The Rise of the Machines

Just had my latest fix of sci-fi. Last night I finished the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and despite the meaningful glances, clichéd dialogue, cheesy acting and the decidedly annoying voiceover, I enjoyed it. Following the themes set out by the Arnie movies, we see 15 year old John and his mother, Sarah, on the run from cyborg Terminators…

Pouty John’s sulky teenager moods and boyish rebellions grate at times - especially when you consider that we’re talking about the future leader of mankind. But we have to bear in mind that he’s been raised by a paranoid (doesn't mean they're not out to get you) control freak mother. He also lives with a kick-arse Terminator protector, Cameron, who's hotter than most real girls - no doubt the producers realised early on the need to appeal to the teenage boy demographic.

Watching Cameron adapt to the challenges of the mission is fascinating and bloody funny too. In Cameron’s time period (the future) everything is focused on defeating SKYNET, an artificially intelligent system that has developed a consciousness and is bent on exterminating its creator humankind. Protecting John at all costs means there are few social interactions that don’t involve a battle for survival. This puts her in awkward positions in the present day, not understanding how to relate in a human manner. She grows to understand by watching television and reading, and there is a defining scene where John tells her not to act like a nerd, and she quickly replies with a definition of nerd. John asks her how she knows that, and she tells him she has been reading the dictionary at night. She doesn’t sleep.

Ray Kurzweil has written a number of books on non-biological intelligence and biotechnology. His latest work, The Singularity is Near, When Humans Transcend Biology, is an awesome/terrifying text on life in the near future, when nanobots become self-designing and self-replicating members of our society and help us out with everything from hair loss to taking out the rubbish. ‘Within a quarter century, non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtly of human intelligence,’ says Kurzweil. ‘It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, our environment, overcoming pollution and poverty, providing vastly extended longevity, full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses (like The Matrix), “experience beaming” (like Being John Malkovich) and enhancing human intelligence. The result will be an intimate merger between the technology-creating species and the technological evolutionary process it spawned.’

If Kurzweil’s timeline is accurate, by the mid-2020s, we will be on the verge of a nanotechnology revolution. The soldiers of this revolution are the nanobots, blood cell sized robots that can travel through our bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting DNA errors and reversing the aging processes.

Plans are currently underway to create medical nanobots that will use our own metabolic energy as a source of power. That means these devices could remain operational as long as we are alive – or longer if they manage to get into human egg or sperm. Any nanobot that develops the ability to propagate in this or any other manner across even one human generation has fulfilled the definition of a non-biological lifeform. A true alien.

There is, of course, opposition from the Church and environmentalists. The virtual worlds of Second Life and World of Warcraft have been attacked multiple times by self-replicating worms called Grey Goo, which clutter the environments and in some cases destroy players’ avatars. The name Grey Goo is itself a reference to the threat of nanotechnology: hypothetically, a self-replicating nanobot could consume the Earth’s resources, transforming our planet into a giant blob of grey goo.

So will the future look like Terminator? The Matrix? Blade Runner? It’s inevitable that machines will become ever more powerful. Our interneural connections compute at about 200 transactions per second, at least a million times slower than electronics. With their ability to share their knowledge at lightening speed and ‘think’ in groups, machines will be able to leverage their collective intelligence at a far greater rate than humankind. Then the genie really will be out of the bottle - see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/11/skynet_takes_control/

Advertising is no longer about the things it sells

There was a time when advertisements were about selling us things. There were the women that got over-excited about washing detergent and the chocolate that helped you “work, rest and play”. But it's not like that anymore, is it? Now we get bionic women dressed head to toe in white leather, set against an all-white futuristic landscape, spraying out white paint at a red car that races through the city. At the end of the ad, underneath the car manufacturer's logo, the strapline says 'Fight conformity'.

As advertisers we argue that these campaigns are needed to cut-through our media saturated landscape. But we must be careful.

Many a time the consumer is at a loss as to what the product is, never mind the brand name. Lately, I’ve seen ads where instead of thinking, ‘I’d like to try/buy that’, I’ve been left wondering what I’ve just seen has to do with the product being flogged.

