Baskin Dim Bulb branding advertising social media business strategy

Leap Moments

I've been obsessed lately with the frequency and duration of leap moments.

This is a term of my own making, and I'm referring to those moments when whatever it is you're doing is put on hold, paused, or there's otherwise a few minutes that don't seem to belong to anyone.

Like when the line gets longer than a few people at the Starbucks or fast food counter.  Or when you're waiting for your order to be fulfilled.  Sitting on an airplane within a stone's throw of the gate, but you can't get off for 10 minutes because nobody's there to open it.  An elevator trip that makes a dozen stops via slow-moving doors.  You know, exceptions.  Interludes.  Leap moments.

They usually occur when something that's supposed to occur doesn't, or doesn't happen fast enough.  They also usually involve a group of people, aggregated in physical space, and often arise because of their presence (i.e. too many people trying to do something at the same time).  Leap moments are somewhat predictable, and a fairly regular fixture in our supposedly hyper-paced lives.  They're like extra time, or moments out of time.

So, thinking as any good marketer should, I wonder how we could exploit them?

There's not much happening on this front so far.  When people wait on the telephone ("we're experiencing unusually high call volume..."), it's common practice to throw advertising at them, since they're quite literally captives.  But waiting on hold is a solitary experience, and there are far better ways to engage with folks than subjecting them to recorded ads via IVR. This approach is the most common tool used when folks are similarly held captive in geophyscial real space, too.

I choose to define the marketing opportunity differently, and focus on the qualities of those moments that people share, even as they do their best to ignore one another (iPod volume, anyone?).

I wonder...

• Would people want to play a game of some sort? 
• How about some activity that earned them benefits that could be used moments later (i.e. could waiting be so incetivized that folks would look forward to them).
• Maybe these impromptu aggregations of consumers could be focus groups, or information-sharing experiences?  I mean, isn’t standing in line a de facto social activity...or could be?
• Why not simply (and basically) use them as opportunities to communicate with people on substance or some other quality (other than throwing ads at them that they didn't ask to see or hear)?

Again, right now, these moments are exceptions -- almost as if businesses don't know what to do with people -- and yet they are common enough that they should get incorporated into the overall brand planning.  I'm not thinking logos and marketing, though, but rather working to figure out what might your consumers want to do with a few found leap moments? 

There's another possible approach, of course: stop making us wait?

Wal-Mart Should See More Green

 

I can’t believe I’m saying it, but Wal-Mart deserves more money.  I think it should get paid for its green initiatives, which seem a helluva lot more sincere and real than any of the CSR marketing nonsense that passes for environmental responsibility at other companies.

It started down a path in 2005 to remake its business based on principles of sustainability, with some frightening huge long-term goals:

• Running operations solely on renewable energy
• Creating zero waste
• Selling only products that sustain the earth's resources and environment

It also shared its intentions with its suppliers, which dared them into embracing similar goals, if not explicitly or for their own businesses overall, at least for the products and services they hoped to sell in Wal-Mart stores.  P&G ramped up development and production of concentrated laundry detergent.  GE starting making lots more fluorescent light bulbs.

Now, people can have legitimate issues with Wal-Mart.  Employee salaries and benefits are contentious points, as is union organizing.  The uber-economic role it plays in replacing local, inefficient manufacturers and suppliers with distant, efficient vendors has massive implications for communities (its provision of low prices to consumers requires them to unwittingly stop being producers). 

You could even question the motives behind its green initiative.  But I would ask why?  Who cares what its leadership is thinking?  As a matter of fact, let's just presume that Wal-Mart does nothing for the greater good.  Altruism isn't a word that appears in its employee handbooks.  Building a sustainable business, and selling sustainable economy products, is pure, mercenary contrivance, intended to do nothing but enrich Wal-Mart and its shareholders.

Good.  That's exactly the sort of corporate responsibility we need.  Skip all the branding nonsense about "having a conversation about our energy future," or symbolic donations to charitable causes. 

The real drivers of brand equity don't reside in the imaginations of communicators, but rather in the spreadsheets of business operators.

We should be less concerned with what companies say, and more with what they do.  And that’s not just when it comes to green initiatives.  Any claim of a product or service attribute should have its basis in some actual thing(s) a company actually does. 

At least on this issue, Wal-Mart is a company to emulate.  I wonder why it's not doing a better job driving consumers with the info.  It could probably see more green for all the green it's seeing.

A Damn Good Idea

A fellow dim bulber forwarded a blog post to me, and it was such a damn good idea that I felt compelled to repurpose it here.

