New York Times – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

A Sales Lesson From Mitt Romney

The #1 competitor you face today isn’t another company. It’s the customer’s decision to do nothing, to make no change at all…The value they perceive that you offer isn’t big enough to offset what they think it will cost to implement something new.”

— Kevin Davis, President of TopLine Leadership and author of “Slow Down, Sell Faster”.

Unemployment is still over 8%. The incumbent’s approval rating has spent most of the year below 50%. The youth vote that was so excited about Barack Obama’s candidacy four years ago appears to be sitting this one out.

As the presidential election season got underway, many believed that Obama was vulnerable. All Mitt Romney had to do, the smart money said, was present himself as the alternative to Obama, and the election would be his.

And yet, with five weeks to go, Obama has opened a significant lead in the polls. Even the most conservative commentators believe that the Romney campaign is in trouble.

“Barack Obama would win if the election were held today, and probably by a relatively comfortable margin,“, said Ross Douthat in the New York Times.

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan suggested that Republican stars such as Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, and Susana Martinez should be out on the stump with Romney every day showing support and whipping up enthusiasm. But, she said, “Some of them won’t want to do it because they’re starting to think Romney’s a loser and they don’t want to get loser on them.”

If the polls are not a just a product of the liberal media conspiracy – if Mitt Romney has, in fact, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory — how did it happen?

The short version, from a marketing perspective: while many of Romney’s prospects (voters) may not be completely satisfied with their current vendor, he has not convinced enough of them them that switching to him is the right move.

Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Romney must define more clearly what he would do as president. In spelling out his five-point plan for the middle class, he’ll have to deepen awareness of how each element would help families in concrete, practical ways, and offer optimism for renewed prosperity.”

Douthat, again: “Every presidential campaign is actually a referendum on the challenger as well as on the incumbent, and … it’s entirely possible for voters to ultimately reject a challenger even when they think the incumbent might deserve to be defeated.”

A couple of disclaimers before I continue:

1. A lot can change in five weeks. This is a snapshot of the way it looks on October 2, 2012.

2. I have opinions on politics, but I am not going to express them here. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m voting for whoever you’re voting for.

There is a powerful marketing lesson in what’s going on with the Romney campaign, and it applies to anyone trying to advertise a product or service.

From a presidential-election perspective, it’s not enough for voters to be dissatisfied with the current administration. If the polling data is accurate, Romney has not (at least so far) convinced enough of them that the value he offers is big enough to offset what they think it will cost to change administrations.

How does this relate to a private-sector advertiser?

Here’s an example: an information technology company in the Midwest. Like any company (and like Mitt Romney), they are in the problem-solving business. You can watch one of their commercials here.

The commercial attempts to entertain while listing the problems they are in business to solve: email spam, balky internet connections, and computer viruses. The goal of the campaign was to convince companies experiencing these problems to contact the advertiser for a meeting.

To succeed as a marketing strategy, the campaign must convince the prospects that the value of hiring them outweighs the costs of implementing something new. Unfortunately, the campaign does nothing to establish the value of hiring this company.

Whatever business you are in, you exist to solve problems. When you contact them with a marketing message, your prospects have three possible responses:

Buy your solution.

Buy a competing company’s solution.
Do nothing and live with things as they are.

To succeed, as Mitt Romeny is learning, it’s not enough to convince them that they have a problem. You have to convince them that you are the right solution.

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Writer of the Life Cereal “Hey Mikey!” Ad is Gone

If you grew up in the 70’s and watched any TV at all, there is probably a space reserved in your head for the “Let’s Get Mikey!” ad. If you, like me, never thought about the fact that someone wrote the thing, take 30 seconds to salute Edie Stevenson, who died recently at the age of 81.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEXzx-TINc]

My favorite part of the obituary is this line:

In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her longtime partner, Gordon H. Price; two sisters, Daphne Stevenson Penttinen and Adelita Stevenson Moore; three sons, Steven, David and Donald Mann; and five grandchildren.

She also leaves a cat, Mikey.

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Position it Right, and People Will Buy Anything

Does your coffee taste like… dung? There may be a reason. From New York Times comes this news:

Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.

A few thoughts come to mind:

I would love to meet the person who first saw what looked like coffee beans in a pile of animal dung and decided to use them to make a drink. Just to ask, “What were you thinking?”
No, I mean really. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
There’s no way a woman would have done it first. It had to be a guy. Most likely in his late teens or early twenties. Of this I am certain.
On second thought, that’s not the guy I want to meet. The guy I want to meet is the person who decided that this is a product he could sell. Just to ask, “How did you arrive at a price?”

And for those in my readership, a question: Have you ever tried this stuff? If, say, Starbucks carried it, would you order a grande?

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Marketing to Boomers as They Age

Very interesting article in the New York Times on how marketers are dealing with the aging of the Baby Boomer generation. The generation still has huge purchasing power, but the messages they respond to are different from those that succeeded with the previous generation of seniors.

According to the Times, this is in part because “they don’t want to believe they fall into any niche at all.”

That leaves marketers grouping older consumers into categories that give the illusion of individuality, they hope, while still encompassing millions of people.

For example, Age Wave, a consulting firm, has settled on four essential categories for post-retirement consumers. There are “Ageless Explorers,” or rich retirees who respond to images of silver-haired scuba divers reinventing themselves in their waning years. The “Comfortably Contents” are also wealthy, but more attracted to scenes of fishermen, friendly dogs and rocking chairs. They want to spend their final years free from the responsibilities of work, social obligations and worrying about anyone else. The “Live for Todays” wish they could relax, but didn’t save much, so their financial anxieties make them easy targets for Costa Rican retirement communities and thrifty insurance plans. And then there are the “Sick and Tireds,” basically ready to die, who are attracted to anything that makes the waiting less painful, particularly if it costs less than $19.95.

Charles Duhigg, who wrote the article, details some of the advantages and pitfalls of the approach. You can read the full article here.

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Wrigley Field Ivy, Brought to You By Under Armour

Arriving just days after Walter Kirn’s rant in the New York Times about the ubiquity of advertising comes the news that Wrigley Field’s ivy will have ads this year.

Since I would have cheerfully sold that sponsorship if I were still working in baseball (“Come on,” I’d have insisted, “the stadium’s named after gum!”) I’m not sure why this bothers me. But it does.

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