Marketing Archives - Otis Regrets... or not

The Amazon Effect, and its opposite

This jar of Broad Bean Sauce is $8.62 on Amazon with Prime shipping. At our local Asian supermarket, it’s less than $3.

The Amazon effect: sometime in the early teens, we needed a Weber Smoky Joe portable charcoal grill for a camping trip. We went to the camping aisle in our local Walmart and found the shelf and the price tab for the product, but it was out of stock. We pulled up the Amazon website on our phone—I recall being surprised we could get service inside the store—and ordered the Smoky Joe on the spot. It was the first time we’d done something like this, but certainly wouldn’t be the last.

The Amazon effect: this week we visited a couple of CVS stores in search of the 16 ounce bottle of coal-tar dandruff shampoo we like. They only had a shelf space for the 8 oz size and were out of stock. We checked the CVS app and found that only the 8 oz size is now available and it costs what the 16 oz used to cost. We abandoned the many CVS coupons we had loaded on our device and searched for “coal tar shampoo” on Amazon. A 16 oz bottle ships free for what the 8 oz bottle costs at CVS. We ordered it on the spot.

Non-Amazon marketers like to bemoan the chilling effect of Amazon on smaller retailers, but these are examples of mercantile Darwinism at work. Neither Walmart nor CVS would have lost the sale but for decisions they made about inventory management. Walmart has adapted quite well in recent years, while CVS seems to be going in the opposite direction. They’ve built a flashy app, but it is hard to use and you have to pay for shipping for that out-of-stock item; there’s no ship-to-store option.

And here’s a reverse Amazon effect: we’ve recently been doing a lot of Chinese cooking using The Food of Sichuan by Fuchsia Dunlop. As a result, we find ourselves browsing the aisles of our local Asian supermarket for products which are hard to find because the labels are not in English. So what do we do? Go on Amazon, find the product we want with a search term like “black Chinese vinegar” or “broad bean sauce”. We then show this product, the photo blown up so the Chinese characters can be read, to a store employee. They guide us to the shelf where we find the product, always at a much lower price, and we buy it on the spot. Amazon loses the sale in this instance; mercantile Darwinism at work.

Why market testing is worth the effort

Over the years, I have known a number of clients who didn’t do market testing or didn’t think it was worth the effort. Often these are overworked employees of medium-to-small companies who have a lot of balls in the air; how can you justify spending hours to analyze a past campaign when it’s all you can do to get the current one out the door? I’m frustrated by this attitude as a copywriter because results are what I get paid for; if I can’t prove my effort outperformed your control then you’re less likely to hire me for a future project.

I like clients who live and die by market testing and are willing to follow its learnings even if results conflict with their gut or the preferences of their boss. Such a client recently asked me to write a number of variations of an email inviting investors to an introductory workshop. This organization has plenty of data tracking how registrations for this event turn into a future revenue stream. Increasing registrations costs nothing more than the few dollars you pay the copywriter to come up with a fresh message and the benefits go directly to the bottom line.

I crafted the test messages based on input from focus groups and polling of prospects who had registered for a previous event but did not show up; if we could find anomalies in these groups compared to the profile of their typical student and speak to those, maybe we could increase the perceived value of the workshop and make them more likely to register and then attend. I also did a series of messages based on an earlier successful test in which we emphasized that the event lasted just three hours and made that seem like a trivial commitment and a good use of their time.

Result: virtually all my emails beat the control and the most successful nearly doubled it measured by the percentage of recipients who signed up for the workshop. The creative was the only variation in the promotion, proving that yes, people really do read the copy. The messages will be retested, refined and rolled out, potentially bringing in a lot of motivated new prospects to be nurtured and developed into committed, profitable students. Market testing is definitely worth the effort.

