During these two dive marketing threads I've seen surprisingly little about what these posters would actually do about it. Instead I see a lot of marketing jargon, statistics, etc. but not a lot about actual ideas for solutions.
I'd love to do my part. As mentioned several times. "Doing something about it" in my world starts with the genuine, honest-to-goodness. proven professional process that will for-certain do something about it.
Someone else can buy pizza or start a dive club or go door-to-door.
Me? I do this sort of thing for a living. I'll do it right. But I'll need a few months and about $275,000 (plus expenses) just to get this thing off the ground...
[Little smiley "I'm just kidding" emoticon intentionally omitted]
Speed/time in the morning
Single moms or working parents
He's your trusted grandfather/dad
I'm not asking for the solution, but your idea. What's your 'Brimley' concept?
I know you want the answer. And I know, and can appreciate, that you think
that I think that I have the answer and that I'm just not telling you. The secret of a good marketing/ad guy's success is to be 100% confident in the fact that you
don't know the answer. Not even "in our gut" not even "on a hunch." That's not to say that we don't ever have "a hunch" but that we simply remain open to idea that it's probably wrong. And it mostly is. And it's often EXACTLY wrong.
Below in bold headings are three questions that every marketer must ask. We spend days/weeks/months answering these. Boiling it down below belies that fact to the point of making some of it sound obvious. It’s not. Plus, we usually pursue multiple paths at the same time. So I'm going to meander a bit and provide a level of depth to try to give a feel for what it's really like. We often take this sort of "narrative story telling" approach at work, because it's required in order uncover and convey the nuances that a strategy or campaign can leverage.
What market do we want to be in?
Don’t look at the product! Look at the customer. When, where, how, why can they use your product. Needs to be big enough to be commercially attractive, but specific enough to be exploited. What market is Quaker Instant Oatmeal in? We don’t ask ourselves in a meeting, we do market research to find out from the customer where our best opportunity is.
Instant Oatmeal market: Current market; way too small, growing slowly.
Oatmeal market: Somewhat larger, but declining. Perhaps get people who eat oatmeal to eat it more often? More times per week? Not enough potential.
Hot breakfast market: Larger, growth opportunity; Oatmeal better for you than pancakes, waffles, etc? Pretty obvious, but could there be something better/bigger?
Hot meal market: very big; Huge potential if we try “it’s not just for breakfast anymore?” (Nope - customers were confused by oatmeal for lunch or dinner, too much work/time/money needed to change this perception. Plus risk alienating current breakfast users.)
Breakfast market: much larger than just “hot” segment; some work/time/money needed to break out of “Oatmeal market” but tremendous growth if we can. (Plus, this also includes the first three markets above, so whatever we do will keep us true to our current customer base.)
Who is our optimal target audience?
OK, if we are in the “Breakfast market” then our target audience is obviously people who eat breakfast, right? Wrong, for so many reasons. But the main reason is that’s not a TARGET audience… that’s everyone in the market. There is no product that is marketed to “everyone” in the market. We’ll spend months hashing this one out, based on being big enough to warrant going after, ability to motivate to action, ability to efficiently reach them with our message and many other factors. One of the main ones is that the target audience must be well-defined based not just on demographics but also on a specific need they have, or mindset they hold. We need that last part in order to exploit them! So who is our target audience?
People who eat breakfast: Adults (men and women) and kids (boys and girls) are way too big to target. Plus… kids don’t have money and don’t buy food. And tough to develop a single message for all, and woefully inefficient to buy media to reach “ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages.”
Adults who eat breakfast: Men and women; still too general demographically, and too small in some respects. Lots of men and women don’t eat breakfast… but some of those people do buy/specify breakfast purchases for others.
Adults who eat and/or purchase breakfast products: Too diverse to develop a single message that could resonate with a male college student, a mother of three, and an 85yo widow. Plus too diverse to reach from a media standpoint, as those people watch different TV shows, magazines, etc. Sure, we could cut by age, gender, etc. But even then the likelihood of success is low.
