No amount of tweeting can save you now.

It’s feels like déjà vu all over again. I remember standing in that mediocre office in a drab North Atlanta office park and thinking to myself at what point would this client stop pretending to be a viable business and start trying to actually be one. “This website needs to make us look very big and very credible” he said through a grunt while moving the hard top to his Carrera from one side of the office to the other.
There could be no doubt everything I was involved with; all the photos, headlines, designs and this new fangled website thing (It was 1998) had a single aim- sell the company at a higher price. This company was not unlike many I was working with. There was energy in the air. Everyone was buying and expanding and visioning. There was only one problem- no one was actually making anything. The entire economy was virtual. It’s was taboo to point this out, of course. You wouldn’t want to say anything that might begin the inevitable avalanche of falling confidence.
The late 90s dot com era seems like a lifetime ago but it came back to me, in a sense, when I got an invite from the my local Chamber of Commerce indicating that their annual meeting would have some sort of Twitter theme. Now, I’m not too proud to admit it. I tweet. Perhaps it was my desire to find connection with the younger generation much like when I grew my hair out long despite being over the age of 30. Those poor souls who follow my tweets will probably complain to you that 90% of my dispatches are updates as to the growth and proliferation of my garden. But for you non-tweeter, let me explain the magic of twitter.
Imagine sending a quick e-mail to a select group of friends where the message will also reside on a page where people can see your other messages. Also, people can sign up to receive your messages and you can sign up to read other people’s messages. The messages must be 140 characters or less. Yes, that’s what this whole mesmerizing phenomenon really just comes down to. I know, you could have done much of that with e-mail and a website years ago. Now, that’s what twitter is in a functional sense, here’s what it is in a practical sense. Take the aforementioned technology and try to use it to either make yourself seem more attractive, hip, intellectual, popular or “plugged in” or try to use it to hock worthless junk either blatantly or in a seemingly innocuous message that is a bit like “Just got back from a jog. Time to make millions assembling products from home”.
I won’t lie. I have enjoyed keeping up with the tweets of a few folks. But here is my fear. There are at least a few businesses who believe the sheer magic of social networking tools (like twitter) are going to reverse the fortunes of an otherwise fundamentally flawed business. Even worse, there has been a meteoric rise of social networking “experts” who will promise you that you are just one tweet or face book update from windfall success. Where this gets really scary is the remarkably similar pattern all this has to virtual economies, bubbles and implosions of our recent past. Again, businesses are flocking in droves trying to find a quick cure-all rather than resolving fundamental problems of strategy.
When I lecture about this subject to groups, my favorite metaphor for economic transaction is the miller, the farmer and the blacksmith. Think of the very basics of transaction. Each of our medieval friends has some things the others need. The farmer grows grain but needs it milled. Both the miller and the blacksmith need grain to eat by way of the miller’s preparation. The miller and the farmer both need tools and parts from the blacksmith.
We know needs exist and the progression of an exchange is based in some pretty basic motivations. In the acquisition of that which is needed, the purchaser seeks reassurance that the expectation of that which they are acquiring will be fulfilled by that which they acquire. Put simply, if the farmer is exchanging two sacks of grain for a new plow, his intention is that the performance and ownership experience of the plow will be worth the exchange of his grain, time and energy. The deliverable of how a product, service or concept fulfills a set of needs is what a few of us in the marketing world call the promise. And it’s the promise where many companies fail strategically.
In my book The Promise and The Trust, I outline the things that distinguish good promises from bad. Good promises are differentiated in that they don’t simply promise something you can already get elsewhere. Good promise appreciate the whole value and experience of that which is to be acquired vs. that which is used as payment. The rise of CarMax proved that the too often gut wrenching experience of buying a car from a traditional dealer is a factor beyond the mere price. Good promises also resonate with actual needs instead of seeking to solve needs that don’t really exist at a commercially viable level. Finally, good promise are those in which it is believable that the organization making the promise can fulfill what is claimed. GM can claim they’re driving the American Revolution all they want. We still know they’re making a ton of cars in Mexico.
Until a company understands and can articulate a solid promise, no amount of any marketing tactic is going to help. It’s does not matter if they are featured in “100 great places to work” or if they have a new I-phone game, without a good promise it is all window dressing. With a good promise, the trust-building can be relatively easy. BMW’s advertising is by no means groundbreaking. They don’t send me tweets or connect with me on linked-in. I imagine their press coverage might be nice but I hardly have read it. Yet the position of a car, which is truly thrilling to drive, is firm in my and so many other minds. Their promise is solid and enduring and it has paid off. For comparison, what do you supposed GM’s promise is. Yeah, they don’t know either.
After a company’s promise is firm all the other activities intending to build credibility that the promise will be fulfilled begin to occur. This is the tactical side of marketing rather than the strategic and it is where most people in marketing concentrate their thinking. Things like websites, newspapers ads, radio spots, infomercials, sponsorships, news articles and yes, twitter- all aim to build trust that a promise will be fulfilled. However, without a solid promise in which to build confidence, all of these tactics are futile. Think about it, what exactly are you asking people to trust? That you are really, really, really cool or important or successful? Look at most ads- that’s exactly what they are asking consumers to do. When you boil it down, the reason most companies give for why you should give them money, time and attention is that they are cool, important or successful. Nothing about how they meet needs- just that they are more awesome than everyone else. Hardly compelling.
Instead, trust should be built by explaining how you are meeting needs, indentifying with consumers and getting the individual or organization endorsement needed to allay consumer’s mistrust of claims. Take note, I’m am not saying do one of these things. Your marketing should do all of these things. The goal is to tell a story as to why you can be trusted to fulfill consumer’s particular needs.
The world of commerce is at an important crossroads. The shrinking of incomes and credit is making people a bit more tight-fisted with their resources than they were in the past. This could mean great things for the companies that are clear about their promise and do the kinds of things that help people trust that promise. However, this next era in our economy might spell disaster for the aimless, untrustworthy and hapless huckster who cannot muster a sales pitch beyond “hey everyone, look how cool and zany I am”.
The phenomenon of social networking is about to exit its honeymoon and people will begin to ask if it really did all the things that were promised. I suspect, much like the remnants of the dot com era, some of the applications will be around for a while albeit in a more realistic commercial use. Meanwhile, the peddlers of marketing cure-alls will move on to some other bubble and the rest of us will sift through the remains looking for the lessons.
Perhaps if we all stop and think rationally, we might be able to see some of the telltale signs that ignoring the strategic in favor of the tactical has already begun to erode value and confidence. Perhaps we might look back just a few short years and remember the lessons from an economy that also had no real products but plenty of empty promises. If so, we should really start to warn each other. Let’s tell people to focus of fulfilling needs and keeping promises. Let’s spur business to think about what they really do and get them to tell everyone else about it in a compelling way that encourages trust.
Of course, they’ll need to do it in 140 characters or less.

The only two words that matter in marketing.

In the beginning, there were ideas. Those ideas turned into businesses. One person milled grain. Another made cheese. And another shaped metal. And then, in time the crafts began to specialize. The blacksmith profession split and some blacksmiths specialized in horseshoes and other specialized in making things like swords.

Businesses were built with refined purposes. For many, the business was driven by passion. The craftsmen and smiths took pride in their work and the reputations they had made for selling quality goods. Bigger businesses were formed to serve bigger needs.

Even today, we tell the story of great and passionate entrepreneurs whose drive and purpose guide companies to greatness. We wax of their focus and vision. We tell of their passion for their employees and customers. We pry through their histories hoping to reveal that magic blueprint for unbridled success.

But then something happened. Businesses began to separate from those focused purposes. Instead of intensely living out a passion or purpose, companies tried to manufacture the appearance of purpose. Companies separated from being focused on products, customers and experiences and became more focused on the mirage of celebrity executives, Wall Street roller coaster rides and disconnected branding veneer meant to hide aimless, purposeless and insatiable companies.

Mission statements went from being aspirations to a bunch of corporate puffery. Organizations no longer had concrete reasons for being other than creating the perception of making money. Brands became synonyms for the orchestrated trickery meant to persuade consumers that our products, services and companies are really something more than they really are.

At the same time and possibly instigated by the beckoning complexity of the finance and IT portions of business, marketing departments began to intoxicate themselves with all manner of potions and elixir cure-alls. Psychographic segmentation, media mix modeling, buzz worthiness, executive blogs and a whole host of other marketing malarkey helped sooth otherwise aimless and fruitless efforts by allowing everyone to look really busy.

In truth, there are only two words that matter in marketing: Promise and Trust. Your company has something distinct and differentiating about it, otherwise it would not exist. It is a promise to consumers. Understanding that promise is crucial to the point that you should remove everything that is in the way of carrying out that promise and accentuate the things that are helping. This means products, systems, people and processes.

A whole lot of successful companies do this without even knowing it. The reason why they do is because they start with a focused purpose and keep it potent. They manage the interaction with the customers and keep a level of attentiveness and transparency that consumer’s feel they can support. In short, these companies prove to customers that every dollar spent on the company’s products will result in the benefits promised and expected, be they functional, emotional or experiential.

Consumers want to know their investment of time; energy and any other resources will have the intended result. They want and need to know that what you are offering is not fully duplicated elsewhere for less money, will be worth their investment and will deliver the desired result. This is where trust comes in. People want to know they are making a wise choice with their resources. All the little procedures we do under the marketing umbrella are (or at least should be) aimed at increasing the trust that customer resources are well placed.

The goal of marketing is to build trust in the promise of the offering. It is that simple. No amount of marketing tactics will ever overcome the need of companies to make a compelling promise that they can deliver and then help consumers believe that promise. Consumers have always been and continue to be interested in getting the desired result for their investment. Offerings that clearly offer and pitch such will be successful.

