How Lovely to Be a Woman?

Last night while viewing a rerun of The King of Queens, I caught a glimpse of the new Walmart cosmetics commercial.

Women in various states of beautifying themselves with cosmetic products as "How Lovely to Be a Woman" from Bye Bye Birdie chirps brightly over the action. This continues for much of the commercial until the selling message - Walmart has loads of well-known cosmetic brands at low prices! - is revealed at the conclusion.

What confused me was the ad's tone, which came off - to this viewer - as completely tongue-in-cheek. Poking fun at the level of effort women go through to 'make themselves beautiful.' I'm not sure if it was the video footage itself (a couple women looked to be preparing for clown auditions). Or the soundtrack. Or both.

I'll readily admit I'm not their target audience. My beauty regimen, if we can even call it that, normally consists of face lotion and chapstick. Maybe a tinted lip gloss if I'm feeling particularly sassy that morning. Was I being overly cynical? Too sensitive to the level of pressure already placed on women's physical appearances? Maybe.

But after the ad finished, I turned to my husband and asked what he thought - without leading the witness in any way. His reaction: it's making fun of cosmetics.

I doubt that's what Walmart is hoping for.

New, Easy Open Cap!

Some product improvements are just bad business.

If you've ever opened a jar of Hellman's mayonnaise, you might have had to struggle through the shrink-wrapped tamper-evidence seal. I usually have to grab a knife out of a nearby drawer to slice open the plastic. Some products use a perforated vertical strip to make it easier. Others use a hard plastic tear-strip that pulls right to left. The Hellman's jar I opened today had a better experience.

There was a big sticker on top exclaiming New, Easy Open Cap! ...something I didn't notice as I grabbed it off the shelf. There was no plastic shrink-wrap and no tear-strip. All I had to do was spin the cap open just like I do normally and listen for the snapping sound as it opened for the first time. Better? Sure. But do I really care? No.

Although I regularly felt the inconvenience of the tamper-evidence seal, it NEVER occurred to me that I should switch brands to make it easier to open. Or that I should use less mayo. ...which leads me to the point. Hellman's no doubt went through focus groups, re-engineering, changes to the manufacturing process, and lots of other costs to make this simple change. If it doesn't cause someone to buy who wouldn't have already bought, then all of that cost was unjustified.

I see the same type of moves in technology product sales. Vendors spend time and money building and delivering features that won't influence sales. I know that a group of useless features could be bundled into some category like "innovative" that makes people buy, but that misses the point.

My point is simple. Prioritize the road map based on what will deliver real value to buyers. And don't waste money on improving the tamper-evidence seal – even if the new seal is considered super cool by everyone in the industry. Increased value for customers is the only clear indicator of money well spent.

Strategically speaking

I found this B L Ochman post very educational for anyone considering social media as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Excellent questions to stimulate serious thought and sound planning prior to jumping in the pool. Even more welcomed than her straight-forward tone, it showcases how social media (when done right) is no different than any marketing campaign. Sure, there are a wealth of free to relatively inexpensive resources online to convey your story - as opposed to the often uneconomical path of traditional media buying or print advertising - but companies need to recognize a shotgun approach won't see results. And though the technology may not be costly, there still needs to be effort and resources put behind a campaign so it's not merely an after-thought. It's a marathon not a sprint.

The CMO/agency conversation struck me, as well.

Placing it on the personal level - how many of us want to be friends with someone who withholds information, or scrubs their language so as to never truly feel genuine? As though s/he is interested only in what we are sharing, not vice versa? How many long-lasting, valued relationships happen within weeks or even months of first meeting?

Social media isn't a quick fix; it's simply another way of communicating to consumers and prospective new consumers.

Building relationships takes time.

Inbound Marketing hurts Innovation

I went to the HubSpot blog to read about Inbound Marketing Lessons from Phish. I left a comment there, but wanted to raise the question here too.

We all see that inbound marketing has become a key part of our marketing lives. And the success stories are analogous to those of real-estate investments. We all hear the stories about people who put nothing into it and get back incredible returns. The flip-side applies as well. For every one who super-succeeds, there are fifty who do mediocre or worse.

