Now, I may have missed something, because I refused to turn it on much before the kick-off. So, here’s what I saw (and how I reacted):

First Half:

Bud Light - House made of bud cans. Moderately amusing.

Snickers - Some guy playing football “like Betty White” until he has his Snickers. Meh.

Focus on the Family - Part one of the famous Tim Tebow-was-not-aborted ad. Or is this it? Sweet enough mom and son thang, and nicely done. A plug for the full story, but will anyone actually click through to see it? Given all the run-up, probably yes. So, this was a clever way of getting their message out, without doing a turn-off issue-ad. Stay tuned - I have no idea whether there’ll be more to this one or not.

Survivor - Yawn.

Hyundai Sonata - Does one really buy a car for its paint job? I mean, you would not buy a car if it was known to have crappy paint job, but the comparison here is to a Mercedes’ paint job. Huh?

BoostMobile - Pro football player shuffle. I was too busy trying to figure out who was in the motorized “scooter chair” to concentrate on what the ad was for. They pushed for a click through. But I’m guessing fewer people will. And do I detect a pattern here: teaser ad, hoping to drive viewers on line.

Doritos - Dog with a no bark collar gets back at the guy withholding those chips. Funny, in a disturbing kind of way.

Robin Hood - Starring Russell Crowe-Cate Blanchett. Give me Errol Flynn and Olivia deHaviland, thank you. This version looks like too much production and not enough corny dialogue. Plus it doesn’t come out until May. Premature build-up, anyone?

Doritos - Keep your hands off my mama? Cute kid, but a bit too precocious.

Bud Light - Asteroid is heading to earth. The end is near. Party time for the astrophysicists. Pretty funny.

NCIS - Head slap as greeting. Some kind of inside joke for those who watch the show.

Coke - The Simpsons cast of characters populate this episode in an ad. Very clever and amusing, but have The Simpsons sold out?

Go Daddy - Masseuse hoping to be a Go Daddy girl? Now here’s an ad that I can imagine quite a few guys clicking through on….

Undercover Boss - A show that I actually might watch. Just not tonight.

One quarter down? I’m channeling Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is?” Has the magic gone out of Super Bowl ads, or does it always happen later in the game? Meanwhile, Peyton Manning is quite amazing. It’s so much easier watching these games if you don’t have a heart-stopping interest in it.

Doritos - Jumbo casket full of Doritos. These Doritos ads aren’t improving as we move along.

Bud Light - Warped voices, setting up the par-tay. Give me the astrophysicists, any day.

Monster. com - Fiddle playing Beavers. I don’t quite get it, but I did like it.

The Wolfman - Movie trailer. Yawn.

The Who - Coming at halftime. Yawn.

Bridgestone -  Save the whale from bachelor parties. Nothing much here.

Skechers - Okay. (Hey, if they come in narrow width, I’ll consider buying a pair - the first item advertised so far that I can actually say this about.)

Cars.com - Timothy Richmond, boy genius becomes man genius who can’t pick a car without help. This is either a new version of a prior, very clever ad they did along this theme; or they’ve ripped the idea off from someone else. In either case, it’s not quite as effective as the original.

CBS - It’s all about us. Network of the decade? If you say so.

Bud - The bridge is out! Townspeople rally to get the Bud truck across. Pretty funny.

Shutter Island - Couldn’t get into the book, but I like Boston-related movies. And Leo DiCaprio does a pretty good Boston accent.

CBS Cares - Mark Sanchez on heart attack prevention. I might believe that Mark Sanchez - a real cutie - cares. But do I really believe that CBS does?

Letterman Show - Dave, Oprah, Jay. (Jay?) Yep, not a very good Super Bowl party.

The Amazing Race - Are these unamazing ads because CBS couldn’t sell out the space, or is this just such an irresistible opportunity to push their shows? In either case, enough! (I am now officially not mentioning CBS ads for their own shows.)

Career Builders - Casual Fridays with the guys in underwear. We gotta get out of this place. Very funny.

Dockers - Then there’s the No Pants singers. Since this followed on the heels of an ad for Career Builders that featured no pants, I was initially confused. Bad timing, me thinks. Or was it inspired?

Hyundai Sonata - Brett Favre in 2020. Clever way of getting across Hyundai’s guarantee.

Bud Light -  Lost-take-off. Pretty funny.

Dove for Men - Peppy and clever - they definitely caught my attention with the sperm… But are men going to use Dove? (I’m thinking Talbot’s for Men here.)

