The strategy makes some sense.  It’s easier to convince someone to try an alternative than to create an entire new use for a product.  One detail that seems lost is the actual occasion.  5 hour is positioned against home brewed coffee, and is offered as quicker and easier.  This lacks some believability as there are both instant coffee products like Starbucks via that are nearly as easy and taste pretty good.  Also if we have the ability to plan, many coffee makers have timers.

The missed opportunity seems to be to position 5 hour energy against cafe coffee.   Even the fastest barista can build up a consderable backlog in the morning rush, and the product is pretty expensive.  Given the economic climate, a product that’s faster and cheaper than an alternative might have better results than one that’s just faster.

However, what do you think?  Is 5 hour on track with their marketing or could they do a better job.

It requires a basic understanding of Internet users.  The vast majority of people that use the internet are content consumers.  Sites are built to make this group of users be able to consume content easily.   On the other side, there’s a small percentage that create content.  Some are professionals, but the vast majority of creators toil in relative anonymity, but continue to produce.  These are the folks that create reviews at sites like citysearch and comment on newspaper stories.   They are, virtually by definition, incredibly eager to share their thoughts.

These content creators are the most vital and active Twitter users.  They see the power of the system to push out their message, and are eager to defend its virtue.  Twitter can provide a megaphone for content creators of prior obscurity, and further amplify the voice of a loud organization or celebrity.  Since psychographically they are the same as blog commenters, they aren’t afraid to provide input into any article written about their new soap box.  This creates activity and action on sites that write about twitter.  It creates a cycle, which is self reinforcing.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t yet matter if the masses adopt it.  It will, as the ability to push a message to the masses is what is attractive in the first place.  But for generating hype, it doesn’t matter.

There’s a lot that any business can learn here.  Your best customers are your most powerful advocates.  Make it easy to share your message and they will.  Also, never forget the value you are giving to your best customers.  Twitter provides value by giving a voice, and their best customers repay them by returning the favor in hype.  Nothing is more viral than that.

There are some principles we can draw on those that are successful and some things we can learn from those that aren’t.

A brand like Coke, Budweiser, Audi helps define a lifestyle.  Most of these brands have fan pages in the tens of thousands, whether they are unofficial or official.  The jean brand Seven for all mankind has a following of over 4000 despite never posting a single thing.  In this regard, the use of becoming a fan is not to subscribe to information, but to express elements of your own personality.  To illustrate this, you can look at the great number of quirky groups that have formed around things like the “cool side of the pillow” or “joe the plumber”  People join these as a subtle way to self express.

The second way a brand can use social media is to be more informative.  This can be more time intensive, but if your brand doesn’t have the cachet of cool, it’s your best route.  Telling people how to use your product better, or offering scheduling is key here.  Movies and TV shows do this very well, but even brands and companies that few talk about can do well here.  Imagine something like being told how to date better by match.com

The final way is the seemingly unrelated but sponsored element.  Toyota created a free virtual gift that could be distributed to your friends, as a very soft way to provide value.

The bad category would come from many of the biggest brands.  Fancy feast, nor any other pet food that I could think of, have significant followings on facebook.  After working in that industry, I know that many people define themselves by the brand of cat food they serve their pet.  It seems like they should work harder there.  Of course, they also tried to launch a pet-centric network called petside, so that may have distracted them a bit.

The short answer is that going social is all about providing value in a social context.  It has to provide information, allow self expression or be altruistic.  It can’t be pushy the same way that conventional marketing can become. It’s a different idiom, but there are plenty of brands that can fill that role.

However, there have been a number of recent articles that suggest that there are areas of dissension in this thought.  Internet advertising, a prominent mode to support free content, is showing signs of cracking under the economic pressures. Banner blindness has been long documented and has limited the effectiveness of online “push” advertising.

