Whether it's gizmos, gazpacho or godliness, how you sell is often more important than what you're pushing. And it's certainly more entertaining.
In these columns, here called Brandmusing but originally published as Top of the News for MediaPost's Marketing Daily, I look at marketing within the larger context of the lives we all lead as consumers, citizens and caregivers. I generally decide on a topic at night, sleep on it, then write from 5:00 to 7:30 a.m., providing a daily rush in more ways than one.
Anti-SOPA Campaign: Instant Case History In The New PR
The young pups of the internet have a few tricks to teach the old dogs of the Internet if this week’s grassroots campaign against the pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA in the House) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA in the Senate) are any indication of how to rapidly mobilize a movement against entrenched –- a.k.a., well-funded-– interests.
“The public relations profession, which is where I spent my entire career, is a miserable place -- a hangout for tense, frustrated, insecure people who always expect the worst,” writes Richard Truitt, the former head of Doremus & Co. and Carl Byoir & Associates in a recent Together article. “We’re pleased with whatever success we might enjoy because success comes so infrequently, and when it does materialize the client almost always gets the credit.”
Without fully endorsing that POV –- you secure, un-frustrated and always-availing PR professionals know who you are –- I think it’s fair to say that the “amateurs” who organized the anti-SOPA and PIPA protests this week are enjoying more than a little success.
Cruise Industry Braces For Reaction To Disaster
New Yorkers sometimes speak with more passion than logic but that often gets them right to the heart of the matter. So it was yesterday with a woman disembarking from a cruise who was interviewed on a local radio station. Things like the grounding of the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the coast of Tuscany aren’t supposed to happen “after the Titanic,” she averred.
Indeed, even Theresa Norton Masek, editor-in-chief of Vacation Agent magazine and cruise editor of Travel Pulse, writes that up to the “sickening moment” that she first saw a photo of the half-submerged Costa Concordia, which is owned by a subsidiary of Carnival, on her iPhone, she “would have confidently assured anyone that such a disaster was impossible in this day and age.”
Most consumers aren’t silly enough to think that natural disasters such as hurricanes can be entirely avoided but they have come to expect that certain safety standards are uniform across the industry. When their expectations are vainly and inexcusably violated -- as they apparently were by Capt. Francesco Schettino, as has been widely reported -– the folly of one man rips through the industry like a tsunami.
Paula Deen: Out Of The Lard And Into The Fire
Portly Paula Deen, the doyenne of sumptuous Southern cooking served in heaps, went on the “Today” show yesterday morning and revealed that she’d waited three years to reveal that she has Type 2 diabetes because she wanted to have a plan of action in place before she did. Within a minute of admitting to Al Roker that long-circulating rumors about her health are true, she was referring viewers to Novo Nordisk’s “Diabetes in a New Light” website.
Novo Nordisk markets diabetes drugs such as NovoLog and Victoza, which Deen is promoting directly as a paid spokeswomen for a new marketing campaign that will “help you manage every day of your life,” she says.
Tellingly, the “Bites on Today” story on MSNBC carries the headline “Paula Deen: Diabetes diagnosis won't change how I cook.” When asked whether her show, “Paula’s Best Dishes,” was going to offer different fare, Deen “didn't give a direct answer, instead encouraging viewers to practice moderation,” writes Vidya Rao.
“Here’s the thing, you know, I’ve always encouraged moderation,” Deen tells Roker. “On my show, you know, I share with you all these yummy, fattening recipes, but I tell people 'in moderation... You can have that little piece of pie ...'"
Dan Evins, Nostalgic Founder of Cracker Barrel, Dies at 76
Danny Wood Evins, who saw an opportunity in the late Sixties for “a glorified gas station in which travelers could grab a bite and browse a gift shop, as well as fill up their tank” and turned it into the highly successful Cracker Barrel chain of restaurants, died in his company’s hometown of Lebanon, Tenn., Sunday, Bobby Allyn reports in The Tennessean. He was 76 and had cancer.
Evins, who was working as an oil jobber in a firm started by his grandfather, borrowed $40,000 to open the first outlet in 1969 after Highway 109 connected with Interstate 40.
“Cracker Barrel started as a place where [ordinary] people off the interstate could get their gas pumped by guys in overalls,” his son, Joe, tells Allyn. The name came from Evins’ recollection of country stores in the South where folks played checkers on empty cracker barrels, but it tried to appeal to all sorts of customers –- including well- and high-heeled ones.
