October 7, 2010 No comments

When Good Isn’t Good Enough

The history of brands is littered with good — sometimes even great — products that failed.  Can you spell (or remember) Betamax?

A recent case in point can be found in the litter of the aftermath of what many seem as the most colorful political primaries in record.  Amidst scandal, write-ins, and Tea Party surprises there was the DC mayoral race.  A race lost by incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty.

Mayor Fenty.  Young.  Smart.  Aggressive.

And effective.

By any objective standard he was a good mayor (and we’ve not had many in the three decades I’ve been here!).

He inherited a budget mess, and fixed it.  He said he would take over the city’s schools and make them work.  And he did!  He reduced crime, kept spending in check, modernized city services, and boosted private investments.

And he lost.

Why?
There were some immediate issues.  He addressed the budget by cutting jobs and fixed the schools by laying off teachers.  Not very popular in a city with a high unemployment rate.  But the real reasons were at the same time ephemeral and substantive.  It was a question of attitude.
Fenty’s intensity and intellect often led to arrogance.  His doggedness sometimes became insular.  His purity could be strident.
In the end, his base deserted him.  And he lost.
There are plenty of brand lessons in Mayor Fenty’s fall from grace.
One being that just because you’re ‘good’ doesn’t mean you’re ‘good enough’ for the next choice or purchase.  Substance matters.  But substance isn’t everything.  You can be ‘right’ and still have your customers think you are ‘wrong’.
Remember the advocates, supporters, purchasers, and fans that got you where you are.  Be nice to them.  Maybe even listen.  Ok, at least pretend to listen.  Don’t expect that they’ll follow and support you just because you think you’re doing the right thing … just because you’re so … good.
Just being good isn’t good enough.
September 28, 2010 1 Comment

Glittering Generalities

Watching the news this morning from one of my favorite ‘hidden gem’ hotels – The CharlesMark in Boston (Back Bay).  I stumbled across an interview with Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).  I liked her.  Seemed like a genuinely smart person and skilled operator.  And she’s been working hard making the rounds this days as educations reform and charter schools take the spotlight with the new documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

But I was unimpressed with her work this morning.  The exchange went something like this:

Reporter:  “But isn’t there a real problem with teachers who don’t have the skills or drive or ability to teach our children yet they continue in the classroom year after year?

AFT president:  “No one wants bad teachers in the classroom.  We don’t want that.  We’re not for that.  We’re against that.  But that’s not the real problem.  The real problem is getting everyone together.  We all have to address this educational challenge we face together.  We need to bring everyone to the table.  All parties have to work together to address this collectively … to do it together …”.

Blah, blah, blah.

She punted on recognizing the reality of the problem – bad teachers in the classroom.  And if you can’t step up and admit that a problem exists, how can you formulate a way of solving it?  She might as well have said, “If we can all just hold hands and sing the Coca Cola song …”

Then I read about the GOP’s “Pledge to America”.

We’re for families.  We honor the constitution.  We hate deficits (as well as the government we long to take control over).  We support our troops.  We believe in a strong America.  We hate terrorists.  And we are not fans of illegal immigrants.  We love America.  We love America a lot.

So what exactly to we do?  Not so much.

My fifth grade teacher used to term all this “glittering generalities.”  Kumbya on the left … Kumbya on the right.

I don’t know about you but the kumbya talk doesn’t work much in my world.

My mortgage company wants the check.  My clients want me to show them how much stuff I helped them sell.  The folks in the class I teach expect to learn something.  My wife expects me to fix the garbage disposal.  The people in my world want specifics.  They want tangibles.  They expect problems to be confronted and addressed.  You don’t even have to solve them all the time.  But if you show that you acknowledge it and doing everything you can to fix it, people will often give you the benefit of the doubt.

Does straight talk make a company or brand stronger?  I think so.  We can all cite popular brands that don’t.  But my experience is that if you dabble in glittering generalities long enough, the real problems catch up with you.

Not only that …

You become boring as hell.
September 11, 2010 1 Comment

Help! My brain is sabatoging me

I’m mad at my brain.

I read an article in LifeHacker titled “Top 10 Ways Your Brain is Sabotaging You (and how to beat it)“.

And while my current brain isn’t using all ten sabotaging techniques, there were enough on the list that I’m thinking my brain is up to something.

According to author Kevin Purdy, the #1 sabotage technique is for the brain to emit ‘negative emotions’ that cause you to put off doing things.  It is the project that you never complete because you never start it.  And you never start it because just thinking about it causes you to feel nauseous.

My brain does this to me all the time.  I mean ALL the time.

