MortarBlog

Yeah, we thought that would get your attention.

Last year, Pfizer spent $1.4 billion on Exubera, an inhaled insulin product that users are supposed to do, well, bong hits of.

It ain’t selling.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude!
First off, if somebody gave us $1.4 billion to design a bong, it would totally have come with a recliner with built-in subwoofer. At least one.

Second off, please please please, somebody pay us $1.4 billion to design a bong!

Ahem. Sorry. Wait. What were we talking about?
Oh yeah.

Second off, let’s work on product design a bit, kids. Here’s a comment from Café Pharma, the industry’s online bulletin board: “Look at the size of the bong! Who the fuck wants to carry something so damn big that it doesn’t even fit in a pocket[?]” Indeed. Even in our hippie days, nobody just walked around carrying a bong. That’s what God gave us soda cans for. Duh.  But we digress. Again. Wait. What? Oh yeah.

Here’s the funny/valuable part: Pfizer got in this mess by “relying on consumer research data that has turned out to be faulty in the real world.”   Ya think!?
Are you guys seeing a bunch of stoner college kids going “Dude! You should make it a bong!” then spending their $150 focus group honorariums on fat sacks of Blueberry Romulan?
Us, too.
But seriously, there is a demand for inhaled insulin. Nobody likes needles. Get the product design right, Pfizer, and you’re on to something. Just make sure you take your focus group info with a grain of common sense next time.

P.S. We picked this (very funny) article up from our buds at Brandweek. Who knew they had it in ‘em? When you’re not reading the MortarBlog, check ‘em out. Beats working.

Is anybody else hungry?

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We recently hired on with a new eco-energy customer targeting the green market. And we are certainly all in a lather over doing our bit to cool the planet. So it was with some surprise that they indicated one of their biggest concerns was not the adoption cycle, but rather the tendency of the alternative power industry to attract scam merchants.

The latest entrant into the market, Citizenrē  (Citizenry — geddit?) has poured a bunch of cash into what looks to Wired (and MortarMark) like another multilevel marketing scam.

"Energy startup The Citizenrē Corporation’s haikulike Google ad says
it all. "Solar for free," it headlines. "No initial investment needed.
Just monthly payments for power."

Instead of making you spring for $25,000 or more in gear, Citizenrē
says it will loan you a complete rooftop solar power system, install it
for free and sell you back the power it generates at a fixed rate below
what your utility charges. The company hopes to make back its
investment with those monthly payments, augmented by federal tax
credits and rebates….

"Indeed, Citizenrē’s offer is generating a furor in renewable energy
circles, fueled by the company’s own secrecy and an unusual business
plan that combines serious technological expertise with an exuberant
multilevel marketing campaign in the style of Amway, Mary Kay and
Tupperware." See Wired for the rest of the story.

Left: If you really want to be part of the solution you need to get a hat like Citizenre’s sales chief Rob Styler. I don’t know why, but it screams green. Odd that, isn’t it?

But what really caught my eye was the long video on Citizenrē’s website. Produced with liberal amounts of low-cost licensed imagery, and narrated by the soothing baritone of Morgan Freeman the homepage features a personal plea by Hollywood ecopreneur Ed Begley Jr. Looking oddly unsavory and  less-than salubrious in an interview from what must be his Beverly Hills couch, Ed’s pitch is strangely over done and sounds more like the kind of thing you’d find on late-night TV sandwiched between endless reruns of Head On and that annoying 18-year old Hawaii real estate tycoon.

Some of Ed’s gem’s:

"Citizenre provides a 25 year guarantee,. That’s right, a 25 year guarantee".
"I mean who wouldn’t do this. It just makes sense".
"Imagine you helping friends save on their energy costs".
"Signing up is fast, easy, and does not obligate you to anything".

Bear in mind that the solar panel industry is struggling with soaring demand and sky high production costs (due to expensive materials fees).

The net effect is an offer that just sounds "too good to be true".

