Dim Bulb

Obama's Conundrum

I'd like to try and learn a branding lesson from the challenge facing Barak Obama as he vies to become the Democratic nominee for President.

His brand seems to be that we need to change the conduct public discourse and, thereby, address important issues more constructively.

Only a lot of people seem uninterested in changing it. Clinton and McCain are happy with business as usual, because they believe (perhaps correctly) that a majority of voters believe so, too.  The logic goes something like this:

• Voters vote (like consumers buy) on the WIIFM principle -- what's in it for me? -- even when they might label those benefits as altruistic selflessness
• They (we) have been conditioned to expect pandering to our most base, hot-button issues, and then choose to believe promises that play to our brightest vanities and darkest fears (and violate the facts, if not just common sense, along the way)
• Candidates are supposed to knee-cap one another, and use every dirty trick in the book (or the kitchen sink) to promote their politicking each day
• The media aren't a mirror to some objective, meaningful truth, but rather a Greek chorus of paparazzi and sports color commentary   

There's no way to be above the fray of this context.  It just is, and everyone and everything is within it. 

So Obama's complaints about the silly questions he got in the last debate, or apparent accountability for Rev. Wright’s latest insanity, aren't distractions...they're part of the toolkit from which candidates declare their differences, the substance with which media report on the campaigns, and tidbits upon which voters base their decisions. 

Brands, whether corporate or political, are inexorably immersed in context and behavior.

For Presidential aspirants in the U.S., it's a knock-down, drag-through-the-streets-bloody context that has been this way ever since John Adams and Thomas Jefferson threw mud at one another.  The presumption (and hope) has always been that, once beyond this phase, the winner would relinquish the behaviors that produced victory, and embrace governance with true vision and equanimity.

Yeah, right.  Like in the business world, you usually get what you pay for.  I think it's why government, high-tech gizmos, or most anything else we buy rarely works.

Hence Obama's branding conundrum, and perhaps his opportunity.

His conundrum is that he can't, or won't, win playing the game of politics, but he's stuck playing it.  His ripostes to Clinton's attacks seem weak, his pandering lame (memories of those bowling photos make me shudder), and his protests and impatience appear like he's the one who is distracted, not us. 

The opportunity is that he can still play his own game, but he needs to play it according to the rules by which the game is played. 

If he truly means what he says, I think he needs to crystalize what change means.  Humanize it.  Put it into the same tangible, WIIFM terms that make individual voters (or groups) think that they're getting something at the expense of someone else.  Run against the specific shortcomings of the politicking process.  Cite a handful of the particular things he'll deliver if people will give him their vote, but do so in terms of what it will mean to each individual voter (money saved, jobs created, security enhanced and, most importantly, what will they do differently...like act, join, save, buy, whatever):

• Healthcare that's available and financial solvent (not just a mandate or expensive government bureaucracy)
• A true alternate energy Manhattan Project (not just lip-service of taxes on oil companies and miniscule givebacks to truckers);
• A global partnership to defeat the jihadists (not empty rhetoric on war and unilateral American might)
• Financial reform that strengthens institutions (not punitive taxes, handouts, etc.)

Conversely, he could label every attack or question from the media intended to produce a quick headline as impeding or fighting to keep this real change from happening. 

How many people are refused medical care every day?  The planet warms up another nth of a degree.  Hedge fund managers collect more millions.  Iran gets closer to a nuclear weapon. 

In marketing, we used to call the ultimate challenge of delivering branding within a specific context that of finding a "burning platform."  A burning platform is making the call-to-action for a particular behavior more desirable, or palatable, than not taking action. 

The issues that I believe Obama cares about are going to ultimately motivate voters one way or another, either now as proscriptive levers or, once one of the simmering crises we’re facing explodes into something far worse, a reactive lever.  There's a burning platform here, for sure.  The fires are already raging.

He needs to define the WIIFM qualities of these issues, and present himself as the change agent for taking action now versus later.  In doing so, he can define his opponents -- Clinton, McCain, the process itself  -- as impeding this real action.  Just like selling toothpaste or car insurance, his brand needs to embody a solution, not just  be an alternative option that's a part of the problem.

Business and politics as usual will hurt voters.  Obama has to tell them how and why he will change things.  Explicitly.  Repeatedly.  Consistently.

Would it work?  Ultimately, that's the real conundrum, and I defer to bulbs far brighter than my own to figure it out.

All the Way to the Bank

Tween pop star and actress Miley Cyrus has posed semi-nude in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, and she's borrowing an explanation from Britney Spears: oops, I did it again.

It seems that she, her dad (real and on-screen played by Billy Ray Cyrus), and various "minders" were at a day-long photo session with celebrity fetishist Annie Leibovitz that involved shooting and reviewing various poses, including at least one in which Miley appears topless while wrapped in a stain sheet. 

Now, Miley thinks they're "silly, inappropriate shots," and that she hopes her fans understand that she's going to "make mistakes" and isn't perfect.

Oops.  (add nervous giggle and cast-away eyes for effect; cue Hannah Montana theme music; cut to commercial for Disney plush toys)

Of course, it's not an oops.  There's a slight, outside chance that everyone in attendance at the shoot was rendered senseless at the exact moment Leibovitz suggested Miley pose for any picture without all of her clothes on, but I wouldn't put money on it. 

However artsy or faux respectfully the solicitation may have been cast, the punch line is that there's no good reason for a 15 year-old to get photographed even sorta, partially, oh-my-gawd-like nude.  Somebody on the set should have known better.

