S-S-Sellin' To My Generation

Divergent Pitches to Boomers, Xers and Millenials

The more things change...

Generational divides are nothing new. But they’ve never been as problematic for marketers as they are now.


Back when TV was black-and-white and “doctors” pitched cigarettes during Uncle Miltie’s commercial breaks, selling was simple: just follow the money. The money was in the hands of dad and mom, who were resolutely suburban, and invariably aged 30-45. Look back on the ad campaigns of the day, and you’ll see that the vast majority of them were targeted laser-like at this precise demographic.

Oh, but how times have changed. Advertisers must still follow the money, but that money has dispersed beyond all expectation. Three distinct generations–boomers, Xers, and millennials–are holding purse-strings these days, and sellers are making divergent, concerted pitches for all three.

There are of course no limits to the ways of doing that, but it’s interesting to note that one method in particular is being used across that entire spectrum: an appeal to nostalgia.

We’ve told you recently about brands from the baby boomers’ yesteryears being brought back for profitable reprises.

But nostalgia, it seems, has no definable shelf-life, and marketers seem willing to leverage ever more recent memories in hopes of moving product.

If you, for instance, loved the Eighties then MillerCoors is betting you’ll also love its retro Miller Lite packaging, last seen in stores in the late 1970s. For over a year now they’ve been re-dressing their premier low-cal beer in the same cans and bottles they wore when introduced way back in 1972. The beer itself hasn’t changed––Miller Lite is still brewed according to the same recipe used since day one. It’s the packaging alone that has evolved, then devolved, all in the name of nostalgia.

And nostalgia can be even more late-model than that; here’s one for the millennials. Coca-Cola is reintroducing Surge, an iconic ‘90s-era citrus concoction that disappeared a mere 12 years ago. For many of us that’s hardly enough time to have even noticed it was gone.

We may scoff, but in the end the proof of all these gambits will be in the pudding. If consumers are buying, then selling to their nostalgia must be an efficacious idea. But it seems to us there has to be a point of diminishing returns here. If not, then we can only take this strategy to the extreme: Once any product starts to falter, just take it off the shelves for a few weeks, then bring it back to great fanfare and shouts of “You missed us, right?!”

Let nostalgia be true nostalgia, is all we’re saying. Forcing it, especially before its due time, seems desperate and desperately artificial. Consumers might not be seeing it this way...yet. But trust us, if this hand is overplayed consumers will notice and they’ll start equating commercial nostalgia with distasteful manipulation.

And hey, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives. There’s one time-tested method for winning over any buyer of any age: offer them what they want, with quality and value. That’s a selling proposition that a boomer, an Xer, and a millennial can truly get nostalgic over.

The C4:
1. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are now 75.4 million baby boomers, 82.1 million generation Xers, and 83.1 million millennials. That’s 240.6 million adult (or young adult) consumers. Marketers are tasked with endeavoring to steer that consumption.

2. But marketing requires a targeted approach, and your approach might vary if your target is 18 versus 80.

3. It is certainly not out of bounds to appeal to nostalgia. Emotion, after all, is an aspect of the buying decision, and nostalgia is emotional. But can it be overused? Maybe so. When we start turning yesterday’s fad into tomorrow’s nostalgia, then definitely so.

4. When in doubt, just remember that each of those 240.6 million consumers are looking for value, and expecting to be treated with dignity and respect. There’s no magic bullet or killer app in honest marketing–there is only the unassailable recognition that the buyer is the boss.

It's Alive! The Case for Resurrected Brands

If you brand it, it will sell.

That’s hyperbole of course, but it’s also the Cliff’s Notes version of modern marketing theory: Find a unique and irresistible offering that you can hang a price tag on, build around it a memorable and endearing story (a brand, by any other name), and let the buying public’s sentiment become your partner in unbridled sales.

Of course, “Cliff’s Notes” is another way of saying “oversimplification,” and all of our treatises unto you, up to and including this one, are other ways of saying “there are no shortcuts in brand-building.”

Except, you know, sometimes there are.

So picture with us a scenario where the brand-building is done for you...maybe even long before you were born. You still offer that unique and irresistible thing; you still deliver quality and exemplify customer service. But the indelible sentiment that makes your brand a familiar friend? That work’s all been done.

