marketing isn't a real thing, is it?

Dilbert by Scott Adams

My favorite panel, from any comic strip, ever, has to be this one. I love "Marketing isn't a real thing, is it?" "It's mostly guessing." Haha, that Dilbert, he gets me every time.

Of course, if you're reading this and you're a marketer yourself, you know that marketing is anything BUT guessing.

Marketing is actually a very precise science - something that only seasoned marketers - those who have failed and those who have triumphed - can truly understand.

Think back to your 5th grade science fair. What were you asked to do? First: Identify a problem. Then form a hypothesis. Next, design and perform an experiment(s). Then, collect and analyze the data. Lastly, formulate your conclusions about your hypothesis.

And class, what do we call that?

The Scientific Method

The S-C-I-E-N-T-I-F-I-C M-E-T-H-O-D.

Good job, class.

Marketing is science. Your client is your teacher, he/she brings you a problem, "Hey Kathy, we have these really great thingamajigs that nobody knows about, how can we increase our sales?"

"Hmmm," you say to yourself, "nobody knows about them, you say?" You do some more thinking and then it hits you, "I bet if we tell people about your thingamajigs, they'll know about them, and they'll buy them." There's your hypothesis.

So then you do your research and discover that the guy down the street from your client also sells thingamajigs. But your client's thingamajigs are 20% cheaper, come in 50% more colors, and your client has the ability to ship them directly to their buyers. These are your major points of difference (sometimes called your value proposition) and will later help inform your messaging strategy.

You also discover that your client's competition only promotes their thingamajigs with flyers and directory listings. So you design a marketing plan that also incorporates flyers and directory listings, PLUS e-mail marketing, a CPC campaign and social media. You design your communications strategy around several trackable entities including a rewards program, coupon redemption program and a referral program (all underscoring your client's value proposition). And you spread each of these programs across the various outreach methods - equally.

Using a tool like Intelliclick or MailChimp or even Constant Contact you can easily track the number of email opens, forwards, and even navigation to your client's website. Every time a digital coupon is redeemed on your website, or someone signs up for your referral service, this information is collected too. You make a simple separate spreadsheet to track how many paper flyers make their way into your client's store.

At the end of a month you compare and analyze the data to find out what offerings and what delivery methods were most effective. On top of selling 245 thingamajigs in just one month - your client's highest ever sales number for a single month - you conclude that not only did "telling people about the thingamajigs" prove to be a correct hypothesis, but that the most effective way to sell to people was using a digital coupon on social media, which also earned your client referrals outside of the referral program that rewards your client's customers when they tell a friend about your client's thingamajigs. Which is great, because  social media is so much cheaper than a CPC campaign, so you advise your client to scale back on the paid-for media opportunities as you go back to the drawing board to create a new hypothesis about how you can increase your client's sales and begin designing a new experiment around socially shared pop-up store events in your client's densest populated target market area.

A mad scientist like me.

In my 10+ years of experience, rising from a executive temp at a PR agency to having run my own consultancy, to directing major national brand campaigns for companies like Toyota, and even working one-on-one with celebrities like Tim Robbins and Daryl Hannah, I've learned a great deal about manipulating the formula that creates brand buzz. And because no two brands are alike, no two formulas are alike. Sometimes it takes a mad brand scientist to really elevate a brand to its full potential - someone with a keen insight, a different way of looking at this mad, mad, mad world, and with natural-born leadership skills.

Sometimes when you're looking for a marketing manager, what you should really be looking for is a mad brand scientist. You should be looking for someone like me.

go ahead, ask me what day it it...

HAPPY HUMP DAY! 

 

Before getting laid off, and over a couple of pints with co-workers, I had threatened to come into work on my last hump day dressed like a camel. Alas, my employers made my last day of work a Tuesday. 

GEICO's new campaign "Get Happy, Get GEICO" has been running now since last year when they rolled out with Gallagher at the supermarket smashing fruit. According to GEICO's wikipedia site there are now 12 of these campaign spots running. By far my favorite has to be the Hump Day Camel. 

GEICO does an amazing job of running multiple campaigns at the same time without ever obscuring their message or value propositions. You've got the GEICO Gecko, the "Get Happy" commercials, Maxwell the Pig, and the Cavemen. Not all brands do this so successfully. And honestly, I bet if I polled 1,000 people today, more than 75% of them have at least called GEICO if not actually switched. I called GEICO back in 2007 during their relatively uncreative "15 minutes could save you 15%" campaign. In the end, they couldn't save me 15%...they couldn't even save me 1%. I was better off with the agency I had. 

Another favorite insurance seller's campaigns I am fond of are the AllState "Mayhem" spots. But, I must admit, I just had to google "Mayhem + insurance + commercial" in order to remember what insurer ran those ads. AllState runs another campaign alongside these, it's the one featuring that black guy with the deep voice as part of their "Connected" campaign. The two campaigns are running at the same time and they're anything but connected. And the brand isn't identifiable through either of them. 

Unlike GEICO, AllState doesn't stick to a singular message, they keep coming up with cute gimmicks, but they seem to be trying on several identities, too, which creates inconsistency, and that's where the brand identity gets lost. 

Then there's that spot with the big offish looking guy who is supposedly a French Model (bonjour).

I had to look this campaign up too - turns out it's for State Farm - as part of their "State of Disbelief" campaign.

I also like several of the Famers commercials that make up their "Smarter" campaign.

And how can you forget their jingle - We Are Farmers! Bum Ba-Dum Bum Bum Bum Bum - this saves them from obscurity. If it wasn't for that jingle, I would have had to google them too.  But between All State, State Farm and Farmers I get confused. So while they're making great commercials, they're not doing as good of a job branding them.

Another insurer, Progressive, does a great job branding. Anytime I see Flo I think Progressive. You could show me a blank box in white blue and orange and ask me what product I associated it with and I'd say Progressive. Do I like their commercials? Eh. I think they've grown pretty tired now. Maybe they should try sticking Flo in another roll (not as Flo) but as someone else. Her face is very identifiable with the brand. And they should keep the color branding. They just need a whole new direction. It's no longer feeling very "progressive" to me.

"So what?" you're probably saying right now...the what is: because of the number of channels now capable of delivering us marketing messages, consistency and repetition are key in branding your image into the conscious minds of your target audience. Look at all the ways you're exposed to media messages on a daily basis: TV commercials, radio commercials, billboards, print magazines, newspapers, in-app ads, email, text mssg,  movie theatre previews, social media, etc.

Public Relations pros used to tell their clients it takes the "power of 3" to make an impression in your customer's mind. Meaning  your customer must see or hear your message at least three time before remembering it. Then that number ticked up to 7, then 12, then 24...I'm not even sure how many impressions a brand must now make before it's consciously registered with its target audience. But it's a fuck ton.

I don't know anyone who has a fuck ton of money right now. So its best you be judicious about where your spend your money. I highly recommend spending it on building consistent brand identity through clever marketing campaigns that you can pull through each medium - from a billboard over the 405 fwy to a shareable youtube spot. 

Now, get back to your hump day. And celebrate responsibly.