Sensitive Heroes

Brands are curious heroes.
They may be courageous enough to beat an entire army of enemies but
lack of enough love will almost bring them to their knees.

Here are three tokens of love, your brand will always understand:

(1) Consistency
Brands really really hate to change as often as brand managers switch
jobs or as often as a so-called design-guru tells you to change packaging.
I know at least two fmcg brands here in Romania which have lost brand
equity because they confused customers with horrible packaging and
with pushing two types of packaging design at the same time.

(2) Price wars kept at bay
Think of an elephant trying to compete at a weight contest. What are
the elephant's chance of getting a prize for the skinniest animal
around? Now picture this: brands command premiums. If you have them
competing on price for too long or too hard, they lose strength and
staying power. Enter price wars only if you're the sure winner and
the war is short lived :)

(3) Relevance
I'm positive that your advertising agency is mad about those pink
shelf-talkers saying "Have a minute?". But, think about how pink and
joyful fit to your aging maturing target market or to the nature of
the product itself.

Guard consistency and relevance. And keep price wars at bay. This is
how your brand will stay a hero for a long time.

Adapting vs. Adopting

Sometimes free advice is... well... just free. :)

"Value-for-Money Strategies for Recessionary Times"( by Peter J. Williamson and Ming Zeng, HBR-March 09), otherwise a great read, made me think that not all marketing tactics are universally applicable. One must adapt general strategies and tactics for local impact. This is rule number one in Int'l Marketing)

For example, the text implies for multinational companies to use (promotional) tactics from emerging economies in their home markets. Acer "uses a novel channel": heavy-luggage trolleys in Asia's airports. Great idea, as business people and wealthy vacationers can be exposed to its logo while carrying their luggage. However, copy-paste-ing this initiative in Europe, for example, will most probably expose your message to more 'regular people' and 'low cost travelers' than you'd want to. When choosing a channel for one's brand message, one should put emphasis on efficiency.

'Optimizing promotional activities can be achieved by multinationals by adapting low-cost strategies from emerging markets. However, there's an important difference between adopting and adapting.'

I'm sure that the authors meant it this way as well, but the example with Acer is getting a different idea across.

The Goal

The Goal
Originally uploaded by brandlyyours

This squirrel almost makes any self-help book useless. Keep an eye on the prize, assume some risks and you'll get many goodies.

Is this a good way of living? well, it might be one, if you are a naturally born runner.

Applying the same logic to branding and marketing tactics:
(1) Doesn't this squirrel remind you of guerrilla marketing? Quick, nimble competitors sweep away market share from large, slow - moving giants.
(2) Let's say blood flow is cash flow. The squirrel normally has 300 heart beats per minute. On the other hand, a domestic swine, similar to wild boars, has a heart beat of only 60 - 100 beats per minute. Do these figures resemble the real cash flow for small vs large successful companies?

Anyways, don't let a squirrel get you to far from doing marketing :)

Here are $2bn. Can I have some respect please?

Yesterday I went shopping for food supplies and I have used my powers to send an important message to the Italian government.

On a bottle of cooking oil I found a certain message which made me alter my entire shopping approach. The message read: "Imported from Italy".

Now, I am no fan of economic programs such as "buy American/Romanian etc", but because the media in Italy is currently balking at the entire Romanian people, I have decided that at least for the time being, I will spend my money on a cooking oil made in a different part of the world and not in Italy.

Today, I have checked some statistics and found out that Romania's trade deficit with Italy was just a hint above $2 billion. (2007 figures from the UN)

Now, my €3 for cooking oil might be less than peanuts to Italy's exports to Romania BUT someone talking to the Italian government should keep in mind, that if everything else fails, we could try to convert the trade deficit in image surplus.

Just repeat after me: "Here are $2bn. Can I have some respect please?" :)

The Sound of Marketing - The Crisis

Listen to "Yesterday". It's about love, sorrow and sweet regrets.
Doesn't it sound familiar? It's about the crisis.

"Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,"

Tick --> This one applies to our days

"Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday."

Tick --> This one applies to our days

"Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,"

Tick --> This one applies to our days, the marketing budgets etc

"There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly."

Tick --> This one applies to our days

And, because I'm positive that you all know the song, here's a "rare" studio recording of it.

The Economic Crisis, MS approach

This is how the crisis would have looked on a Windows PC.

"In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset" (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft)

From blogged

PS: The figures are words written in hexadecimal.

