By: Mike Gospe, KickStart Alliance
Conceptually, the theories of persona-building, positioning, and messaging are easy to understand. However, sometimes it’s helpful for a marketing team to critique a real example and then discuss the parallels to their own business. An example that everyone can easily relate to, and that is separate from the business you represent, is also an effective way to diffuse any emotion that may hinder folks from seeing the lessons associated with trying to execute a poor go-to-market strategy.
The following is a true story: the case of a better mousetrap. In 1955, an eager entrepreneur introduced a revolutionary new product that was destined to change the world of “rodent control”. In addition to producing leaflets, promoting through friends and family, this ad (click on the link below) ran in a variety of publications at the time.
Ad for a better mousetrap, circa 1955
Issues and Opportunities
You can infer a lot regarding the marketing strategy by looking at an example of the execution. While the product design clearly is creative (and not for the squeamish), the entrepreneur fell into several traps that are common today, especially in hi-tech marketing:
1) Failure to focus on a clear target segment/persona
Who is the target audience/user/buyer? It looks like pretty much “everyone.” For fear of leaving a sales opportunity on the table, the entrepreneur attempted to be all-inclusive. In a single swoop, he went after farmers, restaurant owners, food processors, meet packers, ships, homes, and orchards. Although the confusion of trying to address multiple audiences at once maybe obvious to us gentle bystanders, one wonders if anyone asked the entrepreneur the following questions:
• Who is most likely to buy your product? Who is the persona?
• Do all these audiences look alike? behave the same way? have the same concerns?
• What problem(s) are you trying to solve?
• How well do you really understand the target buyer?
2) Failure to properly position the product
Every product needs to have positioning statement.
What’s in a name? Clearly, not all “mousetraps” are alike. In 1955 (and even today!), the top-selling mousetrap is the Victor snap-trap. In 1955 the snap-trap sold for 5 cents. Our entrepreneur’s mousetrap sells for $29.95. Branding the product against a generic “mousetrap” nomenclature will not serve his marketing interests. (Although, a branding effort would introduce its own set of challenges.)
A new category? He’s attempted to establish a new category of mousetraps, namely, the “sanitary, self-setting, portable” mousetrap. This is good, and goes a long way to justifying such a massive price increase over the competitive alternative. However, what you can’t quite make out in the photos is the following:
• The mousetrap’s dimensions are 3 ft long, 8 inches wide, and 18 inches high.
• It holds 3 gallons of water, and is quite heavy (especially if loaded with 102 mice!).
NOTE: Years ago, when I developed my first Positioning Workshop, I had the opportunity to view and touch this actual, very real mousetrap. Unfortunately, it is actually neither, sanitary, self-setting, nor portable. We have a category mis-match.
Benefit? Which benefit? There are many benefits floating around in the ad. Which one is most important? Some seem hard to believe. Again, it’s the “everything for everyone” approach.
For a benefit to be meaningful, it must be relevant to the target audience. It must also be single-minded, clear, substantiable (e.g. you can prove any claim with data), and differentiable.
Differentiation? We come back to the 5 cent snap-trap alternative. If anything, this ad makes the competitor’s product look better.
3) Failure to have a crisp, clear “elevator pitch”
Because there was no positioning statement to guide the marketing strategy, the messaging is a confused mess. The entrepreneur would have greatly benefited from the Message Box template where he could underscore 4 key messages:
1. An “engagement message” designed to establish relevance with the target audience and their primary “rodent control” pain points they are trying to address.
2. A “solution message” that illustrates why not all mousetraps are the same, and certain applications require something much more than the standard snap-trap.
3. A “reinforcement message” that shows how his invention is superior to alternatives.
4. A “value message” that describes how the target’s life will be better than before after using his new, revolutionary product.
Critique your own work
How well does your ads/direct mail/website stack up? Use the mousetrap example as a teachable exercise. Never be afraid to critique your marketing strategies with regards to your persona, positioning statement, and messaging. It’s not about placing blame; it’s about reaching the “next level” of marketing effectiveness. Otherwise, your success may be limited to selling 4 units to your brother-in-law.
