Hello Ladies…would you please buy Old Spice?
Posted on | July 26, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. Isaiah Mustafa (aka “the Old Spice guy”) has continued the reinvigoration of the once-moribund brand with a breakthrough advertising and social media campaign.
2. However, some of the first sales reports don’t look promising, with one report showing Old Spice down 7%. Then again, other reports say sales are brisk. It is simply too early to tell.
3. But asking one campaign to both “reposition” and “boost sales” may be too much to ask in a crowded segment. Patience is warranted here.
The newest Old Spice campaign could be the hottest ad campaign of the year.
It is arguably the best use of social media in an advertising campaign thus far, with spokesperson and former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa responding to several tweets via YouTube videos.
Have a look at one of the most popular “responses” here:
This video, alone, has reached nearly one million views. And there are dozens of responses like it. Add to that the significant broadcast airtime and the viral nature of the original ads themselves (not to mention several very smart parodies) and you get a lot of exposure for the Old Spice brand and its now-instantly-recognizable spokesperson.
Here’s the rub: The ads don’t seem to be driving sales of Old Spice in the Health and Beauty aisle at your local Wal-Mart or Target. The latest national media news puts Old Spice sales down 7%.
The knee jerk reaction would be to claim the ads are more about the ad and more about the persona than they are about the brand, and that misdirected focus is pulling attention away from Old Spice and heaping onto Mustafa.
Other analysis points to the creative approach itself. Mustafa is talking to “the ladies” assuming they will be the influencer on the purchase of the Old Spice brand. Previous campaigns spoke directly to the men themselves. Perhaps men really are the buyers after all?
Further “explanations” point to the generational-skipping strategy P&G used when it took control of the brand – going directly to younger men and first-time deodorant buyers. Perhaps the younger men like the ads, but aren’t translating that to brand selection.
An even more obtuse perspective claims men feel a bit threatened by Mustafa’s portrayal of the “handsome man ready to whisk your woman away”. Do men really enjoy being emasculated by an ex-NFL player? Will they really want to emulate him?
If you believe all that, and you’re the brand manager for Old Spice, you’re faced with a decision: Kill the campaign now, before it does more damage, and switch to an activation-focused approach to drive incremental sales. Or stick with the approach and give it more time.
I’m not sure this is the right way to look at the situation, however.
First off, a few weeks is not enough time to evaluate any campaign, let alone one that is working to reposition a brand. A 7% drop in sales could be the result of several factors outside of anyone’s control, especially for the brand that holds the top spot with about 20% of the $1 billion men’s deodorant market. But not everyone agrees on the numbers. A recent AdWeek article showed sales of Old Spice rising sharply as a result of the campaign. Mixed results should not really surprise anyone; it is simply too early to tell.
Second, Old Spice has been on a long road of repositioning since P&H acquired the brand in 1990. At that time, Old Spice held the unsavory position as something your grandfather wore (mine did), lurking in an off-white bottle in the medicine cabinet. During that same time, the metrosexualization trend gained steam – men watched “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” for fashion tips, they headed to the salon in unheard of numbers, and started to wear skinny jeans.
P&G saw the opportunity to hold fast to the “classic” image of the man’s man – from the NFL-themed “Red Zone” line, to redesigned packaging, to the “swagger” ads, to snarky demos, to LL Cool J. Mustafa is just the latest in the series.
And by all rights, they’ve succeeded. During the last 20 years, Old Spice clawed its way ahead of Right Guard for the men’s top spot.
There’s no question youth-oriented brands Tag and Axe present a challenge, and organic/natural brands have gained traction, but I wouldn’t stick a fork in Mustafa just yet.
P&H can always run sales promotion-focused spots and FSIs – ideally using Mustafa to help drive home purchase decisions using classic price incentives.
But the real challenge is holding the positioning high ground, and that is precisely what Old Spice has done.
Related Links:
Old Spice Red Zone sales drop 7%, despite hot ads
AdWeek: Spice It Up
Old Spice’s Extreme Makeover
Tags: Isaiah Mustafa > Old Spice
Bad, ASPCA! Bad!
Posted on | July 19, 2010 | 1 Comment
Bad, ASPCA! Bad!
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. Aggressive direct marketing seems a bit out of character for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).
2. Part of the perceived need inside the organization to boost efforts could be driven by the successful publicity strategies of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
3. The ASPCA would be wise to promote its numerous assets, most notably the significant direct efforts to support its mission, than resort to direct marketing trickery.
I am not a pet hater.
From from it. I would categorize myself as a “pet can’t haver”. Both of my kids are allergic, and anything with fur is banned from the house.
So it surprised me last week to open my mail and find a letter from the ASPCA (the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). No problem, of course, I get a lot of charity pitch mail. I guess being a supporter of Minnesota Public Radio somehow predisposes me to support other not-for-profits. The beauty of statistical correlations.
But this letter was different. I didn’t just get a pitch letter. I got a member card. With my name on it. And an assigned member identification. And stickers for my car window. And, without fail, a pretty strong pitch to send a fat check.
Like I said, I see a lot of charity pitches, and this one struck me as way off the charts into the “aggressive” category. In fact, it reminded me of the uninterrupted stream of printed garbage that comes courtesy of Capital One, whom my shredder has come to loathe.
I opt in to becoming a member of a charity, I do not opt out, thank you very much.
Forgive me if I seem a bit frustrated, but in an age of rampant identity theft, I am simply not comfortable being “signed up” even if the cause seems benign. Is this just an ASPCA marketing technique? (Probably) Am I now counted as a member? (Probably not, but even so) Will the ASPCA publish my name somewhere? (They had better not)
But before this little gem hit the shredder, I took a minute to step back and think about from the organization’s perspective. When an organization begins to get unnecessarily aggressive, it often is a signal that some problem is afoot.
