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Star Trek vs Star Wars: Battle of the BrandsNovember 27

Star Trek is a brand. Star Wars is a brand, too. (Jar Jar Binks was their “New Coke”. If the brand survived that, it can survive pretty much anything).

Like CPG brands, they compete not just in the market, but for a place in consumers’ minds and hearts. Which one wins? Check out this completely illegal digital mashup video.

I think both brands triumph here. What do you think?

The CPG Digital Marketer’s Resource PageNovember 26

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the day-to-day of our jobs.

But if we don’t stay smart about what’s happening in CPG, we’re not actually doing our jobs. Fortunately, there are a few billion resources out there to make it easier for us to make ourselves smarter.

Below is a completely spurious side-by-side brain scan of a marketer at a major CPG company.

The scan on the left was taken immediately before consulting these resources. The scan on the right? Immediately after.

OK, it’s time to feed your head. Dig in.

CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS: INTERACTIVE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

CONSUMER PACKAGED GOODS: ADVERTISING

Brandweek

The Wile E. Coyote School of MarketingNovember 25

Recently, I was talking with some friends about today’s worship of measurement and ROI over all other considerations. While it’s important, it is not and never will be a substitute for judgment.

Even Young-Bean Song, Director of Analytics at Microsoft Atlas Institute cautions “What we have done well is measurement for the bottom of the funnel…clicks, conversion, sales, revenue, etc. But we’ve turned the purchase funnel into a purchase spoon.”

It occurred to me that marketing follows a predictable cycle that ought to be taught in all MBA programs, but never is. Here’s how it works:

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1. Declare the last god worshipped a hopeless dead-end.
2. Forget all lessons learned; abandon anything that was working really well.
3. Find a new false god to worship.
4. Affix blindfold.
5. Chase the new false god directly over the cliff.
6. Fall to bottom of chasm. Dust self off.
7. Declare the last god worshipped a hopeless dead-end.
8. Forget all lessons learned; abandon anything that was working really well.
9. Choose the next false god to worship.
10. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

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Are You In-The-Flow, Or In-The-Way?November 18

Three days ago, P&G GM Interactive Marketing and Innovation Ted McConnell said “I’d really rather not buy any more banner ads on Facebook.” Why?

“Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody.”

I’ve seen Ted speak a number of times at conferences, and he’s a very smart guy.

For me, he hits the nail on the head when he talks about what consumers are “trying to do”

Are You In-The-Flow? Or In-The-Way?

Repeat after me: user intent matters.

One reason TV performs so well is that because people turn to it looking for entertainment. As a user, I’ll give my attention to whatever entertains me. If what happens to entertain me is an ad, that’s OK.

Why? It’s part of what I’m doing.

View Vs. Do

A challenge for Facebook is that people are often trying to do something. Every user knows from experience that the “in-the-flow” stuff is in the middle of the page, and the “in-the-way” stuff (the ads) is at the periphery.

Guess where users focus their attention.

I’m not saying Facebook ads are a bad idea. The targeting is really good. And, some users are on there just fart

TV: WIWWIWWIW or RIPNovember 14

Update 11/15/2008: Only a few days before the largest BitTorrent tracker will celebrate its 5th anniversary, the Pirate Bay reached a new milestone. The site now tracks 25 million peers, which is more than the entire populations of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark combined.

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We’re at an important inflection point for marketing. And, it’s going almost entirely unreported and unremarked upon.

Here’s the thing. With video, consumers want “What I want, where I want, when I want.”

If the TV industry gets it right (see Hulu as a good example), we’ll have an amazing future with lots of opportunities for marketers and everyone in that food chain to do very well indeed.

If the TV industry gets it wrong, it’s very likely that consumers will cobble together their own infrastructure. They will use torrents, peer-to-peer networks, DVDs,and whatever else they can to get “What I want, where I want, when I want”. If that happens, people will be able to get what they want for free, without seeing any advertising at all.

if that sounds impossible, ask a friend in the music business how it’s going