Set a goal. 

Because as ace marketing consultant The Cheshire Cat advised to his client Alice in Wonderland...  "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Get You There." 

What you may not know (only because I'm, well, making it up right now) is that The Cheshire Cat then continued... "Only It Might Take You A Very Long Time, And You Might Never Know When You Are There, Which Means You Really Need to Start With A Goal."                           

There are lots of goal-setting tools and heuristics, like S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound). I just want to add one piece of advice. Make your first 2012 marketing goal an outcome goal, not a process goal. That means it specifies an accomplishment or result, not just an activity.

Think big. Where do you want your business or organization to go? What outcomes do you envision? List them, apply the S.M.A.R.T. test, then choose one. 

Rather than moving forward without a clear direction (more on this via our late friend George Harrison in his poignant song Any Road), or choosing an end point blindly (as Dr. Doolittle did to go to Spidermonkey Island), or "throwing the rock, then moving the target" (as my colleague at AARP Senior Research Advisor Bob Vorek describes many social science research projects), set your goal with purpose and commitment.

It will set you up for a solid and effective start for 2012.

For years, the dairy industry "owned" the category milk. In our minds, milk meant the stuff from cows. As a result, other forms of milk needed a descriptor. For example, nursing a baby wasn't about just "milk," it was about breast milk. 

Marketers know there is nothing better than dominating a category. Like FedEx created and dominated the category of overnite delivery, the dairy industry (a family of brands) dominated the category of milk. 

But, in the words of the great singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, "Times, they are a-changing."

Check out the game on the Got Milk website to find "real" milk. Here's a screen shot of how they show what one can only assume are the "fake" milks.

Then take a look at their "Real Milk comes from cows" TV ad. Seems that the California Milk Processor Board (they're behind the long-running the Got Milk campaign) is getting defensive. That means Silk and other brands of Soy Milk, Almond Milk, Coconut Milk, Rice Milk, and others are taking not just shelf space, but market share from cow milk folks. Hence, the campaign to equate cow milk with real milk. 

As a long-time consumer of the competing non-dairy products (when my "raised on rice milk" kids were little and lactose-intolerant, they heard the refrain cow milk is for baby cows at least a million times), I see this as a prime example of a category (milk) growing beyond its dominant product line (cow milk).

Will we see the day when restaurants say, "Would you like cow's milk, coconut milk, or rice milk with your cereal?" I suspect we will.

My daughter Hana saw these in a store and texted me a photo, being impressed with Jelly Belly's marketing savvy.

They aren't available very often, but when they are...Jelly Belly fans love to snap up our famous Belly Flops. These special beans taste great, but don't quite meet all of our demanding standards for size, color, shape and flavor.    

 - From back of bag, as blogged by Sugar Pressure

 This is another example of the world's greatest marketing axiom (my favorite anyway): If You Can't Fix It, Feature It!

Four marketing lessons from Belly Flops:

1. Instead of trashing the misshapen jellybeans or hiding the irregularities, they feature the "mistake" and the fun it produces:

You may find one that's round, one that's square, or you may even find a bunch stuck together. On very rare occasions, a flavor may not match a color. A red Belly Flop might taste like Blueberry, or a white one might taste like Chocolate Pudding. Crazy!

2. The product name Belly Flops leverages the well-established Jelly Belly brand name, while simultaneously repurposing a kinda funny label that most people know refers to a not very serious, well, flop. Which is all strongly reinforced by the graphics on the bag.

3. They assure customers of the usual great Jelly Belly taste, and at the same time, reinforce that they have "demanding" aesthetic standards that this product doesn't meet.

4. They make us feel like we're getting a deal - half price, in fact.

Good marketing JB!

Micheline, head of our International Desk, recently gave me a Time magazine article about seducing customers. Actually, it was about how supermarkets create "zones of seduction" that get customers to spend more. What the author and consumer fan Martin Lindstrom (check out his buy-ology book pictured below), called "seducing," I used to refer to as "engineering." But seducing sounds well, more seductive (and is actually more customer-centric). Don't you think? 

A key point was changing the environment to trigger our primitive, and often subconscious survival responses, like hoarding for lean times. The approach requires lots of customer field research to know what works and to fine-tune the changes. For example, changing a point of purchase sign in the supermarket aisle from $1.95 to 1.95 increased sales. The dollar sign seemed to trigger a greater awareness of expense, not value. Adding the line "maximum 3 cans per customer," coupled with smaller shopping carts and a bumpy (and noisier) tile floor that led people to slow down increased spending sevenfold. Sevenfold!

Think about slot machines in Vegas, starting with your first steps off the airplane.They are everywhere! You can't even go the bathroom without passing a zillion slots seductively beckoning your credit card.

Are we being constantly manipulated? Yes. Is that bad. Sometimes. Is it an inherent part of a capitalistic society? Yes.

And the real bottom line question: How can YOU more effectively and ethically seduce your customer (or client, patient, partner, investor, etc.) to "buy" from your organization?

As I was watching the Broncos (barely) win yet again, I was struck by a Dodge Journey ad. Positioning the car as "the search engine for the real world," the campaign (Wieden + Kennedy) makes the point that people can't experience life online. The campaign was launched several months ago with the added ploy of hiding three Journeys in different parts of the country and making a contest of finding them. And ironically, you needed to go online to get clues.

Interestingly, there is no mention- zero, zip, nada- of any car-related features or benefits. It's all about experiencing life.

Three powerful marketing lessons:

1) Your competitive advantage may have nothing to do with the features of your product.

2) The campaign is strategically sticking to its theme - Journey, by virtue of the storyline in the ads, the design of the contest, and of course, the name of the car.

3) By highlighting that experiencing something online (aka "like" being there) is not the same as really being there (the copy goes "no one makes list of websites they want to visit" while driving by beautiful sites that people do want to visit in person), the campaign touches a pain point most of us know deep down is true, yet may not articulate. 

And Dodge is providing the solution: Buy the Journey, and really live.

I predict that lots of products and services will join the growing ranks of campaigns that contrast "real life" with what they portray as a much more shallow online or "virtual" life. Again, the message is you buy the product, and you really live!

P.S. Check out AdWeek's story here.