Good luck!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Airline Pricing - WTH?
I went with "What the heck", not sure if that is a widely accepted acronym or not, but at the very least it is politically correct. I recently had to play the airline pricing game and I ended the game more confused than I entered it. This has been a long lived confusion and I have verified that I am not the only person who shares this confusion / frustration.
I would consider the pricing strategy an important element to any companies' success. It is an extension of the brand image you are looking to portray and it is a message to customers as to what they should expect from your company. Are you looking to be an elite provider or the low cost solution? Are you looking to market to the whole country or a small group of affluent customers? More often then not, a company will end up in the middle somewhere, but there are great companies on both extremes.
There is not a "right" pricing model necessarily, but there is a pricing model that fits your company better than the others and will allow your company to reach its potential.
Which pricing model have the airlines chosen? Some of them appeared to be pushing towards the low cost providers, but the more I search the more prices vary from day to day and cheapest carrier seems to vary from flight to flight, city to city and even within the same day. Just to figure out which flights are the lowest price could require two computers, an Abacus and a role of duct tape.
I ended up choosing Southwest for this particular flight, but I flew on Delta for my last flight and Frontier for the flight before that. I will applaud Southwest for at least sticking to their no luggage charge policy. Should I really need to look up the luggage policy for each individual airline to figure out what total cost will be per flight?
In the end, for the airlines, this comes down to a customer service issue. Do you want your customers to hate purchasing your product because it is a difficult and time consuming process? Do you want them to relate the purchase process with anxiety? How many other purchase environments relegate the customer to a form of gambling? Will the price go up tomorrow or down tomorrow? Is this the lowest the price will go or should I wait another week?
I think the worst case scenario for a business is having a pricing model and process that causes anxiety and confusion for your customers. Keep that in mind each time you are going to communicate to your customers. If you are straight forward with the customers they will know exactly what to expect and won't get any surprises. Good luck and if you have any flight searching tips make sure to share them.
I would consider the pricing strategy an important element to any companies' success. It is an extension of the brand image you are looking to portray and it is a message to customers as to what they should expect from your company. Are you looking to be an elite provider or the low cost solution? Are you looking to market to the whole country or a small group of affluent customers? More often then not, a company will end up in the middle somewhere, but there are great companies on both extremes.
There is not a "right" pricing model necessarily, but there is a pricing model that fits your company better than the others and will allow your company to reach its potential.
Which pricing model have the airlines chosen? Some of them appeared to be pushing towards the low cost providers, but the more I search the more prices vary from day to day and cheapest carrier seems to vary from flight to flight, city to city and even within the same day. Just to figure out which flights are the lowest price could require two computers, an Abacus and a role of duct tape.
I ended up choosing Southwest for this particular flight, but I flew on Delta for my last flight and Frontier for the flight before that. I will applaud Southwest for at least sticking to their no luggage charge policy. Should I really need to look up the luggage policy for each individual airline to figure out what total cost will be per flight?
In the end, for the airlines, this comes down to a customer service issue. Do you want your customers to hate purchasing your product because it is a difficult and time consuming process? Do you want them to relate the purchase process with anxiety? How many other purchase environments relegate the customer to a form of gambling? Will the price go up tomorrow or down tomorrow? Is this the lowest the price will go or should I wait another week?
I think the worst case scenario for a business is having a pricing model and process that causes anxiety and confusion for your customers. Keep that in mind each time you are going to communicate to your customers. If you are straight forward with the customers they will know exactly what to expect and won't get any surprises. Good luck and if you have any flight searching tips make sure to share them.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Power of Brand Filters: Tips for Better Company and Product Naming
By: Phillip Davis, Tungsten Branding
Each week frustrated business owners call me, exhausted from their latest company-naming marathon. They've spent dozens (if not hundreds) of hours in valuable staff time churning out endless lists of ideas, suggestions, brainstorms, etc.
