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Industry Matters/News, Marketing and Sales, Seagram

What does website design and spirits manufacturing have in common?

January 6, 2011 2 Comments

Two different worlds, right?

Maybe not.

Like most people I’m on the Internet constantly — learning, exploring, researching, being entertained, buying stuff and on and on. More often than not, I get to a website and wonder, “What the hell were they thinking when they put this up? Why is it so hard to move around and find what I want?”

It’s fairly obvious that the problem lies in the “manufacturing” of some websites. They are either over designed or put up on the fly with low cost as the driving force. That’s part of the reason.

I think a more important factor is that the webmasters or designers are thinking of the “product” or what it takes to make it happen and don’t consider the user or the “consumer.”

They’re thinking manufacturing not marketing.

I once paid a visit to one of our main plants and spent a day or two explaining what marketing was up to and why our needs can sometimes be difficult to execute. At the same time, I wanted to learn how the products were made and “walk in the shoes” of the manufacturing people.

At lunch one day I got into a conversation with the plant manager. “You know, if you got rid of the embossed seven with the crown on top (Seagram’s 7 bottle), we could produce a hell of a lot more per day. Those things on the back sometimes knock up against each other, break and we have to stop the line to clean up.”

I pointed out that the brand was falling badly and the last thing we wanted was to mess with the heritage, identity and packaging. He explained that his mission was to provide the best quality product while keeping the cost of goods in line.

We got to understand each other’s agenda and from that day on, we worked in partnership matching consumer expectations with manufacturing excellence.

Above all, he was a consumer himself and understood brand equity from an end user’s standpoint. The same is true for many web designers. But, I believe there are also many who probably never visit the site they create after it’s up.

Maybe it’s just the ones I go to.

“What did the client say?”

December 13, 2010 1 Comment

I came across an interesting and fun piece in Ad Age Daily I wanted to share with you, in case you haven’t seen it.

Derek Walker, whom I’ve never met but hope to, has a blog about advertising. He describes himself as “the janitor, secretary and mailroom person for his tiny agency, brown and browner advertising based in Columbia, S.C.” So right off the bat I like him.

His posting in Ad Age was called, Clients Say the Funniest Things. Since I’ve been on both sides of the desk I found his client quotes and reactions to advertising creative to be right on target and very funny.

So to those of you on the agency side, please enjoy. Those of you on the client side, well, here’s what some of your counterparts elsewhere, ahem, sound like.

For those of you who haven’t witnessed the presentation of creative messages and the reactions, this will be a window on the dance that sometimes takes place.

Here’s the interesting part — these reactions often happen to marketers themselves when they present creative work to their management who, in effect, is a client.

With thanks to Derek Walker for his approval, here are some client comments he has heard:

“We love the concept, it’s great! But can we change the visual, rework the headline and adjust the copy. Other than that we love it!”
“We don’t want ‘friends’ or for people to ‘like’ us. We want customers.”
“In the marketing class I took in college, the instructor said you should mention your company’s name at least seven times in a radio spot to be effective. Can we add 5 more mentions? That would make it great.”
“We don’t want to use emotions, we’re talking to business people and they don’t have them.”
On social media: “I get it but I’m worried that people will start talking about our product without us.”
After laughing hilariously for a couple of moments: “That’s great! It does everything we want and it stands out. But seriously, let’s see the real work.”
“Everyone loved the concept, then I took it home and showed it to my wife who used to be an English teacher and she said the line isn’t grammatically correct. Can you write a new headline?”
“We can’t do this; it is nothing like what we’ve done in the past.”
“Why talk to customers, can’t we just tell them what we offer?”
“I don’t understand why you put in so much effort. It’s only a website. Couldn’t we just throw up something and be done with it?”
“None of our competitors are doing or saying anything like that. How do we know it will work?”
“We don’t want to spend any money but we want everyone to know about us, we want to be everywhere our customers are.”
“Do we really need to be creative? I mean, isn’t our product great enough to attract attention?”
“I don’t believe in advertising, we’re only doing this because our competitors are.”
“I sure miss the days when all we had to do was produce a calendar with tits and ass and everyone was happy.”

For some of us in the booze business, the last one really resonates.

My own personal favorite is when a presenter of creative gets pushback from the client and asks for specifics on how to address the concerns. Too many times, I’ve heard the phrase, “I can’t tell you… I’ll know it when I see it.”

Quality Control

December 6, 2010 No Comments

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or even used the expression — “It’s all about what’s in the bottle” — when referring to the appeal of a spirits brand.

It’s homage to the intrinsic appeal of the product and recognition that image alone is not sufficient.

Couple of interesting questions…

If that’s the case why do some awful tasting brands of booze sell well? To maintain my friendships in the industry I won’t cite any examples but lets just say there are brands that sell more on image than product taste.

The more important question is, who decides if it’s “in the bottle?” For the smart marketer it’s based on consumer taste tests, sensory panels and research of that nature. Generally there are benchmarks, action standards and criteria or hurdles of acceptability.

Except when the owner or senior executive decides that he/she knows better than the consumer.

At Seagram there were the owners who made the decisions and their deputies who established the criteria.

I once asked the head of quality control who had been trained by Mr. Sam about Jack Daniels and got a 20-minute lecture on what was wrong with the quality of the brand. I protested that his view of the product was counter its performance in the market place and consumer appeal. Good thing Mr. Sam was long gone by this time or my head would have been rolled down the building plaza.

A good friend who was there when Seagram introduced a Scotch called 100 Pipers recently told me a story that illustrates the point.

Despite the fact that the company owned Chivas Regal, the leadership at the time, from Mr. Sam on down, was Canadian whiskey driven. So when the idea of 100 Pipers came along the QC folks, led by the owner, kept rejecting the formulation until it reached their notion of acceptability. Research was ignored; R&D and production was ignored; they kept fiddling with it until it tasted the way they thought it should. They felt that no one wants to drink Scotch so take the Scotch taste out.

The result — a good tasting Canadian whiskey that Scotch drinkers hated and Canadian whiskey drinkers wouldn’t consider. It never clicked.

Guess what? According to data I recently saw, it sells over 2 million cases today with more than half of that in Thailand. Who knew?

Still made by Chivas Brothers and owned by Pernod Ricard. Bet it tastes like Scotch too.