Dim Bulb

A Once-Every-Four-Year Opportunity

We've got an extra day on our hands, everyone.  Happy leap day!

I know it's really a bit of calendar legerdemain, just like the "extra hour" that Daylight Savings Time takes and then gives back every year.  But leap day gets its own date that doesn't otherwise appear on the calendar.  Relatively speaking, I'll grow older a day slower this year than I would have had I not received a bonus 24 hours.  So I'll choose to look at it as a gift, thank you very much.

Even if we don't understand or care about leap day, its very existence requires even the most disinterested, busy, or ignorant of us to acknowledge it.

Imagine what marketers could do with such near-100% awareness:

• Make it Chore Day.  Home Depot could have retailed a "clean your garage" kit, or Chase might have offered a "balance your checkbook" online calculating tool.  Employers could have oriented internal communications to help people assess their benefits packages.  Every insurance rep in America could have done an email blast suggesting that their customers do the same
• How about Get-Away Day?  Marketers could encourage people to use this extra day for something fun...a travel getaway, special entertainment event, whatever.  Where is the special "once every 4 years" trip pricing?  Think of what any hotel, travel site, or event venue could have done with it.  How about special meal offers at restaurants, or incentives to "linger a little longer" with deserts (there's an entire escape your routine pitch that any food or beverage brand could have used)
• Use it as Customer Loyalty Day.  Any business, irrespective of industry category or segment of end-user, could use leap day as an opportunity to give back to its customers.  How about suspending interest payments for 24 hours?  Extending service contracts by a day (or week, or whatever)?  Why not simply a personalized thank you note to every customer, noting that a bonus day is a chance to pause and reflect on the value of their patronage?

I'm writing this the day before leap day, so perhaps I'll be proven wrong, and there'll be lots of leap day tie-ins.  But I suspect not.  I haven't seen many (if any) so far.  Perhaps a few car dealerships and furniture stores will run their typical "insert holiday name here" sale ads, but I bet that will be about it. 

There are just too many entrenched-in-Powerpoint habits that keep brand gurus from operationalizing such an obvious opportunity.  Marketers tend to look inward, at what they and their target consumers think and feel about things, instead of addressing all of the outward qualities of where, when, how, and why they do things. 

What does leap day have to do with the brand attributes of your (or any) product?  Absolutely nothing.  But it has a lot to do with what people will do today.  It's part of the context and experience of their lives.  What a marvelous opportunity prompt a behavior that is relevant to that reality.  

 Taco chips, floor cleaner, or industrial widget.  Any brand could use leap day.  Too few will. 

At least there's a chance to start planning for the next opportunity.  When it comes to the work necessary to changing entrenched marketing habits, 2012 isn't all that far away.

Hey, today would be a great day to start working on it!

Miracles in the Automotive World

In little more than six months after being purchased by private equity firm Cerberus, it's a new day at Chrysler.

The branding says so.

All it took was a laundry list of warranties, lots of sales incentives, a glossy new logo, and cute TV spots.  It was only in late August that Chrysler recruited a marketer from Toyota to work her magic, yet the company has already incorporated consumer feedback into all of the vehicles it has manufactured and shipped to showrooms.

Voila!  Miracles in the automotive world never seemed so easy. 

The problem is that it's all hot air, at best.  I mean, c'mon now.  GM and Ford are busy trying to get their entire workforces to resign.  Sales are slumping.  Factories are closing.  Chrysler itself admitted only this past December (that's two months ago) that it is "operationally bankrupt."  Gas prices are skyrocketing.  Consumers are clamoring for greener cars.  Roads are falling apart. 

And we're well into a "new day" at Chrysler because it came up with a branding campaign that says so?  Somebody at their ad agency should pick up a newspaper once in a while. 

The idea of a miraculous "new day" at an automaker comes across about as credible and enticing as a "new day" after the Titanic hit that iceberg.  Or a "new day" for Napoleon's troops slogging through a Russian winter.

It didn't have to be this way. 

There's real change underway at Chrysler (there has to be).  Employee blood-letting aside, new CEO Robert Nardelli is reorganizing engineering, and will change other departments.  Functions will be internationalized, outsourced, and supported with better systems and processes.  A few years from now, Chrysler will invent, develop, build, and deliver cars that, conceivably, are far different from what it does today.

What it will look like is anybody's guess.  It's a giant gamble for the private equity folks, which is why they do what they do...the potential returns are potentially immense.  Nardelli and his backers at Cerberus are betting that the company might emerge as a fundamentally different, perhaps newly and uniquely competitive automaker.  I wrote about this potential soon after the deal was announced last year.

It's about a half-minute past dawn on this "new day" at Chrysler. 

Imagine if they let consumers in on the bet, too?

The branding braintrust could have actually addressed this reality honestly and directly.  It could have skipped the cute logo and all the hyperbolic claims of newness, thereby avoiding the head-on collision between its rosy public declarations and the truths of experience that are evident to any would-be consumer who has seen the news lately.

There'd have been something central about the idea that "Chrysler is changing, and you are invited to be a part of it."  It would have addressed all of the variables and all the challenges, but in doing so, it could have set the stage to make a substantive, real pitch: join us in this journey.  Make a guarantee of honesty and openness, while addressing the unfinished nature of the tasks ahead.

So the new TV spots that show consumers giving Chrysler designers direction on new features wouldn't be used as much to promote innovations that have already happened, but rather as an open invitation to participate in the company's future.  Think of all the real, meaningful social media implications for this...

...then add themes of returning to the origins of the engineering-driven, small, focused company that Chrysler was back when it was first founded.  The branding would evoke some sort of commitment to a relationship while this change is underway.  It would be about a true relationship with the automaker, and what it would mean in terms of vehicle support, information sharing, feedback, yadda yadda. 

