The old advertising jingle. I do miss it--really. Think about some of those great old jingles of your youth, and how they still stick in your mind: "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way." (Burger King) "Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener." Even short one-liners set to music have an impact: if I were to say "Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" I'm certain many folks could sing it back to me with the right melody.
What is the power of the jingle? It started in the pre-television days of radio advertising. Without a visual medium to demonstrate the attributes of a brand that you just had to have in your home, jingles played on another key sense - sound - and the lasting impression that sound can make.
One of my favorite-ever episodes of "Cheers" was the one where Rebecca decides to start up an advertising program because their cross-town competitors, Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, has been advertising heavily. She goes to an advertising agency and tells them of her need, and they bring in a heavy-hitting music composer. She advises that she only has $200 to spend, so they roll in Sy Flembeck, a past-his-prime bar-room piano player who composes every ad jingle to the tune of "Old MacDonald (E-I-E-I-O)".
When you think of the other ways in which music impacts our mood and our memory, it makes a great case for re-incorporating this into advertising. The music each of us tends to gravitate to is whatever we listened to in late high school and college. A given song can evoke a certain feeling and perhaps even a specific time, place and person. Think also about movie and television show soundtracks: the producers of "Forrest Gump" chose some songs that were spot on with the time and situations of the movie's scenes.
The television show "ER" was known for its music selection: one of the songs that has always struck a deep emotional chord with me is Santana's "Samba Pa Ti". In the first episode in which the character Lucy Knight appears, she has to inform a wife of her husband's terminal condition, and as she walks away, that song comes on in the background. On the episode in which Lucy is stabbed to death by a schizophrenic patient, Chuny goes across to the diner to inform her colleagues that Lucy has died, and that song is playing once again. I think it is a brilliant piece of music mastery, even if not original composition, and is one thing that made "ER" stand out for me and for many.
What advertising jingles are etched on your memory? Do you still play them back in your mind when you think of a certain brand?
Innovation. A new method, product or idea. "Nova" is the Latin root word of "new".
Most studies seem to show that 85-90% of new consumer products fail. Why? No doubt it's a combination of things: overestimated demand, lack of differentiation from current products or services, an egotistical marketer who won't stop pushing (!!). We as marketers too often lose sight of the core driver of a successful new product introduction: it has to fulfill some un-met consumer need.
Let's look at some the most successful innovations of the past several years, and why:
- The iPod brought us compact, portable, customizable music, improving upon portable CD or casette players that were somewhat customizable (remember mix tapes?), but not so easily. Note that the iPod wasn't the first MP3 player on the market, so Apple clearly benefited from being a follower rather than a first mover.
- The Keurig coffee brewer enabled us to brew just what we want, when we want, cup by cup. You want french roast, your wife wants decaf green tea? Done. Again, there were other capsule- or pod-based brewers on the market already, but Keurig enhanced the consistency and expanded the offering with several known, branded options to choose from.
- The Swiffer made it easy to dust, sweep and mop. No dustpan, no bucket, no feather-duster to make you sneeze.
What do each of these successful new products have in common? They improved what was currently available in their respective categories by bringing items that had a very short learning curve for most everyone, and were almost infinitely customizable. What else? Their manufacturers executed on the concepts and made them happen.
The examples above are all items that did come to market and were successful, and each of them has continued to innovate and extend their product lines. But what about some great ideas that never (or barely) made it to market?
- Rumor has it, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based manufacturer of adhesives, filters and other items (any guesses?!) developed a floor cleaning system based on interchangeable, disposable components. They apparently (or allegedly) couldn't figure out how to bring it to market, and were beat to the punch by not just one competitor product but TWO of them: P&G's Swiffer and Clorox's ReadyMop.
- DeLorean Motor Corporation designed a sleek, brushed stainless steel performance automobile with gull wing doors. Despite the high-profile buzz created when the vehicle starred in the "Back to the Future" movie franchise, the car never took off. Why? There were many issues, but one of the original premises of John DeLorean's design was a unibody plastic-fiberglass frame that would need no metal and thus ease manufacturing and save weight. DMC was under such pressure to get cars to market, that they began production without having finalized the unibody frame, and in fact never utilized that component. Poor execution.
What will make the difference in your innovation? Are you certain that it will fulfill and un-met need? Have you checked with any consumers beyond those at your kitchen table? Are you certain you have the team and resources to make it happen, and a place to sell it? Or, will it end up just another entry on your list of cool ideas?
For many marketers, Loyalty is the holy grail. We've all heard it for a long time--at work, in business school, in publications about marketing. Yet, somewhere along the way we as marketers seem to have lost sight of just what loyalty is and what it should mean to a brand.
