A key feature of the campaign’s website – http://www.helptheoversharers.com - has a ”Best of” Twitter feed that streams some classics: “My arm is itchy,” “Cleaning the kitchen,” and “New shower gel – hooray!”

Amazing: “hurray” is just the utterance I was planning – too bad P&G got to it first.

So anyway, the website offers tips for recovering oversharers, a plug-in that allows you to “shame a friend with just one click” (very popular, I’m sure) and even an interactive video into which you can drop some of your favorite inane comments.  And you can buy a t-shirt with a dopey tweet on it.  Of your choice.

The site is accompanied by a utility on Facebook that Pringles’ 3 million fans (and anyone else who feels like it) can download and use to label boring Facebook updates.

To me, the campaign feels a wee bit derivative of Burger King’s 2009 ”Whopper Sacrifice Challenge,” which offered a free Whopper to anyone willing to unfriend 10 people on Facebook. That campaign was semi-criticized for being an “anti-social” social campaign – a page that Pringles appears to have torn out of the fast fooder’s playbook. And there have been a number of other brands – like Nestle and Skittles – that have leveraged the riskiness and “nowness” of featuring a live Twitter feed in their promotions.

But so far, this has been a conversation focused on techniques and tools – a plug-in, a feed, interactive videos and custom t-shirts.  I love tools just as much as the next marketer, but… what does the Oversharers campaign have to do with Pringles’ persona and the ultimate goal of selling more product? 

If there’s a second phase of this campaign that ties the downside of oversharing online to oversharing your Pringles (because you want to eat them all yourself?), P&G better get moving. It seems like that’d make sense… but I’m guessing and this connection isn’t made at the moment.

So from a business point of view, I don’t get it.  You’re the Pringles brand manager: what consumer insight led to this campaign? What are you trying to communicate? What differentiation would motivate trial, or make an existing Pringles eater feel good about the brand?

Don’t “overshare” social media tools because they’re cool.  It’s tempting – and I recommend social media experimentation all the time – but all of the standard rules of branding, communications and marketing (and revenue and market share and shelf space) apply.

The average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is less than 3 years.  I have long said that a key reason for this is because companies think Marketing is magic – that branding is magic (!!) – and when everyone discovers that the CMO is no sorcerer… Well, let’s just say that CMOs have something in common with PCs these days: it’s just easier to throw out the old one and buy a new one. 

And if the budget has to be cut? Take it from Marketing – no one knows what they do anyway.  In an average corporation, I’d be willing to bet that, as a functional expertise, marketing departments house a higher percentage of people entirely untrained in marketing than - well, it’s got to be pretty high on the list.

So the last thing a marketer wants to do is sound like what others think marketers sound like.  I cringe when I hear someone say something that only a Buzzword Bingo player could love.

Here’s a recent quote from the CEO of one of the biggest advertisers in the world:

“I would argue social networks and digital media are scale at play.  One of the things that came out of Cannes for [us] was the scale impact of social media.  The Cannes idea is a bit outdated… The way I see it, the awards now should all be Titaniums – you start with the idea now before you ever think about a medium and you take the idea, which is rooted in consumer insight, and only then do you figure out how to use the media, and you use every medium.  And then what the marketer needs to be able to is to be about to let go… Another was the ubiquity of social media and how an idea can take off and you don’t have to pay for it. What I worry about is that it democratizes scale.  It allows the little guy to get scale almost instantaneously. And we’ve got to make sure we don’t give up that opportunity.  That’s why we’re talking about transforming the company through digitization, visualization, virtualization.”

WTF? Or perhaps I should say, BINGO!

People, people, people: speak English.  Remember to use language that everyone (i.e. your boss and the finance guy) can understand. And – for Pete’s sake – unless you make video games, please try to avoid using the words digitization, visualization and virtualization in one sentence.

Normal people everywhere will thank you.

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Check out my other blog, Marketing Mojo, at www.stephaniefierman.com.

