About Romi Mahajan

Romi Mahajan is Chief Marketing Officer of sentiment analysis firm Metavana. A well-known speaker on the technology and media circuit, Mahajan serves on a variety of Advisory Boards and speaks at over a dozen industry events per year.

Cool is for Fools

January 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The Burger King

The "Burger King"

[Editor's Note:  This post originally appeared on our sister site, Marketing Access]

I read recently that the creepy-assed “Burger King” mascot has been taken off his throne and sent to the rubbish bin. I was thrilled because I found the ads with that particular “being” crude and frankly, as a father of two young kids, scary. Further, I thought it was a bad piece of Marketing that too many otherwise sane folks extolled as creative and, well, “cool.”

Yep, there we go. Taking out the soapbox now – here goes:

Cool is a stupid word. Trying to be cool is a stupid aspiration.

Let me at this point say that I’m as guilty as everyone else in the sheer overuse of the word. In a funny way, the word is democratic- it’s used by everyone for everything but it unites grungy California ne’er do wells with titans of the tech industry. But that’s where it’s “coolness” ends.

If I wanted to give a benign and thoughtful criticism I’d say that the main problem with the word is that its meaning has been dulled to the point of nothingness by constant use. But that’s not really my point.

My point is that the desire to be cool makes people do silly (and at times bad) things.

Take what the desire to create cool work has done to Marketing.

It’s instructive to look at Burger King because they went the “cool” route. But for the past decade, their business has sucked while McDonald’s is kicking ass. The latter did simple things like, well, introduce coffee and salads. And they advertised them in, well, fairly normal ways. So while cool might have won Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky a ton of awards and got them a bunch of brainless small-dollar acolytes, it didn’t do much for the Whopper boys who, incidentally, pay their bills.

The desire to be cool makes you derivative and a follower. Cool is for charlatans without substance.

Do something real ladies and gentlemen. Please.

Filed Under: Advertising, Essay, Innovation, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Mad As A Bear

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Grizzly Bear[Editor's Note:  This post originally appeared on our sister site, Marketing Access]

Children really test Marketers’ will. If you are a Marketer and a parent you know exactly what I mean- you end up buying a bunch of over-priced, disposable, and soon-forgotten crap because your kids’ desire-du-jour is more powerful than your will (and ability) to resist.

I’ve done it all. Dora stuff, Diego stuff, Little Pet Shop, and Transformers. And I’ve chased down Elmos when they were scarce and plied my kids with sugar (and high fructose corn syrup) when my love for Michael Pollan dimmed in comparison to the nirvana-light of peace.

I’ve done bad things to them. I feel worse now than when I was the only dad in swimming class who didn’t know the words to “The Wheels on the Bus.”

And somehow they must sense it because two days ago, they got their revenge on me. In a BIG WAY. Like young Napoleons they picked
the field of battle well; in this case not Austerlitz but Build-a-Bear Workshop (BABW) in Bellevue Square Mall.

Let’s pause for a moment so I can describe how BABW works. The process is something like this:

1. Kids and parents walk in.

2. Kids pick hollowed-out carcasses of “animals” to later be stuffed and adorned.

3. Kids wait in line with parents.

4. Fake-nice BABW worker injects a large metal tube in an orifice of the unstuffed carcass and allows kids to “step on the pedal,” filling the animal with some substance (cotton maybe) and thereby re-animating said animal.

Oh hold on.

3.5 Before the colonoscopy, BABW worker asks the kid in a sweet voice “now sweetie would you like a ‘sound’ in your {monkey, polar bear, dog, etc.) ?

3.6 Kid says “yes.” The better ones say “yes please.”

3.7. BABW worker asks hapless parent “Is that okay w/you?” Harassed parent, having no clue what just went down, agrees.

Okay back to the progression.

5. Animal is now stuffed and kid is asked to “pick a heart” and then to “hug” the animal. Kid complies.

6. BABW worker then directs parents and kid to the accessories/clothes/other stuff area of the store so that kid can “dress up”
the animal.

7. Kid picks up enough stuff to bankrupt an already soon-to-be-weenie-night-thinking parent.

8. Kid and parents then collaborate on creating a “birth certificate” for newly-christened Freddy the monkey.

9. Parents and kid then stand in line for a LONG time.

10. Clerk then rings up the purchase.

11. Parents notice that each item costs a lot and that they’ve been had. The “sound” costs $4 or $5 bucks. That sly question to the kid at the beginning was an upsell. Who TF knew.

12. Parent then pays while Clerk contributes to the denuding of the Amazon rain forest by packing Freddy the monkey in a huge cardboard box.

13. Bank account is diminished by around $35 per kid.

14. Parents then indulge in self-loathing; being a sucker is hard to take.

I love my kids, but for now I’m mad as a bear. At myself.

