Jonathan Salem Baskin's Dim Bulb

Why Now?

A number of dim bulbers emailed me this week to complain that it was dumb for spokesceleb Mike Rowe to add the phrase "why not?" to the end of Ford's tagline "why Ford, why now" in a new TV commercial.

I actually don't like the "why now" part.

Answering a rhetorical question is a valid communications approach, and it's even a business strategy if it has a purpose other than declaring truth into the cosmos.  Telling people that your burgers are juicy, cost less, or available at 2 a.m. presumes some part of your audience might be hungry.  Southwest Airlines' "you're free to move about the country" line answers the query "I want to go somewhere," even though it might not have been articulated immediately prior.  I get it.

There are a zillion reasons people aren't buying cars like the old days back in 2007, and not many of the biggest questions have anything to do with Ford.  Economic meltdown anybody?  College savings evaporated?  IRA values at a fraction of what they were a few years ago?  Quick, name three friends who've lost their jobs in the past six months (it's OK to count yourself).

And let's not forget the vehicle quality revolution, which means lots of vehicles don't fall apart as fast as they used to, so there's much less of an organic replacement market...and it's not coming back.

So why Ford?  Well, because it has won a lot of awards; the cars are the best at this, most at that.  Initial quality.  Gas mileage.  These are arguably really good machines, and Ford deserves lots of extra credit for its foresight in borrowing a lot of money, and firing a lot of people, before its Detroit brethren got around to doing it.  Consumers need to know this stuff; the brand must be repositioned.

No, it doesn't.  It needs to answer real questions people are asking and, unless your car is about to fall apart, the pressing issue isn't "why Ford" but rather "why buy a new anything, let alone a new car?"

By not addressing this contextual reality, all of the otherwise valid claims come across as somewhat irrelevant, don't they?  I mean, every car wins awards of one sort or another; there are services like J.D. Power that exist to sell this affirmation to any company that'll pay, not to mention all of the gearhead magazines that'll pretty much recognize every car for one or another honor.

Worse, all these factual statements and accolades get reduced to lines of text superimposed on marketing imagery...i.e. they get drained of any authenticity and uniqueness, and translated into brandingspeak.  Ford even trolls the blogosphere to capture discussions about its brand, standardizes the feeds and formats, and tees it up on a special website.  Voila!  Ersatz conversation, only most of it was once real (well, except for the content picked up from friendly ad agencies).

Ford should figure out why somebody might need to go to a dealership to test drive a car today.  Right now.  The answer isn't going to be because Ford is a great company; it's going to be because:

• A third-party, not Ford, says "buy now" to the community that trusts it
• An individual says it to a family member or friend who needs a new car
• The company provides a compelling incentive that truly changes the game

Without one or more of these reasons, they're left with only one answer to the question of why Ford, why now?

Why not?

My Right To Slaughter Mutants

A trade group representing video game makers is suing the Chicago Transit Authority for the right to advertise “mature” and “adults only” games on the sides of buses, evidencing that the industry continues to have difficulties growing up.

Video games aren't movies, and they aren't just another format for presenting the same content you might find a book: they're intense, engaging, perception-modifying, and sometimes more “real” than real.  I speak from experience, having enjoyed playing them since the days of Pong, and I'm a fan.  In fact, I think the potential for games as entertainment and education goes far beyond titles that let players slaughter mutants or flip playing cards.

But to ignore the fact that participatory experience can perhaps influence kids, and sometimes become a harmful obsession, is like saying addiction is just an extreme form of like.  Or that love is only a little more than friendship.  If big brand spend billions every year trying to influence people’s lives via 30-second TV commercials, how could anybody claim that playing an ultra-sick video game for 18 hours wouldn’t have any impact?

And to ignore the fact that the content of most titles is about as nuanced and profound as a sharp stick in the eye is to miss the immense amount of work still ahead for this industry.  Game designer Adrian Hon presented on this topic (Why Stories In Games Suck) at a conference last month, and I think he summed things up quite well.  Crap pays.

These two points -- the game industry's lack of self-introspection, and the fact that the most violent, evil crap is what sells the best -- are what's driving the ESA's lawsuit against the CTA.

