Snowden Tatarski Blog

Presentation available on creating a competitive and sustainable marketing strategy.

2009-11-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Presentation

Jeff Snowden presents concepts in his new book The Promise and The Trust in a 60-minute presentation full of stories and examples. The presentation is valuable to general, marketing and brand managers and those that advise on brand marketing activities.

Background

After working in Atlanta with STB Media Group, ASI worldwide, Lazzari and Tillman Allen Greer, Jeff Snowden co-founded Snowden Tatarski in 2000. Since that time he has consulted businesses of all sizes on brand strategy, marketing and advertising.
Snowden has taught workshops, been a featured speaker and authored discussion papers on marketing, branding and advertising. He authored the marketing strategy book, Gin, Incense and Deacon Blues and has contributed to Kleepner’s advertising procedure, a popular college advertising textbook. Jeff is also a former commercial photographer and has two books of his photography published. He resides in Athens, Georgia with his wife Maura, a social worker, where the couple gardens compulsively and pretends they are still in college.

A brief of the presentation

In the beginning, there were ideas. Those ideas turned into businesses. One person milled grain. Another made cheese. And another shaped metal. And then, in time the crafts began to specialize. The blacksmith profession split and some blacksmiths specialized in horseshoes and other specialized in making things like swords.
Businesses were built with refined purposes. For many, the business was driven by passion. The craftsmen and smiths took pride in their work and the reputations they had made for selling quality goods. Bigger businesses were formed to serve bigger needs.
Even today, we tell the story of great and passionate entrepreneurs whose drive and purpose guide companies to greatness. We wax of their focus and vision. We tell of their passion for their employees and customers. We pry through their histories hoping to reveal that magic blueprint for unbridled success.
But then something happened. Businesses began to separate from those focused purposes. Instead of intensely living out a passion or purpose, companies tried to manufacture the appearance of purpose. Companies separated from being focused on products, customers and experiences and became more focused on the mirage of celebrity executives, Wall Street roller coaster rides and disconnected branding veneer meant to hide aimless, purposeless and insatiable companies.
Mission statements went from being aspirations to a bunch of corporate puffery. Organizations no longer had concrete reasons for being other than creating the perception of making money. Brands became synonyms for the orchestrated trickery meant to persuade consumers that our products, services and companies are really something more than they really are.

At the same time and possibly instigated by the beckoning complexity of the finance and IT portions of business, marketing departments began to intoxicate themselves with all manner of potions and elixir cure-alls. Psychographic segmentation, media mix modeling, buzz worthiness, executive blogs and a whole host of other marketing malarkey helped sooth otherwise aimless and fruitless efforts by allowing everyone to look really busy.

In truth, there are only two works that matter in marketing: Promise and Trust. Your company has something distinct and differentiating about it, otherwise it would not exist. It is a promise to consumers. Understanding that promise is crucial to the point that you should remove everything that is in the way of carrying out that promise and accentuate the things that are helping. This means products, systems, people and processes.

A whole lot of successful companies do this without even knowing it. The reason why they do is because they start with a focused purpose and keep it potent. They manage the interaction with the customers and keep a level of attentiveness and transparency that consumer’s feel they can support. In short, these companies prove to customers that every dollar spent on the company’s products will result in the benefits promised and expected, be they functional, emotional or experiential.

Consumers want to know their investment of time; energy and any other resources will have the intended result. They want and need to know that what you are offering is not fully duplicated elsewhere for less money, will be worth their investment and will deliver the desired result. This is where trust comes in. People want to know they are making a wise choice with their resources. All the little procedures we do under the marketing umbrella are (or at least should be) aimed at increasing the trust that customer resources are well placed.

The goal of marketing is to build trust in the promise of the offering. It is that simple. No amount of marketing tactics will ever overcome the need of companies to make a compelling promise that they can deliver and then help consumers believe that promise. Consumers have always been and continue to be interested in getting the desired result for their investment. Offerings that clearly offer and pitch such will be successful.

It all comes down to The Promise and The Trust.

What people are saying about the book.

Consumers yearn for authentic brands, services and products that deliver on their value promises from companies that can be trusted and are transparent to their customers. Jeff Snowden revisits the business of branding, boiling it down, like good southern home cooking, to a simple yet filling portion of Promise and Trust. His exposition is clear, concise, and chocked full of stories, metaphors, and real life narratives. He gives branding new life.

Thomas Leigh, Professor
Tanner Chair of Sales Management
Department of Marketing and Distribution
Terry College of Business
University of Georgia

Oh, does this subject and book hit a sweet spot in my business soul!
I have had the wonderful opportunity of introducing new products to the consumer world, and am presently doing that very thing. At the age of 66 the fires still burn, as does the passion of introductions. Jeff’s book hits on so many of our companies Core Values, with the heart of those values being the promise and the trust. This is a great insight to consumer products and their development, growth, success or failure. Jeff Snowden has such a unique way of business writing that provides common sense and down-home humor while being encouraging, but reminding us to never take ourselves to darn serious.

Tom Nall
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Republic Tequila

Once again Jeff Snowden turns his bemused eye on the over-hyped and under-delivered world of current brand marketing and, in plain, compelling language champions the fundamentals that once drove great products and companies. His latest book is a simple plea for the enduring value of common sense and honest commitment in marketing... shared through a wry perspective that gently skewers the foibles and fantasies of so many “how-to” business tomes. Enjoy the read— you might even learn something!

Hayes Roth,
Chief Marketing Officer
Landor Associates

“Promise and trust are critical elements in differentiating your product in a land of killer competition. Without it you stand a chance of not surviving. A must read.”

Jack Trout
Author of Positioning and Differentiate or Die

No amount of tweeting can save you now.

2009-09-20T05:10:00.000-07:00

It’s feels like déjà vu all over again. I remember standing in that mediocre office in a drab North Atlanta office park and thinking to myself at what point would this client stop pretending to be a viable business and start trying to actually be one. “This website needs to make us look very big and very credible” he said through a grunt while moving the hard top to his Carrera from one side of the office to the other.
There could be no doubt everything I was involved with; all the photos, headlines, designs and this new fangled website thing (It was 1998) had a single aim- sell the company at a higher price. This company was not unlike many I was working with. There was energy in the air. Everyone was buying and expanding and visioning. There was only one problem- no one was actually making anything. The entire economy was virtual. It’s was taboo to point this out, of course. You wouldn’t want to say anything that might begin the inevitable avalanche of falling confidence.
The late 90s dot com era seems like a lifetime ago but it came back to me, in a sense, when I got an invite from the my local Chamber of Commerce indicating that their annual meeting would have some sort of Twitter theme. Now, I’m not too proud to admit it. I tweet. Perhaps it was my desire to find connection with the younger generation much like when I grew my hair out long despite being over the age of 30. Those poor souls who follow my tweets will probably complain to you that 90% of my dispatches are updates as to the growth and proliferation of my garden. But for you non-tweeter, let me explain the magic of twitter.
Imagine sending a quick e-mail to a select group of friends where the message will also reside on a page where people can see your other messages. Also, people can sign up to receive your messages and you can sign up to read other people’s messages. The messages must be 140 characters or less. Yes, that’s what this whole mesmerizing phenomenon really just comes down to. I know, you could have done much of that with e-mail and a website years ago. Now, that’s what twitter is in a functional sense, here’s what it is in a practical sense. Take the aforementioned technology and try to use it to either make yourself seem more attractive, hip, intellectual, popular or “plugged in” or try to use it to hock worthless junk either blatantly or in a seemingly innocuous message that is a bit like “Just got back from a jog. Time to make millions assembling products from home”.
I won’t lie. I have enjoyed keeping up with the tweets of a few folks. But here is my fear. There are at least a few businesses who believe the sheer magic of social networking tools (like twitter) are going to reverse the fortunes of an otherwise fundamentally flawed business. Even worse, there has been a meteoric rise of social networking “experts” who will promise you that you are just one tweet or face book update from windfall success. Where this gets really scary is the remarkably similar pattern all this has to virtual economies, bubbles and implosions of our recent past. Again, businesses are flocking in droves trying to find a quick cure-all rather than resolving fundamental problems of strategy.
When I lecture about this subject to groups, my favorite metaphor for economic transaction is the miller, the farmer and the blacksmith. Think of the very basics of transaction. Each of our medieval friends has some things the others need. The farmer grows grain but needs it milled. Both the miller and the blacksmith need grain to eat by way of the miller’s preparation. The miller and the farmer both need tools and parts from the blacksmith.
We know needs exist and the progression of an exchange is based in some pretty basic motivations. In the acquisition of that which is needed, the purchaser seeks reassurance that the expectation of that which they are acquiring will be fulfilled by that which they acquire. Put simply, if the farmer is exchanging two sacks of grain for a new plow, his intention is that the performance and ownership experience of the plow will be worth the exchange of his grain, time and energy. The deliverable of how a product, service or concept fulfills a set of needs is what a few of us in the marketing world call the promise. And it’s the promise where many companies fail strategically.
In my book The Promise and The Trust, I outline the things that distinguish good promises from bad. Good promises are differentiated in that they don’t simply promise something you can already get elsewhere. Good promise appreciate the whole value and experience of that which is to be acquired vs. that which is used as payment. The rise of CarMax proved that the too often gut wrenching experience of buying a car from a traditional dealer is a factor beyond the mere price. Good promises also resonate with actual needs instead of seeking to solve needs that don’t really exist at a commercially viable level. Finally, good promise are those in which it is believable that the organization making the promise can fulfill what is claimed. GM can claim they’re driving the American Revolution all they want. We still know they’re making a ton of cars in Mexico.
Until a company understands and can articulate a solid promise, no amount of any marketing tactic is going to help. It’s does not matter if they are featured in “100 great places to work” or if they have a new I-phone game, without a good promise it is all window dressing. With a good promise, the trust-building can be relatively easy. BMW’s advertising is by no means groundbreaking. They don’t send me tweets or connect with me on linked-in. I imagine their press coverage might be nice but I hardly have read it. Yet the position of a car, which is truly thrilling to drive, is firm in my and so many other minds. Their promise is solid and enduring and it has paid off. For comparison, what do you supposed GM’s promise is. Yeah, they don’t know either.
After a company’s promise is firm all the other activities intending to build credibility that the promise will be fulfilled begin to occur. This is the tactical side of marketing rather than the strategic and it is where most people in marketing concentrate their thinking. Things like websites, newspapers ads, radio spots, infomercials, sponsorships, news articles and yes, twitter- all aim to build trust that a promise will be fulfilled. However, without a solid promise in which to build confidence, all of these tactics are futile. Think about it, what exactly are you asking people to trust? That you are really, really, really cool or important or successful? Look at most ads- that’s exactly what they are asking consumers to do. When you boil it down, the reason most companies give for why you should give them money, time and attention is that they are cool, important or successful. Nothing about how they meet needs- just that they are more awesome than everyone else. Hardly compelling.
Instead, trust should be built by explaining how you are meeting needs, indentifying with consumers and getting the individual or organization endorsement needed to allay consumer’s mistrust of claims. Take note, I’m am not saying do one of these things. Your marketing should do all of these things. The goal is to tell a story as to why you can be trusted to fulfill consumer’s particular needs.
The world of commerce is at an important crossroads. The shrinking of incomes and credit is making people a bit more tight-fisted with their resources than they were in the past. This could mean great things for the companies that are clear about their promise and do the kinds of things that help people trust that promise. However, this next era in our economy might spell disaster for the aimless, untrustworthy and hapless huckster who cannot muster a sales pitch beyond “hey everyone, look how cool and zany I am”.
The phenomenon of social networking is about to exit its honeymoon and people will begin to ask if it really did all the things that were promised. I suspect, much like the remnants of the dot com era, some of the applications will be around for a while albeit in a more realistic commercial use. Meanwhile, the peddlers of marketing cure-alls will move on to some other bubble and the rest of us will sift through the remains looking for the lessons.
Perhaps if we all stop and think rationally, we might be able to see some of the telltale signs that ignoring the strategic in favor of the tactical has already begun to erode value and confidence. Perhaps we might look back just a few short years and remember the lessons from an economy that also had no real products but plenty of empty promises. If so, we should really start to warn each other. Let’s tell people to focus of fulfilling needs and keeping promises. Let’s spur business to think about what they really do and get them to tell everyone else about it in a compelling way that encourages trust.
Of course, they’ll need to do it in 140 characters or less.

The only two words that matter in marketing.

2009-06-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, there were ideas. Those ideas turned into businesses. One person milled grain. Another made cheese. And another shaped metal. And then, in time the crafts began to specialize. The blacksmith profession split and some blacksmiths specialized in horseshoes and other specialized in making things like swords.

Businesses were built with refined purposes. For many, the business was driven by passion. The craftsmen and smiths took pride in their work and the reputations they had made for selling quality goods. Bigger businesses were formed to serve bigger needs.

Even today, we tell the story of great and passionate entrepreneurs whose drive and purpose guide companies to greatness. We wax of their focus and vision. We tell of their passion for their employees and customers. We pry through their histories hoping to reveal that magic blueprint for unbridled success.

But then something happened. Businesses began to separate from those focused purposes. Instead of intensely living out a passion or purpose, companies tried to manufacture the appearance of purpose. Companies separated from being focused on products, customers and experiences and became more focused on the mirage of celebrity executives, Wall Street roller coaster rides and disconnected branding veneer meant to hide aimless, purposeless and insatiable companies.

Mission statements went from being aspirations to a bunch of corporate puffery. Organizations no longer had concrete reasons for being other than creating the perception of making money. Brands became synonyms for the orchestrated trickery meant to persuade consumers that our products, services and companies are really something more than they really are.

At the same time and possibly instigated by the beckoning complexity of the finance and IT portions of business, marketing departments began to intoxicate themselves with all manner of potions and elixir cure-alls. Psychographic segmentation, media mix modeling, buzz worthiness, executive blogs and a whole host of other marketing malarkey helped sooth otherwise aimless and fruitless efforts by allowing everyone to look really busy.

In truth, there are only two words that matter in marketing: Promise and Trust. Your company has something distinct and differentiating about it, otherwise it would not exist. It is a promise to consumers. Understanding that promise is crucial to the point that you should remove everything that is in the way of carrying out that promise and accentuate the things that are helping. This means products, systems, people and processes.

A whole lot of successful companies do this without even knowing it. The reason why they do is because they start with a focused purpose and keep it potent. They manage the interaction with the customers and keep a level of attentiveness and transparency that consumer’s feel they can support. In short, these companies prove to customers that every dollar spent on the company’s products will result in the benefits promised and expected, be they functional, emotional or experiential.

Consumers want to know their investment of time; energy and any other resources will have the intended result. They want and need to know that what you are offering is not fully duplicated elsewhere for less money, will be worth their investment and will deliver the desired result. This is where trust comes in. People want to know they are making a wise choice with their resources. All the little procedures we do under the marketing umbrella are (or at least should be) aimed at increasing the trust that customer resources are well placed.

The goal of marketing is to build trust in the promise of the offering. It is that simple. No amount of marketing tactics will ever overcome the need of companies to make a compelling promise that they can deliver and then help consumers believe that promise. Consumers have always been and continue to be interested in getting the desired result for their investment. Offerings that clearly offer and pitch such will be successful.

The above material is part of a my forthcoming book and an accompanying presentation I am giving to marketers, marketing organizations and students. The presentation discusses the two crucial and often overlooked words in marketing in a 45-minute talk full of stories and examples. It is valuable to brand and general managers and those that advise on brand marketing activities. If you are interested in having me come talk to your staff, club or class email me at jeff@sn-ta.com

What’s at the bottom of cocktail cove?

2009-04-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

Outside Atlanta, on Lake Lanier, sits a special little cove with a notorious reputation that could make Charlie Sheen blush. Cocktail Cove has hardly any road access, so it became a destination for crazy hillbillies, dot-com millionaires and the girls who seek them out. The bands of boozers would tie their boats together, knock back boxed wine and wander boat-to-boat, helping contribute to Georgia’s population of children in State custody.

You could call Cocktail Cove picturesque, just as you could call a retaining pond picturesque right after its construction is completed. Lanier’s water bears striking resemblance to the water in a port-o-potty (it does smell better), and the beaches were stuffed so full of shirtless rebels that it looks like a Jimmy Buffett concert at a prison. The only thing that really elevated the level of the place were the yachts, houseboats and cigarette boats all tied together, despite the occasional over-served partier ending up in the water.

Cocktail Cove was legendary in its heyday, but the drought drained Lanier so much that Georgia almost declared war on Tennessee in the course of an attempt to siphon water out of the Tennessee River. Lanier’s water dropped so low that many boats sat stranded on docks up dry streams. The water receded, and secrets were discovered. The farmsteads that lay underneath Lanier began to poke chimneys above the water. The trees that had laid for decades under the water lay bare on sand. And beneath Cocktail Cove lay a mountain of garbage that would make Wall-E commit suicide.
The never-ending party had created a mountain of beer cans, full garbage bags, grills, boat equipment, chicken bones, prophylactics, and pretty much any other piece of garbage you would expect to come from decades of partying. It looked like someone had put twelve full dumpsters in a blender and dumped the result in a pile 10 feet tall and 40 feet across.

I might be the only person who looked at what was beneath Cocktail Cove and thought about corporate management.

There is an old saying that often gets used in economic development to describe large, positive economic events: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” And it’s true. A strong economy or economic force lifts plenty of ventures. If a large manufacturing facility comes to a small town, it creates ripples that lift the entire town’s economy. A strong economy can lift all businesses, even those with less than watertight strategies.

Thanks to Cocktail Cove, I have a new saying to describe what happens when the boom years depart and you must confront the decisions made in better times. A rising tide may lift all boats, but a receding tide shows all the crap you threw overboard when you thought no one was looking.

As a country, we enjoyed a mighty party for a number of years. We grilled and drank and tied our yachts together. We partied in Cocktail Cove until the wee hours. But now the tide has gone out, and we’re left to deal with all the garbage we thought we could hide under the waves.

I have seen more than a few good businesses go down in this recession. I have seen some companies blind-sided by bad luck. But I have also seen companies convinced by their performance in a strong economy that they were invincible try to act on impractical and poorly conceived plans based on premises that no longer exist and probably never did. The water is gone, and all those great party plans are scuttled among years worth of garbage.
So what’s at the bottom of Cocktail Cove? Here’s what you’ll find and where you’ll find it.

Poor decisions that go unchecked by the market.

I remember once advising someone to reverse a dumb idea because it was sapping the equity from their other brands. The field sales organization knew it. The dealers knew it. Most of the customers I talked to knew it. But sales remained steady, so they thought it must have been a good idea. Never mind that the market was as robust as they had seen in decades. Never mind that the company had launched a new product and customers were eager for it even though they felt they had to hold their noses to buy it. Never mind that his brand led its category and the new brand was not even associated with the line of products. Never mind any of this because when the tide is up, who cares what you throw overboard.

But what happens when the tide goes out? A ferocious and well-armed competitor is preparing to foray into the market in a serious and capable way. The first organization will still have its pants around its ankles, trying to explain its strategy. Without being checked for bad decision-making by the market, the organization is sounding the all-clear and venturing down a terrible path.
In a less buoyed market, dumb decisions are checked more quickly and easily, and in a market when people are buying everything indiscriminately, it is tough to discern what is good strategy from what merely appears good on the surface. It was in the robust economic cycle that the camera shop I once worked ventured into selling custom framing and cell phones. In case you’re wondering, it eventually went bankrupt. Twice.

Impractical and impossible schemes.

The art of brand consultation became high art during strong economic years. Sadly, much of the consultation turned out to be worthless junk, and nobody cared because they were still making money. Believe me, GM cares now that they stupidly built one car and put four names on it, but when they were flush with cash, they were convinced they wrote the rules of marketing.

The activities associated with the high times continue to linger even after the tide goes out. It’s like a guy who shows up at the garbage pile where Cocktail Cove was and still wants to party. The utter tomfoolery of Atlanta’s dot-com scene was the finest example of this. Marketing numbskulls who made calendars with nude women holding microchips and idiots who commissioned paintings and then took out ads to brag about it continued to preach their failed marketing viewpoints to any business that would listen. The use of arrogance and pomposity as a marketing strategy lingered well after the bubble burst in a hangover that would rival anything anyone ever experienced at Cocktail Cove.

What’s really buried at Cocktail Cove is reality.

The thing that bothers me most is that what’s beneath Cocktail Cove is always there, even if you don’t see it. I think it’s rare that businesses don’t understand their fundamentals, but they become convinced that good times will never end.
If you look at what happened to real estate in 2008, you’ll see financial instruments developed with the assumption that real estate would never lose value. I told a friend I was concerned about what would happen when the proverbial music turned off and there weren’t enough chairs for everyone only to be rebuffed for “not getting it.” In truth, the scariest (and dumbest) thing to do when the tide is in is make plans as if it will never go out again.

While I write this, it has rained in Athens for more than a week. The state climatologist has said the soil is saturated and most reservoirs are at full pool. Even Lanier is starting to fill up. The water is starting to rise in Cocktail Cove. Before long, there will be yachts tied together, girls in bikinis and spray tans sunning themselves, and guys wearing chains with little golden anchors on them. Companies will chase after the unattainable and, more likely, undesirable. Consultants will peddle whatever fad they can with the same fever in which they peddled the last fad, now at the bottom of the cove.

What a party it will be. It will go on all weekend and then all summer; some will party like it will never end. They will laugh at those of us that stick to sound business fundamentals, saying we don’t have the vision or the guts to be successful. And even though the people who said that just before the last tide went out are on their fourth job selling condos in Buckhead, the water’s up and this gaggle will not be swayed into thinking things could ever change. So let’s get ready for the next party. Bring the little lights shaped like chili peppers, and I’ll give you my vaunted recipe for Texas-style margaritas, but I won’t pretend the party never ends. I know what’s at the bottom.

Taddie's Time Capsule.

2009-03-16T04:33:00.000-07:00

The first time capsule ceremony I went to was absolutely stupid.

I was attending Berkeley Lake Elementary, a little school poised on a lake that was once a water-accessible-only retreat of Atlanta's well-to-do. Actually a very scenic place, it felt cheapened by us burying an elementary school yearbook, school spirit T-shirt and some reading textbooks. I guess, even at that young age, I didn't see the point. By the time the time capsule would be opened, plenty of those yearbooks would still be in prime condition sitting unopened in people's attics and garages. The T-shirts would have near duplicates worn ironically by Vassar dropouts living in the Lower East Side. And, thanks to spectacular education funding, the textbooks are still being used, though stickers now adorn them to correct their politics.

I got a new appreciation for the idea of a time capsule after my great aunt died. Taddie's house is what Shakespeare's house might have looked like if he were a meth addict. Taddie saved everything and it made for a pretty decent treasure find these many years later. We found 19th century antiques, several very old books and a complete season of Wheel of Fortune on videotape (talk about time capsule!). Taddie had been in a nursing home for several years and her house was a wreck. A tree had hit the roof and water poured in to soak the newspapers. The mountains of clothes held humidity and let off a scent something like burning yogurt.

As we cleaned through the house, I noticed the hatch to the attic. I had dismissed the attic at first, thinking that surely nothing of value would be in the attic. Too cliché. Boy, was I wrong. My father-in-law and I ventured up to find many of the family treasures resting as they had for decades. Large oil paintings of family patriarchs. Silver that my ancestors had hidden from the meddling Yanks during "The Great Unpleasantness". Many pieces of antique furniture. And then we saw the steamer trunks.

A rat scared the crap out of me when I opened the first trunk. It was full of clothes, personal items and a few letters. Apparently, after a family member had passed, their prized possessions, at least those that could fit in the trunk, were loaded up and drug into the attic for storage. Several of these trunks rested in the attic, each filled with the things that accompanied the lives of my ancestors. While searching through one particular trunk, we found a family member's small vial of brownish liquid. My father-in-law opened it thinking the scent of Great Grandma's perfume might bring back memories for my grandparents. But it was not perfume. It was bourbon, meaning the only memories it brought back were mine of college and even those were sufficiently cloudy.

So today, we have another time capsule of sorts. In business (and in business writing, in particular) it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback. We writers and theorists love to recall spectacular blunders and strategic stumbles while we infer causation of that enterprise's demise. Doing it in reverse is another story. Far fewer theorists are willing to make predictions with the same confidence they have in judging past efforts. So I am going to try it. I'm going to make a prediction and you'll get to judge whether or not I am right. I'm going to throw something in this time capsule and the payoff will be your awe over my prediction or the enjoyment you may get from my absolutely false prediction.

Around summer 2007, Chrysler was purchased by Cerberus Capital Management LP. I know the idea of a company being taken private is all the rage as of this writing and, with important exceptions, I think this will be a good thing for Chrysler.

One plus is that Chrysler will not have to continue to make moronic decisions that boost quarterly results at the expense of long term growth, as per the instructions of stock analysts, fund managers and other assorted know-it-alls. One negative is that they traded in one set of bankers for another and, like all bankers, they expect to get paid in the timeline they demand.

This brings up plenty of questions concerning the future of Chrysler. Changes in the economy raise new and troubling questions for how Chrysler might find the funds, markets and customers to support its proposed turnaround. The perverse and often baffling nature of automotive marketing means Chrysler could be walking into the perfect storm, its finest hour or, most likely, both.

So what do I want to throw in this little time capsule? Well, I have some predictions. Current Chrysler LLC President says the turnaround should be complete by about 2013. So make a bookmark or put it on you calendar. Like sand through the hourglass, only time will tell us the fate of Chrysler. So, here we go:

1) If Chrysler thins out competing models, the existing models will sell better over time.

Chrysler execs are claiming that they no longer want to cannibalize their models. What I would like to know is why they decided to do that in the first place. And they weren't the only ones. It seemed like for a period of several years, GM would make one car, only to change its bumpers, jack it up and put a new grill on it to make whichever brand you wanted. This is what happens when you let accountants and analysts make your marketing decisions.

2) If Chrysler properly manages their portfolio of brands, they will gain share against competitors in the brand's respective market.

Why did Daimler Chrysler ever make a two-wheel drive...Jeep? It's not worth answering. By chasing the grocery-getter market they allowed the entrance of Hummer and Land Rover. People who wanted a real 4x4 did not want to drive the soccer practice special. Jeep failed to own this position, so eventually they were supplanted by more focused competitors. The Chrysler brass says they want to align and focus their brands. If they do it right, they will do well.

3) If Chrysler can get away from doing the things car companies and dealers have always done, they will benefit.

Okay, I must disclaim that Chrysler has been mum on this subject, save for their plans to thin the dealer network by a third. And I like the idea of thinning the dealerships because there are too many. When Toyota launched Lexus, part of the strategy was to limit dealerships to avoid over-saturation and enhance the elusive appeal of the car. It worked.

My opinion is that Chrysler needs to get away from door buster sales, inflatable gorillas and the guy in Atlanta who says, "All I do is discount Dodges". The dealers have cheapened the brands with their snake oil sales pitches. This once perennial brand has lost credibility due to price offs, infinite financing and campy dealer advertisements. In fact, when thinning the dealer organizations, I would start with anyone who features their kids in the ads as first on the chopping block. It's high time Chrysler grabs its wonky dealers by the horns. Hit it! (Bass line)

Chrysler has a great opportunity right now to stop being so much of a car company. For so long, Chrysler has competed on attributes and financial incentives. As if the company itself believes that no one really wants a Chrysler, they just want features and don't care about the brand. This attitude has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and the car category, which once thrived on brand differentiation, is now a wasteland of super brands that don't really stand for anything.

This new economy has a mandate. Get smarter about your marketing. To make money is not as easy as it used to be and it will not get much easier in the near future. As attributes become commodities, companies will be forced to think about what their brand means to consumers. Chrysler seems to be doing that right now. When we dig up these ideas years from now will they smell old, outdated and offensive, like the three-year-old pasta in Taddie's fridge? Or will they have seasoned and mellowed like Great Grandmama's bourbon stash? Will the concepts I have put forth just become matter of fact? Will many businesses be thinking more deeply about their interaction with consumers?

Looking Good.

2009-02-16T02:44:00.000-08:00

We arrived in nearly total darkness, which didn't really matter because we didn't know where we were anyway. I had heard rumors of the Army training crags on Mount Yonah and Richard and I decided to check it out for ourselves. And so, with a thin rack of climbing gear and sub-standard camping supplies, we hopped in his pickup truck and drove to the desolate gravel road outside of Helen, Georgia.

The mountain campsite looked like BarterTown from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome". Drunken country kids lit moonshine as they spit it out of their mouths. There was a loud Charlie Daniels Band sing-along. I'm pretty sure at least two fights broke out.

The next morning we got directions and started the walk up to the climbing routes. After a brief period of getting lost, we walked out onto a small rock shelf that served as the base of the face. I looked up the chunky routes and realized that these were far easier than the scant faces of California featured in all the rock climbing books we had been reading. We roped in, shuffled up the routes and were bored in no time.

I complained about my boredom to one of the regulars who informed me of a few more challenging routes just at the end of the face. "Foxy Lady" had a difficulty of about 5.8 and was a tiptoe up some acorn-like protrusions until you reached a narrow crack that walked you up the finish. It was harder than I expected, but it was nice to complete. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, I set my sights on the adjacent climb, "Afternoon Delight," for the next day.

"Afternoon Delight" was an awkward climb pretty much the whole way up. I started by shimmying up a massive plate of disjoined granite to where I could stand on top. "I don't see where I'm supposed to go," I yelled down to Richard, who was belaying my line.

"Go up," he responded.

I have never seen a better belayer than Richard. His knowledge of the technical aspects of the climb combines perfectly with an ability to instill confidence. He also has a cunning ability to know the proper moment to yell, "Quit being such a bitch".

He was right. I was being a bitch. I was bitching about the fact that I could not see where the next move was.

All I could see was the slightest banana shaped indentation about collarbone high. And this situation only called for one move and I didn't want to do it. A mantel is where you pull up and over a hold and then quickly shift your arm to palm down over the hold. Think about getting out of the pool, without the stairs or the ladder.

The cherry on top of this maneuver was that the next hold, a body's length above the banana, was a little dime-sized extrusion. "Put your face into it," Richard yelled. He was right. Unless I could get my body weight directly over the banana, I would slip out and down. I pulled up and stuck my face right against the rock. In the same movement I shifted my arm and hauled my feet up into the banana. Without using any handholds, I stood up. Before I peeled away from the ledge and sailed down, I reached up and dug my fingernails into the tiny little hold. I was stable.

I looked up for the next move. Again, nothing. I thought I might sit a while and ponder but the hot sun made my hands and climbing shoes greasy. I was sliding off my holds.

"Those cracks to your right, start traversing straight right," he said.

I looked and saw what he was talking about. Three rungs of thin cracks made their way like a ladder just off to my right. I tiptoed over and did three pull-mantel-no-handed stand ups to the top. I should have been ready to celebrate. I felt like vomiting.

Had I been there by myself like Stallone in "Cliffhanger", I would have failed. Had I a belayer who didn't give me direction and encouragement, I may have quit at the banana.

Good belaying is about communication, understanding and mutual success. When you are the lead climber, your belayer tells you where the route goes and helps beef up your confidence. If you are the following climber, the lead climber belays you up the same route and tells you where most of the issues are in a closer sense.

Plenty of companies sure could use someone belaying them like Richard. They need a better view of the path ahead rather than just what lies directly in front of them. They need that safety line of someone who is at least tied into their same fate. They need someone to tell them to quit being such a bitch. Yet many companies try to go it alone without a rope and we see their bloodied corpses on the rocks below.

After a few trips up and down the mountain, I have seen what makes a good company belayer. So spit in your hands, pull up your tights and chalk up. Let's go climbing.

First, start with a good rope.

Or maybe a good thread, to be exact. The lifeline that customers often offer and so many companies refuse is the line of communication. Customers want to be involved or, at the very least, acknowledged. With today's technology, it's easier to get in, and stay in, touch with customers.

And there's something else to consider. The relationship between belayer and climber is not one of formal register. Consumers want to have a brand as a friend and, therefore, should be treated like friends. The more corporate hogwash you throw at them the less they'll want to hold the line for you.

Make sure you have a bonfire at the summit.

I'm always surprised how rarely companies engage their customers in any formal discussion about products and brands. The common attitude is that the company is somehow above the customer and, therefore, whatever the company dictates, the customer should do.

This is a lot like thinking the lead climber is somehow in charge just because he or she goes first. In truth, the lead climber and belayer both play essential roles. Having a dismissive attitude as the lead climber may prevent the belayer from telling you about the falcon's nest you're about to stick your hand in.

I suggest all companies use a customer council to ask questions, get insight and charge up your biggest fans. Considering how much money gets spent trying to build a stronger connection with clients, this should be a no-brainer.

Share the beta.

In climbing terms, beta is advance information concerning the climb. Even a beginning climber learns early on the benefits of sharing the beta. For starters, sharing beta with the other climbers you like means they will also share beta with you and you will all know more.

But perhaps the most important part about sharing beta is that each time you convey it, it begins to resonate more with you. Think about it. Every time you recite some directions or retell a story, you get better at it. Sing your company's beta to your coworkers and colleagues and you might actually start remembering it on the climb.

Looking good. Just ignore those bees.

Having the right partners and treating them like partners can keep you from falling in this business. A good belayer can really help you see beyond just your site. A great belayer can give you the needed information and confidence that you're going where the route is intended.

And let's not forget, at times we all need someone to tell us to quit being such a bitch

My New Running Shoes.

2009-01-16T18:21:00.000-08:00

My birthday was approaching and I am the very definition of the guy who has everything. For Christmas I got a keyboard to accompany my electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, violin, banjo, ukulele and bagpipes. I play a lot of musical instruments; my parents refused to pay for cable when I was a kid.

So I really had to search my mind for what I wanted this year. Though my wife Maura is an excellent gift buyer, even she was at a loss for what to get me. Since exercise had become our new thing, I started thinking of what could make the grind of 6 a.m. workouts just a bit easier. And then I realized there was something I had needed for a while: new running shoes.

In the past I would just go to the mall and pick out a pair in my old size. Now, however, I'm a bit pickier and slightly more accustomed to being handled, so we went to the New Balance store for a custom fit.

The guys in the store winced in pain when they saw my existing running shoes. They were a size tight and way too narrow. Having been a wrestler and a rock climber, I had always believed that shoes should be tight enough to break something. Think about it: when you are using your feet to pose on a rocky ledge or on the neck of some idiot from Norcross High, you don't want your feet to slip around inside the shoe.

The New Balance guy had me stand on a machine which measured my feet and made a recommendation. I was in no position to disagree with the shoe he suggested and the only real decision to make was the color. But this was harder than it sounds.

