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Make your plans to come visit The Newberry for Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North, opening Sept. 27th. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the US Civil War, this exhibit will display more than 100 items that focus the on enormous and costly effect the war had on civilians. Highlights of the exhibition include paintings by Winslow Homer, Frederic E. Church, and other American artists of the period; first editions by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott; sheet music from Chicago-based music publishers Root and Cady; and magazine illustrations that depict the changing roles of women and children who supported the war effort. Home Front will run through March 24th, 2014. Marketing Keys is heading the advertising campaign of this special exhibit.

Do you know a Business Owner or Marketing Director that would be open to new strategies and ideas to reach your customers through an everchanging media landscape? If so, please forward our newsletter to them. Many of our clients have come to us through your kind introductions to your friends and business associates. In return, please let us know how we can help in terms of referring business back to you! roger@marketingkeys.com.

Welcome to the September issue of Key Notes - Marketing Keys' monthly newsletter. We hope everyone had a great summer! Our goal is for you to be informed and entertained with the latest media and marketing happenings quickly and efficiently. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

Facebook is seeking to break the long-held dominance of advertising over television budgets by selling TV-style commercials on its site - starting at $1M to as much as $2.5M per day.

 

With more than 1.15 billion members, Facebook is expected to start offering 15-second spots to advertisers later this year. This would follow efforts by Facebook's online rivals to capture ad dollars that have traditionally gone to TV networks.

 

In Facebook's case, the idea would be to capitalize on the millions of users who check the site on a daily basis, including during prime-time television hours. As of last quarter, 61 percent of Facebook members were using the site daily, and 88M to 100M people are active on Facebook during primetime TV hours in the US every night.

 

These commercials will initially be sold on a full-day basis and can be targeted to users based on age and gender. Currently, marketers on Facebook target ads based on location and areas of interest, which TV networks generally don't offer. By relying on fewer categories, Facebook is mimicking the way television ads are purchased, an attempt to make the process more comfortable for executives accustomed to TV.

 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back the start date at least twice to make sure Facebook's user experience won't be tainted by the ads. Zuckerberg has said that he's sensitive to how users react to advertising in general, and plans to limit the amount of ads people see to about one for every 20 updates, or 5 percent or a user's news feed. 

 

Even so, television remains the undisputed king of the ad world. While internet ads are expected to reach $36.3 billion, or 22 percent of all media purchases, TV advertising will garner $63.9 billion, or 38 percent.  

 Law No.1 of Marketing: "It's better to be first than it is to be better." 

 

Hertz in rent-a-cars. Kleenex in pocket tissue. McDonald's in hamburger chains. Gatorade in sports drinks. The list is endless.

 

While it's better to be first than it is to be better, there are many occasions where that's not possible. So what do you do if your brand is not first? There are four possibilities.

 

Duality 

Every new category starts out with dozens, if not hundreds, of brands. There were some 300 brands of personal computers with names like Apple, IBM, Motorola and Xerox. Apple was first in 8-bit "home computers, but lost its lead to IBM who was first in 16-bit "business computers, a new category.

 

Then there was Dell. Dell realized that one of these hundreds of PC brands is going to become the market leader. Long-term, two brands will dominate the PC market and Dell's only opportunity was to become the No.2 brand who's dominant characteristic is to be the opposite of the market leader. 

 

Since all of Dell's competitors were being sold through retail channels, Dell could become the opposite of the market leader by selling direct. Dell not only survived, but went on to become a strong No.2 brand and eventually even the market leader. 

 

Layers 

A category is like a layer cake with frosting at the high end and a number of less-expensive layers at the low end. The average category has three layers. One at the high end, one at the low end, and one in the middle. If one of these layers is missing, there is an opportunity for a new brand. The missing layers can normally be found at the top or bottom.

 

In airlines, Southwest exploited a missing layer at the low end.

In coffee shops, Starbucks exploited a missing layer at the high end. 

 

Packaging

The energy-drink market's No.1 brand is Red Bull. Out of the hundreds of other energy-drink brands, who would wind up in second place? 

 

Monster, the first energy-drink brand in large-size cans. 

 

Countries

In spite of a strong trend toward "global" branding, we are actually seeing a rise in "country" branding. 

 

Barilla became the No. 1 pasta in America three years after it was introduced in the American market. Amazing, considering there were quite a few well-known brands already in grocery stores. Barilla's position, identified on every package: "Italy's No. 1 brand of pasta."

 

Even if you're not first in your category, there are a lot of alternate strategies in order to become No. 2. 

Kleenex isn't just about cleaning up after sneezes anymore: The Kimberly-Clark Corp. brand has created a tool to predict when your sneezing will start. 

 

The brand is preparing to roll out "Achoo", which Kleenex says is a proprietary forecasting model using Centers for Disease Control data. It can be found at MyAchoo.com starting later in September. It goes beyond existing cold and flu trackers like Google Flu Trends or the Cold-FX app, by predicting where germs will strike within the next three weeks. Preliminary tests suggest the tool is 90% accurate. 

 

The forecasting model will be able to show the top five to ten cities predicted to be hit the hardest, come the end of September. Consumers will also be able to enter their Zip Codes at the site to get regional cold and flu forecasts.

 

The effort also includes a "Kleenex Checkpoints" traveling promotion that starts Sept. 25 in Chicago -- a city that las year was one of the hardest hit by the most severe U.S. cold-and-flu seasons in a decade. After that, Kleenex will travel to where the algorithm moves it, rolling promotion and publicity efforts into towns at highest risk for outbreaks.

 

The idea is to get consumers to stock up on Kleenex before they get sick, rather than buy supplies when they already feel bad. A TV campaign breaking Sept. 16 shows the shame of people who've been forced into unfortunate alternatives when they didn't have Kleenex, such as sneezing into their hands and then wiping them on the family dog. 

 

Along with the TV campaign, Kleenex will also place geo-targeted digital ads based on Achoo predictions.  

Top Marketing Books of the Summer

 

 

Here are the top 5 books that were recommended by readers of Ad Age:

1. "How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know" by Byron Sharp
2. "Brand Rituals: How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life" by Zain Raj
3. "Marketing in the Participation Age: A Guide to Motivating People to Join, Share, Take Part, Connect, and Engage" by Daina Middleton
4. "The Loyalty Leap: Turning Customer Information into Customer Intimacy" by Bryan Pearson
5. "The Loyalty Leap for B2B: Turning Customer Information into Customer Intimacy" by Bryan Pearson

Until next month, may all of your marketing dreams and goals
come true! And - if they don't - we are here to help.