Update: for lazy texters, the figures are

437265646974206372756e6368

4f766572666c6f77

536361726564

45636f6e6f6d79

5374726f6e67204272616e73

507269636520456c6173746963697479

536869656c6564

The Sound of Marketing - Consumer Choice

Consumer choice, competing brands and "no-frills-just-honesty" brands. All these concepts and more in "Two Princes" (Spin Doctors, 1992) click to get to youtube

"One, two, princes kneel before you
(thats what I said, now)
Princes, princes who adore you
(just go ahead, now)
One has diamonds in his pockets
(that sounds great, now)
This one, said he wants to buy you lockets
(aint in his head, now)"


"Marry him or marry me,
Im the one that loves you baby cant you see?
Aint got no future or a family tree,
But I know what a prince and lover ought to be,
I know what a prince and lover ought to be...."

View this Speech

Mr. Putin spoke at Davos. Key words: "global", "crisis", "must". "Energy" and "economics" also rank high.

Intersting idea for the paranoids among us:
"Third. Excessive dependence on a single reserve currency is dangerous for the global economy. Consequently, it would be sensible to encourage the objective process of creating several strong reserve currencies in the future. It is high time we launched a detailed discussion of methods to facilitate a smooth and irreversible switchover to the new model." (transcript via WSJ)

The Sound of Marketing - Total Customer Lifetime Value

By the Book

Total Customer Lifetime Value - TCLV =
average spending *
average purchase frequency *
average timespan during which customers buy the brand

Listen to the Music

"I got my mind set on you
But it’s gonna take money
A whole lotta spending money
It’s gonne take plenty of money
To do it right child
It’s gonna take time
A whole lot of precious time
It’s gonna take patience and time, mmm"

Got my mind set on you, George Harrison

Why not look for songs about marketing? Know a good one? Let's hear it. Just jot down a comment :)

The Sound of Marketing - Introduction to this New Series

We have always found various deeper than expected meanings in both lyrics and melody of music. We are able to listen to a song and find ideas related to philosophy, friendship or even dieting. So... why not look for songs about marketing?
this being said, I will start a new series on this blog: The Sound of Marketing - TSM.

Best Prediction So Far

The first 2009 prediction I am looking forward to seeing it become reality? It's Nancy Duarte's "PowerPoint will be used by the President".

After answering press and client questions regarding The Crisis I am really grateful for visionary + optimistic people.

Patent on Improved Price Discrimination

The guys at Microsoft recognized that "elasticity curves [for PC sales] are based on the pressure to maximize profits on a one-time-sale, one-shot-at-the-consumer mentality".

One of their ideas - now patent application - implies the introduction of the pay-per-use PC with an option of scaling computer performance. This idea would bring us closer to a situation of price discrimination of 1st degree.
Wow, Microsoft's got the patent on it :)

via Cnet news

Science Fiction Elections

Now this year's election brought another "first time in history".
The first live hologram on TV.



PS: Congrats too President Obama!

Rebrandings in the Stone Age

Look! Even dinosaurs have feelings for brands. :)
Click for comic

 

View this Data (ep. 6)

This interactive feature compares previous plans to help ailing economies to the currently debated one.

If you're not an economically inclined person, just think of this feature as a way to browse through history and get a bit of comfort from knowing that we've been in similar situations before. Ok, it might be a bigger issue now (at least money-wise) but we've dealt with stuff like this before.

Let's hope we do the right thing.

"Since Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary, unveiled his $700bn plan to rescue the American financial system all manner of alternative models have been debated. Here we take you through some examples of past bailout structures, drawing from the US, Sweden and Japan."
(FT.com)

See this Speech?

What did Mrs. Clinton talk about last night?
Well, let's see: America, Barack, Obama, going, keep, years, care, people and children.


And if you have the time, read it or watch it.

One Common Language

This should be one more proof that besides math we also have a second global language.
Here's Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" final scene (theme song) in 9 languages. Same message different spoken languages. i particularly like the Korean version. :)

Top 20% Economic Research Institutions in Romania

Judging by number of citations, number of papers written and other similar academic key performance indicators, the most respected academic authors in Romania are:

• The National Institute of Economic Research (Romanian Academy) - 1st in Institutions

and


• Mr. Catalin Pauna (The World Bank's Mission in Romania) - 1st in Authors
  

To see other Romanian top economic research click here, or click here and choose your country / region.

Breaking News: Men Cook!

Emancipation finally shows some true results: men cook!

When there's a new segmentation study identifying some "keen and accomplished male cooks" as gastrosexuals, it's time i also put the info on the table:

Yes, I'm cooking for pleasure, praise and seduction ;)

Move over all you metro - and uebersexuals, gastrosexuals rule the kitchen... ahm... world. We know how to boil an egg and we're not afraid of baking cookies.

