Can’t See Your Desk?

“A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.”

How did such a filthy studio produce such clean paintings?

Whether you take umbrage at that statement, or whether you find yourself nodding in agreement, is probably a safe indicator of your own desk’s state of tidiness.
  
So we have here, once again, a clash. A dichotomy. Once again we have a way of dividing ourselves against ourselves. As if we didn’t have enough of those.

Those of the uncluttered persuasion will tell you that there’s a place for everything, and everything should darn well be in its place. It’s a matter of productivity, they say. Neatness and organization provide the tools and empowerment to get work done quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

Meanwhile, the denizens of the other end of the spectrum tell you that where you see clutter, they see an unconventional yet workable filing system. Of course they know where everything can be found — every pile and overstuffed desk drawer represents a logical progression of tasks and relationships.

Besides, they say, if you’re spending so much time organizing your workstation, how much work can you actually be getting done?

Sigh. Can’t we all just get along?

Here’s a thought: Maybe both sides are right. Now before you accuse us of being wishy-washy, let us assure you that this isn’t just a theoretical group hug we’re advocating here. We speak from experience.

Within these hallowed halls of Caler&Company (What? They’re hallowed to us…) you can find both cluttered desks, and desks that veritably shimmer with immaculateness. Some members of our team are called to alphabetize their paperclips, and some of us need to dig archaeological trenches to find last month’s expense reports.

And it doesn’t matter a bit. Not as long as we’re creating powerful marketing communications that get results for our clients. (We totally are.)

Because what works for each of us is, unsurprisingly, that which works for each of us. Trying to force our Oscar Madisons into Felix Unger-shaped pigeonholes wouldn’t just be futile, it’d be counterproductive. It would mess with this precious success-formula of ours. We can’t have that.

Maybe this philosophy would work for your business? It just might. Give it a try. Instead of driving wedges between your neatniks and your paper-hoarders, try just letting them be themselves. If they give you their best work, you know you’re on the right track.

And if you still need a dichotomy, then try this one on for size: If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk a sign of?

The C4:

1. The hullabaloo between those who neatly organize their desks, and those who, um, don’t, is getting a little nasty. The two sides have gone beyond questioning each other’s work methods. Seems like they’re now questioning each others' sanity, patriotism, and commitment to the survival of mankind.
2. Which means we’re taking taking this way too seriously. It comes down to this: It’s your desk. Can you find everything you need? Can you get your work done? Can you not just perform, but excel? Then great — organize (or disorganize) anyway you choose.
3. That’s how we run things here. At Caler&Company, we’re judged on our results, not the state of our desktops. Makes sense, doesn’t it? There’s more than enough divisiveness to go around.
4. For example, much as we love our coworkers, would you believe that come Sunday, some of these people are going to be rooting for the wrong team? Now that is truly a sign of some kind of messed-up mind.

The Chief, The ’Skins & The Right Thing To Do

Maybe it's time.

We at Caler&Company tend to look at public-relations controversies in a couple of different ways. We’re interested observers, followers of news and rumors…and at the same time we’re industry insiders, always wargaming how we’d navigate similar challenges. “If they were our clients…” is how many a conversation ’round our watercooler begin.

Full disclosure: the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins are not our clients. We have no say in how they handle the perennial (yet currently very active) controversies surrounding the Native American themes in their team names and mascots.

But if they were our clients, here’s what we’d tell them…

It’s true that political correctness can run rampant, far past the point of ridiculousness. It’s also true that a significant segment of the population, maybe even one that’s concentrated among the sports-loving types, reacts pretty negatively to political correctness. They value history and tradition, like the 66-year-old legacy of Chief Wahoo, and the 81-year-old history of Washington’s team name.

On those criteria alone, a public relations professional might be justified in telling the teams to hang tough. They could probably make the argument that the fans will appreciate their steadfastness all the more.

But the best public relations strategy, we’d tell them, always has to be this: Just do the right thing. And we’d ask them if retiring Chief Wahoo and the name “Redskins” is a matter of political correctness, or is it the right thing to do?

The traditions and memories those teams and their symbols are steeped in are overwhelming positive. Fans of those teams think of great times with family and friends, of thrilling triumph and crushing defeat, when they see the Indians or Redskins names and logos. Racial injustice and humiliation are surely the furthest things from their minds.