Throughout college, everyone wore grey New Balance running shoes (that is, when they weren't wearing their redneck work boots). And not necessarily for running. Just 'cause. And I'm not sure what the reasoning was. Perhaps because the grey 991s were amongst the more expensive shoes on the market and rich never goes out of style. Maybe it was because they were so understated, what with other manufacturers putting out shoes in electric blue with florescent mucous-colored accents. Even as I started to make the sounds of "Gggrrreee..." I stopped with an abrupt, "I'll take the blue ones". Maura asked me in the car why I choose blue over the old stalwart. "Because I don't want to be stuck in college". She knew exactly what I was saying, but the truth is we're all stuck in college.

Maybe not college per se, but there is a period in life where your sense of style begins to crystallize and you will use that point of reference to craft your style from there out. It's why my grandpa wears shirts with suspiciously large collars. He also wears velour jumpsuits. It's why you always see that group of people who look like they're dressed to go on a hike. That was the campus style in the early 1990s, and they've been on the trail wherever they go ever since. Your style gets locked in and, even though you may try to fight against it, it's difficult. And you may emerge looking a little odd. We've all seen that guy who tries to dress like a pro skateboarder or the mom who thinks she's a backup dancer for Britney Spears. It's just sad.

Why do we get locked in? It's comfortable, like grandpa's jumpsuit. And since our peers seem to be doing it we figure it can't be all that far from fashionable.

Businesses have their college years. They shed the old duds from high school and start looking fresh and successful. Like all of us, almost every business can point to that period known as "the days" and at least something from "the days" has persisted. And there's nothing wrong with remembering the past. Heck, sometimes our old style becomes retro fashionable, renewing our vitality while garnering us the credential of an originator. The problem is when we need to break with the past but are unaware or simply don't know how.

Some giant businesses were the big man on campus back in their day. Sears might have been the biggest. Talk about good looks and likeability. But today Sears is a shadow of its former self. What happened after graduation?

From a strategic standpoint, Sears failed to age gracefully. The "get it all here" approach was successful so long as boutique and specialty shops stayed at bay. But them Home Depot came and took their tools. Best Buy took their TVs. Bed Bath & Beyond came and took the softer side of Sears. And everyone else came and looted clothes, tires and financial services. Yes, if you didn't know, you used to be able to buy financial services at Sears.

What should have happened? Sears really has great customer service. If you haven't shopped there (and they still exist when you read this book) you should really go. The people are polite and know what they are talking about. The cornerstone brands (Die Hard, Kenmore, Craftsman) have really great quality. Sears really does provide a great shopping experience.

But they don't leverage that experience. They don't say, "Come to Sears because we know what we're selling and you will get great quality". They say what they have always said, which is, "We have a bunch of stuff...come buy it". Their failure, metaphorically, was not getting a new color shoe. What worked in the past was successful in the past. It is no longer the past.

So how does this happen? I believe it is simply a function of great strategies and their lifespan. I believe that when a truly great strategy is conceived, the proponents of this strategy go about selling it up and down the organization. If they are successful in getting buy-in and the whole company exudes the same strategy, assuming the strategy is good, I would expect wild success.

But then time happens. And though great strategies, like great styles, can have an inhuman lifespan, they are never immortal. The progenitors of the strategy retire to the palm coast. And everyone left has been taught that the way we succeed is by following Ol' Man So-n-So's time-tested and time-worn strategy.

The people now in charge do not necessarily attempt to birth new ideas. They were raised through the company ranks by following someone else's progeny. And if they disagreed or had critiques, they probably did not last to be in charge of much. I'm not saying this is always the case. I'm not saying this is the case with your company; that's a question only you can answer. What I'm saying is that maybe you should ask the question of whether or not you're wearing yesterday's clothes.

In other words: Have we evolved how we market our product in the right way or are we using yesterday's strategy to address the requirements of tomorrow's market?

This is normally the part where I list some bullet points or conversation starters, but that's not what I'm going to do. This kind of inquiry is far too complex and subjective for a few mere questions. Instead, I implore you to ask a few tough questions of your own with the goal being to understand the root of your company's competitive strategy. No matter what you find, I think you'll at least find value in having a better perspective of where you are now as an organization and where you are headed.

This is an important issue for most companies. The world of competitive marketing is changing. Strategies and tactics need updating. The way companies view and interact with consumers will always be changing. Time is running. And right now it might have on blue running shoes.

Now with Live, Active Cultures.

2008-12-15T06:23:00.000-08:00

I was into live, active cultures before live, active cultures were cool. Back then, nobody even heard of Bifidus Regularus (and isn't that name a little ridiculous? It's one step beneath "poopest nowest"). Whatever, I knew all about the bowel healing power of yogurt far before people in spandex started talking about it on TV.

It was Easter and I headed to my Dad's house for dinner. One thing you should probably know about my family is that we are food centric. My step-mom likes to celebrate God's most wonderful gift by cooking many of his other gifts and serving them with horseradish or mint jelly. She's also from Pittsburg, which means she even fries the butter. The meal is big enough and greasy enough to make you want to funnel Maalox.

This particular year, my beloved nephew got sick in a way not to be discussed around food. He had the Norwalk virus (which was a hip illness back then, like Hypoglycemia) and the result required a bath. After his bath we assumed he was clean and so, like with most babies, we all played with the little bio terror. About 11 p.m. that night I threw up from the toilet into the tub. Even in such discomfort I had to pause and laud this achievement because I am male. It was impressive.

If you are not familiar with the Norwalk virus (now officially known as norovirus), go rent that terrible movie Dream Catcher. That part where the guy poops out the alien that looks like a three foot long barracuda? It's a lot like that. Plus you vomit and your head might spin around.

My Cirque dus O'toilet exercise was enough to give my roommates the virus (three guys in a 1950s house. Lysol? Yeah right.). The next two days we all sat in bathrobes chasing chicken soup with orange juice watching that movie with Clint Eastwood and the sassy monkey that wears a T-shirt. (Editor's note: the two films are 1978's Every Which Way But Loose and its 1980 sequel Any Which Way You Can, starring Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde.)

In time, the virus passed and I began to feel a little bit more normal. But a problem loomed. My appetite waned and I still got nauseous when I ate. I called mom, who knows all about viruses and puking since she raised four boys. Mom said the key to getting your stomach back to normal is to eat yogurt. And not that whipped chocolate moose junk. Real yogurt with live cultures. Now, when I hear someone complain about their stomach, I interrupt them and say, "Oh, you need yogurt. And not that whipped moose junk. You need active cultures. Give me five dollars".

Your stomach has to have some bacteria to break down all that junk food you eat. Doritos and Ding Dongs don't digest themselves. Well, most of the time, anyway. Live cultures help build the right environment for your digestive tract.

Richard probably knows better than most about cultures and the often resulting poop. He worked for a cheesy dot com that never had an actual useable product and touted their success in how much venture capital money they could obtain and spend. It was the nineties and the "look how cool we are" culture craze was in full effect. I visited Richard at work and he gave me the tour. "Here is our pool table that nobody uses. One guy used it once but the VP of Development of something glared at him. Now the only time it gets used is when we give tours to investors and prospective employees to show them how hip we are". How sad.

But it was not rare. All round the ATL and in every tech city, mountains of ping-pong tables, bean bag chairs, razor scooters, hacky sacks and hockey sticks just sat around for show. The old, stiff investors were so impressed with this youthful thing we call the Internet that they encouraged everyone to pretend to be wacky.

This notion of the live, active culture persists today. Marketing service firms not only encourage their employees to be fun and vivacious, they whore them out for it. On more then a few websites of marketing firms have I seen pictures of some staff person kayaking or running a marathon or playing guitar at a local Earth Day celebration.

Listen, I'm not trying to Norwalk all over fun cultures. I mean, Richard has a collection of different canned and packaged meats on a shelf in his office. When it comes to being zany, we run with the best. But why should companies care about the culture of their marketing people? Like with so many other things, we feel we should care, but don't really know why or how we even started caring in the first place.

You shouldn't have to catch Norwalk to learn about active cultures. I've had it a few times and you can learn from my disgusting experience.

Fun is creativity, right?

Nope. Fun is a bottle of whisky, a minigun and a chandelier store. Of course, that's just my opinion. You can substitute whatever you might find fun in that section. But fun is often mistaken for creativity. You walk into your ad agency and you see a group of people sitting on the floor yelling about headlines or photos or whatever. Later you see them throwing pumpkins off the parking garage roof and you say, "What fun, creative people!" But what you are mistaking for creativity is what people will do when the rules are relaxed and creative's trying to blow off steam so they can stop your tagline about "single source solutions" from ringing in their heads.

Fun, right? But does it increase creativity? Our gut says maybe, but I think that's just indigestion. Honestly, people may have an active brainstorming session and still be terrible at brainstorming. And creative people will blow off steam even if the concepts are a joke. What's worse is that agencies have been trained to appear fun and zany even if their work is sub-par. Clients delight in the off-the-wall approach and mistake it for something innovative.

Diverse interests means that you bring a broad perspective?

I love seeing firms pitch how vivacious and interesting their people are. I'm always amazed to see so many people into running and scuba. Here's the problem: most of this country does not compete in triathlons or cook gourmet food. Have you ever noticed how much media and advertising seem obsessed with a lifestyle that the rest of the country does not live or even want to live? When 95% of the people who work on your marketing are into emo rock and sushi, how representative of the do-it-yourself mechanic market do you think that will be?

I have an easy recommendation. Instead of getting people who are supposedly interesting, get people who are interested to handle the marketing of your product. When you are working on marketing a product or service the most important thing in the room should be that offering and not the account executive's surfboard collection. I like interesting people, but when it comes to working on a marketing issue I like interested people more.

Yogurt. Now with new made-up cultures!

What's the difference between real, active cultures and cultures that are invented for marketing purposes? Well, a few things, first of which is respect. Strong cultures foster real, mutual respect. They respect and have empathy for each other. They respect the client. Respect that can only cite the chain of command is not a strong culture.

Next is confidence. Strong cultures empower their teams. They do not need constant oversight. Conversely, lack of confidence in people leads to a firm throwing its own people under the bus. And if an agency will throw its people, their careers, their ideas, their reputations all under the bus for a check, you better think twice about believing what's written beneath their logo in the lobby.

Put simply, they have a house of cards based on a fake culture. They play creative company, but you'll get your hand slapped if you actually ride the razor scooter. It is a culture celebrating the illusion of creativity rather than celebrating and encouraging actual creativity. The problem is many clients cannot discern between the two.

Third is diversity, but maybe not in the way you think. Some cultures look like they picked through the box of crayons on purpose. The result looks like a college brochure. This is neither empowering nor productive. There is a humongous difference in empowering/engaging diversity and the more common promotion of diversity. I believe diversity should be embraced because of the value it brings to solving a problem fully rather than using it for promotional use only. If we use diversity as a way to broaden the scope of how we see an issue, that's a good thing. Otherwise, it's an pool table that no one ever uses.

Feeling a bit irregular.

I realize I may be irritating the colon of the organizations who believe in leveraging their culture. Please don't misunderstand me, I believe in strong, active cultures. I just believe in real ones rather than fake ones. I believe in actually living out those statements of "what we believe" that so many marketing services tattoo on their websites. I believe in real, active cultures and not that whipped chocolate moose junk.

A great culture can be the perfect environment for creativity and problem solving. A great culture can reduce the stress in the normally high stakes part of business. And perhaps the best thing about a great culture is that it is infectious and when you catch it, you can't help but spread it so everyone has it.

The Super Trooper.

2008-11-14T04:44:00.000-08:00

The Isuzu Trooper was my baby. We called it the Super Trooper. And boy, it was super. I bought it a few years into school when everyone went all country and I could no longer try to be country and drive a Nissan Maxima at the same time. The Trooper was like a giant dumpster with windows and wheels. I think if I would have bolted a giant piece of plywood to the bumper, it might have improved the gas mileage. This was an SUV from an era when SUVs were actually sport utility vehicles.

It was a 4x4 in every sense of the term. You had to get out and lock up the hubs, guaranteeing you'd slip and fall in the mud. We used to go bogging out along the Oconee River because it was like a cheap trip to the amusement park and because the girls liked it so much. It made them feel rustic, which is hard to do in the 'burbs.

One afternoon we decided to go get muddy and I gassed up the Super Trooper and picked up the girls at their house. We roared down the old jeep trails and through the mud pits until not a speck of the Trooper's white paint was visible. And then came the monster. The monster was a pit of mud 20 feet across, 4 feet deep, with a slanted bottom. When we rolled up on it, two Jeeps were already stuck side by side. Bryan was trying to plug the hole in his Jeep's floorboard as muddy water shot through like Old Faithful. Cory was standing on the hood of his Jeep, hopeless. We sent another vehicle around to the other side to pull them out.

I don't know what I was thinking. I just got in the Super and drove right in. The Trooper lunged to the side and I saw muddy water crawl up the passenger side widow. The engine shut off and I heard the people outside yelling. They were holding onto the roof rack to keep two of the tires on the ground so I wouldn't tip over.

They pulled Super out of the pit with a tow strap and I took her home to wash her. I thoroughly got my 75 cents worth at the local car wash when I noticed it. Just a little rainbow in the suds. Getting bigger. An oil leak.

I hypothesized the worst. The bottoming out of the Trooper in the muddy pit hit the transmission hard enough to weaken the rear main seal. I knew from people who had the rear main seal repaired how expensive it could be. I took the Super to the shadiest mechanic in Athens and he confirmed my suspicion. The cost to repair old Super was as much as I had paid for her.

Over time, the leak got worse. It got to where I would drive around with a case of oil to fill her up every hundred miles. Eventually, I bought a new car and parked old Super. Once in a while, I'd go out and wash her or just let the engine run a bit.

Then Maura and I bought a house and we had to move. The Trooper had fallen into enough disrepair that she could not be driven. I had her towed to a mechanic recommended by a friend to fix the things so at least we could drive her. The mechanic called and said, "I found a brake caliper and a few hoses for that power steering line cheap so don't pee yourself over the price. I should be able to get all this installed by the end of the week. Oh, by the way, I tightened down the head so you shouldn't be leaking anymore oil".

Tightened down the head? What happened to the rear main seal? I've been leaking enough oil around rural Georgia to rival the Valdez. You mean it was a few loose bolts?
I was tempted to go punch that first mechanic in the throat. However, I was so happy that Super Trooper's oil leaking days were over. For now. Until she sprung another leak, as vehicles with 220k miles often do.

I have paid a lot of money to mechanics for the wrong diagnoses. I've had mechanics ignore what I brought the car in for and fix something else entirely. I've paid for a fix that lasted about as long as it took to leave the mechanic's driveway. Shade tree mechanic does not come close to some of the fools I've hired. My mechanics would cut down the shade tree into logs, stuff some of the logs in the trunk and say they fixed that pull in the suspension. They're just plain shady - no tree required.

Then again, I've met some shade tree marketers as well. They change the oil hoping it will inflate the tires. They put washer fluid in the gas tank to save a few bucks and want to know why the engine won't run. They paint the inside of the car while sanding the outside and call that a long term strategy.

Making the right diagnoses of your marketing is a crucial but often overlooked procedure. We marketers could have meetings about planning meetings to plan something, but when it comes to discussing how to get the lead out we seemed more inclined to let the air out instead.

We need one of those diagnostic computers that mechanics hook up to the car so that it will tell you what is wrong. Sorry. They don't make anything like that for marketing plans. No, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Pop the hood and hand me that flashlight.

The best test of whether or not it will run is to try to start it.

The easiest test of a marketing plan is to see if it is doing what it is intended to do. Are sales rising? Are we making money? Sure, this is simplistic, but I ask you, if the marketing plan couldn't even turn over, is that not a good indicator that something might be wrong?

Work backwards from the starter.

Take the entire drive train of marketing and do diagnoses. Have you done things to build awareness? Are customers building enough interest? How are we helping customers gain knowledge or make a decision to buy? When they want to buy, how helpful are we? After the sale, do we reinforce their decision or run away laughing with the money, which, by the way, is what that first mechanic did.

Check for burning oil.

If the machine is in good running order, you should not only have decent efficiency, it should be getting better. As many marketing activities are cumulative, the cost incurred to make each sale should be decreasing either by an elevation in sales or a savings in costs due to ever-bettering practices. Unnecessary smoke is most often the use of price reductions and financial incentives which you can run on for a while but it'll run like crap and eventually clog your engine.

Check the gaps and the timing.

As consumers are made more aware of your offerings and you are constantly evolving your offerings with the consumer, the gap between their desires and your offerings should narrow. This should always be an ongoing process of improvement and refinement. The idea that if you just get it right once and it'll run forever is just as true as it is with cars.

Kick your tires for a change.

Every marketing plan is worth a little diagnosis if just to head off bald tires and poor alignment that is inevitable in every business over time. Regular maintenance helps ensure a long running machine and more enjoyable experience when driving. And you never know, you might have a leak that you can't even see yet.

The Trooper is still alive and hauling things on my in-laws property. There is a good reason for this. The oil leak meant the Trooper always had fresh oil and it was checked every 100 miles. Also, the spray of leaking oil coated a bunch of parts that would have otherwise rusted long ago. She self preserved like one of those ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber. It's pretty amazing. Well, we didn't call her Super for nothing.

What a Lamppost Uses a Drunk For.

2008-11-14T04:43:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine told me that, though he received his law degree from Vandy, he had to do extra study at Harvard before he became a professor. I asked him why he had to go to Harvard and he explained that his bosses wanted to make sure that in a courtroom he could correctly identify who was the plaintiff and who was the defendant. So now you have your highbrow humor for the day. The appropriate reaction is a slight snicker.

My own education had its own gauntlet of sorts, though I imagine nowhere near as perilous as an LLM from Harvard Law. For me, it was two research classes required of all who studied psychology at the University of Georgia's very research orientated psychology program.

I took the first class, Research Design, in the summer, when I had quite possibly the sweetest living arrangement in town. I was a couple blocks from the building where I would be taking my one class for the summer, not paying for utilities and the cost...$50. No, that's not per month. That was the cost for the whole summer. And when you're saving that much money in rent, you have excess funds to spend on other college activities, like taking your best girl to the picture show and singing festive songs at the local orphanage. Yeah, right. We partied like the members of Motley Crue only wished they could.

The professor was one of those laid back PhD candidates who basically promised you'd get an A anyways, but please show up so his review board doesn't get suspicious. Despite our encouraged lackadaisical attitude, however, designing research was interesting. Between rising at the crack of noon and raucous summer bashes, we learned how to create studies, control variables and make comparisons. I wished my entire education would have gone just like that.

But then came the second class, Research Analysis. Our teacher was nice enough, although a bit strange. He was a PhD candidate who didn't really seem to like or be interested in people, an odd characteristic for a psychologist. The class was at dawn and by that time I had moved into a house miles away, meaning I had to fight the other twenty thousand students for the apparently 30 allocated parking spaces. And the class was horrible. With the analysis of research, all the energy and enjoyment of designing research was drained out into the nearby Oconee River. Instead of using research to investigate and solve problems, we now seemed to be finding ways to use research to create new problems, which solved very little. Except we could now point at the amazing complexity of the process we used to say nothing.

As I yearned for the summer days where we pontificated confounds and null hypotheses, I questioned why we were taught the process in two parts. It would seem more logical to teach the design and analysis of a research method, in addition to teaching a variety of methods, rather than break the process apart. Yes, to do that would have been logical. But to put windows in the psychology building with some regular pattern would have also been logical. Instead, the university asked professors if they wanted a window and if they said yes they got one. If they said no, no window and the resulting building looked like it was designed by 8 year-olds who just floated a keg of soda. Logic has nothing to do with it.

And so it often goes in the wild world of marketing research. The design of studies and the interpretation of results too often seem disjointed. And if that is not enough to question validity, many studies start out with no real defined subject, only to follow up the act with an ethereal interpretation designed to support a pre-existing notion. As the late, great David Ogilvy said, marketers often use research like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.

I routinely see studies designed to measure broad and barely defined aspects with a tiny population of participants with obvious confounds, such as an Internet survey to study people who don't use the Internet.

Now for the record, I have worked with some of the most fantastic researchers in the marketing business. Yet even with great research, I have seen managers cherry-pick the results and ignore a huge swath of important data. I have sat in the room and watched my friend Jim Nelems tell a company's leaders to their faces what the issues are, only to watch said leaders either try to discount the findings or ignore them altogether.

I am no research expert. But I am practical and I don't commission research unless I have questions I want answered. And when I do get data, I don't reengineer the questions to fit the results. In the studies I have been involved with, I have observed some amazing technique and skill and, while I could detail all the things I have liked, I think this subject is best addressed by the strongest lessons I learned. These few tidbits stand out to me either because they were not what I was expecting or because they fundamentally shaped the role I see for marketing research.

Better road map than treasure map.
One particularly terrible mistake marketers make is assuming research will predict the future. Sure, we test products and flavors and advertising and that gives us directions for where to put money, time and effort. But what research cannot do is control all the variables. In the lab, a consumer can tell you they prefer a flavor of cough drop. In the real world, you don't know how far the distance is from their house to the drug store that carries your cough drop. This is not to say the research is incorrect. You asked the consumers if they liked the flavor and they said, "Yes". There is a considerable difference, however, between liking the flavor and buying the product.

In my experience, research does a far better job of defining the problem rather than offering the solution. This notion should affect where marketers place the role of research. In at least a few efforts, I have observed marketers develop a product and then attempt to use research to affirm certain notions. Instead, well conducted marketing research should have informed the creation of the product to put it more in line with consumer preference. While some companies do this, the vast majority do not.

Better fairy godmother then magic genie in a lamp.
The genie gives you three wishes and goes back in the lamp until the next wisher happens along. Similarly, plenty of marketers rub their researchers and ask a few questions only to stuff them back in the bottle. Research, however, can advise and inform on all phases of a product's life cycle. Research can flush out attributes most desired by the consumers. It can test positioning strategies and communications. Why put the genie back in the bottle when it can grant all these wishes as well:

Allows benchmarking and testing of strategies in development.
Strategy testing all along the consumer marketing spectrum.
Verifies that strategy from research is aligned and has not skewed.
The better idea is to use your research as a fairy godmother. She exists more like a counselor, helping to inform decisions and granting the occasional wish when needed. Just don't ask for the world and then ignore her advice. She might turn you into a pumpkin.

Doesn't always have to be in a room with one-way glass and lots of M&Ms.
The best researchers can pull data out of anywhere. They can read the b-roll from your corporate videos. They can make inferences from the distribution of your brand magazine. The can diagnose issues from past efforts. I have seen focus groups take place at a customer's house. I have sat in a restaurant and observed customers for an upcoming in-store promotion.

The belief that research must always look like research is a self-imposed restriction. While the controlled setting has its value, one should not eschew the whole other world that is out there.

In today's marketing world, boundaries are falling. Sales and marketing departments have not only signaled a cease-fire, they are beginning to work together. Finance and marketing are beginning to teach each other a common language. And so, the world of research should drop the curtain and begin to better integrate into the whole workings of an organization. Research is a primary window into the life of customers. For the customer-led firm, research is not just an expense or luxury. In fact, a lack of research can be a liability.

They still teach Research Design and Research Analysis separately at the University of Georgia, despite plenty of complaints. I told them that methods should be taught alongside data analysis. I think I made a decent case for connecting the means of getting and understanding data. I put all my concepts on a survey of the course.

A survey, I imagine, nobody ever read.

Running for Senior Class President.

2008-09-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

It might surprise you to know I was a shy kid in high school. Well, most of high school, at least. I came into high school having an older brother who was a bit of an ass-whooper. Not such a bad resource when you think about it. But once Chris was gone, I had to fend for myself, which meant I was pretty quiet. I was a decently small kid, weighing in on the Jr. Varsity wrestling team at about 119 pounds. Like Chris, I could be an ass-whooper, but only on the mat against opponents of similar weight. The halls of high school were not as fairly matched.

But something happened during the end of my junior year. Maybe it was the impending authority of being seniors. Maybe it was the fact I had managed to break 130. Whatever it was, I decided to no longer be the quiet kid in the back of the class. So I did what every kid does when they decide to come out of their shell: I ran for senior class president.

Senior class president is a worthless position which amounts to essentially two things: 1) You will be forever remembered as the one who peaked in high school; your old classmates will never think that you amounted to anything outside of the grand halls of the 400 building. 2) You get to pick the color of the balloons at prom, so long as you pick silver, black or purple.

The other kids running were the typical cast of characters. Two cheerleaders with poofy bangs. The odd kid who smelled like graham crackers. The overachiever girl involved in every extracurricular activity on the quest for the perfect high school resume. The guy with the nice car. And the guy known for really, really liking pot. (Distinct from someone who just smokes pot, this Mary Jane groupie felt a greater calling to promote pot through the wearing of pot-themed clothes, the displaying of pro-pot bumper stickers, the utterance of pot-themed catch phrases and the listening to of Peter Tosh.)

Teddy Grahams and Smokey Robinson were not much competition and nobody took the cheerleaders seriously, so I focused on Richie Rich and Valedictorian.
Richie Rich was a bit of a tool, but his parents were rich so he had some popularity. He hung out with the jocks, which made him vulnerable because nobody liked the jocks. I'm not saying that nobody ever likes jocks, but our jocks were terrible at their respective sports, a fact none of them seemed aware of. Plus most of them were juicers and liked to beat up freshmen during 3rd period lunch. Valedictorian was a slightly different problem, but not unbeatable. She had been doing everything since elementary school. School paper, yearbook, flag corps or team. All of which made her a nice target. The disdain most had for her was enough to unify the freaks, geeks, nerds, Goths, drama dorks and straight-edgers.

I huddled my campaign strategy team, which essentially consisted of a guy who could draw, the class clown and some crazed weirdo holed up in the guy-who-could-draw's basement. We discussed strategy. The key to winning would be to find the holes in my opponents' denim armor that corresponded with my strengths. We talked at length about how Richie Rich was really a dork who people pretended to like because he had money. We discussed how Valedictorian had pretty much alienated everyone because she always had to be in charge of everything. Then the strategy became clear. My strategy would be that I was not them. I had never thrust myself to the head of the Spanish club or yearbook committee. I was a normal guy who had to bum rides to school, owing to a lack of car (a common situation for a high school junior in those days).

My crack team set to making some fliers. We focused on me being a regular student that regular students could identify with. We focused on the fact that I had no touchdown record or National Honor Society membership. The competition had no recourse. The more they tried to say that they too were just normal students, the more ridiculous they looked. All through high school, their entire image was based on being better than the average student. To say that they were anything but above the rest of us went against the very thing they stood for. Their position was that they should be president because they were above us meager plebes. My approach took the wind out of their sails.

This is my favorite marketing tactic. I love it when we develop a brand that invalidates a competitor's position. You can almost hear them wince in the paralyzing indecision of how to move forward.

I worked on a campaign for a client once entirely rooted in the idea of "we're not them". We made fun of the competitor's staff, products and we even spoofed their commercials. Man, were they pissed. As our share steadily grew, I got word from media reps who said they saw the brass at a competitor's office watching and cursing our TV spots. It was awesome. We pulled off the marketing equivalent of a kick in the balls. There is no recourse. They simply fall to their knees and whimper.

And what can they do? They will have to come out with the marketing campaign themed, "Nuh-uhh!" If they face you head on with their existing strategy, they only amplify your position as the alternative. If they change strategy, two things happen. First, no one will believe them. Second, abruptly changing strategy puts a company off center. Another competitor might move in on their unguarded original strategy.

Some famous examples are out there of this phenomenon. My favorite was the rise of The Body Shop. In the ultra sleek and stylish world of cosmetics, The Body Shop came out with a position of health, natural beauty and conscientiousness. The fabulous set didn't know how to respond. If they followed The Body Shop into the realm of peace, love and coco butter, they would invalidate their existing position. The Body Shop, however, was robbing their market share based on a strategy of, "Hey, those people suck...and we're not them".

I cannot list all the specific ways to invalidate your competitor here. I do have, however, some quick criteria to get you started.

Want to kick your competitor in the balls? Ask these questions:
What is it that consumers put up with from our competitor begrudgingly and is that a position we can capitalize on?
What is the opposite of our competitor's position? For example, if they are high tech, can we be simple? If they are lavish, can we be humble? If they are the original, can we be the product for the new generation?
If our competitor does not have a clear position, can we give them one that consumers will believe and accept?
What prevailing consumer values has our competitor failed to adopt or convey?
What change to values, structure and our offering are we willing to make and are we able to put our whole effort into developing and maintaining this position?
How will we sell this up the ladder so the brass doesn't get all itchy?
What will be our competitor's reaction? What about other competitors? How will they react?
This list is by no means thorough. I encourage you to think about what else can be done to violate your competitor's position. If you have some good ideas, consider going to our blog and sharing with everyone else (Just your tips, not your strategies!).

And in case you're wondering, I didn't win the student election, but it was not from a lack of strategy. My heart wasn't in it. It turned out that I really was just a normal student. And, let's be honest, no normal student really cares if they go down in history as the person who got to pick the color of the balloons at prom.

Cowboy Up.

2008-08-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

It's hard to grow up in the South and not have a redneck phase. It may never fully metastasize into full-blown hickdom, but the seed is always there. And even if its symptoms are brief before going into remission, it always starts subtle.

This is probably an appropriate time as any to make the distinction between a redneck and a Southerner. Most people you meet in the South qualify as a Southerner. They like the South's slower pace (it's because of the heat) and enjoy the fine things life in the South has to offer. They enjoy the land and appreciate the bounty that has allowed our ancestors to thrive in this part of the world.

Rednecks are something altogether different. Rednecks have two speeds: spit and fight. Unlike Southerners, who enjoy the cultured things of life, rednecks delight in the lack culture or manners. They might show up at a wedding in a T-shirt and then talk about it incessantly to distinguish themselves from what they perceive as uppity folk. If you need a further description of the things rednecks value most in the world, go to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, where the gospel of Larry The Cable Guy is held in high regard.

What's more, rednecks have what we who have worked in the packaged goods business might call differentiating packaging. In fact, the first step to being redneck is to look redneck. First, you get some boots. I'm not talking about flashy cowboy boots that '80s rockers wore over their spandex. I am talking about some basic work boots, boots that might slightly look like somebody who works on a farm might consider wearing.

Then comes the hat. While the subject matter of the hat has a wide latitude (beer, racin', Lynyrd Skynyrd, bass boats), the condition of the hat is without question. A new hat must have any supporting backing ripped out from behind the headband. This will allow the hat to crush and gives a "What the hell you lookin at?!" essence to the presentation. The brim should be squeezed narrow to obscure other viewpoints. The hat should be dirty and the occasional tear might need to be added to complete the look.

My redneck period actually occurred twice. In its nascent high school stage, I hung out with a few quality 'necks with whom I had played sports. We mostly sat around pickup trucks and talked about pickup trucks. Over time, I just got bored with the high school 'necks and quit hanging out with them, hanging up my hat and boots for a while.

In college, however, the contagion of 'neckdom became epidemic. Temporary redneckness in college had nothing to do with actually wanting to be a redneck. It had everything to do with girls. City girls came to the southern university looking for that country boy they'd heard about in country songs sung by Canadians and Australians. A boy who loves his Mama and his truck and his faithful Labrador, Gen. Robert E. KillYankee. It was very romantic.

The only issue was that the overwhelming majority of students at my college were from three zip codes, all a convenient 15-mile (2-hour) commute from downtown Atlanta. The whole situation created a new beast on the university campus dressed in farming jeans and carrying an unrivaled spending ability. Enter the Cobb County Cowboy.

The Cobb County Cowboy (CCC) drove a Land Rover (or a least a Tahoe) with a brush guard, external accessory lights, safari rack and roof mounted spare tire. He may or may not have an axe mounted to said safari rack. The CCC would admit he went to Pope High School, but claimed ancestral roots somewhere in South Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi. The act paid off. Girls flocked to the CCC like celebrities to a secluded drug rehab center.

And then, one day, the style deflated. When it was on the rise, CCC style infected every non-nerd to some extent, to the point where it was hard to distinguish the finance student from the poultry science student. Everyone looked like they were ready to slop the hogs. And that was the problem. As the trend became pandemic, there was no longer any differentiation in being a Redneck. Now, everyone was a redneck.

At its height, the redneck appeal neared cult-like proportions. I heard guys from Atlanta faking Southern accents. Even the girls tried to talk like Scarlett, particularly when drunk on Miller High Life. Our school mascot was nearly replaced with the chocolate Lab.

But eventually, the elements that had made up this redneck cult began to crumble. The CCC joke began to spread and we began to tease each other about whether or not they were going to try to plow the North Campus quad before sunset. The trend imploded and it was stark to see this roaring cult appeal become the brunt of a joke.

After finally swapping in my cowboy boots for wingtips and entering the working world, I began to study the similarities between trends and cults. As both inspire loyalty that has a mental or emotional award, I wondered, could the deprogramming methods used to wean cult members off of a dysfunctional loyalty also be used to break the bond between some ironclad brands and their most devoted fans?

In all honesty, many brands employ the techniques of acceptance, immersion and maintenance that help create cult-like devotion. I integrate many similar techniques into the construction of brands to help foster affinity. Brand loyalty is one of the few reasons why someone will pay you more than what your product is attributably worth. It goes without saying that brand managers have an incentive to explore any method that could offer such a return.

But can the reverse be true? If the techniques used by cults can be used to create brand loyal customers, what is keeping the techniques used to combat cults from being used to neutralize a brand? Because the truth is they can.

Brands are at least as vulnerable to deprogramming as any other trend or cult. When the nature of the brand's loyalty is revealed, countermeasures can be used to debunk positions and deprogram loyalty. So let's get a chair, a swinging bare light bulb and a room with no windows, 'cause we're about to start deprogramming.

1) Discredit the authority.

Go after actual sales claims. Point out the fine print. Do a side-by-side comparison. Just make sure that whatever you do gets mud in the competitor's eye. Are they using child labor? I think that begs a photo. Do whatever it takes to knock them off that high perch. Sure, it's a ugly business but if you think for a moment that they got to the top handing out apples and puppies, you are sadly mistaken.

2) Present contradictions.

If a brand claims to be the original, prove that it is not. If they claim to be a high-tech innovator, out them on stealing ideas and being a techie-come-lately. The idea is to sap their credibility. Whatever their primary claim is, find the flaw and exploit it. If, however, you are engaged in the same flaw, be careful. For example, if you are trying to discredit a competitor because their parts are made in Mexico and your parts are as well, don't expect the deprogrammed consumer to come calling.

3) Recognize the breaking point.

There will come a point when you'll start to have an audience for your competitor bashing. If your contradictions and assorted mud slinging are true, consumers will begin to question their loyalty.

