12.28.2004

McKinsey - New strategies for consumer goods

Many companies in the industry are struggling despite improved productivity anda focus on core brands. What can they do to spark growth?

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/15925

Making the Perfect Marketer

A study from the Association of National Advertisers and Booz Allen Hamilton suggests five ways to make marketing more relevant than ever.

Read the article. You have to register with the site, but it doesn't take but a minute.

Cool Quote - 12.28.04

Scott came across this quote and thought we would enjoy:

So, in 2005, marketers will need to understand the essence of their brands -- the one thing that they stand for -- then communicate symbolically to reach these consumers (all of us) who are struggling to process the information load that comes their way on a daily basis. Keep it simple, sensory (sensorial experiences reunite us with our biological rhythms), empathetic (understand our time-pressed needs), and optimistic (give us small moments of joy as we go about our day).

12.21.2004

Back to the ABCs--Make That the Three Ps--of Marketing

Marketing in America is adrift today. More than 90% of all new products launched are not on the shelf two years later. Manufacturers are scrambling to maintain brand share in the face of a sea of private-label entries. Consumers are showing less and less willingness to pay a premium for "national brands."

A hundred years ago we had it figured out. Marketing was about product, place, and price. Get a good product to a place where someone could buy it for a price that reflected the intrinsic value of the product and how difficult (or dangerous) it was to get it to the buyer.

In the decades since, while creating more product and place options than we can effectively use, we've forgotten the basics of product, place, and price. In the face of this myriad of options, consumers are reverting to a simpler approach to making choices.

Consumers, it seems, haven't forgotten the basics of product, place, and price. Just as we followed consumers into the frontiers of cable television, online shopping, warehouse clubs, and dollar stores, now we must follow them again as they change the rules of the game to fit their needs.

Read how to profit from the three Ps of marketing.


By Ben Ball, PROMO

12.20.2004

Cool Quote - 12.20.04

"Marketing is not an event, but a process . . . It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely." - Jay Conrad Levinson

12.16.2004

Cool Quote 12.16.04

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman

For all you current & former youth marketers...

Ypulse is an independent blog for teen/youth media and marketing professionals providing news, commentary and resources on commercial teen media (teen magazines and websites), entertainment for teens (movies, games, television, music), technology used by teens (cell phones, instant messaging, SMS), the news media's desire to attract teens (newspapers, cable news), marketing and advertising (targeting the teen market) and civic youth media (highlighting organizations' efforts at promoting youth voices in media).

Check out Ypulse.

Ypulse is affiliated with a cool guerilla marketing agency called ALT TERRAIN.