“You might have a lady in a fur coat sitting next to a guy in overalls with muddy boots on,” Evins told Bill Carey in Fortunes, Fiddles & Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History. “She’s there because she thought it was quaint. He’s there because he was hungry.”
Everyone Wants A Piece Of The Vast Chinese Market
While musing over the richness of human languages recently, I got to wondering how long it would be until we were all basically speaking the same tongue, and what it might sound like. English? Mandarin? Spanish? In any event, it is to be hoped that peaceful commerce will be the catalyst for the evolution of how we communicate, and some stories in recent days indicate how frenzied the rush to do commerce in the Chinese market has become.
Perhaps too frenzied in more ways than one, in fact, suggests a story by Simon Rabinovitch in Financial Times. You may have seen reports, such as this one in the Los Angeles Times, about angry mobs in Beijing pelting an Apple store after the company said the iPhone 4S had sold out. Well, reports Rabinovitch, “a glitzy mall across the street was bathed in silence, with just a handful of shoppers hunting for bargains.”
It seems that as fast as China is minting Western-style consumers, it can’t keep up with the builders who are throwing up “cavernous” new malls. It’s a calculated risk, dependent somewhat on changing attitudes.
Lowe's Hammered, By Not By All, After Pulling Ad
The headlines in the Los Angeles Times and Ad Age are virtually identical this morning: “Lowe's Faces Backlash After Pulling Ads from TLC's 'All-American Muslim,'” reflecting the growing controversy surrounding the No. 2 home-improvement retailer’s widely reported decision that, in the words of a California state senator, many people see as “"bigoted, shameful, and un-American."
As Karl Greenberg re-reported in yesterday’s “Around the Net in Brand Marketing,” the Florida Family Association had protested Lowe’s advertising on the show, claiming it is “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values." Lowe’s withdrew its advertising while protesting that it did not do so “based solely on the complaints or emails of any one group.”
Spokeswoman Karen Cobb said yesterday that Lowe's has a "long-standing commitment" to diversity and pulled the ads only after the show became "a lightning rod for people to voice complaints from a variety of perspectives." Cobb tells the LA Times’ Shan Li in an email that other companies had also removed their ads from the show. A spokesperson for the Discovery Network and TLC Network declined to comment on that assertion, emailing, “we stand behind the show … and we're happy the show has strong advertising support."
A Couple of Whiffs for Amazon?
There’s a quote floating around that basically says that sluggers who take big swings strike out more often than singles hitters. One of the heavy hitters in the digital ballpark, Amazon, has been having a bad game.
The New York Times’ David Streitfeld reports this morning that the Kindle Fire is being lambasted by some reviewers on its own website, as well as influential outside techies such as usability expert Jakob Nielsen.
Among the problems cited are: “No external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device…. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.”
That might be enough to put most consumer products on the bench. “But as a range of retailers and tech firms could tell you,” Streitfeld writes, “it would be foolish to underestimate Amazon.”
The product does carry an average of four stars from more than 4,700 reviews, has nearly 9,000 “likes” and the online retailer claims on its home page this morning that it is the “#1 most-gifted product on Amazon.” (Do you “gift” in your family? Just curious.) Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster points out that 13% of the naysayers give the product a mere one star but says the figure has held steady since the product’s launch and predicts that its attractive price compared to the iPad will make it a winner in the long run.
Twitter, Wendy's Both Breaking News
The headline above is a mere 35 characters. Meaning what? You got it. Meaning that it doesn’t take much to entice us to learn more about something that catches our fancy. Not only that, but I have 105 more characters at my disposal to get really verbose if I want to tweet the information. Amazing how this app, which makes headline writers of us all, has so quickly changed the way we think about things.
The winner of Twitter's Golden Tweet Award for the most retweeted tweet of the year is Wendy’s, we learned yesterday. Its Father’s Day message -- "RT for a good cause. Each Retweet sends 50¢ to help kids in foster care #TreatItFwd” -- reportedly raised more than $50,000 for foster children, a pet cause of its late founder, Dave Thomas.
“In a year when the entertainment world gave consumers and media pundits plenty to tweet about, including Charlie Sheen’s eyebrow-raising antics and Ashton Kutcher’s fumble over the Penn State scandal, it was an advertisement from the burger chain that was the most retweeted tweet of the year,” blogs the Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica.
