If Russell Davies will forgive me, I have a new assignment for his Account Planning School of the Web. 

The topic: the cruise ship industry. 

The question: what the hell happened? 

The task: break down the problem, build up the industry.

Your assignment (should you accept it):

save this industry with a cunning piece of meaning management.  First the analysis.  Then the creative.  For God’s sake, Tom, do something!

__________________________________________________________________

It’s no fair asking others to do what you will not do yourself.  So here’s my 5 cents worth, just to get things started.  I expect submissions to be vastly better than what follows. 

1) Pirates!

The real world seemed to become a theater for cruise ship misadventure.  Terrorists killed an Israeli citizen on one cruise ship.  A mysterious disease broke out on another.  Staff members were accused of sexual impropriety on a third.  And for one Greenwich man featured on 60 Minutes (or something), a honeymoon cruise ended in death.   

All of this is from memory, and that is as it should be.  The idea "cruise ship," once idyllic and peaceful, is now crowded with violent images and vague fears.  Something tells me a cruise ship was actually even boarded by pirates.  I may be thinking of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but the point is "Cruise ship" is now a semantic space that invites "boarding" by malevolent creatures and unhappy imaginings of every kind.

2) A suburb at sea

Something about the idea of cruise ship is suggests that even if things go well, the possibility of captivity is still quite likely. I mean, what if you get stuck at a table with real drones.  What if there is no TV, and all the films are Gidget.  What if you really feel like getting away from it all?  Where are you going to go?  It’s as if cruise ship stayed still and the ocean moved beneath it.  Somehow I think of the cruise ship as a suburb at sea, predictable and tedious.  Sure, you can get off in port.  What, and go shopping?  Cruise ships feel like a world with the dynamism removed.  (And perhaps this is why we are now so prepared to imagine bad things.  Perhaps we trying to put the dynamism back in.  We merely over corrected.) 

3) Resort culture

There was a time, the 1950s, say, when this culture worshipped lots of things that were bad for you: sugar, sun, fat, salt, alcohol, smoking and Wayne Newton.  People went to Vegas and other resorts to relax.  But it’s a wonder they made it home alive.  Some part of me imagines (falsely, I’m sure) that cruise ships just happen to be the place that resort culture went to die.  I imagine that some where out there on the ocean are little worlds of smorgasbord, free drinks, lounge acts, gambling, sun burns and frightening quantities of cholesterol.  The old Vegas.  In technocolor.  Out there on the high seas.  Vegas before Circe and Steve.  Vegas without the drugs and prostitution to give the place the tang of criminality and lawlessness.  Vegas with no mobsters to add drama and snappy dressing. 

4) the anti-Cuba

Someone once persuaded me that the future was going to look like Cuba before the revolution, that it would become a place of unimaginable contrast, cruelty, and extravagance.  I don’t that this is true, but by this standard, cruise ships, as opportunities for new experience and engagement, feel a little like toys for the bathtub, tiny, plastic ships that can negotiate the  miniature, well enamelled sea, but no other.  Adventure or excitement?  Forget it.   By this reckoning, what the cruise ship does, effectively, is to lock the traveller away from the world. 

Ok, that’s enough.  Feel free to discard, rewrite, or render intelligible, as you want.  Now for the assignment.

1) do your own (better) analysis.  What are the systematic properties of cruise ships before the fall.  (Or am I kidding myself?)  What happened to bring the industry low?  What were the deeper cultural trends that drove this descent?  What were the more immediate causes?  What was happening in the industry itself?  (I am not sure how you find this part out, but, hey, if you want to get a degree from Russell Davies, you will learn to be resourceful.  Make it up if you have to.) 

2) give us a strategic plan

What needs to happen here?  Map the strategic space.  Lots of fields.  Lots of arrows.  Lots of powerpointing.  How does the cruise ship industry need to do to restore itself?

3) give us an action plan

What do we do now, in the next 12 months, 2 years, and 5 years.

Good luck and God speed.

I am at Marketing Science Institute meetings on ethnography in Toronto.  If the wireless connections here at the 4 Seasons weren’t almost completely random, I might have posted something on the conference by this time.

Arg!  There is lots going on here and I look forward to sharing it with you when time and connections allow.  In the meantime, some thoughts on the TV show that holds viewers, most of them, in the palm of its hand.  American Idol, what an enterprise!

But from a marketing point of view, we need to break it down.  (I think that’s a James Brown phrase, but let us appropriate it for our marketing purposes.  From a branding point of view, it is clear that Coca-Cola is riding a rocket. They signed up early and someone at TCCC (the Coca-Cola Company) now looks like a frickin genius.  (And if someone saw what was going to happen here before it happened here, they are a frickin genius.)

So what does Coke have?  If we think about this from a celebrity endorsement point of view, it gets interesting.  On the one hand, we could say that …

I interrupt this blog to report that at 8:57 in the Studio Cafe here in the 4 Season’s hotel in Toronto, a group of very large people passed my table and one of them was Al Gore.  Al Gore!  This is celebrity sighting and a small indication of the lengths to which This Blog Sits At will go to serve the interests of its constituency.  Everywhere you want to be.  Or wouldn’t mind being.  Or wouldn’t mind being as long as someone else was picking up the tab.  Or wouldn’t mind being as long as someone else was picking up the tag, AND House  or Bones or… for that matter, American Idol, wasn’t on.  Hey, don’t be like that.  This is a great man.  Or at least a really large one.  Hey!

Sorry, on the one hand, we could say that American Idol is the ultimate just-in-time experiment.  Coke gets to make a connection with celebrities at the very moment of their minting, just as they are "coming to market."  No brand can hope to be more current than this.  On the other hand, Coke must make itself a party to a brutal winnowing process as a result of which some of the nation’s sweethearts are eliminated.  This can’t be good.

I think the branding sweet spot for Coke should be that moment when there are, say, 8 contestants in place.  Coke has helped mint the latest celebrities, present, as it were, at the moment of creation.  As the number dwindle however, Coke is actually party to the elimination of favorites and the destruction of dreams.  This is not the place any brand every wants to be.

