Marketing Thoughts by Domus Inc.

Everything has a natural cycle of life – even major brands. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Ford Plans to Kill Storied Mercury”. Although as early as 1985 Mercury was still dominant US brand, since then it has increasingly declined. In 1985 Mercury sold over 500,000 vehicles, but by last year that number had dropped to just over 92,000.

For 25 years (and especially over the last 10) the brand has declined. As such it is a good business decision for Ford to cut its losses and move on. After a certain point, there is not much that can be done to revive a dying brand, no different than a dying person.

That doesn’t mean that there is no room in Ford’s line-up for another brand – Volkswagen does very well with multiple brands – but just no longer Mercury. Mercury’s demise began when it no longer stood for anything special, unless you consider replicating a Ford sister car with fancier trim as something special.

As such, hopefully Ford Motor Company has learned the importance of brand management for its future. Good brand management means that you don’t only declare and communicate the position in the consumers’ minds that you intend to hold, but that you consistently and exclusively deliver products and/or services that meet the consumers’ changing ideas of what that position means. Mercury failed to do so.

Moreover, it’s a recognition that sometimes a brand position can be squeezed into non-existence by other brand positions. Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln represented a “ladder of brands” strategy, giving people smaller stepping stones between levels of prestige. But when foreign auto makers started selling higher quality cars with more standard features at lower price points, Ford had to respond by improving its main Ford brand, which squeezed Mercury from the bottom. Similarly as Lincoln offerred cars at lower price points, it squeezed Mercury from the top. That has left no distinguishing position for Mercury.

Domus is a Philadelphia-based advertising and PR firm as well as a digitial and social media marketing agency. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

In less than a month, the most-watched sporting event on the planet will begin, the 2010 World Cup. But an associated competition is now well underway – brand sponsorship and advertising, specifically the rivalry between Adidas and Nike. Adidas is currently the biggest world cup brand, sponsoring major players and fully one-third of the teams going to South Africa. But Nike is not far behind, sponsoring some of the biggest names in the sport as well as their own teams. Worldwide, Adidas sells about $1.8 billion in soccer gear while Nike sells about $1.7 billion.

This week Nike launched their official World Cup campaign with a new three-minute video created by Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu (Babel, 21 Grams). Called “Write the Future”, it features soccer stars like Wayne Rooney, Franck Ribery, Cristiano Ronaldo, Landon Donovan, and Ronaldinho, as well as non-soccer stars such as Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, and Homer Simpson.

Adidas, on the other hand, won the rights to be the overall World Cup official sponsor, so it will be interesting to see who wins this battle as Adidas counters Nike’s move.

Domus is a marketing and digital advertising agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Google recently released a new advertising feature called “Remarketing”. Basically, it allows you to create an AdWords campaign that targets people who’ve been to specific pages of your web site.

This opens up a whole new area of online marketing segmentation. Previously, you could target people who searched for your keywords or who visited other sites, but without knowing much more about them. Or you had to wait until they explicitly entered their email address for you to contact them directly. Now you can focus some of your effort on people who, by their own actions, have clearly indicated some interest in you specifically but haven’t yet given you direct contact.

Consider the possible conversion rate performance improvements by offering something special to previous visitors. It’s not quite the same as email marketing directly to people who have left you their email addresses, but it has the potential to be more than marketing blindly to everyone who meets a generic demographic.

If you haven’t at least begun to explore Google Remarketing, you’re probably doing your brand a disservice. Check it out at Google Remarketing.

Domus is an innovative advertising agency and digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. For more information visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

On April 30th, Apple released their first draft of the iAd framework reference document. Although this document is written for developers and not advertisers, it gave some insight into how advertisers will be able to use the iAd program.

Below are some key points -

1. Developers will be able to embed ads in their apps using the AdBannerView object. After developers embed ads in their apps, they will start earning revenue.
2. iAd will use an ad network. When adding iAd to an app, developers will choose to display their apps among different segments available in the ad network.
3. iAd includes standard ad sizes including 320×50 for portrait banner ads and 480×32 for landscape banner ads. The ads are shown in the background of an app.
4. The iAd program can be enabled and disabled. App developers can recognize if iAd is loaded by bannerLoaded property while cancelBannerViewAction allows applications to cancel displaying iAd.
5. Because developers can shutdown iAd at any time, revenue wouldn’t be calculated by PPC or PPV but instead a new way that is to be determined by Apple. Apple mentions that revenue can be lower if developers let apps close iAd frequently.
6. Lastly, this technical document only covers the iPhone and iPod touch but not yet the iPad.

We are eagerly awaiting more details on iAd as they become available.

Social media marketing, advertising, and PR are all important components of an effective marketing strategy. However, those components lose their effectiveness, and even become detrimental, when the brand itself is faultering. Advertising is about increasing brand awareness, but when people think negatively about your brand, increasing awareness does not help. Similarly, the social media landscape is where people are communicating among each other about you, about your competition, and about everything else. But again, when people have negative thoughts about you, encouraging more conversations is counterproductive.

Successful brands are those that are singularly focused on delivering the best products and services in markets consumers demand. Consider companies like Apple. On top of their other successes, their iPad is on target to being the fastest product in history to reach the $1 billion mark. Although Apple invests in marketing (principally advertising and minimally in social media), it own’s the public’s perception as a company that delivers the most innovative and desirable devices. Apple is focused on product and customer first, which then enables effective communication options.

On the other hand, companies that cannot consistently meet and exceed their customers’ expectations will faulter no matter how much attention is paid to the remainder of the marketing mix. Their focus should instead be on their products and service. Once those are on the right track, companies can once again employ communication tools to regain growth.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia, focusing on fundamental marketing strategies that employ wide ranges of communications media and delivery. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.