Can someone please explain…?

Looking for reason in all the wrong places.

What color is Havana? Or Gypsy?

Posted by jlsimons on June 23, 2009

Good catalog copy needs to immerse its reader in an experience of a product they can’t touch. It’s a lonely voice in the wilderness, tasked with selling a product in a few words, at a distance, sometimes with the help of a picture.

Sure, if you’re selling copier paper or a toner cartridge in an office supplies catalog, you can get by with just the basics. But if you’re selling hand-stitched honeymoon hammocks made by entrepreneurial Maragucho mothers in steamy Venezuelan villages around Lake Maracaibo, or a $239.95 wooden ship model of The U.S.S. Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” or the softest pillow you’ve ever laid your weary head upon, non-descriptive copy just won’t do.

Your catalog doesn’t need to show your products in photographs, or even in color. Years before Banana Republic had brick and mortar stores, the Zeiglers’ hand-drawn, monotone illustrations on rough-hewn, un-coated digest-size stock built a direct response kingdom based on romance, adventure, intrigue and promise.

So did J. Peterman. Long before Seinfeld satirized him, his first ad was a 1/6 page black and white with a line drawing that appeared in the New Yorker back in the mid 80’s for the Cowboy Duster.

I still remember the last lines of that ad: “Although I live in horse country, I wear this coat for other reasons. Because they don’t make Duesenbergs anymore.” (See this People Magazine article from 2000 for the full story, including the name of the copywriter, Don Staley.)

The instant I read that ad I picked up the phone and ordered two coats, one for myself and one for my friend, noted funny car designer and railroad artist par excellence Tom Daniel.

I was a catalog copywriter at the time, selling wooden ship models and car collectibles at Model Expo, and I learned how to romance and sell just about anything by reading catalogs like Banana Republic and J. Peterman. (My copy for the Navy Issue Coffee Mug in the Lion’s Share catalog — “0:300 hours… the windswept, raindrenched bridge of a ship on patrol in the Pacific…” –  broke all sales expectations for what was supposed to be an impulse item throwaway on an order form.)

I get offended by bad  catalog copy. And there’s nothing worse than catalog copy that doesn’t deliver.

Why am I telling you this? Because I was just reading the black and white, line illustrated  Campmor catalog, my favorite outdoor adventure catalog, and came across the following available colors for hiking boots:  Havana, Jupiter, Gypsy and Brindle.

Now, to be sure, some color names are getting more intriguing, playful and engaging. I can figure out what color Butter is, especially when paired with Cordovan. Mint Green is easy, as is Dark Chocolate. Mud is a bit less clear – after all, wet dirt can come in a variety of hues. I’m pretty sure Limonata will look something like the liquid in those tiny Italian bottles of soda that cost way too much and never taste that good anyway.

But what about Beluga? Is it describing the whale, which is white, or the caviar, which is smoky black? Then there’s Moonstruck, Picante, London Fog, Andorra, Fossil, and Elephant (They don’t say whether they mean African, Indian or Pink. Hey, it matters!). Then there are the blues:  Pearl Blue, Turkish Blue, Brushed Metal Blue, and Goblin Blue. (I’ve played D&D for decades and never once heard of Goblin Blue.)

It’s not just one company. These colors describe boots by Columbia, Merrell, Vasque and North Face. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got to New Balance’s color palate:  Blue, Red, Brown, Black and Grey.

But my absolute favorite obfuscated colors are Havana, Jupiter, Gypsy and Brindle.

I looked at a Google Earth and for the life of me couldn’t figure out what color Havana is. (Unless they were making a sideways reference to skin color, but even then, Cuban skin color varies in the extreme from light to dark.)

I looked at a picture of Jupiter on Google. Do they mean the spot or the bands? And are they looking at the red-tinged color enhanced photos, the washed out grey ones, or what?

Gypsy — I don’t even know where to start, given that traditional Gypsy garb is very colorful and almost never monotone.

The best of all is Brindle. According to Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, Brindle is defined as “Having obscure dark streaks or flecks on a gray or tawny background.” Mmm, I want a pair of those to go with my Roan pants and Harlequin shirt. (What, no dog lovers out there?)

Look, I love when copywriters romance their descriptions. And I get the problem of making your product stand out from the next when they’re all colored Brown. But what’s wrong with using words that simultaneously describe and romance? Nobody was ever left wondering what color Mocha is, or whether Apricot would look better on your feet than Desert Sand.

