Marketing Disciplines
Back in Bed
Mon, 11/10/2008 - 01:03 — Tim Manners
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What must agencies do to feel the love again? A discussion featuring Mark Mears of The Cheesecake Factory, Jim Zambito of Johnson & Johnson, Bill Pearce of Del Monte and Chris Maher of Greenlight. (more) |
Team Unilever
Mon, 05/05/2008 - 00:03 — Tim Manners
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The ultimate shopper insight is that sales and marketing need to think as one. An exclusive Q&A interview with Lisa Klauser of Unilever by Tim Manners. |
The Hub Top 10
Thu, 05/01/2008 - 11:42 — Tim Manners
Far be it from us to pass judgment on the many outstanding agencies and brand marketers pioneering the new frontier of Shopper Marketing. It is not our place to do that because, for one thing, we have not walked a mile (or even the final two feet) in their shoes. Nor is it our purpose to declare that one agency or one brand marketer is creating the “best” Shopper Marketing programs. But we did think it would be helpful to try to set some standards for excellence in Shopper Marketing, to benchmark and try to help improve overall industry performance. With Hoyt & Company designing our survey instrument, and the Promotion Marketing Association’s membership supplementing our own subscribers, we reached out to the best and brightest practitioners of Shopper Marketing today. To ensure maximum objectivity, we simply asked agencies to rate brand marketers, and vice versa, against ten key areas critical to success. The result is our first-ever report of The Hub Top 10 of Shopper Marketing Excellence. (results here). Our congratulations to all of the agencies and brand marketers that achieved recognition in the Top 10. Of course, what matters most is that when the principles of Shopper Marketing are fully engaged, everybody is a winner, especially the shopper. ~ Tim Manners, editor |
Tip This
Mon, 04/21/2008 - 00:03 — Tim Manners
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Was Madonna a fluke and Hush Puppies an accident? By Chip Martella. (more) |
Points of Pain
Mon, 06/04/2007 - 00:01 — Tim Manners
Last March, we took a survey of Cool News readers, asking the question: As a marketer, what is your greatest point of pain? We received 237 open-ended responses, and HUB senior editor Peter F. Eder categorized them into roughly three groups: 1) You! More than 80 respondents identified someone else as their biggest pain; either not understanding issues, plans, goals, strategies, not buying into programs, subverting or discounting them or abandoning them before completion. 2) Information! More than 60 respondents said they did not have enough sound information to guide them. Number-one pain was not having the tools to evaluate ROI or other results effectively. Also, not having enough information to develop effective messages, to select or assign media, or to create plans; and 3) Resources! The third largest cluster complained about the "pain of not having enough" -- e.g., budgets; people; time to get things done; or adequate systems. This Wednesday, June 6th, I will ask our now-famous "point of pain" question of five of marketing's best and brightest: Donna Sturgess, svp innovation of GlaxoSmithKline; Tom Boyles, svp of CRM of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts; Scott Deaver, CMO of Avis Budget Group; Jeff Glueck, CMO of Travelocity; and Neil Metviner, President of Pitney Bowes Direct. Each will briefly describe his or her greatest challenge, and then we'll talk about how to solve it. The fun (we promise it won't be painful :-) begins at 9:40 am, at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC, during Henry Stewart XVII's annual confab (more information here). Hope to see you there! ~ Tim Manners, editor |
Pencils & Towels
Mon, 05/21/2007 - 00:03 — Tim Manners
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Put the marketing into event marketing and help make CMOs brand heroes again. By Charlie Tarzian. (more)
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No Pain, No Gain
Mon, 08/14/2006 - 08:01 — Tim Manners
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The Granite Pages
Mon, 06/05/2006 - 07:53 — Tim Manners
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10,000,000 Flies
Mon, 04/10/2006 - 08:28 — Tim Manners
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Taxi Arts
Thu, 11/03/2005 - 10:21 — Tim Manners"Let's put it this way: This project represents an intersection of ideas, art and design," says Matthew W. Daus, explaining an initiative to re-design New York City taxicabs in a New York Times article by Sewell Chan. Right now, 93 percent of the city's fleet is simply a Ford Crown Victoria, painted yellow -- and that's just wrong, according to "a large group of designers, artists and planners," who are displaying their ideas at an exhibition called "Designing the Taxi: Re-thinking New York City's Moveable Public Space," a collaborative effort between the Design Trust for Public Space and Parsons School for Design. "What is troubling about the New York City taxi is not that it is ubiquitous, but that it is so ill-suited to its job," wrote Paul Goldberger, dean of Parsons, in a book that goes with the exhibition.
Some of the suggested ideas center on functional issues, "such as rear-facing passenger seats and spacious interiors that can accommodate wheelchairs. Some might even have touch-sensitive panels to open the doors ... Citystreets, an advocacy group for pedestrians, proposed installing Global Positioning Satellite systems, 'black boxes' storing crash data, electronic logbooks and on-board video cameras in cabs ... Under a scheme by Weisz + Yoes, an architecture firm, the roof light would carry one of three easily readable easily readable messages: 'Maybe ...,' 'I'm Free!' and 'Nope.' A design firm called Pentagram, meanwhile, homes in on the design itself (check it out), with a turn "to a classic theme: Checker Cabs, the last of which was retired in 1999. The checkered pattern would adorn T-shirts and even an annual CD compilation of world music 'celebrating the international character of New York's drivers.'"
Yet another outfit, Birsel + Seck, "a product design firm, suggested demarcating, on busy streets, a section of the sidewalk and the adjacent traffic lane as a colorful area for loading and unloading passengers." However, even though this project "has the cautious support of the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission," the chances of implementing any of these ideas appear faint unless they persuade the customer -- in this case, the cabbies. As the exhibition catalog states: "Within certain guidelines, taxi owners decide what vehicles to buy, how they should be maintained, and to a large extent, how the system should operate. Consequently, improvement efforts that fail to incorporate the owner's perspective are doomed." Naturally. In addition, only a very small number (about 3,000) of taxis are retired each year, so "the economics make change hard to come by" as well. The dream runs through January 15th and is located at the Parsons gallery at 2 West 13th Street.