The association should be spending the member companies' contributions on creating the platform and structure for the real entertainment industry that games should become: 

• Aggressively sponsoring alternate approaches to using the medium, like that coming from The Game Company
• Paying scholarships for a new generation of creators and designers who will invent games that don't rely on the first-person shooter model
• Inventing a real, meaningful ratings service (the ESA claims an advertising review council, but it's invisible on its website), and coming up with certification and awards for various contributors to the creative and technical integrity of the industry
• Researching the implications of game experience, both positive and negative, and helping game designers understand what they're playing with

Every time I dare to write about video games, I always get feedback from gamers who scream that games don't promote violence (after all, movies and music don't, right?), and that the right of free speech is all that matters.  They're wrong on both counts, just like the industry they so adamantly defend.

Keeping the world safe for potential unsafe games will never earn the industry the widespread acceptance it deserves...or could deserve.  Defending my rights to slaughter mutants gets it no further toward this goal, presuming that it even sees it.

15 Years

I just re-read The Economist's "Future Tense: The Global CMO" survey from late last year.  And I'm not encouraged that there's even a future for the job description.

The report reflected results from a survey of 250+ senior marketing execs around the world, so it's far more of a snapshot of the present than an insight into what the future might reveal.  EIU.com normally studies countries and other substantive subjects; this report was sponsored by Google, which has an obvious interest in what CMOs think they're supposed to be doing.

To its credit, the report doesn't extrapolate or wax poetic on the responses, but rather summarizes them, like when it repeats the buzzword-impaired sentiments of some interviewees that CMOs move into "...a more 'transformative' role across the enterprise, driving innovation through the business and becoming evangelists of customer engagement."

This leaves the poetic waxing possibilities to people like me.  :)

So when I read the major conclusions of the study, I couldn't help but imagine what the CMOs were really saying:

What they said: Centralization is more important than localization.

What they really said: We want control so we can preserve our jobs.

The language they use to talk about brands (strategy and delivery) is still frighteningly 20th Century, even as they doff their virtual hats to digital marketing and conversational media.  An overwhelming majority of them think that local -- the step between brilliant ideas and consumers in Mumbai or Des Moines -- is an executional step...just details on the back-end of global thinking.  They think this isn't going to change anytime soon, when of course it already has happened.

What they said: Conferences/events are the most important marketing activity.

What they really said: These gigs are where I can showcase my accomplishments to would-be employers.

Again, the PC terms of online/digital whatever are repeated as useful channels, but since the definitions of brands are still 1) centralized, 2) based on ideas, not actions, then marketing activities remain distinctly tactical, static and inert; a two-way conversation that prompts no behavior isn't any better than a one-way pitch that failed the same way.

What they said: Brand-building is far more important than customer acquisition, lead generation, cross-selling, or customer retention.

What they really said: We don't understand that true nature of the change that has occurred in our world, or in our companies.

All those messy operational things that constitute how a business functions are where brands emerge, are validated, and are subsequently grown (or damaged).  Marketing's role in that evolution decreases with every day that a CMO focuses on talking about branding.  Combined with points 1 & 2, they don't see empowering the folks on the ground responsible for maintaining the brands to do anything about it...yet it's "the most important thing?"

What they said: The most important ROI for media campaigns is awareness surveys (just as important as sales/revenue results).

What they really said: We want to keep our options open on how we measure success, so we can do a better job at Point # 2.

I understand the predicament those CMOs feel they're in: the world is changing, and their primary job is to keep their jobs.  But this report reveals a vision of the future that's identical to that of today, only with more blinking lights and less specificity of how exactly marketing will contribute to things other than innovation.  They use really vague, mushy concepts to describe a world wherein everything is so digitally rendered.

My gut tells me that the big observation would be to acknowledge that marketing, as a stand-alone function, might be going the way of the dinosaur, and that its subject matter expertise is already being distributed throughout, and by, the entire enterprise.

"Future Tense: The Global CEO" states that the CMO title barely existed 15 years ago.  Maybe it's a transitional role that won't even exist 15 years from now?

The Bulb Asks:

• Is what people do with your brand more important than what you say about it?
• How is the idea of "control" translated into reality?  What does marketing really control?
• Aren't there marketers/marketing activities already embedded in every department?

Don't Check Your Guitar

A Canadian musician named Dave Carroll thought it was a good idea to hand off his prized guitar as checked baggage on a United flight, and then was so incensed when it was returned to him smashed that he recorded a song about it -- "United Breaks Guitars" -- posted it on YouTube, and got more than 3.5 million views.

