The Monkey Shack

On Hiatus

2009-06-26T11:03:00.003-06:00

The Monkey Shack is on hiatus while I work on a whole new personal website and blog. Until then keep in touch with me via Twitter.

The truth is in the details

2009-05-21T13:34:00.014-06:00

Yesterday I blogged about how Google search data indicated that Adam Lambert would be the runaway favorite to win American Idol. After all, he had an almost 4:1 margin over Kris Allen in search activity. So you can guess my stunned amazement when I learned Allen had pulled the upset.

So where did the numbers go wrong. I still believe that search data can be used to predict outcomes like this, but the analysis has to go a little deeper than simply looking at whose name is getting search fore most often. The truth was in the details.

I went back and looked at the data last night to figure out how this played out. I began by looking at both "Kris Allen" and "Adam Lambert" related search terms from the past 30 days, and discovered that "Kris Allen" related terms outpaced "Adam Lambert" related terms by almost a 2:1 ratio. A further indication of the momentum Allen had established in the closing days of the competition, breakout terms, or terms rising faster than Google can calculate the rate of increase, showed Kris had an almost 3:1 edge.

Google Insights Top 10 Rising Searches - Past 30 days

Analyzing the data from a number of different angles showed the same story. Over the final week of the competition, Allen's lead of the top rising searches grew to nearly 3 to 1, and search terms rising at a rate greater than 250% showed Allen with a slightly better than 2:1 lead.

Google Insights Top 10 Rising Searches - Past 7 days

A further indication of Allen's gaining momentum and Lambert's popularity erosion is seen when looking at the data on a per name basis. Looking at just "Kris Allen" related terms over both the past 30 and past 7 days, only searches related to his name and American Idol are found among the Top 10 Rising Searches.

Search terms related to "Kris Allen" - Past 30 days

Search terms related to "Kris Allen" - Past 7 days
When looking at Lambert's rising searches, it become evident that Kris Allen was invading those searches and instead showing Allen as the true dominant force.

Search terms related to "Adam Lambert" - Past 30 days
Search terms related to "Adam Lambert" - Past 7 days

The lesson from this? You must take a deeper look to attempt to discern or characterize the nature of the interest rather than looking at the sheer volume alone.

Can Google predict who will win American Idol?

2009-05-20T08:58:00.006-06:00

The answer is, yes!

Now I don't follow American Idol. I have only watched one entire episode the past eight years. I didn't even know who the contestants were this season, but did know (thanks to Twitter) that tonight was the season finale. And while most everyone I've heard this morning thinks Adam Lambert will be this year’s champ, I think he will win for an entirely different reason.

Google.

I have never heard him or the other finalist, Kris Allen, sing, but I am tempted to run over to Wendover to put some money down on tonight's outcome. Online chatter and search volume correlates very closely with actual voting. It happened in the presidential election and its happening with American Idol. By looking at Google search trends (volume, demographic and geographic) for the past three seasons, patterns in the data appear that can predict the eventual winner of American Idol.

For example, in 2006, Taylor Hicks dominated much of the search volume from early March through the finale. Eventual runner-up Katharine McPhee passed Hicks for a brief window in late April and early May, but Hicks surpassed her and rode the momentum through the finale. In 2007, an analysis of search data revealed that Jordan Sparks received more related searches than Blake Lewis. Last year's competition saw the two finalists, David Cook and David Archuleta, trade jabs as the leader in search volume. But larger states, including Archuelta's birth state of Florida, leaned in Cook's favor and carried him to the title.

This year Lambert is crushing Allen in searches, currently holding an almost 4:1 margin over him. And unlike previous seasons, where the leaders have traded top search position week to week down the stretch, Lambert has held a sizable lead for the past month. The only state leaning towards Allen at this point in his home state of Alabama. Even the states which had strong support for Danny Gokey, the contestant voted off last week, show Lambert running away. For a marketing geek like me, the implications of utilizing search data to predict consumer and market trends is enormous.

Search volume utilizing Google Insights. Lambert Allen

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 American Idol winner, Adam Lambert.

Help! Where do I click?

2009-05-18T17:14:00.005-06:00

If I didn't have ADHD before visiting ESPN.com this afternoon, I sure do now. User Interface experts and web designers said you couldn't cram this much graphic into this small a space, but ESPN has proved them all wrong!

Sometimes it takes one quick glance at something like this to remember that less often really is more.

Beware the Fail Pig!

2009-04-30T12:10:00.003-06:00

The swine flu panic how now gripped the Twittersphere and turned the Fail Whale into the Fail Pig!

Thee Irrationality of our Rational Decisions

2009-04-13T08:41:00.002-06:00

In his epic work Hamlet, Shakespeare once wrote, “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”

It is remarkable when we consider the scope of everything our minds and bodies are capable of. I’ve watched in amazement the past few months as my one-year-old daughter has learned to walk, pull herself up onto the couch, communicate using sounds and hand gestures, and even feed herself (sort of). We can recognize and process the quarter of a million distinct words of the English language, not to mention the innumerable slang and regional terms, computer jargon, acronyms, etc. We can ride a bicycle or snowboard down a mountain. We can run at full speed, see something in the corner of our eye, then change directions. We can sing and learn to play musical instruments. Truly, humans are amazing creatures.

About one hundred years after Shakespeare penned the quoted lines from Hamlet, the belief that man truly was “noble in reason” moved to the forefront of Western intellectual and philosophical discussions. The Age of Enlightenment was based on the desire for human affairs to be directed by rationality rather than by instinct, tradition, superstition, religious faith or revelation.

In the midst of the Enlightenment, Scottish economist Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, arguing that people act in their own interest and do so rationally. In other words, consumers will carefully calculate the value of all the options and decide upon the best possible choice for themselves. If mistakes are made, the “invisible hand” of market forces force us to recognize our own irrationality and place us back on the safe path of rationality.

Ever since, economists, marketers, and us as consumers continue to think of ourselves in rational terms. The majority of economic scholars continue to hold to the theory of “economic man,” which suggests that purchasing decisions are the result of largely "rational" and conscious economic calculations of an individual buyer seeking to spend his income on those goods that will deliver the most utility (satisfaction) according to his tastes and relative prices. Many of these principles still constitute the foundation of our economic society today.

Imagine with me for a moment that you have an early morning meeting. You walk into the conference room in the office and take a seat next to a coworker who is taking a sip of their Starbucks coffee. If you were to ask your coworker why they decided to purchase their Starbucks that morning, what sort of responses might you expect to hear? Your coworker will likely describe how he or she enjoys the taste of the particular blend, and that the local Starbucks was conveniently located along their way into the office.

These may indeed be true, but they don’t explain why your coworker chose to drive past several other coffee houses along the way, or why they decided to pay $4.00 instead of helping themselves to the free coffee available in your office’s break room. Or why they decided it was even coffee they wanted in the first place. Is the taste of that morning Starbucks really that much better? Was the Starbucks location and wait time really that much more convenient? Or is something else at play here in the myriad of decisions we make on a daily basis?

Each day we engage in behavior that most of us would consider irrational. Few of us will openly proclaim ourselves to be superstitious, yet how many of us will refuse to walk under a ladder? We avoid black cats. We discuss with some friends how well things appear to be going for ourselves, then instantly begin to search for some wood to knock on. If we break a mirror, the first though that comes into our head is that we have suddenly doomed ourselves to seven years of bad luck. Buildings and airplanes are often built without the thirteenth floor or row. We don’t consider ourselves superstitious, yet irrational behavior such as this exhibits itself constantly.

Whenever we are faced with a decision, or confronted with a product or brand, our brain instantly begins to process thousands of pieces of data and information. Some have said that we only use ten percent of our brains. Neuroscience findings, however, show that our brain is indeed 100% active. Our brain is divided into several primary functional areas and regions which are linked together. One area of the brain does not act independently of the others, and none of the functional areas of our brain are inactive, not even during sleep.

While our brains may be 100% active, the vast majority of our data processing occurs deep below our conscious levels. According to Dr. Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School and a former member of the Executive Committee of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, about 95% of all thoughts, emotions, and learning occur in the unconscious mind—that is, without our conscious awareness.

Part of our own irrationality is due to the fact that human behavior is largely learned. As we grow up, we have experiences each day that leave an imprint upon us. The time our mother raced to comfort us after we hurt ourselves as little children. The time we struck out in little league at a crucial moment in the game. The times we were successful in school, and the times we weren’t. The conversations we’ve had. The teasing and compliments we received as children. The time we broke up with our first high school sweetheart. We are experiencing something every minute of every day, some of which are more memorable for one reason or another and thus may become more permanently retained in our short-term memory. Most become forgotten, but they remain somewhere, working behind the scenes to drive the decisions we make.

How many times have you misplaced car keys, eyeglasses, or the remote control? Is it because your mind did not take account of where they were placed? Not likely. Instead, the thousands of bits of data your brain is processing at any given moment—the sounds, smells, textures, and colors of the environment around us, the phone call we are expecting, the list of things we need to do around the house this weekend, all take up the limited capacity of our short-term memory and squeeze out the exact location of our car keys. The same thing happens with the majority of the experiences we have on a daily basis. We may not be able to recall most of them, but we had them nonetheless and they leave an indelible imprint upon our minds and the decisions we will make in the future.

In his book Predictably Irrational, MIT Sloan School of Management professor Dan Ariely describes an interesting behavioral economics study in which he and two other colleagues set up a table outside a large public building. At the table they offered two different types of chocolates—Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses, with a sign hanging above that read “One chocolate per customer.” The Lindt truffle was priced at 15 cents and the Hershey’s Kiss at one cent. 73 percent chose the truffle and 27 percent chose the Kiss.

They then decided to change the price, offering the Lindt truffle for 14 cents and the Hershey’s Kisses for free. Rational theories of economics and consumer behavior would suggest there would be no difference in response. Both candies had been lowered by the same amount, one cent, and there was still a 14 cent difference between the costs of both of them. But this time, 69 percent passed on the opportunity to purchase the Lindt truffle for a good price and opted for the Hershey’s Kiss instead. Demand for the truffle fell from 73 percent down to 31 percent.

Ariely subsequently conducted other variations of the study, pricing the chocolates at different price points or even placing them next to cash registers so as to eliminate the chance that people were just taking the free Kiss because they didn’t feel like digging around in their pockets or purses for change. Yet in every case, the result was the same. He concludes his account of the experiment by saying:

“According to standard economic theory…the price reduction should not lead to any change in the behavior of our customers… And yet here we were, with people pressing up to the table to grab our Hershey’s Kisses, not because they had made a reasoned cost-benefit analysis before elbowing their way in, but simple because the Kisses were FREE! How strange (but predictable) we humans are!”

Another example comes from Martin Lindstrom’s latest book, Buyology, in which he describes a neuromarketing study which used fMRI data to analyze how participants responded to various branded sights and sounds. One of the brands included in the study was Nokia. Participants rated the images of Nokia phones extremely favorably. But there was an overwhelmingly negative response to the famous Nokia ring tone to the point of actually suppressing the generally enthusiastic feelings participants had when seeing the Nokia phones alone.

The data suggested it was highly likely that the sound of Nokia ring tone was damaging the brand. Consumers clearly had a preference for the phones design and features, so why would a default ring tone that could be easily changed be responsible for holding the brand back?

The sound of the familiar ring tone was evoking negative feelings in consumers, most of them probably unaware it was happening. Consumers connected the sound with the romantic dinner that had been disrupted by a phone call from the boss calling you back to the office, or the coworker who forgets to turn down his cell phone only for the Nokia ring tone to go off in the middle of a crucial conversation or presentation. The problem, Lindstrom discovered, was that consumers associated the sound with “intrusion, disruption, and feelings of annoyance…(and) had come to hold all of the lyrical charm of a nervous breakdown.” As a result, potential customers were being turned off from the brand. A highly irrational reason to decide against a brand, but a powerful one nonetheless.

With so many different variables in play, influencing and driving our decisions on a daily basis, marketers have even more reason to engage in meaningful brand building activities. Branding should not be limited to those with mega-budgets at their disposal. In fact, branding becomes even more critical when budgets get a bit tighter. No marketer will argue that getting through to consumers is tougher today than ever before. We have become overloaded with information to the point of ignoring it altogether. Or so we think.

As we have already discussed, nothing escapes our senses. We are constantly interpreting signals, making up our own perception and understanding of the brands in the environment around us. At the same time, we are constantly sending our own signals to those around us, leading them to make up their minds about our own personal brand. When companies neglect brand building, they are nothing more than a blank sheet of paper, leaving consumers to make up their own minds while perhaps waiting for something more distinct.

Imagine for a moment you have just entered an old European cathedral, temple, or mosque. The experience is an entirely holistic one as it engages all of your senses. You can small the fragrance of the incense, candles, or old wooden benches. You can hear the bells ringing, the subtle tones played from the organ, and the voice of the priest or rabbi or minister speaking. The sunlight streams through the colorful stained glass windows. You touch the stone walls, and recognize the unique architectural arches.

You may begin to have certain feelings as you walk around. Certain emotions or memories may begin to intensify. The experience of walking into the religious setting has communicated a brand message, a powerful one that has invoked the use of all the senses. But now imagine you walk into an entirely different religious setting, perhaps a simple church building. There are no bells tolling and no stained glass windows. What if the same religious leader had been delivering the same sermon in both places? Rational theories would expect people to feel and act the same, but our own experience tells us that is not to be expected. The environment and sensory experience has changed, and even though we may not have been consciously processing the sensory data, the subsequent emotions, thoughts (and decisions) become entirely different.

Picture in your mind a car mechanic. What do you see? Most people would describe someone wearing a pair of grease-stained coveralls and possibly carrying a red shop rag. Now picture in your mind the CEO of a Fortune 500 company making a presentation to a group of investors. What do you see this time? Perhaps you imagined a sharp-looking business professional, wearing an expensive looking pinstripe suit and a starched white shirt and tie. But what if you were one of those investors in that meeting, and someone looking like the mechanic walks in to present. Even if their delivery and knowledge and expertise were the same, would you trust them? What if you walked into the mechanic’s shop only to find someone in a three piece suit hanging over the hood of your car? Would you have the confidence they would be able to do the job correctly?

That so much of our decision-making is influenced by subconscious elements does not mean that we are unable to control ourselves or immune from the consequences of our decisions. Instead, by better understanding our own irrational behavior, we gain more control over ourselves and the decisions we make. The more rational we claim to be, the more irrational we really are. It is by acknowledging our own irrationality that we actually gain control.

Similarly, marketers need to recognize the irrationality of consumers and act accordingly. In a sense, the irrationality of consumers is understandable and even predictable, and can be used to design everything from products, brand strategies, retail store layouts, campaign tactics and more. Not because we have somehow tapped into the subconscious of consumers and have deviously “tricked” them, but because we are delivering meaningful and desirable products, services, and experiences that are both emotionally engaging and enhance the lives of consumers.

This is why traditional marketing approaches which assume that consumers will act rationally struggle for success. Each decision we make is influenced by countless factors, some rational and most irrational. Multiple emotions, instincts, cultural norms, thoughts, values, beliefs, and experiences kick in and lead us to a decision. When considered, we are far from the “rational creatures” that we, along with the philosophers, politicians, economists and others, have long supposed ourselves to be.

Even most marketers that understand the irrationality of consumers still heavily rely on research techniques and information that only works properly if reason rules the day. A company spokesperson for Microsoft said it well when they acknowledged that “human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions.” A focus group participant is unlikely to admit that the real reason they purchased the large McMansion that put them on the brink of bankruptcy is because it appealed so much to their sense of vanity and desire to show their friends they could afford such a house. New and innovative qualitative research techniques and methodologies, in addition to the more recent emergence of neuromarketing practices, are necessary in order for marketers to have a window into the human mind and the ability to decode what consumers really are thinking and feeling, and what is ultimately behind our consumer behavior.

In the end, Shakespeare wasn’t incorrect when he proclaimed, “What a piece of work is a man!” Scientists and marketers alike are only beginning to understanding the depths of the human mind. The veiled forces that shape our decisions each day are not frightening, but exciting. It does not make the job more complex for marketers. If anything, when armed with understanding, it gives us greater ability to promote our products and services and build brands in a more meaningful and thrilling way.

Wall Street Journal, you're next!

2009-04-09T10:04:00.002-06:00

My recent white paper discussing the importance of branding in a recession (posted here), was today's featured story on UtahPulse.com. Another white paper is the final stages and will be submitted again for publication, with hopes of getting it in the printed version of the Deseret News or Salt Lake Tribune as well.

Next stop: The Wall Street Journal.

Atlanta airport goes subliminal

2009-04-09T08:26:00.004-06:00

Airports might not be the first places you look for examples of unique brand experiences. For the most part they are all the same, large floor to ceiling windows in the main ticketing areas, not enough ticket agents at the counters, stressed-out passengers at security checkpoints, and rows of chairs in front of each gate with passengers sitting silently, waiting for the announcement that they can begin to board the plane in cattle-like fashion.

Could holistic sensory branding tactics change the experience of passengers at one airport? Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International, one of the world's busiest airports servicing over 6.6 million passengers per month, thinks so.

Visitors to Atlanta's airport will hear familiar R&B classics with new lyrics meant to gently prompt passengers in a campaign to promote airport cleanliness. The songs, "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb, "Bustin' Loose" by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and "Fantastic Voyage" by Lakeside, were rerecorded by the original artists themselves.

Says Doug Strachan, Creative Innovations Manager for the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation, who rewrote the lyrics and invited the original artists to record the revamped songs, "Whereas words reach the mind, music reaches the heart. These are hit songs that people love ... real powerful, catchy and make you want to dance. If you can make someone dance, you can probably motivate them to do other things."

But the airport isn't just using music to reach passengers, it is also using scent. The airport also uses a scent called "Breeze," which uses a variety of different notes including vanilla and a little lavender, to help enhance visitors' mood. A custom scent that will be exclusive to Hartsfield-Jackson is in development.

Travel commentator Stefanie Michaels, also known as Adventure Girl, says anything airports can do to make air travel more relaxing is more than welcome, especially in the times we live in. "Movie theaters and restaurants have been using scents and those kinds of subliminal tactics for years," Michaels says. "Music makes people feel good and with the economy the way it is, people are just stressed to no end, so from a subconscious level it's a really wise thing for the airport to do."

The rise of cultural movements

2009-04-07T13:50:00.002-06:00

From MediaPost's Engage:GenY blog. Post authored by Chip Walker.

In 2007, I fielded a global quantitative study of Gen-Yers in 13 countries and was surprised to find the No. 1 attitude unifying the generation was: "I would fight for a cause I believe in." A large majority of global Gen-Yers agreed with it from among dozens of other attitudes. My colleagues and I were all puzzled by this finding and weren't quite sure what to do with it. As I've created campaigns for Gen-Yers during the past couple of years, the meaning of this finding has become crystal clear.

Simply put, Gen-Yers have an activist bent. But their activism is different from the idealism and rebellion of their Boomer parents in the 1960s and '70s. For today's Gen-Yers, activism is not about rebelling against institutions -- there's simply not that much left to rebel against.

Belief in institutions like government and big business crumbled long ago. Rather, in a world of almost infinite lifestyle choices, Gen-Y activism is about young people knowing their own inner priorities and making a vow to live by them -- even in the face of adversity.

