Denny’s Restaurants has been around for…well…for a long time. Long as I can remember, anyway. And they’ve been largely interchangeable, between their competition. I mean, can you really tell me how Denny’s differs from iHOP, Shoneys, or any of the other places that cater to big appetites with small wallets? I can’t. But Denny’s may have found a way to cut through the clutter and make a name for themselves. And it involves, of all things, television. Read the rest of this entry »
Pepsi Throwback: An idea who's time has come...and gone.
I admit it. I love colas. Far more than I should. In fact, when I wanna lose weight (which is most of the time), I swear off them (or swear at them), as it’s a great way to eliminate empty calories from my diet. But oh, what I lose when I do so…that rush I get with the morning’s first intake of caffeine! The bite of the cola as it trickles across my palette. The joy of cola, indeed.
But since I was a kid, colas – virtually ANY colas – have become a mere shadow of themselves, thanks to bottlers’ ever-changing formulas designed to save a buck. I speak of the vile change from the traditional pure cane sugar to the concoction known as “high-fructose corn syrup,” A.K.A.: “HFCS.” If you have a can or bottle of your carbonated sugar water beverage of choice at hand, feel free to take a gander at the ingredients. I’ll wait… Read the rest of this entry »
Let me apologize in advance – this is gonna be a pretty quick post, but I haven’t written in a while, and I’ve been dying to talk about Pizza Hut and their misguided marketing. Have you seen their spots, where they get a bunch of people in some ostensibly well-known restaurant, give them food, and then have the owners blithely announce that THEY didn’t cook the food – that it came from Pizza Hut?
Let me tell you why this is wrong…on so many levels.
First of all, if I take my date to Chez Overpriced Dinners or Casa de Dinero, I’m expecting a great meal – especially if I’m paying a lot of dough for it. If I’m enjoying the meal and discover that the food I’m eating is actually some cheap stuff from Pizza Hut (that I can have delivered to my home) I’ve just lost all respect for the restaurant in question. I mean, why would I go spend money at a place that’s gonna sell me stuff I can get a lot cheaper at home? Take away the “let’s get out of the house” angle, and you’ve got…nuthin’.
Second, you’re essentially telling the world, “Pizza Hut products are just as good as restaurant-quality food.” Nobody’s REALLY gonna believe that – especially if they’ve tasted the Pizza Hut product. But it is going to make people stop and compare the two – and Pizza Hut will lose that comparision.
Third, it’s a mean-spirited idea. I can’t believe anybody’s gonna be delighted to learn that they’ve been fooled by a restaurant and by Pizza Hut. Kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth, no pun intended.
Fourth, I’m really fed up (again, no pun intended…I’m just hungry), with businesses that are dissatisfied with their core biz, and decide to branch out. That’s not expanding a franchise, people. It’s called losing focus. If you’re Pizza Hut, sell pizza. Not pasta. Not hot wings. Pizza. Do that better than anybody else, and the world will beat a path to your door. Do it the way you’ve been doing it, and you’ll be wondering where your market dominance has gone. (Hint: to your competition.)
Marketing can’t make a bad idea good. It can’t make illogical things logical. Pizza Hut is guilty of trying to do both, in the first degree.
Remember the first time the Dems tried to get a government health care plan through Congress? Lemme refresh your memory. It was back during the Clinton years. Hillary was in charge, and she and her merry band of secret advisory panelists put together a plan with no outside input, then punted up to Capitol Hill. The plan was effectively D.O.A. One of the things that was credited with torpedoing the plan were commercials featuring “Harry and Louise” – a stereotypical, middle-age, made-for-TV couple, who turned out to be shilling for the Health Insurance Association of America, an industry lobbying group. The commercials showed them, sitting around the breakfast table, expressing genuine concern over how HillaryCare was about to force socialized medicine on the country. They were effective spots, and probably did more to wake up the middle class as to what was going on in D.C. than anything else. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been visiting my Dad for the past week or so, and I’ve been watching his DirecTV. (When you’re visiting your parent, you’re activities are pretty much limited to what they do. He watches a LOT of TV.)