Out of the 14,000+ comments he got, I didn't see one that stated the obvious: How dumb do you have to be to check your guitar?

Everyone knows the stories, whether true or apocryphal, about baggage handlers: they're rough, careless, and the mouseprint on the tickets absolves them of any liability short of committing murder.  American Tourister had a popular TV commercial a while back that featured a suitcase getting mauled by a playful chimp.  Even if Carroll had one of those hard cases that was tested to survive a nuclear blast, he should have know it would be stupid to check his computer, collection of crystal glasses, or precious acoustic guitar.

Only he didn't, and instead got pissed off when United refused to ante up to pay for his mistake.  It seems that airlines are liable up to $1250/passenger for damage to luggage, not to what might be inside it.  United's policy explicitly states that it's not liable "for damage to fragile items."

So he wrote a funny song and shot a funny video, and now we have an illustrative case history on the power of UGC and social media.  Or not.  Past the pageviews and colorful comments, I'd ask that we check a few other metrics that might be relevant:

• Did United's bookings go down (or up) while folks were tuning into YouTube?
• Did its complaints go up (or down) from travelers with baggage damage issues?
• Did travelers learn anything new about United (or air travel in general)?

Does the popularity of the video illustrate the power of individual consumers over large, anonymous organizations?  If so, then the measures should be some change in United's policy (which hasn't changed at all, as far as I can tell).

So what does it tell us?  I say that United missed a chance to ride the wave, and get some free exposure:

• It should have videotaped its own response (after all, one silly song deserves another).  Maybe Ms. Irlweg, who Carroll named in his video as the most-unhelpful customer rep, could have riffed on all the objects she was relieved he hadn't chosen to check
• How about starting a contest for other people to post videos about what they love or hate about the airline?  Let people register and get frequent flier miles for participating; there's really no such thing as bad publicity, is there?
• Carroll is debuting a second video about his conversations with United, so why didn’t the company offer to co-create it with him?  Clearly, he sees this as his track to fame, and he seems like a good guy, so why not co-opt him?

I'm not sure there'll be any lasting impact for this swift exchange of UGC and viewer commentary, any more than the swapping of Iran tweets resulted in more than convenient, and passing, indignation.

Well, maybe after all is said and done, there's one lesson that will have been learned:

Don't check your guitar.

The Bulb Asks:

• Could companies do more "responding in kind" to social media/UGC?
• All viral stories ultimately disappear into The Muddle; could a strategy be to hasten that evolution?
• If you can't beat 'em, why not join 'em?

Naming Rights Gone Wrong

"People are mistaken when they see tall buildings as symbols of a corporation," said a spokeswoman for Willis Group Holdings, which changed the name of Chicago's Sears Tower earlier this month.

She's right.  Willis made a big mistake.

Willis is a financial services company based in the UK.  It's leasing 140,000 sq. ft. of space in the building, and naming rights came along with the deal.  So it deleted the label that had been on the structure since its construction in 1973.

The Sears Tower is a landmark, branded by its very existence.  A generation or two have grown up knowing it as such, even if we know that Sears doesn't have anything to do with it anymore (the company moved to smaller digs in the suburbs years ago).  Maps, brochures, and countless family photo albums preserve the legacy.

I'm not sure what Willis accomplishes if it rewrites that recognition, presuming that it's even possible.

I am sure that there's lots of blather from branding experts to conceptually support the hope.  Perhaps Willis hopes to sell stuff directly to consumers.  Maybe it needs to market itself to B2B partners and clients.  Of all the ways available to tell the world what might be most important or relevant toward realizing these goals, the company chose to put its name on a skyscraper...and thus accomplished the same thing as doing so on a sports stadium: it declares authentic, credible, and that we've arrived.

Or not.

I'd suggest that it’s more like the real estate corollary of a celebrity endorsement.  The hope is that the brand can trade on the value (or awareness) of the physical property and, in this case, Willis hopes that it'll get recognition for, well, putting its name over the original name of a really tall building that everyone knows is named Sears.  Maybe it'll pay off in 30 years, or however long it takes for everyone who remembers the Sears name to die.

The worst part of all this is that Willis missed an opportunity to really make a difference for its brand.

