Nothing, really. It’s a good idea. The real problem is with some of the marketers who’ve fallen in love with it. As ethical marketers, they’re opposed to practices that deceive the customer. If only they’d be equally opposed to practices that deceive themselves. For example – look at these recent headlines from the marketing press and blogs:

“Mediabrands Launches Shopper Marketing Agency”

“Integer Expands Shopper Marketing Expertise with New VP”

“Birdsong Gregory Appoints Jared Meisel to Head Shopper Marketing Team”

“Coca-Cola India Appoints OgilvyAction To Oversee Shopper Marketing Business”

“New Report On Shopper Marketing Illustrates Need For Mobile Channel Focus”

You’d think from all the attention it gets and so-called news it generates, that “shopper marketing” was some newly created discipline that was about to reorganize all agencies and revolutionize all marketing practice. There’s even a trade journal and a trade show dedicated to shopper marketing.

But you’d be wrong. Once again, the marketing business has demonstrated its almost limitless talent for deceiving itself. Shopper marketing is just a new name for something that our agency and many others have been doing for years.

A Deloitte report defines shopper marketing as “all marketing stimuli, developed based on understanding shopper behavior, and designed to build brand equity, engage the shopper (i.e., person in ‘shopping mode’), and lead him/her to make a
purchase.”

Hmmm, sounds vaguely familiar. Been there, done that. It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. My colleague Steve Smith touched on this before, when he wrote a post about P&G’s (supposedly) new Store Back marketing concept.

Shopper marketing is what sales promotion and merchandising agencies started doing 1960s and 70s: Using marketing tactics to take advantage of shopper preferences and behavior. For example, in a bricks and mortar store:
•    The best display position, all things being equal, is to the right of the front door, because that’s how shoppers tend to turn when they enter.
•    Shoppers are more likely to take advantage of savings if you give them a piece of paper to carry around and remind them (a coupon) than if you just hope they remember the savings they read about a week ago.

Now shopper marketing extends that kind of thinking beyond bricks and mortar to all kinds of purchase behavior. For example:
•    To online shoppers, and their behavior when they fill and then abandon, their virtual shopping carts.
•    To B2B shoppers, and the role of the gatekeeper, and the decision making differences between the small business shopper and the large corporation network of purchase decision makers and influencers.

Now the shopper isn’t just Mom in the supermarket, deciding which brand of toilet paper to buy. The shopper can also be a C-level executive, deciding on purchases that will determine the company’s strategic direction.

But the name “shopper marketing” is not just a harmless piece of marketing puffery, directed at us. There are some real risks to believing that it’s something entirely new. True believers may end up:
•    Reinventing the wheel, recreating techniques and ideas that behavior-oriented marketers have always practiced.
•    Failing to create the new insights and techniques that clients need, because they’re too busy recycling old ones.
•    Deceiving themselves into thinking they’re making a major contribution to marketing thought.
•    Wasting time and effort, patting themselves on the back.

So go ahead and call it “shopper marketing,” if you like. But beware of persuading yourself that you’re doing something new and better than before, just because it’s got a new name. Remember the famous George Santayana saying about history:
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“Win A Year’s Supply Of Cereal!” screams the headline on the Honey Nut Cheerios Non Challenge. It’s the first and most obvious indicator that this marketing event belongs right at the top of the “What were they thinking?” list.

Not a new Porsche. Not a dream vacation in Tuscany. Not even $25,000 to help me create the kitchen I’ve always wanted. But a year’s supply of cereal. Whoop-ti-doo.

Did I unknowingly fall asleep like Rip Van Winkle, and awaken to a new world of no-nonsense, just-the-facts- Ma’m, totally practical sweepstakes promotions? Should I look forward to other marketers offering me a chance to win a pair of socks a day for a year? A pound of ten-penny nails? A gallon of paint?

What’s missing here is the subjective element of excitement and aspiration that usually sets sweepstakes, games and contests apart from other promotion tactics. To work, a coupon or a refund must offer an obvious, objective and assured measure of savings. A free merchandise premium should offer obvious, objective value and/or exclusivity, vs. purchasing the same item.

But sweeps, games and contests are a little different. Obviously, only a few can win the big prizes. So to make for this lack of assured value, chance and skill promotions substitute the appeal of “big dreams.”  The promotion’s delivered value may not be certain, but it is certain that you can enjoy the perceived value of anticipating something exciting.

A year’s worth of cereal may be a good value. But obtaining it isn’t assured, and it’s certainly not exciting.

But excitement isn’t all that’s missing from this promotion. For example:
•    The “year’s supply of cereal” is actually 12 coupons for free boxes of HNC – one a month. Personally, I can go through a box of breakfast cereal in a week and half during late summer’s peach and raspberry season. (Full disclosure: personal favorites are regular Cheerios and Frosted Mini-Wheats.)
•    If you don’t win, you’ll receive a 75 cent store coupon. But this benefit – the real traffic and sales drive – appears only after you participate in the promotion.
•    This is an adult promotion. The “Non Challenge” theme highlights HNC’s cholesterol-lowering benefit. So why did HNC choose to keep the cartoon bee and the roster of fairly lame kids’ online games as part of the promotion? And why expect adults to come back to play the online game every day?

•    The whole promotion is almost entirely online. There’s an on-pack communication – a promotional  burst on the front of the box, shown on the website. And there’s a TV spot. But there’s very little to directly drive traffic to the product, on the shelf, in the store.

Ultimately, the Honey Nut Cheerios Non Challenge game only does do two things well:
1.    Capture email addresses. Presumably HNC will use these for future promotions.
2.    Get Honey Nut Cheerios featured on the all the coupon savings and sweepstakes sites – “Stockpiling Moms,” “The Krazy Coupon Lady,” “Wicked Cool Deals” and more.
But are these worthwhile primary goals for a CPG promotion? The Non Challenge is a non-winner, because there’s little incentive to build store traffic and sales and little excitement to build the Honey Nut Cheerios brand.

