December 1, 2006
George’s Going to Market: What is Strategic Marketing?
Mindbender: The New Razor-AV Editor Flip Phone
Katie's Corner: Holiday Shopping Frenzy
Greetings!
At Pepper Group, we love the fact that no two days are ever the same. We get to work with a wide variety of clients, in a wide variety of industries, on a wide variety of projects. And we love it.
And while our greatest successes come with helping our clients achieve greatness in their lines of work, it’s always a nice treat to be recognized by our peers as well.
That’s why we were honored when Graphic Design USA, The News Magazine for Creative Professionals, named us the winners of 8 creative awards, in 5 different categories, in this year’s annual competition.
Check out their spicy selections:
| Client: Life Fitness Project: B2B Product Launch Award: VIVO Logo As the initial component of a comprehensive launch effort targeted at health clubs worldwide, Pepper Group created an unforgettable name and a striking brand identity. Our tagline, The Power of You, further reinforces the product’s benefits and fits perfectly with the graphic image. |
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Client: Jolex Enterprises Project: New Business Startup Award: BRUGO Logo Involved in every aspect of this startup, Pepper Group helped take an entrepreneur’s idea and turn it into a popular, mainstream product. Starting with a highly professional graphic identity, our comprehensive marketing program helped put BRUGO on Good Morning America and on track to hit $1 million in sales in the first 18 months. |
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Client: Gleacher Center Project: Sales Support Tool Award: Gleacher Capabilities Brochure The Gleacher Center’s conference facilities are truly state-of-the-art. They needed to communicate their capabilities in the same manner. Printed details accompanied the interactive CD, which featured panoramic views of each room, along with a 4 minute video introduction. |
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Client: Brunswick Project: New Product Launch Award: Fitbug Packaging When is a pedometer worth $150? When it’s combined into a complete, personalized and effective fitness program. Fitbug buyers, however, only physically take home a pedometer. So Pepper Group created this very unique, elegant packaging that vastly improves the perception of value and quickly communicates the benefits of the complete program. |
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Client: Sonoscan Project: Lead Generation Campaign Award: Their Fab, Your Neck Oversized Mailer Series Sonoscan needed a campaign to support expansion into a niche market. Pepper Group developed a powerful message and executed a highly creative campaign that demands attention and effectively communicates a sense of “impending doom” that Sonoscan eliminates. |
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Client: Jolex Enterprises Project: Direct Sales Website Award: www.brugomug.com Before retailers and other distributors were brought on board, Pepper Group developed this award-winning web presence to sell the BRUGO mug directly to consumers. The site contains a 2-minute Flash-based movie that communicates the key benefits in such a convincing way, that one out of every three visitors completes a purchase. |
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Client: Pepper Group Project: Enhanced Web Presence Award: www.peppergroup.com This is our third generation site. It is highly interactive, especially the presentation of our portfolio sections. Our Peppercorn Learning section provides over 20 white papers visitors can download. The average visitor spends over 10 minutes at the site—a great testimonial to its stickiness. |
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Client: Pepper Group Project: Sales Support Tool Award: Graphic Identity Brochure The Pepper Group is our toughest client! We’re continually held to a higher level when it comes to our own marketing. We wanted to convey our philosophy, some case studies, a few samples and a little spice. A copy is always available on request! Know a company who could use a little spice in their marketing? |
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If you’re currently looking forward to 2007—how you’ll gain more market share, launch new products or services, stay in constant contact with your customers, even rebrand yourself—we’d like to help. Who knows; one of your projects might be a great entry for next year’s competition!
Tim Padgett
tim@peppergroup.com
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Word on the StreetGreg Whalen—professional voice-actor, comedian, longtime friend of the Pepper Group—and our own Todd Underwood, recently voyaged out to Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo to get answers to some of life’s burning questions. They spoke with anyone willing to talk on camera and were surprised at the willingness of people to open up to a couple of strangers standing around with a camera and microphone. In fact, they got much more footage than was expected that day and should be able to keep you entertained for months to come.
Why, you might still ask, did we spend valuable work hours putting these videos together? In addition to enriching the content we offer in the Pepper Mill, we wanted to remind you that we offer full in-house multimedia/video/animation capabilities.
And now, click on the link below for our third installment of Word on the Street, in which we go directly to people on the street to find out who their favorite hero is.
www.peppercornlearning.com/word-on-street04.wmv
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George's Going to Market: What is Strategic Marketing?
