Landor Blog

Meeting the perfect stranger

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:42:02 GMT

Recently, I was lucky enough to take an environmental portraiture photography class with the very accomplished photographer Alex Fradkin at the International Center of Photography. The class was based on the idea of photographing strangers and using the context of their surroundings to tell a story. Photographing people? Photographing strangers? For many the very idea would make them hightail it in reverse. I promise you I was tempted, but took the challenge and what I found were a number of life changing experiences and relationships that have not only made me a better photographer, but have also transformed the way that I look at the world around me and made clear the importance of trying new things.

In months of typical hibernation, endless hours were spent walking around the various neighborhoods of New York City looking for that perfect stranger and that perfect moment; collaborating with people I had never met before. Every day we walk past thousands of strangers without a thought in the world, but if you take a step back, you’ll appreciate that these are all real people, with real stories and lives that are each interesting in their own way.

The camera is a powerful tool that allows you to explore the unknown, capture moments, share stories, record a little bit of history, and push boundaries to where one might not have gone before. When the shutter is released, a person’s existence is registered in time and place, capturing a moment and an experience. This series of photos allowed me to capture a glimpse into the lives of people I never would have met before, make an exchange, and learn a little bit about who they are while giving a little bit of myself in return.

With these photographs came experiences that never would have been expected. I met the actress who plays Hester from the famed show Sleep No More, made an appearance in a rap video, spent time with some local independent shop owners, held a complete conversation in two separate languages with a visiting woman from Columbia, watched an illustrator from SVA paint the first sight of spring, learned about the lives of people who live in the underground subway system, and met a very important eye surgeon who every day tries to improve the vital sense of sight. When you put yourself out on a limb, wonderful things happen, things that you would have missed otherwise.

Do something every day that scares you. Get out of your comfort zone. Take a class. Try something new. Meet some strangers. The funny thing is, once you take the picture, you’re technically not strangers anymore.

You can see the full set of portraits on my website.

Note: Two of the photos are not actually of a stranger. They were warm up shots from the beginning before I got fully comfortable approaching strangers, but they are still keepers.

Stone soup brands

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:48:41 GMT

Does Facebook have a brand? A controversial question perhaps. And not just to pick on Facebook, I’d ask the same question of other social media companies like Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Sure these companies are household names with widely recognized visual identities and unaided recall that is the envy of marketers everywhere. But still I ask: do they have brands? What hangs me up is that none of them actually make or deliver anything of their own. They are the proverbial tabula rasa. Put another way: the most interesting thing about them is not them. They provide a platform that we fill with value. Their product is entirely the making of their customers. They can’t even be said to set an editorial direction, aside from privacy and legal compliance policies, to shape the types of content they attract. Quite intentionally they don’t have a personality, tone, or style. They have no brand voice. They target no particular customer, demographic, or region. Whether you are an evangelical Christian or an ardent atheist; wine snob or teetotaler you and your friends and followers have a home on Facebook or Twitter.

Which leads me back to my to my title. There is a children’s fable called Stone Soup. You can read about here but the gist is that a stranger comes to a village with a magic stone that supposedly makes soup. Slowly he entices the normally reticent villagers to contribute to the soup until in the end it is a rich flavorful stew. Of course the stone is really just a stone and the only magic are the contributions of the villagers. All the stone does is bring together what was there all along. As I think about the social network brands, I wonder if they represent a new type of brand. A stone soup brand, if you will. Where the value they create is their role as an attracting, unifying force. It doesn’t matter if the soup we make is all vegetables or all meat, spicy or mild. If we enjoy the soup than the stone has done it’s job. And that job is to be nothing at all.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Twenty

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:21:52 GMT

For those of you that were betting against my semi-conspiracy theorist ideas and thought that the colors would just balance out in the end, be prepared to be very disappointed. After 20 bags and 368 M&Ms, I sent a note to the friendly people at Mars, told them what I was doing, and let them know of my curiosity about their process.

Here, ladies and gents, is their response (paraphrased, of course).

After conducting consumer preference tests, Mars deduced the perfect color mix. Each batch is mixed to the perfect ratio and then the bags are filled by weight (which explains why bags with the tumerous candies often have less overall).

What combination made the M&Ms look their tastiest? Well, that differed based on variety. Most M&M snackers prefer blue in the majority and brown in the minority. Peanut M&Ms seem to have the largest discrepancy between color, and dark chocolate the most even (16 or 17% for each color). Coconut? Well, they have their own colors we're not going to worry about. For our purposes, let’s look at milk chocolate.

On average, the mix of colors is:

24% blue
20% orange
16% green
14% yellow
13% red
13% brown

And, mild surprise, our own research was very close after only 20 bags. Check out those lovely twin graphs!

Results

Overall stats

Bag	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	4	4
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	4	2
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	7	6
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1	3
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	4	3
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	0	2
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	20	20

Bag	16	17	18	19	20	Avg
Brown	1	0	3	5	2	2.7
Red	2	3	3	2	2	2.35
Orange	7	3	2	1	1	3.55
Yellow	0	1	2	4	3	1.8
Green	4	4	5	5	5	4.05
Blue	4	4	5	2	5	3.95
Total	18	15	20	19	18	18.4

Instead of simply picking their colors and averaging them, Mars took a step back and thought very thoroughly about their consumer. As we all know in branding, it’s not just about the product—it’s about our interaction and emotional connection with it. Is it a coincidence that I both prefer dark chocolate AND for my colors to be nice and even? Maybe. Either way, Mars understood. I'm satisfied.

How do you brand a cloud?

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:31:58 GMT

With spring in full bloom, and while riding the commuter train, I recently turned my attention with fascination to an approaching storm front, marked by a truly breathtaking cloudscape. Powerful, amorphous, and illusory, these clouds seemed to be inviting me to fixate on them, only to fleetingly change shape and then vanish altogether.

No less mysterious and intangible is the much-heralded "cloud" resident on/within the Internet. You know—THE cloud: The digital depository we’ve all been hearing about of late, where “everything” is moving towards. So what is all the excitement about?

At first glance, the messaging surrounding the cloud seems to rely on an almost utopian vision of some grand, digital, end-state, whereby transitioning one’s content (music, documents, photos, documents, email, etc.) to the cloud will remedy a person’s communications challenges. To be sure, Apple customers/followers today are being recruited from iTunes and being asked to move their content to the cloud, with the implication that some kind of angelic, digital bliss awaits them. But what is the cloud anyway?

To begin, the cloud, at its core and demystified, is/are computer services provided like a utility (always available, always on) the result of huge increases in storage capacity across redundant locations around the world. In some cases, gigantic server farms have been created by companies such as Google and Apple, adding to the foundation of the planet’s storage capacity, which is growing at geometric rates to match our populations’ ravenous digital consumption. Here it should be noted that “private” clouds have been around for some time, created by many global businesses to securely back up data and provide redundancy, synching, and access across their operations—so the cloud is not totally new.

Today, however, with cloud marketing raining down on consumers, there are many unanswered questions and thus I thought it informative to participate in this movement for myself. On a recent weekend I downloaded most of my digital possessions to Apple’s iCloud and the experience confirmed a lot of what I knew about the cloud—its capabilities and its limitations.

First, from a consumer vantage point, iCloud is probably the best place to begin the journey of moving all your songs, photos, etc., to the cloud. It’s a BIG leap of faith, right? And so, best put in the hands of a company we all “trust” to make things work: Apple. But even with Apple acting as my digi-sherpa, I found there to be too much wayfinding on my part, as I learned that I needed to update all my operating systems across all devices (e.g. iOS5) to ensure the iCloud worked as advertised—ubiquitously. This took some time.

Once all OSs were in order, my content ported to the iCloud quite well, but then I was left with a big—now what? This worried me, as I could start to see some content appearing on some devices, other content on others, but nowhere was there a place to manage it all or instructions. For the first time in my life Apple had let me down. Eventually, I did find an optimal way to manage my iCloud content, but it required me visiting an Apple store for assistance—really?

Even now, as I scribe, I have still to reach the summit, as I need to add (read: buy) more storage in the cloud to house all my content. I guess I am fine with this, but in all it will cost me an additional $40, plus what I had spent on iTunes Match ($29)—so my trip into the clouds did not come without a cost. And while I do “know” that my content is “there” (on/in the cloud), there is some let down, as the full promise of content harmony across my devices has not been realized, and generally left me (an early adopter) with a bunch of questions—even today.

So what are the key lessons learned?

1. Make the cloud work: Right from the Apple playbook—it just needs to work!

2. Brand is as brand does: From a branding standpoint, where experience needs to match expectation, the “promise” of the cloud needs to be expressed in tangible terms: Here’s what you need to do, here is what you will get, here is what it will cost. Then the experience needs to be equally simple.

3. Guide the journey: Knowing the cloud is a remote and illusory concept to most consumers, their initial trust must be quickly rewarded and followed up with crisps directions to navigate consumers from end to end.

4. Get ahead of confusion: Basic questions need to be answered upfront to get ahead of likely consumer confusion such as: Where is my data, really? What if I want it back? Does anyone else have access to it? Sadly, none of this is addressed by Apple overtly, and that is really out of character for them—We miss ya, Steve!

In the end, I think most of society’s content will one day reside in the cloud. However the way we, as consumers, get there remains largely up in the air.

For the love of it

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:53:39 GMT

I start my day each morning with my coffee in my historic Brooklyn, New York brownstone, peering through my window and wondering what delights and distractions will catch my attention today. My daily obsession is observing the world around me—which, at times, can be overwhelming living in New York. The hustle and bustle of people on a mission to somewhere, but probably to nowhere, is something I find intriguing.

I naturally have a curious mind, which wonders without me sometimes, questioning everything with wide-eyed enthusiasm and respect for things I don’t know. This daily obsession has helped me develop as a creative, always questioning, how and why?

I have come to realize when going to work every morning it is easy to slip into an unnatural state of mind—a repetitive mindset can easily approach you sideways without you noticing. Not the ideal place for a creative to be. I continually break up my route to work to help me further understand the world around me. Breaking up my routine helps me navigate and see things differently. I look at architecture, people, artwork, and coffee cups. Yes! Coffee cups. Totally obsessed, by everything. An object is an object, but to me, it’s the story behind it that fascinates me as a creative.

Take Starbucks coffee cups as an example. Fast Company reported on how Starbucks asked designers if they could fix their coffee cups in the 2010 betacup challenge, and a few favorite approaches:

Recycling
KISS Cup
Australian designer Keith Orchard wanted to reduce waste while keeping the experience intact. His pulp paper-based cup is coated with palm-leaf-derived carnauba wax. "People aren't going to recycle if it's not easy," he says.

Reusable
CupUp
Inspired by children's toys, this inflatable thermal mug also has a bar code for loyalty programs. "Sustainable solutions must actively promote behavioral change," says Rae'ut Stern, one of CupUp's five Israeli designers.

Yet the coffee cup, which sits precisely at the intersection of brand and sustainability, lays unattended on the floor or bin after the experience of drinking it is over.

Everything in our world has been designed by someone—quite amazing when you stop and look around and imagine a world without it. We go about our daily tasks never quite appreciating how engrained design is in our lives. Our cities, towns, and communities, even our homes are museums of design, interacting with us, supporting us through our daily lives—never asking or wanting anything in reply. Imagine a world without door handles! A simple design solution that is intrinsic in our lives. Genius...

“For the love of Poseidon, it was so simple! Why in Aphrodite's name didn't we think about this earlier?”
—Socrates, on door handles, Uncyclopedia

Our urban streets and cities have become cathedrals of man’s designs. Collecting hidden dreams both young and old, which create soundbites that capture the heartbeat to our lives, surrounding us with gratitude and self-worth—our metropolis, utopia, our garden of Eden. A manifestation of man’s ability to create new through the means of design. The personality and dreams of designers are everywhere, hidden in architecture, stuff we use, books we read, clothes we wear, even the rubbish on our streets, all have stories behind them. Our landscape literally changes day-to-day showcasing designers’ emotions within these objects. Everything you see and feel is an emotional design idea that started somewhere, with someone’s imagination and personality thrown in. Is designing an emotional or functional thought, which creates solutions from a problem? Or is it symbolic to cultural changes, which exist, in our daily lives?

The word design has many different meanings that collectively build our landscape, layer upon layer, all trying to out do eachother, competing for space and attention while maintaining grace and charm by telling their own unique stories (graphic, industrial, fashion, architecture, product).

Design is the imagination of one or a collective to achieve better. Design is not political nor culturally biased in any way. Design alone is honest and respectful of all races and creeds. It’s mans ability to twist the function for his/her own means that creates misguided principles in the world. The world is a beautiful place thanks to design and man’s ability to imagine better. Thank you to all the creative people out there—the world salutes you.

Brand architecture: Building brand value

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:15:47 GMT

Brand architecture often comes down to an evaluation of tradeoffs. In my experience, there’s rarely a cost-free benefit or a no-foul cost. That’s why I have found the concept of brand value so helpful. It focuses on the net effect of an initiative—are the benefits worth more than the costs of getting those benefits or are cost-saving initiatives doing more harm than good?

Brand value has been defined by C.W. Park, professor of marketing at USC Marshall School of Businessas: “The difference between customers’ willingness to bear the costs to obtain the brand’s benefits and the firm’s costs expended to create these benefits.”

A house of brands strategy—as exemplified by P&G and its huge range of brands, from Tide to Crest to Gillette—benefits from the fact that each brand has a focused positioning, but it costs a lot to market all these different brands. So P&G (and other packaged goods manufacturers) have been aggressively reducing their brand portfolios. This strategy has a cost—there are lost sales and share from the discontinued or sold-off brands, and the remaining brands can become overextended. But so far the benefits seem to be worthwhile, and brand value has been increased.

On the other side of the spectrum, the single brand strategy of Accenture is very efficient, and pours all the equity into a single brand. But the downside is that it’s more difficult to highlight specific areas of competitive advantage. Single branded companies typically allow brand architecture “exceptions” when they decide that, for example, folding an acquired brand into the existing business will cost too much in terms of lost brand equity—or that one business does not fit well with the remainder of the portfolio and must be kept at a distance.

Some common drivers of the benefits and costs of brand architecture initiatives are:

Increasing benefits

1. Targeting the drivers of specific product categories

2. Targeting the needs of specific consumer groups

3. Focusing attention on product innovation or other areas of competitive advantage

Reducing costs

1. Reducing marketing costs necessary to support multiple brands

2. Reducing the management costs of running a complex brand portfolio

3. Reducing buying costs by giving customers fewer options so that they can find what they’re looking for more quickly

One common brand architecture issue is brand proliferation. Over time, either through organic growth or acquisition, companies increase their portfolio of brands and eventually find that the cost of supporting and managing all these brands is impacting business performance.

This issue is particularly well-served by brand value thinking—anything that dies not add value should be eliminated. Brand value puts the burden of proof on keeping brands that add complexity and cost for little benefit. For growth-minded companies that are prone to brand proliferation, it provides a useful check and a source of control.

Brand value also puts a premium on simplicity. The simplest brand architecture will be the least expensive solution, so it should be the default choice, all things being equal. All other things may, of course, not be equal—there can be strong arguments for more brands. But since brands are a source of cost and complexity, they should only be added or kept if the benefit outweighs the costs incurred.

In terms of an overarching principle, brand value thinking says that businesses should cover the market and target consumer groups with the least number of brands necessary. Fewer brands are easier to manage, less expensive to operate, and create stronger pools of brand equity. Less, in brand architecture terms, is often more.

From Marketing Daily

Branding Bioplastics

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:22:55 GMT

I had the opportunity last week to speak at the BioPlastek 2012 forum in Arlington, Virginia. In a room filled with chemists and engineers, I was part of a panel bringing the concepts of branding and marketing to the rapidly-developing industry of bio-based plastics. I discussed the topic of bioplastics and their need to deliver their story to consumers to increase consumer demand and in turn increase material usage.

I was joined on the panel by several esteemed players in the world of green marketing and bio-based packaging. Jacquie Ottman of Ottman Consulting spoke of the need to deliver a clear and understandable message to consumers, taking care to avoid "greenwashing." Kate Lewis from the USDA gave an update on the Biobased Product Certification Program. This program provides on pack product and package biobased content to consumers.

In my presentation I focused on several brands that are using bioplastics and how they are delivering the message to consumers. Coca-Cola has developed their proprietary PlantBottle resin formula and mark and have done a good job promoting it on both Coke and Dasani water. There is still a need to gain more consumer understanding of what bioplastics are and how they benefit consumers and the ecosystem.

In my summary and recommendations, I suggested that all of the bioplastics manufacturers band together as a council and develop a council mark that can be used to promote the industry. Through effective promotion of their materials and with education, consumers could become advocates and encourage manufacturers to use bio-based plastics in their packaging.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Dieciocho

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:55:23 GMT

Howdy folks! This week’s blog is going to have to hold you over until next Friday (I know, you’re so sad) because I will be visiting the sunny San Francisco office. I will probably be too distracted by nature to count my M&Ms. So here we have it for today: pretty average and boring, with blue and green at the top and a little extra weight overall. Be sure to check back in two weeks—there are some fascinating facts, and some exciting news to come.

Current stats

Bag	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	4	4
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	4	2
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	7	6
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1	3
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	4	3
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	0	2
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	20	20

Bag	16	17	18	Avg
Brown	1	0	3	2.61
Red	2	3	3	2.38
Orange	7	3	2	3.83
Yellow	0	1	2	1.61
Green	4	4	5	3.94
Blue	4	4	5	4
Total	18	15	20	18.38

Push or pull?

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:56:15 GMT

Story is central to the human experience. Whether they are shared to impart practical information, illustrate a moral, or simply to engage and entertain, as human beings we turn to story time and again to help us make sense of and more fully enjoy our lives. It is no secret that I love stories; I shared my love for fiction in a recent post.

It is also no secret that I have long encouraged the use of story in our daily work, especially in terms of how we share our ideas and concepts (usually in the form of a presentation) and how we seek to influence what work gets produced (as in driving selection). The truth is, most of us are experienced in pushing information out. But even when the information is important, people often have trouble connecting to it and even more trouble recalling it.

But, take that same information and put it in the form of a story, and more often than not, people will listen, engage, and retain. Pull your audience into a good story, and your chances of getting people to remember and even act upon the information you share go up greatly.

I first shared the “push versus pull” demonstration re-created in the above film in 2008. The film illustrates the power of story versus the often-anemic affect of facts. It never hurts to remind ourselves of the amazing impact story can have, and to encourage us to use story more often.

Why?

Stories can help us more fully engage our clients in our work, inspire them, make their day a little more interesting
Stories can enhance our ability to influence the actualization of the best work in support of our clients’ brands and businesses
Stories are creative in a way that information alone is not. For anyone working in a field that uses creativity to drive results, can you afford to rely on information alone to get your point across?

Take a look at the push versus pull demonstration and challenge yourself to find one way this week to incorporate story into your work. It will be effective and even if you don’t get the exact result you were hoping for, you will have flexed your creative muscles in the creation of your story. Either way, story pays.

“There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

Walter’s Little Black Book

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:38:14 GMT

Walter Landor’s Little Black Book wasn’t filled with the names and numbers of the brand man and l egendary host’s famous party guests—it was a custom guide to the City by the Bay.

Former Landor designer Sean King guesses the book dates from the 1960s, a time when our San Francisco headquarters floated on the Bay in a renovated ferryboat, the Klamath.

Each page is distinctly illustrated, customized by a different designer.

From the book's introduction:

My fellow designers and I have put together this little black book together so that we might share with you the pleasures of those sights and tastes of San Francisco that some of us particularly enjoy. It is by no means conceived as a complete guide but rather as a personal aid to your enjoying the city the way we do—perhaps as a momento after you leave.

We hope you’ve enjoyed looking through these pages as much as we’re sure the dignitaries, movie stars, and our visiting clients surely loved this beautiful book—and their trips to San Francisco.

All photography by Michael Friel, Landor.

Drinks with Walter

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:58:15 GMT

Walter said that brands are created in the mind. Walter’s reputation? You could say it was created on the Klamath. Or maybe in the last few spicy sips of a boat-made, stomach-burning Bloody Mary.

The movie stars and senators, columnists, diplomats, rock stars, and business tycoons who partied on the Klamath when the docked ferryboat housed our San Francisco office in the 1960s probably had trouble recalling the specific details of Walter’s parties. But, headaches and parched mouths aside, they must have opened their eyes the morning after the events feeling generally good about the festivities, because they kept coming back. That is, if they left at all.

When the office first moved to its home on the waves, invitations were mailed to four opening parties: There were two a day, morning and evening, for two days. There was a bar on every floor of the ferry, and a band played as guests danced and sipped highballs. And everyone had so much fun that they refused to leave. Instead of four opening parties, Walter hosted one wild two-day affair.

Walter was the life of the party, but he didn’t overindulge. “Don’t make mine too strong,” he’d say, ordering one of his favorite cocktails, a Bloody Mary, light on vodka. Besides being a socially acceptable way to imbibe in the morning, one of the beauties of the Bloody is that it can be customized easily to fit each drinker’s taste. Bobby McNamara, who worked for 38 years at Landor, once lived aboard the Klamath, and did just about every job—including mixing drinks for lunches, parties, and the daily five o’clock cocktail hour—tells me they called his Bloody Marys “stomach burners.”

Drinkers in the states didn’t fill their glasses with vodka much until after the Cold War. During the late ’50s and ’60s, vodka became popular—mostly because of vodka cocktails. Businessmen, mistresses, and housewives alike sipped sweet Moscow Mules and tart Greyhounds, and calmed their hangovers with Bloody Marys.

Like all alcohol-soaked tales of yore, the spiced, red inebriant’s origins are as hotly debated as the Tabasco in (some versions of) the drink. A reigning tale takes place in the ’20s and stars Paris bartender Fernand Petiot who supposedly created an early two-ingredient version at Harry’s New York Bar (whether the featured spirit was originally vodka or gin is up for discussion). In another version of the story, comedian George Jessel is credited with its invention.

Post-Prohibition, Fernand brought the Bloody to the states, mixing it for customers behind the stick at the King Cole Bar in New York City’s St. Regis Hotel. Legend has it that the King Cole attempted to give it the less-grotesque name “Red Snapper” for a time—but that clearly didn’t catch on. Over the years, heat and horseradish, spices, and lemon were all added to the glass.

Today, revelers in sunglasses hunch over Sunday brunch tables across the U.S. stirring Bloody Marys with everything from pickled greens beans and celery to bacon, doctoring the drink to their liking with Old Bay and clam juice. Or substituting Scotch, beer, or tequila for vodka. The number of Bloody variations is as high as the number of drinks the world’s hungover people downed last night.

And if Walter were here today, or we were still living back then, maybe some of those people would be sipping their drinks on the decks of the Klamath as it rocked gently on the waves of the San Francisco Bay. And they might raise a glass to Walter, who would raise a (not too strong) drink back in cheer and toast: to great parties that never end.

Bloody Mary

Everyone has their own best recipe, but this is how my husband, Christian, makes his “famous” Bloody Mary:

2 oz vodka
4-6 oz tomato juice
1/2 oz lemon (3-4 wedges squeezed)
1 squeeze of lime
2-3 dashes Worcestershire
1 bar spoon ground horseradish
3 shakes celery salt
1 dash olive brine
Ground pepper
Tabasco to taste

Pour over ice in a highball glass and stir.

Garnish with celery, olives, cocktail onions, pepperoncini, pickled radish, etc.

Bloody Mary image courtesy of Aurimas (flickr); permission being requested.

Special cheers to Bobby McNamara for sharing his stories with me.

If Fezzik falls in a wood and no one is around...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:23:05 GMT

Last week, our office received an invite to an event to celebrate an award that Shep Fairey is receiving in Cincinnati. (Eloquently, in a building that is a curving extension of the sidewalk. A skateboarders dream, perhaps). In addition to the (now iconic) Obama poster, Shep is a well-regarded “ street artist.” And I’m always interested in whatever he’s up to, because I was lucky enough to be in college with him, and part of the community zeitgeist of his early creative genius.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know the guy well. Because it was a small school, and art school (though perhaps not the art world) is about the closest model of a true meritocracy, it wasn’t inconceivable that a naive goody-goody would know a nimble skaterat who was already a campus hero. But our paths crossed only because I filled the highly-skilled role of door monitor for the printmaking building. Every night, I sat in a little alcove directing entrants to a sign-in sheet (and way back then, we had real keys to get into buildings after hours, too).

That was how I knew first hand the depth of Shep’s drive, his drive to have a voice (even if it seemed incidental to him), his drive to produce. He was the guy who signed in soon after dinnertime, and he would not have signed out when I left at midnight. Yeah, it wasn’t all work (how did that keg get in?), but it was known that Shep worked. He was one of the few students I remember to have a fully realized one-man show, and when he was suspended from studio, he still showed up to work (and I’ll plead the fifth, and just say I wasn’t the most by-the-book building monitor, how did Shep and that keg get in?) Yes, he’s had some recent “missteps,” but even his challenge to the original lawsuit is, in itself, a meta performance of his art.

Creativity is now an imperative, in childhood, in school, in business. Art school certainly taught us the creative process, and through experimentation, we were able to find our genius (IMHO, creativity is a learned skill, and every one of us an element of creative genius). Ideas, thinking, and realization—expressing those thoughts—became second nature.

But during this heady, creative juices-fueled time, what really stood out, what separated latent genius from realized, was lots of hard work. Without work none of it was real. And that is ultimately the really, really scary part of any form of creativity. You come up with an idea, flesh the thought out, research and find influences, then let it all go enough for an “aha!” moment. After all of that, you actually produce something. Something that you can stick in a closet (compelling more often then you’d think) or something to hang up for public scrutiny, hang it up, and let it live on its own. You birth the kid (more similar than you’d think), and then hold up your newborn up for criticism.

In essence, the entire cycle of creativity brakes down to a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, plodding path broken by moments of heightened euphoria. And, even back then, back in the neon age, we watched Shep keep plodding, nimbly putting one step and front of the other. And because he did, and continues to do, his creativity keeps being heard.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Sytten

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:43:09 GMT

Well, it’s not raining in NY today, but it’s still a sub-par day for yellow. Brown seems to be down in the dumps as well, not even bothering to show up and face the day. It’s ok, we all feel that way sometimes. But for the whole bag to be so light (only 15!) is something different all together. Maybe...

Current stats

Bag	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	4	4
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	4	2
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	7	6
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1	3
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	4	3
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	0	2
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	20	20

Bag	16	17	Avg
Brown	1	0	2.6
Red	2	3	2.35
Orange	7	3	3.94
Yellow	0	1	1.59
Green	4	4	3.88
Blue	4	4	3.94
Total	18	15	18.3

Coffee and investing

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:26:33 GMT

“That will be 28 cents please!” Not something you hear every day, especially in New York City.

I was so delighted I asked to hear it again. That’s the price of a cup of coffee from The At-Cost Café, which was parked on Union Square yesterday afternoon.

This unexpected treat is from Vanguard, and sadly is only in New York for a few days. The message is simple and compelling: Vanguard’s mutual fund fees are about 1/5 of the average charged by the US mutual fund industry. And you guessed it, 28 cents is 1/5 of $1.38, the average price of a cup of coffee in the US.

Putting the math aside, the clear message to investors is that fund management fees really matter. Vanguard describes two funds with typical industry performance other than fees—the one with Vanguard’s fee level will typically provide the investor with 95 percent of the gross return over a 20 year period, while the one with industry average fees delivers only 74 percent of the return after costs.

On the other side of Union Square, another challenge to the status quo is in progress: Occupy Wall Street has arrived with banners and protesters loudly proclaiming their anger at the financial sector.

This juxtaposition brings to mind the dramatic contrast in approaches taken by financial brands in today’s turbulent market. On one side, Wall Street is still struggling to counter public perception that the game is rigged in the banks’ favor, with fresh self-inflicted wounds from the recent uncomfortable encounter with Sesame Street. The standard response “we only succeed when our clients succeed” sounds hollow when evidence continually surfaces that these firms may be acting in ways that are misaligned with their clients’ interests. No matter how much money they spend on citizenship activities, these will only return pennies on the dollar while they remain overshadowed by public distrust of their motives.

Returning to the other end of the public square, there are a few financial brands that have always lived on Main Street, acting transparently and doing the right thing for clients. Chief among these is the sponsor of my at-cost coffee, who has made “vanguarding” a verb synonymous with responsible finance.

Our belief is that a brand is as a brand does. Closely aligning a company’s actions with its message is essential to building a consistent brand, and this goes double for financial brands. Vanguard can authentically convey its message through a simple cup of coffee because they already have the public’s trust, and everything they do reinforces this.

This approach is more than good public relations—it builds a brand reputation that enables a financial firm to retain clients through inevitable market cycles, build strong business partnerships, attract talent, and protect its license to operate from public pressure or regulatory action.

Those financial firms that embrace this and make it core of their business will reap the benefit. Those that don’t will at minimum suffer a missed opportunity and continue to waste resources on activities that do very little to build a durable reputation.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Sixteen

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:35:36 GMT

Happy Friday, ladies and gents! Just kidding. It is in fact a sad Friday. Why? It’s rainy in New York, the balloon on my desk is deflating, and yellow is officially the color with the most zero-instances thus far. Not that I was particularly rooting for yellow, but I still feel bad for it.

Current stats

Bag	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	4	4
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	4	2
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	7	6
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1	3
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	4	3
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	0	2
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	20	20

Bag	16	Avg
Brown	1	2.44
Red	2	2.13
Orange	7	4
Yellow	0	1.63
Green	4	3.88
Blue	4	3.94
Total	18	18.5

Bonus points for those of you who realized that I’ve started numbering the charts and the blogs with the bag number instead of the week. It was just less complicated that way. You’ll thank me later.

What’s the point of purpose?

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:14:18 GMT

I wonder, sitting in London, bombarded as I am with cries of outrage about “city” bonuses; directors’ share options being clawed back; cabinet ministers in the Courts of Justice; invasion of privacy scandals creating global, conglomerate, threatening waves; and the Occupy movement operating in 82 countries and claiming, ingeniously, “We are the 99%,” whether this all means something much more significant. Should we, are we now, viewing the last three decades as a form of mutant-capitalism and responding against it? Are we experiencing the pimply spotted signals of a society maturing from a self-obsessed, greedy teenager to a thinking, worldly, family man? Are we in the crisis of identity that precedes and presages a new era of honor and character, when being good and honorable is the starting point and all words and deeds flow from that?

Certainly there have been broad signs of progress over a lifetime and it is always interesting to see how “social-norm-creep” looks in retrospect. The everyday; an image of a pregnant woman smoking, is now a shock tactic, toilets and beaches aren’t racially segregated, seat belts are always worn, even hardened criminals go outside to smoke; there is progress.

At an organizational level, we have seen companies and governments, like citizens, driven by a variety of pressures, dragging themselves towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) or the triple bottom line, and now purpose, have, buried within their confusing nomenclature, the acceptance that making money just isn’t enough, that there has to be more. This is not a new realization, there have been many prodigious feats of CSR though recent and very recent history, though it was then called philanthropy and civic duty: Port Sunlight, Bournville, Saltaire; whole towns built for workers to improve their lives. In the Industrial Revolution, spurred by vast inequality, many with money did good things for others because they thought it was the right thing to do. Money was the enabler, but the currency of society was honor, values, and beliefs. Now in the form of endowments from Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and so on it’s called something else.

So doing good is not new, but somewhere in the last five decades we, society, and business, have confused the “what” with the “why.” It is as if we, having decided that our bodies cannot live without blood, have concluded that making and pumping blood was the meaning of life.

Perhaps now that is changing. We know that top graduates demand that their future employers have meaning, and that pressure groups have successfully pushed for more transparency and accountability and that the internet and social media have enabled and accelerated it. Perhaps we are changing? Perhaps.

Within the corporate world there are now many different thrusts to do better; environmental, social and economic sustainability, CSR, and now purpose. To the consumer these all amount to the same thing. Consumers don’t understand the corporate jargon, but they know a company with, and importantly without, honor when they see one.

At Landor we used to be, and sometimes still are, asked: “Does being green make money?” Now I would change the question to “Does being good make money?” but I would broadly answer in the same manner.

1. Leaving aside specialist niche products, being good doesn’t drive sales: Although people will, in some categories, select the good option if all else is equal. There is however evidence to suggest that the absence of good is a driver of rejection, and of course a major disaster if it is big enough, can now bring down the company

2. Being good saves money: Last year the UK’s Marks and Spencer’s accounts reported £70m savings based on its Plan A initiatives

3. Being good increases brand value and secures the future: Being good is a strong driver of perceptions of leadership and innovation

Why does good drive perceptions of innovation and leadership? Consumers see leadership as implying a sustainable position, they see sustainable initiatives as demonstrations of leadership and “goodness,” they know sustainability is new and that it demands an innovative approach, if they see an innovative company, they assume a sustainable position and a responsible perspective. It is a neat, circular and overlapping story, consumers do not logic chop the activities of, nor understand silos within companies, they only see and care if you are a good, responsible, honourable company, if they believe this to be true, the rest follows. The UK’s Cooperative Society (Coop) is a good example.

In 1844, the UK’s Cooperative Supermarket was founded on a moral principle by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. This stance has in the last decade been cleverly enhanced by the Coop’s single-minded and high profile support for fair trade. Consumers cannot cite the sustainability or responsibility credentials of the Coop, yet the Coop always tops the sustainability and morality charts. It is the consumers’ understanding of the belief sets of the Coop that make them assume that the Coop is a green, good, moral company.

We are living in interesting times

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:53:44 GMT

In recent weeks I have been enlightened and delighted by humanity and it’s common belief in ability to change. We humans are amazing creatures who’ve shaped our world as we know it today through creativity, innovation, and men and women continuously pushing advancement in the pursuit of better. It’s true our world is moving on, the rules have changed, and new games plans are being drawn up every day with curious minds. Our world is becoming self-run by humans, thanks mostly to the digital free information age we now live in. And this creates a bigger question: Where are we heading as a society?

During no other time have we had so much power at our fingertips to take action and create change in the world. Humanity now has the embryo of a common thread growing that crosses boarders, cultures, and political views. We are starting to believe and understand our own perceptions are more aligned than we previously understood. The Arab Spring, which caught the world off guard, illustrates this change, along with much-publicized KONY 2012 campaign running now. (Get involved.) It became apparent reading a tweet about KONY that fundamental shifts are happening, and happening now. We are starting to understand what our new digital information age is allowing us to do. People around the world are using digital platforms to speak and collectivity stand behind decisions and beliefs they care about. Forcing governments to act on common beliefs between people who otherwise would be strangers. Are we shaping our world? Is there a power shift happening? Are we building our own collective vision of the future as a people and for the planet? Saying, “I want to change the world” all of a sudden doesn’t seem so far fetched. We do have a voice and it will be heard—maybe humanity has a future after all.

Humanity is at a pivotal stage in the world’s timeline—in the future, society will look back at its history books and pinpoint this moment when our world woke up and decided to take either the blue or red pill. Guess you know what happens next? Obvious signs are out there signaling fundamental patterns of shifting ideas that collectively add up to something. I see it everyday in our industry—creativity being used to create meaningful experiences for the world and businesses alike. Our industry is shifting to align to questions being asked by the world. Brands need to work harder for attention today; aspirational brands driven through advertising don’t wash anymore.

It’s our natural understanding and common belief in ourselves that is growing—a sense of renewed hope for our fellow man and our future. Our world is an amazing place—look around, we’ve proven that. However, we didn’t get it right every time and our own history shows this. Society made huge advances over the past 100 years, more than any other time in history, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. I believe we are seeing the foundation of an equivalent situation today; our own digital revolution happening now—shaping us faster and quicker than we could possibly have imagined. We’ll advance quicker in the next five years than we did in the past 100.

Apple made the rules and can break them whenever it wants—even when it comes to a name

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:03:20 GMT

This branding pundit wants to throw in his two cents on the new iPad. I am not going to weigh in on the technology. I'm not going to offer up my opinion on the pricing, either on this device or that of its predecessors. I’m not going to talk about how Wall Street reacted after Apple CEO Tim Cook took the podium to present his company’s latest iteration of the iconic tablet. Rather, as someone with experience in the naming of brands and brand offshoots, I want to share my thoughts on Apple’s decision to call this third iPad the, well, the iPad. In my view, the company can call it whatever it wants and calling it the iPad makes sense for a couple of reasons.

First of all, when you’re the leader, when you’re the leader by a long shot, you make the rules (and, in this case, the category), and you can break the rules. What rule did Apple break? Not exactly anything hard and fast, but more like the conventional wisdom that says consumers want or need something sexy or more intergalactic to emphasize that they have the latest, greatest model of whatever. With technological products, this usually means something alpha-numeric, like the XYZ-250, or the MT-33. It gives people the satisfaction of knowing they’ve not only got the “next one,” but that they’re one up on their friends and colleagues. Given that Apple owns the category, for the foreseeable future anyway, I say they don’t need any alpha-numeric nomenclature. Let the iPad become (stay?) synonymous with the general functionality, like Kleenex or Google or Xerox. When I want the new iPad, I’ll just go into the Apple store and ask for the new iPad. It’s that simple.

And that brings me to the second reason I think the company made a smart decision in not giving the newest iPad a new name. It makes it simpler for people. I want an iPad. How simple is that? I don’t have to explain which iPad, other than saying the newest model or the less expensive model. Despite the early jabs at the name, Apple stood its ground and let the buzz go from negative to positive. The name is what it is, and today everyone knows what it is and wants one.

Bottom line? I think not giving its new version of the iPad a new name was yet another in a long line of game changers on Apple’s part. What does it want people to think about when they think about tablets? It wants them to think iPad. They do.

From Forbes.com

Everything you thought you knew about brand architecture is wrong

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:01:53 GMT

We all know the truths of brand architecture, let’s reprise them quickly: (1) we should have as few brands as possible and as many as we need; (2) there are two architecture models, house of brands and branded house; (3) brands can be stand-alone, endorsed, or monolithic; and (4) the answer to the best brand architecture lies in aligning the brand map to the map of the market. Point 1 is a re-statement of the brief, the others are wrong, or more accurately, incomplete. It is useful to speak in shorthand, for example, branded house, provided that we do not mistake “a truth” for “the truth.”

HSBC is often cited as a branded house but they own First Direct; and others, big consumer goods companies like Nestlé, are cited as a house of brands, but they have obvious “inbetweeners” like Nescafé, NaturNes, Nesquik, Nestea, Nespresso and so on. Coca Cola is a house of brands and a branded house and some “inbetweeners” as well. There are few if any brands that in reality follow a pure model; all brand architecture solutions are an aggregate of lots of different relationships between two different brands.

So given that these two models are at best directional, at worst unhelpfully misleading, what are the options for the relationship between brands? Is it as simple as (3) above? Brand architecture cannot be a wholly logo-centric conversation, though of course brand identities do play a part; but brands are like people and there are many more than three types of relationships between people: Google images of a John Lewis bag and a Waitrose bag to see one; they are wearing similar clothes but have different names, they resemble players on a football team. What is the relationship between McDonalds and Big Mac, not one of endorsed brand? The relationship between individuals can have many layers, some visible, some not, such as beliefs. But even on the level of brand expression we have the name, color, type, style, layout, and many more tools to play with. Let’s not tell ourselves we have only three options. We could design a brother, a half brother, and a family, members of a club, Dolly the sheep-like clones. There are many more than three possibilities.

Finally let’s address the view that the answer to brand architecture lies in the market. On the whole “yes” for FMCG brands, for many corporate brands, “no,” telecoms companies being an excellent case in point. In the past, telecoms companies split off their ISP and mobile activities spurred by higher P.E ratios and a belief that they would not thrive under the dead hand of ex-state controlled monopolies, leaving behind the “plain old telecoms” to become more plain and more old. Then came convergence. The question was not whether consumers wanted a single integrated brand, for they didn’t, but rather how could any company lead the charge without one? They were left struggling with multiple brands doing the same things in multiple countries and multiple brands doing converging things in the same country. The only solution was a consumer-oriented corporate vision. To be clear, the company’s vision of the future, not the market, leads the change. As the world gets smaller, geography becomes history; technology becomes less of a silo and more of a true enabler. Many categories face parallel problems.

So we started this piece with the truths of brand architecture as written in books and white papers and espoused in blogs. They are at best half-truths and the problem with half-truths is that they are half wrong. If a client asks for guidance and gets a half wrong directions he is unlikely to end up in the right place.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Some results!

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:12:52 GMT

We’ve done it! 15 bags of M&Ms cataloged. And now for some infographics (after one of this week’s bags positioned over this strange, happy rainbow face postcard I found).

Current stats

Wk	1	2	3A	3B	3C	4A	4B	5	6A	6B	6C	7	8	9A	9B	Avg
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	4	4	2.7
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	4	2	2.23
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	7	6	3.38
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1	3	1.7
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	4	3	3.92
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	0	2	4.39
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	20	20	18.31

Total color tracking over 15 bags

(A slightly hard to read but very attractive graph)

Yes, there is a color key. Just in case you weren't paying attention.

Color data as broken down by totals (left) and averages (right)

So dear readers, there you have it. After 15 bags, the colors have still not evened out. Note the discrepancy between the yellow and the blue—less than half as many! I'm secretly rooting for the orange, so things are looking up.

Just in case you were worried (or hoping?) that this blog might be over now, it's not. I’ll be back next week to carry on the mission. Together, we will discover the secrets of the M&M bags!

Apple's New iPad misstep?

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:57:06 GMT

The first sign of an inevitable decline?

With the first major product announcement since the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple seems to have made a misstep.

The new iPad has been dubbed…the new iPad. Not iPad 3. Not iPad HD, Extreme, or whatever other alphanumeric, descriptive or superlative suffix the good folks in Cupertino might have come up with.

This “new” name, or lack thereof, is being met with confusion. And rightly so.

It bucks not only industry conventions—which the company often does—but Apple’s own recent naming conventions. Its iPhone devices have had successive numeric extensions to signify product versioning and the iPods all have quasi-descriptive monikers: shuffle, nano, touch, and classic. This departure from nomenclature norms actually feels anathema to the extreme consistency of the i prefix system that Mr. Jobs introduced with the iMac.

There are two possible explanations I can imagine (which does not mean that either is correct):

Apple thinks the whole numbering thing has become confusing to consumers. For example, the iPad 2 has 3G Wi-Fi capability and is offered by providers touting 4G. So to reduce confusion the device doesn’t have a version number and offers 4G LTE Wi-Fi data transmission.

The problem with this is that once the new iPad is no longer new, there will be a need to distinguish the next generation device from it. Will these be “newer”? “The new, new iPad”? “The newer than new iPad”? Or “iPadVista?”

And how will people refer to this one in the future? “The new iPad*”?
This next explanation seems far-fetched, but I think it’s worth considering: The execs at Apple couldn’t decide what to name it in time for the announcement. If this is the case, we may be experiencing a watershed moment. Perhaps, without the [insert gushy adjective here] leader at the helm, the company has stumbled for the first time in a very long time. Could this be the beginning of a downhill slide?

Regardless of the reason, the blogosphere will undoubtedly raise a ruckus (guilty) about what may be (but doesn’t look like) a very thoughtful strategic decision.

*Not as new as it used to be and not as new as the new, new one? (Special thanks to M. Bishop for this dose of humor.)

Image courtesy of Apple.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: IIX

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:11:37 GMT

Happy Friday, fellow OCDers. Today’s bag is in favor of the blues with boring brown suffering quite the disadvantage. Now, I've been hearing a bit of chatter around from the non-believers. “It will average out,” they say. “Who the heck cares?” others chime. But, my dears, after 13 bags, take a gander at the averages column. Those numbers span from 1.7 M&Ms to 4.4 M&Ms. And, while the majority of the bags total at 18, the range is between 17 and 22! That is quite a large margin of error indeed. When we reach the 15th bag, it will be time to enlist that friend from college whose job has something to do with statistics. She’ll be able to sort this all out for us.

Current stats

	Wk 1	2	3A	3B	3C	4A	4B	5	6A	6B	6C	7	8	Avg
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	0	2.7
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	1	2.23
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3	3.38
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	2	1.7
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	5	3.92
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	7	4.39
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18	18.31

How many relationships can you handle?

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:39:52 GMT

100 years ago relationships were limited to physical networks, now with social networks we have become adept at managing vast networks of, albeit shallow, relationships.

When I read that more and more media content providers are looking to build direct relationships with consumers I do get excited of the prospect of Universal Music and HBO ramping up their marketing and services to talk to me and offer tailored services that match my viewing and listening needs. However, I do start to question how I will fit yet another relationship in my life. The reason we used retailers in the first place, whether bricks and mortar or e-retailers like Amazon and Apple, was because they managed those relationships for me. Yes, I suppose I was conscious of the margin they were making on my purchase but ultimately, did I care? Probably not—not if they delivered me what I wanted, how I wanted it, with minimum time and ease of purchase.

I’m not saying we can’t evolve to manage all these new relationships; if you’d told someone 100 years ago that they’d still have some degree of a relationship, through intermittent contact, with 500 or so of their school and university friends, 10 years on, despite the fact that they live in another country, they’d probably question their capacity, too. The interesting thing will be to watch how these relationship-hungry brands go about fostering connections with you and I after spending so long focusing on the middle men.

Brand strategy is MAD

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:45:58 GMT

The first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, the next two brought an end to the Second World War, and it dawned on the world that nuclear was power. From 1945 to the late 80s the number and destructive power of nuclear weapons inexorably increased such that the world could be sterilized many times over; this was the nuclear arms race. Later, when no one could think of another way of being, the “more is more” strategy was post-rationalized into the formal doctrine Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD); the idea that even after a ‘first strike’ the victim country, now destroyed and meaningless, could still launch enough weapons to render the aggressor’s country destroyed and meaningless.

The first brand strategy models were created in the same era as the atomic bomb, around the time that Walter Landor was turning art into design, pack into experience, and purchase guesswork into behavioral science. Brand models, people quickly realized, were power and they have, proliferating in type and gaining in complexity, pursued the “more is more” approach. But why?

Firstly we have to recognize that marketers live in a multi-disciplinary, real world arena with many confounding variables, where proving the value of a single agency’s work is impossible. Some famous stories of effectiveness for advertising for example, fail to recognize that the product, service, and identity all changed at the same time, which makes the claims unscientific, but a lovely piece of positioning for the advertising agency. Hence the Holy Grail of accountability and thereby credibility eludes us all. Secondly, most brand consultancy work is project-based, and we have to win new work or die on a daily basis: it is Darwinian in nature. Along with creativity, chemistry, and rigour, being highly strategic is a key lever in trying to win that work. So what does “highly strategic” look like? Given that we all analyze the same data in very similar ways, it is an obvious tactic to “add value” to the brand model, to make it “cleverer” than the competitors‘ and if it works, keep doing it. The more complex the model, the more intelligent the speaker, the deeper his knowledge, the more sure the result. Evolution at work.

To understand if this proliferation is a problem, we need to ask a rather obvious question: what is a brand strategy model for? And to answer this we have to ask in turn, what is a brand for? The purpose of a brand from the “owners‘“ perspective is to drive behavior, hence the value of the work lies not in the strategy, but in the consequences of the strategy, what it changes in the real world. We should work to the maxim that “if it’s not simple, it’s not right.” For only a simple idea can cut through in a cacophonous marketplace, only a simple idea can turn employees into evangelists, only a simple idea can unite all marketing disciplines into an integrated whole. Thus we have created a world where the outcome has to be increasingly simple and input is becoming increasingly complex.

Some agencies, those more relationship-based such as advertising, have not succumbed to the same temptations. It is this industry that brought us: U.S.P., “brutally simple,” “one word equity,” and “the big idea.” One arm of the marketing industry has convinced the client of the need for compelling simplicity, another arm has used complexity as a proxy for credibility.

In the '80s the world saw SALTs 1 and 2, the crazy idea that neither side would try to shoot down the missiles of the other, and eventually, in the early '90s, START; finally the reduction of the number of missiles, a reduction in MADness.

Surely brand consultancy needs it’s own SALT; a return to brand fundamentals, to understand the simple questions of why, who, what and how, and make the work about actions not dressing, effect not models, simplicity not paralysis. This then should be the mission: to rid the world of the extraneous, to take a fundamentalist Occam’s Razor to our work, to understand that less is more and play in new but above all, simple, territories; to recognize that strategy without simplicity and passion is just PowerPoint with neither power nor point.

An OCD journal of M&Ms: Sieben

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:10:59 GMT

Once again, this week’s pack is unexpected and uneven. Right when I thought things were going well for yellow, it’s gone all together. And to top it all off, one of the browns has a tumor (it’s on the underside of the bottom piece, so you can't quite make it out), another is missing a stamp, and there are only 17 overall. This bag is really slacking. I was so dissapointed it was all I could do to eat them anyway.

Current stats

	Wk 1	2	3A	3B	3C	4A	4B	5	6A	6B	6C	7	Avg
Brown	5	2	4	7	2	1	0	3	4	2	1	4	2.92
Red	2	2	3	2	4	5	1	3	0	3	0	3	2.33
Orange	1	2	4	1	1	4	9	8	3	5	3	0	3.42
Yellow	1	1	2	1	1	1	0	2	4	2	5	0	1.67
Green	7	5	4	6	7	1	1	3	4	1	3	4	3.81
Blue	2	5	2	1	3	6	7	3	3	5	7	6	3.83
Total	18	17	19	18	18	18	18	22	18	18	19	17	18.33