Wide Angle

The US is in a kind of tough place right now. Let’s see: unemployment is hovering around 10%, not only idling millions of workers but keeping millions more stuck in jobs they don’t like; it’s shaping up to be the hottest summer on record in many parts of the country; and, to top it all off, traffic is getting worse as local governments run out of money to invest in public transit and new roads. Add these (and many, many other) factors up, and it’s no secret why your average American is a little on edge these days.

So when JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made a dramatic exit from his job on Tuesday, delivering an expletive-laced tirade to passengers over the intercom before grabbing a beer from the service cart and sliding down the plane’s emergency chute, it wasn’t surprising when he became something of a cause celebre. A Facebook fan group established after the news broke on Tuesday now has nearly 200,000 fans, and there’s talk of a legal defense fund (Slater was cited for public endangerment). Slater has been hounded by reporters and paparazzi since being released on bond, and his relatives have made the talk-show rounds. Read More »

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One of my favorite things to read about and experience is how quintessential American brands have localized themselves around the world. It’s odd, for instance, to think of American mainstays like McDonald’s and 7-11 offering radically different products and services in their outlets abroad, but they do: McDonald’s, for instance, serves porridge in Singapore and Malaysia, and 7-11 sells video games and consoles in Japan.

And as China’s economy and level of personal wealth has exploded, so too have the number of Western companies doing business there. Unsurprisingly, Chinese consumers have made their imprint on companies like Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and, believe it or not, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Here are some funny, insightful, and just-plain-weird examples of stuff they sell in China:

5) Pig faces at Wal-Mart

Picture me, sitting at my desk in MLC World Headquarters, perusing an off-topic link sent to me by a colleague. “16 Items They Only Sell At Chinese Wal-Marts“. Imagine my horror as I scroll down to find pictures of pig faces – not the heads, just the faces – stacked in a bin.

Apparently pig face isn’t just a delicacy in China – in Spain, it’s called careta – and, in any case, I’m not one to criticize. I’ve eaten even more disgusting things on a dare.

4) Pabst Blue Ribbon – for $44 a bottle

Catering to the growing Chinese business class is proving to be quite a boon for some American manufacturers, including Pabst. Long known as a blue-collar (and later, a hipster) beer in the United States, Pabst Blue Ribbon has a special edition in China called “Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844″, is sold in a bottle that’s reminiscent of a high-end vodka, and advertisements suggest that the beer be served in – what else – a champagne flute. Retailing for an astonishing US$44 a bottle, the beer is marketed to the Chinese public as similar to scotch, brandy, and Bordeaux because all four are aged in wooden casks.

In a country where per-capita income remains just over $3,500/year, Pabst probably doesn’t move many units of this premium brew yet. But it’s an interesting anecdote illustrating an empirical truth – Chinese consumers are gaining purchasing power, and quickly. Read More »

(This is a guest post by Dan Clay of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for call center executives.)

Needless to say (especially living in Washington, DC) it’s hard to find a conversation topic that elicits the same reaction from everyone.  But my experience working in customer service reveals one commonality across all ages, nationalities, races, and eye colors:  If you tell someone you work in customer service, they’ll tell you their latest call center catastrophe. Read More »

Click to Enlarge | Domino’s Pizza (NYSE: DPZ) Share Price vs. S&P 500, Dow, and Pizza Sector (PZZA) August 21, 2009 – April 13, 2010 (Red line denotes launch of new crust)

(This is a guest post by Andrew Kent of the Sales Executive Council, our sister program for sales leaders.)

Domino’s Pizza’s new crust has been making the company a lot of dough.  The pizza delivery chain announced a new and improved crust on December 16, and has been blitzing the airwaves with ads ever since—ads which you’ve no doubt seen many times by now.  Over that time, the firm’s share price has leapt by 84%, trouncing the S&P 500, Dow, and pizza sector.

That’s a meteoric improvement—and no doubt a relief to Dominos’ marketers, who spent “tons of time — about 18 months — and millions of dollars” experimenting with various recipes and testing them with customers, according to CMO Russell Weiner.

