From Shakespeare to Starbucks: Pumpkin spice marketing mystique

Popular wisdom used to say "It's the sizzle that sells the steak." Well, today it's the PSL buzz that sells the drink. But if you know your Shakespeare, you know that it's not a wholly new idea.



Retailers don't wait until October to push pumpkin in the form of special scents and flavors. Even those who don’t sell drinks or food have hopped on the pumpkin spice bandwagon with scented candles, body lotions, soaps, and even deodorant.

In fact, the most highly-anticipated pumpkin spice of all made its grand arrival in August. I refer, of course, to pumpkin spice latte (PSL) that fans look for every year at their favorite coffee shop.

The pumpkin spice mystique is not just about the flavor; it’s about building a connection with customers that heightens anticipation and engagement. Starbucks does it brilliantly.

During August, Starbucks rides the buzz on the return of the PSL. It lets it build up with much speculation about when the first one will be poured, as the date changes each year to maintain a feeling of mystery and maximize anticipation.

That's the essence of the PR strategy that Shakespeare's Prince Henry adopts, as he tells the audience  in Henry IV Part I:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

What works for heroic kings in plays also works for brands that know that even pleasurable things lose their sparkle when they are around all the time, just as we take the sun for granted when it is never hidden by clouds. The perception of rarity grants the object in question a particular status that it would not have if it were always available.

For more marketing posts, see a collection of links to blogs posted on various publications here and
Marketing in Uncommon Times

For more references to Shakespeare, see The Marriage Plot: Expectations for Novel Ending Must Be Met, The Marriage of Opposites, and Happy (Early) Birthday, Shakespeare.

Have your shoe and eat it too

Anyone on TikTok or Twitter has likely seen at least one #EverythingIsCake meme. These very short videos make anything from what looks like a can of Coke, glass of water, roll of toilet paper, or even a human hand to be an actual cake that is revealed when it is cut. Yummy.

A Croc was one of the items, and perhaps that is what inspired the collaboration between Deliveroo and Adidas UK. Deliveroo delivered the news in a tweet featuring the edible version of the new  ZX 2K Boost Adidas sneaker (in England called trainer) design that would accompany the real thing for the winner of its promotional offer.

 

Does the shoe fit?

For a chance to win the twin pairs of shoes - one to wear and one to eat - those who live within a 1.5 mile of the Deliveroo Whitechapel Editions kitchen have to visit its app after noon on August 26. While cake is among the usual items Deliveroo delivers, the wearables would be a first.

So why should a food delivery service promote itself with sneakers? It’s all about capturing attention and publicity.

Read more in Have Your Cake and Eat It Too.

A nickel-and-dime trick for thousands of dollars of free publicity

One of the things that has been noticeably absent this summer due to COVID-19 is the usual run of summer blockbusters. It’s been a long road to safe reopening.

At the end of August, finally, there is good news for movie lovers. AMC Theatres announced it will open over 100 theaters as of August 20th, rolling out to open more than half of their locations by September 3.

To mark the reopening and 100 years of movies, AMC is offering 1920 prices at the theater for one day only.

Limited time bargain

This offer is only available to those fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of one of the theaters opening on the 20th. They get to snag the bargain of a lifetime: just 15 cents plus tax for any movie showing that Thursday.

This is a great opportunity to be able to echo your own grandparents in boasting “I remember when movie tickets cost just 15 cents!”

Read more in: A nickel-and-dime reopening offer from AMC

Why is offering 15 cent tickets such a win? In the first place, the people who do snag those tickets on Thursday will likely feel they saved enough to justify a splurge at the concession stand. In the second place, the offer brought AMC so much attention that just about every single news outlet in the country covered the story, giving it tens of thousands of dollars worth of free publicity.  

What's in a pen name?

We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about the name on the cover? Should it be the author’s real name or her chosen one?

The Reclaim Her Name series is a re-release of books “with their author's real name on the cover for the first time.” To mark the 25th anniversary of the Women's Prize for Fiction, there are 25 books available for free download or eBooks (which definitely keeps costs down for printing and shipping).


It’s a fact that women have written some of the best novels ever published. It’s also a fact that some of those novels feature a man's name in place of the authors.



The question then is: are we doing a favor to George Eliot and her pseudonymous peers in stamping their birth names in place of the names they chose themselves?

Read more in A Toast to Women Writers

Related:
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1658/

Why you need a little Christmas in your marketing earlier this year

From key search terms to AR-powered ads, this holiday season is a boon to brands that capitalize on digital opportunity and get in the game early.

Among the many shifts in shopper behavior thriggered by the global pandemic is that of thinking about the December holidays as early as April. Marketing insights from Pinterest and Facebook were already published in June, so businesses can start to gear up earlier than usual.
Dreaming of the holidays under lockdown

In June, Pinterest put out its guide to marketing with the apt title, Earlier Than Ever Holiday 2020. While pinners always show earlier holiday activity than the public at large, this year, they were thinking of Christmas as early as April.

Pinterest reports that its search volume on terms like “Christmas gift ideas,” “holiday recipes,” “Christmas,” “holidays,” and “Christmas decor” were 70% higher in April 2020 than for April 2019. Clearly this past April was different from those of other years.

By then a fair amount of us were told to stay home to stay safe under lockdown conditions with no clear end in sight. Feeling both bleak and bored at home, it’s no wonder that people felt they could use a little Christmas right this very minute.

Cue up the song from Mame:

at were t

“As the coronavirus pandemic grips us with anxiety and fear, we should all follow Mame's lead and light up the night with holiday lights and lighthearted music.” That’s the comment from April 2020 on the video.

