Not Looking Heroic Here Folks...

We have grown used to a basic credo of advertising that posits brand-as-hero is the point of the exercise. Mr. Clean saves the day. Problem, yes? Solution? Right here. National car rental speeds impatient and attitudinal road warriors through the process and quickly on the road. Swiffer solves that pesky pet hair issue. Cialis, well, you get the drift. We frame the issue and serve up the answer. Technologically savvy kid living at home with his parents? No worries. GE to the rescue.

            Recently, however, there seems to be a curious shift taking place: Brand as not exactly anti-hero, but certainly Brand as comic relief buffoon. The court jester of the marketing realm.  

            Exhibit A: The most recent Jet campaign. The fictional representation of the Brand’s ‘price shrinking’ tool goes haywire and starts shrinking ears, shirts and heads. Hmm. Is this tool a good thing? A dangerous thing? Or just a momentarily funny thing to make us watch instead of text?

            Exhibit B: Flo, the Progressive Insurance pitchwoman, stands guard in a client’s yard, protecting home and property from what? Home delivery of the newspaper? Huh? How is this a good thing? (The New York Times and paying subscribers would say ‘nope, don’t do that’ pretty forcefully, I suspect.) Is the Brand really going to save us from bird droppings on our cars or are we just meant to chortle briefly or casually observe that success has gone to Flo’s waistline?

            It begins to feel like Brand as desperate stand-up comedian trying to stand out in a dark and dingy club, silhouetted against a backdrop of booze, boos and bored viewers. The routine doesn’t make much sense, but maybe there’s a giggle to be found. No matter what the Brand has to do to get it. Flop sweat much?

The Moribund Center Aisle Has Moved...Out of the Store

            There has been a great deal of renting of garments and gnashing of teeth during the past decade or so about the demise of the center aisle of grocery. Conventional wisdom documents the migration of excitement to the peripheries, e.g. fresh everything from produce to dairy to baked goods.  It makes sense, of course. Frozen and packaged foods, hmmm, not so much. Theirs are the areas that have been commodized: Cereal, mac and cheese, ketchup, crackers, packaged cookies. So sad.

            And yet.

            Perhaps the center aisles of the grocery stores have just moved?

            It turns out, they’ve been relocated to the periphery of (wait for it) chain drug and convenience stores.

            I was in a CVS this weekend which had been re-imagined to welcome me at the entrance with what looked for anything like the center aisles of a conventional supermarket – with one major exception: Prices. Later one in the week I went to a Duane Reade: Same deal, new planogram. 

            The new traffic pattern starts customers down the entry aisle chock-a-block with packaged foods and not just chips, salsa and beer. It was all there: Pastas and sauces, all the classic Post cereals and well beyond, Betty Crocker cake and brownie mixes in a radical profusion of flavors. All the usual grocery suspects from Hershey’s and Mars to Nabisco, Campbell’s and Kellogg’s to Purina. It required traversing four long and packed product corridors before there was an aspirin in sight. These were full-sized products, too, not smaller snack packs for spontaneous consumption. The real deals.

            Hypothesis: Perhaps it’s not (just) about the inevitable dominance of a juggernaut of fresh, organic, gluten free and bespoke micro-brands as much as it is about just a simple concept called convenience. Big grocery has gotten so big that it’s just too much of an Odyssey to venture in for cereal, snack crackers and spaghetti. So, big drug has picked up the slack. Discuss. 

Dad, the New Maternal?

We do a fair amount of work here figuring out the “archetype” of various brands and categories. It is fascinating work. I was introduced to it by Procter & Gamble when it owned Folger’s coffee. It seems the archetype of coffee is “Home,” as in “Mom’s in the kitchen and all’s right with the world.”  The signal that cues us we’re getting it the aroma wafting upstairs and waking us kindly, gently up. Thus, when P&G wanted to make sure that we’d notice Folger’s advertising, it reversed the archetype. The mom’s in the bedroom, sound asleep. Young soldier comes home on leave, comes into the kitchen and makes the coffee. The aroma drifts purposely upstairs. Mom awakens and mouths the words to herself, “He’s home.” Whoosh, wonderfully memorable advertising, plucking at the strings of our hearts. Nicely done.

            We’re wondering though what happens when archetypes themselves are reversed. By the culture. Mom is no longer routinely in the kitchen. The new norm evolves. Sometimes these new norms collide. We are discombobulated. Suddenly, the emerging archetype is dad as mom. We see toilet training commercials, with the dad firmly in charge, both of the process and the laundry. We see dads wading in on the best dishwashing detergent. We see dads driving the kids around to do chores. We see wonderful, handy dads building seemingly endless treehouses. Characters in our television shows and movies embody a soft focus dadness cum old school momity. In short, we are awash in nurturing dads. Dad World used to be the bastion of Idiot Dad, the goofus who puts the warm and toasty waffle to his cheek to help him administer to his head cold, or brings home the cheaper brand and knows nearly immediately he had to go back to the store. And that guy is still around, but New Guy is coming. 

