Tech brands prove to be leading "momentum brands" in recent study

EuroRSGC, one of those gigantic, multi-national ad agencies, just released findings on a study conducted to identify the brands that are "most improved" in terms of customer preference over a few years ago. I suppose you could call these brands "momentum" brands (my term, not theirs) because these are the brands that seem to have the best traction with the consumer and are leading the way in strengthening their bond.

If that's the loose definition we'll use for "momentum" then can it be any surprise that the three brands that lead the way (Dell, Google and eBay) have demonstrated an almost obsessive passion about staying current and relevant in their dynamic marketplaces? Google is always fiddling with their search algorithms, eBay just underwent yet another user interface re-design and Dell is nuts about product development and customer service.

It's not just that these companies are "tech" companies, either. AOL, one of the mightiest brands in all of the technology circles, showed up on this study as the brand that was the biggest loser - actually losing ground and showing a kind of backwards momentum.

How could that be? Well consider where AOL has been over the past few years. They've dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising and product development - but they've become very unfocused and poorly defined. Time Warner merged with AOL to become AOLTimeWarner and within two years there seems to be a kind of "de-merger" breaking the two apart again. In the meantime, the AOL brand has become entangled with other noteworthy brands in the TimeWarner family (e.g. Time, CNN and Money) and has tried to pull those brands through its online presence.

Consumers today just don't know who or what AOL is. They've become part of the ether. In fact, I know first hand, that some consumers think AOL is the Internet. They can't distinguish between the two. And how could they? If you read content from CNN on your computer via AOL, how is that really any different from those of us who read CNN content directly from the CNN website?

AOL has done this to themselves and deserve everything they get from it.

But other brands have shown backward momentum in the EuroRSGC study, too. Those brands include the three major airlines (United, Delta and American), two video game makers (Nintendo and Sega), Kmart and Barbie.

Problems with the major airlines is just a flat-out indictment of the industry in general. People's expectations of what the flying experience should be like are still set at pre-9/11 levels or are formed, in more cases than not, through the media where television characters are shown sitting in comfy, first-class cabins with extra wide aisles and pleasant flight attendants that don't have to deal with the "moron in row 17." The problem with this, of course, is that what they show on television can't exist on an airplane. There just isn't enough room on a real plane.

The airlines can probably expect continued backsliding on their brands - but at least there are signs that they've decided to take the battle for the hearts and minds of the consumers to the right place ... the consumer. Automated check-in procedures, reporting on-time arrivals and most importantly, re-building flight schedules to accommodate for take-off delays and longer turns will make flying more predictable and reliable - key factors in re-establishing brand credibility.

Other brands that have lost their mojo - brands like Barbie and Kmart - are suffering from their own desperate times played out in the press. Barbie, in a ridiculous stunt last year, broke up with Ken. Huh? These are dolls, not humans, not celebrities. What was Mattel thinking?

These dolls are more important to people than most celebrities - to millions of women (and some men, I suppose), Barbie and Ken represented a piece of their childhood around which hours of positive memories were built. Who the hell is Mattel to mess with that?

All for the sake of some press? Stupid.

Kmart has suffered from it's own misadventures as well and, unfortunately, probably took a little bit of heat from the exploits of Martha Stewart. More importantly, it can't help they're up against one of the best retail brands in the business: Target.

Huh? Not Wall-Mart?

No. Target. Wall-Mart is a mega brand, no doubt. But the company has the distinct flavor of "empire" about it. You shop there because you "know" the prices are going to be low. At least that's what we've been taught to think.

But walk into a Target and you'll see notes from local school groups thanking them for the field trips. Open a local arts program and you'll see an ad or a thank you to the local Target for supporting their function. Target has found a way to compete head-to-head with the big bully on the block and, I believe, in the long-term has managed to put in deeper roots into their local communities compared to Wall-Mart.

Kmart, on the other hand, is all tangled up in their own underwear (and Martha's, to a degree). How they manage to extract themselves will be interesting to watch. The two best pieces of real estate in the battle for share of mind in this space are already taken. Good luck.

Later.

MediaDailyNews 06-10-04

This information is (c) 2004, Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. If you are interested in receiving news and analysis directly from BCS, please log onto our website (www.brandcentralstation.com) and sign up for our weekly newsletter, the BCS TuesdayReport.