I'm curious about the bad reasons, though, and I can think of at least two:

First, it really is a case of bad judgment.  A lot has been written about how Miley's parents work hard to keep her normal, and I actually believe it.  Forget the marketing value of making her life as wholesome as possible: she's their daughter, after all, and I don't question the authenticity of her parents' desire that she get a chance to grow up as if she were the girl next door.

Only she's the girl next door who lives in a gigantic mansion, has more money than most families will ever see in a lifetime, travels with her own tweeny posse, and spends her productive time standing before thousands of screaming, adoring fans.  She shows up at award ceremonies and other public events in spandex, plunging necklines, and grown-up amounts of make-up.

What aspect of that description strikes you as normal? 

Miley and her parents (and all of their minders, whoever they are) live in a strange, exotic, rarified bubble, and they expect to be able to make sound judgments?  That's like letting an alcoholic decide when he's drunk, isn’t it? 

If this was the result of bad judgment, it wasn't that Miley's reaction to the topless photo idea might have been "hey, cool, yah" (just consider the dumb, self-exploitive photos that lots of teenagers willingly post of themselves on social networking sites).  Instead, it was a failure of perspective among those entrusted with the authority to make judgments for her.  It might help if one of the ‘minders’ was culled from outside the bubble?

The second bad reason is that the entire escape was purposeful.

All child actors face an ugly, inescapable fate: they grow up.  Miley, at 15, is within a year or two of losing her youngster fan base.  So the marketing machine behind her brand has to find ways to slowly migrate her to another market which, by definition, is older, more mature, and probably appreciates its celebrities semi-nude (or worse).

This is a dicey procedure, and Disney fails at it just as often as it succeeds in inventing these tweener starlets in the first place.  Sometimes, as in the case of Hilary Duff, the stars struggle to find relevance to an adult audience who can't forget how cute and cuddly they once were.  Others, like Lindsay Lohan, age as if in dog years, and make you want to forget who they once were, because it's just too sad.

This is the "oops, I did it again" strategy, plotting moments now and then that introduce new, er, aspects of the brand to the market. 

If this is the bad reason for the incident, expect a follow-up to be some more adult, thought-provoking themes for a song or two on her next album.  Maybe she'll end up having to apologize for them, too, but it'll prompt more downloads among the very consumers who are interested in such themes.

Either way, the Miley Cyrus brand will chug along, apologizing (and perhaps ever-so-slightly chuckling) all the way to the bank.

A Firm Grip on Branding

I can't tell if this is a joke of not, but that's perhaps why it's so funny.

Reputable newspapers in the UK carried the story last week of an obscure government agency -- the Office of Government Commerce -- that had spent about $30,000 to redesign its branding, which prominently included a new logo. 

It wasn’t until the icon had been printed on mousepads and pens that somebody realized what it looked like when rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Yup.

See, the newspapers quoted a spokesman for OGC saying: "It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend."

That's why I think it's a joke.

Inane logos have long been a mainstay of branding consultancies that presume to imbue graphics with meanings that the non-initiated should perceive.  Images and typefaces are streamlined, updated, refreshed, as if a marketing department could somehow by deft pen and ink change the very substance of the reality experienced by everyone else.

Of course, we react to certain colors differently, and we certainly attach attributes to some of the icons that feature in our lives.  But the majority of those attributes come from experience, whether ours or those of whom we trust (or, in the case of social media, utter strangers we've decided to believe implicitly). 

Why a government procurement department ever thought it needed branding -- let alone paid money for a new logo -- is itself a funny question.   And the thought that the new treatment got all the way to print before somebody realized that it might actually have an explicit meaning...just not the one the bureaucrats intended...begs a better answer than oops.

So I say that either the whole thing is a hoax, or perhaps it was all intentional.  A guru quoted in the Telegraph story suggested OGC should be happy with all of the publicity, even if the logo's double-entendre wasn't deliberate.

But what if it were? 

Talk about having a firm grip on branding.

A Quantum Moment

Two Italian researchers of the paranormal believe they have found the explanation for ghosts, telekinesis, and other paranormal phenomena in the disturbances to quantum mechanical fluctuations in spacetime.

Granted, the article I read qualifies the lead scientist as having a "last known address," but here's his theory:

• Reports of stuff flying around the room, along with other weird occurrences, are often reported in the vicinity of -- or triggered/controlled by -- kids
• Kids experience massive changes in their bodily structures, which includes their brains and mental functions
• Brains (and mind) operate on impulses of electrons
• As these impulses change, so does the electron activity not just in the kids' heads, but also perhaps around them
• Changing/moving these electrons might change the structure of spacetime, perhaps prompting the appearance of virtual, or anti-particles, that can pop in and out of existence
• This popping creates ripples in air pressure, which could account for objects seemingly moving of their own accord
• All of this messing around with the sub-atomic structure of reality can prompt a variety of creative inventions, including the apparent appearance of ghosts, voices, etc.

The report appears in a publication called Neuroquantology, which itself sounds really arcane and interesting.  The mainstream science community is already bashing it, which means there must be some substance to the theory.   "This looks distinctly flaky to me," said one Nobel laureate physicist. 

The idea that reality gets invented moment-to-moment at the incomprehensibly small quantum level has been accepted scientific wisdom since early last century, even if its implications have never become apparent to the macro lumbering-about level of which we are conscious.

It's all wildly cool to contemplate: there are more dimensions than four, objects communicating instantaneously as if they're aware of one another, and other objects busy being two things at the same time.  More amazingly, much of this quantum-level existence doesn't really pop into existence at all until somebody is conscious of it, and once they are, they can only know a portion of it.

So could our perceptions -- or even the vaguest of inclinations -- of strange, paranormal phenomenon emerge from this not-so-normal-appearing reality within/underneath our reality reality?  I say sure.

