The most important element of any trade show display booth is the graphics. Your company’s logo, positioning statement, and memorable imagery should be incorporated into any well-designed exhibit.
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The essence of branding is being different.  The logic is simple:  if you hope to outperform competitors, you must give customers reasons to do business with you instead of someone else.  And so you must clearly articulate these reasons in a brand position, defined as how we are different. 

But it’s not good enough to carve out a position and leave it at that.  The goal is to maintain ownership over the long term, which is a difficult matter of delivering consistent experiences at every touchpoint – say, for a decade or more.

10. Starbucks

Position:  most expensive, strongest coffee / the “third place”

Position clarity: 90

Consistency: 50

Total score = 140/200

Despite a surprising number of dirty stores, mis-made drinks and holier-than-thou baristas, Starbucks has still delivered enough great experiences to boost its stock price by 263% this decade.  It is frontline employees that are at once this brand’s greatest strength and weakness:  with an average age in the 20s, they turn over at an enormously high rate – with a commensurate, negative affect on service quality.  Scary to think how well Starbucks might do if they could solve the turnover problem (perhaps by diversifying their employee demographics).

9. Volvo

Position:  safety / old and boxy

Position clarity: 75

Consistency:  90

Total score = 165/200

In the context of a brand discussion, you can say “safety” to someone and there’s a very good chance they’ll respond “Volvo.”  Their ownership of the safety position is an achievement so remarkable, and so profitable, that the pointy heads at Ford – Volvo’s owner – have been looking to sell the unit for some time.

But Volvo also owns a negative position – old and boxy – which an audience will tell you if unaided.

8. Lululemon

Position:  empowerment / your butt will look great

Position clarity: 90

Consistency:  80

Total score = 170/200

Launched in 1998 by Vancouverite Chip Wilson, Lululemon went public in 2006 with a valuation of $225-million.  In a recent year, they spent a measly $37,000 in advertising – underlining this brand’s unsurpassed word-of-mouth power.  Yes, Lululemon’s success is driven by female consumers’ connection with the spiritualism of the brand’s Manifesto (which includes proclamations like “dance, sing, floss and travel”), but in the end, it’s all about the status that accrues to possessors of $100 stretch pants and resultantly beautiful bottoms.

In the dying moments of the decade, Lululemon gets docked 10 consistency points for disgracing their brand by trading upon the Vancouver Games without paying for the right to do so.  Most unspiritual.

7. MasterCard

Position:  priceless / for everything else, there’s MasterCard

Position clarity: 75

Consistency:  100

Total score = 175/200

For running its ever-entertaining “Priceless” campaign since 1997, MasterCard earns a perfect consistency score.  The ads, long since embedded in the popular culture, were being seen in more than 100 countries, in 50-plus languages, by 2006.  Thousands of people actually spend their time writing jokes and piecing together funny videos that build up to the “Priceless” punchline; a search of YouTube yields 50,000 results for “Priceless” and 18,000 for “MasterCard.”

Although perfect consistency has helped drive up the stock price by 468% this decade (vs. 38% for Visa), I struggle with what the brand position really is.

6. Porter Airlines

Position:  flying refined

Position clarity: 90

Consistency:  87

Total score = 177/200

How do you know you’ve got your brand position nailed?  When it’s expressed with 100% accuracy in a tagline as succinct and elegant as Flying refined.

When I first started flying Porter to Ottawa in 2006, the planes were basically empty and the prophets of doom were everywhere.  But next year this brand will move 2,700 passengers every day, and in 2011, expects a total of 1.6 million of them.

The value proposition inherent in Flying refined has always been inescapable:

• For all, a glamorous service that delivers many perks associated with business class
• Prices competitive with economy fares on WestJet and Air Canada
• Ultra-convenient downtown airport, meaning shorter, less-stress trip times
• Genuinely fresh and friendly (non-unionized) staff on the ground and in the air

Wrap it up in wonderfully disciplined and consistent (yet playful) brand communications, and you have a rare brand that people love to talk about.

 5. WestJet

Position:  we care

Position clarity: 97

Consistency:  85

Total score = 182/200

Air Canada’s stock has lost 94% of its value this decade.  WestJet shares have risen 152% over the same period.  Just as diametrically opposed are the experiences customers have with these organizations.  Despite spying on Air Canada in a manner perversely off-brand, WestJet’s clear differences from its rival make it one of the very few brands (along with Volvo) for which you can do a word association exercise in reverse:  ask a group of friends “which is the brand that cares?” and you’ll see what I mean.

4. Subway

Position:  healthy

Position clarity: 95

Consistency:  95

Total score = 190/200

It’s been a great decade for Subway.  In 2008, they celebrated their 10th year with Jared, the guy who lost 245 pounds eating subs.  Since hiring Jared as the exemplification of their healthy brand position, Subway has doubled its stores and sales:  to 30,000 and $8.2 billion, respectively.

