For 40 years, you couldn’t walk through Grand Central Station in New York without admiring the Kodak Coloramas. These 18×60 foot photographs showcased the Kodak brand to commuters, highlighting the creativity of great photography in a series of “Kodak moments.” Kodak marketing executives were adept at weaving the brand into the fabric of America for generations. In fact, at its peak, Kodak captured 90% of the US film market and was one of the world’s most valuable brands.
Immensely successful companies can become myopic and product oriented instead of focusing on consumers’ needs. Kodak’s story of failing has its roots in its success, which made it resistant to change. Its insular corporate culture believed that its strength was in its brand and marketing, and it underestimated the threat of digital.
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It’s been said that you can’t please all of the people all of the time and it holds true for marketing, as well. Especially, when it comes to the generation gap between Gen-X and Gen-Y consumers.
That’s the finding of new research by Nelson Barber, an associate professor of hospitality management at the University of New Hampshire, who looked at the shopping habits of Gen-X and Gen-Y consumers.
Those groups together comprise 116 million consumers. Generation X is generally considered those people born between 1964 and 1977. Generation Y is identified as those born between 1978 and 1998.
Barber decided to try to understand what marketing methods work best for each group by examining how each comes to its purchasing decisions. He discovered that the differences in their shopping habits have significant implications for marketers.
“Generation X is very motivated to search for purchase-related information and is adept at searching. Generation Xers tend to use information not as a point of pride but as assurance that they are not being taken advantage of by marketers and are getting the best deal possible,” said Barber. “Generation Y selects and consumes products that help them achieve their goals of blending in with the crowd or a certain group; thus, they are influenced by the need to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them.”
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What can a boneless barbeque-pork sandwich teach you about marketing? More than you might think. McDonald’s announced Monday that its elusive McRib sandwich is back on its menu, available at all U.S. locations until November 14. (For a limited time only!) Since it was introduced in 1982, the McRib has been a fleeting menu item, irking customers by never settling in one location for too long. (Hurry, get it while it lasts!) And in the last decade, McDonald’s has begun using the McRib’s alleged eternal disappearance (One last chance!) and miraculous comeback (Wait, there’s more!) as quirky promotional events. Does all that hype sound familiar? While McDonald’s playing hard-to-get with the McRib certainly baffles most customers, from a business perspective, it has proven to be a wildly effective marketing strategy. The McRib’s marketing strategy bundles the appeal of exclusivity, scarcity, and seasonality into one savory package. And it’s become a strategy so successful that McDonald’s is making the promotion perennial. Proof? How about a Facebook fan page that has more than 7,000 “Likes,” or the obsessive unofficial McRib Locator website, which attempts to identify McRib hot zones by cobbling together user-submitted “confirmed” and “possible” sightings of the McRib across the United States, (according to the site, the Northeastern states and Southern California currently boast the most confirmed sightings). The McRib has even found a place in the pop-cultural zeitgeist: It was immortalized in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons in which Homer became addicted to the “Krusty Burger RibWich.” “Bringing it back every so often adds to the excitement,” Marta Fearon, marketing director of McDonald’s, told the Associated Press. She taunted that it is “too early to speculate” whether the McRib will return next year. Want a piece of the marketing magic? Here’s what you can learn from the McRib’s comeback—again and again—and how you can add some more special sauce to your own limited-time-only campaigns. read more
McDonald’s brought back the McRib this week, but once again just for a limited time. Cruel and unusual? Maybe. It’s also brilliant marketing. Here’s what you can learn from the country’s most in-demand pork sandwich.By Nicole Carter | Oct 25, 2011
Colgate Wisp: Case Study
Look closely at the marketing strategies used by Steve Jobs and other visionaries and the first thing that comes to mind is the realisation that marketing is not a democratic process and that those who are really successful at it are, yes, visionaries.
Great marketing, I believe, requires visionary leadership in the form of a benevolent dictatorship capable of inspiring teamwork among those who work for them.
