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There’s been a lot of talk lately about the value of the Coke brand vs. the value of the Pepsi brand.
There’s a terrific article on The 60 Second Marketer about these cola wars. It’s called “Coke vs. Pepsi: Why Coke is a more valuable brand than Pepsi” and it outlines why Coke’s brand essence knocks the socks off of Pepsi’s brand essence.
Check it out, it’s worth reading.
A few days ago, I wrote a post about the Coke vs. Pepsi cola wars. I pointed out that Pepsi is a very forward-thinking company. There’s wide-ranging evidence to support this, including the fact that they’ve hired Ms. Indra Nooyi as their CEO.
As is often the case when I write something on this blog, The Wall Street Journal is quick to follow in my footsteps with a story about the very same topic the next day.
I’m kidding. That was a joke. It’s actually the other way around.
Anyway, today’s Wall Street Journal does an excellent job with a profile of Ms. Nooyi called “PepsiCo CEO Adapts to Tough Climate.” The article highlights the fact that Ms. Nooyi was the brains behind the decision for Pepsi to take the lead in the U.S. in the beverages that are growing the fastest: juices, flavored and bottled waters, teas and other drinks.
It’s a good article and one that’s well worth reading. Check it out!
I have a good friend of mine who runs an eCommerce company who owns several negative brand URLs relating to her brand. A negative brand URL is one like www.________Sucks.com or www._______IsEvil.com.
Many large companies, including Xerox and Dell Computer, spend countless hours and thousands of dollars buying negative brand URLs. But you know what? Most marketing directors have way too much on their plate to be spending time trying to snatch up every .com, .org, .biz, etc. with their brand name on it.
Quite frankly, there’s a better approach. And that is to embrace the people visiting the site and listen to their concerns. If you can change 1 out of every 5 people’s opinion on the negative site, you’ll have created an army of people who will tell others, “I used to hate ________. But they listened to me, acted on my issues and fixed my problem. Now I’m a huge fan of _________.”
To be sure, that’ll be labor intensive, too. But as as the protector of your brand, you have two choices:
1) Try to squash dissent by buying up all the negative URLs, which will be impossible;
2) Embrace the dissenters and try to convert 1 out of 5 from brand haters to brand lovers.
It’s a challenge, and it won’t be easy. But it’s the best solution out there and I’d encourage all marketing directors to explore this option.
There’s a lot of talk going on about China these days, and it’s not all about the Olympics. People are asking a number of good questions about the size and scope of China’s economy.
China is growing, that’s true. But the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is still four times as large as China’s ($13.9 trillion for the U.S. vs. $3.7 trillion for China.)
With that in mind, here are some interesting statistics about China’s economy from the latest issue of the National Geographic:
• Number of privately-owned cars in China: 11,500,000
• Number of additional cars on Beijing roads every day: 1,000
• Year the government began encouraging private car ownership in China: 1994
• Number of privately-owned cars per 1,000 residents in China: 9
• Number of privately-owned cars per 1,000 residents in the U.S.: 450
• Number of McDonald’s drive-throughs in 2005: 1
• Number of McDonald’s drive-throughs expected by the end of 2008: 115
• Percent of U.S. shoes made in China: 72
• Percent of the unsafe toys recalled in the U.S. in 2007 that were made in China: 100
Things are changing in China, that’s true. The U.S. economy is still much larger than China’s, but that won’t last forever.
I just came across an email from a friend who pointed out some random trivia (some related to marketing) that I thought I’d pass along:
Onward!
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve pieced together that I’m both an admirer of and a critic of Steve Jobs who, arguably, is the greatest business person of all time.
Well, once again, the topic of Steve Jobs and his health has come up.
Despite all the speculation, you can rest assured that Steve Jobs is okay. The 60 Second Marketer did a dive into this subject about a month ago and here’s what we wrote:
Has Steve Jobs cancer flared up again? The short answer is “no,” it looks as though he has not had a recurrence.
In an article posted on The New York Times, writer Joe Nocera reports on a phone call he received from Mr. Jobs that reportedly started with “This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant (expletive) who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”
After that rather Jobsonian opening, Mr Nocera received some details on Mr. Jobs’ recent health problems.
