by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC
Faux Sure!
You already know that Pringles aren’t really potato chips. One bite told you that. You just ate ‘em because they make good midnight munchies. And they come in that cool tube.
But the blogosphere buzzed when parent company Proctor & Gamble publicly proclaimed that Pringles aren’t entirely made from potatoes… (more…)
Categories: Case Studies · Marketing 101
Tagged: branding, brands, Buildabrand, marketing, Pringles, Proctor & Gamble, Wal-Mart
My friend Nalts, a top YouTube director and marketing whiz, found this brilliant spoof of focus groups:
Tip of the thinking cap to TheIdeaGroup for creating this video. My only criticism is that I didn’t think of making this myself. (BTW, why is everything funnier with a British accent?)
Focus groups have notoriously rejected minivans, Seinfeld, and telephone answering machines. (“What do I need a machine to answer my phone for? I’m perfectly happy doing it myself…”) They’re statistically irrelevant — indeed, statistically worthless — and the participants are under huge “group think” pressure to conform. In fear of making a mistake, participants tend to favor the familiar and reject the unusual. That spells doom for innovation.
Yet, because focus groups are “scientifically” conducted by overpaid consultants in controlled environments, people take their feedback seriously. I’d rather conduct one-on-one interviews with each person, with the goal to determine their needs and issues.
For more sensible approaches to marketing research, please read my post: Freeze: “Paralysis by Analysis” and other Joys of Marketing Research.
Categories: Marketing 101 · Media Review
Tagged: business satire, customer research, focus groups, marketing research, spoof
"Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake at addition, but it's always someone else's money he's adding up."
- Raymond ChandlerLet's hear it for uncommon sense: that inner itch that inspires you to stray from the herd, ditch the training wheels and leap into the fast lane. As we all know, it's the risk takers who get their faces on the cover of Wired magazine and their words on National Public Radio. No one ever remembers who won "honorable mention"...
Cool Rules Pronto celebrates uncommon sense in marketing and media. It's written by Freddy J. Nager, the Founder & Fusion Director of the L.A.-based marketing agency and production company Atomic Tango. For Cool Rules Pronto, he draws on two decades of experience in advertising and entertainment, including 15 years in new media. He has created campaigns and projects for agencies Saatchi & Saatchi and Magnet Interactive, and for such clients as Toyota, MCA Records, National Lampoon, Nissan & Infiniti, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, the NFL on Fox and numerous startups.
Freddy also serves on the Board of Directors of City Garage Theatre in Santa Monica, California. He holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from USC (go Trojans!), and currently teaches marketing through Antioch University L.A. and the University of Wales/Robert Kennedy College. He also wrote the satirical book, Claw Your Way To The Top: Ten Things I Learned About Business From My Cat, which he'll get around to marketing someday.