It's alive! Brands find power beyond the grave!

Lacking an industry buzzword, we’ll go ahead and coin one: resurrected brands. You’re probably familiar with the concept, maybe without even realizing it. Indian Motorcycles is a fine old American company, famous for manufacturing sought-after motor-scooters between 1901 and 1953. The brand was idle for over half a century, but one quick visit to a vintage-bike swap meet would have told you all you needed to know about its enduring popularity. It was resurrected to great fanfare in 2006, and has been in production ever since. Currently a division of Polaris Industries, Indian has been restored to its well-deserved spot as a premier American sport-bike brand.

And here’s an example closer to home (and close to our heart)—Norka (it’s Akron spelled backwards!) was Summit County’s very own soda brand, a local favorite from the 1920s to the early ‘60s. And now it’s back! A team of plucky Akronites have rescued it from the beverage-brand boneyard, with both original and updated recipes. It’s already on your grocer’s shelves.

There are plenty of other case studies, but you get the point. The point is, there are brands so beloved they can transcend a business’s natural life cycle. Bankruptcy or the passing on of the principals are irrelevant to the brand’s legion of fans. If it’s gone, they pine for it. When it comes back, they flock to it.

What’s even more interesting is what a diverse opportunity this is. You could be motivated by nostalgia, or you might simply be looking for an unexploited angle. Either way, the potential upsides are almost unlimited. The marketplace head-start, in terms of re-releasing a brand that’s already known and appreciated, cannot be overstated.

But of course, this alone isn’t a recipe for success. Creating a brand is just the first step; maintaining it is the never-ending second. Resurrect a brand and you’ve taken on the responsibility for maintaining its perceived value...in perpetuity. Let quality slip, even a little, and your customers will notice, will be offended, and they will be gone.


The C4:
1. Marketing 101: In retail business, you build success by building a brand. Enter the marketplace with a unique product or service, then position it in people’s consciousness with an appealing and memorable personality.

2. DO NOT deviate from Marketing 101! (Unless, ahem, you can.)

3. The rare opportunity might present itself in which you won’t need to build a brand, but only defibrillate one. Nostalgia is a growth industry. Find yourself a dormant (yet available) brand name, one that the people remember fondly, and you just might find yourself a goldmine.

4. But heed the cardinal warning of shortcuts: they never get you all the way home. To resurrect a brand is to assume a legacy. Betray that legacy at your peril. Whatever your business, whatever your brand, your success is dependent on quality and customer service. This is even more true with a resurrected brand, because your customers are comparing you to an idealized memory. Measure up to that, or the brand shall die a second death.

Are We Creating the Clutter that We're Trying Hard to Break Through?

Let's elevate the conversation.

All these advances, the ones bringing our world more closely together, they’ve given us so much. But just as surely, they taketh away.

And perhaps it’s always been that way, particularly with revolutions in how we communicate. The invention of writing, some eight or ten millennia ago, gave us our first non-wetware capability for information transmission. But it also spelled the end of the nearly supernatural feats of memory exhibited by the shamans and storytellers, who’d been keeping and sharing the tribal legacies since the Stone Age. And likewise, with the coming of the printing press, away went the gorgeous handcrafted product of the calligraphers and scriptoria.

The communications revolution we’re living right now is arguably (or maybe barely arguably) the
most profound thus far. Starting with desktop publishing in the nineties, then on to the World Wide Web and the social media explosion as we know them today, we’ve been effectively handed a global, instantaneous platform for spreading information and sharing ideas. Non-local communication is no longer the purview of the elite, but rather the birthright of nearly all of humanity.

And what, pray tell, might that taketh away?

Novelist and copywriter Robert Cormack warned recently of a coarsening of society, of a “vulgarization”, as he called it. He points an accusatory finger at the advertising industry, perhaps not unfairly, calling attention to our command of mass media and asking us to examine our motives and commitment to the higher good.

They’re questions worth asking, to be sure, and we certainly call upon ourselves and our colleagues to let our consciences be our guides.

