Mmmm.... Peanut Butter! Part 1

Both radio and peanut butter have humble beginnings, making their big splash this side of the border. Marconi used Newfoundland to receive the first Trans-Atlantic broadcast and Edson patented peanut butter from his residence in Montreal.

Canadians are awesome. (insert smiley face emoticon here)

A number of years ago, in the grocery aisles where I grew up, there were three dominant brands available to consumers: Skippy, Squirrel and Empress.

Empress. What can I say, it was the Safeway store brand before there the invention of no name or generic products. It was a decent enough product, and half the price of the others. You knew better than to ask for allowance when there was Empress in the pantry cause things were tight if we were eatin' store brands. Quality was always good, but flavour was a bit lacking and this was true of most of the house brands, the jams that Empress made however were top shelf. Today, the Empress brand is reserved for jams only, other products along with the peanut butter moved into large tubs with lousy packaging that equal the taste.

Skippy was the fun one, it had colourful packaging, and was noticably sweeter and smoother than the others - their secret was the use of icing sugar rather than granular or liquid sugars. The packaging was marketed to kids, and as a result, it was the top pick amongst us kids. The Canada Corn Starch Company manufactured this under the Best Foods banner until it was sold to Unilever in the 1990's.

Squirrel peanut butter was a novel treat from time to time as it gave you one of the first unique packaging experiences known - when you opened the jar you were greeted with a whole peanut, sitting on the top of the peanut butter. The first scoopful was always a treat - the rest of it was so-so, mostly because it wasn't the kids first pick. I may be wrong about this, but I believe Kraft had this under their umbrella and manufactured it for many years before finally selling to Best Foods in the 1990's. CCC, AKA Best Foods, quickly liquidated many of their lines which included the unloading of Squirrel and Skippy to Unilever.

When Unilever acquired both Skippy and Squirrel, they decided the consumers only needed one peanut butter or they only wanted to manage one peanut butter with the accounts. Customers wouldn't notice, or if they did they wouldn't be vocal about it - luckily I didn't have this blog then. They did it slowly, they slowly killed off the number two seller in the category. Some companies in the food industry would die to have number 1 and number 2 sellers in a category - there certainly must have been other issues to arrive at the decision they did to nix the poor squirrel.

So, Skippy came out on top and its name would carry on down the sales trail - but how exactly would they 'off' good ole Squirrel? Well, they decided to do somewhat of a merger of the two brands - a sort of brand integration 'til the end. I actually would have advised the same tactic at the time. They merged the two brands by calling it Skippy the Squirrel and in a collaborative effort between wordmarks and fonts the slowly worked the squirrel out of the brand. It was the Skippy formula with the Squirrel peanut on the top... for a while.

Whether through customer feedback or just sheer lack of understanding of their brand legacy, they changed the formula and dropped the whole peanut. And, over time, the packaging featuring the little mascot squirrel and the name squirrel started to shrink, and each time you purchased a jar, it got smaller and smaller until one day they were gone entirely. Gone from the shelf, but not from our memories.

I used to love having a peanut butter sandwich... raspberry jam was my all-time favourite, but strawberry jam or honey worked out nicely too. And, if my dad taught me anything it's that the amount of peanut butter is at the very minimum twice as thick as the complimentary spread - dad always made the best peanut butter sandwiches, not sure if mom was spreading it thin as a means to make the jar last longer or she just didn't know any different. I never told her this fact because she would change it for sure and there would be no difference between the two - then dad's wouldn't be looked forward to as a treat.

These days, a bit of me gets disappointed when I eat a peanut butter sandwich. I get excited about the idea of a PB and J, I lay out the bread 4 up on the counter with the tops of their crusts touching. My mouth waters as I make the sandwiches, but when I take the first bite, something is different. It's not the same. Is it that I am old and loosing my taste buds? I don't think so. I think the formula has been changed ever so slightly over the years, a bit here and a bit there... enough to make my childhood treat, my comfort food, my sit back and relax snack, a distant memory.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the sandwich, it's just different. It's not the same as it once was. And, it once was great.



Kevin's helpful shopping tip: if you're looking for real jam, it should read 'jam' on the label, fruit spread is not an acceptable substitute in my book.

Steadfast and True

Business is booming right now for us. It's encouraging to know that all the hard work my staff and I have put into making Francomedia a great company has not gotten washed away or eroded with the global recession we are faced with.

Quite the opposite in fact. Despite the downturn in the economy, we have posted two record setting months; April and June. And, I think that's just the beginning.

2009 hasn't all been great though, we did operate for 2 months at a loss and 2 months of just breaking even. I was expecting 3 or 4 months of down time and although I didn't really budget for it, I managed to keep everyone employed while things got back to black.

What I didn't count on was the swell of clients coming to us from agencies that have been taking advantage of the market conditions prior to the winter. When I say taking advantage, I mean over-charging. The market turned in October, and when things get tight, the first thing many companies do is look to cut some dead weight and reduce expenses. They begin to analyze their spends a little bit.

When they see that their ad agency charged them $200 to burn a CD of their own web assets they begin to question the relationship and the value they're getting - and justly so. Soon, they begin to shop around for another agency or service provider.

