Marketing Ostriches

Wishing won't make it so, my friends;

no, I'm afraid that it simply won't.

Oh dear, they're at it again. Perhaps I'm getting an inkling of what our infamous, erstwhile Vice President experience when he felt compelled to upbraid those "nattering nabobs of negativism" in his famous address.

Would that it were as simple as combating a bevy of journalists on jeremiads – alas, it's far worse than that. Once again the “trades” are full of excoria, purporting to be expert advice regarding the practice of marketing and maintaining brands – and these by self-proclaimed practitioners of the craft.

And what [dare we wonder?] do these “experts” prescribe? Nothing less than the death of brands as we have come to know them. Yes, these experts resemble no one more than the fabled Dr. Kevorkian of suicide machine fame. As an aside, one wonders – where is the good doctor these days, in prison? Writing a book on marketing? The mind fairly boggles, no?

“Surely you exaggerate!” I hear you cry, and perhaps I do – but I very much doubt it; for once again the siren call of “Your Brands are what everyone else says they are” is heard throughout the land. Yes, and your résumé means precisely what I think it means, and not what you had intended, right?

And so it goes.

When will we get past this cult of the mediocritocracy? Perhaps this all goes back the Jean Paul Sartre and his French existentialist ilk. The whole idea that “you are who others think you are” seems to be the basis for today's rampant brand surrenders.

One must assume that they've missed the basic point of Sartre's play, Huis Clos (or No Exit, to you and me!), which was that Hell is Other People.

If we let our brands be defined by “other people,” we've consigned them [and ourselves!] to Marketing Hell. Hardly the stuff of which dreams are made, let alone profits.

All the while this drivel [yes, drivel!] is being promulgated, we also receive information that strong corporate brands continue to grow – despite the economic downturn. Clearly, a fickle, shifting public defining of these brands is no-where to be seen – growing brands are strong because they're nurtured by wise marketing professionals, not by being blown thither and yon by the vagaries of public opinion.

In a related blast of cognitive dissonance (if you'll pardon the “technical” term!), I read that there are now more Americans making their respective livings as professional bloggers (?!) than there are fire-fighters or even computer programmers [sadly, there are still more lawyers than bloggers].

“Where's the dissonance?” you ask. Well, just as my mind was being boggled by reading this statistic, I discovered that one of my three favorite bloggers is hanging up his keyboard, as it were.

Whenever I wanted to catch up on the goings on in the “Motor” City [that's Detroit to you and me!], I would steer my trusty browser straight to the Detroit Media Guy blog on the internet. Seldom [if ever!] would I be disappointed by the posts and the comments. Yes, it's quite a testament to the readership that DMG (as his cyber-friends seemed to call him quite regularly) was able to attract that the comments to his musings and postings were often as well-written (and as well read!) as those posts themselves.

Perhaps it's time for a mini-series of newsletters covering my favorite bloggers – before they're all victims of bit-rot or right-sizing – or perhaps not.

It might be instructive to gather a list of your favorites and mine, so that we all might share in the cyber-bounty of thoughts and counter-arguments that make up the blogosphere [and no, Jody, that as nothing to do with that rascally erstwhile Governor of Illinois!].

As a start, my top three, in no particular order (thank you, Tom Bergeron!) are:

Detroit Media Guy,
Random Rantings, and
The Lonely CEO

[feel free to follow the links cleverly embedded in the preceding text to sample these fabulous blogs!].

We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC look forward to compiling and disseminating a list of our joint favorites in the weeks to come.

Excelsior! and RIP DMG.

Last time, Jay wrote about the death of newspapers and paper routes:
R. Scott "Randy" Hearst responded:
"Jay, you've either got your tongue stuck in your cheek, or you're woefully ignorant of the real workings of the paper-delivery system in this great nation of ours.
I notice that you don't distribute a printed version of your newsletter, so you don't have to deal with finding a stable of stinky young brats with bicycles to pedal through urbia and suburbia delivering the sweat of your brow - now firmly printed on pulp. If you had ever had to substitute at 4AM in the cold for some rotten brat just because he had strep throat or pneumonia, you wouldn't ..."

