Category: Branding
July 30th, 2016

Decisions, decisions. What Marketers can learn from Pokemon Go, Katie Couric, and the bacon-cheese log of vacations.

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Since 2002 Mortar has been a big idea agency. But no more. We have decided to change.

Read on for why you might want to join us.

Until this year we believed the essential elements of a project should be condensed onto a single page. Each of the briefs we developed were organized around a bold and inspiring big idea.

The big idea was Mortar’s launching pad for iteration and creative thinking.  (Read more here).

In 2016, we replaced the big idea with two steps: a strategic marketing decision (SMD) and an A-ha moment. This article deals with the SMD, I’ll publish on the A-ha soon.

Instead of arguing to a big idea we make a big decision about how to market. To decide what we will do differently this time. To articulate how the message should change because the way we see the world—and the client’s customer community—has also shifted.

Introducing Strategic Marketing Decisions

We call them strategic marketing decisions (SMD). Making one can be a lot harder than it sounds.

For example, let’s take the problem that plagues Yahoo: is the massive internet property a media or a software company?

If it is a media company, then content production and delivery should be its priority. Hiring Katie Couric, buying Tumblr, paying big money to stream the NFL, these are all moves in the right direction. And they contribute to Yahoo’s unique value.

But what about engineering new forms of engagement?

Take say, Pokemon Go’s innovative use of augmented reality (AR). Pokemon Go is a game. It is an app. But it is also an engineering marvel. By smart use of AR, geolocation, and a sprinkling of inspired game theory, Go’s engineering team created a new form of participatory entertainment.

You just don’t get that type of engineering from a media company, you have to be all in on being a software company.

To walk through one door is to decide not to walk through another. In marketing it is never wise to be all things to all people. Effective marketing requires focus. Focus requires choices and decisions. Many argue that Yahoo failed to prosper because it failed to decide one way or another: and the lack of clarity sapped the company of vital energy, spurring multiple failed investments and inexplicable changes in direction.

What makes a decision a Strategic Marketing Decision?

The BBC defines strategic decisions as “long term, complex decisions made by senior management. These decisions will affect the entire direction of the firm”.

At Mortar, Strategic Marketing Decisions, are decisions that impact the direction of, well, marketing.  But they need not be long-term. Just clear and wide-ranging. Like deciding to act like a leader. Or to line up behind a new vision. Or to take a position quite unlike a rival. SMDs are decisions, about marketing, that have important implications.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review Phil Rosenzweig in “What makes strategic decisions different?” describes the basic types of decision. Here’s how they apply to the SMD:

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1. Choice

Making a choice can be a strategic move. Many an organization is plagued by its inability to choose—and thus find its focus. Just by clarifying the need for a decision we can often find a new way forward.

Take Vancouver-based Westport Innovations as a example. When Westport came to Mortar they described themselves as “a Canadian IP company”. We very nearly hung up. But after visiting them we realized Westport was, more than anything else, a natural gas engine company. Oh sure they did a host of other things—like make small engine parts and work with other forms of fuel like Hydrogen—but the heart of engine maker thumped at Westport’s core. By making the strategic marketing choice to focus messaging around natural gas engines they could turbocharge the way they talked about themselves and their mission.

2. Inspirational Vision.

“In so much of life, we use our energy and talents to make things happen. Imagine that the task at hand is to determine how long we will need to complete a project. That’s a judgment we can control; indeed, it’s up to us to get the project done. Here, positive thinking matters. By believing we can do well, perhaps even holding a level of confidence that is by some definitions a bit excessive, we can often improve performance.” (Rosenzweig).

In marketing, a decision to make something happen can also be strategic.

By suggesting that a trip to the city of Reno is actually a visit to the Reno/Tahoe area, we remind travelers to the big blue lake that the joys of the bacon-wrapped cheese log of vacations is just minutes away. An example of positive thinking influencing outcomes if ever there was one.

Planting a flag on the hill as a symbol for all to follow can be an inspiring move, and work to spur creativity.

3. Betting.

“The best decisions must anticipate the moves of rivals. That’s the essence of strategic thinking, which [we can] define as “the art of outdoing an adversary, knowing that the adversary is trying to do the same to you.” (Rosenzweig).

Deciding which way the game will go can also be a candidate for a strategic decision about marketing.

A lot of what we decide is based on what we think a rival will do. Strategic decisions based on reading a rival’s tea leaves are wonderful raw material for marketing.

In marketing, deciding to decide can make the difference between success and failure. Watch for my next post: the A-ha moment that follows from the SMD.

July 25th, 2016

5 things today’s news misses about Yahoo! and Marissa Mayer

FILE - In this Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, file photo, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, listens during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. Yahoo showed more signs of progress during the fourth quarter of 2012m, as the Internet company took advantage of higher ad prices and rising earnings from its international investments to deliver numbers that exceeded analyst forecasts. The results announced Monday, Jan 28, 2013, covered Yahoo's first full quarter under Mayer. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)

Yahoo! is going to join AOL in Verizon’s growing stack of web businesses. As one commentator chirped “the 90’s are alive and well at Verizon“. But if you are like me, you will be struck by how uncharitable today’s coverage is of Marissa and her Yahoo turn around.

