Jonah Bloom Outreach

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Dear Blogger,

Are you a recipient of the Jonah Bloom outreach email from Advertising Age Magazine? If you are a member of Advertising Age Magazine's Power 150 Marketing Blogs I'd encourage you to check your email. Here's what I had to say in response to the email:

The most overlooked piece of digital technology today is the simplest and most overlooked. The keyword. With 81 billion blogs and websites, business owners depend upon keywords to drive site visits. But we all use the same keywords. So it becomes impossible for Google’s AdSense for Search and Content Optimization Teams to help you build truly effective campaigns. Regardless of the business you are in. If you are an ad agency ‘ad agency’ would be a keyword, so would branding, strategy, product positioning, differentiation, marketing and a plethora of other terms we all use. Commodities. So using keywords, differentiation becomes impossible; unless you find a way to identify keywords people are searching for that no other web site but yours has to offer.

As a new product concept and product positioning consultant to companies such as Procter & Gamble I was stunned to find a site with a very simple keyword utility called wordtracker.com. You plug in the term and it gives you something called a KEI index. The higher the number the more people are searching for the term and the fewer the number of web sites containing the keyword. What a great way to differentiate yourself. I’ve found gaps covering “Perceptual Monopolies” and “Abstract Dimensions” among others that have captured the fancy of inquisitive clients everywhere, and the best part is, no other consultant or ad agency on the planet employ these terms, so I know they’re not stepping on my Intellectual Property or sharing these concepts and philosophies with clients.

The 3 Innovations

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I have been asked by a prestigious MBA School's professor to proof an advanced copy of his book. And while the author does an excellent job of describing the problems and symptoms, he like others are yet to tell you "how to do it."

There are three Innovations in Business.

1) Technological Innovation, typically patent driven, which is why companies grow in fits and starts and breakthroughs are fewer and farther between;

2) Product Design Innovation which more often than not is practiced simply by making the old look new - i.e. turning mops into Swiffers - which is easy to copy and does not sell an incrementally greater number of redesigned mops;

3) and the most underutilized and least understood Innovation

Perceptual Innovation® leading to Perceptual Monopolies® that enable companies to:

A) Leapfrog competitors with ideas that change thinking rather than changing things with expensive and risky capital technology investment;

B) Change consumer habits and practices;

C) Reverse the effects of mature product and category (or industry lifecycles - every company's challenge in fast track consumer packaged goods categories and automobiles);

D) And, if you're a company such as Starbucks, Chrysler, GM, Ford or Home Depot desperately in the need - turn mature earnings companies back into rapid growth businesses.

This all speaks to C-level execs who are the leaders in charge of innovation driving the growth of their company. It sure isn't Chuck in product design or Larry in manufacturing/R&D.

We have a process that will readily identify the Perceptual Monopolies® you desire, if you have a competition in you that does not want to see others (rivals and competitive brands) succeed - work that also enables you to point your company's future development of technologies in the proper direction.

Why ads don't work

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You know. I had a new guy visit my site who just started his own blog. His name and site is http://danielhonigman.com/

I visited his site and found that his post dealt with an ad he saw and on which he speaks on why he wonders why the ads he sees don't work. I had to post him back....

No Danman10019. You're correct. Ads today have lost site of the goal of actually getting someone to get up and go do something. They are made more in the mold of, "if you throw enough shit against the glass some of it might stick."

There has been a dramatic abscence in "calls to action" or "reasons-for-being" in ads over the last 25 years, - the things that give ads traction - coincidentally coinciding with a decline of importance of "positioning" in the minds of marketers. Oh sure, Cadillac has a "positioning" - it lives in the luxury high price quadrant versus Chevy's family/value quadrant at GM. The only problem is that these "positionings" do nothing to drive breakthrough creative or innovative Perceptual Innovations or Perceptual Monopolies that cause consumers to get up and go spend their money with Cadillac versus the likes of a Lexus or Audi that instant. Just puting mid life good looking models getting out of Cadillacs with tag lines that say, "Life. Liberty and the Pursuit" just don't cut it motivationally. They have all the pieces - they know who their buyers are - the strivers, the alpha men and women - GM and its agencies just don't know how to put them together. Please delve into this subject further. You are on the right track. For more about the auto industry also visit Crubs & Fents at http://crubsandfents.wordpress.com

The ads you see are the way they are, because the people who make the ads have grown up in an environment where the ads they make are much like the ads they've seen. Same goes with their teachers in MBA schools. Therefore, they believe they are correct. As the saying goes, "average has gotten so bad that you can go to the head of the class just by showing up."

Calle Creativity Summit - New York, New York - November, 9-11, 2007 - Host Cat Deeley

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American Idol presenter Cat Deeley will host Calle & Company's 10th Annual Creativity Summit in New York November 9-11, 2007. Director of Differentiation Strategy Martin Calle says attendance has grown every year. Invitations closed August 29 and the event is sold out.

This year the conference will focus on product differentiation and why CEOs are more likely to jettison a brand or ad agency than look in-depth at the product to find brand boosting product-based marketing solutions to take the business to the next level.

CEOs chase consumer ears and eyeballs, they promote lavishly, but the anchors, the product's features and benefits can only take the business so far. The goal of the conference will be to present attendees with solution strategies. To illustrate, Martin said that M&Ms started out as a hard shelled candy. Nobody wanted it until Rooser Reeves found a more abstract under pinning; "they melt in your mouth, not in your hand." Martin says answers like this are so obvious, they're not obvious. Advertisers no longer think that way, substituting a product's reason-for-being with :30 seconds of buzz du jour dialogue. And advertising has taken a tumble. Martin says, "My grandfather had a farm. My dad had a garden. I have a can opener."

Breakouts will cover Multi-Dimensional Creativity® - a linking process that creates the conversation of creativity in consumer minds, Abstract Dimensioning® - the critical mass of connected thought that becomes available when stimulated into existance through the use of custom-created proactive materials. Question-based or Quantitative Marketing - pitfalls and poor traditions of gathering and measuring data, establishing Perceptual Monolpolies® - the lost ad process and more. A complete calendar of events is available from Calle & Company. future@callecompany.com