[Getting Your Brand Into Costume ]

With this being Halloween season, our thoughts turn to one of our favorite pastimes: costume parties. In particular, we’re fascinated by the way a costume seems to change the person inside it. Your shy friend dons a blue wig and becomes the life of the party. The office chatterbox becomes an eerily silent specter. A costume allows you to step outside your usual role and become someone else... and gives the rest of the world permission to take the new you at face value.

A lot of organizations could learn the value of getting into costume. Often, a bold new product or service needs a bold new look...especially if the market’s perception of your brand is holding you back.

Hershey’s, for instance, has been promoting a new premium line of chocolates, Cacao Reserve, with stylish design and heavy advertising. But, according to Advertising Age, this spring the chocolatier found itself forced to discount the $2.50 bars. The reason is stamped right on the package: “Cacao Reserve by Hershey’s.”

To Hershey’s executives, their name probably symbolizes quality, tradition, and history. But to the marketplace it symbolizes Bars, Kisses, and Kit Kats: reliable, middle-of-the-road sweets. Why pay more for Hershey, even if it is gourmet, the consumer thinks, when I could be buying Godiva, Ghirardelli, or Lindt?

Cacao Reserve might well taste better than its competitors, but most consumers will never find that out. To be successful, Hershey’s should have put on its Cacao Reserve costume and never let the mask slip. Rather than being a badge of pride, “by Hershey’s” is a scarlet letter to premium chocolate buyers.

On the flip side, it’s typically much easier for a brand to explore down-market...and the new offshoot sometimes finds it’s worth it to dress up in the parent brand’s clothing. Hence the success of Filene’s Basement, Nordstrom Rack, and outlet malls. Whether one finds new products, less commercially successful lines, or even remaindered clothing, it all feels like a steal – so what if there’s a stitch out of place? Almost inevitably, the halo of the parent brand’s success clings to the new line: I may be at the Rack, the consumer thinks, but I’m still in a Nordstrom.

Some firms dress up their products to capitalize on other brands’ reputations. This is especially rampant in grocery store cereal and soda aisles. Notice, for instance, how huddled right next to Froot Loops’ Toucan Sam is a generic knock-off also pitched by a bird character. Not confident enough that their low prices can lure customers away from Kellogg’s, many store brands resort to near-piracy of Kellogg’s imagery and packaging as well.

Safeway is the rare company that seems to know how to dress up and down. Unlike most grocery store brands, their Safeway Select line does not try to ape the look and feel of name brands. Instead, with lush photography and elegant design, Safeway Select has positioned itself as a first among storebrands – not Coca-Cola or Kellogg’s, but a cut above its other grocery competitors. More recently, it has opened a line of upscale quick-service restaurants called Citrine New World Bistro. Aimed at those who snack at Panera and Nordstrom, the chain’s connection to Safeway is being kept almost completely hush-hush–awise strategy for a brand trying to woo diners who wouldn’t food-shop anywhere but Wegmans.

Picking the right outfit is tricky, but Safeway knows when to parade in all its finery, and when to go incognito. Hershey’s–and scores of other firms – would do well to take note.

[ Twin Freaks: Two Unlikely Marketing Success Stories ]

The initial response was not good. Considerable advertising in four test markets yielded only a tepid response. No one wanted to pay for what was essentially scrap paper. The project was on the brink of being killed altogether. It looked like the end of the Post-it note.

In the run-up to Super Bowl XXXIII, Fox ran constant promos for Family Guy, a new animated series debuting after the game. The series premiere was a success, with 22 million viewers tuning in. But after a successful first season, the ratings declined. After Season 3, the show was cancelled.

In a last-ditch effort to save the Post-it, two 3M executives took to the streets of Richmond, then Boise. They cold-called office managers and purchasing agents. They flooded offices with free samples and instructed receptionists and secretaries in their use. They put their product literally in the hands of people who would use them most. Soon Post-its began circulating on memos, reports, and other documents. And when the last Post-it was gone, people didn’t just want more. They needed more.

Two years after the plug was pulled on Family Guy, Cartoon Network began showing syndicated reruns during Adult Swim, its popular late-night programming block. Meanwhile, Fox released the first two seasons in a DVD box set. The result was pure synergy. DVD sales fed off free publicity from the reruns, which in turn converted new TV viewers. Within a month 400,000 copies of the box set had been sold, and the show’s ratings represented a 239 percent increase for Adult Swim.

