Food for Thought

A man walks into a bar and orders a Whopper. Wait, what?! It’s no joke. Brandchannel reported that Burger King is expanding their menu to include beer. Such “Whopper Bars” already exist outside of the U.S. but one will open in Miami next month. I don’t eat meat and oddly, though I am Irish, I don’t drink beer but can I just say; this is genius. I’m sure there will be backlash from teetotalers, those who think this sends the wrong message to fast-food eating children, or some fringe group that thinks this discriminates against soda but in terms of keeping your brand relevant to your consumer demographic, this is fresh.

In an earlier blog, I wrote about consumer criticism over the “Drive Thru Diet” campaign from Taco Bell which apparently continues to be controversial, as The New York Times and others are still writing about it. I won’t repeat my sentiments here; suffice it to say, I think anyone who believes they can lose weight by eating fast food should be wary of ads for cheap land in Florida. I’m a foodie, addicted to new cookbooks and recipes so I know a thing or two about what I should eat. With the advent of food porn from The Food Network and others, many of us are much more educated about what is healthy and what’s not. As Michael Pollan says in his excellent new book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, “…everybody now has at least a passing acquaintance with words like…saturated fat and carbohydrates…” So we know that pounds won’t budge if burritos are a mainstay.

The winners in the food game will be marketers who “get it”; that is they recognize that people really would prefer an easy way to eat healthy food that is also appetizing. Healthy Choice has a great new campaign featuring a wide variety of novel offerings. Just as variety is the spice of life, a diet is doomed to fail if there is no variety. Starbucks offers egg white omelets with spinach and tomato; even Dunkin Donuts offers egg white sandwiches now, albeit with cheese which one can forego. Who knows, Burger King might even offer light beer. After all, swimsuit season is just around the corner. Maybe my local ice cream parlor would consider stocking Skinny Cow?

It’s a Small World

There was so much in the news this week, I hardly know where to begin. The NBC brand was battered if not broken with the Leno/Conan debacle. It was ridiculous but also oddly compelling to watch, as are most train wrecks.

It was good to hear about Target’s $1B remodeling; it was good to hear the word “remodeling” at all during the spat between Scripps Network and Cablevision that kept my beloved HGTV off the air for too long. Target plans to add groceries to more stores which is fine by me; it’s where I go now for the cheapest prices on snacks for the kids, so I look forward to a wider selection. They’re planning this category expansion as sales of clothing and furniture have decreased. People are buying clothes but mostly at discount outlets so Bloomingdale’s parent company, Macy’s Inc. announced they’ll open four more outlet stores. Cheap is the new chic.

News that rocked my world (and not in a good way) was that The New York Times will start charging for access to its website. Oh, unhappy day. I fondly remember the leisurely Sundays when I would read the actual paper from cover-to-cover instead of scanning it online at the speed of light while I multi-task at a million other things. But at least now I can scan it sans subscription. It’s counterintuitive to me in this Information Age to throw up a roadblock like this. Many people, including me, post interesting Times articles to Twitter but now, unless we or others are subscribers, those articles will be unavailable in their entirety. If I subscribe to even the Sunday edition, however, I will have limited access online so maybe I can use this as an excuse to bring back my old tradition of a leisurely Sunday. Family, consider yourselves forewarned.

All eyes were turned towards Haiti following the devastating earthquake that has 111,000 confirmed dead. I watched the reports with a heavy heart for those poor people who had little to begin with and are now left with nothing, not even the small comfort of the proper burial of their dead. I was touched by the amazing charitable response from the rest of the world especially through the power of texting. Those who texted the word HAITI to 90999 donated $10 each to Haiti relief, raising $30 million thus far. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook allowed for an immediate, global response not seen in the recent past, not even during the 2004 tsunami in Asia. Technology truly does make the world smaller but it makes it larger too, in this case, it allowed our humanity to increase in great measure. We’ll never be able to entirely fill the void by what was lost but we can help those overcome by loss, one text at a time.

BranDID

The world is a strange and wonderful place. Yesterday, I left the offices of a firm where I’m consulting to catch an early train home and celebrate my birthday with family. Well, I’m a curmudgeon about my birthday, so they celebrate and I endure. In fact, I’m such a birthday buzz kill that I hadn’t even told anyone it was my birthday. When I did tell one nice, young woman at the office why I was leaving early, she reacted as if I’d won the lottery. Alas, the transit system was not cooperating and I sat on that “earlier” train for awhile. My seatmate (another nice, young woman) politely asked if I was going to be late for something important. I suddenly blurted out that it was my birthday. She reacted as if I’d just found gold under my seat. When people turned to see why she was so excited, she told everyone – loudly – that it was my birthday and a few, happy businessmen toting suspect paper bags began a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday” while others chimed in. I’d never been so horrified and gratified at the same time. People surprise me every day.

