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.

Chrysler's $2.99 Gas Guarantee

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People want to buy products that say smart things about them - but how can American car manufacturers address that need when the price of a company's stock, like General Motors, sells for less than $10 a share? That's not smart - and I don't care how many sharp looking "strivers" and "achievers" you throw into those Cadillac ads and positioning statements under the heading "brand character." Do you want proof that a company's management jumps to conclusions before they jump to the facts? Do you want proof that a company's management does no homework before engaging their mouth? Just look at Chrysler's $2.99 Gas Guarantee promotion. Not only does Chrysler find it difficult to sell cars. Now they're selling gas instead. And once you've sold price your brand equity sinks so low you have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom. But wait. That's where Chrysler already is. Where is the dramatic turnaround shift? Talking about Chrsler's wonderkind CMO let's quote Casey Stengel who once asked, "Is this all there is, or is this all you got?" Why doesn't each product line have a unique selling proposition instead of generic segmentation? Is it not true that doing the same things the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity? Do basics, adventurers and other socio-economic classes of consumers actually see themselves in Wranglers and Cherokees when the stock of American car companies like GM sell for less than $10 a share? The purchase just says, "You're dumb." Years ago my research for GM found people want "to buy products that say smart things about me." Sure, the economy and the housing/mortgage/credit crunch are excuses in combination with the high price of gas - but it's only an excuse - and excuses have to be corrected. I am certain that everything management knows about how to market its vehicles and leverage its brands comes from fine market research processes that gather and measure data. But the trouble with quantifying yesterday is that it does not tell you anything a company needs to know today - at present. As Captain Kirk did in the Kobiashi Maru simulation at Starfleet Academy - Chrysler needs to create new knowledge that does not yet exist to be measured to alter consumer habits and practices and to change the rules of the simulation to win. Except slow moving inventories are not a simulation. Look at this lot. Everyday, we drive past auto malls jam packed with slow moving inventories. Banners proclaim fantastic deals, yet day after day we see the same lots. Why doesn't a dealer get smart and one night after closing remove 80% of his inventory from sight. The next day most of us would think, "Wow! Something's going on. Either there is a blow out clearance sale or the dealer's going bankrupt." The sharks would swim in looking for the deals smelling blood in the water. What a perfect environment and buyer mindset to close the sale. That's what sales people call Jonesing people.

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.

My Top Ten Brands

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The other day I recieved a poll question from a leading advertising industry trade magazine asking "What is the most genuine brand." I was given the choices J&J, Google and UPS. And I thought "Christ! What's the point of THIS question? Is someone feeling uncertain as to their authenticity (which is just another flavor of the "genuine" selling dimension)?

So I got to thinking. This question is irrelevant to these three, but in my lifetime, what have been my Top 10 Brands? That is, over the last 40 years, when I look back at every consumer good I've ever purchased, which 10 brands have I always purchased - and never purchased a rival? Interesting question right? Well here are my 10 based on product performance profiles.

1. Q-Tips (feel as good as sex when you use them)


2. Band-Aids (they stick well)


3. Neosporin/Polysporin (never bought anything else for scrapes)


4. Hellmann's Mayo (thank Laura Ries for pointing out REAL)


5. Coke (and only Coke) (never tried Diet/Zero/New/Vanilla, etc.)


6. NPR (National Public Radio is the best)(The Christian Science Monitor was a close second)


7. The Beatles (ok, I do like other bands, but not with the same total immersion)


8. Walter Cronkite/Chet Huntley/David Brinkley (great news anchor brands - after them, the news became, well, not news)


9. Acura (biggest bang for the buck - my 91 Legend is over a quarter million miles without a single repair issue. Have only changed the fluids, tires and brakes - still runs like new)


10. Maxfield Parrish (one of a kind great graphic artist)

As far as any other consumer good or category goes, I must admit, I have accepted substitutes, misplaced my loyalty and shopped on price percieving your brand to be a commodity.

So what's your top ten brand list? Post it here. Do you have an imaginary brand list for new products not yet invented? Mine starts off with Vel-Close and ends with OraQuel. What are they? I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Thanks!

About those airline baggage charges

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Ever hear the saying about someone being so far down a hole they have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom? How about the rule that once you trade on price your brand equity sinks so low it has to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom? Once you go price consumers think thrice! Nothing like training another generation of price sensitive travelers! P&G learned that with EDLP (everyday low pricing for the layman). Now Costco tells them how to make Tide or they'll plug the pipeline. So who is in charge of brand equity innovation at American, United, Delta and all the other price wielding baggage charger busways of the skies? If on Madison Avenue "it's all about the strategy" as Eduardo Bottger says at Hispanic agency of note al punto - What ad agency is riding to the rescue with a strategy that gives one of these brands a reason-for-being (that matters)? (Please no more platitudes that failed to move me in the first place) What evidence is there that straight forward problem solvers might listen to an abstract thinker that pinpoints new selling dimensions that are more relevant and resonant to core travelers? And how does that strategy resolve the newly forming habits of meeting online instead? Sounds like a job for Superman. Or maybe American should just sell all of its hardware assets and operations and become the world's first motive conference or motive visit network. Move into Kodak's memory space. What can be logged and filed solely on line. Can I charge for information transfer by the pound? Isn't that what business travel is for? How about tiered pricing for travel purposes? Do we charge a lot less for a trip to grandmas and a lot more to discuss Kraft's brand management? Now that would be some exploratory qualitative answering the questions what could an airline become. What are the future consumption drivers in "travel?" Does travel mean I have to "go" somewhere physically. And how would one "own" that? Just musing. Apologize for incomplete, incoherent or disconnected thoughts. Where's a good no baggage airline when you need one? This is all just taking shape. At some point it will just be cheaper to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of clothes and toiletries once I get to the other end. Could spur whole new terminal retail. And of course, what hotel chain is going to win me over with baggage charge rebates or credits? And why aren't they doing this instead of me writing about it? Get Tom Boddett or those guys from freecredit.com to sing a song and solve the travel woes.

The Closed-Minded Innovator

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Being an innovator and being closed-minded seem to be an oxymoron don't they? Yet that's what I just ran into...an innovator who says their company innovates all the time...so I ask, "on what level is your company innovating all the time?" It's about a $307 million company according to Hoovers.com. "Wouldn't you like to grow it by $300 million?" I ask. I've created new product concepts like Baked Lays that did at least that well in their first 10 months for Frito-Lay. So maybe I should go knock on the door of Marvel Mystery Oil instead. Maybe they're hungrier. So back to the flippant comment, "Our company innovates all the time." (Interpreted as, "We don't need you.") I'd like to quote leadership guru John Maxwell, and I quote; "You can find plenty of smart, talented people who can only take their business so far due to the limitations of their leadership and vision." So if all that is required to grow the business is to change the way you think (which costs nothing) why wouldn't you want to employ (or learn about) a proven innovation thought-leadership system of creative invention that could double or triple the size of your company? The ego of a young territorial executive too busy learning everything all over again for the first time muddies the water. But as the National Enquirer used to say, "Inquiring minds want to know!"

Just what is "THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX?"

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Pharmaceutical companies today are developing hundreds if not investigating thousands of new products each year - many of which go OTC. So I began thinking, "How many would ultimately converge on the same positions, just saying the same things about themselves the way their different advertising agencies want to?" Now the agencies like to say, "It's all about the strategy!" lol So just what does it mean to think outside of the box in oral care where there are only five category attributes that account for all consumer perceptions in oral care: whitening, cavity prevention, breath freshening, tartar control and gum care?" I can hear the advertising exec selecting the new advertising agency now! "I don't care what you talk about, just talk about one of those five things." So when it comes to new product development, the same thing happens. Consequently, there is no thinking outside of the box. which is why McKinsey & Company reports that over the last 45 years, despite solid balance sheets and healthy bottom lines CPG execs wonder where their new growth will come from. New technologies still converging on the same positions? Withdrawn FDA approvals?

