mercredi, 14 mai 2008
Customized Branding: Consumers Get Creative Control
Un petit texte de Brand Channel sur la customisation à découvrir absolument.
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=407
The concept of customized branding—one the consumer helps to create—is not new. Highly customized “My” web pages have been around a while. Apple’s iTunes could just as easily have been called “MyTunes”—it offers the unlimited potential for the consumer to build his or her own own digital songbooks. My Twinn creates uncanny doll likenesses of little girls from their pictures, right down to freckles and birthmarks.
One of today’s more successful consumer-created brands is NikeiD. Consumers go online to design their own personal versions of Nike shoes and apparel. Conceived in 1999, NikeiD has seen its business triple since 2004.
Nike has followed up the success of its online service with “NikeiD studios,” one of which opened in London in November 2007. The London studio, the first of its kind in the UK, is similar to one that opened in New York’s Nike Town in October. Pilot NikeiD spaces have previously opened in Paris, France and Osaka, Japan.
The London NikeiD studio is a stylish two-story glass and steel cube suspended in the Nike Town store. It gives consumers a hands-on design experience using the NikeiD.com online design process, aided by one-to-one appointments with trained Design Consultants.
Once consumers have created their designs in the studio they can be stored in an online "locker" and shared with others online. After ordering, the shoes are individually made and delivered to them, either via the Nike Town store or direct to their homes.
Obviously, Nike believes in the consumer-created brand: “The world has changed. Consumers interact with brands on their own terms,” says Trevor Edwards, Vice President, Brand and Category Management for Nike.
So what is it about this point in time that is causing the avalanche of consumer-created brands? According to Trendwatching.com, a worldwide service that keeps its eye on new consumer developments, it’s part of a much larger evolutionary consumer trend: Participation. Generation C (the C is for Content, or more broadly, Creation) is the primary driver behind Participation. This generation of primarily young consumers “have come to expect to be able to create anything they want as long as it’s digital,” says Trendwatching. “The next frontier will be digitally designing products from scratch, then having them turned into real physical goods as well.”
This creates both an opportunity and a huge challenge for traditional brands. Brands like Nike are focused on the individual anyway, so for them, moving to a consumer-created brand is a natural fit (excuse the expression). Nike is fearless about innovations that bring the consumer into the process—and the firm has the financial and technological firepower to pull off something like NikeiD. Nike also sells high-end products that are worth customizing.
But is it possible to customize simpler products than athletic apparel?
The answer is an enthusiastic yes. Even now, the consumer-created brand is starting to rapidly move down the product chain. German consumers can make their own cereal from 75 organic ingredients at mymuesli.com. American consumers can create a tissue box with their own personal photographic image on it for as little as US$ 4.99 at mykleenextissue.com. M&Ms can be customized at mymms.com—even a company’s logo can be added to each tiny candy.
Perhaps the most uniquely personal brand available today is “My DNA Fragrance,” which creates a customized perfume based on a human DNA profile (Cost: US$ 134.99). The consumer uses a DNA home collection kit to provide the company with a DNA sample. “With more than 30,000 designer fragrances on the market, My DNA Fragrance assures that no two people will ever smell alike again,” says the company.
Consumers are heavily engaged in the product creation business. The leading office supplies store, Staples, invites inventors to submit their ideas for office products, offering them a chance to win US$ 25,000 if Staples develops and sells the invention. Several Staples brand products have already been brought to market as a result of the “Staples Invention Quest.” Similarly, Dell's “IdeaStorm” encourages customers to suggest ideas they would like Dell to implement. Users vote on the ideas, and Dell pursues those that seem feasible.
With the consumer wielding such power—actually participating in product creation—we have now entered an era in which consumers can help create brands themselves. Consumers already decide the fate of brands with their purchasing power. The time is likely near when brand owners will let consumers actually help decide which brand names to use, or even which new brands to introduce. It may be inevitable, in fact, that brand owners will take on consumers as full, participative partners in branding.
This raises an intriguing question: How far are companies willing to go when it comes to real consumer involvement in long established brands? Brands are valuable assets that directly affect profitability, so will a company’s senior management be all that anxious to let the consumer play such an influential role?
