That’s the way that polite people put it. Less polite ones say, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

I don’t blame them. For one thing, I don’t know anyone else who uses the term. I shamelessly ripped it off from the medical profession.

For another, they’re not far off. Most marketing isn’t evidence-based. Marketers usually make choices from gut feel (“I have an eye for what works”), focus groups (not the least bit predictive), in-person, phone, written and online surveys (ditto), recall scores (from which they mistakenly think they can infer causation), concurrent sales (ditto), informal feedback (like, “everyone I know loves it,” which is useless), etc., etc.

Rather than assume an ad is successful because it’s popular or easily recalled, our shop devises ways to track its performance right down to the final transaction. It lends a bit of science. You begin to see which techniques work best, and which tend not to work at all. You’d be surprised how many popular ads aren’t very effective. You increase your odds of selling more with an evidence-based approach. 

Here’s an example. One of our clients wanted to know whether to continue to market under its own, well-known brand, or under the better-known brand of its parent company. The question was not which brand would be better liked, but which one would produce more sales—a scenario in which management’s opinions, focus group feedback, interviews and surveys could yield suggestive but not conclusive answers. So we put together a scientific test. We mailed a series of identical offers to the client’s best and most frequent customers, and to prospects who closely resembled them in terms of demographics and psychographics. But one-third of the mailers were marked with the lesser-known brand, one-third with the better-known brand, and one-third with an unknown brand. Then we counted the results, and repeated the test a number of times to rule out flukes.

The result surprised our client and us. It may surprise you as well. In this case, the brand made no difference in sales. In fact, the only tested element that affected sales was the nature of the deal we offered—and the difference was dramatic.

Caution: I’m not saying brands don’t matter. I dare say that an offer from Disneyland will fare better than the same offer from a no-name amusement park. This was one test, for one client. Nor do the results suggest that the brand for this client or its particular vertical is irrelevant. But they certainly indicate that neither brand had the power that the client thought. The biggest take-away, of course, is that this client’s customers cared more about the deal they were offered than about who offered it.

As for those on the client side rooting for one brand or the other? Neither side was happy. Only the commission-based salespeople were thrilled.

—Steve Cuno

People like to save face: “I loosened the lid for you.” ”The audience clapped louder for you because I warmed them up first.” “My plan was perfect and would have worked if it hadn’t rained.”

Marketers are not immune: “The ad campaign generated buzz.” “...hits” “...awareness” “...awards.” ”The Board of Directors liked it.” “It got our name out there.” “It showed that we’re a force to be reckoned with.”

But most of the time, if you ask whether the campaign boosted sales and by how much, expect to be told that it isn’t that simple.

Funny. It was that simple when the original objective was being set.

—Steve Cuno

PepsiCo is rebranding Sierra Mist, its lemon-lime soda, as “Sierra Mist Natural.” In a dazzling display of making old look new, the soft drink will henceforth (until further notice) contain neither preservatives, artificial flavors nor caffeine. On the positive side, it will contain real sugar.

Here is the new slogan, from agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners: The soda nature would drink if nature drank soda. 
 
For us marketers, the idea of “the impossible that would be possible if it were possible” opens up all kinds of, well, possibilities. For Neosporin: The ointment bacteria would like if bacteria liked being annihilated. For Cheerios: The cereal you could use for a life preserver if you were ant-sized and happened to be drowning in a bowl of milk. For Yanni: The music people with taste would listen to if they had no taste.

—Steve Cuno

The latest issue of Communication Arts features the above-pictured, plastic Coke cups. The cups are cool. It is the malarky in the write-up that made me laugh. 

It says:

The Coca-Cola Transparent Cup was designed as part of the Coca-Cola Visual Identity System. The bottle shape appears knocked out against an opaque red background, allowing the liquid to be seen...

[OK, good so far, but wait]

...and communicating the brand idea of “Coke brings joy.”

Gad. Who wrote that? Who approved it?

—Steve Cuno

There seems to be a controversy over whether it’s OK to rename high fructose corn syrup “corn sugar.” Funny thing is, this is not a new idea. Al Ries & Jack Trout suggested the rebrand as early as 1981 in their flagship book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. 

When government gets involved in food definitions, the results can be comic or tragic. On the comic side, for instance, is that prune marketers have long lobbied for permission to refer to their product as “dried plums.” I lump that under comic because, well, dried plums are kind of what prunes are. Just as—forgive me if this spoils one of your favorite snacks—raisins really are dried grapes. For all I know, you’d need permission to say that, too.