This is propagated by the current tendency to be caught in a self-referential loop where advertising is mostly about advertising. Never mind the stupid soft drink, feel the art direction. ‘Look at me, I’m a really interesting ad’, screams the graffiti-proofed poster which could be for IKEA, a kitchen appliance or a charity. You can never tell…

However, there is another, more exciting and appealing trend, where advertising again, it seems, is no longer about the things it sells. Indeed, it’s not even about the things at all.

No, it’s about ideas that build positive impressions of your brand, that in turn build brand loyalty, that in turn build an army of consumers that will not only buy your products but keep 'em coming back for more. So the argument goes, if you give people a reason to love your brand, people will (repeatedly) buy your products. In particular, ideas that get people taking about you are held in high esteem, like Cadbury's Gorilla that brilliantly captured the essence of Chocolate - happiness - and generated 3 million views on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo)

The old paradigm was to identify ideas about brands. The emerging notion is to think of brands as being about ideas. For example, Jeep talked about all the stuff they had done over the past 50 years and summed it up with ‘There is only one Jeep’. In essence, Jeep’s communications focussed on the things it was trying to sell - Jeeps. Jeep decided to re-evaluate this strategy. They took a few steps back, looked at their vehicles and realised a plain truth - their cars were simply about fun. They switched tack with the end line ‘Have fun out there’. There were a bunch of people out there that wanted a fun experience with their SUV. And Jeep wanted to say to them, ‘Yeah, we’re into that too’.
The latest brand buzz word is content, as in if you don’t have a cool product then creates cool content that will give your brand the desired positive impressions – it’s not about the things your selling. We talk about giving is the new taking. We talk about legions of marketing aware punters not wanting to be stalked like targets (segments). We talk about them wanting to be surprised and delighted where brands help them in unexpected ways, like, for example, a bank that sets up branded lockers at a beach for them to leave their clothes and stuff while they have a swim.

This is all good stuff and successful brands will adopt (if they haven’t already) these approaches…but we mustn’t forget, as well as building positive impressions of the brand, we’re - ultimately - here to flog stuff.

To highlight what I'm talking about take the latest campaign from Carlton - 'Made from beer'. It's an ironic, self-referential pastiche that keeps things strikingly concise and simple. It appeals to the sensibilities of the no-nonsense beer drinking audience and will help Carlton stand-out from the bewildering clutter of beer competitor communications. It combines a neat idea with flogging beer. It has sublime balance.

KIPPERS - prepare to be smoked

And so because of a few greedy financial fat cats who lent money to people who had, at best, a slim hope of making their payments, we’re heading for a global recession where thousands of people will be put out of work and lose their homes. Thousands more around the world will die of poverty and hunger as the developed world pulls in its horns to look after No. 1.

In a way I feel reluctant to blame the Gordon Gecko types who triggered this mess. They were playing in a game with certain rules. They played hard, following the rules, in an effort to maximise returns for investors (and themselves). And look where we are - the bursting of an outsized bubble of interlocking debt. Clearly, the rules were not right and with the latest round of billions of dollars being injected into the system, governments around the world have given a clear indication that they have lost faith in the market (and the system). We have witnessed the end of unbridled capitalism. If you don’t believe me, look at the heart of capitalism - the US - where Fannie and Freddie and AIG, both massive, massive financial institutions are now owned by the taxpayer, making them effectively nationalised companies like in a good ol’ communist state such as Cuba.

But my feeling is that there is something more fundamental going on here. The world is now run on credit and debt (the lack of credit - as banks stop lending to each other for fear the debter will go bust - is the main contributing factor to the global recession). It has become natural for people to be in significant debt. There has been a huge growth in consumer credit, which has amplified the economic cycle and prolonged the recent upswing. In the US, consumer indebtedness is a massive 139% of disposable income, while in the UK it is even higher at 173%. The biggest debt we have is a mortgage and I guess, in a way, paying off a mortgage gives the individual a purpose in life. It is the cornerstone of liberal, capitalist, democratic system.

