Evaluating Creative Professionals: Are You Only As Valuable As Your Creative Portfolio?

WRITER’S WARNING: This is a long post. If you’re not crazy about reading long online posts, download the post as a low file size PDF.

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A black book (or web page) is opened.

Samples of creative work are viewed.

The book or page is closed.

Decisions are made.

Rinse. Repeat.

As a creative professional and educator, I have always pondered the meaning and role of the creative portfolio, what it means to those who are creative professionals, and also to those who are not—those who interact or recruit creatives. For art directors, copywriters, and designers in multiple disciplines, the creative portfolio is their lifeblood. It’s where they show their work. It’s their default resume and principle means by which to land jobs. And, in the end, it defines their careers. The reason it defines their careers is because creative directors, hiring managers and recruiters use the “book” or portfolio to judge a creative pro’s worth. But how much can we really tell about someone from their portfolio, and how defining is it? To me a creative portfolio is solely this:

An artifact that illustrates the degree to which a creative person has been “allowed” to be creative.

Since I put allowed in quotes, let me define it a bit. Unless you are a street-corner musician, a poet or a self-styled starving artist, creative professionals are almost always more obligated to be professional than creative. They work for design companies, ad agencies, or corporate in-house creative teams. This means that their creativity is constrained by their employer. Creative people are further constrained by the clients of their employers. For services companies, this means external clients. For internal groups, this means other functional units within the company. In effect, the sum of these constraints equals the degree to which a creative person is allowed to be creative.

Process and Environment

These constraints don’t simply lie in the necessity to conform to a creative brief, design specs or customer requirements. From a broader perspective, all individuals who judge the work of the creative person subjectively form constraints. These include creative directors, account executives, marketing clients, engineers, technologists and many more, including the end-customer if a company is creating correctly. In the end, the work of the creative is not solely a measure of their creativity, but also an artifact of their particular environment’s creative process. It’s important to note that when I say environment, I don’t mean the process itself, but the space within which the process acts itself out. Let me illustrate this with an example:

I

A copywriter and art director team, from a Chicago advertising agency, come up with an idea for a 30-second television commercial for a consumer package goods (CPG) client.

II

The idea is shown to their creative director, the creative director’s boss, three account executives, and two clients who are marketing managers/directors. The client then takes the idea and shows it to four more people including their boss. The idea gets altered in numerous ways to meet the ideals and requirements of all who have touched it. Next it goes into production. A director, actors, producers, editors and numerous others touch it and alter it before it is a final product that goes into the copywriter’s and art director’s creative portfolio.

In the example above, the first part contains the environment in which the creative process is acted out

1. Chicago

2. Ad agency

3. CPG client

The second part is the process. Most creative professionals understand this process, or one similar to it. Most consider this a system that is acceptable and known. And though creatives, being creative, might occasionally moan about it, they mostly resign themselves to its machinations. However, what very few people consider is how drastically this scenario changes when you change the first part, the environment. So let’s take the exact same process and make the following environment replacements:

Chicago to Portland, Oregon
CPG Client to Athletic Shoe Client

Now, even though the process is probably very similar, the environment has drastically changed. For instance, Chicago has traditionally been a conservative advertising city. Portland has not. CPG clients are often conservative marketers. Athletic shoe makers typically are not. CPG companies often flock to Chicago agencies due to their CPG expertise and conservatism. Athletic shoe companies do not. CPG companies typically employ the kind of person who can understand and conform to the sort of strategic branding these companies do. Chicago ad agencies typically hire creative professionals with portfolios that fit their current client’s style.

Change the Environment, Change the Creative Product

Now imagine the process above taking place in the new environment. If the exact same copywriter and art director were involved, with the exact same process, would the outcome (creative portfolio artifact) be different?

Faster than you can say swoosh. You can bet your recession-proof savings on it.

Country, city, type of office, type of client; these are the environmental elements that designers, art directors and copywriters work within, and that contribute to the formation of their creative product, and thus their creative portfolio. And this is why a creative portfolio only tells part of the story regarding an individual’s creativity and creative potential.

Throughout my 20-year creative career I have known and worked with numerous wildly creative individuals who do NOT have wildly creative portfolios. I’ve also known many creatives who blossomed and evolved once their environment changed. For some it was simply a change of workplace. For others, a whole new city or country or client industry precipitated the evolution.

Ive League

There’s a rather famous example of this not many people know about. The lead Industrial Designer at Apple, Johnathon Ive, has become a legend for his design and design stewardship of Apple’s groundbreaking iMac, iPod and iPhone designs. But Ive wasn’t always the hero at Apple. In fact, during the years when Steve Jobs was away from company, Apple took a nosedive, and the company was at its all-time lows in stock price. Despite the fairly wide acceptance of Mac by creative professionals, Apple looked as if it was going the way of the Dodo. At that time, Ive was there (he started in 1992), designing, and building a (mostly unimpressive) creative portfolio.

Then his environment changed.

Steve Jobs returned in 1997 and put the focus of the company on industrial design. He opened the floodgates for folks like Ive, a brilliant designer, to show just how creative he can be. This one change in environment changed a middling creative talent (if you only looked at his creative portfolio) and allowed him to achieve a level of creativity closer to his potential.

IVE BEFORE JOBS' RETURN

A creative portfolio is an artifact that illustrates the degree to which a creative person has been “allowed” to be creative.

IVE'S PORTFOLIO AFTER JOBS' RETURN

Seeing Behind the Portfolio

The implications for this sort of perspective about creative portfolios stretch from creator to creative co-worker to recruiter. I think that most creatives would agree with much of what I’ve outlined, perhaps even with an apathetic shrug. But to those who float the periphery of the creative world, these notions are perhaps far more important.

Outside of creative professions, job hunters are judged on their resume, their experience, their education and how they come across in an interview. This is the normal world. But not for creatives. Creative professionals are mostly, and often solely, judged on the content of their portfolios. Given this inevitability, I would plead with those who critique portfolios and make hiring decisions (yes, you too, creative directors) to open their minds to a creative’s potential as much as their portfolio. I humbly request you start with these three simple guidelines that help you see behind the creative portfolio to the real creative professional.

1. Read between the lines.
Look at creative executions with an open mind. Try to see through the end result and consider the process and especially the environment.

2. Listen, don’t look.
Listen to the creative talk about their work and probe deeper into how it got there. Don’t just scan it and take it at face value. Typically, there is far more value hiding behind the face.

3. Remember that creativity is born before it is recruited
Creative professionals are creative by nature first, not profession. What you see isn’t all there is. In fact, the typical creative portfolio is usually just the tip of the creative iceberg.

With these guidelines, I guarantee you will better understand both the work and the mind of the creative professionals you come in contact with, and be able to better gauge creative potential. In today’s creative world there are a handful of wunderkinds out there who are tearing up the awards books, and making names for themselves internationally. But these handful are not the only ones capable of creating extraordinary work, they merely represent the ones who have been allowed to.

Read this post as a PDF

As always, your comments are welcome–BV

TED Talks: Rory Sutherland on value and perception

Check out this short but illuminating TED Talk by advertising executive Rory Sutherland. In it, he portrays consumer perception as an often manipulated and rarely common sense commodity. It gets to the heart of how the economy is dependent on where we place our values. Both funny and insightful.

Brand in Japan: Why is brand strategy different here? Part 3

Brand on the Inside

External focus on the corporate brand image is also mirrored inside the Japanese corporation.

According to Tokyo marketing veteran, Mineo Kamiyama, most companies think “product brands should only be managed by people who know the product”. This is somewhat different from Western practices where Brand and Marketing managers are often marketing professionals first, and product experts second (with the exception of many B2B marketing and sales organizations, which would espouse the Japanese way). For better or worse, this means that the average Japanese Brand Manager, despite their usual lack of marketing savvy, is often left to his own devices when it comes to marketing strategy and tactics. Furthermore, the energy behind those strategies are often directed at new product development, line extensions and packages redesigns, things that Japanese managers see as getting quick, quantifiable results. In other words, new, different, whiz, boom, bam! Unfortunately, brand strategy and brand building tactics don’t have the same immediate effect, and are therefore ignored.

To make the corporate situation even worse, most Product/Brand Managers don’t remain as such throughout their careers. In Japanese companies it is common to implement internal company-wide staff rotations so as to develop generalists. Senior Account Directors become Research Professionals, Creative Resource Managers become Media Planners and a Regional Sales Director replaces a 3 or 5-year veteran to becomes your brand’s next Brand Manager. Lucky you.

To complete the picture, on-the-job training and personal, spoken-only role handoffs are very common. And written brand guidelines or manuals typically don’t exist or are summarily dismissed. According to Kamiyama, that means that a product’s “brand strategy essentially changes at the same time the product (or brand) manager changes.”

In the end, this all happens because top management sees their product brands as a pale shadow compared to their corporate brand. Time is certainly spent on brand image, but the majority of it is for the corporate brand only. That’s where top management sees value, so that’s where they put their energies and their best marketing people.

Change is coming…sort of.

Some would say there is no need for change; that this is the Japanese way. It’s different yes, but why mess with it. For the most part, at least in terms of how brands are managed, I agree. (However, I would disagree with HR practices, i.e. building the generalist and sacrificing the expert, on-the-job training and the misc. politics that circumvent better marketing practices. But that’s another blog, for another day.)

I don’t think the whole system should change, but I do think that Japanese companies can easily inject more product focus, better brand continuity and more brand consistency into their product marketing efforts. This may also help Japanese companies to be bigger players internationally. For the last several years the top 100 worldwide brands have only contained 6-8 Japanese companies—surprisingly low for the world’s second largest economy.

A Western-style brand strategy has worked on a few occasions in Japan for both companies and product brands. For instance, both Softbank, the telecommunications giant, and Uniqlo, Japan’s version of The Gap, started, gained notoriety and became successful without a large corporate parent company. Pocari Sweat, a sports drink and Healthya, a wildly popular green tea drink in Japan also succeed by branding their names over their respective parents Otsuka and Kao Corp. These last two companies went out on a limb, but unfortunately, are of the minority who are trying product marketing and/or the House of Brands model over the traditional model. You can barely find the Otsuka or Kao names on the Pocari Sweat and Healthya bottle and many Japanese people don’t know who makes these drinks. Yet, both brands were product marketed to wild success. And there are several more examples like this (though, not a great deal more).

