You know that feeling when it’s unbearably hot outside and you’d pay just about anything to have a nice, cold beverage?  Budweiser surely recognized that pain point, and as a solution, it launched an “Ice Cold Index” app in Ireland.  The objective of the app was simple; get Irish people to think about Budweiser, a beer that is not typically a top seller in Irish pubs, when the temperature started to rise.  The nature of the objective was also simple; the hotter the day, the less you pay!

In order to make people envision Budweiser as a refreshing beverage during a hot, summer day, similiarly as many people do in North America, the company developed an iPhone/Android app that offered discounts on a pint of Budweiser at participating bars depending on how hot the outside temperature was.  The voucher scale went as follows: On days the temperature reached 20°C and over, users were presented with a voucher for a free pint; at 18°C or 19°C, users received €2 off a pint; and at 16°C or 17°C, users received €1 off.  There were over 2,500 participating bars, and once a user redeemed his or her voucher, he/she had two minutes to show it to a bartender in order to receive the discount.

Budweiser also recognized that checking the weather was one of the most common activities that smartphone users performed on a daily basis.  For this reason, the beverage giant teamed up with Met Éireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, to automatically notify users of each day’s temperature at 1pm.  By capitalizing on this natural customer behavior with an app complete with daily temperature, a bar finder, and bar reviews, Budweiser was able to create a unique summer experience that sky rocketed its presence in Ireland.

As with any other mobile marketing initiative, however, Budweiser also faced risks in implementing its “Ice Cold Index” app.  To see these risks, along with the final results of the campaign, visit here.

With all the TV commercials that air during a single half-hour program, let alone during an entire day, you’re bound to encounter some strange ads.  We take a look at some of the creepiest, in no particular order.

#1 Burger King’s “Wake Up With the King”:  The Burger King “King” commercials ran all the way from 2003 to 2011, so you would think that they must have been somewhat popular with consumers, right?  Well despite being backed by the award-winning agency, Crispin Porter Bogusky, the fast food giant saw a big loss in market share during these years, along with a 6% drop in first quarter sales in 2011.  Maybe it was the creepily-smirked mask mixed with a human torso, or just the situations Burger King put the character in (waking up next to a sleeping stranger?!), but one thing is for sure: these ads were creepy!

#2 Sony Ericsson’s Experia Play:  You may remember this tv spot from Super Bowl XLV, where the lovable, green Android robot gets a human thumb transplant in the back alley of a street in Bangkok.  The ad was meant to stress the Sony Ericsson’s gaming capabilities, but seeing the Android robot with human digits was just way too weird.  If this ad wasn’t creepy enough, Sony Ericsson also released a follow-up ad to show the thumb donor’s perspective. Bizarre.

#3 Skittles’ “Touch” Commercial:  It starts as a funny concept: an office worker named Tim has the Skittle version of the Midas touch – everything he touches turns to Skittles.  But when the worker recounts a story of him turning a man into Skittles after shaking his hand, and how that man will never see his family again, the plot takes a dark and depressing turn.  Leave that part out, and we like it..but a bit too far, Skittles.

#4 Lamisil “Digger” Creature:  One of the top YouTube comments on this video says it all; “This commercial makes me want to throw up everytime I see it.  It just creeps me out.”  While foot fungus is disgusting in and of itself, having a Lamisil creature that lifts up toenails and digs under them is way too graphic.  I’m glad I wasn’t eating anything as I was writing this post.

#5 Quizno’s Singing “Spongmonkeys”: Plain and simple, these commercials are haunting.  What’s worse is that Quizno’s offered no explanation as to what these creatures were, or what they had anything to do with edible food.  They almost looked like gerbils with birth defects, and many viewers associated these ratlike creatures with unsanitary sandwich-prep environments.  At the end of the day, the ads got people talking, which is exactly what Quizno’s wanted, but they were just too creepy for me.

Have a particularly creepy ad that didn’t make our list?  Please post in the comments section!

(MLC members – interested in evaluating your global marketing presence? Sign up today for our Global Marketing Anatomy, which measures your company against industry and category peers across 27 key attributes of strong global brands.)

You may have seen the news that P&G is moving top executives for its skin care and other businesses from Cincinnati to Singapore.  Global marketing is a topic I am hearing more and more about from CMOs, and so we’re tapping CEB’s global executive network to sort out rules of the road and best practices.

To that end, we recently co-hosted a global marketing summit at SABMiller’s headquarters near London.  Leaders from 20 different global marketing organizations joined us for discussions on marketing organization structure, agency management and marketing operations at a global level.