Parents who purchase/specify breakfast products: big enough to be attractive, but still too diverse; men and women have different motivators in general, and there are so many subsets of each gender. Then there’s the whole media difficulty/inefficiency thing.
Mothers who purchase/specify breakfast products: getting interesting. We don’t lose much kicking men out, since the wife/mother does most of the breakfast buying and preparing.
WE’RE ALMOST THERE! The problem/opportunity now is to find the specific segment within this target audience that we are really going to target everything we do and say directly at. This all needs to be done based on two things: finding a large enough segment that has a compelling problem that our product can solve.
So what segments of mothers do we have, and what problems do they have that we can solve? This stage is probably the most critical, because everything is based on what we find here: message, creative, media spend, etc. And the research to find out the “problem they have” is the key.
As I said above… it is so important to NOT just pick what you think the answer and test it. Doing so will doom you to failure. The research we do in these situations is specifically designed to start completely with the customer. Big picture. What are their hopes and dreams? In fact we don’t even talk about the product. We don’t even tell them we’re talking about oatmeal… or breakfast… or food. The people the research was done with din’t know why they were there. Didn’t know they were be talked to because they were women… or because they were parents… or because they were moms.
We interview women and see what they say. Listen for commonalities. Listen for what they say. For what they don’t say. Questions like: What did you like to do as a child? What did you want to be when you grew up? What do you do now? Why? Do you like that? Why? Why not? What makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? What things stand in the way of you being happier? What would/could you do if those barriers to happiness were removed? What would that mean to you? What would THAT mean to you? And what would THAT mean to you? And then what?
We call this “insight mining” because we’re literally digging for insights. We’re listening to the customer tell us THEIR story. They lead the discussion, we don’t. (This is very different than what is traditionally done, where the marketer asks the customer what they think about OUR story.) After you do enough of these interviews you find patterns “Hey, there’s a lot of woman who think X, and are frustrated by Y, and would really like Z to happen.” And none of it has anything to do with food, or breakfast, or oatmeal, much less Quaker Oats.
Incredibly hard to convey how this happens and what it feels like when you do it because it truly is magical. What we find is an incredible insight that is not only powerful, but that uniquely defines a large audience segment. The insight into “the problem the customer has that we can solve” is nuanced, but those of you who swerved around it in posts above will hopefully appreciate the nuance and the power of it. I won’t go through the dozens of permutations here, but hopefully cutting to the chase will be illuminating.
The segment in question was the Married Working Mom (MWM) who, not surprisingly, stood in sharp contrast to non-working moms in many ways. What was VERY surprising was the sharp difference between the MWM and the Working Single Mom (WSM). So much different that even the order of words in those segment names (MWM and SWM) is actually purposely different. Note the order of which word is used to modify “mom” in their minds!
You see, Working Single-Moms do NOT identify themselves as “working moms” even though 99% of them work. It’s actually almost redundant in their minds. They define themselves – and their problems – based on their marital status. On the other hand, Married Working-Moms
don’t define themselves in terms of their marital status… they define themselves (and their problems) in terms of their employment status. And we’re still not to the good part yet! (We still haven’t found out what their biggest problem is, and how Quaker Oats can solve it. )
What is the biggest problem a Married Working Mom faces? Long story short… guilt. Guilt of going to work instead of “being there for her kids.” (Trace got to this point – good work!) And deeper down the rabbit hole.
But even THAT’S not the most interesting part! What is interesting is that, in general, the Working Single-Mom does not have the same guilt. Why not? Because society understands that the Single-Mom
has no choice about working. She is not judged by society, or her family, or herself for going to work. (Yes, she is judged for other things.) So it’s sort of OK that she gives Timmy a Pop-Tart, drops him at the bus stop, and drives to work.
The Married Working Mom is different. She is judged by society, by herself, and her family because she
chooses to work instead of attending to her children’s needs. And, frankly the agency could be off to the races from here playing on her guilt. (And it's not just about breakfast.) Great strategy, but the creative team still doesn’t have enough to go on in terms of what to put in the ad. We could have all her neighbors judging her. Have her husband giving her grief, have her conscious bugging her, etc. But luckily, the rabbit hole goes even deeper!
