This week on the Marketing Update, Karen Rubin and Mike Volpe discuss how potty humor sells, b2b marketing investments in 2012, the Xerox CMO not being sold on social, Google?s over optimization penalty, and HoJo?s apology to Don Draper.
Episode #198 – April 27, 2012
Intro
How to interact on Twtter: Include #MktgUp in your tweet!
On the show today is Karen Rubin (@karenrubin) and Mike Volpe (@mvolpe)
As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review!
Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience – 4pm Friday
Headlines
Potty Humor Sells
Cottonelle is introducing a campaign that uses humor to address the embarrassment surrounding adult wipes, and to underscore that, rather than substituting wipes for dry toilet paper, consumers typically use them in tandem.
Southern hospitality, the clean getaway, the freshy fresh, the buddy system, the two-handed tango, el clea?o
The Double Doodie, Double en Taint, Wipe and Swipe, No fear for the rear, fickle fecal wipe, Skid marks no more!, The American Bidet
End of the ads – ?Nothing leaves you feeling cleaner and fresher than the Cottonelle Care Routine,? says a voiceover. ?Try them together. Then name it on Facebook.?
The name-generating campaign ?gives an opportunity for consumers to talk about it, and to make the behavior more routinized,? Mr. Simon said.
?To try to get prescriptive begins to cross that line of critical distance, where, ?You?re telling me that I?m not getting clean enough and I?m not sure that I want to hear that,? ? Mr. Simon said.
Being open-ended, and encouraging consumers to name their approach on Facebook, represents ?the democratization of toilet etiquette,? said Dean Suarez-Starfeldt, senior vice president for strategic planning at Biggs-Gilmore. ?We don?t as a brand want to push a toilet routine, but we want to activate the conversation.?
?We know from our user data that the growth is 100 percent incremental,? said Mr. Simon of Cottonelle. ?If you used six squares of dry toilet paper before, you?d still use six squares, and one or two flushable wipes.?
Marketing Takeaway: Be serious about data, but willing to laugh at yourself.
B2B Marketing Investments in 2012
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/04/b2b-cmos-decrease-community-management-investment-in-2012.html
Forrester report titled ?B2B Marketers Must Focus On Partnership and Experimentation As 2012 Budgets Rise?
Based on 864 marketing executives at NA and EU companies with 100+ employees
CMO’s are putting them money into marketing operations, including analytics that measure marketing success
How much will your planned budget in 2012 change as compared to 2011 in the following areas
8.2% Marketing Operations
1.9% Product Marketing
1.5% Field Enablement
1.2% Customer and market intelligence
0.1% Lead Origination
-0.1% Lead Nurturing
-3.3% Channel Enablement
-3.6% Branding Awareness
-6.8% Customer community management
Partner more closely with sales. Too many marketing organizations are still playing a reactive role to sales. But by focusing the marketing team on deep customer and market expertise, senior marketers can increase their clout with sales management and become equal partners in defining the go-to market strategy, determining together what the sales team really needs, which is usually different from what it asks for.
Embrace a culture of experimentation. Firms such as Kaspersky Lab set aside funds for marketing experimentation and encourage their teams to challenge the status quo. Marketers cannot do the same things over and over and expect different results. Instead, they must experiment with emerging technologies and test new program ideas.
Marketing Takeaway: Social media should be integrated with the rest of your marketing, not a standalone effort.
Xerox CMO Not Sold on Social
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2170853/xerox-cmo-sold-twitter-pinterest
Xerox recently began experimenting with Twitter paid advertising a couple weeks ago. The verdict so far: “An initial negative reaction from our more established clients.”
Christa Carone, CMO at Xerox “I’m not sure it works for our campaigns and our messaging,” she said of Twitter ads.
While Carone did not dismiss the importance of sharing Xerox branded digital content through social media, she indicated that certain social channels might not be suitable for all marketing purposes for the company, especially when it comes to selling multi-million dollar systems to businesses.
“I know that the CIOs of major companies are not going to be making a $5 million… deal based on their connection with Xerox on Facebook,” she said.