Author Archives: Bill Winchester

About Bill Winchester

Bill Winchester is Chief Creative Officer/SVP at LSB. Bill is fond of riding his bike and playing the bagpipes though rarely at the same time.

Break the Stranglehold of the Status Quo

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What I’m about to say may shock you coming from someone whose job it is to jumpstart brands: If you’re reigniting a brand you will probably fail. According to the Harvard Business Review, 80% of brands launched die and only 8% of those attempt to rejuvenate.

Why? The status quo is nearly impossible to fight. People hate change. It’s not just an uphill battle, it’s an uphill battle in slippery mud with rocks being tossed down at you and wild, crazy, rabid animals coming out of the woods and eating your shoes.

The question is, why? Why is it so damn hard to ignite a brand? The answer is there are three big things working against you.

The first is fear. I’ve tried to scare you away. I’ve warned you. And I’m willing to bet I’m not the first. Face it. You’re afraid. The status quo is safe and cozy and cuddly like a warm blanket…that’s strangling you.

The second is human nature. People don’t like to change. They like to come to work at the same time. They like to know the dress code. They like to do the same things they were doing. Doubt me? Change the soda in the soda machine. It will take you at least two months to quell the anarchy.  And that’s just the people who work for you.

Consumers hate change as well. According to Jack Trout, American families repeatedly buy the same 150 items and those constitute 85% of their needs. They hate change even when they know in their collective guts that your product or service may be better.  In other words, they love, love, love the status quo.

The third is binders. Yes, binders are the hobgoblin of brand jumpstarts. (Keep your Romney jokes to yourself.) “Whaaaa???” you say. Think about this scenario and tell me it doesn’t happen: You do a ton of brand research; you have scatter charts, focus groups, etc. etc. It’s all condensed into a neat little pile that’s called the new “Brand Bible.” It comes in a neat but uninspiring little binder.  No one really understands it other than it’s a bunch of words on a bunch of pages with a new tagline and some ishkabibble about what the brand means blah, blah, blah.

It gets talked about for about three days, shoved on a shelf and everyone goes back to, you guessed it…the status quo.

The binder problem boils down to relevance. The consumer never sees it and so it never makes the brand really come to life. In the words of Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery in How great design will make people love your company;  “…have you made your company matter to people? Are you a positive force in their lives? If you disappeared would they care?” And honestly, most of the time the changes companies are willing to make to reignite a brand aren’t enough to really matter to the consumer.

Of course, by now, if you’re still with me, you’re saying, “Cripes, that’s a downer, you’ve said ‘status quo’ like, 100 times, I get it, what’s the answer?”

If you hope to succeed (and I’m rooting for you, I really am) the answer is creating emotion. Emotion breaks the stranglehold of the status quo because emotion creates charisma and charismatic brands command a 40% premium.

And the most effective path to creating emotion is design.

I’m not talking about designing a neat new logo or website, or even redesigning the product, although these are all good things to do. I’m not talking about just physical objects. I’m talking about designing the sum total emotional experience people have with your brand. Only by getting down into the very DNA of the experience and creating something dramatically new can you actually change the way people feel about your brand. You need to make them feel there is a change. And unless you change the way people feel, you’re just feeding the status quo.

First, start by thinking of your brand as a portal. Great brands are like walking into a new world that is something either thrillingly different or incredibly soothing. They represent an ideal, a better place. Incredibly different? Unless you live in a Mies Van Der Rohe house, the Apple experience is thrillingly different from your everyday world. It represents the ideal future. Prefer soothingly familiar? Think Starbucks. It’s like Cheers without the liquor (hint to Starbucks, one word: liquor). Starbucks has created the ideal everyday experience.

If you start by thinking of the ideal experience your brand can provide, you can begin to diagram what you have to design to make that happen. Everything in the design chain is there to tell the ideal brand story.

