How ESPN anchors its network

ESPN is clearly holding its own in the new battle over 24-hour sports television. They have the NFL, MLB, NBA and other important live sports properties. But they have something else. An incredibly strong brand in SportsCenter, their nightly wrap up show that has been a staple of the network almost since its inception.

Why is SportsCenter so strong?

Not because they show scores and highlights, you can get most of those on your local news sports segment. Not because of all the high-tech wizardry they use on their set. Not even because it's on one of ESPN's networks almost every hour of the day.

What makes SportsCenter so strong is its cast of anchors and the personalities each member has created for him or herself. If you watch the show regularly you know who likes which sports, their catchphrases and the idiosyncrasies that make their presentation of sports news interesting.

But one way the network helps bring those personalities to life and demonstrate how inside sports ESPN is, is the This is SportCenter campaign, of which this is just the latest excellent execution.

If Fox, NBC or CBS ever get into the conversation of 24-hour sports broadcasting, it will be because they don't just deliver sports news and but because of the strong brands of the people who deliver that news.

That's the only way to truly differentiate their networks in the long run.

Getting it right matters

It's hard to believe someone could develop a product so awful that it could kill an entire category, but GM managed to do just that back in the '70s.

Compared to gasoline engines, diesels are more efficient, more reliable, more durable, can run more easily on synthetic and biofuels, and now are very clean burning.

With all those benefits why aren't there more diesels in American cars? I offer exhibit A: The 1978 Olds Cutlass Diesel.

The 5.7 liter V8 diesel that GM cobbled together for that car in the midst of the energy crisis was so bad it killed the whole concept of diesels for generations of American car buyers.

So while more than 50% of new cars in Europe are sold with diesel engines, that number is about 4% in the U.S. and would be closer to zero were it not for the efforts of VW and BMW who have both spent millions of dollars in advertising to trumpet diesel's benefits.

This is just a reminder that when developing new products, if you do something wrong – really, really wrong – you can, in fact, ruin it for the rest of us.

Tweet this

In its new Twitter Causation Study, Nielsen Research has found that twitter activity had a statistically significant impact on the ratings of programs 29% of the time. And, according to the study there's a reciprocal relationship:

“Using time series analysis, we saw a statistically significant causal influence indicating that a spike in TV ratings can increase the volume of Tweets, and, conversely, a spike in Tweets can increase tune-in,” said Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer, Nielsen.

So when more people watch a show they tweet more about it and when more people tweet about a show more people watch it.

Thus, when someone tweets, "Dude, are you watching #Sharknado?!!" a few more people tune in and when more people tune in, more people tweet about the awesome awfulness that is Sharknado.

This is good news for TV networks and for marketers because it's hard evidence that Twitter works as a word of mouth platform to a degree.

The challenge is nobody talks or tweets about ordinary things. You have to be remarkable to get the conversation started. In Sharknado's case, the show was remarkably bad, in a fascinating "I can't turn away even if I wanted to" kind of way.

So to set the twitterverse afire you need a killer product, a surprising and relevant marketing event, or a great story worth sharing.

Because while people are tweeting about a tornado that transports sharks, the unreal acts of real housewives, and backstabbing top chef/designer/model competitions, nobody's tweeting about a documentary of vanilla ice cream.

Time waits for no brand

Just because your brand is relevant today, doesn't guarantee it will matter to people tomorrow.

Technologies change. Tastes change. Your competitors change. If you don't adapt your brand to keep up with the changes, it will die.

Indy racing thrived as a series where manufacturers proved the durability of their products by pushing them hard for 500 miles. But now that even the cheapest cars are expected to run for 100,000 miles with barely a tune up, the series has little relevance to everyday drivers and the stands are empty.

Flip phones were all the rage when portability and style were the relevant benefits in mobile technology. But with the introduction of mobile email, web browsing, video and other location based services, smart phones have taken over, and today a flip phone is about as relevant as a land line.

Light lagers from a handful of brewers dominated the market until beer drinkers discovered that beer actually could have flavor and their long steady decline began.

People may love you today, but don't get too comfortable. Someone or something will come along soon and that easy chair you're sitting in will become a hot seat.

Why Facebook mobile is stuck in neutral

Facebook may rule on the desktop, but they still haven't figured out mobile.

The apps for Android phones and tablets are terrible. I know this from personal experience. According to reviewers, the new Facebook Home app works great unless you want to use your phone for its primary intended purpose, a phone. And now comes the news that AT&T will be dropping the HTC/Facebook phone from its lineup because they've sold only 15,000 of them in the past month. For context AT&T sells 300,000 Android phones every month.

How do they keep getting something so important, so wrong?

Let's start with this premise by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"You're going to be able to turn your Android phone into a great social device. Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around."

