Fresh Thinking Starts Here

Marketers Need a New Definition of 'Loyalty'

"Package-Goods Brands Lose Loyalists in Recession."  So reads the article headline on AdAge.com today.  The gist of the article is that as the recession has bore on, brand loyalty has suffered, with over half of the consumers who said they were highly loyal to a brand in 2007 becoming significantly less so a year later.

The article points out that brands like Coca-Cola, J.M. Smuckers', Folgers, and Thomas' English Muffins came out much better - they "kept more than 60% of their highly loyal consumers from 2007; Coke and Thomas' retained more than three-quarters."

Conclusions from the article: the more brands spent, the better they fared; and losing brand loyalists is costly.

So, here's the problem I have with all this.  The actual definition of loyal is:

"unswerving in allegiance"

Notice the first word - UNSWERVING.  When half of your 'loyalists' desert you when times get rough, it is hard to consider them loyal in the first place.  They might have been friends, but you certainly weren't married. 

In fact, given that brands that spent more fared better, one can begin to question whether loyalty truly exists in brand relationships.  Many studies have pointed out that your most 'loyal' consumers are quite often your least profitable.  This is because 'loyalty' is often confused with 'bribery.' 

Here's a hint - if your 'loyal' consumers jump ship based on price or promotions, they were never loyal to begin with.  Your relationship with them was a fleeting one of convenience and affordability/value and they dumped you as soon as something better/more convenience/more affordable/more valuable came along.

You would never talk about how many of your loyal friends ditched you when you were going through a problem period.  The very fact that they are loyal would imply that they stuck with you through thick and thin, better and worse, etc...

So don't fool yourself by talking about your consumers/customers as loyal just because they keep buying from you (mostly on deal, coupon, or special offers).  Your TRULY loyal consumers are those who won't switch based on price or deals - they are the ones who somehow have created a bond with your brand that is strong enough to weather the ups and downs of relationships. 

There are lots of studies, thoughts and opinions on 'brand loyalty.'  However, I think that the world of marketing would benefit greatly by a change of terms in this field, as the word 'loyalty' implies things about your consumers that, most often, are far from the truth...

Survey Respondents Craft Brand ManageCamp 2009 Agenda - Travel Stimulus Program Announced

After months of preparation and planning, Brand ManageCamp 2009 is now officially ready for registration!  A few months ago, we circulated a survey that included 40 potential speaker choices for BMC2009.  Based on over 340 responses, we crafted the conference people want to see - including an all-star agenda of the best and brightest in brand thinking, such as:

• Philip Kotler - Marketing Strategy Legend; Best-selling author of dozens of books including the upcoming Chaotics as well as Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Ten Deadly Marketing Sins, and more
• Guy Kawasaki - Best-selling author of Reality Check and The Art of The Start; founder of Alltop.com and Truemors; former Apple Fellow; Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures
• John Gerzema - Best-selling author of The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How To Avoid It; Chief Insights Officer of Y&R
• Charlene Li - Best-selling author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social Technologies; Founder of Altimeter Group
• Jonathan Salem Baskin - Author of Branding Only Works on Cattle; Advertising Age columnist; Information Week blogger; Creator of Dim Bulb
• Amber MacArthur - New Media Specialist; One of the 50 Most Influential Female Bloggers; NOW Magazine's "Best Geek Personality" of 2006; Host of CommandN.tv; AmberMac.com
• Jeremy Gutsche - Founder of Trendhunter.com - the world's largest network for trend spotting and innovation
• Michael Dunn - Author of The Marketing Accountability Imperative; CEO & Chairman of Prophet
• Jim Lecinksi - Google's Managing Director of Central Region
• Simon Bray - Innovation Expert; Head of Capability for ?What If! North America
• Joe Navarro - Author of What Every BODY Is Saying; 25 year veteran of the FBI; Founding Member of the National Security Division's Behavioral Analysis Program
• and more...

Announcing the Brand ManageCamp Travel Stimulus Plan

We know a lot of folks are experiencing some pressure on their travel budgets.  To make it as easy as possible for you to register for Brand ManageCamp 2009, we have created a Travel Stimulus Program.  Register before June 1st, 2009 and you could save $500 AND Fly/Stay for FREE!  Check out the details...

