The twelve days of Christmas

It was a wonderful holiday. My most excellent wife and I took in a store’s worth of movies, a year’s worth of family (in close quarters) and an adequate amount (though it’s really never enough) of time reflecting on the year past and the year to come. We enjoyed a holiday in the Hamptons (which is to say Hampton Roads, Virginia), New Year’s Eve with my New Orleans-based protégé Meri and New Year’s Day with the Tatarski family. I count my blessings year round, but the holidays are a particularly great time with family and friends.

I’d love to go on about our trip to the Chrysler Museum or Chef Hugh Acheson’s Jedi-like sense in perfecting the cooking of foie gras for New Years eve, but this is a marketing newsletter so marketing we shall discuss. The holiday time is a great time to reflect on marketing. For many, it will begin a new year of efforts and budgets. For some it brings the hope that the past successes will be continued. For others it brings the hope that last year’s failures offer insight into how to do things correctly this go round. For all of us, we hope to be more efficient and effective in how we market what we must this upcoming year.

The holidays offer an added insight in marketing because it is the most wonderful time of the year to be bombarded with pleas for your business. There’s the one day sale and the doorbuster sale. There’s the two day secret sale item sale, the early preview secret doorbuster sale and the ever-elusive secret two day doorbuster sale with an early bird preview and a one day mystery coupon chaser. The marketing we get to see around the holidays can really make us take stock of our own efforts.

So it’s a new year. A chance to start fresh. You’ve got a spring in your step and a positive attitude. You bought whatever exercise equipment to help you keep that resolution (I got a Giant OC2 road bike). You have a new plan for how you’re going to lift those sales and cruise past that quota. Let me be the first to congratulate you in advance. But also, let me be a little bit of a grinch and offer a bit of advice: there are seemingly innocuous yet significant problems lurking out there that can derail even the best marketing team. Make it your resolution to steer clear of the little potholes when you plan this year’s marketing.

Now everybody, the things to look out for this year, in the key of C.

On the first day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Research which fails to accurately ascertain or report correct information.

Research is a funny thing with possibly unfunny results. Research which is very scientific (and suggested to be reliable) often tells nothing but then it costs an arm, leg and a forest to produce. Research which is more interpretive often uncovers the needed approaches and insights which can move a brand onto the right track. The trick is to get this kind of research interpreted the correct way, which is to say, objectively. Jim Nelems always says, “The true power of research is in the understanding of what you're are seeing, hearing and uncovering.” He is completely right. And don’t treat research like fruitcake and pretend to happily accept it only to let it gather dust next to the Perry Como Christmas album.

On the second day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An overall brand position poorly rooted for competition.

Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke thinks he is fighting Darth Vader in a cave, but it turns out he is really just fighting himself? I know a ton of brands making that same mistake. They aim at a ghost competitor and, had the competitor existed, they would have done a fine job competing against them. The result is restaurants trying to be all things to all people, cars built for no one, tequila meant to be mixed with cola and a slew of household and packaged products whose taglines should be “what were we thinking?”

Before you march out with that next idea, you better make sure the brand concept is rooted in reality.

On the third day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies rooted in flawed tactics.

Line extension is the mistletoe of marketing: you think it’s cute to have around, then you find out it’s really a parasite. There’s a lot of mistletoe hanging on brands these days.

A better choice is to focus on doing what you do best. Get a scorpion concept. If you don’t know what a scorpion concept is, e-mail me and I’ll send you my book. It’s full of scorpions.

On the fourth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies disjointed in execution.

In the movie Drum Line, Denzel Washington has a simple but pointed command for his players: “One band, one sound.” Rarely are marketers held to such a standard. Advertising, sales, PR and customer service are all apparently playing different songs. They have one band (sort of) and a million different sounds. From the tuba section comes the pitch of value while sax is playing a conflicting tune about price-offs. Let’s not even talk about what’s coming from the clarinets. The point is marketing should have one powerful sound that harmonizes.

On the fifth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies wrongly translated into advertising.