Of course, this all takes a certain kind of thinking and approach and that is where you have to think like a designer. Obviously, in a blog, I’m not going to turn your company around, but here are some ways to start:

  1. Don’t do anything until you have to have top management behind you and even then you’ll probably be fired. Look at JC Penney. Geez, sorry, I know it’s a bummer but in this business you should always have your resume in order anyway.
  2. Be an iconoclast. Some of the best and most successful brands are headed up by iconoclastic leaders and because iconoclasts are better at ignoring fear and great design is, by nature, fearless. When you’re in the middle of reviving a brand you’re facing a lot of new and novel situations. In his book, Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Like an Iconoclast, Gregory Burns, PhD  says,  “The problem with novelty is that, for most people, novelty triggers fear…fear of uncertainty and fear of public ridicule are the two biggest impediments to iconoclastic thinking.” So, I guess that means, well, you have to grow a pair. Ladies, too.
  3. On that note, you have to realize the design process is about risk-taking, Robert Brunner says, “If great design resided in research, there would be a lot more great design.” Most companies think that there’s some magic oracle in the research. There isn’t. Not that you shouldn’t do research, but the right kind of research involves more than surveys it involves observation. David Kelley of IDEO describes successful experience design starting with the process of observation. Imagine you’re an airline and then think about redesigning that experience. There are about 12 things involved with the venture before you even get to the actual plane ride. If you observed the entire process you have a better idea of where an airline brand could make it itself matter to people. Using observation as a research tool makes it easier to make the creative leaps necessary for great design, but be aware, there will still be a leap into the unknown.
  4. The risk, and thus the fear are mitigated slightly when you realize design is an iterative process. Express–Test–Cycle. How quickly you prototype is directly proportional to the success of the experience design. David Kelley calls this “Enlightened trial and error.” Observe, make a version, get input from consumers, observe, change the design and start over. Most companies fail at this because they simply don’t move fast enough. They place too high a price on failure. In the world of experience design, make prototypes of every part of the brand experience. They don’t have to be finished, just get them in front of people to get reactions. Look for emotional cues, how people feel is more important than what people say. Body language, facial expressions and overall enthusiasm are more important that questionnaires. And let’s face it sometimes you know in your gut it’s right, then run with it. That “pair” you grew will come in handy.
  5. If you move fast you can address the fact that people hate change by burning the bridge as you cross it. It’s Blitzkrieg branding. Changing so many things, so fast that people can’t go back. The status quo simply isn’t an option.
  6. There is an experience supply chain. It starts with the earliest exposure to your brand.  That chain needs to be defined, led, staffed and watched constantly to make sure it’s as good as it can be. It includes everything, from product design, store design, customer experience, signage, post-purchase experience and nearly everything else you can think of.  It needs to look right and feel consistent. It includes all the senses. What people see, feel, touch, smell are all important and great starting points to think about your brand’s experience.
  7. The experience supply chain isn’t contained in a binder, it’s contained in the DNA of your company. Consider the brand experience your employees have.  The same question that applies to consumers applies to your staff: Do you matter to them beyond a paycheck?  Are they cheering for you? People feel best about the place they work when they feel they’re making a difference. Forbes has a pretty nice short article that may help.
  8. So, eschew binders that contain a gaggle of charts and graphs and meaningless research that are erroneously named “Brand Bibles.” Instead, make the brand bible an emotional experience that is an embodiment of the brand itself. There are some really nice examples of brands empowering their employees. You’ll recognize these as brands that matter and that is a testament in itself. Of course, these are still, in essence, fancy binders. Consider creating something more emotional. A movie, a video or even an entire physical experience can help people see, feel, smell and taste the brand experience. When brand matters to your own people, they are more equipped to make it matter to the consumer.

Breaking the stranglehold of the status quo isn’t easy. Like I said, you’ll probably fail, but if you can banish fear long enough to create a brand that really matters to your employees and customers, you’ll have done something impressive and important. Make them cheer for you. I certainly am.  Now go try and get yourself fired.

Launch Story: Esotika From Product Idea, to Key Insight, to Archetype

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Esotika GlassesThere are product categories that have gone years without innovation. And when I say years, I mean since Ben Franklin’s time.

Take, for instance, reading glasses. It’s not like they’re things that people seldom use. Some of us, well, actually all of us, are facing the inevitable entropy called aging. So, while reading glasses are useful, they aren’t necessarily celebrated or loved. Sort of like vacuum cleaners, Pepto-Bismol or hearing aids.

 

What’s new Ben Franklin?

So when a new product came to us with something that innovates in this category, it got our attention. Todd Huschka had an idea: make designer reading glasses that aren’t bifocals, but you don’t have to keep taking them on and off. His idea was to simply cut the conventional lens shape into a “U” so you could use your long distance vision looking straight ahead most of the time, but when you had to read you simply looked down through the glass portion for correction. Glasses to read. Not glasses to see far. Pretty slick idea. It seemed like a product with a lot of potential but would need to be differentiated on more than just the functional benefits. After all, there wasn’t a burning need for reading glasses. So what is the burning need and reason to live in a target consumer’s life?

