And this kid was 7, maybe less. And he had this thing, for years, when he’d walk up to the mirror and watch himself for a while, and he’ll make faces and concentrate, and then he’d start crying. With big, round, wet tears. Often he’ll be truly bawling.

All this time he’d be staring at his own reflection in the mirror, and I seem to remember him having this intense look. Like he was amplifying and looking through it the same time.

Like he was trying to understand.
Who is this kid?
Why is he crying?
Whose body is this?
Why is it crying?
Whose kid is he?
What do those “crying” signs mean?
Who do they belong to?
And so on…

So lately I’ve been thinking this kid was a pioneer. It seems a lot of kids are doing that these days.
Or maybe he wasn’t and they always had.
Anyway, for some reason, nowadays kids are often quite happy doing it.

And in London they say: jyouknowhaamean?

I’ve always rejected the myth of the suits/creatives split. Have always maintained a common language between marketing, design and other media is important and empowering to everyone involved. Hopefully, I can introduce some useful concepts and break some myths.

(And in case it doesn’t come through: OMG!!!!1! I’m so bloody psyched about this!)

Brand strategy reconstructed
How marketing lost the plot and how it might find meaning again

Marketing is a discipline in crisis. For the last decades it has become evident to practitioners and scholars alike that many of the trusted old methods were just not cutting it any more. Worse, it now seems some of them weren’t valid in the first place. This series of contemplative talks brings together ideas from narrative studies, semiotics and cultural theory to drive design thinking in solving the challenges of postmodern marketing. Numerous examples will be given from actual projects, popular culture and recent marketing cases.

The first six talks:

1. Marketing, meaning & decadence: an introduction to the sophistication of marketing sign-systems and their tendency to degenerate.
2. Suspicious minds: the myth of “a consumer subject”.
3. On branding and meaning: can a simplified theoretical tool-box cut through buzzwords and hype?
4. Advanced narrative marketing: the untold story of brand stories.
5. Marketing plots: cultural pattern-recognition as a strategic tool.
6. Embracing the mess: how clients and agencies are changing their work culture and methods to encourage more sustainable marketing strategies.

Mondays@17:00, Starting May 18th, excluding 25/5 (bank holiday) and 8/6 (prior obligation).

To my non-UK readers: London College of Communication, formerly London College of Printing, is the largest constituent College of the University of the Arts London, Europe’s largest university dedicated to art, communication, design and related technologies.
Two graduates Israeli readers will know are David Tartakover & Alex Livak.

Recovery, Java, Latency, Change, Art, RSS, Socialism, Elvis, Economics, Rotis, Analog, Location, Design, Snackr, Diversity, Violence, Prishtina, Enterprise search, Music, Elvis (again!), Prishtina (again), Matter (duh), The Pentagon (shiver), Elvis (lives!), Evolution, Ingrid Michaelson (lucky lady), Wildlife, Firefox, Elvis (never underestimate him ever again), Corruption.

End of page three, but it stays interesting.

There’s a web art installation waiting to happen here somewhere.

In the meantime – happy holidays and a happy new year.

(good night and good luck)

I’m fascinated by stories where leading brands become stuck in that generic spot everybody is trying to get out of. These are players who worked very hard to get to the top, only to discover they’re all pretty much the same up there.
As a consultant I really like working with challenger brands, but often find them trudging through a painful plateau, that is something quite depressing for a hard-working
over-achieving team.

This is a plot that repeats in highly competitive global categories, especially with big service oriented B2B companies. In these categories it is common to have hundreds if not thousands of global players, but there will usually be a group of leaders that tower among everyone else. They may be top-5 top-10 or top-50, it depends on the category, but they stand apart from all the rest.

When a brand enters this exclusive club a common mistake will be to get stuck on things that no longer matter for audiences:
“We’ve grown a lot in the last couple of years – nobody seems knows it. Let’s make more noise about how big and good we are.”.
News-flash: no one cares. Of course you’re big, that’s why you’re a top-X player. Thus, this fact becomes boring and irrelevant. Counter-intuitive, eh?

The problem is that what got you so far, won’t set you apart from the rest of the leaders.
Why? It’s like the Olympics. When you compare all the runners in the world the performance varies greatly, but on the Olympic track, the winners differ by 0.1 or 0.01 of a second.

When this happens in business, you’re in trouble, many of your differentiating achievements magically disappear and turn into “entry prices”. The things you spent years fighting for, no longer mean that much.
Best practice is the new average. Hell, best of breed is the new average.

When this happens, top-of-mind counts for surprisingly a lot. If it’s a competitive B2B category, a decision maker will have one or two favourites, first ports of call, but beyond that? The first top-x name that comes to her mind. Being this top-of-mind player means a chance of winning those star accounts and star deals, and the benevolent circles they create – whether you’re a VC cherry-picking entrepreneurs (= being cherry-picked by the best entrepreneurs), a chemical manufacturer or a professional services provider.

