WikiBranding

Stop piracy, not liberty.

2012-01-18T12:00:00.002-06:00

Show your support. Let Congress know your point of view on SOPA and PIPA.

Gaming as a form of strategic marketing.

2012-01-09T16:09:00.000-06:00

We've all seen the brief: raise awareness, shape new customer behaviors, launch a new product and generate revenue.

Historically, this brief has been answered through an advertising campaign. But in a world in which collaboration and experiences often trump one way communications, gaming is fast becoming a bankable marketing strategy.

A while back I attended a thought-provoking presentation by Dr. Jane McGonigal, a leading game designer and researcher, about the social benefits of gaming. Dr. McGonigal believes that gamers exhibit four personality traits that are essential for problem solving:

urgent optimism
social collaboration
blissful productivity
epic meaning

Perhaps inspired by Albert Einstein's quote – "Games are the most elevated form of investigation." – her work focuses on ways to harness gamers' collective intelligence and creativity to solve societal challenges, such as imagining a world without oil, or new ways to bring water to sub-Saharan Africa.

Now companies are embracing gaming as a business strategy. Within the past few months I've witnessed B2B gaming initiatives from IBM, Cisco, GE, SAP and Microsoft. Each is using gamification to engage customers in a deeper brand narrative, or to train sales people.

BD'M used gamification to help United Airlines sell its new suite of Travel Options. We designed a game around each Travel Option – e.g., Line Jump Hero, Legroom Legend, Mileage Ace – that could be played online or on smart phones. After being played over nine million times and generating millions of dollars in incremental revenue for United, The Mobile Marketing Association named the Optathlon games the best mobile promotion in 2011.

This new presentation by PSFK provides a thorough and clear case for gaming as a business strategy. Gaming has the potential to communicate; to teach; to solve; to alter behavior; to raise money. It does so through its unique ability to tap into peer competition and one-upsmanship; stakes and rewards; exclusivity and access.

PSFK Future of Gaming Report [Preview]

Marketing to the 66%.

2012-01-03T10:11:00.001-06:00

A big issue confronting marketers is the shrinking middle class consumer. Let's call them the 66%, after accounting for the famed 1% and the 33% of Americans living near or below poverty levels (an even bigger issue).

The middle class, a core target for most marketers, is hurting because technology and process-driven productivity increases is eliminating middle management jobs in manufacturing and service industries.

In 2011 marketers witnessed what the WSJ calls the "Barbell Effect." Marketers catering to wealthy consumers fared relatively well. Sales at Saks and Nordstrom were strong, as were sales for Mercedes, Land Rover, Porsche and BMW. At the other end of the "barbell," sales at dollar stores and discount chains spiked as the middle class traded down, causing marketers such at Heinz and P&G to focus on discounting and bargain brands.

What should marketers do? I'd suggest CMOs look at what Hyundai has done over the last few years to drive a remarkable surge in sales. Several years back, Hyundai began addressing the fundamental issue depressing sales -- FEAR. The vast majority of consumers are not facing layoffs or home foreclosures, yet they curtail spending because they're understandably anxious about the future.

Hyundai launched its Assurance program, allowing consumers to return their new car within a year of purchase if they lost their job. (Sales jumped 14% that month while the industry was down 37%.) The company followed that by sweetening the program by offering to pay the vehicle loan or lease for 90 days while the owner looked for work. Moreover, Hyundai has also made buyers feel smart – another way to alleviate fear – through its warranty program, styling and quality.

Looking back on my recession-themed posts (a topic I look forward to not writing about in the future!), the strategies suggested at the outset of this recession remain applicable today:

Reduce anxiety by making consumers feel smart;
Appeal to consumer's need for emotional security and "cocooning";
Get closer to your best customers through true loyalty incentives and CRM;
Consider tiered pricing and value options;
Invest in innovation – "new" is still a powerful lure;
Finally, don't let a good crisis go to waste – refocus and reprioritize all elements of your product portfolio, marketing and media mix.

A case for SMS over QR codes.

2011-12-08T20:18:00.001-06:00

QR codes are the rage in marketing. I'm not yet a full-on fanboy.

Adoption rates are low. The user experience is spotty. Today's piece on CNN summarizes many of the key reasons, including the most basic – it is complicated and time-consuming. My earlier posts on misusing QR codes noted that many marketers are leading customers to content that is largely unsatisfying. Why go through the bother of snapping a QR to get the same content I could have gotten by typing a URL?

Asking consumers to text DEMO to 1234 to view a product demonstration is familiar and uncomplicated, can be done on every smart phone, in every lighting environment. To me, that sounds like the quickest response.

Clearly, we need to avoid blanket prognostications. Tech-savvy consumers and professionals are prime candidates for using QR codes. It's hard to flip through an issue of Wired without seeing QRCs from marketers as diverse as The Glenlivet, Goldman Sachs and Microsoft.

We may reach a tipping point as QR readers become native features within smart phones, and as their quality improves. We may also encounter alternatives to QR readers – I've had good experiences to date interacting with print ads embedded with Google Goggles.

Mobile is an opt-in response device more so than an advertising medium. It has the power to blur offline and online marketing. It is a central part of a brand's overall "screen strategy" in which we seamlessly link the power of sight, sound and motion across TV, online and mobile.

Marketers do best when they embrace fundamental human behaviors. We all know how to send text messages. Inserting an SMS call to action may be a better alternative to inserting a QRC, which may not work, depending on the lighting, may not be enabled on the phone, or may or not be fully understood by most people.

The age of screen strategies.

2011-12-07T11:47:00.000-06:00

Video content, regardless of the type of screen on which it appears, was the star topic at this week's UBS global media and communications conference.

TV advertising is not dead, as many people mistakenly proclaim. Worldwide spending on television advertising is growing. Viewership remains strong, albeit increasingly splintered.

But this fact hides the bigger opportunity for marketers — it's no longer about television, it's about "screens."

I watch football live on my TV, but I stream CNN live on my iPad. I DVR "Modern Family" but use Hulu+ for my daily dose of Stewart, Colbert and Portlandia. Other times I stream "Once Upon a Time" (my guilty pleasure) on abc.com.

Even my "print" is on a screen, mostly The New York Times and Wired on my mobile appendages.

All of these screens provide ample opportunities marketers to employ sight, sound and motion — the building blocks of memorable storytelling.

TV advertising became king in its day because of the persuasiveness of sight, sound and motion. Unlike the original Mad Men, we now have myriad opportunities to use this branding tactic. (That's why I believe this is truly the most exciting time in our business.)

The key to an effective screen strategy is not simply to create video content, but to determine in advance ways to seamlessly integrate and link these storytelling assets. For example, the SMS call to action in the print should lead to product demonstration videos that subsequently link me to customer testimonial videos on the website. Using screens is smart; connecting screens is smarter.

The successful screen strategies are those that create custom content for each screen's unique context and experience. For example, shows on Hulu+ or abc.com are usually sponsored by a single advertiser. The common mistake is to run one TV commercial four times (and be annoyingly repetitive) and miss the opportunity tell an ever-deeper story in four chapters. (Remember, unlike TV, online viewers cannot skip the ads.)

Shifting attitudes toward premium brands.

2011-12-06T14:10:00.001-06:00

The 2011 Mendelsohn Affluence Survey reinforces several themes from my earlier posts on premium branding. For example, the definition of premium is relative – 89% agree luxury is in the eye of the beholder (a BMW is clearly premium to most, while a Prius is premium to others). Premium brands continue to derive their worth from the emotional content and meaning they convey.

The study also shows how the definitions of luxury and premium brands is shifting. Value is playing an increasingly large role. Small indulgences can be as rewarding as buying an expensive luxury item. Some consumers are defining these at "treats.

Thinking inside the box.

2011-12-01T10:53:00.001-06:00

Marketing a service can be challenging because it is intangible. (I learned this first hand when I led Marketing Communications at Aetna Healthcare.)

More service brands are tackling this challenge by literally thinking inside the box.

I'm seeing a trend toward productizing intangible services – i.e., making the service look and feel like a packaged good you might find on a store shelf.

GM OnStar is the latest marketer to embrace this idea. By placing a satellite-based service in a box, it now feels like something consumers can better comprehend, something you could imagine buying at Best Buy.

Perhaps GM is lifting a page from Progressive Insurance's playbook. We all know Flo works in an "insurance store" filled with boxes of insurance products. Again, seeing things in boxes = tangible = comprehensible. Going even further in this direction, Progressive's new Snapshot is truly a tangible product – a monitoring device customers plug into their car to receive safe driving discounts.

Over the last few years, ING Direct has launched banking cafes in eight cities around the U.S. to help transform IRAs and CDs into a tangible brand experience.

Looking back, I suggest that Jyske Bank is the Rosetta Stone for this trend toward productizing intangible services. Several years ago Denmark's second largest bank transformed its dusty banks into something akin to Apple Stores, complete with boxes of banking products displayed on shelves. (See my earlier post on Jyske Bank. It's a fascinating case study.)

These examples provide a perfect illustration of embracing design as a business strategy, not as an aesthetic process.

Innovation – aka, don't let a good crisis go to waste.

2011-11-14T10:36:00.001-06:00

The Wall Street Journal's small business innovation competition shows how businesses can succeed in a poor economic climate by using the realities of the marketplace as a source of new business models and product offerings.

This made me pause to think about our small business, Barrie D'Rozario Murphy. Starting an agency on the eve of the Great Recession is a focusing experience. And while we were named in 2009 by the 4As as the "best small agency in the U.S.", we believe we've gotten better since because we started rethinking what marketers need from an agency.

Our clients needs ideas – not just TV ideas; not just print ideas; not just banner ad ideas. They need the best solution for the problem at hand. Any agency that specializes in one solution, whether that is TV or interactive or social media, is the proverbial hammer that views all problems as nails.

We deepened our commitment to being an agency with "no walls." No walls between us and our clients; no walls between us and other partners working for our clients; no walls preventing us from discovering new and innovative partners that can help our clients succeed; no walls between people of different disciplines.

"No Walls" has inspired us to design smart phone games to sell a la carte travel options for United Airlines (using gamification as a powerful communications strategy). We created an extensive iPad app for Medtronic to tell its corporate brand story (the modern version of the :60 corporate branding effort traditionally reserved for Sunday morning news programs). We created social media savvy street teams to launch Best Buy's eBikes program (the new way to link local events to a larger audience).

And throughout this journey we haven't lost our advertising mojo, having created beautiful print, TV and promotional programs that have been recognized with Gold Lions in Cannes and EFFIE Awards from the American Marketing Association.

The morale of the story. Never led a good crisis go to waste. Rethink everything, and discover something even better.

Why Steve Jobs mattered to us.

2011-10-06T17:41:00.002-05:00

Steve Jobs' death is being mourned worldwide because he changed the world. He democratized technology. He liberated it to do good. Most importatnly, he brought optimism, creativity and joy to the lives of ordinary people.

His passing is particularly saddening for people in creative professions, and within the agency world in particular. His impact upon people in our industry extended well beyond the power of his products to inspire and enable creative expression. Steve meant more to us than that.

On the surface, we admired his creative instincts - in the design of his products and in the campaigns he approved.

Perhaps we looked up to him as the archetypal client. Those who worked with Steve say he was tough and demanding, but always in pursuit of greatness.

And, maybe, just maybe, on a deeper and more personal level, we wanted to see a bit of ourselves in Steve Jobs and identify with him as a kindred spirit - one of the dreamers; the crazy ones; the few people in corporate America who dared to think different.

We can honor Steve Jobs' legacy by honoring his standards. Don't accept anything less than great, because life is too short to be merely average.

Design as a competitive advantage.

2011-10-04T14:50:00.000-05:00

Fast Company's cover story on design ("The United States of Design") is a must-read for any business leader looking to find a sustainable source of differentiation. Its central point is that design's strategic value is not just in improving the product offering but in rethinking the entire way businesses operate.

I've written on several occasions about the value of embracing design thinking as a business discipline, not as an aesthetic process. Design thinking forces executives to view the world from the customer's standpoint. It focuses on the overall experience and not just the tangible product. It requires reductive thinking. All of which are extremely healthy business practices, not design practices.

Design as a business strategy and source of differentiation was embraced years ago by early adopters like Hermann Miller, Apple, Kohler and Target. Now companies as diverse as McDonalds, 3M, Black and Decker, Jawbone and Method are following suit.

As Fast Company points out, the value and power of design is misunderstood in many companies. In fact, David Butler, coke's head of global design, jettisoned the squishy D-word and instead talked about how his team can "make stuff better."

Fahrenheit 212's Mark Payne notes that "design is differentiation made visible, visceral and experiential." Well put.

What makes a premium brand premium?

2011-09-19T09:37:00.000-05:00

I was thinking the other day about the DNA of premium brands.

One thing is certain -- it's a relative idea. For example, Hyatt is not a premium brand if you're used to staying at a W or a Ritz Carlton. But if your vacations to date have been holed up in a Holiday Inn, then by all means a stay in a Hyatt is a premium experience.

Another thing is certain -- a brand is considered premium only when we believe it is worth the price. And that's where we can dig deeper. Why are we willing to pay more for a product when there are others that provide the same service or function at a lesser price?

I have spent a good part of my career in advertising developing strategies and ideas for a wide range of premium brands, including American Express, Sony, Callaway Golf, Hilton, Jaguar, Land Rover – even the Toyota Prius. Through these experiences I have come to believe that a premium brand is built upon specific tangible and intangible attributes that give it a sense worth:

Sensual – It arouses our senses and feels indulgent. It is an experience. We want to touch it; we enjoy looking at it. (Think about Steve Jobs' obsession on how a iPhone should feel in your hand, or how Jet Blue orchestrates a total sensory experience – from snacks to entertainment – to set itself above the fray in a fiercely competitive category.)
Mysterious – It draws us in deeper and reveals more to us over time. We are intrigued to learn its back story. (Witness how Land Rover cultivates its image as a global trekker to set it apart from the herd of grocery-hauling SUVs.)
Rare – It represents a discerning choice, intriguing because it is uncommon. (Audi has cultivated this particularly well – the thinking person's alternative to BMW and Mercedes.)
Confident – It projects a feeling of intrinsic worth. (Burberry didn't ask permission to transcend its classic trench coat. It confidently asserted its plaid on to a wide portfolio of products and dared us to question its right to do so.)
Authentic – It knows its "true north" and remains committed to this ideal. (Ritz Carlton's premium experience is a direct result of its mission statement – "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. " With this simple ethic, the hotel's employees know exactly the business they are in and how they should serve customers. Starbucks saved its shaky reputation by refocusing on coffee.)
Quality – It is consistent and shows obsessive attention to detail. (Tiffany understands the premium cues conveyed by a detail as simple as a white bow on a blue box.)

Managing a premium brand is one of the most difficult challenges in marketing. Like any business, premium brands must pursue growth strategies. However, unlike many mainstream businesses, premium brands must do so in a way that doesn't dilute the brand's image or the user's sense exclusivity and pride. Certain strategies are off-limits. Brand managers for premium brands must know when it is best to pass on short-term growth opportunities that could tarnish the brand's long-term health.

Marketing a premium brand demands that we think through every facet of the brand experience. Packaging matters. The choice of materials and lighting in the lobby matters. Attentive customer service matters. And within the company itself, culture matters. Culture is often the alpha and omega of successful brands – particularly in the case of premium brands.

NOTE: This is updated from an earlier post.

Is digital killing luxury brands?

2011-09-14T16:01:00.003-05:00

Oddly enough, this is not a question that's keeping me awake – it's one recently posed by Adweek. I'm writing this because I disagree with the article's central premise: the web's democratizing power might weaken a luxury brand's cachet.

The article suggests that most luxury brands were slow to embrace "new media" because the web makes brands too accessible. (By the way, if you want to make a 30 year old laugh, refer to the web as "new media.")

To address Adweek's question we need to tighten the vocabulary. I don't believe cachet comes from offering a luxury, it is about being premium. A brand is considered premium when we believe it is worth a higher price. That's how you measure cachet.

Certain brands compel us to pay more even when there are others that provide the same service or function at a lesser price. Previous wikiposts have explored this point. Having worked with brands such as Sony, American Express, Jaguar and Land Rover, I tend to believe premium brands are built on a core set of attributes that give them greater perceived worth – e.g., sensuality, rarity, confidence, authenticity, quality.

Brands are defined by creating an empathetic relationship with customers. Those brands that offer a premium lifestyle or image, in particular, are often defined by what they do, not just by what they say. In other words, it is our experience with the brand that helps define its worth. Part of Apple's worth is the retail experience; part of Nike's worth is its authentic and deep involvement with athletes at all levels; Land Rover's cachet is in part formed by the off-road test tracks at the dealership, and the fact that its showrooms feel more like an LL Bean store than a car dealer.

Given the importance of orchestrating rich experiences, no medium is better suited for this than the web (other than event marketing). Interactive platforms, whether a website or an app, offer the opportunity to inspire deep engagement, personalized experiences and highly emotional storytelling. These tactics can build mystery, exclusivity, a sense of authenticity and craftsmanship – the hallmarks of a premium brand.

