However, the iPad 2 transcends cool. Über-cool. Seriously stylin.’
This thing ROCKS.

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.

Television…it’s sooooo 90′s. Or 80′s. Lord knows, it’s not “now,” or “hip” or “happening.” The flavor of the month for that would be Twitter, or one of the other social networking phenoms. So it’s unusual in this day and age to see an established but sleepy brand do something that can rise above the video noise and come up with a campaign that is, well…blogworthy. But Denny’s did it.

Their new commercial features a Joe Average guy who looks like he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty for a living, coincidentally somebody that actually enjoys eating enough food to qualify as not only breakfast, but ballast. He has that same sort of no-nonsense, matter-of-fact delivery that marks him as a stereotypical “solid Midwestern” type. Think Patrick “Puddy” Warburton, without the fame.

What gets your attention, though, is some of the best writing I’ve seen in a commercial since Bartles & Jaymes started the wine cooler craze. They’ve created a character that at once comes off as both endearingly earnest and charmingly a little thick. He opines about frappaccinos and mochaccinos as foodstuffs not fit for a decent breakfast.

Denny’s has correctly identified their competition for the breakfast market not restaurants like iHOP, but coffee shops like Starbucks. You see, by going after the coffee crowd, they can increase their market share for breakfasts by acquiring new customers, rather than fighting their fellow restaurants for the same bunch that already brunches. They establish this proposition with a memorable one-liner, “Coffee and milk foam is NOT a meal!” But it gets better. The payoff at the end of the spot is the best one-liner that ranks right up there with Bartles & Jaymes best:

“Mr. Chino, I’m not a fan of your beverages, but I sure do love your pants.”

With the kind of responses they are getting from the public, I’d be surprised if the Denny’s guy doesn’t join spokesmodels like my personal fave, the Glade Lady, in a long-running series of spots. I’d also be surprised if Denny’s market share and in-store sales doesn’t go through the roof.

No thanks to Mr. Chino, and his beverage empire.

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…

…Back? Good. Did you notice the absence of “real” sugar and the substitution of high-fructose corn syrup in the ingredients list? Yep. Unless you’re drinking something from South o’ the border or a product of a micro-bottler (i.e.: Jones Soda), you’re getting the UNreal thing, regardless of brand. Bottlers made the big switcheroo years ago to save over the escalating price of cane sugar. That switch came with a steep price – first of all, the bite of cane sugar is not in any way replicated in corn sugar. Second, there are some fairly well-documented health concerns regarding HFCS in foods.

Now I’m not a doctor, research scientist, or some kind of eco-Nazi, on the warpath against “Frankenfoods.” I’m sure the folks over at the High-fructose Corn Syrup lobby are not bad people (call off the dogs, guys!) and their product is not the spawn of Satan, as some would have you believe. But I have a hard time swallowing (no pun intended) their argument that because corn is all-natural, that HFCS is every bit as natural, and therefore harmless.

You see, there have been some links noted between HFCS and increased cases of diabetes. Is this true? No idea. Should we ban HFCS without proof? Of course not. Should we study this more and not let a lobbyist group throw up a big smokescreen campaign to divert our attention from what could be a real health issue? Undoubtedly.

But I’m not here today to argue about the relative merits of HFCS and links to diabetes. I’m here to rag on Pepsi for a really stupid marketing idea.

Soda Cognoscenti the world over will tell you (and tell you, and tell you) that cane sugar makes for a vastly superior pour over beet sugar or corn sugar. End of discussion. They’ll also decry the day that bottlers made the switch, and claim they’d be happy to pay the extra coin to get that cane sugar rush back. And Pepsi has (temporarily) obliged, with the release of their “Throwback” line of beverages featuring REAL corn sugar.

I mean, if the Throwback cans contain (by their own admission, remember) “real” sugar, what in the Sam Hill have they been putting in the OTHER cans of Pepsi? That would be the aforementioned HFCS – one of those slightly mysterious ingredients you see in processed foods, like MSG or something else with an unpronounceable name that only a lab rat could love.