Leading free sites in a number of categories, such as plenty of fish in dating, have started to try and find ways to charge users.  This, despite being a vocal antagonist of paid business models. The Wall Street Journal was never able to remove the pay wall to its content, despite early intentions and signals that it would do so.  The remaining newspapers are under enormous pressure from their seeming inability to do the same, as chronicled by Bill Grueskin on newsoaur.  Twitter is under pressure to figure out how to make money from its rapidly growing traffic, and has considered paid premium accounts for commercial users

In the meantime, sites that have been unapologetically paid seemed to have weathered the storm, even in these tough economic times.  eBay isn’t the powerhouse it once was, but it still makes very sound profits even during this spending crunch.  eHarmony and match seem to be doing quite well in the space of paid online dating.  iTunes never seems to falter and truly objective review sites like consumer reports have done just fine.  For that matter “adult” content has been a pretty solid source of revenue since the dawn of the Internet.

The highest quality products are items that people will pay for.  I don’t think it’s any different online.  Just because there’s a large amount of content available for free, it doens’t mean that is what you actually want to spend your precious time reading.

There’s a fact that’s hard to deny.  Most websites are a business, one way or another.  Someone has to pay to keep the lights on.  It might be through advertising, it might be through donations, or through subscriptions.  There are times that you get what you pay for. For that matter, it is those payments that allow for potential improvements to many of these sites and products over time.

Even Craigslist, for all of its perception as a philanthropy, quite simply isn’t there just to do good.  They charge fees for listings in a few places, and they aren’t a non-profit.  Sure they could charge more, but don’t confuse a rational business decision with a wanton giveaway.

I’m still not sure where this all will end up.  Certainly there is stress in the system right now that is straining advertising supported businesses.  Targeting technology and other relevancy improvements could strongly improve the value of online advertising inventory.  However, paid buisness models will have the resources to invest in product and marketing far in excess of lower revenue models.  Feel free to leave your comments on the future of free.

The Ritz-Carlton has understood this for a long time.  They know that any nice hotel room is pretty much the same.  It’s a bed and four walls.  What matters is what happens outside the room.  That’s the service.

They also know that service is easy when things are going well.  It’s not that hard to check you in and out, valet the car and deliver your luggage.  What makes the difference is how things are handled when things aren’t going well.

It doesn’t matter if you need a reservation to a restaurant, a special delivery or have an issue with a noisy neighbor.  What ever the problem is, The Ritz has realized they can distinguish themselves as one of the best hotel chains by fixing it and fixing it well.

The Ritz has a customer service policy that borders on amazing.  If a customer has a request, the employee they tell about it must see that it is closed.  They own that interaction beginning to end.  No one gets to say “that isn’t my job” or “here’s the person to call.” They do it.  They have to.

Any business can learn from this.  Your customers want their problem fixed, what ever it is.  They don’t care who does it for them.  When they get shuffled around they lose faith that the issue will be solve.  Empower people to make it right, and it will get better.

There’s the famous Nordstrom story about the woman who returned a tire there even though they don’t sell tires.  Charlie Trotter has told a story about ordering a steak from a nearby restaurant to serve to a customer who wanted one, even though he didn’t have one on hand.  Fix a problem and you can build a loyal customer.  How would you have liked to have your business mentioned as one of these service leaders?  It’s a viral marketing buzz that’s hard to beat.   Anyone care to share a comment on a great experience?

Product placement is one of the most obvious ones.  It’s one of the rules of the Top Chef drinking game, and that rule alone would have you pretty buzzed by the end.  I will give them credit for keeping most of the placements relevant to the “story” A few things like the phone placements this season were a bit forced, but in general they work.  A stove or wine brand makes perfect sense in a show about cooking.

Top Chef also does a great job of providing challenge sponsorship opportunities.  Creating a frozen dinner (Bertolli) or low calorie treat (Dr. Pepper) makes sense for the brands in the past that have done it.   The Glad family of products sponsors the overall pride and gets more than frequent mentions as a result.

Even those placing traditional ads might get a bit better off in the show.  They use frequent mini-sodes that bring fans back into the show if they tune out or try to skip past via Tivo.  I haven’t touched the mobile content or website integration, which further extend the show in advertiser friendly methods.

I don’t have the data that proves or disproves the effectiveness of their tactics.  What I can say is that the same sponsors have appeared season after season.  To me, that’s pretty good evidence that something is working.

There is a real lesson that any marketer can use.  Engagement is key to effectiveness.  If you find a place to promote your product that is relevant, it’s likely that you’ll do better.  Placement matters for you and your brand.  Scattershot placements are far less valuable than relevant ones.