The results?
A hodgepodge of names with no rhyme or reason to them, little or no group consensus, a lack of matching domain names, potential trademark issues, and a looming deadline of one sort or another. The group has grown increasingly wary of the whole ordeal and everyone just wants to "move on." Sound familiar?
At the root of this problem lies a lack of established "brand filters." By brand filters I mean the screening criteria that nearly everyone in the company inherently knows but that remains unarticulated. Think of it as the mental tumbler that any new idea or project must go through before someone at the company says "Yes, that's a fit for us!" An example might prove helpful.
Imagine you were on the board of directors for Rolex and one of your top sales people came to you with a proposal to sell millions of inexpensive Rolex watches this holiday season at Wal-Mart--what would you say? What if another salesperson came to you with the idea of co-branding a Rolex interior in a new line of Lexus automobiles? Which proposal would make more sense? Why?
On one hand you could argue that Rolex is a watch company and that selling millions more watches is the way to go, even if it means selling them cheaply. A more astute observer would see that Rolex really isn't a watch company; it's a prestige company. The watch is just the method or means of selling the prestige. If properly understood, this subtle shift has tremendous ramifications. Instead of looking to extend your brand along product lines, you would look to extend it along attribute lines.
So in this case, the first "brand filter" for Rolex would be prestige. Any new idea, product, service, venture, brand extension, etc. would need to incorporate an element of upscale sophistication before it would be even considered. If Rolex were then to conduct a naming assignment, one of the top criteria would be the need to convey elegance, prestige and luxury vs. needing to convey the idea of a "watch."
As obvious as this may seem, most naming assignments don't utilize branding filters to evaluate names. Without them, the names tend to gravitate towards literal descriptions and the judging of the potential new names defaults to random associations--biased personal judgments that have nothing to do with the company or its future direction. Without proper brand filters, the criteria can become quite arbitrary, such as "It's got to be one word." Or "It's got to be high in the alphabet." Or "It's got to have a hard consonant sound." These are all technical, linguistically constructed issues that should come secondary to the primary purpose of having a name that reflects who you are, based on your most compelling attributes.
One of the top branding filters for our naming firm was conveying a sense of brilliance, insight and clarity. With that in mind, we developed the name Tungsten, a metal Thomas Edison used to illuminate light bulbs. From a linguistics standpoint, the name was a bit problematic. It's not the easiest to spell. The exact matching domain name was not available either. But the overriding consideration was given to the fact that the name captured the essence of creating brilliance. In other words, it told a story.
In establishing your brand filters, what chief characteristics do you wish to convey in your name? Is it strength? Ease? Reliability? Status? Which ones are most important? Write a list and prioritize them. Typically the overarching attributes will be on top and the more pragmatic criteria will be lower (i.e. length of the name, exact matching domain, etc.). Here's a typical example for an internet start-up company--Sample Branding/Naming Filters.
•Conveys a sense of innovation and ingenuity.
•Has an "interruptive" quality that makes the consumer want to know more
•Segues easily to a background story/elevator speech about the company.
•Is easy to say and spell.
•Has a closely matching .com domain name.
Once you have your set of brand filters, it's much easier to ask your core group of decision makers to compare the naming candidates against the list of criteria rather than against their personal biases. The question simply becomes, "How do these potential names compare against our branding filters?" vs. "What do you think about these names?" Stay flexible with the process. If a name fits the filters but everyone hates it, then perhaps your filters need adjusting or re-prioritization. Perhaps having an easy to say name is more important than first thought. But by having these filters, it creates context in which to better evaluate your naming decisions.
By creating brand filters in advance of a product or company naming assignment, you can alleviate a lot of missteps and come to consensus naturally and intuitively. The naming process becomes a true process and your naming sessions become more productive. Instead of names that describe the products you sell, you'll create names that convey the essence of who you are, what you do and why you do it. And that makes for great branding.