We have been on the receiving end of more than a few of these companies that were looking for some 'fresh ideas' and honest billing.

Luckily, we've built a solid reputation in the market place for being very creative and we operate cleanly. Meaning we are fair and honest with all our clients. Sure, we could have taken advantage of things when times were good, but that's not in our make up - that's not who we are. Making money has never been our primary objective, we've always put the work first. 'Be creative and serve the clients needs and the money will follow' - that's what I've always believed.

It may not be the best business strategy, I understand a business needs to be profitable and make money, it's just not our sole purpose. Making money is a necessity and a benefit of what we do, our purpose is creation. At times it's tough to balance and sometimes we give clients ridiculous deals just so we can do something creative.

So, the tide is turning and our reputation is prevailing. More and more companies are coming to us and looking for some good old fashioned, honest, creative.

We are happy to oblige.

Contesting

Contests are a great way to promote your product, service or brand - if done correctly.

In any marketing, be it an advertisement, a web page, a vehicle design, apparel, logo or a contest, the messaging and purpose has to be relevant and on brand. What you do in anything related to marketing must not stray from your brand motto or your brand's core beliefs.

Recently, we have been putting a contest together for our tiny, little boutique creative shop. The contest has a purpose - to promote the win of a creative award for the design and concept of a custom envelope and stamp. And, the contest is relevant - to win the contest, you have to collect the very thing that we won the award with - our custom stamps.

Structuring the contest this way informs people about the win and gets them to notice and focus on the envelopes and stamps that may have been background noise up until then. Our goal is to promote to our customers and people who deal with us that we are an award winning creative shop that specializes in out-of-the-box thinking and design.

You can read about this contest here.

The goal of a contest is not to give away a specific prize but to promote your offering or brand. If the prize does this, that's great but not every business can do this. In our case, we are awarding lunch for the winner and eleven of their closest friends, delivered by our staff. This will award the winner, but also allow for interaction with our staff and their staff.

You want to give something away that is meaningful and/or has some relevance.

Immersing people in your brand and having them engage with it makes for a successful campaign. Just having people enter to win with no interaction can be misguided unless you are collecting data to follow up with at a latter date.

At the end of the day, people need to remember what your offering is and what you do. When planning a contest, think about this carefully, will your contest accomplish this?

I think ours will.

The Marketing Platypus

Everyone has heard the analogy that a camel is a race horse built by committee. If a committee builds a camel, business owners who want to do things themselves usually build a platypus.

There is no more definitive proof of this than when you check your mail at the end of a busy day and see the unaddressed admail in your mailbox. You see some of the most unprofessional misfirings in marketing. Many times, I bring these into the office for the entire group to see (and get a good chuckle). Nothing says home made logo, like a home made logo.

A platypus isn't good for much if you're competing with race horses, or even with camels for that matter. This sounds contradictory, but in marketing, sui generis is usually what you are after, but being unique in the amateurish and nonsensical arena won't get you on top. There are times when an unpolished or kitschy approach can work for marketing, but this takes planning and strategy, not just blind luck and a duck beak.

A while back I wrote a blog called, Heed the Advice, it spoke to the fact that you have to listen to the advice of experts. This came from a lesson that I learned and was not meant to be an endorsement by any stretch, unlike this posting (insert smiling or winking emoticon here).

There are some things you might like to experiment with or do as a hobby, all too often we see companies that treat their marketing this way. Marketing is not a hobby, you either live it and breath it or you don't. Having said that, there are some business owners have a knack for it, understand the importance of marketing but, they know when to bring experts to the table to execute or refine their ideas - there's no coincidence that these are the very same business owners that are successful in what they do.

If you are serious about growing your business, hire a marketing professional - but before you do, make sure they can make race horses. Have a look at their track record, make sure they can build successful campaigns and bring creative approaches to the table.

At the end of the day, we build race horses for customers. Sometimes we end up with a camel but never a platypus.

From the opening credits of Dogma, a film by Kevin Smith:

Remember: Even God has a sense of humor. Just look at the Platypus. Thank you and enjoy the show.

P.S. We sincerely apologize to all Platypus enthusiasts out there who are offended by that thoughtless comment about Platypi. We at View Askew respect the noble Platypus, and it is not our intention to slight these stupid creatures in any way. Thank you again and enjoy the show.

Marketing is like Self Help

Most people in their life have found themselves at one of those self-help type seminars put on by people like Steven Covey, Tony Robbins and the like.

And, most people walk away from these events energized and full of hope that they can be a better person, or at least remember 1 of the 7 important things they have heard. They learn 'tips' and 'tricks' on how to be more focused, more congenial, more positive, more everything.

The thing is, none of this positive self-help is news to anyone in the audience - there is nothing revolutionary being said and everyone knows it all ready. For the most part, it's common sense stuff. It's a good reminder of stuff we already know to be true but perhaps aren't acting on.

Whether it's the new infusion of thought, or the 12 coffees consumed during these seminars, people seem to come out of these seminars charged up and ready to change their lives for the better. And, for a couple of days they may even implement some of the philosophy and teachings. But it is soon forgotten because the two things they remembered to do, didn't really make an impact so they stop doing them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the importance of self-help - it's good stuff, and we all need reminders now and then.

