Cutting Through the Clutter

Because believe me, the clutter is coming. Especially if you live in an early battle ground state such as Iowa or New Hamshire (plus the clutters earlier than it has been in past year). I have no intentions of making this a poliical blog but I had to post Bill Richardson's recent "Job Interview" campaign ads because they're a perfect example of defying the convention in a particular market.

Political advertising, despite all of the money thrown at it, its influence, and its lack of regulation, is surprisingly uncreative. Every season Ad Age has a story after story on which agency is taking sides yet pays almost no attention to the fact that despite the involvement of industry's best creative minds, the same head and shoulders, baby-hugging, family-man, chore coat-wearing drivel is produced and takes up (too much) good air space.

Richardson has done one thing that none of the other candidates' advertising has yet - he got my attention.

Advertising 101 - you have to get people's attention so that they'll listen to you and (hopefully) have the desire to take action.

Again, this isn't a Richardson endorsement. It's an endorsement of creativity and telling stories. And it's not just a political message either. Think you're in a buttoned-down industry or space that can't do creative and engaging messaging? Do you or your peers say "we're not Apple or Nike, we're just in the [INSERT YOUR INDUSTRY HERE] business." Actually, you need to totally flip your perspective if that's the case. Be like Bill. If everything else in your industry is business as usual then they are just waiting for you to jump to the head of the pack with a clutter-cutting message.

No Means No

I'll get to a more meaningful post very soon. Apologies for not keeping up. It's been a busy March/April. More on that later. I had to toss these two screen caps I found recently as examples of unintuitive web design and really ... just general online avoidance and trickery.

The first offender was when I was creating yet another online account. I get cranky about account creation. I have SO many. Right now I'll do anything that Google offers so that I can just use my Google account. Anyhow, I got to my email preferences and didn't want their newsletter and it came back at me with the red text below.

Yeah ... I read your offer the first time. Leave me be! No means 'no.' Don't question my choice because it tells me that you think I'm stupid and I can't read. I made a decision. Move on. Now I'll never subscribe.

Second offender - slightly worse in my opinion. I was on a site and confused this particular online merchant committed a two-tier no-no. First, they didn't have a phone number. Call me old-fashioned but I think every site needs a number where you can reach someone if everything goes wrong. Worse yet, I go to fill out the email contact form and after I click 'Submit,' it gives me this little message:

Grrrrr. I'm basically lost in your store and you won't let me ask for directions. This was extremely aggravating. In my personal opinion it never should have made it this far because they should have covered the phone number thing and at the very least had an easy-to-use contact form.

I guess both of these are pretty good reality checks for your next site design. They seem like no-brainers but go back and check your potholes. Can users easily sign up for an account without being guilted into you spamming them? Does this sound like a real sturdy opt-in to you? And, can a user ask for help easily at any point throughout your site and get some form of immediate response? A dedicated phone line or some sort of live chat would be ideal. A contact form that didn't try to get you lost further in the site would do also ...

Again, more on other things very soon.

The Injustice Ends!

In case you haven't already heard, the caveman from the GEICO ads is getting his own pilot on ABC. Is this a surprising development? Not really.

In a time when marketing is content and content turns to marketing, this actually isn't that surprising. Hopefully the clever neanderthal will fare better than CBS's failed attempt to serialize Baby Bob. Poor kid ended up hocking sub sandwiches after that ...

Right Message, Right Audience

Forgive the lack of posting. Just digging out from a winter storm.

Anyhow, if you're a movie lover and you hunkered down last night to watch the Oscars like I did, I'm sure you had a chance to catch Apple's new anticipation-building iPhone ad. This 30-second spot is a perfect example of the laws of context and relevancy of message. On its own it's a cute commercial but fairly unremarkable. If you look at it in the context of the Academy Awards - when everyone's huddled around fetting the legacy of cinema - it sparkles and adds another heart-warming montage to the evening (thankfully short and sweet -- hint, hint Academy).

It's the Big Things Too ...

... that can save you from certain doom. We all know about the week JetBlue's been having so I'm not gonna bother to recap. How do you come back as a business from a nightmare like this? Today JetBlue announced their Customer Bill of Rights. Nothing real exciting on paper but remember the old adage of "it's not what you say, it's how you say it"? Well, what's gonna save JetBlue is how they've said their Customer Bill of Rights.

Go to their website and they've posted it clearly on the homepage (big duh after a bad PR week - you do NOT want to hide your response). BUT what they've posted isn't a document stating the rights. In fact at a cursory glance I can't find any webpage or pdf that lists them in writing. No, this link takes you to a YouTube video nested in the site of JetBlue founder and CEO David Neeleman telling you the Bill of Rights. Not a typical CEO standing at a podium addressing the troops. It's an intimate setting with Neeleman in a open-collared shirt talking about their FUBAR week and his promise (the company's too - but the implication is that he's personally vouching) on how their going to make it better. And the cherry on the sundae - he closes by asking for your business. Well played, JetBlue.

