Jonathan Salem Baskin's Dim Bulb

Evolutionary Marketing

There's an emerging field in science called evolutionary medicine in which the causes for some diseases and chronic afflictions are found in the conflicts between the varied rates of change among human beings, the pathogens that haunt them, and the context of the environment in which it all exists.

It's an interesting model to explain autoimmune disorders, like Crohn's, which have emerged since we improved our hygiene and killed the parasites that used to live in our guts. Our bodies still expect them to be there and go about attacking themselves; enough evolutionary cycles haven't passed to rewire our systems yet. Ditto for higher rates of cancer (we get it more often than other species), since the potentially deadly aspects of our environment have changed more quickly than our bodies. The outcomes are based on these disconnects...

Isn't there a similar disconnect between how fast and widespread the changes have been in technology and culture, and how our human minds (and souls) are still pretty much identical to what they were in the 14th Century? For instance, maybe the growth in social media popularity isn't because consumers are embracing it, but rather a symptom of their alienation from other media. Would this perspective change the way we use it?

I wonder what would happen if we marketers spent less time believing that our job is to embrace the new and instead better understood the conflicts with what's old. 

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?

Evolution Is A Lie, Too

A Burger King franchisee recently chose to market its outlets by taking a position on a contentious issue.  It would be a brilliant move if it wasn't so utterly stupid.

I guess they presume their customers are suspicious of the theory of global warming, so declaring the sentiment would 1) get folks' attention, and 2) make them want to buy a Whopper.

It's no more dumb than any of the social media nonsense BK has initiated over the past few years.  The company prides itself on doing things that insult, offend, or otherwise amuse people with campaigns that it says "participate in the conversation."  None of these campaigns actually sell anything other than some possible street cred for having dared to spend money not selling anything (how totally cool is that, dude?).

It's hard to put street cred in the bank, though.

As for this signage, the franchisee is trying to tell the local base of customer something that matters to them, albeit unrelated to the business or experience of retailing fast food.  The implicit declaration is that McDonald's believes in that commie plot to stop machines from spewing filth into the air.  Buy BK if you're a stalwart for burning oil and coal; hell, let's split some atoms while we’re at it!

This is all they have to tell us about the brand?

Global warming is something the politicos call a wedge issue, because people have strong opinions on it one way or another, and those opinions are less the result of reasoned thought, and more the outcome of more instinctual, heartfelt beliefs.  By choosing it as a trigger for a thought about hamburgers, however briefly, the franchisee is gambling that enough folks will say "hell yeah, I agree and, come to think of it, I need to get me a Whopper." 

Maybe it's easier do to, or a better investment to make, than trying to actually convince would-be customers of some unique BK benefit?  If so, it might suggest other biases that the franchisee might want to consider.  Imagine the next series of signs over its outlets:

• The Jews Did It.  Try Our Grilled Chicken Burrito
• Your Healthcare Coverage Is Fine.  Double Whopper Sale!
• Obama Is A Moslem.  Sausage & Eggs Only $1.49
• Evolution Is A Lie.  Get Two Large Fries For Price Of One

I read that Burger King corporate wasn't too happy with the signage, and went to great lengths to declare that denying global climate change wasn't an official company position.

But between reactionary politics and inane social media campaigns, what is?

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.

Holidays 2008: Social Media Was Just Talk

For all the spending and related buzz about social media this year, it didn't do much for getting folks to actually buy anything, did it?

I know such sentiments amount to damnable heresy.  So many companies are spending so much money on digital campaigns, chat rooms, and on monitoring the incessant chatter that emerges thereby/therefrom.  A multitude of agencies, staffed by enthusiastic experts who've been encouraging such activities, are aggressively promoting more such activities...primarily because so many companies are doing them.  It's cheaper than creating TV commercials, and delivers more eyeballs than a print ad.  Best of all, social media let people interact with, or otherwise touch, your branding. 

Isn't it about time that somebody asked why?

