Dim Bulb

The Flack & The Guru

The Flack & The Guru

American Airlines' announcement last week that it would charge $15 for a checked bag was met by disdain and contempt in the communications industry.

It was fun to read AA's outside PR flack explain the strategy: "We understood that consumers would be frustrated with another fee.  Precisely for that reason; we did our best to communicate the full impact that oil is having on our business."

A guru at one of the branding elite firms countered that rationale, though: "The fuel crisis is so staggering for them internally that they have to take the PR hit.  It's almost a no-win situation because customers don't want to hear about the problems of a giant corporation."

Most of the communicators I talked to seemed to concur with the flack or the guru.

I heard a lot of about a lack of transparency and the likelihood that unsuspecting travelers would be in for quite a shock at airports.  Some said that AA didn't explain, let alone promote, an idea as much as defer the unpleasant policy details to the front-line troops to handle.  It wasn't a communications strategy at all, but rather a corporate shrug.  Others said that we could have expected little else.

Maybe so, but it's all rather academic, isn't it?  AA could have claimed that evil monkeys had taken control of the company's executive suite.  Explanations and ducking are not communications strategies, however much we wrap the activities in the blather of branding. 

The AA brand was, and is, irrelevant. 

Travelers are going to gripe at the airport anyway, since the places are mostly constructed, and certainly managed, to frustrate, confuse, and offend anybody who has the misfortune to pass through.  No information, the indignities of security provisions, the vagaries of weather, machinery, and human foibles...remind me what there is not to hate about the experience. 

Adding what would amount to a stealth, surprise fee won't make the travel experience much worse.  There are already lots of fees attached to airline tickets, so much so that the pricing they advertise has little in common with the ultimate cost.

Airfares are one of the last prices that have no basis in the reality of consumer experience.    As a consumer, I can come up with a story for why things cost what they cost...even if I'm wrong, I have this broad equation that assigns value to production and, thereafter, my consumption.

Not so much with airfares.  What somebody pays for a seat is a mystery, which then changes from one moment to the next.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, especially when it comes to the soaring costs of fuel.

This latest event was a chance for the AA brand to become relevant.  Here's how:

• Anybody who has ever filled a gas tank or driven a vehicle understands the math; you buy fuel, and you can get so many miles out of it.  I may not like the math, but it makes intuitive sense to me
• If this math is truly driving AA's fee increase, why did it choose to detach the cost from any semblance of meaning for travelers?
• It would have been very reasonable for AA to create a pricing variable that it applied to routes, based on miles traveled.  It could be updated daily, and provide a "fuel cost multiple" to the price of the ticket.  It certainly wouldn't be greeted as good news, but everyone would understand it and, I bet, understand and accept it
• Another approach would have been to invent a load discount that it applied to seats on less-filled planes.  Flying and airplane costs effectively the same irrespective of how many people are riding in it, so why not let consumers know that they could be charged less so as to "make whole" one flight vs. elbowing into a nearly-full one?  Kinda like swapping carbon credits, or something

Transparency was only half of American's problem, and thinking consumers wouldn't blink was the other half.  The flack and the guru asked the wrong question, so they got the wrong answer. 

They were both right...and both utterly wrong.  AA could have used this event to communicate more meaningfully, and memorably, with consumers who may very well have been willing to give it their attention.  If only AA had tried.

Being irrelevant was its true sin; how AA did it is, well, irrelevant.

Boycott Blazers!

A fellow Dim Bulber clued me into the fact that conservative mountebank Michelle Malkin forced Dunkin Donuts to pull the above-pictured ad because the spokesperson was wearing a scarf that resembled the ones that terrorists often sport (called a "keffiyeh").

As she blathered on her blog:

"It's refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backwards in the direction of anti-American political correctness. Naturally, liberal commentators on the Internet are now up in arms over Dunkin Donut's decision to yank the ad and mock anyone who expresses concern over the keffiyeh’s symbolism."

Damn good for Michelle!  So I say we keep going. 

Personally, I'm very concerned about blazers.  I know that my mamby-pamby liberal friends will say that it's just a coat, but how can you not associate blazers with the scourge of Nazism? 

For that matter, what do we say about bathrobes?

Sure, Hef's a capitalist, but his lifestyle has been anything but traditional, and about the only American values he supports are those that can be recited by a hormone-obsessed teenage boy.  How could any of us wear a bathrobe without tacitly acknowledging his world view?

Now, don't get me started on hats.

But hey, I could go on.  Millions upon millions of people wear blazers, bathrobes, and hats, and they have no association (or interest in) the occasional mass-murder or mass-philanderers who might share their fashion tastes.  Same goes for the keffiyeh, which has been worn by loads of people in the Middle East...few of whom have anything to do with terrorism.

The brilliant and purposeful duplicity of Malkin's tirade equates the fashion accessory with chosing to wear a Burberry version of a Klu Klux Klan hood.  The them of the all-pervasive Liberal Conspiracy are out to promote anti-American fashion, and must be stopped...even though she's the one promoting the censorship!

And so what if the keffiyeh is worn as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause (Yasser Arafat brought it out of the dim memory of Exodus reenactments and into modern political discourse)? 

It's a scarf, not a hood, or a swastika armband. 

Symbols and reality are often very different things; just think about the American flag pin nonsense for a minute.  I wouldn't wear the scarf even if I can rationally grasp the idea of Palestinian nationhood, but to accuse anyone wearing one of being an apologist for terrorism is not just a far reach.  It's idiotic.

