Author: Drew Neisser

Yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the last hour of the Wachovia Championship at which Tiger won his 57th PGA tournament. That puts him fifth on the all-time winners list, just five short of the legendary Arnold Palmer. This wasn’t one of his crushing runaway victories. Rather he simply stayed calm while the competition seemed to melt away handing him a cozy little two-stroke victory. What is amazing to me is that I never tire of seeing Tiger win. In fact, I don’t even bother to tune in when he is not in contention. All the other players are simply Tiger-bait.

In other sports, there is usually a fatigue that comes with continued dominance (a lot of sports fans hate the Yankees and Duke basketball for that very reason.) But not golf. Anyone who has ever picked up a club knows how hard it is to hit the ball straight once, let alone drive after drive, chip after chip, putt after putt. What Tiger does is simply magical and can be enjoyed over and over and over again.

Speaking of driving, I happened to notice one ad during the golf broadcast that promoted Buick, Pontiac and GMC as partners with a non-profit called A Million Thanks. A Million Thanks encourages anyone and everyone to write thank you letters to American troops posted around the world. Founded four years ago by a high school student named Shauna Fleming, this charity is inspirational on a number of levels. First, Ms. Fleming started A Million Thanks as a freshman in high school! If you think you can’t make a difference as an adult, consider for a moment that this young lady from Orange, California has now inspired millions of letters, letters that have really meant a lot to the recipients. If you have teenagers like I do, then you’ll want to share Ms. Flemings’ story with them assuming you can get your kids away from their gaming or IM’ing for a second or two.

The idea of the commercial was to inform people that they could drop off their “thank you” letters at any Buick, Pontiac or GMC dealer. The connection to GM brands and this program seemed tenuous except perhaps as a subtle way of reminding Americans that these are American brands that support “American” values. Though this is clearly a “good will” effort on GM’s part, I couldn’t help but wonder if this program would actually help GM sell more cars, something they need to do a lot more of. Perhaps the folks that come to GM dealerships to drop off letters will check out the cars while they are there and be so inspired that they’ll drive away with a new car. Frankly, I hope so since GM needs all the help they can get as Toyota continues to eat their lunch.

The reality is that GM cars are just not as good as Toyota’s on basic measures like reliability and fuel economy. Toyota is the Tiger Woods of the automotive industry. They just keep producing a superior product, raising the bar for everyone around them. While I applaud GM for supporting A Million Thanks, I would be infinitely more excited about it if they had more reliable, more fuel efficient cars on the lot. That would indeed be driving for good.

I’m in a good mood this morning. The sun is shining. It’s Friday. The Yankees starting pitchers actually held their own yesterday, winning back to back victories over the Texas Rangers. No one got injured. There is still hope after all that by October the Yanks will find themselves in the playoffs, despite the fact that they just set a record for using the most starting pitchers (10) in the first 30 days. If you aren’t a baseball fan, you may not appreciate the problems associated with a weak and/or injury-plagued pitching staff. Don’t worry, I’ll relate this back to Marketing for Good momentarily.

Pitching is the single most important variable in baseball. Good pitching inevitably beats good hitting. Over that last six years, Yankee hitting has been awesome during the regular season, only to be stifled by a few great pitchers during the playoffs. You have to go back to 2000 when Andy Petitte and Mariano Riviera combined to shut down the New York Mets in their five game World Series.

In marketing terms, pitching is essentially your product offering. Good products inevitably beat good advertising. If your product stinks, no amount of advertising perfume can save it. Jet Blue struggled this winter as foul weather wreaked havoc on their schedules, causing a blizzard of delays and bad press. Another airline, with the product equivalent of a bad pitching staff, might not have recovered from the avalanche of negative publicity and customer defections. But Jet Blue’s product is fundamentally sound and the customers have returned by the planeful. Sure Jet Blue upgraded the IT system that became overloaded this winter, helping them to get back to the basics that built their brand — strong customer service. The sizzle provided by the “Customer’s Bill of Rights” would not have saved the game if Jet Blue had not truly renewed its commitment to providing a thoroughly pleasant customer experience at every point of contact. Once the product was “fixed”, marketing communications had no problem hitting into the gaps, reminding the consumer of all that Jet Blue has to offer.

Marketing for Good encourages marketers to enhance their product offerings as the primary way to achieve competitive advantage. If your product line-up is not as strong and as it should be (i.e. weak pitchers) you will undoubtedly struggle as the season unfolds. One way to enhance your offering is by turning your communications into a service in and of itself. In the Jet Blue example, their Customer Bill of Rights was essentially a marketing idea that became a product enhancement. Other examples will be forthcoming. And if you are listening, Mr. Cashman (GM of the Yankees), do us all a favor and go buy some good pitchers, pronto.

Flipping through this week’s Economist, I was hoping to stumble upon a fresh example of Marketing for Good. Remarkably, the only one I found was from “big bad” Microsoft about their global technology competition called the Imagine Cup. Though the competition is not new, it was new to me and I was intrigued enough to learn more about it. Turns out the Imagine Cup is now in its 5th year, involving over 100,000 students from over 100 countries. The introduction on the website imaginecup.com sets the tone:

Let’s face it — the world needs help. The kind of help that happens when you take the top young minds from around the globe and turn them loose on solving the world’s toughest problems. That’s what the Imagine Cup is all about. This is your chance to innovate and create, show the world what you’ve got, and win some serious prizes. Simply put, it’s your chance to use the power of technology to change the world—and have some fun while you’re at it.

