George Orwell was kinda right...

We all thought Big Brother would look like this:

Or like this:

Instead he looks like this:

When it said in the bible that "The meek shall inherit the earth" we now know that the monks couldn't translate for shit.  What they really meant was: "The geek shall inherit the earth."

So the question is this: how friended is your business?

Welcome to the era of NIMBLE MARKETING...

And so it hits me in the waiting room of the car dealership while getting my car serviced...the problem with marketing is that it is slow-moving.  Slow based on the timelines of a TV ad or a print ad.  It is a system that precludes a finite conclusion.  We set out to do this piece of marketing and then it's done.  It's about the end and not the means to an end.
The reality is that this system doesn't line up with the pace of the world.  Or the pace of the consumers living in this world. Now, I am not advocating throwing the baby out with the bath water.  What I am advocating is a dual-layered approach - one that takes into consideration long production times and another that creates its own system of nimble marketing.
Nimble marketing itself comes in two flavors:

1. Nimble Activation: A platform that creates - in real time - new consumer engagements where they are, when they are, in the media they use.
2. Nimble Content Creation: A platform that empowers consumers to create - in real time - their own engagements with the brand...their interpretation of their brand.  Not yours.

The reason nimbleness is so important is it accepts the reality of the playing field in how consumers really engage with brands.  They don't just sit back and accept what is being given to them, they want to be an active participant in their relationships.  As goes for human interactions - the healthy ones being built on a common understanding of mutual give and take - so goes for the human/brand interaction.  Each is allowed, encouraged even, to express their own opinion.  The biggest hurdle to this is that brands don't often own that last stage of the "one-on-one" interaction to both seal the deal and provide the comfort of a personal relationship.  (This was the awakening for Apple to close the loop of the brand experience by owning the final stage of the sale by opening up the Apple store.)
This is where the digital interaction pays huge dividends in being able to efficiently aggregate and accommodate a personal dialogue.  I, get to profess my love for the brand.  I, get to vent about a problem I had with the brand.  I, get to engage with other lovers of the brand so WE can have a mutual admiration society for our greater intelligence and better taste BECAUSE we are brand lovers.  I, get to hear from the representatives of the brand to fix my disappointment and turn it into delight.  Now, the solution is not always a digital engagement that will function as a proxy for a personal relationship.  Sometimes it is a personal phone call or an invitation to a special event, anything that makes me feel special again for choosing you instead of another to be a part of my life.

So the reality of a brand today is to build into their marketing plans an interwoven platform (one that blends long-term projects and one that creates a real-time feedback loop on continuous dialogue between consumer and brand) that empowers the pursuit of a personal relationship by accepting the nimble nature of consumers by being nimble themselves.

My question then is this: What part of your marketing platform is nimble?

So I took a hiatus...

It's been over a year since my last post which pretty much coincides with my time at a digital agency.
First, no hard feelings.
Second, my hunch was right...digital is the future.
Third, digital is the future IF creatively well executed around a big idea.

So here's my evolution on the definition of marketing:

Marketing is about masterminding one huge ripple effect of feedback loops where one brand interaction MUST lead to another and another...intentionally.

Marketing has gone from 8-track to 7.1-THX-certified-surround-sound-3D-smellavision.  The marketing paradigm is shaping to be a chaotic mass of traditional marketing, shopper marketing, social marketing, guerilla marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, mobile marketing in need of the simplicity and clarity of a tight, elegant and inspiring strategic idea.

We have an unlimited universe of media and tools to bring a brand to life – to seduce and engage consumers, shoppers, buyers, tweeters, facebookers, bloggers, mashers, artists, teens, tweens, moms, HCMs, blue collar and white collar dads, young and old singles, brand evangelists…by tapping into their passions with the power of big ideas, attracting them with amazing design, inspiring them with a compelling and evolving product/brand story and engaging them with ongoing relevant social currency to keep them coming back for more.

So new rules about what I believe in.

I believe in...

