keithmonaghan.com

The Art of Simplicity

Keith Monaghan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:10:09 +0000

The great jazz pioneer and composer Charles Mingus said, “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity”.

Here are five awesomely simple print ads that highlight their products or companies in memorable ways. From the highly addictive site Ads of the World.

McDonalds – Free Wi-fi

CNN – Weather Report 99% Accurate

Johnson & Johnson – KY

Sensodyne – For sensitive teeth.

Wüsthof Knives

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Great Quotes About Marketing

Keith Monaghan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:44:45 +0000

A great quote makes you see its subject in a new way. Here are a few I find inspiring when it comes to business and marketing. Like many good quotes they apply to the bigger picture of life as well.

“We live in a world where the little things really do matter. Each encounter, no matter how brief, is a micro interaction which makes a deposit or withdrawl from our rational and emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we feel about a particular product, brand or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our everyday behaviors more than we realize.” – David Armano

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” – Howard Aiken

“Insecure managers create complexity.” – GE CEO Jack Welch

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.” – Steve Wynn

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker

“Fail cheap. Fail fast. Fail often. Always make new mistakes.” – Esther Dyson

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Link-o-rama: Good Stuff From Around the Web

Keith Monaghan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:00:16 +0000

Lots of thought provoking ideas on marketing out there. Here are a few favorites found over my morning cup o’ tea. Enjoy.

How do you grab the attention of thousands of business commuters at London’s Waterloo rail station? One company uses projected video to play with the lines of the building. Not sure if it increases business but it sure is pretty. Check out the above video. (Can’t see it? Click here).
5 Ways to Use Twitter’s List Feature For Marketers - Rohit Bhargava’s take on how to use Twitter’s long overdue (and desperately needed) new list feature. Bottom line: segment like crazy.
Why Email Remains the King of Internet Communications – Open standards and universal availability mean good ol’ email will be around long after many of the hot Social Media sites bite the dust.
How’s this for irony? 33% of PR pros see press releases as “a necessary evil”. Ouch. A nice summary from Steve Rubel.
And finally, something good for the soul. YouTube: How to shoot an anvil 200 feet into the air…

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Why Apple & Google Win (But Your Company Doesn’t)

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:45:41 +0000

Via stuffthathappens

5 Steps to Better Marketing

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:53:07 +0000

Listen to this post:
Download audio file (5stepsbettermarketing.mp3)

Download: 5 Steps to Better Marketing (.mp3 | 6:04 | 8.4 MB)

What makes a marketing campaign great? It’s the Big Question we all ask ourselves and, for what it’s worth, I have a partial answer.

Here are five things that are often overlooked by marketers but, done properly, can turn any campaign into a smashing success.

1. Start With a Better Product

Think your product is too boring to be great? Don’t tell that to the folks at the Sherwin-Williams. They revolutionized the retail paint industry by designing a paint can with an easy twist-off lid, comfortable side handle and no-drip spout. Oh, and it’s square to maximize shelf space. How’s that for making a boring product great?

It’s a lot easier to sell people a product that answers their needs–even needs they may not be aware of–than trying to convince them to buy an average or poorly designed one.

Consider this quote from Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. A master marketer if ever there was one:

It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do. We just want to make great products. — Steve Jobs, Fortune Magazine

2. Be Clear

How many times have you watched a commercial and wondered what it was trying to sell? Quite a few, I’m willing to bet. How many campaigns have you created that did the same thing? Come on, be honest. We’ve all done it.

It’s easy to become blinded by the opinions of insiders, technology or the latest marketing trend and end up creating something that, while obscurely clever, fails to successfully market your product.

Some experts argue such campaigns are justified as “brand extension” or “customer experience”. Maybe. I say you’re better off creating a campaign that makes it easy for customers to understand what is great about your product why they should buy it.

A good example is this ad for Buckley’s Cough Syrup:

Funny, to the point, and it gets the message across. No list of unpronounceable ingredients, no baffling conceptual art, just a statement of the obvious: “It tastes awful”, followed by a gutsy claim: “And it works”. The TV commercials are brilliant too. Clear is always better than clever.