The marketing behind the most recent product introduction from KFC is (choose one):
1.    __ A sales promotion.
2.    __ A publicity stunt.
3.    __ None of the above.

KFC’s free sandwiches offer for their new Doublicious menu addition pretends to be a promotion. But a sales promotion is supposed to be like a business proposition: A marketer promises you an incentive for a specific behavior…but the value of the incentive has to match the potential cost of the behavior. Here’s how I (if I were a burger flipper at McDonalds) might have responded to the proposition from KFC, for their new Doublicious sandwich:

“A free sandwich just for coming in? Let’s see if I’ve got this right:”

•    I work at one of your competitors. (McDonalds, Burger King, Popeye’s, etc.)
•    You want me to betray my employer in favor of you. (Eat at your restaurant.)
•    You want me to make sure everyone knows I’m doing it. (Wear my uniform when I visit KFC.)
•    If I get caught, you’ll make up for it by graciously allowing me to apply for a job with you. (You’ll give me a job application…but not a job.)
•    And for all this, you’ll give me a free sandwich. (Oh, wow. Whoop-ti-do.)

“Hmmm. No. I don’t think so. I’ll pass on this one.”

Of course, KFC never really thought that competitive fast food employees would say “yes” to the free Doublicious offer. The whole thing’s a stunt, pretending to be a promotion.

But it doesn’t really work very well as a publicity stunt either.  Most of the publicity came from the marketing press and blogs, all talking to each other. Meanwhile, KFC ignored what their customers might think of all this.
•    Why should a potential customer care what the kid behind the McDonald’s counter thinks about the KFC Doublicious sandwich?
•    Why would you do business with a company that thinks someone’s job is worth no more than the price of a sandwich?
•    What’s exciting and appealing about any of this? A free sandwich is no big deal. The prospects of hordes of customers dressed in competitors’ uniforms invading KFC is unlikely. And the only creative tension comes from the slightly ghoulish prospect of knowing someone might get fired.
•    And most important, what’s in it for me, the customer who’s expected to pay for the Doublicious sandwich?

So as another one of KFC’s competitors said so famously many years ago: “Where’s The Beef?”

A recent Wall Street Journal article reports on yet another use of promotion marketing for a purpose no one dreamed of before. In New York City, the Maloney and Porcelli Steakhouse is using free steak dinners and access to an open bar to motivate workers on a nearby noisy, dusty construction project to finish their work by the November deadline. They even have a Construction Club website tracking progress toward work goals and worker rewards.

Back in the 1980s, when my colleagues and I were toiling away in the promotion marketing mines, sweepstakes, refunds, free premiums and so forth were a specialty area then, mostly used by consumer products marketers.

Who knew they would they would get into the mainstream, used as tools in government, economic policy, law enforcement and social engineering today?

We touched on this subject in a previous post about Michigan credit unions’ Save To Win program offering one entry toward a $100,000 prize for each $25 saved, and a New York City “promotion” rewarding poor people with cash incentives for visiting the dentist, opening a bank account, and so forth.

Since then, in addition to the Maloney and Porcelli Construction Club, we’ve run across:
•    The U.S. government SAVE Award, an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) contest that honors federal employees for ideas that save taxpayer dollars. Winners get to meet with the President. Unfortunately, they don’t win any “dead Presidents” to put in their pockets.
•    A Harvard experiment that bribed kids for getting good grades – a larger, more sophisticated, controlled version of the old “get a dollar for each A on your report card.”
•    The recent Cash for Guns program right here in Chicago. In just one day, it got over 4000 weapons off the street.
•    And of course, the ever popular police sting “party” tactic. Police invite criminals to win big prizes at a special VIP event, then clap on the cuffs when they show up. This idea has gone international; here’s an example from Thailand. (Don’t crooks ever read the paper or watch the TV news? By now, they should see this one coming from a mile away.)

Two questions:
1.    Have you run across other cases of promotion tactics used to support government programs, social engineering, and law enforcement (rather than to sell products or services)?
2.    When does it make sense to “pay” people extra, to do what they’re supposed to do (or what we hope they do) anyway – save money, have responsible habits, work more efficiently, get good grades, prevent crime and so forth?

This is not tree-hugger, politically-correct “green marketing.” Let’s be blunt about it: What we’re talking about here is the marketing of the green goddess, maybe-soon-to-be-legal “recreational” marijuana, inspired by the fact that medical marijuana is now legal in 14 states.

Knowing that it will take a joint effort to succeed, some growers and medical marijuana dispensaries are already starting to get serious about marketing. They’re not letting any grass grow under their feet as they get to work on this budding new product category.

(*Reader alert: How many gratuitous uses of marijuana slang can you find in the headline and first paragraph?)

Examples of recent marijuana marketing initiatives include:
•    MyMarijuana.com. a new online resource for targeting medical marijuana advertising to best prospects, including include street-level interactive maps, consumer reviews and a verification system.
•    The International Cannabis and Hemp Expo at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, attracting 15,000 attendees, with vendors featuring vendors displayed bongs, vaporizers, pipes, papers, stash containers, and yes, free samples.
•    A group of growers and clinics hiring an agency to do for marijuana what marketing did for Burt’s Bees personal care products.

Will this new wave of not-in-a-plain-brown-bag marijuana moguls go for the good stuff? Or will their marketing just end up with seeds and stems? We believe success may depend on their ability to address issues like these:

Brand Development
At first, it’s the medical marijuana dispensaries that will need brand name differentiation. Look forward to the friendly neighborhood “Grass Station” inviting you to come in and fill up.

The next step will be individual marijuana brands. But rumor has it that mega alcohol and tobacco marketers have already made an end run and trademarked names like Acapulco Gold, Maui Wowie and Panama Red. So the new wave of marijuana marketers may have to establish new brand names, or settle for undignified names like Wacky Tobaccy and Laughing Grass.

