Well said.

There was a Scott Kirsner column in today’s Boston Globe about the struggles of start-up IdeaPaint and their lack of market traction for their paint-on dry erase boards for home and office. Hmmm…I Googled white boards and was instantly served over 10 million returns for erasable white boards of all colors, shapes, sizes, even custom built boards, all available for less than the $200-per-can price of IdeaPaint.

According to the article it seems that IdeaPaint suffers from multiple ailments including product performance (smelly when wet, needs multiple coats, hard to erase), product price (competitor Rust-Oleum offers a similar product at a fraction of the price), and even user error (according to a company spokesperson “people start assuming every wall is a whiteboard, and sometimes write on other walls). Hmm again.    

So a couple of conclusions here. First, be careful who you brainstorm with or you might end up with a graffiti-covered conference room compliments of your channel manager. Second, today’s Globe article just might be the biggest marketing splash ever created with IdeaPaint.

Erase that please.

IS a BPA audit next at a billion members?

I have spent the last two months working with management to create new messaging and positioning for this innovative company, culminating in a fairly comprehensive launch & announcement at the DIA Conference in San Diego on June 22nd…truly exciting. Sure, we received great coverage by trade publishers such as Compliance Week and FierceBiotech among others, but more importantly, we successfully articulated a unique position and laid the foundation for a strong brand and value proposition.

To say that I am 100% sold on Virtify’s technology and our future success would be an understatement…and believe me I have been around a variety of software application spaces – including the content management category and its standard collection of sleep-inducing competitors. But what Virtify and our team has built and delivered thus far for this highly-regulated market is both unique and jaw-dropping, and I am convinced that we will not only succeed in quickly establishing a new category of Enterprise Content Compliance vendors, but will come to dominate them as well.

Take a hill anyone?

As you may have heard Legal Sea Foods launched the next iteration of its “fresh fish” campaign this week created by DeVito/Verdi, New York. Once again many of the ads were turned down by MBTA executives including one that stated “Hey, lady, I’d like to mount you over my fireplace,” which sounds not only fresh, but actually a bit threatening.

For the record I really do have a sense of humor, really. But I guess I’m left wondering, if you’re wondering:

·         Are these ads on target? Or is this a case of “creative first, strategy second?” According to a Legal spokesperson the ads are designed to reach college students. Hmmmm. Like the rest of us I know plenty of college age kids who regularly drop $14 on a shrimp cocktail plus $25 to $35 for a piece of palm-sized grilled fish. In fact I think I recently read that the trendy “euro” college crowd has been regularly seen binge eating at their local Legal Sea Foods restaurant, running-up tabs of $100, $200, $300 for lunch alone. I’m glad the savvy marketing folks at the chain are moving fast to capture this growing, haute couture crowd.

·         Does a 50-year-old highly successful company who has risen and remained at the top of one of the most competitive industries really need to shock and even insult new and existing customers into spending?

·         Do these ads help or hurt the LSF brand and code of ethics which states “Not only do we do right by our guests, but we work hard to make a positive difference in the communities in which our restaurants reside. Legal Sea Foods has always believed in the virtue of “doing well and doing good.”

Hey I have a campaign idea. Maybe they could develop a limited edition series of mile long gill nets with the LSF logo and smiling fish woven right into the netting? And then merchandise the campaign by serving grilled dolphin and sea turtle? Right whale kabobs anyone?

Please pass the cocktail sauce.

1. Distill desired benefit or message
2. Articulate through simple demonstration or analogy
3. Add humor that resonates with target (single, male, 18 to 29)
4. Repeat

Hope you enjoy this spot as much as I did. Go Taco Bell & Steelers!

Wow, new and exciting news on the technology front in the Boston area? Well, not news to Scott Kirsner who covered CloudSwitch and their recent $7.4 million investment by Atlas Venture and Matrix Partners.

So who and what is CloudSwitch and what’s the marketing connection? First, the Company is founded by Ellen Rubin previously of Netezza and John Considine formerly of Pirus Networks/Sun Microsystems. Second, this “wildly exciting company” will crack the cloud computing space which enables IT cost savings, reliability, uptime, and improved performance by externally managing a company’s data center, applications, and/or infrastructure.

Whew…oh, and all this can easily be accessed by users and IT folks via a browser

So why the intersection with Marketexture? Well for starters the concept and the benefits of cloud computing are not dissimilar to those expressed by others over the years i.e., outsourcing, hosting, managed services, SaaS, etc. So as a brand and a promise, maybe cloud will have an easier time of it? It certainly can’t hurt that folks like Amazon and Google are behind the concept.

Best of luck to Ellen and her team; definitely a company, and a marketing effort to watch in 2009.

