Feb 15
If you enjoy good wine and helping to make the world a better place, then here is something for you. On March 20th, Northern California Urban Development (NCUD) is holding it’s annual Future Vintage Wine Tasting Dinner and Auction. Currently NCUD is bringing financial literacy and economic life skills into the classroom in five Bay Area schools, through their Future Profits program. Future Profits is currently educating 350 students weekly. Proceeds from this event will help them expand their reach into more schools. This event is being held at the Menlo Circus Club in Atherton, CA. The evening will begin with hors d'oeuvres, cocktails, along with wine tastings from several premium wineries, including Miner Family Winery, Clos Pegase, Spring Mountain Vineyard, and Mandolfo Vineyards. Guests may participate in a silent auction during this time as well. After the wine tasting and silent auction, guests will enjoy dinner, followed by a live auction of wine and other items. Individual tickets are $150, and tables of eight are $1,000. Come for a night of great wine and food, while helping NCUD fight the systemic effects of poverty in East Palo Alto, Redwood City and East Menlo Park, CA. Buy Tickets Here: http://bit.ly/a39qCE
Oct 23
In the AdAge Article "Do NBC Universal, Fox and Disney Need to Rethink Their Hulu Strategy?" @AnthonyYoung with @optimedia media placement suggests that Hulu's giving away the store.
He says: "I first met Jason Kilar at a Tribeca lunch spot last June, and it wasn't hard to be impressed by his impassioned mission to insert Hulu into a special place in the media ecology. But I question the wisdom of the broadcast network's strategy behind Hulu ... it just doesn't make any sense from a business perspective. Consumers want a lot of things they can't have. I'd love to have free meals at Denny's every day, or zero delays in and out of JFK, or environmentally friendly gas. But it just doesn't make business or financial sense for companies to provide this. Consumers understand this and they aren't demanding anytime, anywhere access to premium TV at no cost, but if it was offered up then they'd be mugs not to take it.".
Wow, I have to wonder if Anthony was involved in a lucrative consulting gig with the RIAA in the late 90's? Here is the article and my thoughts.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=139869#comments-50238
Sep 4
Del Monte Foods is further accelerating its already pumped-up marketing budget for its fiscal 2010.
The company, which originally planned to increase its marketing budget by between 30% and 40% compared to fiscal 2009, announced in its financial report for the first quarter of the new fiscal year that it will instead hike marketing spending by 40% to 50%.
Increasing marketing investment to drive sales of Del Monte's core brands and higher-margin businesses is a key component of the company's accelerated growth plan. During the first-quarter financials call, president/chairman/CEO Rick Wolford said that the "very encouraging" results now starting to be realized from last fiscal's increased investment supported the wisdom of increasing the marketing budget for the current year.
Wolford said that marketing spending increased by only 11% in the first quarter as a result of delayed spending in its pet products division reflecting concerns about optimizing execution, but will accelerate during the remainder of the year.
One area of both marketing and production innovation investment focus is packaged produce, Wolford confirmed. Del Monte saw strong first-quarter net sales growth in this business, and a four-point share gain.
Del Monte pleased investors and analysts by reporting $58.9 million in first-quarter income from continuing operations, for EPS of $0.30, versus a loss of $8 million and negative EPS (-$0.04) for the same period last fiscal -- and by raising its EPS guidance for the current fiscal to $0.88 to $0.92 (compared to previous guidance of $0.76 to $0.80).
First-quarter net sales rose 12%, to $813.7 million. Consumer products sales rose 4.7% to $401.4 million, largely driven by benefits from fiscal '09 price increases. Sales from new products, including Del Monte Fruit Chillers Tubes and new packaged produce items, also contributed to growth. Pet product sales grew 20.3% to $412.3 million, driven by strong unit volume growth in pet snacks, in particular, plus last fiscal's price increases.
Commentary:
Here's a great article about Del Monte and how they are using the recession to their advantage, by Karlene Lukovitz on MediaPost.
