Branding Disconnect Makes Tote Garbage

Last week I attended an event where I got another tote bag from a well-meaning sponsor. Aside from the fact that we now suffer from an influx of coffee mugs, water bottles, and toe bags (much like we did five years ago with frisbees and mousepads), I was struck by the incredible poor positioning by the company.

REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) has a longstanding reputation in the Pacific Northwest as being a purveyor of contemporary outdoor equipment and merchandise. From your high-tech sleeping bag, nordic-rated tent, to even a campfire espresso machine, REI regularly impresses customers with the latest and greatest for the outdoor enthusiast. So WHY, please tell me WHY, did they choose to put their orginating date on their bag. AND WHY did they choose a tote bag to convey that message?

Marketers -- we have to stop being stupid and stop choosing the easy way. How does a generic tote-bag further the brand or position of REI? How does putting the only message on the bag your company's origination date reinforcing the image of contemporary -- and even high-tech -- equipment?

The next time your company has the privilege to reach out to a group of people when you sponsor their event, make that thing you give them useful and relevant to your brand. As well, ensure that it reinforces your position in the market as not only the best choice, but the ONLY REASONABLE choice.

-- David Kinard, PCM

Stop the Interruptions!

Parenting is teaching me a lot about marketing, and how much we as marketers have yet to learn about interrupting our audiences.

Let me set the stage for you:

• I walk into the house, arms burdened with several bags of heavy groceries. My eight year old son instantly starts to tell me of the Lego spaceship he has just created and wants me to come see it.
• I have my hand in the toilet, scrubbing and cleaning and my twelve year old daughter asks me if I can log her on to the computer so she can play a game.
• It is Sunday morning and I am luxuriating in a few precious, extra hours of sleep and one of my kids comes in, wakes me up, and asks if I want to answer the phone (I guess it's ringing).

In each instance -- now as much by habit as by deliberate effort to teach them the importance of time and place -- I say something like, "Hmm, what am I doing right now? Is this the right time to ask me about this? Can this wait until I am done?"

I think we as marketers are doing the same types of things to our target audiences.

This quarter while teaching MBA marketing at Seattle University, I emphasized the importance of ensuring our customer communications meet five critically important criteria in order to be truly effective:

1. The message being sent must be the right message.
2. The message must be delivered at the right time.
3. The message must be delivered to the right place.
4. The message must be delivered through the right medium.
5. The message must be delivered to the right person.

In my day job, I tell my own staff the importance of paying attention to these same criteria. It's all to easy to put up another poster, to send out another mailing, or to broadcast another commercial. The challenge for us as marketers is to figure out when our audience is most receptive to our message, and make sure we deliver it in a stand-out way.

Case in point, I remember consulting with a healthcare system that wanted to increase the number of appointments by women for free breast cancer screenings. They had a brochure set to deliver this message. Jokingly, I mentioned that I don't think women are thinking of the health of their breasts when they just come home from work and open the mail. The challenge for us was to think about when women were thinking about their bodies and find a way to introduce our message then and there in a stand-out way. We came up with the idea of shower kits with soaps, a razor, lotions, and a waterproof card on how to do a self exam while in the shower.

Now I am not saying that commercials, direct mail, and posters are bad. They have their place. But the vast majority of these materials are just visual wallpaper to our brains. We must move beyond what's easy to what's effective.

Do you have examples of when you thought through your communications and instead of interrupting your audience you met them in a powerful, integrated, stand-up way?

-- David Kinard, PCM

Use Integration Instead of Interruption

My professional friend Katya Andresen recently had a visitor -- a door-to-door canvasser for Save the Children. She writes in her blog about his visit, and that she ended up giving him a pledge worth $336. Katya writes:

"...what I really wanted to know was why they were doing fundraising via canvassing. He said because it worked wonderfully. Most of Save’s child sponsors sign up via canvassers, apparently. Save is focused on this approach, scaling back TV ads and other broad-brush, less effective means of getting recurring, monthly gifts...."

I was surprised to read that they've found success in this form of highly-interruptive marketing. With so much focus these days on permission-based marketing, to hear that door-to-door fundraising is working makes me wonder what's going on. But after a bit of thought, it all made sense to me.

Of course Save was not getting any ROI from their TV ads and other "broad-brush" efforts -- it is precisely because they were so generic in nature that their impact was so low. The failure of Save, or any other nonprofit/cause related organization, to see any return from their marketing efforts is due to a lack of integration in their marketing mix.

Right time, right message, right person, through the right medium -- that's the challenge and opportunity we all face in getting out the good word of our organizations. And, when we fail to do that effectively, and resort to interruptive marketing tactics like door-to-door canvassing, of course we'll see an uptick in responses. And just because it's a worthy nonprofit doing the canvassing doesn't make it right.

I'd challenge Save the Children to rethink their approach and find a permission-based model to work from.

What do you think?

-- David Kinard, PCM

[image credit: Save the Children]

From Garbage to Great – Advertising Rating Metric

I am one of those people who actually likes to watch the commercials. I enjoy advertising and always have. Um, well, I should qualify that a bit. I enjoy good advertising.

There is a tremendous amount of garbage being thrown at us that amounts to nothing more than noisy wallpaper. We as consumers screen and filter out this noise pretty well, too. So, with the power of the remote to skip over what we see, and the power of our own filters to screen out the advertorial noise, it’s no wonder that companies are finding it very hard to see any return on their advertising investment.

Though the current situation is bleak in terms of advertising effectiveness, it doesn’t have to be so. There is a lot of great advertising being done today, and in this week’s Metric Monday I thought I’d give you some pointers on how to evaluate your own advertising to ensure it is in the great category, not the garbage.

When it comes to developing and measuring your advertising, there are five key elements to keep in mind: Attention, Read-through, Cognitive, Affective, Behavior. Each is described in more detail below.

Attention: How well does your ad catch the attention of the target audience? Contrary to popular practice, key to getting attention is not to be obnoxious or blaringly loud. Rather, getting the attention of your target audience relates to one thing – are you pertinent?

Read-through: How well does your advertisement lead the target to go further into the ad itself? In other words, once you’ve got their attention what are you going to do with it? This is where most ads fail. In short, they’re boring and lack interesting qualities that deepen interest.

Cognitive: This has to do with the clarity of the central benefit of your message. What are you offering and is it clear to the target audience? How clear? Are you being overt or is your benefit-laden message hidden amongst jargon? (I like to ask my kids (ages 8 and 12) if they can pick this out. If not, it’s back to the drawing board!)

Affective: This relates to the appeal of your message and its overall emotional impact. My friend Martin Lindstrom noted in his groundbreaking book Buy-ology that every decision we make has an emotional component to it. So, you need to ensure you have an emotional (affective) appeal in your ads.

Behavior: It’s often said the number one failure of sales people is that they forget to ask for the sale. What is your ad specifically telling the target audience to do, think, or feel? What behavior are you hoping for and does your ad support that goal?

So here is the easy way of putting this together. Each element is worth 20 points. Begin to rate each element and add up your score. I’ve included a rating sheet for your use. Of course, this is a subjective tool and should be used in conjunction with a financial metric, but it will help you to ensure that what you put out has the greatest chance of achieving your goals.


Bottom line: Whether you are placing print ads, radio spots, or banner ads on Web sites, your job as a marketer is to fully understand your target audience so that your whole message (visuals and words) is relevant and important to them. Remember, advertising is NOT about you, but about what your target needs, wants, and demands. Take the ad rating sheet I’ve provided and have a group of customers rate your ads on a regular basis. This will keep you on track and effectively stewarding your marketing dollars.

-- David Kinard, PCM

[image credit: riptheskull]