If you need to sell the value of market testing internally, you might use the example of MoviePass. This company had the bright idea to buy unsold tickets in movie theaters and then wrap them into a membership plan where you can watch x movies a month for a fee of y. According to a recent interview with the CEO of its parent company, MoviePass did test y but apparently not x. They just decided to offer unlimited movies… which meant MoviePass would end up buying its members a full priced ticket if a discount was unavailable for a popular movie. The CEO didn’t see a problem with a burn rate which was then $21 million a month even though MoviePass only had $43 million in cash on hand.

Shortly after this interview (which went live on July 18 of this year), MoviePass announced the number of movies you could see per month would be reduced from unlimited to… three. The result was a sharp decline in its stock price and a feeding frenzy from competitors and the media. All of which could have been avoided with some simple market testing.

When changing your logo is like wetting your pants

Why Adirondack Trust changed its logo… TMI!

The bank in town recently changed its logo. They explain in the pop-up above, which appeared when checking my statement online, that they wanted to “keep up with advances in technology” and that the new logo is “very well suited to today’s mobile world” and then go on to explain the design strategy, much as the designer might have done when presenting to the client. How much do I, the customer, care about this stuff?

They’ve also got a new website that must seem complicated to use because there’s a statement at the top: “Welcome! Learn to use our new website–watch our tutorial video here.” When I click that link I get a warning that I am about to go to a third party website, which turns out to be Youtube. The video is a screen capture done with Camtasia, where we watch as they select from a drop down menu, access a contact form and such, all without any narration. Meanwhile the old website–which is called Webwise Banking–is still there and looks pretty much the same other than the logo change and doesn’t have any new functionality. Unlike most bank websites, it doesn’t present me with a table of recent activity. I have to counterintuitively click “history” to see any of that stuff.

The best thing about all of this is that their mobile sites, both adirondacktrust.com and webwisebanking.com, have been mobile-optimized; formerly webwisebanking (I never knew about the other site) returned a micro type version of their desktop. And their app, which formerly didn’t work for making mobile deposits, has been updated as well.

One wonders why Adirondack Trust thought it was necessary to put up a video tour of the site and why they didn’t imbed it on the page so they didn’t have that warning about the third party site. (This morning, by the way, the site is glitching and clicking the video link doesn’t do anything.) And why they continue to operate two sites, adirondacktrust.com and webwisebanking.com rather than redirecting the latter.

Think about Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima and how those food product icons have evolved over the years. Do those companies make an announcement every time they update the art? Think about your favorite apps which are constantly updated behind the scenes. If you’re curious or bored you can look up a snippet about what’s changed, but often these are silly, suggesting the developers don’t think anybody will read them.

It’s fine to update your logo (the old Adirondack Trust logo was complex and not particularly attractive or bank-y) and a good thing to improve the user experience. But just do it, don’t harp on it to your customers. To do so is like wetting your pants while you’re wearing a dark suit. It gives you a nice warm feeling, and nobody will notice but you.

Reflections on Black Friday weekend 2017

Black Friday was the catalyst that turned me from a wise-ass cub copywriter, marking time till I sold a screenplay, into someone serious about their profession. Not a few years ago, I got a job as direct mail ad manager at the Broadway, a defunct chain of department stores in Southern California. One of my first assignments was the sale catalog to bring people into stores on the day after Thanksgiving. (No evening-before previews then.) I had to wrangle departmental buyers all of whom wanted more space than they’d been assigned, or wanted to jam more product into their allotted space. It was a nightmare. I seriously thought about quitting.

Then, on that morning (yes, we worked the day after Thanksgiving then) Marketing VP Jan Wentzel put me into his car along with my boss, Lisa Stanley. We drove to several stores to watch the people lining up to get in, and then lining up at cash registers–LONG lines–to purchase the very products I had been working so hard to present in an even handed way. For the first time, I realized that what I was doing had something to do with the company’s success and, by extension, all of us keeping our jobs.

In more recent years, I’ve pretty much ignored Black Friday, especially as it became easier to shop online. This year, at the goading of my teenager, I decided to check it out. I hit Walmart, Target, Sears and our local mall on Friday afternoon. I also made a serious attempt to find online deals which could count as Amazon-killers because they combined online and pickup-in-store shopping.