 

Think deeper than benefits. What’s behind the need?

Rather than stabbing blindly (pardon the pun) in the dark, the first step is to figure out who your audience is. In this case it starts with demographics, but quickly expands to deep psychological needs. You don’t need anything but walking around research to know that the biggest audience for this product is people over 40. Demographics done. That’s the easy part.

The next step is to figure out what is their need? Not functionally, but psychologically. What about this brand makes them more of who they are? Not who are they–a 40-year-old female who’s facing farsightedness–but who they are archetypically? A brand acts as a prop in their personal theatre, so the key to success is to discover the story they are telling the world through the product.

 

What story are they telling to the world?

First off, the bad news: they’re aging. What happens when you age? You fight it. You deny it. You rebel against it.

Then the good news: when you age you just want to stay cool. Many people carry brands that say: “I’m still there. I’m still young.” Products that embrace the unconventional, that eschew normality scream young.

The story many people of this age want to tell the world is, “I’m still an original.  I’m not a fuddy-duddy. I’m still the cool rebel I always was.”

This is the harmonic convergence we’re looking for: a product that is avant-garde and breaks convent; a product that rejects convention and was literally born out of a need for re-inventing the way it’s always been done. That the product meets a consumer who is rebelling against aging and needs a brand-prop that screams unconventional.  Voila! Burning need.

 

Who gets to be invited to the show?

Does this mean that every boomer out there is going to wear these glasses? Far from it. Positioning is not about inclusion, it’s about exclusion. Besides, it’s unlikely that we’re going to sell this brand to people who desire conformity.

So we have an archetype: The rebel. The rebel, in a nutshell, is about tearing down the old. Breaking convention. Doing it differently. Creating a better world by getting rid of the old one.

From this point onward a brand can begin to form its unique point-of-view. The archetype informs everything from the name to the packaging to the tone of voice. It tells you who to cast as models and how to answer the phones. It informs new product innovation and sales strategies. In short, an archetype is the center of the brand universe. It establishes a need for products beyond the functional.

 

 

Off Target: The Difference between Branding and Retail Sameness at Target

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What’s happened to Target? Well, a lot of their advertising has gone stupid-retail for one. Their broadcast has become a big ho-hum that carries very little branding, almost zero concept and this means the brand linkage to Target is completely dependent on three seconds of logo at the end of the spot. Advertising like this relies on consumers actually paying rapt attention–which they don’t–and is a formula that makes it easy for them to confuse Target with one of their competitors.

 

 

 

For instance, check out this recent Target commercial for Champion sportswear:

 

The problem with this ad is it could be for anybody. Is it a Nike commercial? No, it’s really not that good. Is it a Kohl’s commercial? Maybe. It seems like a throwback to some “Softer Side of Sears” era. Lots of pretty pictures, absolutely no concept and worse yet, no brand linkage. If I don’t get bored and change the channel before the end, I wouldn’t know it was Target. Sure, it has Jude Hollywizzle and I guess if you were into street ball (which, I’m guessing, 90% of the soccer mom/Target shoppers aren’t), you’d pay attention. The goal here is to sell the Champion line of clothing , but what about the Target brand?

Here’s the new look for the brand ads that are doing the work supporting Target:

Compare that to this Target commercial from days gone by:

The use of the logo, the iconic use of the color red and the overall energy and vibe of the commercial. Could this commercial be for anyone else?

It seems especially from the retail ad side of things, Target has decided that rather than trade on its iconic brand it will try to be like every other retail chain. Here’s the formula:

  1. Find a pop song.
  2. Find a designer, movie star or a sports star that’s willing to be in your commercial.
  3. Edit a spot with random shots of that person doing random things.
  4. Put your logo in the last three seconds.

J.C. Penny does it. Kohls does it. And now Target. Not exactly differentiating or for that matter memorable.

I realize that brands need to move forward and the advertising needs to change with the times, but Target had a winning formula that put their identity at center stage. It was a celebration of their retail-ness or retailosity or whatever you want to call it, that carried with it a big, fun, hip personality. Different? Check. Memorable? Check. Certainly there’s a way to create new spots that are entertaining, have brand linkage and are, well, Targety.

