Creativity for left brainers.

Over the last two days I led a live case study for MBA students at the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine.  Their challenge was to identify a new flavor for Dasani Drops that is relevant to the brand and could drive incremental sales.  I am grateful for the hard work shown by all 12 teams and am excited to get two teams in front of my friends at Coca-Cola.

Beyond evaluating the soundness of each team's research and findings, I was also looking for signs that they were willing to color outside the lines.

In the innovation workshop I run for left brainers, I explain that creativity is not a dark art – it is simply counter-intuitive problem solving.  Yet if corporate whiteboards could talk they would tell tales about the three most common creativity killers:

• We accept assumptions and end up solving the wrong problem.
• We know what we know and narrow our thinking within well-trodden mental paths.
• We aren't comfortable pursuing multiple solutions and lock in too early on a solution.

The innovation framework I teach exhorts left brainers to embrace four catalysts for creativity:

• Define:  As Norman Berry once said, "Give me the freedom of a tightly defined strategy."  Challenge the definition of the problem you've been asked to solve.  Create a ruthlessly well-honed problem statement.  A more accurate definition of the problem will inspire more specific, imaginative and effective solutions.  (The design team tasked with creating a better water bottle for bikers recast that challenge as creating a better way for bikers to hydrate.  The outcome was the Camelback.)
• Know:  Michelangelo is said to have tweeted, "A man paints with his brain and not with his hands."  Creativity flows from knowledge, not guessing.  Category knowledge is essential.  But limiting our knowledge to this can stifle fresh ideas.  New information from other categories and seemingly unrelated trends will disrupt preconceptions.  For example, a few of the Dasani teams looked beyond water to examine trends in flavored vodkas and emerging culinary taste profiles.
• Invert:  Not to be outdone by Michelangelo, Einstein once quipped that "Imagination is more important than knowledge."  The process of inverting a problem requires that we pick it up, turn it upside down, and see it with fresh eyes.  If we are in the hotel business, let's solve the problem as if we were in the entertainment business.  If we are in the packaged good business, let's ask ourselves how Apple might solve this problem.  By inverting the problem we free ourselves from the ankle bracelets that trap us within the conventions of the category in which we work.
• Collaborate:  One of my favorite maxims is "We > Me."  The era of the lone genius is dead.  The biggest ideas result from the collision of disparate ideas, perspectives and people.  Collaboration isn't about brainstorming with people who are similar to you; it works best when you're brainstorming with people who are dissimilar to you – people from disciplines outside of marketing; people with a different lifestyle or upbringing; people who might look at the problem from a very different perspective. (For example, if you're brainstorming products for kids, don't limit brainstorming to parents – throw in a few teachers who actually spend more time with these kids than parent do.)

Demystifying Creativity: a handbook for left brainers. from David Murphy

Apple rediscovers the power of empathy.

Empathic Marketing is a model for integrated marketing that I developed from a simple human observation – what's true in life is true in marketing.  It was inspired by my observations over time and across categories that the ways in which we form personal relationships mirror how we form brand relationships.  The 4Es of relationship building – empathy, experiences, endorsement and energy – shape our best and most lasting relationships, both in real life and with the brands we embrace.

Apple has long mastered the 4Es.  At its launch, it struck an empathetic bond with creative souls everywhere who yearned to think different.  Its stores, not to mention its its design and packaging, created experiences that transformed perceptions into deeply-held beliefs.  Its legions of fans created a peer-to-peer endorsement network.  And Apple's steady cadence of new products created a aura of infectious momentum and energy.

However, I believe that Apple's advertising lost its emotional stickiness years ago, probably around the iPhone launch when it's communications focused more on app functionality.  The new iPhone campaign fixes that.  It artfully reminds us of its intimate and irreplaceable role in our life, not through app functionality, but through authentic emotional empathy.

Why I love teaching.

One of the reasons I love teaching at Chapman University and UC Irvine's Merage School of Business is having the opportunity to inspire just one student to pursue a profession that pays you to connect the dots between business and almost everything imaginable (technology, art, social trends, pop culture, media...). It's a huge investment of time, but this feedback from that "one" student makes it all worthwhile.

Liberating marketing from old vocabulary.

In my recent talk to the students at Chapman University's Internet Communications Program, I exhorted this next generation of marketing ninjas to help liberate marketing from the antiquated vocabulary that fosters silos in how we think and act:

• We must reject tired distinctions such as "traditional vs non-traditional" marketing.  (There is only traditional thinking...and this is punishable by irrelevance!)
• We must admit that terms such as "new media" represent old thinking.  (If you want to make anyone under 25 laugh, refer to mobile as "new media.")
• We must not allow "offline and online" to live in separate silos.  (In a world of QR codes and second screen viewing, is anything truly "offline"?)
• We cannot restrict "brand advertising" to mean TV and print.  (The Internet is the most powerful branding tool ever.  Storytelling.  Sight, sound, motion.  Peer endorsement.  Experiences.)
• We must embrace media as a source of creativity.  (How and where a brand appears is as important as what it says.)
• We need to enthusiastically embrace metrics, both hard and soft.  (Ignore store traffic and nobody will care about the awareness gain.  Similarly, click through rates at the expense of emotional relevance and differentiation will not matter if the brand degrades to commodity status.)

Finally, we must break with the past.  Old branding models are out of step with the way in which people consume media and interact with brands.  Instead, new models such as Empathic Marketing build brand relationships by mirroring the ways in which people tend to form real, human relationships.  These 4Es of real relationships –  empathy, experiences, energy and endorsement – form a clear and measurable brand planning model to help marketers create more customer-centered brand platforms.  After all, what's true in life is true in marketing.