1. Integrated. A successful brand integrates across all thouchpoints.  So think laterally.
2. Choicefulness. Activation across all touchpoints is a choicefull strategic process. So figure out first what EMOTION you are REALLY SELLING.
3. Emotion as driver. Form follows function follows feeling.  So start your project with the feeling you wish to evoke.
4. A new reality. Digital/mobile has become the glue that connects the engagement points of a big idea.  So figure out how one interaction builds on AND feeds the next and the next.
5. A feeling. A big stonking idea is a feeling you get in your belly.  So listen to your gut.
6. Creative in, creative out. The more creative the research and approach to a business problem, the greater the creative output.  So think first, do second.
7. Looking elsewhere. If you are looking in the same place everybody else is, expect vanilla strategy.  So start from scratch EVERY TIME knowing that each business problem is ALWAYS different than the last.  
8. Knowing the differences. Understanding consumers is to differentiate what they say from what they think from what they do from what they don’t do.  So figure out where along their journey they opt out from fully engaging with your brand... and fix it.
9. Strategy and tactics. To create a great strategy is to validate against great tactics, big ideas need both to work.  So stress test the big idea AND the execution against both sides of the marketing brain.
10. Being right. It’s about being at the right place at the right time with the right message in the right media for the right target.  So make it everyone's job to be a Connections Planner.
11. A beginning. A brand is built from the shelf out (off- and on-line).  So look at the world from the vantage point of the packaging at shelf.
12. The experience. A brand is how we feel about it based on how we experience it.  So create theater, theater, theater...
13. Sensuality. We shop with our senses first, our minds second.  So leverage more than one sense to bring your brand to life.
14. Two kinds. There are inspiration shoppers and mission shoppers.  So create for both sides of the brain.
15. Favorite wins. We buy our favorite brand over the best brand. So make it your mission to always make them fall in love.

So my question is: are we overcomplicating the overcomplicated?  Are these rules simple enough to create simplicity?

Just when you think it has all been already done... along comes a wolf...

This is brilliant!

Mad props to its creator, 25 year-old Tokyo-based Taijin Takeuchi (article here).

And for another stroke of beautiful elegance...

I have seen the future of branding and it is... Nine Inch Nails!?...

Ok... Not a huge fan of NIN the music, but I am now a huge fan of NIN the marketing machine. I think Trent Reznor and Rob Sheridan are really on the cutting edge of Integrated Marketing. They may not call it that but the simplicity and elegance in their understanding consumers and human truths to turn them into great marketing strategies with relevant and powerful tactical executions is a work of art. Listen below (and read the article here)...

The brilliance of their marketing integration begins with Reznor asking himself:
'What would I want if I were a fan?"
Fan, consumer, shopper, whatever... this is the epicenter of all good marketing.

Not to be a genius of the obvious, Reznor continues:
"How would I want to be treated?' Now let's work back from that. Let's find a way for that to make sense and monetize it."

WOW! What the consumer wants...working back from there...
What novel concepts. Yet, it is so ironic that many people in so-called marketing expert positions never start their marketing campaign from the simply obvious. Instead they look at it from THEIR marketing objectives identifying ways to exploit consumers.

Lesson here: observe, listen, understand, get inspired by what consumers are doing and then see how your brand can fit into their lives - let consumers exploit the brand. Read, make it theirs.

As I see it, it's not a brand for me until it becomes MY brand.

It is also a path of least resistance:
To build it out, Reznor decided to use off-the-shelf resources — Blogger, Twitter, FeedBurner, Flickr, YouTube — rather than trying to duplicate what other people had already created. 'They're going to do a better job than we are," he explains, "and they're going to have a lot more resources to put into it.'"

And the coup de grace: "We're using what people are already using every day anyway... It's media on the fans' terms, how they want to use it."

Lesson here: consumers are so overwhelmed by life they don't have time to add a new way to do things. So, forgo the "wanting a proprietary process/technology/system to make it ownable by the brand/company/etc." and instead focus on what works. Ask yourself: what works best for consumers so we can achieve ______?