Subway knows on which side their buns are buttered.  They’ve turned down no less than four hotshot ad agencies since 2000, who – surprise – wanted to make their mark, which naturally involved getting rid of Jared.   

And so it is greatly frustrating to see the Canadian operation tinker with the longtime tagline – Eat Fresh.  In a pointless diversion from the messaging of their U.S. parent, the Canadians have moved to Think Fresh.  Eat Fresh – disavowing one of the greatest positioning stories in the history of brand management.

3. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Position:  the world’s best hotels / unbelievably good service

Position clarity:  95

Consistency:  100

Total score = 195/200

No one ever says they want to be “the Ramada” of their industry.  Or even “the Westin.”  It is Four Seasons, often used as a synonym for the best there is, that is so honoured.  Despite their exotic locales and stunning designs, these hotels are renowned for the people that work in them:  ask anyone about their stay at a Four Seasons and they will focus on the incredible service they received – not the property itself.

2. Energizer

Position:  the longest lasting batteries

Position clarity:  97

Consistency:  100

Total score = 197/200

It may be that MasterCard’s Priceless tenacity was inspired by Energizer’s long-running Bunny campaign, now an incredible 20 years old.  Both brands have continually met the difficult creative challenge of coming up with fresh twists on their messaging, while keeping threats to consistency (primarily in the form of restless executives and ad agencies) at bay.

1. Apple

Position:  really cool technology that works so much better than PC

Position clarity: 100

Consistency:  100

Total score = 200/200

Apple is a shining example to branders everywhere:  living proof that you can stake out a single, narrow brand position, and through single-minded consistency, grow your stock price by 682% in a decade.  As with any brand that aspires to greatness, this kind of clarity and consistency can only be driven from the top – in this case, of course, by CEO Steve Jobs.  The consistency he demands can be experienced at every point of contact with this brand: at the Apple Store, in the quality and aesthetics of the products, and in the relentless brilliance of the long-running “I’m a Mac” ads.

Next week:  Top 5 Best Brands for Executives, and the Top 5 Worst Brands of 2009.

Hexapod Systems Offer Six-Axis Positioning

Parallel kinematics hexapod systems from Physik Instrumente (PI) provide positioning in six axes with precisions below 1um. The miniature M-810 hexapod takes up minimal installation space. With a diameter of 10cm and a height of 118mm it provides travel ranges up to 40mm in the XY plane and up to 13mm in the Z direction. The high-precision brushless special DC motors and high-resolution encoder give each individual strut a positioning resolution of 40nm.

The mini hexapod positions loads up to 5kg and achieves speeds of up to 10mm/s. Despite its compact size, the necessary driver electronics have been integrated into the base platform of the mini hexapod. The control is 100 per cent compatible with all previous hexapod models and is executed via an Ethernet connection.

As with all PI hexapods, the position can be entered with commands in Cartesian coordinates. Parallel kinematics systems have several advantages over stacked multi-axis positioners, according to PI. All six actuators act on a joint platform, which keeps the moved mass low. There is no summation of the lateral run-out and tilts of individual axes. The pivot point can be selected as desired via software commands and therefore remains independent of the movement.

My Comments On: “REI TV Ads Portraying the Outdoors in all its Uncomfortable Glory” By Dan Neil December 1, 2009 LA Times.

I just read Dan Neil’s article on REI’s brave commercial execution that features 2 women scarfing down a PB&J, without the J. It’s like they can’t wait for the sandwich to be complete. Who needs all the ingredients when 2 will do in a rush? This is the great outdoors in all its cold, damp, uncomfortable, realistic glory. The commercial’s voiceover says, “Oct. 28. Jenny Kruger finds out that even the finest four-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars.” The camera pans up to a patch of sky between the clouds in the dusky blackness.   View the commercial via the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZh_7vMSZxY&NR=1

Dan called it “very nice”.  I call it brave, honest, intrusive, compelling and overall OUTSTANDING!  Great job, REI and BBDO.  And congrats to Dan Neil and the LA Times for their insight in bringing it to our attention.

Wow, it can’t wait to be cold and uncomfortable again because of this execution. Thanks REI.  I’ll be sure to stop by first before I leave.

Let’s face it, not everyone is easily brandable. And furthermore, sometimes it is not an efficient use of time and energy trying to try create your unique brand if, at the end of the day, you are really an exceptionally good, effective “generic” product.

Before everyone gets ready to lynch me for heresy, I certainly feel that if you have truly unique skills, or a standout business persona you should do everything in your power to differentiate yourself and build your personal brand around these unique attributes. But sometimes what one offers is, at best, uncompromised performance at being a generalist. You know the proverbial “jack of all trades and a master of none”. Sometimes what is really needed is a superb generalist.

