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Author of the Purple Cow, Entrepreneur, and Agent of Change - Steal This Brand
The Marketing Manifesto
Friday July 18, 2008
Yodeling for Yahoo
You know you’ve heard it. That distinctive yodel that search engine giant Yahoo used to tack onto its commercials.
That yodel, performed by Wylie Gustafson, was the subject of a lawsuit several years ago when the company paid Montana native Gustafson just $590 to create and sing the yodel-jingle that has since become synonymous with the brand. The yodeler later sued Yahoo when he heard his yodel being played on national broadcasts, even though he understood his fee covered only regional advertising. Check out USA Today’s 2002 story on the suit settlement that netted Gustafson some extra cash for his contribution to Yahoo’s brand.
This weekend I had the opportunity to hear that distinctive yodel 400 times (well, that’s what it felt like now that it’s been stuck in my head with irritating permanence since Saturday). Gustafson and his band, Wylie and the Wild West, performed at the 70th National Folk Festival held in Butte this weekend. Listening to the broadcast on NPR, I heard Gustafson take the opportunity to yodel his Yahoo call numerous times and tell the story of how the campaign launched yodeling into the national spotlight.
He spoke of Yahoo fondly (apparently the lawsuit was resolved well enough for him). But it made me wonder who ends up benefiting the most when a little-known musician makes it big (relatively anyway) for himself but also delivers to a company a hugely memorable, unique jingle of sorts. Gustafson gets the chance to market himself as the “world-famous Yahoo yodeler” as he does on the band’s Web site and Yahoo gets a catchy audio tagline. And Gustafson’s audiences get a reminder that there are search engine options other than Google every time he calls the company’s name – and Yahoo probably isn’t paying him for those kinds of advertisements.
So the real question is, can anybody put the O’Berry Cavanaugh name into a yodel?
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Thursday July 17, 2008
Bozeman just doesn’t have what it takes
Inc.com — you know, the people behind Inc. magazine — has unveiled its annual Best Cities for Business list. And the Montana cities of choice are… drumroll please…Billings and Missoula.
Huh?
Billings is ranked 31 out of 335 among the best overall cities. (Small? Huh? Yeah, those ranker people must not Montanans). That slot moves the city up from its last year’s position at 44. Missoula is 166, dropping from its 2007 rank of 76. You can check out all the full lists and search them by looking at the article package.
So you might be asking, “Why not Bozeman?” The answer is that Bozeman apparently just doesn’t measure up to its neighbors when it comes to data such as a region’s growth rates, total nonfarm employment, government, education, etc. Check out the details and decide for yourself if our town would have won had Inc. factored in other measures.
We’re making a case for Bozeman to be on that list based on our own criteria:
• Access to fantastic creative capital
• More entrepreneurs than you can fit in your contact database
• Proximity to a great university (we gotta root for Montana State University (www.montana.edu) whenever we can!)
• Great professional organizations (like Bozeman’s Prospera Business Network (http://www.prosperabusinessnetwork.com/))
• A community that’s small enough to be cozy and friendly but big enough to generate innovative ideas and business concepts you won’t find anywhere else
Maybe next year we’ll just have to sponsor our own Best list.
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Wednesday July 16, 2008
Hey, BzzAgent, you owe us 50¢
Ask marketing or advertising gurus, and they’ll tell you that word of mouth often is the one of the best, most solid strategies – and also one of the most elusive. How do you generate and sustain buzz? And just as importantly, how do you put a price on word of mouth advertising?
Enter BzzAgent, the company that for years has been emerging as a pioneer and leader in word-of-mouth marketing. The company’s process is fairly brilliant but very difficult to explain succinctly, so check out BzzAgent’s explanation yourself if you’re interested.
Brandweek magazine recently covered BzzAgent’s attempt to assign a cost to each word-of-mouth style conversation that mentions a given product. The verdict? About 50¢ per conversation, BzzAgent President Dave Balter tells Brandweek.
Here’s the lowdown Brandweek writer Todd Wasserman gives on what that means for those in the marketing and advertising fields: “The word-of-mouth marketing industry is lurching towards some sort of standardized ROI metric, but none has emerged yet. Those in the industry say the lack of such a figure isn’t hurting business per se, but nevertheless, finding one has moved to the top of the agenda for the burgeoning discipline.”
That lurching search likely could take a while, so in the meantime, we’ve got 50¢ for anyone who works O|C into his or her next conversation.
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Monday July 14, 2008
Exactly what color are “Frilly Knickers”?
The O|C team is officially smitten with a new brand – butter LONDON (and yes, that no-caps/all-caps action is part of their brand). The nail polish company is a standout in the crowded beauty market for several reasons beyond just great colors like “Frilly Knickers” or “Diamond Geezer” inspired by British slang and its use of non-toxic formulas. Granted they’re based in Seattle, but still a smashing concept.
We’ve been thinking about the beauty marketing, branding and advertising arena a lot lately for one of our clients, Clarisonic®, the sonic-powered cleansing system from the creators of the Sonicare® toothbrush. After analyzing so many beauty industry advertisements and products that resemble each other, we love that butter LONDON’s use of vintage-style illustrations and rich colors is markedly different from much else in the field.
We also applaud the company for its unique business strategy. It focuses primarily on putting its luxe stores into airports – can we say captive audience? With many travelers having long layovers, shopping or a manicure is a perfect way to kill time. And nail polishes are small enough purchases that they can be tucked into already-stuffed carry-on luggage. Airport Revenue News this year gave the company the Best New Specialty Retail Concept award.
And props to butter LONDON for clever public relations/marketing/advertising efforts such as the “Turn in Your Toxins” campaign that invited consumers to bring in three of their used any-brand polishes and receive in return an online coupon for butter London lacquer. The catch? Consumers filled out a customer profile sheet, giving the company a great opportunity to capture demographic data.
We could go on, but you get the picture. We’re smitten.
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Saturday July 12, 2008
Apple’s iOops
Apple unveiled its newest version of the iPhone Friday to mass media attention and long lines of gadget geeks across the globe. But what should have been a bright day in Apple’s public relations and brand portfolio had a few clouds in the form of phone activation trouble.
The company had told customers that phones purchased Friday would be activated in stores at the time of purchase, but that didn’t quite work out. Oops. USA Today reports that a “spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple’s iTunes software that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned.”
So iPhone buyers, probably going berserk like a kid on Christmas morning who gets a coveted new toy only to find out Mom and Dad forgot the batteries, had to finish the last activation step at home.
Such a snafu easily could be counted as a brand and marketing misstep – a brand known for its reliability coming up short at a moment when all eyes are on it. But papers around the country, like the Seattle Times talked with buyers who were miffed by the failed activation, but no one quoted in papers sounded devastated and none renounced the Apple brand. Apparently in the eyes of true Apple devotees and gadget freaks, the iPhone is a gadget cool enough to make up even for a brand misstep.