Walmart was the winner at that category. I bought a device which was one price online, but $30 cheaper if you bought in-store. However! You could order online for in-store pickup, know it wasn’t going to be out of stock, and get the same $30 discount. I did that and went to the store to pick it up, scanned a bar code at a kiosk, and realized I could buy a couple more things while I was waiting for them to bring it. Very smart, Walmart.

Sears was just sad. Not a lot of shoppers but even fewer cashiers, so there were still long checkout lines. What you’d expect from a store that’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

I like Target a lot but ended up buying just one thing from them. They had a nice sale on Fitbits as a doorbuster, but the model I wanted was gone. I found it on their website and ordered it. Unfortunately I then found it elsewhere at a lower price so the item will be returned. Feeling bad for Target, I spent a good amount of time checking their website for other bargains to buy, and returned yesterday on Cyber Monday when they were offering 15% discount and free shipping on everything. But time after time, when I got to the product page it was unavailable to ship, check inventory in store. Where I wouldn’t have the 15% discount.

The one sale product I really wanted was a Sony wireless Blu-Ray player, marked down from $119 to $49. It was “temporarily” out of stock online and finally disappeared from the website. Amazon, surprise, had it at the same price and I ordered it. Not going to the mall was more than worth the $7.50 in theoretically lost savings. Amazon wins again.

Tips for making the most of DMA &Then annual conference in New Orleans

The DMA Annual Conference happens next week, October 8-10, in New Orleans. If you haven’t registered, you can still get a ticket here. The format has been revised again, eliminating the Ignition sessions I’ve led the last three years, so I will be sitting this one out. Please have a beignet and a muffuletta on my behalf.

In case this is your first DMA, a couple of tips. The content has reverted to a focus on use histories presented by marketers and their agencies, which can vary from life-changing to self-serving and there’s often no way in advance to know which is which. My strategy is to choose backup sessions in each time slot and sit at the back of the room, so I can slip out unobtrusively if the session turns out not to meet my needs. I’ve found there is little correlation between the size of the room or the popularity of a session and its quality, so you shouldn’t necessarily jump into a room because it’s standing room only. Read up on the speakers and their companies and plan accordingly.

My second tip is to spend a good amount of time in the exhibit halls. Of course you want to see what the exhibitors are up to (and support their investment in the show), but this is also the place where I run into old colleagues, clients and friends who are randomly trolling the floor like I am. Speaking of networking, my third tip is to sit at tables during the meals where not only do you not know anybody but the participants don’t appear to know each other. That’s how to meet new prospects (because I’m a copywriter, almost everybody is a potential prospect for me) and learn new things.

And finally, take the time to enjoy New Orleans, one of the great food and entertainment cities of the world. The Convention Center is somewhat removed from the most interesting areas as are the big hotels, so you’ll need some initiative to make the most of the city. Go to the French Quarter early in the morning when the locals are waking up. Stroll, smell the flowers, get chicory coffee along with that beignet at Cafe du Monde. If you’re there on Sunday, take the streetcar out to the Garden District and have brunch at Commander’s Palace. Walk the French Quarter again at night, where you can enjoy much of the jazz (including Preservation Hall) simply by standing outside the open windows. I’m jealous!

Hopkins Scientific Advertising for free?

Would you like a free copy of Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins? Sure you would, because this marketing classic is as relevant today as when it was published in 1923. Here are four principles from the book, as summarized on the Marketing Experiments blog:

1. People are selfish.
2. Generalities are worthless.
3. Advertising is salesmanship.
4. Advertising is a science.

The last is obviously to self-justify the book. But would you disagree with any of the others? Of course not, for reasons we have written about here many times. The world may change, the delivery mechanism certainly does, but people are still people with universal wants and fears.

