The Death of Brands?

Not if branders really get (and give) the value of their value.

A recent Time Magazine story entitled Brand Names Just Don't Mean As Much Anymore posited that belt-tightening in the wake of the Great Recession has brought on the slow, steady decline of brand-name goods. The story cites the no-name or generic items that sit next to the similar (sometimes identical) brand-name equivalents on grocery store and drugstore shelves.

Consumers have long known that generics compare well to the brands in quality, and purely outshine them in price. It seems that in this "new normal" of everyday cost-consciousness (where 93% of shoppers report changes in buying habits due to the economy), consumers are now choosing generics with increasing regularity.

So should the brand names be panicking? Well, not exactly — especially since many of the brand-name producers also supply the generic or store-brand goods. This trend might be cutting into profits, but it isn't yet erasing them.

But consumer goods suppliers, and indeed brand managers everywhere, should definitely be paying attention. What we're seeing here is a shift in the consumer mindset, and a forecast into their brand-loyalty — or the lack of it — for generations to come.

Because brand loyalty hasn't died, it's just stopped being blind. Consumers really do want to embrace familiar brands, instead of scrambling for bargains each week. Consumers are happy to support companies, products, and yes, brands they believe in...providing they see those things as worthy of their support.

And what makes them worthy? Is it price? Not exactly.

It's value.

Don't make the mistake of conflating price with value. Price is an element of value, but it's not the entirety. Value is a complicated algorithm that's computed unconsciously in the consumer's head. It integrates variables like quality, availability, and even brand equity, to arrive at a value-based buying decision. And clearly, if two side-by-side products are identical in every way except price, that lower price tips the scales of value.

So brand managers, what can you do if you can't compete on price? Compete on value — make a better product, market it better, service it better, and build a quality-centric brand to stand behind it.

The best part of this formula for success is that it doesn't just apply to the consumer goods that Time was speaking of. If you've got a brand, no matter your business, focus on value and you can't go wrong.

The C4:

1. Time Magazine just reported that due to shifts in buying habits, brand-name consumer goods are losing market share to their generic, no-name, or store-brand equivalents. We like Time's reporting, but this particular revelation surprised exactly no one. 
2. Economies can change rapidly, but buying habits, not so much. Consumers are now in the habit of seeking out the best values, brand loyalty be damned. This is the new normal, and marketers need to get used to it.
3. It's not (necessarily) a matter of price. It's value. It's bang for the buck. If a no-name brand compares well in quality but is 20% cheaper, most consumers won't agonize over the decision very long before putting that no-name in their shopping cart. 
4. Marketers take heed. No matter what you're selling, you'd better be selling it with value. If you can't compete on price then you have to be offering something else, something of value, that the cut-rate brands just can't provide. This is an axiom we all should have been living by all along, but now it's a matter of success or failure.

Tend To The Trends

But beware of paralysis when mining your findings.

There's a lot going on in data mining,
and just as much when searching for it.

What's trending now? That's a culturally loaded question, and the answer very much depends upon where you look. What's trending on Twitter? What are the hot topics on Facebook? On a more macro level, what's trending with your customers? What are they buying, what are their gripes, what turns them off and what turns them on?

Start asking those questions, and it's all too easy to get sucked into a virtual world of information overload. You can data-mine yourself into paralysis, always parsing data but never acting on it. And if you're over-monitoring social network trends, you might find yourself with lots of online friends and followers, yet with a spiraling level of productivity.

None of which is to say that data-mining on topical trends isn't worth your time. It's free business intelligence, as close as the Connect channel on Twitter, or the Google Adwords keyword tool. You have at your fingertips some of the most powerful engines imaginable for getting inside consumers' heads, for seeing what matters to them, what they like about products (any products), and what they hate about them.

Just...beware that paralysis. Protect your productivity. Approach this venture with a plan — know which trends you want to monitor; make lists of search engine keywords you want to check hit rates for; identify in advance the specifics of your data-mining: demographics, product preferences, buying history.

Most importantly, know what you want to do with this info. Are you willing to make major changes based on what you find? Or will you at best make some minor tactical adjustments? Either answer is acceptable, as long as that's your plan going in. 

Things are trending right now. A lot of things. A few of them directly impact your business. It's easy to find them, a bit harder to act upon them...but it's all well worth the effort.

The C4:

1. "What's trending" is the new way of asking "What are people talking about?" With social media, they're talking quite a bit, and it couldn't be easier to eavesdrop.
    
2. So listen in. Decide what trends you need to know about — things impacting your business, your product line, etc. — and use the tools at your disposal to data-mine the trending topics in social media, and the most popular search engine keywords.
    
3. But beware analysis paralysis! You can expect a flood of info coming in. Budget your time and resources appropriately, and don't turn trend-mining into a full-time job.
    
4. Above all else, act! Find ways to turn trends (specifically, your knowledge of trends) into a business advantage. Think of your time and effort at trend-mining as an investment, and make sure you get a return on it.

News Strong to News Weak

A venerable giant in our news lexicon, Newsweek shifts from print to online only.

Newsweek, an 80-year-old standard-bearer for news magazines, announced on October 18 that they would cease print operations at the start of 2013, and switch to an all-digital format.

It’s hard not to see this development as gloomy, especially for we news consumers who’ve seen daily local papers shrink or disappear, and who’ve seen dramatic changes forced on venerable outfits like the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the The New York Times Magazine.

Newsweek’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, makes clear in her announcement that the organization is reacting to the same demographic shifts and economic forces that downsized the Times-Picayune and compelled the Monitor to publish only online. She cites the 39 percent of Americans who say they get their news from the Web, as well as the explosive growth in tablet users, who are perhaps the ripest targets for subscription-based digital distribution. She leaves unspoken the shrinking circulation of print editions — and the commensurate shrinkage of ad revenue — but there’s no doubt these were the spurs that made Newsweek’s shift inevitable.

We’ll miss Newsweek, at least the Newsweek we’ve come to know. Brown promises no change in editorial vitality and journalistic integrity, and we have no reason to doubt her word. But still, the nostalgia…

But we’re advertisers and business people, and nostalgia pays no bills. In that respect, what does an all-online Newsweek mean to us? 

It means that marketers had better come to understand, to master, the evolutionary changes in the news industry. Consumers will still be reading Newsweek, as well as all the other digital outlets, and they’ll still be receptive to our advertising messages.

But they’ll be a somewhat different set of consumers. On average they’ll be younger, more tech-savvy, more affluent. And as tier-based subscribers, they’ll be empowered to pick and choose which marketing messages they’ll see. These are the realities that create insurmountable challenges for some 21st-century advertisers and awesome opportunities for others.

So yes, we’ll miss the Newsweek we’ve known all our lives. But we’re ready to work with the new Newsweek, and ready to thrive in this new media landscape. We hope you are too.

The C4:

1. The December 31, 2012 issue of Newsweek will be their last in print. As of New Year 2013, Newsweek will join the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times Magazine in shifting to an all-digital format.
    
2. Grant yourself a moment of nostalgia. Think about the noble history of print news in this country. Reflect on the sad fact that the print news industry is disappearing before our eyes.
    
3. But let that moment pass, and get busy adapting. For advertisers, this new media landscape presents awesome opportunities. It’s an entirely different world, requiring different approaches and newly developed skillsets.
    
4. We’re dedicating ourselves to embracing this new world, and we hope you are too. Tina Brown would agree: it’s a matter of survival.

I Phone Home...

When I'm off the map.

Image c/o Businessweek.

The launch of any new Apple device is rabidly anticipated and treated with a level of fanfare that’s slightly puzzling to those of us who haven’t yet drunk of the Apple-flavored Kool Aid. The late September release of the iPhone 5 was no different.

