The Internet has made public many things once considered to be of a private and personal nature. The times have changed and we continue to push the limits, as companies attempt to break through the intense promotional clutter, creating visibility for their brands and engaging with customers in a very open and public way.
I have no real issue with any of this, more so a marketer’s curiosity as to whether the promotional tactics are appropriate to the brand strategies, as some of these promotions seem a little contrived — but then I’m not the target audience so I probably just don’t get it.
One such promotion is an online contest recently launched by Kimberly Clark for its Kotex brand, called “Project Make-Under.” The contest, which runs through September 12, asks women to write a brief (no pun intended) essay, of 250 words or less, on why their underwear has lost its luster.
“Spring has officially arrived.” So says the spam email I received from Brian at Phenix Investigations this morning. “It’s time to think about using surveillance to deal with employee-related issues.”
I don’t know Brian and have never heard of Phenix Investigations until today, but I did find it a rather curious email. For starters, spring officially arrived about five months ago. And frankly, I can’t think of a worse idea at any time of the year than spying on my employees, especially in the current business environment.
My curiosity moves me to do a little investigating on my own.
An increasing number of nonprofit organizations are mobilizing, calling for a change in the way they market their causes to a consumer public that is spending less and thus donating less. These marketing leaders will be sharing ideas and recommending different approaches at the upcoming American Marketing Associating (AMA) annual nonprofit conference to be held in Chicago on October 11-13.
According to Cynthia Currence, who is president of the AMA nonprofit group and will be chairing the conference, there is a need for their sector to reinvent and transform the way they approach marketing, especially now in a challenging economic environment, as it is tremendously underleveraged.
One of the most profitable and sustaining business models is the razor and the blade concept. In this model, there exists a synergistic coupling of two compatible products, one dependent upon the other, requiring a capital purchase (the razor) and then the continuing need for necessary consumable products (the blade), which is of course where all the money is.
The key to sustaining this model is the continued reinvention of both the razor and the blade. As consumers, we know this. Yet, because of our need to always have the next new thing, we invariably get sucked into the razor and blade syndrome.
Imagine my good luck at receiving a credit adjustment in the mail for $161.64.
Not knowing exactly what a credit adjustment is, I rip open the nondescript, official looking envelope to find that I have been included in a select group of individuals chosen for a special publisher’s offer on a three-year subscription to Motor Trend magazine — an offer not available to the general public.
The regular subscription price is $179.64, but with my special credit adjustment of $161.64, the price is only $6 per year. Wow.
Note: Today’s entry is a guest post from Bridgz Marketing Group employee Nick Nelson, detailing a recent customer experience.
From the first moment I tried on a pair of Skullcandy headphones, I loved them.
I’d grown accustomed to using Apple’s plastic earbuds that came with my iPod, but they had a tendency to fall out and after long periods of time they’d make my ears hurt. Skullcandy offered a refreshing alternative. Their earbuds were soft and comfortable, stayed in place when I went for runs and featured strong sound quality. Heck, even the cord never seemed to get tangled up.
I became a loyal customer for Skullcandy. Any time I needed a new pair of headphones, it was the brand I chose, without hesitation. When my cat chewed through a pair, I went to Target and picked up a new set. I bought pairs for both my parents for Christmas. I spoke glowingly of the brand to friends and colleagues
In his whitepaper entitled Absorption, Dr. A.K. Pradeep (aka Dr. Deep) tells marketers that it’s not enough to just engage with customers — though that certainly is a worthwhile endeavor — as that only brings us to the gateway to the brain. We need to step further into a state where marketing messages are fully absorbed. And not just to one part of the brain, but to those deeper regions where emotions and memory retention reside, both crucial to the formation of what we call persuasion, which is transformed to purchase intent.
The example Dr. Deep uses is a sponge. At any given moment, he claims, the brain takes in as many as a hundred million individual stimuli from our five senses. When fully activated, the brain consumes the equivalent of “a bottle of wine’s worth of blood a minute” as it records and reacts to all this stimuli.
The image of a bottle of red wine filled with blood is now being fully absorbed into my brain and I’m not sure I like it.
Dr. Deep delves deeply into the consumer’s brain in search of pleasure.
Marketers need to go there as well, so they can learn how to better engage with their customers on a more emotional level, which will lead to increased purchases and brand loyalty. So says Dr. A.K. Pradeep, or “Dr. Deep,” as I 
call him.
Dr. Deep is founder and CEO of a company called NeuroFocus, which is the self-proclaimed world leader in EEG-based full brain measurement of consumers’ subconscious responses. EEG (electroencephalography) is basically a recording of electronic activity produced by the firing of neurons within the brain based on certain stimuli, or whatever.
Basically what he does is measure, record and analyze brain activities responding to different stimuli like brand messaging, advertising and buying experiences. In doing so he has identified increased activity in the pleasure center of the brain, creating what he describes as “little moments of luxury.” Apparently, this is our subconscious desire to feel better, attempting to escape the stress and anxiety of our lives. The little moments, he contends, are also markers that indicate our precognitive responses to different brands, products, advertising, and customer engagements — how they affect purchase behaviors and emotional connection with the brand. He refers to it as a “Luxury Perception Framework” (LPF).
Filed under: Marketing Models
A well socialized research project done earlier this year by R2 Interactive reported that 65% of marketers who claimed to be active in social media said their companies have not seen any increase in revenue or profited in any way from those activities. That would mean at least 65% of marketers are flying blind.
What they do not seem to grasp is that the economic foundation on which our media infrastructure was built is changing rather rapidly from a capitalist to socialist state — from distribution push to access pull; from ownership to co-creation, aggregation and sharing. The power structure has shifted and business no longer controls media; it has become a public utility owned and operated by the people.
I was truly disheartened by a recent report that Raisin Bran cereal is in fact not all that healthy, containing more sugar than even sugary kid’s cereals like Lucky Charms and Fruit Loops.
Not that I care about Raisin Bran, I don’t even like the stuff. But once again we find that advertising claims are not to be trusted as they are often overstated, misleading or blatantly false. They force consumers to fend for ourselves, checking ingredients on every product we buy, no matter what the brand promise or perception.
Perhaps I’ve simply been too gullible, but for years I have been led to believe that Raisin Bran is like health food, with the high fiber content and all, but it’s the “all” they never told us about. Now I come to learn that it’s also loaded with sugar — a whopping 19 grams, the equivalent of five teaspoons of sugar in an average serving.
(more…)
