Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

Ulrike has once again pointed out a good example to me, this time of a product development strategy straight out of the Ansoff matrix. I’ve noticed the traditional German cuddly toy maker trying to do something about the dwindling birth rates in Germany before, most obviously by targetting older buyers in the media (who’ll buy [...]

On the latest marketing course we finally had students again who were keen to compete. They took on the task of designing a competitor for Unilever margarine brand Lätta. The winners came up with a brand extension for Philadelphia, also a major international brand but not yet known in Germany as this format of spread. [...]

Many markets are made terribly complicated by government legislation and restrictions that, to marketing people, do nothing but make life difficult. But the P for political/legal in the PEST model won’t go away, so you have to decide whether to go with the flow or do something about it. Could you eat the contents? Two [...]

For years marketing execs have been trying to get the audience to react to ads – ideally immediately. If only they could find the right tools to get the last part of AIDA going through an advertising campaign – Action. A triumph for direct response advertising? Take TV. You could put a telephone number in [...]

Better than before How do you update a brand without making it look like what you had before wasn’t perhaps as good as you were making it out to be? For years people mocked the iconic Persil for claiming it washes whiter. What, like it didn’t wash white before? And what is ‘whiter’ anyway? The [...]

A sure mismatch for some Abercrombie and Fitch have decided they don’t want free publicity on TV. At least not the free publicity they’re getting from US make-out-like-a-macho TV series Jersey Shore. In a bold move they’re telling the stars of the show they will pay them NOT to wear their clothes. A kind of [...]

Source: website screenshot I have Johannes to thank for this latest example of a German company realising that many customers judge you most by the part of the marketing mix they see most often: P for product, in this case even P for packaging. Pickled gherkins are big in Germany (the market, not just the [...]

Addicted? Plug in and suck. I’ve recently had two bizarre products pointed out to me. Both leave me shaking my head in disbelief. The first is the e-cigarette. Yes, you heard it here, the cigarette that isn’t actually a ciggie, it’s an electronic device pretending to be a ciggie. As they say on some of [...]

Producers of mobile phones, digital cameras, flat screens and similar hi-tech products often have to pump huge budgets into R&D. To get this investment back – and break even as quickly as possible – they tend to “price skim”. This involves using high prices to remove the “cream” from the market before the competitors catch [...]

What do you do if a competitor copies your brand name? Normally: blast them out of the water. But check your facts first. Beer from here, and there. The German brand Löwenbräu will be familiar to beer drinkers in many countries of the world. In Germany there are two Löwenbräu’s, however. So which one is [...]