When in Rome…

In the end, one must work within the confines of their discipline’s environment, be it geographic or otherwise. And though I have long since realized this, I also know that organic change happens very slowly—and in Japan, even slower still. So if you work with brands in Japan, it is good to understand what makes them tick here. And though it is also important to practice the when-in-Rome mentality, one must never forget that Rome fell, or maybe only its brand did.

Merging Physical and Digital: Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen and Sketch + Save

I love these two ideas for combining standard communication tools (pens and markers) with digital applications. Look for this sort of thing to pop up more and more. By using tools that people are already familiar with, both physically and cognitively, these sorts of digital apps increase their chances at adoption as well as loyalty.

The Pulse SmartPen, by LiveScribe, uses a pen with a built in mic, speaker and memory. By using special paper, you can record and replay whatever you hear when you are writing. An interesting solution at lectures, meetings or brainstorming sessions.

The Sketch & Save, designed by Pavel Balykin, provides a 2-cap tool with Flash USB on one side and a pen or marker on the other–a multipurpose, multimedia notation and memory tool.

The Convergence of Business and Design: Are you a Straddler?

Idris Mootee recently commented on the topic of business strategy and design convergence, what he called “Integrative Creativity”, over at his Innovation Playground blog. Tempted to comment on his post, I opted to weigh in here instead, given the natural soapbox (right brain/left brain) this blog affords.

Like two slow trains on two very long tracks, design and business strategy have been heading towards each other on intersecting paths for some time now. In the last 5-10 years they seem to be picking up speed and they are finally starting to get close. Some design schools are teaching how design can better integrate into business. Some B-Schools are teaching design and innovation. Few schools are thoroughly integrating the two, but it seems only a matter of (a little more) time.

But more importantly, individuals from one side of the fence (or brain) are clearly attempting to straddle it fairly often these days. Business executives are seeing design as more than lengthy processes and “shiny” deliverables. And designers, from all disciplines (graphic design, advertising, ID, interaction design etc) are realizing the need to integrate their thinking and environment with corporate and business strategy.

This group of “straddlers” is the most important in the short term. Show me an MBA or seasoned business executive who is newly interested in brand identity, sketching or experience design and I’ll show you a business organization that is going to soon change their perspective on any number of topics. Find creative and design professionals who go back to school to get an MBA, and you’ll have found individuals more suited to understand that which they create, and who can work better across functional units, bringing more iterative processes and methodologies to bear.

In the long term, schools will bring these disciplines together more and more. But school, especially undergraduate studies, is a place to discover who you are and where your passions and talents lie. As a college instructor for more than 10 years, what I clearly saw in my classrooms was a funneling of energies to an individual’s area of interest or skill. This funneling would eventually lead a student to declare a major. Although exposure to both right and left-brain subject matter is essential, it won’t significantly change an individual’s desire to do what they do best. However, it will provide them with the foundation to switch gears and straddle brain hemispheres more easily. In the future, these individuals won’t struggle nearly as much as those of us trying to do the same today.

Brand in Japan: Why is brand strategy different here? Part 2

The Power of a Parent

Another big difference between brand strategy in Japan lies in the typical brand portfolio structure. Western companies embrace the House of Brands model more, where many unique brands fall under one large corporate brand. In Japan, a Branded House, where the corporate brand and the product brand are often one and the same is far more prevalent. This structure was initiated post-WWII by keiretsu. A history lesson I won’t go into here. (But please feel free to read about it in the link) This structure, and the history that formed it, was one of the catalysts for placing far more importance on what the corporate entity is doing, and far less on what the product brand is doing.

You’ll find a perfect examples of this in the typical 30-second TV commercial. Most companies feel that the corporate logo at the beginning and end of the commercial is just as important as the product messaging in the bulk of the commercial. In fact, by putting the logo at the both the beginning and end, advertisers are invoking the primacy and recency effects, thus insuring those logos are the most memorable pieces of their communication, rather than the information about the product. But this idea is not relegated to the Branded House model, nor is it solely symptomatic of it. Some House of Brand companies in Japan also hold the corporate name in much higher esteem than any of their product brands.

In early 2009, I gave a seminar about brand portfolio development to an MBA alumni group from Kobe University. The discussion became rather heated when I challenged this focus on corporate branding over product branding. A couple attendees related to this corporate focus as a cultural artifact as much a marketing principle. They explained that in Japan it was traditionally the family name that was important, and the your given name was no more than an identifier within the larger scope of your family. This is still true today, and it is a big reason why most Japanese company’s product brands are treated with disregard or apathy.

This notion has been tested. There have been new product launches by big companies that attempt to “go it alone”. In other words, they try to launch new products or services without their big corporate logo attached. The vast majority of these products simply never take off, or are mired regardless of design, price or differentiation advantages. The companies then re-market the product, tacking on the corporate logo and corporate endorsement, and the situation is vastly different. This is Japanese society telling companies that they will trust them if they’re big and successful, and if they know their name. Otherwise, forget about it. The repercussions of this are clearly evident for product brand strategy, not to mention entrepreneurial efforts.

In the next, and last part, I will show how internal operations drive a different viewpoint on brand, and wrap up with a look at where things are heading.

Brand in Japan: Why is brand strategy different here? Part 1

This is Part 1 of a three-part post. Come back in a few days to read Part 2.

When in Rome… I don’t even have to finish that phrase. One automatically knows what it means. It stands for something through its meaning, concept and constant repetition. It has become a universal brand statement for living, traveling and working abroad. But when it comes to living with brand strategy in Japan, I have a difficult time obeying the old maxim.

In Japanese companies, “brand” is often looked upon with disinterest, disbelief or, at times, derision. Once, while giving a presentation to a group of my clients on the subject of brand continuity and the importance of focusing on a single message, an attendee fell asleep. This could have been due to him staying up late the night before to catch up on Lost episodes. But more likely, it was because he, and most Japanese marketing folk don’t understand, appreciate or believe in the idea of traditional Western product brand strategy.

I’ve struggled with this throughout the last four years of my tenure here in Japan. It has confounded me and frustrated me while searching for an answer to this riddle. Frustration is generally derived from the general disinterest (falling asleep) but also at the complete and total disregard for what I consider basic brand principles.

To provide a frightening client example, about three years ago my company developed a new marketing communications campaign and tagline for one of our Japanese multinational clients. The campaign was doing well and the tagline was not only getting brand recognition, several countries, other than those it was intended for were also organically utilizing it. Who knows, it might have been the next ‘When in Rome”. But then, all of a sudden and without warning, our client came up with a new tagline (with another agency). When asked why they did it, they simply told us that they wanted to do something “new”. The campaign and tagline were unceremoniously trashed. And this is not at all uncommon in Japan.

So why would a company with successful messaging throw it out the window for no good reason? There are a few key perceptual differences in Japan that drive this behavior and prevent most Japanese companies from embracing the Western idea of brand.

New is Good, Good is New

Japan is a country that, despite its rich cultural heritage, treasures newness and is fed on fad. When a new restaurant opens people invariably flock to it in droves (often, it is left barren the next week or month). If someone receives a new toaster as a gift, they immediately throw out the old one. And most Japanese people would never buy things like appliances, furniture or clothes used. This focus on newness is one of the key societal reasons Japanese advertisers insist on “mixing things up” and throwing brand to the wind (or in the trash as it were).

Traditional brand strategy tells us to create something memorable and of quality and then stick with it over and over again until it garners recognition, sales and loyalty. In the West, a good brand and messaging can, and often does last 3 to 10 years, or more. But in Japan, it’s rare that a product marketing campaign is repeated for more than 1 or 2 years. If a new manager comes in, so too does a new message. If a senior executive has a fresh idea, it becomes a new message. If awareness or sales go down, they immediately think that the problem is that their message is old. And a new message very often means a whole new messaging strategy—in essence a new brand.

But of course, this is just one reason brand is the way it is in Japan.

In the next post I’ll talk briefly about how brand portfolio structure, and the importance of a name , affect brand strategy.

BusinessWeek 100 Best Global Brands: Do you trust the companies you buy products from?

Trust seems to be the newest and most relevant marketing buzzword these days. Consumers have gone beyond simply perceiving branded messages or being part of a brand and the experiences it affords. They want a deeper relationship with companies. Consumers more often want cognitive consonance with the brands they interact with.

Check out this article from BusinessWeek on the topic of trust for more info. Also, view the slide show of this year’s Top 100 Global Brands for a look at which brands are keeping their heads above water in this recession, and which are losing their way.

Budweiser in China: Smart Advice on Brand

I apologize for not writing lately.

Unfortuantely, I’m still not.

Instead, I’m recommending some great thoughts on brand leadership over at Denise Lee Yohn’s brand as business blog. Her post offers a quick lesson (read: slap in the face) to Anheuser-Busch InBev about the value of brand consistency and leadership as well as the importance of the strategic and creative process.

Don’t miss it.

Time and Marketing: TED Talk and the “Time Variable”

Ok, to be fair and upfront right off the bat, the following TED Talk does NOT discuss marketing. But as a marketing professional, I challenge you ignore the relevance. In this short talk, Philip Zimbardo discusses how different people perceive time. He breaks them down into three main categories, “past-oriented”, “present-oriented” and “future-oriented” and breifly outlines each one, offering a couple subsets for each along the way.

As people’s perception of time is so very clearly tied to how they make decisions, these divisions appear to be an overlooked criteria for market segmentation. I’d propose a “time perception” variable in any psychographic or behavioral segmentation of a target market. Knowing this variable would help direct or retail sales immeasurably. It would also be very useful to service companies at the brand strategy level as well as point of sale.

Take a look for yourself. Anyone else have any thinking on this?

Book Review: Billion Dollar Lessons

In Billion Dollar Lessons Chunka Mui and Paul Carroll look at the flip side of Jim Collin’s study of successful companies (Good to Great) and how they got there. In this book, Mui and Carroll take a pointed look at corporate failure. They review case studies showing how companies, who were sailing along nicely, blew it by miscalculating a synergy, rollup, adjacency or consolidation move, were foolish or greedy with finances, stayed a misguided course or fumbled with technology

The book is replete with excellent well known and lesser-known studies lucidly illustrated and explained by the authors. If you are a fan of business case studies then you will love the first 190 pages of this book. These cases will surprise, and probably terrify, you as they show how so many smart business folks have made so many bad decisions. As the authors point out, these companies and their CEOs were not stupid. Yet, a typical MBA student wouldn’t have made many of their mistakes. But complacency, unsound hope and hubris often clouded the judgment of these failed companies and their leaders.