And I think something bigger is going on. Let me share a bit of what I learned.
In the past 15 to 20 years, the ASPCA has grown alongside changing American attitudes regarding pets. What was once akin to a “kid’s toy” in the family has become an integral part of that family. Not everyone feels this way, certainly, but enough to create a market for advanced veterinary surgery centers, pet health insurance, pet trust funds, and pet memorial services.
The research (and a couple of clients I’ve worked with over my career) have told me it is the empty-nester baby boomer cohort that is driving much of the change. Once the children leave the home, the pets become a powerful emotional replacement.
We can see that popularity extend to an entire cable network (Animal Planet) and the proliferation of mainstream companion animal programming.
The ASPCA, founded in 1866 (surprised me!), is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profits with over 1 million members and revenue of more than $127 million in 2008. With a focus on animal cruelty prevention efforts, the ASPCA funds a significant number of “boots on the ground” operations – law enforcement efforts, pet insurance, poison control, adoption, and behaviorist assistance.
According to its three star rating on Charity Navigator, you could do much worse with your philanthropic dollars.
But there is also another side to “animal rights” organizations: Political activism. And that’s where I think the problem lies.
Other organizations – most notably the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) – have stolen the animal rights “banner” from their more conservative and long-standing neighbor and have been driving the lion’s share of media attention and new membership.
Whether one agrees with the strategies of HSUS and PETA or not, it’s easy to see why the techniques work – vivid political and media displays drive up the emotion level, drive up membership, and drive up contributions. HSUS boasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million members. PETA tops 2 million.
Please understand, I am not passing judgment on any of the aforementioned organizations, but I think it’s safe to say HSUS and PETA are significantly more politically active than the ASPCA. As a consequence of that activity, they drive polarization.
From the ASPCA’s perspective, the problem is simple: HSUS and PETA are stealing the thunder. Charity research tells us that people get “donation burnout” when peppered from multiple, similar, organizations. They’ll support the one the best identify with, and that identification often comes from what publicity the organization has been able to get. When most people want to support a cause, they’ll support the organization they think best aligns with that cause. And if they don’t look into it too hard (the majority of donors don’t), they are likely to support the organization they’ve heard of.
Hence, part of the rational for the HSUS and PETA strategies.
But let’s take a look – objectively – at what the ASPCA has to offer from an operational perspective in order to make a case for it being the strongest advocate for animals.
Again, we can look to Charity Navigator for help.
As we can see, while the HSUS and PETA boast many more members, but are significantly smaller than the ASPCA. As a further reminder, for those dollars, the ASCPA maintains infrastructure for a law enforcement arm, a behavioral counseling service, pet adoptions, poison control center, and a pet insurance agency (to name just a few). The HSUS and PETA – by stark contrast – are primarily grassroots political organizations.
Again, please understand, I am not claiming one strategy is correct/good/moral/effective and the other is not, but rather, I am suggesting the basis on which the ASPCA should be making its case to prospective donors and members as the best option for a sustainable focus on direct, demonstrated efforts to accomplish its mission.
I had to do a couple hours of research to discover that.
I would have preferred the ASPCA told me, rather than trying a direct marketing gimmick.
Related Links:
www.aspca.org
www.aspcabehavior.org
www.aspcapetinsurance.com/
ASPCA Wikipedia Entry
ASPCA Charity Navigator report
When will Americans see the Tatas?
Posted on | July 12, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. India’s Tata Motors is positioning itself for a run at the US market with the acquisition of Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford.
2. But it’s not those nameplates current players need to be worried about – it’s rather the $2500 Tata Nano.
3. The Nano is likely a game-changer in the market, offering US consumers the first legitimate sub-$5000 transportation option.
I just can’t resist the chance to talk about one of my favorite subjects.
Cars, of course.
With all the attention given General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, and Toyota these days, you’d be forgiven if something else came to mind when I mentioned India’s dominant automaker.
But with its recent acquisition of the Land Rover and Jaguar brands from Ford, Tata Motors is positioned to leave its home market behind and hit the world stage with a splash. The purchase gives the company the engineering chops and the street credibility it will need to compete in the American market.
Together, the Land Rover and Jaguar nameplates barely make a dent in the US auto market, having trouble (together) selling 100,000 units a year. However, Land Rover is the last surviving “4-wheel-drive” brand (alongside Jeep), and Jaguar retains a certain place in the luxury car pantheon (however tarnished its reputation might be at present).
One could make the case that Tata wants to use the brands as a foothold in the US market to bring in its other models. Specifically, the real game-changer: The Tata Nano.
If you haven’t heard of this little car yet, stay tuned. The Tata Nano is the least-expensive production car in the world, coming in at just over US$2500.
Yes, you heard correct. $2500.
That’s a car that goes on a credit card. I have a friend who spent more than that on an entertainment center last month.
Clearly, for $2500, you are not going to be getting a “Land Rover Light”. The Nano is the epitome of basic transportation – something you could envision weaving in and out of pedestrians on the crowded streets of Mumbai.
When it was first announced, the mainstream automotive press came to the collective conclusion that the American market didn’t really want a sub-$5000 car, especially one without the “features” US buyers have come to expect. They pointed to that other uber-cheap econobox – the Yugo – as an example of a tried-and-failed attempt to bring the ultra-cheap car into the US market.
But that was before the Great Recession.
And Tata is no Yugo Motors.
