The tag line is supposed to be the embodiment of a company’s corporate vision. It should reflect the company’s brand positioning and, if possible, capture the company’s unique selling proposition (assuming it has one). It should drive the marketing spend, look and content.

The best tag line my former company ever used was during the period when it was part of the Masco group, a collection of upscale home renovation and home furnishing companies that over time have included the likes of Merillat kitchen cabinets, Delta faucets, Weiser locks, Behr paints, as well as Thermador appliances and Hendredon and Drexel Heritage furniture. The tag, encapsulating the premium nature of the group’s various businesses: Where quality finds a home. The play on home worked in principle and in fact.

Tagging in Tough Times

It is interesting to see how companies shift their focus as the winds blow hot and cold. Keeping to the home sector, one of the engines that drive the economic well-being of the nation, The Home Depot strived to be your go-to partner in renovation with their tag: You can do it. We can help. Their commercials appealed to cocooners everywhere and tugged mightily at the heartstrings. But budgets are tighter now and the Big Orange has shifted to More saving. More Doing. This matches up neatly with Walmart’s Save Money. Live Better, a tactical shift that aims at crossing demographic boundaries. Ironically, Lowes Home Improvement Warehouse, Home Depot’s natural born enemy, has gone the old Depot way with its tag: Let’s Build Something Together. Most interesting.

Another company that shifted its emphasis, trying to deke out the recession was Scotiabank, one of Canada’s big five chartered banks. For a number of years, its tag was You’re Richer Than You Think. Scotiabank wanted you to know that it was the one to handle all your ill-gotten gains. But times got tougher in the millennium’s first decade and people just didn’t feel all that rich. So Scotiabank switched on a dime (9.5 cents for American readers) and came up with a new message to potential customers: Get a second opinion. Scotiabank invited Canadians to take advantage of a no-obligation second opinion on their portfolios. The focus was on service and solutions, things it assumed consumers were looking to bank on in tough times. But things are getting better north of the 49th parallel and so Scotiabank has happily brought back the Richer than You Think tag.

Scotiabank hasn’t cornered the market on service, however. Another Canadian chartered banker, TD Bank, stays open from “8 till late”, 50% longer than the competition. TD’s tag is Banking can be this comfortable and the primary visual is an iconic, massive (and, in my wife’s opinion, perfectly ugly) green leather chair.

Zoom Zoom

Ever since the birth of segmentation by GM’s legendary Alfred P. Sloan, car companies have tried hard to match tagline to brand aspiration. Some of these tags have become almost iconic; others, however, are as forgettable as the cars themselves. Following are our best and worst automotive taglines.

Starting with The 5 Best:

#5. Volvo. For Life. This one, though relatively innocuous, resonates because it plays off Volvo’s well-known and well-deserved reputation for safety.

#4. BMW’s The Ultimate Driving Machine may be a bit pretentious but it certainly captures the company’s image of and aspiration for itself. The good news for BMW is that both are shared by its target audience.

#3. Lexus: The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection. Lexus has clung to its M.O. and its tag since day one. Perfect. (Side note: I had a terrific assistant who was a bulldog when she had to follow up on something. I told her to add a tagline after she signed one of her menacing memos: The Perfection of Relentless Pursuit.)

#2. Chevy Trucks: Like a Rock. What can I say? I love the song. And it’s certainly better than Ford Tough and Dodge’s Grabbing Life by the (Ram’s) Horns.

#1. Okay, so the header gave it away. Number one is Mazda’s Zoom Zoom. Fun. Fast. Forever young.

And now for The 5 Worst:

#5. If Volvo is fifth best, its Swedish compatriot, Saab, is fifth worst.  Saab never could get it right, however. Born from Jets was bad. Its new Move your mind is truly, mind-bendingly, bad. It would rank higher on the hate scale if anybody actually cared.

#4. On the other hand, there is the curious case of Mercedes Benz. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! Mercedes recently dropped its Unlike Any Other for The best or nothing. It’s part of Mercedes’ new strategy to highlight the fact that the company is introducing 16 new models by 2011. Really? I mean, do you get that? Considering the heritage of Engineered Like No Other Car in the World, how did Mercedes Benz come up such a cropper?