The above material is part of a my forthcoming book and an accompanying presentation I am giving to marketers, marketing organizations and students. The presentation discusses the two crucial and often overlooked words in marketing in a 45-minute talk full of stories and examples. It is valuable to brand and general managers and those that advise on brand marketing activities. If you are interested in having me come talk to your staff, club or class email me at jeff@sn-ta.com

My New Running Shoes.

My birthday was approaching and I am the very definition of the guy who has everything. For Christmas I got a keyboard to accompany my electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, violin, banjo, ukulele and bagpipes. I play a lot of musical instruments; my parents refused to pay for cable when I was a kid.

So I really had to search my mind for what I wanted this year. Though my wife Maura is an excellent gift buyer, even she was at a loss for what to get me. Since exercise had become our new thing, I started thinking of what could make the grind of 6 a.m. workouts just a bit easier. And then I realized there was something I had needed for a while: new running shoes.

In the past I would just go to the mall and pick out a pair in my old size. Now, however, I'm a bit pickier and slightly more accustomed to being handled, so we went to the New Balance store for a custom fit.

The guys in the store winced in pain when they saw my existing running shoes. They were a size tight and way too narrow. Having been a wrestler and a rock climber, I had always believed that shoes should be tight enough to break something. Think about it: when you are using your feet to pose on a rocky ledge or on the neck of some idiot from Norcross High, you don't want your feet to slip around inside the shoe.

The New Balance guy had me stand on a machine which measured my feet and made a recommendation. I was in no position to disagree with the shoe he suggested and the only real decision to make was the color. But this was harder than it sounds.

Throughout college, everyone wore grey New Balance running shoes (that is, when they weren't wearing their redneck work boots). And not necessarily for running. Just 'cause. And I'm not sure what the reasoning was. Perhaps because the grey 991s were amongst the more expensive shoes on the market and rich never goes out of style. Maybe it was because they were so understated, what with other manufacturers putting out shoes in electric blue with florescent mucous-colored accents. Even as I started to make the sounds of "Gggrrreee..." I stopped with an abrupt, "I'll take the blue ones". Maura asked me in the car why I choose blue over the old stalwart. "Because I don't want to be stuck in college". She knew exactly what I was saying, but the truth is we're all stuck in college.

Maybe not college per se, but there is a period in life where your sense of style begins to crystallize and you will use that point of reference to craft your style from there out. It's why my grandpa wears shirts with suspiciously large collars. He also wears velour jumpsuits. It's why you always see that group of people who look like they're dressed to go on a hike. That was the campus style in the early 1990s, and they've been on the trail wherever they go ever since. Your style gets locked in and, even though you may try to fight against it, it's difficult. And you may emerge looking a little odd. We've all seen that guy who tries to dress like a pro skateboarder or the mom who thinks she's a backup dancer for Britney Spears. It's just sad.

Why do we get locked in? It's comfortable, like grandpa's jumpsuit. And since our peers seem to be doing it we figure it can't be all that far from fashionable.

Businesses have their college years. They shed the old duds from high school and start looking fresh and successful. Like all of us, almost every business can point to that period known as "the days" and at least something from "the days" has persisted. And there's nothing wrong with remembering the past. Heck, sometimes our old style becomes retro fashionable, renewing our vitality while garnering us the credential of an originator. The problem is when we need to break with the past but are unaware or simply don't know how.

Some giant businesses were the big man on campus back in their day. Sears might have been the biggest. Talk about good looks and likeability. But today Sears is a shadow of its former self. What happened after graduation?

From a strategic standpoint, Sears failed to age gracefully. The "get it all here" approach was successful so long as boutique and specialty shops stayed at bay. But them Home Depot came and took their tools. Best Buy took their TVs. Bed Bath & Beyond came and took the softer side of Sears. And everyone else came and looted clothes, tires and financial services. Yes, if you didn't know, you used to be able to buy financial services at Sears.

What should have happened? Sears really has great customer service. If you haven't shopped there (and they still exist when you read this book) you should really go. The people are polite and know what they are talking about. The cornerstone brands (Die Hard, Kenmore, Craftsman) have really great quality. Sears really does provide a great shopping experience.

But they don't leverage that experience. They don't say, "Come to Sears because we know what we're selling and you will get great quality". They say what they have always said, which is, "We have a bunch of stuff...come buy it". Their failure, metaphorically, was not getting a new color shoe. What worked in the past was successful in the past. It is no longer the past.

So how does this happen? I believe it is simply a function of great strategies and their lifespan. I believe that when a truly great strategy is conceived, the proponents of this strategy go about selling it up and down the organization. If they are successful in getting buy-in and the whole company exudes the same strategy, assuming the strategy is good, I would expect wild success.

But then time happens. And though great strategies, like great styles, can have an inhuman lifespan, they are never immortal. The progenitors of the strategy retire to the palm coast. And everyone left has been taught that the way we succeed is by following Ol' Man So-n-So's time-tested and time-worn strategy.

The people now in charge do not necessarily attempt to birth new ideas. They were raised through the company ranks by following someone else's progeny. And if they disagreed or had critiques, they probably did not last to be in charge of much. I'm not saying this is always the case. I'm not saying this is the case with your company; that's a question only you can answer. What I'm saying is that maybe you should ask the question of whether or not you're wearing yesterday's clothes.

In other words: Have we evolved how we market our product in the right way or are we using yesterday's strategy to address the requirements of tomorrow's market?

This is normally the part where I list some bullet points or conversation starters, but that's not what I'm going to do. This kind of inquiry is far too complex and subjective for a few mere questions. Instead, I implore you to ask a few tough questions of your own with the goal being to understand the root of your company's competitive strategy. No matter what you find, I think you'll at least find value in having a better perspective of where you are now as an organization and where you are headed.

This is an important issue for most companies. The world of competitive marketing is changing. Strategies and tactics need updating. The way companies view and interact with consumers will always be changing. Time is running. And right now it might have on blue running shoes.

The Super Trooper.

The Isuzu Trooper was my baby. We called it the Super Trooper. And boy, it was super. I bought it a few years into school when everyone went all country and I could no longer try to be country and drive a Nissan Maxima at the same time. The Trooper was like a giant dumpster with windows and wheels. I think if I would have bolted a giant piece of plywood to the bumper, it might have improved the gas mileage. This was an SUV from an era when SUVs were actually sport utility vehicles.

It was a 4x4 in every sense of the term. You had to get out and lock up the hubs, guaranteeing you'd slip and fall in the mud. We used to go bogging out along the Oconee River because it was like a cheap trip to the amusement park and because the girls liked it so much. It made them feel rustic, which is hard to do in the 'burbs.

One afternoon we decided to go get muddy and I gassed up the Super Trooper and picked up the girls at their house. We roared down the old jeep trails and through the mud pits until not a speck of the Trooper's white paint was visible. And then came the monster. The monster was a pit of mud 20 feet across, 4 feet deep, with a slanted bottom. When we rolled up on it, two Jeeps were already stuck side by side. Bryan was trying to plug the hole in his Jeep's floorboard as muddy water shot through like Old Faithful. Cory was standing on the hood of his Jeep, hopeless. We sent another vehicle around to the other side to pull them out.

I don't know what I was thinking. I just got in the Super and drove right in. The Trooper lunged to the side and I saw muddy water crawl up the passenger side widow. The engine shut off and I heard the people outside yelling. They were holding onto the roof rack to keep two of the tires on the ground so I wouldn't tip over.

They pulled Super out of the pit with a tow strap and I took her home to wash her. I thoroughly got my 75 cents worth at the local car wash when I noticed it. Just a little rainbow in the suds. Getting bigger. An oil leak.

I hypothesized the worst. The bottoming out of the Trooper in the muddy pit hit the transmission hard enough to weaken the rear main seal. I knew from people who had the rear main seal repaired how expensive it could be. I took the Super to the shadiest mechanic in Athens and he confirmed my suspicion. The cost to repair old Super was as much as I had paid for her.

Over time, the leak got worse. It got to where I would drive around with a case of oil to fill her up every hundred miles. Eventually, I bought a new car and parked old Super. Once in a while, I'd go out and wash her or just let the engine run a bit.

Then Maura and I bought a house and we had to move. The Trooper had fallen into enough disrepair that she could not be driven. I had her towed to a mechanic recommended by a friend to fix the things so at least we could drive her. The mechanic called and said, "I found a brake caliper and a few hoses for that power steering line cheap so don't pee yourself over the price. I should be able to get all this installed by the end of the week. Oh, by the way, I tightened down the head so you shouldn't be leaking anymore oil".

Tightened down the head? What happened to the rear main seal? I've been leaking enough oil around rural Georgia to rival the Valdez. You mean it was a few loose bolts?
I was tempted to go punch that first mechanic in the throat. However, I was so happy that Super Trooper's oil leaking days were over. For now. Until she sprung another leak, as vehicles with 220k miles often do.

I have paid a lot of money to mechanics for the wrong diagnoses. I've had mechanics ignore what I brought the car in for and fix something else entirely. I've paid for a fix that lasted about as long as it took to leave the mechanic's driveway. Shade tree mechanic does not come close to some of the fools I've hired. My mechanics would cut down the shade tree into logs, stuff some of the logs in the trunk and say they fixed that pull in the suspension. They're just plain shady - no tree required.

Then again, I've met some shade tree marketers as well. They change the oil hoping it will inflate the tires. They put washer fluid in the gas tank to save a few bucks and want to know why the engine won't run. They paint the inside of the car while sanding the outside and call that a long term strategy.

Making the right diagnoses of your marketing is a crucial but often overlooked procedure. We marketers could have meetings about planning meetings to plan something, but when it comes to discussing how to get the lead out we seemed more inclined to let the air out instead.