More Marketing = Higher Sales = Pleased Investors. Note, the key to this algorithm is performance.
So before you run off and do the trendy thing and hire an SEO/SEM specialist, make sure you are covering the bases on the fundamentals. Do you know who your target customer is? Does your current message resonate with them? Is your message to them clear, concise and consistent across all your channels? Do you know what they actually want, or why they use or buy your stuff?
Stop and take a look at what you've been doing up to now. What are you doing well? What needs work? What do you need to stop doing? Do you know what you don't know? SEO and SEM will be much more effective after you have the rest of your act together.
A recipe for success: Answer these questions, then look for ways use the current economic downturn to your advantage and put your increased marketing dollars to work.
A recipe for failure: Cut back on marketing and hope that your Field of Dreams strategy (i.e. build it and they will come) will somehow work.
P.S. A special note to Mobile App Developers: These days your chances of a Field of Dreams strategy working is less than hitting the Lotto jackpot. You need a Marketing plan.
Jim
---
Jim Berkman
Principal, Supplemental Marketing
jim@supplementalmarketing.com
Twitter: marketingguys
Aug 26
If you haven’t checked out Posterous.com, you should. ‘Nuf said.
www.posterous.com
Aug 24
Here is some good commentary by Judy Hopelain. Her tip at the bottom of the post is key: discount to drive additional sales - not across the board. If you’re doing you’re job as a marketer, you have the data and know the difference. ---
Anyone who’s been shopping lately has seen it: the store wide sales, discounts, coupons and massive price reductions taken at the cash register. While back-to-school shopping last weekend, we saw it up close and personal. As a shopper, it makes me a little crazy not to know what the actual price is of the items in my hand and a little excited when it rings up as less than I calculated. As a strategic marketer, it makes me crazy to see across-the-board discounting on the rack and at the register. In recent articles in Business Week, Retail Customer Experience and elsewhere, the experts are weighing in on when, where and how to discount. There’s great retail advice out there. Kate Newlin’s recent article for
Retail Customer Experience offers advice about the antidote to price-based competition. How do we kick our own addiction to price promotion? She asserts "We have to return our focus to the shopping (not buying) process, enhancing, entrancing, and engaging the customer and the salesperson in the dance.
"
Kate advises clients on how to avoid discounting and how to contain the damage if/when they do by: Hiring front line people with a passion for the merchandise
Branding the experience, differentiating on elements of style and design
Changing the tone, acknowledging that the customer knows the economy is in free-fall and expects a deal
In an August 14 article in Business
Week, Steve McKee shares 3 rules for discounting wisely. They should discount briefly: make the rationale behind the discount credible (and obvious) to consumers, so they don't perceive it as an act of desperation. They should also discount credibly: for a limited time to treat a specific condition. And last, McKee contends they should discount creatively: by focusing on other elements of the marketing mix. I agree with McKee that in your customers' eyes, your product is either worth regular price or it's not.
Read the rest of the post here:
http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/article_printable.php?id=1330&page=2
Aug 24
Whatever the Merits of Obama's Reform, the Marketing Is a Mess
Our Marketer of the Year Forgot the Lessons of His Campaign
By Ken Wheaton
If the political world has a cliché as tired as marketing's "Nothing kills a bad product like good advertising," it's probably the somewhat related "Governing is not the same as campaigning." Barack Obama and his team of political operatives -- named Marketer of the Year in 2008 -- have learned that even tired clichés have large elements of truth. Team Obama was hailed last year as a fast-thinking, highly adaptable machine quick to marry the best of old campaigning methods with the newest. Team Obama became Brand Obama, a sort of pop-culture phenomenon that consumers voted into the White House. Once elected and faced with the reality of the office, Brand Obama held up pretty well in the face of enormous challenges. And then came health care. Even in the best of years, tackling health-care reform in the U.S. demands something approaching perfection when it comes to messaging and branding. Rest of article:
http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=138558