Today the Post-it has become a staple of the workplace, as integral to document management as...well, staples. According to one Gallup study, the average professional receives 11 messages a day on Post-its. Entire offices are seemingly blanketed in the rainbow-colored squares, and news services heralded the product’s recent 25th anniversary.

Fox is once again running new Family Guy episodes. The series has done the seemingly impossible: it returned after cancellation. The box sets are the all-time best-selling DVDs for a television series. But more importantly, Family Guy’s success helped make an entire industry rethink its business model. These days, a TV program is as much a commercial for its DVD as it is a show in its own right. And this change has sparked a television renaissance, as networks take greater risks with characters and story arcs to win fans.

The success of the Post-it and Family Guyare a testament to the faith of their respective creators. Both Art Fry and Seth MacFarlane’s teams overcame considerable hesitancy at 3M and Fox, and both groups continued to champion products long after they seemed to have failed commercially. They had faith in their products,and they persevered.

But these products’ success is also a testament to the power of identifying the right market. Post-its didn’t jump off the shelf at consumers; instead people had to be trained in their use. Office workers had to be educated into becoming consumers. Likewise, it wasn’t until Family Guy moved to DVD and to the Adult Swim timeslot (to which its teen-and college-age audience is slavishly devoted) that the show found acolytes who would recognize and spread its daring humor and incessant cultural commentary.

Even the best, most innovative product may find itself fighting for survival. Believing in your products will get you halfway there. The other half involves doggedly honing and adapting your marketing until at last you find the right audience – the one that believes as fervently as you do.

[ Our Two Cents About Your Two Bits ]

You’re in possession of some fascinating examples of branding. They’re probably scattered across your dresser or lurking in your bag. You might even have some jingling in your pockets right now. They’re the new state quarters, produced by the United States Mint.

Since 1999, the U.S. Mint has been producing quarters whose reverse sides each celebrate a particular state. The result is not only compulsively collectible, but also highly revealing of a how each state sees itself. And that’s why these quarters fascinate us: because they are an exercise in branding. Each quarter has one chance to reach an audience. Each message is set in stone...a copper/nickel alloy, actually. Like any marketing effort, each was a mix of art, strategy, and committee process. And each quarter had to please several audiences, including its governor (who determined his or her state’s design submission process) and the U.S. Mint itself.

So if we examine the new quarters the way we do other branding efforts, which ones work? Here are a few of our favorites, a few duds, and a few that fall somewhere in between.

Montana– New for 2007, this quarter is very strong. The bison skull is both visually arresting and speaks to the state’s Native American heritage, and the landscape reminds us of wide-open appeal of The Big Sky Country.

Maryland– Sadly, our home state’s quarter gets mixed reviews. Like our license plate,this coin is spare and stately. But our nickname – The Old Line State – is obscure, and our statehouse, despite its colonial significance, doesn’t seem to evoke enough of the state’s spirit.

West Virginia– We hate to pick on our much-picked-upon neighbor. But a quarter should not be a postcard of a bridge.

Florida– Florida’s Gateway to Discovery quarter neatly juxtaposes a Spanish galleon and the Space Shuttle, effortlessly spanning five centuries of history. Brilliant.

New Hampshire– Originally, the state’s choice of The Old Man in the Mountain seemed odd to those not familiar with the landmark. Now it seems like uncanny foresight– three years after the coin was minted, The Old Man crumbled. From a marketing perspective, this was luck at its height: the event received major (and elegiac) media attention, adding to the strength of New Hampshire’s brand.

Indiana– Our Design Director lives and breathes auto racing, and even he thinks this Indy 500-focused quarter lacks the appropriate gravitas.

Texas– From a design perspective, the Doric simplicity of this quarter – the star, the slogan, the state itself – is commendable. But the size of the state silhouette reminds us that Texas remains, as always, fascinated with Texas.

Alabama– Like any good marketer, Alabama uses surprise to cut through the clutter. In featuring Tuscumbia native Helen Keller, Alabama calls attention to its favorite daughter; in using Braille lettering, the state takes full advantage of the sculptural possibilities of the medium. Bravo.

