Tom Fishburne: this one time at Brand Camp

driving by the rear view mirror

I get most of my cartoon ideas in meetings.

I was in a strategy discussion recently that became stuck in a competitive debate. We charted the minutia of each recent competitive action and overdosed on two-by-two matrices.  

In the middle of this war-gaming, someone observed, “We’re trying to drive by the rear view mirror.”

It was a wake-up call that reminded us we were so focused on the competition, we had lost sight of the actual consumer. Sure, you need to know the competitive landscape.  But others can only guide you so far.

I most felt this competitive fever pitch in the Low Carb gold rush a few years ago.  For a year, every food manufacturer set up Low Carb task forces to rush products to meet the earliest possible ship windows, worrying all the while that they might be too late. 

In 2000, there were 26 Low Carb products in the US. In 2003, there were 392. In 2004, there were 3,375. In 2005, the Atkins company filed for Chapter 11. Brands hit the gas and followed each other off of a cliff.

I read once that a company can either become a rule breaker, a rule maker, or a rule follower. The only companies that succeed as followers are those with scale, lower cost, and higher efficiency.

If you're a rule breaker or rule maker, it's good to remember to take your eyes off the rear view mirror and look to the horizon.

Here's a cartoon I drew in the midst of the Low Carb fever pitch.

the toilet paper budget

Last week, method cofounder Eric Ryan was the only speaker at the Association of National Advertisers conference not representing a billion dollar brand. 

Whenever he speaks to a crowd like this, he does a funny bit where he calculates the rolls of toilet paper used by employees at Unilever, P&G, Reckitt Benckiser, and all the companies method competes against. He then compares their toilet paper budget with the media budget at method. 

“I will happily trade my marketing budget for your toilet paper budget,” he tells the crowd. 

AdAge picked up this story in an interesting article called, “method conducts a bit of meta marketing in a room full of marketers.”

the caged bird tweets

I found an interesting study about social media in the workplace, called “Whistle but don’t tweet at work.” The poll reports that 54% of companies ban social networking entirely, even for business purposes. 

Organizations are clearly struggling how to address social media. Many start with the premise of social media as a threat, rather than an opportunity. The emphasis is on limiting liability, often with Draconian command-and-control policies (like the muzzle and cage in this cartoon). 

Counter that approach with what a recent Harvard Business post advocates as “The Über-Connected Organization”. It gives some good pointers on how to embrace social media within an organization. Large companies like IBM and Toshiba are connecting employees globally and driving mass collaboration through social media tools. 

Those case studies speak to the potential of über-connections within an organization. But the greatest opportunity involves the über-connections between an organization and its customers. More than ever, consumers are seeking organizations with a human face. 

Yet, the corporate social media crackdown is hamstringing those types of meaningful interactions. These new policies are bolstering the “Corporate Firewall” I cartooned a few months ago. 

It’s time to tear down that wall. It’s time to acknowledge that the command-and-control model no longer works. It’s time to encourage the organization to engage more freely with the outside world. 

If there’s nothing to hide, then the risk should be low for social media tools to enable more transparent conversations. If there is something to hide, then the effort should be placed on cleaning up those skeletons in the closet so that the organization can truly brand itself from the inside out. 

Time is far better spent there than on devising over-protective social media policies.

efficiency farming

There's constant pressure in business to make things as efficient as possible. In every project, the fat is trimmed, the edges are sanded, and the processes are streamlined. It’s how you bring scale to ideas. It’s how you improve margins over time. But far too often, the uniqueness of an idea gets lost in all the efficiency. 

I was reminded of this recently when evaluating a couple different bottle designs. One was incredibly unique and differentiated, but inefficient all the way through the supply chain to the retail shelf. Another was über-efficient, but, not surprisingly, too close to the rest of the category. 

In the end, we kept at it until we found a middle road that pushed the boundaries without being too disruptive. It was the type of collaborative compromise that’s part of innovation in the trenches. But compromise can sometimes be a wet blanket to good ideas. The hard part is compromising without sacrificing. How do you make an idea stronger, not weaker, by the diversity of thought that went into it? 

Walking down the grocery aisle sometimes reminds me of the “Little Boxes” theme song from Weeds: 

“There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same”

Design has many masters. Efficiency is constricting one. How disruptive can you be when you’re innovating in a very small box? 

Think about how much design thinking is put into the last 5-seconds at shelf, as opposed to the whole lifecycle when you’re actually using the product. Shapes are chosen for efficiency on shelf (not taller than the shelf height, not too wide to take up two facings, not too deep that you can’t fit enough on shelf). Because the shapes end up so similar, the graphics overcompensate by shouting “Buy me!” Design decisions are often made by eye-tracking tests. 