It turns out that it plans to pour zillions into making the building some green miracle, install a luxury hotel, yadda yadda.  It has already put in some gut-wrenching glass-bottomed observation deck.  It's actually making the building very much different.

The marketing strategy should have been to make all those changes and only then rename the structure.  It would have been naming what had effectively become a new building, and been a platform to associating all those good, real-world improvements with the Willis name.  All the steps along the way would have generated interest and media coverage, thereby substantiating the ultimate anointing of the tower with a new label.

Unfortunately, it got its naming rights all wrong.

The Bulb Asks:

• Do names affect our opinions, or versa visa?
• Beyond awareness, do sponsorships really communicate anything substantive?
• Did Sears ever benefit one iota from having a building named after it? 

True Lies

A recent Nielsen study revealed that people most trust what their friends say about stuff, and that they trust generic online consumer opinions as much as they do branded communications.

I think this has more to do with the contextual reality of the expectations than it does with any inherent trustworthiness in a particular communications medium (or lack thereof).

Media are agnostic when it comes to meaning and utility, or so this dim bulb believes.  TV isn't more or less authentic than the Internet, and information gathered from a chat room won't inherently prove more useful than the same info copied from a roadside billboard.  What differentiates trustworthy content from that which is lesser so has everything to do with, well, content -- i.e. what is being communicated -- and the context in which it's being shared (i.e. the immediately obvious and beneficial use for the information).

As such, trust is based on expectations: if I know that TV ads are generally funny but reasonably devoid of motivating info, I'll trust them to perform to those low standards (a result borne out by another Nielsen study on advertising), so it's less distrust and more the absence of it altogether?  If I usually associate texts on my phone with friends or other reasonably intimate info, and I get generic sales pitches instead, I'm going to learn to trust that channel to tell me nothing useful, too (also confirmed by the Nielsen research).

So, conversely, if I were surprised by some consistent delivery of meaning and utility via TV spots, my trust would increase, as would my appreciation of mobile marketing if it similarly improved? 

The Nielsen data seems to support such extrapolation: the most trusted "form of advertising" is a recommendation from a friend, which is something you'd expect to have merit coming from someone you know (or in response to a direct question); some of the lowest are online video and ads before movies, which are presented without regard to the who, what, where, when, or why of context.  It doesn't help that the content is often purposely pointless.

Why do "branded websites" tie "consumer opinions posted online" for trustworthiness?  Similar expectations: the corporation is going to throw blah blah at me, and the aggregate conclusions of the crowd are going to trend toward some common denominator.  In both cases, we get what we pay for, so to speak.

It's marvelously intriguing information.  Just think how many marketers are running away from traditional media, like newspapers or radio, because they think consumers don't trust them anymore?  An equal number of them are racing to embrace social media campaigns because they are assumed to be more trustworthy.  

Both assumptions are wrong.  Why don't we focus on making the conduct of our businessesmeaningful and useful, and then structure the marketing communications to deliver that information?

The Bulb Asks:

• Is the best way to answer a question to wait for somebody to actually ask it?
• If trust emerges from experience, can we improve any medium's ranking?
• Are consumers themselves the ultimate source of marketing-relevant content?

Just Another Secret Code

The newly reformulated Powerade contains "ION4," and the branding emphasizes the secret code for this new concoction at the expense of the name of the product.  I'm not sure that’s such a smart thing to do.

The brand refresh actually makes a lot of sense.  Gatorade invented the sports drink category in the mid-60s, and recently went through its own update, though of logo and not recipe.  Powerade has always seemed like an also-ran, introduced a few decades later and commanding less than a fifth of Gatorade's market.  So its product development decided to play to this circumstance of history, and claim a better, more current understanding of the hydration needs of the human body.

ION4 is "The Advanced Electrolyte System" that makes it work better and faster that Gatorade's 50 year-old science, or so Powerade's marketing would have us believe.  Its strategy to label these ingredients, and feature it prominently in its labeling and advertising.

I think it obfuscates a potentially useful functional benefit with some outdated thinking about branding.

You've never heard of ION4 before.  It's a made-up term, probably confirmed by Coca-Cola's crack legal team to connote no meaning or sense of ownership anywhere on the planet.  So I can't imagine that anyone is comforted by its mention, let alone inspired by it, or terribly interested in taking the time to decipher what it might mean.  It's not like a community of sports enthusiasts created it, or some loose affiliation of sports doctors have heralded its invention.  

