Phil's Blog

Consulting For You -- A Fourth Anniversary

This blog celebrates its fourth anniversary this month. Hooray!

To celebrate, here is my very first blog post from November 2005:

“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” --Peter F. Drucker After I retired from 30 years at General Mills, Six Flags and, on the agency side, from Campbell-Mithun (Minneapolis) and my own advertising agency partnerships, I traveled, I relaxed and I taught for a semester at the University of Florida. But I became a little bored. What to do? I love capitalism and, especially, marketing and advertising. So I became a part-time marketing consultant, part-time retiree. In the first two years of this new consulting career, I have been hired to coordinate ad agency (and PR firm) reviews. I have also helped advertisers (aka "clients") to negotiate better, often less expensive compensation agreements. I love it. If you and your management want to improve your marketing, conduct an agency review, negotiate a better compensation agreement, please call or email me. Let’s talk. Thank you. Phil Schwartz

In a recent agency review, I am absolutely certain that none of the agencies participating in the review ever heard the word. The word I am referring to is a verb. It refers to one thing none of the agencies did. In fact, few agencies do it. That word is

rehearse.

Mommy, what's a newspaper?

Almost four years ago, I wrote a blog post "Daddy, what's a newspaper?" which forecast the decline in newspaper appeal and circulation. Since then, I've posted three updates.

Newspapers have failed for most part when adding an online version because they've done so without any marketing strategy whatsoever. None. Weil, unless you count putting the paper online as an actual marketing thought.

Inevitable failure comes for many reasons. They're cheap about it, both in spending and planning. They use juniors to do the conversion, those recently out of tech school who know nothing about marketing. And, principally because they, as many clients have done, assume that the Web is simply a print vehicle without paper.

This lazy, uneducated view is still being espoused. Here's an excerpt from a September 21st interview with Tina Gaudoin, editor of The Wall Street Journal magazine on WWD.com: "Asked if the online-only issues specifically would be adapted for the Web, Gaudoin replied: 'They’ll be specifically adapted in the sense that it’ll be online. It will include the same length, the same quality, the same integrity as the magazine.'"  

The more things change, the more non-thinkers fall behind.

Phil

Lee Clow said

"Impact requires craft."

"Try asking your doctor to do a little angioplasty on spec."

"If you'd put it in your Powerpoint deck, don't put it in your ad."

"New does not necessarily equal good. Old does not necessarily equal bad. Exercise wisdom accordingly."

Whine Not.

"A person, who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person." - Dave Barry

"A potential client who is not nice to you is not going to award you the account." - Phil Schwartz

After advising 54 advertising agency reviews, I've observed quite an array of company presidents, CMOs and other senior managers as they make the decisions about which ad agency gets the advertising assignment and which ones don't. In many cases, it hasn't been pretty.

Principally, there's a lack of respect for service companies. It may stem from suspicion or jealously or past experiences. Wherever it comes from, you should get some advice from a "fly on the wall" such as me. 

My counsel can be a full-day discussion with your agency's management or advice on pitching and winning your next review. 

When you think of the cost to pitch accounts these days, you might want to learn as much as you can about things like selection committee discussions, what must be said by agencies to prospects and critical mistakes made by agencies that prevent success.

So, please e me to begin the conversation.

Phil

Crowd Magnet at a Trade Show

Very few companies understand how to market themselves and their products at a trade show. Proof can be found in two forms. First, walk down the aisle of any trade show, consumer or industry, and count how often you are even slightly enticed by design or by humans to enter a booth. The number will be small. Second, observe who at the company is given responsibility for trade show marketing. You will discover it varies wildly and is often split up between two or more departments. All this is plainly wacky considering how much it costs to rent a booth; build, furnish and ship a display; supply collateral materials and pay for travel expenses and sales people to man (and woman) the booth for 3 days. Here are the key objectives of trade show marketing: 1. Draw qualified attendees to your booth, 2. Teach attendees about your product(s) and 3. Obtain their contact information for follow up by sales people at and after the show. In my experience, the consistently successful solution in getting qualified trade and consumer show attendees to enter your booth, learn about your product, and willingly leave their information is to hire David Stahl, who calls himself: the Crowd Magnet. On a 26-inch platform, in a booth 10 feet square, even in an obscure area of the exhibit hall, Stahl can bring into the booth at least 25% of the attendees walking the floor at a given moment. Yes, 25%. The booths around you should be pleased. And, he works from your product creative brief to tell, even teach, booth visitors key points about your product before he turns them over to your sales people. He does 4-5 (different) performances a day. He’s been doing them for 25 years, mostly in tech and finance shows plus many consumer shows. He is nothing short of amazing. In a 2-3 day show, he will attract almost everyone in the hall at least once. Visit his site.