The same happens in all categories. Show me a laundry detergent or household cleanser that doesn't promise to do the cleansing job better and faster. Show me a shampoo and conditioner that doesn't promise model-perfect hair. Show me an allergy technology that doesn't promise to relieve symptoms better and faster. Show me an orange juice that doesn't promise to taste most like the orange.

Yes. Commoditizations besets every new product launch like the plague. Hastening copy cats and capping each new technology's rapid growth phase because they do not insultate their businesses by discovering and communicating the proprietary Special User Effect no other rival can own.

Tell me about other categories in which "thinking outside of the box" beats or sucumbs to commoditiztion - but be careful before you dispute me - you can't be in "a category" unless you are converging on the same position as your rivals. So here's how you'll get a leg up on first place, or get there if you didn't launch first.

My beef with online research

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You can't quick and dirty half billion dollar ideas. Plus the fact that none of the information collected elevates brands beyond current laddering study data arresting the additional growth of product and brand sales.

My innovation beef with market research

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Why don't I like asking consumers questions? Because I've been exposed to almost forty years of the best and brightest market researchers at companies from Procter & Gamble to Pizza Hut who ask questions. In all that time, the answer to every question only reconfirmed things we already knew - basically reinventing the wheel, which, if I was to focus on advertising is why so much advertising bores or desensitizes us. I found that no one could ask a question they didn't already know the answer to. When new generations of managers asked questions at these companies it was so they could learn everything again for the first time. In companies like Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago, I've actually seen senior client service executives collect, secret and destroy the work of predecessors to protect their current position from better answers found before their time. I found that when you ask questions, you don't get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that has led companies from General Mills to General Motors astray, or at least slowed or reduced their innovation return on investment. The root of all this doom and gloom? The fact that none of this question-asking ever stimulated respondent's minds - be they client or consumer - so that they could respond in surprising ways beyond their current frames of reference to hasten the pace of successful innovation and generate a consistent stream of important new disruptive technology and manufacturing patents and consumer new product concepts. So where's the beef? That is, where is the answer found? In processes that proactively stimulate consumer and client minds rather than those methodologies that reactively collect and measure data. In processes that create new knowledge, rather than in those that pre-ordain and then sell syndicated or predefined trends (i.e. Cocooning - let's write a book as a self proclaimed guru then go sell the answer to everyone so they can pull the trigger at a target at point blank range and go nowhere) data such as the existence of new subcultures of our population such as Thrivals or Basics or Adventurers - all those psychobabble social and behavioral target audience definitions that have put the brakes and blinders on so many brands by limiting their appeal through their contrived application (i.e.: Type A Strivers shilling for Cadillac). Or all those touchy-feeley product design firms who observe the here and now creating new Swiffers that do nothing more than replace old mops and refrigerators. Making the old look new. That's not innovation.

Creation's Conundrum: The Qualitative Quantitative Conflict

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What is it about clients that insist on the use of qualitative firms who also quantify their own work? Way back in the early days of pioneering qualitative research this was considered a big no no - you were letting the fox watch the hen house - if you did this no one would hire you. Now, clients want convenient one stop places to shop and don't care about this conflict of interest - let alone the burden to objectivity. Maybe this is just another reason why McKinsey & Company reports that despite solid balance sheets and healthy bottom lines consumer packaged goods executives worry where their growth will come from. How long can you stand the target wherever you want it, and then fire at point blank range? It's like predefining a new trend or psychographic/attitudinal/social marketing target audience, then telling everyone to go shoot at it. You artificially arrest the extent of your business. Hitting the bulls eye becomes a no brainer - with sales results that match. Do yourself a favor and learn all of the tricks you you can skip the mistakes.

This image courtesy of Dee's Liberature. http://bdee.wordpress.com.

Airline Marketing Hits Rock Bottom

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Didn't yo momma tell you that the instant you trade on price your brand equity's so low you'd have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom? Has average gotten so bad that an airline thinks it can get to the head of the class by charging for your baggage? I don't know about you, but given the choice of no baggage charge versus a baggage charge, I'll choose free. Still sitting smug thinking their positioning strategies and messaging reaches captive business travelers, how long will it be before some airline wakes up to the magic of abstract creativity? Of positioning their stew as a soup you eat with a fork (Chunky Soup); of finding abstract selling solutions the way Pampers took 'fit & dryness' for granted (business travelers) and found that more diapers (and airline seats) can be sold on a 'developmental' brand platform? Hmmmm? United, "the developmental airline." What could they develop as a campaignable idea that would make all the charges worth it? Business relationships, personal relationships? There are so may Special User Effects still to fulfill - an airline (like American Airlines) could go a lot longer on one tank of creativity.

Topping Google

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You know the word "topping" has a lot of connotations. If you're 'topping' someone you could be going them one better; you could also be holding them down, like topping a tree. It cuts them down - like the Hickory Hilltopper's in that great Gene Hackman movie Hoosiers. But I am writing this post because I am tired of all the talk about Microsoft's attempt to buy Yahoo in a bid to, dare I say, 'top' Google? - Or is it more 'just to keep pace and stay abreast so that Google does not get too far ahead. To slow them down.

Google, like Starbucks is starting to show frays in it's cuffs. So let time take its toll. Now all the talk is about investor Carl Icahn (sure has the name for it - iCahn, iKahn, ICON-great new brand name for a Google topping search engine) and cronies such as Microsoft's Steve Balmer reigniting their takeover bid. Hey guys, listen up. All of this takeover action is proof that the guys working the problem don't have the ability to out-invent a new Google. Something better that grows not from pure technology, but from the creation of new knowledge from consumer minds, that by perceptual innovation would discover that knowledge required to change consumer habits and practices with ideas rather than ownership of a rival.

It sure is a lot cheaper , and only takes about six weeks to find that breakthrough idea that would snuff Google's mass appeal. I've done it before. Why not just treat the problem like a new product concept development exercise and invent a real google competitor from scratch for $200,000 or so rather than the $37 billion it would take to buy a Yahoo that's always going to be, like Avis, number 2. Of course, this advice comes from someone who knows how to do this type of problem solving strategic innovation. I don't do those garden variety line extensions.

I think the real problem believes this can't be done. "The cost of pioneering" would bee too high." But it would still be far, far less than what would go into Yahoo's acquisition. Imagine just what you could do if you were a successful new product person with several multi-billion home runs under your belt and someone gave you $37 billion to play with. I'd reinvent the entire consumer packaged goods industry including it's distribution channels.

The Banality of Selling Consumer Products

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I like the saying, "Branding is something you do when you don't have anything important to say." However, the banality of advertising today, what products and brands are saying about themselves, to sell themselves, borders on absurdity. Now I know that marketers don't want to stick their necks too far out on the line. And they'd rather be safe than sorry, especially in a rough economy. But it also reminds me of the saying, "Ships in a harbor are safe, but that's not what ships were made for."

I make special note here of the new advertising being done to sell 7-Up. Now with real, natural flavors. Who cares! It's a soft drink. I got through all these years with artificial flavors, so what strategic rocket scientist at Cadbury-Schweppes decided this was the best way to go? Reminds me of Procter & Gamble days where the soaps and surfactants division toyed around with the idea that washing your clothes "sanitized" them. DOH! Who cared? My clothes were clean.

