A Strong Brand Lets You Win with Even Minor Features

A Strong Brand Lets You Win with Even Minor Features


This Honda ad promotes the fact that their mini-van has a vacuum cleaner. I will admit that my immediate reaction when I first saw it was “who would want to make a big deal out of a vacuum cleaner in a car? Of all the meaningful differentiating features an automobile can have, why would they feature this silly little convenience? Because they have put themselves in a position where they can.

The Honda brand is strong. It is a reliable, practical automobile, perfect for families. This new feature is consistent with that fact. It helps support that claim and it separates Hondas from Toyota, Chevy, and other similarly practical brands in doing so.

But it only works because that overall Honda brand is so strong. This add contributes, only in a small way to the overall brand. But the important thing is that it contributes at all. The audience already knows about the Honda reliability. To repeat how reliable it is wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t move things forward either. It would solidify its position by reminding the audience of its family value. There is nothing wrong with doing that. But the previous ads that did solidify its reliable reputation and allow this ad to push in a different, but not counter, direction.

 

Ice Bucket Challenge: Stone Cold Marketing Brilliance

Ice Bucket Challenge: Stone Cold Marketing Brilliance

How many marketing techniques can you fit into a single campaign? The ALS ice bucket challenge might set a new record. And they execute them all so well.

The challenge employs:

  • Celebrity endorsements – You can’t help but see celebrities of all walks of life taking the challenge then calling upon more celebrities to join them. The unpaid endorsements top every other campaign I’ve ever seen….even more than USA for Africa if you can stand to hear “We Are the World” one more time
  • Viral Marketing – The idea that part of the campaign is to call out three people assures a viral thread across the social media universe once it took hold
  • Word of Mouth – You will see your friends endorse the campaign one by one, until you are finally called upon. Try to resist the peer pressure that creates
  • Multi-level (Pyramid) marketing – By creating brand champions out of friends, family and celebrities, it sucks you in to become one too. It is a steamroller of pyramid marketing.
  • Social media – It employs Facebook and twitter better than any campaign ever has. It uses those tools to make money more effectively than anything in recent memory
  • Public Relations – Even the social media illiterate will surely have heard of the campaign and seen clips of it through news, and sports shows, or through friends and relatives who have seen the videos or participated themselves.
  • Branding – We know it by the “Ice Bucket Challenge” We know it is for ALS research. They have made that message part of us now. We don’t even have to think about it.
  • News, excitement and a strong call-to-action – News:0 “Everyone wants to work to cure ALS” Excitement: The visual of a bucket of ice over a person’s head. Call-to-action: The next three named really can’t ignore it.
  • Brand advancement – The consistency and simplicity of every message, each delivered in its own unique way to make sure you view it is astounding.

What do you get when you run such a successful campaign? Last year, through the month of July and August, the ALS Association received about $2.5 million in donations. This year, with the start of the campaign, they are over $79.7 million in donations.

Like just about every other successful campaign you can think of, the success of this campaign is not in its uniqueness. Every one of these techniques, right down to the bucket of ice over the head, has been done to death in about every combination possible. So why has nothing worked this well? What is different here, is that all the techniques were employed according to a strong plan, that made sense and employed great fundamentals.

When you create a campaign, just worry about the fundamentals, and make sure what you decide creatively makes sense according to that plan. Then believe in and commit to it.

 

 

A Lesson on Differentiation

A Lesson on Differentiation

peyton_manning_gatoradeThis is an old marketing gimmick, but I like it as a football fan and a marketer.

First, the best thing Payton Mannning does while not on the field is to act like Payton Manning, even more than being Payton Manning. He enjoys acting more than any athlete I can remember. OK, maybe Ditka likes being Ditka more but for different reasons.

But the marketer in me loves how these spots help differentiate Gatorade from the Monster and Red Bulls of the world. Those energy drinks are heavy on the caffeine. That is where their energy comes from. They are right for dealing with  pulling long nights, and handling managing daily drudgery.

Gatorade is specifically formulated to replenish your body after physical strain. Kind of a minor and boring distinction, but an important one for the brand. And this campaign solves it gloriously.

View the videos on Adfreak. They play several of them there, and Adfreak deserves the credit.