So? “Now what?” That’s your big question, and yes, it can be a slightly depressing one. The futility of achievement is one of the challenges of leading a meaningful life, and that goes for doing meaningful work as well.
Now is the time to start exploring what really got you that far and what’s different about you. If the answer is: “nothing” it’s time to figure out what you want to stand for. Once you find it – find a way to tell it concisely at every opportunity you have.
Preferably, find some juicy stories you can use. Like the was sequoia uses the star Internet brands they invested in (Google, Paypal, Youtube and more) when talking about themselves, thus creating a virtuous cycle of star-deals. Architect firms use those star projects, their stories told in a very specific way.

Welcome to Olympus!
The bad news – everybody is immortal around here.
The good news – it’s a clear and limited group to stand out from.

The symptoms:
Your category’s brands all seem the same, they may be differentiated on the identity/communications level, but when you look at the actual perceptions (see brand vs. “brand”) of the target audiences, you find out that their perceptions are similar between competitors and pretty much correlate to the market-share of each player. It is an eerie feeling, as if no brand in the category stands for anything, even more so “owns” any positioning arena.

Epidemiology:
Common in markets where the brand experience in a category has been generic or dormant for very long – this could be due to lack of competition, or any other type of stagnation. It can also happen regardless of product innovation, because product innovation may stay purely functional if brands don’t differentiate.
I’ve found it is extremely common in emerging markets, where often many service categories used to be government owned or just heavily regulated.  A condition increasing the likelihood of this syndrome is when players try to adopt “best practices” from other markets instead of coming up with the meaningful moves necessary to shift image in their own market.

Microbiology:
The tacit structure is simple. People’s perception of their experiences is poor, and their expectations are low – so they don’t think players in the category stand for anything.
They will only switch brands on extreme negatives (e.g. a health crisis or gross-misconduct leading to a full scale public image crisis).
If you talk to them using focus groups or interviews, people in “trapped categories” will mostly talk about their fears / anger with relation to the brand experience. If you try to tap them for ideas, they will articulate their ambitions as the removal of negatives.

Roughly, in these situations, you will find customers in qualitative research divide into two groups: “Weak customers”, from marginal segments talk mainly about fears. Form the “please stop the pain“ group.
“Strong customers”, from sought-after and courted segments, will vent their anger about all players in the category. This the “go be stupid somewhere else“ group.

Ignoring this condition triggers the “generic loop complex”, which very simply works like this:

1. A brand’s category is largely generic
2. The company discover that the category, their brand included, is generic.
3. They turn to the customer for answers.
4. The customers can only speak of their generic experiences
5. The company bases any vision or “new” concept this input, mistakenly labelling it as  “customer insight”, or it borrows undifferentiated best practices from other markets as its home audience requirements seem generic.
6. Managers come up with generic briefs ; Agencies with generic solutions
7. Go to 1.

Treatment:
You have to be brave.
Look inside for answers. Another focus group just won’t do. Take a hard look at the company and realise what made this brand get so far. Then build on your best qualities. Start to communicate what you wish to stand for. Your audience can not tell you what the break-through experience should be, simply because they have never experienced it. Trying to force them into giving you an answer will just make things worse.
Only you can find what it all means.
If you want to make sense of your world, MAKE it.
Sense is made, rarely found.
Facts are found, stories are created.

“In my opinion, there are 2 types of marketing professionals. The majority (Call them “professionals”) focus on the technical side of marketing (setting the website, the PR tour, names, trade-shows, etc.). These people are necessary in every marketing department. However, it’s the 2nd type (the “wizards”) that make a real difference, that come up the wild & crazy ideas.”

He goes on to give three cases from Salesforce.com, Google & iPod.

Great examples, Daniel, but I have to differ on one bit.
It’s not the crazy ideas that make the 2nd type of marketers. Crazy ideas are easy to come by – you put 3 creative people in a room for 30 minutes and you’re bound to come up with a couple.

What makes those ideas remarkable is the ability to figure out what the brand/product is actually about, and then come up with ideas that embody this spirit. It’s about turning stategy into a compelling story, and about finding an oppotunity to tell that story in an engaging way, in the cases you give – through an event, a distribution idea or packaging.

If they just “painted it purple”, it wouldn’t work that well. It’s the underlying meaning that makes a difference.

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, google, gmail, salesforce.com, marketing, purplecow, wordofmouth, branding

Some stories are so strong that they are bound to repeat across categories. This is one of them.

#1 creates a new category. He may not be the first one to come up with the idea or the product, but is the first one to leverage it for mass market.
#1 learns how to tell the market about the new product, #1 teaches people that it is good, and eventually many people are convinced. Maybe #1 even comes to stand for that idea or product. Their brand is the strongest in the category by far, there may be some small players pitching similar products, but they can’t touch #1. #1 is the one who teaches the market why the entire category is good, why it works, why it is important.
Everything is fine, until, one day, #2 comes to town.

#2′s product isn’t as revolutionary as #1′s. Maybe there’s a twist on the original idea somewhere, but sometimes that twist is more in the way they communicate about the brand. You see, #2 are quite happy with the fact that #1 is synonymous with the category, because it means #1 stands for values & attributes that are generic and shared by every player in the category – big or small.