The question is, do the new brand ads and retail ads do the trick? Do they carry that fun hip vibe of Target? Love to hear your thoughts in comments section.

(post edited to include brand ad)

Is Your Brand Training to Win or Just Happy to Compete?

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Competition ImageWhy is it that a lot of brands seem to lack the drive to compete? Marketing departments that are run by people who will kill you at racquetball, trounce you in a 5K or dunk over you in a game of basketball become shrinking violets when faced with a rival brand.

Marketing decisions that should literally take minutes, instead take months, bogged down in research and discombobulated decision-making. The “run-it-up-the-flagpole” culture that exists in America today has created a sort of corporate genetic mutation. Brands that should be lithe and agile, instead have mutated into weak-muscled, milquetoasts and are in danger of getting mowed down when the game gets serious.

But why? Why would a company choose to be non-competitive? There must be a good reason.

There’s a time to plan and a time to play

I believe it’s the disease of having to prove ROI, without a shadow of doubt, before a product or marketing campaign even exists. Instead of developing new products and innovative marketing campaigns, companies develop arcane algorithms and processes. Marketing and new product development stops resembling a game of racquetball or basketball, requiring quickness and ruthlessness, and starts resembling a stroll through a swamp requiring fear and slogging.

The result is new product introductions stall with fear and hesitation until the company loses interest or the idea becomes irrelevant. Brilliant ad campaigns decelerate while they are passed around from marketing manager to CMO to CEO and back again until they seem old and tired and suffer death by yawn.

It’s a four-quarter game

Who’s to blame? In the past, folks writing for the Harvard Business Review have pinned it on Wall Street. The problem, in a nutshell, is Wall Street rewards steady earnings over innovation.

Chris Trimble, who writes and teaches about strategic innovation at Tuck, is quoted in this article: “I’ve had CEOs tell me that ignoring Wall Street is the only way to do the right thing for the company’s long-term future. They choose to invest in innovation, take the short-term punishment (in the form of a declining stock price), and hope that the punishment is not so severe that they lose their job.”

I’m not arguing with the Harvard Business Review, but the problem goes much deeper than the CEO. Fear has become part of corporate culture and has led to a collective lack of competitive drive. That should be scarier than Wall Street.

The saving grace for most brands is their competition is doing exactly the same thing. It’s simply become the way business is conducted. It’s like everyone made a collective decision to be nice. “Let’s just have a friendly game. No elbows and no dunking, okay?”

But ask yourself this: What happens if one of your competitors has been sharpening their game? Becoming quick and ruthless. What if a new competitor came into the marketplace? Someone who can move fast and without fear? Perhaps a company who is privately held and doesn’t’ worry about Wall Street. Could you move fast enough to keep your advantage?

The solution is pretty simple. Learn to compete. Learn to win. Train. Run faster. Stop being fat and complacent. Simplify your game. Get mean. Throw some elbows. Be aware that you’re only winning because no one is challenging you.

Businesses need “first-step speed”

In many sports there is something called “first-step speed.” It’s the first step you take with the ball that gets you just that little bit in front of the competition.

A brand can develop that first step by doing a couple of things: First (and just to keep the sports analogy going) don’t worry about winning the next quarter, worry about winning the game.  Stop being afraid of Wall Street and start being afraid of your competitors. Second, question the algorithms and processes your company uses to develop everything. Are they really valid or are they simply slowing you down and opening up an opportunity for a faster competitor? And third, play the marketing game like street-ball. Not Wall Street ball.

You’re Creative, I’m Creative, Now Let’s Get To Work.

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I think everyone is getting sick of the us vs them argument. The fact is, ideas can come from anywhere. Creative isn’t the sole domain of the creative department. An idea is an idea whether it comes from ones and zeros or it comes on a scrap of a paper napkin.

Rein Inamoto’s definition is, Idea= Emotion x Function. And his article in Fast Company is causing all kinds of fuss. But that’s always been the formula for great advertising.

Here’s what I think is a little better definition: An idea is taking two previously unrelated things and creating something new. For instance, a strategy from point A and a technology from point B.

The thing I’m really getting tired of is this strange inferiority complex that seems to exist with people who don’t have the word “creative” in front of their name. Inamoto’s quote, “They were creative, it’s just that the creative thought they weren’t.” But when you say things like “Embrace the culture of code,” as he does, that sounds like a threat, not an idea. Code isn’t an idea. Algorithms are not an idea. No more than a television spot is an idea. That is, until they’re mated to something strategic plus something beautifully and strangely unrelated. That’s what makes an idea.

