Good time leads to Good Money for brands & Vice Versa for prestige brands

Focus on Time Sells More Products : Research: Stanford GSB

"It’s Miller Time." "Live Richly." - What do these vastly different marketing campaigns—one selling beer, the other financial services—have in common? They both focus on experiencing, rather than possessing, products.

Here are some of the top lines from the article:

- Because a person’s experience with a product tends to foster feelings of personal connection with it, referring to time typically leads to more favorable attitudes—and to more purchases
- Research identified the different attitudes and behaviors triggered just by mentioning time rather than money
- One explanation is that our relationship with time is much more personal than our relationship with money
- Ultimately, time is a more scarce resource—once it's gone, it's gone—and therefore more meaningful to us
- How we spend our time says so much more about who we are than does how we spend our money.
- One theory is that references to money will always be negative because consumers are reminded of the cost of acquiring a product rather than the pleasure of consuming it.
- When marketing products that consumers buy for prestige value, stressing money spent seems to be more effective. Designer jeans, expensive jewelry, and high-status cars all fall into this category.
- With 'prestige' purchases, consumers feel that possessing the products reflect important aspects of themselves, and get more satisfaction from merely owning the product rather than spending time with it

The most interesting part of the article was an experiment on concert tickets with the comment - "who actually incurred a higher cost in terms of time spent—rated their satisfaction with the concert higher". Might explain the commitment of the Starbucks' consumer.

Rewards, Expectations and Deliverables

Strange things have happened and aligning rewards with expectations and deliverables is certainly not one of them. Consulting is a fun business, it gives me the ability to see a lot of new things and experience a lot of strange, funny and sometimes stupid concepts.

Recently during an engagement I had an opportunity to better understand some performance metrics for a large national retailer. The part that was most enlightening was the knowledge of the performance indicators and a mental contrast with a street hawker merchandising and selling their wares… the result was the inspiration for this essay.

	Street Hawker Retail (typical from a Developing Market)	Large Retailer (typical to a Developed Market)
Image
Not in the KPIs	· Customer satisfaction · Customer experience · Customer communication · Vendor satisfaction/partnership	· Customer satisfaction · Customer experience · Customer communication · Vendor partnership/partnership
KPIs	· Revenues · Profits · Units · Identical sales to previous day	· Revenues · Profits · Units · Identical sales to year ago · GMROI · Inventory turns

Challenging the frontiers of AGE

This morning I read another mention of how anti-aging is not just a beauticare phenomenon but a business strategy (my alma mater) MIT has a lab that is researching opportunities as the generation ages and nature starts to challenge the way consumers do day to day tasks.

The article from the Boston Globe - Growing old is the New frontier, sheds light from research and efforts at MIT.

As boomers around the world age, the richest consumer generation has new FUNCTIONAL needs and brands need to respond with solutions to capitalize on the opportunity. Here is a old post from my blog on how it is happening in the retail world in Germany.

War in the Boardroom

I scanned through the powerpoint slides on slide share about a week ago and this morning USA Today summarized some of the examples from the book. The synopsis of the book was great may be now I need to read it in entirety

War in the Boardroom

View more presentations from Laura Ries.

•Management deals in reality; marketing, in perception. Most managers believe that producing a better product is the key to success. Yet, time and again, new products with perfect benchmarks fail, such as Volkswagen's Phaeton (a luxury car with top ratings) and beverage Miller Clear. Miller Clear tasted like regular beer, if you closed your eyes. "(But) when you drank Miller Clear with your eyes wide open," the Rieses write, "it tasted like watery beer. Perception always trumps reality."

•Management focuses on the product; marketing, on the brand.

Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola are similar soft drinks. Although Pepsi consistently wins blind taste tests, Coke outsells Pepsi by more than 50% in the USA, and even more internationally.

•Management wants a diversified market strategy; marketers prefer to focus in one area. Motorola introduced the first commercially available mobile phone in 1983, while Nokia came later to the cellphone market. However, Nokia began selling off non-cellphone holdings, while Motorola added computers, radio, even satellite communications. By 1998, Nokia could boast cellphone supremacy.

•Management targets the center of the market, while marketing targets the ends. Management sees the market as a bell curve with a large middle; marketers see it as bifurcated between a low end and high end.

Southwest Airlines succeeded by ignoring the first-class market and sticking to discount fares. Kmart failed by attempting to target the middle ground between low prices (Wal-Mart's specialty) and designer goods (Target's specialty).

•Management wants better products, while marketing wants different products. Management's response to a rival is often to try to do the same thing better. The marketing response is to do something different and create a new mental category.

Rather than fight Ivory Soap's pureness campaign, Dove responded with "cleansing cream." Rather than fight the hardware of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo released the Wii. It's still a video game system, but it creates its own category — as well as more sales and profits than the other consoles.

•Management wants a single brand; marketing wants many brands. Management wants the big brand name on everything to justify the money spent on brand recognition. Marketing wants to launch new brands, because often the new product isn't a good match for the old brand name.

Xerox was well-known in copiers, but Xerox computers fell flat. Kodak was a leader in film photography, but Kodak digital cameras didn't move. On the other hand, Levi's launched a workplace casual line with Dockers, and Toyota managed a luxury brand called Lexus. No doubt a "Toyota Elite" would have gone the way of VW's Phaeton.