Now, as to its implications for branding, I must confess: I see none.

But even dim bulbs can contemplate cool ideas, if only for a quantum moment.

Applicant Eye Color

I wonder if some of the latest thinking on measuring engagement with online brands is something akin to recording the eye color of job applicants.

There's no question that we can come up with ways for people to pass time visiting web sites: great, creative content and contests are tried-and-true tools for capturing and keeping someone's attention, whether accomplished via crude hand-puppets on a makeshift stage, or through slick digital transmission.

But the variable of "time spent" is a rough stand-in for meaning, conclusions and, ultimately, sales.  All sorts of engagement -- whether marital, warfare, or marketing -- need to lead to a conclusion in order to reveal an ultimate value.  Engaging is a verb that requires the purpose of a noun or two.

This chronology must lead to sales for it to matter to businesses, doesn't it?

No amount of brand awareness on the Internet has value independent of eventual sales, any more than it did back in the days of town criers and news broadsheets.  Just like it would would make little sense to assign value to tracking the eye color of job applicants if it didn't have an impact of their suitability for job openings.

Companies large and small are attacking this idea of understanding the engagement pathway.  Brickfish has already helped a few big companies track messages as they weave their way through social media.  Microsoft's Engagement Mapping Service is looking not at the movement of messages but actual visitors, testing ways to portray the pages folks troll as they wade across the web.

These are bright bulb ideas, and they need to get integrated into models for understanding all of the other influences on purchase, not least of which all of the other ad, PR, promotional, in-store, and related channels.  The movement of brand messages  is far less important that the places and ways people use them to prompt decisions.  The Internet is an important input into said decisions, but not the only one.

As this methodology evolves, I suspect the most successful businesses will be those that consistently apply a rigor to any engagement strategy:

• Purpose: Nobody wants to stay engaged forever.  There has to be a point to the activity...a fundamental WHY for consumers to get involved (and for your business to spend money for providing the privilege.  The just do it argument coming from a lot of the digital marketing firms is a thinly-veiled grab for business, mostly.  Only do it if there's a purpose other than, well, doing it
• Context: Whatever purpose you chose to address, it would make sense to also integrate your plans into a broader context, and make your intended consumer engagement relevant to it.  They know why we want them to get engaged; the challenge is to understand why they'd want to do so.  Right now, the work-around this question is to give them senselessly entertaining content.  The utility of time-wasting declines precipitously over time, as do the value of the brands that prompt it
• Outcome: Engagements end, whether with an action or a trigger that leads to the next engagement.  So should yours.  I'm not talking about a sales promotion payoff (like the awarding of contest results) as much as a natural conclusion to the time and attention you asked for (and, in turn, provided) to your consumers

There are bright bulbs working on ways to understand the differences between wanting to engage with consumers and being truly engaging in a business-critical way.

No company should have to wait for them to figure it out.  Experiment like madmen and women.  But it might be a good idea to stay focused on purpose, context, and outcome. 

Brands That Make No Promises

If brands are a promise, then the rules of chance, tactics of politics, and the uncertainty of human behavior all suggest that we should promise as little as possible.

Chance is an engine of randomness, so it's a foregone conclusion that a percentage of what absolutely, positively know that we can deliver for consumers will, someway, somehow, and through no fault of our own, get all screwed up.  That means every marketing plan needs to incorporate a fickle finger of Fate factor, and any sensible business approach would demand that we minimize its potential impact and cost.  Promising less would be the obvious variable to move.

In politics, we see the candidates for President lowering expectations (or the criteria for judging) for their performance.  Each one of them is an underdog, although it's statistically impossible.  Statements are parsed, revised, and otherwise changed in real-time, in a way that constantly tempers any specifics of promise with the comfortably vague declarations of desire and intent. 

And you can pretty much forget about trying to manipulate human behavior; if people did what they were supposed to do, nobody would believe in UFOs, the Soviets would have won the Cold War, and our kids would go to bed on time. 

Consumers are now as much the architects of their experiences -- thanks to social media, technology, and the me-ness of the Entitlement Generation -- as they are the recipients.  So any promise you make to them requires an equivalent promise from them, although your brand will still be held accountable if they subsequently fail to follow through.

A brand conceived as a promise heightens the risks to your business in four primary ways:

1. Expectation: A promise raises expectations, pure and simple.  We tend to think of our products and services in terms of what they should do for consumers (functional benefits), and then attach all of the attributes that could be a part of those experiences (associative benefits).  Since we believe in what we sell, we often promise what we want to swear by, and not necessarily what our consumers will ever recognize or explore
2. Knowledge: For those experiences to be realized, our consumers need to know ever-more about how to realize them (as well as where, when, why, etc.).  A promise has implicit context and requirements around it, so the more we hope to deliver, the more we must deliver.  Promises make our lives more complicated and expensive
3. Accountability: Be careful what you wish for is a salient warning for brand marketers, as sometimes the worst thing we could accomplish is to get our consumers to expect exactly and completely what we promise...because that means they'll hold us accountable for it
4. Benchmarks: So, presuming we actually deliver on a promise, our success serves to hike and re-set the benchmark for the next promise. 

I wonder whether brand promises should be purposely low-balled, and focused less on a list of functional and/or associative benefits, and more on an ongoing process of engagement.

Maybe in this age of constant contact, we could shift our approach from plotting consumer experiences of branding promises to promises of branded experiences.  Brand not so much a litany of buillets to be delivered, and more a series of moments that we design so we can constantly exceed, delight, and inspire.

