Month: November 2008

Categories
Integrated Marketing PR and News Social Media

Dead…dead…dead

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of hearing:

“Blogging is dead.”

“Newspapers are dead.”

“Email is dead.”

“The 30-second commercial is dead.”

“Print is dead.”

“Magazines are dead.”

“Paid search is dead.”

“Affiliate marketing is dead.”

“Behavioral targeting is dead.”

“Pop-ups are dead.”

“Friendster is dead.”  Well, okay, I’ll give you that one.

What is it with this feeding frenzy to pronounce media channels and tactics dead?

I’m as guilty as the next marketing guy. The account people at my agency, Tanen Directed Advertising, are getting sick of hearing me gleefully pronounce newspapers dead, as if I’ve somehow got a stake in the sale of their headstones and caskets.

And I’m just as wrong as everyone else, too, at least about Friendster and newspapers.

Friendster isn’t dead… it’s just different. 85 million members strong isn’t dead. It’s just moved to the Phillipines and Southeast Asia. (39% of it members are in the Phillipines.) But even in the US,  Friendster gets 2.6 million monthly unique visitors according to Quantcast.

Newspapers aren’t dead either, they’re just moving online. According to a Nielsen Online report done for the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper websites had 68.3 million unique visitors on average in Q3 2008, which is nearly 41.4% of all internet users, and is up 15.8% over the same period last year. It was also a record for page views, just over 3.5 billlion per month, which is 25.2% higher than the same quarter last year and the highest since the NAA started tracking it in 2004. The same quarter set records for page views, pages per person, time spent per person, and visits per person. In other words, more people are visiting newspaper websites more often, spending more time there, and getting more information there. (And those sites accept advertising.)

I just saw a great video interview with Michael Rosenblum at the Society of Editors conference 2008. He talks about how newspapers have a great, but dwindling window of opportunity, to retain and capitalize on delivering news to their audiences, as long as they keep the news and get rid of the paper. It’s worth watching, especially for his analogy of the death of the whale oil industry in New Bedford, and it’s here on Diablogue. (I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Seth Godin’s great post, “Do you own trees?” from all the way back in June of this year.)

We live in interesting times. The rate of change is amazing. Blogging, just barely out of the womb, is being declared dead yet again. (For a great post and history of Blogging obituaries, see B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next Blog post, “The Annual Death of Blogging is Baaaaaack!” here. )

This is what media fragmentation looks like. This is what technological revolution and social upheaval looks like.

Everything is changing, but that doesn’t mean it’s dying. Shrinking, retrenching, transforming… but not dying. And yet we seem obsessed with premature declarations of death that set the stage for us to glorify and justify the media channel or tactic that we like much better… this week.

Can somebody please explain to me when we’re going to grow up, consign “…is dead” to the trash heap of overdone phrases (along with “…is the new black”) and start seeing the turmoil for the opportunity it represents?

Categories
Branding Misleadership

Cover-Up Exposed: The Death of the Maytag Repairman

Do you remember the movie “Dave?”  In the 1993 political comedy, the President suffers a stroke while having an affair, and rather than let the public know, his Chief of Staff and Communications Director convince a look-alike to impersonate him.

In a conspiracy reminiscent of the movie, a much loved popular icon died recently, and rather than let him go, his handlers have conspired to make us think he’s still alive.

I’m talking about the Maytag Repairman, that lonely symbol of stoic superfluity in the face of unwavering reliability, a commercial icon who has been with us since 1967.

I’m not complaining about the latest actor to play Ol’ Lonely, Clay Earl Jackson, who replaced Hardy Rawls, who replaced Gordon Jump, who replaced Jesse White, the original Maytag Repairman.

No, I’m complaining about something that actually matters: brand integrity.

You see, the point of the Maytag repairman was that he was lonely because Maytags were so reliable that there was nothing for Ol’ Lonely to do. It was the core of Maytag’s brand image, the way Volvos are safe, Coke is refreshing and Apple is cool. “Built Strong to Last Long” says the Maytag website.