Introducing Empathic Marketing.

Yesterday at Chapman University's Internet Communications Program I shared my approach to Empathic Marketing, the integrated marketing model I developed from a simple, human observation:  What's true in life is true in marketing.

Empathic Marketing was inspired by my observations over time and across categories that the ways in which we form personal relationships mirrors how we form brand relationships.  

Forces such as empathy, experiences, endorsement and energy help shape our real life relationships.  Think about the people with whom you enjoy your most lasting relationships.  It’s likely those individuals who “get you” because you share the same values, sense of style, point of view or sense of humor; these same people are likely those with whom you've enjoyed truly memorable experiences; they are likely the people you trust most because their reputation is consistent; people who always seem to be up to something new and interesting.

What’s true in life is true in marketing.

These 4Es of real relationships –  empathy, experiences, endorsement and energy – form a clear and measurable brand planning model to help marketers create more customer-centered brand platforms.

Empathic Branding – aka, what's true in life is true in marketing. from David Murphy

Lessons in leadership from an accidental CEO.

One of my favorite quotes is in Tom Peters' book, Re-imagine – "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."  This quote always serves to remind me that life, let alone our careers, is a journey of learning and growth.

Today I was invited to give a talk on leadership to the Executive MBA program at the University of California Irvine's Merage School of Business.

My lessons in leadership are a work in progress.  They are skills I've learned through trial and a lot of error; skills that I'm constantly refining; skills that I hope will inspire these Merage students to develop a style that is tailored to their unique talents and personalities.

I often refer to my self as the "accidental CEO" because I never set as a goal occupying the top box on the org chart.  Instead, my goal has always been to take on new challenges and to keep learning and growing.  Years ago, when I was President of Y&R in Southern California, a friend of mine shared with me this quote:  "Those on top of the mountain didn't fall there."  I've kept this on my desk for the past seven years as a reminder that the harder I work the luckier I get.

Lessons in leadership from an accidental CEO. from David Murphy

Seven universal stories all marketers should know.

I've written frequently about the power of archetypes and storytelling in creating enduring branding strategies.  After all, archetypal personalities tend to transcend time, cultures and geography.  We are hard wired to understand the Ruler, the Jester, the Magician, et al.  Defining a brand in archetypal terms will resonate more deeply with consumers than surface level "tone and manner" statements.  As for stories, I think we can all agree that stories convey meaning, and in the media saturated world in which we live, meaning trumps information every time.

This piece published in Adweek offers a very helpful insight into the seven archetypal plot lines told in literature and movies.  Every brand marketer should know these time-tested narratives.

Challenging misperceptions of challenger branding.

T-Mobile's new campaign is a promising example of challenger branding in action.

A common misperception of challenger branding is that it is simply a case of the #2 or #3 brand tweaking the category leader.  However, challenger branding is more nuanced than that.  There is a range of challenger branding models:

• "The higher cause" – challenge consumers to lift their sights and opt for something more meaningful than what's offered by the status quo.  Dove has championed this approach in its "real beauty" campaign through its opposition to the falsehood of media-defined beauty.
• "For all of us" – a democratization strategy in which a brand liberates and makes available to the masses what has heretofore been exclusive or out of reach.  Target democratized chic design, starting years ago with the Michael Graves toasters.
• "Change of the guard" – the classic storm-the-palace strategy in which the leader is repositioned as out of touch and out of date.  Apple epitomized this with its famous 1984 commercial.  Years later, it seems Samsung is using this very same strategy against Apple to market its Galaxy smartphones.
• "Counter culture" – an approach that enlists bands of co-conspirators to zig when the category leader demands that we zag.  Miracle Whip has employed this successfully in its underground war against mayonnaise.  Apple played in this area for years with its exhortation to "think different."
• "The common man" – an empathic strategy that challenges the category elite by siding with the common sense point of view of the average person (if there is such a person).  Miller High Life's "delivery guy" rants are a text book example of this in action.
• "Total rethink" – a moment in time in which a marketer draws a line in the sand and declares that "there's got to be a better way."  The new T-Mobile campaign is the latest example of this approach.

One final and important point about challenger branding:  never confuse challenger branding with competitive advertising.  Challenger branding should feel like a movement; a moment in time in which things will be different from this point forward.  Consider Bing's effort to challenge Google.  They conduct product comparisons that show that people prefer Bing over the category leader.  But it doesn't feel like a call to arms or an invitation to rethink all you've known to date.  It simply offers up the facts and invites us to try Bing.  Perfectly effective comparison advertising, but not challenger branding.

Is Facebook fatigue setting in?

Yes, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.  Some highlights:

• 27% of Facebook users in the US who were surveyed reported that they plan to reduce the amount of time they will spend on the site.
• The study found that 61% of Facebook users have taken a break from the site for several weeks or more.
• A lack of time and interest seem to be driving this trend.

Social media demographics.

We're beginning to get a better understanding of who is using social media, thanks to new research studies such as the one released recently by the Pew Research Center (and published in Adweek).  Some highlights from the Adweek article:

• Two-thirds of internet users engage in some form of social media, with Facebook being the dominant platform.

• Women are more likely than men to use social media, and are five times more likely than men to use Pinterest:

• When in comes to ethnicity, Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than Whites to use Instagram and Twitter.

• Not surprisingly, social media uses is highest among 18-49 year old internet users.  Among the 50+ segment, Facebook by far the preferred platform. 

• Level of education doesn't seem to drive social media usage overall, but it does seem to influence the relative choice of platform.