A big part of Gen-Y activism is what I call "self-activism." They treat themselves and their dreams almost like causes. It's less based on idealism and more a matter of necessity: If they don't activate the revolutionary inside, they simply won't get anywhere in today's hyper-challenging marketplace.

According to the Wall Street Journal, half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. According to a Gallup pool, over two-thirds of high school students say they intend to start their own companies. Clearly, an independent spirit pervades this generation, and it's fueled by a strong sense of their personal values and beliefs. Among GenYers' most important personal values are authenticity, altruism and community.

Yet, it is this generation's consumer activism that makes them a unique challenge for marketers. Gen Y-ers don't just want to buy brands, they want buy in to what a brand believes in. They flock to brands like Red and Livestrong that spark movements.

Some are social movements -- the sweatshop-free and socially responsible clothing movements are making clothing brands like Timberland, American Apparel and Patagonia must-have items for GenY. Others are cultural movements -- rather than selling processing speed, Apple invites GenYers to join a creativity movement. Obama became the choice of Gen-Y voters because he asked them to join a movement for change, not simply to vote for him.

Would your brand fight for a cause it believes in? Would your employees? Most Gen-Yers would. Today more than ever, GenYers are seeking to summon their own passion, courage and determination. Thus, if you want to connect with them, it's time to stop doing traditional marketing and start believing in something bigger than making money.

It's not easy for a brand to spark a cultural movement. But it's worth doing because it allows us to go beyond having a point of difference and actually have a difference-making purpose in the world. I, for one, believe Gen-Y's unique activist spirit will be its lasting generational hallmark, one that will change the future practice of marketing for the better.

Fight the recession. Grow a beard!

2009-04-07T10:52:00.005-06:00

In an effort to stay ahead and be able to predict economic downturns before they happen, economists and financial analysts have looked to number of different indices for help. The most popular may be the "misery index," which calculates the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate. Other more obscure gauges include the "lipstick index," which keeps an eye on cosmetics purchases (they rise during a recession), and even the so-called "Mormon index," tied to food assistance and stockpiling.

But now there might be another gauge economists can look at to evaluate the health of the economy: the length of men's beards. Esquire grooming editor and New York salon owner Rodney Cutler, who was also recently retained by Philips' Norelco as brand spokesman, says "recession beards" are on the rise as more men are letting it all grow out as an act of "playful rebellion," a sign of defiance and of not being a "corporate slave."

Not to mention a sign of not being employed. Hundreds of thousands of layoffs monthly are reducing the number of men who feel the need to shave daily. Some purport that facial hair is a visible, outward sign of one's masculinity, and that by growing beards, unemployed workers suggest that they have not been "unmanned" by their recent job troubles.

Observing the wave of layoffs across the country, workers at one financial services company decided that facial hair might be a great way to show solidarity with their unemployed friends. The trend has even spawned a handful of Facebook groups. And the 2009 NYC Beard & Mustache Championships unveiled a new category this year, the Recession Beard.

The Trouble with Twitter

2009-03-30T14:39:00.003-06:00

TwitPic issues, anyone?

2009-03-25T16:13:00.004-06:00

If anyone has tried recently to upload a picture to TwitPic only to discover it misplaces your photos and puts someone else's pic in your Tweet, perhaps the above graph showing TwitPc's traffic graph will help to explain some of their scaling issues.

What lawn care taught me about the recession

2009-03-25T08:34:00.003-06:00

Over the weekend, my wife and I spent a good part of our Saturday working outside in the front yard. Most of our time was spent "thatching," raking up the thick layer of matted and/or dead grass that accumulates below the top layer of the lawn, especially after a winter of heavy snowfalls. The thatch on a lawn can be the biggest hindrance in growing a vibrant and healthy lawn, preventing water and essential nutrients from reaching the soil.

As we spent hours raking (we have the blisters on our hands to prove it), I thought about how well the process of thatching a lawn after the winter works as a metaphor for the challenges we face both in life and in business.

Until last weekend, we had not thatched our lawn since moving into the home. It had gone through three winters of heavy snowfall and two summers of hot, dry temperatures. As a result, the lawn was really starting to struggle in some areas, literally choking itself and struggling to survive the Utah high mountain desert climate.

In many ways, the current recession is like my lawn rake, getting rid of the areas of inefficiency that are choking a business and preventing it from healthy, vibrant growth. The recession's "rake" removes unnecessary or wasteful spending, undesirable products and services, poorly performing employees and management, inefficient business processes and models, and underperforming departments and companies. Once the thatch of business is removed, growth can occur.

You don't have to thatch your lawn every year, but should do so occasionally in order to keep it healthy. Same thing with recessions. They are cyclical. They come and they go. The important thing to keep in mind is that, while painful, they are necessary and in a counter-intuitive way, even desirable.

Unveiling the "Sixth Sense"

2009-03-24T09:35:00.002-06:00

From Pattie Maes' presentation at TED. Fascinatingly cool stuff!

A really long post about the importance of branding in a recession

2009-03-23T11:23:00.004-06:00

The following is the text of a white paper I published recently, outlining the importance for marketers to maintain their brand-building and marketing activities in the recession. Enjoy!

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THE IMPORTANCE OF BRANDING IN A RECESSION
By Thomas Nehren | Richter7 | March 2009

In recessions or other periods of slower economic performance, brand managers and marketers have to carefully consider how to wisely spend their valuable resources. In times of economic concern, one frequent response is to cut brand-building and marketing activities in an effort to better control costs. While it is in many respects the last thing a company should do, it is often the first thing they do.

Branding today has become more important than ever before. The current economic climate only heightens its importance, rather than diminishing it. Admittedly, a company’s executive and marketing management must have strong stomachs to follow a strategy that at times may seem counterintuitive and contrarian by investing funds in branding marketing while exacting tighter control over expenses in other areas.

Robert Frost once wrote in The Road Not Taken, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” This paper outlines four key points for marketers, brand managers, and business leaders to consider when facing the difficult decisions of why a brand should seize the opportunity created by today’s economic decline.

First, historical data and statistics show that companies that maintain or increase their marketing and advertising efforts in a recession do so to their significant advantage. Second, recessions brings about dramatic changes in consumer trends that only intensify the need for branding. Third, rational statements about product quality or superiority no longer provide sufficient room for differentiation. And fourth, advertising clutter can only be overcome by solid brand strategies based on emotional connections that embrace a consumer’s lifestyle. Unique plans based on alternative and/or guerilla media do not alone have the power to generate sufficient and lasting awareness and interest.

RECESSIONS CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR BRAND-BUILDING
During a recession, marketers are essentially faced with two options. One—cut back on advertising, hold on tight, try to ride out the storm, and promise that money will again be spent on branding once there’s extra to be found. Second— push forward with aggressive marketing to take advantage of a competitive landscape vacated by rivals.

It is an instinctive reaction for many to respond by cutting advertising and marketing expenditures along with other areas of discretionary spending. Such a reaction, however, often fails to distinguish between short-term operational and long-term strategic initiatives. Thus, long-term competitive advantage is sacrificed to instead meet short-term financial targets.

As stated by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton of the Harvard Business Review, such attempts to play it safe or “cut fat and waste often slice into newly growing muscle, bone, and tendon.” Ironically, such a reaction to a slowing economy ends up only damaging the company’s most valuable asset: its brand. Another article from the publication states that "Advertising should be regarded not as a drain on profits but as a contributor to profits, not as an unavoidable expense but as a means of achieving objectives.”

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch, writing in The Financial Times of London, wrote that “instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession.” He went on to say “It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.”

The benefits to companies who continue, and in some cases expand, their marketing efforts during recessionary periods is widely documented. In the 1920’s, both the Kellogg’s and Post cereal companies raced neck and neck to dominate the emerging breakfast cereal category. During the Great Depression, Post cut back on their advertising while Kellogg’s maintained their strategies. By the time the Depression had come to a close, Kellogg’s had emerged as the clear leader in the category, a position they continue to maintain seven decades later.

Analyzing the recessions of the 1970’s, the research firm of Meldrum & Fewsmith showed that "sales and profits can be maintained and increased in recession years, and (in the years) immediately following, by those who are willing to maintain an aggressive marketing posture, while others adopt the philosophy of cutting back on promotional efforts when sales appear to be harder to get." Specific to the 1974-1975 recessions, the firm showed that companies which did not cut marketing expenditures experienced higher sales and net income during those two recessionary years and the two recovery years following than those companies which cut in either or both recession years.

Following the recession of 1981-1982, the McGraw-Hill Research's Laboratory of Advertising Performance analyzed the performance of some 600 industrial companies during that economic downturn. It found that "business-to-business firms that maintained or increased their marketing expenditures during the 1981-1982 recessions averaged significantly higher sales growth both during the recession and for the following three years than those which eliminated or decreased marketing.”

An additional study by Cahners and the Strategic Planning Institute found that businesses that increased media advertising expenditures during the recessionary period of the early 1980’s "gained an average of 1.5 points of market share." More recent studies of recessionary years during the 1990’s have showed similar results.

CONSUMERS CONSUME BASED ON EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO BRANDS
Perhaps some of the reason for the response to cut marketing expenditures may be due to the fact that advertising, and more specifically branding, is often inaccurately interpreted to be nothing more than glorified awareness of a product or company. Such inwardly-focused branding efforts fail to capture the essence of what true branding is intended to be—an outreach to consumers in ways that are particularly relevant and motivating to the point of the driving sales, improving customer satisfaction, or supporting higher prices.

Each recession brings with it changes in consumer values and mindsets, which affect the purchase decisions they will make long after the recession is declared over. The current recession, which began in December 2007, brought about monumental changes in consumer values and behaviors. The crumbling of financial marketers worldwide resulted in a level of insecurity and angst unlike any other period in memory. Consumers awoke to a realization on our interdependence and vulnerability, longing for someone to provide reassurance, direction, guidance, and escape from daily worry.

We are social creatures and crave relationships that shape our identity. We develop strong personal relationships with family members and friends. Online social communities and neighborhoods are built to connect individuals who share common interests and passions. We develop connections with pets, to our country, to religion, to sports teams, celebrities, even to inanimate objects. And we develop connections to brands.

At the heart of these connections are our emotions. Dr. Gerald Zaltman, Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and a former member of the Executive Committee of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, argues throughout his books that metaphors provide context for the often subconscious emotions that drive our behavior. These emotions are a lens through which we view the world. Feelings of attraction, desire, fear, and love among others cause us to act upon our thoughts.

The need for an emotional element in a brand’s persona extends to all categories. In 2005, the Workers Compensation Fund conducted extensive research which showed policyholders don’t believe their insurance providers truly understand the disruption and impact workplace accidents, fraudulent claims and inefficient claims handling have on their business. A traditional and more rational approach might be to educate the consumer about these disruptions.

However, research also learned how most workers do not actively think about safety, almost believing they are invincible. However, once reminded about the impact an injury might have on their family, they became more sensitive to safety messages. WCF worked with Salt Lake City-based Richter7 and infused emotion into their brand by having family members, particularly children, take the lead in reminding their loved ones to “Be Careful Out There.”

The campaign moved both customer and prospect favorability towards WCF, as well as existing customer satisfaction, to all-time highs. More importantly, workplace accidents among WCF clients dropped more than 40%, while remaining flat or edging slightly higher among their competitor’s clients. The campaign communicated the important message of workplace safety, but took it one step further by attaching that message to an emotion, the love that a provider feels towards his or her family. Appeals to the rational side of our brains without simultaneously making an emotional connection fail to incite the desired response from consumers.

As humans, we are first and foremost emotional beings, and our behavior is driven only when intellectual thought or reason intersects with our emotional side. As consumers, our consumption behavior is driven in the same manner. A brand’s image, its core message, its experience, and persona all work together to allow for a relationship to develop and some sort of action by consumers to take place.

In their new book Brand Immortality, authors Hamish Pringle and Peter Field studied 880 campaigns and found that emotional campaigns were almost twice as likely to generate large returns than rational campaigns. When at a time when the emotions, and even the logic, of many consumers has been thrown into a state of disarray, a brand that pulls back and fails to establish itself does so at its own peril.

BRANDS OVERCOME “THE DILEMMA OF SAMENESS”
Consider a recent study conducted by Consumer Reports. In the study, over fifty various kitchen ranges were tested and evaluated. The ranges were priced anywhere from $400 to over $5000. Of the ranges tested, forty-seven were rated as “very good” and four were considered “excellent.” Two models were considered “good,” and not one was rated as “fair” or “poor.” The trend is not limited to kitchen ranges. The ratings for smart phone devices, vacuum cleaners, digital cameras, and most other categories similarly yield a wealth of highly-rated products with virtually none falling into “fair” or “poor” territory.

A product manager for any of the fifty-one kitchen range models rated as “excellent” or “very good” may have been both pleased by their high score, and at the same time disheartened that their product did not immediately stand out amongst the crowd of competitive models. It can be considered a “Dilemma of Sameness.” Little differentiation in terms of overall quality takes away a marketer’s ability to continue what has long represented the majority of all marketing strategies, a selling proposition based primarily on rational benefits and logical arguments of product superiority.

Never before have there been so many quality products sold in America as is the case today. While business can be proud of their advancements in quality and performance, consumers are left to navigate a sea of products, with only the smallest of differences to help them distinguish and choose which products represents the best value for them. That is not to say there is nothing that can be done to further and improve products or services, or to make them “remarkable” as Seth Godin has said, but often such improvements aren’t enough to change perceptions and actions in the marketplace.

When consumers perceive little if any difference in tangible buying criteria, they will always defer to the most obvious difference: price. Again from the book Brand Immortality, reviews of previous national and international campaigns found that emotional campaigns generate a wider range of desirable business effects, most notably in their ability to reduce price sensitivity by an enduring sense of differentiation for the brand.

Consider the popularity of touch screen smart phone devices. RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky suggests the number of iPhones sold in 2008 at 14 million, and estimates that an additional 24 million will be sold in 2009. The staggering sales figures come despite the fact that Consumer Reports currently rates six devices higher than the iPhone, most of which are also cheaper than the iPhone’s price tag of $299 for the most recent 16GB model.

Even more interesting are results from a recent survey by internet monitoring firm comScore, which showed that the iPhone is proving most popular among low income earners despite its high price tag. The survey found the strongest sales growth for the iPhone came from households earning between $25,000 to $50,000. Sales in this sector of the market grew forty-eight percent, compared with just sixteen percent among households earning more than $100,000. The staggering growth and popularity of the iPhone is being driven by an income bracket one would expect would have been hardest hit by the recent downturn in the economy.

Logically, the iPhone would not appear to the best value when it comes to touch screen smart phones, and certainly not for lower income and more vulnerable households. But that hasn’t stopped consumers from spending. The difference is Apple’s iconic brand and strong affinity among its consumers.

Using kitchen ranges again as another example, consider the case of The Viking Range Corporation. The company makes professional-quality stoves for homes. These products are priced around $4,000. Stuck in the middle of the ranges classified as “very good” by Consumer Reports, the line has grown into a $400 million business. Interestingly, in their book Trading Up, Michael J. Silverstein and Neil Fiske point out that “Some seventy-five percent of Viking cooktops installed are never used.”

It would seem illogical that one would spend so much on a cooktop, only to never use it. But Viking isn’t selling a cooktop. It is selling a brand that tells a powerful story that resonates with a targeted group of consumers who seek to express their sophisticated individual style and tastes and adventurous spirit in seeking out new culinary experiences. A brand based on emotion. An emotion that drives behavior.

MEANINGFUL BRANDS, NOT GUERILLA TACTICS, BREAK THROUGH CLUTTER
Providing further complexity to the problem faced by today’s brand managers is the case of what many marketers have referred to as “advertising clutter.” The more of it there is, the harder it becomes for any one advertisement to stand out.

Complaints about advertising clutter are nothing new, dating as far back as 1759 when English author Samuel Johnson wrote, “Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.”

Certainly, a growth in available products and greater access to them makes today’s situation for both consumers and marketers much different than was the case in 1759. It’s even more difficult than was the case just forty years ago, when advertising executive David Ogilvy blamed the clutter problem for consumers having “acquired a talent for skipping advertisements in newspapers and magazines and going to the bathroom during television commercials.”

Recent estimates suggest consumers are exposed to over 5,000 advertising message each day. Media agency Mindshare reports that fifteen minutes of every hour is devoted to advertising and/or network promotions. TNS Media Intelligence further suggests that on top of the thirty-second commercials, viewers were also exposed on average to six minutes and twenty-two seconds of paid product placements during one typical hour of prime-time programming. During the third quarter of 2006, the CBS show Rock Band: Supernova contained over 1,600 product or brand shots within its episodes alone.

What makes clutter more challenging for marketers today is the increasing proliferation of advertising messaging, as well as the ease with which consumers can navigate around it. Armed years ago with a remote control to change the channel, ad blocking software for internet browsers, TiVo, and wireless devices now give consumers more ability to ignore marketing at the push of a button.

The change in the ways consumers consume media has brought about amazing new trends in communication and messaging strategies. Many of these new strategies and tactics provide a unique opportunity to develop relationships between brand and consumer like never before. Brands can engage consumers, walk with consumers, and become a welcomed and celebrated part of their lifestyle. In his book Buying In, columnist for the New York Times Rob Walker describes the phenomena of “murketing,” a description for the murky way in which relationships between brands and consumers have become “strangely interconnected, even reinforcing.”

The Toyota Scion branded itself as a car for the younger crowd they called “tuners,” a crowd who expressed their own unique style and personality through the way they customize their vehicle. The Scion’s marketing budget would have made even a mid-sized advertising agency scowl. Yet, the approach involved showing up at outsider and trendy parties, festivals, and events in urban centers. Scion hosted club events with DJs and gave away free copies of a Scion CD Sample Volume. They let editors of alternative publications test drive the vehicle for a week.

Scion embraced a lifestyle, reinforced that lifestyle, and gave consumers an outlet for their emotions. The car started wit a cult following to become now a mass-market success as the rest of the automobile industry questions its future.

Though an integral part of the campaign, it was not the creative use of alternative media and guerilla tactics that made the Scion a success story. It was the brand’s ability to understand the emotions and needs of a particular target audience. They embraced those need, and built a brand that didn’t just try to convey understanding through a cool logo and tagline and crazy marketing stunts, but through an entire philosophy surrounding everything about the brand.

The market is full of examples, from Tylenol to Red Bull, of companies who built a brand based on emotion, infused that emotion into their marketing, and provided experiences that reinforced that same emotional side of a consumer’s lifestyle.

THE CALL FOR BRANDING
The bottom line for any brand manager in a recession is this: one must aggressively, determinedly, tirelessly work to build the brand. It cannot be put on hold or placed on a back burner. Recessions come and go, and they will continue to do so. With the amount of competing messages vying for the slightest crack of attention, brands cannot expect to maintain or return to their position in the marketplace once brand-building and advertising is reduced. Once gone from the consumers mind, too often that brand is gone for good.

Instead, a brand must become even more diligent in its efforts to build a case for its own singularity and exceptionality. It must be built on emotion that is deeply relevant and resonant with a target audience in order for it to have the lasting power and be perceived as special enough to be worthy of not just a consumer’s limited pocketbook, but also their lifestyle. Brands have the unique opportunity often created by unpleasant economic environment to forge deeper relationships with consumers that are profitable for both the company and the consumer.