The web's accessibility is not the point. A Burberry store in a mall is equally accessible. It is the experience that Burberry creates in its stores that makes it feel premium and exclusive. This same attention to detail when designing the in-store experience – e.g.,lighting, surfaces, wardrobe, signage, product displays – is required when designing an online experience.

Marketing's new normal.

2011-09-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

There seems to be a steady stream of books offering breathless predictions about the death of advertising and, by extension, agencies.

I’ve recently come to believe that the Chicken Littles who squawk loudest about the perils of not embracing the new normal in marketing are secretly rooted in the past.

Good marketing professionals – marketers and agencies alike – realized this several years ago, adapted and got on with things. Successful companies tend to do this. Others don’t. They go out of business. Just as Mr. Darwin predicted. Moreover, the next generation of talent streaming into the marketing field are probably clueless as to what these authors are debating. If you want to make a 25-year-old ROTFL (whether they be a brand manager or a copywriter), refer to the web as “new media.”

Those who still go on about the how the business is changing do so because deep down they still use the wonder years of network television and national magazines as the yardstick by which to measure change.

The new normal banishes words like "traditional" and "nontraditional." Is a print ad with an embedded QR code traditional? Or how about bus board with a mobile call-to-action? You get the point.

The new normal doesn’t view "brand" through the narrow lens of a product’s TV or print campaign because consumers build brand impressions through a complex mix of first-hand experiences, peer opinions and, yes, intangible and emotional imagery.

The new normal views interactive media as a powerful brand-building medium because it has the ability to inspire deep engagement, expose customers to peer reviews and immerse customers in highly emotional brand narratives.

The new normal embraces media as a source of creativity, not as the pipes through which we beam ideas. The context in which we appear in a customer’s life is often as important as what we say.

The new normal embraces metrics, both hard and soft. Those who embrace only one set over the other will struggle. Ignore ROI or store traffic and nobody will care about the awareness gain. Likewise, click-through rates at the expense of relevance, differentiation and likability will not sit well when the brand degrades to commodity status. True professionals work hard to balance these seemingly conflicting goals, and that’s why they’re good at what they do.

The new normal also recognizes the business value of TV, print and radio. Good luck reaching C-Suite executives with a viral video, or my mom, for that matter, through Twitter. And let me know how efficient your street teams are relative to a spot on an NFL game in reaching millions of guys. When we close our eyes to the power and effectiveness of mass advertising, we are as blind as those who ignore the creative possibilities within social media or mobile marketing. True professionals embrace all forms of marketing and know when and how to deploy each.

So let’s just get on with it. The industry doesn’t need to change. It needs a good dose of creative destruction. Let market forces take their toll. Those who embrace the new normal will prosper. Those who don’t will not. Couldn’t be simpler. Don’t you love capitalism?

Where does your brand draw the line?

2011-08-23T12:50:00.002-05:00

If you've read my earlier posts on brand narratives then you know I believe brands should invest as much time defining what they oppose as they do defining what they stand for.

Knowing what you stand for provides a clear sense of true north. Knowing what you oppose keeps brands focused, aligned and authentic. (Michael Porter has written that great strategy not only tells you what to do, but should also tell you what not to do.)

That's why I applaud Abercrombie's decision to pay the Jersey Shore to stop dressing its "stars" in A&F garb. Whether or not this is a genuine offer or merely a PR stunt is beside the point. What Abercrombie is doing is drawing a proverbial line in the sand so that its customers know the brand's point of view, taste and values.

Why we declined United's invitation.

2011-08-11T20:12:00.003-05:00

United Airlines announced yesterday that it selected McGarryBowen as its new agency of record after a lengthy review. We're happy for our friends at United and wish MB great success.

Many people are asking us why BD'M declined to participate in the review. After all, BD'M created for United arguably the category's most distinctive and effective advertising (continuing the great work my partners Bob and Stuart led at Fallon). The animated Rhapsody campaign has won nearly every international creative award through the years, and last year won an EFFIE for the effectiveness of our Travel Options campaign.

After United and Continental merged, with the inevitable management shuffle, the three of us came to the sober conclusion that incumbents seldom prevail in a post-merger environment and declined United's invitation to defend the business. We decided it was smarter to invest our time and money, as well as the talents of our employees, doing great work for current clients while pursuing new opportunities.

Granted, it's easier to make a bold, principled decision after you've just prevailed in a major pitch to win a global AOR assignment from Dell, besting a range of multinationals for the computer giant's Public Sector business.

Did we make the right decision? We think so. While we miss our friends at United, being on offense instead of defense helped BD'M win a second global AOR from Dell, this time winning its Large Enterprise assignment, as well as the recent AOR assignment from Wagner.

I suppose the moral of this story is that sometimes in life you need to step back in order to move forward.

Wagner selects BD'M.

2011-08-04T10:09:00.004-05:00

Our world just got more colorful with the news that Wagner Spraytech has chosen BD'M as it agency of record for its full line of power paint sprayers and power rollers. The assignment spans all channels, from print to online to in-store, and all points in between.

I've long enjoyed working on DIY-targeted assignments because these consumers are extremely engaged and open to new ideas. It was easy to measure the entire agency's passion for this assignment by our willingness to finally allow a splash of color on the pristine white walls of BD'M. (An agency with "no walls" finally paints its walls. Ironic.)

This year is shaping up to be one of momentum and diversification for BD'M. In addition to Wagner, BD'M has won two global AOR assignments from Dell (Public Sector, followed by Large Enterprise), a corporate branding assignment for Medtronic, and global AOR responsibilities for Chamilia jewelry.

The power of empathy.

2011-07-27T18:08:00.003-05:00

Whenever I present my point of view on the defining elements of brand equity, I always talk about the power of empathy. I believe what is true in how we form personal relationships is also true in how we form brand relationships.

We tend to have our deepest and most lasting relationships with people who share our values; our beliefs; our sense of humor; even our sense of style.

As human beings we are soft-wired for empathic behavior. Many neuroscientists believe we are equipped with "mirror neurons" that cause us to experience another's plight as if we were experiencing it ourself.

Empathy is how we bond with one another. It is also how brands bond with customers. We gravitate towards brands that get us. Define a brand's source of empathy with its customers and you'll get to the essential truth of the brand.

I found this video to be a fascinating journey through the history of empathy – first established through blood ties, then shared faith and later through national identification.

21st century advertising.

2011-06-24T09:35:00.011-05:00

When I started reading Marc Ruxin's HuffPo piece entitled "The New Creative Department" I was prepared to feel dissatisfied over not having reached yet another moving goal post that defines a next gen advertising agency.

Marc posits that what marketers need in today's media and cultural landscape is "a creative team that can manufacture content in an age where news feeds, social games, Pandora, daily deals, photo sharing, on demand or time-shifted video competes with live television, magazines, movies and radio."

I agree. And I'm also proud to say that Barrie D'Rozario Murphy is doing this every day for its clients. When we stand up to give our credentials presentation here's what we show:

Mobile games to promote United's Travel Options. (Check them out on iTunes, they've been played nine million times and counting.)
Station Domination take-over to help Dell connect with hard to reach IT decision makers in D.C.
Social media campaign for Applied Materials' burgeoning solar division. (Follow The Sun on Twitter @TweetFromTheSun.)
iPad app to help Medtronic's customer-facing employees tell the corporate story.
Street marketing buzz gangs to launch eBikes at Best Buy.
QR codes for Compellent that imbue static collateral with the sight, sound and motion of customer testimonial films.
SMS-enabled airport banners to show video demonstrations of United Airlines' new International First and Business Class sleeper seats, as well as a microsite to help road warriors track the roll out.
Viral film for the Chambers Hotel that won a Gold Lion at Cannes.
Documentary films to capture the vitality of Del Webb's residents.
Rich media to allow women to design Chamilia bracelets in the unit itself.
And, yes, some award-winning TV and print for all our clients.

So what's the moral of the story? First, I'm proud to partner with Bob Barrie and Stuart D'Rozario and the creative teams they lead; second, it's been my observation that those who write how the our industry needs to change must take more time to observe what successful agencies such as Goodby, Wieden, Crispin, Anomaly, etc. are already doing; finally, let's not call it "creative content" – it's advertising.

Misusing QR codes

2011-06-21T14:20:00.001-05:00

A QR code should not be a substitute for a URL.

Used correctly, a QRC is one way to imbue offline, static communications with the brand-building power of sight, sound and motion — e.g., a link to an emotional brand video, or a provocative product demonstration, or compelling customer testimonials. (For the record, I'm no QR fanboy. I believe an SMS call to action is a more natural behavior for most people. Not everyone has a barcode reader, but all know how to text.)

Use it incorrectly and you end up doing something like Medica has done, which recently wallpapered Minneapolis with its QR codes.

After a couple of weeks of curiosity (one of the secret draws of a QR) I broke down and tagged the code. Imagine my joy when it revealed a mobile site that can give me a health insurance quote. I feel this misses a QR's true potential and also overlooks the role of context in brand-building — a parking garage usually is not the place where I want a price quote on my health plan. (Those more mundane moments in life may be the exact time to inspire me with tips and tricks to live healthier.)

If you want prospects to go to a microsite, simply give them a URL.

Groupon dissected. Merchant beware?

2011-06-15T18:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a provocative POV on Groupon from TechCrunch - internet marketing company or small merchant loan sharking scheme?

A few excerpts:
Groupon is not an Internet marketing business so much as it is the equivalent of a loan sharking business. The $21,000 that the business (up front) for running a Groupon is essentially a very, very expensive loan. They get the cash up front, but pay for it with deep discounts over time. Now here’s the crazy part. Not only is Groupon effectively giving loans to merchants, but it also works the other way around. The merchant is on the hook for the entire value of those deals until Groupon pays the merchant back its portion. Unlike other loan providers, the merchant is making a short-term loan to Groupon. (Not technically, but effectively.) They buy inventory in advance of the Groupon run. They also serve the initial rush of customers. The business is in a hole before they get their 30- and 60-day Groupon payouts.

Even more interesting is the squeeze that Google Offers is putting on Groupon.
In (Groupon's payment terms), the first installment is 33% in 5 days. If they have to pay merchants faster, that could lead to problems. And Google might force that to happen. According to Google Offers’ payment terms, merchants receive 80% of their share in 4 days—more than twice as much, 1 day earlier. There’s no way that was an accident. If Groupon matches these payment terms, they’ll need cash faster and need to grow faster.

Happy birthday, David Ogilvy.

2011-06-13T09:51:00.008-05:00

David Ogilvy would have been 100 today.

I spent my formative years at Ogilvy & Mather, going there straight from Duquesne University and leaving 15 years later with a grasp of brand strategy, integrated marketing, global branding, and most importantly, the value of big creative ideas. O&M helped me grow up professionally and personally, and I am forever grateful.

In those days Ogilvy was a "teaching hospital" – you learned while you practiced your craft. In addition to formal training programs we were inspired by the ever-present Ogilvy-isms – a body of "how to" principles for creating effective advertising.

Even though David had long since retired to his chateau in France by the time I joined O&M, I did have one memorable encounter with the man. We were pitching Jaguar Cars on the Friday afternoon before the Memorial Day weekend, but half the agency had left early for the long weekend. So we created the perception of a bustling shop by moving people around the building by walkie-talkie (in the days before cell phones) as we led the clients to various pitch rooms. In in the midst of this logistically complex pitch I heard that David Ogilvy was in town and wanted to meet the clients. What could be better than to have the man who penned the famous Rolls Royce ads meet the gentlemen from Jaguar Cars? David entered the final room on the walking pitch, introduced himself, and asked the clients to leave with him. For 15 minutes, Charlotte Beers, Graham Phillips, Bill Hamilton, Rick Boyko, Kelly O'Dea and I, sat there with absolutely no clue where he had taken them (fearing that I had not only lost the pitch, but I had literally lost the clients). We later found them huddled in David's office. It seems David needed to pee, so he brought them to the men's room, then to his office to hear his wisdom.

We won the account – my first victory leading a pitch.

Thank you, David Ogilvy.

Shazam – The QR code of TV.

2011-06-07T08:43:00.003-05:00

Progressive Insurance is running (testing?) TV spots that are Shazam enabled. When I saw the spot the other day I was excited and jealous at the same time.

I love Shazam – it's a very cool music app. Last weekend, after tagging "Pumped Up Kicks," I found myself wondering why Shazam hadn't yet positioned itself as a QR code for TV. TV audio is just like a music track – it's all about ones and zeros. When I later saw the spot I realized I wasn't alone in pondering this question.

Using Shazam to tag the Progressive spot downloads content from Flo, a link to get a quote, a Flo-isms app, etc. Is Progressive the best test case of Shazam? Not sure, but I applaud them for testing it. It would certainly be good for a brand that needs deeper demonstrations or explanations – e.g., cars, computers, financial services, etc.

Going mobile.

2011-04-28T19:37:00.002-05:00

I've long advocated that marketers view mobile as an opt-in response device and not as an advertising medium. Let's agree on a simple truth: everyone has their phone in hand or nearby all of the time. Sad perhaps, but undeniably true.

The huge potential of mobile is captured in this infographic, courtesy of Microsoft.

By including a mobile call to action we blur the tired distinction between offline and online; between traditional and nontraditional; between one-way and opt-in communications. Is a QR-enabled print ad in Fortune traditional or nontraditional? Is an outdoor poster with an SMS invitation offline or interactive?

I believe mobile response is best used for bringing sight, sound and motion (an amino acid of brand marketing) to otherwise static media. For example, for United Airlines BD'M included an SMS response on airport banners to enable smartphone wielding business travelers to watch a video of the airline's new first class sleeper suites; for Compellent we embedded a QR code in their brochure to enable IT managers to immediately see customers raving about "Fluid Data."

The jury is out on the effectiveness of QR codes vs SMS. I believe simple solutions that require less fiddling around will always win (aka, Occam's razor). Some people may want to snap a photo of a mobile tag, but most may find it more natural to send a text – something they already do dozens of times a day. (To that end, check out Zoove.com, a service that makes it even easier to create and own "vanity" numbers which are more memorable than most short codes.)

Repositioning a brand in a nonlinear world.

2011-04-25T13:05:00.159-05:00

Let's admit that the AIDA model of awareness –> interest –> desire –> action is dead

Brands exist in a nonlinear world of social media, SEM, viral and, yes, advertising. This is why I coined wikibranding — more than ever before, brands are defined by consumers, via peer influence and first-hand experiences, and less so by linear brand marketing.

Here's a personal case study: Buick.

I remember when I moved to America from Ireland as a kid seeing Buick ads that featured a catchy Mad Men-esque jingle, something along the lines of "wouldn't you really rather drive a Buick...than any other car this year?"

Through the years my answer to that question was a resounding "no." Buick's gray styling, quality and customer profile placed the brand squarely in the "I'd rather eat prunes" mental filing cabinet.

As of last week, however, I now would consider a Buick Regal and advocate that my friends do likewise. Did I suddenly become aware of the redesigned Regal? No. My Buick Regal journey didn't follow the AIDA model.

I experienced the car first-hand, by accident, when I rented it at National. I was impressed by how well it drove — precision and road-feel, balanced with Lexus-smooth transmission and suspension. It's interior styling was premium and smart, as was the exterior.

I was so surprised by the Regal that I posted my epiphany on Facebook. The ensuing skepticism of my import-driving friends further reinforced the challenge brands like Buick face — it's hard to change perceptions when your image is trapped in time (and a social media echo-chamber).

Later that week I was driving through Laguna Beach when a good looking car cut in front of me; I stared at it because it didn't look immediately familiar – yet again, the Regal. My earlier driving experience caused me to impute positive perceptions on a car that I would otherwise have ignored.

A day later while flipping through Wired I noticed an ad for the Regal that invited me to photograph the ad with Google Goggles to view additional video content.

I'm quite sure that Regal and its ads have been trying to get my attention long before my first-hand experience. But all these efforts were invisible to me because our brains are the original spam blocker. My positive first-hand experience made me more open to listening to Buick.

So what are the lessons learned for well-established brands like Buick that seek to change perceptions?

Rethink the role of brand repositioning advertising. In a nonlinear marketplace, I no longer believe the objective of a repositioning campaign is to build awareness – its true function is to reinforce newly formed perceptions brought on through first-hand experiences. Think about it: if a consumer knows they don't like prunes, running ads that make prunes seem hip and cool isn't likely to work. Accept the truth that the consumer knows what they know. After decades of dismissing Buick, the last thing I had time for was reading one of its ads.

Create experiences that allow the consumer to reach their own conclusion — e.g., sampling, trial offer, public displays, 3D immersive experiences online with like/dislike review options, in-person demonstration, trusted peer reviews. This is the root of wikibranding.