Last year, Cadbury Schweppes beverage division, including Snapple and 7-Up was up for sale. And nobody bought. So there's been little growth in the division, and no one wants to buy the division. Don't you think it would be time for a little creative thinking and strategic innovation? This effort isn't picking the high fruit from the tree. As a matter of fact, it isn't even picking up the dead fruit from the ground.

Reality Vesus Actuality: A Construction of The Truth

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Reality has swept America. Reality TV that is. Is it real? So quickly the lines blur in one night's viewing. I no more need watch The Apprentice to know that I can make better decisions. But I do not get a better job, or a raise. And gas still costs $4 a gallon. An expense to my quality of life that is needless. That's Actuality. Disney was the first painter of reality. He is the grandfather of reality. He did not paint actuality. No one would watch - no one would come. Disneyland is a study in an idealized America that never existed. But now we watch shows and immerse ourselves in a reality that is not actuality. I do not want to escape. I do not want a shot at love with Tia Tequila.

So those of us who are not so numbed by the barage of reality - wonder about actuality. Are you marketing to actuality? Because that's where the people with disposable incomes are in a crappy economy. They're dealing with Actuality. They're not frittering away their dreams on reality.

Washington Mutual is marketing to reality. They've borrowed billions to remain solvent, and to mask the actuality, tell us they are the bank that makes you say, "Whoo Hoo!" The Germans call that "dreck." Please don't deposit your marketing waste in my Actuality bin. WaMu is using "reality" strategy to mask the fact that it is really the bank that lacks actuality management, and could very well make depositors cry Boo Hoo - if they had a run on the bank and had to lock the doors. Yes actuality fans, disaster at WaMu is really that close.

But as long as we can immerse ouselves in reality, know one will take accountability. And as soon as the credit crunch is averted - because that's what reality helps us do - we'll have dodged actuality again and life will go on taking Visa.

What happened to gold standards.

So in what camp are you placing the future growth of your company, your strategic innovation? Reality or Actuality?

Advertising Campaigns with Zero Thought Profiles

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So absurd. Why do companies take their names, shorten them, then use rhymes as advertising campaigns? Washington Mutual. WaMu. Whoo Hooo. Adult minds actually concieve and sign off on this crap. What is it's intent other than to misdirect depositors to think that everything's OK at the bank in spite of having to borrow $10 billion to keep its doors open these past few weeks. Sure they don't want a run on the bank - BUT - There isn't any problem at a company that can't be fixed by a good product, and standards. And I'm not talking about free checking from those friendly, flannel shirt clad bankers in Seattle. It just doesn't sell. Why redirect consumers fears? Why not do something that brings in sound money during a crappy economy? That works. That's marketing. But they told me it hurts their heads to think that hard. That's not smart.

Mitsubishi. Mitsu. Trying not to be Japanese. What's next, Mhoo Shoo?

Why Not Ask Questions?

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Everyone else is doing it. Asking questions that is - in focus groups, quantitative research, qualitative research, strategic planning and innovation. So why not ask questions? Because if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. Which is answers that do not substantively move your business forward. Answers that confirm the things that you already know. Answers that move you closer, like gravity, to the same strategies all of your competitors are using coverging on exactly the same positions, only saying the same things differently. No gain.

So what do you do if you are Staples and the strategy that once made you all powerful now threatens to turn you into a commodity. Kodak, Starbucks can all ask the same thing. But the last thing they'd want to do is ask their customers questions. Sounds ridiculous right? Opps, that's a question.

You don't want to ask your customers questions because without additional positive mental stimulation, they will be unable to answer your questions from beyond their current traditional frame of reference and knowledge, They will only say what you and they already know. Further, you can't ask any questions you don't already know the answer to. It's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why should Starbucks introduce $1 cups of coffee and who said that would impact their business? Are they doing it because there are now so many competitors Starbucks is becoming that commodity? So why respond with a dollar cup of coffee? It's not like going to Starbucks is out of the way, they're everywhere. They're not going to steal share and they're not going to stem trial of rivals products - so the move is an example of Starbucks running scared. I never heard of a Starbucks customer complaining about the price of a cup of coffee. Starbucks price is what made their product part of one of my aspirations. So now you're ripping the guts out of your brand by trading on price!? When you trade on price you go so low in terms of perception and brand equity (P&G learned with it's EDLP - everyday low price strategy) that you later have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottome or is that bottom? (I knew that)

And lastly, when you ask questions you don't get the voice of your customer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that will lead you astray. So questions are dead you say? Yes! OK smarty pants - so why do attorneys ask questions and win cases with them? Because they are trying to prove a point in law, a static point, that already exists. It does not move. And to grow business you must. And why don't more people stop asking questions and start probing minds with proactive materials that stimulate activity to a higher level? Because they don't know how. They were bred from birth to ask questions. It's as easy as breathing - which is why everyone does it. Getting ahead without questions is much harder. It is the road less taken - which is why it wil take you farther than you need to go.

So don't ask questions. Look what happened to the joker.

Marketing to Germphobic Societies - Turning next generation men into residential mice.

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Or should it be the other way around - turning today's residential mice into men. Years ago the Boy Scouts of America started watering down the Boy Scout Handbook, and in my mind easing qualifications for advancement in rank in an effort to remain competive with the abundance of activities competing for a share of young boy's time. This is not a condemnation. What I'm saying is that less information is provided in more detail in today's scout handbook than I had in mine related to sheer survival skills 40 years ago. Now granted I'm an Eagle Scout and can survive with just a knife in the wilderness, even caught and ate a squirrel on my Order of the Arrow Ordeal. But never have I seen this more in evidence than in a scout outing with my son's new troop this weekend. Granted all the boys in his patrol are young, and less than "experienced" scouts - all are still working on tenderfoot or second class requirements. But the first thing I saw plopped on a table as the tents went up was a bottle of Purell. Now that in itself is not bad, but what I found disturbing was the boy's need to pump that bottle every time they touched a dirty stick, played in the fire, picked up a rock or gathered firewood. More, rather than be the example of what the boys should be doing (ie: demonstrating the Boy Scout way to prepare meals over an open fire, one dad showed up with Lunchables in his knapsack to feed himself. Self reliance has gone to hell in a handbasket here and I'm going to turn it around! It isn't that the parents attending were doing anything wrong, admittedly they'd never been scouts. So I started teaching scout skills. When I was a scout the challenge was to be able to build and light a fire with just one match. And if that match went out, you were SOL - and in a real life situation probably dead. When done, I challenged the boys to gather their wood, build their fires and then we'd have a competition to see who could light a fire with one match. An indignant parent stepped forward suggesting that that was too much pressure on his child and that he should have all the matches and chances he wanted. I asked him if he thought if in a survival situation that was realistic? - I was trying to teach the boys that in a survival situation they needed food, shelter and warmth. What was his child to do to provide warmth, if he did not even have a match? This is the Boy Scouts for Christ sakes and I'm trying to teach the boys to BE PREPARED. One dad slept in the back of his mini van instead of his tent anyway - guess comfort is king. The demonstration went on without a hitch. I lit two fires, each with one match - still not too rusty after 37 years away from my scout experience. I admitted that it took me 20 campouts before I could light a fire with just one match. Just one problem. I assumed the boys knew how to use matches. They didn't. So it's back to square one on the next campout and before we move on to the different types of fires: cooking, signaling, etc. More on turning boys into men later. One thing for certain, those boys thought the challenge was cool, and they all had lots of questions. Good men!