It isn’t consumers who fail to understand the meaning and importance of a brand. It is the failure of the marketer to communicate that to the consumer. When that occurs, and when money is tight and sentiment is weak, consumers will make the necessary and even unpleasant choice that many marketers are learning the hard way: They simply won’t buy it.

Three Components of Brand Equity

2009-03-20T15:10:00.006-06:00

A recent AdAge article focused on settling the argument over "emotional messages" and "rational messages" and which ones are preferable in marketing. The authors reference data that shows that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two.

Even better than an emotional campaign is an emotional brand, which, in general, generate a wide range of desirable business effects in improving profitability. Emotional brands reduce the consumer's focus on rational features and benefits and have a substantial reduction on price sensitivity.

"Brand Equity" is the sum total of all associations, experiences, and perceptions consumers have over time with a company, including its products, services, marketing, employees, retail stores, etc. As companies seek to establish greater Brand Equity, its three components must be considered separately.

Awareness
Unaided awareness is the foundation and first key measure of brand equity. Awareness comes from exposure, i.e. advertising, publicity, event sponsorship, store fronts and signage, email campaigns, direct mail campaigns, packaging, website, banner ads, etc. These things must be created with extraordinary style and creativity so they grab attention and have impact.

Understanding
Understanding comes from what you say about yourself, and, more importantly, what others say about you. Do consumers think about you the same way you think about yourself? In the past, understanding was shaped largely by the news media and word of mouth, but now social media gives brands a tremendous opportunity to listen to what consumers are saying and engage them in actual conversation. Imagine for a moment that your target audience could only think of you in one single way. What would you want it to be, and how many would say that very thing about you?

Loyalty
Loyalty comes through positive interaction with a brand. The more positive the experience, the deeper consumer loyalty becomes. Branding is a business strategy not just a marketing strategy. It is a long-term commitment, not a short-term initiative. Develop a positive experience through product design, employee training, creating a great shopping experience, and customer-friendly corporate policies. From a marketing perspective, look at highly personalized data base driven marketing programs, i.e. preferred customer programs, cross-sell programs, and particularly the personalization of your website.

Slow down!

2009-03-11T11:04:00.007-06:00

There is a reason we're supposed to slow down when we go around curves when we're driving. If we don't, our car's inertia becomes too strong to correct quickly enough and we end up driving off the road and over a cliff or into a tree.

On a recent road trip, we were coming over a mountain pass and around a corner that I misjudged and didn't slow down enough for. I never lost control of the vehicle (no I wasn't taking the photo above as I was driving), but the turn was sharp enough to wake up the passengers.

When developing brand positioning and marketing strategy, many business leaders, especially small business owners, take the corner too fast. Recently I consulted with several small business leaders on brand strategy, but once our brainstorm began they excitedly began discussing how they were going to talk to consumers and started brainstorming taglines.

Its natural. As humans we are impatient and want to get to our destination as quickly as possible.

But before you can talk tactics (how), you have to figure out what you are going to say and why anyone would care. Only once you have slowed down and done the first step can you begin taking the next step.

Otherwise you just might steer your business off the road.

Hiatus

2009-03-11T10:30:00.004-06:00

The Monkey Shack has been on hiatus the past few weeks. Oddly enough, the number of visitors to the blog has increased since I last posted. Thanks to everyone in our growing community for stopping by. These are interesting times for business leaders and marketers, and we'll be jumping back into cyberspace shortly!

Back to basics for Toyota

2009-02-24T09:48:00.005-07:00

On Monday, three top executives announced their retirement from Toyota. One of them was Mitsuo Kinoshita, one of the primary architects of the company's global expansion the past two decades. Incoming president Akio Toyoda, grandson of the man who founded the company, plans to focus on abandoning kakushin, or "revolutionary change," current president Katsuaki Watanabe's term for changing the way Toyota designed its cars and factories. It spawned technological advances, but in Toyoda's opinion led to cars that were often costlier to produce.

Toyota is struggling through the global recession that seems to have a bulls eye planted squarely on the backs of automakers. Though Toyota is in a stronger position than GM, it still forecasts a loss at the end of the fiscal year March 31. The company is stockpiling unsold cars in of Fuji Speedway and is moving forward with plans to shutter factories in both North America and Japan.

Watanabe spoke often about innovation kakushin, kaizen (continuous improvement) and kaikaku (revolutionary change). A corporate philosophy built on those principles pushed Toyota to become the world's largest automaker and earn a reputation for the best and most reliable cars in the world.

Now they seek to distance themselves from those philosophies and focus instead on thrift and efficiency. Only time will tell if abandoning some of the core principles will help Toyota stay afloat and reemerge out of the recession even stronger, or if they will only sacrifice what decades of work has built and impede the company in the long run.

The Great Recession

2009-02-23T16:24:00.005-07:00

Last week, Billionaire investor George Soros said the the world financial system has effectively disintegrated and the resulting turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, then compared the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union. Donald Trump said we are in a depression earlier this month.

Scary opinions coming from two very successful and influential global business leaders. But before you get too freaked out, consider that the US Gross Domestic Product fell 46% between 1929 and 1933. The current recession has seen it fall 3.86%. Unemployment reached a high of 24.9% in 1933, right now we sit at 7.6%. The stock market fell 86.7% during the Great Depression and took over 25 years to break even. Today stocks closed at their lowest point since 1997, down 49.8% from October 2006 and more consistent with the recessions of 1973-74 and 2000-03 (48.2% and 49.2% respectively).

While the current economic situation is certainly severe and likely to recover anemically next year, to say we are in a depression is nothing more than hyperbole, lack of perspective, and panic. We are not even close to the turmoil of the 1930s, and data indicates we are not going to come even close.

Yet consumer fear continues to hold the recovery back. Consumers have lost faith in business executives so they turn to politicians, only to hear Obama constantly suggest, "If the stimulus doesn't work, there's more to come," which further destroys confidence. The broken record rhetoric encourages investors and consumers to hold off, to see if a better deal materializes down the road. Even Bill Clinton says Obama has been too negative and needs to change his tone.

Results from a poll released this morning by CNN show what is really at the heart of this economic downturn. 73% of Americans say they're very or somewhat scared about the way things are going in the United States, six points higher than in an October 2008 poll. Nearly eight in 10 say things are going badly in the country, with just 21 percent suggesting that things are going well. The survey also says that three out of four Americans are angry about the way things are going in the country.

But three out of four questioned say that things are going well for them personally.

A Keynesian "paradox of thrift" mentality is settling in. Paradox of thrift is an economic theory which simply states that when everyone saves more money during times of recession, aggregate demand falls and in turn lowers total savings in the population because of the decrease in consumption and economic growth.

Consider a leaky bucket. A hole in a bucket, representing savings, is made a little larger, corresponding to people becoming more thrifty. Initially there will be a larger flow of water out. But this cannot continue indefinitely. Equilibrium exists when the inflow equals the outflow, and the inflow has not changed. This means that the water level must drop so that the pressure forcing water out the bottom will be reduced. Less pressure means less outflow, and at some lower level of water equilibrium will be reestablished.

Three-fourths of Americans think things are going well for them, meaning that economic turmoil does not exist as much in actuality as much as it does rather in the perceptions of the surrounding economy. Consumers fear that it is a dark, stormy sky outside and that the bad weather somewhere else in the country may eventually come to affect them. That's why so many say they are angry and scared, even though they're content with their own personal circumstances.

This mindset is totally understandable. Even last week I was too scared to buy tickets to Disney World for my family for these same reasons until I realized the mindset that was causing me to be hesitant. It is a mindset that is becoming deeply entrenched, reinforced by constant negativity from the leaders who ought to provide optimism and perspective. The paradox of thrift mentality is having an unintended consequence in delaying a recovery and prolonging and making the overall situation worse than it really is.

Marketers have to be bold, both for their own survival and for the good of the economy, and unapologetic in their encouragement of commerce and consumer spending. Constantly slashing prices and offering insane deals only causes a consumer to sit back and wait for a getter offer they know is inevitable.

Despite assertions to the contrary, consumers have not lost their appetite for spending. They still have their money and are willing to spend. They are resilient. They want to participate in the marketplace. But right now they need reassurance and encouragement. And this is what marketers must do.

Get to work, it's not raining as bad outside as you think it is.

Tiger's back

2009-02-20T16:24:00.008-07:00

After winning the US Open last June essentially on one leg, Tiger Woods took the rest of the PGA season off to recover from surgery on his stress fracture and torn ACL. He hasn't played a tournament since. With the sport's biggest star gone, television ratings and interest plummeted. Now the icon who brought golf into the mainstream is bringing it back from its 8-month spell of irrelevancy, announcing yesterday that he will play in next week's Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona.

But am I the only one who thinks it is more than just a coincidence that Tiger chose to make his highly anticipated return at a tournament sponsored by Accenture, seeing as how they are one of his major sponsors?

Fight or Flight

2009-02-19T09:35:00.001-07:00

The "fight or flight response" is our natural instinctive response that prepares the body to "fight" or "flee" from perceived attack, harm, or threat to our survival. Its hard-wired into our brains, which means it is difficult to regulate when these instincts kick in. Because most of the businesses I know are run by humans (not all but most), business leaders and marketers possess these same instincts when they encounter threats in a business environment. You can fight it, or you can flee from it.

A large number of businesses have decided to flee from the threats posed by the current economic downturn. Marketers expect to cut an average of 3% from their 2009 budgets. Some would argue that lower customer spending leaves some businesses with no choice, resulting in slashed marketing budgets and eliminating experimental programs. Instead of fighting and addressing the threat (or opportunity) head on, they flee.

At best this "survivalist mode" reaction only protects existing share of voice, but more often it will see that share slip away and leave a brand poorly positioned to connect with consumers and separate from the competition in the eventual economic recovery.

Brands must be bold and recognize the recession for what it is, an opportunity to reexamine core beliefs and strengthen relationships with consumers. The recession brings about new customer attitudes, values, and behaviors. All it takes is one simple decision, to choose not to participate in the recession.

Surviving the recession

2009-02-17T10:59:00.006-07:00

Last year I bought a Dell XPS laptop for over $1400. I upgraded the machine to meet what I needed, and bought during a sale so I thought it was a bargain at the time. But today I went online to discover they are selling essentially the same laptop for $949. Other consumers who purchased new vehicles a few years ago are kicking themselves when they see the discounts and incentives some automakers are offering right now.

The recession has forced consumers to carefully consider where they spend their money. Companies across the board have reacted by slashing their prices, leading consumers to then ask themselves if they’ll ever consider buying anything at full price again. Ask Taco Bell if it could ever move away from having a 99 cent value meal.

In 2005, GM became the first automaker to allow customers to buy vehicles at the employee rate. The “employee pricing” promotion worked in the short-term, boosting GM’s sales 41 percent in June 2005. Ford and Chrysler then followed with their own employee pricing plans the following month. But that short-term strategy did little to offer added value to customers, but instead cannibalized their brand. Detroit’s automotive industry is now on life support.

During the Super Bowl, one automaker took a dramatically different approach. Instead of cutting back its advertising, Hyundai bought the spots vacated by GM. How do you think an assembly worker at a GM plant felt when GM said we weren’t going to advertise during the game, and let an overseas competitor come in and rub it in their faces that one of their models was named North American Car of the Year? I can’t imagine morale was at an all-time high at the GM plant the Monday after the game.

But that is a post for another day. Hyundai also took the time during the game to introduce its “Assurance Program,” where customers could return their vehicle without any damage to their credit if they lost their income in the year after their purchase. Instead of slashing prices, Hyundai added value.

As sales in the automotive industry continued their precipitous drop, Hyundai posted 14 percent increase in sales in January. I wonder why?

In an email I received this morning, brand expert Martin Lindstrom noted, “As every business goes about cutting their marketing budgets, slashing development costs and sticking their heads underground, experiences shows that those who take a chance on doing the opposite will emerge on the other side of the recession with the brand fresh in the consumers mind. A brand is first and foremost an investment, so why jeopardize the many years and millions of dollars spent building emotional connections with your customers? Now is the time to show the world that your brand is a survivor, and when Noah is calling, you'll make it onto the Ark. There are only few spaces left.”

Joaquin Phoenix goes Amy Winehouse

2009-02-12T14:13:00.002-07:00

What do you think? Has Joaquin totally lost his drug-addled mind, or do you think he is up to some sort of mockumentary PR stunt?

Cessna fights back

2009-02-11T09:13:00.003-07:00

In what may have been one of the biggest public relations blunders in recent memory, the CEOs of Detroit's "Big Three" automakers flew to Washington DC on private jets to request government bailout money. Then word leaked out that Citibank, also a recipient of $45 billion in government funds, had ordered and was about to finish the purchase of a luxurious $50 million corporate jet from a French manufacturer.

The media and public both skewered the Detroit CEOs and Citibank at the time for their use of corporate jets. Its like asking your nurse for caviar and champagne when you're on life support. The Big Three disbanded their fleets. Citi canceled their order for their jet. And in the wake of the unexpected public backlash, orders for business jets have taken a sharp nose dive.

Across the industry, new orders for private jets have almost evaporated, and hundreds of existing customers have sought to defer or cancel orders that were placed in higher-flying days. In addition to layoffs, some jet makers have cut production by as much as 56%. Cessna Aircraft Co. is laying off more than 4,600 people, or roughly a third of its work force, to cope with the sudden drop in demand for private airplanes of all sizes.

Now Cessna is fighting back. In a campaign that launches today, Cessna will run an ad that says, "Pity the poor executive who blinks," and gets rid of the company jet. "One thing is certain: true visionaries will continue to fly." In another ad, Cessna says "Timidity didn't get you this far. Why put it in your business plan now?" Instead of retreating, Cessna argues, companies should adjust and make sure they are flying the right type of aircraft.

So far, Cessna is the sole jet maker to take on the negative publicity with a high-profile ad campaign. Total cost of the campaign, developed by Dickerson-Grace in Denver, is unknown, but a spokesman for Cessna did say the company has "redirected more than half of our promotional budget to this campaign."

Pay more taxes!

2009-02-10T13:19:00.007-07:00

Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix has reached out to President Obama and asked him to raise the taxes of anyone that makes over million dollars to 50% per year! But what Hastings may not know is that he can already pay more taxes. Angry Netflix subscribers who would rather not have their taxes raised so they can pay for things like, umm...Netflix memberships, can print and then cut-out the sheets below and include them when sending back their DVDs.

The cut-out sheets can be downloaded here.

Why I'm cancelling my satellite package

2009-02-06T14:57:00.007-07:00

My wife and I recently had the conversation about whether or not we should keep our Dish Network subscription or just cancel it all together. We'd had the same conversation before, but we've never actually gone through with it. As soon as the topic came up this time I immediately began trying to think of all the possible things I would ever want to watch on TV but would no longer be able to. What if I wanted to catch the game one night? What about when my wife wants to watch The Hills or Jon and Kate Plus 8? What about when our 3-year-old wants to watch a cartoon on Disney Channel after breakfast?

I've made similar lists when we have had the discussion in the past, and each time we agree that we'd better keep Dish instead. But I'm no longer convinced that is true. Let's start with my son. He would rather watch Cars for the 15,000th time than watch anything else on TV. Second, he and I watched two episodes of Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on my BlackBerry last night before he went to bed. As for my wife, she watches The Hills or The City online more often than she does on TV. And I'm never home enough to actually watch a full game (I didn't even watch a full quarter of the Super Bowl), but have instead gotten used to following games on my phone with ESPN's mobile GameTracker.

Go to the web site of any network and you can watch full episodes of pretty much any show, at your own convenience. I haven't seen a single episode of The Office on TV in two years, instead watching them online over the weekend. Same goes for 24. And with sites like Hulu or Joost offering free movies and TV shows, rarely do you come across anything on television that isn't also readily available in its entirety online.

Internet users in the U.S. viewed a record 14.3 billion videos in December alone. That's BILLION, with a "B" (cue up Dr. Evil). Hulu visitors watched more than 24 million videos the same month. Joost users viewed 818,000 hours of video in January, up 25 percent from the previous month. The future of television is online, and that future has in many ways already arrived.

That's it, I'm gonna call Dish Network right away on my phone. As soon as my son is done watching cartoons on it.

Super Bowl post-mortem

2009-02-05T23:34:00.007-07:00

I know I said I was going to post my reaction to the advertising from the Super Bowl, but I felt the ads were so poor that it has taken me the better part of the week to stop shaking my head at the work my industry released on that stage.

Personally, I thought the Denny's ad was the best one from the game. It was funny and entertaining, had a great promotion behind it, and got people to think about having breakfast at Denny's again. I hadn't even thought about Denny's in years, but they solved that in 30 seconds. Over 2 million people went to take advantage of the offer. Denny's CEO Nelson Marchioli said "This free offer is our way of reacquainting America with Denny's real breakfast and with the Denny's brand." Nicely done.

The other one I felt was a successful ad were the two Hyundai advertisements, one of which showed Lexus and BMW's reaction to Hyundai Genesis being named North American Car of the Year. In step with last year's Super Bowl ad, this one resorted to changing perception of the automaker without the juvenile, throw a snowglobe in someone's crotch sort of humor that others have come to expect from the game. Instead they fixed the biggest problem with their brand, that no one could pronounce their name. In another spot, Hyundai introduced their "Assurance" program which allows buyers to return the car with no penalty should they lose their income at some point in the following 12 months. Another great program to add significant value, all done without discounting or cheapening their product.

At Richter7 we held our annual Ad Bowl party the Monday after the game and rated each ad. Here is a clip from our party as covered by a local television station. (Just click the image and be forewarned, KSL puts a preroll advertisement in front of the clip so be patient).

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Is $3M for a Super Bowl ad worth it?

2009-01-30T16:39:00.003-07:00

First of all, its not just $3 million. Factor in production costs, and the total to advertise in the Super Bowl can easily exceed $5 million.

But the answer to the question is, well, it depends. For FedEx, the answer was "no." The advertiser pulled out of the game for the first time in 12 years due to the "unprecedented economic waters." Even GM, who is still sponsoring the Super Bowl, will not advertise during the game, largely because everything they do with bailout taxpayer dollars opens them up for further criticism.

But despite the economy, many jumped into the game for the first time. Rookies include Denny's, Teleflora, and Pedigree. The commercials will also include innovative media buys, including a one-second commercial for Miller High Life pitching the beer as "good and honest at a tasty price." Frito-Lay solicited consumer-made ads and will air one during the game, even offering $1 million to its creator if it is picked number one in USA Today's Ad Meter. And DreamWorks will air the first ever 3D ad for its upcoming film "Monsters vs. Aliens" and is distributing glasses for the spot through partnerships with Pepsi and Intel.

Most of the airtime was purchased prior to December, when the stock market was still above 11,000 and a recession hadn't yet been officially declared, meaning some of the advertisers (and their media planners) might now be regretting their decision. Yet expected to draw just shy of 100 million viewers, the Super Bowl is still the biggest platform imaginable for any national advertiser and even boats a fairly reasonable CPM of $30. Not to mention the fact that this is one event where people tune in to actually watch the commercials and not TiVo through them.

I'll check back in on Monday and give my grades of the advertisers and my thoughts on whether it was worth it for them or not.

