Adage reports

Innovative strategy
Chief Marketing Officer Michele Buck has been charged with upping marketing innovation at Hershey, a strategy evidenced by a full-scale blitz that begins March 13 to tout Take 5’s “Taste and Believe” positioning. Unlike the brand’s 2005 launch, which focused $17 million on traditional TV, the effort includes 69,000 buzz-marketing evangelists and a Web game that plays off Take 5’s TV ads.

(read between the lines here – it says DDB’s stuff sucked air big time)

Too complicated

Research showed the initial launch campaign from Omnicom Group’s DDB, New York , which focused on the bar’s five ingredients — pretzels, chocolate, peanuts, peanut butter and caramel — was too complex for consumers, who were far more impressed with the bar’s taste.

John Staffen said the new approach is designed to further the momentum on the bar’s good initial trial numbers and build on the passion of its loyal consumers through “a more aggressive, focused and targeted effort rather than just an ad campaign.”

(no kidding John – what a great idea)

Hershey will also do extensive sampling. A consumer promotion April 17 through July 31 offers Take 5 fans the chance to submit their own 60-second commercials explaining why Take 5 is the greatest candy bar ever. Consumers will be able to vote on the final five submissions online.

(consumers will be able to generate their own commercials and then vote the winner …. smell americal idol here. If it works why not)

Paula Courtney, president of The Verde Group, tells (in a Knowledge@Whaton article) of how brands can no longer rely on poor information flow to offer differential pricing.

"Courtney told about her own experience buying a briefcase in an airport shop in Philadelphia. She used her mobile phone to call her husband in Toronto and ask him to go online to research the brand. He discovered that the same model, which was on sale for $475 in the airport, was available online for $230. Courtney used the information to negotiate a 50% reduction in price at the airport store. "We are much savvier shoppers," she says. "We have no time and we don’t want to overpay — all the more reason retailers have to worry."

Now, would you trust the pricing at that store next time? Not likely!

Because if they dont get it off their chest to you, they will tell others.

From Knowledge@Wharton (shool of Business)

No surprises here, but neverthless and excellent piece about the power of word of mouth – in this case about retail experience, but surly just as valid for any service business (from financial services to hospitality)

"When consumers have a bad shopping experience, they are likely to spread the word, not to the store manager or salesperson, but to friends, family and colleagues.

Overall, if 100 people have a bad experience, a retailer stands to lose between 32 and 36 current or potential customers. These are some of the conclusions of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006, conducted by The Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton and The Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, in the weeks before and after Christmas 2005.

according to new Wharton research, such word-of-mouth communication should be a big cause of concern to retailers.

Results of The Retail Customer Dissatisfaction Study 2006 — conducted by The Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative at Wharton and The Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, in the weeks before and after Christmas 2005 — show that only 6% of shoppers who experienced a problem with a retailer contacted the company, but 31% went on to tell friends, family or colleagues what happened. Of those, 8% told one person, another 8% told two people, but 6% told six or more people. "Even though these shoppers don’t share their pain with the store, they do share their pain with other people, apparently quite a few other people," says Hoch.

The complaints have an even greater impact on shoppers who were not directly involved as the story spreads and is embellished, researchers found. Almost half those surveyed, 48%, reported they have avoided a store in the past because of someone else’s negative experience. For those who had encountered a problem themselves, 33% said they would "definitely not" or "probably not" return. "This storytelling has even more impact on the people the story is told to than the people who told the story," says Hoch. The data is based on a survey of 1,186 shoppers.

And we hear, "don’t buy our product next time" …

My Norton Internet Security started scaring me yesterday, after it ran its Critical Update it started telling me that there was a critical problem.

"Contact Technical Support immediately with the following information" followed by a bunch of file name and version numbers  it said.

Well YOU try finding a number to call on Symentec’s website.  Nearly impossible.  I found it after 30 mins of searching, only to find it would cost me $30.  At this point i decided that the experience would probably be of a long hold time and a bored call centre rep who just wanted to close the call rather than help me (this is the impression I get from their website)

So I decide to send in a support email.  Here is what I get back

Loyal to their agency readership , it covers the Consumer Generated Ads story, with a “No. Get ready for a motherload of crap content” response.

Umm, I s’pose the endless “car on windy road” commercials are really great, the celeb endorsement spots are highly original and creative and the "men are stupid and women are tits on legs” are the pinnacle of elegant communication.  And which is why we all love TiVo and use it to skip what you 4As guys spend huge amount of your client’s money on churning out.

I s’pose that www.youtube.com which hosts and streams consumer generated content and which as gone from zero to an audience the size of www.nytimes.com  in less than a year, or that google (not known for making blunders) are investing heavily in managing video, is not prescient of things to come.

Come ON you 4A guys – get past denial, it’s the only the first stage of dealing with the problem, you have many more to get through.

Go get some therapy if needed!