It wouldn't be about falling for some "new day" marketing nonsense, but rather accepting the idea that reinvention is possible, and agreeing to become a part of it.  There's a patriotism theme here, too.

Cars are a miracle, if you think about it, moving us from place to place at the tap of our toes.  I say that the automotive world itself is a miracle that we've just grown used to.  So I believe that it's very possible that Chrysler is another miracle in the making.

But it'll only happen with some game-changer branding that prompts meaningful behaviors.  Behaviors, that is, other than the marketer and her agencies spending oodles of money on marketing that doesn't ring true. 

The fact that they could produce this stuff in spite of the reality all around them is a miracle in and of itself.  It's just not the right one.   

I Want a Free Blu-ray Player

Now that Sony's Blu-ray DVD technology has beat out Toshiba's HD DVD as the disc standard du jour, somebody should figure out how to get the players into the homes of every consumer alive.  For free.  Now.

I think it would be the smartest marketing move of the decade.

Millions of branding and marketing dollars are going to be spent on convincing us to pay for the new format.  Manufacturers are going to promote devices (both the players and the TVs enabled to view them).  Movie studios will promote films on the new format.  Retailers will merchandise the discs in hopes that they drive traffic and sales.  Online and bricks-and-mortar rental chains will want people to use the new format.

Lots of entities have skin in this game. 

So do lots of the format's competitors.  There are many devices and services coming out to enable Internet distribution of filmed content, including some very well-known brand names.  You already use one of the enabling devices to read this blog.  A new disc standard is nowhere near being a foregone conclusion. 

The challenge for Blu-ray is to communicate the compelling reasons for consumers to use the format as quickly and completely as possible.

Picture quality and additional content (out-takes, alternate endings, etc.) are probably the two biggest reasons to go disc vs. broadband.  So you can believe that a lot of the branding and marketing money mentioned above will be spent trying to portray these benefits in unique, memorable, compelling, and new media creative ways. 

Why not just let people experience it first-hand?

If we looked at the key brand attributes required for entertainment media use and experience -- not initial purchase -- routine and utility would factor high on any list.  Sure, early adopters fork out money for the latest gizmos (and then blather about them in Internet chat rooms), but your average, rank-and-file consumer consumes much more out of habit, convenience, and unconscious routine. 

I think the opportunity for Blu-ray is to get into those routines before the Internet or some other distribution vehicle does it faster, better, or more cheaply.

So here's a giant brand marketing idea: The movie studios, Netflix, Blockbuster, and the CE retailers should kick in the money to buy Blu-ray players for every consumer who commits to some sort of hardware service/movie purchase or rental programs.  Skip all the glossy communications, and get the players to do the communicating.  Cover the planet with them.

The gizmo makers make their money, then all the content-involved businesses make money on all those Blu-ray discs (maybe up the price since they're so much better?).

There's no time for the slow roll-out of branding nonsense.  Blu-ray needs a game-changer approach.

Think razor blades. 

Make the players free.

It's Good to be a Consultant

As Hillary Clinton's public persona raced toward political bankruptcy in January, her top PR consultant made nearly $360/hour...even when he was asleep!

Clinton's entire communications team are making out like bandits, each month collecting many millions of dollars for their expert counsel.  I'd assume that the gurus working for Obama and McCain are getting similarly remunerated, if not that lavishly. 

It's good to be a political consultant.

I've often used the political world as an example of purpose-based branding: every communication in an election campaign is directed at prompting an ultimate action...there's no pay-off for asserting any vague perceptions or associations. 

Real-time brand equity is quantified solely by likelihood of subsequent voting behavior.  All communications channels lead to election day.

Considering the simplicity of this goal, you'd think that the ROI of political branding could be calculated by a simple metric, such as the latest opinion poll.  Branding gurus and consultants could be paid according to their success: the efforts that raised voters propensity to vote one way or another would be more lucrative, and serve as an incentive to continue along that track (messages, channels, etc.).  The market could validate both salaries and brand.

Nope.  It’s pretty much all about salaries.

It turns out that the political world works just like the business world, where branding consultants get paid for their efforts, and not for their successes.  The incentive isn't to stick with a winning message or theme; rather, it's to incur hours of work.  Consultants are implicitly encouraged to prove their worth by contributing ever-newer communications advice, theme and message management, etc.

So a candidate can get the "best" branding advice, yet still lose an election.  Clinton's gurus have been very busy on this front. 

In the corporate world, there are ample examples of well-known, brilliantly rendered brands that did little, if anything, to realize actual sales or profits. 

None of Clinton's donors would have tsk-tsked the expenditure if she were winning.  And there's the rub: no candidate, nor any corporation, should really care about -- or pay for -- its brand independent of the purpose of branding...which is selling stuff.  The equation might be longer, more convoluted, and more tenuous than a single election day, but the context for politics is certainly the same as it is for businesses.  It just never occurred to me that political gurus could get away with the same nonsense as their corporate brethren.

Like I said, it's good to be a consultant.  Especially if you're in the branding racket, and not held accountable for producing any results. 

Still sleeping? 

Cha-ching!

Sharper Image Isn't Enough

Now that electronics gizmo retailer Sharper Image has filed for bankruptcy, I think it suggests two broad observations we can all take to heart:

Beware of hidden drivers of your business, and don't let your branding confuse want with need.

Sharper Image has always offered a vast array of products.  You can’t walk into a store without getting a sensory bombardment of beeps, flashing lights, and devices that flip, fly, or otherwise move around.  There are hundreds of things to look at and wonder about.

But it turns out that the number of products it relied on selling for its profits could be counted on one hand.

It's no surprise that its financial woes got particularly woeful starting in 2005, the same year that Consumer Reports reported that the Ionic Breeze air purifier might pose a health threat.  The product had accounted for over 1/4 of the store's entire sales, and perhaps even more of its profits.  Sales plunged, and the store never recovered. 