From dreaming to planning and shopping

One major difference to note between the two guides, though is this: While Facebook does draw on some data from 2020 to account for the pandemic’s impact, it primarily draws its holiday trends from 2019, in contrast to Pinterest’s focus on 2020 for holiday searches.

Read more in
Holiday Season Arrives Early for Data-Driven Marketing

Making working from home work for your business

The number of employees working at least part time from home has been rising over the past few years According to Global Workplace Analytics: “69% of employers offer remote work on an ad hoc basis to at least some employees, 42% offer it part time, 27% offer it full time.”

Once the coronavirus pandemic struck, those numbers swelled as companies around the globe scrambled to comply with government mandates that disallowed businesses to bring in anyone to a workplace that was not deemed essential.

“The world’s biggest work from home experiment” is how Heinan Landa, CEO and Founder of Optimal Networks, describes the current situation.

Read more in  

Implementing a Successful Remote Work Strategy

Diversity produces better quality for AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer just a projection into future uses but a part of business practices. Machine learning (ML) is a tool used by businesses for predictive modeling that is used in an array of industries, from healthcare to finance to security.

The question that businesses have to address is: Are we being careful to not misuse AI by having it reinforce human biases in the training data?

To get insight into the various factors that play into that assurance, Martine Bertrand, Lead AI at Samasource in Montreal shared her thoughts. Bertrand holds a Ph.D. in physics and has applied her scientific rigor to ML and AI.

The Source of Bias

Bertrand concurs with what other experts have pointed out: “The model doesn’t choose to have a bias,” but rather she said it: “learns from the data it is exposed to.” Consequently a data set that is biased toward a certain category, class, gender, or color of skin will likely produce an inaccurate model.

We saw several examples of such biased models in Can AI Have Biases? Bertrand referred to one of the instances, that of Amazon’s Rekognition. It came under fire over a year ago when Joy Buolamnwini focused her research on its effects.

Buolamnwini found that while Rekognition did have 100% accuracy in recognizing light-skinned males and 98.7% accuracy even for darker males, the accuracy dropped to 92.9% for women with light skin and just 68.6% accuracy for darker-skinned women

Despite the demand for its removal from law enforcement agencies, the software remained in use. Bertrand finds that outrageous because of the potential danger inherent in relying on biased outcomes in that context.

Read more in  Why Diversity is Essential for Quality Data to Train AI

Let me entertain you

The cornerstone of TikTok for Business is the key to effectively marketing to Gen Z as identified by the motto, “Don’t Make Ads, Make TikToks.” It’s not just about self-promotion for the platform that has had explosive growth over the past year but about meeting the expectations of a generation that is responsive to marketing that moves it. Not to what feels like an ad.

Draw in Gen Z with creative content

Marketers “should create ads that don’t feel like ads,” according to Gen Z in 2020: How to Advertise to the New Digital Natives. That’s the conclusion it draws from research into what draws positive attention from Gen Z.

Drawing on a 2017 study by Time Inc., Media Post says Gen Zers “want to see brands do something new, unique, or creative to get their attention.” Also 88% agree that it’s “a good way for new brands it hasn’t heard of to reach them.”

The numbers are equally impressive for the responses on engagement: “the study found that 90% of those polled like the idea of custom content as a way for brands to engage them, 89% believe that custom content is a great way for brands to break through the clutter.”

How can brands create this kind of custom content that engages Gen Z? Performance art appears to be a pretty effective approach, as it taps into this generation’s passions.

These were the findings of market research company, Millward Brown: “Gen Z are dramatically more passionate about music and movies. Ads placed in these contexts are far more powerful with this group, with 39% of Gen Z saying music makes them more positive to advertising and 38% reporting that movies have the same effect.”

Likely that is due to the emotional pull that music and movies have on audiences. When we listen to or watch something that really resonates with us, it makes a very deep impression, which is why it can prove so effective for marketing.

Music and marketing, a natural pairing

This is the background of that approach Movers+Shakers takes in creating custom content for marketing, particularly aimed at Gen Z and millennials. The company’s CEO, Evan Horowitz, shared the secret sauce of its campaigns’ success: joyful marketing.

What underlies their approach is the understanding that “consumers want to be entertained,” he said. “Anything that feels like an ad is a turnoff.” That’s why at Movers + Shakers, the content produced for brands is entertaining with music selected to resonate with the style of the brand and its audience.

Read more in Don’t Make Ads: Make Engaging Entertainment

The 15 Second Key to Success

"In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes," Andy Warhol predicted back in 1968. In the 21st century, though, it’s not about minutes but seconds.

TikTok videos are designed to be short and the original default length for uploading was just 15 seconds. Rivals hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the short video format with music also set their base standard at 15 seconds.

The boom and bust of 2020 for TikTok
The first half of 2020 has been very good for the social video app from Internet company ByteDance, called TikTok. By the end of April, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimated that the app had been downloaded over 2 billion times on the App Store and Google Play.

The popularity of TikTok is a worldwide phenomenon. However, its presence in India is now curtailed because the government banned the app, as well as 58 others, on June 29, due to their links to China.  That is quite a blow to the app in light of the huge user base in India.

Live Mint reports that there were over 200 million active users of the app in India, which represents a major chunk of its global hold.  It was such a profitable market for ByteDance that last year the company said it planned to invest a billion dollars there.

The rise of the Reels rival

The Indian market may now turn to one of the rival video platforms that have been trying to compete with TikTok. They include offerings from Instagram and YouTube.

As TikTok’s growth has been impossible to ignore, Facebook attempted to launch its own version through Instagram under the name Reels. It first rolled out on a limited basis in Brazil in November 2019.

Read more in Finding Success In 15 Seconds