But that doesn’t alter the fact that “Redskins” is a slur, and Chief Wahoo is a gross stereotype.

If they were our clients, we’d tell them they could probably hang tough if they wanted to. They could probably thumb their noses at any and all who took offense, and most likely get away with it. For a while at least. Times and attitudes change after all. One day, we’d tell them, they could probably expect a reckoning.

Or they could do the right thing, right now.

Saying goodbye to the Chief, and renaming the ’Skins, isn’t the same as admitting that there was racism inherent in the long history of those franchises. We think even the most vocal critics realize that the teams’ management, players, and fans are motivated only by love of their sport and their hometown traditions.

And resist it though they might, we think even the most diehard fans will come to accept change, maybe even embrace it. New traditions are being born all the time, after all. If they’re born to replace ones best left in the past, then so much the better.

The C4

1. Public relations is a prominent offering on the Caler&Company menu. We love our close engagement with our public-relations clients, and the rollicking challenges that come with real-time PR operations. We can’t turn it off. So we analyze PR cases. The thornier they are, the more we analyze them.
2. We’re well aware, then, that the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Indians have had slow-burn public-relations trials for decades now, churned up by those who say they’re indiscriminately insulting American Indians. We also know that at present the controversy seems to be heating up a bit.
3. But who knows. Maybe it’ll blow over. Surely the PR pros at work on this know that’s a possibility. The teams very well might not have to change a thing.
4. But they should. The world gets a little better every time we discard a slur or stereotype. Kind of makes you wonder why we don’t discard them all.

Huddle Up, Stakeholders

We’re reaching out to you today so we can put a stake in the ground, grab for the low-hanging fruit, and think outside the box.

You may not have noticed, but there’s been this juggernaut of jargon that’s taken over the business lexicon.

Seems like a no-brainer now, but back when we started talking this way, we thought it was a game changer. A win-win proposition. We were speaking the same language, mangling the same metaphors, and we really thought every conversation would be value-added — bringing us more bang for the buck.

Well, it brought about a paradigm shift, all right. It moved the needle…but in the wrong direction. Turns out we’ve become parodies of ourselves. Irritating ones at that.

Drilling down into the problem, we find the stigma of cliché, and the way that the overuse of tired, misapplied jargon actually weakens our messaging. Dive deeper, and you see that talking like a rigidly programmed Business Bot destroys your differentiation. You become plain vanilla, just another face in the crowd.

You’ve got a lot on your plate, we know. This probably wasn’t even on your radar. We’re not asking you to reinvent the wheel, but going forward, maybe you can repurpose some of this drivel? Transition it into another role?

At the end of the day, your communications skills are seen by your customers, competitors and employees as key performance indicators, showing them just how much bandwidth you’ve got for your core competencies. If they think you’re just parroting the masses, well then you might as well be down the rabbit hole.

Death to jargon, is what we’re saying. Do we have your buy-in?

The C4

1. The definitive guide to effective communications, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style includes every rule of English usage you can imagine.
2. Seriously, read it. It’ll make you a better writer and speaker. (And it will turn you against insipid jargon, forever.)
3. Its most vital advice, which if we follow it will end jargoneering for all time (amen), can be summed up in one very short sentence…
4. “Omit needless words.”

Instagram v. Vine

Which is better for your business?

Oh, our love of drawing lines and taking sides. Mac v. PC, Ford v. Chevy, Elvis v. The Beatles.

Somehow the choices we make have become dichotomies — we’re expected to embrace one, eschew the other, and develop a steadfast loyalty that’ll last forever (or at least until the next big thing comes along).

It’s happening in the social-media sphere too, and until we see that Next Big Thing, the opposing teams seem to be Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, there’s not much of a dichotomy there. Because those two social powerhouses are different enough, with different usages and potential reach, that business and casual users tend to embrace them both. At the risk of oversimplifying, we use FB as our storefront and Twitter as our megaphone. They’re synergistic, and we’re using them that way.

But now comes Instagram and Vine, properties of Facebook and Twitter respectively, bringing back head-to-head competition, bringing back dichotomy, alas, to our social-media choices.