Another sneaky trick the brain has figured out.  It will refuse to shut itself off.  That is #7 on the top ten sabotage list.  It is when your brain “won’t stop spinning … even when you’re asleep.”  My brain is guilty as charged.

#6 on the list sounded familiar too.  It simply read:  “You Give Priority to Experiences that Prove You’re Right.”

Right!

And then finally there was this line:  ‘Ever set out to “Really, seriously clean out this room,” then find yourself, 20 minutes later, slowly sorting through photos and memorabilia, unable to toss a single thing?’  I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me.  But if I can’t tell you I’m sure that my wife can.  And all you have to do is go to our basement to prove it.

So now I know.  My brain is the culprit.

We’re going to have to have a talk.
August 30, 2010 3 Comments

Brand personality and brand Obama

Let’s see.  Eighteen months ago President Obama’s public approval ratings are through the roof.  Today, not so much.

What happened?

Others have written about policy, the economy, and the politics of it all.  I wonder about how all that can be viewed from the perspective of brand.  So I combed through the files and pulled up a structure from our friends at Leo Burnette.

Burnette’s brand structure is simple.  There are three components:  brand personality, brand promise, and brand essence.  The brand personality is the part that helps a person ‘relate’ to the brand.  That is, it is what led to those hideous questions in focus groups like, “if Dove soap were a famous person, what type of famous person would that be?”

Then there’s the brand promise.  The brand promise is the value statement.  Ir addresses the specific thing that the brand will do for you.  It is the ‘what is in it for me’  part of the brand.  Most often this is captured in the tagline.  I buy a BMW and I get the ultimate driving machine.  I buy Panasonic and I am one a step ahead.  I drink a Coke and get the real thing.

And yes.  Most brands don’t actually keep their promises.

Finally there is brand essence.  That is the emotional thing.  It is the Disney magic.  It is the Nieman Marcus return policy.  The service at a Ritz Carlton.  The reliability of a Honda.  This is the hardest one to pull off because it is supposed what people ‘feel’ when they interact with the brand.

Let’s apply them to brand Obama.  First, the brand promise.  It is a good place to start because, by definition, a political figure’s brand promise is not going to appeal to everyone.  It is the reason we have Republicans and Democrats.  Delivering on his brand promise — which President Obama reminds people that he is doing — is not just something people won’t relate to (a common problem among package and service brands) but is something that Republicans will hate.

Now let’s go to the brand personality.  Seems that the Obama brand personality seems to be rubbing Democrats the wrong way.  What once was the everyman presidency is now being seen by many liberal Democratic activists as effete, elitist, and arrogant.

Which leave us with the brand essence.  The emotional element.  And there the brand Obama has serious competitive and circumstantial challenges.  It is hard to keep excitement about “hope” when employment flirts with double digits and every morning you click on the Dow Jones to see if your retirement fund is still there.  (Not that any President can do much about it …)

My read is that it is the brand personality that has suffered most and is the key to brand Obama’s revival.  The President can’t change who he is – a Democrat – and therefore the promise is set.  Nor can the President do much to change the macro picture of two wars and an economy that daily veers drunkenly on the knife’s edge of a cataclysmic abyss.

But by most people’s read, there is work to be done on how people relate to him as a person.  The personality of his brand that was built on a certain populism.  An appeal to a ‘higher calling’.  It wasn’t divisive or bitter.  It was both reasonable and aspirational.

Not an easy thing to do when folks are calling into question just about everything in your life — from where you were born to your faith.
August 10, 2010 1 Comment

The New Minimalism

People are paring down, cutting back.  Will it last?

And if it does, what does it mean for the consumer or business brand of tomorrow?

I thought about this as I read a great piece in the Sunday New York Times by Stephanie Rosenbloom on the link between consumption and happiness.  According to Rosenbloom in the downsized economic world people are discovering that the Beatles were right … money does not buy you love … or happiness.

While the current round of stinginess may simply be a response to the economic downturn, some analysts say consumers may also be permanently adjusting their spending based on what they’ve discovered about what truly makes them happy or fulfilled.

Of course we all know that, right?  Well we should.  We read about it in the Great Gatsby (something I’m reading for the first time at the recommendation of my daughter).  Poor Gatsby.  Poor Daisy.  Awash with riches and beauty and … absolute boredom!  But we need not rely on F. Scott Fitzgerald and works of  fiction.  Watch an evening of “Access Hollywood”.  The misery to fun ratio leans decidedly to the former.  Addictions.  Infidelity.  Rehab.  Prison.  Divorce.  Abuse.

We’re not talking Leave it to Beaver.  For all their money, the jet set seem a pretty tawdry, depressing, miserable bunch.