OraQuel ® - Lowers the incidence of heart disease

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OraQuel ®
Toothbrush rinse lowers the likelihood of heart disease.

(OraQuel® is not a drug, over-the-counter or prescription pharmaceutical) Every time you brush your teeth you increase the liklihood of heart disease and arterial damage. The effects are cumulative over a lifetime. Medical studies link heart disease, arteriosclerosis and the oral plaque that accumulates in arteries and on heart valves (as a result) to poor oral care habits, gingivitis and periodontal infection. Deposited on arterial and heart valves and walls, the majority of oral plaque comes from gingivitis and periodontal gum infection.

OralQuel® lowers the incidence of daily gingivitis and periodontal infection by assuring you a clean toothbrush. Directions: To lower the incidence of reinfections, shake excess water from toothbrushes immediately after use. Pour approximately a half-ounce of OralQuel directly onto toothbrush bristles, assuring penetration to root of bristles. Wait 1 minute. Product may cause slight foam to form between bristles. Rinse and store your toothbrush as you would normally.

OraQuel®, is a new product from CalLabs, the research and development arm of Calle & Company. To order OraQuel® (16 oz.) send $19.95 (+$3.95 S&H) (cash, check or money order) to Greenwich Marketing, Inc. 18881 Patrician Drive, Villa Park, CA 92861. Make all checks payable to Greenwich Marketing, Inc. Please include your name, address, phone number and email address. Get 10% off orders of four or more. All transactions in USD. Returned and NSF checks subject to all fees and $15 handling charge. International customers please add $9.95 shipping and handling.

Find out more about OraQuel® at www.OraQuel.com

OUT OF GAS. How to Know We Are Really Out of Gas

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I find Energy Marketing an interesting subject. With gas hovering near $4 per gallon and a barrel of crude running $111 consumer confidence hits an all time low every time one looks at the gas guage - your constant daily reminder of how things are. Now, the oil companies say that profiting $20 billion per company per quarter, or $120 billion over all last year is in line with what other companies make - and given the cost of exploration and development, it seems oil companies may not be making enough. So here I am on their side.

But where I am not on their side is when they raise the price of gas because they say they have a "fear" that something "might" happen - that we pay through the nose retail because of their lack of confidence. That's a leadership issue and it lands squarely on Washington's dinner plate. Of course the middle east enjoys the $111 a barrel scenario because it funds the massive infrastructure construction projects going on in Dubai and elsewhere. Is Washington building itself a retirement community, a VIP Leisure World in the middle east at American's expense?

But I'm off point. My point was, "How will you know when we're really out of gas?"

Back in the day I was brought in from outside to save several accounts at Leo Burnett. The term they used in my offer letter was to "bring a breath of fresh air" to accounts such as Kellogg, Philip Morris, Nestle and McDonald's. A rare opportunity given that Burnett is very well known for not hiring outside the company. Anyway, early on, I was asked what I thought about Philip Morris' pending purchase of Kraft by EVP Client Service William Lynch. I told him my read was that tobacco was becoming politically sensitive and that PM was preparing to reduce its dependency on tobacco profits. I was scoffed. But sure enough, within 5 month Philip Morris had acquired Kraft. Vindication sure tastes sweet. PM dependency on tobacco profits plummeted from 96 to 56 percent, with the acquisition of Miller dropping that figure to around 46 percent.

So how will you know when America is really out of gas? When the oil companies start buying other companies. They'll be in a scramble to reduce their dependency on oil profits.

But right now there is no sense of urgency. And that's because the oil companies know they have years of oil profit ahead. That's also why they've only dumped a paltry $3.5 billion into alternative energy. Just enough to keep the pliable liberals and global warmers happy. So what's the conclusion? Right now there is no gas shortage, we are overpaying at the pump, face time with Congress buys Big Oil a little more time while we idiot pawns feel vindicated Big Oil's getting its wrist slapped by Congress - they are the actors and we are the audience. Will you applaud, or ask for a refund?

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.

Making A New Run At Strategic Innovation

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Conversation Starter:
Making A Run At Strategic Innovation

What do you do when the very breakthrough strategy that once made your business uniquely powerful (Staples, Home Depot, Starbucks) now threatens to turn you into a commodity rivals find easy to copy? Whenever I get an assignment from a client shifting from strategy ‘maintenance’ to ‘creativity’ mode I employ Multi-Dimensional Creativity to lift an industry or brand past previous benchmarks.

Creativity Is Not Just An Ad You Watch, See & Hear

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL-CREATIVITY® - To redefine an industry’s original breakthrough strategy, define new underpinnings and to get tongues wagging again (or to invigorate a brand, create a new product or envision a new category) we first sit down and list out over 500 product dimensions concerning that product, brand or industry that in every way shape and form impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior. Under each dimension; sensory, form, function, usage, image, attitude, price, packaging, delivery system, segmentations, transitions, escape, reward, heritage, trust, tradition, affluence and hundreds of other dimensions only we know of, Partners bullet point another 500 short phrases per dimension that in every way shape and form may potentially positively impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior in that industry, category or segment. When done we will have amassed about 250,000 phrases - many times the number of ideas an advertising agency or company brings to the table in their brand's lifetime. From this list we hand-select 500 to 1,000 phrases that we put in front of consumers so that consumers can select the phrases that best motivate them to try a product once [again] and if they try it and like it to buy it again. We employ this Consumer-Creativity® via our comprehensive Creative Stimulus Packages as the foundation for the highly-differentiating and salable new breakthrough business strategy concepts that result.

Has your brand become a heavily price driven commodity? Do you manage business strategies that compete in heavily price driven categories? Dot coms Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Orbitz and Hotwire are great examples of heavily price driven commodity brands. And as Procter & Gamble discovered with EDLP, once your consumer sets their sights on price your equity sinks so low you have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom – enabling retailers (Costco) to finally get a leg up on P&G and call the shots on core brands like Tide.

In this environment, Callé & Company has demonstrated a consistent track record of reversing the effects of mature business strategy lifecycles – of turning mature earnings companies back into rapid growth businesses. We ask consumers no questions so they can tell us no lies. We prefer our proactive Creative Stimulus Packages to reactive market research to create new knowledge - once again leapfrogging existing frames of reference, and competitors, with strategies rivals will find difficult to copy. P&G’s Paper Division employed our process, shifting Pamper’s strategic focus from ‘fit’ and ‘dryness’ to ‘development’. Repositioned as Pampers Phases Developmental Diapers the brand arrested category migration to rival Kimberly-Clark’s Pull-Ups, providing a much broader base from which to develop the paper business and net an incremental $1 billion in disposables sales each year. K-C never caught up.

Callé & Company does not cut and paste strategies from one industry or company to another. I have no canned answers as do the experienced advertising agencies on Madison Avenue. If you would like to determine optimum future business strategies, let’s meet.

Tarney Spencer Band

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The world's most underplayed one hit wonder - No Time To Loose. Potential Ad uses. Analgesic advertising, 30 day promotion music. Sense of urgency.

OBAMA-pop

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Like him or not, it's still a great poster.

Chrysler Ready To 'Listen' On New Site

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Like they hadn't been listening? As reported in Advertising Age Magazine (http://www.adage.com/) The Automaker is to Recruit an Online Consumer Advisory Panel.