If you haven't already heard about this season's "best" viral campaigns, you will soon: whether an almost-funny little movie about what happens to insensitive husbands and boyfriends from JCPenney, the always-entertaining "dancing elves" e-card from OfficeMax, a similarly customizable makeup toy from Sephora, or another one that I missed...the success will be based on how many people saw, played with, and/or forwarded the stuff. 

But here are some nagging context issues that won't get a lot of coverage:

• The content of these campaigns is inherently more credible if it makes no claims to credibility
• Relevance is directly proportional to authenticity, and indirectly proportional to expectation
• Only the stuff that is apparently worthless possesses any value

It just seems silly to carp about consumers not wanting to buy anything when we spent so much money and creativity avoiding the very suggestion that we wanted to sell stuff to them.

Even some of the most educated tomes on social media require a de facto cognitive dissonance that encourages businesses to work overtime to avoid selling anything.  "That's the old model," or "The language of the Internet is collaboration and consensus."  For every case history offered as a reason to embark on a social media campaign, there's another one held up as an illustrative mistake to avoid (the Motrin Mom catastrophe being one of the latest, or pretty much anything Wal-Mart ever tries to do online).

But what do they illustrate, exactly?

Corporate reputation is already at historic lows, as is customer satisfaction.  For all of the effort companies have made to embrace social media -- what big company doesn't already have somebody blogging because, well, "ya just gotta do it and experiment" -- only 16% of Americans actually trust what those companies blather on about.  Only about one-third of consumers who post anything in a company-involved social media experiment believe they're even heard, let alone subsequently satisfied.

The reality of P2P online sharing, whether as a distribution medium for information or a crucible for the emergence of fact and opinion, is a phenomenon that every business must understand and address.  Its impact reaches far beyond the purview of the folks who do marketing, though: informational sites like Healthytoys.org promise to rewrite the way brands are conceived and delivered to consumers.  

So, for all of the buzz about social media this year, I think we saw that all of that conversation did a lot for agency revenue, and it kept the Twitter crowd busy telling one another how with it they all were.  But making the leap to impacting sales, or building anything sustainable (and sustainably valuable) over time, remained a chasm that has yet to be crossed.  It's the void between fiction and fact.

I think we're seeing that people don't believe companies when we pretend that we're not selling stuff to them.  Corporations have spent the last few years effectively lying to the public, and we're surprised that it hasn't done much for sales?

Andy Warhol's Branding Strategy

Back in the Dark Ages of the late 1960s, pop artist and Crispin Glover-inspiration Andy Warhol once quipped "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes." 

He meant fifteen seconds, right?  Or perhaps the time it takes to post a shot on a social media site (and maybe add a single return volley)?  Maybe it's however long a Super Bowl commercial might be?  If Weathproof Garment Co. had its way, fame could be sliced into increments no longer than three seconds.

That's what the Wall Street Journal reported last week: Weatherproof had proposed to divvy up a 30-second spot with nine other brands, planning to give each about enough time to blurt out a company name. 

5 seconds.

Only guess what?  A quick Internet search reveals that Weatherproof's PR impressario made the same announcement last year, duping mainstream reporters into covering it.  The stunt was quickly exposed, generating lots of virtual press clippings as folks tisk-tisked the entire shebang.

10 seconds.

So is it news current, or past, or maybe never?  Some more checking... 

• The Weatherproof corporate site doesn't have a news report more current than one dated March 3, 2008
• There's no publicly available list of the brands committed to blowing millions of dollars on Super Bowl XLIII
• Most stories on the event focus on 1) how many big names have dropped out of the lavish expense, or 2) the ludicrous lengths marketers like GoDaddy will go to in order to get publicity for whatever they plan to do (or not).

Ah.  Make news with the what if, which prompts a snippet of time far beyond whatever could get bought by a commercial.  Who cares what, how, or why?  Remember, Warhol repeated his 15 seconds-quip for the next few decades, achieving repeat recognition simply because he was recognized repeatedly.   

