CharacterWeblog

The Overdog's Dilemma: What Happens When Challengers Win?

2010-07-25T16:18:42Z

Does the recent commotion about the shortcomings of the new iPhone seem out of proportion to both the problem and the newsworthiness of the whole affair? When’s the last time you saw so much energy devoted to a cell phone that drops calls? And yet, there it is, front and center in the public consciousness.

And yet, from a story perspective it makes perfect sense. This isn’t really about a phone that drops calls, it is about a status shift in an iconic brand. Apple spent decades as the counter-culture underdog of the tech world. Steve Jobs was the freewheeling, self-proclaimed pirate (“It’s more fun to be the pirates than to be the navy”) who thumbed his nose at the stuffy conventions of the IBM and Microsoft establishment, building fun, cool computers that broke the rules for the benefit of the audience.

But a series of truly disruptive innovations, beginning with the iPod, has changed the role that Apple plays in the drama of the category. Apple successfully challenged the old definition of what a computer could be and thereby cemented its position as the thought leader in the tech category. In the long running battle between Apple and IBM/Microsoft, Apple won—so much so that it felt like an amusing bit of trivia when Apple’s market cap actually surpassed Microsoft’s recently.

While winning thought leadership has clearly been a good thing for Apple, it also comes with some fairly significant challenges. The chief one is how it affects the brand story. How can Apple be the underdog-pirate-challenger on which it has built its identity when it is now the king of the category? Everything Apple does and says is interpreted differently when it is the winner. Aggressive actions that would have seemed perfectly in character for a scrappy underdog fighting the oppressive big guys, take on a whole new aspect when those big guys are on the run and the world is lying at your feet. We’ve seen this happen many times—whenever a challenger wins. As far as the brand is concerned, it is just doing what it has always done, but from the audience’s perspective, it is playing a different role now and it needs to act accordingly.

That new perspective was painfully apparent at the press conference where Steve Jobs, previously seen as a charming and entertaining rouge for his in-your-face arrogance, tried to defend the new iPhone.

It will be very interesting to see what happens next in the unfolding story of Apple, but it is our suspicion that, unless they can come to terms with their change in status and circumstance, they’re going to be in for some rough sailing.

Long-term greedy is a story; quarterly earnings is not

2010-06-11T17:33:59Z

I’ve been trying to make sense—story sense—of the Goldman Sachs fiasco. After all, for years we’ve been saying that you don’t really have a brand unless there is a story that lives alongside the money story and suggests a purpose for the enterprise over and above making money for its owners. But what if the business of the firm is money? Does the same principle still apply?

From my point of view, Goldman Sachs used to have a very compelling story that was the foundation of its successful business. The essence of that story is contained in the idea that, in the words of its former senior partner Gus Levy, the firm should be “long-term greedy”. That phrase nicely captured the conflict between self-interest and the interests of the larger community. It suggested that if Goldman put the interests of its clients ahead of its own short-term profit then both would benefit in the long run.

Long-term greedy suggests a compelling story because it gets its energy from the collision of competing human needs and values. It is essentially the story of the marketplace at its best, and suggests a role for the firm as a facilitator of Adam Smith’s invisible hand—bringing needs and opportunities together in a way that magically turns the energy of individual greed into wealth for companies, jobs for workers, and profits for the Goldman partners.

The story of long-term greedy was an important part of the formula for the firm’s success for many decades. The fact that the firm was a partnership, which meant that as a partner you could only really cash in on the firm’s success when you retired, was congruent with the idea of long-term thinking. And the fact that a large number of senior partners went into government service after they retired seemed to support the idea that this story had some redeeming social value at its core.

Unfortunately, today’s headlines suggest that Goldman Sachs is another example of a brand whose very success has led it to outrun its own story. Whether or not the firm has done anything illegal, the crisis has exposed the fact that the firm is no longer living by the values of long-term greedy, and probably hasn’t been living by those values for some time now.

In the old days, Goldman’s reputation suggested that it had a talent for embracing the conflict between self-interest and community interest in smart, creative and authentic ways. Of course, that is not easy to do, but that’s the whole point—embracing an eternal human conflict is never easy, which is why a company that pulls it off with a certain amount of grace and integrity benefits from deep customer loyalty. Goldman’s story made it look like a company you would truly like to do business with, and it suggested reasons why the firm might be better at its business than competitors who were only in it for the short-term gain.

I used to believe that, as a client, I would benefit from Goldman’s superior insight, knowledge and experience if I maintained a relationship with the firm over the long term. Today I believe that Goldman Sachs will value its own quarterly earnings ahead of my interests, just like every other Wall Street bank. The Goldman Sachs brand has lost its golden aura, and with it the prospect of a lot of fee income going forward. That evaporation of trust has already taken with it tens of billions of dollars in stock value.

