Yays and Nays of the Week

Having spent much of the past week in one of my favorite cities, Reykjavik, I didn’t consume as much marketing media as usual. Oh sure, I was exposed to just as much of it. But Icelandic isn’t one of the languages in which I’m conversant (those would be American English and British English), so most of the messaging was lost on me.

That said, I did see and hear enough to compile what I’m hoping will be a regular feature of this blog: the marketing zeniths and nadirs of the week.

·         * Outerwear brand 66° North is a ubiquitous presence in Iceland, where it's headquartered. And it’s also ubiquitous on Icelandair planes: 66° North apparently sponsored the flaps of cloth than hang over the seat headrests, so its name and logo are in front of you throughout the entire flight. Because it’s a low-key logo, though, and absent any obnoxious hard sell, the advertisement didn’t bother me. And the headrest covers are a great way of establishing a quiet, almost subconscious brand awareness—a brand awareness that I’m sure pays off when first-time visitors arrive at Keflavik Airport only to realize they should have packed an extra sweater or a winter jacket after all, but lo and behold! there’s a 66° North shop right there.

·        * “Oops! George Kovacs lighting, giftable ceramic & tabletop, and designer & personalized holiday cards” read the subject line from Joss & Main, a flash-sales decor site (and, full disclosure, a competitor of a company I work for). That “Oops!” certainly grabbed my attention, much more than anything else within the subject line. But when I opened the email, there was absolutely no reference to any sort of goof. Could “Oops!” have been included simply to boost the open rate? Last year a rash of companies sent out “sorry we goofed” emails apologizing for slow site load times, deliverability snafus, and the like. No doubt some of these apologies were valid, making amends for genuine mistakes. But it’s just as likely that some were bogus, written solely because subject lines referring to mistakes—and often offering discounts or other goodies as an apology—often lead to a lift in response.

·        
         * Another subject line, from UK furniture retailer Cargo: “7 Weeks to go… Are you ready?” Obviously this was meant to create a sense of urgency regarding Christmas shopping. But I think “seven weeks” would encourage procrastination instead. “What, I still have seven more weeks till Christmas? That’s plenty of time. Let's head to the pub.”

·         * And another home furnishings retailer, Pier 1 Imports, has unveiled its holiday marketing with the tagline “Cheer 1 Imports. This is where the holidays begin.” It’s simple, it’s sweet—I love it. I also love the cheery Santa dancing atop its home page.

The top photo is of Reykjavik taken from the bell tower of Hallgrímskirkja church. This photo captures everything I love about the city.

Timely Subject Lines I Wish I'd Written

Writing email subject lines is part of what I do every day. That means I’m all too aware that 1) clever subject lines aren’t always more effective than your straightforward, and even dull, versions, and 2) being clever isn’t easy.

So while I have no way of knowing if the subject lines that landed in my inbox this week from U.K. home furnishings retailer Cargo and children’s clothing merchant The Children’s Place generated satisfactory open and clickthrough rates, they are nonetheless worthy of kudos for their creativity, if nothing else. In other words, they persuaded me to open the emails, even though I no longer live in the U.K. and I’d dropped a small fortune on clothing for my child just last week.

 “What are you doing with your 25^th hour?” was the subject line of the Cargo email I received on Thursday, three days before the British were scheduled to set the clocks behind one hour to mark the return to Standard Time. It’s a great, unforced tie-in to something that Cargo’s audience is no doubt aware of (and anyone who had forgotten about having to switch the clocks no doubt appreciated the reminder). At the same time, it piques just enough curiosity to encourage recipients to click through.

In the body of the email, which leads off with an attention-grabbing image of colorful alarm clocks, Cargo suggests using that extra hour to take advantage of an extra 25% off certain lines of bedding. The sale was scheduled for just one hour only—not in the wee hours of the morning but rather from 7 to 8 p.m. Limiting the time frame of the sale to just one hour is perfectly in keeping with the theme of the promotion—and it has the added benefit of not costing Cargo too much in lost margin. And for those not in the market for Kirsty Allsop or Orly Healy linens, the email serves a reminder that Cargo is offering 10% off almost everything else in its stores and on its website.

“Fiends & Family Event—25% Off? LAST DAY” read the subject line of the email from The Children’s Place. My first thought, when I saw this at 4 a.m. during another of my sessions with insomnia, was that The Children’s Place had failed to catch an embarrassing typo. I’d like to think that if I’d been more rested I would have immediately recognized this as some sort of Halloween tie-in, but in a way it doesn’t matter: I’ve had email pros tell me that subject lines they’d erroneously sent out, with typos or internal messages such as “TEST,” pulled better than standard subject lines. So while curiosity may kill the cat, it can also spur consumers to open an email.