When you start to make an impact, narrow in on a core group of consumers. Remember, these brand loyal people used to wax about the virtues of your competitor. Recruit them and you'll find they are worth far more than the ordinary Joe.

4) Allow the subject to self-express.

You'll know you have made some progress when former cult members begin to air their own grievances against their former masters. This is no time to cool off; allow your new brand lovers a forum to lash out against the cruel former dictator. Show them in commercials telling about life before this newest illumination. Give them a blog so they can e-hate.

5) Foster identification and transference.

Let's remember, the whole reason people joined these cult brands was for a feeling of self-expression and belonging. Now that they have voiced out against the competitor, an opportunity exists for them to find a new home with you. I know, I know, I'm essentially saying you should deprogram people from one cult brand so they can join your cult brand. Actually, that is exactly what I am saying. And there will even be a chapter in the upcoming book on how to program devotees...

I don't want to make light of the pain and loss of actual cult members and defectors. But we're not talking about poison Kool-Aid, black running shoes and polygamy. We're talking about brands and trends, so don't feel like you're being pushed to do something unethical. And while I feel that plenty of opportunities exist to do the wrong things with some of these techniques, marketers should subscribe to a level of ethics that would prevent them from abuse. That has a nice ring to it: marketers should subscribe to my school of thought. I know what is good for marketers and I want them to be empowered to do the things that they rightfully deserve to do. You can start right now by sending me $50,000 in non-sequential bills, your shoe size and the deed to your house. Welcome the Family...

I Can Smell Garlic on You.

2008-07-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

My wife and mother-in-law have two interesting (and some might say contradictory) characteristics. First, my mother-in-law has a sense of smell that bests a bloodhound. If you've been chopping onions...say...a state away, she can smell it. She's a pretty good cook, so I imagine the enhanced sense of smell comes in handy.

Here's the rub. My wife's special talent is that if she eats garlic or onions or shallots she smells of them. I know someone smelling of a little garlic when they eat it is not too uncommon, but with Maura, it is nearly instantaneous. Obviously, we have little fear of vampires.

The whole situation has become a bit tense. My wife, self-conscious of the fact that she smells like garlic, gets annoyed when her mother asks who has been eating garlic. My mother-in-law is just annoyed that someone smells like garlic.

As I stated, while impressive, my wife's feat is not so unusual. I've heard that if you drink too much carrot juice you'll turn orange. Only after I learned that tanning beds also turn people orange did I reverse my assumption that our college cheerleaders drank too much carrot juice. My friend Blake claims that if you drink a particular brand of beer from a can it will make you smell like metal, though I am unclear as to whether he is describing the elemental metals or the musical genre popularized by hit band Metallica.

Mr. Slim Goodbody says you are what you eat and I believe him. The things we eat begin to show on us. That's why I have a corkscrew tail, Ho Hos for fingers and a keg for a stomach. But what about companies? Do the things they ingest seep through the skin? Can a company's internal state penetrate its exterior? Let's dive a bit deeper into this.

A good friend of mine turned me on to a training exercise to get employees, stakeholders and friends of a brand to live the brand's essence. I bet you think that's a bit campy, but I have to disagree. It was actually nice to sit in a boardroom and hear people from all rungs of an organization talk about the company's values and how those values inform decisions. In a training I conducted, I once heard lower level employees actually chide the management for not "living the brand" in their decisions. It was awesome.

But should you really live the brand? In a skin-deep sense, I think many managers would agree that it's a good idea. But should living the brand escape the few cubicles that make up the marketing department? Now that's a whole different ballgame. Plenty of people are willing to live the brand by hanging a banner in the lunchroom, but when it comes to living the brand when dealing with suppliers, Wall Street and other non-marketing associates the oft response is, "These are serious business matters not left to the quacks in marketing".

So my bigger question is this: When your company fails to truly live the brand, can consumers smell it on you? If a company tells you they are "raising the bar" or have "higher standards" and then they leave you on hold or talking to someone who cannot pronounce your name (or the company name, for that matter), can you smell it?

This raises another common business question. How many of the things we say we do in marketing do we actually do? If we say we believe in a certain value, would our employees disagree? Do we live what we say or is it just fodder for the sale?

A brand essence and corporate culture seeps through to the outside via customer service, employee conversations, publicized decisions and every other leak in a company's ship.

I am reminded of a story brought to me by a great intern. He had read that a particular car company had announced that it would be repositioning one of its brands to take on the luxury market, hoping to chase down higher margins. In the same article, the company said part of its plan was to build the soon-to-be-luxury brand using parts from one of its several anything-but-luxury brands. My intern was confused and asked me for an explanation. I asked him, "Who would be excited about the prospect of trying to sell a car for more while using cheaper stuff to build it?"

"One group," he answered, "Wall Street".

We found humor in that this car company seemed aloof to the fact that consumers would be reading the declaration as well. Who wants to buy a car built with cheaper parts for more money? Who believes this company's claim of luxury when we now all know it's built with a plastic engine? Who smells like garlic?

So what does your company smell of? Do you truly live your brand? To steal a few words from Gatorade, "Is it in you?" Do you live it or just say it? Here are a few questions to jump start your thinking.

1. What exactly do we stand for?
2. What is our brand's position in the market?
3. How do our values and brand essence inform non-marketing procedures?
4. How good have we been at communicating our brand inside of the organization, but outside of the marketing department?
5. Do we allow people to participate in the brand and make suggestions for improvement and evolution?

To see how your company is living its brand may take some poking and prodding. The whole concept may be a bit ethereal to some hard-nosed managers. You might dig and find the wonderful spirit of your brand's values. Then again, you might find that your organization's commitment to brand values is a bunch of BS. In which case, imagine what you might smell like to prospective consumers. Because you don't need a nose like my mother-in-law to smell BS.

Steve's Advice.

2008-07-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

Steve is a man among men. When it comes to reliability of advice, Steve gives my lawyer and accountant a run for my money, both of whom have plenty of my money to run with.

Steve is not my life coach, yoga instructor or some guru helping me center my chi. Steve is oft our waiter at the famous Five and Ten in Athens. Whenever we go there, we request Steve and he makes a special effort to get us a good table in his section.

A few years back Maura and I were having dinner at Five and Ten when we had a question about a particular wine. Steve made a recommendation. Then he brought us a sample. Then he retrieved a dusty old book from the back detailing growing region, good years and recommended pairings.

For those of you who don't love wine, this might seem like a bit much. But you should understand this situation in context. Five and Ten is a restaurant for people who love food. The menu is incredibly inventive. The atmosphere is classy yet homey.
Steve's actions were those of a person who truly lives their brand and it made an impression on us.

In subsequent trips, Maura and I always asked Steve's opinion. We trust him because he has earned our trust. To us, he is as much of the brand as anything else.

When I started writing this, I had originally thought of writing it about customer service or living a brand's values. While I have written about the latter subjects, however, I have neglected to write about what I believe to be one of the most crucial people in the success of a brand. Like Steve, these brand champions embody their brands and carry them out with enthusiasm and joy. Their actions may seem over the top. Their dedication to the brand might seem obsessive. But they inspire great things like loyalty, creativity and communication, just to name a few. They are the tipping point for a brand success. They are the inspirational brand managers.

Perhaps the best, and definitely most entertaining, way for me to tell you about inspirational brand managers is for me show some contrasts between good marketing management and tomfoolery. With these examples drawn in negative space, you might begin to see the potential of a positive figure.

We all have a story or two of blunder and high jinx on the high seas of industry. I once had a brand manager who was an executive assistant before "leading" the marketing department and whose job was more to cover incompetence than to market anything. Her best sell was the idea that she knew what she was doing, which was still unsuccessful as it failed the maxim of truth in advertising. I had one manager who pingponged between our firm and the client's 12-member marketing committee, whose only standing commitment was to agree to disagree about everything. Before that job she had been in charge of setting up special events and, in a rare moment of agreement by the marketing committee, that was the job to which she promptly returned. I once had a client rep, working as the brand manager, who spoke as if he was dictating a memo. Honestly, few things I've experienced in client relations are as marginalizing as someone saying, "Jeff...Subject: Quarterly sales result...Participants: You, me, my assistant Susan...Conducted: via conference call". I thought he was perpetually whacked out on psychotropic mushrooms.

Then again, I've also had some great ones. I've had a few brand managers that after meeting them for five minutes you want to be part of their team, because whatever they do will be innovative and successful. I have worked with brand managers who make and maintain perfect teams, where they foster great collaborative work and in which they participate, rather than looming from above. I have had a few marketing managers who have walked through fire for their people, ideas and company. It is truly something to see when you witness a marketing manager stand up, look down the boardroom table and tell the CEO, "With all due respect, we're right about this".

I don't know if great marketing leaders are born or made. Of the truly great ones I have met, their education did not play a dominant role in their success. Every great one I have worked with had a particular uniqueness about them that bordered on eccentric. Every single one has an excellent sense of humor. They always have raucous stories about seemingly innocuous things and I suspect their keen interest in people and situations makes such possible.

To detail out the characteristics that made my favorite marketing leaders so great is impossible for me. But what proves helpful is looking at a few similarities they share. And perhaps through understanding these interesting people, you and I might better equip ourselves and our companies with their approach.

More egghead than blockhead.

My favorite marketing directors are all voracious consumers of information. They read about trends and case reviews and techniques. They use information as leverage and the upper hand they often get on a competitor might have been gleaned late one night from a book rather than some grand strategizing on the 60th floor. That's not to say they aren't great at strategy; they are. But their approach to strategy formation is always evolving, which is how they bring fresh perspective to each effort. For at least a few of them, I have wondered what remarkable professors they might have been or one day be.

Quarterback, head cheerleader and coach in one.

I have always been amazed at how great marketing directors can help facilitate a discussion, participate in it, and yet also lead it, all at one time. The truly great ones make leadership something that their team desires rather than resents. And when you have worked for a great marketer, you're tempted to follow them wherever success might take them.

This team member/leader role empowers others to give the best of their abilities. When a staff member feels valued and respected, they can create approaches that stretch beyond competitors' restraints because they no longer fear irrational reprisals from their team leader.

Want to be paid with success.

I have never met a great marketing director who works solely for the money. Great marketers want to succeed and I have seen them get very angry when things unnecessarily get in the way of achievement. Those who hire great marketers are wise to not try to put them in a box of outdated constraints. Sure, a place exists for people who go about doing what always got done. That place, however, is not for great marketers. Great marketers are driven to achieve and they will go where they feel the best opportunity is to do such.

From good to great.

I think we can all learn important things from great marketers. The affectionate relationships they build with customers and the loyalty they inspire from their teams are things that every business needs more of. Through them, I have learned the power of creativity. I have learned the value of solid team members. I have learned that winning is everything when you define winning the right way.

And I've learned that the first step in a great marketer/consumer relationship is not quality or value, but a mutually respectful relationship. Once you truly respect the customers and their needs and their perspective, everything else needed for a great relationship seems to follow.

All Hail the Fort!

2008-05-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

The first fort was a half-fallen-down chicken shack. My childhood buddies and I stumbled upon it while walking through the woods that bordered our neighborhood. By the time my family had moved to the area the official bird of the city had become the Viper Car Alarm, but it hadn't always been that way. Duluth was very rural just previous to the housing explosion that we surfed in on. And it was for this reason that rabid little suburban children, such as us, might happen upon old chicken shacks and turn them into forts.

The first fort was also a death trap. The wood was rotted and plenty of sharp, rusty things jutted out to snag your jeans or neck. From even a casual glance, the limits of the first fort's potential were obvious. Enthusiasm waned.

But then we made a fabulous discovery. The second fort was larger; you could actually stand up in it. It had what appeared to be horse stalls, stairs and a locking door, which is important for securing all the junk artifacts kids find in the country woods. The pickaxe and case of glass jars that we would soon be throwing at trees and each other would be safe from other marauding bands of children.

The second fort was an inspiration. Because it was sturdy, we formulated plans of how to add on. So we added a porch. And a second entrance. And a rooftop shooter's nest where we could shoot BB guns at friends as they approached. We even built a stove that should have convinced our parents that we were all destined to become engineers. That is, if our parents ever found out that we were setting fires in the woods. The stove used an old drum with a fashioned door, an external air input that drew air from outside (instead of pulling through the cracks of the walls), and a insulated metal chimney that exited the exhaust. When you fired it up full blast, it could thaw out Antarctica.

We had old basement furniture from Mike's parents' house but we never really sat on it because you never really sat down. The whole fun of the fort was building. If we didn't know what to build or add on, we built it anyways. And the fort grew into what appeared to be the Swiss Family Robinson's safe house, where they might retreat to if the government ever got on to them for smuggling weapons.

The difference between Fort Version 1.0 and Fort Version 2.1 was that original structure it was built on. Fort 1.0 looked like someone wrecked a burning saloon full of manure into some trees. Fort 2.1 was sturdy and strong, which is important when you are nailing several hundred pounds of "found" construction materials to it.

If some cheesy business executives were wandering through the woods, they might look at the new fort and say we had "really thought outside the box". Then they would be shot with pellet guns and we would smash glass jars in the trees above their heads.

I hate the cliché, "Think outside the box". I think the people who say it don't fully appreciate its meaning and they themselves are thinking inside a box because they have to conform their ideas to lame business clichés. Is not thinking outside the box, thinking beyond constraints like, say, clichés?

I have heard all the fun alternates, like, "Don't box the neck", or, "Don't put your brain in a box". It's fun to play at wit. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking you to fly in the face of this little business pearl. I don't want you to think inside the box, per se. I want you to think inside the fort. Fort 2.1 to be exact.

The reason for 2.1's success was its strong base. We had something with which to start. Sure, the fort took on a much larger life after we nailed tons of particleboard and rusty sheet metal to it. It didn't even look like the same place. Yet all the while, under the surface, sat a strong base built by someone we never met.

Like Fort 2.1, great businesses also have a strong base. They have a root which is securely planted in a particular place. They have an anchor that holds everything else up. And great businesses are always cognizant of their base. Products, services, operations: everything attaches to that secure base.

When was the last time you reevaluated your fort? How strong is it? Can it support the weight of everything you've nailed to it? Is the design consistent and is it functional?

Let's take a look.

Build a shooter's nest first.

It's easy to have your head down over whatever you're nailing only to ignore a pending threat or opportunity. But the front lines of whatever you're building need to be watched. Had we kept our heads up, we might have been able to outrun that sheriff's deputy who came to give us lip over being on someone else's property.

For businesses, it's not always the fuzz (though for an unfortunate few it might be...). Instead, it is a changing market place or a savvy competitor. Sometimes it's even a problem with your own construction that you might never see. Getting a good view of yourself and your surroundings is a continually needed task.

I recommend you have a constant watch of research professionals. Find out what customers are saying. Find out what your biggest critics are saying. Continuously examine the structural integrity of your fort. Nothing is more embarrassing than standing next to a collapse while insisting, "Nothing's wrong".

Build on a hill. If you can't find a hill, build one.

The worst issue I have found in constructing brands and strategies is when companies stand for and own nothing in the minds of consumers. Sometimes I think people get scared when I tell them to take their business, find a hill and take it. It is as if we in business have become scared of our own shadow. Are we so afraid of some competition that we would rather go out of business? Get serious. Get your BB gun out. They want our fort!

Your company must stand for something. Have a set of values, beliefs and objectives as well as a good understanding of your role in the marketplace. This is the box you not only need to think within, you need to use it to nail things to. Once you have this structure, many other decisions become easier to make and many other opportunities become apparent.

How far does the addition extend off the foundation?

In the maturation of every fort and business, there is a desire to see how far you can go. Companies see opportunity and hope that solidly built brand equity can be stretched to support something two or three trees away. This is a really bad idea. Customers have a peculiar way of how they allocate brand affinity. Just because you make a nice truck does not mean they will care about your car. Just because you run a nice casual restaurant does not mean customers will support your upscale or quick service efforts as well. In fact, the further away something is from the base, the harder it is to support.

Business thinkers have known the perils of line extension for years, yet businesses seem doomed to repeat it. The temptation is for businesses to expand their offerings as they grow more successful. The better idea is to continue to focus and take a stronger ownership of a position as credibility and brand affinity grows. To put it simply, dance with the one that brought you or you'll go home with no one.

Today, we think inside a new fort.

Fort 3.0 is by far the best. We have working plumbing and a heater. We have a conference room, production room and an awesome lounge with surround sound. And instead of building makeshift booby traps, we're building brand strategies that we hope will snare up our client's competitors. However, there are some things from Fort 2.1 that remain. We still look for strong, supported beams before we try to nail something to it. We still confer on the overall vision of the fort before we build anything. And we still welcome anyone who is interested in building something strong and lasting.

But you might want to make some noise or call out before you get too close. Otherwise, Richard might shoot you with a pellet gun.

The Big Five.

2008-04-15T05:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the saddle again. To those of you who have missed this semi-regular e-mail, I apologize. Things at ST have been busy. We have been venturing into wheat fields and cotton capitals and all the while helping to develop some pretty powerful brands. The last few months have been daunting, to say the least. A big part of my thinking lately has been taken up with the development of a new book that will explore the alignment between consumers, organizations and products. Obviously, that has taken a ton of my time.

And in that time, I've come to realize that you never write the same book that you start out trying to write. For my first book, I started out with grand visions of profundity, only to end up with 140 pages of crude jokes, goofy quips and occasionally something about marketing. My next book will be different. I mean, I hope it will. But don't you worry, all that seriousness is saved for the book. These newsletters will still be as crude as you love...

As I dove through materials on consumer attitudes, marketing strategies and successful implementation, I began to notice something stark. It became clear that the majority of firms successful in marketing a product or service seemed to adhere to a few rudimentary marketing concepts. Conversely, firms that saw their marketing ambitions fail to launch had violated at least one, and more often a few, of these simple marketing maxims.

So what are these concepts? Are they austere puffery about synergistic visioning? Hardly. Are they the ever-broadening decrees that, in fortune cookie fashion, suggest everything while saying nothing? Nope. They are a collection of brilliant, salient inquires collected from clients, fellow consultants, academics, nutcases and the occasional intern.

And now, ladies and gentleman, for your enjoyment (and hopefully the betterment of you marketing), the Big Five:

1) How are we providing value to those who purchase our offering above what is available from competitors?

Put more simply, why do we exist? The President of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, says consumers are over the "er" descriptors (fresher, crispier, tastier). Roberts says products need a soul or persona over competitive attributes. I call BS. If a product or service does not have an attribute or collection of attributes that legitimizes its existence, maybe it shouldn't exist. And, in time, it probably won't.

This doesn't mean neglect the brand. An entire structure of meaning can be built around competitive attributes. BMW says they build the ultimate driving machines and they do. Their brand is the definition of driving enjoyment. They back up this position with attributes like glued to the road handling and bi-turbocharged engines. Attributes and persona do not function at the exclusion of each other. They are dependent on each other to make and support meaning for the brand. If you don't have an attribute that makes your brand competitive, find one, create one or start over and don't stop until you have one. A brand does not live on image alone.

2) How are we further evolving the offering to match the evolving needs and desires of our customers as tied to our brand?

Many offerings start off responding to a need. Successful offerings seem to find that sweet spot where brand and attribute intersect and a star is born. Then comes Father Time intent on spoiling the party. Over time, attributes may change and be updated. Also, brand messages may get a facelift, or at least a little Botox. The problem, however, is that the two rarely evolve strategically in reference to the consumer.

Here's a decent example. Ford started as the company that made a car accessible to many Americans. They didn't invent the car, and the quality was good but certainly not on the level of earlier, hand built models. When more consumers wanted a truck, Ford put a good truck within reach of millions. Midsized sedan? The Taurus. SUV? The wildly popular Explorer. Yet today, Ford's products and marketing are a mixed bag. Sure, they still make the assorted every-person cars but they also make $65,000 trucks. For every time Ford has done a great job of making desired cars available to the masses, they've screwed it up trying to be the everything car company. And now, manufacturers like Hyundai and Kia are making popular features and designs available to more people and those people are driving past the Ford dealership in a new Sorrento.

Ford could have evolved its product and marketing strategy to something more like IKEA. Smart designs, good quality, no BS rebates or sales tricks. They could have evolved that simple principle of getting good cars within reach of every American. Today Toyota is doing that better than Ford. And if Toyota beats Ford in making a hybrid that is price accessible to the majority of Americans, it just might signal the end of the once great Ford brand.

And if you want to know what a dying brand looks like, check out this link. The devolution of Ford's brand (and brand culture) is truly sad. http://culturegarage.com/2008/01/11/ford-sometimes-i-think-you-want-to-fail/

3) What about us do our customers put up with because no easy alternative exists?

Somewhere, a cable TV executive weeps a little every time a late night talk show host talks about how crappy the cable company is...and is right. You wonder, had they known of the phone and satellite companies' ability to enter the TV market, if they would have thought twice about asking customers to wait between the hours of 10 and 3 on a Tuesday so the cable guy can come figure out why MTV is fuzzy.

Though amusing, plenty of companies do equally stupid things to customers and then are honestly shocked when customers flee in mass exodus to a slightly more sensitive competitor. Too many companies mistake purchase for loyalty, but there is a difference. Purchase may keep you afloat today, but it takes loyalty to weather the storms of the changing market.

I recently tried to track a parcel from our office, but could not find the tracking number. I searched the shipping company's websites and saw plenty of links for logistic solutions, but nowhere did it allow me to see the last few packages I shipped. I called customer service and they plainly told me, "We don't offer that". This company tried to offer me everything under the sun except what I really needed and what I felt was a pretty basic request. Let me tell you, the second their competitor installs that new drop box next to our office, I'm going to see what they'll do to actually earn my business.

4) How easy is it to buy from us?

I know. This sounds stupid. Yet there I was on the phone with a kid selling newspaper space asking him to send me a quote to run in all five of the papers he represents. "Just send me the quote," I said. He didn't care. His prerogative was to send me a rate card, along with an acre of useless promotional junk, like he did, fruitlessly, to everyone else.

My beloved mentor calls it, "The dog finally catching the bus". We are almost so shocked by making a sale that we either can't appreciate it or we don't know what to do, so we fumble. Tell me, why would we ever make it hard to buy whatever it is that we're selling?

Give your sales system an audit. Are your hours, locations, sales rep's schedules all reasonable? How about your quotes, invoices and billing system? Do you make it easy to do business with your company?

5) Do our long-term plans match the needs of our customers and current strategy to address those needs?

I am always amazed at how companies who become successful make such abrupt changes to their strategies and move away from the consumer's affinity. Like bars trying to become white table cloth restaurants or fast food joints trying to sell everything from pizza to Chinese food.

Planning is inevitable in business, but by the very nature of planning a certain amount of suggested input is required. Sadly, much of that input is from a financial perspective rather than a consumer perspective. The result is less effective customer strategies to meet an accounting goal conceived in a vacuum. GM fielded several cars of the same model with different names and even different brands, prompting their lampooning by the press (and most of the car buying public). This was not a marketing decision. It was an accounting decision dressed up as a marketing strategy and, moreover, it was a disastrous failure further watering down this once noble brand.

Give yourself five.

Take a moment and ask yourself and your company these questions. If the answers come easy, good for you. I bet you'll have plenty of success. That is, unless you're lying. For everyone else, this might be a chance to perform a little introspection into how your business operates and the efficacy of its marketing.

Take a moment and write out your company's approach to the Big Five. You should have plenty of juicy morsels about how Tom in accounting keeps derailing your new product rollout to save 50 bucks and how Susie still thinks it's the 1970s when it comes to graphic arts. You might even write enough to write a book. If so, send it to me. I could use the help.

Nature vs. Nurture.

2007-08-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

I started playing football in the 5th grade and it changed my life. Before, I had lived in Chesapeake, Virginia where I played soccer for a tough sounding co-ed team called the Rainbows. Once we moved to Georgia, I suited up in pads and sought to clobber anything not running too fast to catch. For me, football had more off-the-field value than on. I liked playing but I liked the attention of being a football player even more. On Friday we would wear our jerseys to school and later than night to the high school game where they let youth league players in for free. The cheerleaders all gushed over wearing a player’s jersey and one couldn’t help but develop a snobbish sense of pride from all the fawning.

Then came my freshman year of high school. Thanks to hormones, both natural and injected, half of my former teammates had gained about 50 pounds the summer before our freshman year. The varsity players looked enormous and it broke my heart to know that the only position a 119-pound kid like me was fit for was guarding the Gatorade. Just like that, my keys to high school stardom no longer fit the door.

But being 119 pounds, scrappy and having a slight like for violence does have one advantage: wrestling. I went out for the wrestling team my freshman year and immediately found that it suited me. I remember it like it was yesterday, my first match ending with me barreling out, pretty much running the other kid over and pinning him in 110 seconds.

Wrestling can be scary. For starters, there’s no team to hide behind. Sure, we keep score and pretend it’s a team sport but when you lose out there in the middle of the mat, you’re the one who lost. In front of everyone and for everyone to see, your successes and failures now available for public scrutiny. I found that out in my second match. I contended in a higher weight class because the other team did not have a 119-pound kid. The other kid completely opened a can off whoop ass on me and then tried to stuff me in it. I felt so bad; I could have crawled in it myself.

Coach said I had ability. I was strong for my size and I could get real mean in a hurry. But mean alone doesn’t win matches. It would take technique, courage and tenacity to train like never before to make me a good wrestler. So, after the three hour practices each day, I ran five miles. I took lessons from a former Olympic wrestler and lifted weights at 5 a.m. every morning.

Eventually, I turned out to be a decent wrestler and better yet I learned about myself, getting a grasp on what I wanted and how I needed to get there. Innate ability might have got me to the mat but the training kept from repeatedly being pinned to it.

Today, I’m wrestling with something else. My client has innate ability. Perhaps innate is not the best term. The type of ability I am talking about is one that which is seemingly underlying but has benefited the company in a mode of marketing. Months ago we reviewed the client’s case and found a particular ability that syncs up with the desire of consumer. My team and I busily got down to finding sales and communication channels to shout this ability from the rooftops in hopes of bringing our client success. And then it hit me like a belly to back with a double chicken wing and a figure four: Innate ability is not enough.

My client has a marketable trait but it is faint and only partially believable. They have yet to do the real heavy lifting to develop the trait and it leaves me with little to help them pitch with. This is a common problem. Marketers often have innate or partially developed selling propositions and rather than develop the natural tendency into a skill, they opt to running out on the mat and getting their butt whopped. It is the business equivalent of telling the coach to put you on the varsity team now because with some training and hard work, you might become good someday.

I believe marketing has two main entities and conditions that bond or impede their connection. On one side is the customer. On the other is the offering. The customer has wants, needs and influences. The offering has propositions, channels and all the things that make up the brand. In between the two are all the communication strategies, channel efforts and pitches. An innate but undeveloped offering is like a thin strand connecting the two. There is a connection to be sure, but it wavers in the breezes of disbelief and is easily disjointed if a serious disturbance rolls by.

Marketers are wise to study the connection with consumers of their products and services. With a few questions, one can begin to see if the offering aligns with consumer desire. Here are a few suggestions:

Why should your target prospect care or want what you are offering?

Sure, you say it’s high quality and dependable, but who’s listening? After every sales claim you should ask yourself, “Why does the customer care?”

Is this reasoning believable, reasonable and/or compelling?

I have heard some amazing concoctions of consumer viewpoint in my experience, particularly with marketing to young people. If you want consumer perspectives about a product, ask them. Moreover, listen to what they have to say lest you fall into a trap similar to the marketers of Guns & Roses trading cards.

Why is your proposition better than the nearest competitor?

The competition is a reality. You might not be starring them in the face day-to-day but they still sit next to you on the shelf, web and in the customer’s mind. You better have a real differentiating proposition if you want to compete.

Is this reasoning believable, reasonable and/or compelling?

Again, do a reality check with your sales claims. Is it really stronger, better built, providing more value? I have a former client who rolled out a huge campaign based on the claims that were actually twice the price of the competition. In short, tell the truth.

What are you doing right now to reinforce your pitch to consumers?

Once you have a distilled concept, don’t rest on your laurels. Say you’re a brand of Louisiana fish fry whose pitch is the authentic experience. Don’t stop at just saying you’re the authentic experience. Put beads on your shipper displays. Offer authentic accessories for a real Louisiana fish fry. Don’t just say it. Do it and be it.

Make it your nature to nurture.

Innate ability is important and I don’t want to play that down. But innate ability is not enough. Marketers should take the efforts that are driving loyalty, action or purchase and augment those efforts. Rather than diffusing competitiveness, the differentiating factors of a product or service should be focused into lean, mean and powerful strategies.

Take a big white board. On one side, write your offering. On the other, write your best description of the prospective customer. Start connecting the two with propositions and pitches. Then ask the above questions in earnest. Answer them honestly and with the least amount of confused jargon. After this exercise, you may not fully pin the strategy but at least you’ll have it in a half nelson.

It’s just like wresting. Train and you’ll wipe the mat with that punk in the blue spandex. But lose your focus and you’ll lose big.

And everyone will see it.

Divide and conquer

2007-08-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

John had a huge mouth that wrote checks his butt couldn’t cash. It was a quality that made our little clique love him and hate him concurrently. An excellent storyteller, John often used his wit to insult the kids a grade ahead of us. Such was the occasion when he gathered a few pages from a filthy magazine and penned a note in the margins about a classmate’s mother. To put it lightly, it was on.

We already had a strained relationship with this classmate. He once played bass in our garage band but we had to kick him out because of his doofus friends that would always show up sidecar at our practice wanting to join the band. John’s little “art project” was insult to injury and the impetus for the entire sophomore class rallying to teach us freshmen a lesson.

This would be the first fight of the year so word spread throughout the school like mono. John was my friend so I pledged to back him up. I have to admit, I was kind of looking forward to punching our old bassist in the neck. Just as well, he had earned it.

When the appointed hour arrived, a friend of mine from one town over (outside muscle, yeah, that’s how I roll) and I jumped in the most conspicuous car ever conceived: a yellow, railroad servicing truck with a utility bed. Did I mention it was yellow? We drove the few miles to Shorty Howell Park and ascended the hill getting ready to rumble. Shorty Howell is a few baseball and football fields with parking lots and a road encircling it. When we drove in, the entire sophomore class lined the street. Perhaps the stress has fogged my memory, but when I recall the moment, I remember the sophomores wielding tire irons, maltave cocktails and pineapple grenades. Regardless, they might as well have had baseball bats wrapped in rusty barbed wire because just as our giant yellow target entered the prescribed parking lot, I realized we were the only ones there. More specific, my friend wasn’t even really involved so really, I was the only one there.

We bolted as fast as such a practical and utilitarian vehicle could go. The sophomores tailed us, not like it was hard, but amazingly we lost them long enough to make a phone call. I called John asking why he wasn’t there to join me in martyrdom. “My Mom wants me to do some laundry” he replied. He could have said anything. Something like “my Mom wants me to negotiate commodity prices for a consortium of South American businesses”. It didn’t matter. What John was really saying was he wasn’t coming.

The small group of sophomore’s that were out for blood had managed to pull off one of the most perfect effects in war, politics and marketing. First, they divided. Then, they conquered. To begin, they let John know that he was the only freshman they were interested to pounding. That was enough to scare John off. Second they knew that the rest of us would not fight for John if he did not have the spine to show up. Third, they rallied a larger force, mostly just spectators, but the effect seemed like a mob waiting to tie our lifeless bodies to the goal posts.

One need not be a war scholar to recognize this effect in historic battles. Commanders routinely try to separate efforts from supply lines, divide armies and concentrate the most amount of force at the moment of decision. This is war 101 and we should glean some lessons from it.

Yet many marketers seem to fall in their latrines when it comes to battlefield strategy. Instead of focusing their forces, they spread out and try to take the hill with a line six miles long and one soldier deep. They get half way to an objective and redirect the force to a distant objective that, in the fog of war, looks more desirable. They win the wrong battle where the opposition doesn’t even show up and ultimately, they lose the war.

These principles are basic and applicable to most marketing efforts. I have a few tips to share- So lace up your boots, blow your nose and dress the line- It’s time for boot camp.

Know where to divide and who to conquer.

Proctor and Gamble are the kings of divide and conquer. They take a category (say, laundry detergent) and they split it into a million pieces and position their product at the peaks of every sub category. One brand for freshness. One for color. One for whiter whites and so on. The strategy is brilliant. They never give up a piece of the field and when a piece of vulnerable ground is spotted, they are the first to stake it.

Take a look at your category or categories. Can they be split? If you can’t rule the whole category can you rule a piece of it. We once advised a maker of anti- diarrhea products to eschew the broad category dominated by goliaths and instead focus specifically on the travelers diarrhea (what happens when you drink the water) market. The strategy begs a question that’s easy to answer. Why serve in plain diarrhea when you can rule in traveler’s diarrhea?

Rally the masses.

The sophomore didn’t want to kill us because of John’s x-rated collage. Instead, the pocket of incensed sophomores appealed to their classmates with a more attractive call to arms. Here was a group of sassy, punk freshmen that need to be taught a lesson. They insulted an upperclassman (more specifically, his Mom) and they need to pay. What sophomore could resist such a rallying cry?

Brand managers should never expect their motive to motivate the masses. Nobody bought an iPod to increase the share price of Apple. The iPod meant the liberation of music that can come from anywhere and go anywhere. The iPod has led the digital music revolution and while I would like to think that Apple’s motives are purely benevolent, truthfully my black, 80 GB model is an expensive piece of technology that makes the folks at Apple a lot of bucks. Yet Apple has begun to stand for so much more. The iPod thumbs its nose at corporate music and decrees that the user is king of what he or she listens to. And again, what sophomore could resist such a rallying cry?

Focus on the point of decision.

Getting John to chicken out was key to squashing our interclass strife. The sophomores, despite their ugly looks, were not dummies. They focused their strength at the point of decision and used their mass to display strength that made us cower.

Every purchase decision has a point of decision. When people eat, decide to buy a motor home or choose a urologist all have points of decision and are wise to think deeply about those points. It might be to apply recentcy to a TV schedule or getting the right referral materials in the hands of the people your prospect sees right before you. Recognize and concentrate on that point and you can turn back a brood of sassy freshman a thousand strong.

Hey, you’re kicked out of the band!

I have let the story meander in a way that might let you think the sophomores took the day. That’s not entirely accurate. When I realized that John left us to the mercy of 15-year-old punks, I called my brother- a giant, unpredictable senior. As the core of the sophomores trolled the town, trying to track down the yellow big bird mobile, they stopped at a gas station. We spotted them getting back into a sea foam green convertible (really, sea foam green). My brother pulled up and blocked in their car. He grabbed the driver and pulled him up and out of the car. I will paraphrase and censor but the substance of my brother’s oratory was to the effect of “My brother didn’t start this fight so if you don’t leave him alone- I’ll be using your empty skull for an ashtray”.

