Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Remember the Tipp-Ex Bear? A campaign that was lauded for its ability to garner millions of views of Youtube, allowed people to interact with the brand and created awareness for the Tipp-Ex and rejuvenated the brand. Effectively, the attempt was to reposition the brand from a routine category to an entertainment category brand. Watch their case study, if you don’t know it.

If the idea was to entertain millions of people for a few weeks, it certainly worked. According to the agency’s case study film, sales went up 30%. Assuming this is true, it was a stunning sales success. However, the question remains: did it solve the business problem in a sustainable manner?

In a world that is more and more digital, correction fluid simply has a more fundamental business issue: no one needs it anymore. And, while the campaign did create awareness, it did not credibly claim a new territory for the brand in which its new role in a digital world became apparent to people. Even after this case study, would you look to office supply companies for entertainment? Probably not. As a result, people still do not know why they need the Tipp-Ex brand.

Along comes Edding, another German brand with pretty much the same problem. Highlight markers, too, suffer from the same business issue as our working lives become more and more digital.

Edding, however, choose a different route. Highlighting text with highlight markers, just like correcting type with correction fluid, is a routine office behavior, not a fun entertainment behavior. Instead of trying to reach awareness through entertainment, it focused on a competency the brand credibly had in analog times and brought it online. In other words, the brand is trying to solve the problems people have at the office and make their lives easier, just as decades before.

With their digital highlighter you can highlight text on website, save articles as PDF, share them on twitter or facebook. The website still calls it a “release candidate” and I hope Edding will include Dropbox, Evernote, delicious and other existing services, if they want people to actually use it. However, strategically, this direction tries to credibly solve for their business in the business they are in, instead of pretending to be something they are not.

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Glee celebrates it.  Austin wants to stay that way.  Apple embraces it.  But what can marketers learn from being different or even a little weird?

In this brief TED talk, Derek Sivers explores how weird can just be the existence of the opposite of what you’re expecting, given your past experience and circumstance.

I left this talk wanting more, more, MORE!

There are in fact several lessons to be learned from being outside the mainstream, and being willing to embrace the weirdness within and without you.

1. There is Purpose. There is a fearlessness in being exactly who you are when there seems to be no one else even remotely similar.  There’s a reason why ‘blue oceans’ exist, and it has to do with the pack mentality that most business unfortunately operates under.  Where most see a ‘blank space’ as no opportunity, some see no competition.  But knowing that a specific uncharted territory is your destiny requires a deep-rooted knowledge and belief in what your purpose is, and a comittment to seeing that purpose through.  It’s a kind of belief in yourself, your co-workers and your product/service that can guide all that you do - your North Star.  Because Weird knows where it’s going.  Weird doesn’t look over its shoulder.  Weird looks straight ahead.
2. There is Differentiation.  Nothing sets you apart like a viewpoint or look or functionality that shows that you have a completely different approach to solving a problem.  This is an important place where retro parts ways with weird - because a retro feel is also ‘against the grain’, but it tends to stay in line with pre-established aesthetics, which can allow lots of different brands to try to tap into its energy.  But Weird can never be mistaken for another Brand.  It makes its own sauce, and always has distinctive flavor.  Copycats have no power over Weird.
3. There is Freshness.  A viewpoint that is not apparent to everyone at first glance that can break through established patterns.  You may have to come at a problem or customer or shopper situation from an angle that you haven’t thought of before.  You may even have to dismiss some established beliefs about what types of solutions may exist.  In the end, you may need to explain a bit just why you chose to make some decisions that you did.  And those decisions may make the final product or experience something that makes you stop and think, because it’s not using the same old same old shorthand for looking at the world that everyone else is using.  And that’s a good thing for Weird.  Because Weird wants you to listen - to try to understand.  Weird wants to bring you along for its strange ride and come to embrace it.  Because Weird is not following a trend - it’s creating one.  Do you want to join?
4. There is Vision.  In order to showcase your weirdness, you must convince others that you have the right idea and perspective.  And this persuasion only comes with a vision of the world or market that you can share with others in a way that they can come to embrace.  This is where it gets tricky for most creatives and marketers, as they think all they need is a bizarre approach or tagline, but they neglect to discover and preach the strange logic that makes your weird approach the right one.  Weird isn’t doing anything the wrong way.  It’s doing it the right way in a wrong world.

What weirdness can you bring to bear to change your perspective on your market, product, service or customer experience?

I’m thinking of having a Weird Summit.  Anybody interested in speaking at it?

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Recently Netflix in the US changed how their business model works, and in the aftermath they have experienced a steady stream of abuse in the media (here, here, here, and you get the idea), and significant losses in share price. The noise is mainly the sucking sound made by tribes of angry subscribers leaving after price hikes and planned changes to the service (including splitting the service into two separate companies).

What’s interesting about all the hullabaloo, is that some very real principles about what customer service has become are starting to be codified, using the company’s missteps as object lessons of what not to do.

1. Get inside your customer’s heads when it comes to value. You have to do your homework to understand how the price-value equation works for your customers.  Just because there is a way for your planned changes to drop the price for one element of your service, doesn’t mean that your customers view your service that way. It’s like the opposite of how bundling works - you can charge more for bundled services as long as the customer sees a discount hiding in there.  By unbundling their products, NF gave their customers the reverse stress of seeing a full-price paid for each service, rather than a deal.

2. Realize that your best customers don’t care about your business model. It may be obvious to you why you’re making changes to your service or structure, but keep in mind that users see you (hopefully) as a solution to a problem that they have, not an enterprise with a long-range plan.  If you simply have to make a change, then be prepared to show the users how it benefits them directly, not just why it’s good for you.

3. Don’t underestimate the need for continuity amongst your users. Understand that if you’ve done your job right, then your customers feel that THEY own your brand, not the other way around.  There are so many great examples of how angry people can get in this regard: Gap’s logo gaffe, recent Facebook changes, and the list goes on and on.  It’s not that you can’t ever change things successfully, but you have to be sensitive to how it impacts your user community.

4. If (or more likely, _when_) you have to apologize, make sure that you sound humble. It can be grating to read an apology that reads defensive and seems to imply that the reader doesn’t ‘get it’.  Try to sound more like you’ve learned something, rather than you’ve been misunderstood.

Have you learned any other painful nuggets of wisdom regarding customer service for your product or service?

Photo: David Armano, on Flickr

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Download the latest Cultural Fuel Trend Report August 2011

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You can say whatever you want about the demise of Flash, but it sure a large part of the last 10 years in webdesign. How fitting that Propaganda 3 would make such extensive use of it for their 10 year anniversary site which features a bells-and-whistle timeline. Not sure if this site is older, but just found it on Pixelgangster.de

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So I guess we have all probably been expecting this from Google… A Catalog app that aggregates the worlds leading brands and retailers under one little screen, providing a rich, interactive shopping experience, that will also deliver Google a whole new revenue stream

The app allows you to flip through catalogue pages as you’d expect, and extends that to detailing out each product, playing videos and other rich content, while providing a “Buy Now” button to launch the brands e-comm store or “Find A Store” button which instantly maps locations with directions.

So who’s on board so far? Urban Outfitters, Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, Macys, Bloomingdales, Crate&Barrel, Lands’ End, Nordstrom, Patagonia, UGG and many many of others!

Aden Hepburn

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Joshua Foer: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Study Yourself Failing from 99% on Vimeo.

OK-ness is the enemy of greatness. At the 99% Conference, journalist Joshua Foer illustrates why we must step outside of our comfort zones to achieve truly remarkable things.

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BMW posted its half year earnings at a record high this year. In fact, the company has never had a better 6 months in its entire history. For this reason, it is positive to observe the company continuing to spend some of that profit for worthy causes. But not only is CSR type activities, but rather in collective creative community platforms, such as the one just launched with the Guggenheim in NY.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile travelling idea lab that takes on the challenges of cities and urban planning with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Also, it invites residents to participate.

It is not a new idea, but simple and timely. The trend of collaborative community projects has shown much hope and success especially in NY where such projects as the Highline have received much attention.

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Check out this lovely TED Talk Julian Treasure on 5 ways to listen better.  It’s much more than just a typical “You should listen actively”-type talk.  It’s more about how we develop real understanding with each other and the world around us.

He discusses the lack of listening skills that have plagued humankind, practically from the invention of writing, and also talks about some pretty magical ways to listen better in your everyday life.  I was reminded of the You Are Listening To Los Angeles site we featured here a while ago.

Julian talks about listening positions, which planners should be well acquainted with, where you shift the attitude of what you’re listening to or the filters you’re receiving the information through from active to passive, from being critical to being empathic, from in or out of your cultural norms.  It’s a great technique to get conscious about the filters and ‘move to different positions’, i.e., develop your understanding of the topic or conversation in different ways.

What caught my attention, however, was the section where he talks about listening for leaders, teachers, spouses, parents or friends.  He uses “Rasa”, the sanskrit word for essence or juice, as an acronym for:

Receive - pay attention

Appreciate - show that you are engaged

Summarize - make sure you understood

Ask - expand your knowledge

I would change the last one to Ask/Act - and encourage marketers to examine their actions and activities to see if they are following through to truly expand knowledge together.

Are you consciously embracing listening?  Are your actions full of Rasa?

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I call it Cellular Pausely: That thing where you are having a lovely conversation and then everyone takes out their phones and stops talking to each other.

How often has this happened to you?  How often have you done it?  Do the alerts, flashing lights and vibrations of our phones create irresistible an Pavlovian response to get connected with our virtual lives, even while we are standing or sitting next to perfectly available humans?

photo via: only can die once

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