Since the book is long out of copyright, a number of links to free downloads are available on the web. My favorite is this page by Roy Furr which showed up last week in my LinkedIn feed. Furr is a disciple of Jay Abraham who will of course use the podium to sell his own works while he has you engaged. But there’s no obligation, and I will take it on faith that opt-out requests will be honored.

You can go to this page and get full exposure to Furr’s marketing message, which is classic long form copy though a little long on analytics and short on emotion for me. In true Jay Abraham fashion, he really massages the info premium. Scroll to the bottom, and not only can you get the PDF download, but you can get an audiobook which Furr “recorded for my personal use”. The reader is pretty professional sounding, whether it’s Furr or somebody else.

My own publisher, FastPencil, is not so smart about freebies. They’ve discontinued the preview download feature whereby I offered the first ten chapters of Copywriting that Gets Results! at no charge. But a complete PDF is just $6.99, and since you’re saving so much on Claude Hopkins why don’t you just buy a copy?

What the pool guy can teach us about selling freelance creative

I’ve recently moved into a house which, two owners ago, was tricked out with all the bells and whistles available in the early 1990s. Most of these tchotchkes have fallen into disrepair and must either be abandoned (like the in-wall coax cabling throughout the house) or gussied up. This has caused visits by a stream of spa guys, pool guys and sprinkler guys and I’ve noticed something interesting and consistent in the way they address my wife and me which can help in selling freelance creative.

“See the three holes in the top of that sprinkler head?” says the sprinkler guy. “That’s a Toro. They require a special tool to open the head, so you have to call a service to do it for you. I’ll replace all those with Rainbirds you can adjust yourself.”

“This is junk,” says the pool guy as he turns the handle on the filter tank. “$125 for a new one.” Water starts to ooze out. “Look at that.” As the gaskets become saturated, the leaks stop. “Well, maybe it’s good for one more season. But keep an eye on it. If you lose your prime [which for some reason is what they call pressure in the system] then your pool will become filled with algae.”

What’s happening in both these instances is that the contractor is sharing a do-it-yourself tip to make me, the client, feel in control while simultaneously instill fears, uncertainties and doubts that I’ll actually be able to do it.

“Write like you talk,” you might tell a client who thinks they can do their own copywriting. “Short sentences, no more than 10 words on average but break those up with an occasional one- or two-word sentence. Paragraphs no longer than five lines, but break them up with an occasional one-line or even one-word paragraph. And your vocabulary should be plain English. No words over ten characters if possible.”

Now who’s going to remember all that? The guy is going to dutifully write it down, and possibly try it, but will quickly abandon the effort and call you. And you may well be able to ease your estimate a bit higher because they now have more appreciation of your craft.

This is why I shake my head at creatives who present their work as a black box and refuse to open the kimono and explain what they’re doing. The more you tell them, the more they will respect and trust you, and the more likely they are to hire you to do it for them. Now I’ve got to go down in the basement, because the last owner loved to tinker with his sprinklers and I’m pretty sure he had one of those special Toro tools.

How to interpret “illogical” market testing results

From time to time I’ve made analogies between marketing and home shop experiences and pointed out the simple wisdom that can be found through working with your hands. So bear with me for a moment here as I wind up to a theory on illogical market testing results.

Cindy and Chris at Northside Service Company were miracle workers in bringing my 25-year-old NuTone intercom system back to life. However, when all was said and done there were some glitches. You are supposed to be able to push a button to initiate a call from a remote unit, the recipient is able to talk hands free, and you as the initiator can continue to talk by pressing a button each time you want to speak.

My system wasn’t working like that. You could initiate a call and hear another person and they could hear you, but after that first time you pressed the button subsequent presses did nothing; the signal didn’t go through. There was another issue, minor but consistent across the system: the “end call” button which returned you to whatever you were doing beforehand (like listening to FM radio) didn’t work.