I'm going to stop you right there, "Randy," before it gets too personal. Once you've calmed down a bit, I'd appreciate a less deprecating and more thoughtful commentary. Any chance of that?

-- Jay

Entertaining Clients

Are there lines which one ought not to cross?
Some pit-falls and prat-falls of T&E

We were having lunch at Michael's a week or so ago. I believe I saw Jack Myers there with an attractive woman who must have some position in an up-and-coming, off-the-wall new media company.
"Aren't you having a drink today, Jay? Are you feeling OK?" queried my guest.
"Yes, I'm feeling fine, thanks, but no, I'm not drinking today. This is my way of showing solidarity and lending some moral support to my erstwhile partner, Pat."

Some background may be in order here. What a long, strange trip it's been....
Perhaps I ought not to have been surprised, but I must admit that I was completely gob-smacked when I received the call from Dr. Rodney.
The good doctor was calling from the Casper-Harvey Clinic to tell me that Pat had “checked himself in” for treatment.
After hanging up – and informing certain of the staff here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC – I had a long conversation with Morgan and Jody about the dangers of our way of life – viz. how entertaining clients can be a quick road to liver damage and other problems. Morgan – perspicacious as ever – opined that this might help to explain Pat's behavior back when he had announced my death to the readership of this newsletter and blog. I have a feeling that Morgan is correct.
In fact, I have been out in the great (!) Pacific Northwest® these past two months, lending to Pat what support I could in his efforts to de-tox his body and to re-start his life.
At first, I was almost more concerned for myself than for Pat, as I – for perhaps the first time! - noted just how much of the distiller's art I routinely quaff. Still, as the weeks went by, and I began sleeping more soundly than I had in years, I found myself almost thanking Pat for his “fall” from grace - as it were! - which showed me just how closely behind him I was poised (metaphorically speaking, in the main).

But ... back to my lunch at Michael's. My co-diner [but not co-winer!] was somewhat non-plussed at the fact that I was forgoing the traditional adult beverage. While not nearly as prevalent as it once was [alas, the days pass much too quickly], the consumption of alcoholic beverages as part of the business T&E tango goes on a-pace.
One wonders if there will ever come a time when the after-lunch brandy, the "House Chardonnay" with the entrée, or the pint of Guinness [for strength!] with a plate of fish and chips will be as unwelcome in polite society as is the Camel "straight" or the post-meal cigar in this day and age. I - for one! - dread any such developments as not only counter-productive, but also de-civilizing.

Still, I come back to that scene where I had to fess-up, as it were, to the fact that I was drying out in order to show support for a friend who was also being dessicated - and this for his own good, mind you.
There really isn't much more to put in this issue of our once-regular newsletter apart from this: We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC look forward - and most eagerly, let me assure you - to hearing your thoughts on this topic. Is there really a new era about to dawn on the consciousnesses of this generation of marketing professionals? What will a fully tea-totalling workforce mean to productivity measures? What of the workers at the breweries, distilleries, and wineries of this fine nation [and beyond!]? Think of the children! When will they learn the difference between an ale and a lager, a Pinot Noir and a Shiraz, or a true Bourbon and simple Tennessee sippin' whiskey?

We anxiously await your replies.

Last time, Jay wrote about long-distance relationships:
John Dvorak responded:
"I've been a true road warrior for as long as the term has meant something other than a wrestler or Mel Gibson wannabe, and let me tell you one thing. My relationships have been just as satisfying from a distance as they are up close In fact...."

Let me stop you there, John, before you reveal more than you perhaps truly intended.
As you may be able to discern from this issue's text, things are going, while not swimmingly, at least they are going.