Instagram has been around for a while. It started as a photo-sharing tool, with a bit of a reputation for hipsterism. Recently, Instagram has added video sharing capabilities, hosting clips up to 15 seconds long.

Which intrudes directly into Vine’s wheelhouse. Vine was designed from the get-go as a video app, hewing tightly to Twitter’s penchant for short, pithy messaging. Six seconds: that’s all you get to make your splash on Vine.

These are still early days for both, so they’re both still the domain of the dabblers. Business and marketing professionals are taking notice, though, and strategies are being created to make the most of each.

So what kind of appeal can you pitch in just a handful of seconds? A pretty compelling one, by necessity. You don’t have time for a narrative arc — you must get to the point, unambiguously, with some kind of call to action. You turn on the camera, state your case quickly, then yell “cut” and get it posted.

You’ve got a tad longer to do so on Instagram, with the added bonus of tying your messaging in with its massively popular photo sharing (currently approaching 20 billion pics, shared by nearly 150 million users). You can also easily integrate your clips into your business Facebook presence.

On the Vine side, if you can’t say it in six seconds, then you might as well give up. But you know what? You totally can say it in six seconds. Vine users are remastering what Twitter already taught us: cut out the fluff and let the message speak for itself. In six seconds you can communicate one funny, scary, enticing, or intriguing statement. Do that with your URL flashing on the screen, and you’ll probably grab some traffic.

So how about that dichotomy? Do we really need to choose sides? Well as you surely know, we’re lovers, not fighters (ask anyone). So we love ’em both.

Down with dichotomies. Down with either/or. Vine and Instagram, much like Twitter and Facebook, each offer unique possibilities for building brands, reaching customers, and sharing the message of the market.

We know not which course others may take, but as for us, give us Instagram and Vine.

The C4

1. Choice is what makes the market work. We love choice.
2. But for some reason, choice has turned into an either/or thing. If you select the one, you must disdain the other.
3. Must it be so for Instagram and Vine? They’re similar enough, with their strict limit of either 15 or 6 seconds per video clip. Aficionados of each are probably already sneering and trash-talking each other.
4. It doesn’t have to be that way. Instagram and Vine are similar, but not identical. They integrate well with their parent platforms, Facebook and Twitter. They can host messaging that dovetails nicely with your overall social media strategy. You can use them both to reach different audiences, in different ways. So do you have to make a choice? Yes — you can choose to use them both.

Is Premium Brand Development A Double-Edged Sword?

One must remain sharp to fend off the pirates — and the vikings.

First, you build your brand (you’ve heard us say this before).

But your work’s not done. You must then protect your brand. You must be on guard not just against your competitors, but also actual counterfeiters, and brand knockoffs.

That’s not a huge surprise, especially if you’ve ever been offered an eye-widening bargain for a new “Gucchi” handbag or “Rollects” timepiece. It might shock you to learn, though, that this is hardly a new phenomenon. Premium brands were being harried by knock-offs much earlier than most of us realize.

How early? At least as early as the Viking age — over 1,000 years ago.

The well-equipped Viking, as he set out from Scandinavia on his dark errands, might wear at his hip the finest sword he could afford. We know from the archeological evidence that the most sought-after sword in those days was the Ulfberht.

No one today is sure exactly what the word Ulfberht means. It might have been a family name, but since the swords were in production for well over a century, it probably wasn’t the name of a single craftsman. It was clearly a brand, though, in the most literal sense. The word was proudly and intricately inlaid into the steel of the blade.

A few dozen Ulfberhts have been recovered and are in museums around the world. Not long ago, researchers noticed something odd about them. About a third of them bear their “trademark” in this format: +ULFBERH+T. Tested metallurgically, the steel of these blades were found to be remarkable: extremely high-quality carbon steel forged in a process that wouldn’t be recreated in Europe for centuries.

The others, which comprise the majority, are branded +ULFBERHT+ and are made of cheap, inferior metal. Our hypothetical Viking would have no way of knowing this without access to a scanning electron microscope…or until his prized sword shattered during battle.

The battle metaphor is pretty common in business, marketing, and yes, branding. Some wonder if it might be hyperbole. Our 1,000-year-old case study insists it isn’t. Consumers buy brands they trust because they’re expecting consistency in quality and service. Knock-offs dilute that quality and erode that trust.