So if I’m a cane sugar fan, why do I object to this campaign?

Simple. It’s every bit as stupid and damning to their core product line as “Budweiser Select” is to Bud. You see, what Pepsi is acknowledging here is that their drinks used to taste better. A LOT better. And if you buy their “Throwback” Pepsis, Mountain Dews, et all, you’ll taste what I mean. There is an entire (Pepsi) generation of kids that have never had the oral pleasure of downing a cane sugar drink. What’s to be gained here for Pepsi?

Now I know that PepsiCo is King of the Line Extensions. They’ve never met a brand they couldn’t weaken by extending it one more direction. Pepsi. Diet Pepsi. Pepsi One. Pepsi Clear (you get the picture…not that Coca Cola is any better in this regard). So the Throwback line is completely in character for Pepsi. But I don’t get what they are trying to accomplish. It’s not being marketed as a premium pour. The ad campaign is hammering on the nostalgia theme. Huh? I mean, they are admitting (on the one hand) that the old-ways is the best-ways, and on the other, not doing a thing to try and protect their core products. Self-cannibalization is STILL cannibalization, after all. And what if demand is such that they are forced to either keep the Throwback line around, or end up going back to cane sugar all together? Unless sugarcane prices have plunged recently, I doubt that it’s cheaper than corn syrup, and I suspect the corn syrup lobby will NOT go quietly into that good night, especially as the Ethanol thing hasn’t quite worked out according to their master plan for energy domination.

What is Pepsi’s game plan here? (Artificially) Color me “mystified.” While I vastly prefer cane sugar over corn (not to mention Coke over Pepsi – sorry, guys), I just don’t get it. And this is coming from a guy who willingly pays over a buck per king-sized bottle for “Mexican Coca-Cola,” made with REAL cane sugar. (I figure they taste better, and the additional cost keeps me from downing more than one per day.)

If anybody can shed light on Pepsi’s end-game, I’d be fascinated to hear about it. Without some inside knowledge, I’m afraid that their “Throwback” campaign is going to do little more than “Throw Away” their level playing field with their competitors, at a premium price for cane sugar. On the other hand, if this somehow results in Pepsi, Coke, et all, returning to their sugarcane roots, I’ve but one thing to say about it.

Sweet!

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.

Fast-forward to 2009. HillaryCare is back, retooled as “ObamaCare” – but this time, it was crafted in the House of Representatives, instead of the White House. Harry and Louise are back, too. This time, they are FOR the plan, courtesy of their new sponsors, a pharmaceutical industry trade group and Families USA, is a progressive non-profit consumer health-care advocacy group.

Harry and Louise sold out.

The new spot is confusing, simply because these two went from being government watchdogs to government lapdogs in under 30 seconds. I had to watch the spot several times because it’s so bloody oblique. As I listened again, I realized why I was confused – because they were mindlessly shilling for Obama & Company. So what made them fight HillaryCare, but love ObamaCare? Simply put, their corporate masters got bought out.

Unlike last time, when Hillary thought that she and her progressive pals would be able to run roughshod over all the stakeholders, Obama thought that by buying off Big Pharma, AARP, and the AMA, they could overcome the two groups scheduled for a-screwin’ in the new plan: Insurance companies and the general public. Lo and behold, the public – in particular, senior citizens – have pushed back, and have basically said “NO” to ObamaCare. Interestingly, Harry and Louise’s former team – Big Insurance, is now getting pilloried by Pelosi & Co.  (as a writer, I’m dying to write “pilloried by Hillary” for the alliteration alone, but Ms. Clinton is busy saving the world from the evils of the U.S.A., and has to watch her pet project from the sidelines).

What interests me as a marketer is how minor political icons have, through a quirk of ownership (the IP is owned by the agency – not the client), changed sides, and what effect that will have on the debate. I’m betting that the switch will backfire, and that Harry and Louise will find their credibility shot, and their 15 minutes of fame a fond memory. But that’s what happens when you trade consistency for expediency and common sense for a quick buck.

