Is Your Brand Subject To " Phantom Relevancy Syndrome?"

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In the medical world amputees are subject to phantom limb syndrome: The perception of sensations, usually including pain, in an arm or leg after the limb has been amputated. The brain still gets messages from the nerves that originally carried impulses from the missing limb. Phantom limb syndrome is relatively common in amputees, especially in the early months and years after limb loss.

So as your brand relevancy diminishes are you subjecting yourself to phantom brand relevancy: the perception that your brand is still relevant even though it is not? Now many businesses are facing diminished relevancy today and there isn't a lot of hope that they'll bounce back. So what is it that goes on in the mind of the people running these businesses that they refuse to admit their business is fading away? Is it the fact that the USPS still does over a trillion dollars a year even though it's relevancy can't compete with email and text messaging? Is it that newspapers still get away with charging people for subscriptions even when radio is free and the internet delivers the same news a day earlier? Why do these brands refuse to reengineer themselves socially even though they're following in the same steps of greatly diminished brands such as Polaroid or Kodak who became commodities in the age where we now capture and transmit our memories digitally? And what of Microsoft's Bing Search Engine or Zune MP3 player - also rans that are 10 years over the hill before they were even new. Like General Motors chasing that dying aging midwestern audience - only that audience still process images in a way that once gave these businesses the lion's share.

So is it that managers cling to their ideas more tenaciously than their most prized material possessions that prevents them from effecting change? Is that the syndicated knowledge from which they draw insights fails to accurately map the future...or continues to lead them down the path that if they just keep coming to work and doing their thing everything will be allright? Are they playing ostrich and just hoping for a sustained miracle turnaround? Or is it that a few hybrid vehicles, while still a brightspot at General Motors have not been enough to do the trick? Of course I've been preaching this is the flaw in GM's relevancy for years. Before people will respond to a cash for clunkers deal at GM, GM has to establish the bread and butter market currently dominated by Ford, Honda and others. In short, you have to build more quality into your product.

But now I drift from my purpose, to promote comment on phantom brand relevancy syndrom. K-Mart's on the cusp, as is Sears, as is Starbucks as was Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. One step in the grave and no one's willing to admit it. How do these managers console themselves for one more day that everything is all right?

What do you think of the new Starbucks promotion

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Here in my sunny southern California stores they don't sell the afternoon drink for $2. They give it to you for free after 2PM with a morning receipt. Observed net impact; a shift of consumer behavior; an influx of pairs-traffic at 1:55 followed by freebies delivered at 2:05 according to local Starbucks baristas. Not sure that helps. But it sure is hard to hold off that morning purchase until early afternoon.

TURNING SPARE CHANGE INTO STAR BUCKS

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I allocate a lot of time to Starbucks because it is a classic example of the rise and fall of a great brand - and because I was one of the company's early adapters in terms of product usage and portfolio holdings. And it all happened in one of the shortest times on record, so it is a great example of what not to do. Time was, you could go into Starbucks with a buck or a buck twenty five and get a great cup of coffee, then expenses and overhead went up as the brand "grew" to become more things to more people. Rather than a great place to go for some quality time that didn't cost an arm and a leg Starbucks became a planned distination for which one had to determine if a stop at an ATM was necessary before dropping by. The beginning of the end.

Now no one believes that recipe dissemination, a few novelty fro-yo drinks, closing stores, trimming the payroll and soliciting user-generated input via an online portal will affect Starbuck's turnaround. The cost reductions are a technical mandate, but the rebuild of unit sales and dollar volume requires the creation of new consumer knowledge (as in tell me something new about yourself) to raise the bar and get foot traffic flowing in the door again. Why not target a number like 400 customers per hour on any given average hour? Why not? That's what Costco does. And why do this? Because every decision Starbucks now makes is based on established consumer habits and practice. And Starbucks already knows what that gets them. I think their stock is trading around $14 a share.

SAVING STARBUCKS

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With every cut more water is pouring into the hold of the Titanic. Why would you want to fire all those people and let all that experience go to a competitor - just because you couldn't find a better answer?