This is a tractable marketing problem.  Coke can grow and shrink its presense on screen, according to the moment.  There is meaning management to be undertaken here.  Is TCCC thinking this way.  Or are they just hoping for a maximum of exposure whatever the context/contest in question.  I fear the latter.  Hey, maybe they should be running for office. 

I went to the opera, Wagner, last night, a weird MET production that teetered between solemn and camp.  Eesh. 

Robert Wagner, now with this Wagner, an actor of standing, a man of deep and relentless talent, this sort of thing doesn’t happen.  Ok, so it happens all the time.  Never mind. 

But what was really distressing was the conversation at dinner.  I listened to people talk about how very confusing things are inside some corporations, how little clarity is brought to bear on critical questions of the brand.

It’s as if there’s no system.  The marketing people, often MBAs, are reduced to issuing "make it so" pronouncements.  Because, chances are, they don’t know how to "make it so."  Let’s hope someone else does. 

Business schools are not very forthcoming on this one.  What is the brand?  How does the brand speak for the marketing team and the corporation?  How does it speak to the consumer, in all of his/her/their blooming?  How does the brand keep it’s center of gravity in a culture that looks more and more like the Bermuda triangle in hurricane season.  (Brands disappear!  We don’t know why!)  This is a complicated business about which the business school offers merely a chapter here and there, and at best a course in the second year. 

But really it’s up to kids without much preparation to preside over the brand, and they are making a hash of it.  Just ask anyone who works with them. 

Brands, they are really, really, really hard to do well.  Very smart people, with great training, working at the top of their game, with magnificent colleagues and limitless resources can still get it wrong. When is the business school world going to snap out of it and get this right? 

When Wagner sings Wagner at the MET, that would be my guess.  Maybe we should just start again. 

From a Sony Corporation press release:

Mr. Stringer [Sony CEO] focused on the increasingly personalized nature of entertainment and the importance of recognizing and accommodating the needs of the individual while providing choice and convenience in the ways that consumers use Sony products.

From a Sony Corporation website:

We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. You don’t seem to be using that particular browser at the moment, so, unfortunately, we’ll have to part ways until we support the browser you’re currently using or you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer.

References

Anonymous. 2006.  Sony Corporation Press Release: "Howard Stringer, Sony Chairman and CEO Presents Sony’s Vision for Entertaining the Future at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada January 5, 2006." here. 

The Sony Corporation website "Connect" here.  (I provoked the message above by visiting the Sony site with Firefox.)

Donald Trump, he’s a polarizing guy, isn’t he?  Either you think he’s a total moron or you think he’s an absolute idiot.

What I really dislike about the show is the way it distorts our idea of capitalism and marketing. 

Sure there are moments in the corporation when the knives come out, but I would be astonished to learn that people are ever obliged to stand up and denounce one another.  Mr. Trump, I believe you are thinking of the show trials of Stalinist Russia.  Oh, don’t feel bad.  It’s an easy mistake to make.  I get them mixed up all the time. 

Further more, unless the profession has changed over the weekend, marketing is not a matter of amateur dramatics in the streets of Manhattan.  In the show last time, the team created a "marketing campaign" for the Gillette Fusion that obliged them to take to the streets in their bathrobes.  In the only other show I have seen, the team gave a public Karaoke performance.

Mr. Trump, no one does this.   This is not marketing.  It may be good television but…oh, let’s be honest, it’s moronic television. 

What is it about this guy?  Once a decade, he rises like a Phoenix, not from the flames but his own ignominy…only to screw it up all over again.  Some day, Donald Trump will make a interesting subject for someone writing about self branding and celebrity construction.  For the moment, he’s, well, an embarrassment to us all. 

Marketing nations is hard.  Constrained by bureaucrats, the creatives are reduced to the banal and the exclamatory.  Incredible India!  Supernatural British Columbia!  Uniquely Singapore!  Malaysia: Truly Asia!  WOW Philippines!  England: little and damp! 

And along comes Australia with "So where the bloody hell are you?"  Ah, bless them.  This is perfect.  The spot shows scenes of Australia at its most sumptuous, and Australians saying things like,

"We’ve bought you a beer.  And we’ve had the camels shampooed. And we’ve got the sharks out of the pool." [An aboriginal dancer adds:] "And we’ve been rehearsing for over 40,000 years."

The execution is not quite as charming as the idea.  The punch line "So where the bloody hell are you?" comes from a beautiful young woman on the beach (pictured) and she quite deliberately jiggles while delivering her line.  Yes, yes, I know we’ve seen the return of jiggle television, so why not jiggle advertising?  It’s facile marketing, that’s why.  If you need a jiggling 18 year old to sell your line, well, actually, the line is so good, it didn’t need a jiggling 18 year old.

What’s good about the line "So where the bloody hell are you?" is that it captures what I take to be a peculiarly national endowment.  Australians have so perfected the art of bonhomie that they can trade in frankness without being rude.  They can challenge without ceasing to be companionable.  In the vernacular: Australians can get in your face without getting all up in your face about it.  (On the map of cultures, only Italians can do this kind of thing so well.)

Now, in a postmodernist time we know that any generalization about nations is a very slippery business.  At the very mention of the word "Australia" our heads fill with panorama, breaking surf, shell-like opera houses, kangaroos, guys called Bruce, girls called Sheila, shrimps on the barbie…and we know all of this is crap.  Australia is a very various place, like all countries (with the possible and tragic exception of France) a stereotype in ruins. 

But, postmodernists be damned, there are national tendencies.  I suspect that Australian bonhomie is something we could identify, measure and confirm.  And as long as this is so, those of us who live in cultures that are preoccupied with ceremonial exactitude listen to ads of this kind and go, "ah, a vacation from getting it exactly right." 

And let’s face it, Australia is the old America.  Heart on the sleeve, tell like it is, forthrightness, this used to be an American virtue.  And it was the reason the English kids at Cambridge would sometimes gather round a North American, thrilled and perhaps a little scandalized  to be in the presence of someone who didn’t have to get it right every time.  It seemed a little liberating (when it was not manifestly risible…some of them could not decide.)  No, Australia is to America what American used to be to England, a place not entirely Japanese in its attention to the niceties of social interaction. 