Dunkin Donuts might have missed a marketing opportunity when it chose to quickly duck this contrived controversy.  It could have gone out to its customers -- what a great use for social media? -- and asked them for their opinions.  Put the commercial to the test of real public opinion, not just the ruminations of an angry extremist and her minions. 

But I need to sign-off and go don my plush robe, slippers, and pipe.  And I refuse to apologize for Hef. 

A Fascinating Fishbowl

I wrote a few days ago in my column in the CMO Strategy section of Advertising Age about the precariously useful vetting process for new ideas in brand and marketing.

It's pretty much driven by headlines in the media about wacky tests, which are substantiated by marketers and vendors who have a vested interest in seeing more money spent on said experiments.

The exigencies of being newsworthy and quotable are much of the litmus test.  So is an idea's capacity to fit into the tenor of the times, and make sense as part of the narrative of things marketers are doing...which is itself nurtured by the self-same headlines in the media process.

Welcome to the fishbowl, Goldie.

I wrote,

"The best strategies in our business are like those in policing: Success comes from smart, methodical processes, such as profiling customers, data crunching and other numbingly boring activities.

Yet we celebrate the flashy creative, even if it's often shorthand for a customer conversation we don't deconstruct. We publicize technical experiments because they're shortcuts to a conclusion that everyone can visualize, like kicking down a door with our guns blazing. In doing so, we doom ourselves to adopting them from one another. Bad ideas circulate just as quickly as good ones."

So how might the conversation become different?  Three quick ratios for vetting new brand or marketing ideas:

• The Mercenary Discount: The veracity of any recommendation should be qualified by the profit potential said idea presents for the presenter.  If the vendor can make money on it, you probably need a truly objective/independent second opinion. Good luck finding one
• An Action Verb Rating: When you get your next dense slide presentation, count how many times the activities involved in the program are described with active verbs...and not just verb tense, but declarations that have subjects and objects wrapped around the verbs   
• The Negatives Ratio: You should count the times a program deliverable is prefaced with "can't" or "won't," as well as the moments you wish there were some clear deliverable.  Expressed over the total number of statements gives you a ratio, the larger the worse for you

There's another solution, perhaps a lot easier, only not as elegant as a set of arithmetic factors: hire somebody, or drag a staffer from a department utterly unrelated (and unexposed to) the brilliance of brand marketing.  And ask the staffer if something makes sense.

You may not be swimming in such a fascinating fishbowl when it's viewed from the outside.

This Brand Needs Rehab

The Gap has proven again, as if we needed another reminder, that it's addicted to an old, ruined, costly, and self-destructive idea of what constitutes a brand.

If you're a stockholder, sell.  If you're an employee, brush off your resume.  And if you're an expert or firm that is responsible for selling this branding nonsense to a clearly impaired client, shame on you.

I opened my May 19 issue of The New Yorker to find not one, or a few, but many pages of ads for Gap T-shirts created (and mostly worn) by artists. It's in celebration of the 2008 Whitney Biennial (whatever that is; sorry, I live in flyover country, where most of the stores are located).  It seems that Gap is collaborating with previous Biennial artists to create a limited collection.

The shirts are mostly inane, though some feature a bold, explosive Gama-Go thing.  The artists are mostly well into the broad "middle" on age, and seem to represent every conceivable ethnic or gender persuasion.  As for what the shirts really look like (they're worn all twisted or messed up), what they cost, or where they're available, you're outta luck: there's not even a mention of the collection or ad campaign on the company's web site.

It's utterly tasteful...and completely useless.

Why does Gap insist on producing this dreck?  I've written about past image campaigns (here, here, and here) and pondered the facts that 1) its competitors have copied it, so the imagery doesn't stand out, and 2) there's no way the stuff would drive store traffic anyway.  It's clearly not meant to do anything of the sort.

Ever since the happy days of those dancers wearing their khakis, Gap has seemed addicted to the conceit that it can "brand" itself with image advertising..or that it would matter even if it could.

It has tenaciously stuck to this idea in the fact of comp store sales that consistently tumble, a revolving-door of executives, rumors that the company is up for sale, and store interiors that make a Kohl’s look like they got something right.  The clothing itself looks like, is priced near, and served by employees who could be working at any of a dozen other retailers (or more). 

Maybe I'm a dim bulb on this one, but it sure seems like Gap wants to spend good money after bad.  It's not sticking to its guns as much as refusing to abandon a sinking ship (and making the hole bigger instead of trying to plug it).

I guess I'm not surprised that there's always a brand expert, photographer, or other helpful vendor more than willing to take Gap's money.  To me, they're no better than drug dealers; clearly, Gap is brand that is sick and unable to fend for itself.

Producing campaigns like this one not only embarrasses the company, but it gives the entire brand marketing industry a bad name.

A Cuddly Lumberjack?

A fellow Dim Bulber clued me into the branding head-on collision of Brawny paper towels.

First, the outbound marketing (imagery, packaging) is based on a lumberjack who looks like he did duty as a Village person, or perhaps sang that song on The Monty Python Show.  There's a thriving swamp of viral videos mocking, twisting, and otherwise abusing him.  The logo features a cartoon rendition of the guy, and the package labeling uses the word brawny in a typeface that looks like it's, well, brawny, as if it were the schlocky badge on a belt worn by a boxing champion. 