Targeting Key Segments
The low-hanging fruit may be seniors. They’re the pot pioneers of the 1960s, and now they’re coming back, some because they grew up with grass, and some because it alleviates the aches and pains of age. To appeal to this key segment, marijuana marketers may want to bundle their product with senior-appeal accessories. For example:
•    The Geezer – the familiar bong or hookah, now repackaged with a new (old) name and 60’s-style Fillmore Auditorium graphics.
•    The Zen Clapper – the late night TV commercial home electrical accessory, now redesigned to clap on and clap off to the sound of one hand.

Nurturing Marketing Alliances
As they become less like “connections” and more like conventional consumer packaged goods marketers, they’ll want to ally with relevant brands that will build customer involvement and increase perceived value. They should consider:
•    Betty Crocker Brownie Mix. A natural, although we have a hard time picturing Betty with a paisley headband, bellbottom pants and bare feet.
•    Frito Lay Munchies Snack Mix. A sure success for the marijuana marketer who can pre-empt competition by allying with the perfect brand name.
•    Mary Jane peanut butter candies. Another perfect brand name, but one that should not be marketed to the senior target segment, because it will pull their fillings out.

Added Value Promotion
Finally, after they’ve established their brands and basic communications, marijuana marketers will want to develop some short-term excitement-building events. For example:
•    The Rename The Roach Contest. Why should the best part of the joint have the worst name?
•    Vote For The Viper. Who should be the celebrity voice that stands for your favorite marijuana brand? Choose from people from the past, like Jerry Garcia or Humphrey Don’t-Bogart-That-joint. Or from contemporaries like Bill “I didn’t inhale” Clinton, or Michael “It was wrong to bong” Phelps.

*Six, by my count.

I missed it! March 19^th was the first National Day for Unplugging, an event designed to celebrate the Sabbath by asking people to give up, for 24 hours, use of cellphones, GPS, computers, TV … in other words, most of life as we know it. But then, the very nature of the day is contrary to finding out that it exists. It’s an intriguing idea, given the all-pervasive technology surrounding us. Apparently, some participants struggled, while others found it refreshing.

The idea of staging events on specific days or weeks has been around for many years. We have National Popcorn Day in January, as opposed to National Popcorn Poppin’ Month in October (popcorn brands take note – a little marketing integration needed here).  Next month, May, prepare yourself to celebrate Teen CEO Month (scary), Tennis Month (Alan Maites take note), as well as Revise Your Work Schedule Month (less for me, more for you), National Vinegar Month (eeuuhh), and National Meditation Month (ohmmmm).

Now clearly getting a day or month event to work effectively in marketing requires more than just saying this date or this period is “yours”.  First you need an official sponsor, a marketer to pay the bills. And you need to host some events, get some publicity, have others talk about it and join in the fun/celebration/remembrance.

To add to the ideas above, I’ve thought of a few examples of technology-inspired National Days:
1.  National Day of Unfriending – One day when you can un-friend as many of your 1356 closest Facebook friends as you like, without getting hate emails. But you could send snail mail – maybe the U.S. Postal Service should sponsor this one.
2.  National Day of Twittering – A 24 hour period when you need to twitter ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING you do, staying awake all night to detail every tedious aspect of your existence.  This could be a charity fundraiser for On And On Anon Ymous, the 12-Step program for people who talk too much.  Or another excuse for people to behave like Chad Ochocinco.
3.  National Erase Text Day – The sponsor for this is obvious: TigerText, the new iPhone app that limits text message lifespan, inspired by the celebrity who escapades were revealed when he crashed his Escalade. (Shhh. We’re being discreet here.)
4.  National Jobs Day – No, not a spur for employment, but a chance to honor Apple’s Steve Jobs, who seems to be on the cover of every magazine and have product placements in shows like ABC’s Modern Family.  The idea here is you celebrate by standing in line outside of an Apple store.  Wait a minute, wasn’t that last Saturday at the iPad launch?
5.  National Day of Spam – One day, just one, when you’re required to read all spam and junk emails.  In return, the spammers would have to provide you with their own personal home street addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Hmm, on second thought this might end up being a one-time event.
6.  National Day of….? Now go ahead and make your day. If you had to promote a ‘National Day of …” what would it be, and why? Who would sponsor it?  Best idea wins a precooked meat product in a distinctive blue and yellow can, made by the Hormel Foods Corporation, in 13 delicious varieties.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The old-time traveling medicine show has evolved into the “experiential” road show.  The obsolete cigar store Indian is now the giant inflatable display. And now Brandweek reports that the traditional Tupperware-type sales party has transformed itself into the new venue for high-tech and high-ticket products from Ford, Verizon and Microsoft.

But we believe there’s an even bigger opportunity for companies to be the life of the party, when they match their marketing with the right kind of party.  After all, you wouldn’t promote chewing tobacco at a wine and cheese party, or retirement communities at a rave, would you?

Party in a pigpen
So why should Tide detergent restrict itself to tennis superstar promotion, when it can go where it’s really needed? Tide can party hearty at down and dirty Mudfest events in Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida and more.  Both participants and spectators are perfect prospects for Tide, and it’s the ideal showcase for the Tide Mobile Laundry truck.

Party with pride
For McCormick Spices, forecasting flavor trends is marketing that preaches only to the foodie choir. The people who really need McCormick are the cooks and the diners at the West Virginia Roadkill Cookoff. McCormick can party with pride, because they’ll be continuing a long historical trend: The Spice Trade was driven by the need to disguise the taste of spoiled food.

Companies can also create their own parties, especially if they’re marketing products that even satisfied customers are unlikely to recommend to their friends.

Provocative parties
One example that comes to mind is condoms. The Trojan brand’s recent advertising campaign has been pretty suggestive, but it’s difficult to turn that kind of attention into action. Even in our supposedly sexually-liberated times, guys’ locker room talk rarely turns to a detailed comparison of condom performance. But party marketing is the ideal opportunity for sampling. Should the parties be coed? Should the samples actually be “test driven” at the party, or just distributed there? We’ll leave that up to the condom company that pioneers this kind of party.

