The personal pod coffeemakers are nice, but when it comes to personalization, they leave something to be desired. Specifically, a customer only has the ability to make coffee by the predetermined choices of the pods. Enter Breville USA, the U.S. arm of an Australian company, which has created a coffeemaker that allows people to use the coffee they want, how they want and in the amounts they desire. Developing the product, Breville executives couldn’t really “define in America what the perfect cup of coffee was,” owing to everyone’s personal tastes, says Steve Driggs, executive creative director at Salt Lake City-based Struck, which (along with media partner Blitz Media) created a television campaign for the product. Instead, they created a machine that allows people to make coffee according to their tastes and needs. “They did recognize that the personal and pod cups of coffee are successful, and there’s a convenience level you can’t argue with that’s so easy,” Driggs tells Marketing Daily. To compete with that, they wanted to make sure it was easy and that you could just make a cup.” The new commercial, which will run on a variety of cable networks this holiday season, depicts people highlighting the different ways they like their coffee brewed. Amid shots of the product working, a voiceover mentions different possible brewing attributes accompanied by visuals. “Bold,” for instance, shows a stern academic-type who sternly closes a spyglass shut. “Mild” features a youngish African-American woman relaxing in a chair. “Intense” is a 50-something woman behind a desk tossing papers aside. (Think Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.”) In the corner of each visual representation are graphic illustrations like those on the appliance showing the settings they use to brew their coffee. The idea was to get as many different types of people possible represented in the commercial. “We tried to build these personas of people that mimicked the high-end coffee-loving demographic and create personas around who might like their coffee in a certain way,” Driggs tells Marketing Daily. The campaign, which will also be supported via social and Internet advertising, will run on networks such as the Food Network, Cooking Channel, MSNBC, Travel Channel, A&E, Bravo, DIY and TLC in the U.S. and Canada. Breville USA is also the presenting sponsor of the PBS program “In the Mind of a Chef,” narrated by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. The commercial will also run as a part of that sponsorship.
Tim Mahoney, EVP and chief product marketing officer for Volkswagen of America, was in San Diego post-Los Angeles Auto Show to give members of the press a run in the new Beetle R performance series. The brand itself is souped up, too, with increasing sales, consideration and market share. Mahoney talks to Marketing Daily about the Beetle, the brand, and the business of staking a claim in a crowded field. Q: The Beetle has for decades been a car with a happy-go-lucky personality. Where is it now? A: The shape of the vehicle is so iconic, you can't change the sheet metal too much, so the strategy from a life-cycle management perspective is to launch a series of derivatives, four of which we showed here in LA: the R line, and three "decade" models to pay tribute to the style and sensitivities of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. It's a people's car, but at the end of the last cycle it had been predominantly a car driven by females -- so adding performance through the R line, as well as Turbo and Fender versions, was a design effort to balance it out a little bit. Q: Are you extending the R line to other models in the Volkswagen portfolio?A: We have it already on the CC sedan and are showing it on other vehicles as well, possibly next month when we get to [the North American International Auto Show in] Detroit. Q: The Beetle still has its quirky side, like when you made a Beetle-shaped shark cage in which a diver drove around underwater playing Marco Polo with sharks.A: That was around the Beetle Cabrio launch this summer. We partnered with Discovery Channel on Shark Week and its 25th anniversary. But rather than just treat it as a media placement, we really came at it from an integration standpoint. The [shark-cage] Beetle had headlights, it moved forward and backward. So we had three vignettes, and a digital component. And from that we saw a big spike in August in terms of activity and even sales. Q: How's the new campaign, "Why VW," going?A: It goes back to the idea of building a platform that has content in one place, content around safety, style and performance. But it brings together what we want to say about the brand and what customers say. We have gotten a lot of responses with people submitting content -- everyone has a VW story -- and it is going very well. Q: Because of the new campaign, are you going to go in a different direction for the Super Bowl next year? A: All of the stories we tell are very human and very simple and some are funny -- not necessarily belly laughs, but a smile, a wink. So I think that formula has worked well for us and will continue to work well for us in the Super Bowl. This year's ad had over 36 million views. Q: How has customer feedback from "Why VW" helped refine the brand?A: In grad school, I had a marketing professor who said the purest form of marketing is understanding the customer so well that the product sells itself. If you can have a sense of what the customer is telling you, you can be smarter and more competitive and I think that's what we are trying to do -- whether it's positive or negative. Obviously, it's a lot nicer to get positive feedback, but I find I often learn more