And since price pressure should be no surprise, either, I’ve been startled by the snarly response emanating from the ad industry.  I’ve already forgotten a few instances I noticed recently, but the WSJ late last week offered an ok example.  In an article titled “Thrift Darkens [Ad] Industry’s Hopes,” Maurice Levy of Publicis sniffed, “The reality is that clients want more for less.  It’s something that is unfortunately becoming quite common.”

Is that right?  Really? Clients want more of the same quality work that you’ve been giving them all along for a lower price?  For some, this may be the case.  Then again, many of the large agencies in my experience became too big, spoiled and overpaid through the years.  Too many clients have been pithed by the senior staff, and left with inexperienced AEs.  You were supposed to fork over 15% just – I dunno, because.  Because advertising is magic.  Or whatever. 

Times used to be great, no question.  I’ve enjoyed some wonderful agency relationships and learned a lot of my craft from my partners in those shops and others.  We all have.  How many AdAge headlines have screamed about client cutbacks and layoffs in the last year?  More with less? I’d say there’s plenty of pain to go around.

AdAge really lit this match for me whenb I first read an editor’s reaction to a set of business decisions recently made by P&G: business decisions that - for a reason that cannot be justified -touched off a cascade of immature, naive and nasty remarks from this person’s bully pulpit.

According to this editorial, P&G’s decision puts the “still-moist notion that it’s possible to do interesting things for huge, unglamorous marketers” out of its misery.” That’s just embarrassing.  And my personal favorite – that the changes give ”the best talent yet another reason to leave the industry… buh-bye, innovators and creative geniuses” - is pathetic.  Wow: talk about turning on someone when times get difficult.  What does this solve?

The editorial concludes by toasting P&G for killing one of the “final drops of joy” (*gag*) left in the industry, and for making the business – and I quote – a “little bit shittier just because it can.”  I’m actually still appalled just typing these words weeks later.  This isn’t about freedom of the press: if the writer has her own blog, she should knock herself out.  But AdAge is a publication read by professionals and aspiring professionals on all sides of the business.  Such bitter statements are grossly unproductive and, frankly, more than a little silly.

I wonder if AdAge believes that this kind of vitriol will help the industry attract the ”creative geniuses” whose absence it so mourns.  I doubt it will.

The fact is that agencies and vendors work at the pleasure of clients and – in AdAge’s case - report on them.  I also believe it’s safe to say that both agency executives and marketing journalists fancy themselves articulate thought leaders… and they should be.  Clients would like them to be.  Throwing oneself on the ground and having an unattractive hissy fit helps no one and only makes a difficult time harder and needless (or at least more) contentious.

Grow up, people.

This week’s AdAge features an editorial, “InBev abusing agencies with its payment terms,” written by the president of an advertising agency in the Midwest.  

InBev is the Belgian company that bought Anheuser-Busch.  The brewer is notoriously cheap and frowns on pricey marketing and advertising, both of which had been a highly visible of A-B’s strategy for decades.

The editorial points to numerous cost reductions and policy changes that InBev seems to have implemented after the purchase.  The author mentions a couple internal corporate changes, such as the replacement of offices with bullpens and the elimination of first-class travel and baseball tickets.  There’s a snarky retort after each mention including, “So what?” and “Hey, times are tough.” So much for this agency executive’s public expression of empathy for (or any effort to protect the privacy of) InBev/A-B employees.

He’s far clearer in his disdain for the company’s treatment of external partners.

“The company has gone one step too far” by announcing that it would now take up to 120 days to pay its bills - a “horrible precedent.”  After InBev’s CEO says (in an unrelated WSJ interview) that he’s going to run the company on a tight leash, our author quips “… that’s true of any company, but we all still need to pay our bills.”  Oh, snap!  He grinds on, quoting a Morningstar analyst as describing the InBev team as “ruthless” “machete-wielding investment bankers.”

Finally, the writer crows that the Belgian government may soon examine the new policy to determine whether it is an abuse of power.* I suppose he throws this in to point out that others (a whole government!) see what he sees.

And here’s where I may get in trouble.

I’ve been an executive for 20 years.  I value and am grateful for my relationships with the agencies that have made me look good and helped grow my brands.  There are many in the agency business whom I consider friends.  But there are some fundamental, DNA-level business principles and tenets that are not negotiable.  Discretion is on the top of the list.  