Here is what we learned: Read More »

(This is a guest post from our friends at the Communications Executive Council, MLC’s sister program for corporate communications leaders.)

As we’ve charted developments in the internal social media and collaboration  space, we’ve seen many overinvest in the latest and greatest technology platforms. These efforts, such as implementing internal Facebook or Twitter-esque applications, met initial enthusiasm only then to see early adoption rates plummet and to struggle justifying value created for the business.

For the most part, these efforts failed because the platforms were non-intuitive and without an obvious purpose or benefit. Many companies wasted time and effort on employee sharing solutions that simply couldn’t compete with employees’ personal options. Before your team begins experimenting with new social media options for employees, here’s what you need to beware of: Read More »

As the B2B sale has become more complex – both the buying and selling sides –  it’s become a lot harder for reps to accurately judge which potential opportunities are the best, most defensible fits for your company’s capabilities and identified growth areas.

Why? Well, your company probably offers more products and services than it once did, as B2Bs have gradually moved from suppliers to consultative sellers and solutions providers. Your buyers’ companies have similarly gone through big shifts, particularly in the way they buy, as more accountability and internal checks and balances have shrunk (your) margins.

And so it can be hard, on the fly, for reps to say “Yes, this is a good opportunity” or “No, I should leave this one alone.” That’s why Marketing at McKesson, a healthcare company, created a Dynamic Opportunity Scorecard for its reps to quickly judge new sales opportunities. The tool essentially asks reps to assess their opportunity in two key areas:

Business issues. This section of the tool asks a variety of questions about the way the opportunity fits in with the reps’ own company capabilities and priorities. Marketing assigns a weight to each of those business characteristics, and reps simply mark “yes”, “no”, or “unknown” in response.

Customer characteristics. Similar in structure to the above, the customer characteristics section asks reps to quickly assess the potential customer – particularly around cost pressure, ease of selling, relationship with high-level executives and potential for imminent change. There’s also a range of customizable customer attributes, designed to allow Marketing to insert other customer variables that correlate with particular value outcomes.

Want to give it a spin? Check out the template, and visit our Sales Tools playbook to learn how to design tools for Sales that get used.

As most are probably aware, Facebook – the social network turned connective social tissue of the internet – is headed for its big day: the company’s stock will debut on the Nasdaq exchange May 18. By all accounts, it will make founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the richest people in the world, and there’s already discussion over how the influx of money will change the economy of Silicon Valley.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the IPO: Facebook released some revenue numbers (which we covered a bit), and a tsunami of blogospheric skepticism was unleashed. That sort of thing is easily-answerable: Facebook, led almost unilaterally by a wunderkind technologist, hasn’t nearly begun to maximize its revenue opportunities – instead focusing on building the product and the network.

A new set of stories, though, looks a bit more worrying. In recent weeks there’s been a torrent of discussion about Facebook’s ad rates and effectiveness numbers – both of which suggest that Facebook advertising might not be a great deal for brands.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal led off with a report on advertisers’ doubts about Facebook, featuring numerous quotes from brands and agencies questioning the value they’re getting from their spend. Facebook won’t release standard online advertising metrics for its products, but third party analyses suggest that Facebook’s click-through rate is one-fifth the average for online ads, a number that’s already very low (hat tip to The Ad Contrarian for those reports). WPP chief Martin Sorrell, quoted in the Journal, said:

“The area is a very sexy area, and clients have gone in almost willy-nilly, because it’s fashionable to do so…[finance departments] are increasingly starting to look at the value of those investments.”

Now, part of this is Facebook’s fault. They have an endlessly-monetizable userbase, but have done very, very little to help advertisers and brands craft presences on the network that monetize it in useful ways. The fact that traditional web ads – an advertising product we’ve had for 20 years – make up the bulk of Facebook’s ad revenue is understandable but unfortunate. It’s their job to create great inventory that delivers value to their main customers – brands – but they haven’t done it.

But some of this rests on marketers, too. Advertisers have demanded very little from the company – perhaps they’re jazzed by working with such a cool platform, maybe they think spending a little bad money now will lead to more favorable terms down the road, or maybe they’re just caught up in the hype. I think we’re out of the phase where an intern runs the social media presence, but most brands still have done relatively little to add real value to their customers and fans on Facebook.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the next few months, as market pressures will surely lead Facebook to begin offering new opportunities for brand engagement. What do you think? Let us know in comments.

