Wide Angle

Sometimes the cornucopia of plenty in American grocery and general merchandise stores can be, well, a bit monotonous. The bread aisle is a monochrome light brown (occasionally accented by, oddly enough, brown shelves), the dairy case a washed out sea of white plastic bathed in a pale fluorescent glow, the men’s undershirts an undifferentiated mass of white, brown and light gray. It’s no wonder, then, that consumers crave a little variety in packaging and presentation. It’s not just to make the scenery a little less boring; it also makes products dramatically easier to find. Read More »

Big brands are often the last to catch on to changing consumer behavior.  There are few industries where this is more visible than airline travel, where frazzled consumers have long begged the major players to deliver an experience that exceeds the “punishment for a crime you did not commit” bar.

Iconoculture recently reported on an unsettling trend in consumer travel—as airline innovation fails to keep pace with consumer demands, consumers are either rewarding smaller players like Suite Arrival (who delivers TSA-friendly personal items from popular brands directly to travelers’ hotel room) or inventing their own “DIY” approaches to make travel less frustrating. Read More »

Here’s a common thread that I’ve picked up from conversations recently with CMOs and some research we’ve done into innovation.  There’s an interesting connection between what some call “polycentric innovation”, what I’ll call innovation “crucibles”, and marketing talent development.

Starting with polycentric innovation, in a recent special report on innovation in emerging markets, The Economist described how companies like Cisco and IBM are building innovation centers in emerging markets.  These aren’t just laboratory outposts—these are major innovation centers on par with those in developed markets. These emerging market innovation centers act as a sort of crucible—an intensely pressured, constrained environment that accelerates innovation, and potentially leads to discontinuous solutions that you simply wouldn’t get in other contexts. Read More »

Everywhere we look, there’s evidence that consumers are a little more skeptical, a little more cynical, and sometimes even a little angry. While these consumer sentiments are widely recognized by marketers, many brands continue with the feel-good aspects of their message: family, friendship, security, trust, and even hope.  At the same time, Surly Brewing and Angry Little Girl totes are migrating from niche to mainstream with a different message—you’ve got attitude, and we understand that. Red Tettemer illustrates the approach perfectly in Tub Gin’s recent campaign:

One of the sharpest subversive ads of the year (a humble opinion) is available at http://www.tubgin.com/, and click on “A short, short story”.

These brands offer just a few examples of a broader trend in tapping directly into the edgier, snarkier sentiments of today’s consumer (Whitney had to tell me what snarky means).

Iconoculture—MLC’s new partner for bringing real-time consumer insights to our members—has picked up on this trend in its most recent research on “Subversive Branding.”  Iconoculture’s findings point marketers in an interesting direction: while subversive branding can breathe new life into our marketing messages, it also runs the risk of alienating consumers. Read More »

With the World Cup winding down, which brand sponsors will have done the best? And what will have been the key to their success? 

There’s no shortage of sensational reporting on the sponsors.  For example, there’s an interesting report here on the buzz between Nike and Adidas (the official sponsor). Observation: the PR success for Adidas from the Jabulani ball has, like the flight of the ball, been erratic and unpredictable, but probably a net positive for Adidas. 

Meanwhile, other sponsors fled like rats off a sinking ship to get away from the implosion of the French national team.  Sacre (les) Bleus!

Non-sponsor brands also saw their share of action. In a provocative tale of ambush marketing, 36 female Dutch fans were detained for wearing orange miniskirts, evidently a clear symbol of Bavaria beer (NOT an official sponsor, by the way).

But beyond all the buzz and antics, what characterizes great, enduring world cup sponsorship marketing? Read More »

When we started exploring innovation from a marketing perspective a few months ago, Andy Armstrong left a copy of Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses that Market Themselves by Alex Bogusky and John Winsor on my desk—a fantastic read on market-driven innovation.  I was only a few dozen pages into the book when I hit a particularly insightful piece of guidance:

“Make a list of the cultural trends that influence your consumers’ behavior.  Take your time; all of the items on this list will not be immediately apparent.  Stay with it, and you will gradually observe more and more.  Be a good observer.  Remove yourself from your own cultural perspective.  Look for the absurdities, the incongruities, the things that don’t necessarily make sense.  You will begin to laugh as you start to see the culture from the outside.  (Laughing is a good sign).”