It's not that the online sessions won't be that informative, or that Chrysler won't be doing anything with the information. It's just that all the other auto manufacturers collect exactly the same bits of infomation - promoting a parity situation in which Chrysler will be unable to budge it's distant 3rd position in the market. Typically, this type of consumer input substantively fails to move the sales or market share needle - let alone consumer interest and involvement.

So why does Bob Nardelli keep signing the checks for VP - CMO Deborah Wahl Meyer who is very busy learning all of this for the first time? Does she not know that:

To get ahead, you have to learn things no one else knows. To CREATE THAT KNOWLEDGE you must follow the following recipe to stimulate consumer minds to say things they'd never otherwise think to say.

To invigorate a brand and find out what people want we first sit down and list out over 500 dimensions concerning that product that in every way shape or form impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior regarding that brand or product. (Otherwise they just talk about cup holders and places to put their Garmin or Tom Tom.) Once done, the real work begins. Under each dimension; sensory, form, function, usage, image, attitude, price, packaging, delivery system, state changes, reward, escape, heritage, trust, tradition, quality, awards, rewards and many other dimensions only we know of, we bullet point another 500 short phrases per dimension that in every way shape and form impact and influence consumer perception and purchase behavior. When done we will have amassed about 250,000 phrases - many times the number of ideas an advertising agency or company brings to the table in the lifetime of a brand. From this list we hand-select 500 to 1,000 phrases that we put in front of consumers so that consumers can select the phrases they like best and that would compel them to try a product once, and if they tried it and liked it to buy it again. We employ this Consumer-Creativity® as the foundation for the highly-differentiating and salable concepts that result for companies from General Mills to General Motors, Procter & Gamble to Pizza Hut.

Innovation Gone Wild

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Innosight's President Scott Anthony made an interesting post on Harvard Business Online the other day about Innovation gone overboard - questioning to great extent whether replacing a car key with a wireless pushbutton constitutes "innovation." I couldn't agree more that it does not. But then Scott asks the question, "How do companies get to this point? How do slim and marginal improvements in product performance become dubbed innovation?" I have long said that innovation is an over used term. And managers eager for recognition apply the term liberally to any step forward. But what are the underpinnings of their thinking? Well here it is.

Have you ever watched a group of 11 and 12 year old boys try to earn their fishing merit badge in the Boy Scouts? They remain interested in the merit badge counselor's instruction for about two minutes, then the boys drift off into their own worlds. Called back to order, the counselor asks one of the scouts to "watch" him tie the knot again and the boy, unable to tie the knot, or innovate, looks away. "No" says the couselor, "watch." And the boy glances as the counselor specifically shows him how to tie the not. Again the boy looks away before the task is completed, and struggles ten minutes longer than all the other boys before completing the knot successfully.

If it is this difficult to learn how to tie a knot with the instructor present, showing you how to do it for free, imagine how difficult it must be for an adult to innovate without additional supervision. Like the young Boy Scout, it is hard to pay attention and simpler just to take the easy way out. Trial and error. Which is why the pace of innovation is so slow and why the term innovation gets tattooed on every product upgrade. Only a few years ago Procter & Gamble would label it's products "new & improved," an ultra this or concentrated that. New & Improved has simply been replaced by the word innovation - today's marketing buzzword.

MADISON AVENUE Blog Makes it into AD AGE Pages!

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Yippee! MADISON AVENUE Blog gets published in Advertising Age Magazine. What a thrill! Responding to editor Jonah Bloom's request for his Power 150 Crystal Ball 2.o article on what's hot and what's not in Digital Marketing, and what technology marketers should be looking out for in 2008. Our recommendations got mentioned - along with a link to our site. I haven't checked the print edition yet but Google analytics picked up a tremendous spike in readership. Thank you Jonah Bloom and Ad Age! Thank you readers!

Does Your Brand Suffer From INCOMPLETE COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE PICTURES?

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I read the following description of the 'Competitive Landscape for Grocery Stores and Supermarkets'

"Demand for food products is limited by the 1 percent annual growth of the US population. Profitability of individual companies depends on having the right product mix and on efficient operations...."

And wondered where in the hell the ability to effectively differentiate one store chain from another comes in to play. Given that groceries, as a whole, are heavily price driven commodities, the stores do not really do a good job of differentiating themselves save for store brand name, geography and weekly circular.

There's none of that 'positioning work' going on where a brand like Pampers advances beyond cost-of-entry 'fit' and 'dryness' (have to fit the baby and keep it dry) to infant 'development' as a means to raise the perceptual positioning and sales bar.

New Products: Non-Slip Toothpaste Tube

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Just to keep this post simple: I brush my teeth in the shower. Do you brush your teeth in the shower? I wonder how many people brush their teeth in the shower? Does Procter & Gamble, Unilever or Colgate wonder if people brush their teeth in the shower? When will we know how many people brush their teeth in the shower? When will they distribute a non-slip finish on toothpaste tubes? If you google "non slip toothpaste tubes" you get zero results. The idea must exist in the new product twilight zone. Answers from the beyond.

Differentiate Or Become A Heavily Price Driven Commodity Brand

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I was going to call this post "Differentiate Or Die" then remembered that that's not true. If you are a major brand in the real world, and you are unable to differentiate yourself, you become a heavily price driven commodity brand, such as Folgers, in a heavily price driven commodity category such as 'ground roast coffee (GRC). Other examples of heavily price driven commodity brands and categories include United, American or any airline, Duncan Hines in baking mixes, Crisco in edible oils. And now I leave room for a few of you readers to add a few of your own. It takes a lot of time to become a heavily price driven brand in a heavily price driven category - so what is it these advertising agencies have been doing with your advertising budgets all these years if it hasn't been differentiating "YOU" in the marketplace?

I tried to post the following on the Marketing M.O. Blog that got me started thinking about this via Seth Godin's the "the" factor, but was unable to. So here's the comment I tried to post there.

How would you express the "the" factor if you were a fried chicken chain attempting your first US expansion? How would you find the "the" factor in a recent Harvard Business case study of a new VP Marketing positioning "HUNSK MOTORCYCLES" as "authentic". Is this brand not converging on the same position owned by Harley Davidson, Indian and resurgent Victory motorcycles (also claiming authenticity) - just saying the same thing their own way. I would say you need to differentiate or die - but that's not what happens in the real world. When you are unable to differentiate yourself - which is what has happened to brands such as United, Oldsmobile, Dodge, Folgers, Crisco, Duncan Hines and so many others - you just become a heavily price driven commodity brand in a heavily price driven commodity category.

Presidential Candidates, George Bush, Avoid Gas Price Issue

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Why do the US Presidential Candidates avoid any discussion of hemorraging gas prices? Why are we paying $4 per gallon so the Sultan of Dubai can build an island and the world's tallest buildings just off his gulf's coast? You think he's paying for it? No! We are!

Why are Americans directed and misdirected to purchase a Toyota Prius when in reality there is no gas shortage, just behind the scenes manipulations to facilitate middle east finances at the expense of American pawn citizens? You know that as soon as George Bush leaves office the price of gas will drop back to $2 a gallon. Or are Hillary and Obama making back room deals with the middle east too?

Is this the reason The White House offers no "Ask The White House" or "White House Interactive" links to gas issues on their email links page? Certainly they know we as citizens are edgy about gas prices. Has The White House told the candidates to stay away from the issue? What middle east construction project deadlines coincide with the departure of George Bush from office?