But Pandora’s box has been opened. Consumer empowerment has been unleashed. Once the consumer realizes the amount of control he or she exerts, the brand owner may be forced to let even an established brand ultimately become a consumer-created brand.
12:45 Publié dans Revue de web | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : Brand, channel, customisation, revue, web, article, texte
mercredi, 07 mai 2008
Why so many campaigns that begin with a sizzle end with a fizzle
Dans la série, Revue du Web, un bel article à découvrir de Monsieur Joseph Jaffe.
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/community/column...
The world is changing. The consumer is changing. Marketing is not ... and that's not a good thing, as it so desperately needs to adapt, evolve and conform to the only constant these days, which is change itself.
One of the key principles of the "New Marketing" arena is the idea behind communal activation. In the mainstream world we might refer to this as "engagement," i.e., getting people to care enough to take some kind of action -- inquiring about more information, telling a friend, blogging or, the Shangri-La of marketing: the purchase.
Marketing today is like a spectacular fireworks display. Short-lived and breathtaking. Unforgettably forgettable. The Macy's July 4th fireworks display might as well be the Super Bowl. (Take the test: Can you name 10 brands that advertised in this year's big game?) All our efforts seem to be front-loaded into launching with a bang. In order to break through the prototypical clutter, we have to take over our prospects' lives, leaving no stone unturned, nowhere to to hide.
The fireworks are mesmerizing. The sky is filled with brilliant colors, flashes of light and accompanying music to boot. A hypnotized mob "oohs" and "aahs" with appreciation. A captive audience. But as quickly as it began, it ends. The sky returns to darkness. The silence is deafening.
Sound familiar? It's your media plan, dummies. Your fleeting blobs of color suffocated in darkness.
As quickly as we burst onto the scene, break down the doors to our consumers' homes and trample our muddy paws all over their freshly cleaned carpets, we stampede out of their domiciles en route to our next "blitz" play.
Today, we all chase the elusive and marketing-weary consumer with the blind ambition of buzz or viral success. We spam bloggers with form e-mails, use shock tactics to get millions of pimple-faced teenagers to Digg, rate, refer or spoof us. And when all else fails, we resort to sex, babies, bunnies or puppies in order to entice the suspecting public to remember us for all the wrong reasons.
The one thing we don't do, however, is stop for a moment to listen; to respond; to join the conversation already in progress.
The seeds of conversation are just that. They are not magic beans. There are no overnight successes anymore.
Our job is to be a groundskeeper of change, to till the soil, water the seeds, protect and nurture the conversation in order to realize its full potential.
But we don't do that, do we? We are the golfers who attempt to whack the living daylights out of the ball in order to show off to our playing partners. The only problem is that we have no follow-through anymore. The golfers out there know that a lack of follow-through makes for a pretty poor golf game, one filled with misdirection and not much distance.
Bring this back to reality and we have the floundering agency that is, at best, the golfer without the follow-through and, at worst, the drunken hacker who should never have been trusted with a golf club in the first place.
Our marketing model is fraught with flawed infrastructure and methodology -- from the way we train our people to the way we compensate them. If we really want to be internalized and embraced by our customers, we need to give them a reason to believe that reaches beyond a cutesy jingle or catch phrase.
Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" was one of the early pioneers in a new way of going to market, insofar that it helped seed a brand idea as a movement, a purpose-based call to action that alluded to change -- changing soap brands and, in a small way, playing a part in changing the world.
Dove can never go back to the old way of marketing; one characterized by retouched, artificial and contrived models of exaggeration. The "Campaign for Real Beauty" epitomized a perfect tee shot, but the jury is still out as to whether the perfect setup will be matched by the perfect follow-through. Can you say Axe/Lynx?
Ultimately we pursue the metric of "lifetime value" of our customers, but if this is the case, are we in it for the long haul? Are we prepared to commit to our customers with a marketing approach that is enduring and timeless? Are we ready to invest in authentic relationships, devoid of control, opacity, manipulation and hyperbole? If we want our customers to trust us, are we prepared to trust them in return by giving them a voice?
