Purple Cow (4 page)
Of course, it wasn’t just supermarket brands. It was John Hancock and Merrill Lynch and Prudential. Archer Daniels Midland, Jeep, and Ronald Reagan as well. Big brands, big ideas, big impacts on our lives.
TV commercials are the most effective selling medium ever devised. A large part of the success of the American century is due to our companies’ perfecting this medium and exploiting it to the hilt.
Our cars, our cigarettes, our clothes, our food—anything that was effectively advertised on TV was changed by the medium. Not only did marketers use television to promote their products, but television itself changed the way products were created and marketed. As a result, all of the marketing
P
s were adjusted to take advantage of the synergies between our factories and our ability to capture the attention of the audience.
P
s were adjusted to take advantage of the synergies between our factories and our ability to capture the attention of the audience.
Of course, it’s not just TV that’s fading. It’s newspapers and magazines—any form of media interrupting any form of consumer activity. Individuals and businesses have ceased to pay attention.
The TV-industrial complex lasted a half-century—a long time. So long that the people who devised the strategies and ads that worked so well are gone. There’s no one left at Philip Morris or General Foods who remembers what life was like before TV created the bureaucratic behemoths.
And that’s the problem. The TV-industrial complex is hemorrhaging, and most marketers don’t have a clue what to do about it. Every day, companies spend millions to re-create the glory days of the TV-industrial complex. And every day, they fail.
The old rule was this:
CREATE SAFE, ORDINARY PRODUCTS AND
COMBINE THEM WITH GREAT MARKETING.
The new rule is:
CREATE REMARKABLE PRODUCTS THAT
THE RIGHT PEOPLE SEEK OUT.
We can see the same thing in a simple chart:
The marketer of yesterday valued the volume of people she could reach. The center of the black curve above was the goal. Mass marketing traditionally targets the early and late majority because this is the largest group. But in many markets, the
value
of agroupisn’t related to its size—agroup’s value is related to its influence. In this market, for example, the early adopters heavily influence the rest of the curve, so persuading them is worth far more than wasting ad dollars trying to persuade anyone else.
value
of agroupisn’t related to its size—agroup’s value is related to its influence. In this market, for example, the early adopters heavily influence the rest of the curve, so persuading them is worth far more than wasting ad dollars trying to persuade anyone else.
Before and After
Consider the Beetle
The ad that launched the Beetle to everyone.
The original VW Beetle was not as much of a counter-culture car as you may remember. Its sales languished until some brilliant advertising saved it. On the basis of this great TV and print campaign, the car was profitable in the United States for more than fifteen years. The original Beetle is a poster child for the power of the TV-INDUSTRIAL complex.
In this case, it was the shape, not the ads, that worked.
The new Beetle, on the other hand, was a success because of the way it looked and the way it felt to drive. Good reviews, great word of mouth, and a distinctive shape that marketed it far and wide—these factors were responsible for the new Beetle’s success. Every time the very round Beetle drove down a street filled with boxy SUVs, it was marketing itself.
After marketing the new Beetle for just three years, VW is now offering incentives, new designs, and other features to make the car exciting again. The Purple Cow works, but, alas, it doesn’t last as long as good old TV domination did.
TV-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX PRODUCTSBARBIE, PRELL, HONEY WELL, UNITED AIRLINES, McDoNALD’S, MARLBORO, CAP’N CRUNCH, BATTLING TOPS, EXCEDRIN, THE ORIGINAL BEETLE
PURPLE COW PRODUCTSSTARBUCKS, MAGIC CARDS, DR. BRONNER’S, LINUX, JETBLUE, OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE, MOTEL 6, MP3, DR. BUKK, PROZAC, THE NEW BEETLE
What Works?
One way to figure out a great theory is to look at what’s working in the real world and figure out what the various successes have in common.
With marketing, though, it’s puzzling. What could the Four Seasons and Motel 6 have in common? Other than the fact that both experienced extraordinary success and growth in the hotel field, they couldn’t be more different. Or Wal-Mart and Neiman Marcus, both growing during the same decade. Or Nokia (changing its hardware every thirty days) and Nintendo (marketing the same Game Boy for fifteen years in a row).
It’s like trying to drive by watching the rear-view mirror. Sure, those things worked, but do they help us predict what will work tomorrow?
What all of these companies have in common is that they have nothing in common. They are outliers. They’re on the fringes. Super-fast or super-slow. Very exclusive or very cheap. Very big or very small.
The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken—it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.