Talking about brands a promises, full stop, maybe misses the point.  I expect too much from my definitions to be satisfied with it.

Follow the Watch

If you’ve ever been mesmerized by an ad, a growing cadre of brand experts want to explore your, er, emanations.

Subjecting consumer focus groups to hypnosis in order to discover TRUE feelings about brands is gaining popularity on both coasts of America, according to a recent Brandweek article.  Proponents claim that it enables them to "..find out the imprint of the brand" and "...to get to a deeper, more emotional place."

Your eyes are getting heavy...

Anton Mesmer discovered animal magnetism in the late 1700s, believing that the flow of some vital fluid through our bodies could be fed and manipulated to cure mental and physical afflictions.  He built weird devices that moved people into strange fits or bland disbelief, depending often on their expectations, and he's credited with being perhaps not so much the father of hypnotism, but perhaps its crazy uncle.

Now, perhaps it turns out that he's a patron saint of the new branding.

As if trying to manipulate conscious minds -- and decision-making -- weren't enough, a number of practitioners claim to help brands discover their levers of subconscious influence.  "People can describe the cookies their mother made them when they were 5 in great detail," explains one expert.  "This drives adult behavior."

Brands like Volvo, Dewar"s, and "blue-chip beer, soda and telecom companies" (none of them named Rosebud) supposedly swear by it.  And, while a vocal minority of people refuse to sign-on (those naggingly literal ROI heathens), I think this could be a brilliant solution to the age-old questions about finding and verifying branding.

I say we marketers should wholly embrace the paranormal sciences:

• Remote viewing: Who needs to ask consumers questions directly, even if they're swooning in a magnetic daze, when you can hire adepts to watch them from afar?
• Telekinesis: A practitioner strategically placed in a grocery aisle could move that six-pack into a shoppers cart as if by magic
• ESP: We could know if consumers were changing their minds before they themselves were aware of it
• Apparitions: Go past TV and game screens, and conjure 3D commercial fantasms that could sing and dance in homes and offices
• Precognition: Talk about taking the risk and uncertainty out of that next business plan!
• Telepathy: Imagine hiring a bank of experts who could convince entire civilizations to, say, buy your beer, or eat your taco chips?
• Seances: Why stop with manipulating the living?  Think of how many names you could add to your dCRM tools?

Fringe science is rich with tools for brands.  And, if you agree, perhaps you already know what I really think about the idea of hypnotizing consumers.   

Skype Hates You

Rarely does a business do its utmost to offend, alienate, and outright reject the patronage of even the most tolerant customers.

Skype is one of the exceptions.  And it didn't have to be this way.

In case you're not aware of it, Skype was the first branded effort to bring VOIP telephony (for Voice Over Internet Protocol) to the masses of us who aren't necessarily early adopters of technology.  VOIP makes it possible to route conversations over the Internet, which means the transmission costs from computer-to-computer are zero.  The innovation of plugging a phone or headset into each terminal rivals the revolution prompted by Bell's declaration "Watson...come here...I want you."

Not only should VOIP have changed the way we use and pay for phone conversations, but in doing so should have flushed teleco stocks down the toilet.  Skype, in establishing the first friendly interface -- replete with cuddly typeface and happy I'm-talking-to-you-as-a-fellow-human-being language on its app and web site -- was poised to be the brand that would lead this new wave of communicating. 

eBay paid $2.6 billion in 2005 in a bold move to capture this momentum, and promised another $1.7 billion payout based on the company’s forecasted growth.

Oops.

Skype has instead become a poster-child example of how otherwise smart people can misread a technology and its likely impact on society and, in doing so, make utterly dumb decisions about how to manage a business.

Skype neither owns nor has any control over how its calls are routed across the ether of the Internet, and it can't ensure or support the myriad connections possible between the net and local routers, LAN lines, wireless thingamabobs, computers, or telephony accessories. 

Call quality is uneven, unpredictable, and at times unavailable, so nobody can rely on the service as a replacement for land-lines and/or cell phones.  If anything, it would have to find a role as an adjunct to those technologies, which is what I guess eBay thought: maybe sellers and bidders on eBay could use the Skype interface to talk about auctions, shipping, etc.  And perhaps from there they could build communities and talk more, raising a number of options for monetizing those activities.

VOIP is a chronically unstable media that needs an interface that provides stability, or at least assistance, where none is otherwise available.

The opportunity for Skype would be to become that guy...to facilitate use by impatient, technically illiterate consumers.  And, since it can't control the actual experiences of VOIP, it would have to focus on "owning" services on the front and back-ends of that use.

Skype would need to be the most aware, enlightened, and helpful customer customer service-oriented business in the VOIP racket.

Instead, it turns out that it is nothing more than its cute branding.

In fact, it's just a technology toy that doesn't even make pretenses about being a real business.  There's no customer service to speak of, unless you consider chatting web copy to be the same as an offer of real assistance.  Got a problem with a call?  Sorry, there's really nothing you can do about it.  If you read the company’s rules and policies, you'll realize that Skype isn’t responsible for bad connections or disruptions of service.

On top of this gigantic shrug, Skype maintains some real customer-hostile policies. 

Paying for the service requires pre-charging a credit card or PayPal account.  But sometimes the credit card option doesn't work, and users get some nonsense sorry screen.  Good luck trying to get an email answered with any advice other than "keep trying, or use PayPal."

Problem recognition isn't the same thing as problem resolution, at least not in the consumer space.  Regular folks don't want to wade into geeky user groups to try and find a possible solution posted by an utter stranger. 

Presuming you’ve gotten over this hurdle and succeeded in giving Skype your money, make sure you use it regularly, or the company will seize it.  It maintains a policy it blames on "standard accounting principles" that allows it to keep money that isn't used within a particular period of time.

