02:12 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

WaMu's WTF Advertising

Sometimes, when seeing an ad whizz by you on a bus, or hearing a spot on the radio, you can reach straight through the ad to the creative brief -- and in a good way. A creative solution to a well-defined business problem can have a sort of elegance that practically sparkles when you see it, brimming with energy.

This isn't one of those ad campaigns. I unveil to you: Whoo hoo! (See the TV ads on their microsite here.)

Hello, Washington Mutual -- or should I call you WaMu? Let's spend millions of dollars on TV, in-store, direct, print, out-of-home, radio, and Web site communications on a large-scale advertising and branding campaign associated with a word without any defined meaning to our audience (other than calling to mind Homer on The Simpsons and "Song 2" by Blur). We can then imbue said exclamation with the following meaning: that it is related to the experience that people have when they come in and bank with us -- specifically, as they discover the great set of benefits we provide them for free, and enjoy not being smacked with fees as they do their day-to-day banking.

Great idea in theory. But this creative approach is what I call WTF Advertising. You look at these ad executions in and out of home and go, "What the heck is this supposed to mean?" Then you connect the dots when you happened to collide with a radio spot or TV ad. I didn't for many weeks. And when I did see the ads, I was very disappointed. This is it? This is "Whoo Hoo?" Big whoop.

Here are three lessons I learned from enjoying these ads.

1. Don't do an integrated campaign with a print execution that relies on a sound.

The term "Whoo hoo" totally flops in the out-of-home executions because it has no tangible meaning outside the TV and radio spots.

The key insight and hook of your campaign isn't working if it can't be transmitted across all media in a cohesive manner using words and images that convey a solid, consistent meaning. You should never expect that someone will see more than one execution in a campaign, no matter how much money you're spending on media. Unless you embed sound chips in all your print materials, and when you pass by the billboards, it beams the words "Whoo hoo!" at your car and pipes them through your stereo speakers.

2. The entire hook of the campaign isn't supported across the customer experience after purchase.

All of the ad executions in TV and radio rely on invoking the emotional experience of starting a relationship with WaMu, and imagining how your day-to-day life and dreams become real as a result.

Dreams, meet responsibilities. "Whoo hoo!" isn't supported in the actual experience of being a WaMu customer in a consistent way after you've initiated a relationship. "Whoo hoo" becomes marketing fluff after purchase.

Since the campaign has come out, a few people who are long-term WaMu customers have mentioned to me how they have never felt "Whoo Hoo" about their banking relationship. In fact, they're looking to get out, and were prompted by the ads to make a faster exit. Was this an intended byproduct of the ads? Can't you make more money from making your current customer base happy, instead of going out and trying to land new ones? Talk about alienating your core constituency.

Plus, you know it's bad advertising when people start sending phone messages regarding said ads to your wife, asking her if said blogger feel embarrassed to be in the same profession as the people who created them. Or when people start blogging in such an eloquent manner to bring down the two-handed hammer.

3. Don't cultivate a rebel personality when you're really just pretending.

Do you sign up for banking services on a whim? Because of a feeling?

Being this unbanklike isn't necessarily good for a bank brand. Especially when banks make money off late fees, interest, etc. "Whoo huh?"

I'm a big fan of disruptive, polarizing ads -- if that's what they're intended to do. There are a number of brands, such as Axe in America, or Pot Noodle in Britain, who do a great job of being brash to the point of inspiring real brand hatred, inspiring a closed circle of ever more loyal product users.

In this case, what polarized me was recognizing the audience WaMu was really aiming at. Perhaps they have always been aiming at them, but it's just so baldly explicit in the ads, I can't help but take notice.

The people who float through dreamy interludes where they frolic and dance from the feeling of a bank that truly "gets them" -- those people are not doing so hot when it comes to finances. I can just hear the creatives presenting the concept: "The target audience -- those people 25-45 who are scrambling for money to make rent or their mortgage, that are dancing on the razor's edge with their finances to open their business or save for their children's college tuition -- will respond well to these ads. Because we've 'got their back' and a suite of great rewards for signing up with us, they'll switch to WaMu."

Gawd, that's bold. And exploitative. And insincere.

