites)

There are also media companies which are responsible for buying ad media (places where the ads go e.g. TV, online magazines, sponsorships).

All of this is based on what’s known as disruption marketing. In other words, I as the consumer am interrupted from a program and fed an ad, like it or not. These days the world is moving more towards permission-based marketing. This is where I as the consumer am largely in control of which “content” ads or otherwise I’d like to see. There may still be some disruption marketing there but companies have to be much smarter about placement because if marketing is not aligned with content appropriately I’ll find something else to watch.

So what does this have to do with the hybrid approach? It’s acknowledged that for any client it’s imperative that we know our client’s business inside and out and we understand their customers and everything about those customers. However, gone are the days where we “push” a message out to the broadest amount of people and hope that they’ll respond which is basically what :30 (thirty second) TV spots are.

Now, for any given effort we may decide to develop say… a mobile phone application. This requires idea creation and oversight from the principals, a little art direction and then programmers to develop it. The heavy lifting is done by the programmers but that’s not a function we want to own, nor should we because every client is different every client's need is different and every client’s customer is different and how we reach them is inevitably going to be a broad mix of mediums.

I’ll use Sunoco as an example. Sunoco’s retail strategy for the past several years has been “The Official Fuel of NASCAR”. So they put the signage on everything and then some and do a few ads with NASCAR drivers and sprinkle it with a loyalty program and presto everyone comes running. Not so much. They’ve effectively made NASCAR “the” strategy as opposed to being a part of “a” strategy and in all likelihood have probably alienated anyone who isn’t a fan of NASCAR.

An approach might be to have NASCAR as a part of a greater motorsports strategy. Sunoco is also the official fuel of Porsche Club of America (not sure how many Porsche Club folks are NASCAR fans). This is a great affinity group and ones who are likely to evangelize the brand. Sunoco also happens to be in Philadelphia within maybe two hours of something like a good 3-4 nationally known Porsche tuners. Another part of the strategy might be supporting those groups with a little more TLC and letting them organically help to grow a loyal base of customers. The bottom line is it’s an effective strategy that doesn’t require the full-time hierarchy of agency staffing that you need to find ways to keep busy.

Typical agency staffing looks something like this:

CEO

Creative (develops ads/strategy)

· Chief Creative Officer

· SVP Creative Director

· VP Creative Director

· Associate Creative Director

· Art directors

· Copywriters

Account Management (client relationships/strategy)

· SVP Group Account Director

· VP Account Director/Management Supervisor

· Account Supervisor

· Account Executives

· Assistant Account Executives

Account Planning (customer insight)

· SVP Account Planner

· VP Account Planners

Studio (prepares creative for production)

Traffic (manages timelines and information flow)

Broadcast Traffic (manages timelines and insures that TV ads get to the right networks/stations/etc)

Then of course there are the support functions for all of this (HR, admins, finance/accounting).

Mirror all these people for all of the different mediums I told you about and you’re talking about a lot of frickin’ money in which people scramble with timesheets to account for the billable hours agreed upon. As advertising agencies battle with corporate procurement, agencies are now butting up against the evil they’ve in essence created.

Our CFO also asked how long clients stayed with agencies.

It used to be forever. Literally. Up until the 80s, accounts stayed with shops for 20+ years. Now days, agencies are lucky to hold onto business for more than a few years. This is largely a result of a three things. 1) Quarterly earnings – if you’re not moving the needle, you’re out. 2) CMO tenure – on average I believe it’s less than 24 months. This is also tied to quarterly earnings. 3) When the CMO goes or there’s a significant shift in the agency such as a creative talent leaving, business often shifts with it. There is very little loyalty left in the business anymore. There are other reasons why client’s part with agencies related to poor client service management or not delivering solid creative product as well but the bottom line is agency/client relationships are often pretty tenuous.

Now after re-reading all of this I’m wondering why I signed up to help these guys?

Oh yeah I love it.

Oh and while I can’t fully predict the success or failure there is one thing that I do know and that is for an agency like thisto succeed is going to require a first client who is willing to take a risk to help the industry evolve and know that mistakes will be made but figured out. Kind of like this whole social media thing.

What happened to Volkswagen?

2010-02-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

@martysg sent me a tweet following the Super Bowl.