I guess, in all that excitement, they never thought I might know how to divide and conquer as well.

Heal Thyself

2007-07-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am the child of a teacher, and that has a lot of influence on how one grows up. For my mom, everything is a lesson. As my peers were eating mud pies and burning ants with a magnifying glass, I was learning how and why vegetables grow in garden and the secret lives of all the creatures that inhabited it. When you have a parent who is a teacher nothing is sacred. My toy soldiers, a staple of male youth since the iron or at least the plastic age, fell victims line after line to my mother, who made them little parachutes out of napkins and sewing string to illustrate how air resistance allowed them to float effortlessly down from the window above the garage to the landing zone in the driveway.

So it is without surprise that every summer came with a major lesson and objective. One summer was spent in summer school in order to skip a level of math the following year. One summer was spent caring for my baby brother while mom taught summer school. And one summer, early in high school, my mom offered that I learn scuba or lifeguarding at the local YMCA. A two week stint at the local fast food joint was all it took to convince that I needed a better job, perhaps one that involved less grease.

I was a decent wrestler in high school and was hardly concerned with the physical requirements of the class. Our first night we huddled next to the pool as we received the instructions for our workout. Five hundred yards, divided between the front crawl with head out of the water, a modified backstroke and the side stroke. My classmate dove right in and it was about then I realized I could not swim. That’s not accurate. I could swim but not like these kids. Most of them were from the class instructor’s swim team. They flew through the water with ease. I thrashed like bulldog pulling a small raft full of cats. Having ear infections, tubes and a botched surgical procedure from a dentist posing as an ear surgeon (yes, I’m serious) when I was young, I spent most of my childhood on the side of the pool while my brothers swam. The lack of pool time kept me from learning a decent swimming stroke. It was not pretty. But I was not deterred. Some coaching from mom and a lot of hard work and I taught myself to swim. And I must have been a good instructor, because I eventually rose to teach swimming and then lifeguarding for the YMCA.

The situation in which I learned to swim still makes me laugh. I remember teaching advanced swimming at Simpsonwood United Methodist Retreat outside Atlanta and telling my students stroke correction, only to be reminding myself the same corrections in my own laps. I did not have the benefit of a long youth of swimming and therefore much of what I preached, I was still very cognizant to practice.

My professional practice has been little different, as I often find the things I become most interested in regarding marketing and communications were absconded from efforts by many of those with or for whom I have worked. My only solace was to retreat to the study of the hordes of scholars, practitioners and consultants who screamed at the top of their lungs for the need for strategy. People like Jack Trout, Al Ries and John Steele, and Publications like Harvard Business review. All warn of the perfect storm that will arise when burgeoning consumer choices, a marketing industry more concerned with the myriad of tactics rather than core strategies and the thunderbolts of change striking the media landscape will all collide in a spectacular implosion.

The thing about teaching yourself something is that you have got to know what you don’t know, you know? You need to recognize where there may be more information or knowledge or experience. Unless you can appreciate that the answer may lie elsewhere, you will never go look for it and assume that what is at hand is all that exists and is therefore right. I hate the idea of stagnation in business, but I also appreciate the comfort that might come with predictability. Some people are doing the same things they’ve always done - like a particular ad placement, trade show or format for presentation simply because they’re comfortable with it and it doesn’t seem broke. Some people would call this not fixing what’s not broke. I have a slightly different view articulated by my friend Charlie. It doesn’t matter if you are on the right track if you’re not moving. You’ll still get run over by the train.

This newsletter is not as much me trying to teach you something as it is me trying to illustrate to you that my partner and I are teaching ourselves something. We’re diagnosing our own problems. We’re correcting our own backstroke. We are, in the very essence, trying to heal ourselves.

Years ago, when we founded this firm, it was in response to what agencies were not providing. As many firms chased down new tactics to fill billing gaps in a client’s budget, they left a gaping hole in the place where strategic counsel was supposed to be. Firms are more concerned on being able to absorb billings for direct marketing, interactive, advertising, public relations and event planning all on the same bill that they have ignored to core problem of constructing a central and powerful core strategic plan. They have, in a sense, become a collection of tactics with no strategy. Like an arsenal of weaponry with no idea where to march, shoot, take cover or take over. As they reach to offer more varied service, the hole deepens and brands are taking the brunt of it.

We intend to fill that hole.

I lecture my clients on doing what they do best and communicating such in a thoughtful way. I teach my clients to marry the consumer need with the offering in a way that consumer’s can spot the connection. I tell my clients to focus. And now Richard and I are telling ourselves the very same.

Welcome to a new concentration of problem solving, ideas and actual solutions. Welcome to a new firm that will focus on solving the strategy problem before all else. Welcome to a new Snowden Tatarski.

For some this won’t seem like much of a change. We’ve always talked about the need for a strategy above all else. For others it will seem abrupt, as they have used our service to carry out the various tactics without having a unified core competitive plan. For us it is and will be a series of ideas, ideals, beliefs and guiding principles. Because this is an organic change, I hope you will forgive any rough edges as we make this transition more succinct and harmonious. The following are some concepts which are at the forefront of our minds as we make this important transition.

We are not an advertising agency. We do not and will not constrain ourselves to the tactic of advertising, nor do we retail media in an agency format. We are a marketing consultancy, and while we will create advertising and advise on media planning as it pertains to strategic marketing, we will not put the fresh wine of a new approach in the old skins of a less relevant and outdated format.

We believe strategy is central to whether an effort is successful or not. Tactics are not strategy and campaigns which are not united in voice, message and selling proposition are not functioning at an optimum. If you cannot clearly articulate your overarching brand strategy in less than 30 seconds, you do not have one.

We are located in a seat of knowledge. Ad agencies are in Atlanta where they can be near competitors and a fabulous new martini bar. We are in Athens next to one of the nation’s most respected and prolific academic institutions with which we have a strong partnership. We are a company which provides the thoughtful resolution of marketing dilemmas; therefore we consider the vast resource of the University of Georgia and its world-renowned faculty to be an asset few can match.

We are a small company. Ad agencies have teams of people who hurriedly run about carrying faxes and video tapes and lattes and they can show what each of these people are doing right on your bill. It does not take a keystone army to solve a marketing problem. We maintain a core group of consultants in residence and in affiliation, including a consultant with 25 years in travel and hospitality, one with 30 in packaged goods, one with 15 years in technology and manufacturing, one with 25 years in food services and one with 35 years and several degrees in marketing research. We also maintain close relationships with filmmakers, music producers, interior designers, event planners and all the other tactical people who can make a good strategy a great result.

I hope you will take a second to view our website at www.sn-ta.com. On it you will find information about our new focus and existing qualifications, many case studies about strategies we created that drive businesses and information on how you can contact us to chat. I am sorry that this newsletter may come off as more of a solicitation than the typically weekly fodder; however, those of you who reply every week with insights and suggestions have become a sort of peer review and I relish the learning I get from so many of you.

And that makes this newsletter and this new focus of our firm important. The learning we get and give to each other increases our collective abilities and therefore propensity for individual and mutual success. The more we teach each other, the more we teach ourselves.

Let it grow

2007-07-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

This is the year we decided to fight back. When Maura and I bought our current house we were happy to get a decent sized piece of land while still being close enough to downtown for my occasional cycle to work. 1.59 acres might not seem like much until you mow it. Never the less, we think it’s plenty big for us. When we bought it however, nearly a tenth of the property was covered in kudzu. Living in Georgia most of my life, I have only recently had to tell someone what kudzu is. For those of you not familiar, here’s my description:

Kudzu is a green sewer rat with leaves. It is a parasite of a vine that grows a foot a day (no joke) and wraps itself around trees, trailers, satellite dishes (yes, the big ones) and many other places that country teens go to make out. It will grow over top of, wrap around and strangle the life out of your trees. It is a dastardly vine made even more repulsive with the local transplants who’ve had some sick infatuation for the leafy invader and who have taken to letting the kudzu overtake their hovels.

So, the kudzu took over a portion of the yard that was too uneven for the mower and in an area that the former residents saw fit to litter with bricks, rebar, beer bottles, coils of metal wire and if I eventually find one of those canisters with a zombie in it (like from the Return of the Living Dead movie) I can’t say I’ll be that surprised. My grandmother would politely describe the way this part of the yard was kept as “rustic”.

Maura and I were not and are not content with sacrificing this portion of the yard so we worked up a plan of attack. Napalm was too expensive and the barrel wouldn’t fit in my Subaru so instead we decided to mow it, hoe it and till it until we could make the jungle wasteland into our garden. Now you must know I am a man who must have the right tools for the job even if I don’t really intend on doing the job. We have the mower and the hoe (no jokes). What I didn’t have was a tiller.

For those who don’t know the whimsical intricacies that separate tillers, let me be the first to welcome you to the machine. A tiller comes in two sizes. There are the ones that barely work and are best suited for tilling a potted plant. These tillers can be gas or electric and cost about $300. Then there are the real tillers. These tillers have rear, counter-rotating tines, brush guards and run on gas or plutonium. These kudzu devouring monsters cost more like $800. Knowing my love of tools and toys, Maura has me on a strict budget and without divulging my toy budget; I’ll just tell you that if I showed up with an $850 tiller, I’d have to return the new digital camera to the store.

So one day on an errand, Tatarski and I were wandering through the Sears and I wandered over to the lawn and garden department. I explained my dilemma to the sales associate and he made a recommendation: rent a big tiller and do the yard once. Then, buy a small tiller for maintenance. I didn’t want to say that I would be embarrassed if the neighbors saw me with the “kiddy” tiller. I walked off and sulked in spirit of those regulated to paying kudzu a land tax. I moped around to see what other fun lawn toy could lift my spirits when low and behold; I came upon the biggest, meanest, knarliest tiller Sears sells with a price tag of $207. “What’s wrong with it” I asked the associate. “Nothing” he said. “This happens every year, somebody buys a tiller, does their yard and returns it to the store”. I asked Tatarski to keep his hand on it while I checked out. I wasn’t letting somebody sneak in and get between me and kudzu-destroying bliss.

The next weekend was everything I dreamed it would be. Maura and I scalped the area with a small push mower then we hacked the kudzu at its roots with a hoe and machete (everyone should have one). Finally, I roared out with the tiller like a drunken funny car driver and digested the kudzu into a rich, beautiful garden. All the while I was grinding away at this scourge of a plant, once praised and encouraged for its erosion combating traits, I was thinking; good strategy is like a good tiller. And I have a good tiller.

Business opportunity is out there but you’ve got to till it up. Its not just going to sit their on the surface without someone else to come along and get it before you do. I know. There’ll be rocks and beer cans and the occasional discarded badminton net that gets wrapped around your tines, but a good tiller can power through all of that and leave you standing on fertile soil. I'll stretch the metaphors just as far as I can before they break so put your hat on and pull your boots up. Let’s do some yard work.

Get the right equipment.

If you fully understand the task to be undertaken, you will be better equipped to choose a wise strategy. Or tiller. Knowing what you’re getting into can help you do a thorough job of choosing what resources and efforts you’re going to need to be successful. A funny thing about providing resources for efforts is that investing half of what it takes to be successful does not yield half successful results. Had Maura and I bought one of those junior tillers we would not have done a half good job. The job would have never gotten started as the ground and kudzu would have been too much for the pint-sized effort.

Only when a company fully appreciates the pervasiveness and competitive advantage afforded by a good strategy can the adequate appropriations of resources and efforts be made.

I doesn’t matter how big the tiller is if you’re not willing to walk behind it.

A common misconception is that when a strategy is adopted or initiated that it needs no further care. This is untrue. Strategies have an uncanny knack of drifting which sets up an even worse situation than before. Managers will blame the strategies without seeing or acknowledging the drift. The result is total loss of the value of what might have been a great idea simply because the people carrying it out did not understand and the person who should have been following behind the tiller left it to go on its own to run over the garden hose.

Every time you till it correctly it gets easier.

The way things were always done can be a stubbornly dense layer of soil riddled with the remnants of failed efforts and the intertwined vines of bad ideas and bad intentions. My advice is: don’t be timid if you are looking to create fruitful ground. Get in and bust it up. Cut vines; throw out the useless junk that’s not part of a thriving garden.

Good strategies are pervasive. Turn up the soil now and it will be easier every time you need to do it again. You never know; the ideas, opportunities and staff you wish to cultivate might begin to blossom in an atmosphere that breaks up some soil and works some fresh nutrients into the mix every so often.

You reap what you sow.

I am constantly surprised how many business tasks plunge headlong into efforts and budgets without the correct amount of preplanning. Just like the garden, everything in marketing does not thrive equally across geographies, seasons and degrees of attention. Treat your tomatoes like your cucumbers and you’ll be substituting pickles for tomatoes in your salad.

Growing business from strategy takes patience and good old-fashioned hard work. There will always be a tough row to hoe, the occasional intruding vine but then again, there’s the situation when you look up one day and see everything begin to bloom. Be smart and nature will work with you. Put a good strategy to work and you never know what you might grow.

To Brand or not to, Brad.

2007-06-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

Everyone should have a story like this. It seems as if somewhere, a page from my life was made into 47 different after school specials and 115 movies produced between 1983 and 1987. Does art imitate life or is life merely following the script handed to it by art? How many licks until you get to the center of a tootsie pop?

Brad was so much like the villain in all those mid-eighties teen romp films that I still wince at the idea that we were ever friends. Brad was much like a shrinky dinked Iceman from Top Gun. He had Iceman’s flattop and Hitler youth looks. Brad never really played sports but that didn’t matter. Huge doses of steroids (seriously) work wonders on the 13-year-old body and Brad looked like one of those freakishly built, pre-pubescent Russian gymnastic stars with the unnatural bulging muscles.

I guess I was friend of Brad because everyone else liked him or at least feared him. His synthesized testosterone temper earned him a reputation that other eighth graders avoided like a wedgie. Brad was not cool but no one dared say it. Becoming friends with Brad was like joining the army through transcription and even though I never really like him, over time he became tolerable.

Brad’s parents moved a lot. So when his parents moved a few towns away, Brad would come to my house to connect with the old crew. It was on such a day that Brad came over, and together with Amber (who will be explained in a second), we did what kids of our age did. We walked around the neighborhood.

Amber was what is defined at that age as my girlfriend. We were not old enough to go on dates or anything of the ilk. At that age, being girlfriend and boyfriend simply means when a slow song comes on (usually super rawk group Cinderella’s “Don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”) one should migrate over to slow dance with whoever your girlfriend was that week. Only, with Amber, the week had turned into two years. It started as kind of an accident. When we all first started junior high we played the all too typical game of musical dance partners where everyone pairs up with the person they will send cute little notes and custom mix tapes of love songs to. I guess I wasn’t paying attention with the music turned off and everyone grabbed a cheerleader and I got stuck with Amber. I tried to end it but she cried and I hate it when girls cry.

So here was Brad, Amber and I. I had a football game to go play, which left Brad and Amber to discuss things that 14-year-olds discuss. We beat Norcross for the county championship and I sacked the QB who would later play QB at University of Georgia (Go me!). But the elation of the win was not enough to quell the hurt that I felt when the final buzzer rang. Brad and Amber were now boyfriend and girlfriend, just waiting for a slow song.

Ironically, this happened to me again but with a slight twist. Our little town of Athens is celebrated for its artistry yet its prowess in marketing to the outside world is dismal. Every year our town’s various tourism and economic development entities run ads full of bullet points, clichéd pictures and some campy headline like “Have it all in Athens!”

My team and I decided we could help. We convened a group of the city’s tourism and economic development stakeholders. The Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), the Economic Development Foundation, the mayor’s office, the convention center and several area businesses were all invited to a presentation.
We were really on our game in this presentation. The concept we presented was called “Only in Athens.”

The concept and drive behind Only in Athens was to develop a brand that could be used to attract both visitors and relocatees of an individual and organizational nature. We marketed the idea that our seemingly paradoxical existences indicate our unique spirit that is desirable to businesses and individuals alike. For example, in an ad we showed two restaurants on our main drag in downtown. To the first restaurant pointed an arrow which said “Chateau D’ Pomerol, $198 a bottle” to the second restaurant pointed an arrow which said “Chateau D’ Milwaukee, $3.50 a pitcher. The ad then went on to explain that Athens’ biggest selling point is great diversity peacefully existing in one area. Diversity of geography, business, entertainment and lifestyle make Athens what it is. This approach is in opposition to the too often bullet point laden junk that so typifies destination marketing. We told the relocating businesses that our unique offerings were something that they needed and that they could only find in Athens. Similarly, we told the prospective visitors that unique cultural and enriching experiences also exist to make Athens a fine destination.

Walking out of the meeting, I knew we nailed it. You could see the glimmer in the attendee’s eyes as they imagined all the other seemingly paradoxical relationships that exist in Athens. We had struck a cord and were awaiting a flood of new and even better ideas to emerge from within the strategy. It took only days to get the e-mail.
And we were crestfallen. The head of the Conventions and Visitors Bureau dispatched an e-mail to the mayor calling for the group that had convened to reconvene for a more expansive study of which he would happily be in charge of. He powder puffed our efforts and vacuumed all the momentum we had created in pursuit of his ambitions.
Welcome back Brad.

In the three years it took the CVB to craft a brand for the city there was enough tomfoolery to upstage the Benny Hill show. The first firm considered promised to do a full review of operational effectiveness of the CVB and other brand entities. That firm was promptly dismissed because this effort was about the CVB trying to make itself relevant, not to let everyone see how the sausage is made.
The second firm was ousted for giving several communities the same brand. All of the smoke and mirrors that the CVB director had used to persuade the stakeholders towards and out-of-town firm ended up being just smoke and mirrors. The dismissal of the second firm was kept quite as to not wake those asleep at the wheel. The third and final effort used a professor from a college a state away, the bountiful resource of about ten thousand dollars and came up with something profound. Athens: Life Unleashed!

The effort landed with such a resounding thud that even some of the stakeholders would not sign their name to it. The newspaper called foul and conducted an online poll where two thirds of the respondents said they hated the concept. The CVB staff ran around like a battalion of keystone cops trying to cover their actions. When I attended their board meeting soon after the supposed launch they cowered from the subject and barely mentioned their three years in the making masterpiece.

I was asked my opinion because we had been summarily dismissed from the CVB because they could not gain political power from our continued efforts; the Economic Development Foundation loved our materials. So did the ADDY judges. The material was named “Best in Show” by the local ADDYs. A major market research company who studied the branding efforts of the State of Georgia said the work was “The best municipal marketing materials I have ever seen.” So what was my opinion?

My critique is simple. That’s not a brand.

It’s a campy slogan. It’s a poorly designed logo. It’s a group of ads that continue to perpetuate the undesirable concept that Athens is a place of excesses. Honestly, when was the last time anyone typified anything positive as being “unleashed?”

I blame the CVB for putting their own attainment of power and influence above the needs of the town but I don’t fully blame them for the brand screw up. It is a common problem to equate the idea of a brand with so much that it is not.

Businesses often make this mistake. They design a logo and call it and new brand position. They mock up a few yuckfest ads and say they have a new brand strategy and that strategy is “fun!” Branding has become the new buzz concept for companies but it is so widely misunderstood and widely misused that the unimpressive result of such misuse has made the approach suspect. It reminds me somewhat of the Adkins diet. People who know and faithfully implement the diet lose weight. People who do it halfway or simple don’t know what they are doing gain weight and blame it on the diet. Rarely does one hear someone say, “I tried the Adkins diet but my inability to following directions or commit myself to any long-term discipline has delivered lackluster results”.

I cannot and will not attempt to explain every nook and cranny of creating brand in this chapter. Instead, I’ll throw out some broad and oft violated rules that will help you test the integrity of what you are calling a brand.

A brand is a system of meaning.

A brand gives consumers predictability and assurance. A brand is all the attitudes and perspective concerning a product or service. It encapsulates the essence and inspirational nature of a brand. It is the awareness of the earth exuded by Patagonia and the love of driving extolled by BMW. A brand is a personality for a product or service. And like a person, if the brand is not interesting, engaging and fully developed from a personality standpoint, good luck making friends. And even if such a brand can make friends, they’ll all be like Brad.

A brand is not a logo.

A logo may identify a brand. A logo may even incorporate the spirit or essence of the brand (Like Nike’s swoosh) but the logo itself is not the brand. A swoosh without all the imagery and emotion of Nike is an icon that could just as well be promoting a fertility clinic.

A brand is not just for mass communication.

A brand also functions as an internal ethos. Companies with solid and rooted brand concepts have an uncanny ability to incorporate the meaning system within their organization. Sometimes it is the internal culture which gives rise to the brand. Brands such as Ben and Jerry’s and Saturn used the communication of internal culture to inform the masses what they stand for and believe in.

A brand is active. A brand is nothing without a brand strategy.

I have observed far too many companies conduct a distillation of their brand only to say, “Okay folks this is our brand: we believe in innovation.” “Now, back to work.”
A brand strategy that is not implemented is worthless. Brand strategies are not just the persona but how that persona is cultivated, communicated and nurtured. The brand strategy determines what types of media the communication will flow through and what the next product or distribution channel might be.

A brand is everyone’s business.

The iPod was not an invention of the marketing department yet it taps so deeply into the Apple brand. The brand is essentially what is being sold and it is everyone’s responsibility to live the brand. New products should be on-brand. Sales should be selling on-brand. The design of the corporate headquarters should be on-brand. A brand is what a company and its products are. It is based in who you are in the life of the prospective consumer. If it is something you try to fake, you will fail.

Brad vs. the CVB.

The violation that too many companies make, ultimately leading to their poor branding efforts, is betrayal. A brand is not created in as much as it is discovered. A brand already exists for most companies and the careful uncovering of exactly what motivates a consumer to take action and love a brand might as well be pure gold. The failed efforts of branding have given the practice a tarnished reputation when truthfully it was ineptitude and incompetence to blame.

Be it Brad, the CVB or your marketing department, loyalty can make the difference in whether or not those you want to like you will actually like you. When an entity shows loyalty to its prospect and earnestly listens to that which is already beckons the brand’s devotees, magic happens. In the all too common situation where personal agendas, politics and a little back stabbing are leading the way of your branding effort, I have but one recommendation: Put them back on the leash.

The dog and phony show

2007-06-21T07:46:00.001-07:00

This is a true story. Sink, Matt and I hauled up across state lines for a competitive pitch on a nice piece of business. We had a good feeling about the account and had done some preliminary work that was pretty great. Anyways, they stuffed us into a boardroom while they went out to round up the attendees who had run off to play with their Blackberries between meetings.

On the client side, I’ve always hated these meeting. Agencies and consultant always seem to present a gumbo of campy clichés and talk to PowerPoint presentations for thirty minutes about creating a “winning mindset.” When I pitch these days, I think back to those horrid presentations and try to make mine a bit more interesting.

Back to that day in the pitch, I saw a small black box. Sink, who can get all clandestine on command, snagged the box and opened it. It was a cell phone with some stupid card that said something to the effect of “Make the call! Choose Purple Llama Advertising!” (name slightly changed). We studied the bribe and noticed a stand where a projector had just been. Right there, we completely changed the presentation. No slides, no sound effects. No bribes. Straight talk and straight answers.

I was told later that we butchered the competition from a strategic capability standpoint but that some of the members of the voting body were just enamored with the cell phones, gifts and other little gimmicks.

I have a confession to make: our industry does this. We offer bribes, and lavish dinners and outings to tattletales. We promise connections, influence and activities that could be accurately classified as kickbacks. I have seen agencies whore out employees, take clients to Vegas and/or suggest better access to high ranking state officials. It is important to note that not a single part of this has anything to do with ability or prowess in helping the client reach strategic goals.

What are marketers to do? On one side you have consultants and agencies sending you champagne and taking you on “media tours” that include $700 dinners they will eventually charge to your company along with the customary 20% markup. On the other side are actual capabilities. The answer looks easy, but the result anything but.

So what allows the substitution of food, embroidery or a cell phone for real ability? It has to do with marketing team construction, commitment and liability. The team is often the root of whether the right group of outside marketers or a group of dopes who gave away watches will be selected. Here a few tips to avoid making this dumb mistake.

The person in charge should be in charge.

In every environment I have worked in there are always those folks determined to milk the job for anything they can get. They bring in all their personal mail and use the company stamps. They ship their Christmas gifts with the company shipping account. They make their long distance calls from the office so they don’t have to pay for them. To them, this job is about what they get out of it. Never put this person in a position to extract perks from a vendor. I have seen brand managers use the relationship to subsidize travel, pay for vacations and even secure other employment. It’s sickening.

When a person has more at stake than the ability to get free junk, the truth of the situation becomes clear. Is this consultant going to mesh with the corporate culture? What will be the outcome and have we identified the desired outcome in the first place? And the easy tip is to never let a person be involved in the decision unless their neck or their reputation is on the line.

Tell the agency to stop kissing your assets.

Agencies have a knack for getting in the marketing budget and spreading it out until all marketing activities are conducted by and paid directly to them. Endless attempts to encumber more parts of the marketing budget are par for the course, and this is the strategic aim of most conglomerate agencies. Here’s the rub: an agency that oozes over into the area of what your company supposedly needs is never as potent as one who specializes in it already. I would never have an agency handle an important PR project when I know there are people who specialize in PR. I don’t care if the agency just hired two yahoos to write releases. There are people with real track records and abilities in the various subsets of marketing consultation. If you want good work, be willing to look for it.

I already have a cell phone. Give me a strategy.

An interesting fact about the groups I have seen using bribes and junk to peddle their trash is that not one ever had a decent command of the business problem. Instead of salient strategy, they offered logo emblazoned folding camp chairs. Instead of insight, they had an offer to have the next meeting in Bermuda.

Whether or not an agency or consultant can or does have a mental hold on the concept and business problem at hand is extremely relevant. I remember sitting in a meeting with a hack arguing because he could not understand the difference between an American pub and an English pub. Sure, he was more than willing to send our president on a lavish media tour of magazines in Chicago and New York, but ultimately it was worthless because he simply could not understand the strategy.

Put your strategy out there. Give the prospect a chance to reflect it back and comment on it. See if they can really let it soak in. Do they get it? If they don’t, show them the door. Free cell phone or not, your company’s well being is not worth including a dud on the marketing team.

A partnership is two sided.

The last and perhaps most important quip I can offer about the client/consultant interaction concerns the nature of the relationship. The agency is going to need to work from the inside if the results are going to be a real connection between the product and the consumer. Clients who treat their agencies like partners instead of vendors will far exceed the result of those that see the agency like the coffee service company.

So the goal is clear. Getting an agency that can partner with your company, understand your strategy and be a true contribution to the team is not hard to ascertain with a few questions. Ask prospects to explain the strategy and approach on other pieces of business. Ask them how they might approach your business. If they can clearly reflect back to you strategic ability and insight in addressing the business, tell them to keep the free phones and you’ll send them a contract.

PETA hates the dog and pony show.

In recent times, more companies are nixing the big production of agency pitches in favor or more personal interviews. After all, when you ask a person to join your team (which is what the hiring of agency should be), you sit and talk with the person to get to know him or her. You don’t ask the candidate to bake you cookies or make a video about how fun they are. Marketing is serious business and when the result of a marketing effort might have your job in its jaws, you might take the selection of teammates a little more seriously.

So what will it be? Embroidered blankets and promises of connections or strategy and ability? Will you be the one who knows there’s no “I” in team or the one who points out that there is a “me” in team? (There is also a “meat.)” Real business is counting on you to pick strategy over pomp. To pick ability over self interest. And, if after all this you have to have a dog and pony show, well …

http://www.hsus.org/

Just imagine everyone is naked.

2007-06-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

There is a legendary class at the University of Georgia taught by one of the guys who led the largest mass streak, according to the record books. While the naked parade happened long before I arrived at UGA, my friend Guy was there, and he assures me everybody got their money’s worth. For a usually starched and pressed southern town, the local folk sure took joy in bringing their kids out to see the naked hippies run down Lumpkin Street.

The class, however, might be even more legendary than naked running hippies. “The Psychology of Sexual Deviation” is one of the hardest classes to get into at Georgia. Tales of posters and mobiles constructed from nudie magazines filtered down to us in junior high from our older siblings. One notorious exercise in the class has a guy and girl sit back to back and watch a silent x-rated film (yes, an actual film played on a projector) while one partner describes the actions of the film in fully clinical terms. No slang. No hinting. Just the facts in psycho babble with an imaginary disco bass track playing in your head all the while. The class had a several thousand person waiting list when I signed up. A groovy adviser and my psych major helped me get a spot in Dr. Pollack’s class.

The class was decent. We took a disturbing survey of what we though our parents’ behavior might be like. We watch a veiled attempt at fine art in a film that ultimately included the clichéd “bow chicka wah wah” track and involved a ballerina. The lady from the health department came in with assorted fruits and vegetables. All in all, it was a decent class.

But what about the posters and mobiles and ridiculous descriptions? I skipped registering for Bowling 101 and The History of Rock and Roll for this. When do we get to the fun part?

There was no fun part. The class had been tamed for some reason, and the result was a class suitable for all audiences. The image that I had trumped up in my mind turned out to be a supercharged high school health class complete with awkward giggles and a written final exam. What a let down.

All these years later, I’m still getting let down. As the tasks of my consultation business require me to find and use emerging methods, I find myself in self-directed study of all types of things. Case interviewing is one of those subjects. (While I could have learned this in business school, I instead spent my time in classes like “The Psychology of Sexual Deviation.”) I’ve studied what many of the greats have to say. I’ve learned methodologies from Kellogg, McKinsey and Thunderbird and many other organizations with names that sound like cereal, scotch and bum wine.

Yet again, though, I’m let down. In a book I am reading currently, the section on evaluating the marketing strategy is barely noted. A few paragraphs talk about position and selling proposition. A few paragraphs talk about linking consumer schema to product attributes in a meaningful way. What is terrible, though, is that the pages of the book don’t do any of the aforementioned things. Instead, they engage endless exercises of drawing circles and bubbles and listing out competitors. In the end, it is a sterile, PG-13 approach that has about as much passion as biology lab.

I don’t blame the author for glossing over strategy. When you don’t understand strategy, it’s hard to get excited. For those of us who understand the power of a huge strategic idea, we get excited because we know success can and often does hinge on the big idea. For the idea agnostic, the alternative is to try to flow chart the concept to death, endlessly searching for a new taxonomy and function paradigm in which to harness creative energy of ideation.

So, for your reading and viewing pleasure, I’m going to make a mobile out of nudie magazine pictures. Just kidding. Instead, I’m going to write the chapter I think is missing from the strategy book. It will be the Cliff’s Notes version - nearly as short as the few measly lines from my recent read. However, I’m going to give you a breakdown of how to evaluate your marketing strategy. For some of you it will be a predictable plot. For others we might have to up the film’s rating owing to your expletives at the realization that your marketing department’s big idea is just a big expense. Either way, get ready, the film’s about to begin.

Just because everyone says the class is awesome doesn’t mean the class is awesome.

Fads can be wrong. Even trends can be artificially engineered as hype spreads like the Norwalk virus. Managers in search of a cure-all happily embrace the newfound approach and then expound it to others in hopes that if the fad fails, they won’t be alone. Like the rumors of this class, non-marketing concepts like Total Quality Management and Benchmarking continue to run strategies amuck. Don’t get me wrong, TQM had some benefits. However, the broad assumption that consumers would flock to a product simply because the manufacturer claimed it was “made better” made a ton of companies looks pretty naked on the balance sheet.

I should have checked out that class before I signed up for it. Like many marketing magic pills, the prospect seemed too good to be true. Well, it was.

Make a mobile or a poster.

If you can’t clearly illustrate it, you don’t have it.
It has plenty of names, but one core concept. If you cannot clearly articulate a marketing strategy in thirty seconds, you do not have one. If you say it is because your plan is so multi-faceted, what you are really saying is that your effort has no unity and is basically a diffuse collection of tactics and efforts, which is not strategy.

Complexity is always covering up something. Though we never did the exercise, I imagine the most humorous part of the whole back to back exercise was to see how one might struggle to describe the acts seen on screen sans the colorful abilities of slang. I have met a few marketers who could ace this exercise with long, 8-syllable words and complex jargon that sounds like Klingon. My beloved mentor Bob once gave me the best breakdown of the many million, several thousand employee company he once headed. He said, “We make and then sell things and hopefully we sell them for more than it costs to make them.”

If you really feel like streaking, go for it.

There is something to be said for bravery in marketing. Bravery is making a call that could hurt your career now rather than absconding and letting it hurt the company later. Companies should be so lucky to have a marketer who puts his or her reputation on the line for a great win.

But don’t confuse bravery with stupidity. Bravery makes a judgment where data is simply unattainable. Stupidity just barrels in on a gut feeling without doing any homework.

Today’s lesson might get a little nasty.

Its can be scary to see the trends and not want follow them. The natural herd instinct of business comes to life when the boss pulls a clipping from a trade magazine and puts it on you desk with a post-it. Then again, you might be the one with a concept that needs the buy-in - in which case be clear, be thorough but quick. And then there’s bravery. It’s scary to be brave in business. Again, the herd instinct says don’t do what we’ve always not done. There’s risk in being brave. Your career teeters on whether your concept was a “game changer” or “the stupidest thing since we bought all those emus.”

Sometimes you feel all alone and naked in the field. But look up. There are a lot of people around you headed the same way. They are just as concerned and just as naked. There sure are a lot of them. Might even be enough for a world record.

Et Tu, CMO?

2007-06-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

I was not the most popular student government President at DeKalb College. One of my Senators used to sit right across from me and make accusations; however, he would not direct them directly at me. He would use obscurities like, “Well, (snap) some people, blah, blah, blah random complaint blah, blah, blah.” I sort of feel bad about him not liking me, but he often wore fluorescent mesh tank tops and billowing workout pants to meetings, so I didn’t fully trust his judgment.

Being President had its perks, though. I got snubbed by Spike Lee when we picked him up at his mother’s house in a limo for him to speak at our MLK day celebration. I got to hang out with Zell Miller and discuss important things like cowboy boots and Georgia’s sodomy law. I hugged Maya Angelou and introduced her at an event where she sung and spoke for two mesmerizing hours. I saw and did a lot as President. But in that year, and without me knowing, my adviser Michelle taught me what it means to lead.

I’ve lead other things since being student government President at DeKalb. I was President of my local ad club and served as state director for the American Advertising Federation. I’ve led groups to study issues and solve problems. I lead Snowden Tatarski and it is not always easy, but I have to say if there is anything likable about my style of leadership it is owed to those mentors and friends who made it their cause to teach me.

My mentor Bob is the best mentor a leader can have. Bob teaches an inverted pyramid style of leadership where the leader helps facilitate the actions of the rest of the organization. Nowadays Bob teaches this leadership style to companies, organizations nonprofits and MBA students.

