Take a look at the June cover of Glamour Magazine at right (if you cannot see image, click HERE):
The photo of three attractive models on the cover is accompanied by the headline, “Curvy? Skinny? It’s All Good!” But… which one is the curvy one? Is it the one on the far right? The far left? It’s the one on the left. Yes, I said the one on the left. I’ve added a couple other images of said model to this post (HERE and HERE), and let me tell you: any woman whose thighs (or other body parts) do not aggressively touch when at steady state is not “curvy” in my book.
I truly don’t understand this particular one, because no woman who is overweight believes she is also a thin model. The average American woman wears a size 14 – and knows it. She does not think that Crystal Renn is her spitting image. Hair, cellulite, make-up, the size of one’s pores: the savvy woman generally knows that all of these can be drastically manipulated ad – sadly – some women still aspire to these things. But chubby and frolicking in one’s bikini in a magazine? No.
Then why the fixation on imaginary weight claims? Is it advertisers? And if so, go all out so an advertiser targeting a real plus-size girl might actually be able to see a real one. There is no real-life party that is served well by this kind of activity.
I suppose I should just be thankful that Glamour didn’t pull a Ralph Lauren and get all drunk and stupid on Photoshop: see the related blog post I wrote and lovingly titled, “Can Someone Get That Turkey A Sandwich (you’ll have to read it to know why). Do you think the average person knows that even photographs of food are fake?
No wonder people still don’t trust advertising. Sometimes – a lot of the time – we lie.
There’s a real reputation-meets-revenue battle happening between online.
Today, any advertiser with a Google AdWords account can buy virtually any keyword to advertise its own goods, regardless of whether said advertiser has the rights to use the word. This is particularly troublesome for brands that have spent decades burnishing a brand and consider the associated brand names to be reputational assets of great value. If you go to Google right now and type in “LVMH” (the owner of numerous brands including Louis Vuitton and Hennessy), one of the sponsored ads shouts “Designer Handbags 70% off,” with a URL that includes the Louis Vuitton name. That has LVMH steamed and the company sued Google in Europe for trademark infringement.
Well the ruling is in… and it’s a split decision, advantage: Google. Upon Google’s appeal of earlier rulings (that didn’t go its way) the highest court in the EU has determined that - on its face – the mere fact that an LVMH-protected word is available for sale by Google does not mean that Google is in violation of LVMH’s trademark protection.
Specifically, the court has said that the search company is not violating trademarks if (a) its automatic ad system is judged to be “merely technical, automatic and passive” in its operation, and if (b) the company is not aware and cannot be expected to fully police all the words that advertisers purchase.
Since computers are programmed by humans – and those folks at Google are pretty darn smart – this is fishy to me, but ok. It was not a flat-out win for Google, however, as the court also ruled that Google must remove said ads if the brand owner formally complains about an advertiser infringing on its marks. If Google fails to do this, the court says it won’t be so helpful in protecting Google’s revenue stream the next time around.
The court also reinforced that Google could be held liable for selling keywords that openly encourage or facilitate counterfeiting, which – in luxury categories – is a win (or at least a booster shot) for the brand owners. And lastly, the court also clarified the responsibilities of advertisers who mustn’t be found “using such keywords arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow Internet users to easily establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question originate.”
I don’t know about you, but if I’m an advertiser that gets into hot water for legally buying a word that Google sold to me – and I’m not trying to sell knock-offs – I’m naming Google in my legal response.
LVMH has been on the attack re. this issue for a long time, which is understandable. eBay has also been in the conglomerate’s in the past. This is a worldwide, high-stakes game such a company must play in all sales channels: right here in New York, LVMH was front and center in the effective elimination of a thriving Louis Vuitton counterfeit trade on Canal Street. The company will flood Google “Don’t Be Evil” Inc. with complaints until the search company will at least have to question what (and how much) it is defending by taking on massive legal expense (and bad PR) in order to make money from advertisers leeching off others’ trademarks.
And speaking of buying Louis Vuitton knock-offs on the street, a LVMH board member point of view has been (quote) “Under trademark law anywhere in the world, brand owners have the right to stop third parties from using their names. “Why make an exception for the digital world?”
As the division between online and offline “worlds” continue to disappear, why indeed?