Marketing is a unique and broad discipline. Unlike most areas within a company, marketing requires both open-minded creativity and strict rigorous analysis. Marketers not only set high-level agendas, they also manage all the execution details.
Because it’s these details that are the most visible, many non-marketing practitioners view marketing’s role as purely tactical. Sometimes even marketers think of their role in this way. True marketing, however, is about much more. Marketing is a strategic function. It must be completely aligned with the organization’s business strategy. In fact, marketing should help drive it.
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“Marketing is not the art of cleverly disposing of what you make. Marketing is the art of creating genuine customer value.” —Philip Kotler |
A popular view is that the term “We need to do more marketing” invariably means, “We need to get our name out.” In reality, advertising and communications are very important parts of marketing, but they are tactics within a good marketing strategy, not THE marketing strategy.
As a strategic player, it is marketing’s role to help the business achieve its overall objectives. To do this, marketing should identify and pursue the opportunities that provide the highest profitability and create the best long-term success for the organization. This includes, along with many other strategic decisions, identifying which markets to pursue and which to ignore, which needs to satisfy and which to leave unmet, which customers to grow and which to drop.
With this power also comes a greater degree of responsibility. Marketers must deeply understand their business, their market environment and their competition—including substitutes. Marketers must know precisely what value is added by intermediaries (dealers, etc.) that may touch the product before the end-user. Most critically, marketers must intimately know the end-users, even if they are two or three steps downstream.
By knowing the end-users—the true customers—marketers can better create value. Business Market Management defines value as “the net economic, technical, service, and social benefits the customer receives from doing business with your firm.” This net result is all the good things the customer gets minus all the costs incurred to get them. These costs can include conversion costs, shopping costs or training costs. It’s the difference between this net perceived benefit (value), and the price, that is the incentive for the customer to buy.
The process of maximizing value encompasses both internal and external responsibilities as well. Internally, marketers should create priorities for improvement and expansion, and help ensure customer needs are served. Externally, marketing must define and communicate the value in a way that resonates with thetarget audience. It should position the company’s offering to make it the best choice, and make the price seem small in
comparison to the net benefit.
In today’s hypercompetitive environment, it is becoming increasingly important to market more strategically. Marketers need to think beyond tactics. By creating and delivering maximum value where it matters most, customers are better served, price becomes less of an issue, profitability is maximized and greater success is the result.
George Couris
george@peppergroup.com
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Mindbender: The New Razor-AV Editor Flip Phone
Just to make sure Todd Underwood, our video editor, would stay busy on his trip to Florida, we got him the new Razor-AV Editor flip phone.
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Katie's Corner: Holiday Shopping Frenzy
Ahh,
the holidays. Magic is in the air. Neglected friendships are being renewed, holiday parties are being planned and travel is being arranged to ensure family togetherness. The spirit of brotherhood and peace is truly ignited.
With all this holiday warmth, of course, comes another tradition. It’s the time when we make that delicate transition from being rational consumers to wild-eyed deal hounds!
And this Black Friday was no exception. In fact, this year’s batch of overaggressive consumers managed to rack up $8.9 billion more in sales than last year!
So what’s up with this shopping frenzy? And what is igniting these predator-like instincts? Why do herds of shoppers find it absolutely necessary to rise at 3:00 am just for a chance to lead the stampede at Wal-Mart?
I’m not saying a $99 20-inch flat screen TV and an $18 DVD player isn’t pretty nice booty for a morning’s worth of physical assault! However, I do find it hard to believe that such maniacal desires are driven by good deals alone.
Is it the rush of competitiveness that motivates bargain seekers? Is it the triumph experienced when they beat the other guy to the last parking space in the lot? Or maybe its the hero-like worship from the other hunters when grabbing the very “last” Sony Playstation off the shelf.
During the holidays, the late night news often spotlights these exultant individuals, usually appearing weary from the day’s hunt, but positively victorious. Sometimes, I can’t help but celebrate with them. I am, after all, impressed with their stamina, and every now and again, I even find myself wishing I was among them.
I can’t say for sure what fuels them, but I suspect it all goes beyond the drive to save a few bucks. In fact, given the holiday season, it might just be a latent need to be among people. Hoards of people. And under the guise of shopping you get to spend some rather exciting quality time with strangers who appear to share the same pursuit. My observation is that the secondary benefits of entering into this chaos might just be companionship. And the holidays are all about that.
Katie Anderson
katie@peppergroup.com
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Spicy Marketing by Seasoned Professionals |
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