I was having lunch with my friend Steve the other day, and he told me something shocking. His Maytag broke down, more than once, and in the ensuing nightmare Steve found out that Maytag doesn’t service their own products anymore. They subcontract to third party repairmen through a third party customer support line.

In other words, the Maytag Repairman does not actually work for Maytag anymore.

Not that you’d know it from the language on their website: “To help you depend on your Maytag appliance for years to come, we’ve handpicked the best maintenance and service technicians.” And if you do need help, they’ve made it easy for you to schedule an appointment: “Skip the phone call and schedule an appointment online right now.” After all, they wouldn’t want you to talk to a live customer support representative who might spill the beans about their domestic outsourcing.

Another thing you might not easily learn from their website is that Maytag was bought by Whirlpool on April Fools Day, 2006. (No joke:  Wikipedia says April 1, although the Whirlpool corporate site says March 31. What a difference a day makes.) According to the Maytag article on Wikipedia, the plants would be closed within a year, most employees terminated, and the Board of Directors and CEO given 5 years severance. The name, however, would continue to be used on re-branded Whirlpool appliances. And obviously, so too the Maytag Repairman.

The Maytag site won’t tell you any of this. The beautifully produced flash Maytag Timeline goes all the way to 2007 and neglects to mention the sale.

In “About Maytag”, under “Corporation” there is in fact a link to Whirlpool, “Our Parent Company” as well as mentions in the press releases. And even though the “Investors” link says “Read the latest news and press releases from Maytag and Whirlpool Corporation” it takes you straight to the Whirlpool site… and then promptly disses Maytag.  Right there, in the Corporate Profile, it says “Whirlpool’s primary brand names — KitchenAid, Roper, Bauknecht, Ignis, Brastemp, Consul and its global Whirlpool brand — are marketed in more than 170 countries worldwide. Whirlpool Corporation is a significant supplier to Sears Holdings Corporation, which owns and controls the Kenmore brand name.”

Did you see Maytag listed?  Me neither.

Even worse, Kenmore was listed. Now I’m really worried. I was raised trusting Kenmore, and if Whirlpool has brought the same care and consideration to Kenmore that it’s brought to Maytag, I may have to switch to LG.

While the death of the Maytag repairman may come as a shock to you and me, customer review sites like BizRate and RateItAll are filled with uniformly negative reviews by customers who discovered he was gone the hard way. From their high end machines to their low, washing machines to refrigerator/freezers, the majority of the reviews all basically say the same thing:  Don’t buy Maytag. “Broke twice in a year and a half.” “We were warned but didn’t listen.” “Nightmare on Elm Street doesn’t compare.” “Buy at your own peril — Maytag’s folly.” “Extended service plan is awful.”

Interestingly, some of the customers say they bought their lemons because of positive online reviews. I did see professional reviews by a company named alaTest.co.Uk that were uniformly glowing and served to raise the overall ratings, at least on Biz Rate.

But when I went to Consumer Reports, I found that in the one category I checked, Washing Machines, Maytag was the most repair-prone among front loaders and second most among top loaders. (I wonder what Consumer Reports says about alaTest.co.uk?)

To sum up:  a company that built its brand reputation on quality and reliability, that took everything they stood for and created an iconic brand image symbolized by one of the most memorable advertising campaigns of all time, is not only not reliable, it isn’t even a real company anymore.

And yet, the Maytag Repairman is still starring in commercials, spewing an empty promise, like a long gone Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum or a ghastly computer generated Orville Redenbacher shilling popcorn. Dead men walking.

In this day and age, can a brand actually believe that it can get away with pretending to be something that it’s not?  Is a brand reliable just because it says it is?  Is misleadership a virtue now?

I subscribe to the belief that a brand is the conversation its stakeholders have about it, not the marketing propaganda it spews at consumers.

So can someone please explain to me how long we’re going to allow this unholy zombie of a Maytag Repairman to walk among us before we get our torches and send it flaming into the blackness where it belongs?


Categories
Marketing Partnerships Misleadership PR and News Relationship Marketing Social Media

Obama and the AKC: Another Shaggy Dog Story?

