Category Archives: Observations

An ugly side of marketing to beautiful people.

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It’s a timeless marketing proverb, “If you try to be something to everyone, you’ll end up being nothing to anyone.” This statement has endured because it is more or less true.

I hold that marketing is essentially appealing to someone’s sense of self. The purchases we make are exercises in narcissism. We “dress up” in our brand choices to tell people who we think we are.

If a brand decides its target is “Males, 18-34 with a household income of $75K+, who are into sports and cars”, they’re basically saying we’re appealing to everyone who thinks of themselves in these generic terms. And of course, no one thinks of themselves that way which is why those broad marketing strategies usually happen in parity categories that compete on couponing, discounting or various forms of market bribery to make their sales quotas.

The brands that stand for something and consider themselves “lifestyle brands” – almost exclusively these brands have a clear, narrowly defined target audience that is more about world views than demographic data points. And appealing to those world views, at the exclusion of others, is how they build a loyal tribe of customers.

Sometimes though, this lifestyle marketing and narrow focus can come off a bit distastefully when it’s spelled out bluntly. Check out this article and interview with the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch – one of America’s favorite near-soft-porn teen apparel brands. (Sorry, that was my inner parent characterizing it there.)

As a father of daughters, what he’s saying is offensive, elitist and about as insensitive as one can get. It’s also dangerous to young minds and arguably irresponsible from a social standpoint. His are exactly the sentiments that contribute to bullying, self-esteem issues, and eating disorders. Disgusting, really.

As a marketer though, I recognize what he’s doing and why its working. He’s very candid about his brand, his target and what he’s going after. As CEO, he is clearing establishing the vision, mission and values of his company. Which is exactly the charge of CEOs.

I’m sure more than a few Abercrombie wearers are outside his desired caste of ‘cool kids’ but he is successfully targeting a specific mindset and doing it consistently, right down to the sizes of the products he offers and the (hellish to parents, heavenly to teens) dark stores with their horribly pervasive scents, thunderous house music and barely-clad poster models.

My wife went into Abercrombie for my daughter once, looking for shorts. She emerged ten minutes later, daughter in tow, after unsuccessfully asking the salesman (a boy, really) if they had anything in stock that wasn’t “tart-y”. Nope. All their shorts were short-shorts. Next stop, Gap.

Do I want my daughter wearing Abercrombie after seeing reading this article? Absolutely not. Do I plan to reinforce in my daughter a healthy sense of body and modesty about that body? Absolutely. Will I continually remind her that people come in many shapes and sizes and that while I advocate building a strong mind in a strong body (“Mens sana in corpore sano” being a personal motto of mine) it is not right to judge people purely because they don’t fit our ideals. I will try to bestow those values on her. I will in effect be fighting Abercrombie’s marketing.

But I’m not the target audience (and I’ll be damned if my daughter will be, either). Abercrombie is intentionally excluding the likes of me. They don’t want me. They don’t share my values. They are appealing to a wholly different target. One who subscribes to their vision and values. And while it may sadden me that such a market exists, and in such great numbers, the Abercrombie message works because of its elitism.

Driverless cars are around the bend but is there a market for them?

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Unknown

Spaceballs’ President Skroob got caught with his pants-down, literally, underscoring one of our fundamental discomforts with video calls, even decades after the technology became available.

Predicting the future is a risky business. Nonetheless, many of us feel compelled to try. Businesses are no exception and often they try to extend a bit of seemingly sound logic into a new product through which they hope to define a new, and high growth product category. Sometimes it works as with the iPad. Sometimes it doesn’t. (Remember “clear beer”?).

The trick is to anticipate what the marketplace will want before the market even articulates it. That’s a tall order.

I recently read this piece on Google’s driverless car. A fascinating article shedding light on some truly amazing advances in navigational technology. The benefits of the driverless car would be many fold; more leisure (or working commute) time while traveling. Better safety. Less highway congestion. Better fuel efficiency. Even the ability for the disabled to use cars.

Close your eyes, dream a little, and the mathemicatically precise, perfect driving scenario envisioned in the file version of Minority Report seems like a possibility.

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The film Minority Report depicted perfectly spaced, computer-driven cars that later allowed for manual override outside crowded cities.

Google believes its driverless car will be ready for the mass market within the decade. While it’s not exactly the hovercraft I was promised by the science fiction of my youth,  the future does appear to be upon us.