Yet, when you get the product home, do you really want it shouting at you? Do you really want it to be a little box made out of ticky tacky that all looks just the same? 

Last year, I toured the ginormous warehouse of Ocado, the leading web grocer in the UK (think Webvan, but their business model works). Because of this warehouse model, shoppers only discover and shop brands through a web interface, never a retail shelf. So, the last 5-seconds at shelf constraint simply doesn’t exist. 

Down the road, when more and more shopping is done this way rather than the retail shelf, what impact will this have on product design? 

Instead of farming for efficiency, it could allow us to farm for what is most remarkable.

feature creep

I passed by a design studio last week that had jack-o-lanterns on the stoop. I like that an office of designers would spend time designing pumpkins.  It struck me that jack-o-lantern carving could be a good metaphor for innovation.

If we carved jack-o-lanterns the way we design products, we would probably carve by committee. And, whenever something is designed by committee, it's in danger of "Feature Creep."

With “Feature Creep”, the idea gains extraneous features until the project loses focus and momentum.  It becomes a peace treaty.  By trying to appeal to everyone, it misses what it set out to do. A series of bad compromises can strip away what was remarkable about the original idea.

In a way, "Feature Creep" is closely related to “A Death by a Thousand Cuts”. But instead of cuts, the idea becomes more and more bloated.

So much of the art of innovation relates to the ability to hold true and defend the original idea. Through all of the twists and turns in product development, the successful innovations are the ones that can shield against the cuts and resist the temptations of creep. 

That’s not to say that ideas should be developed in silos. Ideas should be made stronger by the diversity of thought that goes into it. But, it’s an essential skill to pick and choose which direction to incorporate, which to ignore, and which to delay until later. 

Here’s another cartoon I drew on “Feature Creep” a few years ago.

managing the brand

In the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of chatter about the role of the "brand manager" and marketing organizations generally, after Jack Neff at Ad Age previewed a Forrester research report in an article called "Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager."

"Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers are the real arbiters of brand meaning, and it's become increasingly outmoded in today's two-way world. That's why a new report is going to recommend changing the name "brand manager" to "brand advocate," and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age."

Denise Lee Yohn picked up this thread in a fascinating post on the CMO’s Dream team and advocated for the role of “brand operator”. David Kiley at BusinessWeek argued for the role of “brand editor” with an interesting story of the McDonalds CMO thinking of its brand as editorial. 

These musings on the role of brand manager inspired this cartoon. The role of "brand manager" implies a certain level of power and control. From inside the marketing ivory tower, it’s easy to see yourself as a puppeteer for the brand. Ultimately, though, it’s the consumers who determine what your brand means. 

Think about Stella Artois. For years, the beer carried an advertising slogan of "Reassuringly Expensive". Yet, in the UK, the common slang nickname for the beer is "wife beater" (because of its high alcohol content). Patrons are even known to order a "wife beater" for short in the pub. Years of marketing position statements and heavy advertising couldn’t shake the nickname that consumers gave the beer. Stella finally dropped the "Reassuringly Expensive" slogan in 2007 and are the in the midst of repositioning themselves, including the launch of a lower strength beer to try to counter the meaning attributed by consumers. 

It’s important to remember that most consumers have probably never even heard the term “brand manager” yet alone think about the brand in the same way that marketers do. 

Rather than draft brand positioning statements in language that has meaning for other marketers, how inspiring it would be to talk in terms than real consumers can understand. Better still, to turn it into a actual two-way conversation with consumers.

At the DO Lectures last month, Duke Stump gave a remarkable talk about creating something he called "bonfire brands." In his first day as CMO at Seventh Generation, he addressed the office and said: 

“I don’t know anything about marketing or branding. Here’s what I do believe. The purpose of what we’re here for is to optimize the resonance and relevance for those we serve. That’s how I hold this whole term of marketing. What’s really going to make us great is if we create a bonfire brand. A brand that people are actually drawn to. Where there’s a conversation. And they’re partaking in your conversation. They’re evangelists for your brand. They’ll defend your brand. They’re also your most ardent critics. It’s a beautiful thing when you can sit around a campfire with those you serve and they can tell you everything that’s great and everything that’s not so great. Instead of holding it as a brand, hold it as a bonfire.”

the viral video bandwagon

Back in 2001, BMW created an internet-only series of short films called The Hire directed by big name directors like Guy Ritchie and John Woo. All of the films featured a pre-famous Clive Owen driving a BMW in different assignments around the world (my favorite involved Clive driving around Madonna). 