Hold a “party’s over” party
Another example of party-partial product categories is caskets. Brands like Batesville experience an insurmountable barrier to word-of-mouth advertising success, because even their most satisfied customers have nothing to say. Up until now the big news in casket marketing has been free next day delivery, and distribution at Walmart. But now casket marketers can invite Major League Baseball fans to game night parties, where they can try on a casket with their favorite team’s logo. Party marketing puts the “fun” into “funeral.”

Just when a marketing technique seems old, worn out and irrelevant, it comes creeping back in a new disguise.  If the lingering Tupperware association still bothers you, think of party marketing as social media marketing, with the “social” part being accomplished the old-fashioned way: Real flesh people interacting face to face.

DM News recently announced a dubious marketing achievement:  A first-of-its-kind escalation of hostilities between dueling loyalty programs.

In the Oscar-nominated movie Up In The Air, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) and Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) spend some time comparing their airline and hotel loyalty programs. Normal behavior, if you spend your life on the road.

In real life, road warriors can also visit various websites to compare airlines’ and hotels’ loyalty programs. This is also normal – the pursuit of best value.

But the new Intercontinental Hotels “Luckiest Loser” campaign is anything but normal, in the way that it appeals to members of their own Priority Club Rewards program who also belong to competitor Hilton Hotels’ HHonors program.
•    The Intercontinental member with the most HHonors points receives 2 million Priority Club points.
•    The top 20,000 “lucky losers” each get up to 20% of their current HHonors balance in Priority Club points, up to 20,000 points.
•    All members receive 1,000 points for just for responding.

The upside and the downside
In the short term, we applaud Luckiest Loser; it’s a powerful, creative customer retention and upsell campaign. But in the longer term, it aggravates The Great Loyalty Program Trap.
•    Luckiest Loser puts Intercontinental (and Hilton, and other hotel chains) in the position of competing almost solely on the basis of their loyalty programs, rather than on the tangible features and benefits they offer to guests, or on the intangible value of their brands.
•    “Earn points, get rewards” stops being the tie-breaker it was intended to be. Instead it becomes the one criterion for a hotel purchase decision, taking the place of comfortable rooms, excellent dining, business facilities, convenient location, quality of customer service and so forth.

The airlines who pioneered loyalty programs already know this. For them and for marketers in other categories, loyalty programs aren’t just another kind of promotion. They’ve become part of the product itself. These marketers find themselves damned if they do (because they have to spend significantly, just to keep running a program that isn’t part of the core value that they offer) and damned if they don’t (because customers will leave if they cut the program back). We’ve seen many of these marketers jump through creative hoops, trying to find exciting ways to get members to redeem points at lower liability.

So Intercontinental’s Luckiest Loser is an ingenious promotion.  But it may be helping to dig a hole that’s way deeper than marketers ever thought possible.

You can find marketing innovation in the oddest places: A construction site along a main road in the western suburbs of Chicago.  And in oddest forms: a giant inflatable cat squeezing a hard-hatted worker in its fist. I had to stop and get out of the car and take this picture.

It made me forget about innovations like social media, segmented direct marketing and search engine optimization for a while, and give some thought to one of the dinosaurs (literally, in some cases) of marketing: the giant inflatable display.

They get attention by blowing up (excuse the pun please) a brand message, like the giant Firehawk inflatable does for Firestone tire stores. But I’ve always wondered what auto dealers were thinking, when they blew up those giant inflatable gorillas, Godzillas and so forth. The only message they deliver is “big.” Kind of redundant, in an auto dealership half a block long, with row upon row of shiny new cars, bright lights, string of colorful pennants and big, big signs. Local visibility and awareness is not a problem. Passers-by do not suddenly see a giant blue gorilla and say “Gosh! I was going to buy some paint at the hardware store. But that big gorilla makes me think I’ll stop and buy a Buick instead!”

The giant inflatable gorillas and Godzillas are an aberration; auto dealers’ usual attitude is that if it doesn’t work, it’s gone. But the giant inflatable cat is an innovation. It doesn’t support a brand (like the Firehawk inflatable), but it does deliver a very specific message. The fat cat inflatable is designed and built to support unions’ picketing of employers at job sites.

A marketing menagerie
It turns out that the fat cat is not alone.  A little Googling revealed there’s a wide selection of giant inflatables manufactured specifically to support labor vs. management messages: A rat, a pig, a cockroach, even a skunk.

They’ve been used in management vs. labor disputes all over the U.S., including baristas vs. Starbucks corporate at the annual meeting, and for striking movie and TV writers. There’s even a flickr photo posting site for fans of the giant inflatable rat.

Leave aside labor vs. management preferences and opinions about negative advertising for a minute.  Imagine the giant (inflatable?) light bulb appearing over the head of the innovative marketer at Big Sky Balloons or Inflatable Images, when he or she first thought “How can I expand my customer base beyond the business segment? What if…I created a product to satisfy the needs of the ‘other side’”?

Back in August, I bestowed my second Recession Thriver Award on Jos. A. Bank. As loyal readers may recall, I based my selection on two things: the numbers and the attitude. Often when a blog post appears, it has a half-life measured in seconds. But that one generated enough sustained buzz that I thought a follow up was in order.

The Numbers

In August, the Jos. A. Bank financial results were impressive in the face of a continuing recession. As department and specialty stores continued to suck wind, Jos. A. Bank was awash in black ink. While most companies struggled to show any profit growth through cost cutting of every sort, they could not hide declining revenues. And as the recession deepened the anemic quarterly sales numbers were declines against the quarter-a-year-ago numbers that were themselves declines. But not for Jos. A. Bank. Revenues were up as were same store sales.

So now they have reported third quarter numbers and the performance is even better. Net income for the quarter is up 26%! Total sales are up 8.1% and same store sales increased 3.3%. And what they call “Direct Marketing” sales grew 21.2%. We’ll talk more about that last one in a moment.

