[If you're Googling for an
"example of strategic marketing plan" template, I'd
recommend you start with our Introduction
to Marketing Strategy.]
Are you looking for what we've
done for your direct competitors?
Perhaps you'd like to learn what else we've sold to
your core customers?
Scroll or click.
After working on over 140
brands, it's a little daunting
to select exactly the right examples of strategic marketing plans that have
worked particularly well. Here are few brief descriptions of how we think
and work. Some of these précis lead off to other detailed pages on this site,
or elsewhere.
Dice.com
EarthWeb
Fuel Charger Power Cells
National Dynamics Speed Tapes
Orlando Utilities Commission
Carnival Crystal Palace Resort
Budget Rent a Car & Truck
Pulte Home Builders
Aetna Partners National Health Plans
Mello Yello
Eastern Airlines
Birdseye Little Ears.
Oddly enough, this has been the
most popular page on the site for the past three years. Must be the
keyword. Thanks for
visiting. Comments?
Dice.com. $14 to $40 MM in 18
months.
In the fall of 1998, we did
not boast to dice.com in Des Moines that in the next
18 months we would drive revenues from $14 to $40 million,
increase job listings from 60,000 to 245,000, and make dice the largest IT
job site on the Internet. But our testimonial radio
and limited cable TV
did exactly that, on about 15 national GRPs a week. For the complete
strategic marketing plan, media strategy and creative story
click
here.
"Get me a bigger Geekdom!"
(mpeg) :30 TV. (For a
.mov file click
here.)
The gist of this commercial came straight from my interview with a
satisfied dice customer.
"My pager's goin' off right now.
It's on vibrate..." This spot for dice is an
excellent example of testimonial radio, and an illustration of how Multiple
Selling Propositions often work better than USP. For
more Dice radio, click here.
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EarthWeb
was a huge IT brain-dump funded in the fall of 1998 by an $80 million IPO.
If you needed Sed, Awk, Perl code or JavaScript, the latest books on UNIX, a rebuilt motherboard, a new job, or just about anything
else IT, EW offered 17 free content sites, including dice.com. We produced and ran some pretty decent
corporate image TV as well as a "stunt" campaign in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, the IPO money eventually ran out. For
the whole strategic marketing plan, click the logo or
here.
How do you demo 17 content sites in one :60
TV spot? Actually we ran two, with this lift of the best bits. (.MOV
format runs on QuickTime.) The other two are in the longer story.
The
original :60 for EW ran in Silicon Valley, doubling HPH in about three weeks.)
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FUEL CHARGER
POWER CELLS are solid state fuel ionizers that force diesel
fuel, gasoline and heating oil to burn cleaner - in a finer mist of
drops. The result is more power, torque, BTUs; up to 85% reduction
in soot; and 3% to 16% better fuel economy. Since May 2001 we've
developed a new logo, a corporate identity package, a half dozen intro ads, and an entire
V-shaped
web site from scratch.
The
www.fuelcharger.net site is is a good
example of strategic marketing plan thinking for a small brand competing in a
very tough market.
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NATIONAL DYNAMICS SPEED TAPES
had run the same network :30 DR radio spot for
nine years, fielding about 2,000 calls a week. The Telemarketers
reported that most callers, when confronted with the price, claimed,
"I was never any good at memorizing in High School Spanish. I
guess these tapes wouldn't work for me." I wrote a series of spots that defused
that
objection up front. Calls promptly rose to 5,000 per week. Perhaps you recall
this 30-second Spanish
lesson? What's on your feet? (For the rest of the campaign, go here
or here.)
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ORLANDO UTILITIES COMMISSION
asked us to come up with a way to position energy conservation as a smart idea
for new home builders and buyers. Our "Gold Ring" campaign proved
decisively that upscale home buyers would pay a little more for insulation, window
treatments, double-paned windows, etc....and that nobody else besides the EPA and commercial customers really
cared a hoot about conserving electricity or water. Still, it was a gorgeous campaign.
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CARNIVAL'S
CRYSTAL PALACE
was a gargantuan polychromatic cement &
tile "resort" on
Grand Bahama Island. Its $350 per night
rack rate rather deterred Carnival's budget - conscious cruisers from extending their vacations. Occupancy levels were in the 55% range
when I came in on a YPB swat team to
reposition the property against upscale A++ type vacationers, who try to compress
2 weeks into four days. We also targeted meeting planners. In four months,
occupancy rates were up in the mid 80% range, sufficient to attract a
consortium of German investors. Click the pic for the campaign.