In a world where increasing importance is being placed on the "new influencers" -- the digerati, technorati, and the like -- we need to unlearn a ton of staid thinking in order to adjust the way we approach "the conversation." There needs to be a seismic shift from the one-off fireworks display to something that is pervasive, enduring and consistently assuring, including, but not limited to, influencer outreach, blogger activation, conversation monitoring, optimization and response, contingency planning, crisis management and course correction.
And if agencies are to play any part in this shift, they have to change the fundamental way they plan, create, deploy, optimize and evolve their communications. In order to do this, marketers themselves are going to have to follow suit and restructure their internal organizations in order to realign and adjust accordingly.
Or you could just go back to shooting flares into the heavens and hope that help comes along. It won't.
12:40 Publié dans Revue de web | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : Joseph, jaffe, adweek, marketing, revue, web, article
jeudi, 03 janvier 2008
L’OM est le vrai champion 2007 en L1
Je tiens à vous faire partager un article des Cahiers du Football qui révèle la vérité sur le classement final de L1. En effet, les chiffres officiels fournis par la Ligue de Football sont erronés, c'est bien Marseille, Toulouse et Rennes qui ont fini dans les trois premiers l’année passée.
Pour une ligue 1 à la mode argentine
Faut-il importer chez nous le championnat à deux temps en vigueur dans le pays de Messi? La formule ouverture / clôture trouve un avocat sur ces pages...
Vu d’ici, la formule du championnat argentin laisse franchement dubitatif. Les matches aller constituent un tournoi d'ouverture indépendant des matches retours qui composent un tournoi totalement autonome dit de clôture. Deux champions sont ainsisacrés chaque année, sans qu’on ne cherche à les départager par une confrontation finale. Quelle crédibilité accorder, alors, à une saison qui livre deux champions, sans que chacun se soit opposé sur sa pelouse et sur celle de l’adversaire dans une même compétition? Pourtant, personne ne songerait à remettre en question la légitimité d’un champion du monde en prétextant qu’il est désigné au terme d’un tournoi organisé sur le principe de l’élimination directe – formule on ne peut plus aléatoire. Mais là n’est pas la question.
Deux quartiers d'orange
La question, nous la poserons sous cet angle: l’instauration d’un tournoi d’ouverture et de clôture, ne serait-elle pas de nature à dépoussiérer notre bonne vieille Ligue 1 bien plus efficacement que tous les classements de l’offensive ou autre championnat des tribunes? La transposition de cette formule de championnat sur la saison de Ligue 1 écoulée apporte son lot d’enseignements.
« Tournoi d’ouverture »
1. Lyon 50 pts
2. Lens 35 pts
3. Sochaux 33 pts
4. Saint-Étienne 31 pts (+8)
5. Lille 31 pts (+8)
6. Marseille 30 pts
…/…
18. Troyes 17 pts
19. Nice 16 pts
20. Sedan 13 pts
Certes, la première phase aurait consacré le parcours exceptionnel de l’Olympique lyonnais, comme notre long championnat finira par le faire quelques semaines avant sa trente-huitième journée. Mais ce que tous avions compris dès la dixième journée lors de la fessée infligée par l’OL à son dauphin du moment au Vélodrome (1-4), c'est-à-dire l’inéluctabilité de la supériorité rhodanienne, la Ligue 1 ne l’aurait pas traîné comme un boulet pendant les trois derniers quarts de la saison. Lyon aurait été champion du tournoi d’ouverture en fin d’année civile – et quel champion! – et les compteurs auraient été remis à zéro pour aborder une deuxième phase palpitante.