I guess I could just go to the Campmor website and look at the pictures to find out what color these colors really are. But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a printed mail order catalog in the first place?

So, since I’m clearly too stubborn to find out on my own, can someone please explain to me what color Havana is?

Posted in Branding, Business, Directed Advertising, Marketing, Misleadership | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Dr. Bronner’s and Thorlo: A tale of two brands

Posted by jlsimons on June 18, 2009

Try this experiment. Go hiking on some back country trail one day and ask every backpacker you meet what soap they have in their backpack and what socks they have on their feet. You might be surprised how many of them say Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap and Thorlo socks.

It wouldn’t surprise me, though. That’s because I’m a big fan of both brands. But these days, only one of them makes me happy, and the other has begun to break my heart.

If you don’t know Dr. Bronner’s, here’s a great article that will do a better job than I can of telling you about one of the quirkiest brands on the planet with one of the most loyal customer bases of any product I know. Made from natural ingredients and organic oils, Dr. Bronner’s is sold in nearly every health food store in America. It’s inexpensive, it’s made by hand, and millions of bottles are sold every year with a minimal marketing budget. The company splits much of its profits with its small staff of employees, and gives away much of the rest to good causes ranging from Boys and Girls clubs here in the US to orphanages in China, schools in Mexico, and impoverished villages in Ghana.

The 61-year old company is still being run by the Bronner family, 5th generation, and still being bottled in the same anti-commercial packaging, a bottle completely covered in a cacophony of tiny words, a weird mix of philosophy and quotes from the Bible to Confucius, Chaucer to Paine, creatively adapted by the original Dr. Bronner himself.

Most importantly, the soap delivers the same customer experience it always has. It is an honest product that lives up to its brand promise.

Then there are THOR-LO socks. If you’ve never put on a pair of Thorlos then your feet don’t know what it feels like to walk on clouds. Thorlo socks feel so good and cushion your feet so well that you don’t mind paying up to $18 a pair for them. They’re made in the USA, they’ve never given me a blister, they wick away perspiration and they’ve got task specific models for virtually every type of activity you can do with your feet except swimming.

According to the company website, Thorlos are backed by 25 years of scientific research. The company has spent many millions on R&D alone. They’ve got 59 patents. They trace their roots back to 1953, when they made their first socks in 1953 for the military. The company even supports our troops by letting you buy discounted anti-microbial military versions and send them to the troops with no shipping or handling charges.

I have a couple of pairs of Thorlo socks that are at least 20 years old. I’ve worn them hiking at the top of the Swiss Alps and the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Unfortunately, those 20-year old Thorlos are in better condition than the wimpy 2-year old pairs that are wearing out from just being worn to work.

If you are a long-time Thorlo fan like me, then you know that the quality of Thorlo socks has plummeted faster than the waters of Yosemite Creek plunging over the edge of Yosemite falls. They wear out in the heel and the toe so quickly that if you just stare at them long enough, you may actually see the fibers fall out. Okay, that’s clearly an exaggeration, but it’ s no exaggeration to say that the newer the pair, the shorter the life expectancy.

Both Dr. Bronner’s and THOR-LO have loyal fan bases, from celebrities and athletes (Martha Stewart uses Dr. Bronner’s and Martina Navritalova wears Thorlos) to regular folks like me. You won’t find either brand in Wal-Mart or Target, but you will find them in places like Whole Foods and Campmor, where shoppers demand value and store employees use and swear by the products they sell.

But while one brand has continued to deliver on its powerful, if quirky, brand promise, the other seems to be committed to destroying its reputation for longevity and durability, two of the brand attributes it’s most valued for?

So can somebody please explain to me why nobody at Thorlo seems to have noticed, or if they have, why they don’t seem to care?

Posted in Branding, Business, Marketing, Value for Value | Tagged: , , | 12 Comments »

How to save the NY Times?

Posted by jlsimons on June 9, 2009

News outlets make news. But to make money, they wrap that news in advertising.

Anybody else see a disconnect?

As we all know, advertising revenues are down as advertisers shift their dollars to more attractive media channels. And not every newspaper, least of all the NY Times, will be saved by the influx in erotic advertising that is resulting from Craig’s List’s ban described in this article on Adotas.

So I have a suggestion. Newspapers should climb out onto the leading edge of the micro-payments industry in this country and charge us for the news we so desperately need the same way they used to pay their reporters:  by the word.