Of course, in the light of the recent worldwide financial meltdown and the credit crisis, some of these cases might appear a bit mundane. In that respect, Mui and Carroll have to be kicking themselves that they were so efficient getting this manuscript to their publisher. A couple extra months of research (or procrastination) and they could have included Lehman, WaMu, Fannie, Freddie and others in the book. Nevertheless, the mistakes illustrated are still pretty bad and well worth learning.

If you are not a big fan of case studies, then the first 190 pages of this book might be a bit tough to get through. However, the opening sections of each of the first seven chapters posit the lesson very well without the case study. This will allow you to move forward through the lessons at a clip (although you will be losing quite a bit of detail without the studies.)

After finishing the first part of the book, you might find yourself thinking that it’s easy to criticize or that hindsight is 20/20. So the authors found a bunch of flops and brought them to light, what’s the big deal? But this is where the real benefit of their research comes through. In Part 2 the authors elucidate several easy-to-grasp and actionable strategies for becoming aware of and preventing the pitfalls mentioned in the first half of the book. The most important of which is certainly the Devil’s Advocate. Though nothing new, the idea of employing a Devil’s Advocate in business is uniquely spelled out by Mui and Carroll. They give companies several clear-cut ways to review decisions using the Devil’s Advocate and eventually wrap the book with a short “course” on how companies can establish an independent Devil’s Advocate review.

All in all, the case studies and the author’s suggestions in Billion Dollar Lessons are very illuminating. You can’t help but read this book and be instilled with a greater sense of caution. And in the end, caution is really what this book is professing—informed, and above all, honest caution. The billion dollar mistakes are out there waiting to be made by your company. If you read this book and find out where they lie, maybe you can learn how to avoid them. But will you?

www.billiondollarlessons.com

Downturn Marketing: Reinforce Don’t Reinvent

A few posts ago I talked about why companies should market in a down economy. The basic gist was to keep in contact with their most important asset—their customer. Customers are already forgetting your company’s products due to the fact that they may not have the money to buy them. The last thing a marketer wants is for his or her company or products to be forgotten once people do have the money and inclination to shop or purchase again. Marketing in a downturn helps keep your brand top of mind and customer relationships strong.

So what should you focus on with you precious, and perhaps dwindling, marketing dollars? Reinforce your brand’s equities. Minimize new messages and/or off brand communications.

In a market where disposable income is scarce, introducing new products or trying to sell weak attributes is a big no-no. A brand should identify it’s largest equities, whether it’s a product attribute, a logo, a sponsorship, and ad campaign, a strategic relationship or a combination of these, and make sure the customer remembers it. Reinforce don’t reinvent.

If you are Nike, don’t launch a new shoe or sign a new celebrity unless they’re heavily tied into your key equities. People aren’t engaged and won’t remember these new messages as powerfully as they will when disposable income is more accessible. Instead create events, ad campaigns or websites that build on what you’re currently doing right, and have done right in the past. Reinforce your strengths, don’t try to build new ones. If you’re Mercedes, and car sales are down across the board, don’t put all your eggs in the price/financing promotion basket. Though that might increase sales a small bit, it does not support a key Mercedes equity and it will weaken the brand in the long run. Instead, remind and confirm your customers of the company’s reputation, history and mid to long-term successes.

Marketing is necessary in the downturns—even in the meltdowns. But make sure that the bulk of your effort in these times is focused on what has made you strong in the past. Reinforce don’t reinvent.

Customer Service Gaffes: U.S. and Japan

I recently read a blog over at Marketing.FM about customer service inflexibility at Chase, in their credit card division. The basic gist is that a customer service rep apathetically canceled the account of a ten-year customer per the customer’s request.

There was a dispute about charges. The customer was not wrong. But Chase wouldn’t take the blame either. So, in response, when the customer said he wanted to cancel the card, the customer service rep simply did as asked with no resistance or effort to keep the customer.

This sort of behavior seems to be the norm for large corporations nowadays. And there are endless obvious reasons why this should be considered bad business, not the least of which is the fact that it costs far more to acquire new customers than to retain and expand existing ones.

But what really struck me about this particular example was that, though deplorable, this behavior is the norm in Japan. In Japan, if you called to cancel phone service, Internet service, mobile phone, credit card, bank account or any number of memberships you might have, you would be politely “allowed” to do so. In fact, in their minds it would be the opposite of customer service to do otherwise–as if they were questioning your right to keep or cancel your account.

Japan is also a rule based culture. So though some companies might want to do what it might take to retain customers or even to keep them happy, if those actions don’t fit it with the rules, then forget it. Here’s a couple examples.

A few years ago I was staying in a large American hotel chain in a large Japanese city with my wife and son. We were booked at the hotel for at least 2 weeks and maybe as long as 4 weeks. Unfortunately, my company (who was paying for my stay) booked us a room that was a little snug. After about a week we mentioned this to the hotel manager thinking that perhaps, knowing that we would be in the hotel for a while, might upgrade us to a slightly larger room. In the US or Europe, this would have very likely happened. In Japan, not a chance. I could almost gaurentee that the notion never even snuck into the Japanese manager’s head. He probably looked at us wondering, “Why are they telling me this? And what am I supposed to do? Does he want to pay to upgrade?” With a simple upgrade he could have turned me into a loyalist or evangelist. Instead, I become indifferent or worse.

Another example refers to cover charges. In Japan, many nicer bars have cover charges or ‘table charges’. Being no stranger to these in the states, I understand and appreciate the concept. Often times, the cover charge pays for entertainment, which is fine. A couple months ago myself and four friends went into an upscale bar on a Saturday night around 9pm. Except for 4-5 other patrons, the bar was empty. The five of us sat down and were about to order when the waitress informed us that there was a 800 yen (US$8.00) charge per person just for sitting down. Remember, we were in a nearly empty bar, with no entertainment. When we told her we didn’t want to pay and were going to leave, the waitress nodded politely, smiled and opened the door for us. The cover charge rule bound her from simply saying, ‘forget about it’ and letting us buy five overpriced drinks–maybe more. Instead, she let paying customers walk right out the door. Sound insane? Again, in Japan it’s the norm.

Though I offer no solution to these service gaffes, I do say to the blogger at Marketing FM be happy your Chase experience doesn’t happen more often. At least sometimes when you complain in the states you get compensated or treated fairly. In Japan, 95 times out of a 100, you simply get a blank stare and a smiling guide to show you the door.

Corporate Creatives: C-Level Executives With Two C’s.

Not Just For Ad Agencies Anymore

McDonald’s, Adobe, Nike, Coke and Apple share one similarity that will certainly help to take each of them further than their competition.

They each have a creative executive or executives.

McDonald’s, Adobe and Coke all have Chief Creative Officers (CCO), Apple has an ECD and a few CDs and Nike employs several EVP or VP level Creative Directors. But these are just the biggest of the big. There are scores of other companies, especially in the technology and communications industries that understand the importance of creative messaging, brand continuity and marketing communications integration.

Creatives in the midst.

Today, marketing efforts are attacking consumers at so many touchpoints that a corporate creative advocate is now becoming necessary for most corporations. Narrow-focused or self-serving ad agencies or branding agencies can no longer police or properly direct this effort and corporate brand and marketing directors often do not possess the education or experience to understand creative planning, concepting, brand messaging, development and print or broadcast production. The wisest and most savvy companies are now realizing that a creative expert needs to be in their midst and on their side—and not just on the vendor or agency side.

Directing the creative.

In a corporation with significant marketing efforts, a creative executive, such as CCO or a VP/Director of Creative Services, would oversee all creative efforts (advertising, promotions, interactive, direct mail, collateral and more) produced both internally and externally. For instance, they would direct and oversee the creation of an intranet site that may be developed in-house and targeted only to employees, as well as a TV advertising campaign developed by the company’s advertising agency for the consumer market. The primary mission of this position would be to work along side the company’s key marketing role to insure consistency, continuity, and quality across all creative and branding efforts. The level of daily interaction with the “creators” or vendors would depend on the size of the company and the level at which the creative executive was hired.

Have you hired a creative today?

These “creative experts” can enter a corporation at several levels and with varied titles; Manager of Creative Services, Creative Director, Director of Creative Services, VP, SVP, EVP Creative Director and of course CCO, or Chief Creative Officer. Having any of these within a corporation with even an average marketing budget would do a world of good. But of course, having one at the Director or VP-level position will provide the most advocacy and eventual benefit to the corporate marketing effort as a whole. This role’s best chance at success and company-wide acceptance will be as a direct report or equal to a SVP Marketing or the CMO, working along side a VP Advertising or VP Marketing. Though, even as a Director of Creative Services, reporting to a VP, this position can be very valuable, especially if the role is backed by senior management or the Board of Directors as a whole.

To be or not to be creative.

As for the qualifications for this role, the VP or CCO should certainly have at least 10-15 years of varied creative experience, and 7 years or more actually directing creative product (TV, radio, print, interactive) and staff (art directors, designers, writers, photographers, actors, production artists etc). The more varied the experience (ad agencies, promotions, interactive, graphic design) the more this person will be able to understand the big picture and properly react to change. This variety of experience will allow the creative executive to address the full range of marketing communication vehicles, and give them the ability to manage multiple outside creative vendors.

A Mind For Business

Finally, the creative executive in a corporation needs to understand the business of the company they work in–they must have a “business mind”, be able to multi-task extremely well, be a highly skilled presenter and communicator and leader. These talents will be necessary for success in a corporate environment, which most “creatives” are very unfamiliar with and often find uncomfortable.

In the end, the corporate creative executive is someone who will help improve the bottom line by being an advocate for the brand and for marketing communications. This individual’s unique ability to understand creative communication and brand strategies, production techniques and efficiencies and how to best work with marketing vendors will deliver a skill set often found lacking in typical corporate marketing executives.

Do you know any corporate creative executives? What do you think about their importance? Comment below. I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Innovation: BumpTop Computer Desktop

This has been around a while, but it’s a good lesson in the missed innovation opportunities of multinational corporations. Too often companies reply on improving what they have and repeating what they already know customers want, rather than looking for completely new solutions. With their human and financial resources, Microsoft or Apple SHOULD have developed desktop applications like BumpTop. Instead, this startlingly fresh idea was conceived by an independent, Anand Agarawala.

