Six of the Best: We're all indebted edition

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Summer arrived just in time in San Francisco. Time to head to the beach but, first, here are six of the best, most of which come from the "likes" of Facebook friends:

1) Clarke and Dawes ask the million dollar questions: ABC News (Australia) (via Matt Sherman)
The European debt crisis summarized by Australians. Laugh. Then throw yourself off a cliff.



2) A useful guide to the brand utility: Ingmar de Lange (via Chris Wilson)
Lots of good examples as Ingmar describes "brand utility"--where companies have been able to do something useful at the same time as they promote themselves. Things like free shipping from Amazon or IKEA's home design helping web site.

3) Sienna Minivan: Sienna's Channel (via Spencer Mains)
Good to see that Toyota still has a sense of humor. Made Spencer laugh. Me too. No "mother-father swearing" for the owners of The Swagger Wagon. But why no embed option?

4) I've Got Chic in My Pants: JWT for Huggies (via Ben Kunz on Thought Gadgets)
More cute: "My diaper is full. Full of chic. When it's a #2, I look like #1. I poo... in blue"



5) Museum AR app completely changes the landscape, um, streetscape: advergirl (via brandflakesforbreakfast)
The Museum of London has launched an augmented reality app that gives a real picture of the city's past. A sign of things to come as well as a record of things that were.

6) The 50 Worst Inventions: Time (via Marc Lichtenstein)
This list has been around for a while but you may not have seen it. All the old favorites from the Segway and New Coke to Marc's choice: The Comfort Wipe: "As easy to use as a shower brush:"



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Six of the Best: In the land of the blind edition

I really, really want the London Olympic Games to be successful. Let's hope the choice of the one-eyed mascots is just a little bump along what will otherwise be a smooth road ahead:

1) London 2012: A Second Gold Medal for Dubious Branding: eyecube
I was sort on the fence about the 2012 London Olympics logo but I have no such doubts about the mascots that have been chosen. I don't like anything about them, not their names (Wenlock and Mandeville), not their design (sort of Pokemon-like and described as "patronising rubbish" in the Telegraph) and especially not this video:



2) Write The Future: Nalden
Meanwhile, World Cup fever is spreading across the globe (except, of course, in the U.S.). This week, it was Nike's turn to capture the spirit of a world cup competition actually played by countries throughout the world.



3) Word bloat and privacy policies: Bad Langauge
The week can't pass without reference to all the hoo-hah about Facebook's ever-changing privacy policies. The New York Times seems to have created a department specifically dedicated to producing infographics about Facebook's new policy. Matthew Stibe references a couple of those infographics in his post where he points out that you only need five words to say ‘we will protect your privacy’ if that is your real intention, rather than the 5,830 words in FB's privacy statements.

4) Mayors of Starbucks Now Get Discounts Nationwide with Foursquare: Mashable
Foursquare has take a step up the adoption and relevance ladder this week as Starbucks announced a chain-wide promotions rewarding "Mayors" in FourSquare with $1 off Frappucinos. That's a high profile and low cost promotion for Starbucks, given that there's only one mayor per location and there has to be a limit to how much Frappucino any one person can drink. As marketing promotions like these become more common, expect issues related to FourSquare "cheating" to soar as people start checking in (multiple times) to places just to get rewards. They do it now for a mayorship so they'll definitely do it even more for real rewards.

5) GINK: derrickcomedy
As Darryl points out in his post about this video on brandflakesforbreakfast: "This is exactly how you sound when talking about FourSquare in front of your mom."



6) Walk on Water: Liquid Mountaineering
Another video found on brandflakesforbreakast. This one has almost 4 million hits on YouTube-- a clever and disguised promotion for Hi Tech shoes.



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Meme of the Week: Pac-Man on Google

No need for a pocket full of quarters. No need to head to the arcade (per this song).
A playable version of Pac-Man is on Google today (5/21) to celebrate its 30th birthday. Enjoy!

The Essentials of Branding: FREE! download

McGraw Hill's Big Book of Marketing is, they say: "The most comprehensive book of its kind... the definitive resource for marketing your business in the twenty-first century."

