8/02/2005
Política da Morte
8/01/2005
Espionagem Chinesa
7/29/2005
O Que Fazem As Marcas Mais Poderosas
7/25/2005
Hoje Ser Bom Marketeiro É Para Idealistas
Exemplo de Bom Uso de Tecnologia
Só desarmar não basta, dizem especialistas
7/11/2005
Internet PelaTomada de Luz
7/07/2005
Correios: Como Não Oferecer Serviços no PDV
7/05/2005
Exemplo de Ação do CONAR
7/04/2005
Socialismo do Tio Patinhas
7/02/2005
Falta de Criatividade na Propaganda
A Baixaria da Campanha de Outdoor do Olla
6/30/2005
Fórum de Globalização de Wharton - Novo Modelo Mundial
6/29/2005
Promoção por Telefone
6/27/2005
Que Capitalismo É Esse ?
6/24/2005
ABA - Associação Brasileira de Anunciantes
Marqueteiros de Portugal
6/22/2005
Haja Paciência com a Vivo
6/18/2005
Agência Tenta Vender Capa da Isto É Dinheiro para Schincariol
6/17/2005
Gillette Lança Depilador Que É Um Vibrador ?
Equipe de Vendas Terceirizada
6/15/2005
Experimenta, Experimenta !
Celular de Baciada
As 3 telinhas: vendo as coisas da perspectiva do consumidor
6/14/2005
Microsoft Censura os Blogs Chineses
6/11/2005
Volkswagen Consegue de Novo Atolar
Risco Calculado ou Agência Levando no Bico ?
Não Grite, Escute - Procter & Gamble na Internet
6/08/2005
Dois Quintos dos Infernos
6/07/2005
Quem É O Cliente - Texto da Soraia Camargo
6/06/2005
Link para artigo Todos Marketeiro É Mentiroso
Sinceridade no Marketing
6/01/2005
A Vida Em Uma Multi de Consumo
5/27/2005
O Funcionário Entusiasmado
5/20/2005
Como Comprar Livros de Marketing Barato
5/17/2005
Seis Tendências do Marketing
What trends are already reshaping our ideas of branding?
1. Consumers Are the New Creative Directors
Brands that create a process of discovery drive passion and ownership of the brand. Consumers like being the creative director and feeling in control of shaping the products and brand. Born from consumers' desire to differentiate themselves from the mass market, this trend toward customization will continue to grow with the flexibility and efficiencies offered by technology at home and in manufacturing.
Consider Timberland's BOOTSTUDIO, where you can "build a boot as original as you are," including adding your own monogram. Nike ID also allows customers to control the look of 27 footwear styles and view their final creation from five different angles.
Lab21 takes customization to new heights by creating individually formulated skin-care products based on your DNA. Customers take an at-home DNA test and answer a questionnaire about the health of their skin. LAB21's Skin Profiler System then creates a custom formula (with your name on the label) to treat specific conditions.
As diamond promoters encourage women to buy their own diamonds (why wait for a marriage proposal?), technology that allows a gal to design her own diamond ring in three easy steps is sure to increase sales. Diamond.com not only builds your custom ring but also clearly educates on the four Cs, grading reports, setting styles and how to find your ring size.
2. Cynicism Raises the Bar for Authenticity
With consumer cynicism about marketing at an all-time high, brands must cultivate authenticity on a level never demanded before. Consumers are smart, resourceful and savvy. If your brand doesn't deliver on all its promises, or fails to speak to a consumer's specific, personal needs, your brand will become irrelevant, or worse: a pariah.
Furthermore, the companies behind a brand will be expected to behave authentically and demonstrate an active alignment with consumers' values. Simply slapping a pink ribbon on your Web site will no longer cut it, especially in building brand relationships with the influential woman consumer.
This demand for authenticity will shift marketers' preference for communicating via advertising and direct mail. The overt sales focus inherent in these channels makes them more suspect in consumers' minds.
Conveying brand messages via third parties, especially if they are a trusted, impartial source, will be better received. We'll see an increase in brands using the more transparent channels of public relations, sponsorships, niche interaction, word-of-mouth/buzz and blogs to deliver seemingly unbiased brand communications.
3. Multitasking and Info Overload: Don't Waste My Time
In a 2004 Redbook magazine poll of 1,000 women, a majority actually preferred time to money. In our info-saturated, multitasking lives, time is the new currency.
Barraged by more information than we can ever hope to absorb, we have what Paco Underhill, author of Why We Buy, refers to as a process crisi —how do we get the wisdom out of all the data with the least amount of time investment?