But the real holy grail of marketing:
"There’s an enormous value in having a relationship with your fans, more value even than in selling your records." says Peter Jenner an ex-manager for Pink Floyd and The Clash.

Manufacturers and managers need to wake up to this reality: there is more value in having a relationship with your brand's consumers/advocates/fans/evangelists than selling product. In the end, as Reznor believes, people want to feel included in your brand experience. Connect them to each other because they are already connecting with you. There is more power in numbers.
So do as NIN does, post pictures of the audience they take from stage: "It was great," Reznor says: "People felt included. People kind of felt like they were getting postcards from us."

So my question is: are we creating our own marketing monster by trying to be too clever? Shouldn't it always be about understanding consumer/shopper behavior AND THEN seeing where the brand can fit in rather than the brand trying to make executions fit our needs?

I once read that the University of California system had built some new buildings. They then waited a year before landscaping and putting cemented paths from one to the other; they were looking to see what paths the students naturally took. The moral of the story is that they observed actual behavior and leveraged it for efficiency and effectiveness. They didn't base their decisions on a plan that looked good on a drawing in a boardroom - because it was convenient for the architect - they did it because it made sense from the "what would I want if I were walking across a campus" perspective.
This reduced immediate and long term costs, was more intuitive and relevant, and people actually used it.

The importance of creating a brand from the shelf out...

I have been following this story for a while now but it was because of today's article in the New York Times Magazine that it really hit me: design is where it's at. (Preposition intended.)

This story has gotten a lot of traction from AdAge (link is broken but the jest was: Sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line dropped 19% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22 resulting in a loss of $33 million following the disastrous introduction of new packaging), to the Huffington Post, to Fast Company, to a series in the NYT. But what I find most interesting was the consumer reaction. There are a number of forces at work here:

1. Tropicana brand managers who are looking for new news to excite the trade and boost sales
2. The design team (Arnell Group) who wants to infuse the brand with some design intellectualism, push the client for a brand REvolution rather than an evolution (and make some cash for the company)
   
3. The consumer who has a love affair with a brand and wants nothing to change
   

A brand is something we create out of thin, calculated air... hopefully. Prior to a brand's launch it doesn't exist and has no meaning. It is not until it is designed that it begins to take on meaning. As Deyan Sudjic ascertains: "design is 'the DNA' of a society, the code that we need to explore if we are to stand a chance of understanding the nature of the modern world." Now this meaning is two-fold: the actual, inherent, tangible attributes and functionality of the product, and the embedded, attributed, ethereal, intangible beliefs of the brand. One is very left brain, the other very right brain. Some is conscious, some unconscious. So, in essence a successful brand is a balance of the two. Different brands exist at different point along the rational/emotional, tangible/intangible spectrum. Tropicana is more to the left (tangible) and the Tiffany blue box is more to the right (intangible). Or is it...

I see the Tropicana event as a tipping point in the modern American culture, one where design (in this case packaging) holds all the power of successful marketing. Even for lowly orange juice cartons.

If there is anything to learn from this fiasco, here are my take-aways:

1. Creating something new just to create something new is not always a good idea.
   Brand Managers need to look at where the REAL marketing problem lies asking themselves "Where is the consumer OPT-OUT in their shopper journey?" Identify that and you can address the real marketing inflection point. For Tropicana it was a lemming situation: Pepsi is redesigning their logo and packaging, well, then we need to also. They chose the corporate path of least resistance because it would get the green light rather than ask the hard question: What is the real problem with this brand...
   This has landed PepsiCo with what is being referred to as their very own New Coke fiasco from 1985. "We underestimated the deep emotional bond [consumers] had with the original packaging" said Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America. Not be a genius of the obvious but, did you ask them before you started this.
   
