If one were to break down the Presidential election into marketing analogies, John McCain would be the well-established, venerable brand everyone is familiar with, while Barack Obama is the new entry trying to swipe market share. "It's one of those classic marketing dichotomies," says Ged Parton, CEO of the brand and communications practice at Synovate. "You can summarize these two brand strategies into 'you, you, you' and 'me, me, me'." In Parton's analogy, McCain is Diet Coke--a well-known brand that focuses its communications on what it is, rather than features and benefits, leaving the consumer to figure out why he or she should like it. Meanwhile, Obama is Nokia, hinging itself to a few key attributes and how those attributes will benefit the consumer, and makes itself accountable to them. "McCain's strategy is based on him, his experience and his service to the country," Parton tells Marketing Daily. "[Obama's] whole articulation has been about what he's going to do." Parton breaks the two strategies down into a "me, me, me" vs. a "you, you, you" contest. If the polls showing Obama leading are to be believed, Obama's outer-directed strategy resonates more with Americans than McCain's "big brand" strategy, Parton says. The market research company polled 1,700 registered voters and discovered that Obama connects strongly on four issues: healthcare, the desire for change, the Iraq war and education. McCain, on the other hand, doesn't have a strong connection with voters on any one specific issue. Naturally, marketing a politician has some nuances that marketing a brand does not. Parton agrees that people look for different attributes in politicians than they do dishwashing liquid. But there are some lessons product marketers can take from these two strategies. If one is a venerable brand whose only strategy has been to focus on yourself, there has to be something tangible for consumers to latch onto to change opinion. "If you want to change perceptions in people's minds, you have to demonstrate how you're going to change things," Parton says. "It's the tangibles that legitimize mind changes. Without the tangibles, you're only asserting." Lesser-known brands, however, can take advantage of that position by making assertions. Because consumers are less familiar with the brand attributes, it's easier to get them to try something and make up their own minds. "You can make assertions, and let the market decide," Parton says. "It's a much easier task than trying to deal with what's established and try to reshape it."
Somewhat battered by competition from new coffee initiatives by McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts and money-strapped consumers' growing inability to spend several dollars on a cup of java, latte or other beverage treat, Starbucks is launching a gold rewards program that offers a 10% price discount on many beverages, as well as other incentives. The gold card program will offer 10% off on most purchases in participating U.S. Starbucks stores (excluding gift cards/certificates, publications, digital downloads, membership fees). Also, discounts applying to the existing Starbucks Card Rewards program cannot be combined with Starbucks Gold discounts. Gold membership requires paying a $25 annual fee, but Starbucks customer data indicates that frequent customers will recoup that fee in savings in "a very short period of time," according to Starbucks spokesperson Alisa Martinez. In addition to the 10% discount, Starbucks Gold offers the ability to pay for purchases by cash or credit card. The existing card program requires pre-loading the card with value and using it to pay at point-of-purchase. Those who purchase their gold cards at a Starbucks retail location will also get a free beverage. The Starbucks Card Rewards program offers benefits such as gratis beverage customization (free syrups and milk options), free refills on drip coffees, a free beverage with the purchase of a bag of Starbucks whole beans, and up to two hours per day of free access to AT&T Wi-Fi at Starbucks locations. However, it does not offer price discounts. "Starbucks is being responsive to customers' needs for savings in the current economy," by launching the gold program, says Martinez. "We realize that our customers don't want to give up their ritual of visiting Starbucks, but need to ease the pressure on their pocketbooks." "Starbucks has enjoyed a tremendous response to its Starbucks Card Rewards program, and we're excited to introduce a new program that will elevate the reward experience for our most frequent customers and recognize them in new and different ways," said VP, customer relations management Brad Stevens, in a statement supplied to Marketing Daily. Starbucks has not yet publicized details of the new program elsewhere in the press, but last week sent an email from Stevens to members of its existing Card Rewards program notifying them that the Starbucks Gold program will launch in early November, providing info on some of the benefits, and encouraging them to look for more details when they visit Starbucks locations next month. Starbucks also recently sent a direct mail piece to its most frequent customers that included a gold card, more detailed information on the program, and the link to the new program's microsite (www.starbucksgold.com), reports Martinez. Those who spring for the $25 Gold membership are not required to register their cards, but are being incentivized to do so with additional benefits. For instance, those who register their gold cards will receive a complimentary beverage on their birthdays, according to Martinez. Starbucks may also offer "friends and family days," during which gold members can extend their 10% discount to purchases for family/ friends, and will make various special incentives and offers available to Gold Rewards members on an exclusive basis, she adds.