But like any offer of that ilk, Citizenrē’s pitch is nevertheless compelling. We hope they are for real (700 people haves signed up already).

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Starbucks visionary Howard Schultz is concerned the international coffee store behemoth is losing focus and commoditizing its own product.

"In a blunt Feb. 14 memo, he warned executives that the chain may be commoditizing its brand and making itself more vulnerable to competition from other coffee shops and fast-food chains. The nearly 800-word memo questioned whether Starbucks’ automatic espresso machines, new store designs and elimination of some in-store coffee grinding may have compromised the "romance and theatre" of a visit.

The criticisms pinpoint Starbucks’ biggest challenge. Mr. Schultz, the company’s resident visionary, wants Starbucks to become one of the world’s most recognized brands, with 40,000 locations around the globe, or more than triple its current count of about 13,000. But to do that, Starbucks must improve its efficiencies and make other changes that threaten to erode the virtues that made it so successful — which in turn could jeopardize its ability to charge premium prices.

"Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead [sic] to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand," Mr. Schultz wrote in the memo."

Read the rest of the story here.

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Love the post "Urban Spam" talking about Lazer Graffiti - check out this video on Break.com.

And here is a snippet from the post at Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts:

"Okay.
On the one hand this is super cool because it hasn’t been used that
much yet. On the other hand, if too much people start to do this, it
might become irritating… This is an example of that ‘beyond’. It’s an art
project, but it can easily find it’s way into the marketing and
advertising landscape. It’s not the same as the beamvertising campaign
we’ve seen earlier for Sportlife, where the images of a moving
skateboarder were projected on shopfronts and outer walls of houses in
several big cities in The Netherlands. This is ‘Laser Advertising’.
It’s alike, but not the same thing."

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Follow up to my post about Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty a few months back… here is a snippet from an interesting article discussing why the campaign is resonating with women, written by Marti Barletta, author of the book PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders.

These PrimeTime Women are not in denial about how old they are or
what they look like. They accept their age, actually relish it, and
can’t wait to see what the second half of life brings them. Many say
you couldn’t pay them to be 20 again! Studies have shown that women in
their 50s and 60s report these as the happiest decades of life. As one
of our respondents exclaimed, "I love being 50; I love this time in my
life. I don’t think, ‘oh God, I’m getting old.’ I look in the mirror
and see wrinkles and I’m okay with it."

Contrary to popular opinion, Boomer women aren’t in denial about
aging. Advertisers are. And the women they’re supposed to be trying to
connect with are getting annoyed. One respondent said: "I really resent
the notion that you can’t grow old comfortably. You must NOT have
wrinkles. The truth is, they are a natural part of aging."

Dove totally "gets" this PrimeTime Woman. And the real story behind
the success of this latest iteration of the Campaign for Real Beauty
lies in the principle that this woman is comfortable in her own skin.
Being herself feels better than being seen as perfect. Authenticity
trumps aspiration.

Marti also gives some simple yet clear marketing advice in her article:

Marketers, take note: This is the dawning of the age of PrimeTime
Women. They are the healthiest, wealthiest, most active, educated, and
influential generation of women in history.

Marketers are always looking for a "magic" answer. For once, they
just may have one… with their huge numbers, rapid growth, and
incredible spending power, PrimeTime Women may well be the "silver
bullet" marketers are looking for.

Read the full article: The Real Story Behind the Success of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty courtesy of MarketingProfs.

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For some reason, AdCritic decided to give us “credit” for the Bud Light “Great Apes” Super Bowl spot. While we’re flattered that everyone thinks we ran a Super Bowl spot this year, we, um…didn’t. And if we had, it would have gone a little something like this:

FADE IN: EXT. ZOO, DAY.
TWO SUPER-INTELLIGENT GORILLAS HAVE A PRIVATE CONVERSATION.