And yet the next generation, currently 13-28 year old Generation Y-ers aka KIPPERS (Kids in Parents Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings), have no interest whatsoever in saving, let alone make a pact with the devil and take on a mortgage. The current average credit card debt amongst Gen Y is $5,000 and rising. If they’re short, Mum and Dad fix them up and bail them out. But what happens when Mum and Dad don’t have a job any more, and see their Super halve overnight. I foresee great pain for Gen Y-ers, as they are forced to face reality and see that endless prosperity is not guaranteed.

As a result, Gen Y-ers, and consumers in general, will become far more financially aware and will demand simplification of financial products and services. Those banks that respond to this emerging need will be well placed to return to growth after the economy rebounds and enters the next upward cycle.

The death of a living legend

Last Friday, a living legend died. It was a sad moment when his star twinkled no longer and went out in the sky.

Paul Newman was a class act. He was a totally supercool human being, both on and off the screen.

I never met the man. And yet through his films, I feel I did. This signifies that he was a movie star not an 'Act-or'. He was a brand - irrespective of the part he played, we were absorbed by the magical, charismatic soul that radiated out from those piecing blue Paul Newman eyes. He often played roles that had a laconic, minimalist style - a character style that I particularly like. As a teenager I was attracted to the archetypal shrewd, good-guy outlaw roles he played. He played tough guys who were tough without being violent. He played reluctant, mysterious leaders brimming with charisma. He wasn't a trier - he simply did. He didn't do hard, he did smart.

He had a selfless humility, being the last to acknowledge that he was anything special (this coming from, in my opinion, the best looking man to have ever walked the planet, who was also endowed with a searing intelligence and rapier wit). He was also a motivated philanthropist via Newman's Own sauces (even those are great). He used his fame and fortune to do good. And he kept himself to himself, shunning the limelight.

Above all he was a bloody good bloke.

The world is a lesser place with him not in it.

Just call us X...literally

I’m currently working on a presentation for a client. It's about the differences between Generation X and Y, and in my reading, I came across a rather beautiful piece of irony.

Originally labelled as the Post Boomers or the Slackers Generation, only the label Generation X has stuck to describe those born from 1965 to 1979. I dipped back into Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, a book written in 1991, right at the time that this new generation were emerging. Ironically, the book was about a generation that defy labels – “just call us X” he said, yet the label has stuck, and spawned the labels for Generation Y and Z.

Never Say Never Ever

I’m feeling decidedly down in the dumps today, for a couple of reasons.

First, over the past 5 years or so I’ve watched 98, yep, 98 episodes of the Star Trek series ‘Enterprise’ and I've got only 2 more episodes to watch. When I was a kid, I thought Sci-Fi was a load of mumbo-jumbo. I preferred to read factual, historical stuff or novels about interesting characters in unusual situations. My preference was for the US heavyweights – Mailer, Irving, Roth, Wolfe, Updike, you know those guys that you read and you think, feck me, there’s a seriously large and sophisticated brain behind these words. I loved stories, but not stories about green men or bug-eyed aliens.

It’s strange then that as I got a bit older, I started to really get into Sci-Fi. One of my favourite episodes from the Enterprise series is when Captain Archer and his crew come upon a planet with 2 races where one is in desperate need of medical and scientific assistance.

The plot rotates around interfering with a doomed species (Valakians) that dominates a currently lesser but evolving species (Menks) or allowing the species to die and allow the dominated species to evolve on their own without the oppression of the other.

Archer meets with Doctor Phlox and asks him to develop a cure. Phlox says that he doesn't think that it would be ethical to give the Valakians a cure because it would interfere with an evolutionary process that has been going on for thousands of years. Based on his genome studies, Phlox sees increasing skills and intelligence in the Menk that quite possibly would leave them the dominant species - provided the Valakians died off. He suggests that Archer simply let nature take its course. Archer isn't happy with his doctor's dilemma. Doctors are supposed to heal. Phlox says he's a scientist, and must be concerned with the larger issues. He then uses an analogy of early Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis and what would have happened if some well-meaning aliens had interfered. When pushed for an answer, Phlox discloses that he has indeed found a cure.