Those marketing dollars certainly translated into a mouthwatering share price, but what about the pizza?  Did the crust really improve by that much? Read More »

Source: youtube.com/nikegolf

Now that the frenzy over the Masters is winding down, let’s take a look at the Tiger ad from Nike.  Smart move by Nike, or not?  More importantly for the Wide Angle readership, are there lessons here for marketers more generally? (Beyond be careful which superstars you get in bed w—sorry, bad choice of words) 

If you look at numbers released Monday after the tournament, it certainly doesn’t look good for Nike.  Confusion, skepticism and other negative emotions reign. Read More »

With the Super Bowl not too far in the rear-view mirror, and basketball’s March Madness in full swing, B2C marketers break out the checkbook for new TV campaigns integrated with broader marketing communications efforts. We’ve seen everything from babies talking stock options to houses made from beer cans. But the overarching question remains: do the campaigns work?

The Council’s work on marketing communications has always stressed the primacy of client-side creative brief writing. Many heads of advertising will tell us they can ascertain the relative success of a campaign in advance simply by reading the creative brief sent to the agency. Our research shows that the best briefs contain three can’t-miss elements: Read More »

Friday’s Wall Street Journal showed a delicious contrast in innovation approaches in side-by-side articles (yes, I’ve just revealed I still read a broadsheet from time-to-time).

On the one hand, you have P&G launching the latest, feature rich, premium-seeking version of its Fusion razor.  Blade edges so fine you need a microscope to see them.  Anti-hydroplane technology.  And an even more ergonomic grip. 

(Wait.  Backup.  My razor blade can hydroplane? On my face?  Scary… Does my auto insurance cover that?)

In contrast, the neighboring article details GE’s plans to launch a handheld ultrasound device.  Price point: under US$10,000.  Compare that to $25-50k for laptop-based machines, or $250k for a cart-based ultrasound.  Of course, the handhelds won’t have the functionality of the others, but for many situations, they don’t need to.  Cutting out features in favor of portability and low price actually opens up new markets.  That’s smart, “good enough” innovation in a tough economic environment. Read More »

Someone smarter than me has surely waxed poetic on the virtue of looking to the past to prepare for the future.  Yet if 2009 taught marketers anything, it is that the past is no predictor or guarantee of future performance.  Heraclitus figured it out long ago – the only constant is change.  2009 was the year of assumption upheaval, of predictable patterns overturned by equally unpredictable economic conditions.  How about a few examples? Read More »

My New York Giants didn’t play this weekend – that’s one way to end a losing streak. I hadn’t enjoyed four consecutive losing Sundays of gesticulating wildly at my TV to no avail. But Fox, CBS, NBC, or ESPN didn’t quite care – I was watching.

As were about 17.2 million others any given Sunday, helping the NFL to their highest TV ratings in 20 years, a 15% uptick over last season. That’s an increase far beyond the 2% decline in stadium ticket sales, so much so that NFL national sponsorships are up. The pattern extends to baseball as well – World Series TV ratings were up 42% in 2009, which we can’t attribute solely to my Yankees’ return to dominance.

Clearly, we’re seeing not just changing consumer behaviors, but new, never-before-seen behaviors. A 15% viewership increase isn’t just former fans returning to TV. Our latest research on consumer behavior tells us that today’s winners are somehow helping consumers satisfy emerging desired outcomes – not the outcomes consumers say they want, but the latent (often emotional) ones that ethnographic research could uncover. Read More »

I don’t know how many of you follow box office results, but I’d like to point your attention to Paranormal Activity, a horror movie getting a slow rollout from Paramount that just this past weekend grossed $19.6 million from just 760 screens.  That’s a per screen average of $25,813—a number more common for a summer blockbuster than a small, independent, genre film with a budget of $11,000.   So how did this small movie get so big?  Marketing, and more specifically a very smart use of social media. Read More »