Bogusky’s hypothesis underpinning this advice is simple: consumers are participants in a culture first and an economy second—they’re much more likely to spend their hard-earned dollars on culturally relevant products than culturally ambivalent products.  If a brand wins the cultural relevance game, they’ll likely see the economic benefits as well. Read More »

Scientia potentia est, the Latin maxim commonly paraphrased as “knowledge is power”, is as much a philosophy for gaining competitive advantage today as it was when famously stated by Francis Bacon centuries ago.  But in the elegant simplicity of this phrase lies its vulnerability to misinterpretation and misapplication.  One need only look at the rise and fall of knowledge management (and its current transformation with Web 2.0) to see how quickly this concept can lead you astray.

Just as the word “knowledge” is not qualified in this famous maxim, many people assume that more of any knowledge contributes to more power.  This fails to take into account that some knowledge is far more valuable because of its uniqueness or quality.  Or, perhaps even worse, it falsely assumes that all knowledge is worth the cost of consuming or managing it.   In most organizations, this remains a highly contentious subject.  For every white paper extolling the potential of knowledge management, I read or hear a story from one of our members about the unwieldy systems that fail to deliver. Read More »

Arriving in South Africa yesterday, I was reminded of what British heritage leaves around – driving on the left, spelling key as quay, and televising every world cricket match. One day I’ll understand that sport. You also can’t escape the reality of global branding from the moment you exit the plane – the ubiquitous HSBC jet bridges, Visa adverts plastering baggage claim, and a Coca-Cola vending machine in every corner.

There’s also this large sporting event coming up (in case you haven’t heard): the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Or rather, “the-every-fourth-year-global-football-tournament-to-determine-a-single-country-champion,” as FIFA would like me to refer to it in this space.

FIFA is playing brand police here in South Africa, and a ruthless outfit at that. You can find just a taste of their efforts in this article. My personal favorite – their request of Kalula, one of South Africa’s low-cost airlines, to withdraw its slogan “Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What.” While fully understanding that FIFA and its corporate partners paid truckloads of money for brand exclusivity at the tournament, the brand management tenacity at play here seems to far exceed rational boundaries. Read More »

Continuing a very episodic series on how some things might be bottle-necked, my next observation is around the number of key accounts that a company manages at any point in time.

This observation comes from a study of key account managers in 2006 that surveyed key account managers from 53 large companies.  The study found that, while all companies tier customers, they also tend to limit the number of accounts that fit the description: “a customer relationship that is deemed significant to your company’s long-term growth because of that customer’s current and/or expected financial, learning or strategic value”.  Specifically, the number of true key accounts tends to cluster around the 15- to 20-mark, irrespective of the company’s industry segment. That was a surprise, since we expected certain firms (like the delivery industry) to engage with a much larger number of accounts given their routine interactions with 100,000s of customers. Read More »

The clock is ticking for retail: create a truly multi-channel customer experience or perish.   A recent consumer survey released by ATG reveals:

• 78 percent said they use two or more channels to browse, research and make purchases; 30 percent said they use three channels or more
• 43 percent said they start their research online or through a mobile device, but then need to call a customer service or call center representative to complete the transaction because the necessary product or service information cannot be found online
• 39 percent said they browse via the online or mobile channel and then make purchases in the store because they prefer to touch and feel the product; 36 percent said they do this to compare several brands of the same product

Consumers are embracing the freedom the new multi-channel environment provides them in evaluating products and services to ensure that whatever purchase they make is the right one.  Retailers are starting to follow suit, but they face some significant barriers in doing so: Read More »