You're a bank. You hold people's money to make more money. You'd better "have my back." The last thing I want a bank to do is tell me that I'll feel good signing up for a bank account, because that feeling will fade. What I really care about is having money in my bank account and my bank not going under.

I have nothing wrong with the business strategy that is behind WaMu's staple Free Checking package. They've been hammering on it for years, positioning it in a number of different ways. It's the weak marketing strategy here that makes me cringe. WaMu isn't Umpqua Bank. Now they know how to be sincere.

You blew it, WaMu. Now go merge with Citigroup. You can join good company, as pundits have been tearing apart their ads for years.

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See full visuals associated with this post, including a "Big Whoop!" billboard comp, at http://changeorder.typepad.com/

12:02 pm | 1 recommendation | Be the first to comment

Sorry, We're Clopen Source

My brilliant colleague Carrie Byrne came up with the title of this post and the term. I'm just the messenger.

Clopen source is the spirit of open-source application creation -- crowdsourcing, product development by a vocal community, free sharing of information to encourage innovation separate of a technology provider -- with very strict boundaries that ensure the profit of the key patent-holders. The key boundary is the device that holds the applications.

Clopen source means more than just having a community of users contribute to the success of a technology or device. It requires mechanisms for profit as part of its motive. And it requires purchase of a specific product or service to play ball. This ain't your father's UNIX, which is really the last frontier for true open source goodness.

Apple Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone? Clopen source. More apps on their phone means more minutes used, more iPhones sold, and more SDKs sold to third parties. Create a community that develops apps for you, then monetize it. This has been the game on all smart device platforms, until Android came along.

Google's Android OS for smart devices. At first, doesn't seem like clopen source. Google is making the device OS 100% open source for developers, but the platform still needs to be monetized. So, who wins here? Phone sellers push more units at similar prices to Windows Mobile phones without paying for licensing, while Google makes more money off mobile search and advertising tied into the apps. This would be clopen source at its heart. You can't just give it away.

Free code, or even full applications, that drive your Web site? Clopen source. Using the code encourages the adoption of a specific server-side technology and the use of a development platform. Just choose your flavor and its overall software cost to you.

Neuros OSD, which lets you archive your DVD and video content? Clopen source. The box runs on Linux and Neuros encourages developers to improve the device's feature set. But it's a closed community, and you have to fork over for the box to play ball.

I don't think there's anything wrong with clopen source. It seems to be the best way to make money off interactive technologies in today's "free economy."

In many ways, clopen source is the great hope of keeping ahead of the curve and advancing the next killer app. By having product audiences have access to personally improving company technologies, and allowing those companies to absorb that learning into their own products, will have massive impacts on the speed of technological growth in immature markets like mobile computing, smart device generation, and other technologies that blur the lines between product categories.

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See the full post at http://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2008/03/sorry-were-clop.html

01:00 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

Channel Marketing + Sales = Branding

I love it when marketing managers talk about how it's their job to help funnel leads to salespeople, and that they can't control anything after that magical transference of responsibility.

I also enjoy it when salespeople talk about how they spend too much time sifting through weak leads from those same marketing managers to close a sale.

Or when I enter a store after being enticed by a compelling marketing promotion and hot price on some product I can't wait to purchase (phone, climbing gear, and chocolate all come to mind), only to be ignored by the salespeople.

The truth is, we're all in this together: designers, marketing managers, and salespeople. And we have to work together to create compelling communications that support our brands, drive through sales, and ensure that our customers keep coming back.

You'd think the big dogs in the consumer marketing space would have wised up to this new truism of the Information Age: you can't assume that people will like your brand if they get stoked by great marketing and let down by poor service in any channel. There was a great post on Ideas on Ideas about this recently, related to blogs and their influence on purchasing decisions, but I think there's a broader point to be made than just bad service = big word of mouth = bad branding. Often bad service can cascade into a larger problem because of poor continuity between sales channels.

I remember being stunned as I walked through Best Buy last month, to be greeted by every single salesperson I passed. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven after so many years of terrible service there. We had dropped in to purchase a microwave for my wife's office, and they were able to direct us to options right off the bat, without having to sit there and decode the boxes to figure out which one would be the wisest purchase. We'd researched the purchase on the Internet, made sure to call ahead and ensure the products were in stock, and then were helped by a real person right on the spot to make a no-pressure purchase.