Yugo suffered from innumerable quality problems from the get-go, and could never shake its Soviet Block image. Tata, quite the contrary, couldn’t be more different. Instead of a tiny, recovering, Soviet satellite state-run enterprise, Tata is the largest automaker in the world’s second largest country. They make buses, trucks, SUVs, small cars – a variety that certainly rivals GM in the United States. And Tata is using its recent success to invest across the board in its product line.
It’s not a question of if the Nano will arrive on US shores, but when it will arrive. When it does, it is likely to hit the US auto market like a ton of bent sheet metal.
With its introduction, the Nano will effectively reset the bottom of the US auto market. If we look at the price continuum below, we can see the Nano clearly occupying the “low cost” end of the spectrum. Nameplates like Toyota, Ford, Honda, VW, Nissan, and GM still fit in the middle of the pack. Acura, Audi, Infiniti, and Lexus in the near-luxury group. BMW and Mercedes near the top.
The “danger zone” is aptly named for those nameplates who used to occupy the value-point niche. That includes the recent Korean imports, Kia and Hyundai. While Hyundai has made numerous moves (and probably should be placed in the mainstream market), the Kia brand is a world of trouble. Its hard to see buyers opting for a “slightly better Nano” for three times the cost.
But beyond problems for Kia as a brand, the Nano spells trouble for the entire small car segment – offerings from all of the major carmarkers attempt to compete in this segment as US buyers have expressed a renewed interest in low-cost transportation. Look at the comparison between (arguably) the top car in this segment – the Honda Fit – and an upcoming Tata Nano. Yes, the Honda is “more car” for the money, but is it $12,000 to $15,000 more car? I don’t think so.
What’s more, at about the same time Tata hits our shores, it can count on some pent-up post-recession demand from the US economy. College present? What about a Nano? How about a “buy a Land Rover for you, get a Nano for your college student” (ala “buy an Apple computer, get an iPod Touch”). I like it!
However, the auto business is not just about building the cheaper mousetrap. And that’s where Yugo went wrong. It didn’t spend the time cultivating an image in the mind of the US buying public – a “cult following” of sorts that the original VW Beetle was able to pull off 30 years ago. Yugo also didn’t spend the time and energy building the distribution network (read: Dealer network) it needed to compete during the “Saturday afternoon rush”.
Tata is far smarter than that. And even if it weren’t, it has far more money in its war chest than any current player in the US market. Along with some new Fiat introductions vis-a-vis Chrysler and perhaps a Chinese introduction or two, the US market may be very close to a micro-car invasion.
All that said, I think by 2013, we’ll need two definitions for “Tata” in the Urban Dictionary.
Related Links:
Tata Motors’ boss moves up a gear
Tata Motors Summary
Tags: Tata Motors > US auto market
Mobile Malware: The Worm in the Apple
Posted on | July 5, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. To this point, the growth in mobile computing seems to have outpaced the growth in malicious software for those devices.
2. But the exponential growth in mobile-web-enabled devices will be an irresistible opportunity for malicious software.
3. Apple’s “ease-of-use” value proposition is especially vulnerable in an increasingly sketchy mobile online world.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1993.
It’s not that I have a poor opinion of its PC counterparts, it’s just that I’ve had great luck with Apple products over the past (almost) 20 years. In that time, I have owned four machines. Just four. That includes a bondi blue clamshell iBook (cute at the time), a 12-inch PowerBook (wrecked by a botched repair job), a 15-inch MacBook Pro (my current main squeeze), and an iPhone 3Gs.
Compared to my PC friends, that’s a pretty good return on investment.
Part of the obvious reason for longevity is a tight connection between hardware and operating system software, and a notoriously protective Apple developer program (I know, my firm is a certified Apple mobile developer, and it wasn’t easy to be one). That connection, along with a smaller user base for desktop computers, means Apple is rarely the target of malicious software attacks that plague so many on the other side of the proverbial fence.
But the landscape is fundamentally changing in the computing world.
Apple’s signature iPhone, RIM’s Blackberry, and Google’s Droid phones have created an entirely new class of mobile computing which, as of yet, has been comparatively free of malicious software attacks.
Clearly, the party won’t last forever.
It’s just that the adoption curve has raced ahead of virus writers’ ability to capitalize. To see what I mean, all we need do is explore a couple of charts.
The graph below shows the rapid growth in mobile internet access as compared to other internet access technologies. By way of comparison, it took AOL nearly four years to reach 20 million subscribers. It took the iPhone about one year to do the same. Of course, the two were born into to two very different market circumstances, but the rapid growth remains stunning nonetheless.
The second chart presents a slightly different picture. Essentially, it plots the number of computing devices per user by decade. Of course, the mainframe era saw very few machines per person, mini-computers (adopted mainly by large businesses) more, PC’s more still. But notice the left end of the scale – it’s logarithmic. By 2020, there will likely be 20 billion internet-enabled mobile devices in operation – a predicted 2.2 per person worldwide (however, the distribution, undoubtedly, will be skewed).
Put simply, that’s a lot of hardware.
And the opportunity for malicious intent – whether for notoriety, petty crime, organized crime, or espionage – will be irresistible.
For the time-being, those concerns are muted. Unless your iPhone is “jailbroken”, you are pretty safe. But let’s look ahead a few years. There is no question the wide scale infiltration of malicious software for mobile-web-enable devices is on its way. What will it mean to the Apple brand to have its (clearly dominant) device the target of malware on a global scale?
To answer, let’s examine the crux of the Apple brand: User-friendliness.
Of course, one could argue that the Apple brand is really about technical innovation (not really true – other devices are technically superior to the iPod), or emotional attachment (that one I can accept, but emotional attachment to what is the real question).
