Hypersonic Sound Beam & Marketing

Picture the following future scenario. You are walking down the street and you pass by a store that you have never shopped in before and all of a sudden you hear a voice say “One Day Sale at SuperStoreZ”.

You look around for the source of the voice. There is no one behind you or around you and yet the voice persists as if it were coming from inside your own head. You think to yourself – “That’s it, I’ve completely lost it. I am hearing voices and they are instructing me to look for sales. Next stop – Arkham Asylum.”

Here’s the Good News/Bad News

Good News: You’re not crazy. This is a new technology called Hypersonic Sound Beams. I would try and describe it – but here is a direct quote from IRI Technologies that makes the technology:

“The Hypersonic Sound Waves travel silently through space, up to 300 feet away, then convert into an instant sound source whatever surface they impact. Amazingly, if you aim this magical device at a person, their head will become a speaker, and they will hear your message “inside” their head.”

Bad News (depending on your opinion): This isn’t a prototype or future technology – it is already being used. One report from Wired Magazine said that A&E is using it in New York City to promote a show on the paranormal.

As marketers, we are often at odds with where we define personal boundary. Now technology has raised the question of weather or not the mind itself can be a place to hand a billboard or run an ad.

Is this too far?

“Clusty” and its Impact on Brand Zeitgeist

A new web-search engine that is starting to gain some traction in cyber-scape is Clusty. It is built around the principal that any topic that you might search by will actually generate clusters of websites around common ideas that you may not have thought of and may lead to something more specific that you were looking for.

For example: If I go to the main screen and type “Ferrari”, it takes me to a results page that looks similar to something that Google might give you, except for a box on the left side that has the following Clusters:

• Pictures (32)
• Enzo (19)
• Owners (12)
• Reviews (12)
• Maserati (12)
• Ferrari Club (11)

They are ranked by the number of unique sites in each cluster (numbers in the bracket).

So if I were an avid Ferrari owner – I would be asking myself why does Maserati come up with more pages than Ferrari clubs given that I was searching for Ferrari?

Where I see this adding value for a marketing managers is that it provides a quick snap-shot of what anyone and everyone in the world (wide web) is currently talking about with your brand. It sorts through not just websites, but blogs, job postings, images.

Here is another example: Southwest Airlines

This company has always been the darling of business school case studies for their contrarian business practices, fun work culture and their success at being a low-cost airline. This past week, they had to ground several planes because of FAA safety violations.

When I searched Southwest Airlines – the first page generated a list of pages you would expect to be no different if it were pulled prior to this FAA ruling.

Clusty came back with the following Custers:

• Airports
• Tickets
• Planes, Grounded
• Safety, Investigating

I think this paints a more accurate picture of what everyone is thinking about the brand.

Does it not seem like this might be a useful tool to instantly gauge the marketplace? While rudimentary, it certainly can’t get much more current (or dynamic) for market research data.

Contrary to Popular Belief

I was riding the bus to York earlier this week when we passed a billboard Ad for Canada’s National Newspaper: The Globe and Mail. Here is what it looked like:

There is a picture of a chicken in the middle, and three thought bubbles each indicating what it means to a different columnist.

I then overheard someone on the bus say how similar it was to a certain university’s marketing campaign. I did some digging in my magazine collection and found the following print ad for York university. Note: this was in a magazine published in December 2007.

It shows a gift bag of wine and what it can mean to….wait for it…3 different areas of study. What a fine bit of Deja vu?

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In class this week, we had a guest speaker from Taxi speak to us about the history of the Telus “Future is Friendly” campaign, which, if you are keeping count, has been around now for 10 years. Starting with Clearnet and then carrying on through the acquisition by Telus, “Future is Friendly” was revolutionary because it positioned a cell phone company in a completely different area that the major players in the Canadian market.

Its success cannot be denied. From being a late entrant in a market dominated by national players, Telus has exponentially grown marketshare, brand equity and continues to still be in the “most liked” campaigns according to Marketing Magazine [citation needed]. To the credit of both Taxi (Telus’s Lead Agency) and Telus, the company has been very disciplined in staying with a consistent message for a time period much longer that most other campaigns in the telco. industry.

Simple. Consistent. Different. Effective. To paraphrase a page from Marty Neumeirer’s book “Zag” – When everyone else is zigging, you should look to zag.

So why so often do competitors who have the resources to take their brand in any direction work so hard at imitating another brand’s success? Apparently in marketing, imitating is not flattering for anyone involved.

Lost and Found

For company exec’s, brand managers, entrepreneurs and even lowly bloggers, it isn’t enough just to have a presence on the internet – your market also needs to be able to find you. The internet can behave as much an intermediary as it can a communication tool – and thus value is created by connecting and meeting the needs of buyers and sellers.

Searching Engine Optimization (SEO) has become a growing niche industry within web-consulting. If you want to know what is on the cutting edge of search-marketing – there a series of events called the SMX or Search Marketing Expos.

They have global events – none in Canada so far – but the SMX East is happening in New York on October 6-8, 2008. Take a look.