Though he isn't happy about it, Phlox decides to place his trust in the Captain to make the right choice. When he meets with Archer, he asks the Captain to reconsider. Archer says that he spent the night reconsidering, and that his decision went against his principles. He had to remind himself everyday that until a directive was written that outlined what could and couldn't be done, he was in no position to play God. Archer gives the Valakians a medicine that will give them more time to find a cure on their own.

Good Sci-Fi is about what-ifs and thought experiments not intergalactic shoot ‘em ups and light sabre duels. When we open our minds and imagine what could be possible we’re halfway to creating a solution. Much of modern physics is built from thought experiments - where experiments can’t be performed due to practical limitations but potential practical and ethical consequences can be examined. (Note to myself: explore the use of thought experiments to explain difficult subjects in layman’s terms.) The thought experiment that I recall most vividly is from my days as a philosophy student and it goes like this: A scientist wants to build a bat from scratch. He/She knows every material aspect that makes up a bat and he knows how to put this material together to make a bat. But because he will never know what it is actually like to be a bat then he cannot be sure that he has really made a bat.

In essence, the mix of logic and emotion that combines to make science fiction helps us think the unthinkable; to be innovative, mashing together existing but separate knowledge to create new ways of life and modes of living.

Which brings us to my other reason for feeling a tad miffed. At a recent Joint Propulsion Conference in the US, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused my (along with humanity’s) interstellar dreams with ice cold water. The scientists analyzed many designs for advanced propulsion and the calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.

The main stumbling block concerns propulsion. Utilizing the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system's nearest neighbor. Apparently it would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a probe with our best rocket engines to the nearest star.

Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has put forward a radical design that calls for a long, needle-like spaceship. In its entirety, the spaceship would weigh a gigantic 120 million metric tons including fuel - the Space Shuttle weighs in at a mere 2,000 metric tons. With all that fuel and a super-sophisticated superconducting magnet propulsion system, it would still take nearly 40 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Earth's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centuri, he said. (So with advances in cryogenics we could easily get someone to the next star system within a lifetime!)

Interstellar missions are big because of the massive amounts of energy required to get moving fast enough to make the trip in anything like a reasonable amount of time. So big in fact we’d have to mine the outer planets to find enough fuel.

Over recent years, scientists like Frisbee, have turned their attention to alternative-propulsion systems that can be developed over a shorter period, say the next 50 years. Nuclear power is a possibility but radioactivity would limit its use to outside Earth's atmosphere, and the politics are positively toxic. Antimatter engines, worm hole drives, warp generating reactors - the conference found most to be utterly unworkable.

It’s a bummer – according to the experts, interstellar travel is bloody hard, takes way too long and we’ll die of old age before we get there. But as Frisbee said, ‘It's always science fiction until someone goes out and does it. All it takes is one breakthrough to make the calculations work’.

I’ll leave the last word to Dr Who who said, ‘Never say never ever’.

Delivering ‘On-brand’ employee behaviour

In an increasingly commoditised market place, where people see less and less difference between products, brands have become more important than ever. People buy brands not just products (unless it’s a remarkable, groundbreaking product), so we need to create positive impressions of the brand. Each year businesses spend vast sums on communications to build their brand but very few businesses, particularly those with a heavy service slant, take measures to ensure that consumers have an experience that is commensurate with the expectations raised by the brand. Many advertising campaigns over-promise because businesses do not prepare employees for delivery.

To build a successful brand it’s critical that you gear your people up to deliver the experience the brand promises. A brand creates certain expectations that are more often than not let down by frontline employees who fail to deliver the brand promise. Many compelling advertising campaigns are undercut and corporate brands are tarnished when a customer encounters a surly employee or is trapped in the voice-mail maze of ‘customer service’.

Strong brands are built on the actions of employees over time. Leading companies fully understand the value of continually engaging employees as their ‘brand ambassadors’. They spot the points where employees’ behaviour has the most impact on perceptions of the brand, and they can identify the organizational barriers that prevent employees from fully supporting the brand. Most importantly, they have developed processes that enable employees to ‘deliver the brand’ effectively and consistently.

