Fried chicken + cosmetics = chicken fingers (Part II)

As far-fetched as this whole idea sounds, I must admit that I find myself fascinated by it.  Perhaps this has to do with the fact that I love chicken, or that I have a penchant for spicy food (after all, I am originally from Africa). Or still, perhaps it is because I just love the idea of ‘pushing boundaries’, taking risks and being innovative, even if doing so may generate more questions than answers.  Questions such as:

• What specific channels of distribution KFC plans to use for marketing this product?  I mean, when they decide to start mass-producing this thing, will it be only sold in KFC restaurants along with their chicken meals (i.e., “Would you like some nail polish with your meal, Sir/M’am?”), or will it be available exclusively in cosmetic/beauty retail stores, or both?
• Who exactly is the target segment for this product?  Is it only for women, or is it a “unisex” product?  After all, the promotional music video released on YouTube shows a woman licking her fingers (while sitting on a pillar), and a man busting some serious robot-dance moves while showing off his Hot & Spicy KFC nail polish.
• Should you have any interest in this product, would you want it to remain on your fingers? And for how long? Indefinitely?  How often would you be expected to lick your fingers during the course of a day?

In the final analysis, it should be noted that this is not the first time (and certainly not the last) that a company has come up with ‘creative’ or ‘unorthodox’ products.  A quick online search can reveal the extent of these types of products, and out of curiosity, have you ever wondered about what the combination of just a handful of these products would look like?

Perhaps I shall attempt to illustrate with a picture …

Imagine a rainy morning in Hong Kong. A young, fashion-conscious female professional has just got off the train and is walking the remaining few blocks to work. Anticipating a particularly busy and important day ahead of her, she ensures that no details are left unattended about her overall countenance by completing her makeup with her favorite Hot & Spicy KFC nail polish (which she purchased the weekend before at her favorite cosmetic retail store).  Being an avid chicken lover, and of course a loyal KFC customer, she stops to pick up her usual KFC chicken sandwich, the kind made with chicken buns, also known as the “Double Down”.  She is well protected from the rain with a hands-free, full body umbrella,  to ensure her nail polish stays dry while she works on her sandwich. Later, during the high-power business meeting she was attending, she met some new clients and established contact with them by handing out her rather unique business (read: meat) cards.  Due to the high stress of the day, she found herself licking her fingers “again and again and again” throughout the course of the day, so much so that by the time she got home, she discovered, to her dismay, that she had bitten into one of her fingers unknowingly.  But not to worry, she’s well stocked up with bacon bandages that are readily available on amazon.  Finally, before turning in for the night following another successful day, she will make sure that, included in her nightly hygiene routine, she brushes her teeth with her unique bacon-flavored toothpaste.

Now that, in my opinion, is the ultimate genius of innovation all in one package

Fried chicken + cosmetics = chicken fingers (Part I)

Last week, I tweeted about Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) deciding to enter the cosmetic business (and yes, this is not a typo, nor a prank!) by introducing a ‘new product’ in the form of edible nail polish!  By now most people must have heard of this (just Google it, or check out Steven Colbert, or pretty much any news outlets).  The product, uhmm, nail polish, developed in collaboration with a marketing agency, is said to be made of all-natural ingredients, and it comes in two distinct flavors and colors: “Original Recipe” in beige color, and “Hot and Spicy” in red.  For now, this  campaign is limited only to the Hong Kong market.

In our last class session of Marketing, we learned about some of the implications of digital and social media marketing in terms of how companies can identify opportunities.  More specifically, remember the 3 circles: Transaction costs, Attributes, and Benefits, and how each circle can be impacted by the new rules of marketing?  And how, for any company, the Benefits circle — the innermost — is the most impacted?  I remember one of the last things the professor said was that these new rules will result in improvement of products or creation of new products altogether!

So one would wonder how this applies to KFC, that is, developing a ‘new product’ in the form of nail polish that tastes like chicken, what impact does the company expect to have?  What’s in it for the customer?  What value would such a product aim to optimize?

When asked, various sources involved with this new product said this is a way “to remind the younger generation of the great taste and good times the brand stands for”, and “to create excitement around the fast food chicken brand in Hong Kong”.  In other words, KFC just wants to both reaffirm, and at the same time, redefine the brand image through its promise.  It may be worth noting that the KFC brand is already very popular in Asia in general, and particularly in Hong Kong, and yet apparently, they still feel the need to ‘spice’ it up a little bit more.

It would be interesting to know the overall reaction to this product, or consumer perception. The company says it is currently conducting an exploratory market research, mostly online (remember, we’re talking about digital & social media marketing!), where they are collecting votes, opinions and reactions from the public on how well this new product will be received. The ultimate goal is to learn which one of the two flavors the market-place would prefer, with apparently “neither” being not an option.

Verizon strike … and brand image!

Driving to work this morning, I saw a large group of people in the distance, mostly dressed in red, and carrying signs and the beloved American flag. This spiked my curiosity and I decided to do a little detour for a closer look. As it turns out, these were Verizon employees (from the Verizon store nearby) … on strike! To my grand delight, some of them did not mind me taking pictures of them.