These folks are smokin’!

The Attitude

The reason the numbers are soaring while competitors are contacting bankruptcy attorneys is twofold. First, the company-wide attitude is one of energy, nimbleness and smart risk taking. Over the last year, Jos. A Bank has tried every conceivable variation of price promotion to drive traffic. In rapid-fire order they have taken a shot at everything from “Buy One Get Two Free” to “Everything is 70% Off.” If one of them drives traffic and sales, they roll it out for a few days then try something else. They rotate the winners with velocity and create the perception that something is always going on.

The second reason is akin to keeping your foot on the throat of a fallen opponent. At a time when many of their competitors are contracting and literally hanging on by their financing fingertips, Jos. A. Bank is rolling out new businesses and marketing tactics. I mentioned above that they highlighted their Direct Marketing results. This isn’t email or snail mail to customers but the Jos. A. Bank shorthand for their Internet business. They have been aggressively expanding their web store and feature just as many value promotions with the same velocity. Their web wizards are a busy bunch.

The most recent business addition takes dead aim at Men’s Warehouse: tuxedo rentals. The press release indicates customers have asked for the service. But in typical Jos. A. Bank business fashion the introduction is going to be fast and risk managed. They are quickly trying the rental program in 5% of the store. If successful, they will have it in half of their stores in time for the spring wedding season. And they aren’t risking their capital. The tuxedos are going to be owned by a national distributor and shipped to the individual stores when rented. Sounds like a winner on a lot of levels and a competitive threat that Men’s Warehouse will have to deal with very soon.

If you have to leverage a tiny budget to market a parity product, you may think your job is tough. Think again. Things could be worse. What if your customers learned your product had failed again, every time they glanced at the TV, radio, online or print news?

If you’re marketing a second- (or third-, or eighth-) best car or soft drink or printer, you can always:
•    Claim to be the price leader.
•    Or preempt competition by emphasizing some feature that’s actually common to all brands in the category.
•    Or get a few satisfied customers to provide testimonials.
But if your “product” is a sports property:
•    Your losing record is headline news almost every day.
•    And that’s just the beginning, as professional commentators and fans expend thousands of words a week talking about your failures.

One way to take on this tough marketing job is to distract people’s attention:
•    The classic example happened when Bill Veeck sent up 3 foot 7 inch Eddie Gaedel, uniform number 1/8, to pinch hit for the last-place major league baseball St. Louis Browns in 1951.
•    Minor league baseball teams carry on this tradition today, with promotions like the last place Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Salute to Cows with mooing contest, cow tipping and more, and the second to last place Fresno Grizzlies As Seen On TV Night with the Snuggie ShamWow LifeAlert relay race.

Make lemonade
But borrowed interest is the easy way out; some sports marketers intentionally embrace their losing record.

•    In Japan, thoroughbred horse Haruurara became famous by losing 113 races, backed by fans wearing Haruurara-themed T-shirts, key rings, hats and more.

•    Ski jumper “Eddie The Eagle” Edwards became famous by failing at the 1988 Winter Olympics. He turned that failure into a career as a one man marketing machine.
•    The Jamaican Bobsled Team also debuted at the 1988 Winter Olympics. They crashed; people laughed. The team laughed all the way to the bank, as they went on to inspire a successful movie and to finish ahead of the United States, Russia, France and Italy in the 1994 Olympics. You can still buy an official Jamaican Bobsled Team T-shirt.
•    The 2009 NBA season started with the New Jersey Nets losing game after game. So at game 10 they ran a “10 Is Enough” promotion, with $10 tickets.

Of course, when it comes to the marketing of wait-till-next-year sports properties, we’re right here in Chicago, where the motto of so many of our teams is “We Never Fail….To Disappoint.” And none is quite so disappointing as the Cubs, who have not won a World Series since 1908, and have not played in one since 1945. Legend says that this is because in the 1945 series, the team ejected a ticket-holding goat owned by saloonkeeper Billy Sianis, who then cursed the team. So in 1994 the Cubs invited a goat to Wrigley Field. And in 1997 the Cubs held a curse-removing press conference at the Sianis family’s tavern.

It didn’t work; the Cubs still haven’t made the World Series. But attendance at Wrigley Field continues to be near capacity, with an average 2009 ticket price close to $50. So at least the marketing works.

You’d think that a retail marketer with 36,000+ stores would know how to turn online promotion for a low-ticket product into sales action in the store. And that a high tech marketer would be more likely to make big marketing mistakes, trying to create a sales-building shopper experience for a high-ticket product.

But you’d be wrong.

7-Eleven does it wrong. Their “Wake Up To A Hot Brazilian” online promotion for coffee is a classic example of creativity for its own sake, getting carried away with cleverness and technical wizardry without actually trying to sell anything. While Hewlett Packard does it right. Their movie theater lobby sampling/demo for its HP Photosmart Premium/Touchsmart Web printer lets best prospects get their hands on the product, and then gives them strong incentives to buy.

Customers can visit The 711 Club, a virtual nightclub in Rio de Janeiro, where they can try out pickup lines on other patrons, to earn a downloadable coupon for a cup of real world 7-Eleven Brazilian Bold coffee. But then marketing reality intrudes:
•    How anyone is supposed to know that The 711 Club exists at all is a mystery. There’s no evidence of any traffic-building activity to the site, or the store.
•    The offer is disguised so well that it might as well not even be there. Copy says, “wake up to a hot Brazilian.” But it doesn’t say anything like “get a free (or discounted) coffee at 7-Eleven.”
•    The whole process of pickup lines and earning points on the Mojo Meter is drawn out and laborious, just to get a coffee coupon.
•    There’s no in-store POS presence for the program, at least in the locations we checked.
•    The whole thing seems like overkill, for motivating the simple familiar behavior of running into a C-store for a cup of coffee.