3. Design Better

The average American is exposed to between 200 and 3,000 ads per day. If it’s going to cut through the clutter, a marketing campaign better convey your message quickly, clearly and powerfully. That means good design.

Badly designed campaigns can damage an otherwise healthy brand by creating doubt in a customer’s mind about you, your product and your company. If you can’t get your marketing together then why should they buy your product?

By way of example: What would happen if Microsoft redesigned Apple’s famously understated packaging for the iPod? Watch the video below to find out. It’s not pretty. Good design matters. A lot.

Can’t see the embedded video? Click here.

4. Improve Customer Service

What does customer service have to do with a great marketing campaign? Well, if the campaign succeeds people will be making purchases, calling and emailing you with questions and, heaven forbid, experiencing problems.

It’s not sexy or trendy but great customer service can produce better results than any PR or marketing initiative, not to mention happy and loyal customers (and you need those more than ever right now).

Give them a great story to spread about how effortless the purchase was, about how well you took care of them and how quickly you solved their problem. The word will spread, I promise. Great word-of-mouth is priceless marketing and good customer service is an easy way to make it happen.

For some interesting examples of both good and bad customer service, check out my podcast “Marketing in Tough Times – Improving Customer Service“.

5. Remember, Your Customers are Human

Sure, treating customers as a faceless mass of numbers has it’s upside: it makes things like accounting, valuation and profit analysis easier.

But this industrial revolution mentality has its limits in today’s hyper-connected world. With the social web, we’ve moved beyond the simplistic concept of an individual mass of customers to customers as a mass of individuals. As a result, learning how humans work, specifically your humans, can reap enormous rewards.

Case in point, the following quote from John Medina’s book, Brain Rules:

“We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.”

In short: learn how humans work and develop your message accordingly. Your efforts will be rewarded.

What other steps can businesses take to improving marketing? What would you add to this list? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

Study: Adults Dominate Social Media

Keith Monaghan — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:48:27 +0000

On a recent episode of NPR’s excellent Science Friday program, Forrester analyst Sean Corcoran spoke about a new report that looks at the use of social media and online communities among US computer users.

It offers fascinating, if sometimes obvious, insight into who’s using Facebook, Twitter, et al. Bottom line: it’s not all kids and hipsters, it’s mostly old farts (including yours truly). Sean says:

4/5 of Americans who are online participate in some form of Social Media.
Of the 250 million people worldwide that belong to Facebook, half log on daily spending over 5 billion minutes a day on the site.
Women over the age of 35 have flocked to Facebook, Twitter’s population has a male slant, MySpace is mostly the younger crowd.

Some of the points we’ve heard before (marketers, build relationships!) but the show neatly summarizes what’s happening online and, if you’re looking to put Social Media in perspective, it’s a well-spent 12 minutes. Get the full episode at these links:

Listen on the Science Friday site | Download the MP3 from NPR | Get on iTunesSee also:

Reality Check: How Augmented Reality Will Change Your Business

Keith Monaghan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:09:18 +0000

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.” — Adam Savage, host, Mythbusters.

Imagine walking down the street and spotting a pair of fancy shoes in a store window. You really like those shoes so you point your cell phone at them. It immediately tells you that a store two blocks down carries the same shoes at a lower price. Cool, you think, so you touch your phone’s screen and up pops a map that guides you, in real time, to the other store where you purchase your awesome shoes, saving a few bucks, and go on your way.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. You can see it at work in the video above in which a phone pointed at the Amsterdam skyline immediately shows which houses are for sale. (Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Awesome, isn’t it? It’s called Augmented Reality and it’s coming very soon to a smart phone near you. In fact, it is available right now for phones running Google’s Android operating system (Layar) and phone maker Nokia is currently beta testing its Point and Find system in the US and UK.

What does this have to do with marketing your business? Everything.

If you’ve paid attention to technology and the web over the years you probably know that you as a business are not in control. You never were. There is no stopping negative reviews online, only dealing with them honestly and head-on. The best strategy is to make a great product and reach out to people who will hopefully spread the word. That’s lack of control if I’ve ever heard it.

The Bad News

Augmented Reality is lack of control on steroids.