NFL Draft - Blech.

Dodge Charger - Men resolving to be work and relationship gems, in exchange for driving the car of their dreams.

Teleflora - Seems like a re-run of last year’s ad - fresh flowers vs. flowers in a box. I know first hand that flowers in a box can come fallen, cold and dead. But repeating a successful ad by changing the content a bit seems a bit cheesy. (See cars.com.)

Papa John’s - Official pizza sponsor. Go online for an offer. Only if I wanted some Papa John’s pizza.

Alice in Wonderland - Special effects look great, and probably a lot closer to what was going in Lewis B. Carroll’s head than the prissy and sanitized Disney cartoon version.

Dr. Pepper - With KISS. Yuck - both the product and the ad. Yuck.

Harry Potter’s World - Universal Studios - Not much of anything.

FloTV Personal TV - Asking men to man up and stop being so darn whipped. This appears to be another Super Bowl ad theme (Dodge Charger, anyone). But in the case of a Charger, I see that the car’s particular appeal is to a male audience. FloTV seems kind of universal a product.

Intel - Okay, core processors aren’t as cute and exciting as robots, but this made me think that core processors just aren’t very much of anything.

My first half winners: Career Builders, Bud Light with the astrophysicists, Bud bridge builder, Coke with the Simpsons. If I had to pick one, I’d go with Career Builders. Having seen some truly terrible violations of casual dress in the workplace, I could definitely identify with this one. (I’m channeling the techie who wore what appeared to be a pj top with holes in it, and what appeared to be blood on it.)

HALF TIME

FloTV - Talkin’ bout my generation. Now this is more like it. An ad with universal appeal, and a nod to us oldsters.

Toyota - Move along citizens, nothing to see here.

Metro PCS - Cell phone ads with the Indian (India-India) version of the Festrunk Brothers. I’ve seen this before - it’s mildly amusing. And it’s also either a tad racist and/or a sure sign that Indians have become such an engrained part of the techie culture, that we all get it.

Acura ZDX - YACA: Yet another car ad….

Pays to be curious.com - Maybe, but I’m not curious enough to see what this one’s about. Is it part of the Acura ad? Who cares?

And speaking about Who cares? The Who? Say what? Was it just me, or did they really sound old and terrible…Talk about geezer wasteland. This may well be the death knell for Boomer-era musical acts on Super Bowl. Bring on Lady Gaga.

Second Half:

Wow! An on-side kick. Talk about no guts, no glory. Geaux Saints, all right. That was better than any ad we’re going to see tonight.

Prince of Persia - Another movie that won’t be out until May.

Motorola smartphone - Danica Patrick (I think) in a tub, thinking about sending out a provocative ad. Very funny. Fresh and sexy. Pretty much what a Super Bowl ad is supposed to be.

Volkswagen - Very funny variation on a punch-buggy theme. I really liked the Amish guys, and Stevie Wonder.

Denny’s - Free Grand Slam Day. Second prize, two Grand Slams…

Michelob - So Lance Armstrong drinks Michelob. Yawn.

HomeAway.com - Chevy Chase in a come-on ad to come to the site and find out why it’s better to rent an apartment than a hotel room. Don’t need to convince me about that.

Bridgestone - I was distracted and couldn’t really follow this one. Something about making a movie. Matters not. I don’t need no stinking tires.

KGB - Shirt police, shirt police. Who wants to look at that pale scrawny flesh. And are people really willing to pay someone else to go to The Google for them?

Coke - Man sleepwalking in the veldt to the tune of Bolero. all for a Coke. Nicely done.

eTrade - Sorry. These kids are definitely cuties, but the voice of the original eTrade jaded smart-ass is going to be hard to beat. I do like the introduction of some girl-baby eTrader characgters, however.

US Census - Snapshot of America. Gosh, I hope they didn’t pay full price to make or place this ad. Hope there was a government discount on both ends…

Google - Do these guys have to advertise? Are they really competing with KGB? Are they aiming this at the 2 viewers (John McCain and one other) who don’t know how a Google search works?

Sorento from KIA - I’m a sucker for anything with a sock monkey. But would it make look at a particular brand of car?

RoundUp - Nothing like a good weedkiller ad to get the blood racing. (It did make me think of spring, however. I can’t wait to see my first weed.)

Bud Select 55 - Straightforward message about the lowest calorie beer in the world. Other than that, bor-ing.

