Tag Archives: amazon

Super Bowl Ads – The REAL Best and Worst – – and why

Posted on February 11, 2018 by davetuchler

A week ago the impossible happened – a Super Bowl that was WAY more exciting than the ads.

Still, duty calls – – it’s taken a week to fully process the advertising train wreck but the result is worth the wait.

The Armchair MBA carefully analyzed the reviews of 10 respected entities (plus a timid peep from Harvard Business School), summarily ignored them and can now announce the REAL best and worst ads of 2018.

SB 2018 Montage

Super Bowl spots, in particular, need to stand out in a hyper-charged environment, create water cooler (social) chat to extend the brand, and ultimately move the brand forward.

Clicking on this chart will blow it up so you can see where everyone came out.

Included at no extra charge – charming, witty, pithy bons mots! It’s so worth it!

We generally subscribe to the ADPLAN evaluation system set up by the Kellogg Graduate School of Management (Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplification and Net Equity).

First, a few general observations:

When everyone does anthemic feel-good ads to set themselves apart from the competition, everyone starts looking the same. In some cases I was moved almost to tears and had no idea which brand I should hug.
I have a dream that in the future, companies won’t feel compelled to stretch to co-opt (read: exploit) a universal good (cancer research, disaster relief, first responders, and BABIES!) to draw attention. Winner (loser) by a long shot in this category – – Ram Trucks.
LCD humor apparently remains a reliable go-to for advertisers (see: Febreze, M&Ms).
Not as many animals this year (no Clydesdales, Doberhuahua or Puppymonkeybaby), BUT we still had more than enough with Yellow Tail’s ‘Roo, TurboTax’s monster under the bed…and Steven Tyler.
Personality counts a LOT! Morgan Freeman continues to define ‘Maximum Possible Q Score’, Peyton Manning is a reservoir of humor and credibility (especially since the divorce from Papa John), and Eli, he of the permanently blank expression, will always be the little brother.

Selected Best Ads

Echo (Amazon) – – witty, creative, great cameos, and the product is the whole point
Doritos/Mtn Dew — great pairing, both products and performers, with a high fun factor
US Olympic Committee – – in the grand tradition of Up Close and Personal, terrific effort at personalizing the competitors (particularly important in light of current controversies). Incorporating childhood photo/video a big plus.
Tourism Australia – – in a head-fake worthy of Doug Pederson, grabs your attention and keeps it

Tide (It’s a Tide Ad) – – P&G threw a long ball with several executions of this campaign spoofing other campaigns (see above), and scored. The premise of ‘if it’s clean, it must be Tide’ could not be more spot-on (pun intended)
Rocket Mortgage – – humorous, relatable, and highly relevant to the product
Sprint – – a bunch of robots who make the logic work, and then crack wise, make it a strong spot

Selected Stinkers

Ram Trucks – – #1 stinkeroo. Someone thought it would be a good idea to use the words of MLK Jr. to elevate…a truck. Shame on Ram Trucks, and shame on the MLK family, for that matter.
Squarespace – -in a way, they’ve become sort of a reliable companion in the stinker category. This year, we had Keanu Reaves riding a motorcycle standing up and…pontificating.
T-Mobile – – a high-concept ad which pans over a multitude of infants, and unsuccessfully tries to make some sort of connection to the product. Creepy.

Febreze – – ironically in the stinkeroo category. Maybe the man’s *** don’t stink – -but that doesn’t mean the copy is something you want to be around
NFL – – I’m apparently a voice in the wilderness here. Most people found the Eli/Odell pas de deux a charming play off the iconic Dirty Dancing scene. I just thought it was forced, clumsy and unfunny. Plus, not sure what the message was.

Maybe like the E*Trade commercial says, I’m just getting old.

A Non-Techie’s Guide to the Internet Commerce Trade Show (IRCE)

Posted on July 16, 2014 by davetuchler

This year was the 10th anniversary of the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) and my first year of attendance.

Trying to neatly summarize this sort of confab without a experience as an e-commerce operator is sort of like assuming you can translate Portuguese based on having watched the World Cup. The show was large, chaotic and alien – sort of like walking into 100 Star Wars bars simultaneously.

So while I have decent e-retailing experience, I will not attempt to make sense of all of this.

But I do have some observations.