I was surprised to hear recently that when women were asked what brands they remain loyal to these days; their responses were – in this order – “Walmart, Target, and none.” NONE? I knew that more and more people were shopping at Walmart and Target, because I am one of them, but women shedding brand loyalty altogether is as incomprehensible to me as people who like to celebrate their birthdays. My father taught me many things (including the very handy trick of slipping out the back door when your house is full of birthday well-wishers) so I know he would remind me, “Never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.” Women with no brand loyalty are too much for me to wrap my (rapidly ageing) brain around. Oh, sure, we’ll try a new, cheaper house brand of salad dressing because sometimes, that’s how you discover new favorites. But once a woman has found, say, a personal hair care or cosmetics brand that gives her consistent results, she may experiment with other brands but she will keep coming back to the one that works.

Women shop to please their families. So if we throw in the factor of an end user, say, finicky-eater offspring who will only eat the white meat chicken at one fast food purveyor, then brand loyalty is firmly entrenched. Because try as you might, you can serve a new food or suggest a new soap to those for whom you shop but not without resistance that would impress the last Japanese soldier to surrender. Trying a “brand-new” brand happens every day but usually “in addition to” before “instead of”. Having NO brand loyalty? That’s a little too hard to believe. I can’t help but think that women responded to this survey in this way because it was the politically correct thing to do right now. Flaunting one’s wealth or bonafide vacation these days is tantamount to feasting on bread while others eat cake. Saying that you’re remaining brand-loyal when cheaper brands can save you cents seems, well, insensitive, even to a curmudgeon like me.

Sleight of Hand

There’s no greater tribute to the superior selling abilities of a salesperson than to say, “He could sell ice to an Eskimo”. And truly, were that possible, that would be some accomplishment. So I am always in awe of those who can sell their product without actually showing their product. Special K is one such advertiser with a new campaign that focuses on women, their weight-loss goals, and how substituting cereal or cereal-based products for two meals a day can get them there – without ever showing those products in the spots. Some might think that it’s pulling a fast one but I think it’s genius to focus on a humble goal and its benefits – a healthier, happier, more energetic you – but not on the rather mundane food that will help you do it. Let’s face it, eating cereal twice a day is no picnic, although Special K has expanded its product line to even greater variety. Kellogg, which makes Special K has found a way to speak to women and in doing so, they’ve increased market share.

When marketing to women, it’s all about the conversation, not the pitch. Anyone who’s ever tried to rush a woman into a quick date or a fast decision knows that we like to take our time. Women decide to buy after they’re done some research, not just about a brand but also about the company behind it. Try to pull a fast one on a woman and she will call you on it. When Taco Bell launched its Drive Thru Diet spot, female bloggers went loco because women know just what it takes to lose over 50 lbs and they can tell you that switching to salsa alone will not do it.

The green cleaner Method sullied its brand recently with their “Shiny Suds” spot. I can’t post it here because it was pulled from You Tube after many complaints. Suffice it to say that it’s a dirty spot alright, with animated suds leering and jeering at a woman while she showers. Viewers felt that it was not only sexist but that it “condoned rape”. There’s a word we women learn at an early age that sums up icky sentiments in a succinct manner, “Ewwwww”. Any women who’s worked in a large city and has ever had to walk the gauntlet that is any path that puts you in clear view of a construction crew knows that leers and jeers are icky, whether they come from a boy or a bubble. In short, when advertising to women, remember that they like honesty and believability in their ads (and their men) so don’t try to pull a fast one.

Resolutions

You know what they say about New Year’s resolutions – they go in one year and out the other. But experts say that nearly 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail because people focus on one big goal without breaking it into smaller steps. “I will never eat chocolate again” is doomed to fail whereas divorcing yourself from that nightly candy bar companion on the commute home may be more doable.