Now, is the Ionic Breeze a fun product?  Is it cool and with-it, something that'll prompt a twenty-something who mistakenly thinks he or she has disposable income to think "hey, I want that thingee?"

Nope.  I'd bet that it was something that particular consumer segments felt that they needed.  Like parents, or smokers, or the elderly.  The gizmo was promoted as an air purifier at one time, even though now it has come clean and admitted that it's really an air freshener.  But I think people who bought it thought they needed it.

Imagine the Ionic Breeze customer working her way through the Sharper Image store (or wading through its web site).  Do you think she also needed an electric poker chip stacker?  A fiber-optic sculpture?  A stretching massage robotic recliner? 

The single most important driver of customer traffic was a need product, and Sharper Image stocked its store full of unnecessary, impulse want products.  Its entire offering was the corollary of that popcorn and candy lining the checkout corridor at Blockbuster stores. 

Management must have known about its leveraged dependence on a single product, right?  My suspicion is that they misread the drivers of that success, and that's why they were unable to exploit or repeat it.  And I imagine that branding had a hand in the confusion.

Sharper Image had (and has, to a great degree) a great, recognizable brand name, built in large part on the familiarity consumers had developed with Hammacher Schlemmer.  If I had to guess the language that appeared in the company's mottos, mission statements, and the other branding blather that companies waste lots of time and money fine-tuning (although nobody ever hears them), I'd bet it wanted to be known as a retailer of products that were innovative, problem-solving, and unique.  I'd also bet it saw in the Iconic Breeze the realization of this brand position.

Only the branding had nothing to do with what drove its profitable customers to the store.

There's not a single product listed on its web site that comes even close to offering the once-promised utility of the Ionic Breeze.  Quite frankly, much of it is pretty much useless, throw-away technology, targeted at doing things slightly faster or better (or just differently, which means requiring batteries) than another more common product that 1) accomplishes the same work, and 2) is already in your kitchen, bathroom, or travel kit.

And a lot of the products don't even claim to have any utility whatsoever.  They're "fun."  Oh, and you can find the same products (or ones made by a factory in China that's next-door to the one Sharper Image used) from lots of other online and brick-and-mortar consumer electronics retailers.

Sharper Image confused what it wanted to be with what it needed to be. 

Management drank their own Kool-Aid, and populated the store with products that somehow fit the aspirations of its branding, but didn’t even come close to meeting the needs of its customers.

It didn't have to be this way:

• What else would Ionic Breeze customers have wanted to buy? Some analysis of these purchasers based on their lifestyle needs and issues -- and not on their aspirations or emotions (or other branding nonsense) -- might have yielded product concepts that Sharper Image could have taken back to China to design and build.  Hammacher Schlemmer has a line of ozone devices that kill bacteria on surfaces in the home; it could be doing this exact sort of research
• How could product offerings have been branded together?   Instead of grouping its products by area of home, it could have organized them around need states -- healthy eating, in-home mobility, whatever -- which might have made multiple offers both apparent and relevant to its customers
• Could it have avoided selling toys?  No retailer (except Apple) can resist the need to add at least one piece of garbage, especially at checkout, because of the odd chance that it might turn into a sale.  I say don't go toward the light! Sharper Image’s stores could have made a lot more sense if they were a lot less filled with nonsense

In the end, or at it, Sharper Image is perhaps a case history of image not matching reality, either internally (in business processes and pursuits) or externally (in product offering and store experience).

I think somebody got distracted by its branding.  Maybe lots of folks did.

Feed the Pig

I really like the premise of this public service campaign, but its execution is a little confusing, and its timing was downright unlucky.

"Feed the Pig" is intended to encourage consumers to spend less money and, in doing so, avoid going into debt.  The sponsors are the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts and the Advertising Council...two entities whose members probably make their money from people spending more money than they should.  Hence the campaign is a hat-doff, like a junk food company sponsoring some nominal healthy eating program.

Anyway, the campaign is based on a guy who looks pretty spooky wearing a pig nose and ears; named Benjamin Bankes, he reminds us via commercials and a web site to "bank" our money.  Get it?

One spot I particularly like is called "TV Store," and features a slacker dude getting all fired up to buy some exotic flat-screen TV.  Ready to buy, he gets whacked on the hand by Bankes, and then he sheepishly changes his mind.  It captures that special shopping moment when cost and benefit lose all meaning, and the purchase elevates to be a be-all/end-all action. 

Bankes is that reminder from reality that we all wish we had (well, had most of the time) working in our favor.  A guardian angel with an ugly snout.

So first, a word about the campaign's unfortunate timing: isn't our economy in dire need of more shopping, so much so that President Bush has implored everyone to spend instead of save?  We're supposedly going to get checks from the IRS to help us along in this pursuit.  If we plug those funds into our piggy-banks, don't we hasten the arrival of the naming ceremony for the recession we're already experiencing?

If it's my patriotic duty to wantonly consume stuff, why should I listen to Mr. Bankes?  Perhaps he's a communist or something.  Or worse, a Democrat.

Now, when I get over this disconnect of happenstance, I find myself at the web site. 

There are some simple don'ts that the campaign should have avoided, like an irritating pig snort or cash register cha-ching that happen apparently randomly as I scroll across the page. 

The main space of the homepage tells me about how much of a rotten saver I am.  Of course, I'm not, because just like my daughter's school performance, I'm above-average in every way (ahem, not really, of course, but presenting an average on savings habits and calling it "my financial mirror" is not so me or anybody else).

Ultimately, the site doesn’t really motivate me to do anything. 

It lists "calculators" and "more resources" in the main nav, but there's no do this challenge.  Just lots of nice ideas.  There's even a link to another web site that has lots more information on it to better understand and manage your finances. 

There's just no reason to use any of it.