The Internet is growing up.

Don't call me a bandwagon jumper. I'm not. But I do like technology and the possibilities it brings to the table.

I looked on with awe from the sidelines as so many of my friends got into (and burned by) the Internet boom of the 1990's. That bubble rose quickly, lifting everyone to new heights - and probably ruining any sense of perspective for those young people graduating from college when it came to starting salaries - and then burst.

For some reason, we weren't beneficiaries of all that ludicrous spending. Not that we didn't want to be, I just couldn't figure out how what any of these clients wanted fit with what we did. It turns out, in this case, that I was right. Hey, I didn't need the Internet bubble to burst to create my economic crash, I had my own start-up airline investment go down in flames (figuratively, of course).

We had our own website. It was cool and kooky and received awards and praise. But it wasn't much more than a big, online brochure.

When I started Brand Central Station in 2001, I had visions of doing more online. As it's turned out, online has meant, for the most part, via e-mail. And I have some interesting stories to tell as a result - but it hasn't been until recently that I started to figure it out.

See, if you hit me over the head enough times with a stick, I'll eventually figure out what's going on.

I may be in the right place to take advantage of this most recent Internet boom that's just starting to catch fire. There's one big difference between this one and the last, however.

This boom is built on business, not hype.

In the B-to-B Magazine story referenced in this article, companies are finally starting to re-tool their websites to be more responsive to customer needs and facilitate transactions. Hey, people are figuring out how to make money on the web. We knew it would happen, we just weren't sure when.

All we knew is that it wouldn't involve a sock puppet.

Look where the money is getting spent - not on the sexy, flash animations or massive online productions but on basic blocking and tackling issues: improved order capture, web analytics and search engine optimization. This is a good sign for those marketers who operate in the web/online space.

And it should serve as a wake-up call for the rest of us that work in the "more traditional" medias:

Now hear this ... as the Internet matures, it's ability to perform and provide accountability on a granular level is going to challenge all other forms of media. In online marketing, you know how hard every penny works. Newspapers, television, radio and outdoor better start figuring out how to be even more accountable to advertisers than ever before.

Talk about exciting. There is plenty of growth opportunities in the online world. But that growth will be tame compared to the inevitable upheaval that will be coming from the "real world" of mass media who, no doubt, will be caught flat footed by the new challenges presented by their "virtual" cousins.

I can hardly wait.

Later.

Companies plan Web site upgrades

Why do we shoot the messenger when he tells us things are no longer the way they used to be?

This most recent article from Advertising Age is one more example of changes in the media landscape being dismissed by "those who know better." In this particular case, it's the latest MRI study that's being dissed for showing (out of a survey of over 18,000 people) that entertainment magazine US and Middle-of-the-Road title, Weight Watchers are every bit as influential with readers of influence (the wealthiest Americans) as traditional favorites Town & Country and Vanity Fair.

"What's this?" challenges the established agency community. "It can't be. There has to be a flaw." MRI's claims lay siege to decades of easy, common sense assumptions that direct tens of millions of dollars to wealth titles for clients targeting the wealthy.

Or, so it now appears, those who think they're wealthy.

What strikes me as odd is our industry's tendency to not believe the media landscape is changing - even when presented with statistical evidence that it is. The MRI study isn't the first time this kind of industry-wide denial has occurred. In fact, there's an on-going firefight over Neilson's use of people meters and there is still innuendo and consternation over the dramatic fall-off of young men from television viewing.

Young men are only MIA as far as the advertising community is concerned. "They're there somewhere," media experts seem to be saying. "We're just not sure where."

Let's try something counter-intuitive to the advertising and marketing world for once. Let's say these studies are, in fact, right.

What's it all mean?

Well, for starters, it means that people exercise their own free will and aren't quite as predictable as we thought. From my point of view, that's encouraging. It means that eventually reality television will come to an end (and not a moment too soon).

It also means the old marketing strategy of "We'll do what we did last year, just a little more or a little less depending on how budgets work out," is about the dumbest thing a business can do. Face it guys and gals, all marketing activities are getting more challenging.