I make resolutions on a daily basis but there is one I hope to keep for the New Year and that is to lower my expectations of advertisers. Like most marketers, I have this knee-jerk reaction to ads wherein I either love them as is — no edits required– or I loathe them and wonder how they ever got past the edit stage at all. But hope springs eternal and so like a kid waiting for Santa, I will wish for advertisers to refrain from the following in 2010:

Random Jingles – why would a local law office or insurance company have a singing jingle to describe their services? Doesn’t that erode any confidence prospective clients might have in the seriousness of your firm? When I hear them, I’m reminded of that hokey country song that spells out the word D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Sexist stereotypes – why do marketers who produce consumer goods clearly targeted to women delude themselves into thinking knocking that very gender will endear themselves to that demographic? Yes, we can laugh at our foibles but not ones we don’t believe we have in the first place.

Comparison ads – anyone who’s ever had a friend go through a bad breakup and had to endure their jibes as they dug through their bag of bitches ad nauseum will know how loathsome it is to sit through these.

Poor actors – sure, sometimes they have an unintended entertainment factor but in the end, they’re just that – laughable – not what you want your spot remembered for. (And is the “world record speed reader” from the Bronx?)

Bad voiceovers – someone in the editing room was clearly hitting the wrong buttons and someone on the account side was clearly hitting the bottle. The result is that I hear no other message than the inattention to detail.

I could go on (you know I could) but I will leave you now with all the best wishes for a Happy and Healthy New Year and a quote from Joey Adams – “May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions!”

Random Acts

When a “White Christmas” came a little early and brought with it over two feet of snow, my family and I decided to enjoy the calm after the storm before we got to work clearing off the cars, the driveway, the walkways, etc. Most of our neighbors had finished by then so our house was a prime target for entrepreneurs trolling the streets in search of snow removal work. In past years, we might have been solicited by a lone teenager, if that. But yesterday, we had more than a half dozen people ring our doorbell, offering to do that work for hire. It’s been a tough year for many, my family included. Yet we are blessed in that we have a home that requires shoveling when so many do not and although my sons were perfectly capable and we could ill afford the cost, we paid a man and his teenage son to clear the snow.

A family whose young daughter is a classmate of my son’s, lost their home in a fire last week. As PTO Corresponding Secretary, it was up to me to send a request to our nearly 600 member PTO families for donations on their behalf. I honestly didn’t know what kind of response I’d get this close to the winter break with Christmas just days away. Candidly, I’ve been disappointed with the level of volunteerism that I can usually expect. But people surprise you every day, and I’m happy to say that the outpouring of gifts and good will did much for my Christmas spirit.

Fast Company reports that gift giving is up and lists retailers who’ve used cause-related marketing effectively this season. At the grocery check-out line today, I watched a woman lose it when the clerk asked if she’d like to make a donation to a local food bank. Apparently, she’d been asked one time too many. Others were outraged or amused as she stormed off but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. She may be going through lean times of her own and it’s hard to help others when you may also be in need. Still, I never begrudge a small donation at the grocery store since I’m lucky enough to be able to buy food. The $2.00 that in the past might have bought me a grandé tea at Starbucks now goes into Salvation Army coffers. And because my love of reading began at a young age, I always manage to donate a new children’s book to Barnes & Noble each holiday season. This will be a very lean Christmas for my family but not as lean as it will be for others and that’s why I give. Because as the dear Sisters of St. Joseph often reminded me, “only by giving, are we able to receive more than we already have”.

Coup(on) de Coeur

An unexpected benefit of this economic downturn is that holiday shopping is much easier when one simply cannot afford it. In my family, those young enough to believe in Santa (or the parental equivalent) will receive some but not all of what they wish for and those who’ve told me that I should package my baked goods will (spoiler alert) also get their wish. But curious about exactly what I was missing amid an avalanche of coupons arriving daily, I decided to brave the stores.

First up, Kohls. I’d never shopped there but their ads make you think they have unbelievable bargains on great designer clothes. I arrived armed with a boatload of coupons, ready to shop and save. I was disappointed however to see so much dark, depressing, patterned polyester; also modal, nylon, viscose, and other man-made materials on everything within sight including faux patent pleather Vera Wang handbags that looked as if they might melt in the sun. Maybe the shoppers weren’t grumpy from waiting in line to pay but from wearing all those synthetics.