I am sensitive to dumb and/or insensitive imagery and statements in advertising and the media – I thought that the “How I Met Your Mother” Frosty the Snowman spoof was a little over the top, for example – but this is pushing it.
A new commercial for the all-natural line of cleaning products, Method, has already been pulled – and that’s a pity.
Droga5’s “SHINY SUDS” is a silly send-up of Dow’s Scrubbing Bubbles commercials. Method created the video to support the Household Products Labeling Act, which would require full disclosure of harmful chemicals in cleaning products. Here’s the ad (if you cannot see the ad below, click HERE):
Right after the video was posted online, women began to react negatively – and harshly. A blogger accused the company of “humiliating women” and effectively saying that – if you don’t know exactly what’s in the products you use – “you deserve to be sexually harassed” in your own home. A reader of the same blog post called Method to tell them that she was “curious of [sic] their perpetuation of rape culture.”
Rape culture? Sexual harassment? The “pornification” of a dull House act about cleaning chemicals? What am I missing here?
Apparently a lot, as the company received hundreds of calls and emails from outraged women before declaring itself a “values-based company” and pulling the spot.
Of course, there are other interested parties who struck back, most notably (a) the advertising community (which asks when brands are going to – ahem – “grow a pair” and tell zealot ”idiots” to bug off) and (b) both men and women who say that this “overreaction” is just another example of why many believe that feminism has become a joke.
I’m not going to lean that hard in either direction… but I didn’t see the danger in this video. What do you think?
Airbrushing, retouching and photoshopping are techniques that are broadly used with all manner of model and celebrity on a regular basis (see Kate Winslet, Jennifer Love Hewitt et al). Do it with your own photos, and your always-on-a-diet Aunt Nancy will thank you for shaving off that extra 30 pounds.
Some of the applications of photoshopping are so bad, there are entire sites dedicated to the worst photoshop crimes, like PhotoshopDisasters. One of my personal faves is a recent hot mess from Ralph Lauren, who took the idea of using really thin models just a little too far. If you don’t see the photo on the right, click HERE. Now that’s a tiny waist.
Anyway, what all of these generally have in common is the notion of creating personal desire – the desire to be the person in the photo (by buying the product, natch). This almost seems normal by now, but… could our food be wishing it could look a little more attractive, as well??
Witness the innocent Thanksgiving turkey. We think of them being saved by the President or, more likely, waiting for us at the grocery store. Who knew that your turkey might have had a little work done? The folks at Food & Wine, Bon Appetit and Every Day with Rachael Ray all admit to photoshopping turkeys that are too fat, too thin or just not quite right.
“Turkey, as a model, is very much like a fashion magazine with fashion models. There are plump turkeys, and, I’m not kidding you, there are skinny turkeys, there are chesty turkeys, breasty turkeys, there are flat-chested turkeys,” says the EIC of Food & Wine. ““We have,” she admits, ”enhanced the breasts of turkeys.”
Enhanced the breasts of turkeys. Turkeys. What kind of world do we live in where even our birds want boob jobs? Are flat-chested turkeys laughed at in high school? Don’t mama turkeys tell their babies that they are beautiful just the way they are?
Oh well. I’ve asked for retouching on my share of advertisements, so I’m hardly innocent. We marketers will do anything to get the shot.
New Balance has created an online/social media campaign and (offline) line of shoes that marries both worlds in the most elegant way.
The 574 men’s and women’s collection is made entirely of left-over scraps of cloth in the company’s Lawrence, MA factory and, as a result, each pair is just a bit different – each has its own personality, you might say. A very special, limited line deserves equally powerful promotion, and the company’s ad agency, Mother, knew it.
When you buy a 574 pair from one of ten boutiques in the U.S., there’s a special Polaroid photograph in the box. The owner can then go to 574Clips.com, and match the Polaroid to a special mini-film about the shoe. Once the film has played, the happy shoe wearer can add his/her name at the end of the film. The film for 106Red appears to show a man dipping a carrot into the shoe (for dip, or course), while 115Green has a lovable furry muppet (with green nose to match) admiring a pair of shoes. Each is very short and fun – check out one or two for yourself, and see if it doesn’t make you want to buy the shoes.
574Clips.com also features links to Facebook, MySpace, De.li.ci.ous and Tumblr, so buyers of these unique shoes can tell (and show) all their friends. The campaign is also tied to sneaker culture blogs like High Snobiety and Nice Kicks.