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs’ fall from grace, from a story point of view, is a function of the shift from embracing the conflict to managing it. Managing a conflict is usually a polite way to say that a company is ignoring a conflict or pretending that one doesn’t exist. And that is exactly what Goldman was doing in the past few years that seems so sleazy to all of us regular main street types. Goldman was acting as if there were no conflict between maximizing their own short-term profits and optimizing the long-term creation of wealth for their clients, themselves, and the economy as a whole—and they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

It’s important to keep in mind that it was not the financial crisis that changed the Goldman Sachs story. The firm made a number of choices about how it pursued opportunities for growth and profit—particularly in the decade since it went public—which gradually eroded the authenticity of its story. But as long as everybody was making money it was easy to maintain the aura of authenticity. What the crisis did was rip away that mask. That’s what a crisis is good for: to reveal the true character of all the players in a story.

Give Me Back that Filet O' Fish, Give Me Back My Self Control

2010-04-09T18:13:00Z

I just saw the one-year follow-up to the Give Me Back that Filet O' Fish commercial from McDonald's and I was disappointed by the effort. Apparently McDonald's, while aware of the popularity of the first commercial, doesn't seem to really understand what it was or why it worked. In the new spot, the two guys from the original reprise their offbeat roles while viewing a video of the singing fish on a cell phone. There's really not much to the latest entry except the reference to the earlier spot. It's more like a reminder than an addition to that previous work of genius.

Work of genius, you ask? I think so. At first glance, the original Give Me Back that Filet O' Fish commercial just seemed like another absurd bit of deconstructionist advertising--a commercial non-sequitur--but I think there's something much deeper going on. The original spot is funny, weird and vaguely disturbing, in that order. Funny: A slackerish looking guy sits in a garage, eating a Filet O' Fish sandwich and nodding to a tune sung by one of those animatronic singing fish wall plaques. Weird: The whole thing really, but in particular the way it's shot, the quirkiness of the art direction and the tune the fish is singing, the performances, the inexplicable arrival of the friend with the drill. Vaguely disturbing: The fact that the guy eating the sandwich is chubby, that he's sitting on a weight bench, that the fish says "if it were you in that sandwich you wouldn't be laughing at all", that the guy is enjoying the performance of the fish and finally, the fact that I'm enjoying the performance of the fish.

That's what makes this ad more than just another non-sequitur designed to get a laugh because it's so off the wall. It's actually a brilliant metaphoric representation of what's going on with fast food and every part of it says something important. That singing fish is more than just a drug-store-novelty item relegated to the wall of the garage. It's a representation of the irritating but addictive nature of most pop culture memes. It's referencing the Ohrwurm quality. Ohrwurm is German for ear worm--a piece of music like a jingle that repeats compulsively in one's head, that sneaks into your brain when you're not paying close attention and triggers some subconscious pleasure center so well that you can't easily stop thinking about it. It is annoying but irresistible and it's an excellent crystallization of what's so powerful about fast food. The Filet O' Fish sandwich is a Bauchwurm--a belly worm--a piece of food that we eat compulsively because it triggers pleasure centers in the subconscious, in the lizard brain that is focused on physical survival but isn't smart enough to realize that we're not cavemen anymore.

So, the chubby slacker guy, eating on a weight bench instead of using it to work out, is a metaphor for the average (read obese) American. He's minding his own business, waiting around for some unspecified thing to happen when his brain gets hooked by the irresistible Siren song of fast food. And without thinking about it consciously, he enjoys being hooked and grooves along to the primal pleasure of it. He is mindlessly eating.

Now it's important that this story takes place in the garage. That singing fish was probably in the house at one point--a highly entertaining novelty that the whole family enjoyed. But now it's been demoted to the garage because of its more annoying qualities. The chubby guy still gets to enjoy his mindless eating groove, but not in the house anymore. The singing fish is a metaphor for fast food.

Half way through the spot, a physically fit guy--probably a friend of the chubby slacker--walks into the garage. This friend clearly has a purpose; he's holding a drill. Drill guy notices the odd connection between his chubby friend and the hypnotic fish and you can see that it disturbs him. Drill guy represents the people in society who are worried about what fast food is doing to everyone else. Drill guy notices, but he can't do anything to stop the connection except be disturbed. You can tell because his drill is unplugged--he's impotent.