NFL - Tribute to their fans. Gee, thanks for that.

ZDX - “The four door coupe concept from Acura.” Actually, it’s a real car, not a concept. I’m such a quibbler.

Southwest Airlines - Come on, you usually have pretty good ads, why this re-run. Oh, just realized these are the local, big-nothing ads. I think I’ll skip the next couple.

Vizio Internet apps - Too much techno. Confusing. Was that the Monster.com beaver I saw flash by?

Pop Secret and Emerald Nuts - Cheesy but engaging. At lest it wasn’t the E+N Emerald Nuts lame-o ad.

Dante’s Inferno - Dante (and Beatrice) are rolling over in their graves.

Bud  - They did do a Clydesdale ad. Awwwww….. How cute was that little cross-species number?

Honda - YACA. Boring.

Denny’s - Yet another ad for the Free Grand Slam. This one was at least funny. But does Denny’s contributing to the obesity epidemic really make Free Grand Slam Day a great day to be am American? Gag.

Audi’s Green Car of the Year - The Green Police. Pretty funny and, if we don’t get a grip soon, probably the deserved wave of the future.

Taco Bell - Well, it’s better than the Grand Slam from Denny’s. Still….

Doritos - Nahhhh….

Bud Light - The softball teams nerds. Couldn’t really follow it, as my husband wanted to talk about what a fun game it is. (That is, if you’re not a Colts fan. At least that’s the way it looks at this point. The Saints are definitely marching in at this point.)

Hyundai Sonata - YACA.

eTrade - More of the new kids on the block. Still, no one can top Mr. Original.

Skechers - Okay, okay.

Go Daddy - ANother see-more-now.

Denny’s - Death but not a Free Grand Slam, please. Just kill me now.

Forget the ads, what a fun game….Unless, of course, you’re a Colts fan. But it did some right down to the last minute or so.

eTrade - Okay. This final one, with the kids on the flight is nearly as good as the original ads.

Chevy - YACA.

Campbell’s - The real SB ads must be over….In any case, I’ve seen quite enough.

In general:

Lots of ads pushing a visit to the web site. It will be interesting to see how this works out. To me, there has to be a pay-off if you do so. To me, the ones that will draw are the Focus on the Family (curiosity), GoDaddy (the obvious), and Papa John’s (free pizza).

I don’t have any obvious favorite. I liked the Coke ads - nice production values, fun, held your attention until the pay-off (i.e., finding out it’s a Coke ad). Some of the Bud ads were pretty good, too. (I may be the only one, but I liked the astrophysicists…)

There seemed to be a bit too much repetition of previously used ideas (Cars.com, Teleflora, eTrade).

Bottom line: The best part of the game was the on-side kick. And there’s something to be said for the best part of the game being played on the field, and not in an ad agency, isn’t there.

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Here’s last year’s edition.

And here’s a link to an interesting and provocative article by Dan Neil of the LA Times on some of the banned SB ads.

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Opinionated Marketers Super Bowl Ad Review IV

For those who haven’t seen it, the video is supremely engaging, and shows folks from a Portland, Oregon hospital, doing some nifty choreography - all while wearing Medline pink surgical gloves (pink being tied, of course, to breast cancer awareness). I defy anyone to view this video without smiling. It’s just great.

Emily Macinnes Somers is the marketing person behind it, and a big old Opinionated Marketing shout out - however belatedly; this was widely blogged about in early December  - to Emily for coming up with something so engaging that it went ballistic-ly viral. I read that Emily did the choreography herself and, since it uses “real people,” the production costs were probably minimal. And, by now, a kazillion people have viewed it, giving Medline all sorts of almost free, highly positive publicity for their surgical glove product, in particular, and the company, in general. And this for a medical supplies company - not the sort of entity that would come to mind if you were thinking fun, fresh, and creative. It really shows to go you what imagination, verve, and thinking outside the glove box can do for you.

The cautionary note is that, once something goes viral, it’s out of your gloved or ungloved marketing hands.

When the video was making the rounds, it was often accompanied by an e-mail that said that Medline would be making a donation to breast cancer research when there were a million hits on the video.

Not so, according to Snopes.

But - unlike with a lot of the rumors that Snopes debunks - no harm, no foul. Medline does donate generously to breast cancer research and awareness, just not based on the number of folks who watched the video.

While there’s no harm, no foul for this one, the cautionary tale is that crazy and destructive rumors can go viral as easily as upbeat and positive ones do (probably more easily, given the tempora and mores).