It's all about context and control.

All the features and functions that work on the desktop where I can focus almost exclusively on Facebook become overwhelming in a mobile environment where I may have only a few seconds to check my wall on phone. In order to make order out of the chaos and randomness that is my timeline, Facebook should give me more control and make it easier to for me select the features I prefer in a mobile environment.

They're so busy worrying about "people" they're not thinking about the individual users and how we might want to customize the experience to get the information and content we're looking quickly and easily.

The minute they cede control to the users is the moment they'll begin to succeed in mobile.

Yesterday's news

The next couple of days are jam packed here at OBX Thinking's global command center, so rather than letting the blog lay idle for a couple of days I'll be reposting content from a few years ago. Today, we revisit the evolution of obsolescence.

In the 1950s designer Brooks Stevens coined the term "Planned Obsolescence" to describe the fundamental underpinning of our burgeoning consumer economy. Companies were deliberately designing their products in such a way that within a few years – thanks to ephemeral style, technology or performance – people would be forced to buy new stuff on a regular basis.

My, how things have changed.

We've gone from a time when companies felt they had to design obsolescence into their products in order to guarantee future sales, to one where global competition is so intense that people are afraid to buy the latest computer, cell phone, car or fashion item for fear that it will be out of date by the time they get it home.



We're living in the era of "Forced Obsolescence." No one has the luxury of allowing products to become obsolete on their own timetable. The competition will do that for you.

If this had been the '50s, Apple would have launched the iPad and milked that platform for a few years before making significant investments in changing it. Instead they knew that competitors would quickly enter the marketplace and the iPad 2 was launched with more features, more functionality and an improved design for the same price less than a year later.

Apple knows, and hopefully your company does too, that today you have to eat your own young before the competition does it for you.

Just a bit off the mark

Here's a tough one.

You make a product that's hot. So hot that you can't keep up with demand given current capacity. You have a choice, alter the product in an almost imperceptible way so you can stretch your supply or leave sales on the table. Maker's Mark choose the former and the outcry was as loud as it was predictable.

After sales increases of 14% in 2011 and 15% in 2012, last week it was announced the Beam Inc. super premium bourbon brand would lower the alcohol content of its product from 90 to 84 proof in order to have enough to meet the burgeoning demand. While they claim there was no discernable difference in taste, regular Maker's drinkers saw it as an attempt to "water down" the product. They shared their displeasure with the decision through Twitter, Facebook and email and within days Bill Samuels Jr., the Chairman Emeritus of Maker's Mark reversed the decision.

So why didn't Maker's do what other companies do when demand exceeds supply and just raise the price? Beam uses the popularity of Maker's as leverage to get distributors and retailers to carry its other brands like Basil Hayden's, Booker's, Bakers, Knob Creek, Laphroaig, Connemara, Ardmore, Effen, Sauza and more.

In essence they're saying, "You can't have our most desirable product, unless you carry a full line of our other products."

It's a good strategy until you kill the lead dog and the rest of the pack has no one to follow.

So what could Beam have done? It takes six years to make a batch of Makers at its current strength so they can't distill more and have it on the shelf tomorrow. In this era of social media and transparency making the change unannounced would have been a flat-out disaster.

In this case the best course would be to take the long view and build the business through a combination of activities. First, increase production capacity so in six years Maker's can meet the global demand. Second, select other bourbon or spirit brands from the portfolio and invest in them, creating additional leverage points with distributors. Given the fickle nature of trends in this business, that strategy also has the added benefit of providing options if and when consumer tastes change. While there's no guarantee of creating a blockbuster like Maker's out of the other brands, at least they wouldn't be devaluing any of them.

Ultimately the lesson here is: more sales aren't always good sales.

Are they nuts?

According to Ad Age, Psy will be cracking Wonderful Pistachios gangnam style at some point during the Super Bowl.

Here's my question. Does the celebrity campaign actually build the Wonderful brand or just sell pistachios?



On the surface it doesn't seem any different from Planter's branding peanuts, but it is different for a couple of reasons.

The product is not any different than I can purchase in bulk in the produce section of my supermarket. The packaging isn't incredibly convenient nor does the brand make any other promise to differentiate their nuts from those I currently enjoy. Are they fresher? Tastier? More sustainably raised? Anything?

The other challenge is the brand name itself and the way it's used. "Wonderful pistachios" is exactly how I feel about the nuts I buy in bulk. To be honest, when I first saw these spots I thought they were for a grower's association, not a consumer package goods company. It wasn't until I looked more closely at the package and saw the heart in the logotype that I realized these pistachios were from the same company as Pom Wonderful.