“@slprquattro Did you see that Deutsch VW ad last night? They never shoulda dumped CP+B. Terrible.”

While I can’t necessarily say that they never should have dumped CP+B. CP+B isn’t for everyone and I get that but I can say that VW’s work in general has gone down the crapper in my humble opinion. I don't know if the agency can shoulder all the blame though.

First off let me give overall commentary about the SB spots. I do this because it's important to my philosophy about creative. 98% of the work sucked and I'm fine with my manliness, thank you very much. The best two spots in my mind were the Google spot and the Dorito's "Momma" spot. The former seems generally agreed, the latter I would say is highly subjective and a matter of personal taste.

One might legitimately ask, what the hell do I know? My personal top five nor #brandbowl’s were in USA Today's top 50. And I'm going to guess that USA Today is more representative of the country than #brandbowl or me for that matter. Bottom line is that the disparity between #brandbowl and USA Today should register pause in and of itself. There’s obviously an intellectual disconnect somewhere.

One point: We should make a distinction between great, really good and good. Great should be designated as once in a lifetime… we talk about it for years. Really good means it stands out in the category and continually performs well and perhaps is imitated. Good means it basically does its job. And let’s not forget, the company and product have to stand behind the work.

In general, I think really good broadcast requires finding the subtleties or the intangibles. Most spots have a moment to be great but miss it. Most of the SB spots missed it. Some showed hints of brilliance but most missed it by a long shot.

In VW's case, I think that there is a clear desire to appeal more to the mainstream. But does that mean that you have to be GM? OK that might be a little harsh but in my view, advertising needs to inspire and engage, especially when your core customer is less mainstream. Furthermore, just because it’s a :30 spot does not mean that the rules of suspension of disbelief don’t still apply. And based on the most recent Forrester report it doesn't seem ads are delivering as of late.

The reason why the VW spot was such a disappointment to me is because they have a history of greatness. And SB spots are supposed to be great or at least really good.

Now, with regards to VW, as you might gather from my twitter name, @slprquattro, I'm a bit smitten with Audi/VW. Don’t worry I won’t bore you with my ownership history. I've also followed their agency track record, ummm a bit. VW has always flirted with brilliance going back to the days of the DDB Beatle ads.

My all time favorite was the New York Times Magazine ad after Jerry Garcia died. Whoa.

"Driver's Wanted" debuted and put the company squarely back on the map and re-established it in America’s consciousness. DaDaDaDa was the talk of the water coolers. The "Pink Moon" spot quite literally brought Nick Drake back from the dead. I also loved the "Mr Roboto" spot and the "Singing in the Rain" spot was very cool. At the end of the day, the "Driver’s Wanted" campaign was sheer brilliance. It drove sales and clearly showed that VW and Arnold knew the customer.

More recently, VW in my opinion had some nice efforts with "Safe Happens" which were sobering to say the least. And “Unpimp Ze Auto” but admittedly those spots weren’t for everyone. I also liked the “Make Friends with Your Fast” effort. Perhaps less memorable than "Unpimp" and again not for everyone but nevertheless good demonstrations of the sensibilities of the audiences they were trying to reach.

The “Punch Dub” spot perhaps had potential but misses the mark (even with the punch to gramp’s gonads and the Tracy Morgan and Stevie Wonder cameo). I don't think it's the agency's fault. I don't think CP+B could have saved them either. Liz Vanzura and Kerri Martin's impact are missed. I think VWs issues are probably embedded in a client who’s playing it safe and has forgotten about their core customer.

These days that’s the last place I’d want to be.

The Irony of Mad Men-themed Holiday Cards - How far we've come... Or not

2009-12-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

My friend and former colleague, Steve Hall (founder of AdRants and AdGabber), had a post on his Facebook page about how tired and unoriginal the Mad Men-themed Holiday cards are from our agency brethren.

While I agree I couldn't help but notice a rather pathetic irony. That in the Holiday card from Denver-based Cultivator Advertising & Design all the "staffers" dolled up to look like Mad Men characters are all white. And this was shot in 2009. That's pretty sad in my book.

Happy Holidays!

Augmented Reality and Art & Copy

2009-11-29T09:29:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I posted about the documentary, “Art & Copy” which hails Bill Bernbach’s industry changing pairing together of an art director and copywriter as a creative team.