One of the things Bob has taught me in our work and friendship is the value of marketing leadership. A sales and marketing organization is an organism that has a stubborn, thick skin in some spots and a tender underbelly of vulnerability in other areas. Companies often seem to not know what to do with the marketing beast, so they feed it just enough to keep it from starving to death. This methodology leads to countless situations where a good product with sufficient opportunity in the market fails due to poor marketing leadership.

So what is marketing leadership? It is knowing that what you don’t know about the consumer or the product can hurt you, and then seeking clear answers in research. It’s the discipline to not screw up an otherwise good strategy with unneeded input. I am careful to distinguish between input which is helpful in the marketing process and input which simply exist to reinforce a power structure. Put simply, don’t be a bully just because you can.

Marketing departments often suffer from maladies and hexes that tax their own efforts. Whereas leadership could serve as an anchor and source of support, there is instead a black hole that that sucks in the energy and self esteem of the marketing team. To list all the sources of marketing leadership implosion would take volumes. Instead, here are a few of the greatest hits.

A fish stinks from the head.

Behind every dysfunctional marketing organization is a dysfunctional person. Good marketing leadership takes supportive and understanding leaders with the ability to cultivate the next line of marketing leadership. The stinking head of a stinking marketing department gets three words into the last sentence and decides its crap.

To be in the presence of one of these specimens is truly something. They are bullies. They like hunter green and royal red not because of any marketing purpose but because they like it and if you don’t like it you can shut up or quit. These fine individuals ask your opinion as they are walking out of your office. This embrace of command/control style of leadership can and does choke a marketing department down to a group of drones carrying out orders.

A better way to lead is to actually lead. If the team is too dumb to have a good idea, fire them and get a better team. Successful marketing managers hire intellectual equals, if not intellectual superiors. Bullies hire morons, bone heads and nincompoops to run around carrying faxes and press releases. Such makes bullies feel important but in the end the whole company suffers.

None of us is as dumb as all of us.

The opposite of the power bully (though they may coexist) is the kangaroo committee. The kangaroo committee is a group on non-marketers or pathetically skilled marketers who get in a room and try decide which photo to include on the thank you note. This gives an elaborate illusion of doing work. Truthfully, a single person could make all the decisions such a committee makes in a year in a single afternoon. Such committees seem to exist if only to waste time and give people the feeling that their input is wanted. In the end, the committee’s direction is always vague and so someone (often the bully) has to step in and make the decision.

Committees can be great for determining issues. It is worth while to ask the head of sales what they are learning about the customer and what implements would be helpful in closing sales. What you don’t need to know from sales is what color the background needs to be in the product shot. It is not that their opinion doesn’t count; it’s that the clock does. Time as a resource is finite. Unless your aim is waste time and money, find competent people and let them do their job.

The soup sandwich.

Occasionally marketing is seen as a place to resolve corporate conflict. Sometimes this is good and sometimes it is really good. Marketing is the perfect place to discuss the overall corporate strategy concerning customers, marketing, products and opportunities. When it comes to resolving such problems, marketing can really shine.

But the marketing department can also be a dumping ground. I have worked with teams that use the marketing department as a repository for non-marketing executives’ friends’ children in need of an internship, the boss’ spouse who really knows her way around Microsoft Publisher, and best of all, a giant slush fund to pay for undocumented expenses, country club dues and “leadership” trips to Vegas.

Again, strong leadership from a marketing department can snap the rest into focus. Organizations seem to lose focus on marketing because focus never really was the aim at all. Existence was. Instead, marketing pros should feel empowered and included in the crucial operations of the organization. Think deeply about it. Your next breakthrough, business changing concept - is it most likely to come from accounting, finance or marketing?

A modification of the soup sandwich is the invisible rope. The invisible rope ties up the hands of everyone in marketing and ties up nearly every project with only the top brass being able to untie the knot. There are companies where the CEO must see and comment on every ad before it goes out. Sure, quality control you say. No. The ads rarely make it out the door, and the only quality control is more like a limiter as the marketing department can only work at the speed of an eighty-year-old who works sparsely in between golf and naps.

Fire the guy in the poofy pants and pink tank top.

Had I known back at DeKalb College what I know now, I would have handled that Senator a little differently. While I’d be interested in his opinion of how a strategy or direction should be carried out, I would not try to brain (or blame) storm every aspect. I would take the officers who were most capable and give them every authority to solve the issue, but he would not be chosen. Am I being a tyrant or vindictive? I don’t think so. With the competitor, policies and sheer inertia of the masses against you, the least you can expect is honest loyalty and productive leadership within your organization.

I don’t have all the answers and I am not always right. But I know a few things quite certainly for my experience. Great leadership inspires great results. Beware of someone who attends an important meeting in a mesh tank top. And Maya Angelou is far more cordial than Spike Lee

The Aristocrats.

2007-05-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

Learning the truth behind the joke “The Aristocrats” was far less funny and intriguing than the build up. I’m sure there is some sort of comedian lore that says I shouldn’t spill the beans, but I really don’t care. The whole idea behind “The Aristocrats” is to tell a joke about a man pitching a play to a theater director. The comedian telling the joke describes the play and ad libs this part to make it his or her own. The versions that I have heard are basically filth-ridden toilet humor that would make Larry Flint blush. The ending (and the name of the joke) is when the theater director asks for the name of the play, to which the guy pitching says “The Aristocrats.”

Hah, Hah. Real funny.

I never really liked the joke because while it could be mildly amusing, the format was pre-scripted, which made even the ad lib part decently predictable with most comedians. I prefer jokes that are a total surprise. I like humor that blazes new paths and makes a new mental connection where there was none before.

Nonetheless, I am in the minority. Society likes its high canned in heavy syrup. At the very least, nobody’s made enough noise about the collective dumbing in humor to really make a difference. Movies are no different. Movie executives even describe film concepts in terms of former ideas: “It’s like Die Hard meets Die Hard Two.” I think the situation comes from the fact that new ideas are difficult and risky. Why take the risk to see if something will connect when you can repeat whatever yukfest somebody originated before you?

Marketing through advertising is no different. Coming up with a new approach, strategy, concept or idea is tough. There’s all that cumbersome research to read. Then there’s the whole review of case study. Finally, you’ve got to connect the consumer insight with the strategy in a way that will keep prospects from turning the page or changing the channel.

That sounds a lot like hard work.

This wouldn’t be a truly great diatribe about advertising sequels if it was not itself a sequel. We examined the tried and true advertising archetypes before, and today’s installment adds new firepower to the advertising tactician’s arsenal of talking food, dancing girls and their midriffs and dumb-dumb dads with hot wives.

So bust out the can opener, because if you want to avoid the heavy lifting of working strategy into effective advertising you can also use a worn out old format that someone else tossed out years ago. Sure, it will smell a bit and be out of style, but look at the alternative- work. Yeah right. I mean, it’s like, martini time.

Relax advertising friends. Don’t get your $100 jeans that come pre-faded and pre-torn in a wad. We can help you maintain the needed time to write your screenplay. Just do what pretty much most ad people do these days and follow these easy formats.

Kids say the darndest things.

Does your product have nothing to say? Don’t worry; just get a kid to say it. It will be cuter and people will pay attention because we all love kids right?

Plus, is there anything cuter than a kid explaining Voice Over IP? Sure, you say that’s not cute, but the kid in you loves it.
There’s a spot out where Mom tells the kid that she wants new floors but doesn’t know how to ask Dad. The kid yells out “Dad, Mom wants new floors.”

In my version, the kid yells out “Dad, Mom needs to see a therapist to deal with her communication problems caused by her absentee father and oppositional defiant mother.” Now that’s funny.

The Monocle Popper

Every so often comes an ad that attempts to appeal to the jilted youth with some kind of set up of an imaginary old and oppressing regime. It’s like somewhere out there is a group of crusty old men driving around in an Xcaliber wearing top hats and they are all out to get us. Think Monopoly's Mr. Moneybags.

A great example of this was all those Taco Bell ads where a dude (even though he looked about 35) jumped the wall at a posh country club, sending the waspy members into an unbridled frenzy. My business partner, Tatarski, loves making fun of these ads, saying things like “My stars!” and then he pretends that his imaginary monocle has popped out and his top hat flew off with a puff of steam.

I secretly wish that the dude in the Taco Bell ad would jumped the wall only to be beaten unconscious with a 9 iron by a sauced up John Daly. My stars! Pop!

Unexplained Celebrity

In the ATL there is a billboard with a picture of a girl from Grey’s Anatomy. (I don’t watch the show so I don’t know which one she is. I think she’s McStupid.) Anyways, it’s her and a cell phone. No words. No explanation. Just her smiling and the phone. She’s not even smiling at the phone.

I thought it was a mistake until I saw the same thing in a print ad. I then I saw it twice by a competitor, but this time with Catherine Zeta Jones and Harry Connick, Jr. Again no explanation, just the celebrity and occasionally, a picture of the product.

Is there some magic power about celebrities that their unexplained presence causes a product to connect with a consumer? “Oh look, a cell phone– wait, is that McStupid? I just gotta have that phone!”

If it turns out that this theory is successful, I am going to start sending all my newsletters with pictures of The Captain and Tennille with the hope that the sheer power of their celebrity will make the words go that much further.

Customer Cam 2.1

I guess after hearing, “A 12-year-old could create better advertising than that!” about a thousand times, some agency somewhere agreed and handed the keys to the creative to the customer. So now we have the customer cam, or better recognized in one of its more horrid forms as the Krystal Cam. The premise is the Krystal Cam tractor trailer pulls up in college towns where college students wax on about their beloved Krystal adventures. They rarely mention value (a key attribute) or convenience (another key attribute). They simply blab on about how cool Krystal is (untrue)interspersed with bubbling about things like how they stay fit on the Krystal diet (also untrue) and college infidelity.

The peddlers of this type of advertising swear it is some mutation of word-of-mouth advertising. Newsflash: its not. It’s unfunny drivel reminding people how stupid they look on TV. This fable has been repeated and offered to clients in substitution of a coherent strategy. While the production crew might have had a blast taking Jaeger bombs with the Kappas at Auburn, the resulting spots are nothing but a hangover.

Zaxby’s tried the same technique, only with slightly less thought. In that ad consumers disgustingly sip and slurp through a plate of food while describing how good it is. Then a voice-over chimes in and says, “Indescribably good.”

What just happened? You had people describe something to you then say is indescribable. But you described it.

The whole effect of the spots is indescribably dumb.

I Believe in Believing in Believing

My realtor is nothing like the class act realtor I see on TV. That guy on TV has got it together. He believes in values that transcend the everyday. He knows what I want to achieve and he has specialized marketing insight when it comes to typing my information into MLS that goes well beyond the ordinary. He has to. If he didn’t, he would wear the yellow jacket. He said so himself.

The declining popularity of the televangelist has been replaced with the peddling performance coach. The spots consist of some big words and a synthesized orchestral build up. At first these spots seem pretty convincing, but in the end you still get the washed up old agent that smells like smoky potpourri.

The Discerning Lifestyle

I’ve always had a thing for lifestyle ads. It’s the soft spot in my recycle bin. And every week Maura and I get a kick out of the ads telling me I am the type of man who knows what I want, and that’s why I’ll invest in gold. Real estate is a great purveyor of the discerning lifestyle with an often humorous twist.

While many of the ads for high priced communities are aimed at discerning customers, the people creating the marketing materials seem to be far less. Example: down the street from me is a neighborhood called Putters, owing to the fact that they have a putting green. Okay. Cute. A little campy, but whatever floats your boat or finds your lost remote. Only problem is the golf club on their materials is not a putter, it’s a wedge. Don’t you think the person so incensed to buy in a community that has a putting green might know the difference? Apparently the marketer didn’t think so. Discerning indeed.

It’s not just them. Across from my office is a tower called Georgia Traditions. Their logo: a modified fleur-de-lis. Okay. Fine. But the fleur-de-lis is no Georgia tradition. It is mainly a French tradition and in this part of the South it is well known as a New Orleans Tradition. I guess the crescent moon and palm tree idea was already taken.

Insert punch line here

So a guy walks into a theater and says “I want to do a play.”

“What’s it about?” says the director.

“Well, I’m just going to piece it together from a bunch of other plays. It’ll have no real meaning or purpose except to spend a lot of other people’s money producing it.” “I don’t really know what I want to accomplish, but that doesn’t really matter”

“Why you must work in advertising,” says the theater director.

The man nods.

“Say, what’s the name of your play, my young advertising friend?”

Rip Rah Rega.

2007-05-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was the oldest ATO pledge at Georgia since the guy who came back from Vietnam and finished his pledgeship. Having worked a few years in Hotlanta as a photographer and camera slinger, I finally made the trek to Athens to finish my degree. The first semester was horrible. I didn’t know where anything was and I didn’t know anybody, but it wasn’t in the cute, “Isn’t college fun?” sort of way that freshmen stink of. No, for me it was just pathetic, and I knew that if I was going to enjoy my time in school, I would have to shed that jaded, artsy, I’ve-already-had-a-real-job crap and start making some friends.

Georgia rush is an experience unlike anything else. One house wouldn’t talk to anyone not on their list. Another house was full of creepy dorks who insisted that all of us would make great brothers. One house didn’t have a house, just a couch in the front of the yard where the house used to be. And yes, there was a dude passed out on it. Around midnight, my rush group got off the bus in front of the ATO house and the bus pulled off, leaving us in the dark. We started up the hill when the brothers yelled for us to stay at the bottom. Just then, a guy on a motorcycle burst through the front door and roared down the steps in a full wheelie. The rest of the brothers ran out onto the porch to the point that when the first ones got to the edge, the ones in the back started pushing so that people were falling off the porch into the bushes below. They then made us run up the steps and shoot a basket on the basketball court. We then watched a disgusting slideshow and took a tour of the renovated caboose, complete with bar and TV. The house was filthy in the way a river looks after a flood. It smelled like someone was cooking a stew of cigarettes, stale beer and dog fur. The interior design echoed the “expletives scratched on a wall”school of design and the brothers appeared to have each drank enough that night to kill a rugby team.

I knew I was home.

I love ATO, but that’s on purpose. People often like to tell me that they were on the newspaper or the fencing team and it was kinda like a fraternity. No offense to the fencers - it’s nothing like ATO was. At the school newspaper, the guy or gal who schmoozes their way to editor gets to boss people around and get away with it. ATO was more like communism. We had leaders, but mostly just because someone had to be responsible to pay the bills. I didn’t matter if you were the president, if you started being an ass, someone would haystraw your room or tie you to a tree and cover you with the leftovers from a freshly dressed deer.

There was a system and it made you loyal. While you were a pledge, you had to do demeaning things like clean the bathroom, race the house dog during his game of fetch and be a 24 hour chauffer. Before my class pledged, there was a creepy old dude who pulled his bed in the middle of a room and made the pledges watch him sleep. He threatened, “If I wake up and you’re not looking directly at me, you’ll take a bag of sugar up the stairs one granule at a time.”

But then, in the midst of the unpleasantness, the brothers would do something awesome. They paid for and sent my pledge class on camping trips. They would take us out, buy our drinks and introduce us to questionable women. They made efforts to find us dates and introduce us to their friends outside the fraternity. For every tough thing that we went through, there were two things that were really good. It not uncommon to hear of guys getting a little sad after pledgeship because they miss the attention and excitement.

My brothers and I learned how to foster loyalty. If the brothers ever gave us pledges a hard time it was because of some crap we did. If a brother had expressed an interest in a girl and another guy tried to move in, that other guy might expect to get mop water dumped on his head the next morning in the shower. And when brothers did things to help each other, we talked about it and told the guy that we appreciated him. Don’t think we got all weepy about it. Right after we told him we appreciated him, we shot a bottle rocket under his door and it exploded under his futon.

I am loyal to ATO. I believe in its creed and its brotherhood. Sure, I got pissed a few times, but I know I can count on my brothers and our bond is a lasting one.

It’s kinda like how I feel about REI. Okay, maybe that’s unfair. My fraternity is a group that helped me through an important part of my life. But I have known REI longer. I got into the outdoors in high school and REI was my source for equipment and information. I would go there whenever I could to get gear I had been saving for and comb the message boards for things outdoorsy in the ATL. Like ATO, REI had a plan to build my loyalty and while you may say they buy their friends, I protest that my loyalty is simply a repayment of their loyalty to me.

Brands make friends and sometimes those friends are loyal. Brands like Apple and Airstream have followings that rival any the bonds of Beach Weekend or White Tea Rose Ball. Brand devotees have Harley tattoos and Saturn homecomings. Brands that foster such loyalty can sometimes create loyalty that transcends mere support, in which case the followers take over and the company becomes like our chapter President who simply paid the bills. I can’t tell you all the secrets from ATO. But I will tell you the secret that many brands use to recruit their followers. Here’s the secret knock, passcode and handshake.

You’re like us. We’re like you.

I remember an interesting tactic we used when recruiting new members. We asked about particular interests, and paired the recruit with a guy with the same interests. I was a spreadhead so I got paired with groovy guy who wore overalls and carried a bongo drum. The message was clear. The other fraternities are a bunch of geeks in Polo shirts and ironed khakis. Come join us where you can have fun and be yourself, dude.

Brands have the same chance to celebrate their recruits’ individuality. Brands like Airstream, Trek and Subaru all have particular types of purchasers and when those people feel a stronger connection, their loyalty grows. The temptation is to broaden an appeal in order to capture a broader audience. This does not work. It is the equivalent of the fraternity who will let anyone in no matter what; ergo, membership is worth next to nothing.

You’re either with us or against us.

Fraternities are competitive. We fight over the sororities’ social calendars. We fight over recruits. And some times we just fight. Fraternities are not ambiguous about membership. Either you’re in or you’re not. Either you made a few sacrifices and sucked it up or you’re just hanging out at our party being awesome by mere proxy.

Membership has its privileges but it also has its costs. Brands with a strong following are not without commitment. A MacG5 is expensive. A VW may not be the car your Mom or spouse wanted you to buy. You may have to drive out of the way to get to the Fresh Market. The key is making membership in the brand worth it. Only then can there be a sense of pride in belonging.

Together we’re heavy.

I remember how excited we got when we maxed out our pledge classes. More members meant more opportunities for friends and the fraternity as a whole. It meant current and future strength of our brotherhood. It meant that we had successfully communicated what we stand for and that such a pitch was well received.

Brands are smart to appraise and connect the membership. Forums now connect car enthusiasts and Linux people and all the other thriving brand communities. For a brand to adequately develop a following, it has to show people where to go.

Nissan losing their following. Yup.

When brands lose the love for their brotherhoods and sisterhoods, they begin to dwindle. Nissan was once the mighty sports car and truck company who gave us the Z car and Pathfinder. Nissan once had passion. Today their design and communication is so watered down that the voice over in the TV commercial might as well been read from their annual repot. What exactly is “inspired design?” Isn’t all design inspired? And just because it is inspired, does that mean the inspiration was necessarily a good one? What if the car was inspired by a giraffe?

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Loyalty takes work but it is worth it. Brands that want loyal fans better be ready to take their licks, show some restraint and believe in the cause. Today’s consumers have plenty of choices in nearly every category. Today they’re looking for meaning and for something they can support. Give them a brand they can tattoo on their ankles. Give them a brand they’ll display proudly on a car, desk or wall. Give them a brand that they’ll shout out. As for me, well, here it goes.

Rip, Rah, Rega
Alpha Tau Omega
Hip, Rah, Hip, Rah
Three cheers for Alpha Tau
Rah, Rah, Rah, Hey!

The Lexus and the Olive Garden

2007-05-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

When my family moved to Georgia when I was young, we thought we were moving into the country. Our neighborhood was one of the first in a patch of pasture land, forest and red clay, and I remember having to ride the bus a long way to school. There was, however, a gleaming beacon of capitalism in our new town, one that beckoned the weary with promises of fulfillment in the form of a video games and cheap jeans. Long live Gwinnett Place Mall.

My friends and I went to Gwinnett Place every weekend. It had a movie theater across the street and that, combined with walking around in circles, was enough to entertain a horde of 12-year-old boys for hours. One major facilitating factor in us going to the mall was the Ruby Tuesday. My dad would not let us go hang out at the mall ourselves, so he and the other dads would go hang out at the Ruby Tuesday talking smack while we blew our allowance on watching Freddy Krueger or buying snap and pops.

But then something happened. An anomaly in our little ecosystem. A new kind of siren that beckoned our parents from far beyond our refuge at the arcade. The prospect of cheap, mass produced Italian food with all you can eat breadsticks was too much. Friday night’s buying candy cigarettes were replaced with accompanying the parents to the Olive Garden for sensibly priced chicken parmesan.

I cursed the Olive Garden for destroying my youthful bliss, but as the years have ticked by, I have come to appreciate that which held our parents captive like armadillos to headlights. Rewind back a few decades and look at the casual dining scene. There was Chili’s, which originally was an upgraded McDonalds that sold beer. There was Applebee’s that was pretty much like a Chili’s and still kind of is but now they also sell Italian. Weird. There was Ruby Tuesday which was like Chili’s and Applebee’s with the undeniable awesomeness of being in the mall. The casual dining sector was a collection of also-ran burger joints that all sold Shirley temples and soggy fries.

The Olive Garden came and changed all that. Not just the Olive Garden, but also Longhorn’s, Fuddrucker’s and every Happy #1 Super King China Buffet served to fracture the casual dining sector into many parts like what happened in Gremlins when Gizmo got wet.

Once there was one idea of casual dining. The sector was split apart as restaurant holding companies stopped running one type of restaurant and started running a portfolio of restaurants. The theory is simple. Give consumers more options within a category and win yourself a larger slice of the pie.

Procter and Gamble is famous for this. One detergent makes your clothes smell nice. One protects colors. One is all temperature. P&G spit the category into many factions and positioned a product to fit each niche. The result is leading brands in nearly every subcategory and a commanding aggregate share of the category as a whole.

So why didn’t P&G just make Tide all temperature, Tide fresh scent and Tide color safe? Well, they sort of did but not with the same potency that their brands Cheer, Gain and Ivory have. This is where you can find the fundamental mistake that many marketers make. They know that additional lines within a category can result in gain of share through the respect and brand affinity created for individual brands. They don’t know the proven fact that line extension is a risky game. Sometimes you get Ivory laundry detergent and it sells. Sometimes you get the Eagle Talon and it sucks.

Dividing the sector and taking a new position within the sector is tricky but doable. Here are a few tips.

1) Know what you do. Know what you don’t do. Do things based on what you know. Don’t do thing based on what you don’t know.

The point here is to have an accurate self appraisal. Don’t position or attempt to position an effort of impractical or improbable aspects. I once had a client tell me his strategy was to be the best customer service company in the world. Even if that was achievable for his company (it wasn’t), it is not the core of his business. Sure, customer service is a conduit for business, but the idea that you can muscle a meager product onto a customer simply by following every sentence with “it’s my pleasure” is wrong, wrong, wrong.

2) Before you dive in, find out how deep the water is.

If you know yourself, the next knowledge you need to have concerns the market. The funny thing about products that roar to stardom and those who explode on the launch pad is that they often have a similar start. Both saw an opportunity where others did not and while the star saw a real need and niche, the failed brand went after a market and consumer that never existed. Good market intelligence is valuable to every effort no matter how novel or innovative. Go ahead. Talk about all those techies who started in their garage without market research. Well, thanks to the idea that market research is somehow passé, there are plenty of companies still in the garage, and considering the market’s hangover from tech’s empty promises, they better get real comfortable.

3) Don’t serve jalapeno poppers at an Italian restaurant.

So you have a niche. You found a vein of potency and you’ve focused on a particular mindset, customer and value proposition. Congratulations. Now don’t screw it up. Often the collective gut says “we’ve made it, now what?” which is immediately followed by some horrid extension. Remember that O’Charley's promo? You know, the American Restaurant with the Irish name that serves Italian. Way to focus, Charley.

Instead hunker down in your niche. How can you invite more people to your little island? VW started with a cool little small car and invited others to join their club. They resisted the temptation to build cars like everyone else and the exploitation of customer insight is why they still exist today.

The nexus at Lexus.

Lexus is on of my favorite examples. Toyota knew they could not build a luxury Toyota (even though they later tried with the Avalon). Toyota means reliability and value and Toyota knows such. When Toyota detected an opportunity for a performance luxury car, they didn’t just buff a Celica to a high shine. From design, to advertising to a limited distribution base to sharpen demand, Lexus was and is a nearly perfect niche creation.

Toyota listened and they reacted with insight and tact.

The world is Fiat.

As boundaries fall between countries and the collective intellect of our fair country is hopefully rising, opportunities for niche brands will abound. Sectors will open and consumers, armed with more information than ever, will make discerning choices on the brands that they ultimately use to show the world who they are. When the opportunity opens, will you be there with a better smelling t-shirt, a 300 horse power roadster or free bread sticks.

Good marketing plans tell the customer that you care.

Great plans tell the customer of your passionate pursuit of their passions and pursuits.

And the truly great niche positions speak so pointedly to a customer so that all that the customer hears is, “When you’re here, you’re family."

The gap wedge.

2007-05-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

I was a winter graduate of college. My parents think of it as me making up for those semesters where all I took was skiing and History of Beer (a real class at UGA in case you are considering a graduate degree). I like to think of my extra time spent in school as my victory lap, although I started celebrating well before crossing the finishing line.

But finish I did and my first post school job was in the creative department of a particularly terrible advertising agency. I graduated on December 16th, but the new job did not start until February 1st which left me over a month to do what every ambitious and driven young person should do as a capstone experience of their education and that is play golf everyday, sometimes twice a day.

Golf was kind of my new thing and while I had taken a class in it (insert parental snicker here), it was not until that time between desks that I really began to enjoy the sport. Having only the funds from odd photo jobs to keep me floating, my choice of courses was limited to the Green Hills Country Club or the Athens-Clarke County Municipal Landfill. I choose Green Hills because it had a slightly better chef. Green Hills is the discerning man’s course. And that discerning man should prefer a concrete pad and a net for a driving range. I shouldn’t give Green Hills a bad rap. I mean, it’s a family place. Like, for instance the old family cemetery on the third fairway. Yes, there is a cemetery on the fairway.

My friend Mike was also waiting for his big advertising job to start, but he wasn’t able to join me on the green because he had not technically been hired yet. Mike spent his days working at a golf shop, and like any great friend who works at a golf shop, he hooked me up with all types of junk for cheap. Enter the pure spin. Mike found a club that he swore by and he bought me one. It was a pure spin gap wedge and I remember being impressed with the flashy neoprene cover. I thanked him, put it in my bag and there it stayed.

I didn’t use the gap wedge for a bunch of reasons. For starters, I didn’t know when to use it. Second, my game was making progress with what I already had in the bag so why go and mess with progress by using this awkward little club. Third was that it appeared it was going to take some work to use it correctly and since I didn’t know what the result might be, I ignored it and left it in the bag.
You have to admit you’ve done this at work at least once. You had a tool; you didn’t know what to do with it. You left it in the bag. Somebody might have asked you, “What does that do?” And rather than sound dumb and say “I don’t know,” you said, “Oh that stupid thing is worthless.”

Next time I want to throw a club in the lake, I’m reaching for that one.
I have consulted plenty of companies who leave the marketing department in the bag. They see that slightly awkward looking club and don’t really know what to with it so it sits. They know others use it with prowess but they simply have not let it work for them and so when they’re in the rough, the unused club sometimes finds itself at the bottom of a dyed green lake.

Are you tired of hauling that club you never use? Scared that you’re going to swing it only to ground out? Are you ready to lower the handicap that not properly using a marketing department is causing? Here’s how to better your game with the basics.

Learn to read the situation

Some golfers thoroughly study the landscape and some golfers just wrongly guess and then follow which ever way the wind is blowing. Some get down and read the putt while others rush through a 3 putt and blame it on the ball marks.
Learning to read the situation is the beauty of research and that market research is nothing short of a crucial function and need of marketing. Marketing departments should be actively vetting intelligence about market conditions, trends, competitive movements and channel opportunities.

Some say they don’t have the time to get down and read the situation. I say the time you don’t have now is used up fishing your ball out of the lake. Some say they have intuition and I say that unless you play a scratch game then there is always something more you can learn.

The right swing, every time.

Golfers spend years getting their swing right and they should. It is the element that affects pretty much the whole game and a good swing touches nearly everything. The need to fix the swing is unavoidable and it is my experience that those who refuse to work on their swing do not remain golfers for long.
I wish marketers that ignored their swing would not remain marketers. I’m not trying to be mean or suggest that people give up, but the swing of marketing is where the game is won or lost. The swing is strategy. It’s the successful integration and maneuvering of consumer, market and competitive insights to a pinpoint application of force that sends results sailing far and, more importantly, where you want it to go.

But many marketers don’t care about their swing. Funny, they often try to play the game without swing. And when they do swing, they do this little croquet looking exercise that send the ball twenty feet. “You just hit the ball twenty feet,” someone will yell.
They reply, “Yeah, but it’s in the right direction.”
To which the original golfer says again, “Yeah, but you just hit the ball twenty feet.”
I know, you won’t go in the lake if you hit it twenty feet at a time. Just don’t expect to win anything but the middle finger of the group who’s behind you on the course.
Crafting good strategy takes practice. It takes the driving range of academic study and the training of a pro who knows how and what to correct. The marketer who learns command of strategy may not always hit a hole in one but you can be assured they are progressively making every swing more accurate, more useful and more precise.

Now play the game.

It easy to assume that you’ll get better by playing without learning to read the course or perfecting your swing, and to an extent, you’re right. In marketing, playing the game is carrying out a plan. It is all the advertising, sales activity and promotion that aims an effort down the fairway. You can skip the first two steps and still get incrementally better - that is if you can afford it. TV spots cost money. Brochures cost money. Salespeople cost money. This is not Green Hills. There is no discount for off season play.
But let’s say you do read the course and perfect your swing. In that case, get out there. Be bold. You might not always clear the lake or stay out of the bunker, but with a good idea of the course and a strong consistent swing you have the odds with you.

Give the club a try.

I was working the chipping green at the University of Georgia practice area and decided to give my gap wedge a try. It works. It pops the ball up with perfect spin and when the ball finally sits down it pops down like it fell in a mud. Despite my reluctance, I learned to use it. And my game hasn’t been the same since.

Order Up!

2007-05-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Healthy living is my new thing. I eat right when I can. I’m on the bike when I have a chance. Maura and I have even taking to backpacking and we are eagerly waiting to hike Georgia’s wettest trail with over 40 river fords, the Jacks River Trail. Healthy living is all about education. I’ve tried to learn about how food and exercise interact with the body. I know red wine is good for you so I intend to make it great for me. I mean really great. Really.

I learned early in this health kick about the importance of meals. Like how I need to eat breakfast. Years of a Guns ‘N Roses lifestyle have conditioned me to not eat breakfast save for two cups of coffee. No more. Plenty of diet experts and grocery check out line tip books have convinced me that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I force down yogurt and granola, and I have replaced the coffee with tea or water.

Lunch is another problem I have had to remedy. Before I decided to stop eating like a rouge dog, I would treat lunch with one of two answers. The first, resulting from no breakfast, would be to gorge on something high in carbs and blue cheese. The other scenario would be to continue my fast and worked through lunch living off coffee and the pieces of gum we keep for meetings in the conference room. The eventual dinner was pretty much always like you picture a meal on a pirate ship. I’d eat three meats, a starch and a wheat field and wash it down with a bottle of cheap French wine. Bon appetit.

I’ve changed my ways and I’m trying to teach others. While I have got a few who’ve listened to my moderation apotheosizing, I still am surrounded with those who starve and gorge, but this time I am not talking about food. A marketing plan is like a living thing. It loves to be nurtured. When it get beaten and bruised, all who love it feel its pain. And probably most important, it needs proper nourishment.

How do you feed your marketing plan? Are you stuffing it with presentations until it can’t walk only to find it hungry again in an hour? Is your plan getting all the right food groups like awareness building, knowledge building, sales support and defined action? Is it getting enough fiber? That is to say, is the old stuff that doesn’t really need to be around passing through and out or is your plan just plain constipated?

Marketing plans need to eat the right stuff for sure, but just as important is making sure plans are eating three square meals. There are no shortcuts to getting it right and skipping a meal can mean a loss of discipline or momentum later. Want to get that marketing plan back to health? Follow my easy meal plan. It works and despite not having a snazzy infomercial, I assure you its more rewarding than juicing.

Breakfast: Assorted fruits and nuts, bran muffin.

There are only a few focus groups I’ve observed where the attendees would be classified as assorted fruits and nuts. The bigger point is research now will quell that empty feeling come lunch time. And the bran muffin? Sometimes you need to clean things out. Like unproven ideas, wrong convictions and assumptions and the type of business minutia that makes you feel irregular, bloated and gassy.

I am constantly surprised at the people who try to skip research and wonder why they feel awful later in the day. It is just like when you skip breakfast. You end up gorging on something else and wonder why your stomach is upset. My advice: eat your breakfast. Force it down if you have to. It will get easier with time and your brand will certainly be healthier for it.

Lunch: Soup, salad, sandwich and strategy.

There is nothing like a little bit of everything to satisfy a lunchtime craving. Great strategies are just like that. They take all wants and desires into account. I’m not saying if you want a fried banana and mayonnaise sandwich that you should have one. I am saying take into account the need and address all of it with different means. Sales, operations, distributors and others are all salivating for what a wholesome strategy can accomplish.

Yet so many marketers decide to work through lunch. They see lunch as a luxury and seem to think that some gut feeling overrides the need for a strategy. Well, listen up my hungry friends. That gut feeling is hunger and that growling stomach is the boss or the analysts or someone else counting on marketing to be getting its essential vitamins and minerals.

Tactics, it’s what’s for dinner.

Nobody skips dinner. It’s so much food. Why there are so many TV spots and baseball team sponsorships and, oooh, looky there is a gravy boat full of shipper displays. Nobody skips dinner. In fact, they just save room for dinner. Marketers are skipping the research and strategy table and piling up a heaping load of tactics. Another plus to dinner is all the company. When you had no one to eat with over research or strategy, suddenly there are scores of media, agency, accounting people posing as marketing consultants and a table full of other dinner guests just waiting to stuff whatever they’re serving down your trap. Is that a delicious interactive website with a viral video served on the side?

Marketers skip the first two crucial meals and gorge on the other. With no room for research or strategy they are stuffed fat with tactics that have no nourishment. In the end, all that is left is the carcass of a poorly cooked sponsorship, a vintage bottle that claimed to have a clutter-busting ad campaign but ended up being empty, and a really bad case of heartburn because while the meal had some satisfaction, the meal was not free and you got stuck with the check.

Order up.