Each week frustrated business owners call me, exhausted from their latest company-naming marathon. They've spent dozens (if not hundreds) of hours in valuable staff time churning out endless lists of ideas, suggestions, brainstorms, etc.
The results?
A hodgepodge of names with no rhyme or reason to them, little or no group consensus, a lack of matching domain names, potential trademark issues, and a looming deadline of one sort or another. The group has grown increasingly wary of the whole ordeal and everyone just wants to "move on." Sound familiar?
At the root of this problem lies a lack of established "brand filters." By brand filters I mean the screening criteria that nearly everyone in the company inherently knows but that remains unarticulated. Think of it as the mental tumbler that any new idea or project must go through before someone at the company says "Yes, that's a fit for us!" An example might prove helpful.
Imagine you were on the board of directors for Rolex and one of your top sales people came to you with a proposal to sell millions of inexpensive Rolex watches this holiday season at Wal-Mart--what would you say? What if another salesperson came to you with the idea of co-branding a Rolex interior in a new line of Lexus automobiles? Which proposal would make more sense? Why?
On one hand you could argue that Rolex is a watch company and that selling millions more watches is the way to go, even if it means selling them cheaply. A more astute observer would see that Rolex really isn't a watch company; it's a prestige company. The watch is just the method or means of selling the prestige. If properly understood, this subtle shift has tremendous ramifications. Instead of looking to extend your brand along product lines, you would look to extend it along attribute lines.
So in this case, the first "brand filter" for Rolex would be prestige. Any new idea, product, service, venture, brand extension, etc. would need to incorporate an element of upscale sophistication before it would be even considered. If Rolex were then to conduct a naming assignment, one of the top criteria would be the need to convey elegance, prestige and luxury vs. needing to convey the idea of a "watch."
As obvious as this may seem, most naming assignments don't utilize branding filters to evaluate names. Without them, the names tend to gravitate towards literal descriptions and the judging of the potential new names defaults to random associations--biased personal judgments that have nothing to do with the company or its future direction. Without proper brand filters, the criteria can become quite arbitrary, such as "It's got to be one word." Or "It's got to be high in the alphabet." Or "It's got to have a hard consonant sound." These are all technical, linguistically constructed issues that should come secondary to the primary purpose of having a name that reflects who you are, based on your most compelling attributes.
One of the top branding filters for our naming firm was conveying a sense of brilliance, insight and clarity. With that in mind, we developed the name Tungsten, a metal Thomas Edison used to illuminate light bulbs. From a linguistics standpoint, the name was a bit problematic. It's not the easiest to spell. The exact matching domain name was not available either. But the overriding consideration was given to the fact that the name captured the essence of creating brilliance. In other words, it told a story.
In establishing your brand filters, what chief characteristics do you wish to convey in your name? Is it strength? Ease? Reliability? Status? Which ones are most important? Write a list and prioritize them. Typically the overarching attributes will be on top and the more pragmatic criteria will be lower (i.e. length of the name, exact matching domain, etc.). Here's a typical example for an internet start-up company--Sample Branding/Naming Filters.
•Conveys a sense of innovation and ingenuity.
•Has an "interruptive" quality that makes the consumer want to know more
•Segues easily to a background story/elevator speech about the company.
•Is easy to say and spell.
•Has a closely matching .com domain name.
Once you have your set of brand filters, it's much easier to ask your core group of decision makers to compare the naming candidates against the list of criteria rather than against their personal biases. The question simply becomes, "How do these potential names compare against our branding filters?" vs. "What do you think about these names?" Stay flexible with the process. If a name fits the filters but everyone hates it, then perhaps your filters need adjusting or re-prioritization. Perhaps having an easy to say name is more important than first thought. But by having these filters, it creates context in which to better evaluate your naming decisions.
By creating brand filters in advance of a product or company naming assignment, you can alleviate a lot of missteps and come to consensus naturally and intuitively. The naming process becomes a true process and your naming sessions become more productive. Instead of names that describe the products you sell, you'll create names that convey the essence of who you are, what you do and why you do it. And that makes for great branding.
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