Hard-boiled marketer that you are, you might be tempted to ask if the feel-good campaign actually resulted in more than enhancing Wendy’s goodwill. CNBC technology contributor Natali Morris wonders the same thing. “Subliminal advertising does seem rather powerful to me and I find myself wanting a cheeseburger as I click through to Wendy's Twitter page but I am four months pregnant so I might not count,” she blogs.
Netflix' Hastings Wants Us To Look at the Big Picture
Problems? What problems? Did you see a problem around here?
“To hear Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tell it,” writes the AP’s Michael Liedtke, “the bone-headed decisions that have dragged down the Internet's leading video subscription service during the past five months eventually will be forgotten like a bad movie made by a great film director.”
Actually, Liedtke allows, Hastings has been “humbled and surprised” by customers’ reactions –- not to mention the loss of 75% of the value of his company –- to his strategy of splitting the mail-rental and streaming services into two separate plans and drastically raising prices, followed by a name change that was later recanted. He also threw out some “self-deprecating humor” at a UBS AG media and communications conference in New York Tuesday. But in the end, he believes that his company will prevail.
"If you fundamentally believe Internet video will change the world in 20 years, we are the leading play on that basis," Hastings boasted. He quickly added a caveat: "As long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot anymore."
P&G Sells PUR, Keeps Global Clean Water Program
The PR Newswire headline reads: “Helen of Troy Limited Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire PUR Business from The Procter & Gamble Company.” Cincinnati.com, the website of P&G’s hometown Cincinnati Enquirer, trumpets the more important story: “P&G Brands Water Purifier.”
The purifier P&G is putting its name on is not a typical commercial product, however. The product that will carry the didactic label “P&G Purifier of Water” is a packet of powder developed by P&G in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that “enable[s] people anywhere in the world to purify dirty water in a simpler, more affordable and convenient way,” according to the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program (CSDW) website. CDSW distributes the product at cost to governments in need.
Based on technology similar to municipal water systems in developed countries, the powder removes pathogenic microorganisms and suspended matter, making contaminated water clean.
“P&G remains committed to the life-saving work we do through our Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to provide clean drinking water to countries throughout the world,” says chairman and CEO Bob McDonald. “As a natural extension of that commitment, we are rebranding the water purification packets with a new P&G logo, visibly standing behind a product that embodies our purpose, to touch and improve lives.”
Kraft Names Who Will Move Its Cheeses (And All Else)
Kraft Foods yesterday formally revealed that current CEO Irene Rosenfeld, 58, will head up its $31 billion global snacks business, and Kraft North America president Anthony Vernon, 55, will run the $17 billion North American grocery business when the company bifurcates next year, Reuters reports.
“The appointments of two internal candidates -- which was widely expected -- could signal that the two new companies do not plan to deviate much from Kraft's ongoing aggressive marketing makeover, which has included multiple ad-agency shifts and more aggressive spending,” E.J. Schultz observes in Ad Age.
Kraft also named John Cahill, 54, currently a partner at private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, as non-executive chairman of the North American grocery company. Cahill will “initially” serve as executive chairman when he joins the company in January, however, “reflecting the tremendous effort required to launch and transition to a public company,” according to a company statement.
"Irene, John and Tony are three of the finest executives in business today," says Mark Ketchum, lead director of Kraft’s board of directors. "Their commitment to shareholder value, passion for brands and focus on sound financial management give the board great confidence in the future of the snacks and grocery companies."
Xbox Takes Command In Living Room Voice Recognition
What’s the first thought that comes to mind when you read this headline from this morning’s New York Times: “Xbox Live Challenges Cable Box”? If you’re like me, it’s “Wow, Siri, get me my nickel-and-diming cable provider on the phone and cancel.”
But it’s all still a fantasy at this point –- including my employment of Apple’s Siri as a personal assistant –- as it turns out. The cable set-top box is only going to become “less relevant,” Nick Wingfield and Brian Stelter report -- contingent, of course, on your making the Xbox, and competitors to come, more relevant.
“People will still need to pay the cable providers to get channels through the Xbox. They will also have to pay the roughly $60 a year Microsoft typically charges for a premier membership to Xbox Live,” they write. “And the Xbox won’t be a true substitute for everything viewers can get through their cable boxes because content rights will have to be negotiated for some shows before they can be watched through the console.”
