Southern California Sonic Boom

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Big one! 12:17 PM this afternoon. Anyone know what it is/was?

How Marketers Define "Convenience"

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THE CONVENIENCE BACKLASH

Marketers, always ones predisposed to put a positive spin on things, define "Convenience" a major attribute in packaged goods categories as, "time saving." Sounds good and irrefutable right? Well, at least we've all been conditioned to believe that this is true.

As SIEMENS defines convenience: Convenience enables the automation of the routine functions around the home to improve your comfort and enhance your lifestyle. Sounds like Siemens intends robots to take over every humanly function so that our brain cases become gelatinous gobs of goo. Insidious.

The truth is, "convenience" has conditioned us all to become "lazy" and poor "time managers." Why exercise those muscles when I don't have to. I have these "convenience" items to get me over the hump?

Everyone that's truly good at what they do has a mentor that makes them better. Donald Trump found a mentor when he wanted to air The Apprentice in founder/director of Reality Series Survivor - Mark Burnett. Tiger Woods found a mentor in his father. Each was a time manager.

Hey consumer, you can't do it alone, so don't rely on marketers. If you are a consumer find products that make you work your physical, emotional and mental muscles, that make you manage your time. Make your family your mentors. Take time, make time to bake those cookies from scratch. By forgetting how to use these muscles, the products that champion convenience made us weaker time managers, weaker organizers, weaker, weaker. And that's what's ruined the American economy today. Weak Americans bred by America's spin doctoring convenience marketers. Bad medicine.

We don't have time to relax. We don't have time to relax because we don't use our time wisely. It's relaxing to mix up a cake batter - from scratch. It's relaxing to make a meatloaf. Buying it premade in the refrigerated section of the grocery store only makes you rush on like you don't have time to the next thing. Get convenience, get relaxed, make it from scratch. Quality living and time management is the best convenience. And it's not so hard once you try.

Marketers, look out for the trend against "convenience" in the growing age of responsibility and accountability. Time, is the only commodity we can't get back - consumers want to spend it wisely, so make it a quality time experience. A good opportunity if you're someone like Gold Medal Flour.

What's Wrong With Marketing

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Perception. Self-Perception. Everyone has a way of convincing themselves they're number one in some way shape or form. But that's not true.

The managers managing brands think they're OK even if they're not number one. They think OK of themselves. They come to work today to do the same thing they did yesterday and what they will do tomorrow.

Avis tried harder for a long long time. Never made it past number two. And rifled through managements faster than you can shake a stick at. So, unable to come up with a better idea (lack of abstract problem-solving skills) the linear thinking problem solvers simply buzzed their We Try Harder into a famous campaign. Famous? Yes. Memorable? Yes. But that never translated into enough rental units moved to become #1. Memorability does not always equal more SUSTAINED sales. Neither does generating impressions, celebrity endorsements by Oprah or Tiger, etc.

Apple is not a brand name that slithers off the tongue. The Ps get in the way. But Avis is even more a brand name that slithers off your tongue. A man, and most travelers were men back in the heyday of car rental advertising ordered a Hertz...it almost sounded like a beer. Shemales rented an Avis. Now, the industry is so dominated by linear thinking cost cutting problem solving managements that it's a heavily price driven loyalty driven category that spends relatively little on advertising.

Well, when someone at one of these companies comes up with something important to say I guess they'll stop "branding" (It's what you do when you don't have anything important to say) and start "differentiating" themselves with a product-based reason-for-being communicated via traditional and electronic advertising.

Hell, General Motors wasted billions on shemalish advertising every year. All those people thought well of themselves and that they were doing the right thing everyday. Now look at 'em. Problem is/was, they design(ed) and build(t) products to rental car fleet standards. So what did that say about the people who bought their sedans on their own? Not much. I can hear what the neighbors are thinking. "Jesus! He/She bought a rental car." Bye bye GM.