from the mistakes I make rather than the things that go right. So we listen to feedback. Q: Your professor's assertion only works in an ideal world, doesn't it? The auto market is definitely not ideal, so how does VW define the brand so it stands out?A: Maybe this is an artificial distinction but there is difference between marketing and branding. I think branding is standing for something, and connecting with a certain audience. That's where I think we have some core pillars: quality and value; performance and style; and commitment and responsibility. We have seen companies that are so focused on what they want to be that they sort of lose touch with the customer. There is a dynamic back-and-forth between listening and understanding the market, and understanding who you are, about where you want to be. Q: And how is that dynamic working for VW?A: I think Volkswagen has a human, simple, cool persona that has allowed us to grow. We are up 36% this year, 26% in 2011, and then 20% the year before that, so the brand is on fire. We have moved from 17th place in consideration to 10th now. We are putting ourselves on the consideration list through product, through marketing and value, and through our retail network. It is really coming together for VW.
Mars Petcare is encouraging cat owners to remember their four-legged family when they are doing their holiday shopping this year. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company has created a wish-list generator on its Temptations cat treats Facebook page. By answering a few questions about their cat's personality, the wish-list generator will produce customized gift ideas. While most cat owners think every day is a holiday for their feline friends, a new survey conducted by Temptations shows that nearly half of cat owners (46%) go the extra mile this time of year to buy their cat the perfect present to put under the tree. The survey showed that the majority of cat owners who do gift their cats during the holidays almost always purchase treats or toys. But most cat owners believe that if their cat could manage their own wish-list (should they be able to make one) the majority of them would want their stockings stuffed with treats. Temptations polled 2,500 Americans via online omnibus survey to find out how many cats would meow with joy over their presents this holiday season. Women (48.7%) are more likely than men (42.6%) to consider their cat when buying gifts during the holidays. However, when it comes to spending, men will go all out to make their cats' holiday perfect! Of gift-buying men, the majority (38.3%) will spend anywhere from $11 to $20 on their feline friends, while women (38.3%) only estimate spending $6 to $10. For those cats lucky enough to have made the shopping list, the large majority (84.9%) of their owners will be purchasing toys for feline friends; despite the fact that owners believe their cats prefer treats in their stockings.
A year ago, Marketing Dailyreported that regional chain Anthony’s Pizza was trying a gutsy strategy: It shifted away from its longtime practice of using 90% of its annual marketing budget in out-of-home media, to using 90% in television. The key was franchisees’ willingness to spend most of the year’s budget on running television in a concentrated flight period (five weeks during fourth-quarter 2011) -- using the medium to achieve greater reach and targeting, but less prolonged exposure than OOH. The restaurants relied on social media and grassroots marketing for exposure during the remainder of the year. How did it pan out? The campaign produced a sales uptick at the Denver-based restaurants, according to John LeBel, who is VP of Anthony’s Pizza & Pasta International (the franchisees who own 24 of the 27 restaurants), a franchise owner and the chain’s chief marketer. “It was successful, and we’d do it again,” he says. “Out-of-home is great for branding, and it’s been effective for years for Anthony’s,” particularly with creative from agency Cultivator Advertising & Design, says Mindy Gantner, VP media director at Explore Communications, the chain’s media agency. “TV is better at conveying messages and visually differentiating the restaurants. But you do need to have a budget large enough to make it effective. This year, there were other priorities. But when we have the budget -- yes, we may well use TV again.” Indeed, last year’s TV ads ended up yielding market and customer insights that ultimately worked against having the funds for more TV this year. “The TV ads brought in new customers, and our talks with them were important in our decision to refresh the brand and the restaurants,” says LeBel. Pizzerias have been moving to more upscale positioning in Denver and elsewhere. Anthony’s, in addition to updating its logo, is investing in updating its interiors -- replacing a colder, modern-style design with a more comfortable, “classic pizzeria” environment that aligns with its authentic, New York-style pizza, LeBel reports. Such investments rule out television for the time being. Instead, the chain is back to OOH, with new billboard and bus tail creative from Cultivator. The new campaign (sample shown above) indirectly takes on trendy fast-food options and faux-artisanal offerings by tweaking trendy behavior and spotlighting Anthony’s commitment to its classic recipes and genuinely artisanal ingredients. Each ad bears the tagline “Anthony’s: Pizza That Never Follows Trends,” accompanied by messaging such as: “Really need a like button to tell you what you like?”; “Skinny guy jeans? Next year you’ll be wearing bell-bottoms”; “Love social media? Sit around a table with friends”; and “If you dress like a lumberjack and you’re not, then you’re not.”
