Marketing Insight Archives - Page 14 of 15

New York Series: Barbie Celebrating in Style

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

It’s not secret that Barbie has had her challenges in her 50 year history, from promoting ridiculous body image, to the more recent market share battle with Bratz.

But on her 50th birthday I saw one of the coolest promotions I had seen in some time. Bloomingdales New York. It has the entire history of Barbie on display. Nearly every doll ever made in uber cool glass cases, right through the entire ladies clothing floors. It cannot be missed. and demands attention. In addition they have some life size barbies who have been dressed by leading fashion designers. Here’s a photo essay, and some important comments about it below:

If we are in the fashion business (which more of us are than we think) then we must constantly be re-inventing, and reminding our people why we are the coolest.

How does your startup show how cool it is?

New York Series: Bloomingdales – You’re Welcome, really.

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The historically significant department store Bloomingdales do some pretty cool stuff. This includes the ‘Visitor discount’ they provide:

bloomingdales-visitor-centre-1

bloomingdales-visitor-centre-2

Yep, if you’re from another country you automatically receive an 11% discount on everything you buy. Now, this isn’t one of those trick promotions, impossible to get, with 100 other conditions. You simply go to the visitor center pictured above and show them your passport, or overseas license and that is it. And the discount is real, even if an item is on promotion or already discounted, you get the 11% on top of that. I was fortunate enough to get an incredible winter jacket which was already half price (end of winter discount, even though it was actually snowing outside) with an additional 11%. I was pretty happy. They also have a gift incentive if you spend over $200, and yep, I got my gift…

It get’s better, they also have personal shopping assistants, Multi-lingual assistants to take your around store and free hotel delivery for purchases greater that $250. You can read more about it here.

Sure, discounting isn’t always the path to profitability, but when you are taking one time customers, making them feel special, with ‘money to spend’, under your wing, it’s pretty clear that they are ‘inventing revenue’.

What does your startup do to ‘invent revenue’?

New York Series: Naming a Brand

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

This is the oldest marketing lesson in the book – What to call our brand. It seems it doesn’t matter how many times the story is told, but some businesses never seem to learn. Here’s a bad example of a clothing brand name which I saw in Bloomingdale’s today.

Yep, Acne. Which means pimples here in Australia. I’m surprised it even made it instore. So here’s the startup blog rules for brand names. Which I’ll keep short:

Try to invent a word that currently has no meaning. (our job is to invent meaning under it)
Ensure you can ‘own it’ globally. (No confusion, registerable)
Make sure it doesn’t mean something ridiculous, in your country or another.

That’s all that matters in real terms. Other rules are made up by people who are focused on stuff which doesn’t really have much to do with brand building.

New York Series: Nice copy writing

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a nice piece of copy writing I found on a store in Soho. The thing I like is that ‘fun’ have finally entered categories which go beyond toys, chocolate bars and candy.

Life was meant to be fun, so I think it best we inject it into our startup regardless of what category or industry we play in.

New York Series: NBC ‘Scareface’ & UGC

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I went to 30 Rock to check out the NBC studio. One thing that struck me was the involvement they create for customers in the studio. Here’s a picture of me as Al Pacino:

It’s an old trick, but the point is simple:

The days of passive consumption are over.

We now demand to be part of the experience, to create the stuff we buy. Especially in new media and web forums.

New York Series: Dylan’s Candy Bar

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I was so impressed by Dylan’s Candy Bar – they get it.

It’s just perfect in every way. The understand the following important factors in branding, retail, business, marketing:

Theatre at transaction – best I’ve ever seen
Premium product
Single Minded proposition
Being the experts
Feel good factor
Service by people who dig working there (when you get served they say ‘have a sweet day!’ – love it)
Escapism
The brands are the stars – the product ‘is’ the promotion. No advertising required here.
They know the category is more important than their ‘Dylan’s brands’.

In fact, instead of me raving on…. here’s a huge photo essay I took. That should give you the idea. Enjoy.

New York Series: So much advertising

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I am absolutely flummoxed at how deep the media channels flow in the USA.

I’ve never such visual pollution in one city. So much advertising.The thing I’m most surprised about is the ethical (pun intended) pharmaceutical category. TV advertisements for Drug X, encouraging people to go to the doctor to see if they have disease Y, in which case they should ask the doctor to prescribe drug X. This is so wrong, on so many levels. Start ups out there, please be in business for good – sales should be your secondary objective – helping people your first.

times-square

Sure, Times Square is kind of cool to look at, a real visual orgy. But it just never ends.

If you’re in the media business in Australia or Europe, there are plenty of new spaces which can be leveraged. I’ll provide a summary of new media channels with a photo essay at the end of the trip. But in the interim here’s a link to an historical advertising photo stream I found on flickr. Quite interesting.