What's the idea? By Steve Poppe

There’s a new trend in marketing -- it’s called you get what you pay for. Not you get what you bet on. Or you get what you hedge. Or you get what may appreciate.

Too much of the economy has been about investing in the promise of returns. That’s what venture capital funds are saying as they get ready to cut way back. It's what drove the financial industry meltdown. And the Internet start-up boom. 

Today, people are spending their hard earned on real stuff. They are shopping and comparing – even enjoying the pursuit of value.  American’s are tired of wasting money. Sure they will buy a new BMW, but only after making sure it’s a good value. No more cheese. No more futures. People want brick and mortar stability. Not products built to last 9 months.

The companies that will do well in this recovering economy are those who market smart. Build products with predictable returns. Good products. With efficient pricing. And proper promotion. Bet on packaged goods. Housewares.  Durables. Peace!

The business of marketing is and will continue to be a tripartite business: marketers, marketing agents and media. The lines may blur every now and again and some companies will try to bypass one of the players to save a buck, but the system will endure. 

Microsoft purchased aQuantive and Razorfish to see if it could get into the marketing agent business and now has decided it can’t and is selling Razorfish. Smart move. Marketing agent Anomaly is trying to become a marketer and will enjoy some modest success, but they are more likely to make their bones giving independent counsel to makers of products and services than change the system.

At Cannes Eric Schmidt and Maurice Levy agreed to play better in the sandbox...but there needs to be a little friction between media (Google) and agent (Publicis) for everyone to make money. Friction and conflict keep everyone on their toes.

Media will change. Ad agent tools will change. Products and services will change. The tripartite system will march on. Peace!

Penny Baldwin is Yahoo!’s new brand savior.  Reporting to CMO Elisa Steele, Ms. Baldwin is tasked with creating the way forward for the Yahoo brand. Newsflash: If you are plotting the course for the brand, you are plotting the course for the product (hopefully).

For years Yahoo has been a multi-headed dragon: part search, part start page, part portal and Web tool kit.  Ms. Baldwin knows this and will likely use a variety of means to look into Yahoo’s past and determine where Yahoo’s brightest embers lie. Where its greatest loyalties reside and the treasure trove of revenue amassed. Researchers will look at competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Anthropologists will delve in to time-of-day usage and where other media intersects. All this info and data will go into the hopper and be extruded into a hardened strategic mass that be delivered to 72 and Sunny or some such shop(s) and $65 million and six months later we’ll be humming a new song or reciting a new line, but Yahoo will still be foundering.

Here’s what needs to happen: Yahoo needs to get rid of 65% of its technologists, replacing them with really good free-agent and draft pick content creators: bloggers, video bloggers, podcasters and journalists. People make appointments with internet properties to be informed, entertained, enlightened, and educated. Yahoo isn’t "my home on the web.” People don’t need the weather and horoscopes and puzzles and shizz, they want curated pages leading them to the coolest original content. Invest in content Ms. Baldwin. Peace!

The front page of The New York Times today has pictures of smiling Iraqis, smiling Al Franken, a smiling German choreographer, a not so smiling uninsured couple and a big fat, juicy hamburger.  4 out of 5 ain’t bad. The first section of the Times is 34 pages thick with ads from Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Verizon, Liberty Travel, HSBC, New Balance, Chevrolet, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, Sirius-XM radio and Cadillac.

The financial pages suggest hope and the bank ads are about saving, not spending. My friend Cory Teffiletti, who publishes a newsletter called “The Digital Influencials,” is once again filling his space with some exciting start-ups and Twitter is growing so fast, we marketers haven’t quite figured out what to do with it. In fact, it seems there is a Twitter Conference on every corner of every major city this summer.

Right or wrong, marketers of every stripe are embracing social media as a new way to improve sales and that has started up a cottage industry of consultants. Social media is also making traditional agencies fight harder for their breakfast – another good thing. Embrace the good people. I smell goodness in the market. Peace!

Foster, Bias and Sales is the name of the ad agency I always wanted to start. The name, unlike many, contains a branding idea. Okay three ideas. If you know me, you know that breaks one of my rules about focus -- brand strategies can’t have commas or conjunctions -- but rules are made to be broken so Foster, Bias and Sales it is. 

Foster is about developing "good will" towards a client's product or service. People need to root for the product. Foster is about creating a positive, conducive sales environment. Bias is a word I often heard used by Eric Keshin, a past and learned boss. Eric’s a big macher at McCann Erickson. Creating bias or preference toward your product is "selling."  Sometimes you might have to create bias against a competitor, but only as a last resort. And Sales? Well that’s why we market. Sales are the ultimate metric. Cha-ching! 