They're going to shell out (badumbump) $3.5 million dollars for thirty seconds of airtime on the Super Bowl, pay Psy a healthy fee, and spend a few bucks on production. Personally, I'd try to do something with my product to give people more of a reason to choose it over the bulk alternative before I spent that kind of money.

As the lead brand in the category, doing things to grow the category makes sense. If they had a product that actually differentiated itself, however, that media spend would be a lot more effective.

Using green to make more green

When it comes to convincing people to live a greener life, the equation is pretty simple:

You're trying to overcome inertia, history, habit, the way things have always been done. It won't be easy.

People will rarely do anything just because "it's the right thing." If they did, every urban commuter would ride a bicycle and we know that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Recycling programs work when they're easy and free. The minute you make them confusing or add a fee, participation goes down.

That's why I think this move by Starbucks is pretty smart. They're hoping to cut down on the number of paper cups their customers put into landfills by selling reusable plastic mugs for $1.

They're also reducing their operating costs by having to give away fewer paper cups and passing it off as an environmental initiative, which is good marketing.

It should work. It's easy, cheap and gives people a way to feel like they're making a difference everyday without having them make a huge change in their behavior.

The challenge for people will be to remember to bring their cups with them. That's the convenience factor. If Starbucks wants to incentivize people who buy the cups, they can either knock a few pennies off the cost of a refill – as grocery stores do for those who bring their own bags – or add a 5¢ to go fee for those who still want paper.

If you're trying to sell a more environmentally-friendly product experience, think about what's in it for your customers beyond just a "better world." Otherwise, neither your balance sheet nor our world will be any greener.

Gone in an Instagram

There's a new verb in my vocabulary today:

Instagrammed

It's what happens to companies who cavalierly alter their terms of service without properly consulting and communicating with their user base.

When Instagram slipped the following clause into their Terms of Service the other day, the firestorm was as swift as it was inevitable.

A business or other entity may pay Instagram to display users' photos and other details in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

Yeah, that was going to go over well. Allowing advertisers use photographs without the consent of or compensation for the owner of the image. It went over so well in fact that yesterday tens of thousands of Instagram users backed up their images on other services and closed their accounts.

I understand their desire to make money, and as revenue models go this isn't a bad one. But Instagram forgot one simple step: ask for permission.

Rather than just set up a blanket policy to profit from user photographs, they could have created and marketed a program that Instagram members could opt into. Then when advertisers found images they wanted to use, Instagram could share a percentage of the revenue with the user. This would have created both monetary and emotional benefits for the users who would take pride in seeing their images in an ad somewhere.

Would they have made as much money? No. But then again, they wouldn't have had to issue this apology.

What this demonstrates yet once more is how fragile a brand is and how those brands that take their customers for granted can be gone in an instant.

The next time you're thinking of making a change to your product or service, think about your customers, or yours might be the next great brand to get instagrammed.

Innovation is risky enough

Here's a tip for food marketers and product developers.

If you have to issue the following statement when introducing a new product, you may want to rethink things.

We have carefully reviewed FDA requirements and believe our product is in compliance with current regulations for food ingredients.

With all the recent news surrounding high-caffeine energy drinks this may not be the best time for Frito-Lay to launch Cracker Jack'd, a line of "energy snacks" targeted at young adults.

Yes, the FDA may say they're safe. They may be exactly what consumer's are asking for. But if just one over-caffeinated kid collapses after eating a bag of Cocoa Java Power Bites, it could put the whole company in jeopardy.

Remember: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

America's game?

Football is doing to baseball, what Ndamukong Suh does to opposing guards.

On Monday night, when the NFL was on cable (ESPN) with a terrible, essentially meaningless regular season game – the New Orleans Saints against a Peyton Manning-less Indianapolis Colts – more people watched  the NFL's 62–7 blowout than a World Series 4–0 nail biter.

I'm not saying that baseball is dead, but if a World Series that's tied at 2-2 with all-star names like Pujols, Hamilton, and La Russa can't outdraw a mid-season matchup in the NFL, America's pastime is clearly past its prime.

I get it. We don't have the biggest teams with the biggest stars so the ratings are bound to be lower than a Yankees/Cubs series, but that's exactly the point.

Nobody tuned in to MNF to watch Curtis Paynter. They tuned in to watch the game. So obviously, it doesn't matter who's playing. Even if it had been the Browns and the Seahawks, Monday Night Football would have out-drawn the baseball game.

This is baseball's biggest event. A week long festival that's supposed to be an exclamation point on the end of a grueling 162 game trek where a champion is crowned and a loser sent home saying, "There's always next year."

Can baseball ever compete with football without a series of hall-of-famers on the field? Probably not. But if TV ratings are important to MLB (and they are) at some point their going to have to objectively look at the product as it's presented and make some changes.

Until then, their long slow slide into sports niche-dom will only continue.