I’m not serving up what hasn’t been served a thousand times by others. Trout and Ries have been screaming for years for people to stop skipping strategy and research. Industry magazines are asking when marketers are going to stop binging on fad food and start planning their marketing meals with discipline. I imagine the problem is that many of us speaking up for a balanced diet are just about as influential as the middle school gym coach. We can tell you all day long that you should eat right, but gurus, the media and even perhaps your friends want to sell you on a plan that takes no discipline, allows you to eat whatever and whenever with no consequences and will make everyone like the slimmer sexier you. Friends, that does not happen. It has never happened.

Juice by Jeff.

Maura bought me the bike for Christmas and I’m still on it. I’m losing some weight, but I have to say the best thing is learning to live a healthy lifestyle. It changes the way I see my meals and exercise, and I think it’s the right step towards making this heath thing a keeper. Changing the way your marketing plan eats works the same way. Once you have committed to eating right and at the right times, you begin to feel better and the change of perspective means you’re more likely to stick on the right track for the long haul. When hunger growls, consider good, fresh research, well balanced strategy and tactics that are part of a well balanced diet. It pays to eat well. Because, as we all know, you are what you eat.

The legend of Doc Rounds

2007-04-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Doc Rounds made me believe in chiropractic. He was our football team doctor and the father of my close friend, Scott. Doc handled nearly every bump, bruise and bash by spraying it with a liquid that nearly froze whatever you complained about after which he would tell you to walk or shake it off. It always seemed to work though I never really appreciated Doc until one summer when I took a particularly nasty bash to the hip. Something must have disjointed and the pain shot down the leg and up the back which seemed odd. Every time I stepped on that leg I could feel the pain rise up my back and nearly over the top of my head. I finally complained to Doc.

My Dad really liked Doc and had no problem letting him treat me there on the wooden bench of practice field four at Shorty Howell Park. I lay on my back and Doc measured my leg then grumbled through a half chewed cigar that one leg was significantly shorter than the other. He lifted my knee and pushed it over while holding my shoulder down and crrrrrack. I was cured. Several years of wrestling, rock climbing and that one time I fell off a building while working as a photojournalist and that hip has yet to bother me since Doc fixed it.

Years later I was consulted by a chiropractic group concerning their marketing and I told that same story. One of the doctors gave me a book and I learned the history and philosophy behind chiropractic. Now I have to admit, besides my field-side treatment I have not gone back to a chiropractor but that does not dissuade me from giving credence to one of their core ideas: Alignment.

From what I understand, the philosophy behind chiropractic is that nerve signals are interrupted by misalignment and the result is a multitude of symptoms that seem unrelated. While the injury may lie at the hip you may feel it in your shoulder. Who knew?

Brands often behave the same way. They seem to ache in one place but the injury lies elsewhere. Their disjointed alignment has sidelined growth and no amount of spraying the “cold stuff” is going to make the ache go away. Brands have symptoms. Sometimes it’s due to old age. Sometimes it’s just growing pains. Sometimes once strong muscles are fatigued. Sometimes things are just out of alignment and need an adjustment. I believe these brands experience discomfort due to misalignment somewhere between the prospective customer and the brand where things have just gotten out of joint.

Here are a few symptoms that brands commonly display:

1) Gets tired easily

Sales rise but the cost of the sale is climbing even faster.
The brand that seems to continue to grow in sales but the costs associated with driving sales continues to go up each year so that the dollars that are currently in spent-to-drive sales (advertising dollars, trade promotion dollars or consumer promotion dollars) are getting increasingly inefficient. The result is profits growing at a partial percentage of what they actually should be. One of the reasons such a situation occurs is that brands have become commoditized in the mind of the trade and in the mind of the consumer. Marketers must consistently underwrite them from a financial point of view and give the consumer financial incentives or give the trade of a financial reason why they continue to support the brand.

2) Tapeworm

An inability to gain weight no matter what you eat.
A brand that is not increasing its sales no matter how many dollars invested in a downward spiral and that might be a decline in the category or it may be a function of new products that have come into the category that are deemed to be superior in either quality, value or performance. It just might be new products that touch the heartstrings of consumer in certain way that begins to gain a share of that consumer’s heart, consumers mind and ultimately share of business. Something new has to take place if the businesses are going to continue to expand and efficiently compete.

3) Thinning bones
The milk of long term planning makes for a healthier tomorrow.
The business is going fine but you want to make certain it's one of your strongest brands. You want to make certain that you are always thinking through every conceivable way of building a business because essential to the success of our company is this brand and its long-term success. You should never be caught short while thinking through potential positions and new ways to talk about our product to consumers and ways to continue to win hearts and minds. It's almost like it's an insurance policy that marketers continue to take out to make sure that this cash cow is a long term performer.

4) Anemia, brought on from giving too much blood.
Wall Street wants more blood whether you have it or not.
Wall Street continues to demand growth out of the company and single digit growth for each brand is not going to be sufficient to be able to continue toward the PE ratios that the company is currently trading on. Every brand manager is being tested and is under scrutiny to figure out new and innovative ways to make brands cost effective while profitably growing the business.

5) Blisters.
The pains of breaking in a new acquisition.
The new purchase of a brand along with the need for a new strategy to position a product to customers and trade under the idea that enhanced efficiency allows for a quicker return on investment and return to profitability.

Why does it hurt when I do this?

A brand suffers aches and pains that seem to come from all around but truly have only one source. The alignment between the consumer and the brand should two parallel lines. The first line is the reception of consumer’s thoughts, dreams, aspirations and desires inputted to the brand. The second is the reflection of the consumer’s input paired with the brand as a solution to achieve the consumer aspiration, desires and such. Brands give off symptoms when one or both of these pathways are out of alignment.

Finding and correcting misalignment.

Research, by virtue of its impact and purpose, should be unfettered. The reality is that research companies are sometimes scared to tell the truth. The reality is that sometimes a company’s own employees are afraid to tell the truth. Incorrect intake of information from the consumer results in incorrect strategies from the outset. Another common malady in marketing is the incorrect translation of the brand strategy into meaningful advertising. Production artists get enthralled with actors, techniques and style and the strategy gets lost. Alignment from consumer to brand comes through the correct conducting and interpretation of research in all its varied forms. Alignment from brand to consumer comes through the correct translation of the strategy into impactful creative which enlivens schema and connects to the brand.

Maybe the whole body needs adjustment.

The sudden resolution of discomfort in marketing might tempt one to consider adjusting the alignment of marketing within the entire organization. While marketing may be in perfect alignment when concerning itself, it may disjointed with sales, finance, production, etc. Correctly aligning marketing within the organization can resolve bigger organizational problems and allow a marketing campaign to truly succeed.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Couples Skate Only

2007-04-04T12:25:00.001-07:00

Hannah was my grade school girlfriend but she only loved me because I could roller skate backwards. She gave me a necklace that had a little key shaped charm on it and she wore the matching heart with a small section in the shape of the missing key. I lost the key while water skiing in Lake Lanier, but even such a young romance faux pas could overcome the fact that I could roller skate backwards. Having grown up in Virginia Beach, the self proclaimed east coast headquarters for roller skating and skate boarding, I could roller skate with a prowess hitherto unseen in rural Georgia. All the girls were jealous because Hannah and I could face each other while we skated to the slow songs while the other couples had to hold hand side by side much like one did with a parent when they were younger.
Hannah went to another school the following year and we weren’t reunited until years later when we were in high school. While our memories of skating rekindled a brief romance, Hannah had turned into quite a beautiful woman and soon left me on the rink. I heard later that she was caught by her stepfather doing the high school equivalent of skating backwards with a senior football player and was abruptly uprooted and moved to another high school. I learned early that there is no perfect relationship no matter how good you skate.
Sometimes I want to kick myself for not remembering Hannah when it comes to client relations. There I am, out there doing 360s, skating backwards and shooting the duck while the object of my attention is at the snack bar. I’ve had the clients that first really like the idea of skating backwards but then they notice everyone else skating side by side so they chicken out and blend in. I’ve had some clients that think they’re ready to skate backwards, but then decide the skate rental cost too much. I have had a few clients that I’ve had to teach how to skate altogether.
My mentor Bob is a great man. He has never seen me skate, but I know he would be impressed if he did. I have tried out my skating skills in this now older body and despite knocking down the fat kid in the sweat suit who was wearing a helmet, I've still got it. Regardless, I don’t know if Bob skates or if he likes to skate, but I do know that Bob knows about relationships. Bobs knows what I wish I’ve always known and that is the correct management of relationships where all participants win.
The client and marketing/advertising consultant relationship has always been a tenuous one. Unlike the cost-cutting, outsourcing and efficiency management that accounting firms are peddling, marketing consultation is typically about investing in a less-than-sure thing. Sure, the biggest gains a company will ever make are far more likely to be related to marketing than cost savings; however, the sheer idea of betting a dump truck full of money that a product and message are going to connect with the consumer scares a lot of executives right out of their skates.
The need for progress does not care if you’re scared. The option to go hide from the consumer is not really an option at all, and if you don’t take the hills of customers’ affinity, someone will be more than happy to take them from you. Marketing also tends to be more art than hard science. Anytime people and their opinions are involved, the level of uncertainty rises. This rising uncertainty coupled with the often artistic and ethereal discussion put forth by a marketing consultant can create a situation of strain on the client and the relationship. Many in the industry have tried to soothe this discomfort with more open communications and understanding. When that failed, the two would engage in all out combat with marketers demanding to know costing and procedures for all agency processes and the agency/consultants reengineering company process, dissolving in-house efforts, acting as a surrogate marketing department and occasionally demanding a share of the pie when profits come to fruition.
It takes losing a few loves to the seniors before one really knows how to manage relationships. When I asked Bob to write the foreword to Gin, Incense and Deacon Blues, the request came at a time when a particular multi-year relationship needed some refreshing. Bob’s advice made its way into the foreword, but his words so impressed me that I wrote down the concepts and put them in a document we often send to potential and new clients entitled “A Word on Relationships.” The document serves as a manifesto of sorts and helps the client understand our orientation concerning relationships and the correct execution of such for the betterment of business and all involved. And now, for your reading enjoyment, “A Word on Relationships.”
A Word on Relationships.
Business is about relationships. It’s the relationships between companies and consumers. It’s the relationships across the web of interconnectedness between suppliers and vendors and end users. It’s the interpersonal relationships within an organization.
We believe relationships are at their best when they are respectful, caring and beneficial while containing a mutual sense of responsibility and benefit. Many call such a relationship “win-win.” We will simply say it is these types of relationships that we seek to create and maintain with our clients. Relationships which by attention, compensation, respect or any other means dictate that one side of the relationship wins and the other loses are not positioned for long term success. We do our best to avoid them.
We have three points that, when followed by both parties in a relationship, will help make that relationship successful and fruitful.
1) Know each other’s intentions upfront.
People do things in business for a lot of reasons, and these reasons often get cloaked behind pleasantries, protocols and professional images. Eventually, however, these motivations will surface, and the result can be that everyone is not working towards the same goal for the same reason.
Our motivation in the relationships we form is simple. We want to do the best and most effective work at the highest level of our capabilities while being compensated for it fairly. In return we offer our best thinking, best effort and enthusiastic energy in making our shared efforts successful.
2) Make commitments with the intention of fulfilling them.
Be it by potential, compensation or expectation, all companies have been guilty at one time or another of promising more than they can deliver. It is these situations that erode confidence and hinder progress. We have found it is better to discuss and agree upon expectations and deliverables from the outset of the relationship. As new projects are added, those projects should also be fully vetted for expectations for all parties involved.
3) Consistently show value for the relationship.
When a relationship matures, it is common for companies to dismiss the affirmation of the relationship as a formality needed only at inception. We believe that relationships require maintenance. This can mean hearing new perspectives, discussing past efforts, plotting new strategies, adjusting expectations, appreciating evolving roles and insight and the myriad of other activities aimed at keeping relationships strong and productive.
We understand that not all businesses will agree with our views concerning relationships. We do not feel that businesses which do not treat relationships the way we recommend are wrong. We simply have found that our particular business thrives when relationships are respectful through and through.
Making your own word on relationships.
The client/consultant relationship as it pertains to marketing will probably never be smooth sailing all the time, if only for the reason that if both parties had the exact same viewpoint, capabilities and insight, the need for consultation in the first place would diminish. Companies looking to make marketing stardom should seek out consul and partners that they intend to treat like partners instead of vendors.

I had a client who praised us and talked of decades-long relationships only to find that during a photoshoot he was in the next room romancing a competitor. My advice: talk your talk and walk your walk. If you are seedy in the way you deal with your marketing consultants, an individual or group who knows all your secrets, vulnerabilities and whose successful allegiance will by far exceed the performance of any other consultant, if you just must be a snake when it come to working with them, then you have a really big problem looming over your head. Better nip it in the bud now.

Some people’s perspective on successful business relationships is where they win and you lose. Avoid these people. You can bet they have a long list of enemies and disenchanted individual laying in their wake. Some of the best marketing I have other seen was done by somebody who was burned in someway by the rival. Strong strategy and creative fueled by venom in the mouth is not only dangerous for the initial bite, the stamina of a marketer scorned is truly something to behold. They are not content with winning market share. They want total war and full destruction of the adversary. They will not rest in pursuing the adversary until they are at the bankruptcy liquidation sale.

A funny thing I have noticed about the consultant/consulted relationship is that when it works, it really works. Consultants begin to understand the essence of a company so much that they involve themselves in the company’s whole strategy planning and begin to find a place in product development and distribution. The meshing and integration of the two entities erodes outdated and hampering boundaries that impede the seamless communication of enthusiasm for the offering. For one client, we wrote the marketing chapter of their businesses plan to help them get funding for a new endeavor. It was partnership at its best. When things are working, you need to keep them working well.

So, in OJ Simpson trial style, I’ll give you a line to ponder. If it’s a fit, you must commit. If you find that the idea and energy you are receiving from the consultant is the exact recipe to turn around slumping progress, the last thing you want to do is to attempt control by fear. Creative thinkers work best when they are not hampered by the looming doom and threat of severing the relationship. Also, a long term commitment lessens the chance that a correction to an internal problem the consultant may spot will be absconded simply to keep smiles up in the next contract negotiation. So of the worst work I’ve done was because of fear. The client started toying with the contract and we responded by doing whatever they wanted. The creative should have gone right off the desk into the toilet. We help make the client a faux celebrity, a situation he had wanted all along, and the result made even the spot’s editor want to change the channel. Fear makes you do stupid things. If you are in search of stupid things, by all means, motivate your people with fear.

It’s been years, but I don’t feel so far from the skating rink these days. Clients wheeling around in circles and everybody trying to impress them with all sorts of tricks. People will flash by with twists and turns sure to dazzle Brian Boitano and if you’re the client, you may be tempted to skate with the kid who can do a double axle. Just remember the kid who does the double axle does it because of the way it makes him feel when people ooh and ahh. And the kid who skates backwards with you during the slow song? He does it for the way it makes you feel.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Put it in a pot

2007-03-28T08:33:00.001-07:00

I have to admit that it is not so uncommon for Maura and me to find ourselves without food. I’m not talking about famine from the African plain, but for people who are used to either following a well scripted recipe or heating up Digiorno, finding yourself with a block of cheese, a nearly picked bare baked chicken, four thousand different condiments and two cans of cheap domestic beer means that there’s no food. One with MacGyver-like skills might boil what’s left of the chicken with salt to make a broth, and then combine with the beer and cheese to make a very excellent beer cheese soup. If you have some leftover celery sticks or carrots (ours are often from an order of chicken wings), cut up the veggies and add them as well. This end result has made Maura and me a decent meal when we unable or unwilling to trek to the grocery store.

Other popular fun gourmet includes fried rice made with any frozen vegetables we can find and very interesting salads made with grapes, shallots, whatever cheese is hanging around and the combination of a condiment like hot sauce and a dressing such as Caesar.

But the result is not always so appetizing. We once made a bread pudding that came out more like a quiche. I tried to season venison with tea leaves one time. I know, it sounds nasty, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. The venison smelled so awful that we didn’t even try to eat it. I threw it to the dogs and they refused as well. We even have had the occasional beer cheese soup go terribly wrong. Our first attempt was made with a skunky import and Gouda. The result was so stringy that we nearly suffocated trying to eat it.

The thing about a leftover gourmet is that sometimes you get lemonade from lemons. Sometimes you just get lemon juice. Sure, I occasionally amaze Maura and myself, but you are really taking a chance when you commit to making dinner out of whatever you didn’t eat since you went shopping too long ago. It is more our habit to do the opposite and go to the store nearly everyday. I know it horrifies diet experts and financial gurus, but we simply enjoy the ritual of shopping together for the night’s meal. We like good eating and that you cannot always leave to the chance of leftovers.

I like having a recipe at work as well. I hate having to hodgepodge whatever is in the fridge when it seems the guest I’m serving wants me to throw it together in a pot and have it come out like Emeril himself cooked it. The entrée which I am talking about is a marketing plan. I have cooked them up with the recipe and received five stars. I have cooked them up with whatever I had in the fridge and the consumer critic found it an interesting delight. But other times, when the plans are laid sans recipe, my dogs wouldn’t eat it even if you smothered it in gravy.

I am not entirely certain what motivates people to commit large sums of money to a plan that has hardly been planned. A typical excuse is “we already know what our strategy should be,” to which the reply to my further inquiry is “we believe in innovation.” Sure, that’s real strategic, differentiating stuff.

Another justification for failing to plan is similar to Maura’s and my oft-used excuse for not going to the store. With Maura being a social worker and me spending my time doing things like writing this to you, we often complain we just don’t have the time. Marketing planners should find the time. Maura and I are changing our perspective as we have committed to eating smarter and healthier. We no longer just eat whatever is there. If I eat yogurt for breakfast, I need my granola and if I want my granola, I need to go buy it. I just can’t substitute breadcrumbs or allspice for granola. A desired outcome requires a commitment.

Not having the time to plan for marketing is not a marketing problem, it is a corporate problem. If marketing is truly concerned with how the product or service is delivered and compensated in a particular corporation, then it should be at the heart of corporate planning and not some tertiary concern regulated to whatever resources are left over after the donation to the zoo is made. Sure, go ahead and laugh. I know a $30 million company in a marketing-dependent industry that doesn’t even have a marketing department. That’s how important it is to them. How’s it working? Well, they only closed 50% of the number of locations they grew by last year. Some strategy.

So what exactly is the type of planning I am talking about? What kind of recipe from what type of book and where on earth are you going to find the ingredients? Well, I’ll tell you, and if you are in higher elevations, you might want to adjust your oven.

The list of ingredients.

One part fresh and high quality research.

Sure you could use that 20-year-old research and the result might come out alright, but considering how much the wrong research could ruin the rest of the ingredients (which you paid for), you might as well get the fresh stuff.

As for quality, don’t look for foie gras at the dollar store. If you are going to tack major efforts to the suggestions of the research, be willing to spend what it should take to get it right. This is not time to skimp and get a crack team of juniors or interns. I have said it before, cheap stuff ain’t good and good stuff ain’t cheap.

Season to taste

It sure would be something if marketing plans could be developed with consumer research and then be directly implemented without modification. But this is the real world, and you have to cook with what you got. Once a plan has begun to develop, it is best to consult with all facets of the company that will touch said plan. Production, distribution and field sales are critical; however, they should not be the only ones.

Careful, you want to let others taste a nearly finished dish, not consult on how to cook it. Too many chefs in the kitchen spoil the pie along with the ad campaign.

Let it simmer

My favorite part about a campaign is when we know we got it just right and then we let it simmer to think about what might go well with it. Time away from the problem helps enliven new contiguous concepts like promotions, new products and all myriad of in-strategy maneuvers. It is worth it to let it simmer. As for the beer cheese soup, don’t just eat it, serve it with some fresh French bread if you have it.

You never burn a good roux.

I use a roux in my gumbo and etouffée but I also use it in soups, sauces and red beans and rice. For those who have never made it, a roux is simply flour fried in oil. You want to get a nice chocolate brown, but if you overdo it, it will be bitter. You should charge into marketing with no less discipline (perhaps more, considering that gumbo doesn’t cost you $2.5 million). Take your time. Know the characteristics of the equipment you are using. Use high quality ingredients and don’t be afraid to ask advice from someone who has made a gumbo you enjoy.

Successful marketing is a combination of elements you buy and elements you already have. When done haphazardly with carelessness, it is simply not worth the effort. When done correctly the result is always better the sum of the ingredients. When the preparation is thoughtful, you can taste it. I like to think that the proof is in the beer cheese soup.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Brand flew over the cuckoo's nest

2007-03-27T09:43:00.002-07:00

When I was in college, the psychology major seemed to attract many of the campus crazies. I know because I was one of them. This notion was confirmed when my 1101 professor told us students that if we were taking the class to find out what was wrong with us to get out. Later, in a clinical class, we took a popular psychological test and the professor reassured us, “don’t worry, psych majors always score high on the dissociative/psychotic spectrum.”

Well, that’s a relief.

I had originally set out in academia with the goal of being a clinician, but my other two majors, keg parties and sorority girls, left little time for all that extra studying. There is always that awkward moment in the upper level psych class when the professor asks what everyone will do after graduation, to which 99% of the class says “grad school” and I say “following the jam band Widespread Panic and selling veggie burritos out of my Subaru for gas money.”

I did get the book, however. The book is the manual for a practicing psychologist. No, it does not contain special instructions or insight into Freud’s coke habit. It’s far more important than that. The book contains the numerical assignments of diagnoses which psychologists used to get paid by insurance companies. The book is the Diagnostic Statistic Manual or DSM.

Do you pee in your pants to show anger or frustration? Then you might get a diagnosis of diurnal enuresis #307.6. Have a grandiose sense of self importance, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy for others and do not work in Hollywood? You might just be #301.81 or narcissistic personality disorder. The DSM makes a diagnosis along a five axis system. Each axis represents a sector that affects psychological health, and they are as follows:

1) clinical disorders
2) personality disorders
3) general medical conditions
4) psychosocial and environmental problems
5) global assessment of functioning

The result is a fuller way of looking at a person and their ability to function in society.
As marketers, we like to personify our products and brands. We talk about their maturity, strength and personality. Sometimes with make little idiograms of people that represent our brands. Our brands are very much like people to us, which makes this marketer think we should put them on the couch.

Tell me about your mother.

A brand should check in with the head shrinkers from time to time- not because there is a problem, but simply from the passage of time as those closest to the brand may need a little dialogue. Then again you might need a confrontation to talk about the brand’s issues so that they don’t get out of control.

I believe we all sit in the psychologist seat from time to time when it comes to brands. We talk about personality and aspirations. We talk about how well our brand plays with others. We deserve a way to evaluate and measure our brand’s mental health.

So here it is.

Dr. Snowden’s diagnostic and statistical measure of brand mental health (or, the SnowDSM, trademark applied for).

I) Clinical disorders (who exactly are you)

In the real DSM, this is where schizophrenia goes. In the SnowDSM it’s the same. Sometimes brands are confused. They react to threats that are not there. They see opportunities in the market that are nothing but hallucinations. To the rest of us, they just appear odd.

This is the place to boil down who you really are. A brand is as much the sum of perspectives as anything else. Understanding the consumer perspective, the marketer’s perspective and the distance between the two is what this axis is all about.

II) Personality disorders

Some of our greatest leaders have total narcissism. There are personality traits that have been celebrated in one era only to be loathed in another. If you’re going to put the brand on the couch for any reason, a personality inventory is as good as reason as any.

Where axis one and axis two differ is in internal company awareness. In axis one, the company is simply unaware or deluded into a particular thought stream. In axis two, they just don’t care.

I have had a number of clients insist we should simply change the way people think. I’m not saying draw consumers towards a particular action or sway opinion. I’m saying we’ve been asked to abruptly present information counter to a consumer’s perspective and change their minds.

Amazingly enough, we’ve pulled it off a few times. However, there are no guarantees in marketing and pursuing a consumer with a myopic and self-centered orientation rarely works.

III) General medical condition

Time takes its toll on brands much like it does on people. That once vibrant, youthful vigor is now referred to as the everyday grind. The excitement of the brand has, perhaps, begun to wane and fresh ideas are put down like a lame dog.

Axis three is more about the internal wants and desires for a brand. Sometimes simply milking the profit from an old and entrenched position is the aim. Sometimes a brand needs a new regiment and one would be wise to very much consider issues which fall under this axis before the budget is written.

IV) Psychosocial and environmental problems (educational, occupational, economic and legal problems)

I have yet to see marketing truly exist in a bubble. Outside forces inevitably affect a brand and to ignore such forces is not wise. As markets crest and fall, strategies should seek to ride the wave rather than be swept away by it.

There is caution here. Occasionally, marketing focuses on addressing the problems in this axis to the exclusion of other efforts. I have seen a client move a huge share of the resources to defending a lawsuit through the newspaper. The problem: most consumers didn’t really care about the lawsuit and when they stopped hearing the companies’ main pitch, the company was forgotten.

And that brings up another word on strategy.

V) Global assessment of functioning.

The strategy is the heart. A feasible and potent strategy is the key and should be the barometer to the brand’s overall health. No matter what the execution, marketers should be constantly testing and evolving a strategy to meet impending needs.

If a company’s marketing efforts are waning, strategy is the first place to look. Is the brand promise doable? Is there sufficient pull from consumers to justify the brand promise? Do we have the tactic to make a compelling case?

Take two and call me in the morning.

Take a moment or two and think about your brand’s personality. If that brand were a person, would you like to be friends with it? Would you find your brand to be a valuable friend? Would you seek out similar relationships?

If the answers are no, you might send your brand to the shrink. Take heed in the famous words: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” Freud said that and I agree with him. Cocaine fiend or not.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Ga that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Everything Changes

2007-03-27T09:42:00.001-07:00

Richard Tatarski is no guiltier than most of us. It’s tough being a kid and perhaps the toughest part is fitting in with the crowd that you would most like to fit in with. My beloved friend and business partner will, with a little prodding, recall for us the whimsical days when he was (in his words) a skater punk. He had a skater mullet and wore skater shirts. I don’t know if he had the requisite footwear or Vision Street Wear, but I am sure that footwear and all other accompaniments fit nicely into the “sk8 or die” brand.

Chicks don’t dig skaters - or at least the type of girls that Richard likes don’t. They wanted a man who wore Z. Cavariccis when Richard was wearing some sort of shorts made by Powell Peralta. The girls wanted a guy who could dance like MC Hammer and properly wear a bolo. While he had some good friends with this crowd, this was not Tatarski one bit, but we all know that fitting in has its dues. The times, they were a-changing, and Tatarski needed to get with it. He needed a costume change.

Abrupt costume changes are important moments for their stark admittance that we are social creatures in need of the security of the pack and the ample fodder to be consumed in the lunchroom, along with corn dogs and Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches. There have been more spectacular costume changes than Richard’s. Our friend Mike went from Lonsdale skinhead in all his 18-hole combat boots and Fred Perry shirt glory to a chinos-and-sweater man literally overnight. The best conversion I’ve ever seen was a different Mike who was the person who finally gave up trying to fit in with the preppies and resorted to a punk rock metamorphosis. This person entered the chrysalis with a seemingly benign accessory (like a wallet chain) and emerged with a spiked Mohawk and a dog collar.

Richard was the reverse. One day he went home a skater. The next day: enter casual Richard. He traded his Corrosion of Conformity shirts for cardigans and drawstrings for those cute little braider belts that, when properly tied, makes an interesting knot that points at the ground. Richard claims he can still achieve this knot although we have yet to locate a properly braided belt on which he can demonstrate.

Richard is candid about his costume change and for a good reason. He made the change in response to real social forces and did, if for only a while, achieve the intended result. Looking back, Richard will tell you he would have preferred to just be himself (which even today is more skater than preppy). However, the reality on the grounds of Duluth Middle School was that the right style got noticed and if you didn’t have that style, you might consider a change.

Today, Richard’s style includes BMW fanatic. Our office regularly receives deliveries of Richard’s Bavarian auto parts and the work day is occasionally accented with the offer to ride in his vintage 2002tii sedan that will make you smell like exhaust. Richard lives the BMW brand. He participates in the discussion groups online about proper tunings and restoration techniques. He can have a lengthy discussion with you about how the handling characteristics found in his 1973 2002tii OR his grey market 1980 525i can be sensed all these years later in a new M5. He went with me to visit Jim Nelems at the Marketing Workshop, not because Jim is a trusted and excellent partner of some consultation projects, but because it was a chance to see Jim’s cherry 635i, M5 or custom M7.

When BMW made a costume change, Richard was crestfallen. He called me and I consoled him, but as time continued we ended up making each other feel worse as we cursed the impending prospect of the ultimate driving machine becoming the ultimate idea machine. Advertising patriarch Pat Fallon would love Richard. In fact, Richard thought Pat and company had him in mind when they developed BMW films, a genius concept that included several short films shot by top directors in which the Bimmer plays a central, but not gratuitous, lead role. We watched the films over and over, salivating over the M5’s cornering in a spot shot by Guy Richie in which his wife (Madonna) wets herself, partially from the fear/exhilaration that only a few hundred horsepower planted and glued to a rail handling can provide.

And then there was a few weeks ago. Richard called me to say he had seen a print ad pitching the Bimmer as some sort of cure for the seven year itch. Now those of you who read me with any regularity know I am not a bit shy about letting my copy shy on the blue side. But this is my car you’re talking about: my 525i which I buffed to a gleaming shine and moisturized the seats with special seat sun tan oil. Don’t mess with my car and don’t ever reference it when discussing a social disease.

For those who don’t know, BMW has undergone perhaps the most watched costume change up until Britney Spears went bald. A feisty little marketing team decided to poke and tease Pat Fallon by calling his work into account, and old Pat responded but opting out of the selection process, ending an era of reinvention, intense distillation and focus of the brand efforts and the profitable sale of many, many, many cars.

But you know how it goes. The new kid comes in and all of a sudden everything that was done is now has-been and if there is little turning around to be done, they’re going to finally get things turned around. I have seen enough of these situations that I feel a little nostalgic just writing about it.

Brands make costume changes. They changes positions and logos and advertising messages. They change for the business’s sake and they change for the sake of changing. They evolve from their past and they forget the past and seem bent on repeating failures. And then repeating failures again. It’s as if one day being the coolest of the skater punks is not good enough and the brand begs mom to take it to the mall to get some topsiders.

The thing about a costume change is that you really have to go all in if you want any chance of success. You can’t be a skin-prep or a skater-jock. It needs to be a whole and holistic change. No easing into it or partial commitment. Jump halfway across a ditch and guess where you’ll end up? Also, there is always the risk that a new peer group will reject you like an organ with the wrong blood type. And then where do you go?

This is an important question for brands. At what point is a costume change necessary, poised for success, required for survival? I wish I had a quick answer, but I don’t. I only have a few suggestions and remember, they are deduced from the fact that Richard Tatarski one day decided to stop wearing shirts with skulls and crossbones on them and instead wear pants that cinch at the waist and cuffs while ballooning at the leg and have the label prominently displayed on the zipper. In other words, my advice or not, change your costume at your own risk.

Before you wear MC hammer pants, make sure MC Hammer pants are really cool.

Hammer pants were a practical joke played on a generation of American youth. The pants looked like giant tribal dresses and because Hammer always wore them shirtless (or perhaps with a small leather vest), no kid from the suburbs was ever going to pull off that look. Instead, most kids looked like a homeless genie with a mullet.

Yet, despite this, how many companies make huge amounts of noise to announce that they are transforming themselves into a brand that seems dated before the ink of the business cards is dry? AT&T is my favorite new example of a company in MC Hammer pants. With its futurist manifesto commercials of bespectacled tech CEOs doing yoga with a cheesy faux-emo theme song, AT&T brings back all the fun memories of the dotcom era, except now you can’t get rich off it. I don’t know that I have ever seen a company that is in business today seem to wish so badly that it was still 1995. Their image is a tour d’flop of everything that’s wrong with yesteryear communication conglomerates. Their insistence to dissolve the brand of Cingular (a solid and inspired brand) and revert to AT&T (a brand synonymous with the worst service and the least concern about customers) is just another example of people aspiring to a heyday that is, like the pants, way out of style. Oh, but they put “the new” in front of AT&T. Yeah, that’ll work.

Why not just love yourself?

I had one particular client who went out on a limb and was rewarded for it. We approached with a gutsy concept, and the client’s courage turned into a wildly successful and award-winning radio campaign. I hate to brag, but we put the pants on a few big agencies with this campaign and at least three other restaurants copied us with blatant rip-offs.

And then, out of the blue, the client wanted a change. Not because sales were down. Not because customers had complained. Not because of old content (we were producing at least two new spots a month). No, it was just change for the sake of change. It was that casual.

Some times change is good. And sometimes change is just change. When Richard decided to change, he had a goal in mind. After all, you don’t subject yourself to the possible merciless taunting of 13-year-olds without a strong motivator. But I have seen and met a few who think change is progress, even if the result is progress towards nothing more than acquisition or bankruptcy. Smart businesses should have a goal and then audit all proposed activities related to a change in the brand. That which furthers a needed change should be kept and that which does not should find a spot next the bolos and Hammer pants at the dump.

Car seat in an IROC.

The opposite of change is what I like to call the car seat in an IROC theorem. On special occasions, Maura and I will venture up to the drug store to get something that doesn’t warrant a trip to the grocery store. The drug store is next to the dollar store, bowling ally and at least one liquor store, thereby elevating the chances that we’ll see someone loading their kids in the back of an IROC-Z. You just know this was their high school car and they probably still have cassette tapes sandwiched between the Kicker subwoofer and the six pack of Zima.

Sometimes you need a change and just don’t know it. This need for change is not limited to just a logo or website. Marketers should be thinking about how the brand applies to the ever-changing consumer and update pitches and messages accordingly.

Perhaps no one should eat more on this message than the folks at Chick-fil-a. The cows were funny at the start, and those of us who have followed the campaign have oooooed and ahhhed with each silly cow antic. But imagine you didn’t have any background on the campaign. Imagine you never saw the effort materialized and evolve, and instead your only introduction is to one group of animals attempting to dodge their impending slaughter by suggesting the slaughter and consumption of another. Don’t you just love it?

Ch-ch-changes.

No situation is better for knowing when, why and how to change than to have a constant ear and eye to the customer. I believe that customers love brands and want a brand to stay relevant to them as they make their way through life. Brands and managers are wise to listen, make relevant and grow with the consumer and their changing wants, needs and desires. A responsive brand commands loyalty and therefore better opportunity for success. Truly, that’s what it comes down to: increasing the opportunity to find success. That’s what we’re in business for. That’s what we plan for, that’s what we pursue.

And that never changes.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Fries with that.

