As highlighted in this NPR article, increased fuel costs, demands for improved work-life balance and technology advancements all support more people doing their work from their home.
Two key reasons this is of special importance to the marketing community. First of all, many of us are “knowledge workers” – in that what we do involves information, graphics or communications – all of which can be digitized and managed as well from one’s home office as from anyplace else. Also, as marketers, we need to be aware of all such trends. There are marketing opportunities in the “telecommuter” segment, either by bundling business services in a new way that appeals to the telecommuter segment or in yet-to-be-defined innovative products, services or campaigns.
One promising aspect of this trend is the incredible productivity boost it can create. For the employee it comes from eliminating the time and cost of transporting yourself from your residence to your place of work. On any given day this probably adds at least an hour of discretionary time for most people. It is certainly something I value in my own “work from home” environment.
The employers’ side of the equation includes reduced expenses for facilities to make room for the employee.
Of course telecommuting won’t work in all situations and for all people. It takes a certain type of person to manage the independence inherent in telecommuting. If you’re looking for hierarchy and structure you won’t find it working from home. While the NPR article also mentions a need for personal interaction, I think this “need” will be increasingly fulfilled by interactive technology as time goes on and in fact it may be easier to connect with people via a network than face-to-face in a workplace. Anybody who has ever scrambled for a meeting room at the last minute can relate to that!
People who grow up texting and on Facebook will collaborate in different ways than older generations, for sure.
In the shiny, beautiful world of magazine photography, airbrushing models and actresses is an open secret. How much this affects the self-esteem of girls and women is a recurring topic in the media.
Recently, a British government-commissioned study proposed affixing disclaimers to photos depicting digitally altered models.
Retouched photos turn up in both editorial and commercial photography. Focusing on commercial photography for our purposes, it seems appropriate to ask if we have pushed the perfect, unnatural world depicted in advertising to a new realm.
We want our target audiences to aspire to the world we create with our particular product/service.
Is it right to make that desire, for most women, completely unattainable?
My son is graduating from High School this year and we’re right in the middle of the decision-making process on where he will attend college in the fall.
The process is complicated by the fact that he seeks to major in music performance so an on-site, in-person audition is required for each school to which he applies. We’re focusing on six schools, which means the campaign requires six university applications – plus additional application requirements for the school of music in some cases – and the aforementioned auditions. I keep telling myself not to think about the time investment and out-of-pocket costs for this campaign!
At the audition-day lunch at CIM, the Cleveland Institute of Music (the only location that provided a lunch – a nice touch despite the mediocrity of the food), I met two marketing consultants recently hired by the college to update their marketing strategy – this got me thinking about the topic.
Competitive Set
As with any marketing strategy, the competitive set is a critical variable. CIM’s consultants inquired about the schools we were visiting and they noted with interest that we had not applied to Oberlin, which I’d guess is an important competitor to CIM. Many of the schools we visited took pains to compare themselves to certain other schools – either because a program like Juilliard, often mentioned, is a true competitor or the school would like to think so, at least.
Segmentation
The consultants also noted that CIM was the only pure music conservatory among our choices – all the other music schools were incorporated into a larger university. The pure conservatory distinction is a major segmentation in the music school market.
Among the music schools embedded in a larger university, there are very different offerings with regards to how integrated the music program is with the rest of the place. At CCM, the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, they tend to wall off CCM from the rest of UC. For example, the music students are largely concentrated in a single dormitory. Rice University, on the other hand, prides itself on how all its students are mixed together in their living arrangements. Carnegie Mellon describes its mission, in part, as combining technology and the arts, and its music program integrates the technology (for which CMU is well-known) more so than other schools.
Another segmentation is the size of the program, is it relatively small and “Selective” or a large “Factory” (the latter term used by fans of the smaller organizations). This interacts with another variable, the performance opportunities, with larger organizations having more ensembles and variety.
Location
This is an important consideration for a music student since exposure to outstanding culture available in a large city becomes part of the curriculum. Rice admissions personnel described Houston as a cultural “hotspot” – which would probably surprise anyone not acting as a Houston booster. Location is a bit of a handicap for a school that merits high ranks in most other categories – the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Another element of location is the importance of “moving away” for college, Ohio State is a bit too close to home for my son.
It is difficult to miss the recent wave of advertisements promoting products alongside messages centered around how consumers are saving money.
A woman in a recent television ad is shown walking into a train car while explaining to a friend that she helps herself to all of the available hotel bathroom toiletries. The ad then goes on to show a number of people discussing various ways to save money. Sadly, I remember the commercial but could not tell you what company sponsored it.
Speaking broadly, companies have reshaped their advertisements to reflect the new economic reality while still driving home branding messages.
It is in vogue to have a savings account again.
Flashy spending seems vulgar.
Given the speed of the economic recovery, it appears this new advertising direction is here to stay.
Bob Evans Restaurants core customers are 65+. It’s down on the farm feel doesn’t give it a modern vibe at all. But they’ve embraced the 21st century and are using digital marketing to make it all happen. Columbus AMA President Nick Iannitto asked Chelsea Hamilton, the Field Marketing Communications/PR Manager, how its gone digital without losing its core values.