This is a missed opportunity: 

• There are easy ways to mass customize the home page to give each visitor what approximates a personal analysis of their financial behavior (it's how insurance gets quoted online).  Maybe even a drop-down or two would let the user tell it enough to spit out something close to a reasonable observation
• Then, the main section of the page could have issued a challenge -- "save X this week," or "make a list of the next 5 things you plan on buying, and cross-off 4 of them," or something like that.  Give the visitor a clear call to action
• One or more of the resources/calculators offered could be to help people calculate these behaviors (like "if you skipped a coffee one day a week at Starbuck's, here's how much you’d save in a year").  A neato tool to forecast interest earnings would be helpful, too
• This could prompt lots of opportunities to turn participation into a contest as well as a social media experiment.  Think of all the blogs that track people's diets and athletic training; couldn't this campaign prompt similar tracking and info sharing on how to save, how to enjoy things for less, etc.?
• Finally, Pig boy Bankes could have been rendered as a cuddly cartoon, or as some wanton consumer (lots of bling and ostentatiously bad taste).  The "pig" metaphor is a little confusing, because the site says feed it yet we're supposed to be starving our inner-pigs and putting money into porcelain piggy-banks instead
  

I understand that the average family in Japan each year saves more than does the entire population of Chicago, or something like that.  So it's a problem that deserves some attention, and the fact that the AICPA and Advertising Council tries to address it is laudable.

They just could have tried a little harder.

Oink.

Be The Band

Thanks to video games from Aerosmith and Miley Cyrus, you can leave behind your life as a mere music lover, and join the band instead.

Talk about brand engagement.

The news from Aerosmith is that Activision, Inc. will debut a game called "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith," featuring 30 songs from the band.  The Guitar Hero games let people literally play as a part of a band, using a toy instrument to trigger guitar sounds within songs.  The entire franchise has moved a billion dollars of product since its launch in 2005.

Miley's game, Hanna Montana: Spotlight World Tour, works on the Nintendo Wii, which utlizies a little wand to prompt the same sort of on-screen interaction.  The Wii has been so extraordinarily successful that its consoles have been in tight supply since its launch last year.

While .mp3 downloads have been dismantling the packaged-goods CD model on which the music industry is founded, there’s been what I call the American Idol-ification of culture simultaneously underway.

• American Idol features zillions of kids who think that singing in the bathroom shower means that they deserve to be famous.  Anybody can do it, according to the encouragement dispensed regularly from Paula Abdul
• It encourages zillions more to fantasize the same thing, even if they don't make it to the point of embarrassing themselves on-air
• Production technology has advanced so far that it is easy and cheap to make music, whether via Apple's Garageband software, or simply playing one of those Casio keyboards that all but play themselves.  Digital video cameras and editing software give the average teenager the tools once reserved for engineers at the original three U.S. broadcast TV networks, only better
• Distribution technology is also all but free, as well as simple.  Start a blog, and you can distribute your videos or songs for chump change

Say hello to the burgeoning universe of user-generated content.

User-generated content is the fancy phrase to label stuff not made by professionals.  The American Idol-ification trend is all about all of us becoming users and creators simultaneously.  So it turns out that the distinctions been "amateur" and "pro" were pretty much circumstantial and otherwise artificial.  Good stuff comes from anyone, anywhere, anytime, or so the theory goes

So, let's see...we have a creative industry -- music, right now, but video is sure to follow -- that has lost its grip on producing readymade "pro" product, and we have a cultural trend that empowers one-time consumers to consider themselves producers instead.

The video games from Miley and Aerosmith merge these trends.

I never wanted to just listen to Aerosmith anyway.  Any self-respecting teenager doesn't listen to music as much as fanastize about it, from making the stuff to living the lifestyle.  And anybody whose ever set foot on stage, whether for a grade school play or to compete in a spelling bee, knows that there's a rush that comes from making something...anything...and not just absorbing it.

I want to be the band, and now I can.  And I don't have to even fool myself into thinking that I can play the guitar.

Could there be a nascent model here for the music industry to pursue?  There are any number of ways to involve consumers as co-creators, or at least make them think they are:

• Alternative versions of songs distributed for fans to choose (charging for each version, of course); communities could vote for mixes, length, even content itself
• Songs missing a track could be sold, along with some rudimentary software that let consumers add the track with the instrument of their choice
• Entire songs could be distributed as discreet tracks, along with some tool that let people mix them to their own tastes
• Every new song could come out "prerecorded" and in "game-enabled" versions, making PlayStation3, Xbox360, and Nintendo's Wii hubs for music experience on an ongoing basis
• Bands could align with particular interface devices, so there'd be an "Aerosmith guitar thingee" that was somehow different from the one available from Fall Out Boy.  Consumers could build dexterity on the devices of their favorite bands/brands, thereby giving them better song experiences
• How about allowing "better" players -- i.e. consumers who are committed to your brand -- to unlock "better" music content on the songs they buy?  If I truly love everything Miley Cyrus releases, and play along with her songs all day long, maybe I could get more tracks, extended versions, etc.
• Different versions/mixes of songs could be licensed and re-sold, each generating income for the creators of the original tracks (i.e. bands)
• Bands could offer music-creating tracks/software, and encourage their fans to write music in the spirit of the originals (a la those Star Trek fans who write and film entirely new episodes of the TV series)

Who needs American Idol if I can take the stage with Aerosmith?  For that matter, who needs CDs?  But if there were some way that all of these media interacted, maybe I'd need all of them?

There's probably a ton of money to be made reworking the music industry into an interactive/game/visual/user-generated/somethingoranother industry.  And brand marketers of consumer products and services could probably learn a lot from what's going on in the entertainment world.  What's simple to interact with because it's digital may very well be but an example of the interaction/engagement that we'll want someday soon with every purchase...

Rock on.

Lindsay Lohan Reveals Her Brand

News of recently-teenaged actress Lindsay Lohan's impersonation of still-deceased actress Marilyn Monroe via a nude photo spread in New York magazine says a lot about how brands can devolve.