-- Jay

I Hope You'll Indulge Me

I believe you'll enjoy this excursion into the past, leading to the future of marketing!
I've been reading quite a few marketing and advertising articles recently which use boxing as a metaphor for our work. One such exhorts us to take the advice of (the mythical!) Rocky Balboa's (also mythical!) trainer – played by the delightfully loopy Burgess Meredith, whom I loved as the Penguin on the Batman television program, but I digress – when the told Rocky to learn to “eat lightning and crap thunder,” if you'll pardon the imagery.

Another posited the wisdom of Angelo Dundee, who adapted his training to the style of his charge, Muhammed Ali (perhaps you remember him as Cassius Clay?), saying “when you get a short guy, make him shorter. When you get a tall guy, make him taller.” Words to live by, I believe, unless your name is Procrustes, and you're a bed salesman – but again I digress.

Although a life-long athlete myself, I've only once been even tangentially involved in boxing, or the “sweet science” as it is sometimes named (that's pugilism to us here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC!).

I hope you'll all indulge me as I fade once more back to my prep school days. My bi-athlon team held practices out in the woods behind the athletic building, where stray shots and scattered casings were less likely to cause any trouble for our athletic brethren (and our sistern, as St. George's had gone "co-ed" some time before). Our return path to “the showers” took us past the gymnasium where the boxers plied their trade, and just short of the meeting room of the chess team.

Oddly (at least it seemed so to us at the time), both of these groups looked down on the various prowesses of those of us on the bi-athlon team. The boxers looked at us as wimps and “poseurs” (although I don't think a single one of them could have pronounced that word properly, let alone spelled it!), while the chess team thought of us as “jocks” or worse (whatever that might have been).

One of my team-mates, Al Bester (you may have heard of his Canadian cousin, Myriam Bédard who actually won Olympic bi-athlon medals!), came up with a spectacular thought – viz. we would challenge the combined chess and boxing teams to a chess-boxing match. Naturally, chess-boxing is a relatively unknown sport, as it has only been mounted the one time (to our knowledge!), and the expected winners are none too eager to repeat the drubbing they took at our hands (and minds!). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As I was recounting, Al Bester conceived of the chess-boxing match, and even created the rules. This was much like the Wizard Chess^TM many of you are likely to have seen in the fairly popular line of films about a wizard named Harry Potter®. The main differences were that rather than using magic to move large pieces around, students stood on the “board” and punched one another silly to gain access to the desired square, and that we split the boxing team between the chess team and ourselves (we being the bi-athlon team, just trying to keep things clear!) to be the pieces for the two sides.

The chess-ters and their coach, Mr. Rybak, thought themselves possessed of a great advantage, conceiving themselves to be masters of the tessellated square, while Mr. Giordano, the boxing coach, looked on the match as a spectacular opportunity to find out which of his pugilists were “sand-baggin” as he called it. We looked at it as our chance to put all of them in their respective places.

Being skilled marksmen and skiers, we bi-athletes were naturally also interested in matters military, so the study of strategy and tactics (especially Greek!) was a bit of a hobby for many of us. We expected that these studies would translate themselves quite well into the world of chess-boxing – nor were we to be disappointed!

The day of the match arrived, cool and clear, with a hint of juniper and lilac on the breeze. As we set our “pieces” in place, a bit of a tussle broke out among the chess-ters' boxers, as they argued about who would be king and who the queen. We had no such troubles with our “men,” having chosen wisely with just this potentiality in mind. Our own bi-athlon coach, Mr. Gunderson, wished us well, and repaired to the stands to watch the expected carnage. It was only the briefest of intervals, a few moves on each side, before the fists were flying, and we had quickly relieved the chess-ters of the majority of their pawns.

In short order, our king's bishop and queen's knight were threatening the opposing king – who escaped by means of a queen-side castling manoeuvre (precisely the move for which we had hoped!). In a trice, our king's knight had crashed over the last pawns and cold-cocked the opposing king. Victory was ours, and none had ever tasted sweeter.