During an interview on American Public Radio’s Marketplace with the director, Doug Pray, he talks about how advertising used to get done. He said, “In the old days of advertising, it was driven more by the account. And just information. It was all about you got a car, it does 12 new things this year, we just have to tell people about the 12 new things. And have a pretty picture. So you do the pretty picture. We'll tell them about the 12 new things.”

I was paging through the Dec/Jan 2010 issue of Dwell Magazine and I came across an ad for the third generation Toyota Prius. In this particular ad the reader is invited to 1) Install the Prius Experience iPhone App from the App Store and 2) Interact by taking a picture of said ad using the “interact” mode, then touch to see features and videos.

On Youtube there is a video of the Prius Experience App, “Draw”. The description says “The Prius Experience App has four modes to help educate and entertain iPhone™ users interested in learning more about the EPA-rated 50 MPG 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid. Admittedly the “draw” feature and corresponding Times Square promotion was kind of cool. But in general, while the Toyota ad is theoretically progressive and cutting edge, it’s really just a cheap trick and the content presented is still presented just like the days of old. The only difference is the medium has changed.

It dawned on me that perhaps we’ve gone full circle except instead of telling people the 12 new things about the car in the magazine ad, we have to lure them into going through the process of installing an iPhone application to tell them the 12 things.

So I wonder, are art & copy teams to be a thing of the “old days of advertising driven more by the account?” And teams will now consist of iPhone programmers and film producers and directors in addition to copywriters. What will it take for agencies to think about instead of “Advertising ideas → Ideas that you can advertise”, an idea wonderfully and simply illustrated in a presentation by Nick Emmel? The latter having to do more with producing engaging and relevant content. For reference, Toyota’s Youtube channel has had a little over 107,000 views. Contrast that with Ken Block’s Gymkhana 2 which is now up to 9.2 million plus views and I think you’ll see what it means to produce relevant content that people want to engage in.

Can Hummer have a Hyundai Moment?

2009-11-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

I recently read a great blog post by Andrew McCafee on the “Illusion of Brand Control” from the Harvard Business Review blogs. Mr. McCafee studies how technology affects businesses.

In his article he cites examples of two brands. One which seeks to try and corral perceptions of its brand the other who seeks to let its brand run free.

The brand that seeks to corral the perceptions of its brand does so fairly unsuccessfully while the brand that lets it brand run free seems to find organic success. These may not be apple to apple case studies but nevertheless, the former it would seem could learn something about perception, identity and aligning business, product development and marketing strategy.

The example of the brand allowed to run wild is MIT, in which there are 11 student blogs featured on the admissions office web page. They are central to the schools communications efforts. The premise was simple. The school is confident enough that in having some of the greatest scholars of the world grace its campus, why wouldn’t they be capable of presenting a cogent dialogue on a variety of topics to the world thus demonstrating why you would want to attend MIT.

On the other side of the spectrum is Hummer.

Mr. McCafee starts his piece…

“You've probably heard by now that ‘your brand is no longer yours.’ The assertion's based on simple math. In the era of blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools, virtually everyone can get online and talk about your company and its offerings. As a result, the amount of information your marketing and PR departments can generate is only a small percentage of the total volume of content on the Internet about your firm.

What's more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they're going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed "Hummer" into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand's owner.”

Let’s talk about the fourth one. On that site there are 5092 submissions of people flipping the bird to passing Hummer H2s. That’s a lot of angst.

When one thinks about Hummer’s past advertising, it often portrays young, good-looking, hip and adventurous 30-something individuals utilizing their Hummers to create their own adventures seeking out the most remote spots on earth.

Granted a great degree of Hummer's spots are automotive eye candy in shot in places like the far reaches of New Zealand. However when there are people in the ads, the folks and imagery used in Hummer’s spots are really not at all representative of the actual Hummer consumer. And these days, I don’t think there are many people in America who want to be seen in a Hummer. The people portrayed in the spots of old courtesy of Modernista! are no doubt beautifully art directed and shot. But the people in the commercials look a lot like, well the people in agencies like Modernista! And what I know about people like these is that most of them wouldn’t buy a Hummer. They’re probably more likely to buy a Mini. And the hardcore outdoor folks that you might find riding their bikes to their boutique agency are design/brand snobs and extraordinarily eco-friendly. I might personally resemble this last remark.