However, don't make us wash the dishes or other blue collar stuff - we are true creative people and not washing machines. Hint: Think of Ratatouille.


Gastrosexuals cook for:
(1) pleasure
(2) praise
and
(3) potential seduction

A few words on this study: Commissioned by PurAsia (trademark owned by Mars), the study has been done by Future Foundation and can be requested on their website or at gastrosexual.com

Why I Blog

Kit's musings prompted me to also question myself why I keep blogging.

Two main reasons:
(1) So that I can look back to the stupid / brilliant things I might have said x years ago
(2) Because of the few 'returning users' from all over the world


Other Nopes and Yeaps
(Nope) not for the money --> This blog never generated a dime in cash, despite the fact that I'm keeping 2 google ads (ever noticed them? :D ).

(Nope) not for boosting visibility --> Just type my name in Google :)

(Yeap) This blog helped me in fulfilling a professional goal. It was through brandlyyours.ro's contact form that the guys at Brandient called me for a job interview. While I'm now with another company, the time spent in Brandient remains both a dream-come-true and a personal proof that I can accomplish my goals.

This is Not Yet Another Caustic Verbal Attack on Apple

There are some voices telling us that Apple has "lost its mojo", that it screwed up with launching iPhone 3G and that it lied about mobileMe "push" technology.

"The handful of recent stumbles by Cupertino is just a temporary rough patch, right?" full story here

None of this is either wrong or vicious. I think there are many consumers and mavericks loosing hot steam about recent Apple glitches.

My 2 cents: Apple is playing a profitable but somewhat dangerous game of escaping the niche - player status.

Reasons why these are great times to do this include:
(1) Microsoft is having troubles with Vista --> good time to attack it
(2) Telecoms are trying to boost data revenues --> good time to push iPhone 3G
(3) PC manufacturers only offer incremental performance upgrades to existing form-factors --> good time for product innovation in personal computing

Things Apple should pay more attention to appear to be:
(1) Manufacturing

(1.1) Volumes --> better anticipate demand
(1.2) Product life cycle in reference to pricing policy --> expensive products should resist moral and technical obsolescence more than 6-9 months

(2) Global Distribution channels --> reviewing channel partners is recommended

PS: This post should be in no way considered a bitter man's scream. I've seen lots of these kind of articles and posts in the last 12 months. Apple is a business, a sound one. It has a great marketing approach but I think the time has come for this company to also do some internal work.

View This Data (ep. 2)

For those of you buying a widescreen HDTV, you might be soon looking for a bigger home :)
It appears that you can calculate an optimal couch to TV distance by multiplying the TV's width in inches with 1.8664.
For visually inclined mathematicians, the picture below should help.

Help or Company Needed

After some 100 questions, I now know for sure that I'm a total geek.

Should I seek help or company?

The reference table from innergeek.us

+ Geekish Tendencies................................≥09%

++ Geek.............................................≥15%

+++ Total Geek......................................≥25%

++++ Major Geek.....................................≥35%

+++++ Super Geek....................................≥45%

++++++ Extreme Geek.................................≥55%

+++++++ Geek God....................................≥65%

+++++++! Dysfunctional Geek.........................≥75%

Economic Turn-Offs

People respond to incentives, right?
But what about turn-offs?

An Albanian refinery entered a restructuring program and decided to only keep employed one member of each family. So... a few couples working at this company decided to ... get a divorce in order to keep both jobs.

Via capital.ro, liberation.fr

Tips for Price Increases via HBS Working Knowledge

The 7 steps seem intuitive, even too general at some point:
(1) Know thy customer
(2) Invest in Market Research
(3) Redefine Value
(4) Use Promotions
(5) Unbundle
(6) Monitor Trade Terms
(7) Increase Relevance

Now, 1 and 2 generate 3, 5 and 7 and are related to consumers because you know them you will be able to serve them and to convince them to keep their business with your company.

4 is the all-time favourite pain killer for inflation and price increases. I remember that a few years ago soft drinks in Romania used to hide price increases by organizing a promotion. So, by counting the number of promotions for cola, I was able to estimate whether the Leu is doing better or worse than it used to do a year before. I know, it's not a scientifically sound method but it worked. :)

While 1-5 are focused on defending top-lines, 6 and 7 are aimed at profits. Brands and bundles are profit generating vectors.

Letting aside all these musings regarding the steps described above, I think that the end of the article is really funny. Especially because it's very unorthodox. I would not apologize for price increases... and I have never heard of a company apologizing for charging more.