GORILLA #1: “I’ve been working on this plan for three years. The same Bud Light delivery guy goes by every Thursday at the same time…”

GORILLA #2: “Wait, wait, wait. We’re super-intelligent gorillas. We can read, write, and talk. Bobo has had an investment blog for two years!”

CUT AWAY TO BOBO, POUNDING ON A LAPTOP.

GORILLA #1: “So what are you saying?”

GORILLA #2: “For one thing, why don’t we just ask for a beer. And for another…Bud Light!? You’re a highly-evolved mammal! That’s the best you could think of?”

GORILLA #1: “Sorry…”

GORILLA #2 : “Maybe we’re not all that super-intelligent. Geez.”

BOBO: "I wasn’t going to say anything…"

CUT TO: TITLE CARD.

TITLE CARD: Heineken. It’s about the beer.

FADE OUT.

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As reported on Church of the Customer Blog yesterday, Intuit’s TurboTax unit has teamed up with rapper Vanilla Ice to launch a citizen marketer-esque YouTube video contest. Contestants videotape themselves rapping about the tax software for a chance to win $25,000.

We are hoping our resident Account Executives, Suzanne and Molly will join in the fun; they have some incredible rhythm they share with us daily in the Mortar hallways.

Check out the contest here…

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Think nothing’s wrong with your overgrown Twig & Berries? Think again…

Men, in our infinite mulish simplemindedness,
tend to think all body parts are just supposed to work and all the
stuff growing on our backs and thighs and groinal regions looks damn
fine as it is no matter how tangled and shaggy and utterly
extraterrestrial it might appear and how often our lovers cringe and
shudder at the sight of us naked. Besides, there’s little we can do
about it anyway. Right?

Gaze, won’t you, at Philips Norelco’s latest and surprisingly bold viral Internet ad campaign from 2006, found on www.shaveeverywhere.com

Have some fun on the site… I recommend the music video.

And be sure to read the entire hilarious article "How To Shave The Modern Male: In which a helpful corporate giant encourages you to please groom your crotch."  By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist.

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CREATIVITY AND EMOTION ARE THE TWO KEY CHARACTERISTICS!!!!

What you say? Jam-packing an ad with product feature after product feature doesn’t work? That’s crazy talk!

Dr. Heath from the University of Bath has got the answer we have been searching for. Not only the answer, but proven scientific results.

"Dr Robert Heath, from the University of Bath’s
School of Management, found that advertisements with high levels of
emotional content enhanced how people felt about brands, even when
there was no real message.

However, advertisements which were low on
emotional content had no effect on how favorable the public were
towards brands, even if the ad was high in news and information.

Dr Heath, working with the research company
OTX, tested 23 TV ads that were on air at the time in the USA and 20
that were on air in the UK, for their levels of emotional and rational
content.

They then asked a second sample of 200 people
in each country how favorable they were towards the brands in the
advertisements. Those who had been exposed to ads with high emotional
content showed a marked positive shift in their favorability towards
the brand. But those who had seen ads with low emotional content showed
no real shift in favorability, even when they had a high level of news
and information."

Thus, the most effective advertising  to establish a preference among brands are ads with a large amount of emotional content and very little actual information.

"In advertising, it appears to be the case that it’s not what you say, but the way that you say it, that gets results."

Read the whole article  here

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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For those of us that have never been fans of V-Day - the folks at Altoids opened three very temporary retail outlets on February 8th. 

In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, Altoids invites the lovesick, lovelorn and Cupid-wary to a sanctuary from all the romantic overtures.

Altoids Curious and Original Chocolate Shoppes have touched down in Chicago, Miami and New York, and will feature various activities, from Therapeutic Crafts for the Broken-Hearted, with free ‘Love Stinks’ needlepoint kits, to Love Lost Readings. The main feature, however, is letting customers sample new Altoids Dark Chocolate Dipped Mints, accompanied by free lattes.

Simply delightful.

If you have a moment, check out the new Altoids website. It’s got a few glitches but there is so much explore. www.altoids.com Especially, the singing telegram, hilarious.

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