Conversely, the towels themselves are the epitome of bad crafts-store cute and cuddly.  We're talking flowers and ladybugs (that look kinda like strawberries).  The designs are disposable (like the towels?), bringing to mind nothing as much as recognition that some artist was careful not to offend anybody by drawing much of anything. 

It all crashes together on the company web site, which rotates a few pretty engagingly messy photos of needs states, and provides some actually helpful uses for paper towels, called "One Minute Solutions."

I think we're talking brand management by committee, if there's any management going on at all. 

There are lots of opportunities here to make a difference:

• Pick a side?  Be brawny or cuddly, but don't try to be both.  Towels that look like they should be hanging in a kitschy guest bathroom just don't say use me or tough spills.  Conversely, cute requires more than a dainty floral border, doesn't it?
• Pick a purpose? Maybe there's a segmentation play here, targeting a particular towel (not just print, but perhaps size and texture) to different purposes...some brawny, and some maybe no so?
• Pick a response?  Does anybody think that there are a lot of consumers searching online for information on paper towels?  Maybe Brawny could use its outbound marketing and web site to solicit some sort of response (or action) from consumers...submit tips, whatever.
• Pick a timeframe?  I'd imagine that consumer engagement with paper towel brands rises just past the enthusiasm we have for brands of home heating oil; towels are something you need to have on that roll in the kitchen or garage.  I wonder if Brawny could add a time dimension to its branding, so outbound marketing (and its use states) connected to dates, seasons, etc. 

Ubiquity of use could be a good thing, if Brawny's branding actually made sense.  I used paper towels already three times this morning (coffee spill, blow nose, and dry hands).  It seems that the main opportunity would be to make a branded product relevant to those (or other) uses.  All the time.

Brawny could cruise with that branding.  But using a lumberjack and ladybugs amounts to a head-on collision.

A New Can of Soup

(note: this is part 5 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives)

Although Andy Warhol didn’t exhibit his first art show until 1962, I think we've been seeing art as brands since the late 19th Century...or perhaps forever.

If we define a brand as "the perceptual aggregation of qualities that constitute the experience of something," then the corollary fits perfectly.  Nobody experiences art separate from the influences of context:

• There's no such thing as pure music, or painting, or literature
• We can no more limit our use of our senses (inputs of sound can’t be isolated totally from whatever our eyes or noses are picking up) than we can control how we interpret what comes in (experience is as much creative process internally as it is reception of external content, if not more so)
• So I say we've been engaging with brands ever since somebody got to see that precious little twerp Wolfie Mozart play one of his prodigy inventions.  Or first viewed a painting, or a bard read a poem aloud. 
• You can't separate the experience of seeing embers floating into the sky as you hear the words and smell the trees.  Or whatever

We use all of our senses for every art experience, even if we prioritize those inputs, and then mush it all up in our minds (and hearts). 

Consumption of culture is a multi-media experience, irrespective of technology or medium.

But is art branded the same way as, say, toothpaste?  Can the context of art experiences be contrived in such a way as to ensure consistency over time?  Or, are art brands simply symbols, like badges we wear ("I like this band because they're so like me," or "that artist speaks directly to my soul.")?

I don’t think it's as simple as putting a label on a soup can. 

By definition, artists change; in fact, those that stay reasonably consistent are those that risk becoming either:

1. Disconnected from their original audiences, who will think them stale, or
2. Staying just different every time to develop loyal fans, like those fiction authors, musicians, painters, and movie-makers who consistently produce ever-new permutations of the same work.  Repeat performances are thus made fresh

Is consistency, then, the enemy of pure art?   

You already know what I think: there's no such thing as pure art, per se.  So consistency is as much an accomplishment as it is a limit to creative expression.

Perhaps Aeschylus and Rembrandt were the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andy Warhol of their times.  Shakespeare certainly entertained returning audiences, just as Michelangelo was hired because he could do his "thing" on a variety of horizontal as well as vertical surfaces.

Maybe the truth of art is in the experience of it, even if the purchase (or adoption) is driven by brand awareness.  We might have brand preferences, but without product innovation, the brands eventually lose their relevance, meaning, and value.

Artists might be brands, but art isn't?  This dim bulb is flickering at the thought.  Don't confuse it with proof of an idea, however. 

Designer Salvation

(note: this is part 4 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives) 

Lots of people shop for religion, and some even get their salvation custom-designed. It didn't used to be this way. 

Religion was something you were born with, like eye-color, and its practice was a given.  Societies enforced it, even if you as much as entertained the possibility of switching allegiances.  So did the religions themselves; eternal damnation was a stiff penalty for canceling your account.

In fact, choice couldn't be a factor when the USP of your designated brand was Absolute Truth. 

The channels through which this benefit was communicated -- rituals, symbols, dietary prohibitions -- weren't designed to make said truth any easier or fun to comprehend, necessarily.  Sometimes they made it downright uncomfortable, both on an individual level (limits to personal behavior), and from a group identity perspective (think of how many times somebody has been beat up, or worse, because their faith dictated their clothing choices).

Belief was never intended to be easy, and compliance required real work and sacrifice.  And since it meant getting born into a lifelong commitment, lots of people learned not only to endure it, but to find great meaning and reward.

Not so much anymore.

Religion is now often a choice made more than once, at least in America.  You can pretty much find versions of every "great" world religion crafted to your specific needs: telegenic sermons, simplified "you're ok" theology, a bit of liturgy borrowed from someplace else, congregations contrived among endless permutations of age, gender, proclivity, or affliction. 