So, the fish sings on, cementing the metaphor in all its glory. The fish asks the chubby slacker, through song, "What if it were you hanging up on this wall? If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn't be laughing at all!" Now, I'm not even going to go into the potential religious symbolism of that fish stuck up on its plank as a sacrifice to our entertainment, I mean, seeing as it represents a product for which 40% of the total sales fall during Lent. Instead I'll focus on the other bit of symbolism that seems to come through loud and clear. The fat guy is the fish. Hey, we all know that "you are what you eat." The spot seems to be saying that the fat guy, main stream America, has been caught as surely as the fish, snagged by the bait of cheap, tasty fast food. He's as trapped in his chubby body as the fish is on its wooden plank.

And then, there's the scariest, most accurate part of the story. The fish on the wall, the one who is claiming to share a kinship with what's in that sandwich, he isn't even a real fish. He's just the image of a fish built to addictively entertain.

So wow, what a deep and accurate reflection of the plight of the modern eater McDonald's served up with that first commercial. I'm pretty sure our analysis is not what they intended to say, and I don't know whether it's been effective in selling more Filet O' Fish sandwiches, but I do know that it has struck a compulsively resonant chord with the audience. While the vast bulk of viewers may not consciously perceive the deeper meaning, it connects with them because they know intuitively that the problem with fast food is that it's really an irresistible belly worm, entertainment disguised as food. On the most benign level, the spot captures what is so attractive about the Filet O' Fish sandwich. If you don't think about it too much, it makes you happy--the Filet O' Fish probably more than most of McDonald's other offerings, because it's fish. And fish is good for you, right?

The new spot brings up one last note, a coda that McDonald's probably didn't intend but that puts a nice bow on the whole package. In the new spot, the singing fish is just another viral video--just another passing craze. The new commercial doesn't express any insight or depth of its own, ultimately suggesting only that, maybe in the grand scale of human development, our irresistible attraction to fast food will turn out to be a transitory fad like the singing fish.

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The war on food

2010-03-14T18:39:13Z

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a senior marketer at a major global food company and he described the current environment as "a full assault on food companies of all kinds." I saw an interesting example of this assault at the TED Conference, where Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef) was awarded this year's TED Prize and delivered a very engaging rant about the state of the food business. Here is a link if you're interested.

Anecdotes like these suggest to me that the story energy in the food business is undergoing a tectonic shift. Over the past sixty years, one of the overarching conflicts in the category has been ease versus virtue. Virtue has generally meant health or nourishment in some form, while ease has meant convenience, along with value, taste, fun and indulgence. Unsurprisingly, ease has been the dominant story current.

One of the rules of story is that when one side of a conflict is suppressed for a long time the suppressed energy will eventually emerge with extra force. It feels like we are approaching a tipping point at which the virtue side of the food story is getting ready to assert itself with a vengeance. If so, then food companies that can embrace this conflict in an authentic way will prosper, and those that can't will get swamped by the wave.

Embracing the conflict between ease and virtue means presenting an original, engaging and credible take on the collision of the two energies. One brand that seems to have been doing this pretty well is Newman's Own. The virtue energy in the story is very clear in the idea of "all profits for charity." It is strongly underscored by the perception that Paul Newman himself could have lived a life of self-indulgence but chose the virtues of faithfulness and family, partnering with his daughter in this business for the fun of making unusually good stuff and sharing it with the world.

The ease side of the Newman's Own story is visible in the kinds of products the brand initially chose to create--comfort foods and snacks, for example--and also in the very fact that the brand seems to dabble in a wide and eclectic range of foods, making it easy for me to browse through sections of the store that might otherwise present a confusing range of choices.

Coke, on the other hand, is a brand that got a tremendous boost from the ease-versus-virtue story in its formative years, and has suffered as the definition of virtue has shifted to pull the floor out from under its story. The idea of putting refreshment "within an arm's reach of desire" is very compelling so long as the energy boost and refreshment offered by a bottle of Coke feels like a virtue.

McDonald's story has described a similar arc, beginning when Ray Kroc took the easy, tasty indulgence of the drive-in and added the virtues of safety, cleanliness and responsibility. That story was captured with deep cultural resonance in the idea that "You deserve a break today." Now, McDonald's is scrambling to evolve its menu so that it can continue to offer an interesting collision of indulgence and responsibility without alienating its regular customers.

Pretending that the two energies are not really in conflict (as Kentucky Fried Chicken tried to do at the height of the Atkins craze by suggesting that KFC had suddenly become "health food") will undermine any hope of authenticity and runs the risk of leaving the audience feeling betrayed. The only way forward is to figure out how to embrace the conflict with grace and integrity. That may be hard to do, but it does make for an engaging and emotionally satisfying story.

