A New Found Respect For Ford

Just because Ford avoided making the decisions that led the other two American car companies down the wrong path. When people at the other two car companies picked directions to pursue someone at Ford must have said, "let's go the other direction."

Why New Products Fail To Make Big Money

Because new products that lack creativity are just line extensions. Case in point? 2008's most successful new product was Gatorade G2. It sold $159 million in the first 12 months. The last successful new product launched by anyone in the consumer packaged goods industry that sprinkled the effort with creative thinking was Frito-Lay's Baked Lays Potato Chips. It sold $310 million in it's first 10 months. No other new product has surpassed this level of first year sales in the consumer packaged goods industry for at least the past ten years. There's a lot of creativity not going around. But there sure are a heck of a lot of underperforming line extensions. You know Chunky Soup was going to be an extension of the Campbell's Brand. They were going to market it as a stew. Then creativity turned it into the soup you eat with a fork. It was the product that first pushed and sustained the Campbell Soup Company at over a billion dollars in sales way back in 1970. Why is this type of creativity so few and far between? Now there's a question.

Brand Me, Brand You and the Decline of New Products

In the days before all the self-promotion brand me and brand you gurus marketers were far more curious; and new products frequently topped half a billion in sales in their first year. Then came the rise of brand me and brand you; brought to you by all the self-promotion gurus who made killings while the companies in which all the mes and yous worked saw declines in new business. As McKinsey reports, CPG execs [still] wonder where new growth will come from. The rise of the MEs was about the time everyone at companies like General Motors replaced the title on their business card with a new title that read, "Knower of all things." Hence systems were devised in companies like General Motors that deflected all responsibility away from individuals. You couldn't put your thumb on anyone for being responsible for anything. Thus began the commoditization of syndicated knowledge. Let's hire the people who tell us the things we already know rather than the people who can tell us things we don't know. What I already know is just easier to manage. We're doing fine. Hell, even at the end General Motors still owned 20% of the market. Hell, nothing to worry about here. Even in failure we have a way to convince ourselves, the brand MEs that GM's stunning failure is a success. The bar for excellence has dropped so low we can go to the head of the class just by showing up...or keeping some dealerships open. Forget Bruce Almighty. It's GM Almighty. Failure is the new black. And that's what the rise of brand ME or Brand You has brought us. Anyway, with the rise of brand me and the decline in outward looking forward thinking the impact of new products began to dwindle. Hell, they've damn faded, and the guys running the companies are being conned by a new nemesis called social marketing. Now we're touting the success of new products brought to us by a new messenger: social media. Companies like P&G and Del Monte Pet Products have new products generated by social media. The "community" created it. I took no risks. Yet none of the growth topped $100 million and not one social media product will top this year's or next year's top 10 most successful new products. Guaranteed. In 2008 the most successful new product anyone launched was Gatorade G2 at $159 million. The least successful new product I've ever conceived working with those pre-ME curious execs was Baked Lays. It sold $310 million in its first 10 months. I'm fairely safe in my contention that Del Monte's Breakfast Snacks for Pets will not move the needle past $60 million. But that won't stop others from following suit. Just no original thinking left in those MEs and YOUs. That's the greatest risk to new products. Now I'm not pooh, poohing new channels for product development but without doping people's thoughts with creativity before they create something you're just not going to get that $400+ million winner that comes from creating new knowledge that's never previously existed to be perceived, mapped or measured.

Calle & Company New Products Top IRI, NPD & ACNielsen 2008 Most Successful New Product Pacesetters for 56th Year

I've said it before. My name is Martin Callé. I run Callé & Company, the most successful new products development company in the consumer packaged goods industry. Once again, our new products topped the best of IRI, NPD and ACNielsen’s most successful new product pacesetters for the 56th year. The least successful new product we ever conceived, Frito-Lay’s Baked Lays Potato Chips sold $310 million in its first 10 months. 2008’s most successful new product, Gatorade’s G2 sold only $159 million in its first year. So if our least successful new product beat their most successful new product conceived some other way, doesn’t that tell you that their best practices aren’t the best practices?

Data from market research companies like IRI, NPD and ACNielsen typically drive new product development in companies such as yours. And no one using that knowledge has been able to launch a more successful new product than ours in 56 years. In fact, ACNielsen has not launched a more successful new product since their founding in 1923. NPD has not launched a more successful new product since their founding in 1967. And IRI has not launched a more successful product since their founding in 1979.