One caveat: You may have to do a lot of fostering and biasing before sales come. A friend’s your son was on a soccer team with a talented Irish-American coach who told the little dudes “This year we’re learning the fundamentals. We will not win any or many games, but we will learn how to dribble and pass. We will learn about spacing and defense. If you all pay attention and stay with me, we will win the championship in two years.” Guess what? Sales. Peace!

Habitat, a British furniture company, spammed Twitter recently hawking a sales promotion tied to hashtag Mousavi (#mousavi).  Smartly, recognizing its error, Habitat posted an apologetic retraction, and even used “Social Media Today” to help spread the word.

Unfortunately, this type spammy promotion has only just begun. Like dinner time telemarketing, and “enhancement” ads in email, we can expect legions of marketers to jump on board and phantom tweet us for their own gains. Que nuisance!  

This being the Internet age, the technologists at Twitter will no doubt quickly figure out a way around it, but it will cost them time, money and resources. And considering Twitter has no monetization strategy in play, this spamming issue will be a setback resource-wise.  Let’s wish them well and in the meantime do our best to police this bogus crap.   Peace!

It’s fun being me sometimes. As a marketing and brand planner, I come up with branding ideas, selling ideas and selling schema. Much of my world revolves around consumers, products and services but having spent a good deal of time in the technology sector, there’s a part of my brain that relishes what’s next, what’s new and what’s possible. Properly harnessed, these things can really help in my marketing life. So I am a student of technology.

There are a few tech blogs I read pretty regularly: Scobleizer and TechCrunch are faves -- GigaOm and ReadWriteWeb are a couple of other good ones. BBH Labs tweeted a post today by Marshall Fitzpatrick, who writes for ReadWrite, on the subject of Augmented Reality. (Marshall’s an important blogger…you heard it here first.) Check out his post and watch some of the short videos. Augmented Reality is going to augment marketing. In a very big way. Peace!

Have you heard the expression “To a hammer everything looks like a nail?” Well, I’m of the mind that to conversational media companies, say Federated Media, all marketing looks like a conversation. Thanks to Dave Knox and his blog HardKnoxLife, I watched a video of John Battelle’s introductory remarks his recent CM Summit. CM stands for Conversational Media. Mr. Battelle is CEO of Federated Media.

Mr. Battelle is a brilliant marketer, but if his platform for conversational marketing -- Federated Media -- was a conversation and not a well-managed brand, it wouldn’t be the successful property it is today. You see, Mr. Battelle has created and managed a brand with the help of great writers, terrific targeting, innovative positioning and a strong revenue model. He did it. The conversation may have been his inspiration, but mark my words, he created and nurtured it.

Content creators are still the life source of his business. Communing participants may be the blood, but they are not the brand. In my ebook, what Mr. Battelle is doing – and doing well – is brand management. He may not admit it, but he knows full-duplex marketing is a mistake. Good marketers need to manage the hen house.  Peace!

If you were to weigh all of the editorial that has been written about the Internet – the most exciting, disruptive communications platform ever created – I bet 75% of that edit would be about how it is tearing the stomach out of "old school" media ventures. Skype is killing telephone company landline revenue. Peer-to-peer music services have killed CD sales. Craigslist has halved newspaper classified revenue. Email has us on the verge of a 4-day postal service. Need I go on?

Not enough has been written about the money making side of the Internet...and that's because there’s not a lot of that going on.  If Web 1.0 was about ubiquity and connectivity and Web 2.0 is/was about usability, search and community, then Web (dare I type it) 3.0 is about revenue.

What is going on at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week in Boston is all about revenue. Not about selling widgets or hard and soft goods but about how to make companies more efficient. The real breakthrough after companies are more efficient will be innovation. Innovation the likes of which we have never before seen.  We will cure cancer, solve the energy crisis and even morph into a more peaceful planet when we create “social business design” solutions for our planet. (Thanks Dachis Corporation.) Oh yeah, it will create lots of money for corporations, too.

Twitter does not yet have a revenue model. Here’s one to ponder:

The service should continue to be free for subscribers. To generate revenue I think Twitter should sell small ads on the direct messaging page and those ads should be targeted based on hash tags and other behavioral targeting information gathered. If, for instance, someone uses the hash tag #iranlelection, maybe their direct messages will contain a small ad for The New York Times. In addition, I’m wondering if the keyword bidding and pay per click method pioneered by Google Adwords would also be smart.

Think about it and get back to me. Peace!

I’m a bit of a stalker and one gentleman I’ve been following the last couple of years is Jeff Dachis. Jeff started Razorfish, a pioneering digital agency, and the words "big thinker" are an understatement when describing him. Anyone who has been involved with large corporations the last 20 years knows they are not particularly fine-tuned machines. With good leadership and good structure corporations can outperform competitors, but there is still a good deal of waste and me-ism, keeping productivity down. Jeff Dachis knows this, and has a plan.