FREE Summer Webinar Series

As if the amazing agenda and the Travel Stimulus Plan weren't enough...  As it turns out, we had far more fantastic speakers identified then we could fit in the actual 2 day agenda at Brand ManageCamp.  So, instead of letting all that great content go to waste, we will be providing a FREE Summer Webinar Series - only available to BMC2009 Registrants.  These webinars will feature folks like:

• Tom Asacker - Best-selling author of A Little Less Conversation and A Clear Eye For Branding; acleareye.com
• David Meerman Scott - Best-selling author of World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing & PR
• Linda Kaplan Thaler - CEO & Chief Creative Officer of Kaplan Thaler Group; author of Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World, The Power of Small, and The Power of Nice
• Kate Newlin - Author of Passion Brands: Why Some Brands Are Just Gotta Have, Drive All Night For, and Tell Your Friends All About
• Hamish Pringle - Author of Brand Immortality: How Brands Can Live Long and Prosper; Director General of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising - the UK's leading trade and professional body for advertising, media and marketing communications agencies
• and more... 

We hope you will join us October 5-6 in Las Vegas!!!!

Fight The Lure Of The 80/20 Rule!

If you are a brand marketer, I can almost guarantee that at some point in time you have invoked the 80/20 Rule.  To be clear, this is different than the 5 second rule which allows you to safely eat any food that hasn't been on the floor for more than 5 seconds.  The 80/20 rule is what happens when marketers say "80% of our sales come from 20% of our customers - so if we can just find and focus on that 20% we can get better bang for our marketing bucks."

Admit it - you have a slide in a deck (or multiple slides in multiple decks) that invoke this rule.  Here is my advice - throw those slides away.  They are the manifestation of everything within us that biases us towards the path of least resistance.

I submit that the 80/20 Rule and the subsequent search for the holy grail of that 20% is indicative of a big problem in brand marketing today.  Forget about the fact that most of the time folks focus on the 20% that deliver 80% of the SALES - as opposed to 80% of the PROFITS (in reality - those 20% are actually your LEAST profitable customers as they are the most price sensitive and buy mostly on deal or with huge discounts).  The real problem is that the 80/20 Rule, by definition, focuses on the status quo and limits your view of your potential market.

Look at it this way - if you buy into the fact that 20% deliver 80%, you are then predisposed to protecting that 20%.  You become scared of doing anything that jeopardizes that 20% and you become biased towards the status quo.  I mean, if what you have been doing is right for those 20% what impetus do you have for change?

The real question you should be asking is "Why can't I get more from the other 80%?"  And, if you start asking that question, you will start looking at the 20% that are your heavy users in a completely different way.  You will start looking at them to try to figure out how they are different than the other 80%.  How do they think differently about your brand?  How do they use your brand differently?  Why do they use so much more than your light or non users?

The goal of asking those questions is not to protect the 20%, but instead to take those learnings and use them to try to convert the other 80% into heavier users. 

So, fight the lure of the 80/20 Rule.  At the very least, turn it upside down.  Don't be content with having 20%.  Learn from them and uncover the secrets to unlocking the potential in the other 80% of your market.

New Microsoft PC Ads and The Difference Between Insights and Actionable Insights

One of the things that marketers love to talk about are insights.  They are at the core of our positioning statements and it is common understanding that if you can uncover the right insight, you can connect with your customer/consumer in ways your competition only dreams of.

At their best, insights can create that 'a-ha' moment for your customer - when they begin to realize that you really really get them, that you understand their lives and their motivations and that you may actually belong together.  And it gives them a persuasive argument for why they should buy/use more of your product/service than they would have in the first place.

The problem is that this level of insight goes beyond just the normal everyday insight - it falls into the classification of what I would call 'actionable' insights - those insights that not only show an understanding of the customer but also are persuasive and give the customer a true reason to do something different that what they normally would.