"The key here is to educate the consumer, apologize for the uncontrollable price increases, give price-sensitive consumers some promotional options, and reemphasize product benefits."
Seven Tips for Managing Price Increases

Thoughts on... Voice Recognition

The Economist wrote in May that French teachers are upset that pupils have less and less spelling skills.

Their scapegoat: "fingers are pointed not only at progressive teaching, the decline of the dictée or the legacy of May 1968. The new culprit is text-messaging." Article is here

My two cents: SMS is doing to spelling what fast food is doing to food. However, imagine what will voice recognition do to spelling... :)

Later edit: How does "br&ly urs" sound? :)

Plants recognize their relatives

Cakile maritima
Originally uploaded by waen ♡

"Some plant species show an ability to recognize (and prefer) their own relatives." Wow. Let me tell you this: Frank Herbert was right. :)
In his Pandora series, Frank Herbert talked about conscious plants and a tangled web of ecology, politics and philosophy. Jesus Incidentis the first book of this SF series. I've read it one or two years ago and am talking to plants ever since :)


NYtimes: Loyal to Its Roots By CAROL KAESUK YOON


Later edit: "No one knows, yet, how significant such effects are. Moreover, we’re
only beginning to make an inventory of who’s down there — the identity
of most intraterrestrials remains mysterious." from NYTimes.

Uncluttering OS X Naming Architecture

The Apple Blog wonders:

So is dropping the “Mac” from OS X a sign of things to come? Or is it just to unify the marketing between the Mac OS and iPhone OS? Stay tuned.

I'll stay tuned. But is Apple ready to become a mainly-software shop? No, I'll put it this way:

Are the software developers ready to port Windows software?
Are the enterprise customers ready to switch massively?
Are the Apple customers ready to give up some of Apple's can't-touch-this glamor?
Are you sure, Steve Jobs is ready for this? :D

On the same topic. I'm still waiting for that biiig 'Ipohone' ("Imagine this..." from last year)

Thoughts on... Pistachio

Is it possible that pistachio is the rich man's sun flower seeds?

I've noticed that "nouveau riche" consumers are substituting sunflower seeds with pistachio. I guess old habits die hard.

This is great news for pistachio sellers and by no means bad news for sellers of sunflower seeds. As living standards improve, new users of sunflower-snacks will emerge.

Math, Roads and Retail

On Wikipedia, a Dacia Logan is about 4 meters long.

First math problem:
How many Dacia Logans does it take to fill a 1.5 km road with 3 lanes / direction?

Second math problem:
This one is tricky.
We have a retail complex near city B (let us assume: 1.5 km from the nearest traffic light within city limits).
Ok, I'll give you 3 lanes / direction.
Being big, the retail complex has 9500 parking spaces.
All people living in city B drive Dacia Logans.
The parking lot is 50% full until all shops close.
Question: How many minutes does it take for the last car leaving the parking space to reach the traffic light within city limits?

The following chart offers you a cheat sheet as I transformed parking spaces and all 3 lanes (for one direction) in kilometers.

Thoughts on... Reference Points

Apple leads Q1 sales in premium priced PCs (pardon the term :) ).
Now that's a shift of perspective.

"Apple's retail market share is 14 percent, and two-thirds for PCs costing $1,000 or more."

Conspicuous Demand in Romania

After reading that Romanians last week bought yachts worth €15 million, I remembered that low-income African-Americans are thought to be some of the biggest customers of high-end sport shoe retailers in the US.

The general rule put on the table in Slate Magazine is this: "In general, the poorest people in any group are forced to opt out of the conspicuous consumption arms race—if you can't afford the signal, even by stretching your finances, you can't play the game."

This rule applies to Romanian millionaires as well. Imagine a Romanian millionaire with a lower than average income (average of his peer-group: the millionaires). He / she must be crying because 'Life's unfair" and some other guy bought a new yacht.




Business Standard Story about yachts: Romanians invested some €15 mln in luxury yachts - Business Standard

PS: The economist who came up with this conspicuous demand theory is Thorstein Veblen

Thoughts on... Trust

It seems logical to me: trust is proportional to credibility, reliability and intimacy (how close people let you get to them). Also, trust is indirect proportional to self-orientation.

So, with my meager 8.4 score, I'm asking you: What's your Trust Quotient?

