The dog and phony show

This is a true story. Sink, Matt and I hauled up across state lines for a competitive pitch on a nice piece of business. We had a good feeling about the account and had done some preliminary work that was pretty great. Anyways, they stuffed us into a boardroom while they went out to round up the attendees who had run off to play with their Blackberries between meetings.

On the client side, I’ve always hated these meeting. Agencies and consultant always seem to present a gumbo of campy clichés and talk to PowerPoint presentations for thirty minutes about creating a “winning mindset.” When I pitch these days, I think back to those horrid presentations and try to make mine a bit more interesting.

Back to that day in the pitch, I saw a small black box. Sink, who can get all clandestine on command, snagged the box and opened it. It was a cell phone with some stupid card that said something to the effect of “Make the call! Choose Purple Llama Advertising!” (name slightly changed). We studied the bribe and noticed a stand where a projector had just been. Right there, we completely changed the presentation. No slides, no sound effects. No bribes. Straight talk and straight answers.

I was told later that we butchered the competition from a strategic capability standpoint but that some of the members of the voting body were just enamored with the cell phones, gifts and other little gimmicks.

I have a confession to make: our industry does this. We offer bribes, and lavish dinners and outings to tattletales. We promise connections, influence and activities that could be accurately classified as kickbacks. I have seen agencies whore out employees, take clients to Vegas and/or suggest better access to high ranking state officials. It is important to note that not a single part of this has anything to do with ability or prowess in helping the client reach strategic goals.

What are marketers to do? On one side you have consultants and agencies sending you champagne and taking you on “media tours” that include $700 dinners they will eventually charge to your company along with the customary 20% markup. On the other side are actual capabilities. The answer looks easy, but the result anything but.

So what allows the substitution of food, embroidery or a cell phone for real ability? It has to do with marketing team construction, commitment and liability. The team is often the root of whether the right group of outside marketers or a group of dopes who gave away watches will be selected. Here a few tips to avoid making this dumb mistake.

The person in charge should be in charge.

In every environment I have worked in there are always those folks determined to milk the job for anything they can get. They bring in all their personal mail and use the company stamps. They ship their Christmas gifts with the company shipping account. They make their long distance calls from the office so they don’t have to pay for them. To them, this job is about what they get out of it. Never put this person in a position to extract perks from a vendor. I have seen brand managers use the relationship to subsidize travel, pay for vacations and even secure other employment. It’s sickening.

When a person has more at stake than the ability to get free junk, the truth of the situation becomes clear. Is this consultant going to mesh with the corporate culture? What will be the outcome and have we identified the desired outcome in the first place? And the easy tip is to never let a person be involved in the decision unless their neck or their reputation is on the line.

Tell the agency to stop kissing your assets.

Agencies have a knack for getting in the marketing budget and spreading it out until all marketing activities are conducted by and paid directly to them. Endless attempts to encumber more parts of the marketing budget are par for the course, and this is the strategic aim of most conglomerate agencies. Here’s the rub: an agency that oozes over into the area of what your company supposedly needs is never as potent as one who specializes in it already. I would never have an agency handle an important PR project when I know there are people who specialize in PR. I don’t care if the agency just hired two yahoos to write releases. There are people with real track records and abilities in the various subsets of marketing consultation. If you want good work, be willing to look for it.

I already have a cell phone. Give me a strategy.

An interesting fact about the groups I have seen using bribes and junk to peddle their trash is that not one ever had a decent command of the business problem. Instead of salient strategy, they offered logo emblazoned folding camp chairs. Instead of insight, they had an offer to have the next meeting in Bermuda.

Whether or not an agency or consultant can or does have a mental hold on the concept and business problem at hand is extremely relevant. I remember sitting in a meeting with a hack arguing because he could not understand the difference between an American pub and an English pub. Sure, he was more than willing to send our president on a lavish media tour of magazines in Chicago and New York, but ultimately it was worthless because he simply could not understand the strategy.

Put your strategy out there. Give the prospect a chance to reflect it back and comment on it. See if they can really let it soak in. Do they get it? If they don’t, show them the door. Free cell phone or not, your company’s well being is not worth including a dud on the marketing team.

A partnership is two sided.

The last and perhaps most important quip I can offer about the client/consultant interaction concerns the nature of the relationship. The agency is going to need to work from the inside if the results are going to be a real connection between the product and the consumer. Clients who treat their agencies like partners instead of vendors will far exceed the result of those that see the agency like the coffee service company.

So the goal is clear. Getting an agency that can partner with your company, understand your strategy and be a true contribution to the team is not hard to ascertain with a few questions. Ask prospects to explain the strategy and approach on other pieces of business. Ask them how they might approach your business. If they can clearly reflect back to you strategic ability and insight in addressing the business, tell them to keep the free phones and you’ll send them a contract.

PETA hates the dog and pony show.

In recent times, more companies are nixing the big production of agency pitches in favor or more personal interviews. After all, when you ask a person to join your team (which is what the hiring of agency should be), you sit and talk with the person to get to know him or her. You don’t ask the candidate to bake you cookies or make a video about how fun they are. Marketing is serious business and when the result of a marketing effort might have your job in its jaws, you might take the selection of teammates a little more seriously.