We can’t all be chiefs and generals. Sometimes the army just needs great troops, not another great tactician of outstanding strategist. If the organization’s bench strength is already strong with great generals and chiefs in place, what I would want for the organization is a proven professional who can execute the chief’s strategies flawlessly.

Ok, I can already hear you now. You are saying that the ability to be a great executer is by itself a unique quality, worthy of being a brand. Well, I site a real world debate that I had with a VP of marketing from an office supply/paper goods manufacturer. (I did not work for this company.) I argued, “Do you need to offer the market another brand of legal pad, at triple the price, with a higher quality yellow pad, with a brand name that is really unknown to most anyway”. Competitively, a 5-pk of regular pads will cost less, perform the same, and no one even cares or looks at what the name brand is”. But, we still expect…and get, an acceptable level of efficacy from the 5-pack of cheaper paper pads. I have yet seen a legal pad that did not perform up to expectations, no matter what the quality of the paper.

The same can be true of professionals who are only brandable with great deal of effort, energy and creative positioning to craft a brand. The end result is still answered by “who cares”. Know your brand quotient and position yourself accordingly. You’ll be more successful in the end.

Saab automobiles are, most would agree, a unique product within their catregory–”quirky” may be the word to best describe the well-etched brand. Having owned the company outright for the past ten years, GM wants to now cut and bury the company, as they’ve done with their Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer brands.

Yet Saab won’t go away easily. Despite representing less than one percent of GM’s overall sales, Michigan is now trying to sit on, squash and mufffle the dissenting voices of those on the other side of the pond. Perhaps GM hopes to use geographic distance to their favor, praying  for a big Nordic snow storm over the holidays so Michigan can quickly bury the remaining frames of Saabs sitting on auto lots.

But GM may face a bevy of  complications in killing off the scrappy Saab brand. First off, Saab is a cool car. Positioning-wise, I’d suggest it’s not that far off from Volkswagon, starring all these years in the role of VW’s older, more sophisticated female second cousin. And for all I know it’s probably a fairly-well engineered car that would benefit well in the hands of a smaller manufacturer who could pour some much needed mechanical attention and detail into the product, synching the auto’s integrity with its quirky, well-bred image. Perhaps most importantly, over 80% of Saab dealers are not in the U.S. (they’re located primarily in Europe), unlike the other brands GM killed off. Home turf can mean a lot in a passionate battle.

Don’t forget, Saab was a profitable company, until…. the year after GM bought them. It has not been profitable since then. A reason to kill them off? I think there are other options on the table to explore before such drastic behavior. It seems others think so, too.

In the end, the brand is a management nusance for GM, granted. It’s a distraction for a company with much larger concerns. But why not show a bit of love to the European community and help usher the Saab brand to a company willing to take on the challenge of owning and running the company? Such action would produce enormous goodwill for a (foreign) company with little positive equity to its credit right now. And Europe, by the way, buys loads of GM cars: over 2 million in Y2008, the second best result ever for GM. They can still grow there with less than ten percent of the overall market. Opportunity now knocks!

And besides, Saab will live on, somehow, some which way. Watch.

Benjamin sez you all deserve some props!

Ah, late December. The time when bloggers get lazy and start reposting their old crap rather than writing new material. We here at Dark Matter Matters are no exception. For the Dark Matter Matters top 10 posts of 2009, I’ve split the list into two categories. First we have 5 posts that were popular with readers, followed by 5 posts that were popular with, well, me.

Five posts popular with readers:

1. Brand positioning tip #1: points of parity and points of difference: Perhaps it’s the combination of analyzing Mexican food and brand positioning, but this post, the first in a series of tips that I wrote starting in June, is the most read post I’ve done yet on the blog.
2. Tom Sawyer, whitewashing fences, and building communities online:  Written in September, this post was the first in a series about community-building where I talk about the difference between creating communities to do your work for you and being a humble member of a community larger than just you.
3. Brand positioning tip #3: the brand mantra: A short post explaining Scott Bedbury’s concept of a brand mantra.
4. Maslow’s hierarchy of (community) needs: Comparing a company’s community motivations to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, introduces the Iain Gray hierarchy of community needs.
5. The top 10 books behind Dark Matter Matters: Exactly what it says it is. Books that inspire me.