The question is, will anyone want it? And if so, who.

Marketers probably have a decidedly different perspective than the engineers behind the driverless car technology. Marketers know that in America at least, cars are sold emotionally and a lot of that emotion is the sense of freedom and control they give us. After all, cars were chosen over the railroad way back in the day because we could go where want wanted, when we wanted. The United States, after all, was founded on independence. We’re reluctant to give it up. It’s central to our self identity in the world. We talk endlessly about our rights. Even though more and more algorithms make decisions for us we don’t like having this fact thrust in our face. And we’re even less willing to relinquish our control to a robot even if, rationally, this makes all the sense in the world.

Google self-driving car

Driverless cars might be available within the decade. But will people want to let go of the freedom and control of driving?

We Build It Because We Can
Many an engineer’s passion is to create something new and useful. If the technology exists, we are eager to exploit it. That experimentation has led to incredibly important advances that have changed life on this planet. The trouble is, these same engineers don’t always (or,often) realize that they are not the “target audience” of the creations they make. Their own bias, interests and assumptions are not always aligned with everyone else’s.

Video calling, for example, has been available for decades. Apple ships it default on its iOS and Skype is a global brand. Few personal computers are made today without the embedded camera and audio components to enable video calling. You would think people everywhere would be eager to video call one another, right? Yet, except for special circumstances – like when Mom or Dad is traveling and wants to ‘see’ the kids – we usually don’t. As human beings we prefer to hide behind the non-visual nature of audio calls (or even better, text-messaging and email). Video calling brings risk. How does our hair look? Are we dressed? Are we doing something we’d want the person on the other line to know about? Do we want that person to know where we are when they call? Does seeing the other person’s face force us to behave in a certain way that takes too much energy? Whatever our reasons, most of use don’t opt to turn on that video camera except under very specific circumstances. Yet companies continue to offer video calling whether by Facetime or Google+ hangouts. If video calling is becoming more popular, it is a slow growth category to be sure.

I think the driverless car will work much the same way. It may have an important role in crowded cities like Shanghai, Delhi and Tokyo where gridlock is infamous. It may catch on faster in countries that don’t yet have a lot of drivers and therefore could ‘leap’ a step ahead similar to how some nations went wireless straight away because they didn’t have a wired infrastructure to undo first.

Part-time driverless navigation (like part-time 4-wheel drive) might become an option too. Offering the best of both worlds. But who will choose to employ it and when? And if only some people use it, will some of the benefits (like safety) be reduced because now the human ‘x factor’ will be present because of the other driver?

And then there’s the perception of driving optimally. It seems kind of boring really. Doing the speed limit feels slow to most of us. When a cab is dragging its (w)heels in front of us, we look for any opportunity to swerve out and pass. In rush hour lockups, everyone struggles to be “one car ahead” cutting off the guy next to us to sneak into a merging lane. It would be a huge behavioral change – like moving from voice calls to video calls – for us to relinquish the wheel in such circumstances. We’ve been active drivers since horse-drawn carriages.

So then might governments mandate it in the name of public safety? One could see a Bloomberg-like Mayor of the future trying to make driverless navigation a requirement within certain areas of the city known for accidents or gridlock. Good luck with that. Common sense laws like mandatory seat belts and helmets are met with hostility as impingements on freedom. Now you’re asking people to give up control of their car? That’s a tough sell.

Admittedly, I have always been something of a skeptic and sometimes markets surprise me. I struggled to understand the utility of the iPad when it first came out. Now I wouldn’t want to live without mine. So who knows, maybe the driverless car will find a mass market. And maybe video calling will become increasingly popular and one day we’ll all communicate the way they did in those sci-fi shows of the 80s.

You can’t have a successful product without understanding people.
The bigger point I’m trying to make it that just having the technical means to make something doesn’t mean the market will embrace it. And while Google’s brand is about innovation and therefore building a driverless car, even if it flops in the market, helps them retain their leadership position – for many companies in many categories – leaving R&D strictly to the engineers is probably increasing the risk overall. It might not be bad to include some behavioral psychologists and dare I say it, even marketers, in the process, early on, too.

