Launch Clinic

Gobbledygook Grader: just how crappy are your marketing materials?

In my commitment to provide innovative and unique approaches to product launch, I am pleased to introduce  a tool that is focused on helping you deliver next generation, high performance, flexible, world class, new and improved, robust, optimized and cost effective marketing materials that produce desirable outcomes. In terms of entertainment value added and leverage, Gobbledygook Grader is the easy to use, leading provider of gobbledygook grading tools.

The text above got a Gobbledygook Grade of 0 out of 100.  I win!

Gobbledygook Words

This content contains 21 words that are considered gobbledygook (they are overused and lack specific meaning). For more information about Gobbledygook words, read "The Gobbledygook Manifesto" by David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and the hit new book World Wide Rave.

The following gobbledygook words were found: commitment , cost effective , easy to use , flexible , focused on , high performance , in terms of , innovative , leading provider , leading provider of , leverage , new and improved , next generation , optimize , outcomes , pleased to , robust , unique , value add , value added , world class

Technorati Tags: launch,marketing collateral,gobbledygook

Trade show budgets decline 17% in 2009

According to the Trade Show Exhibitors Association in their newly released “2009 Exhibit Marketing Survey”. It’s the result of “interviews of nearly 300 professionals who use exhibits, events or face-to-face marketing to promote and sell their products”.

It looks like a reduction in the number of trade shows attended will be down by 17% year over year.

Highlights:

• Exhibitors attended an average of 30 trade shows in 2008 and expect to attend 25 in 2009
• Trade shows will account for one third of an organization’s overall marketing budget in 2009
• Budgets for exhibiting will decrease from an average $459,100 in 2008 to $381,000 in 2009
• Corporate private event spending will decrease 30% from 2008 to 2009
• Spending for medical/healthcare/pharmaceutical industry events will increase 5% in 2009, but spending for technology shows will decrease 46%

This should come as no surprise to most of us. I expected the decline to be more severe.

The fact is that we have a trade show that runs 24 x 7 and it’s called the world wide web. It’s a trade show where potential buyers are looking for solutions to problems and they could be anywhere in the world. You could potentially reach 5,000 people at a physical trade show or 5,000,000 online.

I acknowledge for some of you trade shows are essential, but for others they are more of a tradition that would be difficult to justify on their own merit in today’s economic environment.

If you think about your website as a proxy for a trade show, what would you do differently? Are you doing the work to make sure that buyers can find you? Are you providing information buyers need to make a decision to go to the next step in the buying process?

Technorati Tags: marketing,trade show,tradeshow,product launch

A launch lesson – Nokia U.S. 5800 XpressMusic Phones

Not to pick on Nokia but there is a lesson for all of us to learn from Nokia’s efforts at launching the 5800 XpressMusic phones in the USA.  The phone was a huge hit in Europe but bombed in the U.S. due to communication glitches with consumers that use carrier AT&T.

The 5800 works on GSM networks (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US) and Nokia sold it unlocked, direct to consumers. GSM is the predominant wireless communication technology in the world, dwarfing the competing technology CDMA. The 5800 was such a huge success in Europe, my guess is Nokia expected it to work just as well in the U.S.  After all, GSM is GSM right? Unfortunately that didn’t happen and Nokia must now regroup.

In bypassing carriers, Nokia could sell direct to consumers and in theory get to market faster, improving sales velocity.

Ouch. This was a big deal for Nokia.  No doubt they’ll recover but it’s a tough lesson to learn.

Priya Ganapati at Wired.com covered this story in more detail here.

 

Technorati Tags: product launch

B2B marketing budgets down; pipeline acceleration programs are up

A SiriusDecisions study of B2B companies revealed that 44% of companies report a drop in budget, but  many are doubling their pipeline acceleration programs.  Worst hit are advertising and events.

“ When breaking down proposed marketing spend, SiriusDecisions found that companies with $101-$500 million in revenue are making cuts. Organizations with at least $1 billion in revenue are cutting back as well… “ 

Technorati Tags: marketing,budget,product launch

CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is “Broken”

Today while reading Marketing Vox, one of the many RSS feeds I like to read each day, an article caught my attention – CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is “Broken”.

The article is a result of a survey conducted by Verse Group and Jupiter Research.  There are 5 priorities identified from interviews with 101 CMO/VP Marketing executives in B2B and B2C companies.