Paul Kirwin writes a blog called Channel Signal and, on Deccember 25, 2008, he wrote a post entitled  "Completing the Loop."  His central thesis was that iPhone apps were brilliant in concept and in practice, but they consistently came up just shy of true business utility: they don't usually take the next step -- from conversational engagement to transaction -- and help users actually buy something.

His focus was on a few outdoors equipment suppliers -- The North Face, and REI -- which had developed iPhone apps that provide real-time weather reports and snow updates.  This is high-value information for skiers, and traditional branding logic would say that such utility has a halo effect for the sponsoring businesses.  Full stop.

But Kirwin argues why stop there?

Imagine if the app provided a sales offer keyed to the specific details of the weather report?  A discount on warm gloves if the temp was particularly low.  A special promo on sunglasses if it was a bright day.  Why couldn't there be a button on the app that gave the user the directions from their location to the nearest store, and another button that allowed her or him to actually reserve the merchandise?

The possibilities don't have to stop there. 

Imagine related product and services providers getting in on the action.  Cold day?  Couldn't a resort price a special half-day ski pass, and offer it up as a useful option?  How about the apres ski restaurant providing warm-up beverages throughout the day?’

The possibilities are endless, but they'd all be grounded in the idea of relevance to the real-time context of the consumer experience.  Content wouldn't need to be as much about brands as it would be keyed to actual purchaser needs, turning the iPhone into a real-time commercial interface. 

Some consumers might want lots of opportunities provided to them, while others might opt to decline seeing any of the pitches.  No big deal.  That would only mean that the people seeing your branding and marketing would have self-selected and identified themselves as potential customers.

Is there a technical reason why iPhone apps don’t provide this level of integration with reality instead of with brands?  I don't think so.  The latest successes reported from Kraft on the app front are encouraging, but still don't fully exploit the interest-purchase link.

I'd wager the limiting factor is the perspective of brand marketers, many of whom wouldn't know a damn good idea even if it appeared with a tada! blip on their iPhones.

Then So Should A Car Wreck

If the eyeballs delivered by the viral nonsense coming from Burger King is considered marketing, then so should a car wreck.

Various campaigns that riff on the Whopper theme -- "Virgins," "Freakout," and "Sacrifice" --  have proven beyond doubt that they can get people's attention.  Funny video clips, culturally-insensitive creative, or a click that'll virtually deny a hamburger to a Facebook name and thereby earn a coupon for a free, real burger...there's been a torrent of smart, off-the-wall content originating from the company's ad agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

The only problem is that nobody can connect any of it to sales.  Not even close.

In the study of evolution, there’s a mechanism that allows a species to adapt so completely and exclusively to an ecosystem that it'll be unable to live in any other; worse, even a slight change in those otherwise comfortable environs will amount to a catastrophic challenge to its existence.

I think the Whopper campaigns -- going back to the work the company did for its creepy mascot -- evidence just such development.

The best, if not the only, thing that anybody can say about these viral/social media campaigns is that they break through the clutter.  That's always been the challenge for advertising, even when there was less clutter to break through.  In branding's heyday, earning consumer attention was often based on simply interrupting theme.  Media was one-way and there weren't many channels (or newspapers, magazines, or radio stations) to chose from, so consumers literally couldn’t escape the commercials.

But bothering people was never considered an accomplishment, was it?  Nobody got paid for successfully yelling fire in a crowded room. 

Branding and marketing had to sell stuff, which meant using those precious moments gained via interruption to deliver information relevant to buying.

How is it that we now look at marketing and expect the exact opposite? 

It's as if the best social media campaigns are those that sell absolutely nothing, but otherwise somehow contribute to the esoteric, absolute value of branding...something so vitally important that it can't be measured by such inconsequential metrics as, well, sales?

My gut tells me that 2009 will be the year that the ad industry comes to terms with this disconnect.  Not necessarily because it wants to, but because a crappy economy is going to make it ever-harder to tolerate such non-results results.  The chattering class of advocates for the stuff will have to finally put up or shut up, and leave their made-up metrics behind.  Selling isn't a dirty word, and it can’t be wholly left out of the new media marketing equation.

If the junk coming from Burger King is celebrated as smart marketing, then so should a car wreck.  Both accomplish pretty much the same thing for businesses.

Car Companies as Mutual Funds

I had a chance to present to members of the Luxury Marketing Council of Southern California a few weeks ago, and they challenged my thinking -- and got me thinking -- about how to apply a brand is behavior approach to selling autos coming out of Detroit.

