MortarBlog

If you are what you eat, then you’re definitely a member of the LOHAS market if you’re downing a Dole organic banana (and know what we know about the Dole Organic Program).

Some of our recent work has brought us deep into the mindset of the “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability” segment and there’s at least one thing we’re sure of - transparency is everything. 

And that can drive some companies bananas. But, it seems, not Dole. Dole has created a site where its customers can enter their fruit’s 3-digit sticker code and find out exactly who, what, and where their bananas come from. Country, farm, certifications, pictures… everything. They go a step further by outlining their actions and intentions to improve their leadership in organic agriculture.

How’s that for up-front and honest? Makes me want to go buy a Dole banana.

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Spotted these riffs on the idea we exploited for active learning specialists, FrontRow on Adrants. Our version is here.

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Escalating gas prices are not having as much of an impact on consumer behavior as Detroit expected, reports Joseph White in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Apparently, we’re turning our nose up at  GM’s gas-sipper Aveo (37 miles per gallon).

The Journal reports:

"People say that $3 a gallon gas makes them think twice about their energy consumption, and what kind of vehicles they drive. People say that global warming worries them, and that they want to do something about the tons of CO2 that burning fossil fuels pumps into the atmosphere.

"Small cars have underperformed out of the gate this year, as gas prices moderated during the winter months,"  Mr. Ballew says.

Sure, Prius sales continue to soar (manufacturer Toyota was the only car maker to enjoy a sales increase in March while the Big 3 reported worsening sales).

But the Journal’s point is a good one. Consumers often say one thing: and then do quite the opposite.

And who said our job was easy?

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Why isn’t there a bank for kids? Or a car for geriatrics? Is it crippling groupthink or is American business really a lot smarter than it appears?

Proving our point that there is always room for a new challenger to exploit a niche: 1st for Women launched into the South African insurance space with an offering targeted at, well, women.

Their ads read: "If men were women, we’d insure them. But they’re not. So they don’t get to pay substantially lower car insurance premiums. Cover with care."

Presumably less testosterone behind the wheel adds up to less risk, and one very profitable market segment.

The work was created by Black River Football Club, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Credit to Adrants.

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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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I have been driving myself crazy watching the Alexa rank on MortarBlog. As the blogosphere lacks a meaningful traffic measurement system, most blogrolls (lists of top blogs - like the right hand column here) draw on the Alexa rank of the sites listed. But Alexa seems flawed to me.

First, let’s refresh ourselves on how Alexa works:

"Alexa Rank is a relative measurement on how popular a web site among the Internet community. Alexa is relative because it depends on the data of Alexa Toolbar users. And also Alexa Toolbar is only for Internet Explorer which means it doesn’t count growing group of Firefox fans or any other browser users. But there are over 10 million Alexa Toolbar users who make it a recognized measurement.

Alexa orders web sites according to Alexa Traffic they get. That means a site with a rank of 1000 gets more traffic than a site with rank of 1001 according to Alexa, of course." HomeBizPal.

So why does Alexa suck? Well, the last few weeks were banner weeks for MortarBlog. We had huge traffic from two great mentions from the lovely Angela Natividad on AdRants (eSurance and Anti-Advertising) and design site NotCot sent hundreds of fans of St Mary’s campaign our way after posting about our new ER campaign. Consequently we received 10x more traffic last week than we had ever got before.

And our Alexa rank shot down fom 580,000 to 800,000 or so (bear in mind 1 is good, 800,000 is bad). Um.  Now many marketing blog sites, like the mighty Seth Godin’s have impressive Alexa ranks and cater to the ad community: so it can’t be all down to Marketing and Ad types using a Mac+Firefox combo.

And its not just me. We are in the midst of launching a blog site for a technology client. When we proposed the idea of using Alexa ranks to monitor their success, the client’s CTO (and this is one sharp hombre) shot back a look of disgust.

So, there you have it. Alexa technology defines the list of top blogs, but seems to be fatally flawed. 

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Credit: Tom Fishburne

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Alain Thy’s “7 Secrets of a Good Marketing Budget” on FutureLab inspired me to share some of the things we’re advising our clients to consider this year:

1. Continue to cut back on traditional advertising channels — but don’t simply pour every penny saved into impressions and clicks. Organizations of all types are moving the savings into PR as well. Even though it is more challenging to draw a direct line between anticipated sales and increased media outreach, there is a reason the PR industry is enjoying one of the biggest booms since the dot comm crash. In the battle for the hearts and minds of cynical consumers Earned Media is even more influential than Paid. (See this recent post for details of tying PR outreach to shopping cart success).

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Oh sweet, baby Jesus, make it possible for tiny Mortar to work with the great William Shatner.

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