Bloghound

In a meeting today with VML, Mike Lundgren, VML’s creative technology director, had an interesting comment about one of the big mind shift changes happening in marketing today:

“It’s not about how good you look talking about your own brand. It’s about how you make other people look good talking about your brand.”

In other words because people pay attention to people like them through Facebook, blogs, YouTube, and word of mouth, an important marketing goal should be helping people talk about your brand in ways they find easy, interesting and natural. That is more important than how YOU the company talk about your brand because people pay more attention to people like them than your company’s marketing programs.

It’s no longer messaging as usual.

Who are many CEOs and sales executives most similar to?

a) Al Gore

b) Bob Kerry

c) Bob Dole

The answer is all of the above. The reason is that most CEOs and sales executives, like unsuccessful political candidates, present litanies of facts, figures, and rational reasoning to try to persuade people, and they overlook (or dismiss) the power of emotions.

They rely on dispassionate logic. Yet, neuroscientists and psychologists have proven that the more “rational” a message, the less likely it is to trigger the emotional circuits in our brains that activate behavior and decisions.

The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of a Nation by psychologist and political scientist Dr. Drew Westen is a fascinating read about the science and practice of persuasion in American politics, particularly about how the Democrats, with the exception of Bill Clinton, have blown it so many times by relying on dispassionate reasoning and policy discussions rather than connecting with people on an emotional level.

People decide by how they feel about you. (Or your company or party.) Republicans and many consumer products marketers are masters at this; most Democrats, business-to-business and professional services are not.

Aside from being a political junkie from a communication strategy perspective, I found the book interesting because the principles of political persuasion are the same for business, and are becoming even more relevant in our video, podcasting, blogging world. Most companies obsessively talk about their products, capabilities, roadmaps, strategy du jour ( Six Sigma, anyone?), and obvious trends (“we’re all about helping customers reduce risk and cut costs.”). But they fail to first connect with people, be they customers or employees, in an emotional way that engenders feelings of competency, trust, and liking.

In my book Beyond Buzz, chapter 3 (“Make Meaning Not Buzz”) explores why emotion is the superhighway to making meaning and understanding. Westen’s exploration of scientific research goes much deeper in showing why the mind is hardwired to tune into emotionally compelling appeals vs. rational reasons, and offers strategies on how to appeal to that neural network of often unconscious decision making.

Here are some takeaways from the book that I found especially interesting for those of us in in business.

On getting attention

“We do not pay attention to arguments unless they engender our interest, enthusiasm, fear, anger or contempt. We are not moved by leaders with whom we do not feel an emotional resonance.”

On driving behavior

“Emotion is one of the most potent sources of motivation that drives human behavior. It is no accident that the words motivation and emotion share the same Latin root, movere, which means to move.”

Thinking beyond the message itself

“The implications of these findings suggest that the choice of words, images, wounds, music, backdrop, tone of voice and a host of other factors is as likely to be as significant to the electoral success of a campaign as content.”

The right feelings vs. the best argument

“As decades of survey research demonstrate, people are driven in the voting booth by their feelings, and these feelings reflect the extent to which they believe a party of candidate is attending to their interests and values.”

“The data form political science is crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the candidate who presents the best argument

Beware messaging by focus group

“Virtually every word that came out of his mouth [Gore, 200 presidential campaign] had been market-tested using focus groups and hand-dials indicating when listeners liked and didn’t like what he ways saying in practice debates. Unfortunately, the more his words seemed market-tested, the less genuine they seemed. And the less genuine he seemed, the less likable

The appeal of being clear

“Political scientist Larry Bartels found, as expected, that voters prefer candidates whose values and policies match their own preferences. But he also found that voters prefer candidates who are clear on what they believe, even if it is not what they believe.”

4 questions that matter in deciding

“Voters tend to ask four questions that determine who they will vote for…Candidates who focus their campaigns on the top of this hierarchy and work their way down generally win.

1. How do I feel about the candidate’s party and its principles?
2. How does this candidate make me feel?
3. How do I feel about this candidate’s personal characteristics, particularly his or her integrity, leadership, and compassion?
4. How do I feel about this candidate’s stands on issues that matter to me?