   
2. Design for design sake is not always a good idea.
   I call this board room design. The strategy is great - Squeeze. It has so many layers. Had I come up with it, I would have been proud. Unfortunately, the strategic team needed to follow through to design - the planners should have been in the room to evaluate creative. The execution was self-indulgent from a design perspective; they went cold and modern when they said warm and connected - the imagery and words are there but the design "feeling" is off: hugging families (warm), black and white visuals (cold), colorful orange (warm), sans-serif typography (cold).
   
   
   Even Peter Arnell seems to be struggling with telling the brand story.
   
   
   Moreover, if the shopper reaction is that it looks "ugly," "stupid," "generic brand-like," "store brand" then I would suspect that little research was done before (by conducting a retail category audit) or after (shopper testing in real-world, at shelf environments). Most likely it was done in a board room full of left-brain managers (this is not a criticism of MBAs, they are very good at finance, but it is a criticism of having the right person for the task of evaluating creative executions. Hire more artists to evaluate and screen packaging/art/design or better yet, put a CDO - Chief Design Officer - at the center of your company. If it's good enough for P&G, it should be good enough for the rest of us.). Or the packaging was tested in a traditional consumer focus group: closed room, no windows, two-way mirror, a bunch of people telling you what they think you want to hear - nothing remotely resembling the real retail shopping experience.
   Then again, I could be wrong and they did everything right and no one during research spoke up: brand managers, designers, consumers, shoppers, and they are all in shock from the consumer reaction.
   
   
3. Not checking in with consumers thinking you are smarter than them is not always a good idea.
   If you are selling to them, find out what they think first. I have seen this happen so many times. Brand managers who get paid healthy six-figure salaries making marketing decisions for consumer (well they should, they get paid enough to know what other people want) without testing the creative before rolling things out only to find out consumers hate it. When was the last time they went into a grocery store.
   
   
4. Consumers have all the power.
   We, in the marketing business from brand managers to agency folk, like to believe we are smarter and have this great ability to make things irresistible to consumers and shoppers. We are all victims of our intellectual delusions. All our expensive education will never, and I repeat, never make up for the fact that shoppers choose things for the most irrational reasons, the best of which is: because I can. The reason they do, is something attracted them to it. Their senses guided them to the design.
   
   In the case of Tropicana, the design turned them off. It turned them off so much they took the issue into their own hands and keyboards. Technology has given them the ultimate democratic power and seat at the marketing table to do something about their beloved Tropicana. Read, package design - still the same product, but not the same brand. Checking in with consumers now seems like a smarter idea than change for the sake of change. The Tropicana billboards were great but the packaging failed to sell the brand at shelf. You fail at shelf, no traditional advertising is going to help you.
   

So my question is: Even though we are in a turbulent time when people crave the familiar, is change good? Do we not just need an evolution to win the marketing game rather than a revolution?

The one upside I see in this story is what was done to increase the sensual experience of Tropicana - the squeezable cap in the shape and texture of an orange. More senses, more emotional connection. Not a revolution, an evolution for the brand. Tropicana decided to keep that because consumers liked it.

Give it up...

It is said that the company doesn't own the brand, the consumer does.

So the question today is: why do so many corporations covet their brand equities like the holy grail and keystone holding the foundation of their company together when all consumers want is to feel the brand is part of them?

If a brand makes a concerted effort to release their equities for consumer play, then the consumer will play. Their creativity with the logos and taglines will spawn cult-like following without the heavy-handed corporate control which only translates as disingenuous.
Recently Coke decided to do just that, let the consumer keep the control over their brand. The second most trafficked page on Facebook (after Obama's) was a Coke devoted page created by two Coke fans (Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski). (For data and Ad Age article click here)
Now, FB policy is a branded page must be "authorized by or associated with the brand." So FB decided that they would have to close the page or give it to Coke. Under traditional corporate policy, a cease and desist would be issued. But Coke did something different. They decided to work with Dusty and Michael. Coke suggested that Dusty and Michael share it with them. What a novel concept! Sharing a brand... Giving it up for all to play with...

The culting of a brand will never come from the corporation/manufacturer only from the consumers. But it can only happen if the corporation/manufacturer allows it - or one better, encourages it - to happen.