“Well and good, but so what?” I hear you cry, and I can but agree. It was well done and a good lesson to us all; but what can we take from this to apply to our marketing lives?

Simply this – while our marketing opponents (c.f. our competitors and their products) may have mastery of particular fields or skills which seem to give them the advantage over us with the customer, there will always be a combination of skills which we can bring to bear which said competitors not only cannot match, but perforce cannot withstand.

The sight of the opposing “king” lying on his back, bloody-nosed and glassy-eyed should be an inspiration to all and sundry. I know that it is to those of us here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC, and we stand ready and able to help each of our friends and clients discover and develop those "combinations" which will lead to your very own marketing triumphs!


Last time, Jay wrote about "offensive" marketing:
Marian Kirby responded:
"Jay, I think you hit the nail right on the head with your column about bad taste. I can't tell you how often I'm embarrassed to watch TV with my son - all because of commercials for various hygiene and health products. "Mom, what's feminine itching?" or "Mom, what's erectile dysfunction?" I don't know what they're teaching nowadays, but he sure isn't learning this stuff at the junior college...."

Marian -
Thanks for the kind words. Perhaps it's time for your "tyke" to be out on his own? I believe I learned most of these things on the street corner, and look where it's gotten me!

Excelsior!

-- Jay

Pranks, Gags, and Other Such Tom-Foolery

Is it ever "O.K." to fool one's customers?

Well, well, well. It appears that the lads at Google® have colored me Tom. Their April Fool's Day announcement of an expedition to Mars caught me and took me in, both hook, line, and sinker (as it were!). Perhaps you saw my entry on my "blog" on the internet regarding my expected departure for the "red" planet . (Please note that I have left that entry there as a testament to our open-book policy here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC.) The only defense I can offer is that I came across it on April 3rd, and was (justifiably!) no longer in "that's an April Fool's Gag" mode. Ah well.
Still, one wonders (or at least one ought to wonder) about the long term (or shorter!) effects that such pranks, gags, and tom-foolery may have on the brand under whose rubric they are perpetrated. (viz - might I now use Yahoo!® whenever I google something on the internet, being reminded of my folly each time I see that multi-hued Google® logo?)

Pranks and Gags have been the topic of conversation here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC over the last fortnight or so, largely due to my having been taken-in by the “Virgle” announcement, and my associates' glee at seeing one usually so perspicacious falling victim to what ought, in their view, to have been a fairly obvious prank. Sam opined that, as humor is often based on an unexpected outcome to a seemingly simple narrative, corporate pranks and gags might well be considered simply having a joke with one's customers.

While I see the appeal of that line of logic, I couldn't help thinking of some of my favorite old comedy films – viz. The Three Stooges, and their hilarious blend of slapstick and political pastiche. In many of these, a seemingly innocent action ends up with someone's nose in a large pair of scissors, or a hot iron to the nether regions, or a saw “accidentally” shaving a reverse Mohawk^TM into someone's head, or ... well, I'm sure you get the picture. I believe, however, that it was the staff's general reaction to an accidental meeting with a banana peel on the lunch-room floor that brought Sam to my line of thinking. To wit: “Pranking your customer is generally not a good idea.”

Consider this “thought experiment” (or Gedankenexperiment, as Hans Christian Ørsted might have said) in this regard. Your consumer durable goods firm has completed a contract to subsidize the mortgage payments of consumers who agree to buy a certain number of your appliances over a five-year period. In the first of these appliances (perhaps a new top-loading washing machine!), there is one of those great spring-loaded snakes that used to come in boxes so that when you open them it jumps out at you. This is all meant in good fun, as is only clear based on the coupon for 20% off the purchase of a package of a co-promoted laundry detergent attached to the hind-end of the snake.

