Four Things That Made Me Say WOW

1)     Sniff it up with LE WHIF

Now you can puff your chocolate instead of chew it. Le Whif, a lipstick shaped inhaler, sends out tiny particles of chocolate intended to tantalize the taste buds. And of course this is all for less than a single calorie! Plus likely it doesn’t stain your teeth.  Not sure how I feel about the ‘eating by breathing’ idea, but, hey, to each his own.

2)     Meet the moo-er via “Where is My Milk From?”

Buying local is all the rage, and there are more and more tools to identify “localness.” Enter this website to help us lowly consumers track our herds and judge some semblance of milk miles. (I did always wonder what those numbers were near the expiration date.) Now, whether people will care enough to switch brands or write manufacturers and producers is yet to be seen.

3)     The world is one, at least on Skyrock.com

What I love most about this site is watching the number of blogs increase by 30 in 60 seconds, ultimately landing at 30,974,172 while I was writing this post. That’s a lot of people with a lot of things to say. The second most interesting thing about this site is that the only thing it doesn’t do is cook you dinner—but it does have chat, blogs, profiles, dating, poker, music, social networks, videos and possibly Jimmy Hoffa.

4)     OMG, did you see that catch??!!!

Last but not least, for all you sports fans out there, check out  “Are You Watching This?” In addition to your crazy fan friends calling and texting you, you can have an online service do it too. RUWT will send you alerts (ranging from okay to EPIC) about your sports/teams of choice. So now no need to change that wedding date or postpone that meeting with HR, because you’ll always know the score.

We’ll miss you. Kind of.

About 20 years ago, I decided to go to a lunchtime seminar to look for an internship. I was a student and, well, running late is being kind. The doors had just closed so I sat down next to a guy who also seemed to be waiting for the right chance to make an entrance. He immediately struck up a conversation about how excited he was to hear the speaker. He had heard that the guy was good: Brilliant. Funny. Handsome. I gave him a sideways glance— I had never even heard of the speaker before. Of course, just a few minutes later, my chatty seatmate strolled on stage.

That was how I met Bob Garfield, the critic for Advertising Age. Garfield always had his own take on the latest work that made him the first thing to read when the new issue arrived. Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes we disagreed. Either way, I always knew he called it as he saw it. Except for maybe the handsome part.

Thanks for keeping us honest.

A Little Change Here, A Big Change There

It used to be said that the world and society is slow to change. If we take a look at technology’s impact on societal norms, that statement is now a blatant falsity. Societal change is happening at terminal velocity. Here are but a few observations regarding our ‘new way’ of interacting with the world and each other.

• Wireless Reading Devices: Hmmm, will this mean people  can no longer loan their favorite books to friends, line their shelves with bound escapism or close a novel with a resounding thump and a sigh of satisfaction? Publishers and designers, I challenge you to up the ante on personalization and experiential elements of electronic reading devices — make them warm and snuggly and allow them to be as artful as books on display.

• Online Shopping: I have a favorite grocery store check-out person. She’s funny and happy and always makes me smile. I pick her lane when she’s working. So, online retailers, what can you do to make me smile upon check-out?  Or maybe this is where UPS/FedEx can increase their value even more. Picture a world of  shoes being delivered to your door with a pretty rose left on top of the box. Now that would make me smile!

• Texting: Let’s rally against becoming a pack of monosyllabic keyboardists. Prose should continue to mean something.  I fear texting’s effect on literature and on attention spans. If I write a sentence, or heaven forbid, a paragraph, will it be ignored because it is too long, or says too much? We need to make sure depth of communication and emotional attachment stays present in our relationships; business, personal and otherwise.

• Cell Phones: Our private lives are made public via the topics we are discussing in the company of others. We’re both exhibitionists and voyeuristic at the same time. While traveling this week, I heard a father say a sweet good night to his child, a woman break up with her boyfriend and a boss dress-down a subordinate. The first made me happy, the second and third made me uncomfortable and want to move seats. Architects, builders, cell phone manufacturers: what’s your next innovation to protect us from TMI? Privacy booths and cones of silence might be the next big thing. Maxwell Smart did have it right after all.

Every advancement, every vision creates a need for more. And that’s what makes all of this pretty darn fun. Here’s to the next ten years of advancement and adventure.

Are we creating value or just communicating value?