But given that mass media is now truly massive, and that we’re all content creators, we think it’s wise to cast a wider net, and to plead for communal responsibility, for leadership from the trenches.

Every single one of us can decide, each time we mount our digital soapboxes, whether we’re about to contribute to an elevation of the global conversation, or to its lowest common denominator. We can choose whether the content we create—be it a ten-thousand word blogifesto or a dashed-off tweet—makes people think, or makes them cringe.

This colossal platform of ours invites unexpurgated input, but it also permits anonymity and it winks at uncouthness. This all can, and does, lead to an erosion of the dialogue into something that’d never happen when people meet face to face, when they open their hearts, and when they share their thoughts.

We’d like us all to remember this—that no matter what sort of interface and no matter how great the distance, it’s still a conversation we’re engaging in. We hope we can approach all our conversations, digital and otherwise, with the respect and civility they deserve.

We’re committed to honoring our role as global citizens and communication leaders. And we very much invite you to join us.

The C4:
1. Advertisers have gained a reputation (not entirely undeservedly) for using our media leverage in the pursuit of dishonesty and a dumbing-down of the collective conversation.

2. Reputations can only be rehabilitated by action. It’s up to us to reform from within and to gain back any esteem we might have lost. We’re on it.

3. May we humbly submit, though, that we no longer command (if we ever did) the tenor of the media and the trajectory of societal discourse? The fact is, we’re all creators, and we all share responsibility for the integrity, or lack thereof, of the content we share.

4. We’re not saying cool it with the cat pics (you can haz cheezburger!), and we love a viral vid as much as anyone. We’re just saying that this global conversation is ongoing, and we can choose to make it constructive, or to let it become toxic to us all. We’re aiming for the former. How about you?

Le ROI, c'est Morte

What do we measure, and how the heck do we measure it?

Are you a data person? If so, you are no doubt happy to be alive. You’ve got data in spades, don’t you? It’s at your fingertips, it’s accumulating in the cloud, it’s compounding by the second. You can slice it, dice it, collect it, collate it, and endlessly compare it to past performance and industry benchmarks. If you’re one to drive your decision making with quantifiable data, you’re living in a world primed and pumped to make that happen.

In marketing, our gold standard, data-wise, has long been ROI, or Return on Investment. ROI seeks to quantify the results that can be directly attributable to marketing initiatives. It’s why, back in the salad days of direct advertising, every new version of a sales letter solicited response to a different P.O. box, and every infomercial used a different toll-free number. Consumer response could be directly tracked, and winning (or losing) sales pitches could be easily identified.

Nowadays, with so much of our sales taking place online, data is even more immediate, and immediately available. Click-throughs and page-views are easily trackable in real time, can be traced back to particular IP addresses, and can be compared against exhaustive records on evolving consumer behavior. If you’re engaged in digital marketing, you might think you’ve got a better handle on ROI than has ever been possible.

Please – think again.

The dirty little secret about twenty-first century ROI is just how misleading those numbers can be. So your hit counts and individual impressions are sky-high and climbing even higher whenever you up your Google Adwords bid. Is that translating to sales? Is it resulting in money in the bank? Take as cautionary the latter-day parable of the seller who’s dazzled by the real-time reportage from his digital marketing manager...both of them trying their darnedest not to think about the inventory gathering dust out there in the warehouse.

Those numbers? They can be gamed. People click on banner ads and follow links – not always because they want to buy, but sometimes just for the heck of it. If you’re advertising on a popular website, its followers (or even its publishers) might be clicking on your ad just to keep them in business.

Andy Frawley at AdAge recently tackled this conundrum in his article, “ROI Is Dead.” He argues for a new, updated metric, one he calls ROE2 (return on experience times engagement), which would quantify the experience your audience has with your outreach, and how they engage with it.

Amen, we say. All we’d add is that we cannot, must not, shalt not discount the incontrovertible gospel of sales. If product isn’t moving, then our marketing is faulty – no matter what the other metrics say. Our solution is to join marketing and sales at the hip. Let their functions be separate, but let them sing from identical hymnals in terms of consumer engagement, product offerings, and the unique solutions we provide to customers. Consistent messaging always gets results, regardless of the format.

