Tom Fishburne: this one time at Brand Camp

feature creep

I passed by a design studio last week that had jack-o-lanterns on the stoop. I like that an office of designers would spend time designing pumpkins.  It struck me that jack-o-lantern carving could be a good metaphor for innovation.

If we carved jack-o-lanterns the way we design products, we would probably carve by committee. And, whenever something is designed by committee, it's in danger of "Feature Creep."

With “Feature Creep”, the idea gains extraneous features until the project loses focus and momentum.  It becomes a peace treaty.  By trying to appeal to everyone, it misses what it set out to do. A series of bad compromises can strip away what was remarkable about the original idea.

In a way, "Feature Creep" is closely related to “A Death by a Thousand Cuts”. But instead of cuts, the idea becomes more and more bloated.

So much of the art of innovation relates to the ability to hold true and defend the original idea. Through all of the twists and turns in product development, the successful innovations are the ones that can shield against the cuts and resist the temptations of creep. 

That’s not to say that ideas should be developed in silos. Ideas should be made stronger by the diversity of thought that goes into it. But, it’s an essential skill to pick and choose which direction to incorporate, which to ignore, and which to delay until later. 

Here’s another cartoon I drew on “Feature Creep” a few years ago.

managing the brand

In the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of chatter about the role of the "brand manager" and marketing organizations generally, after Jack Neff at Ad Age previewed a Forrester research report in an article called "Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager."

"Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers are the real arbiters of brand meaning, and it's become increasingly outmoded in today's two-way world. That's why a new report is going to recommend changing the name "brand manager" to "brand advocate," and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age."

Denise Lee Yohn picked up this thread in a fascinating post on the CMO’s Dream team and advocated for the role of “brand operator”. David Kiley at BusinessWeek argued for the role of “brand editor” with an interesting story of the McDonalds CMO thinking of its brand as editorial. 

These musings on the role of brand manager inspired this cartoon. The role of "brand manager" implies a certain level of power and control. From inside the marketing ivory tower, it’s easy to see yourself as a puppeteer for the brand. Ultimately, though, it’s the consumers who determine what your brand means. 

Think about Stella Artois. For years, the beer carried an advertising slogan of "Reassuringly Expensive". Yet, in the UK, the common slang nickname for the beer is "wife beater" (because of its high alcohol content). Patrons are even known to order a "wife beater" for short in the pub. Years of marketing position statements and heavy advertising couldn’t shake the nickname that consumers gave the beer. Stella finally dropped the "Reassuringly Expensive" slogan in 2007 and are the in the midst of repositioning themselves, including the launch of a lower strength beer to try to counter the meaning attributed by consumers. 

It’s important to remember that most consumers have probably never even heard the term “brand manager” yet alone think about the brand in the same way that marketers do. 

Rather than draft brand positioning statements in language that has meaning for other marketers, how inspiring it would be to talk in terms than real consumers can understand. Better still, to turn it into a actual two-way conversation with consumers.

At the DO Lectures last month, Duke Stump gave a remarkable talk about creating something he called "bonfire brands." In his first day as CMO at Seventh Generation, he addressed the office and said: 

“I don’t know anything about marketing or branding. Here’s what I do believe. The purpose of what we’re here for is to optimize the resonance and relevance for those we serve. That’s how I hold this whole term of marketing. What’s really going to make us great is if we create a bonfire brand. A brand that people are actually drawn to. Where there’s a conversation. And they’re partaking in your conversation. They’re evangelists for your brand. They’ll defend your brand. They’re also your most ardent critics. It’s a beautiful thing when you can sit around a campfire with those you serve and they can tell you everything that’s great and everything that’s not so great. Instead of holding it as a brand, hold it as a bonfire.”

the viral video bandwagon

Back in 2001, BMW created an internet-only series of short films called The Hire directed by big name directors like Guy Ritchie and John Woo. All of the films featured a pre-famous Clive Owen driving a BMW in different assignments around the world (my favorite involved Clive driving around Madonna). 

Over four months, the films were seen 11 million times and spiked BMW sales by 12% (and helped launch Clive's career). They effectively pioneered viral video marketing. I remember seeing these films in 2002 and marveling at how a brand could create content that interesting and compelling. 

Viral video marketing has exploded in the years since (and you no longer need Guy Ritchie to direct them). Along the way, there have been some great standouts like Smirnoff's Tea Partay, but also a lot of complete rubbish. 