If you have other examples of companies in the food business who are doing a good job of embracing the conflict, I would love to hear them.

Warrior or Mercenary?

2010-01-31T19:09:30Z

I read the Ad Age interview with Bob McDonald, Procter & Gamble's new CEO, with great interest. Two things jumped out at me--in fact, they were the first two things he said. He started by referencing his military experience as an airborne infantry ranger trained in desert and jungle warfare. And then he launched into an impassioned discussion of P&G's purpose, describing it as incredibly important but underexploited. This caught my attention because, in the world of marketing, the metaphor of war and the idea of purpose frequently seem to be at odds.

You may be familiar with the metaphors of marketing--War, Science and Story--which we discuss at Character Camp (if not, there is a one-page primer on the subject here). At Camp we teach that the war metaphor is the toolset marketers use to operate in a competitive landscape. Story, on the other hand, is the set of tools best suited to building a relationship between the brand and its customers. Brands frequently act as if war and story are in conflict--as if you are either fighting for share or building equity, but not doing both at the same time. At a deeper level, however, I believe there is great synergy between war and story, and the connecting link is brand purpose.

Purpose, framed as the objective of the protagonist, is what drives a story forward. Winning is often presented as the goal that drives a soldier forward. But what Bob McDonald's interview reminded me is that in an actual war there is always an idea that is supposed to give meaning to the struggle and inspire the soldier to win. Without such a purpose, a warrior can become little more than a mercenary--motivated only by personal gain.

To underscore his point about purpose in business, Mr. McDonald cited his conversations with students at Harvard Business School who were looking for professions that would provide meaning for their lives. Interestingly, one of the first comments posted on the Ad Age website was openly cynical, assuring Mr. McDonald that, among Ad Age readership, it is not necessary to "frame CPG as an altruistic calling." The comment concludes, "Does the world need more new Swiffers, more new Febreezes? No, of course not. Like you and 50 Cent, we just wanna 'get rich or die trying.'"

I disagree. I not only support the Harvard MBA candidates in their search for a meaningful job, I think the evidence is pretty clear that they are more likely to be successful--both emotionally and materially--if their efforts are driven by a purpose that goes beyond just making money. This is particularly true in consumer products, because your customer can tell if you have a real interest in what you are doing that goes beyond the transaction. That sense of purpose gives your customer a reason to believe that you will be better at your business than a competitor who is just in it for the money.

It is interesting to me that the current thinking about counter-insurgency warfare is focused less on projecting power for its own sake--on killing large numbers of enemy soldiers, for example--and more on creating and securing the conditions in which the marketplace, along with the other aspects of civil society, can function. Even in war success ultimately depends on having a purpose that goes beyond winning for its own sake.

In other words, purpose is what distinguishes the warrior from the mercenary. And in the world of story, the mercenary never wins unless, like Han Solo, he turns out to have the heart of a warrior after all.

May the Force be with you,
David

The Purpose of Purpose

2009-12-23T22:31:40Z

It seems like a lot of brands are starting to understand that making the most money isn't an emotionally engaging reason to exist. Certainly, making money is one of the purposes of a brand, but it's a purpose that doesn't work well as the center of a rich, emotional relationship between the brand and its customers. And ironically, brands that achieve that kind of rich, emotional relationship with their customers find it a lot easier to make money. If you think of a brand as a character in a story, the character that exists only to make money is generally the villain--which is pretty much how a large segment of the audience is coming to view most very large brands. The audience understands that a brand needs to make money, but that's not a sufficient reason to care about a brand.

Brands that connect powerfully with their audiences on an emotional level seem to share a key trait: they have a purpose above and beyond just making money. They care about something alongside the rational, commercial transaction at the center of their business. This observation has started a number of large businesses down the path of looking for causes to support in order to build a sense that their brands have altruistic urges and a larger sense of purpose. Hence the explosion in pink ribbons and green claims on a shockingly wide assortment of products. Purpose is the new black. But I believe there's more to it than that. From a branding perspective, some purposes are better than others. Not because they are more altruistic, more noble or pure, but because the purpose suggests a reason to believe that the brand is better at what it does than a competing brand that is only out to make money.

The best brand purposes seem to suggest to the audience why a particular brand has a passion for what it does that is likely to make a difference in the quality of the product. When Philips partners with the Susan G. Komen foundation and creates a portable pink DVD player to call attention to the fight against breast cancer, I can find that admirable, but supporting that cause gives me no reason to suspect that what Philips cares about as a brand enables them to produce better electronics than any other company. Interestingly, the purpose you find on Philips' website is "to intimately understand the needs and aspirations of consumers and customers in order to deliver innovative solutions." In other words, Philips tries to figure out what I want and sell it to me. As a consumer, I don't find much in that purpose that takes me beyond the money story.