We need one of those diagnostic computers that mechanics hook up to the car so that it will tell you what is wrong. Sorry. They don't make anything like that for marketing plans. No, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Pop the hood and hand me that flashlight.


The best test of whether or not it will run is to try to start it.

The easiest test of a marketing plan is to see if it is doing what it is intended to do. Are sales rising? Are we making money? Sure, this is simplistic, but I ask you, if the marketing plan couldn't even turn over, is that not a good indicator that something might be wrong?


Work backwards from the starter.

Take the entire drive train of marketing and do diagnoses. Have you done things to build awareness? Are customers building enough interest? How are we helping customers gain knowledge or make a decision to buy? When they want to buy, how helpful are we? After the sale, do we reinforce their decision or run away laughing with the money, which, by the way, is what that first mechanic did.


Check for burning oil.

If the machine is in good running order, you should not only have decent efficiency, it should be getting better. As many marketing activities are cumulative, the cost incurred to make each sale should be decreasing either by an elevation in sales or a savings in costs due to ever-bettering practices. Unnecessary smoke is most often the use of price reductions and financial incentives which you can run on for a while but it'll run like crap and eventually clog your engine.


Check the gaps and the timing.

As consumers are made more aware of your offerings and you are constantly evolving your offerings with the consumer, the gap between their desires and your offerings should narrow. This should always be an ongoing process of improvement and refinement. The idea that if you just get it right once and it'll run forever is just as true as it is with cars.


Kick your tires for a change.

Every marketing plan is worth a little diagnosis if just to head off bald tires and poor alignment that is inevitable in every business over time. Regular maintenance helps ensure a long running machine and more enjoyable experience when driving. And you never know, you might have a leak that you can't even see yet.

The Trooper is still alive and hauling things on my in-laws property. There is a good reason for this. The oil leak meant the Trooper always had fresh oil and it was checked every 100 miles. Also, the spray of leaking oil coated a bunch of parts that would have otherwise rusted long ago. She self preserved like one of those ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber. It's pretty amazing. Well, we didn't call her Super for nothing.

What a Lamppost Uses a Drunk For.

A friend of mine told me that, though he received his law degree from Vandy, he had to do extra study at Harvard before he became a professor. I asked him why he had to go to Harvard and he explained that his bosses wanted to make sure that in a courtroom he could correctly identify who was the plaintiff and who was the defendant. So now you have your highbrow humor for the day. The appropriate reaction is a slight snicker.

My own education had its own gauntlet of sorts, though I imagine nowhere near as perilous as an LLM from Harvard Law. For me, it was two research classes required of all who studied psychology at the University of Georgia's very research orientated psychology program.

I took the first class, Research Design, in the summer, when I had quite possibly the sweetest living arrangement in town. I was a couple blocks from the building where I would be taking my one class for the summer, not paying for utilities and the cost...$50. No, that's not per month. That was the cost for the whole summer. And when you're saving that much money in rent, you have excess funds to spend on other college activities, like taking your best girl to the picture show and singing festive songs at the local orphanage. Yeah, right. We partied like the members of Motley Crue only wished they could.

The professor was one of those laid back PhD candidates who basically promised you'd get an A anyways, but please show up so his review board doesn't get suspicious. Despite our encouraged lackadaisical attitude, however, designing research was interesting. Between rising at the crack of noon and raucous summer bashes, we learned how to create studies, control variables and make comparisons. I wished my entire education would have gone just like that.

But then came the second class, Research Analysis. Our teacher was nice enough, although a bit strange. He was a PhD candidate who didn't really seem to like or be interested in people, an odd characteristic for a psychologist. The class was at dawn and by that time I had moved into a house miles away, meaning I had to fight the other twenty thousand students for the apparently 30 allocated parking spaces. And the class was horrible. With the analysis of research, all the energy and enjoyment of designing research was drained out into the nearby Oconee River. Instead of using research to investigate and solve problems, we now seemed to be finding ways to use research to create new problems, which solved very little. Except we could now point at the amazing complexity of the process we used to say nothing.

As I yearned for the summer days where we pontificated confounds and null hypotheses, I questioned why we were taught the process in two parts. It would seem more logical to teach the design and analysis of a research method, in addition to teaching a variety of methods, rather than break the process apart. Yes, to do that would have been logical. But to put windows in the psychology building with some regular pattern would have also been logical. Instead, the university asked professors if they wanted a window and if they said yes they got one. If they said no, no window and the resulting building looked like it was designed by 8 year-olds who just floated a keg of soda. Logic has nothing to do with it.

And so it often goes in the wild world of marketing research. The design of studies and the interpretation of results too often seem disjointed. And if that is not enough to question validity, many studies start out with no real defined subject, only to follow up the act with an ethereal interpretation designed to support a pre-existing notion. As the late, great David Ogilvy said, marketers often use research like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.

I routinely see studies designed to measure broad and barely defined aspects with a tiny population of participants with obvious confounds, such as an Internet survey to study people who don't use the Internet.

Now for the record, I have worked with some of the most fantastic researchers in the marketing business. Yet even with great research, I have seen managers cherry-pick the results and ignore a huge swath of important data. I have sat in the room and watched my friend Jim Nelems tell a company's leaders to their faces what the issues are, only to watch said leaders either try to discount the findings or ignore them altogether.

I am no research expert. But I am practical and I don't commission research unless I have questions I want answered. And when I do get data, I don't reengineer the questions to fit the results. In the studies I have been involved with, I have observed some amazing technique and skill and, while I could detail all the things I have liked, I think this subject is best addressed by the strongest lessons I learned. These few tidbits stand out to me either because they were not what I was expecting or because they fundamentally shaped the role I see for marketing research.

Better road map than treasure map.
One particularly terrible mistake marketers make is assuming research will predict the future. Sure, we test products and flavors and advertising and that gives us directions for where to put money, time and effort. But what research cannot do is control all the variables. In the lab, a consumer can tell you they prefer a flavor of cough drop. In the real world, you don't know how far the distance is from their house to the drug store that carries your cough drop. This is not to say the research is incorrect. You asked the consumers if they liked the flavor and they said, "Yes". There is a considerable difference, however, between liking the flavor and buying the product.

In my experience, research does a far better job of defining the problem rather than offering the solution. This notion should affect where marketers place the role of research. In at least a few efforts, I have observed marketers develop a product and then attempt to use research to affirm certain notions. Instead, well conducted marketing research should have informed the creation of the product to put it more in line with consumer preference. While some companies do this, the vast majority do not.


Better fairy godmother then magic genie in a lamp.
The genie gives you three wishes and goes back in the lamp until the next wisher happens along. Similarly, plenty of marketers rub their researchers and ask a few questions only to stuff them back in the bottle. Research, however, can advise and inform on all phases of a product's life cycle. Research can flush out attributes most desired by the consumers. It can test positioning strategies and communications. Why put the genie back in the bottle when it can grant all these wishes as well:

Allows benchmarking and testing of strategies in development.
Strategy testing all along the consumer marketing spectrum.
Verifies that strategy from research is aligned and has not skewed.
The better idea is to use your research as a fairy godmother. She exists more like a counselor, helping to inform decisions and granting the occasional wish when needed. Just don't ask for the world and then ignore her advice. She might turn you into a pumpkin.


Doesn't always have to be in a room with one-way glass and lots of M&Ms.
The best researchers can pull data out of anywhere. They can read the b-roll from your corporate videos. They can make inferences from the distribution of your brand magazine. The can diagnose issues from past efforts. I have seen focus groups take place at a customer's house. I have sat in a restaurant and observed customers for an upcoming in-store promotion.

The belief that research must always look like research is a self-imposed restriction. While the controlled setting has its value, one should not eschew the whole other world that is out there.

In today's marketing world, boundaries are falling. Sales and marketing departments have not only signaled a cease-fire, they are beginning to work together. Finance and marketing are beginning to teach each other a common language. And so, the world of research should drop the curtain and begin to better integrate into the whole workings of an organization. Research is a primary window into the life of customers. For the customer-led firm, research is not just an expense or luxury. In fact, a lack of research can be a liability.

They still teach Research Design and Research Analysis separately at the University of Georgia, despite plenty of complaints. I told them that methods should be taught alongside data analysis. I think I made a decent case for connecting the means of getting and understanding data. I put all my concepts on a survey of the course.

A survey, I imagine, nobody ever read.

Running for Senior Class President.

It might surprise you to know I was a shy kid in high school. Well, most of high school, at least. I came into high school having an older brother who was a bit of an ass-whooper. Not such a bad resource when you think about it. But once Chris was gone, I had to fend for myself, which meant I was pretty quiet. I was a decently small kid, weighing in on the Jr. Varsity wrestling team at about 119 pounds. Like Chris, I could be an ass-whooper, but only on the mat against opponents of similar weight. The halls of high school were not as fairly matched.

But something happened during the end of my junior year. Maybe it was the impending authority of being seniors. Maybe it was the fact I had managed to break 130. Whatever it was, I decided to no longer be the quiet kid in the back of the class. So I did what every kid does when they decide to come out of their shell: I ran for senior class president.

Senior class president is a worthless position which amounts to essentially two things: 1) You will be forever remembered as the one who peaked in high school; your old classmates will never think that you amounted to anything outside of the grand halls of the 400 building. 2) You get to pick the color of the balloons at prom, so long as you pick silver, black or purple.

The other kids running were the typical cast of characters. Two cheerleaders with poofy bangs. The odd kid who smelled like graham crackers. The overachiever girl involved in every extracurricular activity on the quest for the perfect high school resume. The guy with the nice car. And the guy known for really, really liking pot. (Distinct from someone who just smokes pot, this Mary Jane groupie felt a greater calling to promote pot through the wearing of pot-themed clothes, the displaying of pro-pot bumper stickers, the utterance of pot-themed catch phrases and the listening to of Peter Tosh.)