And this ad captures that perfectly.  And what a value ad this is.  To give people a vacation from the perplexing difficulties of their daily life, when old rules have been overthrown, and new ones not yet created, (most of my Connecticut neighbors have retreated into rudeness), this is a good thing surely, and the best way to build a national brand and to wow the would-be tourist. 

Marketing nations doesn’t have to be an exercise in the banal and the exclamatory.  And as the new consumer goes looking for touristic experiences (not national stereotypes) plainly, it can no longer afford to be. Good on ya, Australia. 

Reference

Kotler, Phillip.  1993. Marketing Places: Attracting Investment, Industy and Tourism to Cities, States and Nations.  New York: Free Press. 

Stanley, Bruce.  2006.  &@#$%!– Australia Throws Another Tourism Advertising Slogan on the Barbie.  Wall Street Journal.  March 10, 2006; Page B1. (subscription required)

The "where the bloody hell are you?" campaign here.

Acknowledgments

Tom McFarlane, M&C Saatchi’s regional creative director in Sydney.

John Howard, Australian Prime Minister for defending the spot. 

This is very big news for marketing.  The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) may be converting to a "long tail" model marketing. 

Given its pending portfolio of coffee soda, gourmet teas and Godiva drinks, Coca-Cola is expected to expend more time and energy on low-volume, high-margin categories than ever.  (Hein, in Adweek, today, ref. below)

As Hein notes, that TCCC has a history of creating small brands and then losing interest in them.  But it now appears to be acting in earnest, with a slew of new launches, including Coke Blak, Gold Peak Tea, and Godiva Coffee. 

It’s hard for a company like TCCC to supply the long tail.  The corporate mind set is shaped by the sales volume associated with Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.  Anything less looks like a waste of time. 

But the market reeducates us all.  Big brand erosion appears to have persuaded them that a "long tail" approach is now obligatory.  In the words of Caroline Levy, a gifted analyst at UBS, "I believe they understand they have no choice now." 

But here’s the kicker.  There are moments in the Adweek article where it sounds like people inside and outside TCCC universe believe that this the new brands are being driven by nothing so much as the health considerations attached to sugar and carbonation.  This would mean that TCCC would be making the right move for the wrong reason.

Surely, people are moving away from CSD (carbonated soda drinks) but just as clearly, never will be see monolithic brands like Coca-Cola and Diet-Coke rise to take their place.  This is because the market has fragmented, plenitude has exploded, and we will never put Humpty Dumpty together again.  What we are looking at is a long tail market, as Chris Anderson would call it, in which niches exist not because consumers are in flight from old "unhealthy" brands but because their taste and preference is busting out in all directions.

Is TCCC using long tail language?  No, according to Hein, they are multiplying products to speak to various "need states." 

Rather than look at beverages on a category by category basis, Mary Minnick, head of marketing, innovation and strategic growth, has said Coke is looking at how beverages fit into consumers lives. She has described the need states as, "Enjoyment today," "feel good today," and "be well tomorrow." 

I have never been crazy about the "need state" model.  It colonized vast portions of the marketing world, and if it helps a marketer model diversity of taste and preference, that’s all to the good.  But finally, it does not encourage a systematic cartography of the long tail.  If TCCC thinks it is innovating to address a "feel good today" need state, it is prevented from seeing that it is in fact talking to the newly various America.  And this, even more than what counts as acceptable sales volume, is one of the great challenges for TCCC is an era of plenitude.

Will TCCC embrace a long tail model?  In what was perhaps the most expensive "cost saving measure" in the history of the CSD industry, TCCC CEO Douglas Daft some years ago fired the Atlanta marketing team.  This made it difficult for the corporation to practice marketing at the top of its game.  The good news is that Neville Isdell is rebuilding this team.  So one of the necessary conditions of transition is now in place

There is evidence of a robust and leading thinking happening inside the corporation.  The "light it up" campaign shows intelligence and courage TCCC hasn’t exhibit in some time.  (Though even here the results are uneven.  "Haircut" was wonderful.  "Boy kisses girl" was cliched.) 

Let’s cross our fingers and hope that TCCC installs a "long tail" model.

References

Hein, Kenneth.  2006.  Strategy: Coke Seeks Relief (Again) By Scratching The Niche.  Adweek.  March 06, 2006.  here.  (subscription required)

McCracken, Grant. 2006.  Lighting it up at the Coca-Cola Company.  This Blog Sits at … February 17, 2006.  here. 

For a long time, financial services regarded marketing as infra dig, something you did (if you did it) while holding your nose.  But this is changing. 

A friend and former banker, Susan Abbott, wrote to say that Charles Schwab had always been ahead of the marketing game.  And indeed yesterday, I spotted an Schwab ad that read:

"’My house is worth a million’ is not a retirement plan"

Wonderful.  This demonstrates a detailed knowledge of the consumer.  My research tells me this is precisely the way many consumers think about their financial affairs.  The topic is so loaded with mystery and anxiety that if the consumer has a "short form" solution (like "my house is worth a million"), he/she will seize on this as their "plan."  And when there’s talk about a real estate bubble, well, a tremor runs through the consumer, but even this is not enough to make them seize the issue and put things right.

"My house" goes right at this issue.  It goes straight into the consumer.  It finds them where they live.  This is consumer centricity, that great objective of all marketing, so much praised, so rarely accomplished.  "My House" engages in that remarkable way that good research and creative can. 

Props go to Euro RSCG Worldwide-New York (especially Ron Berger and Michael Lee), and to the marketing team at Schwab, (and especially Rebecca Saeger).  It looks as if Schwab did the research.  Plainly Euro RSCG did the creative. 

I wonder if other players in financial services know how good this work is and far they must go to catch up.  As Schwab’s Glen Mathison puts it, "[Most financial services advertising is] filled with images of people on the beach or with their families, and it doesn’t stand out."  Indeed, most financial institutions are still the captives of the kind of thing the CSD industry was doing in the 1950s and early 1960s.  "Happy families" is the rough equivalent of Coke’s "fun in the sun" creative. 