However, one particular difference became evident within days as not-so-happy iPhone 5 owners began reporting surprising problems with the newly created Apple Maps, which was rolled out with the iPhone 5 as a competitor to the industry-leading Google mapping program. The specifics of the Apple Maps issues, which include incomplete and inaccurate road and route data, and even typos in place names, speak of an unready product rushed into service. Clearly not what we’d expect from history’s most successful tech company.

But Apple’s real problem is still developing: their gaffe has turned their newest product into a late-night punchline. (Example: A guy with an iPhone 5 walks into a bar. Or a church. Maybe it was the Pacific Ocean.)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has issued an apology, and fixes are reportedly being expedited. Given the still-strong sales of the iPhone 5, and Apple’s resiliently loyal fanbase, it’s likely the company won’t suffer too much for their mistake.

But that shouldn’t excuse them for the worst kind of PR disaster: the self-inflicted kind. This one began with the widely panned decision, made back in the summer, to ditch Google Maps — reportedly in retaliation for Google’s entering the mobile-hardware arena. The inside story remains to be written, but it sure seems like Apple’s habit of cutthroat competition resulted in the too-soon release of an inferior product, all at their customers’ expense.

The bottom line is that Apple’s reputation, like every company’s, is their most important nontangible asset. No company can afford to risk it needlessly. Apple will undoubtedly survive the iPhone 5 maps fiasco. But how well will they fare the next time hubris lays them low?

Do they really want to find out?

The C4:

1. The iPhone 5 was released on September 21, 2012. Like most Apple releases, this one was treated as one of the most momentous tech happenings of the year.
2. The story quickly shifted, though, as users reported problems with the on-board Apple Maps program, which seemed to make it as useful for navigation as a demagnetized compass. Even though sales of the device are strong, the launch has turned into a PR fiasco, necessitating software fixes and a CEO apology.
3. It never should have happened. The whole sorry episode seems to be the result of Pyrrhic competition between Apple and Google, and of the unacceptable practice of rushing unready products to market.
4. In the long run, despite a hit to their reputation, Apple probably won’t suffer inordinately for their mistake. But reputation is finite. One hopes Apple has learned something from this, lest their reputation comes to be defined by it.

What You Don't Say Speaks Volumes

Processing your message.

As you may recall from either your psychology or sales classes (the concept is equally important to both), the majority of communication going on during a two-way conversation happens on a non-verbal level. That means that regardless of the words we say, our interlocutors receive the most of our message based on our facial expressions, body language, and other contextual clues. Knowing this arms us well for our one-on-one encounters; we can plan ahead and think about our postures and the nuances of our smiles, to ensure that we’re supporting our message with every non-verbal cue we give.

But it puts us in a bit of disadvantage when it comes to written communication. An email, letter, or dashed-off note is decidedly one-dimensional, without the clarifying add-ons that come with a nod, a grin, or an arched eyebrow. You might think your written missives are in constant danger of misinterpretation — unless you’re one of the millions who’ve suffered some office drama because your well-intended sarcasm didn’t translate into email format. Then you know that’s true.

The most well-reasoned defense against this is a careful, clear-eyed reading of all your output, checking for passages that can be misconstrued. It’s certainly not a bad idea, and you might consider getting into the habit.

But who wants to be stuck on defense? The best offense is a method of writing that employs the tools your word processor gave you to round out the subtleties of your writing.

For instance…the use of ellipses (…) provides a mental pause, and clues the reader that something momentous is to follow. Need to add some extra emphasis? Try italics. Even more emphasis, something like the written version of an attention-getting hand clap, is boldface.

And pay attention to your use of paragraph spacing. Setting important words and phrases all by themselves—

—like this—

—gives them weight, dimensionality, and particular focus. There are *other* tricks as WELL, probably limited only by the functions and macros available on your keyboard.

It’s a simple, handy way to help get your written message across. Just...try not to overdo it.

It gets ANNOYING, fast.

The C4:

1. In a one-on-one conversation, the majority of the conversing is happening non-verbally. Messages are emphasized, amplified, and clarified based on facial expressions, body language, and other non-spoken cues.
2. This leads to a problem with written communication. Our audience has no message to interpret other than the words we’ve composed. If there’s ambiguity inherent in them, we can sure they’ll be misconstrued.
3. So read everything you’ve written before you send it out, and try to spot and refine anything that’s not crystal clear. And use every macro, function, and special character your word processor provides, if they can help you to impart the message you mean to impart.
4. Oh, but use those sparingly, if you can. A page full of italics, bolds, and underlines can quickly clutter a page and become a visual turn-off (supplying, that way, yet another message you didn’t intend to send).

Who Should Stay At The Graybar Hotel?

A question of fairness.

Whether the financial crisis of 2008 ate a chunk of your liquidity or a goodly portion of the value of your 401(k), or even if you came away relatively unscathed, chances are you’ve been waiting ever since for justice to be served. With the trillions of dollars of wealth that disappeared, with the shady dealings of mortgage-backed securities and bundled sub-prime amortizations, surely there’s a guilty party somewhere who must be made to pay.

Four years later...and we’re still waiting. No major criminal cases have been filed, few fines have been paid, none but a handful of mid-level executives lost their jobs. If there’s a scale somewhere representing this vision of justice, then someone’s thumb must be firmly planted on one side.

So you might take heart to learn that the New York Attorney General’s office, with the blessings of the Justice Department and several other states, has filed a civil fraud suit against JPMorgan Chase & Company, alleging misrepresentation of the values of mortgage securities sold in 2006 and 2007. The case won’t result in anyone spending time in the ol’ Graybar Hotel, but it’s a start, right?

Actually, no.

Looking closer at the suit, we see that JPMorgan isn’t actually accused of any wrongdoing (nor is Chase, for that matter). Who sold the fraudulent securities? That would be the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired at fire sale prices — $2 per share — in 2008.

But fair is fair. When you buy a company you also buy its liabilities, including responsibility for its criminal wrongdoings. That’s clearly why JPMorgan is on the hook here.

Maybe so. But as long as we’re introducing the concept of fairness, let’s give JPMorgan a fair shake. If you cast your mind back to those dark days of March 2008, you’ll recall the impending failure of Bear Stearns was sending shockwaves throughout the entire financial system, bringing it to the very precipice of collapse. JPMorgan certainly wasn’t looking for acquisitions just then; they were pressured into it by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, with the argument (which still holds up in hindsight), that the economy just might depend on it.

We want justice too, and if justice is served by criminal and/or civil prosecution of the Big Banks, then we’re all for it. We just don’t think justice — or even common sense — is served by going after JPMorgan in this case. Because all JPMorgan is guilty of, in this case at least, is saving our collective necks.

The C4:

1. The financial collapse of 2008, which has been convincingly tied to the housing bubble and the introduction of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities, has to date resulted in very little in the way of criminal prosecutions or civil liability.
2. This has led to an understandable, yet not-always-rational yearning for justice. We get that. We’d also like to see the guilty punished. We just want to make sure the innocent aren’t swept up as well.
3. Is that what’s going on with the civil fraud case against JPMorgan? The suit alleges fraud committed by Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan acquired after the fact. The law is clear: a company is liable for the transgressions of any entities it acquires.
4. But sometimes fairness is more important than the law. Our nation’s financial regulators begged JPMorgan to buy Bear Stearns, and when JPMorgan did, they just might have saved our economy. Should they be punished for it? We don’t think so, but we’d love to hear your opinion. Please log in and let us know.

Are You Complaining About The Complainers?

Be careful when responding to online reviews.

How do you deal with an unhappy customer? Unfortunately there’s no one right answer for that. Factors like your business model, their specific complaint, even the current economic climate all go into determining how you can best put the gruntle back into the disgruntled.

But there are plenty of wrong ways to do it, and plenty of object lessons in how not to behave.

