Monthly Archives: April 2016

Kindle Oasis. Ish.

0

I feel like a geezer when telling people I still read books on my Kindle.  As if it’s an old technology. Why not read on your tablet or phone people may ask? Well, I like the form factor. When my original Kindle seized up I wondered if I’d like the swipe feature over my click buttons.  The jury is still out but I’m getting used to it. The Kindle Paperwhite is back lit and that’s very cool – so agrees the wifus as I read in bed.  

kindle oasisKindle has just released the Oasis. As a defense against people who like to read on more multipurpose devices, Amazon logics the sell by saying the devise is only for reading – no distractions. No email, no texting. Just unfettered Henning Mankel. I love it. (Please don’t go all Airplane mode on me.)

Two trends I often post about are media “Twitch Points” and “Technology Backlash.” A twitch point is a media moment when one switches devices or media in search of more information or clarification. Twitching is easier on one device, but it’s not really multitasking, it’s serial. As for technology backlash, where people just want to disconnect and go au naturel, that is still a thing…even if we tweet about it. The Kindle Oasis, which is wonderfully named by the way, supports the latter trend and allows for the former, but in a more disconnected way.

Anyway, I love that Amazon gets us and our weird contradictions. Good job women and men of the jungle. Good job.

Peace.     

 

Change Dot Org.

0

The governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory, stepped back from his anti LGTB position yesterday after taking a ton of flak from the NC populace and feeling the economic heat of large organizations who pulled out of the state to show solidarity. Though he has not completely reversed – it’s a step toward making most parties happy. (Pet peeve: Do journalists try to make it hard to understand their prose? Example, “But he stopped short of opposing limits on which bathrooms transgender people could use….”     Stopped short (negative), of opposing (negative), limits (negative) – that’s net negative, right?)

Only in politics can you get away making a big change, listen to the people, change your mind and reverse course, and end up being better off than where you started. But that’s not really true.  When Coke launched New Coke, changing the formula, Coke drinkers were in an uproar. In one of the greatest marketing parries ever, Coke dashed New Coke and came back stronger than before. Most brand and marketing journalists will tell you the move galvanized Coke drinkers and re-launched the brand in a stronger position.

I’m not sure if governor McCrory is in a position that is stronger than ever, but I wouldn’t be surprised. When the people speak and you actually listen, it shows they have the power. Consumers and voters like that. It’s okay to listen and it’s okay to change.  

Try it. Peace.

 

The Negative Continuum.

0

The What’s The Idea? brand strategy framework is simple, 1 claim and 3 proof planks. To get there, the discovery process searches out consumer “care-abouts” and brand “good-ats.”  While exploring these things I’m always looking for positive ways to build strategic values.  For instance, a client launching a healthier-for-you cookie made with all natural ingredients, faced a category perception that products of this nature are often dry with harsh mouth feel. A negative. The brand plan made “moisture” a plank. A positive.

Leveraging negatives is a common marketing practice. But in branding, it’s all about the positives.

On the negative side of the ledger there is actually a continuum.  From most to least strenuous it includes: hatred, anger, annoyance, nuisance, irritation, and dissatisfaction.

When going positive, it’s important to have a sense of where on the continuum consumers lie when evaluating competitor or category negatives. Are dry natural cookies an annoyance or a nuisance? Then when promoting the moist nature of your cookie, you mete your response proportionately.

Today’s newspaper says the negative ads against Donald Trump are in record breaking territory, with $70M spent by fellow republicans alone. I wonder if they are using the negative continuum?

Peace?

 

 

Rhode Island. No commas or conjunctions.

0

Rhode Island’s new tagline “Cooler and warmer” is catching a lot of flak from the state’s citizenry. The lovely ocean state recently launched a new logo and tagline, costing the taxpayers a couple million dollars, and the homies are not happy. The logo is okay, but the tag has no ballast. Poetic? Perhaps. Goofy? No doubt.

rhode island logoSo how did Rhode Island get into this mess?  I’m guessing there was no brand brief. And if there was, it certainly lacked a tight idea. I used to mentor brief writers by telling them your claim should have “no commas or conjunctions.” A claim should be about one thing. “Tastes great, less filling” is the rule breaker. And let’s just say the Rhode Island brand brief was tight, then the tagline writer and approver rode roughshod over the process. For my money, there was no brief. Or it was a poorly crafted piece of strategy.

If anyone has a copy (on the off-chance there was a brief) and would like to share, I’d be happy to do some forensics.  Peace!

  

The Scariest Business Question Ever.

0

freud

I’ve been around large corporate environments. I’ve worked for some powerful people. I’ve seen what it take to reach the top. I’ve seen what it takes to stay on top. And I’ve also seen what a precipitous fall from the top looks like.

I say this as I read about the ouster of Disney’s Thomas Stagg, the heir apparent to Robert Iger. Did he see it coming? Did he know he wasn’t meeting expectation? When you are that high up in a company, do you know upon what you are being judged? It’s rarified air up there.

Remembering friends who ascended the mountaintop and were removed while reading about the sturm and drang at Disney has me thinking about adding a question to my business planning discovery questionnaire.

Here it is:

“If you were to be removed from your current position by the CEO or board of directors, to what would you attribute the firing?”

Freud doesn’t allow powerful men and women a wonderful night’s sleep without a few “naked-in-school-without-your-homework” dreams, so C-level executive think about this stuff. Don’t let them off the hook if they answer with high drama scenarios. Make them talk metrics.  That said, don’t allow them one-word answers like “growth” or “stockholder value.” Probe it. Ask them to storify it.