I would argue what has made Apple so successful with its consumer electronics products is that anyone – even the grandmother I saw at the pool last week with her family – could feel comfortable with a glossy new iPhone. It works the way the user would expect it to work. It doesn’t have too many options. It makes many of the decisions for you.
By ceding control of many of the mobile computing decisions, a large group of users who simply want their mobile experience to be easy and enjoyable have rewarded Apple with a commanding market share and silly-high profit margins on the device and astronomical profit margins in the iTunes store.
What happens, then, when the inevitable happens, and the iPhone operating system is the target of repeated and increasing vicious malware attacks?
That reality strikes at the core of the Apple value proposition.
Users will no longer be able to carelessly assume they are not at risk. They will need to be involved and engaged at a level they are not today. And with Apple’s dominance over both the device and the software, it will not be able to escape blame. Over time, a more complex user experience could erode the emotional connection of a large group of Apple users.
My prediction: Steve Job’s latest brilliant new announcement won’t be a new device, but new antivirus software.
Related Links:
The Truth About The iPhone Virus / Vulnerability Thing : It’s Fixed
iPhone virus discovered: be vigilant and seek advice
Tags: Apple > droid virus > iphone OS > iphone virus > malware
Has it become unethical to market tanning?
Posted on | June 28, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. A recent U of M study seems to remove all doubt – tanning (in any amount) is strongly linked to the most dangerous form of skin cancer, melanoma.
2. A combination of FDA, FTC, FCC, and state regulations will probably restrict tanning services in a variety of ways, but are not likely to kill the industry altogether.
3. If tanning will still be sold (in some form), “informed consent” could be the most prudent path forward from an ethical perspective.
I am not sure why this was a surprise to anyone.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota recently published a studying in which they found that people who use any type of tanning device, for any amount of time, are 74 percent more likely to develop a melanoma.
Holy crap.
Melanoma is not the more-easily-treated form of skin cancer. Melanoma is the really bad stuff. Of course, this comes as no surprise to experienced dermatologists, many of whom report an alarming increase in melanoma – especially among young people. And even less surprisingly (and more sadly), they say, among mainly young women in their teens and early twenties who using tanning salons.
Yes, that could still be correlation rather than causation, but I think we’re past that nuance on this issue, aren’t we?
As I write, the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing recommendations from a scientific advisory panel that would ban or severely limit indoor tanning use for those under 18. And if the feds don’t act, many states are thinking of taking up their own legislation.
Much of discussion in the marketing field as it relates to tanning will undoubtedly revolve around how to get young people to stop using tanning salons. Much like the “Truth” campaign to attack teen smoking, any anti-tanning efforts are likely to focus on dangers of tanning, what skin cancer looks like, and how it can kill you – not years down the road – but quickly.
Not that the messaging will be easy, or that it is not a professionally interesting problem, but I’d like to look at the issue from the other perspective for just a moment.
I’d like to pose the following question: How will tanning salons continue to market themselves? And if they do, is it ethical to do so? If it is, under what circumstances?
The knee-jerk reaction might be to say “shut them all down”, much like some would like to do to the tobacco industry. But that’s not only a mental copout, it’s also unrealistic. So long as tanning salons have a legal right to exist, and so long as they do not violate FCC guidelines on deceptive advertising, they have every right to communicate with their audience.
Let’s start with the first question, which speaks directly to target audience. Whether it is the FDA who lays down the law, or the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) who does it, or the states, the industry should count on being severely restricted in marketing to those under the age of 18.
That’s not as easy as it sounds.
The tobacco industry struggles with this as well, as does the liquor industry. If you advertise, say, in Cosmo, you would be reaching (primarily) an adult female in her late 20s to early 30s. But about 16-18% of your audience will be under 18. How do you select a media that will not reach who it is not intended to reach? (And let’s assume good intentions, that the industry does not want to reach younger people – which certainly is not a given – but that’s a topic for a different time).
Needless to say, this can get complicated fast. The chart below summarizes the coming maze of potential restrictions the tanning industry could face as it continues to communicate with its customers.
Needless to say, the tanning industry will need to get much better at selectively reaching its audience, and much more careful (creative!) regarding its messaging. The problem is, the tanning industry is highly fragmented. Unlike the barriers to entry in tobacco which consolidate the industry into a few very large players, even the “good guys” in tanning will need to compete with a huge pool of smarmy ones.
But beyond the legality lies the much more complicated ethical argument.
Assuming a combination of FTC, FDA, FCC, and state regulations will effectively remove the “under 18″ ethical issue, the tanning industry still will need to address the increasingly undeniable fact that it markets a dangerous product.
One argument would couch ethics in terms of the legal lay of the land. So long as the industry does not violate society’s written rules, it has every right to exist and market within that framework.
Another argument might ask the industry to weigh the benefits of tanning (self-esteem, enjoyment, etc) against the drawbacks (a risk – but not a guarantee – of skin conditions, including its most dangerous cancer). If the risks outweigh the benefits, so the argument goes, ethically you must cease.
A third path might raise the issue of “informed consent”. If the consumer enters the tanning salon with full knowledge and grasp of the risks, and choosing to partake anyway, then there is no ethical issue. The burden would be placed on the industry to educate its customers in order to make sure they can make the choice demanded of them eyes wide open.
I’m conflicted.
As a professional persuader, how could I use my abilities to help convince someone to engage in an activity I know could harm them – especially younger people? There is not only the question of a life cut short, but also the cost to society to care for very sick people when it could be avoided.
On the other hand, I am not sure I want to live in a world where someone (a government agency?) decides for me what products or services I can or cannot use. Of course, that already happens on a large scale, but how much more control do we want to cede?