Not surprisingly, these lessons are all Internet-related. There’s danger inherent in the Internet, in that illusory degree of separation and in the way your impulsive typing-and-clicking can spread ‘round the world, and never be taken back.

Customers complain online. We have to accept that fact. Services like Yelp and Epinions make it as easy as can be for consumers to log their good and bad buying experiences. Alas, it’s been proven again and again they’re far more likely to talk about the bad than the good. And as bad as that might seem, it’s often the merchants’ reactions that really do the damage. Consider the evidence:

A one-star Yelp review for a Chicago-based wine-paring class resulted in dueling blog insults, and finally a half-million dollar defamation suit against an internationally renowned oenologist. In an email he accused his customer of acting like a child, but the resulting publicity hurt only him.

In Canada, a restaurateur responded to negative reviews by creating a fake sex site profile for the reviewer. She’s just been convicted of two counts of defamatory libel and will be sentenced later this year.

And perhaps the worst: the owner of an online eyeglass retailer has just been sentenced to four years in prison for stalking, harassing and intimidating critics. He would routinely email and even telephone reviewers, threatening them with his knowledge of their personal information such as home addresses. Amazingly, he was apparently courting bad feedback, under the theory that any online mention at all result in higher search-engine rankings.

How shortsighted. In business, your only real currency is your reputation. Your reputation utterly depends on how you deal with the most challenging situations. Can you win back every unhappy customer? Probably not, but you can certainly extend the effort to try to make things right. In the most extreme cases you can just ignore them. But engaging in a very public war of words (or worse)? That’s something you can’t win, and can never undo.

The C4:

1. Try though you might, you can’t make every customer happy. Unhappy customers complain, and in our digital age there’s a very good chance they’ll complain online. Do yourself a favor and accept that fact.
2. Resist the urge to engage. Yes, it burns inside to see your business publicly disparaged, especially if you don’t agree with the reviewer’s version of facts. But do you want to play “he said/she said” with the whole world watching?
3. Instead, consider your alternatives. Can you turn a negative into a positive? Can you swallow your pride, say Mea Culpa, and make some kind of public effort at reconciliation? It might not feel good, but it’ll look good.
4. Failing that, just walk away. Readers of online reviews are willing to take outlying gripes with a grain of salt. Prove your critic wrong by giving stellar service to everyone else who walks through your door. If you engage and say the wrong thing you’ll be tarnished forever. Treat your reputation as currency, and never risk it on a sucker’s bet.

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

...and clicking.

First, a couple disclaimers here: Yes, we know the Yellow Pages have never really gone away. Just like you, we receive ours every year — they clutter the porch then plop into the recycling bin, often without ever being opened.

Second: No, we don’t want to wind back the clock. We love today’s technology, and we’re awed by the fact that in lieu of letting our fingers do the walking, we can type and click and within seconds find the businesses we’re looking for, get a synopsis of consumer reviews, and map out detailed driving directions.

But — the Yellow Pages! From a marketing perspective there are things about the Yellow Pages unmatched by anything online.

For instance, say you’re a plumber. Ask yourself, what is it you offer your customers? You might answer: fast service, free estimates, and satisfaction guaranteed. Great.

Now flip open the Yellow Pages, and see what every other plumber in the city offers. It’s a quick reality check, and a prod to get busy differentiating yourself from the competition.

Nowhere else can you get such targeted business intelligence about your local competition, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they’re saying to lure away your customers. It helps you hone your message and define your Unique Selling Proposition — that pithy description of why you and you alone should be their provider of choice.

So as long as businesses are still advertising in the Yellow Pages (and they are), so should you. And you should be using it as a resource, too.

In fact, go get it right now. It’s probably still there, waiting on your porch.

The C4:

1. The Yellow Pages — not yellowpages.com but the old fashioned annual phone directory. It’s become something between an anachronism and a punchline by now. But it still exists, businesses still advertise in it, and consumers (much fewer but still notable numbers) still consult it.
2. For local businesses, it’s an intelligence tool. Within a few conveniently alphabetical pages you can check out all your competition, and see what they’re saying they offer.
3. And that should influence what you say. To win over customers you differentiate yourself. Let your Yellow Pages perusing help you figure out what you offer that they don’t. Then let that become your Unique Selling Proposition.
4. Market accordingly. Build a marketing communications strategy around your uniqueness. Emphasize it in all your consumer-oriented messaging. And yes, that includes your ad in the Yellow Pages.

Let Go of the Past, Embrace the Future

Open wide your windows of opportunity.

Not exactly controversial advice, right? But when that past includes equity and proven success, it tends to make an alternative future that much more uncertain. And this makes letting go of the one and embracing the other all the harder.

Still, it happens. We’ve seen it happen twice in recent weeks, with both Microsoft and Avis bidding farewell to iconic marketing elements, and moving on to something new. This was brave of them…but was it wise?

In Avis’ case, they’ve stopped using a marketing slogan that has for half a century defined them as a determined rental-car underdog. “We Try Harder” was their 1962 answer to their second-place status to Hertz. All these decades later Avis is still following Hertz, but has at last ceased advertising that fact. Instead, they’re concentrating on their core market, business travelers, by adopting the position “It’s Your Space.” They’re attempting to tout all the amenities they offer busy people on the go, which is probably a smart strategy. But “We Try Harder” has been around for generations; Avis is mistaken if they think their customers will forget it anytime soon.

Then there’s Microsoft.

That company has stirred up both tech and design observers — two opinionated groups if there ever were any — by replacing their 25-year-old logo and branding. The “wavy windows” look is gone, but what’s in its place is eerily familiar. We now have a bold, sans-serif rendering of the company name, next to a symmetrical four-color window grid. In terms of branding updates, this one is more like baby steps.

That hasn’t quieted the sounding-off, though. Some are saying that the placid, 2D windows look like an antithesis of technology. Others say the design is clean, simple and memorable. What’s probably a win from Microsoft’s point of view is that people are talking about it.

These sorts of updates are never easy, in that they’re a letting go of often beloved elements of a company’s history. On the other hand, such elements almost always eventually date themselves, and must be let go (take a look at Microsoft’s original 1975 logo if you don’t believe us). Either way, it’s a gamble.

And like all business gambles, these ones will ultimately be settled in the marketplace.

The C4:

1. In business theory, the idea of letting go of the past and embracing the future is a no-brainer. In practice, it’s trickier. When do you let go of something that’s served you well? When do you try something new? Often the right answer only becomes clear in hindsight, often when you realize you’ve chosen poorly.
2. Nevertheless, Avis and Microsoft have both moved boldly, relinquishing tried and true marketing elements and replacing them with something brand new. Avis, in focusing on service to business travelers, risks the question, “Aren’t you guys trying harder anymore?” And Microsoft has raised the scorn of logo critics, who say the simple new design ill represents one of the world’s leading tech companies.
3. Those reactions are worrisome, but what were these companies to do? They’ve both broken with decades-old traditions—something most of us would argue has to be done sooner or later. Whether their decisions are smart or self-damaging perhaps is just a matter of timing.
    
4. So did they time it right? Or did they shoot themselves in the foot? The answer is entirely up to the customers of these companies. The jury’s out, and deliberations are underway.

Jump On The Blog Wagon

There's a logical explanation for your organized thinking.

What if we told you there’s a single tool that can support all your marketing efforts, enhance your management and internal relations, improve your communication skills, and sharpen your critical thinking?

Already it sounds too good to be true. So just wait until we add: This tool is absolutely free.

The tool we’re speaking of is the blog, and if you don’t have one already you should start one right away.

What can you do with a blog? To begin with, you can explain yourself. You can provide the detail behind your decisions — to your customers, to your employees, to strangers…maybe, if need be, even to yourself.