And it didn't stop on the website. Neeleman was all over TV this morning making the rounds. They responded quickly enough to get into the news cycle and may end up changing the story. My prediction? JetBlue is going to come back from this. They're a remarkable business that is working to handle a terrible misstep remarkably.

Speaking of which ... do you have a Customer Bill of Rights? If so, is it on your website? If it's on your website is it buried?

It's the Little Things ...

... that transform good marketing into great marketing. This morning, The Lion in Winter was on and I had to go to the endlessly-useful Internet Movie Database. (BTW - Wasn't this one of the first viral sites that all of your friends told you to bookmark?) Anyhew ... I got into the individual movie page and noticed a dramatically tweaked page layout (the movie poster is on the left hand side now!). As always, it was a little jarring but pretty soon I got the lay of the land. Helping me in this endeavor was the small bar below the top nav shown above. If you can't read it, it simply says 'Questions about our new look? See our Redesign FAQ for answers.'

This link takes you to a comprehensive FAQ that if you take the time to read you can see that this wasn't just a cosmetic redesign. Everything was changed based on research and user feedback and testing. Wow. As if I needed another reason to like this online geek-cylcopedia - now they have to go and run the very model of a user friendly site. And the kicker? The FAQ makes it clear that nothing is permanent yet as they are still testing the redesign. A+ IMDB! (P.S. You'd be surprised how many times you have to remind people to test.)

Throwing the Brand Out with the Bathwater

This week at the Chicago Auto Show, Ford announced that - just months after they retired the model - they would be resurrecting the Taurus/Sable nameplate. This summer when they release new models of the Ford Five Hundred sedan, the Freestyle crossover, and the Mercury Montego, they will be rechristened as the Taurus, Taurus X, and Mercury Sable respectively. I think this is an important step in helping the recovery of this particular Detroit giant. How big of a step it is I'll get into in a bit.

I also had occasion this past week to hear Jack Welch speak before the National Automobile Dealers Association. When first asked what he thought GM and Ford were doing wrong he sighed exhaustively and said "Jesus ..." More impactful, though, was when he took an informal poll of the audience. He started by asserting that he thought Detroit was getting better but they were still in the process of brand recovery so it's still an uphill battle. He then asked the crowd if they thought the current cars were better then peoples' perception of them. A majority of hands went up - mine included.

See these are the issues: perception, brands, story.

The product is on an upturn but they've squandered most of their equity so most of these early-recovery innovations will be spent getting their brands out of the black. So if admitting you have a problem is step #1 and making some immediate course corrections is step #2 the next questions have to be How did this happen and Is what they're doing now enough?

In the case of Ford, I think resurrecting the Taurus is a smart tactic. Who in their right mind thought it would be a great idea to kill the model for middle America - your average apple pie sedan? I think it's safe to say that most people have at least ridden in this classic at one time or another. How many models can you say that about? But I think Ford's using the wrong 'r.' I think they would have been better off reinventing the Taurus rather than slapping the nameplate on a slight redux of the model's less-than-popular successor. It seems everyone - especially Ford - has forgotten the legacy of the Taurus brand.

Before the Cadillac and Nissan design renaissance there was the Taurus. In a sea of boxy, post-seventies aircraft carriers, Ford birthed an automotive design revolution with the original jelly-bean inspired '85 Taurus. It looked like "the car of the future" (this was reinforced with great product placement as the police cars in Robocop - this helped Ford tell the "car-of-the-future" story). And everyone wanted to emulate the design of this innovative vehicle.

What followed was the most dangerous spoil of success - brand stagnation. It's so successful we shouldn't change it at all. And they didn't. Not significantly for the next decade. Even then it was, at best, a slight update with the jelly bean model making way for the late '90s "bubble" Taurus. This changed little also and only for the worst with all of the design funk being squared out and leaving a large, average-looking sedan. Ironically, the car had evolved into the very thing that the original had rebelled against.

So, again, I make the case that what they should be doing is reinventing the brand. It may sound crazy but if I was Ford I would make the new Taurus about reinventing the design of the American sedan again. That's the right way to be a good steward to a powerful brand like the Taurus.

As for Detroit recovery, I put more stock in broad strokes like GM's new electric car the Chevy Volt. This could be a crazy move and it could indeed fail. But as Tom Peters points out "crazy times call for crazy measures" and every now and then you have to blow up what you've worked forever to create and reinvent it in order to ensure your organization's staying power in the years to come.

Do you see the nuance? You have to risk blowing up what you've created but not at the cost of your most valuable asset - your brand. See, it's not enough to do something 'good.' You have to jump in the deep end and either triumph or fail fabulously. But being 'good enough' is clearly no longer good enough. And you need to be a steward to a brand and help it grow and develop. You can't just leave it alone for years thinking that times will keep supporting your product because they always have. A steward helps your brand change with and for the times.