It seems like only yesterday that Lindsay was that cuddly little ingenue in Disney's remake of The Parent Trap.  Well, it was practically yesterday, only since then she has sped through her mildly endearing early teens to slam into a few guardrails with her car, not to mention alcoholism, rehab and, oh yes, a few utterly forgettable movies.

Now, at the ripe old age of 21, she's all but washed-up, revealing herself quite literally in a photo shoot emulating another actress who killed herself soon after her own nudie pics were taken.

If we looked at Lindsay and all actors as "brands," what might it tell us?

Actors and actresses offer particular sets of qualities from which movie-goers can choose, just as readers can pick authors (or listeners prefer one musician over another).  There's a Tom Hanks brand that pretty much guarantees a certain type of acting experience, just as Cate Blanchett offers a unique style, etc.  Playing with or against such perceptions keeps us interested, and buying tickets, as long as the acting substantiates our expectations and expenditure of time.

Celebrity is something else, tho, and it's only marginally attached to these brands.  If the acting itself defines the brand qualities, notoriety and other celeb-related coverage could be seen as the associative qualities. 

Now, if we were talking about consumer products instead, say, toothpaste:

• Functional benefits -- like cavity-fighting -- would be substantive branding, like the outcomes from acting
• Promises that the resulting smile would help you get the boy or girl would be the  celebrity associations

As such, you can see where the latter gets you without the former.

There are rare examples of brands that have a modicum of sustainability without offering any substantive benefits.  In the entertainment world, there's Charo, (was) Tiny Tim and, to a extent, we now get to enjoy Paris Hilton's famousness for being famous.  In consumer products, there's Monster Cable. 

More surprisingly, there are lots of consumer marketing offers that evidence a disconnect between function and promise.  Lots of so-so products and services are marketed by wildly inventive, creative branding.  You've seen it.  Maybe you've had a hand in creating it for a client or an employer. 

We marketers pride ourselves with our ability to make something out of nothing.

Lindsay's brand got disconnected from her actual acting ability or output soon after she made Freaky Friday (which was a hilarious movie in which she did an amazing job, in my humble opinion).  After that, her brand got defined by her increasingly-inane, self-destructive behavior.  The actuality of her acting disappeared. 

She became her image, and nobody really likes it anymore.  Hence the Marilyn Monroe knock-off photo shoot.  We're talking bottom of the barrel stuff.  With nothing but image to manipulate, she's running up against the literally physical limits of what she can do with it...er, herself.

I wonder if (and which) consumer products brands run the risk of treading Lohan's road and experiencing her Devolution Track (DTs...get it?).

• Is there a correlation between how memorable an ad or other marketing artifact might be, and the intensity or amount of scrutiny consumers apply to the actual functions of the product or service?
• How about when marketing, especially the latest, gee-wiz social stuff, reaches for themes distantly related to the functions of the brand itself (like a tissue maker wasting time and money on videos and chats about moments that make people want to cry?)...does this accentuate a disconnect that consumers perceive?
• Once a brand gets recognition for something, does that elevate expectations for the next event to be ever-bigger, funnier, or edgier, thereby lessening the integrity of the brand?  I'd call this the Super Bowl Effect, only "SBE" isn't anywhere near as punny as "DT."
• At what point does brand marketing from competing products, just like reports on stupid celebrity antics, start looking the same?  Viral video campaigns from two companies that make computers or TVs are as ignorable, and as disassociated from the functions of the products themselves, as reports on Brittany Spears and her stupid little sister, aren't they?  In the end, who cares about any of it?

Acting matters to entertainment brands.  So do the actual functions of products and services support, or destroy, consumer products branding. 

In both worlds, if the branding gets disassociated from reality, or dependent on associations with non-functional attributes to gain exposure, the brands suffer.  They devolve. 

Once that disconnect is fully revealed, they're all but done. 

Toys "R" Us Takes a Stand

With an announcement last week of new safety standards for its suppliers, Toys "R" Us has a chance to give its brand the biggest boost it has had in years, if ever.

There's lots of legislation pending to require tougher thresholds for lead paint, testing tools, and more safety checks.  Toys "R" Us CEO Jerry Storch wants to get out ahead of it and "...reinforce our leadership position in this regard."  So is Wal-Mart.  I doubt any toy brand wants to get tagged with another discovery of child endangerment a la the crises of late last year.

Remember all of the harumph answers from the toymakers?  Because manufacturing had been outsourced many times more than on-step removed (sub-suppliers supplying suppliers, etc.), the CEOs were "shocked" and blathered on regarding their "commitment to safety."

It was as if their conceptions of brand were somehow separate or above of the messy reality of making things.  So the crises weren't really their fault, per se.  The entire shebang came off like a the dog ate my homework moment for the toy industry.  Blame the Chinese was the ugly subtext to the excuse.

Well, no. 

Blame the brands, for what are brands if they're not at least the labels that we put on products and services?  You can't subcontract out making stuff (or the people who make it) and then shrug when they do something wrong.

Now, Toys "R" Us has put itself into a very intriguing position. 

The company has had its ups and downs over the past decade or so, as shopping for toys has followed shopping for lots of other products and gone online.  It has also gotten significant competition from other retailers that can just as easily source and display shelves of toys as it can.  Maybe even do it better, or cheaper, or faster.

It has faced, and still must ponder, an existential question: why does the business exist? 

A few private equity firms took a stab at answering this question in 2005 when they took Toys "R" Us private, and you and bet there have been many attempts to wrest proof of their financial acumen from reducing employee headcount, squeezing margins, lowering the store thermostats in winter.  The company is probably far more efficient than it was a few years ago.

But that's not branding.  Neither is issuing a corporate statement about product safety.  But the company’s CEO has, perhaps unwittingly, taken a step toward an answer that could have meaning for customers.  It might also actually drive top-line sales.