Should we foment a revolution and start dumping tea into Boston Harbor at our local gas stations? Should we have a National 'Buy No Gas Today' Boycott? Why not? What would happen in the middle east? What would happen to US gas companies if one day a week for the next 12 weeks no one in America bought gas or paid a gas or oil bill? The gas companies are each profiting arount $40 billion per quarter right now. You know their Chairmen, Board Directors and Executive Managements know they have the world by the balls. How many of them are anticipating artificially driving the cost of a barrel of crude to $300 a barrel to further facilitate middle east expansion plans while they profit $100 billion a quarter per company. Hell, Why stop there? Is a trillion dollars a quarter out of reach for an artificially gas-starved world? Hey, it pays to think big. Better wake up America! A Prius is no where near the answer. We need a gas revolution. We don't need to talk about peace in the middle east. The issue is deals in the middle east at the expense of the American consumer. Danger Will Robinson, is just beneath the surface.

Chrysler's Marketing Con Job

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WHAT KIND OF STRATEGY AND ADVERTISING DO YOU GET WHEN THE MINDS OF THE FEW TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE MINDS OF THE MANY?

I was feeling kind of bored by blogging so I hadn't posted much recently. You know, you get tired of watching marketers do the same things at the same companies different ways year after year. But Sunday, I sat next to an interesting gentleman at my daughter's National Junior League Basketball Championship game (yes, we won). Turns out he's the head of finance for Toyota and has to sign off on all this stuff. So he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I could make every $35 marketing dollars work like a $100. We started talking about what was wrong with car ads and decided to pick on Chysler's rebirth led by Deborah Wahl Meyer, VP-CMO.

Her new direction latches on to lifetime powertrain warranties? What's wrong with that? Well, no one really cares. With nearly 70% of all vehicles leased these days i'm going to turn my new car in in 3 to 5 years anyway - not to mention the fact that bread and butter cars like the Accord and Camry are made so well that they don't even break into a sweat by the fifth year. So who would care about a lifetime Chrysler powertrain warranty? Only the very feeble minded. But then again, that's the kind of strategy and advertising you get when the minds of the few try to communicate to the minds of the many. Conclusion: Another case of a marketer failing to do proper consumer marketing homework. That's the kind of stuff that gets me excited again!

Jonah Bloom Outreach

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Dear Blogger,

Are you a recipient of the Jonah Bloom outreach email from Advertising Age Magazine? If you are a member of Advertising Age Magazine's Power 150 Marketing Blogs I'd encourage you to check your email. Here's what I had to say in response to the email:

The most overlooked piece of digital technology today is the simplest and most overlooked. The keyword. With 81 billion blogs and websites, business owners depend upon keywords to drive site visits. But we all use the same keywords. So it becomes impossible for Google’s AdSense for Search and Content Optimization Teams to help you build truly effective campaigns. Regardless of the business you are in. If you are an ad agency ‘ad agency’ would be a keyword, so would branding, strategy, product positioning, differentiation, marketing and a plethora of other terms we all use. Commodities. So using keywords, differentiation becomes impossible; unless you find a way to identify keywords people are searching for that no other web site but yours has to offer.

As a new product concept and product positioning consultant to companies such as Procter & Gamble I was stunned to find a site with a very simple keyword utility called wordtracker.com. You plug in the term and it gives you something called a KEI index. The higher the number the more people are searching for the term and the fewer the number of web sites containing the keyword. What a great way to differentiate yourself. I’ve found gaps covering “Perceptual Monopolies” and “Abstract Dimensions” among others that have captured the fancy of inquisitive clients everywhere, and the best part is, no other consultant or ad agency on the planet employ these terms, so I know they’re not stepping on my Intellectual Property or sharing these concepts and philosophies with clients.

How not to launch a New Coke

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As CMO presiding over the launch of New Coke, Sergio Zyman rode herd over one of the largest and most important marketing blunders in history - proving that everything my father taught me about how companies and ad agencies typically create new products was absolutely true. He wanted me to believe that all ad men were crooks and con men and that they wanted clients to believe that they were the only people with phone lines to God on Fridays. He also wanted me to believe that when developing new products, most companies, including Coca-Cola did little more than set four men in a room to brainstorm - and when they did, it was usually over a supplier related concept rather than anything original. New Coke was based on a supplier's new sweetener, and it failed. Pepsi's Indra Nooyi took Procter & Gamble's Olestra and launched failed WOW! Chips with Olestra thinking the underwear staining grease would be overlooked by diet conscious consumers. Guess they were wrong. Why were they wrong?

They were wrong because they made these decisions themselves. Time and time again I'd watch inexperienced assistant account executives prepare recipe dissemination ads for Leo Burnett clients and no other input whatsoever. Take it to the account supervisor who takes it to the client and voila, another ad, another account, another sale bites the dust. We see it and forget it. Might as well be making newspaper ads for all the insight that goes into such productions - but hey clients, it's your money not mine.

I always preferred a form of consumer homework I used to employ that proactively stimulated consumer minds with hundreds of phrases covering all known and potentially hidden product dimensions that in some way shape or form might impact consumer perceptions. I put the creative stimulus packets in front of consumers, removing myself from the loop, and let consumers choose the most important directions. Because I didn't have to use my mind as the "Idea Broker" I kept hitting home runs for people like Coke and Pepsi, General Motors and General Mills.,

What's different about today? Executives in companies still don't like to do their homework.

New Cold-Formula Crest With Zinc

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The managers at Procter & Gamble are always shopping for new Perceptual Monopolies. They just don't know it because I am the only marketer that uses the term. And why do I do that? Because I am the only person who knows how to do it.

A Google search for the term yields no results. Calle & Company is the only marketing firm on the planet that returns a result among marketing, advertising and sales companies. Perceptual Monopolies.

The managers at Procter & Gamble are also pretty miffed at their inability to take down Colgate's Total. Crest Pro-Health is fraught with perceptual problems that limit consumer acceptance so they're back to square zero looking for a contender.

Google search "Cold-formula Crest" or "Crest with Zinc." You'll obtain zero results if you do an exact word match search with quotation marks around the terms. That means there are no such products in the market and a golden opportunity for the straight-forward problem-solvers at P&G to attack. Perceptual Monopolies.

You can't tell me people don't think differently about their toothbrush when they're sick with the flu. But P&G will all too quickly not do it thinking people will just get a new toothbrush. Boy, when you don't want to do something one excuse is just as good as another.

How did I get so smart? How do you get smarter?

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I was wondering how I got so smart? Then I remembered Greenwich resident and neighbor Oliver Grace telling me, a seven year old boy, "Marty. Marty. Marty. Life is a matter of exposure. The more you expose yourself to, the more successful you'll become, and the more frequent your success."

Well said.

So whenever my dad or I'd get a project from say Procter & Gamble, Kraft or another company to invigorate a brand or create a new product we'd first sit down and list out over 500 dimensions concerning that product that in some way shape or form might impact or influence consumer perception regarding that product. Once that was done, the real work began. Under each dimension; Sensory, form, function, usage, image, price, packaging, delivery system and many others only we'd heard of, we'd bullet point another 500 short phrases per dimension that in some way shape or form might impact or influence consumer perception. When done we'd have amassed about 250,000 phrases - a list that often took over a month to complete. From that list we would select 500 to 1,000 phrases that we would put in front of consumers so that consumers could select the phrases they liked best. At times, we would stay up and argue for more than 72 hours straight over which stimulative phrases should be in the creative stimulus packages presented to consumers and which ones shouldn't. Some of my favorite all time phrases?

"Provides night time tranquility"
- which led us to the invention of NyQuil for Richardson-Vicks.
"A soup you eat with a fork"
-which led us to the invention of Campbell's Chunky Soup.
"Comes in a hard top Marlboro box"
- which led us to the invention of Tic Tac Mints.
"Helps me work and play well with others"
-which led us to reposition Folgers as the best part of waking up.