Enjoy the game!

The Digital Presidency

2009-01-27T13:42:00.004-07:00

I blogged last week about how cool it was to watch the inauguration online and communicate with friends via Facebook at the same time. I got this email from Iconoculture this afternoon talking about just how many people went to the web to participate in the event.

More than a million citizens packed into every nook and cranny of the National Mall last week to watch now-President Obama take the oath — but also groundbreaking was the throng of proud Americans who enjoyed the event via technology.

Internet video supplier Akamai Technologies reported a record 7.7 million viewers who watched the event via live streaming; CNN.com posted Facebook status updates, earning 27 million pairs of eyeballs; and Twitter messages were flying at a rate of five times the norm per second (AP 1.21.09).

Still, the online experience was not unlike Chief Justice Roberts' version of the oath: a bit rocky. Viewers on streaming websites like Hulu and CBS were bogged down by stuttering pictures and long login delays. At the root of the tech hiccups was the overwhelming surge of netizens heading online in unison. And the en masse infusion illustrates that the desire of consumers to engage in a digital setting is universal.

President Obama has earned the moniker of the first "Digital President," thanks to an administration that burst onto the social media scene (YouTube, dedicated websites, Facebook). Some say the key to his election success was communication via multiple tech platforms. The People have spoken. Are you listening?

Lifesaving checklists

2009-01-27T08:14:00.004-07:00

I've always teased my wife for how she makes her checklists on scratch paper each morning of the things she needs to get done that day. But I've never been able to argue with how much she is actually able to get done on that checklist. Now, according to a recent study led by Atul Gawande and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a checklist doesn't just help you get things done. It can save lives, too.

Among the findings of the study was a simple change in procedure in operating rooms, which asked people to introduce themselves and describe their function before an operation starts. That one step had a profound impact on the success rates of surgeries, and was one of 19 steps in a checklist adopted by surgical teams at eight hospitals. Over the course of the year the teams saw their death rates fall by 40% and their rate of complications by almost a third.

While the researchers weren't able to attribute the success to any one of the items on the checklist, they concluded that it was the behavioral changes occasioned by the checklist that improved the outcomes of the operations conducted by the team.

The implication, however, extends well beyond healthcare. It shows how a combination of relatively small changes in procedure can have a huge impact on the quality and success of any venture, either in business or in personal life.

A Short History of Marketing

2009-01-23T14:32:00.002-07:00

From European agency Scholz & Friends

Video games make you smarter, but lonelier

2009-01-23T14:04:00.005-07:00

I work as a marketing researcher, and I love sports. So when I saw the results for a recent online survey conducted by EA Sports and the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, I was naturally intrigued. Then I saw this fact from the survey:

Madden video game players are, on average, "60% more knowledgeable about the game of football” than non-Madden playing NFL fans. Amazing! Now I have proof that when I play Madden I am only really in training for my future NFL head coaching job. This is great!

83% of Madden players correctly knew what it meant to bring an "8th man into the box", compared to only 47% of non-Madden players. Similarly, 59% of Madden players knew what the purpose is the purpose of sending a man in motion before an offensive play, compared to 19% of non-Madden players.

The survey also showed a correlation between the total hours of playing Madden NFL per week and football IQ, as scores increased the more a gamer played Madden NFL. A Madden NFL gamer who rarely plays the game attained an average score of 20.4, less than one hour a week scored 20.9, one to five hours per week scored 21.4, six to ten hours per week scored 22.4 and a Madden NFL gamer who plays more than ten hours a week earned an average score of 22.7.

The only bad news? This comes on the same day as another study conducted by BYU which showed that video games, even non-violent titles like Madden, is closely correlated with "lower relationship quality." I guess I'll turn the XBOX off after all.

2M Facebok status updates

2009-01-21T10:56:00.001-07:00

Obamarketing

2009-01-21T09:05:00.003-07:00

As I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama yesterday (via CNN.com while liveblogging on Facebook), I thought back to the many posts I had written, and the vast number of articles I had read about Obama's unique marketing strategy that brought him both his party's nomination and eventually the White House. It was a strategy that combined online and offline, social and traditional, which some have since called Obamarketing.

The high point of Obamarketing began on a chilly January night in New Hampshire. Barack Obama had just lost the state's Democratic primary contest to front-runner Hillary Clinton. At the 10-minute mark of a 13-minute speech, he slipped into an aspirational cadence punctuated by a steady incantation of “Yes We Can!”

will.i.am, a hip-hop musician and frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, was listening. The speech sent him into the studio, where he teamed up with director Jesse Dylan to create and produce a “Yes We Can” video in just 48 hours.

From that point on, the timeline accelerated at a pace that had nothing to do with traditional advertising. Within a month, it was up and running on YouTube. Within three weeks, more than 22 million viewers had seen the clip. It was advertising. But it was advertising unlike any other that had played a critical role in a race for the White House.

Change comes to WhiteHouse.gov

2009-01-20T11:08:00.008-07:00

At 12:01 PM Eastern Time, before Barack Obama had even taken the oath of office, WhiteHouse.gov, the internet home of the President's administration, had already changed over. The site is promised to "be a central part of President Obama's pledge to make his the most transparent and accountable administration in American history."

The site contained several pre-written blog posts, all date-stamped Tue, January 20, 12:01 p.m. EST. One of the entries was written by Macon Phillips, who introduces the role of the website for Obama's campaign to promote communication, transparency and participation, as well as introducing himself as Director of New Media, a newly created position within Obama's staff.

One thing that will be interesting to watch is whether or not Obama will break his silence online. Jay Rosen of PressThink has some advice for the 44th President: "Write it yourself."

From Rosen's blog, describing a DNC event that place prior to the official start of Obama's presidential campaign:

"Obama: 'We’re really glad the bloggers are here to get the word out. In fact, I may be coming to you for advice because I’m going to start blogging at my campaign website…'

"I have advice for him. Cupping my hands to make a faux megaphone, I shout out to Barack Obama, 'write it yourself!' Meaning: Don’t start a blog and make it an extension of the press release. You’d be worse off, with a lame blog and a blown start in the race to be smart online. Don’t start a Barack Obama blog at all unless you are willing to write it yourself. He heard me (and saw me) and chuckled. 'When I find three hours of free time in my day, I will do that.'

"Which was a diss. But a polite, smiley one; certainly I took no offense. Later on he did start writing blog posts himself— on Daily Kos, for example.

"On Saturday, as he made his way by train to Washington for inauguration as our 44th president, that was still my advice: write it yourself. You don’t have to do things the way they have always been done. Turn the page, is the way Obama put it during the 2008 campaign. I like that image. But once you turn the page you have to write it yourself."

Waste of money

2009-01-16T15:40:00.004-07:00

I don't know exactly how much money Sprint is paying for their pre-roll advertisements on NBC.com, but they certainly aren't getting their money's worth. I went online to view a short clip I was referred to, which had a pre-roll ad from Sprint before the clip loaded. But is never played. Instead, the flash loader sat at 0%, perpetually trying in vain to load a dynamic ad that never materialized. The 30 seconds ran up, and my clip played without me ever having seen the ad Sprint was shelling out cash for me to see.

Twitter covers crash of US Airways 1549

2009-01-16T08:25:00.007-07:00

Twitter once again demonstrated its power when it became the primary source of information in the moments immediately following yesterday's plane crash of US Airways 1549 into the Hudson River.

Janis Krums, or perhaps now better known by his Twitter alias jkrums, set off an Internet frenzy Thursday when he posted this image (left) of passengers huddled on the wings of the plane moments after the aircraft had plunged into the icy Hudson River. Snapping the photo with his iPhone, he then uploaded the image to TwitPic.com and sent out a Tweet at 3:50 PM that read "There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy."

After posting his photo, Krums disappeared from the Web to help the survivors. Meanwhile, nearly 40,000 Web users viewed the photo in the first four hours. As of the time of this post, the photo had been viewed almost 180,000 times. It has also become one of the landmark photos of the story and has been picked up by media outlets from all around the world.

Twitter users set up groups to follow the news as eyewitness reports lit up the service. "My brother just saw the US Airways #flight1549 slowly land in the Hudson river from his office in 35th floor in Times Square," read one Tweet, using the Twitter hash code to add the message to a group.

Krums was not the only citizen journalist that helped provide crucial information to the story. A Flickr search for the words "plane" and "hudson" yields 1700 results. One early image taken by Queens resident Gregory Lam shows the plane bobbing on the river’s surface, its wake still visible, before rescue arrived.

Economic Outlook for 2009

2009-01-14T09:37:00.003-07:00

RGE Monitor, chaired by NYU professor and economic expert Nouriel Roubini, has been incredibly accurate with their economic forecasts the past three years. Here is some of what they see ahead for the US economy is 2009:

“With the industrial world already in outright recession and the emerging world navigating towards a hard landing (growth well below potential) we expect global growth to be flat (around -0.5%) in 2009. This will be the worst global recession in decades as the fallout of the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression took a toll first on the U.S. and then – via a variety of channels of recoupling – on the rest of the global economy.

“We forecast that the United States economy is only half way through a recession that started in December 2007 and will be the longest and most severe in the post war period. U.S. GDP will continue to contract throughout all of 2009 for a cumulative output loss of 5%.

“One last look at 2008 will reveal a very weak fourth quarter with GDP growth contracting about -6%, in the wake of a sharp fall in personal consumption and private domestic investment. We see the real GDP growth contraction playing out through the year as follows: Q1 2009 -5%; Q2 2009 -4%; Q3 2009. -2.5%; Q4 2009 -1%, adding up to a yearly real GDP growth of -3.4% for the U.S. in 2009; our forecast is much worse than the current consensus forecast seeing a growth recovery in the second half of 2009; we also predict significantly weak growth recovery – well below potential - in 2010. Canada entered recession at the end of 2008, and the outlook for 2009 is likely to be worse, with the economy contracting by an estimated 1.5-2% for the year.”

RGE’s prediction is interesting in that their time frame for recovery, first half of 2010, aligns with what other financial analysts are projecting as the point at which housing prices will become again affordable, meaning that household incomes and home value ratios will return to pre-2000 levels.

So what does it all mean? First, notice the contraction in GDP growth slowly recovers in 2009 from the low point of -6% we hit last quarter. This means we appear to have reached the bottom of the “trough” in this U-shaped recession.

Second and most importantly, even though recovery at times seems a point in the distant future, it is not. Whether the recovery actually begins in the second half of 2009 or first half of 2010, it is now visible on the horizon. The time to help begin planning for the recovery is now. Even a short-term 12-18 month marketing plan has to include planning for how the business will operate and market itself during and following the upcoming recovery.

Page loading....

2009-01-13T09:55:00.003-07:00

Once upon a time, in a land of sputtering dial-up connections, websites took ages to load. Folks yearned for the 100% mark. But as soon as that figure arrived, the beloved (or bemoaned) preloader disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Until now.

Pretty Loaded is an archive of preloaders that preload other preloaders...which in turn reveal only more preloaders that never get you to a website you know isn't coming yet instinctively expect. An infinite loader that serves as a tribute to a vanishing art form amid a constantly changing digital landscape.

Social innovation

2009-01-13T08:45:00.004-07:00

A lot of companies wish to innovate, but struggle to find the manpower or creativity necessary to generate great thinking. With the power of social media and an online, connected customer base, those ideas can come from anywhere. Dell recently took advantage of its large customer base and opened IdeaStorm, an online community that allows consumers to share ideas for new Dell products or services and foster a candid and robust conversation between both users and the brand.

The initiative has proven tremendously successful. At the time of this post, IdeaStorm had already received 11,019 ideas and generated 83,882 comments on this site. Dell essentially has a brainstorm and innovation community working for them 24/7. At no cost other than what it takes to maintain the site and evaluate an idea's potential, which users can vote on, causing the "best" ideas to naturally rise to the top. Dell provides status updates on submitted ideas, and comments on an ideas potential.

Perhaps just as important is that it gives Dell users a chance to interact with the brand. This is really what the power of social media is really all about. Its so much more than a Facebook fan page or a branded app for a blog or iPhone. Marketing is about relationships, and an online community like IdeaStorm provides an opportunity for both users and brand to deepen and strengthen the relationship in both directions

Polaroids and Palms

2009-01-12T16:32:00.012-07:00

Polaroid never really went away. They just reinvented themselves. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Polaroid unveiled a 5-megapixel camera they plan on releasing in March.The digital camera contains a built-in printer that prints 2X3-inch full color photos. A 3-inch LCD screen lets users preview and edit images before printing.

Check out cNet's blog from CES 2009 for more info about other cool stuff all us technophiles will be drooling over the next 12 months...like my new phone! Finally, a cool new smartphone from Sprint!

Managing in Tough Times

2009-01-12T11:28:00.002-07:00

In the video above, business consultant Ram Charan discusses how today's business leaders must approach the era of economic uncertainty and turmoil. Even in economic downturns, opportunities abound. At least they do for those managers and executives who recognize that the old rules of business have disappeared and keep their eyes peeled for openings in the marketplace. Here are some of my thoughts and suggestions:

1. Change your mindset
Money is tight. The markets are extremely volatile. And anxiety has reached the point where irrational decisions become knee-jerk reactions. Morale becomes harder to boost in such an atmosphere. Acknowledge to yourself and your team that the world has changed, and make the tough decisions to place yourself in a position to succeed. Says Dennis Carey, a senior partner at Korn Ferry International"You can't rely on a peacetime general to fight a war. The wartime CEO prepares for the worst so that his or her company can take market share away from players who haven't."

2. Get your financial house in order
Perhaps the biggest issue for companies right now is getting the funds necessary for growth. Only those with strong balance sheets stand a chance for survival, let alone success.

3. Make a move for market share
I've said that recessions are garage sales for the rich. Many have and will react by slashing costs across the board. But as the pie gets smaller and less nimble rivals are get weaker, a tremendous opportunity is provided business leaders to grow at the same time that others cut back. Don't wait. Be bold and aggressive in strategy, acquisition, and hiring.

4. Rethink your rewards system
Among the first to go in leaner economic times are employee benefits and rewards compensation. The result is lower morale, loyalty, and assertiveness. If you can't can't give staff more money, can you give them more power? Single out top performers and solicit their advice on how to improve performance. Offer employees flexible scheduling, or the opportunity to work from home. The key is high-value (for employees), low-cost (for employer) solutions.

5. Dare to innovate
Innovating can leave a business in prime position for a turnaround. Pfizer broke apart both its research and business units last year to help spur new ideas to make the company more efficient and more entrepreneurial. Deploy distributed innovation groups. Whirlpool dedicated an internal team to embed innovation as part of the core of the company's operations, which added more than $2.5 billion in worldwide revenue to the company's bottom line in 2007.

Social media fights a war

2009-01-12T09:17:00.006-07:00

That governmental entities have used various "Web 2.0" elements isn't anything new. The whole world of social media began with bloggers using the new media as a voice for anti-war protests, political discourse. Reporters began using blogs to report the events of second Iraq war. Wikis helped coordinate volunteer disaster response for Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. And the popular image-hosting service Flickr stepped into mainstream during the 2005 London underground terrorist attacks.

This past year we have even seen Obama use social media as a critical part of both his campaign and administration. Twitter was used by media professionals and citizens alike to report on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and December's riots and protests in Greece.

But we are now seeing the next step in the evolution of how governments use the social web. As Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza, its Consulate General in New York held a press conference on Twitter and the IDF launched a YouTube channel to provide footage from aerial and ground attacks. Bloggers and Twitter users on the Palestinian side are trying to influence the international community with dramatic reports from besieged Gaza.

Their reports and tweets have become increasingly important as actual ground footage has been hard to come by and news organizations have mostly been forced to report from the sidelines. Al Jazeera, the only news network with reporters in Gaza, has emerged as the main source of direct information from the region. Often its Twitter updates from a dedicated account and YouTube videos routinely precede those of other media organizations by several hours.

Social media provides information and content where there otherwise would be none. It provides a forum for discussion, dialogue, and even debate. That conversation takes place between consumers, as well as between consumers and brands (or in this case citizens and a government). It is 100% transparent and authentic, not filtered (see related story here). It helps to unite supporters of one cause and make a case when conversing with those supporting the opposition, or those who haven't yet made up their minds. Some marketers simply throw up a Facebook page and cheer their use of social media, yet we would do well to pay close attention to the true role (and power) social media has played in the Gaza conflict.

Fight the instinct

2009-01-09T15:43:00.005-07:00

I've been working on an extensive paper regarding the importance of maintaining or even growing your branding and marketing efforts during the recession, which goes against the instincts of most business executives. Too often marketing seems like the easiest column on the spreadsheet from which "profits" can be poached. But you cannot save your way to profitability.

In the above video, Mark Gambill, CMO at CDW, the 34th-largest private corporation in the U.S. with $8.1 billion in annual sales, warned big marketers to resist the knee-jerk inclination to slash marketing budgets. Mr. Gambill was in Manhattan to accept a top marketer award and offered his observations and advice for the coming year.

Friendship sacrificed for a Whopper

2009-01-08T14:56:00.001-07:00

Ever browse through your list of friends on Facebook, only to come across that one person who you can't even remember who they are or why they are your "friend"? Now Burger King wants to help you do something about it. By sacrificing them for a flame broiled beef patty.

Burger King just released a Facebook application called the "Whopper Sacrifce," which gives you a coupon for a free Whopper every time you knock off 10 people from your friends list. Your banished virtual acquaintances are sent a message telling them that their former-friends' love for them is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper.

As you ruthlessly knock off your friends one by one, the app charts your progress towards your free Whopper, enticing you by asking "Who will be the next to go?"

Its almost impossible to tell how well any branded application will go over on Facebook. Most actually seem to flop. But this is the sort of antisocial element that is so out there and different that it just might work.

Home For Sale. Only $500!

2009-01-08T10:33:00.007-07:00

This 3 BDRM, 1 BA 1000 sq ft. home with wood floors located on a quaint, tree-lined street in Detroit can be yours for just $899!

If you needed a sign of just how bad the real estate market has gotten around the country (I don't...my neighbor has had their home listed for 18 months), then take a look at what is happening in some of the markets around the country that have been hit hardest by foreclosures.

According to Realtor.com, there are 18 listings in Flint, Mich., for under $3,000. There are 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and 709 in Detroit. In a CNN article, Heather Fernandez, a spokeswoman for the real estate Web site Trulia.com, says that "Foreclosures have turned banks into property management companies, and it's often cheaper for them to give these homes away rather than try to get market value for them."

Some homes can be purchased for as little as $500. In Detroit, one realtor lists a three-bedroom, one-bath bungalow of about 1,000 square feet for just $500. Even with renovations of $15,000 or $20,000, that's still a huge bargain considering that the home last sold for $72,000 in late 2007, according to Zillow.com.

Many lenders have gotten to the point where any chance of making even breaking even on thse homes in unrealistic, and are unloading propoerty just to get it off their books to avoid paying for maintenance and property taxes. Recessions truly are nothing more than garage sales for the rich!