One of the prompts was a simple question: "What could Cadillac to get me to forsake replacing my Acura RL with another one two years from now, and buy domestic instead?" Another participant commented “Will the Chevy Volt be a success, considering both the wait (two years or more), and likely price point of $40,000 or more?”

I had to think about things a bit more before I could formulate a reasonable response. And then it hit me:

There's nothing that the traditional branding and marketing playbook can offer Detroit.  If the next round of vehicles are churned through the same communications machine that last year burned through $6 billion, the companies are doomed.  There's just not enough time to effect the incremental change in consumer buying habits; remember, the switchover to Asian imports took decades, not years.  And that would presume that the marketers could invent marketing that actually worked.

Further, there's just not enough variability in the metal and functions of the vehicles to build a case for differentiation. 

More and more, cars are tending to resemble one another, perform like one another, and last about the same amount of time.  Sure, there are differences, and some of them are very nuanced, but I don't think that claims of a smooth ride or handy cupholders carry the legitimacy that they once did.  Service offers and promotional prices are effectively generic.

Add on top of it all the fact that credit is still tight, and people are feeling financially strapped, so there are some serious externalities affecting Detroit's ability to sell cars, even if people want to buy them.  Branding can't overcome these problems. 

But I think a radically new business strategy might do it.  I think the Detroit automakers should function as if they were mutual funds.

Instead of buying or leasing a hunk of metal, consumers would buy a share or portion of the company; they'd literally "buy into" the idea that these companies matter, and can provide goods and services that other people would want to buy.  Actual vehicles and service coverage would "cost" some level(s) of investment in the company; you could buy a portion of a future vehicle, and hope that the value of your investment would increase over time.

More importantly, this set-up would create a number of positive, shared incentives:

• For starters, the value of your shares would go up if other people bought in, so there'd be a real incentive to evangelize for your company
• As a shareholder, you'd take a more serious interest in how the vehicles were manufactured and distributed, which would provide the basis for lots of social media interaction and collaboration (instead of chat about whether or not you like the ads).
• Shareholders would vest more fully over time, providing a growing and powerful incentive to both stay engaged, and be a loyal buyer.  Imagine frequent driver points as an added benefit

I have no idea how it would be structured, or whether it would even work. 

But imagine if the U.S. government didn't give the bailout money directly to the automakers, but instead handed Americans checks, and told them to make an investment in one or more of the companies. 

Talk about building accountability into the disbursement. And maybe it would be a business strategy that actually had a chance of working?

An Opaque Bubble

I'm tired of the easy, incessant media references to stock markets as things, or entities with emotions or opinions. 

We now know that markets are indicative of little more than their own limitations.  They're opaque bubbles, and assigning any further meaning to them is a distraction, if not an outright lie.

That's not to say that markets don't play a vital role in our economy, or that they're not internally consistent.  Maintaining places where equity can be raised, ownership distributed, and value assigned is not just a nice thing, but a foundational core of Capitalism.  Markets, like baseball stadiums, have physical boundaries and game rules, so what happens on the floors and fields makes sense therein.  Prices and batting averages have meaning that is far more real and useful than, say, a government or gaggle of sports writers deciding the numbers and decimals.

But what do markets tell us about the real world or, more specifically, the companies behind the listings?

First off, valuations have no connection to actual company performance, and certainly aren't indicators of the future.  Stock analysts -- and the media who follow them -- don't have any special insight into what's going on, and companies are ever-more adept at obfuscating their activities (Sarbanes-Oxley notwithstanding).  Worse, companies often don't have particularly accurate insight into what they themselves are doing; witness Citi  or any of the financial institutions that lost zillions of stock value overnight, or companies like United that could, with the tap on a keyboard (and without a shred of explanation) write off billions in "goodwill value."

Then there's the matter of markets that aren't really open or public, but nevertheless exert enormous influence over those that are.  Private equity, and all the secretive, off balance-sheet, un- or under-regulated ways hedge funds and other mechanisms of the wealthy trade profits with one another render the hapless "public" markets as imperfect,  secondary operations of economic life. 

Most financial markets are best understood as trailing mirrors of public sentiment, and otherwise self-referencing systems.  The primary impacts on stock prices are what stock traders (or their autonomous software programs) think other traders think are the primary impacts on stock prices. 

So what does, say, "market reaction" to President Obama's inauguration tell us?  That traders thought other traders might be suspicious, or worried, so they sold, thinking that others might sell, too.  They expressed no shared observations, though, let alone wisdom.  What do we know from assessing the market cap of big brands like Starbucks or Coke?  Primarily, that other assessors might hope that yet other assessors would buy the stock, or not. 