An example.  For years and years, the advertising for Campbell's condensed Tomato Soup looked very much the same.  Cute kid comes in from the cold and/or a bad day at school; Mom lovingly gives kid a steaming bowl of tomato soup; kid looks up with big toothless grin; Mom and kid share a moment that most moms would envy.  Over the decades things changed slightly - different kids, different scenarios, different patterns for the bowls...but the overall theme stayed pretty much the same.

This advertising was truly based on insights gained from research that time and time again delivered the same results.  When consumers were asked about their opinions/relationship with Campbells Tomato Soup they came back with the common answers of mom, warmth, love, family, caring, connection, etc...  It was what Campbells Tomato Soup owned and it was that message that was used for the 'a-ha' - letting consumers know that Campbells understood them and their relationships.

The problem was that this messaging did very little in telling the consumer anything new or persuading consumers to do anything different than what they were already planning on doing.  If you stopped two people on the street - one who used the soup every day and one who hadn't had it in 30 years - you would still get the same exact answers about what they thought about when they saw Campbells Tomato Soup.

When we started asking the questions a bit differently, we found out that while everyone had the mom, warmth, family, love, etc... answers there were truly some ways that heavy users were very different than light or non-users.  Specifically, we found that, in addition to all the other givens, heavy users loved the versatility of the Tomato Soup.  The fact that it could be combo'ed with grilled cheese for a great lunch for the kids or just had in a mug for a quiet alone time snack for mom or put out with an array of toppings like salsa, chips and cheese for make-your-own-taco-soup family dinners.  When this idea of versatility was communicated to light or non-users it was as if a light bulb clicked in their heads.  They too had a need for this simple, low-cost versatility in their cupboard and had never thought of Campbells Tomato Soup for this use. 

This actionable insight became the "Possiblities" advertising campaign that launched in 2004 and is still going on now.

Fast forward to the new Microsoft advertising campaign that is driving home the fact that pc's are less expensive than Macs.  On the surface, it seems like it is based on a very important insight - consumers are more value conscious than ever and are looking for ways to get more for less.  They are looking for companies to recognize that even though they are cash-strapped, they still want cool stuff.  From this angle, the ads make sense and are clever.

However, is that insight truly an actionable insight?  Does it tell anybody anything they didn't already know?  Anybody who has looked at computers in the last 10 years knows that Macs are more expensive - and the people who end up buying them do so because they are convinced that they are getting what they are paying for.

The reality is that the people who didn't want to spend more than $1,000 for a computer would have never bought a Mac anyway.  So, then, what does this new advertising accomplish?  I would argue 'not much' other than creating a negative image of 'cheap' for pc's and opening up the door for some easy ridicule from Apple (can't you just picture the 'I'm a Mac' ads that will come out of this?).

It is not enough to just have insights and rely on the fact that reminding customers of what they already know will push them to do what you desire.  You must push past the easy answers and find the truly actionable insights - those that will open people's eyes and persuade them to break their status quo.  Actionable insights are much harder to find/uncover - but when you do, the results are well worth the efforts.

What Is Your 'Right To Win'? I'm Guessing Starbucks' Is Not 'Value'

In an AdAge.com article today entitled "Starbucks: Not as Expensive as You Think," Emily Bryson York outlines Starbuck's CEO Howard Schultz's new push to fight the common belief that Starbucks represents excess.  Schultz is concerned that in this time of economic stress Starbucks has been defined by the crazy idea that they are all about the $4 cup of coffee.  He wants to change that perception and prove that Starbucks is a value-oriented proposition, touting the fact that "half of the chain's beverages cost less than $3 and one-third are priced less than $2."  He even goes so far as to suggest that Starbucks has been defined by their competition.

This strategy, while seemingly rational in this day and age, feels very wrong to me on a couple of levels.  First of all, for as long as I have been in the business of producing branding events and conferences and for the last decade of business books, Starbucks has been held up on a pedestal by every speaker, author and marketing guru as one of the pinnacles of modern branding success for the very reason that they were able to get people to pay $4 for a cup of coffee.  They were also applauded for their mastery of defining a whole culture of coffee consumption with almost zero mass advertising.
And now we are to believe that all that was the unfortunate by-product of being defined by their competition? 

Second, I have been working for quite some time on a concept I call "Right To Win."  At it's core, this concept proposes that every business/brand must find that one message that allows it to connect with a significant target in a way that no other business/brand can.  The trick with "RIght To Win," though, is starting from the inside out and being flexible enough to redefine your target and frame of reference to reflect your true brand strengths and how they connect with the ever-evolving marketplace.  Starbucks had an easily defined 'Right To Win' and one time, and it wasn't about value.  In fact, Starbucks' proposition transcended value and elevated people into the emotional realm of community, atmosphere, belonging, etc...  It was the antithesis of value.

But now we find ourselves in challenging times - not just for Starbucks, who were already seeing their own fair share of problems, but for everyonee.  And what will define the winners and losers from this period in history will be the level of fortitude to continue down the paths to their respective Rights To Win, instead of abandoning all that makes them who they are in favor of short term decisions that wrangle them back into the pack of mediocrity and sameness.

"Right To Win" is a novel concept in that it bucks the tradition of all we hold dear as it relates to brand positioning.  Ever since the word was made popular in the world of marketing by Ries and Trout, the concept of brand positioning has started with the target market and their insights.  It is reflected in the way a traditional positioning statement is crafted:

"To (target) who (insight) BRAND X is the (frame of reference) that best (benefits delivered) because (reasons to believe)."

The problem with this is that the validity of the entire statement revolves not around the brand itself but around the target, their insights and the frame of reference.  This is outside-in thinking that very much depends on identifying the RIGHT target and the RIGHT insights and the RIGHT frame of reference.  Unfortunately, brands' judgements are often clouded when making those decisions and they end up choosing:

1 - generic targets that mean absolutely nothing (i.e., Women age 25-54)
2 - the targets they have always used - not accounting for changes in the marketplace, psychographics, competitive landscape, etc...
3 - the biggest targets ("the bigger the target, the more opportunity, right?")
4 - the 'coolest' targets

Once they decide on their target, they then focus on the target insights and then define the competitive set in terms of who else is trying to meet their needs.  Once that competitive set has been put together, they likely focus in on a SWOT analysis, determining their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Unfortunately, those strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are all defined from the outside looking in.  And, most often, the weaknesses are looked at in terms of 'how do we fix' them and the threats are looked at in terms of 'how do we eliminate' them. 

But what if your perceived 'weaknesses' were really strengths - just to a different target????  What if, by defining the wrong target, insights and frame of reference, you have played right into your competitors' hands - following their script exactly?

Some years ago I worked at the Campbell Soup Company on the condensed soup business with a couple of really smart guys named Maurice Herrera and Mike Ferry.  One of the problems the business was facing was a constant onslaught of advertising by Progresso as to how they were the soup for adults and Campbells was the soup for kids.  The advertising was mostly unfair as Progresso was a ready to serve soup that was more in line with Campbell's Chunky line while the soups they were comparing themselves to were our condensed line.  As such, the teams at Campbells over the years had spent a lot of time complaining about this unfair advertising and trying to figure out ways to fight back. 

Progresso talked about how Campbells condensed Chicken Noodle soup had very little in it - barely any meat or vegetables, a bland taste, flimsy noodles - and that it was not an adult soup like Progresso was with its loads of big vegetables and egg noodles and meat.  In a typical SWOT analysis back then, our weaknesses were largely defined by what Progresso was saying.  And our opportunities were...add more meat, more vegetables, bigger noodles, etc...

Logical, right?  Sure, but innefective and costly.  That was a battle we just couldn't win.

But then something amazing happened, spurred on by Mr. Herrera.  What if we were fighting the wrong battle?  What if all of our problems were defined by the fact that we were still trying to fight for the same target we had when condensed soup WAS an adult meal, like 100 years ago?  What if we really WERE a kids soup, and Progresso was right???

All of a sudden, our weaknesses - flimsy noodles, lack of vegetables and meat - became STRENGTHS.  Kids don't want lots of vegetables or meat in their soup, they want to slurp noodles.  And guess what, the kids soup market is really big!  And it had been handed to us on a silver platter (or bowl, in this case).

To succeed in this day and age, brands need to, first and foremost, really understand themselves.  Before you go around changing your messaging and messing with your products, first you have to come to grips with what your true 'Right To Win' is.  While it may seem to fly in the face of the consumer and customer-centric world we have grown into, this inside-out approach may have a tremendous amount of merit with the brands that once were at the top and have seen their empires eroded away by refusing to be flexible with their targets, insights and frames of reference as time has progressed.

To not understand your Right To Win, or worse yet to turn your back on it completely, may result in short term gains.  But the long term damage done may be beyond repair.

Coming back to Starbucks, I truly doubt that their 'Right to Win' is anywhere near the concept of 'Value.'  I believe that they need to take a step back, gain a firm understanding of what it is they actually bring to the market that nobody else can replicate (I'm guessing there are 1 or 2 or 500 books that have broached the subject) and focus on how they find the right target and competitive set that allows them to turn these perceived short term weaknesses back into the strengths that propelled them to their place in coffee and foodservice history.  There are lots of ways to do this - and this is the crux of the work I've been doing.  More on this soon...

What's Good For The Goose - Tie Congressional Pay To Performance Of The Nation

I'm getting a bit tired of all the hub-bub over AIG's bonuses.  This is yet another case where the media and media-hungry politicians are jumping on the bandwagon of what they think the public wants to hear regarding something that really should have never been news in the first place.

The furor, of course, is over the $165 million in bonuses AIG is planning to pay out even though they have accepted taxpayer funding and are coming off some abysmal financial performance.  $165 million seems like a huge amount of money when taken out of perspective.  However, put in perspective, it represents only .10% of the $170 BILLION in taxpayer funds that have been sent their way.  Let me repeat... POINT 1 PERCENT!  This is the equivalent of someone who makes $100,000 having a meltdown over whether to spend $100.

With the frenzy of outrage, people lose track of the fact that the vast majority of those AIG'ers getting bonuses had very little to do with what is currently going on.  They are regular people - not jetsetting partiers reveling in wasting taxpayer money - who depend on their bonuses to pay their bills and do their part to keep the economy going.  And if AIG is ever going to get out of this mess, they need to somehow incent the best people they have to actually stick it out and not run for the hills.  Best way to clear out the talent?  Don't pay them bonuses.

Regardless of all this, I don't think I would be so peeved if it weren't for the hypocrisy of it all.  I think most people have to realize that those in Congress played their own very significant parts in getting the country to where it is right now.  Years of Congressional mismanagement and lack of regulation led us to this housing bubble that is at the heart of the nation's troubles.  And yet, Congress is still due it's automatic annual pay increase.

How about pay-for-performance for the very people who would like to dictate Wall Street's pay?  How about Congress' pay including bonuses for bringing positive change to the nation - and withholding those bonuses when targets are not met?  How about eliminating automatic pay increases?  I mean, with all that is going on, what argument could possibly be made that those in Congress deserve MORE compensation?

Because, when it all is said and done, the American taxpayers may have an 80% stake in AIG, but don't forget we have a 100% stake in Congress.

Somehow we have to get this nation out of the era of finger-pointing and grandstanding over what really amount to trivial issues and get the focus on taking the big steps that are needed to move us in the right direction.

Just Measure Something...Anything!

So, I've got to admit, my wife and I have gotten aboard the app train with our iphones.  We've got stuff for ourselves, stuff to keep our kids entertained and stuff that has no apparent purpose at all.  The most recent addition that my wife turned us onto is an app called Lose It!  Basically, it allows you to punch in your current weight, your desired weight, your desired weight loss per week and your height and it tells you how many calories you can eat in a day.  Then you log what you eat (you can either enter the calories yourself or search its fairly well populated database of food items - both generic and branded) and it lets you track how many more calories you can eat and still stay within your allotment for the day.

My wife and I approach this app very differently.  She carefully tracks every morsel of food she eats, painstakingly calculating the calories in the different dishes she might prepare or consume away from home.  I'm a bit more loosey-goosey and do a lot more estimating - usually on the high side to be safe - and, I must admit, cheating off her calculations (feels a bit like high school...).

Regardless of the methodology, though, the result has been that we have both been much more cautious and deliberate about what we have been eating.  We have been making much more conscious decisions, now that the implications of those extra calories will be highlighted in red once we go over our daily limit.  Knowing that my exercise routine burns a little over 500 calories lets me make informed trade-offs and adjustments and gives me more room for error when I'm feeling like a Twix bar.  And it is clearly paying off - I've already been losing more than the 1 lb per week budget...

Of course, weight loss is not the important thing here and nothing I've said is new to anyone in the diet or fitness field.  But it highlights an important point.  Before I started tracking what I ate, I wasn't doing anything egregiously wrong and I wasn't significantly overweight - but I had been packing on an extra couple of pounds a year and over the course of time that all adds up.  Bad habits are formed and before you know it you are fighting weight related disorders that could have been avoided.

The same is true for brands.  Left unchecked, things may seem to be going well, but it may be hard to really notice the little bad things that are piling up.  Some money wasted here, some consumer loyalty lost there, some less-than-stellar advertising over yonder...before you know it, your brand is on a downward spiral and is carrying far more weight than it can carry.

But measurement is hard - right?  What do we measure?  How do we measure it?  How actionable is it?  What is the statistical significance?  How do we get everyone on board with what to ask?  How can we really quantify the long-term effect of advertising?

There are a million reasons you can come up with to not measure.  The same holds true for dieting.  What should we track?  Fat?  Calories?  Sodium?  Carbohydrates?

The fact is - it doesn't matter.  Just the sheer exercise of measuring something...anything...will put you in a position to make better decisions, both in the short run and for the long run.  The basic consciousness of where you are spending your money and what you seem to be getting for it will force you to look more closely at everything you do.

Now, of course, the recession already is forcing folks to do that.  The unfortunate thing is that a point-in-time outside pressure usually results in the un-informed decisions that may look right in the short run but will have significantly negative long term effects.  Instead, be proactive, take some measurements and don't just make decisions, make the right decisions.

How Twitter And Other Social Media Can Save The World

(Cartoon Credit:  Liza Donnelly; http://lizadonnelly.com; blog: http://open.salon.com/blog/liza)

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**First, a disclosure.  Occasionally, I get overwhelmed by a completely irrational bout of optimism.  I believe for just a moment that everyone will do the right thing, that everything will fall into place, and that good will overcome evil.  It is during one of these bits of craziness that I am writing this post.  You have been warned.**

I was reading an article this morning about how the government is trying to 'halt the cycle of fear' and it struck a cord with me.  Clearly, we are stuck in a downward spiral right now.  It's trickle-down economics gone bad.  Everybody is hiding their heads in the sand and waiting - afraid to buy or do anything right now for fear of what is still yet to come.  Now, of course, there are broad macro-economic reasons for all of this that can be debated 100 different ways (and I still won't really understand what's going on).

But there is one thing I do know - negative outlooks and feelings are contagious.  And, let's face it, there is no shortage of negative news out there.  You can't turn on a tv or open a newspaper or browse a blog without hearing about how bad things are and how bad they are going to be.  Other countries are even tapping into this and adding to the depressing headlines ("Russian Analyst: US Will Collapse Next Year").

Now, this is nothing new.  It's always been true that negative headlines sell better than positive ones.  Sure, there are positive feel-good stories every now and then, but mostly the news has been about what is going wrong - who's killing whom, who's stealing what, who's corrupt, who's a cheat, etc...

Chip Heath (half of the Heath brothers team who wrote the best-selling "Made To Stick") actually published an academic paper in 1996 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes that studied whether people prefered to pass along good news or bad news ("Download Good news, bad news-OBHDP ").  The interesting conclusion was that it completely had to do with the perceived negativeness or postiveness of the topic.  Through a series of social experiments, Heath surmised that people were more likely to "pass along exaggeratedly bad news when the topic is emotionally negative, but to pass along exaggeratedly good news when the topic is emotionally positive."  So, if the topic was wait times at the health center, rated as an emotionally negative topic, people were more likely to pass along negative news (even if they were expecting the news to be positive...).