This tells us how steep is the marketing mountain most must now climb. 

I leave for later discussion (or reader comment), the use of "Chuck" instead of Charles Schwab and the use of Waking Life animation in the TV spots.  I am on the fence about "Chuck."  I am  impressed with one of the Waking Life animations (the Asian guy) and a little creeped out by another (the execution for "woman on a chair lift").  Both are vivid, however, and return to memory with a power that "people sitting on the beach" cannot match.

References

Elliott, Stuart.  2005.  A Schwab Campaign Steeped in Personality.  New York Times.  September 27, 2005. 

French, Julie.  2005.  Campaign Close-Up: Charles Schwab. Sales and Marketing.  here.
(This is the source for the Mathison quote.)

McCracken, Grant. 2006. Marketing the Capital Markets.  This Blog Sits At…  February 17, 2006.  here.

Yesterday, I noted that Blue Ocean Strategy does consistently well in the Amazon rankings despite the fact that it is not very good, spectacularly naive, and almost certainly too French. 

Today, I am taking on another title: Lovemarks.  The cruelest thing about this book, for me, is that its worst rank on Amazon is better than my average rank there.   (You may treat everything that follows as sour grapes.)

There is lots to like about Lovemarks. It is written in an accessible prose.  It is generously supplied with images that do make things more lively and interesting.  The expanded edition includes quotes from readers.  So it’s kind of interactive.

The good news: this book is art directed.  The bad news: so’s the prose.

This is breathless, imperative, exclamatory and over capitalized.

Be passionately curious about everything.  (p. 206)

The reader ends up in a state of conceptual excitation that I have not experienced since I spent an afternoon at the Science Center in Toronto.  After a couple of hours of pushing buzzers, spinning wheels, and otherwise "making science," its all I could do to keep from "operating" every shiny object in the parking lot.  The spirit of the exhibit space had colonized consciousness.

So it is with Lovemarks. 

I began to notice that all my thoughts were followed by exclamation points!  I had to struggle to keep from shouting pronouncements at fellow passengers on the train.  (I am on the train as I write this.)

It may be unfair to examine this kind of thing too carefully.  But unless I am mistaken, this is what we do with "books." 

Consider this. 

Give your brain a rest.  There is nothing wrong with thinking but thinking demands action to make any sense. (190)

My brain is quite rested, thank you, and I am very glad to hear that there is nothing wrong with thinking, but I can’t imagine what you mean.  "Thinking demands action to make any sense."  I am trying to think what you mean, but…  Oh, I see, I must act it to get it.  Dramatize it.  Shout it at fellow passengers, possibly?  No, that didn’t help.  Some seem, well, distressed and I’m none the wiser.   

But this is too easy.  And coming from an obscure author like me, it does sound like sour grapes.  No, if I am to "add value" here is by offering an act of intellectual salvage.  (If only that gave me claim to 10% of the value of the wreck.)  Is there a way of seeing how Lovemarks creates value for the reader?  Is there some way pulling it off the rocks of exclamation, contradiction and hyperventilation?

I think there is.  We may think of Kevin Roberts as a prophet.  Lovemarks is an opportunity to escape the way brands are defined by economics, business schools, the big consulting houses, most senior managers, and the capital markets. 

The "economics model" defines the consumer as an economic man, the purchase as a transaction, motive as the search for utility, marketing as exchange of information, and brands as a badge of trust.

The "lovemarks" model says the consumer is a little dreamy, purchase an act of connection, motive the search for meaning, marketing the exchange of emotion, and the brand, wait for it, a mark of love. 

This is a better view in some ways.  With people like Clayton Christensen insisting on functional branding, we need all the Kevin Roberts we can get.  As long as b-schools and seniors managers treat brands like blunt objects, Lovemarks gets high marks. 

But there is a larger issue here. We have been searching for a way out of the economic model for some time now.

Economics, which assumes people are basically reasonable and respond straightforwardly to incentives, is no longer queen of the social sciences.  The events of the past years have thrown us back to the murky realms of theology, sociology, anthropology and history. Even economists know this, and are migrating to more behaviorialist and cultural approaches. (David Brooks in the New York Times)

This might be called the "Northwest passage" of our time.  (European nations of the early modern period risked lives and fortunes searching for a faster way to the riches of the Orient.) 

Has Roberts found the Northwest passage?  Does Lovemarks give us a way of moving beyond the economic model into something richer, more nuanced, more, er, Asian? 

Well, yes and no, but mostly no.  He has sold a lot of books, and some of them are probably being read by the inhabitants of the economics approach to branding.  And some of these will have had an conversion experience and now regard all trademarks, potentially, as lovemarks.  But many more will have looked at the riot of image and assertion and said, "Oh, lord, let me return to the verities of economics."

Lovemarks is messy, self indulgent, and where it is intelligible, wrongheaded.  Lovemarks, we are told, are created when branders cultivate mystery, sensuality and intimacy.  All these are apt objectives for the marketing team and important objectives for the brand.  But all are astonishingly delicate, perishable and nuanced. 

The bad news: we simply cannot get there from here.  If we want mystery, sensuality and intimacy, it’s going to take something more the exclamation and exhortation.  It’s going to take  something more than advice like:

Get out of the office. Ask the great questions. (206) Call three consumers.  Every day.  (144)  Give your brain a rest.  Embrace emotion.  Kick the information addiction.  (190) 

If we want to win mystery, sensuality and intimacy for the brand, it’s going to take a system, dry, thoughtful, grounded, nuanced, and powerful.  It’s going to have to be something that the people at McKinsey (or any HBS grad) can look at without sneering.  (We can just imagine how they received, "Kick the information addiction.") 

The corporation has always known the brand is something more than an economic proposition.  And finding that "something more" was the ad agency’s job.   The corporation used the agency to make imagination, creativity and better branding available, without having to endure it inhouse, or allowing it to interfere with the economics model.  But, in the last decade or so, branding (and the creativity and innovation it represents) has become too important to be left to the agency alone.  That’s why, not incidentally, the God-like A.G. Lafley consented to write the introduction to this book.  Creativity, once the special preserve of the agency, was now everyone’s concern.