Motorola Solutions CTO Paul Steinberg’s recent piece in Forbes – where, incidentally, MLC’s Pat Spenner posts regularly on marketing leadership – is one of the most succinct explanations I’ve ever seen of why good ideas are not enough: that, without the necessary culture and execution, great ideas aren’t worth much more than the paper they’re printed on. It’s something I think most people in the business world can agree with, but there’s a distance between “agree” and “implement” – and a significant gap in organizations’ ability to commercialize transformational ideas.

What’s responsible for those gaps? Here’s what Steinberg thinks (and we totally agree): Read More »

America’s automakers, as anyone who can remember 4-5 years back can attest – are in three very different places. Once universally derided as companies that made uninspired, cheaply-made vehicles with terrible fuel economy, Ford, GM, and Chrysler have all made some measure of comeback. Chrysler – due to some legacy issues that didn’t affect the other automakers as much – is just beginning its journey back to the hearts of the American consumer; GM is a bit further along, having introduced several critically acclaimed models in recent years and recently achieving its 9th straight quarter of profitability.

But Ford – due to a little good luck, a very strong new product pipeline, and a bit of management savvy – finds itself in the position of an automaker ascendant. Its brand perception is among the highest in the auto industry. Its quality ratings have blossomed, and a minor setback in its MyFord Touch product has been handled swiftly and competently. Its sales numbers are up. And in the midst of new economic challenges, the company’s debt was recently upgraded to investment status, a status it hasn’t held since 2005 – and it’s reporting its biggest profits since the 1990s.

So it’s natural that Ford might try a different tack in their advertising strategy. While Chevy and Chrysler are sticking with consideration-oriented strategies designed to appeal to American patriotic sentiments, Ford is transitioning from their consideration oriented strategy to something…very different: Read More »

We’ve been harping on it for a few years now, but I think it’s finally starting to sink in – the way that B2Bs can win in a crowded marketplace with margin-eating monsters around every corner is to lead with insight. The task ahead of Marketing and Sales in such an atmosphere is primarily one of information brokerage – and, since customers are hungry for knowledge about their business, those that have embraced that model are reaping great returns.

I think it’s safe to say we have now reached the second stage of insight marketing adoption. Most B2B marketers and sales leaders will agree that leading with market insight is important, and most have instituted some insight-oriented ideas into their plans. Now comes the hard part: figuring out how to make insight a sustainable piece of every customer touchpoint, and how to derive competitive advantage from customer knowledge.

That’s what we’ve been hearing from B2B marketers around the world, at least, and it’s why we made the topic of scaling insight the center of this year’s annual executive retreat. Specifically, we’re hearing two things from leading marketers:

• There are real, immense market returns to superior customer understanding. A marketing executive at a major tech firm told us, “There are so many ways to leverage customer understanding. It can help you identify the customers most ready to buy, better target the value proposition, understand buying behavior, and pick up on the subtleties of customer language.”
• As as result of the above, they’re engaging in willy-nilly customer information collection strategies. The idea is that hoovering up as much information as possible and analyzing it with high-end statistical techniques is the best path to gaining the elusive 360-degree view of the customer. What’s the problem? They don’t know how to get that data, and they don’t always know how to commercialize it.

So, what do we think so far? MLC members, you’ll have to check out our early findings to find out! But we can leave you with this: we know a lot of members are struggling with developing profitable streams of insight. One way we can help: take our Commercial Insight Assessment, a diagnostic designed to measure your team’s commercial insight capabilities, benchmark you against other B2B marketing teams of your size and industry, and identify opportunity areas and potential fixes. We’ve even created a handy one-page info sheet, perfect for sharing with colleagues, that tells you all you need to know.  If you’d like to check it out, contact Shelley West (swest at executiveboard.com) or your MLC account manager for details.

Here in the western world, we’ve been in the modern era of advertising and branding for about a century now. As such, most of our brands aren’t any older than a century – and when marketers talk about revitalizing old brands, they’re generally talking about an entity that’s no more than 50 years old. But what if your brand is 400 years old or more? Is it possible to revitalize something that’s older than many countries?

That’s the situation that traditional brands in China have found themselves in in recent years. As the country opened up to western commerce, traditional Chinese brands – called laozihao – found themselves in a tough spot. As tastes modernized (and westernized), how would they guarantee their continued existence?

The Chinese government gives a small amount of preferential treatment to officially-designated laozihao, but in general, these brands are expected to compete with new arrivals, and many didn’t succeed. But it’s worth looking at the successes to see if we can arrive at a list of some of the things mature brands do to ensure their continued relevance: Read More »