Archive for the ‘Retail Marketing’ Category
Imagine that you’re moving your company to a new office space. You have the opportunity to let it say everything about you that you want your customers, business associates, and vendors to know. You spend time with an expert contractor coordinating improvements. You work on room designs with a space planning specialist. You use your IT guru to ensure your computers, phones, etc. will operate effortlessly. You do this because when it’s finished you’ll have work space that not only helps your company’s productivity, but also defines your brand for every visitor to see.
Now, replace this office space design process with your website development process. These days, there’s not much difference. You’re just replacing tangible brick and mortar with virtual space. But if you consider which of these walls and roofs more people visit, you’ve figured out the true value of your website.
So back up for a moment and ask yourself, “How much am I willing to pay for experts who know how to turn a cookie-cutter office space into my company’s brand?” Chances are good you’re willing to pay more than a few dollars. So, why, when your website is your opportunity to show your unique brand, would you settle for one that has nothing unique?
Interesting paradox, huh? Websites are much less expensive to build than they were just a few short years ago, but if you want to make yours stand out, to represent your brand and do a big part your selling for you, you’re going to have to pay for some real experts. Not just programmers who know html, php and css, but designers and brand strategists who know how to represent your best assets online. And writers who know how to take the hundreds of keywords necessary to help your site show up well in search results, and incorporate them into enticing content that flows seamlessly.
Websites like this are not just necessary for e-commerce businesses, they’re imperative for any business that wants to take advantage of the wonderful benefits the web has to offer your brand. It’s a new way of thinking, isn’t it?
I originally wrote the blog post below in March of 2010, when we made the decision to move to a new kind of office space as soon as our lease was up. We are now just two weeks away from moving to our brand new office. I revisited what I wrote 16 months ago, to see if our rationale for moving had changed. It hasn’t. But something I didn’t realize back then was how many businesses are moving to shared work space environments. Most surprising, it’s not because of the economy.
Shared space is not a new idea. Remember Chiat Day’s virtual office disaster back in 1999? But it has certainly grown more popular for companies that used to make bigger offices on better floors more important than money. For many businesses now being run by energetic entrepreneurs this seems like a ridiculous idea. Why separate brain power? Why limit collaboration to conference rooms? And why make office size a competition between co-workers?
I personally give a lot of credit for this change in thinking to Tony Hsieh, CEO and founder of Zappos. As Zappos grew from a small online shoe seller, to the mammoth business that Amazon purchased in 2009 for $1.2 billion, Tony never thought twice about moving out of his same-size cubicle located in the middle of all the other Zappos employees. Certainly it was an act of humility, which Tony is known for, but he also knew how important it was for the company’s success that he stay in the midst of the action. In his book, Delivering Happiness, he credits the most successful collaborations came from people having direct access with him, and each other.
That’s pretty much what you’ll see at the new Brandtailers office. And, even though it’s been a little scary for us to realize we’re going to be working literally side-by-side and face-to-face, we have the team to pull it off. Stop by after August 1st and see for yourself. Our new address will be posted shortly on our Contact page on this site.
March 2010:
Brandtailers has moved four times during our 20 years in business. Each time we’ve moved to a bigger (although not necessarily better) space. Before we made our last address change a little over four years ago, it felt like we were stepping over each other just to get around the office.
So we made the move from 5,800 square feet to just short of 14,000. For the first few months the extra room to breath was so refreshing. The Creative Department had their own wing, the Media Department had theirs. The Interactive Department was on the other side of the building, while Account Services and Admin were off in a whole other section. Ahhh, space.
But guess what happened over just a couple of months? People stopped talking to each other face-to-face. They weren’t collaborating like they used to. Instead of getting out of their chairs and walking 100 feet to talk to someone in another department, they’d send them an email. We thought we came up with the brilliant solution of encouraging instant messaging to make the communication feel more personal. That was dumb. People stayed in their offices even more.
Our lease is coming up for renewal in the next year and, yes, we will be moving to a different type of space. No more “wings” for us. It just doesn’t work. Hopefully in our next office instant messaging will involve vocal chords, emails will be for external purposes, and collaboration will be spontaneous moments of smart, creative people within ear shots of each other.
For those of you who like coming to our office, don’t worry. We’ll be taking the pool, ping-pong and fuss ball tables with us. And our walls will still be bright and tell their stories. Yes, we’ll take the African spears too. But we may be stepping over each other again, so bring your own chair.
The problem with being cheap is that once you start, your competitor will likely play the same game. 90-days later you’ll find yourself as a profitless commodity.
Cheap is a lazy way out of the battle for consumer awareness.
Why do some customers focus so much on price? Because you’re not giving them anything else to think about.
With 84% of U.S. consumers using the internet to determine what they’re going to buy and who they’re going to buy from, having a brand is more important than ever.
Isn’t it true that in every market measured, the leading brand, the one with the highest positive name recognition, has a huge advantage over the others? Whether it’s Honda, Nike or Tide Laundry Detergent, a lot of benefits go to the brand that wins.
Branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, it is about getting consumers to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem. The great success stories are not the companies that did what others did, but a little cheaper. They are companies that decided to do things a whole lot differently. Don’t just think better. Think different and establish your brand.
Written By: Kristen Roberts
What have we been saying? In today’s advertising and marketing, TRUTH SELLS. Here’s one more great example. Domino’s profits have just reached an all-time industry mark due to their radically transparent “Oh Yes We Did” campaign about their pizza being, to put it lightly, less-than-the-best.