On to Bed, Bath & Beyond. I get so many coupons from them that a shopping obligation is almost inferred. I could spend a happy afternoon among kitchen gadgets but I’ve learned from experience that after using them once, the most contact you’ll have with them is shifting them around in the kitchen drawer to get to what you really need, i.e. the corkscrew. So, averting my eyes from the microwaveable gravy dish and the multi-colored melamine measuring bowls, I went straight to the holiday specials. I’m probably one of the few individuals in America – nay, the world – who does not own a Snuggie. Call me crazy but a blanket that’s the equivalent of a hospital gown leaves me cold. I briefly considered a tartan plaid flannel sheet set for my son’s fraternity bed but then remembered that he once nixed a striped set as too “fem” and also that house brand sheets purchased there before were as soft as pumice stone.

Next up, Target. Now here’s the interesting thing. I receive very few if any, coupons from Target. Yet, I find myself there more often than not. They keep things interesting. On any given week, there will be something I could use, merchandised up front where I don’t have to don a miner’s hat with flashlight to find it. I may not actually need it but the low prices and their prescience when it comes to knowing what I will want is uncanny. I peruse their weekly email circular faithfully like someone in search of the Holy Grail. And here’s the secret, with Target, I don’t need to clip any coupons. Oh, sure, they send me some but even without the extra dollar off, I know that I’m getting a bargain. The store is clean and well-stocked; the help is downright helpful; and I’ve never been dissatisfied with my purchases. The French call love at first sight a coup de coeur. That’s how it is with Tar-zhay and me, no coupons required.

The Twelve Steps of Christmas

“Christmas time is here and we’re full of fear”. No, those aren’t the words to the famous Charlie Brown Christmas song although they could be, judging from advertisements this year. Many retailers are acknowledging the 900 pound Santa in the room – the recession – with ads that commiserate with consumers about these trying times but assure them that if they shop at the right place, all will be well. It seems an apt approach if only a tad depressing. If some of us have to own up to the fact that tumbleweeds may be blowing through the space under our Christmas trees, it helps if we can laugh a little about it. It seems preferable to advertisers who don’t acknowledge the recession at all – like Lexus – whose ads still depict that old chestnut, upper class husbands and wives gifting luxury cars to one another.
Walmart kicked off the season in what I thought were appropriate ads filled with raucous kids careening through their homes towards the Christmas tree while the song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” played in the background. The retailer also showed kids positively gleeful with their gifts while mom intoned, ‘I love seeing them go nuts’. Target has several ads with fearful kids reluctant to accept their parents’ largesse; resentful husbands accusing their wives of shopping excess; or judgmental neighbors (and their dogs) appalled at those whose home decorations have gone overboard until we see the taglines. Each indicates that no belt tightening was necessary to achieve such joy since all shopped at Target. Hallmark is running a spot that features a young mom thanking her mother with a card (a frugal choice) and the words, “We never could have made it this past year without your help.” In fact, Hallmark has a whole line of “difficult times” cards. That might be a bit much but it does follow the first commandment of tackling an issue – acknowledgment that one exists.
And so, with apologies to al-anon, I give you a twelve step program for Christmas during this recession and beyond:
1. We admit we are powerless over shopping—that our finances have become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves (such as the Fed) could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of someone more frugal than we.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our purchases.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being i.e. our spouse the exact nature of our wrongs i.e. those hidden shopping bags.
6. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and the lint from our wallets.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings about bargain hunting.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all, just not with any extravagant gifts.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others, i.e. by giving them fruitcake or re-gifting.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it such as putting a stop to our inexplicable need to wear Uggs or Crocs.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with coupons as we understood them, praying only for knowledge of how to find the best ones and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our shopping expeditions.

Hit or Miss?

I’m a retailer’s worst nightmare. I did no shopping on Black Friday or on Cyber Monday.  My list looms but none of the things on it were on sale because it’s modest; there’ll be no sleigh full of stuff this year. Still, I read every breathless email alert, tweet, and fan page post from various retailers, in the, ahem, interest of my craft. Amazon, Kohls, Penney and others kept up the pressure, sending me daily countdowns of the few remaining hours left on their deals. Bath & Body Works, Saks, and Sephora were also relentless. But the campaign that I kept scratching my head over was Target’s. Not the cute ads they posted on Facebook, those were fun. It was the TV ads featuring the demented homemaker hell-bent on an over-the-top Yuletide that left me wondering if someone on the creative staff had a little too much eggnog.

Target is my self-anointed media darling, so it was bewildering to see them stumble. Usually, they depict moms as take-charge types with a soft side. I like that. But the woman in their holiday ads had no appreciative family as the recipient of her zeal. Despite her Junior League look and ubiquitous pearls, she has a distinct lack of taste, with tinsel adorning everything but her side-swept ponytail which, in and of itself is a fashion faux-pas. Some ads feature her polar-opposite sister who looks scattered and either simpers about the holidays or is snide towards her sister’s gung-ho approach.

