Mad Libs Marketing. Or, “That’s your message? Really!?!?”

I’m sure you remember those wonderful fill-in-the-blanks books, “Mad Libs.”  You know, you just insert your own verb, noun or adjective in the blanks and see how silly the sentences come out.  Mad Libs are great for kids and fun at parties, but they have no place in expressing your marketing message.  Yet, as I look through the pages of ads in magazines, or surf companies on the web, I see all kinds of Mad Lib slogans and taglines, which are in effect condensed marketing messages:

• A Global Leader in [ activity ].
• Building tomorrow’s [ product ] today.
• Putting [ people, needs or ideas ] first.
• [ kind of people ] helping [ other kind or same kind of people ]

Perhaps most the most egregious users of Mad Libs marketing is the funeral industry.  The marketing messages are so generic, any competitor in the same category could put their name in the space:

• A tradition of caring. [ company name goes here ]
• Dignified, compassionate service.  [company name goes here ]
• Serving [ location community ] since [ year founded ].  [ company name goes here ]

They don’t communicate anything genuinely unique about the service provider other than the category in which they operate, putting them at the same level as everyone else who offers a similar product or service. They could have come out of a catalog!

By comparison, here are a few examples of taglines in the funeral industry that stand out because they have something unique to say:

• A Fresh Approach to Funeral Care – Bunker Family Funeral Home
• Creating Funerals as Special as the People they Honor -  Bonaventure Funeral Home
• Your Legacy Deserves A Place Like This  -  Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuary

I would have included more examples of good taglines, but frankly, I couldn’t find too many.  So here are some from other industries:

• The Ultimate Driving Machine
• Think Different
• The Uncola
• It’s everywhere you want to be

As the new year progresses, it’s worthwhile to look backwards to some of the strategies and tactics you’re bringing into 2012…starting with your basic marketing message.  Ask yourself, is our message so familiar, expected or generic that it could apply to any of our competitors?  Does it fully express our unique point of difference?  Is it fresh and “sticky”?

Without having a strong point of view and a distinctive message risks your customers seeing your business as a commodity or generic service, and they’ll be happy to shop your competitors when they think price is really the only difference.

This may require a bit of corporate soul-searching, but it belongs on your marketing must-do list for 2012.  Otherwise, you’re just [ verb ]-ing your marketing dollars [ preposition and place ].

What is your passion?

In all my years working with clients, regardless their type of business, one thing has proven true time and time again: the most successful companies are the ones with a leader whose passion drives the enterprise.

Passion is both fire and fuel to a business. It is what sets it apart from the competition.  It is what provides a positive and forceful sense of direction.  To be passionate is to know your own purpose and use your business as a means of realizing it.  If you’re passionate, you can articulate that passion to others and inspire them to be conspirators in your purpose.

One can always tell when a company is driven by passion; it has that “something” no other competitor has.  Think of Apple, driven by the late Steve Jobs and his passion to innovate and democratize technology.  While there are plenty of other computer companies out there, it was Jobs’ passion that truly separates Apple from the rest.

Passion is equal parts Mission, Vision and Determination.  It’s the desire to want to make a difference in the world – or at least your corner of the world.

So what’s your passion?  Is it the thing that drives your business and separates it from all others in your field?  Can it be easily and clearly articulated to your staff?  And do they subscribe to it?  Is it the kind of passion that turns your customers into raving fans?  Is it contagious?

As we close out the year to begin another, take time to think about what drives and inspires you. Find the passion that’s inside and give thought to how you can more forcefully bring it into your world.  And commit to 2012 as the year your passion really began to make a difference.

Why is a brand like a baby?

If you’ve ever had a baby, you know how carefully and lovingly it has to be nurtured, protected and cared for.  The world revolves around that tiny person…as it should.

Your brand, if it’s well-founded, is exactly the same in this respect.  If you don’t make that brand the most cherished part of your business’ equity, if you don’t protect it from erosion by inconsistently applying it in marketing, and miss the opportunity to place it in the very center of all your messaging, it will be as if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Your brand is your reputation. It precedes the sales call.  It’s what makes you respected.  It’s what sets your business apart from all others.

Everything you do should point back to the brand.  If you have a Facebook page, it needs to have the brand at its core.  if you’re on Twitter, the tweets need to reflect the tone and importance of your brand message.  Your website, your ads, your recorded phone messages all need to be on-brand, or your uniqueness as a brand is diminished, if not completely dissipated.

Because most funeral home and cemetery owners don’t think like marketers, their brands, if you can call them that, wreak of sameness.  Just switch out the logo, and one could easily replace the other.  There’s no distinctive qualities or identity to build on, so the salespeople have to work all that much harder, and there’s little foundation when a hot new competitor comes to town.