2007-03-27T09:41:00.001-07:00

When I was fifteen, I got a demeaning job at a greasy, disgusting fast food restaurant. I grilled burgers, sliced lettuce and cleaned dead rats out of the grease trap. It was such a joy to have my first work experience molded by the meth addicts and ex-cons who used the esteemed power they had as shift managers to harass and terrorize the staff. Oh, the wonder years.

It was a hotter and greasier day than normal, and I was working the grill when the cheerleading squad came in for burgers. They were dressed in short shorts and tank tops. I stood there, with my grill mate who could barely speak English at my side, both of us covered in so much grease that at the at the end of the shift we would have to peel off our uniforms. I locked eyes with one of the cheerleaders.
That was the end of my fast food experience.

I immediately enrolled in lifeguard classes. Despite the fact that I couldn’t really swim, a year on the wrestling team and a persistent mom got me through the classes and I became a certified lifeguard. I took my classes in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which meant the training was geared toward guarding the beach. The classes were like boot camp and I spent most evenings after class puking up the pool water that I had swallowed when the instructor put forth his best effort to drown me.

True to my purpose in becoming a lifeguard, my first post was at the local pool propagated by the local cheerleaders who, save for the occasional chicken fight, spent their time laying about the pool deck. Was this really a job? I’m watching girls in bikinis have a slap and tickle fight with each other and someone is going to pay me?

Honestly, I felt guilty when I got my first paycheck. At the burger joint, I got covered in more filth and garbage than an ATO pledge for a measly five bucks an hour. Now I was getting six an hour to watch the local cuties spritz themselves. It’s hard to feel like you’re really working when you’re a lifeguard.

I have met at least a few marketers who are like lifeguards. Somewhere deep inside, they feel guilty about asking for money. They duck behind image campaigns or price-offs, anything just to avoid asking for the sale.

I’m a little old (and less shapely) to be a lifeguard anymore, but I still wince when I ask for money. After all, I love marketing and it doesn’t feel like work to me, so why should you pay me? Well, first off, I’m married to a social worker, which means my wife gets paid two banana peels, fourteen food stamps, a few dry beans and a half-eaten bag of frosted donuts each month. Since the mortgage company takes none of these things as payment, I have to charge people for our services.

My mentor who is a lively, spirited (and though not tall, larger than life) man gives me great advice much like a kung fu master or perhaps a Jedi. He recently asked me, “Young grasshopper, are you getting paid for each hour of work you complete for clients?”

“No master,” I responded.

“You work for a fool and must stop.” He shot back.

But I work for myself and the firm.” I responded

“Exactly.”He replied

Note: It is important that you know my mentor is a sweet and honorable man and would never call me a fool unless I really deserved it (which I’m pretty sure I’ve yet to do). Paraphrasing and modification of his comments was needed to maintain Kung Fu imagery.

It’s foolish to not ask for the sale. It’s foolish to advertise without wanting an action. Maybe the action is to change an opinion or consider a service, but whatever you do, have a desired purpose when you have an audience. The master has shown me the way (or, the force if you prefer) of asking for the sale, whatever the sale may be. His nearly magical three step process is reprinted here so that you need not shave your head, sojourn and seek his tutelage.

1) Master says to grasshopper, get beyond the guilt of selling or I’ll smack you.

There is no crime in getting paid what you’re worth. Be it a brand, item or service, value should be compensated. It is easy to start chiseling at the bottom line with justifications like “our margins can allow us to reduce price.” But the truth is, if you cannot respect your offering enough to stand by the price, what do you expect purchasers to do? People pay what they think things are worth.

When you give a fair offering at a fair price, there should be no second guessing. One way to NOT accomplish this is to simply charge what you think the consumer will pay. Instead, simply charge what the consumer should pay (relative to R and D costs, manufacturing, marketing, profit, etc) and stand by it. It is amazing the change in attitude when the seller knows the price and proposition are rooted in logic and fair play.

One of the core tenets in the development of the concept of branding was that the consumers desire to support the brand would negate the need for continual sales and price wars. Some brands are sticking to this notion but others have allowed their brand to become know as “those guys who have a sale every week”.

2) Master says to grasshopper, respect the seller/ consumer relationship and the mutual expectation/ responsibility.

It is too often and too bad when the balance between a consumer and a marketer is disrupted. Often companies view consumers like cattle who stampede in when the right product is thrown in the pen and then crap all over the place. It is not so uncommon that marketer has a less than flattering view of consumers. Consumers sometimes don’t hold up their end of the deal either. Ever get behind one of those people who always complain at the burger joint just to get free junk?

What exists between buyers and sellers is a relationship based on quality, expectation, brand identity, affinity, value, and shared importance. Trying to tip the scales to the favor of one of these at the expense of the other never works out.

3) Master says to grasshopper, the worst they can say is “no” (or perhaps “hell no”).

You really don’t know until you ask. When you run a commercial that doesn’t seem to want the sell, you’re better off not advertising. Maybe it’s the plain fear of the word “no” that has led companies to skirt the question. Think about it: if you never ask for the business, you can never get shot down. Sounds like high school.

The savvy marketer should be ready to hear no and follow it up with a why. “No”’ indicates failures of the brand to connect. “No” indicates a pocket of influence that is not swayed. “No” teaches us not only that the ship is listing but where the leak is.

Marketers need to stop being afraid of their own shadows and instead begin to stick it out there and ask for the sale. That next inquirer may be a future fan or user for life, but you’ll never know if you’re not actively trying to spur action. Perhaps one day people will just know everything they want and need and we advertisers won’t need to educate customers and ask for their business. Until then, we need to ask.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Ga that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Horatio jumped the shark.

2007-03-27T09:40:00.001-07:00

Normally my wife and I share television preferences. We love Studio 60. We like Law and Order. We tolerate Heroes. But CSI Miami suits my wife’s palate while I think it’s a dish best left un-served. I’d rather degrease my bike than watch CSI Miami. It wasn’t always that way. Initially, we would watch the show if only to make fun of the patronizing portrayal of the clichéd southern belle turned cop and the airhead kid who looks like the happenstance of being a crime investigator just happened to be a convenient detour from following the Warped Tour. That, and the dauntingly dramatic dumb-dumb Horatio. It’s worth watching CSI Miami if only to make fun of Horatio.

Horatio is not your typical cop. He looks like the Mad Magazine spokes-cartoon Alfred E. Newman except he wears all black and cheesy sunglasses. Horatio does have one superpower, however. He can instantly and powerfully pick the most stupid one-liners to follow each pocket of drama, and he delivers these lines in a voice that one might imagine Don Corleone’s pillow talk might have sounded. It’s kind of like Schwarzenegger’s cheesy deliveries of “I’ll be back” or “He had to blow off some steam!” (famously said in Commando after he impales an enemy into a boiler and steam rushes out of the pipe). So imagine Schwarzenegger but 130 pounds lighter, seven shades paler, bright red hair and instead of having Arnold’s famously tough character names like John Matrix, John Kimble, “Dutch" Schaefer, and the ultimate, Conan the Barbarian, Horatio rolls off the tongue of toughness into the sink. Hey, don’t get your feelings hurt: movie tough guys don’t get names like Jeff either.

But I don’t care that Horatio dresses like he works at a New York ad agency. I don’t really mind that he sounds like he’s gargling hot asphalt. I can tolerate the fact that he delivers his lines with the proficiency of an understudy in the Folsom State Prison Christmas play.

I didn’t give up on Horatio until he jumped the shark.

Within a forgettable plot, Horatio is on a hill with a sniper rifle. (Remember, he is a crime scene investigator that works in a lab.) A terrorist-driven box truck comes over the hill to assault freedom, and Horatio, with a single shot, blows the truck into a million bits. He probably had some kitschy line like “light my fire” as well, but I stopped listening

That, my friends, is a textbook case of jumping the shark.

Jumping the shark is a not-so-old term used to describe when a television program has run out of good ideas and is on bad idea life support. Like the fact the hit hospital drama ER has resorted to helicopter crashes and hospital shootings in every episode just to keep things interesting. The original shark jump can be attributed to Henry Winkler, aka the Fonz. Apparently, Happy Days ratings were not so happy and writers decided that one solution to raise interest would be to have Fonzie compete in a water skiing contest during which he would jump a shark. Yes, he would jump a shark. Henceforth, television programs with endless plot extensions, characters returning from the dead multiple times and successive episodes of at least one character in the reoccurring cast getting shot are said to have jumped the shark. And now you know.

But we can’t save such a fun term just for TV. I mean, come on, TV already has its exclusives like telethons and Ryan Seacrest. Is TV really the only place were a shark gets jumped? I’ll answer the question with a question. Remember when Buick resurrected Harvey Earl to hawk their cars? As if the only answer to fading brand excitement was to bring old Harvey back from the dead. Yeah, cleared the shark by two feet.

And how do you drag an old barn side American brand like Maxwell House into the new millennium? Well, you keep the hokey imagery but then have good ole red-blooded Americans sing a British pop song with enthusiasm not seen since Designing Women jumped the shark all those years ago. Look out sharks, Maxwell House coming over head!

It’s not hard for a brand to jump the shark in its marketing. It is difficult to find the right mix and chemistry for a marketing plan, so it is understandable that marketers might want to dance with the one that brought them. But brands do age and unlike sharks, they don’t always have a second set of teeth to take a bite out of the competition when opportunity avails. Simply put, relevance to the consumer must be kept relevant. However, it is important to know that such a shark jumping demise is not imminent for a brand. Had Fonzie meandered down another plot line with interest, perhaps he never would have come anywhere near the sign up table for the water skiing contest.

Brands can insulate themselves from sharks and waterskiing contests by performing a few thoughtful tasks.

1) Don't make any sudden movements.

Brands often grow stale and therefore feel forced to make knee-jerk reactions. The results are often undesirable. Instead, marketers should consider brand planning as a long-term strategy which evolves in the market. Of course, all this could be eliminated by continually refreshing the brand. Which brings up……

2) Review the brand continuously.

The exercise of reviewing a brand and its relevance to the consumer is not like going to the dentist twice a year. It needs to be done daily. All efforts that are meant to be touch points with consumers need to be reviewed with the brand for relevance and then the brand itself needs to be evaluated with the different opportunities and products. It is crucial to gauge consumer attitudes for each touch point. Marketers are wise to update and refresh their brands and to glean new insight with every single interaction they have with the consumer.

3) Know thy true self.

Brands have a tendency to think of themselves within the context of their founding or heyday. This is a mistake. It is important to understand the role of the brand in the consumer's life and how that role functions in the present day and the days to come.

An important note: Points 1 and 2 are different. Point 1 refers to strategy which should be rooted, strong and hard to change. Point 2 refers to tactics which should be updated with time. It is important to point this out, as many companies change strategy at every coffee break but keep a tactic for some faux nostalgia they insist consumers have.

Want to be in a water skiing contest?

All businesses age, and the ones that are successful through multiple decades have a commitment to learn from every interaction. The greater message here is for marketing to get the same tinkering and refining as R&D does. Manufacturing is improved by R&D to save money and effort. So can be the effort of continued improvements of functioning and relevance to consumers.

The alternative is to suck the potency out of the brand and allow it to expire into irrelevance. You may try to reenergize the brand and jumping that shark may not seem like that bad of an idea. Just remember, even if Fonzie had won the water skiing contest with his amazing and flawless shark jump, Happy Days still lost.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Me and the Tank

2007-03-27T09:39:00.001-07:00

Me and the Tank

Back in the day, I played B-squad noseguard for the Wildcats at Shorty Howell Park in Duluth, Georgia. I was ten, weighed slightly more than an overstuffed scarecrow and was the second team stand-in for “The Tank,” a massive kid comprised entirely of Mrs. Winner’s chicken, Mazzio’s pizza and a mullet. Tank was so big that his uniform doubled as a pool cover in the off season. You could see the fear in the other team’s (and their parents’) eyes as Tank took the field. Tank was a sweet kid with a heart made of gold, or at least chocolate cake. He was a rough redneck, but when you look like the kid who ate the fat kid, you gotta be tough.

Unfortunately Coaches Steve, Tommy and Moon couldn’t harness the power of the tank. While he was bigger than a nuclear submarine, he simply couldn’t clear the hole for the linebacker or drive the hole and rip off the quarterback’s head. Once, I even lined up against Tank and found that running in to him was somewhat like running into a mattress. He wouldn’t push you back, and you weren’t going to push him either. You just kind of mashed into him and occasionally, he’d fall over on you. And while you think he’d be heavy, he just kind of spread out so the weight was well distributed. Tank was a big kid with a big heart (figuratively, of course) who simply couldn’t be harnessed to play nose guard.

It’s been a long time since I played at Shorty Howell Park, but I bet even then marketers talked about taming a looming giant that could easily have taken them to the championships. Their tank is much older and can be much meaner. He’s brought down formidable quarterbacks, giant corporations and powerful politicians. This tank has led revolutions, built businesses from the ground up and sold so much stuff that a Wal-Mart the size of Oklahoma couldn’t hold it all. Yet no one can tame it.

The Tank is word of mouth.
To marketers, harnessing the power of word of mouth would be like finding the Ark of the Covenant in Atlantis with the Holy Grail inside. Word of mouth comes with a certain truthfulness and authority as we humans err on the side of believing each other. Word of mouth comes with a unique adaptation quality that caters the message to the receiver simply though the dance of polite conversation. Word of mouth has a special draw, as marketers dream of the day when they can tell all those pesky and peppy media reps to shove it where the TV don’t shine. No wonder it’s so elusive.

A few snake charmers have claimed to harness the power of word of mouth. Peddlers of endorsement radio claim to be selling word of mouth, but what it appears to me that they are selling is the same endorsement structure popularized back when radio was invented. This is not to discount the power of radio endorsements, but to say that having a DJ recommend a product, by virtue of believability, mechanism (it’s not in person, friends) and broad audience with little ability to narrow or cater the pitch indicates endorsement radio is far from word of mouth.

Now there are some fools you can pay to talk about your product. For a low, low price they will infiltrate social networks, peer groups and blogs and extol the virtues of your new cell phone, Crock Pot or herbal body mist. The only problem is the enthusiasm is bought, and therefore typically fake. Plus, the bought enthusiasm also typically accompanies a canned sales pitch which is hardly believable.

So is all hope lost? Are you, like Indiana Jones, destined only to see the Grail for a fleeting moment only to have it fall down a giant earthen crack faithfully recreated by Hollywood? (Or alternately, are you to find the Ark only to have it stolen by Nazis then lost by the US government in a giant warehouse?) Take solace, Dr. Jones. I have your treasure map right here.

OK. I don’t have the key to word of mouth and I don’t think anyone does. But we are smart people and I bet we can dissect the issue to its core. So grab your hat and bullwhip and let’s go blow up some old stuff.

1) Word of mouth thrives on interest.

So, duh, make your product interesting. Every product can have a story that builds intrigue. Look at your product like a consumer and find the hidden intrigue. Maybe your story is in how people use the product. How does it affect their lives? And if all else fails and it turns out your product truly is boring, invent a story. When the crew at John Hancock wanted to add spice to the poi of financial services, they shot a commercial featuring two lesbians adopting a child from China. The spot solicited gasps, death threats and calls from officials in the People’s Republic. Well that, and so many new policies that Hancock was propelled to the insurance first string. The spot was stark, honest, human and provided water cooler banter for weeks. So the moral of the story is: tell better stories.

2) Word of mouth thrives on mystique and exclusivity.

For many people, the thrill of word of mouth is discovering something and then enlightening their peer group to it. The product, concept or idea then spreads down a chain of various pitch people and adopters. The delicate recipe to set off this chain reaction thrives on mystique. Fostering mystiques is not as much about what it is you do as what it is you don’t do.:
Do: Create a product which has inherent mystique. If it is a service make it a little more exclusive. Not everyone can afford a Dyson, which is why we all want one. If it is a food, make it more exotic or authentic or unusual. What ever it takes, give it some interest.
Don’t take a dumb product and slather hype on it. Jay Z wouldn’t drive just any SUV off the lot. He had to take three years to invent his own color called Jay Z Blue (very creative). I bet you anyone who has a Jay Z blue SUV is gonna let you know that interesting fact within a minute of meeting them.
Do: Create an ad that has a specific voice, persona and attitude which the targeted top of your consumer chain will find intriguing.
Don’t puke out a trite, celebrity-worshiping porno-mercial of Paris Hilton or any other movie star making out with your product.
Do: Have your PR folks pitch the press, where they have to earn the story with a good pitch and approach.
Don’t have your PR folks get stories in magazines where they know the editor (or have some sort of “in”) who will run whatever garbage is sent over. Media that have a good grasp on readers know how to turn a pitch into a story that will have appeal to its group. Simple lesson: Let the editors make the translation. P.S. do not try to force them to print your mission, vision or any other kind of statement. The only mystique about most mission statements is how anyone got so many words to into one vague and vapid sentence.

3) Word of mouth thrives on information.

I admit it, Tatarski and I are both gear heads. Not just cars, all gear. Not too many people know this, but long before we started Snowden Tatarski, Richard and I were climbing buddies. Rock climbing is an interesting sport in that it is so dangerous, the gear manufactures try to protect themselves by being as thorough as possible in their sales literature. They tell you what you can do with the product and what you shouldn’t do. They tell you what the product does, doesn’t and what other people might use it to do. Of course all of this information is saddled next to breathtaking photos of somebody climbing Mount Death over a desert somewhere.

When people are passionately interested in an item, they crave information. Cars, computers, climbing gear and so many other items have a myriad of magazines, Web sites, discussion groups and so on-simply to get consumers the information they crave. If you don’t retain anything else in this article, retain this: the information you provide to prospective and current consumers will be the information they digest, mold and deliver to other prospects. Therefore, be thorough and interesting and maintain the brand position throughout the communication.

If only Tank played left guard

Tank would have made a fabulous left guard because linebackers would bounce off of him. Similarly, the funny thing about mediating word of mouth is that the tools already exist, they’re just being misused. Advertising gets a chance to arouse interest and intrigue and provide valued knowledge; however, many marketers see it as a chance to boast, wax philosophical or simply provide the needed time for viewers go to the bathroom and not miss anything important. When telling stories, many marketers seem to prefer books with few words and more pictures. Even worse, the pictures are all cheesy product glamour shots and the words might as well be left off the page. They’re that useful.

I urge you to stop by your local REI and go over to the climbing department. Get a catalogue for Petzl climbing harnesses and see what I am talking about. If you are in Atlanta, it’s on the Clairmont I-85 access road. If you get on I-85 north and take it a few miles to Pleasant Hill Road and go down around and down the hill, Shorty Howell Park is on your right. It’s just a few football and baseball fields with a lake. The park is named for the man who donated the land and could be seen picking up litter every night while we practiced. It’s the place where I nearly got beaten to death by 50 punk sophomores. It’s the place where I got a chiropractic adjustment on a rickety wooden bench. It’s the place where I was a 2nd string nose guard. That’s Shorty Howell Park my friends. Home of the Wildcats, me and the Tank.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Stairway to Heaven....Man.

2007-03-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite SNL sketches is the one where Eddie Murphy claims to be Clarence, the fifth Beatle. To substantiate his claim, Clarence offers a tape of Beatles songs with an added sax track and the word “man” after “she loves you”, supposedly proving that the original song was “She Loves You, Man.” He then plays the track backwards and you hear Paul McCartney say “Hey George, lets kick Clarence out of the band and steal all his good ideas.”

Some say if you play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards you will get a special evil message, a situation which Robert Plant denies. However, Plant did have a horrid solo career with its pinnacle in the release of “Tall Cool One,” so anything he says is immediately suspect.

“Stairway to Heaven” was not the first song I learned on guitar. It was the second. Actually, I only knew the first few notes, but I could play them with unmatched precision. I could also play “Iron Man” with power chords and a particularly terrible rendition of Guns N’ Roses “Patience.” “Stairway” is one of those songs that have drifted upward to a stratosphere of music beyond reproach. It’s not cool to say you don’t like “Stairway to Heaven.” If you don’t like it, follow your mother’s advice and don’t say anything at all.

In everything lies a “Stairway to Heaven.” In everything, there are things you just don’t question, critique or try to add to. You would never question the ingredients of my Great-Uncle Carl’s Brunswick stew lest you will be shamed with a steamy pile of country insults that sound like compliments but are veiled jabs. To tell Carl that his Brunswick stew is missing something is, in essence, to recommend adding a saxophone part to “Stairway to Heaven.” The marketing equivalent of “Stairway to Heaven” is the four P’s, which are relentlessly beaten into the head of young marketing students until they are recited like the lyrics to “Whole Lotta Love.”

Product, Price, Place and Promotion have become houses of the holy, and while some contend that such structure is unfortunately what is and what should never be, that leaves strategists dazed and confused as they to reconcile today’s initiatives with yesterday’s constraints. I suggest that the communication breakdown is because a lack of flexibility has made a time tested system a real heartbreaker for contemporary marketers.

Before you take a look at the four P’s and ramble on, might I suggest that your time is going to come and you will tell me thank you if you simply do the unthinkable and add a saxophone to marketing’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Well that, and play it in reverse.

What is missing from the four P’s (the sax, part so to speak) is the customer experience. Too often, we marketers assume the customer experience without truly delving into a customer’s interaction with a product or service. As product commoditize, we can no longer expect customers to adapt to a speculative experience. I know in suggesting the customer experience should be added to the four P’s that I’m messing with the way things have always been done. I know I’m adding a sax part to a classic, but it just plain sounds better.

Play the “Stairway to Heaven” of marketing in reverse and you’ll get a much better result. Here’s the first note.

1) Customer experience.

How will the customer interact with the product and message on practical and emotional levels? Is the design such that customers feel the desire to accessorize with it? Is there an essence of trust about the product, and if not, can we add it?

The customer experience is the realm in which products and service now find themselves competing. You can have two products with nearly identical attributes, but the one which by design, promotion or essence leans more towards creating a more succinct and desirable experience for the customer will win every time.

2) Promotion.

Sure. I can hear your thoughts from where I’m sitting. I am a consultant concerned with how to adequately promote things; therefore, I’m moving promotion to a top spot.

Untrue.

It seems that products are often proposed without the slightest hint of how they can or will be promoted for sale. That’s dumb. Honestly, a company should know how a product will be communicated and received by consumer far before the design is finished. And no, this is not an R&D thing. If the marketing department faces the daily task of connecting with consumers, then the marketing department should be able to impart some of that consumer and promotional insight into the product before it goes to production.

3) Place

The shelves are getting crowded, and unless there is a super-super-store format around the corner, I suggest not holding your breath for a door-busting miracle. Why would any company consider developing a product without having a clear channel of how to get it to customers? It seems that many companies are content to develop something new and find distribution after the fact. As distributing channels get choked with the hordes of products available these days, the successful products of the future will appreciate not only what they give to consumers but how they give it to consumers.

4) Price

I do not want to give the impression that pricing strategy is not important. It is. It’s not that I believe pricing strategy is not a strategy, I just don’t believe it is an entire strategy. Yet every holiday season the airwaves are full of door busters, one day sales and special secret items sales. In the end customers with zero brand loyalty are attracted to specials from which waning profitability turns “black Friday” into “deep in the red Friday.”

Instead of price, we need to think about value. How are we creating value for the consumer and how does the value relate to the cost? We can slash prices or raise value. I’m going with value.

5) Product.

After we ask question about what the experience is that consumers want and we provide; after we think deeply about what attributes a product should have to create promotion which is memorable and spurs action; after we spec the distribution channels to find a congruent way to get our product out there; after we get a solid price which accounts for all it will take to pull this off right…

We have the product.

So why should product people listen to marketing people? I’ll answer with a story.

While I was teaching a class, a group of bright young lads and lasses came to me with an amazing concept: an iPod for older people. The promotion was beautiful. Outlines of grannies on the now famous bright backgrounds. TV commercials with the heavy beat tracks replaced with big band, jazz and my favorite, audiobooks. This whole campaign was wrapped up in the concept of getting “your” iPod.

I put my giddiness aside and said, “This is awesome! What features will it have?”
“Features?” they asked. “It’s a regular iPod.”
“That’s stupid,” I nicely critiqued.

Wanting to play the old marketing song backwards does not mean listening to it all alone. What my young learners had not appreciated is that while the consumer pull might have existed, they should have been considering what R&D could have done to drive the message home. Marketing had identified the niche but it would be a product solution that would get things moving together. One student in the class came up to me with the answer: make the letters bigger on the screen.

No big deal. No fundamental reengineering. No overhaul. Just finding a way in the software to make the numbers and letters bigger so that we could back up the claim of “your” iPod.

Those young students had a lesson for me and all of us that day. We need to listen to the consumer and work backwards in developing seamless rollouts. We need to communicate between departments to make sure that we play from the same playbook and sing from the same songbook.

For many of us, the challenges and opportunities that today’s marketplace offers will give clear routes to our customers’ desires, and the prospect for success sounds pretty good. For those who refuse to look or listen another way, the prospect is bleak and, sadly, the song remains the same.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

The twelve days of Christmas

2007-03-27T09:37:00.002-07:00

It was a wonderful holiday. My most excellent wife and I took in a store’s worth of movies, a year’s worth of family (in close quarters) and an adequate amount (though it’s really never enough) of time reflecting on the year past and the year to come. We enjoyed a holiday in the Hamptons (which is to say Hampton Roads, Virginia), New Year’s Eve with my New Orleans-based protégé Meri and New Year’s Day with the Tatarski family. I count my blessings year round, but the holidays are a particularly great time with family and friends.

I’d love to go on about our trip to the Chrysler Museum or Chef Hugh Acheson’s Jedi-like sense in perfecting the cooking of foie gras for New Years eve, but this is a marketing newsletter so marketing we shall discuss. The holiday time is a great time to reflect on marketing. For many, it will begin a new year of efforts and budgets. For some it brings the hope that the past successes will be continued. For others it brings the hope that last year’s failures offer insight into how to do things correctly this go round. For all of us, we hope to be more efficient and effective in how we market what we must this upcoming year.

The holidays offer an added insight in marketing because it is the most wonderful time of the year to be bombarded with pleas for your business. There’s the one day sale and the doorbuster sale. There’s the two day secret sale item sale, the early preview secret doorbuster sale and the ever-elusive secret two day doorbuster sale with an early bird preview and a one day mystery coupon chaser. The marketing we get to see around the holidays can really make us take stock of our own efforts.

So it’s a new year. A chance to start fresh. You’ve got a spring in your step and a positive attitude. You bought whatever exercise equipment to help you keep that resolution (I got a Giant OC2 road bike). You have a new plan for how you’re going to lift those sales and cruise past that quota. Let me be the first to congratulate you in advance. But also, let me be a little bit of a grinch and offer a bit of advice: there are seemingly innocuous yet significant problems lurking out there that can derail even the best marketing team. Make it your resolution to steer clear of the little potholes when you plan this year’s marketing.

Now everybody, the things to look out for this year, in the key of C.

On the first day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Research which fails to accurately ascertain or report correct information.

Research is a funny thing with possibly unfunny results. Research which is very scientific (and suggested to be reliable) often tells nothing but then it costs an arm, leg and a forest to produce. Research which is more interpretive often uncovers the needed approaches and insights which can move a brand onto the right track. The trick is to get this kind of research interpreted the correct way, which is to say, objectively. Jim Nelems always says, “The true power of research is in the understanding of what you're are seeing, hearing and uncovering.” He is completely right. And don’t treat research like fruitcake and pretend to happily accept it only to let it gather dust next to the Perry Como Christmas album.

On the second day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An overall brand position poorly rooted for competition.

Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi where Luke thinks he is fighting Darth Vader in a cave, but it turns out he is really just fighting himself? I know a ton of brands making that same mistake. They aim at a ghost competitor and, had the competitor existed, they would have done a fine job competing against them. The result is restaurants trying to be all things to all people, cars built for no one, tequila meant to be mixed with cola and a slew of household and packaged products whose taglines should be “what were we thinking?”

Before you march out with that next idea, you better make sure the brand concept is rooted in reality.

On the third day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies rooted in flawed tactics.

Line extension is the mistletoe of marketing: you think it’s cute to have around, then you find out it’s really a parasite. There’s a lot of mistletoe hanging on brands these days.

A better choice is to focus on doing what you do best. Get a scorpion concept. If you don’t know what a scorpion concept is, e-mail me and I’ll send you my book. It’s full of scorpions.

On the fourth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies disjointed in execution.

In the movie Drum Line, Denzel Washington has a simple but pointed command for his players: “One band, one sound.” Rarely are marketers held to such a standard. Advertising, sales, PR and customer service are all apparently playing different songs. They have one band (sort of) and a million different sounds. From the tuba section comes the pitch of value while sax is playing a conflicting tune about price-offs. Let’s not even talk about what’s coming from the clarinets. The point is marketing should have one powerful sound that harmonizes.

On the fifth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: Strategies wrongly translated into advertising.

If you were expecting golden rings you are at least part right. That is, of course, if you’re referring to marketers who incorrectly try to make a linkage between their brand and a sporting event, like perhaps the Olympics. And don’t get me wrong. I think the Olympics are awesome, but the attempts by marketers to squeeze the square peg of something like financial planning into the round hole of a TV spot featuring someone on the pommel horse are slightly cheesy. It’s not just sports. There are plenty of opportunities for the message to get lost between the product and the tube.

It is better to make a succinct case for your marketing strategy and not try to bring in outside confounds.

On the sixth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An abrupt change in a good strategy.

Those of you who know me know I like to cook, and one of my favorite items to cook is stew. I make this one stew with wine-marinated chuck roast that is so good, you’ll want to slap the person sitting next to you in delight. The key to stew is to use the right ingredients and wait. If you taste it early and make an overcorrection you will screw it up.

How many marketing plans get cut off so the marketing team can chase a fringe market somewhere else? Good marketing is a calculated risk where, like stew, we use the ingredients that we know taste yummy and we trust that the things we learned from all the other cooking we’ve done will give us predictable results. Newsflash: many marketing efforts aren’t truly novel. Conventional wisdom is a great servant but a terrible master.

On the seventh day of Christmas my VP gave to me: All the expectation with half the budget.

Budgets adequate enough to only get halfway across the river leave you wet, hurt and angry. Nonetheless, I have met at least a few people who believe they can save their way to growth. Control all frivolous spending and fund important efforts adequately, remembering that you pay for what you get.

On the eighth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: The wrong media.

It doesn’t matter how good your message is if you put it on a trash can. Make your media choices congruent with the marketing goals and strategy. And don’t fear the specter of more media choices. The more media fractures, the more we can target particular groups and waste less of the budget on a mass audience. It’s funny how the people predicting the doomsday of fractured media are the people who make money helping you reach thousands who will never be prospects for your product or service.

On the ninth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: No second strategy after launch.

So you have a great plan to sow the seeds of desire in your customer’s heads? How are you going to harvest the wheat? I was once part of a campaign where we ran spots to build awareness but then did nothing to spur action. When I asked why, I was told that the other component of the campaign was cut from the budget. Why would you seek to make consumers aware but not ask for the sale?

You have got to have a plan to bring in the crop. I’m not saying you can’t tinker with the second part as you learn more about the initial effort’s success, but if your plan is simply waiting, then you really don’t have a plan.

On the tenth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: An inability to accurately diagnose and assess success and failure.

In the crazy world of marketing, strategies will continue to fail. But a failure does not have to be a complete, disastrous failure. We can learn so much about consumers and efforts from accurately evaluating a failure. A sure way not to accomplish this is to mess with the language and numbers to make a failure look like a success.

Take apart every effort. What worked? What didn’t? What assumptions and predictions did we make and how did they stand up?

On the eleventh day of Christmas my VP gave to me: 27 different people in charge.

We’ve all heard the goofy little quips like “a giraffe is a horse designed by committee.” Such jokes are funny to tell right before the meeting where everyone tears apart a marketing campaign and fills it up like a piñata full of misguided strategy, personal agenda, turf guarding and, in a very few marketing piñatas, revenge. It is nearly impossible to gang fight a marketing effort if no one is in charge. Years of business have taught us that those who lead a marketing coup may be hitching the train to the big time. The result is a leaderless team with strategies all trying to hit a grand slam when all that’s needed right now is a base hit.

The people element is deeply important in a marketing department. Organization and effectiveness starts with a clear command that praises teamwork and shared success.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my VP gave to me: A partridge in a pear tree.

I don’t even begin to know how to care for a partridge or a pear tree, let alone both at the same time. I have a hard enough time keeping my fake plants alive. The bigger point is what we get from the guys and gals in charge. Do they give us expectations paired with authority? Are they focused on the process of our efforts insomuch as they ignore the outcomes? Will we ask for constructive criticism and leadership and instead receive a bird and a houseplant? Let’s hope not.

Here’s a new years wish that your products sell, your consumers love you and success and accomplishment follow all the days of your life. Here’s to the hope that this year will bring prosperity and opportunity for all of you. It’s a new year and a new chance to prove why marketing makes businesses successful. Here’s to you and 2007. Hip, hip, hurray!

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

The Archnemesis

2007-03-27T09:37:00.001-07:00

My wife had an archnemesis, a situation that I find neither normal nor disturbing. I guess I just assumed that archnemeses only existed in movies like The Karate Kid 1, 2 and 3 (but not 4). I never had an archnemesis - it was just different for boys. If you had a problem with someone, you just met up at the football practice field or Shorty Howell Park or the local gas station (one near us was even called The Fina Arena) and you pounded each others’ skulls in until you liked each other again. This very situation was graphically illustrated in The Karate Kid when Daniel delivers the final crane kick to the face to win the tournament at which time the opponent, a kid who has earlier beat Daniel unconscious, assaulted Daniel’s girlfriend and mowed Daniel down with a motorcycle, then comes up to Daniel, hands him the trophy and says, “This is for you.” Aesop’s moral is, there’s no contention a little kick to the face can’t correct. Chuck Norris must have made up with his enemies long ago.

But my wife is not Chuck Norris or Daniel Laruso, and I am thankful for that fact. However, her strife with her archnemesis, a girl who had jealously spread vicious rumors about her, was a protracted and vicious affair that no amount of front kicks to the maw would repair. I eagerly bring up the fact that Maura had an archnemesis when we are at social engagements, and the listeners seem eager to hear every detail about Maura’s sworn enemy. Better yet, Maura beams with pride when she talks about her archnemesis as if she is locked in some sort of medieval strife over taxation rights in the duchy.
My opinion: having an archnemesis keeps the drab days of high school more interesting.

While I didn’t have an archnemesis in high school or college, I certainly have had them in the working world. Sometimes they are coworkers. Sometimes they are the boss. Sometimes they competitors and sadly, sometimes they are my very clients themselves. I have to admit though, I must have missed out on the power of focused resentment in my early years. Now, my frustration, disenfranchisement, anger and any other negative feeling that the life of consulting conjures up can happily reside in the persona of whoever my archnemesis du jour may be. If only I had focused as such on the ninth grade wrestling team, I might have better than a 4th place medal. And yeah, I didn’t think they gave a medal for forth place either.