Anyone who watches Entourage (Episode 3, Season 6) knows how culturally important “sneakerheads” are – the (mostly) men who must have the hottest, most limited sneaker available tend to be heavy influencers and leading indicators of pop culture trends and information. It’s a valuable and – in their own milieu – sophisticated crowd, and Mother has delivered an equally sophisticated communications plan. The blending of manufacturing, blogs, web, community, video and product is exceptional.
And now I must sign off – I’m on my way to Reed Space: the only shop in NYC to carry the $75 shoes with the special Polaroid inside…
The economic news these days is, uh… bad. It turns out that the productivity increase in the 2nd quarter was due to companies letting more people go and freezing the salaries of those who remain. And then there’s unemployment. And retail sales. And GM. And the banks. And the entire state of California.
Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.
So I was somehow heartened by an issue of the Wall Street Journal this week that just happened to include stories about a lot of companies trying to grow and people looking to better times. Here are just some of the stories I noticed in the WSJ on just one day:
– Disney buys Marvel – Baker Hughes agreed to pay $5.5 bil to purchase BJ Services – Walmart is creating an online mall and will sell merchandise from other retailers – Restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory are testing healthier menu selections and kids-eat-free nights to try to get families to eat out again – Payless Shoes is expanding into Russia – Companies are doing more pro bono work – and finding that it’s earning them paying gigs – Dell is going to sell Brocade networking gear under its own name – Samsung is launching an apps service for cell customers in Europe – Blue Nile is undergoing a major overhaul in an effort to attract women (most of its customers are men) – Some people are making fools of themselves with wacky job-hunting tactics that may not close the deal today, but have helped garner them some positive media coverage and made them stronger for it
Anyone who knows me knows I’m not exactly a blind optimist, and it’s not the first time I’ve noticed that newspapers are full of stories every day (wow!). But there was something about that particular issue that just seemed bursting with hope and – on that singular Tuesday – I appreciated and was grateful for it.
Yet another result of the flailing economy: truly new brand launches are faltering while brand extensions are succeeding.
In 2008, less than 10% of new products were “net new brands,” even though the pace of product introduction was about on par with the last five years. Take a look at the top food and non-food brand launches of last year:
If you remove the pharma/DTC products (which are in a psychic/regulatory/financial class all their own), all the products on these lists are extensions or reformulations.
In the best of times, launching a truly new product is extremely difficult and expensive. Manufacturing, distribution, marketing – starting from scratch is daunting. In a recession, success is even more difficult to achieve.
Then there’s the consumer psyche to consider: what are the monetary and non-monetary risks of trying something truly new? Who hasn’t been curious enough about a new launch – let’s say something perishable that cannot be returned – to try it out? But when money is scarce, the news is full of stories of imprudent spending and people are making trade-offs among the smallest of purchases, the price of “wasting” money suddenly becomes very high. I will feel foolish if I buy this and don’t like it when there are existing substitutes that I know are good enough.
The other thing that’s noticeable about these lists and others is that the “closest in” extensions win: an existing brand holds a space in the consumer’s mind, a range of functionality and messaging in which that brand has credibility. Hershey’s can launch new candies, Porsche can introduce a “wireless racing wheel” for gaming, Mr. Clean can (sort of) try out the car washing business.
But a $1,200 Disney Sleeping Beauty fountain pen or Kellogg’s hip-hop streetwear? Not so much.
A recent Crain’s New York Businessarticle discussed what many retailers are doing to try to squeeze as much as possible out of what is expected to be a lousy back-to-school season.
One step: uniforms.
Not uniforms uniforms, but rather solid color separates – blazers, pants, polo shirts, skirts, etc. – that parents can mix and match to create multiple outfits for kids age 5-11ish. At stores like J.C. Penney, Target and Children’s Place (even Macy’s…) each piece is priced around $10 or less. As uniform sales in these stores have increased while sales of children’s apparel overall have been falling for the last two years, this is a step that is likely to help these stores hold onto customers who are trying to get through the recession.
But one thing: please think hard before “putting a small section in and [literally] calling it uniform” in otherwise non-uniform retail locations. Few parents (or children, for that matter) will assign positive connotations to the word itself… and it’s not all that great in quickly communicating benefits, either. “Budget smart”-like phrases may be a better way to go.