Before reading further you need understand my position on branding. At the core of any company is a brand.  That brand is bestowed on a company by their customers based on the ability to deliver value. The trappings of the brand – logos, fonts, colors, images – are the dressing of the brand. Too often marketing executives equate “brand” with how it looks, not the value the company delivers to its customers. No amount of branding can overcome a fundamentally flawed product or business model.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

#	CMO Priority	Translation
1	Achieve measurable ROI on marketing efforts	Marketing is the only group in the company that isn’t measured on outcomes that matter and the jig is up
2	Developing marketing programs that integrate online and traditional media	I still don’t know crap about this online marketing thing.  Skittles anyone?
3	Translating brand experience across different touch points	Congressional earmarks
4	Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance	See #1 above.  This accountability thing is really going to suck.
5	Optimizing portfolio of brands	Something to say to confuse the board into demonstrating the CMO is really smart

Here’s a quote from the article…

“If companies such as GM, Dell and Sony are to regain their competitiveness, they have to retool their approach to marketing, not just their products,” said Randal Ringer, co-founder of Verse Group. “They need a compelling narrative to engage the hearts and minds of customers.”

Apparently Randal is referring to the little “m” of marketing, as in t-shirts, coffee mugs, lunches and logos. Brand is earned.  We can influence the buyers perception of the brand but only as long as the promise is delivered.

Back to the quote. GM has been on a downward spiral since the 1970’s.  Retooling marketing isn’t going to fix GM’s competitiveness. Management at GM have known for years what’s wrong and they didn’t fix it. Sony invented the portable music phenomenon with the Walkman and now Apple is king. Maybe a better narrative can help Sony.

Here’s a branding initiative you can take to the bank: If you want a better brand focus on delivering value to your customers.

Technorati Tags: marketing,ROI,branding,product launch

April Dunford on Competition

I’m a big fan of April’s blog. She posted a story about competition that I really like. It reminds of what my face must say when someone tells me they have no competition. My wife tells me it’s the “are you really that stupid or is someone helping you” look.

Technorati Tags: competition,competitors,competitive analysis

Runners wanted – Ragnar Relay – Wasatch Back

Pragmatic Marketing has entered a team to run the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay and we need four runners to complete our team. The run is on June 19-20, 2009 and is from Logan, UT to Park City, UT. It’s a 178 mile run (yes, that’s correct) completed over 24 hours in a team relay style. The team consists of 12 runners who will run 3 segments over 24 hours.

Our goals are modest.  We just want to finish.

If you are interested please visit the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay website and then contact our team coordinator – Josh Covey by email – jcovey (at) pragmaticmarketing.com.  Josh can fill you in on the details.

Technorati Tags: Ragnar Relay,Wasatch Back,Runners,Running

Saturn, RIP

The writing is on the wall for Saturn and it’s only a matter of time before the brand that would have transformed the American auto industry is kicked to the curb. I dinged the AMA for their post on the Super Bowl ads and I wanted to make up for it with a link to a new AMA post titled Saturn Coulda Been a Contender. So true and so sad.

Saturn had an awesome differentiator: no haggle pricing. The market responded positively and Saturn became profitable in just three years.

In my humble opinion the fate of Saturn was sealed by the auto unions and a powerful GM dealer network, both threatened by what the realization of the Saturn mission would do to the status quo. GM management, the unions and the dealers are complicit in the demise of Saturn.  How do they sleep at night?

Principles and integrity trump image any day.

The AMA on Super Bowl Ads

After reading the AMA blog post - "The Super Bowl Spots: What Worked, What Didn't", I realized first there was no way they could know which spots worked and second how it was an analogy for what management often sees as what is wrong with Marketing.

While I agree with their assessment about the creative execution of the ads, what really counts is if the ads sell more stuff. That won't be known for a while.  Chances are the GoDaddy ad did drive people to their site to see what else Danica Patrick was going to do in the shower.  It was measurable.  It wasn't brilliant cinematic execution but then again it didn't need to be.

Marketing is often seen as a creative bunch that spends a lot of money and shows little in the way of demonstrable results. They measure things like "leads" and unique visits to the web site.  In this rough economy the only metric that matters is deals closed.  If Marketing doesn't wake up to that reality and connect everything they do to selling more stuff, it will be a bitter lesson to learn.

Spatially Relevant Blog: Marketing IS in the middle

A blog post about a blog post about me titled Marketing IS in the Middle: David Daniels.  Kind of like the Department of the Redundancy Department.  I can't believe I might have actually been more irreverent than Steve Johnson.  Enjoy.