For the most part, the exercise described above represents and represented far more homework done on the part of a client, for one product or brand, than all of the advertising agencies on Madison Avenue could claim combined - had they worked on that brand. It was a powerful lot of experience.

In this, we became adept, preeminant at finding product-based problem-solving selling solutions for a wide range of marketers asking questions.

1) How do you keep Marlboro smokers in the Philip Morris franchise once they decide to switch to a competitor's brand?

2) What are the future consumption drivers in soft drinks?

3) When does a candy bar stop becoming a candy bar and start becoming a cookie?

To date, I've participated in the development of millions of stimulative phrases - short 5 to 7 word statements that pass the consumer test, " If a product did or said that about itself I would try that product once - and if I tried it and liked it - I'd buy the product again."

This process remains, to this day, the fastest way to innovate in any category.

1) It enabled Wheaties to increase distribution 24% and win an award as The Year's Best Repositioned Brand from Advertising Age Magazine.

2) It enabled Breyers to set record profit and volume featured in Kraft's Annual Report.

3) It enabled Tylenol to resucitate the 92% of capsule segment sales lost to cyanide tampering with the invention of Tylenol Gelcaps - the first inherently tamper-proof capsule.

So I ask you, what company wouldn't benefit from having a dose of this creativity applied to their business?

New Cold Formula LISTERINE with ZINC

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What I'd launch if I was them? New COLD FORMULA LISTERINE WITH ZINC. No. It doesn't exist yet, but a current bout with the flu grunge guarantees I'd buy this line extension new product.

OTC Cold Symptom Remedies

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I am such a believer in the power of positive thinking to stave off the onset of colds and flu or to reduce the severity of both that I find it difficult to believe that not a single otc cold symptom relief brand harnesses the power of positive thinking in its ads. "Here is the brand that gives you a better outlook on things, a better attitude." Now the lawyers would say that couldn't be done. They said the same thing when we devised Folger's, "The best part of waking up is caffienne in your cup." The censors said we couldn't sell a drug so we simply replaced the word 'caffienne' with the word 'Folgers'. Heavy ground roast coffee consumers related and drove the brand to number one. But I know why the otc companies really don't want to more substantively differentiate their product from rival's. They don't want to take the time or spend the money to do the homework. They feel their advertising agency should do this for free - which they do - but they do it without doing any homework opting instead to sit around and brainstorm in their office the old-fashioned Darren Stevens way on Bewitched. Categories and their customers have become too sophisticated for that, yet the commodity symptom relief advertising persists year after year and brand positions remain unchanged as greedy CEOs await the next technological breakthrough to drive their business forward. Why not just do the homework and get the job done now? Instead, next season we just might see an ad agency making Samantha Steven's infamous nose wiggle the trademark of their client's advertising. Different ways of handling itchy drippy noses. Wouldn't Tabatha's nose wiggle be cute?

FRIDAYS on MADISON AVENUE

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A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.

- David Brinkley

Bud Lite Copies Miller Chill Salt and Lime

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You know what's so boring about blogging. The fact that marketers never do anything different. You could have had the same story ten years ago, and the only thing that would be different would be the names of the products and the names of the people copying each other. Is this what they teach in business school, or after, in business. Where I went to school, you always flunked when you copied. Why is this lesson now lost?

I don't know what Budweiser's VP, Innovation Pat McGauley and VP-Trademark Brands Dan McHugh's are talking about regarding this product launch. Nothing about research is "extensive." It just takes you up to where the road ends. People then stop their search for the trump card when the price gets higher - the cost of doing more profitable homework. (The saying goes, "People stop chasing their dreams when the price gets too high.")

Why copy Miller? Go past them. That's what Miller Brewing's New Ventures Director Dave Krishock and I did back in the day. While Budweiser was busy chasing another phantom called 'dry beer' Dave and I discovered the concept of Cold-filtered Miller Genuine Draft instead - now the most popular brand in Miller's portfolio.

A product launch worth spending time on would net 10-20 share, not the .3 to .5% sought here. Maybe that's why McKinsey & Company reports that despite solid balance sheets and healthy bottom lines the CPG industry has lost its glow and the executives in it are wondering where their growth will come from.

Conflict Fuels Technology

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But conflict first requires ideas. Without first ideas, technology and competition is impossible.

Is your brand a parrot in the land of odds?

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Is it?

Pagan Technology Worship - The First Rule of Positioning

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All those who worship pagan technology Gods ultimately fall to those who can change consumer habits and practices with ideas rather than devices. An idea can be more powerful than any technology man can perceive - especially in marketing and business development.

Where Did Everything You Know About Marketing Come From?

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Where did everything you know about marketing come from? How would you react if you found out that everything you knew about marketing was a fraud? A sham? How would you operate differently, if you did not have everything you think you know about marketing to lean on?

Well I'm here to tell you that it's all true. All those meetings you go to - in companies large and small - old and new - where you talk about and rationalize strategies utilizing terms such as Alpha Males and Alpha Females, Early Adapters, Late Adapters, Thrivals and Rivals, Adverturers and Basics, Generation X and Generation Y, those who Cocoon and those who do not. It is all a sham. A scam. Or as George Parker would say, "An AdScam. The horror."

I have been and my father before me a pioneer in advertising and marketing. Before any of the above existed we watched in amazement as we, the rival companies that sprouted up (for example SRI's Values & Attitudes Lifestyle Studies were just knock offs of our Culturally Influential Consumer Groups) (and focus groups an offshoot of our orginal Assays Product Investigation Circles) sold the next big thing to clients that never realized all of this was just made up by four guys sitting around a room, or a couple of people sitting in a closet trying to think of new ways to make money. So that they could have you believe that they were the only ones with the phone lines to God on Fridays.

Where would you be if you had none of this made-up-crutch to lean on. I'd tell you where you'd be. As a marketer and advertiser you'd be much better off. Go out and start thinking for yourself - and stop thinking what someone else already thought.

What It Means To Let Consumers Help With Brand Building

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Adidas Lets Consumers Help With Originals Brand Building

But as I said to the people at Adidas, "consumer-generated input is not the same as 'consumer creativity'." To gain true conumer creativity Adidas need provide customers 'creative stimuli packets' that enable consumers to leapfrog their current experience, perceptions and frame of reference. Otherwise, Adidas will remain #2 even though they are trying harder.

Micro-wits Working Their Way Up To Full Idiot

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Here's a survey for you. I just received an Advertising Age Magazine e-mail poll asking me if I thought the merger of Microsoft and Yahoo would change my life. IDIOTS! No, half-wits, working their way up to full idiot.

I say again...Microsoft + Yahoo = Sears + K-Mart. The name of the new company will be "MicroSearch." Nothing about Microsoft or Yahoo's positioning strategies compel me to fix the problem of changing my consumer habit and practice of using Google, and switching to them. This is not one of those Field of Dream's "If you build it they will come" mergers. There once was a time when marketers did change consumer habits and practices with brain, what they now can't do with brawn; believing instead that 'the lazy man's sell' of direct mail promotions, social and behavior marketing (along with traditional) will effect the desired transformation in consumer usage. But it just ain't so. Congratulations. You were just promoted to full idiot Steve.

Fly Commodity Airlines

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United Airlines says it will charge a service fee for a second piece of checked luggage, a move experts say will spread across the beleaguered industry.