Teddy Grahams and Smokey Robinson were not much competition and nobody took the cheerleaders seriously, so I focused on Richie Rich and Valedictorian.
Richie Rich was a bit of a tool, but his parents were rich so he had some popularity. He hung out with the jocks, which made him vulnerable because nobody liked the jocks. I'm not saying that nobody ever likes jocks, but our jocks were terrible at their respective sports, a fact none of them seemed aware of. Plus most of them were juicers and liked to beat up freshmen during 3rd period lunch. Valedictorian was a slightly different problem, but not unbeatable. She had been doing everything since elementary school. School paper, yearbook, flag corps or team. All of which made her a nice target. The disdain most had for her was enough to unify the freaks, geeks, nerds, Goths, drama dorks and straight-edgers.

I huddled my campaign strategy team, which essentially consisted of a guy who could draw, the class clown and some crazed weirdo holed up in the guy-who-could-draw's basement. We discussed strategy. The key to winning would be to find the holes in my opponents' denim armor that corresponded with my strengths. We talked at length about how Richie Rich was really a dork who people pretended to like because he had money. We discussed how Valedictorian had pretty much alienated everyone because she always had to be in charge of everything. Then the strategy became clear. My strategy would be that I was not them. I had never thrust myself to the head of the Spanish club or yearbook committee. I was a normal guy who had to bum rides to school, owing to a lack of car (a common situation for a high school junior in those days).

My crack team set to making some fliers. We focused on me being a regular student that regular students could identify with. We focused on the fact that I had no touchdown record or National Honor Society membership. The competition had no recourse. The more they tried to say that they too were just normal students, the more ridiculous they looked. All through high school, their entire image was based on being better than the average student. To say that they were anything but above the rest of us went against the very thing they stood for. Their position was that they should be president because they were above us meager plebes. My approach took the wind out of their sails.

This is my favorite marketing tactic. I love it when we develop a brand that invalidates a competitor's position. You can almost hear them wince in the paralyzing indecision of how to move forward.

I worked on a campaign for a client once entirely rooted in the idea of "we're not them". We made fun of the competitor's staff, products and we even spoofed their commercials. Man, were they pissed. As our share steadily grew, I got word from media reps who said they saw the brass at a competitor's office watching and cursing our TV spots. It was awesome. We pulled off the marketing equivalent of a kick in the balls. There is no recourse. They simply fall to their knees and whimper.

And what can they do? They will have to come out with the marketing campaign themed, "Nuh-uhh!" If they face you head on with their existing strategy, they only amplify your position as the alternative. If they change strategy, two things happen. First, no one will believe them. Second, abruptly changing strategy puts a company off center. Another competitor might move in on their unguarded original strategy.

Some famous examples are out there of this phenomenon. My favorite was the rise of The Body Shop. In the ultra sleek and stylish world of cosmetics, The Body Shop came out with a position of health, natural beauty and conscientiousness. The fabulous set didn't know how to respond. If they followed The Body Shop into the realm of peace, love and coco butter, they would invalidate their existing position. The Body Shop, however, was robbing their market share based on a strategy of, "Hey, those people suck...and we're not them".

I cannot list all the specific ways to invalidate your competitor here. I do have, however, some quick criteria to get you started.

Want to kick your competitor in the balls? Ask these questions:
What is it that consumers put up with from our competitor begrudgingly and is that a position we can capitalize on?
What is the opposite of our competitor's position? For example, if they are high tech, can we be simple? If they are lavish, can we be humble? If they are the original, can we be the product for the new generation?
If our competitor does not have a clear position, can we give them one that consumers will believe and accept?
What prevailing consumer values has our competitor failed to adopt or convey?
What change to values, structure and our offering are we willing to make and are we able to put our whole effort into developing and maintaining this position?
How will we sell this up the ladder so the brass doesn't get all itchy?
What will be our competitor's reaction? What about other competitors? How will they react?
This list is by no means thorough. I encourage you to think about what else can be done to violate your competitor's position. If you have some good ideas, consider going to our blog and sharing with everyone else (Just your tips, not your strategies!).

And in case you're wondering, I didn't win the student election, but it was not from a lack of strategy. My heart wasn't in it. It turned out that I really was just a normal student. And, let's be honest, no normal student really cares if they go down in history as the person who got to pick the color of the balloons at prom.

Cowboy Up.

It's hard to grow up in the South and not have a redneck phase. It may never fully metastasize into full-blown hickdom, but the seed is always there. And even if its symptoms are brief before going into remission, it always starts subtle.

This is probably an appropriate time as any to make the distinction between a redneck and a Southerner. Most people you meet in the South qualify as a Southerner. They like the South's slower pace (it's because of the heat) and enjoy the fine things life in the South has to offer. They enjoy the land and appreciate the bounty that has allowed our ancestors to thrive in this part of the world.

Rednecks are something altogether different. Rednecks have two speeds: spit and fight. Unlike Southerners, who enjoy the cultured things of life, rednecks delight in the lack culture or manners. They might show up at a wedding in a T-shirt and then talk about it incessantly to distinguish themselves from what they perceive as uppity folk. If you need a further description of the things rednecks value most in the world, go to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, where the gospel of Larry The Cable Guy is held in high regard.

What's more, rednecks have what we who have worked in the packaged goods business might call differentiating packaging. In fact, the first step to being redneck is to look redneck. First, you get some boots. I'm not talking about flashy cowboy boots that '80s rockers wore over their spandex. I am talking about some basic work boots, boots that might slightly look like somebody who works on a farm might consider wearing.

Then comes the hat. While the subject matter of the hat has a wide latitude (beer, racin', Lynyrd Skynyrd, bass boats), the condition of the hat is without question. A new hat must have any supporting backing ripped out from behind the headband. This will allow the hat to crush and gives a "What the hell you lookin at?!" essence to the presentation. The brim should be squeezed narrow to obscure other viewpoints. The hat should be dirty and the occasional tear might need to be added to complete the look.

My redneck period actually occurred twice. In its nascent high school stage, I hung out with a few quality 'necks with whom I had played sports. We mostly sat around pickup trucks and talked about pickup trucks. Over time, I just got bored with the high school 'necks and quit hanging out with them, hanging up my hat and boots for a while.

In college, however, the contagion of 'neckdom became epidemic. Temporary redneckness in college had nothing to do with actually wanting to be a redneck. It had everything to do with girls. City girls came to the southern university looking for that country boy they'd heard about in country songs sung by Canadians and Australians. A boy who loves his Mama and his truck and his faithful Labrador, Gen. Robert E. KillYankee. It was very romantic.

The only issue was that the overwhelming majority of students at my college were from three zip codes, all a convenient 15-mile (2-hour) commute from downtown Atlanta. The whole situation created a new beast on the university campus dressed in farming jeans and carrying an unrivaled spending ability. Enter the Cobb County Cowboy.

The Cobb County Cowboy (CCC) drove a Land Rover (or a least a Tahoe) with a brush guard, external accessory lights, safari rack and roof mounted spare tire. He may or may not have an axe mounted to said safari rack. The CCC would admit he went to Pope High School, but claimed ancestral roots somewhere in South Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi. The act paid off. Girls flocked to the CCC like celebrities to a secluded drug rehab center.

And then, one day, the style deflated. When it was on the rise, CCC style infected every non-nerd to some extent, to the point where it was hard to distinguish the finance student from the poultry science student. Everyone looked like they were ready to slop the hogs. And that was the problem. As the trend became pandemic, there was no longer any differentiation in being a Redneck. Now, everyone was a redneck.

At its height, the redneck appeal neared cult-like proportions. I heard guys from Atlanta faking Southern accents. Even the girls tried to talk like Scarlett, particularly when drunk on Miller High Life. Our school mascot was nearly replaced with the chocolate Lab.

But eventually, the elements that had made up this redneck cult began to crumble. The CCC joke began to spread and we began to tease each other about whether or not they were going to try to plow the North Campus quad before sunset. The trend imploded and it was stark to see this roaring cult appeal become the brunt of a joke.

After finally swapping in my cowboy boots for wingtips and entering the working world, I began to study the similarities between trends and cults. As both inspire loyalty that has a mental or emotional award, I wondered, could the deprogramming methods used to wean cult members off of a dysfunctional loyalty also be used to break the bond between some ironclad brands and their most devoted fans?

In all honesty, many brands employ the techniques of acceptance, immersion and maintenance that help create cult-like devotion. I integrate many similar techniques into the construction of brands to help foster affinity. Brand loyalty is one of the few reasons why someone will pay you more than what your product is attributably worth. It goes without saying that brand managers have an incentive to explore any method that could offer such a return.

But can the reverse be true? If the techniques used by cults can be used to create brand loyal customers, what is keeping the techniques used to combat cults from being used to neutralize a brand? Because the truth is they can.

Brands are at least as vulnerable to deprogramming as any other trend or cult. When the nature of the brand's loyalty is revealed, countermeasures can be used to debunk positions and deprogram loyalty. So let's get a chair, a swinging bare light bulb and a room with no windows, 'cause we're about to start deprogramming.



1) Discredit the authority.

Go after actual sales claims. Point out the fine print. Do a side-by-side comparison. Just make sure that whatever you do gets mud in the competitor's eye. Are they using child labor? I think that begs a photo. Do whatever it takes to knock them off that high perch. Sure, it's a ugly business but if you think for a moment that they got to the top handing out apples and puppies, you are sadly mistaken.


2) Present contradictions.

If a brand claims to be the original, prove that it is not. If they claim to be a high-tech innovator, out them on stealing ideas and being a techie-come-lately. The idea is to sap their credibility. Whatever their primary claim is, find the flaw and exploit it. If, however, you are engaged in the same flaw, be careful. For example, if you are trying to discredit a competitor because their parts are made in Mexico and your parts are as well, don't expect the deprogrammed consumer to come calling.