Domino’s ran commercials and print ads admitting its old pizza sucked. It then introduced a new recipe by showing it to its staunchest critics. It continued the transparency theme by encouraging customers to alert Domino’s when the pizzas they ordered were not up to par. With today’s instant media exposure thanks to Flips, G4 iPhones and good old fashioned video cameras, you can imagine how many Domino’s Pizza haters uploaded their less-than-par pizzas to YouTube.
Russell Weiner, Domino’s CEO at the time the campaign launched, said he was pretty scared but still willing to risk the company’s reputation. “You’re a 50-year-old pizza company with 5,000 stores out there, these guys first tell you to go on air and say your pizza sucks, and then go out there and show how crappy it’s made,” he said. You wonder if Russell Weiner would have taken such a risk if he were not planning on leaving soon after the campaign launched. But after all, whatever happened with the campaign – and the company – would be his legacy, too. Lucky for everyone, it was working well enough that incoming CEO, Patrick Doyle, continued to support the effort with equal gusto.
How does one of a million “New and Improved” campaigns that today’s consumers are numb to have such dramatic success? By shocking people with its honesty and transparency that exposed Domino’s humility and possibility of failure. Patrick Doyle admitted that, if they fail at this endeavor, it could most likely be the end of Domino’s. Year-to-date, same store sales just exceeded 12%. That’s a new record in the pizza business.
Look at your company. Are you even capable of being transparent? If so, are you willing to market your company as flawed, but humble and honest? Most business owners reading this think we’re crazy. But remember, people don’t trust most advertisements. If you can’t get your message past this initially huge roadblock, maybe you’re wasting your money advertising. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to offer your customers some radical transparency, you’ve at least got a shot at breaking through that tough core of consumer mistrust. And when consumers trust you, they become your advocates.
Are you willing to at least think about what it would take? It might not be as scary as it sounds. It’s the way things are going, and getting there first while doing it right could mean an awfully big increase in market share. Something to ponder, eh?
Sounds like a crazy question until you look at the way Facebook, YouTube, Flicker and simple templated blogs can easily duplicate a website’s content these days. Besides, websites can be frustrating to maintain, challenging to keep current, and expensive to upgrade, right? Plus, with more people using Twitter and Facebook as search engines, who needs to pull up first in Google anymore? Remember the announcement a few months ago that Facebook surpassed Google in weekly internet traffic? Makes you think you might not need a website as much as you used to.
Wrong.
There’s no question that a company’s website is still it’s most powerful marketing tool. You own it, you control 100% of it’s content, you manage its destiny. Your Facebook page? Well, ask Mr. Zuckerberg what he’s thinking of next and that’s what your Facebook page will look, feel and behave like next month. Your YouTube channel? Have you ever gotten into its content management system? Nope. And it’s the same with most of the other marketing tools we mentioned. Today you need a great website more than ever.
In fact, there is even more opportunity for today’s corporate websites to drive business straight to your doorstep. But you still have to start by focusing on your brand. Forrester Research says 67% of today’s customers create their initial opinion of a company via their corporate website. This is the classic branding part of marketing, where you build trust with your consumer. But a well-designed website can also take your potential customer into the actual sales process at the right place and right time. A website that’s been designed to offer both a brand and retail message has proven to be stickier, with more time spent browsing through pages, clicking additional links and converting to leads or online sales. Look at Home Depot, Wahoos Fish Taco and Morgan Stanley for a few good examples. They have places within their sites where their call-to-action request is not only appropriate, but expected.
So then, what do you do with your other marketing tools like Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels and Flickr? Simple. Use them to create conversations. Get people (aka customers and potential customers) talking to you, about you, and for you. Sure, you can include calls-to-action when appropriate. But mix them up. Remember, people don’t want to be sold – but they love to buy from companies they trust. Build your website with this in mind and you’ll be on the right path to online marketing success.
Recognize this guy? He’s “The man your man could smell like” from the Old Spice campaign that launched during this year’s Superbowl. Now, with over 11 million views and 20,000 consumer comments on You Tube, this campaign is the ad industry’s year-to-date darling, winning Clios and dozens of other creative awards. This Old Spice manly man also ambushed YouTube for two days this month, posting over 200 instantaneous videos responding to Twitter requests from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and Perez Hilton. The campaign was owning both Twitter and YouTube like no other campaign has done yet.
Wow. Quite a marketing success, right? Wrong.
Sales of Old Spice’s Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, the product in the commercials, have dropped 7% in the last 52 weeks. Ad critics are blaming the confusion of who our Old Spice manly man’s message is targeting. Is it the ladies who giggle and gawk at him, or the men who want ladies to giggle and gawk at them?
It doesn’t matter. Because that’s not where the campaign went wrong. In fact, the campaign didn’t go wrong at all. The client went wrong. So often this happens when you have great creatives like Wieden and Kennedy, where the client (P&G) gets so caught up in the creative, they think it will make up for a weak product.
Any adult male who knows what Old Spice is, probably still relates the smell to his grandfather. It’s a 73 year old brand that people still think smells like a 73 year old brand. Maybe P&G hoped women would go out and buy one Red Zone After Hours Body Wash as a joke for their boyfriend or husband. That could create a few million extra sales – once. But think about it, what guy really wants to be a repeat buyer of a product that reminds him of his grandfather. Worse yet, a product that sends the message, “I want to be a manly man.” Come on. There’s a saying in advertising: “The fastest way to kill a campaign is by doing great creative for a bad product.” This may be the case for Old Spice.
P.S. Selfishly, we hope sales pick up. The spots are hilarious.