As you build your marketing program, whether online, social or traditional, your brand must – MUST – come first.  It has to be unique, fresh, memorable, experiential, clear and unexpected.  Then, everything you do must be a reflection of that brand.  And then your job is to nurture, coddle, protect and grow that brand just like a newborn babe.  Do it right and it will be there to protect you later on!

Does advertising work?

If you read the various marketing blogs, many will say that Advertising as a marketing form is dead.  They argue that consumers want more control and no longer pay attention to out-bound advertising. And they sharpen this point and drive it home as if the argument is something new.  It isn’t.

One of the advantages of having gray hair is that it means I’ve been in the battle for a long time.  I’ve heard all the death-knells before.  They seem to chime in 15-year cycles, and often grow louder with each economic slump.  Then, as consumers start spending again, companies start advertising again! Funny how that happens.

I’ve had clients tell me directly, “Advertising doesn’t work; we only do it to impress our dealers.”  Then, four to six weeks later, after the ads run and as consumers tell the dealers that they’re in the stores because of the ads, the clients retreat from their positions…for at least a few months.  I’ve said before, marketing is a self-fulfilling prophesy: if you believe in it, you’ll invest for success and voila! it works.  If you don’t believe in it, you won’t do what’s necessary to support its success and you’ll be right as well.

But at the same time, Advertising – or any marketing form, for that matter – won’t work at all if you don’t have something worth saying. Simply blurting out your name along with a clever slogan isn’t going to move the needle.  You have to offer something your customers want – better services, lower prices, greater convenience, new features, etc.  Your ads have to have “news” value, where the audience is left saying “Gee, I didn’t know that!”  If all they say at the end of the commercial is “that’s funny!”, it’s going to fail.  And worse, if they don’t notice it at all because it has no break-through quality, you may as well write the media check to me personally, since the money’s not doing you any better when the ads run.

Advertising doesn’t work without having a message that works.  What can you say that will raise your customers’ eyebrows?  What might you offer that raises your value well above the competition’s?  What’s the “news” that compels a response?  What’s your point-of-view that’s unexpected and exciting?

Once you answer those questions in a way that incites surprise, interest and desire, then you have lots of advertising options and they’ll nearly all work for you.  Less than that, I’ll tell you where to send my check.

Don’t Drink the Lemonade

I was visiting a prospective client today, a company who produces a very fine grocery food product.  As we were discussing their brand and their competitive climate, I noticed in the corner a sheet pinned to the wall that said: Goal for 2011: 100,000 Facebook Friends.  Throughout the meeting, the prospect asked us about our capabilities and experience with Facebook.  Clearly he thought Facebook was the bee’s knees!

But as we talked about his brand vision and tried to understand his marketing strategy, it was evident that he really didn’t have any.  Still…Facebook loomed large in his dreams.   After all, everyone who’s anyone has a Facebook page!  So it must be important, right?  Meanwhile, my partner and I were casting glances at each other wondering how he was planning on converting “Friends” to profits.

It’s not that Facebook, Twitter and other avenues of social media can’t produce an ROI, but isn’t this a little like letting the tail wag the dog?  I mean, shouldn’t Strategy dictate tactics and not the other way around?  Because that’s what social media, direct mail, billboards, sign-twirlers, cable commercials and sky writing all are – they’re tactics and not an end unto themselves.  Even if they actually do a good job of getting attention.

The New Testament says “In the beginning was the Word.”  The Marketing Testament (I just made that up) says “In the beginning was the Idea.”  Give me an Idea – another word for Strategy.  Tell me why that Idea will get people talking about my product or service.  Tell me how that Idea will lead to people BUYING my product or service.  Show me how that Idea plays out tactically and which tactics will create the most value for the precious dollars I’ve got to spend.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve seen huge successes with social media (and billboards and sign-twirlers) for certain products. But, especially within the funeral business, if you’re thinking about social media as a major platform, ask yourself – or your marketing gurus – how will this serve the overall Strategy, and what will be your next step once a prospect clicks the “Like” button. Be a pragmatist and play out the entire process from the perspective of your audience.  Think about the path you’d like them to take that will lead most directly to a pre-need sale or an at-need call.

A healthy dose of skepticism or agnosticism with respect to all marketing tactics, from social media to more traditional forms, is required in today’s economy – not only to conserve marketing dollars but to assure bottom line profits. Having a sound, imaginative and strongly competitive Strategy will help guide the way.  Let your competitor drink the lemonade while you plan on pouring the Champagne.

Shark Tales and Ghost Stories

You’ve probably heard the old saying that sharks must continue to move in order to stay alive.  I did some research and found out that, generally speaking, it’s a fact.  In full disclosure, there are some species of sharks to which this does not apply, but it holds true for many other sharks.

