We have seen the market...and it is us

When I was president of Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve, we identified a major economic trend (women’s escalating purchasing power) and branded it EVEolution. Today, I would say (albeit less cleverly), it's become a revolution.

Right now women are responsible for $7 trillion (yes, with a "t") in consumer spending in this country alone. And faster than we can name the next generation, we (women) will be in charge of fully two-thirds of consumer wealth, influencing at least 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and fully 50 percent of those we tend to think of as 'male,' e.g. cars, home improvement and consumer electronics.  

These factoids come to us courtesy of Intel, as does a further observation: 
91 percent of women say "advertisers don’t understand us."
 
Advertisers don't understand our Earning Power...

• The average American woman is expected to earn more than the average American male by 2028
• 51 percent of U.S. private wealth is controlled by women, today
• Women account for more than 50 percent of all stock ownership in the U.S.
• Women control more than 60 percent of all personal wealth in the U.S.

...or Our Spending Power

• We women make 80 percent of healthcare decisions and 68 percent of new car purchase decisions
• 75 percent of us identified ourselves as the primary shoppers for our households
• Nearly 50 percent of us say we want more green choices, with 37 percent are more likely to pay attention to brands that are committed to environmental causes
• We believe financial institutions are interested in making money, while we want to use our wealth to make a difference

Want to know more? So do we! 
 
Ready to explore the amazing business building power of #SHE? So are we!
 
You know your Brand has an untapped opportunity here. Let us help deliver competitively insulatable growth by discovering the emotional content of your Brand’s promise to women.

Email. Phone. Text. We're here and ready when you are. 

Kate
www.katenewlin.com
kate@katenewlin.com

I am, as you will know by now, not a fan of discounting to get folks to engage with your brand. My frustration with the endless (and desperate) banners screaming 50 percent off! 70 percent off! We’ll pay you to take it off our hands! Is the reason I wrote Shopportunity! My Rx to correct the system was what I shared in Passion Brands.

            My plea in both cases: Plu-eese! The flop sweat is just too, too obvious and anxiety producing for shoppers. Simply put: It stinks as a strategy. If price is the only variable that matters, why don’t we all just go to Dollar General and be done with it?

            So it’s with a certain amount of chagrin, mixed with raw admiration that I say my hat is off to JC Penney’s new “Get Your Penney’s Worth” campaign. The brand found the emotional resonance that connects its name, heritage and value proposition. Beautifully. Gently. Respectfully. And, with some fun.

         Seen through the lens of that single copper penny in a jar, you believe there’s a solid rationale for savings. At THIS store. At Penney’s. Not for them the hopelessness and “Do you like me now?” of other mass retailers. (I name no names, Macy’s.) They’ve found a real divining rod to help shoppers find genuine worth. Of course, it’s a construct from which Penney’s can promote and have circulars and shelf-talkers, but it’s one that allows all that to make consumer sense: A powerful platform.

        This is all the more impressive given where the retailer has been during the past decade. Well done, folks.

        Want to discuss our thinking for your brand at retail? We know shoppers. We know women. Operators are standing by.

Kate

I am, as you will know by now, not a fan of discounting to get folks to engage with your brand. My frustration with the endless (and desperate) banners screaming 50 percent off! 70 percent off! We’ll pay you to take it off our hands! Is the reason I wrote Shopportunity! My Rx to correct the system was what I shared in Passion Brands.

            My plea in both cases: Plu-eese! The flop sweat is just too, too obvious and anxiety producing for shoppers. Simply put: It stinks as a strategy. If price is the only variable that matters, why don’t we all just go to Dollar General and be done with it?

            So it’s with a certain amount of chagrin, mixed with raw admiration that I say my hat is off to JC Penney’s new “Get Your Penney’s Worth” campaign. The brand found the emotional resonance that connects its name, heritage and value proposition. Beautifully. Gently. Respectfully. And, with some fun.

Seen through the lens of that single copper penny in a jar, you believe there’s a solid rationale for savings. At THIS store. At Penney’s. Not for them the hopelessness and “Do you like me now?” of other mass retailers. (I name no names, Macy’s.) They’ve found a real divining rod to help shoppers find genuine worth. Of course, it’s a construct from which Penney’s can promote and have circulars and shelf-talkers, but it’s one that allows all that to make consumer sense: A powerful platform. This is all the more impressive given where the retailer has been during the past decade. Well done, folks. Want to discuss our thinking for your brand at retail? Operators are standing by.

Peter Pan May Have It Right: Why Grow Up?

I’m sure we can all make a pretty robust list of “things that have changed since we were kids.” But, what would be at the top of the marketing list? Sure, social media is a candidate, with all the various apps attendant there unto. For me, however, it’s the radical escalation of consumer marketing on behalf of prescription pharmaceuticals. We have become inured to it, I suppose: It’s been around episodically since at least the 90s, but clearly there’s been a crescendo of late. My question is more along the lines of what does a 16-year-old make of the über messaging: This is what it means to age.