Five posts that hardly anyone read. Give them a chance, people:

1. Tom Sawyer Part 2: where can your company pitch in?: As usual, the sequel isn’t as good as the original, but I still like this post, which has really helped me focus some of my ideas on corporate humility.
2. How to conduct a symphony of communications: Compares the role of a 21st century communications professional to a conductor in a symphony.
3. Sharing your brand story (and here’s ours): Introduced the Red Hat Story book (including a downloadable copy).
4. Why did I just write a post about Viking longships: Compares the job of brand manager to the guy at the front of a Viking longship. Yeah, I wouldn’t read it from that bobo article title either, but this is the kind of post that makes me happy.
5. Markepoetry Part 2: It turns out I have needs: Talking about making (only) myself happy, no list of the Dark Matter Matters posts that no one reads would be complete without including one of my pieces of markepoetry– the language of marketing, made beautiful. Basically, I take real statements that I find in marketing copy and transform them from ugly marketing-ese into poetry. I thought this one was nice.

So as we close out 2009, I just want to say thanks for everything.

I’m approaching one one year of writing this blog, and it sure has been a lot of fun. I still can’t believe I’ve written over 100 posts. What has made it the most fun for me is getting to meet lots of new people, while also becoming closer to people I already know.

I’m looking forward to 2010. I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about.

Success Begins on Sunday…today I am starting out another successful week learning to create “me-directed” FB ads for my clients at JMI. I’m learning to create “me-directed” ads that change images and text depending on the characteristics of the user viewing the ad…hence, the term “me-directed.”

For example, a Facebook Ad I saw today said…

“That’s right, if you’re a 41 year old Female driver, your car insurance rates can be as low as $12 a month. Get your free quote now!”

A very nicely done ME-DIRECTED ad, INDEED! I’m 41, female, driver and of course I’m looking for low car insurance rates. Who isn’t??? 

This ad was very different from the rest because it’s perfectly positioned for ME…Gave my age, gender and car ins (something I could be looking into). 

As a result of seeing this ad, I’m stoked!!! Which is a weird thing for me to say, since I never say “stoked,” for ANY reason…but I AM!!!

I’m totally stoked and excited to learn as much as I possibly can so my JMI clients can capitalize on this type of advertising.

To Another Successful (yet short) Week!!  Cheers!! ~~~Dawn )

Of course one could place a link to the ballot, but that would be to simplistic and very unpolish.

via Polonian wikis: Top achievement of polonian webmaster.

At the end of the year, it seems we are always reading about what the past year was like and what the future one will bring. Everyone makes lists at the end of the year, including us. This year in particular, there seem to be even more of that summation fever going on.

At Gold Communications, we try to keep our lists simple and concrete. Five items is a number that sounds feasible and achievable, both key characteristics. Lists should never be too long because one sets themselves up for failure right from the start.

Goals are important but they much be reachable. Our advice is to set yourself a few goals at the beginning of the year and then check back in every six months to see how far you have come in attaining your plans.

Our five goals for 2010 are pretty straight forward:

1. A more efficient use of Twitter, Facebook and Linked In for our clients and our company.

2. Fuller participation in the associations we support

3. A new Pro Bono project for the year

4. Quicker response time following new meetings.

5. Lateral thinking

While these may seem banal or easy to do, the key will be consistency. Like all PR and communications professionals, it is the constant updating of one’s tool box and knowledge that makes the difference between us and our peers.

I recently got intrigued by the whole Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort. Obviously I am way behind the true thought leaders in this field. I didn’t get my FaceBook site until a year ago when a friend chastised me for being behind the curve of the social networking trend. I just got a Twitter site within the last 6 weeks. Yes, I was a Linker (LinkedIn), and I was on another lesser known social network site but I viewed this whole trend as something for those who were not very serious business people. After all, if you were a serious business type how did one have the time to tinker with these time consuming diversions. Well, I now smell the coffee. I have gotten excited about the whole process in its entirety.

I started with completing my LinkedIn site so that my status shows 100%. Then I posted a professional profile that is viewable on my FaceBook site through BrightFuse.com. I even created my own website within the last 2 months. But I mainly did these things because others said that marketing professionals should be getting involved at this level. Especially, if you were recently unemployed as I am. But they said that it was necessary, particularly if I want to stay relevant in the newest phase of the electronic technology expansion called Social Media. But at first I was just going through the motions. Then I got exposed to some folks that are really proficient in the whole SEO process. I have even been lucky enough to meet a true professional in the field, John Nosal through an organization called Career Connections. These folks helped me to understand how little usage I was getting out of my tools it they were not complete. Then once complete they needed to e optimized to reach people through SEO efforts.

I had to start optimizing and linking my sites. At first it was just a list of activities that doubled my ever growing “list of things to do”. But then I got started and I got hooked. I stared optimizing each social site. I then took my very basic website and started dressing it up so that it spoke “professionalism” to other marketing professionals who viewed it. Don’t get me wrong…it is still basic compared to some that I have seen. But it is not a company website. It is just my personal site to market me, Wendell Hall, and Mother Nature Marketing. Very recently I created my first blog on WordPress as you are no doubt reading now. Each baby step that I learned has made me go back and continue to refine the earlier social networking sites.