Back on July 10th, in my post “Is Obama Going To The Dogs?” I wrote about the Presidential Pup website where the AKC was holding an election to decide which dog the Obama girls should get. I wrote in glowing terms about what I thought was an excellent and timely marketing partnership.

And a successful one… at least for the AKC. Since they started, there have been 42,000 votes and a clear spike in traffic. According to Quantcast, site visits to AKC.org, which were hovering around 2.5 million before the start of the promotion at the beginning of July rose sharply over that month to a high of about 2.8 million in early August, only to drop again to their pre-promotion level by late August.

By the way, the Poodle won the election.

So when President-elect Obama mentioned his canine promise to his girls in his acceptance speech, I fully expected there to be some connection to the AKC partnership, at least in the days ahead.

Empathetically, I thought, if I were the AKC marketing director, and Obama didn’t mention our partnership at this global-attention focal point, I’d feel a bit ripped off. Talk about a missed opportunity. The whole reason to do a marketing partnership like that with a highly public cause is for the attention it brings. Even more problematic, he mentioned shelter dogs, not exactly the territory the AKC tends to pee in.

I went to the Obama site. Nothing about the AKC and the Presidential Pup site.

I just spent the last week at Ad:Tech listening to all the ways in which the Obama campaign has rewritten the rules of online marketing. According to Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy Mather Worldwide, the Obama campaign is the “best CRM campaign that has ever been run.”  For the Obama campaign to be involved in a marketing partnership and not to mention it on their site isn’t a mistake, it’s an impossibility.

So then I went to the Presidential Pup site at the AKC.  The site landing pages were updated on November 5th to reflect Obama’s victory and discuss his public reiteration of his promise to his girls. The site discusses the voting, and goes on to say “We hope the Obamas consider the survey results,” said AKC Spokesperson Lisa Peterson.

“We hope”?  “Considers”?  That didn’t exactly sound like a partnership to me, and it certainly didn’t sound like the tone of the original site.

Somebody at the AKC is definitely on the ball, though. In addition to the speed with which they updated their landing page, the page has a picture of two adorable poodle pups with the headline “A Pair of Poodles for Pennsylvania Avenue” and the caption which partially reads “A pair of six-week-old Toy Poodle puppies rescued by Flora’s Pet Project/Poodle Rescue Connecticut visited the American Kennel Club offices in Manhattan today to be photographed in hopes of catching the attention of the Obama family. The pups will be available for new homes in early January. They can be adopted by contacting…”

That’s great marketing. Obama specifically mentioned shelter dogs, so the AKC adds the “rescue dog” element to make their efforts more relevant. (As I recall, there was no mention of rescue dogs the first time around.)

They’re also spreading a wide net to attract attention. They made sure to mention that it was reported that Veep-Elect Biden has said his wife told him that if he got the vice presidency and got elected, he could get a dog. This too is good internet marketing, adding additional key words and relevance;  last time, they made sure they got the McCains in the story as well.

The site goes on to say “No matter what breed the Obamas or Bidens choose, the AKC hopes they can assist both families. “I would be happy to personally assist Obama and Biden in identifying a responsible breeder if they are looking for a puppy,” said AKC President & CEO Dennis Sprung”

The first site really made it seem like the Obama’s were along for the ride.  But now, it’s clear that wasn’t the case.

Nearly a decade ago, in our book, Making Money While Making a Difference, Dr. Richard Steckel and I wrote about the dangers of misleading the public when it comes to cause related marketing.  It’s only gotten worse since.  When you pretend to be helping a cause or when you aid and abet consumers in reaching the conclusion that you are aligned with a cause or group when you are really just trying to cash in on their publicity, you are in danger of a serious, negative backlash.

If the AKC were aligned with Obama, wouldn’t he have mentioned it in one of his long and involved post-acceptance speech statements about the promised pooch?

If this were the marketing partnership it seemed to be, then wouldn’t Obama have mentioned it at least once during the many times he’s had to address this overwhelmingly important issue since winning the nomination?