What Roberts spotted is that the madness of the agency must now migrate into the larger corporate world.  Banging insight, Mr. Roberts.  But your book is enough to make one weep.  These ideas are too important to be trusted to the exclamatory mode.  There is a Northwest passage out there somewhere.  But we are not never going to find it this way.  We are going to need the help of better navigators.

Here’s the thing that really rankles.  Lovemarks is misnamed.  It should have been called Lovemark.  For it is in fact a lavish, four colour, print ad for Saatchi and Saatchi.  I can’t believe the other agencies are letting him get away with this.  I know the CEO of Arnold has a book out.  How about the other agencies?  Time for other CEOs to put pen to paper.  And when they do, they should call me.

References

McCracken, Grant.  2006.  Economic Man: Absent without leave in the pages on the NYT.  This  Blog… here.  (for the quote from Brooks)

McCracken, Grant.  2005.  And stop calling me stupid.  This Blog … here.  (for a criticism of the Christensen "function" model of branding)

Roberts, Kevin.  2005.  Lovemarks: the future beyond brands.  2nd edition.  New York: powerHouse. 

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday.  UPS managed to move my new computer from Shanghai to Norwalk in 3 days.  Impressive! 

Then it took 3 days to fail to deliver it the last mile.  Not impressive!

When bad execution happens to good brands!  At some point, the letters UPS came spontaneously to stand for "U People Suck!"  Juvenile, I’m sure, but when brands disappoint us, we will rewrite them.

My distinguished colleague at Corante, Olivier Blanchard, very kindly smiled on my Friday post about marketing financial services, and asked me for more on the topic.  I am happy to oblige.

Friday, we noted that financial services and the capital markets have recently been obliged to climb down off their high horse.  Now they must at least pretend that the "consumer is king," that "voice of the consumer" counts, that it is time to be "consumer centric," [insert favorite marketing cliche here].  (Well, they may be cliches to us.  Not in the money biz, apparently.)

Friday, we noted there are muddles in the models.  Thus, when American Century Investments uses Lance Armstrong, it’s not clear they have it exactly right.  The metaphor (Lance is to athletic achievement what you the consumer can be to financial achievement) spins into implausibility.  No meaning is transferred.  A great wad of cash is wasted.  The consumer is mystified.

Today, an ad from citi:

It’s not I$NY

The heart of New York

is so much more than Wall Street

To help keep it in perspective,

we offer free financial guidance

to help you get control of your future.

Because after all,

people drive the economy.

The stock market just rides shot gun.

Something about this ad makes me nervous.  There is something odd about protesting the obvious.  Surely, none of us has ever doubted that "the heart of New York is so much more than Wall Street."

I can’t help wondering whether this is not a kind of semiotic leakage.  Without meaning to, the ad gives away the Wall Street conviction that it is the center of NYC. 

And then citi presumes to help me "keep it in perspective."  Um.  Actually, I believe this is my job, keeping things in perspective is, and, no, no help is actually called for. 

Then there’s the non sequitur: financial guidance will help me keep the fact that Wall Street is not the heart of Wall Street?  Really?  I guess I see what’s intended here.  That good advice will help me think less about money, and that will help me participate in the life of the city.  But, er, advertising is the art where perfect clarity meets perfect compression.  No guessing should be necessary. 

But then things get really strange.  "People drive the economy, the stock market just rides shotgun." 

So you’re saying my career is a covered wagon.  Really, I am so flattered.  Really, I am this close to tears.  And, what, you’re protecting me?  With a shot gun?  Get out of here!  I’m, like, Roy Rogers.  And you’re like…Jingles!  Jingles with a shotgun!  That gives me a nice warm feeling.  A large, stupid man with his finger on the trigger. 

But let’s take the metaphor seriously.  On Friday, I compared the capital markets to the black nobility of the Vatican: creatures of great power, prestige and standing.  But this metaphor repositions things rather dramatically, doesn’t it?  Now the capital markets are creatures of the open range.  No important distinctions of rank here.  And all of us are creatures of action, quick to respond to the lawlessness of the wild west.  (I rather like this part of the equation.  Contemporary markets are a little like the wild west, dangerous and unpredictable.)

This concept of the capital markets is a little better than the aristocratic one.  It collapses the status difference.  It supplants lordly disdain with something more engaged, more combative.  But I can’t help feeling there is a via media here, something in between the grand elites and rough hewn heroics. 

It’s a little like watching an evolutionary process.  An industry that never used to care about marketing is having to learn how to do it on the run, branding itself as it goes.  Each players in the industry is trying out several experments.  Some of them (Lance and Jingles) will work as object lessons, what not to do.  The industry "brand" will eventually prove emergent. 

I’m just guessing but I think the future of the marketing the capital markets lies almost exactly between Jingles and J.P. Morgan. 

References

Blanchard, Olivier.  2006.  Let the games begin.  Editorial at Corante Marketing. here. 

The office of J.P. Morgan and Company at 23 Wall Street is  luxurious but unmarked.  The implicit message: "If you have to ask, you can’t come in."

The world of financial markets was close to an aristocratic preserve.  Its occupants were to capital what the "black nobility" were to the Pope: noble Roman families with prestigious ceremonial positions at the papal court and vast influence in the city beyond.

These princes of capitalism weren’t like the rest of us, grubby merchants struggling to make a living.  These people came from good families.  They had the benefit of good degrees, patrician manners, and the right connections.  Most of all, they enjoyed a certain self confidence, and a quiet self regard. 

Most of all, the princes of capitalism did not shill.  After all, shill was shrill.  Every gentleman and woman understood that the first law of status was sprezzatura (to conceal art with art, to conceal effort with grace).  You might be "working at it."  But you must never be seen to be "working at it."

If you have to ask, you can’t come in.

But things have changed.  Now the capital markets live in a world that’s a lot like yours and mine.  They have to ask.  This means marketing. 