What does 'loyal' mean? Most sources I found defined it as something along the lines of "giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution." That's pretty clear; so far, so good.
Most marketing academics define 'loyalty' by a customer or consumer's share of requirements (SOR). That is, if I buy 10 bottles of soda a week, then that is 100% of my requirements. Each category and brand has its own idea of what share of requirements defines a loyal user. If I buy Coca-Cola 5 out of those 10 bottles, then Coke provides an 50% SOR. That's pretty darned loyal, if you include all possible carbonated soft drinks in the consideration set. However, if you look at only full-calorie colas as the consideration set, then it's about what you might expect given that there's really just Coke and Pepsi. RC Cola has, sadly, all but disappeared.
I've always looked at the consumer buying process as having four phases:
Awareness - where the consumer takes notice of your brand in the grocery aisle, or via advertising or word-of-mouth.
Trial - where the consumer finds your product or brand's benefits compelling enough to spend some of their money and try it. Coupons or similar incentives work well here, especially if their already buying a competitor brand.
Repeat - where their first trial experience was a good one, and they will try you again now that they have some expectation of what your product will deliver.
Loyalty - where the consumer has replaced their previous preferred brand(s) in the category with yours, and you provide the largest SOR.
So, am I loyal because I fly Delta nearly every flight I can? Or is it simply that they have >80% share of the Minneapolis-St. Paul market with non-stop flights to most major cities?
Am I loyal because I go to Caribou more than Starbucks, or is it that there's a Caribou location on the right-hand side of my morning commute and it has a drive-through?
Am I loyal because I always buy adidas Response training shoes, or do I have tough-to-fit feet and I find it best to go with what I know?
None of these is easy to answer. In each case, the share of requirements test would say that yes, I'm loyal to Delta, Caribou and adidas. However, it doesn't measure any kind of emotional attachment I might have to any of them. Some brands carry that extreme emotional connection for some consumers--think about Harley-Davidson, Mountain Dew, even Slim Jim, where people have had the brand's logo tatooed on their bodies. That's loyalty. That's commitment.
It's easy to sign up for the frequency program of every airline, hotel and car company you travel with, or every retailer you shop. They all seem to be very willing to give up some pretty hefty points for sign-up and for credit cards. But will that grab you, pull you in and lead you to buy more from them, more often? Or will they just be more cards in your wallet, or bar-code fobs on your key chain?
The thing about experience is that it is far from linear--in fact, the only thing linear about it is time, and then only if you're graphing it. There's broad experience and there's deep experience, and the more you get of each, the stronger your overall capability becomes--as long as you learn from both your successes and your failures.
I've spent my entire career in marketing and sales, and I love it. The thing about marketing is that every life experience you've ever had provides you with something you can bring to your work, because it's really just about what makes people tick: what turns them on, what turns them off. Think about the last time you shopped at the grocery store. Retailers have been doing endcap promotions since before I was born. Why? Because they've figured out that by featuring a product in such a spotlight location, more shoppers will buy more units of whatever it is--whether or not it's at a discounted price, and there's plenty of data that backs it up!
Anyone who's ever bought anything or seen an advertisement has some marketing opinion. However, there is both an art and a science to marketing that you simply can't gain by being a consumer, or studying it, or reading about it. So why, then, do many major corporations continue to regard marketing as a shared service, an operational enhancement, or a corporate rotation for developing executives? I think that mutual understanding is a great thing, and cross-functional exposure benefits the whole organization.
I have the capacity to do reasonably complex arithmetic in my head, and the aptitude to envision most food manufacturing and packaging processes. However, that plus an MBA don't qualify me to be a controller or an operations director, and few companies would even dream of hiring me for such a role. I've seen too many times where the organization rotates someone into marketing leadership who is less experienced and skilled than even the junior marketing staff, and it inevitably leads to less than best-in-class marketing as well as drained team morale.
Marketing involves knowing your consumer and your distribution channel, and thus is closely tied to corporate strategy. It must be core to a corporation's culture, and the key driver of planning and business models. As we emerge from this global recession, I believe we will find that the companies that recover quickest and strongest, are those that invested in marketing even during these tough times--in consumer insights, product development, integrated communications and the People that know how do guide them and leverage the results.
The old advertising jingle. I do miss it--really. Think about some of those great old jingles of your youth, and how they still stick in your mind: "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way." (Burger King) "Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener." Even short one-liners set to music have an impact: if I were to say "Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" I'm certain many folks could sing it back to me with the right melody.