So, okay, screw it. Anyone who has the ability to put unrelated things together to make something new is creative. Everyone has that potential so we’re all creative. Ideas can come from anywhere. But let’s not forget our job is persuasion, and the ideas have to be in service of that. The delivery system has changed, the fundamentals have not.

There, I’m done.

Now Hiring: Creative Technologist

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Creative_TechnologistIn advertising we’ve often mistaken creative technologist for someone who designs websites and also doesn’t mind doing a little coding. Or a writer who can fix your computer. But the real job description is something that is so much more. The confluence of unfettered creativity and the technology to make it happen is rare. The two things seem to live at odds in most people’s brains and being good at one (like coding) often is at the expense of the other (like kinetic movement). Ask most art directors about algebra and you’ll get the idea.

I was surfing and I ran across this and it totally captured my attention. And while I’m not a big fan of America’s Got Talent this is a good example of why, as a creative person you have to keep your eyes and mind open to everything. You just never know when or where something is going to appear.

The woman who created this was a dancer and also into programming (this is the rarity that I’m talking about) created this and it’s a great example of what is meant by a creative technologist. Truly something different.

The million dollar question is, can an advertising agency hire someone like this and keep them engaged? I’d like to try, so if you’re out there we’re looking send me your stuff.

Is Design Thinking Really Dead?

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Impatient companies trying to incorporate design thinking into their organizations have become frustrated with the whole process and like children who’ve played with a toy so much they’ve worn down the batteries, they’re pouting and saying, “It doesn’t work.”

Here’s the issue, people who don’t fully understand design thinking have made it a “codified process,” effectively pulling the wings off of it. The people I’m speaking of are the corporations looking to capture some of the magic of design thinking. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be able to do anything without making it a Stage-gate process, attempting to apply straight-line thinking to something that eschews straight-line thinking. Anybody see the problem with that? To say design thinking doesn’t work is idiotic, to say there are people trying to implement it that don’t understand it is probably closer to the truth.

Three Principles of Design Thinking
Design thinking works in the hands of people who accept three principles:
1. It’s not a linear process, it’s an iterative exercise. It works by making illogical leaps. This makes some people in a corporate environment very uncomfortable. If I can’t repeat exactly the same success every time, what good is it?

2. It encourages experimentation, which means that there will be failure. Failure makes people uncomfortable. How much is too much? How much is not enough? People also want to codify failure.  But that’s not the point. The point is to make a lot of stuff quickly and find out what works and what doesn’t; faster. But when there’s a failure, people get impatient, and scared, even though they might actually get to the solution faster.

3. A lot, not all, corporate environments tend to have a basic hiring guideline that means they get a lot of people who think the same. It’s generally good when everyone is part of a cultural organism, but design thinking encourages us to go outside the boundaries. To look outside the culture that you’re in. Similar people focused on a problem which requires a unique solution often stymies the thinking. The way to get around this is to bring people in that aren’t part of the culture. People who are from the “outside.” People who don’t know the false boundaries that a corporate environment puts around thinking. People who can’t be fired for being challenging. Or fearless. Or crazy.

So to say design thinking doesn’t work is probably a lie. Saying corporations have a challenge implementing it is probably true. They need help to guide them through it.

Is it “Creative Intelligence” of just plain creativity?
Which brings me to a new fad, Creative Intelligence. Now, I don’t know much about creative intelligence, the buzzword, but I’ve been a “creative person” and worked around creative people for most of my life. So I DO know that there are a few basic things that creative people possess that haven’t been cultured in other people. These are:

  1. A broad curiosity of everything in the world.
  2. The ability to take dissimilar things and make a connection. To take all the curiosity and all the arcane knowledge and somehow connect the dots to make something new.
  3. A fundamental lack of fear. To experiment. To throw things away. To start over.

There’s no doubt you can encourage this, nurture it, coddle it. But there will always be people who are better at it than others. Not always necessarily labeled creative people. For example you might find them in the R&D department. They were the kids that wondered what would happen if they mixed shit together. It probably blew up or stunk the place up or some other failed experiment but they are curious and they’ll use the failure to try something new. That, to my mind, is creative intelligence.

But it will suffer the same damning as design thinking when it becomes codified. When everyone has to go to a seminar on curiosity.  Or attend a “learning session” called “finding your inner DiVinci.”