Musings on the Mobile Wallet

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imagesI had a digital first today. I paid for a latte and a black and white cookie using my mobile phone. I’m sure some of you have done this already, but I am particularly sensitive about financial matters and digital tools. I’m a bit of a late adopter when it comes to moving my money online. I still haven’t deposited a check via my mobile phone and I can’t bring myself to carry my plane ticket to the gate on my phone. Some of you might laugh at this luddite side, but I know I’m not alone. Trusting your money to the ether takes some getting used to for some of us.

That said, my coffee purchase experience went well and once I did it I will admit, it felt cool. I wonder how long it will take to become truly popular though because the reality is, debit cards are still far easier. This got me thinking about Apple’s Passbook, Google e-wallet, loyalty programs, mobile purchases, etc. I think the adoption of these new technologies will either boil down to perks or convenience (or both). A mobile payment option needs to satisfy at least one of these or it will struggle with longterm viability. The trouble is, winning at either perks or convenience is a challenging business proposition.

Convenience: Cash vs. Debit vs. Mobile
I have a few transactional apps but chose Starbucks to test an actual purchase – mostly for convenience (there’s one within walking distance of my office). It seems the general process for any of these apps (retailer or 3rd party) goes something like this:

  1. Download the app
  2. Set up an account with the company
  3. Acquire a gift card (for the retailer version)
  4. Register the card with the app (again or retailer versions)
  5. And then register a credit card with the app to refill the account.

That’s a lot of effort for a cup of coffee. And my Starbucks app can only be used in Starbucks. Even my Target app has limited use. From a convenience standpoint the retailer-branded apps are at a disadvantage.

What about the likes of Square Wallet and other would-be third party providers? I downloaded the Square Wallet app and set up an account there too. When I opened the app to see how many companies accepted Square for payments I was not too surprised to find the number minimal (though the Starbucks I was just in was one of them).

Without broad acceptance by merchants it will be hard for a mobile payment system to compete with the debit card in my wallet. And even if it does, is grabbing my phone and tapping the screen a few times that much more convenient than opening my wallet for cash or a debit card? Probably not. Unless you could fit attach unlimited number of loyalty programs to that e-wallet and the e-wallet would ‘know’ during the transaction which to apply points or perks to. Which means perks are a big part of the larger convenience story.

What makes a perk persuasive (and profitable)
To choose a retailer-branded app to make payments means I am choosing that brand over some obvious conveniences. What would drive me to do that?

I’d have to be in this store a lot.
Or, I’d have to really love the brand a lot.
Or, I’d have to really find value in the rewards.

These are interesting reflection points for a retailers. Some stores are more conducive to frequent visits but a whole bunch are not. Some retailers are more conducive to true brand affinity but many are not (even if it breaks the brand manager’s heart to admit this). And largely speaking the more valuable the rewards offered the more it cuts into the profit margin of the company offering it. So one has to be careful as retail margins are often squeezed to begin with.

The fuzzy middle.
Possibly the most challenging aspect of the e-wallet is that both the convenience and perks camps are not mutually exclusive. Any successful e-wallet will need aspects of both. To do that means taking on the banks and Visas of the world in terms of being accepted broadly while also offering enough true value-added perks to keep people involved with the platform as it competes with multiple payment options from cash on up.

There seems to be room for a big player here. A ‘glue’ platform that ideally would ship with the operating system of the phone, be backed by a big financial powerhouse and open enough that retailers could license into the platform and use its API to integrate their loyalty program. Oh, and someone would probably be very interested in getting their hands on that data.

That’s a tall order. My guess is it’s a ways off too. Meanwhile the rest of us will likely download more apps and be burdened with yet another decision at retail – which of these apps or options should I use to pay for this cup of coffee?

The AR-15 & Gun Control Debate: A Marketing Perspective

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ar-15The AR-15 is currently the polarizing icon of the gun control debate which was recently rekindled by another horrible mass shooting. I have been participating in conversations with friends both in person and via social media. Along the way I have tried to keep an open mind, educate myself and acknowledge when either side has a valid point.

As usual, the media has focused the gun control debate on so-called “assault rifles”. The gun lobby is quick to cry foul citing such issues as the general misunderstanding of what ‘semi-automatic’ means. They claim to dislike the term ‘assault rifle’ because they think it puts an inaccurate stigma on a whole classification of firearms – comparing them to AK-47′s and other action movie favorites. Owners of the AR-15 are also quick to point out that the gun itself is really not any more powerful than a hunting rifle which they say a greater proportion of society seems to have less of an issue with.