How To Create A Brand Name

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Forget who you're targeting. Say what you do. That appeals to the broadest audience with a call-to-action AND a reason-for-being. Vaseline INTENSIVE CARE Lotion, COLD-FILTERED Miller Genuine Draft, BAKED Lays. Well. You get the point. Drop the letters, V, S, A, Z and any other letters that slither off your tongue. They make your name sound soft like a shemale. "What do you drive?" "I drive a Venza." Sounds like you have an STD. "What do you drive." "I drive a Versa." Brand names with soft letters (V & A) just don't sound like they work or would last a long time. Use lots of strong letters like R, M, L, F, G, D, C, N, etc. Folgers sounds like coffee that will wake you up. It's also the #1 brand of ground roast coffee. MGD; Miller Genuine Draft is the most successful brand launched by Miller Brewing in the last 25 years. Chanel just sounds like it will make you sexy.

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. General Motors is free at last.

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It's not that General Motors product management ignores new product ideas that have a 97% top two box intent to purchase score among import-minded and domestic car buyers in bread and butter and higher margin luxury segments. It's not that they ignore those ideas even though they were presented with enough lead time to address current market conditions. You knew General Motors is/was really in trouble when letters on the subject sent to CEO Rick Wagoner went totally ignored. When those letters never reached his desk. When those letters were redirected by staff to underlings powerless to do anything about them - and who didn't have a care in the world about addressing company saving information further. But more importantly, you knew Genberal Motors is/was really in trouble when you followed up on those letters and you were told to call back because it takes Rick Wagoner's or any staffer's office five days just to acknowledge receipt of that letter. Way too slow in the information age and marketplace. If it takes five days just to log in a letter, imagine how slowly the organization responds to doing important work - like developing and properly marketing the products people want.

The answer isn't cost-cutting, delaying health benefit and pension plan disbursements or renegotiating union contracts and worker pay. Those are all the solution of linear thinking managements. The answer, rather than ignoring what people want and making what GM wants is to make what people want, not what trend forecasters say will sell. That's how GM and Detroit got stuck with all those SUVs. The problem is the results are , well, just too general. Not creative. Not abstract and interesting. Like one ex-head of GM strategy told me time and time again, "No one was/is going to save General Motors single handedly." Wagoner's ouster verifies that; but does it? He's been with the firm since 1977; steeped in the corporations culture so deeply that he never stood a chance. And that's the problem for other insiders. So if I were President Barak Obama, I'd bring in an outsider like Jim Sinegal who knows how to get things done at the speed of Kirkland as the CEO of Costco. Humble, efficient, a cracker-jack manager and he knows how to sell pallets of product everyday. Just the kind of volume General Motors needs. And you know what? American consumers are predisposed to want to buy cars a new way. We knew that 20 years ago. And GM didn't like the dealers either - always looking for new ways to eliminate those lengthy obligations, Abandon the dealers, streamline the pipeline and let people just order cars the way they shop for any other consumer good. Here's my credit card. Here's my down payment and my permission to automatically deduct each payment over the next 36 month. Kind of gets rid of the people with the bad credit and the whole finance infrastructure. Not needed to make the second most expensive purchase in your life today.

Why not take Saturn and make it the Kirkland brand. That'd be an interesting test! Then of course, there's my other solution for GM. Stop building cars altogether, lease the brand names to Toyota and let Toyota make the products in exchange for a payment on each and every sale to GM. What then to do with GM? Easy! Clean slate. Start over. Invent new product lines and brands. Sound hard? Not at all. At one time American's only had sticky paste and roll-ons as antiperspirants and deodorants. Then we invented a new form; Mennen Speed Stick; the first solid antiperspirant and still the most popular item in the category today. Just takes a little abstract thinking to determine what people want before they know they need it; then give it to them. Plenty of people happy to get paid $48 an hour to build cars since receiving their pink slips from the Japanese auto companies too.

The Relevance of Motown

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Not the record company. The Motor City. That's the question Detroit and the Big Three General Motors, Ford and Chrysler need to ask. What's the relevance of Motown? Obviously, their ridgid adherence to styling queues didn't do enough to set Oldsmobile apart. Oldsmobile's now extinct. So why'd they stick to portholes at Buick? Same reason. Dogma. Which is why portholes are still potholes at Buick. And when you see those portholes glued to the front quarter panels of some old import car you know they've given your brand equity the kiss of death. So what is the relevancy of brands such as Buick? Hopefully, the news of the auto maker's brands demise is premature. But the answer isn't in price. Once you trade on price your brand equity sinks so low you have to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom. And the US auto industry habitually throws promotions all the time - further decreasing their value. Now we can't get the credit even if we wanted to make a purchase. Quality, dependability, design and styling, J.D. Power Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Road & Track, Car & Driver and other media recognition, annual auto shows, all hype. And the only junkie who's hooked is our own US auto industry who continue to believe they can make what they want and use advertising to continue to convince us it's what we need.