And if you want to build value in your brand, acquire market share and keep customers longer, buying last year's media with a few value-added bonuses like lunch at Del Monico's ain't gonna cut it. Leave that thinking to Larry Tate and Darren Stevens, kids. You've got work to do.

The only right answer here is to get to know your customer. And that's going to take legwork, improved internal communications and a clear understanding of what matters most to those who matter most to you.

Why are wealthy people admitting to reading US and Weight Watchers? Has anyone thought that with all the stress in the world today, we're looking for escape? And the two most popular forms of escape are Hollywood and food.

Hey, rich people need a getaway, too.

Later.

MRI DATA PAINTS SURPRISING 'WHO READS WHAT' DEMOGRAPHIC PICTURE

Guerilla marketing has to get a monkey off its back.

It was just a matter of time.

Last week's Ad Age officially marked the spot where that marketing specialty known as "guerilla marketing" jumped the shark. We're on the downhill slide now, folks. And as he said in the article, Brian Bolain, national sales manager for Scion, is right in stating: "Once anything becomes to mainstream, our job [as marketers] is to stay one step ahead."

It's not so much that guerilla marketing has become mainstream. That would be a contradiction in the very name of the discipline.

But guerilla marketing has managed to muddy the stream so badly that most consumers can no longer make out the water from the shoreline. Marketing messages have become an intrusion rather than a diversion.

And many consumers are getting pissed.

Is it smart to piss off the masses with intrusive cleverness? Granted, what one upsets one person can be of little to no consequence to another (look at how many stupid people find SPAM to be entertaining). But the consequences of violating convention for the sake of being clever are too great, in my opinion.

I often make the argument to clients that brands are evaluated by the way they act more than what they say. In this case, to bastardize Marshall McLuan, the message is the medium for what really matters to the customer.

So, what to do ...

I'm flattered to be involved in the launch and growth of a new professional marketing group focusing on brand experiences. The Experiential Marketing Forum (EMF) is a dynamic online discussion forum where professionals who work 24/7 (some of them) on breathing life into those promises made by brands share tips and opinions on things that matter to them.

I'm also fortunate enough to know some of the folks who have put this forum together and the plans are to go much bigger very soon. If anyone can get the monkey off the back of guerilla marketing, it's these folks. They know and understand how to tap into a consumer's psyche, recognize what's important and assist the brand in making proper (and most important of all, relevant) connections to that consumer.

Experiential Marketing - remember it. For Scion's Brian Bolain, it is the way to stay one step ahead.

Later.

BATTLE FOR THE STREETS: MARKETERS VS. AD-WEARY CONSUMERS

50% of B2B websites fail. In which half is yours?

How would you feel if you knew half of everything you worked on was a failure? No question that for even those of us with plenty of self-esteem, such a realization would slow us down for at least a minute or two when we got dressed in the morning. But that realization is just now starting to dawn on people who thought a "presence" on the Internet would be good enough.

Please allow me to quote John McLaughlin from the PBS roundtable WRONG!

An electronic brochure, which is what we used to call it, isn't good enough any more. Today's story, a report on how B2B, and more specifically industrial buyers, deal with websites that don't provide required product or pricing information is clear and unambiguous. If they can't find it, these buyers go elsewhere. No phone calls. No e-mails asking "where"? Just flat-out gone.

And why won't these buyers give a supplier a break? Because they're rewarded for sourcing online as it is. Nearly 40% said they saved their companies thousands of dollars by finding lower-priced items online and 85% said they go online as their primary channel for finding suppliers.

So, what should a company do about all this?

The answer is simple, but not inexpensive. Just like with any kind of sales experience or marketing assignment, you have to get to know and understand the needs of the customer. That requires two things many B2B marketers don't have in great supply ... patience and money. You don't have to spend a fortune, but you do have to spend something. Investing the time and the money required to develop a clearer understanding of your customer will help you make smarter marketing decisions down the road and that will help you save money in the long run.

But taking a look requires introspection as well as external discussions. Take a look at your current website statistics and find out where your visitors drop out. If you combine this historical perspective with forward looking, client research, you should be able to find simple ways to improve your online experience and keep visitors longer. The end result, increased online sales.

