Wild monkeys swinging through my brain

Creating an environment to be alone with your thoughts can be an impossible task these days for those who make our living stringing words together. Finding that elusive flow when one thought trips effortlessly into the next, crafting a coherent thought when all around you randomness explodes and shiny objects erupt from your dozens of open desktop applications. Nevermind the texting, the kids screaming, dog yelping, stomach rumbling, dryer beeping it's wrinkle guard warning for the dozenth time. Would Hemmingway stand a chance against these distractions? So I eagerly want to try out this new program called Ommwriter. It creates a serene, zen-like world to concentrate on that elusive threesome of writer-page-inspiration. It's not a word processing program (ok, it kind of is), but more of a matrix that combines sounds and aesthetics and the veil of stimulative privacy that I haven't experienced in so long. Hence, the lack of postings as of late.
So far, so good. I'll report back later.

Bad, bad blogger

Lordy, lordy. Look at all them nasty weeds growing in my new blog garden. Got to find time to go out there and tend to it soon.

Crowd-sourcing the designer right out of the room

Fascinating article in the NYTimes SundayBusiness section yesterday. You can read it yourself, but here’s the nub of the question: with immediate, quantitative feedback available so readily online, what role should the designer play? Nearly every aesthetic decision can be measured now, which makes it a tempting trap to let the crowd decide how a brand should not only behave, but even how thin the rule should be around the logo file.

This seems to completely hamstring the potential of design, reducing it to operate completely in the margins. I’m a big believer that the consumer ultimately drives the brand as I've posted before. But marketers must look at users’ intent, frustrations and ambitions first, then design the experience appropriately.

Why aren’t brands flirting with me anymore?

There are worse things to be accused other than a “flirt.” A good flirtation can make your day, whether you’re the receiver or instigator (or best of all, if you can participate in some mutually satisfactory flirtation). And I’m not talking (strictly) about man-woman interplay. We flirt with our clients, our vendors, the barista from whom we’re hoping to coax a more generous dollop of froth. I even flirt with my kids in the hope of drawing them into a family activity or get them to take an interest in a homework subject.

At its best, an ad campaigns is little more than a well-coordinated flirtation. It shows interest in you, and how you feel. It flatters your intelligence, and sophistication. And it leaves you with the promise of something more and exciting if you’ll just return the favor and spend just some additional time (consideration, money, etc.).

It seems that brands have lost their flirt. Advertisers have become more transaction based, building their core brand essence around generating immediate response, and what’s being squeezed out of the conversation is even the effort to show interest in consumers as people with lives and desires and egos to stroke. Blame it on the current economy, sure. But I think this began way before the current downturn and escalated retail urgency. Even categories that should be steeped in seduction (travel, high-end autos, cosmetics) have taken on the shrill and somewhat desperate tone of blunt mercantile exchanges. Where’s the romance?

Here’s one theory. We consumers don’t want our brands to make goo-goo eyes at us anymore. Our collective cynicism have built up because the brands we’ve given our heart to over the years have disappointed us or simply gone away. Besides, if I want to flirt and be flirted with, we can always Twitter. After all, a good flirtation should be accomplishable in 40 characters or less.

Coleco football and Dig Dug still rule, but...

First off, I am not a gamer. In fact I stay clear of most video games probably for the same reason Robert Downey, Jr., avoids heroin. We know it’s fun, and it will completely consume our lives and ruin our careers.
That said, we marketers have to stay current on gaming if for no other reason that it continues to occupy an enormous and growing chunk of consumer’s eyeball time. Another reason I waned from my latent gaming habit is that while graphics, levels and experience kept getting better and better, the basic narratives of most games began to bore me. The major platforms and producers seemed to have stalled on a few basic game conceits: the first-person shooter, civilization building (Sims) and sports.
It looks like that may be changing. A burgeoning Indie gaming industry has begun to make an impact in the gaming oligopoly. You may have heard of the first Indie game blockbuster, “Flower,” where you control a single petal in the breeze in the hope of building a new eco-system. Reviewers call it meditative and “Zen-like.” Not exactly words usually associated with PlayStation games. Another game still in trial called “In the Pit” really captured my attention. The game runs with no graphics; players navigate the game and combat monsters using only sound cues. Dig it: a video game without video!
That’s the kind of counter-intuitive creativity that we can take gaming to the next level. Any new games push your buttons?