The Analytics Chasm

I often wonder what makes a strong candidate for an Analytics role? I know what has gotten me excited during presentations… it is the ability of an individual to narrate a story. One of my favorite presentations is the NPD eating trends by Harry Balzer. Harry does a fascinating job when it comes to narrating the story and connecting the data and insights.

The chasm between reality and analytic insights has often made me uncomfortable. How much of the insight are truly data and the social, anthropological elements contributing to “SPIN”?

Certainly a business driven by analytics is build on a sound base! The easiest way to cross the chasm is to try a little, test a little, try some more and test some more until you are ready to go all the way. A culture of analytics without the a culture of risk taking is like going to a fine dining restaurant with a severe hangover.

Consumer driven product lifecycle

This is a very interesting view of the product life cycle. In the past I have written about the brand manager as a driver in the rear seat, this is a classic example of what could be happening and the need to constantly steer the brand in the desired direction.

Not all is lost there is hope for the Brand Steward and it is called BRAND ARCHITECTURE.

Geo segmentation

The Organization Triad

Over the years I have run into three types of organizations and the other as I sat to think about them I visualized them in a triad.

1. Stable organization with controlled change
2. Evolving organization with experimental change
3. Metastasized organization with no change

1. Stable organization with controlled change: Are the ones that are extremely successful with a defined culture and strong foundation of institutionalized knowledge. They are able to attract top talent and sometimes competitive pressures inside the organizations can get caustic but always push individuals to perform better than expectations
2. Evolving organization with experimental change: These organizations are always trying to understand why things are not working at the highest levels of performance? A definitive culture is lacking, knowledge is not usually institutionalized, fear prevails across all the ranks creating the need to try new things without giving anything a fair chance of success and leadership gaps exist at many levels within the organization
3. Metastasized organization with no change: These organizations are in a very sick state. Talent has suffered, leadership is very often in denial on many issues, and most people like to play the blame game. Issues tackled are symptoms and the root cause continues to fester. Poor leadership is often the root cause – MOKITA is a fact here. Short term thinking leads to shortfalls and is perpetuated, no one wants to tie a bell around the cats neck.

Making a promise & keeping it!

For the old but still relevant and in fashion... from a German grocery store. Appealing to a segment and staying relevant in every way.

Personal expression is catching up with Barbie!

Nothing is more personal than the individual, their personality, their appearance! The marketers at Mattel are making Barbie relevant (...Oh this is surely not for the 3-10 yr old that has to look up to Mom & Dad for the $20 toy but the 30-60 yr old bird out of the nest that can drop $200 if interested) to the new sense of personal expression through tattoos and piercings.

"Totally Pierced Barbie"
"Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie"

The article made reference to another blog that mentioned the divorce with Ken a couple years ago and the possibility of a "Divorced Barbie"?

The agency BRANDTRUST published some research on the topic of Tattoos (called Indelible) that calls for a deeper meaning that just Barbie with a tattoo but none the less; here are some of the top-lines from their work:

Tattoos are clear statements of willing nonconformity, and refute any suspicion that failure to fit in is unintended. A tattoo thus transforms someone who sticks out into someone who stands out.

Tattoos illustrate a map of the wearer’s life.

Tattoo artists are the ultimate arbiters of who will join this tribe. They guide people to an understanding of the meaning of the tattoos

The first tattoo takes on significance of the same sort as coming-of-age rituals in traditional cultures.

tattoo is the opposite of a mask. Although tattoos visually cover the skin, they reveal their owners

You don’t get tattooed for other people. You get tattooed for something within yourself. The only way to get this thing that lives inside of you out is to get tattooed.”

Now that is a BOLD, UNAPOLOGETIC BRAND, kudos to the team at Mattel! (pictures of Barbie from over the years)

Frito applies Neuro marketing

Top lines from the the editorial on the article - The Female Brain

• Women’s brains have more distributed functions than men, especially for language and memory. Women’s brains have stronger connections between the two hemispheres.
• Women have a larger hippocampus, a major area of the brain that is involved in memory function. Women rely more heavily on brain areas that contain mirror neurons during empathic interaction. Mirror neurons enable a person to feel what they see another person is feeling.
  

WOMEN	MEN
Look for landmarks	Look for targets
Look for connections	Zone in on the target
Explore territory	Systematize, make maps
Are relational	Are spatial

“When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.” - Comedian, Elayne Boosler

Productivity tools and the loss

I always hear people complain about receiving too much email or addiction to the Blackberry what surprises me is that these are some of the same system/tools/devices that are supposed to improve productivity and performance. Is the power of these brands and the value being lost because of the user’s lack of expertise in taming these productivity improvement tools? If productivity improvement is the value proposition should training stretch beyond just the manual and a quick reference guide be part of the product?

It is amazing how few of the capabilities of the systems and tools users know and leverage. It often amazes me that the manufacturers of these brands invest more into research and development while adoption of some of the advanced features and capabilities that are at the core of the value proposition (in existing models/versions) fade away by the wayside for the dominant cross section of the user community.

When does it makes sense for the brand stewards to focus on training the user community and reprioritize the messaging, visuals and launches?

This is one classic challenge with most software companies where the brand marketers are focused on new versions, new tools, new launches when there is a community of users are frustrated because the product does not deliver to expectations and forces them to make compromises and trade-offs especially when there are minor settings that can help alleviate the root cause of the issue.

Is it time to get back to the drawing board in trying to figure out what is the scope of Marketing and how it aligns with the Value proposition?