There are lots of dim bulbs involved with this corporate nightmare, from the numbnuts who run the thing, to the addled visionaries who presumed that a high-tech contrivance could rely on business press buzz and branding good-lucks to support a viable consumer business.

It can't.  And it doesn't help that Skype hates you.

It's Too Easy Being Green

The jury is in on green marketing: it doesn't work. 

Although unpleasantly glib, the 2008 BrandJunkie Survey of consumer opinion revealed that nobody really believes the environmentally-friendly branding claims of most companies.  This is after such traditionally "green" businesses -- you know, like oil and car companies -- have spent many millions to brand themselves accordingly.

Many more businesses have at made passing, sometimes half-hearted attempts at green marketing, from adding glossy green logos to programming (Universal will likely fell more trees and burn more coal propagating its consciously 'green' programming), to Whole Foods recently announcing that it will no longer offer plastic shopping bags (begging the question of whether producing and maintaining cloth bags is, over time, any more environmentally responsible). 

For that matter, some consumers have decided to green their own personal brands, especially those who trade "carbon credits," (as if a market-based transaction actually lowers the aggregate emission of harmful pollutants). 

Clearly, there's a lot of desire on the part of consumers to do whatever they can to painlessly (and without any additional expenditure) improve the lot of the planet.  It's also legitimately important...no, it's vital...to earth's future.  So it's not surprising that companies want to jump on this bandwagon, and give them what they want.

But consumers have spoken: marketing probably isn't the way to do it. 

Few purchase decisions are made on the intangibles of creative marketing on the subject, no matter how brilliant or heart-tugging it might be.  No poster-child LEV, token investment in a greenspace, or banning of paper cups in the employee cafeteria will change the fact that people know better.

I am so struck by this disconnect -- between the faux answers of green branding, and the real challenge of sustainable business practice -- that I'm moved...to express myself in song...

It's Too Easy Being Green
(with apologies to a certain felt frog)

It's too easy being green,
Spending each day hyping something untrue,
Claiming colors like brown, or grey, or at least puke or pus green
Would be a fairer, and more honest thing to do.

Company functions look happier if left unseen,
Storefronts and labels traditionally hide processes quite mean,
So people tended to pass you over
Until the web made every burp, poorly-crossed "t," and toxic byproduct
A visible star in the sky.

But green's the color folks wanna buy,
It's politically-correct and friendly-like.
And green can be a big selling op, like being funny,
Or important, like citizenship,
Or tall, like the rest of your brand promise.

When green is what you claim to be,
It makes your consumers wonder why:
"But why pollute?"
"Why exploit?"
If your brand is green,
Maybe it's something your business should be, too?

Microsoft's New Coke?

Windows XP is scheduled to disappear from store shelves in a few months, making Microsoft's new OS formulation the only game in town.  Lots of people aren't happy with the new taste.

You dont need a PR clipping service or complicated social media tracking tool to sense the outrage.  One online petition (Save XP) collected more than 100,000 signatures.  Lots of expert reviewers weren't happy with Vista when it first launched, and an uneven and overly complicated retail/upgrade program left lots of consumers in the cold (various versions, matrices of incompatibilities with accessory drivers, etc.).

Not surprisingly, a vocal group of users have declared their undying allegiance to the old formula, and vow to stick with XP until such time that Microsoft comes up with another operating system that better embodies the functionality and ease-of-use they associate with their current OS.

Is Vista New Coke, all over again?

No, it isn't, for one very solid reason: there's no turning back.  Vista is the future, and there's no way that Microsoft is going to entertain the idea of preserving an island -- even a reasonably large one -- of users reliant on an outdated OS.  Software developers and retailers will desert them (and did so many months ago), in search of serving the much larger audience of Vista users instead.

"You can’t go back to old technology," as Thomas Wolfe sorta said.

But the parallels to the New Coke debacle might be relevant, more from a perspective of understanding brands and how they intersect with consumer behavior.

First off, I have to imagine that the gurus at Microsoft were surprised by public reaction to Vista. This came after exhaustive research -- consumer surveys, focus groups, and all the other techniques used to map and predict both thoughts and likely behaviors -- just the same way probably that Coke investigated its new concoction.  Vista was built to meet or exceed what were believed to be the most important performance (i.e. taste)expectations.

So was the Edsel.

I know, I know, Vista is no Edsel, and it's not really New Coke, either.  But the designers sure got it wrong, just like their predecessors did.

Vista has a bunch of bells in whistles in it that solve problems few consumers knew they had; it answers questions nobody was asking.  As such, it's a great example of research that confuses stated intentions and technology possibilities with required needs and technological necessities.

Second, even I was shocked that the consumer marketing was so lame.

I don't quite understand why Microsoft though that the newness of Vista would be the driving motivator for consumer adoption, any more than the Coke folks felt it was the trigger to reinvigorate its consumers.  New is an associative brand benefit that has little relevance to consumer experience; it's inwardly-focused back at the business, almost implicitly demanding a rest-of-the-sentence for consumers that says "new...because..."

The need to launch new products for companies to keep the sales pipeline primed is not a motivator for buyers.  Yet that's exactly how Vista came across.

Just like Coke drinkers, there had been no outcry from unhappy XP customers demanding an improvement.  Then, Microsoft spent many millions without ever coming up with simple, memorable, and compelling reasons why people should care about Vista.  No question asked, and no real answer given, and voila. 

No demand.