Ironically, it is the fact that #1 built the category and told everyone what it was all about that made them generic and vulnerable.

This will be especially true if the category has commoditized in the meantime.
This gives #2 a chance to look at the category and either find out what it is “really” about or make a claim regarding what’s important. Anyway, #2′s claim comes off as strong, especially if it is emotional in nature, mainly because it is focused, and different, and that makes #1′s loyal customers pay attention.

Before you know it, #2 is a serious threat to #1′s domination of the market. They get a bigger and bigger share of the cooler, more unique aspects of the category, and their popularity accelerates.

At this point, the story usually goes down one of two paths:

• #1 doesn’t realise what’s happening quickly enough and before you know it they start being perceived as dated and boring. They lose their #1 position forever.
• #1 wakes up in time to reposition themselves, using their more established heritage to make a more emotional claim that they are the real thing. Even then, life will not go back to being as easy as they used to be.

The lesson for established brands is to watch out for that moment when what was once an innovative message becomes obvious, and try to stand for something unique even before the need to differentiate is pressing. If a new player plays on difference, it’s time to find a fresh way to reclaim your heritage.

The lesson for contenders is to try and isolate the area where the leader created a standard and has become generic, or find a unique story, that is in the heart of the category and which they can become to stand for quickly.

Easier said than done? Sure. Complete solutions will take much planning and hard work, but the point is the value of recognising the narrative pattern of this plot and using it for your benefit.

“Historic” Examples: Coca-Cola & Pepsi, Motorola & Nokia, Creative & iPod, possibly Friendster & Myspace. I’m sure you can come up with more.
To the Israelis in the audience: Orange vs. Cellcom, Yoplait vs. Danone, Tzabar & Achla

Next: Stories so powerful they define categories, or even markets.
Previously: Marketing-stories, and stories about stories.

Technorati Tags: storytelling, marketing, narrative, plot, differentiation, positioning

You can quickly flick through it on Slideshare, or if you want the fully annotated PPT file, get it from esnips.

Vincent’s photo by Calos Luis
This presentation was given as part of Tinylove’s distributor event in Koln (Cologne), Germany, September 2006.
It was not modified for the web or this blog. Only the annotations were made more elaborate so people can understand more or less how it went and what it tries to say.
The annotations is not the exact script. There isn’t one.

Some parts may seem obvious or too “educational” to some of you out there. If they are, I’m sorry, this was to help the audience follow the ideas.
Also, note that this is a “fun” presentation as the distributor event is largely an evening “recreational” event. To avoid being “the heavy bit”, I did my best to make this presentation light and engaging.
I still tried to bust some viral marketing myths along the way, which is a part some of you may wish to skip to.

Tinylove, are a client of mine who create meticulously designed developmental toys for babies. Their main target audience is parents, specifically “Generation-X parents”. The focus of my work with them was how to better reach this audience through the web. It covered their site, SEO/M, community marketing and more. The implementation of those recommendations is currently still a work in progress and is, obviously, much wider and deeper then the aspects mentioned in this presentation.
Their blog is here.If this presentation is absolutely useless to you, maybe it be can useful to someone you know. Or – at least you may enjoy the work of the talented flickr photographers used to make it.

Anyway – enjoy the show.

CC (on the textual content only) – some rights reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Technorati Tags: communications, marketing communications, viral marketing, marketing, storytelling, web communities, networked communities

Stories are closer to the way people interpret, articulate and communicate (complex) meaning in most contexts.
That’s another reason one-word-equity (whether you refer to the “new” concept or the “old” one) just can’t work – The association networks people have about brands are tangled, fluid, complex things. Trying to introduce focus using this “laser” approach is hopeless – the mind will (and should) resist. Telling a story influences perception in a much subtler way.

Stories are so central to culture and the way our minds make sense of the world, that the same message communicated using a story, enjoys some of the following advantages:

• Stories are more memorable
• Stories are more interesting
• Stories are more evocative
• Stories are perceived as more unique
• Stories are more believable / authentic
• Stories encourage identification and empathy
• Stories contain conflicts in a credible manner
• Stories are more viral

You can tell various stories about any brand, some may accompany it for it’s entire life. For marketing purposes it’s better to focus on one story as credibility, relevancy and differentiation allows, even if through different manifestations.
Additionally, there seems to be an advantage to identifying/creating an “over-arching” theme, which ties everything together, often using a familiar structure from similar stories. One of the names for this structure is “Plot”.
The word plot is quite close to the word plan.
Planners should spend more time recognizing plots and plotting.
Other words that share similar meaning? How about design or architecture? (See, I’m not just paranoid, it does all tie together.)

Tracing some marketing plots is what I’d like to do next. Doing that, I’ll be telling stories about stories, in an attempt to make sense of how they work.
(stories about stories are sometimes called meta-narratives or (cultural) myths, I will aim to use the term plot consistently)

(Final note: I’ve been obsessed with this subject for a very long time, so if I’m jumping ahead or if something is unclear – let me know, and I’ll do my best to bring it back on track)

Technorati Tags: marketing, storytelling, story, narrative, plot, planning