Religions -- or, more precisely, the institutions that offer them (churches, mosques, synagogues, etc.) -- have learned to compete for customers, and their tools have become the very channels that used to emerge naturally, if not authoritatively, from the USP at the core of each faith.

Now, we pick a brand of religion, based in large part on the experience of its products and services.

Some thinkers, like James B. Twitchell in his book Shopping for God, suggest that this is why religious fervor, especially among evangelicals, is thriving in the U.S. compared to the decline in many of Europe's state religions.  The problem is that without competition for souls, there's no incentive to improve the way the offering is packaged.  Hence, fewer buyers.

Perhaps this is why militant Islam has made such inroads into particular segments of consumers: it has adapted in order to be relevant to a target audience, and offers a powerful mix of extreme sacrifice in exchange for very clearly articulated brand benefits.  Compared to the alternatives, it offers more value for the faithful. 

But does effective branding get at the ultimate truth of religion?

Oddly enough, religions are all pretty much the same, at a broad, core level, aren't they?

• The monotheistic faiths claim that there's an Ultimate Authority responsible for creating existence, and requires that we follow simple precepts of good behavior and kindness
• The polytheistic religions insert that same Authority into every thing, and expect the same response from us
• The product differences really are in the messaging details.   

So choosing the brand that works best for you becomes a very relevant quality of religious experience; it's now something we decide to do, vs. something we have to do.  And keeping track of souls saved has become the ultimate metric for measuring the success of religion.

But is it a measure of Truth?

Finding Equity in Labor

(note: this is part 3 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives) 

Earlier this year, I wrote that Karl Marx was prescient when it came to explaining the woes of corporations that find themselves chasing the same consumers.

Without ever having sipped a double espresso skinny latte, he worked through a model that predicted companies would tend to pursue monopolies (via acquisition, or simply by destroying the competition), vertically integrate, squeeze workers until they earn the least possible, and then commoditize human experience. 

His analytic recipe was to mix one part facts with two parts poetry and philosophy, with a pinch of angry, personal emotion thrown in for spice.  But he nailed much of what's fueling the desperate chaos that was once erstwhile opportunity for brand names like Starbucks or Dell. 

Too bad Lenin, Mao, and that nutcase Chavez in Venezuela (among others) gave the guy's observations such a bad name.  Their political machinations, not to mention stupefying evil, made the anti-Christ out of a grubby, dirt-poor vagabond who spent much of his adult life sitting in the British Museum for light and warmth. 

Marxism, the brand, is about as toxic as you can get.  That leaves us with one brand -- Capitalism -- as the guiding principle for every economic event in our lives. 

Capitalism is based on numbers, no more real than those Marx used in his Das Kapital.  It also invents variables, and then weaves them together into equations intended to yield meaning and relevance, just like Marx. 

Only Capitalism, the brand, has proven time and time again that it works a helluva lot better than its former competitor. 

That is, until it fails utterly, either on a topical or philosophical level.  And when that happens, we have no other brand of economic thought to consider or choose. 

So when oil prices climb, the culprit is some vague entity called "the market" that exists beyond the reach (or complete understanding) of governments or consumers.  Same goes for the way health care is priced and provided (or not) in America.  The free market is an unassailable absolute, driving our sole brand of economic thought.  It's beyond reproach, even when it challenges the experience of our senses, like when we're told "destruction" is "creation," or that the way to collect more tax revenue is to lower the rates at which they’re collected.

Humm.  I wonder whether we'd be better able to understand topical news events if we had another brand of explanation from which to choose?  It's how consumers make value judgments on products: compare and contrast "A" and "B" on functionality, experience, and price. 

I doubt we're ever going to see Marxism (or Socialism, or even, gasp, Communism) as a brand alternative offered up to help explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis in tomorrow's newspaper, for instance. 

On a more philosophical level, living with a single brand of economic thought means we get only one version of those variables and equations I mentioned earlier.

Think about the idea of value for a minute. 

Capitalism determines the ultimate value of goods and services primarily based on cost (to produce and/or to acquire).  There's established math that tracks and affirms it, which the market uses to continually reset those valuations.  And it's from that math that we define major metrics for our social experience, not just economic: "gross national product" is a measure used to determine lots of things beyond the dollars in in which it's priced.

So what’s the value of, say, a healthy environment?  How about commute times, or spiritual well-being?  Is there a value inherent, as lots of literature would suggest, in the very act of making something, whether it's a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction?  Do the experiences of respect, or cordial neighborliness, have value?

Capitalism, the brand, promises to factor in all of these variables, only it doesn't.  Most of these variables are externalities because they defy quantification. 

Yet it's why so many of our economic answers don’t neatly fit the questions that arise from our experience.  Time wasted sitting in traffic should shift commuters to other means of transportation, only it doesn't.  The long-term cost of pollution should be factored into the short-term pricing of energy, only it isn't.  Jobs are described in terms of salary rewards, not function.

Marx (and other economists, like Ricardo) believed that labor had an inherent value, or LTV.  Maybe they would have quantified other qualities of our lives.  And maybe that math might never have added up.  But because we only get to choose from a single brand of economic thought, we'll never know.   

If competition yields better choices, might it help to have an alternative to Capitalism to consider now and then? 

