Hot Commodity

I’m taking a marketing class this semester and we’re always talking about the four P’s (product, promotion, price, place), the five C’s (company, competition, context, collaborators, customer) and other such “analytical tools” that can help us evaluate the finest marketing methods for any given company, but in the midst of all these mnemonics I’ve come to a very simple conclusion about one of the best advertising techniques out there: the more imitatable your advertisements, the better. Experts and gurus in every industry are always preaching about the importance of being unique, whether in regards to products, customer service, marketing, or any other dimension that a company can differentiate itself on, and I think sometimes people interpret that as meaning that the more imitatable you are, the less valuable you are and that “ordinary” is unacceptable. Based on observation, however, these statements are far from the truth.

Ordinary and simple campaigns are the ones we remember the best, the ones that we most identify with, and the ones we find ourselves quoting. These are the ones we use in presentations and skits to make a point, the ones we find countless copycat Youtube videos of, and the ones that continue to live beyond their debuts and their demises.

The classic example is the ubiquitous “got milk?” campaign that debuted in California in 1993 and went national in 1995. Launched by the California Milk Processor Board, it has inspired dozens of copycat campaigns. Other such ads include the “Is it in you?” campaign by Gatorade, Mastercard’s “priceless” campaign, Intel’s “Intel Inside” campaign, and even Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” campaign. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen people use the “Mac vs. PC” campaign format to “compare” products or other things completely unrelated to Apple. What makes these campaigns similar? They’re simple, universal, and highly imitatable. In fact, part of the motivation for this post came when I was walking through downtown Philly the other day and saw a man standing on the side of the street holding a sign that said “got change?” in that familiar white font on a solid black background. I couldn’t help laughing, thinking about the “got milk?” campaign, and giving him some money. Fraternities and sororities on Penn’s campus and elsewhere are constantly donning shirts that say “got greek?” or “Greek Life…Is it in you?”

So why are they especially useful for the original company? Well every imitation just expands their reach, because when you see a copycat ad you can’t help but remember the original. And sometimes they become so pervasive that your competition gets desperate, freaks out, and imitates you too! (i.e. think Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC” campaign- Apple can just sit back, relax, and watch Microsoft do the work for them!)

Long story short, keep it simple and replicable and let the copycats do the work for you. Just do it.

A new burger joint called Top This just opened up on Penn’s campus. The restaurant has a creative name, and an even more creative pricing strategy. Take a look:

See anything strange? In case you didn’t catch it, the Fries & Beverage “combo” actually costs more than purchasing the fries and a beverage separately… 1 cent more to be exact. Creative no? Trick your customers into thinking that since it’s convention for combos to be cheaper than buying the individual components, they are probably getting a better deal with the combo and they probably don’t need to check…

Except when they do. A friend noticed this, took a picture, and showed me, and of course he’s not the only one that’s noticed. The 1 cent difference isn’t even the issue, it’s more about principle, and it’s justifiably pissing people off. Strategic pricing is an art, and firms pour tons of money into research in this area, but there some basic no-no’s. This is one of them.

I’ve written previously about TalkBizNow’s aggressive entry into the business networking arena on August 18th. With claims that the website will be far superior to LinkedIn and hopes to attain over three million users in the first six months, the company loves to generate buzz, regardless of how or why.

I just read a recent interview that BNET conducted with TalkBizNow CEO Martin Warner dating back about a week to Friday September 12^th. Below are some snippets from the interview:

BNET: Who predicted that the company would be five times bigger than Facebook? What’s the basis for the claim?

Martin Warner: Who said that? [What we said was] that the business networking market is going to be five times than the social networking market. It has nothing to do with Facebook. Is that the headline? I’ve not said it.

BNET: Didn’t you vet the release?

MW: I approve or my president approves every press release, but this comes as a complete surprise to us. It’s not good form if someone from our agency released this without being approved.

BNET: The release also claims that Talkbiznow.com is the “world’s first business networking site.” How is that true?

MW: That’s a fair comment. If we think about a couple of the players that are trying to do this in the market, Xing out of Germany and LinkedIn out of California, they’re allowing business professionals to connect with each other, and on that we all agree. The difference is the way we can do peer to peer networking, hosting a webinar, or selling a product. Once you connect, they don’t necessarily say here’s what you do to do business online. Ours may appear to a social network to be a little stout. It may look like a business application – it is a business application. It is a pure b-to-b networking tool. We haven’t seen that on the market. It’s whether you have something that wants to be a b-to-b tool or something that sits in the middle of a business and social network.

BNET: No offense, but the type of over reaching statements in the press release I saw indicated sloppy execution. Might that not come back to bite you?

MW: If you read all the press on us, I think we’ve done very, very well. People have testified how good our press has been. We’ve got enormous amount of buzz around the application. The press campaign, I’m very happy with. We’ve got that coverage and, I’m sure, we’ve got viral targeting based on it. We can put out something that raises more questions and then be ready with answers. That can be effective. We just have to stand up and be counted for our statements.