Everything the past, present and future team at Starbucks knows about its business is based on established consumer habits and practices and no matter how hard you study the past it will never tell you all you need to know for the present. The demand to create new consumer knowledge, that which has never existed to be gathered and measured is essential for Starbucks to immediately generate significant incremental unit and dollar volume sales. And I'd like to demonstrate how that worked at P&G on Folgers and Pampers, just to prove it works everytime to those who think it's impossible to generate incremental AM usage occassions. It is the most immediate way to impact a brand and business. No layoffs, no store closures. Nobody quits when you're making money. So what's to loose?

STARBUCKS...HOW SAD

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Did I die at Starbucks and wake up in Aunt Gloria Jeans Tea Room? Selling frozen novelty yogurt drinks called Sorbetto at Starbucks is a clear signal the coffee purveyor's brand equity compass is way off track. This isn't even making Howrd Schultz look good if he's trying to stabilize the company for a sale. Selling non coffee drinks at Starbucks, especially frozen yogurt novelties is like Campbells Soup Company selling Chunky Soup as a stew in a can instead of "the soup you eat with a fork." That's how you biuld the equity of a soup company as a soup company. Starbucks. Desperate. The company hasn't even taken coffee 20% of where it can go, and they're already turning in non-coffee directions. And, not to be critical, but those Pepto-Bismol colored splats placed on Starbuck's store floors look like some sick kid yakked. Then people walk on it and it's even more revolting and unappetizing. Looks like some stores in-need-of-repair restrooms. Rating: Thumbs down. Coffee loyalists, Turn around and walk out. Newly [re] appointed marketing head Michelle Gass has her work cut out.

THE CONSUMER FREQUENCY

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Most marketers are busy crunching numbers today, like they did yesterday, and the day before, and as they will tomorrow. What they are analysing are minute changes in business performance based on standards driving businesses that have not changed in decades. We all drink beer, wine, ale and spirits to address the need states of "to party" or "to relax." There are no other reasons. When our wives had babies we bought disposable diapers that had to "fit" the baby better and keep the baby "dryer." The entire industry remained flat until the revelation that a diaper brand such as Pampers could actually capture toddlers by extending its foot print to "development" sold an incremental $1.6 billion worth of Pampers that year while all the nay sayers suggested there was no way to generate an incremental disposable diaper consumption occasion - but those were not the forward-thinking outward-looking execs.

So to what frequency do consumers tune when dialing in your business? Are you broadcasting a frequency only they can hear? That sure would cut clutter! Why ask this question? Because we all operate with our own definitions of positioning, insight, branding, ad nauseum. And they can't all be correct. There is an overburden of clutter, commoditization and desensitization to ad messages in the marketplace. So how do you tune into that one frequency that reaches that one person (thought leader, early adapter, whatever) that you want to hear your message?

About 24 million consumers ago (that's about how many consumer panelists we've intereacted with face-to-face/not online in the last 40 years) we determined that the insight you want to target is called a Special User Effect. It is not a generic emotion of the sort generated by Hal Riney for Saturn. That division still operates in the red. A Special User Effect is consumer-created (not Madison Avenue or client created) and it is the result of a process that creates new consumer knowledge that has never previously existed to be mapped, gathered or measured. It is not the product of your own mind, my own mind or insight either.

This places the bar higher. That's where "development" came from for Pampers, which grew the business by $1.6 billion that year (now that's an insight). It's also the way the oral care business determined the five category attributes that account for all consumer perceptions in oral care. So I don't really care which agency you are or you hire. Every insight they have will in some way shape or form be somehow inextricably tied to one or more of these five attributes unless you create new breakthrough knowledge. We only brush our teeth for reasons of whitening, breath freshening (includes germ killing), gum care, tartar control and cavity prevention.

Why do I make such a hard line stance and draw my line in the sand here? Because my goal is higher. I don't just sell more product with garden variety insights. I control the definition of categories with the proprietary ability to create new knowledge from the minds of consumers. That's consumer-creativity and it is not the same as merely soliciting user generated input from websites where provided input comes only from consumer's existing frames of reference. Companies only do that because it's cheap. No matter how hard you study the past [that way] it can never give you everything you need for the present.

A brand IS fewer things to fewer people. That is what causes the early adapters to glom on. The novelty is what gives a brand an allure. Then they 9the numbers crunchers and insight hounds) try to make it more things to more people and you can kiss it goodbye. Everyone else is just a follower. A brand IS something that someone started that caught on. The rest of us are merely members of the herd. How do you resurrect a company like GM or a brand like Starbucks? It can only come from the creation of new knowledge. Closing 600 stores, recipe dissemination, a few novelty fro-yo drinks and a MyStarbucksIdea website will not improve Starbucks fortune. They are merely stabilizers and are only preparatory moves to Howard Schultz making another kind of decision, like cashing out.

