In 1970 apparently someone thought this ad was OK
And all the birds is too many of the birds
Hi Gobbledeers,
How’s it going? You’re not going to believe this, but did you know that they’re making a BARBIE movie? Really! I don’t know why they haven’t done any marketing for it. It’s weird.
No. No. That’s a…No. No.
One of the lessons of the Bud Light debacle is that just because a marketing campaign seems reasonable at one point in time does not mean that it will be considered reasonable at another point in time.
Like at one point in time, “everyone should drink Bud Light, no matter how you feel about how someone self-identifies, gender-wise” was an unremarkable thing. But then it was “holy crap, people sure do feel strongly about how people who drink Bud Light self-identify, gender-wise.”
Ages ago I mentioned this 1970s-era Jell-o Pudding ad, which suggests this wife of the new assistant vice president is too much of a dumb-ass to know what an assistant vice president is, yet because Jello-O Pudding tarts are so easy to make that even a dumb-ass can do it, she was able to celebrate her husband’s promotion to who-the-hell-knows-what-he-does by making him a Jell-O Pudding tart. “Congrats, dear, I stuck a pecan in some pudding.”
And while I’m not aware of any blowback about this ad, I guess that the marketing team at Jell-O Pudding thought long-and-hard about it and decided they should switch up their marketing to show that in that era of women’s liberation, they should have a spokesman who truly believe in women’s equality.
Anyway, my point was that there have been marketing campaigns that may have seemed completely unremarkable at one point and then seemed completely remarkable later.
To wit, I’ve been fascinated with this Benihana ad that ran in New York Magazine (and I’d guess, elsewhere) in 1970. It had first caught my attention because Benihana had an interesting problem when they first launched in 1964 - how do you convince Americans who don’t know that there’s a style of Japanese food that isn’t sukiyaki (something safe) or scary (raw fish).
Like many ads at the time, they went with a copy-heavy approach that actually addressed that problem head-on.
However, as I read it, at about paragraph 3 I saw something where I heard one of those record-needle scratch effects and thought, “oh no. No. No, you can’t. No. Even in 1970?”
They used it twice? Twice!
So I guess the lesson is, if you’re going to use slurs in your restaurant ad, make sure you use them a couple of times?
Everything Is Positioning
Joe Biden’s dad would’ve been a good software marketer:
Or maybe he wouldn’t have been. I have no idea. But for some reason he used to tell his 9 year old son that if he’s ever the SVP of Marketing at a software company (well, first they’d have to invent computers, and then software that runs on those computers), that he really should focus on what or who their prospects should compare the software to, rather than just saying it’s the best thing ever invented.
Joe Biden, Sr., that’s good advice!*
*(also effective if you’re running for President.)
Maybe All the Birds Was Too Many Birds
Speaking of positioning…
If you worked for a venture-backed tech company in the mid-to-late 2010s one thing you may have noticed is that one day none of the senior execs wore Allbirds and then one day all of them were wearing Allbirds.**
(**Well, not if your senior execs were women. Hahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahaha. There were very few female senior execs at venture-backed tech companies in the mid-to-late 2010s.***)
(***Outside of HR.****)
(****And sometimes customer success.)
Like one day nobody had these shoes on, then the next day everyone had those shoes on. And if you went to your company’s Board meeting you may have noticed that all of your VC Board members were also wearing Allbirds.
Then, because, y’know, dress for the job you want, everyone in tech was wearing Allbirds.
That occurred for 2 reasons:
Reason 1: Do you have a pair of Allbirds? Holy crap are they comfortable.
Reason 2: They made an, how do you put this, unconventional-for-a-footwear-company financial decision to raise venture capital as a way to grow the business. And then those VC guys told their VC guy friends and so on and so on.
We’ve recently addressed how your financial structure affects the marketing decisions you make - finance actually does have a huge impact on marketing (even if you got into marketing so you’d never have to think about finance). But I’m going to talk about it again because for whatever reason, we don’t talk about finance in the same way that Lin Manuel Miranda doesn’t talk about Bruno.*****
(*****For a song that was everywhere in 2021, it’s possible I haven’t heard it since then. Did it ever exist in the first place?)
