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Number
52: May 12, 2004
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This week in Katydid:
Good
Samaritan Robots
Creativity in marketing usually means stretching the truth. In the
case of the recent Mini Cooper campaign, creativity means inventing it
outright. In fact, unless one looks closely, it is not clear at all what
product is being advertised.
Perhaps you've found the excerpt of a new book inserted into one of
your magazines. It's titled Men of Metal: Eyewitness Accounts of
Humanoid Robots by Rowland
Samuel. The publisher is Casson Publishing
Ltd. London. The book is a piece of investigative journalism looking
into a mysterious engineer named Colin
Mayhew, who may, in fact, be the
creator of a number of robots seen near Oxford, England.
According to a New York Times article by Stuart Elliot from May 10,
2004, the publisher, the author, the book, and the subject are all
entirely fictional. The campaign by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in
Miami has created a bit of buzz:
"Most people seem to want to believe," said Alex Bogusky,
partner and executive director at Crispin Porter, to the point that when
some skeptical consumers asserted it was advertising, "others said,
'They're saying it's marketing to cover up it's real.'"
According to the NYT article, the targets "are primarily men
ages 18 to 34" but the campaign's success is not easily measured.
There's no doubt, though, how much fun the campaign must have been for
its creators.
The book, Men of
Metal, is about forty pages of pure fiction built
around the idea that someone is building robots out of the spare parts
of Mini Coopers. It turns out that because Mini Cooper parts are
"over-engineered" and because so much artificial intelligence
is built into these cars, they make the ideal materials for intelligent
robots.
Of course, these robots are benevolent and roam the countryside
helping motorists out of bad situations, which is the lifestyle the Mini
Cooper is meant to promote – a community of car enthusiasts who enjoy
touring. Their slogan is, "Let's Motor."
The Mini is not even mentioned until about halfway through the book
with few details until the end of the book. The advertising firm saves
the most direct marketing material for the very last page of the book,
buried in the Author's Note:
"Many parts of the Mini Cooper are overbuilt. Consider the
multi-link rear suspension alone. Any car enthusiast will tell you that
on a front-wheel drive car, a multi-link rear suspension is overkill.
Yet there it is on the Cooper. To this day, Mini has offered no formal
explanation."
Clearly, Mini Cooper, owned by BMW, wants to create an evangelical
community similar to Apple, VW, or
Harley-Davidson. Those communities,
however, sprang up organically. All those companies had to do was
recognize the community and find ways to involve them. In this case, I'm
betting the company has created more fans of their campaigns than they
have of their cars.
In the meantime, if you find yourself in your car spinning out of
control in a hard turn, and suddenly picked up and placed gently on the
side of the road by a 22-foot-tall robot with a tailpipe that looks like
a beer can, please don't be alarmed. It's only a marketing campaign.
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Godin
Giving it All Away
Seth Godin, author of Permission
Marketing, Purple
Cow, et al, has just
published a new book, Free Prize
Inside.
Once again, Mr. Godin has set up a web site specifically for
Free
Prize Inside, demonstrating the cleanest way to market products. (How I
wish our requirements were so simple, though.) So, that's me spreading
the ideavirus to you.
What makes this book interesting is that it addresses one of the main
concerns that kept coming up for me around Purple Cow: namely, creating
remarkable products. You see, while I firmly believe marketing should
have an intimate role in product development, we're rarely invited into
that process. So, how can I make my product remarkable (i.e. a purple
cow), when it is, in fact, an ordinary Holstein (all apologies to
Elsie)?
Godin's latest book addresses that problem by showing you how you can
create a remarkable product through what he calls soft innovations:
"The clever, insightful, useful small ideas that just about
anyone in an organization can think up. Soft innovations can make your
product into a Purple Cow, they can make it remarkable. They do this by
solving a problem that's peripheral to what your product is ostensibly
about. It's a second reason to buy the thing, and perhaps a first reason
to talk about it. It may seem like a gimmick, but soon, what seems like
a gimmick becomes an essential element in your product or service."
If you have some examples of soft innovations out of your own
marketing programs, please share them with the rest of the class, by
e-mailing your feedback to the Weekly
Katydid.
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Krispy Creamed
One can hardly discuss Godin without thinking about Krispy Kreme
Doughnuts (one of his remarkable examples), but Krispy Kreme investors
(NYSE:
KKD) had only glazed eyes after their stock plummeted 29 percent
in one day last week. The fall came after the company reported lowered
earnings and reduced their forecasts for the fiscal year by ten percent.
According to a New York Times article, the company blames customer
interest in low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins and
South Beach.
The article states:
"Krispy Kreme itself was viewed by some as a fad, with long
lines outside new stores as it expanded from its base in the Southeast
United States to most of the United States, as well as Canada, Mexico,
Britain and Australia.
But now Krispy Kreme is closing a handful of company-owned stores and
reducing plans to open new ones." ("Krispy Kreme Runs Head-on
Into a Low-Carb Wall," Floyd Norris, May 8, 2004,)
Krispy Kreme will divest itself of Montana
Mills, their bread
company, which one can attribute to the interest in low-carb food, but
I'm not sure that Krispy Kreme can blame all their woes on empty
calories.
Krispy Kreme is an experience more than a product and the long lines
at their stores was due to loyal customers craving the uniqueness of a
fresh, hot doughnut. This differentiated Krispy Kreme from all the other
purveyors of sweet fried dough.
Now, doughnuts had been going out of style for some time. They had
long before transitioned from a staple breakfast food in the American
diet to a luxury item when Krispy Kreme came along and became the crème
de la Kreme of breakfast desserts.
Unfortunately, as Krispy Kreme has risen in popularity, they have
diluted the fresh, hot experience. Now, Krispy Kremes are available in
many convenience and grocery stores. Most are in boxes and some are kept
warm under heat lamps.
This has lowered the barrier to entry for those who want to try
Krispy Kremes, but the experience is cold, stale, or (at best) warmed
over. Potential new customers cannot become Customer Evangelists because
they have not had the authentic experience.
In short, there's nothing remarkable anymore about Krispy Kreme. They
have essentially turned their brand from an experience into a product –
in a dying product category.
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Thanks for Reading
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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