The frequencies of insights are deafening. There are so many so inconsequential insights echoing against the fundamental building blocks of categories - any category - that we tune them out - noise - commodities we take for granted - which is why agencies and managers get hired and fired all the time. The insights that matter are those that fundamentally change perception in a category and substantively alter consumer habits and practices to a desired goal, solving problems. To that end, there can only be one insight - the rest are all peasants.

IS YOUR BRAND SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER?

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Did you know that the New York Times is written at an elementary school level? That's because that's the average intelligence level of an adult in America today. They've already forgotten more than they've learned simply because they don't use it every day. And for that reason the muscle gets flabby and weak. Have you ever actually seem a contestant win the Jeff Foxworthy game show Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? Not in my memory. So why are you entrusting the future growth of your business or brand to the input and responses of Americans? To Americans who answer the countless questions and who provide the user-generated input solicited by corporations? Even worse, the use of online research where companies get panelists to respond for points and prizes. You can't even look them in the eye to see if they're telling the truth! Smarter people would only respond for cash! Obviously the airlines, Starbucks and General Motors are listening, and look at the results. And that's the problem. No one is creating new knowledge to take your fifth grade customers to the next level - the level where you want them to be.

By creating new knowledge that has never previously existed to be gathered and measured you could gain a proprietary advantage over rivals and markets in the areas of strategic innovation, consumer insight and new product concept development to invigorate struggling brands and businesses. Does anyone actually think that recipe dissemination, a few novelty fro-yo beverages, closing a thousand stores and a http://www.mystarbucksidea.com/ website that does not give consumers the latitude to respond beyond their current frames of reference is going to solve Starbuck's problems? (every question or category in which to respond mimics a store as it exists today. How is starbucks to improve if the existing model is the baseline? All that can be expected are very small incremental...not even evolutionary steps. And that's not the material of a turnaround.) Why create new knowledge? Because no matter how hard you study the past, by asking consumers and customers questions, it can never tell you all you need for the present. How would you expect them to respond? They can only respond within their current frames of reference within long established habits and practices. Without the stimulation required to identify new product potentials and the bigger consumer persuasions beyond, companies have no recourse but to look for bailouts and new merger and acquisition suitors as solutions. That's strike 1,2 and 3 against inbound organic growth. No forward-thinking, outward-looking executives here. Just Pavlov's respondents running large businesses. Knowledge creation is why our clients hit more home runs in more categories than any other.

What's wrong with struggling companies and brands? They know everything there is to know about their business...and nothing new.

GM's TurnaWhat

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Do you remember that old Hot Tuna rock album You Can Tune A Piano But You Can't Tune A Fish (or was that REO Speedwagon)? Any way - Wagoneer GM CEO Rick Wagoner is up to his same old tricks again slashing jobs and cutting costs in a bid to save GM and keep his "turnawhat" on track. Isn't this what Wagoner does everytime GM's "turnawhat" hits a speedbump? Does he not know that doing the same things the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity? Calls to Rick's office went unreturned soliciting the company's need and ability to create new knowledge rather than gather and measure information regarding GM's future new product development efforts. (Hint: unless you come up with bread and butter vehicles like Camrys and Accords GM is going to be SOL. Gone are the days when a Corvette's or Solstice "halo" could save you. And you can also forget the goodwill or excitement of auto shows and good press. That's just stuff you're supposed to do.) Based on latest inquiries we were able to ascertain that it takes GM at least 5 days just to acknowledge receipt of an email or letter to Rick Wagoner. Apparently the earth is slow, but the oxen are patient. I did not invent that line - I stole it from Tom Selick and Bess Armstrong in the movie High Road To China. Well, insider wisdom has it that no one at GM is going to save GM single handedly. How's that for an insider unity statement. When Wagoner turns around to look I'd like to know who he sees following.