            Good thing? Bad thing? Who knows? The point is the core archetypes have been around since people first made up myths to explain inexplicable reality. It means something when our myths move.

Let's Raise a Glass to High School English Teachers Everywhere

One of the avocational hazards of adopting a Fitbit-obsessed lifestyle is that we end up spending an inordinate amount of time watching television while pedaling to nowhere. Thanks to the progress made by modern gym design, we can at least watch an equally inordinate amount of commercial television. Thus, we come to see the same commercials that run in the morning on MSNBC over and over again.

            With nothing much more to think about than attempting to count how many times I see the same ones, I have started to notice a new (to me, at least) phenomenon. The power of grammatical irritation as a communication device. My hypothesis: When we hear and notice a genuinely wrong use of our language there’s an immediate frisson of superiority that is remarkably ratifying and then each time that commercial repeats we notice it much more powerfully than others which have done a better job with the language. If we are so lucky as to see the commercial actually corrected, then there is a genuine jolt of respect and affection released each time we re-experience the commercial and our personal backstory.

            A case in point: Trop50 from Tropicana. Jane Krakowski tells us all about the joys of the new orange juice, which has, she excitedly relates, “50 percent less calories.” At which point, our inner grammarian autocorrects: 50 percent fewer calories. Day after day for the entire three-week flight, she keeps insisting “less." Augh. Then, suddenly several months later, we see her again and this time, her voice-over explains this miraculous new product has “50 percent fewer calories.” Elation. And the wonder: Did somebody’s high school English teacher write in? Was there a groundswell? Whatever happened, it is charming. We are charmed. An advertisement far more memorable and personal for having stumbled and then righted itself.

            Now, I’m awaiting the nice folks at Ancestory.com to explain to the Zuccolis that Eric’s ancestor doesn’t look like him. Indeed, that it is much more genetically likely that Eric looks like his ancestor. 

Zoom-Zoom: Gone-Gone.

When I did the original research for Shopportunity! we were searching for the most powerful consumer shopping experience. For women, it was straightforward: Her wedding dress. The basic syntax, which we came to term APPA, held.

·      Anticipation. Think of all those viewings of Cinderella and all that Barbie Wedding paraphernalia.

·      Pursuit. Once she’d been asked to marry, she went in hot pursuit of the perfect gown.

·      Prominence. The amazing significance her every desire was accorded, from the sales woman to her best friend to her mother: Bottled water? Champagne? Just let us know.

·      Appreciation. No, not in the “you’re a beautiful bride” meaning of the word, but in the financial context. The dress simply becomes more valuable once she’s worn it, stores it away and brings it out to show her daughter, thus beginning the ‘anticipation’ phase all over again.

            For guys, the APPA construct holds every bit as gravitationally, but for a far different purchase. Think. Think. Think. What could it be? It’s his first car: freedom and the open road. He’s played with cars since his Matchbox days: Anticipation. Freshly minted license in-hand, he heads with his father to the used car dealership: Pursuit. Sure enough, he is the certified center of attention: Prominence. And, just as surely, even though he sold the car long ago, if you ask him over a beer he can probably tell you what that car would be worth today, if only he’d put it up on blocks in his dad’s garage when he went off to the navy, or moved for his first job, or needed a more, hmm, “mature” vehicle.

            When Mazda came out with its Zoom Zoom campaign, I knew it was brilliant: Sits right on that excited little kid voice, chock-a-block with aspiration and transgressive frisson of ‘when-I-grow-up’-ness.

            That was then.

            I suspect all this car buying power as illustrative of independence and autonomy is about to erode. Indeed, it already has. Perhaps it started when seat belts and car seats became de rigueur. Not a complaint, mind you. But a definite change in meaning. We’re looking at two key aspects to the evolving meaning: Think about self-driving cars. No self-directed, driving down the old lonesome highway liberation there. Think about car sharing as the new norm. We no longer badge ourselves by the brand and model, we are branding ourselves as advocates of a sensible means of communal transportation.

            Big Auto. I just gotta ask: Are you ready? Beyond investments in Uber? Are you ready? To be a commodity instead of an emblem?

            I imagine one day in the not too distant future, we’ll do another round of research with consumers on the topic of shopping and for both men and women it will be “first cellphone.” 

Oh Daddy!

As I have watched the various political machinations play out and pondered as a fierce anger rises from the electorate, I began to wonder how the advertising community would respond to such seething fury unleashed. Voters are consumers too, right? Is their shopper-eyed view of the marketplace as outraged? Will we see that “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” rage be coupled with an “I no longer want cheap goods at any cost, since I’m good and angry that my job has been shipped overseas” and a “screw political correctness: I want the 50s back” world view. Quite a complex caldron of consumer sentiments to usher into a palatable stew.

            Remember the charm of the Cheerios commercial that showcased an interracial couple and their daughter? That ‘post-racial’ moment seems antiquated now. Or maybe it always was, given the vitriol that followed on social media. Remember the guy couple returning home from somewhere with their baby girl? Everybody so very happy to welcome them and celebrate their ‘post-modern’ family? The brave new world of today’s (not retro) reality-based marketing.