Now I can just point my phone at the front of your restaurant and see your reviews and health board rating. No more wasted time digging around on the web to see what others are saying about you. Everything about you now comes to my phone quickly and effortlessly. I can decide on the spot whether or not to eat at your place.

Or I could scan the conference floor with my phone, identify you, and see those embarrassing pictures on Facebook or that nasty twitter fight you had with a customer. I’ll know your dirty little secrets before we ever shake hands. If you’re smart, you’ll look for mine too.

And that shoe buying scenario I described earlier? It’s not possible yet, but it will be very soon. Retailers should be shaking in their boots.

Scary, eh? Sure, but only for the unprepared. And you’re definitely not one of them. Augmented Reality stands to be a very powerful tool in the hands savvy marketers.

The Good News

There is huge potential to engage customers and extend brands with Augmented Reality. Admittedly, the Wow Factor is a major part of the impact these campaigns will make, but I believe that with care they can be developed into highly effective marketing tools. A few ideas:

Digital ads or promotions that “appear” on the front of your building and are only visible through the screen of a phone.
Beautiful high-def pictures of your food on the gadgets of passersby when they scan your restaurant (coupons too).
Give customers who hold your product up to their computer’s web cam special access to exclusive online content like music, e-books and downloads.
Get people together and talking by providing Social Networking info on local customers who also love your products (opt-in, of course).
Finally, check out video of Disney and GE’s impressive early efforts with AR on YouTube: Disney’s Nightastic and GE’s Wind Turbine campaign.

Conclusion

Augmented Reality is here and I believe it’s going to be hugely popular in the near future, it’s just not widely distributed yet. But it will be. Now is the time to get ahead of the trend and start thinking about how you can best use it for your product and situation.

After the hype has died down I suspect we’ll find that the best way to use AR to market our businesses is the same as it’s always been: have a great product, be genuine, add value and, most importantly, remember that there are humans at the other end of the technology.

What do you think? How will Augmented Reality affect business? How can it be used for marketing? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

I’m On the Neuromarketing Blog!

Keith Monaghan — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:37:17 +0000

Holy cow! I almost spit a cup of tea out of my nose this morning when I noticed an incoming link from Roger Dooley’s influential Neuromarketing blog referring to my post Scarcity Sells. Roger writes:

“In a reply to my post, The Scarcity Effect, Neuromarketing reader Keith Monaghan pointed out how one bourbon marketing effort is employing scarcity to build its brand… Keith is right on the money with this.“

Roger’s posts have influenced how I think about marketing and social media and I’m deeply flattered by the mention.

You can read his article, Scarcity in Action, on the Neuromarketing blog and mine, Scarcity Sells, right here at keithmonaghan.comSee also:

Starbucks’ $11,000 Coffee Maker

Keith Monaghan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:59:38 +0000

Can’t see the embedded video? Click here.

The Coffee Giant Gambles With Customer Perception

On a recent trip to the Bay Area I found myself at a restaurant with a Clover coffee maker–the $11,000 machine designed by Stanford engineers to produce a perfect cup of steaming-hot coffee.

So, I ordered a cup. How often do you get to drink an $11k cup of joe? More on that in a minute.

To many of us this sounds ridiculous. How much of a difference can an insanely high priced coffee machine make? How good could it possibly be? Even the best cup of coffee is, well, still coffee.

But maybe there is something to it because Starbucks just bought the company that makes the Clover.

I know, you coffee connoisseurs are thinking, “Starbucks? What do they know about good coffee?” I won’t get into that debate, but consider the following from insight from modern consumer psychologists.

“Whereas economists or marketing strategists might look to numbers—wages or interest levels—psychologists know that something more motivates the consumer purchase trends. They have discovered that often in the most depressed economic times, the sales of luxury items go up.”

Or as Matthew Honen, host of the Wired video about the Clover embedded above, says, “Basically what you’re paying for is a team of Stanford engineers to build this thing by hand. You’re also paying to get an individually crafted cup.”

Hmm… OK, now it’s starting to make sense.

But in a down economy where enough people are abandoning their morning lattes for Starbucks to close 600 stores, is experimenting with uber-quality a good move?