Imagine if Toys "R" Us were "the safe store?"

• While its competing buyers scourged the world for the latest, cheapest toy fads, Toys "R" Us could do so with the added requirements of the most stringent safety thresholds in existence (workplace quality, worker age, and other standards, too?)
  
• It could provide its customers with a pervasive, no-exceptions guarantee, and back it up with some services, like repair or replacement, that no online or multi-purpose brick-and-mortar competitors could muster
• Pricing could have some meaningful link either to safety qualities, or perhaps durability
• Product displays could be organized by age, maybe even by educational or group-use applications
• It might start applying its safety standards as a Toys "R" Us certification program, allowing manufacturers to sign up and benefit from using the qualification (any manufacturer, not just its own)

In other words, Toys "R" Us could be the leader for safety, thereby giving its customers a unique and ownable brand benefit, and thus its stores a reason to exist.

It would be so cool to see such bold, visionary effort from a private-equity-owned company (that's supposed to be capable to taking such bold, visionary effort, if you believe the hype that surrounds most of these financial maneuvers). 

The company's  CEO has gone to the trouble of having his PR people gin up a press release; why not actually take a stand, and build a brand upon it?

Tell Me About My Flight

Heathrow’s new terminal five will utilize 333 billboards and 207 flat screen TVs to barrage each visitor with 50 to 200 ads.  One of the billboards already crows that the display company and airport operators are "...bringing the world's best brands and audiences together."

Airports, like doctor offices and subway cars, are places where audiences are captive, so they seem like obvious opportunities for brand marketers to exploit every available surface and media.  Airports might be even better because they can skew upper-income, especially during the work week.

That's why Heathrow is already gummed up with lots of bistros and retail stores.  I've run the gauntlet through Terminal 3 more than I care to remember, and it's like wading through an endless shopping mall.  U.S. airports from Portland to Minneapolis are no better. 

Stores I get, mostly, as they're something to do other than work when waiting for a flight or making a connection.  It beats a smoky bar, most of the time. 

But I happily ignore the TVs and billboards already plastered around me, just like I do in any other public space.  We've all learned to ignore the advertising background noise that's unavoidable where we least care about it, like on sports stadium walls, in video games, and wherever else TVs and billboards can be thrust before us.

So is the idea that this "captive audience" wants to consume branding is perhaps a bit misplaced?

Instead of looking at airports as another place to catch consumers who might be relevant to your business plan, why not consider doing things in airports that are relevant to them?

I say forget about brands.  Tell me about my flight.

No airline (or airport) seems able or willing to get its collective marketing heads around the central, overriding priority of keeping people informed...consistently and responsibly.  It's telling that the Heathrow signage plans are all about using every available inch of space to tell people things they don't necessarily need to know.  Information from the airlines remains a process problem that yields communications that are spotty, imprecise, and often-times flat-out wrong. 

So why not let them outsource the information and notification functions to third-party brand names?   It wouldn't matter what the product or service actually sold (hamburgers, insurance, whatever), because at the airport it would be selling relevance and utility.

Imagine the brand setting up the reporting system(s) required to all but guarantee that passengers on so-and-so airline would get real and dependable updates on schedules every, say, 5 minutes.  TVs and billboards would present this information instead of recasting its branding nonsense, so there'd be no presumptions of associations with vagaries of emotion or other associations. 

Brand X would be in the airport because it provides an incredibly useful service. 

Think of all the wonderful brand associations that come along with being so relevant.  Once you stop thinking about airport visitors as victims for brand marketing as if they were sitting in front of a TV or computer screen waiting to get sold to, there are other riffs worth pursuing:

• How about a brand developing some unique weather predicting tool, so its signs could post some forward-looking information on what storms might arise in so-and-so flight corridors?
• Maybe a branding presence could focus on predicting likelihood of weather forcing delays or cancellations, posting a running, real-time picture of what delays could occur?  There could be a historic basis for calculating future issues that got ever-better with time.
• A brand could assume responsibility for posting "most popular" stores in the shopping mall/airport, or ranking "best deals" in real time.
• Another brand could cross-analyze flight schedules and pricing, and provide travelers with up-to-the-minute information on change options.
• Billboards could be keyed to actual flight performance, and offer immediate sales benefits (call this # now for a discount, etc.) that were keyed to actual flight/schedule issues, giving the best deals to people with the most time to kill/greatest desire for something ‘good’ to happen after learning of a terminally-delayed flight.

But the last thing we need in airports are more ads featuring celebrity endorsers, or just content that is inwardly-focused on the needs of the brands.  There's nothing futuristic (or particularly intelligent) about using new tools to do something archaically old like waste people's time.

Be the business that helps me in my time of need, and I'll far more likely to drink your soda pop, buy your floor cleaner, or invest in your mutual funds.  In airports, we need information, and providing it could earn brands some real affection, if not outright loyalty. 

Don't tell me about your brand, though.  Tell me about my flight. 

Yuuuck

I'm a firm believer that behavior matters far more than thought or intent when it comes to branding, but I can't help reacting to the latest innovation in lickable ads with a yuuuck!

Welch's has recently initiated a campaign for its grape juice.  The company responsible for the Peel n'Taste technology, First Flavor, offers a variety of ways to integrate taste samples into ads, coupons, direct mail, and live events. 

Our individual senses get no respect these days:

• The news imagery on TV screens no longer appears without that constant textual scroll along the bottom
• Movies need sound, just as music needs video
• Console video controllers have added the barest of tactile experience to games for a while now, and there have been notable experiments, like the scratch-and-sniff cards that accompanied the movie Polyester in 1981
• And you can't walk near a well-thumbed women's magazine without being overpowered with a dozen fragrance samples

Multimedia is less a possibility and more the requirement for consuming content these days, whether advertising, or the filler that abuts it.