Microsoft has a lot to gain from the Imagine Cup.  Young coders are a particularly independent lot and are steeped in anti-Microsoft lore at an early age.  Microsoft is seen as the enemy of “creativity, ideas and dreams” the very words it uses to promote the Imagine Cup.  A competition like this is irresistable to young coders helping to neutralize some of the negative perceptions.  Here’s what one young coder noted about his participation:

I never thought I would have to add something called “Microsoft” in my tag list, but it’s happening. After going through a lot, we our two proposals, one for Software Design (GeoLink) and other for web development (AcSO), went to second round. OMG.. Imagine a doing two imagine cup projects.. damn.. it’ll be hell of a lot of work… let’s see. I’ll keep this up to date.

The competition includes regional finals withing countries with the winners getting to go to the finals (India in 06, Korea in 07). Winning even the regionals is quite a prestigious honor worth boasting about as one team from UK does:

Here’s a question, what do they put in the water in Hull that makes the students there keep winning the UK heat of Microsoft’s annual Imagine Cup? Last year it was Team Three Pair from Hull University that took the honours, and this year – the fifth outing for the global competition – it was a team called The Seedlings that snatched the victory from 10 others competing down at Microsoft’s Reading fastness. And yes, The Seedlings come from Hull University as well.

In the scheme of things, this is a tiny program relative to Microsoft’s massive global footprint. Yet for the 65,000 kids who participated in 2006, it was a chance to test their ingenuity on a world stage. Microsoft is smart to engage these kids and to celebrate brains over brawn. Being a geek has always been cool at Microsoft. Helping young geeks around the world feel the love will pay huge dividends for Microsoft in the years to come, not just by making their brand more appealing but also by identifying a potential talent pool long before they graduate. Smart stuff. Good stuff.

As marketers seek more green from green, it is inevitable that some will become greenwashing machines, laying claim to green without really being green. This month’s Vanity Fair is ripe with green ads–some good, some so so. Before I get into those, I wanted to site an article in this week’s AdAge about the risks of greenwashing:

Yet going green is a perilous business, especially for those whose actions aren’t as substantive as their ads. The way this wave of planet hugging differs from the last one, which petered out in the ’90s, is simple: scrutiny and accountability. Token environmental platitudes so boastfully touted won’t cut it. Glossy green print ads and TV spots will be easy targets for critics, and will be viewed as exercises in “greenwashing” or “eco-pornography” if their roots are not sufficiently deep.

Now onto a few of the greener ads in the Vanity Fair “green issue.”

Levi’s: After you make it through pages and pages of typical fashion ads you see an exquisitely fit couple wearing nothing but “New Levi’s Eco Jeans” that are “100% Organic Cotton.” The models cast a shadow across the page that transforms into a tree. Since the ad offers no other supporting copy, it is difficult to infer much about Levi’s commitment to green. Surprisingly, they don’t even provide a URL other than LevisStore.com which does not provide any further detail about the greenness of the products. Clearly, this is an effort to be on trend without making too much of it. I’m not saying this is a bad thing either. Since Levi’s is in the fashion business, they are probably smart to position their jeans as sexy clothes that happen to be organic. We’ll have to see what comes out in the wash with this one.

Yuban: Atop three stacked cans of Yuban Organic, “the latest in our line of sustainable coffees,” sits a red-eyed Amazonian tree frog. This endangered species is the poster tadpole of green and sends a organically clear message of Yuban’s commitment. This new direction for Yuban is undoubtedly an effort to revive sales in a declining category (canned coffee sales have tanked over the last ten years as Starbuck and Co have replaced homemade brews.) Unlike the Levi’s example, Yuban is actively riding the green wave and makes it the lead story on their website:

Making a difference…is as simple as brewing a delicious cup of Yuban coffee. As the world’s largest supporter of Rainforest Alliance Certifiedâ„¢ coffee beans, Yuban helps to protect the environment and support the people and wildlife in coffee-growing regions. So the next time you brew a cup of Yuban coffee, know you’re doing something good. Every sip counts.

AbundantForests.org: A four-page insert by this forest industry alliance discusses ways “to ensure that there will be abundant forests for future generations.” In addition to providing simple tips on how consumers can be more eco-friendly, the insert encourages readers to “plant it forward” a somewhat clever makeover of the do-gooder notion of “play it forward.” The ad caught my attention at first because I couldn’t identify any sponsoring companies. The supporting website reveals that almost every major forest industry company from International Paper to Weyerhaeuser is part of this coalition. Knowing the backers, I couldn’t help think that the fox was offering advise on how to protect the hen house.

So where does that leave us? Levi’s is selling fashion not green which is probably smart. Yuban is selling green not taste which could be problematic. Forest companies are promoting conservation of paper and wood products, the very goods that keep them in business. It’s all very confusing and while none of these are true examples of Marketing for Bad, it is worth reprising AdAge’s cautionary headline: “marketers’ environmental claims need substance or it’s little more than fertilizer.”

In a scenario reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, advertising pundits have been crying “bring out your dead” in reference to the magazine industry for the last few years. As a print fan or perhaps simply a Luddite, I have been searching for signs of hope that my beloved magazines are “not dead yet.” One such sign is Vanity Fair which continues to offer a brilliantly engaging publication month after month. Their May “Green Issue” is a sterling example of the power of this medium and how to keep breathing life into the category.

Article after article was interesting and insightful providing a uniquely VF point-of-view. From electric sports cars that can accelerate from 0 to 60 in four seconds to Amazon droughts, the range of topical green issues was vast and inspiring.  Photos by Annie Lebowitz among others dazzle the eye and take full advantage of the magazine’s size and tactile nature.  All in all, this particular issue is well worth the $4.50 newsstand price and is vastly superior to the complimentary online experience.

Advertisers also took advantage of this issue filling it chock full of ads many of which had green messaging.  I will review the best and worst of these in tomorrow’s post.