CharlieMoger.com

Marketing and advertising advice for owner-operated businesses

A seismic shift

A fissure opened yesterday spewing hot gas and smoke as television’s landscape changed forever. NBC and CBS followed ABC’s lead by teaming up with Comcast and DirecTV  making programming available on-demand–something the once-mighty nets steadfastly resisted far too long. Soon, viewers will have access to programs of their choice for 99-cents a show.

Denying consumer choice is akin to locking the doors of your business because you expect customers to arrive on YOUR schedule. Only the clueless would argue against the growing choice-driven marketplace.

Consider what’s about to happen in prime-time television. Will a program’s longevity one day be tied to paid viewings rather than estimated mass viewings? No doubt networks will not only know how many people are viewing, but WHO is viewing their product.

If an ad ran and no one saw it, would it still be an ad? It’s not a silly question. This is a new reality bulleting toward you: a consumer controlled marketplace means you can no longer force-feed your message to a pliant population. Like trees felled in a vast forest, advertising is increasingly falling unseen because advertisers ignore the reality of consumer choice.

Our challenge is to create marketing newly empowered consumers CHOOSE to see; compelling, relevant, genuine messages that set aside pretense and hype.

Don’t just open the doors, hand your customers the keys. Speak in their language. Give yourself over to their choices. This isn’t a fad. This is the new landscape.

 

[Originally published 8 Nov 2005]

Core thinking

Thoughts are fast moving things. Leaping about in the left and right sides of our brain, we create and discard a million possibilities in a moment. Those who can birth these fleeting ideas into tangible existence are considered creative (even though we all could, only an intrepid few DO).

The video iPod is a good example of creative thinking in application. A room full of TV execs sat down to discuss the pros and cons of the new device recently. Some thought it cool, some dismissed it like the movie studios dismissed the dawn of television. What will the role of this technology be?

Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment nailed it,  “You need to find all these different ways to continue to bring viewers in.  It all has to feed back into our core business.”

Your core business. What is it? It’s not marketing–that’s MY business. Are you in retail? A service company? What is the thing you do well? What is it you want to be known for? That’s your core business and just as the video iPod may prove to be for television, your marketing should be for you: something that feeds business back to your core.

Any time you catch yourself spending time away from honing your core to meddle in your web site or newspaper ad or human resources, remember this: your core business needs to be nourished to grow and its best food is thought.

Take time to think.

 

[Originally published 27 Oct 2005]

So fifteen minutes from now

Acceptance of my kids’ advanced sense of hip reminds me, life is like those moving sidewalks in the airport: walk or stand still, you’re being carried along–walking the wrong way will only keep you in one place.

My kids call me “so fifteen minutes ago” when I share my understanding of current hipness which they’ve long since digested or spit out. It’s all moving and we’re being carried somewhere…

So, if NOW is so fifteen minutes ago, what is still fifteen minutes AHEAD? Hang on to your carry-ons and grab the Advil, passengers: here comes IPTV.

Heralded as a Trojan Horse to the media fortress, this new technology is going to shake up changes in television we’re still coming to grips with now.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Diane Mermigas says, “Ready or not, dominant gatekeepers — from cable and satellite operators to telephone companies and television networks — are about to confront a new competitor: open-sourced, real-time, stored digital video on handy Internet-connected devices that play by a different set of rules.”

IPTV could do to TV what the Walkman and iPod did for/to music retailing: personalize and decentralize it. As they learned in Troy, walls of a city are more easily torn down from within. When consumers take control of content without regard to what will soon seem a narrow-band channel of distribution, choice will indeed go critical mass.

This end-run will put enormous pressure on your messaging: it has to be relevant, real and compelling. If you think the effectiveness of broadcasting is declining due to fragmentation now—wait fifteen minutes.

 

[Originally published 11 Oct 2005]

Zigging when they’re zagging

Three stories of imposing red brick, McIntyre Elementary School was a small town classic. Towering windows, chalkboards that seemed a mile-long, green walls and black tile floors, it remains the picture that pops in when I hear the word school. Is your school still in you? Are you still in school?

Marketing is the continuing education of observation; labs are campaigns. When the student in you is ready, the lesson always arrives. Today it comes courtesy of Bavarian Motor Works–better known as BMW.

After pioneering the era of “branded entertainment,” BMW has popped the clutch and left it behind. Advantages are always fleeting and seldom is there a better example than this: BMW practically creates a category. Others rush in to copy. Demand explodes. Prices escalate. Value diminishes. BMW exits.

AdAge reports, “The primary reason for BMW’s new backseat approach: Branded entertainment is just getting too expensive. According to executives close to the client and experts in Hollywood, BMW doesn’t have the marketing dollars to ink entertainment deals at a time when integration fees and marketing requests from film or TV partners are escalating.”

Like poker and used cars, knowing when to get out is almost more important than getting in.

Here’s the lesson: Don’t love marketing campaigns that can’t love you back. BMW saw the party was over and moved on. You should too. When advantages diminish, depart. Better yet, when it seems they are about to–be the first one out the door.

Like BMW, you can create just as much buzz ending something as in beginning it–provided you do both boldly and smartly.

There’s another lesson in this story. Go read it now and then click to continue…

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