I wonder what would happen if the NY Times wrote an open letter to all its readers in all formats (print, online, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) explaining that the old advertising model no longer supports the costs of news gathering, and asking us to opt-in to a micro-payments structure that has users pay for content by the word or article.

After all, we pay for our music by the song or album at iTunes and Amazon. Users pay for their apps, too, at the iPhone store.

Maybe our news will cost us 100th of a penny per word — I don’t pretend to know — but there’s a number that would be worth paying to get accurate, valuable journalism, fed into our brains by whatever method we choose.

Faced with the alternative — disappearing like The Rocky Mountain News, turning into an online blog like The Tucson Citizen, or going Chapter 11 like the Chicago Tribune — would the stakeholders of the Times keep the “Old Gray Lady” afloat?

Advertisers could play along too. They could buy prepaid content credits that they would give to their target consumers  — as premiums, promotions, free-downloads, usage credits, rewards points, membership discounts or rewards. When a reader used credits, if they were sponsored, they would see their sponsor’s message.

From a reader’s perspective, it would look like this: Whenever I logged onto the Times website (or followed a Twitter link (A Twink?) etc.) I’d get a screen with that day’s advertisers’ offers. I’d pick a sponsor, they’d pay, I’d get my news, and they’d get my eyeballs. Maybe by the article, maybe by the day, maybe by bandwidth, whatever. (Hey, if Bank of America brought me my NY Times content for free, I’d gladly sit through their pre-rolls.)

These prepaid blocks would represent reliable chunks of income that could be sold through a digital auction model or on an upfront basis, or a combination of both (digital auction for the any inventory left over after the up front sales). A major advertiser could work out a promotion with Amazon that every large format Kindle would come with a sponsored year-long subscription to the Times.

Forwards to a friend could represent extra eyeballs for the advertiser, or extra charges, depending on the media buy.

It is frequently said that people don’t value what they get for free. While that may not always be true, it is true that the Internet has changed people’s cost/value perceptions as it pertains to news.

I am a news junkie. I stopped reading printed newspapers long ago, mostly because they’re outdated the minute they’re printed. And I’m ingesting more of my news online or on my phone rather than be continuously disappointed by cable and network news (which I am watching less frequently). Online, I can get better news faster. And much of that news comes from the NY Times. But I usually only notice the publisher after I’ve read the article, if at all. I frequently don’t even notice whose article it is I’m reading on Google News. Or Digg. Or a tweet.

So, in my desperate search for news, would I be willing to pay for that NY Times article? I would if, like E-ZPass, it was effortless to do. Would I sometimes choose an article from the competition if it were cheaper? Depends on the organization. (After all, I have always had the option to buy a Post or Daily News rather than a Times, and yet rarely did so.) More importantly, would I sit through ads for the sponsored version if it were free? I would.

Format-wise, news gathering and dissemination is wonderfully adaptable to large-format Kindles, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and more.

But what will happen to the dead trees, and all the personnel associated with their destruction, rebirth, and delivery as newsprint?

Since we’re attempting to reinsert value into the equation, let’s look at it in those terms. Would people find enough value in the printed version to pay more for it? Might the printed version of the Times became such a status symbol that some people would happily pay more to make a conspicuously consumptive statement?

Where is the tipping point? Could the Times sustain a print edition at $10 per copy? Remember, under this model they’re already paying for news-gathering and editing with micro-payments. The printed version just needs to carry its own weight. And if it can’t, then I’m sorry for all those workers along the non-value chain, but it’s time for retraining.

So what do you think? Am I crazy, or could this work? And if so, can someone please explain to me why the NY Times isn’t already doing it?

Posted in Branding, Business, CRM, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Partnerships, Media, PR and News, Relationship Marketing, Value for Value | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

What can iPhone apps teach us about price, perceived value and customer satisfaction?

Posted by jlsimons on June 1, 2009

Hi there, everybody. My name is Jeffrey Lee Simons, and I don’t have an iPhone. You see, my fingers are the wrong temperature or something and touch screens only work for me about 20% of the time. You’ve probably seen me at an ATM, stabbing my useless digits at the screen and cursing a blue streak until I remember to use the keypads.

(What uber-phone do I use? LG Voyager… it’s got a touch screen, but flip it open and you’ve got a full keypad.)