            Now, I know it may seem nonsensical to ask, since it’s unlikely that teens watch the kind of commercial laden, network television that comes crammed to the gills with ads for Viagra, but humor me. A casual game of ‘what if?’ Consider the notion that ‘nearly half of men over 40 experience occasional erectile dysfunction.’ Does just having that as atmospheric background noise tells them something about the half-life of the romantic bell-curve they are just on the cusp of entering? What about the psoriasis and potential weight-loss properties of non-insulin treatments for adult diabetes treatments? TMI about adulthood? Ditto ‘bladder leakage.” How about all the famous men chatting about their heart medication and whether or not they can eat a salad at the golf club. Mama, what is A-fib? What is ulcerative colitis? What is opioid constipation? What is IBS-D? How about Rheumatoid Arthritis? Mama, what is CLPD?

            It’s not pretty, this impression that adulthood is 10 pounds of medical emergencies, flare-ups and chronic irritants crammed into a five-pound pill case. We nonchalantly observe recent college graduates opting to live in their parents’ basements and blithely term it “infantilization.” Perhaps. But maybe it’s just wisdom. Who volunteers for the decline these ads auger and make seem inescapably inevitable? When I was a kid, adulthood looked kind of glammy and Mad Men-ish with a top note of James Bondian adventure. Now, not so much.

            The other major change in marketing, of course, is the legal eagle ads which stalk medical marketing: Did you use Cialis? Call us at 800-GET-RICH.  

Hey! Muhtar Kent! Hey! Indra Nooyi! Over Here!

A recent issue of Ad Week had this to report on the Genesis story of M&M’s, celebrating a 75th Birthday this year, on how the beloved candy got its name: One M came from Forrest Mars, the other from William Murrie of Hershey’s to whom Mars had turned to “ensure a steady supply of chocolate.” Just pause for a moment to contemplate, to savor: Arch competitors Mars & Hershey’s working together to create a candy which could stand up to summer heat and become the calorie-laden confection of choice for GIs during World War II. What used to be called, the greater good.

            I began to daydream about what amazing benefits might come from other odd pairings.  

            Republicans and Democrats?

            How about Coke & Pepsi?

            Coke brings its iconic “I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” Santa and polar bear-iness to the table, while Pepsi infuses the moment with the brand’s urgent pop relevancy. Then, the ultimate Mash Up hit me: What if Coke’s red cans stood for Republicans and Pepsi’s cans got enough additional blueness so it could stand for Democrats. Could we have the ultimate on-going straw poll cum promotion to re-ignite the smoldering cola category and regain consumer relevance?

            Sure. At least until November. Every week, the ‘votes’ would be tallied, results announced and shoppers engaged at retail, vending and on-premise in ways they haven’t been in a decade. It’s the kind of presidential campaign season that would benefit from some, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for, joy?

            Beyond building the flagging sparkling beverage business, who knows? Maybe the plan might even turn this campaign season into something a trifle more effervescent, just a bit more sparkling? I know it seems odd to think these exemplar American brands could work together to bring some delight to the moment, but hey! It’s worth a try.

            Those of you who know a bottler or someone who works at either company, feel free to print this out and place it in the Suggestion Box. I know it’s there somewhere.

Best,

Kate

Here's to NCIS Brands: Do You Know Who You Are?

A great deal of the work we do here is about positioning, e.g. figuring out where a brand or a company fits in its category and in the greater world. Oftentimes, using analogies is a great way to frame to ourselves and Clients a way to think about that fit. Thus, I was engaged by an article in The New York Times this morning about the long-running CBS drama NCIS, starring Mark Harman. It is ranked as the number one show in the country and arguably the world. It will air its 300th episode soon.

            This is a big American brand. Loved by virtually everyone and emblematic of a certain sense of national values. A 60-minute adventure (pulsed to allow for commercials) that takes us from horrible murder, to team effort to solve, to final satisfying denouement. All done with a wry and familial sense of role and personality. We know what to expect, the program delivers what we’re counting on and does so with enough variation cut with well-known and loved characters to keep us intrigued and tuning in for more. The ingredients: Ducky, Abby, Ziva, Tony, “The Autopsy Gremlin,” and, of course, Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

            And, yet: “Did you watch NCIS last night?” has probably never been asked around the water cooler. It’s just not cool enough, but it is good enough to keep us absorbed weekly. It’s not fresh content delivered in a fresh context, as from Netflix or Amazon, and the only way to binge watch is by turning into USA cable, after the infomercials are over. Still, there’s a lot to be said for NCIS-style brands. I’m thinking Cheerios, Hershey’s and Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Fill in the blanks: Name your own reliable favorite. Just enough flavor variety and gluten-free news to stay interesting and relevant (Tony kissed a transgendered woman!), but not, happily, attitudinal or edgy.

            Some brands are Kimmy Schmidt brands, others are House of Cards, still others, Downton Abby. We’re not in the discovery zone with NCIS, but rather in the world of the tried and true ‘procedural.’ In a landscape that is festooned with breakthroughs seeking our full attention, advocacy and passion, sometimes it’s a good idea to exhale. And, of course, it’s always a good idea, in life as in branding, to know who you are and what expectations you’re hoping to fulfill.