#3. Late and unlamented. In another case of what were they thinking? how about Pontiac’s fighting it out with Ford over the rights to Car. Ford’s recent ads let you know that the company “speaks car”. But Pontiac is Car. Don’t get it? Here’s the company’s own explanation: “Car. One simple word. Packed with so much meaning. To some, it stands for freedom. To others it’s hood scoops and horsepower. For others still, it means fun and escape. We all have our own personal definitions. They all mean something special. So let’s bring car back. And all the good it stands for. From the company that always was, and will be, Car.” There you go. From the company that always was, but no longer will be. Car.

#2. Mercury: New doors opened. Case closed.

#1. Toyota tops (bottoms?) the list. You have to question the thinking behind Toyota’s Make Things Better. Seriously, is that a call to action for their own organization or their potential customers? It gets really weird when you remember Toyota’s previous tagline: Moving forward. Considering the sticking accelerator pedal recall crisis to follow, the marketing folks were clearly prescient. All around, this has not been a good year.

Haunted

Of course, when the tagline follows the name but not the thinking way up in the corner office, the words ring more than just hollow. They come back to haunt you.

Consider BP Global’s Beyond Petroleum.  That BP pays lip service to alternate technologies has been well documented. So for anyone paying the slightest attention, Beyond Petroleum is, like everything else BP says, beyond belief.

Enron’s slogan was Ask Why? The “thinking” behind the tag was that Enron was an innovative company because it questioned conventional wisdom. Now, when we look back and consider the actions of “the smartest men in the room”, you know the answer.

Microsoft abandoned its Life Without Walls, which may or may not have been its way of asking the Antitrust folks to leave them alone. Of course, the irony of Life Without Walls is not lost on Windows users who depend on firewalls to protect them against unwanted viruses. Well, at least its new Be What’s Next tag can’t get them into trouble.

Then again, with taglines you never know.

Love It or Hate It, Nike’s Ad Got Noticed

The sub-head: Widespread reaction means ad worked, executives say

Really?

I have a lot of respect for Hollie Shaw and I am sure her reporting is accurate. I also swore to myself way back when that I would not weigh in on the whole Tiger thing on the basis that enough ink had already been poured into the sea of Tiger Woods reporting to keep the Titanic afloat. But the premise that noise for noise’s sake is a good thing bears discussion.

You all know about the commercial. Trading in on the dead father’s memory and the respect in which that memory is held. A cut and splice job assembled to set the stage for the son’s redemption. A swirl of publicity ensued in the wake of the ad’s appearance. Some decried it for being in bad taste. Others, including a goodly number in the advertising industry said that bad taste or not, the commercial wouldn’t hurt Nike a bit. Indeed, they surmised, all that publicity would be a boon for a company that seen its golf sales decline 11% in 2009.

“If I were the marketing guy at Nike the day after that ad ran, I’d be a pretty happy guy”, said the chief creative officer at one large at agency.

Why?

In the bad old days, that mantra was a variation of the line usually attributed to master showman, P.T. Barnum: “I don’t care what they write about me, as long as they spell my name right.” Which is reminiscent of the classic from Mae West: “Call me anything, but call me often.” (Note: you may also find the first quote ascribed to Mae West and, another old time entertainer, George M. Cohan.) Any publicity, it was said, was good publicity.

Well, we know better now. And, somehow, I don’t see where the Nike ad is good publicity. Here’s my thinking.

1. Reflected Glory?

Nike’s promotions are celebrity-based, with Tiger Woods the centerpiece of its celebrity platform. If the ad reflects badly on Tiger Woods – and even the ad execs admit it doesn’t help polish Woods’ already tarnished image – how could it be a plus for the advertiser who clearly produced the ad to play off that image? Sorry, but ugly is as ugly does.

2. Bottom Line Contribution?

The link between Woods and Nike is well-established…and well understood by the golfing community at large. If this ad had not been aired, would Nike’s notoriety be one wit less impressive? I doubt it.

For example, none of Nike’s 2009 sales decline is attributed to the Tiger factor (if there is such a thing).

According to a survey conducted by TNS, a world leader in market research, global market information and business analysis, the scandal may have hurt Woods’ personal reputation, but not those of the brands he endorses. Respondents to a TNS survey said they had a more favourable opinion of Tiger’s brands including Nike, EA, Gillette and Gatorade (which did drop Woods but only at a point too close to the survey to have an impact).

