A Better Course

• Your Customers Are ‘Predictably Irrational’ | Business Week
  “The moral is that if you tell people up-front that something might be distasteful, the odds are good that they will end up agreeing with you—not because their experience tells them so but because of their expectations”
  (tags: marketing businessweek predictablyirrational research)
• The Future of the MBA | Business Week
  the MBA is in crisis—because it selects for and cultivates traits and skills that are increasingly vacuous and superfluous. The markets are right in that the dominance-hierarchies and markets of today need one more selection engine.
  (tags: businessweek mba businesseducation information)
• disambiguity – » Tone of voice matters (show some respect)
  The insight that the tone taken in this email gives me to this brand is profound, and frankly, I don’t want anything to do with a company who has this kind of attitude in their customer communications.
  (tags: virgin directmarketing directmail copywriting bad marketing)
• SOLAR LILY PADS (Monoscope)
  Proposed for Glasgow’s Clyde River. Just lovely.
  (tags: monoscope glasgow solarpower sustainability)

In case it doesn’t come across clearly enough on this blog, I’m a complete geek about branding, particularly the idea that a brand can come to “own” a single word. One of Nader Tavassoli‘s exercises in presentations is asking everyone in the room to say the single word they think of when they hear the word “Volvo” and the single brand they think of when they hear the word “magical”. I’ve seen that a couple of times now, and watching people chant safe and Disney in perfect unison has yet to lose its charm.

Noah Brier has made Brand Tags (via swissmiss), an entire site based on this principle. You can input what a brand makes you think of, look at how other people have tagged the brands and – brilliantly – guess the brand from the tag cloud.

There’s loads in this; I’ve only really given it a cursory look so far. Some brands a known mostly for a product, others get adjectives (for better or worse). The degree of consensus is interesting as well; Nike seems to have done brilliantly well at being known as a brand rather than a set of products, whereas Gap‘s tag cloud doesn’t really have a clear winner.

Finally, the tag cloud for GE is interesting, because clearly more than one person has 30 Rock as the first thing they think of when they see the GE logo. Whilst very funny, 30 Rock was hardly laudatory about GE, and it would be interesting to know what the second word would be for everyone who chose “30 Rock” as their first…

• adliterate: Are our start ups a let down?
  The hallmarks of the start up – fearless audacity, challenging thinking and world beating creativity – have been rare qualities in the UK’s young agencies. This has to change if London is to restore its fortunes as a centre of advertising excellence.
  (tags: adliterate advertising startup london)
• How to Manage Problems You Can’t Fix | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
  Ask first:
  * How could you change the world to live with this problem?
  (This creates your first set of solutions)
  and then:
  * How could you change the world so the problem goes away?
  (This creates a second set of solutions).
  (tags: marketingprofs marketing creativity economy)

• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Bloodbuster: Llama, Killer Klowns, Shock Waves, The Stuff
  “Believe us, cinema can still astonish you.”
  (tags: advertising ibelieveinadvertising cinema)

• An Alternative Approach to Marketing Rock Bands – New York Times
  Just as important, Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become.
  (tags: nytimes fueledbyramen music business marketing online branding)

• Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? – New York Times
  Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try […] the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in
  (tags: nytimes habit innovation psychology creativity neuroscience)
• Evidence-based Management: Guest Columnist: Andrew V. Abela
  The only time that animation within a slide is useful is when the animation itself provides information that static images could not, such as when you are trying to explain how various complex parts of a process come together. Animation for its own sake i
  (tags: presentation evidencebasedmanagement research communication science)
• Chris Heathcote: anti-mega
  Presenting the abstract pointillist powerpoint toolkit. 20 slides that can be used for any presentation. Cut, paste, copy, crop the slides to create an abstract of your ideas that you can then talk to and through.
  (tags: presentation antimega communication abstract abstraction idea)

• FT.com | Dear Lucy | ‘Someone took my chair. Would it be petty to make a fuss?’
  Of course your problem is petty. But so is office life. Indeed, on the spectrum of petty things your chair is at the serious end of the range. You spend almost as much time in it as you do in your bed and to have it stolen is an outrage.
  (tags: lucykellaway corporateculture office ft chair)

• How to Make Meetings Matter | Business Week
  “Meetings have tremendous symbolic power [but] I was focused on saving the company” says Klebahn. “The meeting was so broken,” says Sutton. “Everyone was remarkably unenthusiastic.
  (tags: businessweek bobsutton meeting business social)

Last night, I went to see a talk by Stephen Butscher of Simon Kutcher & Partners talk about loyalty schemes. I’ve been interested in this since the adliterate post on the basis of loyalty (little love lost for loyalty schemes, there) and wanted to see if anything would change my mind.

Simon made a point halfway through the presentation, which I think formed the centre of the talk for me; he spoke about exclusivity inflation. You used to be in a scheme where you started at “bronze” status, then moved up to “gold” via silver. Now, you start at “silver” status and work up to “platinum” via “gold”, and there’s every reason to believe that the next logical progression is going to be “gold”, “platinum” then “black”.

This was made as an almost offhand comment, but it matters to the point of the whole talk and, I think, to adliterate’s point – that so often, all these schemes offer is an illusion of exclusivity without any tangible benefits to either the customer or the company. The example of a loyalty scheme that actually does offer benefits is Porsche’s. As well as the usual raft of semi-benefits, semi-irritations (newsletter, I’m looking at you) they also offer a “Park and Wash” service with Avis. If you need to park your Porsche at an airport, you don’t need to worry about getting a parking space, or the general public getting their mucky paws on it, or seagull faeces eroding it while you’re away; you park in Avis space, and they wash it for you before you get back.

There’s obviously a lot that Porsche can do that other brands can’t. But there’s also a lot to learn from this example in more abstract terms. Firstly, it’s a benefit that’s totally based in the product – you need a car, to need airport parking. But it also solves a problem that is not really solved by the original product; sure, the car gets you to the airport, but what happens once it’s there?

I always want to see more marketing that solves problems, and liked the idea that a loyalty scheme could solve more problems than the fake “I have to pay for ten out of ten coffees rather than nine out of ten” kind of problem. I certainly don’t believe that every product introduces a problem that can be solved by further marketing; but Monday’s talk was a good introduction to how these problems can be solved at all.

• Attention-Deficit Advertising | Business Week
  Through a special promotion, Motorola (MOT) enabled loved ones to “Say Goodbye” via photos and messages sent from their phones to digital billboards in the departure area. The photos appeared there inside the image of a giant Motorola mobile phone.
  (tags: advertising marketing media attention businessweek motorola promotion service)
• Neuromarketing » Get More for Your House with an Odd Price
  sellers who listed their homes more precisely—say $494,500 as opposed to $500,000—consistently got closer to their asking price. Put another way, buyers were less likely to negotiate the price down as far when they encountered a precise asking price.
  (tags: neuromarketing pricing house negotiation)
• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus – Here Comes Everybody
  media is actually a triathlon, it ‘s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
  (tags: media clayshirky online innovation television culture)
• Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: everything i.e. anything
  It would be great if people did create more, and especially felt empowered to create, change, edit, curate, but we can’t expect them to do that without consumption and reflection.
  (tags: antimega clayshirky media consumption workethic)