E-Commerce is based on a few simple objectives, not too different from the marketing funnel used for any other product marketing, but with different terminology:
– gain the right customers’ attention (‘engagement’, ‘click thru’, ‘open rate’)
– encourage purchase (‘conversion’)
– efficiently delivering (‘fulfillment’, ‘final mile’)
– establish a relationship (‘customer experience’)
– encourage repeat purchase (‘loyalty’, ‘retention’)
– encourage WOM, referrals (‘evangelism’)
– etc.

Simple, no? I mean, we all shop online, how difficult could it be?

Well, let’s illustrate some of the complexities using a typical grocery store as the template. Imagine running this store.

This is a store where:
– the store itself serves the entire world — yet it needs to be built to serve the right volume of customers profitably
– finding the store requires a guide — yet the description that will lead to your store changes every 6 months
– your most loyal customers can be lost if a competitor offers to carry the groceries to the car for free
– one of your big vendors (i.e. ISP) can have a bad day and you are unable to open, with no control
– competitors can pop up virtually next door – instantly – and go away just as fast
– about 4 in 10 customers fill up their carts and then exit the store, leaving the cart in the aisle
– a person with bad intent could lock the doors of your store – from thousands of miles away
– your loyal shoppers are barraged with promotional messages from stores right next door – and around the world
– your competitors’ customers don’t necessarily live nearby – – but you still have to find them
– some of your competitors sell products to an enormous store that’s in every market, and which sells them cheaper (hint: starts with an ‘A’)
– and all of this is changing at light speed — Yikes!

On the other hand, all is not lost. Imagine if your store could:
– remind customers when important events are, and even suggest items to buy for the occasion
– send customers totally personalized communications, including catalogs – – as often as you want, for almost nothing
– make recommendations to your customers about what they might love, based on what they’ve already bought
– send customers not just promotions, but at the exact time that you know they typically buy, and the deals that they respond to
– enable your customers to tell all their friends about your great store – – instantly, when they’re most excited
– follow up every single purchase to make sure everything is ok
– dress your store up for the holidays or another event – – instantly
– change what your store offers based on what your customers are buying elsewhere
– enable customers to order merely by touching the picture in the ad

This is the magic of e-tailing. The ability to reach and influence is remarkable, and the rules are constantly changing.

Here are a few companies whose products looked interesting:

Ship 2 My ID – – from their website: “Ship2MyID is a social commerce enabler that will allow users to buy items online and send them to others without needing to know the receiver’s physical address. Both the sender and the receiver’s physical addresses are kept hidden from each other, and the receiver has to accept the shipment, ensuring security.” Got it? You give them your email or social media ID, they help someone ship something to you without their knowing your address. yes, me too.

OrderGroove – encourages all-important loyalty by enabling subscription ordering (i.e. they figure out when you run out of vitamins, diapers, dog treats, whatever, and facilitate having the manufacturer send to you.)

Bitpay – Still don’t understand bitcoins? Doesn’t matter. With these guys, your store can still accept them.

From their site: “Instant conversion, no transaction fee, and bank deposits in US Dollars, Euros, GBP, CAD and more. We take the bitcoin exchange rate risk, your customers get the best rate on the market, and you get a payment you can count on, every time.”

Sounds pretty low-risk to me.

FeedVisor – Algorithmic Repricing for Amazon Sellers! I will admit – – not 100% sure what these guys do. Maybe not even 50%. There was a crowd of intimidating techies crowded around the booth so I just gave them wide berth and moved on.

The IRCE show is one trade event that is actually worth attending every year, because you know that in a year everything will be completely different.

The Final Mile is The Toughest

Posted on May 13, 2014 by davetuchler

One of the great things about online shopping has been the free shipping, often via retailer promotions (‘free shipping over $50’) or programs like Amazon Prime.

Isn’t it terrific? You can be prancing around doing whatever one does when one prances, and should a random thought pop into your head like “man, I really need a Teflon fly-swatter”, you can just go online, order it, and before you know it, like Bugs Bunny waiting at the mailbox for his order from Acme, a Teflon fly-swatter arrives at your doorstep, typically in a box big enough to hold a microwave oven.

Long Haired Hare (1949)

Well, you may want to get your impulse shopping Jones satisfied now, because the sad news is that free shipping as we know it is likely to be changing. Reality bites.

This past week FedEx announced it was changing its freight policy to include not only weight, but also the dimensions of the shipped product. This will result in increased shipping costs on about 1/3 of items, particularly large but lightweight products (e.g. toilet paper) that fill up trucks or planes but don’t represent as much revenue (or profit).

