One of the best account planners in the business, Kevin is an Ad Guy who brings experience, passion and insight to every initiative. He first joined the firm in 1994, spent five years on Madison Avenue, then returned to Riggs Partners in 2004.
I read Mike Carlson’s whitepaper, “The Curse of Sterile Advertising,” last week before a client meeting, and its simple premise has stuck with me since. Great marketing is based on keen empathy with the target audience.
In my last blog post, I speculated that The Great Recession’s lackluster recovery has spawned the Great Insecurity. During insecure times, nothing feels better to your customer than empathy.
The campaign I presented yesterday offers hardworking parents a much-needed break. It features an enticing promotion, and that’s great, but not always necessary. What we know is that even the smallest gesture is appreciated. Monday, the fellow who cuts my hair knocked $5 off my bill because he was late and I waited on him. Instead of being put out, I’m now more loyal than before.
My local Chick-fil-A sends a cashier outside to take orders when the drive through lane is long. Whether or not this speeds things up is beside the point. Chick-fil-A understands that people drive through because they are in a hurry, so they provide attention quickly, and look both responsive and caring in the bargain.
People have less time and money now than ever before. Take a moment to think how your brand can help. And remember, it doesn’t take much.
Are things getting better? It’s hard to tell. Advertising is selling again. TV and radio stations have little to no inventory. Meanwhile, the jobs picture remains bleak and the stock market is sideways at best.
If “The Great Recession” has waned, I suggest that “The Great Insecurity” has begun.
Americans are, quite literally, in the process of settling a steep debt. Household budgets remain tight. Even the unscathed among us now live with a steady trepidation that things could get bad in a hurry. There is that little mess in Greece that keeps lingering. And while household debt is being slowly retired, rising government debt is the source of debate threatening to stall the world’s economy.
Given this backdrop, it’s understandable that charitable giving has taken a beating. Charitable giving requires some “disposable income,” and our current climate has made every household dollar essential. People need to feel secure to give.
As a result, nonprofits need to closely examine messaging. Many are tempted to amp up the cause, the direness of need. This is a mistake. Consumers have cause fatigue, and they tune out what seems beyond their control.
Success lies in a highly distilled message that states in the simplest possible terms why your nonprofit exists. Done well, it should also be positive.
The American Cancer Society’s “Birthdays” campaign hits the perfect note. Sure, star power helps, but the message is the organization’s mission, communicated in the most positive manner possible. It speaks to consumers without the desperation to which so many causes resort.
With our somewhat tepid economic recovery, consumers are continuing to reconsider every purchase and pattern. To that end, I suggest a shift in mentality and language from “leading brand” to “incumbent brand.” As people continue to trade-down and flock to house brands, incumbent brands have to justify their customers’ ongoing preference.
One way to do this is through corporate social responsibility.
Maxwell House’s “Drops of Good” campaign highlights their commitment to building stronger communities. The program, which concludes later this month, has had 1.9 million people participate thus far. Maxwell House has localized a national brand, and given coffee drinkers a reason to continue to choose Maxwell House over less expensive alternatives.
Nonprofits have much to learn from incumbent brands. Many fall into the trap of a marketing strategy solely based on direness of need. The point is that you are helping. People follow organizations that make an impact, not organizations that are causes unto themselves.
The housing bubble, gold at $1,545 an ounce and silly bandz have one thing in common. All seem completely reasonable in the moment.
I see trends as momentarily curious absurdities just prior to obsolescence. This brings me to Groupon. Billion dollar rumors abound. I cry foul.
From the consumer’s point of view, the group coupon trend is a win. At the same time, businesses are forgoing up to 50 percent of their sales for the volume Groupon and Living Social can deliver. Working twice as hard for half as much money? It doesn’t make good business sense to me.
If this equation yielded consumer trial, followed by a long-term relationship with a brand, it would be different. Yet Groupon and its peers are breeding a consumer who demands extreme discounting — one that will merely move from one discount to the next.