If the Belgian government instructs InBev to reverse the policy, great. If I worked at InBev and one of my agencies was hurt by this new policy, I would take up its cause with my superiors and encourage the agency to privately protest and/or resign. 

And if that agency went to the press to air private and confidential matters such as billing and payment policies, I’d dismiss them on the spot.

This is such an unholy, obnoxious breach I wouldn’t think twice.  An agency executive who takes a business matter to the media cannot be trusted with a private conversation, negotiation or anything else.  You do this and you’re done.  At least in my backyard.

What purpose did this agency president believe his editorial would serve? Is he an InBev agency or did he simply decide to speak out on behalf of his trade? ‘Doesn’t really matter.  Could anyone believe, particularly in this economy, that he could or should pressure a global company by throwing a temper tantrum in public? 

I’m tempted to tell him, “Hey, times are tough” (where have we heard that before?), but the policy may in fact be unreasonable. It would be unjust for a small agency to suffer or even go out of business because InBev wants to make money on the float.  Not my point; I plead no contest.  But an agency leader who takes private business and/or contractual matters out into the public forum should perhaps consider a different line of work because – in the increasingly fragile, trust-based business of advertising – I wouldn’t trust this guy to pull out my chair at dinner. 

* Update: the Belgian government has dropped its probe, determining that InBev’s new payment policy does not violate any antitrust regulations.

He’s publishing and frequently updating a list of the “top” CMOs on Twitter – those with the largest number of followers.  So what does this mean?

–  It makes Kent a leader in the marketing community on Twitter.  It makes his “personal brand” stand out in a positive way among friends and colleagues with shared interests.
–  It’s likely that many on the list will retweet the post but, just as importantly, they’ll send it to others outside of Twitter (Hey Mom, look at this list I’m on!).  This exposes Kent and his work to an ever-widening, friendly crowd on the Web.
–  It connects everyone on the list to one another.
–  It gives Kent fresh content to create meaningful tweets over time.  Not always easy.
–  It drives traffic to not only Kent’s Twitter page, but also his own website, which is where he posts the list.
– Each time he posts an update, everyone on the list has their names, their brands and their Twitter addresses repeated, thus making it likely that they’ll get even more followers, and giving the search engines yet another page to crawl for their name. 
– And of course, each new update can potentially bring changes to the list, thus given a new CMO a fresh spotlight and creating renewed interest as everyone checks the list anew.

Kent leveraged his profession – which any of us could have done but didn’t – into its own mini-phenomenon that spreads learning and excitement across the Web, simply by calling attention to a community in which he’s already a member.  It’s a marvelous example of social media marketing at its best.

I’m proud to be on Kent’s list (#30 with a bullet!). For those of you on Twitter, take a quick look at the list:  you may want to follow someone who is the CMO of a brand you care about.  At #1 is Best Buy ’s Barry Judge (with more than 6,800 followers!) and it goes from there.

While I’m sure many airlines are experimenting, this particular piece features Alaska Airlines, where Steve Jarvis, the company’s head of sales and customer experience (and a man intensely focused on delighting high-value customers), talks about what they’re doing and learning along the way.  Wordlessly delivering a frequent flyer’s favorite drink (in coach) “is not about the cocktail.  The point is the recognition and thanks for your business.”  

As a frequent flyer desperate just to be treated like a human being when I get to the airport, Steve Jarvis is my hero for recognizing that it’s good to be nice to people you need and actually doing something about it.

This will not be easy.  The foundation of my entire career is customer segmentation and CRM.  I know – in technicolor – how gigantic the technological and personal demands can be inside a company determined to change.

For starters, identifying even what customers do today – at every touchpoint – requires considerable data alignment.  As with banks, airlines tend to have (a) outdated systems, that (b) don’t talk to one another.  So whether a customer buys a ticket online (and when and for how much) is likely to be invisible to a gate agent.  A phone representative most definitely does not know about the luggage problems you’ve had 2x this year already, and a customer service rep at the airport has no idea whether an email notification re. a cancelled flight was delivered to you or not.  If this information exists, it typically sits in silos that either must be refitted or, sometimes, blown up entirely.