Each of its 24 chapters covers practical advice about a part of the marketing process--everything from pricing, distribution, advertising to sales management and warehousing. Chapter 4 of the book is all about branding and that's the one that's available for free download on landor.com. Landor contributed most of the content for this chapter. Some of the chapter sections are:

1. The difference between a brand and branding: As Walter Landor himself said: "Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." If a brand resides in the mind, then branding is about influencing people's impressions through word and deed.

2. Starting a branding project: If you start out with the right reason, the right commitment, the right business strategy and the right (customer) focus, you'll be starting out on the right foot.

3. The brand strategy: Defining the brand idea, the brand architecture and the brand personality as well as producing the creative brief.

Also covered: Creating and delivering the brand experience, managing a brand and measuring the performance of a brand.

Download available: The essentials of branding from The Big Book of Marketing, McGraw-Hill, edited by Anthony G. Bennett

Six of the Best: Lies, Jobs, Strikes and Football all-video edition

Gosh. Ages since I did a "Six of the Best." No particular reason. An all-video edition this week:

1) Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks): Sebastian Wernicke
Even though TEDTalks videos are relatively short and the subjects seem like they might be interesting, I rarely watch them. On the other end of the spectrum, Sebastian Wernicke analyzed all of the 10,000 minutes of TED videos and their 1.3 million words to work out the components of the ultimate (best and worst) conference speech.



2) The Google Job Experiment: Alec Brownstein
Could you get a job by taking out a search ad and run it against the names of top creative directors so that they'd see if it if they googled their name? Yes! And it only cost $6! (He's now at Y&R.)



3) Carlsberg Team Talk TV Ad: Carlsberg
England is gearing up for the World Cup. We're still in the blind faith stage which will inevitably eventually be followed by total despair as someone handles the ball, misses a penalty, gets sent off or otherwise contrives to screw things up. Carlsberg captures this fleeting moment.



4) Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel: prideatworksf
Hotel workers in San Francisco have been staging long-running protests against hotels, campaigning for better contracts and health care coverage. Normally these are rowdy, placard-waving protest outside the hotels. But here a flashmob managed to get inside the Westin and came up with something much more creative, inspired by Lady Gaga's song: Bad Romance.



5) Forrest Gump in One Minute: whycantihavespaces
A new feature on YouTube (well, new to me) is the Spotlight section which is currently featuring the favorite selections of Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. This is one of his favorites. (I think--it's a bit confusing and not that well designed). Funny anyway.



6) Television is a drug: Beth Fulton
Beth says the inspiration for this video comes from Todd Alcott's poem, Television. With echoes of the Old Spice commercials? A little intense.



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

If the price is right. Pricing strategies that stop customers chasing prices

Photo: Captain America's low priced shield by el fedora on Flickr

As promised last week, more on the HBR article by Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu on how to stop customers fixating on price. Bertini and Wathieu argue, paradoxically, that pricing itself can be the most effective weapon. They outline four approaches:

1) Price restructuring: If you have an advantage over your competitors, can you figure out a way to restructure your price to focus consumer attention on that advantage? Example: Orica put focus on the extra explosiveness of its industrial explosives by changing its pricing to charge by the results (rocks blown up) rather than by the stick.

2) Willfuly overprice: Can you (dare you) use high prices to break clear of the competitive set? If products are priced outside the band of competitive offers, consumers don't automatically reject them--they are actually motivated to take a closer look and try to understand what makes them worth it. Example: Burt's Bees charged 80 to 100% premium for its personal care products but it has been a great success. Consumers rationalize their decision to buy because of the company's use of natural ingredients and its commitment to social responsibility.

3) Partition prices: Can you break an item into its component pieces and price them individually? The idea is that consumers pay the most attention to the offer price and will then consider other benefits if they are priced separately vs. bundled all together. If you've ever been through (and you have) a purchase process which starts out sounding like a great deal but then, added fee by added fee, gets more and more expensive (and annoying), you've seen this strategy at work. Examples: Airlines

4) Equalize price points: Can you price everything the same instead of pricing on a cost-plus basis? The idea is that pricing complexity forces consumers to think about price whereas a single price stops consumers thinking so much about it. Examples: Swatches single $40 price point for all its watches and iTunes 99 cent pricing on all its tracks.

