The Facebook Forecast: Uncool?

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Columbus AMA

Adweek’s Steve McClellan recently wrote an article concerning the decline in Facebook use in the 18-24 year old set.

To be fair, opinions differ on whether the decline in minutes spent on Facebook is a true reflection of user habits. One expert believes that the 18-24 year old age group accesses Facebook primarily through their smartphones and their comScore numbers are not being tabulated.

Others believe the decline is a real phenomenon. They believe Facebook now teeters on the brink of being uncool in an important age demographic.

McClellan points out that once Grandma friends you, the mystique of Facebook evaporates.

What does this mean for us? As a marketing tool, Facebook still has plenty of potential according to McClellan’s article.

The trick will be to know when Facebook is right for a marketing campaign in the 18-24 year old demographic and how to activate customer support for a brand on a social media site that may be waning in popularity for young adults.

Certainly, we need to monitor this age group’s changing relationship with Facebook which McClellan writes may be changing significantly even now.

Finally, we need to ask if our long-term social media marketing strategies are still relevant in this fast-changing Internet landscape.

Art vs. Science in Marketing

Posted on December 26, 2009 by Columbus AMA

By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA

During the holiday season we may pause to consider the more meaningful aspects of our lives – our connections with others, the special times spent with family, traditions that transcend the banality of daily life – and these elements of our life are very precious to us. Marketers can take a lesson from this annual ritual and remember that brands are built from meaningful connections with our customers and not promotional gimmicks.

The allure of promotional gimmicks is irresistible due to business “science” that can show a measurable ROI for these tactics when properly conceived and executed. Plus, a promotion can be designed, budgeted, run and evaluated within the short life span of a brand manager on a new assignment – what could be better!

Valuable as it is, the science of promotion will never beat the art marketing when building a brand. Even loyalty program marketers recognize this. touches an emotion, a feeling, a sense of the possible that sparks the imagination and makes hair stand on end.

Marketing as art is rarer, certainly, and all the more valuable because of it.

What Never Changes in Marketing

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Columbus AMA

by Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA

One of the great things about marketing is the ceaseless change inherent in the challenge. Timing is a crucial element of all in-market activity and time is an endless stream of change. What never changes, though, is human nature.

When reading Edward Gibbon’s “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” as a teenager (history geek that I was, perhaps still am) I recall being struck by how normal the human characters were in that drama. Same goes for all of Shakespeare. Homo sapiens are people and people are human and until our evolution begets a new species we will be what we have always been.

I don’t deny the appeal of the new and cool things that technology and culture lay at our feet. I admit blatant infatuation with the ability to create and distribute video on the internet – my personal video introduction is a perfect example. This is great fun for anyone who has ever harbored a fantasy of creating, producing or starring in moving pictures.

My stock in trade, however, is leveraging insights on motivation to address business challenges and the motivations inherent in human nature do not change. Keep that in mind celebrating another “new” year and the ushering in of a “new” decade.

Oh, yeah, Happy Holidays!

Pastry Preferences and Marketing

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Columbus AMA

By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA

This week I did what I usually do when I’m waiting for the car to be serviced which is head over to the Panera Bread next door to the dealership and get a coffee and a cinnamon roll. The cinnamon roll at Panera Bread is a pretty good one. Probably not world-class, mind you, but something I can eat with regularity with some satisfaction. I don’t like to eat gooey or greasy things with my fingers and Panera Bread always gives me a fork to eat the cinnamon roll; which is just as well since I’d have to ask them for one if they didn’t give one to me.

While ruminating on this topic I began to consider the marketing aspects of this situation. In general, these days, I prefer to Panera Bread to other choices. I don’t think I am alone, I recall seeing a Wall Street Journal article over the summer about how Panera was doing well, expanding in the recession and picking up cheap real estate along the way.

One of my other options for “coffee and a pastry” is Starbucks. If it really is just a coffee I want then I prefer Starbucks, I think their coffee is the best. I have a Starbucks card and use it fairly frequently but, in general, I’m probably more often inside a Panera Bread. The barristas in Starbucks are just so juiced up on caffeine they are really a bit too perky for my taste most of the time. And the pastries in Starbucks are lame. Again, it seems I am not alone; Starbucks has been contracting – at least in number of outlets – for some time. That is probably due as much to earlier overexpansion as anything. For a time, Starbucks were popping up in every available square foot of empty retail space.

Starbucks tested the limits of their brand’s capacity and found the limits and went past them. There were Starbucks in the Meijer AND the Target on Sawmill Road, for example, right across from one another. The Meijer one eventually closed while the Target operation was still going strong the last time I was there. It seems the Starbucks brand works better with Target’s demographics than Meijer’s – which doesn’t surprise me.

