Wide Angle

Last weekend, I spoke with a friend who just returned from Italy.  He asked: do you know how long it took to build the St. Peter’s basilica?

120 years!  That’s 1.2 centuries.  Or, a decent-sized-fraction of a millennium.

Awe-inspiring, no doubt.  But what is particularly remarkable is that the basilica planners had to answer some extremely important questions before construction even began: would the building accommodate the size of the community in 120 years?  Would the design meet the aesthetic tastes of our grandchildren?  To answer these questions without the luxury of Excel, Stata or dartboards (created 100’s of years later by our friends in England) must have required luck—and prayer.

In many ways, it’s the equivalent of a modern-day, consumer product development cycle.  In a sea of shifting segments, who will purchase my product when it finally hits store shelves?  Not an easy question to answer, even with modern, predictive tools we now have at our disposal. 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 »

Ah, the sweet smell of redemption on a Thursday morning. Last week, I wrote about whether executives could tag companies as ‘innovative’ if they failed to deliver revenue growth (and implicitly, fail to meet customer needs). BCG’s listing of the top 50 innovative companies said yea; I, nay. And this week, I think I’ve got 23 companies to back me up: Fortune’s list of 23 companies that achieved double-digit revenue growth despite the turbulent economy in 2009. Perhaps not innovative, but doing a great job of exceeding shareholder expectations.

Discerning a common thread among those on the Fortune list isn’t easy, especially since most would rarely appear on an ‘innovative company’ list. You could certainly argue that value positioning helped tremendously, i.e., the right economic proposition to capitalize on retrenched consumer spending. Companies like Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Ross Stores certainly fit the bill. Yet, there are plenty of ‘value’ retailers that noticeably didn’t make the cut, from Family Dollar to the granddaddy of them all, Walmart. There isn’t an easy industry lens to the list either – in what was generally another poor year for financial services, USAA, Wells Fargo, and Erie Insurance beat the odds handily. Even with oil prices up across 2009, there isn’t an energy company to be found. Read More »

I’m a sucker for top ten lists – world’s busiest airports, tallest buildings, largest bankruptcies, habits of effective social media marketers (ok, the last was just a shameless plug). Yet there’s one list each year that always piques my interest – BCG’s Most Innovative Companies, and this year’s survey results were a bit of a head-scratcher.

Not because of the leading companies on the list – the old standbys of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and IBM still head the class. What was more startling was that 11 companies had declining revenues and 17 companies had declining margins across the 2006-2009 survey period. You can play devil’s advocate with the recession all you’d like, but in a top 50 list of innovators, more than 20% falling shy of growth raises an eyebrow. Read More »

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Concourse D and I’m eating Sbarro, drinking a Coke, and overlooking flag carriers from the Netherlands, France, Italy, and the UK. The voice from above announces flight information in three languages – Dutch, English, and the language of the country’s destination. The passengers next to me are listening to iPods singing American pop, heading for Africa.

Whither globalization? I beg to differ.

There was a bit of consternation at the Davos confab earlier this year as to whether the era of globalization was the root cause of the global financial meltdown, and as a result, perhaps it was time to roll back some of that interconnectedness. Nicolas Sarkozy was particularly pungent in his argument to this effect. Granted, globalization certainly hastened the onset of recessionary tendencies the world over; international capital flows have only increased since the Asia financial crisis of the late 1990s sent a minor shock wave through the system. Read More »

Marketers would be remiss to ignore the U.S. political events of the past week. Scott Brown’s upset victory in Massachusetts’ Senate race removed the air of inevitability from health care reform. President Obama’s plan for a tax on the largest financial institutions sent the Dow plummeting 5% across three sessions. As December home resale data proved less than stellar, the administration announced a wind-down of federal support for mortgage rates – potentially a double blow to that sector’s recovery. Let me back up: why should marketers care?

Political affiliations aside, government touches more elements of our consumer-driven economy than ever before. One policy change here, another there, ripples through the system with unprecedented speed (like perhaps, an unintended consequence). If banks feel less wealthy as a result of taxation and more limited mortgage support, the less likely they are to expand credit. Tighter credit, as we saw vividly in the fourth quarter of 2008, leads to lower business investment and greater consumer savings – starting another cycle of money removed from our economy exactly at the time it needs capital injected.

Senior leadership teams don’t want excuses, though. After two years of stumbles, most executives look to 2010 for growth. Yet the number of extraneous variables affecting that potential growth is incredibly high, hence marketers’ collective uncertainty. Just take several possible scenarios that could happen across 2010: Read More »

After my gloomy 2009 retrospective, I thought I’d try for a cheery 2010 prognostication. Then I looked at the unemployment rate, continued declines in construction spending, the looming bust of commercial real estate and quickly recalled why I’m a self-described realist (others call it cynic, take your pick).

So how about an even-handed assessment of things to watch for in 2010? Even the cynic can provide that.  Here are three big macroeconomic and marketing-specific trends every marketer should follow in earnest: 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 »

I sense an eerie (and I think false) sense of security from marketers as they enter 2010 planning, that the worst is behind us, we can forecast 1-2% GDP growth for the next 12 months, and the Fed has the financial crisis under control. 

After meeting with a regional retail bank, a Fortune 500 CPG company, and a host of planning executives last week, I’m almost frightened by the sense of stability I see in 2010 plans.  The picture is not rosy, certainly, but it assumes stability.  We seem to have checked any Black Swan thinking at the door.  How the economy recovers, its precise trajectory, and changes in consumer behavior are far more volatile than the stability many marketers are putting into their plans.  And let’s be honest – too many of us leave those plans on the shelf for 12 months without revision. Read More »

Driving down the New Jersey Turnpike to visit a Council member, a billboard caught my eye (please, no jokes about the Turnpike and billboards).  It read as follows – “Recession 101: Interesting fact about recessions . . . they end.”  Pithy and humorous, I thought.  When I reached my hotel, I did some searching and the Recession 101 campaign is nationwide, paid for by members of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and designed by an unnamed private donor.

Seeing the billboard and scrolling through Recession 101’s Twitter feed (sidebar: good social media integration with ‘traditional’ media), it did prompt me to realize that our members are asking one question with increasing frequency – does MLC think that the economy has turned the corner? Read More »