  1. She did it. Perhaps the first thing everyone is missing is that Mayer solved the Yahoo problem. Yahoo was going nowhere fast until this morning. Now it has a new lease on life, a parent who understands the future will be mobile and social, and no more pesky, activist VCs. The problems of a looming tax bill for Alibaba’s incredible success appear to go away too (Mayer inherited a 15% stake in Alibaba that is now worth $28 billion—sparking concerns the struggling internet giant would redirect its gains in shoring up Yahoo’s business). 
  2. She netted a $4.8bn price tag for Yahoo… which, yes, was worth $200 billion back in the day. But that day is some 20 years and a Google and Facebook ago. Yahoo has suffered for years because of the mistakes the company made long before Mayer. (Well if you can call failing to buy Google and Facebook a mistake: because to be charitable, there were a lot of companies who dropped that clanger—Apple, IBM, Oracle, Hearst, Rupert Murdoch to name a few). Web businesses age in dog years: in Silicon Valley 20 years is a lifetime.
  3. And she managed to have three babies in the course of her tenure as CEO. That fact alone should be stirring the voices of support and awe. If we are at all serious about the continued ascendancy of women to the executive branch of our society, Marissa Mayer did arguably more on that front than most.
  4. She resolved Yahoo!’s identity crisis. Mayer introduced the term MAVENS to describe the company’s focus on advertising sales in mobile, video, native advertising, and social. Yahoo was always a media company. Even from the early days when it was home to a legion of web surfers who individually classified websites by hand (how ridiculous does that sound now?), despite efforts to move it more into the engineering camp, Yahoo was never a software powerhouse. Yahoo started off as a media company and it grew with its culture. Even attracting Terry Semel from Warner Bros, as one of Mayer’s four predecessors. Yahoo is a media company—which means it lives and dies by advertising revenue–and the future of media is mobile and social. Mayer realized that as quickly as her rivals at Google and Facebook. Only she had to drag her company dragging and kicking into the MAVENS age.
  5. She admirably played her role as the top executive for the Yahoo community. I am reminded by her decision to give the community a voice in the redesign of the Yahoo logo—which she accomplished by survey. But unlike less savvy rivals she did not make the results public—opting instead to thank the community for making their voice known and acknowledging the community did play some role in the final decision. Masterful. Contrast her actions as leader of that community with, say, how well Reddit handled their recent issues and it’s clear that Mayer does know a thing or two about being an incredibly visible and high profile spokesperson for a community that lost its relevance in Silicon Valley years ago. Let’s remember, communities that started hot but come to be regarded as irrelevant tend to be resentful and inwardly-focused (for an example consider my fellow British countrymen’s horrendous decision to allow the fear of immigration to drag them out of the European community). Playing spokesperson for a global group struggling to be sexy and cool again is a tough gig, no matter how you cut it.

So as you review the coverage over the next few weeks, this commentator believes Marissa Mayer deserves a hearty round of applause for solving the hardest problem in marketing: how to turnaround a failing internet brand.

Bravo, Marissa.

April 30th, 2015

Moon Jellies. Mermen. And Other Reasons to Love the Ocean.

The last time you kicked back on a white sand beach, or savored a piece of grilled sea bass on orzo, did you thank the ocean? Better yet, have you ever thought about who looks out for this massive natural resource that covers 71% of our planet’s surface? As powerful as it is, the ocean can’t speak up for itself. Fortunately, there are a few people who work for the health of our incredible seas. (Just for the record, mermen are real. Most of them live in Florida.)

 

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There are three main players in this game: 1) government, 2) the community (fishermen, scuba divers, and people who own homes on the coast), and 3) science (more specifically, academia). The California Ocean Science Trust plays outside the bounds, connecting all these folks: They provide timely, useful, and reliable science that helps people make informed decisions about the ocean’s future.

It’s a highly specialized and important role, because groups often attempt to skew research in favor of their own agenda. Ocean Science Trust restores trust in the scientific process—ensuring integrity, accuracy, and impartiality. Unfortunately, their former brand identity didn’t exactly scream these qualities.

So we got to work, starting with the logo. What Ocean Science Trust does is pretty complex, so our main goal was to simplify. We used three rings to represent government, science, and community, making them organic and fluid to reflect the ocean’s movement. The typography, inspired by old school science textbooks, conveys an air of established authority.

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Next, we tackled the website. Simplicity and serenity was our aim here as well. Shades of deep blue and soft coral evoke the sea, warm sunsets, and colorful marine life. We also revised the key messaging, infusing it with a crisp, inviting, and energetic voice. Bonus points if you noticed the header at the top of the page noting the current date and time. Since data is at the core of Ocean Science Trust’s work, we programmed the homepage image to change with the time of day: at morning, daytime, and nighttime. Watch the demo below, or visit the site yourself.