I work in communications. It’s my job to communicate the value of my clients products and services to the target market. By doing it well am I creating actual value or just symbolic value? Or, some of both? I particularly enjoyed this often tongue-in-cheek TED presentation by Rory Sutherland who ponders the power of communication to alter the perceived value of goods. Enjoy.

Have You Hugged Your Target’s Amygdala Today

Studies have shown that emotionally arousing events are more likely to be recalled later than more neutral events.  That’s because strong sensory stimulus causes information to bypass the short-term memory and go directly into long-term memory. It is a matter of survival.  Things that are very painful or scary should be remembered so as not to be repeated. Touch a hot stove once and you pretty much have that down. Conversely, more is more with things that are pleasurable. So, biologically speaking, memory is a very useful thing indeed.

Marketers know this and have tugged emotional strings in their targets for years. But marketers are rarely rigorous about making an emotional connection. Especially when there are pressures on sales, our industry tends to hit ‘em between the eyes with rational reasons to buy.

The research is clear, and the implication is as old as the species:  activity in the amygdala, the so called pleasure center in the brain, at the time of encoding information correlates with retention for that information.

So, don’t hit your target over the head. Get inside their heads and give their amygdalas a gentle hug.

Connect Here

Ah, the delicate balance of creative tension

I see a lot of communications out there that are either relevant to a target market or are creatively differentiated. I’ve chosen to block out those that are neither and focus on the real question: Why aren’t there enough communications that are both?

Sadly, all too often there is a winner or a loser somewhere along the way between creative curiosity and disciplined marketing thinking. This should not be a mutually exclusive proposition—one should build on the other. To be successful, there must be a “yes, and” type of relationship between creativity and discipline.

I’d like to quantify the amount someday, but I would be willing to bet that more than 85 percent of all communication efforts are sub-optimal because one of these two elements “won” at the expense of the other. That is far too high a number to be accepted. Far too many marketers are not marketing effectively, because when one wins over the other, the resulting idea is out of alignment.

Creating an environment that fosters the delicate balance of creative curiosity and marketing discipline is fundamentally critical to creating an environment where compelling work happens again and again. (The “again and again” part is important–it is business after all, not artistic expression.)

Creativity without discipline is too often misdirected and wasteful–what we refer to as “The Bright Shiny Object Trap”. “Hey, that’s cool” or “Wow, I haven’t seen that before” are not the only measures of success. On the flip side, look at all the work out there that is hitting all the rational points but without grabbing someone’s attention and motivating them. Marketing discipline without a compelling creative idea is likely to be relevant but uninspiring, and it won’t move anyone to take any action.

If you aren’t already, take a day and pay attention to every message that is trying to work its way into your world. What don’t you normally pay attention to? Why wouldn’t it normally get in? Chances are, there wasn’t any balance to the discipline/creativity tension along the way.

If your brand isn’t thinking with both sides of its brain, it’s time to catch your balance.

Restore honor to groupthink – sage advice to collaborators

How have we allowed “groupthink” to describe a negative phenomenon? Groups are good. Thinking is good. And if everyone agrees that group collaboration is essential to making the work better, then how can it be inefficient and lead to small, consensus-laden thinking?

Well, here’s where your sage advice comes in: Collaboration by definition requires all involved to contribute. It doesn’t mean handing the responsibility off to a bigger group. It means stepping up and leading the group to superior holistic problem solving. When leaders bring whatever is needed to create target-relevant work and everyone brings a point of view and is heard, groups can make the work better–and do it on budget, on time and on strategy.

Happy groupthinking.

The death of the department store

Been to a department store lately? Yes, I know, many of you are saying “Well, not by choice.” During a recent trip to the mall, it became painfully clear to me that department stores are becoming soulless holding cells for retail brands. Sears, J.C. Penney, Macy’s, etc. have no defining experiences whatsoever. When a consumer is deep in the aisles, it’s virtually impossible to determine one store from another.

This doesn’t seem to be that hard to solve—where’s the thinking around fun chairs at the entrance, branded floor tiles with personality, signature mints upon checkout? Give us anything that creates a feeling about you, the owner of the four walls. There are so many consumer touchpoints in-store that could lend flavor or elegance or uniqueness to the visit.

Stand proud, create and own a brand voice. Relying only on your merchandise, which often isn’t your brand, is a long-term death knell.