Now I've been waiting for GM's turnaround throughout CEO Wagoner's reign, but like the problems facing Starbuck's head Howard Schultz, all I've seen are a lot of "turnawhats". Closing stores, recipe dissemination and throwing a few fro-yo new drinks into the equation will not quite cut the mustard at Starbuck's "turnawhat" either. There's got to be a sale or merger discussion going on in there somewhere - that's what these leaders always do. Just no inventiveness or creativity can be seen galloping to the rescue. (No pun intended with George Gallop or all the other pollsters and information harvesters currently selling data to GM and Starbucks.) Without the ability to create new knowledge to lead the company away from the brink what else are the straight forward linear thinking problem solvers to do? Can I trademark that term (TURNAWHAT) like Pat Riley's "Threepeat?"

Why are good insights so hard to find?

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You know, I just love LinkedIn - the professional online community. Not only is a great place to connect with colleagues, but it is also a great place where smart people ask incredibly interesting questions like, "What is an insight?" Which got me thinking - what is an insight and why are great insights so hard to find given that in my industry - consumer packaged goods - there are thousands of experts looking for them. Are they finding them? I don't know. Based on McKinsey & Company's assessment I think not. McKinsey says, "Despite solid balance sheets and healthy bottom lines CPG executives wonder where their new growth will come from." Since CPG companies are probably most active in the insight field, I then wonder why important insights are so rarely discovered. A while back the rumor circulated that men around the age of 34 shopping for diapers in grocery stores after 8 pm also purchased Budweiser - but that was no biggie. InBev just swallowed them up without even chewing.

Very often, managers view any product, service, idea, technology, or process that is new (to them) or different as an insight or innovation. (Well just because it's new to you doesn't mean it's new to the rest of us) (An old mentor tipped me off to this type of behavior chastising me for being too busy learning everything all over again for the first time) So I think quality insights are so hard to find because we don't know how to find them. Most companies have reliable resources in place to 'gather' and 'measure' data, but gathering and mining data is only a reflection of current consumer habits and practices and no matter how hard you look at the past it will not deliver what you need for the present. So what do you need instead? Why a knowledge creation process of course! Something that can create new consumer knowledge that has not yet existed to be gathered and measured. That's how you improve consumer behavior and take your highly saturated and penetrated category and take it another quantum leap forward - the same way Pampers learned to take disposable diaper's 'fit' and 'dryness' for granted and put the brand on the much larger 'development' footprint back in the early 1980s. Or the same way Folgers went from generic 'sensory' advertising (Mountain Grown/Richest Kind) to 'control's' best part of waking up is caffiene in my cup - recently sold to JM Smucker for $1.6 billion. That stuff sure does help me work and play well with others - especially in the AM! Now that was an insight!



Why else are good insights so hard to find? It's a matter of exposure. The rule of thumb is "The more you expose yourself too the more likely you are to succeed." But apparently you can't expose yourself to a whole lot by gathering and measuring data. And companies don't want to take on additional external resources. Sounds penny wise and pound foolish!



So if business managers are running businesses and making decisions based on gathered and measured data and have not exposed themselved to knowledge creation processes could that be the reason so much of American business is only managed to meet the numbers? Kraft can predict it's sales based on predicted birth rates over the next 5 to 10 years. Doesn't take many if any profound insights to pull that off. Is that the kind of business management that's going to bail Starbucks or General Motors out of a jam? Is this why technology is king in the new creativity economy? Well, lets forget about technology and product design. It's too easy to reverse engineer and copy.



So what is an insight?

An insight is the realization of value from a new solution to a problem that rewrites the rules of the game. In order for something to qualify as a true insight

• It must engage a creative process,
• It must be distinctive,
• And it must yield a measurable impact.

When a good business goes bad

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What are the outwardly visible warning signs that a good business is going bad? How can you tell when a rapid growth company is turning the corner to becoming a mature earnings company and you can kiss all those lucrative stock splits goodbye?

Hired by Leo Burnett, the EVP Client Service asked me what I thought of rumors that Philip Morris might buy Kraft. I said I thought Philip Morris was preparing to reduce their dependency on tobacco profits from 96% to something in the range of 46%. No one believed me, so no one went after Kraft's new business except me, landing the Kraft BBQ sauce business for myself and not Leo Burnett. And there followed a string of Kraft account work resulting in Kraft's most successful growth period with brands turning in results well beyond anticipated category norms. I made a bundle and so did Kraft.