Go where the customers are
By contrast, the HP program is a perfect example of how to “sample” a product that doesn’t usually lend itself to sampling, because it costs around $400.
•    Knowing that customers couldn’t get hands-on with their printer online, and that most people just don’t visit Office Depot that often, HP went where the customers are: Movie theater lobbies in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami and Houston.
•    POS and holographic 3-D kiosks turned lobbies into HP live demonstrations, complete with a $50 coupon distribution to drive retail traffic for the printer.
•    During off hours, HP used the theaters to train sales personnel from Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Staples and Office Depot.
•    A tie-in with Fandango even allowed consumer to print out movie tickets.

As more and more marketing moves online, everyone wants to show off, to do the cool digital stuff. They forget that it’s still the down and dirty stuff in the non-virtual world that makes so many of the sales.

TO:      Hizzoner, Da Mare.
FROM:     Da Marketing Agency.
RE:          Sexy Chicago campaign – work in progress

“Marketing is like sex. Everyone thinks they’re good at it.”

We learned how true that saying is, after our October 26 post called for a campaign to claim Chicago’s rightful place as the world’s sexiest city. We were swamped with ideas. But now we’ve eliminated all the business-as-usual beauty pageant ideas (and their downscale cousins, wet T-shirt contests) and come up with half a dozen recommendations:

1.  A Labor Of Lust.
The Sexy Chicago campaign will lead an initiative for the entire Rust Belt, the industrial territory stretching from New York State, across the Great Lakes States and up into Wisconsin.
•    From now on the “Rust Belt” will be known as the “Lust Belt,” and Chicago will be positioned as its buckle.
•    “Chicago Unbuckled” marketing events will include tours to visit voiceover talent agency Naked Voices, the Naked Furniture store, and the site of the notorious turn of the century luxury brothel, the Everleigh Club. In June, our guests can also participate in the World Naked Bike Ride.

2. Get Wet.
To make marketing more efficient, we’ll build on what Chicago is already famous for. For example:
•    We’re composing a new theme song for the Chicago-To-Mackinac sailboat race in August. It’s a take-off on a Beatles classic, now renamed “Why Don’t We Do It In The Lake?”
•    We’re also working on a North Side vs. South Side, Cubs vs. Sox program that invites fans to “get to first base, get to second base” and so forth.

3. Let’s Get Busy.
Of course, we’ll be getting the local business community involved.
•    To transform our brutally cold winters into something sexy, we’re in talks with Peoples Gas and Nicor to run a “Turn Up The Heat” promotion. Instead of putting on a sweater, Chicagoland consumers could win enough free natural gas heat to go naked in their homes all winter long.
•    And we’re starting a non-profit That Chicago Sensation Foundation to fund smaller businesses’ development of sexy products and services. The first recipient will probably be Dr. Elena Bodnar, inventor of a bra that splits in half to become his and hers emergency gas masks.

4. Everybody’s Doing It.
To assure participation by all Chicagoans, we borrowed inspiration from the popular Take Your Pet To Work days.
•    We’ll be inviting Chicagoland citizens to dress down during “Go To Work In Your Underwear Day.”
•    Of course, recognizing that Chicago is not Miami or LA, we’ll encourage our more modest (or less attractive) citizens to just wear a lapel button, or wear their underwear on the outside of their clothing.

5. Good Enough To Eat.
On the Chicago food front, we’ve enjoyed some unexpected help from a tourist from the UK. We want to use Aaron Everitt’s deeply sensual testimonial about his first experience with Chicago-style deep dish pizza.
•    “The whole experience is basically the dietary equivalent of sex…first of all you have a 45 minute wait while the pizza cooks…which is a time where they ply you with appetizers… think of these as the foreplay.”
•    “When you’re done you feel an overwhelming sense of elation and also a curious amount of tiredness – all you want to do is sleep.”

6. Get All Worked Up.
Finally, we believe it’s time to reconsider that classic Chicago slogan, “The City That Works.” We recommend a better fit for Sexy Chicago:  “The City That Smirks.” It’s the perfect way to pay off a campaign that does exactly what marketing’s supposed to do:
•    Begin by promising gratification.
•    End with fulfillment.

Today was one of those increasingly rare mornings when the first scan of the email inbox brought a pleasant surprise. No, I did not discover that I am the sole remaining heir of a wealthy doctor from (Fill in the name of some village in Nigeria). And I haven’t been presented with the opportunity of a lifetime by a manufacturer in Asia whose name I can’t pronounce but who offers me the import rights for an unspecified line of small appliances and computer-like stuff. My surprise and delight was triggered by someone closing the loop on a promotional marketing effort that will be one for the text books. Often we see a really great idea only partially executed. I am sure you have seen stuff that got your attention but failed to ask for the sale or the add-on sale. Here’s one that takes the idea of community, brand advocates and promoters and hits it out of the park.

I can be in the credits of the Paranormal Activity DVD

The email I got was from the nice folks at Eventful. They are the ones with the Demand feature that created the popular support for Paranormal Activity and turned a $15,000 budget film into a multi-million dollar cash machine. Now they are starting to hype the DVD and Blu-ray release by telling me I can get my name in the DVD credits if I register. Thousands of Eventful members who originally demanded the film come to their theaters will now be turned into a word of mouth army telling all their friends they are in the credits. Talk about building early demand for a DVD release! My hat is off to Eventful, Paramount Pictures, and everyone else involved. They have earned a spot in the Biggest Bang for the Marketing Buck Hall of Fame. Well done!

In the face of a deep economic downturn it’s nice to find a reason to smile. For that alone I should probably give a Recession Survivor Award to the Hotel Helix in DC. But by all accounts their numbers are holding up too at a time when a lot of hotels are taking it on the chin. After all, just like an airline seat, a hotel room is a perishable item where “unoccupied” equals “no revenue.”