So what is it about this particular style of gun that stirs such strong convictions both pro and con?

As any marketer knows, packaging matters. Take the Honda civic. In steel grey, off the line, it’s a sensible mid-range car, good on fuel mileage, fast enough to commute to work, with room for groceries in the trunk. What happens though when you take that same vehicle and paint it acid green and then add a spoiler, fins, neon lights under the chassis, and a noise modifying muffler? It’s still the same 4-cycliner, sensible engine, but the person drawn to that Civic is now a very different one – more Fast & Furious than weekly commuter (even if the kid mostly just drives around town at 40mph blasting his radio and trying to draw a little attention).

I’d like to talk about the AR-15 this way: Not in terms of how it works, how big the magazine is, the “stopping power” of a discharged round or even what it’s really used for. Instead, I’d like to talk about how it’s sold and who it is designed to appeal to. Like the tricked-out Civic, the mechanics inside the AR-15 are part of the sale, but how that gun looks defines the person drawn to it. What might the psychographic profile of that person be?

Look into the many after-market parts available for the AR-15 and an answer will become clearer. Vertical forward grips, scopes, lighting systems, night vision systems, flash and sound suppressors. Whether it is in fact a military-grade “assault rifle” or not, it is very clearly sold as one. This is not a firearm designed for hunting. (As one woman noted, if you need a 30-round magazine to hunt, you’re not a very good hunter.)

The AR-15 was in fact originally a military weapon. Colt bought the design and began selling it to the public. The ‘consumer’ model remains clearly modeled on it’s military predecessor. While laws prevent gun manufacturers from introducing civilian firearms that can be easily modified to allow for full automatic fire, the weapon itself, to the untrained eye looks every bit as lethal as an M-16, AK-47, other any other gun Arnold Schwarzenegger might take into the fray. Whether it is or not is beside the point,  that it looks that way cannot be debated. That’s important to note because it is about the only aspect of the gun control debate that everyone agrees on. The only difference is, some people want the AR-15 precisely because of how it looks. Others want it banned for the same reason.

Combat AR-15.indd

The aesthetics of the AR-15 leverage popular culture and military heritage to serve two psychological ends; to intimidate an adversary and to give the wielder a sense of strength and confidence. The advertising language follows suit.

I take issue with the gun lobby claiming the media is vilifying guns like the AR-15 and mis-labelling them as “assault rifles” when they are very clearly designed to look like assault rifles. If you look at how they are marketed, the AR-15 is pitched to a prospective owners self-image as one who could “hold their own in a firefight” – whether defending their home or truth, justice and the American Way.

Yes, the words ‘self defense’ appear sometimes in the AR-15′s sales pitch, but the definition is necessarily different. You can’t carry an AR-15 in public (at least not without causing a panic) so its fairly useless for preventing a surprise streetside mugging or carjacking. What about a burglary? Well, how often is a home robbed by a dozen people such that a firearm with 30 rounds is necessary? Usually it’s one or two interlopers and frankly a pistol (with just a few rounds) would likely do the job. …Unless you’re expecting (or fantasizing about) a cinematic firefight.

The AR-15 is designed to look like the type of gun you’d use in a military-style engagement. Combined with a popular culture that depicts its heroes with similar weapons and glorifies gunfire – especially the “one hero against many bad guys” scenario – it’s easy to see why the AR-15, impractical as it is, remains iconic and may be desirable by someone who would like to seem themselves protecting their family, friends, countrymen or whoever against a legion of evildoers.

While the fringes on the far left and far right are crying out with their usual extreme perspectives (and poorly photoshopped propaganda on Facebook), I wonder if we’re not really missing the crux of the matter. Fewer people begrudge the hunter his rifle or even the single woman living alone a pistol in her nightstand, provided both are responsible gun owners. No, emotions seem to run highest when guns like the AR-15 come into play. Why?

A former business partner of mine, who is also a psychologist by training, believes (rightly, in my opinion) that marketing works not because it portrays the aspirational but rather satisfies the narcissistic. We buy products that confirm what we think of ourselves.

Consider that. What does the car you drive, the beer you drink, the cell phone you own or the brand of shoes you wear say about you?

What then does the lucrative market (and subsequent marketing) for weapons like the AR-15 say about how a significant proportion of our society thinks about itself? Addressing that core issue of self-perception might do more to resolve the “gun issue” than a lot of the noise being spouted by both sides.