In the abstract, ROI will always be relevant. If you make an investment, sure, you’re more than a little curious regarding the return. It’s how you quantify it that matters. If you’ve been doing it wrong your choices are clear: Keep going on down that well-trod primrose path, or pivot to one that might actually get you where you need to go.

The C4:
1. ROI is the king of marketing metrics, for pretty good reason. Marketing ain’t cheap, and decision makers need to know if their marketing dollars are well spent.

2. But metrics are malicious if you’re measuring the wrong thing. We’ve all had a particular approach to digital ROI, ever since Berners-Lee flipped the www switch. It’s dawning on us, perhaps slower than it should, that this approach might be all wrong.

3. Hit counts and click-throughs and eyeballs-on-the-page are interesting, but they tell us diddley about sales. Sales tells us about sales. Digital marketing, like all marketing, has to be about consumer engagement and consistent messaging. The rest will take care of itself.

4. Le ROI est kaput. Off with its head. If history teaches us anything, it’s that nothing is so replaceable as a king who’s outlived his usefulness.

So, you think there's no power in advertising?

You may want to lather, rinse and repeat.

“Don’t leave home without it.”

“Taste Great. Less Filling.”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Where’s the beef?”

We’ve just thrown at you four unforgettable examples (we could add dozens more without breaking a sweat) of the enduring power of mass-media advertising. Just take a second to appreciate the stickiness of these ear-worms. They’re representative of campaigns that ended years, sometimes decades ago; yet, unless you’re hearing them here for the first time (in which case you’re a hermit or a youngster. Or both?)...then they’re every bit as familiar to you as they are to us. More than that—you can probably hear or see, in your mind’s eye at least, the original flight of ads that embedded them in your consciousness, and in our collective unconscious.

And that’s exactly what happens to these classics, wouldn’t you agree? Eventually, they belong to all of us. They become cultural markers, very often evolved beyond, in due time, the corporate identity from whence they came: “Bet you can’t eat just one” “Have it your way” “Would you like fries with that?” “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

These are the phenomena that we hold up as rebuttal to those who say that advertising has no relevance. And we reference them to rebuke, as strongly as we can, those who claim advertising has no power. We humbly submit that advertising like this, lines like these, surpass marketing and mercantilism, and become part of our popular imagination.

“It’s the real thing.”

“Good to the last drop.”

“What’s in your wallet?”

You must realize, then, that this is an ongoing process. That even as the ad-memes of yesteryear endure (“My bologna has a first name!”), contemporary ones are implanting themselves today (“So easy a caveman can do it!”). The cycle repeats.

So what’s the takeaway? For most of us, it’s that our culture is alive, vibrant, ever-changing—replete with not just art, music, and literature, but also with the provocative creativity found in our popular media. With advertising.

And for a select few of us: marketers who’d love to harness this collective chorus, the takeaway is imperative and pithy: Just do it.

The C4:
1. A diamond is forever.
Succinct and catchy advertising slogans endure. They make the jump from media to imagination, and they stay there.

2. Plop plop, fizz fizz.
Repetition is key. Marketers jumpstart this phenomenon by harnessing all available channels to spread the message.

3. But I’m worth it.
Don’t forget value and quality. What you’re selling must be worthy of the consumer’s attention.

4. Time to make the doughnuts.
It takes hard work, and it takes time. Stick to it and you’ll gain customers, move product, capture
market-share. And who knows? Maybe you’ll create that one catchy line they’ll still be raving about a hundred years from now.

Who is Bill Cosby?

Is he America's funniest dad?

Perhaps he is a purveyor of fine puddings and delicious gelatin-based desserts? Or is he someone with decidedly more sinister secrets?

We don’t know the answer any more than you do, and we watch with resigned sadness as it plays out - we hope - to some kind of resolution. But this unfolding story illustrates a vital point, one we think is applicable to our personal lives, business lives, indeed to all of life, writ large.

Because the truth is, whether we’re talking about Bill Cosby, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or Billy the Kid, we have to realize that a public persona, or any persona, tells only part of the story.

Lives are complex. That seems simplistic, but it’s actually a truth so profound that it’s worthwhile to frequently ponder all its implications.