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.

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.

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.

Recently, bottled water has come into the cross-hairs of the Greens. You see, the ecoNazis see the bottles as the problem. (If you do the math on what they get for bottled water per gallon, you’d find that it’s more expensive than Premium gasoline. THERE’S your problem. Not the bottle.) So they are doing their best to kill the market for bottled water. Of course, up unitl about 15 years ago, there was no real market for bottled water. You had your Perrier sparkling water, and that was about it. Then the health food craze hit the public consciousness, and (coupled with stories about micro-organisms in the public water supply like cryptosporidium – which sounds like some sort of terrorist-created poison gas), bottled water took off like gangbusters. The bitter irony? The same people that are health conscious in the extreme are – you guessed it – ecoNazis. So the campaign against the humble disposable  plastic bottle begins.

Here’s more irony. When I was a kid, soft drinks came in glass bottles. Recyclable glass bottles. You drank a six-pack or two, then returned the bottles for a rebate of a nickel per bottle. The grocers returned the bottles to the bottling plant, where they were sterilized, refilled, and sold again, over and over. You could easily do the same sort of thing with plastic bottles but now that the supermarkets and bottlers no longer have to mess with recycling, they’d rather not start it up again, thank you very much.

Now, bottlers know a good deal when they see one. Water is cheap to acquire, cheap to bottle, and highly profitable. They don’t want that market to go away. So they are desperately trying to do something…anything…to keep their business, um…afloat. Ozarka has come up with a very PC-esque solution: make the bottles with less plastic. (This is the kind of gesture that torpedoed W’s last term as President, and blew his street cred as a conservative, but I digress.) Ozarka is pitching this as their “Eco-Shape® Bottle,” made with “30% less plastic to be easier on the environment.” They follow this up with a whiney “We can all make a difference — please recycle.”

Um. Yeah. THAT will convince the ecoNazis.

In practice, the Eco-Shape bottles are a disaster. As you drink the water out of the bottle, the 30% less plastic translates into a bottle that tends to get crushed in even the most gentle of grips, spilling water everywhere.

So what’s the real solution? Well, I can’t speak for the rest of America, but I buy one bottle of water, then refill the bottle over and over again. This gives me a convenient container, and I don’t waste so much plastic. At the grocery, half the time we get plastic (and reuse them for cleaning up the litter box) and half the time paper (and use them instead of kerosene, to start our natural wood fires in our grill). By the way, I live in Texas…you’ll get me to stop grilling when you pry my grill tools outta my cold, dead hands.

The idea of reducing the amount of plastic in a bottle has a logical point of diminishing returns. Ozarka passed that point, when they made collapsible bottles, regardless of their intent. If and when grocery stores are forced to stop offering paper or plastic bags, I’ll have to find something else to use for cat litter disposal, and another way to start my fires. That will simply drive the cost up for me to take care of our pets and to cook. But in my experience, so-called Progressives seldom stop to think about the hidden costs of their ideas. They’d much rather strike a morally superior pose, and if they going gets rough, exempt themselves from their own ideas, under the guise that the ends justify their means.

I’m all for cutting out waste. I’m all for “saving the planet” (never mind that I find it the height of egotism that Progressives both believe the planet can’t survive the “assault” of humanity upon it, and that anything we do will have the least effect on it in the long term). But when half-baked ideas are pushed past common sense, and force changes to our lives that accomplish nothing but lining the pockets of opportunistic companies trying to change the rules to make a buck, that’s where I draw the line.

We don’t need to stop selling bottled water, forbid grocery stores to give out sacks (paper OR plastic), or force incandescent light bulbs off the shelves. We need to stop wasting stuff, start saving money, and stop listening to politicians and special-interest groups that would pervert marketing into a propaganda tool to turn consumers into sheeple.

Billy Mays, Pitchman. R.I.P.

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.