« Tournoi de clôture »
1. Marseille 34 pts (+9)
2. Toulouse 34 pts, (+6)
3. Rennes 32 pts
4. Lyon 31 pts (+8)
5. Monaco 31 pts, (+5)
6. Auxerre 31 pts (+4)
…/…
18. Lille 19 pts
19. Saint-Étienne 18 pts
20. Nantes 17 pts
Un final dément
Les observateurs se sont époumonés pendant de longs mois pour se plaindre du manque d’intérêt du championnat. Aucun d’entre eux n’aurait pu tenir ce discours, au-delà du mois de décembre, avec une Ligue 1 à la mode argentine. Chaque journée aurait été assortie d’émotions fortes, dans un championnat au couteau de la première à la dernière journée. La dernière serait même resté gravée dans les mémoires comme aucune n’a éveillé les passions en Ligue 1 depuis le but de Feindouno dans les arrêts de jeu de la dernière journée du championnat 99. Avec Marseille, Toulouse et Rennes comptant le même nombre de points (31), ainsi que Lyon, Monaco et Auxerre en embuscade à trois points seulement, l'ultime soirée du tournoi de clôture 2007 aurait été absolument démente.
Le consensus autour des belles émotions vécues lors de la dernière journée de L1 – pour peu que l’on ne fut pas supporter rennais – ne prêterait-il pas à sourire en comparaison de la folie qui aurait accompagné le dénouement d’un tournoi de clôture, proposant un enjeu ô combien plus savoureux qu’une misérable troisième place au classement général?
La passion de la 38e journée de Ligue 1, décuplée et vécue deux fois par an, n’est-ce pas tentant, à la réflexion? D’ailleurs, les supporters argentins ne puisent-ils pas dans cette formule de championnat une partie de leur inégalable ferveur?
Nantes sauvé ?
Outre la belle dynamique offerte à la compétition, cette formule présenterait l’avantage de tuer dans l’œuf l’incohérence d’un mercato de mi-saison navrant, capable de défigurer les participants d’une compétition au beau milieu de son déroulement... Ses autres effets nocifs persisteraient, mais ils seraient déjà plus acceptables si le mercato était calé entre deux tournois distincts.
Accessoirement, la relégation du FC Nantes en Ligue 2, que tant déplorent aujourd’hui, n’aurait rien eu, avec la formule argentine, de la fatalité à laquelle nous avons assisté tout au long de cette saison interminable. Les relégations se jouent en effet sur trois saisons: un classement de descente prend en compte les résultats des six derniers tournois et les deux derniers de ce classement sont relégués au terme du tournoi de clôture.
Un raté deviendrait dès lors plus supportable pour les clubs qui, paradoxalement, pourraient être encouragés à travailler davantage sur des politiques sportives à long terme avec une compétition resserrée. Quant au niveau général du championnat, il se verrait inévitablement rehaussé par cette limitation de l’aléa sportif, consistant à rétrograder les clubs les moins performants sur une longue période.
Pareille révolution culturelle induirait la mort des matches sans enjeu, des émotions décuplées qui auraient fatalement une influence bénéfique sur le jeu, une clarification des effectifs pendant le déroulement d’une compétition, et un système de relégation plus juste. Qu’est ce qu’on attend, en fait?
10:30 Publié dans Revue de web | Lien permanent | Commentaires (2) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : Cahiers, football, argentine, fermeture, cloture, tournoi
lundi, 24 décembre 2007
Revue de web
Dans cette nouvelle catégorie, j’ai envie de vous faire partager les perles du net, c’est-à-dire des articles que j’ai découverts sur d’autres sites et que j’ai aimé.
Pour commencer, un article en anglais de Al Ries, le pape américain des lois du marketing, qui nous montre ici que la force d'une marque n'est rien sans une forte catégorie.
Think Category First, Brand Second
A brand is the tip of an iceberg. How big and how deep the iceberg is will determine how powerful the brand is. The iceberg is the category. If it melts, the brand will melt too. Take Kodak, for example. Just eight years ago, Interbrand ranked Kodak as the 16th most valuable brand in the world, worth $14.8 billion. Every year since, the Kodak brand has fallen in both rank and value. This year, Interbrand ranked Kodak No. 82, worth just $3.9 billion.
What's a Kodak? It's the world's best film-photography brand. Unfortunately for Kodak, the film-photography iceberg is melting as the world turns digital.