The free WiFi at Panera Bread is another important consideration – it meets my internet-usage needs when I’m travelling throughout the Midwest in my work. Starbucks advertised “free WiFi” in connection with a Starbucks card and I was quite excited by that until I started the enrollment process and realized I’d have to sign up for AT&T’s WiFi service to access the available free hours. The last thing I need is another “account” that taps into my credit card – even if I don’t charge anything there.

An honorable mention, of sorts, must go to La Chatelaine and their croissants – these are by far my favorite pastry in Central Ohio. I like La Chateleine’s coffee, too. They even have free WiFi, now. Even with all that, I’m still in a Panera Bread more often than La Chateleine and the reason is convenient location (not to mention that La Chateleine is purely a Columbus-area chain). If I’m meeting someone, as I often am, a Panera Bread is easier to find. The last time I met somebody at the Dublin La Chateleine they were late because they couldn’t easily see it while driving back and forth on the busy Bridge Street.

My main complaint, such as it is, about the Panera Bread cinnamon roll is that the outer edges are a bit dry. Cutting into one from the outer edge creates a veritable shower of crusty sugar bits from the coating they drizzle all over it. I then have to spend the rest of my eating frenzy trying to get the little sugar bits to stick to my fork in some way. Now I’m not so sure this is really a big complaint because I’ve had gooey-er cinnamon rolls that aren’t dry at all in any part and the frosting is really soft and smooth and I find those to be a bit much – it seems they are a bit undercooked and the frosting is really sickening. I’m not a big fan of frosting, either, preferring a cake, for example, that is unfrosted or simply glazed.

So I have to wash down those first few dry bites with my coffee. That’s fine, that’s what the coffee’s for, after all. But after I fight through the first sort-of-dry-ish outer ring then we’re getting into the real meat of the experience. Perhaps the reason I really go for a cinnamon roll is that it reminds me of the cinnamon bread with raisins that my Mom used to buy. I don’t remember where she got it, perhaps from the milk-delivery service that came to our house, but that cinnamon bread was great. I used to pick out the raisins if there were too many and the best part was the crumbled sugar/flour bits or whatever they were on the top crust – but man that bread made some good toast! When I finally make it to the soft inner rings of the Panera Bread cinnamon roll with the soft pastry and sweet brown cinnamon paste – well, it is a delight!

Niche Marketing Luncheon Speaker Highlights Hot Trends

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Columbus AMA

At the December 8 Columbus AMA luncheon, Michael Daniels, Co-Owner and Co-Publisher of Outlook Media, spoke on demographic niche marketing in Central Ohio. Daniels focused his discussions on how to market to Asians, African Americans, GLBT & Hispanics.

The highlight of Daniels’ speech was focused on the need to create unique strategies to attract each group, including ads that are different for each group because they all have different needs and desires as customers.

Too Much?

Posted on December 8, 2009 by Columbus AMA

By Andrea L. Crabtree, MS

Folotyn is a chemotherapy drug indicated for patients suffering with peripheral T-cell lymphoma. The newly approved intravenous drug is manufactured by Allos Therapeutics.

The New York Times recently devoted an entire article to Folotyn. However, the article did not detail the efficacy or safety of the drug. Further, it did not share the story of a patient’s miraculous cure after being treated with Folotyn.

Instead, the article focused entirely on the price of Folotyn.

At $30,000 per month for treatment, Folotyn has attracted the attention of patient advocacy groups, oncologists and the health insurance industry.

No doubt Folotyn’s price will fuel more discussions on the costs of healthcare and the ethics of pharmaceutical pricing. However, in a broader sense, the drug’s price brings the topic of pricing back to the most basic marketing questions.

How much is too much?

And how much is too little?

Customer Engagement in 2009

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Columbus AMA

Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA

When I worked in brand management at SC Johnson in the early 1990′s I could only dream of having the tools available to marketers today. 15 years ago, brand managers spoke of creating a “relationship” with consumers but this was entirely one-way, unless you counted the sporadic, limited and often inscrutable feedback we got through our marketing research efforts. With the ever-expanding technologies and exploding bandwidth capabilities of the internet we will soon live with real-time, multi-user, multi-sensory, two-way interactions.

I’ve always been a believer in innovative test-marketing when in comes to business development and the proliferation of tools makes this easier than ever. As a relative late-comer to social media I’ve only been actively developing my LinkedIn network for about 6 months but it has paid bigger dividends, faster, than anything else I’ve invested time and effort into.