This year, it feels like every marketing plan features viral video as a tactic. Yet, many brands treat these videos in the same dull way as placing a grocery cart ad or staging an on-pack promotion. They feel like infomercials. These brands assume that if they build it, viewers will come (and watch, and share). 

Brands sometimes forget that videos become viral, not by how interesting the content is for the brand, but by how interesting the content is to the viewers. They also forget that "viral" is, by nature, unpredictable. 

I thought that Volkswagen struck the right chord with its launch of The Fun Theory last week. VW created a clever series of videos around the simple principle of creating change for the better by making them more fun. They communicate a lot about VW and their environmental approach, but in a way that is not heavy-handed. 

Another personal favorite is David Mitchell's Soap Box series, put on by Bulldog, a young 5-person brand of men's natural grooming products in the UK. I had lunch with Simon and Rhodri, the two Bulldog founders, last week. They compete against the largest CPG businesses on the planet, and need to find ways to break through the clutter and level the playing field. In this video series, they commissioned David Mitchell, a well-known British comedian, to riff on a variety of 3-minute topics. Here's one I enjoyed that pokes fun at some of the language in traditional marketing.

breaking the rules of traditional retail

Traditional retail can be brutal for a new brand.  I gave a 30 min talk a few months ago about launching the method brand in the UK and how Ocado as an entrepreneurial web retailer helps support challenger brands by questioning the status quo.  

Breaking the Rules of Traditional Retail from Tom Fishburne on Vimeo.

the large print giveth

Whenever I need a marketing wake-up call, I listen to the classic Tom Waits' song, “Step Right Up.” It is an anthem for bad marketing.  In this brilliant song, Tom Waits cobbles together every cliché marketing pitch.

"We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale
And a smoke-damaged furniture, you can drive it away today
Act now, act now, and receive as our gift, our gift to you
They come in all colors, one size fits all
No muss, no fuss, no spills, you're tired of kitchen drudgery
Everything must go, going out of business, going out of business
Going out of business sale
Fifty percent off original retail price, skip the middle man
Don't settle for less
How do we do it? how do we do it? volume, volume, turn up the volume
Now you've heard it advertised, don't hesitate”

Toward the end, he quips, “you got it buddy: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

It’s a striking reminder that this is how most consumers perceive marketing. And for good reason. Even though consumers are savvier than ever and resistant to marketing clutter, most marketing communication still falls in this huckster camp.

To spread the word about your brand, this is the marketing clutter that that you have to break through. You won't break through by turning up the volume. You break through with remarkable products, disarming authenticity, and not sounding like hawkers and hucksters.

Tom Waits had it right 30 years ago. Here’s a vintage 1979 live performance:

the corporate firewall

I recently stumbled across the cluetrain manifesto again.  It had a big impact on me when I first read it ten years ago.  At the time, I was building web sites for big companies and it gave voice to a lot of the frustration I felt trying to get these companies to really embrace the potential of engaging with consumers directly.

I worked with an airline that refused to handle any consumer inquiries generated by their web site.  They actually had an in-house call center for reservations, but didn't even want their phone number listed on the site (let alone an email address).  For them, the web site was a cheaper way to book reservations, and they were trying to lower transaction costs, not increase consumer loyalty.

This was particularly odd because the airline prided itself on in-flight customer service.

Reading the cluetrain manifesto, I was struck by the metaphor of the "corporate firewall": "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall."

This airline (and many companies) had erected a strict corporate firewall that barred the majority of consumer interactions and only let out carefully scripted marketing messages. Loyalty was achieved through frequent flyer miles: essentially buying loyalty rather than earning it.

Ten years later, the 95 theses of the cluetrain manifesto feel prescient now that the tools for social media are commonplace.  Social media is part of every marketing plan.  Yet, I question how much the corporate firewall has actually changed.  

Using social media without first re-evaluating the corporate firewall feels like the same old window dressing.  It's today's brochureware.  It doesn't achieve the potential that these tools were designed to achieve.

There is an opportunity for companies that tear down (or at least reevaluate and modernize) the corporate firewall.  For those that don't, the cluetrain manifesto offers this caution:

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

priority soup

I was struck by something that Seth Godin wrote this week about the unheralded skill of setting priorities.  He poses the question: "how do you decide what to do next?"

A few years ago, I worked on a business that routed packaging artwork by hand to get reviewed and approved. They had a traffic department that managed this process and they marked artwork by the level of urgency so that you knew how quickly to review it.  Over time, I learned that lowest urgency was marked "Hot!", medium urgency was marked "Hot! Hot!" and highest urgency was marked "Hot! Hot! Hot!".

In this era of doing "more with less" where urgency ranges from "Hot!" to "Hot! Hot! Hot!", everyone has more pots to stir.  My desk sometimes feels a lot like this cooktop.  It's tempting just to spend time firefighting.

But that path leads to Busy Fools Syndrome.  What goes hand in hand with trying to do "more with less" is learning what to take off the priority list.  What's more important than having a "To Do" list is having a "To Don't" list.

I've been trying to manage less by urgency and more by priority lately.  I certainly don't always have the right balance, but I've learned a bit from reading Tim Ferriss.

social media makeover

Watching some businesses and brands grapple with social media reminds me of that classic expression, "putting lipstick on a pig".

I stumbled across this Marketing Week article a few months ago called, "Reckitt Benckiser makes an online push to connect with young consumers."  As part of a social media campaign backed by online advertising, the cleaning products company launched a Facebook fan page to reach "the online chattering classes" and "be automatically seen to be in the top three global FMCGs".  

One of the best parts of the article was the sole comment it attracted:

"A fan page on Facebook? You'd have to be very sad to join that. I'll be surprised if it connects with young people. Will they really manage to get a 20 year old student \(or worker) interested in connecting with Vanish?".

Many businesses treat social media tools the same dropping an FSI or placing a grocery cart ad.  It becomes just more superficial window dressing.  I think it would be far better to apply that investment toward actually making the brand and products more interesting and remarkable.

I touched on this theme last year with Poser Marketing too.

the silent designers

My friend Adam at method asked if I could contribute a cartoon to a post he wrote for TreeHugger this week called "For design to create change, we must all become designers."

When talking about the post, he introduced me to the concept of “Silent Design”, an expression coined in the late 80’s by Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas in a London Business School paper: 

“A great deal of design activity goes on in organizations which is not called design. It is carried out by individuals who are not called designers and who would not consider themselves to be designers. We have called this 'silent design’.”

I like this broader, more holistic definition of design. Innovation is the output of such a diverse cast of characters, all of whom have the ability to impact the experience of a product and the role of that product in the world.

As an example, here’s a photo of Adam and some of the gang at method, standing in front of method’s first post-consumer recycled plastic resin silo a few years ago. This silo lets method make new bottles entirely from plastic that has already been recycled.

None of these guys would consider themselves designers in the traditional sense (we like to tease Drummond for wearing a black belt with brown shoes for the picture). Yet, the fact that we can use 100% previously recycled plastic is very much a part of our design. Design is so much broader than bottle shapes or font treatments. 

I think that businesses sometimes forget the essential holistic role of design.  Design can become marginalized to superficial window-dressing outsourced to agencies. Instead, it’s empowering to think of the silent design activity as Design with a capital D. And that everyone in the organization can and should think of themselves as designers. 

As a coincidence, I’m traveling late this week with Adam to remote Wales for an event called the DO Lectures, put on by howies, a brand that certainly thinks this way. They invited Adam to give a talk about business as an agent of change. Empowering the "silent designers" is a key ingredient.

mixed signals

I've been unpacking storage boxes after moving home from London to San Francisco a few weeks ago, and rediscovered a classic children's book called "Mr. Pine's Mixed-up Signs". 

It features a signmaker who loses his glasses and accidentally installs the wrong signs all over town: "One sign said Stop. One sign said Go. One sign said Fast. One sign said Slow. Stop. Go. Fast. Slow. All mixed up."  Chaos ensues and the town simply can't function. My daughters thought it was hilarious.

It struck me that this dynamic happens inside business all the time.  Companies send mixed signals when priorities aren't defined, when priorities flipflop, and when different leaders push conflicting priorities at the same time.

This year in particular, as everyone tries to read the tea leaves to tell the future, the signs keep changing for many businesses. The result for the rest of the organization can be inertia.  If you're told to simultaneously go fast and go slow, it's tempting to idle the engine and wait for clarity. You can be busy without really being productive.

Change is always part of business, but the limbo of mixed signals can be particularly demotivating.  In times of ambiguity and rapid change, I think it's more important than ever to spell out priorities, and give a clear guiding light for people to follow (even if it all changes later).

In the book, the town mayor couldn't calm the panic until Mr. Pine eventually finds his glasses and puts the signs in order. It's a good reminder that effective leaders have to be clear signmakers.

(As an aside, thanks to our old friends the Swifts for turning us on to Mr. Pine and Leonard Kessler a few years ago).