As I began to tinker I found myself more and more intrigued by the creative process. Being unemployed I have more free time than I have had in years to devote energy to just learning, just for sake of “learning”. Intrigue grew into real enjoyment. Now I happily logon to Blog, Tweet, FB and Link. See, good things come from the most unfortunate circumstances. Certainly I wish I was still among the ranks of the employed. But since I am not I have learned a new set of skills that, hopefully, keeps me relevant and informed.

Creating and ensuring consistent & strong positioning is one of the most important tasks for a marketing person to do. If the marketing team does not consciously create and communicate the positioning, the market and sometimes the competition will do it for you. I am a big fan of Pragmatic Marketing, and they have a great article on positioning. The key points include:

• You cannot create the positioning in a vacuum, it has to be supported by the positioning, brand reputation that already exists
• The supporting messaging has to be credible
•  Positioning should be problem/solution focused, rather than feature/function

In my experience even marketing professionals get confused between value proposition, positioning, branding, tagline, mission statement, elevator pitch, and messaging. However, if marketing people get confused, imagine the rest of the organization. In today’s world of blogs, twitter, podcasts, it is critical that everyone in your company understand your positioning and leverage when communicating with customers, and prospects about your company.

How does it fit together? I propose that pretty much anything and all major external communications must be positioned. Examples includes: a major product release, job postings, a new product launch, an acquisition.

First and foremost, to ensure consistency, when I say positioning, I do not mean a tagline or elevator pitch, although those can be derived from positioning. I am referring to a one page positioning document. I use the template from Pragmatic Marketing. It covers

• Problem statement
• Solution statement
• Primary message
• Product description
• Three supporting benefits-oriented features

It’s design is to support positioning a product or a product release, but it can be adjusted for other announcements.

In putting this together, it should be done with a group that includes product manager, marketing communications, input from a thought leader on your sales team. The hardest part is trying to get it all on one page, with as few words as possible, while at the same time, creating meaningful content.

Finally, to build and leverage consistency product releases should build upon product positioning, which in turn should build on corporate positioning. So whether your company is a start-up or an established market leader, create and write down your corporate positioning, then ensure all appropriate stakeholders know it.

I have learned to look to the natural world as a source of learning and solace. Mother Nature, herself, has frequently taught me the lessons of slowing down to a point where I can think and process the information around me. She has shown me that natural selection is the way of the universe and is not necessarily a bad thing in business either. Consumers gravitate to the best ideas, the clearest message and products that fill a need and make life a little easier or happier.

Similar lessons from nature are all around. She has shown me the wonders of immense snow capped mountains, vast green valleys and the awesomeness of a rushing river, the beauty in desert environments and the wonders that lie in tidal waters of our oceans. All of the elements of her natural world have lessons waiting to be learned. If listened to, these lessons combine with my spirit, make me a more knowledgeable person, a more thoughtful business man, a more creative marketer and a more patient and tolerant human being. Some might say that Mother Nature is my Therapist.

Much is being said about who your best customer will be in 2010. In the last 24 hours, I’ve filled my mind with a few tidbits I thought you should know about for your strategy and marketing efforts in 2010. I’ll cover them in this post and the next so stay tuned.

First, this morning’s Wall Street Journal had a great article on the behavior changes we’re seeing even from the highly affluent. The reporters state that

“…Businesses ranging from shoemakers to financial services to luxury hotels don’t expect American consumers to return to their spendthrift ways anytime soon.”

The article goes on to state that Jim Taylor, vice chairman of market researcher the Harrison Group, last month surveyed 1,800 affluent Americans and found that 48% think they could suffer major financial losses in the future. “People are getting used to being careful, and I don’t know how you undo that,” Mr. Taylor said.

Just this October, the Commerce Department reported that Americans saved 4.4% of their disposable income, which compares with an average annual savings of 2.7% for the past 10 years. We’ve been saving nearly zero in the last several years, so this is a great sign for the financial stability of the American family.

Another research study by DYG Inc., of Connecticut shows that consumers report being worried more about social and environmental values than before. In DYG’s studies, the proportion of respondents who say they have shopped for products for “social, political or environmental reasons” rose by 10 percentage points, to 51%, over the past year. That’s huge! Positioning your product or service this way can boost your business; the extent will vary by market.

And, just yesterday, I listened to Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics Magazine and now trends analyst at New York advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, profess the following trends will dominate next year:

Mr. Francese has so much more to say and I’ll gladly share that with you in my next post. If you just can’t wait, you can purchase his report for yourself at this link on Advertising Age’s site. Until I write again, be sure to work on your 2010 marketing strategy. Running your business without it is like inviting stagnation at best, decline at worst, into your enterprise!