Detroit's real salvation is in the identification of a Product Potential so relevant and meaningful to consumers that we'd mortgage our homes to buy their products. It's merely not sufficient to trot the "buy American" motto back out of mothballs. We've been there and done that. But as Procter & Gamble learned through Folgers it is possible to kick the habit. As all food and beverage manufacturers believe, we buy their products for taste, or flavor and aroma. Sometimes convenience. But that bar's too low. Of course you taste good. Otherwise I'll become a trier/rejector. But what is more relevant to heavy ground roast coffee consumers is "control." The best part of waking up is that stimulant in their cup. It helps them think earlier. They take flavor for granted.

And that's what Detroit needs to do. Realize that everything it says and does is taken for granted. Now give us a selling dimension that's more relevant to the US car buyer. It's all a matter of seeking out and finding that answer through the process of Perceptual Innovation. How you change the way we all think. Another "halo" new product just won't cut the mustard. We take 'em for granted.

And if they can't do it maybe they should hire Motown Record's founder Barry Gordy. At least he can identify a hit. He didn't make black music. As he said the other night, he makes music for everyone.

The Problem With Advertising

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The problem with advertising today is that it informs rather than sells. And there is a difference. Every time an ad informs it conveys the manufacturer's or provider's thoughts on a subject. A slice of thinking or tangent not relevant to all. As Simon Cowell would say on AMerican Idol; "an indulgence." That is different than focusing on a well-reasoned and highly differentiating reason-for-being for a product or service. The information ad only appeals to those who think like a minority - you - the ad or marketing manager. The ad that sells a reason-for-being makes the product or service relevant to a much larger audience. Examples on request.

MyStarbucksIdea.Com

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Does MyStarbucksIdea.Com actually make Starbucks a more valuable company or materially improve the value of the company's stock? Or is this just another self-pat on the back by those who email us singing the site's praises. It says it's been a year and 70,000 ideas later. But other than oatmeal for breakfast we have seen little. The company value/stock meter has not moved anywhere near the $22 lows it would hover before rebounding to thye $40s during the company's rapid growth phase. So who's still working on the real problem Starbuck's needs to address? "What do you do when the strategy that at one time made you all powerful has now rendered you a commodity? Obviously the solution will not be found by incumbent straight forward linear thinking problem solvers. As always in these situations the answer will be found in the realm of Perceptual Innovation that once again changes consumer habits and practices. A new product won't fix this. It's a consumer perception/positioning issue where the best answers are always abstract and so obvious they're just not obvious.

Memo from General Motors

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I received a note the other day from Maria at General Motors asking me to go visit GM Dealer showrooms and see if that doesn't cause me to reassess my position on the troubled car company, at present, living solely on borrowed time. Here is Maria's letter:

I work for GM, and wonder if you've visited a GM dealership recently? If not, I encourage you to test-drive award-winning vehicles like the Chevy Malibu, Buick Enclave and Cadillac CTS. Take a look at the photos of the upcoming Buick LaCrosse, Chevy Equinox, Cadillac SRX and the Cadillac Converj concept shown at the Detroit auto show last week. Vehicles like these have been extremely well received by the media and consumers, and are created for people who care deeply about beautiful design, reliable performance and fuel efficiency.Your reasoning suggests that if you're not number one, why bother. So should Pepsi slink away into oblivion because it hasn't caught up to Coke? By the way, GM led the U.S. auto industry by 750,000 vehicles in 2008, and is No. 1 in China, the world’s fastest growing market. But, eh, who’s counting, right?