Second, the modeling capabilities needed to capture and place a quantifiable value on behavior – evolving usually into some kind of score that informs the type of service a customer receives – is imprecise at best and far more sophisticated in industries that have been at this for decades, like banks and credit card companies.   The European airlines have a jump on us, though, and that’s good news for the learning curve.

Third, the really-really stripped down implication of all this work is that the value assigned to a customer will change the marketers’ human behavior.  This is very hard – far beyond basic training and comp changes.  In a crowded airport, you finally reach the counter, already yelling, and the agent is supposed to capture your name, “read” your score and follow the instruction that would be appropriate for a customer with that score.  Good luck.  It’s doable, but must be implemented with patience and empathy.

So if this is the direction in which the airlines realize they must head… fantastic!  There are a lot of weazened but wise customer experience/CRM/segmentation veterans out here whom I’m sure would want to help.  I, for one, will continue to watch for hints of progress, both on the plane and off.

According to a new article published by eMarketer, Fuqua and the AMA fielded a survey last month among 581 marketing executives “to find out how top marketing officers around the country are dealing with adverse economic conditions.”  Here’s a deck that Duke created to present the research findings.

I have not seen the survey to see the exact wording of the questions but the article says that price dominated when the CMOs were asked about customers’ top priorities in the next year.   Here’s a graphic of how their answers shook out:

 I would respectfully propose that this is a serious problem of garbage in, garbage out.   Concepts such as “innovation” and “trusting relationship” – particularly the latter – address the very essence of a brand.  No one is going to say they love Apple because of their “relationship” with the company.  Price and quality can be seen and touched: trust and value cannot be. 

That does not mean that the latter concepts are less important – they are in fact, what drive the notion of “value” (which, after all, is only a product’s competitive blend of price and quality) over a long period of time. 

But on their own, ideas such as these are not palpable to the average buyer.  My ”relationship” with a brand is like oxygen:  I can’t see it, but I know when it’s there and when it’s not. 

And I’m not even going to get into how truly problematic it is to force-rank “brand” as a consumer priority on a list that also features “price” and “quality” during a recession.   Big-time apples and oranges.

Say hello to Hawker Beechcraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas.  Hawker ran this full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal last week.  Intended to look like a letter from James Schuster, Chairman and CEO, the ad begins, “Dear Starbucks, You still need to fly.  We’re here to help.” and goes on to say that “in an era where every dollar counts” and “you need to fly smarter,” the Hawker 4000 is the way to go.  The Hawker 4000 costs $18.8 million, according to Wikipedia, and can seat 8 (for the aero-enthusiasts among you).

The ad is part of the company’s campaign to “fire back at the media and politicians on business jets” and was accompanied by a press release in which the company’s Marketing VP claims the company is “puzzled” that the media and political community could so badly mistake private aircraft to be a symbol of excess.  This individual goes on to express concern that this “stereotype is damaging the ability of American corporations to compete globally and, at the same time, jeopardizing thousands of American aviation jobs.” 

OK, let’s start with the revenue potential represented by this campaign.

That would be zero.  A private aircraft is a highly considered B2B purchase with a long sales cycle.  Let’s say there are 100 people/organizations in the market for this product right now (at best).  Such a sale requires personal relationship-building at the CxO level over time,  extensive, expensive marketing and promotional efforts and community/industry participation.  A newspaper ad is a needle in a haystack.

After all, Hawker Beechcraft has sold exactly one commercial-use unit so far to Talon Air, a luxury air charter company.  None have been sold outside the industry.  And as a side note, thanks for pointing out that Starbucks uses private aircraft (perhaps to help executives fly around closing stores and getting rid of staff).  Starbucks investor relations department must have been delighted to be called out in this manner.

If anything, this ad may impede sales, as it does not make Hawker appear to be a prudent and discreet partner at a time when such a purchase might receive signficant scrutiny.