The ad was rejected by Yahoo.

Why?

It lacked a disclaimer on the word “Free.”  That’s right.  They expected that the word could only be used with some sort of catch.

I tried to explain that we are truly free and get a sample disclaimer.  How can you disclaim something that’s true?

I’m leaning toward using “internet connection required” for our online ad.

Free, we will miss you.  I wish you still meant something because in these dark times, we need you more than ever.  It’s sad how often I need to put you in quotes to signify your empty meaning.

Even in the early days of the Internet, the rise in affiliate marketing led to “free” giveaways of expensive items.  The catch there was that you needed to complete a great number of offers, at substantial cost, to receive the so-called free item.  The affiliate marketer made more revenue than the cost of the item, and the rube customer received a number of products and services.  Certainly not free, but if a person were actually interested in all of the offers they did get the product for free.

The idea of the free trial was another big blow.  The idea was for a person to try out a web service for a short time at no cost to them.  Of course they had to enter their credit card for the free trial which was mercilessly charged if the service was not canceled in time.  The “adult” industry made this practice an artform and free was kicked hard yet again.

Credit reporting services brought both of these together to deliver a deadly blow to free.  Rather than go to the government’s weakly promoted annualcreditreport.com, where a consumer can truly download a credit report from every agency once every year for no cost; the credit reporting firms promoted their own “free” solutions which require a trial of a credit monitoring solution.  No matter what it says in the url, if a consumer doesn’t watch out they will end up with a monthly bill for their zero cost credit report.

Free had a bit of resurgence with peer to peer downloading, but getting something for free that you are supposed to pay for is just as wrong as thinking you are getting something for free and then paying for it.  The big difference is the lawsuits that were directed at the biggest users of free downloading.   The legal bills made this anything but free.

I’m certain that you have been hurt many more times than I could ever chronicle.  I feel for you.  Once such a noble word.  Now people assume you are part of a deception.

People have tried to revive you by adding 100% in front of your forsaken name, but to no avail.  Even the words completely and totally have no effect on you anymore, my poor lost free.

It is time that we move on and agree that you mean nothing now.

So how can we marketers tell people we won’t be charging them?   I have to admit I’m a bit lost without you free.  Could someone send me a free hug?

Why would a brand this strong risk reintroducing itself as “G”?  Why would it change its formula to include vitamins?  Why would it retool its entire line to feature odd text like “bring it” and ditch almost all graphics?

The answer in short is that it is now reacting to an emerging competitor, vitamin water.  While I don’t have data to support this, I have to imagine that the distribution force of Coke combined with their brand endorsements have started to take significant market share.

Gatorade is now starting to look and act a lot like their #2 competitor, and that might be a really bad move.

Moves like this are the “rock and a hard place” for brands.  If they do nothing, vitaminwater will continue to steal their share.  If they change, they lose much of the advantage they held with their brand heritage.  The normal strategy here is to innovate, but line extensions like Propel and G2 seem only moderately well adopted.

I do think the Gatorade team has done one very significant innovation they have failed to leverage, at least to my knowledge.  They launched a line for performance athletes called Gatorade Elite.  Done right, this could be a “halo” that could further their reputation as the experts in serving athletes.  Done wrong, it will collect dust on the shelves at Gold’s Gym.  I’m far from the target here, so I don’t know much about distribution.  In fact the first I had heard about it was in researching this post.

We all wanted to be like mike, so why not take that to the next level with Gatorade Elite?

In the end, the ad wasn’t very good, but they had more than made up for it in buzz.  They’ve repeated the stunt for several years, by always trying to push the letter of the law to the limit.

The latest in the string of “PRstunt-erists” is a dating website that promotes affairs and cheating.  Darren Rovell of CNBC was kind enough to provide them with a blog post about how their ad for the Super Bowl Program was denined.

Darren, when you post links to the site, the PRstunt-erists win.  They could have gotten maybe 100,000 people to notice their ad, and your coverage might generate 10x that.

Personally, I stand behind the NFL and their decison to deny the ad.  In fact to atone, I think they should offer a free ad in the program to the dating site that is the polar opposite.  One that is not for married people and is free – the free dating site downtoearth.com.