Alright, so where to begin? First of all, it’s a bit questionable that neither Warner nor his president approved the comment about TalkBizNow being five times greater than Facebook, and yet it somehow made its way into the press release, but I won’t even harp on that point for now. The claim that TalkBizNow is the first business networking website is simply riddled with holes. Judging by the responses to the interview posted on BNET, even if you buy Warner’s argument about LinkedIn and Xing, which I don’t, several other business networking sites that offer similar peer to peer networks have existed for the past couple years. Take a look at WeCanDo.BIZ, Biznik, or Zoodango, just to name a few. It’s one thing to say you’ll be the best, it’s another to claim you’re the first when others clearly already exist.

Because the number of social networks has exploded in the past few years, experts have been studying the mechanisms and ins and outs of this phenomenon. One of the most important aspects of any network’s success seems to be the trust and the relationship between the users and the network. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is well known as the face behind Facebook, and users are encouraged to contact him if ever they have something to say about the way Facebook works. With the amount of exposure one receives by including so much personal information on the network, it’s no surprise that trust is such an important element.

Dan McComb, the cofounder of Biznik writes, “It seems that anyone who has been in the business networking industry for any length of time knows one thing: successful business networking is all about building trust. In fact, any business getting started in this social media landscape is going to need the trust of their customers, and making overly bold claims isn’t exactly the best way to get it. The fact is [that] “business networking” is a massive potential market, with plenty of room for healthy competition. Adding some project management tools to the application sounds like an interesting idea. I question whether advertising on a social network of any kind will be able to support the model, though…”

I commend the company for adding such software services as blogging, webinar facilities, calendars, free user advertisements, and online stores to the more expected linking with colleagues and business associates; however, I can’t say the same about their marketing strategy.

Enough of my rambling though… let’s see how the website is doing so you can judge for yourself…

(It’s been exactly one month and remember: the goal is to attain three million users within the first six months)

For several years now stores that cater to the more prosperous demographic have seemed “immune” to the ups and downs of the business cycle, but in today’s economy, as the real estate market and Wall Street are both struggling, it appears that even the upper class is trying to save, especially when it comes to “discretionary” purchases such as clothing, electronics, jewelry, home furnishings, etc. that they might usually splurge on at higher end department stores.

From the retailers’ perspective, everyone likes to advertise when times are good, but several companies seem to scale back heavily on marketing gimmicks and campaigns as soon as the economy turns a little sour, even though there are probably other areas of discretionary investments that could be (and should be) minimized instead. Finding ways to improve operations, decreasing overhead, and overall increased efficiency are all ways to cut costs, and can give a company an extra advantage when times are rough, especially when their customers might be trying to cut back.

As the fall season approaches, several of the nation’s higher-end retailers, anxious about the uncertain economic outlook, are weary of engaging in large advertising campaigns, but Bloomingdale’s (a division of Macy’s) and Saks Fifth Avenue (a unit of Saks) recognize the importance of continually appealing to and “wooing” customers, and are stressing “innovative advertising” as a means to attract customers even in an economic downturn (according to an article in the Times).

 “We’re in a tough economy; there’s no denying that,” says Jack Hruska, executive vice president for creative services at Bloomingdale’s in NY. He adds, though, that those retailers “who play up their strengths will emerge stronger when the economy comes back than those who retreat or scale back. We’ve seen that time and time again.” Clearly other retailers must have their eyes wide closed.

 Bloomingdale’s is introducing an elaborate campaign centered on music, and based on successful results of an experiment with a virtual catalog in the spring, Saks Fifth is expanding the availability of video clips online to offer shoppers a more comprehensive virtual version of their catalogs. They are also attempting to appeal to youthful shoppers that may be slightly younger than their typical customer base, via an outreach campaign to almost 100 blogs and a presence on social media websites like Facebook.

Frivolous advertising spend is obviously unacceptable whether or not the economy is down, but both companies are cognizant of the fact that for luxury goods there’s an expectation of better service and that they must be able to convey this level of service at all times in order to retain a loyal customer base. Thus, in times like this, they are astutely looking to drive outsized growth with “innovative initiatives” and looking for “ways that are nontraditional” to reach the hearts and minds of their customers.

I met Ron Klein (Chairman & CEO of Macy’s East) in this past February at the Undergraduate Business School Leadership Conference, and he shared with us several of their “work-in-progress” campaigns at the time. They were entertaining and appealing and I’m looking forward to the newest round, which were just released yesterday. Bravo!