3) Recognize the breaking point.

There will come a point when you'll start to have an audience for your competitor bashing. If your contradictions and assorted mud slinging are true, consumers will begin to question their loyalty.

When you start to make an impact, narrow in on a core group of consumers. Remember, these brand loyal people used to wax about the virtues of your competitor. Recruit them and you'll find they are worth far more than the ordinary Joe.


4) Allow the subject to self-express.

You'll know you have made some progress when former cult members begin to air their own grievances against their former masters. This is no time to cool off; allow your new brand lovers a forum to lash out against the cruel former dictator. Show them in commercials telling about life before this newest illumination. Give them a blog so they can e-hate.


5) Foster identification and transference.

Let's remember, the whole reason people joined these cult brands was for a feeling of self-expression and belonging. Now that they have voiced out against the competitor, an opportunity exists for them to find a new home with you. I know, I know, I'm essentially saying you should deprogram people from one cult brand so they can join your cult brand. Actually, that is exactly what I am saying. And there will even be a chapter in the upcoming book on how to program devotees...


I don't want to make light of the pain and loss of actual cult members and defectors. But we're not talking about poison Kool-Aid, black running shoes and polygamy. We're talking about brands and trends, so don't feel like you're being pushed to do something unethical. And while I feel that plenty of opportunities exist to do the wrong things with some of these techniques, marketers should subscribe to a level of ethics that would prevent them from abuse. That has a nice ring to it: marketers should subscribe to my school of thought. I know what is good for marketers and I want them to be empowered to do the things that they rightfully deserve to do. You can start right now by sending me $50,000 in non-sequential bills, your shoe size and the deed to your house. Welcome the Family...

All Hail the Fort!

The first fort was a half-fallen-down chicken shack. My childhood buddies and I stumbled upon it while walking through the woods that bordered our neighborhood. By the time my family had moved to the area the official bird of the city had become the Viper Car Alarm, but it hadn't always been that way. Duluth was very rural just previous to the housing explosion that we surfed in on. And it was for this reason that rabid little suburban children, such as us, might happen upon old chicken shacks and turn them into forts.

The first fort was also a death trap. The wood was rotted and plenty of sharp, rusty things jutted out to snag your jeans or neck. From even a casual glance, the limits of the first fort's potential were obvious. Enthusiasm waned.

But then we made a fabulous discovery. The second fort was larger; you could actually stand up in it. It had what appeared to be horse stalls, stairs and a locking door, which is important for securing all the junk artifacts kids find in the country woods. The pickaxe and case of glass jars that we would soon be throwing at trees and each other would be safe from other marauding bands of children.

The second fort was an inspiration. Because it was sturdy, we formulated plans of how to add on. So we added a porch. And a second entrance. And a rooftop shooter's nest where we could shoot BB guns at friends as they approached. We even built a stove that should have convinced our parents that we were all destined to become engineers. That is, if our parents ever found out that we were setting fires in the woods. The stove used an old drum with a fashioned door, an external air input that drew air from outside (instead of pulling through the cracks of the walls), and a insulated metal chimney that exited the exhaust. When you fired it up full blast, it could thaw out Antarctica.

We had old basement furniture from Mike's parents' house but we never really sat on it because you never really sat down. The whole fun of the fort was building. If we didn't know what to build or add on, we built it anyways. And the fort grew into what appeared to be the Swiss Family Robinson's safe house, where they might retreat to if the government ever got on to them for smuggling weapons.

The difference between Fort Version 1.0 and Fort Version 2.1 was that original structure it was built on. Fort 1.0 looked like someone wrecked a burning saloon full of manure into some trees. Fort 2.1 was sturdy and strong, which is important when you are nailing several hundred pounds of "found" construction materials to it.

If some cheesy business executives were wandering through the woods, they might look at the new fort and say we had "really thought outside the box". Then they would be shot with pellet guns and we would smash glass jars in the trees above their heads.

I hate the cliché, "Think outside the box". I think the people who say it don't fully appreciate its meaning and they themselves are thinking inside a box because they have to conform their ideas to lame business clichés. Is not thinking outside the box, thinking beyond constraints like, say, clichés?

I have heard all the fun alternates, like, "Don't box the neck", or, "Don't put your brain in a box". It's fun to play at wit. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking you to fly in the face of this little business pearl. I don't want you to think inside the box, per se. I want you to think inside the fort. Fort 2.1 to be exact.

The reason for 2.1's success was its strong base. We had something with which to start. Sure, the fort took on a much larger life after we nailed tons of particleboard and rusty sheet metal to it. It didn't even look like the same place. Yet all the while, under the surface, sat a strong base built by someone we never met.

Like Fort 2.1, great businesses also have a strong base. They have a root which is securely planted in a particular place. They have an anchor that holds everything else up. And great businesses are always cognizant of their base. Products, services, operations: everything attaches to that secure base.

When was the last time you reevaluated your fort? How strong is it? Can it support the weight of everything you've nailed to it? Is the design consistent and is it functional?

Let's take a look.


Build a shooter's nest first.

It's easy to have your head down over whatever you're nailing only to ignore a pending threat or opportunity. But the front lines of whatever you're building need to be watched. Had we kept our heads up, we might have been able to outrun that sheriff's deputy who came to give us lip over being on someone else's property.

For businesses, it's not always the fuzz (though for an unfortunate few it might be...). Instead, it is a changing market place or a savvy competitor. Sometimes it's even a problem with your own construction that you might never see. Getting a good view of yourself and your surroundings is a continually needed task.

I recommend you have a constant watch of research professionals. Find out what customers are saying. Find out what your biggest critics are saying. Continuously examine the structural integrity of your fort. Nothing is more embarrassing than standing next to a collapse while insisting, "Nothing's wrong".


Build on a hill. If you can't find a hill, build one.

The worst issue I have found in constructing brands and strategies is when companies stand for and own nothing in the minds of consumers. Sometimes I think people get scared when I tell them to take their business, find a hill and take it. It is as if we in business have become scared of our own shadow. Are we so afraid of some competition that we would rather go out of business? Get serious. Get your BB gun out. They want our fort!

Your company must stand for something. Have a set of values, beliefs and objectives as well as a good understanding of your role in the marketplace. This is the box you not only need to think within, you need to use it to nail things to. Once you have this structure, many other decisions become easier to make and many other opportunities become apparent.


How far does the addition extend off the foundation?

In the maturation of every fort and business, there is a desire to see how far you can go. Companies see opportunity and hope that solidly built brand equity can be stretched to support something two or three trees away. This is a really bad idea. Customers have a peculiar way of how they allocate brand affinity. Just because you make a nice truck does not mean they will care about your car. Just because you run a nice casual restaurant does not mean customers will support your upscale or quick service efforts as well. In fact, the further away something is from the base, the harder it is to support.

Business thinkers have known the perils of line extension for years, yet businesses seem doomed to repeat it. The temptation is for businesses to expand their offerings as they grow more successful. The better idea is to continue to focus and take a stronger ownership of a position as credibility and brand affinity grows. To put it simply, dance with the one that brought you or you'll go home with no one.


Today, we think inside a new fort.

Fort 3.0 is by far the best. We have working plumbing and a heater. We have a conference room, production room and an awesome lounge with surround sound. And instead of building makeshift booby traps, we're building brand strategies that we hope will snare up our client's competitors. However, there are some things from Fort 2.1 that remain. We still look for strong, supported beams before we try to nail something to it. We still confer on the overall vision of the fort before we build anything. And we still welcome anyone who is interested in building something strong and lasting.

But you might want to make some noise or call out before you get too close. Otherwise, Richard might shoot you with a pellet gun.

Let it grow

This is the year we decided to fight back. When Maura and I bought our current house we were happy to get a decent sized piece of land while still being close enough to downtown for my occasional cycle to work. 1.59 acres might not seem like much until you mow it. Never the less, we think it’s plenty big for us. When we bought it however, nearly a tenth of the property was covered in kudzu. Living in Georgia most of my life, I have only recently had to tell someone what kudzu is. For those of you not familiar, here’s my description:

Kudzu is a green sewer rat with leaves. It is a parasite of a vine that grows a foot a day (no joke) and wraps itself around trees, trailers, satellite dishes (yes, the big ones) and many other places that country teens go to make out. It will grow over top of, wrap around and strangle the life out of your trees. It is a dastardly vine made even more repulsive with the local transplants who’ve had some sick infatuation for the leafy invader and who have taken to letting the kudzu overtake their hovels.

So, the kudzu took over a portion of the yard that was too uneven for the mower and in an area that the former residents saw fit to litter with bricks, rebar, beer bottles, coils of metal wire and if I eventually find one of those canisters with a zombie in it (like from the Return of the Living Dead movie) I can’t say I’ll be that surprised. My grandmother would politely describe the way this part of the yard was kept as “rustic”.

Maura and I were not and are not content with sacrificing this portion of the yard so we worked up a plan of attack. Napalm was too expensive and the barrel wouldn’t fit in my Subaru so instead we decided to mow it, hoe it and till it until we could make the jungle wasteland into our garden. Now you must know I am a man who must have the right tools for the job even if I don’t really intend on doing the job. We have the mower and the hoe (no jokes). What I didn’t have was a tiller.

For those who don’t know the whimsical intricacies that separate tillers, let me be the first to welcome you to the machine. A tiller comes in two sizes. There are the ones that barely work and are best suited for tilling a potted plant. These tillers can be gas or electric and cost about $300. Then there are the real tillers. These tillers have rear, counter-rotating tines, brush guards and run on gas or plutonium. These kudzu devouring monsters cost more like $800. Knowing my love of tools and toys, Maura has me on a strict budget and without divulging my toy budget; I’ll just tell you that if I showed up with an $850 tiller, I’d have to return the new digital camera to the store.