There are a number of factors that are driving the need for a sharper focus on the links between employee behaviour and brand image delivery.

There are more customer touchpoints than ever before. Customers interact with companies via more and more channels ATL, BTL, website, mobile, Customer Services, Sales and so on. Each affect channels has an impact on the customer’s experience.

Approximately a third of corporate costs are employee costs. Astute business leaders conduct an on-going examination of productivity and pressure on management to generate greater value from employees.

When employees know how they fit into the organisation's success and understand the benefits of brand alignment they tend to be more satisfied. The result is lower churn, lower recruitment costs and, of course, the benefits associated with staff continuity.

But I guess ultimately its about the growth of the service economy. Manufacturing in developed countries is in decline. Service industries are contributing >70% of GDP. Looking at the automotive industry, most manufacturers make their money from servicing not from flogging cars. (Why then doesn’t a brand position itself as offering a superior ownership experience?)

Linking employee behaviour to the brand promise helps businesses pull in the same direction. This will help to increase conversion rates, customer loyalty and advocacy, word of mouth and ultimately sales. In my experience, many large organisations don’t communicate to frontline staff how they fit into achieving the company’s brand and, ultimately, financial objectives.

By properly aligning employee behaviour (‘on-brand’ behaviour), business vision and brand positioning, an organisation can build a brand that is more credible, more durable and effective, and more clearly differentiated than anything it can achieve with a standalone killer ad campaign or a hot new product. When I say alignment I mean, 1) Employees understand the business’ aims (what needs to be achieved), 2) Employees understand the brand (how the organization wants to be perceived), and 3) Employees know how to behave (to deliver an experience that fulfils the brand promise).

I’d like to give an example of a company that does this well…but to tell you the truth I’m finding it hard to give you one. The company that came nearest to it for me most recently is Mazda. I’ve been taking my Mazda for a service at the same service centre for the past 2 years and I’ve always found the staff to be very professional, knowledgeable and courteous. When I called their customer service line I had a similar experience. I was treated as a valued customer. This is in stark contrast to when I bought the car. I had a painful and protracted 3 hour negotiation with the sales staff. At one point the salesman asked for my credit card to show I was serious, which I promptly handed over. Later, when I got up to leave because we couldn’t make a deal, he accused me of wasting his time. Deal finally done, I felt like I’d been hit with every slippery sales trick in the book – not a nice feeling and most definitely a dampener on the new car excitement vibe. Upon reflection, I figured that Mazda had a firmer control on their call centre than on their franchised dealers.

So aligned employee behaviour is a key enabler of brand differentiation…but it isn’t easy to achieve.

Employees are not hard-wired to deliver experiences that are automatically aligned to the brand; unchecked their responses are largely driven by their personalities. Marketing - the function responsible for developing and implementing the brand - does not control the touchpoints and the employees that have the crucial interactions with customers. Few companies’ internal communication efforts reinforce brand strategy efforts. And employees often don’t see research data; employees often aren’t engaged in the process of defining the behaviours they believe will lead to better alignment of brand positioning and image attributes.

CEOs need to mandate a path to brand enthusiasm; a roadmap to change employee behaviour in line with the brand promise.

Taking an approach from Kim and Mauborgne’s seminal work Blue Ocean Strategy, to make alignment happen, you need to recruit Kingpins, the persuasive, respected influencers in the organization. Once you have these guys, all the other pins will come toppling down. It also helps that because there are usually only a small number of kingpins, it is relatively easy for the Chief Exec to identify and motivate them.

Broadly, and in brief, I see 4 steps to the journey, taking place over 1 to 2 years. The first is to develop a change attitude and educate the workforce about brands (its role and benefits) via the Kingpins. This should include an understanding of the company’s emphasis on delivering an aligned brand experience. The second step is to build knowledge about the brand positioning components, familiarize staff with examples of excellent brand experiences delivered through employees and highlight expectations of behaviour. The third step is to urge employees to believe that they can personally make a difference and that it is in their interest to deliver the brand. Compensation systems should be modified to encourage employees to deliver the brand via incentives and performance reviews. It should be made clear to staff that they will recognized and rewarded for excellence in customer service that reinforces brand image delivery. The final step is for all employees to deliver; to become brand ambassadors that actively and enthusiastically deliver the brand promise and experience to customers.

