Focusing Consultants
Ad Age
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Names don’t matter
By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 12/2009 On my first real job (at General Electric in Schenectady, New York) I noticed a consistent advertiser in the electrical publications with an unusual name. A company selling wire and cable was called “Crapo.” Presumably pronounced Cra-po and not Crap-o. That’s terrible, I thought. Oh no, my more experienced colleagues said, one of the first things you need to learn in this business is that names don’t matter. What matters is the quality of the product. That’s been a common refrain in my years of marketing work. Whenever I objected to a brand name, I would hear the same thing: Names don’t matter. Read More The TGIF revolution is only half the story. By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 11/2009 If you were a first-time visitor from Mars and you happened to drop into a marketing meeting somewhere in the United States, you might assume that marketing people do nothing but talk about “TGIF.” That’s Twitter, Google, the Internet and Facebook. There’s no question these four revolutionary developments have forever changed the marketing function. Word of mouth has now become word of finger. A key difference: Word of mouth leaves an invisible trail in the ether. Word of finger leaves an electronic trail on the Internet. Read More The downside of upgrades By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 10/2009 A recent trend is the downgrading of established brands by upgraded line extensions. Take Budweiser Select. According to Anheuser-Busch, “When it comes to brewing beer, the prevailing assumption is that you can't have it both ways. You can either aim for the best possible flavor, forgetting about calories and carbs; OR you can keep the calorie count in check, and sacrifice taste along the way. Budweiser Select is the exception to these brewing rules.” So what does that make Anheuser-Busch’s other low-calorie beer? Read More Slowly But Surely, Line Extensions Will Take Your Brand Off Course By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 9/2009 Marketing is like steering a ship. If you don’t wait long enough for a marketing effect to run its course, you can draw exactly the wrong conclusion. Take Anheuser-Busch’s 1981 introduction of Bud Light, virtually the last major brewer to introduce a light version of its regular beer. Wouldn’t that hurt sales of Budweiser regular, I asked management. Instead, why don’t you introduce a totally new brand? Oh no, came the reply. We’re not positioning Bud Light against Budweiser. We’re going to take business from Miller Lite, Coors Light, Schlitz Light and all those other light beers out there. Read More GM's Appointment of Lutz Shows No Respect for Marketing By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 8/2009 Has respect for marketing fallen so low that the most difficult job in the profession (getting GM out of the ditch) can be given to someone with so little experience in marketing? I’m afraid so. The fact is that most companies do not assign much value to the marketing function. Nor do they compensate marketing people at the same level as they do financial, legal and other functional occupations. Read More Bill Bernbach: A true advertising genius. By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 7/2009 “Nobody’s Perfect” is the title of Doris Willens’ new book on Bill Bernbach and the golden age of advertising. And just to make sure you get the point of the title, the book explores every imperfection she could find in the career of perhaps the most famous person in the history of advertising. Fair enough. Nobody’s perfect. But I think she failed to stress the essence of Bernbach’s genius which, in my opinion, was his incredible ability to recognize a good idea. Read More A new position for Central America By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 7/2009 SPECIAL ARTICLE FOR AD AGE CENTRAL y EL CARIBE edition. Why is Central America poor while America is rich? The average per-capita gross domestic product for the seven countries in Central America is $5,650, as compared with $45,800 for the United States. No country ever got rich by closing its borders and selling things to each other. Switzerland didn’t get rich by selling watches to the 7.6 million people who live there. Switzerland got rich by selling watches to the 6.8 billion people who live in the rest of the world. Read More Variable pricing: The ultimate brand-destruction machine. By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 6/2009 A former New York Times editor recently wrote a full-page article for Forbes magazine advocating “variable pricing” for art museums. “Art institution directors should start thinking like airline yield managers,” was the subhead of the article. That’s strange. You might think the yield-management gurus would have the airlines rolling in dough. But that hasn’t happened. Read More Metric Madness: The Answer to Mathematical Failure Seems to Be More Math By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 5/2009 If You Run a Company by Numbers Alone, You'll Run It Into the Ground. March Madness lasts only three weeks, but Metric Madness goes on all year long. What is Metric Madness? It's the notion you can run anything by the numbers, and it's become the hottest concept in business today. Read More Don't Damage Your Brand for Short-Term Gains in a Recession By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 4/2009 Cadillac Should Remember What Happened to Its Long-Ago Rival Packard Read More What's Love Got to Do With It? By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 3/2009 "Love" has become a key ingredient in many marketing programs. Does "love" work in marketing? Sure. As a matter of fact, falling in love is a good analogy for the branding process. A young person falls in love and gets married. Now suppose the next year that same person meets someone who is better looking, wealthier and more fun to be with. Bingo, he or she changes spousal brands. Read More Are You a Left Brainer or a Right Brainer? By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 2/2009 Marketing Success Comes From the Right. Your brain is divided into two completely separate hemispheres. Each hemisphere processes information differently. Your left hemisphere processes information in series. It thinks in language. It works linearly and methodically. Your right hemisphere processes information in parallel. It thinks in mental images. It "sees" the big picture. Read More The Difference Between Building a Business and Building a Brand By Al Ries for Ad Age.com: 1/2009 Are you building a business? Or are you building a brand? Silly questions, you might be thinking. Naturally, you are trying to do both. But that might be a mistake. What's good for the business is not necessarily good for the brand. And vice versa. Read More |
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