Third, here are, over a year later, and there's still been no deviation from the branding plans...no subsequent proof points or rationale for converting the unconverted.  The branding might be exquisitely on-target and integrated, but it hasn't been made flexible and integrated with the information needs of the consuming public.

A year of happy users finding reasons to adore Vista, and yet we don't know a single thing about them.  Like Coke, Microsoft is less interested in how people perceive and experience its brand, and more focused on what it likes to say and show about it.

Like Yogi Berra said, "This is like deju vu, all over again."

Consumers will come to terms with Vista, especially once it’s the only game in town for PC users.  New users will adopt the OS.  Kids who grow up with it won't know, or remember, an alternative.  And lots and lots of people will never really think about Vista any more than they thought about XP, which is an altogether different problem.

As a matter of fact, the marketplace will chug along, and everything will settle.  Just in time for Microsoft to upend it with the next OS improvement.

Let's toast to learning the mistakes of the past.  With New Coke.

Tough Crowd

 

I've become a regular reader of Brandweek's peer reviews of ad campaigns.

Talk about a tough crowd.  They hate pretty much everything they write about.

Ads are regularly noted for their creativity, along with some armchair contemplation of the background strategy (I do this all the time just for fun, asking myself the "what were they thinking?" question when I see something notably cool but incomprehensibly inane).  I think this professional hat-doffing is a courtesy within the trade.

But inevitably then comes the whammy.

"...I applaud the consistent creativity of your previous ads, but with this one you lost the message, and the audience, in an ironic/sardonic haze,” recently ruminates one brand guru about the efforts of another to establish various associations in its ad.

"...if I had watched this spot sandwiched in between other commercials," she continues, "with only a few second to grab my attention, or feel some connection with the brand, it would not have done it for me."

Most of the peer reviews go this way.  Spots don't make sense.  Creative conceits are complicated and difficult to grasp.  Relevance to the actual product or service getting hawked is imprecise, strained, or just too much of a reach altogether.  The acting is bad.  Jokes fall flat.

In other words, the brand experts don't like much of the branding they see in the world.

I'm with 'em.

It's kinda like noticing how silly clothing fashions can get: you've got to see the stuff on someone else before you truly see it.  Ditto for your driving habits, as it takes somebody cutting you off on the freeway before you realize that you, too, drive like a maniac.  Or when your kid blurts out a swear word and only then do you remember that it's one that you habitually use as an adjective.

Branding usually makes sense most to the branders, and ever-less sense the further the brandees get from the darkened conference rooms in which the branding was conceived.  The variables of content and content are just simply too immense for lots of the presumptions of branding to overcome.

Considering that you can look someone you know intimately well right in the eyes, and tell them something very simple, direct, honest and true...and still be completely misunderstood for reasons you can't even fathom...makes those presumptions of branding seem, at best, a pleasant dream.

The peer reviews in Brandweek reveal that the actuality of most branding experiences (at least in ads) is a lot less, er, pleasant.

And if the peers who are predisposed to love the stuff don't like it, imagine the reaction of actual consumers.

Now there's a tough crowd.

Those Who Can't Sell, Buy

Blockbuster has made an unsolicited (and heretofore unanswered) bid to acquire Circuit City electronics stores.

The concept initially makes no sense whatsoever, yet could be a tremendously smart idea.  And, even better, there's great drama buried underneath the headlines.

Both Blockbuster and Circuit City are suffering business, the latter a bit more than the former.  That's because they depend on selling particular hardware devices and software formats, the values of which have been on a mad dash to zero as manufacturing has gotten outsourced, centralized in 5th world economies, and costs thereby reduced.  Whatever value remains is attached to the entertainment content, even thought that, too, is fighting the insane variations of free distribution.

Blockbuster and Circuit have found themselves running commodity businesses, or something close.  Profit margins stink in those industries.  Best Buy, Circuit's erstwhile competitor, is succeeding only by aggressively selling warranties and services for the machines it retails. 

So a merger of commodity businesses might make sense purely on the basis of cost-control, if even for nothing more than the short-term.  Combining operations could mean firing lots of people.  Maybe retail locations could be normalized.  There might be economies of scale in purchasing, as both companies buy loads of DVDs (Blockbuster to rent them, and Circuit City to throw them away as loss-leaders to drive consumer traffic).

But maybe there's a grander plan afoot?

If there’s one thing that Apple has shown the world, it's that the intersection and integration of entertainment hardware and software/content are far more important to consumers than the constituent, separate parts.  The sum of experience is paramount, and in that experience resides many opportunities for creating value.

Yet the world beyond Apple is anything but orderly.  Devices and formats abound.  Some work with others, while others work only sometimes.  Innovation has become the cover-up word for chaos as each year brings new choices to consumers who are already dumfounded by what;s available to them (ergo Apple's success).

Imagine if "Blockbuster City" could become the hub for such integration. 

The new Blu-ray disc is a great example of what might be possible: everyone is reasonably if not very happy with their DVDs; the devices work (they're a gigantic leap in quality and convenience over VHS); and many people have invested significant coin in movie collections.

What if Blockbuster City offered a transition package for consumers, containing a free Blu-Ray player with a commitment to rent discs for a few years, along with some plan to help folks upgrade their old DVDs?  A combined business could figure out the pricing and profit models on something like this.

Here's another idea: why couldn't it configure systems of various devices and content   -- this mp3 player works best with that service -- and then tack on some really solid consumer support so people would consider Blockbuster City the brand name for buying and enjoying entertainment?  It could really become the front-end for bringing together all of the hardware and software confusion that's making possible Apple’s success...only the potential market is far larger. 

