Hearing aids are mismarketed. Right now, I should be trying to figure out how to pay $3000 for some espionage-ready X-man hearing skills. I'm talking targeted, telescopic microamps that add 100 zeros to the Whisper 2000. Seriously, these things should make the Bionic Man noise when I jut out my neck and crank heavy reverb when I suck in sound, hands on hips.

"Honey, the neighbors have termites."

For some reason I have been obsessed lately with Circuit City and Best Buy – a tale of two companies. Maybe because of all the holiday and Super Bowl promotions around Flat Screen TV’s. Regardless of why, it makes me think back to my days as a retail executive with the now defunct May Department Store Company, which merged with Federated Department Stores last year.

May Company grew dramatically during the 80’s and early 90’s under the leadership of David Farrell. It grew through the acquisition of a number of other traditional department stores – mainly regional players. Then May centralized a number of functions creating efficiencies and more central control. For a number of years it held the title of the nation’s largest department store company (if you classify out discounters such as Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, and JC Penney’s).

Continue reading "A Tale of Two Companies: The Innovator and the Follower" »

My comrade, sharp tack extraordinaire at a respected academic-centered consultancy, posted the following at his organization's official blog:

Why isn't there a FAQ on this site?

Good question. We'll put one up soon.

I can only assume his post is in response to 1) redundant queries or 2) the suggestion of a FAQ, specifically, to field them. His site receives respectable traffic from all sorts, folks who no doubt inundate his whipsmart cohorts with fairly tedious questions. Indeed, FAQs (in their traditional use) are useful for pre-qualifying clients & associates, redirecting lost interlopers, and translating industry jargon. But here's why I must dissuade said tack from a FAQ: they're designed to end a conversation before it begins.

Continue reading "Frequently Avoided Questions" »

Every Woz needs a Jobs. And every Jobs needs a Woz. I’m talking, of course, about Apple Computer co-founders, Steve Wozniak, and Steve Jobs.

Continue reading "JobsWoz" »

VO5: "Hair treatment so revolutionary, even China gets it!"

China: "Saaaay, this V05 hot oil is PERFECT for frying every American man, woman, and child into yankee pigdog rangoon! 21st Dynasty can ya feel me!?"

If you squint a bit, you may be able to make out the details of this shabby snap from my Treo:



Once you've gathered that it's (a small corner of) a bulletin board of some description, you may wonder who spilled their Easter egg paints all over it. You may think these pastels help categorize the content of the individual bulletins, allowing onlookers to sort at a glance. And the (in this photo illegible) headlines must be some important, standardized bit of content (event name or date) to distinguish items within those categories. And these notes, all of which come from the same source, are designed to match a standard template and information structure ...

But I'd have to tell you, they don't and they ain't.

Well, it's just a bulletin board, you may say -- it's not like the primary audience is folks with compromised, diminishing physical and mental facilities, right?

Alas, I'd reveal more disheartening news: this bulletin board -- the visual equivalent of a shouting match -- is the events calendar at my grandma's senior home, where sucka fool bulletin boards be shoutin' at my grandma.

Brand Noise has a post about a "hot new idea shop" called Fahrenheit 212. The post links to a BusinessWeek article about the firm. From that article:

Clients think of the firm as a way to make long-shot bets without having to use their own research and development resources. "Samsung is a lean organization. We can't afford to have people coming up with ideas that don't work," says Chief Marketing Officer Gregory Lee. "The people at Fahrenheit are very helpful because they are working on ideas that can fail--it allows you to experiment a bit." What's more, Fahrenheit ties much of its compensation to the success of the product, making it an even safer bet.

I think the focus on innovation that the marketplace has been entertaining for the last several years presages more and more of these kind of enterprises. Back when we were starting bigwidesky, my partner Mike told me of a survey of the clients of ad agencies he'd read in which the single biggest gripe was that the agencies weren't bringing any powerful ideas. I, for one, am happy to sidle up and fill that hole with the most amazing ideas we can concoct. Clearly we're not the only ones with this ambition.

Guy Kawasaki has a sweet little post up with a link to a fabulous "Periodic Table of Visualization Methods". Having just read this great Tufte book, I found it quite interesting.

A very accomplished, well-known and respected ad guy spoke in St. Louis on Friday. I was in the audience. He was singing the praises of the Mark Ecko/Air Force One stunt. I asked him if the inauthenticity of the stunt (ie. that wasn't really Air Force One) might make peeps feel like they'd been had.

He responded to the effect that it wasn't inauthentic because it fit the brand.

I was disappointed to hear the lackluster results of an ad campaign I found to be clever, on target and different than other competitors. The ad was for a drug called Rozerem, a sleep aid by drug manufacturer Takada. The drug, despite $100 million ad spend ranks 6th in its category; far behind category leaders Ambien and Lunesta and even trailing two generic brands. Check out Brandweek’s full article for more details.

So now you have to ask the following: “Was the concept wrong? Was the message wrong? Is the product inferior to its competitors? Was its late entry into the category too big of an obstacle to overcome?” I can come up with a bunch more.

Without knowing all the details I have to speculate. I think the ads are well concepted and executed as previously stated. But perhaps the product is to blame. The article references that although the drug helps those with sleeping disorders fall asleep faster, they often wake up in the middle of the night. Perhaps they succeeded in capturing first time users but due to this shortcoming, those users didn’t refill their prescriptions and requested another brand. This combined with their late entry into the market could prove to be too big of an obstacle to overcome. And if this is true, and users aren’t repeating, the drug will die out in the next couple years. It would be nice to know what percentage of first time users refilled thier prescriptions and how that compares to industry standards.

This is where some consumer generated feedback, through a forum or blog would be very advantageous. Instead of speculating, they can gather ongoing feedback, both from consumes and perhaps even physicians. If what they learn is that the product is inferior, then guess what – cut your losses now and go back to the lab and improve the product. Put the money in R&D and save the money marketing the product as is. In my opinion, these kinds of web based tools need to be part of every campaign in some shape or form. The days of a well planned out campaign that would run for a couple years are over. You have to learn and adjust as you go.

Ah, the rules of marketing keep changing. Let's see what happens to Rozerem over the next 24 months.

Daniel over at Organic's Three Minds blog has a post about Paul English's gethuman.com. Basically, gethuman.com is about trying to get companies to improve their phone support. "Be Human" is our mantra at bigwidesky, and things like this redound to my belief that being human is a meme whose time has come.

A recent ad campaign from the Regional Tourism Committee of Paris Ile-de-France is targeting Londoners to come visit what is often considered by the English as a “stuffy museum city.” The ads themselves are pretty cool but the best part is the Cop the Parisian Attitude game. Some of those people, with their shrugs and their unnecessarily large pouts, look more Parisian than Parisians. And you’ve gotta love any ad campaign poking fun at the French.