The thing is, it’s more true of businesses than of sharks!  You have to keep moving forward or at minimum, you’ll eventually be eaten by your competition, or simply die from lack of momentum.  Which is to say that the two scariest words in the Latin language are: Status Quo!

Countless businesses, large and small, have come and gone because they were satisfied to leave well enough alone.  Without the fortitude and vision to keep your business moving forward, you can be a goliath one day and a ghost the next.

This recession has seen more small businesses fold their tents not because business dried up for them but because their marketing efforts came to a grinding halt when the financial $%@& hit the fan.  They stopped advertising.  They stopped being creative.  They took a hunker-down-in-the-trench mentality and allowed fate take its course.

Even our own company had to reinvent itself or we’d suffer the same fate. We evolved from being an advertising agency to becoming a full-service marketing firm, embracing all the traditional and emerging forms of marketing, from PR and promotions to special events and social media.  We re-drafted our mission statement and became an Agent of Change®  for our clients, assertively pushing forward their marketing agendas employing whatever means necessary.

For several of our clients in the funeral industry, they’ve also come to realize that now is the best time to be players.  Media rates are still super-negotiable. Their competition remains silent, giving them an open field to play in.  And the audience is actually buying, but at the same time, seeking new and interesting options with regard to pricing, customization, greener alternatives, and other funeral choices in line with their personal values.

So which direction have you chosen?  Retreat or Advance? Status quo or full-steam-ahead?  Will you be a shark…or a statistic?

 

 

The Pieta wasn’t created in a day

I have long said that the reason to be fresh and surprising in advertising is not for its own sake, but because creativity is an excellent delivery vehicle for a marketing message.  It is human nature to pay attention to something that is new or novel rather than something that is expected.  (That said, there had better be a compelling marketing message embedded in that creativity or no matter what, it won’t succeed.)

But there are several costs to creativity.  The first is that it will almost certainly get push-back from others within the organization who say “that’s not the way things are done around here.”  Let’s face it, any time someone steps out on a limb, there are plenty of others holding fast to the trunk because it’s safer.

The other, far less understood cost of creativity is TIME.  Trying to force a good idea from out of thin air is a difficult task.  The process of idea-making is still studied and debated to this very day.  But it is generally agreed upon that much of the creative process takes place in the subconscious.  In problem-solving, one first defaults to all the rational and expected solutions.  Then, after  the work of processing and playing around with many possible angles, one often has to walk away from the problem long enough for the inner mind to do its thing – maybe a few days or even weeks.  To the world, it looks like no work is being done, but in the mind of the idea-maker, the process doesn’t sleep.

Working on a new campaign for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, we were tasked with developing a completely new ad for its cemeteries, something that would reawaken an audience and let them see the cemeteries in a new light.  I struggled for a solid week on  ad ideas, a few which had promise.  Then, still before the deadline, my wife and I took a vacation to Italy.  While in Rome, visiting the Vatican, we beheld Michelangelo’s magnificent Pieta sculpture, among other treasures.

Once back in LA and returning to my project, almost without thinking, the Pieta revealed itself to me as the solution. I thought “who better understands the loss of a loved one” than the Church? It became the ad that the Cardinal himself praised and was used by the Archdiocese for years.   But it wouldn’t have happened had I only been given a week’s deadline, had  I not been able to walk away from the project long enough for the subconscious  mind to open up and allow fresh input.

Albert Einstein put it very well when he said “… if you are patient, there may come that moment when, while eating an apple, the solution presents itself politely and says, ‘Here I am!’”

The moral of the story: Don’t ask for or expect truly creative ideas to happen in a hurry.  Allow the process time to fertilize and gestate.   Respect and be willing to invest in the most necessary cost of creativity so it can pay off to everyone’s benefit.

Have Faith – and Good Fortune Will Follow

Over the years, I’ve seen advertising programs succeed and others fail.  I’ve watched marketers win significant business and some simply flush their ad dollars down the proverbial toilet.  I’ve gotten to a point where I can generally predict which way a program will go – and it often has little to do with the ad message or even the product being advertised.  It all comes down to Faith.  What am I, some kind of religious zealot?  Well, I am perhaps a marketing evangelist.  But here’s what I mean.  Marketing is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If one believes in the power of marketing, they generally are willing to invest in its success. They budget more money to develop the programs, hire better and more talented professionals to create the ads, buy the most visible media they can afford and run it longer, and most important, have patience while the ads and other marketing components begin to influence the marketplace.  They don’t knee-jerk and cut the budget the moment there’s a bit of a dip in sales because they understand that for marketing to work, it takes time.  The reverse is also true: if one doesn’t believe in the power of marketing, they’re also right!  Timidity or impatience will lead one to under-spend, not produce the best marketing possible, and quit before the miracle happens.  Either way, you get what you wanted.