            Seems there’s a new, new reality emerging. Two recent ads may serve as the canaries in the coal mine of the nouveau safe yet somewhat evocative gestalt.

            Chase starts us off with what looks to be a cross-dressing, albeit bearded fellow suiting up in a princess gown, wig, make-up and wand. Oh-oh. But then, whoosh! It turns out he’s just a great Dad! Phew. Making his daughter and her neighborhood sister princesses react first in shock and then awe at what a great guy he is, before transitioning from one hug to the next, this time in the bank’s environs. No need to worry: He’s a real man taking care of his daughter’s financial future. So we’re free to chortle. We’ve been on a ride.

            Then, there’s the new Audi ‘coming out’ ad. Nervous, seemingly worried youngish man in this father’s study, explaining he’s always been different (but ‘not THAT different,’ the father opines). Turns out the guy needs to escape his father’s BMW heritage and create his own legacy. Exhale: It’s about wanting to drive a different brand of luxury car, suggesting that brand transformation comes with the merest dollop of consumer transgression.

            Welcome to the new edgy.

Big Food's Growth. Our Failure to Shrink. Hmmm.

I have always thought Pepsi’s decision to buy Frito-Lay was a clear-eyed bit of business strategy genius: own both the cause and the cure of thirst. A complete and sustainable consumer ecosystem. Neat.  But recent articles in The New York Times suggest that an even more lucrative continuous loop has been undergirding one ballooning ($82 Billion) segment of the consumer market: weight loss.

            Yet, we are no thinner, right? Indeed, roughly one third of us is slouching towards obesity.

            How can this possibly be? The Times’ reported on a small study done by following the trajectory of the various ‘winners’ on The Biggest Loser and found that virtually every one of them had gained all or most of the weight back. More importantly, the study explained why this is possible. It seems our bodies fight like crazy to get us back to our higher weight. Our bodies, it turns out, get even with us for consciously seeking to lose weight: They drastically alter our metabolic settings, so that once we’ve lost the weight, we have to work literally twice as hard to keep it off.  Seems that once the body thinks 450 is its ideal weight, it battles to return to that goal-flouting number: By lowering our metabolism; by infusing us with hormones that keep us from feeling sated; and probably by other remarkably mean-spirited tactics that haven’t been discovered yet.

            What intrigues me is that all the major weight loss systems we have focus primarily on loss, not maintaining the loss: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, we know them all. It’s all about the ‘before and after’ success stories.

            Well, gosh: Follow the money: In the current culture, it’s all about food with a doff of the hat, wink-wink to the importance of the “and exercise” in diet and exercise regimes. We don’t want to exercise. We want to be at our high school graduation weight. The power of magical thinking leveraged to fuel Big Food’s growth. Growth has come from consumers’ failure to shrink.

            Like a snake feeding on its own tail, the weight comes off in 12 weeks and goes back on in 40 and then, back to the New Year’s resolution ritual that includes a gym membership never used after Valentine’s Day. Consumers are left to their own devices to shed that two or so pounds a year that our bodies seem hard-wired to layer on. It’s a business plan mired in a cycle of defeat, but one which unwittingly (or not) reboots annually. Very Pepsi/Frito-Lay when you think about it: Be both the cause and (alleged) cure of the problem.

            Come on folks! No more new products until you get this right. Put the R&D into science, not soft-drink flavored Pop-Tarts.

             Kate

Enchanting Retail: Enchanting Profits

A few weeks ago an article I wrote (Big Brands vs. Little me) was published in the Spring issue of The Robin Report.* The piece speaks to the underleveraged power of the personal to offset the smoothly efficient algorithms of online shopping. The more we don’t have to leave our homes, the more we’ll lust for some sort of social engagement when we do.  It’s a facet of retail from which Starbucks is perfectly poised to benefit: The barista protocol requires staff to know your name. You design your absolute favorite concoction and claim it like a true member of the cognoscenti.

            We can see this drive toward the particular in all the various artisanal products coming into focus. There’s a joy in nuance: chocolates from France, macaron-esque cookies from Spain, coffee liqueurs from California. We dote on these whimsical discoveries. So in the world of business news, tiny is big. The ‘sommelier’ of the shops which purvey them love to speak about them, educate customers about them, evangelize. They provide a charming education and topic of conversation, which the customer then goes and shares with guests they host.

            It’s a sweet model for sure. Worth spending $25 for the chocolates or alfajores from Spain, or $35 for the liqueurs. Margin, meaning, street cred: Everything a boutique brand, or indeed any brand could want.

            So why don’t big retailers compete here? Why not big brands?

            We often joke that Maxwell House or Folger’s would never have started a coffee shop, right? Big brands have a tough time thinking small. But if the heat of the market is trending towards the convenience of commoditization ushered in by Amazon, they will have to consider how to deliver social engagement if they want to deliver genuine, margin accretive growth.

