HISPANIC MKTG TIP: Family matters

According to Carl Kravetz, Chairman of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, marketers may habla espanol, but they don't get Hispanic consumers. In a speech on November 13, he discussed the findings of a market study, "What Makes a Latino, Latino?"

One contention in the report is extremely consistent with our research at CM Solutions:

Mr. Kravetz says, "Interpersonal orientation is the way we live our relationships with other people, and is ... radically different from non-Latinos," he said. For instance, individualism is important to Anglos, whereas Latinos have a collectivist culture that favors cooperation, and values family needs over those of the individual.

In every Hispanic Insights study we have conducted, one of the most frequent comments from Hispanic shoppers has been, "I buy it because my family likes it." Of course non-Hispanics say this as well, but far more often the comment is, "because I like it."

Mr. Kravetz's conclusion is that this means marketers should focus on understanding the Latino family as a unit, including group decision making. I absolutely agree! The trick is understanding how to do this. With our experience in talking directly to thousands of Hispanic consumers we can help you discover your key influencers. Give me a call and I'll be happy to discuss how we can help your brand connect with all of your consumers, including Latinos.

AdAge report on Mr. Kravetz speech
Transcript of another Kravetz speech on the same subject

Looks like AdAge agrees with me

A brief article by Marc Graser of AdAge draws much the same conclusion as I did with respect to the Nielsen study on product placement.

Nielsen says product placement boosts brand recognition 20% (Maybe)

Nielsen Media Research has proudly released a new study that claims that having a product placement in tandem with a traditional ad on TV boosts brand recognition by 20%.

My response: So what.

The study found that brand recognition increased from 47% to 58% when a commercial was accompanied by a product placement in the same show. Duh! They saw it twice and, as a result, a slightly larger proportion remembered it. The bigger question in my mind is did that additional investment produce an increase in purchase intent? Unfortunately, the answer to this was NO. If you dig deeper in the research, here's what they found:

"The addition of a product placement to a commercial spot for the same brand does not appear to have an edge over a standalone commercial in terms of motivating viewers to purchase that brand. Whether the brand was presented as a product placement, commercial or both, a little more than one third of all viewers expressed high interest in the brands they were able to recognize."

There might be some silver lining in the finding that, "Product placements appear to be at least as effective as a commercial spot in improving viewers' general attitude toward a brand. Nearly 60% of all viewers felt more positive about the brands they were able to recognize in a placement." But, note that this only applies to brands consumers' recognized (i.e. were already familiar with).

Most notabley, the study said, " Substantial variations in brand awareness, attitude and purchase interest were found to be impacted by the level of familiarity a viewer had with the brand, the genre of the program, a viewer's loyalty to that program, the exact nature of the placement, etc." In other words, if I already knew your brand, liked your brand, planned on buying your brand, and you put it in a positive context in a show I like, I liked the placement. Again, DUH!

Look, I am not against product placements. It’s just that this story is another example of a headline leading marketers down the wrong path. If you don’t understand the implications of the entire study, you’re likely to start over-investing in placements when they may not contribute to your ultimate objectives (which you should be clear on before starting any marketing effort, by the way). Placements can be very powerful, like Wonder bread in Will Ferrell’s film Talladega Nights (which they didn’t pay for). But, it is not just about putting the product in front of consumers again. The key is to associate the brand with a likeable character or emotion.

My opinion: put your quality product in the hand of my favorite character, in my favorite show, and show her enjoying its benefits, and you MIGHT change my perception of your brand. Otherwise, save your money and stick with the commercial.

[I wonder what Budweiser would pay to displace Duff in Homer Simpson's fridge? Ohhhhhh...BEEEER.]

Does your brand have a champion's smile?

I never thought I’d say this, but I got hooked on the reality show “Dancing with the Stars”. I came home from a date with my wife one night and our babysitter was watching it, and I was captivated by the skills that amateurs had developed. I didn’t watch the series religiously, but I did see enough to know who the really talented people were.

To my surprise, Emmitt Smith of football fame was crowned this season’s champion. Was he the best? Not even close. I’m no dancer, but it was very clear to me that his competitor, Mario Lopez, executed much more difficult moves with infinitely more finesse.

The moral of the story: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF CHARISMA. There is no doubt that Emmitt Smith had the most infectious smile and engaging personality on the show. You couldn’t help but want to see him succeed. He performed extremely well, but was not the best. He did however, have the most appealing product.

So what does this have to do with marketing? EVERYTHING. Having the best product is not a sure path to victory. As in dancing, it’s just as much about charisma. Does your brand have a winning image? Does your marketing make your brand likeable? Is your packaging captivating, like Emmitt’s perfect smile?