           Kate

Wither Retail: Howard Schultz Will You Lend A Hand?

I’ve had two fascinating conversations in the past couple of days, both centered on what-in-the-world-can-save bricks and mortar retail? As is nearly always the case, sharp thinking gets sharpened in dialogue, rather than by ruminating off in a corner on Macy’s decision to close 40 more stores and fire 4800 more employees in order to offset dismal sales and earnings last year. I was in one of those closing stores recently and it was heart-breaking to see a seasoned, senior and professional sales person walking the second floor and letting people know that “Yes, the fixtures are for sale.”

            The essential promise of great retailing is being “lucky,” which can be manifested in many ways: Getting the right dress for that special evening, finding the suit that fits perfectly, discovering the perfect tie that will bring out the color of his eyes. And, of course, getting a great ‘buy.’ For most of the past 20 years, that last option has driven stores like Macy’s: 30 percent off! No 40! How about 50? Do you like me now? The flop sweat is nasty.

            The downward price spiral erodes the margin that could be spent on staff. So a time motion expert arrives at Macy’s Herald Square and sees that Sophia spends most of her day walking the 3rd floor marking down the price and writing in the new cost. Then, repeats that the next day, as they take another five percent off. He suggests they just put 30 percent off signs on the top of the kiosks and have the customers do the math. That doesn’t work. Then, they decide that technology can come to the rescue: Voila! Scanners are installed everywhere, so that customers can just run the tag through the scanner to find out how much the price is today. Except that the scanners don’t work and the customers don’t like them and now Sophia has been downsized so there’s no one to ask how much the item costs today. The customer walks away in disgust. Online shopping seems pretty fine right about now, doesn't it?

            Meanwhile in its endless desire to make someone else do its job (let’s let the customer figure out the price), the store stops training its sales staff on this year’s fashion trends. Let’s let the manufacturers schlepp in two boxes of donuts and set up in the break room. They can bribe tired salespeople with a free sugar high to listen to why the plackets are designed this way this year, and the YYK zippers are a quality improvement, and the color palette is inspired by sunset in Tahiti. All on the off-chance that at some point one of these people will remember what they’ve been told “on break” and somehow communicate it to a customer. It’s enough to make you weep.

            And yet. Somebody has done this right: Starbucks has managed to train and professionalize its staff to make pitch perfect coffees and teas and knowledgeably discuss the origins and taste profiles of its wares. If a coffee shop can be professionalized, why not retail salespeople? Oh, I know, the Armani and Chanel sales people are pros. World class at what they do. But what about that poor Macy’s customer, just trying to find a dress for the office party? Lord & Taylor? Nordstrom? Can you hear her now?

Kate

            Editor’s Note: Late breaking news. I know the answer to the riddle, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?” The answer is NO. How do know? My love affair with my Fitbit continues and the other night I saw I was six flights of stairs shy of a perfect green circle of achievement. So, I went out to the interior stairway of our building and climbed up six flights, came back down and went to my Fitbit Dashboard, ready for the endorphin rush. But no! The mean-spirited dashboard told me I’d only done one additional flight. You may imagine my distress. Now, I knew I’d climbed all the flights I needed to. But the tracker didn’t know it. My climb didn’t count, wasn’t heard. I went out and climbed five more flights of stairs. This time the tree fell and it was heard. 

The Petite Madeleine? Mais Non.

Last weekend, during Winter Break at my daughter’s high school, we made the radical choice to head midwestward ho! to visit my mother and brother in the land Time forgot, three hours south of Chicago. Just as I insist (and fail to prevail) that we not visit PacSun, Pink and Brandy Melville shops when we visit Paris, I attempted to mandate we avoid those, plus chain restaurants in the hinterlands. I might as well have championed a starvation diet. It was a revelation.

            I had wanted her to see ‘authentic’ Midwestern fare and shop the local wares. My mother and brother refused to join us on the culinary Odyssey to Gil’s in Hanna City, whose charming positioning statement was and is, “To get a fresher piece of chicken, you’ve got to be a rooster.” This had seemed an extraordinary, electrifying place when I was a kid, enlivened by country western groups on Saturday nights and emboldened by music we choose from an ecumenical jukebox, spanning Sinatra, Streisand, the Beatles and Patsy Cline

            Mattie was shocked that I had sought out this place: Cheesecloth tablecloths of various patterns, shining under bright florescent lights. To her, it frankly looked like the homeless shelter at our church where she volunteers some Friday nights: Men and women, seated at tables for four, clad almost universally in jeans and sweatshirts and shod in either cowboy boots or sneakers, surrounded by plastic boxes to pack-up what they didn’t eat in order to take it with them.

            The same held true for clothes shopping: We visited the department store where we had loved to shop as kids, now transposed to a mall. Mattie took one look and said, “Yes, this seems like a place where Grammy would shop.” Indeed, it did. We explored the terrain, including the Going-Out-of-Business Macy’s and I won’t get started on that here, except to say, Terry, shame on you.