And they have their work cut out for them.  Most people still treat matters of money, capital, finance, the stock market, and even simple banking matters as if they were essential mystical or at least magical.  The math makes it scary.  What remains of the hauteur of the capital markets makes it intimidating.

But there is a mystery at the very heart of money.  For most people, even sophisticated, well educated people, in a sensible world, money doesn’t make money, people do.  Most were raised with a notion that value is created by an "honest day of labor."  The idea that money makes money, this is insufficient narrative.  Who’s the agent, we want to know.  How can something make more of itself?  (I know it sounds crazy.  But then that’s what anthropology is for: unearthing things that on finer scrutiny are simply odd.)

Lots of the consumers of financial institutions practice "money avoidance."  Once they set things up, they tend to leave them be.  Leave to the expert.  Even if the interest rate is ludicrous.  Even if the financial products are completely wrong for them.  Good news for the existing bank, mutual fund or credit card.  Bad news for anyone who is trying to win new business. 

But everyone is now trying.  And the most trying try are those photos we see in the lobby of our local bank.  Stock images of happy families, young, prosperous, sunny.  Oi!  This marketing gesture is designed to put a human face on capital, but, for my money, it just ends up making the enterprise look even more mythical and extraplanetary.  I mean, who are these people?

And then you get the ad that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this morning.  It reads "Put Your Lance Face on" and it shows Lance Armstrong head and shoulders, larger than life.  The photo is over-lit so that we can see every pore on Mr. Armstrong’s face and Mr. Armstrong has an expression that is absolutely Martian.  He looks like the human machine we know him to be. 

We can see what American Century Investments was trying to do.  Here’s what the ad says:

What does it mean to put your Lance face on?  It means taking responsbility for your future.  It means developing a plan for the most important goals in your life.  It mean staying focused and determined in the face of challenges.  When it comes to investing, it means the same thing.  Lance makes every decision count.  You can too.  For more information, contact our financial advisor…

Not very subtle.  Not by any means state of the art advertising.  But a sincere effort to draw a comparison between Lance Armstrong and the kind of investor we can be if we work with American Century Investments.

The trouble is, and this is the strategic problem, it is really hard for any of us to accept the comparison.  All of us know Lance Armstrong to be a kind of God.  I mean, the guy recovers from cancer and wins the Tour de France.  He wins the Tour de France over and over again.  If there is a hero in our world, if there is a human who has assumed mythical proportions, it’s Lance Armstrong.  The ad would like to transfer meaning (responsibility, focus, determination) from Lance to us, thanks to American Century Investments, but none of us is likely to find this plausible.

The trouble is, and this is the executional problem, the ad itself exacerbates the strategic issue by giving us a picture of Lance that confirms our worst suspicion: that he’s not like us, that all comparisons are preposterous.  Lance is a Martian.  We are not.  (Well, I’m hoping I have a couple of Martian readers.  You know who you are.)

I am sure my distinguished colleague in Toronto, Susan Abbott, a former banker and a gifted marketer, would have caught this marketing howler.  I suspect that Pip Coburn and his remarkable team at Coburn Ventures would have thought their way out of it.

But a good deal of the rest of the capital markets are struggling to catch up to an elementary understanding of marketing.  How they must stoop to conquer!

References

Anon.  2006.  "Put Your Lance Face On."  Full page ad for American Century Investments.  Wall Street Journal.  February 10, 2006, p. A9.

You’d think the Superbowl was a contest between ad agencies, and of course it is.  After the ads, various media pundits are called upon to pundit (or punt it, as the case may be).  The results are almost always grim, a thorough going demonstration of how little we understand advertising and the culture for which and to which it speaks.

Eugene Secunda, an adjunct media studies professor of the department of culture and communication at New York University and former senior VP at J. Walter Thompson went so far as the suggest that beer consumers are "essentially nihilist" and "cynical, hostile, angry people. There’s a lot of mindlessness and destructiveness."

Really?

George Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said beer ads tell viewers that beer is "the raison d’être for being involved in the sport."

Wha?

Pleading for mercy, one of our own, Linda Kaplan Thaler, CEO and CCO of Kaplan Thaler Group, said creators of successful beer commercials must "think of the mind-set of the person they are trying to reach.’

And on behalf of beer companies, I’ve spent a lot of time in bars talking to people about beer consumption.  The mind-set is not mindless or destructive.  No one I talked to thought that beer was the raison d’etre for being involved in the sport of football.  (Mind you, and to be fair, I did not interview anyone in an insane asylum.)

To sum up this research for Miller Lite, I wrote a little essay some years ago called "Riggins man" which seemed to me to capture the mind-set of beer consumers.  I can share it with you because Margaret Mark, an executive with the JWT, republished it in a book called the Hero and the Outlaw. 

Riggins man

Riggins man was first spotted in the early 1980s at an affair of state.  He was in fact discovered in a Washington stateroom filled with dignitaries, luminaries and celebrities.  The dinner was held to celebrate Reagan’s presidency and a new era.  This was Washington at its most sumptuous. The president himself was about to speak.  The crowd fell silent.

Almost silent.  From a far corner of the room came a rumbling sound, almost as if someone were snoring.  As it turned out, someone was snoring.  Someone had fallen asleep in front of the President of the United States on one of the great social events of the season.   The ceremonial order of Washington had been breached.  The new imperial presidency had been wounded.

People were outraged. Who dared affront the president?  Eyes searched the room for the author of this impertinence.  Where was the poor schmo who had pegged out in his salad?  He will be made to rue this day.  The crowd will set upon him.  They will hound him into a life of bureaucratic insignificance on the far reaches of empire.  This guy will be lucky to end up running a post office in rural Oregon. 

Two legs stuck out from beneath rich linen folds to mark the culprit’s lair.   Here the snorer lay.  A group gathered to look on in astonishment and indignation.  Someone peered under the table.  He was, first, puzzled, and, then, he smiled.  The word spread, and now everyone was smiling.  The snorer, it turned out, was John Riggins, running back for the local football team, the Washington Redskins.