Recently Starbucks launched its VIA Instant Coffee product, for $1 a packet or cup. When I first heard about it, I thought they were crazy! Here you have a true category creator, in this case premium coffee, coming up with what to many is a downscale, basically commodity type of product. Look at it this way, currently you can get a 20 ounce cup (“venti”) for over $2 today in the Boston area where I live, or you can get a cup of instant (Nescafe and even Tasters’ Choice) for pennies.

Is there a difference in taste? You bet. Then does this mean that Starbucks is lowering its standards?, in essence looking to capture that “cup of joe” on the run crowd?, probably not, at least directly for a $1 a packet.

To most of us Starbucks means affordable luxury, infinite choices, the third-place on top of home and office, “Venti” and “Grande” instead of large and jumbo, rich flavored beverages, etc. How does this square with a product category that we associate as bland, chemically adulterated, “instant” coffee…

The danger here is if we associate VIA as an instant coffee product. If it comes down to price, it is very expensive. And if it is not positioned strategically, then the “instant” product can take the Starbucks brand down a notch or two. Talk about a potentially very dangerous brand conflict in the works!

If customers begin to associate a premium brand with a commodity product, the risks are:

1. elevating the commodity product while at the same time lowering your brand value, and/or
2. trying to swim upstream and justify an off the charts price against other much cheaper products in the, in this case, instant coffee category.

A mis-fire and at best the product will fail with worse consequences possible if people sense that brand is deteriorating and losing value.  Talk about high risk and high stakes.

And Starbucks has muffed it before.

Remember how in their zeal to speed up service they mechanized the bar drink process in order to serve more customers more efficiently? They reduced the hand crafted nature of the beverage and role of the barrista. This opened the door for potent “new” competitors such as Dunkin Donuts and even McDonald’s to leverage mechanical processes and also offer such beverages, enter the premium category and take market share.

Add to this that the company has taken what appears from the outside to be a passive marketing posture these past few years with flattening sales to boot, and I wondered how they could pull this off.

Glad to say, Starbucks did it… and did it with superb marketing intelligence!

You could see this high level of marketing thinking in the launch itself.

If you are a Starbucks fan you may remember that this past fall they had VIA tastings in each store as part of the rollout. The interesting thing was what they tasted VIA against. My initial thought was that they would taste against Instant Coffee to show how much better (hopefully!) it was.

But instead they did something completely different… they tasted and literally positioned VIA against Starbucks brewed coffee itself and used Instant to define convenience, not the category.

I will argue that this was a stroke of marketing genius. Here’s why.

1. They redefined the instant coffee category into Blue Ocean, uncontested territory, from a low price/commodity play to convenience… take it anywhere.
2. Instead of trying to push up market in the instant coffee category ($1/cup price for a product costing in the pennies), they pushed down in the brewed category (Starbucks flavor for $1/cup).

Roll it all up and with VIA now you can now have a cup of Starbucks you can take or have almost anywhere for a buck! Sounds good to me, and tastes good too! Apply marketing at this level to the company overall, well Happy Days may indeed be back at Starbucks again.

Repositioning

Here are Four Rules of Success that Trout provides in Chapter Nine:

1. Find out what position you already have in your public’s mind. Spend a few dollars on research. Or put in your hat and coat and go out and talk to customers and prospects. And don’t forget the most important people of all: the editors of your key publications.

2. Adopt a repositioning strategy that you want to own. Zero in on a specific concept that you want to achieve through public relations and advertising. Make sure this idea is not a general one, like improving your image. And avoid attributes like “dynamic,” “modern,” or “progressive.” These are not about repositioning; they are purely a question of style that public relations can seldom do much about.

[Note: Trout’s comments about a repositioning strategy remind me of a family-owned barbershop whose principal competitor (a chain franchisee) offered a $10 haircut. The family-owned barbershop repositioned itself with the statement “We repair $10 haircuts.”]

3. Convince everyone to concentrate exclusively on this one repositioning approach. This includes your management, your advertising agency [if you have one], and, of course, everyone in your public relations department [or better yet, everyone in your organization who interacts with customers]. Stick to your one basic strategy, and reinforce it with every press and public penetration.

[Note: In response to other airlines who continue to charge and increase the fees for checking bags, Southwest Airlines now wages a new advertising campaign that proclaims “We love bags! Bags fly free!”]

4. From time to time, evaluate your PR efforts [i.e. interaction with customers, prospects, and print media] along with your advertising, merchandising, and overall marketing position. Public relations is simply one of a number of tools that should all be aiming in the same direction. It is self-defeating when PR pulls in one direction and advertising in another.

Remember, readjusting perceptions takes time and patience.