That’s because the act of writing, of blogging, forces a focus in your thinking and an examination of your procedural logic. In sitting down to write the 500 or 1,000 words on whatever’s relevant to your business this week, you’ll find yourself delving into why it’s relevant, and what that means, and what it foretells.

You’ll support and amplify your marketing campaigns by providing a longer-format appeal that just isn’t possible through any other outreach. You’ll humanize yourself and the voice of your company, by supplying the ongoing narrative that explains why you’re in business and what makes you tick.

You can spend money on blogging, to be sure. Spend as much as you want. But you can get started, and you should get started, right now, for nothing. And similarly, you’ll probably get started with few or no readers. That shouldn’t stop you either. Every blog you write, whether it’s read widely or not at all, sharpens your mind and hones your ability. Every entry makes you a better writer and a better thinker. And rest assured, the better you get the more attractive your blog gets. The readers will come.

This is a tool that’s loaded with potential. Your potential to start a conversation, to introduce yourself to an unlimited audience, and to begin explaining why you’re doing what you do starts with the gentlest of efforts.

We urge you to make that effort at once.

The C4:

1. The blog is the definitive format of twenty-first-century electronic publishing. It is open and available to all and is equally serviceable for business, for art, for pleasure, and for no particular reason at all.
2. From a business perspective, there’s probably no comparable tool that can reach so many people, that can explain or justify so ably and thoroughly, and can elicit such critical thinking, for so little outlay and effort.
3. Your earliest efforts at blogging might attract little notice. Your first few blogs might be choppy or rambling. Soldier on. You’ll get better with practice, and your practice will attract attention.
4. Blogger and Wordpress are free hosting services that can have you up and running with a beautiful, dynamic blog in just a few minutes. With Tumblr, you can create a more visual-oriented and stripped-down yet still great looking blog even faster. With Wordpress you can download the open-source Wordpress software and host it yourself. You can buy a domain name for a few bucks and redirect it to any blog, anywhere. The point is you can spend a little, a lot, or nothing — and still create a blog that lets you speak with your customers like never before. Why not get started today?

The Glitter That Makes Markets Jitter

Where’s the silver lining?

“Gold is a hedge against inflation.” 

That’s such a long-accepted trope you probably don’t remember where you first heard it. Historically, it’s usually been true. The price of gold rises and falls like anything else, but it normally stays fairly closely pegged to the inflation rate. One way to think of it is this: an ounce of gold has always been enough to buy a decent suit of clothes, whether in 1849 when gold was going for $20, or in 2000 when it was up to $300.

But a not-so-funny thing has happened since the 2007 financial crisis — the price of gold itself has become inflated, maybe even hyper-inflated, shooting up to an all-time high last year of nearly $2,000 an ounce.

That’s a pretty nice suit.

So, what was going on there? Was it a bubble fueled by panicky investors here in the U.S.? Talk radio and investing forums were thick with gold hype during the worst of those years. Gold brokers were springing up everywhere, selling dubious gold certificates and engaging in the even more dubious practice of buying gold by mail. This all doubtlessly played a part.

But what played an even bigger role was the chugging engines of Asian economies. China and India, especially, weathered well that financial storm. They had fresh dollars to invest, but Western markets weren’t exactly attractive opportunities. So they invested in what conventional wisdom said was a dependable hedge against inflation. For almost five years Chinese and Indian purchases accounted for more than half the gold consumption in the world.

In the last 12 months things have begun to change. The Chinese and Indian economies have slowed, and with them their purchases of gold. Since September 2011, the price of gold has fallen more than 17% to a still-inflated but somewhat more sane $1,600 per ounce.

Will the slide continue? Or is this an example of a market correcting itself? Time will tell. If anything it’s an abject lesson — perhaps a painful one — for investors. Beware bubbles. Beware hype. And if you’re hedging against inflation, don’t buy in at inflated prices.

The C4:

1. Since the start of the 2007 financial crisis, we’ve seen some disturbing fluctuations in the price of gold; it shot up to an all-time high last year, reaching about $1,900 per ounce. Now it’s begun one of its steepest ever declines, dropping 17% in 11 months.
2. Looking back, there was clearly some gold fever here at home. Conspiracy theorists advocated hoarding while fast talkers were begging us to sell them grandma’s jewelry. That was the start of the bubble.
3. Asia is where the bubble blew up. India and China were just as hungry for gold, and they could afford much more. They started buying more than half of all gold on the market…until their economies started to slow. Which brings us to today.
4. Is gold still a hedge against inflation? History, as they say, is no guarantee of future performance. The price of gold will probably stabilize and it might even become a decent hedge again. But investors would be wise to remember: gold is a commodity, as susceptible as any to inflation and deflation. Markets have behaved irrationally when it comes to gold, and there’s no reason that won’t happen again.

I Said, Fill The Void!

The whisper of whitespace amplifies meaning.

Let’s preface this with a declaration: we love design, every aspect of it.

But there’s one certain aspect of design that is perhaps our favorite. We could rave (we have raved!) about its elegant simplicity, its deceptive minimalism. Funny thing is, it's often our clients’ least favorite aspect of design.

It’s the whitespace.

See what we did there? We added paragraph breaks, that is, whitespace, before and after that one short sentence, those three short words. Do you see the way it draws the eye, the way it heightens the drama?

That’s why we love whitespace.

Oh, but we see our clients’ point. They’re paying for ink on the page and pixels on the screen, and most importantly for the effort it takes to put them there. Paying for whitespace? That’s a little too much like paying for the air in a bag of chips.

Hard to argue that point, except like this: in marketing design, what you’re really paying for is the effect. And the effect of whitespace is phenomenal.

Remember, we’re having a conversation with your customer. We’re stopping him in the street, staring him in the eye, and telling him all about you. Maybe he doesn’t want to listen. Maybe he’s hurrying to an appointment. Doesn’t matter. It’s our job to start that conversation, any way we can.

The whitespace is the dramatic pause in our sales pitch. It’s the knowing smile and confident nod that tells him that what comes next is going to blow his mind. Whitespace allows the message to breathe, separates it from surrounding visual noise and places it on the pedestal of absence so that it can be better understood.

We surround your message with whitespace, not because we’re in love with minimalism and dramatic design (true though that may be), but because we know it’s one of our most powerful tools to awe, to captivate, and…

…to communicate.

The C4:

1. Marketing design: it’s equal parts marketing and design. Design serves marketing. Design is gorgeous (maybe we’re biased), but unless it serves marketing it’s self-congratulatory and a waste of everyone’s time.
2. With that in mind, please believe us when we say we will leverage every tool in our considerable design kit to further ours and our clients' marketing aims. We will make gorgeous design, never doubt it, but we’ll do so only with that laser-like focus in mind.
3. One of those tools, one which we often find ourselves defending, is whitespace. We understand the doubt. Whitespace is, by definition, nothing. Who wants to pay for that?
4. Here’s the thing, though: you’re not paying for the nothing. You’re paying for the drama the nothingness creates. Our whitespace draws the eye, heightens the awareness, and lends an exhuberant exclamation to the elements it surrounds. It’s a message that reinforces itself by demanding attention. It creates a mental cadence to let the audience know that the central point is at hand—

          Just

          like

          this.

NLP Is A Tool For Programming Change, But...

Beware of duplicity?

Consider the hammer. It's the tool that, probably more than any other, built Western civilization. In the hands of a Michelangelo, it helps to sculpt David. But in the hands of a psychopath, it becomes truly frightening.

All tools are like that: neutral by nature, beneficial or maleficent depending on intent and application.

Next, consider NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. It’s an approach to therapy, self-help, and behavior modification that’s been around since the 70s. It leverages the mind’s atavistic reaction to language, in order to alter demeanor, improve performance, and develop communications skills.