This one-and-you’re-done setup worked fine for summoning kids to dinner or answering somebody who pressed the doorbell. And standing at a wall intercom and talking back and forth in your own home seemed a little Austin Powers-ish. Nonetheless, I wanted to get to the bottom of this.

Through testing I found ONE remote intercom system, out of 16, that worked as it was supposed to. You could press and release that talk button and continue to communicate, and the “end call” button worked as it was supposed to. So I took it apart. And it turned out it was mis-wired. Two wires going to terminals marked “red” and “red/white” were reversed.

I tried mis-wiring a second remote and it, too, began to work properly. I thought about the master controller and what might be wired incorrectly. No schematics are available after a quarter century, certainly not on the NuTone website. Perhaps I made a mistake when I took out the pull connectors to send it in for repair. But I was pretty careful and the pull-off single wire connectors were grounds, so they should not affect the electrical switches.

My guess is that something deep within the system was mis-wired at installation and the original owner put up with it the entire time they lived in the house. There is no other logical explanation because the problem began with an illogical mistake. It takes only a minute or two to remove a remote from the wall and rewire it, so that’s what I’m going to do with the remaining 14 remotes. I’ll also put a note inside the housing of the main controller for a future owner of the house.

Getting to the marketing analogy, many many years ago I worked on a test mailing that involved a bunch of shredded U.S. currency visible through a window in the outer envelope. The product was a newsletter on reducing your taxes, and the message of the involvement device was that you might as well be tearing up your own money for all the unnecessary taxes you’re paying. This test was a disaster. The numbers indicated that absolutely nobody had opened the package and considered responding.

And that was odd. The involvement device may have been a bit sensationalist and there were probably some quirks to the copy, but it followed a solid platform related to the features and benefits of the publication we were selling. I could accept a terrible result of responses that were 20% of the control’s, but 0%? Something is wrong.

My hunch is that somebody at the mail house (or possibly the post office, but less likely since that would be a hanging crime) took a fancy to my gimmick and simply appropriated the few thousand pieces involved in the test. Illogical and far fetched, but can you give me a better explanation?

Happy April Fool’s Day, by the way, but the above is no joke.

Why Cadillac “Dare Greatly” campaign doesn’t

While many brands made a political statement with ads on the 2017 Super Bowl, Cadillac saved theirs for the (surprisingly non-political) Academy Awards telecast. “We are a nation divided. That’s what they tell us, right?” the ad begins. “But what they don’t tell you, what doesn’t make the news, is this: We carry each other forward.” And we have a series of clips of Americans supporting or carrying others, sometimes literally.

Next we go to a montage of historical figures standing next to their Cadillacs. “No matter who we are, or what we believe, or where we come from, we’ve had the privilege to carry a century of humanity,” the ad continues. The “carry” metaphor is not very subtle, but it speaks well to Cadillac’s history as a symbol of having made it. I grew up in a suburb of Dallas with a very eclectic population mix—from college professors to poultry distributors, and from aristocrats with a long southern heritage to first generation immigrants.

Some folks thought owning a Cadillac was a way to show off your prosperity; my Uncle Jim bought a new one every year. But others would never own a Cadillac because it was not appropriate to be so ostentatious. I suspect the new Cadillac campaign is speaking to the first group. You may live in fear of deportation, you may belong to an ethnic group that is the subject of hate crimes, but if you have money for the down payment at least you can drive a nice car.

As it wraps things up, Cadillac stretches its metaphor a bit too far in my opinion. “But maybe what we carry isn’t just people. It’s an idea. That while we’re not the same, we can be one. And all it takes is the willingness to dare.” And we close with the Cadillac logo and the tag line, “Dare Greatly.” (The tag is not new, but was introduced with this campaign a couple of years ago.) Again, what we’re talking about is bourgeois prosperity. It’s the same kind of daring that might cause you to go for it with a nicer anniversary gift or a pricier steak than you had planned because, hey, this is America and you can. It’s really not that daring, but maybe it hits the Cadillac buyer’s sweet spot.