This is where the opportunity lies for Hummer for North America. If they align the business strategy, product development and marketing effectively they could actually carve out a nice little niche for themselves.

While current brand perception is negative, I would predict that if you dug down to the brands core you’d find perception about the brand is probably still pretty well respected for being a vehicle that can pretty much get anywhere.

With that, if Hummer plays its cards right they just might have a chance in hell at surviving. Consider developing smaller than H2-type vehicles with less bling, powered by clean diesel (the magic word is torque) and provide functional utilitarian packages aimed at various affinity groups.

This is where I wonder if Hummer can have its own Hyundai moment. Any marketer with a subscription to AdAge knows that Hyundai is the marketing darling of the industry these days and rightfully so. However it wasn’t marketing that created Hyundai’s turnaround. It was the company.

As Mark Allen Roberts said in response to the AdAge's "Marketer of the Year"article on Hyundai, “What they did brilliantly was on the front end.”

I don’t suspect Hummer will be as universally captivating as Hyundai because it will always be a niche brand but I do feel that there’s a tremendous opportunity for Hummer.

Youtube is a Network Waiting to Happen

2009-10-18T18:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Ken Block’s second iteration of Gymkhana.

No this isn’t Kurt Thomas’ attempt to extend his 15 minutes of fame and woeful acting skills on the heels of his early ‘80s film Gymkata. I’m talking about the founder of DC Shoes and his foray into the world of rally racing, stunt driving and the next generation of drifting.

Ken Block is a phenomenally intuitive marketer. Certainly as evidenced by his savvy in building DC Shoes into arguably one of the strongest action sports brands ever. Perhaps second only to Burton. Perhaps it's that no one felt comfortable to tell him the rules. Perhaps he wasn't listening anyway. Whatever it is, he knows right when he sees it.

Gymkhana 1 was originally posted about 10 months ago and between various posters of the video, it garnered over three million views. Not too shabby. No doubt it was professionally shot at every level and Ken Block has money to throw at these things. Although, I’m pretty sure he’s mastered the art of OPM.

Nevertheless, while most create :60 spots and hope they’ll find viral traction on Youtube, Ken Block did it on purpose! And I know lots of people will say, “come on, we did that.” Tampax, Dove, Cadillac. Blah Blah Blah. I don’t think anyone has done it as well AND on purpose as Ken Block.

7 minutes and 32 seconds. They even call it an infomercial. At the beginning of the video note the following:

“WARNING! The following is a product advertisement. You are going to be bombarded by visuals of great looking products, and then entertained by motorsports eye candy. Do not resist the temptation to purchase the products when prompted to do so. Enjoy!”

Who the hell would watch a dumb seven minute infomercial? Well all told there have been over seven and a half million views of Gymkhana 2.

Gymkhana 2 was technically brought to you by DC Shoes but other brands who reaped the benefits of this are Subaru, Monster Energy Drinks, BF Goodrich, Rob Dyrdek/MTV and Crawford Performance.

Now there’s a Gymkhana 2.1 brought to you by MTV and Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory which is a spoof of the very first Gymkhana. Another 1.3 million views. And all these people chose to watch it!

How many people are choosing to watch your spots?

Is the :60 spot going away? No. Does broadcast deserve its dominance and to make all the money? Most definitely not.

Once upon a time people laughed at cable as a network contender. I don’t care what you say. Youtube is a network waiting to happen.

Stuff White People Like

2009-10-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

Brooke and I went to college together in the private enclave of Colby College in Waterville, ME.

We lived unique college experiences with my social environs grounded more in my lacrosse teammates and others in the student-athlete universe. Brooke while no doubt a sports fan was far more intellectual than I. Nevertheless, we were bound by common friends and most notably a class called “Female Experience in America”. In this class, we were part of one of six teams asked to create documentaries on social problems in America. It was probably one of our favorite classes from college and it was all-encompassing.

Brooke remains a good friend. She went on to Stanford and Salem State to get her MS in Psychology and is now the director of a community program at a local community college. She’s a wonderful global citizen. But Brooke is also phenomenally unique and very cool.