Now go Google NLP; or worse yet, do a search for that term on YouTube. You’ll find every type of huckster peddling NLP miracles, and promising of the ability to manipulate people to your will. Books like The Game by Neil Strauss detail how “pickup artists” use NLP to razzle-dazzle females into submission.

Some of it’s disturbing. Some is disgusting. But that’s what happens when powerful tools are used by bad people. None of it should discourage good people, though, who can use a tool like NLP for the best of reasons.

Want to improve your ability to communicate? Collaborate better with your peers? Shed harmful habits and cultivate healthy ones? Neuro-linguistic programming might be your ticket. It’s worth looking into.

As with all your endeavors, this one requires caution and common sense. Do your homework and be wary of inflated promises. There are scores of honest NLP instructors who can build a targeted course to help you and your organization reach your goals. You just need to separate the honest ones from the hucksters.

So will it work for you? Only one way to find out. All we can hope for is that you’ll respect it for the tool that it is, and use it only with the best intent.

The C4:

1. Neuro-linguistic programming is a behavior-modification technique developed by psychotherapists in the 1970s that uses language, rapport, and suggestion to achieve goals.
2. NLP can be used in business to create better communications methods, increase sales, and improve collaboration throughout the organization. It can also be used on a personal level for targeted self-improvement.
3. NLP is earning a bad rap, though, because some truly awful people are using it — selling courses that promise Svengali-like manipulation, and demonstrating pickup techniques based on deception and duplicity.
4. A tool in the hands of a bad person does bad things. In the hands of a good person it can better the world. What can you do with NLP?

A Dark Knight For Trading...

Are these gyrations the dawn of more NYSE angst?

Wall Street and its arcane world of securities trading — could anything be more complex? But really, the principles of stock trading are forthright and easily understood, and haven’t much changed in a couple centuries…

You buy fractional ownership in a corporation. You make money, if not through dividends or shares of profit, then by reselling your shares as their values tick higher. Thus the familiar refrain, buy low/sell high.

The complexities creep in as you try to wrest loose every erg of possible profit. Can revenue be gained when share prices rise by a quarter penny or so? It can, but only when you’re trading thousands of shares, thousands of times per second. Here’s where trading software comes in, the likes of which has revolutionized the securities market.

But it’s also imperiled it.

On August 1, 2012 the Knight Capital Group began executing a series of erratic, rapid-fire transactions that had over 100 stocks gyrating wildly for more than 45 minutes, until the NYSE suspended trading. In the meantime Knight was losing more than $10 million per minute, for a final hit that equaled more than quadruple that firm’s total profit last year.

The culprit of course was software. Knight was trying out a new trading algorithm that had been regrettably rushed into service without due testing and bug-fixing. When you or we come up against a bug, we might curse at a blue screen for a while. When it happens to a company like Knight (which executes trades for Citigroup, TD Ameritrade, and others, and was responsible for 11% of all U.S. securities trading in the first half of this year), markets shudder.

It’s a fact of life in this new century of ours that we rely on technology in more ways than we can count. It’s also a fact that our reliance sometimes outstrips the technology’s capabilities. There’s nothing abstract about binary code that can eliminate vast fortunes in the blink of an eye. We have software today that can bankrupt companies and destroy lives.

If we’re resolved to keep it, then we’d better find a way to make it work.

The C4:

1. On August 1, a trading-software glitch caused 45 minutes of erratic stock transactions that have so far cost the Knight Capital Group $440 million and over 75% of their company value. They’re likely headed for bankruptcy.
2. This is hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened. The Facebook IPO in May was marred by a $40 million glitch and the 2010 “Flash Crash” caused a thousand-point swing in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in just over six minutes.
3. Every broker, day-trader, and 401k dabbler relies on stock-trading software. It’s made our modern securities market possible.
4. But when it goes wrong the consequences are devastating. The risks here are way too high. Stricter regulation is never a popular solution, but if anyone has a better idea for protecting our markets from software glitches, we’re all ears.  

The Booming Voice From Boomers:

"Hey, we're over here!"

Here’s a message that marketers aren’t accustomed to hearing: “Please advertise to us.”

But that’s exactly the message delivered by a campaign recently kicked off by AARP, intended to goad advertisers into embracing the over age 50 demographic.

“I may be gray but my money is as green as it gets,” reads one of AARP’s broadsides. “I may be creased but my money is crisp,” says another. These are not-so-subtle reminders that although Madison Avenue loves to cater to 20-somethings, those millennial youngsters aren’t exactly rife with purchasing power these days.

The AARP crowd, by contrast, is doing OK. The average annual income for baby boomers as a group now tops $70,000. Those over age 65 are among the few that saw a net increase (from $29,400 to $29,775) in the challenging years between 2008 and 2011. And Americans over the age of 50 account for more than 60% of new car sales in this country.

Older adults tend to dine out more often, take longer and more luxurious vacations, and spend as much — if not more — on consumer goods as any other group. Yet marketing in these areas tend to focus on the younger set. This perplexing misfire might be explained by an out-of-date tradition — MadAve started targeting baby boomers when they were age 18-34, and never readjusted as that generation grew older. Or maybe it’s because MadAve itself is young: 40% of the advertising workforce is under 35. 

Either way, AARP makes clear that the advertising industry spins its wheels selling to a generation that’s all but broke, while effectively ignoring one with pretty deep pockets. That’s self-defeatism at its worst, which is something marketing should never be accused of.

We’ll speak for ourselves, and hopefully for our most ambitious clients: AARP, you don’t have to tell us twice.

The C4:

1. AARP — formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons — is now titled solely by that four-letter acronym and represents any Americans over the age of 50, retired or not.
2. AARP has kicked off a campaign to remind advertisers of the purchasing power of its members.
3. Americans of AARP age buy more than 60% of new cars. They’re among the few groups that saw little or no income decrease during the Great Recession. They dine out more, travel more, and spend generously on consumer goods.
4. These statistics haven’t exactly been kept secret, yet somehow we advertisers still treat millennials (age 18–34) like they, not the boomers, are the golden geese. It’s a shame that AARP had to remind us how to do our jobs, but now that they’ve done so we’re happy to assure them: we’re on it.

A Wealth of Ideas

Don’t let them go fallow.

There’s a precious business asset that is ultimately responsible for all success. It costs nothing to own, so it’s present at every startup. Amazingly, though, some businesses stop using it. They let it go fallow, forgotten.

We’re speaking of creativity, the art of ideas.

You were creative when you went into business. You must have been. You must have devised something new and untested. You thought of a new way of delivering services, or an innovative way to sell a product.

Which is laudable, of course. But how creative were you today? How creative will you be next week? You’re not sitting back and letting your earliest ideas define your future, are you?

The most creative companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and others — constantly innovate because they encourage their people to constantly create. Many set aside up to 20% of their employees’ time to work on emerging ideas. A lot of those ideas, maybe even most, go nowhere. But there’s brilliance enough in the rest to make the exercise worthwhile.

We said creativity costs nothing to own, and that’s true (hint: you were born with it, as was everyone you know). That doesn’t mean it’s free to nurture, though. It takes time and care and a loving environment. It’s rather skittish. Demand it to come forth and it’ll run and hide. Be gentle and inviting and it’ll trot right up and feed from your hand.

There’s creativity permeating your organization. Everyone for whom you sign a paycheck is teeming with ideas, ideas that have the potential of catapulting your success.

All you have to do is let it happen.

The C4:

1. Creativity was the founding asset of every business, and it’s the cause of every future success. Some businesses forget this at their peril, thinking that first good idea was all they’ll ever need. That’s folly.
2. Smart businesses realize that a constantly changing world calls for constant new ideas. They foster creativity as a way of eternally reinventing themselves.
3. Creativity is free, but harnessing it for business success takes investment. Invest in the time and environment needed for a free flow of ideas, and those ideas will greatly repay you.
4. Creativity abounds. You’re a font of ideas, so are your managers and entry-levels. So is the guy who cleans the floor. There’s a wealth of this resource all around you. Harvest it.