No wonder people are paring down.

So is there anything worth buying?  According to the experts the money shot is on things you do, not things you do things with.  That is:

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

“  ‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)

Good news for hotels and cruise lines, bad news for Best Buy and The Furniture Store.

But some are going beyond the reductionism of consumerism to experiences.  Some are pushing a new minimalist lifestyle.  Not the least of whom is the author of RowdyKittens, Tammy Strobel.

Could this be the ‘new’ normal?  I actually think so.  At some point the cacophony of modern life takes its toll.  And the uncertain economic climate only reinforces what most people already know.  That the delight in life is in simple, genuine experiences.  Which brings us back to brands and what may be the modern test for brands in these lean economic times.

What simple, genuine experience do you generate for your customer?
August 4, 2010 No comments

I’m Good … I’m a Leader … Really!

I recently read an excellent article on resume writing.  It was so excellent that I now can’t find it which is usually the way things work.

The really good stuff I forget to tag or file away.  All the mediocre stuff ends up stacked up on the desk, clogging up the inbox, filling up the hard drive and overwhelming the Delicious file.

But I digress.

The point of the article on resume writing was that people waste valuable resume space — and more importantly valuable resume reader time — telling people about personal characteristics that are either (a) presumed; or (b) best judged by someone other than the writer.

How many of you have read — or have! — resumes that include phrases like …  “hard worker” … “detail oriented” … “team player” … “self starter”.

You read those things and you think to yourself “gosh, this person thinks pretty highly of him or herself.”

And you wonder when you are going to read a resume where someone writes:

“sometimes I’m lazy” … or …

“I’m tough to get along with” … or …

“I am capable of doing exceptional work but every now and then I need a good kick in the ass or else I’ll blow it off.”

Fact is we  often promote character traits that most people should expect of someone.  Like being honest, punctual, dedicated.

More importantly, we are rarely honest with ourselves about anything that concerns ourselves.  And while we may think that we are all these things, could it be that we are somewhat biased?

Shouldn’t others be the judge?

I often work with corporate clients on positioning and messaging their corporate brand.  Inevitably they will want to include the term “leader” in the messaging mix.

Funny, I’ve never have a client who wants to be a “follower” … they all want to be a “leader”.

But shouldn’t that be the judgment of others, not the brand?

Better to talk about your accomplishments, philosophy, and what you stand for.

Then letter others make their own judgment about who you are.
July 15, 2010 2 Comments

The JuiceBar Jobs Program

This morning I read the Washington Post and found out where all our money is.

It is with all those companies that aren’t hiring.

Apparently they are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash.  In fact, they have 25% more cash on hand today than they had prior to the economic meltdown!

By contrast, I’m sitting on … well … not nearly that much.  In fact, like a lot of people I’m trying to cut back because experts tell me that I should have more cash on hand.  My new found frugality is upsetting a lot of people.  Guess who is most upset?  The same companies that are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash!

Companies are saying they are not hiring people (despite having $1.8 trillion cash on hand) because there is ‘uncertainty’ in the market.  There is uncertainty because people are nervous.  People are nervous because they are afraid the companies with $1.8 trillion aren’t hiring and in some cases still laying people off.

We need a way out.

So here’s the JuiceBar’s deal with corporate America.

We’ll buy your stuff if you hire our neighbor.

We can even set up a formula.

If we buy an extra 100 cases of Crest, P+G hires back one mid-level manager.  15 gas grills from Home Depot equals an extra cashier.  Five flat screens and LG has to hire back one technician.

And I’ll only refinance at these incredibly low rates if the bank agrees to hire two recent college graduates with English degrees.

The history and English majors need our help.

And with $1.8 trillion you could buy a lot of them.
July 4, 2010 No comments

Happy Dependence Day

We can learn a lot from the Declaration of Independence. Happy July 4th.  On this day we  celebrate being ‘free’.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The authors  go on at length describing the reasons for which they declare themselves to be ‘free’ of King George.  It is a very healthy list that culminates in “a prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Good.  We all can agree that independence from tyrants is a good thing.  But that was not the end of it.  While we often focus on the the things that founders wanted to be ‘free’ from, we don’t pay enough attention to how the framers closed the document:

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

So in severing their dependence from King George, the founders declared their dependence to be elsewhere — depending on Divine Providence and each other.

This idea of dependence is lost in much social and political thinking these days.  People claim that individuals, left to their own, can decide and do better than business and government.  But as Mark Lilla recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, this type of groupthink has its own pitfalls.  Indeed, there’s little in history to suggest that left alone, the individual can go very far.  The question is not independence vs. dependence.  The question is what things go in which category.