Still, this is a really feel good, good marketing story.

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The Pink Glove Video: great marketing, but a cautionary note

However much the prevailing winds of anxiety and disgruntlement helped Scott Brown become a US Senator in last week’s Massachusetts election, it’s pretty clear to those of us who watched the campaign up close and personal that Brown’s marketing - all the way around - was far superior to Martha Coakley’s.

But it struck me that Coakley’s signal failure was taking her customers - the citizens of Massachusetts, who lean liberal and as often as not vote Democratic - for granted. She apparently assumed that she would automatically win, so - while Brown, an little-known politician with a fairly thin resume, was driving around the state shaking hands, seemingly with every voter - Coakley failed to campaign. Big mistake.

Part and parcel to taking her constituents’ support for granted, Coakley made a few off-hand remarks that seemed to indicate she didn’t have a clue who the citizens of Massachusetts are. One was a flip comment about whether she was supposed to stand in the cold outside Fenway Park and shake hands with hockey fans there for New Year’s Day’s Frozen Classic Bruins game. (Well, yes, Martha, that’s precisely what a politician is supposed to do.) She also, apparently, confused Red Sox Curt Schilling with the traitor Roger Clemens. (Come on, Martha, if you don’t know anything about sports, that’s fine, but most of the folks around here do. So don’t do sports talk: it will just make you look aloof, snobby, and out of touch.)

Personally, I like Martha Coakley. (Disclosure: I voted for her, phone-banked for her, donated to her, and am sufficiently heartsick over the election’s outcome that, a week on, I still haven’t read or watched any news. Strangely liberating, by the way, and giving me a lot time for non-political reading. Since last Tuesday evening, I’ve made my way through a novel, a book about women in prison, a book of essays on medicine, and a collection of short stories.) Coakley’s just not much of a politician, and she sure took her customers for granted.

As B2B technology marketers, we have to make sure that we don’t do this with our customers.

I’ve worked for companies where we were so focused on gaining new accounts, that we did nothing to maintain good relationships with our existing customers. We just assumed they’d always be with us which, of course, wasn’t always the case. Not surprisingly, behind our backs, the other guys were actually whispering sweet nothings in their ears, paying sufficient attention that some of them - heavens! - were actually wooed away from us.

Conversely, I’ve worked for companies where we stayed alive well beyond the point where we should have withered away and died precisely because we were extremely good to our customers. We were attentive and bend-over-backwards supportive to the extent that they could overlook the substantial flaws in our outdated products for a surprisingly long while.

How can you keep your customers from feeling you’re taking them for granted?

Nothing, of course, substitutes for having products and services that meet your customers’ needs. (Oh, that.)

But it also means reaching out to them even when you don’t have something to sell to them. (Thought you’d be interested…) Acknowledging when something big happens in their world. (Congratulations on your banner year!) Providing them with forums for two-way communications (and listening when the communications come your way). Making your customers proud that they’ve chosen you by not producing defective products, by not engaging in quasi-ethical behavior, by not behaving as corporate jerks.

It really doesn’t matter if you’re selling a one-time purchase product, an ongoing service, or yourself. You should never, ever, ever take your customers for granted. Ever.

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Never, ever, ever take your customers for granted. Ever.

But direct mail ain’t dead yet.

Case in point:

The other day, my sister Trish received an in-bound post-card mailing. Now, the fact that it was from a crackpot with a get-rich-quick scheme is beside the point.

The point is that the postcard - professional, in a sort of amateur-ish way, and on nice glossy card stock - was something that Trish actually looked at. (Okay, she did a lot more than that. She brought it to a family event so that we could go on the guy’s website and make fun of his enterprise. We’re about evenly divided on whether it’s an authentic Ponzi scheme or not.)

Would she have looked at a missive from this person if it had come in via e-mail? More than likely, it would have been caught in her spam filter. If not, she wouldn’t have given it a second glance.

As for Trish having found them through inbound marketing? Not a chance. Come on. I just googled ‘get rich quick scheme’ and this guy didn’t even make page 1.

So, the lesson here is that, in this day and age, when people are being bombarded with information in so many ways, an old-fashioned direct mail campaign might actually stand out. And a postcard mailer may be an excellent approach, since the recipient can tell at a glance whether they’re interested, without having to go through the hassle - yes, we’re all that rushed these days - of opening up an envelope.