Wyoming– Simply mystifying. We salute The Equality State’s record on women’s suffrage, but slapping this nickname next to a cowboy on a bucking bronco produces a thoroughly muddled piece. Perhaps all the cowgirls were modeling for other coins...

Utah– We’re excited about this upcoming quarter as well. Proclaiming itself The Crossroads of the West, Utah commemorates the Golden Spike and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad...when the West was still wild and mass transit was cool.

Your Name Here– So what about your brand? Can you distill who you are down to an image on a coin face? Try it! Can a nickname succinctly capture your essence? If you had just one chance to speak to the nation, what would you say? A brand solution worth minting is a brand solution worth a mint.

[ Thinking Green, Marketing Green ]

With An Inconvenient Truth’s Oscar win, we’ve reached a tipping point. The environment – and man’s effect on it – is on everyone’s mind.

For organizations this means new challenges. Energy providers are being pressured to find alternatives to fossil fuels. In the marketplace, green products have gone from fringe to ever-growing niche, and now they are poised to explode. In all industries, customers are beginning to demand that firms be responsible, sustainable, and carbon-neutral.

So now is a good time to consider how green your organization is. And if you have embraced environment friendly policies, it’s also the time to let your clients and customers know.

Take the burrito chain, Chipotle. While certainly not “fast food,” the restaurant does serve food fast...and in very large, meat-oriented helpings, which hardly make
one think “environmental.”

Yet Chipotle is thinking green, responsible, and sustainable on a number of levels. Its napkins have gone from white to pulp brown in order to reduce their use of harmful bleaches. It’s buying naturally raised pork and avoiding bovine growth hormones that could make their way into the groundwater. Even Chipotle gift cards are made from renewable and recyclable corn plastic.

It’s important to note that Chipotle didn’t make these changes all at once. The company has taken small, affordable steps, building momentum as it goes. But what’s crucial is that Chipotle has kept the customer informed at every step. Signs, cups, and menus at every store regularly update patrons on Chipotle’s progress, essentially saying, “Here’s what we’ve changed, and here’s why we’ve changed it.” It’s green thinking, good business, and great marketing.

To be certain, going green should be its own reward. But these days a sustainable philosophy is a marker to clients and customers of a premium product. And soon it will be price-of-entry in many categories, as it’s already becoming in industries like coffee production and homebuilding.

So if you’ve adopted green practices, it’s to your benefit to communicate that fact clearly to the customers, because they want to know. The green audience is discriminating, involved, and loyal...and if you win them by marrying a good product to a sound environmental philosophy, your organization will be rewarded.

If you haven’t thought about adopting environmentally friendly practices, now might be the time to start...even if your company doesn’t produce anything accompanied by a bleached napkin. A bank can look into new plastics for its ATM cards. A law firm might call a bike courier instead of a delivery van for local parcels. A new facility might be designed to be carbon-neutral. (And while some green solutions are still expensive, many others are not. Wal-Mart is enjoying improved media relations thanks to its move to energy-efficient lighting, but you can be sure they’re going to enjoy the estimated $3 billion they’ll save on their energy bills even more.) Most importantly, if you do decide to adopt green practices, be sure you communicate that fact to your clients, stakeholders, competitors, and local public officials.

Deciding how environmentally conscious to become might well be a challenge for your organization. But marketing your environmentalism is common sense. It will win you a loyal following, please external audiences, raise the bar for your peers, and increase public awareness of green initiatives as a whole. You’re saving the world...so make sure the world notices.

[ On Wiener Dogs, Rats & Search ]

Dachshunds are a smart, compact breed of dog designed to seek out and dispatch their even smaller and smarter adversaries: rats. This February Yum Brands had a rat problem worthy of a whole herd of wiener dogs, in the form of television footage showing rodents run amok in a New York KFC/Taco Bell. When the video found its way online, anyone could search for it. And they did.

We normally think of our favorite search engine as a faithful tool, a trusty hound sniffing out the answers we need from the Net. But like any excitable breed, search might just turn around and bite you.

Which is the real public relations lesson from the Yum Brands rat incident. As Kate Macarthur points out in Advertising Age, while the firm did make its share of typical PR mistakes – a slow response, treatment of the story as purely local, inadequate statements on the brands’ websites – the mechanics of search morphed the crisis into a fiasco. When people searched for “rats” they got Taco Bell; when they searched for “KFC” they found links to exterminators.