Let’s take a gander at a few of her recent Facebook posts:

• “Thinks 38-0 against a team with no wins this season is sufficient. Let the Titans go home to warm up, and put on some NASCAR or a hockey game!”

• “Leblanc has wanted to be a professional hockey player for as long as he can remember. But after he was drafted by the National Hockey League, he didn’t listen to the scouts who wanted him to skip college and dedicate himself to the pro game.” – Related Boston.com link

• “Loves her Bruins -- consistently inconsistent!”

• “Inside 10 laps to go, Denny Hamlin and Greg Biffle were contenders for the checkers. They brought home the steering wheel." [Nationwide series @ Fontana]

• “Now back to more important things: NBC's f*-up of canceling ‘Southland’” – Related EW.com link

Brooke also has links posted to Youtube clips of Istanbul spoofs from the song by They Might be Giants and clips from the Craig Ferguson show. Among her fave bands are REM, The Allman Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Her fan pages on Facebook include: NASCAR, U2, Brigitte Bardot, Wimbledon, The United States of America, The New York Times, Starbucks, Target, Twilight, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Calvin and Hobbes, Roger Federer, The New England Patriots, The Daily Show, Pete Carroll, The Princess Bride, The Young Ones and A Christmas Story.

What’s so unique about Brooke? She lives in New England, went to the preppy private enclave of Colby College in the woods of Maine, LOVES the NHL, her Bruins and NASCAR.

Here’s what’s so unique about Brooke. She’s black.

If you attempt to market to her solely based on her race, you will make assumptions that are flat out wrong. Just another example of the importance of truly getting to know your customers.

Why Big Ad Agency Models Will Struggle to be Sustainable

2009-10-06T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today, AdAge reported research findings from the 4As that “Chief creative officers at large U.S. agencies, on average, billed $964 an hour to clients in 2008.”

Pardon me, but that’s insane.

If that’s what clients are paying, they’re not even close to an ROI. Most of these are at agencies owned by holding companies which are publicly traded companies with blue chip clients. Didn’t IPG land on a list of one of top 10 companies likely to file for bankruptcy this year? Gee I wonder why? Creative directors should start asking for raises. Perhaps the agency biz needs to be raked over the coals the way the financial services businesses currently are over compensation. Granted I will say that if the $100 million dollar man at Citi earns the company a billion dollars, give the guy what he wants. But I digress.

There are companies that have said they’ve changed the agency model but let’s be honest, that’s a crock. If it looks like a duck… They’ve changed the COMPENSATION model NOT the BUSINESS model. No one has. And clients haven’t demanded it of them. In general, large and mid-sized agencies are often given Carte Blanche to “move the needle”. And research is designed to show how “I’ve moved the needle”. Clients, how about empowering your employees and demanding more of them to ensure they are not using the agency to make them look like heroes?

And as the universe of consumers lean towards microtrends and microbrands, big agencies can't service these companies because they charge too much. They have to charge too much to pay for the exorbitant overhead.

Here’s what I think? The :30 spot doesn’t mean what it used too. Heck, corporate web sites don’t mean what they used to.

A good friend is the founder of a student loan marketing company. If you do a search on student loans, there’s probably a one in three chance you’ll land on one of his sites. It’s a pretty ingenious business and I admire him greatly for what he’s built.

He shared with me an effort for one of his financial services clients that he represents for student loans and credit card products.

I think it speaks volumes about how much companies miss opportunities in understanding their customers and prospects and how disconnected middle management is from senior management.

On one of his several web sites he has a student marketing blog. He posted a blog comparing two credit cards aimed primarily at college students. He also conducted a poll. The poll suggested a pretty clear winner. The winner was a rewards card. There were 250+ comments which further suggested that what students cared about was rewards but they also cared greatly about rates. The comments are in essence qualitative research and could help the company figure out what to probe for in formal qualitative research or what to ask in quantitative research and can also help folks at an agency in developing communications that are far more relevant and appealing to the target audience.

Furthermore, one may discover that a way to use the broadcast medium is to drive people to this blog as opposed to directly to the corporate web site or 800# where the prospect will be hit with a hard sell and likely be apprehensive. The blog, poll and corresponding comments would validate and support the prospective customer’s decision. Yes, as a company you’ll lose a little bit because of the shared revenue with your marketing partner but arguably you’d make that up with stronger close rates.

