Alberta Business Marketing

Steve Jobs put a computer inside a phone that made it into 120 million pockets. He was a boundary breaking thinker and astute marketer. Apple stock increased over 1700% since 1980 to $378 in 2011. There are very few brands that can deliver such an astounding return on shareholder value. And very few companies generate so much revenue from just four product lines: Macs, iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Walter Isaacson wrote a 571-page biography of Jobs, which went on sale earlier this month. The book confirms what we know today: Jobs was focused on exploring new and interesting ways of doing things. There's even a Facebook page dedicated to WWSJD (What would Steve Jobs do?).

Here are three themes that marketers can use as guideposts when developing marketing strategies:

1. Get your thinking "clean to make it simple"

“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end.”

We often hear about the need to “keep it simple” in marketing campaigns. But most marketing strategies don’t follow this principle. For example, in product development today, the emphasis is on new variants instead of original product ideas. A twist on keeping it simple is to start with a simple concept and stay true to the original brand idea. Jobs summed it up really well- “it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important”.

Steve Jobs told Fortune magazine in 2008, "Apple is a $30 billion company yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before". He went on to add:

"Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. The clearest example was when we were pressured for years to do a PDA, and I realized one day that 90% of the people who use a PDA only take information out of it on the road. They don't put information into it. Pretty soon cell phones are going to do that, so the PDA market's going to get reduced to a fraction of its current size, and it won't really be sustainable. So we decided not to get into it. If we had gotten into it, we wouldn't have had the resources to do the iPod. We probably wouldn't have seen it coming.”

2. Understand feelings and emotions

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google and former Apple Board Member said in an article in Bloomberg Business Week, “One of the things about Steve is, he was always in the realm of possibility. There was a set of assumptions that Steve would make that were never crazy. They were just ahead of me.” He added, “he had a level of perception about feelings and emotions that was far beyond anything I’ve met in my entire life.”

At Arcus, we have found that the biggest insights and ideas come from observing and analyzing in real time how consumers interact with products in their daily lives. Jobs believed that technology can be a tool for individual definition and self-expression. A pink iPod is about much more than just listening to music. Simple insights can lead to great campaigns. This goes against conventional thinking about market research. Focus groups and quantitative research generate insights but these tools will never match the depth of understanding that observing feelings and emotions of people in real life situations can offer.

3. Anticipate surprising and completely new strategic directions

“Creativity is about connecting things.”

We live in a connected world. Interaction between brands and customers has never been more complex with so many touch points. However, some things never change. Good ideas are scarce. No matter how complex we think marketing has become, the most successful strategies tend to have a simple premise that captivates and delights audiences. Jobs' last advice to the new Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc., Tim Cook, was to 'never ask what Steve would do'. He would suggest, ‘Just do what’s right’. He felt that followers tended to spend all their time thinking and talking about what someone else would do.

Merril Mascarenhas

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, technology
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Earlier in 2011, Quizative was cast to participate as “Marketing Mentors” in Canada’s biggest reality show – Recipe to Riches airing on the Food Network. Each week the final two contestants were told that they’d be meeting with two “of the most creative agencies in the country” and one of them joined us at our Quizative offices for an intense product marketing session. In less than 24 hours we helped them name, brand, design, and sample their products on the streets of Toronto. They battled for their chance to win $25,000, earn ultimate bragging rights as their products were sold in Loblaws stores across the country, and secure their spot in the final battle for the big prize of $250,000. This weekly blog will discuss one marketing lesson from each episode inspired by the experience. Win or lose, the lessons of the competitors offer insights for marketers big and small.

Recipe to Riches: Episode 1
Marketing Lesson: We are who we are.

In this episode the two finalists were Canada’s newest sweetheart Glo McNeil with her Luscious Lemon Pudding and nice guy Brad Gash with his Maple Pudding Chomeur. Brad joined us at Quizative as we set about helping him name, brand, and market his product. The pudding (or pouding) was a simple, sweet maple flavoured cake. Here’s the thing for those who don’t know what chomeur means - it literally means “poor man’s pudding.” It was first created during the great depression by female factory workers who could only afford the basic ingredients that make this traditional French-Canadian dessert.

Let’s face it, this isn’t exactly rich ground for marketing a product that is competing in a national cooking show vying to win the big prize. It is poor man’s pudding after all! So where do we go from here? Maple syrup! One of the ingredients in the recipe was maple syrup, and Brad wisely decided to call this out right from the beginning. What’s more Canadian than maple syrup? This conjures thoughts of sweetness, national pride and all things Canadian. The strategy wasn’t to hide from the history of the cake. It wasn’t to try to rebrand it “new and improved” with a flashy name or fancy title. The strategy was to take the “chomeur” name and put it front and centre right alongside that wonderful ingredient – maple syrup. The judges seemed to like the decision – especially as Brad drew the analogy to poutine.