To avoid being in the doghouse, here’s what to remember:
• The more people visit a site, the higher it climbs in the rankings. To give your firm’s message equal billing, you need viewers to visit the sites you point them to...because they’ll already be checking out your site of disaster. A media crisis is a marketing crisis, so be sure your crisis communication plan addresses all forms of communication. It’s vital to get your message right and your click rate up.
• Be mindful of the need to advertise against negative search terms. Unhappy combinations of search terms – like a company’s name and “rodents” – can bring up damning sponsored links. You can fend off such results by buying up the relevant terms. Yum Brands seems to have taken this advice – now such a search yields zero sponsored links, instead of a who’s who of exterminators. (Over-reliance on computer-generated advertising is also unwise, even downright ghoulish. Adrants notes that when Anna Nicole’s son died, IntelliTXT ads offered new Smiths for sale at Target.)
• On the Net, mistakes are global...and they linger. At time of writing, one of the top 10 results for a Google search of “Taco Bell” involves union boycotts, and the sponsored links reference E. coli and law firms specializing in food and drug cases. Steady PR and search monitoring are always needed to offset such messages.

On the Net, the complications from poor crisis management can breed like rats...and it takes dogged persistence to sort them all out.

Unless of course,the dog dies from eating tainted pet food.

Which is why, as Ad Age and Yahoo! News report, organic pet food producers are experiencing a bonanza in the wake of pet deaths from tainted brand-name products. After all, the whole point of search is that it lets people find you. So paid-search ads drove concerned consumers to natural and organic pet food providers, whose sales have skyrocketed. Menu Foods’ debacle is a godsend to these companies, who recognize an opportunity to reach a vast, suddenly interested audience.

Thus, while organizations need to anticipate and protect themselves against potential crises, they also need to be nimble and alert to new opportunities. Disasters may linger on the Web, but golden opportunities don’t. When a competitor stumbles, ask what marketing communications tools might be used to capitalize on the moment...including, of course, search optimization strategies.

When well trained, search can be man’s best friend. Don’t let a crisis be your organization’s obedience school.

[ Baltimore: To Be Determined ]

Behind our offices there used to be a giant mural. It featured the bricks of our building melding into a stage curtain, which in turn parted to reveal the prow of the USS Constellation. The ship cut through churning water. The Inner Harbor stood proud in the background.

Actually, the mural is still there; it’s just hidden. No longer visible to cars streaming toward Baltimore’s stadiums, the mural is now part of an alley behind a new building that will house...whatever. And while new construction should be welcomed for the jobs, opportunity, and sheer energy it brings to our city, it’s sad to see this proud image of Baltimore’s sailing past covered up.

But it’s our present image that currently concerns us. By now you’ve probably had more than enough time to digest (or forget) last summer’s much ado about the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association’s tourism slogan. Bright and cheery ads, banners, and a website all trumpeted, “Baltimore: Get in on it.” From almost the moment it appeared, reactions to the campaign were...mixed, to put it kindly.

In an editorial, the Baltimore Business Journal’s Joanna Sullivan blamed the widespread resistance to the branding effort on Baltimore’s continuing “inferiority complex.” We respectfully must disagree: you can love a city and still loathe its tagline. (Similarly, Cornerstone practically runs on Diet Coke...but we vastly prefer The New Seekers teaching the world to sing in 1971 to G. Love teaching the world to “chill” in 2005.)

Meghana Kulkarni, in The Urbanite’s August 2006 issue, summed up the campaign’s central problem in a nutshell: “Seems like we answered the question, ‘What do we have that everyone else has too?’” Of the 14 icons that make up the logo, at least eight are generic to any large town, let alone a world-class city. As for the tagline, what specifically are we supposed to be getting in on? Kulkarni wisely notes
that a successful civic slogan, whether official (“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”) or controversial (“Keep Austin Weird”), emblazons its city with one distinctive notion, from which the rest of its character can be extrapolated.

BACVA’s mistake was in focusing on everything Baltimore has to offer – in their own words, “the totality of the Baltimore experience” – instead of focusing on what Baltimore is – the essence of the Baltimore experience. Branding is an act of peeling away layers to find the core. Slapping on a new facade (or 14) just obscures the central work.