Software companies raise VC investments because you typically have to scale your operations a year in advance of seeing any revenue — getting your new salespeople up to speed is 2-3 months, and then it’s 6-9 month sales cycles in enterprise software. But you have to pay people and get them laptops and whatnot well before you see the cash. So VCs will invest. They also invest (or perhaps, primarily invest) because of the repeatable subscription revenue that, in good times, means the company is worth 10X revenues.
When a footwear company raises venture capital, it means they have to grow very quickly. Perhaps irrationally quickly. Perhaps they also go public too quickly, well before they’re profitable and are running a business with predictable growth and profitability.
Because they’re not a subscription business they don’t have a base of revenue that just renews every year - they have to constantly pay to re-acquire customers. Also, footwear companies may be valued at 1-2X revenue rather than 10X revenue of a tech company, and let’s just say that’s why nearly every apparel and consumer goods company that raised VC funding and went public from 2019-2021 is now down 95%.
Including Allbirds.
The Wall Street Journal wrote (free article for ya) about the company and their struggles to grow.
After the initial success of its original shoe, the Wool Runner, Allbirds tried to expand beyond its base of 30- and 40-year-olds to attract younger customers with more technical running shoes and other sneakers in brighter colors and edgier patterns. It also pushed into new categories—underwear, puffer jackets and golf shoes—but struggled to replicate the success of its first shoe.
The company lost focus, unsure if it was selling to sneakerheads or soccer moms, said the people, who are familiar with Allbirds’ product development and marketing. A key business assumption, that consumers’ concerns about the environment would drive them to buy sustainable products, has been a tough sell.
So - Allbirds had a financial structure that required them to grow quickly…far more quickly than if they were funded in another way. Because of that they couldn’t only build off its base of 30- and 40-year-olds who loved their comfortable wool-based Wool Runners. They had to go find new customers (and every company wants younger customers, even if they have a great base of non-younger customers). And they had no idea what these new, younger customers wanted (because they weren’t customers). And they had to keep growing, so they couldn’t just stop selling to the older customers. But if they kept making products for older customers, the younger customers wouldn’t be interested and so on and so on and so on.
You may remember the column from a couple of weeks ago where we talked about the collapse of the Instant Pot, where a new CEO came in and said that the company had been a “product phenom” and now wanted to expand beyond the “phenom” product. That failed miserably, as they couldn’t figure out how to expand its product line in a way that resonated with consumers and wasn’t already inundated with competitors.
Sound familiar?
Allbirds needed to expand, but wasn’t sure if its core customer was “sneakerheads or soccer moms” (I would note here that it is difficult to please both of those groups), and overestimated how much consumers cared about the “wool is better for the environment” part of their product messaging.
As you may imagine, if you don’t know who your customer is, and you want to change your customer, and you’ve misunderstood how much your customers actually care about what you think is your core product benefit (good for the environment) versus what your customer likely thinks is the core benefit (hey, these are comfortable), and you need to expand your product line, well I think you may be screwed.
And screwed they were.
They tried moving into technical running shoes, and then into athletic wear made out of wool (which apparently led to see-through leggings and other products that weren’t durable). Then came the puffer jackets (?), and wool dresses (?) and ballet flats (?).
As one insider put it, Allbirds wasn’t going to convince kids in downtown Oakland, Calif., to ditch their Air Jordans when it was selling ballet flats.
In short - Allbirds thought their positioning was “super funky shoes that are also great for the environment, and young people love both those things.” Except their actual position in the market was “the world’s most comfortable shoes.”
Oops.
It’s a shame, because “the world’s most comfortable shoes” is a pretty good business. Just not as a public company. Yet.
How We Can Work Together
As always, thanks so much for reading. I continue to be pleasantly thrilled/shocked that people actually want to read about marketing :)
If you’re a marketer and you’re starting to think about your positioning, there are two ways we can work together:
In a half-day (or so) workshop we’ll help you hone your positioning and messaging so it’s clear what you do, and why you’re better than your competitors.
Do you have an event where you want someone to talk about messaging and positioning in a fun way? I do that!
Happy to chat - here’s my Calendly link.
And it would mean the world if you could share Gobbledy with a friend. Or enemy.
Couple of things.
First, mmm, pudding.
Second, I'm sure they meant Puffer Red jackets, which were a very big seller in Detroit, via your local Mr Alan's, whose famous tag line, "One for 29, two for fiddy" should be the subject of a column. Or maybe an entire blog.