The merged company would have to think and operate fundamentally different than the separate business do today, but it's not inconceivable.  I'm not sure that the short-term wring-money-out-of-the-failing-commodity-business is any smarter, and it's certainly not sustainable.

The rich subtext to this entire shebang is that one of the largest shareholders of Circuit City was the founder of Blockbuster's greatest video rental rival.  So this deal would bring the two former competitors together, somewhat. 

Talk about the challenges of integration!

The Mother of Invention

Tough economic times force us to make marketing decisions differently, and there are at least two schools of thought on what those options might be.

One line of reasoning says to focus on value, as consumers (and B2B customers) feeling less financially flush are going to make more critical and reasoned purchases than they did when they had money to burn.  Stuart Elliot in the New York Times overviewed this thinking in a recent edition of the paper.

The other argument is that we should focus on creativity, and use ever-newer, more unconventional ways to reach and convince consumers who are too preoccupied with their shrinking stock portfolios to pay attention to ads that used to warrant their scrutiny. Sam Ewan, whose firm orchestrated the LED promotion in Boston last year that prompted a city-wide terrorism scare, outlines this approach in a recent issue of Brandweek.

I think they're both right, with a few caveats:

• Is it time to spend some of that brand equity you've saved up?  If there are reasons your consumers have bought stuff other than value, now is maybe the time to figure out how to get them to do more.  I mean, what’s the point of that equity if it doesn’t have some benefit that can get converted into more sales?  Perhaps you have consumers who are heavily engaged with your brand.  Shouldn't they ante up now that it matters...and buy something?
• Value is front-loaded in purchase cost, so skip some of the intangibles.  Folks watching their spending are interested in value that is measured in dollars, pounds, or any other currency.  Lots of that brand equity you possess in things like likeability or some associative benefits of emotion or style aren’t easily convertible.  THink less about enhancements and more about do better-thans.
• Shorter timeframes don't need also to be short-sighted.  I know lots of brand marketers who equate a focus on price/benefit, and on selling stuff, as somehow requiring damage to the brand.  In truth, it just does damage to their comfy definitions of brand (and how they spend their dwindling budgets).  The need to sell can refresh your brand, as long as you choose to define it as the totality of your relationship with your consumers, and not simply some esoteric absolute.
• Awareness needs to be actionable.  So think behaviors, not just recognition, and consider actions that lead to purchase vs. finding ever-more inventive ways to waste peoples' time.  Consumers with less money (and less time) to spend contemplating purchase decisions are less interested in interacting with your brand, and more interested in your brand finding ways to be relevant to them.   

Nobody would ask for a bad economy, but it's interesting how it challenges us to reconsider much of what we assumed was true (or which we simply took for granted). 

When it comes to brand and marketing, the dare is simple: redefine success in terms of sales and business performance.  We've done it before.  Lots of companies have done it all along. 

It will be thrilling to see how this necessity becomes everyone's mother of invention.

A Barometer of Europe-ness

Ever since 1972, the EU's executive arm has been spending large sums of money on polls of its member country citizens.

It spent $22 million on doing it last year.  It's an intriguing idea...almost a government by real-time referendum. 

So far, the polling has been used in a standard marketing context, primarily as a tool for positioning and selling newly-passed laws and government programs.  An example would be the daily tracking of receptivity to the Euro when it was first introduced.  But commissioner Margot Wallstrom has proposed using the Eurobarometer polls while policies are being formulated and agreed upon.

I'm not sure that it'll work that way.

Opinion polling is just what it says it is: a poll of opinions, taken at a specific moment in time, in a particular manner.  It is a knowledge tool that is as inexorably tied to the context of its conduct as it's disconnected from the behaviors that occur before or during  its execution (or might follow, for that matter).

It's a snapshot of not a moment, but a moment as imaged and expressed by individuals.  It's representative of reality, not really real.

We know this because they're so often wrong.  Or just nuts. 

If they worked, we'd know which politicians would win elections (we rarely do), and it would be a helluva lot easier to sell new products (it isn't).  The Eurobarometer itself once found a vast majority of respondents approving of collective action against terrorism, even when only half of them "approved" of the EU in the first place.

Even the best-intentioned people say one thing, and often do another.  Opinions are less evidence of a priori facts, and more the subjective outcome (or translation) of deeper, sometimes more complicated truths.  Change the inputs, and the outputs change also.

Or maybe they don't.  Poll results can be graphed over time on a chart, and thus suggest momentum or consistency.  But it’s a chimera.  Discreet events presented next to each other are still discreet events.

I sense in the Eurobarometer some struggle for legitimacy.  Being a government of governments and all isn't particularly representative of the individual voters' will. 

But an opinion poll is about one half-step removed from hosting a chat room.  Don't the member countries have elections?  Couldn't EU-level issues get presented and voted upon -- and thus provide the much sought-after mandates -- that the Eurobarometer hopes to find instead? 

Modern Day Mood Rings?

You may or may not remember mood rings but they were the coolest fad when I was a kid.

Instead of sparkling gems, the rings (or wristbands) were filled with a substance that reacted to the temperature of your skin.  It turns out that there were approximate corollaries between heat and emotion, so the rings evidenced moods. 

It was very cool.  For a short while, everyone seemed to want to identify one another’s moods.  And then everyone moved on; since they'd been able to identify and share their moods prior to the invention of the rings, they went right on doing it without them.

What if social networks are our modern day equivalent?