Similarly, Groupon, which also sells a few things from time to time, has increased its free shipping threshold from $20 to $25.

Why the changes? Well, the short answer is that you can’t download stuff you order online.

Amazon might have the most amazing distribution centers, but stuff still has to be shipped with pre-internet technology like TRUCKS and AIRPLANES and HUMANS. And the cost of fuel of all of these mechanisms is going up, as are fees, taxes and everything else. Like a bridge that goes 99% across a river, that final 1% really makes or breaks the whole program.
– there are related impacts as well: retailers will likely now need to stock more box sizes (to reduce over-sizing), which carries inventory costs.

SO – someone has to pay for these increased costs. And ultimately you know who that is: you and me.

It’s well known that there’s a high rate of cart abandonment – by one measure about 65% – -and that 44% of these are due to high shipping costs. (cool infographic here). So retailers are loathe to add or increase shipping charges.

What is likely to happen is that costs will be increased throughout the system, for example:
– Shippers like FedEx incorporating package dimensions to increase fees (and UPS likely to follow)
– Retailers raising thresholds for free shipping (like Groupon)
– Retailers increasing prices in other ways (Amazon Prime going from $79 to $99)
– And plain old increased costs of merchandise to cover shipping

There will very likely be increased use of shipping as a promotional tool, but over time costs will inevitably need to increase. There’s just not enough profit in the system right now.

Until some equilibrium is reached, however, you may still notice overt signs of covering costs – – like $50 for a $2.50 order of screws (actual cart total – – and yes, it was abandoned). So keep your eye on the ‘shipping cost’ line for the time being.

Top 10 2013 Mostly Accidental Marketing Lessons

Posted on December 30, 2013 by davetuchler

This is the time of year where instead of being productive, people put together lists.
So here’s my look back at 10 events in 2013 that provided (purposely or not) great learning.

2013 Lesson 1: Measure Twice, Cut Once. Make that: Measure three times.
Healthcare.gov rollout
(honorable mention for Chicagoans: Ventra public transit card rollout).
– So many lessons here. It’s the lesson that keeps on giving. Reminder: even if your brand isn’t one-sixth of the national economy you probably still want to test a new e-commerce site. Test, test and then test again.

2013 Lesson 2: A brand CAN do a 180 in a Single Day
Miley Cyrus
– And in this case it took about 5 minutes. The recipe: take one tweens’ idol named Hannah Montana. Remove most clothes, liberally add makeup, a big foam finger and nationally televised awards show; mix aggressively using the body and add a large dash of idiot grin. Voila! You’ve now transformed from Hannah Montana into what looks like the love child of Gene Simmons and Dita Von Teese, without the charm.
The winner: probably Miley and her handlers, but hard to know yet. The clear losers: Millions of formerly innocent Hannah fans. Also, the general cultural level in the US.
So yes, it is possible to completely change your brand’s image in a day. But it might involve twerking.

2013 Lesson 3: There is such a thing as too much transparency
Lululemon
– Due to quality control snafus, Lululemon’s yoga pants delivered a little more than was supposed to meet the eye. The media, always a model of sober restraint when it comes to high-minded topics like see-through clothing, did its best to spin this story as salaciously as possible. Ultimately it went viral, resulting in loss of gobs of market value, as well as Lulu’s top management. At least they kept their sense of humor about it. (actually, there is a real lesson here: at the end of the day it’s about the product – and you can never take your eye off the ball).

2013 Lesson 4: The early bird still catches the worm – – if he tweets about it.
Oreo cookies
– We now live in an era that enables, and requires, real-time marketing. As has been reviewed ad nauseam (guilty!), Oreo slam-dunked it with a timely tweet during the Super Bowl blackout. Meanwhile, given the opportunity of Marco Rubio’s magic cotton-mouth TV moment, the Poland Spring ad team not only didn’t stick the dive, they missed the pool entirely.

2013 Lesson 5: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When your meatball supplier tries to slip you some horsemeat, clean house IMMEDIATELY.
IKEA
– When IKEA learned that some of its famous meatballs (150 million annually!) might contain traces of horsemeat, it immediately got rid of all meatballs in inventory, whether suspect or not. Cost of write-off? Probably pretty high. Benefit to reputation by immediately taking action? Priceless. Sales of meatballs since then? UP.