So what will it be? Embroidered blankets and promises of connections or strategy and ability? Will you be the one who knows there’s no “I” in team or the one who points out that there is a “me” in team? (There is also a “meat.)” Real business is counting on you to pick strategy over pomp. To pick ability over self interest. And, if after all this you have to have a dog and pony show, well …

http://www.hsus.org/

The twelve days of Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

War. Huh. Good Gosh Yall.

The Cola War has been long and tiresome. There have been chemical weapons (Crystal Pepsi), dirty bombs (Christina Aguilera) and, most recently at Coke, a few insurgents. Yet still each year, a few inches are lost and a few are gained and to what end? The campaign’s budgets are only exceeded by the ambition to have a cola replace organized religion. You know, “catch that Pepsi spirit.”

North Korea isn’t the only one testing new weapons.

So now, Pepsi’s got them a newfangled brand idea and they intend to use it no matter what the UN says. The concept is “Feel the Pepsi” and its aim is to capture the volume and sheer awe of their 1970’s spirit catching effort. My recommendation: bring back epic “spokes dancer” Michael Jackson, incorporate “Taste of the New Generation” concepts and release a slightly modified campaign called “Feel the Youth”.

Doesn’t that just grab you?

This cola war has been studied for so long it’s gone flat. The once scenic market space of soda is now a wasteland of fads, slogans, once revolutionary media and aging pop stars. But the war has its lessons and we should take heed. The cola war cut the teeth of many a brand manager and the biggest lesson might be in a battle that has yet to happen.

Many, many years ago, the generals of Coca-Cola developed a secret weapon that would surely undo the enemy. This weapon was developed from years of frontline battles and its early tests assured a damaging blow to the competition. Coke loaded the weapon into its superior deployment system. They flew directly over the target and opened the bomb bay doors. The weapon released with a roar, plummeted towards the earth, hit the ground and failed to explode. Pepsi executives approached the weapon and admired its shining outer case proudly displaying “New Coke.”

What did Pepsi’s generals do with the unexploded ordinance? They hurled it over the line right into the Coke encampment after which it exploded with a ferocity not seen on aisle 12 in a long time. Coke’s bomb had exploded in their own face.

Every commander is expected to write a post mortem and Coke’s brass was no different. It seems every MBA class has something to say about New Coke. They spoke of the consumers who rebelled and favor the way Coke “used to be.” They reported the protest against changing a brand which people had used to define themselves. They acknowledged that it seemed that sabotage from the most loyal consumers was New Coke’s undoing. We now study that battle under the mantra of “the consumer is king”.

The dust has settled on aisle 12. Cola has become more of a cold war and the stockpiling of arms in other sectors seems to be the way of the foreseeable future. Both sides now have the “water bomb” and both sides have built alliances with major delivery systems. But what did Coke really learn? Will those who refuse to listen to history surely repeat it?

The next cola war: A prediction.

It will be a day not unlike today. People will gather in a conference room in one of the cola giant’s bunkers and amidst discussion the realization that things just aren’t what they used to be will appear. Awareness that distribution channels have changed, brand perception has shifted and consumers are just not who they used to be will creep over the room and set off terror within. The first strike will be a test.

One product will be repositioned. Perhaps steering Dr. Pepper in a nostalgia direction or maybe it’s a new way to “Do the Dew.” However it happens, the intention of the first strike is to make sure the weapons work after all those years in the silos. Will the bottlers march in step? With today’s fractured audience, can we really get the air power in the brief window available for a sweeping attack? And will Coke use the secret weapon?

The secret weapon was revealed in the New Coke attack. Consumers stood up and said they wanted a product that understood their heritage and roots. Consumers hoarded the Classic Coke as if their very identity was being stripped away and in a way, it was. There is real potency is the identification of heritage, enduring values and respect for a way of life that Coke seems more able to invoke than anyone or any brand.

The big lessons from the cola wars.

Get good intelligence.

There seems to be a tendency to want to sterilize and commoditize market intelligence. Coke’s focus groups said the product tasted better, so why the flop? Coke assumed that the consumer affinity was all about taste and ignored the more important intangible of persona and self identification. Perhaps more “feet on the street” intelligence would have warned against a disaster.

Keep your eyes in the boat.

Pepsi and Coke have barreled after some products with such focus that other opportunities get left unguarded. Tea, energy drinks and water are all sectors that Coke and Pepsi could have owned considering the pre-existing relationships and logistical systems. Concentration elsewhere have made Arizona, Red Bull and Evian little nuclear powers of their own.

3. Ideas are the most powerful weapon.

The reason that beverage sectors have developed in spite of the dominance of the two big kids is because of ideas. Ideas have changed the balance in many a war and marketers are wise to be on the lookout for good ideas. One need not be a maverick entrepreneur working in a garage to get great ideas. Procter & Gamble has an entire system dedicated to the best ideas money can buy. You don’t have as many successes as P&G and not recognize the power of great thinking.

Charge!!!!!

The big one is coming. Swelling arsenals and the stoking of quarterly stock expectations means it is inevitable that the two biggest kids in the lunchroom are going to have to fight. Pepsi has their posse called the new generation. They’ve got a standing army and every soldier in it feels the Pepsi. And then there’s Coke. They’re no youngster. They’ve got the muscle and the mean. They have the weapon. But will they use it?



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