There is much to be gained from an alignment program, and much to be lost if an organisation fails to do so.

All Hail Fragmentation

As the years pass and you begin to see more candles than cake, is it not part of the human condition to become more philosophical about life, the universe and everything?

The trouble is that these days its damn hard to find the time to do this kinda stuff when us marketers are making it increasingly difficult to know yourself physically, let alone philosophically.

Like millions of other humanoids, I trudge along, with forlorn face and tail between legs, to the local ballbusting supermarket to do the weekly shop. I decided, in advance of my latest shop, to turn the trudge into something positive; to engage in and soak up the Woolies experience, and see what I could learn about myself. And so there I stood in the shampoo aisle - auto pilot switched off, flying on manual. By the time I got to the end of the aisle all that I knew about myself was that I knew less.

Apparently, there are 20 types of hair. Which category did mine fall into? What is dull? How lifeless is lifeless, how unmanageable unmanageable? Is greasy oiler than oily or is oily oiler than greasy? Did it need revitalising, enriching or conditioning? Did it need body?

I gave up; inertia had set in. I finally grabbed a Head and Shoulders that I’d used - I suppose quite successfully - before. But I swear next time I’ll go for that one with the PH balance and guacamole protein.

I moved on to toothpaste. Did I have sensitive teeth? How would I know? Were my teeth cruel, brutal even? How discoloured should my teeth be before special care should be taken to whiten them? How tender do my gums have to be before I need to take some special gunk to fix them? Did I need a pump action? Did I need to defeat Tartar?

The deodorants needed to know if I had mild or heavy perspiration. Well, I thought, it depends on the circumstances. Mmmm…I should go for the heavy to be on the safe side…but what if I have frivolous perspiration; will my pores snap shut and my impermeable body slowly swell with incarcerated sweat? Bath gel: if I go for the delicate version, what if the dirt refuses to budge?

Let us all rise and hail our new leader, Fragmentation, a term which loosely covers the seemingly inexorable disintegration and demise of mass market economics, social organisation, political stability and the nuclear family, the unified self, the nature and grounds of knowledge, and inevitably, the all-pervasive, disconnected arrays of vivid images generated by the increasingly hydra-headed media. As Walter (aka John Goodman) said in the movie, The Big Lebowski, am I wrong dude? Maybe, but you can’t argue that the fragmentation of markets into smaller and smaller segments, each with its compliment of carefully positioned products, is everywhere apparent. Even in the new car market you can have any colour, engine size, bodywork variant, trim level, sound system, safety features and optional extras you like. 20 years ago there were a few toothpaste brands, in Woolies I counted more than 30.

Paralleling the proliferation of products, and reinforcing the trend of micro-marketing, distribution channels and advertising media have multiplied. We’ve witnessed the rise of niche retailers that stock a narrow but in-depth assortment of specific product categories. We’ve also witnessed The Long Tail, a phrase first uttered by Chris Anderson to describe the niche strategy of businesses such as Amazon that sell a large number of items in relatively small quantities. In addition, the number of locational options has exploded with out-of-town outlet centres and retail parks, not to mention dedicated shopping channels and, of course, online shopping.

Advertising options have also burgeoned as a result of the proliferation of everything from local free-sheets and ‘lifestyle’ magazines targeted at specialist audiences to the web. Pay TV has contributed to the demise of broadcasting and the rise of narrowcasting, where highly focussed messages can be delivered to specific groups of people. There is more advertising space than ever before (think about your local hospital, airport or health club). Jameson’s predication, as set out in his 1985 work The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, of a ‘perceptual present’, a world of fleeting, fragmented images of hallucinogenic intensity, seems remarkably prescient. With proliferation come challenges for us marketers as it becomes ever more difficult to cut-through and get our brand messages across. There are some tricks you can employ, but I’ll leave that topic for another post.