What it takes to do design thinking well

The answer, of course, is like everything that’s good. Good is hard. If you want to implement design thinking, creative intelligence or whatever the next thing is, you have to start by having a culture that encourages creativity by hiring people who think differently, encouraging play and banishing fear. Things that are unfortunately anathema to most corporations. Creating that culture is hard. Creativity is hard. There’s no magic process. No magic seminar. No magic book. You can’t institute creativity or codify it. You can only encourage it.

To succeed at design thinking, look to the Bible

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by Bill Winchester

If you’re part of a company that isn’t using design thinking to solve problems, well, sorry to be blunt but you’re behind the curve.

WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?

Design thinking, for the uninitiated, is a process that uses the tenets of the design process and applies them to other problems. Part of the reason for this is that great design has become a major player in just about everything involving the consumer experience. Product design, web design, package design, store design have all taken on extreme importance in the race to become differentiated and memorable. Smart companies have not only embraced design but have embraced the thinking process that makes great design and applied it to a myriad of problems. The thinking that designers use is not longer “weird” and “non-linear” but has become “vetted” and “viable” and has allowed business to streamline the solutions to complicated problems with speed ultimately creating more lithe and nimble go-to-market strategies.

In a vast oversimplification, there are four major steps to design thinking. Breaking a process down into big pieces rather than micromanaging it speeds it up and forces an organization to really think about what’s important in a macro sense. It also forces a lot of experimentation, collaboration and rapid development of solutions. Things that are sadly lacking from most of corporate America.

BILL WINCHESTER’S SIMPLE STEPS OF DESIGN THINKING

There are a lot of different ways to break the process down, but here’s my take: Step 1: Observation. Step 2: Assimilation. Step 3:  Rapid Prototyping. Step 4: Repeat.

Who else besides designers and smart companies use it?

Well, let’s take God for example. Not to get into an existential or futile discussion about religion that could potentially start an armed conflict, but for a really good example of design thinking you don’t have to go any further than the Book of Genesis. You want to create something fast? How about the heavens and earth in seven days? Actually, it was six because on the seventh day God probably just kicked back cracked a beer and tuned into a Packers/Bears game (he’s on the Packers side by the way.) Now that’s the advantage of design thinking. In other words, Genesis is a perfect example of the rapid prototyping part of the process:

IN THE BEGINNING … THERE WAS DESIGN THINKING

Day 1 – God created light and separated the light from the darkness,

calling light “day” and darkness “night.”

Day 2 – God created an expanse to separate the waters and called it “sky.”

Day 3 – God created the dry ground and gathered the waters, calling the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters “seas.” On day three, God also created vegetation (plants and trees).

Day 4 – God created the sun, moon, and the stars to give light to the earth and to govern and separate the day and the night. These would also serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years.

Day 5 – God created every living creature of the seas and every winged bird, blessing them to multiply and fill the waters and the sky with life.

Day 6 – God created the animals to fill the earth. On day six, God also created man

and woman (Adam and Eve) in his own image to commune with him. He blessed

them and gave them every creature and the whole earth to rule over, care for, and cultivate.

Day 7 – God had finished his work of creation and so he rested on the seventh day, blessing it and making it holy.

Now, you may look at this and say, “Hey wait, on day one God created day and night but He didn’t create the sun, moon and stars until day four. What’s up with that?” That, my friends, is design thinking. You create a hypothesis first and then experiment with ways to accomplish the desired goal. Think of it as a wireframe of sorts and the prototypes as rough sketches.

God probably said, “I can’t have these poor people bumbling around in total darkness and they’re going to have to sleep at some point so I’m going to need light and dark, but I’m just not sure exactly how to create it yet.”  Then on the fourth day, he had a brainstorm and said, “Hey, sun and stars and moon. And this is cool because now I have seasons, days and years.”

So, if you doubt the theory of design thinking just keep Genesis in mind. Or read Design Thinking by Tim Brown (or anything by Tim Brown for that matter), The Design of Business by Roger L. Martin or, if you’re in a company that’s ready to embrace great design and need some inspiration, Do You Matter by Robert Brunner.

Sorry, but I have to finish up here. The sky is getting very dark and there seems to be a lot of lightening.

Passive is Massive

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The United Nation’s International Labor Board calculates that workers in the United States put in more working hours than any industrialized country. Bully for us. We also watch the most television per week. Is there a correlation?