            We found the best selection and service, finally, exactly where Mattie knew it would be: The Brandy Melville section of the PacSun store. We found the best dinner exactly where my brother said it would be: The Longhorn Steakhouse chain near their home. It is beginning to dawn on me that I’m going to have to admit the best chains have raised the bar, as I suppose they promised to. It was the better dinner, better lit, better looking. Guessing Time doesn’t forget. 

Kate

The other day during one of the sporadic snow events punctuating what serves as winter this year, I headed down to the gym for my routine morning workout, ready to engage with Joe and Mika, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but rows on rows of machines with their TV screens out of order. The screens are fed content through Direct TV and now there were dancing logos all around me, reminding me that Direct TV was now part of AT&T. It did not make me think well of either brand, but it did make me wonder about how the mistake of one (now) sub-brand tarnishes the über mark.

Bad performance does travel upwards.

I now have a worse perception of AT&T’s ability to deliver consistent service as a telephony company. Honest. I do.

Unhappily, great performance does not travel upwards, or else we wouldn’t be hearing the deep-seated resentment of the government that is a daily thesis of Morning Joe.

Exhibit A: I recently had to renew my passport. I was able to get everything I needed online. I was able to easily figure out the charges and how much I needed to send the State Department and to which address to send it in order to get “expedited” service. The mailing went out. The site promised three weeks “door-to-door” for this rushed process. Two weeks after sending, the new passport was in my mailbox. The site had warned me that if I wanted a passport card, it would arrive separately. Voila. It’s here now. Ditto my old passport, chock-a-block with memories of voyages past.

All accomplished, efficiently and effectively. As are dozens of interactions I’ve had with local, state and national government entities over the years.

Why is the U.S. Federal Government brand so tarnished? Wither all the hatred?

Note to great (and bad) brands and conglomerates which own them: Great performance of the subsidiary does not create a halo that can buffer the whole, but poor performance surely does. 

Kate

A Love Letter to My True Passion Brand

I’ve been writing these posts for just about a year now. If you’ve stayed with me some portion of this time, I think you know me well enough for me to tell you: I’ve fallen in love. Head over heels, obsessed in love. With my new FitBit. Honest. I’m constantly checking in on its dashboard to see – you guessed it – how I’m doing. This is the absolutely ultimate in narcissism. Enough about the gadget: How many steps have I taken? What did I eat? What’s my resting heart rate? How did I sleep? No one has cared about my every movement since I was six months old. It is thrilling.

            Several years ago, a friend of mine whose romantic relationship had suddenly evolved to a long-distance one was bemoaning his inability to just pick up the phone and casually call his lover to tell him about the “great blueberry muffin I had for breakfast.” I remember being nauseous. Really, really just weirded out by the concept of telling anyone what I’d had for breakfast and what I’d thought about it. But no more!

            FitBit wants to know every morsel. FitBit wants to know how my workout was! FitBit wants to know if I walked the dog. And how far I went. Even better, FitBit knows. It knows better than I that 45 minutes on the elliptical is worth 247 calories. And, wonder of wonders, FitBit reaches out to congratulate me! All I have to do is walk 10,000 steps or drink eight glasses of water.

            So beyond the ratification of my essential narcissism and the infantilization inherent in having my every heart beat monitored and spoon of gruel assessed, what is going on here? I am hoping these folks are sharing all this data with some pharmaceutical companies somewhere, for starters. We’re talking really, really Big Data. Almost certainly a huge sample size, definitely better than ‘self-reported’ behaviors, right? I hope they are creating an app to ensure users can send all this data to their doctors to be mined for insight at the individual level, too.

            Secondly, of course, I think like a marketer. P&G used to pound into us that the hardest thing to do is change consumer behavior. Well, FitBit is changing mine, easily. I suddenly want to exercise a bit longer. I want to walk to a dinner party rather than hail a taxi. I want what in literature they call the ‘objective correlative,’ e.g. I want to know how FitBit thinks I slept, not just how I know I dreamed. Certainly, the buzz term ‘gamification’ is at play here, but there’s something more, I suspect. My algorithmic alter-ego is ushering me down a road I know I should go. Indeed, have known forever I should have trod. But now, one cheerfully monitored step at a time, I’m walking the walk.

Kate

Excellence in the Small Stuff Matters

Last week, I asked you to send in your candidates for the “good, the bad and the truly ugly” anecdotes of consumer service experiences. I fully expected horror stories, and indeed I got a fair amount of them. Shame on you, Verizon, Citi, Land Rover, and assorted others: You know who you are. But, I was absolutely taken aback by how many really wonderful experiences there were.

            Some really charming stories of grace under pressure: My favorite was from my friend John Olsen, whose Christmas gifts and dinner plans were almost derailed by his own mix-ups: Got on the wrong train. Then, got off the wrong train and left his bag of goodies on board. Could have been a true tail of woe, for sure. John, trusting soul that is he, called the Lost & Found department of New Jersey Transit and sure enough: Happy news. Even happier, the conductor who found them realized that the designer chef bred Cornish hens wouldn’t make it through the night in the station locker, so she took them home, put them in the refrigerator and was ready to rendezvous with him the next morning, hens and giftwrapped presents in tow. Thrilling, right?