Photo Credit: Spontaneous Chaos

Filed Under: Essay, Featured, Marketing Tagged With:

World’s Oldest Profession

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

MarketerI’m a Professional.  I want to engage my customers and build intimacy.  I want to monetize that intimacy.  As long as my practices are secure and safe, and my customers are happy and pay me, then my job is done.  My friends tell me to be authentic with my customers but in reality I have to create an artificial persona all too often. 

I get in trouble with The powers that be too often.  There are times I feel incredibly diminished as a person.  It’s pretty hard to explain to people what I do and that provokes all manner of barbs and demeaning comments. 

A lot of my peers can’t do the job for more than a few years.  It’s tough.

Who am I?

I’m a Marketer.  (What were you thinking you naughty boys and girls?)

Okay so you’re thinking “Romi, you love hyperbole don’t you?”

And I’m saying this:  While the above is a pastiche of things Marketers do, say, and feel, I’ve seen, heard, and endured each element a thousand times or more.

And I’m saying this as well:  If we want to avoid the direct comparison with the world’s oldest profession then we need to clean-up our language, get off the ledge, and own the problem like people with a lot to lose would.

[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on our sister site, MarketingAccess.com]

Filed Under: Essay, Marketing

The Physical and The Digital

September 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Marketing Punters and Pundits alike make stupid predictions.  One of the most laughable of late was the prediction of the early demise of “physical” Marketing- it will all be digital, in the ether, non-corporeal the big-thinkers said.

And like the seers of a “paperless office,” they were dead wrong.

Case in point is a superb piece of Marketing that just crossed my desk today.  The sexy brand Ferrari built their website on Microsoft’s Sharepoint for Internet Sites (FIS) platform, as have thousands of other companies.  Seeing an opportunity, Austin-based Catapult Systems decided to build a Practice out of planning, developing and maintaining websites built on FIS; in order to drive (excuse the pun) the business forward, they decided to do a Marketing campaign leveraging the Ferrari brand in a smart, fun way.

They sent a physical mailer with a nice Ferrari keychain attached.  A VIN number was etched on the keychain.  With simple text, the physical mailer drove (there we go again) folks to a website where one can watch a very simple-yet-compelling video about Sharepoint FIS and how Catapult systems can help companies engage their customers with the Sharepoint technology.  After watching the video, one had to register (with only a few information fields.)

And guess what?  No matter what happens, you get to keep the keychain (and who doesn’t love Ferrari products!)

In one fell swoop, the consumer got a very compelling digital and physical experience.

Now, I’m not trying to stump for Catapult; that’s not my intent or the intent of this blog.  But I do want to heap praise where praise is due.

But more than that, I want to share a bias with you all- I still love physical marketing.  A good giveaway is as compelling as any website.

So throwaway the bathwater but keep that gorgeous and gurgling baby!

[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on our sister site, MarketingAccess.com]

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

What’s Your Beef?

September 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

Airline food for vegetarians sucks. End of story. Think I’m wrong? Talk to the hand. Seriously.

Now before you think the obvious and say “Romi, all airline food sucks so clearly vegetarian airline food does too.” Put your Venn diagrams away because my point is different.

Veggie airline food is crappy because of a Marketing and Market Research problem. Not because of bad cooks.

For those of you who have suffered uncooked potatoes or been forced to daintily pick at fruit when you are ravenous, you very likely know where I am going here.

Which is this: Too much segmentation is a BAD thing. Too much “correlation” is a BAD thing.

Because airlines seem to think that if you are vegetarian you are either 1. On a diet; 2. Hindu; 3. Lacto-Ovo-Pyscho.

In my case I’m none of the above though I probably should be 1. Being vegetarian doesn’t mean I lost my taste buds in a freak accident. Nor does it mean that I hate fat or think protein is an organization fighting for adolescents’ rights.

Bro, I am HUNGRY, just like you are.

Okay I made my point.

So just remember, figuring out “coupled traits” and “buying adjacencies” is a cool exercise but often you’ll just get nonsense data.

Remember, Marketing is more art than science.

Anyway, enough. Off to drink a Jicama shake for breakfast.

NOT.

Filed Under: Essay, Market Research, Marketing

Early Demises: Why Zealotry around Digital Hurts Marketing

September 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It is NOT all about digital. I swear I read that somewhere in a magazine. Or, maybe, I saw it on TV. Not sure, but I do know that Marketing is a many-splendored thing and shouldn’t be cast as narrowly as it has been of late.

This piece is an admonition not a statement of nullification.  But we need to make it clear that Marketing is still about the “mix” and about “context.”  So the intended audience is those of you who are in “digitally zealous” mode – head out of orifice please!