Man, it’s a tough time to be a media company. What with News Corp.’s operating income dropping 47% (99% in the newspaper business and 97% in the TV division) and both Arianna Huffington and Jeff Bewkes declaring the death of big media, what’s a media mogul - or budding mogul – to do?
One obvious answer IMHO should be an enhanced, more enlightened focus on women, because their behavior is changing and not enough advertisers and media companies appear to be keeping pace. 36% of women claim to be reading fewer magazines and 39% are spending less time reading newspapers. These are consumers – moms, in particular – who control 85% of all household spending and are worth more than $2 trillion in US spend each year. That’s “trillion” with a “t.”
A lot of these women say they’re migrating online. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is women age 40-50 in the home; moms aged 25-35 with at least one child are heavy online shoppers (see chart); and twitter moms showed Motrin who’s boss in November 2008. “Power moms” are also increasingly focused on video, and even upload their own on a variety of topics at sites like NewBaby.com.
SFMOGD came across two ads this week that are real… which just seems sort of impossible!
Ad #1 was brought to our attention by our friend, Jonathan Gilbert, and has some disturbing things to say about the condition of German underwear. Here is a billboard currently posted in Berlin’s shopping district:
That would be Chancellor Angela Merkel on the left posing in front of various undressed members of the German government, with her ”weapons of mass destruction” in full view. The ad is part of an underwear company’s national ad campaign. Modeled after the country’s successful ads promoting ”cash-for-clunkers” exchanges, the ad’s copy offers Germans who trade in their old underpants a €5 credit toward a new pair with the slogan ”The country needs new undies.” No mention of whether the old panties need to be (*gag*) washed before you trade them in.
Ad #2 appears to be a real television commercial for a North Carolina furniture store that takes race relations very seriously. Based on the company’s perfectly normal description of the ad on YouTube, the weird humor and full-on racial context appears to have been lost on The Red House. Luckily, it’s not lost on us:
There have been several articles recently pointing to the rise in both offline and online coupon use. While consumers 65+ are more likely to use newspaper coupons and younger individuals prefer online coupons, there’s no real news here given that these stats will change over time as newspapers become less available and older consumers become more and more comfortable on the Web.
In the meantime, don’t leave home – or buy online – without it!
I’ve become accustomed to checking online for coupons and promotion codes prior to making either a store or Web purchase. There is an art to this and, once you get the hang of it, you’ll become savvier about what sites are likely to bear fruit and which will not.
There are four general categories of sites I’d recommend you consider:
1. Aggregators – these are sites whose sole purpose in life is to offer coupons and “promo codes” from many retailers, typically across multiple industries. Some examples would include:
4. Forums - some activities tend to make people want to vent (like having to take your shoes off at the airport…), and folks on these sites love to let others in on a deal:
If you’re set on a particular brand, it only takes a second to check out that company’s own site, too. KFC, for example, has a pre-set button on its home page pointing visitors to printable coupons. I’m actually surprised that more brands don’t take advantage of this simple way to build a solid customer database. If a consumer is a fan, he will part with valuable demo and psychographic information in exchange for a steady stream of deals delivered by email.
And as a final tip: consider opening a brand new email account exclusively for your interactions with coupon and promotional sites. You’ll be able to see all your coupon- and deal-related email in one place without clogging your own email inbox.
So start looking for coupons online and, pretty soon, you too will understand the nirvana of “stackable codes…”
Poor Dominos.
In a nutshell, two employees posted a “prank” video on YouTube that shows them at work spitting and sneezing on food, putting cheese up their noses and then onto pizzas, passing gas on meat then – ouhhhh – putting said meat on the food…
As the beauty says to the gross Ben Stiller character when he asks her out (in that great philosophical movie, Dodgeball),I think I threw up in my mouth. Just a little.
I coach corporate clients on how to manage their reputations and build brands online. I show companies how to proactively create meaningful online interactions with prospects and customers. I use case studies to demonstrate the usefulness of one social community vs. another. I present lessons that apply to all businesses, and some that are industry-specific. And I do train companies how to assess and react to negative content on the Web. Be proactive and, when you must, here’s how to react to problematic online content.