Even if your success has been driven by a performance edge, don’t underestimate the power of creating an appealing LOOKING product. The best example of this is in the PC graphics-card business. Ten years ago, these powerful video processing cards were unadorned chucks of silicon and metal shipped in plain brown cardboard. After all, they were being sold to hard-core gamers who were presumably focused on performance; and they were going inside a computer anyway. Much to the surprise of the industry, when they started putting exciting images and colors on the card and using professionally designed packaging, sales skyrocketed. Why? Image, not performance! Now, half of the battle in selling these cards is figuring out whether to cover the package with scantily clad nymphs or blood-oozing demons. [Gamers seem to like naked things or killing things.]

So take an honest look at your brands and positioning. Is their success relying exclusively on performance or do they have that winning smile to become champions.

DOUBLE your DESKTOP and DOUBLE PRODUCTIVITY

My clients constantly ask how I can get so much done so fast. I have one major secret I’m ready to share. I give myself lots of room in which to work; on my computer desktop that is. Did you know that you can DOUBLE the size of your computer desktop and in many cases for FREE?!? Learn how and see my nutty desktop that has nearly 20 million pixels and more than 60” of glorious viewing pleasure.

The secret is Windows XP’s native ability to support multiple monitors and create a “virtual desktop” across them. All you have to do is add another monitor and enable the feature in Windows. “Why would I want to do that,” you say? Just imagine being able to see all of the columns in a spreadsheet at once; or being able to look at your calendar while you read an email requesting a meeting. You can even create a chart in Excel and simply drag it to PowerPoint to drop it in your presentation. And, if you have a laptop, you can probably do it for FREE, just by connecting any external monitor.

Here’s the extreme to which I have taken this:

As shown here, I can SIMULTANEOUSLY review a chart in PowerPoint, analyze a spreadsheet and graph in Excel, write you a note in email about what I’ve found, AND check dates on my calendar for us to get together. IT’S AWESOME!! I have two 20” LCDs and a 24” widescreen LCD all connected to the same PC. This means I can view more than 79 columns and 63 rows in Excel at once. I can literally see monthly sales back from today to May of 2000 without scrolling! This may seem like overkill, but in total these screens cost less than $2000 and I am able to do the same work in half the time. That’s a good ROI if you ask me. It’s probably the only reason I get to see my kids.

Shouldn’t you consider investing in this productivity boost for your key people…like ANALYSTS!! It’s amazing to me how many companies give the worst hardware to their most technically astute users that require the most power. These poor folks are asked to review massive amounts of data from multiple systems and then aggregate it into a succinct story. Imagine how much more productive they would be if they could look at two reports at once. My experience has shown that most analysts will increase their productivity by 30-50% with the simple addition of a second 17” LCD monitor which costs less than $200. Even if they only increase productivity 10%, that’s a 2400% return! That’s why I buy the required hardware to allow all of my employees to do this. IT PAYS FOR ITSELF! And they’re happier. It’s a no-brainier.

So here’s how to do it:
If you have a laptop, simply plug in any ol’ monitor into the external VGA port on your machine (you know, the one you plug a projector into). Then, go to your desktop, right click, and select “properties”. This will bring up this window.

Click on the picture of the second monitor and select the little box that says, “Extend my Windows desktop on this monitor.” Click the series of “OKs” and that’s it. Now you have one larger virtual-screen that spans your laptop’s screen and the monitor you attached. [One caveat: You may have to reboot to get the monitor to be recognized. Also some systems have a Fn + some other key you need to press to activate both monitors. At first, they’ll redundantly display the same image, so just follow the instructions above.]

For those whose laptop does not support this, or those with a desktop, you can check out the external video cards from Matrox. With these you can add up to three more monitors, QUADRUPLING your workspace without even cracking the case on your desktop, all for about $200. It’s very worth it and would make a great Christmas gift for any geek you know. Here are some of the latest prices on froogle.

My recommendation for anyone trying to maximize their workspace and budget is to create a similar configuration with four identical 17” LCDs (which are cheap). That would give you lots of space for little cash. And for the retailers in the audience, let’s admit it, you’re all cheap. Get over it and buy that poor analyst a $200 17” LCD (and kick in $100 for a new video card). They’ll feel valued and appreciated, and you’ll be thrilled with the return.

Finally, for my fellow geeks in the audience, I have two NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT cards, each with two digital video ports running in a SLI configuration (with SLI disabled). So, I could add a fourth LCD, which I did for a while, but it took up too much space. If you count my laptop, which is also on my desk, I currently have 19,218,432 pixels, or more than 24 times the typical 1024 X 768 desktop. COOOOOOL!

Will It Blend? - Rake Handle

My personal favorite in the "Will it Blend?" series.

Will It Blend? - Golf Balls

Another classic in the series. This is the only way to slice worse than me.