Just make sure that you don’t waste any direct mail $$$ sending things out to a poorly list. Unlike the fellow who thought Trish would respond to this sort of message. He wasted an awfully cute 28 cent stamp with a polar bear on it. And those 28 cent polar bear stamps sure can add up. (Of course, given the Ponzi, MLM scheme-i-ness of it, there’s the creepy possibility that the card wasn’t sent out by the guru lurking behind the pyramid, but by someone she actually knows. Hope not!)

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Give me that old time marketing religion (at least on occasion)

Like everything I’ve seen - and liked - from HubSpot, “DARC Ages” is interesting, provocative, and probably just a teensy-weensy bit exaggerated in spots. (Or maybe just a teensy-weensy bit ahead of the curve.)

The thesis is that successful companies of the future will not be built on outbound marketing success (think Mad Men) but, rather, on inbound marketing excellence.

It’s certainly hard to argue that inbound plays an increasingly important role in marketing. I’ve heard David Meerman Scott - an advisor to the HubSpot board - speak a couple of times, and both times he’s done a simple little exercise asking the audience about how they find product information/make purchase decisions. Not surprisingly…

Yup! We all go to the Google.

And we all know that any company that’s not doing at least some rudimentary inbound marketing - something one non-baby step beyond mere “web presence” - is more than likely losing out on opportunities. Hey, these days, you can even buy a casket online.

So I agree with the fundamental HubSpot point that marketing departments need to look for and groom employees who are “inbound marketing savvy.”  And they provide a framework in which to evaluate employees, which is where the DARC comes from.

D = Hire Digital Citizens
A = Hire for Analytical chops
R = Hire for Web Reach
C = Hire Content Creators

To identify passport-carrying Digital Citizens, HubSpot suggests finding out what RSS reader someone uses; what blogs they read; whether they blog, twitter, or YouTube; whether they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook - and when they last updated their profile. It also suggests you have that someone show you their blog/RSS reader/Tweets. (Opinionated Marketer to prospective marketing hires in the DARC ages: if you have a highly personal (ahem) any kind of presence out there, get yourself a more professional one a.s.a.p.) 

Another question it suggests asking is whether someone knows whether they’ll come up first when you google their name. I guess the point is not whether you actually do come up first. You may not have a lot of control over it.

Personally, I run horseneck and neck with equine consultant Maureen Rogers, but - at least for today - we’re number one!

Someone with an even more common name can’t be expected to be at the head of the class. I have a friend with the same name as an aging B-list celebrity, so - although my friend does have a web presence through articles and presentations - he doesn’t show up very easily.

Analytical Chops have always been useful in a marketer. (Ask me about my minor concentration in Applied Marketing at the Sloan School. I used to love, love, love that conjoint analysis.) But now that there’s data that’s inbound, and, thus, can inarguably be closely sourced, it’s more important than ever to have someone around who can analyze it.

Here’s the way that HubSpot suggests testing for it:

…have your prospective hire bring to the interview his or her favorite spreadsheet with pivot tables, and show
you some counter-intuitive insight that came out of the spreadsheet model in graph format.

Gosh! What if your favorite spreadsheet doesn’t have pivot tables. (Mine doesn’t but, then again, it’s not used for analysis.) And what if all of the data’s screaming intuitive!  It can happen. Not to mention that sometimes counter-intuitive is both counter-intuitive and just plain wrong.

Web Reach is something that HubSpot says you should also look for, i.e., try to hire someone who has a lot of industry followers on Facebook, Twitter, Blogpost… The example they use of strong web reach is Guy Kawasaki. Personally, couldn’t they have set the bar a little higher? (Not!)

Sure, wouldn’t all marketing bloggers like to have the reach of Guy Kawasaki. Or Seth Godin. But, realistically folks…

One of the things HubSpot suggests as a means to identify reach is to query your candidates about their Facebooking/blogging/ tweeting/LinkedIn-iness, etc. - especially with respect to whether they have a specific focus on your industry. Personally, if there’s someone out there who is a known force in your industry - popular blog, tweets that matter, etc. - then you should know about them already. And maybe be pursuing them. As AmEx did in the Guy Kawasaki instance. (I.e., I’m just guessing here, but my guess is that AmEx didn’t bring Guy in for a sit down and then ask him how many followers he has. They went after him because of his name, reputation, caliber…)

As for those with large followings for something they’re doing other than in your industry, they’ve clearly developed the knack for attracting attention that bodes well - but which may not necessarily translate into anything for your industry. Maybe Mary’s got a massive following in the crocheted dog-sweater world, but will never have the same passion for widgets. 