Take a look at the BumpTop demo (still waiting for a beta release) below.

Evaluating Consumer Choice Modeling

A recent Booz & Co. Resilience Report titled “Tracking the Elusive Consumer” identifies consumer choice modeling as a good way to find out what products or product attributes consumers are looking for.

About a week ago I found myself telling a colleague that when you want to find out what people want, the last thing you want to do is ask them. Of course, what I meant was, that oftentimes, asking consumers outright what they want tends to elicit uncertainty, a range of answers too broad to be useful or flat out untruths. That’s not the case when you want to find out whether someone likes the black or the blue jeans. But becomes a much bigger problem when you ask them why they bought their new Chevy Malibu.

The article above, from strategy + business posits consumer choice modeling as an excellent alternative when attempting to tackle questions of the latter sort. The technique focuses on identifying the reasons consumer make particular choices and trade offs among product options and attempts to hone in on the desirable characteristics of features and why consumers value those characteristics.

Generally, this type of modeling is most valuable when you have a stable consumer base and product offering, and less valuable when your product is a market or industry newcomer. The Booz article does mention an exception to this when it illustrates how this modeling identified the success of the iPhone prior to its release. However, though the product was new, the iPhone’s attributes were well known in advance, and this also dealt with a known commodity in Apple.

Overall, the article doesn’t give many specifics or details about how the models are administered, but does offer a couple interesting examples and results. Well worth the 5-minute read.

Google: Use digital to “speed up in a slowdown”

A Financial Times article today talked about how a Google executive is pushing digital. This is pretty much a no-brainer, right. it’s pretty self-serving for Google to convince companies to not let their digital guard down–to spend more on digital? Well, yes it is, but it’s also objectively good advice.

In 2006, the share of time spent per day on the Internet, at home, was 21% (in the mix of Internet, Radio, Newspaper, Television and Magazines) But the share of the advertising spend on measured media was only 6%. Compare this to radio, which also had a 21% time spent percentage, but received a full 20% of advertising spend. But if the usage numbers aren’t enough, there’s also a value story for digital. In 2006, $17 billion was spent on Internet/Online advertising, to reach 75 million households–that’s $224 per household. In comparison, newspaper reached 56 million households that year, but spent $49 billion–$885 per household*.

But of course, advertising is just one piece of the digital pie–namely Google’s. Building and rebuilding your Web presence to add greater content and functionality, build great niche access and expand target reach is also immensely important. As are mobile applications and content. And all of these usually come at a lower cost than traditional marketing communications–perfect for an economy where budgeting is critical.

*The facts in this paragraph came from Chris Vollmer’s book, Always On–which I highly recommend.

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2008

I just came across a link to Interbrand’s ranking of best global brands. It came out towards the end of this September, so though not terribly newsworthy, it is still an intriguing list to peruse. Some of the 100 brands will be obvious and expected–others, more interesting. Check out the whole list when you get a chance. Until then, here are some of the highlights and surprises.

• The top 10 were Coke, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, Toyota, Intel, McDonald’s, Disney and Google.
• 8 out of the top 10 were U.S. brands
• 4 of those were computer or Internet related
• Marlboro was a surprise to me at #18 (down from 14 last year)
• Citi dropped 8 ranks to #19
• H&M was a newbie to this list debuting at #22
• HSBC was listed higher than Nike (27 and 29 respectively)
• Thompson Reuters is ranked higher (#44) than Ebay (#46), Ford (#49), MTV (#52) or Amazon (#58)!
• Blackberry debuted at #73
• GAP dropped 16 ranks to #77
• Starbucks is only at #85!

How To Be More Creative: Try Standing On A Table

When I was a 21 year-old copywriter working in an advertising creative department I had many creative blocks. Once, while desperately trying to come up with new advertising ideas for a purveyor of ham, I decided to stand on a table to see if it would help.

It did.

It was the first six months of my very first full time job. I had been sitting in the same chair—in the same position—for hours, coming up with nothing. I was getting nervous that I wouldn’t come up with a good idea, my boss would be mad, the ham people wouldn’t lose all their business to the turkey people and I’d be fired–a hasty end to my illustrious six-month advertising career.

Then it struck me. I was looking at the same walls, the same paper, the same desk, and so why shouldn’t my thoughts be mostly the same. So I got up and went to one of the company’s nice conference rooms. I locked the doors behind me, and on a whim that only a 21-year old could make sense of, I stood on top of the large, darkly wooded conference table that most likely cost triple what I made that year. It was liberating. But most of all it was the change of perspective I needed.

Within moments, a couple of new advertising concepts popped into my head. I immediately sat down on the table and wrote them on my pad. That’s when I noticed a light go on in the adjacent A/V room and I deftly scurried off the table and into a chair. My liberation was over, but my new method for finding a creative muse was discovered.

In fact, it wasn’t just the change of rooms, but the change of physical perspective that instigated new creative thoughts. Just standing with my head at nine or ten feet, instead of six, gave me, very literally, a new perspective, which was enough to trigger my brain to think differently. And I did—again and again. I used this method, along with many others,on and off for the next year or two, on that same table and many other tables, chairs and balconies. Along the way, I eventually learned to do what most practiced creative pros do, to initiate the change of perspective in my head without altering my position in the universe.

What I also learned is that creativity demands change as fuel. This change is what helps catalyze a new perspective and allows creative people to see things in a creative way—in a way different from others. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to claim ownership of this notion. Most creative people have realized, throughout the ages, that creativity comes with change. People who are creatively stifled leave to get some exercise, switch their locale, or even do drugs and drink alcohol to catalyze creativity. But the enduring creatives, the ones that live past 40, are the ones who can learn how to create the necessary change in their minds.

If you’re one of these talented few, congratulations. If you’re not a professional creative, try focusing on physically changing your perspective the next time you’re called upon to come up with new ideas. Get away from your desk and seek out something different. Take a walk around the block. Visit a friend’s office. Or find a nicely wooded conference room and hop up on the table. But please, take your shoes off first.

Of course, if this works for you please come back here and let me know.

Wal-Mart Advertising = Smoking Gun

Though the death of the Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday was horrific and reprehensible, it appears the relatives of the trampled man are now filing a lawsuit that says that Wal-mart’s advertising killed him. It complains that Wal-Mart “engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem,” The link to the full story is at Advertising Age.

Not to be glib about the issue, but wouldn’t most advertising professionals consider “creating and environment of frenzy and mayhem” the pinnacle of their profession? In fact, under normal circumstances, I would consider it a compliment. After all, the whole point of advertising is to educate, to create excitement, to stimulate interest and to get people to buy.

Unlike guns, which are actually designed and built to kill, advertising’s design and purpose is nothing of the sort. This case is a sort of “precipice case” in that, if it doesn’t get flatly thrown out, the industry will be teetering on the precipice of some pretty enormous change. It’s a slippery slope that could lead to anyone filing suit with claims saying, ala David Berkowitz, “the advertising made me do it”.

It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Your Product Isn’t Your Product.

If I could have the line above tattooed on the forehead of every marketer I’ve ever worked with, I would. It might be a little distracting to talk to them without letting my eyes drift up towards the words. But I would overcome this niggle for the clarity it would give marketing managers and directors every morning, and throughout most days. See, with this hypothetical, alternate-universe tattoo I dream about, when a marketing director wakes up and goes to the mirror to brush their teeth every morning they will be reminded that the product they spend the day working with really belongs to someone else. It belongs to their customers.

Unfortunately, in the world where marketers don’t wear this tattoo, the common misconception is that products belong to the companies that create them.

Silly companies.

They often say things like, “We have to talk about the ohm impedance”, “The new plant in Asia is incredibly important, lets put it into the ad” or “Web 2.0 is hot. Let’s do that for our new line of paper clips.” All the while, oblivious to whether or not ohm impedance, the new plant or socializing about paper clips means anything to the customer.

This behavior is commonly referred to as “talking to yourself”. What it means is that what a marketer is trying to do for a product is not for the customer but for themselves, their boss, their home office, the R&D staff etc etc. Unfortunately, talking to yourself (besides being crazy) is only a short-term panacea. Ok, so the R&D staff will be ecstatic you talked about the techy stuff, the home office will be giddy you brought up the new factory and your boss will think you’re sitting right on the cutting edge of paper clip conversations. But in the mid to long-term, if these are not what the customer is looking for, sales and/or brand loyalty will assuredly drop.

Of course, I know these one-way conversations are a tough habit to break. Even with my tattoo on their head, most marketers know so much about their products, they often forget to consider what really matters to customers—or forget to get the information they already know updated. Also, as most marketing folks feel more accountable to their internal audiences (the audience effectively looming over them) many have a hard time balancing customer needs with internal proddings. Having worked with US, European and Japanese companies, let me assure you, these dilemmas are universal. And they have only one solution.

Leadership.

If a company doesn’t have leadership that understands and pontificates on the importance of the customer, directors and below will not put customers first. More pointedly, leaders must make the customer the center of their company like a wheel hub, making every person a spoke that is in direct contact with that hub, and with the product, the rim of the wheel. In this way, it becomes an employee’s job to understand the customer as much, if not more, than they understand their product. And this shouldn’t just extend to the marketing people, but also human resources, operations, research & development—to any and all parts of the company that might have even incidental contact with the customer.

Of course, this is the essence of the marketing concept. And it has always been important to a product’s, and a company’s, success. But in today’s economy, which is in the midst of rewriting the marketing landscape in innumerable ways, this focus on the customer is more important than ever. If companies lose focus, or especially if they don’t establish it in the first place, their spokes will become loose, and their wheel won’t spin true (read: sales will suffer). Furthermore, regaining those lost sales will be immensely more difficult than they would have been, say 10 or 20 years ago due to the diversity and amorphousness of today’s marketing environment.

So, first step: if you’re a leader, make the customer a priority. This is not brain surgery. You probably have a ton of smart people in your organization who know just how to do this. You just have to identify them and shove them in the right direction.

If you’re not in the position to drive this from the top, then your task is tougher. If you feel you don’t know your customer well enough, reintroduce yourself to them. Learn more about their needs and desires through research, analysis of sales, and ethnography. Then try to get your leadership on board. Show them some insights, talk about the hub and spoke. Make them understand that their product really isn’t their product. Finally, convince leadership to implement all you have learned about your customers.