Predicting Gold

Let's see if statistical modeling pans out.

The 2012 Summer Olympics won’t end until August 12, but the results are already in. Team USA will be the overall medal winner, although China will win the most gold. Russia will take third place and host country Great Britain will be fourth.

Statistical modeling. It’s that accurate.

The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has perfected this predictor, basing their model on surprisingly few factors: population, GDP, and home-field advantage. The most successful teams come from countries with a population base large enough to produce cadres of athletes, and with economies big enough to support them. More amorphous, but historically proven, is the host-country effect. Olympians are spurred on, apparently, when performing for their own countrymen. That’s what gave Greece an outsized 16 medals in the 2004 Athens games, and Australia 58 medals in Sydney, 2000.

It’s a simple concept with some powerful math plugged in. Tuck has fine-tuned the weighting for each variable, resulting in an accuracy ratio well into the 90th percentile for the last several Olympiads. For Beijing in 2008, their numbers were 95% correct.

Those are betting odds, and they have us thinking about a lot more than Olympic gold. Statistical modeling is used throughout the business world, from insurance to financial services to macroeconomics. It’s a way of quantifying a world of possibilities, and giving startlingly precise glimpses of the future.

Chances are your business is already relying on statistics in ways you’re not even aware of. Chances are you can (and should) be using them a lot more. Statistical modeling is complex, difficult to master, and decidedly unsexy. It doesn’t even exactly deliver the gold. But as the Tuck School so ably demonstrates, it can tell you exactly where the gold is going to be.

The C4:

1. The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has created a statistical model that predicts, with up to 95% accuracy, who will win the most gold, silver and bronze at the Olympics.
2. That’s the Tuck School of BUSINESS. Clearly they’re not overly concerned with international athletic competition. They’re making a powerful point about the versatility and reliability of statistical modeling.
3. It’s a point you should heed. Your insurers' actuaries do. So does your broker, your banker, and probably your baker. Statistical modeling is how modern businesses can see the future and control their own fates. Are you using it to its fullest potential? Statistically, probably not.
4. OK, thanks to Tuck we already know how London will end. But Michael Phelps will still be in the water, and Kerri Walsh will still be in the sand. We won’t miss this for the world, no matter what Tuck predicts. Go Team USA!

Caveat Emptor

The cons are pros.

The more volatile the market gets, it seems, the more the rip-offs, con games and pyramid schemes proliferate. Con men know that investors are desperate to beat the meager returns they’re seeing from their conventional investments. And they know that desperate investors are easy marks.

There are sadly too many examples to recount. Bernie Madoff’s take ran to the tens of billions. Bayou Hedge Fund out of New Orleans created its own “independent” accounting firm (going so far as to forge office stationery) to hide a $450 million Ponzi scheme. And here in Akron, three now-convicted fraudsters plundered the venerable Fair Finance Company to finance their own lavish lifestyles.

The common denominator in all these cases is that innocent investors got ripped off. And no matter how many con men go to jail, there’ll be plenty more to take their place.

So how do you protect yourself? Start with this age-old defense: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Any investment opportunity boasting of double-digit returns should be treated with great caution. Any that “guarantee” returns should be avoided like the plague (and probably reported to the Feds).

Next, do your own research. Learn everything you can before you invest. Talk to the firm’s employees and other investors. Check the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General’s office for outstanding complaints. And if the firm or fund references outside auditors, research the history and track record of those companies to be sure they’re legit.

Perhaps most importantly, think of all of your investments as risky propositions at best. Even Federally insured instruments, and securities listed on the major stock indices carry their own risk levels. Alternative investments might bring greater potential returns but their risks are commensurately compounded.

So invest with the same attitude with which you might go to Vegas: don’t gamble with money you can’t afford to lose.

The C4:

1. As conventional investment markets get more and more shaky, more unconventional investment opportunities present themselves. All too many of these are cons, because con men know that investors are looking for alternatives.
2. Caveat Emptor — let the buyer beware. Protect yourself before you invest. Be skeptical of all claims, no matter who's making them. Even friends and family, with the best of intentions, can rope you into a pyramid scheme. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. The greater return that’s promised, or even hinted at, the more skeptical you should be.
3. Do your own research. Independently verify, through multiple sources, every claim. Check out the histories of all principals and associated companies. Talk to employees and other investors. Check the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General’s office for outstanding complaints.
4. Finally, remember that investing always means risk. Don’t invest money you can’t afford to live without.

America Celebrates A Birthday

Half empty or half full?

There’s much to fret over, if you’re the fretting type. Unemployment is stuck above 8%. The economy is shaky and vulnerable to ominous developments in Europe. Politically, the country has never been more divided. The recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act enraged half the country, gave cause to gloat to the other half, and gave unity and closure to no one.

But if perchance you’re not the fretting type, if you prefer to see our collective glass halfway full, then there’s encouragement for you, too.

The economy is showing unmistakable signs of improvement. Housing prices are up all across the country, which is bound to boost other sectors. Eurozone leaders have just reached an agreement to protect their banks (without the growth-killing austerity that earlier agreements called for), so it looks like the worst-case European scenarios are averted.

Oh, and that Supreme Court decision? There’s cause to celebrate there, too — regardless of how you feel about the ACA.

How awesome is it that We the People willingly give final say to, and accept the judgment of, a branch of government to which we’ve granted no enforcement or budgetary powers?

On July 4, 1776, our nation broke with the ancient tradition of might makes right, of taxation without representation. Twelve years later we enshrined a radical and untested form of government: representative democracy and the rule of law.

Two hundred and twenty-four years after that, it’s still working. Not only that, it’s brought us unprecedented prosperity and has made us a model for the world.

So is the glass half empty or half full? Is our country on the right track or hopelessly off the rails? Come July 5, we say go back to being as pessimistic as you like.

But on July 4, please join us in celebrating all that’s good, hopeful, and transformative about the USA. Happy birthday, America, from all of us at Caler&Company.

The C4:

1. If you choose to see the negative, there’s lots of that to see. The worldwide economy and our domestic politics are undeniably worrisome.
2. But there’s cause for optimism, isn’t there? The economy isn’t breaking any recovery speed records, but it is improving. We’ve just seen a momentous Supreme Court decision and we’re moving toward a momentous election — both are testaments to the enduring strength of our Constitution.
3. May we humbly suggest that you spend this Fourth of July setting aside pessimism, setting aside partisanship, and simply celebrating the American ideal?
4. Oh, what the heck. Why not spend ALL of July doing that?

A New Cuban Revolution

Capitalizing on emerging capitalism.

There’s a revolution going on in Cuba. There are guerrillas walking the streets of Havana. They bear little likeness to Fidel’s cadre, though — the one that installed a Marxist dictatorship in 1959. Instead they’re free-market reformers, responding to Raúl Castro’s 2010 easing of restrictions on small business entrepreneurship. They are the island’s first capitalists in three generations, and they’re creating from scratch a uniquely Cuban approach to guerrilla marketing.

They’ve embraced the guerrilla approach — that unconventional, low-budget and ever so effective style of advertising — not because they’ve heard it’s trendy here in the States. They’re doing it because they have no other choice. Print and broadcast media in Cuba is still state controlled and doesn’t accept advertising. Internet connectivity is severely limited. The new entrepreneurs of 2010 were faced with the challenge: how to let their fellow Cubans know they were open for business.

They met that challenge with ingenuity we should all find instructive. They accepted their limited resources, their limited access to mass media, and worked around them.