And even today, long after the last Viking ship has sailed, this can still be a matter of life and death.

The C4

1. Brand counterfeiting isn’t just about cheap handbags that look vaguely like the original. Everything from auto parts to smoke detectors are being counterfeited. Cheap knock-offs can and do hurt people.
2. A thousand years ago, some unlucky Vikings learned this the hard way. The expensive+ULFBERH+T and the affordable +ULFBERHT+ looked equally shiny and nice just off the showroom floor. It was only when its owner needed it most that the metal’s mettle was truly tested.
3. Consumers and brand-owners are both in similar peril today. Every product, every brand is subject to counterfeiting. Only an informed public and a proactive business community can fight that.
4. First you build your brand, then you protect it. Branding is a process that never stops. Yes, we’ve said it before, and we’re sure to say it again.

Read Our Lips

Advertising is a cost of doing business.

Tax policy is such a multifaceted thing — if it weren’t so dry and yawn-inducing, it would make a fascinating case study for the reach and scope of government. It creates and regulates the flow of revenue into the treasury, of course, but it’s arguable whether this is its most important function.

Tax policy is also a cudgel, or a spur. It encourages certain types of behavior, while discouraging others. Very often that’s entirely deliberate. There’s a proposal under discussion right now to levy a 10% tax on the use of tanning beds…not so much because those extra dollars are needed, but rather to prevent, hopefully, some number of new cases of self-inflicted melanoma.

That’s all well and good. But what about the unintended consequences of tax policy? What about tax policy that will discourage behavior that no one can argue is detrimental?

Like buying American.

Separate committees in both the House and Senate are currently discussing overhauls to the U.S. tax code. Both committees, it’s been reported, are considering what we think is a drastic and ill-advised step: reclassifying marketing and advertising costs so that they will no longer be treated as normal, deductible business expenses.

Clearly, we have skin in this game. And clearly, we can argue that designating advertising as anything other than a necessary cost of doing business is simply inaccurate.

Instead, we’ll make this point: Tax policy is indeed a cudgel, and it does indeed alter behaviors. It’s an easily proven fact that when taxes are levied on a particular activity, then fewer people will engage in that activity.

By taxing advertising expenditures, the federal government will ensure that less advertising takes place. That distresses us (no surprise there) but it’s our contention that it should distress you, too. Why? Because the vast majority of advertising dollars are spent locally — local businesses working with local agencies, print shops, and production facilities, to place ads with local newspapers and broadcasters. Even on a national level this principle holds true. When American companies market to American consumers, most if not all of their expenditures stay within our borders.

For more than a century, since the birth of the federal tax code, advertising has been treated precisely like what it is: a wholly legitimate operating expense, necessary for finding and keeping customers. The industry that’s grown up around that need has become an engine of American economic advancement, and a thriving source of American jobs.

The proposed change to the tax code, the alteration of the advertising-expense deduction, will change all that, very much for the worse. We oppose it as strongly as our finite voices and human frailties will allow. We’re saying so to our senators and congressmen, and to anyone who’ll listen, really. We’re making the same case we’ve just made to you. We think it’s a convincing one.

If we’re right about that, then all that’s left is to ask this simple question: Are you with us?

The C4

1. The tax code is a mind boggler. No doubt it’s in need of an overhaul. But the sections governing advertising expenses, classifying them as deductible business costs, are right on point, we think.
   
2. It ain’t broke, but the government is trying to fix it. Both the House and Senate are considering changing or even eliminating that deduction. It is our stance that not only would this result in an unfair tax on a legitimate operating cost, it would also cause irreparable harm to an important American economic sector.
3. Marketing and advertising creates jobs and spurs growth — locally, regionally, and nationally. “Buy American,” they tell us. Well, when you buy advertising, that’s exactly what you’re doing.
4. How on earth can they justify attacking that? Make no mistake, a tax on advertising will mean less advertising, and that means an economic hit, right here at home. It’s wrong, it’s folly, and it needs to be stopped. We’re trying our best to stop it, and we sincerely hope you’ll join us.

Washington Post Acquired By Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

Medias merge.

