Counter intuitive thinking and a $1000 incentive to quit the company

It is not very often that you hear the company where a person works described in a really enthusiastic and positive light. This could be part of the national cynicism of the British but I’m sure its pretty universal. Its one of the few bastions of a sense of community feeling to be able to share in the berating of the place where you work on a par with things like reality TV contestants.

So what if your company started to offer you incentives to leave. If you really meant all of the moans you'd take them up in a shot. Otherwise you would have to start to admit that actually you have got it pretty good and on balance its where you want to be.

Zappos, which for people outside the US is the Amazon of shoes, offers all new recruits $1000 to leave after they have completed their initial training (from an interview on the HBR ideaCast.) And as the company has been growing so has the amount offered to quit. The result being that the people who stay do so after interrogating and renewing their conviction, and the one’s that don’t have the desire or the energy leave the company with its full blessing and something to tide them over while they think about their next move. It makes perfect sense knowing that one of the big problems with big companies is the lower concentrations of motivated and passionate people than in small companies.  However I had to hear the explanation before I fully agreed and understood. Therein is the problem because anything that needs explanation to sound sensible is always going to struggle in the modern company where ideas have to survive based on only the partial attention of all the people necessary to carry and execute them.

It’s a far harder sell to get people to implement the opposite of what seems to make sense rather than the obvious. Even less so in consumer facing decisions such as brand communications which often come from outside partners who have even more incentives to put simplicity first. There must be plenty of instances where the opposite of what seems to make sense is a much better option…

i.e.

-Grown-ups telling young people not to do things like smoke and drink usually has the opposite effect. Wouldn’t it be better to do something like brand them as brilliant fun for the ‘sad’ and middle aged.

-The hard sell also puts up barriers rather than takes them down… why not communicate how hard your product is to find or make your audience go to special lengths to get hold of it.

-By selling sex to men to promote a product like deodorant (aka LYNX,) you are essentially part of the problem that stops young men getting what they really want i.e. attracting and affirming the behaviours of the kind of men who put pictures of topless women on their wall. Wouldn’t it be better to be the kind of brand that helps men appreciate that if they really really like women that much then would it not be much better to avoid doing things that repel them like giant images of Carman Electra in their uni flat. This may not seem counter intuitive to most women but to the 18 year old male and the marketing director it might well be.

“Moving from a brand image brand to a consumer experience brand”

Just found this little discussion piece. Think there is some interesting points about a new starting point for brand communications...
Brand image as a business driver is an outdated model for understanding how consumers relate to companies and brands.

It relies on an old assumption that was probably wrong when it was designed (primarily in agencies) and certainly is getting less and less right. This assumption is that brands can deliver a brand message in mass media and that this will in itself create brand love.

It was probably always wrong because it does not get a couple of fundamentals about the way that people understand, absorb information and gain ‘experience’ of the world around them.
Actually we react not to what people say but by what they do. Actions speak louder than words. The medium is the message is the way to explain this in a cultural or brand context.

It is certainly getting less and less right because a couple of the key pillars that drive it are breaking down. People do not have to listen to brand messages and do not consume the channels that deliver them in the same way. The only stuff that gets through are the things that people choose, things of value to the individual. Ads can be dialed down or ignored more and more easily because generally they do not offer anything of value.

On the other hand what is valued is the consumer experience that is delivered. Whether this be in a direct product related way such as help about how to use a product, or in a more extended general way such as an interesting project that involves them or captures their interest at least.

For this reason it does not make sense to think first about brand narratives or personality – the big brand message that could work as a piece of advertising… Instead the starting point should be to think about the consumer experiences that the brand delivers within and between every communications touch-point.

What kind of experience would this be?

Experience is how we learn stuff so what do you want to teach?
Experience is something we participate in by choice.
Experiences are live, lived and real things in our lives rather than brand image which is the big unknown incalculable
Experiences happen in destinations – retail and digital spaces
Experiences tie products and brands together
The experience of using a product should be married to the entire experience a brand gives... i.e. if your product offers creative thinking tools then so should the brand through every thing it does.

“So decide what you want the consumer experience to be and then work up and outwards from that”

Brand friendships... sweet or sour?

I think brands working together to create their own stories could be a bit of a threat to traditional advertising in the future. The thing is that a great meeting of companies can create mutual benefits and its own news where, in the best examples, very little communication is needed. You can do much of it virtually for free. And as they say in groups of three one always gets a left out. I can see how this might be the agencies who have until now been the owners or at least champions of brand value creation capabilities. Think apple + Nike which is a great example of 1+1= 3,4 or even 5. So what would be the rules? Can it work out for just any brand pairing and lead to consumers seeing the value?

A friend of mine sent me a link damning the launch of Opera Mini (web browser but shrunk down for mobile phones,) which was launched via a partnership with Mini. He is a cynical journalist so I thought I would give it the benefit of the doubt. On the surface there is a natural fit between what they want to say to people i.e. 'small and cool,' but actually there is nothing in common at all in the user experience i.e. web browsing on your phone is probably an arrestable offense if making a call gets you three points and a fine. It sits as close to the surface as you can get but has nothing more to offer up.

Whereas another example that I found recently which on the surface seems ridiculous, sits perfectly as a brand partnership when you boil it down.
Poetry publishing and Breakfast cereal..? Now there's lateral thinking. After a number of consecutive years sitting down day after day to read the same ingredients list, the same nutritional data, and the slightly varying antics of an advertising character relic, how refreshing or even enlightening it would be to wake up to better appreciation of poetry. And all this in one of the few moments where you are contained and rooted enough to give it whirl.