Mr. Dachis and his bullpen of strategic thinkers (Peter Kim, David Armano, Kate Niederhoffer, and Jevon MacDonald) have been trying to wrap their heads around this inefficient corporation for a year now and today made an announcement coinciding with the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston today.

It is fascinating to see how each of the Dachis strategists frame the new, still-to-be-named product. (To do so, please check out their links today at www.beingpeterkim.com.) The explanations are the same, yet different. You can tell who came from which discipline in their posts.  

First off I love what they are calling the product category “Social Business Design.”  It’s descriptive, implies a benefit and is understandable. That’s the IS in the Is/Does. But here is a graphic schematic of the DOES. Hee hee. No one said redesigning business in a 2.0 world was going to be easy. Peace!  

Blackberry (Research in Motion) revenue was up 53% year-over-year, according to its just released quarterly report, adding 3.8 million subscribers. Its forecast for next quarter is for healthy growth, though just under Wall Street expectation. The stock dipped in after hours trading. Amazing. Here’s a company doing well in a piss-poor economy and the street is selling. 

Blackberry is a smart company. They are innovating, taking chances, have a cornerstone product (with a nickname) and have created a market for a requisite business tool. How is this stock not rising every day?

Twice on Monday I found myself – I’m not a Blackberry owner, but my 18 year old son is – emailing business associates that I would be off the grid for a couple of hours. In other words, in transit without laptop connectivity. Off the grid sounds cool but it's a euphemism for "I don’t own a Blackberry."  This was the first time in a long time I felt modest tech shame. The fact is I text like a dookie, but that’s not happening for the majority of your Blackberry-carryin’ business class. I don’t see myself buying a Blackberry, but if the shame turns into lost dollars….. Peace!

The Black Eyed Peas star in a new Target TV spot that is visually and aurally very cool. Also cool is the fact that their new CD is only available at Target. Both of these things should be enough to get people into the store but, frankly, the spot doesn’t go far enough to leverage the “cool” in a why that makes non-target shoppers consider the store for other reasons.  The art director did a great job, the copywriter not so much.

Set to the new tune “I got a feeling,” the spot shows members of the band camouflaged against a floral wallpaper, bedspread, graffiti festooned brick wall, creating terrific visual impact.  The song concludes with copy explaining that the CD is available only at Target.  How hard would it have been to add some copy saying “You’d be amazed by what you can find at Target, if you really look.”  Check out the spot and let me know if you agree.  Peace.

MySpace just cut 420 jobs at the behest of new CEO Owen Van Natta. See the Ad Age story here. Without knowing to what extent Mr. Van Natta researched these RIFed people (corporate speak for Reduction In Force), I’m going to offer a thought.

A more social approach to the layoff: Idea 1. Prior to the RIF, hold a town meeting asking all employees how to improve MySpace. The loudest, most ardent opinions will surface.  Idea 2. Ask everyone at the town meeting to weight in on the same question, anonymously, and as with a tag cloud organize the key words into a prioritized solution set. Idea 3. After the all-hands meeting hold face-to-face meetings with each employee on the RIF list asking the question “What needs to be fixed to make MySpace a better property.”  Not exit interview stuff, truly constructive stuff. Use this time to find the gems on the list.  MySpace, after all, is a social networking site. There are some things the algorithm can’t do. Finding and retaining the best people requires an ear. Peace!

Ad agencies make money selling stuff. Want a TV commercial? That will cost you $350,000. Want a billboard? $25,000. How about a direct mail program? $125,000. Website? $75,000, if we don’t have to outsource it. If there is commissionable media…all the better.

As an ad guy coming up in the business a great day was one during which you presented brilliant creative and the client approved it with excitement, energy and money. If the creative really worked and sales followed you could just smell success.

But, today, as a brand planner the real excitement comes from presenting a brand strategy that lights up a CEO. When s/he reads the paper or the screen and breaks out in a smile and says “You get me” that's the home run.  A brand strategy is not the creative, it’s the idea that leads the creative -- it is the long term idea that makes the money.  I use a line in presentations all the time “Campaigns come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible.” Powerful branding ideas are how agencies should make money. Their ability to deliver on that idea should be the key to remuneration. Therein lies the ROS (return on strategy) conundrum.

Any thoughts on how to make this work? Drop me a note at steve@whatstheidea.com Peace!    