And if you’re really really dedicated to the cause, steal the image at the top of the page and wear it with pride

Good luck, and good sales.

Creativity Farms

Great video I came across at brand flakes for breakfast about creativity in southwest England. It was developed by a Brit agency named Rubber Republic. It’s a worthwhile watch.

Marketing and Trend Watching

Happy 2009!

There’s no better way to ring in the new year than to reacquaint yourself with the year that just passed. A great way for marketing folks to do that is to read the Most Contagious Report for 2008. This report was developed by Contagious Magazine’s London staff and gathers all the trends for that year. It’s a bit EU focused, but a good roundup nonetheless.

http://www.contagiousmagazine.com/pdf/MostContagious2008.pdf

Enjoy.

What is Brand? Brand is Expectation.

If you’re like me you’ve probably read more articles than you can recall about the idea of brand. All this “brand noise” has driven me to this blog, in an effort to finally define this elusive notion. Over the years, we’ve heard brand referred to as a promise, a set of beliefs, a logo, a tagline, the product’s positioning and much more. But a brand isn’t any one of these things, but rather the collection of these aspects that ultimately form expectation about a product or service in a consumer’s mind. Simply put, this expectation IS the brand.

It’s important to point out that engaged brands, that is, brands that have engaged a consumer, rather than existing unknown, require a consumer to be active rather than passive. The more engaging a brand is, the more we can call it a brand. Furthermore, because every brand is “for sale” in some way, those engaged with it are always in a state of consideration. People don’t just perceive brands, like many espouse. They consider them. While they are considering, they are forming and reviewing their expectations. These expectations, though not terribly tangible, are the brand in the consumer’s mind. The more expectation you build, the bigger and more multifarious your brand becomes.

When someone says to you “tell me about your brand” he or she is asking you to tell them about the expectations people have of your company’s brand name product. What do people believe about it? What are the typical experiences surrounding it? What does it promise customers? What do customers promise it in return? What other products are associated with it? In fact, this list of questions can go on and on and diverge many times based on the nature, longevity and notoriety of the brand. Great brands have great expectations (inadvertent literary reference) and poor brands have poor expectations. But that’s a lengthier discussion.

To put all this in a neater package, I’ve identified four diverse dimensions that coalesce to form expectation, and thus brand. They are: Brand History, current Marketing Communications, Competition and Brand Promise. In the coming weeks I will briefly discuss each of these in turn. To make these dimensions clearer, I will try to use a particular company or case to illustrate how each dimension contributes to expectation and thus, forms the whole of a brand.

Please feel free to discuss, refute, agree, praise, chastise or otherwise opine about these posts.

I will post Part 2, Brand History, later this week.

Brand is Expectation Part 2: Brand History

Brand History can be the best or worst aspect of a brand. Certainly, what you expect of a product, and thus a part of its brand, is based on that product’s history. This history can cause you to expect superstar endorsements and $2 million TV commercials or starving kids and sweatshops. Or, in the case of Nike, both.

Nike was the first shoemaker that really made a splash in the athletic shoe industry. Before Nike, you bought your sneakers or gym shoes at the K-Mart, Sears or Kinney store. But with Nike, and with the retail presence of places like Footlocker, all of that changed. Suddenly, or so it seemed, sneakers were no longer sneakers. They were running shoes, tennis shoes or cross-trainers. They were also the way to ‘just do it’—to get out there and be active on a larger-than-life scale. Nike had Michael Jordan, Beatles songs and a swoosh stripe that was as ubiquitous as the stripes on the US flag.

But in terms of the actual product, Nike shoes were never really THAT different than Adidas, Reebok, New Balance or any of its other early competitors. Instead, the company had economies of scale that allowed it heavily-weighted marketing budgets. These budgets launched it into the public consciousness like no other company in the industry.

Unfortunately, Nike also had many problems revolving around its use of Asian workers. This was exacerbated by the fact that it was a well-known company. This popularity made it a poster child for campaigns against sweatshops. Ironically, people rebuked and shunned the company for the exact practices that gave it the financial freedom to become so top-of-mind to those people in the first place.

Together, Nike’s marketing efforts and its production practices have equated into an immense amount of brand history—some good, some bad. This has, in turn, become expectation about the brand. What the Nike brand is today is partly what it once was. And what it once was helps to form our expectations of it today. Those expectations are part of its brand.

In conclusion, one of the most important things for marketers to remember about Brand History is that it is not universal–especially when dealing with a brand that crosses generations. Today, a 40-year old, who was privy to Nike’s early days thinks differently about Nike than a 20-year old, who might have very sparse Brand History with the company. The younger of these two generations doesn’t have the same history, the same perceptions, and consequently, the same expectations. The Nike brand is thus very different for these two groups.

As usual, let me know you thoughts.

I’ll post the next aspect, Marketing Communications in a week or so.

E-Mail Rules–from Seth Godin

If you’re a frequent marketing blog reader, then you’ve probably already seen Seth Godin’s e-mail rules from earlier this week. If you haven’t, check them out. They are particularly relevant to sales-type e-mails (not necessarily spam, although spam can certainly be improved with some of his rules).

The post is a quick easy read, and you’ll find at least a few of them worthwhile.

Brand is Expectation Part 3: Marketing Communications

This is probably the most obvious and conscious way people form expectation about a product, and so I promise to keep this post brief. Marketing Communications are advertising, promotions, interactive materials, direct marketing, sales, brand design, packaging design and PR. These include all the “conversations” you have with your customer, and are the ways that a company attempts to position its product in the marketplace to increase sales and build its product’s brand.

It would be difficult to argue against the notion that Marketing Communications help form expectation about a product, so I won’t spend time defending this premise. There are countless ongoing examples of MarCom tools effecting the customer and changing their perception and expectation of a product. But one very recent, and clever, one is the case of Shreddies.

In Canada, Shreddies was a lagging, 67-year old snack brand. Once a national favorite, the brand had minimal marketing support, and was slowly falling into obscurity, while newer brands captured market share.

Enter the intern. An Oglivy Toronto intern suggested the idea of turning the square snack on its side and renaming and repackaging Shreddies under the moniker Diamond Shreddies. With advertising, promotions, a new website and new packaging to support it, Diamond Shreddies (mind you, the exact same square product turned onto one of its corners) sold out four-months supply in two months and increased sales by 18%.

But even better than the temporary increased sales, Shreddies changed the expectation of its brand. Before, people thought very little of the brand, thinking it staid and boring. From now on, the target will expect so much more fun from the brand. Thus, the brand becomes so much more. Which means Ogilivy has their job cut out for them.

I hope they have a good intern pool to pick from.

Interpublic Geier–How to Fix the Economy

Phillip Geier, former Chairman of Interpublic and current head of The Geier Group, a marketing communications consultancy, says he knows how to fix the economy. And he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to let everyone know.

He says it all has to do with getting consumers to spend in the short-term. His theory is that by using certificate checks that can only be used for products and services, rather than a rebate check, people will be more likely to spend, rather than save. This will increase consumer confidence and get the markets going again.

This is a well and good, and maybe even a sound theory. But does anyone else feel that, as someone who markets other company’s products and services for a living, this might appear to some as sales through the back door of political action?

Read the ad at The Geier Group website.

Brand is Expectation Part 4: Competition

Competition is the first of two external factors that help create expectation, and thus brand. The other is External Associations. The difference between the two factors is how each is controlled. The External Associations of a brand are typically (but not always) controlled by the company itself: through PR, coop arrangements, CSR and more. On the other hand, Competition is not controlled directly at all. It is only reacted to. Sometimes that reaction is not to react, or to react little. Other times, Competition forces product or service brands to react strongly. The stronger the reaction, the more the reaction affects the reacting brand, and the more those reactions cause expectation in the mind of the consumer. Case in point, Apple computer.

Many years back Apple started “taking on” Microsoft, Windows and the PC industry. But their attack was passive aggressive and heady, and frankly was only really in the minds of Mac fanatics themselves. But a few years ago they stopped dancing around the ring, and started laying some sounds jabs in the face of Windows/PC with a TV/Web campaign.

This campaign, utilized a personification of a Mac and a PC, and started out each ad by illustrating that simple point: “Hi, I’m a Mac. And, I’m a PC.” After that the commercial focused on the deficiencies of the PC and the benefits of Macs. Sometimes, this was done overtly; sometimes it was clever and subtle. In both cases, Mac owners left feeling proud, and usually giggling maniacally. After many years of producing, what most Mac owners would call, a superior product, Mac was finally getting their licks in.

Though the creativity of the commercials garnered most of the press about the campaign, it was it’s lasting effect on the brand that was most important in the long run. Mac had for once, stood up to PCs and Microsoft. Though this didn’t change the expectations of current Mac fanatics that much, it greatly changed the expectations of owners on the fence, as well as new and potential owners. In a culture where bragging and boasting have become commonplace, Apple now took part in the game and gave as good as it got. This created an exciting expectation for the brand. Now people didn’t just expect the artsy and quirky fringe computer, they expected a platform and product that openly and boldly stood up for itself. And thus, a brand that truly competed.

For people on the Competition’s side of the fence, they now looked at Mac as a viable contender. Whereas most PC owners simply ignored Mac, or didn’t know about it at all, they now gave it greater consideration than ever before.

By using Competition to change expectation for those in the target group, as well as for those often opposed or indifferent to the product, Apple has greatly increased awareness and built an overall stronger brand.

What CMOs Want

Looking for a marketing job? Find out what Chief Marketing Officers want in their marketing hires. A new study by marketing services company Epsilon found that 39% of CMOs at top U.S. brands are unsatisfied with the pool of talent currently available for hire. The number one candidate trait on their wish list–creativity, followed by leadership and the ability to complete projects.

The report also queried its 180 senior marketing executives about the marketing programs they admire (Apple), outside vendor satisfaction and which services to keep in-house.

Download the report PDF here.

Brand is Expectation Part 5: Brand Promise

Brand Promise is where expectation, and brand building begins. Simply put, it is the promise the brand makes to the customer. Sometimes those promises are specific, but mostly they are broader and strategic so that they can be delivered throughout the marketing mix. But before we get to how Brand Promise works with expectation, here are a few examples of Brand Promise.

Volvo:                Safety
BMW:                Ultimate driving machine
Apple:                 Innovation and great design
FedEx:                When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight.
Avis:                    We try harder.
Amazon:            Everything under one “roof”
Las Vegas:         What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas
Barack Obama: Change

You get the idea.