What is Positioning?
Positioning is a product management process to identify and ultimately articulate a product’s value to potential buyers. It’s an important process that should result in one or more positioning documents (more on that in a future post) that are the foundation for all outbound marketing communications.

Why buyers as opposed to users? Buyers are the decision makers. They need to be convinced that your product offers the best value in solving their business problem, particularly in comparison to your competitor’s product.

Why is it important?
Not only is positioning important to your outbound marketing activities, it is also important for other reasons such as:

• When unforeseen issues crop up during development, it can provide guidance on what’s the best alternative.
• When you make the go/no go to market decision, it can be used to determine if you have delivered product value.

When do you start positioning?
Considering its importance to your development process, positioning is not something that should be undertaken just before product launch. Ideally, it should be completed before you write a single line of code. The more clarity you have about your product and its value, the better you will be able to support your product from its inception to product launch and beyond.

I have to thank Darren from the Our Life blog for today’s post.  He turned me on to the Lens Simulator on the Nikon website.  The simulator does a good job of displaying the difference in lens focal length along with the crop factor associated with using FX lenses on a DX body.  There are a number of different inputs and images to select from, and when you get tired of playing you can then try the Lens Positioning Map (link found on the dame page).  The positioning map gives you a visual representation of focal length with aperture and how the various lenses compare to one another.  It also lets you select your own Nikon lenses for customized comparison.

During the holidays I bake assorted quick breads for my friends and clients – pumpkin, banana, zucchini, lemon-poppy seed, cherry and on and on.  They’ve become quite popular and every year around this time people start asking me when they’ll get their holiday goodie basket. 

One of my good friends, Tina, makes the best cookies on the planet – her gingerbread cookies are the bomb! She, too, uses the holidays to showcase her work.  For almost ten years now, I have been telling her she needs to give up her day job and become the cookie lady!  Well she’s finally interested and wants me to join her. 

So…we are discussing the possibility of starting a specialty baked goods company.  There’s so much to think about.  We have fantastic products which appeal to the general public (or at least those not on a diet).  But how do we narrow that down? Who would our best customers be and how do we package and market our products to them? 

We could sell exclusively online.  We could target businesses and promote ourselves as a corporate gift basket company.  We could open a neighborhood bakery.   Or we could sell to specialty restaurants in Atlanta.  Ultimately, we’d love our company to be all those things.  But it’s crazy to think we could effectively market to all those people right off the bat. 

Each type of customer is looking for something different.  Each has its own motivations and expectations.  And each will react differently to various messages and packaging ideas.  Ugh!!! 

We need to start at a very basic level and look at our own unique style, ideas, motivations, values and products.  If we can identify who we are as a company and what we stand for (our brand), our first niche (target market) should reveal itself.   Once we decide where to begin we can learn more about our market, research our competition and start the positioning process. 

Take some time to think about this if you’re about to launch a new product, service or company.  It may seem elementary but I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs who can not define themselves and what they stand for much less their target market, competition or core strategy.  What motivates you and your customers?  What can you offer that is unique?  Does your advertising send the right message about who you are and the product/service you provide? 

–Maureen McCarthy

talk about an elegantly simple message! this is more proof that the best creative is often the simplest. (jm)

Author : THERESIA, RENNY

Persaingan antar kartu pra-bayar yang makin ketat dari waktu ke waktu membuat para provider seluler berlomba-lomba mencari cara agar dapat mempertahankan bahkan meningkatkan jumlah pelanggan yang dimiliki. Penelitian ini mencoba mengidentifikasi tentang segmentasi dan positioning gsm pra-bayar. Hasil penelitian ini menemukan bahwa segmentasi berdasarkan psikografi pelanggan kartu pra-bayar terbagi menjadi segmen status-oriented, action-oriented, principle-oriented. Dan setiap kartu pra-bayar memiliki positioning tertentu di benak pelanggan.

Keyword : pre-paid gsm, segmentation, positioning, status-oriented, action-oriented, principle-oriented

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/3136/

Author : PRAJITNO, CHRISTIAN

In sport footwear global market, NIKE, Reebok, and Adidas are the biggest player with NIKE as the markand leader. This dissertation report would like to analyze the competition among those three giants. As the basis of comparison, the writer uses “9 core elements of marketing ” theory from Hermawan Kertajaya. Deep comparison will be conducted to analyze the key success factor of NIKE in which able to leave Reebok and Adidas by significant gap. From those elements, this dissertation would give analysis in which section NIKE is doing better over others and vice versa. The comparison would be supported by the relevant data and findings. In the last chapter, this dissertation report would answer the research problem Its NIKE untouchable by its competitors?- with several possible actions that may facilitate Reebok and Adidas to be able to catch up with NIKE.