If you were expecting golden rings you are at least part right. That is, of course, if you’re referring to marketers who incorrectly try to make a linkage between their brand and a sporting event, like perhaps the Olympics. And don’t get me wrong. I think the Olympics are awesome, but the attempts by marketers to squeeze the square peg of something like financial planning into the round hole of a TV spot featuring someone on the pommel horse are slightly cheesy. It’s not just sports. There are plenty of opportunities for the message to get lost between the product and the tube.

It is better to make a succinct case for your marketing strategy and not try to bring in outside confounds.

On the sixth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An abrupt change in a good strategy.

Those of you who know me know I like to cook, and one of my favorite items to cook is stew. I make this one stew with wine-marinated chuck roast that is so good, you’ll want to slap the person sitting next to you in delight. The key to stew is to use the right ingredients and wait. If you taste it early and make an overcorrection you will screw it up.

How many marketing plans get cut off so the marketing team can chase a fringe market somewhere else? Good marketing is a calculated risk where, like stew, we use the ingredients that we know taste yummy and we trust that the things we learned from all the other cooking we’ve done will give us predictable results. Newsflash: many marketing efforts aren’t truly novel. Conventional wisdom is a great servant but a terrible master.

On the seventh day of Christmas my VP gave to me: All the expectation with half the budget.

Budgets adequate enough to only get halfway across the river leave you wet, hurt and angry. Nonetheless, I have met at least a few people who believe they can save their way to growth. Control all frivolous spending and fund important efforts adequately, remembering that you pay for what you get.

On the eighth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: The wrong media.

It doesn’t matter how good your message is if you put it on a trash can. Make your media choices congruent with the marketing goals and strategy. And don’t fear the specter of more media choices. The more media fractures, the more we can target particular groups and waste less of the budget on a mass audience. It’s funny how the people predicting the doomsday of fractured media are the people who make money helping you reach thousands who will never be prospects for your product or service.

On the ninth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: No second strategy after launch.

So you have a great plan to sow the seeds of desire in your customer’s heads? How are you going to harvest the wheat? I was once part of a campaign where we ran spots to build awareness but then did nothing to spur action. When I asked why, I was told that the other component of the campaign was cut from the budget. Why would you seek to make consumers aware but not ask for the sale?

You have got to have a plan to bring in the crop. I’m not saying you can’t tinker with the second part as you learn more about the initial effort’s success, but if your plan is simply waiting, then you really don’t have a plan.

On the tenth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An inability to accurately diagnose and assess success and failure.

In the crazy world of marketing, strategies will continue to fail. But a failure does not have to be a complete, disastrous failure. We can learn so much about consumers and efforts from accurately evaluating a failure. A sure way not to accomplish this is to mess with the language and numbers to make a failure look like a success.

Take apart every effort. What worked? What didn’t? What assumptions and predictions did we make and how did they stand up?

On the eleventh day of Christmas my VP gave to me: 27 different people in charge.

We’ve all heard the goofy little quips like “a giraffe is a horse designed by committee.” Such jokes are funny to tell right before the meeting where everyone tears apart a marketing campaign and fills it up like a piñata full of misguided strategy, personal agenda, turf guarding and, in a very few marketing piñatas, revenge. It is nearly impossible to gang fight a marketing effort if no one is in charge. Years of business have taught us that those who lead a marketing coup may be hitching the train to the big time. The result is a leaderless team with strategies all trying to hit a grand slam when all that’s needed right now is a base hit.

The people element is deeply important in a marketing department. Organization and effectiveness starts with a clear command that praises teamwork and shared success.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: A partridge in a pear tree.

I don’t even begin to know how to care for a partridge or a pear tree, let alone both at the same time. I have a hard enough time keeping my fake plants alive. The bigger point is what we get from the guys and gals in charge. Do they give us expectations paired with authority? Are they focused on the process of our efforts insomuch as they ignore the outcomes? Will we ask for constructive criticism and leadership and instead receive a bird and a houseplant? Let’s hope not.

Here’s a new years wish that your products sell, your consumers love you and success and accomplishment follow all the days of your life. Here’s to the hope that this year will bring prosperity and opportunity for all of you. It’s a new year and a new chance to prove why marketing makes businesses successful. Here’s to you and 2007. Hip, hip, hurray!


Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com