Your new customer opens the washing machine (perhaps with a double arm-load of dirty clothes - or unmentionables!) only to have a huge snake leap out, trailing a 20%-off coupon for laundry detergent. There is little in the literature to suggest that you will now have made a customer for life – in fact, your legal department may find itself defending the no-cancellation clause of the mortgage subsidy contract!

No, my friends and readers, it seems clear that one ought never to fool one's customers, let alone Mother Nature!

In a belated nod to "Earth" Day, we ask you to enjoy another helping of Classic Jay, this time from April 20, 2007 -

Mother Nature Taking Over?
Is your marketing aligned with the seismic shift in consumer attitudes?

Who would have thought Home Depot® would be leading the way? Who indeed? Still, it comes as no surprise that there would be a savvy marketer ready to capitalize on the current greening of the world, does it?
Regular readers of this newsletter know that we here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC are nothing if not savvy, and with our commitment to various "out-of-doors" activities (including bi-athlon and rock racing!) we are also committed to maintaining an environment around us.
Lest the reader think this is nothing but pre-Earth Day pandering to the masses of environmental lobbyists, crack-pots, and ne'er do wells. We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC have put our collective money where my mouth is - so to speak! - and are working on making the space flights mentioned in last week's newsletter something more than a marketing boon-doggle. Indeed, Lee (from our R&D group) is hard at work (as are we all!) calculating the relative costs and benefits of carrying toxic and other forms of difficult-to-dispose-of wastes on these space flights - with the proposition being that said waste be dumped, not on the Earth, but rather tossed into decaying orbits around the Moon or (perhaps too ambitiously) the Sun itself.
Imagine, if you will, a next-generation Space Shuttle - in full NASA regalia - bedecked NASCAR-like with logos of sponsoring entities (perhaps your product? your clients' product?) along with a payload, also logo-bedecked, of dangerous waste products, bound for extra-Terrestrial disposal. Who might be interested in such a scheme? How about Waste Management®? How about the InSinkErator® folks? How about just about anyone wishing to make a statement that we know better than to mess up our own house? As they say, animals don't defecate where they habitate (a catchy rendition or that sentiment, don't you think?) - neither should people.
What marketer wants to be known as one who poisons his (or her!) own customers? We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC believe the answer is clear and unambiguous: nobody we know!
Once Lee's work (along with the fabulous Jay Standish, Inc. LLC R&D staff) is done, we will be shopping around the first potential sponsorships of this concept. We're still working on names for this service, and we'd appreciate feed-back from our readers on these possibilities, as well as any suggestions you might care to make. Imagine seeing your own neo-logism boldly pasted on a proud (American!) spacecraft as it quivers with excitement on the launch pad in Florida, waiting for the thrust to send it hurtling into space - perhaps into Trans-Lunar Injection!
At any rate, our first list of rough possibilities await your comments:

• Star Trash
• Garbage to the Stars
• Wasted Space
• Take Out The Trash - Way Out!
  
• Ad Astra Per Trashpera

Last time, Jay wrote about amateur hubris:
Ima W. Esome responded:
"I don't know where you come off saying that my public access show isn't as good as Mad TV! You've probably never even seen my brilliant impersonations of Beverly Garland or Alice Ghostley...."

I think someone's pulling my leg here. Still, you didn't make any good points, and there's no point in annoying the host.
-- Jay

2008, Here We Are At Last

It may have taken a few weeks, but

are we ever ready to wow you again!

First off, to those of you who've been reading the "blog" site, I'd like to make sure you hear our apologies regarding the erroneous obituary of O.D. "Slim" Whitman. Mr. Whitman is still alive (and very popular in Europe, as well as here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC!), despite the report we had received and passed on at the "blog" site. Again, our apologies to all and sundry.

It has been gratifying to carry on the conversation which is enabled by that back-and-forth medium (the internet "blog"), if only to hear from those of you who seem not to want to reply by e-mail. Thus far, we seem to have avoided most of the lunatic fringe that some other "blogs" seem to attract (apart from the fantastically-named "durwood quade" whose modus operandi appears to be name calling and political advocacy - I hadn't realized that Ru Paul was running for president this year), and for that we are quite grateful.