Now, take a look at the sales deck your sales reps are using, the speech your CEO recently gave to employees or partners, the marketing messaging “playbook,” the “look and feel” of your company’s PowerPoint style .

• How do they make people feel about your company?
• Do they tell a compelling story in words and images – or are they a rationale laundry list of capabilities, products, competitive advantages and other dispassionate facts and figures?
• Do people like telling your story? Or are they dispassionate and not genuinely engaged with the ideas?

Metaphors are one of the best ways to understand ideas and concepts. Here’s a good one: Branding is more like a salad bar than a fixed asset, says Tom Asacker over at A Clear Eye.

“It is compelling, and much simpler, to view a brand as a fixed and valuable asset, like a piece of real estate. One that simply requires protection and promotion., Instead, today’s brands should be thought of as perishable assets, like salad bars. They are marketplace offerings, which need to be constantly reinvented and refreshed to remain relevant.”

Guy Kawasaki recently posted an excerpt of Beyond Buzz, the nine themes people like to talk about and hear about — on his blog. (Thanks Guy!) I’ve heard from many, many folks about one of the nine themes that they think is especially valuable: aspirational stories.

So here’s one of my favorite examples of an aspirational story: Steve Jobs, a college drop out, giving the commencement address at Stanford University. He talks about connecting the dots, love and loss, death and the value of staying hungry, and staying foolish. Enjoy.

Tomorrow the United States celebrates its independence and our love for democracy. But perhaps it’s time to reflect on democracy — and how conversations in non-political but highly participatory contexts can shape a civilization. Or how isolation and apathy can erode its soul.

My good friend and the brilliant director, playwright and Trinity Rep artistic director Curt Columbus recently talked about this notion with graduating students at Brown University, and shared his notes with me.

Curt explains that throughout history people have defined their selves and negotiated the rules of their societies by participating in raucous public forums, where all voting citizens participate. And these forums are theaters.

• Think of the influence of the play Persians on the Athenian culture – after the Athenians had just defeated the Persians. The play empathizes with the Persians rather than just hero worshipping the victorious Athenian warriors. And the Athenians choose to be a civilized society rather than ruthless conquerors.

• Or how Shakespeare influenced the culture during the Elizabethan era, helping people to understand what it meant to be English in that turbulent time.

Curt contends that today we need theater and its shared conversations and experiences more than ever. Here are his views:

“So you might say, Curt, these are interesting demonstrations of the theater’s historical importance, but what does this have to do with us in a 21^st century, technologically sophisticated American democracy.

Noam Chomsky said, ‘The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.’

I will go a step further. The most effective way to restrict democracy is to hand over decision making power, and then become increasingly isolated, increasingly unwilling to collect, to connect, and to converse.

I believe that we reached another of those historical moments when the culture needs the theater.

The media in our cultural has raised its volume to a deafening roar. People are starving for a genuine point of interaction, a way to fight the isolation of television and film and internet. They want to find meaning through conversation, through community. And they want to collect in a room with other people to find themselves engaged, enlightened and entertained. The theater is at the crest of a cultural tidal wave in America, if we will just take our place there.

The American archeologist Howard Winters said, ‘Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term ‘we’ or ‘us’ and at the same time decreases those labeled ‘you’ or ‘them’ until that category has no one left in it.’

And University of Chicago educator Robert Hutchins said, ‘The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.’

I’m sure there is a small amount of self-aggrandizement in thinking that theater can save American democracy. But I know that the great Theater is a place where you see the other, walk in their shoes, which is the ultimate humanist act, and where you rub up against the rest of the world, outside your limitations, outside your comfort zone. And that is where the democratic impulse begins at the very least.”

Happy 4^th of July.

Why oh why do organizations obsess over logos and tag lines? If execs looked at the the return on investment they’d be shocked. And, by the way, people hardly ever “get” what the brand experts say the logo and tag are supposed to mean.

Two recent cases in point.

What does the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, pictured above, say to you? It says nothing to me, except that I think the Olympic Games paid too much for not much at all. Yet the Olympic Games went a step further and paid to produce a video to explain the logo. Promote a logo? Good grief, what a waste of money. But to top off the ridiculousness, the video showing an the animated logo has been found to cause epileptic seizures. (And not just among the people who authorized the branding firm .)