So I’ve missed out on the whole iPhone App feeding frenzy. Although I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been missing. After all, the average iPhone app only gets used about 19.9 times in its lifetime according to this article on marketingcharts.com.  “The study also found that 46% of users play their games/apps five times or more, while 10.2% play 25 times or more.”

I just read a detailed discussion about the economics of iPhone game apps in Gamasutra, the gaming business enewsletter, written by iPhone-appmaker Ian Bogost.  Game apps are among the most popular of all iPhone apps. (12 of the top 25 apps in Feb 2009 were games according to a recent Comscore report.)

Bogost tells a woeful tale of plunging sales (down 8% in April alone) and a race to the bottom for both pricing ($0.99 seems to be the target)and quality. The average net profit on an iPhone app is $1771, and for a game app that figure is closer to $900. That’s average. The difference between the hits and the not-hits is so wide that the median may be much lower, though Bogost admits this is hard to determine.

$900 or less. (Apple doesn’t even distribute royalties until you hit $250 in each region, so for many game developers, there’s no profit at all.)

Now while I haven’t ever produced an Apple iPhone Game App, I have produced a variety of games in my life, from advergames that took a minimum amount of time to historical simulations that took a tremendous amount of time. But at no time would I have looked at $900 or less profit as a sustainable business model.

Hoping and praying to be the breakout game among the multitudes is fun, to be sure, but makes for a harsh, ridiculously competitive and ultimately indefensible business strategy. (Although it sounds a bit like blogging. Or publishing. Or the music industry. Or…)

But the most insightful aspect of Bogost’s article concerned perceived value and customer satisfaction. People who are willing to shrug off a bad cup of $0.99 coffee hold a $0.99 game app to much higher standards. One is clearly disposable, and for $0.99 who really cares enough to complain. The other is not, and is far more likely to garner complaints (especially now that Apple lets people “comment after deleting” an app).

All this really comes down to value.

How much value can an app developer deliver for $999 or less? How much value does a customer deserve for $0.99 these days? Does using a product 19 times make it disposable or not? After all, you probably use a razor blade that many times before throwing it away.

And the answers, it seems, comes from where they always do. The customer. If a customer feels a product isn’t worth the money, they buy the lower priced versions. More people buy Toyotas than Rolls Royces, although to be sure, there is a market for both.

It looks like, in Apple-land, $0.99 is the acceptable price for everything from games to songs. Regardless of their cost to produce, you’re expected to make it up in volume.

But can someone please explain to me how consumers can ever expect to get value out of a system that refuses to return value to the producers?

Posted in Branding, Business, CRM, Marketing, Value for Value | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

What does global warming have in common with junk mail?

Posted by jlsimons on May 19, 2009

To a direct marketer, testing is vital. But it’s important to know exactly what you’re testing. If you’re not careful, what you think your test is telling you may not be what it’s saying at all.

It’s not just in direct marketing and business that testing matters, as you’ll see in a minute.

Evan Jones, my good friend and ex-Partner-in-Crime at our old game company, QED Games, Inc., is beginning to make a name for himself in an entirely new field, Climate Change. He’s about to be the “et al” in two scientific papers and was a key researcher in a current report to Congress.

Evan is part of a group led by meteorologist Anthony Watts (who writes a very popular blog, Watts Up With That, aTechnorati Top 5K blog with a ranking of 2083!) that is focused on a major aspect of Global Warming:  not whether it’s happening, but whether we know whether it is or not.

Evan and his colleagues have been examining the over 1200 U.S Historical Climate Network (USHCN) surface stations in the US that measure temperature. And what they’ve found is surprising. Nearly 89% of these stations are located in situations that render their data suspect or flawed according to the government’s own standards. Most of these stations were once fine, but encroaching urbanization has frequently turned an isolated station into one surrounded by heat sources. Add to this the fact that temperatures are recorded by citizen volunteers and are roughly 30% incomplete.

There’s more, of course. You can read about it here in this article from WBZ TV in Boston.  Better yet, WBZ did an interview with Evan while he was up in Boston assessing some of the surface stations there. You can watch the report here. And be sure to check out Anthony’s blog for even more examples of questionable data.

In the end it all adds up to one thing: the data doesn’t add up. It is, for the most part, not telling us what we think it’s telling us. For instance, when a station formerly situated in the middle of a field registers a temperature increase over the last decade but that station is now situated in a blacktop parking lot with an air conditioning exhaust unit nearby, is the planet getting warmer, or just the station’s readings?