Now, on to the, if you will, "meat" of the newsletter: Experiential Marketing. While we promised to address packaging in a response to a comment to an earlier newsletter, as we investigated that topic, it became clear to us here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC that packaging is really only the gateway, or introduction, to the full experience of a brand.

The packaging can serve to invite the consumer in (cf. those new, no-can-opener-required cans of ground coffee - while we may have an issue with the rim left on the can, we can have no issue with the ease with which our respective kitchens - or anywhere else! - can be filled with that fresh-opened-can-of-coffee aroma), or to keep him (or her!) out (viz. that flexible, clear, yet nearly impervious plastic in which all manner of products are now encased, for the cutting of which my sister bought our mother (as a Christmas gift, no less!) some of those nifty Black & Decker® electric power scissors: which were packaged in that self-same plastic - perhaps said plastic is fortified with irony!).


Still, the packaging, however good (or bad!) is but the first part of the brand experience. First steps are important, no doubt (remember - a Journey of a Thousand Miles (or Kilometers!) begins with a Single Step!), but they are only first steps. What we, as savvy marketers, really want is for our customer (or customers!) to enter fully into the brand experience; not simply to see the brand, but to be the brand. (Ah, I miss Mr. Gianopoulos, my Junior High School P.E. teacher, who taught us all (in Dodge Ball, no less!) this sure route to success: "See the ball, Be the ball;" but I digress.)

Experiential Marketing has become one of those catch-phrases, or "buzz" words which seem to have a fluid meaning - terms which can end up meaning little or nothing due to their having been attached to too many disparate concepts. We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC want to caution our readers to examine any proposed Experiential Marketing programs to make sure they're not just warmed-over, re-named products from your advertising and marketing partners. In this day of user-generated content, amateur commercials on the Super Bowl®, and general disinterest and confusion, it is imperative that our marketing efforts actually be focussed on where the consumer and the brand interact - in the consumers' heads and homes and lives.

Perhaps one example from our Experiential Marketing Practice will help to clarify. Jay Standish, Inc. LLC team members Morgan and Shannon are members of the up-and-coming (you can bet on this one!) Celtic-Punk band, Left Sister Down (perhaps you've heard of their underground hit, póg mása, cadránta ceanndána buaf!). Now, clearly their fans are their consumers, and they (equally clearly!) want to enter into the "band experience" (if you'll pardon the "play" on words!), and that is exactly how the band is marketed. They offer their fans the opportunity to join them in their bus (more properly, their minivan) as they travel from "gig" to "gig" around the country. These lucky consumers are then treated to the full experience of life in a traveling Celtic-Punk ensemble, from problems finding lodging to chipping in for gas money. These folks are then used as "seed" fans at each concert "venue" to encourage the others in attendance to enjoy the music.

Apple (formerly Apple Computers) calls this kind of consumer "evangelists" (named, apparently, for Linda Evangelista, the first leggy supermodel ever to program an Apple computer using the Hypercard® program once included with each purchase), and they are, perhaps more than any other single marketing effort, responsible for the immense wealth (yet lack of couture) of Mr. Steve Jobs. We here at Jay Standish, Inc. LLC ask you this - who wouldn't want that "gig" - especially knowing one could dress in any way one thought proper! - who indeed?

Last time, Jay wrote to send his holiday best:
Ham Hiroki responded:
"Jay, it's all very well and good that you mention the standard holidays in your note, but relegating the rest of us to a 'blessed whatever' seems a bit cavalier, even for an american..."

Ham -
Based on your note, I'm glad to see that you took no real offense at the omission of various and sundry other celebrations (most specifically your own, Shinto matsuri), and hope that you had a wonderful 大晦日 (Ōmisoka to the rest of us).

-- Jay