Logo Change 2008

I think the cool thing to do in 2008 is change your logo.

Arby's and Wendy's are. Best Buy is. And so is Pepsi. Yahoo! started wearing purple, baby (instead of red). As I looked at my Walmart receipt the other day, I found yet another logo alteration. And remember Starbucks’ desire to go back to a nearly nude mermaid in May (the “new” from May was actually a re-working of an early company logo)?

In fact, Brand New is a blog dedicated to these sorts of changes.

And all of this is for what? For those companies to increase their mindshare with a fresh branding statement? I’m not sure that a new logo translates directly into increased revenue.

Sure, the gurus say that sometimes a logo change is exactly what a company needs—especially if they are changing their services (like from a print shop to a marketing firm), undergoing a merger or recovering from some corporate scandal.

But it seems to me that most of the time, logo changes don’t capture the attention of the masses for longer than a few days.

So why change? Maybe changing a logo isn’t about capturing attention at all. Maybe it’s about changing attitudes. Maybe the companies above want to send a subtle message to the masses.

Perhaps Walmart is trying to say, “We really are friendly! (Even though we lost a huge labor lawsuit in Minnesota)” And maybe Yahoo! is saying, “See how passionate we are, we’ve painted everything purple! (So stop using Google, okay?)”

There is an easier way to grab attention and change customer attitudes about your company. And that’s by being what you say you are.

Let’s face it—Walmart wouldn’t have to think “friendlier” if it were actually better to its workers.

Yahoo! wouldn’t have painted their entire corporate headquarters purple if their shares weren’t trading for pennies. Well, not pennies exactly. According to Google (ahh irony) Yahoo (YHOO) closed at $11.58 per share on October 27. Year highs were over $34.00.

In the coming months, I’m not sure that clever branding initiatives are going to dupe consumers. Mark Penn (the guy who discovered the “Soccer Mom” voting bloc in America) writes in the intro to his book Microtrends:

“Too often…marketers don’t believe the facts or the issues matter that much. Oftentimes it is they who are the fools.”

So here is the question: Are people one big group of scatterbrained buffoons, or do people actually make methodological decisions based on individual values?

I think that question will dramatically alter how we market throughout this recession. Do we continue to market a blanket ideology to consumer-buffoons, where products are linked only tangentially to some desirable state of being (like a commercial for a department store that shows a happy family eating dinner)? Or do we market actual products and services to reasonable individuals?

I think I feel an example from Barak Obama’s campaign website coming on (only because McCain’s site doesn’t have all the features that Obama’s does). But that will have to wait until later.

Marketing in a Recession

Here are the facts:

1. Our economy is in recession.
2. Now is the perfect time to focus on increasing market share.
3. Someone in your company will want to cut the marketing budget.
4. You must, at all costs, preserve your marketing budget.

Think about it. If your competitors spend less to market their products than they currently are, and you spend the same (or slightly more), you’ll have a chance to increase your market share at a lower cost than in a good economy.

This is nothing new. Proctor & Gamble did it with Ivory Soap during the Great Depression. Their sponsorship of radio dramas not only lead to the coining of the term “soap opera,” it also landed them a boatload of money in a down economy.

The question is, do you have the nerve? Penn State Business Researcher Gary Lilien says that those companies that make their recession marketing efforts work are those who match their business savvy with the will to push harder. As BNET quotes Lilien,

“Companies that have been looking at marketing as an investment, and not an expense, and have been running their business through customer knowledge are the ones that are going to come out of this [recession] really, really well.”

John Quelch, Harvard Business School's Senior Associate Dean also lists researching customers and maintaining marketing spending as the two key components to marketing in a recession (the rest are on BusinessWeek.com). The winners often do what the crowd is not. Why do you think Warren Buffet is investing right now?

Of course spending a lot of money in a recession is risky. But you can mange that risk. You can manage risk by understanding your customers. You can manage risk by marketing smarter.

So marketers need a solution that reflects their company understands its customers. They need a solution that gives phenomenal ROI.

I’m partial to one-to-one cross-media marketing. Such campaigns usually include a direct mail piece, an email and a PURL (personal URL). Today’s technology lets you take customer data that you have on file and customize every printed and online communication with your customers. That means you can send different offers to different prospects based on their demographics, buying habits, place in the sales cycle and place in the customer life-cycle.

Not only does this approach show your customers you know them, it costs a fraction of TV ads and, on average, provides better return-on-investment. As one CEO once told me, “One-to-one marketing is like regular marketing on steroids.”

So think about it. See yourself dominating the market. And if you want to know more about one-to-one, email me.

SMS!

I’ve been pondering the benefits of SMS marketing lately. For those who still raise an eyebrow to the whole text-messaging thing, SMS stands for Short Message Service, and its available on almost every mobile phone.

Remember Barack Obama’s VP announcement? That was planned to come out over SMS. You can view Obama’s mobile contact page here. And regardless of your political bent, you have to admit that the Obama campaign is handling his marketing efforts really well.

But enough politics. The reason I find SMS so appealing for marketing is that people are spending so much time on their mobile phones. If you’ve been in an airport lately you know what I mean. Out with the laptop, in with the iPhone.

So marketers, what are we waiting for?! Unlike any other media delivery device, mobile phones are with people 24 hours a day. SMS provides us with the unique opportunity to take relevant marketing to the next level by using the dimension of time.

Today’s savvy marketers (the 1:1 kind) are already individualizing offers using variable data print, personalized URLs (PURLs), and customized email blasts. But it’s hard to control timing in those channels—mail gets delivered at different times for every person, PURLs are accessed at the customers’ will, and email blasts get ignored in crowded inboxes.

But imagine getting a text-message coupon from a local restaurant just as you are getting up from your desk to go to lunch. BAM! SMS has instantly delivered relevant information based on prospect location, need, and the time of day.

As Twitter is to blogs, SMS is to email. Think about the possibilities. Use SMS to drive people to a website or PURL. Use SMS as part of a customer loyalty program. Use SMS as part of a lead nurture initiative. Use SMS to solidify relationships with new customers.

But like every media channel, SMS isn’t perfect. Here are what I consider to be the technology’s biggest challenges:

1. Selling SMS. It’s hard enough to convince some clients that spending the extra money for customized direct mail or PURLs. If marketers want to sell SMS, they’ll have to anticipate resistance and have an answer to every “Thanks, but…”
2. Building the database. Customers will need to opt-in for SMS marketing to work, plain and simple. I foresee mobile spammers getting sued and losing.
3. Integration! Integration! Integration! Single channel marketing never works as well as multiple channel marketing. Unless you have a program like XMPie that can organize digital print, PURLs, email, and SMS efforts, you can expect coordination headaches.

Until L8TR.

i hate html

There are many things for which I am thankful. Here are a few: socks, tissues, deodorant, and most importantly today CSS PROS!

I write. I tinker with html. I fail at html. Thank goodness Sea Monkey was there to help me out when I needed a free, fast, and easy compiler to figure out how to add my feed burner, twitter stuff, etc.

It is now 1:17 in the am. Sleep awaits.