State of the Brand

Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. The US Justice Department fined Pfizer $2.3 billion for illegal marketing practices; taking doctors on golf trips, paying for massages, and the like to encourage off-label prescriptions of popular drugs. 2. With such a hefty penalty, conventional wisdom would say Pfizer’s market perception should suffer. By objective measures, that is not happening. 3. Pfizer has insulated its corporate brand by positioning its blockbuster drugs as the stars, and not marketing itself. That seems to be working. For now.

Remember the dad in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”?

He used Windex® for everything. He went so far as to carry around a bottle at all times, spraying things (and people) at comically inopportune times. Clearly, neither the FDA nor our friends at S.C. Johnson and Company in Racine, Wisconsin endorse Windex for the treatment of cold, flu, arthritis, and acne. The depiction was so ridiculous, most (reasonable consumers) wouldn’t take it seriously.

Now, let’s change the scenario.

Imagine you are recovering from a surgical procedure. Let’s pick appendix removal, but it could be anything. Clearly, you’re in pain, and your attending physician prescribes a medication - in this case, Bextra®. She tells you to take the prescribed dosage as needed and come back in three weeks.

Let me ask you something: In that scenario, do you look up the drug name in the formulary? Did you learn your doctor just prescribed well beyond the recommended dosage? Did you also learn Bextra; was not approved to treat post operative pain? That is was really an arthritis drug? And a Cox-2 inhibitor? The same Cox-2 inhibitor class of drugs you’ve heard about?

But your doctor knows best, right? Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Most “special financing offer” auto advertising is so bland, you hardly notice. Not this time. 2. Porsche is under tremendous sales pressure, volume down some 27%, and special offers seem to be helping the cause. 3. However, price discounts undermine the value proposition of any brand - but especially lux brands like Porsche. Say hello to deteriorating margins.

Three words undeniably mean “sale” at your local car dealer.

Giant. Inflatable. Gorilla.

It conjures images of smarmy guys in plaid suits and plastic smiles. Add in stale popcorn and balloons for the kids, and you’ve got the makings of a busy Saturday afternoon.

When you arrive, you can count on a bevy of smart-sounding deals: X% financing (where “x” equals some number less than 1.0%), Cash Back deals, Bring Back deals. You can expect to learn what “taking delivery from dealer stock” means. You’ll start to wish you listened more carefully to the super-fast-disclaimer-talk the last time you saw the television ad.

It’s also pretty easy to guess what car nameplates you’ll see on the lot: Chevy, Ford, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Buick, Kia, Hyundai. You might see the occasional Honda or Toyota, but don’t get your hopes up.

It is so common, and so predictable, that it becomes background noise. In the advertising biz, this type of promotion is akin to wiping your backside with your ad budget - no one is listening anymore.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. It may be a response to the globalization of the food supply, but locally-produced foods are a growing trend. 2. Following the same broad strategy as organics, local food producers use emotional appeals as well as raw facts to convince us to pay more. 3. In the end, however, globalization (and resulting efficiencies) may be too powerful a force for anything but a niche market presence for “local” foods.

I had every intention to buy Gold’n Plump chicken.

My wife and I were at the grocery store (which shall remain nameless) last weekend. And I was ready. I had seen the ‘local chicken’ ads on television and on billboards during my (some days too many) trips around town. They made sense to me. I was ready to ‘take a stand’.

When we arrived at the meat counter, I noticed a competing national brand on sale for 20 percent less money. But I was prepared. Locally produced food was important to me. I put it in the cart anyway.

That’s when I noticed the I-can’t-take-you-anywhere look. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. A single print and broadcast ad from the World Wildlife Federation comparing the 9/11 terror attacks to the 2005 Tsunami death toll crosses the line. 2. But it is not that the ad shocks us - that’s not the point - the ad flies in the face of the mission of the organization, and undermines its reputation. 3. Corporate sponsorship, partnerships, and individual membership will likely suffer in the US, perhaps with irreversible damage.

I don’t have a problem with shock advertising.

I really don’t.

In some instances, violently abrupt advertising can help shake us out of our complacency and drive attention (and ideally, action) toward a worthy cause.

But it is so easy to get it wrong. The follow ad from the World Wildlife Federation is a case in point.

Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. The US Army spends 10 times what the average college or university spends for each new recruit. That just is not sustainable. 2. A combination of regulatory changes and careful data-mining - combined with smart sponsorship and coaching for the popular video game Halo 3 - are likely to turn the tide. 3. The inevitable targeting of younge r and younger children by recruiting messages could be seen as both a threat to the innocence of youth as well as an opportunity to communicate civic virtue to young citizens.

It costs the US Army, on average, $24,500 for each new recruit.

$24,500.

That may not sound like a lot of money until you consider the average university spends just over $2000 to achieve the same result. Street math: The Army spends 10 times what the U of M spends. Yikes.