Ever since my kids were old enough to talk I’ve taught them not to say the “H” word. It is one of America's favorite words, yet it is one of our most insidious. Hate. “I hate broccoli” was always met with “Don’t use the H word.” In our house the word hate was viewed as worse than a curse.

Though I’m not big on parenting other's kids, I heard myself saying don’t use the H word yesterday to a child at a graduation party. It had been a while, but it reminded me of how I used to do it to my kids -- with a big, surprised smile on my face.  When I said it to a 6 year old in front of his uncle, the uncle had my my back. The boy kept quizzing me “What’s the H word? Hell?  

If everyone played my game with kids and meant it, we could start something really big. Words do matter. Try it sometime. Please. Peace!

This recession has been kicking my ass. Never a good saver, like most Americans I have been leveraging assets and looking to future earnings. This was okay while everyone else was doing the same and banks encouraged us along, but when the banks and bank insurers went under, the News Hour turned to fright night, and millions lost their jobs, I got religion.  Being an ad guy in my bones, I remain positive, even as my work days and consulting fees dwindle.

Most American’s have been spanked and I hope we have learned our lesson...as individuals and as a country.

There are signs that we may be turning the corner economically. Though, ad spending was down in 1Q, senior executives are talking about signs of budget life. Jobless claims have slowed and a slight bump in retail sales are two other good signs.

Mr. Positive, here, believes this smack in the butt is going to make us stronger. Each and every one of us: college kids, newlyweds, first time home buyers, retirees and their elders.  Individually and as a country we need to focus on what we need. When we buy and use more than we need, things get risky. We must get back to fiscal and environmental responsibility. If we do, the goods we purchase will mean more, we will take better care of them, and life, I suspect, will be fuller. It will also give us more time to put tunes on our iPods. Peace!

I write a good deal about newspapers and how that business is changing. I do so because there’s a big newspaper close to home, Newsday, that has great potential, but, as is the case with many papers, is nervous about real change.

What paper newspapers don’t seem to understand is that their online properties are really poised to win the news and local information war. Why? Because they have the content and the ability to deliver it (fact-checked) in near real time across a lot of media platforms: video, audio, pictures, feeds, and written word.  

I haven’t looked behind Newsday’s curtain and know there are smart people with money doing innovative things, but at the end of the day I think they’ll take the paper paper, turn it into flash and HTML, and debate the monetization issue.  Along with News Corp., Cablevision (owner of Newsday) is one of the few companies with the resources and footprint to reinvent the online news business…but they need to lose the fear and think different. In 10 years online news sites will be the sites of choice. Peace!  

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that every employee, especially those young and fairly wired, sends somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 plus messages a day to consumers, prospects and business partners on behalf of the company or brand; a message being a communication from a land line phone (inbound or out), email, letter, instant message, text, blog post, tweet, or face-to-face conversation. Fair? Do you know who is managing those messages? No one. 

The only place where a company’s messages to consumers, prospects and partners are managed effectively is the marketing and sales departments.  And that’s a bit of a leap of faith, based on what I’m seeing. Good brand and sales managers, good public relations people and good executive management know the value of a powerful, prepared corporate or brand messaging. They understand a well conceived brand strategy, conveyed and carried out by an entire company, provides a power of which General Patton would be proud.  The cacophony of employee messaging taking place today, thanks to the all the comms channels and lack of brand stewardship, is watering down the managed messages we send into the marketplace. Have you ever tried to talk in a normal voice while hundreds of hungry ducks are quacking around you?  

And what’s even most concerning is that many of today’s brand champions, people at the helms of big marketing budgets, are out on the talk circuit spreading the word that brands are owned by the consumer – the conversation, they say, is in the hands of the consumer. OMFG. This is insanity.  (This video of Best Buy CMO Barry Judge is one example.)

I’ve been in touch with a few tech CEOs over the past year and I know it is not easy being them; they are responsible for financing, product development, legal, the code, usability, hiring, business metrics and last but not least strategy. 

The true test of a great CEO, though, is what happens after these two words pass through his or her lips “major rebranding.” “Major rebranding” is code for we don’t have a focused strategy. Sadly, most rebranding assignments often yield a PowerPoint deck filled with marko-babble, a logo (nice), tagline (generic), a visual symmetry discourse and bill for some serious money.  Most of the bill, by the way, pays for tactics.

Branding is all about strategy. It is forward looking, consumer-facing, fresh, it pushes the culture (business or societal), and all the heavy lifting is done before any visual tactics or art are employed. The precursor of a branding idea is a suit strategy and it should reflect each and every element the CEO cares about (see first paragraph).  When the suit strategy talks to the CEO and makes him/her smile, the rest of the job can begin.

If you run into a CEO who when commenting about a rebranding project says “I’ll know it when I see it,” give the check back and run.