So one day on an errand, Tatarski and I were wandering through the Sears and I wandered over to the lawn and garden department. I explained my dilemma to the sales associate and he made a recommendation: rent a big tiller and do the yard once. Then, buy a small tiller for maintenance. I didn’t want to say that I would be embarrassed if the neighbors saw me with the “kiddy” tiller. I walked off and sulked in spirit of those regulated to paying kudzu a land tax. I moped around to see what other fun lawn toy could lift my spirits when low and behold; I came upon the biggest, meanest, knarliest tiller Sears sells with a price tag of $207. “What’s wrong with it” I asked the associate. “Nothing” he said. “This happens every year, somebody buys a tiller, does their yard and returns it to the store”. I asked Tatarski to keep his hand on it while I checked out. I wasn’t letting somebody sneak in and get between me and kudzu-destroying bliss.

The next weekend was everything I dreamed it would be. Maura and I scalped the area with a small push mower then we hacked the kudzu at its roots with a hoe and machete (everyone should have one). Finally, I roared out with the tiller like a drunken funny car driver and digested the kudzu into a rich, beautiful garden. All the while I was grinding away at this scourge of a plant, once praised and encouraged for its erosion combating traits, I was thinking; good strategy is like a good tiller. And I have a good tiller.

Business opportunity is out there but you’ve got to till it up. Its not just going to sit their on the surface without someone else to come along and get it before you do. I know. There’ll be rocks and beer cans and the occasional discarded badminton net that gets wrapped around your tines, but a good tiller can power through all of that and leave you standing on fertile soil. I'll stretch the metaphors just as far as I can before they break so put your hat on and pull your boots up. Let’s do some yard work.

Get the right equipment.

If you fully understand the task to be undertaken, you will be better equipped to choose a wise strategy. Or tiller. Knowing what you’re getting into can help you do a thorough job of choosing what resources and efforts you’re going to need to be successful. A funny thing about providing resources for efforts is that investing half of what it takes to be successful does not yield half successful results. Had Maura and I bought one of those junior tillers we would not have done a half good job. The job would have never gotten started as the ground and kudzu would have been too much for the pint-sized effort.

Only when a company fully appreciates the pervasiveness and competitive advantage afforded by a good strategy can the adequate appropriations of resources and efforts be made.

I doesn’t matter how big the tiller is if you’re not willing to walk behind it.

A common misconception is that when a strategy is adopted or initiated that it needs no further care. This is untrue. Strategies have an uncanny knack of drifting which sets up an even worse situation than before. Managers will blame the strategies without seeing or acknowledging the drift. The result is total loss of the value of what might have been a great idea simply because the people carrying it out did not understand and the person who should have been following behind the tiller left it to go on its own to run over the garden hose.

Every time you till it correctly it gets easier.

The way things were always done can be a stubbornly dense layer of soil riddled with the remnants of failed efforts and the intertwined vines of bad ideas and bad intentions. My advice is: don’t be timid if you are looking to create fruitful ground. Get in and bust it up. Cut vines; throw out the useless junk that’s not part of a thriving garden.

Good strategies are pervasive. Turn up the soil now and it will be easier every time you need to do it again. You never know; the ideas, opportunities and staff you wish to cultivate might begin to blossom in an atmosphere that breaks up some soil and works some fresh nutrients into the mix every so often.

You reap what you sow.

I am constantly surprised how many business tasks plunge headlong into efforts and budgets without the correct amount of preplanning. Just like the garden, everything in marketing does not thrive equally across geographies, seasons and degrees of attention. Treat your tomatoes like your cucumbers and you’ll be substituting pickles for tomatoes in your salad.

Growing business from strategy takes patience and good old-fashioned hard work. There will always be a tough row to hoe, the occasional intruding vine but then again, there’s the situation when you look up one day and see everything begin to bloom. Be smart and nature will work with you. Put a good strategy to work and you never know what you might grow.

The legend of Doc Rounds

Doc Rounds made me believe in chiropractic. He was our football team doctor and the father of my close friend, Scott. Doc handled nearly every bump, bruise and bash by spraying it with a liquid that nearly froze whatever you complained about after which he would tell you to walk or shake it off. It always seemed to work though I never really appreciated Doc until one summer when I took a particularly nasty bash to the hip. Something must have disjointed and the pain shot down the leg and up the back which seemed odd. Every time I stepped on that leg I could feel the pain rise up my back and nearly over the top of my head. I finally complained to Doc.

My Dad really liked Doc and had no problem letting him treat me there on the wooden bench of practice field four at Shorty Howell Park. I lay on my back and Doc measured my leg then grumbled through a half chewed cigar that one leg was significantly shorter than the other. He lifted my knee and pushed it over while holding my shoulder down and crrrrrack. I was cured. Several years of wrestling, rock climbing and that one time I fell off a building while working as a photojournalist and that hip has yet to bother me since Doc fixed it.

Years later I was consulted by a chiropractic group concerning their marketing and I told that same story. One of the doctors gave me a book and I learned the history and philosophy behind chiropractic. Now I have to admit, besides my field-side treatment I have not gone back to a chiropractor but that does not dissuade me from giving credence to one of their core ideas: Alignment.

From what I understand, the philosophy behind chiropractic is that nerve signals are interrupted by misalignment and the result is a multitude of symptoms that seem unrelated. While the injury may lie at the hip you may feel it in your shoulder. Who knew?

Brands often behave the same way. They seem to ache in one place but the injury lies elsewhere. Their disjointed alignment has sidelined growth and no amount of spraying the “cold stuff” is going to make the ache go away. Brands have symptoms. Sometimes it’s due to old age. Sometimes it’s just growing pains. Sometimes once strong muscles are fatigued. Sometimes things are just out of alignment and need an adjustment. I believe these brands experience discomfort due to misalignment somewhere between the prospective customer and the brand where things have just gotten out of joint.

Here are a few symptoms that brands commonly display:

1) Gets tired easily

Sales rise but the cost of the sale is climbing even faster.
The brand that seems to continue to grow in sales but the costs associated with driving sales continues to go up each year so that the dollars that are currently in spent-to-drive sales (advertising dollars, trade promotion dollars or consumer promotion dollars) are getting increasingly inefficient. The result is profits growing at a partial percentage of what they actually should be. One of the reasons such a situation occurs is that brands have become commoditized in the mind of the trade and in the mind of the consumer. Marketers must consistently underwrite them from a financial point of view and give the consumer financial incentives or give the trade of a financial reason why they continue to support the brand.

2) Tapeworm

An inability to gain weight no matter what you eat.
A brand that is not increasing its sales no matter how many dollars invested in a downward spiral and that might be a decline in the category or it may be a function of new products that have come into the category that are deemed to be superior in either quality, value or performance. It just might be new products that touch the heartstrings of consumer in certain way that begins to gain a share of that consumer’s heart, consumers mind and ultimately share of business. Something new has to take place if the businesses are going to continue to expand and efficiently compete.

3) Thinning bones
The milk of long term planning makes for a healthier tomorrow.
The business is going fine but you want to make certain it's one of your strongest brands. You want to make certain that you are always thinking through every conceivable way of building a business because essential to the success of our company is this brand and its long-term success. You should never be caught short while thinking through potential positions and new ways to talk about our product to consumers and ways to continue to win hearts and minds. It's almost like it's an insurance policy that marketers continue to take out to make sure that this cash cow is a long term performer.

4) Anemia, brought on from giving too much blood.
Wall Street wants more blood whether you have it or not.
Wall Street continues to demand growth out of the company and single digit growth for each brand is not going to be sufficient to be able to continue toward the PE ratios that the company is currently trading on. Every brand manager is being tested and is under scrutiny to figure out new and innovative ways to make brands cost effective while profitably growing the business.

5) Blisters.
The pains of breaking in a new acquisition.
The new purchase of a brand along with the need for a new strategy to position a product to customers and trade under the idea that enhanced efficiency allows for a quicker return on investment and return to profitability.


Why does it hurt when I do this?

A brand suffers aches and pains that seem to come from all around but truly have only one source. The alignment between the consumer and the brand should two parallel lines. The first line is the reception of consumer’s thoughts, dreams, aspirations and desires inputted to the brand. The second is the reflection of the consumer’s input paired with the brand as a solution to achieve the consumer aspiration, desires and such. Brands give off symptoms when one or both of these pathways are out of alignment.


Finding and correcting misalignment.

Research, by virtue of its impact and purpose, should be unfettered. The reality is that research companies are sometimes scared to tell the truth. The reality is that sometimes a company’s own employees are afraid to tell the truth. Incorrect intake of information from the consumer results in incorrect strategies from the outset. Another common malady in marketing is the incorrect translation of the brand strategy into meaningful advertising. Production artists get enthralled with actors, techniques and style and the strategy gets lost. Alignment from consumer to brand comes through the correct conducting and interpretation of research in all its varied forms. Alignment from brand to consumer comes through the correct translation of the strategy into impactful creative which enlivens schema and connects to the brand.


Maybe the whole body needs adjustment.

The sudden resolution of discomfort in marketing might tempt one to consider adjusting the alignment of marketing within the entire organization. While marketing may be in perfect alignment when concerning itself, it may disjointed with sales, finance, production, etc. Correctly aligning marketing within the organization can resolve bigger organizational problems and allow a marketing campaign to truly succeed.


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

Horatio jumped the shark.