Isn’t that what everyone’s goal is?

The Fundamental Reason Why Ad Agencies Lack Diversity

2009-10-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

At breakfast with a colleague today the discussion of advertising agency diversity came up.

Being a black male who spent about 13 years in ad agencies, a lot of people ask me how I managed to be successful and what I think are the reasons why ad agencies can’t seem to tackle the diversity issue.

Although I do think agencies have traditionally “self-selected” its staff which is really just human nature, I do not believe there to be any significant mal intent. And I say this fairly confident that I’ve been discriminated against at least a few times in my agency career.

That being said, my view on the agency diversity problem is exceptionally pragmatic.

The most fundamental reason for why ad agencies lack diversity so much lies with simple economics.

Ever noticed that account service staffs at big agencies are generally made up of good looking white kids who look like they came out of a j. crew catalog? There’s a reason for this. Ad agencies don’t pay well at the entry level and generally the big agencies are in urban centers. Expensive ones. NYC, Chicago, Boston, LA, San Francisco. These two factors are critical. Most of my peers when I was a lowly AAE were subsidized in some way shape or form and almost no one had the burden of a student loan to pay off (including myself). In walking around agencies these days, things haven’t seemed to change very much. If you haven’t read a book called “The Hidden Cost of Being African American” by Thomas M. Shapiro that might be a good place to start in beginning to address the diversity issue in agencies. It’s a fact. Most African Americans coming out of college have significant student loans to pay off. Living in a very expensive city on an assistant account executive’s salary in many cases isn’t even an option.

Most of the best and brightest African American college graduates are pursuing careers in law, medicine or business. This is largely a financially driven decision. Any of the best and brightest kids of color who might have been marketing majors are getting cherry picked by guess who?

Your clients.

And they offer a much clearer career path, training programs, benefits and better salaries in areas where the cost of living is far more sustainable. If a potential client has a diversity requirement as a part of an RFP, might I suggest you request to borrow a few of theirs? And I’m not kidding.

Ad agencies might want to look at organizations like The Posse Foundation which provide access to students of color to generally small liberal arts colleges and further work to ensure retention. I would suspect that ad agencies might find similar challenges to that of small liberal arts colleges.

However, until the wealth gap closes significantly or entry level agency salaries increase significantly, I wouldn’t expect much to change.

Cross-Culturalization Today

2009-10-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

“In 1930,Gottfried de Purucker, an author and theosophist, warned against intermarriage saying that ‘the race of the future will be a composite, composed of the many different races on earth today. Let us also remember that all men are ultimately of one blood.’” Time Magazine – 1993

I recently saw a trailer for BLAKROC. For those of you that don’t know, this is a collaboration of the rock band, The Black Keys (white guys) and Damon Dash founder of Rocafella Records (black guys). Back in the day Aerosmith and RUN-DMCs “Walk this Way” was considered to be cataclysmic. Mind blowing. Call that perhaps the beginning of a tipping point of Cross-Culturalization also known as Trans-Culturalization as coined by the founder and former CEO of the True Agency, Richard Wayner. A man well ahead of his time.

BLAKROC may not receive as much hype but in my mind it’s that much more telling. Because it’s a true collaboration whereas my belief was that the Aerosmith/RUN-DMC collaboration was a business opportunity. Don’t worry, I fell for it too. We all know that of course this is a business opportunity for Dash. The guy’s a pretty savvy businessman. However, when you watch the trailer you can see that these are artists collaborating and trying to create something. Mark my words, it will be dope. But what is so cool about this collaboration is the cultures, meeting, melding and creating something palpable.

Funny thing is that I wasn’t surprised at hearing about this collaboration. A couple of years ago I recall an article in which the author was shadowing Damon Dash for a day. They’re in Dash’s car and the author was taken aback by what Dash was listening to. John Mayer.

I’ve posted before about my belief that to market to people based on their race or ethnicity is inherently flawed and I still hold firm to my beliefs. It’s 2009 and agencies like Project 2050 should be agencies of record. Fact: by 2042, the racial make-up of this country will be more than 50% NON-WHITE. However we continue to have these ludicrous discussions about how non-representative of society agencies in fact are.