Phil

The Internet is a fad.

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."                                                                                                                  - Mark Twain

Just look at the Web sites for most magazines, newspapers, hotels and ad agencies. You'll see sites that do not avail themselves of this powerful, expanding and omnipresent medium. You'll see newspaper mastheads just like their printed versions, hear magazine pages turning like their hard copy brethren and companies that took their brochures and put them page by page online as if those are great and efficient ideas.

They're all failures. Their management clearly views the Internet as a fad and believes it will fail as a communication medium. Or worse, they really have no expectations of it at all.

For them, it will fail. For them, it won't produce. However, for the rest of us, it's opportunity knocking. Loudly.

To identify real marketing opportunities for your company on the Internet, please email me.

Phil

Microsoft Chooses "Follow" Again

"Lead, follow or get out of the way." - Thomas Paine

Microsoft chooses "follow." As Microsoft and Yahoo announce their 10-year search deal, we are reminded again of the reactive, not innovative culture of Microsoft. 

Lead by a the uninspiring Steve Ballmer, the company achieves second place once again. Sometimes, they seem to shoot for third. 

They missed Search the first and second time around opening the door for Google and Yahoo. They copied the iPod five years to the month after it was introduced by Apple with Zune. They purchased Razorfish and droves of the Web's best minds fled that company. (Now it's up for sale.) X Box is not leading although they briefly benefited when competitors couldn't deliver more popular game systems to the market. And let's not talk about wistful Vista.

I guess the mistake is to assume that Microsoft wants to lead. Clearly, they don't. If you were Google would you be shaking in your shoes? Probably not.

So, to remind myself of their firm commitment to refrain from innovation, I shall apply that lower case style of so many digitally savvy folks and spell their name microsoft. Shh. Whisper it from now on.

Hyperbole

The late Mike Sloan, a mentor and former partner of mine, used to advise potential clients in our new business presentations: "If you read your ad copy as a carnival barker and it sounds hokey and false, then it isn't good ad copy."

In almost every new business presentation that I've observed (more than 1600!), agencies claim to be great, often superior, in this or that. Few of them sound believable to selection committee members who not only don't vote for those shops in the review, they make broad judgements about the advertising business.

"Are they ALL like this? Do they all exaggerate beyond believability?"

Well, most of them are and do, yes.

Phil

Broken Brands - Part 2

Dear Copywriter,

Let's imagine it's a year from now. Or five. What are the emotionally charged and motivating words that you, an advertising copywriter, can use to draw interest, create buzz and, most importantly of all, get people to buy?

For the first time in advertising history, the word "New" with or without an exclamation mark will be innocuous. So will the word "Special." And forget about using the word "Sale" unless it's a sale on a sale on a sale.

"Lowest prices ever." -- Right.

"Never before seen" -- Uh huh.

"Today only" -- Sorry, I can't make it.

"Supplies are limited" -- Yawn.

Sorry, my copywriter friend, the welcome mat has been worn out during this recession.

Fortunately, there are two answers. Number one, is doing what used to be called "high school" advertising meaning using naughty words (oh no!) or writing suggestive headlines. What's the big concept here? Pull down your pants to get attention. (For examples, check your local stations. Cable, too.)

The other answer? Some strategizing with your favorite thinker, me. I'm only an email away.

My word!

Sincerely,

Phil