While the conversation was off-the-record, the article goes on to say that Mr. Jobs does not have a recurrence of cancer. That’s great news on several fronts — most importantly because Mr. Jobs is a family-man and would be missed by both his family and his massive fan base around the globe. But it’s also good news because it gives Mr. Jobs time to begin sharing the spotlight with some of the other geniuses at Apple. That’s something I suspect employees and shareholders alike would welcome.
I outlined this concern in a blog entry several months ago called “Why Steve Jobs is Both a Genius and a Knucklehead.” The blog discusses the risk Mr. Jobs puts Apple in while he continues to promote himself as the exclusive face of Apple.
The danger of having Apple’s health linked so closely to Steve Jobs’ health is a scenario both Apple and Mr. Jobs should avoid.
There’s a lot of buzz going on about Twitter these days. A recent article on BusinessWeek.com highlights all the latest and greatest information about which companies are on Twitter and why.
A few weeks ago, The 60 Second Marketer published a piece called “Who’s Tweeting on Twitter?” It talks about which companies are using Twitter to communicate with their customers, what micro-blogging is and how you can use it to strengthen the bond between you and your customer.
If you haven’t read the article yet, you might want to check it out. It’s a nice piece with some helpful links in it.
Okay, let’s get this straight — Twitter is the new “hot thing.” That’s no surprise to anyone reading this blog.
But is Twitter a complete waste of time?
A few days ago, BusinessWeek.com wrote an article called “How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands.” The article highlights many of the companies that are using Twitter to track customer “chatter” about their brand.
Companies like Dell, GM, Kodak and Whole Foods Market follow Twitter in an effort to keep track of what people on the micro-blogosphere are saying about them.
Getting this kind of “we care about our customers” PR is great for Dell, GM and others. But is Twitter really just a big, fat waste of time for the gazillions of people who use it?
At The 60 Second Marketer, we’ve used it to connect with people in the Social Media world, and that’s been a very, very positive thing. It’s also been a great way to interact with people on the cutting-edge of new and emerging media. But the vast majority of employees who use it spend a good portion of their day writing self-centered Tweets like “Sitting here on a rainy day wishing I was somewhere else.”
Is that a productive use of company time? I dunno, but it sure doesn’t look like it to me.
Views contrary to mine are welcome. Have at it.
It’s crossed my mind that there are two articles on The 60 Second Marketer that discuss the Coke vs. Pepsi cola wars. One of them recounts a study done at Baylor University that used brain-scans to analyze the findings of a taste test. The other talks about the brand essences of Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi.
You might read these two articles and think that I’m a bit biased towards Coke, but that’s not actually the case. (If anything, I usually root for the underdog, which is why I’m an Apple computer fan.)
Anyway, there are a lot of incredible things Pepsi has accomplished over the past several decades. They spotted the bottled water trend before The Coca-Cola Company did. They were the first to jump on the consumer shift to non-carbonated beverages. And they’ve done a fabulous job with some of their core brands like Gatorade and Mountain Dew.
There’s a lot to be said for the folks at Pepsi — including the fact that they have Indra Nooyi as their CEO, proving that the gang in New York is a forward-thinking bunch. (For the record, I can recall 7 or 8 top people at The Coca-Cola Company from the past two decades and 100% of them are white males.)
Anyway, the cola wars continue in part because Pepsi keeps The Coca-Cola Company on its toes. And that’s definitely something worth acknowledging.
If you hang around marketing professionals long enough, you’ll hear a lot of talk about brand value pyramids, share-of-voice analysis, market touchpoint strategies and a whole slew of other complex sounding things.
To be honest, if you hang around The 60 Second Marketer long enough, you’ll hear a lot of the same stuff. But you know what? All that is gobbledygook. (Side note: Gobbledygook makes it through spell check. Who knew?)
I’m not saying that brand value pyramids, share-of-voice analysis and market touchpoint strategies don’t have a place in your life, because they do. But the truth is, if you’re a marketer, there’s only one thing you should keep your eye on and it’s something I call the Triple Play.
How do you score a Triple Play? By having a relentless focus on these three things:
1) Getting new customers
2) Getting those new customers to come back for additional purchases
3) Getting long-term customers to buy more than they did the last time
As a marketer, it’s your job to stay focused on these deceptively simple tasks. I know — it’s easy to get distracted by the newest tools and gadgets. But don’t deceive yourself into thinking that those distractions are the end result. They’re simply a means to an end.