I’ve always enjoyed Andy Rooney’s wit and subtle sarcasm, as well as his sometimes-assumed role of advertising/media critic. Last week’s take on the early-bird marketing of Christmas was no disappointment.

It’s been nice to see some positive television as of late; broadcast advertisers coming to the rescue of financially troubled consumers through the savior-like words of company founders and CEO’s promoting discounts, sales, and hope. All fine and good, but as I watched Andy Rooney’s remarks about the early arrival of Christmas I laughed, then quickly felt embarrassed being the opportunistic marketer that I am. Maybe not as grand a delivery as “It’s a Wonderful Life” but there’s definitely a lesson here somewhere.

Enjoy & Happy Kwanzaaka!

Move over MasterCard.

Investment in creative, media, and top agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky: $290 million. Cost of mega-talent Jerry Seinfeld to pair with Bill Gates in a series of TV ads: $10 million. Campaign disappearing three weeks after its broadcast debut: priceless. There are some things money can’t buy. O.K. so it is easy to poke, criticize, and play armchair critic. After all the latest Microsoft^® campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld was designed to reposition our favorite Goliath as smarter, even cooler than its creative foil Apple, and show all of us in modern culture, the marketing industry and specifically, the technology marketing industry how to get that brand-thing done.

So how could these ads given their exceptional ingredients actually fail to the point of getting pulled after only three weeks? Well for starters regardless of how sophisticated your wit the ads simply didn’t make sense. Yes, they were somewhat amusing, but only to the extent had Gates and Seinfeld actually exchanged unrehearsed dialogue following a chance meeting in a shoe store.

Advertisements or sales pitches these ads were not. Hence they disappeared following a short three week run amidst other Windows^® Vista ads focusing on real users who were surprisingly pleased with the new operating system – and others entitled “I’m a PC”, a concept that takes Apple “head on” but delivers a fairly weak punch.

So what did we witness here? A Microsoft spokesman claimed the ads were never intended to air more than a couple of weeks and that they achieved the goal of getting viewers to talk.  Many critics panned the campaign, while the general buzz contended that the mix of multi-themed spots was an incredibly sophisticated set-up soon to converge into a much talked about “ah-hah!”

Look, I’m not a very funny guy. I can get my kids, my wife, and maybe a fishing buddy or two laughing. But to be honest given the budget, talent, and resources involved here you’d have to work pretty hard to make these spots fall flat, even though Bill Gates doing the “robot” was very, very funny.

Maybe they should have reunited the cast of Seinfeld? Maybe Bill Gates plays Kramer? Maybe Elaine lunges at Bill with her signature push and her “get-OUTTA here!!” as he describes the feature-rich Vista OS? Or maybe, just maybe it’s a campaign about absolutely nothing…except selling product and making us laugh.

One out of every 10 people in Britain smoke. No wonder they recently raised the legal cigarette buying age from 16 to 18 (very responsible) and implemented a new, graphic warning system on all tobacco products.

You can see the entire collection of new cigarette WARNINGS here. And if you still feel like smoking go right ahead. I hate to say it but these graphic photos are a breadth of fresh air from ghoulish images of all-American cowboys, healthy teens and twenty-something’s in various forms of play (Newport), or tennis players (Virginia Slims)…all of whom enjoy a good smoke during a break in the action. After all, it truly is the pause that refreshes.

If you’re ever in a discussion about good ads and bad ads and the wildly entertaining T.V. ads from GEICO pop up I’m sure you will receive very little opposition from the bad guys.

It’s probably close to impossible to find anyone who doesn’t at least like GEICO ads, despite the weird and completely original toggling between gecko, cavemen, Mrs. Butterworth, and/or other themes. But let’s face it, the standard for all great campaigns is making the cash register ring. So if you’re wondering whether GEICO’s campaign achieves this consider the following:

• In 1998 GEICO launched its first annual big-budget marketing campaign worth about $100 million intent on increasing its market share from 3 to 10 percent. Although some might consider their current 7% share (worth over $12 billion) to be modest GEICO is one of only five auto insurers that together own 50% of the US market. That’s a lot of drivers.
• The spots are from the folks at the Martin Agency who after forty-plus years are still improving their game (AD AGE top five agencies 2007; #3 last year) and perhaps even more impressive handle advertising for WALMART.
• Each spot reiterates GEICO’s positioning, messaging, and value proposition, “GEICO. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more.” 
• Warren Buffet, founder and CEO of GEICO’s parent company Berkshire Hathaway consistently asks of the insurers advertising “How is it doing?” not “How is it liked?”

 Keep the cavemen coming.