I cannot see where this ad did Nike any good in the market or that missing out on the publicity garnered by its airing would have done it any harm.

3. The Fatigue Factor

Polls confirm that most people are tired of hearing about the Woods scandal. It was interesting…even titillating. For a while. But most now feel it’s time to move on and time to let Woods move on with his life, sympathy for Elin Nordegren notwithstanding. The ad, therefore, did nothing but keep the embers lit. It contributed to the fatigue.

Plus, frankly, the ad wasn’t that interesting. Or the production quality that good. In fact, objectively, the ad was pretty boring and, were it not for the context in which it was placed so callously, it would have been eminently forgettable.

In short, if I were the marketing guy at Nike the day after that ad ran, I wouldn’t be that happy with myself.

In the many presentations I have made over the years, I seldom counted on delivery alone to ensure that the information I offered up would have the desired impact. I was just not that good. So, I liked to use props, and the best and most readily available props are invariably the graphics by which the information is being conveyed.

There are basic rules for infographics, be they in a PowerPoint presentation, in a printed document or on screen.

1. Each graphic should make one point. Which means that if there is no point, don’t have a graphic. (Actually, if there is no point, don’t do a presentation at all.) The corollary is that if you want to make several points, then use several graphics. Layering can work, if your points are sequential and if the layering is handled delicately and judiciously. It’s a dangerous practice, however, that should be attempted only by the most adept.

2. The graphic itself should be obvious. Obvious doesn’t mean plain. It doesn’t mean boring. It does mean clearly understandable. Whether you are showing market share, population densities, product life cycle stages, elevations or critical paths, the viewers’ or readers’ eyes should know instantly where to focus.

3. If you have devices like legends, eyes are forced to hop from place to place just to have a reference point. Legends are not helpful. They cause clutter. They cause confusion. They should be avoided. Graphics where the legend is built into the concept are most effective.

If you are looking for a really great website on infographics, check out infographicsblog.com. It showcases some of the finest – and, sometimes, the less than finest – infographic work being done, saluting innovation and creativity as well as the ability to educate and impress. For each example, the author explains what works well, what doesn’t, and what essential element is missing that might, if present, have put the illustration over the top.

One of my favourite, if slightly flawed, graphics from this blog shows the evolution of Crayola crayon colours over time (100+ years). The kid in you has got to love it, though the ability to have the colour name pop up as your mouse rolls over each colour strip would have been a wonderful touch.

A particularly troublesome illustration tries to present the 10 best places to buy a house in America. Focusing on small cities, it looks at such factors as median family income, average property tax, the number of universities and museums within 30 miles, the number of librairies and movie theatres within 15 miles, the number of sunny days per year, as well as unemployment levels. It uses a variety of charting tools, several overlapping X and Y axes, and a map where the cities are identified by numbers for which you must refer to a legend. I would challenge anyone to actually identify, at a glance, which city would top the chart. Actually, I would bet that, given 10 minutes to study the graphic closely, most people would still be hard pressed to choose. It is one of those well-intentioned if ill-conceived graphics laden with data but light on useful information.

Spend some time at the site. It is as much fun as it is enlightening.

1. Good marketing works best in the service of good products, like Acquisio’s ppc management software (sorry for the plug – I’m a fan!).

2. Good products beat new products. Sustainable market leadership requires equal or better products than the competition.

3. Safety lies not in products but in portfolios of products.

4. Product lines must continually evolve as the market evolves.

5. The advantage goes to first movers.

6. Innovate rather than extend. In this way, you cannibalize someone else’s product instead of your own.

7. Seek technological leadership, but never be led by technology.

8. Competition always overtakes an innovation.

9. New products should not be developed, and current products should not be maintained, unless they are financially viable.

10. Product integrity and financial viability are the direct result of good execution.

At first glance, these principles appear straightforward, almost obvious, and your company may have applied many of them intuitively. My bet, though, is that there are products or groups of products in your company’s line-up that run counter to one or more of the guidelines and that their performance has been deleteriously affected as a result.

You may know of exceptions – successful products that break the rules – but invariably these exceptions will define and ultimately corroborate the rules.

Every company is different – to a point – and every market is different, again to a point. That said, I have found, over the years, that similarities outweigh differences and that one never goes too far wrong applying basic truths and process fundamentals. I would suggest, at the very least, you think about these guidelines not just abstractly but in reference to your own company’s product offering and those of your competitors. Better still, use them as a filter to see if your company is on the right track or if you are throwing fixed and working capital at losers.

Saturn, a different kind of car company that never quite figured out how to make a go of being different and, as a result, made little difference to the fortunes of its parent GM, is now on the verge of extinction. It is ironic that the more Saturn made cars people actually wanted, i.e., the more mainstream it became, the less relevant and more redundant it became. In other words, it is good to have a point of view, but make sure the view has a point in the first place.

Starbucks had a strongly-held point of view about coffee and people and how the two could come together. And that was enough – along, of course, with impeccable execution – to make the company an institution and an icon. Over-expansion which led to under-execution, along with competition from the lower brow and lesser brews of McDonald’s brought Starbucks profits to a coffee grinding halt. Vivanno smoothies, breakfast foods and other unimaginative fixes proved to be little more than froth. So now, two years later, Starbucks comes out with its newest game changer: VIA Ready Brew instant coffee.

According to the company’s spinners and weavers, Ready Brew is a breakthrough in “soluble” coffee:

“Ready Brew is different – it’s full-bodied and flavorful, just like the Starbucks coffee you know and love…The magic is in a proprietary, all-natural process that we spent years perfecting. We microgrind the coffee in a way that preserves all of their essential oils and flavor. No other coffee company takes this step, and it makes all the difference.”

The wording is reminiscent of an old ad for Tab, a vile diet drink introduced in 1963. “How could just one calorie taste so good?” the jingle asked teasingly. “Because the Coca Cola Company kept the flavor in Tab.”

Ready Brew takes direct aim at the $17 billion instant coffee market. Starbucks hopes to satisfy analysts without resorting to franchising and other brand-sensitive restructuring initiatives. But you’ve got to wonder: will the Nescafe crowd spend more for a Starbucks brew and could a frapuccino freak fall for an instant coffee? Will the brand be damaged by its implausible dip in the soluble pond? My guesses are no, no and yes. Time will tell.

So what about those 50 points of IQ? Starbucks shows what happens when your view gets fuzzy and Saturn when there is no substantive and sustainable view in the first place.

Time to yank out the PIMS database. The marketing budget was not going down without a fight. In fact, I had little trouble convincing my colleagues of the need to keep investing in marketing and product development. To my surprise, we had even less trouble convincing the Board. The issue arose with our attempt to determine the extent of this investment.

I came up with a plan to focus expenditures on winning technologies, products, markets and even specific customers. My Power of One presentation explained why we should put all our money on leadership products, first movers, consolidators and core markets. I was successful on the principles of the thing, but not the details. My colleagues were all for focusing, but to most that meant keeping the pressure up on those areas and pulling back elsewhere. Which translated not into the reallocation of funds and resources but into cutting what had now become ‘non-strategic’ investments. Hmph…here I was, hoisted on my own petard!

Seeing the Big Picture

It was useful, however, to take a broader view of things. Pulling back on the marketing spend (as I would normally define it) was offset by pushing ahead in R&D and operating efficiencies. What is Marketing in fact? Arguably, the additional investment in R&D and operations covered two of the four Ps…maybe even three. In fact, the company was about to embark on the biggest capital program in its history.

So now the marketing exercise was to get the biggest bang for the buck being spent on the ‘focus’ items and find a way to keep the rest sailing along in their slipstreams.

Remember the last post? “In down times, consumers and businesses alike look to safe havens, familiar brands and dependable suppliers that focus on delivering consistent value.” While we kept plugging away at our key focus items, all items were ceremoniously dumped in the safe haven / familiar brand / dependable supplier basket. Public relations, customer service, complaint handling, loyalty programs…all those things that make customers comfortable with a brand were tightly managed with the safe/familiar/dependable relationship in mind.

The jury is still out on how, ultimately, this strategy will work. But the company is sticking to the plan and, in fact, has returned to the black well ahead of schedule. The future looks bright…even if, right now, that future feels very far away.

Note: Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to David St Lawrence over at Making Ripples. The long-time blogger, author, artisan, community activist, gentleman and friend recently suffered a heart attack. This obviously strikes close to home, given my history. Take care of yourself, dear reader, and pay heed when your body sends you signals that something is wrong.

The MO was the same, with a twist. Whiskas’ Hubert et al pretend they are cats. The Cadbury gorilla pretends he is human. The latter (submitted by Fallon, London) was the 2008 Grand Prix winner at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival so, admittedly, I’m stacking the deck. But the choice of Gorilla at Cannes was not unanimous. You may, indeed, love or hate the ad. But you will, I bet, love the gorilla for his cool and for the expressiveness of his eyes. Just as you, almost as assuredly, hate Hubert for his inane and insufferable manner. Remember, both ads are selling food and both are designed to generate word-of-mouth publicity, so the comparisons are not as specious as they might first appear. The Whiskas ads generated spoofs as silly as the original. The Cadbury ad generated remixes almost as clever as the original. YouTube, as always, is the unofficial arbiter.

By the way, I assume all you ad execs are getting ready for the Cannes festival. With some 25,000 ads from 80 countries submitted each year, the Lions awards are surely the most prestigious, most sought after recognition in the industry. (Results are more important, but they don’t generally get you to the French Riviera.) Online entries open January 29, 2009 with deadlines, depending on the category, March 6, 13 or 20. The work that you enter into Cannes Lions 2009 needs to have aired or been published between March 1, 2008, and April 30, 2009. Entry is getting a bit more complicated; categories seem to be multiplying with the additions of Titanium and Integrated Lions, but that is another story. Good luck all.

In my former company, I was part of an executive committee set up to oversee all the commercial aspects of the enterprise. It was my practice to show the group our various marketing campaigns while they were still in the design phase. I also showed how our corporate strategic intent and marketing program specifics were perfectly aligned and how all aspects of the various campaigns were fully integrated.

And that was the last time they would see or hear anything until I was good and ready to show it. Good and ready meant that the ad or the brochure was produced and looked fantastic and there was a competitive equivalent that did not. It meant that we had evidence customers were happily cabbaging onto our material with documented results. It meant we had won an award or, better still, two. My colleagues were apparently happy with this approach, partially because they trusted me and mostly because they felt it was more important for them to focus on customer issues, like impending threats and looming opportunities.

This made it easy to be late and safe to produce the odd stinker. Which we, respectively, occasionally were and sometimes did. It helped a great deal that our marketing was at least reputed to be among the industry’s best (not difficult) and that, at the end of the day, we were never over budget (difficult indeed). My withholding strategy was, thus, not a tactic to get away with something, but one merely to keep a reasonable distance between us and the abacus crew (i.e., accounting) until we could put our programs in place.

In the hurly burly of everyday, it is possible for oversight to be manipulated rather than managed. Without proper structures and processes in place, campaigns can become inconsistent or run off on some tangent that has nothing to do with the long-term well-being of the enterprise. Happy numbers get presented that mask return on investment.

What we sometimes see is a gap between concept and execution. That gap may be caused by poor guidance or simply poor taste. As a result, some adverts smell like a prickly durian melon. (Never tried one? You can’t begin to imagine what you’re not missing.)

If you need an example or two, check out the continuous outpouring of putrid creative being produced for Pedigree’s Whiskas cat food line. The silly putty or, worse, silly potty humor of the ‘only cats can be cats’ ads are tasteless to the extreme and can’t possibly be enticing for anyone…least of all cat lovers. You want to strangle the loathsome Hubert and bury the lazy and listless Boris alive. The Temptations ads, with cats repeatedly crashing through walls ostensibly because they would hear someone shaking a bag of treats, are simply stupid. Which is clearly how Whiskas sees its customer base. That said, I suppose some will be drawn to the Whiskas Wet Food Challenge. Who dreams this stuff up? Who, on the client side approves? Is this an agency problem or a management one? There are those that will argue that several of the Whiskas ads have gone viral. Certainly the parody ads have. Is this a plus?

The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind. Are the whiskas ads ones you will remember or ones which you will do your best to forget. Do these ads ‘stick’ or are they just…well… just sticky?

Seth’s Blog, where he posts almost daily, proves that he has reached iconic status. He can be recognized by a single name like Madonna, although he is not at the point where he would be “the marketer formally known as the marketer formally known as Seth”.

In a recent post, The Marketer’s Attitude, Godin describes the perfect marketer. It would be a high energy, relentlessly positive person. It would be someone self-motivated and self-sufficient, able not only to visualize complex projects but also to carry them through to fruition. He or she could engage strangers and embrace ambiguity. He sees the down streams and the downsides of any plan and adjusts accordingly. And so on.