Why is it that the more airlines try to make money the more desperate they become? Charging for second bags, banks charging for talking to tellers - The inexorable march toward commoditization not realizing that once you trade on price you've gotten your brand equity so far down a hole you'd have to climb up a ladder just to get to the bottom.

What companies used to do with brains (the creation of positioning strategies that actually changed consumer habits and practices regardless of price), they now do with brawn. But then again, the airline industry never was very nimble with this type of creativity and differentiation. When the competion drops the bar this low it makes it real easy for some one like Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines to steal the business just with a joke. I love Southwest. Last time I got on the flight attendant said, "Thanks for flying Southwest today. If at anytime during our flight today you need something, you make sure you just let us know... ... ...right after we land." Later, "Thanks for flying Southwest today. This concludes our flight. If there was anything you did not like about our flight today make certain you call ... United." Fabulous!

Trading on the humor selling dimension rather than business class segmentation and price. Then again, this is what happens to a company when it crunches too many numbers. Promotionally driven price-biased companies that must whine for government subsidy to stay afloat. Why do they make my life so boring? As Professor Kingsfield said in The Paper Chase, I wish they'd "Fill the room with [their] intelligence."

Not long ago I flew to Miami on Southwest and the flight was booked solid. Once again, everyone enjoying the personality and humor infused by the CEO. On the way back I was less fortunate in flying American Airlines. The flight was empty. In discussing the differences with flight attendants to pass the time Southwest was disparaged by the flight crew as being "Sooo unprofessional." To which I said, "But it seems unprofessional sells."

Lost and Found

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The Guitars That Destroyed The World. If anyone can find me one of these, I should like to have one.

The SuperBowl Ads - The Sins of Our [Advertising] Fathers

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OK. I'm not going to get into how bad every single SuperBowl ad was yesterday. Not a single ad made a point or gave me reason to separate myself from my money for any one of the advertisers who spent ridiculous amounts of money to get in front of me yesterday. Oh sure, I laughed at some, and groaned in pain at others. I empathized with the Budweiser commercials, appreciated Hyundai's Genesis ad and laughed at Bridgestone Tire's "oh nooooo" Mr. Bill Squirrels and friends - but that's not the point.

The point is this - THE SINS of our advertising fathers. How companies get so wrapped up in what they did before that they'll give us a sequel next time - like GoDaddy. And to believe someone has a job signing off checks on spending hundreds of thousands in production costs and millions to air ads that don't work. What do I mean by "don't work?" How do I define "don't work?" I mean, NOT ONE SINGLE AD I'VE SEEN IN YEARS has created the consumer habit and practice of getting me up off my dead ass to go separate myself from my money for any of the products I've seen advertised. And I'm not a particularly tough sell. It's just that advertising no longer 'perceptually' intriques people. Oh, I can like them. That's one definition of perceptual intrigue. But I don't act on them or their lack of 'call to action.' Just informing me with an entertaining ad won't cut the mustard or gut the fish. They don't ask me to get my hands dirty, make a decision or do something. For example, no ad agency looks at a stew and sells it as Chunky Soup "the soup you eat with a fork." They sell it as a stew, as did all Super Bowl ads yesterday. Lost are the Abstract Selling Dimensions that put your mind to work. Brands, advertisers and agencies have become like ten speed bikes - most having gears they've never used.

I knew the end had come long ago in advertising when Kraft market researchers looking at my positioning recommendations on key brands asked me to "take all the sell" out of the concepts 20 years ago when Philip Morris was revamping the company with me and Chairman Bob Morrison. What was left was a gelatinous blob of verbage that bore no interest. People who'd never sold anything other than their resume to a college recruiter became 'qualified' through the myth of their position to somehow now become the arbiter of what's sold to us. High impact concepts were consumer created, and exceeded all previous AC Nielsen BASES norms for intent to purchase with top two box intent to purchase scores well above 97%. What Kraft ended up with was business positioning concepts limping around the 2% ups and downs in America's birth rate. Madison Avenue and it's manufacturing clients have lost the killer instinct - what Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed would have called the eye of the tiger.

Too many damn 'don't say anything wrong to anyone liberals' have taken the punch out of a world where brands made a bigger impact being only some things to some people rather than trying to be all things to all people. Go Daddy's ad, for example, was just an example of sheer arrogance and how companies of like ilk end up producing ads that talk too themselves about themselves which is why the rest of us just don't get it. Are you paying attention GM? To be a brand you have to stand for something, and brands today are uncomfortable asking us to make that decision - which is also why so many people get divorced. It's easier. Which is why I'd rather fight than switch. [Get it? - or is this too lost in our politically correct and socially conscious memory?]

Microsoft + Yahoo = Sears + K-Mart

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Obviously, Steve Balmer has so much money he's forgotten how to find, or make a good deal. Need I say more? Once again proof that what companies once did with brain (out market Google with positioning that causes more people to choose Yahoo) they now do with brawn (mergers & acquisitions). Where is the finesse in business anymore?

Result of merger? A new business called 'SoftWho'? 'YawnSoft'?

Steve Balmer. Sit down for lack of creative thinking. This move about as inspiring as HP's Carly Fiorona buying Compaq when everyone knew there was no money in the hardware end of the PC business. Even the manufacturers let the retailers spend the ad dollars to drive the brands. But Carly ignored that too - if she even ever knew it.

Microsoft + Yahoo = Sears + K-Mart

Braking Sensors Slow Speeders - End Speed Traps

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Forget about cruise control and photo enforced speed limits. The technology has long existed for auto manufacturers and transit authorities to install sensors in vehicles and on roadways that automatically brake cars exceeding set levels. Therefore, the police and municipalities would no longer be able to make money from your speeding infractions. The same sensors could stop your car at stop signs and slow your car on exit ramps. A radar system to warn of obstructions already exist on some vehicles. This would be the end of speed traps

CLASSIC SUPERBOWL PRE GAME WARM UP MUSIC

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Play it loud. Bob James. "Farandole" Also great music (McCann) for a Buick ad. Also great music for a hip hop remix.

Scatterlings of Africa - Juluka

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Some of my favorite world music. Scatterlings of Africa. Johnny Clegg. Juluka. Hope you like it.

Why I Like Barak Obama

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I like Barak Obama, or Barry Obama as El Rushmo called him this morning, because he speaks well. But not only does he speak well. If you've ever been responsible for leading others in an endeavor or organization you'll recognize that the words used come from an inherent understanding and regular application of concepts such as Integrity, Accountability and Responsibility according to the John Maxwell School of Leadership Development. It is the best embracing a simple philosophy, "When you help other people get what they want, you get what you want." The implication being that Barak Obama will do the right thing when no one is looking. That reflects character. HC has simply yet to realize that there is no 'I' in team. BO is a team and consensus builder.

Calle & Company launches new smoking cessation plan.

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Are you interested in quitting smoking? Forget all the patches. Forget all the plans. Quit smoking the way I quit smoking. Go out and try to run a quarter mile. You'll cough up a lung and "the burn" in your chest will certainly convince you that you are doing something you need to quit.

Obese? Stop suing people like McDonald's. The truth is, Americans simply no longer labor manually. Go out with a shovel and start shoveling sand, or digging holes. I found that several weekends of over turning 12 inches of earth in every garden in my yard not only stimulated a healthy appetite for "good food," it trimmed inches from my waistline, added strength and muscle definition and I slept a lot better at night too. A good physical workout cleared the mind and helped melt away worries and put them in perspective.

You have the power. Stop blaming other peole and stop looking for excuses. Get a checkup with your doctor and get to work.