            As I was thinking about this willingness to go the extra mileness, I found myself in a Walgreen’s in Greenwich, hoping to have my passport picture taken during a break in meetings. I was pretty sure this was a remarkably bad idea, but hey! What to do in Greenwich for 15 minutes, right? At a Walgreen’s. Pretty quickly I was positive it was dumb decision: Had to find the camera. Had to lower the screen. Had to haul out the stool for me to sit on. Yes, in the middle of a Walgreen’s. Tick tock, tick tock. Once the picture had been taken, however, I was pretty sure it would go quickly. I was wrong. I simply could not imagine what was taking so long, now. Until I walked over to where the fellow was working. He was air-brushing out stray hairs that he felt were less than flattering (in my passport photo!).

            These stories all remind me of the value of professionalism and pride in craft in every line of work and how important it is for our own sanity to treasure them. 

Kate

Customer Service in the Service of Genuine Differentiation

There’s something coming into focus in the typically fuzzy-illogical world of customer service. How do I know? Well, for starters, in the year I’ve been writing you, typically 10 to 20 folks have responded with comments to this weekly epistle. EXCEPT when it’s been about poor or just plain weird customer service. Then, the phone lines and email in-box and LinkedIn comments light up and queue up. Après poor customer service, le déluge.

            Tales arrive of both good examples and the horror shows we’ve been led to expect. My most recent example: Hosting a party and ordering all the goods from my go-to on-line grocery source (and heretofore poster child for what I believe constitutes a Passion Brand), FreshDirect, only to find a piece of chewed chewing gum (true story) as I poured the salted almonds into a bowl. When I contacted the company it offered a ‘total refund’ of the $11.99 – and asked that I return the bag with the gum. DNA testing of the malcontent or sloppy staff member? Proof that I wasn’t trying to scam some almonds? I’ll never know, but eeck.

            Exhibit B: The raw joy from a colleague over the moon with a response from B&H Photo, apologizing for a product that fell short, replacing it and crediting the entire cost.

            Exhibit C: The recent announced downsizing of Macy’s staff and Walmart’s locations, because of customers’ movement to on-line. There’s also the suggestion that Macy’s at least is more valuable for its Herald Square real estate than its marquis retail location. If there is no real customer service (not just the righting of wrong, but pure service in-store), why bother going there? The algorithm can probably do a better job.

            And yet, here’s the ‘something’s coming into focus’ part.

            Exhibit D: Ford’s press release announcing a $100 million initiative to invest in customer service as a differentiator. That’s what I’m beginning to believe is happening. All the product features and benefits and all the Brand personality messaging being to migrate into “okay, available and cheap” land. And the real differentiator (are you listening airlines?, hear me now, banks?, how about now, department stores?) become how human beings deal with other human beings. 

Welcoming in the New Year...

Welcome back from the Holidays. I’m hoping yours were as magical as ours. “Magical.” Indeed, “mysterious” is perhaps the better term. We were chock-a-block with the mysterious magic of the holidays. To wit:

1.     The first holiday mystery: How did The New York Times’ newspaper carrier manage to get the holiday card to my front door (with the attendant self-addressed envelope to ease the process of tipping) two hours before he got the paper there on December 11?

2.     The second mystery of Christmas: How can Verizon relentlessly claim superior service when T-Mobile actually delivers it? My daughter has a Verizon account and mine is T-Mobile. Thus we are a petri dish of comparison experiments. T-Mobile people are somehow able to respond as intelligent human beings (v. scripted nincompoops) when I want to order a new iPhone or set-up the ability to talk and text from Europe. I’ll take three bars vs. four any day, if you don’t make me call you six times for one transaction. Whoever is in charge of T-Mobile customer service people: You are a giant among pigmies.

3.    And, the third mystery of the holidays: Is Weight Watchers really going to try to try to see if the “Oprah incantation” works on Main Street the way it’s worked on Wall Street? Crazy people. Just saying, “We’ve got Oprah” was enough to goose the stock price, but do we really think it’s sufficient to gain traction with the New Year’s newly resolved? 

Best,

Kate

Security at Retail: Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

Paris
 
Standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower one day recently, looking longingly and nostalgically at the darkened entrance to Le Jules Verne, and taking in the barricades and heavily armed police and military presence, I could not help but wonder at how comforted I was that the security presence was obvious and unambiguous. I’m not sure we would have gone up to the Alain Ducasse restaurant, if we’d been allowed to. But the choice was not ours, nor was it anyone’s choice even to walk beneath the tower, two weeks after the Paris massacres. The entire plaza was cordoned off.
 
The teeter-totter balance between feeling confident we’re protected and comfortable enough to enjoy our lives is also the one retailers, mall managers and builders, movie and restaurant chains and sports teams and arenas are going to have to confront in the months and years ahead. How would it make us feel to see armed guards at the entrances to our malls, shopping centers and stores? How might it change our shopping behaviors, our entertainment preferences, our choice of restaurants and other gathering sites to see an obvious quasi-military presence. Or, to imagine that our fellow shoppers, diners, movie-goers might be packing their own protection?
 
