Brand Ng

Mountain Dew's mouse-liquefaction lawsuit defense is easier to stomach than you might think

Stewart Little, doin' the Dew / SONY

In a lawsuit against PepsiCo, a man claimed he found a mouse in a can of Mountain Dew.  The Atlantic Wire reported on Pepsi's defense:

Pepsi's lawyers... found experts to testify... that "the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it," according to the Record. (It would have become a "jelly-like substance," according to Pepsi, adds LegalNewsline.) 

Typically, it's Marketing which asks Legal to approve edgy communications.  They would have been well served to do the reverse in this case.

That said, PepsiCo is quite lucky that this case is for Mountain Dew and not for some other beverage, say Lipton Brisk, or Diet Pepsi.

Smokers don't smoke for health benefits, and neither do drinkers of Mountain Dew. Dew drinkers already know that it's bad for them and, as such, this PR "problem" is unlikely to change the long term behavior of current drinkers.

The Mountain Dew brand has spent the last couple of decades attaching itself to action sports and all things "x-treme."  And action sports athletes are always trying to do tricks that are new and more creative--things which are usually more dangerous.  

Mountain Dew's ability to dissolve a living creature might ultimately be additive to its brand. Teens may view it as a valuable feature of the soda as they jockey, on the halfpipe, for status and manhood.

IMG 50th Anniversary Ad Campaign: "To More Great Moments"

Click on the image to enlarge

IMG officially turned 50 in 2011 and we developed an ad campaign around the anniversary.

As is typical for us, we only ran these ads in sports business publications, so I thought I'd share some of the campaign here.

We decided that the campaign should be about great moments made possible by IMG, with a nod that we will continue to power these moments well into the future.   We didn't want to focus solely on the historic winning plays most often remembered by fans, because we felt that we should also celebrate the sometimes-forgotten ones: a half-time tradition, a turning point in an exhibition game, a steely glare, a split second decision.

Our "great moments" are plentiful: IMG is the company that is credited with creating the sports marketing industry, while adding fashion and other categories over the years.  Throughout its five decades, IMG has developed, owned and supported--in every conceivable way--important events around the world. 

The copy from the anthem ad reads:

 

There are big moments, played under bright lights and in extreme close-up.
And there are little moments that sneak up on us.

There’s the moment right before — when no one knows what will happen.
And there’s the moment right after — when no one believes that it did.

We remember the losing moments, which test devotions. And the winning ones,
which renew them. If there was only the one kind and not the other, then there’d be
no reason to watch.

For 50 years, IMG has dedicated itself to these singular instances in time.
And while it’s difficult to measure precisely when one moment begins or ends,
we know for certain there are countless more to come.

IMG at 50 years. To more great moments.

 

My team for this campaign includes Chris Sweet, Jeff Feng, Christie Kim, Ted Vergakis and others. As always, our ad briefs were a product of IMG ICON Engineering, the process we created to manage sports and fashion brands. 

 

Click on any ad to enlarge

 

 

 

Manchu Wok sign in ORD is a slam dunk winner

For you travelers this Thanksgiving / Black Friday weekend:

My favorite airport advertising backdrop is in ORD/Chicago O'Hare.  At the Manchu Wok, there's a lighted sign with a guy in a Manchu Wok uniform about to make a monsterous slam dunk.  

At first blush, it doesn't seem to make much sense, but the player is actually an anthropomorphized fortune cookie.  The cookie's paper fortune extends, serving as a tongue, MJ-style.  The result: a 3-item combination of chinese food, sports and local lore.  Nice.

NYC.gov ad about pets is unusually cruel.

 

Its one thing to spay or neuter your cat. It's another thing to have it suffer the indignity of photographing it while it's actually happening, and then plastering the result all over the subway.

How to develop the skills to become a top marketer in a large organization

Marketing is increasingly complicated - Source: [Zurb via flickr]

Every year, I meet with many talented interns who are thinking about entering the field of marketing. In the past, I talked about how to get marketing experience without an internship. Here's one question that came from a b-school student this year:

How would you suggest that young people develop their abilities to become a top marketer in a large organization?

My answer:

This seems self apparent, but each person will need their own approach. A person’s strengths, weaknesses, goals, etc., will greatly affect one’s career path. You might, for instance, have an extraordinary ability or interest in design, or perhaps in data analysis, and either of those would put your career on a fairly specific track.

Obviously, it also depends on your target organization, since they have different needs. For example, a design-driven consumer organization is going to have different needs than a sales-focused B2B organization.

That said, to move up the ranks of marketing management, I would want to acknowledge two big trends. The first trend is that there is a lot more complexity in marketing today than even just 10-20 years ago. This complexity is driven by the availability of data and general technology: we simply have more options and more to consider today than before. The second is that competition in the field of marketing has increased; a greater number of smarter people have jumped into the marketing field—as is probably true of any corporate function.

With these two trends in mind, trying to be a generalist too early in your career may not give you the best chance for development. Competition is just too strong, and things have become too complex. Instead, a simple rule of thumb is to become a specialist in two or more areas within marketing, with at least one being a quantitative discipline. This may sound like a misnomer—to be a specialist, you need to focus; to be a double-specialist almost certainly reduces your focus. However, it would be hard to take a top position in marketing while being a specialist in a single area.

Attempting to be a specialist in two or more disciplines will mean you should be prepared to make a switch after a few years of work, including, potentially, a step backwards at that time. For example, to switch from being a search engine marketing role to a product development role may require you to step back one level.  

To become excellent in two or more disciplines, you may need to spend many years in each. That excellence is unlikely to be achieved through classroom assignments. To be a specialist, you’ll actually need to work through real life situations, plan for them, act on your plans, and make adjustments based on your results and on the ever changing marketplace.

It's important that at least one of the disciplines be quantitative in nature. This can include anything that is primarily driven by numbers, such as search marketing optimization, media planning/post-campaign analysis, general statistical analysis, research-based insights, pricing, etc. Measurement has simply become a requirement in marketing, and if you don’t have mastery of numbers, it is unlikely that top marketing jobs will be available to you.