Why
The Wall Street Journal
Annoys Me So Much
The Wall Street Journal
Annoys Me So Much
The
Journal
is the poster child for marketing old-think. Every day, more than a million dollars’ worth of full-page ads run in this paper—testimony to traditional marketers’ belief that the old ways are still valid.
Journal
is the poster child for marketing old-think. Every day, more than a million dollars’ worth of full-page ads run in this paper—testimony to traditional marketers’ belief that the old ways are still valid.
A full-page ad in the
Journal
costs more than a house in Buffalo, New York. Page after page of dull gray ads, each pitching a dull product offering from a dull company.
Journal
costs more than a house in Buffalo, New York. Page after page of dull gray ads, each pitching a dull product offering from a dull company.
If you took 90 percent of these ads and swapped the logos around, no one could tell. Switch one stock photo of a guy in a black derby hat with another stock photo of an earnest-looking pan-Asian smiling employee, and no one could tell.
One morning, with time to kill at a fine hotel, I interrupted a few people who were reading the
Journal
over breakfast. I waited until they had finished the first section, and then I asked them if they could name just two of the companies that had run full-page ads. Not one person could.
Journal
over breakfast. I waited until they had finished the first section, and then I asked them if they could name just two of the companies that had run full-page ads. Not one person could.
Then I took one of the ads, folded down the bottom with the logo, and asked the
Journal
readers which company ran the ad. No idea.
Journal
readers which company ran the ad. No idea.
Finally, I asked them the million-dollar question (literally). Had they ever requested more information about a product because they’d seen a full-page ad in the
Journal?
Journal?
You can probably guess the answer.
It’s not just TV that’s broken. Just about all the ways marketers promote themselves (whether they sell to businesses or to consumers) are becoming less effective.
Here’s the entire text of a full-page ad from a recent
Wall StreetJournal:
Wall StreetJournal:
INTRODUCING KPMG CONSULTING’S NEW NAME AND ERA OF EMPOWERMENTWE HAVE DONE MORE THAN JUST CHANGE OUR NAME. WE HAVE CHARTERED A NEW BEGINNING. AN ERA OF EMPOWERMENT. WHICH POSITIONS BEARINGPOINT—FORMERLY KPMG CONSULTING—READY TO ASSUME THE LEAD AS THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL AND RESPECTED BUSINESS ADVISOR AND SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR. BUT WHILE WE HAVE CHANGED OUR NAME TO BEARINGPOINT, WHAT WE HAVE NOT CHANGED IS OUR MINDSET—THE DESIRE TO GET IT DONE. AND GET IT DONE RIGHT. OUR GOAL IS TO BE ON EVERYONE’S LIST. AT THE TOP, OF COURSE. WE WILL ACCOMPLISH THAT GOAL THE SAME WAY WE HAVE OPERATED FOR OVER 100 YEARS. ONE ON ONE. WITH PRACTICAL KNOW-HOW. WITH PASSION. DELIVERING TO OUR PRESENT AND FUTURE CLIENTS MORE THAN JUST CONSULTING. By HELPING OUR CLIENTS ALIGN THEIR BUSINESS AND SYSTEMS TO ACHIEVE THEIR DESIRED GOALS. PROVIDING THE RIGHT INFORMATION TO EMPOWER THEIR BUSINESS. BECAUSE THE RIGHT INFORMATION BRINGS KNOWLEDGE. AND KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. SHARING IT IS EMPOWERMENT.
A committee wrote this ad. A committee approved it. No one will remember it; no one will point it out to a colleague. Advertising doesn’t have to be this bad. It could be remarkable. It could help spread the word about a remarkable product.
Just because it’s an ad doesn’t mean it can’t be remarkable. If the goal of the advertiser was to create a measurable impact—to create ads that actually got people to sit up, take notice, and tell their colleagues—the ads would be a lot better than they are today. But even that wouldn’t be enough.
Awareness Is Not the Point
The marketing old guard is quick to defend the power of the TV commercial. They’re delighted to point out the great success stories of years past, and to happily articulate why only TV can get the awareness needed to launch a new product or maintain an existing one.
Yet Sergio Zyman, the marketing guru who was there for most of Coca-Cola’s rebirth, points out that two of the most popular TV commercials of all time—“I’d like to teach the world to sing” and “Mean Joe Greene”—sold not one more bottle of Coke. They entertained and got attention, but they translated into no incremental revenue. He jokes that the commercial should have been, “I’d like to teach the world to drink.”
In Sergio’s words, “Kmart has plenty of awareness. So what?”
The Will and the Way
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