Clearly, the economy is a negative topic right now.  As such, people (and, more importantly, news outlets) are far more likely to share exaggeratedly bad news than good news.  This bad news then leads people to make fearful decisions, leading to more...bad news.

This is where Twitter and other social media can save the world.  The news outlets are not going to buck the natural trends as they need to do what is going to give them readership and keep them in business.  However, David Meerman Scott is right in that we are all journalists and publishers in this day and age.  How about we use this power for good instead of evil?

What would happen if everyone in the twittersphere and blogosphere committed to spreading nothing but good news for the next day or week or month?  What if we only talked about positive experiences instead of negative?  What if we talked about success stories instead of making fun of failures?  What if we talked about bargains instead of rip offs.

What if, in essence, we were actually positive and hopeful and optimistic and altruistic?  Is it possible that it might rub off?  Based on Heath's research, it would appear that we would first need to switch the emotional perception of the topic of the economy to one that is positive vs. negative.  Obviously, this would be a huge undertaking.  But with millions of self-made journalists and publishers out there fighting the good fight, is it impossible????

Ok, as I float back down from the clouds into the real world, this is seeming less and less likely.  But, on a personal level, I'm going to at least try.  I'm going to share positive stories - both in person and in my social media outlets, and do my best to create some positive feelings in my own little sphere. 

What do you think?  Willing to give it a try?

Be The Fuel For Your Customers - Not The Car

With Exxon-Mobil recently reporting another record profit of over $45 billion for 2008 while General Motors just released a(nother) fourth quarter loss of nearly $10 billion, it got me thinking - in these difficult times, do you want to be your customer's car or their fuel?

You see, when times are great consumers are much more likely to go through their cars faster - trading up for the latest and greatest every few years.  But when times get tough, they start to realize that those cars are actually built to last MUCH longer.  And so they hold on to them.  And car inventories grow.  And car companies go out of business.

But whether they get the newest cars or keep their old ones, consumers still need gas to drive them.  Sure, they may try to drive less distance (or even more as they try to avoid more costly air travel), but they still will need to get from point A to point B whether they are in a brand new 2009 model or a 9 year old Ford Explorer (like me).

People may build fewer houses and move less, but they still need heat.  Parents may buy less toys, but they still need batteries to keep the old ones going. Families may go out to eat less, but they still need to eat. You get my point.

Now, don't get me wrong.  Most everybody and most every business is feeling the pain right now.  But the things that are required to keep things running will always fare better than the things they help run.

How can you ensure that you become your customer's fuel and not their vehicle?

Can Logos and Taglines Make People Happier?

That seems to be the line of thought these days as lots of companies are jumping on the bandwagon of smiley faced logos ("Kraft Latest Marketer to Cheer Up Its Logo") and/or happiness-inspiring tag lines, such as:

Dunkin Donuts - "You kin do it!"

Coke - "Open Happiness"

OfficeMax - "Life is beautiful.  Work can be too."

IKEA - "Embrace Change"

Kraft - "Make Today Delicious"

Pepsi - "Every Generation Refreshes The World"

I know that research must be telling marketers that, in this messed up world of foreclosures and layoffs and bankruptcies and busted pyramid schemes, people more than ever are looking for rays of sunshine and reasons to believe that good will overcome evil and that everything will be all right. 

The problem is, how does this all relate back to Authenticity?  Do people really believe that Coke will make them happy?  Do they really believe that work can be beautiful right now?  And even if they do, aren't they setting themselves up for a big disappointment when they discover that there is no rainbow nor pot of gold right now?

I'm wondering who is going to be the first one to address this crappy situation we are in head-on and provide real, authentic information as to how they fit in.  Here are some of my suggestions based on the above:

Dunkin Donuts - "With everything else going on, are you really going to deny yourself a donut???"

OfficeMax - "Work will still suck, you might as well pay less for paper"

Pepsi - "The last generation really screwed things up - let's distance ourselves!"

Just some thoughts - clearly I'm no ad creative!