But beyond the lack of revenue potential, this campaign is so unnecessarily cold and snarky that it eliminates the potential for any good result at all.  The company coyly says it is “puzzled” at the public outcry about waste and excess.  Puzzled? I don’t think so.  Private air travel is the only efficient way to fly?  They know this is not the case, or that customers and shareholders of companies that may purchase private aircraft would not think that was the case.

Look, here’s my point:  no one in this country or any other will begrudge a worthwhile company trying to sell a legal product.  Whether someone is unemployed or put out of his home, everyone understands that a company is in business to sell and that sales create jobs.  But to play-act surprise, to clasp one’s breast and say that the media and politicians are trying to “destroy” America’s strongest industries… to spend money on a full-page WSJ ad that will generate only bad will and no sales – at a time when most companies, including Starbucks (the unfortunate target of this particular ad), are scrambling, and Hawker Beechcraft itself is laying off employees – is irreparably misguided and, frankly, sad.

And P.S.  An effort like this also draws attention to the company itself as well as its executives.  For example, a quick review of a few SEC documents reveals that the company posted a 2008 net after-tax loss of $139.9 million, while Jim Schuster’s 2008 bonus was set at (up to) $630,000 – the same amount he received in salary.  And upon his imminent retirement, Schuster will get $321,000 in severance, company-subsidized health benefits for himself and his family for at least 12 months, an additional $750,000 when the company buys back 75,000 common shares and another $1 million for no discernable reason at all.  Is this what Schuster meant in November 2008 when he announced an earlier layoff and told employees to “plan for the worst?”  He certainly appears to have done ok for himself.

Is that a low blow? Wrong question.  This isn’t personal: it’s business.  CEOs mustn’t get pulled off track by what they know about the inner workings of their own organizations.  It’s how things look in the current economic climate that must be factored into the equation.  Tell me again why Hawker’s executives and ad team deliberately drew this kind of attention to themselves?

In his memo to all employees last month announcing additional layoffs, Schuster offered concern, understanding and reflection on the economic conditions that are causing suffering, both within and outside his own company. 

A good media and crisis communications expert – and any marketer worth his or her job – would recommend to Mr. Schuster, Hawker Beechcraft’s Board and Schuster’s successor that perhaps this tone is far wiser and more welcome under the circumstances.
Hawker_Beechcraft

As The Wall Street Journal detailed just today, retailers are slashing prices and discounting like crazy in the face of shrinking consumer demand.  Too bad most of these promotions aren’t working.  Enter the grand gesture… and I’ve seen two retailers do it particularly well recently.

The winner thus far has to be Wal-Mart, with its announcement last week that it’ll be pricing several top toys at $10 for the holiday season.  Both Target and KB Toys scrambled to follow with their own cuts, even adding items to the discounted list… alas, too late to get the spotlight.  One of the most important people in my life is rabidly negative about Wal-Mart:  its politics, its employee policies, its chilling effect on local commerce… She’s never been in one and never planned to go.  When this announcement was made, the earth stopped rotating, pigs started flying and she said that, if she had kids, this promotion would get her into a Wal-Mart.  That’s serious success.

The second smart promotion I noticed recently comes from KFC, where marketing is now led by Javier Benito, formerly of Coca-Cola and Starwood.  KFC has introduced the Value Meal, a “complete and affordable meal for today’s value and time-conscious families,” consisting of seven pieces of chicken, one large side order and four biscuits.  The twist here is that the marketing campaign challenges consumers to create the same meal for under $10 on their own.  The TV commercial highlights a mom and her two kids moving through the grocery store trying to replicate the meal (at the butcher counter, the little girl exclaims, “7 pieces of chicken is HOW MUCH??”).

While the ad has generated a lot of buzz  online from (mostly) women saying that they could beat this challenge any day of the week, it’s… generated a lot of buzz online.  I think it has good potential to break through an awful lot of clutter.

Both of these are examples of retailers thinking outside the box and swinging broadly toward the outfield.  Just because you have a bat, doesn’t mean everything has to look like the same old ball.

KFC    Wal-Mart $10 toys