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of internet-commerce giant Amazon.com, has entered into a purchase agreement with the Washington Post Company to take control of their 136-year-old flagship newspaper, The Washington Post. The paper, famous for its Watergate-era truth-to-power journalism, went for a reported $250 million, or a little less than 1% of Bezos’s net worth.

Although the Post has long been considered one of the nation’s premier dailies, on a rarefied par with the New York Times, it’s not immune from the modern perils plaguing all traditional newspapers.

Declining ad revenue and a shrinking readership base is the new — or maybe not so new — norm for these institutions. Even the Post, which boasts a vibrant digital presence, has suffered earnings shortfalls in each of the last six years. Although the Graham family, which has owned the paper for four generations, gave no previous hint that the Post was for sale, no one should really be surprised by this turn of events. Newspaper sales are also the new normal, because for many of them, their only hope of survival is new management.

At first glance, it might seem that the big story here is the marriage of a venerable media company, with one of its upstart online heirs. And maybe there’s something to that — ad revenue, after all, isn’t just the Post’s bread and butter, it’s also the mainstay of many a Dot Com. That’s not true for Amazon, though, which is a straightforward product retailer (once operated, by the way, from Jeff Bezos’s Seattle garage). No, it seems that the only real connection between the Post and Amazon is their mutual purveyance of the printed word.

It’s important to remember, though, that the NASDAQ-traded corporation Amazon.com didn’t buy the Post. Jeff Bezos did. When the sale is finalized, probably in October, he’ll be the paper’s sole proprietor.

And that, we think, is the story. “Billionaire buys paper” — it’s not a new story. Just a few days before Bezos made his move, John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, bought the Boston Globe. In both cases, the newly minted publishers publicly affirmed their commitment to ongoing journalistic integrity, and to a “hands-off” editorial policy.

Newspapers are in trouble. They’re vital to communities, but as profit centers they’re sorely lacking. It just may be that the stewardship of benevolent billionaires, who let journalists be journalists and for whom ad revenue isn’t so important, could be exactly what saves them.

The C4

1. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994. Legend has it he wrote the business plan as he was driving from New York to his new home in Seattle. A little unsafe, yet still inspiring.
    
2. He turned that little online bookselling concern into one of the most valuable, recognizable, and enduring online brands. Jeff Bezos helps define twenty-first-century entrepreneurship.
    
3. So maybe we shouldn’t have been as shocked as we were when the Graham family announced on August 5 that they were selling the Washington Post to Mr. Bezos. 
    
4. What comes next is entirely up to him. He might dismantle the newsroom and sell the fixtures. He might turn it into an editorial cheer-section for all things Amazon. Or he could reach into those deep pockets and create a journalistic legacy, independent of meddling and financial worries, that will go on serving the readers of the Washington Post. We think we know which way he’s leaning. We sincerely hope we’re right.

When Ads Go Bad

Don't make your customers hate you.

Just like many professionals, we like reading about our profession. We read the advertising trade publications to get the buzz of what’s going on inside our industry. And we read the popular press to see how we’re viewed from the outside.

Unfortunately, that’s not always exactly uplifting. In fact, very often such stories are about some hair-raising errors in judgment, and usually end with a variant of this sentence: “The ad was pulled from circulation, and the company apologized to all who were offended.”

When an ad goes bad there’s usually plenty of blame to go around. The client gave the creative team some rough parameters (or maybe even specific parameters), the creatives spit-balled some ideas, one was chosen and fleshed out, and the client signed off on it. Sometime thereafter an ad was unleashed upon the world.

That creative team should very much fall on its sword, though, if the ad was badly targeted, poorly communicated, or was somehow actually offensive. Even if it completely followed the client’s directives, it’s the agency’s job to make sure it does what it’s supposed to: drive awareness, position against competitive offerings, pre-qualify potential new customers and precondition targets for the selling process. It’s the agency’s job to foresee any backlash, any counterproductive scenario, and when necessary to put the brakes on. 

So when a bad ad is released, it’s the agency’s fault. Period.

This is always the case, even when the ad’s relative “badness” is a matter of conjecture. Take this example from earlier this summer. McDonald’s in Singapore ran a print ad for McNuggets, declaring that “Today’s PSI (Peak Sauce Index) is deliciously high.” The problem? In Singapore, as well as throughout English-speaking East Asia, PSI is universally recognized as the Pollutant Standards Index. And the week the ad ran, Singapore’s PSI was at a record high, leading to widespread illness and misery.