Even if another explanation was wrong, at least we would have a basis -- other than the catchy shorthand of branding -- to know that we what have chosen was right.

Facts & Theories

(note: this is part 2 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives).

Shorthand is anathema to science, isn't it? 

So are metaphor and analogy.  Ditto for most any sort of imaginative modeling.  Anything that might truly help communicate a scientific theory, or observable fact, generally confounds the invention of such concepts.  The what invariably gets all messed up with the why, and versa visa.

That's why Creation Scientists actually have a bone to pick with proponents of evolutionary theory. 

Sure, there is uncontroverted proof that generations of fruit flies evolve traits basted on avoidance of swatters and frog's tongues, but elevating that process into an absolute, and then reapplying it as a model in which to piece together a story for, say, humanity, is putting the proverbial ape before the man. 

Evolution is certainly a far more likely theory, based on observable reality, but the claim that the bits of said reality are objectively dictated into a story has the process bass-ackwards.  Scientists fit the pieces into a pre-conceived idea that helps guide what they do, just as a photo or memory helps a rescue crew reassemble the wreckage of an airplane. 

The presumption is that evolutionists will revise (or reject entirely) a theory once those pieces either

1. Prove otherwise, or
2. After enough trying, fail to materialize. 

So, for instance, astrophysicists are in a sticky wicket these days, as they're presently stuck with a theory for the Universe that has the vast majority of matter and energy utterly invisible and undetectable.  Let's see how long they can hold onto that theory without some pretty amazing discoveries.

Creation Scientists, on the other hand, can pretty much be expected, no matter what, to find the wood chips from Noah's Ark.  Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs not because the fossil record confirms it, but because there's no evidence to deny it; therefore, the lack of a negative supports the positive assertion. 

This is what makes Creation Science a branding creation, irrespective of the merits (if any) of the science of its theory. 

While there's a difference between the two approaches, the shorthand of labels -- or brands -- contributes nothing to our understanding.  In fact, it impedes it.

Is all "paranormal science" really paranormal and/or scientific?  What about how alternative or medicinal "alternative medicine" might really be?  Are there really such things as "Islamic" or "Indo-Asian" (or "Christian") science?  And what about "environmental science," in that a bias affects how researchers interpret indicators of, say, global warming?

I think not.  The language of branding doesn't mix well with science, other than as a tool with which to overlay religious, political, or cultural qualities.  Pre-conceived notions don't help discovery as much as hinder it. 

While it helps to have an idea of what you're looking for, the idea is to find what's truly there to be found.  Not just further promote your brand position.

Never Having to Say You're Sorry

(note: this is part 1 in this week's 5-part series on the brandification of our lives.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a political Independent).

The Republican Party is going to try to "rebrand" itself this year.

"It's not that the party's going to change, it's what we talk about and how we talk about it," explained House Minority Leader John Boehner last week.

"You look at the Republican brand name being where it is, let's be frank about it. Iraq has been very unpopular, right?  It's associated with Republicans. The president's job approval is somewhere down around 30. Those are the two big issues that hurt the brand."

As a marketer, I find this language very interesting. 

Boehner is drawing a clear distinction between what his party has done, and what he wants voters to think about it.  This evidences a concept of ‘brand’ as a variable that's somehow independent of reality.  And he assigns public reaction to the former in terms of how the latter has communicated it.

Either he's onto something, or he's a complete idiot.

The idea of politics as a branding business is nothing new, of course.  The Democrats regularly use the same perspective in defining their work: both parties would make Orwell proud with their equal-opportunity dictionary abuse in order to say one thing, but do another:

• Oil drilling and nuclear power programs are housed in environmental protection bills
• Handouts to special interests get buried in legislation to encourage work or fairness
• Reform is a word defined solely by whomever chooses to use it, for whatever purpose

All over the world, tradition has it that parliaments and other legislative bodies should busy themselves with bold, easily-grasped themes in order to marshal the popular will.  Kings and queens have been beheaded for what they stood for more than who they were.  Dictators have threatened the life of the world with it.

In fact, both major parties in the UK are busy rebranding themselves, especially the Conservatives, who are seeking to be considered the party of change.

But is any of this branding?

We business types expect certain qualities from brands: consistency, implicit value, uniqueness.  We do branding in hopes of establishing things of lasting value, though it's becoming ever-harder to do so. 

So isn't there something disingenuous, at best, and cruelly manipulative, at worst, when politicians choose to detach the reality of what they do from the imagined descriptions of what they say?  Or that they might think that just changing the branding communications will change how people see the brand?

Sure, it might work in the short-term, just like a product marketer could claim a faux benefit that prompts a purchase.  People won’t buy that product again, though, unless there's yet another promise made.  This approach isn't long-term branding; it's exploitation, and there are laws in commerce to prohibit it.

In our personal lives, we call it lying.

Perhaps Boehner's problem isn’t that voters misunderstand the Republican brand, but that they have an all-too clear understanding of it.  Iraq, gas prices, and the other issues that have emerged under a two-term Republican President -- with an angry, activist party behind him most of the time -- don’t affect the brand as much as they are the brand.

To suggest that the solution is to talk differently appears misguided, whether in commerce or in politics.

I don't know how you change your brand without first changing your reality.

An Inelastic Snap

A barrel of crude oil has nearly doubled in price in the last two years, and retail prices of about $4 per gallon are around 50% higher than just a year ago.

And most people shrug and pay it?