Just for a second imagine that you’re a welder, or a waitress, or the guy who runs the whey machine at the cheese factory and you just got off work and walked in the door of your house. You grab a beer, sit down on the sofa and do what? Grab your computer and check  your mutual fund? Check Wikipedia for an obscure fact that you heard earlier in the day? Check on the price of Kruggerands? Nope. Chances are you turn on the tube. Why? Because it’s what I’ll call passive entertainment. Meaning the most arduous thing you have to do is pick up the remote, surf the channels and let the entertainment hit your eyeballs.

Maybe this is why Nielsen statistics indicate that television viewership has increased to an average of 151 hours a month or about five hours a day. Folks out there are busier, more stressed and more tired at the end of the day and mostly just ready to not have to work at anything too hard.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t also checking their email, logging onto “I can Has Cheezburger” or checking out the latest YouTube video that Aunt Nellie sent them. In fact, they spend 2.5 hours a month surfing the Internet and watching television simultaneously.

The Internet, however, is active entertainment. In other words, you have to do something to get it. You have to search for it. You have to move your mouse. You have to think just a little, tiny bit. This is where television has an advantage. No thinking involved. It may not be exactly what you want to watch, but it flows to you and the only muscle you have to move is the little one that connects your thumb to the remote and the occasional blink of the eyelid.

Like I said, passive.

As the pace of life and the intensity of our worklife accelerates, it becomes more and more important to have times when we do nothing.

Of course, the Internet will catch up at some point and deliver the option of entertainment that is customized to our tastes and then collected, collated and streamed to us. Five and half hours of bloopers on metacafe.com? If that’s what turns your crank, bring it on. But it will be passive. People just don’t have anything left at the end of a long day.

Okay, I’m done for the day. Think I’ll watch a little South Park, then maybe some football and oh yeah, around halftime I can switch to Modern Family, then back to the game then maybe a little of that Chef Ramsay guy. He’s crazy.  It’s going to be a relaxing night.

BW

It’s the Positioning Stupid, Now Pass the Beer.

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While in Boston recently I saw some Michelob transit ads that got me thinking. The campaign had headlines that went something like this:  “Think Rooftop Garden vs. Fire Escape. And, “Think Courtside vs. Nosebleed. I would characterize this as competent advertising. Not overly clever, but well executed and well strategized.

But what really got me thinking is that in this world where everyone is going just a little crazy over social networking and wringing their collective hands over what to do next, maybe it’s time to return to some basic advertising principles. And that’s what’s interesting about this campaign.

First of all, it’s for beer. One of those products that, while many have tried to create a “point-of-difference” few have succeeded. Consider the Coors “We’re colder” campaign running right now. Really? Isn’t the temperature up to me? It’s trying to invent a point-of-difference where one doesn’t’ exist. It may be relevant to people, but it’s not differentiating. Any beer that comes out of my fridge is cold. Mnemonic campaigns like this one rely on repetition to hammer the message into people’s heads and take a lot of media dollars to be successful. I’d rather be smarter.

So where is the sweet spot with a product like beer? Let’s go back to one of the very simple tenets of our business: Positioning.

The Michelob campaign does a nice job of positioning the product. And there are other beer campaigns that use this as well. The Miller campaign where the guy takes the beer away from the “high-falutin’” people is another excellent example.

The interesting thing about this advertising is it’s for a product category that, for the most part, is parity. In blind taste tests people can’t even tell their favorite beer (go ahead and argue, but try it sometime). And yet, these products have found a way to differentiate by using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Positioning.

But wait, it gets better. You can’t simply position a product with demographics, or even by narrow psychographics. You have to take a broader cut at it. What these campaigns have going for them is they all use archetypes. Michelob is positioning itself as a Ruler brand and Miller is a Regular Guy.

Archetypes are the most powerful and useful tool out there because they position and differentiate in broad context. Consumers aren’t good at nuance. Sorry to break it to you but they simply aren’t looking at your advertising that closely. Most consumers could play these beer’s positions back to you pretty succinctly. Miller, the beer for regular people. Or Michelob, the beer for achievers.

So, if you’re panicking about what to do in this new world of social network marketing, or any marketing for that matter, the first step is to figure out what archetype your brand can use most effectively. If your advertising can’t answer the question for consumers: My product is for people who _____________. You’re not there yet. The next step is to communicate that position as clearly and succinctly as possible.

BW