You see, many/most MWM actually feel like they don’t have a choice about working. For whatever reason, their family requires two incomes. And in fact, the Married Working-Mom has a bit of deeper issue than being judged over her choice to work. She has a nagging feeling that she is also being judged for... her choice of husband! If he had a better job… she wouldn’t have to work! Do all MWM’s feel this universally? No. But very often, and very deep, and very hurtful. And even those that didn’t feel it themselves… identified with it.
Of course
she knows her husband is a good guy, and she sees how hard he works. ("But if he DID make more money...") And she doesn’t really care what society thinks. ("And it would be great if I didn't have to work...") But there is someone who’s been judging her husband every step of the way… her father!
When she came home with the engagement ring years ago… her mom said “I’m so happy for you!” Dad, on the other hand, even if he liked the guy said “That’s great honey… are you sure he’s the one?”
And then they got married and moved into that small apartment/condo, which she felt was being judged by her dad. Her dad, who was able to buy a house when he and her mom got married.
And then she got pregnant… and there was a lot of discussion about whether she was going to stay home after the baby came. And even if no-one said anything… she knew what dad was probably thinking. After all, her dad made enough money that her mom didn’t work after she and her brother came along. (Her brother’s wife doesn’t work either… come to think of it.) But her husband doesn’t make enough to support her and the kids in whatever lifestyle they think they need/want.
So what is the root problem that the Married Working Mom has that Quaker Oats can solve?
She needs her father’s approval. (0002s got close, good work; but didn't answer the "Why" Wilford Brimley question.) Not just approval for being a working mom, but approval for every decision she’s made in her life, from the boyfriends in high-school, to her choice of a husband years ago, right up to going to work this morning. And every weekday morning, as she quite literally is forced to re-visit - everyday - her choice to go to work instead of taking the time to prepare (and clean up after) a “hot, nutritious meal” for her children.
So her problem is not just a need for speedy, convenient breakfast. It’s a need for approval. And now we know that we can take that approval that she craves and wrap it up perfectly and embody it in approval from her father.
What is our message?
If you’ve done all the stuff above right… the message and the campaign writes itself!
Wouldn’t it be great if even just once she made a decision that her father agreed with? If he could accept a choice that she made, without feeling like he was judging her. If just once, after she decided to do something her father simply said “It’s the right thing to do.”
Wait… someone write that down! And get me Wilford Brimley on the phone!
So now, every time she prepares Quaker Instant Oatmeal, she gets approval from her father!
Only by honing the market context, identifying the target audience, understanding their emotional drivers, and delivering a compelling message were they able to do what they did. And by going at it the way they did, the found the most powerful message that hit the tight target on the head, but also resonated with the single mom, and dads, and really anyone else who is pressed for time at breakfast. But they never, ever, ever, in a million years would have come up with that insight and campaign if they hadn’t kept going deeper down the rabbit hole.
I know this was very long. And I hope I was able to do justice to the magic that undepins what Pat McGrath and the other folks at Jordan McGrath Case & Partners did. (Or Jordan Case McGrath & Partners, depending on when you worked there. Gene Case, by the way, is generally acknowledged as being one of the men that "Mad Men" characters are based on.)
It’s not as easy as “tell the world what you think they need to know about your product’s features.” There’s a process. The process works. And without the process…
- You probably don’t really know what market you’re in.
- You probably don’t really know who your customer is.
- You probably don’t really know what you’re customer wants.
- You probably don’t really know what you’re selling.
- You probably don’t really know how to sell it.
- You probably are not really going to be successful.
Has anyone in the "scuba diving industry" asked these questions about their brand? About the industry as a whole?
Is anyone in the industry
interested in the answers to these questions? Is the industry as a whole interested in the answers to these question? Because I know a guy...
:cool2:
[video=youtube;el66jnuItYc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el66jnuItYc[/video]