The diplomatic incident de-escalated as suddenly as it had arisen.  Everyone suddenly stopped ‘recoiling in horror’ and ‘sniffing in disapproval.’  No one leapt to restore the honor of the president.  Security wondered whether they shouldn’t remove this "stupid, vulgar" man.  But everyone just looked at them, as if to say, "What, are you kidding?  Let him sleep.  He’s probably really tired or something."  In the blink of an eye, everyone went from high indignation to rye amusement, as if to say "Well, that’s John Riggins for you.  Riggins fell asleep listening to the president?  Wait till I tell the kids." 

What protected Riggins from punishment?  Partly, it was the old joke, "where does an elephant sleep?"  (Anywhere it wants to.)  But there was something else.  Riggins’s gesture tapped the way Americans define maleness.  Confronted by ceremony, formality, and politesse, the Riggins male is supposed to crawl under a table and go to sleep.

Football players, the theory goes, are works of nature untouched by civilization.  They are men who do not know and do not care for the niceties of polite society.  Football is, after all, the practice of barely mediated violence.  It is an exertion of a primitive kind.  Off the gridiron, out of violent male company, obliged to present a social self, these men are bored witless.  Remove this elemental man from his elements, and a nap is inevitable.

Almost every group of males includes a Riggins male and almost all of them surround him with ambivalence.  He is essential even as he is there on sufferance.  He will often react without thinking.  He will often engage in reckless behavior.  He will precipitate misadventure, fights, and commotion.  He is gives new meaning to the cliché, an accident waiting to happen.  He is tolerated by the group precisely because he has a Riggins quality, because he keeps the flame for the group, he is an elemental male. 

The classic representation of this character in popular culture was John Belushi, an actor who made the cultural form his "part" on screen and, tragically, off.  A somewhat more nuanced portrayal has come from Steve Zahn who played the part in SubUrbia (1997, Richard Linklater).  He is "Buff," a maniacal teenager who plays triumphant air guitar and taunts the world with mock but vivid threats of sex and violence.  He is exuberant, good hearted, red necked, and clueless.  Buff is never really sure what is going on around him, but he is quick to surrender to the impulse of the moment, whatever that might be.  His group of friends indulges him even when his behavior reflects on them.  He is a cherished member of the group even when at odds with it.

In Out of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh), Zahn (as Glenn Michaels) plays the role again, but Soderbergh, in his characteristically brilliant way, finds a way to undo the myth.  Glenn plays the thoughtless force, but it isn’t long before he finds himself out of his depth.  In a key scene, he is called upon to participate in a savage act of murder, and he is thoroughly undone.  The remaining scenes show him wandering catatonically in a blood stained sweater, still at a remove from the world around him, but not any longer because he is a vital, primitive force at odds with it.

I will spare you the strategic recommendations, but this will give you a small indication of the "mind set" of the beer drinker.  Now, clearly, Riggins man is in the Steve Zahn "format," an unusual male and a small part of the larger group.  But my argument was that all guys, when drinking beer, especially in groups of men, veer towards Rigginsness.  Even guys who are otherwise mild mannered and bookish. 

Now that we have the mindset, we can assess the advertising winners and the losers of Superbowl more carefully.

Winners (in this order)

1. Bud Light: Hidden beer in office (The beer hunts reveals the Riggins man within)
2. Bud Light: Save yourself (stealing another man’s beer is exactly what Riggins man would do)
3. Bud Light: Fridge worship
4. Bud Light: On the roof

Losers (in this order)

1. Michelob Ultra (girls don’t tackle Riggins men)
2. Miller Genuine Draft (Riggins man does not care about checkgirl’s approval.  At all.)

Honorable mention

1) Degree for men: the "stunt" spot is almost perfectly Riggins, including touch of self mockery at end. 

2) Ted Ferguson, Stunt man (this is another spot for Bud Lite, not shown during the Superbowl).

On the client side, the award goes to Marlene Coulis, 14-year A-B veteran, and the first woman — and first Hispanic person — to hold the top marketing post and Bob Lachky here predecessor.

I am unable to identify the agency responsible for this work.  If anyone knows, please let me know. 

Thanks to fellow Canadian and Montrealler and friend, Stephane (see his excellent comment below), I can now say that the agency in question is DDB, Chicago.  Now, does anyone know the names of the creative team? 

References

LaPointe, Joe.  2006.  Great Beer Ad Debate: Funny or Irresponsible.  February 5, 2006.  here.
(both quotes above from LaPointe)

Find all the ads from the Superbowl at ifilm here.

Friends of mine went to a London hotel recently only to discover that they couldn’t check in.  In fact, they couldn’t find see a front desk. 

No, instead, they were met in the lobby and quietly ushered to their room.  No standing in line.  No fishing out of credit cards.  No waiting for the staff and technology to "sign them in."

Sign them in?  Was that ever necessary.?  Who said so? But it is, for all of us, so much a part of the ritual of visiting a hotel that Cheryl and Craig said that they were briefly disoriented.  They were standing in their room, thinking, "Um, are we here yet."

Front desks and entry rituals, these are so deeply etched in our cultures, the hospitality industry, and our own expectations, that the world is a little confusing without them.  But in an era of the high-end hotel, they are, of course, completely gratuitous, and a classic example of the dead head of competence.  We force you to stand in line, because we always have. 

Capitalism finds advantage "outside the box."  So we are quick to "reinvent the world."  It takes us several decades to do so, but finally someone had the wit to eliminate the front desk and the entry ritual.

My question, and I do have one, who was this?  This is one of those wonderful innovations thrown off by the world of marketing, but no one is going to get the credit.  I’ve made this point here before, but the other meaning makers in our culture (film makers, talk show hosts, writers) get lots of ink.  No sooner were we treated to endless interviews with Peter Jackson to celebrate the release of King Kong, then we must now endure endless photos of and stories about George Clooney.  Hollywood would very much like to shower this fella with Oscars, so we will be subject to Clooney "revelations" right through Febuary. 

But will we ever learn who "rethought" the front desk of the hotel?  Not a chance.