It's secret code, which is another dumb vestige of schmarty-pants branding.

Marketers filled the latter-part of the 20th Century with lots of nonsense claims and terms for product benefits: more surfactants in dishwashing liquid; greater stain-removal power in laundry detergent; added somethingoranother in gas.  It still happens a lot today, as evidenced by Comcast's claims of super-dooper Internet speeds, or the nonsense propagated about digital music file formats.  They're all secret codes that marketers presume to claim, and then offer as unique benefits. 

Only they're not.  I'd argue that consumers either don't have time for this nonsense, or they're empowered and motivated to see through it.  ION4 requires more explanation; it's more work, not less.  A hurdle, not shorthand.

Wouldn't it have been lots easier and more obvious to stick a "new" or "improved" starburst violator on everything?  That's another tried-and-true tactic, only its simpler, and it lets the brand keep visual space for, er, the brand name.  All the creative talent that went to the elaborate web site to present ION4 could have been directed at making the our-formulation-is-current-and-theirs-isn’t positioning more immediate and motivating. 

Instead, we get just another secret code.

The Bulb Asks:

• Shouldn't branding make things easier to understand?
• Is a proprietary term worth the cost of making consumers decipher it?
• Why would you ever highlight an ingredient over your product name?

A Starbucks By Any Other Name

A new local coffee-shop called "15th Avenue Coffee and Tea" is opening this week on Seattle's Capitol Hill, only it's not new, nor is it local.  It's a test concept from Starbucks that, if successful, could appear in other markets.

Interestingly, the names of subsequent outlets would be similarly customized to their locations.  This would help give the stores what a Starbucks exec calls "a community personality," as the test shop in Seattle will serve alcohol, host live music and poetry readings, and otherwise do whatever it can to come across as a local indie experience.

Is this brilliant branding, or aggressively creative lying?

"Local" has cachet these days, I suspect because folks expect it to correlate with qualities like authenticity, community, and a broader definition of profit and loss (more direct connections between revenue and the success of the local marketplace, like Vox Pop's example; better green policies that'll preserve the local environment, etc.). 

Some brilliantly conceived brands have gotten grilled for lacking these attributes, like the opposition Wal-Mart regularly gets to its store expansion, or the uproar a few years ago over the toys that Mattel manufactures faraway that don't look so safe close-up.  Micro-breweries continue to steal customers from the big beer brands. 

So I get the impetus to look local. I just wonder if being local is the same thing, or whether consumers are interested in the difference?

Beyond branding, there's nothing local whatsoever about Starbucks new store concept; like the craft beer labels coming from Anheuser-Busch/Michelob, we're talking labels.  Look-and-feel.  15th Avenue Coffee and Tea hopes to repurpose a tired Starbucks location with marketing.  It's an excruciatingly traditional strategy that's somewhat dishonest, however brilliantly it might be conceived.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Imagine if Starbucks (or any galactically-large retail brand) came up with a model for its outlets that was truly local:

• Site: Physical space configured and designed to fit unique real estate
• Employment: Recruiting nearby, and training based on unique customs
• Benefits: Individualized by location, from healthcare to support services
• Sourcing: Purchasing nearby products and services
• Offering: Custom products/configurations based on tastes of clientele
• Community: Profit/loss closely tied to charities, schools, etc.
• Management: Future developments keyed to local feedback & needs

The problem, of course, is that operating as a truly local store would obviate all of the habits and economies of scale that make global brands possible, let alone profitable.  But maybe there's a middle ground?  If Starbucks could operationalize at least some of these qualities, it might be a helluva lot more marketable and sustainable than a new branding concept. 

Right now, 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea is nothing more than a Starbucks by another name.

The Bulb Asks:

• Is consumer knowledge/awareness changing what they expect from brands?
• Is "conversation" what matters, or what subjects businesses put up for discussion?
• If the brand name isn't working, do you fix the name or the underlying business?

And We Go Pre, Pre

The latest TV spot for Palm's Pre smartphone resurrects a song from the early 1980s, and uses it as background for some pale wisp of an actress to spout off zen nonsense about traffic lights turning green.

It seems to build on an earlier spot featuring the same android-like androgynous woman surrounded by hundreds of monks in orange gowns dancing Busby Berkeley patterns as she chants about her life.