Whether you’re building an online research survey, setting up a 16-cell direct mail testing matrix, optimizing a paid search campaign or collecting temperature data to prove or disprove global warming, you need to check your inputs, check your confidence in the amount and clarity of the data, and structure the test to actually answer the questions you’re asking.

It’s critical that your testing framework not be flawed or all of your results could be useless. It’s equally important that you analyze the testing results accurately. And if you go ahead and act on bad information, whether it’s a new product launch or an attempt to save the planet, you could be doomed to failure before you start.

And speaking of global warming and saving the planet, can someone please explain to me how anyone can be so certain of the truth when the tests themselves are flawed?

Posted in Business, Directed Advertising, Marketing, Media, Misleadership, PR and News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Surviving the Second CNN Revolution

Posted by jlsimons on May 5, 2009

On a recent post I commented about CNN’s updated news crawl being a shill for their Twitter and other online efforts. Turns out, I was more right than I knew. Not only were they in the midst of a heated competition with their worthy opponent Ashton Kutcher to see who could reach a million followers first, but they were simultaneously reeling from the news that they were now, for the first time in their existence, ranked THIRD in viewership behind Fox and MSNBC!

Ashton beat them to the mil, but as Rick Sanchez so magnanimously said, “If you counted everything we do on Twitter we really beat him, but it’s all good.” or something empowering like that.

Normally I’d ignore his good sportsmanship except that I also read an article in Variety that said nearly the same thing. CNN spun their 3rd place finish in prime time into an ad for their multi-channel capability:

“Primetime is most meaningful to entertainment networks,” says CNN U.S. prexy Jonathan Klein, noting that his channel sells its commercial time in a more bundled, multiplatform way that differs from most cable networks, which deal more in the typical currency of primetime ratings points.

And that’s why, no doubt, during the middle of the day the other Friday, they actually showed Ed Henry interviewing somebody on CNN-Radio on CNN cable TV. There he was, boom mike dangling in front of his face, CNN Radio sign strategically positioned, except he was on the TV.

Multi-Channel is as multi-channel does. So CNN aims for the Twitter stratosphere,  creates partnerships with Facebook, takes on Talk Radio (”We’ll fight them on the fields, we’ll fight them on the shores, we’ll fight them in the air!”).

Or, to quote a more controversial character than old Mr. Churchill, “Get ther the fustest with the mustest.” (Be the first to guess who said that one and I’ll send you a Claxton Fruit Cake!)

We are watching CNN, the people who transformed television news by replacing the tyrannical scheduled reporting cycle (anybody remember the 6:00 News?) with getting their cameras wherever news was happening as it was happening (and using local network reporters when they didn’t have one of their own in place) transform news again. This time, they’re replacing the tyranny of platform exclusivity with the freedom of device. Klein continues:

“We sell against all of our platforms — TV, online, international — and it’s hard to say there’s one particular daypart or hour of the day that matters more,” says Klein… Our competition doesn’t have the resources to cover the news the way we do. They’ve actually ceded news coverage to us.”

Convergence doesn’t just happen. CNN is using their core platforms to advertise and drive their customers to their other platforms including Time Magazine. It’s a massive multi-channel marketing effort, it’s intrusive, and apparently, it’s working:  Follow us on Twitter — over a million Twitterers can’t be wrong!.

Recognizing, as CNN’s John King said, that they are “in the word business”, CNN is stuffing those words wherever they can … and monetizing their words along the way. Newspapers should take note:  you’re all in the “word biz” — not the dead tree biz or the radio wave business or the cathode ray business or the pixel business.

Of the last twenty or so articles I read from the NY Times, none of them were on newspaper, and I found them via Digg, Google News, and in emails from friends. The last radio program I listened to was on my computer. The last time I got a story from CNN I read it on my phone.

CNN won the first digital news revolution. They overthrew the powers that be and changed everything. Now that they’re the underdogs again, it looks like they’re sticking it to the man one more time — only this time, the man is Rupert Murdoch.

So, with CNN working hard to become the multi-channel newsroom of the next great era in journalism, with all their vaunted commitment to new media and the instant-dissemniation nature of Twitter, can someone please explain to me why in the last 24 hours, CNNBRK, their twitter account with 1,339,599 followers, had only two breaking news stories?

Posted in Branding, Business, CRM, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Media, PR and News, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Does anybody else hate the new CNN news crawl?