Further, there are two different ways companies elucidate Brand Promise; the post-affect way or the pre-affect way. The post-affect way says that whatever positive affect the brand has had on people to date IS the Brand Promise. This allows companies the luxury of 20/20 hindsight. Basically, a company looks at what they already offer and how they communicate to their target, and calls that the Brand Promise. If, in this instance, this Brand Promise was something developed prior, then their pronouncement should come with some pride—the brand is actually fulfilling the promise. Otherwise, this method is simply a function of the five senses rather than actual brand strategy. For better or worse, this is how many companies identify their brand promises.

The pre-affect way is the written/premeditated way. This way of viewing Brand Promise goes as such 1. A bunch of smart people from the company and from their associated media agencies sit around and figure out what their brand should be by identifying brand essence, personality, values, requisites, and differentiators, just to name a few. The culmination of this exercise elicits the Brand Promise. 2. They write it down and called it a Brand Promise.

Of course, after this step comes the hard part—you have to deliver on your promise throughout the organization and across all marketing touch points. This is really the starting point for Marketing Communications and the next element, External Associations. It is also the filter through which Competition should be viewed and the strategic catalyst for Brand History.

The process of delivering the Brand Promise builds expectation in the customer’s mind and thus forms the brand. That is, the promise is delivered and people expect exactly what the promise says. Or, it doesn’t deliver, and people expect something that is not the promise—the latter of which can be very dangerous for a brand because you’re saying one thing and doing another. This confuses consumers and/or makes the brand untrustworthy.

Over the last 100 years, few brands offer a better example of delivering on the Brand Promise than Volvo. In 1920, Assar Gabrielson and Gustaf Larson, the founders of Volvo, established the following vision: “Cars are driven by people—the guiding principle behind everything we make, therefore, is and must always remain safety.” This Brand Promise has been around since the beginning and is still espoused today. The ad below, from several years back, could have only worked for Volvo. It would have seemed false for most other companies. Most companies wouldn’t have been able to pay it off. But for Volvo, it was a natural.

Over the past decade or so Volvo has been able to nicely weave the fact that their cars are actually fun to drive into their brand, with taglines like Volvo For Life. Clearly, this line speaks to safety, but it also intimates living life to its fullest and enjoying the driving experience. These positions also made a nice segue into Volvo’s environmental stance. Yet, even though their marketing communications began speaking about things other than safety, these messages still feel true to the Brand Promise and true to what Volvo is all about, and they work towards furthering the power of the brand.

When a new brand establishes a Brand Promise, or when an old brand revitalizes theirs, they bear the burden of not just acknowledging or elucidating that promise, but also delivering on it. As in the case of Volvo, delivering on their promise has paid off in spades. Because the promise is so strong and well understood, there is little miscommunication with their target. This strong clear message resonates and builds with each successful communication to form an uncomplicated and unsullied expectation in the target’s mind. This expectation mixes with other expectations to form the brand.

Adidas.TV “Entertainment” network

If you sense some sarcasm due to my quotes around the word entertainment in the title, then your senses are acute and working just fine. Adidas’s full-blown foray into web videos, adidas.tv, is a lot of pandering and overt marketing, and very little entertainment.

This collection of video content bored me within 10 minutes and insulted me much quicker than that. Videos like “The Game” wasted 2:20 of my time watching an athlete and a rapper play poker -WITH ADIDAS PLAYING CARDS–only to see one of them lose thousands of dollars by raising an ace high flush to four queens.At the end it showed cliche party scenes with people break dancing backed by a track that sounded like it was from the 80’s. Besides the cliched production of the piece, I am still pondering why it is on the site…

Another video, titled “12-foot dunk” put highlight footage music to film showing people sewing an Adidas basketball uniform. Man, I was stoked. And I thought Rocky was inspiring.

Finally, I watched a video called “Celebrate originality”, which as you might now be able to guess, was about as un-original as a sporting goods manufacturer could possibly make a video. I could have taken virtually any “wanna-be-hip” brand and stuck it to the end of the video, and it would have had the same effect.

After those three (the first three I watched, by the way) I could stomach no more. Adidas should be ashamed of itself. It marketed too hard. It pandered too blatantly. And, although the concept for a video content site isn’t necessarily wrong, their execution of the idea definitely was.

Check it out for yourself.

www.adidas.tv

Coming to terms with Creativity–Elizabeth Gilbert at TED

Elizabeth Gilbert is an author and a recent speaker at TED. Her take on creativity and the creative process is worth hearing.

Embracing Change

In this time of extreme financial turmoil I feel obliged to purvey this cliché: embrace change.

Sticking to your guns, staying the course, and “going to your strengths” may work out to your advantage in these times. But for a vast many, these tactics will hold them back in a big way.

Instead, companies need to start embracing the change that is going on around them. Look to new solutions, new sales strategies, new marketing tactics and new ways and means by which to innovate.

This is a time that will lay the framework for b-school case studies for the next 20 years. Your company can hunker down, stay the course and be one of the failures. Or, they can be flexible and receptive to change, and become one of the success stories MBA’s drool over.

Great reads or re-reads today include Billion Dollar Lessons, The Innovator’s Dilemma, Good to Great and Corporate Canaries.

KFC: Does good buzz automatically equal good chicken?

So KFC is creating some special recipe buzz for itself these days. But is it the right buzz?

It seems that the fried chicken king is taking its show on the road. It’s decided to help fix the potholes in the roads of five major cities, starting with Louisville, KY. After they fix a hole, they plaster a non-permanent stencil on the fix that says,”Refreshed by KFC”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping out the nation’s infrastructure. But why KFC? Does this help it’s brand? Yes, you could say that it creates awareness, and that’s good. But is it the right kind of awareness. After all, do I want to correlate dirty roads with my fast food meal? Or maybe that doesn’t matter.

I applaud whoever came up with this for its ingenuity in getting the brand out there and creating buzz. But the question remains, is all buzz good for the brand?

Or might they have chosen a more relevant way to do good, like providing food for to homeless shelters, reducing their use of chemicals in their food, or, as Robert Weissman, director of Commercial Alert said, “KFC should fix their menu first.”

Marketing the Down Economy: Big Opportunity for Smaller Companies

Not restricted by market machinations and a stock-holding public, smaller or private companies are allowed to take bigger risks with their money these days. A simple way to capitalize on the current economic downturn is to maintain or increase marketing. Public companies getting hit with hard times initially look to marketing as a place to cut corners. Marketing is not considered a core function to most companies, and therefore an easy target for cutbacks.

What happens when they cut back is that they diminish their products’ and brands’ awareness. They reduce their presence, giving their competitors an opportunity to gain mind and market share and to gain a competitive advantage. Without the hindrance of a Board, holding the company’s stock price above all else, private companies can maintain or increase marketing to gather up this lost mind share.

Is there any proof positive this will work? Hard facts illustrating the ROI? No, not that I’m aware of. Marketing is just too amorphous for that kind of certainty. And this market is frankly, unprecedented. But there are some general success stories.

One interesting study, conducted in 2005 by Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, discusses companies and brands that thrived in down economies. Some examples include Proctor & Gamble’s marketing of Ivory soap during the Great Depression, Intel’s “Intel Inside” platform started during the recession of the early 90’s, or Wal-Mart’s impressive expansion from 2000-2002 with Every Day Low Prices.

The study’s authors put a very fine point on which organizations are poised to thrive by marketing more in a downturn. They say that the firm must 1. Have a history of valuing marketing 2. Feature a corporate culture that rewards risk taking, and 3. Have enough “slack resources” or extra cash lying around to support it.

In other words, very few companies qualify.

Which is why I must warn that if you read the Smeal paper, please do so with caution, and as a reference more than advice. It is quoted often in articles on the web about the benefits of recession marketing. But its end result is telling you to stay put or cut back, unless your company is perfectly positioned to benefit. I fear that if all organizations followed its advice explicitly, everyone would be losing market share and awareness together.

Instead, use the paper’s examples as motivators to create your own marketing success story. Private companies (and perhaps, highly decentralized public ones) can use this economy, and other companies’ failure to retain their customers, by taking the gamble that has the best chance of paying off—maintain or increase marketing.

In an insightful post over at Coach’s Corner, Vin McCaffrey talked about the current economy in terms of Lance Armstrong’s key strengths. Armstrong, almost never excelled in the downhill. But when most of the racers were just trying to stay in the pack during the uphill, Armstrong used the opportunity to get ahead.

“The economy has us all in a defining uphill battle. The reality is that you may not realize immediate gains, but the efforts you put forth during the uphill set you up to win at the end of the race.”

For my money, if your company is nimble and brave enough, the efforts that will provide the greatest competitive gains in today’s uphill environment will invariably revolve around using marketing.

Viral Marketing: Easy to Catch, Harder to Transmit

Viral marketing is a holy grail for many marketers today. Get out a few good stories. Create some buzz with minimum media expenditure. Throw a video on You Tube that gets a million hits. Enlist SMEs, thought-leaders, devotees to be evangelists. A good viral marketing campaign can be more valuable than a :30 spot during the Super Bowl—and a heck of a lot cheaper. Unfortunately, all viruses are not created equal, and establishing a strong viral marketing campaign is not an exact science.

Dan and Chip Heath, authors of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, try to put a lasso around it by outlining three key traits of strong viral messages in their Fast Company article titled “Three Secrets to Make a Message Go Viral”.

Their three traits for a good viral story are:

1. Make the viral message emotional. Positive or negative, the more emotional, the more the story will be shared. It needs to touch a nerve.
2. Make the message a public service. People want to help their friends, family and coworkers with useful or proprietary info. In other words, make the person who passes on the virus the hero.
3. Give the story triggers. Make sure there are occasions that remind consumers of the story, remind them to retell it.

Right Brain/Left Brain Marketing on Alltop

I try not to be too overly self-promoting on this page. But Right Brain/Left Brain Marketing was recently added to the Branding page (http://branding.alltop.com/) of Guy Kawasaki’s blog aggregation site Alltop. One of the prouder moments in this humble blog’s existence.

So let’s stop to take moment of pause. Ah. There we go.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled marketing.

Cheers, Barry

Brand is Expectation–PDF

A few weeks ago I spoke at the Osaka Hilton to FEW (Foreign Executive Women) about corporate and personal branding. The engagement turned out to be as much a discussion as a presentation. And the idea of brand seemed to spark the imaginations of the non-marketing based attendees as much as the marketing-savvy ones. I introduced the idea of brand as “expectation”, and tried to clear up how brand was formed by the expectations of customers. At the end, I handed out the PDF linked here.