Today, I’ve learned to get mad and channel it. If we are pitching an account against another firm, then the inevitable outcome is that someone will win and someone will lose. And while your nemesis is not so directly responsible for your loss of market share, mind share and profit that you foam at the mouth at the mention of their name, the inevitable results (loss of bonus, decline in job security, addiction to Pepcid) should be enough to make you see red. It has always amazed me how some people insist on being so sedate and spineless at the idea of competition. It must have been that wave of politically correct gameplaying that swept the playgrounds of the late eighties. People were taught games where no one won or lost and basically you just ran around with a ball and had no real goal or objective. When I played seven-year-old soccer for the rainbows in Great Bridge, we went for the shins and throats because Chesapeake pizza always tastes better after you won. Not to mention, when you’ve had a chance to lose, you learn how to make losing into a winning strategy. The hurt and fear of losing can steel any effort into a hardened attack machine and often one learns more from a loss than a win.

I am going to go ahead and give the disclaimer now that I don’t advocate for people truly hating people. By the virtue of my faith and beliefs, I would not want nor condone you to take my words to mean you should go out and find someone to hate. However, hate in the spirit of lively competition is another thing altogether and that’s what I’m talking about when I say you should hate something. In such spirit, I hate the Norcross blue devils, The Florida Gators, all of my clients’ competitors and most consultants and ad agencies I’ve ever pitched against.

There are plenty of books on winning and competition out there and I really don’t want to microwave and serve their leftovers. What I can serve up is my few suggestions about competition and enemies in marketing that I have learned from rugged battles with a few of my most beloved archnemeses.

Don’t be a communist.

In Rocky 4, Ivan Drago was six-and-a-half feet of corded hate. Drago was just mean about everything except perhaps steroids and mother Russia. When Drago killed Apollo Creed, it was just unfocused hate against unfocused buffoonery. Enter Balboa. When Rocky sought to take down the towering socialist, he focused his hate right at Drago. He moved to a drafty farm house in what appeared to be Siberia. He ran in the snow while the KGB followed behind him. He carried the weight of the American ideal that struggle and hard work pay off in proportion. While Drago trained in his state of the art gym/planetarium, Rocky was lifting potato sacks full of rocks, chopping wood and drawing faces on Drago’s picture. When was the last time you did that? No, not ran from the KGB- I mean drew faces on a particularly despicable enemy? It’s liberating. Go do it right now.

The point is focus. Rocky knew who he wanted to beat and he focused that motivation in its highest concentration at the point of decision. That is an old, tried and true military concept and it deserves repeating. When battling an opponent, concentrate the build of your resources at the decision point. Drago hated everyone and everything sans the motherland. Rocky just hated Drago and perhaps Russia. Drago spread it out, Rocky concentrated and Rocky won.

Just because you don’t have an enemy doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t pegged you as theirs.

There will always be a company that wants what you have. They want your clients and your reputation. They want your distribution and your R and D staff. They want your marketing and credibility with the public. You can pretend all you want, but the truth is somebody is gunning for you right now and it is better the flush them out in the open where you can get a clear shot.

I’m not saying to get all paranoid. Competition is healthy for a business and competitors can be as valuable as allies, if not more. So don’t cower in your office waiting on the attack. Instead, do a little recon and see who sniffs around your camp. You might do a little sniffing around their camp as well.

Then again the enemy may lie in more sinister places. Like in the interdepartmental feuds over what a company really does and how it should be communicated to the outside world. Or perhaps the stagnation of a brand that begins a momentous slide into shrinkage. I know the old saying says better the enemy you know than the one you don’t know but any of you who’ve taken on a home grown enemy probably agree you rather face Drago with your hands tied behind your back.

A true friend is a trusted enemy.

Friends in business are a curious phenomenon. I’m not talking Brian who goes with you to get a latte and scones. I’m talking about strategic partners and supposed allies who agree to relationships that essentially boils down to the equivalent commitment of they won’t let the dog poop in your yard if you have the same respect with your dog and their yard. In the Godfather, the Don said it: keep your enemies closer. At least an enemy is committed and has unwavering faithfulness to hating you. You can rely and even plan on your archnemesis’ disdain. All the while your supposed friends are working up other deals with other friends that all of a sudden propel them to stardom and you to the doldrums. Oops. Their bad!

Controlling your fate as it relates to your partners and competitors is an art that is tough to master. The easy place to start is to follow some rules the Don might have suggested. Be in no ones pocket. Be beholden to no one and make no excuses for protecting your businesses. Attack the weak before they get strong. Take every threat seriously. Don’t let your guard down for anyone whose fate is not inexplicably linked to the fate of the organization. Use the competitors’ force against them. And remember, while it is not war, it is how you make a living and provide for your family. If that is not worth a little fight once and a while, I’m not sure what is.

I wish Maura would just go ahead and kick that girl in the mouth.

It has been many years since Maura has seen her archnemesis, but it’s not the same with me. Some of my ardent critics are now close confidants. I have truly enjoyed the competition and now friendship of people I once pondered sending a poisonous snake to in the mail. Oh, don’t scoff. I know you’ve dreamed up worse.

So do it right now. Get a picture of the competition and hang it in the company bathroom for everyone to deface. Put it on a dart board or put a dialogue bubble coming from the mouth, unleashing a torrent of self-depreciating obscenities. If you don’t have an archnemesis, invent one. Take all that is despicable in your sector and embody it in a symbol of ugly stuffed animal or stupid trinket. Take your enemy and your disdain for them seriously.

Because it is better to have hated and won
Than to have not cared and lost anyway.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

War. Huh. Good Gosh Yall.

2007-03-27T09:36:00.001-07:00

The Cola War has been long and tiresome. There have been chemical weapons (Crystal Pepsi), dirty bombs (Christina Aguilera) and, most recently at Coke, a few insurgents. Yet still each year, a few inches are lost and a few are gained and to what end? The campaign’s budgets are only exceeded by the ambition to have a cola replace organized religion. You know, “catch that Pepsi spirit.”

North Korea isn’t the only one testing new weapons.

So now, Pepsi’s got them a newfangled brand idea and they intend to use it no matter what the UN says. The concept is “Feel the Pepsi” and its aim is to capture the volume and sheer awe of their 1970’s spirit catching effort. My recommendation: bring back epic “spokes dancer” Michael Jackson, incorporate “Taste of the New Generation” concepts and release a slightly modified campaign called “Feel the Youth”.

Doesn’t that just grab you?

This cola war has been studied for so long it’s gone flat. The once scenic market space of soda is now a wasteland of fads, slogans, once revolutionary media and aging pop stars. But the war has its lessons and we should take heed. The cola war cut the teeth of many a brand manager and the biggest lesson might be in a battle that has yet to happen.

Many, many years ago, the generals of Coca-Cola developed a secret weapon that would surely undo the enemy. This weapon was developed from years of frontline battles and its early tests assured a damaging blow to the competition. Coke loaded the weapon into its superior deployment system. They flew directly over the target and opened the bomb bay doors. The weapon released with a roar, plummeted towards the earth, hit the ground and failed to explode. Pepsi executives approached the weapon and admired its shining outer case proudly displaying “New Coke.”

What did Pepsi’s generals do with the unexploded ordinance? They hurled it over the line right into the Coke encampment after which it exploded with a ferocity not seen on aisle 12 in a long time. Coke’s bomb had exploded in their own face.

Every commander is expected to write a post mortem and Coke’s brass was no different. It seems every MBA class has something to say about New Coke. They spoke of the consumers who rebelled and favor the way Coke “used to be.” They reported the protest against changing a brand which people had used to define themselves. They acknowledged that it seemed that sabotage from the most loyal consumers was New Coke’s undoing. We now study that battle under the mantra of “the consumer is king”.

The dust has settled on aisle 12. Cola has become more of a cold war and the stockpiling of arms in other sectors seems to be the way of the foreseeable future. Both sides now have the “water bomb” and both sides have built alliances with major delivery systems. But what did Coke really learn? Will those who refuse to listen to history surely repeat it?

The next cola war: A prediction.

It will be a day not unlike today. People will gather in a conference room in one of the cola giant’s bunkers and amidst discussion the realization that things just aren’t what they used to be will appear. Awareness that distribution channels have changed, brand perception has shifted and consumers are just not who they used to be will creep over the room and set off terror within. The first strike will be a test.

One product will be repositioned. Perhaps steering Dr. Pepper in a nostalgia direction or maybe it’s a new way to “Do the Dew.” However it happens, the intention of the first strike is to make sure the weapons work after all those years in the silos. Will the bottlers march in step? With today’s fractured audience, can we really get the air power in the brief window available for a sweeping attack? And will Coke use the secret weapon?

The secret weapon was revealed in the New Coke attack. Consumers stood up and said they wanted a product that understood their heritage and roots. Consumers hoarded the Classic Coke as if their very identity was being stripped away and in a way, it was. There is real potency is the identification of heritage, enduring values and respect for a way of life that Coke seems more able to invoke than anyone or any brand.

The big lessons from the cola wars.

Get good intelligence.

There seems to be a tendency to want to sterilize and commoditize market intelligence. Coke’s focus groups said the product tasted better, so why the flop? Coke assumed that the consumer affinity was all about taste and ignored the more important intangible of persona and self identification. Perhaps more “feet on the street” intelligence would have warned against a disaster.

Keep your eyes in the boat.

Pepsi and Coke have barreled after some products with such focus that other opportunities get left unguarded. Tea, energy drinks and water are all sectors that Coke and Pepsi could have owned considering the pre-existing relationships and logistical systems. Concentration elsewhere have made Arizona, Red Bull and Evian little nuclear powers of their own.

3. Ideas are the most powerful weapon.

The reason that beverage sectors have developed in spite of the dominance of the two big kids is because of ideas. Ideas have changed the balance in many a war and marketers are wise to be on the lookout for good ideas. One need not be a maverick entrepreneur working in a garage to get great ideas. Procter & Gamble has an entire system dedicated to the best ideas money can buy. You don’t have as many successes as P&G and not recognize the power of great thinking.

Charge!!!!!

The big one is coming. Swelling arsenals and the stoking of quarterly stock expectations means it is inevitable that the two biggest kids in the lunchroom are going to have to fight. Pepsi has their posse called the new generation. They’ve got a standing army and every soldier in it feels the Pepsi. And then there’s Coke. They’re no youngster. They’ve got the muscle and the mean. They have the weapon. But will they use it?

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

You Don't Say

2007-03-27T09:35:00.001-07:00

I am perhaps the only person I know who is very interested in body language but does not want to use it to win at Texas hold’em. Despite my enjoyment of the rare occasion playing gin rummy, hearts or go fish, the images of seedy characters wearing Hank Williams, Jr. sunglasses and accountant visors glued to a table have just never done it for me. I was the lone detractor when a restaurant client of mine seemed to like the idea of not selling food in favor of all the Texas hold’em you can eat. It is a lonely, lonely time where you’re the only one who can’t seem to get “in” on a fad.

While I share little interest in the game with Texas holding aficionados, I have yet to encounter one who doesn’t want to talk about body language. I imagine the ability to decode the feeling and intent of the guy across the table wearing the cowboy hat and blue blockers, especially when the kids colleges money is on the line, would be kind of handy. My interest in nonverbal communication came about a different way and perhaps the same way it does for many, which is, in the pursuit of the opposite sex. Being able to unmasked the façade and decode nonverbal cues meant knowing if she was interested, bored, excited or defensive. Years ago, I studied nonverbal cues and their indications in psychological testing and analysis and today I observe focus groups and interviews looking for upturned wrists, crossed arms and toothless smiles and hoping to reveal a hidden opinion, group dynamic or unconscious reaction.

An upturned wrist? It means surrender. Bearing the wrist puts you in disadvantageous position to attack. Plus, it’s hard to hide a sharp rock or a steak knife when your wrist is facing upward. Some even speculate that shaking hands originated from the fact that shaking another’s hand would prove the other person wasn’t holding a weapon. I’m not sure how that would help when it comes to their other hand which might be holding an axe or a mace. Crossed arms can be both a reassurance and protection. We naturally put our arms in front of ourselves when we feel attacked but we also tend to self hug when we need the feeling of reassurance. As for the toothless smile that my real estate agent gives, the truth behind the façade is pretty sinister and I’m not referring to her blinding outer-space whitened teeth. When we genuinely smile, our whole face moves: cheeks, eyes, lips, brow, etc. When we fake smile, we move our lips but little else save for a slight squint of the eyes...to focus…as in to focus on a subject for attack. A fake smile is less a prelude to a kiss and more of a prelude to a knuckle sandwich served sans mayo.

Of course, there are body signals that are less about survival and more about survival of the species, such as the hip tilt. The hip tilt is a little maneuver that women can do thanks to the special construction of their hips. The tilt is achieved when weight is shifted to one hip and the waist is tilted out, accentuating the curve of her midsection and highlighting that she is, in fact, not a man. The posture is all but irresistible to men and if you need and example, look in pretty much any magazine where women are used to get men’s attention.

And that brings up attention. Our body seems to want to tell the world whether or not we are interested. We point our bodies in the direction of what we want to have, see or attack. When we try to hide that we are pointing, we point anyway. A person trying to conceal that they are interested in someone or something will still point their toes in the direction of interest. Next time you are in a social situation, first guess where the interest lies then look at everyone’s toes. Yeah, we’re surprised too.

I recall with great humor a situation while on vacation at the beach with a group of friends and how one little attention-starved vixen set up her beach chair perpendicular to and directly in front of all the other girls’ husbands. And while none of the wives fully verbalized why this made them mad, they were mad enough that the vixen is lucky she didn’t get force fed a bottle of Coppertone. Sure, she was just laying out her chair. Wrong. She was putting herself in a space where all the men of the group were seemingly directing their attention at her whether they had intended to or not. It wasn’t a message to the men as much as it was a message (and not a very pleasant one) to the other women.

So, if brands function best when they develop a functioning persona, then could one reason that brands have body language that inadvertently makes communication to consumers? The answer that helps and hurts many companies despite their contrary efforts is a definite yes. Companies and their brands tend to function less like a single organism and more like a coral reef. In a single organism, a central nerve center controls the function of ancillary processes. In a coral reef, thousands of organisms work together for the promise of shared success and prosperity. Basically put, nobody has to do anything on the reef. They simply choose to. And the result is that each organism has, at least, the possibility to send out its own signals.

It might be simpler if a company was only known by the communication it purposefully circulates. Such an idea is unlikely and possibly undesirable. Truthfully, the multiple levels of communication a company gives off helps fill the numerous gaps that no corporate communication department could cover. Additionally, the shedding of information works as a check and balance system of corporate behavior. Think I’m kidding? Ask Nike or one of their many 14-year-old Malaysian retirees. Companies who try to control the natural flow of communications end up creating a vacuous void and the consumer response is to assume something is being hidden from view. Much of the American way of life is rooted in the belief that information, be it the writ of habeas corpus or the freedom of the press, is an entitlement to be withheld from no one.

So, where are your company’s toes pointing? Are you covering up vulnerabilities or do you need a collective self hug? Let’s do a little digging and see what’s going on behind the toothless smile.

Is that a hip tilt or do you really need to use the bathroom?

Companies often seem coy about wanting to attract customers. While the media stratosphere is full of the outgoing, the vast majority of marketers seem to fear that if the put themselves out there, they’ll get shot down.

Often I have to tell a company how attractive they are. I imagine the years of struggle and humility have made some companies shy about how irresistible they are to consumers. My advice, realistically embrace your attractiveness. Understand your strengths and trouble spots and don’t be afraid to cop to either.

Put your beach chair there in the middle and you might get your eyes clawed out.

The opposite of bashful is attention starved. The hype-filled late nineties taught us that hype and attention are as good as money in the bank, so long as it’s somebody else’s money in your bank. Now that the dust has settled, companies should use good judgment before plopping right down in the middle of the watchful eyes that have been jaded from all the unfulfilled eye candy of the dotcoms.

It is better to hone your strengths and beckon from afar- a technique that attracts the most brand-loyal first and then pulls the larger and perhaps less forgiving mass behind. This type of lure has far more credibility and therefore staying power with the market.

Take a look at where your toes are pointing.

The toes of a company are simply important. It says something to consumers about who you are, what you’re interested in, how sincere you are and if you can be trusted with their loyalty. So what are you communicating to them outside of that booming ad or bloated press release that’s sugar coated for instant absorption? What does your charitable giving say about you? What does your labor relations say about you? What does your board composition, CEO’s choice of speaking engagements, headquarters’ architecture, interior design, two-sided business card or any of the myriad of other things that form the sum communication say about you? It might be time to start asking those questions.

A man in high heels defeats the purpose.

The idea behind high heels is that it makes women walk in a way that clearly distinguishes them from men. And that is the whole attraction, distinguishing and discernment. But companies often don’t want to highlight differences. They would rather blend into the perceived safe noise and hope that fading into the background is some kind of strategy to get customers attention. If you want your company to have an enduring and desirable brand, it might be time to find a better way to mediate attraction.

I recommend your company primp a little. Find out the secret to your attractiveness and control those nonverbal cues so that you are sending the right message with the whole company body. At the same time, listen to customers nonverbal cues and find out their true feelings and intentions. Understand and control the attraction, and you won’t be surprised when you look down at your customers’ feet and they’re pointing right at you.

Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Presenting the Soulamites

2007-03-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

I’m not bragging, but I play a mean rendition of James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing.” Our band, called the Soulamites after 1970’s poet and action star Dolemite, was a collection of suburban miscreants and band kids. We connected with the band kids because none of us could play a horn, and what is a soul band without horns? We played a set of clubs on Marietta Street in downtown Atlanta in an area that looked like the industrial parks in Robocop. In about 1/8 mile increments from the Georgia Tech campus lay the three spots: The Wreck Room, the Somber Reptile and PJ’s Nest. These were the places where I spent many of my teenage weekends playing “It’s Too Funky in Here” and “Soul Kitchen.”

It was one afternoon in late spring that I found myself in PJ’s Nest setting up for the four or five people who came to see us play when the opening act blared to full volume. It needs to be said that when it come to music, I have a high tolerance for cheesy. (Remember, I was a white kid from suburban Atlanta playing James Brown covers in a band named after a man also known as The Human Tornado.) I have played Montly Crüe songs without a hint of irony. I was a one man act in college playing filthy renditions of country songs under the name Rusty Bones. I am all about cheesy. But this particular opening act needed to be spread on a pita wafer topped with lemon honey and served with a fine Moscato D’Asti.

The singer was a man with long teased curly hair, a sleeveless shirt and bright white jeans. I also think he had some sort of chain link belt. The guitarist looked like Howard Stern on a crack binge and wore jeans so tight that he must have put them on wet and closed the zipper with pliers. The rest of the band looked like the cast of The Lost Boys, complete with leather trench coats, renaissance boots and trashy girlfriends. What this fashion club did have, however, was some of the best equipment we had even seen. The drummer had a full rail system with new Tama drums and every cymbal created since the Bronze Age. The guitarist played some sort of Ibanez with a handle on it (presumably for some sort of mid-solo acrobatic routine) popularized by 80’s axe hero Steve Vai. And when he went for a solo, we realized his guitar had a wireless connection which allowed him to rock his way through the crowd of eleven people to the back of the room and return with a pause to make some sort of tongue wag at his girlfriend. These guys’ music was so bad that the idea of hanging out in the toxic waste dump site across the street until our set didn’t seem like such a bad idea. They didn’t have talent.

What they had was production value.

Most advertising copywriters get their start in print where they don’t initially learn the amazing powers of production value. In print, you cannot hide. People are expecting words and while you can try to distract them with an appetizing, appealing or nearly pornographic picture, you most likely have to have some words or, at the very least, a concept. Sometimes you can pair a pretty picture with some obscurity like Viva La Product Name, but such flashy absconding of any real idea rarely happens outside of the worlds of fashion, clothing, automobile, liquors, restaurants, condo developments or consumer and household packaged goods.

It’s not until one enters the realm beyond print that the true idea-avoidance power of broadcast and web are realized. Don’t have anything useful to say about that new car you’re marketing? Don’t worry, you can just make it fly or turn into a cartoon or morph into a transformer. Got nothing to say on the radio? Well don’t let that stop you from radio advertising. You can just mix a bunch of faux celebrity voices making campy commentary with a few sound effects. You could also have a techno power track accompanying the echoing voice of a guy yelling that even if you don’t have a job, you too can have a Mitsubishi from their sales manager, Mr. Value.

Thanks to the special effects gleaned from Michael Jackson’s music videos and The Matrix, you no longer need to have an idea to advertise on broadcast. You simply dress up a non-idea with an explosion of production parlor tricks.

Overproduction does not simply dwell with those who create the broadcast or web content. Often we advertisers take a non-selling point and produce it into interesting but useless content. For example, a recently viewed commercial for Subway restaurants has a laudable plot of a person who walks to the counter and orders a number six value meal. When she changes her mind and orders a number nine, the server simply turns the box around apparently in a little jab about how competitors don’t offer variety. Ha ha. But folks, seriously, out of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Quizno’s, Arby’s and Subway, which do you feel has the least amount of distinctly different choices on the menu? Your funny joke’s on you, Subway. The spot is funny but remarkably untrue, useless and potentially counterproductive. Convince enough consumers that they deserve more choices, and they might agree.

You all know how much I love Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Their amazing crash spots for VW make you want to call your chiropractor. However, I have to disagree with the premise. VW has always been a quirky little car for individualists. The overwhelming majority of the new spots focus on safety. When consumers lashed out against VW some years back, it was not about safety, it was about quality. And while the new spots dramatically show that a VW is nearly as safe as a Volvo, nowhere is it mentioned that they improved the quality of the cars, which has made V-dub owners curse their vehicles for years. CP+B, great spots. V-dub, wrong pitch. Promise us the handle will never again break off in our hand.

So get up offa that thing and let’s talk about production value. Here some things to think about.

Does the creative work have an easily discernable premise which is not overrun by the production value?
Is the premise (or sales pitch) firmly rooted in a competitive strategy based on offering attribute and consumer perception?
Is the production congruent with the premise? In other word, does the car really need to fly to make the point?
Is the production value really a “value”? Does the benefit of the added production value justify the expense?

It’s not easy being cheesy.

It is not always easy for clients to see the blurred line between production value which is needed and production value which is a bunch of production engineers playing with their toys while you pay for it. Clients are not immersed in the business of producing television, so they must often depend on people to give unfettered advice about what is needed, what is not needed, what is a good idea and what is a non-idea wrapped up in flashy dissolves. I hope you have that trusted confidant already and if you, don’t call me, and for the price of lunch, I’ll tell the truth about production value. If you’re in the A-T-L, maybe we can go to lunch down on Marietta Street at the Somber Reptile Cajun Café. I hear they serve a mean crawfish étouffée.

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

What would Chuck Norris Do?

2007-03-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, a fight broke out. Well, it was more of an academic discussion concerning the greatness or absence thereof and the abilities, be they limited or limitless, of 1980s karate great Chuck Norris. It was highly scientific in nature with observations such as, “Chuck Norris’ roundhouse kicks have such speed that they traveled back in time and killed historical figures whose deaths had been, until now, unsolved.”

Making the jump from the big mat to the big screen is tough for anyone, beard or no beard. But Chuck did it with such grace and fury that he is a truly modern marvel of machismo. A whole generation of children took three or maybe four weeks of karate, all thanks to Chuck.

But Chuck is no match for Patrick Swayze, especially his character Dalton from the 80s blockbuster Roadhouse: a tour d’ testosterone of hard drinking, boot skootin’, karate, Sam Elliot and wearing suede renaissance boots with acid washed jeans.

In the movie, the bar called the Double Deuce is where most of the characters work and is center stage for the movie. The place is a peanuts-on-the-floor kind of dump with a nightly performance from a chicken wire shielded blues band. When the vivacious crowd gets a little out of hand, the bar tenders, waitresses, bouncers and the cooler, which was Dalton, all work together to keep things running smoothly. In a place like the Double Deuce, people are going to get out of control. It is in the proper management of the situation that the beauty lies.

The Bogey Man may check his closest for Chuck Norris before he goes to sleep, but when it comes to retail marketing, Dalton’s got a knock out punch (or roundhouse kick) that Chuck simply cannot stop. Not so long into the flick, Dalton tells the staff how it’s going to be.

“If I guy looks for trouble, tell him to stop. If he won’t stop, tell him to walk. If he won’t walk, walk him”. If you can’t walk him, get another guy and the two of you walk him together. And I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”

“When do we know that?” Asked a bartender

“You won’t. I’ll tell you.” snapped Dalton.

Let’s see the Texas Ranger make a verbal joust like that.

Despite his nearly perfect mullet, Dalton knows something you and I should probably take to heart besides karate. For starters, Dalton appreciates the nature of the room and the systematic interaction of the people in it. Second, he respects roles and the insight or expertise associated with those roles. Third, he has crystallized the path of customer interaction for his staff. Hang on. This will start to make sense in a hurry.

In retail marketing, we often fail to have a plan or defined roles, and it’s the lack of such that’s making us lose the fight. While the concept of a multi-faceted marketing approach has been discussed in this forum before, I’m going to narrow it to discuss its implications in retail sales. And, as always, I’ll start with a story.

In my work with Wolf Camera and Video, we positioned ourselves as the experts in photography. We carried expert equipment, if only to impress those with less expensive leanings. We used employee pricing on equipment to attract staff who moonlight as pro photographers and their extensive knowledge showed the serious consumer that we truly had expertise. We packaged up the image and sold it to the customer under the mantra, “Our expertise is free”. We controlled the image of customer experience with our metaphorical Waitresses, Bartenders, Bouncers and Coolers, and this is how it worked:

The Waitress
The waitress (or waiter) has a relatively low-knowledge job. She takes the order from a customer who knows what they want and, if asked, might make a suggestion or two. Don’t expect the waitress break up a fight.

In retail sales, our waitress was the counter clerk. He or she could make film recommendations and ring up sales but beyond that there wasn’t much more they were charged to do.

The Bartender
The bartender has a little more knowledge than the waitress and, owing to the expense and effort needed to get a good bartender, has probably been along a while longer. If you get in the skirmish, the bartender might hit you on the head with a bottle of Schnapps if you’re close to the bar, but don’t expect the crane technique from the bartender, it’s not his job.

In retail, our bartenders are often seasoned waitresses. They spent enough time around the place to know their way around and just the witnessing of the bouncers and coolers has shown them a few moves that they can readily employ. And like the Bartender, their experience and personality make them a great marketing tool, as people come in to see their favorite bartender.

The Bouncer
The bouncer gets things done. He is constantly watching the room for issues and opportunities. The bouncer can resolve almost any issue and works with other bouncers to keep the bar profitable with the least amount of head aches and homicides.

In retail, our bouncers were managers. They had the clout and stripes to get things done and they had the experience to close a sale that otherwise looked unwieldy to the bartender or waitress. When a serious customer came through the door, we typically routed them to the bouncer.

The Cooler
Dalton was the cooler, which means he solved the unsolvable, often with some kind of hybrid Kung-Fu. Not many businesses have the knowledge or wherewithal to have a cooler. But we did.

At Wolf, we had a cooler. He was a crispy, old school photographer who could fix any camera and knew pretty much everything about photography there was to know. If the customer was unwieldy and no one else could handle the request, we called in the cooler.

Here’s the kick in the head.

This seems simple, right? Sure, have people with differing skill levels and selling prowess manage a retail sales effort. Simple or not, it almost never happens. Rather than training or acquiring staff with high level skills, many of today’s retail environments seem content with social promotion where they simply promote the longest running bartender to a bouncer. Additionally, many retail environments fail to design the sales experience in a way that routes customers who have particular needs to the adequate resources. The end result is a total loss of efficiency in selling ability and the frustration of customers who cannot get the service they want.

I have long advocated for connected retail selling efforts to broader marketing themes, however the most strategic marketing will fail if the retail delivery is neither intrinsic nor tactical. Designing and monitoring the retail experience is as important as any other part of a marketing effort.

The idea of separation of roles and routing has numerous other applications in the contemporary marketing department. It means separating efforts, responsibility and authority concerning the different facets of an effort and allowing the individual tasks to complement each other. It means applying the appropriate resources to the right areas instead of bogging down your Cooler by making him serve drinks all night and having your waitress “walk” four guys with razor tipped boots. It means, more than anything, having a plan that everyone is in on.

You may disagree and say Chuck is tougher. Leaner and meaner. Well when it comes to dividing up the team and getting the job done right each time, I’ll quote Jeff Healey for my choice and say:

“The name is Dalton.”

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com

Post Script:

For your entertainment, I have listed some of my favorite Chuck Norris feats below as well as a link to a place with more feats and the chance to have them printed on a shirt.
Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.
Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.
Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.
When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.
Chuck Norris is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.
Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a royal flush.
There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was chilly, so he turned the sun up.
Chuck Norris can lead a horse to water AND make it drink.
Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch; HE decides what time it is.
Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.
Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. Chuck Norris bites frost
Remember the Soviet Union? They decided to quit after watching a DeltaForce marathon on Satellite TV.
Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.
Chuck Norris has two speeds. Walk, and Kill.

Who's with Charlie

2007-03-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Who’s with Charlie-

The first debate I was able to attend this year seemed like a giant circus. There was the incumbent and her entourage, looking more like an aging folk band than local politicians. There was the royal blood apologist who peppered conversation with profanity much to the print media’s delight and the broadcast media’s disdain. There was the career politician who stood for nothing with such fever and conviction, normally unseen outside the Beltway. And then there was Charlie.

Oh, election season. For those of us in the business, it’s a special time of gluing your cell phone to your head, yelling at the newspaper every morning and surviving solely on a diet of those little wrap sandwiches and cheap red wine served at fundraisers and forums. It’s not a job for the faint at heart, but it is a good job. For marketers, political work is somewhat of a Petri dish where brand, persona and voice can be meticulously tweaked with nearly instant results.

Charlie is a grandfatherly man who always has the perfect joke for the occasion. He was once a police officer but only has one arrest to his credit, a story he tells with neither pride nor shame. He drives several counties over every week to preach at a small church that ten years ago needed a preacher, and Charlie heard the call. As a young man, he was once literally beaten while trying to vote, yet today he is a serious contender to be our next mayor.

He is not a hard man to admire. I’m proud to say I’m with Charlie.

I sincerely encourage every marketing professional to help someone run for office. While our day jobs allow for the positioning of one product or service against another, politicians often adopt similar platforms requiring the marketer to split nuances and push persona to the forefront. In marketing, we often divide and departmentalize our efforts. In politics, the packaging, promotion and product have to work together in seamless harmony, or all you have to show for it is the payments you ending up making on the newspaper publisher’s Mabach.

This is my third election working with a candidate, and in each I’ve learned a little more about people and communication. I’ve learned that nothing is more potent than the truth and the rawer the truth is, the more impact it has when it is put out there. I’ve learned that people like people, and the more we distance candidates’ humanity, the more we distance the candidate and the voter. I’ve learned that the lessons learned by others are valuable. Knowing such, I’m going to try to pay it forward and tell you some of what I’ve learned. And because I think so much of Charlie, I’m going to use some of Charlie’s quotes to head each lesson.

“Do what you always did and you’ll get what you always got.”

Early in the election, professional political consultants started showing up like zombies at a mall. Charlie was pressured to listen to a consultant or two but in the end, he decided to be a maverick and just be himself. Resulting was a truly grassroots campaign that has unified once deeply separated groups, a feat no other candidate in this area has been able to accomplish.

As marketers, we are often guilty of doing what we always did but expecting something different than what we always got. While the prospect of defying convention can be uncomfortable, a strong strategy rooted in principle can give direction in otherwise uncharted waters. Charlie stuck to a strategy of being himself, and companies could take a lesson from Charlie in this respect.

“The guy with the cheapest price is probably overpaid.”

Today’s market is flooded with “great opportunities.” Media people have flooded the campaign office with the offer of web banners, sticky notes and special signage. All of these things promise to get out the vote for less money than conventional methods.

Today, companies border obsession with podcasts, YouTube and other assorted stunts aimed at bypassing traditional media. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you tattoo the brand name on your forehead, if the strategy is flawed or undefined (which it often is), there is no manner of webcasting that’s going to save it. Charlie’s take: say it from the heart wherever you can. Charlie ran three newspaper ads and the local politicos said he was out campaigning the competition. Three ads in the old newspaper, a medium that is supposedly declining, defined a platform and drew first blood.

“The day after Election Day, no matter what happens, we’ve still got to live with ourselves.”

After a searing editorial from my friends at a local paper (friends whom I sometimes call lying broods of spineless vipers unworthy of authoring a condo association newsletter, much less a newspaper), I was crestfallen and Charlie noticed. I wanted to counterattack with such overwhelming force that those pencil necks at the paper would shrink by 15 percent. Charlie consoled me. He said, “The day after the election, I will still be Charlie, and you will still be Jeff, and those people who confirmed the mistrust the public often has for them will have to live with their choices.”

It took getting into more mass market efforts before I realized the significance of this little pearl. When working with smaller companies’ marketing efforts, we did what we said and said what we did. But as the budget and expectations grew, I began to find promises made to the consumer that had no real intention of being fulfilled. I saw lavish sales presentations aimed at energizing a sales force but no follow through.
Relationships and expectations matter in a marketing effort. Business is about relationships. It’s the relationships between companies and consumers. It’s the relationships across the web of interconnectedness between suppliers and vendors and end users. It’s the interpersonal relationships within an organization.
I believe relationships are at their best when they are respectful, caring and beneficial while containing a mutual sense of responsibility and benefit. Many call such a relationship “win-win.” Relationships which by attention, compensation, respect or any other means dictate that one side of the relationship wins and the other loses are not positioned for long term success.
A market effort requires such a relationship, and the way that relationship is handled will be what we have to live with after the polls close.
Whatever your company’s hanging chad, when it come to marketing, you could benefit from a refresher in political science. Nowhere else can you see and hear the consumer with such personal connection. Nowhere else must you position a hair’s breadth from the competitor and say, “ I’m going to do what my competitor is doing, I’m just going to do it better.” Nowhere else can you meet such people who volunteer their time, money and sweat in the hopes that democracy gives each person voice in our nation’s destiny. I’ve met at least a handful of great people in politics and each one is a brand unto themselves. Dreamers, crusaders, optimists, nutcases and various combinations thereof. I’ve met plenty and I’m happy to say, I’m with Charlie.

####

Snowden Tatarski is a brand consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation of the whole brand experience. The agency offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising creative development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com