I met with a restaurant owner last week who lost $1,200 after implementing a group coupon tactic. It doesn’t have to be this way. Incenting trial through discounts and creating a sense of urgency are worthy goals. Just don’t give away half your sales in the bargain.
Take a cue from my local garden center. I came home Friday afternoon to find a flier under my doorknocker.
This flier gives the first 20 customers a $10 certificate.
It’s nice to see someone getting it right.
Know your customer: The garden center had delivered to my address before.
Establish urgency: I wanted to be one of the first twenty customers who got a discount.
Drive preference: Why would I go to another garden center when I had the possibility of a discount at this particular one?
Be impossible to ignore: I was forced to interact with the promotion. It was under my doorknocker.
Get people in the door: Even if I went and didn’t receive the discount, I would still be in the store ready to shop.
Make a sensible investment: The first 20 customers got $10 off. That’s $200 in merchandise, or $100 out-of-pocket for the store’s owner, not 50 percent of the store’s total day’s sales.
What a welcome dose of smart marketing amidst the chaos of current trends.
A recent Pew Research Center study found that 1 in 3 Americans doesn’t know his neighbors.
As suburbs sprawled, front porches disappeared and screened porches morphed into Florida rooms. Sidewalk parking — heck, sidewalks in general — disappeared, as carports became three-car garages. It’s today’s reality: In our communication-starved society, there’s little hope of neighborly dialogue between the garage and the kitchen’s granite topped island.
Enter the great reboot of the American dream. For the first time since 1950 (when the average size home was a mere 983 square feet), houses are getting smaller. Many people now prefer to rent rather than own. Security has replaced more as the American ideal. So how has this impacted marketing?
Facebook is the current decade’s front porch.
Put simply, people are starved for human connection. On Facebook, people can see you sitting right there, just watching the world go by and waiting for a friendly visit. Human connection via IM, but connection nonetheless.
You can see it playing out on TV as well. Lay’s potato chips wants us to “know the farmers.”
A far cry conceptually from “No one can eat just one.”
California Milk and Cheese is adopting a similar strategy.
Again, the shift is pronounced. “Got milk,” the dairy association’s legendary campaign, focused on the consumer. Now the focus is on the integrity of the product.
What’s key is realizing that relevance is no longer enough. Now there must be value and values – even for a potato chip. Sustainability, community investment and charity aren’t ancillary messages anymore. And the perfect place to parade them is right in front of today’s virtual front porch.
All around, I see budding social responsibility efforts. It’s one of the positive outcomes of the Great Recession, and one I believe will last.
My oxford shirt no longer lines the pockets of the folks at Brooks Brothers, it also supports St. Jude’s Children’s hospital. Outback Steakhouse just launched a “Red, White and Bloomin’” menu. Order from it during March and all proceeds will benefit Operation Homefront, a nonprofit offering emergency and morale assistance for US troops and their families. Riggs Partners is working with Moe’s Southwest Grill on a special $1.99 burrito day, with $1 for every burrito sold on April 20th benefiting the Medical College of Georgia’s children’s hospital.
While these efforts seem tailor-made for retailers, business-to-business and corporate marketers needn’t be sidelined.
Jim Rogers, Duke Energy’s visionary CEO, recently called his alternative energy plant construction “purpose driven capitalism.” Rogers has long been a proponent of seemingly counter-intuitive initiatives such as the Alliance to Save Energy. He sees green power as the way his company, soon to be the largest utility in the nation; will help to solve the growing carbon emissions crisis.
In today’s business climate, every business, even a regulated monopoly, would be smart to align itself with worthwhile objectives. In doing so, they’ll be moving toward the type of brand affinity that will buoy them against future market turbulence.
In watching the Oscars Sunday evening, I was struck by the best ad I’ve seen since the recession began. It was for Kraft’s Miracle Whip. Packaged goods seem an unlikely source of brand inspiration, but this one excels as a source of smarts for every brand.
In this struggling economy, there is great desire to exclude no one by appealing to everyone. Given shrinking consumer spending, that’s understandable. Yet it’s a mistake. And one well avoided by Miracle Whip.
Miracle Whip comes right out and says: “We’re not for everyone.” How refreshing. How smart.