True, last summer is long over; in fact this summer is speedily approaching. But what’s important is what you can glean from the debacle. After all, it’s easy to nod in agreement with these principles. It’s another to apply them – to focus the same coldly critical eye on your own advertising. Are you trumpeting all that you do, or what you do best? Are you merely establishing the credentials that put you in line with your competitors, or are you shouting what makes you unique?

Perhaps this test is the most telling: when you last circulated your marketing campaign for comments, did everyone point out what could still be excised? Or did they start dolloping things back in? Sometimes, everyone getting in on something doesn’t help. In the rush to answer dueling constituencies, you can forget to address who really matters: the audience.

Meanwhile, we’re glad a new building went up behind us. We wholeheartedly want what’s good for Baltimore. But we miss viewing our sailing mural, so emblematic of this historic city’s unique charm.

Huh. “Charm.” Now there’s an interesting notion to attach to a city. Maybe one worth a campaign.

[ WWW: World Wide Widgets? ]

William Gibson, the man who coined the term “cyberspace,” once published a novel called Virtual Light. In an early chapter, the protagonist comments that his roommate had printed out the news just the way she liked it, with no disasters and three times the celebrity romance coverage.

This was in 1996, when Netscape still indexed every website as it appeared. Soon Yahoo! would let users customize its portal. Now, we don’t have to browse bookshelves anymore – Amazon will recommend titles we’re likely to like. We aren’t yet printing out custom newspapers, but we don’t need to – RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) feeds will deliver news from pre-selected sites.

The Internet, as predicted, has put almost unlimited information at our fingertips. But what no one predicted was that we might actually receive less information than before.

Go to a bookstore and you’re bound to pick up something other than what you were looking for. Read the paper, in print or online, and you’re bound to browse an article you weren’t seeking. But with RSS feeds you get only what you already know you’ll read.

This trend is accelerating. For instance, our office’s new Macs now sport the Dashboard feature. Thanks to Dashboard’s “widgets,” we can check the weather, traffic, airline flights, ski conditions...the list goes on. And more widgets are available to download each day. We don’t need to even risk the distraction of Google to get almost all our daily information.

It’s certainly convenient. But is it good? In many ways, society is now less well informed. We’re becoming isolated in our own informational niches, leading to groupthink, narrow vision, and general disengagement.

Or are we?

Since we have the information we need, we’re more free to chase information we want. Every second a widget saves us is one that can be spent discovering something new. We might throw away half the newspaper unread, but RSS feeds link us to articles we’ll probably like, which in turn lead us to still more articles, and so on.

It’s scary for businesses though, because more media makes it harder to reach customers. Are they listening to regular radio or satellite? Do they see your banner ads? Will Google AdWords always work? What about email blasts?

The good news is that creativity still rules the day. The right mix of offerings will continue to hold your customers’ attention, and even make them brand evangelists. We didn’t need to see any ads for Snakes on A Plane; our kids sent us customized phone invitations to the film from Samuel L. Jackson. Last time we got sick, the CareerBuilder.com chimps sent us an e-card. The very prevalence of these widgets, free downloads, and other goodies keep users returning again and again to sites like Apple, MySpace, or YouTube. Strong advertising is now as valued a commodity as a cool music video – the good ones are talked about and shared around.

No question, the Balkanization of shared information and experiences is a disturbing trend from certain social and civic perspectives. But businesses and advertisers should welcome widgets and other new applications as an opportunity...as yet another way to earn customers.

After all, our Dashboard now sports dinner recipes from Epicurious.com. And thanks to the BBC widget, our credit card receipts now show a surprising number of British music purchases. The future of Virtual Light is here, and it’s neither a utopia nor a dystopia. It’s just where we are now.

[ The Kids Are Alright.........And Craving Crullers ]

MTV recently celebrated its 25th anniversary...by not celebrating it. At all.

MTV figured out long ago that it was not Music Television, but rather Youth Television – reflecting, and just as often directing, the culture of America’s teenagers. It’s tied itself to an identity as a rebellious upstart. So MTV wisely realized that to celebrate its 25th birthday would be to mark itself as old, as square, as an institution, as “The Man”...in other words, to compromise its brand credibility. And preserving that credibility is more than worth skipping a birthday...even one this landmark.