Thx Herr Peemoeller

It may be un-eco-friendly, and I must say I don’t feel absolutely comfortable about this, but I like cars. My Dad is one of those practical-type Dads who given a few tools can repair just about anything. Just now he pulled the faulty driver’s seat out of his relatively new car and fixed it. I can remember many a time on a cold, winter’s morning begrudgingly handing him spanners and ratchets while he was under the hood graunching his knuckles.

I'm not interested in how cars work. I like to look at them and listen to them. I like to blow my hair back. And I like the thought that they are a means of escape; that they represent freedom and possibility. Thinking of cars as just a method to get from A to B is totally wrong.

My brothers also like cars. From Triumph Stags to Porsches, from Beemers to Jags. So it runs in the family – we like cars.

I thank the Lord then that Henry Ford ignored the “focus group” findings. As he put it, “If I had listened to my customers I would’ve invented a faster horse”.

But if there’s one thing I really dislike about cars then it’s car parks. Now I know they’ve come on a bit lately, but in the main they are piss-stinking, soulless, depressing, concrete-grey-ugly eye-sores. Not to mention the fact that they tend to bring out the worse in humanity, what with the parking space psychology swiftly leading to parking space fury.

And so it was with a more than a little pleasure that I come across this by designer Axel Peemoeller who has worked out the math to create, optically directional car park signage that appears to hang in the air. Found in the car park of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, there's no technowizardy here, just a man with a can of paint and a few severely skewed letters. The result: mindbending, v smart and surely a Eureka moment. Perhaps a car manufacturer that wishes to position itself as innovative could join up with Mr Pee to create these signs across all major car parks in Australia…Whatever, well done Mr Pee, and thx for making my car park experience just a little bit less painful.

A blog about Marketing, Brands, Advertising...and other stuff

I’ve just realised I’ve committed a cardinal sin. How can I expect you to read my blog without knowing who the hell I am? Am I worth listening to? Am I a reliable observer?

Well the answer to the last question is easy…no, I am not a reliable observer. I have 10 years of various marketing, brand and advertising experience. I have my opinions and you have yours. All I can ask is that you bear with me and hear me out, as we venture out on this path of marketing discovery. And though the road may be rocky ahead with ravines to cross and mountains to climb and all that kinda stuff, I hope the journey will be, at worst, interesting.

Whatever the case may be, the time for synoptic circumlocutions has now passed…the final countdown has begun. But before lift-off commences, it may be worthwhile making a small but important point.

Marketing is in crisis.

Much has been written and said about the demise of marketing. As much as large corporations talk the talk about being a customer-centric organisation, rarely do they walk the walk. When were you last on the receiving end of really great service? (That’s a rhetorical question by the way.) Brands promise certain experiences and raise expectations through their communications. Then you wander down to one of their stores and when you ask for assistance you are faced with an 18 year old sales assistant who does not assist you in the sale (in fact they often mislead or confuse). Man, it gets me mad and I know I’m not alone. (I’ll be writing about linking the brand promise to employee behaviour in a future post.)

With increasing media fragmentation, brands are finding it increasingly difficult to get their messages across. We can screen out TV commercial messages via Tivo and DVD Recorders. Indeed, many are doing away with their TV completely, setting up their 20-inch widescreen iMac centre-stage in the lounge and feeding it with content from iTunes, DVDs and other web-based media services. They are asserting an iconoclastic form of control over their media lives.

Over-capacity, a perceived lack of differentiation, and commoditization are common characteristics of markets across the developed world. More people than ever have a marketing orientation, with many aware of and hostile to the machinations of the marketing machine – Douglas Coupland’s prescient and seminal book Generation X published in 1992 summed up this attitude perfectly with a chapter entitled ‘I am not a target market’. The trust we have in organisations, let alone one another, is at an all time low. For us professional communicators, this makes things tricky.

What do we need to do? We need to be more innovative and creative than ever before to make punters sit up, listen and take notice. We need to involve, engage and entertain consumers to attract them. Sometimes, being different isn’t the only way, sometimes we need to tease them, sometimes we need to play heard to get. Brands should look to tell great stories, that are authentic and likely to spread (I tip my hat to Seth Godin here).