2013 Lesson 6: Hint: ‘Fail Fast’ is really just a euphemism for Test and Learn. It doesn’t mean your goal is actually to fail fast.
JC Penney
– Here is a retailer that tried to do a 180 without twerking. Or more importantly, without considering that its customers preferred periodic discounts. Boom.
Easier to adapt to customer preferences than to try to force them to adapt to you.

2013 Lesson 7: There is No Such Thing as Bad PR (at least for Jeff Bezos)
Amazon
– Amazon’s eerie delivery drones cleverly debuted on ’60 Minutes’ the day before Cyber Monday. Never mind that if you give it about 5 seconds’ thought, the barriers are significant (snow? wind? power lines? privacy issues? teen boys with slingshots?) – what it really shows is that in addition to any product you can think of, Amazon’s mission apparently also includes delivering PR to all homes.

2013 Lesson 8: If you go for the ‘wink-wink, joke’s on me’ approach, and people don’t get it, then ‘wink-wink, the joke’s on you’.
Honda/Michael Bolton Holiday campaign
– If you didn’t see them, these spots feature the man of the strained tenor and shorn mullet singing soulful holiday-esque tunes from atop a Honda, next to a Honda, in a Honda showroom, behind a piano, behind a guitar, all to the indecipherable reactions of surprised, baffled, younger presumed car shoppers. It’s difficult to tell what the point is. The obvious assumption is that this is a quid pro quo: the 60-year old Bolton (perfect for a younger target!) has a new album that needs promoting (true) and Honda needs some breakthrough quality in the holiday car ad environment that generally features obnoxiously gift-wrapped luxury cars (true again).
But what’s Bolton doing up there on that car? Apparently, according to Adweek, this campaign is ‘poking fun at itself with melodramatic guitar solos and idiotic lyrical gems like “This special time of year, it’s filled with joy and cheer, for me and you and you and you, too’.” Well, I know something about misplaced melodrama and idiot lyrics and I didn’t catch it. If there’s a wink in there somewhere, it’s subtle enough as to be invisible.
So we’re left with a spot with bland cars, being promoted by bland music – – a perfect match, but I suspect probably not what they were going for.
The American public as a rule doesn’t respond well to ‘subtle.’ Witness, if you will, Ron Burgundy for Dodge – – a more effective celebrity hookup.

2013 Lesson 9: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When trying to break into Southern California, and your name contains the word ‘Fresh’, don’t pre-wrap the fruits and vegetables.
Tesco Fresh & Easy
– This one already has a coda. Big UK retailer Tesco created its Fresh & Easy chain in late 2007 to penetrate the Western US market with a fresh new smaller format store, famously after significant consumer research. The experiment failed when consumers didn’t respond well to new formats, new food presentation, and in some cases, truly foreign concepts. Ultimately F&E was sold to Yucaipa, which has added “competitive pricing, improved hours, fresher foods and assisted checkout” according to management. Everything, it appears, has been changed except the name.
– The obvious lesson – – listen to your customers (see Lesson 6).

2013 Lesson 10: You can say Social Media and B2B Marketing in the same sentence
Maersk Shipping
– Maybe it’s the exotic locations where its ships are shown. Or maybe it’s just the fact that deep down we’re all little kids and are awed by really cool big boats. Whatever the appeal, big freight shipper Maersk found a way to go from zero to one million+ in Facebook likes in about a year (good Forbes article here). Of course, no one places container orders on a Facebook page, but for very little cost (repurposing archival company photos) this enhances the Maersk brand, distances it a bit from its competitors, and likely provides meaningful recruiting and morale benefits.

Probably the big lesson for 2013 has been that while many old conventions are being challenged (e.g. static campaigns, role of social media), the key marketing fundamentals are still alive and well: understanding your customers and their needs is the surest way to success (or at least avoiding being in next year’s write-up).

Happy New Year.

2 Comments

Posted in Branding, Marketing and Media, Marketing Strategy, Retailing, Social Media and tagged 60 minutes, amazon, amazon drone, drone, Facebook, fail fast, Fresh & Easy, hannah montana, health care rollout, health care website, healthcare.gov, honda, honda holiday, horsemeat in meatballs, ikea, JCPenney, jon stewart, Lululemon, Maersk, Maersk shipping, Marco Rubio, meatballs, michael bolton, michael bolton commercial, miley cyrus, Oreo cookies, Oreo super bowl, Poland Spring, shipping, swedish meatballs, Tesco, transparency, tweaking, tweeting, ventra rollout, Watergate, Yucaipa. Bookmark the permalink.

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