Embrace new behaviors, not just brand imagery. Consumers judge brands by what they do, not simply by what they say. Media can play a huge role in redefining a brand by signaling new behaviors. Buick's ad was in Wired, not Golf Digest, where I would expect to find Buick. That brand context, combined with the Google Goggles interactivity, helped me see the Regal as a tech-savvy brand. No amount of copy would have had the same effect.

I will be the first to say that this model may not apply to a new brand which desperately needs awareness.

But for brands that need to recast their positioning and perceptions, awareness can be a ball and chain (i.e., "I know you and know that I don't like you.") For these brands I would suggest that instead of AIDA, we let consumers practice EOIS – experience –> open mind –> investigate –> share.

Multicultural is the new mainstream.

2011-04-20T15:46:00.005-05:00

The 2010 Census data released last week further underscores why marketers must begin blurring the distinctions between the general and multicultural markets.

In marketing terms, the multicultural effort is often managed in a silo, funded with the money left over from the general market campaign. Those days must fade away – population trends and good business sense demand that we think differently. Multicultural marketing must be central to our thinking.

In many states across the U.S., multicultural markets are increasingly mainstream – not just in California and New York, but also in states like Delaware, Maryland, Louisiana and Nevada. In each of these states the white population accounts for about two-thirds or less of the total.

If you want a glimpse of the future, look no further than the ethnicity of the youth market: among people under 18 years old, whites make up only 57% of this cohort. Millennials have grown up during a time marked by dramatic growth in immigration and racial integration. Multiculturalism is simply a fact of life for this group, reinforced early on by Sesame Street, and later in the classroom, as well as in film and music.

Moreover, those who view multicultural marketing in black and white terms need to think again. The 2010 Census shows that the U.S. Hispanic population jumped 42% over the past decade and now accounts for 1-in-6 Americans. Hispanics are now the dominant minority group in 191 of the nation's 366 metro markets – and not just in the Sun Belt. This trend will likely keep growing, if for no other reason than the simple fact that the median age of Latino women is 28 years old, whereas the median age of white women is 42.

This multimedia tool from USA Today offers a nice summary.

(PS: penned by a Pakistani-born son of Irish immigrants...aka a census category of one.)

Anantomy of a successful viral video campaign.

2011-04-17T08:16:00.000-05:00

Guess which brand's YouTube channel gets more views than BMW. Even more than Disney. Did you guess Orabrush? Nah, didn't think so.

The story of Orabrush's success with its YouTube video campaign is very instructive. Even the NY Times has covered it in an attempt to decode its success.

Orabrush's YouTube channel has received more than 33 million views and is the seventh-most subscribed channel, beating brands like BMW, Disney and Nintendo Wii. Why? After reading the NY Times article and viewing a bunch of Orabrush's videos, I think their success in going viral can be attributed to a few factors which many marketers would be wise to consider:

Be funny, even slightly outrageous.
Don't be slick. YouTube is not TV or web.
Be prolific. Program the channel. Make a lot of videos and release them over time to build a following.
Cede creative control. Persuade the community's "alpha-producers" to make parodies of your video.
Be authentic. Don't let the dark magic of Madison Avenue be seen or felt.
Cross your fingers.

Relatedly, check out Ad Age's list of the top viral videos, with commentary on why they were so successful.

Is Facebook becoming The Internet?

2011-04-04T22:18:00.004-05:00

I read a couple of items tonight that helped bring into sharp focus the sheer magnitude of Facebook's market influence.

First, some data and insights from a talk given by NYU professor Scott Galloway :

Facebook now accounts for 10% of all time spent on the internet. More people around the world spend more time on Facebook that any other site.
"People are leaving the internet and spending more time on social media platforms. There's an emerging generation for which Facebook is their OS. They don't leave it all day."
Currently, Facebook has 580m users. If we apply Moore's Law to this we can envision this user group doubling in 18 months to 1 billion – perhaps exceeding 20% of all time spent online. And as we've witnessed so far, as Facebook gets bigger, it tends to grow even faster.
If Facebook were to account for 40%-50% of time spent online, then effectively Facebook has become the internet.

Then there's this factoid from today's Wall Street Journal: In February, more than one-third of all online display ads in the U.S. appeared on Facebook – more than 3x Yahoo, its closest rival.

Perhaps this is why I chuckle every time I receive an email from classmates.com.

Medtronic selects BD'M

2011-03-23T18:24:00.002-05:00

Minneapolis based Medtronic has selected BD'M to help tell its corporate story. And what a story it is: from two guys in a garage in 1955; the first pacemaker; to a $15 billion leader in medical technology.

Beyond its commitment to innovation, what strikes me as special about Medtronic is its culture – they haven't changed a single word in their mission statement since it was penned in 1960 by the founder, and every employee can recite it by heart. You don't usually find that in companies of this size. (I'm a student of corporate cultures. It brings out the wannabe anthropologist in me, because great cultures tend to be tribal in nature, unified by shared legend, lore, symbols and rituals.)

In January, Dell enlisted BD'M as its global agency of record for its Public Sector business unit, followed shortly by Chamilia. The momentum feels good.

How to be a social brand.

2011-03-14T10:48:00.002-05:00

Here are some good insights from Headstream Consulting's recently published Social Brands 100 ranking of the top social media brands. While the rankings will likely ebb and flow, just like social media conversations, I found Headstream's insights into the traits of truly social brands to be instructive and useful.

Ten key insights from Social Brands 100:

Social brands don’t just send messages, they create value for people and communities.
Social brands are happy to exchange rigid control of their brand for greater involvement with people.
Social brands manage their brands in a more human context. It is less about the word of the brand guidelines and more about the spirit of the brand, often replacing formality around tone of voice in favour of expressing brand character, values, purpose and cause.
The types of content that social brands create can be categorised as providing information, utility, entertainment, reward, incentive or something that reflects a person’s character and what they value. Brands are still totems to what we believe, reflecting our personality.
Timeliness of response is a critical indicator of social enablement. Social brands are agile and responsive to the needs of people, relishing opportunities as they arise.
Being appropriate in social doesn’t mean using a lot of brand outposts. The use of brand outposts is driven by what is most relevant for the community.
Negative and positive sentiment is acknowledged and accepted by social brands
Social brands create, develop and encourage behaviours that mirror community or individual behaviours. They meet and exceed expectations, often delighting people in doing so.
Social brands are true, compelling, authentic and transparent.
Social brands simplify their intent and continually act against it. They have established what they want to achieve and ensure everything builds towards this commitment. To be a social brand you have to be a good brand, a good employer, make good products, provide good customer service and have a moral centre to your purpose by those that represent you.

Are you a typical human being?

2011-03-03T14:36:00.001-06:00

National Geographic, as part of its look into our 7 billion strong planet, offers this summary of the average human being, circa 2011.

So next time you think you're just a face in the crowd, remember how unique you are – unless, of course, you are an educated Mandarin-speaking Chinese Christian male who lives in the city and works in a service-related job.

Six-word stories.

2011-02-21T13:51:00.019-06:00

I've written extensively on my belief that great brands tell great stories.

Stories help us understand. They convey meaning. And in a fast moving world, meaning trumps information. Too many brands get bogged down in lists of nouns and adjectives. Brands are verbs; like characters in a story, they do things.

The approach I've developed over time for creating persuasive brand narratives involves identifying your archetypal personality (the universal characters that form our collective unconscious), the hero's journey (the brand's true north, why it exists) and conflict (great literature hinges on a clearly defined antagonist; great brands define what they stand for by being equally clear about what they oppose).

Today I stumbled upon a new exercise to help further fine-tune this process: six word stories - based on the famous challenge issued by Hemingway that resulted in his shortest story ever: "For sale: baby shoes, never used."

Some of the brands I've worked with might tell these stories:

Land Rover: "Been there? Twice. Saved village chief."
Jaguar: "Still flirt, no more flings. Monogamous."
Sony: "Can't be done? Not to dreamers."
"Del Webb: "Retire? Prefer do-over. Shelved many dreams."

Why is this important for brands? Allow me to sum it up in six words: Information overload. Little time. Parity attributes.

Creating a culture of learning and innovation.

2011-02-18T13:50:00.003-06:00

Tim Brown's piece in HBR ("Permission to Innovate") prompted a good amount of responses and opinions (the holy grail for a blogger!). His thesis surrounds the idea that certain companies create a culture of innovation by first fostering a level of tolerance - or permission - from users, channel partners, etc. to occasionally miss the mark, provided the company hits the mark more often than not. These innovative companies tend deploy multiple strategies to experiment and grow in adjacent categories.

What prompted such a volume of comments on Brown's post was his assertion that "what you can't measure, you can't get better at." (As one comment noted, it was Einstein who said "not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts.") The community's response is understandable since metrics are usually code for success v. failure.

I'd suggest a different way in which to view metrics - they should be viewed as a source of learning.

When I worked with Toyota as a client, I was taken by the company's culture of Kaizen, or continuous improvement. Kaizen is a culture of test, learn and improve - not pass or fail. Metrics are used as a way of learning, not assigning glory or blame. If a program misses the mark, managers are celebrated if they can identify root cause solutions and learnings for v2 of the program.

The onus here is on leaders to instill this culture within teams. When reviewing metrics in staff or project meetings, ask all presenters to focus more on learnings that can be applied going forward, as opposed to discussing metrics in the past tense.

Chamilia selects BD'M.

2011-02-17T14:06:00.004-06:00

Barrie D'Rozario Murphy has been selected by Chamilia as the agency of record for the jewelry company’s brand campaign. Chamilia is a rapidly growing premium, personalized jewelry brand with distribution around the world. Our assignment will include brand strategy consulting, digital, print and POS creative, as well as media planning and buying.

"We chose BD'M because they understood the passion our customers have for the fashion designs we create," said Claudio Garcia, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. BD'M wowed us with ideas we believe we help us achieve our growth goals." (Thanks Claudio!)

Adding Chamilia is another in a series of wins for our four year old agency. Two weeks ago BD’M was appointed by Dell as the computer company’s global agency of record for its Public Sector business unit. And in 2010 we won AOR assignments from Bissell and Del Webb.

I'm liking 2011 more and more.

Delighting customers

2011-02-14T10:31:00.001-06:00

The 2011 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index underscores the role of "authentic innovation" in delighting customers.

It also underscores several themes I hold near and dear to my thinking when designing brand strategies.

First, it's not about the product or service per se. It's about the total experience. Every interaction defines the brand. The packaging. How the phone is answered. The quality of the customer service people (are they brand ambassadors or employees?). The website. Events. You name it, the list goes on. Why? Because experiences turn perceptions into deeply-held beliefs. (At BD'M, our approach to Persuasion Planning demands that we think through the types of experiences – not just messages – we want to create. After all, brands are judged on what they do, not just on what they say.)

Second, it's about "authentic innovation." I've written before about innovation that solves real customers needs, not just gadgets and gizmos for the sake of gadgets and gizmos. Innovation is not the domain of the lone genius, it is a highly collaborative process that starts and ends with customer empathy.

Check out Andy Lark's post on this topic, through the lens of Net Promoter Score – the metric that leaves uninspiring brands no room to hide.

Creating shared value.

2011-01-31T17:54:00.003-06:00

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review carries a compelling piece by Michael Porter (my favorite author on business strategy) on how businesses can do well by doing good.

Porter and his co-author, Mark Kramer, make the case that companies that create shared value – i.e., value for the corporation as well as for the communities and customers it serves – to unlock new opportunities to innovate and grow.

The authors note that capitalism has come under siege as business has been blamed for a range of social, environmental and economic issues. Much of this blame is well deserved – the result of companies off-shoring jobs and shuttering plants (and communities) in pursuit of better quarterly earnings.

Porter argues that companies such as Wal-Mart, GE, IBM, etc are creating high returns from activities that create social value. According to their research:

"There are three distinct ways to do this: by reconceiving products and markets, redefining productivity in the value chain, and building supportive industry clusters at the company's locations."
"By better connecting companies' success with societal improvement, it opens up many ways to serve new needs, gain efficiency, create differentiation, and expand markets."

We see this theory in action in Wal-Mart's efforts to decrease its carbon footprint throughout its supply chain, Sun Chips' support of solar energy and recycling, the Toyota Prius (a former client of mine), Johnson & Johnson's employee wellness programs.

Porter and Kramer draw an important distinction between corporate social responsibility and creating shared value – the former is largely a strategy to improve a company's reputation and is often divorced from business strategy, while the latter is integral to a company's profitability and competitive position.

Dell selects BD'M.

2011-01-27T14:59:00.001-06:00

We received the best news this week when Dell selected Barrie D'Rozario Murphy as its global agency of record for its Public Sector business unit.

This is a huge win for BD'M on many levels.

First and foremost, we are inspired by Dell's mission to help people grow and thrive. Working with the Public business unit puts us in the business of connecting Dell with customers who share that mission – healthcare, K-12 educators, higher education and government.

This win also allowed us to forge very strong partnerships (and friendships) with the folks at Tag, SolutionSet and Naked. We're looking forward to a long and happy relationship as we team up around the world for Dell.

Lastly, adding Dell to our client roster extends the momentum we gained in 2010 when BD'M was named "Best Small Agency in the U.S." by the 4As and won AOR assignments from Bissell and Dell Webb.

Growing and thriving, indeed.

Winning the future.

2011-01-26T08:26:00.001-06:00

I sat down to write my point of view on last night's State of the Union address when I remembered that I had written it two and a half years ago during the 2008 primaries.

It is indeed time to "win the future" through a better educated workforce; through a more intelligent information-based healthcare system; through a clean energy policy that is less dependent on OPEC; and through a 21st century infrastructure that boosts productivity and employment. These investments are not abstract issues for policy wonks, these are kitchen table issues. (If you have kids, think about these issues relative to their future and you'll know why I believe this.)

But, similar to what I expressed in 2008, I think the message needs to be clearer and more motivating (and without a slogan that can be shortened to "WTF.")

While "winning the future" attempts to inspire, we see time and again that messages tend to be more motivating when contrasted with the perils of inaction. Compelling stories need both a protagonist and an antagonist . Is essential to the Hero's Journey. It is essential to brands. It is essential to winning the future.

The "Sputnik moment of a previous generation was a direct reaction to the Soviet Union's sudden superiority in space. The American people had no doubt who we were trying to surpass and why. To that same end, I thought President Obama should have made clearer the level of investment China is making to win the future in alternative energy, high-speed rail and education. As a people, we tend to pull together when we have a clear sense of purpose.

Marketing during a recovery.

2011-01-07T13:32:00.000-06:00

Over the past two years I've offered points of view on ways marketers can tailor message, media and product strategies to win share during the Great Recession.

Recent economic indicators – namely steadying home prices, declining unemployment claims and increasing consumer spending – point toward a slow but steady recovery.

Now we must summon the power of optimism and begin thinking about marketing strategies for the Great Recovery. An article in this month's Harvard Business Review offers two good starting points:

Withdraw recession-pricing tactics. It's time to phase out those lower-margin price-leaders and promotions (two-for-one, 18oz size for the price of 12oz, kids eat free). If your brand cannot command a marginal price increase, then you must question if you really have a brand. After all, the role of branding is to be able to charge a slight premium in exchange for intangible emotional values or a tangible point of difference.
Introduce new premium products. I've written about the fallacy of the "new normal." It always sounds dreamy, yet always gets trumped by the "pleasure revenge." As paychecks become more secure and 401k plans once again conjur a sense of wealth, consumers will likely seek their hard-earned reward.

It would be wise to not abandon all strategies that worked during the recession. For example, in earlier posts I wrote about marketers investing more in product innovation to increase differentiation and demand; developing programs to listen to and serve their best customers; or rethinking old rules and using interactive for branding, not just transactions. These are sounds strategies during good times as well.

The media mashup.

2011-01-04T10:52:00.004-06:00

I enjoyed this article in yesterday's NY Times on the great media mashup.

I entered the advertising business last century as an assistant account executive at Ogilvy & Mather New York. In this millennium, I'd enter as an assistant media planner. The reason is simple: media is no longer a channel through which we beam cool ideas, media is the cool idea. Today, media creates content; media creates brand experiences; media creates social relevance. In other words, media forges many of the dynamics that help create vibrant brands.

I hope 2011 is the year we banish the vocabulary that continues to shackle innovative thinking – offline vs online; traditional vs. nontraditional. After all, is a print ad with an embedded QR code traditional? Is the web really "new" media?

It's all media. It's all nontraditional (if we're doing our job right). And it all must lead back to online interactions.

More consumers are phoning it in.

2010-12-17T18:47:00.000-06:00

I've posted frequently about the huge role that mobile will play in engaging customers and continue to hold the view that mobile is not an advertising medium; rather, it is best viewed as a customer service app or as an opt-in response device.

Yesterday's report in the WSJ documents the rapid increase in the number of consumers using smart phones not only for comparison shopping, but also to make the purchase. We're heading to Wal-Mart to shop, then, while standing in the aisle, buying the product for less on Amazon. According to the article, "on the Friday after Thanksgiving a year ago, consumers using mobile devices accounted for just 0.1% of visits to retail websites...this Black Friday, they accounted for 5.6%."