The Hotel Helix is a self-described hip, boutique hotel in DC. It’s on Rhode Island Avenue NW just off Dupont Circle. In this super-pricey hotel city, it found itself looking at the prospect of a difficult summer of 2009. While they had to resort to some discounting to keep occupancy up, they also threw in healthy measures of imagination and fun. They put together a couple of fun packages for the out-of-towners and the locals. Their Twist and Shout Romantic Getaway includes a free Twister game in the room for some late evening recreation. Their Rock and Roll Romance Package features 5 hours of car service and VIP Club Passes. All in all rather more hip than just $25 off a room per night.

Rock Breaks Scissors

But what I really like about their approach is how they hand out room upgrades. Comping an upgrade to a nicer room is one of the oldest promotions in the hospitality biz. If you have a suite unbooked, give it to a customer. It doesn’t cost anything (remember the concept of perishable) and you may win a customer for life.

Rather than just hand out nicer rooms, the Hotel Helix has found a way to make it memorable and fun, and reinforcing of their image. Guest are offered the chance to earn an upgrade by beating the front desk staff in a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors or hula hooping for 20 continuous seconds. I have had 3 people tell me about it. Now that’s deserving of a Recession Survivor Award.

Know a worthy award recipient?

If you know of a candidate for any of my Recession Awards, drop me a line at lwallace@marketingvaluations.com and tell me about them. Remember the awards are Thriver, Survivor and Diver. A Thriver is a business that is pressing their advantage in the midst of the economic downturn. They are growing their revenue and spanking their competitors. Survivors are hanging in there in the face of overall declines in their industry. They are keeping their heads above water and should make it through okay. Diver are the ones who are circling the drain or have already been flushed. You’ll notice I haven’t given out any Diver Awards so far. Hey, you should to have some compassion for people whose livelihood is disappearing. On the other hand, there are businesses that are doing pretty boneheaded things and some that are probably illegal. For sure they will earn a Diver Award. I could have given one to Bernie Madoff but that would have been too easy.

Later.

What’s going on here? These promotions don’t seem to make sense.

•    The headlined prize in this summer’s MasterCard “Break In Your Jeans” sweepstakes was a pair of “priceless” jeans; the vacation trip that came with it was hardly mentioned.
•    To promote his film Postal, controversial director Uwe Boll offered contestants a chance to appear in the movie, getting punched in the nose.

•    Within the past few weeks, San Diego’s luxurious Rancho Bernardo Inn offered a $219/night room for just $19…but without a bed.

•    Years ago, a Campari promotion offered the ultimate high ticket merchandise mail-order premium: A Lear Jet for more than a million dollars.

Beyond common sense
Common sense marketing says these are bad ideas. The incentives aren’t very incentivizing. Most of us can afford to buy our own jeans. Few of us can afford a Lear Jet. No one wants a punch in the nose. And if I want to sleep without a bed, I’ll go live in cardboard box on Lower Wacker Drive.

But the MasterCard, Postal, Rancho Bernardo Inn, and Campari programs go beyond common sense. Their ideas are more important than their incentives. The objective is buzz, not behavior change. These promotions make advertising work harder by offering customers the chance, however unlikely, to be participants and not just spectators.

Incentives to pay attention
They should be a wake-up call to all the marketers who keep trying to make sense, offering what customers say they want: Vacations to the “popular” destinations like Disney World. Minivans. Caps with sports team logos. Gift cards. Home makeovers. And so forth, and so on, until we all fall asleep.

Yes, Disney World, sports caps and gift cards are good, rational, value-driven incentives. And yes, they can change behavior, some of which probably shows up on the bottom line. But as ideas, they’re easily accessible to every other marketer, so there’s a good chance they’ll be invisible in a blizzard of similar competing communications.

Think of ideas like the jeans, the punch in the nose, the bare-bones $19 room and the Lear Jet as incentives to pay attention, to be used in addition to (not as a replacement for) more conventional behavior-driving incentives.

I recently came across a business in Naples, Florida promoting ‘Wild Wednesdays’, with great deals and offers.  Problem was:  it wasn’t a bar like Hooters, offering draft specials and two for one shots.  It wasn’t a restaurant, offering a crazy party atmosphere while shucking oysters.

It was a dry cleaner.  It was wild by offering discounts on starched business shirts.  Which kinda prompts the thought that if retirement is all about having ‘wild Wednesdays’ at the dry cleaners, then keep working, man, keep working.

But the key point is this:  make the promotion theme make sense.  It’s hardly ‘wild’ to give a discount on starched business shirts in a climate where no one wears one (apart from doctors, realtors, and funeral directors).  And saying it’s ‘wild’ without doing anything at the store (balloons?  an inflatable gorilla?) is just a let down.  By all means, excite and stir the imagination with a theme.  But be real, and realistic, with the audience and offer you make.

Overclaiming leads to overdisappointment.

Nice to see that the government is taking a not so invisible hand in stimulating the economy, moving beyond cash for cars into cash for old refrigerators and freezers.  Stimulate sales of many new Kenmore machines, that’s good.  Get rid of old, energy consuming equipment, that’s good.  Save money on electricity bills, that’s good too.

But what next?

In looking around the house for energy inefficient items, I’ve come across a few suggestions for the next round:

1.  The dog – she’s kinda old, just consuming her dog food and lays around.  Highly inefficient use of energy.  Doesn’t even bark at the mailperson anymore.  So maybe the government should give ‘cash for collies’, trade in your old dog for a young puppy.

2.  The teenager – not so old, but highly energy inefficient.  Leaves on the TV and lights constantly, always consuming power via Wii’s, cellphone, laptop (typically simulataneously, given the nanosecond attention span).  Call this one the ABC program (adolescent brings cash).

3.  The  house – unless you’ve got solar panels, a wind turbine outside, and a process for turning domestic manure into energy, you’re probably living in a highly energy inefficient house.  So here’s the idea:  government pays cash, we sell house to government, buy new house.

Wait a minute.  Soviet Union tried that.  Results weren’t too good for their economy.