What made the experience so great?

Every single point, from Internet to phone to in-store, was high-touch. Swift. Too the point. Propelling us to the purchase, no matter where we chose to make it, and with us feeling like we were in control of the situation. In every channel.

This is the holy grail of retail. The ability to cultivate a positive experience that extends across every touch point in the sales process, from consideration to purchase to happy customer to long-term customer/company relationship.

And why is it so rare?

Because there's a weak link somewhere in the chain from product creation to marketing to sales. And most often, this is related to your channel marketing strategy not lining up.

Companies that grok this spend a lot of time refining their business process on a regular basis -- because they know it's the only way to ensure the customer experience is optimal. It doesn't always boil down to a bad marketing promotion or a bad in-store experience. Often the things that can hobble a corporation's branding efforts in the long term are all about how they do business.
Marketers like to segment out Internet, phone, in-store, email, etc. in their marketing plans and focus on increasing the effectiveness of each channel. They think about the synergy of how each channel works together to ensure a continuity of experience until a customer engages in a purchasing decision. Where necessary, they'll work around issues with legacy sales systems, weak infrastructure, wonky in-store policies, and other hurdles in the background to ensure that customers keep getting funneled into a sales decision. And this is where their brand truly suffers.

Usually one channel is less mature than another. Some companies are slam-bang great at Internet, but they are terrible in the store. Others have some of the best phone service around, but the online experience is weak. Some companies like to focus their marketing dollars on the channels that perform best, such as online, often to the detriment of hiring the killer staff that will make their in-store sales rise more swiftly.

But I digress. Let's focus on the places where channel marketing can break down, from the customer's perspective.

Customers don't expect much. But they do have real expectations when it comes to how they'll approach you -- and what kind of behavior they'll tolerate. Let me share some of these expectations with you:

• If you're going to sell something online and in a store, sell it over the phone too. Even if your business model doesn't support it. Customers expect high-touch -- unless you're Fry's Electronics -- and the sale will probably cost you less than the in-store one.
• Be ready to accommodate multiple forms of payment. In any combination.We take cash, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Oh, and gift cards too. But you can't use a gift card online and a credit card to cover the rest of the purchase. So you'll have to go to the store, because we can't take your purchase over the phone. Our computer system can't handle that. And the store isn't close to you. Sorry about the inconvenience.
• If you don't have it in the store / online / on the phone, secure one for your customer promptly. If you have it on the floor as a sample and it isn't in stock, don't just say: "Sorry, sir, we don't have it." Go find it at another store or have me buy it online with you and then send it to me. Or, alternatively, you could go back to talking with the other salespeople behind the counter while the 4 other customers wander around the store and, like me, eventually leave without making a purchase.
• If you say you'll call me or email me when the product comes in, actually contact me. Don't wait until I call back in a week or two, ask when said product will be in the store, and be told, "We got a big shipment in just a few days ago." This means you don't have a method for CRM within your store that carries into another channel. I wouldn't complain if you sent me an automated email that was triggered when my product was stocked.
• Don't send me to a third party to purchase it, if you can. If you make a great product, why would force me to search around for it at the mall? Sell it to me directly and make more money, via phone or Web.
• Don't think that since you carry that hot product everyone wants, you can treat me poorly in any channel. Yes, I would love that new smart phone that everyone seems to be coveting. No, I will not put up with waiting in line forever, being on hold on the phone, and/or returning over and over again to the Web site to see if it's back in stock. Take my money and send it to me when you get some in. Make it easy for me.

I think most of what I've listed here is fairly obvious and clear to most marketers. But the proof is in the performance: you need to invest in each channel appropriately, and continue analyzing the effectiveness of the customer experience in each channel, to ensure that customers aren't falling out because of inconsistent experience or overcoming your own internal struggles to improve.

In the end, what customers experience in the sales process for a consumer product will likely hold more weight than the quality of your advertising, your marketing, and sometimes even your product quality, if it's on parity with the competition.

Do you really want to risk dragging the equity of your brand down in the long-term? If you aren't retaining your current customers and helping to foster brand loyalty in the long term, then how much money are you really throwing away?

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I blog on business and design at http://changeorder.typepad.com/.