Essentially, mobile phones have transformed Wal-mart's, Target's and Best Buy's stores into one massive showroom for Amazon.

I believe a brick and mortar retailer's best response is to reimagine their stores, more as customer service centers that create a tangible value for buying there, not just shopping. For example, whereas currently Best Buy charges a premium for its Geek Squad service, I can imagine a day when this added value is offered free of charge. Amazon would have a hard time matching this. I can also imagine a day when Best Buy takes a page from Apple's playbook and turns its Blue Shirts into an in-store genius bar. I'm less likely to buy from Amazon if I know I can make an appointment at Best Buy to get a tutorial on my new gizmo.

Mobile's other big value is as an opt-in response device. By replacing generic calls-to-action with a mobile invitation (e.g., SMS to learn more, QR code to view product demo), mobile has the ability to make moot the silly distinctions between online and offline. To wit, is a magazine ad with an SMS call-to-action traditional or nontraditional? You get the point.

Don't discount natural demand.

2010-11-16T17:02:00.000-06:00

Yet more evidence that discounts seldom build incremental sales. Instead, they tend to pull forward demand and reduce profitability.

According to a study out of the University of California, Berkeley, the government's "Cash For Clunkers" incentive increased car and truck sales by 360,000 units. Sounds great until you read that sales for the next seven months were down by 360,000 units. That was a $1.4B investment in discounting natural demand (360k units x $4k/unit).

My purpose here isn't to criticize this specific program. As economic and social policy, it put more money back into the consumer's wallet and helped remove less fuel-efficient cars from the road.

But this does reinforce what we see time after time in marketing – straight cash incentives (coupons, cash back) tend to discount sales marketers are likely to get anyway. The best promotions tend to be those designed to change preference and long-term demand – e.g., discounts targeted at competitive customers (register-generated coupons targeting competitive users, online retargeting to reach competitive customers with a trial offer, member-get-a-member referral offers) or incentives to stimulate sales during off-peak periods (fly this summer, get a discount next winter).

What is leadership?

2010-10-16T15:47:00.002-05:00

I gave an address yesterday to the Executive MBA program at the University of California Irvine's Merage School of Business.

My goal was to share with these executives what I've learned about leadership through observation, trial and error. Core to my beliefs is the idea that leaders create more leaders to achieve things that matter. The attached presentation outlines my point of view on the traits of effective leaders.

Creating great leaders.

View more presentations from wikimurph.

The power of local intimacy.

2010-10-04T01:50:00.011-05:00

I've long believed that empathy is an essential building block in any successful brand strategy.

Empathy is how we bond with one another; it is also how brands bond with customers. We gravitate toward brands that get us; that share our sense of humor; that share our values; that make us feel good about ourselves. Define the basis of your brand's empathy with its customers and you'll get to the essential truth of your brand.

SABMiller has reached the same conclusion, and has done so on a global scale. Rather than follow the siren song of global efficiencies – i.e., one message worldwide – the brewer realized that local marketing can be more effective in creating a tight bond with the emotions, values and culture of its customers, which, particularly in the case of beer, can vary widely from market to market. SABMiller calls this "local intimacy."

This doesn't mean a marketer must sacrifice global efficiencies. To be sure, a blue collar worker in Krakow likely shares many of the same values as his or her peer in Kalamazoo. Hard-earned rewards for a hard day's work can be a universal appeal. Many creative assets can be shared to enable local markets to invest less on production and more on media. However, in a "glocal" model, markets should use these assets flexibly to cast their message within the local zeitgeist (sports, humor, pop culture).

This flexibility can help make your brand feel like a good friend sitting on the next bar stool versus a passing stranger who tries to strike up a conversation.

Is anybody listening?

2010-09-22T09:33:00.000-05:00

Three years ago while speaking on an Ad:Tech panel, I coined the term wikibranding to convey an observation that brands are in fact wikis, entities that are increasingly defined by the crowd and less so by the manufacturer.

Given the disruptive forces in social media that have taken hold since then – YouTube and Facebook weren't yet the mass forces they are today, and Twitter hadn't yet tweeted – I believe this to be even more true today.

So the question is not whether customers are talking, it's whether marketers are listening. What are marketers doing with the flood of peer-to-peer likes and dislikes that travel around the world at light speed?

I've grown tired of traditional dashboards. They provide heat but little light. They report but don't inspire ideas. That's because most analytics are a dizzying blur of data that are disconnected from the building blocks of brand equity; disconnected from product innovation; disconnected from the CEO's line-of-sight on what's actually happening in the marketplace.

Infographics is a start. Sure to get more senior management attention on what the data are saying.

The chatter about the emerging role of Chief Listening Officers is another step, but one that will add value only if the CLO is given a mandate to make things happen. (Shouldn't the CMO be the CLO?)

Another way is to begin aligning analytics with the key principles of how brands build equity and value. (A project that's already underway at BD'M.)

Whatever the solution turns out to be, it's sure to require an equal balance of lateral thinking to find insights within disparate data points, as well as patience to make sure we don't react to every opinion that passes as fact on the Internet.

The economic value of crisis management.

2010-09-17T17:07:00.009-05:00

Interbrand just released its annual ranking of the Top 100 most valuable global brands. The usual suspects made the Top 10 – e.g., Coke, IBM, McDonalds, GE, Microsoft and Disney.

This year, while looking at how Toyota and BP fared, the study made me think about the value of crisis management. Both brands faced a major crisis of consumer confidence. Toyota suffered through problems with sudden acceleration and customer fatalities, made even worse by the company's slow and confused response. BP created an epic environmental disaster, and then had its CEO make matters worse by having us feel as though we were inconveniencing his summer holidays.

So how did each do in this year's ranking? Toyota dropped from the Top 10 to the #11 position, while BP dropped off the list all together.

Why did Toyota's brand value hold up better than that of BP? Certainly years spent building brand equity and consumer trust worked in Toyota's favor. And despite Toyota's halting initial response, it did something smart by deciding to offer its advanced STAR safety system as a standard no-cost feature on all models. This showed great insight because, even though Toyota's problem was one of sudden acceleration, the emotional issue in play was a feeling of being vulnerable and unsafe.

And BP? It ran ads.

If ever there was a case to be made why we need to consistently invest in brand equity – through a mix of product, service and advertising – this is it; particularly when we see how quickly a brand's economic value can evaporate.

Announcing the echo chamber app.

2010-09-02T12:28:00.003-05:00

We live in a world where we can access the entire knowledge base of the human race within two clicks. Why, then, do we increasingly find ourselves in an echo chamber?

The echo chamber happens when we tune in only to the cable news channels or blogs that reinforce our political points of views; when we use Twitter to hear ourselves speak but not to listen; when we only absorb topics within our comfort zone of daily water cooler chatter. It's human nature to hunker down during a storm, and the interweb is a virtual tsunami of information.

Today, Christopher Taylor and I riffed a solution: An app that monitors our daily intake of media, web searches, entertainment, appointments, tweets, social network interaction, etc. (which largely exist on our computer or smartphone) and provides a daily infographic illustrating whether or not we made it out of the chamber.

(My DV% to avoid the Echo Chamber.)

The app would require us to establish desired pre-sets – similar to the % Daily Value nutrition labels – that seek a balance between topics and people we know versus time spent exploring new subjects and voices.

Maybe the app could ping us at regular intervals during the day to let us know if we need to increase our intake of the new and unfamiliar.

Chris added that we could make this into a game. Everyone loves badges, after all. But unlike Foursquare, where you become a mayor by visiting the same place over and over (geo-echochamberism), we'd give out badges for visiting a place for the first time.

By the way, I just met Mr Taylor today for about 30 minutes, so I think I hit my DV% of New Opinions.

Now where's my badge?

What I learned at Lollapalooza.

2010-08-09T20:16:00.004-05:00

I just returned from three days at Lollapalooza with my daughters. Great time with the girls. Outstanding festival – really well planned and run. (Chicago is a fantastic city!)

While I've spent years creating events for youth marketing programs, often from the outside looking in, this gave me chance to experience youth marketing from the mosh pit out.

By and large, the marketing was fairly flat-footed. The usual branded swag became white noise. The best efforts came from a handful of marketers whose presence added something to the fan's experience.

The best by far came from my old friends at Toyota. Their tent wasn't an escape from music – it celebrated music and creative expression. There you could hop in a Corolla retrofitted to be a four-door photo booth; spin to win some cool prizes; listen to little-known, up-and-coming bands (the roots of Lolla, right?) who performed in the tent and were streamed over the interweb; as well as create art and posters.

Estancia Wines showed that it understood a simple fact about three-day concerts: people need to sit in the shade. The Estancia tent was set up like an outdoor ultra-lounge, featuring leather chairs and couches, cafe tables and stools, and, of course, a wine bar.

AOL did a decent job promoting its Lifestream service by setting up a helpful charging station. Very simple and insightful.

The most well-intended but ineffective effort came from AT&T, which handed out ear buds to promote that it was offering free wi-fi inside the festival. The only problem was that its wi-fi coverage didn't extend throughout Grant Park. Epic Fail. (They've learned what veterans of Lolla and Coachella have long known – 3G networks become paralyzed by tens of thousands of people simultaneously blogging, posting, tweeting, texting, poking and uploading.)

My daughter Lauren has a great idea for any marketer gearing up for next year: Sponsor a tent where fans can decorate and personalize their own "find me" stick, and perhaps upload the image to their friends. I noticed in the crowd how some people brought poles and sticks decorated with stuffed cats, balloons, jesters, etc – anything they could hoist up to help their friends find them in the sea of fans.

Let me not mislead you into believing that I actually spent three days thinking about this stuff. It was all about the music. And here's the music I really loved:

The Strokes
Arcade Fire
The National
Frank Turner
Against Me
The Walkmen
Yeasayer
Matt & Kim
Gogol Bordello (tied with Matt & Kim for the most entertaining band)
Social Distortion
and, of course, Green Day

Me and Green Man are tight.

Why Millennials will save Madison Avenue.

2010-08-02T09:39:00.010-05:00

(As published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.)

Listen in on most brand planning meetings and one word comes up over and over – Millennials. Sometimes called GenY or EchoBoomers, this is the generation born between 1982 and 2000. Millennials are no longer solely on the playground; they're running companies (Mark Zuckerberg), entertaining (Rihanna) and winning Olympic Gold (Shaun White). To marketers, Millennials represent a 76 million strong brand-conscious demographic.

Recently, however, I’ve started viewing this generation through a different lens. Beyond being a coveted advertising target, the characteristics that define this generation make them extremely well-equipped to re-architect the modern advertising agency.

I believe this to be true because Millennials are widely viewed as a generation of collaborative, tech-savvy, multicultural, problem-solvers – the very skills necessary to address the questions marketers increasingly voice about their advertising agencies.

Let’s break it down by examining some of the defining traits of Millennials, as outlined by Lynn Lancaster and David Stillman in their recent book, The M-Factor, and examine how a career in advertising meshes with these values.

Millennials are inherently collaborative: This is a generation that believes we > me. They’ve been working in teams since kindergarten as classrooms increasingly emphasized group participation. Soccer became the suburb’s biggest after-school sport because it prizes team flow over star-power. Advertising is a great profession for people who thrive on collaboration (or “no walls”, as we call it at BD’M). The agencies that are succeeding are those that have banished silos, where media, creative and strategy form one big mosh pit of ideas.

Millennials are the first multicultural generation: This generation has grown up in a time in which the U.S. experienced dramatic growth in immigration and racial integration. Multiculturalism is simply a fact of life for this group, reinforced early on by Sesame Street, and later in the classroom, as well as in film and music. Let’s face a hard truth: the advertising industry must do a better job when it comes to diversity. This is not simply a politically correct goal – it is an economic imperative. We're in the business of helping clients connect with main street America. Agencies succeeded at this over the decades largely because we mirrored the face of America. This is no longer true, and unless this changes we put at risk our ability to give our clients relevant and intimate customer insights. Millennials can play a huge role in reshaping the face of agencies and our ability to understand and connect with multicultural America.

Millennials want to be innovators and problem-solvers: Marketers hire us because the lines on the graph are heading the wrong way. At its core, advertising professionals solve problems by inspiring clients to embrace new solutions. More and more these solutions involve online, mobile and social media. Millennials have been training for this job since birth.

Millennials want to feel they are contributing: Boomers and Xers sometimes label Millennials a needy group requiring constant feedback. To be sure, this is a generation that received trophies for simply participating, not to mention an endless flow of reinforcement from their “helicopter parents.” Advertising is an excellent career for people who thrive on instant feedback. In this business you’re either a hero or a goat; there’s nowhere to hide. Whether you’re writing the TV spot, mapping the online user experience, or crunching the CPMs for the media plan, your work is out there in the white hot spotlight for all to critique.

Millennials want a job in which they can be heard: On the night before a pitch, a great idea knows no title. If you are a so-called “junior” and feel you have the answer, irrespective of the fact that your title has half the syllables as that of your boss, shout out and be prepared to defend your point of view. Anybody who has worked with me knows that I refer to meetings as a full-contact sport. Come play.

Millennials want to make a difference in the world: Like it or not, we live in a consumer culture bombarded by media in all its forms. Smart, talented and creative people can get intimately involved in creating marketing ideas that make a difference. Witness Starbucks’ support of Red; Pepsi’s strategy to crowd-source world-changing ideas; Target’s support of the arts; GE’s ecomagination; or Ford’s support for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Millennials want to express who they are through work: Good luck expressing yourself in a huge corporation. Conversely, an agency is like high school for grown ups. You can earn social currency through your individual sense of style, taste in music, tattoos, social causes or antics at the last party. We really don’t care if you are gay, straight, indie, emo, conservative or downright crazy, just as long as you have smart ideas and come through when it counts.

To capitalize on the opportunity that Millennials present, the advertising industry has to begin making a clear case why this profession should attract this generation's best and brightest. (Anybody who hasn’t viewed Rory Sutherland’s 2009 speech at TED –“Life lessons from an ad man.”– should take a few moments to watch it and reflect on the economic value and cultural impact we create when we do our jobs well.)

The 4As must ramp up campus recruiting and attract talented graduates by connecting the values of this generation with the unique career opportunities advertising agencies present – a career that stands at the nexus of business, media, entertainment, technology, pop culture and any and all new trends.

Most importantly, senior leaders of advertising agencies need to stop dwelling on what they had to do back in the day to get ahead and instead unleash the creativity and energy of the twenty-somethings buried in their agencies. Any agency that is having a hard time grappling with social and digital media is simply an agency that hasn’t tapped its in-house experts – its Millennials.

Jobs = income = demand = profits. Not vice versa.

2010-07-07T21:59:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I attended a leadership meeting for the Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine, where I serve as Vice Chair of the Dean's Advisory Board.

At the meeting Paul Merage, whose gift and vision has helped propel the school's progress, reiterated his vision that the U.S. is in the midst of its third economic epoch. The current Innovation Economy is radically transforming our country from its earlier roots in its industrial and agrarian based economies. As Paul points out, our country faces twin challenges if it hopes to succeed in this economy: we need a new generation of executives to lead in a global innovation economy and we also need a well educated work force to ensure these innovation-driven jobs stay at home.

This same theme is put forward in a must-read article in Business Week by Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel. The legendary Silicon Valley leader makes a compelling case for why we need to fix America through jobs and not Wall Street profits, particularly when there is 10x more tech jobs in China for every one in the U.S. Sure, our jobs pay more, but left unchecked this is the path toward wider class and economic divisions in our country — a highly unsustainable economic and social model.

While Henry Ford is rightly credited with pioneering mass production, what he actually created was a viable middle class to consume these mass-produced and newly affordable cars, appliances and, later, TVs. Higher paying manufacturing jobs creates real income which fuels consumption which underpins demand. QED.

Winning is sweet.

2010-06-29T14:57:00.002-05:00

Today Bissell announced it has chosen BD'M to handle the launch of an exciting and important new brand. Everyone at the agency who worked on the pitch was so taken by the culture and people and Bissell. And the new product is definitely going to make a statement. We're looking forward to a very good partnership.

So far 2010 is shaping up to be a year of quiet momentum at the agency. In addition to winning this assignment from Bissell, earlier in the year Pulte Group named BD'M as AOR for its Del Webb brand; UnitedHealth Group enlisted us to lead a brand positioning and identity project; and, along with our partners at United Airlines, we just won an EFFIE for our Travel Options campaign.

The people at BD'M have given their all and more this year, and it's beginning to pay off. Let's hope the Great Recession is finally giving way to the Great Recovery!

Opt for success.

2010-06-13T17:43:00.008-05:00

Last week BD'M and United Airlines were awarded an EFFIE by the American Marketing Association for the success of its Travel Options campaign.

Travel Options by United is a marketing program that enables customers to purchase a la carte the premium perks traditionally enjoyed only by elite business travelers – e.g., using the faster security line, boarding early, enjoying extra legroom in Economy Plus, shipping your bags directly to your hotel room, lounging in the Red Carpet Club.