My father had a way of thinking about things like this that I think will help us here. He reminded me to be careful of having too strong an opinion on anything. The world is full of millions of colors, only two of which are “black” and “white”.
I think he’s correct. Neither position is acceptable. Salons should be able to market their product, but it needs to be controlled. Balance may not make everyone happy, but I think it’s the best answer we’ve got right now.
Related Links:
U of M study links tanning beds to higher risk of skin cancer
Tags: FCC > fda > FTC > tanning
If you like Robin Hood, then I don’t
Posted on | June 21, 2010 | 1 Comment
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. When we like something, we tend to think others will too.
2. But when others like that same thing, we tend not to like it ourselves.
3. Recent research on Projection and Introspection helps marketers understand what might be going on, and what it means for message creation.
Last week, my friend and I had a talk about two of this year’s big summer movie movies: Robin Hood and The Last Airbender.
We started with the latest M.Night Shyamalan flick. I am really excited to see it. When they were smaller, my kids watched Avatar: The Last Airbender (not the silly 9-foot cat people, but rather the little boy with a curious arrow tattoo on his head). It was a cartoon about the last survivor of a genocide against his race of people (the “airbenders”) at the hands of another (the “firebenders”). He must travel the world to learn the skills necessary to face down the leader of the firebender race and bring peace to the world.
Deep stuff for a cartoon, I know, but we all loved it.
Most kids’ programming is trash – mind candy – with little staying power. Not this one. Needless to say, I was stoked.
But my friend was not. I had a dozen reasons why I thought he should like it. I knew he would want to see it. Instead, I got a dismissive “yawn.”
Fair enough. We don’t need to agree on everything. No big deal.
It wasn’t long before we found ourselves discussing the latest Russell Crowe-Robin Hood. I thought it was a pile of unmitigated, non-sensical, unnecessarily violent, Magna Carta revisionist history, bad accent trash. It was two and a half hours of my life I will never have back.
That’s not how he saw it. He thought it was pretty entertaining. In fact, he was surprised I didn’t like it.
Odd.
Of course, this could be a case of a friendly disagreement, or different tastes in movies, but an article I picked up in Science Daily seems to point to something a bit deeper going on.
The article presented two fancy words to describe what was going on: Projection and Introspection.
As it turns out, to understand a consumer’s opinion about said object (a movie, in my case), it matters greatly how you ask the question. In other words, the research wanted to answer two seemingly-separate questions: “Why do you like what I like?”, and “Why don’t I like what you like?”
It turns out, if you ask the question two different ways, you get two very different answers, driven by two very different thought processes.
The simply chart below should help visualize what the researchers were looking for. Remember, in both cases, we are simply asking an opinion regarding an “object”, but asking about it from two different perspectives.
Let’s start with the first scenario: You first are asked to form an opinion regarding an object. Then you are asked what another person’s opinion would be regarding the same object. In this case, you are likely to use Projection. In other words, you will tend to think the other person will share your opinion – projecting your preferences onto that person. That feeling of “other people like what I like” boosts self-confidence and camaraderie and helps explain this tendency.
Let’s move on to the second scenario: This time, you are first asked to think about what you think the other person’s opinion of the object would be. Then you are asked your opinion of said object. Remember, same object, different starting point. Funny thing, the tendency is precisely the opposite. We are more likely in this scenario to reject what others like or dislike. The researchers surmised the subjects felt their individuality and uniqueness were threatened by simply accepting the opinion of another.
Interesting.
When I read this, it seemed to fly in the face of the tried and true “bandwagon” theory of advertising and the whole appeal of pop culture. We like what others like in order to belong.
But I think both things could be going on. This study seems like a useful way to think about marketing preferences based on consumer psychographic profiles. It would seem to me highly self-identifying people will be less likely to be swayed by “everyone is doing it” messages.
We can see that play out in the marketing strategies for Apple’s latest little jewel. iPads marketed to 30-something gadget hounds simply need to remind them how cool it is. That same product marketed as a business productivity tool to the small business owner community (a more self-assured / self-confident group overall) highlights business applications and productivity savings in specific situations. In other words, is it “everyone’s decision” or “your decision”? As it turns out, that makes all the difference.
No one said consumer psychology was supposed to be easy…
Related Links:
Consumers: Why Do You Like What I Like, but I Don’t Like What You Like?
Why do tornados still kill people?
Posted on | June 14, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. Early in the morning of June 7, 2010, a series of tornados struck the Toledo area, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens.
2. Tornado forecasting is prone to false positives (a tornado predicted, but failing to materialize), creating a “cry wolf” set of scenarios.
3. In marketing, we call those scenarios “scripts”, and they are a powerful predictor of a behavioral response to a predicted tornado and ca inform public safety messaging.
The scene was both terrifying and sad at the same time.
Photo Credit: Toledo Blade
Last week, a set of powerful storms ripped through the upper Midwest, killing at least seven people in Ohio. Although people had ample warning about the potential severity of the storms, they struck overnight, catching people less aware than they would have been.
But did that matter?
Granted, fewer people were killed and injured in this round of storms than would have been the case 15 to 20 years ago, but one could argue this number still is unacceptably high. We live in an era of much-improved (but not perfect, of course) advance detection systems.
Meteorologists – even the best ones – can misinterpret computer-modeling data. That’s true. But we can, however, predict with startling accuracy the conditions under which a tornado is likely to form within a given storm cell. It’s not perfect, but it is a couple of orders of magnitude more accurate than it was in the 1980s or even the 1990s.