Posted by jlsimons on April 1, 2009

I recently shattered my right arm at the shoulder and spent two painful weeks on the couch. I mostly watched cable news, as the opiate cocktail I was on for pain precluded reading or anything else requiring actual concentration.

And while I’m normally a fan of the bloodsport that is cable news, merrily flipping between CNN and Fox with the occasional vacation to BBC, sort of like an endless intravenous drip of watered down news, CNN recently made an extremely annoying change that is so frustrating I’m even considering replacing them in the rotation with MSNBC. (Shudder!)

I’m talking about the “crawl” or “ticker” at the bottom of the screen.

I’ve always made fun of the crawl, riddled as it was with intriguing news tidbits that fly across the screen, tantalizingly brief and often never seen again — and sometimes not even retrievable online!  Short attention span theater, indeed.

As bad as it was, CNN recently replaced their crawl with something worse: a static parade of changing news items described in a maximum of 60 characters each, spaces included.

This leads to infuriatingly incomplete news bombs such as:

“Airline grounds 60 jets for safety inspections”

“Only 25 votes separate candidates in deadlocked election.”

“Investment firm charged in Madoff case.”

Which airline? What election? Which firm? C’mon, guys, you’re supposed to be delivering news, not vague murmurings worthy of Nostradamus!

Why would they do this? Branding? Innovation? To stand out from the competition? Is there some business purpose that I’m missing?

Perhaps the key to this change lies in the little “CNN.COM>>” that precedes each news bomb? Maybe it’s a cross-sell, and they’re trying to tease me into finding out more online. (I’d love to know how they would even track that.) This may be the likely purpose, since other CNN news shows sometimes use the space for fan tweets (Rick Sanchez) and newscaster tweets and teases (Anderson Cooper’s promise more at AC360.COM).

But what they’re actually doing is driving me into the clutches of the more informative news crawls on Fox and BBC. Because after all, if you’re in it for the long haul, it’s all about the crawl.

So can someone please explain to me what CNN hopes to accomplish with this new format, and whether it’s succeeding at anything other than increasing FOX’s ratings?

Posted in Branding, Business, Marketing, Media, PR and News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Special Report, Breaking News or Scam?

Posted by jlsimons on March 11, 2009

Have you seen the new commercials that look and feel like cable news programming?

I’ve seen at least three different variations for three different advertisers. The one I see the most is the most innocuous:  it’s for the “Mucho Money” show, a Jim Cramer “Mad Money” rip-off selling Optimum Online and related services. I say innocuous because nobody with half a brain could mistake it for a real news show. Not with the stock ticker at the bottom of the ad tracking the price of Mango Chutney and Waffle Irons.

But then there’s the “Breaking News from the TMU FHA Hotline” commercial that I think  sets dangerous precedents and needs to be taken off the air.

At the start of the commercial, the screen shouts “TMU” in huge type, then “Breaking News” in slightly smaller type. This is on for a a while, and then, in tiny print at the bottom of the screen for all of maybe 2 seconds, it says “The following is a Paid Advertisement brought to you by Topdot Mortgage.”

The rest of the commercial plays out just like a breaking news story on a cable news station. The ticker at the bottom of the screen says “Breaking News – Federal Government raises FHA Loan Limits…” and continues with newsspeak about loan rates, limits, etc.

The commercial ends with the “newscaster” saying “We’ll have more on this story and other developments on the next edition of the TopDot Mortgage Update.” This is followed by a screen that features TMU and a phone number and half a screen of incredibly fine print that’s up for all of maybe 5 seconds.

This isn’t the worst of these I’ve seen. The worst was one I saw on CNN one day while I was working out on the exercise bike in my gym. It started with the words “Special Report” and looked in every way like a cable news show and had absolutely no mention of an advertisement whatsoever. Unlike the comedic “Mucho Money” it was a serious attempt to come across as real news.

Having forgotten to stuff a fountain pen in my shorts, I couldn’t write down the name,  and I’ve been unable to find it since. (I think it said Investor Link Special Report, but I’m just not sure. If you’ve seen it, please let me know.)

I don’t do TV, so I don’t know whether these DRTV (Direct Response TV) ads are actionable or not. But I do create direct marketing print advertisements, so I have a standard to compare them to.