The agency's challenge was to launch Travel Options in a way that separated it from things like baggage fees and other price increases airlines had to implement to combat volatile fuel prices and a drop in air travel during the recession.

United and BD'M made this a success by digging deep to understand the product from the customer's point of view, mapping every conceivable touchpoint along the customer's journey, and adopting a very collaborative test and learn approach. But perhaps real magic behind the program was the quirky little word we happened upon: "Opt." This simple idea not only conveyed choice, but became the glue which held together the full range of products and services United offers within Travel Options.

While BD'M has earned a number of accolades during this past year, including a Gold Lion in Film at Cannes and the distinction of being named "Best Small Agency in the U.S." by the 4As, the EFFIE Award represents an agency at its best – creating distinctive work that delivers superior results for its clients.

What is a brand?

2010-05-18T15:45:00.016-05:00

A column on adage.com today discusses a widely known secret in our industry – we're in the brand-building business, yet no two professionals seem to share the same definition of a brand.

Some define a brand as a promise. Some define it as an idea. While others define a brand as mash-up of rational and emotional benefits. There's likely an element of truthiness to each definition.

The article challenged me to set down in writing my beliefs about brands – a point-of-view formed over the years through different experiences and inputs. So here goes...

Brands are based on an empathetic relationship with customers.

When I grew up at Ogilvy, Charlotte Beers used to preach that brands are defined by relationships. That got me thinking, and over the years I tightened that definition to focus on the power of empathy. I believe people choose brands the same way they choose their friends. Walk into a crowded party where you don't know a soul and notice who you end up chatting with – someone with whom you have something in common.

Empathy is how we bond with one another; it is also how brands bond with customers. We gravitate toward brands that get us; that share our sense of humor; that share our values; that make us feel good about ourselves. Define the basis of your brand's empathy toward its customers and you'll get to the essential truth of your brand.

More and more we are witnessing a third party in this relationship – our peers. In a social media environment, brands are increasingly based on the relationship that exists between the product and the customer and the other customers who use the product. This observation is why I coined the term wikibranding. (My former boss at Saatchi, Kevin Roberts wrote a great book called Lovemarks; perhaps his sequel should be "Brands: A menage a trois.")

Brand equity is not a static metric – it is the combination of four essential dynamics: differentiation, relevance, esteem and knowledge.

When I was President of Y&R Irvine I worked closely with a brand equity model called Brand Asset Valuator. BAV, the world's largest database on brand equity, demonstrates across hundreds of categories, time after time, country after country, that brand equity is built by the sequence and relationship between a brand's levels of differentiation, relevance, esteem and knowledge (aka, DREK, a very unfortunate acronym). Of these four dyanamics, relevance and differentiation are most important: relvance = volume, while differentiation = margin. Define a specific and tangible strategy for these dynamics and you will have a clear plan for building brand equity.

Experiences transform brand image into brand beliefs.

Customers judge brands on what they do, not just by what they say. This has always been true, but is amplified ten-fold in a social media world. When I see a compelling brand ad I will absorb it and remember it. When I engage a brand in a unique experience – sampling, a cool app, helpful online experience, an event – I will tweet about it.

Great brands tell great stories.

Stories help us understand. They convey meaning. And in a fast moving world, meaning trumps information. Too many brands get bogged down in lists of nouns and adjectives. Brands are verbs; like characters in a story, they do things.

The approach I've developed over time for creating persuasive brand narratives involves identifying your archetypal personality (the universal characters that form our collective unconscious), the hero's journey (the brand's true north, why it exists) and conflict (great literature hinges on a clearly defined antagonist; great brands define what they stand for by being equally clear about what they oppose).

Alas, if it was only that easy. Greatness is in the execution. And some brands simply out-execute other brands. They convey an infectious sense of momentum through purposeful innovation. And they embrace marketing's "new normal" and eschew tired distinctions between offline and online, traditional and nontraditional.

In the end, one may debate whether I'm right or wrong, but not where I stand on the issue; nor the fact that I've been fortunate to have worked for some smart people over my career. Thank you all.

Can Cadillac lead again?

2010-05-11T09:55:00.004-05:00

A while back I was interviewed for a piece on how Cadillac can regain its cool factor. The new spots from BBH are visually stunning and a step in the right direction. But the line "The Mark of Leadership" leaves me wondering how Cadillac intends to lead. Leadership in performance? Leadership in design? Leadership in technology?

If the answer is "yes" to all three, that is wishful thinking because it is not singleminded. Cadillac's identity is so fuzzy that it requires nothing short of a laser-like focus on one theme. In the piece I wrote I suggested technology, which by the way is a singleminded platform that can be used to support a range of messages, including safety, performance and even design.

Facebook or deodorant: What matters more?

2010-05-06T13:46:00.012-05:00

I recently conducted a survey via social media to better understand our relationship with the personal technologies that increasingly define our daily lives. After all, we’re glued to smart phones, addicted to Facebook, Twitter and texting, and seem to be caught in an endless hunt for wi-fi.

The survey explored a range of questions, such as how we personify our relationship with technology, how our life might change if we had to live without our favorite gadget for a year, as well as what we’d be willing to sacrifice in order to keep our favorite tech (Sleep? Deodorant? Proper nutrition?).

Boomers and Xers display the most angst over whether our addiction to technology is good or bad, in large part because we can recall a time when we weren’t tethered to work 24/7. Among Gen Y respondents this issue is a nonstarter – like debating the merits of electricity. (Hasn’t the entire knowledge base of the human race always been two clicks away?)

We have a love/hate relationship with our personal technologies. We love it because it’s like a personal assistant, helping to keep us in the know and be productive.

We hate it when it reveals things about us we’re not proud of – e.g., we’re socially needy, we’re workaholics, we can’t control an obvious addiction.

A few themes emerged.

Technology is our concierge: We accomplish more things more easily. Our smart phone is like a best friend – always there, always helping us.

“Technology is like a brother to me.”
“A valued assistant.”
“Technology is like my third child. It plays a hugely significant role in my life.”
“We’re tight, me and technology. Close chums.”
“It’s like electricity. Always there.”

Technology enslaves us: We are tethered 24/7. While respondents see this as helpful to our personal relationships, it comes at the price of always being “at work.” Gen Y respondents seem to fear that being off the grid equates with being socially irrelevant.

“Addicted and in constant pursuit of more.”
“Cell phones have become a socially acceptable drug with no cure.”
“It’s a devil and a saint.”
“If I don’t respond to a my friend’s text right away it’s taken as an insult.”

Hygiene matters less than connectivity: Respondents would give up deodorant before giving up their favorite technology – perhaps a sign that our personal technologies have isolated us, so poor hygiene might not matter much.

“I’m locked away emailing most of the day so giving up deodorant wouldn’t be an issue.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of unwashed, staying up all night Facebooking and Dorito-eating folks descending into that abyss right now.”

We hunger for more meaningful connections: Because of texting and Facebook, our personal connections are broad but not deep. This became evident as respondents reflected on how their life would change if they gave up their favorite personal technologies for a year:

“My personal interactions would be narrower, but deeper.”
“Less texting, more face to face.”
“Less time ignoring caller ID and actually picking up the phone and realizing someone really did need to talk to me at that moment.”
“I’d probably have trouble handling the small daily stuff but might actually have more time to focus on big important issues and relationships.”

Clearly, there is no turning back. Nor should we. There are countless ways for consumer technology companies to make technology more of a friend and less of a frenemy. Nintendo’s Wii has been successful because it brought back face-to-face interaction to gaming. Apple’s success is due in large part to how its design and functionality makes technology simple, inviting and less intrusive. Bing has picked up market share by addressing the issue of information overload, smartly positioning itself as a decision engine. And Best Buy’s “twelp force” has brought a degree of humanity and personalization to the act of shopping for electronics online.

The same old "new normal"?

2010-04-14T18:27:00.008-05:00

Today I saw a study on "The New Affluents" and how they will be behave differently from previous generations of people with more dollars than sense.

According to this study, affluent Americans are now into self-expression, not status. They will not buy anything to impress others because conspicuous consumption is out. Brand choices will be guided by perceptions of quality and authenticity.

Sure. If that's true we'd all be driving a Honda.

I cannot remember the last time I heard somebody admit in research that they are shallow and driven by what the Jones' think. Seriously, did the researcher expect that in the midst of the Great Recession respondents would agree that conspicuous consumption is a personal priority?

I am wary of research that predicts that consumers will respond differently during this recovery than we did following previous recessions. As I posted at the onset of this recession, the narrative of the "new normal" (i.e., grounded values, cocooning, authenticity, personal fulfillment) always comes to the forefront during a recession, only to be followed by new cars, new houses and designer baby buggies during the shiny, happy days that follow. This has occurred after every recession since the early '80s. Marketers that bet against deeply ingrained human needs tend to lose.

To be sure, what will be different in this recovery is the power of social and online media to make us smarter and more empowered consumers. But don't be surprised if we once again experience what Faith Popcorn once described as "the pleasure revenge."

Three fools. One good agency.

2010-04-01T10:50:00.005-05:00

Only fools would start a company just as the economy was about to crater, and do so on April Fools Day.

On April 1st, 2007, three guys at the top of their game left great jobs and corporate comforts to run away and join the circus. The result was Barrie D'Rozario Murphy.

The agency was hatched over multiple breakfasts when Bob and Stuart made the tough decision to leave Fallon to launch their own agency, followed by multiple phone calls from Stuart persuading me that joining a 3 person shop would be more exciting than leading Saatchi LA's 300 person shop. Stuart is quite persuasive. And prescient.

We call our company a "grown up start up" – a handle Jon Bond kindly gave us one night in New York after we launched, inspired by several martinis and Jon's passion for giving brands a clear positioning.

Three years later, BD'M has earned the trust of marketers such as United Airlines, Bissell, Best Buy, Applied Materials, Compellent, Del Webb, UnitedHealth Group and our founding client, the Sunset Marquis. Our work for the Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis garnered one of only two U.S. Gold Lions in Film last year at Cannes. And the 4As named BD'M "best small agency in the U.S." (Go to our site and read the tongue firmly in cheek ad we ran in the New York Times.) But we take most pride in the talented people who have ventured from near and far to join BD'M. We'd be nowhere without them.

A start up? Not so much anymore. Grown up? Well, Bob, Stuart and I are still working on that part.

So this April Fool's Day, do something very foolish and follow your dreams.

Compellent - TRASH THE SAME OLD SAN.

2010-03-23T09:40:00.002-05:00

Here's a viral idea BD'M created for Compellent to allow IT managers to work out their angst over outdated data storage technologies.

Have some fun. Trash the SAN!

Compellent - TRASH THE SAME OLD SAN.

Posted using ShareThis

How Games Can Help Us Solve the World's Biggest Problems

2010-03-18T13:40:00.003-05:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: Thought provoking presentation by Jane McGonigal about how the skills acquired by gamers can be applied to solving the epic problems the world is facing.

Design Intersections: How Games Can Help Us Solve the World's Biggest Problems

View more presentations from avantgame.

Finding a brand's emotional truth.

2010-03-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

I had been scratching my head this past year wondering why Bud Light was touting "drinkability" as its new brand positioning. It's an odd word for a beer, somehow very powerpointy. This week the answer came into the light: consultants. According to Advertising Age, "drinkability" was the output of a consulting group hired by Anheuser-Busch.

I fully embrace the clarifying power of one-word brand equities. However, some strategic language should stay in the brand bullseye and not become the creative expression. At least Coors Light bills itself as "refreshing", a word that makes me thirsty for a beer.

The consultant's explanation is that all brands need to be underpinned by an emotional and rational appeal, and that relying solely on an emotional message runs the risk of being replicated by competition. That may be true in many categories, but I'm not sure this is true with beer. And it is certainly not true if you take the time to peel back the layers of the brand to reveal its essential emotional truth – something that cannot be replicated.

Witness Dos Equis. The campaign featuring "The most interesting man in the world" is purely emotional. It taps into powerful archetypes and storytelling. The campaign has contributed to double-digit sales growth.

So next time you're in a bar, you can order a beer that is drinkable, or a beer that makes you interesting. Enough said.

ING Cafes - the Starbucks of banks.

2010-03-15T10:10:00.001-05:00

I stumbled upon an ING Cafe in Philadelphia last week and was struck by the brilliance of the bank's decision to reach customers in such a unique way and give the bank a tangible personality.

I've since learned there are seven ING Cafes across the country, each a fully functioning coffee shop and retail bank. In addition to a latte, customers can choose to speak with an ING representative about opening a checking account. But if you simply want to kick back with a cup of coffee and tweet to your heart's content, the ING bankers will stay in Barista mode.

These Cafes are a savvy way to feed social media and boost the bank's Google results, which include restaurant reviews in Yelp and New Yorker Magazine – a media context in which a bank is seldom mentioned.

The ING Cafes seem to be inspired by the successful Jyske Bank case study I've highlighted in previous posts.

While advertising is certainly a proven way to build a strong brand image, first-hand experiences are unparalleled in their ability to turn perceptions into deeply held beliefs.

Super Bowl commercials 2010

2010-02-08T09:40:00.003-06:00

The big commercials on yesterday's Super Bowl seemed a bit smaller than those in years past. Perhaps the problem is that we tend to use as our benchmark the waste-money-at-all-costs commercials of the dot.com days when you didn't have to say anything, just have a chimp clanging a symbol or punch somebody in the nuts to get a laugh.

So while the spots seemed a bit smaller in scale, many seemed to nail a new model: humor that reinforces a big brand message without getting in the way of it.

Some exemplars included Snickers ("Betty White"), Bud Light ("Lost", "T-Pain"), Coke ("Simpsons") and, as usual, Monster ("Fiddlin' Beaver").

Super Bowl ads need to draw a laugh in a room full of noisy, well-lubricated fans. Talking animals, guy-humor, and, yes, people getting punched in the nuts, are all part of the formula. But using this huge stage to land a big message must be part of the formula as well, particularly in an increasingly results oriented climate.

Two other consistent themes yesterday: seemingly guys have been neutered beyond belief and several brands that start with the letter "D" (dudes?) are here to help men be men again (Dodge, Dove, Dockers); Danica Patrick must move on and leave GoDaddy in her dust – she's better than them. I think.

And, finally, one observation: As more and more marketing budgets get redirected to digital and search marketing, it was ironic to see Google running a Super Bowl spot.

The power of a big brand idea.

2010-01-24T18:15:00.004-06:00

All of us at BD'M are very proud of our new work for Compellent.

Compellent is one of the country's fastest growing network storage companies. Their "secret sauce" is a unique technology that is extremely dynamic, scalable and efficient. The company enlisted BD'M in 2009 to dissect the brand and develop a new plaftform to help fuel Compellent's next phase of growth.

The result? "Fluid Data", a big brand idea that marries the essential truth of Compellent's technology with a clear point of view on what the future of data storage should be.

This brand video is the tip of the iceberg. There's more cool stuff in the pipeline. Stay tuned, because the future is fluid.

Viewing event marketing as mass media.

2010-01-21T12:45:00.001-06:00

I really like this Coke video that's sweeping YouTube. It nails the brand idea (happiness). It's also and interesting blend of event marketing and viral marketing.

The basis of event marketing used to be to stage something provocative to get customers to in a specific location to experience the brand in a new and engaging manner. The event would be seen by the 500 or 5,000 people at the event, whether on a street, a campus or at a sporting event.

Social media changes everything. Now we need to think about event marketing as a form of mass media. Stage an interesting event that can be documented and seen by the 500,000 people who will view it and share it on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube. At last count Coke has racked up over 784,000 views so far. I would imagine that is slightly more than the number of folks on the campus where they staged the event.

The PayPal of mobile commerce?

2010-01-19T19:26:00.002-06:00

The Red Cross text message campaign to raise donations for Haiti is brilliant. It's simple and immediate, two things that tend to resonate in America.

It's also been hugely effective, raising about $22 million in donations as of this past Sunday, or nearly one in every five dollars raised so far by the Red Cross for Haiti.

(By the way, if you haven't done so already, please text "Haiti" to 9099 and and $10 donation to the Red Cross relief effort for Haiti will be added to your phone bill.)

This makes me wonder about the future applications of this idea. Why couldn't I do the same thing to buy a product? Why can't AT&T or Verizon step forward to become the new PayPal for mobile commerce?

The BD'M culture club

2010-01-07T10:05:00.004-06:00

Culture Club
By David Gee

“Do you want to start an agency?” said Fallon vet Stuart D’Rozario to his former and current colleague, Bob Barrie, over cocktails late one afternoon several years ago. The reply, “Can I tell you in the morning?” As you might imagine since you are reading this story, the answer did indeed come back in the affirmative and thus began a new agency called Barrie D’Rozario. Astute readers, however, will no doubt note there is a Murphy missing from the BDM triumvirate.