During that time Starbucks also took off. It was time to buy stock. I'd buy at $22, watch it rise to $44, split, then repeat the process again and again. So how did I know when to get out? When Starbucks launched milder dimensions coffees in a bid to become more things to more people. That was the beginning of the demise of Starbuck's brand equity. It was also the last time the stock grew and split. Starbucks had actually succeeded by being fewer things to fewer people. You had to love that dark roast taste or you didn't. Today my broker told me Starbucks dropped to $14. That's off $4 from four days ago.

What brings my attention to these matters? The price of gas. At nearly $5 a gallon I've come to realize that there's actually no gas shortage. How do I know this? Because when we are really out of gas, the oil companies will begin to diversify into non oil and gas businesses. Then it will be time to worry. Sounds like Philip Morris all over again.

The Grand Unified Theory of Creativity

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I am approaching 40 years of experience mumbling and working with Madison Avenue ad agencies and their clients, finding strategies that invigorate the sales of products, brands, categories and industries. Beneath the surface I've sought what I call The Grand Unified Theory of Creativity - what is it that would give a client the single most comprehensive yet concise view of all product and positioning potentials available to their business. While this search with my clients has allowed me to amass many career's worth of experience in less than a lifetime, I still wonder why more people don't get it - knowing as I do that they can go farther than where they are, expanding their product or strategy's Viability Envelope, by just tipping the creative tea cup a bit further - in the same way shifting from 'fit' and 'dryness' to 'development' dramatically expanded Pamper's industry footprint?

Letters back from companies such as Starbucks and their Senior Vice President of Category Management state they have plenty of specially designed resources available for the gathering and measurement of the required data - never realizing that you can never measure your way to where your business can go. Again I ask, "So why don't they get it?"

No one is talking to Starbucks (or any company) about The Grand Unified Theory of Creativity (google "the grand unified theory of creativity" in quotation marks and you will find I am one of only two people on the planet thinking about it, and the other guy wants to be a western writer.) And Starbuck's 'gathered' and 'measured' data is doing nothing to reverse the fact that the strategy that once made them most powerful is now being copied handily by every other Tom, Dick and Harry coffee purveyor.

Strategic Innovation, and The Grand Unified Theory of Creativity is about Multi-Dimensional Creativity. Another one of those terms that companies such as Starbucks tells me is provided by their ad agencies (really?...so if you google the term "muli-dimensional creativity" why don't any advertising agencies pop up in results?)? Multi-Dimensional Creativity is about that comprehensive/concise justaposition of which I spoke earlier - looking at fractions of millions of strategic options in the blink of an eye. That's just to get the linear thinkers out of the starting blocks. It doesn't come from the user-generated input websites touted by Chrysler to get them closer to their customers. It's the Abstract Creativity, The Abstract Dimensioning that ensues that makes the obvious special. (and that's not covered by any ad agencies or strategic innovators either).

So say you are Staples, and the strategy that once made you so powerful, and the first to consolidate office supply acquisition, is now so copied that you've become little more than a commodity; what do you need to shift your business strategy from strategy maintenance to strategic creation mode? You need to visit a fine tailor and get your new grand unified view of creativity custom tailored to fit you.

Starbucks Slows Ship, Begins Return To Safer Harbor

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MarketingPost's Marketing Daily reports on a slide that began with the introduction of Starbuck's "Milder Dimensions". Even the name was prophetic of the company's future performance. I hope Howard Schultz gets back to the basics of just being some things to some people instead of trying to be more things to all people to restore his brand's equity and consumer's allegiance. Like I always said, "If I's ever wanted Milder Dimensions I would have gone to the grocery store and gotten some Maxwell House." But I didn't. I went to Starbucks because I liked good, dark, strong coffee. If I smoked cigarettes, it would be the equivalent of a filterless Lucky Strike or Chesterfield.

Wild Bunch + Company

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Singapore's Wild Bunch & Company is the Starbucks of organic juices. Watch out Jamba Juice! I'm looking into a franchise.