When we create print ads that take on an editorial look and feel, we add a slug to the ad that says “Advertisement” or “Advertorial” or “Paid Advertisement.” Even if we didn’t want to, the publications demand it or they won’t accept our ads. Some publications won’t accept an ad like that even if it does say advertisement clearly, just to avoid any potential confusion on the part of their readers.

But where was CNN when the “Special Report” ad ran? Don’t they bear some responsibility for airing a misleading ad that attempted to fool their viewers into thinking it was a CNN Special Report? Did USA think that the cursory notifications on the TMU “Breaking News” ad was enough to avoid confusion or worse in the minds of their viewers?

And more importantly, what was going on in the minds of the ad agencies that created these ads? Are they proud of their work? Did they beg their clients to clearly identify that these were ads, but failed to convince them?

Or did they tell their client, “Don’t worry, we’ll run it until we get caught, if we even get caught, then pay the minor fine and laugh all the way to the bank?”

We’re pretty safe in assuming that their clients don’t have a problem with taking advantage of gullible or vulnerable consumers. The greed and lack of moral responsibility exhibited by mortgage lenders and financial institutions is a big part of the reason the entire world economy is tanking right now. As one of the victims of the mortgage meltdown said on CNBC’s “House of Cards” said, “I may be stupid, but they’re guilty.”

But I really do want to know what the creatives were thinking. Can someone from the agency that created these ads please explain to me what you were hoping to achieve by running these misleading ads, and more importantly, how you sleep at night?

Posted in Business, Directed Advertising, Misleadership, PR and News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Don’t turn your customers into quitters

Posted by jlsimons on February 26, 2009

The other morning on my way to work I was listening to CBS-AM, and Joe Connolly of the Wall Street Journal told the story of someone who had gotten a collections letter from their bank that sounded more like it had come from a repo man. (Or maybe it was the Sopranos… sorry if I’m misquoting, Joe.)

I’ve been seeing a lot of collections letters recently, and not because I’m up to my eyeballs in debt.

It turns out my agency, Tanen Directed Advertising, is pretty good at writing collections letters. And not the kind Joe was talking about.

For the most part, collections letters tend to fit into a few basic molds.

There’s the impersonal, computer-generated type that remove all humanity from the equation… and from the recipient. (You’d be surprised how many of them aren’t written by computers.)

There’s the escalating, threatening letter that’s meant to scare the recipient into compliance but frequently just pummels them into paralyzed inaction.

And there’s the sickeningly sweet, fake “we know what it’s like and we want to help” letters that allow the sender to hide behind feigned consideration without presenting any real options and just serve to drive the recipient further away.

We don’t write those kind of letters. You see, we look at collections letters as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools.

After all, the recipients are your customers. They bought a car from you. They took out a mortgage with you — or with a bank thrice removed, but they’re your customers now. They get their electricity from your utility. They’re your patients and you’re their doctor.

Every time you communicate with your customer, you have the chance to deepen or damage your relationship with them. Which outcome would you prefer?

Sure, you can beat them into the ground to get your money, and you’ll get it. Maybe all of it, maybe just some of it. Maybe you’ll be the last straw that breaks them, but you’ll get your money.  And unless you’re a monopoly, it’s probably the last money you’ll ever get from them.

What if it turned out that by simply communicating with your customers, by treating them like valuable human beings who have feelings and brains and are integral components of your company, and by going the extra mile to give them some options, you can actually get more of the money they owe you?

We’ve written collections letters that have gotten 400% more of our client’s customers to call in to discuss repayments than did their previous best performing letters (known as controls in direct marketing). We’ve increased the amounts collected by our clients time and time again.

If you know anything about collections, you know that you usually have to hunt down your customers to talk to them. Our letters get your customers to pick up the phone and call you. Willingly. Because we explain their options to them, we empower them to take control of what felt like an out of control situation.

If you keep a customer, their lifetime value to you continues to increase, rather than bottoming out. If you show faith in your customer, and work with them to come up with a solution, they tend to respond with something every business desires:  loyalty.

Last night our President reminded us that we’re not a nation of quitters. That given a chance, Americans will do what it takes to rise from the depths of despair and work their way back to the top.

I’ve heard our current economic situation described in part as a crisis of faith, and that not until we all have faith in the future and start spending and lending again will we come out of it.

I’d like to add that as businesses, if we have faith in our customers and help them through these tough times, the rewards can be far greater than can be gotten through threats and intimidation.