"I'm rich, sucka!" - Al "Skeletor" Davis

They said it: The top 10 quotes of 2008

2009-01-07T13:01:00.003-07:00

OOPS! Here are the Top 10 quotes of 2008, as compiled by the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations:

#10 (tie) - "Anyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one -- especially the worst one since the Great Depression -- is making up his own private definition of "recession." -- commentator Donald Luskin, the day before Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, The Washington Post, Sept. 14

"There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises." -- Krugman, in an interview with Bill Maher on HBO's "Real Time," broadcast Sept. 19

"Cash for trash." -- Paul Krugman discussing the financial bailout, New York Times, Sept. 22

#9 - "Barack, he's talking down to black people. ... I want to cut his ... off." -- Rev. Jesse Jackson, overheard over a live microphone before a Fox News interview, July 6

#8 - "I'll see you at the debates, b------." -- Paris Hilton in a video responding to a McCain television ad, August 2008

#7 - "Maybe 100." -- McCain, discussing in a town hall meeting in Derry, N.H., how many years U.S. troops could remain in Iraq, Jan. 3

#6 - "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." -- the Treasury Department's proposed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, September 2008

#5 - "The fundamentals of America's economy are strong." -- McCain, in an interview with Bloomberg TV, April 17

#4 - "It's not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number." -- a Treasury Department spokeswoman explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout, quoted on Forbes.com Sept. 23

#3 - "We have sort of become a nation of whiners." -- former Sen. Phil Gramm, an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, quoted in The Washington Times, July 10

#2 - "All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years." -- Palin, responding to a request by CBS anchor Katie Couric to name the newspapers or magazines she reads, broadcast Oct. 1

#1 - "I can see Russia from my house!" -- Comedian Tina Fey, while impersonating Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," broadcast Sept. 13

Green Coke

2009-01-05T13:12:00.006-07:00

The Coca-Cola Company's iconic red billboard in New York City's Times Square sits quietly in the background of millions of pictures that visitors take in Times Square. But partygoers at the most recent New Years Eve celebration in New York might not have realized that the billboard has actually gone "green."

Coca-Cola is leading a unanimous eco-friendly shift to wind power among 30 billboards that tower over the world's most recognizable intersection, becoming the first company to select clean, renewable wind power to light up their billboard located at 47th and Broadway. After Coca-Cola made their commitment, all of the neighboring billboards on three buildings around Times Square joined the movement through an electric supply agreement with ConEdison Solutions and the building management company.

Coke also debuted a new "green" ad on New Year's Eve themed, "Refresh. Recycle. Repeat." The ad touts the beverage giant's goal to recycle or reuse 100 percent of the aluminum cans and plastic bottles it sells in the U.S., part of the company's "Live Positively" operating philosophy. Coca-Cola is also planning a recycling education event in New York City's Bryant Park next week, helping consumers learn about recycling, play trivia and interactive games, and view items made from recycled bottles. The company has also rolled out a new fleet of 142 hybrid delivery trucks, the largest such fleet in the world.

John Brock, chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, recently had this to say in an interview with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania: "First of all, we believe sustainability is critical, absolutely key. It's center of play. It's not niche anymore. It's not just something you kind of do when you're thinking about it. It's something we take seriously, and it has to be done all the time."

Nice to see a company not just talk the talk, but walk the walk and lead by example.

http://www.livepositively.com/

Five Guys Burgers and Fries!

2009-01-02T11:30:00.006-07:00

I love this place! Seriously, the double cheeseburger with grilled onions and grilled mushrooms, BBQ sauce, hot sauce, tomatoes and lettuce, with a bag full of cajun fries makes you forget that you are eating a weeks worth of calories in one sitting!

Yes, all marketers are liars

2008-12-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

Well, at least some of them are. And I had to be suspicious of one advertiser I came across online the other day. First I saw these two ads on a website I was visiting:

The ads invited me to click on the ad to read someone's story about how they were able to lose weight so quickly. But what caught my eye first was that neither of the two ads matched. Even more curious was that ABC would allow their logo to appear right alongside the logos of competitors CNN and CBS News. Unlikely that a major media company would do that. So I clicked through to see what I would find.

The ads took me to a blog written by a woman named Tanya, who says she is setting up the blog to document her 10-week weight loss effort. Strange, isn't it, that a woman would buy ads to direct people to read her blog?

There was even more strangeness. There is only one blog post, dated December 3rd, meaning that Tanya would have made her first post at the start of her weight loss campaign, then gone in regularly and edited that original post by adding her latest update, as well as changing the date. That's not likely either. A blogger would just create a new post each day or week throughout their weight loss efforts. Also, there are no links to her other blogs she supposedly maintains, no pictures of family, and some details about her intimacy with her husband that a lot of people wouldn't float into cyberspace.

It got more and more blatant the deeper into the content I went. There were two links towards the bottom, one linking to a site selling acai powder, the other selling a colon cleaning antioxidant.

So far this site is looking like some marketer's poorly conceived attempt to jump into social media to pitch their product. That was confirmed when I went to the comments, all of which were posted between November 13 and November 21. But wait, she didn't even finish her weight loss campaign until December 3rd? So I tried to make a comment, but to do had to enter my email address (my fake one I use for these things, I'll wait to see if they send me anything). But after submitting my comment, it didn't appear!

The last thing I did was checked into who owned the domain name. A search on WHOIS showed it had been registered using a privacy service called Moniker. Whenever you register a website, your name, phone number, even address shows up on the WHOIS directory, meaning anyone can type in a URL you own and see your information. These privacy services cover that information so that it isn't so easily available. It also means marketers can use it to cover themselves so that a phony blog isn't so easily traced back to them. Then I checked the domain ownership of the two websites for the acai and antioxidant the blog linked to. Surprise! They too were covered through Moniker. What a coincidence!

I had to ask myself why they went through so much trouble to cover what it was so obvious they were trying to do. Many marketers have ventured into the world of social media, and most of them fail at it. At the same time, people are becoming increasingly frustrated with marketers who thrust themselves into social media world where many don't think they belong. These types of half-brained campaigns don't help any of that.

Why not be transparent? If you truly have a great product and story to tell, why not tell it? Why do you have to hide behind the alias of Tanya who doesn't even exist? Why not set up a website that touts your product, but provides context, authenticity, and support? Set up a campaign and call it the 10 Week Challenge. Give users and potential users of your product a chance to interact with each other, talk about their successes and failures and the role your product has played in their weight loss efforts, to build an online community and support group. Become the facilitator of something major happening within their lives and in their networking and interactions with each other.

Transparency and authenticity will become increasingly important across the board in 2009. Changing demographic and psychographic groups are calling for it, and corporate America is forced to now take strides to restore consumer trust in the wake of the economic collapse. Be open and honest about who and what you are, and where you are heading. Consumers will respect that. They crave that. Hiding behind fake websites and bloggers only leads people to think you really don't have much of a story to tell in the first place.

My iPhone hopes are dashed to pieces

2008-12-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

As I talked about on here a few weeks back, there is a $99 iPhone. But not at Walmart. Meaning, once again, I have no reason whatsoever to get excited about the mammoth Super Walmart being built in my town.

Speculation has been brewing for months that Apple would try to make the iPhone more broadly available by distributing it through the world's largest retailer. Walmart still plans on selling the phone, but it won't be at the steep discount previously reported. Instead, AT&T will be the low-priced leader, selling $99 refurbished handsets for a limited time.

Walmart will charge $197 for the entry-level 8 gigabyte phone with a two-year AT&T contract. WOO-HOO! That's a $2 SAVINGS than what you'd pay through AT&T! Not exactly the heavy discount everyone had been expecting from the low cost retailer. Meanwhile, AT&T will sell refurbished 8GB models for $99 with a two-year contract, and a 16GB iPhone for $199. The phones will be available until AT&T runs out of stock.

So what does "refurbished" mean exactly? AT&T defines them as "previously owned devices that have been unused or lightly used and returned during the 30-day trial period."

Innovating in the Great Disruption

2008-12-29T07:59:00.002-07:00

While the global economy began slowing down in late 2007, forces transforming the face of business trace back more than a decade. Over that time period, technological improvements have made it ever easier to start and scale a business. Convergence went from being a cliché to a reality. Companies from countries like China, India, and Brazil burst onto the world stage. The global slowdown coupled with the credit crunch in late 2008 accelerated these forces.

If sagging employment and dwindling economic prospects led historians to term the 1930s the Great Depression, perhaps it is appropriate to tab today's hyper-competitive market where competitive advantage dissipates in a heartbeat the "Great Disruption."

In 2009, managers will realize that they are no longer dealing with a crisis; they are dealing with a condition. In the Great Disruption, companies simply can't anticipate that today's competitive advantage to last for more than a few years. Former Intel Chairman Andy Grove anticipated this more than a decade ago when he wrote, "Only the paranoid survive."

While companies might want to return to the corporate equivalent of comfort food--cost-cutting and a focus on the core business--the Great Disruption won't allow it.

Some companies have been developing their innovation abilities for years. They are in good position to seize the opportunities that always present themselves in tough economic climates. Companies that are in the beginning of the innovation journey need to accelerate capability-development efforts or will find themselves simply unprepared for the fight ahead. Industries that had already been grappling with disruptive threats for years--like newspaper companies--will face intense pain as they struggle to find a safe haven in today's brutal economic climate.

Thriving in the Great Disruption requires a particular breed of innovator. Specifically, innovators should look to master three disciplines:

Placing a premium on progress. While more and more companies recognize the name of the game is transformation, the tolerance for blind experimentation has never been lower. Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning.
Mastering paradox. Leaders in most Fortune 500 companies grew up in an era where they could succeed largely by exploiting their existing business. Today's leaders need to master both exploitation and exploration. They need to develop the ability to rely on precise data in their core business and intuition and judgment when they are creating new growth businesses. They have to live the old F. Scott Fitzgerald mantra, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the same mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
Learning to love the low end. In the dark days of October and November, consumers flocked to discounters like Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Increasingly value conscious consumers and hungry low-cost competitors mean that innovators have to learn how to love low-end business. That doesn't necessarily mean that companies have to slash prices. Rather, they have to figure out how to deliver what consumers in low-end segments consider value.

The world of innovation is going through important changes. A generation ago, many thought innovation was unpredictable and random. Those with this perspective would either leave innovation to "creative geniuses" or seek to intentionally insert unpredictability into their innovation efforts (picture unfocused brainstorming efforts with attendees dressed in ridiculous costumes).

Over the past generation, path-breaking academic research and work by companies like Procter & Gamble and IBM has shown how innovation can be managed like any other corporate process. We're not yet at the point of perfect predictability, and there still are many important innovation questions that are difficult to answer. But innovators have a playbook that can help them even in these highly uncertain times.

The innovation genie isn't going back in the bottle. Entrepreneurs and corporate innovators will continue to introduce disruptive innovations that transform existing markets and create new ones. In fact, the Great Disruption demands that companies make innovation a strategic priority, or suffer the consequences.

Thanks to Scott Anthony, Harvard Business Review

Celebrity Endorsements

2008-12-23T22:04:00.005-07:00

The following article comes from The Onion, making fun of some of the ridiculousness that sometimes surrounds celebrity product endorsements. Making it even more amusing was how it mentions Accenture, an account I worked on briefly at Y&R in New York City.
_________________________________________________________

I Couldn't Help But Notice Your Product Hasn't Been Endorsed By Anyone Yet
By Tiger Woods | The Onion

My specially designed Tiger Woods TAG Heuer watch read 11:45 a.m. yesterday when I got back from the practice range. After washing up and shaving with my favorite Tiger Woods Gillette Champions razor and getting in a few rounds of EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08, I picked up the copy of Golf Digest on my coffee table—the one with my ad for TLC Laser Eye Centers. What caught my attention, however, was an advertisement on the adjoining page for your product, Pine-Sol.

Call me crazy, but it looks like you're lacking a big-time celebrity endorser. Yes, you have that sassy fat black woman who appears in commercials and print ads, but she's hardly a celebrity. I'm talking about someone with name recognition. Maybe even someone who's won, say, 64 professional golf tournaments, 13 major championships, and has been named PGA Tour Player of the Year nine times? Your lady may be funny, but is she the most marketable athlete in the world with a supermodel wife, a new baby girl, millions in the bank, multiracial appeal, and a great smile?

No.

Even now, I just can't stop thinking about how foolish you've been for never approaching me about endorsing Pine-Sol. Is it the money that concerns you? Because let me tell you something: When you are dealing with a Tiger Woods endorsement, money should be the last thing on your mind. What you should be thinking is how, with my face on every container, we are going to move more Pine-Sol than you ever thought possible.

Look, when you get Tiger Woods, you're getting Tiger Woods—the guy who made it cool for kids to want to play golf.

Bottom line, you need me, and I'm ready to break into the domestic-products arena. Despite my work with Accenture, many people still think of me as cold and calculated. A couple of Pine-Sol ads where my mom shows me how easy it is to clean my bathroom ("Oh Mom, you're embarrassing me!"—you know, that kind of crap) and we're all set.

But if you don't move on this fast, tomorrow I'm all over the TV with my new Tiger Woods–strength Lysol Wipes. Think about it.

Plain and simple, I would do an excellent job endorsing Pine-Sol. You know it, I know it, the makers of the all-new Gatorade Tiger most certainly know it. A high quality, all-purpose cleaner such as Pine-Sol deserves an endorser who is an ultra competitor—someone who will go to the mat for you no matter what. No way I'm going to go halfway like Roger Federer or David Beckham would.

See, Tiger Woods likes to get his hands dirty. As your front man, I would work day and night with your scientists to create an all-purpose cleaning formula worthy of the Tiger Woods name. We'll call it "Tiger-Sol" and it will come in a variety of pleasing scents, including Tiger-Berry, Tiger-Apple, Tiger-Peach, Lemon-Tiger—you get the picture. And when Tiger-Sol hits stores, those other bush-league cleaners will have no business even being on the same shelves, let alone trying to make the same bathroom sink sparkle.

I can do it all. Humorous commercials where I'm putting for the U.S. Open championship in my bathtub and I notice there's grime between my ball and the drain that will force the putt off-line. How do I get rid of the grime? Pine-Sol. I sink the putt, the gallery in my bathroom goes crazy, I do one of my signature fist pumps, and you just sold 3 million bottles of Pine-Sol.

Then we move into more artsy commercials where I'm hitting golf balls in slow motion in the rain and my voice-over comes in and says, "Pine-Sol." And for prime-time TV, we'll do one of those mass-appeal commercials where I clean a kitchen with Asian, white, and black kids. We all laugh and start splashing each other, and I get hit on the cheek with a big wad of soap suds. I make my upset face and there's a pause, because all the kids think I'm going to get angry, but I don't. I laugh it off because I'm Tiger Woods and America loves me.

Within a week you'll have kids demanding their parents buy Pine-Sol because Tiger Woods just made cleaning the house awesome. They'll associate your product with 400-yard drives, and being handsome, fit, and effortlessly charming. Then they're hooked on Pine-Sol from the age of 5 until the day they die.

In the end, this is all very simple. Basically, what you have to ask yourself, Pine-Sol, is do you want to make half a billion dollars today or not? That's it. And if there's still any doubt in your mind, think about this: If I've convinced an entire populace that I drive a Buick, no doubt I can sell a bottle of Pine-Sol.

Creative Risk

2008-12-23T14:48:00.006-07:00

According to a recent study, 65% of marketing executives and 45% of advertising executives think their firms don't take enough risks when deploying marketing and advertising projects.

Among marketing executives, only 33% said they take the "right" amount of risks, and a mere 1% said they take too many. Nearly two-thirds believe their firm either doesn't take enough risks or plays it too safe when developing creative work for clients.

Companies tend to become more risk-averse in an uncertain economy,” said Megan Slabinski, executive director of The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service for advertising and marketing professionals who backed the study. “But when budgets are lean, it can be an opportune time for firms to try new or unproven promotional strategies and distinguish themselves from competitors.”

Its a good think that marketing and advertising professionals see opportunities to continue to push their own levels of creativity. That's why clients hire them. Good, creative ideas seem to perish when there’s no one to effectively champion them. But all too often, those same ad and marketing execs fail to view things from their audience’s perspective. Understanding the challenges decision makers face and the pressures they are under will help in presenting the most relevant information, and sell ideas in ways that c-suite offers understand and value.

Debunking the myth

2008-12-22T09:21:00.004-07:00

An article appeared from the AP this morning describing how my state, Utah, is considering cutting its advertising expenditure due to a budget shortfall. And Utah isn't alone. Whether it's state government or business, in times of recession the first thing CFOs often do is look at advertising and cut it. It looks good on an Excel spreadsheet. But advertising is crucial in slow times.

It makes sense. You have a slow season, so you need to get people in your door. How do you lure those customers in? You have to advertise. Once you cut your marketing, it's hard to get back to where you were. You disappear from the consumer's mind. You lose ability to influence your brand image. One of your competitors instead keeps advertising and gains market share as you start losing traction, sometimes to the point it can never again be recouped.

Keynesian economics works with businesses too. Those who advertise will remain in a much better situation after the recession is over than those who do not.

Its not just advertising, but research too. Research is at the heart of a company's ability to innovate. As with advertising, too many companies talk themselves into thinking that research is something it cannot afford. Yet part of the reason we are in the economic situation we are in is because the market dramatically evolved, while the policies that governed business remained as they have for half a century.

So in reality, a marketer shouldn't be asking themselves if they can afford to advertise or invest in research. The real question should be, "How can I afford not to?"

Are Santa's reindeer female?

2008-12-19T08:48:00.006-07:00

If you ask Alice Blue-McLendon, a veterinary medicine professor at Texas A&M University, the answer to that question would be "yes." In fact, that they still have their antlers at Christmas time may mean that not only are they female, they may also be pregnant! According to the Reindeer Research Program (no, I am not making that up) Rangifer tarandus is the only deer species in which both the males and females grow antlers. Even calves grow antlers during their first year! Antlers, by definition, are shed and re-grown every year. Bulls lose their antlers during the winter, typically around Christmas time. Non-pregnant females will also lose their antlers during the winter. Pregnant females will not drop their antlers until they give birth in the spring.

Blue-McLendon furthers her point by asking would a boy reindeer really sport a shiny red nose that almost glows? She says females like accessories. "You know, shiny stuff."

A hyphenated name with a .edu email address arguing over the gender of fictitious reindeer...seriously?! Story from the AP

Foreclosed on Facebook

2008-12-16T20:50:00.005-07:00

If a lawyer ever tries to "poke" you on Facebook, beware! Australian lawyer Mark McCormack became the first person in the world to serve legal papers via FaceBook. After unsuccessfully trying all other avenues to foreclose on a couple’s home, he obtained permission from the courts to get the papers served via FaceBook. At least the judge was kind enough to force McCormack to send the papers via private mail and not post a message on the couple's wall for all the world to see.

The fact that legal documents would be exchanged via Facebook or other social networking sites is another step in their evolution as a viable media channel. Now we'll just have to see how long it takes before someone develops an application that screens for bill collectors.

Should I stay or should I go?

2008-12-15T12:27:00.005-07:00

I got an email from a student at the University of Utah this morning worried about the job outlooks for graduates and asking for advice about the current economy. He asked for my thoughts on whether or not he should try to enter the marketing industry or stick around in college to finish a double major.