What’s interesting to me is the dichotomy between the ads from both DirecTV and Dish Network, versus the experience of actually using their services. Since I have Dish Network at home, I have a fair amount of perspective now on both systems.
Lately, Dish has been marketing themselves as a “cheaper” but every bit as full-featured alternative to DirectTV. That’s definitely an “Avis” strategy (you know…”we’re number two, so we try harder”). I would therefore assume that Dish is running second to DirecTV in sales. (If they aren’t they need to take their marketing team out back and shoot them – this is NOT the right strategy for a market leader.) Dish, on the other hand, markets themselves against cable systems. I’m a big believer in satellite – I’ve had universally crappy service from cable, and there’s no way they can match satellite’s prices, largely due to their inherent disadvantage due to their fixed infrastructure costs.
What’s interesting, is that from their ads, aside from price, there’s little differentiate Dish and DirecTV from each other. That is, of course, until you use them.
As a user interface specialist, I’ve been underwhelmed forever and a day with Dish Network’s clunky U/I. I see so many things I could do better. I’ve been told that DirecTV’s is better. Not sure I agree with that. On the whole, I think the Dish Network’s remote is easier and more intuitive to use. Certainly, the modal nature of the DirecTV remote is a barrier to use – until you get used to it. On the plus side, DirecTV’s menus seem to allow more customization. On the negative side, that customization (which is largely to limit the lists to specific channels) is harder to figure out, and once you have it customized, it’s difficult to switch modes (back to seeing everything, rather than just the ones you picked for your custom list). What’s interesting is that both systems could stand a U/I reworking, and neither seems to be overly-interested in what is an essential aspect of their product.
So which one is “better”? I don’t know. From a usability point of view, I’d say Dish wins. From a marketing point of view, DirecTV has better ads, and a market-leading strategy. (I also worry about the DVR offered by Dish, and the fact that they will eventually lose their battle with TiVO, and I’ll probably be out one DVR.) This is largely a case where the edge in marketing (by DirecTV) probably translates to a sales lead – but not because of a superior product – but slightly better marketing.
As a creative guy, I love coming up with creative ways to market things. Nothing jazzes me more than to come up with an ad concept, a slogan, or a logo that will resonate with the public. But I’ve learned something about successful marketing over the years – repetition is the key to turning a great idea into effective marketing.
Repetition. Sounds simple. Just create your message, and repeat it, ad nauseum, until it works. Think of it as the marketers version of the Rinse, Lather, and Repeat instructions you find on shampoo bottles. Of course there’s more to it than that. If your message doesn’t resonate, it will get lost in the noise. But it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that if you don’t repeat your message enough, even the best marketing simply won’t work.
I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had that either don’t commit to a big enough media buy, or they get bored with their spots and want to change them before it’s appropriate to do so. When you see a commercial enough to get bored with it, you’ve just witnessed marketing penetration. Everybody wants to run commercials or ads that get people talking, but successful marketing is not built on a momentary “buzz” (i.e.: “did you see that new ad for ________”), but on effective ads that are repeated over and over.
Another point that may have escaped your notice is that in life, everybody is a marketer. I’m dealing with a situation in my personal life right now that has brought that lesson home. Just like what the world learned in WWII, if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes indistinguishable from the truth. Having the truth on your side is nice, but it’s no guarantee that you’ll prevail. No, I’ve learned that repetition of a marketing message can overcome the truth, even when I have the truth on my side.
I’d love to tell you that truth will win in the long run. I’d love to tell you that if you have a superior product, or a message that resonates, you’ll win. But while being right or building a better mousetrap is good and important, remember that it’s no guarantee of success. Without repetition as a key component of your marketing, you’re fighting a battle where you are, effectively, an unarmed combatant.
There’s reality. And then there’s perception. And when you’re talking about business, there’s ulterior motive. Nowhere is this more blatantly true (and less obvious) than in the rush to “green” products.
