For about as long as I can remember, I’ve been aware of the idea of strategy. Back when I played middle school football, we learned about two big strategic principles: pile up resources at the greatest area of need, and (contrariwise) deploy resources away from the point of contact, to A)trick the opponent into deploying their resources poorly (play action pass), or B)dilute your opponent’s resources in hopes of a mismatch (stretching the field with a fast, deep-threat wide receiver, in order to create opportunities over the middle).

In marketing, examples of these two tactics might be:
Concentration of resources:
• A retailer spending a majority of advertising budget between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to coincide with consumer behavior
• A manufacturer assigning a full-time rep to a single customer company, in order to cultivate deep relationships, secure the customer’s loyalty, and expand the footprint within that customer company
• Coordinating national, regional, and local advertising around specific “promotional” periods, and focusing messages on the specific offers of the promotion.

Generally, these are strength-against-strength tactics. They are very logical. And they will work, over time, given a solid product, a competitive price, and continuous, predictable demand.

Contrarian deployment:
• A retailer, recognizing the trend toward post-holiday sale shopping, saves the majority of its advertising budget for a post-holiday sale blitz
• A manufacturer who is well know in one industry, but less known in other industries, assigns a full-time rep to getting first purchases (trial) from customers in adjacent industries, while “milking” the industry in which they are established…risking that their products will become commodities in the established industry, as the threat the industry as a cash cow
• A manufacturer launches a directly competitive product with a media blitz in the hometown (or a strong market) of an established brand, forcing the established brand to “defend its turf”—the hope is that the established brand will over-react (overspend) or get distracted from their core business…creating opportunities elsewhere
• A brand with a cash advantage spends excessively in a market “owned” by a less liquid competitor, forcing the competitor to defend what it might otherwise have taken for granted…milking the competitors limited resources.

Of course, these strategies are all risky, and none of them can really be considered long-term strategies. Their purpose is to change the status quo, so it would be silly for someone to employ them who benefits from the status quo.

One problem with some upstart start-ups is that they become very good at contrarian tactics, to the point that these tactics become part of the culture. But, when they become the man, they are still culturally inclined to fight the man. They don’t know how to act like category leaders.

The job of the category leader is to promote the category. So, category leaders should use strait-forward, logical (boring) strategies, in order to signal to consumers, competitors, and vendors what the category is doing. This may seem charitable, but it really isn’t. A lot of people (probably most) want to do business with the confident leader. So, by successfully taking the leader posture, a company is effectively blocking competitors from potential customers. Think of Tide, Cheer, Crest, Gleam, Head ’n’ Shoulders, Clorox, and Shout. By being the voice vendors listen to for direction regarding how to sell to the category, a company puts itself first in line to negotiate the best deal with potential vendors. And by signaling to competitors, a leader gives itself a home field advantage.

Everybody else’s job is to take shots at the category leader, by slicing off niche markets, cherry picking high-value customers, and/or offering a mass-market alternative (me-too) choice to consumers. When number two becomes number one, the whole category can feel shock waves for a while.

Business is not a philosophy class or a smoke filled dorm room in the middle of the night. It’s really pretty simple. Do you offer something people want at a price they want to pay? If so, say so. If not, change your price, change your offering, or fold up your tent and go home.

We have been enjoying working with a new brand concept for a few months now. They are great folks (and that is not something you can ever take for granted). But what makes it really enjoyable to work on their business is that they know what they stand for. They are out there on a limb, saying, “people are willing to pay for a really awesome steak!” If they’re wrong, well, they are out there on that limb. But if they’re right (and it’s looking as if they are), they have that limb all to themselves.

Funny, isn’t it, that a you can go back about fifty years, and walk down a street in a pedestrian neighborhood in Brooklyn, and bump right smack into a breakthrough 21st century brand concept. Great piece of meat. Knowledgeable, friendly service. Some good stuff to go with it, to round out the meal. Seems like a no-brainer, which is a pretty good indicator that either it has already been done (which does not appear to be the case) or it’s a sure winner.

We will see.