My favorite piece of Marketing over the past 5 years has to do with the TSA. Yes the Transportation Safety Administration. No, not their cool outfits.  No, not their incredible customer-service. And not the **** probes either.  Instead, I love the trays. Because Zappos “owned” them for a long time and it made sense: advertising shoes where you put your, well, shoes.

Nothing like a captive audience, already immersed in “context.”

I have to admit I still believe in magazines too. While I think there are serious considerations around the environment that might militate against the growth of the magazine base in general, I still subscribe to no less than 10 magazines. In many ways, I still have a bias towards what I call the “burden of authorship” which characterizes the print editorial process. Because of that, I pay more attention to the advertisements in magazines because I find the surrounding content valuable.

And so on. You get the point.

Look, I embrace digital too – when it makes sense. The possibilities unmasked by the digital media are fantastic: measurement, quick-revolution, interactivity, deep experiential value, and so on. Wow. Because of these, it’s easy to get sucked into that world and to think “Digital is everything.”  It’s easy to get sucked into religion as well but so far I’ve steadfastly avoided that as well.

Because zealotry of any fashion hurts the whole.

So as Marketers, let’s reintroduce ourselves to our complex and wonderful craft.

In all its forms.

[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on our sister site, MarketingAccess.com]

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Lessons from Jelli

September 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A few nights ago, I had dinner with Mike Dougherty and Jateen Parekh, founders of Jelli, a company that has brought “social” to radio (full disclosure:  I have invested in Jelli and so have much to gain if they are successful). It’s always great to talk to entrepreneurs and to discern from them what they believe matters. In the case of Jelli, I was very happy to see that topmost in the minds of both the CEO and the CTO is the user-experience. How do you provide a phenomenal and memorable experience to the people who use your product and service? I left the dinner very satisfied that a company I love was on the right track (and my investment was going to multiply!)

On the walk home to my hotel, it occurred to me that Jelli has a lot to teach the market research community.  MR folks are a bit like rocket scientists: they solve hard problems with knowledge and methodologies that are not trivially understood by others. Further, they find beauty in data and find symmetries and structures that are in accessible by others. Good MR people can see data and find intelligence.

But very few help the “guy at the end of the line” see the patterns and beauty that emerges. Very few have the empathy or desire to make real art out of the intelligence.

Ultimately, the user-experience (in all its forms) is about art.

Who is going to step up to create the first MR firm that wins awards for aesthetics and UX?

Filed Under: Innovation, Market Research Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Last Mile

August 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was speaking earlier with Dror Ben-Ishay, CEO of Intlock, a Tel-Aviv based company that has built some amazing marketing extensions to Microsoft’s ubiquitous SharePoint platform. His is a small but fast-growing company that will undoubtedly be successful in the marketplace. What was remarkable, though, is that he is building the company to leverage the HUGE investment in R&D that Microsoft makes. Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, he’s basically closing the “last mile” between a software platform and the needs of a Marketer.

Bravo.

More of us need to learn from this.  There is opportunity everywhere.  In the MR community, we help others assess the size of markets but we don’t help them clear the last mile.  Thinking aloud, I wonder if an intrepid Research Access reader could start a company (call it Last Mile MR) and focus on closing the yawning gap between data/intelligence and real-world results.

When you find an opportunity, it’s important to seize it.  You seize it or you cede it.  End of story.

So, again, who is up for the challenge?  Let us know and if the idea is good, we’ll feature you on Research Access!

Filed Under: Essay, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Advocacy and Action

August 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

All companies have a wide range of customers: those who dislike their products and services, those who are indifferent, and those who are raving fans. Most companies try to understand their customers’ feedback so as to improve business; some do so in a very lightweight fashion and others do it rigorously, employing complex listening systems and teams to sift through data. While these efforts are laudable, most companies overlook an important area of action – igniting their advocates to graduate from zealous fans to “virtual” sales people.

It’s understandable why companies miss this so often – because it’s not trivial to operationalize and make work. Luckily, it’s become a lot easier than it ever was.  That’s the message I got in a fertile discussion I had with the CEO of Zuberance, Rob Fuggetta. A former partner at Regis-McKenna, Rob built Zuberance to help customers understand that they have a huge asset in their advocate base and that they have to make use of this asset in the here and now.

Put simply, they have to take the potential energy and make it kinetic.

As I understand it, Zuberance is a web-based software suite that allows a marketer to, very simply, identify, manage, and energize the company’s advocates.

Pretty exciting stuff for an old hand at customer-satisfaction work. What got me really pumped up is my own (bad) experiences with programs like NPS (Net Promoter Score). The idea is brilliant but the execution against the idea is usually poor because most companies don’t do a good job actually capitalizing on the data they collect and rarely create programs that impel their advocates to take the next step.

The MR and VOTC communities have a vested interest in seeing their work operationalized and institutionalized.

Companies like Zuberance can help them.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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