This morning, Billy Mays died. He was just 50 years old – in the “prime of his life” as they say. He went to bed last night, seemingly fine, and never woke up. The only pre-autopsy clue to his demise is speculation over the potential role a rough landing he had on a flight Saturday into Tampa International, where both front tires on the airliner blew out on landing. Mays was interviewed after the incident, and said that he’d been hit by falling luggage, but claimed his “hard head” saved him from injury. Maybe. Maybe not. I suspect that the same thing that killed Natasha Richardson resulted in his demise, an epidural hematoma. (I further suspect that it won’t be long before the ObamaNation calls for mandatory helmet regulations for all Americans.)

There are all kinds of marketing. Highbrow. Lowbrow. High Pressure. Subtle. Mays style was that of the quintessential pitchman…oft imitated, seldom – if ever – equaled. He will be missed.

UPDATE: 6/29: The M.E.’s office states that the preliminary results of the autopsy show that it was NOT any kind of brain injury that killed Mays. They now suspect heart disease, but further tests will be needed.

From what I could tell, as well as what I read about the guy, he had a big heart. Evidently that was in both a spiritual as well as physical sense. Rest in Peace, Mr. Mays.

...because, she'll pretty much have to.

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.)

Now to the radio spot in question. The Barnes folks are devotees of a guy out of Buda, Texas (Roy H. Williams) who calls himself the “Wizard of Ads.” Willams has a brilliant marketing shtick. He’s written a series of books (I believe they are published by his own publishing company) that purport to give the average guy on the street the “secrets” of marketing. The books are cleverly-written, and leave the reader with a thirst for more information. Lucky for the reader, Williams is ready to help, with a series of pricey seminars, taught in the Hill Country of Texas, teaching people how to market themselves, in-house.

I’m not sure if this radio spot is a result of the Wizard of Ads training, but I suspect it is. What’s so bad about the ad? It’s actually a fairly well-produced ad, voiced by one of the owners, himself. In a conversational tone, he casually identifies a potential problem in marriages – the “fact” that, over time, what once seemed like a respectably-sized diamond in your wife’s engagement ring has started to look small, puny, and Just Not Big Enough.

Now THAT’S evil.

Forget for a moment that diamonds are essentially worth money only because their supply is controlled by a cartel that has effectively squelched supply in order to drive up demand (OPEC’s got nuthin’ on these guys). Forget for a moment that people buy diamonds because of a huge, multi-year marketing campaign that has convinced the public that a diamond ring is an essential, traditional part of every marriage – and the size of the diamond is inexorably tied to a husband’s financial worth, and is furthermore an outward and visible sign of a husband’s inward and invisible love of his spouse. That’s bad enough. But now, Barnes suggests that it’s not enough to continue to shell out money on over-priced, compressed carbon, but that in order to reaffirm your love for your wife, you need to trade in that engagement stone for a bigger one – or you’re just not showing your love.

The spot is brilliant, in its own, evil way, insidiously implying to men that they are risking divorce if they don’t keep pumping up the volume on the carat count, and to women, that if their husbands REALLY loved them, they’d receive a bigger stone for their engagement ring.

That’s not marketing. That’s sick.

Now I don’t quibble with Barnes Jewelry’s right advertise whatever they want. And I’m not insisting that diamonds are a waste of money (in my opinion, they are, but you have a right to sell whatever you like, just as customers have a right to be slaves to marketing). But I draw the line at companies that attempt to sow the seeds of discord in marriages, just to make a buck. (For the record, I feel the same way about the idea of a company – AshleyMadison.com – that exists as a facilitator for spouses with a roving eye to have discreet affairs.)

As the market leader in Amarillo, I think Barnes Jewelry has a noblesse oblige to act accordingly. Price your merchandise higher than the competition? Cool. Cater to the silk stocking trade? No problem. But try to convince wives that their diamonds are somehow inadequate, and husbands that they are just not showing their wives the proper adoration without an engagement ring update – and you’ve crossed the line. Market all you want, but let’s leave the evil marketing to the government – the real experts.