What if you're a company who doesn't traditionally sell through online channels? Maybe you have distributors or produce goods that require heavy customer involvement? Why spend the time and money on research and improving your website? If you read further into today's article, you'll see why.

Even more than the cost savings associated with finding cheaper suppliers, businesses are realizing significant productivity gains by sourcing and working with suppliers over the Internet. Time savings to the tune of thousands of hours a month. That means improving employee productivity and, in turn, profitability significantly on an annual basis.

If a business is able to save 500 hours a month, as over 20% of the survey respondents claimed, they've essentially added the capacity of three full-time workers at no additional charge. At an average annual wage of $33,000, the company has been able to create an opportunity to drive over $100,000 to the bottom line through cost savings (if they chose not to hire people) or, more importantly, by leveraging that increased capacity into top-line sales of over $1,000,000 (assuming a 10:1 billings to salary ratio).

So how much of your bottom line ROI should you put into remodeling your website? Certainly not all of the customer advantage relates to business for your company. But think of it this way ... if half of your competitors are automatically missing out on sales because their websites don't provide the kind of information buyers really need - where is all that business going? Chances are, if you haven't seen a measurable impact on your top line sales or bottom line profitability that you can attribute to your online presence, you need to consider re-inventing your website.

When it comes to a question of how much, you need to buckle down and make some decisions. It's a level of commitment that many businesses are not comfortable making in the real world, let alone the virtual one. But it's a commitment that has to be made. Just realize that setting the objectives is your job and making sure they get achieved is your agency's.

Later.

BUSINESS WIRE: The Global Leader in News Distribution

Japanese new media company to launch video mobile news service in South Korea

So imagine you're waiting for a train and you're reading an article about your favorite sports star's walk off homer in the big game last night. There's a url at the bottom of the article that allows you to access more information about the story, but you're nowhere near a computer.

In South Korea, all you'll have to do is hold your phone against the code and it will access a video feed of the game's highlights so you can watch it right there. This is the latest technology offered by Ico, one of the leading mobile content providers in Korea and a subsidiary of For-side.com, a top Japanese tech company.

For now, the content delivery is tied through a joint venture with a newspaper, the Daily Focus, but one has to wonder how much longer it will be before video over WAP becomes the standard rather than the exception. And when that happens have we lost one more barrier to our personal space?

The power of connectivity is important to understand. It can make people incredibly efficient, allowing them to multi-task on a level never before imagined. But there's still the issue of contact "quality"- how much do we give up in one-on-one quality time in order to satisfy our need for mass quantities of media?

Ico is aiming to sign up more than 200,000 users, presumably by years' end. In a country like South Korea, where mobile phone penetration is very high and the populations in metro areas are extremely dense, that seems like a very achievable number. But we should watch carefully to see how much "new market" this kind of innovation creates and how much "old" marketshare it takes from rivals like newspaper, radio and television.

Later.

For-side.com Sub Ico to Launch Video-on-demand Mobile News Service in South Korea

Warnings sound on GOOGLE'S impact on trade pubs.

It's gotta be tough running a trade magazine nowadays.

In the old days, being the "bible" of an industry meant you were there first and (usually) didn't have to be much more interesting than the Bible. Age mattered. Roots mattered. Inertia was king.

Then came the Internet and those yahoos like Yahoo! and Google. Next thing you know, they're putting buyers in direct contact with sellers and there was no messy paper, closing deadlines or ink to get in the way. The business of business had moved online and many of those crusty, old industry bibles were caught unaware.

According to this article in Ad Age, Pat Kenealy, the CEO of IDG (a huge tech-trade publisher) warned the attendees at a conference sponsored by American Business Media that Google (and other search competitors like Yahoo!) were horning in on the trade pub business through products like Google AdWords and the like.

What's at stake here is hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in advertising. That's no lie. The B2B segment of the magazine biz has been hurting for the past few years (since the Internet bubble burst) and many of the magazines have been biding their time, cutting expenses and waiting for the rebound. But Kenealy's words should be seen as a bell weather warning:

"There isn't going to be a rebound."

At least not like the kind most of these old dogs have been waiting for. The trade pubs that have reinvented themselves and invested in online content have learned an important lesson. The Internet search engines (e.g. Google) can aggregate but they can't edit. You stand a better chance of survival if you have a clear editorial voice and point of view.