The codes and cues that telegraph to our psyches that we’re safe and secure have been disrupted. Quite possible corrupted. Do we believe that a decline in Black Friday store sales is simply burn-out from too many Thanksgiving nights spent fighting for door busters at Walmart? Do we imagine that online sales are skyrocketing simply because we’re suddenly realizing it’s easy and we can trust Amazon to get the stuff to us on time?
 
We can debate the need for gun control. We can champion mental health awareness. We can develop counter-terrorism protocols. Yes. We can and must as a society. But, those are steps beyond the immediate control of brands, retailers and venues. Let’s go further than telling store personnel and customers to “shelter in place.” Let’s decide that “It won’t happen here” isn’t working as a strategy and get focused. Tommy, Ralph, Donna: What do you want your sales people to do if they hear a shot fired? Penney’s, Bergdorf’s, Target: What changes have you made to your store architecture to allow a cogent plan for immediately shepherding shoppers and staff to safety? Simon, Rouse, Traubman: Come ON! 
 

Kate
www.katenewlin.com
kate@katenewlin.com
 

Hey Doug McMillion: Wanna know why Walmart is having problems?

HINT: It’s not because you’re paying your employees too much.

This is an absolutely true story, dialogue verbatim.

Scene One

Three packages are delivered to my Manhattan apartment. Two from Amazon. One from Walmart. (Now, of course, any one who knows me knows I am no fan of Walmart. I’ve written about their troublesome race-to-the-bottom pricing and manufacturing policies in Shopportunity! and Passion Brands and elsewhere for years. So, let’s just say, I didn’t order anything from it and nobody I know would send me a gift from there.

I open the package, which is correctly addressed to me at my address. There’s a packing slip, which says “Shipped to” and gives Beth Ann Somebody’s name and an address in Terra Alta, West Virginia. Inside: something called a Remington S5500 AntiStatic Digital Ceramic 1 Flat Iron Col, Unit Price 19.45 and Total Price $19.45, plus $1.17 sales tax, plus a real shipment total of $20.62.

I look for the return label. There is none. There is a note at the bottom of the packing slip saying that if I want to return the item, it will be easy. Just go to www.Walmart/returns.

Scene Two

I go to the website. It gives me two choices: Either I’ve ordered something or someone set me something as a gift. If I choose the first option, I’m instructed to log in, but I do not have a Walmart account, so that’s a dead end. If I choose the second option, it tells me to take the package back to my closest Walmart. Hmmm.

Scene Three

I peruse the website, trying to find the “it’s easy” return page. I finally decide to call the 800 line. I call and get the predictable recording. I work my way through the menu, which at some point asks me if I have the 15-digit order number to punch that in. I do. The recording tells me it cannot find that order. I punch the #3 the recording tells me will get me to a person. I’m told by another recording that Walmart is eager to help, the wait will be five minutes and if I want to keep my place in line, they will call me back. I opt to hang on and listen to the Musak.

Scene Four

                        Walmart:        Thank you for calling Walmart. How may I help you?

Me:                 I received a package that is clearly meant for someone else, someone who lives in West Virginia.

Walmart:        I see. Well, you can drop the package off at your closest Walmart.

Me:                 I live in New York City. I have no idea if there’s a Walmart anywhere near me.

Walmart:        I see. Well then, you can actually drop the package off to the person who ordered it.

Me:                 The person lives in West Virginia!

Walmart:        I understand. But those are your two options. You can take it to your nearest Walmart. Or, you can deliver it yourself to the person who ordered it.

Me:                 This is your mistake, but you’re making it my responsibility to make it right.

    Walmart:        No. I’m just saying, you have two options. You can either take it to your nearest Walmart. Or, you can deliver it         yourself.

Me:                 I believe there is a third option. I can throw it away. The woman who ordered it in good faith won’t receive it.

Walmart:        Yes, that’s right. She’ll call us to report it as undelivered and we’ll send her another one.

Me:                 Well, then I think I’ll take that option.

Walmart:        Okay. Thank you for calling Walmart.

Scene Five

I sit down to write this Open Letter to Doug McMillan. This is just wrong. You don’t disappoint your customers. You don’t have strangers deliver your goods and make up for your ineptitude. You don’t figure it’s a cost of doing business to toss away (and add to the landfill) goods honorably ordered and paid for by a real customer. That is: You don’t and succeed. Shame on you.

A Micro Solution for the Macro Problem?

Like many of us, I watched the news all weekend, obsessed with the tragedy unfolding in Paris. I watched and listened as expert after expert, politician after politician weighed in on what France must do, what America could do, what NATO might do, what the Gulf States should do. I heard terms like “boots on the ground” and “the dark web” and “coalition like in 1991” and “most powerful nation on the planet.” Statements like “We can win this.”