Brand stands for 'trust'
Years ago I was discussing the situation with a Kodak marketing manager. It was no secret then that digital photography was starting to replace film. You're going to have to launch a second brand, I said. Not so, the marketing manager replied. The Kodak brand stands for more than just film. It stands for "trust."
Trust Kodak for film photography. Trust Kodak for digital photography. That seems to make sense. Furthermore, Kodak invented the digital camera and introduced the first model, the Kodak DCS, in 1991.
Sense doesn't matter in marketing. The Kodak name was the tip of the film-photography iceberg. And so far no brand, including Kodak, has managed to climb to the top of the digital-photography iceberg. As a matter of fact, all the digital camera products (Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Casio, Samsung, Panasonic, etc.) are line extensions from other icebergs.
Nobody is thinking category. Everybody is thinking brand. "How do we take advantage of our well-known brand to carve out a piece of this new iceberg?"
The Eastman Kodak Co. has been devastated by its brand-oriented approach. Compare the past with the present. In the last six years of the 20th century (1995 to 2000) the company had sales of $87.3 billion and net profits after taxes of $6.7 billion, or a 7.7% net profit margin. In the first six years of the 21st century (2001 to 2006), Eastman Kodak had sales of $80.4 billion and managed to lose $296 million. (No wonder the stock market has lost its trust in the Kodak brand.)
Dominate a category
The objective of a marketing program is not to build a brand, but to dominate a category. Red Bull dominates the energy-drink category. Starbucks dominates the high-end coffee category. Google dominates the search category. Does it surprise you that these relatively recent brand successes were started by entrepreneurs, not by established companies?
It shouldn't. Big companies are busy burnishing their brands while entrepreneurs are looking for ways to dominate new categories.
Brands are important, but they have value only to the extent they stand for categories.
Take Coca-Cola, the world's most valuable brand, according to Interbrand. But the value of the Coca-Cola brand has been steadily falling. It was worth $83.8 billion in 1999. Today it's worth only $65.3 billion. Why is the value of the Coke brand falling? Because the cola category is losing its share of the soft-drink market. A brand is only valuable to the extent it stands for a category.
The Marlboro brand, according to Interbrand, is worth $21.3 billion. As smoking continues to decline, someday the brand is going to be essentially worthless. (Maybe the nicotine-flavored chewing gum category will make the Marlboro brand worth a few dollars.)
As a category iceberg melts, so does its brand melt too. As the minicomputer disappeared, so did the value of the Digital Equipment brand. As the word processor disappeared, so did the value of the Wang brand. As instant photography slowly disappears, so does the value of the Polaroid brand.
Most companies are so brand-oriented their first thought is, "How do I save my brand?" So Digital Equipment launched a line of personal computers with the Digital name, as did Wang with the Wang name. And Polaroid launched a raft of new products including conventional cameras and film, printers, scanners, medical imaging systems, security systems, videotapes, etc. With the Polaroid name, of course.
All for naught
All for naught. Polaroid went bankrupt in 2001 and through a series of transactions wound up in the hands of the Petters Group in 2005. That year, when the new chairman was asked what would Polaroid be like in the year 2010, he replied, "It's a consumer electronics leader known for really cool products that offer quality and value."
There's no iceberg out there in the consumer ocean named "cool products that offer quality and value." So expect Polaroid's second reincarnation to be no more successful than its first one.
There are two types of icebergs. The first type is narrow and deep. The second type is broad and shallow. While the second type might offer greater sales potential, the first type offers greater profit potential and greater brand stability. Brands that are narrow and deep are almost invulnerable to competitive attacks. Furthermore, they usually are incredibly profitable. Think Rolex in expensive watches, for example. But there are many other brands that fit this description:
- Hellmann's in mayonnaise
- Campbell's in canned soup
- Heinz in ketchup
- Orville Redenbacher in popcorn
- Tabasco in pepper sauce
- Gatorade in sports drinks.
- Visa in credit cards
Someday your brand's iceberg might start to melt. So what. You can always look around for a new iceberg to dominate.
With a new brand name, of course.
10:20 Publié dans Revue de web | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : Al, ries, lois, marketing, category, brand