The Other Side of the Empowered Consumer Sword

January 5, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments

Here’s what ignoring your customers on the Web does for your brand.

Good luck fixing this with anything other than meaningful, operational changes.

Maximize The Benefit

Minimize the bullshit.

By Ken Peters, January 2010

Let’s be frank. For consumers, your brand’s value is proportional to the amount of aggravation it adds to or eliminates from their lives. Maximize the benefit and minimize the bullshit or be swept into the dustbin of irrelevance. Today’s consumers are too smart and too busy to waste time with bullshit brands.

Case in point: my recent holiday shopping exploits with two prominent retailers. Never before have I encountered so much – pardon the bluntness – brand bullshit. Read on and you’ll see what I mean. Don’t worry, though, this post isn’t about whining.

You may have to indulge me in a little venting, but you’ll benefit from a critical review of how poorly designed brand experiences can cost sales and send customers running to your competition. Whether you’re selling consumer products at retail or offering B2B services – or anything in between – you can learn from the mistakes of these brands.

Our story begins with my quest for Christmas gifts. First on my list, a Nook, Barnes & Noble’s sleek new entry into the eBook reader category….

via nocturnaldesign.com

Quick eBook Readers Christmas Roundup (geardiary.com)
Kindle is the most gifted item ever says Amazon (robbiz1978.blogspot.com)
Kindle is Most Gifted Amazon Item, Ever (dvorak.org)
e-Book Echo: More Kindle Books than Print Versions; Nook and Sony Reader Downloads Overloaded (jkontherun.com)
Nook fails to communicate, download purchased ebooks (Vladislav Savov/Engadget) (techmeme.com)

Filed under Clarity of Message, Consistency of Experience, Getting to Imperative · Tagged with Barnes & Noble, Brand, E-book, Nook, Retailing

Domino’s Steps Toward the Truth

January 4, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments

When users are empowered to drown out your marketing messages, the nature of marketing changes. It needs to become “Marketing,” with a capital “M,” and bring more to the table than a tagline. As I said in my last post, where once you could focus on driving the product reality by shaping market perception, now you must also gather market perception to shape the product reality.

As if on cue, I came across a brand embracing this ethos in a very visible way.

If you want to understand why Holland-Mark is so committed to having a real impact on what our clients sell, and not just how they sell it, look no further than the changes underway at Domino’s Pizza…

Good for you, Domino’s.

So have you tried the new ‘za? What’s your take?

Domino’s Embraces Negative Thinking! (thepowerofnegativeblogging.com)
Domino’s Pizza Responds To Snooki’s ‘F— You’ (huffingtonpost.com)
How Restaurants used Social Media in 2009 (restaurantsocialmedia.blogspot.com)
Domino’s Pizza drops, despite 3Q profit surprise on cost-cutting (ceoworld.biz)
Social Complaints: How you can help yourself while helping us (jburg.typepad.com)

Filed under Getting to Imperative, Relevance of Offering, The Holland-Mark Way · Tagged with Brand, Business, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Pizza, Positioning, Reality, Restaurant Chains, Retail

Holland-Mark 2K10: Capital “M” Marketing in the Imperative Economy

December 30, 2009 by Mike Troiano · Comments

Turns out we had a pretty good 2009 here in the ‘Mark, and closed the year stronger than any of us expected. We’ve spent the last few weeks reflecting on this momentum, and on what seems to be working for clients and resonating with prospects. A strategy has come into focus around these ideas, and it’s going to have a big impact on our direction going forward.

So what can you expect from us in 2010?

Well, while we’re still going to call ourselves an “agency,” it’s just so folks have a box to put us in. The truth is we’re becoming something very different than that.

Now… I know you hear that from every advertising agency these days. Next time you do, ask whether they’ve actually turned down opportunities to create advertising for paying clients. We have, and I must say it’s been pretty liberating.

We’ve done this not because we think advertising is dead, although that makes better copy than the truth. We’ve done it because we think advertising is the wrong place to start.

The Imperative Economy

We start with an observation. It is that people — in both their business and personal lives — are only spending money on what they consider imperative. Think about how your own behavior has changed over the course of The Gateway Recession. When was the last time you plunked down the Platinum card on something that was just interesting, or even something with just the potential to influence your life? I bet it’s been a while. We buy what we need now, and it’s the same for the spending decisions we make on the job in the “B2B” marketplace.

Becoming imperative has become imperative. And doing so isn’t about “small-m” marketing, meaning, primarily, outbound marketing communications. Good advertising can make a product more interesting, no doubt. But it cannot make it imperative. “Consumers” — as we used to call them — decide what is imperative, and they communicate with each other at a volume and frequency that drowns out all but a very few deep-pocketed commercial entities.

Reality Is Perception

The implication of this is significant: Where once you could focus on driving the product reality by shaping market perception, now you must also gather market perception to shape the product reality.

What I’m saying is what we all know… that Marketing needs to step up, put the crayons down for a bit, and take a seat at the grown-up table. Getting the topline moving in the Imperative Economy will take more than advertising. It will take “big-M” Marketing, meaning a willingness to tackle the substantive issues related to:

the relevance of your offering,
the clarity of your message,
the consistency of your communication, and
your ability to drive engagement among a group of brand advocates large enough to support your business.

Holland-Mark’s Role

We think our job is to help clients establish that cycle… to “corrupt” their vision with the external reality. In a nutshell, Holland-Mark helps businesses connect with, respond to, and benefit from the truth about their customers, products, and brand relationships.

If you come across someone who needs that — and who recognizes the need to change more than just their tagline to achieve it — please drop us a line. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you think about our conclusions, our approach, and our prospects.

Look for more details soon right here. Be sure and subscribe to our blog if you’re interested.

How clothing brand transition from wholesale to (recycleemail.com)
1 reviews of Which Is More Effective For Advertising, A Vision Map Video Or Vision Board (rateitall.com)
The Near Future Agency (socialhallucinations.com)
What You Need to Know about Business in 2010 (wordsforhirellc.com)
The future of the ad agency (sharemarketing.wordpress.com)
Marketers more likely to recommend their PR agencies than ad and media agencies (mumbrella.com.au)

Filed under Clarity of Message, Consistency of Experience, Driving Engagement, Getting to Imperative, Relevance of Offering, The Holland-Mark Way · Tagged with advertising, Advertising agency, Advertising and Marketing, Brand, Business, Communication, Consumer, Customer, Market, Marketing

AOL Un-Brands with Un-Logo

November 23, 2009 by Mike Troiano · Comments

So AOL is going through a re-branding effort as it’s spun out of Time Warner, and a video of the CEO announcing the effort to employees has surfaced:

First … due respect … this is not “the brand,” it is “the logo.” Pet peeve of mine.

Second, while I’m not in the habit of criticizing other agencies’ work, I really think the mark itself is a mistake. On a practical level, a negative-space logo like this – particularly one that only functions on top of other content – is an Art Director’s nightmare.

On a conceptual level, it strikes me as too-clever-by-half. A great logo should add value to what it represents, not call attention to itself, as this does.

Finally, on a strategic level, I just don’t see how this non-idea could ever replace the swirly-A logo we’ve all known for so long. And it needs to.

How to Make a Logo

If you need a logo, take a piece of paper, and write down what you want it to make people think.

Got it? Great. Throw that away.

Now think of what you want your logo to make people feel. Write that down, not as a paragraph, but as a word or two. Then get someone with talent to design something that does that.

That’s what I think, anyway. How about you?