“We agreed that we needed a third partner on the strategy side,” continues D’Rozario, “and I told Bob I had once met this cool ad guy, David Murphy, several years earlier and that he might be a fit. At that time, Murphy was president of the combined offices of Young Rubicam and Wunderman in Southern California. I looked him up and found he had moved on and was running the 300-person Saatchi & Saatchi LA office. So we both said to ourselves, ‘Good luck with that.’ called David anyway and said, ‘Do you remember me? We met five years ago. How would you like to leave your job, and run away and join the circus?’ One thing led to another, and four or five months after the phone call it all came together.”

On April 1, 2007, Barrie D’Rozario did, indeed, become Barrie D’Rozario Murphy.

“The draw and the lure is having the opportunity to partner with other people who have a similar vision of what the culture should be like,” says Murphy answering his own question—and mine. “The world doesn’t need another ad agency, but when you have people who understand the role of culture, the right culture, the right people will be attracted to that and the right clients will value that. We have the same passion, the same interests and it’s very collaborative.”

“That said, we are very different people with different perspectives,” interjects Barrie. “I’m the guy who has spent my entire career in Minneapolis; five years at a couple of retail shops and then 24 at Fallon. Stuart, on the other hand, has worked in Seattle, Hong Kong, Boston and Bombay, and David was born in Pakistan and has worked all over the world as well.”

Having given up successful jobs in other places, the three now work together in a clean, crisp, open space on the second floor of the Wyman Building, to create and collaborate and run an “agency with no walls.” And, as per their own verbiage, they do just that:

No walls between BD'M and the clients …

“We think of it as one team,” says Murphy. “We don’t think of it as us and them. Clients say to us all the time, ‘don’t give me the org chart, just give me a handful of people that are going to make us successful.’”

No walls between BD'M and other partners working for clients …

“We’re obviously independent, and that has its blessings,” says Barrie. “We can collaborate with virtually anyone in the world without undue influence to use a certain company or person simply because they’re ‘in the network.’ The model has become that clients don’t have just one agency anyway, they tend to work with a lot of agencies. Whether we are the lead brand agency, like we are with United, or a supplemental support agency, like we are with Best Buy, we play well and collaborate with others. A lot of agencies are real competitive and constantly jostle for position, but we found our work is better and the mood is better if we approach it as ‘we’re all in this together.’”

No walls between people of different disciplines in the agency…

“My pet peeve has long been the creative department,” says D’Rozario, a former creative director at Fallon. “Everyone thinks it’s ‘hallowed ground,’ this special place. The one thing we will never have at BDM is a creative dept. It’s all just smushed together.”

Of course, there are only a couple of dozen people “smushed together” at BDM, as opposed to the several hundred people at places where the three principals have worked previously. What about the head count? The infrastructure? The heads of the big agencies in New York, Chicago and L.A. will obviously always say size matters. Does it still in the ad agency world? I asked David Murphy.

“When I was running the Y&R shop in LA, I developed this game that I used with people in response to the question, ‘What’s the agency going to do about this or that?’ I’d say there’s no such thing as ‘the agency.’ Because for Callaway Golf, one of our clients, there were seven people. That was the agency to the client. For Sony it was 22 people. So it really comes down to small teams. There are never 200 or 300 people working on one client’s business. The team we have working for BD'M on United’s account is no different than the number of people who would be working on it at a bigger agency. One thing that is different, however, is that bureaucracy and compartmental silos do not encumber our team. We have the same brain power, the same resources, but they are more directly applied to the client and their jobs.”

So you can make the argument size doesn’t matter, but awards always do. And the BD'M crew scored a big one this past fall when they came out on top in the small agency category for the American Association of Advertising Agencies O’Toole Award for Creative Excellence. And they took out a full-page ad in the New York Times (see sidebar) to tell the world about it.

“We got phone calls and emails for days, including from people who aren’t even in advertising!” says Barrie excitedly. “They were sitting in a coffee shop and calling saying how much they loved this ad because it spoke for the little guy.”

“We had a lot of fun with it, but it was actually kind of a risk,” adds Murphy. “The industry is starved to have a point of view and it was really kind of cheeky.”

“I actually wrote the ad sitting at the kitchen table,” says D’Rozario. “It has helped bring us some business, and we enjoyed it, but then you move on. The biggest thing about awards is that clients are hiring us to make them more successful and it gives them confidence that we are successful ourselves.”

And as the ad says, the agency’s principals do want BD'M to grow. However, they are quick to add—in unison—they want responsible, healthy, organic growth so the agency doesn’t get too big, too fast, and implode on itself as they have seen others do. And that involves not only paying attention to revenue and head count and clients, but also the culture.

“One thing I have learned here at BD'M is it really is all about the culture,” Murphy closes. “Everyone has the same processes, the same flow charts, etc, but it’s the culture that makes things happen.”

The decade of analytics.

2010-01-05T15:50:00.002-06:00

I believe the new decade will be defined in marketing circles as the analytics decade.

Over the past ten years marketers have become adept at using ones and zeros to market to customers. We now must use these same digital tools to learn more about satisfying our customers.

Traditional forms of market research have long revealed the chasm between what customers say versus what they actually do. What people say in focus groups is often quite different than how they actually spend their time and money. We often find clearer insights when we observe real behavior. We used to rely solely on field work to see consumer-erectus in its natural environs. Now we can use their actual online shopping behavior to get a real-time fix on their behaviors, wants and needs.

A recent NY Times article ("A Data Explosion Is Remaking Retail") illustrates this point in action.

I particularly like the example of Wet Seal, the teen fashion retailer, which bases its merchandising and inventory decisions on the trends it observes when customers use the Outfitter feature on its website to see how different items might look when paired together -- e.g., which tops go with which jeans, color combinations, dressy/casual mash-ups, etc.

To be sure, we've long been able to gauge behavior by looking at what people buy online. What's interesting about Wet Seal's Outfitter application is its ability to analyze what people would like to buy in the future, based on real behaviors on the retailer's website.

How Cadillac can become cool again.

2009-12-02T18:14:00.011-06:00

BNET contacted me recently and posed this question, “What should Cadillac do to strengthen its brand image?”

The article appeared today on BNET. Given the limitations of space, the article had to excerpt the ideas put forward from each of the brand strategists who were interviewed. But given the unlimited space of my own blog, I thought I’d offer up the complete point of view I shared with BNET.

Here's what I think Cadillac should do to regain its mojo.

Behave like a technology brand, not an automotive brand. Throughout the last century the automobile stood for freedom, mobility and joy. Cars represented modern life at its best. Today, technology defines modern life. Each new smart phone or lifelike home theater joyfully proclaims that today is better then yesterday. Automotive brands such as Lexus and Ford are beginning to embrace this idea. Cadillac's brand positioning should be grounded in technology. This requires more than simply promoting whiz-bang gizmos. It's about projecting the sense of optimism and progress we want from technology. It’s about forging an image of being forward-looking, smart and efficient.

Here's the innovation brief I'd give to the engineering team: Pioneer new technologies that liberate us from old compromises. Prove that design and performance can co-exist with safety and environmental responsibility. After all, the basis of Moore's Law, Silicon Valley's driving force, is that technology should always help people do more with less.

Understand the difference between "luxury" and "premium." Premium is more than price. Premium is about worth.   This requires a new way of behaving. The most successful premium brands exude worth through a mix of sensuality, rarity, confidence, authenticity and quality. (These should replace typical automotive brand values such as bold, exciting, powerful, etc.)

Continue taking more design risks.  Right now, Cadillac’s cars are looking sharper, the interiors feel more premium and the quality of its cars and SUVs has been steadily improving. Cadillac has created a solid foundation from which to build. Never again revert to playing it safe. Exploit the fact that a designer is now running the company. We live in a very design savvy age. Bryan Nesbitt is a fresh face for the brand. He should be used extensively in PR and maybe even advertising. I think he could pull it off. Internally, use design thinking to rethink the overall brand experience, not just the product.

Begin cultivating Gen Y. To be sure, this generation is not yet ready to buy Cadillacs. But it is a mistake to continue picturing this group on the playground – nearly half are of college age. Cadillac needs to become this generation’s counter-intuitive statement. Every generation embraces a new idea to proclaim that they are not their parents. Boomers and GenX embraced Lexus and BMW over Cadillac and Lincoln. The minivan was a revolt against the station wagon just as the SUV was a protest against the minivan. Why can’t Cadillac be this next generation’s mark of independence from their Mercedes and BMW driving parents?

At the end of the day, Cadillac must solve the cocktail party dilemma. People must be able to look a peer in the eye and say, “I bought a Cadillac” without having to explain why. This is the crux of the problem. People never have to explain why they brought a Mercedes (engineering), Lexus (quality) or a Land Rover (adventure). Cadillac can be progressive and smart.

Playing it safe won’t do. Cool, must-have technologies. An image of being progressive and smart.   Audacious marketing. And new cars that have convey the optimism and swagger of concept vehicles. That's a plan that will rock the cocktail party circuit.

Repositioning a brand.

2009-11-24T06:30:00.002-06:00

Last week BD’M presented a deep dive into brand repositioning case studies to identify the strategies that drive success, as well as the mistakes marketers must avoid.

Dave Daily, Christine Dennis and Amber Greenwalt worked with me on researching these cases. We examined repositioning efforts over the last several years across a range of CPG, B2B and corporate brands.
As a starting point we isolated the most common strategies that marketers employ, levers that are often used in tandem for maximum effect:

New visual identity
New meaning and context.
New behaviors (distribution, media, promotion, product, etc).
New target audience.
New pricing.

After examining each of these brands we identified seven success factors shared by many of these marketers, and some cautionary notes:

Clearly define the problem. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. (Walmart did this particularly well.)
Find a new positioning from within the truth of the brand. Be credible. No skin grafts. (Cisco is a good example of extending a core brand truth.)
Create tight alignment throughout the value chain. The experience must line up with the advertising. (Few have done this better than Target. Sun Chips is another interesting example.)
Change behavior, not just words and symbols. Provide tangible evidence of change. (Hyundai nailed this several times over. As did Old Spice.)
Seek inspiration from your best customers. (Holiday Inn conducted extensive research among customers. )
Execute a seamless re-launch, no patchwork roll-out. (Holiday Inn seems to be doing this well, with real penalties for franchisees that do not meet spec.)
Pre-plan Phase 2 of the re-launch. Demonstrate continuous improvement. (Hyundai has successfully sequenced image-shifting initiatives over time.)

This is just a executive summary of the presentation. If you are a marketer contemplating a repositioning in 2010, please drop me a note (david.murphy@bdm.net) or tweet (@wikimurph). We'll be happy to share our full findings and implications, as well as examples of repositioning work we've executed for brands such as United Airlines and Applied Materials.

Design as a business strategy.

2009-11-19T10:51:00.011-06:00

I've written on several occasions about the value of embracing design thinking as a business discipline, not just as an aesthetic process.

Design thinking forces executives to view the world from the customer's standpoint. It focuses on the overall experience and not just the tangible product. It requires reductive thinking. All very healthy business practices, not simply design practices.

Roger Martin, Head of Canada's Rotman School of Management, brings some fresh thinking to the topic, continuing the trend of B-Schools thinking and educating more like D-Schools. According to Martin, business leaders who embrace design thinking focus more on the possibilities over the existing framework, they balance analysis with intuition, and they discard templates in favor of fresh solutions when attempting to solve strategic challenges.

Another piece I read recently by Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds in the MIT Sloan Management Review further illuminates the similarities between great managers and designers. According to Duarte and Reynolds, "Managers and designers have to do the same things: Embrace restraints, question everything, and make sure tools don't get in the way of ideas. Design concepts such as hierarchy, balance, contrast and harmony are just as relevant to managers."

Finding the competition's Achilles' heel.

2009-11-04T11:24:00.006-06:00

We often see companies attempt to compete against a successful category leader through price cuts and other forms of discounting in an attempt to maintain market share. This is usually the sign of a company that is out of ideas.

A smarter strategic response is to see if you can turn the leader's strength into their vulnerability.

I was reminded of this while reading a Wall Street Journal article on how Illy has chosen to compete with Starbucks. Starbucks’ strength is its ubiquity. Illy cannot compete by building more brick and mortar. So its response is to piggyback on the ubiquity of local independent coffee shops, signing contracts with cafes that agree to serve Illy exclusively and allow Illy to exert quality control. Starbucks’ strength becomes its vulnerability – too many stores result in too much overhead and fewer opportunities to grow. Illy becomes the cool indie brand.

We see this same dynamic at work in other categories.

Amazon turned Barnes & Noble’s success in building bookstores around the country into bloated overhead that hangs around the retailer’s neck like a lead weight.

Apple reshaped Microsoft’s long time dominance in the corporate market into the image of a tweedy bureaucrat.

Enterprise built an entirely new category – temporary replacement cars for suburbanites – that Hertz and Avis cannot easily serve from their deeply entrenched airport locations.

And then there is Google, a company that uses the power of "free" as a competitive wedge to disrupt categories.

Your competitor's strength also can be its Achilles' heel. Find it and exploit it. Don't play the game by their rules. They'll win every time.

The power of touch.

2009-10-30T09:00:00.007-05:00

We’re supposed to be hurtling toward an age where all business is done through ones and zeros, with sales and service more efficiently handled online.

To be sure, we see many examples where this is producing a better outcome for marketers and their customers. Witness iTunes vs. Tower Records, Netflix vs. Blockbuster, Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble or Expedia vs. your neighborhood travel agent.

But this rush to virtual selling is not a one-size-fits-all strategy for all categories and marketers. Some recent examples illuminate our desire to see, touch and feel products, and how the best service is often carried out face to face.

What got me thinking about this is Microsoft’s announcement that it is opening retail stores, with the first launching in Scottsdale and Orange County. Like Apple stores, these outlets will sell hardware and software and offer technical support for people who are proud to be a “PC.”

And speaking of Apple, reports suggest that its stores generate more revenue per square foot than any retailer in the country. What more need be said about the power of a strong retail concept?

Recently, General Motors took the bold step in California to sell its cars on eBay. Great idea, lousy results. Turns out people prefer coming into the dealership to haggle. (I’ve witnessed this dynamic before in automotive research. Customers say they hate haggling but don't want to accept a fixed pricing model.)

Best Buy, a client of BD’M, has a strong online sales channel but knows that its key source of differentiation and repeat business is the knowledge and objectivity of its “blue shirts” working the store aisles.

Jyske Bank, Denmark's third largest bank, represents one of the most famous case studies on the power of a unique retail experience. Jyske re-imagined their savings and checking services as physical "products" to make them tangible and clear and evoke an emotional connection. They created that special "third place" -- a haven that is neither home or work -- that has been the secret sauce behind Starbucks' success. The result? Ad Age reported that Jyske Bank doubled its customer base in one year by improving loyalty while attracting new customers.

I am fortunate enough to have earned United’s double-secret “Global Services” status from our client. The aspect of the service I value most (other than the really cool black card!) is the GS hotline where the phone is answered by a real, empowered person before I even hear the first ring. While not an example of brick and mortar, it is another way to give customers the satisfaction of real and helpful interaction, not automated voice prompts.

The lesson to be learned may be that we are a prisoner of our vocabulary. Brick and mortar. Click and mortar. Retailing vs. e-tailing. Perhaps it's simply about the reassurance customers get from real live human interactions. That can happen in a store. That can also happen online via “click to chat.” Either way, it has to happen. I think we’re starving for true contact.

Read this today while supplies last.

2009-10-12T07:00:00.004-05:00

Advertising has long relied on the straightforward call-to-action to prompt consumers to act now. It's been a simple tactic that never required much more thought than how loud to shout or how bold to make the type.

However, today's media environment challenges us to imagine new ways to invite a response from customers. Mobile, search and social media create smarter and more specific opportunities to prompt an immediate action.

I began thinking about this when I saw an ad for Sony Pictures' new release, "2012." The billboard said, "Search 2012." This call-to-action is brilliant in its simplicity. It recognizes that people are increasingly dialing up brands through search, not by typing in a brand's URL. The volume of Google searches prompted by this call-to-action results in a wall of search hits that makes 2012 seem like a pop culture buzz machine. Moreover, the simple request to "search" may even inspire more curiosity about what one will find.

I've long advocated that we view mobile phones as a response device, not as an advertising platform. I think we can agree that everyone we know carries a mobile phone. And smartphone penetration is around 20% and climbing. (Presumably much higher among the business crowd.) For example, including an SMS call-to-action in a magazine ad transforms an offline message into an interactive message. The exponential increase in iPhone apps is creating new ways for consumers to shop as soon as they see a brand's commercial. In fact, Pizza Hut now ends its commercials with an invitation to order via iPhone.

Social media offers an entirely different call-to-action. For example, Prius asks people on Facebook to share "Random acts of Prius" -- small gestures that can help your friends make the next 24 hours better than the previous. (Props to my former colleagues at Saatchi.)

So next time we're writing a brief, or thinking about writing a throw-away final line of copy, take a few minutes to think through a more interesting way to compel customers to interact with the brand.

But do so today!

Designers invade the executive suite.