Hot on the heels of the 1st Thriver Award given to Panera Bread, another standout performer needs to be recognized … Jos. A. Bank Clothiers. If bets were placed at the start of the current recession on who would thrive during this economic chaos, I think someone looking to make book on a specialty retailer of upscale, classic men’s clothing would have offered very long odds. Yet as department stores and most other retail merchants bleed red ink, Jos. A. Bank zips along racking up some very impressive results. Add to a chaotic economy a change in CEO on December 31st and another retail disaster might have been in the making. But not at Jos. A. Bank!

The Numbers Tell Part of the Story

The second quarter financials reported sales up 11.8% versus the quarter a year ago. Gross profit is up too, to $98.5 million from $91 million. Earnings have climbed by double digits in all but two quarters in the last 3 years. Considering what is happening to other apparel retailers and department stores, this is phenomenal.

Three Reasons for Success

Three characteristics of Jos. A. Bank Clothiers have made this success possible. First, they seem to possess a corporate attitude that is energetic and optimistic. Their sale ads don’t mention the recession or rely on cliches such as “our own economic stimulus package.” Rather they show great clothes at great savings. Quality is not compromised. (Interestingly, since they have managed to build such strong gross profit margins, they are not selling product at a loss just to generate traffic.)

Second, they have a nimbleness that others must envy. Jos. A. Bank freely admits they try a lot of promotional devices and then run with those that work. They have created an aura where customers actually look forward to the next announced sale such as Buy One Get Two Free and view it as a great opportunity. Other retailers struggle to read the effects of a promotion weeks after the event and have to push its roll-out through layers of approvals that can take weeks. Jos. A. Bank reads and reacts almost instantaneously.

The third reason is continuity. When Neal Black took over as CEO in December, he had been Chief Merchandising Officer since 2000. This was part of a planned succession and he had been actively involved in the development of strategies that have created an enviable track record. They could not have chosen better.

One Downside

The only downside I can detect is in the store. With the continuous steam of promotions I have seen some anxiety at the register. I don’t know if it is a POS problem, employee workload or an influx of new associates. The experience at the register can be slow and confusing for both the associate and the customer. The wide variety discounts may be pushing the limits of the POS system to keep up. But at least they try. I know of two instances where associates have contacted a customer at home hours after the sale to tell them that they had failed to take the full discount they were entitled to. They then offered  to make the adjustment. It brought the customer back and sent them away with a great feeling they told friends about. That’s how to build a brand.

Then again the problem may be too many customers. These guys are good!

Rest In Peace, Cash for Clunkers. Your time has come at last, but we’ll be forever grateful for the way you’ve revived retail auto sales. Now we can all look forward to a brighter future.

Or maybe not, because with Cash for Clunkers the government and the auto industry may have invited an 800 pound gorilla into the room.

Me-too marketers have already imitated government’s Economic Stimulus and Bailout themes. Think of it as trickle-down creativity. So now we’re watching for Son of Cash for Clunkers, born from the brains of private sector marketers who want to cash in on the visibility and popularity of trade-in programs. Since many product categories already do trade-in programs, it should be easy for marketers of computers/servers, phones, household appliances, cameras, dental supplies and more to create their own versions of Cash for Clunkers.

Before they start, maybe they should ask if Cash for Clunkers really was win/win for everyone. Consumers were sure winners. They saved, even if their old cars didn’t qualify as clunkers, because the program drove them to dealerships for other savings and rebate programs. The environment will be a winner too, as the program drives gas guzzlers off the road.

But for the auto industry, the outlook may not be so bright
In the short term dealers won big gains in traffic and sales, auto makers are ramping up production to fill depleted inventories, and auto workers are going back to work. But in the longer term there’s that 800-pound gorilla in the room – the potential negative impact of forward buying. By successfully driving a big burst of consumer buying now, Cash for Clunkers may have depleted the market of qualified consumer prospects, causing decreased demand later.

Uh-oh…could this mean a return to the tried and true giant inflatable gorilla, as auto dealers’ primary marketing tool?

Eh. Ho hum. Yawn. How many times have your eyes glazed over, reading guarantees like this?

“Friendly service, clean rooms, comfortable surroundings, every time. If you’re not satisfied, we don’t expect you to pay. That’s our commitment & your guarantee.”

It’s from Hampton Inns, and it’s typical of the meaningless copy in too many marketers’ guarantees.

Not your typical tired old guarantees
But now some marketers are exploring new ways to add some intestinal fortitude to their guarantees.  They go way beyond the conventional “money back if performance promise is not met” or car dealerships’ “if you can find a lower price we’ll beat it ” offers.

•    The big breakthrough came early in 2009, with Hyundai Assurance: “Finance or lease any new Hyundai, and if you lose your income in the next year, you can return it with no impact on your credit. Sound too good to be true? Come and see us and we’ll put it in writing for you.”

•    “Me too!” marketers quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The Ford Advantage Plan offered 12 month payment coverage for customers who lost their jobs. Toshiba Computers’ No Matter What Guarantee told customers purchasing a laptop they could claim a refund should they lose their job within the first year of purchase, and keep the model purchased as part of the deal.

•    Harley Davidson’s We Ride Free Guarantee told bikers they could buy a new 2009 Sportster, ride it for up to year, then get the full purchase price as trade-in value.

•    California Lutheran University’s 4 To Finish Guarantee reassured parents worried about college costs – incoming freshmen will graduate in four years, or the college will pay for any remaining classes.

•    And back in 2007, Sonicbids rock band booking service’s Get A Gig Guarantee offered member bands a free 6-month membership extension if they did not secure at least one gig over the course of the next 6 months.

Between brand promise and brand promotion
These guarantees are proactive, not reactive, directly driving business during a recession, the right time for extra reassurance when the brand reputation may not be enough. They fall into a gray area between brand promise and promotion, and actually add to brands’ perceived value.  They’re stronger than generic “satisfaction” guarantees because they require a specific performance and offer a specific remedy. And they’re cost-efficient, because customers succeed when marketers succeed – it’s not in customers’ best interest to take advantage of the guarantees.