So Maria, it sounds like you are another one of those corporate "younglings" (isn't that what George Lucas dubbed young Jedi in training in Star Wars - heads down, eyes covered, weilding light sabers blindly?). Maria, save yourself and don't deliver the same line I've heard from every generation of management at GM, and many other companies, for each of the last 40 years. The cars are no different and the ads all sound the same - perfect evidence that nothing's changing at GM, Ford or Chrysler. Yesterday I heard an ad about how I should buy a Cadillac because it's the product President Barak Obama is driven in.

Maria, do you have one of those coffee cups on your desk with the handle inside the mug? If you do, you will find the words "bass ackwards" imprinted on the inside bottom when you finish your coffee or tea. GM (and Ford and Chrysler) you've got it all (as Sean Connery would say in the Hunt for Red October) all wrong. You don't make what YOU want then use dealers, PR and advertising to tell us it's what we want. It's bass ackwards and all wrong.

How easy it is to turn potentially bright minds to the dark side and away from the force (known as Common Sense)

Thanks Maria. But I did visit GM dealerships yesterday anyway, and what I found did nothing to change my mind. I am what you now call a trier rejector. All I found was this year's version of last year's news - which for example is why portholes remain potholes at Buick and why Pontiac's positioning continues to suffer from pubescent development lag disease. (Pontiac is still making cars for adult teenagers who never matured mentally. In terms of age they may be adults but in terms of what appeals to them, they are old tweens. The experience? Completely uneventful. And no wonder. It takes about 5 years to get a car from concept to production/3 years on the fast track. Since GM was on the skids, a position well hidden back then, what's on the floor now and for the next couple of years will be, well, ho hum. Guaranteeing that the government bailout money will run out well before GM effects a turnaround - making it even dumber for ex-President Bush to give them some pocket change in the first place. I'd start sending out my resume Maria.

What's GM's best option? Stop manufacturing cars. License the names Toyota wants to Toyota. Let Toyota manufacture and market the cars and GM can collect a fee. This way, GM can cancel all the union contracts and the workers can earn a decent $48 an hour working for Toyota rather than the $78 at GM. Let GM and Mr. Goodwrench snap up hundreds of Jiffy Lube locations across the country and provide maintenance services. Like the name says, General Motors products are well, just too general, but I think they can do repairs on commodity vehicles very well. I've always liked their service and parts people anyway. GM hasn't done much to devastate my perception of them.

What's my solution for the US auto industry Ford, GM and Chrysler? Lump the three companies together in one company, get rid of the CEOs and Boards, bring in Costco's Jim Sinegal to manage the companies and make certain that the products offered meet Kirkland's brand standards. Sell the cars through Costco as well. No one likes dealerships anymore. By the way, Sinegal isn't a payroll hog either. He's quite humble and effective. And no, I'm not Jim Sinegal's talent agent.

General Motors Pisses On Consumers Again

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As part of the agreement made by Ex-President Bush to give General Motors part of an industry $17 billion bailout The Associate Press reports General Motors has yet to clean house of dunderheads who forget to engage brains before opening mouth.

According to an Associated Press article which sites GM's loss of the number one auto sales position to Toyota GM's Executive Director of global market and industry analysis Mike DiGiovanni downplayed the significance of the drop to number two saying the automaker is focused on profitability rather than sales volume. "I don't think being number one in vehicle sales means all that much at all to the American consumer. I think what matters most to the is consumer is strong brands and strong products..."

Jesus Mike! How do you have strong products and brands if you're not number one? Those are the strong products and brands! This statement is about as intelligent a move as your CEO flying to DC on a private jet asking for a handout. Seriously. It's in the same league. Did your PR department approve this statement before you let fly? Are your advertising agencies reviving an Avis like "We try harder" campaign? Mike, this type of thinking is why GM stock was trading around $3.50 yesterday. Oh, that's right Mike, I forgot. It's OK to say stupid things that influence consumer perception by telling us being a winner isn't important. Or did you never learn that Americans love winners? Your excuse for being stuck on stupid? ...GM is a penny stock company and penny stock companies don't employ the best, the brightest or those with much common sense. That's why they're penny stocks instead of corporate leaders. I won't even have to look today to know GM stock selling even lower.