Above all, from an advertising point of view, I believe we must seek to make an emotional connection with people, to reach out and touch people, be it to make them laugh, feel uncomfortable, surprised etc. Festinger, with his Cognitive Dissonance Theory, told us long ago in 1959 that people decide emotionally and justify with logic, and yet how many communications do we see that focus purely on the rational factors, ordained from above by super-analytical and consumer illiterate Finance Directors-slash-CEOs. The battle lines have been drawn…

What is this thing called 'Cool'?

Now, some of the more observant among you may have noticed that the title of my blog is taken from the iconic 1967 movie ‘Cool Hand Luke’. Not only is it one of my favourite films, but when I saw it as an impressionable teenager it had a profound effect on me. The central character, Luke, played by the brilliant Paul Newman, is a war hero who is sentenced to 2 years on the chain gang in the Deep South for cutting the heads off parking meters. Essentially, Newman plays a character that stands up to authority (in this case, the prison system and the prisoners’ ‘rules’). He is an archetypical rebel and he is cool.

But the film is more complex than that. It also questions whether the establishment is vulnerable to rebellion at all. It is a pessimistic film about the possibility of justice, reform, and individualism. In the end Luke dies for his sins (perhaps perpetrated during the war) and to an outside observer, his reification as a folk legend among a small band of convicts seems like a hollow victory at best. The parallel to the founding of Christianity is a fascinating aspect of the story (though don’t get me wrong, this is not a religious film).

This is reinforced in one scene where, to settle a dispute, Luke boxes a fellow prisoner, Dragline (he later in the film becomes Luke’s biggest fan and worshipper). Dragline beats him to a pulp, but despite the entreaties of the other prisoners and ultimately Dragline himself, Luke refuses to stay down. Finally Dragline is too disgusted to continue. He walks away, leaving the ring to the battered and stumbling Luke. This is the turning point of the movie, and ostensibly demonstrates its main theme, that spirit can overcome material adversity.

As I’ll be mainly writing about marketing and brand stuff in this blog, I thought a good starting point for my blog would be to examine the essence of ‘cool’ or what makes a person, something or a brand ‘cool’.

In a way, Luke is cool because he steadfastly refuses to change, irrespective of what others do to him or say to him. It’s a bit like Muhammad Ali’s stance on the Vietnam War. Non-conformity seems to be a key aspect of being ‘cool’, but not always. A bunch of 60 year olds turning up at a Ministry of Sound club wearing tie-die are not conforming, but you’d wish they would.

Some see ‘cool’ as ‘trendy’ – those that are sitting at the tip of the adoption curve. It is said that this ‘community’ can identify cool before the conservative mainstream. So if cool means trendy then making something cool just means getting the endorsement of ‘opinion leaders’.

But in this sped-up world, the time between inception, adoption and disposal is crunched rendering opinion leaders foresight as utterly redundant. So if ‘trendy’ doesn’t mean ‘trendy’, then 'cool' definitely can’t.

So back to Cool Hand Luke. Perhaps providing a reference point around which like-minded people can gravitate is it. ‘Cool’ has something to do with believing and standing for something, it is sustained, it has permanence. Brands and bands who believe in something tend to endure.

But it’s more than that. Energy and vitality is crucial, especially for Brands – to present what you stand for in fresh and innovative ways. And for brands, it also means standards. Keeping standards high is the secret of Apple and Adidas. These brands deliver consistency. Take Coca-Cola, as Andy Warhol eloquently put it, “A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking…Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it and you know it.”

So forget trends (especially fads that masquerade as trends) and non-conforming, the 3 things that help make a brand cool are: a firm sustained belief in something, energy and high standards.

And, lest we forget, cool does not try. Cool is.

I’m not saying all brands need to try to be cool. Look at the Number 1 car manufacturer in the world. Nobody would accuse Toyota of being cool. But the car brand that goes down the path of Apple, Adidas, Coca-Cola or Nike…now, wouldn’t that be cool?