Then in tag line la la land we have all the car companies using just about the same tag lines, and also making a big deal about announcing a new tag line.

Mercedes-Benz use to have the tag line, “Engineered Like No Other Car in the World.” which as tag lines go is pretty descriptive and clear. But it dropped that lined for the bland “Unlike Any Other” because the car company said the brand was about more than engineering.

In the past month Audi has introduced a new tag line, “Truth in Engineering,” as has Chrysler with its “Engineered Beautifully.”

Mmmm…seems like all the auto brands are starting to sound the same. Will these tag lines, which probably cost of hundreds of thousands once you add up the market research, copy writing and testing fees, make a dent on the brands revenues?

While a strong, distinctive visual identity is important, it seems that too much money and executive time is spent on logos and tag lines in relation to their value.

[Olympic logo] [taglines] [branding] [Audi tagline] [Chrysler tagline]

Does your writing say you’re a man or a woman? Check out The Gender Genie, a free site which uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Insert about 500 words of your writing and the Genie predicts your gender, allegedly with high accuracy.

I submitted two recent articles and the first chapter of my book. Alas, the Genie thinks I’m male. The articles scored high on the male gender; the book came out male but the score was more balanced: 834/female and 892/male.

  Don Murray, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism professor at my alma mater, University of New Hampshire, recently died but left so many of us with a lasting message: “There’s no magic in writing. It’s a discipline and a process.”

The hardest part of that discipline for me — and many others in marketing — is saying less, stripping out the adjectives, not over-explaining. Using fewer useless words makes for better stories. The other upside to being brief, according to Creative Think’s Roger Van Oech, is that limitations can “be powerful creative stimuIants.”

In the spirit of brevity and creativity, Robert Hruzek of Middle Zone Musings has created a contest challenging people to tell a story in just six words. similar to Wired’s November 2006 feature, “Very Short Stories”

My six word story contributions:

• Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella. Same charming prince?
• She struggled and then just laughed.
• The answer came from weird questions.
• Keeping lids on passion screwed them.
• Addicted to love, seduced by cotton.
• Housework kept her life uncomfortably tidy.
• Would you look at that? Uneffingbelievable.

Kudos to Australians Kristin Hickey and Derek Leddie of The Leading Edge and David Jenkinson of Fosters Group for their ESOMAR award winning paper, “The Heart Transplant — Customers at the Heart of Your Business.” The authors liken marketing’s obsession with brands to a worn-out, struggling heart and suggest that a customer-centric focus offers the equivalent of a heart transplant.

In an interview with Jesse Blackadder, editor of “Research News,” Kristin said managers see consumer-centricity as a source of sustainable comeptitive advantage for three reasons:

1. It allows an organization to get closer to the customer, increasing the relevance of innovation, communications and other marketing.

2. It provides ane lement of consistent objectivity in the business. There are fewer push-and-pull struggeles between departments based on opinions of differing priorities. The Customer insight and advice provides incontestable direction.

3. Customer-centricity can be a source of bargaining power with trade or retailers.

The paper shows Foster’s journey from being brand centric to customer centric, explores the six barriers to adopting a customer centric vision in an organization, and suggests a five step process for leading a customer-centric revolution.

“Business are already increasing their expenditure on consumer insights, which is creating buoyancy in the research industry,” said Kristin. “However, on closer inspection this buoyancy should be a significant cause for concern. Our industry holds itself up as the expert in the field of consumer insights. Yet to date we have failed to provide strong, compelling leaderhip for businesses searching for consumer-centricity.”

An interesting note: to become customer-centric Fosters took customer insights out of market research and created a new organization which is part of the senior leaderships team, working closely with the CEO and senior business strategists.

This week I sat through ten hours of sales presentations over two days. The speakers were smart, passionate and informative. But even so after a while everything started to blend together for those of us in the audience.

One speaker got everyone’s attention because he didn’t just tell and explain, he challenged assumptions. “Most people assume that the way to run a loyalty program is this…but that’s the wrong assumption.” Really? Now we’re really listening.

He also suggested, “Word of mouth marketing is not the largest driver to get new customers. But it is the most important.”

My observation is simply this: people who have a point of view and the courage to challenge assumptions get people’s attention, and often respect too.