But this type of gaff reminds me of another GM story years ago when GM hired a Deputy Director of the US Census named Vince Barabba to come in and give the company "a voice of the consumer." Vince met me in his office to explain he believed there was "a market for people who wanted cars that didn't look good." I had to ask Vince to repeat the objective of that new product assignment before I graciously declined to participate. I left. Vince stayed. Vince didn't last long at General Motors and neither did his Chevy Lumina.

If GM was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz do you think they and CEO Rick Wagner wake up each morning tapping their heels together saying, "It's not about sales. It's not about sales."

Let The US Auto Industry Fail

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Failure. It's the price General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will have to pay for decades of making what they wanted then trying to make us believe it was what we needed. Don't bail them out. Like children, they got what they wanted every time they asked and they never learned to fend for themselves. There is a book on this called Cornucopia Kids. It's about why so many college graduates end up living back at home.

Many times I presented what domestic and import car buyers said they wanted only to watch the Big 3 go in completely the opposite direction with their ad agencies as strategic partners. Before many a c-suite presentation the head of strategy would whisper in my ear how many friends I had in the room, but that no one was going to save these companies single-handedly. Now there's the death knell of an arrogant corporate culture.

Through many product launch failures these companies had plenty of opportunities to begin again more intelligently...isn't that what Henry Ford said? Instead, they just kept letting history repeat itself and loosing became a habit.

Could You Predict Obama's Victory?

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Were you a pre-election McCain supporter yet working in new products, consumer insights or strategic innovation? My opinion? If you could not predict Obama's victory as clearly as Jedi Master Yoda can see the future you need to ask yourself if you are in the right business. If you needed polls to keep track of where either candidate ranked, you are definitely in the wrong business.

MARKETERS: You're SOLVING the WRONG problems?

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Stop! You’re solving the wrong problem!

(A bed time tale) At one time you could create new products based on consumer want and need. Brand relevancy was easy. You were one of a kind. Then the pool of easy-to-see wants and needs dried up. Copy-cats tom, dick and harry converged on the same position doing the same thing with their own new products. Categories got crowded. Unable to better differentiate products, marketers resorted to pre-conceived strategies developed on their own. Boiler plate templates like price value propositions or recipe dissemination. Suddenly directly-connected consumers lost contact with original brands and became distant cousins. Heavily segmented price-driven commodity categories ensued due to self-inflicted wounds that sliced and diced categories until consumers strongly sought price-driven quality brands like Kirkland instead. The once powerful ‘brand’ began trading on price. As new generations of management moved in, consumer’s ability to relate weakened. We had so many things no one could put their finger on what they wanted. Purchases were not reasoned; with plenty of free credit people impulse-purchased even high ticket items. Brand equity sank so low it had to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom. As modern CMOs leveraged ever-proliferating media and networking solutions to reach smaller and smaller audiences to deliver watered down strategies generating only awareness and recognition, finding highly differentiated product-based growth solutions to secure sales took a back seat. But, doing the homework to find highly differentiated growth solutions to stir sincere consumer emotions, perceptions and purchase motivations remained easy. As more brands set up tents in categories crowding out older tenants we retained the original ability to find unique product-based selling solutions that create more space in densely populated neighborhoods. The only difference today, as then, is that the best new answers are so obvious they’re not obvious. They’re abstract, and exert a stronger pull on consumer’s hearts and minds than anything you could imagine. Since the dawn of categories, seeing unique business solutions requires Abstract Creativity®.

The Relevance of Brand Relevance

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Why is it that people running brands ranked 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th in a category can convince themselves that their brand is relevant. The same might also be asked if you were number two - say Anacin versus Tylenol or Advil. The same might be asked if you were a little brand like E.E. Dickenson's Witch Hazel or Gold Bond Powder. Why wouldn't they like to be a billion dollar brand instead of a couple of hundred million.

I never was one who thought much of that Avis, We try Harder shtick to justify being number two. Avis was just less relevant. Same goes for Adidas versus Nike or Maxwell House versus Folgers or Kraft Mayonnaise versus Hellman's/Best Foods, etc. So who wouldn't want to take that also ran brand and turn it into number one? When I used to run sales competitions first place would get a great prize, third place would get the same great prize and second place got a buck. Why? To drive home the point that no one remembers second place. In terms of relevance - that brand and the ones that followed were somehow wrongfully (or fatally) hitting the target between the eyes.

IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC) & Ask.Com To Close Bloglines?

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For those of you who don't know Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. Bloglines offers (so they say) "the most features for people who like their online news to be fresh. It’s the most popular website of its kind, indexing millions of new online articles every day."

So many popular bloggers, including myself, submit their feeds to Bloglines making it easier for readers to find valuable content. But there is a catch. When submitting your feeds as a publisher you must "claim" your feeds and await "authentication" from bloglines. To date, my feed status for "authentication" has been "pending" for two years. You do so much work on a blog that you tend to let things like this go back burner. So recently, I checked in with Bloglines again only to have found the problem still unresolved. So I made it my mission to resolve this situation.

Within the last 48 hours I have discovered that no matter how hard you try to "claim" your feeds, you can't. The user id field is prepopulated with a user name that is not your own...so you can't log in...and you consequently never can receive or re-request the "verification" email required to complete the process. Checking with the online support links I did find someone say the situation could be resolved by using the new Bloglines beta, but that doesn't work either.

Since I couldn't log in I resubmitted the "lost my password" form. You don't get a response because they say they don't have your email address on file.

If you try to resubmit your blog with your email and password they say that account already exists (but as I said, it's inoperative).

So I started making calls to Barry Diller's office. He's the head of IAC in Manhattan. I found out a guy named Eric Engleman is Blogline's General Manager. Eric Engleman's phone number is 510 985 7744. (From my due diligence - trying to fix the problem on my own - I found lots of us are having the same problem - so hey guys, this number's for you!) Additionally, Bloglines general phone number for Oakland (they're apparently no longer in Campbell, CA as the web site says) is 510 985 7400. They also have a useless customer service number that practically says we won't call you back - 510 985 8119. I just called IAC HQ in Manhattan again learning there is another Bloglines customer support number 510 985 8114. I'll try that next. (oops. just tried it. don't waste your dime. just a recorded message that sends you back to the (useless) help forums).

I spent the day yesterday resolved to correct this situation. I called IAC HQ in New York at 212 314 7300. The reception operators generally draw a blank when you ask for Bloglines. They don't know what it is (are you getting the sense there's no leadership here?) ... so you have to tell them what it is and that it operates (to my knowledge) as part of ASK.com (which is having its own obvious problems). At least that generates some recognition. They give you an IAC Customer Applications & Portal help number...914 826 2000, but when you call (and they are nice people) they disavow any knowledge or assitance with Bloglines.

So kind of like Mission Impossible, that's what I've learned to date. Is Bloglines working or not working. I don't know. But I do know I tried it and didn't like it so I probably won't buy it again...and niether should you. If you have any knowledge, please contribute. Thanks! I thought this could have been a short-term Bloglines maintenance issue, but two years?

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.

The Power Of Mind

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The power of one mind is magnificent. The power of multiple minds on the same problem is exponential.

Consultant's Trained Brains, Consumer Creatives and Brand Ambassadors

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In how many ways do consultant's trained brains, pre-selected consumer creatives and brainstorming brand ambassadors provide false positives skewing direction and slowing the expansion of brands and the success of new products?

Questions

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Of what good are questions if your mind is not inspired beyond those things of which you are already aware? Hence the saying, "You can't ask a question you don't already know the answer to." This is the classic consumer packaged goods bottleneck in strategic innovation, consumer insight, brand expansion and new products. To stop your ideas from going up in a cloud of smoke, such as what would it take to increase brand IKEA's relevancy, you must stimulate all minds, marketer and consumer, beyond all current frames of reference.

KRAFT UNREAL?

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If arch rival Best Foods/Hellmanns Mayo is so well entrenched as the "Real" Mayonaisse, why doesn't Kraft Mayo, long the category's also ran who uses Miracle Whip as its Halo-Crutch just stick their tongue in cheek? "Unreal" is such an exclamation of so many incredible things! I can see the spots now with hungry teenagers ripping into sandwiches slathered with Kraft Mayo nodding their approval, skateboards in tow. "Unreal dude." A sign of approval. And let's not forget, younger kids always want what the older kids have.