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Great marketing, I believe, requires visionary leadership in the form of a benevolent dictatorship capable of inspiring teamwork among those who work for them. Read more.Look closely at the marketing strategies used by Steve Jobs and other visionaries and the first thing that comes to mind is the realisation that marketing is not a democratic process and that those who are really successful at it are, yes, visionaries.
None of these things can happen overnight. Trust me. I’ve been on the phone with printers and clients the day before Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve trying to get a last-minute project done, and it’s not fun. You can avoid that stress if you start preparing now. Keep in mind that holiday marketing includes both customer marketing and internal marketing. I’ve created many internal holiday promotional campaigns to motivate sales teams, customer services representatives, and other employees during the busy and critical holiday season. With prizes and recognition, you can give employees the incentive they need to reach individual performance goals and overall business goals. Read more.
For many small businesses, the holiday season is an opportunity to bring in significant sales and revenues. But many businesses don’t start preparing for holiday season marketing until it’s too late, and they end up missing out on opportunities. For optimum success, you should identify your holiday marketing budget and begin planning your holiday marketing months in advance.
There was a time, going back at least 70 years, when all it took to be successful in business was to make a product of good quality. If you offered good coffee, whiskey or beer, people would come to your shop and buy it. And as long as you made sure that your product quality was superior to the competition, you were pretty much set. Well into the 1970s, a savvy consumer could distinguish between high-quality and shabby products quite easily. Read more.
And yet, as much as we like to complain about what we buy, it remains a fact that we live in a golden age for quality products. Today, it is much more rare to find cars that consistently break down or kiddie pools that leak. I challenge you to walk into any supermarket and find a product that is not of almost equal quality to the category leader in terms of functional performance. Nevertheless, the companies that were category leader in the early days often still are today. Some represent the “foundational brands,” the companies that in the 1950s and 1960s epitomized the kind of smart marketing that is now ubiquitous. A handful of these marketing leaders are listed in the gallery below. And the reason they have survived the test of time comes down to the discipline of marketing and branding.
Thoughts … These ideas are pretty much the polar opposite of what we discuss re: social media marketing (digital vs. non-digital) but there are times when not only do “old school” techniques work—they may be the best option.
Guerrilla marketing is a term reputedly coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book, “Guerrilla Marketing,” first published in 1983. Guerrilla marketing employs unconventional and inventive strategies and tactics to promote and market products and services for minimal cost and maximum return. For small businesses struggling to survive in these difficult economic times, and with the added burden of tight marketing budgets, guerrilla marketing can be an inexpensive way to get people talking about your company, attracting people to your store, or at least writing down your phone number and website address in case they ever need your goods or services.
The tips offered below are just a few ways to get attention for, and interest in, what you’re selling. There’s literally no limit on what an inventive person might create to achieve those goals. Let your mind wander creatively and use this list to stimulate additional ideas and marketing tools.
Tried and Traditional T-Shirts
This is one of the oldest and most successful guerrilla marketing tools. If you buy a half dozen T-shirts, or more if you can afford them, and have them imprinted with your company name you have a good chance of bringing in more business. In smaller, but visible lettering, you can include a phone number, street address and website address. Wear one shirt yourself and pass out the others to people who move about your neighborhood as a way of creating a walking ad for your company.
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The facts are sobering: the majority of small businesses fail within five years of starting up. While there are many reasons that businesses fail, including some that have nothing to do with an owner’s skills, it’s also possible that many of those same businesses collapsed simply because they couldn’t get enough customers to buy their product or service. In other words, the owners founded their business on a strategy of “build it and they will come” where, unfortunately, the customers never came. In fact, a recent study undertaken by the Blackbox seed accelerator found that many tech start-ups failed because they focused more on their product than on their potential customers. The good news is that there are a variety of ways you, as an entrepreneur, can conduct some market research to assess the potential demand for your product or service without spending a lot of money or hiring an expensive market research team. Read more.