I heard about a successful businessman who, prior to launching his business, wrote down his three Critical Success Factors on the back of a business card. He claimed to have looked at it several times a day for 20 years.
By keeping his sights set on what was truly important, he was able to avoid distractions and build a multi-million dollar business.
So here’s the bottom line:
• It’s easy to get distracted by the bright, new, shiny object
• It’s just as easy to get wrapped up in complex, theoretical gobbledygook
• But there are only three things you need to focus on: Getting new customers; Getting those new customers to come back for additional purchases; Getting long-term customers to buy more than they did last time.
If you stay focused on that “Triple Play,” everything else will take care of itself. I promise.
If you’re like most people, there have probably been times when you’ve been sitting in a meeting and someone used an interactive term you didn’t know.
It’s happened to me. Plenty of times.
Because of that, we decided to get a list of 25 interactive definitions everyone should know. It’s part of a list of 100 definitions that our friends at BKV put together a few months ago. You can check out our list of 25 by clicking Interactive Definitions. If you’d like the complete list, you can contact Brent Kuhn, who is the “K” in BKV. He’ll email you a copy right away. And he promises not to give you any long sales pitch.
Enjoy!
Bob Stone wrote one of the best marketing books of all time. It’s called “Successful Direct Marketing Methods” and it’s a classic that general marketers and direct marketers should read cover-to-cover.
(Okay, I admit it — I haven’t read it cover-to-cover, but I have read 87.3% of it.)
In this week’s 60 Second Marketer eNewsletter, we’re going to feature a video on seven of the key ideas from Bob Stone’s classic. I’ll give you a sneak peak of one of the key ideas right here:
• The most important order you’ll ever get from a customer isn’t the first order, it’s the second order. Why? Because a two-time buyer is at least twice as likely to return and buy again as a one-time buyer.
Whether you’re an eCommerce store, a bricks-and-mortar store or in the service industry, those are words to live by. You can check out all the secrets Bob Stone has to offer by buying his book on Amazon, or you can get seven of the best secrets by signing up for our eNewsletter and getting the 60 Second video on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Apple has scheduled an event for next Tuesday that might be the launching pad for a new line of iPods. Word on the street is that Apple is working with music-industry partners to develop “interactive albums” for Apple devices such as the iPhone and the iPod touch that will provide liner notes, lyrics, photographs and other extra materials to supplement music available on the iTunes store.
Why is Apple so successful at just about everything they’ve done in the last decade? Three reasons — first, because they’re one of the most innovative companies on the planet. Second, because they understand a fundamental reality about consumers, that is that we don’t want more buttons and complexity, we actually want fewer buttons and less complexity. And third, because they’ve built one of the most powerful brands on the planet.
You don’t get a powerful brand through luck. You get it from hard work. And Apple is proof of that.
On Tuesday of this week, Google launched a new web browser called Chrome. The big idea behind Chrome is that it’ll allow consumers to run software like email and other data-intensive programs online (see previous post on Google and Microsoft’s foray into “Cloud” computing).
Like all things Google, the new web browser is sure to be a hit. The Wall Street Journal reports that “One feature … allows users to create desktop icons that launch their favorite web applications, like email, in a special window that looks more like the screen of a typical software program without the trappings of a web page.”
Doug Anmuth, an Internet analyst with Lehman Brothers, said that the big draw for Chrome will be the Google brand. While the browser carries some noteworthy features, those alone aren’t likely to drive users to change their web browsing habits.
The products and services that Google has pretty much sell themselves. But having the power of the Google brand behind them ensures success for just about everything Google does.
The news is out — Google has launched “Chrome” — a new web browser to compete with Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Some of the features include the following:
The bottom line? Like most Google products, this will be a big hit. Will it change the Internet? No. Will it change a lot of people’s choices for web browsers? You betcha.
The 60 Second Marketer is a free online magazine brought to you by BKV Interactive and Direct Response. We try to provide quick updates on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing. We also try to accomplish that with a dose of humor or levity. As it turns out, we're pretty good at providing tools, tips and techniques, but we're not actually all that funny. Which would explain why people don't call us "funny" as much as they call us "laughable." Bummer. Our offices, for those of you who are interested, are located in Atlanta (404-233-0332) and Kansas City (913-648-8333). We also have offices on Bora Bora, but they don't have the phones installed yet.
© 60 Second Marketer, a division of BKV, Inc.
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