Maybe. Perception is a powerful thing. For many of us hyper-quality coffee isn’t that important, but to some coffee drinkers it is, especially during tough times. And that, I think, is the point of Starbucks’ acquisition. Will it work? Your guess is as good as mine.

As for that cup of Clover coffee I had? Well, it tasted like… a cup of good coffee. Nice, but nothing special. But I’m not the customer for this experience. The big question is are Starbucks customers ready for the Clover?

What about you? Do your expectations affect your feelings about products? How? Have you ever tweaked the perception of a product to increase sales?

Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also:

Scarcity Sells

Keith Monaghan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:06:10 +0000

How Failing to Keep Up With Demand Can Be a Good Thing

Knob Creek’s current ad campaign announces something shocking: they may actually run out of bourbon this fall.

The elegantly zen-like piece (above, click for big version) features a precious last drop of bourbon, the tag line “Thanks for nothing”, and some clever copy:

“For the next few months Knob Creek Bourbon is in a unique situation — our product is so popular that we cannot keep up with customer demand. As a result, our supply will be running low over the next few months, and, in some cases, we may experience temporary stock depletion. But, instead of compromising quality to meet demand, we have chosen to let the supply run low. In deference to Booker Noe and his vision for Knob Creek, we will age all our bourbon the full 9 years. The next batch will be ready in November of this year… Again, with all the success we’ve had, we’ve still come up empty. Thanks for helping make it happen.“

This is brilliant old-school marketing and I love it more than a man should love any ad. Here’s why:

It reinforces Knob Creek’s old world, hand-crafted image: You can’t rush excellence.
It proves they are popular. “Hey, we ran out!”.
It spins “Thanks for nothing” into a positive statement.
Most importantly, it combines two powerful marketing strategies in an elegant way: Scarcity and Social Proof.

Scarcity and social what, marketing guy?

I know, it sounds like marketing gobbledygook, but both approaches are real and based on serious research and Knob Creek does a beautiful job of combining them. How so? Read on.

Scarcity

The best way to make a profit is to deal in something scarce. People want what others can’t have. Crowds and lines generate curiosity. Word-of-mouth about great, but hard to attain, products creates demand (see Social Proof below).

Most importantly, Scarcity forces your true fans, those customers who will do most anything to buy your product, who obsess over it, to talk. They talk about the waiting and the searching and the longing an how it’s driving them crazy and they just can’t wait to get their hands on it already!

And people are talking about Knob Creek (Google Blog Search). In fact, the ad has generated so much interest that they are hosting a webcast on September 1st to explain how the shortage came to be and why their 9-year aging process makes Knob Creek bourbon so special, extending interest in the campaign. Nice.

As effective a strategy as Scarcity is, there’s another, even more interesting, aspect to it: Social Proof.

Social Proof

Simply put, Social Proof is the tendency to look to others for ques on how to behave–monkey see, monkey do, if you will. If Knob Creek is sold out we assume it must be great and if everybody likes it they must know something we don’t.

It’s why companies use celebrities to endorse their products, Amazon features customer reviews and TV shows use canned laughter.

Right or wrong, we often assume others must be better informed and they are acting on experience or privileged information. Often it’s just a mob mentality, group think, following the herd.

And it’s why Knob Creek’s is happy to announce they’ve sold out: If it sold out it must be good. It’s that simple.

Could it Be Even Better?

Knob Creek’s “Thanks For Nothing” ad is word-of-mouth marketing at its best. They’ve highlighted their Scarcity problem without any hype and subtly used Social Proof to show that many people think their bourbon is great. And damn if I don’t want to try it because of that.

But how could they extend this great campaign even further? A few ideas:

YouTube videos featuring customers talking about their frustration with The Wait.
A social media campaign that counts down the days until the next batch is available.
A contest in which a lucky winner gets the first new bottle a few days ahead of the official re-release.

What do you think? How could Knob Creek take “Thanks for nothing” even further? Should they? How do you use Scarcity and Social Proof? Leave a comment or email blog at keithmonaghan dot com.

Thanks for reading.See also: