Why Burger King No Longer Reigns?

"On Monday, it plans to launch a lineup of smoothies, frappe coffees, chicken strips and snack wraps." Sounds a lot like the menu listing of America's #1 fast-food burger chain, McDonald's. But this is actually Burger King's idea of getting back to the top... or at least #2, where it used to be until Wendy's took its place for the first time last year.


A news report said, "Burger King has failed to evolve even as competitors have gone after new customers with breakfast items and healthier fare... Burger King executives don't deny that its new items are pretty close to those on McDonald's popular menu. But they say the new menu was created as a result of Burger King's own research."  


I don't think BK failed to evolve. I think they made a gamble when they decided against getting on the "healthy-food choices" bandwagon, the way many fast-food chains have. Unfortunately, their gamble didn't pay off because of wrong TIMING. Capitalizing on a consumer trend is a lot like trying to get on the best wave for surfing. Every consumer trend has a pattern---a rise and fall. I suspect Burger King was trying to capitalize on the young male group who want REAL-juicy hamburgers, not something as politically correct as the chicken wrap. BK was waiting for the tipping point. It was waiting for us to say, "That's it! I've had it with all of these healthy-eating, organic food nonsense. I only live once, so gimme that WHOPPER of a meal!"  But alas, no one said a word because we were busy stuffing our mouths with salads and protein drinks. 


Burger King's own research probably told them that this trend of healthy lifestyle is here to stay... at least for the time being. This trend is still on the rise. Refusal to adapt and cater to this trend  might just kill the King and dethrone him for good. This is a double-edged sword: BK needs to adapt to the changing consumer taste in a financially feasible way. BK also needs to differentiate itself from competitors if it were to have any chance at beating its rivals. The big question is how can BK adapt without losing its identity? If people remember McDonald's when they look at Burger King's menu, is that a good thing? 


Major TV ad campaigns with celebrity endorsements may help get the word out. But marketing guru, Seth Godin, reminds us that the product and experience itself need to "be remarkable." 

Off the Grid

My husband got me a cell-phone to replace my iPhone 3G that, after more than three years of use, has a died on me. Like many with of you who use a smart phone, I was so tethered to this technology. So much so that the convenience and knowledge-at-your-fingertips capability in a smart phone have been fully integrated into my daily routine.

The replacement phone I asked my husband to get for me was this AT&T phone. I know what you're thinking... But, the reasoning going into getting this phone is not the issue at-hand. My experience of switching to one after years of being spoiled by a smart phone is.

Being Off the Grid:
It was... well, BASIC: no camera, no social media on-the-go, no traffic, no maps/GPS, no games, no smart web-browsing, and no e-mail among many other spiffy apps. But it does take and make calls or text messages (side note: even my technologically-challenged dad uses a cell-phone more advanced than this)! For many people, the only time they are "off the grid" is when they're sleeping. For me, once I shutdown my work computer, I'm basically "off the grid."

For the first month, I felt like I was like a drug addict going through terrible withdrawal symptoms. On numerous occasions, I find myself pulling my hair out in the car when I forgot that I didn't have google maps on my phone to figure out the traffic or find the number to a restaurant to call in my order in advance. On another instance, I wanted to take a photo to post on Facebook and tweet about it, but the phone nonchalantly said, "Sorry, no can't do!" to my highly disappointed face.

I'm now two months off the grid. I've been sharing my personal life less in cyberspace. I suppose I have less to worry about Internet Privacy and a target for Online Behavior Advertising. Essentially, I have become e-marketers' biggest challenge: The un-reachable "Adult 18-34" customer in mobile marketing.

I've learned to get back to living like the days before Steve Jobs enlightened us with gadgets we didn't know we needed.  Am I happier off the grid? I think I have more time to focus on the things happening around me, rather than trying to find out what's happening elsewhere with my friends.

If you want to give more focus to the present, the here, and the now... getting off your smart phone might be a smart thing to do. Or not?

A Creative Challenge

One of the courses that I had just completed this quarter is the Marketing Communications and Persuasive Messages. The goal is simple: Your message should make people do what you want them to do. Whether it is a written letter, live presentation, or a message on a video, the person who initiated that message always wants to persuade you to believe in what they're communicating.

I'd like to share with you one of my assignments in this course. The task is to create a persuasive video, no more than 90 seconds long, and it can't be text-heavy. Here's what I submitted. :)

Well, what do you think?

Learning from Google's hiring practice

Sure, credentials and experience count. But when faced with a pool of equally qualified job seekers, how do forward thinking companies, like Google, make their pick?

Through my conversation with a recent IMC graduate who got hired at Google, uniqueness of character and passion that drive an individual beyond just working to make a living are the factors Google looks for in a job applicant. But mind you, saying "I am passionate," won't be enough. These companies want to see you 'walk the walk' and, in some cases, 'climb up a cliff even though you're afraid of heights!'

Why?

Well, if you are a good leader with a great vision and you choose your team players based on more than just their work experience and education, your team's character will be the differentiating factor between your company's success and mediocrity.

The way I see it:
Great leadership + a great team = a company doing great things
Great leadership + not so great team = an exhausting endeavor
Not so great leadership + a great team = not possible!

My Valentine Discovery

Ever wonder why your loved one doesn't seem to feel your love?
Or, maybe nothing your loved ones do or say seem to be enough to show how much they love you?
Maybe you're speaking a different Love Language than they do...?

Here's what I mean:
There are those who feel loved through the gifts you give them. In that case, don't think a simple "Happy Valentine's Day" greeting would suffice. Be sure to get him/her a thoughtful gift! According to the Gary Chapman, creator of the "5 Love Languages," these types of people thrive on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. If that person speaks this language, the perfect gift or gesture shows that he/she is known, cared for, and prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to that person. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty, thoughtless gift would be disastrous—so would the absence of everyday gestures.

My husband and I had to figure out our Love Languages before we got married. Maybe you and/or your loved one should take the 5 Love Languages test by Gary Chapman? Take it here! 

What language(s) do you understand best?
 The "5 Love Languages" are:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

What I find interesting is that with a little bit of tweaking, these love languages can also apply to the relationship between a consumer and a brand!

The "Inggrid Yonata-Fu" version would be:

• Words of Affirmation: The relationship relies on positive feedback and suggestions from the brand to improve customers' utility and value of the brand. Social media is the name of the game.

• Quality Time: The brand and its representative is always on-hand to troubleshoot any customer issues--a worry-free relationship (outsourcing to India or using automated representatives is NOT a good idea).

• Receiving gifts: "Congrats on your ______ (insert special occasions/milestone of customer) day! Here's a gift from us to you. Enjoy!"

• Acts of Service: Prime example is Zappos, Inc., Nordstrom... companies that go out of their way to please the customer. Brands loved by these types of customers live by "Customer is King" motto.

• Physical Touch: Actual interaction, be it in the form of a nice, firm handshake or a product demonstration that requires physical involvement. Jeep does a great job at making customers feel their brand by setting up a Jeep ride/test drive at the annual Auto Show.

Whether you are a company or just someone trying to get a special someone's attention, if you don't understand your target's primary language, you could end up wasting a lot of time and resources to make very little gain.

SOPA, PIPA: What's the big deal?

Apparently, it's a huge deal for websites like Wikipedia that went on strike yesterday in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. SOPA. and Protect IP Act, a.k.a. PIPA.

My IMC Ethics & Law class had a heated discussion (no exaggeration) last night about this topic. Our professor played devil's advocate: So what if SOPA blocks our access to websites that commits/facilitates online piracy by deleting link that comes out of search results?

As a marketer who values the the importance of brand building, piracy is a major problem. But what SOPA & PIPA try to do is WAY too broad and far reaching. U.S. based sites like Limewire and Megaupload.com can be shut down. But it's almost impossible to take down foreign based sites. So, the SOPA will enable the U.S. gov't to block our access to those sites. They won't show up in Google, Yahoo, etc...

Congress, don't forget: The real issue is that people are uploading and downloading pirated content online. Blocking access to one site doesn't guarantee that another site won't pop up offering the same pirated content. It just doesn't seem smart or right to do.

No access = no information = CENSORSHIP
SOPA & PIPA are essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
It's like BOMBING your house down because of a spider in the bathroom
Instead of blocking access, why not block the ability to upload and/or download from those sites? After all, isn't that the action we are trying to prevent?

The uphill battle against smoking

My "Law & Ethics" class talked about how the FDA has been trying to deter people from smoking. They went as far as trying to impose big tobacco with a rule to dedicate 50% of cigarette packaging to FDA warnings against smoking.

I'm not a proponent for smoking but there has been no concrete evidence that prove these warnings and images are effective.

Why not?

Dig deeper into the American consumer's mind and you'll find that great American dreams were built because people lived by this motto:

 

The word "QUIT" carries such a negative connotation. But the FDA and all materials out there keep on telling people to QUIT.

 

People know that smoking is bad for the health. But they say, "I'm no QUITTER. Never have been and never will be." Now you know why the government is having a hard time getting people to stop smoking? Quit using the word, "QUIT" because...

How to make the study of Science exciting!

Topic: Tegenaria duellica, a.k.a. Spiders
Finding: Experiments have shown that common house spiders spin their webs in different ways according to the psychotropic drug they have been given.

So they behave differently... big deal! *Yawn* Boring, right? 
Wrong. 

Turns out, the folks at Environment Canada Wildlife Service may have found the way to communicate to the young and restless. This short documentary will show you what I mean:



If only more educational videos can be as creative and entertaining, we will have youths paying more attention in classes like Sex Ed, Alcoholism, Defensive Driving, Drugs and the Law... etc. 

Always think from the customers' point of view.

Social Experiments

The Washington Post conducted this social experiment:

Violinist Joshua Bell plays incognito in a Washington subway before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people using a $3.5 million handcrafted 1713 violin by Antonio Stradivari.
What do you think would happen?




Excerpt from the Washington Post article: "A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."

On the flip-side, will consumers pay the premium for a mediocre product with a hyped up brand? Oh wait... that's what we, marketers, do. Make the ordinary, extraordinary. The unnecessary, a must-have.

On a much lighter note, how does a region's environment affect its people?
Take the people of Osaka, Japan, for example...



The insight lies in these quotes from my friends familiar with the Japanese culture:
"They are from Osaka, which is like the Japanese capitol of comedy" 
"Only in Osaka. You do this on Tokyo ppl, and you'll get completely ignored."

Marketing & Marie Curie's P.O.V

A recent IBM survey of chief marketing officers showed "that many feel unprepared to handle today's social media-infested waters." No doubt, marketers with an "old-school" approach are losing their grip in this world of digital media and data explosion.

The gist of the survey conducted by IBM: 

• 71% said they are under-prepared to manage current "data explosion"
• 68% struggle with changes in social media.  

Phil Kotler, author and marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University said, "Marketing was just easier in the past."

To me, "marketing" never got easier or harder. It was a matter of how much marketers were able to understand the consumers and their motivations. Back then, the expectations put on a marketer were much lower than what they are today. Creating a great buzz around a product or brand is great... but that will no longer suffice today. Marketers and businesses want more than just exposure and engagement. They want to measure the EFFECT - an obvious link between the ad and the resulting purchase. So far, only the world of online advertising and e-commerce has been fairly successful in tracking a specific user's site visit, duration and activities.

Marketers today shouldn't feel overwhelmed by the influx of information. We won't have all the answers for every question and, sometimes, the answer leaves us even more confused and uncertain. But that's okay... we should be comfortable living and making decisions in a VUCA World. If anything, marketers today should get excited of the deep consumer insights they can uncover thanks to the availability of data and technology to analyze what's happening on a larger scale.

In the words of French Physicist, Marie Curie:  

"Nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood."

My alter ego - Inggrid the Newscaster

I had just finished my fall quarter at Northwestern University's Integrated Marketing Communications program. Although I still have two more quarters left before graduating with my M.S. in IMC, I have learned a lot from this program. One of the three courses that I took this fall was Customer Value Innovation--taught by a very thought-provoking instructor.

Yesterday, he asked me about my TV reporting background. He said, "You must be famous! People must've recognized you (outside of the TV station)!" I replied, "Nope, not really... because I look very different on TV than I do in real life." He didn't believe me and so I showed him this video of my work from the days I reported and anchored for NBC.

Inggrid Yonata's Demo Reel from Inggrid Yonata on Vimeo

His jaws dropped to his amazement and he kept on repeating, "Whoaaa... you look SO different!" at least a dozen times within 5 minutes before the class started.

We all have our own alter ego, whether we realize it or not. Human beings are fascinating like that! Our characters are multidimensional. We just have to know how to make the best out of each of them.