This would be called a perfect example of inelastic demand in the parlance of economists, meaning that consumption doesn't seem all too sensitive to pricing.  Cost goes up or down, but folks -- maybe not all, but certainly a vast majority of consumers -- just keep on buying.

The media can't provide a rational explanation for what's going on.  Nobody fully accepts (or understands) wan references to China needing more oil, or America needing to swap pristine wildlife reserves for drilling derricks.  If supplies are really getting tight, why is it that not one expert predicted the demand? The vaunted mechanism of the free market seems to be in full catch-up, or reaction mode.

But to what is it reacting, exactly?  I find this lack of a clear, concise, credible answer rather incredible.

What's more amazing, though, is that consumers seem willing to overlook this oversight and, shockingly, continue to consume the stuff like it is going out of style (which it very well might be).

What does this tell us about how people make choices?

• We don't weigh options too well. So how many of us are driving less because gas costs so much more?  OK, maybe some people, but not many, according to the consumption figures (the oil companies are selling all the gas they can deliver).  As a 50% higher expense, you'd think consumers would see some trade-offs revalued, and perhaps change their behavior?  One trip to the mall instead of two?  Combining errands to a single journey?  Biking or walking instead of driving to a close-in destination?   
• We compartmentalize. What if we consciously considered that the oil companies will soon be doubling the money they charge us for the privilege of helping to destroy the planet?  Wouldn't that affect our refill intentions ever-so slightly?  Now, count all of the impacts of rotten traffic (delays, aggravation, risk and cost of accidents), and it's almost like we wear one "head" when we drive, and another when we choose to think about all those other things that supposedly matter to us (or that we consider a bother). 
• We really don't remember things for long. Weren't you pretty shocked and/or angry when you realized that filling your gas tank cost so much that first time?  I bet you felt less so the second time, and by the time you reached the 10th refill, you barely shrugged your disapproval.  When the newscasters proclaim that oil prices have declined a few pennies, should we feel relieved?  It just means that the cost may level, or go down slightly.  But does anyone remember...truly remember, as in an active realization...how cheap gas used to be?

Remember, I'm talking about the same consumers (you and me included) whom we hope will be aware of our branding, absorb and contemplate it, and then apply what we’ve promoted to their purchase decisions. 

Uh oh.

While the snap of this inelastic demand of ours for gas might sting, it isn't prompting a broad overhaul of our behavior that I'd expect (and wish) to see.   Bulbs brighter than I am should be talking about why.

Maybe the price has to reach some as-yet unimagined threshold (like the prices Europeans pay?).  Perhaps we’ll take action when we see the impacts of costly oil ripple through other industries (airfare is going to keep getting expensive; retailers will possibly start raising prices to help defray shipping costs, etc.).

But so far, it's just revealing how difficult, imprecise, and utterly confounding the influences on purchase behavior can be.

Logo You Don't

How do you feel about logos appearing on the shirts, jerseys, and sweaters of professional sports teams?

I guess there are really two questions to ask:

• Are they distasteful?
• Whether distasteful or not, is it smart branding?

We've seen equipment manufacturers put logos on their products since time immemorial.  Bauer.  Wilson.  I think I got hit in the head once with a Spalding-branded baseball (thank goodness the logo was printed, not embossed).

The bridge from that obviously legitimate to the slightly exploitative was built by Nike, followed shortly thereafter by the other footwear companies, all of them wanting to expand sales to other parts of athletes' bodies.

The one exception has always been NASCAR, where drivers have waded through their jobs wearing what a good CMO friend of mine calls "brand soup."  Outfits and equipment alike are nothing but billboards, and messy, crowded ones at that.

What has any of that pro logo-ing accomplished for sports equipment brands?  I can imagine it has helped them with sales: if my favorite pro prefers one protective ear-cup over another, well then I want one, too.  So it's really a marketing tool in this instance, isn't it?  It sells more of whatever it is that’s been logo-ified (I can't explain what the NASCAR branding accomplishes, other than giving everyone a headache).

But now we're seeing corporate logos on sportswear that has absolutely nothing to do with the equipment. 

What piqued my curiosity was the announcement that McDonald's golden arches logo is going to be featured on all of the WNBA team jerseys during the next season's opening week.

So not only does McDonald's not make sporting gear, but some might consider its product offering not altogether in keeping with the spirit of competitive sports, women's health or, well, ease-of-movement in general.  It's not like they're selling cigarettes or guns, but I don't know. 

And I understand that the Red Sox promo'd EMC’s logo on their jerseys during exhibition games in Japan.  Supposedly other sports leagues are thinking about similarly exploiting 

Driving all of this latest initiative is:

1. The failure of other branding outlets to offer any availability (see a lot of sports stadiums in need of corporate sponsors anymore?)
2. The ongoing challenge of proving that brand logos do much of anything other than get some exposure, and
3. The damn-the-torpedoes approach of pursing said logo placement anyway

Does a McDonald's logo on WNBA player uniforms say anything about the McDonald's brand?  Or is it just clutter...more visual "noise" that we consumers can ignore.

Or maybe when is McDonald's planning to announce its new line of women's basketball jerseys? 

Hummm...now there's a really dim bulb idea!

Hello, It's Me...er...You

I've been watching Lincoln Financial's "Futureself" commercials for a while now, and I want to like them even more than I do.