2009-10-06T17:37:00.012-05:00

Last year Advertising Age published an article I wrote about the lessons car companies can learn from the iPhone. One of the suggestions I made was to elevate designers to a greater leadership role.

Two reasons why I wrote this: First, car companies are industrial design firms at their core. Second, design-led thinking is a business strategy, not simply an exercise in visual packaging. Design-led thinking forces a company to have a more intimate understanding of their customers and their interactions with the brand, and then be very reductive in creating a more valuable experience.

I didn't think it would ever happen. But it has. Twice. In Detroit.

Last month General Motors promoted designer Bryan Nesbitt to be General Manager of its Cadillac Division. That's unheard of. Until, of course, this week when Chrysler promoted Ralph Gilles to be President of its Dodge Car unit. This is a bold and long-overdue move. I'm eager to see what unfolds.

The clearest perspective on design as a business strategy comes from David Butler, Coke's VP of Global Design. "Here, it's about creating more value. How do we sell more of something? How do we improve the experience to make more money and create a sustainable planet? We're leveraging design to drive innovation and win at the point of sale...full stop." His profile in October's Fast Company is an instructive read.

The best small agency in America.

2009-09-24T14:18:00.010-05:00

This week Barrie D'Rozario Murphy was selected by the Association of American Advertising Agencies as the best small agency in the country.

The O'Toole Award is a top industry honor for overall creative excellence across a range of clients and media platforms. The small agency award specifically recognizes this accomplishment among agencies of less than 100 people. BBDO won the honor for best large agency, and Bartle Bogle Hegarty was selected as the best midsize agency.

Bob, Stuart and I are thrilled. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the people who work at BD'M, as well as to our clients.

The people at our shop all left good jobs at good agencies to run off and join the circus with the three of us. And the blue chip clients who enlisted us -- such as United Airlines, Best Buy, Applied Materials, Compellent -- all took a leap of faith in hiring a new agency. We will never stop working hard to reward the faith everyone has shown.

We will also never stop being cheeky and having fun, as evidenced by the advertisement we ran in yesterday's New York Times. The response has been fantastic. I think it touched a pent-up desire by many in our business to have some fun, have a point of view and be a bit provocative.

But as we've said in interviews, the ad is in good fun. We're simply jealous of those big agencies!

How to provoke reappraisal of your brand.

2009-09-18T17:35:00.002-05:00

Time will tell if GM's new corporate campaign featuring CEO Ed Whitacre will work. An advertising columnist recently suggested that "GM out Hyundais Hyundai."

Out Hyundais Hyundai? Really? Hyundai has been on a journey to recast its image for a decade. It's strategy? Bold, bet-the-ranch marketing initiatives:

The most comprehensive warranty in the business.
A direct appeal to rethink Hyundai, based on fact and accomplishment, not bravado.
A buy back program that showed great insight into the real issue facing consumers in the recession (consumers who had jobs but feared not having one later in the year).
A risky move into the near luxury sedan market with Genesis.

The result? Year-to-date Hyundai has picked up over a point of market share (source: Automotive News). A Herculean task to be sure. Every GM brand lost share. The proper domestic comparison to Hyundai is Ford, which, like Hyundai, has kept its head down and worked hard to get its quality and design right. Like Hyundai, Ford has also picked up market share this year.

So this begs the question -- where are the facts to support that corporate bravado ("car for car, we win") is fresh or effective?

I have no connection to Hyundai and no axe to grind. I'm simply a fan of smart and brave marketing. (That and about 15 years automotive marketing experience.)

Open letter to GM: think like a technology brand

2009-08-10T10:50:00.004-05:00

General Motors grabbed headlines recently by claiming its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid will get 230 miles per gallon in city driving. Clearly, such an audacious claim must be independently verified. But the sheer game-changing nature of this claim underscores an opportunity for GM to carve out a new place in our collective imagination by behaving more like a technology brand and less like an automotive brand.

Throughout the last century the automobile stood for freedom, mobility and joy. Hitting the open road expanded our horizons and put a bigger world within our reach. Cars represented modern life at its best. But that was then.

Today, it is technology that defines modern life. Technology liberates and connects. Each new smart phone, wafer-thin laptop and lifelike home theater joyfully proclaims that today is better than yesterday.

Technology brands are the new “car.”

I don’t advocate that GM begin behaving in some geeky kind of way. Rather, it should take its cues from brands such as Sony, Apple, Google or GE. These brands deliver a sense of boundless optimism that was best expressed by Microsoft’s old themeline, “Where would you like to go today?”

For those who question the wisdom of focusing on branding strategies given the myriad issues GM faces, I have one simple word: Malibu.

In 2007, GM revamped the Chevy Malibu from top to bottom to compete with the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, two cars that have ruled the midsize sedan market for years. The result is a $20k car that looks, drives and feels like a luxury sedan.

Consumer Reports recommends the new Malibu. Kelly Blue Book concludes that it looks like a $40k car. JD Power ranks the Kansas City factory that builds Malibu as one of the top three quality plants in the country. It was voted Car of the Year. Nevertheless, more than twice as many people bought a Camry last year. Brand image matters.

Here are some initial steps GM can take to begin behaving like a technology brand.

First and foremost, GM must create modern cars. This isn't just about whiz-bang features or alternative fuel vehicles. Modern cars are best defined by the more relevant relationship they create with their customers. Modern cars are democratic, offering the latest technologies to all, not just in the top of the line models. Modern cars liberate us from old compromises by proving that design and performance can co-exist with safety and environmental responsibility. Modern cars are an extension of the personal technologies that make our lives smarter, better organized and more entertaining. And modern cars look, well, modern.

Second, forge alliances with respected technology brands. After all, brands, like people, are often judged by the company they keep. The success of the Chevy Volt requires that we trust the Chevy brand as a credible source for an electric car. What if GM had partnered with GE on this? (Its name is General Electric, after all.) The company is a manufacturing giant. Its growth strategy is linked to green-tech (“ecomagination”). And it is a household name with a reputation for innovation and dependability.

Third, lift a page from Apple, the tech brand that teaches the master class on marketing. Here are four lessons drawn from the iPhone launch:

Design, design, design: The iPhone looks like nothing else. It took no cues from category norms and wasn’t an exercise in incrementalism. Design reigns supreme at Apple. Steve Jobs is manic about design. Jonathan Ive, Apple’s head of design, is a rock star. It’s time to elevate the automotive designers to be the face of the company instead of the suits. Let's see car designers on the cover of Fortune, Wired and People, not the CEO. After all, auto companies are industrial design firms.

Limited supply: Here’s a very simple rule: a company shouldn’t produce more product than it can profitably sell. Sounds simple, but seldom happens. Limiting supply negates the need for brand-sucking rebates and tent sales. Apple is genius at this.

New distribution model: Sales associates at Apple stores are trained to be living ambassadors of the brand. Consumers may not get this same experience at the average car dealership. So here’s where an auto company needs to swallow a brave pill. Don’t sell the next hot new car through dealerships. Signal change by changing where the car is sold. Establish centrally located shopping galleries – in malls, in airports, in downtown business districts – staffed by the same well-trained ladies and gentlemen hired for car shows. GM’s recently announced plan to begin selling cars on eBay is a smart and timely step. (Dealers must still be reasonably compensated for any sales occurring in their market area since they will play a crucial role in providing ongoing service. Fixing a car is a tad more complex than fixing an iPhone.)

Advance buzz: When Apple launched the iPhone it generated a huge amount of curiosity by doing the exact opposite of what auto companies do: Apple said nothing. Auto companies tend to debut the concept car three years in advance at an auto show, create websites offering sneak-peeks, and give car magazines early test drives in return for good coverage. And what happens? The buzz peaks well ahead of the product's retail launch. The new mantra must be to reveal less and intrigue more. (Dealers did this quite well back in the days when they'd cover up new models until launch day to keep curious faces pressed against store windows.)

Apple did all of this and more. Breakthrough product. Inspiring design. Smart pricing. Tight distribution. Clever marketing. Seems so simple. And therein lies the beauty of Apple’s success, and the lesson for General Motors.

Last century, Detroit pioneered mass production to democratize the automobile and bring freedom, mobility and joy to more people. Cars lost this sense of child-like wonder as they grappled with grown-up issues such as safety, fuel economy and global warming. Going forward, GM can be the automotive company that best democratizes technology to solve these challenges and let us to rediscover that sense of wonder on the open road.

A caveman's guide to branding.

2009-07-27T17:10:00.008-05:00

Most branding campaigns follow a time-tested architecture: an overarching brand idea, supported by individual attributes, all communicated within the context of an unifying creative idea.

And that's what intrigues me about Geico's brand campaign -- it is completely disintegrated. The insurer uses at least four distinct campaigns to land different proof points.

To be sure, Geico's overall goal is to position itself as a better value. Its USP has been unchanged for years: "15 minutes can save you 15% or more."

It uses the lovably cheeky gecko to communicate the overall value message.

It uses the caveman with a chip on his shoulder to to communicate ease and convenience.

It uses celebs right off the D-list to communicate its commitment to customer service.

And now it is using a leering pile of cash to communicate low price.

We've all seen campaigns with different spots in the mix (think McDonald's), or different campaigns tailored for specific media environments (think Nike in football vs. basketball vs. golf), or campaigns for different products within a portfolio (think Toyota Tundra vs Yaris).

But seldom do we see completely different campaigns in support of different support points.

Contrary to what one might expect -- i.e., a blurry cacophony of messages -- each of Geico's messages breaks through and stands on its own feet, is unified by a brand personality that is likable and humorous and, ultimately, supported by the 15% USP.

Is it working? I can only assume so, because Geico has pursued this model for years. We have to assume the graphs are heading in the right direction or they would have abandoned this funky model years ago.

Go Forth.

2009-07-08T14:31:00.010-05:00

Wieden + Kennedy’s new campaign for Levis is stunning in its truth, its insight and its audacity.

The great brands are underpinned by an essential and enduring truth. By linking to the words of Walt Whitman and, on its new website, the United States Constitution, Levis has reconnected with the truth of its brand. Levis is America. And America has always been shaped by people with the courage and tenacity to dream and work towards a better tomorrow.

Its unique insight is in seeing the hollowness of most Millennial-targeted messages of hope and optimism, or perhaps more specifically, how bankrupt these messages must feel to Millennials in the current economy. Instead, “Go Forth” implies that hope and optimism are found by individuals who venture forward and work towards their dream. True of the framers of our Constitution. True of the gold miners in 1849 (the original denim crowd). True of Mr. Whitman. It must also be true of people today if we are to achieve our potential.

But the audacity, the brilliant audacity, to create a website in which citizens can co-create, edit and share their take on the Constitution is to be celebrated. It transforms the Constitution into a communal wall posting which, if you will momentarily suspend your judgment about that concept, is exactly what the Constitution needs to be: a living, shared, and debated document chronicling the will of the people.

Go forth indeed.

Lion hunting.

2009-06-30T11:33:00.007-05:00

The team at Barrie D'Rozario Murphy is thrilled to be one of only two U.S. agencies to win a Gold Lion award for film at last week's International Advertising Festival in Cannes.

BD'M was hired by the Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis to draw more guests into its bar, linger a bit longer, and, of course, run up higher tabs to boost the luxury hotel's revenue.

The result was a faux surveillance video that led guests to believe they were privy to live security shots around the hotel. We included shots of actual guestroom interiors interspersed with a variety of staged scenes - a nun praying to a man in a chicken costume, an alien in the hallway to a blow-up doll on a bed. The video, designed to complement the Chambers' collection of original contemporary art, helped deliver a double-digit increase in traffic to the bar.

It's an exciting example of the role and effectiveness of nontraditional media in solving business challenges.

To watch a excerpt, visit bdm.net, and click on brand experiences/chambers.

A battle of business models.

2009-06-23T09:37:00.001-05:00

A BD’M client noted recently that they were engaged in a battle of business models. This is a clarifying thought – a competition between the fundamental strategy employed by each competitor for creating and delivering customer value.

This point of view implies that each company competes through a single, overarching business model. But can a company compete by spreading its bets across multiple business models?

This was on my mind when I read an article in yesterday’s New York Times about how Amazon will employ three different business models to sell books. As we all know, Amazon’s core business is selling pulp books direct to consumers. And, with Kindle, Amazon is now in the business of selling digital downloads of e-books. But Amazon has decided to also sell its e-books on competitive services, such as iTunes, for the same $9.99 price it charges Kindle owners.

Jeff Bezos and company have created three different models, a move primarily designed to follow the customer and preempt competitors, and also produce a healthy side-effect – greater internal competition to drive ongoing innovation and greater focus.

Strategy guru Michael Porter has long said that alignment is the test of a great business strategy – i.e., a unique value proposition, delivered through a differentiated value chain, with all activities aligned, and all connected back to the balance sheet. Porter’s litmus test doesn’t go away, rather companies will have to apply this thinking across several business models simultaneously – a game of three-dimensional strategic chess.

How to reposition a brand.

2009-06-16T18:05:00.017-05:00

Sun Chips is a case study in the making of what can happen when a marketer thinks outside the box, or in this case, the bag.

Sun Chips have long been positioned as a slightly healthier alternative, with less salt, fat and other naughty stuff. Most every snack brand tries to make this same claim. So how do you stand out? By deciding to ignore the conventions of typical snack food marketing.

Their new marketing campaign is smart and tightly aligned:

They've taken their name and created a logical brand association: sun --> solar --> green --> healthier planet.
They are forging this brand association through actions, not just words. (Solar powered manufacturing plant, biodegradable packaging)
They are using unique media properties to reinforce the brand idea.
They are tapping the power of PR and crowd-sourcing to seek and fund other ideas for a healthier planet.
They are aligning the company's philanthropic investments behind this idea. (Donating $1m to create a solar-powered recovery center to help a tornado ravaged town get back on its feet.)

It's too early to tell if this will be a wild success or an abysmal failure. What is clear, though, is that they are refusing to play small ball. This is a brand team that is truly reaching for the stars.

The lesson of BMW Films

2009-06-15T02:00:00.003-05:00

An article on adweek.com questions why our industry hasn’t built on the success of BMW Films and the potential of branded content. I used to ask this same question until I realized it is the wrong question.

BMW Films made its online debut in 2001 with short films produced exclusively for the web by marquee talent, including directors John Woo, Ang Lee, Guy Ritchie, Tony Scott among others, and starring actors such as Clive Owen, Madonna, Mickey Rourke, Forest Whitaker and Don Cheadle. The Hire consisted of eight action-packed episodes featuring Clive Owen putting the ultimate driving machines through the paces.

The Hire was ahead of its time. Broadband penetration in the United States in 2001 was less than 20%. (Remember the tedium of viewing rich content on dial up?) The films couldn’t capitalize on social media because Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Anderson and Steve Chen (founders Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, respectively) may still have been in high school at that point.

Yet, back in the day, these films broke new ground by changing how we viewed the web. Up to that point, marketers used the web as a substitute for print. Sites functioned like online brochures -- very heavy on text and photos. BMW Films showed that the web didn’t have to be static – it actually could be a replacement for TV, using sight sound and motion to engage viewers.

And that's precisely why the question posed in Adweek misses the point. BMW Films used the web like TV. Right for then, wrong for now. The web has changed dramatically since 2001. It is no longer about one-way broadcasting. It’s about ceding control, co-creation, relevant functionality and crowd-sourced input.

Contrary to Adweek's story, branded content is not struggling to find its footing, an assertion that seems weighed down by a Hollywood-centric definition of content. Branded content is flourishing in new ways that are more tailored for Web 2.0. Subservient Chicken allowed consumers to control the entertainment. T-Mobile’s flash mob campaign capitalized on social media. GE’s online effort for ecomagination and Nike’s mobile initiative both used augmented reality to glue our eyeballs to the brand.

We should tip our hat to BMW Films and appreciate what it unleashed. But instead of looking backwards, we should embrace its essential lesson: Consider how consumers are using the web today, then rethink it and set the bar higher.

Project Natal

2009-06-10T10:03:00.005-05:00

I've seen the future. It's spelled N-A-T-A-L.

The new human interface for Xbox is mind-bending. No controllers whatsoever. You are the controller. It reads body movements. It makes Wii look old fashioned.

I'm not a gamer. I'm more fascinated about the implications this technology can have on product design -- e.g., computers, home entertainment, retail.

It seems the technology we witnessed in Minority Report wasn't so far in the future after all.

we > me

2009-06-01T12:20:00.002-05:00

My previous post on popularity discussed the influence that crowds can have on consumer decision making and behavior. This post highlights how a company can use crowd-sourcing to improve its own decision making and behavior.

Few companies have the courage to fully expose themselves to the power (and potential pitfalls) of social media like the folks at Best Buy (disclaimer: a BD'M client).

Best Buy's CMO is a prolific tweeter (@bestbuycmo), using microblogging as an external internal communications channel to reach the 20-something year old Blue Shirts working in the stores who are unlikely to read email from HQ. Barry Judge uses this channel to invite suggestions and feedback beyond the protective bubble that normally surrounds senior executives.