Lincoln's new New York-based ad agency -- it has a name now: Hudson Rouge -- is a big luminous space occupied by empty chairs, empty conference rooms, furniture and accessories all framed by huge picture windows offering million-dollar views of Manhattan, plus a sliver of the Hudson River, to which half of the agency's name refers. Rouge refers to the river that slips past Ford’s huge F-150 plant that also shares that name. A few of us saw Lincoln’s new agency even before agency employees arrived (they start Dec. 3) to get a look at something else: the new advertising platform -- the largest ever -- for Ford's Lincoln division, now “Lincoln Motor Company.” That's right; in a lot of ways, the brand is hearkening back to its golden days to inform the highly stylized product and brand identity for the future, embodied by cars like the new MKZ. The campaign hits the digital and traditional road today with a palette of five TV spots including a 60-second anthem and 30-second ads for the MKZ, MKS and MKX vehicles. There is also a huge digital play around culture, style, auteurs, music, industrial design, and film. And the automaker, by the way, will also have a 60-second ad in the Super Bowl. TV spots show Lincoln's iconic vehicles of yore, and passing images of famous people -- Dean Martin, Clark Gable, among others -- who drove them. The images appear as reflections on the sheet metal of famous Lincoln cars. Ads focus on design elements, with a direct analogy between past features like club doors and those of the new MKZ, such as push-button shifting and the panoramic glass roof. Wistful and dramatic imagery abounds -- a boy watching the launch of a space shuttle, and an eagle swooping along the hood of the car, mirroring the MKZ's avian grill, for instance. TV and print creative generally eschew rapid-action, somewhat “A.D.D.” quick scene changes that are par for the course in luxury and performance car pitches, opting instead for fluid scenes that evanesce from one to the other. Keeping with the luminous theme, even the bas-relief logo suggests a paper sculpture. "We are trying to mix great notes from the past and present," said Jon Pearce, CCO at Hudson Rouge. He ads that the campaign's acknowledgement of the brand's famous vehicles from its heyday works because the shoppers Lincoln wants to impress have no history, or memory of the automaker, and aren’t dogmatic about a particular luxury marque. "And the time is right for authentic brands: look at the popularity of Woolrich, Pendleton, and Cole Haan. They are both looking back to give people what's cool now." It’s probably worth noting that the agency will likely seek other luxury brands as clients. Lincoln is also tying online creative to print via a partnership with Fast Company. The branded content in print features artists, musicians, chefs and others whose works and milieus are explored on the new “Hello. Again” site, mirroring the larger theme of the campaign. Lincoln is also revamping Lincoln.com and http://www.lincoln.com/now/ whose layout will be graphic and designed for scalability to tablets and mobile devices with a coffee-table catalogue look. Another set of print ads comprises text on white space, with no images, and provocative themes like “Does the world need another luxury car? Not really,” that discuss the brand and its identity. They begin this week in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today.