On the tragic side are the abuses heaped upon consumers who think that when they buy food labeled “natural” or “organic,” that’s what they’re getting. It is legal for farms to use unnatural and inorganic chemicals and still call their products “natural” and “organic.” Oh, and you know those “free range” cattle and chickens? Most of them never even leave the barn. That’s because, very often, the “range” is naught but a limited-access, patio-sized patch of grass adjacent to barn. The animals like the barn better, and if you saw the patch, you wouldn’t blame them. Further, it is legal to incarcerate milk cows without parole and call them “free range,” too. No one does a better job of exposing such malarky than Michael Pollan in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma. 

Getting government to allow marketers to lie is neither marketing’s nor government’s finest achievement.

—Steve Cuno

P.S. I recommend both Positioning and Omnivore’s Dilemma. But take care not to get carried away. Things aren’t quite as simple as the authors would have you think.

P.P.S. The evidence shows that natural/organic and standard farming are a nutritional wash. The latter, however, offers the not-incidental advantage of dramatically increasing yield per acre, which rather helps feed us all. Matt Ridley does a good job of explaining this in his recent book, The Rational Optimist.

Pizza Hut is launching a new campaign featuring its employees. I guess they think that “It’s our people” hasn’t been done before. OK, so it’s not original. At least they’re backing it up with a lame slogan: “Your Favorites. Your Pizza Hut.” If that doesn’t make you hungry, what will?

When Dick Sittig named his highly successful ad agency “Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co.,” he had all kinds of fun with people who mistook the shop for—who’d have thought—a seafood company. This became something of a problem when they were pitching the Porsche account. Eventually, Sitting changed the name to Secret Weapon.

Starbucks has added flavored coffee beans—caramel, vanilla, cinnamon—to its retail line-up (though not in its cafes). That Starbucks. They keep discovering customer wants and filling them—late. On the other hand, Starbucks coffee ice cream covers a multitude of sins.

Advertising Age just listed the best 30 places to work in marketing and media for 2010. They were rash. They should have talked with someone who works here first. On the other hand, maybe they did, but we came up as Number 31.

—Steve Cuno

I still chuckle when I recall a company that invited me to beat my head against the wall in a futile attempt to help them nail down their brand. Futile, because they were afraid to take a stand. When I pointed out, correctly, the kind of customer to whom they were ideally suited, they whined, “We can’t say that. Then other kinds of customers will go to our competitors.”

Exactly. Part of branding is deciding who your customer is. This inevitably means deciding who your customer isn’t. It means giving up dreams of pleasing everyone and instead focusing on doing a great job for those whom you can please.

And, it means risking having people outside your target market view you with indifference or, in some cases, even contempt. 

But then, “all things to all people” is no brand at all. Thus Burger King unapologetically promotes heart-unhealthy fare for those who want it, knowing that those who don’t will go elsewhere. Mercedes-Benz makes a high-end car, knowing that who can’t or won’t pay will seek out less expensive makes. The James Randi Educational Foundation reveals what the evidence says about fantastic claims, knowing that those who prefer fantasy will find solace in astrology or The Secret.

A strong brand takes a stand: this is who we are, this is who we serve, this is what we stand for, this is what we won’t stand for, this is what we’re about, this is what we’re not about. Necessarily, this includes conceding that those who don’t like where you’re headed will need to board someone else’s bus.

Putting all of your brand in one basket is risky. If you choose a basket that engages too few people, you may go out of business. But since you will certainly fail at trying to fill two or more baskets at once, filling one and doing it really well is the wiser bet.

—Steve Cuno

A friend brought to my attention a trademark dispute between IHOP (International House of Pancakes) and IHOP (International House of Prayer). The restaurant chain has asked the church to give up the acronym. 

My friend quite reasonably felt the restaurant’s reaction was over the top. “I can't see how this could hurt them,” he wrote. “It’s not like someone is going to wander into this prayer house thinking they’re going to get pancakes.”

Fair enough. But, unlike my friend, trademark law does not much concern itself with common sense. 

One of the requirements for protecting a trade name is policing its use. This includes having lawyers send nasty notes to anyone who even approaches infringement or misuse. So in the course of protecting your name, looking petty on occasion comes with the territory. When the offending party happens to be a church, you risk looking worse than petty.

That the restaurant and the church occupy separate verticals raises an interesting nuance more or less unique to this case. 