That’s certainly why I clicked through: to see if “Fiends” was intentional or a typo. And as is clear from the downright adorable cartoon bat on the email message, this is indeed a Halloween promotion. 

The Children’s Place home page, by the way, carried through with the messaging and even more adorable graphics.

Both of these emails serve as reminders that marketing in general, and the crafting of subject lines in specific, is an art as much as a science. And I certainly wish I were artistic enough to come up with something like these messages.

"We're Number One!"

As I’ve noted before, I’m a sucker for cute. So when I received an email from Liberty London informing me of a new, exclusive collection of Hello Kitty goods, including fabulous Liberty fabrics incorporating the epitome of cuteness herself, I had to check them out.

Liberty is a British department store (and if you’ve never visited it, you should definitely make a point of doing so on your next trip to London, especially if you love textiles). A quick Google search, however, showed that Liberty has a U.S.-specific URL, us.liberty.co.uk, as well as its primary liberty.co.uk. address, so I figured that it must ship to the States.

And it does… for a flat fee of £25. Unless the order is especially bulky, in which case the price goes up.

As of this writing, £25 comes to $38.91. I like Hello Kitty, but not that much.

In any event, I was also somewhat annoyed that even though I clicked on the U.S.-specific URL, pricing appears only in pounds. There is no on-site option for converting the currency, and even the international shipping prices are given in sterling.

I decided to visit a few other U.K. websites to see if this is the exception or the rule. Harrods doesn’t have any country-specific URLs, and like Liberty it lists all pricing, including shipping costs, in pounds. Also like Liberty, it charges a standard £25. And Harrods even has its own Hello Kitty collection. 

Hello Kitty may be cute, but apparently she’s also quite the slut.

When I logged on to the John Lewis website, I was greeted with a geographically targeted home page: The top graphic was of the Stars and Stripes in the shape of the U.S., with “We now deliver to the U.S.A.” in large type. Below it were several links to a page detailing its international delivery policies and prices. Again, the fees are all in pounds, though at least it costs only £15 to deliver to the States.

It was more or less the same at the other British stores I visited, though Harvey Nicks and Selfridges don’t even ship overseas, and Debenhams and House of Fraser ship to the States for only £10. Both of the latter sites, incidentally, have a link near the top of their home page calling out their “low international delivery rates,” so they clearly seem to be trying to expand global reach.

Surprisingly, two U.S. department stores put these other sites to shame. I say “surprisingly” because U.S. merchants have long been considered less willing than their European counterparts to accommodate international consumers. But on the bottom of its home page, Macy’s has a flag icon and a link that reads “Change country.” Click the link, and you’re taken to a page with drop-down menus listing scores of countries and currencies. Select the currency of your choice, and as you navigate through the site, nearly all prices will appear in that currency. (The exceptions are the prices on nondynamic promotional banners that appear on some landing pages.) Bloomingdale’s offers the same functionality, with a link on the bottom of its home page that reads “International shipping.”

Both Macy's and Bloomies are well-known destinations for overseas visitors, so a failure to have included this option would have been a true missed opportunity. But Harrods is also a must-visit destination for tourists, so it seems that the venerable British retailer is in fact leaving money on the table. 

And while some retailers might not be able to justify the expense of adding a currency converter to their ecommerce site, surely they could at the very least give the international shipping fees in the intended recipient's local currency. This is particularly so if they're making an effort to woo international customers, as Liberty seems to be doing with its U.S.-specific URL and John Lewis with its geotargeted home page.

Who’d have thought that the xenophobic Yanks would have bested the more global-minded Brits at accommodating international consumers? If I were still living in England, this would be an opportunity for me to hoist my fingers in the air and declare, in my most American accent, “We’re number one!”

In Your Suggestions I Trust

By the end of the month I hope to have decided whether to self-publish one of my novels. I’m leaning toward doing so, as an e-book only. Granted, that means my family won’t be able to read it, as we don’t yet own an e-reader, but then again, it’s not as if they have the slightest inclination to anyway. (Last year, when we were donating a bunch of my daughter’s old books to her school library, I was going to include copies of two nonfiction kids’ books I’d written a dozen or so years ago. My daughter asked me not to, though: “What if one of my friends reads them and doesn’t like them? Then I’ll feel bad.” Yeah, my family’s supportive like that.)

Rather than buckle down and read all the necessary nitty-gritty about the self-publishing process, I’m leaping ahead and wondering how to market the book. I’ll get in touch with blogs that review e-books, of course, and with our local newspapers, and the newspapers in North Devon, England, where much of the book takes place. But then what?