At the same time, someone with good content but not necessarily well-followed web presence (either in or out of your industry), may be capable of extending their reach if they put their mind to it.

The C in DARC Ages is for Content Creation where, bless ‘em, the HubSpot calls for excellent writing skills. Marketing departments need those who can create sharp content that gets linked to, and which draws comments.

Here’s my add-on advice here (when it comes to blogging, anyway) - especially for smaller companies. Yes, if you are blogging about a hot topic, people on the look will find it. But, whatever you’re doing, you may always find yourself lost on page 2 because your industry’s Guy Kawasakis have such a huge head start on you. One way to move yourself on up is to comment on the posts of your industry’s Guy Kawasakis. If your comments are interesting enough, people will click through to your site (if you’re allowed to provide the link). You also might want to write posts that key-off of posts written by your industry’s Guy Kawasakis. You may end up being added to a great blogroll or have a biggie write a post that keys off of something that you’ve written.

There’s more to the DARC ages article - it’s definitely worth a read.

And I don’t think that old-timer marketers need to get depressed or discouraged by it. Take a deep breath: The HubSpot is not saying that, if you can’t be Guy Kawasaki you’re irrelevant, as much as it’s saying don’t let yourself be irrelevant.

We all need to be speak some degree of inbound marketing - even if it’s just one-tense, beginner, ask directions skill rather than full I-can-translate-Hungarian-poetry fluency. And we all need to be able to reposition our skills so that they match up with what’s needed in this world.

If we don’t, guess what?

We end up on the outside looking in.

This could happen, anyway. (Age discrimination is serious matter for job hunters, especially in fields like marketing, where the image definitely skews young.)

But nothing will guarantee your irrelevance faster than not getting with the program and recognizing that, whether you like it or not, inbound marketing matters, and is going to matter more and more over time.

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A tip of the Opinionated Marketer’s best chapeau to Alice M. for pointing the DARC Ages out to me.

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Marketing in the DARC Ages? Take a Deep Breath

Any old high-end jock will pretty much do for some of Tiger’s other advertising gigs - Gillette, Nike - with no points off for being not so intelligent, quasi-articulate, and/or a womanizer. But for a high-end business brand like Accenture, there was Tiger. And maybe a few others. But not all that many.

But when the carefully crafted “brand” sustains not a small nick, but is smashed to smithereens. Oopsie!

I’m sure that Accenture’s senior execs figured that, if they couldn’t get the image of Tiger’s wife chasing him down the driveway wielding a nine iron, neither could their clients.

Not to mention that long list of girl friends - porn stars, waitresses, hostesses, cougars, none of whom, apparently, could keep her mouth shut. Maybe if it had just been one. Or two. Or even three. But n+1, where n = the figure we heard yesterday. Wowie! (If it had been one, bitty little affair with, say, an Accenture consultant, in her charcoal gray suit and sensible shoes, with her MBA and briefcase, things would have been fine.)

Promiscuity, duplicity, arrogance - not attributes any business wants associated with their good name. Not to mention the sexism implied by Tiger’s general preference for dim-bims, which really won’t fly with those golf-playing, C-level execs who happen to be women.

No, Tiger had to go.

But he had to go because the image he and his handlers had so craftily cultivated was at some odds with the man himself.

Sure, he’s still a great golfer - confident, competent, etc. - but his crafted image was meant to convey something that transcended the golf course when it really didn’t.

That’s where B2B technology value propositions come into this story.

And that’s where we, as marketers, have to be awfully careful to make sure that what we say about our products and companies actually has some grounding in reality.

If you want to tell the world that your product’s robust - which, in truth, I wouldn’t actually advise, even if it is - then you had best be certain that it actually works. If you want to talk about scalability, better be sure that when the 10th user signs on, it doesn’t freeze up or topple over. If you want to tout security, make sure there aren’t big, gaping holes. Don’t talk about your company’s fab customer support if all a call does it get someone into a chirpy-voice, endless loop,menu hell.

And those are just the feature follies you don’t want to get into. When you get into the benefits, don’t go claiming that ROI can be achieved in a week if you don’t have the evidence to back the claim. Don’t prattle on about saving time if using your product will actually take twice as long as any alternative.