What for, one might ask? After all, people strike all the time, and this is not unlike any other ordinary strike.

In fact, one of the gentlemen in the picture (the guy in the red hat) asked me that question. My answer: I would like to write a ‘marketing’ blog about the event, and I need to include in my blog post some evidence that I actually was there to witness part of the strike! “Go right ahead and snap away”, he said, and so I did!

More importantly, however, is the question of what does an ordinary strike have to do with marketing? The answer is, a few things, and then some.

You see, until I became an MBA student, I have had the tendency to not pay too much attention to a lot of things in my surrounding, although I notice them alright. However, now that I have been exposed to marketing, I often find myself seeing things more ‘critically’, more ‘analytically’.

And so this strike is no exception. If you have been reading/watching the news, you’d know that Verizon employees have been striking this month, and in fact, this has been the largest strike in the US in four years, where over 40,000 Verizon workers are protesting the company’s handling of contract negotiations, among other things.

One ‘striking’ thing about this strike, however, is how Verizon is indirectly accusing its employees of acts of vandalism by sabotaging its infrastructure. According to one article:

In a press statement, Verizon said that there had been a “more than 100 percent increase in the number of suspected incidents of sabotage.” The company does not directly blame the strikers, but heavily implies they are involved, reporting that last week it was investigating “24 suspected criminal incidents in five states since April 13” — the day the strike began. Now, the company says “that number has increased to 57 incidents in seven states.”

As you would expect, the employees denied these accusations, saying that it is the company’s heavy reliance on outside contractors that is to blame. More specifically, they assert that the outside contractors and untrained employees that the company uses to take care of maintenance issues, do not always follow safe practices.

So we now have, in essence, a “two-dimensional” conflict. On the one hand, the strike was initially about labor contract negotiations; on the other hand, it has now added another dimension of a conflict pitting the company against its own employees – albeit the unionized ones – whereby one side is accusing the other of sabotage, and the other side denying the charges and instead blaming the company for negligence by tolerating unsafe work practices.

The ultimate question now is, in light of all this, how does the Verizon brand fare? What does this do to the brand image?

The unfortunate reality for the company is that there is currently a negative perception of the brand, according to a recent consumer survey. In fact, consumer opinion about Verizon has dropped to its lowest level in 3 years, and this is after the Verizon brand took a hit back in 2013 after it was revealed that the company shared millions of phone records with the government (This is shown in the consumer opinion chart below).

Source: http://www.brandindex.com/article/verizon-strike-sinks-perception-three-year-low

As we learned in this Marketing class so far, the importance of a brand image cannot be underestimated.

Granted, Verizon is a leader among the main players in the telecom industry in North America (i.e., AT&T, Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, etc.). This is no doubt a result of a great and respectable brand. However, whereas company positioning is a point of differentiation (after all, Verizon is a leader because they position themselves well relative to the competition), branding is reason to believe – belief in its mission, belief in what the company stands for, belief in its promise.

Therefore, given the declining consumer perception of the telecom giant since the start of the strike, and with no end in sight, is it just a matter of time before the brand image gets tarnished even further to the point of having a serious financial impact on the company?

Only time shall tell …

Donald Trump, and the 5 C’s … seriously? (Part 3 and final)

C #4: Collaborators
Who are enlisted to promote this brand?  The campaign staff first and foremost – who are paid – and an army of volunteers spread across key battleground states. Somehow, these volunteers have found something appealing enough about this brand to motivate them to join this cause and work for the campaign. It should also be noted that, there is a general understanding that the Donald Trump brand has significantly benefitted from the media as an important marketing channel. Whether this is by design or by accident, one thing that cannot be disputed is the strategic importance of this marketing channel to the brand.

C #5: Context
Finally, what are the current cultural, political, social, technological, legal, and economic factors that limit what is possible?  Judging from how this brand is doing, and how much ‘success’ it is having so far in this campaign, it is hard to tell if there is anything limiting it in terms of how far it will go.

What I mean is … let’s take cultural and social factors as an example.

By and large, the american society is generally known to be tolerant and embracing of all people, regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity, or other.  At least, that is the expectation, which some may argue is rooted in the 5 founding ideals of this nation.  So it would stand to reason that any action(s) that would go against these ideals would be considered unwelcome, and thus frowned up. Right?  Yet, against this backdrop, the Donald Trump brand has gained (and continue to gain) significant support for banning Muslims from entering the U.S., and fingerprinting all those that are already living in the country.  A Public Policy Poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning gays and lesbians from the country, and 20% said Lincoln shouldn’t have freed the slaves. The Trump campaign took 5 different positions on abortion in 3 days. And of course, there is a widespread support for deporting all illegal immigrants (particularly Mexicans) and building ‘the wall’.

What has made the rise of this brand even more puzzling is that its support seems to cross demographic lines — education, income, age, even religion — that usually clearly define candidates.  And whereas most Republican candidates might draw strong support from just one segment of the party base, such as Southern evangelicals or coastal moderates, the Donald Trump brand has done surprisingly well from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the towns of upstate New York, including Albany!