15 seconds.

It would be tough to find a better, more pure and unadulterated example of the utter inanity of traditional brand thinking. 

Exposure for exposure's sake. 

Distraction in the name of awareness. 

Attitudinal attributions and associations that exist for nothing more than, quite literally, the blink of an eye (or jab in an online forum).

Andy Warhol looks a scream,
Hang him on my wall...
Andy Warhol, silver screen,
Can't tell them apart at all...

Scent of a Burnt Cow

Burger King has debuted a cologne that smells like flame-broiled meat, and I can't decide if it’s a stroke of utter branding brilliance, outright madness, or a little of both.

Flame comes with its own website, on which images of the King doing a full Burt Reynolds in front of a fireplaces are interspersed with generic shots of flowers and nature.  The cologne promises to deliver "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat."  A Barry White wake-up-and-grill-me-somethin-love track plays in the background.  You can click around and actually find a store that sells it.

The cologne concept generally isn't so weird.  Most celebrities have "signature" scents.  So do many fashion brands.  Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has made its stores smell, and imbued its clothing with the odor. 

I suspect Flame is a gimmick, though, don't you?  I mean, the idea that anybody would want to smell like a greasy fire-pit is, well, not all that appetizing.  It brings to mind other olfactory abuses that should never be bottled:

• Swimming pool perfume
• Grade school hallway body wash
• Smoky bar hair conditioner

Also, the very concept of linking the odor of hamburger meat with the way people smell is particularly gross.  Name a food or ingredient that makes people smell good.  Garlic?  Alcohol?  Asparagus?  Yuck.  I don't think eating hamburgers does anything for one's natural odor.  The spray-on version must just make it worse?

But it's a funny joke item, probably not intended for actual use.  I could imagine it as a stocking-stuffer for the kind of guy who stuffs burgers and can (or should) laugh about how bad it makes him smell.  And then it gets put on a shelf, or re-gifted at the next white elephant party.

The bigger question is whether it does anything for the Burger King brand, and whether that branding does anything for its business.  Ultimately, BK needs to sell actual hamburgers, not just a whiff of 'em.

The logic must be similar to the thinking that has driven millions of dollars' worth of propaganda on the Burger King mascot: win share of mind with something irreverent that should be funny to a target demographic (who will "get" the humor), and it'll translate somehow into purchase transactions sometime.

In today's dog-eat-er-dog marketplace, however, I wonder about the wisdom of that note-to-balloon floating approach to brand marketing.  Better, more direct, even more (gasp) obvious connections to behavior might be a smarter way to go, and the creative challenge being to find ways to do that creatively?

Could every bottle of Flame come with a coupon good for a free Whopper, and a visit to a restaurant to "recharge" your scent?  How about some buzz program to encourage guys to actually wear the stuff, and have models pick them out of crowds at bars (by their, er, odor)?  Right now, there's no behavior attached to the cologne, beyond a weak chuckle.

It just seems to me that Burger King exhibits some marvelous invention, and sometimes casual disregard for propriety (which can be cool), but then stops before taking its ideas past the point of branding blather. 

Does an irreverent idea have merits in and of itself, or is a concept that doesn't prompt behavior for a brand just kinda stinky?

Closer

As branding's flu season is in full swing, lots of companies are betting that getting people to transmit content is the same thing as making them interested in buying a product or service.  Few of these flights of viral fantasy amount to anything more than a virtual sneeze. 

Some are better than others, though.  Sephora's Mistletoe Makeover comes closer to actually selling something. 

The idea is simple: upload a picture of someones face, click on inconsequential Photoshopish outlines of eyes and mouth, and then see the pic rendered with sort-of full clown makeup (or is it Victorian prostitute?) and put on top of a jiggly puppet character.  You can add a short message and then email the "surprise" to a friend or world leader.