Took about as long as it took James Joyce to write Ulysses, but our new site is up. Go check it out. Let me know what you think.

people always went to the lowest bidder. I wonder this, because it seems that people are doing this more than they used to. Might just be nervousness over the economy. But we have experienced a lot of people saying, “we’d rather work with you, but we went with the lower price.” And we are dealing a lot more with current clients saying, “I want to do this initiative, but you’ll have to come down on the price.” Not sure what is going on.

Of course, when you’re talking about commodities, price is the issue. Why pay more for a pound of sugar than you have to? Is that what’s going on? Are people seeing advertising, and marketing communication as a commodity. It’s happened before.

Back in the 70s, when I was studying the art and science of advertising, they were just beginning to churn out MBAs in unprecedented numbers. They were deft at analysis, but not typically good at judgment. So, with the help of a PC on every desk, business began the process of reducing every issue to an arithmetic problem, with a correct answer that could be devised with the use of a spread sheet. Of course, the seventies gave us stagflation (I heard that terrifying term just this morning on NPR, for the first time since the Ford administration), leisure suits, hair mouse, disco, and some of the worst advertising in history.

Fortunately, by the mid-eighties, top businesses seemed to learn their lessons. We had the West Coast influenced creative revival—MacIntosh 1984 spot, Levi’s 501 blues, Bartles and Jaymes, and so on. During the boom, people paid not six figures, but seven figures for single commercials. And in some cases (MacIntosh) it paid off. That was an exciting time.

Then came the 1990s, “Xstreme” everything, and the Internet. The self-indulgent, art-school educated new generation of creatives began using client budgets to subsidize their own cool little films. We got advertising full of smart remarks and special effects—full of sound and fury signifying nothing…and not generating sales. Along with that came the 24/7 auction/bidding war that is the world wide web. The ubiquitous banner/button universe of ads, measured not in reach or frequency, nor in transactions or trial, but in “click through,” began the process of re-dumbing down advertising to the two lamest objectives in history:

• GET YOUR NAME OUT THERE

and

• MAKE AN OFFER THEY CAN’T REFUSE.

The confluence of the MBA quantitative mindset, the waste of budgets on self-indulgent creative, and the point-and-click mentality have taken the sophistication level of advertising strategy to about 1922 (Hey, Mrs. America, is your family satisfied that your dishes are clean when they sit down to dinner? Try Squeek™!). It is not the kind of advertising that history tells us will work over the long haul. But it is advertising that can be done fast…and cheap. Which brings us to the original musing…I wonder what would happen if people always went to the lowest bidder.

Have to tackle that next time. Sorry for the rant.

Ran into our old friend George Lee today at Two Chefs. George is a top-shelf photographer, famous for using light to make really pretty things look breathtaking, and making less pretty things (and people) look really good. He is a master craftsman. Running into George started me thinking about the value of a photograph.

Lately, it’s become trendy to save money by using stock photography. In fact, we’ve done it some ourselves. Stock is getting pretty good now days. But a stop-dead-in-your-tracks visual image can be very valuable to a brand.

What would Marlboro be if it weren’t for those panoramic shots of the American West, serving as backdrops for the Marlboro cowboys. It’s not just a Marlboro man, it’s Marlboro country, and to pull it off you need a photograph suitable for National Geographic.

I remember an overhead shot of a bunch of people walking down an urban street with black umbrellas. There was one guy, walking “against the crowd” with a red umbrella. Striking image. You get the idea without even reading the headline. It had copy, but it didn’t need it. Just the Transamerica logo and you’re good to go.

Sometimes we have “provided” photography. Some is good, some is not so good. We have some design and production tricks to hide the flaws. And we can do some serious magic with Photoshop. But when you think about the expense of retouching, a lot of times it’s cheaper just to get a good shot to start with. Even if it’s expensive.

Bottom line is this. If you or I could get the shot with our point-and-shoot digitals, we wouldn’t need guys like George. But we can’t (don’t kid yourself), so we do. And as far as the price goes, they ought to make something relative to what it’s worth to the client to have the right shot. As the Bible says, “the laborer is worthy of his hire.”