I’m not arguing for charity — I’m making a case for a more successful business strategy. I’ve seen it work for our clients.

So can someone please explain to me why there are so many short-sighted businesses out there who would rather turn their customers into quitters today than do what it takes to earn their loyalty for years to come?

Posted in Branding, Business, CRM, Directed Advertising, Marketing, Relationship Marketing | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Darwin, Domino and the Theory of Media Evolution

Posted by jlsimons on February 13, 2009

In honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday yesterday, I’d like to talk about survival of the fittest and the evolution of the media landscape.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called The Magazine as Metaphor. I talked about the three segments of magazines that added the most new titles in 2008, with Regional magazines in second place with  24 new titles.

Well, MediaFinder.com (as reported here on Marketing Charts.com), the place where I got my data, just reported that regional magazines also lost the most titles last year, losing 33 titles. Overall, 525 titles folded in 2008.

The Theory of Evolution says that the species best adapted to its environment is more likely to survive than those that are less well-adapted. In nature, this happens through natural selection and genetic mutation.

In marketing, it does too. You see, environment is a combination of factors, and sometimes the most obvious ones are not the most important ones, evolutionarily speaking.

Let’s look at Domino, the most recent home furnishings magazine to get thrown out with the trash. And thrown out it was, by Conde Nast.

You see, Domino seemed to be doing everything right. It had growing paid readership, newsstand sales were increasing, it had an integrated online presence, a thriving fan base that built blogs, social networks and even real-world social groups around it.

Domino appealed to the vast majority of Americans who shop in Target and want to live with style without selling our souls to afford it.  (For the whole story, see this great NY Times piece by Penelope Green called “A girl world closes, and fans mourn” here.)

One would think that Domino was perfectly suited to survive and thrive in the changing media environment.

But alas, it wasn’t Domino that was unfit to survive. It was its prehistoric business model that depended on ad pages to survive. And ad pages were down 26%. More importantly, it pulled in only half the advertising dollars that Architectural Digest gets.

For those of you who don’t know, now that House & Garden and Domino are gone, Architectural Digest is Conde Nast’s only remaining shelter book. If you didn’t know that, it’s forgivable. AD has a median readership age of 50, and if you can afford to emulate the lifestyles in that publication, you’re a bit above me and my friends on the socio-economic scale.

Just a few months ago, before the announcement to close Domino, Conde Nast was telling the world how successful the publication was. It was, to all appearances, healthy, on top of the world, the masters of their environment. Just like the dinosaurs may have seemed just before they all died.

It seems wrong that an otherwise healthy and thriving publication was brought down by dropping ad sales, especially in this era when ad dollars are plunging across the board.

But that’s the point. Evolution is heartless. Survival of the fittest is frequently determined after the fact. The advertising supported publishing model is dying, and while some dinosaurs may last longer than others, they are all doomed, in the end.

Maybe it’s size that is the defining factor. In this era where we’re discovering that “too big too fail” applies to more than just dinosaurs, banks, airlines and auto manufacturers, is small the new key to success?

Or are blogs the tiny, furry upstart mammals that will become the next dominant species in the media environment? Aren’t the best of them also dependent on advertising dollars to survive? Is media always destined to be chasing ad dollars, and it’s not the media that is at the top of the food chain, it’s the almighty ad dollar?

Even ad dollars are subservient to a greater force: the consumer. Ad dollars are spent chasing one thing: consumers. And consumers are finally beginning to realize how much power they really have.

They’ve saved television shows that were slated to be canceled. They’ve killed movies and products that were supposed to be the next big thing. They’ve put Hulu on the map. They’ve been the building force behind Google and Facebook and Twitter.

And they’re why even though Domino is gone, it’s spirit will live on online in blogs like Apartment Therapy.com, the 3,196th most popular site on the web with over 900,000 monthly unique visitors according to Quantcast. Which, by the way, is higher than Domino’s paid circ of 850,000.

But still, it’s sad that Domino is gone. It is possible that it could have been saved if Conde Nast hadn’t thrown the baby (Domino) out with the bath water (ad sales).Magazines and newspapers are going extinct all across the land even when they have loyal fans who want to devour their content.

So can someone please explain to me how many more otherwise healthy content providers must die before prehistoric publishers realize that it’s the ad sales based model that’s killing them and that it’s the publishers, not the magazines, that must evolve or die?

Posted in Business, Marketing, Media, PR and News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

« Previous Entries