Keyword : marketing mix, sport shoes, target market, segmenting, competitive analysis, positioning

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1163/

Author : TJONG, CAROLIN

Indonesian tourism was chosen to be the topic that could be interesting to be analyzed as in the late years; the country image has been decreasing due to bombing issues, terrorism issues and economic crisis. Besides, based on the data that the writer had obtained, the numbers of Dutch tourists were decreasing slightly higher than the other European countries. Some research, including primary and secondary research, had been done to reach the most accurate result. The aim of the research is to show whether or not any relation between the decrease on numbers of Dutch tourists and the negative issues towards Indonesia. The result showed that most of the respondents who had never been to Indonesia were less interested to visit Indonesia due to the negative image that the country possessed. Realizing this finding, the writer had some suggestions which were related to building new positioning and renewing marketing strategy to establish positive image and attract more Dutch tourist or even international tourist visiting Indonesia in future years.

Keyword : image management, customer satisfaction, segmenting, targeting, positioning, customer loyalty

Sumber : http://repository.petra.ac.id/1156/

Knowledge Bases on the Web

I attended an interesting talk by Rajeev Rastogi PhD – head of Yahoo! Research in India. He talked about the science behind building knowledge bases form information sources on the Internet.

Building these knowledge bases is tough owing to diversities in representing the same content, noise and the dynamic nature of the Web with about 10 % of all websites changing structure every day.

Knowledge bases are built by crawling, extracting information, making sense of it and making it meaningful. Information extraction is aided by structured and auto-generated web pages such as those in Amazon and Yelp. The process becomes tedious for custom-crafted websites (organizations, individuals). Players in the Internet Search space are developing mechanisms for content matching, identifying content redundancy, machine learning, pattern recognition and more.

Internet Searches of the Near-Future

All this implies that Internet search in the near future would have structured abstracts with every URL, topic entity pages (a comprehensive one-stop information about any search string in the first page of search results including images, videos, text, opinions, reviews / ratings, interviews et al), location / context specific search results, comparison shopping and a host of features that would make searching efficient, quick and more productive. Little wonder that Bing is positioning itself as a decision engine rather than a search engine.

What does this mean for Internet marketers?

Let us make a very basic division while answering this question – that of retail-side marketing versus industrial marketing. I shall deal with retail-side marketing in this post.

Key Pointers for Retail-side Marketers

1. Well-structured and template-driven websites for users and crawlers alike to know where lies what on the website
2. Use of standardized terminology – Site analytics tools provide keywords and phrases that work best businesses based on end-user searches. Using standardized terminology well implies having acquired a reasonably good picture of the minds of buyers – in short, having found the positioning plank.
3. Comprehensive online support for products and services – I might have mislaid my television user manual or I might want to look at how to do some light-weight servicing for my scooter. I would typically turn to the company’s support URL for this (and review and refer their products based on my experience on the website).

Creativity, Advertising?

What about creativity, advertising et al? All would stay. The Internet is a channel and the sheer amount of information present on it requires that websites give pertinent information to users and crawlers without much fanfare. There is creativity in addressing this challenge too.

What about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Keywords are like gestures that early man used when language was not known. Semantics would evolve and crisp descriptions, great but pithy and useful content and references would rule the roost. Tweaking sites for search engines would become unnecessary because search engines would actually converge towards how end-users seek and access information. Therefore, abiding by age-old marketing principles of understanding usage patterns of end-users well would hold the key.

Branding, Positioning?

The end-game is still of branding, positioning and post-sales support (not to forget high quality products). Just that there has been a vital addition to the sources of primary market research. This is Web 2.0 – the new, dynamic, collaborative channel for marketing and sales.

I shall tackle industrial marketing in another post.

I have a button I wear every Christmas.  I believe I’ve had it for more than 20 years.  Some people get the message, many do not.   The way my mind works, I got it the first time I saw it and I had to buy the button.  However at parties and in group settings,  I see some people struggle to find the true meaning. (Sounds like a good Christmas tale?)

When I see the way different people react to the button, it always reminds me of how people respond differently to messaging and advertising. 

Scientists and physicians rarely get the button’s message.  I’ve had many say, “What element is that?” or “I know what H2O is, but what is HO3?”   Kids get the button’s message fast and are the first to yell out “HO-HO-HO.”  More women than men decipher the meaning.   Detail people don’t get it; 10,000-foot people usually see the joke.   

It doesn’t mean that one group is better than the other.  It means we are different in how we view and interpret messages.  One message rarely works for all people.

We really need to think about our target audiences psychographically, rather than just demographically.  So the next time you are thinking about putting a message out there, think about what the people you are trying to reach are like:  How do they view the world? Are they left- or right-brain thinkers? How are they moved emotionally?  Then ,craft your message accordingly.  

And if you are too clever, you may be missing a large part of your audience. Loud and literal always wins the day, even at Christmas.  HO HO HO.