His concern is a legitimate one. There isn’t any industry that is immune from the economy right now. Even sectors that have traditionally been unaffected by previous downturns, such as health care, are being hit in unexpected ways. The outlook consumes the thoughts of both college graduates and professionals with 30+ years of experience alike. But this recession is likely to continue for some time. Waiting for the storm to blow over probably isn't a viable strategy because 12 months from now, we'll probably still be in the middle of it.

The world will pay you what it feels you are worth, and education can go a long ways in elevating your worth to future employers. But really the best advice I could give him was to find find what he was truly most passionate about and go after it full force. Don’t hold back. Don’t accept “no.” As one marketing guru once said, "Be remarkable." Yes, many companies are trimming back their workforce and areas of “inefficiency,” but they are starving for direction, leadership, creativity, and innovation. And those attributes aren’t limited to just marketing professionals.

Christmas Tag

2008-12-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently had a blog entry that tagged readers, then encouraging them to do the same by answering some questions about Christmas on their own blogs. I thought it was a cool idea, and we'll see how far it can spread. TAG, you're it!

Wrapping paper or gift bags
Wrapping paper, and preferably something unique. My brother once wrapped all his presents for the family one year entirely in duct tape.

Real tree or artificial
I prefer the real tree, but right now we have the fake one. I love the smell of the real tree, especially when you suck up the needles with the vacuum. But the last thing we need is our 10-month old crawling into the family room and eating sap, bark, and pine needles for breakfast.

When do you put up the tree?
The Saturday after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, my wife normally breaks down and plays Christmas music well before then.

When do you take the tree down?
The Saturday after New Years. But the Christmas spirit lives on since I normally don't get a chance to climb onto my steep, snow-covered roof and remove the Christmas lights until May.

Do you like eggnog?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Favorite gift received as a child?
A Seattle Seahawks football helmet. But it was too small for my big head so we had to take it back the next day. I never got another one, and it remains the elusive gift I never really had. Maybe that's why I like it, the same mentality that you always want what you can't have.

Hardest person to buy for?
Grandparents.

Easiest person to buy for?
Myself.

Do you have a nativity scene?
Yes. And the ears and legs of the sheep and donkeys are slowly starting to disappear. I think my three-year-old might have something to do with it.

Mail or e-mail Christmas cards?
Go digital. Make your own card and blast it out to your friends and family. Cards actually tend to live longer online than they do in print.

Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I got a pack of pens from a coworker. I mean, how many minutes raiding the supplies closet did it take for him to pull that one off? He was later fired for stealing supplies from the company. Seriously.

Favorite Christmas Movie?
National Lampoons, Christmas Vacation

When do you start shopping for Christmas?
The question should instead be "When do I have my wife go out and do all the shopping for me?"

Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
I had a roommate in college who was a Navajo indian, and he taught me the perfected art of Indian giving.

Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Cinnamon-roasted almonds with hot cocoa

Favorite Christmas tradition?
How quickly the reenactment of the nativity in our home turns into a comedic performance

Favorite Christmas song?
Still, Still, Still (the German version)

Travel at Christmas or stay at home?
Stay home

Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's?
I have to sing the song in my head first, but yes. I can.

Angel on the tree top or a star?
Angel

Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
I held strong for five years, but this year my wife talked me into letting the kids open one present on Christmas Eve.

Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
The icicle lights for the outside of my house work when I take them down. Then when I put them back up the following year, none of them work. Are there lightbulb-eating Gremlins in my basement. Someone really should look into this.

Favorite for Christmas dinner?
It's Christmas Eve dinner that I really look forward to. My Oma's birthday is Christmas Eve, so the family would all gather at their house and have her favorite meal on her birthday: Chinese food. I went to great lengths to keep the tradition alive when I lived in Germany for two years.

What do you want for Christmas this year?
A day in the mountains with my snowboard. I mean really, isn't that what this time of year is really all about? Doing something you truly love and leaving your wife behind to take care of kids while you go hit some rails and kickers at Brighton?

How many days left until Christmas?
13

Making lemonade

2008-12-12T09:43:00.005-07:00

According to a recent Gallup poll, two-thirds of Americans don’t see the economy turning around anytime soon. In fact, most think any sort of a turnaround is still two years away. 29% say it will be two years until the economy starts to recover, 20% say three to four years, and 17% say five or more years. Just 15% think it will be within a year. As consumer confidence drops to historic lows and sales plummet, marketers are cutting back their ad budgets. Big time.

TNS Media Intelligence also released data the other day that showed that despite the billions in ad dollars that flowed into the market thanks to the XXIX Olympiad and a fiercely-contested (and protracted) presidential election season, total media still managed to decline 2% in the third quarter of 2008. In the first nine months of the year, total measured media spend declined 3.7%.

Studies by American Business Media examined the relationship between advertising and sales in 143 companies during the severe 1974/1975 downturn. They found that companies that did not cut advertising either year had the highest growth in sales and net income during the two study years and the following two. Companies that cut advertising had the lowest sales and net income increases during that same period. A subsequent study by The Wall Street Journal and another by the University of Utah confirm that companies that advertise during a recession gain market share by taking it away from competitors unable to adjust to shifting market conditions, and tend to maintain a stronger cash stream throughout the downturn, in contrast to other companies that may have liquidity problems. Amazingly, B2B companies that continue to advertise have three times the sales growth as those that cut back on advertising during a recession.

Some companies pull their ad budgets in an effort to cut back or maintain capital during lean times. At the extreme end, the Arena Football League is canceling next season in an effort to conserve capital, yet promises to come back in 2010. I don't fully understand how by closing operations and not generating any revenue will help you be better off one year from now. Same with marketing.

The fact is that consumers still need to consume. We no longer live in a world where a family can sustain itself for a few years by living off the goods they themselves produce (think farms and mom and pop businesses of 50-60 years ago). They cannot produce their own goods, they need to buy them. And a brand that disappears during a recession runs the very high risk of disappearing from the minds of consumers forever.

What I learned from my 3-year-old this week

2008-12-11T14:24:00.006-07:00

My three-year-old son taught me an important lesson the other evening. We were in the family room of our basement, which we have turned into a large play room, trying to read scriptures as a family before putting the kids into bed. All I wanted was for my son to sit down for three minutes and listen quietly. It wasn't happening. He kept running from one end of the room to another, playing with his cars for ten seconds, then throwing a football into his basketball hoop, then going back across the room and hiding inside his tent. My wife could tell I was getting a little upset, and she reminded me that he is only three years old, and encouraged me to keep reading.

So I did. And he kept ignoring me and exhibiting signs of severe ADD. Or so I thought. I read one verse, and in the middle of smashing one of his cars into another, he asked me to explain to him what one of the words I had just read meant. I stopped. I couldn't believe it. While I thought he wasn't listening, he had actually been paying attention all along.

I know I'm probably not the first parent to have observed this with their children. But it reminded me of what often happens in marketing. The late advertising executive Phil Dusenberry once said, "I think clients and ad agencies get tired of their advertising a lot faster than the consumer does." In today's world when it seems like consumers are running back and forth, with so many other toys and distractions all competing for their attention, it is easy to think that nobody is listening. So they think they need to change something. But maybe their consumers are listening. And perhaps patience and consistency with your message is the best strategy of all.

Thanks, Dylan!

iPhone sells its soul

2008-12-10T15:56:00.006-07:00

For months my wife has been counting down until construction on a new WalMart in our town is completed. Not because we are so enthusiastic about the store, I can barely stand going there. But because it means that we no longer will have to drive 30 minutes to go grocery shopping. Yes we live in the middle of nowhere.

But now I have a new reason to be excited about WalMart. According to Bloomberg, WalMart will start selling a $99 4-gigabyte iPhone later this month!

First of all, I love Apple's timing on this. Wait until after Christmas, so that everyone who wanted to buy one as a gift for Christmas will have to go to the Apple Store for the $199 or $299 version. But some brand analysts are wondering what sort of damage offering the iPhone at a discount retailer will do to Apple's overall brand image. After all, if you're a brand with high aspirational appeal such as Apple, do you want your product showcased an aisle away from laundry detergent and 10-packs of boxer shorts? Not to mention it would sit on a shelf next to Google's Android phone, also sold at WalMart.

Apple has built a premium brand that would be difficult to be commoditized by a low price point. Apple also released low-price iPods that have managed to retain their hip quotient despite mass penetration. And going mainstream is exactly what Apple intends to do by placing the iPhone on WalMart's shelves. It also plans to sell the phone at Best Buy.

But is it worth the risk? Why is Apple doing this? I have a couple theories. What drove the popularity of iPods was the iTunes store. The same thing is beginning to happen with the iPhone's app store. But in order for more developers to jump on board and be willing to program new applications, the iPhone universe has to grow. Broader iPhone adoption will be driven by Apple's ability to build a more complete product line with low-end, mid-range and high-end products. But Apple is also likely looking to amp up its distribution while banking on the halo effect of other Apple products. Studies have shown that when people start to use Mac products, they want to connect those devices with a Macintosh computer rather than a Windows-based PC.

I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to go to WalMart.

Religious branding

2008-12-10T11:18:00.004-07:00

Yesterday I used sports to make a point about marketing and business. Today I'm turning to religion to help draw some conclusions about how branding works. I was reading a book a few months ago that discussed this idea,and I've been thinking about it regularly ever since. Seth Godin even refers to Mormon missionaries in his Tribes presentation. Initially I thought that though there are some obvious differences between true religions and brands, the parallels would be limited to a degree. But the more I have thought about it, I've come to the conclusion that while someone's personal level of commitment and investment in a religion may be stronger in some cases than they would be to a particular brand, the underlying principles remain the same. Here are some of the things that brand marketers could learn from religion.

THE MESSAGE
This is where it has to start. What do you stand for? And why should I care? Think about the world’s major religions, and they all have something slightly unique that they stand for and incorporate as doctrine. Brands are no different. Pepsi stands for youth and fun. Apple stands for creativity, innovation, and self-expression. This isn’t just a tagline, but something much deeper, a foundational principle that is reinforced in everything the brand does.

THE RIVAL
A radio talk show host I listened to this morning is really what motivated me to make this post. Conflict sells. And conflict comes naturally when you have a clearly defined opponent. Better yet, a rival. Red Sox and Yankees hate each other. Glasgow Rangers and Celtic hate each other. Pepsi and Coke hate each other. Apple and Microsoft hate each other. A rivalry forces a brand to continually challenge their opponent, and drives a constant need to be vocal about your position and defines your direction. It gives the community a reason to rally together, and infuses energy and enthusiasm into their support and commitment of a brand.

THE COMMUNITY
One of the fundamental layers in Maslow’s hierarchy is a need to surround ourselves with others who care for us and share common interests and beliefs. We seek meaning and definition in relationships. Brands that make it easy for their consumers to organize and unite, to communicate and support one another have the potential to go far. The brand is looked to to provide leadership and context. The consumers and individual community members then carry that message to others, growing and strengthening the community in the process.

THE SYMBOL
Symbolism is an important part of religion. Symbols are also vital for brands. As the market becomes more crowded, simple yet powerful symbols are forming an instant, global language. Be it a stained-glass window, a cross, or the Nike Swoosh, consistent use of imagery helps individuals recognize a brand, and makes it easy to spread the brand’s message.

THE RITUAL
Rituals build brands. If you remove certain rituals from a small group of powerful brands, you’ll soon notice their power disappearing. . The act of placing a wedge of lime in the neck of a Corona bottle helps sell those beers. And where did it come from? As one story goes, it was invented by two bartenders in California to see how fast a ritual could spread. How would the Olympic games fare without the flaming torch relay? Not many brands leverage the power of ritual, yet so much of religion’s power is based on this very aspect.

THE EXPERIENCE
Critical to the success of a brand is the experience it delivers for consumers. Fail to live up to what you have promised, and consumers will quickly go elsewhere. The stained glass windows, candles, statues, and organ music all provide a sensory experience that reinforces what religious believers hope to obtain. Disneyland quickly draws you in to another world. So too does the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York, the latest Prada store in Tokyo or Burj Al Arab, the world's first seven-star hotel. What experience do you have at a local supermarket? Exactly.

THE STORY
Religions are built on oral traditions, music, and the written word. Brands too have stories to tell, and so do their consumers. Using stories as metaphors to convey a brand’s overarching message makes it easy for a consumer to inject themselves into a situation and better understand the brand’s relevancy in their own lives. And most often this is done at a subconscious level. They don’t even realize when they’re doing it.

THE MISSIONARY
Evangelism is what so many marketers are looking to build today. What religions do door to door, companies are replicating via YouTube videos, Facebook apps, corporate blogs and Twitter. They hope this engagement makes it easier for their brand loyalists to spread word-of-mouth, making use of the inclination of consumers to be persuaded by friends.

The Hedgehog and Sports

2008-12-09T10:00:00.005-07:00

As much as I love sports, drawing marketing and/or business analogies from them doesn't always work for me. But something happened over the weekend that I found quite interesting. My favorite college football team, the University of Washington, finished 0-12, the worst season in the school's history. They fired their coach after four seasons. The players looked disorganized, confused, and surprisingly apathetic during games this season. So they went outside the organization to find a new head coach to breathe life, and hopefully success, back into the program.

On the flip side, the University of Utah finished a regular season record of 12-0 and earning a BCS bowl berth. They had an incredibly successful season. But their head defensive coach was hired to become the coach at another school. Utah made a decision to promote from within, without even looking outside at any candidates. They didn't want to tinker with their system by bringing in someone from outside.

The two schools made two completely different philosophical decisions. True, one school was down and the other on top, but there is a principle in this that each business must ask themselves at some point. In his book "Good to Great", author Jim Collins presents his study of how to take a good organization and turn it into one that produces sustained, great results. Collins explains that the ultimate state of organization’s “greatness” is one in which all challenges and dilemmas are reduced to a simplistic idea called the "hedgehog concept" where strategies are founded on 3 circles: a deep understanding of 1) the organization’s passions 2) their capacity to succeed at one single goal to be the best in the world at something, and 3) what powers their economic drive.

He describes how time and time again, once a company enjoys success they no longer strive for innovation, but protect and insulate themselves from change. Collins says "If you donʼt look at things from a realistic point of view and admit that things are not as good as they can be, they wonʼt get better." Companies who fail to keep the passion in innovation and becoming the best in the world at something will ultimately become stale, eventually finding themselves looking up at a new market leader or an evolving marketplace in which they are unprepared to compete.

Did the UW or U of U make right or wrong choices for their coaches? Who knows, time will answer that one. But if Utah has indeed reached the point where they protect what they have obtained instead of continuing to grow and develop, it will be interesting to see if they eventually only fight to maintain mediocrity.

Pepsi commits suicide

2008-12-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

PepsiMax decided to launch a print campaign recently designed to tout the drink's "one lonely calorie." So BBDO's office in Düsseldorf, Germany decided to visualize just how lonely that one calorie would be by showing a cute but sad little personification of a calorie committing suicide in a few ultraviolent ways, including a gunshot, a hanging, self-immolation and even slitting his little blue wrist with a razor blade while strapped to a rocket.

I can just hear the creative brainstorm sessions now.

STRATEGIST: "We need to promote the idea that the drink only has one calorie."
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: "One calorie, eh? I'll bet it gets lonely in that big blue can, all by itself."
STRATEGIST: "Yes, one is the loneliest number."
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: "If I were that lonely I'd kill myself. Hmm, I know...maybe that little calorie would like to do the same!"
STRATEGIST: "Ja wohl!"

I've lived in Germany, and know that Europeans have a much different sense of humor than we do as Americans. German even has a word for taking pleasure in others' misfortunes called "Schadenfreude." But, Pepsi is a global brand, and what happens in Dusseldorf doesn't stay in Dusseldorf. The play at dark humor will do more harm to Pepsi's core brand image that whatever gains it would possibly make with any targeted segment. Perhaps Pepsi is the one committing suicide here, not the cartoon calorie. There is simply too much risk for misunderstanding and backlash, not to mention a few sleepless nights in Pepsi's legal department.

Needless to say, message boards today have been popping with much anti-Pepsi sentiment, most of it centered on the claim that these kinds of ads are insensitive to the issue of suicide, the 3rd leading cause of death among young adults whom the drink is targeted at. But here I am, talking about PepsiMax on my blog. Maybe that's really what they wanted all along.

App-vertising in a world of widgets

2008-12-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

There are now over 500 million social-network users, each generating 1,200 page views per month and representing roughly 600 billion monthly opportunities for an ad impression. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other, up from 56% just one year ago. I spoke with a co-worker yesterday who mentioned he didn't consider himself an expert in social marketing. My reply was that we better become one, quickly. Marketers have to get on board with social now, and those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.

One route for marketers into the social networking market is through the use of widgets, small applications that can be embedded in web or mobile content, adding to the user’s experience without, more often than not, being overly and blatantly commercial. Widgets and applications first became popular with MySpace members who use them to embelish their profile pages. Then Facebook began to allow developers to create widgets for their members. Other sites, such as PhotoBucket, provide HTML codes that can easily be embedded in blogs and social sites.

Marketers have since turned these into opportunities to provide contextual interaction with consumers. Southwest Airlines' "Ding" widget was downloaded over 2 million times in its first year, generating 10 million clicks in the third quarter of 2008 alone. The App Store for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices that launched in July today has over 10,000 applications. In fact, the current tally of the most popular Apple iPhone applications shows that consumers are willing to pay nominally for games and entertainment and that there are broad opportunities for advertisers.

Widgets and applications have replaced key fobs and branded coffee mugs as new-age digital swag. They provide an opportunity for marketers to reach consumers in an unobtrusive, even helpful way that turns passive, low-level conscious awareness of a brand into active engagement and advocacy. Relatively inexpensive to develop and distribute, free to the user, and easy to share with friends and contacts, they provide a direct link between consumer and brand and carry an advertising message with them wherever they go. Yet, marketers will spend a relatively paltry $100 million on these applications this year, roughly equating the total media buys during the upcoming Super Bowl.

Some applications certainly have inherent limitations. Development meetings will argue over entertainment and utility much in the same way creative directors do over traditional advertising concepts, searching for ways to briefly get users attention and then start over when that attention fades. People have long hated marketing for being intrusive, obnoxiously misleading, and irrelevant. Yet intelligently designed applications combine utility with the brand's stated purpose. Instead of trying to lure customers into your store, take your store to your customer wherever they may be.

Is groupthink deadly?

2008-12-01T09:42:00.009-07:00

Black Friday took on a new meaning when it was reported that a Wal-Mart employee had been trampled to death by a stampede of some 2000 shoppers who had gathered outside the store to begin their holiday shopping. This morning, CNN aired a video asking "was 'groupthink' responsible for his death?"

Groupthink has long been thought to be a major reason why some businesses and organizations fail. The concept leads to poor decision making and results in a lack of creativity by creating an environment in which individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness. Group members settle into a comfort zone, and resist promoting or even mentioning differing viewpoints or ideas that could make them look foolish, or possibly embarrass or anger other members of the group. Innovation is stifled. Hasty decisions are made without thorough consideration or evaluation. Group members become sheep.

Groupthink can kill a business. It's sad to see that it may have also reared its head in public and led to a man's death as well.

Marketing in a recession

2008-11-26T10:27:00.005-07:00

The best strategy for ad agencies in the recession is to anticipate and support their clients' likely desire to shift from brand-building to hard-sell advertising for the duration of the downturn. That's according to Nick Brien, speaking at Ad Age's Media Mavens Awards event. Brien is the CEO of Interpublic Group of Companies' Mediabrands, a unit designed to coordinate the holding company's media assets. Brien was formerly CEO of Univeral McCann, where he won wide recognition as a savvy corporate turnaround artist.

No doubt the economy will have an impact on just how consumers consume. According to RGE Monitor, the U.S. housing sector is still far from stabilizing. Housing starts keep plunging, and demand keeps following supply downward, resulting in inventories not getting worked off and remaining at record highs and placing even more downward pressure on home prices. The most recent Case-Shiller Index showed home prices are down 23% from the peak and the pace of decline keeps accelerating every month. The consensus is now that home prices have still a long way to go before reaching a bottom.

the housing market is central to Americans’ perception of wealth. But the wealth losses for households related to the decline in home values has already reached $3 trillion, and some estimates it will eventually reach the $6-8 trillion range. The loss represents a negative wealth effect of 6 cents on the dollar, and the reduction in personal consumption could amount to a whopping $500bn. Factor in the losses related to the decline in stock market prices, down 40% from its record-high on October 9th of last year, the lack of flowing credit, and the impending dark cloud of staggering unemployment and its easy to see why retailers expect holiday sales to plunge by almost 50% this year and extending the slump well into 2009.

Back in May, I wrote a short piece for some of our agency's clients that mentioned we’ve reached an “inflection point” where the credit-fueled, Boomer-led, 40-year American consumption binge is unsustainable. We live in a different world today than in 2007, and it’s permanent. Americans have no choice but to save, and we’re already beginning to see signs that they’re doing just that. In fact, the national savings rate has been ticking upward since midsummer 2007, coincident with the subprime meltdown.

This as a significant point of change as we undergo a generational shift in this country. Gen Xers, entering their prime earnings years, show little evidence of wishing to follow in the excessive paths of their Boomer elders. Rather, they seek balance, downsizing, for example, from Boomer McMansions. At the same time, Millennials are entering adult life saddled with an average of $20,000 of student loan debt, and are fired up to get out from under that burden.

A new era is upon us where consumer values of balance, thrift, savvy, responsibility, self-reliance and control are ascendant. We are entering an age when established, tried-and-true life strategies and maxims will make a roaring comeback: “Waste not, want not”; “A penny saved is a penny earned”; “Save for a rainy day”… It’s no coincidence that the last generation to practice such a sensible approach, those seniors who entered adulthood during the Great Depression, are generally in excellent financial condition.

Even in a downturned economy in which consumers will put a greater emphasis on saving, consumers will continue to spend. Clearly, there will always be a need for essentials like food, housing, or energy. But sanity is also an essential. Despite a recognized drop in “small indulgences” in the short term, consumer spending will happen in areas such as health-and-beauty products and services, televisions, or vacations. Yet when consumers do spend, they will want to save. Helping consumers easily identify the strength of a product or service's value proposition will rise to the top in almost every possible transaction, as the Dollars and Sense economy shapes a new generation of marketing and consumption.

Discomediabobulation

2008-11-24T09:09:00.006-07:00

In an industry that seems it can focus on little else but the changing media landscape, rarely have there been as many conflicting op-eds and articles on the subject as was the case this weekend. No one will argue that media habits of consumers are changing. But few can agree on just how they are changing, or what that holds for the future of the advertising industry.

The print industry has certainly been hit hard by evolving media consumption in recent years. The local Salt Lake newspapers were forced to overhaul not only their sales and editorial workforces, but also their content over the past year in response to declining revenues. Major magazines such as PC Magazine have moved to all-digital editions, while others have shuttered their operations entirely. Even the storied New York Times announced over the weekend it plans to slash its quarterly dividend by 74 percent amid a worsening advertising slump, further proof of the paper's declining influence.

As the Times scrambled to remain viable, the building that once served as its headquarters became home to the largest sign assembly in the history of Times Square. A digital display wraps all three sides of One Times Square, becoming the central landmark in America's most heavily trafficked outdoor advertising venue. The sign also guarantees its advertiser, Walgreen's, heavy exposure to more than 1 billion TV viewers as the backdrop to the New Year's Eve ball drop.

Digital marketing took a further step in its evolution over the weekend, as Dr. Pepper launched a consumer promotion that is being billed as one of the largest not only in video gaming but in the history professional sports. Dr Pepper will sponsor for the second year in a row Major League Gamer (MLG) websites by featuring an MLG gaming star player on more than 175 million 20-ounce bottles of the regular and Diet Dr Pepper, sponsoring the MLG's no. 1-ranked team "Str8 Rippin," sweepstakes codes inside bottle caps, a promotional site with bonus content, and in-store promotions.

Many consider emerging media as the future of the industry for its ability to better inform consumers and reach them on "their terms," a phrase used to the point of overkill in internal status and agency brainstorm meetings. Online video-game ads, blogs and text messages are gaining influence overall with consumers, especially the younger 18-34 demographic that makes so many marketers salivate. Recent statistics show that online video-game ads influenced 14% of electronics purchases among that group, while blogs influenced 11%, figures that outrank outdoor billboards and satellite radio. Text messaging is also gaining traction, influencing 9% of the demographics' electronics purchases and 6% of clothing purchases.

Then again, an IDC study released this morning concludes social network users are less receptive to advertising, and that the methods marketers have used to advertise through the medium are "stillborn" with lower than average ad effectiveness. Of all U.S. Internet users, only 3% are willing to allow publishers to use contact information for advertising. So much more effective than behavioral targeting can social advertising really be?

Confused yet? Well, the discombobulation was only furthered by two separate stories in AdWeek the past week. In one, the strength of online advertising to weather the deepening ad recession was touted in light of a recent IAB analysis that showed online ad spending approached $5.9 billion during the third quarter, the second-best quarter ever for the industry and an increase of 11 percent over the same frame in 2007 and up 2 percent versus Q2 of this year. But AdAge looked at the same statistics and highlighted how while spending in the sector up, it was slowing and flattening out. Four days later, the lead story on AdWeek now asks "Is the End Near for Display Ads?"

In today's discombobulated and frenetic media landscape, marketers scramble to find the best ways to reach consumers. Yet in an era when new media are prized, or at least often touted, Reckitt Benckiser, the most successful major package-goods company of the past five years in sales and profit, has outperformed the likes of L'Oreal, Unilever, and P&G with what AdAge calls a "contrarian strategy." So what was the media mix of this contrarian strategy? Reckitt decided to stick with the basics, spending nearly 90% of its media dollars on TV last year. While its internet advertising through the first half was already double its full-year internet spending in 2007, it was still only 1% of media spending.

Alexander Lacik, Reckitt's North American household-marketing chief, said the company will move quickly on digital marketing once it's been "qualified," and he couldn't even immediately recall the name of the company's digital agency. Ouch.

Don't count on a bailout

2008-11-20T15:33:00.001-07:00

Executives from Detroit's "Big Three" automakers went to Capitol Hill yesterday to plead for $25 billion in emergency bailout money. First of all, I am fundamentally opposed to giving anything to anyone who files to Washington in their individual leer jet and begs for taxpayer money while their Gulfstreams idle on the tarmac.

Second, nobody has the right to uninterrupted growth and existence. Industries and businesses have to go through evolutions. Being good is the enemy of being great. All too often it breeds mediocrity and comfort doing the things the way they've always been done. But there is no such thing as entitlement or a birthright in business or marketing. There is no guarantee that you will be viable tomorrow, just because outdated ideas, strategies, tactics were successful before.

30 years ago, IBM was the leader in the growing field of personal computers. Then came around some company called Apple. Then Microsoft. By 1992, IBM was staring disaster in the face and posted what was at the time the largest single-year corporate loss in US history. So IBM innovated and reinvented themselves, moving away from components and hardware towards software and consulting services.

What has happened to Detroit should be a wake-up call to marketers everywhere. The current economic slowdown will separate the strong from the weak, the creative from the dull. Don't count on a bailout to make up for your inability to innovate and adapt.

UPDATE:
Read Mitt Romney's and Seth Godin's comments about what should happen in Detroit.

Yes, Scion is an outlier too

2008-11-20T05:22:00.005-07:00

Yesterday's post included an image meant to depict why some automakers have been able to better weather the severe downturn in the auto industry, while others are forced to go to DC to beg for money to survive. The image featured the logos of three brands who have successfully positioned themselves as outliers: BMW, VW, and Mini. I forgot to include perhaps the most successful outlier in the industry's recent history, the Scion.

Here is a clip from AdAge providing perhaps the best summary of Scion's tale, delivered by Jeffrey Rayport at the recent CTAM conference. Rayport encouraged automakers to rethink their relationships with consumers and empower them more, citing the way Scion's 2003 launch managers rethought every aspect of customer engagement.

Why outliers matter

2008-11-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Researchers and statisticians are always leery of statistical outliers, often removing them entirely from consideration when analyzing data. But while outliers may skew data results in statistical charts, outliers are where real change occurs in business and the real world.

The biggest movements and trends normally go mainstream but they rarely start there. Barack Obama was regarded as the most liberal Senator in D.C., began a movement that many considered as fringe, extreme, or radical, then grew it into mainstream politics. In business, change never occurs by doing the things that have always been done, or simply duplicating the strategies of others. Change, by definition, must be different, which means it always starts as an outlier.

Yesterday I forwarded to a colleague a website from a national hotel chain, which is taking a very unique, some may call it risky and extreme, approach in its positioning. My colleague dismissed it as "too far out there" to really be taken seriously. But as a marketer, one should always be paying attention to outliers. Some outlying cultural trends may at first glance seem radical, but always dismissing them will eventually only leave you trying to jump on a bandwagon you yourself may have been driving.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

2008-11-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

Story from the New York Times

Can Google help you avoid the flu?

2008-11-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

For those who are so afraid of needles that they avoid getting an annual flu shot, there may be a new tool to help you avoid getting sick.

Each week, millions of users around the world use Google and other search engines for online health information. As expected, there are more flu-related searches during flu season. But what Google has found is that there is a very close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms.

Counting the numbers of search queries is used to estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States. Compared against data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Google found using search data could accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports.

Check it out here.

Don't get off that couch!

2008-11-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

In the age of new media and TiVo, much has been discussed about the impending death of television advertising as we know it. Media companies have desperately searched for ways to more accurately measure viewership, and companies have struggled to realize the advertising power the medium once provided.

So while others sit back and complain about difficult market conditions and evolving media habits, some companies lead through innovative and creative thinking. Domino's Pizza announced a deal with TiVo yesterday that allows subscribers to place an order directly from their TV's connected TiVo box. The move broadens TiVo's content delivery system, which also allows subscribers to make purchases from Amazon.com or order movie tickets from Fandango.com.

This is just one example of how marketers are find new solutions to adapt to changing consumer needs and behaviors, made possible through the same digital technology that has eroded their advertising power in other media in recent years. Marketers can never settle into a comfort zone of simply duplicating last year's marketing plan. The business landscape is continually evolving, and marketers must learn to adapt or become irrelevant.

The Church of Apple

2008-11-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Apple is fascinating on so many levels. For marketers, few companies have mastered the art of branding as well as Apple. Apple has successfully captured the ever evolving aura of "cool" and attracted an extremely passionate and loyal base of customers from far and wide, part of the reason why Apple was named the "most successful world brand" and America's most admired company earlier this year.

A friend and devoted Apple fan told me yesterday of a conversation he had with a developer from Apple at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference. The developer told him that Apple makes it a point to not simply develop products based on what consumers want (chasing the puck), but build according to what consumers will want in the future (skating to the puck).

The philosophy results in truly innovative products that are first to market (controlling the puck), enhanced by design and packaging aesthetics, retail experiences, and opportunities for brand advocates to engage with the brand like WWDC and store openings that further advance Apple's religious following.

Motrin has a headache

2008-11-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, Motrin made an attempt to go viral be placing the above ad on YouTube, aimed at moms at moms who carry their children in slings or backpacks. Almost immediately, moms everywhere took offense at the ad's condescending tone, which seems to imply that carrying your baby close has little effect and that moms that do so are really using their babies as fashion accessories.

Sure enough the ad managed to generate plenty of buzz, just not the kind Motrin's brand managers had hoped for. No sooner had the online legion of mommy bloggers seen the spot, they began to post angry comments on their own blogs, posting irate video responses to the ad on YouTube, even rejecting the ad en masse on Twitter. First rule in social media, beware the power of mommy bloggers.

Here are some screenshots to show just how much online activity the ad has caused, certainly now well beyond its intended audience. I mean, here I am a 28 year old male blogging about a Motrin ad targeted at moms!

It's shocking that Motrin's brand managers apparently failed to test the spot prior to its release, such strong emotions certainly would have been noticeable had they done so. But what made the situation even worse was Motrin's the slow response, indicating nobody was even monitoring the conversations people were having about their brand.

The ultimate demise of the campaign demonstrates either how quickly social media can galvanize a groundswell of opinion or how much power over online discourse they can give a few vocal tastemakers with outsize weight, and remind marketers of the dangers of trying to talk TO consumers through social media when its true power is in having a conversation WITH consumers.

That conversation shouldn't start only after you launch a microsite or release a viral ad, but should only be a continuation of an ever growing and evolving dialogue between brand and consumer. Consumers will always talk about your brand, and the trick for today's brand managers is to become an active part of and lead the conversation.

UPDATE:
Great posts here from Seth Godin and David Armano about how Motrin failed a second time in its efforts to apologize. AdAge also released an excellent analysis of the campaign's demise.

Skating to the puck

2008-11-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

In an interview with Brandweek, Sprint's SVP of Corporate Marketing Bill Morgan shared an interesting quote. When asked if Sprint's $99 Simply Everything plan, a flat fee for unlimited voice, text, and data, would lead to commoditization in the industry, Morgan responded, "It's kind of the old Wayne Gretzky thing, you're skating to where the puck's going not to where it's at."

The hockey analogy (or any sport for that matter) is fantastic. Is your company skating around the rink chasing a puck, or are you skating to where it's headed? Better yet, are you the one controlling where the puck will go?

Break down the walls

2008-11-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

Kaizen is a Japanese concept of improving productivity. It literally means “change” and “better," or changes of current methods to produce a better result. Toyota figured this out, and based their entire production system around it.

As humans, our natural tendency is to resist change. It brings risk. Instead, we like to maintain the status quo, keep things the way they are and too often settle into the comforts of our own mediocrity. In business, we build artificial walls to block cross-functional cooperation and resist the development of new strategies.

The Harvard Business Review published an article highlighting the efforts of some companies to develop collaborative Distributed Innovation Groups that take part in brainstorming and problem-solving sessions, identify customer needs that could lead to new offerings or business models, consider how to use existing technologies in new ways, scan the environment for emerging technologies and their applications, advise business units, and publicize promising innovations and ideas.

Change most often fails to occur not because there are systems in place to prevent it, but that there aren't any systems in place to begin with. Its a lack of organization and coordination. Find a leader. Be that leader. Unite individuals throughout an organization to seek out and implement the change the market is calling for. If you're not growing, you're dying.s

The Law of Brand Positioning

2008-11-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

I'm not a NASCAR expert, but my son has become a fan ever since he first watched "Cars." As I watched the highlights of a recent race with him, I was intrigued by how the drivers remained in a tight pack for such a long stretch. Certainly there had to be some strategy, but I thought it was an awful lot like how so many businesses market themselves and their products.

All too often, we get placed into our position in the "competitive pack." Just as with the race, one company might move up a few slots, another might slide down, but for the most part, very little changes unless someone crashes or really screws up. Everyone seems to settle into their place and stays there. One driver eventually had enough, and came from the middle of the pack and raced to the front in a little less than one full lap. He was aggressive. He set the tone. He led, while others reacted.

Consider the election. Over the course of two months, John McCain's marketing messages were:

Country first
Maverick
Don't listen to those ridiculous, un-American, liberal, intellectual, coastal elites
Barack Obama is a superficial celebrity
I'm experienced
Change
Obama is a dangerous unknown quantity
Obama is a socialist.

Obama never stopped talking about the economy, health care and education over and over no matter what Hannity or Limbaugh had to say about him on the radio. He set the tone, and was relentless in his consistency. McCain was reactive.

Creating the experience

2008-11-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

A recent study showed that promotional "swag" is more effective than traditional advertising. Before you get too carried away with the findings, realize the study was commissioned by the Advertising Specialty Institute. That means the results are about as neutral as an internal tax audit at Enron.

If you have ever visited a trade show of any kind, you've noticed the number of people who go from booth to booth trying to collect as much swag as they can. But how many of them actually call the companies that gave them free stuff, hoping to do business with them? I doubt its very many. The effectiveness of promotional materials in and of themselves is limited. Swag can, however, help consumers remember the power of the (hopefully) positive memory of an experience they have had with your brand.

Perhaps the most essential part of developing a strong brand is creating the appropriate customer experience. All the advertising in the world will have little impact on someone who has had a poor experience with your brand. A brand's true power lives in the perception of the consumer, and nothing is as powerful on our own opinions about things in life as the personal experiences we have with them.

A very brief history of micro-media

2008-11-10T08:32:00.001-07:00

Another great visualization from David Armano showing the evolution of micro-media.

Government 2.0

2008-11-07T16:44:00.003-07:00

Not long after I blogged about how Obama could continue to use social media in his presidency, he has already started to do so. The Presidenct-Elect has set up a new website called change.gov, complete with a blog, multimedia, Obama's stance on issues and his political agenda, pages calling for Americans to "Share Your Story" and "Share Your Vision," and another page calling on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges.

The bar on the right states: "The story of this campaign is your story. It is about the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose. We want to hear your inspiring stories from the campaign and Election Day."

UPDATE 11.10.08:
CBS News Science and Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg noted on The Early Show Friday that the online push went further than the candidates' personal Web sites, as both Mr. Obama and John McCain tapped into the newest forms of social interaction, from Facebook to MySpace, even text messages. Obama employed the Web to raise record amounts of money for a presidential campaign.

"A lot of elections have been won because of television appearances," Doug Jaeger, a Web designer for thehappycorp.com, told Sieberg. "How people are appearing on the Internet is becoming more and more important."

Mr. Obama must now shift from campaign mode to governing mode with his cyber-supporters, Sieberg points out.

"The Internet has changed the game dramatically," says Andrew Rasiej, founder of TechPresident.com. "It's as if, in 2004, the Internet was allowed into the conference room of politics; in 2006, it was allowed to sit at the table; but in 2008, it's sitting at the head of the table, holding the agenda."

Mr. Obama has said he'd like to appoint a chief technology officer, perhaps at the cabinet level, and he's made it clear he will embrace new technologies in office -- technologies such as Skype, a video tool Sieberg used to get this quote from John Tedesco, a Virginia Tech political communications professor: "(Mr.) Obama recognized that young voters are using social networking sites and social networking software, and he brought his campaign to the young voters online."

Ultimately, according to tech experts, the most important part of Mr. Obama's future strategy is to ensure his digital followers continue to feel empowered.

Says Rasiej, "We're going to see this online community become really the special interest of the Obama presidency. Not the lobbyists, not the people who've traditionally give money, but the people who actually know how to use these tools to make sure that their voices are heard."

Think of it, suggest Sieberg, as the 21st century equivalent of giving power to the people.

