Archive for the ‘Positioning & Differentiation’ Category

Positioning for T&T Local Government win

Monday 5th July, 2010

How should the People’s Partnership (PP) and the People’s National Movement (PNM) position themselves for the 26th July vote?  Just to remind you the last time around the PNM choose the “stability” platform.  We’ve delivered for the last 50 years so you can trust us to keep delivering.  The PP chose to position themselves as the saviours from the evils of poor management, arrogance, corruption  and squander mania. So with PP “we would rise” when you let us fix the mess.

What position should the two parties pursue this time around?  If I were advising the PNM I would tell them to flaunt their newly minted underdog status.  They could adopt the stance of “we’ve made some mistakes, we know that and we’ve also done a world of good and want to continue doing so”.  So don’t throw away the baby with the bath water.  A sub-message could be that you should not put all your eggs in one basket.

The PP boys and girls should stay on their “servants of the people platform” tweaking their message to local government issues.  Both parties need to be real and go easy on the platitudes and empty rhetoric.  Mankind just want to know when the bridge fixin’.    As the incumbent central government, the PP has a distinct advantage.  However, they will have to be careful not to be seen as bullies (given their big majority), so Jack should not be talkin’ about winning everything.  That will only make the PNM more attractive to their faithful and to others concerned about making sure there is someone there to guard the guards.

How can we make the pan more marketable?

Wednesday 7th April, 2010

T&T's Steeldrum, the Pan. Courtesy Trinbagopan.com.

Pan needs a big idea. Like when Peter Ueberroth made the 1984 Olympics the TV games, raising close to a billion US dollars from broadcast rights. Previous to 1984, others focused on stadium seats to be the main supply of revenue.

So we need a big idea. Ueberroth changed the “product distribution” from the stadium seat to the living room couch.

What if we went on a massive YouTube thrust where we put steel bands in worldview and simultaneously start a conversation with the world? Blogging and building a communities interested in tuning, arranging, organising, building teams and all the other great stuff that steelbands do. This will mean steelband people learning some new skills. Skills that are no harder than what they do now. Of course steelbands will also be able to sell their recordings and take bookings.

Or what if we did something crazy like stopping Panorama for a 3 year test period and get steelbands back playing in their community blockos and across T&T. What if we could promise the movement the same level of government subvention to be distributed to its membership as it determines.

Stopping Panorama might be a biggest big idea. It removes the focus on 8 minutes of music and places it back on the instrument and its power to delight well beyond 8 minutes. Do pan people have the belly for this big idea?

Here comes another Doubles blog. Duck!

Friday 2nd April, 2010

duck doublesIt had to happen and it has. Now you can get meat in your doubles. And fittingly it has arrived in the capital of doubles, Curepe. (Debe is the capital of everything else indofried). This Curepe vendor sells doubles with chicken, duck, shrimp, goat, beef and they apologised for being out of conch.

I had a duck doubles. And it was brilliant.  It evoked feelings of a Caura River lime with the cook hitting the sweet spot on this day.  No short cuts because “it’s only doubles”.  Rather curry duck to die for. And a la Maracas bake and shark, a superfluity of dressings and topping to enhance the experience.

I had Doubles with goat in the Fatima fete this year.  I thought it was a Fete thing.  It’s now become a street thing.  And at twelve dollars a pop (duck doubles), not bad in terms of value.

Baked doubles can’t be far away.

Subduing the bull: Monster’s Marketing is Top Notch

Wednesday 31st March, 2010

Bull in a bullfightA 2002 Gallup poll found that 68.8% of Spaniards express “no interest” in bullfighting while 20.6% expressed “some interest” and 10.4% “a lot of interest.” The poll also found significant generational variety, with 51% of those 65 and older expressing interest, compared with 23% of those between 25–34 years of age. (Source: Wikipedia)  In other words, bull fighting is dying in its place of birth.

Not in T&T.  Monster, Full Throttle, Ciclon, Turbo and Battery, to name a few has been taunting and fighting one bull in particular, the Red Bull.

And from what I can observe the Monster is winning.  Why?  There is only so far that fancy clothes can take you.  Red Bull’s cool factor was cool until people started asking; what’s in it for me?

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USA Today launches in Trinidad

Monday 29th March, 2010

USA Today on Sale

The invitation was impressive. The teasers created mystery and curiosity. The launch was held at the posh Hyatt Regency, where “the location has become the message”. (Message: my product must be the best if it’s launched at the Hyatt) Principals flew in for the shindig and the media gave it fair coverage. (Except the other dailies of course)

But will Newsday’s new product entry, USA Today work? I think like most brands a lot of thought went into the promotions “P”. As I said they did all the right things to create interest. I’m hoping they have also paid attention to the other P’s and an O.

First the O, Online. There is a 100% internet penetration among the USA Today T&T target. So that’s where they go to pick up their copy of USA Today, not the news stand. And the other P’s; $6.00 price tag? Probably not a problem if the product is right? What do Trini up scales and business people and American sports enthusiasts (say 10,000-20,000 people?) want to read? I suspect this paper will be male skewed. Is it known what they want? Has any research been done to inform the “product”? (more…)

Taking an Agency kicking and screaming into Digital

Thursday 24th December, 2009
No web for me!

No web for me!

About 9 months ago, I decided to take my small agency down the dark unknown digital road.  At around the same time, quite by accident, I hired someone who had studied web design and communications.  Aisha had been hired predominantly for her old media, graphic design skills.  Her arrival meant that for the first time we had someone who could not only build a website but also answer our silly web questions.  If she did not know the answer, she didn’t give us bs.  She researched it and came back with an answer.

She has been aided and abetted by another Pepper staffer, let’s call her Q (because that’s her name), who blogged in a previous life.  For a small agency with limited resources this was a bold move.  2/13′s of our agency manpower spending most of their time on a market that does not yet exist.

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