Fear of Public Speaking

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Public speaking is the number one fear in America. Public speaking is more feared than death and taxes. So how good are the people at your agency at public speaking? How good are the art directors and copywriters that speak for your brand? How good are you? Could you stand in the front of a Home Depot store for a day and hand out flyers saying, "Welcome to Home Depot. Can I help you find something in the store today?" Or would it be beneath you? Uncomfortable? Boring? If rejection didn't get you, your inability to maintain a great attitude would. So if agency people can't speak to people one-on-one, face-to-face, how could they possibly be good at connecting and relating to millions? They can't read faces. They can't mirror emotions. They have no experience. So when it comes time to write an ad, they can't look inside themselves and say, "Ah ha! I've seen that person before." Utilizing interpretations of markets and segments from studies and customer satisfaction surveys become a joke.

The nation's top breakfast cereal brand is probably Kellogg's Corn Flakes. I believe market share is around 6%. I believe the market share has always hovered around that number. Can you imagine how high market share might rise if Kellogg Corn Flake's Marketing Director went door-to-door, introducing the product to consumers again for the very first time? Oh, wait, that campaign was for Frosted Flakes. I digress. The campaign was a poor substitute anyway.

I can guarantee that if the staff of your agency, or Kellogg's Marketing Diretor took your product door-to-door every weekend, knocking on doors and developing the ability to actually TALK to consumers about your products your sales would soar. Now, the executives would reject the notion at first. Imagine dropping 10 or 12 of them off in some neighboorhood and expecting every one of them to speak with 150 to 200 people that hot summer day. Certainly they had something better to do that day that work at making themselves more empathic and better communicators. That's something they didn't learn when going to school. It takes life experience. And you can't gain that behind a desk or focus group mirror. If that were the job description 98% of them would quit. They'd be too embarrassed. It would be beneath them. The few that remained would persevere, getting better week by week. And after 6 months you'd have a crack team of people able to spontaneously connect and relate with just about anyone. What a great agency training program!

In addition to Martin's accomplishments in product positioning strategy and new product development, Martin Calle trains outsourced sales forces for Fortune 500 companies. Clients include Staples, Starbucks, UPS, AT&T, Verizon FIOS, Coca-Cola's Groupe Danone and more whose sales and market share have soared as a result of his training system. Contact Martin for Speaking Engagements and amazing stories from the street.

Starbucks Gets It

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Hooray! Starbucks gets it! The ground roast coffee category shifted the battlefield from flavor and aroma to caffeine more than 20 years ago! This is the first ground roast coffee ad, since Folger's "Best Part of Waking Up [is caffeine in your cup]" (my strategy), to figure out that heavy ground roast coffee users, the 20% of the audience that account for well over 80% of the category volume, drink caffeine in the morning day part to "THINK EARLIER." Other insights from the work of Calle & Company that enabled Folgers to wrench the category's icon lead and status from Maxwell House include the fact that caffeine enables heavy ground roast coffee consumers to "WORK AND PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS" (very Dale Carnegie: "How To Win Friends and Influence People". Heavy ground roast coffee consumers also perceive that they need to drink caffeine when they get to work because the caffeine helps them show their boss that they "SEE THINGS OTHERS MISS." Caffeine helps them become more alert! It has taken 25 years for this rich, robust and proprietary arabica and robusta bean breakthrough to migrate from Cincinnati to Seattle...but that's marketing in America. It takes a long time for young MBAs and creatives to learn everything all over again for the very first time. How else might the consumption of caffeine enable you to influence others? Thinking outside of the box, might it make you a better leader? Improve your ability to influence others? When you turn around,is anyone following? Now Folger's has Starbuck's on the same strategy. The next commoditization of knowledge in the category is about to ensue.

If you are a ground roast coffee marketer, there are many other ways that can help your brand defeat commoditization, improve the human condition and beat up on rivals. Contact Calle & Company!

How Starbucks Strayed

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A lack of imperfection is how Starbucks lost its soul - and coffee house experience. It is now officially the McDonald's of its business. Starbuck's, and its classically trained leadership has turned Starbuck's once powerful brand equity into a "Milder Dimension." The brand is on the brink of being totally perceptually sanitized. No different than the conflict between Swift-Eckrich smoked sausage and those of rival Kahn's Hillshire Farm. Kahn's products are made by farmers in blue jeans and flannel shirts while Swift-Eckrich products are made by lab technicians in starched white coats ... according to in-depth consumer studies, this fate also befalls Wells Fargo versus Washington Mutual. Wells bankers are "the suits" while WAMU "neighbors" are the nice guys from Seattle in jeans and flannel shirts. How many times does history have to repeat itself before companies have to stop learning things all over again for the very first time?