It's a really cool conceit: people at meaningful junctures of their lives meet themselves as apparitions from the future.  Two spots take place in hospitals (proud dad seeing his child for the first time; worried wife wonders if her husband will live), while a third, and the least interesting spot, happens when a rich older self visits his younger self sitting in coach on an airplane.

The ghosts of rich-people-to-be offer reassuring (and a little funny) advice to their less- well-off younger selves, and encourage them to be prudent planners.  If you go to the LFG website, a virtual sticky note promises to let the visitor "see your future," only that future is effectively to suffer a sales pitch. 

An agency called 22squared produced the campaign, and here's how its CEO described the work:

    "This new campaign is rooted in the principles of 22squared's friendship marketing model.  Our collaborative process with Lincoln Financial began with the realization that the social tenets of friendship govern the relationships between individuals and brands today. Lincoln Financial has bravely chosen to directly establish relationships with individuals as friends vs. consumers as their competitors often do."

Normally, that much nonsense turns me off completely, but I like the campaign even in spite of the fact that a "friendship marketing model" sounds like a second date along the path to Lovemarks.  It's all blather, particularly the comments about social tenets and relationships.

"Futureself" is a cool idea made into a few TV commercials, along with the requisite collateral marketing that we see all the time.  Here's how it could have been really cool:

• It could have been really funny or moving.  Like maybe somebody was about to make a real mistake.  Or the older self could have a limp because of a skydiving accident that hasn't yet happened to the younger one, yet he tells him to go for it anyway.  The copy for the spots was just too pedestrian, and it consistently defaulted to generic advice on financial planning ("my hair is on fire...yes it is, and it's fortunate that you have sound financial advice...").  Imagine your futureself given 30 seconds to talk to you right now; do you think you'd tell yourself some pablum about being true to thine own self?  Hasn't anybody at the agency seen "Back to the Future II?"
• The consumer challenge could have been more engaging.  The web site is a propaganda site with a nice entry point.  Instead, imagine if the campaign would have allowed consumers to, say, create their own "time capsules" for themselves down the road...this could have required registration, which would enable LSG to start a real dialog with them.  Maybe the challenge could have been to offer a small, specially-priced action -- say, put away $100, or something -- as a gift for your futureself, or perhaps your futurechild?  There are no obvious or simple actions promoted here...just lots of sales nonsense
• The social component could have been legitimately social.  Well, there isn't any social component to this supposedly social campaign.  What if LSG hosted forums for people to share their "what I wish I could have told myself" thoughts with others?  Perhaps users could create "top ten lists of advice" or, more playfully, "predict the future" surveys and contests

I'm sure there are lots more, and even better, ideas that would elevate this smart creative idea into a truly stunning marketing campaign. 

For instance, how about making the stupid company logo larger on the spots' closing screens?  Maybe an easy link to go to, or an SMS # to punch?  How about a challenge right then and there, instead of showing the inert, hard-to-read URL? 

Anyway, I'm sure my futureself would tell me to change the bulb already. 

The Ethics of Ethics

Consumers are willing to pay more for ethically produced products, according to a study published in yesterday's Wall Street Journal and the MIT/Sloan Management Review.

The researchers, both Canadian academics, defined "socially responsible" companies as those which are:

• Considered to have progressive stakeholder relations, such as diversity hiring programs
• Believed to follow eco-friendly practices, like using green tech
• Seem to demonstrate respect for human rights, so no child or forced labor in factories

Consumers were then asked how much they'd pay for, say, a cup of coffee from one of these "good guy" companies, and then how they'd price a similar cup from a socially irresponsible business.

Poll participants picked higher prices for the white hat products; ergo, investing in social responsibility is smart business, as it'll be rewarded by consumers.  In fact, they thought irresponsible products should make less, almost as a punitive tax for being evil.

If only market research were so easy.

There's an obvious, and often-times insurmountable difference between what people say they'll do, and what they actually do.  Usually, the former is influenced by absolutes of righteousness and justice, while the latter is the domain of circumstance and expediency. 

Asking consumers what they value needs to get correlated with how they actually spend their money, or the research is really no more directionally insightful than an entertaining cocktail party conversation.  Of course I'd pay more for ethical products.  I always recycle.  And I drive the speed limit, when I'm not taking public transportation. 

Now, to the details of the ethics issue.

I absolutely want ethical business to pay.  I think if most people knew how their clothing was made, or what went into Chicken McNuggets, we'd see revolutionary change in the how, where, and by whom many products are manufactured. 

But most consumers either don't know or, just as likely, don't really care. 

And what's ethical, anyway?  Kids working in a factory sounds to me like a crime, but when their option is to work in prostitution, or to simply starve, maybe the answer is a little more complicated.  Is it socially responsible to rely on electricity instead of oil, when coal fuels much of the former? 

Beyond Thou Shalt Not Kill and 9 other famously declarative prohibitions, ethics really reside in a definitional construct between people or, in this instance, companies and the communities they serve:

• From which they take employees
• With whom the rely upon for parts and service
• To whom they sell finished products, and
• Near which they impact, whether directly or otherwise

It isn't that ethics are relative, but rather that once you get past the broad rules, they're made real within specific contexts.  Kind of like brands.

As such, I wonder whether the value in social responsibility is for companies to recognize the attributes that matter to their customers, correlate them with what matters to the other constituents they serve (as well as to the management and owners), and act accordingly.

Maybe the opportunity is for businesses to fairly and truly participate in establishing and evolving said ethics in their industries. 