Normally my wife and I share television preferences. We love Studio 60. We like Law and Order. We tolerate Heroes. But CSI Miami suits my wife’s palate while I think it’s a dish best left un-served. I’d rather degrease my bike than watch CSI Miami. It wasn’t always that way. Initially, we would watch the show if only to make fun of the patronizing portrayal of the clichéd southern belle turned cop and the airhead kid who looks like the happenstance of being a crime investigator just happened to be a convenient detour from following the Warped Tour. That, and the dauntingly dramatic dumb-dumb Horatio. It’s worth watching CSI Miami if only to make fun of Horatio.

Horatio is not your typical cop. He looks like the Mad Magazine spokes-cartoon Alfred E. Newman except he wears all black and cheesy sunglasses. Horatio does have one superpower, however. He can instantly and powerfully pick the most stupid one-liners to follow each pocket of drama, and he delivers these lines in a voice that one might imagine Don Corleone’s pillow talk might have sounded. It’s kind of like Schwarzenegger’s cheesy deliveries of “I’ll be back” or “He had to blow off some steam!” (famously said in Commando after he impales an enemy into a boiler and steam rushes out of the pipe). So imagine Schwarzenegger but 130 pounds lighter, seven shades paler, bright red hair and instead of having Arnold’s famously tough character names like John Matrix, John Kimble, “Dutch" Schaefer, and the ultimate, Conan the Barbarian, Horatio rolls off the tongue of toughness into the sink. Hey, don’t get your feelings hurt: movie tough guys don’t get names like Jeff either.

But I don’t care that Horatio dresses like he works at a New York ad agency. I don’t really mind that he sounds like he’s gargling hot asphalt. I can tolerate the fact that he delivers his lines with the proficiency of an understudy in the Folsom State Prison Christmas play.

I didn’t give up on Horatio until he jumped the shark.

Within a forgettable plot, Horatio is on a hill with a sniper rifle. (Remember, he is a crime scene investigator that works in a lab.) A terrorist-driven box truck comes over the hill to assault freedom, and Horatio, with a single shot, blows the truck into a million bits. He probably had some kitschy line like “light my fire” as well, but I stopped listening

That, my friends, is a textbook case of jumping the shark.

Jumping the shark is a not-so-old term used to describe when a television program has run out of good ideas and is on bad idea life support. Like the fact the hit hospital drama ER has resorted to helicopter crashes and hospital shootings in every episode just to keep things interesting. The original shark jump can be attributed to Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz. Apparently, Happy Days ratings were not so happy and writers decided that one solution to raise interest would be to have Fonzie compete in a water skiing contest during which he would jump a shark. Yes, he would jump a shark. Henceforth, television programs with endless plot extensions, characters returning from the dead multiple times and successive episodes of at least one character in the reoccurring cast getting shot are said to have jumped the shark. And now you know.

But we can’t save such a fun term just for TV. I mean, come on, TV already has its exclusives like telethons and Ryan Seacrest. Is TV really the only place were a shark gets jumped? I’ll answer the question with a question. Remember when Buick resurrected Harvey Earl to hawk their cars? As if the only answer to fading brand excitement was to bring old Harvey back from the dead. Yeah, cleared the shark by two feet.

And how do you drag an old barn side American brand like Maxwell House into the new millennium? Well, you keep the hokey imagery but then have good ole red-blooded Americans sing a British pop song with enthusiasm not seen since Designing Women jumped the shark all those years ago. Look out sharks, Maxwell House coming over head!

It’s not hard for a brand to jump the shark in its marketing. It is difficult to find the right mix and chemistry for a marketing plan, so it is understandable that marketers might want to dance with the one that brought them. But brands do age and unlike sharks, they don’t always have a second set of teeth to take a bite out of the competition when opportunity avails. Simply put, relevance to the consumer must be kept relevant. However, it is important to know that such a shark jumping demise is not imminent for a brand. Had Fonzie meandered down another plot line with interest, perhaps he never would have come anywhere near the sign up table for the water skiing contest.

Brands can insulate themselves from sharks and waterskiing contests by performing a few thoughtful tasks.

1) Don't make any sudden movements.

Brands often grow stale and therefore feel forced to make knee-jerk reactions. The results are often undesirable. Instead, marketers should consider brand planning as a long-term strategy which evolves in the market. Of course, all this could be eliminated by continually refreshing the brand. Which brings up……

2) Review the brand continuously.

The exercise of reviewing a brand and its relevance to the consumer is not like going to the dentist twice a year. It needs to be done daily. All efforts that are meant to be touch points with consumers need to be reviewed with the brand for relevance and then the brand itself needs to be evaluated with the different opportunities and products. It is crucial to gauge consumer attitudes for each touch point. Marketers are wise to update and refresh their brands and to glean new insight with every single interaction they have with the consumer.

3) Know thy true self.

Brands have a tendency to think of themselves within the context of their founding or heyday. This is a mistake. It is important to understand the role of the brand in the consumer's life and how that role functions in the present day and the days to come.

An important note: Points 1 and 2 are different. Point 1 refers to strategy which should be rooted, strong and hard to change. Point 2 refers to tactics which should be updated with time. It is important to point this out, as many companies change strategy at every coffee break but keep a tactic for some faux nostalgia they insist consumers have.

Want to be in a water skiing contest?

All businesses age, and the ones that are successful through multiple decades have a commitment to learn from every interaction. The greater message here is for marketing to get the same tinkering and refining as R&D does. Manufacturing is improved by R&D to save money and effort. So can be the effort of continued improvements of functioning and relevance to consumers.

The alternative is to suck the potency out of the brand and allow it to expire into irrelevance. You may try to reenergize the brand and jumping that shark may not seem like that bad of an idea. Just remember, even if Fonzie had won the water skiing contest with his amazing and flawless shark jump, Happy Days still lost.




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

Me and the Tank

Me and the Tank

Back in the day, I played B-squad noseguard for the Wildcats at Shorty Howell Park in Duluth, Georgia. I was ten, weighed slightly more than an overstuffed scarecrow and was the second team stand-in for “The Tank,” a massive kid comprised entirely of Mrs. Winner’s chicken, Mazzio’s pizza and a mullet. Tank was so big that his uniform doubled as a pool cover in the off season. You could see the fear in the other team’s (and their parents’) eyes as Tank took the field. Tank was a sweet kid with a heart made of gold, or at least chocolate cake. He was a rough redneck, but when you look like the kid who ate the fat kid, you gotta be tough.

Unfortunately Coaches Steve, Tommy and Moon couldn’t harness the power of the tank. While he was bigger than a nuclear submarine, he simply couldn’t clear the hole for the linebacker or drive the hole and rip off the quarterback’s head. Once, I even lined up against Tank and found that running in to him was somewhat like running into a mattress. He wouldn’t push you back, and you weren’t going to push him either. You just kind of mashed into him and occasionally, he’d fall over on you. And while you think he’d be heavy, he just kind of spread out so the weight was well distributed. Tank was a big kid with a big heart (figuratively, of course) who simply couldn’t be harnessed to play nose guard.

It’s been a long time since I played at Shorty Howell Park, but I bet even then marketers talked about taming a looming giant that could easily have taken them to the championships. Their tank is much older and can be much meaner. He’s brought down formidable quarterbacks, giant corporations and powerful politicians. This tank has led revolutions, built businesses from the ground up and sold so much stuff that a Wal-Mart the size of Oklahoma couldn’t hold it all. Yet no one can tame it.

The Tank is word of mouth.
To marketers, harnessing the power of word of mouth would be like finding the Ark of the Covenant in Atlantis with the Holy Grail inside. Word of mouth comes with a certain truthfulness and authority as we humans err on the side of believing each other. Word of mouth comes with a unique adaptation quality that caters the message to the receiver simply though the dance of polite conversation. Word of mouth has a special draw, as marketers dream of the day when they can tell all those pesky and peppy media reps to shove it where the TV don’t shine. No wonder it’s so elusive.

A few snake charmers have claimed to harness the power of word of mouth. Peddlers of endorsement radio claim to be selling word of mouth, but what it appears to me that they are selling is the same endorsement structure popularized back when radio was invented. This is not to discount the power of radio endorsements, but to say that having a DJ recommend a product, by virtue of believability, mechanism (it’s not in person, friends) and broad audience with little ability to narrow or cater the pitch indicates endorsement radio is far from word of mouth.

Now there are some fools you can pay to talk about your product. For a low, low price they will infiltrate social networks, peer groups and blogs and extol the virtues of your new cell phone, Crock Pot or herbal body mist. The only problem is the enthusiasm is bought, and therefore typically fake. Plus, the bought enthusiasm also typically accompanies a canned sales pitch which is hardly believable.

So is all hope lost? Are you, like Indiana Jones, destined only to see the Grail for a fleeting moment only to have it fall down a giant earthen crack faithfully recreated by Hollywood? (Or alternately, are you to find the Ark only to have it stolen by Nazis then lost by the US government in a giant warehouse?) Take solace, Dr. Jones. I have your treasure map right here.

OK. I don’t have the key to word of mouth and I don’t think anyone does. But we are smart people and I bet we can dissect the issue to its core. So grab your hat and bullwhip and let’s go blow up some old stuff.

1) Word of mouth thrives on interest.

So, duh, make your product interesting. Every product can have a story that builds intrigue. Look at your product like a consumer and find the hidden intrigue. Maybe your story is in how people use the product. How does it affect their lives? And if all else fails and it turns out your product truly is boring, invent a story. When the crew at John Hancock wanted to add spice to the poi of financial services, they shot a commercial featuring two lesbians adopting a child from China. The spot solicited gasps, death threats and calls from officials in the People’s Republic. Well that, and so many new policies that Hancock was propelled to the insurance first string. The spot was stark, honest, human and provided water cooler banter for weeks. So the moral of the story is: tell better stories.

2) Word of mouth thrives on mystique and exclusivity.