A few neat tricks happen along the way.  After dolling up your image, the various products used to harlotitize your face drop down as props on the screen; click on them, and you go to the store page.  You can also choose to buy the entire combination of stuff you used.  And, when you're done, you get a set of lashes or a mini-lipstick as a free gift with any purchase.

My bet is that some sales or operational folks had their say in developing this campaign, more than likely to the chagrin of the branding experts.  God forbid anybody did anything with such viral nonsense other than pass it on; even the hint of relevance of purchase was probably a tisk-tisk capitulation to that irritating brand externality called, er, the real world. 

The uneasy sales/marketing accommodation was an accomplishment, no question, but imagine if it had gone further:

• Consumers could go wild with the makeup.  If the thing is truly supposed to be fun, why limit it to applying a combo that can't look real (the finished pics make faces resemble cadavers, though that's maybe just me)?  Why not let people go nuts applying various items, perhaps incentivizing their behavior with greater discounts for more use (drop-in offers as they play) and/or forwarding?  The pretense that the resulting images are supposed to look good is inane, however much on brand it purports to be.
• Let people give discounts to friends.  Duh.  Wouldn't it be nice if consumers could send discounts to one another (there’s an implicit endorsement in that)?  Why not let it be product-specific, perhaps linked to the campaign artwork?  Prices are going to get slashed in-store about 5 minutes ago, so go ahead and link the discounts to something vaguely resembling a branded interaction.
• Have a life/continuation after the holidays.  This idea that the only time people want to send stupid, useless viral stuff to one another ends the day after Christmas is at best mistaken, and at worst self-desructive.  Shouldn't any communication be the start (or continuation) of an ongoing relationship with consumers?  I have no idea what the creative should be for another dip into the viral vault in, say, February, but I bet there are more than a few possibilities.

Once the holidays are over, there's going to be lots of publicity about the traffic and forwards prompted by various viral campaigns.  I'm sure we’ll hear all about the dancing elves, for instance. 

The important question to ask will be: how did they directly influence and/or support sales?  If the answer is either "it wasn't supposed to" or perhaps simply a shrug, you might want to ask the question of a different vendor when contemplating your next campaign. 

Getting closer to sales impact is a good idea in a bad economy.  Well, in any economy.  Maybe we're talking some branding makeovers in 2009?

A Grain of Salt

The Wall Street Journal dedicated a special section in yesterday's paper to "The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World," and made five shockingly novel revelations:

1. Don't just talk at consumers
2. Give them a reason to participate
3. Listen to - and join - conversation outside your site
4. Resist the temptation to sell, sell sell
5. Don't control, let it go

I know, I know, i'’s hard to catch your breath after reading such insight!  It took a partnership with MIT's Sloan Management Review, and the keen insights of academics from around the country to reach these (and similarly earth-shattering) conclusions.

In other words, it's hard work getting things so completely wrong.

Marketing experts, whether academic or self-proclaimed, can't resist issuing rules, laws, or predictions, especially this time of year.  It often represents the exact opposite of what everybody else should believe or do, usually due to a combination of factors:

• They wear rose-colored glasses.  There's an a priori assumption that marketing is all about mental states, and it affects everything said experts, er, think.  It also means that they're only looking for branding evidence in communications media.
• They have a sales agenda.  Whether driving kids into classrooms, or clients into contracts, it's hard to have an objective conversation about any phenomenon if the thinking is controlled by people who make money on 1) said phenomenon, and 2) controlling it?
• They're also confused.  Qualitative measures of branding are the proverbial tip of the iceberg to all the behavioral underpinnings of such awareness; like hammer-owners, the experts only see the nails.  When marketing experts are busy sending tweets at one another every nanosecond, it's hard for them to imagine, let alone see, a vastly larger world wherein that's not necessarily what people choose to do.

Yet it's these very people who presume to lecture the rest of us at industry events and conferences.  And we can look at the sales collapse this holiday season -- or the plunge in corporate reputation, dissolution of trust in brands, and the evaporation of premium pricing -- and still listen to this stuff without laughing?