Play the video

Sales Isn’t Marketing, Nor Vice Versa

Sales Isn’t Marketing, Nor Vice Versa

shoutThe difference between sales and marketing is profound, but so frequently ignored. So why do I constantly see business card titles and want ads with a position called Sales/Marketing? You wouldn’t see someone with the title of Human Resources/Research & Development. The two don’t have anything to do with each other any more than marketing and sales do.

In general, marketing includes the activities that bring the audience closer to a brand. Its approach comes from the audience, not the company… NEVER the company. Marketing appeals only to what the audience wants. It doesn’t care what the selling company desires.

On the other hand, sales pushes the company’s output out the door and into the hands of the audience. it is built on sales quotas and a process that aggressively converts a company’s output to dollars. Sales is a group internal to the company. Its perspective comes from the company, and the company’s attitude that what it has produced is worthy of your dollars.

The goal of each is really the same, both positions are legitimate, and the two are at their best when working in concert. However, the mindset of each is in start contrast with the other. If your company has separate marketing and sales departments, just watch their interaction and you will see how fundamentally in conflict they tend to be.

Sales is the necessary, hands-on finish to the sales cycle. Marketing is the support function that allows the sales effort to prioritize and concentrate on prospects that have the greatest potential.

They are different. Don’t ignore either.

Drink Beer: Learn Marketing

Drink Beer: Learn Marketing

beerEverything you need to know about marketing can be learned from beer. I’ll do a late night article some day on what else you can learn from it, but for now lets settle for marketing. Look at beer ads. What has worked, what has not? What has been cancelled, what campaigns do you still see running?

One thing you can see is that the old adage of sex sells is a little simplistic. Lifestyle sells. After all, how sexy is the big, burly Miller Lite beer truck driver? That campaign has brought quick success to a brand that had been dead for years. Oddly enough, it came from the same ad agency that gave us the ill-fated Man Rules.” A cute enough concept, but one that had nothing to do with the beer, and therefore didn’t help sell any. So it got canned…no pun intended.

You’ll notice that Heineken changed their ads recently. They used to boast about it being from Holland. But no one cares about that. Then they started running “All About the Beer” where cool people picked each other up in swanky bars with Heineken instead of martinis. Now people drink it. It showes a desireable lifestyle, which is a benefit to the drinker. It’s Dutch origination was meaningless to the people the brand courted.

By far the best has to come from Corona. Associating your beer with a desirable lifestyle is a technique that the beer companies are constantly having to re-learn. But Corona not only identified itself with the relaxed, Caribbean vacation, it dominates it. It owns the whole lifestyle, not a just particular type of party.

If you think you are weary of those Corona ads, don’t be. You should appreciate the genius instead. Repeating that message in various ways only helps to reinforce that brand. I am sure they are running short of ways to portray it, but the point is selling beer, not entertaining. So I hope they never stop. It is good to see all the ways that campaign succeeds.

Makes me kind of thirsty for a beach and a palm tree.

The Cons Against Internal Marketing

The Cons Against Internal Marketing

megaphoneAs the economy improves (it is improving, isn’t it?) your company is starting to reinvigorate its efforts. That means more marketing programs and more aggressive ones at that. Among your decisions is whether to add an in-house marketing staff, or hire an outside firm.

No offense to those who toil in internal marketing departments, but marketing is handled best outside your organization. The only reason for handling it internally is that the organization can control the department internally. They can determine the staff, and how that staff goes about its business. For most departments (accounting, production, personnel) the advantage is clear. However for marketing, the disadvantage is even more clear.

Most important is the perspective of an inside marketing staff. Like others in the organization, the culture becomes one of pushing the product on the audience. They are privy to the effort that goes into the product, and they care greatly about the organization. In the marketing world, those are bad traits. Only the customer counts in marketing. Only what the customer selfishly likes matters. They couldn’t care less about what you go through in your organization. The only concern to those who decide to buy is what can it do for them. No one inside your organization can appreciate that, simply from their daily perspective from inside your company.

Second, is that innovation comes slowly. Internal marketing falls in love with minor success and latches on to what works well enough. An outside firm is constantly exposed to new approaches. They will find successes with other clients and bring those ideas to you. When you are your own only client, you will rarely see an innovation, and you will never see one succeed. Likewise, you won’t see one fail either, so even if you do try to innovate, you are likely to miss some of the pitfalls that await you.

Organizations shouldn’t look at marketing as an expense the way they look at an HR or accounting department. It can grow your company in a way few other parts of your business can.