It's not your mother's CorningWare. That's not the tagline, but it is the message being sent to young women between the ages of 25 and 34 who are settling down, nesting up and ready to wine and dine their friends. The Rosemont, Ill.-based World Kitchen--which manufactures and distributes CorningWare as well as Corelle, Pyrex, Chicago Cutlery, Revere, Bakers Secret and Ecko--is celebrating its golden anniversary by touting SimplyLite glass bakeware, which is 50% lighter than the stuff in your kitchen cabinets. In its first new campaign in four years--from Cramer-Krasselt/ Milwaukee--the mix of TV, print and online captures dream-like scenes from a barbecue, dinner party and cocktail party where party guests--food and dishes included--seem to defy gravity. Television commercials, which began airing last week, will appear on The CW, E!, Food Network and VH1, and print will appear in the September, October and November issues of The Nest, Domino, Everyday with Rachael Ray and Everyday Food. Courtney Marsala, brand manager for CorningWare, says the brand is reaching out to the newly married, newly engaged--"those who are registering for CorningWare. We do a huge bridal business, and we want to remind consumers that CorningWare has been around for 50 years and now we've got something new and different." Marsala says the brand received high ad recall results in focus groups. Whereas 23% is the benchmark, she says, CorningWare got a 34% related recall score, and more than half--52%--were persuaded to buy the product. A solid three-quarters, she says, "got the main idea of the lightweight thing immediately." A strong online presence will include interactive online banners and an Evite.com partnership around "Pot Luck"-themed online invitations. CorningWare.com will also deliver an invitation for a sneak peak of exclusive scenes from the final episode of ABC Family's "Greek" on abcfamily.com. Invites will be sent to CorningWare consumers and abcfamily.com members.
There are brand extensions, and there are brand leaps: Procter & Gamble's Olay is about to take quite a flier. The company says it will roll out Olay Professional-Pro-X, a skincare line as expensive as those sold in department stores, in mass outlets. Previous iterations of Olay have segmented the market by age group, with its Definity targeting women 45-plus, Regenerist wooing the 40-plus crowd, and Total Effects--which was introduced in 2000-- aimed at women 30 and older, in addition to its flagship Olay products. And while those Olay "boutique" brands pushed price points well beyond most supermarket prices, they hover in the $20 range. Professional Pro-X will cost twice that, with the six products priced at $42, and a starter kit for $62. It seems farfetched to imagine women trading up from lower price points at a time when grocery-store bills are top of mind (not to mention the constant economic-doom headlines.) But with so many consumers making conscious efforts to curb spending, Olay may well convince women to trade down from pricier department store labels, as they decide the elimination of crow's feet and laugh lines should take up a smaller portion of the family fortune. By some industry estimates, the anti-aging skincare market has grown 63% in the last five years to about $1.7 billion in sales in the U.S. Experts expect it to continue to grow as more Baby Boomers confront their Botox years, and younger women embrace anti-aging products long before their mothers did. P&G is backing the high-end line with high-end science, claiming that it is based on ingredients derived from the latest in genomics research--chemicals that re-signal skin to behave as if it were younger. The line includes six products: Age Repair Lotion SPF 30, Wrinkle Smoothing Cream, Hydra Firming Cream, Deep Wrinkle Treatment, Eye Restorative Complex and Discoloration Fighting Concentrate. The company says it will be available online in December, and in stores in January. P&G's beauty division, which brought in $22 billion in sales in its latest fiscal years, competes most directly with such brands as Johnson & Johnson's Neutrogena and L'Oreal's Garnier. With this launch, it's also up against such brands as Estee Lauder's Clinique and L'Oreal's Lancome.
At least one national advertiser is not cutting its media budget over the next 12 months. Sonic Corp., with some 3,400 fast-food restaurants and known for its offbeat advertising, plans to increase spending to more than $200 million for the next fiscal year. The company said recently that about half of that bundle would be in national cable, which has helped it efficiently reach new markets as it expands beyond its Southern base. The company now has its drive-ins in 37 states, with openings in New Jersey, Michigan and Minnesota over the past year. President Scott McClain said on a conference call: "We are well on our way to becoming a truly national brand." The $200 million budget represents a 5% increase over the past year, but is up 67% since 2005. Oklahoma City-based Sonic also has a significant presence on national network sports broadcasts. The spending jump comes even as the chain posted only slight growth--.9% in same-store sales for the fiscal year. (It's down from 3.1% a year ago.) A .6% decline came in the most recent quarter. Total fiscal-year revenues were $671 million, meaning that media expenditures came in at about 28% of sales. CEO Clifford Hudson said spots in the coming year will focus on new products and less expensive offerings.