It’s not his fault if the issue keeps coming up: I mean, our economy is in the tank, the mid-East is loping towards a meltdown, attack dog Rahm Emanuel is the chief of staff of the face of change, and the press keeps wasting our time on shaggy dog stories.

Oh wait, so am I.

No, I’m not.

According to Wikipedia, “Shaggy dog stories play upon the audience’s preconceptions of the art of joke telling. The audience listens to the story with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner.” While I don’t claim that the AKC intended to amuse us, I do think their whole presidential pup story is a bad joke with utterly unmet expectations and an unexpected conclusion.

I’m writing about a marketing disconnect. A missed opportunity. Or, more likely, a misleading one. Just another example of misleadership, this one on the part of the AKC.

What do you think?  Can someone please explain to me whether the AKC is practicing good marketing or misleadership?

Categories
Directed Advertising Integrated Marketing

In Praise of the Lowly Yellow Pages

If you asked my clients and colleagues whether I’m a lo-tech or hi-tech kind of marketer, they’d all say the latter.  It’s a rare strategy session that I don’t find some way to suggest search, or content syndication, or blogging, or widgets, or behavioral, or email, or… well, you get the picture.

But the fact is, like my agency, Tanen Directed Advertising, I am actually channel neutral.  If a tactic works, I say, use it.  Not blindly — you need a strategy, and the tactic has to have a measurable chance at achieving your strategic goals, but if it does, I say, go for it.

And that’s why I’m writing about Yellow Page Directory advertising. And no, not the online local search kind. I’m talking yellow cardstock cover, dead tree, “pile three of them on a chair so your 4-year old can see the monitor” kind of yellow pages.

You see, it seems that the lowly, lo-tech yellow pages has a ridiculous click thru rate.  According to a recent study, 78% of directory users contact an average of 2 businesses after referencing a directory.  The most popular action taken is picking up the phone, which happens 93% of the time.  But it’s not limited to a phone call: 31% show up in person, 10% go online, and 1% get in touch through the mail.

Those are monster numbers.  And when you consider that for many categories, there is far less noise and competition than Google, they’re even more compelling.

We all love search because we know that anyone who is in the act of searching is in some stage of the buying cycle.  (According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 81% of all internet users “look online for information about a product or service they are thinking of buying.”)

Local search is growing because it turns out that people who search online sometimes shop locally. (The increasing adoption and use of mobile phones and the growing utility and quality of mobile search isn’t hurting, either.)

Unlike most other forms of advertising, both types of search are non-intrusive and non-interruptive.  They are, in fact, requested and highly desired services.

The same logic holds true with yellow pages.  In fact, didn’t search really start with the yellow pages?  (This reminds me a little of how television advertising is beginning to return to it’s sponsor-driven, branded content and product placement roots)

The study was conducted by Knowledge Networks for the Association of Directory Publishers, so it’s lucky for them that the numbers came out as positive as they did.  But I don’t doubt their findings.  After all, how many times have you reached for the yellow pages in the last few months?  Not many, perhaps.  But, when you did, what did you do next?  See what I mean.

That’s the point.  We all still use the yellow pages sometimes, some of us more than others.  And when we do, we take action.  (Of course, that action isn’t always positive.  I’ve never thrown my computer across the room while cursing Google the way I have my local yellow pages because I can’t figure out in which poorly defined and barely indexed category my local movie 10-Plex is to be found.  Hint: It’s not movie theaters or cinemas, which aren’t mentioned at all.  And if you’re silly enough to look up  “Movies” you’ll be rewarded with “See: CDs, Records and Tapes, Retail; Video Tapes & DVDs Rental & Sales.”  Nope, it’s under Theatres, along with the Downtown Cabaret Theatre, Greenwich Shakespeare Co. , New Canaan Playhouse, Stamford Center for the Arts, etc.)

Now, I’m not suggesting we shift our entire budgets out of AdWords and into printed yellow pages directories.  But given the ridiculously low comparative cost of yellow pages advertisements, the extremely long ad life/placement persistence and the comparatively high level of response surrounding their use, can someone please explain to me why more businesses aren’t including them in their media mix?