            Suddenly, there are a couple of the big guys really engaged. I suspect it started with Nestlé committing more than a decade ago to start Nespresso as a retail business. An international retail business. Recently, I read about two more granular enterprises coming from huge multi-national corporations: Unilever’s Magnum bars (selling 100 million bars in grocery) now going the other way, developing custom-dipping shops throughout the world, the first one in the US is in Soho for the summer. Charming. Then there’s Maille, the French mustard company, creating its own retail shops, complete with mustard tasting bar, vinegars on tap and classes in the art of, well, mustard, augmented by the ability to create a custom mustard ($59).

            These are classic examples of Big looking Small in order to create the retail enchantment bricks and mortar folks need: A reason to leave home. Well done.

            Hey! Big grocery. What are you doing to make the trip through your aisles an enchanting experience, not a coupon-clipping chore?

            Hey! Big fashion brands. What are you doing to make the slog through big department stores to find you into an enchantment, a reason to bother? 

Kate

*  It’s in the print edition, so hasn’t posted on line yet: If you’d like a copy, just let me know and I’ll send the pdf. 

A Genuine Medical Miracle, on Your Wrist

Several years ago, a major American food company asked us to look at the question of obesity to determine both a) the causes and b) what approaches had worked to combat it. This involved lots of research and one-on-one interviews with leading folks in the field. All for naught, of course, because nothing ‘cured’ obesity: Not diet, not exercise, not surgery. That is, nothing ‘cured’ it for a long time among lots of people.

            Quick fixes abound, but not a recipe for the permanent weight loss or fitness surge or better healthcare outcomes we wanted to find. Surely, we all know people who have lost weight, maybe a couple who have kept it off, but these, in turns out, are profoundly personal success stories, not replicable in a way that excites scientists and medical types.

            Vis a vis “cause,” the mantra is “eat less, exercise more.” Duh. We can all do that for perhaps the month of January, with memories of powerful resolutions still dancing in our heads. The tough bit emerges when January’s achievements aren’t enough to inure us to the magnetic pull of a Valentine’s Day dinner and decadent dessert (rather than head to the gym), or ‘just this once’ umbrella drink with colleagues after work (rather than head to the gym), or green beer on St. Patrick’s Day (rather than head to the gym) or the jellybean and chocolate bunny temptations that lurk as we fix a daughter’s Easter basket at midnight (and admit to ourselves we haven’t been to the gym all month).

            I’m thinking though that’s about to change.

            A great (and now quite trim) friend of mine told me how he’d lost 50 pounds because his company’s health insurance provider offers a reduction of $100 from his premium for every month he walks 7,000 steps for 10 days in a row and for at least 20 days in the month. Whoosh! He is FitBitted up and sticking with it. This is replicable. The uncompromising accuracy of these devices brings something beyond good intentions to bear: The process of using them makes us want to use them. An addiction as heady as caffeine or chocolate bunnies, it turns out.  A fresh new daily habit, for sure.

            The hectoring voice of “I should have/I shouldn’t have” goes away as we are triangulated away from the guilty “I need to take off this weight” world to a shiny new and charmingly competitive arena. How am I doing v yesterday? How am I doing v my friends who are also on this?

            The weight is logged, and so is sleep. The steps are logged and so are stairs. The calories and carbs are logged and so is protein, sodium, fiber, fat and water. By monitoring everything, the device calms our narcissistic cravings to know everything we did and ate and slept through matters, while we’re driven to do a bit better today than yesterday. It goes way beyond weight reduction, too. Might even slouch us towards health.

            If I had known it was coming, I’d have told my client to put a FitBit in every box of cereal.

            Since I know it’s here now, I’ll tell every retailer I know to start posting distance numbers showcasing how many steps customers gain by walking the entire store.

            Since I know it’s here now, I’ll challenge every pharmaceutical company and healthcare organization with one question: Are you focused here? 

Kate

Sure we love the dog, but hey! Is that enough to build a brand?

Sometimes you just HAVE to envision the agency’s creative presentation to the client, as you watch the resulting advertising shown on national television.
 

Lead Creative
(sweet guy with stubble and $250 jeans) 
Today, everyone is a photographer! 
Cue photos of food and vacations and random acts of everything from FaceBook pages
Today, every phone is a world class camera! 
Cue all screen shots of various iPhones et al.
 
Client types around the Conference Table
Heads nod
 
Lead Creative 
So let’s elevate everyone’s self-image, let’s aspire! 
Align Brand X with everyone inner artist! 

Voila! The new role model: the professional photographer. Like us, relatable, but better, just like consumers will be when they use our Rx, our computer, our investment advice, our printing services.
 
            And whoosh! Just like that there’s a photographer happily revealing his inner vision with Trulicity. Whoosh again, we’re listening to a Brit tremble with delight over his new Surface. And then again! TD Ameritrade enables the woman to have her own photography show (the one with the dogs chasing balls into water, remember?). Whoosh again! How about the photographer able to have great business cards, through VistaPrint?
 