In doing so, Miracle Whip has succeeded in creating great affinity with its core customer, and no doubt increasing their frequency of purchase. There’s much to learn here, not from mayonnaise, or salad dressing even, but from a market leader willing to exclude an audience in order to increase its resonance with a more receptive one.
Check out Miracle Whip’s: “What Side Are You On” site, a wonderful companion to further engage their brand’s champions.
The long New Year’s weekend included the luxury of a cold, rainy Saturday, one that offered some guilt-free lounging in front of the television. Some observations:
Lots of people have a structured settlement and need cash now.
Everything is on sale.
A dozen or more spokespeople used to wear huge pants.
OK, so numbers two and three are seasonal, but commercials across the board seemed way out of step with prevailing sentiment.
In their book, Spend Shift, John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio discuss the radical realignment of sentiment and behavior following the Great Recession. Here are some things to keep in mind:
55% of Americans have adjusted their lives to seek greater balance and fulfillment
36% are Southerners
78% are happier with a more “down to basics” lifestyle
The values-led movement cuts across socio-economic and generational lines. What unites them is “a common sense of optimism and newfound purpose.” Not sales, markdowns or the size of a spokesperson’s old pants, but optimism.
It’s time to focus marketing messages on what’s meaningful to the majority of Americans. Let’s begin this year by understanding the need for more fair weather messaging.
Marketing a cause should be an easy sell. There’s a problem, and here’s an organization dedicated to solving it. Act now. Yet it’s not that simple.
In fact, simplicity, and a serious lack of it, is often the problem.
Selling a product is often comparatively easy because it’s so tangible. As marketers, we’re even trained to add dimension by assigning brand attributes and emotion to a product. With regard to causes, this is a trap.
We recently completed a project for Columbia’s Gills Creek Watershed Association. The association wanted a modest increase in its $15 memberships. Being a university town, there’s no shortage of conservation-committed individuals in Columbia. So that task at hand seemed easily obtainable, only we had a few obstacles:
People aren’t aware of the organization
People don’t know where Gills Creek is
People don’t understand what a watershed is
Add to that the fact that the association was targeting environmentalists, developers, anglers, scientists and outdoorsmen on a variety of water-related issues from pollution to sediment. In short, there was message entanglement.
Creative team Lauren Bowles and Jason Corbin did a beautiful job simplifying the message to the most relevant common denominator, clean water. They also overcame budget obstacles by producing a poster for area retailers catering to the conservation-committed. Their work reminds me that if your messaging is not brutally simple, even the most worthwhile endeavors can fail.
It dawned on me this fall that Facebook wasn’t merely another communications tool, at least not among young people. It hit me that this new medium was their television. Facebook is the “channel” every young person watches, and watches all day long.
My next conclusion was that Facebook didn’t need postings and updates, it needed campaigns, just like television. Fortunately, we had the perfect client for this in Moe’s Southwest Grill, whose brand and products resonate with students.
Since January, we had been posting rather standard fare, like “It’s Moe Monday, where $5 gets you any burrito, a drink, and chips with salsa.” We had 1,500 followers. In September, we offered free burritos to USC students if we reached 7,000 followers, and surpassed that goal easily.
With sales escalating, we launched Moe’s High School Facebook Challenge. This month-long event offered the high school with the largest percentage of its student body following Moe’s a day of free burritos at the Moe’s location closest to their school. Participation was simple: We asked students to write the name of their high school on Moe’s wall and kept a daily tally.
The campaign went viral quickly. Students at one high school printed flyers and had the contest mentioned on the morning announcements. Others promoted the campaign on their own Facebook pages. More than 200 students from the same high school signed up during one evening.
Moe’s Columbia currently has more than 11,000 followers engaged with the brand twice a day. The outcome is a loyal following with a high frequency of use. The lesson here is that Facebook works best when it’s about your audience, not you.
There is a rising consciousness that we are all connected, one to another - human beings, nonprofits, small businesses, corporate America. This blog is devoted to the study of the intersection between people and the thoughtful brands with which they identify.