But here's my real concern. If buyers shut down cold-calling, email blasts, postal mail, and other more traditional marketing mechanisms, it's going to shape the way that manufacturers design products. #1 priority is going to be ability to create the all-powerful buzz. Because that's going to be the only mechanism to which the buyers are tuned-in.

Will innovators prioritize creation of flashy/cool features over the traditionally more important "solid architecture" and "core functionality" underneath? ...because if they don't, they're going to get buried by companies that do. Even if their product is head-and-shoulders above.

Digital Hack Night

Over the course of 4 hours last night in Ohio, 2 things occurred:

- $100,000 was raised for the charity Feeding America.
- P&G executives learned - hands-on - the influence of social media.

The price-tag? $4,000.

Surely Digital Hack Night's charitable focus helped bolster the engagement and contributions of the marketing professionals' networks and those executives from other companies. But what impressed me most was how a basic training exercise was transformed into a major online event.

In essence, P&G spent $4,000 to help their marketing teams and executives become immersed in social media, while at the same time creating an excellent PR opportunity for the corporation, as well as Google, Facebook, and MySpace. Rather than simply hold internal training sessions on what 'social media' is, they got their hands dirty and let cross-functional teams compete in a widely tracked, online contest. No didactic presentations or PowerPoint slides. Competition and creative thinking. An experience vs. a class.

All of this resulting in a nice chunk of change for Feeding America.

Nice.

Google's Ultimate Power

Recently, I decided to make some adjustments to one of my Google PPC campaigns. ...normal stuff like adjusting bid prices, adding keyword phrases, and adding broad-match or exact-match phrases. Next thing I know, Google dropped my quality scores on just about every keyword in that campaign. ...from around 7-8 to 1-2. That's the difference between life and death in the PPC world. And then the ads weren't showing. Was it something I said?

A few months back, I attended a seminar on SEO that told me to use a domain name that matched my ad copy. So, I did. I bought domains that matched my keywords and ran ads back to landing pages on those domains. It seemed to work. I don't really know if worked better than if I didn't use a matching domain, but I was getting results. Then, Google decided to un-list my site. Why? Because it saw two domains with the same content and determined that to be fraud. I found this out only because I happened to be in the Google Webmaster Tools. Luckily, I removed the alternate content, applied 301 redirects, went through the objection process and they re-listed the site. What a Hassle.

Google has the power to effectively shut down a business if that business is relying on web traffic. And they don't give you a rule-book to play by. So, it's a game of hit-and-miss. And web has become the de-facto mechanism for B2B research. You don't use a phonebook or rely on the physical mailbox to find an enterprise software solution. You use Google. As a marketer, my audience is screaming at me to NOT use email and NOT use (cold) phone calls. So, we are choosing to limit our options to Google. It's dangerous.

Google is essentially limiting your choice to companies who have savvy-enough web marketing to survive. And sometimes simple mistakes or misinformation cause a de-listing. It's bad for sellers and buyers. I think it's time to start advocating a better way. I'm not saying that Google should do anything different. They're good at what they do and provide a fantastic service for navigating the billions of web pages out there. But as a B2B buyer, I can't rely on Google to help me find my best options. And I don't know where else to go.

The Facebook Facelift

My morning routine typically includes Headline News - or "HLN" as they've recently rebranded themselves. Their Morning Express with Robin Meade perfectly compliments my first cup of coffee so it's sort of stuck. I get a little Robin with my caffeine to ease me into the day.

What surprised me this morning was a feature about Facebook's upcoming redesign. Not that it isn't news, don't get me wrong. But that it was shown alongside HLN's regular stream of political pieces, who's who in bail out packages, and sports headlines. I wouldn't call Morning Express cutting edge when it comes to their technology coverage. Facebook's representation in the lineup clearly indicates its impact.

Facebook smartly released a preview of the new layout explaining 'streams' and the ability for enhanced filtering. In the past they've launched changes with little to no notice and dealt with the consequences from a very vocal community of users. Nice to see them evolving their approach towards their consumers.