            What’s going on? No offense, folks, but if you’re trying to resonate with your audience’s inner emotional core, best not to do it from the outside in. Why? Because you’ll end up in the mosh pit of irrelevant memes, like these brands. You’ll miss your moment to resound with actual and personal relevance.
 
            Work the interior reality. Chart the personal topography. Find the emotional promise. Excavate the powerful vein of Unique, not the obvious path to General. 

            And gosh, call us. Or tweet us. Or go to LinkedIn. Or our website: You ARE here already, afterall. You know what to do. 
 
Kate
www.katenewlin.com
kate@katenewlin.com
212-227-0220

We have seen the market...and it is us

When I was president of Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve, we identified a major economic trend (women’s escalating purchasing power) and branded it EVEolution. Today, I would say (albeit less cleverly), it's become a revolution.

Right now women are responsible for $7 trillion (yes, with a "t") in consumer spending in this country alone. And faster than we can name the next generation, we (women) will be in charge of fully two-thirds of consumer wealth, influencing at least 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and fully 50 percent of those we tend to think of as 'male,' e.g. cars, home improvement and consumer electronics.  

These factoids come to us courtesy of Intel, as does a further observation: 
91 percent of women say "advertisers don’t understand us."
 
Advertisers don't understand our Earning Power...

• The average American woman is expected to earn more than the average American male by 2028
• 51 percent of U.S. private wealth is controlled by women, today
• Women account for more than 50 percent of all stock ownership in the U.S.
• Women control more than 60 percent of all personal wealth in the U.S.

...or Our Spending Power

• We women make 80 percent of healthcare decisions and 68 percent of new car purchase decisions
• 75 percent of us identified ourselves as the primary shoppers for our households
• Nearly 50 percent of us say we want more green choices, with 37 percent are more likely to pay attention to brands that are committed to environmental causes
• We believe financial institutions are interested in making money, while we want to use our wealth to make a difference

Want to know more? So do we! 
 
Ready to explore the amazing business building power of #SHE? So are we!
 
You know your Brand has an untapped opportunity here. Let us help deliver competitively insulatable growth by discovering the emotional content of your Brand’s promise to women.

Email. Phone. Text. We're here and ready when you are. 

Kate
www.katenewlin.com
kate@katenewlin.com

I am, as you will know by now, not a fan of discounting to get folks to engage with your brand. My frustration with the endless (and desperate) banners screaming 50 percent off! 70 percent off! We’ll pay you to take it off our hands! Is the reason I wrote Shopportunity! My Rx to correct the system was what I shared in Passion Brands.

            My plea in both cases: Plu-eese! The flop sweat is just too, too obvious and anxiety producing for shoppers. Simply put: It stinks as a strategy. If price is the only variable that matters, why don’t we all just go to Dollar General and be done with it?

            So it’s with a certain amount of chagrin, mixed with raw admiration that I say my hat is off to JC Penney’s new “Get Your Penney’s Worth” campaign. The brand found the emotional resonance that connects its name, heritage and value proposition. Beautifully. Gently. Respectfully. And, with some fun.

         Seen through the lens of that single copper penny in a jar, you believe there’s a solid rationale for savings. At THIS store. At Penney’s. Not for them the hopelessness and “Do you like me now?” of other mass retailers. (I name no names, Macy’s.) They’ve found a real divining rod to help shoppers find genuine worth. Of course, it’s a construct from which Penney’s can promote and have circulars and shelf-talkers, but it’s one that allows all that to make consumer sense: A powerful platform.

        This is all the more impressive given where the retailer has been during the past decade. Well done, folks.

        Want to discuss our thinking for your brand at retail? We know shoppers. We know women. Operators are standing by.

Kate

I am, as you will know by now, not a fan of discounting to get folks to engage with your brand. My frustration with the endless (and desperate) banners screaming 50 percent off! 70 percent off! We’ll pay you to take it off our hands! Is the reason I wrote Shopportunity! My Rx to correct the system was what I shared in Passion Brands.

            My plea in both cases: Plu-eese! The flop sweat is just too, too obvious and anxiety producing for shoppers. Simply put: It stinks as a strategy. If price is the only variable that matters, why don’t we all just go to Dollar General and be done with it?

            So it’s with a certain amount of chagrin, mixed with raw admiration that I say my hat is off to JC Penney’s new “Get Your Penney’s Worth” campaign. The brand found the emotional resonance that connects its name, heritage and value proposition. Beautifully. Gently. Respectfully. And, with some fun.

Seen through the lens of that single copper penny in a jar, you believe there’s a solid rationale for savings. At THIS store. At Penney’s. Not for them the hopelessness and “Do you like me now?” of other mass retailers. (I name no names, Macy’s.) They’ve found a real divining rod to help shoppers find genuine worth. Of course, it’s a construct from which Penney’s can promote and have circulars and shelf-talkers, but it’s one that allows all that to make consumer sense: A powerful platform. This is all the more impressive given where the retailer has been during the past decade. Well done, folks. Want to discuss our thinking for your brand at retail? Operators are standing by.