The Best Buy Idea Xchange opens up Best Buy's innovation process to its best customers to suggest ways to improve the retailer's merchandising selection and business practices. I like the honesty and commitment expressed on the site. Here's an excerpt:

We're new at this. Its probably going to be messy for awhile. We'll probably miss stuff. We'll probably screw up. But we'll learn and get better as fast as we can. We'll blog every two weeks with updates at first. Then we'll build in new and better ways to talk to you about your ideas - when we're reviewing them, or implementing them or when we decide we just can't do anything with them. We'll always be honest. We can promise we're all going to do our best. That means listening closely, talking openly about the ideas that you've shared. And trying our hardest to make it happen.

These behaviors are a good example of the formula that drives social media: we > me. Most corporate decisions are based on feedback in a conference room of 10 like minded executives, or off the results of 50 people in focus groups. Social media exposes companies to ideas -- good and bad -- from a much wider cross-section of people and perspectives, helping to break the protective bubble that tends to insulate companies from their customers.

Popularity sells.

2009-05-29T14:40:00.004-05:00

Carl Bialik's article in the Wall Street Journal on the influence of Top 10 lists questions the wisdom of crowd-sourcing, but also highlights a proven tactic that marketers should consider to help drive incremental sales.

Popularity metrics abound online: Top 10 emailed stories on wsj.com. Most downloaded songs on iTunes. Yahoo's Top 10 user searches. Studies show that people decide what to do in part by following others. We are pack animals at heart, finding comfort in the herd.

Bialik's article cites instances in which marketers were able to dramatically shift customer preference and behavior by calling out those items and choices preferred by other customers.

Amazon has employed this successfully over the years ("people who bought this book also bought..."). However, Amazon makes this recommendation after you've made your initial selection. The dynamic Bialik reports on is the influence popularity has on the initial purchase decision.

I could see ways of applying this to many different categories. Ford dealers could post a sign on the roof of a Fusion letting me know that 63% of current Fusion owners bought the new Fusion. Best Buy could let me know that 57% of people who bought this flat panel combined it with this blu-ray player. United could tell me that 68% of people booking the JFK-SFO flight I'm considering purchased a one-day Premier Travel Option.

Timely and specific suggestions of what similar customers prefer can lift sales. How do I know this? I heard other people saying so.

What does your brand oppose?

2009-05-18T16:54:00.020-05:00

I usually don't think of mayonnaise. That's probably why I like Miracle Whip's new campaign. After spending years trying to tell me what Miracle Whip is, and an equal number of years of my total lack of interest, the brand finally got my attention by telling me what it isn't.

In its new TV spots, Miracle Whip seems to be against conformity and playing nice with other condiments. It demands to be heard through the bread. In fact, it thinks mayo is a wuss.

This campaign reinforces a theme I've been exploring lately -- the power of brand narratives. Great brands tell great stories. They are the lead character on an inspiring journey. They have a clear sense of true north. Importantly, they know what they stand for and what they oppose.

Miller High Life's delivery guy campaign is another good example of a brand that defines itself by clearly stating what it's against. High Life celebrates blue-collar common sense by railing against high-minded nonsense.

Across the pond, Nestle’s Yorkie candy bar is famously marketed as being “not for girls”, with appropriately tongue in cheek advertising.

Dove breathed new life into the brand by harnessing the tension between what it stands for and what it's against. Its highly successful "campaign for real beauty" positioned the brand as an advocate of women’s self-esteem battling the falsehood of media-defined beauty.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the blueprint for this type of branding strategy -- Apple.

Next time you're defining your brand strategy, don't settle for simply declaring what your brand stands for. Define what you oppose, your proverbial line in the sand. Consumers will reward you with their attention.

I could go on an on about this. But I'm for brevity and against long-winded dissertations.

Think like a storyteller, not a marketer.

2009-05-11T13:33:00.010-05:00

Ad Age this week is reporting that Budweiser is returning to the type of emotional advertising that was its trademark in its halcyon days.

I hope the brief goes deeper than that. Emotional advertising is not a goal, it's an outcome. What characterized the great Bud advertising was a keen sense of storytelling and empathy. The brand was a reward for a honest day's work.

As I've posted before, stories are a very potent form of communicating. Stories help us understand. They convey meaning. And in an overwhelming and fast moving world, meaning trumps information. The most enduring stories are built upon several essential elements, including archetypal characters, the hero's journey and resolution of conflict

Storytelling has been a hallmark of the campaign BD'M creates for United Airlines, giving the brand a very distinctive message in a category that normally defaults to commodity service claims.

In the beer world, I tip my hat (and my glass) to the folks at Dos Equis. The "most interesting man in the world" campaign is a classic narrative in the making. They've nailed an archetypal brand personality and convey keen sense of what the brand believes in as well as what it opposes.

@kogibbq...a tasty success story

2009-05-05T06:00:00.007-05:00

Kogi BBQ is an interesting case study on many levels.

First, it's an inspiring story of a guy who has a 4 a.m. epiphany about how delicious Korean BBQ would taste on a taco and then has the courage to follow through on his idea, resulting in a hugely successful SoCal food business.

Second, it's an instructive story about the role that social media can play in creating a grassroot phenomenon.

Kogi BBQ has no fixed location. It is a roving truck that announces its location via twitter (@kogibbq). Flash mobs of Kogi fanboys (and girls) drop what they're doing to go and wait for the Kogi-mobile to show up.

Similar to yesterday's post on T Mobile's campaign, Kogi offers another example of what's possible when social media is at the center of the brand idea, not an ad hoc extension.

I often find that some of the most interesting marketing happens at the local level. Large national marketers could learn much from studying best practices from companies like Kogi, not McDonalds.

Social media is mass media.

2009-05-03T22:27:00.010-05:00

T Mobile's new flash mob campaign is a good example of a media mash up. Is it a TV commercial? A viral video? Social networking? Blogging? The answer, of course, is all of the above.

This campaign illustrates what's possible when we put digital and social marketing at the center of the idea and not treat it as an extension of a TV spot.

T Mobile used teaser videos, social networks and good old fashioned word of mouth to summon over 13,000 people to London's Trafalgar Square last week to sing a fairly in-tune rendition of Hey Jude.

The result? A fun TV spot and, more importantly, thousands of posts, texts, tweets and YouTube videos from people who attended the event, and even more chatter from people like me who heard about it online. Moreover, when you get Perez Hilton's stamp of approval, you know you're doing something right in the pop culture zeitgeist.

The days of simply putting a TV spot on YouTube are over. Marketers need to map out a social media strategy at the outset of a campaign and not leave it to chance. Hope is not a strategy.

Dan is right.

2009-04-30T11:48:00.004-05:00

Dan Wieden, founder and head of Weiden + Kennedy, gave a thoughtful and impassioned pitch at the 4As conference on why diversity matters and why advertising agencies must get their act together.

My favorite quote: The issue of diversity "continues to gnaw at me because, like it or not, in this business I essentially hire a bunch of white, middle-class kids, pay them enormous, enormous sums of money to do what? To create messages to the inner-city kids who create the culture the white kids are trying like hell to emulate."

The imperative to create a more diverse agency culture is not something we should do because it is politically correct. It's something we must do to ensure the long-term success of our industry.

We are in the business of helping clients build their business through our unique ability to understand and connect with main street America. We've done this well over the years largely because we tended to mirror the face of America.

As the American landscape continues to become more diverse, so must we, or risk falling out of touch with consumers and becoming less capable of providing clients with fresh, relevant ideas.

The slipperly slope of discounting.

2009-04-28T08:27:00.003-05:00

Today's New York Times has a good article on the slippery slope of discounting. Price cuts of 50% have given way to scorched earth discounts of up to 70%-80%.

Retailers find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Offer steep discounts and risk losing pricing power longer term. (Detroit car companies never really recovered from decades of discounts and rebates.) Or don't discount and risk a steep drop in store traffic and sales.

An added challenge with discounts is that they are easily matched and simply lower revenues for all competitors. Sandwich chains are seeing this in their $5 lunch wars. Ditto for airlines.

Some brands have found better alternatives, or have at least augmented their discounting with demand-building strategies that also strengthen brand equity.

Best Buy is broadening its appeal to price conscious shoppers by featuring low prices on house brands such as Insignia. The retailer is also maintaining its emphasis on customer service and support (e.g., Geek Squad).

Hyundai was the first car company to realize that consumer anxiety was the main obstacle to sales, not purely affordability. Its Assurance program recognized the emotional component of value -- i.e., the need for consumers to feel smart and in control.

There is no doubt that discounting must play a role in spurring demand during a recession. But marketers would be wise to balance this pricing strategy with other offers -- e.g., loyalty bonus, warranty, added convenience -- that can help differentiate the promotion while also building a lasting positive brand image.

Thank you world.

2009-04-22T13:27:00.011-05:00

I'd be remiss if I didn't mark Earth Day by recognizing some of the contributions being made by some of the companies we work with at BD'M.

We partnered with Best Buy to help brand and promote its Greener Together initiative to help address the damage caused by too many electronics piling up in our landfills. We need to remember to not just dump an old TV or PC. Bring it in to Best Buy to be safely recycled.

Applied Materials is a nanotech company. So what has that got to do with Earth Day? At its core, Applied helps the world do more with less. Chips that are more powerful yet more efficient. Architectural glass coatings that conserve energy. Flat panel displays that are brighter yet use less energy. And a large and growing solar energy business that is helping to scale this industry to reach grid parity.

And today, our friends at United announced a new program to help eco-conscious fliers do something to offset the carbon footprint created by jet travel.

When companies try to support green initiatives they walk a fine line between trying to do something and being called out for not doing enough. Fair game. But doing something beats doing nothing every time.

On this Earth Day 2009, let's take a moment to say thank you to mother earth, through words and deeds. Perhaps this song will put us in the mood.

The dark side of Wikibranding

2009-04-16T08:22:00.005-05:00

I coined the term wikibranding to capture a new marketing dynamic -- consumers have even more power than marketers to rapidly define brands now that access to global mass media is just a point-click away.

Social media enables consumers to co-create and spread a great brand narrative just as easily as it enables consumers rightfully destroy poor quality brands. Most marketing people know this too well.

PR folks at Domino's and elsewhere are learning another painful lesson about social media -- there is no such thing as a local incident, everything is immediately global. The damage control needs to be swift and devoid of spin.

From The New York Times:

Video Prank at Domino's Taints Brand
By Stephanie Clifford

A video prank two Domino's Pizza employees posted online has shown how social media has the reach and speed to turn tiny incidents into marketing crises....http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/business/media/16dominos.html

Optimism requires hard work. And that's the point.

2009-04-14T12:03:00.007-05:00

Optimism has long been a uniquely American trait. It defines who we are. We are a nation of people who believe tomorrow will be better than today. It is why our forefathers and mothers risked long ocean voyages in search of a new world, why settlers in wagons ventured ever westward and why immigrants continue to come here by any means possible, by plane or make-shift raft from Cuba. (As a Pakistani born son of Irish immigrants, it is why I am here today.)

Our ingrained sense of optimism was set in motion by our founding story, fueled by generations of immigrants and reinforced by years of abundance and success.

Lately, though, I've come to wonder if our definition of optimism, or more pointedly our underlying motivation, has changed over the past decade, perhaps not in a good way.

American optimism was always an extension of our "can do" spirit. Anything was possible if we worked hard enough to make it happen. Our optimism sprang from hard work, not hope. We knew tomorrow could be better for us and our children if we rolled up our sleeves.

Recently, however, optimism evolved to become an entitlement, no longer an earned reward. We bought houses bigger than we could afford because we had every reason to believe we would get another raise or that our portfolio would continue to grow. We used magic money -- a.k.a., home equity loans -- to buy the muscular SUVs we coveted. We didn't have to work any harder. Good things just happened.

While the current recession has shaken our confidence, recent polls suggest that President Obama is inspiring us to find reasons to be hopeful once again.

I am hopeful the current "cleansing" process will bring us back to the true definition of American optimism. Tomorrow will be better than today, but only if we roll up our sleeves and earn it.

Microsoft finds an idea.

2009-04-09T10:07:00.008-05:00

Microsoft's new Window's campaign finally has found a clear selling proposition to support "life without walls."

Windows enables us to find and configure the exact computer to meet our needs because it is the standard embraced by every manufacturer...except Apple. (This seems a little more compelling than Jerry's desire for a moist and chewy PC.)

Leaving aside comments on the execution, the premise that Windows opens us up to a full spectrum of options and brands is persuasive. Additionally, it gives Microsoft the opportunity to reposition Apple as a take-it-or-leave it brand that asks us to sacrifice choice in pursuit of cool.

A lesson in why brand image matters.

2009-04-02T09:23:00.010-05:00

Next time somebody tells you that brand image doesn’t matter, that the internet has transformed consumers into rational and well-informed shoppers, just respond with one word: “Malibu.”

In 2007, GM revamped the Chevy Malibu from top to bottom to compete, once and for all, with segment leaders Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, two cars that have ruled the midsize sedan market for years. The result is a $20k car that looks, drives and feels like a luxury sedan.

Consumer Reports recommends the new Malibu. Kelly Blue Book concludes that it looks like a $40k car. JD Power ranks the Kansas City factory that builds it as one of the top three quality plants in the country. It was voted Car of the Year.

Nevertheless, more than twice as many people bought a Camry last year.

It is unreasonable to expect to rewind years of inconsistent quality and value in one year. Having worked with both Ford and Toyota at Y&R and Saatchi, I have seen first hand the hurdle that domestic brands face.

As consumers, perhaps it's time to rethink our aversion to domestic cars, do some homework to update our facts, and, minimally, take a test drive. Then buy the best car.

As marketers, never assume we can milk a brand (or starve it) for years and expect consumers to stay loyal.

Wearable technology.

2009-04-01T09:46:00.003-05:00

Check out this video from TED, presented by Patti Maes from the MIT Media Lab. It is a mind-blowing demo of the potential of wearable technology. Which marketer will be the first to test this? Let the race begin.

It takes about two minutes for Patti to get to the demo, but hang in with it, you'll be glad you did.

Thanks to Dominic Lee for turning me on to this.

Twitter explained.

2009-03-23T12:42:00.003-05:00

This video hit the bullseye. Supports my post below that Twitter is best used as a wiki -- not a public diary.

What I've learned about Twitter.

2009-03-22T12:58:00.009-05:00

I'm approaching my one year anniversary on Twitter (@wikimurph). My first tweet? "Mountain biking in OC." For some reason I felt the world needed to know that. One year and hundreds of tweets later I've learned the true value of Twitter.

Twitter is a real time wiki. Although Google won't admit it, Twitter is a search engine, not a "poor man's email" as it was recently derided by Eric Schmidt. Twitter allows us to tap into the brainpower of people around the world, trusted advisers and total strangers alike.

Over time I noticed that I've gravitated toward people who write tweets that share knowledge ("just saw a presentation about...), tweets that pass along a provocative observation ("has anyone noticed that..."), tweets that point me toward content I might not otherwise have stumbled upon ("check out this site..."). I am following brand strategists, marketing gurus, social media wonks, designers, pop-culturists from Sydney to Sao Paolo. In turn, I have folks around the world following me, including my two teenage daughters (odd time we live in!).

I know I'll still write the occasional narcissistic tweet ("exciting dive today!"), but I've learned I have to give if I want to get. The community gets better when we share something interesting.

I'd write some more, but I'm heading out for a ride. ;)

The IDEO of marketing communications?

2009-03-18T11:14:00.011-05:00

I’ve long been a fan of IDEO, the product innovation and design company, and have been thinking about what an advertising agency can learn from how they work. What would the “IDEO of marketing communications” look like?

I first encountered IDEO when ABC news did a story on the firm. Nightline sent a team to the Bay Area company to chronicle a condensed three-day version IDEO’s innovation process, but didn’t reveal the brief until the day before the cameras arrived. Their assignment – reinvent the grocery shopping cart.

Take a look at these videos, served up in three parts. (Disclosure: these videos are sold on abcnews.com. Although I lifted these from YouTube, I bought a copy three years ago.)

IDEO and an advertising agency are in the same business, albeit with different outputs. We both create imaginative ideas to help marketers grow. IDEO’s solutions tend to be 3-dimensional products. An agency’s end product tends to be online and on TV.

IDEO’s process is fluid, evolving to meet different engagements. But the core seems to be defined by four key principles:

Inspiration by observation (more anthropological, fewer focus groups)
Collaborative brainstorming (always succeeds over the lone genius)
Hot teams (drawn from diverse fields to create a collision of perspectives)
Rapid prototyping (enlightened trial and error, act before you’ve got all the answers)

The diversity of talent and disciplines we had at Saatchi LA helped us move toward this culture. And our “no walls” credo at Barrie D’Rozario Murphy is designed to foster this same collaboration.

So what would the “IDEO of marketing communications” look like? I have my own point of view (no silos, less hierarchy, more diverse talent, truly collaborative brainstorming, etc.), but would be more interested in learning from others.