Is there a brand bubble of valuation, as a recently popular book suggests?  Not particularly; the entire market is an opaque bubble, ultimately.  To search for brand value there is more an exercise in creative invention than discovery.

Markets tell us what markets think about markets.  We have no better tool for feeding the cash needs of companies and investors.  But to read any more meaning into it, or derive insights therefrom, aren't activities on which I would necessarily depend. 

Great Placement?

I know many communicators will claim that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but check out the logo on the medic's sweatshirt. 

Context matters, doesn't it?

The branding racket tends to discount the idea, if it's recognized at all.  Brands, and all of the artifacts commensurate with their expression -- logos, slogans, value statements -- have an inherent, absolute quality; the possess meaning that exists a priori to the immediacy of experience, and instead influence and change those moments.  Lots of time and money are spent connecting those attributes to commercial products and services.  Logos on sports stadiums.  Slogans in ads.  Value statements framed on office walls.  The right colors and fonts.

Every imaginable tool can get used to propagate brands into the cosmos, because consumers not only value these associations, but should pay for them over the real functional attributes of a product or service.  We all live in this imaginary world populated by Platonic ideals of brands and branding.  Everything is a brand experience.

So what branding is the stretcher-bearer accomplishing for HP?

Granted, he wasn't photographed holding a gun, or was the subject of a news report that he'd done something bad or illegal.  But you really can't avoid recognizing the HP logo on his sweatshirt.  That means the HP brand was a part, however virtually, of that guy's entire day...the moment the pic was snapped, and every other moment during what must have been a horrendous experience.  Dozens, if not hundreds of people were exposed to the logo and catchphrase.  Even if he did nothing but acts of selfless goodness, the context of the HP brand engagement was lots of bloody bodies, screaming people, and general mayhem.

It's an egregious example of the same question we should ask of logos slapped on sports stadiums, airline napkins, or the multitude of corporate PR events that are presumed to say or attach immutable attributes to brands. 

Recognition is better than non-recognition, or so the canon goes, only it doesn't take into account context (staring at the corporate name on a stadium as I sit trapped in traffic is a harmless version of stretcher-guy's exposure).  What gets attached to brands has far more to do with what's going on around them, whether immutably or transitory.  And I'm not sure said attachment lasts far beyond the next contextual moment (flipping fMRI VU meters aside).

Our knowledge, opinions, and base recognition aren't static states, but rather ongoing, fluid products of experience.  Brands don't have things attached to them as much as things attach to brands depending on the context. 

So maybe those HP sweatshirts seemed like a smart idea at the developer conference or employee event for which they were created.  No problem.  But it's foolish to consider them, or any other artifact of branding, as being consistent or absolute outside of the moments in which they're used.  

P.S. Mark Hurd, HP's CEO, earned $34 million last year, it was reported yesterday, as he's credited with tripling the company’s profits.  Two thoughts for you:

1. He is responsible for slashing 40,000 jobs at HP, and
2. HP has spent millions on "The Computer is Personal Again" branding.

So...I wonder where the profits came from...and where they're getting spent?

P.S.S. The photo was by Suhaib Salem for Reuters

Your Name Here

In the novel Infinite Jest, author David Foster Wallace invented a hilarious, if not somewhat frightening future, in which corporations could sponsor pretty much every aspect of life, up to underwriting years of the calendar.  Much of the book takes place during the Year of the Depend Undergarment.

I'm thinking maybe he was more creative than prescient (and, sadly, he's also dead, a victim by his own hand last year).

The amounts of money spent on corporate sponsorships and celebrity endorsements would shock you if somebody handed you a list.  Citi committed $400 million to put its name on the new Mets ballpark.  AIG spends almost $100 million annually to have its logo on the jerseys of the Manchester United soccer team.  GM paid Tiger Woods almost $60 million over the past decade to stand next to a Buick.

And for what?  branding, of course.

The logic, if you can call it that, relies on the premise that you can

• Associate disparate ideas, often by simply placing images or words next to one another
• Deliver this information to consumers, usually by putting it in front of them, or hoping they'll see it as they drive by 
• Rely on consumers retaining this information, which can only be sensed via queries about that very information, via polls, focus groups, etc.
• Presume that they'll keep said information sacrosanct, and not modify or lose it based on other associations presented to them (incessantly so, by the way), and 
• Expect them to apply those remembered associations to their subsequent purchase decisions, whenever and wherever they might occur

Can you imagine trying to draw that flowchart on a wall, let alone make the case for it, in front of a management team or board of directors living today?

I'd put sponsorships in the realm of out there marketing.  No, not in the sense of being cutting-edge or strange, but rather because it requires that there's a there out there -- somewhere -- wherein these associations are forged, perpetuated, and used.