Peter Pan May Have It Right: Why Grow Up?

I’m sure we can all make a pretty robust list of “things that have changed since we were kids.” But, what would be at the top of the marketing list? Sure, social media is a candidate, with all the various apps attendant there unto. For me, however, it’s the radical escalation of consumer marketing on behalf of prescription pharmaceuticals. We have become inured to it, I suppose: It’s been around episodically since at least the 90s, but clearly there’s been a crescendo of late. My question is more along the lines of what does a 16-year-old make of the über messaging: This is what it means to age.

            Now, I know it may seem nonsensical to ask, since it’s unlikely that teens watch the kind of commercial laden, network television that comes crammed to the gills with ads for Viagra, but humor me. A casual game of ‘what if?’ Consider the notion that ‘nearly half of men over 40 experience occasional erectile dysfunction.’ Does just having that as atmospheric background noise tells them something about the half-life of the romantic bell-curve they are just on the cusp of entering? What about the psoriasis and potential weight-loss properties of non-insulin treatments for adult diabetes treatments? TMI about adulthood? Ditto ‘bladder leakage.” How about all the famous men chatting about their heart medication and whether or not they can eat a salad at the golf club. Mama, what is A-fib? What is ulcerative colitis? What is opioid constipation? What is IBS-D? How about Rheumatoid Arthritis? Mama, what is CLPD?

            It’s not pretty, this impression that adulthood is 10 pounds of medical emergencies, flare-ups and chronic irritants crammed into a five-pound pill case. We nonchalantly observe recent college graduates opting to live in their parents’ basements and blithely term it “infantilization.” Perhaps. But maybe it’s just wisdom. Who volunteers for the decline these ads auger and make seem inescapably inevitable? When I was a kid, adulthood looked kind of glammy and Mad Men-ish with a top note of James Bondian adventure. Now, not so much.

            The other major change in marketing, of course, is the legal eagle ads which stalk medical marketing: Did you use Cialis? Call us at 800-GET-RICH.  

Hey! Muhtar Kent! Hey! Indra Nooyi! Over Here!

A recent issue of Ad Week had this to report on the Genesis story of M&M’s, celebrating a 75th Birthday this year, on how the beloved candy got its name: One M came from Forrest Mars, the other from William Murrie of Hershey’s to whom Mars had turned to “ensure a steady supply of chocolate.” Just pause for a moment to contemplate, to savor: Arch competitors Mars & Hershey’s working together to create a candy which could stand up to summer heat and become the calorie-laden confection of choice for GIs during World War II. What used to be called, the greater good.

            I began to daydream about what amazing benefits might come from other odd pairings.  

            Republicans and Democrats?

            How about Coke & Pepsi?

            Coke brings its iconic “I want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” Santa and polar bear-iness to the table, while Pepsi infuses the moment with the brand’s urgent pop relevancy. Then, the ultimate Mash Up hit me: What if Coke’s red cans stood for Republicans and Pepsi’s cans got enough additional blueness so it could stand for Democrats. Could we have the ultimate on-going straw poll cum promotion to re-ignite the smoldering cola category and regain consumer relevance?

            Sure. At least until November. Every week, the ‘votes’ would be tallied, results announced and shoppers engaged at retail, vending and on-premise in ways they haven’t been in a decade. It’s the kind of presidential campaign season that would benefit from some, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for, joy?

            Beyond building the flagging sparkling beverage business, who knows? Maybe the plan might even turn this campaign season into something a trifle more effervescent, just a bit more sparkling? I know it seems odd to think these exemplar American brands could work together to bring some delight to the moment, but hey! It’s worth a try.

            Those of you who know a bottler or someone who works at either company, feel free to print this out and place it in the Suggestion Box. I know it’s there somewhere.

Best,

Kate

Here's to NCIS Brands: Do You Know Who You Are?

A great deal of the work we do here is about positioning, e.g. figuring out where a brand or a company fits in its category and in the greater world. Oftentimes, using analogies is a great way to frame to ourselves and Clients a way to think about that fit. Thus, I was engaged by an article in The New York Times this morning about the long-running CBS drama NCIS, starring Mark Harman. It is ranked as the number one show in the country and arguably the world. It will air its 300th episode soon.

            This is a big American brand. Loved by virtually everyone and emblematic of a certain sense of national values. A 60-minute adventure (pulsed to allow for commercials) that takes us from horrible murder, to team effort to solve, to final satisfying denouement. All done with a wry and familial sense of role and personality. We know what to expect, the program delivers what we’re counting on and does so with enough variation cut with well-known and loved characters to keep us intrigued and tuning in for more. The ingredients: Ducky, Abby, Ziva, Tony, “The Autopsy Gremlin,” and, of course, Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

            And, yet: “Did you watch NCIS last night?” has probably never been asked around the water cooler. It’s just not cool enough, but it is good enough to keep us absorbed weekly. It’s not fresh content delivered in a fresh context, as from Netflix or Amazon, and the only way to binge watch is by turning into USA cable, after the infomercials are over. Still, there’s a lot to be said for NCIS-style brands. I’m thinking Cheerios, Hershey’s and Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Fill in the blanks: Name your own reliable favorite. Just enough flavor variety and gluten-free news to stay interesting and relevant (Tony kissed a transgendered woman!), but not, happily, attitudinal or edgy.