Though it's all quite atrocious, at least it's consistent.

The Pre deserves better.  It has received pretty good reviews, and the folks at Palm have serious claims to owning a lot of the history and thought leadership in the area of smart mobile devices.  It also faces a ton of smart, well-financed competition from RIMS (Blackberry) and Apple's iPhone.  So it risks being an also-ran, or just another gizmo that doesn't make consumers' consideration lists.

The challenge is to carve out a unique position, or purpose, for the Pre.  Find a thing or activity that it uniquely enables or supports.  Risk being explicit on a functional benefit (or list thereof, if the phone is a good as I think it is).  Help consumers finish the sentence "I should consider a Pre because..."

The branding campaign for the Pre doesn’t even come close to meeting that challenge.

I'm all forgiving new life to the song "Doot Doot," from the West German band Freur.  I would have never connected it to a smartphone; it's this ethereal, kinda sad dirge that always gave me an existential German oh-this-is-so-horribly-beautiful vibe.  The band was famous for about a nanosecond before returning to the ether.  They deserved better, just like the Pre.

But the campaign confuses tone with content, and this presumption that we can connect disparate emotions to things -- instead of consumers doing the connecting through their experience -- leads lots of otherwise smart marketers down the wrong path.  It would have been a lot stronger had the creative been based not on making some abstract point, but rather told us something concrete and memorable. 

Then the Pre branding gurus could have gone out and found a song to use.  Maybe something with the chorus "better management of contacts" or "I found the website faster."  Hell, AT&T paid Oasis millions to write a song from scratch for its commercials a few years ago (oops...but it said nothing, and you only heard two beats of it).

The Bulb Asks:

• Isn't what you say a lot more important than how you say it?
• Should we expect busy consumers to deconstruct imagery and messaging?
• Does talking about a bad commercial prove that there's no such thing as bad PR?

Zappos Drinks The Kool-Aid?

Zappos let 22 marketing agencies aggregate in Las Vegas last week to vie for the honor of spending $7 million of its money on "evolving our brand" next year. 

It should reimburse them for their expenses, and forget the entire shebang.

Zappos was the poster child darling for a brand that's based on customer service, quality, and all the other attributes we normally ascribe to reality.  I can't tell you how many times I've referenced its "no marketing spend" strategy as an example of how to do branding right.  It put all its cash into customer service, and thereby turned every purchase (or service issue) into an opportunity to satisfy and delight customers (and attract others). 

Now, it's trying to dilute that approach, at best, and perhaps blow it up entirely. 

It floated an RFP to a starving and frightened agency community, asking for ideas about getting brand awareness for Zappos "...as more than a shoe retailer..." (and generating campaigns to drive sales and acquire customers).  104 agencies responded with spec creative, gifts, pizzas, and other sundry gestures of self-immolation.  Little more than 1/5 of them were chosen to fly to Vegas for the honor of begging on both knees.  At least one of the agencies that wasn't selected claimed that its RFP response got all of a minutes' worth of review. 

Forget for that minute that Zappos violated its own principles in the conduct of this process, as soliciting free ideas from would-be vendors is an old, cheap trick that tends to offend or outright turn-off everyone so abused (the rejected suitors will total 103 agencies when it's all said and done, so how many thousands of people, and their friends, is that?).  There's an even bigger question:

Why does it think it needs an agency?

It has already run some ads in national mags, and had at least one guerrilla campaign last year that put its logo in airport security bins.  But the bread and butter of this brand has never had anything to do with the detritus of branding.  No image management.  No positioning.  No complicated stratergy about associated emotions, benefits, blah blah blah.  It got to where it is today in large part because it avoided the typical nonsense marketers tell businesses to do, and focused instead on the business as its best marketing to tell people about itself.

So something must have changed.  Maybe it hired a new top marketer, who is doing what every new top marketer does, and bringing in outside help to "evolve the brand."  Maybe it is getting cold feet, and worrying whether its tried-and-true approach will keep working.  Or maybe it has gotten lazy and disconnected, and actually thinks that its success means it can do no wrong. 

What Kool-Aid is Zappos drinking?

The Bulb Asks:

• Isn't it a bad idea to violate your own principles?
• What got you to where you are works, by definition, so don't give it up too easily?
• What can imaginative branding accomplish that operational reality can't?