Think of it this way — what person, other than yourself, knows you the best? It could be your spouse, your closest friend, or very possibly the church minister or bartender down the block. Whoever they are, and however well they may know you, we feel safe to pronounce: They don’t know you completely. We don’t accuse you of hiding some part of yourself, anymore than we accuse ourselves of the same (this phenomenon is entirely universal). It’s just that we’re all different people, in ways subtle and distinct, depending on circumstances and surroundings.

If this is a truth we can stipulate for people, can we not also apply it to organizations? It seems to us that the complexity must compound when we’re looking at larger pools of personalities.

So — was Enron all bad? Is the Humane Society all good? We’re not taking any stances here (we’re willing to flirt with controversy, but please excuse us from full-on macking)...we’re just posing questions.

Whatever feelings you might have about individuals, organizations, corporations, or even your friendly neighborhood brand-management experts it may behoove you to remember that those feelings were born of isolated experiences. You might remind yourself they probably only represent one small part of a very complex picture.

The C4:
1. One hundred percent good and one hundred percent evil are caricatures. They’re the stuff of comic books and not-very-convincing fiction.

2. Real life is more about subtleties of gray, and of complex ranges of motivation and action. Might not be as satisfying from a dramatic standpoint, but mundane human existence rarely is.

3. It’s well-nigh impossible, then, for any of us to completely, intimately know the personalities of others. We think this is inescapable on an individual basis, and even more so with large groups.

4. Impressions, feelings, even the things you’re sure you know about the people around you and the the businesses you work with might just be incomplete. We’re not saying your impressions aren't valid. They surely are. We’re just hoping you can recognize that other impressions and contrasting truths could be just as valid in their own right.

Sales as Service

The collaborative experience your customers demand

While your attention was elsewhere, your customers became empowered. 

Maybe you were busy tweaking your website or learning new software or integrating your brand into the social networking sphere. No doubt you were confident you were keeping up with the times. Ironically, it’s those accelerating times, and the quantum technology leaps that come with them, that have handed the keys to your kingdom to the customers you serve.

Doesn’t really matter how you feel about that (and hey, it isn’t all bad - after all, you’re someone’s customer too, eh?) — it’s a simple, unavoidable reality. Resist if you like, others have certainly tried. Most of them have already shuttered their doors. 

Today’s buyer is better informed, better equipped, and better engaged than at any time in history. They avail themselves of this ubiquitous tech to compare prices and products and to hunt bargains. That’s the least they can do, with the puniest effort. If they apply themselves just a bit more, if they log just a bit more screen-time, they can learn nearly as much about your business as you know yourself.

Think you can best a buyer like that? Think you can even negotiate from a position of strength? Think again.

It’s time to give up the adversarial selling approach. It’s time to accept this new market reality. Time to transition into the role of collaborator.

Becoming the buyer’s ally is the best, last, and only refuge for businesses struggling to make headway in this evolved economy. It’s the one thing that can set them apart from their less evolved competitors. And it’s precisely what those empowered buyers demand and expect.

Understand that by the time your customer engages with you, their homework is complete and their purchasing decisions are made. Your traditional sales routines are thereby made redundant. What they’re looking for, at this stage, is a partner to help enact their decisions, to usher them through the closing formalities, and to provide the utmost level of back-end service and support.

Understand, above all else, that these are expectations. Your compliance is optional only in the same sense that the continuity of your business is optional.

There are a couple of generations among us now that have never experienced any other kind of market. They don’t know or care that some of us came up in the days when the ol’ hardsell came on hard, and could very much sell. 

That kind of selling is gone, class, and it ain’t coming back. The sooner we accept that—the sooner we turn selling into service, in other words—the sooner we succeed.

The C4:

1. The information age begat the information economy. An economy of information means a liberation of information. It means that information has become the great equalizer.

2. The greatest beneficiary of this has been the consumer—i.e. everyone.

3. Prior to making a purchase these days one has the ability; nay, the responsibility, to equip oneself with all available information to make the smartest possible buy. And the available information for doing so is encyclopedic. 

4. For the seller, the choice is clear: resist and perish. Or accept, adapt, and collaborate...and ultimately thrive.