Even with strong sales and traffic for stores throughout Black Friday weekend, the nation’s biggest chains couldn’t quite shake off Superstorm Sandy. Target, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and even steady-performer Nordstrom all posted declining numbers, below expectation. Overall, retailers saw November sales gain 1.7%, reports the International Council of Shopping Centers, which attributed the below-plan numbers not just to Sandy, but also the fact that the record-breaking levels of online sales over Thanksgiving won’t appear in results until December, when items actually ship. And the large number of people using layaway plans this year also depressed results, since those sales won’t hit the books until December, when final payments are made. And while that means December sales should show a healthy pop, an increase of between 4 and 4.5% according to the ICSC, it made for a downbeat November. At Target, comparable-store sales slipped 1% -- below its expectations, although the Minneapolis-based chain is optimistic about its overall holiday performance, including the launch of its Target/Neiman Marcus holiday collection. And at Kohl’s, comparable-store sales dropped 5.6%. While declines were worst in storm-affected areas, it says numbers slid in all its geographic regions. Macy’s says sales fell 0.7%. “Despite the largest-volume Thanksgiving weekend in our company’s history, we were not able to overcome the weak start to the month, which included the disruption of Hurricane Sandy. Yet we remain on track to deliver a very strong sales performance in the fourth quarter, consistent with our guidance,” CEO Terry J. Lundgren, says in its release. “Going forward into the heart of the holiday season, we continue to be very enthusiastic about how our omni-channel strategy is playing out.” Even Nordstrom saw its sales fall, with same-store results easing 1.1%, which it attributed not just to Sandy, but to weakness in one of its semiannual sales events. Some stores bucked the trend and even beat their estimates. The Framingham, Mass.-based TJX, parent of TJMaxx and Marshalls,, says its sales gained 3%. The Gap also saw an advance of 3%, including a 5% bump at the Gap, 3% at Banana Republic, and 1% at Old Navy.
Mark Zuckerberg thezuck@prodigy.com To: sherylsandberg@fbook.com Subject: potential benefits of Christmas Sandster, I saw the data on higher click-thrus 4th quarter. Kind of took me by surprise. The users seem to be paying 30% more attention at the holidays. What gives? Opportunity here? – Sheryl Sandberg sherylsandberg@fbook.com To: thezuck@prodigy.com Mark, this is just more proof, courtesy of a third-party data analysis, that Facebook is a relevant platform aligned with the rhythms of our nearly 1 billion users worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg thezuck@prodigy.com To: sherylsandberg@fbook.com Huh? Sheryl Sandberg sherylsandberg@fbook.com To: thezuck@prodigy.com Mark, FB meets people where they live. They visit here. They share here. They bond here. They perform here. And naturally, they shop here. Increased CTR simply reflect how Facebook is the only advertising platform that meets people where they live life. Mark Zuckerberg thezuck@prodigy.com To: sherylsandberg@fbook.com Yo, this is me, not freakin’ GroupM. Shut down your PowerPoint and please explain the Xmas bump. Is it some sort of holiday-cheer deal? Should I, like, smile more? Should we all be wearing ugly sweaters? Sheryl Sandberg sherylsandberg@fbook.com To: thezuck@prodigy.com If I may, Mark, let me call your attention to the insights from our partner Nanigans. As you have read in MediaPost, “The firm said click-though rates for e-commerce campaigns were up 30% from Black Friday to Cyber Monday compared to earlier in November. At the same time, holiday season CPCs are increasing at a similar rate as in prior years, twice as high on average as in 2010.” Mark Zuckerberg thezuck@prodigy.com To: sherylsandberg@fbook.com Nanigans? Seriously? Isn't that the bar with all the license plates and old timey baseball jerseys nailed to the wall? Anyway, what I’m asking you, Sheryl, is what this all means. Come on, I've lost $5 billion this year. What are we doing now that wasn't working for the past 11 1/2 months? Sheryl Sandberg sherylsandberg@fbook.com To: thezuck@prodigy.com Mark, I think you need look no further than the changes to our offering: the Relationship Pages, the EdgeRank adjustments in the newsfeed, our privacy tweaks, our Promoted Posts program and so on. We have our finger on the pulse of user behavior, we are ever vigilant about the