You don’t want to build a product without thinking through what the value prop is. But we all know that can happen. If it does, the last thing you want to do is ignore the reality of your existing product when you create an ex post facto value proposition.

A number of years ago, I was asked to brief the new president on the value propositions for all of our company’s products/services. Those products had, originally, had fairly strong value propositions. We were early providers of Internet services, and, as one of the first in for a wildly growing market, we could extract premium prices. Unfortunately, as new providers entered the markets, products like ours were being rapidly commoditized. We had done little in terms of our products to add value beyond what we’d offered initially. And then there was the problem of all the giddy, exaggerated claims that all Internet services providers were making about how greatly their customers were benefiting from their services. (Pets.com, anyone? Arf!)

Anyway, my group put together a truthful accounting of the value propositions for our products, making no pets.com-ian claims about their wonders.

“These value propositions are weak,” the new president told me. “We’ll need to change them.”

He was right.

We did need to change them.

But you can’t change your product’s value proposition by re-wording it.

If you have a weak value proposition, you need to either change your product, or find an audience for whom the product as is will work.

And that’s what I, at least, am reminded by the Tiger Wood fiasco.

If you want to be a play-ah, you can probably still shill for golf shoes and aftershave. But you can’t represent for Accenture.

So it is with B2B tech products. If you want to be able to say that they’re highly secure wonder-widgets that enable your clients to improve their top line and their bottom line, you’d better make sure that your products actually fit the bill.

Just do it!

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What we can learn from Tiger Woods about B2B technology value propositions

Here’s a link to a little something for under your virtual tree: Pragmatic Marketing has turned a series of articles I wrote on Practical Rules for Product Management into an eBook. For those who don’t know the Pragmatic Marketing folks, they are an excellent resource for B2B technology product managers and marketers.

I’m taking off a bit of time to enjoy a White Christmas, which, thanks to today’s blockbuster storm, we’re going to be having. I will be back in the new year, with more opinionated marketing. 

Enjoy the eBook.

And enjoy this look at my neighborhood (from Boston Zest taken by photographer Penny Cherubino). It’s from last year, but it doesn’t look much different out there today. (Bad timing for retailers when five days before Christmas, there’s a storm that dumps up to 2 feet of snow, depending on where you are in the Northeast.  But good luck, I suppose, for e-tailers. I’m sure that shoppers were merrily clicking away when they weren’t out there shoveling.

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Happy Holidays from the Opinionated Marketers

I’m a regular at LL Bean. Every year, I earn a few coupons, which are mostly based on sheer volume, but sometimes tied to specific promotions.

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail, offering a $10 gift card - while supplies last - if I spent $25. I was about to go and place an order, so I was more than happy to hop on and see if I was in time for the $10 gift card. What I was ordering was three gifts, priced at around $40 each, to go to three separate addresses.

I had the three orders teed up when I read the fine print, which said that you could earn one of these gift cards per day.

Well, that was clear enough.

Click on Purchase now for gift going to my sister-in-law in Texas.

Keep in Shopping Bag for the other two orders.

The next day, I went in an ordered the Christmas greens and candles arrangement for aunt #1 in Chicago.

The next day, Christmas greens and candles arrangement for aunt #2 in Chicago.

Total expenditure on my part, about $120; value of the coupons coming my way $30.  25% give-back. Very nice.

I probably would have felt to guilty about waste of UPS fuel if all three of these items were for me, but they were going to totally separate addresses (even the Chicagoland ones are many miles apart), and having to get online for a couple of minutes three nights running was not big deal. So game it I did.

Sure, Bean’s offer is nothing much different than the come-on sales in physical stores. And certainly, since the coupons expire in mid-February (ordinary coupons are good for a year or so), it’s a smart idea for them to encourage folks to do some shopping in what is probably not a supremely active time of year for them. (At least for us New Englanders, by February, we’re sick of winter clothing and the smell of wet wool, but the weather hasn’t exactly been putting us in mind of khaki shorts and little cotton sweaters.) And I’m sure that LL Bean knew exactly what they were doing in allowing this oh-so-game-able offer to occur. The folks Down East are, in my book, pretty fair marketers, and they don’t need advice from someone with zilch-o consumer or retail experience (beyond being a consumer and having worked as a sales clerk in my youth).

But it did get me thinking about how careful you have to be when you do come up with special offers/sales incentives even when you’re dealing with boring old enterprise B2B products and services. This isn’t an arena I find myself in these days, but obviously every offer has to be completely thought through.