So then what would the learning be?

Choose your friends by starting with the consumer experience that you deliver, and then ask whether or not this new introduction would in itself add to or enhance this experience. If not then you won't create additional value, you will just create hot air and no balloon. Mini-Opera (unless I have missed something,) is an example of this. And while you are at it you could look at pretty much any marketing decision you make through this lens!

The WAGS vs Paris Hilton

I was just reading an article in Fast Company where Alex Bogusky (the name that gets dropped from Crispin Porter,) was being interviewed about 'brand fame.' His favourite example of branding genius was Paris Hilton in her ability to stay in the news without bringing anything to the table. The argument goes that as an agency what they look to do is take a brand and personify it a little then make it famous. BBH used to talk about the 'fame factory,' but I think they have dropped it now? I agree that if you don't make news and are just relying on hammering a message using traditional media metrics then you are nowhere, but also that Fame is its own end. As Paris demonstrates perfectly its being seen without substance. I am not sure treating brands like people is a good idea. It sounds a bit fake personal.

My choice would be the WAGS (In-ger-land!) They represent a cultural invention - a lifestyle which denotes a behavior i.e. a WAG is something you can become. They have even helpfully created a video handbook to how you can do this. You could of course argue that this is implicit in the fantasy lifestyle of Paris Hilton but as a lesson for branding the WAG shows us how to invent a lifestyle which could change how people behave and hence consume whereas Paris just shows us how to become a famous person or famous brand but without how to use this to change anything... Or in this case change it back if we put our minds to it.

More Brand Software

Would this count as brand software? In the past brand extensions and partnerships were seen as a way to milk the strength of a particular brand (usually a really expensive unattainable one) into something mass and affordable - think Ferrari key rings and clothing. These reeked of spin and image association - a badgeing exercise. Mini's approach is the other way round. They are using collaborations as a way to create additional hype for a new product, the Mini Clubman. In the spirit of the new car they have come up with some attention grabbing accessories to establish the lifestyle that goes with it. Not just putting a logo on a cap; some funky software that mediates the star product. I don't fully get the music player but the partnership with Onitsuka Tiger is a strong fit against the retro notion that you should have special shoes to participate in the sport of driving.

Utility versus Substance

Was reading a great post from Russell Davies that was a write up of a presentation that he was making at what I think was a widget conference (yes widgets have their own conference,) where part of the argument was for the idea of ‘brand utility.’ This to me means that the idea of the brand as a collection of abstract image statements about the kind of people who buy a particular product is over, and that the new type will have a usefulness and utility, a REAL point.

However the word utility leads to other words like practical or informative, which lead to words like dull and phases like ‘the creativity is seeping out of this great business.’ But to my mind this is the fault of the word and not the idea behind it. If you sat down and thought about all of the things that qualify as useful in your life i.e. the things that given the choice you would keep, then you would probably notice two things about the list. The first would be that great advertising would feature pretty low down. The other would be that as well as things like google, chairs, hoovers, TV news, etc… that simply perform a useful task, you would have to include things like art, books, surprises, the support of a friend etc… that can not be summed up in a functional way. In other words it’s the words that confuse the issue. ‘Brand Utility’ does not allow for the expansive scope of all of the many wondrous things that create meaning and substance in your life.

For this reason I would suggest the phrase BRAND SUBSTANCE to describe this development better. A brand that seeks to add real substance to your life with real things that you will appreciate.

Substance is also a better word for someone who works in the accounts department when assessing the value of a brand. In my mind this had been pretty much a finger in the air job till now. Brand substance will have real mass, can be measured, and its value assessed in a far more solid way. This is the stuff that brands should be made of in the future.

I am going to be looking for examples of brands adding rich and magical substance to products rather than just utility based value and will post what I find.

Brand as Software

When Sega and Nintendo were battling it out to be the best 16bit console it was not a fight between the two systems. Although some people who know more than me will be able to explain the pros and cons of the hardware alone, to most people it was all about the software. Did you want to play with Sonic or with Mario. This was not a simple question of which of the two characters had an image that attracted you more, they were part of the package which affected how much fun you would have with your console. The basis of the whole experience that mediated the product and showed you what it could do.

So any console developer would be foolhardy to develop a great console without ensuring that the software that came with it and in fact sold it in a market situation of parity was top notch. Again I am sure that people who know more than me would have a couple of great examples of where this happened – I seem to remember a console by Commadore that had no games for it.

Anyhow would this model benefit product developers and brand builders if they sat down and had these same conversations that console developers have about software and hardware. For example if you sat down and thought about the brand-software that comes with a running shoe then you would probably end up with something like Nike +. Or if you thought about the software that comes with a cartoon you could probably get closer to the many faceted world of Pokemon. The software that goes with a TV show would probably look like all the PR coverage and phone voting mechanisms of the X factor.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this to brand owner companies would be the fact that all of the above are money-spinners. Charging for the marketing… is that not the Holy Grail? If a product was always considered to be the hardware and the brand the software that goes with it, then it is likely that the branding would take on a life of its own as a viable reason to buy the product, a point of difference.

What would the software of a hit record be (aside from the music video)?
What would the software of a train journey look like (as I am on a train right now)
What would the software of a can of coke look like?

I’m going to have a think…