When people say “the predictions were wrong”, what they are really saying is “the conditions did not result in a tornado”. It may seem like I am splitting hairs, but this distinction (confusion?) is at the heart of why these storms still have the power to catch people seemingly “unprepared”.
In essence, what we need to ask is: Why don’t people heed the warnings?
On the surface, this may seem like a science education problem. I can see that. Americans, generally, do not understand science. We don’t understand what a “25% chance of rain” means, for instance. We have trouble with scientific “margin of error”. We want black and white answers – there will be a tornado or there will not be a tornado – but science (in any discipline, not just meteorology) rarely can give us one.
But I think on a deeper level, this is a human behavior problem, and one that we can understand using marketing psychology.
Specifically, I’m going to help us understand the killer tornado problem using something called a script schema.
In marketing circles, we use script schemas to help understand how “life situations” affect interactions with services and products.
For fun, let’s take a look at a simple example: Choosing what to eat for dinner. That choice could be understood many ways, but an important way people decide what to eat is the context (script) under which that decision is made. For example, if you are expecting guests, you may make a different choice than if you were “too tired to cook at home” or if you “just wanted something different to eat”. Marketers use this analysis to see how well their brand performs against these scenarios.
The chart below examines some common scenarios (scripts) and three choices – (1) Eating at home, (2) Davanni’s Pizza and Hoagies, and (3) Olive Garden Restaurant. The scale on the left refers to the perceived appropriateness of the choice to the situation at hand.
John Eighmey, at the University of Minnesota’s department of Communication and Journalism, did similar work with fast food restaurants. It proves an insightful way to examine how people see your brand and how your competitors stack up. From there, you can implement a strategy that addresses those strengths or weaknesses.
But let’s get back to severe weather and our tornado problem.
We can use the same method to plot scenarios alongside different choices. When we do, what may have been a bit murky becomes brilliantly clear: Our reaction is strongly influenced by the accuracy of the most recent prediction experience.
The graph is admittedly an oversimplification, and we could argue that we knew this intuitively, but if that’s true, why don’t we see messaging from public safety authorities consistently change based on the situation? In other words, why wouldn’t news outlets adjust their strategy based, not necessarily on the “weather facts”, but rather on the state of mind of the public?
Perhaps an interesting way to look at it.
A couple of other ideas: First, “Severe Weather Awareness Week” is in early April (a swing and a miss timing-wise, that’s like talking elections in August, no one cares). Second, the trend of “citizen journalists” standing outside during storms to get photos and video is probably the worst incarnation of this otherwise-promising trend. It presents storms and tornados as spectacles to be captured and rewarded with 15 minutes of fame rather than death traps to be avoided.
You could say the answer would be better prediction, but that’s only a long-term solution. In the short term, meteorologists need to get with the script.
Related Links:
Minnesota Severe Weather Awareness Week
Severe weather rakes Midwest; 7 dead
Photo Gallery: Toledo Blade
What if acupuncture really worked?
Posted on | June 7, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. Scientific studies in peer-reviewed journals are beginning to uncover the secrets behind Eastern/alternative medicine.
2. These studies have significant potential to open huge new segments of the healthcare market.
3. However, alternative care providers need to stop “selling to the sold” and adjust their messaging in order to reach that broader audience.
It was a cold January day in 2005.
Luckily for that time of year, the roads were clear. I was driving from my office in Inver Grove Heights through downtown St. Paul to Shoreview on the north side of town for a meeting. As Highway 52 approaches St. Paul, it slows and stops to allow people to exit onto I-94 or continue onto 7th Street.
As I stopped in traffic I noticed a 40-foot container truck bearing down at over 35 miles per hour in my rearview mirror. Even in perfect conditions, there was no way he could stop.
The driver hit the back end of my Acura TL at roughly 35 miles per hour.
I must have been wearing my lucky rocket ship underpants, because I walked away from it.
Or I might more appropriately say “painfully limped away”.
Nothing was broken, but everything hurt. My primary care physician sent me home with some “super-Advil” and instructions to get some rest. I took the advice. But I also took the advice of a trainer of mine to get some chiropractic help. I didn’t know much about chiropractic, but the idea seemed to make sense: Mechanical help for mechanical problems.
Over the next six months, I saw my chiropractor three days per week, then two days, and then one day. I got better slowly. In the end, I can’t really say whether I got better faster because of my treatment, or if I would have gotten better on my own without any special help.
My experience and my rationale – although isolated – speaks to the larger issue surrounding “alternative” medicine. This group includes chiropractic, message therapy, meditation, acupuncture, and a whole host of other treatments (many of Eastern origin).
The key question for people like me is this: Do these treatments work? And when I say “work”, I mean “work” in the scientifically demonstrable sense. In other words, better than placebo. More specifically, what conditions can they treat? In what dosages? With what side-effects? (Understand that I am not talking about “preventative” care, but rather “treatment”. And yes, I know there is a bigger issue lurking in there).
New research is beginning to shed light on those questions.
One study in particular, published in the highly-regarding peer-reviewed journal Brain Research specifically addresses acupuncture.
To quote the lead researcher Dr. Hugh MacPherson: “When a patient receives acupuncture treatment, a sensation called deqi can be obtained; scientific analysis shows that this deactivates areas within the brain that are associated with the processing of pain.” Current clinical trials at the University of York are investigating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of acupuncture for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and for depression. Recent studies in the US have also shown that acupuncture can be an effective treatment for migraines and osteoarthritis of the knee.
In short, the team hopes to begin to understand the neurological impact of acupuncture treatments in order to better understand how to use it as a therapeutic device in “Western” clinics.