The digital out-of-home business is headed for an "inevitable shakeout," but will bounce back even stronger when the economy recovers, according to Patrick Quinn, one of the only analysts currently producing estimates of aggregate spending and forecasts for DO in coming years. Quinn summarized his findings in his new Digital Out-of-Home Media Forecast 2008-2012. DO's strength is evident in its recent growth: Quinn pegs spending in 2007 at $2.19 billion, noting that this represents a 24.5% increase over 2006. Looking back a few years, Quinn found that the DO market tripled in size from 2002-2007, thanks to a cumulative annual growth rate of 23.1% during that time. Thus, DO outstripped the growth rate for out-of-home advertising in general, which posted annual increases of 5% to 8% per year from 2002-2007. Comparing Quinn's estimate with the Outdoor Advertising Association of America's estimate of $7.28 billion for all out-of-home advertising in 2007 shows that DO constitutes about 30% of total out-of-home revenues, doubling its 15% share in 2002. However, its strong performance in recent years will not insulate DO from the current economic downturn, according to Quinn. He predicts a "shakeout" in 2008-2009 followed by a "breakout" in 2009-2010. In addition to general economic woes, the shakeout will be driven, in part, by the elimination of redundant or inefficient video networks-- many of which were thrown together with little thought for strategy and profitability during DO's boom years earlier this decade. It will also see the liquidation of some high-quality networks that were unable to make their business model work. Quinn pointed to the recent demise of Reactrix, which earned kudos for its engaging interactive technology and high-profile partnerships, but still burned through venture-capital cash without turning a profit. In large part, the shakeout will take the form of mergers and acquisitions, as complementary and competing networks are rolled up by private-equity firms. However, Quinn declined to name any specific candidates for acquisition (or failure). The shakeout will set the stage for another surge of digital out-of-home spending in 2010, once the overall economy begins to recover. The medium's intrinsic advantages are being reinforced by new technologies for targeting and venue-based media solutions. According to Quinn: "Marketers from time immemorial have searched for ways to influence the consumers at the point of decision. Now they're finding ways to coordinate multiple media platforms with digital out-of-home, including event marketing, brand integration, product sampling and online content." Quinn was particularly enthusiastic about the "convergence between digital out-of-home and mobile." In addition, the aggregation of video networks, either through M&A or by meta-networks like SeeSaw, will allow comprehensive geo-targeting of consumers in particular areas. In effect, it will surround them with video messages at multiple venues--a practice called "area-jacking" in Japan, where it was pioneered by advertisers.
Mediapost's Marketing Daily soon will choose a Marketer of the Year, and we invite you to participate. Send us your nominations for companies that this year showed some guts, pulled off an innovation and/or executed with overall brilliance. We will select winning marketers in key consumer marketing categories and one overall Marketer of the Year. So tell us who you think should win, and why. Send all nominations to Nina Lentini, editor of Marketing Daily, at nina@mediapost.com no later than Friday. (It's okay to nominate your own company.)
In this era of online research, more companies are testing public opinion and basing important business decisions on what they learn from this process. Fast, easy online survey technology makes this possible, but it can be a risky proposition. That's because companies are making important decisions on the assumption that the people responding to surveys are who they say they are. Recent real-world experience shows that this is sometimes not the case. Even worse, some accepted methods for identifying and discarding fraudulent respondents don't do nearly enough to ensure an accurate, clean and representative sampling on which companies can base decisions with confidence. The Internet has made it easier than ever before for brand-name companies to gauge reactions to their new ideas quickly and inexpensively by tapping into the opinions of what they presume to be their target markets. This is reflected by the fact that the online research industry has grown 30% in the last year, and, in 2007, respondents completed one billion online surveys. Last year, companies spent more than $4 billion doing online research. Yet, the data returned by these surveys - data that might be used by a consumer products business to determine its next strategic move -- could have serious flaws. Here are just a couple of real-world examples. These are actual survey-takers who were identified and prevented from continuing to respond to research requests: • A man from the Midwest had 130 user accounts. He posed as a woman or a man, always from different email addresses. Oddly, one of his consistent identifying characteristics was that he loves shrimp, but other than that he was using 130 different identities to earn money by participating in market research. • A 21-year-old woman from Texas used more than 150 accounts to provide information to market researchers. She always listed her income in the top 1% of all earners. In fact, she had very low income. Based on real-world validation efforts using a combination of techniques, we have been able to quantify the likely level of fraudulent or questionable survey takers. It's a scary number: 24%. That number breaks down in this way: