Monthly Archives: August 2011

Grammar Make Good More Pretty: Why Language Matters

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From time to time I find myself involved in a discussion about grammar and word use. The conversation reignites every time I read an email where I see a plural word spelled with an apostrophe or read a word or turn of phrase where the person meant something entirely different from what they’ve composed. One of my favorite popped up many years ago when I read in an email the phrase “coup de gras,” or “blow of fat.”  Normally this would be a minor mistake that caused a few chuckles amongst colleagues, but it became much more serious when our French-speaking client read it.  The client wasn’t offended, of course, but he did come away from it thinking that the person, and by association the team, were simpletons.

There are people who would say that this reaction is an outlier, but deluding oneself about the magnitude of these sorts of mistakes is foolish and it ultimately impacts the bottom line. Not knowing the difference between “jibe” and “jive” or understanding when and when not to use a semicolon leaves an impression on the people for and with whom you work.  As Old Navy learned today, it can equate to millions in lost revenue.

Having released a series of college-related t-shirts with the phrase “let’s go” written as “lets go,” it now has to consider recalling the products.  Personally, I would be inclined to play up the humor of a misspelling on a college t-shirt, but it doesn’t look like that was either the intent or what will happen.  And perhaps it doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things should they choose to simply let the shirts sell.  These are inexpensive t-shirts, after all, and won’t destroy the company’s brand image.  But it’s still a mistake and, depending on how they spin it, a potentially costly one.

Now imagine what this sort of mistake means if what you sell is strategic thinking.  Think about what it means if you are basically selling intelligence, creativity and insight.  In this situation it does influence how your brand is perceived.  Make sure your wording and spelling are correct or risk losing credibility and work.

The Grab for Power

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The other day Warren Buffett wrote “OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.”  The rest of the NY Times Op-Ed piece goes on to explain why he and people like him won’t stop investing, either in people or the market, because we close tax loopholes.  I won’t belabor the points here – Mr. Buffett did a wonderful job pointing out the logical fallacies of the post-tea party Republican party.  But for what is a decidedly well thought out expose of the economic fallacies of the far right, the deeper issue really has precious little to do with the outcomes of taxing the .5 percent a little bit more.  They are well aware that 99.5 percent of taxpayers will be unaffected by any policy changes.  This isn’t about improving the economy at all.  It’s about manipulation and power.

Power can be defined in many ways. Most simply, it is the ability to get what you want, or as scholar Kenneth Boulding said, power is “the ability to change the future.”  Boulding said power has three forms: threat, exchange, and love. Threat power is equivalent to “power over.” Exchange power is the power of negotiation, as it requires another party to negotiate with. Love, Boulding argued, is also a form of power. Although not often recognized as power, when people love each other, they do things to help the other person, just because they love them, not for any particular reward or hope of exchange. This gives rise to what Boulding calls “the integrative system,” the structure of bonds, of respect, of legitimacy that holds social groups and whole societies together. This is the form of power that underlies persuasion. People can be persuaded to change their behavior if a convincing argument can be made that corresponds with an opponent’s belief system (or changes that belief system through love or respect). And while there is certainly room to argue details and split hairs, Boulding’s construct is simple and helps illustrate a point.  When arguments from the far right don’t stand up to scrutiny and are still backed by their supports and demagogues (often with more and more outlandish rhetoric), then there must be some motive other than a desire to help God and Country.

Breaking the back of the economy is one sure way to do it, provided you can muster enough brown shirts early on.  When you strip a population of everything and then offer it a bowl of rice, the people are likely to be disproportionately grateful for whatever they get or willing to keep their heads down out of fear of retribution.  And just as the Nazis took advantage of derelicts, psychopaths and the general deranged by placing them in positions of controlled power, creating a kind of perverse hierarchy based on depravity, so to do Tea Party advocates seek to elevate the dregs in order to beat the masses into submission.  Time is the stumbling block, but even that can be overcome.  Step one on the road to creating a society defined by fear begins with shifting the power structure to do away with exchange.

It begins with the simple dismissal of the comments of Mr. Buffett and his cohort. Because the goal is not to actually worry about job creation, rather it is to strip people of a voice, no matter if they are at the top or the bottom of the economic hierarchy. Paint him as being on the fringe, along with other extremely bright, innovative, entrepreneurial folks, and you can continue to grow the level of fear people feel about the economy and their neighbor, thereby doing away with discourse.  The result is that the people consolidating power continue to spread division, which in turn leads to greater reliance on them.  One segment of the population comes to look on the leaders of the far right as saviors, the rest look on in fear but keep their mouths shut.

Of course, they know they have no argument.  When Michelle Bachmann simply scoffs at the man, dismissing him as an unbeliever she knows precisely what she is doing. The base of zealots is already in place.  When Rick Santorum says it’s a plot hatched by homosexuals, he is simply giving people in a growing state of fear something to attack. When Rick Perry says that he doesn’t care what one of the wealthiest men in America says because his own economic policy is guided by God, he does so because he knows that when power is finally consolidated into the hands of a few, he will be able to turn that man – long dead at that point – into a myth of his own devising, a myth that validates the Tea Party agenda.

Because it’s not about freedom, economic or personal.  It’s about establishing the belief that 2+2 = 5. It’s about getting the masses to agree that power and wealth is indeed better off in the hands of a tiny minority.  It is about fear and control, plain and simple.  That Mr. Buffett is right when he lays out his economic argument means nothing.  The goal isn’t about improving the economy.  It never was.

 

 

Coffee: Who Makes A Brand?

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Grabbing my morning cup yesterday I began thinking that while coffee culture has grown dramatically through time, but the public stage (the coffee shop) has changed as a place of social discourse.  Coffee drinking seems to have moved farther away from the social activity that it appears to be, at least on the surface. Yes, coffee shops are full and people interact with each other, but the advent of personal technology has changed the dynamic from its pre-wifi beginnings. It’s far more likely to see people working on laptops, reading, playing Angry Birds or doing some other form of solo activity, be it work or leisure, at the coffee shop. The number who are there solely for social purposes seems very small.

Our coffee and coffee shops we frequent have become badges to signal who we are and what we believe. It is less about a place devoted to social interaction than a place to say “this is who I am” to like-minded individuals with whom we may rarely speak.  Coffee is fashion.

Coffees offer us a way to look at our relationship to the larger world and see that sometimes our choices are not really our own. Brands create us even as we create them. It is not the transaction, but the relationship that matters.  And that sort of dynamic is central to the new age of branding and marketing.

Private-label Goods, India and the Nature of Shopping

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Private-label is a growing in India.  The slow but steady turn from small, family-owned retail and the growth of organized retail has helped shape the process, as has the growing wealth and infrastructure of the country. But the growth of private-label food brands has not been limited to large, organized retailers. Private label goods are finding their way into traditional markets. Increasingly, “loose” foods (food stuffs sold in bulk from bins, are finding themselves well-packaged under the store name, stacked neatly on the shelves next to branded products.

Traditionally, the appeal of loose foods over branded products stems from their perceived quality, authenticity and lower price. However, incidences of tainted food have created negative perceptions in the minds of shoppers for the loose foods, especially among those who are less price-conscious and more driven by quality attributes. Branded foods were once seen as having an advantage due to convenient packaging and guarantees of consistency and proportion. They have also come to be seen as safe.  And increasingly, quality of taste and ingredients have become major selling points.

To give more context, the “loose” format, traditionally sold in most Indian mom and pop stores, includes foods like rice, flour, sugar, salt, spices, lentils, etc. Lacking abundant shelf or aisle space and a smaller client base that typically has less storage space in the home, they are bagged by the retailer for each order. Small scale processes for CPG goods has become is seen as a great opportunity for the people supplying the goods.  In addition to representing new sources of revenue for the manufacturers, this solution gives the store owner better margins than that of branded products. It also helps build a brand equity for the retailer, helping shoppers overcome negative quality perceptions associated with loose foods.

Perhaps most importantly, it also offers up the appearance of greater choice to consumers, providing an increased sense of status, democratizing food consumption across socioeconomic class.  The result for the retailer is to differentiate themselves from other small grocers by providing greater access to less expensive branded products that are not traditionally sold at other such stores.

So what does it tell us?  It tells us that marketing and selling products in India is much more complex than it is in the West, where the mom and pop store has largely become a destination for the relatively affluent and mechanization defines our palette.  It may seem trivial, but it signals that when thinking about branding and selling in India, we have to completely rethink the paradigm of grocery shopping (or any kind of shopping, for that matter) and understand the system in which goods are marketed and sold.  You don’t get that from spending a week observing shoppers in India, you get that from learning how things like work habits, labor divisions within the home, neighborhood structure, views about food preparation, etc. all play into the shopping experience and building your brand with a different worldview in mind.

The Smurfs Are Annoying, But Are They Really Evil?

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Smurfs, it turns out, are evil in the eyes of the far right.  These cute, cuddly little guys represent everything wrong with America.  Why is that so?  Well, here we have it:

  • All the Smurfs dress alike.  The exception to this is Papa Smurf, with his red clothing and sinister beard.  Not only does he look vaguely like Lenin (not the musician, but the Bolshevik), but he dictates to the lowly underlings what jobs they will perform, where they will live, etc.  There is no money, everyone shares and the people do as they are told by a tyrannical state machine exemplified through the party head.  In other words, the Smurfs promote Soviet-style communism.
  • With the exception of the one female in the group, they are all male which means that the creators of the Smurfs are either gay or are all sleeping with the girl.  Or a little bit of both.  Regardless, the logic goes that there are a whole host of sins being pushed to the impressionable minds of our kiddies that will one day leave to lascivious behavior.
  • Perhaps worst of all the Smurfs were not created by God, but are an obscene accident of science and sorcery blended together.

Now, I’ll be the first to say I loathe the Smurfs, but there comes a point at which I have to set my loathing aside and say WTF.  Just because we (meaning the far right) and I can agree on our dislike of these cuddly beasts, it doesn’t mean that their rationale is something we should take seriously.  It is a sad day when something as annoying but basically as innocent as the Smurfs is used to spread such an idiotic agenda.

Pickup Trucks and Fashion: Why It Pays to do Fieldwork

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The pickup truck has become an essential part of Western culture.  Even though trucks are needed and valued for their usefulness in farming, ranching and blue collar occupations, decorative additions are often made to trucks and these additions don’t always follow utilitarian functions.  Indeed, many truck owners do precious little in the way of physical labor – spend a few hours driving through the pricier suburbs of Houston and it become quickly clear that the truck is as much a fashion statement as it is a tool.  Perhaps more so.  Rather, pickups help negotiate and present group membership, notions of masculinity and femininity, and associations with class structure.  However, trucks don’t always present a seamless image, nor are the images always interpreted monolithically by those who own and decorate pickup trucks. There are a range of meanings associated with trucks and subcultures within the larger cultural framework.  But what is most important to this discussion is that trucks are far more than they seem.

Truck owners spend a considerable amount of money on customizing their trucks, with 45 percent spending at least $1,000 and 17 percent spending at least $3,000. The most common components customized are wheels and tires (36 percent), audio and video (29 percent), exterior trim (29 percent) and exhaust systems (19 percent). The high value that pickup truck owners place on their trucks and the amount of money that they spend in aftermarket products makes sense when you consider the fact that 64 percent consider their truck as an extension of their personalities.

As an example, when I was doing fieldwork with women who owned trucks, only one of them owned a truck as a function of her occupation.  Some used it as a means of establishing a sense of identity that said to the world, “I’m not a girlie girl.” Some used it as a way of asserting a sense of strength on the highway.  Some used it as a way of maintaining a connection with their past rural (or semi-rural) lives.  The point is that the truck became a symbol, an extension of themselves and utility played a minor role in the underlying reasons they chose it over a car or an SUV.

So why does it matter? It matters because it speaks to the fact that the products we own and use, whether they are thought of by their manufacturers and retailers as utilitarian or extravagances, are reinterpreted and redefined by their owners and that is a huge opportunity for marketers and designers. The truck is a fashion piece. It is a mobile living room.  It is a toy.  It is many things, and those things become apparent from doing deep fieldwork, not through surveys and interviews.  And just as trucks have a range of unexpected meanings, so to do laptops, beer brands, eye glasses, etc.  Regardless of your product or service, understanding people on a deeper level gives you a significant advantage over your competitors. That means getting out there and doing the kind of rich, immersive research that uncovers real insights, not just the low-hanging fruit.

Tax Cuts Will Not Drive Innovation or Job Creation

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, contrary to popular belief amongst the far right, cutting taxes won’t make the economy grow.  The basic facts speak for themselves. High-end tax cuts haven’t trickled down as job creation, at least they haven’t created jobs that provide a decent wage. The only things trickling down during the last six years of tax and benefit cutting have been  economic meltdown, foreclosures, unemployment, business closures and yet more budget cuts.  From a high-level perspective, the myths created by the far right haven’t come to be. On a more granular level, a large portion of this stems from the realities of how small businesses operate and the needs they have.  But then, the Republican agenda is not in fact about job creation, small business development or entrepreneurialism.  It’s about providing benefits for the elite.