The branding continues to veer off course with the next spot, “Pioneers”. “We’ve always been dreamers. We’ve been a symbol of the future…. A standard… a star. But our past is just that, past. What lies ahead is in our hands.” And the ad goes on to introduce concept vehicles including self-driving and electric Cadillacs. The drivers in these vehicles are younger, much younger.

The third ad, “Pedestal”, starts with a vehicle literally on a pedestal surrounded by gawkers. A well-dressed 30ish woman comes forward, mesmerized. “We know how it feels to be treated like a trophy. Driven to awards shows… parties… and across so many silver screens…. But a Cadillac is no trophy, no museum piece. This is our future, and it will inspire every car that follows…. Intermission’s over. This is how we drive the world forward.” And now the mesmerized woman is behind the wheel while multiethnic pedestrians gawk at her good fortune.

The problem here is that Cadillac is trying to transform its brand and appeal to a new audience, yet its history is the reason for its cred. They should have done what Lincoln and Chrysler did, in high concept campaigns of the past. Tell your story, then shut up. The campaign can continue with product-focused features and performance ads, and buyers will connect the dots.

I’ll close with Electro Cadillac, presumably a current owner, who says much the same thing in a comment under the YouTube “Pioneers” video:

“I can’t believe this… This commercial is basically telling you that all the achievements and great cars that were made in the past, history (which, let’s be honest is much better than the weak plastic bullshit we have today) let’s just throw all that in the garbage… I enjoy driving and all this ‘futuristic’ crap is getting on my nerves with every single day going by…

“One thing that is fundamental guys, Cadillac hear me out: You can’t beat the old school. Those flimsy plastic bumpers will never compare to those good old chrome steel ones.

“And here is another thing. I am watching the Oscars as we speak, and your Escala commercial says this: ‘Our cars will never be like before’. Well that means that you’re not going to be Cadillac anymore.

“Here is a new slogan for you: There is no future without the past.”

Celebrity athletes free to express their political opinions? Now that’s scary.

When Under Armour’s CEO Kevin Plank described Donald Trump’s business-friendly attitude as “a real asset” to the country, the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry told The San Jose Mercury News, “I agree with that description, if you remove the ‘et.’” The sneaker brand promptly terminated its relationship with the popular MVP, explaining that “we don’t care who you are, you don’t disrespect the office of the President of the United States.”

Except that’s not what happened.

Plank took out a full page ad in the Baltimore Sun (Under Armour is based in Baltimore) to explain that “in a business television interview last week, I answered a question with a choice of words that did not accurately reflect my intent.” He then reached out to Curry as well as actor/wrestler Dwayne Johnson and ballerina Misty Copeland, who had also criticized him, to make sure they understood. And Steph Curry is still with Under Armour and presumably free to speak his mind.

In the past the conventional wisdom, and certainly the preference of marketers who pay for their endorsements, was that celebrity athletes should stay out of politics. (Celebrity actors are, of course, a different story.) Why risk offending millions of people who might boycott your brand as a result in the same way that Trump supporters are now boycotting Nordstrom’s and T.J. Maxx? But the flip side is that, when young people put on a pair of Steph Curry sneakers, they’re not just wearing shoes. They’re paying extra for identification with a brand that stands for ability, brilliance, success through striving and just plain coolness.

If that brand lets the celebrity add a political perspective, it may be brave and ballsy but it may also be coolly calculating. Think about the rationalizations that might be made by Midwestern white kids who continue to wear Curries. Maybe they’ll say, “hey, I appreciate a guy who’s complex and able to live with contradictions… like me.” Or maybe they’ll take Curry’s example as a license to form their own opinions and think for themselves. That’s scary, and exciting.

Note: this post heavily draws from a long and thoughtful piece which appeared in the New York Times on February 26, “Celebrity Endorsers Turn Political, and Keep Their Deals”. Please read that piece, by Zach Shonbrun, for more perspective.