In November, I was singing the praises of Geoffrey Frost, the man who brought the Razr through Motorola and into the world.  This guy did something extraordinary, and he died, November 17th, virtually unheralded.  As an anthropologist, I am obliged to tell you, this is just screwed up.  Our culture does not honor everyone it might. 

Another example is Stephen Gordon, the guy who founded and ran Restoration Hardware.  I wanted to write a case about him when I was at Harvard, and somehow the chance slipped away.  Now he appears to have left Restoration Hardware altogether.  (And if you have been in a Restoration Hardware recently, I didn’t have to tell you this.)  It is not impossible to find traces of this guy’s career on line, including, for instance, this intriquing comment:

It’s not about nostalgia. It’s an intuitive process to understand what an egg beater can mean to people, to package a set of salt cellars so they evoke a whole set of  memories…We appreciate tradition and history, but we stay away from ye-old.

Here’s my plea: please would you rack your brain and let me know of people like Geoffrey Frost or Stephen Gordon, that we might sing their praises here and perhaps elsewhere on Corante.  I mean, if we don’t, who’s going to?

References

Anon. n.d., Restoration Hardware.  Publication of the Corporate Design Foundation. here.
(source for the Stephen Gordon quote)

Russell Davies has kindly asked me to act as a visiting professor at the Account Planning School of the Web.  I am honored.

Now I must think of an assignment.  Here’s one.  It’s called "Building a lifestyle."  By "lifestyle" I mean the characteristic choices from media and material culture that a group of consumers uses to define itself and the world.  I cast the net wide to include: the Rat Pack, Preps (in the 1980s), Sloan Street Rangers, Geeks, Chaps (see the website http://www.thechap.net), Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Hippies, the New Georgians, and so on.  You get the idea.  (See the bibliography below for supporting documents and other suggestions.) 

The Rat pack life style includes characteristic choices in how to conduct oneself in public (fist fights OK), a style of language (lots of beatnik talk), highly characteristic dress (styling suits with thin labels and ties), a defining way of thinking about and treating women, a very particular view of maleness, a very particular view of the world (self advertising mixed with deep solidarity, splashy, public, brawling) and so on.  (How particular was this lifestyle versus other lifestyles of the postwar period?  Try to imagine Cary Grant as a Rat Pack member, or any of the Rat pack guys as Cary Grant.)

I want APSW students to design a lifestyle from the ground up, specifying favorite music, films, novels, style of dress, home furnishing, style of speech and so on.  Make it cohere in some ways.  Make it inconsisent in other.  Build in some contradictions.  It is the latter two, as much as the first, that make a lifestyle live. 

I am tempted to impose this constraint: For American students, the demographic segments lives in the American sunbelt.  For British students, they live in the Home counties.  In both cases, these consumers are middle class, retired and over the age of 55.  Nota benne: this age group is still often stereotyped as unimaginative and culturally conservative.  The rest of us know better.  There are NO constraints here.  Take for granted that this segment is as creative and reckless as any other. 

Education Objectives

1. Great account planners, in my experience, are informed about their cultures.  They know life styles.  My hope is that building life styles will make students sensitive to the issue of lifestyle and more appreciative of naturally occurring choices.

2. Many of the great brands came up by drawing inspiration and loyalty from a new lifestyle (Jeep, Scotch, natural food, and so on).  And some brands have actually created a new lifestyle (Starbuck’s Third space, Nike’s athletics for everyone).  This is the original "blue ocean" strategy.  Build a lifestyle and some part of consumer loyalty, taste and preference belongs to the corporation.  (This way lies glory and ever lasting fame for the account planner.)  This is something more than an exercise.

This may or may not be the final form of the assignment.  I will look to Russell for his advice.   

Reading suggestions

Allsop, Kenneth. 1964. The Angry Decade: a survey of the cultural revolt of the nineteen-fifties. London: Peter Owen Limited.

Artley, Alexandra, and John Martin Robinson. 1985. The New Georgian Handbook. London: Ebury Press.

Asimov, Eric. 1996. The New Bad-Boy Sound: Space Age Pop. The New York Times January 6, 1996: E2.

Barr, Ann, and Peter York. 1982. The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook: The first guide to what really matters in life. London: Ebury.

Belk, Russell W. 1986a. Yuppies as Arbiters of the Emerging Consumption Style.  514-19. Advances in Consumer Research, ed. Richard J Lutz. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.

Birnbach, Lisa, ed. 1980. The Official Preppy Handbook.  New York: Workman Publishing.

Brooks, David. 2000. Bobos in paradise: The new upper class and how they got there. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Cohen, Leonard. 1966. Beautiful losers. New York: Viking Press.

Dyer, Richard. 1994. Fashioning Change: Gay men’s style.  Stonewall 25: The making of the Lesbian and Gay community in Britain. editors Emma Healy, and Angela Mason, 178-88. London: Virago Press.

Finestone, Harold. 1960. Cats, Kicks and Color. in Identity and Anxiety: Survival of the person in mass society. editors Maurice R. Stein, Arthur J. Vidich, and David Manning White, 435-48. Glencoe?: The Free Press.

Fitzgerald, Frances. 1987. The Castro. in Cities on a Hill: A journey through contemporary American cultures. Frances Fitzgerald, 25-119. New York: Touchstone, Simon and Schuster.

Heerdegen, Juergen, and Andrew Dickson. Straight-edge.com.

Katz, Jon. 2000. Geeks how two lost boys rode the Internet out of Idaho. 1st ed ed. New York: Villard Books.

Kluver, Billy. 1997. A Day with Picasso: Twenty-four Photographs by Jean Cocteau. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Swingers. 1996. Doug Liman.

Lippert, Barbara. 1995. Our Martha, Ourselves. New York Magazine May 15, 1995: 26-32, 35.

Twist. 1992. Ron Mann.

Sager, Mike. 1995. Generation H. GQ 65, no. 9: 276-83, 303, 306.

Watson, Steven. 1995. The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, rebels and hipsters, 1944-1960. New York: Pantheon Books.

Wolfe, Tom. 1970. Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.