I expect that our current economic predicament is going to make the out there marketing approach a lot less attractive.  2009 will most certainly have a sponsor, but it won't be Depends, or any other commercial enterprise.

2009 is being brought to us by something called Necessity.  I think it might be called the Year of Doing Things For Measurable Reasons. 

Code Words & Secret Meanings

When Procter & Gamble lowered its sales outlook in the middle of last month, it offered up the most traditional, generic excuses for what was wrong...and what it intended to do about it.  The one novel item in the announcement garnered no more media scrutiny than the lame rationale that surrounded it.

The company is suffering from pantry deloading.

No, I'm not kidding.  According to the Wall Street Journal's investigative reporting on the subject, pantry deloading is a common term in the consumer products industry, and it refers to the syndrome of consumers actually using the stuff on their cupboard shelves instead of simply adding to them.

It never occurred to me that consumer products marketing was dependent on an ever spiraling upward escalation in the items stuffed in pantries.  Did you?

It seems that consumer consumption of products is a bad thing for P&G's premium brands; when the caps need to come off, the boxtops torn, and the packages otherwise opened, folks are opting for lower-priced brands and store brands (called "private label").  Perhaps P&G brands are purchased more as prized possessions, meant to be preserved and enjoyed...perhaps prominently displayed for family and friends to appreciate?

Pantry deloading.  What an intriguing concept.  So what is P&G going to do about it? 

• Coming out with new permutations of its premium brands (and new ones altogether)
• Beating up the media to get better advertising rates

Just how these actions address the issue of pantry deloading, the company hasn't said  If consumers don't feel the need to buy premium brands currently, what makes P&G think that they'll want more choices?  And getting better ad rates might lower the cost of marketing, but it has no correlation to its efficacy; brands that don't compel people to purchase don't get more compelling if the advertising cost less.

I'm sure that I'm missing a lot on this one.  P&G has driven brand marketing in consumer packaged goods for a long time. It effectively invented the idea of a soap opera, and has recently won awards at Cannes. 

But relevance and utility are drivers of consumer purchase these days (I'd wager that they always were, only less obviously so when times were more flush).  Premium brands can't just offer to make you feel better...but rather, they must do things better, faster, more often, longer, etc.  "Need is the new want" in this networked economy of ours, and a price surcharge for a brand name without some substantive, survive-the-light-of-day benefits just won't cut it any longer.

It sure won't combat that nasty pantry deloading going on.

The Cosmic Significance of Flatulence

The journal Science last week reported that large plumes of methane gas had been detected on Mars, suggesting the possibility of geological or biological activity that are often associated with the presence of life.

Finally, flatulence gets its good name back as an indicator of a good things.

Living things produce approximately 90 percent of all the methane gas on Earth. It's a chemical sign that transformative biological processes have occurred, usually involving digestion.  The Mars researchers believe they've sensed seasonal differences in methane levels, which is reminiscent of the variation in the gas we might see here between, say, before and after a big dinner.

So is it possible that the key indicator of what would be the most incredible discovery in all of human history...is a giant fart?

Finding things based on their antecedents, by-products, or aftermath is a pretty standard scientific approach.  Since all physical actions have reactions, that means everything that is observable is somehow, someway, sometime causally related to everything else.  Equations are the literal maps of such interactions; theories are the models that propose the linkages.

And then observation and measurement are the litmus tests that differentiate fact from really neat and/or hilarious propositions.

You can probably see where I'm going with this one: why can't we similarly lower ourselves to the same base level of physical truth when we look for evidence of brands?

No qualitative survey or focus group can claim causal relevance for branding to purchase decisions; there's no linkage can can be measured, only a connection inferred.  Suggested.  Implied.  Same goes for the outbound branding prior to purchases.  We can try to measure, whether via conversation or fMRI sensing devices, what aspects of brands somehow register -- for the moment we choose to sense them -- but these mental states remain outside the purview of any direct connection to buying.

We can't write equations for brands, because they steps aren't linked by anything more substantive than dotted lines on PowerPoint slides, or the aspirational hopes of our employers and clients.

Instead of basing our branding equations on the demonstrable reality of who, what, where, when, and why people buy things from us, we chose to measure the vague merits of brand intention, presence, engagement, promises, or whatever.  That's just not the same as measuring, say, the levels of methane gas in the Martian atmosphere, because there are only two ways it got there.  And you don't need a glossy metaphor to describe or understand them.

So where's our flatulence in the marketing world?  I fear that it's mostly generated by all the experts who still have no real idea what they're talking about.