My point is this; these seminars teach many 'tips' and 'tricks' to be a better person, and doing one or two of them really will not make that big of difference in any one person's life - it's when they start doing several or all of these things that you start to see improvement. If you are committed to it and stick to it.

And, folks, that is exactly how marketing works.

Marketing success is the sum of its parts. It's not just doing a newspaper ad, or re-vamping your web site or cleaning up your logo. Everything must be firing on all cylinders if you truly want results. Nothing should be overlooked. Any one part of an automobile is not an automobile - it doesn't take you to point B until everything is is assembled together.

Remember, everything is marketing.

If you truly want to create a memorable or remarkable customer experience everything must be looked at, everything must be on brand and true to your brand motto. For when everything you do and say, reflects the core message or is relevant to your brand, that is when you are really marketing - then it just becomes a game of promoting.

So many companies believe that their logo is their brand. Let me tell you this, people don't interact with your logo, they interact with you or your staff. They go through your web site, hopefully you do a job in immersing them in your brand by giving them a great experience in your store or office. The logo just helps them remember their experience - the logo should reflect the brand and set the expectation, as in all your marketing.

What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is used a lot in our industry, mostly for printing and proofing. In marketing, you must step back and look at your business through a customers eyes. Their perception is reality. What they see is what they are expecting to get. You set the expectation in many ways, think about what a dirty logo'd vehicle tells people that have never dealt with you. Everyone has seen third rate business cards, the impression and perception formed immediately (first impressions) is that your firm is as crappy as your business card.

Cleaning your company vehicle and getting professional calling cards are not earth shaking ideas. In fact, common sense already told you that these were good ideas before I even told you. But, if you don't implement them they won't help. Now, on their own they are not going to save a company, or increase profits, or double your sales - they are just two little things on a list of hundreds.

The bottom line is, you need to follow through on everything to be better, in life and in marketing.

Remember, marketing is everything.

My Famous Business Card

Chances are, that if you've met me in person, you have one of my famous business cards already.

OK, maybe famous is stretching it, but they are certainly unique and on their way to being semi-famous or quasi-famous... if even on a very minor scale.

In April of this year, Francomedia won the Platinum Hermes Creative Award for the design and concept for these very creative business cards and ever since, we have been getting more notice and plenty of buzz about our cards.

The cards themselves are pretty clean and simple, save but a few creative features to each card that speaks to each employees individuality/ specialty. What really makes them remarkable is the complex process to create them - it's the final result and effect that makes them truly sui generis.

Earlier this week, our cards were featured on Card Observer, a site dedicated to creative and unique business cards. Shortly after our posting on that site, we received word that a blogger named Yanda out of Singapore wanted to cover the cards and feature them on their site as well.

It didn't take long for other web sites to pick up the information and start sharing the news about our cards. At time of this writing, we have found a few different sites that are showing our cards: Such as this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one.

Needless to say, this has increased traffic to the Francomedia web site in a huge way.

When I look at the cost to produce our cards, compared to other business cards, some would say I was crazy for doing it, as each card comes close to $5. However, if you look at the fact that these cards have resulted in getting my company international attention online and local press in two magazine articles, I would have to say that it was well worth the expense.

Everyone I hand these cards out to, comments on them and reacts positively. Well, except for one lady who asked about their longevity in a landfill to which I replied, "You're not supposed to throw them out!"

I guess no matter what you do, there will always be one person with a different, albeit skewed, perspective. I assure you, the cards are recyclable, so if you do feel you must dispose of the most creative card you've ever gotten, don't irresponsibly throw it into the garbage, I urge you to recycle it or re-use it.

In marketing, in business, in advertising, ...hell, in anything - doing something truly unique and creative will get you noticed... and that's what it's all about, right?

The Time it Takes

Doing a good job takes time - doing a lousy job takes no time at all.

It's easy to go through the motions but that's not what I'm about. I'm a marketer and slapping things together doesn't help anybody. Things need to be thought through, in concept, in planning, in design and in execution.

I recently heard Roger Grant from Identicor speak on the subject of branding and naming (he is one of the only professional name generators in the country) and he said, "have a look through a trade magazine at all the ads... it's more about fitting in than standing out." I thought this was brilliant. It really sums up what we're about, standing out.

Life isn't middle school and your brand isn't trying to fit in - you need to get noticed and you want to be talked about. Hell, using that analogy, a brand with pimples might make you a household name.

Being different, or remarkable is what any good marketer does - we help you stand out.

If you really want marketing that helps your brand stand out and generates engagement then you have to understand that it takes time + planning + experience. I am always willing to spend the time needed to ensure that the right ideas are put forward, and sometimes even invest time and money into projects that I am passionate about.

If you want band-aid solutions and knee-jerk reactionary planning, I'm not your guy. I don't settle for mediocrity and I won't dedicate time to something I don't believe in.

Great brands and good marketing don't just happen and they're not born of a single event, but rather through planning, thought and design.