Good to see ya, George. Hope you had a nice lunch.

To those of us who are not web savvy, it’s a little creepy. As I understand it, search engines have these virtual spiders (robots) that crawl all over the Internet, making exhaustive notes of everything they find. Then, when you do a GOOGLE search for something, say, “Stately plump Buck Mulligan,” the spiders remember all the places they encountered “Stately plump Buck Mulligan” and post a list of all the pages where they found it in their explorations. There are secret formulas by which they decide the order in which they list the pages.

In your site, you have code, HTML text, images, meta tags, and some other stuff. My friend Dan at Blueridge Solutions could give you the technical scoop on this. But as far as spiders go, they recognize HTML text and meta tags, but they don’t recognize pictures (spiders hate art it seems). Meta Tags are tags, written into the source code, not visible on the interface of your site, that tell spiders what’s important to you. Our meta tags, for example, include “Bank Branding.” This helps you be attractive to spiders (like I want to be attractive to spiders) in a way that helps you when people search for companies like yours. There are specialists within the web design business, who do nothing but “Search Engine Optimization,” (SEO) which is the art and science of attracting spiders.

Quick aside, I head that for the movie, Willard, they put peanut butter all over Ernest Borgnine, so he would be attractive to the rats, so they would look like they were eating him in the scene where the rats ate Earnest’s character. Told you this was a creepy post. Anyhow, SEO is to Internet spiders as peanut butter is to movie rats.

Some people are very sensitive about their image and frequently GOOGLE their own brand. This is a pretty smart thing to do, actually. A couple of times, for example, I mentioned UMPQUA Bank, you know, the world’s greatest bank—UMPQUA. Sure enough, within a couple of days, we got a bunch of hits from UMPQUA and others within their region. Hey UMPQUA, I mentioned you four times, I know I’ll be seein’ ya. Love ya’ UMPQUA. Mean it. You’re awesome.

Anyhow, SEO is great if you want to seat a position. But only if you’re prepared to back up the expectations you’re inviting. Gotta go.

The Discipline of Market Leaders. A little while ago I came across this business classic on a bookshelf, while looking for something else. It was a huge hit back in the 1990s. Then it kind of disappeared, probably because it isn’t a “seven steps to category dominance” kind of book. You actually have to read it. And then, to get anything out of it, you actually have to think about it. But it was a pretty smart book.

The premise was that all category leaders master one of three disciplines: operational excellence, product (development) leadership, or customer intimacy. Makes sense.

Yesterday, we pitched a project that was declined by the client’s agency of record. Turns out, the agency of record can’t make money on the project for the budget that’s available. But the client spent a lot of the meeting raving about the agency of record, how much she loves them, how much she’s come to depend on one of the principals…. Now, we know those folks, and we think pretty highly of them. So what gives.

Well, the client loves them, because they are a “customer intimacy” company. But the cost, at least in their case, of being a customer intimacy company is so great, that there are things they just can’t do profitably. We, being an operational excellence company, can deliver an equivalent product (maybe better sometimes, probably not as good other times) for the same budget, and make money.

For us, it’s all in the process. If you can understand a concept at the thumbnail stage, then you get to see more concepts, and you can approve one or two as a thumbnail. Then, we can do comps of those concepts that were approved. And for the same price, you get more choices. This is never going to work for some clients. But for clients who can work this way, it yields benefits.

To me, this is the biggest job of branding. Yet, most people who talk about branding, even those who really, really get it, hardly give managing expectations a thought. But think about it this way:

• Any effort you spend trying to sell somebody who is NOT going to buy is wasted effort…time you will NEVER get back
• Any effort you expend to draw prospects who are not qualified to buy or likely to buy is wasted marketing expense
• The most expensive part of any sale is the closure—the part that involves people’s valuable time, creativity, energy, and knowledge
• Anyone who is strong-armed into buying is not going to buy again
• Someone who shows up knowing what you’re selling, wanting what you’re selling, and ready to buy what you’re selling is going to be a low-friction, low-cost buyer…and is likely to be a repeat customer…and is likely to be a good cross-sell/up-sell prospect,

So, the biggest job of branding is to communicate, loud and clear, what the world can expect from your brand—your product, your service, your pricing, your commitment to future products, the whole nine yards. Of course, it needs to do this by consistently expressing the brand to all the senses, even as the customer experience is consistent with all the brand expressions. One of the biggest mistakes branding clients make is trying to use branding to become something they’re not.