I’m married to a white woman and we have two beautiful mocha babies. I was dating white women, long before it became fashionable. I am a product of my environment, born to Black aristocracy and afforded the luxuries of prep schools and private college. White enclaves. Figures I would choose advertising for a career. Nine years ago my wife and I were defending our union to my wife's parents. Now I can’t even to begin to comprehend what the spectrum of my daughters’ cultural influences will look like. Especially given how early they’re exposed to the presence of multiculturalism via children's programming such as Blues Clues with Salt, Pepper and baby Paprika. Heck, Bratz forced Barbie to find some new friends. And Alas, finally Disney has decided to get with the program and have a “black” princess. Foxy Brown, look out.

A couple of years ago I was asked to speak at a conference on the “multiracial” category. Statistically this is a group that is technically growing exponentially. Feel free to e-mail me for a copy of the presentation.

Here are some quick facts:
• The incidence of births of mixed race babies has multiplied 26 times as fast as that of any other group.
• In April 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau added 126 different possible racial combinations.
• 2.4 percent of the U.S. population or 6.8 million people responded to the Census by checking more than one race box those numbers are believed to be severely underrepresented.
• Over the past 30 years, America has produced the greatest number of hybrid households in the history of the world.
• The number of black-white mixed marriages increased by 504% in the last 25 years. Mixed marriages were illegal in as many as 14 states up until 1967.
• In a 1993 Time Magazine poll, 72% stated they knew married couples of different races.
• Among Jews, the number marrying out of their faith has shot up from 10% to 52% since 1960.
• Among Japanese Americans 65% marry people who have no Japanese heritage.

Do you think that there’s a little more than the plot line as to why Grey’s Anatomy and Heroes could be so popular among so many different people?

The Cross-Culturalization of music, fashion and style is astounding. The Roots are doing covers of Bob Dylan. Reggaeton while waning in popularity doesn’t negate the fact Daddy Yankee once had a Direct Effect top 10 video. Mexican kids wearing dime store sandals brought us the Converse One-star slides. Japan has brought us urban vinyl, Anime and the next generation of hot rodding in tuner cars. And while Americans are still eating up the Japanese tuner scene, the Japanese have gone Euro. Hip Hop styles are well entrenched in the action sports culture. I’m sure 20 years ago New Era never thought they’d be making the 59FIFTY with a Red Bull logo. Five years ago, I’m sure NASCAR never predicted the Japanese influence of drifting or the European influence of rally racing now an X-Games staple.

Not too long ago, the writer Carolina Miranda did a DNA test to discover literally where she came from. She learned that she was not what she thought she was and I think she sums up a way of thinking about better ways to approach consumers other than by race or ethnicity. The reality is that racial purity is largely a myth and as she stated in a Time Magazine article, “True identity, it seems, resides not in our genes but in our mind”.

Stop & Shop and Starbucks - A Not So Perfect Union

2009-09-28T14:22:00.000-07:00

Update - April 9, 2010: I posted this blog post in September 2009 not yet having read Kevin Maney's book, Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don't. It ranks well up there in my personal critique of business books. Most of which I think you can "get-it" in the first chapter. Maney's deserves the full-read. In it, Maney, does a superb job of taking a wonderfully simple concept which I think successful companies execute well intuitively. It has to do with the balance of "fidelity" versus "convenience". In his book, Maney uses Starbucks as an example which to me was a rewarding validation of my blog post below. There is an adaptation of the chapter on Starbucks from Forbes, here. With that, feel free to read my post but without a doubt, pick-up a copy of Maney's book. It's well worth the read.

Around early 2006, Northeast grocer Stop & Shop struck a deal to open full-serve licensed Starbucks in 35-45 Stop & Shop stores over a five year partnership.

Our small suburban town boasts three Starbucks which might be an indication of the demographics. Our Stop & Shop Starbucks opened early in 2007 and would be our fourth.

A short two years later, Starbucks and our Stop & Shop would part ways. I can’t say I’m surprised.

Don’t get me wrong. The idea is nice in theory.

Starbucks is trying to steal market share from Dunkin’ Donuts (a New England institution and a master in convenience) and there are Dunkin’ Donuts in about 100 Stop & Shops.