Apple, on the other hand, does not seem to have a single, clear cause with which they align their brand, but they do seem to have a reason for being above and beyond just selling computers. Apple seems focused on making technology a freeing experience for people rather than just a useful one. From their famous 1984 commercial through to the introduction of the iPhone, Apple seems focused on making the computing experience liberating, intuitive, enjoyable and human. Their stated purpose is "to make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind." This purpose connects them to a growing segment of the audience who use their computers for reasons other than pure functionality and who believe that Apple makes better computers because of their passion for bringing a human touch to technology.

The road to hell is paved...

2009-12-11T19:22:18Z

Six weeks ago I added a blog posting entitled Brands that outrun their story, in which I speculated that Starbucks is having a difficult time regaining its footing as a brand precisely because the story on which the brand was built seems to be contradicted by the very size and success of the business.

By the same token Walmart--which was arguably in an even deeper hole than Starbucks three years ago--has done a better job of climbing out of that hole because the Walmart story, at its best, is very congruent with its size and success.

So what about Google? One of our readers asked if we thought that Google was in danger of outrunning its story, which provoked the following thoughts:

On the one hand, the Google brand was built around people's experience of a free service, presenting a clean, non-commercial home page and a funny, playful name. As a business, it had a kids-in-a-dorm-room kind of feel to it: friendly and a little self-deprecating.

On the other hand, the model for the business Google was building is a poster child for the network effect: connect uncountable hordes of people and mine unfathomable streams of information until the resulting flow of cash could sink even the Evil Empire of Microsoft itself.

The conflict, as so often happens, was right in the name. On the surface, Google sounds warm, fuzzy and almost cartoony. At the same time, for engineers with their hands on the controls of the digital economy, the word googol stands for numbers so big the rest of us don't know how to deal with them. The conflict is also acknowledged in the company's informal motto, "Don't be evil." The phrase sounds anti-corporate in a glib, rebellious way, while at the same time clearly referencing the corruption that can accompany great wealth and power.

From a story point of view, the future of Google as a brand depends entirely on what objective is communicated by its actions in the world. In other words, what does the brand want? A brand is like a character in the drama of its category. As a member of the audience watching that drama, I am suspicious of any character whose motive is not clear. If a brand fails to convey a clear and convincing sense of what it wants, then my default assumption must be that the brand is only interested in my money. In that sense, Google's strategic marketing problem is very much like Walmart's. As vast commercial enterprises, both Google and Walmart must communicate a sense of purpose above and beyond making money. Otherwise, they will have an increasingly tough time making money.

From the beginning, Google has done a good job of articulating a larger purpose: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The question is, do you believe them? It was easy to buy this as altruism when it seemed like kids in a dorm room playing with geeky algorithms. Now that they are becoming more and more deeply enmeshed with our vital personal information, and the opportunities to exploit that information are so clear, do you still believe they are capable of managing their wealth and power in a way that honors their stated purpose?

I'd love to hear your answers to those questions.

Politics, Story and the Sitcom Factor

2009-11-18T20:07:53Z

So we're having a little political intrigue in Portland, Oregon, home of Character LLC. It's a sadly familiar drama. Apparently, our mayor, Sam Adams, had an affair with someone he shouldn't have, covered it up while running for office and then got found out. Now there's a move afoot to have him recalled.

No one is suggesting he be recalled for having the affair--only for attempting to cover it up. It brings to mind the Sitcom Factor.

The Sitcom Factor is a key story theme that almost every sitcom plays with at one point or another--sometimes for entire seasons. It goes like this: Somebody does something wrong--usually not such a horrible thing, and generally with some justification--but when he is discovered, he lies to protect himself or others. The little lie snowballs inexorably until the whole thing is crazily and hilariously out of control. And then it all comes crashing down in an avalanche that buries the poor transgressor.

This theme is built on the universal human truth that the consequences of a lie can be more damaging than just telling the truth. Sitcoms play with this theme both because it's generally pretty funny to see how a person's world spins out of control in the attempt to "fix" things with a lie and also because the situation flows out of a conflict everyone experiences at one point or another and results in a problem that almost everyone will face. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile wanting to be truthful with wanting to be loved or accepted or safe, but lying is a very unstable solution.