And then there are things that you just can’t plan for. We’ve seen vanity urls (walocaust.com, ihatestarbucks.com) and online stunts created by disgruntled employees and angry investors. We’ve seen rats scurrying along the floor inside a fast food restaurant. These kinds of events are now so frequent that they can and should be part of a company’s online crisis strategy. [NOTE: You have one of those, right?]
But two employees, with no ax to grind, demonstrating phenomenally bad judgment? All a company can do in advance is reinforce its own employee policies with respect to unacceptable behavior and… make sure the Internet is covered. I’m sure that disparaging the company to this extreme is already grounds for dismissal, and these two MENSA members have been fired. And arrested and charged with a felony.
Unfortunately, Dominos is taking a real hit. But the company has come out swinging online - play fire with fire – and I give them enormous credit for that. Take a look at Dominos’ own YouTube response (click HERE if you do not see the video below):
If I were advising the company, I’d suggest a 5-point action plan over the next 90 days. What they’ll actually do? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you order a pizza and think you see boogers… I’M KIDDING!
Here’s a quick post about an article about Disney in the The New York Times today.
The piece is all about a Disney researcher considered to be “the kid whisperer.” Her job is to help the company understand the needs, wants and desires of boys age 6 to 14, and then use this information to drive incremental revenue. While 40% of the audience for Disney Channel is male, for example, girls continue to drive an outsized percentage of (merchandise) sales.
The article follows Kelly Peña as she walks through boys’ homes, unearthing insights such as – while a 12 year old is trying to be tough and mature – he still as stuffed animals on his bed.
While in-home anthropological research is becoming de rigueur in consumer packaged goods, it’s a pretty big deal in the entertainment space, where executives or creatives often believe they “know the target” and pursue a product development process not necessarily informed by real people and their real behavior.
This is a huge simplification, but there is a fundamental difference in both B2B and B2C companies alike that build something new by starting with their customer target’s belief systems and behavior vs. those who start with the best product development process. I was trained in customer segmentation – start with the consumer (or business target) – and build “to suit” – but not everyone is.
If pursued with rigor, I think this type of development work could be extremely helpful to the process of creating new entertainment vehicles and entertainment-inspired merchandise.
While restaurant chains suffer, and the industry predicts a “purge,” one restaurant has decided to let its customers take more of a direct role in its future.
Sghetti’s Italian Bistro, a local restaurant in Pennsylvania, has established a “pay what you think it’s worth” policy. The menu no longer shows specific prices, opting instead for a suggested price range by category: appetizers $3-$9, pasta $6-$12 and so on. The offer is good for parties of 8 or less at dinner only, beginning at 4pm.
“[The recession] is sad, for senior citizens and young families,” says the spot’s owner, Eugene Razzano. “…we can do something to empower people.” Razzano recognizes that some diners won’t be fair, but believes that the press coverage and increased traffic – particularly return traffic – will make this a successful proposition overall.
I think this is brilliant. Razzano has been very clear that he is assessing the program on a week-to-week basis. High-margin beverages are not included, and parties are asked to tip the wait staff, as usual. He’s getting full-blown word of mouth, while still protecting himself on the downside.
Part of the commentary on this blog lately has seen me preaching restraint to businesses advertising at such a sensitive time. If you’re going to put a message out there, be 100% certain that it connects to how people are feeling and what they are experiencing. Even if a negative reaction happens “outside your target audience,” it can have an outsized ability to impact business over the mid- to short-term. My opinion is that companies including Pepsi and Hawker have taken risks with their brand images by promoting messages that are out of tune with the public zietgeist.
Online retail sales are bleak – no question – but there are some opportunities for sharp loyalty marketers.
I say that because some gift types actually saw an uptick around Valentine’s Day this year vs. month prior or year prior or both – ok, the only gifts in the latter category were pets and outdoor gear, but still…
Internet Retailerlooked at both shopping cart completions and sales totals for February 09 and gifts, pets, jewelry and sports apparel & gear all saw increases in the percentage of orders that were completed vs. February 08. That does not mean that order sizes increased – ticket size, in fact, decreased in all of these categories – but more customers completing any orders offer a smart online retailer the opportunity to capture:
- incremental email addresses
- more refined SEO information
- additional data about the relationship between ticket size and order completion
- increased data regarding site visit and purchase behavior
All of these factors permit more accurate and efficient site design and offer development targeting a broader consumer base.