I was pretty irritated a couple days ago when I walked to the Pottruck Center (Penn’s huge gym) only to find that it was closed for “renovations”, but then I went back today and discovered that they’ve installed brand new machines on every floor! The treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, etc. are all by the same brand as they were before (Life Fitness) but now have an entire media center built in. The interesting part is that the media center caters exclusively to iPod users- basically that’s the only kind of music player you can plug in. The machines have a fairly large touch screen where users can scroll through and select songs or play lists, adjust the volume, and perform all other music functions without ever having to touch their iPods. It’s an excellent idea on behalf of Life Fitness, and fantastic for Apple as well, because if you didn’t already have an iPod at Penn, you’ll certainly want one now. The exclusivity is just another sign of how the iPod and iPod related products have truly captured the market, especially among young adults.

Touch screen technology has been around for a while now, but this just goes to show how important incremental innovation is. Something as simple as enabling students to hook their music directly to the machines makes Penn look cooler, Life Fitness seem more inventive, and enforces Apple’s brand image immensely on this campus.

Too bad I can’t use “my iPod’s battery is dead” as an excuse not to go to the gym anymore.

We all know what the Mojave Experiment is so I won’t get into details… oh wait… no we don’t. Unlike Apple’s “PC vs. Mac” commercials that are universally recognized and quoted and have become media’s poster child advertisements (a recent favorite, and another, and a bunch more here because I just can’t get enough), the Mojave Experiment is an advertising campaign by Microsoft for its Windows Vista operating system that has not gained the kind of popularity Microsoft hoped for. In the videos, participants who had never used Vista before were asked about their perceptions of the operating system and then were shown a 10 minute demo of the Microsoft’s alleged “next OS” (codenamed “Mojave”). After the experiment was over, it was revealed that “Mojave” was actually just Windows Vista. The advertisements, which can be found on MojaveExperiment.com display skeptical consumers who, via the mere 10 minute demo, are suddenly convinced that Vista is incredible. Sorry for stating the obvious, but here’s what’s wrong with this scheme:

Length (bigger is not always better): Some of the videos are several minutes long… and I was bored after 15 seconds. In fact, the only time I’ve watched one of the videos all the way through was right before I posted this. If internet users can’t even read entire articles anymore and rely on content aggregators and blogs for much of their news, how can you possibly expect them to be engaged in a long commercial? Especially if it’s boring and cheesier than a cheesy gordita at Taco Bell.

The Cheese Factor: Speaking of cheese, the advertisements remind of me the millions of weight loss commercials on television every day. You know the ones that we all scoff at, ignore, or make fun of? The ones filled with unconvincing testimonials from people who consumers don’t identify with at all. In the face of suave, catchy, hilarious, and practical commercials from the competition, something like this is just not gonna fly.

Features vs. Execution: I’d bet pretty much any company can present a 10 minute demo that makes it seem like their product or services are infallible, creative, user friendly, etc. Several of the problems cited in regards to Vista included issues with installation and other functional problems. Cool features are useless if the execution is terrible, and the advertisements entirely overlook these types of concerns, further alienating, and in some cases enraging, customers

Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, see Rule #1: The advertisements make it seem like the customers are at fault for not recognizing or understanding the features and functions that Vista provides. I don’t need to say much more here- never blame the customer.

But now to address the title of this post…I recently read that Microsoft plans to spend $300 million on a new ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and using some variation of the slogan “Windows not Walls”. I’ll admit that the slogan is short, sweet, and kind of catchy. It also avoids some of the jargon filled and vague marketing speak (”The wow starts now” or “Clear. Confident. Connected.”) that usually comes from the company. However, the slogan is still sounds too “high level”, and the words do seem to relay an inherently defensive view. Which walls, exactly, is Microsoft talking about? Several people have inferred that the company might be targeting Apple. If Microsoft is targeting Apple’s “closed system” it’s making a mistake, because this will only increase the perceived size of the competitive threat that Apple poses, without highlighting Microsoft’s own strengths. I’m not saying Microsoft should ignore Apple by any means- a focus on the competition is obviously important, especially in this case as Apple is taking the world by storm. I simply think that it’s a little late, and since the slogan doesn’t take as definitive and obvious a stance as Mac commercials, consumers may just end up confused by the message.

It’s also unclear as to who the campaign is aimed towards. Apple has a very specific target in that it aims its marketing largely at unsatisfied PC users. As evidenced by the Mojave Experiment, one large demographic Microsoft is targeting is consumers that are hesitating to make the switch to Vista. I’m not sure how the phrase “Windows not Walls” will appeal to that group, or how it’s addressing their concerns?

Finally, Apple’s ads are often cited as resonating so well because they “actually hold true”. The company has found a way to turn one of its greatest competitive advantages into a phenomenal campaign that consumers identify with and often validate. Will Microsoft users recognize and find themselves agreeing with the notion that Windows “tears down walls” or provides a much more comprehensive package than Apple?

Perhaps the campaign will take a different direction, no one really knows for sure yet, but either way it will be important for Microsoft to communicate a very direct, clear, and simple message if they want to be effective. I’m an avid PC user and you never know what sort of traction a campaign might get, but for now I remain pretty skeptical.