needs of our marketing partners and we leverage every chance to improve our interface and expand our reach into every aspect of our users' daily lives. Stay tuned for our Bad Photo feature with the patented “Did I Look Fat in This?” button and the Likely Affair Tracker. Mark Zuckerberg thezuck@prodigy.com To: sherylsandberg@fbook.com Dude, WTF? Those changes you listed went into effect months ago and nada. Zilch. Bupkes. The lift has been in the last 30 days. Why? Have we found the formula that makes advertising on FB a real business, versus an unwanted intrusion into the fleeting, bleating lives of a billion pitiful sheep? It's year-end. Thinking of dumping some stock for a $5 billion paper loss. WHY DID CTRS GO UP?!?! Sheryl Sandberg sherylsandberg@fbook.com To: thezuck@prodigy.com It's Christmas, Mark. Everybody's CTRs are up.
One of the hottest marketing catchphrases of 2012 is "data is the new creative." The premise is that all the creative in the world won't help you if your decisions are not data-driven.Data is the new creative!For those who are squarely in the analytics camp, this new sentiment must feel like a vindication for long years slaving away, gleaning insights from facts and figures without much appreciation (well, maybe that's not entirely accurate, but sometimes it feels that way.) It's about time colleagues and clients realize they could have avoided numerous mistakes if they had only taken the time to look at the data first. The argument is that for too long, people have used "smoke and mirrors" to sell clients programs with flashy creative that was not built on a solid foundation based on data-driven insights.Is data the new creative?On the flip side, many talented creative people see clients doing the same boring old things they have always done based on some stodgy egghead's calculations. The inherent fear of trying any new ideas due to the threat of running afoul of FDA regulations or supposed lack of evidence for success makes creative marketers want to scream! It's bad enough that people hide behind an army of lawyers who are afraid of government censure -- now we have to come up with a master's thesis before we can proceed with any new ideas. Sometimes you have to have a little faith to be innovative.Data + creative = successActually, the truth lies somewhere in between. Data, and analysis of existing programs, should be used to refine ideas or cut out tactics that have not performed as expected in the past. To evaluate success, initial targets should be created based on similar programs or events that have been implemented before. At the very least, regular reporting should be included in the evaluation process to monitor results as you move forward.That doesn't mean that it's wrong to take a chance once in a while. Sometimes it's equally important to break out of old routines and come up with some new ideas. Better to try and fail than to never try at all. But even a brand-new idea should be based on some sort of logic. Believe it or not, analytics people are not afraid to be challenged. A rough ROI model can be hammered out if the creative and analytics people get together and have a conversation. The key is to establish initial objectives and figure out the answer to the age old question: What does success look like. Sometimes data can fuel new creative ideas. A global health care company that manufactures a number of prescription medicines recently embraced the capabilities of an in-house survey tool that enhances the ability to receive feedback from patients involved in relationship marketing programs. A series of short surveys were conducted to learn from the people who have opted in to receive educational materials about a chronic condition. The results of the surveys were extremely valuable. The responses revealed that over 50% of those receiving treatment were apprehensive about starting treatment because of concerns about side effects. We also learned that 75% of enrollees felt that the condition had a significant impact on their lives and their daily routines. When we polled patients about potential tools, we learned that a smartphone application received high marks, while text messaging was of little value.The above data points have been shared with the creative team and have provided specific direction to focus their energies. This in turn will fuel a new program strategy and provide the foundation on which to build creative ideas for 2013. Program enhancements based on patient feedback will boost engagement metrics and will ensure that existing consumers stay on treatment and have positive medical results.