What was the goal? To instill competitiveness among women determined to do it all and have it all? In this economy, is that on target, so to speak? In nearly every ad, the sister who is wound too tight is overdoing things. In one, she’s in her “war room” in which she plots and planograms purchases. In others, she also prepares for Target’s two day sale either on her elliptical trainer or by pulling shopping carts filled with cinderblocks. My least favorite is one in which she is in bed with all types of alarm clocks strapped to her body like a terrorist. With people scaling back either out of need or want, the choice of an acquisitive shopper/spokesperson is off the mark. The alter ego sister is just a downer, stapling her wreath to her front door out of obligation to tradition or limping listlessly through the store aisles. Whom does Target want women to identify with? By trying to be all things to all people they’ve given me no comfort or joy.

Boobs

Does this ever happen to you? You’re running late, getting dressed as fast as you can, and your breasts want to talk. They choose the most inopportune time to get everything off their chest. No? Oh, that must be because BREASTS DON’T TALK, not unless they’re in a Reebock spot written by what must be a frosh creative team from Kappa Tappa Kegga fraternity. One can only hope they’re never given the Viagra account. Seriously Reebok, talking breasts to sell a women’s shoe?! What were you thinking?

Your ads have shock value, I’ll give you that. In one, we’re treated to an off-screen camera guy’s propensity to keep his lens lovingly fixed on the impossibly small but perfectly perky rear end of a model wearing Reeboks, until she turns around to admonish him. If only her nose was as beautifully sculpted. Meowww.

In another, we’re brought into the darkened boudoir of a babe whose back and bodacious booty are turned towards the camera before she writhes into a reveal of her Reeboks. This happens all the time you know, women wearing their sneakers to bed. Usually when they’re planning a quick get-away.

Let me see if I can follow your logic, Reebok. Sex sells? No, that can’t be it. Unless you’re counting on men to gift these butt-boosting sneakers to their women friends? Oh, I’m sure the ladies will take very kindly to the intimation that their wide loads need work. Aspirational for women? Yes, that must be it. Women will want the firm derrieres that are so fondly filmed to depict the toning aspects of Reeboks. I get that. But talking breasts that are jealous of said derriere? You lost me, and probably most of the other women you’d hoped to reach. Let me explain women. We actually can appreciate a good looking woman but in a begrudging, in-my-own-good-time kind of way and never when we’re told to, it has to be our choice. So flouting breasts – even if they’re supposed to be “ours” – as what we should aspire to will have the adverse effect, we will tune you out, like a man who spouts baseball stats or wears a vest over a t-shirt. Victoria’s Secret uses the aspirational tactic quite well. There’s a difference however, between knowing you may never really look like a supermodel but that you’re the closest your man will ever get to one. Just as a fashion photographer would tell us to “be” the supermodel, we do just that by purchasing panties that resemble dental floss. Any jealousy is strictly limited towards the genetically superior freaks that we politely refer to as supermodels.

A lot of women are skeptical about these so-called “fit” shoes anyway. We know in our hearts that the only thing that will really help in that area is a boot camp gym instructor with no mercy. I was sipping a Starbucks in Soho the other morning as I watched New Yorkers stroll by the store window in their “this-is-my-casual-weekend-look” outfits. Maybe I was in too trendy a neighborhood for it but in nearly one hour only one woman walked by in these new fit sneaks. Actually, saying she “walked” doesn’t do justice to the kind of mincing gait she took that put me in mind of victims of Japanese foot binding. The shoes even had that odd, okobo look to them, which kind of defeats the purpose of a sneaker in the first place, doesn’t it? I don’t know if a woman designed these things but I can’t imagine that there are any women on the creative team that came up with Reeboks’ talking boobs spot, though I could be wrong. Whoever they are, they’re talking boobs.

If Reebok is so worried about how breasts are faring perhaps some cause-related marketing would help ease their minds. A colleague of mine sent me an amazing video today. Created to highlight a new product (pink surgical gloves) but also to raise breast cancer awareness, the entire staff of a medical center in Oregon participated. Watch it to see their evident glee at taking a break from the very worthy work they do to have a bit of fun. It’s posted on YouTube and Medline, the maker of the gloves will make a big donation if it gets a million hits. So view it and forward the link to friends. If breasts could talk, they’d say, “thanks”.