And, Sieberg says, there's a sense that people are going to become more deeply involved in local politics, from school boards to running for office themselves, as a result of this online empowerment.

UPDATE 11.24.08: Obama has appointed his Social Secretary, close friend and prominent Chicago businesswoman Desirée Rogers. A Washington Post article about her appointment points out "This appointment sends a strong message that the Obamas want to use the White House strategically, to maximize its use in a way that is consistent with their philosophy -- [to] open it to a broader range of people." The President-elect has also begun posting his weekly messages on YouTube, opting for the web iinstead of radio where Presidents have held their weekly addresses, starting with FDR's "fireside chats."

The Social Election

2008-11-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek has called this the first social media election. The impact that social media had on the election is undeniable, and should once and for all convince marketers everywhere of its legitimacy and effectiveness as a marketing tool. Not only does the internet allow voters to learn more about the candidates than we ever would have before, but it enables voters to broadcast their unfiltered thoughts and opinions to the world. Gone are the days when a democrat in Utah or republican in Massachusetts would have little outcome on an election. Now they can communicate with and influence the opinions of others around the country, forcing candidates and major parties to develop a truly national strategies as opposed to almost exclusively focusing on key battleground states.

With the earliest Obama Girl videos, questions asked of candidates in town hall meetings submitted via YouTube (which didn't even exist in the 2004 election), the viral spread of Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin on SNL, mash ups of candidate videos and logos, blogs, Twitter feeds, virtual Obama or McCain buttons on Facebook, embedded video in emails, and avatars crowded into election-related islands and parties awaiting election results in SecondLife, the election and marketing landscape is forever changed.

So what's next?

2008-11-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

Obama Social

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: obama social)

In my newfound obsession with marketing lessons from the election, particularly the role of social media, the question becomes: What will we see next? Can part of Obama's change also include a fundamental shift in the way a presidential administration interacts with the public, particularly the youth in America who in just a few short years will make up the single largest demo graphical voting bloc in the country?

Many criticized Obama for focusing almost exclusively on "hope." But hope is indeed a powerful emotion (look no further than the gushing emotion displayed in Grant Park Tuesday night). Through a continued commitment to the social web as president, the country's collective hope could be harvested and transformed into collective action. Here are some thoughts on ways the Obama administration could do just that.

mywhitehouse.com
Politicians have always had websites dedicated to their campaign, but few truly use the web as an effective tool once elected. On mybarackobama.com, Obama supporters could create a profile (complete with name, phone number, email and zip code), blog about their campaign experiences, track the latest campaign news and videos, plan, attend and discuss events, find other supporters, and help raise funds for his campaign. Most importantly, the Obama campaign has put supporters to work not as passive volunteers but as empowered organizers, with tools to find, convince and organize other supporters among their neighbors.

The current site whitehouse.gov provides information, but little opportunity to connect and communicate. Instead, turn mybarackobama.com into mywhitehouse.com to provide the public with direct contact and the opportunity to share ideas and organize in their communities to bring ideas to life.

Listen
Social web only works when it is transparent and consumer driven. In this case, allow the public to submit suggestions and feedback, and have a staff on hand that can respond thoughtfully to these submissions with more than a canned "Thank You" note. Whether the submitted queries be big or small, respond with the information the public needs to act and make the site a a true link from the public to the government.

Online Anthropology
The NSA has technology to monitor online chatter in blogs, forums, message boards, etc. Use this not only as a tool to root out criminal and terrorist activity, but harvest its true power as a direct source of public input. People express themselves most openly and honestly when an interviewer isn't asking them questions, so listen to what they are talking about with each other and respond accordingly.

Legislative Co-creation
progressive brands have found the best products often come when comsumers are at the helm of R&D and can co-create new products and services. How cool would it be if we could actually work with our elected officials to create legislation? Why should we only allow for public input and voting on election day? Social media can bring the public's voice to legislative creation and prioritization 365 days a year! Let us "Digg" up the issues we want addressed and make every day an opportunity to "vote."

A True Community Organizer
Think of how effective a financing strategy of gathering a large number of small donations was compared to seeking a small number if big donations. The campaign showed us repeatedly that organization at a grassroots level is often more effective than major national programs. There is the opportunity to greatly increase the overall amount of community service if the public can be enabled to contribute their time in smaller, more frequent ways.

While America was founded upon the principle of elected representation, its sovereignty lies with the people. My hope is that Obama continues to continue to show interest in the power of online technology and use it in his governing. Now that would be change we can all believe in.

Who knew Microsoft Excel could be so cool?

2008-11-06T15:50:00.001-07:00

Working with research as often as I do, I see a lot of numbers and have become very comfortable with Microsoft Excel. I doubt there's more than a handful of people at work who even know what a Macro is (and they all work in accounting). And as I try to find new ways to push the limits of Excel with insanely complicated formulas and massive spreadsheets, I never knew Excel could be so cool.

Check out the video below, which shows how AC/DC made their latest music video by combining old school ASCII-style art with a stat geeky spreadsheet, which can actually be downloaded an an Excel file from the band's website.

Since when did rock bands turn in their jeans and guitars for pocket protectors?

Another t-shirt

2008-11-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I noticed an application on CNN.com that enabled readers to buy t-shirts carrying the website's headlines. CNN says the promotion was meant to build awareness of the CNN.com brand and drive traffic to the site. I will be the first to admit that I like t-shirts and have more than I could ever possibly wear, but I never quite understood the appeal of this promotion.

The $15 t-shirts just had a reprint of the story's headline along with the date and time it appeared. No cool design or graphic. No clever slogan, except for the two best selling headlines which had been "Colossal squid has soccer ball eyes" and "One in three office workers hung over." Apparently many people thought as I did, as only 2500 shirts were sold since the application launched five months ago.

That was until something truly newsworthy happened. Like an historic presidential election.

The election of Barack Obama sent Americans scrambling for keepsakes of the historic moment, including nearly 5,000 CNN t-shirts emblazoned with "Obama inspires historic victory." Under the headline is "I just saw it on CNN.com" and the time and date 11:04 p.m., 11-4-08. The interest resulted in almost $75,000 in sales, doubling the total from the first five months of the promotion.

Read the story here at AdWeek
Buy the t-shirt here

Brand Advocacy 2008

2008-11-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Brand Advocacy 2008 meter was right!

What makes America great

2008-11-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

I took this picture as I was driving home on Tuesday, listening to election coverage on the radio. The sun was just setting behind the large snow-covered mountain to the west of our valley, illuminating the cloudy sky and the yellow fields that stretch as far as you can see. American flags lined the two lane road down the hillside and into the valley. The setting, eerily reminiscent of Obama's campaign logo, signified all that was right and beautiful about America.

I didn't vote for Obama, but in the end that isn't what mattered to me in that moment. Instead, what made the moment so memorable was the joy knowing that I had a right to vote, and that is what has made and will continue to make this country the greatest country in the world.

Oops!

2008-11-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

BBDO's relationship with its newest client, Starbucks, may have gotten off to a rough start. The agency, who was named the coffee chain's agency of record just a few weeks ago, turned around a quick campaign with online advertising and a 60-second commercial that aired during this past weekend's episode of "Saturday Night Live." The promotion offered to give free coffee on Election Day to anyone who comes into a Starbucks and says they voted.

Just one problem.

Washington state officials reached out to the Seattle-based java giant to notify the chain that state and federal election law prohibit any form of remuneration for voting. That means no free coffee to voters. Instead, Starbucks had to alter the promotion so that anyone, not just voters, could enjoy a free tall-coffee.

Starbucks has always been resistant to TV advertising. Now their new agency just spent a ton of money to advertise a promotion they couldn't do, and instead had to give away coffee all day long. That couldn't have been a pleasant client call.

Still not sure how similar election promotions at Krispy Kreme and Ben and Jerry's have fared.

Marketing lessons from the US election

2008-11-04T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have planned on making a post this evening or first thing tomorrow discussing the lessons marketing managers could learn from this election. But then I failed to adhere to one of the first laws of marketing, don't let someone else beat you to market. Seth Godin had a brilliant post this morning about that very topic, so I thought I'd post his thoughts here.

I'll add some of my own thoughts and takeaways later this evening.

Stories really matter.More than a billion dollars spent, two 'products' that have very different features, and yet, when people look back at the election they will remember mavericky winking. You can say that's trivial. I'll say that it's human nature. Your product doesn't have features that are more important than the 'features' being discussed in this election, yet, like most marketers, you're obsessed with them. Forget it. The story is what people respond to.

Mainstream media isn't powerful because we have no other choices (see below). It's powerful because they're still really good at writing and spreading stories, stories we listen to and stories we believe.

TV is over. If people are interested, they'll watch. On their time (or their boss's time). They'll watch online, and spread the idea. You can't email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn't to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we'll choose to watch it and choose to share it.

Permission matters (though selfish marketers still burn it). The Republican party has a long tradition of smart direct mail tactics. Over the years, they've used them to aggressively outfundraise and outcampaign the Democrats. In this election cycle, smart marketers at the Obama campaign toned down the spam and turned up the permission. They worked relentlessly to build a list, and they took care of the list. They used metrics to track open rates and (at least until the end) appeared to avoid burning out the list with constant fundraising. Anticipated, personal and relevant messages will always outperform spam. Regardless of how it is delivered.

Marketing is tribal. This one, for obvious reasons, fascinated me this cycle.

Karl Rove and others before him were known for cultivating the 'base'. This was shorthand for a tribe of people with shared interests and vision (it included a number of conservatives and evangelicals). George W. Bush was able to get elected twice by embracing the base, by connecting them, by being one of them.

John McCain had a dilemma. He didn't particularly like the base nor did they like him. His initial strategy was not to lead this existing tribe, but to weave a new tribe. The idea was that independents and some Democrats, together with the traditional pre-Reagan core of the Republican party, would weave together a new centrist base.

Barack Obama also had a challenge. He knew that the traditional base for Democratic candidates wouldn't be sufficient to get him elected (it had failed John Kerry). So he too set out to weave a new tribe, a tribe that included progressives, the center, younger religious voters, weary veterans, internationalists, Nobel prize winners, black voters and others.

Building a new tribe (in marketing and in politics) is time consuming and risky and expensive. Both set out to do this.

Then, McCain made a momentous decision. He chose Sarah Palin, and did it for one huge reason: to embrace the Rove/Bush 'base'. To lead a tribe that was already there, but not yet his. He was hoping for a side effect, which was to attract Hillary Clinton's tribe, one that in that moment, was also leaderless.

Seen through the lens of tribes and marketing, this is a fascinating and risky event. Are people willing to suspend disbelief or suspicion and embrace a leader in order to maintain the energy of their tribe?

If it had worked, it would have been a master stroke. He would have solidified his base, grabbed key constituencies of Clinton supporters in swing states and wooed the center as well. Three tribes in one pick.

In McCain's case, it failed. His choice cost him the economically-concerned middle (which went to Obama's carefully woven tribe). And it clearly cost him the mostly female Clinton tribe. Yes, he energized the conservative base, but he lost the election. If he had chosen Mike Huckabee, one could wonder what would have happened. Would this less polarizing figure been able to collect a bigger tribe for him?

This is a real question for every marketer with an idea to sell. Do you find an existing tribe (Harley drivers, Manalo shoe buyers, frequent high-end restaurant diners) and try to co-opt them? Or do you try the more expensive and risky effort of building a brand new tribe? The good news is that if you succeed, you get a lot for your efforts. The bad news is that you're likely to fail.

Motivating the committed outperforms persuading the uncommitted. The unheralded success factor of Obama's campaign is the get out the vote effort. Every marketer can learn from this. It's easier (far easier) to motivate the slightly motivated than it is to argue with those that either ignore you or are predisposed to not like you.

Attack ads don't always work. There's a reason most product marketers don't use attack ads. All they do is suppress sales of your opponent, they don't help you. Since TV ads began, voter turnout has progressively decreased. That's because the goal of attack ads is to keep your opponent's voters from showing up. Both sides work to whittle down the other. In a winner-take-all game like a political election, this strategy is fine if it works.

So why didn't the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.

We get what we deserve. The lesson that society should take away about all marketing is a simple one. When you buy a product, you're also buying the marketing. Buy something from a phone telemarketer, you get more phone telemarketers, guaranteed. Buy a gas guzzler and they'll build more. Marketers are simple people... they make what sells. Our culture has purchased (and voted) itself into the place we are today.

Did I mention you should vote?

Literal Videos!

2008-11-03T16:06:00.001-07:00

One of the more entertaining videos I've seen on YouTube in some time, changing the lyrics to match what is actually going on in the video! Long live Tears For Fears!

2008-11-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin has another great post out this morning about the difference between reacting, responding, and initiating. Most employees in the business world today spend too little time initiating or creating change. We cross things off a to-do list rather than take the time to innovate. Yet, as marketers that is precisely the area we ought to be dedicating the most time to.

You can read the post on Seth's blog here.

Most knowledge workers spend their day doing one of three things:

React (badly) to external situations
Respond (well) to external inputs
Initiate new events or ideas

Zig taught me the difference between the first two. When you react to a medication, that's a bad thing. When you respond to treatment, that's a plus.

So, think about your team or your front line staff or your CEO. Something happens in the outside world. An angry comment on Twitter or a disappointed passenger on your airline or a change in the stock price...

Do you react to it? How much of your time is spent reacting to what people say in meetings or emails?

The rest of your day may be spent responding. Responding to a request for proposal. Responding to a form in your inbox. Responding to emails or responding to status updates on Facebook. Responding is gratifying, because you go from having something to do ---> to having something done. There's a pile in a different spot on your desk at the end of the day. You responded to the needs of the tribe you lead, or you responded to password-change requests or you responded to the boss's punch list.

And that's it. You go home having done virtually nothing in the third bucket.

We tend to reserve the third bucket, initiate, for quiet times, good times, down times or desperate times. We wait until the inbox is empty or the new product lines are due (at which point the initiative is more of a response). It's possible to spend an entire day blogging and twittering and facebooking and never initiate a thing, just respond to what's coming in. It's possible to spend an entire day at P&G (actually it's possible to spend an entire career) doing nothing but responding...

Take a look at your Sent folder. Is it filled with subject lines that start with RE: ? Consider your job at the University--do you actively recruit people who don't even apply for professorships? What about your blog--does it start conversations or just continue them?

What did your brand or organization initiate today?

What did you initiate?

Think about the changes you'd have to make (uh oh, initiate) in your work day in order to dramatically change the quantity and scale of the initiatives you create.

Some marketing jobs are about responding. None are about reacting. The best ones are about initiating.

Build a Beard

2008-10-31T17:02:00.001-06:00

Love this site. Design studio atto has developed a microsite that lets you stick a beard on your face and they donate money to a great charity called Kiva.

Check it out and have some fun!

(my tribute to Bob Ross)

Introducing "Generation We"

2008-10-31T10:40:00.001-06:00

You often hear about Baby Boomers and Generation X, but growing up I would sometimes wonder what my generation was to be called. We've been called Gen Y, Millennials, Echo Boomers, or Generation Me. Years later it appears my generation has resolved its identity crisis or only added further confusion. Time will tell.

Generation We.

Industry exec Eric Greenberg has released a book documenting my generation called Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America And Changing Our World Forever, which can also be downloaded online for free here. The YouTube video launched to promote the book has received just shy of one million views in less than two weeks, along with a website dedicated to the pillars of this generation's political movement.

Over the past few years, this generation of youth born between 1978 and 2000, some 95 million strong, has begun to emerge as a powerful political and social force. They are smart, well educated, openminded, and independent—politically, socially,
and philosophically. They are also a caring generation, one that appears ready to put the greater good ahead of individual rewards. Hence the preferred name for them: Generation We.

And they are already spearheading a period of sweeping change in America and around the world. As this period of change unfolds, Generation We will follow (if possible), lead (if necessary). And because of their huge numbers and their unique
new perspective, they will make dramatic changes happen, one way or another.

Generation We has risen to prominence recently and garnered a lot of attention, thanks in part to the rise of Barack Obama, the first presidential candidate to build a campaign largely on their support. But few people realize how unique Generation We actually is, and even fewer have recognized the incredible opportunities they have to transform society for the better, both here in the United States and around the world.

Lessons from a 10-year-old

2008-10-30T21:29:00.001-06:00

Lots of people, and brands, think they can't really create enough change, instead opting to do what has already been done or doing nothing at all. Too few "followers." Too little budget. Not enough time. If you feel that way, think about what a 10-year-old in Oil City, Pennsylvania was able to accomplish.

Tomorrow will be the first time Oil City will allow nighttime trick-or-treating in 16 years. Following the tragic abduction and murder of an 11-year-old a few days before Halloween in 1992, the town banned the tradition. This year, Elizabeth Roess decided it wasn't fair they always had to or trick-or-treating in another community, or go between 2 and 4 pm when Oil City allowed. She refused to settle for the status quo and instead mobilized support for change. She collected 175 petitions, wrote a letter, and presented to the city council.

Thanks to a 10-year-old leader who fought for change, trick-or-treating is now allowed again. If you think you can't create change, think again.

The full story from NPR can be heard here.

Crisis Management in an Era of Consumer Control

2008-10-30T10:55:00.001-06:00

Consumers are in control nowadays, which is a scary thought for some marketers and brand managers. No one likes to give up control, and in a way you do not have to. The top-down model of advertising is broken, but you can still lead your customers. Instead of selling products TO customers, develop products and services FOR customers. Listen and engage in a conversation with them, and provide tools for them to communicate with each other.

Younger Viewers Transforming TV Watching

2008-10-30T09:58:00.001-06:00

Having just finished Seth Godin's latest book, one of the themes he consistently brings up is the death of the TV-Industrial complex. His theory, based on the military-industrial complex, models how companies would buy ads to get more distribution, sell more products, make more of a profit with which they could then buy more ads.

That doesn't work anymore. Consider an article published this morning on TVWeek, which discusses how Millennials, those ages 13-29, exhibit significantly different viewing habits than previous generations. They are three times as likely to use DVRs and watch TV outside the home than young baby boomers, and are more likely to switch around during prime-time commercials or program breaks and watch TV with others in the room.

Another study suggests that approximately half of the viewers who watch TV programs online are using the web as a replacement for watching those programs on traditional TV. Recognizing the shift, TV Networks are scrambling to create their own measurements in a race to develop a standard for counting those precious eyeballs.

The old way is gone, and marketers who choose not to recognize it and long for the good old days are doomed.

Just finished: "Tribes" by Seth Godin

2008-10-29T08:57:00.002-06:00

I just finished reading, well actually listening to the audio recording of Seth Godin's latest piece, "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us." The audio recording of his book, read by Seth himself, can be downloaded from iTunes for $0.95, or free if you register for Audible.

The book points out how we as humans, and as consumers, are returning to "tribal-like" behaviors and looking for individuals who lead and can rally a community around a common identity and purpose. He also goes into detail about what it takes to lead a tribe in today's world, and that technology makes it easier than ever to build a tribe and create change. I felt the book was dead on, and reoriented some of my own thoughts and approaches to brand building. I'd have enjoyed some more discussion on what truly separates the "successful" tribes from those that fail, and whether or not we are truly craving tribal leadership as much as we more tech-fueled humanity itself. But overall the book was great, with tons of examples of tribes big and small, full of insights and challenges to step up and lead.