            Some brands are Kimmy Schmidt brands, others are House of Cards, still others, Downton Abby. We’re not in the discovery zone with NCIS, but rather in the world of the tried and true ‘procedural.’ In a landscape that is festooned with breakthroughs seeking our full attention, advocacy and passion, sometimes it’s a good idea to exhale. And, of course, it’s always a good idea, in life as in branding, to know who you are and what expectations you’re hoping to fulfill.

           Kate

Wither Retail: Howard Schultz Will You Lend A Hand?

I’ve had two fascinating conversations in the past couple of days, both centered on what-in-the-world-can-save bricks and mortar retail? As is nearly always the case, sharp thinking gets sharpened in dialogue, rather than by ruminating off in a corner on Macy’s decision to close 40 more stores and fire 4800 more employees in order to offset dismal sales and earnings last year. I was in one of those closing stores recently and it was heart-breaking to see a seasoned, senior and professional sales person walking the second floor and letting people know that “Yes, the fixtures are for sale.”

            The essential promise of great retailing is being “lucky,” which can be manifested in many ways: Getting the right dress for that special evening, finding the suit that fits perfectly, discovering the perfect tie that will bring out the color of his eyes. And, of course, getting a great ‘buy.’ For most of the past 20 years, that last option has driven stores like Macy’s: 30 percent off! No 40! How about 50? Do you like me now? The flop sweat is nasty.

            The downward price spiral erodes the margin that could be spent on staff. So a time motion expert arrives at Macy’s Herald Square and sees that Sophia spends most of her day walking the 3rd floor marking down the price and writing in the new cost. Then, repeats that the next day, as they take another five percent off. He suggests they just put 30 percent off signs on the top of the kiosks and have the customers do the math. That doesn’t work. Then, they decide that technology can come to the rescue: Voila! Scanners are installed everywhere, so that customers can just run the tag through the scanner to find out how much the price is today. Except that the scanners don’t work and the customers don’t like them and now Sophia has been downsized so there’s no one to ask how much the item costs today. The customer walks away in disgust. Online shopping seems pretty fine right about now, doesn't it?

            Meanwhile in its endless desire to make someone else do its job (let’s let the customer figure out the price), the store stops training its sales staff on this year’s fashion trends. Let’s let the manufacturers schlepp in two boxes of donuts and set up in the break room. They can bribe tired salespeople with a free sugar high to listen to why the plackets are designed this way this year, and the YYK zippers are a quality improvement, and the color palette is inspired by sunset in Tahiti. All on the off-chance that at some point one of these people will remember what they’ve been told “on break” and somehow communicate it to a customer. It’s enough to make you weep.

            And yet. Somebody has done this right: Starbucks has managed to train and professionalize its staff to make pitch perfect coffees and teas and knowledgeably discuss the origins and taste profiles of its wares. If a coffee shop can be professionalized, why not retail salespeople? Oh, I know, the Armani and Chanel sales people are pros. World class at what they do. But what about that poor Macy’s customer, just trying to find a dress for the office party? Lord & Taylor? Nordstrom? Can you hear her now?

Kate

            Editor’s Note: Late breaking news. I know the answer to the riddle, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?” The answer is NO. How do know? My love affair with my Fitbit continues and the other night I saw I was six flights of stairs shy of a perfect green circle of achievement. So, I went out to the interior stairway of our building and climbed up six flights, came back down and went to my Fitbit Dashboard, ready for the endorphin rush. But no! The mean-spirited dashboard told me I’d only done one additional flight. You may imagine my distress. Now, I knew I’d climbed all the flights I needed to. But the tracker didn’t know it. My climb didn’t count, wasn’t heard. I went out and climbed five more flights of stairs. This time the tree fell and it was heard. 

The Petite Madeleine? Mais Non.

Last weekend, during Winter Break at my daughter’s high school, we made the radical choice to head midwestward ho! to visit my mother and brother in the land Time forgot, three hours south of Chicago. Just as I insist (and fail to prevail) that we not visit PacSun, Pink and Brandy Melville shops when we visit Paris, I attempted to mandate we avoid those, plus chain restaurants in the hinterlands. I might as well have championed a starvation diet. It was a revelation.

            I had wanted her to see ‘authentic’ Midwestern fare and shop the local wares. My mother and brother refused to join us on the culinary Odyssey to Gil’s in Hanna City, whose charming positioning statement was and is, “To get a fresher piece of chicken, you’ve got to be a rooster.” This had seemed an extraordinary, electrifying place when I was a kid, enlivened by country western groups on Saturday nights and emboldened by music we choose from an ecumenical jukebox, spanning Sinatra, Streisand, the Beatles and Patsy Cline

            Mattie was shocked that I had sought out this place: Cheesecloth tablecloths of various patterns, shining under bright florescent lights. To her, it frankly looked like the homeless shelter at our church where she volunteers some Friday nights: Men and women, seated at tables for four, clad almost universally in jeans and sweatshirts and shod in either cowboy boots or sneakers, surrounded by plastic boxes to pack-up what they didn’t eat in order to take it with them.