I’m in the middle of creating my first video series to be loaded on YouTube and anyone who isn’t using video in some big way is missing out. Risk taking and experimentation will be rewarded in this environment, especially given the upheaval caused by the recession and resettling of the economy that is taking place. In my own efforts, I’m rapidly learning what does and doesn’t work well. Trial and error, combined with LEARNING, is an effective approach in this market characterized by rapid change and new frontiers.

The report that unemployment declined in November is another sign that the recession is in the past and we need to be thinking about how to leverage customer engagement to maximize our opportunities. If you aren’t ahead of your competition in using the available tools for customer engagement you’re going to find yourself in a continuing recession for your own business that is of your own making.

Social Media Turns Museum Visitors from Spectators to Contributors

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Columbus AMA

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” Marcel Duchamp

Say what you will about his art, Duchamp was right in his idea of turning spectators into contributors. While this is an important concept in art appreciation, it’s perhaps even more important as a survival philosophy for museums and historical societies.

From the beginning, museum spectators (visitors) have taken a passive stance in their relationship to their museum. This, it goes without saying, needs to change. The continued growth of social media tools can not only be beneficial in enabling museums to start intentional conversations with their visitors but also can be used to turn those visitors into participating contributors. It’s allowing visitors to do everything from helping to shape the direction an exhibit will take to supplying some of the content to be displayed.

The advantages to developing this relationship with the visitor are numerous. At the top of the list though may be the way that this entrenches a visitor within your (or perhaps more accurately their) museum. Additionally, a visitor with items on display is perhaps the strongest advocate a museum could have. With a personal connection to something to talk/tweet/blog about the contributing visitor is now not only part of the curatorial team but also part of the marketing unit as well.

Let’s look at a few examples of this concept. As you consider these remember that there are opportunities to integrate visitors through technology no matter the size of your organization.

One of the best examples can be found at the Ontario Science Centre. In a space that focuses on Toronto, they have an exhibit that explores the city by using a web-enabled kiosk loaded with a map from Yahoo! Maps. The exhibit encourages people to take pictures of themselves around the city, tag the photos, and then upload them to the museum’s Flckr account. These photos are then pulled directly into the exhibit map so that when the visitor tries to learn more about say the local coffee shop, the image that comes up is the one of that visitor at the coffee shop which they took and uploaded before leaving for the museum

In a completely different environment, The US Army created a mobile exhibit trailer for its recruiting efforts. When you enter the trailer, there is a touch screen panel whose initial graphic is a map of the United States. You can use that map to find your region and there watch videos which were created and uploaded to the site by other potential recruits.

At a different level, The Summit County (Ohio) Historical Society (in conjunction with other local organizations) has established the Summit Memory Project. It’s a place that allows people to share everything from postcards to first person accounts of the area’s history. People submit their photos and stories and then members of the Historical Society scan and format the material to maintain a consistency.

These are just three examples of many. While museums continue to work on social media as a method of communicating, there should also be equal time spent on exploring how those tools can be combined with existing exhibits or used separately as a standalone exhibition tool. If the goal is to move visitors from Duchamp’s passive “spectators” to participating contributors, what better way is there to do that then by re-purposing the tools they are already using?

Noell Wolfgram Evans is the Senior Writer/Producer at Mills James. You can follow him on Twitter at Noell_MJ. He can also be reached at nwolfgramevans[at]mjp.com

What I Did Not Understand About Black Friday

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Columbus AMA

By Andrea L. Crabtree, MS

I do not shop on Black Friday. I do not participate in the post-Thanksgiving madness that has become the biggest shopping day of the year.

Still, I am terribly curious about why some of my friends and family take part in Black Friday. I want to know what they shop for at 3 a.m. I am curious about what time they go to bed Thanksgiving night. And do they get any sleep at all?

For years, I thought all of this early morning (late night?) shopping was driven entirely by bargains.

I was wrong.

The friends and family I spoke to surprised me by saying that while they certainly took advantage of a few deals, they mostly shopped for the experience. In fact, “experience” was the word everyone used. And most were out of the house before 2:30 a.m.

That made me realize what a truly spectacular job retailers have done with the marketing of Black Friday. What started as a way for people to get an early start on their Christmas shopping and avoid post-Thanksgiving boredom has given way to the biggest shopping event of the year.

Simply, just as Starbucks has done a remarkable job of marketing the experience of ordering and drinking pricey coffee in their stores, Black Friday has transformed itself into something that makes people feel hip.

Like they are a part of something.

In fact, shoppers feel so good about Black Friday that they are willing to camp out in front of a store to take part in the phenomena.

Just don’t look for me in that long line. I’ll be home in bed.

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Monthly Archives: December 2009