Glo on the other hand – good old Glow – was just that, old. And that’s not a bad thing. At 82 she has more energy than some people half her age. She’s a grandmother. And that alone made her different than the other competitors. In the world of marketing, different is good. The team at FUSE Marketing Group decided to take this and run with it calling her product Grandma Glo’s Luscious Lemon Pudding. When it comes to food, the category that is most likely to benefit from the association with grandma is baking – so the recommendation on the product name was a reasonable one. However, there seemed to be some disagreement about that. She didn’t really think of herself as a grandmother. The judges were mixed on the choice of the name with some thinking she’d be better off making a reference to J-Lo. At the end of the day, despite the debate, it didn’t hold her back and she took home the $25,000 prize.

Here’s the thing. In today’s marketing and advertising world the reality is that digital media, social media and the internet make it almost impossible to hide from who we really are. Glo is an 82 year old grandma, Brad’s chomeur was “a poor man’s pie” and they both took the truth of their products and themselves, and they ran with it. The owned it, they marketed it and they didn’t have to make the effort to try and convince customers that they were anything other than what they really are.

The lesson: We are who we are. Don’t try to fight it. Take it, own it, and make it a strength. If we can’t be proud of who we are, then how can we expect others to be?

Adrian Capobianco

Tags: Branding
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I've never before written a post after someone has passed away.

Perhaps it's because I'm writing this on a MacBook Pro. Perhaps it's because we have over a half dozen Apple devices in our home. Perhaps it's the way I see my 3 year old daughter effortlessly using an iPad and technology without a second thought. Or perhaps I still remember when I first used a computer (Apple IIE) and how it was a moment of 'child-like wonder'.

I'm sure you have heard, Steve Jobs the founder of Apple and until recently its CEO, passed away yesterday due to the scourge of cancer. He left behind a wife and young family. He also left behind a legacy as an innovator and someone who demanded excellence. Someone who never contented himself or his company with the status quo.

Indeed I had the privilege to work at Apple but I only saw him once from a distance when I travelled to headquarters in Cupertino, California. But let me tell you that you felt his presence throughout the Apple and it was firmly ingrained within the company DNA.

Words that come to mind as it relates to Steve Jobs and Apple as a former employee? Excellence. Drive. Innovation. Marketing. Simplicity. Financial Performance. Ruthlessness. Secrecy. Vision.

Now I'm not about to suggest that Steve Jobs was perfect. But really who amongst is? He was no deity but one would be naive to deny the tremendous impact Steve Jobs had on marketing, technology and perhaps our society at large especially in the past decade.

Whether it was the founding of Apple. Being later unceremoniously removed from the very company he founded. Returning back to Apple to help it rise like a phoenix from the ashes and the precipice of bankruptcy. Taking Pixar Studios to the next level and making it a blockbuster company in terms of computer animation. Steve Jobs consistently made his mark.

Steve Jobs took an almost bankrupt company (with financial help from Microsoft) and made it one of the largest companies in terms of market capitalization on the planet. He did so by launching innovative and revolutionary products such as the MacBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Each of which significantly raised the bar in terms of the quality of products that companies in the consumer electronics industry produced. Each also severely disrupting other established industries such as music and entertainment.

So here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Like Steve.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, Digital, Get it off your chest, technology, This and That
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The one thing every website owner says they want more of is traffic. Traffic turns into leads that eventually convert into buyers. Without it, what’s the point of being on the web in the first place? While many webmasters focus on the number of visitors to their site, some fail to take into account the quality of the traffic they are receiving.

The truth is that it’s not really that hard to drive traffic to a website. In fact, if you really just want traffic, there are many services out there where you can literally buy visitors to your site. Many of these services will even give you traffic from certain countries and supposedly from certain search categories. If you’ve ever tried one of them, you’ve probably been quite underwhelmed by the results.

No, getting quality traffic in ever-increasing volume is not as easy as just buying it from one of those shady services. It requires a more comprehensive marketing strategy. It may be more difficult, but the increased revenue your site produces is well worth the effort.