            The same held true for clothes shopping: We visited the department store where we had loved to shop as kids, now transposed to a mall. Mattie took one look and said, “Yes, this seems like a place where Grammy would shop.” Indeed, it did. We explored the terrain, including the Going-Out-of-Business Macy’s and I won’t get started on that here, except to say, Terry, shame on you.

            We found the best selection and service, finally, exactly where Mattie knew it would be: The Brandy Melville section of the PacSun store. We found the best dinner exactly where my brother said it would be: The Longhorn Steakhouse chain near their home. It is beginning to dawn on me that I’m going to have to admit the best chains have raised the bar, as I suppose they promised to. It was the better dinner, better lit, better looking. Guessing Time doesn’t forget. 

Kate

The other day during one of the sporadic snow events punctuating what serves as winter this year, I headed down to the gym for my routine morning workout, ready to engage with Joe and Mika, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but rows on rows of machines with their TV screens out of order. The screens are fed content through Direct TV and now there were dancing logos all around me, reminding me that Direct TV was now part of AT&T. It did not make me think well of either brand, but it did make me wonder about how the mistake of one (now) sub-brand tarnishes the über mark.

Bad performance does travel upwards.

I now have a worse perception of AT&T’s ability to deliver consistent service as a telephony company. Honest. I do.

Unhappily, great performance does not travel upwards, or else we wouldn’t be hearing the deep-seated resentment of the government that is a daily thesis of Morning Joe.

Exhibit A: I recently had to renew my passport. I was able to get everything I needed online. I was able to easily figure out the charges and how much I needed to send the State Department and to which address to send it in order to get “expedited” service. The mailing went out. The site promised three weeks “door-to-door” for this rushed process. Two weeks after sending, the new passport was in my mailbox. The site had warned me that if I wanted a passport card, it would arrive separately. Voila. It’s here now. Ditto my old passport, chock-a-block with memories of voyages past.

All accomplished, efficiently and effectively. As are dozens of interactions I’ve had with local, state and national government entities over the years.

Why is the U.S. Federal Government brand so tarnished? Wither all the hatred?

Note to great (and bad) brands and conglomerates which own them: Great performance of the subsidiary does not create a halo that can buffer the whole, but poor performance surely does. 

Kate

A Love Letter to My True Passion Brand

I’ve been writing these posts for just about a year now. If you’ve stayed with me some portion of this time, I think you know me well enough for me to tell you: I’ve fallen in love. Head over heels, obsessed in love. With my new FitBit. Honest. I’m constantly checking in on its dashboard to see – you guessed it – how I’m doing. This is the absolutely ultimate in narcissism. Enough about the gadget: How many steps have I taken? What did I eat? What’s my resting heart rate? How did I sleep? No one has cared about my every movement since I was six months old. It is thrilling.

            Several years ago, a friend of mine whose romantic relationship had suddenly evolved to a long-distance one was bemoaning his inability to just pick up the phone and casually call his lover to tell him about the “great blueberry muffin I had for breakfast.” I remember being nauseous. Really, really just weirded out by the concept of telling anyone what I’d had for breakfast and what I’d thought about it. But no more!

            FitBit wants to know every morsel. FitBit wants to know how my workout was! FitBit wants to know if I walked the dog. And how far I went. Even better, FitBit knows. It knows better than I that 45 minutes on the elliptical is worth 247 calories. And, wonder of wonders, FitBit reaches out to congratulate me! All I have to do is walk 10,000 steps or drink eight glasses of water.

            So beyond the ratification of my essential narcissism and the infantilization inherent in having my every heart beat monitored and spoon of gruel assessed, what is going on here? I am hoping these folks are sharing all this data with some pharmaceutical companies somewhere, for starters. We’re talking really, really Big Data. Almost certainly a huge sample size, definitely better than ‘self-reported’ behaviors, right? I hope they are creating an app to ensure users can send all this data to their doctors to be mined for insight at the individual level, too.

            Secondly, of course, I think like a marketer. P&G used to pound into us that the hardest thing to do is change consumer behavior. Well, FitBit is changing mine, easily. I suddenly want to exercise a bit longer. I want to walk to a dinner party rather than hail a taxi. I want what in literature they call the ‘objective correlative,’ e.g. I want to know how FitBit thinks I slept, not just how I know I dreamed. Certainly, the buzz term ‘gamification’ is at play here, but there’s something more, I suspect. My algorithmic alter-ego is ushering me down a road I know I should go. Indeed, have known forever I should have trod. But now, one cheerfully monitored step at a time, I’m walking the walk.

Kate