We know companies want a better grip on consumer behavior than NPD provides. We know companies want new products to fly off the shelf faster than those piloted by IRI. We know you want to own and sustain a #1 position for ACNielsen to track. But IRI, NPD and ACNielsen data won’t take you there alone. For example, IRI, NPD and ACNielsen all thought Crock Pot Classics was a great opportunity for ConAgra. Slow-cooking was on the rise. More than 80 percent of US households owned slow cookers and 20 percent of families used slow cookers weekly. Yet Crock Pot Classics ended 2005 10th among 10 at only $71 million - well below Calle & Company’s average best in packaged goods benchmarks.

Higher functioning Calle & Company new products are ever present, yet never twice the same. They're creatively built upon consumer-conceived new knowledge that’s never existed to be mapped or measured. IRI, NPD and ACNielsen can’t do that. So when I say, “Callé & Company is the most successful new product development company in the consumer packaged goods industry,” I mean it. It’s true. So grab yourself one of our better performers. Let’s meet to discuss what everyone else is missing. Got 30 minutes? Let’s talk!

Southern California Sonic Boom

Big one! 12:17 PM this afternoon. Anyone know what it is/was?

How Marketers Define "Convenience"

THE CONVENIENCE BACKLASH

Marketers, always ones predisposed to put a positive spin on things, define "Convenience" a major attribute in packaged goods categories as, "time saving." Sounds good and irrefutable right? Well, at least we've all been conditioned to believe that this is true.

As SIEMENS defines convenience: Convenience enables the automation of the routine functions around the home to improve your comfort and enhance your lifestyle. Sounds like Siemens intends robots to take over every humanly function so that our brain cases become gelatinous gobs of goo. Insidious.

The truth is, "convenience" has conditioned us all to become "lazy" and poor "time managers." Why exercise those muscles when I don't have to. I have these "convenience" items to get me over the hump?

Everyone that's truly good at what they do has a mentor that makes them better. Donald Trump found a mentor when he wanted to air The Apprentice in founder/director of Reality Series Survivor - Mark Burnett. Tiger Woods found a mentor in his father. Each was a time manager.

Hey consumer, you can't do it alone, so don't rely on marketers. If you are a consumer find products that make you work your physical, emotional and mental muscles, that make you manage your time. Make your family your mentors. Take time, make time to bake those cookies from scratch. By forgetting how to use these muscles, the products that champion convenience made us weaker time managers, weaker organizers, weaker, weaker. And that's what's ruined the American economy today. Weak Americans bred by America's spin doctoring convenience marketers. Bad medicine.

We don't have time to relax. We don't have time to relax because we don't use our time wisely. It's relaxing to mix up a cake batter - from scratch. It's relaxing to make a meatloaf. Buying it premade in the refrigerated section of the grocery store only makes you rush on like you don't have time to the next thing. Get convenience, get relaxed, make it from scratch. Quality living and time management is the best convenience. And it's not so hard once you try.

Marketers, look out for the trend against "convenience" in the growing age of responsibility and accountability. Time, is the only commodity we can't get back - consumers want to spend it wisely, so make it a quality time experience. A good opportunity if you're someone like Gold Medal Flour.

What's Wrong With Marketing

Perception. Self-Perception. Everyone has a way of convincing themselves they're number one in some way shape or form. But that's not true.

The managers managing brands think they're OK even if they're not number one. They think OK of themselves. They come to work today to do the same thing they did yesterday and what they will do tomorrow.

Avis tried harder for a long long time. Never made it past number two. And rifled through managements faster than you can shake a stick at. So, unable to come up with a better idea (lack of abstract problem-solving skills) the linear thinking problem solvers simply buzzed their We Try Harder into a famous campaign. Famous? Yes. Memorable? Yes. But that never translated into enough rental units moved to become #1. Memorability does not always equal more SUSTAINED sales. Neither does generating impressions, celebrity endorsements by Oprah or Tiger, etc.

Apple is not a brand name that slithers off the tongue. The Ps get in the way. But Avis is even more a brand name that slithers off your tongue. A man, and most travelers were men back in the heyday of car rental advertising ordered a Hertz...it almost sounded like a beer. Shemales rented an Avis. Now, the industry is so dominated by linear thinking cost cutting problem solving managements that it's a heavily price driven loyalty driven category that spends relatively little on advertising.

Well, when someone at one of these companies comes up with something important to say I guess they'll stop "branding" (It's what you do when you don't have anything important to say) and start "differentiating" themselves with a product-based reason-for-being communicated via traditional and electronic advertising.

Hell, General Motors wasted billions on shemalish advertising every year. All those people thought well of themselves and that they were doing the right thing everyday. Now look at 'em. Problem is/was, they design(ed) and build(t) products to rental car fleet standards. So what did that say about the people who bought their sedans on their own? Not much. I can hear what the neighbors are thinking. "Jesus! He/She bought a rental car." Bye bye GM.