So let’s celebrate both.

I don’t want to be dependent on a single client or the next paycheck.  I don’t want to be dependent on government subsidies or tax loopholes.  I don’t want to be dependent on dumb luck, chance, or one-trick gimmicks (although I’ll likely accept if offered).  I don’t want to be dependent on a single offering, service, investment, or option.

I want to be independent of fads, phobias, freaks, and phonies. I  want to be independent of my vices, foibles, and addictions.  I want to be independent of my own whims, vanities and stupidities.

I want to dependent on the military and police to arrest the bad guys and keep me safe.  On farmers to figure out a way to feed me and the rest of the world. On teachers to help educate my children and my grandchildren.   On financiers to help lend me money when I need to invest.  On bankers and money managers to keep my investments safe.  On judges and lawyers to administer justice.  On  engineers to find a sustainable and affordable way to keep the lights on.  On people smarter than I to invent the next new thing.

I want people to depend on me.

I want my customers to depend on me for good products and services.  I want people I meet to depend on me for ideas and advice.  I want community, friends, and family to depend on me for help and support.  I want my wife and children to depend on me being a good husband and father.

Like the founding fathers, I want to depend on God and my fellow man.
Independence alone leads to self indulgence; a cruel master.   Accepting dependence through serving others is the highest delight.

What do you depend on?

Depend wisely.
June 23, 2010 4 Comments

A letter from my Kindle to my iPad

Dear Ms. iPad,

You trollop!  You tramp!  You gold digger!

You shallow hussy!

I had the promise of a real, meaningful, and lasting relationship and you tore it away from me.  You are a cold, merciless, unrepentant whore.  I hate you.

The JuiceBar was mine!  He loved me.  He adored me.  He couldn’t keep his hands off me.  He would cradle me like a baby and snuggle up close to me everywhere from the bedroom to the board room (Yes!  He had me in his office!).  He even bought me svelte, belting leather clothes that accentuated my lines and kept me warm on those long flights and lonely nights.

The JuiceBar used to show me off.  I remember how he almost cried when he thought that a forgetful moment almost lost our relationship.  Now I’m the one doing the crying.

I sit here and watch his eyes light up when you light up.  You and your edge to edge touch screen.  Your backlit glow.  I see his hands reach out for you and softly caress that cold, cold metal back of yours.

Then there’s the worst.  There’s that constant stroking.  Watching his fingertips continually stoke and tap and stroke and tap and stroke and tap.  His fingers never stop.  He has his hands all over you all the time … even in public!  It makes me want to vomit.

I am what he really needs.  With me we read, we learn, we think.  We enjoy the simple things.  Yes it may be spartan to you but it is what true love and true living is all about.

But with you it is all just fun and games.  And with those disgusting hyperlinks you let him explore sights and places that are wasteful, wonton, some even trashy.  No, for you it is all fun and games, excitement and finding the next thing that will make him go “ooooh.”  You are nothing but the ephemeral fleeting pleasure of the moment.

I hope he drops you and that glassy painted face of yours breaks into a thousand pieces.  Better yet, I hope some future strumpette steals his heart and makes you hurt as much as you hurt me.

You’ll get yours.  I promise.

Jerry’s Kindle
June 10, 2010 No comments

A Presidential Tweet

If a picture can say a thousand words?  But can a poster replace the history of the presidency?

I’m looking at a pencil that has all the pictures of the presidents on it.  I think I bought it at one of the Smithsonian museums.

There’s a whole slew of these guys.  They look eerily the same.  Neatly arranged rows of old white men (I bought the pencil before Obama).   Some were heros.  Others were rascals.  But they look so similar.   I think they all came from the same gene pool.

I’ve got a slew of books at home by and about the presidents.  I’ve even read some of them.

People dedicate their lives to studying the presidents, analyzing them, writing about them.  They are the cornerstones of any history text book.  They are the measuring and reference points for much of our own personal history.

And now it has all been boiled down into one convenient 38×24 infographic poster.  Yours framed for $320.

This is such a relief.

I was afraid I was going to have to read Doris Goodwin’s Lincoln.  Or Jim Burns’ Washington.  Or Gary Wills’ Madison (actually since I saw the HBO show the chance that I would actually read the Madison book was pretty slim).

I did read Primary Colors but that wasn’t supposed to be real.

But back to the poster.  I’m in awe.  The entire history of the presidency …  and entire history of electoral decision-making … all small enough to be framed.  I don’t have to read it, just look at it.  I don’t have to put it in a library, I can hang it on a wall.

A graphical equivalent of an historical tweet of the American presidency.

I love this country.