Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

I first drew a version of this cartoon years ago sitting behind the focus group one-way mirror while working at General Mills. We held a lot of focus groups, many of them in a Minneapolis suburb called Eden Prairie. We used to jokingly refer to those focus group respondents as “The Oracles of Eden Prairie.”

We seemingly brought just about every marketing idea to the Oracles of Eden Prairie for inspiration and direction. But what frequently happened is that we would listen for statements that confirmed what we already believed and then disregard the rest. I learned that focus groups can be a great tool for confirmation bias.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about how focus groups are gradually being displaced by technology-driven tools like social listening. As Seventh Generation’s Maureen Wolpert put it: “It’s very expensive to find that progressive-leaning, millennial new mom who has the time to attend a focus group. This is a way to listen in on the conversation moms are having and to really see their problems.”...

I once heard Seth Godin give a talk to a group of marketers in London. After this session, someone asked his secret to being so productive. Seth not only publishes books and starts ventures, he famously finds the time to reply personally to every single email he receives.

Seth replied simply, “I don’t watch TV and I don’t go to meetings.”

That really resonated with me. I’ve worked in organizations where more than 75% of every calendar day was blocked with internal meetings....

From these chaotic beginnings, search engine optimization matured and evolved as search engines became more sophisticated to screen out this kind of overt manipulation. Google makes at least 600 changes to its algorithms each year in an attempt to surface and prioritize the most useful information.

And yet the last few years of content marketing have had a similar dynamic at times. Some content gets published purely for search engine optimization. When every content marketer follows the same SEO checklists, all content can start to look the same.

It will be interesting to see the impact of the latest search engine advance. In 2015, Google announced RankBrain, an algorithm learning AI system, that is designed to think more like a human in ranking sites. It’s already the third top ranking signal....

Brand loyalty is more fickle than many marketers imagine it. Marketers often overestimate the role of consumer brands in consumers’ lives. In the world of FMCG, consumers are generally loyal to a repertoire of brands, not to a single brand.

This overinflated conception of brand loyalty can lead marketers to focus too much on current customers than on attracting new ones. In 2010, Byron Sharp rattled a lot of firmly held beliefs in marketing with his book, “How Things Grow”. He asserted that brand penetration is much more important than brand loyalty.

As Byron Sharp put it at an event last year, “We are loyal switchers. We don’t feel disloyal to Kellogg’s if we buy another cereal.”...

After a decade of Millennial obsession, the marketing world is increasingly buzzing about the next generation around the corner — Generation Z.

Studies highlight their buying power of $44 billion, that they’ll be 40% of the population of US, Europe, and BRIC by 2020, and that they are naturally immune to advertising. Agencies are lining up to offer tools and tricks for brands to “engage” with Generation Z.

And yet, as with Millennials, I’m not sure how useful these broad-brush generational stereotypes really are. Generations are not monoliths. Can a generation-level insight really help a brand engage with such a large and diverse group of people in a meaningful way?...

Bringing ideas to life in an organization can be a bumpy ride.

We’re all familiar with the myth of Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree, waiting for inspiration to fall on his head. Newton’s apple is one of the more common symbols of innovation, right up there with Archimedes shouting Eureka from his bathtub. Metaphorically, that’s what we do when go to a brainstorming meeting to come up with new ideas. If the conditions are right, and the coffee strong enough, the next great idea just might fall on our heads.

What is often overlooked is what happens next, after the apple falls, when we have to actually bring that idea to life. If we’re not careful, Newton’s apple can turn into Newton’s applesauce, a watered down imitation of the idea. One of my first cartoons (back in 2002) was about this phenomenon.j...

United recently announced that it’s joining Delta and American in creating a new Basic Economy fare class, one tier below Standard Economy. This no-frills tier cuts a few of the remaining “frills” of Standard Economy, like overhead bins and pre-assigned seats.

It’s a move to help the major airlines compete with discount airlines like Spirit and Frontier. Spirit advertises itself as “a cheap seat for a cheap-ass” and models after Ryanair which famously considered charging passengers £1 to use the inflight toilet.

A lot of brands offer a continuum of basic to premium, but I think there’s risk to brands that try to stretch this far, literally from “cheap-ass” to first-class. Many travel brands in particular follow a model of low base prices and constant aggressive upselling. But in the process, they can forget all about the impact on customer experience.

Rafat Ali of Skift described how travel brands market to customers as “hate-selling”....