Stop & Shop is trying to elevate its brand to compete with Whole Foods. By the way, right around the time of the Starbucks addition, a Whole Foods opened in our town. So in addition to Stop & Shop refreshing their image, cleaning up the store and offering an organic food aisle Starbucks should be a perfect fit.

Not so much.

I don’t know if either company did much research to decide if this was a good idea or if they did just didn’t ask the right questions.

My guess is that good research would have identified that while the demographics should indicate that a marriage between these two is a no-brainer, the reality is that the two consumer experiences are at odds with each other and the idea is actually inherently flawed.

My wife and I do our “basic” grocery shopping at Stop & Shop. We do specialty shopping at a local market or at Whole Foods. And we relax at Starbucks, with each other, a good friend or a book and ideally no kids.

Stop & Shop is inherently not relaxing. It’s functional. We don’t go wandering aimlessly through the store taking our time. We go with a list and a job to do and that’s complicated further if there are kids with us. There’s no time for a Non-fat White Chocolate Mocha. We don’t have time to place the order, let alone wait for it.

Stop & Shop is for one thing. Starbucks is for another. It seems like it should have been pretty simple to figure that out.

Funny thing is, Stop & Shop is headquartered a couple of towns away from mine. If they had only asked I might have been able to save them a bit of money.

Why it’s important for your customers to say good things about your products AND your company

2009-09-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

Right now there’s an all-out war between Comcast and Verizon FIOS. Even though I have FIOS and like the product (and there is a distinction between the product and the company), I’m going to put my money on Comcast in the long run. Here’s why. Comcast is working on getting people to say good things about the company and their products and Verizon is solely focused on the product.

Recently, I was watching a new Verizon FIOS commercial where the cable guy and the FIOS guy are attending focus groups and the cable guy says something about listening to customers being dumb.

The irony is that this commercial came from Verizon.

My wife recently convinced me to switch from Comcast Cable to Verizon FIOS. I’m a creature of habit so this change wasn’t necessarily welcome but it would save us almost $100/month. Nothing to sneeze at these days.

I told my wife that I wanted to look into it because being in the business of marketing and media, I don’t take these things lightly. First I went to the Verizon FIOS web page and of course they have that nifty little “chat with me” link. So I did. Guess what? It’s not an actual live chat function. It’s a bot. This is frustrating because it keeps circling back and saying “Great, let’s get started.” Even though the stupid bot has never actually answered my question. FIOS. Sacked for a loss.

I did some research online to see what folks were saying about FIOS and in general, people were saying good things about the product, channel selection, interface, multi-room DVR and so on. What they weren’t saying was nice things about Verizon. The consensus from various chatter among consumer feedback web sites was that customer service was abhorrent. FIOS. Sacked for a loss. Again.

I told my wife my findings and said here’s the deal, you have to deal with any and all service issues. She say’s “Done.” Much to her regret.

My wife talks to a sales person at FIOS more than once and is told our savings would be about $100 per month. They tell her we’ll also get a $150 gift card and $300 in savings in gas and groceries. TOUCHDOWN FIOS!

We get FIOS installed. I agree. The product is far superior to Comcast. But there’s a problem. We only get a $50 gift card. My wife begins to deal with customer service. I’ll save you all the gory details but my wife has two full pages of notes and once she started keeping track of how much time she spent dedicated to resolve getting what we were promised she has spent approximately 22 hours on the phone with Verizon. The offer for the $300 in gas and groceries was through a 3^rd party. Funny thing is, no one at Verizon Customer Service knew about it or how to go about signing someone up and even gave my wife an 800 number to call that was disconnected. At one point a customer service person said, “Well you can always go back to cable?” WHAT!?

When you go to the Verizon FIOS web site, there are testimonials about how great FIOS is. The product that is. One of them compares FIOS to a VCR. Really? You don’t say. Although I’ll readily admit and do that the physical product is better. Customer service however is another story and that’s what has the potential to make the product irrelevant.

The greater irony is that while Comcast may need to up its game with making the product better, they’re at least making an effort to listen to the customer.

The bottom line is that Verizon has bigger issues and they just don’t know it yet. Because in the long run while of course it’s important for people to say good things about your products, it’s even more important for people to say good things about your company.