Is this the type of customer behavior we want to encourage? Does this offer have the potential to backfire and cause us all kinds of onboarding support problems? Are we cannibalizing next quarter’s sales to make this quarter’s look better, and will we end up with a net-negative impact for the year? Are we undervaluing our services - and placing too great a demand on them - by giving them away for free?

No right answer here - just a reminder that we all need to think a few chess moves ahead to what can happen when we make special offers. (Ditto for spiffs. Gotta really think through the sales behavior you want to encourage.)

Meanwhile, I’ll be happily spending my $30 worth of coupons on LL Bean.

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Be careful how your structure that incentive

Now, it may be that respondents were thinking “value proposition” rather than “differentiation” - after all, you can have one without the other - although a differentiated value proposition is stronger than one that’s not; and a less than valuable differentiator is, well, less than valuable. (Let me make this point perfectly clear: just because something is different - our font is Calibri! - doesn’t mean it’s worth a damn.) Whatever the case, the results came in that:

…the No. 1 answer was exceptional technical support followed closely by trusted adviser relationship.

DeMarzo added,

To me, those are assets every solution provider must have. But they really are not going to differentiate you long term because anyone can bolster their tech support staff or win over customers with a trusted adviser pitch.

DeMarzo and an audience of of VARs he was talking these results through with came up with some alternatives to the generic, non-differentiator differentiators from the study. He argues that what

…should matter more are credentials and certifications or a deep understanding of a vertical market or a VAR’s grasp of specialized technologies. Those factors along with an intimate knowledge of your customer’s business are the true differentiators.

I’ll definitely be keeping in mind as I work with my VAR client on their positioning. Not to mention when I’m working with other companies, VAR or not.

If you don’t have something to offer that provides true value to your customer - value that is not available with other products and services - you are inevitably going to end up differentiating on price. Now, if being the lowest cost provider is your strategic competitive positioning, bottom pricing is fine. But too often I’ve seen companies trapped into beating the competition’s low, low price - even when they end up losing money on the deal - because they can’t justify their offerings in any other way.

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Thanks and a tip of this blogger’s virtual chapeau to KC.

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The same, only different…

I don’t go there often enough, and usually it’s to meet friends for breakfast, but I really love the idea of the Trident Bookstore Cafe. Where you can eat and buy a book. Two of my very favorite things to do in the whole wide world.

And I will say I’m not all that fond of Amazon.

Sure, it’s fine if you know what book you want. And they do make those suggestions.

But when I’m in a bookstore, what I really want to do is browse. As in browse-browse.

So I like a tangible bookstore, and as chain tangible bookstores go, Borders is pretty good.

They carry a decent selection of high quality literary fiction. They give you discounts if you buy a lot of books. And even if you don’t, you can always get a bargain at the buy-one-get-one-half-price table. They promote locals to some degree.

But mostly I like them for their customer service.

I know I’ve written about this before, but, ask a Borders’ employee a question, and they don’t point you in the right direction, they take you right to where you want to go.

Case in point.

Although I am an avowed East Coast literary snob, I occasionally buy junk. And some of the junk I wanted to buy recently was Twilight New Moon related stocking stuffers for my nieces, who are 12 and 13. I had seen something of interest - New Moon Band-Aid, anyone - at the Back Bay Borders, but cheaped out. Once I thought about it, I realized that it was ridiculous to pass up the opportunity to get them the most ridiculous bit of Twilight-related paraphernalia, even if it did cost $7.

So I stopped in at the Downtown Borders, but couldn’t find the Twilight display. (Okay, even though I was taking advantage of it, one thing I don’t like about Borders is the add-on stuff, especially that aimed at kids.)

I asked a very nice middle-aged Borders’ employee - whose name I unfortunately didn’t note - where the Twilight display was. (In truth, I used the word “junk.”)  He took me to the main display, but, alas, there were no tins of band-aid. So, he buzzed someone from his headset to find out if they carried the band-aid, and where they might be. Then he took me to the spot. The other guy showed up, too, just to make sure we found them.

As someone who has lost a lot of time wandering around bookstores trying to find a specific book or section - not to be confused with non-lost time spent wandering around bookstores just wandering around with no purpose in mind - I really and truly appreciate the level of service that Borders offers.

I know that they’ve been in some financial trouble, but I really hope they last.

I can’t imagine living in a neighborhood where it’s not possible to just wander into a bookstore and wander around.

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Why I like Borders