• We’ve always been members of networks, whether labeled (like school alumni) or not (like fans of Victorian murder mysteries).  We just have the technology to formalize them
• People get that momentary rush of joining so-and-so network(s), and perhaps finding an old or new friend who shares the same thrill
• Eventually, the networks get too big, too diverse, too cluttered with advertising or friend requests from utter strangers...the openness the drives initial adoption is also what over time crapifies the experience
• More importantly, they aren’t really enabling activities that are much different, or more valuable, than what the user previously accomplished (or ignored) offline

So member activity wanes, perhaps to be replaced by new, though slightly less enthusiastic, membership in the next network

The advertising model has driven most of the development and valuations of social networks like MySpace and Facebook.  Broad, horizontal aggregations of consumers mean more eyeballs blinking at ads.  As such, they're much like the television networks they've replaced; though social networks swap pre-produced  programming with user-provided content, social-ness is a byproduct, or means to an end.  What matters -- i.e. what's monetized -- is that consumers are there, using the networks, just like they used to watch broadcast TV.

Does more time spent with a brand in a social community (chatting about it, downloading branded wallpaper for your phone, or whatever) translate into more, more cost-effective, or more sustainable sales?  Although lots of folks are trying to figure it out, so far nobody has a clue.

It's almost as if the stuff that the big social networks take for granted almost precludes the ad channel (or branding environment) models from working.

That's not to say they can't; I believe they not only can, but already do.  There are four basic, unique, and truly valuable qualities of social networks that cannot be duplicated offline, and thus could very well drive future development:

• Provide access to greater and better information.  I know it's a hoot to get Twitters from friends, but it’s not necessarily useful information.  And a posting wall full of bickering rants about one musician or another isn't better info.  Networks that provide stuff that is truly useful, whether due to its entertainment value and/or utility, has potential to grow
• Help people outsource their consent.  The value of ratings, recommendations and  endorsements is a huge only-get-it-here benefit of online networks.  I'm not talking about the viral forwarding of a funny video, but a group...qualified by its participants...helping one another make purchase (or life) decisions
• Become learning/evolving communities.  For networks to thrive, they need to get smarter over time, whether that’s through members learning more about each other, developing track records (ebay's seller ranking system is a basic example).  This is a small but incomprehensibly important step from being aggregations of opinions (qualified by nothing more than their having been expressed) to understanding
• Be autonomous.  Participants must have ultimate control over their own information, as well as the environment(s) in which it is shared.  We can survey their tolerance for enduring marketing/branding as an implicit, necessary evil of the media, but I suspect that they'd happily ban it if there were no other impact on their experience

So is this driven from email accounts?  Vertical search?  Are they all connected, using OpenID or some other identity authentication and activity history tool? 

Sure, since I suspect we're using different early or transitional technology labels to describe the same general behaviors.

And, in some way, it might include describing our very own version of mood rings.

I'm Your Number One Fan

I’m at the Forrester Marketing Conference in Los Angeles, which kicked off with a spiel about a woman in Cincinnati who pretty much dedicated her life to Ikea.

After regularly driving hundreds of miles to shop at the closest locations, she took it upon herself to campaign for a store closer by.  Well, that, and a whole lot more:

• She started a web site to note the most excruciatingly small details about the store
• Regularly contacted journalists
• Corresponded actively and often with Ikea
• Made her license plate "IKEA,"
• Invented and drew a patron saint for the brand (see below), and
• When the store finally came to her city, camped out in the parking lot for the privilege of being among the first to walk into it

She's Ikea's Number One Fan.

So what did the company do when she applied for a job at the new store?

It ignored her.  And I'm not so sure that I would have advised doing anything different.

Her example was intended to illustrate the new consumer behaviors (and expectations) of engagement.  It's a valid point -- and the focus on this two-day event -- but by evidencing such egregiously aggressive involvement with the Ikea brand, it suggested the complexity of this emerging marketing model.

Businesses have always had to contend with crazy people.  Back when I worked with Victoria's Secret, there were always a few people who wouldn't get off the call center phones.  Ever.  Ditto for some of the repeat walks-ins/loiter-arounds we'd get at Blockbuster stores now and then.  Our response was to find ways to un-invite them from being customers.

The Internet can serve to do the opposite: it amplifies and extends this behavior.  Now, these people are called influencers, or opinion leaders.  And we're supposed to engage with them.

But, and intending no insult to Ikea Lady, they're still kinda wacky, aren't they?  At a minimum, they're not the basis for a consumer marketing strategy. 

For every rabidly vocal advocate or detractor of your business, there are many, many more consumers who aren't really interested in engaging with your brand beyond buying and using whatever it is that you sell. 

It's not likely that they're getting influenced much by zealots, who are usually content with ranting at one another.  Your average consumers are definitely going online for information about your business that might impact their purchase decisions, but I question whether much of that content is coming from people like the woman who swore her eternal soul to Ikea.

That's not to say that it's unimportant to understand what crazy people think, or how they might impact your business.  And the groundswell approach that Forrester has pioneered suggests that online communities and networks have an ecology that is mutually-dependent, and in which your business is described and judged without you having much control over those outcomes. 

So the ways that your customers are influencing one another are vitally important to factor into your communications strategy.  Forrester is onto something here, and it's great that there's an event focused on it (and attendance seems amazingly healthy, which is a testament to the hunger for this information among marketers). 

I just think that engagement needs to have a purpose and, in the case of the rare unmitigated zealot, the answer might not be to embrace him or her in the same way you would a more reasonable customer. 

The business case for engagement is going to have a lot less to do with greasing squeaky wheels than it will with oiling the entire machine.

Instead of finding more ways to engage with consumers, maybe marketers need to find ways to be sure that when consumers engage with/about you that their experiences are, well, engaging. 

That means meaningful.  Relevant.  Useful.

If you're active in that way, you also might choose not to offer a job to someone who wants to sleep in the parking lot of your store.