Of course, more research needs to be done. Additionally, this study seems to conflict with other studies that say any effect is fleeting. Likely, with enough data, we’ll learn what acupuncture works for, what it doesn’t, and in what way.
What’s interesting for the marketing of alternative healthcare is what studies like this can mean for messaging and market segmentation.
To do that, let’s divide up the market not demographically, but psychographically. Start with three “spheres” of healthcare behavior – the first is Alternative Medicine, the second is Traditional US-based Primary Care, and the third is Emergency Room / No Care. As the graph below shows, people do not neatly fit into individual buckets.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone marketing alternative healthcare (a chiropractic clinic, acupuncture therapist, etc). Who do you target? With what message?
Group 1 is obvious. They accept only alternative treatment. But that is akin to preaching to the converted. It’s validating, but not a useful technique to widen your sphere of influence. Unfortunately, that is how most alternative care providers market themselves. Their messaging assumes you already accept Eastern/alternative medicine and its tenants.
Groups 4, 5, and 6 are clearly wastes of time. they don’t take healthcare seriously, or if they do, are not willing to take alternative treatments seriously, no matter the evidence (at least in the short term).
In order to move into Group 2 and Group 3 – which represent significant new market share and profit potential, especially as Baby Boomer retire – alternative care providers must begin to communicate more like a “Western” care provider and less like a “spiritual guide”. And that’s where studies like MacPherson’s are worth their weight in gold. Scientific studies help bridge the gap. They invite skepticism. They demonstrate the limits of knowledge. They do not over-promise. They simply say what is.
This kind of approach can help put people in Groups 2 and 3 at ease. They don’t feel as though they are being bamboozled by fantastic promises of “healing”, but rather that they can make an informed decision based on independent evidence.
It’s not fair, but many alternative medicine providers get lumped into the “snake oil” category and dismissed as such.
As hard as it is to be subjected to scientific rigor, it is the path to wider acceptance for the entire alternative medicine industry.
Related Links:
Study Maps Effects of Acupuncture on the Brain
Tags: acupuncture > chiropractic > eastern medicine
Got Mammary Gland Excretions?
Posted on | May 31, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. The National Milk Producers Federation wants the FDA to crack down on plant “milks” (i.e. Silk) using the word “milk” to describe their product.
2. The dairy industry has reason to worry – dairy consumption isn’t quite keeping pace with inflation, the soy milk market (while small) is increasing rapidly, and plant milk prices are approaching parity with dairy milk.
3. But protecting the generic “milk” word is a losing strategy – the dairy industry should instead through its muscle behind differentiating products, especially the exploding probiotics market.
I tried Almond Milk a couple of weeks ago.
I am not a fan.
Even though I tried both the “Regular” and “Vanilla” flavors at the SuperTarget sample cart in Shoreview, I couldn’t stomach it. My wife bought a small carton to try in her cereal (it didn’t go well for her, either). I know a lot of people like “non-cow” milks, but to me, they taste wrong. Perhaps that’s because I am making a mental connection between “cow’s milk” and this new “milk” – perhaps an unfair comparison.
That mental comparison, I come to learn, is precisely the problem the National Milk Producers Federation sees as well. The NMPF has recently petitioned the FDA to stop allowing “non-dairy” beverages to use the word “milk”. To put it more clearly, the NMPF wants the FDA to specify that only mammary secretions from certain mammals (cows, sheep, and goats) may be marketed using the word “milk”.
They contend that the word “milk” conveys a specific set of expectations, characteristics, and health benefits that other “milks” do not. In short, they confuse the buying public. The NMPF points to industry research that shows people lump soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, and other plant-based creations into the “milk” category, and see the two as interchangeable. Also, they claim plant-based “milks” marketing their product as “just as good as milk” distort the “facts” as the dairy industry sees them.
And when the name “milk” becomes genericized, it loses its power as a brand.
The NMPF is quick to point out that it is not saying these products should not be sold, but only that they use a different name to describe their product.
Before you file this in the “you’ve got to be kidding” folder, it’s important to understand how big of a business issue this is.
When soy-based “milks” got their start as early as the 1970s, they represented a mere nothing to the dairy industry. They were hard to get, expensive, and unpopular.
That all changed with “Silk”. A fun branding combination of the words “Soy” and “Milk”, Silk was the first real marketing success for the non-dairy milk industry. From a set of humble beginnings, Silk sales passed the half-billion mark in the middle of the last decade and are approaching $1 billion annually. But it was not just the name or some sense of “latent demand”. Silk was successful, in part, because it was the first truly “national” milk brand. Up until that point, there was no national dairy milk brand – only store-based, local, or regional brands. Silk was able to capitalize on national marketing power that the dairy industry could not.
So what’s the net affect?
The numbers tell the story. While milk production is rising at about 1.1% per year (at the same rate as US population growth), dairy consumption is only growing at 0.4% per year. In the long run, the pressure will be to push prices down (or at least hold dairy milk prices to anemic growth). During the same time period, prices for soy milks (such as the brand Silk) have trended downward as volumes dramatically expand.
Of course, some of this decline in consumption could be due to population shifts and changing tastes, but 11% annual growth in plant-milks in the low margin dairy milk commodity market is significant, especially when that’s triple the dairy milk growth rate. Also, as plant milks approach the regular price of skim milk, it stands to reason more people would consider them a viable substitute – something soy agricultural interests are working hard to promote and dairy agricultural interests want to slow, stop, and ideally, reverse.
Hence the attempted protection for the “milk” brand.
But I think that proverbial cow has left the pasture.