Over four months, the films were seen 11 million times and spiked BMW sales by 12% (and helped launch Clive's career). They effectively pioneered viral video marketing. I remember seeing these films in 2002 and marveling at how a brand could create content that interesting and compelling. 

Viral video marketing has exploded in the years since (and you no longer need Guy Ritchie to direct them). Along the way, there have been some great standouts like Smirnoff's Tea Partay, but also a lot of complete rubbish. 

This year, it feels like every marketing plan features viral video as a tactic. Yet, many brands treat these videos in the same dull way as placing a grocery cart ad or staging an on-pack promotion. They feel like infomercials. These brands assume that if they build it, viewers will come (and watch, and share). 

Brands sometimes forget that videos become viral, not by how interesting the content is for the brand, but by how interesting the content is to the viewers. They also forget that "viral" is, by nature, unpredictable. 

I thought that Volkswagen struck the right chord with its launch of The Fun Theory last week. VW created a clever series of videos around the simple principle of creating change for the better by making them more fun. They communicate a lot about VW and their environmental approach, but in a way that is not heavy-handed. 

Another personal favorite is David Mitchell's Soap Box series, put on by Bulldog, a young 5-person brand of men's natural grooming products in the UK. I had lunch with Simon and Rhodri, the two Bulldog founders, last week. They compete against the largest CPG businesses on the planet, and need to find ways to break through the clutter and level the playing field. In this video series, they commissioned David Mitchell, a well-known British comedian, to riff on a variety of 3-minute topics. Here's one I enjoyed that pokes fun at some of the language in traditional marketing.

breaking the rules of traditional retail

Traditional retail can be brutal for a new brand.  I gave a 30 min talk a few months ago about launching the method brand in the UK and how Ocado as an entrepreneurial web retailer helps support challenger brands by questioning the status quo.  

Breaking the Rules of Traditional Retail from Tom Fishburne on Vimeo.

the large print giveth

Whenever I need a marketing wake-up call, I listen to the classic Tom Waits' song, “Step Right Up.” It is an anthem for bad marketing.  In this brilliant song, Tom Waits cobbles together every cliché marketing pitch.

"We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale
And a smoke-damaged furniture, you can drive it away today
Act now, act now, and receive as our gift, our gift to you
They come in all colors, one size fits all
No muss, no fuss, no spills, you're tired of kitchen drudgery
Everything must go, going out of business, going out of business
Going out of business sale
Fifty percent off original retail price, skip the middle man
Don't settle for less
How do we do it? how do we do it? volume, volume, turn up the volume
Now you've heard it advertised, don't hesitate”

Toward the end, he quips, “you got it buddy: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

It’s a striking reminder that this is how most consumers perceive marketing. And for good reason. Even though consumers are savvier than ever and resistant to marketing clutter, most marketing communication still falls in this huckster camp.

To spread the word about your brand, this is the marketing clutter that that you have to break through. You won't break through by turning up the volume. You break through with remarkable products, disarming authenticity, and not sounding like hawkers and hucksters.

Tom Waits had it right 30 years ago. Here’s a vintage 1979 live performance:

the corporate firewall

I recently stumbled across the cluetrain manifesto again.  It had a big impact on me when I first read it ten years ago.  At the time, I was building web sites for big companies and it gave voice to a lot of the frustration I felt trying to get these companies to really embrace the potential of engaging with consumers directly.

I worked with an airline that refused to handle any consumer inquiries generated by their web site.  They actually had an in-house call center for reservations, but didn't even want their phone number listed on the site (let alone an email address).  For them, the web site was a cheaper way to book reservations, and they were trying to lower transaction costs, not increase consumer loyalty.

This was particularly odd because the airline prided itself on in-flight customer service.

Reading the cluetrain manifesto, I was struck by the metaphor of the "corporate firewall": "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall."

This airline (and many companies) had erected a strict corporate firewall that barred the majority of consumer interactions and only let out carefully scripted marketing messages. Loyalty was achieved through frequent flyer miles: essentially buying loyalty rather than earning it.

Ten years later, the 95 theses of the cluetrain manifesto feel prescient now that the tools for social media are commonplace.  Social media is part of every marketing plan.  Yet, I question how much the corporate firewall has actually changed.  

Using social media without first re-evaluating the corporate firewall feels like the same old window dressing.  It's today's brochureware.  It doesn't achieve the potential that these tools were designed to achieve.

There is an opportunity for companies that tear down (or at least reevaluate and modernize) the corporate firewall.  For those that don't, the cluetrain manifesto offers this caution:

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.