The Age of Persuasion

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to CBC radio on Saturday mornings – you are missing out on a terrific half our of great marketing/advertising journalism hosted by Terry O’Reilly. The show is called The Age of Persuasion and it’s on CBC Radio 1 at 11:30 on Saturday mornings.

The show offers insight and stories into the world of marketing, usually focusing on one theme per episode.

If you did miss the show and want to catch up on old episodes, you can stream them directly from the website. They are currently working on trying to get a podcast off the ground, but are in negotiations regarding copyrighted material used during the shows. Hopefully they get it figured out soon.

Pop Goes the Print Ad

This is really great, simple creative. Thanks to The Cool Hunter for covering it. Created for Arcor Bubble Gum by Leo Burnett in Sao Paulo.

Banking On the Future

Students might not exactly be the most desirable clients for a bank. With few assets, higher levels of debt and little need for other financial products – they probably don’t match the same profile of their A-list clients (see Fig. A)

Fig. A

But the funny thing about students is that they grow up, start working, earning money, buying houses and cars and need a bank.

TD Canada Trust has crossed the digital divide and launched an application “Split It” on Facebook directly geared for students living with roommates.

You can add roommates and divide bills, and it sends reminders to those people through their Facebook mini-feed.

Practical, simple and unique. A quick scan of Facebook applications can’t find any of the other major 5 Canadian banks with on the site.

So do you think this is a good way to build brand loyalty among students?

My one question is how this application is marketed. I couldn’t find anything on the student page of the TD CanadaTrust website. But, like most things in the social network universe, I found out about this from another friend on Facebook – so maybe that how they want it to spread.

Dis-Obay (Part 2)

Part 2 of this campaign is now at your local bus shelter and billboard.

It reads ” Luckily, Obay isn’t real. Sure, you want what’s best for your kids, but when it comes to post-secondary education, pushing them to do what you want isn’t right.

Explore all the options at ontariocolleges.ca”

Diamond in the Rough

Has anyone been following this campaign from Post Cereal’s (Kraft) “New” Diamond Shreddies? They are actively promoting the fact that Shreddies now have a new diamond shape, which is actually just their old shape – rotated by 45 degrees. Good, Good whole wheat irony.

I actually think this is a cleaver campaign and is successful through its high level of commitment. They have gone to great lengths to go support the joke behind the spot, inlcuding changing the packaging and name from just “Shreddies” to “Diamond Shreddies”. Somewhat funny, and certainly self-deprecating from a marketing perspective – it stands out.

Is there actually some seriousness to this campaign? Is Kraft chosing a creative way to get people talking about a re-branding strategy?

What I wonder is what will will happen when the campaign ends? Is Kraft going to stick with the “new” name and shape. I wonder what you think they should do 6 months or 12 months into this campaign?

(This is a spot is coming out of Toronto’s Ogilvy Office, and their blog says that while the moderator is an improv actor, the people in the focus groups are real)

Searching for Meaning

A topic that seems to be popping up a lot these days in the off-line marketing community is creating “Meaningful Consumer Experiences.”

Isn’t it great when an emerging trend has the right combination of words that sound different enough that it could be considered breaking the “status quo” while vague enough that it allows snarky online critics the ability question if it means anything at all? Sometimes I feel like whoever creates these phrases does it on purpose. (Maybe it is the same guy/girl that came up with “synergies”)

Before we dive into what exactly “Meaningful”…well…means – let’s first isolate and dissect a consumer experiences. Do consumer experiences happen only at the point-of-sale or do they go beyond that simple interaction and branch into the pre and post-purchase behaviour? If you buy something and are dissatisfied, it is hard to argue that the return process isn’t part of the consumer experience. If you are still enchanted by a product or brand 15 years after you bought it (retro-chic anyone?) isn’t that still part of the experience?

My first challenge to the community is to question if consumer experiences can really be managed by marketing? They can encompass so much and are different for each individual that can extend well past the life of a product that it makes you wonder if this is something that is ever in the control of the marketer.

Now – we move onto our quest for meaning. How could a company create meaning for an individual whom they have never met? Even if market research was sophisticated enough to start asking about what is meaningful to consumers, the context in which an experience takes place may hold different levels of meaning for even the same individual. We are starting to get into some very tricky territory for a brand to enter – but the alternative is that it can be a very powerful connection that goes beyond functional and emotional brand equity.

One potential example that I found was Method Cleaning Products (taken from PeachPit Book Review) :

Co-founders Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry started by taking an ordinary experience—cleaning the house—and making it more meaningful. As Ryan says, “Our goal was to make chores less of a chore. We thought we could do this by creating experiences that expressed our consumers’ love for their home and tying that to our products. If people don’t have to look at cleaning as killing germs, but as doing something positive for their home, the power of the experience goes deeper than the activity. It’s touching something primal.”

So is Method onto something new with pursuing a strategy for a meaningful consumer relationship? Is this just a rehash of positioning? Are there examples of other companies that are trying to use this strategy? Are the succeeding?

Please Share examples and comments about what value Meaningful Consumer Experiences can add to marketing – or if you think it is just another group of buzz-words that are having their moment in the sun.

Link to book on the subject: Make Meaning by Steven Diller, Nathan Shedroff and Darrel Rhea