There was something missing from his description, however. The perfect marketer must also be the perfect politician. The astute marketer knows that, in a perfect world, all things are possible. But in a highly volatile world, where people see their investments and imagine their lives going down the rabbit hole, where Boards are insecure and CEOs intractable and budget cuts inescapable, not all things are possible. Indeed, most things – even the small things and especially the right things – require a great deal of personal conviction and much cleverness to gain the collaboration of those in high places if projects are to ever see the light of day.

The marketer must know how to properly package a proposal, how to wrap it in the context of necessity, how to make it risk-aversive, politically-sensitive, environmentally-friendly. He must show it as right for the times and right for the customer. He must know how to segment a project so that it is not a capital intensive venture requiring a long-term commitment from skittish shareholders, but a series of small bite-sized chunks with quick wins and easily quantifiable gains to the bottom line. He must know what to say when and to whom, how to recognize windows that are slightly ajar and how to contain disappointment and move on when they are not.

This is not a cynical view of the corporate world. It is a practical one, reflecting the times and the importance of timing. Selling starts not when a product or a program is ready to launch. It begins when it the next most perfect thing is just a gleam in the perfect marketer’s eye.

This strategy is not wholly without merit. Nor is the Poison Apple (let-someone-else-take-the-first-bite) strategy. Let others do the development work in the lab and the pioneering work in the field; once the product has proven itself but before it becomes established, swoop in with a clone and nifty marketing that ostensibly shows differentiation and you’re set. You have to be quick, however. An aggressive pricing strategy would also help but, generally, that was not our way. We were always about value-added, if not value-creation.

The Drivers

In the evaluation of new product potential, success was measured against a set of criteria. We would ask the tough questions: Does the new product play off existing strengths and to existing customers? Is it easily explainable (and, therefore, marketable)? Does the potential return justify the investment required? Clearly, incremental improvements, line extensions and value-added me-too products, which leverage existing brands and customer loyalty, would more likely give yes answers to these questions.

One study of 11,000 new product launches conducted by Kuczmarski & Associates (a Chicago-based management consulting firm specializing in accelerating growth through innovation) listed the primary motivations for launching new products. In order of importance:
-    Attract a new customer or market;
-    Gain or maintain a competitive advantage;
-    Retain customers;
-    Fill a growth or profit gap;
-    Arrest margin erosion;
-    Utilize new technology.
All but the last could be accomplished without adopting ‘risky’ innovation strategies.

In a business with small margins, a success rate of 10-15% for new products is unacceptable. And that’s after the cost of trials and errors getting past the development stage and finally to market test in the first place. Or is that second place. At any rate, market testing is far from foolproof and not universally accepted as the perfect way to go.

This includes market testing new merchandising concepts.

The Best Buy Example

In the September 15, 2008, issue of Marketing magazine, Lesley Young reports on Best Buy’s recent penchant to skip a step (ref. Launching Pad) when initiating new retailing options. Its new Best Buy Mobile mall store concept, for example, went straight to market launch.

Test marketing and launch marketing use basically the same techniques. But tests can eat up time (3-6 months) and save little on costs compared to, say, a true, though geographically-restricted launch. As well, with increasing ethnicity and socio-economic diversity blurring demographics, and with the spillover of regional media diffusing erstwhile targeted messages, there are few perfect test markets available anyway.

Best Buy also created Geek Squad departments inside their stores without testing. They found, probably to no one’s surprise, that the techies were as valuable on-site as they were on the road.

Again, back to my own experience, we found that segment-specific marketing was almost fail-safe as direct-to-launch programs. Of course, in-house specialists worked with customers during the entire design process so that we always knew we were on-target.

At the end of the day, despite all the budget and time restrictions, you’ve got to get results. If you are not introducing a whole new technology, market tests do not circumvent the restrictions, nor do they guarantee the results. The merits of the product or service, the simplicity of the message, and excellence in the execution of the launch will be the determining factors of success.

Last point: I referred several times to the issue of explainability. Will people ‘get’ the new product or program? Can the marketing message be simply defined and easily delivered? It is extraordinarily difficult to change people’s perceptions or habits. I would never consider launching a true innovation or a new technology (which tend to do both) without market testing first. There is a right time and place for everything.