For many people, the thrill of word of mouth is discovering something and then enlightening their peer group to it. The product, concept or idea then spreads down a chain of various pitch people and adopters. The delicate recipe to set off this chain reaction thrives on mystique. Fostering mystiques is not as much about what it is you do as what it is you don’t do.:
Do: Create a product which has inherent mystique. If it is a service make it a little more exclusive. Not everyone can afford a Dyson, which is why we all want one. If it is a food, make it more exotic or authentic or unusual. What ever it takes, give it some interest.
Don’t take a dumb product and slather hype on it. Jay Z wouldn’t drive just any SUV off the lot. He had to take three years to invent his own color called Jay Z Blue (very creative). I bet you anyone who has a Jay Z blue SUV is gonna let you know that interesting fact within a minute of meeting them.
Do: Create an ad that has a specific voice, persona and attitude which the targeted top of your consumer chain will find intriguing.
Don’t puke out a trite, celebrity-worshiping porno-mercial of Paris Hilton or any other movie star making out with your product.
Do: Have your PR folks pitch the press, where they have to earn the story with a good pitch and approach.
Don’t have your PR folks get stories in magazines where they know the editor (or have some sort of “in”) who will run whatever garbage is sent over. Media that have a good grasp on readers know how to turn a pitch into a story that will have appeal to its group. Simple lesson: Let the editors make the translation. P.S. do not try to force them to print your mission, vision or any other kind of statement. The only mystique about most mission statements is how anyone got so many words to into one vague and vapid sentence.

3) Word of mouth thrives on information.

I admit it, Tatarski and I are both gear heads. Not just cars, all gear. Not too many people know this, but long before we started Snowden Tatarski, Richard and I were climbing buddies. Rock climbing is an interesting sport in that it is so dangerous, the gear manufactures try to protect themselves by being as thorough as possible in their sales literature. They tell you what you can do with the product and what you shouldn’t do. They tell you what the product does, doesn’t and what other people might use it to do. Of course all of this information is saddled next to breathtaking photos of somebody climbing Mount Death over a desert somewhere.

When people are passionately interested in an item, they crave information. Cars, computers, climbing gear and so many other items have a myriad of magazines, Web sites, discussion groups and so on-simply to get consumers the information they crave. If you don’t retain anything else in this article, retain this: the information you provide to prospective and current consumers will be the information they digest, mold and deliver to other prospects. Therefore, be thorough and interesting and maintain the brand position throughout the communication.

If only Tank played left guard

Tank would have made a fabulous left guard because linebackers would bounce off of him. Similarly, the funny thing about mediating word of mouth is that the tools already exist, they’re just being misused. Advertising gets a chance to arouse interest and intrigue and provide valued knowledge; however, many marketers see it as a chance to boast, wax philosophical or simply provide the needed time for viewers go to the bathroom and not miss anything important. When telling stories, many marketers seem to prefer books with few words and more pictures. Even worse, the pictures are all cheesy product glamour shots and the words might as well be left off the page. They’re that useful.

I urge you to stop by your local REI and go over to the climbing department. Get a catalogue for Petzl climbing harnesses and see what I am talking about. If you are in Atlanta, it’s on the Clairmont I-85 access road. If you get on I-85 north and take it a few miles to Pleasant Hill Road and go down around and down the hill, Shorty Howell Park is on your right. It’s just a few football and baseball fields with a lake. The park is named for the man who donated the land and could be seen picking up litter every night while we practiced. It’s the place where I nearly got beaten to death by 50 punk sophomores. It’s the place where I got a chiropractic adjustment on a rickety wooden bench. It’s the place where I was a 2nd string nose guard. That’s Shorty Howell Park my friends. Home of the Wildcats, me and the Tank.


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

Stairway to Heaven....Man.

One of my favorite SNL sketches is the one where Eddie Murphy claims to be Clarence, the fifth Beatle. To substantiate his claim, Clarence offers a tape of Beatles songs with an added sax track and the word “man” after “she loves you”, supposedly proving that the original song was “She Loves You, Man.” He then plays the track backwards and you hear Paul McCartney say “Hey George, lets kick Clarence out of the band and steal all his good ideas.”

Some say if you play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards you will get a special evil message, a situation which Robert Plant denies. However, Plant did have a horrid solo career with its pinnacle in the release of “Tall Cool One,” so anything he says is immediately suspect.

“Stairway to Heaven” was not the first song I learned on guitar. It was the second. Actually, I only knew the first few notes, but I could play them with unmatched precision. I could also play “Iron Man” with power chords and a particularly terrible rendition of Guns N’ Roses “Patience.” “Stairway” is one of those songs that have drifted upward to a stratosphere of music beyond reproach. It’s not cool to say you don’t like “Stairway to Heaven.” If you don’t like it, follow your mother’s advice and don’t say anything at all.

In everything lies a “Stairway to Heaven.” In everything, there are things you just don’t question, critique or try to add to. You would never question the ingredients of my Great-Uncle Carl’s Brunswick stew lest you will be shamed with a steamy pile of country insults that sound like compliments but are veiled jabs. To tell Carl that his Brunswick stew is missing something is, in essence, to recommend adding a saxophone part to “Stairway to Heaven.” The marketing equivalent of “Stairway to Heaven” is the four P’s, which are relentlessly beaten into the head of young marketing students until they are recited like the lyrics to “Whole Lotta Love.”

Product, Price, Place and Promotion have become houses of the holy, and while some contend that such structure is unfortunately what is and what should never be, that leaves strategists dazed and confused as they to reconcile today’s initiatives with yesterday’s constraints. I suggest that the communication breakdown is because a lack of flexibility has made a time tested system a real heartbreaker for contemporary marketers.

Before you take a look at the four P’s and ramble on, might I suggest that your time is going to come and you will tell me thank you if you simply do the unthinkable and add a saxophone to marketing’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Well that, and play it in reverse.


What is missing from the four P’s (the sax, part so to speak) is the customer experience. Too often, we marketers assume the customer experience without truly delving into a customer’s interaction with a product or service. As product commoditize, we can no longer expect customers to adapt to a speculative experience. I know in suggesting the customer experience should be added to the four P’s that I’m messing with the way things have always been done. I know I’m adding a sax part to a classic, but it just plain sounds better.

Play the “Stairway to Heaven” of marketing in reverse and you’ll get a much better result. Here’s the first note.

1) Customer experience.

How will the customer interact with the product and message on practical and emotional levels? Is the design such that customers feel the desire to accessorize with it? Is there an essence of trust about the product, and if not, can we add it?

The customer experience is the realm in which products and service now find themselves competing. You can have two products with nearly identical attributes, but the one which by design, promotion or essence leans more towards creating a more succinct and desirable experience for the customer will win every time.

2) Promotion.

Sure. I can hear your thoughts from where I’m sitting. I am a consultant concerned with how to adequately promote things; therefore, I’m moving promotion to a top spot.

Untrue.

It seems that products are often proposed without the slightest hint of how they can or will be promoted for sale. That’s dumb. Honestly, a company should know how a product will be communicated and received by consumer far before the design is finished. And no, this is not an R&D thing. If the marketing department faces the daily task of connecting with consumers, then the marketing department should be able to impart some of that consumer and promotional insight into the product before it goes to production.

3) Place

The shelves are getting crowded, and unless there is a super-super-store format around the corner, I suggest not holding your breath for a door-busting miracle. Why would any company consider developing a product without having a clear channel of how to get it to customers? It seems that many companies are content to develop something new and find distribution after the fact. As distributing channels get choked with the hordes of products available these days, the successful products of the future will appreciate not only what they give to consumers but how they give it to consumers.

4) Price

I do not want to give the impression that pricing strategy is not important. It is. It’s not that I believe pricing strategy is not a strategy, I just don’t believe it is an entire strategy. Yet every holiday season the airwaves are full of door busters, one day sales and special secret items sales. In the end customers with zero brand loyalty are attracted to specials from which waning profitability turns “black Friday” into “deep in the red Friday.”

Instead of price, we need to think about value. How are we creating value for the consumer and how does the value relate to the cost? We can slash prices or raise value. I’m going with value.

5) Product.

After we ask question about what the experience is that consumers want and we provide; after we think deeply about what attributes a product should have to create promotion which is memorable and spurs action; after we spec the distribution channels to find a congruent way to get our product out there; after we get a solid price which accounts for all it will take to pull this off right…

We have the product.

So why should product people listen to marketing people? I’ll answer with a story.

While I was teaching a class, a group of bright young lads and lasses came to me with an amazing concept: an iPod for older people. The promotion was beautiful. Outlines of grannies on the now famous bright backgrounds. TV commercials with the heavy beat tracks replaced with big band, jazz and my favorite, audiobooks. This whole campaign was wrapped up in the concept of getting “your” iPod.

I put my giddiness aside and said, “This is awesome! What features will it have?”
“Features?” they asked. “It’s a regular iPod.”
“That’s stupid,” I nicely critiqued.

Wanting to play the old marketing song backwards does not mean listening to it all alone. What my young learners had not appreciated is that while the consumer pull might have existed, they should have been considering what R&D could have done to drive the message home. Marketing had identified the niche but it would be a product solution that would get things moving together. One student in the class came up to me with the answer: make the letters bigger on the screen.

No big deal. No fundamental reengineering. No overhaul. Just finding a way in the software to make the numbers and letters bigger so that we could back up the claim of “your” iPod.

Those young students had a lesson for me and all of us that day. We need to listen to the consumer and work backwards in developing seamless rollouts. We need to communicate between departments to make sure that we play from the same playbook and sing from the same songbook.

For many of us, the challenges and opportunities that today’s marketplace offers will give clear routes to our customers’ desires, and the prospect for success sounds pretty good. For those who refuse to look or listen another way, the prospect is bleak and, sadly, the song remains the same.


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