 

 

By clarifying Ocean Science Trust’s story, and making it much more enjoyable to look at, hopefully we’ve enticed more people to think about who’s working for the ocean—and whether enough is being done to protect its health. Next time you’re skinny dipping in the Pacific at midnight, think about your friends at Mortar. Or maybe don’t, cause that sounds a little creepy.

May 20th, 2014

A BART Domination, a Billboard Sensation, and a 20-foot-tall Norwegian.

An economic upswing is good for just about everyone. Except for graduate schools, who historically see enrollment go down when job prospects go up. With that top of mind, GGU’s new marketing director was looking to make a big impact this year to reverse that trend. Like, Prince George’s baby kangaroo backpack big.

Uhm…yes, please! All we do is sit around waiting for clients to ask us to go big. GGU’s graduate audience is an ambitious group who are wont to react to energizing, active language that helps them envision their future impact on the world. So we readied an arsenal of powerful headlines, refreshed the design, and proceeded to make our mark on the Embarcadero BART station.

 

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Whether you’re familiar with the GGU brand or not, know that you’re looking at a lot of firsts here. The layout and imagery are bolder and more contemporary than before. It’s the first time we’ve done location-specific ads for GGU, playing off different areas in the Bart stations. And, it’s the first time we’ve executed a programmatic campaign that calls out specific degrees.

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Program-specific ads. Because the more tailored your message, the stronger you’ll resonate with your respective audiences. 

 

But most notably, it may very well be the first time an agency has launched this many ads at one time. Knowing that volume = impact, GGU chose to flood the Bay Area with 900-odd ads. (There aren’t even that many grocery stores in San Francisco!) In addition to hitting Embarcadero and Powell BART, we placed billboards in the East Bay and posters at Walnut Creek, Lafayette, and Pleasant Hill stations. And that doesn’t include the litany of digital banners that are running. The sheer quantity of work produced is astounding – as is the amount of booze and snacks that was required to keep us alive.

But wait, there’s more! Have you seen the billboard up on Bryant Street between 3rd and 4th? Call an Uber and hightail it over, cause this is huge!

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The biggest challenge was finding a Scandinavian woman tall and willing enough to stand up there for an entire month. Don’t worry, we’ll tip her well.

900 ads, a billboard, and a brand that’s more relevant to its audience. If you’re a Bay Area resident who’s even flirting with the idea of maybe, possibly considering a graduate business degree, you’ll now be thinking about GGU. Our work here is done. (We think. Unless those are the footsteps of the account team running to hand us another deliverable. Quick – to the fire escape!)

May 12th, 2014

The Never-Ending Importance of Strategy, Now Applied to Cleantech.

The clean technology industry is worth $170 billion and counting. But spend that money the wrong way, and it all goes down the low-flow drain. When Mortar started working with Westport, they told us they were a Canadian IP company, citing Dolby as an analogy. In the same way Dolby develops technologies for speaker systems, they said, Westport built the technology behind natural-gas-powered trucks.

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But when we took a tour of their Vancouver facilities, we saw this.

That’s a natural gas engine designed for a long-haul truck. Oh, and it’s about the size of a smart car. Imagine this bad boy dangling from a factory ceiling on a thick metal chain, connected by giant wires to giant computers, whirring and humming as engineers test its power and agility. It was like the truck equivalent of a disembodied brain-in-a-jar, hooked up to a life support system.

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Eets aliiiiive!!

 

Westport sure didn’t look like an IP company to us. From our initial observations, it seemed like they needed to focus less on their technology, and more on the human impact their technology drives. It’s a common situation we find our tech clients in, ingredient brands in particular – and cleantech is no different.

And so the Mortar360 process began. Our conversations with customers, partners, prospects, and industry analysts confirmed our suspicions. The same way that Intel was a computer processor company, Westport was absolutely an engine company. And these were no ordinary engines. They were more efficient (read: cheaper), better for the planet, and powered by domestic-fuel – which happened to be exactly what Westport’s early adopter audience was looking for.

Our research also revealed an important market perception. In 2013, Westport’s natural gas engines were already being used in long haul trucks. Yet most of the world was still talking about industrial natural gas vehicles as “the next big thing.” Why? Well, when your friend starts wearing mesh shirts to work, that’s an obvious change. When trucks start running on new engines? Much harder to see. And having an unclear brand message certainly doesn’t help.

Guided by these insights, we crafted a positioning that celebrated the powerful advantages of Westport engines and declared natural gas a thing of the present. The tagline, “Here and Now,” said it all. Add a custom photo shoot, and a stunning brand book and print campaign were born.

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And some snazzy print ads, too.

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The white balloons are a quiet nod to clean fuel. They represent purity, clarity, and the wonder of discovery. They represent possibilities and potential. They signify how Westport is changing transportation in cities and industries everywhere, helping make the world a cleaner place. We also brought those ideals to life in a brand video that’s been used at events, trade shows, and online.

 

Visit our case study page to see the brand identity, website, and manifesto ad we also created. We enjoyed helping Westport find its place in the clean transportation world. And now we’re doing the same for CALSTART, a nonprofit that knocks down the political and financial barriers standing in the way of clean transportation. That’s all we can divulge about our adventures in cleantech for now. ‘Til next time.