Here are the real secrets:

1. Don't just talk at consumers -- Do things.  Behaviors are the drivers of awareness, intention, referral, or any other quality we ascribe to mental states about brands.
2. Give them a reason to participate -- But not to simply participate in/with your branding.  People don't want to talk about ads, or turn the web into a glorified suggestion box.  2.0 activities don't describe marketing, they are the marketing itself.
3. Listen to - and join - conversation outside your site -- Really?  And say what?  By definition, "conversation" implies different viewpoints, and third-party sites are only as credible as they are independent.  How about making the stuff you write on your sites more honest and direct?  
4. Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell -- Wrong.  Everything you produce should have utility, relevance, value, and meaning for your target consumers; if this isn't the textbook definition of selling, then it should be.  Are we really supposed to expect to distract consumers into purchase?
5. Don't control, let it go -- Only there's no "it" to let go of.  And you should actually try very hard to control the conversation, in that your relationship with would-be consumers should have some overarching direction, flow, and context.  You can't guarantee everything'll fit it, but "letting go" is only exciting to people who have no responsibility for what happens next.

Good luck with the other lists (there are lots of them out there already).  My advice is to take them all with a grain of salt, if that.

So Close, And Yet So Far

JCPenney went to great lengths to produce a funny video to promote its jewelry offering, and then failed to connect it to anything resembling a sales transaction.

It’s branding, of course.  So getting lots of people to watch, forward, or interact with it is benefit enough.  I can't wait until it tries to tell that to the shareholders; November’s comp store sales were down 11% from last year.  Investors should be thrilled to learn that the company, and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi, chose to focus on increasing brand equity instead of making money.

That's not to say that "Beware of the Doghouse" isn’t funny.  The set-up is that a husband gives wife a vacuum cleaner for their anniversary, and gets banished to a doghouse that hides a subterranean prison for fellow romance-violated louses.  The closing caption reads "brought to you by The Jewelry Store inside JCPenney," and is underscored with links to nominate someone to get stuck in the doghouse (submit a photo), forward to movie and, oh yeah, click on the store link.

I felt robbed after watching it.

The movie is funny, but only up to a point; then it gets really, really long (almost five minutes' worth of a joke that should have taken all of one).  Worse, the concept is so smugly happy with itself that it forgets entirely to provide any relevance to this holiday shopping season.  The campaign was promoted with the usual Twitter/Facebook nonsense that passes for community these days, so the entire shebang is intended to get people to have fun with the doghouse conceit.

Shouldn't it have tried to sell some merchandise?

I'm not talking a hard sell, or anything as unpleasant as promoting a price (gasp!).  There are lots of creative, funny ways to get would-be consumers closer to something other than adoration for branding creative.  Here are five:

1. Where's the jewelry widget, in which you could enter various personality attributes for your loved one, and it would spit out possible gifts (and deals)?
2. How about a fembot IM app that you could talk to about your galpal?  The helpful android could suggest gifts that were tied to buy now discounts, making the transaction (from branding to buying) real-time?
3. An online club for guys who've been in the doghouse, in which they could earn discounts or points toward purchase for doing things like advising one another, letting guest women grill them, or whatever?
4. A ranking tool that categorized various doghouse-destined "violations," and converted them into the appropriate jewelry gifts?  Perhaps certain mistakes are so sever that it would take two distinct jewelry moments to rise back to the light of day?
5. Let visitors take out doghouse insurance, which would be some nonimal purchase that gave the buyer quick access to a small set of jewelry options, pre-packaged to get shipped overnight to remedy a conflict?

Where are such (or better) connections to the reality of purchase?  Just because the video is intended to accomplish branding, I don't quite understand why it can't also accomplish selling.  What good is the former if the latter doesn’t sustain it?  It's as if the video got to close to being relevant to behavioral reality, but then chose to stay far away.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Brand experts relegate selling to the doghouse.