There’s the restaurant owner, for instance, who takes to the streets of Havana in his garishly painted MG Roadster (displaying the restaurant’s logo, of course). Cuba’s license plates are color coded, so he keeps an eye out for the blue plates designating foreign tour groups, and leaves discount coupons on their windshields.

And there’s the mobile phone repair company (which also does a brisk business unlocking iPhones). They wanted to differentiate themselves from their hundreds of competitors, so they’ve branded themselves as a “clinic,” complete with a cartoon mascot: a cellphone wearing a stethoscope. That icon is becoming familiar throughout the island, thanks to professional signage and thousands of flyers handed out.

Perhaps most innovative is a popular Havana burger stand. They offer 25% lifetime discounts to motorists willing to carry bright yellow advertising decals on their cars. They also managed to get 30 marchers, all wearing branded t-shirts, into this year’s May Day parade (one of Cuba’s biggest public events). The result was mass-market coverage that would have been otherwise impossible.

At this early stage, Cuban marketing is still in its infancy. The same can be said for all aspects of Cuban free enterprise. But as long as they go on showing this same level of resourcefulness and resolve, their future is bright indeed.

And along the way they might have some lessons to teach the free-enterprise giant just 90 miles off their coast. Here’s hoping we’re willing to learn them.

The C4:

1. In 2010 Cuban president Raúl Castro opened the way for limited entrepreneurship throughout the island. Within months thousands of small business — restaurants, specialty stores and beauty shops — hung out their shingles. 
2. They quickly found, however, that they had no easy way of communicating with their customers. Mass media is controlled by the Cuban government and conventional advertising doesn’t exist.
3. So they embraced what we call “guerrilla marketing.” They leveraged ingenuity, meager resources and every opportunity for exposure. It worked. It’s still working.
4. It’s a fascinating, real-time experiment in creating a free-market system from the ground up. There are lessons to be learned in Cuba. Wise marketers everywhere should pay attention to this developing story.

A Foreign Way of Doing Business?

Are business practices universal?

There are countries with bureaucracies so corrupt that it’s said to be impossible to license a car or pull a building permit without the greasing of many palms.

American companies seeking to do business in these countries — in any country in fact — are under the jurisdiction of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977, which applies American law, and perhaps even American morality, to overseas commerce. In a nutshell, the law states that Americans can be prosecuted at home for bribery abroad.

On its face the FCPA seems righteous, responsible and correct. It promotes honesty and fair practice, even in nations that can’t or won’t promote these things for themselves. And it ensures that American businesses represent our country and our way of life in the best light possible.

But couldn’t it be that the FCPA is hamstringing American commerce, especially when we’re competing against economic powers operating under no such strictures? If there are truly places where business is impossible without graft, aren’t we effectively closing those territories to American businesses by holding them to the FCPA?

You might recall the recent Walmart controversy, wherein the retailer was accused of FCPA violations while operating in Mexico. This case might seem cut and dry, but the question begs: could Walmart have operated at all in Mexico, without those bribes?

We like to think morality is absolute. It would be nice if that were so. But ideals of fair business practice are clearly not universal, or at least they’re not universally enforced. We have to wonder if our moral high ground, as enshrined in the FCPA, isn’t ultimately self-defeating.

The C4:

1. The FCPA was enacted in 1977 to prevent American businesses from engaging in corrupt practices abroad.
2. Walmart has recently been accused of FCPA violations for bribing Mexican officials.  
3. We wonder if adherence to the FCPA doesn’t put American companies at a disadvantage, when competing against companies and nations who obey no such laws.
4. This is a distressingly gray area and we’d love to hear your opinion: should morality be absolute, or should we afford our businesses the leeway necessary to compete?

Keep ’Em Close

Defeat? Yes. Destroy? No.

Competition is healthy. That’s something businesspeople grasp almost intuitively. We understand that competition creates efficiencies and forces us to better serve our customers. It can even make our work more enjoyable. Some of us thrive on competition and enjoy the fact that it brings out the best in us.

But it can also bring out the worst. Quick self-diagnosis: Do you consider your competitor to be your mortal enemy? Ever use words like “destroy,” “bury” or “scorched earth” when describing your competitive plans?

Now that’s not healthy.    

There are very few industries in which competition is a zero-sum game. In other words, your competitor’s successes are not necessarily your failures. Thinking of them as such only leads to ugliness in the marketplace.

Instead, focus on areas of possible collaboration. Are there projects in which you and your competitor can form a strategic alliance? Failing that, can you pool resources to influence public policy on behalf of your industry at large?

If nothing else, just have a conversation. Take a lunch every now and then to talk through differences or just get to know each other. You don’t have to be best friends, but you should come to accept each other as decent human beings just trying to earn a living.

We’re all just trying to earn a living, but chances are, we’re all someone’s competitor. And it’ll take all our efforts to make sure that competition stays healthy instead of turning into something ugly.

The C4:

1. Business competition drives market efficiencies and creates choices for the consumer. All else being equal, it’s a positive force for our economy.
2. But competition can turn ugly. It’s all too easy (and far too common) to dehumanize our competitors and to work toward their destruction.
3. That’s not healthy and it’s not good for our economy. Competition is about finding an equilibrium. Very little in business is zero-sum. There is room for success for all of us.
4. Look for common ground. Look for areas of cooperation. Keep lines of communication open. Compete, by all means, but remember you’re competing with decent people who tuck their kids into bed at night. Hopefully they’ll remember the same about you.

The Name of the Game

Pretend it's your baby.

Building your brand starts the moment you start building your company. The decisions you make as you plan, create and launch a new business will inevitably have long-lasting impact on your long-term success.

And perhaps the most consequential of those decisions is a deceptively simple one: just what are you going to call this new company?

Resist the urge to rush that decision. And resist the urge for self-indulgence. Naming the company after yourself, or your kids, or some meaningless word that sounds nice to your ears — there have been plenty of entrepreneurs who’ve managed to make this work. But there have been plenty more who’ve tried it and failed.

Your first consideration in naming your company is the one that should inform all your decision making: what does this mean for my customers? To answer that, you must know your customers, or at least know the type of customer you’ll be targeting. If you sell to a staid, conservative crowd, then one of those edgy, modern monikers — think Tumblr, Skype and Etsy — probably won’t win them over.

Speaking of pronunciation, how does it sound spoken aloud? How does it look on a letterhead? Will lazy tongues or unfamiliar typefaces change its meaning? There’s an unfortunately high possibility of brand damage here. You must anticipate and mitigate it.

Finally, can you trademark your name and buy a suitable Web domain? You might eventually retain a trademark attorney, but why not just start with a Google search? See what companies are out there with similar names, and try to anticipate consumer confusion that might result. And do a search for available domain names, but be warned: there are “domain squatters” out there who specialize in buying up dot-com names based on others’ searches, only to sell them back later at exorbitant costs.

Try to settle on a name that makes sense to your customers, that tells them in an instant who you are, what you offer and why you’re the best at it. Choose a name upon which you can hang the entirety of your marketing program — because that’s exactly what you’re about to do.

The C4:

1. Choosing a company name is the entrepreneur’s single most important marketing decision. Success depends upon treating that decision with that level of seriousness.
2. Don’t rush it and don’t take it as an opportunity to pat yourself on the back. Do look for names that speak directly to the kind of customer you want to attract.
3. Anticipate trademark and Web domain issues, as well as every nuance in how the name will sound aloud and appear on the page and screen.
4. Create a marketing program that starts with that carefully considered, ultimately perfect name…then build your dream from there.

Beware of Greeks Bearing Debt

A symptom of a flawed attempt to unify.

Casual investors, beware: your world has been turned upside-down.

Stocks have become the relatively safe parts of your portfolio. Bonds, which used to be your hedges of first resort, have changed entirely.

Top-rated bonds are all but useless for growth, and will pay practically zero interest for the foreseeable future. Sovereign-debt bonds, a sterling investment just a few years ago, are now almost too risky to contemplate.

What’s changed? It’s easy to oversimplify, but we’ll forge ahead: Greece. Greece has changed everything.

We’re not blaming that incubator of modern democracy, only pointing to it as a symptom. Greece is demonstrating all the perils of the Eurozone, an unprecedented experiment in a multinational currency. Greece is showing how difficult it is for 17 nations to share monetary policy while maintaining economic independence.

There are no easy choices for the Greeks. If they stay in the Eurozone, they embrace another generation of fiscal austerity — strangling any chance of economic growth. If they revert to the drachma they’ll almost certainly default on their national debt.

You say you own no Greek debt? Hold tight anyway. A Greek default, managed in the best possible fashion, will only encourage other teetering European economies to follow suit. Spain, Portugal, Italy, maybe even France, are all at high risk. This scenario, which is unfortunately one of the better possible ones and probably the most likely, means the bottom is going to fall out of the sovereign-bond market.

Forewarned is fore-armed. Think seriously about adjusting your portfolio accordingly. And spare the kindest possible thoughts for our friends and allies across the pond, who are guilty of nothing except a flawed attempt to unite their continent.

The C4:

1. The Greek debt crisis is demonstrating the vulnerabilities of the Eurozone, and pointing to a grim future of cascading defaults.
2. That likely result, coupled with already historically low interest rates on “safe” bonds, means we can no longer rely on the bond market as our hedge against other investment losses.
3. Casual investors (all investors, in fact) need to rethink their strategy. This is a slow-motion crisis that’s giving us time to adjust. Use it or wallow in regret.
4. But don’t blame the Greeks, nor the rest of the Eurozone. They tried. Economic unification is simply an idea ahead of its time.

Dimon In The Rough

$2 billion loss wakes people up early in the Morgan.

Over at J.P. Morgan, it feels like 2008 all over again.

Three weeks after CEO Jamie Dimon said “tempest in a teapot” when asked about the company’s renewed interest in credit derivative swaps, J.P. Morgan revealed that such trades resulted in over $2 billion in losses. The market immediately punished J.P. Morgan, by wiping out nearly 10% of its stock value in a single day.

Two facts make this loss all the more stark. First is that J.P. Morgan isn’t just an investment house. In the latter twentieth century J.P. Morgan benefited from deregulation, which allowed almost unlimited horizontal integration within the financial industry. As a result, J.P. Morgan is now the largest bank in the U.S.

“Too big to fail” almost doesn’t do it justice.

Secondly, we now know the lengths to which Dimon and company went in order to weaken the so-called “Volcker Rule,” which is designed to limit the amount of its own capital a bank can risk. It’s clear now that loopholes in the Volcker Rule, which J.P. Morgan lobbied heavily for, permitted precisely the sort of trading that just cost the company $2 billion.

There’s one hopeful glimmer, though. Perhaps heeding the Golden Rule of Public Relations (i.e., own up to your mistakes, immediately), Jamie Dimon is loudly and publicly admitting the company’s error.

“We were dead wrong,” he said on Meet the Press. “We made a terrible, egregious mistake. There’s almost no excuse for it.”

What comes next? Probably a lot less lobbying to weaken financial regulation. J.P. Morgan and others in the industry recognize this incident does far more to damage their credibility than it could ever do to their bottom line. So they probably won’t want to be seen jockeying for more loopholes, at least not in the short term.

And maybe that’ll lead to the ideal outcome: a financial industry governed by rules that quash recklessness while still encouraging growth. That is, after all, exactly what financial regulations are supposed to do.

The C4:

1. J.P. Morgan announced last week that credit-derivative trading has cost the company more than $2 billion over the course of about six weeks.
2. The day after the announcement, shares in JP Morgan lost nearly 10% of their value.
3. CEO Jamie Dimon quickly admitted culpability and promised a thorough investigation.
4. Only a robust system of financial checks and balances, that encourages growth through responsible business practices, can prevent those “too big to fail” from dragging us back into the nightmare of 2008.

Mondelez? Puh-leeze.

Has a crafty committee, once again, created a camel?

Mondelez: If you’re a Kraft shareholder you still have time to stop that word, Mahn-duh-leez, from becoming the new parent company name for fav brands like Nabisco, Cadbury and Oreo. Later this May, Kraft Foods will ask its owners’ permission to change its name to Mondelez International.

There are slews of consultants and observers already calling it a dunderheaded idea, and chattering about all the branding rules being broken: a name with no equity, no apparent meaning, difficult even to pronounce…

And then you hear how they actually picked it: through a global employees’ suggestion box. And not only that, they actually combined two entries to pick that winner: ‘Monde’ meaning the world, and ‘delez’ being a version of delish.

No, really.

But hey, who knows. Who knows whether chop-sawing the brand of Kraft (using plans drawn up by a committee) will work, rather than failing as spectacularly as expected. Stranger things have happened.

Branding rules are rules for good reason. But rules can be broken for good reason. And rule-breakers often create success stories.

Besides, as long as the Oreos taste the same, who really cares about the nonsense word on the corner of the package?

The C4:

1. Kraft Foods plans to ask its shareholders’ permission to rebrand the parent company of Oreo, Nabisco, Trident and Tang as “Mondelez International.”
2. That’s trading away a trademark that’s worth billions and known round the world. It’s replacing it with a word that no one has ever heard before, and that you need to be coached to pronounce correctly.
3. But who knows. If they’re smart with their marketing and they keep delivering top products maybe the Mondelezians will have the last laugh.
4. A company’s name is always the lynchpin of its branding. It pays to know what works and what doesn’t in naming a company, and when it’s OK to break the rules (next C4 Blast teaches just that!).

Is Healthcare At The Crossroads?

Emerging decisions will impact you and everyone you know.

Whether you call it Obamacare or the Affordable Health Care for America Act; whether you’re a supporter or a detractor; and whether you’re an employer, an employee or even unemployed, the healthcare reform law is bound to have significant impact on your life.

Its second anniversary was Friday, March 23. And on Monday, March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court began deliberating its fate. The most contentious provision — the individual mandate that would force all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty — will be the Constitutional lynchpin that the high court, in all likelihood, will vote up or down.

The arguments are clearly drawn, which is surprising for such a complex law — most of which hasn’t even gone into effect yet. Does the Commerce Clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution) empower the federal government to require citizens to purchase specific goods or services — in this case, health insurance?

If the Court says no, it might choose to sever the individual mandate, leaving the rest of the law intact. The danger there is self-evident: the uninsured will have no incentive to purchase health insurance until they actually need it. The law’s system of affordable health-insurance exchanges, in that scenario, becomes unsustainable.

But healthcare prior to the law’s passage was likewise unsustainable, with 20% of our population without health insurance coverage of any kind. Annually, the uninsured consume more than $100 billion in healthcare services, with more than $60 billion of those costs going unpaid.

Healthcare and politics have become inextricably linked. It’s already a hot-button issue for the next election, and will only become more fraught after the Supremes hand down their decision.

So it’s all too easy to forget what’s at stake: our economy, and maybe our future viability as a society. If Obamacare isn’t the answer, then what is?

We need to know. Share your thoughts below.

The C4:

1. The Affordable Health Care for America Act was signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. To date it has outlawed exclusion by insurers for pre-existing conditions and has allowed children to stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26. Its most contentious requirement, the individual mandate, is not scheduled to go into effect until 2014.
2. The Supreme Court will hear six hours of arguments on the law, which began on March 26.
3. Opponents maintain that the government has no power to force private citizens to purchase health insurance. The administration argues that since we’re all consumers of healthcare services, the Commerce Clause grants precisely that power.
4. In either case, the costs of providing healthcare to all Americans are unsustainable.