The most interesting beer in the world

Did the internet steal all the badge brands? There was a time when you could tell me a guy’s favorite beer, and I could give you a pretty good personality sketch without meeting him. With wider distribution, the decline of the corner bar and diffusing of traditional working-class America, I don’t think that’s the case anymore. But the beer someone chooses to hold in his hands still signals a great deal about how he perceives himself and how he wishes to portray it to others. When creating a beer or spirit campaign, a colleague of mine used to always talk about “bringing the bar mate to life”, i.e: the guy sitting next to you on the bar who the beer represents. Is he an outlaw, a wiseass, a confidante? Who do you want to be seen with?
That’s one of the reasons my favorite campaigns right now continues to be Dos Equis. It launched its “Most Interesting Man In The World” campaign back in 2007 and the work has done nothing but grow on me since.
The beer category obviously operates on some pretty obvious parameters (men being clever, seeking acceptance from peers and getting the girl who’s out of your league). Add to that, Mexican beers have typically played in a much smaller conceptual space, usually on much smaller budgets than their American competitors.
Dos Equis completely redraws the map on how to think about a beer with Mexican pedigree and the person who chooses it. What impresses most is how choiceful they were in their strategy. They completely walk away from typical usage occasion cues for South-of-the-border brews, specifically the food you eat and the state-of-mind you want to capture.
The campaign exudes confidence and personality, but does so in a way that brings you in on the joke. And most of all, it rings true to its drinker. No, he doesn’t always drink beer. He enjoys a wide variety of options, and tries to make adventurous choices. The only thing more refreshing than a cold beer on a hot day may be a little honesty in advertising. Aren’t you thirsty for more?

The spot that started it.

So what's the point?

Every category operates within its own set of rules, a theater of preconceived notions (by the marketplace and the marketers) that we all basically have to play by.  All the ducks stay in a row. One of the reasons I champion the notion of Disruptive Thinking is that it allows us to define a category in new terms, where the winners and also-rans can be reshuffled a bit.  It makes consumers reconsider and look on your product with new eyes.

I’m working on two posts that give some examples in two different product worlds: beer and videogames.  Stay tuned.

If I were going to start a band, I think I’d name it “Content for Eyeballs.”

I was reading a great article about how such wildly popular sites such as Facebook and YouTube struggle with the mounting, suffocating costs of expanded bandwidth without a proper review stream to offset it.  Growth in online ad review began slowing it’s assent early last year and limped into the end of 2008 showing a fairly anemic 10% increase.  Meanwhile spending on traditional broad media continued to drop like my 401K.  Meanwhile the cost of hosting and streaming the endless amount of stuff we post on Facebook and YouTube may not require any wood pulp for paper or barrels of ink to produce, but it takes an acre of servers and millions of dollars in bandwidth daily.

Read the story here.  Or listen to the podcast like I did. (The podcast killed the online article faster than the online article killed the newspaper – discuss.)

The point here is the model of trading Content for Eyeballs could be failing in the digital arena even faster than it is failing in the sickly world of print and television.  So be careful to fall head-over-heals ga-ga in love for the new channel to save our industry. We may be hopping from one troubled media outlet to the other hoping to find a platform that sustains past, say next quarter

I can't muster any sympathy or fear for the young turks behind FB.  They'll manage to survive longer than the Des Moines Register, for example. Because they have a culture of change, risk and adaptability that marketers must now embrace to survive.

Harry Kalas and the slow muting of brands

Harry Kalas died yesterday.

The long-time announcer for the Philadelphia Phillies was one of the best in the business and part of the exclusive broadcasting fraternity that has lost many members the past few years.  Mel Allen, Harry Carray and my own beloved Jack Buck to name a few.  These men were the soul and character of the baseball community they served, and each was as integral a part of their respective teams as a uniform or ballpark.  Kalas, whose deep, rattling voice could shake the leaves off a tree in Spring, was also the voice of another great brand, NFL Films.

It made me think about the role of the announcer in branding.  We talk a lot about a brand’s voice, and when we usually mean how the brand behaves and how it presents itself to consumers.  But one tool we always had to define that is the actual voice that spoke to us on behalf of an advertiser.  Now with more communications happening via non-broadcast channels, brands have by and large been set on mute with fewer opportunities to speak to an audience verbally.  A voice can be an indelible part of a brand’s equity.  Think Tony the Tiger.  With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.  Gene Hackman inviting us to fly the friendly skies of united.  The right personality can help lower our skepticism and build a relationship, not to mention a recall that lasts for years.

What takes its place?  Probably it’s that voice in our head.  The one that narrates what we read online or does the commentary track while we walk the mall.  I don’t know about you, but my voice can’t hold a note in comparison to Gene Hackman or Harry Kalas.

Everything you need to know about advertising can be found in a Wesley Snipes movie

There’s an exchange in an early scene of Passenger 57 when a would-be hijacker barges into the cockpit brandishing a gun.

“Who’s in charge?” he asks.

The captain stoically responds, “I am.”

Wrong answer. Blam-blam. “Once again,” the hijacker continues, now addressing the co-pilot. “Who’s in charge?”

“You are,” says the co-pilot.

That pretty much sums it up. Those of us not willing to relinquish control to the consumer will end up as a dead character actor.

Depressing?  Hardly.  It’s actually liberating to give people the power to consume your brand and your message the way they want.  Let them be the media. The co-author. Engage them. They will reward a brand that understands and respects them.

We don’t have the market cornered on talent, ideas and strategic thinking any more. But now, more than ever, it’s up to us to be the true steward of the brand.  Guide the experience, create new places for the brand to live, and fearlessly collaborate with each other and the audience.

I for one think this is going to be a fun ride.