‘Definitely a glass-half-full approach to some pretty dismal numbers, but both more and less of just about every kind of behavior online can make you a better marketer over time.
While I’d prefer to come up with these on my own, I’m afraid that I would be the one who’s hard of hearing if I didn’t pick a recent Pepsi ad for G2 (low-calorie Gatorade) as the tone-deaf ad of the week.
You can see what Pepsi was trying to do almost immediately, but BLAM: this thing has really come back around and smacked them in the head. This means Pepsi now have something in common with AIG – but I’ll get to that later.
The spot switches back and forth between NBA player Kevin Barnett and a normal, suburban-looking guy – also named Kevin – swimming like crazy. The voiceover also switches back and forth and herein lies the problem. In trying to write a standard “athletic striving” ad, they get seriously tangled in a lot of language that many are considering cruel and insulting to people who have lost their jobs and are otherwise suffering because of the economic crisis. See for yourself (if you can’t see the ad already, click HERE)
When I first heard about this controversy, I really, really wanted to support Pepsi. Then I saw the ad, and that became impossible.
The lines hurtle between insensitivity and cruelty:
Garnett: “I’ve never been handed a pink slip and “I’ve never had to tell me wife ‘We can’t make the mortgage.’” (Kevin “The Big Ticket” Garnett has a $24.75 million NBA contract)
Normal Kevin: “I’ve never had to fill the holes in my sneakers with cardboard.”
That last one IMHO is the most offensive of all. Normal Kevin appears to be taking us past unemployment and foreclosure straight on to visions of being homeless in the park.
The tragedy here is this was completely unnecessary. The financial services companies got into trouble for how they handled their (financial services) business! Gatorade just runs right into a buzz saw for no reason at all.
And so, let me wrap up a Friday by coming back to how Pepsi is now an AIG comrade. Both companies have fundamentally failed to grasp how people are feeling today… how many people are suffering. 1.3 million children in the United States were homeless at some point in one year – and that was before the recession started. I would assume that many of those children have had to use cardboard to plug the holes in their shoes.
If you think I am overdramatizing, I would respectfully suggest that you could make a mistake not dissimilar to the ones made by Pepsi and the banks, either while on the job or at a cocktail party. This is vast, vast pain.
I am counseling clients today to look hard at the need to advertise. If you are running ads, make sure they are seen and tested with a much broader swath of consumers and experts – ones who may not be in your target audience.
Is all this fair? NO ONE CARES. We are all in the business to sell, of course, but think long-term. If you’re not 100% secure in next week’s flight, cancel it. Because getting this wrong could negatively affect your brand’s reputation for years, if not a lifetime.
Skittles’ foray into the social media universe had the marketing blogosphere and Twitterverse on overdrive week.
On Tuesday, Mars replaced the candy’s “normal” website with a live feed from Twitter.com of tweets that mentioned Skittles. If you click HERE, you’ll get a current snapshot of what that site might have looked like several days ago when this experiment first began, but things have calmed down dramatically since then. When I took a look at the feed on that first day, there were tweets full of curse words, comments such as “I found a finger in my bag of Skittles,” “Skittles are made from dead animals,” “Skittles gives you cancer and kills babies,” “Eating Skittles will kill your parents” and so on.
In other words, the idea that anything in a tweet would instantly appear at skittles.com brought adults out of the woodwork to see just how outrageous and inappropriate they could be before Skittles changed strategy. Alas, all these tweets did appear on the site, and it was child’s play (pardon the pun) to get around the site’s age verification tool in order to see every word.
That’s just dumb – and dangerous. If one 8-year old had done something awful as a result of viewing some sort of silly fake directive as to what to do with Skittles… Mars would have had an enormous and entirely self-provoked communications disaster on its hands.
So while many marketers labeled Skittles’ experiment as bold and exciting, I stand with a minority who is not with the “lemmings” on this one. The site started as a confusing mish-mash of wildly unacceptable language attached to a candy, and has since evolved into the most boring site in the category.
Social media is not an end in itself. No tactic ever is. Advertising’s goal is to create goodwill and sales among a product’s target market. Will this effort do that? No. And did the stunt bring non-buyers out in droves? You bet.