So, say you’re a hundred-year-old company that has never changed. You know how to make people comfortable who don’t like change very much. You are not very hip—never have been. You’re sort of technologically backward. You still use cash boxes and an abacus. You still serve coffee in cups with saucers (some of which have become chipped over the years). You don’t move very fast. You get a new marketing director, and the first thing she does is declare that this company has to be branded…it has to be presented to a younger, hipper, faster-moving audience as a hip, fast, cutting-edge company…because “that’s what people are looking for today.” WRONG.

What you really need is to find a younger audience, and a broader audience, of people who are in the market for what you offer, who are intimidated by cutting-edge stuff, who aren’t terribly hip, who don’t move that fast, and who would be quite comfortable with the rate at which your 100-year-old company embraces change…AND BRAND YOUR COMPANY AUTHENTICALLY… to that market segment. Differentiate on what is in your DNA. Don’t try to look hip if you’re not. It will make you look like you’re wearing somebody else’s clothes. Instead, brand for what you are, to appeal to those who would like you if they knew you, and to set authentic expectations.

Some people like Starbucks. Some people like Dunkin’ Doughnuts. Some people want a bank that feels like coffee shop. And some people want a bank that will never be mistaken for anything but a bank. I love UMPQUA. And I think everyone can learn from UMPQUA. But not every bank customer is looking for UMPQUA.

I hadn’t either, until a couple of days ago. The thing is reaching young consumers with advertising messages is getting really difficult. They have such tight control over what they watch, read, and see. They get their news from John Stewart, via podcast. They TIVO their TV shows, and watch whenever they want, without the commercials. They listen to digital satellite radio. It’s like trying to reach somebody wearing blinders and earplugs. So what do you do?

Well, they like to play games. So you can reach them via interactive promotions in which they get to participate. We’ve been doing a some work with mixed media programs using text-message technology as an opt-in medium. They opt in via text. Then you have their text number and permission to use it. You can then start a conversation via text, which is their preferred way of communicating…sort of like database direct marketing at light speed. We’re still learning about it, so I’ll keep you posted.

All of this brings me to “bluejacking.” Seth informed me the other day that we have the capability to “bluejack.”

“Whoa,“ I said. ”Don’t know what that is but it sounds cool.”

Turns out that you can broadcast an open audio signal directly into people’s Blue Tooth receivers. Now, I definitely wouldn’t like that, but then I wouldn’t be wearing an ear piece with a flashing blue light on it. To people who do, anything that makes the light flash (thus making them look connected and busy) is great. So to a certain sub-segment of the Blue Tooth demo, you can light them up with a commercial message, and they’ll dig it, because it makes them look cool.

Marketing communication is getting scary.

Well, you have if you’re a bank marketer. UMPQUA Bank is an Oregon bank that has put the “retail” into retail banking in a big way. They call their branches “stores.” They actually sell stuff in there. They open the stores up to public meetings, serve coffee to people hanging out there, and generally position themselves as the greatest bank in the world. They’ve taken guerrilla marketing and word of mouth to the limit also. They have an ice cream truck, which they take around to the markets they serve, passing out free ice cream. Everybody loves UMPQUA. Does everybody bank there?

Well, they’ve had impressive growth over the past 15 years or so. But they’ve also had some mergers and acquisitions, which means there is growth that cannot be tracked to their extreme likability. But they seem to be the flavor of the month in bank marketing. And as long as they’re having good ideas, and as long as their good ideas of being covered in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, let’s check it out and steal with impunity.