Remarkably enough, there are still hundreds of trade books out there that are nothing more than an amalgam of press releases and customer-supplied case studies. It's lazy publishing and takes less than half a brain to do. That's why it can be automated.

So will Google and Yahoo! kill the trade publication market? No. Definitely not. But those pubs that are going to survive and grow have to have a clear editorial mission.

And all this leads to an interesting conclusion.

If the successful trade books are going to be more editorially focused and work on providing real stories and cover issues of importance, then what does this mean for corporate flacks who have grown accustomed to having their releases run verbatim? It means they'll have to sharpen their pencils and get back to work.

Companies that provide value to their customers make stories worth covering. And it will be up to the corporate PR folks and their outside counselors to find the angles, pitch the stories and make sure their angles match up with the editorial bias of the trade journal covering the industry.

The other advantage to all this, of course, is that in industries where there seems to be a very real difference of opinion, rival trade journals will be able to go mano-a-mano on those issues. Who would have thought that by eating away at the sleepy, fat side of the trade journal biz, the likes of Google and Yahoo! may have found a way to revitalize an industry?

Later.

TRADE PUBLISHERS WARNED OF GOOGLE'S IMPACT ON MAGAZINES

This information is (c) 2004, Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. If you are interested in receiving news and analysis directly from BCS, please log onto our website (www.brandcentralstation.com) and sign up for our weekly newsletter, the BCS TuesdayReport.

My wife ... the activist?

Now, to get thing started, let me be clear about one thing:

My wife is not a prude.

We're not conservative, right-wingers by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, we go to church more Sundays than not and we both vote Republican (usually), but that doesn't make us bible-thumping, jack-booted neoconservatives who see sex and deprivation at every turn and long for the good old days of Eugene McCarthy.

But my wife blew a gasket this weekend at the pool. Memorial Day is supposed to mark the beginning of the summer. Time for the kids to strip down to their swimming trunks and hop in the pool, washing all that nasty education from the last nine months from their minds until late August.

Summertime is supposed to be fun. And when you're five to thirteen years old, like our kids, it's still supposed to be fairly innocent.

That's what my wife and I think, anyway. And that's why when she heard an ad blaring on the radio at the pool that she couldn't take it sitting down. The ad, by the way, was promoting a "male enhancement" product. And the ad ran not once, but three times in one hour.

My wife was not happy.

Nor was I when she told me about it. After all, why can't I find clients who have so much money to waste that they'd blow an entire schedule on Memorial Day, running three ads an hour on a station that didn't even target their core audience? But I digress ...

After enduring the nasty, double entendre the third time, my wife got out of her seat and said something to the lifeguard. Then she said something to the other mothers at the pool. And they all said something to the manager.

Then guess what happened? The manager ordered the lifeguard to change the station and NEVER play that station again.

Ouch.

My wife was still pissed asked two other establishments to ban that station from their in-house PA systems later that day. Both establishments have complied. And now she's even more motivated. Trust me, this station does not want her pissed at them. I know how horrible it can get and they just don't want to go there.

Before dinner last night, my wife told me this story and asked me what else she could do. I told her to write a letter explaining her complaint and the actions she had taken to the station manager and to send a copy of the letter to the local newspaper. I explained that as soon as the station manager realized that he had offended some listeners - and more importantly, was losing audience because of it for ALL of his advertisers - I suspected he would do something about it.

And why copy the newspaper? Because it's important to go public when you attempt to hold the media accountable. More importantly, it's important for people to know that as consumers they have the power to do something when their sensibilities are offended. Frankly, the only thing I find more offensive than bad commercials are consumers who claim they are helpless when it comes to doing anything about them.

My wife, I'm proud to say, is not that kind of consumer. She's actively engaged in the marketplace and taking a principled stand against something she thinks crosses the line. That's her right and, quite frankly, her responsibility as a citizen and consumer in this country.

My wife ... I think I'll keep her.

Later.

This information is (c) 2004, Brand Central Station, all rights reserved. If you are interested in receiving news and analysis directly from BCS, please log onto our website (www.brandcentralstation.com) and sign up for our weekly newsletter, the BCS TuesdayReport.