BRAND IS EXPECTATION PDF

It combines several of my earlier blog posts under the heading “Brand is Expectation”.

Enjoy. And feel free to comment.

Twitter. Tweet. Twy it out? Maybe tomowwow.

Why do so many people think that someone wants to read about what TV shows they watched last night or that their dog had diarrhea, or that they just got back from a trip to Kalamazoo? Nobody cared about this sort of inane minutia before. Why does a platform for dissemination of that material change anything?

I can’t deny the importance of Twitter as a potential corporate marketing tool for select clients or especially for media outlets. But really, aren’t the vast majority of Twitter posts meaningless dribble? Just another soapbox for mediocrity, self-absorption, and frankly, a bunch of twits? It makes me sick. Tweet this!

I was, pretty much, firmly in this camp until very recently when I started seeing some of the value of the Twitter. I also, just read this post on Yahoo Tech that helped confirm some of finer points about the tool and dissuade me from some of the nastier points above. I also learned in the article that Twitter has terrible retention, with 60% quitting the service within a month.

So, as one of the last of the Twitter holdouts (or so it sometimes seems) I’m going to give it a try tomorrow. I’m going to become a twit for at least one month. And see what use it might be to me as a marketing pro, as a blogger, as a networker, as a person that one day might visit Kalamazoo. Along the way, I’ll share my thoughts on the service. And, when the month is up I will decide whether to pool myself into the 60% or the 40%.

Wish me luck. And tweet me when you get a chance (I can’t believe i just wrote that.)

Barely Twittering

Ok, so a word of warning to those who read this blog for interesting marketing news or insights: my Twitter experiment (see post below) may be neither. If that’s the case, I apologize.
Nevertheless, I signed up, but am still a bit clueless about how to get started. I see the Lavar Burton, John McCain, the CBOE and 50 Cent have Twitter accounts and that I can “follow” them. But as you might expect, I have absolutely no desire to do that. In fact, I went through the entire list of Twitter’s “suggest users” and I couldn’t find a single one I give a damn about. Celebrities, musicians, Kim Kardashian (not sure what she is) companies or organizations promoting themselves…it all just leaves me very nonplussed. However, I can guarantee you that if I were 16 and I had Twitter (though CDs weren’t even around when I was 16) I would have loved the site’s suggested users.

So I guess my next task is to try to find some friends who are already on Twitter.

If anyone has any other suggestions about how to get more from the service, please comment below.

Vollmers Digital Darwinism

Chris Vollmer, Booz & Co. Partner and author of Always On, recently wrote an excellent paper over at Strategy & Business called Digital Darwinism. The paper can be seen as a short (and somewhat updated version) of Always On. But it concisely posits his argument about how digital is evolving the broader marketing environment and how customer relationships are changing because of it.

A particularly useful section discusses the five behaviors necessary in the game of survival of the fittest. They are: 1. Turning consumers in to ‘prosumers” 2. Building bilateral brand experiences 3. Placing context on par with content 4.Mastering the new calculus of communication and 5. Establishing collaboration as King.

I’ve linked the PDF here.

To get it from the Strategy & Business website you have to register (free), which is well worth doing as they have a wealth of insightful reading there.

13th Annual Webbys Winners

Check it out.

The best websites, interactive, film & video and mobile–announced a couple weeks ago.

Great work here across the board.

My only beef with the Webbys site is that they make me download something called MS Silverlight to view the award-winning videos. Otherwise, a nice awards presentation site.

Branding Bookshelf

Matthew Fenton over at That Branding Thing asked the question “What ONE book would you recommend…” to a colleague who had only a limited knowledge of branding. He received some great responses. Check it out.

For my money, Kellogg on Branding, is the best of the bunch. It’s a collection of essays written by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management marketing faculty. This book runs the gamut from brand portfolio management and positioning, to advertising and name creation–and a whole lot in between.

Good reading.

Twitter Update

I have still found little use for my new Twitter account, but truth be told, I haven’t given it a fair shake yet. I’ve made all of two measly posts. However, today i did add a couple friends and am following them–you two know who you are:) I’m also following a couple local groups.

Overall, I’m still feeling really old–probably like my parents felt when they first had to program a VCR (that’s a video cassette recorder in case anyone under 20 is reading).

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted.

Social Media: Marketing or Communication?

In recent polling by Knowledge Networks, it appears that today’s social networks are primarily seen as less of a marketing channel and more of a way to network…well…um socially. That is , “less than 5% of social media users regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions in any of nine product/service categories. In addition, only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites.” The largest percentage, 54%, said that “staying connected” is what they like most about social networking sites.

This is obviously contrary to what many marketers hope low-cost social media will do for them and their brands. On the other hand, many in-the-know SoMed practitioners understand Social Media’s value as a PR vehicle, rather than as a replacement for advertising and promotions.

Personally, I think SoMed is still in its infancy. Whether it will “grow up” to be a big, strong, marketing channel is yet to be seen.

FYI: The following sites were referenced when questioning the 502 Knowledge Panel respondents.

Bebo.com Blackplanet.com Cafemom.com Classmates.com ClubPenguin.com Del.icio.us Digg.com Facebook.com Flickr.com

Flixster.com Friendster.com Hi5.com Imeem.com Last.fm Live.com LinkedIn.com Livejournal.com Myspace.com

Myyearbook.com Ning.com Picasa.com Plaxo.com Reddit.com Reunion.com Tagged.com Twitter.com YouTube.com

Fallowing Twitter

Nope, it’s not a typo. Fallow is a farming term. It’s when you plow the ground, but you don’t plant seeds. Apparently, it helps restore fertility.

It seems that this is what I am doing with my Twitter experiment. I’ve plowed the ground by creating an account, by following a couple people, and adding a Twitter widget to the bottom of this page. A few people are now even following me. But I haven’t really planted the seeds yet. I think my next step is to add TwitterFeed or some such other app that will help these blog posts go straight to Twitter. I think I also need to “follow” more or perhaps follow better. I am still having a hard time finding content that I consider useful and/or interesting.

If anyone out there has any tips please tweet me @rightbrainleft

B

Is now the time to innovate?

Maybe.

Bet you thought I was going to give you a resounding all-capital-letters, Clayton Christensen inspired yes. Well, in normal times, I would say that well managed innovation is always a good thing. Whether it’s new products, new designs, new service delivery or new technologies, innovation is what drives businesses—more or less so depending on your industry.

But today, for many companies and brands there’s a good case to be made for not innovating. If your brand has been weakened by the economy, use your resources to reinforce it with marketing communications, not innovation. But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

There are two key terms to understand when it comes to your brand. The first is intent. At what level is your customer “intending” to buy your product? If today’s economy is diminishing that intent, your brand is being weakened and/or forgotten.

Two types of intent are driving customers today: Price Competitive Intent and Postponed Intent. Price Competitive Intent just means that people are shopping around more than they ever have before. They are using price as a purchase driver, when they may not have in the past. Where there was once some brand loyalty, price now reigns. These customers need to be reminded of your brand’s key equities. They need to remember your brand is an option worth shopping. Marketing communications does that more efficiently and cheaper than innovation.

The other type of recession-altered intent is Postponed Intent. This is where people intended to buy your product, but have put the decision to do so on hold. New cars, expensive vacations, capital expenditures are all examples of this. In this scenario, people have essentially put their intent on hold. This mindset heavily puts your brand in the backseat and heavily diminishes expectation.

Expectation is simply what people expect of your brand—in essence, this IS the brand. Expectation is formed through customers’ interaction with brand history (what they already know about your brand) brand promise (what the brand claims to be) competition (how the brand interacts with its competition) and marketing communications (advertising, promotions PR etc).

Unfortunately, in a down economy, companies typically cut back on marketing communications, the most important and effective way to build expectation in a customer’s mind. Combined with lessened intent, diminished expectation can be a death knell for many brands.

This brings us back to innovation. On-brand innovation, that is innovation that doesn’t stray too far from the existing brand equity, is usually a good thing no matter how you look at it. But in this economy, it is essential that expectation be kept frequent, recent and consistent with the established—and most memorable—brand equities. The most effective and efficient way to do this is through marketing communication.

Let’s say your brand is a sinking Titanic. You can keep creating wonderful food in the kitchen, keep putting mints on the pillows, and continue planning extravagant events—all things that will make the Titanic better in the future (innovation). Or, you can start bailing water. Right now, many brands need bailing before they sink. Bailing, in this case, means keeping brand expectation high while customer intent is low. This requires marketing communications.

Of course, if the intent of your customer is greatly unchanged, what i call Status Quo Intent, or if your brand’s marketing communications budget has mostly been retained, then the “maybe” at the top of this post turns into a resounding “yes”. Innovation is your company’s future, if your brands, or your industry as whole, is not sinking then now is the time to innovate.

Marketing in the down economy: Reinforce don’t reinvent

The title of this post is the title of a presentation I recently gave for the ACCJ (American Chamber of Commerce Japan) in Osaka. The presentation focused very specifically on marketing communications, or brand building communication. I discussed why marcom should be utilized to reinforce messages rather create new ones (reinvent) in an economy that is down and to a target who is not paying attention nearly as much as they used to.

Fielding great questions from attendees about ROI, positioning, target markets, social media and more

Because so may companies are shifting budgets to social media in an attempt to lessen costs and increase ROI, I also addressed this form of “tactical reinforcement” at the end of the presentation.

Among the attendees of the presentation were ACCJ Kansai Governor Jiri Mestecky, ACCJ Kansai Director Keizo Yamada, Presentation Zen author Garr Reynolds, multimedia designer Daniel Kwintner, Ai Reynolds from Hilton Osaka, and three very bright Assistant Brand Managers from P&G Japan.

Also in attendance, were John McCrohon from Robert Walters, who I’d like to thank for helping me make the presentation a success.

You can view the presentation on Slideshare.

Mostly Tweetless

Still experimenting with Twitter as part of my ongoing experiment to discover whether its worth its weight in hype. I’ve posted some of my blog posts on Twitter and have generated a little traffic from it (not much). But again, though I am trying to try, I feel mostly apathetic about the thing.