Consumers look to companies, media and marketers to provide information filters—tools to edit the mass amount of data available. As Robyn Waters, trends guru and former VP of Trend, Design and Product Development for Target, points out, "too much information without editing is toxic."
To effectively filter and communicate relevant data to a specific consumer, brands will need to be well versed in the art and science of interpreting, translating and delivering information. This requires cultural, ethnic, gender and generational expertise as well as sophisticated global knowledge of word associations and linguistics.
Amazon.com's highly developed preferences filtering keeps track of your interests, making recommendations based on your ever-growing profile, providing product reviews, updating daily a customized list of the newest and coolest products customers are buying—essentially creating a personal shopper to save you time. And it does all this in six languages with the appropriate cultural insights for each.
4. Humanization of Technology
The mind-bending advancements of the Web and computer technology have thrown life into warp speed. From an evolutionary standpoint, technology has infiltrated every aspect of our lives faster than we can assimilate the changes. Programming the clock on your old VCR seems effortless compared to the overwhelming, and often intimidating, technological knowledge now required to efficiently get through a day.
Successful brands will "humanize" technology by delivering a brand experience where the technology is transparent to the consumer. Products, services and communications fashioned around innate human behavior, instead of the ideals of a programmer, will win consumers.
Hewlett-Packard leads the pack with its "you + HP" consumer brand campaign focused on taking the hassle out of digital photography. Visually fun, full of creative energy and real life scenarios, HP's ads devote minimal space to showing actual product. Instead, they go to the heart of image-making—documenting, sharing and making memories. HP touts its digital cameras and printers as "radically simple picture-making technology, which lets you be in control of the entire picture-making process." It back ups its claim with easy-to-navigate, thorough product support via hp.com.
5. From Multi-Channel to Uni-Channel
Donald Libey, considered the leading direct marketing and catalog industry futurist, predicts that we will see even more evolved information systems than the World Wide Web. Any aspect of communications in our lives—cell and landline phones, libraries and research, bill paying, satellite TV, GPS navigation, entertainment, travel, financial transactions, shopping, fitness and health monitoring—will be available from anywhere at any time.
Increasingly, consumers will be less aware of separate marketing channels. Instead, all experiences of brand communications will be perceived as one all-encompassing, 360-degree, 3-D channel. Brands can prepare now by investing in creating a consistent and integrated customer experience across today's communications channels.
Catalog and retail giant JC Penney understands how to fully leverage multiple-channel synergy. Its stores, catalog, Web site and advertising interrelate across all channels: enter your zip code on jcpenney.com and browse your local JC Penney store's sales flyer or download coupons; order a printed catalog or flip through one online; items purchased through any channel can be returned or exchanged via any channel. At any touchpoint of the brand, the consumer finds a consistent experience.
6. Trends in Trending
While attending the 9th Annual Future Trends Conference, I was struck that one scenario in particular was not addressed more fully—the phenomenon that the mature market, AKA aging baby boomers, will completely redefine what "old" and "aging" means.
With the average American now living about 30 years longer than 100 years ago, what's considered old? What's considered middle-aged, for that matter? If the brands in these consumers' lives rely on the stereotypical notions of older as an uncool, has-been demographic, they'll perish.
Marketers have historically looked to the 18-to-24 year-old crowd for inspiration and indicators of future trends. I'd challenge the next conference, and brand stewards in general, to explore the dynamic, trendsetting potential of the baby boomer powerhouse.
SEGMENTAÇÃO X INDIVIDUALIZAÇÃO
5/10/2005
Falsos Gurus da Administração - Dica de Livro
5/05/2005
Confirmação Do Artigo - Governo Contra o Povo
5/04/2005
Democracia do quem grita mais alto
5/02/2005
Multi-Level Marketing ou Picaretagem ?
4/18/2005
SÍNDROME DE URSULÃO
4/15/2005
Dá Prá Equlibrar Vida e Trabalho ?
4/01/2005
Plágio na Propaganda
3/24/2005
América Indo Para o Buraco ?
America by the numbers
by Michael Ventura
02/03/05 "ICH" - - No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:
- The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
- The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
- Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
- "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
- Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
- "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
- "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
- Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
- Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
- The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
- "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
- Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
- "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
- Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
- The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
- Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
- The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
- "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
- "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
- "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
- The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
- U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
- Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
- Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
- Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
- As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
- Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
- One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
- "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
- "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
- Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
- "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
- "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.
Reprinted from the Austin Chronicle. www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp