Because of the way the hamster takes his red hood off in the beginning, that’s why.

Whoever made this ad really did their homework. The amount of details in this ad is almost staggering, and they all contribute to the authenticity of the aesthetic.

I mean sure, it underlines a bit too clearly what its message is “about”, but the use of imagery and contemporary cultural cues (especially local) is commendable. Rooney’s part was especially touching.

Hat tip to Kaarle

What are you supposed to do when Forbes ranks your city as the most miserable in America? Rally city supporters and create a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign.

That’s what Positively Cleveland, the Ohio city’s convention and visitors bureau, has done after Forbes proclaimed the city as the country’s most miserable last Thursday. Tami Brown, Positively Cleveland’s vice president of marketing, says the day the article came out, the bureau commissioned a local improv troupe to put together a video poking holes in the miserable title. In the video, actors gripe that there are too many sports and live entertainment options in town, and that commutes are so short they don’t have time to do their make-up in the car. There’s also a funny bit where upon hearing that Cleveland has been called the most miserable city, a group of Cleveland people jump up and cheer – which of course, doesn’t make them seem all that miserable.

As I argued in my Kanye West post a while back, thanks in large part to the Internet marketing communications has changed from a brute force approach of bombarding people with a predisposed message until it sticks to something more dynamic where you adapt to what’s “out there” in terms of what’s your brand’s place in culture. To use an analogy, it’s branding by aikido, not by karate. I think you can see the change in thinking in Clevaland’s case as well. Instead of trying to “fight” their new infamous title, they decided to engage it head on, by embracing it and then giving it a meaning makeover.

The sixth and supposedly last season started yesterday in the US (the parts are available in Germany always one day later), however in the last couple of days / weeks a few marketing gigs have already taken place. Such as this one: you can book a flight on Oceanic 815 from Sydney to L.A. on kayak.com – for a horrendous price, of course. Quite a nice idea!

I think this is a step beyond amusement parks like Disneyland, “a miniature Paris in Las Vegas”, and other oft-used examples of hyperreality. And it’s not really alternate reality gaming, cosplay or siteseeing either, it’s something else. I just don’t know what to call this.

But I know Jean Baudrillard would approve.

I had a slight backlog on my TED videocasts and I went through a few them today. One of the videos I watched was Joseph Pine’s 2004 TED talk. This was before he had published the book Authenticity with Jim Gilmore, but this presentation is pretty much on the same stuff that’s being talked about in the book.

The book is essentially about authenticity becoming our (the consumers) primary buying sensitivity. First goods, then services, and now even experiences have become commoditized, so marketers have no choice but to offer authentic experiences. Or at least sell their experiences as more authentic as the competitors’. I had blogged about the book when it came out and I was going to revisit the subject at some point, but I never got around to it. But this is a good reason as any to revisit the subject.

One of the main tenets that stuck with me with the book was this little 2×2 diagram that Pine also had in his TED talk. It’s a screencap, so apologies for the quality.

The diagram has two axis: “it is what it says it is” and “it is true to itself”. What they mean is best illustrated via examples. The “Fake Fake” is rather self-explanatory, but for “Real Fake” Pine says that a tour at Universal Studios is a good example of this: it is real and it is what it says it is (being in Hollywood and a real studio), but it’s fake in the sense that it’s not really “true” to Hollywood because it offers a view behind the scenes, removing the veil of mystery behind Hollywood films. With “Fake Real” Pine says that Disneyworld is the perfect example: it’s not what it says it is – “It’s not a magic kingdom”, as Pine says – but it’s wonderfully true to itself in the sense that the experience is so wonderfully immersive and passionate, that it really captures the feeling of “magic kingdom”.

Which brings us to “Real Real”. When I was watching the TED talk it hit me that for cultural brands, of course, the goal is to embody both categories of “real”: they are both what they say they are and they are true to their selves. The “Real Real” distinction is a new way to conceptualize and complement Douglas Holt’s distinctions of brand literacy and brand fidelity.

Holt says that brand’s should demonstrate an understanding of its supporting demographic’s “populist world” and its custom’s and idioms (literacy). The brand should also understand its place in this populist world and play to it (like Harley does to biker culture and Apple to the creative industries). This is where the “it is what it says it is” comes to play: a brand must neither overstate nor deny its place in the populist world. Examples of brands trying to claim a stake in a subculture and failing are too numerous to list (especially brands trying to ride the hip hop craze in the late 90s), but the shoe brand Timberland tried to do the opposite, it tried to deny its place as a hip hop icon and suffered for it. As for brand fidelity, Holt argues that brands should honor their roots and sacrifice pandering to the masses by thinking populist world first. I think this can be seen as “staying true to itself” in many ways.

In short: brands should first understand what they are and what they mean to a given populist world (build brand literacy) so that they can “be what they say they are”. If no such links to relevant subcultures exist, then a brand should look to build and nurture meanings that have the potential to become such connections. Once the brand understands itself and its place, it should look to nurture this connection (show brand fidelity/be true to itself) and not alienate its core constituency as the brand grows in popularity.

Easier said than done, though.

I was half expecting to find on the list some groups of people who say that marketing doesn’t “affect them” and they only buy stuff that they “know” are good brands (you have no idea how often I’ve heard that), but the groups were actually quite serious in their rejection of consumption. If you’re too busy to click on the link, just know this: one of the groups is the Amish, and the other four are equally committed. So yes, I think these five groups are legit in their rejection of consumerism, but let’s come back to the group that I already half identified there: somewhat normal people who swear off marketing and state that it has no impact on them.

For consumers, what they don’t consume is usually an even more powerful identity statement than what they do. So in effect, non-consumers, big brand haters, leftists, hippies, whatever the group may be, usually do have favorite brands and strong emotional ties to them (like anything carrying a Fair Trade logo), but the consumption of these brands is driven by the fact that they are usually the antithesis to some big brands these consumers are actively opposing. Put it this way: they might actively reject McDonald’s’ marketing efforts, yes, but by running away from McDonald’s, the are also running towards brands that stand against everything McDonald’s stands for. Douglas Holt did a wonderful study on anti-consumers like this in his paper “Why do Brands Cause Trouble?” (PDF). I’ve linked to the study before, and it is a must read for any marketer.

This is not a logo… right?

I was talking to my cousin the other day and he recounted a rather interesting example that mirrors this kind of behavior. My cousin is studying philosophy and he had done his bachelor’s thesis on the ethical questions surrounding pharmaceutical companies (to put it short), and he enlightened me on the effects of so-called health advertising. As advertising for pharmaceutical products has boomed and gotten more and more intrusive (especially in the US, think “ask your doctor if you should be taking Tylenol”), so has the amount of people who actively try to reject this kind of pill-based western medicine. These people feel that pharmaceuticals are promoting over-medication and unnatural remedies just for their own profit, and so these people are driven to holistic and eastern medicine, mysticism and consumption of herbal remedies, just to name a few.

But the interesting thing here is that at the same time people are not just trading their previous habits for staying healthy for different ones, they’ve supercharged their personal health care. Where as in the past they might have jogged once a week and eaten a vitamin pill or two every week, now they chug green tea by the gallon, attend yoga classes many times a week and change their diet entirely.

So the message of the pharmaceuticals has sunk hook, line, and sinker: there is something wrong with my health and I need to fix it somehow. It’s just the messenger’s solution they’re not buying. Marketers are nothing if not culture makers, and it’s examples like these that show how far this kind of cultural influence can go.

I talk frequently with my cousin (who is studying and lecturing on philosophy) on a variety of topics, and one topic we frequent heavily is politics. We ended up debating the virtues and follies of democracy in that it sometimes fails to deliver us the optimal result in decision making. I found that there were again powerful parables between politics and branding, especially the metaphor I had used earlier about statesmen and populists.

I think I can draw from the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau to back my claim (modest, aren’t I?). He argued that there’s a disconnect between volonte de tous (the combined “wants” of the populace) and volonte generale (the “general will, roughly translated). To my understanding, Rousseau never directly stated as much, but he strongly hinted the he felt that the people don’t always know what’s good for them, and the combined “will” of their wants is not better than the “general will”.

So in other words, it’s not about listening to the people and doing their exact bidding, it’s about listening to them and understanding them deeply, a more patient and harder approach.

“Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”

This is one of the main problems I found with advertising in my master’s thesis. Advertisers are in an arms both against other advertisers and against consumers. All new advertising innovations (new media to advertise in, persuasion tactics etc.) are quickly copied by rival advertisers and they lose their effectiveness quite fast. And on the consumer front, as time goes by consumers become increasingly advertising savvy and more likely to ignore or “see past” advertising (as outlined in the NYT article).

I guess this is and always will be the advertiser’s problem; how to deal with constantly declining returns on advertising. Some brands choose to just out-spend the competition, hoping for first mover advantages in new marketing tactics by hiring the advertising talent du jour. Some brands are more responsive and consumer-centric, and move their focus away from practices to which consumers are no longer responding.

To me, the best way address this problem is not to concentrate on the medium, but rather on the message. Sure, marketing tactics are important, but in this day and age it’s becoming more clear that a message worth spreading within the consumer base is more vital than the right advertising channels. Or rather, as they ask in the Mashable article, “why consumers click?”.

This subject has been rattling in my brain for over a year now, dating all the way to this post by David Armano. In it, he asks:

If brands let their communities define them—are they strong brands in the first place? The answer is yes. My voice is my voice. It will not change—I am who I am. But my thoughts and actions can be influenced by what you say and do. Are brands willing to do the same? Does this make them weak or strong?

I see myself as sort of centrist on this matter, but leaning slightly to the “community defined brands are weak” side, but with certain reservations. Given that I’ve written about brand meaning and its evolution in this blog a great deal, it would be quite implausible for me to argue that communities don’t define brands – even strong ones. Again, this is not an argument that brands shouldn’t reach out to consumers on Twitter or anything, quite the contrary. But brand managers would do well to keep their heads cool and not go overboard with reaching out.

Granted, a community-defined brand will be stronger than any mind-share branded brand that doles stale and unimaginative advertising and doesn’t make any effort to connect with its audience. That’s a given. But what I do feel is that really strong brands should and do take initiative in shaping the conversation around their brand. I’d even argue that the strongest of all brands aren’t afraid to challenge their communities and their perceptions – and they do so successfully. And this brings us to the inspiration to this post, the perfect metaphor I finally came up with for this kind of behavior: A strong brand acts like a statesman, but a weak brand acts like populist.

A statesman isn’t afraid to tell the people what they need to hear, to step above daily politics and do what’s “right”. The populist will say whatever is needed to please the public, often saying multiple things to different constituencies. The statesman is often polarizing, but respected nonetheless and can sometimes rise to become a symbol to a cause (like an iconic brand). The populist, on the other hand, in his attempt to be something for everybody, eventually stands for nothing. And above all, a statesman makes a mark in history, whereas a populist is a shooting star.

This guy just sold quite a product,” said David B. Friend, president and chief executive of Palladium Group, a Boston consulting group specializing in strategy execution. “Obama became the ultimate brand. So if you’re in business, it’s hard to miss what this guy did.”

In the nation’s business schools, training grounds for the next generation of CEOs, students have been paying close attention.

“There’s been effervescence in the air around here as we’ve watched this election,” said Leigh G. Hafrey, senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, who described a hunger for a new leadership style. “What happens in the White House has a huge impact on attitudes and practices.”

Full article on the Boston Globe