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Budget Rent a Car worked out a deal with American Express
whereby card members got a special rate on Lincolns. Here's one spot we
used to support it in radio. (The TV :30 is on the
Reel).
Restaurant :60
Budget Rent a Truck had, in 1989, recently added a fleet of easy
riding Isuzu trucks to the fleet. I pored through a lot of research to
learn that women often made
the actual rental decision, were generally unfamiliar with trucks, and were most
likely to rent a truck following an all-too-common tragedy. Here's the
radio:
It's So
Easy :60
Comin'
Home :60.
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PULTE
Homebuilders in Washington, DC had a
fairly strict formula for the ads they ran in the Sunday Washington Post Real
Estate section: Floor plan. Location. Price. All aimed at this week's
shoppers. Unfortunately, a couple of their condo properties weren't competing
well with their nearby competitors. I suggested we run in the Friday
Weekend Section, Saturday Sports, etc. targeting next week's
shoppers. In less than two months, we sold out the remaining 90 units.
An excellent example of the Steam
Principle. Click
the pic for the campaign.
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PARTNERS
was a late entry in the PPO market. Aetna
had teamed up with the Voluntary Hospitals of America (500 not-for-profits) and
their 40,000 physicians. The three entities were natural enemies. At the
time, I was freelancing at Lord, Geller, Federico & Einstein's Boca Raton
office and suggested that unless these fellows worked together, nothing would
ever happen. Hence, the name "Partners," and the the
theme line "Choose Your Partners Well." The first TV :30 is on
our TV reel. The
other spots, collateral, logo, ads etc. are around here somewhere.
Curiously, when LGFE won the assignment, the client immediately asked for
500-GRP intros in six markets, TV, video... "Wait, you can't have all that
for $1.5 million," cautioned the AE. Turns out the opening budget
was $15 million. The agency had misplaced a decimal point. They
promptly whisked the assignment back to New York. The brand flourished
for about ten years. (Aetna had to spin it off a few years ago to comply
with some SEC requirements.)
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MELLO
YELLO was Coca Cola's answer to Mountain Dew. Management (and the top
guns at McDonald & Little, Atlanta) also believed that Mountain Dew's
"Yahoo!" country image was the key to its success. I sat down with a
ream of Nielsen reports and discovered that MD sold ten times faster than
normal through vending machines at gas stations. Why?
Well, a dozen
focus groups later we concluded that MD's low-carb, high-sugar recipe made it
easier to knock down a can, especially if you happened to be a kid working in a
gas station, factory or elsewhere. After much internal bickering, my
fast-drinking strategy eventually won the three-agency shoot out. "Mello
Yello - the world's fastest soft drink" debuted in 1978. The
graphics have changed. The Reason Why remains the same.
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EASTERN
AIRLINES was in terrible shape in
1975. Flights were usually late. Baggage often lost. Ground
personnel surly. The new President, Frank Borman, asked Y&R to help
him regain the confidence of travelers. I was a baby writer at the time
and got called into a 12-team "push." I thought, "Gee, what if
all the employees acted as professionally as the pilots?" EAL's most
famous campaign, "The Wings of Man," was only a year out of
circulation.
So I wrote a new theme line, "We have to earn our
wings every day." One thing led to another. Six TV :60's,
a bunch of ads, jingle singers... My line was Y&R's most-recalled theme
line of the entire decade. All clients. All offices. EAL used
network TV to persuade its 40,000 employees in 102 markets to try harder ( whence,
invertising).
For three or four years, the airline kept its promise. Then the old
habits set in. Union vs. Management. Late. Lost.
Surly. My line became Eastern's epitaph. Moral: Don't promise
service if you can't deliver it.
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The
last example of strategic marketing plans is a pure creative story. The account
guys did all the legwork.
Birdseye Little Ears
My first national ad ever, penned as a writer at Young & Rubicam, New
York,
synthesized reams of focus group research into a simple premise. The
TV spot put the same kid in front of a camera for 30 seconds, during which he
dutifully ate his 
corn,
then said, "I'm full, I can't eat any more." Which was the
whole point.
My CD,
Frazer Purdy, hated
the TV. "Where's your production idea!?" he asked.
(Y&R was famous for Dr. Pepper song and dance spots and other big
numbers.)
"Well, it's a
product demo," I replied.
Anyway, the average
Burke Score in the frozen vegetables category was a 31. This
spot pulled a 52. Highest ever at General Foods. The record still
stands.
Little Ears was
GF's most profitable brand that year.
1973. Even then I knew...
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