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The New Candy Cigarettes – Marijuana Cola?

by Lori Taylor · 1 comment

I’m a 41 -year-old mother of 5.  I remember rabbit ears, white out, and I’m guilty of two spaces after a period.  And I loved smoking fake cigarettes I could eat when I was a kid.

Can you imagine?  Do they even still make those?  I doubt it.

But hey, they don’t have to!  Because now we have Marijuana Cola!

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone else paying attention to this?

Now I’m not being a prude, at all.  But if I have to be super careful with every single thing I say for fear the FTC will sanction me or a client, what the hell is wrong with the world that we can have Marijuana Cola positioned as the next cool thing for teens (check out the packaging and you’ll know exactly who they want to appeal to)?

Please, please – can some other cool person be outraged with me?  God forbid we have ads that follow you around – but is it really NP at all to position drinking Marijuana cool for teens – as long as it doesn’t  stalk us online? Sigh.

After viewing the labels at Canna Cola’s website, many can understand why teenagers would find the packaging sleeve appealing. Teens consume plenty of soft drinks and have responded well to the energy drink market introduced in the past seven years. The caricatures and drink names of Canna Cola’s products do resemble the types of images printed on t-shirts, belt buckles, hats, etc. popular in the teen scene. Then there’s the double whammy. The fizzy pop drink does, in fact, contain real THC, the mind altering chemical extracted from marijuana.

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Groupon Gone Wrong? The #1 Brand Killer

by Lori Taylor · 5 comments

First of all, let me state for the record, I am not a coupon person.  Even when I was poor, I did not take the time to look for, cut, paste and redeem coupons.  If I go to the mall and find out there is a giant sale, I go home.

This is ironic, considering I launched one of the most successful loyalty programs in the country with Kroger, one of the largest grocery store chain.  But it’s really not, because Kroger understood something most brands forget – you never make money with coupons, and all incentives should be created to increase basket size – per customer segment.

Very few experts would argue against the concept that customer segmentation is key to the success of any marketing program. However, if this is the case, how can Groupon really work in the first place?

Even with a PPC campaign, you can get targeted to the right keyword/adword groups.  But the Groupon offers I’ve been presented with, you can randomly share the offer with their friends to “unlock” it…sounds cool right?

Wrong.  How do you know their friends are your friends?  You don’t. Not really.

More importantly, any great marketer will tell you how you acquire a customer can determine your projections on life time value of that “lead”.  So how are projections and budgets being set for Groupon strategies?  My hunch is they aren’t.  Which is why brands are being left so disappointed, unable to put these new buyers into the proper sales funnel is leaving most brands in the dark.

And last but not least, when you use coupons or discounts as your main acquisition strategy you are moving far away from want-based marketing.  Think about it, do you ever really see Louis Vitton, Prada, even Coach on sale? Rarely.  Why?  Because people want their products, they don’t need them.  As soon as you become a need, you become a “fixed” line item in the house hold budget, making you a “commodity”.  Price becomes everything when the buyer believes they need you.

This is how Groupon works: It sends you an email telling you that you can buy, say, a picture of your kids printed on a canvas for US $35 instead of US $70.50, so long as you buy the Groupon…er…coupon today. So you plop down your US $35, get a promotional code, go the providers website and a few clicks later, your toothy-grinned offspring are being printed, packed and shipped to your home. Overall, it is a great way to introduce your offering to new customers and a great way for consumers to save a boatload of money. But, for a business, it is a pretty poor way to build a brand.

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Brands Who Went Big In 2010: Spam or Slam?

by Lori Taylor · 1 comment

It’s been a wild ride for many brands in 2010.

Social media has flabbergasted many of them and put the consumer too close for comfort for some brands.  (Let’s just say transparency is only a good thing when you control what is revealed, right?)

And while many brands got it right, many got it wrong.

The brands who won the most kept their eye on the ball, remembered their purpose, what they stood for and found a way to participate with the right audience.  The ones who lost the most, confused the consumer, were not clear in their call to action and left everyone scratching their heads.

Winners

Tiger Woods – Late last year everyone seemed to be predicting the demise of this legendary golfer. I didn’t. Not because I have psychic powers but because looking through the marketing lens it was obvious that two things will probably keep Tiger Woods from oblivion. One, as an athlete he is a performance brand. This means that as long as he continues to perform on the golf course, he will receive media attention.

Two, his Target Market (i.e., golfing fans), admire him as a golfer first and foremost not as a role model. It is these people who will support his brand over the long haul. Tiger may not have blitzed the links in 2010 but he held the line in an incredibly difficult game.

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