            I heard saber rattling by men who may have once upon a time worn a uniform (but more than likely not) advocating for military responses at a scale to acknowledge this is “World War III.”

            I am a strategist, a business and brand strategist (and full disclosure: one who served as U.S. Army officer). Just as business and brand strategies have been transformed during the past decade, so too have the ways wars are waged.  This isn’t 1991, after all. It’s not 2003 to 2013, either. Surely we have learned something.

            The most powerful marketing movement in the business world in most of our lifetimes has been towards the granular: Real people telling real people what they think about brands, products, and businesses – and the aggregated power of what they think making an actual business difference. Sometimes this comes from the world of high tech: through Facebook, ranking sites like Yelp! Instagram. Sometimes, and I would argue most powerfully, through honest to goodness high touch. Procter & Gamble taught me years ago: “If your mother used Tide, nothing else smells like clean.” In other words: Family.

            Right now, we use terms like “lone wolf” and “isolated cell” to think about these agents of terror and targeted destruction. They are recruited because of their disaffection. But, when we drill down, we find wolves actually run in packs. We find there are often brothers involved. Cousins. Friends. Parents. People who suspected something and said nothing.

            My hypotheses:

1.     It is one thing for the incipient jihadist to be willing to sacrifice his own life to take a hundred others. What if he knew he was also altering his family’s lives by guaranteeing their return to a world they left behind? That his family and friends wouldn’t be given a ‘hall pass,’ simply because they say they didn’t know what they now don’t want to have known?

2.     It’s one thing to know that your son is angry and up to something bad, it’s another thing to know that unless he is stopped, he is sending you back to the land you left decades ago and for very good reasons. Would the parents turn a deaf ear to their children’s rantings and mysterious comings and goings?

            We seem to have a belief that these villains hatch sui generis. That no force on earth can interrupt their desire to spread death, once they’ve been radicalized. That the promise of martyrdom is such a compelling lure that nothing can dim its bright and shiny attraction. That the only way to stop an asymmetrical enemy is to march brigades into Raqqa.

            I’m saying there’s another lever to pull. A piece of international law that changes the balance of power and acknowledges the scores of small, fierce and obvious decisions that must be coupled with willful ignorance on the part of friends and family to create events like those we witnessed this weekend.  Actions must have consequences: Let’s make those consequences personal.

            We’re at a crossroad: We can keep bombing military targets that end up decimating civilian populations by accident and thereby create another furious generation. Or, we can lose our reliance on raw firepower and get focused. Very tightly focused.

            Let’s get granular. 

Hey Amazon! I've Got An Idea For You!

The other morning when The New York Times arrived late with a cardboard package professing to be Google virtual reality goggles I was put in mind of a poem by Matthew Arnold: Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.

                        Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

                        The other powerless to be born

Here we see the delicate wire walk of The Times moving into the future, while still performing in the present by delivering authentically on its heritage and storied past. When I was president of Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, the futurist firm, we used to tell Clients: Anyone can foresee the Future, the art is getting the timing right for your business. From my perspective, The Times is missing it.

I know something of what The Times is up to, because I read the paper and I know folks who work there. It is quite reasonably launched on an Odyssey to reinvent the news delivery system for the 21st century: digital, digital, digital. Last month, it passed one million digital subscriptions. Great. Well done. The Goggle goggles virtual reality initiative must have been the equivalent of a moon walk.

However: Why can’t I get my paper newspaper delivered on time? The Times inexplicably defines a late paper as delivered after 8:30 a.m. But for most people who work, I suspect 7:15 would be closer to the mark. At my house, I’m irritated if it isn’t here by 6:30 a.m. The heavy lifting today is logistics reality not virtual reality. When the paper doesn’t arrive, The Times is literally teaching me to go to my TV news channels, searching out the programs that deliver the fix I need when I need it. I don’t want the TV on in the morning, but there you have it.

The Times can gather, report, write, edit, lay-out and print “all the news that’s fit to print” from throughout the globe. It can do it daily. What it can’t seem to do is get it to my door. It’s the last mile that confounds. Maybe put the Google stuff on the back burner and ask Amazon for help?

The Sky Isn't Falling! The Sky Isn't Falling!

"The agency model is not going to bend—it's going to break," Brad Jakeman warned attendees at the Association of National Advertisers' Masters of Marketing event in Orlando. "This is a disruption that has happened around us, and we are still talking about 30-second television ads. We fundamentally haven't changed." (Adweek)

            I tweeted this article with the headline, The Sky is Falling. The Sky is Falling.  But that doesn’t seem sufficient comment on the essential silliness of the comments. Jakeman calls for a moratorium on the words “agency” and “advertising.” Hmmm. Surely that will do the trick.

            But, if it doesn’t, perhaps it’s because it’s not because Advertising has been disrupted. Something both larger and seismically different has gone BOOM! in the night. There’s been a revolution in relevance – and soft drinks are on the wrong side of the culture’s barricades.