But taste and smell have mostly remained out of the reach of those who wish to mediate our senses with digital content.  No computer file extension can yet trick our taste buds with mimicry of a hot pot roast, or electronically provide the odor of a red rose.

Before we explore these additional senses can we ask does multimedia always have to be the message?

There's something marvelously old school about using a single medium as is: visuals to show something, sounds to play something, etc.  The fundamental challenge to marketers and artists alike has always been to use media to bring ideas to life by provoking a response (cry at the poignancy of the story, or rush headlong to a store to buy a new product).

Complicating the expression can sometimes obfuscate the ideas themselves; more and more, we are presented with gloriously sensory-rich content that fails utterly to engage or provoke.  There could almost be an inverse ratio relationship between 1) available media tools and 2) likelihood that the creative content will get people to do something. 

Add those variables to those of context -- who, what, where, when, and why the content is being consumed -- and it seems to me that the ultimate opportunity for creators is to say simple things simply...and compellingly.

So putting a lick of grape juice in a magazine ad is no different than presenting the simulacra of a car ride via a viral video or virtual world.  It's a fun idea, but it is necessary, or necessarily smart? 

There's potential here.  Sensory cues can prompt behaviors, and those behaviors can matter to real business purposes, like sampling, testing, purchasing, improving, enjoying, and re-ordering.  Integrating these actions, and not just using different media, could be the a-ha branding strategy for the foreseeable future.

But the idea that somebody else could have licked the magazine I found in the backseat on my last flight?

Yuuuck!

Buffett's Not Selling, He's Buying!

Billionaire financier Warren Buffett offered to re-insure $800 billion of municipal bonds, evoking a pivotal plot moment in our current financial crisis as well as that of an imagined one from the movie "It's a Wonderful Life."

You remember...there's a run on the bank just when George and Mary are heading off on their honeymoon, and evil financier Potter offers shareholders of the old Bailey Savings & Loan fifty cents on the dollar for their accounts.

"Don't you see," George exclaims to a roomful of worried depositors, "Potter isn't selling, he's buying!"  Actor Jimmy Stewart goes on to deliver an impassioned speech on how the principles of shared responsibility, patience, and faith should form the basis for our financial markets, as well as for our communities.

It falls on deaf ears, of course.  What keeps everyone from selling out to Potter (gleefully played by Lionel Barrymore) is George's offer of his life savings as a temporary pay-off, which they greedily use up.

Now, Buffett is no Barrymore, and I don't believe he's anything like the Potter character.  He's simply a shrewd businessman who admits, "I'm not doing this so that St. Peter will let me in at the pearly gates.  We are doing this to make money."

What's intriguing, to me, is how powerless and vulnerable investors are, and how contrary this reality runs to the creative inventions of so much financial services branding.

After all, investment branding is all about control and self-interested action.

Dennis Hopper berates viewers about planning in Ameriprise commercials.  Fidelity celebrates the idea that regular 'ol dummies can use the markets to make money.  E*Trade's latest ads use a funny video to tell us that buying stock is an act of self-actualization available to even a baby. 

With the right advice, any individual can dip in and out of someplace called The Market and make money.  Financial news reporting reaffirms this belief, often ascribing emotions and intentions to movements in market or individual stock prices, as if they can then, somehow, be read or analyzed. 

According to all of this marketing, we're all self-reliant, co-equal competitors in search of success, and The Market is there for us each to prove ourselves individually.

The reality of investing is very different.

Your profits or losses have far more to do with those of your neighbor than you care to consider: stock prices move because other people choose to buy or sell them, just as the overall value of the market is determined by their aggregated actions.  There's no There there of objective truth, per se, but instead a running tally of expectations, hopes, fears, and clever machinations, as each of us tries to outsmart the other. 

So you might take actions as an individual, but ultimate value is determined by the brute and unconscious actions of a swarm, or a herd. 

And, if the collective wisdom is to do stupid things, somebody like Warren Buffett can move in and try to exploit the situation.  We individual investors are powerless to do anything about it, other than hope that our own plans are good enough to somehow outperform the others.

We won't, after all, and that's the fundamental point, whether inherent in my own 401(k) account, or in Mr. Buffett's latest offer: for someone to win, someone else must lose.  It's a basic tenet of capitalism.  I'm not just reliant on my neighbor for helping value a stock or bond, but I am hopeful that he'll be dumb and sell too soon (or buy too high).

Buffett's offer to re-insure the munis is an reminder of how powerless we are in such a reality.   

Will the companies feel so threatened by their mortgage-vulnerable holdings that they'll sell off their best, most reliable assets at a steep discount?   If they do, it'll impact the markets.  If they don't, that'll impact them, too, only differently. 

The brand marketing from the financial services firms couldn't be any more detached from such underlying and complicated questions. 

And there's no public-interest Jimmy Stewart giving an impassioned speech for shared responsibility during times of hardship, so forget learning about any good alternatives (presuming any existed). 

When Buffett's buying, somebody is selling; for him to succeed, lots of people are going to have to suffer the consequences of being less successful, at best.

As such, he is the ultimate poster child for all of that financial services branding.  He is an individual empowered to make a difference.

It's just that some individuals are more powerful than others.  And none of the financial services firm branding will ever tell you that.

Wahoo for Micro-hoo!

Although initially postponed, I think the idea of a merged Micro-hoo makes perfect sense.  I can't think of two brand names that would make better sense working together. 

Microsoft is synonymous with computing, consistently delivering great experiences whether in professional, personal, or gamer settings.  It's a brand name that communicates innovation and excellence, and a commitment to value and customer service.

Similarly, we know that the 'hoo is a brand name that is all about great taste.  It's renowned for providing a great mix of ingredients, and it's a brand to which its committed customers have sworn by for years.