Brand credibility matters to consumers, despite the artifice inherent in brands themselves. Or rather, perhaps because of that very artifice: having agreed to identify with an image, and having sealed the deal with a purchase, consumers react fiercely when that image – and their wallets – are betrayed. Rolling Stone has anchored its brand around its reputation as the chronicler of rock throughout the decades; indeed, they’ve seemingly turned every other issue into a top-100 countdown or anniversary extravaganza. MTV, “the rebel,” cannot afford such nostalgia. Today’s teenagers and 20-somethings may know their parents watched the same channel, but they certainly don’t want it pointed out.

Maintaining brand credibility is even more challenging for an organization trying to grow or change. So Dunkin’ Donuts’ rebranding makes for fascinating viewing. After problematic pairings with Baskin-Robbins and Togo’s, Dunkin’ now craves the high-end clientele of Starbucks. But, as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, market research finds that Starbucks and Dunkin’ regulars are practically two separate “tribes” – the former disdaining Dunkin’ Donuts’ impersonal character and standardized offerings, the latter feeling confused by Starbucks’ arcane lingo, specialized choices, and sheer cost.

So how do you expand that loyal customer base? Can you expand your business to make it more appealing to a wider range of customers, but without alienating your core? Without making your regulars feel (as one Dunkin’ focus group member said of Starbucks’ overstuffed chairs and laptop-heavy atmosphere) as though they were “celebrating Christmas with people [they] don’t know?"

The answer for Dunkin’ Donuts has been carefully considered baby steps. It is going after the casual coffee drinker who wants some of the menu options Starbucks offers. It’s phasing in store redesigns, making franchises feel more open, warm, and inviting, with lots of natural light. It’s expanding the menu to include a wider variety of drinks and toying with including lunch foods. It’s staying true to the quick, no-frills service that its customers love – including push-button espressos that take half the time of Starbucks’ manual machines. And with new advertising – an updated logo, They Might Be Giants providing music, and John Goodman lending his voice – Dunkin’ is shooting for hip without ever shooting from the hip.

Dunkin’ no longer wants to simply own their customers’ mornings. They want to supply their coffee and metabolic energy needs at all hours. “America Runs On Dunkin'” goes the new tagline – a claim that both newcomers and Dunkin’s Boston-area diehards can embrace.

So what’s your brand? Chances are it’s not your name or your mission statement. On what does its credibility rest? And do you know how you can grow but still stay true to your brand promise? MTV knows it’s about youth, and is determined to deliver. Dunkin’ Donuts is about something more than donuts and coffee...and over time is very carefully and cannily discovering just what that something is.

[ On Camera Phones & Candy Sushi ]

This past summer we went to a party where we had been promised “a form of sushi.” What we got were desserts made to look uncannily like sushi. On one plate, Rice Krispies treats topped with Swedish Fish were wrapped in green Fruit Roll-Ups. On another, chunks of Twinkies had been stuffed with candy corn and sprinkled with red sugar beads that looked like roe.

The partygoers were thrilled. One said, “This is why camera phones were invented!” and she happily began snapping photo after photo until the “sushi” was devoured. Afterward, everyone else begged her to email the pictures so they could have copies, too.

At work the next day, we received another surprise: a link to a broadcast of the World Cup. But this wasn’t streaming video. Instead, the program converted TV coverage of the game into images made from letters and numbers. In the tiny window, soccer players animated as stacks of keyboard symbols duked it out. In the ‘90s, similar pictures were all over the primordial Internet, only to disappear as graphics evolved. To see them back from extinction and animated made for a weird marriage of nostalgia and future shock. Watching soccer this way was enthralling and unexpected and fun.

Novelty sushi. The latest cell phone technology. A frivolous new way to watch sports. So what did these moments have in common?

Delight.

How often does pleasure take us by surprise? How often are we caught off-guard with laughter? And how often do we put something into the world that delights in return?

The best products, services,and advertising create delight, or make delight easy to capture and distribute. The sushi and the soccer program were novel experiences; the camera phone and a fast computer made them shareable.