Trusted Advisor Associates > Trust Quotient Self-Diagnostic

PS: Self-orientation should affect all other scores in this order: intimacy +++, reliability ++ and credibility +

Consumer Insights (Germany)

Stern Magazine asked readers: "Why do women magazines have girl names?" (German only)

Besides the obvious answers concerning female bonding and search for a best friend, here are some of the real [funny] insights:

1. "This is only due to the lack of courage of the parents, to name their children Schmidt Playboy, Hustler Mueller or Autobild Meier"
2. "Because men can't remember names and they would not be able to find 'their' magazine again"
3. "So that men shouldn't have to say such things as: 'I spent yesterday one our on the toilet with Horst [German male name]' "

Thoughts on ... Scarcity

One of the first concepts introduced in economics 101 classes is "scarcity". Now, economists broadly define it as follows: "[...]scarcity is the problem of infinite human needs and wants, in a world of finite resources." (Wikipedia)

However, I'll let maverick economists debate about the various theoretic details about scarcity and write down some brief did-you-know thoughts:

Did you know that...

• Scarcity is a the foundation of Porter's five forces? Think about it: It's scarcity which generates power for each of the 5 elements of this model.
• Scarcity is the key to higher profit margins for buyers, sellers and suppliers
• Scarcity dictates market attractiveness
• Good branding is about perceived scarcity?
  
• Strong brands command premium prices as the perceived scarcity lowers the product's / service price elasticity

I have just finished reading The Undercover Economist (Tim Harford) and, beacuse I was impressed by the compelling arguments this economist makes in his book, I am trying to jot down some ideas about how economics offers some of the greatest insight into branding and strategy. This is the first post of an "Thoughts on..." series.

I'm walking a thin line here, so please bear with me :)

Empty Words

empty_words
Originally uploaded by brandlyyours

How good or bad is "an interesting book"? How big is "time"? Who is this "state" and how can he/she spend money on something? Who is the "company" and how can he/she take care of employees or clients? And what is a "nation"?
To me, all of these words seem empty. One can measure, describe and even adore these concepts but fundamentally, no one can define them.

Do you know any empty words? How do you like them? :)

YahooMessenger Penetration in Romania

Setting foot on the Sun

Secondary research is often dismissed as unreliable and even too easy-to-do to be a job. I think it's time I get to say my opinion on these issues.

The short answer to both points (unreliable, too easy-to-do) is Depends x 2.

The long version is a short story :)

Adventure Inc.

Mr. Adventure has a vision and assembles his team to share this vision.
"My dear friends, I have some great news. Adventure Inc. will be the first company selling land on the sun and all of you will contribute to this great endeavor! We'll move faster than our competition and, I'm sure you already know, at the moment no one is planning on getting there."

"Sir, I'm in.", Mr. Yes says. "Sir, we can do it. I'm sure we're going to beat the competition!"

"Yes, you're a great team-player. Thank you.", Adventure says. "Are there any questions or comments? We have to start working on this project."

"Mr. Adventure, has anyone come back from the sun yet?", Mr. Curious asked.
"Come back?", Adventure's puzzled, "what do you mean? No, of course not. We'll be the first setting foot on the sun! Curious, are you having doubts?"
"No sir," Curious said, "just questions."
"Like what?"
"Well, how big is it?"
"Silly question, Curious. It's huge, our greatest opportunity ever. We'll see how big exactly when we get there."
"Ok, sir. But..."
"Curious, you're going to have to meet with Yes and discuss all your questions."
"Sir, I'll be glad to do it", said Yes.
"Great. Let's get to work everyone! Adventure Inc, and yours truly - Mr. Adventure, will recognize all of your hard work! Yes, schedule the meeting with Curious."
"Sir, I'll meet with him on Monday!"
"Great!"
"Ahm...Sir?", Yes mumbled.
"What is it Yes?"
"Sir, just how hot is the Sun?"

key learning
To measure a star's temperature one can go there with a thermometer or can... well... estimate it by looking at it with an expensive tool (i.e. telescope). These are both pretty much primary research tools. However, when time and budgets are scarce one can always use Wikipedia - other people's experience and data.
To see just how hot the sun is click here or... go there :)

source: wikipedia

Organizations are like people

Organizations_Habits_inspired_buddhism
Originally uploaded by brandlyyours

Organizations are like people: they have both good and bad habits. Brands are, pardon the syllogism, like people too. :) So, this matrix ("Four Right Exertions" of Buddhism) is helpful to all 3 entities.

Imagine this...

Steve Jobs' keynote guidelines
Originally uploaded by igrec

1.) Get rid of 2 of the 3 iphones.
2.) Put the booklet on the table
3.) Make the 3rd iphone as big as the table and put it where now the booklet is
:) this is my whish for this year's WWDC

PS: Microsoft's Surface is close, but it's running Windows ;)

Derived Demand