Will It Blend? - Coke Can Smoothie

From golf balls to rakes this blender can transmute
anything into a frothy pulp. But, best of all, the
campy music and deadpan announcer create a
viral-marketing juggernaut that has already
demonstrated their product's key differentiator to
more than 2 million people (in one week)!

Check out the others too:
Golf balls
Rake handle

FREE TUNES! You've gotta try Pandora.

Endless hours in cubicles staring at a flickering screen; the curse of the modern workplace. But wait! There is salvation! Drown out the incessant chattering of your peers by creating your own custom Internet radio station, for FREE.

If you like music, you MUST try www.pandora.com. This amazing FREE
service let's you type in the name of your favorite artist and using the characteristics of that style, it will create a custom Internet radio station for you, commercial free. And you can access your stations from any computer with an Internet connection. So whether you have a real job trapped in a cubicle all day or, like me, are always on the run, you will have something great to listen to.


And, if you missed it last month, you have to check out this hilarious Psychiatrist answering machine message. (mp3 file).

SALES: Are you a sales quitter?

In my experience, most salespeople (including myself) give up after the first couple of attempts to close a deal. Unfortunately, a survey of Sales Executives indicated that less than 5% of sales were made in the first two calls. So how many calls does it take to close the deal? Probably more than you think. In research conducted in Los Angeles, over 81% of sales required 5 or more calls. In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated that the single biggest differentiator between "good" and "great" salespeople is persistence. So why do we give up? It’s rarely because of anything the customer said, but rather what we’ve said to ourselves.

[Source: Sales & Marketing Executives Club of Los Angeles and The Dartnell Corp]

I constantly hear Salespeople say, “Well if she hasn’t returned my call after the second time, I figure she must not want to talk to me and I don’t want to bother her. That could hurt our relationship.” I just want to scream, “ARE YOU CRAZY!?! What relationship? If you don’t have the sale, you don’t have a relationship!” This is a perfect example of poor self-talk, or as Dr. Martin E. Seligman calls it in his bestselling book, Learned Optimism, poor “explanatory style”.

In decades of psychological testing, Dr. Seligman discovered that how we explain events to ourselves dramatically impacts how we understand our situation and how we subsequently behave. If we explain to ourselves that the buyer didn’t return our calls because, “She doesn’t want to talk to us,” it is highly unlikely that we’ll ever make another call. And, if we don’t, we certainly won’t get the sale. Admit it, we’ve all done this.

The path to sales excellence is simple; change your explanatory style. When faced with a barrier, identify the other possible causes.

“Perhaps the buyer is on vacation.”
“Maybe she’s just really busy and hasn’t been able to get through the 125 voicemails she probably gets every day.”
“It’s certainly possible that she deleted my message by accident.”
“Maybe she wants to talk to me, but is waiting for my next call.”

My rule of thumb is to come up with 10 alternative explanations. I find that by the time I do, I’m motivated to make that next call. And the best part is that there is no risk. If my initially pessimistic explanation was right, at least I know and you can’t lose a sale you never had. But, more importantly, if one of my alternative explanations is right, I’m actually helping us both and demonstrating my commitment to the customer (whether I get the sale or not).

So get back out there! Nuke those bad assumptions! Make that 5th, 6th, or 20th call and make the sale for your and your customers’ sake.

Free Tech: Copernic Desktop Search 2.0

If you’re tired of spending hours spelunking around your hard drive for files, you should try Copernic Desktop Search 2.0. This clever and FREE tool not only allows you to search by keyword and file-type, but it even can look inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, and e-mail messages for exact words. The program indexes the files on your PC and updates itself only when the system is idle, making searches super fast. So, if all you can remember is, “Bart, research, Gatorade, Hispanic” you can still instantly find that awesome report you lost track of with Copernic.

http://www.copernic.com/

FREE CALLS! With your regular phone! Really!

A new internet based service called jajah (www.jajah.com) allows you to make FREE local and international calls with your regular phone or cell phone. All you have to do is enter your phone number and your friends and click "CALL". If you're both registered, jajah calls you both and connects you for FREE. The trick: when you enter your numbers jajah calls you both using local access, but they route the long distance portion of the call over the internet. Why didn't I think of that?!?

Calls to some countries may have fees, but unless you call Tanzania on your cell phone to your buddy Magagube on his cell, then the prices are still incredibly low. The press have been giving them rave reviews. Here's a review from PC World:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,126455/article.html?tk=nl_sbxcol:

So, if your Mother has been telling you, "You don't call enough!" you've just lost one of your excuses becuase now it's free. And you can't even complain about hardware, software, or setup. There isn't any. Check it out!

www.jajah.com

As always, CM Solutions is not associated with this company in any way and takes no responsibility for how they perform!