None of these pricing strategies is easy to deploy if you are in the middle of bloody and cut-throat price discounting war. And consumers may prefer the status quo because they like to price compare and get the best deal. But what I like about all these approaches (well, except for #3), and why they are worth considering, is that they offer ways to try and win business without cheapening it at the same time.

Sources:
1) How to Stop Customers from Fixating on Price by Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu in May's HBR (subscription required)

More reading:
2) The popcorn puzzle, an empirical investigation: Marginal Revolution (which talks about another pricing strategy--charging more for things like popcorn and razorblades (the "after market") while keeping the entry price low.

Video of the week: Get Out of There!

It's Friday. Get out of there!

The commoditized customer

Photo: Generic Cereal by beketchai on Flickr

Maybe it's not our products that are getting commoditized. Maybe it's the customer. Consider this great quote about customer commoditization in May's HBR:

When has a product category been commoditized? Most managers and business scholars will tell you it’s when competing products are indistinguishable in terms of tangible features and capabilities. But our research shows that commoditization is as much a psychological state as a physical one. A commoditized market is one in which buyers display rampant skepticism, routinized behaviors, minimal expectations, and a strong preference for swift and effortless transactions regardless of product differentiation.

That's from Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu. It's an important insight because, as marketers, our impulse is to try and product innovate and communicate our way out of the commodity trap. But, if customers have become convinced that the available choices are all OK and that any differences between products don't really matter, our efforts may be in vain. We may just end up adding to the noise that the customer is trying to avoid and not shifting opinion in any meaningful way.

So, how do we escape from this kind of commoditization? We need something out of the ordinary to jolt the customer out of their mindset. If line extensions and new features won't do it perhaps an entirely new customer experience might?

But the authors come up with a different and counter-intuitive idea. They propose that you fight disengagement with the one marketing variable that these customers do still care about: price. If they are fixated on price then give them price, only do it in a way that challenges them to figure out what they are actually paying for and makes it more difficult for them to just go for the lowest price option. More on this in a later post...

Source:
1) How to Stop Customers from Fixating on Price by Marco Bertini and Luc Wathieu in May's HBR (subscription required)

Brands with Problems: Apple, Butterfinger and Arizona Iced Tea

This may or not be a new series. We'll see. For now, it just a one-off collection of stories I read last week showing different problems for different brands:

1) Apple Problem: Being judged by who you once were, not who you are today
Part of what makes Apple Apple is the legendary 1984 Super Bowl ad which symbolized its status as an underdog fighting against powerful Big-Brother-like conformity. Apple has long since outgrown its underdog status yet this is still a part of its DNA. It usually benefits from this association but not always. As you can see in this clip from The Daily Show, Jon Stewart uses Apple's former underdog status to frame his attack on the company following the police raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s house (after he got his hands on the new iPhone).

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Key quotes:

“You guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes. What the f**k is going on?”

Apple you guys were the rebels man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming The Man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man!

2) Butterfinger problem: Having self-control



When Joe Weller was CEO of Nestle USA, I'm pretty sure that this video for Butterfinger would not have seen the light of day. He wouldn't have liked it personally and it wouldn't have passed the family-values orientation that he applied as a corporate value during his tenure. But, hey, new administration, new rules. Which sets up two questions: How much should a company's brand values represent the values of the CEO? And, two: Just because Butterfinger now has permission to do this can kind of ad, should it?

3) AriZona iced tea problem: Being name profiled
This is funny, unless you happen to be responsible for marketing AriZona iced tea. As people upset by the State of Arizona's new immigration rules look for ways to protest, they have targeted AriZona iced tea and called for a boycott. But there's no real connection between the brand and the State--it's actually based in NY. I don't know why the originators picked the AriZona name--perhaps because it sounded cool and it lent itself to an appropriate funky-iced-tea-not-the-same-as-Lipton look? Bet they are starting to wish they'd called it Brooklyn instead. Meanwhile, P.F Chang's China Bistro, with its Scottsdale, AZ HQ, is keeping a low profile, hoping that people think that it's actually based in Beijing.