I could make a book trailer, I suppose. I’ve written about book trailers in the past,  but I’m not yet convinced that they actually help sell books. One of the most entertaining trailers I’ve come across, for John Wray’s Lowboy (a fabulous novel I tout every chance I get, like now), featured comic actor Zach Galifianakis as Wray being interviewed by Wray himself. But while it was a hoot (“Do you consider—” “No not really”), it offered virtually no information about the book. Sure, it's had nearly 43,000 views on YouTube, but how many of those viewers—42,000 of whom were probably Galifianakis fans, subsequently read the book?

YouTube also has videos of Wray giving a reading on the New York subway, which makes perfect sense in that much of Lowboy takes place on the subway, and he in fact wrote much of it while riding the subway. I wrote much of my book, Trust, in a b-and-b in Ilfracombe, Devon, where I lived my first summer in England. Much as I’d love to go back to Devon to film for a trailer certain locales that figure in the book (the b-and-b, where the protagonists, a young schizophrenic and an expat writer, first meet; the restaurant where Steve tries to kill himself; the Pannier Market in Barnstaple), I don’t think my nonexistent budget can swing it. Then, too, there’s the fact that not only do I have a face for radio, but I also have a voice for the silent movies. (Exhibit A.)

This blog post is, I guess, a request for help: If you have any ideas for how I might spread the word about Trust, I’d love to hear them.

And in case you’re interested, here’s the elevator pitch (assuming it’s a long elevator ride) for Trust:

A young schizophrenic from rural Devon and an American expat writer of chick-lit would appear to have little, if anything, in common. When Steve and Cat meet, however, in a faded resort town on the Bristol Channel, it's because both have made an escape of sorts. Steve has slipped away from his sheltered accommodation in hopes of weaning himself off his antipsychotics, with their numbing side effects; Cat has moved from London, where she has lived for seven years, in the wake of a divorce and suffering from writer's block. They develop a tentative friendship that deepens even as Steve is hospitalized following a psychotic break and Cat begins dating Alex, a London radio producer. But will Cat's relationships with both Steve and Alex survive her decision to return to London and bring Steve with her? And will Steve have enough trust in Cat—and in himself—to move beyond the only life he's known? Steve and Cat narrate the story in alternating chapters, providing distinct views on their motivations and perceptions.

(The photo above is of a street in Barnstaple—or Boutport, as I call it in Trust—similar to the one where Steve's sheltered accommodation is located.)

Using Twitter (and Liz Jones) for Good, Not Evil

The Liz Jones in Somalia Twitter feed is a brilliant example of the immediacy of the medium and its unique marketing and messaging possibilities. It’s also damn funny.

Liz Jones, for those who have managed to avoid the British rag the Daily Mail, is a columnist best known for her almost mind-boggling self-absorption. (This blog tallies just a few examples.) Several months after writing ad nauseum about her severe financial straits, which she admits are due largely to her insistence on buying designer garb, exotic vacations, and gourmet treats she can't afford, she penned a detailed account of her £13,145 facelift. Her weekday column is appropriately titled “Liz Jones Moans,” and among her targets are parents who take photos of their offspring, people who use laptops on trains, working women who decide to have children, barbecues, women who can’t afford to hire a cleaner but fail to maintain a spotless home, public transit, and women who fail to sport flattering hairstyles.

To put her in perspective for New Yorkers, she makes the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser look like a font of empathy and human kindness.   

So when the Daily Mail opted to send Jones (“I drive a BMW and never use public transport. I always have the central heating on full and walk around in a T-shirt. I frequently order films on Sky Box Office, watch them for five minutes, then change the channel”) to report on the famine in Somalia, outrage predictably ensued. 

Just days after word of Jones’s assignment hit the media, a blogger who frequently takes aim at the Mail under the handle DMReporter launched @LizJonesSomalia and began posting tweets that are a bit over the top for the real Jones (“Awful nights sleep; the sobbing outside my hotel window was so loud. Without my duck-feather duvet I wouldn't have gotten a wink over 8hrs.”), but not by much.

Just five days after its July 31 launch, the feed has more than 7,000 followers. More impressive, it has already raised nearly £10,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s East Africa Crisis Appeal simply by encouraging Jones haters to donate £2 apiece.

Besides being a wonderful example of how to turn lemons (or rather, a sour-as-a-lemon human being) into lemonade, Liz Jones in Somalia shows that an ad hoc campaign implemented in immediate reaction to an event can generate response—and that Twitter is an ideal conduit for this sort of effort. Followers retweet and beget other followers, who in turn spread the word via Facebook, blogs, and other social media as well. DMReporter himself/herself is encouraging cross-pollination by linking to and referencing @LizJonesSomalia in his/her regular feed, Tumbler account, and the like.

It’s also an example of how to latch on to an anger-inducing subject to produce positive results. We tend to skirt around associating ourselves or our brands with anything remotely negative, for good reason: It can be difficult to control the anger away from ourselves and toward our target. But by offering the audience an alternative to the negative—in this case, using the galvanizing power of Jones for good instead of evil—Liz Jones in Somalia provides a catharsis of sorts for its followers. And in exchange for this sense of relief, the followers reward the provider of said relief with goodwill and loyalty.