            The 30-second spot is dead? Perhaps, but the 15 is alive and well: We have no farther to look than the magnificent GE advertising. Whether it’s the “My Mom works at GE” campaign, the “Ideas Come Into the World Ugly” work or the newer “I Got a Job at GE” spots. This advertising is far from dead. It’s alive and well and exciting and doing what it’s supposed to do: Awareness, Affection, Preference.

            What I suspect Jakeman is bemoaning is the loss of effectiveness in junk food and soft drink advertising. Calling it something else or not mentioning it won’t fix the issue. The culture has moved on. Advertising still works quite nicely for products and services people care about. Witness the amazing multi-channel campaign for something as prosaic as Weather Tech car mats. Not high concept gorgeous work: Yeoman tv, print, radio and web. But I’m very doubtful it would run if it weren’t selling. (Things that obsess me late at night: How many cars are there out there? Don’t they all have laser-measured, made in America mats by now?) Call advertising something else, it will still sell when it's about something we care about and shared with us in a way we'll pay attention to, just the way trying to convince a 15-year-old that Pepsi is cool won’t.

A Branding and Fragmentation Issue, Writ Large for Republicans

Once upon a time, there was a man named Larry Light, evp of Backer Speilvogel Bates advertising company. He coined the edict: “One, two, three or you’re out.” Top Brands need primacy of place. You can’t be down in the weeds with a one or two share, make some money and expect to retain shelf space. A decade or so after that wisdom came The Paradox of Choice: too many options stymy us.

            I am put in mind of Larry Light and, too, Barry Schwartz’ book as I look at the ongoing news of the Republican presidential candidates. I’m not speaking here about the pluses and minuses of the various candidates. I’m just looking at the share war, and all the reports of dithering on the part of the establishment politicos about how to stop the new “Brand” juggernauts. Right now, Light’s wisdom looks outmoded. The Paralysis of Choice seems Old World too.

            When we look at the grocery store aisles (and the regional acquisition targets of Big Food), we are seeing a proliferation of small brands, ones we discover, try, buy, share and advocate and then move on from, in search of new discovery. Maybe it started, as one colleague suggested today, with craft beers. Maybe with Sobe Soda, Annie’s Organic, Bolthouse Farms, Kathleen’s Cookies, Mary’s Gone Crackers, the list goes on and on.

            However it began, the Horatio Alger story of a tiny start-up based on a recipe from my mother’s mother and climbing its way up the food chain is the stuff of foodie mythos. Is this the hope that fuels all these presidential hopefuls? Consumers love their candidate discoveries and soon the Big Politics Machine will ‘buy them’ too?

            Is this why the tiny candidates aren’t selling out and exiting stage left? Why the “channel partners” do not demand an SKU reduction? Together the two leaders have something around 50 percent of the Republican poll numbers. The rest of the voters constitute another 50 percent, spread among a dozen or so wannabes. The difficulty, of course, is that while there’s arguably an infinite number of cookies, jam, yogurt and beer brands, there’s a finite amount of space at the top of the candidate pyramid: Two slots.

            Hey Big Deal Republicans. Too many elephants in the room? 

My Open Letter to Oprah!

Dear Oprah!

            I am following your Weight Watchers news with genuine fascination. Oprah, as a new owner, board member, spokesperson cum chapter member, you’ve thrown a 99-yard Hail Mary pass to score a genuine touchdown for the underdog (and under water) company.

            Your own struggle with weight is the stuff of legend. We all remember Optifast. Your ability to illuminate little known brands and make them best-sellers is nearly mythic. Spanx? Book clubs?  (Full disclosure, you included my book Shopportunity! as a Christmas Selects.  Big time thanks.)

            So no wonder the stock price has more than doubled in a day.

            Still, you no longer boast a daily talk show. The OWN channel doesn’t seem to be must-see TV. Is anyone still reading any magazine in print? Hmm.

            Are the ka-ching! sounds we’re hearing the drumbeat of inevitable growth due to the magical, mystical music of The Oprah Effect? Or, more a noise reverberating in the echo chamber of how media and personality used to work?  Is this simply the flop sweat of desperate private equity guys trying to slap fresh news on an aging story so they can exit with their pride and portfolio intact? Or is there potential even more compelling at work?

            You’ve got a $3 billion net worth war chest. You’ve augmented that number during the past four days by something like $73 million. That’s the move on six million shares. My question for you: Why stop with Weight Watchers? Double down. The press release explaining the halo the Oprah Brand provides Weight Watchers suggests an expansion into consumer health and lifestyle, beyond ‘simple’ weight loss.  

            My modest proposal, Oprah: Why not make this the first move into the creation of a global women’s Wellness (or Happiness) Conglomerate. You should be able to pick up a chunk of Avon at a similar bargain and resuscitate its model too: It’s selling at less than $4 today. So grab six million shares there. You could probably scoop up some Yahoo, too. Why not make a grab for Penny’s? Stitch them all together. Make a genuine difference in real women’s real lives, every day. You’ll need a Big Food company and, for sure, a bank. P&G probably has a Brand or two it will sell you. Let’s get a health insurance company on board. Let’s put the “own it” in OWN, Oprah. Call me? 

Kate

212-227-0220