Although you’ll be able to get, for example, the Verizon FiOS service through Xbox, it’s not the robust version that streams though the cable box that has the antiquated looks of the VHS tape deck it sits next to on the shelf. For now, at least, it only delivers 26 channels of programming.
Google, Amazon Back In Frenemy Territory
Google is testing a service that would compete with Amazon.com by allowing consumers to order goods from local stores and the branches of national retailers (Macy’s, Gap and Office Max, for example) and have them delivered to homes and offices by the next day. The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati and Stu Woo broke the story yesterday. Both Google and Amazon refused to comment on the report.
“Google doesn't plan to sell items directly to consumers,” Efrati and Woo were told by a person familiar with the matter. “Instead, it will meld its search engine's product-search feature, which directs shoppers to participating retail websites, with a new quick-shipping service that Google will oversee.”
The service “would escalate Google's budding rivalry with Amazon, which has been riding the success of its $79-a-year Amazon Prime program,” the story reports. In a sidebar blog, Efrati lays out the intrigued-filled details of the two online behemoths frenemy relationship over the years.
Amazon has been one of the largest purchasers of Google AdWords since its inception in 2002 -– so much so that it devised a system of having individual employees open accounts to bid on keywords, working around the limits Google had placed on the number of search terms any one company could have in its inventory. Google caught on, though, and worked out a deal.
Getting Real About Your Food Labels
If a marketing genius were to come up with a food that was fat-free, sugar-free, salt-free, gluten-free, organic and incredibly good for you, I ask nutritionist Bonnie Taub-Dix, what would it taste like?
"Sounds like water," she replies. "Maybe a cup of herbal tea, if you're lucky."
The author of Read It Before You Eat It: How to Decode Food Labels and Make the Healthiest Choice Every Time is very concerned about how we eat. But she's a self-described "realist" about how to convince people to make better choices, not an "idealist." Nor is the advisor to Campbell Soup Co. an ideologue at war with the food industry.
"There's a tendency for people to make black-and-white statements about food," she says. "Don't eat processed foods. You know what? Most of the foods that people in this country are eating are processed."
Sure, in an ideal world, we might be willing to support small-scale local farmers who are able to grow anything we want, from kiwis to kale, year-round in pesticide-free fields and greenhouses. Kids would scarf up spinach with the abandon they munch chips.
'Twas A Bad Week To Be A Consumer
This is supposed to be the golden age of the consumer, isn't it? We have options. We rule. Let the marketer who is not responsive to our needs wither on the social networks. Then why do I sometimes get the feeling that it's all an illusion and that the big guys will just continue on in their mindless, lumbering ways?
There's an athletic shoe I like, the New Balance 373. I did an online search for it on my Firefox browser and found it going for a great price at Sears -- $34.95. They threw in free shipping, too. Clicked to check out. Nothing. Clicked again. Didn't get anywhere. After a few more attempts, I switched to Safari and the transaction went through uneventfully.
The shoes arrived and I liked the deal so much I decided to order another pair. Same problem with Firefox. I emailed Sears in the spirit of "I'd really like to see you survive and it doesn't help if there's a bug in the e-com component of a browser with about a quarter of the market." Received a "We are listening to what you have to say!" email and guess what? The shopping cart is all hunky-dory this morning. I must say that I'm surprised given my further adventures with employees who seemed to care not a whit about the customer experience.
Circle Or Prophecy: Howard Schultz' Vision Prevails
A prima facie case for the genius of Howard Schultz can be found in the March 21 issue of the "new" Newsweek in which said Schultz is given four pages to tell us what a genius he has been by going against conventional wisdom time and again. Headlined "How Starbucks Got Its Mojo Back," the article is excerpted from his new book written with Joanne Gordon: Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul.
I enjoyed the piece, but realized after re-reading it that there really wasn't anything in it -- except perhaps for some details like the many ways the company tried to deal with warmed-up cheeses that were stinkin' up the joint -- that I didn't already know. Whenever Starbucks makes a major move recently, there always seems to be a very informed story somewhere telling us precisely what its strategy is.
In fact, Schultz has been quite openly letting us know what he's going to do ("Howard Schultz Spills the Beans on His Plans To Save the Company He Founded," Fortune, 1/18/08) and why he is doing it ("Starbucks' Schultz Has Positive Message Of Recovery" The Guardian, 1/21/10).