Contrary to myth, most small business owners will tell you that their  tax rate doesn’t affect hiring. If they think I can do more business, they hire more workers regardless of the tax code. The costs of finding, hiring and paying new employees are business expenses. They’re deducted up-front from the taxable income of the business.

Fewer than 3 percent of taxpayers with any business income have yearly incomes above $250,000 (couples) or $200,000 (individuals). Most high-enders aren’t who you think of as small business owners. They include hedge fund managers, CEOs getting paid to sit on the boards of a variety of corporations and partners in wealthy real estate or law firms. These are the people whining that eliminating tax cuts will kill jobs at small businesses. They do not represent the majority of small business owners. Nor do they represent the bulk of job-creating businesses for the bulk of the population.

If Congress wants to help my company create jobs, it should support policies that strengthen our economic foundation and boost broad-based consumer income and spending.  More important than tweaking the tax code YET AGAIN is the need for stability in the system. Nothing scares small business owners more than a fickle market.  Today’s plummeting of the Dow is far more detrimental than closing loopholes and taxing the richest 5%.  The poor and the middle class are expected to sacrifice, the super-rich are not.  Small  businesses and the people they employ take the hit.

More tax cuts at the top won’t create jobs. But we will create jobs and strengthen our economy by rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, public transit, levees and water and gas pipelines.  In other words, if we invest in innovation, we will create jobs and stability. We won’t heal our economy by repeating the toxic policies the right is so in love with.

 

How to Tell a Good Story

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We often get bogged down in the numbers when we talk to our clients.  They’re business folks and therefore we need to talk to ROI, segmentation schemes, bottom-line financials, etc. And yes, that information is necessary, but it shouldn’t necessarily be the focus of every conversation, particularly when we’re presenting findings and insights.  It’s like assuming every movie we see or every novel we read should be a bulleted list of events.  No, the story matters much more than we think.  Even though they might be resistant to the notion, business folks are still human and they respond to the story being told more than they would admit to others or to themselves.  Story telling is imperative to the success of any work you do.  Great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of important audiences. They draw people in.

1. Understand That Attention Spans Are Short

People have little time. As a result, attention spans are getting shorter by the day. Do everything you can to keep your story from plodding along at the same pace and pitch. Mix the serious with funny, dialogue with thought, high energy with no movement, etc.  Telling the story is as much about the performance as it is about details.  Without the performative aspects, there are only facts and facts by themselves don’t make the case.

2. Believe In the Story You Are Telling

If the story doesn’t mean anything to you personally, don’t tell it. It won’t come across as genuine and your audience will know it. A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic. Clients, like consumers, are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for you to get away with a story that’s just slapped on.

3. Be Targeted

Great stories are rarely aimed at everyone. When they are, they rarely stick with anyone.  Be aware that there are some people in the audience who won’t get it no matter what you have to say.  Those who do, however, will become advocates. Average people have too many different points of view, to many opinions and too many competing agendas to come at a problem with a completely clear mind. If you need to water down your story to appeal to everyone, it will appeal to no one.

4. See the Story in Scenes

It’s hard to memorize a story word for word. One of the biggest problems people run into when presenting is that it sounds contrived and forced.  That will kill the message quicker than anything.  Break your story into blocks of time. Think in themes and use visual material to jog your memory about the theme you want to address rather than reciting something you’ve committed to memory.

Great stories are trusted and trust is probably the single most important part of getting anyone to act on insights. No research succeeds in telling a story unless he has earned the credibility to tell that story.  And that is largely accomplished in how the story is told, not just in the pedigree they bring to the table.

Strategy and Culture Change Inside the Agency

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In a world with consolidation of client budgets, agencies must begin to target the projects and clients that will allow them to flex not only their creative muscles, but also demonstrate their strategic prowess.  This business and economic climate results in organizations increasing their focus on cost reduction at all levels. This most definitely includes marketing and advertising budgets not necessarily shrinking, but an increased focus on value. Clients are hiring entry-level designers to handle “grunt work,” and replacing tasks previously handled by the agency with projects requiring higher-level thinking.  Obviously, the risk here is that the agency must have the capability and desire to take on this new role.  They must want to be more of a strategic partner than a supplier of clever content.  And that is a significant challenge.