In terms of following others, I’m still following very few people or organizations. The organizations or groups seem the most annoying to me, as they tend to fill up my screen every day–mostly with info I don’t need. I’ve tried doing searches for the things I need or am interested in, and that has been useful. Although, I am often shocked how many people or topics aren’t being talked about! But I guess this is to be expected. As with any conversation, I suppose Twitter focuses primarily on who and what is hot–and the news.

A few strangers have followed me. But it seems that a lot of people follow only so that you will then , in turn, follow them. When I don’t follow them, they quickly drop me. Have these people been named yet? If not, I’d like to suggest Twit Collectors (as anyone who would follow someone just because they followed you is clearly a twit).

So…still tweeting. Still twying it out.

@rightbrainleft

Rethinking the mundane–Kleenex

Every now and then I come across design that just boggles my mind (in a good way). These new, limited release tissue boxes (“Perfect Slice of Summer”) from Kimberly Clark’s Kleenex brand are extraordinary. Yes, they are visually stunning and clever. But more importantly, they are a wonderful example of breakthrough design. Let’s face it, tissue boxes have been around forever, and with the exception of resizing and exterior printing, they haven’t really changed much. But the in-house design group at Kimbery Clark, and food illustrator Hiroko Sanders, went out on a limb with these by rethinking and re-imagining the mundane and ubiquitous.

Google Keyword Tool: Finding the right keywords

This video shows how to utilize the Google Keyword Tool. It comes from a web design shop/blog in Florida, USA called Naples Web Design. It’s short and sweet, but let’s you know how to get some real value from the tool, so as to be better informed before launching a marketing effort online. Watch it full screen so you can see the details.

Incidentally, two other good tools for researching keywords are Wordtracker.com and Nichebot.com.

Newsweek’s Rick Smith: “Don’t Waste A Crisis”

Rick Smith, ex-CEO and 26-year veteran of Newsweek, came to speak at my company (Dentsu KANSAI) yesterday (6/18/09). He spoke for about 45 minutes on the topic of the economy, and what advertising agencies should be telling their clients. His key message is in the title of this post.

In talking about the economy at large, Mr. Smith spoke comfortably and confidently about how “trends and patterns are becoming clear” and how he believes that the major world economies have finally moved beyond the “panic phase”. Of course, he did provide the caveat that neither he, nor in his opinion anyone else, is completely in the know on this economy given its unprecedented scope and scale. However, he did go out on a limb and say that he believed “real signs of growth” would be apparent around Q1 or Q2 of 2010–exciting news for some, a long wait for others.

Mr. Smith then segued into marketing and advertising. He stressed long-term corporate thinking, saying that companies need to prepare now to position their brands for the recovery. In the face of downward spiraling revenues, Smith said that companies should be focusing on market share growth as much or more than revenue growth. How? Keep marketing to your customers. Don’t let them forget who you are. Let them know your brand is here for the long haul, and that it will be here post-recovery. Not only did Mr. Smith see advertising as an imperative in this economy, he viewed it as an exceptional opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted; one of the ways to make the most of the downturn.

Related RBLB Marketing posts:

Marketing in the Down Economy, Big Opportunity for Smaller Companies

New Newsweek Site Design

Back on June 19th, Rhona Murphy, Publisher and Managing Director of Newsweek Inc., spoke to a small audience here at my company and introduced us to the new Newsweek print and website design. The print version was cleaner, had info-rich graphics and sat on the line somewhere between The Economist and USA Today. Overall a nice change that will definitely make the pub more accessible.

The website redesign had something more interesting to offer. Overall the redesign was unimpressive. And frankly, as a Mac user, it is a cumbersome and sloth-like site that I would never take the time to navigate on a daily basis. However, it did have one content section that impressed me greatly. It was on the home page and called, In The Know. In this section, Newsweek aggregates content from other sites like The Washington Post, CNN, People and 538. When you click on these links Newsweek still retains a top banner, but otherwise sends you to the content provider’s site.

I find this an incredibly smart, albeit uncharacteristic, move for a news magazine website. It’s smart because online news users tend to find the news where they can, and aren’t as loyal as they might be sitting on their couch in front of their TV. With online, you also don’t have to make the conscious decision to subscribe, like you do with a magazine. Newsweek seems to have “got” this. Don’t get me wrong, they are still far from what I would call a hub or news aggregator (it’s only one small section of the home page). But they are certainly moving in a good direction. I hope to see more aggregated content there soon.

Now, if they can only optimize the site so that people with Macs can actually use it.

Twitter Experiment Complete

I’m ending it.

I don’t think I conducted this experiment in the true spirit of an experiment (there wasn’t a hint of scientific rigor involved). But it seems that Twitter has brought some readers to my blog and reconnected me with a few folks. Though it hasn’t paid off in spades, it does seem like a viable digital channel for the dissemination of information.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a lot of nonsense over there; people shamelessly hawking their wares, porn being masked as “followers” and a bunch of other folks, who I named Twitter Twits in an earlier post, following people for no good reason at all. But don’t take it from me. If you haven’t seen HubSpot’s “State of the Twittersphere” report that came out last week, you should check it out. Basically it said that more than 55% of Twitter users are not following anyone and have never posted a single Tweet. More than 50% have no followers. 75% have never written a bio for themselves.

But…nevertheless, I came into this experiment seeing if I could last a month before giving up on it. If you remember, there was another scary statistic (for Twitter anyway) that said 60% of people who sign up for the service drop it within a month. Well, I survived that test, and think that I will keep it going a bit longer.

Look for me. @rightbrainleft

What is a Brand? More answers than you can shake a stick at.

A couple weeks back someone posted a question on the Brand 3.0 board over on LinkedIn. The question was simply, ‘What is a Brand? They were heading upwards of 60 answers last I checked. Some answers were astute and experienced, some naive, some purposefully comical, some knowingly confrontational. But taken together, they paint a big broad canvas that is useful and confusing at once.

Personally, I still prefer to relate to brand in terms of the “Expectation” it forms in consumers’ minds. To see what others have to say, download the What is Brand? PDF here.

Losing Brand Loyalty: CPG Brand Defection in America

An illuminating study was done by the Pointer Media Network and the CMO Council regarding the defection of CPG consumers in the American (U.S.) market. Frankly this report is scary. Based on results from 2007 and 2008, it outlines the extent of defection and the apparent ease at which brand loyal consumers are leaving CPG brands during the recession. It also shows the lost revenue those defections are causing.

Among other interesting figures, the report notes, that for the 685 brands studied, on average 52% of highly loyal consumers in 2007 either reduced loyalty or flat out defected in 2008. Many brands are listed in the report, along with their loyalty numbers and defection percentages. The paper concludes with a few ideas on how to protect your loyal base using predictive modeling and more targeted communications.

Well worth the read…maybe with a stiff drink.

Click the image below to go to the CMO Council website. A quick, free registration gets you the study in PDF format.

MinneADpolis: Trying to lure ad folks

So I recently came across a very interesting website called www.minneadpolis.com. It’s a site that was built to tout the advantages of working in the advertising industry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The site is very well done and looks like it was created last fall.

In case you don’t know, Minneapolis has been a mini-mecca for creative ad folks since about the mid-1980’s. Fallon, Carmichael Lynch and several other hot creative shops started there , grew and continue to do good work from this frozen Midwest location.

Unfortunately, though the site is a good idea, it currently resembles the ghost town that is the advertising industry in the United States. The last job posting was from February and the agency news and portfolio sections seem to be dominated by Colle McVoy, who either created the site or is the only agency left with the human resources to spare to add to the site. The “Working Here” and “Living Here” sections are good overviews of the city and the professional community. The “Working Here” area boasts some good testimonials, but again, they don’t have “added on” dates, and so look a bit forgotten.

All in all, the site is worth a look. But because of its upkeep and the way it now looks deserted, it may depress you a bit if you’re in the biz. I sincerely hope the site–and the ad industry as a whole–picks itself up and dusts itself off soon.

Cannes Gold Lions for Advertising: What are they really worth?

Ad agencies are always talking about their creative awards. But what are they really worth? One award-winning agency out of Amsterdam wanted to know. Check out Boondoggle’s hilarious balancing act between self-deprecation and braggadocio.

The Power of the Web or United Breaks Guitars

I know this story is old (three weeks on the web is like a year in the real world:), but I would be remiss not to comment on it here. If you haven’t already heard, a few months ago a Canadian musician, Dave Carroll, had his guitar blatantly mishandled by United Airlines, and then denied any compensation for it. In return, Carroll produced a song and video called “United Breaks Guitars” which he posted to YouTube early in July. The video went bonkers, being viewed by more than a million people in the first couple days. It now has over 4.5 million views and has caused irreparable grief for United. According to Fast Company, it may have even had a part in a $180 million swing in United’s stock price.

This is not only an incredible example of consumer empowerment, but also a potential panacea for the lack of transparency in corporate policy. Many companies still think they can get away with this sort of behavior unscathed and without fault. But that is becoming less and less true with communication vehicles like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.People are taking charge and speaking out, often in voices louder than the large corporations themselves (Dave Carroll supposedly spent $150 on his video).

If you haven’t been privy to this story, get it from the horse’s mouth over at www.davecarrollmusic.com.

Here’s the You Tube link.

Better customer service begins with letting people do their job.

Last year I wrote about bad customer service , shocked to find how companies and businesses can so easily dismiss customer relationships due to apathy, or more often, to lack of autonomy on the part of the customer servants. Besides individual work ethic, much of the problem stems from centralization; a company’s unwillingness to put control in the hands of the purveyors of customer service.

I was recently reminded of this topic when reading one of Gary Hamel’s latest posts “Unshackling Employees”. In this post Hamel compares corporations to democracy and free markets, positing the difference between to two as degrees of autonomy. Democracy and free markets let people do things pretty much as they see fit, working only within agreed upon guidelines. Whereas, corporations try to manage everything and create rule structures that limit action.

As an example of a changing corporate system he offers up the 150-year old Bank of New Zealand. An old stodgy behemoth like this is certainly a perfect candidate for being centralized and standardized to the gills, controlling every move every employee makes.

Well, for the most part, that appeared to be true for BNZ, but its potential held so much more. Hamel talks about how a couple free thinkers in the organization tried to change things. More importantly, he points out that it wasn’t the free thinkers, but the bank management itself that allowed the change to happen, simply by loosing the reigns and furnishing freedom where it was desired and where it made the most sense.