The soy industry has used issues surrounding the use of antibiotics, Bovine Growth Hormone, and risks with un-pasteurized milks, to nudge more and more of the market to its side. I’m not qualified to take sides in the health aspects of this debate, but there’s little doubt the strategy has been working. Instead of protecting an now-clearly-generic term, the dairy industry would be better served competing in the marketplace using a differentiation strategy.
In addition to the current suite of dairy milk products (the “big four”: whole, 2%, 1%, and skim), the industry must do a better job unifying and promoting an entirely new group of products. These include the neglected brands of Yogurt milks, infused milks (vegetables/fruits), Omega 3 milks, and flavored milks. These can command a 10-15% price premium over the plant-based milks and provide the market additional variety.
More than that, as the Yogurt industry has successfully done, the milk industry can work to promote pro-biotic milk products. Available in limited distribution now, these milks command a 20-30% premium over soy products and tap into a growing boomer market for “health” foods.
If the dairy industry is frustrated by declining margins and undifferentiated products, it seems like it has the tools to attack both. The term “milk” is not one of them.
Related Links:
Imitation Dairy Products
Tags: dairy market US > dairy milk > soy milk
Privacy problems will kill Facebook
Posted on | May 24, 2010 | No Comments
Author:
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Key Points:
1. Facebook’s user behavior is a typical “long tail”, where the vast majority of users interact very little.
2. This is typical of many electronic marketplaces and social networks, and represents solid business potential.
3. However, increased privacy concerns could tip the balance of perceived risk for the huge number of casual users, sending them away in droves.
400 million users.
Wow. That’s a lot of people on Facebook. And I’ll admit, the number has the power to stick with you. I know it did for me. If you think about it in context, that’s more than the population of the United States. It’s certainly bigger than any other social network by a couple of orders of magnitude. Authors the world over have predicted the end of Google, Microsoft, and Apple at the hands of the Facebook juggernaut.
But my personal experience never really meshed with all of the hype. It just didn’t sit well with me. I know there are a lot of users, but the company isn’t making any money. At least not on the scale of the three giants it hopes to unseat.
Add to that a spate of complaints regarding Facebook actively working to change the notion of online privacy, and something just smells funny.
To get my head around the issue, I started with a quick analysis of my own social network on Facebook. I have a reasonably diverse “friend” base, with contacts from grade school, high school, undergrad, and grad school, along with personal contacts, friends of friends, and people I used to coach. All told – a little over 100.
For a period of one month, I counted the number of interactions for each friend as posted on their wall (and therefore, on my news feed). It doesn’t catch everything, but it’s a pretty good barometer of activity.
Here’s the result set:
As you can see, a very small group of people in my network accounted for a huge percentage of all of the posts, comments, and interactions. A much smaller group posted a few times. A larger group interacted only once. About half had no activity whatsoever.
If we fit a curve to the data set, and make the assumption that my data are representative, we can see a familiar pattern emerge.
Statisticians (and author Chris Anderson) call it “the Long Tail”. It describes the situation here reasonably well; a large group of people interact with Facebook very seldom, but not zero. From a business perspective, it costs Facebook next to nothing to provide services, games, and tools to this group – all with the individual potential to monetize the activity.
What we’ve done is create a “utility curve” – a way to see the usefulness and value of a social network technology across its user base, from the hyper-users to the passerby-users.
When we look at other social networks, we see a similar pattern.
Twitter has fewer opportunities for intense interaction (it is a simpler system, after all), but drops off in much the same way. LinkedIn falls off as well, but provides a bit more usefulness even at the far end of the curve – an online professional resume has more value “just sitting there” than a dormant Twitter or Facebook account.
But that didn’t really answer my original question. And here’s where the privacy issues circle back and helps us clarify the real problem.
It all comes into focus when we realize Facebook does not have a “long tail” distribution – one in which the right end of the curve approaches (but does not cross) zero. Facebook’s utility curve does cross zero and move into negative territory. In other words, for some users, using Facebook can actually be harmful, not simply “of limited use”.
The graph below illustrates that difference.
Think of “negative territory” for Facebook users as real or perceived harm. Toward the left of the “zero point”, the harm might be modest – slightly embarrassing pictures, time-wasting games, etc. But at the far of the curve, think of people who have lost jobs (or spouses!) from Facebook posts. Don’t think it could be that bad? Ask someone who’s been stalked on Facebook.
But as long as privacy settings are in place, and robust, the potential for harm exists, but it’s limited. Frankly, it may be no more likely than a mirror of normal social situations.
However, as Facebook obfuscates its privacy controls in an effort to monetize the network, you can see the utility curve shift to the left. This dramatically increases the area under the negative end of the curve. Put another way, a larger group of people will either perceive or experience harm from continued participation in Facebook.
And with a large group of people – who all use Facebook a little bit – the whole “long tail” business model falls apart.
That is Facebook’s fundamental problem.
For a huge number of Facebook users (93-95 percent of them, or all but 2 million users), the social network is a low risk, low reward endeavor. Neat to be on, but nothing special. But dial up the perceived risk, and that huge number of users will reset their own risk tolerance. Without much benefit to keep them engaged, they’re gone.
My prediction: It’s only a matter of time. More specifically, the rate of decline. It may start off slowly at first, but a social network’s power (and value) comes from its size as well as its ability to deeply engage a small number of people.
Without a major rework on the privacy front, I give Facebook 12 months.
Related Links:
How to permanently delete your Facebook account
About
Jason Voiovich
Ecra Creative Group
Phone: 651.209.2778
Principal and co-founder of Ecra Creative Group, a Minneapolis, MN based creative services firm specializing in brand development, reputation process management, naming/trademark, and product launches to drive measurable business results.