Talk about a combination that is greater than a sum of its parts.  The synergies between these two brands are immense:

• I could envision brilliant corporate advertising, highlighting the great emotional, associative benefits for the combination
• There could be co-promotional activities on retail store shelves, prompting consumers of each brand to sample the other
• I bet there's a long line of digital marketers just waiting to create interactive, online branding experiences

From a business strategy perspective, each company complements the other, bringing brand benefits to the other.  The simple logic of combining the brands is incontrovertible.

Wahoo for Microsoft and Yoo-hoo!

Our Very Own Muqtada

I think it's absolutely fascinating how successful James Dobson, founder and chief combatant for Focus on the Family, has been at recasting his radical war on America's Status Quo as "conservatism."

It helps that he has a Greek chorus of fellow insurgents (like Tom DeLay and the ever-omniscient Karl Rove) and eloquent talking heads (Laura Ingram, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, et al) who may well sincerely share his philosophy, but evidence a more immediate, and more mercenary, desire to perpetuate his brilliant sleight of terms.

In their twisted worldview, changing the Constitution is the same as protecting it.  Denying marriage to some people is defending it for others.  Our equality in the eyes of God renders moot the inequalities of circumstance or opportunity, obviating the need for government help.  And the real economic, environmental, and geopolitical issues facing us -- on which principled people of diverging beliefs can and must compromise -- are far less real than imagined slights to family or church.

So conservative becomes radical, in everything but name.

It's a perspective that elevates the "sanctity of human life" as a campaign priority as long as it requires only protests at family health clinics, at most, and not at least a passing notice of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Africa. 

It wants to turn an immigration population into a caste of "guest workers" in deference to a model that led to deadly riots in France, not to mention violating our American principles of equality and fairness.  It's from such balkanized communities in places like the U.K. that homegrown terrorism has grown.

It seizes on the slightest contrarian tidbits to prove that theories of global warming are inconclusive, and thus paralyzes any action by politicizing the issue.

And it wants to take every opportunity to interject religion into our public life when we have evolved the most religiously involved, free, and strong citizens in the world in spite of the civil structures and routines they want to influence or change, and the only examples of religion so formalized in societies are the empty state religions of Europe, or the rabid insanity of people like Iraq's Muqtada al-Sadr

It's a topsy-turvy litany that is laughably inconsistent, if not morally corrupt.  But that's what also makes it such a powerful act of branding. 

Its insanity insulates it from debate, and certainly from conclusion. 

And that's the point.

The radicals don't want the war to end.  Without war, there's no community to lead, flock to advise, or donations to be made for the cause.  Without conflict, there would be no viewers interested in clucking along with the latest nonsense, like Fox's "War on Christmas" noise, which could then threaten to lower ad revenues and salaries for those very talented talking heads who make a living narrating the things which they helped create.

And this is why Dobson and his faithful minions are so opposed to the Presidential aspirations of John McCain. 

McCain has proven his willingness to compromise with others who have expectations that are as passionate as they are divergent to his.  Conservatives and Liberals (or, more accurately, Progressives) can and should debate how to address the issues that face us all, just as they should be held accountable for taking action.  Action requires compromise.   

But, because McCain threatens to do just that, he must never be allowed to become President. 

Welcome to the rebranding of conservatism as perennial war. 

It is an unreal, virtual world (sans avatars), in which up is down, wrong is right, and right, if not absolutely, totally in keeping with some nonsense, pure, Platonic ideal of rightness, is wrong.

Followers are encouraged to suspend their disbelief, and to use even the slightest hint of factual inconsistency (if not outright mistake) as a challenge to reaffirm support for their cause.  The paths down which they stroll are at once the same and yet utterly different than those upon which the rest of America walks. 

Their war appears to them as a war upon them, and it insulates them from seeing, feeling, or hearing anything along those walkways that doesn't reinforce what they were told to expect.

Any corporate marketer would pay good money to bottle what our homegrown Mahdi Army has accomplished.

Think about it.

Branding purports to insulate customers from competitive challenges.  Affirm their affection for what you sell to them.  Keep them coming back for more.  We want our consumers to embrace, say, our soda pop, or SUV, with the same blind passion as Dobson's followers embrace his war.  Only maybe without so much anger.

So what could businesses learn from these radical warriors?

• "No" is far more motivational than "yes": I'm surprised we don’t see as much attack branding in commerce as we do in politics, but getting people to be against something is far more compelling than encouraging them to be for something else.  Think about how much marketing money is spent trying to promote benefits, when maybe the pitch should be focused more on the costs of alternatives?
• Stop making sense: Speaking of thinking too much, how many businesses work overtime trying to weave cogent, thoughtful, linearly-meaningful arguments for consumers?  Perhaps the approach should be to consciously make no sense, or at least twist your rationale so much so that no "normal" attack on it can find any resonance (you won't be held accountable for answers if you impede anyone from asking questions)
• It's all about black and white: There is no nuance involved when you are fighting against the minions of Satan, so why should we market product or service benefits that are "enhancements’" or simply different ways to provide value?  Your brand is right, and the others are wrong.  End of story.
• Your customers are perfect: Skip improvement, or self-reflection, let alone self-awareness.  Your customers are brilliant, beautiful, and perfect, and have little time or interest in being reminded of their shortcomings (let alone their humanity).  So if your product or service purports to "fix" anything, it certainly can't be because your targeted customer isn't entirely without blame for the problem.  Blame her neighbor instead.  Or your competitors.
• Actions speak louder than words: Buyers of political hate speech don't just buy into a worldview, but rather feel constantly motivated to act: vote, register, sign, argue, donate, whatever.  They purchase stuff all the time, and their conversations aren't just foreplay or customer service-related...it's ongoing, real-time
• Don't wait for your customers to start the conversation:  The best defense is an offense, both literal and figurative.  Not only are conversations purpose or behavior-related, but perhaps it makes sense to create an ongoing state of agitation or exclusivity...buy our products because somebody or something else tells you that you shouldn't, or can't