I’m thinking this is rich and richer territory. I can’t wait for my next assignment to try it out.

Peace.

 

Reddit As It Used To Was.

0

Reddit’s new blocking feature, intended to keep the angry in check on certain threads is likely to cause a problem long term for the site’s viability. Reddit has a reputation for some nasty-bad shit when it comes to threads and discussions in the community. There are certainly trolls in the weeds. If you are someone with thin skin (like me), Reddit may not be a good place for you. Early Reddit hire Chris Slowe was quoted as saying, a recent infusion of VC capital will allow Reddit to deal with “…fundamental product problems such as this.”  I’m not sure this is a product problem; it’s more a people problem. And it’s a problem that gives Reddit its biting community credential.

The misogynist and racial stuff is shit. That stuff has no place anywhere. But some of the nastygrams are just people trying to be funny. It’s hard to be funny for some people without being an asshole. And that’s okay. Been there. My fear is, if Reddit becomes too sanitized, with an intention of becoming a third the size of Facebook, it will lose its identity and become boring kudzu in the online fields.

Let Reddit evolve. Let it stay smaller but more powerful. Its tight community will police itself and evolve. Says me. Peace.

 

Sunkist, the brand.

0

One of the greatest brands in the world is Sunkist. Why, you ask? Well — because that’s all Sunkist is. A brand. Sunkist doesn’t make anything or own anything really. It’s just a brand name licensed to number of producers who make everything from Sunkist oranges and juices to sodas and candies. All over the world. Sunkist does not manufacture a thing.

What they do manufacture are marketing programs, brand use rules, and lots of money. At one point around 1910, a Sunkist loyalty program designed to fend off competing merchants by awarding buyers a free spoon for every 12 oranges purchased, made Sunkist the country’s largest purchaser of cutlery.

From a simple organization of orange growers, using great brand management and smart advertising agents has grown a brand that brings a tingle to the mouth and a smile to billions of faces around the world.

Peace.

 

A Tale of Two Launches.

0

Ain’t technology grand?  A new drone delivery company, Zipline, is getting ready to use drones to deliver cold blood supplies and pharmaceuticals to hospitals and docs in need, in Rwanda. It’s genius. Life-saving genius. If you want to lauch a new technology or business, it helps to save lives.  Rwanda makes sense because they need just in time, refrigerated delivery and the red tape is easily cut through. The gub-ment in Rwanda is malleable enough to make smart things happen. Drone delivery in the US has a ways to go. We have enough stuff flying around overhead. Combine that with all our misters of transportation, refrigeration, taxes and such and it will be like waiting in line at the DMV before action. Probably a good thing.

I was lucky enough to be involved with a healthcare start-up, Ketofast, that wanted to launch in the US a couple of years ago. It was a doctor supervised weight loss modality that helped morbidly obese people lose 9% of their body fat in 10 days. It was not particularly invasive, had been tested with over 50,000 people in Italy, and offered a lower recidivism rates, by 3 times, than other weight loss alternatives – including surgery.

Problem was 50 state insurance orgs. needed to approve the modality. Insurance and Medicaid had to get on board. Red tape upon red tape. In a country where just about one in three are considered obese, and diabetes is rampant, this product could have been a revolution. But for complicated governance. Sad, but true. Maybe we should have some members of the Rwandan government come on by and give a speech about health urgency.

Peace.

The Rending of HP.

0

Meg Whitman, who is the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, it seems to me, doesn’t have a marketing bone in her body. She is amazingly successful and a brand unto herself, but marketing is not a major care-about for her. If she cared she would have fought harder to keep HP together and invest into the PC and printer businesses. (Are you reading this on a PC? Is it 6 feet from your HP printer?)  Instead she split the company and took control of something called Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a huge battleship of a company with a stodgy, clunky brand, positioned around an idea “Accelerating Next.” Como se 1990s?

Of the two diverged companies I’m kind of liking the PC and printer business, branded HP Inc. Its new CEO Dion Weisler seems a marketeer. He understands it all starts with a product and has smartly dialed up R&D resulting in some laptop forms that are beginning to create excitement. His printers are offering up consumer care-abouts like lower cost ink and faster printing. It also appears he’s a bit of a showman — introducing some laptops inside one another, as with nested Russian dolls.   

When you think about it, Mr. Whitman got the business brands and Mr. Weisler got the consumer brands which was probably a good plan.

That said, I always bet on a business person with marketing chops.  Let’s see what the future of these two brands bring.

Peace.

 

Mining for Proof.

0

A foundational element of my branding practice is “proof.”  When I start out, sans strategy, I am seeking proof.  Proof of what? I do not then know. I’m also on the lookout for deeds – the things people do in pursuit of commerce advantage. I filter out all the flah flah, adjectives and marko-babble about quality and people, and I mine for evidence.

In Lucent Technologies first ad after breaking off from AT&T, it claimed “Invented the Transistor.” Now there’s a pregnant piece of proof. An example of a question I might ask executives during discovery is “What business practice is uniquely yours?” Hunting for deeds.  

Today it was reported in the NYT that a Viking site may have been found in Newfoundland by archaeologists. A site that could help re-write North American history. They used input from oral Viking history but it is proof that will seal the deal: Smelting evidence, fire broken boulders, wall remnants.

If you are doing a branding project and your brand strategist curls your hair with talk of symbolism, authenticity, and customer journey you are likely in for a long ride.  But if you can tell the brand planner is on the hunt for proof, deeds and evidence, you’re know they are mining in the right place.

Peace.