The “delight factor” is easy to overlook. Businesses want their product to be the best, so they spend time adding features and gadgets. But that doesn’t necessarily make something more fun. (In fact, more features can just make something frustrating. VCRs also had clocks, but did you ever see one that didn’t read “12:00”?) Style, efficiency, or service can often trump something that’s “better” in the technical sense, especially if we’re caught off-guard by how good something is. iPods didn’t win by being the best music player; they won by being surprisingly sleek, stylish, and easy to use. The world was waiting for the next portable music player, but no one saw the iPod coming.

What business are you in? Are you building delight? Are you getting the job done, not only well, but well in a way that surprises? Not every business venture has the pizzazz of a camera phone. But every business can profit from doing more than just covering the bases. Can you reshape your products? Can you shake up your services? Can you make your advertising sing? Of course you can.

And you emphatically should. Because we never wanted a camera phone before. But since that party, getting one has become a high priority. After all, who knows what surprise might end up on our plates? There is delight to be captured, and as consumers we’re willing to spend on the products that will make that easy. And meanwhile letters and numbers take shape on our screen. They flicker; they form themselves into crude figures; they resolve into something greater: people at play.

[ On Disasters, Human Nature & Your Media Insurance Policy ]

The difference between a potential PR disaster and an actual one is typically the PR itself – or the lack of it, in 99 percent of all cases. Johnson & Johnson’s aggressive response to Tylenol tampering in 1982 set the industry standard for good crisis PR. But most companies in a similar situation, like Firestone, fail to live up to that standard: reacting slowly, hiding their heads in the sand, obfuscating, taking half-measures, or even lying.

Typically they do so with the best of intentions – they just want to minimize the bad news. But news always gets out, and the resulting fallout is often more disastrous than the original calamity. (Just ask Patricia Dunn, HP’s overly inquisitive former chairwoman.)

When this happens, it’s easy for the marketing communications world to opine. “If only they had done crisis communications planning!” we say. “If only they’d had media training!” “We could have helped them avoid all this!” And we shake our heads ruefully as we switch our Firestones for Goodyears.

What we overlook is the fact that it’s our fault these companies have no crisis communication plans. We’re offering something that nobody wants.

People are cocky. They don’t believe disaster will happen to them. They always believe they are the exception, that their luck will hold.

Take fires, for example. Do you check your smoke detector faithfully every six months? Is there a fire extinguisher on every floor? And does your family practice its escape plan? Be honest– the answer to at least one of these questions is probably “No.”

Or what about driving? Do you always maintain a following distance of one car-length per 10 MPH of speed, or do you occasionally tailgate? Do you always stop at yellow lights, or do you squeak through before the red?

“But my house won’t catch on fire,” we say. “I’m a good driver.” Firms do likewise: “The company’s books are fine.” “Of course we’re environmentally responsible.”

But wait – look again at the above examples. We may not have nine-volts for the smoke detector...but we do have fire insurance. We take chances in cars that we shouldn’t...but by law, we have to have a policy before we get behind the wheel.

If the potential cost is high enough (the loss of all we own in a fire, for instance) we take certain measures... not to protect ourselves, but rather to get other people to protect us. Essentially, that’s all insurance is. And why should businesses behave any different than people?

So let’s call crisis communication planning what it is: media insurance. Media insurance is the guarantee that, when the inevitable bad day happens, you will know what to say and how to say it. Media insurance is the promise that someone will be there to guide you through the thicket of reporters’ microphones. Media insurance is how you make the news, rather than become it.

In short, PR firms need to stop lamenting organizations’ reluctance to do adequate crisis communication planning, because what they are lamenting is human nature itself. Instead they need to invoke common sense: getting media insurance is simply the smart thing to do. It’s folly to get behind the wheel of a car without insurance. It’s folly magnified exponentially to do the same when you’re driving a company.

www.cornerstonemtm.com

[ On Diamonds, Pencils & Corporate Chemistry ]

It’s easy to see why employees and managers get frustrated when the time comes to nail down an organization’s values. No matter how hard you work to capture your company’s unique essence, the values always seem to come out strikingly uniform and bland.

Honestly, who doesn’t value Excellence? Is any company going to say they don’t care about Character, Quality, Partnership, Communication, or Integrity? So what’s going to make your corporate values distinct?