The basis of almost any great story is a powerful conflict and a fundamental human truth that connect to the audience emotionally because they've been there. Great stories take that material and spin it into a meaning intended to help the audience learn something about how to cope with their own struggles. As vacuous, shallow and hilarious as many sitcoms are, if they work, it's because, at the end of the day, they still touch on something true--some deeper meaning.

Funny, then, that after so many sitcoms have made so much hay from this conflict and truth, so many public figures seem to have missed the message entirely.

Bill Clinton is a favorite example. When he was in office, we called him the Sitcom President. "I did not," he said, banging his hand on the podium for emphasis, "have sexual relations with that woman."

Oh, Bill. Didn't you ever watch Friends? Did you miss the episode where Ross lies to Rachel about having sex with another woman? Sure, he would have gotten in trouble for what he did, but what bothered Rachel was that "he lied to me." Ultimately, in Bill's case, having the affair was nothing compared to the scandal associated with lying about it. That lie nearly got Bill impeached. What an excellent season of The Bill Clinton Show that would have made!

Martha Stewart is another poster child for the Sitcom Factor. It's not that she acted on a tip to bail out of some stock that was going to lose value. She was cleared of the insider trading charges. It was the obstruction of justice that sent her to prison. I suppose, in Martha's case, that she may not have had time to watch television--what with all of the relentless organizing and endless optimizing she was doing --but didn't she or any of her advisors see The Brady Bunch when they were kids?

And now, Mayor Sam Adams. Okay, having an affair with a barely legal guy might have had a negative impact on Sam's image while he was running for office. But once the story started to surface, Sam should have gone back to what the sitcoms teach. Lying about what you did will get you in more trouble than what you did in the first place. It may even get you recalled from office. So why can't people resist lying? Why do people think they can get away with it? Because the possibility of making the problem go away is so tantalizing. That's why it's a fundamental human conflict and why we constantly need to be reminded to resist the temptation and come clean. That's why we'll watch the same story play out over and over again in almost every sitcom on television. That's the power of story.

Of course, we all know what we're supposed to do, the message that all that mediocre (and sometimes awesome) television conveys. Hell, even George Washington supposedly knew.

"I cannot tell a lie, Father. I chopped down the cherry tree."

It's a really simple idea. Obviously, it would probably be best not to do anything wrong in the first place. But let's not kid ourselves. We just don't live in that world. So here's the condensed message of a million hours of television, spelled out for anyone and everyone in the public eye:

Public figures, if you get caught, fess up right away. Take your lumps, comforted by the certainty that they'll be smaller than the ones you'll take somewhere on down the line when the hilariously complex web of lies you've spun comes crashing down on your head and you get impeached, get sent off to jail or find yourself facing a recall vote. And please, please, pay better attention to sitcoms. That's why we have them.

Brands that outrun their own story

2009-09-23T21:26:05Z

We've been thinking recently about different kinds of brand stories, and particularly about whether there are some brands whose very success causes them to outrun the story on which their growth was based.

Starbucks' struggle to rebuild its brand is what first prompted this question. Starbucks originally promised to provide a "third place," separate from home and work. In terms of story, what makes a third place into something really interesting is the conflict between everyday and indulgent. In its early years, the brand played with those two energies in interesting ways. The indulgent energy was conveyed by the comfortable chairs, the secret language and the implicit invitation to stay as long as you liked--and of course by the exotic new coffee drinks. The everyday energy of the story was represented by the easy accessibility of the experience and by the very idea of a simple cup of coffee.

The problem for Starbucks from a story point of view was that the very success of the company shifted the center of gravity from indulgent to everyday. By the time Howard Schultz's famous memo was leaked to the press in early 2007, it was clear that everything the company had done to accelerate its growth--the automatic espresso machines, the range (and aroma) of food offerings, the assembly-line efficiency of the service--had transformed the story from the third place into the QSR of coffee shops. Once there was a Starbucks kiosk in my grocery store, 100 yards from the Starbucks store at the end of the mall, the everydayness of Starbucks had completely overwhelmed the indulgent energy in its story. The way the company has been struggling for almost three years to rebuild its brand suggests to us that Starbucks' story has gotten out of balance in a way that is difficult to correct.

By contrast, during the same three-year period, Walmart has done a very creditable job of resurrecting a brand that had fallen much deeper in the hole than Starbucks. We think the difference is in the kind of story that underpins the brand. Walmart's story, at its best, is about the conflict between winning and serving. Walmart was always an ambitious company, but it was ambitious in the service of its customers. Sam Walton's vision was to bring the good life to small communities that had been overcharged and underserved. In the decade following Sam Walton's death, the service energy drained out of the story, until, by the middle years of this decade, the Walmart story was all about winning for its own sake. And in the world of story, a character who is motivated by a desire to win for the sake of winning is almost always the villain.