While Mars (or its ad agency) may certainly win some wacky 2009 social media award when all is said and done, look for the company to announce that this “successful experiment” has come to an end, and that it is returning to a more standard interactive (and managed) site. It couldn’t happen soon enough. Skittles Skittles_Twitter
“New mover” marketing is huge. Most banks and many other types of institutions have individuals or teams assigned to the art of capturing business from consumers who move from one home to another. Banking, home improvement and security, auto repair, dry cleaning, groceries, pharmacy, electrical, plumbing, gardening… you name it and you need it in a new place.
17-20% of the US population move every year, and new mover total spending is around $170 billion. New mover list rental is a huge and attractive business because new movers are highly responsive.
I have seen QSRs market to new movers (they buy their way into “welcome wagon” programs with coupons or send stand-alone postcards, etc.). A Denny’s example pulled a 38% response.
Now comes a study from Epsilon pointing out that folks spend over 50% more on home decor and furnishings in the first year after they move than do people who stay put. These same movers, however, spend 24% less than non-movers on apparel and personal accessories in that same year.
So… Do national department stores and clothing stores purposefully promote to new movers? Nordstrom, Macy’s, Dillard’s? Do they market a specific message (and offer) to existing store cardholders who change zip, and new prospects (cut by income) living in an X-mile radius of a store?
Amazon Customer Reviews “I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said ‘that’s the worst security ever!’ But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.” “Of course, since the Playmobil Dad could not remove his shoes or other clothing items, the Playmobil security agent became suspicious and, after waving her wand wildy a few dozen times, called her supervisor to wisk the Dad into a special body-cavity search room… My advice – educating your kids about airport security with this toy may actually be more harmful to them than just packing them in the damn luggage with some bottled water and hoping they survive.” “Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like… I noticed that my child is now more interested in current events. Just the other day he asked me why we had to forfeit so much of our liberties and personal freedoms and I had to answer ‘well, it’s because the terrorists have already won.’” “I’ve heard that they were going to publish a coupon and code, to allow us to buy this for $9.11, they’re just waiting for the economy to drop a little more then it currently is. It’s a marketing thing I know…” “This toy would be a lot more realistic with about 350 people standing in line for an average of an hour. But it still makes a nice set with the interrogation room.” Playmobil Playmobil_Security_Checkpoint Amazon
I’ve never been a big Costco person, probably because I live in an apartment the size of a postage stamp. But just this year – when my mom moved close to one in the New Jersey burbs – I took the leap and bought a membership. Now I love going there: the warehouses are like Disneyland! There’s a pie as big as my couch! Cool!
Sidebar: when I finally did buy, it’s because I saw a specific product I wanted that Costco carried at a great price. I bought enough of that product (plus some gum, I think) to “pay for” the $50 membership fee on my first visit. Making a purchase a no-brainer is every retailer’s goal , no?
Now we get a little glimmer into the company’s customer service smarts, as well. Like many membership-based retailers with preferred shopper programs, it’s easy for Costco to keep track of a member’s purchases and to retain specific transaction-related data, such as the date and time of purchase. It turns out that one of the ways in which Costco delivers value back to members based on this information comes in the form of product recall notifications.
While Costco routinely sends letters to customers who have purchased recalled products, it is now the first major retailer to implement an automated calling service that dials and leaves messages for members warning them of problem products.
Costco uses an external vendor that can make up to 500,000 calls per hour. The company estimates that it has already made 1.5 million calls so far related to the ongoing recall of peanut butter products alone.
Would a company focused only on this quarter’s profitability do the same? Probably not…. especially since Costco will give the customer a refund for any recalled product that is returned to a warehouse (with or without a receipt). But how much is a call like this worth to a customer about to serve tainted food to his or her family? It’s invaluable. And, if the company doesn’t already, it would be fairly straightforward to measure the monetary value of the program.
This is a worthy practice. Let me know if you see holes in it.
I truly don’t understand this particular one, because no woman who is overweight believes she is also a thin model. The average American woman wears a size 14 – and knows it. She does not think that Crystal Renn is her spitting image. Hair, cellulite, make-up, the size of one’s pores: the savvy woman generally knows that all of these can be drastically manipulated ad – sadly – some women still aspire to these things. But chubby and frolicking in one’s bikini in a magazine? No.
Skittles 
Skittles_Twitter 
Playmobil 
Playmobil_Security_Checkpoint 
Amazon 
Costco
peanut_butter_recall