Corporate culture. Personal connections and interactions. In short, chemistry.

The analogy is an apt one. Think back to high school. You learned that when a lot of carbon atoms bond a certain way they form a soft substance that slides apart easily: graphite (the “lead” in pencils). But under a different set of circumstances, these same carbon atoms bond another way, forming the world’s hardest mineral: a diamond.

The elements are the same. What changes is how the bonds are expressed. The resulting substances are radically different.

The same is true for organizations. Instead of chemical bonds, we mean the bonds between people – in other words,your organization’s culture. The values may be the same, but it’s your company’s culture that affects how these values get expressed...and how they get put into action.

For instance, two firms might both name one of their values to be “Communication.” A large computing firm might see Communication to mean having clear email protocols and using online discussion listservs. A small consulting firm might see Communication represented at the weekly round-table discussions attended by the whole staff.

One structure isn’t necessarily better than another, nor will it work equally as well for all companies. A diamond is useless if you’re taking the SATs. And you’d look silly exchanging engagement pencils with your future spouse. Likewise, round-table discussions might be unwieldy in our giant tech firm. And a rigid email chain won’t foster freewheeling brainstorming sessions among our consultants. The goal of clear Communication may be constant, but the path to achieving it is different for each company. The same goes for the rest of your values – Integrity, Quality, Partnership, Efficiency, and so forth.

So when the time comes to define your core values, take some extra time to look at how those values actually play out in day-to-day operations. By understanding your organization’s culture,you can track how its values are put into play,and by pointing to the values as models for behavior,you set goalposts for performance. By understanding your organization’s chemistry...how the bonds between people are forged, broken, and transformed...and how values get brought to life...you can stir up quite a reaction.

www.cornerstonemtm.com

[ On Bullet Points, Shuttle Explosions & Loving the Paragraph ]

“Executives don’t read.” That’s what we’ve been told, again and again. “They don’t have time.” “What’s the gist?” And worst of all: “Can you put it in bullet points?”

We know of one consulting firm that doesn’t even use word processing programs anymore. They do everything – everything – in PowerPoint.

We think that’s a shame. We use bullet points ourselves – in everything from office emails to the work we produce – but it’s difficult to fathom an entire workweek composed of nothing but. Besides the horrific image of flavorless slide after flavorless slide, we think it’s just bad communication...and bad business.

What gets lost with bullet points? Story. Nuance. Shading. Bullets fragment ideas and concepts. Bullets can emphasize or de-emphasize the wrong information. They masquerade as facts, when they are, in fact, just points.

Growing up, you learned to read critically. When an argument is fishy, something feels out of place. But when you read a PowerPoint slide, you have nothing against which to judge what you’re being told. What happens if the person who wrote that slide is misinformed? If they’re leaving something out? If they have an agenda?

Or what if they’re just bad at organizing? We learn to privilege information at the top and left of the page. So what happens when someone delivers a dire warning – say, about a shuttle explosion – in the bottom right?

In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was damaged during takeoff by a falling piece of foam. Upon re-entry, it disintegrated, costing seven astronauts their lives. Later, The New York Times learned that a significant danger sign – the foam chunk that initially struck the shuttle was 640 times larger than anything NASA had tested for – had been flagged by engineers during a review of the initial damage. Yale professor and design information expert Edward Tufte pointed out that this crucial information was buried at the bottom of a cluttered PowerPoint slide. The alarm was there, but went unnoticed. Three years later, the shuttle program is only now getting back on its feet.

Chances are, the use of bullets isn’t going to cost your company what it cost NASA. But it could mean the difference between landing a client and losing one, or between being a step ahead of the market and being behind. So we hope the next time someone hands you a bulleted list, you don’t take it at face value. Ask to see the research. Take the time to have someone walk you through the analysis.

But it’s the larger assumption about upper-management attention spans we’d like to tackle, too. Maybe it’s true that you only read bullets. But maybe you haven’t had reason to read more.

We’d like to give you that reason. We’d like to give you a break from bullet points. We want to give you something to think about over your morning coffee – with content, conversation, and yes, even whole paragraphs. So we’ll be sending more of these short missives. We believe you have five minutes to pause, read, and reflect, and that as a smart business person, you’re hungry for the chance to do so.

www.cornerstonemtm.com