In the past three years, Walmart has re-embraced the service energy in its story, without ever letting go of its fierce desire to win as well. Unlike Starbucks, Walmart's size and ubiquity can actually be an asset--as long as its success is seen to be in service to something bigger than itself. That's why the sustainability campaign has been so central to Walmart's turnaround.

So how can Starbucks embrace its conflict in order to infuse new energy and authenticity into its story? Could it perhaps redefine indulgent in the way Walmart redefined serving? Or maybe the answer is to find a better articulation of the conflict, possibly substituting special for indulgent. Creatively, the latest Starbucks advertising and promotional work seems to be tugging in that direction.

I'm interested in what you think, both about Starbucks' efforts to recapture the authentic energy in its story and about other brands whose success might have swept them into a blind alley in which their business has outrun their story to the detriment of both. Drop me a line if you have a moment, or post a comment.

Is your business a force for good?

2009-07-17T20:45:01Z

I've been reading a fascinating book, which I have found quite inspiring, called The Necessary Revolution, by Peter Senge. You may already be familiar with it, since it was published a year ago, but I've just discovered it. What makes this book important for me is the confluence of two streams of thought that I've been chewing on for some time:

First, Senge and his co-authors weave a coherent and holistic picture out of all the disparate threats to human life and civilization--climate change, waste and toxicity, social and political unrest, and health and nutrition issues--and manage to emerge cautiously optimistic.

Second, The Necessary Revolution looks deeply at the role of commerce, particularly the role of large, global corporations, and finds reason to believe that the companies that succeed during the next phase of capitalism will be precisely those companies that are able to harness their entrepreneurial energy as force for good in the world.

Here's what Peter Senge said in a June 2008 interview with BusinessWeek about what's wrong with focusing on shareholder value as the exclusive guide to strategy:

You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy. A well-managed business will have a high return on invested capital. But that's a consequence. It's not a way to manage a business. Peter Drucker said: "Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don't have enough of it, you're out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you're really missing something." The purpose [of an enterprise] is never making money. And I think a lot of the best innovators inside big companies succeed [because] they really understand the theory of their business.

When the limited liability corporation was created 140 years ago, the shareholder had to be protected. But [the emphasis on shareholder value] makes no sense any more. We live in a world that has a surplus of financial capital, and great shortages of natural capital, human capital, and, in some places, social capital. We're optimizing around one input!

What I really like about this perspective is that it elevates the meaning and purpose of a commercial enterprise to its proper place in the hierarchy of strategic imperatives. We have known for some time that companies that have no purpose over and above making money for their shareholders often do a poor job of making money for their shareholders. This book helps to break down some of the intellectual constraints that have hobbled a lot of executives to limited ways of thinking about business strategy.

If you would like to read the whole interview, here's the link.

And if you would like to check out the book itself, here is the Amazon link.

I'd love to know if this stuff resonates for you, and if you have any stories to share on the subject.

Conflict as a Source of Joy

2009-05-29T18:50:15Z

Earlier this year David Altschul sent along links to a couple of TED talks that we found interesting and that we thought might be relevant to our ongoing dialogue about the intersection of story and marketing. (If you missed them, the emails and the links are posted here on our blog to the right of this entry/under "Recent Entries")

David did a short presentation at the TED Conference himself, as part of TED University. There is no immediate connection to marketing in his talk, but it does go directly to the heart of what we teach at Character Camp, which is to always embrace the conflict. And I like it because it shows that David doesn't just teach this stuff, he lives it.

The title of the talk is "Conflict as a Source of Joy", and it's six minutes long. If you'd like to see it, here's the link: HERE

If you do take the time to watch it, we would love to know what it stirs up in you.

Regards,
Jim

Something to Buy Into

2009-05-05T23:14:07Z

I've been thinking a lot recently about handy tools marketers can use to test their brands for latent story energy. One idea--of which I was reminded by the new Starbucks print advertising--is to ask yourself this:

Does my brand offer its customers something to buy into, or just something to buy?

What I like about this question is that it immediately separates a brand with real equity from a commodity. At the end of the day, if all you are offering your customer is a specific thing to buy for a certain amount of money, it is very difficult to develop any pricing leverage and you have no way to engage any loyalty on the part of your customers. (If you have a patent on the thing you are selling you can charge a premium as long as the patent lasts, but that's not brand equity, that is just a temporary government-licensed monopoly.)