I’m reminded that in the late 70′s and early 80′s, anyone with a garage and an oscilloscope had a computer company. It was the first big personal computer boom.   And “boom!” it went.  After the market was saturated, most of the early manufacturers dropped out. (Remember the Osborne computer, the first so-called portable PC?)  So who survived?  Not the companies run by the engineers – who perhaps even had better products – but by the marketers: Apple and Microsoft to name the most obvious.

If you want your funeral home to be successful in your marketplace, start by believing in the power of marketing and then do everything possible to allow for its success.  Ignore the old-school sales guys who will tell you marketing and advertising don’t work and the only answer is to bang on doors, dial for dollars and drop your prices!  Dare to work with an outside marketing or ad firm who will bring fresh ideas into the mix and take you further than you might otherwise go.  And be patient.  Coke, Starbucks, Toyota and even Apple weren’t sudden hits overnight.  But most of all, believe, have faith, and act according to that faith.  The miracle that faith in marketing creates is just around the corner.

Why Incest isn’t such a good idea for the funeral industry

Some years back, there was a magazine directed to retailers in the Consumer Electronics industry. Among its typical industry news, personality features and requisite advertising, there was a regular column of retailing techniques being used outside the CE arena – for pet stores, medical offices and stationery suppliers.  I thought then, and still think now, what a brilliant idea, looking outside one’s own house to see what others are doing!

Yet it’s all too easy to contemplate one’s own navel.

This is an issue I observe within the funeral business.  There is so much conversation about what so-and-so funeral home is doing to personalize funerals, or what such-and-such cemetery is doing within its community to observe Memorial Day.  This is what I refer to as Incestuous Thinking: ideas from within, not without.  There’s no law against this kind of incest, but perhaps the marketing police should be notified!

But you know what I don’t see going on?  How about funeral professionals looking to see what a 60-year-old law firm is doing to stay on the cutting edge of their business, or how a national restaurant chain is repositioning its brand to become “new” again, or what a vending company is doing to completely upset the brick-and-mortar DVD rental paradigm.

I had the pleasure of making a presentation on the “Tao of Branding” this January at the ICCFA Sales & Marketing Conference in Las Vegas.  I took the entire first half of my allotted time speaking about Nike, Disney, Starbucks and Apple to illustrate what effective branding means.  By comparison, I looked at what most funeral homes present as their brand image, which is to say hardly anything at all.  If more funeral homes thought about their own brands in relation to successful brands, if they measured their own marketing by what goes on outside the funeral business, they’d be much further down the road to greater visibility and consumer acceptance.

I urge any of you reading today’s blog post to abandon your incestuous ways – to innovate by opening yourself up to good ideas from outside the funeral industry. Pay attention to what ads capture your attention.  Stop and think about what brands do you engage with and support with your loyalty.

It’s one of the reasons why it was intentional when I launched my marketing agency that we would serve as many different clients in as many different industries as possible, so we would never get stale or reach into the same old bag of tricks.  Odd as it may sound, we’ll get ideas from learning about making bagels and apply them to a banking customer.  A contest we might employ for a loudspeaker manufacturer might work even better as an educational program for a local hospital.

Good ideas cross-pollinate and can surprise a disinterested audience into paying attention if you’re open to broader outside-the-box and outside-the-industry thinking.

Social Media Isn’t What You Tweet

Hi All, it’s been a while since I posted and I’ve had a number of followers ask me to get off my duff and start blogging again.  So here goes:

I’ve been thinking about social media in the funeral industry, which is getting a lot of play right now in the blogs and commentaries.  I keep looking at what outcomes a funeral provider should expect by having a Facebook page or a Twitter account and why anyone should be a follower.  (You’re in the funeral business after all – not a favorite followed topic for most civilians.)  The outcome of an effective social media strategy, I’ve come to realize, rests not with what one posts on their own page or how many times a day one tweets, but elsewhere entirely.

It’s all about what others say about you!

It’s exactly the same philosophy as PR.  PR is based on the fact that unsolicited word of mouth is the best form of marketing, and the second best is what a journalist or other third-party says about you – assuming, of course, that it’s positive.

Therefore, a good social media strategy isn’t about Facebook or Twitter at all.  It’s not about the “where” of the message, but the “what”:  What can you do, say or sell that is fresh and valuable enough that others will be compelled to talk about you.  The Holy Grail is having strong third-party endorsements.  That’s the ONLY social media outcome that really generates sales.

So what can you do that creates such an amazing customer experience they’ll want to share it with their friends?  Start listening carefully to your own friends and associates when they tell you what wonderful thing just happened to them with a product or service and make notes. Read “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and get ideas.  And then act on them.

Generating your own Facebook “friends” is absolutely nothing compared with getting your customers to tweet, blog or talk about the wonderful ways they were treated by your staff – or other exceptional things you’re doing.

That’s how social media in the funeral business works its magic.