Think back to when the “green” movement was known as the “ecology” movement. Remember the brouhaha about grocery bags? First, we were told that paper sacks resulted in killing too many trees, so grocers switched to plastic bags. Then the ecoNazis preached that the plastic bags were bad, as they used fossil fuels, and were therefore killing the planet – not to mention their inability to gracefully decompose in landfills. Today, most supermarkets offer your choice of “paper or plastic,” and have recently started shilling “reusable” bags. A recent episode of the wickedly funny ABC prime time cartoon The Goode Family, the social-climbing mom forgot her reusable totes (6:43 to 7:40 in the clip above) when shopping at the grocery store. Faced with disapproving looks from the other greenies at the market, she finally blurted out, “Load me up…I know a lot of people are comfortable with reusable bags, but I’m not. Those bags are made in sweatshops.” The other shoppers are promptly stricken by kind of Liberal Guilt only someone who is desperately trying to live up to an impossible, illogical standard can feel. Read the rest of this entry »
I never met Billy Mays. But I liked him. And I liked his work. There’s something that has always fascinated me about the pitchman and the way he works. Billy Mays was the King of the Pitchmen. The guy had the mad skills when it came to selling – you get the feeling that, no mater the product, he could find a way to make you want it. The guy could have sold iceboxes to Eskimos, and made them line up 10 deep to buy ‘em. There was something refreshingly honest, open, and yes, even a little hokey about his style. I mean, the man made a living selling stuff, to the extent that his endorsement of a product added to its credibility. Think about that. They guy that sold us Orange Glo, OxyClean and Mighty Putty (which is nothing more than plumber’s putty – epoxy – with a fancy marketing campaign), could give a product some street cred just because he endorsed it. How many marketing guys can you think of that could endorse a product and have it really mean something? To say Billy Mays was a “success” would be an understatement. From humble beginings, he ended up with a mansion in Tampa, Florida, and an income and net worth that was the envy of nearly everyone in marketing. Not bad for someone who came up in the State Fair circuit. Read the rest of this entry »
As I sit here this morning at the grokmedia World Headquarters, listening to Glenn Beck on the radio, I’m annoyed by another airing of a commercial for a local jewelry store. I’m annoyed because their spot is, in point of fact, evil. I don’t mean they’re advocating Satanism, mass murder, or believing what the Administration tells us without question (that would be Evil, criminally Evil, and naieve, respectively). No, this spot is evil with a lowercase “e,” but in a way, that makes it all the more unsettling. Allow me to explain.
Let me first say that Barnes Jewelry is a local institution here in Amarillo. Everywhere you go in the USA, you’ll find local companies that are the de facto category leaders, the ones that are the default choices for the landed gentry, the movers and shakers, and the powers that be. Barnes Jewelry falls squarely in that category. Unlike everywhere else in the USA, Amarillo has a particularly provincial habit of favoring the local talent over a national retailer, even if the national retailer has a screamingly wonderful product, and there’s room for more than one vendor in a given category. (I’m STILL steamed that I live in a burg that is the only place on the face of God’s Green Earth that lost a Krispie Kreme donut shop, because the locals chose to ignore it, and support the local choice, the Donut Stop.) Read the rest of this entry »
On Friday, June 19th, I was fortunate enough to score a new, black 32GB iPhone. No, I didn’t wait in line at the crack of dawn. I didn’t pre-order it. I just walked into an AT&T store around 2PM, and waited (only about 30 minutes) and walked out with my new phone. When I’m gonna buy into something that requires a (2 year) commitment, I typically wait for version 3.0. This is because I’ve learned – the hard way – that the first release of anything is usually the “one-point-UH-oh” release. In version 2, they get the bugs worked out from the first one, but it’s version three where the product really hits the sweet spot. So I waited to jump on the iPhone bandwagon until the 3G s was released (a.k.a. iPhone version 3.0/iPhone OS 3.0). I’m happy to report that the product lives up to it’s marketing hype – and then some. Read the rest of this entry »
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