The more they rely on feel-good, generic definitions like the ones perpetrated by the Canadian researchers, the less likely they're going to reap any real pricing benefits from it.  Over time, I think businesses will get punished not so much for being unethical, but rather for being disingenuous about the entire shebang.

Ethics are an ongoing conversation, not a static brand attribute.  Can anybody say social media?

Come See, Remember Me...

If you want to keep your habits and behaviors private, turn off your Internet connection right now.

Search engines (like Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have been making zillions by tracking your search terms and teeing-up ads.  Now, ISPs are getting in on the racket, selling records of your visits to all sites -- along with such variables as time spent, purchases made, yadda yadda -- to firms that can crunch it all, and throw even better-targeted ads back at you.

So Big Brother isn't just watching you; he's selling to you. 

Welcome to "1984" as a multi-platform marketing event.

The data analysis firms, with names like Phorm, NebuAd, and Front Porch, make claims  that what they’re doing is actually protecting online privacy.  Complicated, branded products do things like assign random numbers to online trollers, and then claim to destroy said records after commercials have been assigned to them.

Yup.  And war is peace.  Love is hate.  And imprisonment is freedom.

We’ve always loved the idea of privacy more than ever actually lived it.  Life in your average little town was anything but anonymous.  Everyone knew everyone else's business.  Your movements, statements, associations, purchases, and even your eating habits were usually apparent to others, whether consciously pursued or simply stumbled upon.

In an era before crowds became segments, urbanization gave people a modicum of privacy, just as mass media swathed everyone in the same commercial dribble.  But most people's lives on this planet have been mapped and memorized by other people far more than they've gotten away with getting away from it.

So why shouldn’t we be either unconcerned, if not downright happy, that our every movement online will equip content providers to give us ever-better customized content?

Well, first off, check out whether your ISP is selling your behavior to someone else.  Click on this online test, which'll find a few (but not all) of the analytics that could be keeping an eye on you (and thanks to the New Scientist for the tip).

I think the danger arises when the Internet becomes the primary spigot through which we encounter and explore the outside world.  That troll through customized content could just as easily be seen as a co-opted, managed march, with search yielding not facts or truths, but biased opinion and commercials. 

Forget finding anything on the Internet when the ISPs, sites, and search engines are all in cohoots to find you.  While this is a wet dream right now for marketers, there's a chance that consumers could figure it out and prompt a loud backlash on protecting their privacy.  This could have a negative, er, effect on the efforts of we in the business of selling stuff.

In the end, the result could be consumers monetizing their habits and behaviors, and adding their cut to the money the ISPs and search engines are making.  So the margins get a little slimmer. 

Or...maybe people might just start turning off their Internet-enabled devices, and searching in other ways for information (at least anonymized search, for starters)? 

The times they are a'telling, and the changing isn't free. 

Virtual Ice Cream

Baskin-Robbins' new website, apparently in support of its new logo, begs the question that any company selling something dependent on senses other than sight and sound must confront:

What's the point?

Odor, taste, and touch just don't easily translate into the media of web pages and mobile phone screens.  Animation, cute typography, and any other artistic contrivance can't make up for the absence of triggers for the more tangible senses. 

Baskin-Robbins wishes otherwise.  Its new website is chocked-full of cartoonish fonts and retro-awkward graphics.  The new logo was clearly intended to capture the name and "31 flavors" references, while trashing any visual recognition in lieu of a more "fun" look and feel.  In fact, it turns out that BR now offers over 1,000 flavors, and it seems that every permutation is included in its site.

I just don't get it.  The company cut its calories on offering a bite-sized indulgence to a generation within referential earshot of the privations of war (or, before that, even worse).  The chain was built in the days when cigarettes didn't cause cancer, and dairy products soothed chest pains.  Fashion models weren't yet pencil-thin.  Probably most of Baskin-Robbins' marketing was promotional, and intended to drive people to its stores.

None of this history, or focus on selling stuff, is apparent in its new branding or website.

Instead of affirming a happier, retro past, the company has opted for a generically comic logo with no connection to, well, anything, whether past, present, or future.  The website throws gallons of information at a user, with no organizing principle or guide.  No call to action.  No relevance.

Baskin-Robbins sells lots of ice cream products.  This part, I get.  But I just don't care, since there are lots of other ways to get lots of other ice cream products.  And if consumers today are going to websites more often than they visit actual retail stores, what could the company do about it? 

Well, probably first and foremost, figure out ways to get them off their duffs and into retail stores.  Is there a Baskin-Robbins experience?  Heritage?  What could consumers get at stores, other than the chance to stand in line, get ignored by surly employees, or any other threat of today’s retail nightmare?  Providing this motivation should be the primary and very aggressive purpose of the site, in my humble opinion.

With that said, a secondary thing Baskin-Robbins could consider would be to use the web to address and promote the things consumers want to know .  The main real estate on the home page promotes various desserts concocted with brand-name candy bars.  I wonder if curiosity about flavors drives any visits to the site?  My guess would be a search for a credible, get-out-of-diet-free-card excuse for patronizing the establishment would be a nice starter guess.

Third, I'd chuck the new logo and go back to an older one.  The present tense of this business is grounded in the past.  Throwing that lineage away cuts the business adrift from any purpose, let alone relevance to consumers.

Pictures of ice cream are tasteless (pun intended), and the new logo tells me far less than the old one did.  Well, it all tells me one thing:

There's no such thing as virtual ice cream.