Why Harpo Quenches My Thirst, but Jennifer Aniston Doesn't

Until a few weeks ago, an image of Jennifer Aniston holding a bottle of water was splayed across a billboard a block from my office. I’m sure the brand of water was also splayed across the billboard, but I don’t recall it, even though I stared at the billboard often enough. Nor do I recall any message, like “Jennifer Aniston says this is the tastiest water ever” or, to quote from the episode of Avatar in which Sokka has a bad trip after guzzling down some hallucinogenic cactus juice, “It’ll quench you. Nothing’s quenchier. It’s the quenchiest.” 

I guess I’m supposed to associate the brand of water with whatever positive attributes Jennifer Aniston is believed to possess, and figure that by drinking it—or maybe just by holding the bottle—I’ll gain those attributes too.

The only reason I even thought of the billboard is that last night I came across a 1955 commercial for Pepsi starring Harpo Marx. Even though Harpo, of course, never uttered the name of the brand, I could easily recall which soft drink he was plugging. 

Granted, comparing a billboard to a nearly two-minute commercial that includes harp playing and pantomime isn’t apples to apples. So let’s compare one print ad to another. First, Aniston for Smartwater (I Google’d “Jennifer Aniston” and “bottled water” to find out the brand):

The copy establishes a rationale for Aniston to be promoting water, and to be flaunting her toned torso while doing so: “Working out feels great… afterwards. That’s why I drink Smart. It’s hydration I can feel. (And it’s one part of my routine I never sweat.)” What it doesn’t do it explain why I should drink Smartwater over not-so-smart (read: tap) water.

Now, here’s a 1961 ad for Smirnoff, featuring (yet again) Harpo Marx*:

 “When I honk for vodka, I expect Smirnoff,” reads the headline. The copy continues, “Harpo, the silent one, may be excused from naming his brand. But you, gentle reader, should be specific. For, ever since Smirnoff changed the drinking habits of America, countless Johnny-come-lately vodkas have gotten into the act. To ensure yourself of the flawless original, always call for your Smirnoff by name. It makes the driest Martinis, the smoothest Screwdrivers, the most delicious drinks of every kind. So know what you drink—drink what you know.”

The link between Smirnoff and Harpo is tenuous at best. Jennifer Aniston is much more likely to drink Smartwater than Harpo, who didn’t really imbibe, was to have consumed Smirnoff. Yet the Smirnoff copy gives me a reason not just to buy vodka but to buy Smirnoff vodka: It’s smoother and drier than the rest.

Many brands, like Smartwater, forget that with celebrity endorsements, the celeb is merely the hook. He or she will attract the consumer’s attention, but it’s still up to the brand to sell itself. No matter how seemingly perfect the match between a celebrity and a product may be, that in and of itself won’t persuade most consumers to buy said product. First of all, I’d wager that most consumers no longer believe that the celebrities use the particular products they endorse. Second, there are too many celebrities posing for pictures with too many products.

Of the commercials I’ve seen in the past few weeks, just one sticks in my mind. And it doesn’t feature a celebrity. It’s for an antiflatulence product called Gas-X, and it includes the line “Your son Rip is on line toot.” It’s neither sophisticated nor tasteful, but it seized the attention of all three of us in our household. Just as important, it used that attention to inform us of the benefits of the product (speedy relief of gas and bloating, in individual-dosage packaging that easily fits in a trouser pocket). 

In this case, “Your son Rip is on line toot” is the celebrity, catching the audience’s eye in the same way that Harpo’s mugging did for Smirnoff or Jennifer Aniston’s flat tummy does for Smartwater. But the rest of the commercial touted the unique selling proposition of Gas-X just as the ad copy did for Smirnoff but failed to for Smartwater.

If only Jennifer Aniston had said, “Smartwater’ll quench you. Nothing’s quenchier. It’s the quenchiest.”

* The reason for my current obsession with Harpo is that I just finished reading his autobiography, Harpo Speaks, and it was one of the best books I’ve read in the past few years. You needn’t be a Marx Brothers fan to enjoy it; I wasn’t. Harpo's evocations of growing up poor in Manhattan, struggling through vaudeville, and hanging out with other members of the Algonquin Round Table provide an indelible sense of those milieus while also showing without telling what a happy-go-lucky, decent, and sweet guy Harpo was. And as an adoptive parent, I was moved to tears by his description of how he and his wife presented their four children with the stories of their own adoptions. So if you haven’t read it, do so.

Editor's Note

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted, and due to an overabundance of work, it'll probably be another week or two before I post again. Sorry, but I'll be back as soon as possible. Thanks!