When It Comes To Energy Choices, Let's Stop The Spin
I saw a Daily Beast headline the other day -- "Most Vulnerable U.S. Nuclear Plants" -- and immediately figured that Indian Point in Buchanan, N.Y., would be on it. I routinely hear test sirens from the facility, which is located fewer than nine miles from our getaway cottage on a dirt road off a dirt road used during the Revolution and not exactly an evacuation route built for SUVs and minivans. Those sirens will sound more ominous from now on.
The reporters for the story ranked Indian Point, which has two reactors, as the most vulnerable of all 65 nuclear facilities in the U.S. based on safety records, the potential for natural disaster and the size of the nearby population. The fact that 17.5 million people live within a 50-mile radius no doubt has a lot to do with its placement at the top of the heap.
I was never one to worry much about the dangers of nuclear reactors. I figured that nuclear power was a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, and that we'd eventually figure out a way to dispose of the waste safely. Oh, and that the engineers and other grown-ups, by and large, had things under control despite the incidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Three Mile Island in 1979. I'd also like to believe that it's not as easy to falsify safety records in the U.S. as it apparently has been in Japan.
Why Is HarperCollins Picking On Libraries?
It's not every day that you get to refer to a story where someone uses a great word like "gobsmacked" but that's the case this morning. What does Philadelphia librarian Anne Silvers Lee say her colleague and she are so astonished about? A decision by HarperCollins to limit the number of times an e-book can be checked out to 26.
"We want e-books in our collections, our customers are telling us they want e-books, so I want to be able to get e-books from all the publishers," she tells the New York Times' Julie Bosman. "I also need to do it in a way that is not going to be exorbitantly expensive."
The American Library Association released a statement yesterday saying that restrictions on library e-book lending threaten access to information. It also points out that "libraries have proven to be powerful marketing tools for e-books," citing a white paper by library e-book distributor OverDrive that attributes the runaway success of the paperback version of Eat, Pray, Love to its having "changed hands thousands of times through book clubs and libraries, scoring rave reviews and stirring up chatter among leading library blogs."
Will Public Demand More Than 'Oops, Sorry About That'?
Pete Thamel last week keyed an analysis of the ethical miasma that seems to pervade collegiate sports to an announcement that Ohio State was suspending its football coach for the first two games of next season after finding that he did not disclose information about potential NCAA violations by some of his knuckleheaded players. Jim Tressel will also lose $250,000 of his salary to fines, leaving him a measly $3.75 million for the year's work.
The announcement came at an inconvenient time for Tressel as he had to interrupt a tour for his new book, Life Promises for Success: Promises From God on Achieving Your Best.
"In a season when scandals, investigations and benefits from agents have defined and tarnished college athletics, Tressel's book tour offers a reminder of the real manual for success -- find ways around NCAA rules, enter gray areas, apologize when you get caught and move on," Thamel pointed out in the New York Times.
As I read the piece, I could not help but be reminded of the pharmaceutical industry. Time after time, it seems, we read about seemingly severe fines being imposed for marketing transgressions of one sort or another. But when you view those against the perspective of the profits the companies made, it's usually just a drop in the exchequer.
'Next They'll Tell Us Junk Food Is Good For Us' Syndrome
It's not going to happen overnight but putting "No Fat" on your label could become more of a liability than a plus once new scientific thinking hits the mainstream (if the public doesn't throw up its collective hands first and say, "Next they'll be telling us that nicotine cures leukemia.")
It really is hard for us consumers to keep up with the current thinking about nutrition, and even when we think we are, we're not always sure of the whys and wherefores. I recently bought a container of Greek yoghurt, for example, having read about its benefits in several places. My wife saw it in the fridge.
"Now I know why people like this Greek yoghurt. It's filled with fat," she said. "It's like cream."
I was caught off guard; she's usually up on these things. "But it's supposed to be good for you" was all I could stammer, knowing I'd read something recently somewhere about fat not being all that bad. A couple of days later, it occurred to me what it was.
In Fit Soul, Fit Body, authors Brant Secunda and Mark Allen compile a list of the "10 Worst Dietary Habits." It doesn't take a vegan foodie with a Ph.D. in biochemistry to appreciate most of the items on the list: 1. Anything high in white, refined sugar; 4. Anything deep fried; 10. Excess alcohol. But right in the No. 5 position was something that made me stop: Nonfat desserts.