Normally, a name used in one vertical is fair game in another. You can open Dell’s Bakery & Radiator Shop without trouble from the friendly lawyers at Dell Computer Corporation. But uniquely coined words are another matter. Your last name may be Kodak, but you won’t get far if you open up the “Kodak Mattress Company.” 

I suspect that IHOP lands closer to the Kodak than to the Dell end of the spectrum. As acronym-turned-name, IHOP is unique. To most people, it refers to the restaurants, period. Allowing a church to coin IHOP could in turn lead to IHOP clothing stores, IHOP daycare centers, IHOP contact lenses and so on, until IHOP ceased to be a unique name. An admitted slippery-slope argument, but a valid one in terms of trademark precedent.

So, I feel for the restaurant. If they fail to rigorously protect their name, they risk losing it. On the other hand, suing a house of worship makes for crappy PR.

A related problem recently arose between Johnson & Johnson and the American Red Cross. Both have shared the cross symbol sans spat for decades. But recently Red Cross started licensing the symbol to commercial enterprises. This indeed puts J&J’s mark at risk. But … who wants to be the big bad wolf seen huffing and puffing at the Red Cross?

—Steve Cuno
Disclaimer: I’m no lawyer. Don’t use this as legal advice, OK?

It’s far too easy to castigate salespeople as de facto evil.

Many are. But many are not. It is possible for selling to perform a win-win service. To spare you from having read a treatise (and me from having to write one), here are just two examples.

1. A friend who sings and plays guitar decided to pick up some home recording equipment. He arrived in the music store bent on buying the most basic device. By the time he left, he’d traded up to a more expensive recording device. He also bought two mics, mic stands and cables he hadn’t planned on. The music store salesperson upsold him, and it was a good thing. The lower-priced recording device would have required additional software and hardware at no small expense. Though its features wowed my friend, he most likely would have outgrown and wanted to replace the unit within a year. As for the mics, stands and cables? Well, you kind of need them to record voice and acoustic guitar. My friend would have been  displeased to have to return to the music store to obtain them. The salesperson helped him to more satisfactory equipment, and saved him a trip. Win-win.

2. I paid my way through college selling shoes in a department store. A man came in to buy a pair of slippers for his wife. He chose the cheapest pair. I, being more of an order-taker than a salesperson, started to ring up his purchase. Then Benny intervened. He showed the customer—not quite in these terms—that the cheap slippers were junk, whereas for a few bucks more a better-made pair would last longer and please his wife more. The customer gratefully spent the extra money. Win-win.

I object when marketers abuse. But I’m all for service-oriented selling.

—Steve Cuno

Clients often ask if I think they should advertise in the Yellow Pages. They don’t quite dare not; they’re not sure if they get business from their Yellow Page ad; but they’re also not quite sure if they don’t.

It’s not as if you can “try” a Yellow Page ad for a short time. A Yellow Page ad is there for a year and you pay for it for a year. Even if after one month you decide it’s not helping.

Plus, there are lots of brands and editions of Yellow Pages out there. Should you advertise in one? Two? All of them? There’s the brand you’ve heard of, plus myriad knockoffs. There are regional editions. There are local editions. There are editions that (supposedly) fit in the map compartment of your car. Oh, and don’t forget the online Yellow Pages. Of course, every edition, according to its sales rep, is The One That Gets Used The Most, and your business will capsize if you neglect to place an ad in it.

Meanwhile, you have to wonder. More and more of us turn to search engines on computers and handhelds instead of to the Yellow Pages. Does anyone even use the darned books any more?

The answer is yes. Incomprehensible as this may be to the technologically adept, not everyone in this country is online. And, even among the plugged-in populace, there are people who would rather open the Yellow Pages than ask Ask, Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

There is a way to find out if your Yellow Page ad brings in business. Put a phone number in the ad that you don’t use anywhere else. If you place ads in more than one book, give each ad its own phone number. Then count the calls that come in on that number, and follow up to see how many result in business. 

You don’t have to set up oodles of phone lines to do this. Companies like CallSource will lease you a phone number that rings on your existing lines and phones. There’s no investment in lines or equipment at your end, and the process is invisible to you and your customers. Meanwhile, their system will count the calls on each line for you (and even record them if you want).

A caution is in order. A low response might mean that Yellow Pages don’t produce business. But it might indicate instead that your ad is impotent. So before you test the Yellow Pages, test the ad you intend to place to be sure it is indeed effective.

Valid scientific ad testing is a bit of a hassle, which is one of many reasons most advertisers don’t bother with it. But that’s how to find out if Yellow Pages work for your business. Otherwise, you’ll just have to guess.

—Steve Cuno