I’d say, either this brand can be credited for a brilliant marketing strategy of effective market segmentation, or could it just be that the underlying conditions (i.e., “customer insights”) already existed long ago, and some marketing ‘genius’ from the Trump brand quickly recognized and tapped into them with just the right messages which, collectively, became the brand promise to “Make America Great Again”?

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree with this assessment?  And also, what do you think the other factors (political, legal, technological) could be?

Donald Trump, and the 5 C’s … seriously? (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this post, I talked about the first C in the 5 C’s of marketing strategy. Here are the remaining C’s…

C #2: Company Skills
What special competence does the “Donald Trump Brand” possess to meet the needs of its customers?  While this has been in the news media for quite some time now, it was interesting to actually hear it first hand, in person, at the Times Union Arena in Albany.  According to the Founder, Chairman & CEO himself (i.e., Donald Trump), the “Donald Trump brand” stakes its claim of qualifications as, among other things:

1. extensive business experience/acumen, which will be leveraged to create jobs, and even bring jobs back from China. Also, under his leadership, the U.S. will go around the world and demand back pay from nations (i.e., Japan, Saudi Arabia, China) that the U.S. has been protecting militarily and providing financial assistance to, in the form of “welfare with no justifiable reason”. And oh, by the way, this will extend to NATO(1) as well, because this organization owes significant back pay for the military assistance it receives from the U.S.
2. the ability to address illegal immigration issues by building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico (and making Mexico pay for the wall), after all illegal immigrants are deported out of the country;
3. the ability to talk tough, and reduce costly, unnecessary american military presence around the globe (such as in NATO), and eliminate all threats of terrorism, including ISIS(2) and other terrorist organizations;
4. the ability to compel Congress to repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a better alternative that is more affordable and available to all Americans.

Taken together, all of the these and countless other qualifications and skills will only result in “making America great again”, which seems to be the brand promise!

C #3: Competition
The competition is fierce, as there are a number of other ‘brands’ currently competing for market share in the same ‘market’, although the field of competitors has shrunk over time to just a handful now (Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders).  While all of these other competitors claim to have what it takes to satisfy the needs of the ‘customers’, the Donald Trump Brand seems to have more appeal to voters (mainly among Republican voters) than all the others, and its competitive advantage is touted as being the only one that can fully deliver on all its promises. This point is reinforced by repeated claims of lack of credibility on the part of the competition (i.e., they are all liars that cannot be trusted!). If you are not convinced of this brand’s competitive advantage, check it out for yourself here in your copious amount of free time (3).

… to be continued in Part 3.

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(1) NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. To learn more about it, check out http://www.nato.int and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO, just to name a couple.

(2) Here are the opinions of some military analysts: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/10/politics/donald-trump-fact-check-bomb-oil-fields-iraq/

(3) To borrow a phrase from Dr. Biswas

Donald Trump, and the 5 C’s … seriously? (Part 1)

The other day, I went to the Donald Trump campaign rally in Albany, my very first experience going to a campaign event.  I did not go because I am a republican — I am not.  Nor did I go because I like Donald Trump — let’s just say, respectfully, that I would never vote for him! I did not attend either because I was paid to show up and help build up a crowd in the Times Union Arena for the perfect ambience the candidate is looking for.

So why did I go?  

For mainly two reasons: 1) out of pure curiosity, but most importantly 2) because I wanted to see first hand, some of the impact of this “American icon” who has marketed himself so strategically as to gain great prominence in the 2016 presidential campaign landscape!  Regardless of people’s opinion of him, for good or ill, it is an undeniable fact that Donald Trump is a fascination, and a marketing genius.

According to P. Drucker, “Value is created by meeting customer needs. Thus, a firm needs to define itself not by the product it sells, but by the customer benefit provided.”  So, if you think of Donald Trump as a “brand”, what I would call the “Donald Trump Brand”, this has been a very successful brand, a “valuable” brand, by most accounts. Why?  Because of the ‘brand’s popularity both here in the U.S., but also around the world. Arguably, the brand has created “value” to its “customers”, i.e., its voting block and others alike!

Let me explain …

Having learned recently about the marketing strategy of the 5 C’s, I will attempt to illustrate how this marketing strategy fits with this interesting ‘american brand’.

C #1: Customer Needs
Clearly, the “customers” here are the voters (although one might argue that this may extend to other categories as well, such as the news media), and just as customers of any company, the american voters have tangible needs that all the presidential candidates compete to gain as much “market share” as possible.  Here’s just a sample of these needs: the economy (i.e., more jobs, better pay, increased minimum wage, lower taxes, etc.); security (feeling safe and protected from terrorism, and of course getting rid of all illegal immigrants and protecting the borders); standard of living (i.e., better and affordable education for all, affordable housing and healthcare for all, lower taxes, etc.); a strong military (capable of defending american interests and values anywhere, including going after all ‘bad guys’ anywhere in the world, anytime).

… to be continued in Part 2.