As part of your overall marketing strategy, here are 4 components that will help you increase the quality of the traffic your website receives, so your site can finally start turning a profit:

1. Get to Know Your Market

This is an often overlooked part of online market research. Before doing anything else, it is important to know exactly what your targeted market wants. How do you find that out? The best way is to spend some time with them. No, I don’t mean physically hanging out with them. I mean hanging out with them in online forums and blogs. Remember, there are online forums on just about every subject, and there is likely one where your target market likes to spend time.

Here’s an example. Suppose you want to market a dog training guide. You would simply do a Google search for “dog training forum” and look through the results. Then you would invest some quality time inside several of these forums. Look for popularly discussed topics and threads with lots of replies.

These will give you some great insight into what concerns your target market has. You may also choose to go one step further and register in these forums. If you register, you can become a contributor and at the same time subtly market your website. Be careful though not to be too blatant when doing forum marketing, or you may be accused of being a spammer.

Another place to get to know your market is at Yahoo! Answers. Go over there and do a search for frequently asked questions from your prospective buyers. If you find out what they want and what their concerns are, you are far more likely to build a site that will attract them and turn them into customers.

2. Search Engine Optimization

Now that you know where your target market is and what they want, it’s time to optimize your site so they will find you. While getting to know your market, you should be collecting a list of keyword phrases that reflect the types of questions or concerns they may have. Then, optimize your site to rank high in the search engines for these search phrases.

There are several factors that go into a successful search engine optimization strategy. They include:

On-site SEO: This is all the stuff you do on within your site to make it attractive to the search engines. This includes technical stuff like meta-tags, and the content of your site. With Google cracking down on low quality sites they call “content farms”, good quality content is more important than ever if you hope to rank well with Google.

Off-site SEO: These are all the things you do outside your site to get Google to rank it higher. Some of the methods used here will also bring in quality traffic outside of the search engines.
Critical components of off-site SEO are:

• Website Directory Submissions
• Building Blog/Forum Links
• Purchasing Links/Link Exchanges
• Article Marketing
• Press Releases
• Video/YouTube Marketing
• RSS Feeds
• Facebook/Twitter/Google +1 Marketing

Once you know who your target market is and where to find them, these are all effective methods to drive increasing numbers of them to your site. The best part is that, with the exception of buying links, all the above-mentioned methods are free. The only cost to you is your time to implement them.

3. Paid Web Marketing

If your budget permits it, you may want to purchase some paid search marketing on top of the free SEO methods you employ. The importance of knowing your market will come into play here as well, because you will again have the right keyword phrases to target so you are going after quality traffic. A word of caution; paid marketing can be tricky, and many a website owner has been known to lose lots of money if they don’t know what they’re doing. This is an area where it would definitely pay off to consult and hire a professional to set up your campaign.

These days, there are lots of places to purchase paid advertising. Here is a list of some of the better-known sources:

• Google Adwords
• Yahoo Search Marketing
• MSN Ad Center
• Facebook
• Stumble Upon
• Buying Banner Ads from Site Owners

There are many, many more methods and sources for buying web advertising. It’s best to do some research and find out the ones that you believe are suited toward capturing the kind of traffic you are seeking.

4. Test and Tweak
Final word of advice for developing a successful web marketing strategy and increasing the quality of your website traffic; continually test and tweak the methods you are using. You are not likely to come up with the “perfect” formula right off the bat, and there are likely other traffic generation methods not mentioned here that are worth trying. Be flexible in your approach and always be willing to try new traffic generation methods if they make sense for your site. This mindset coupled with a commitment to the success of your site will ensure that you can bring your site to profitability in the shortest possible time.

Geoff Jackson

Tags: Digital, Strategy
Posted in Advertising | | Comments Off

Why have advertising agencies been relegated to purveyors of ideas only? Why are they perceived to be "creative" shops first and foremost?

It's because they relinquished their ownership of the consumer.

At one time ad agencies had vast consumer research departments. Leo Burnett Chicago housed a 40 person research group and another 10 person insights group in the mid-1990's. They also had a fully-integrated media department. Since those days most agencies have spun off media departments to create distinct media companies. This was driven by holding company profit goals and not what was necessarily right for clients.

Media departments and now these media companies have access to vast amounts of consumer data the "creative agencies" do not. And virtually no multi-national agency in Canada has a fully staffed research group. They abdicated research to the client, to the media companies, to research companies and now digital agencies. Agency researchers have been replaced by planners. Planners are necessary. But they should be in addition to, not a replacement for research. Information is power. By relinquishing research agencies have relinquished a degree of power now being assumed by their media companies, digital agencies and PR agencies

Tony Altilia

Tags: Research
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