Of course, some stories are deeper and more compelling than others. When Walmart was a scrappy little challenger from Arkansas its story was lifeline for working families trying to get by on a budget. That story, given credibility by Walmart's ability to bring brand name merchandise to small towns at surprisingly low prices, built a successful business and--for a while--a brand that customers across small town America felt connected to. In the years after Sam Walton died the business grew but the story got shallower until, by the middle of this decade, the only thing Walmart was asking its customers to buy into was its ability to deliver the absolute lowest price--no matter what the cost to the towns, the employees, the suppliers or the community as a whole.

In the past couple of years Walmart has once again asked its audience to buy into the idea that its size and its capabilities can be a force for good in the world. Functionally, Walmart still has to deliver low prices in order to have a relationship with its customers at all, but the meaning of its story has gone from deeper to shallower to deeper again--with dramatic consequences for the value of its brand and the success of its business.

I'm interested in what you think of this idea as a tool for uncovering some of the key story currents running through your brand.

I look forward to hearing from you.

The Sixth Sense

2009-03-24T22:33:13Z

If you liked the TED Talk I sent last month about robotics, bioengineering and the state of the economy, you will probably also appreciate this little gem about wearable technology that promises to let you practically live inside the Web.

Here's the link to: Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry: Unveiling the "Sixth Sense", game-changing wearable tech.

And if you are a marketer concerned about the potential power of consumers who have real-time access to all the knowledge in the world at the moment they contemplate buying your product, then this 9-minute video will be sobering and entertaining at the same time.

If you take the time to watch it, please let me know what you think.

The Ultimate Reboot

2009-03-09T21:18:08Z

I just got back from the TED Conference and I heard a lot of optimistic notes amid the chaos and gloom of the current financial meltdown. One talk that I particularly thought you might enjoy was delivered by Juan Enriquez, the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project. I've heard him speak before and I always find his perspective fascinating, enlightening and entertaining. He is an omnivore of ideas who studies the intersection of science, business and society.

This talk begins with the idea that the proper way to manage in a crisis is to keep your eye on the long term even while you are dancing in the flames. Professor Enriquez does a wonderful job of describing the flames without sinking into despair, and then looks beyond the immediate crisis to three trends in science and technology that, between them, offer the promise of rebooting human capability in a way that offers great hope for the future.

Here's the link to his talk: Juan Enriquez: Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis

All the TED Talks are 20 minutes or less, and they are all available for free at www.ted.com. If you haven't already gotten in the habit of downloading some of these talks to listen to on long flights, I highly recommend it. And if you do take the time to listen to Juan Enriquez, please let me know what you think.

My Brother the Archaeologist

2009-01-15T21:59:04Z

When we began this practice, almost a decade ago, I was quite impatient with what I saw as the "pretence of science" that seemed to inform a lot of poor decision making in the world of marketing. But over the years I came to realize that some quantitative tools were essential if you were going to run a business on a large scale. In an attempt to square this circle I consulted my brother Jay, a PhD archaeologist who has built and run a contract archeology company in Tucson for twenty-five years.

I began by asking Jay about the proper role of quantitative analysis in the social sciences (because if marketing does resemble some variety of science, it sure ain't physics). He told me that in the social sciences any question that can be answered yes or no by quantitative analysis alone is probably a trivial question. I told him I understood that only too well, thinking of the misuse of science by a lot of my clients. But then, I said, what are you doing out there with your surveying equipment, measuring the distance from the fire pit to the various pot shards and mapping all the data on your computer?

Ah, he said, here's the point: if you do the quantitative analysis well then the numbers reveal patterns that are not visible to the naked eye. Based on those patterns you develop a hypothesis about how things go together, which can then be tested with new data. The hypothesis is a story, a way of attributing meaning to the numbers, and the virtuous cycle of data-story-data-story is the way we explore and slowly accumulate a better and deeper understanding of the world.

I like this explanation because it helps me understand the relationship between the science metaphor and the story metaphor as applied to marketing. At a superficial level, the two approaches seem antagonistic. Marketers committed to the "scientific" approach believe that research can be used to understand consumers in order to directly influence their behavior. Brands built on story focus instead on finding the meaning in a brand in order to develop an authentic relationship around common values. Superficial attempts to graft the two together often feel like manipulation. But if you understand the virtuous cycle of story and science you can use your insight to develop a brand that commands deep and enthusiastic loyalty.

The question is, are you using your research primarily to find levers that drive traffic or are you using the insight you gain from research in order to connect a brand that really means something to a group of consumers who value what it means? In other words, are you giving your consumers something to buy into or just something to buy?

I would love to hear examples of either kind, if you can think of any.