Changing the worldview of people in any cultural context is difficult.  It isn’t as simple as providing new tools or a new slogan. It requires thinking about how long-term modification will influence the cultural and psychological systems people hold dear to their hearts.  Culture change is the term used in public policy making that emphasizes the influence of cultural capital on individual and community behavior. It places stress on the social and cultural capital determinants of decision making and the manner in which these interact with other factors like the availability of information or the financial incentives facing individuals to drive behavior.  Shifting social zeitgeist  (whereby social norms and values that predominate within the cultural capital in society evolve in over time) and requires understanding the motivations and cultural underpinnings of an industry defined by solo acts.  The “big idea” is more than a way of expressing the push to find that singular message in advertising, it represents the way people within agencies work.  It is the lone wolf with the brilliant idea jockeying for power both internally and with the client.  Breaking through that cultural construct is difficult, but a necessity in the changing face of advertising and marketing.  Collaboration and strategic thinking, so readily taken on in the industrial design and product development worlds, are becoming absolute necessities in the world of advertising and marketing.

The opportunity for marketing and advertising firms, especially smaller firms, now lies with the chance to transform their relationships with clients from being the production shop to a strategic partner that can be a valuable solution to a variety of problems.

Gold Standard Wisdom: Let’s Go Back to Flint Knives, Too.

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We’ve been hearing a lot about the gold standard lately from Tea Party loyalists and those pandering to them.  Specific elements of their philosophy and social agenda have become talking points and gained legitimacy that 10 years ago would not have been there.  Is it because the ideas have legitimacy or because people are desperate?  I think the latter.  It is worth taking the time to examining their various theoretical points from a historical and systems design approach because it shows us that while the ideas are novel, simplicity rarely works out simply.  Let’s look at the gold standard obsession.

While the Tea Party supporters love nothing more than to belittle the French, there are sometimes lessons there to be had.  The French economist Jacques Rueff, an influential de Gaulle advisor,  advocated the gold standard because he believed it acted as a restraint on government action.  Like Rueff, Tea Partiers believe that reintroduction of the gold standard would prevent the U.S. government from running up deficits and inflating its way out of debt. Straight forward in its approach, but is it true?

Any kind of rigid monetary rule limits what a government can do. But why gold rather than wheat? There’s nothing intrinsically different about gold from any other commodity. Indeed, it is of less value to our survival than many other resources. Gold is stable, so the story goes, because it is rare and it isn’t subject to natural disaster when compared against other commodities and there is some truth to that.  (Gold’s greatest draw is the fact that it’s shiny and belongs to the “right” social classIn other words; gold is about power, but that is another topic.)  If they were truly serious about removing volatility from the monetary structure, Tea Partiers could just target the consumer price index. It’s called inflation targeting. Targeting rules are a way to be sure that you get price stability and you can write them into the Constitution or the central bank statute. In other words, there are methods of producing greater stability that are reflective of the realities of a modern, global economy rather than turning to antiquated systems of valuation.  Stepping back in time, or trying to embrace “the good old days” may sound wise, but it rarely works.

You see, what they eliminate is flexibility and the ability to respond to unanticipated events. With a monetary rule, the mint’s printing presses would click on or click off in response to the latest information on gold prices or consumer prices or whatever you are targeting. Not a problem yet, but wait. What happens when there is a problem in financial markets and you have to flood the markets with liquidity?  You can’t.  While we may want to ignore reality and say “well tough shit,” that’s exactly what a central bank sometimes has to do, to act like a lender of last resort.  For the 10% of people with the liquid assets to cover a multi-year financial melt down it’s easy to weather the storm.  But most of the population isn’t in such a position.  It’s easy to have that stiff upper lip when you have nothing to lose and the ability to exploit the people at the bottom. Like it or not, the central bank simply does have to occasionally involve itself.  And the lack of flexibility is what’s wrong with the gold standard or any other simple monetary rule.

Tea Partiers would say that we wouldn’t have such dramatic and cataclysmic problems if we returned to the gold standard.  Financial instability requiring lender intervention would be relegated to history if we would just return to the gold standard. It’s simply untrue.  Look at the 19th century gold standard they so espouse. Major financial crises occurred in the United States about every 10 years. This is why during the 1907 financial crisis, which happened under the gold standard, the decision was taken to create a central bank (which didn’t finally occur until 1914).

The point is that so much of what the Tea Party loyalists have to say is interesting, but decidedly short sighted. Desperate though we might be to turn the economy around, there is a reason ideas like the flat Earth theory, Social Darwinism and, yes, the gold standard have been have fallen to the wayside. Half-baked theory is no substitute for critical thinking.