Let’s do more math, shall we. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Apple’s latest operating system release, OSX 10.6 (code named “Snow Leopard”), spawned an unplanned grassroots effort to help real cats in the wild. 2. The attention is a boon to Snow Leopard conservancy organizations, due perhaps in part to unexpected Google search results, the speed of social media, and Apple’s status. 3. However, the real hook is the image Apple uses to promote its new product - so different from other Apple creative and so powerfully engaging.

This was never supposed to happen.

The new Apple Operating System - technically named Mac OSX 10.6 - simply was following the naming convention the company adopted when it released version 10.2. That was Jaguar. Then came Panther (10.3). Then Tiger (10.4). Then Leopard (10.5).

You get the idea.

The newest release - 10.6, or “Snow Leopard” - has been positioned by Apple as an important, but evolutionary release. Most of the upgrading this time around happened “under the hood”. In other words users won’t see too many new whiz-bang features. From that perspective, using “Snow Leopard”, versus the more distinctly named “Lion”, made product management sense.

From a business objectives perspective, it also helped Apple stay one step ahead of the upcoming Microsoft 7 operating system release.

But something odd happened on the way to market. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Build-A-Bear Workshop and Ridemakerz use the same business model, with a different product, to target girls and boys respectively. 2. BABW invested in the Ridemakerz concept, and helped it along. It really should work. 3. But Ridemakerz really doesn’t work as well. My guess is that the real reason lies in the subtle differences between mother/daughter and father/son relationships.

My wife collects Build-A-Bears.

But not just any Build-A-Bear, she only collects the limited edition World Wildlife Federation “bears”. Last weekend, we stood outside the Build-A-Bear workshop at the Ridgedale Mall in Minnetonka, Minnesota - before the store opened - to be the first in line to purchase the newest WWF wolf.

We stood and waited alongside a group of 9 and 10 year old girls getting ready for a Build-A-Bear birthday party with their moms. We waited as early shoppers stood and gawked at the new (limited edition as well) Portuguese Water Dog Build-A-Bear, no doubt encouraged by the Obama girls’ choice of puppy. My wife chuckled at the fathers and husbands kept physical distance from the store. I didn’t chuckle. I was working on increasing my distance.

The whole surreal experience reminded me of an eerily similar experience about a year ago. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. The Hong Kong airport uses a mix of cheap technology and plain old-fashioned empathy to make its flying experience markedly superior to the US. 2. The US industry, by stark contrast, thinks customer service is something that happens only when convenient for them. 3. Some say airline traffic is down because of the recession. That could be. But a more likely explanation is that most people hate the experience.

I thought my friend Byron was joking.

After all, this story did come off his personal blog after a 16-hour-plus flight from Chicago to Hong Kong. I had every reason to think he was hallucinating.

He wasn’t.

The baggage claim system in the Hong Kong airport is like nothing US domestic airline passengers have ever seen before.

As Byron watched the bags circle the carousel, he noticed they were clumped in groups of three to four bags. In addition, they were all standing upright (on the skinny end). Interesting. Clearly, there was no way bags would magically exit the luggage shoot in this configuration, so Byron (being the enterprising Babson College student that he is) found out why. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Lund’s and Byerly’s entered into a partnership with the Double R Ranch to provide premium beef for its retail grocery stores, taking advantage of building its footprint in a rapidly growing segment. 2. However, it can be hard to distinguish the Lund’s and Byerly’s effort from similar efforts at other major grocery chains, where the “partnership” is more marketing creation than physical reality. 3. In the long-term, however, an authentic branding position has better staying power than a simply imaginary one.

I love the meat counter at Byerly’s.

They still have actual butchers. Not that I would blame most people for not knowing one when they saw one, but nowhere else can use ask tough questions about meat preparation and cooking and actually receive intelligent answers. It’s just about heaven for an armchair chef. Continue Reading »

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Abercrombie & Fitch publicly said is abandoning its premium price strategy and focusing its offerings in order to boost earnings. 2. Lowering prices, however, is a dangerous slippery slope in the fashion world. Shoppers devalue the brand, and will only buy when there’s a bargain. 3. Youth trends are fickle, but Abercrombie & Fitch could have positioned itself for success if it had only reinvented itself sooner. It is likely too late now.

I thought I’d never see it.

A sale. At Abercrombie & Fitch.

Middle school has arrived for our family, and so has a certain sensitivity toward the clothes we buy our oldest son. Needless to say, I found myself at the kid-version of the popular Abercrombie & Fitch. This is the store with less soft core imagery than the adult version, but basically the same clothes, the same undeniably pungent over-cologned aroma, and the same lucky-I-have-rock-n-roll-ear-damage music volume. Continue Reading »

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