Admitting you offered a poor-quality product to your customers in a national advertising campaign requires tremendous belief in your new brand message.
Domino’s Pizza recently took that leap of faith in their reality television-like commercials using quotes from focus groups. The ads hold nothing back and clearly indicate how low Domino’s pizza scores on taste. Finally, the commercials end with the Domino’s chefs singing the praises of the new pizza recipes they developed and offering discounted prices for the new pizzas.
Whether you like the new ads or not, no one can deny that the ads have a number of people talking, tweeting, and blogging. I typed “dominos pizza ad cardboard” into a Google search and several online articles discussing the advertising campaign showed up on the first page of results.
I’ll leave the pros and cons of the campaign to those articles.
Instead, I feel the Domino’s television ads essentially pay homage to the fast-paced world of the Internet. In the commercials, a company receives feedback directly from customers and responds (what seems like) immediately with a vastly improved product.
I realize it probably took Domino’s several months to develop their new products. However, consumers today want lightning-fast responses and the Domino’s ad reinforces this new expectation.
Will any other companies follow Domino’s lead into this edgy, new form of advertising?
While driving through Bucyrus, Ohio, on my way north to a client located on the shore of Lake Erie, I saw what looked like a classic mini-fiasco in marketing strategy. What caught my attention was an abandoned convenience store, the snow underneath the gas pump canopy barely disturbed, and the promotional space beneath the empty gas-price sign proclaiming “WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS.”
It seemed a pathetic, desperate attempt to attract customers to a soon-to-fail business. What is most pathetic, though, is the utter wrong-headedness of the maneuver. Who wants to be seen as a customer of the store that advertises food-stamp acceptance? I suspect food-stamp usage is more tied to grocery stores, in any case, and if so, the message runs counter to established consumer behavior.
I feel compelled to include a disclaimer that I hope this observation is not understood as demeaning in any way to those who use food stamps. In January of 2009, with double-digit unemployment and an economy still suffering from a disastrous recession, food-stamp usage is way up and I’m thankful the tool is there for those that need it.
If the former convenience-store manager saw an opportunity in letting customers know about using food stamps in his store, I would have suggested doing it in a less-prominent way.
In my quick transit through Bucyrus, though, I saw several prosperous convenience stores on my route and the contrast with the food-stamp failure could not have been starker. I took it as another lesson in marketing basics – e.g. focus on your core competency, find ways to add value through service enhancements, product innovation, differentiation, segmentation and communication. Never forget, also, that when you abandon those basics and chase business through a quick-hit discount or a too-obvious and blatant appeal to a government subsidy you are forever cheapening your position – and that is the road to disaster.
Adweek’s Steve McClellan recently wrote an article concerning the decline in Facebook use in the 18-24 year old set.
To be fair, opinions differ on whether the decline in minutes spent on Facebook is a true reflection of user habits. One expert believes that the 18-24 year old age group accesses Facebook primarily through their smartphones and their comScore numbers are not being tabulated.
Others believe the decline is a real phenomenon. They believe Facebook now teeters on the brink of being uncool in an important age demographic.
McClellan points out that once Grandma friends you, the mystique of Facebook evaporates.
What does this mean for us? As a marketing tool, Facebook still has plenty of potential according to McClellan’s article.
The trick will be to know when Facebook is right for a marketing campaign in the 18-24 year old demographic and how to activate customer support for a brand on a social media site that may be waning in popularity for young adults.
Certainly, we need to monitor this age group’s changing relationship with Facebook which McClellan writes may be changing significantly even now.
Finally, we need to ask if our long-term social media marketing strategies are still relevant in this fast-changing Internet landscape.
Pour your marketing budget into television and magazine advertising and you will miss the boat on internet advertising.
How does Apple do it? Jonathan Weber’s article in The Big Money points out how Apple’s marketing decisions break many of today’s “rules” for business. He demonstrates how Apple’s remarkable success rests squarely on their excellent products and their creative, relentless branding.
While Weber points out that Apple ignores many of today’s accepted ideas on social media marketing, internet advertising, etc., he certainly doesn’t suggest we should all ignore these practices. Rather, he argues we shouldn’t forget about the product in all of this.
Which brings me to my own computer-buying decision this past spring.
I decided to switch back to a Macintosh after tiring of paying yearly anti-viral subscriptions for my PC. I had lost all patience with Windows at that point and could not justify the time I spent searching the web trying to decide if my PC was just acting wonky or if it had contracted a virus.
I justified the added cost of buying a Mac based on how easy they are to use and the greatly reduced risk of computer viruses.
That is how one customer decided to purchase a more expensive product in a crowded market. I never consulted Twitter, Facebook or a blog. I didn’t even visit the company website.
At the December 8 Columbus AMA luncheon, Michael Daniels, Co-Owner and Co-Publisher of Outlook Media, spoke on demographic niche marketing in Central Ohio. Daniels focused his discussions on how to market to Asians, African Americans, GLBT & Hispanics.
The highlight of Daniels’ speech was focused on the need to create unique strategies to attract each group, including ads that are different for each group because they all have different needs and desires as customers.