The ad was pulled, and McDonald’s apologized to all who were offended.

There were no moral shocks here, no stereotyping or offensive language. Just a bit of cultural thoughtlessness. That was enough, though, to make the ad completely counterproductive.

An advertisement sent out unto the world must follow the basic tenet of marketing: Know thy customers. Know what appeals to them, and just as importantly, know what turns them off. If there’s the slimmest chance an ad might bruise their sensibilities, or cause them to think unpleasant thoughts, then that ad should never see the light of day.

Of course you know your customers. But you should be able to rely on your agency to make sure your advertising is right for those customers. The agency should value your results far more than their own creative prowess. They might create stunning ads, but if those ads create backlash, they’re hurting you — not helping you.

The C4

1. When we see our industry in the popular press, it’s a little like seeing a train wreck. We know it’s gonna be bad, but we can’t seem to look away. When the popular press writes about advertising, nine out of ten times they’re writing about advertising gone awry.
2. Advertising goes awry because someone, somewhere in the process, didn’t give due respect to the audience’s sensibilities.
3. When that happens, it’s the agency’s fault. Always.
4. Know your customers. And make sure your agency knows them, too. A good agency never stops learning about their clients’ customers, and they craft marketing material that appeals directly to those folks. They know the cultural, political, and sociological hot-buttons to avoid. They’re creatively gifted, to be sure, but they know that creativity counts for less than zero if their clients end up publicly apologizing for their work.

“It's Not Us With The Problem”

“It's you.”

It’s always a bit suspect when pros discourage amateurs from trying their hand. Doesn’t matter what their true motive is, it always appears as if they’re trying to seal off the sandbox they think of as their own.

So we know that’s the risk we take when we try to warn off DIY marketers. We know we look like we have a petulance problem.

But hand on heart, to the amateur advertisers we say this: It’s not us with the problem, it’s you.

Okay, well, perhaps “potential problem” might be more generous. Every business owner who eschews professional marketing help in favor of shot-in-the-dark efforts might potentially hit the bulls-eye every time.

Conversely, there’s that potential for alienating customers. For opening up a can of I-wish-I-hadn’t-done-that.

Marketing designers, account specialists, writers, and the rest of our gang get into this field because we’re good at it — and we get results. Our clients are good at what they do, too, and have the sense to let everyone stick to the jobs they’re best at. We wouldn’t try to run their shops, and we’d heartily object if they tried to run ours.

Marketing looks easy from the outside. That’s all. Looks easy to slap some words with images, to shoot 30 seconds of video, so that’s exactly what these would-be pro-ams do.

You know this because you’ve seen examples. And you knew immediately what you were looking at. Some become internet-famous for their stumbling attempts, and for video that comes off looking like self-parody.

And in all fairness, some resonate with the buying public. Some reap profits. These are the ones that achieve real pro-am status: amateur players getting pro results.

We won’t say amateur efforts never pay off, but we’re sanguine in saying they never pay off with consistency. That’s the difference our pro standing brings — we’re consistently on target, consistently playing our best game. It’s born of experience and of a devoted fascination with the intersecting alchemy of design and persuasion. Of commerce and content.

We’re not hiding any rulebooks from the amateurs, because this is a business without rules. The closest thing we have to rules, we break constantly…or rather, we break them precisely the number of times necessary, precisely when and where it best serves our clients. Amateurs might bend the rules or adhere to them religiously, but you have to wonder how well considered that is, and whether they’re thinking about it as strategically as we would.

Print, broadcast, internet, and billboards — there’s plenty of marketing bandwidth hereabouts, plenty of room, in other words, for a pro-am circuit. In good conscience we don’t encourage it. In terms of pure self-interest, however, we really should.

All this amateur work, to be quite frank, is making us look great.

The C4

1. More business owners try their amateur hands at marketing and advertising, than any other best-left-to-the-pros services. We can’t prove this empirically but it’s anecdotally solid. Business owners who have no problem letting their general contractors build their properties or their lawyers file their briefs, are willing to take a swing at homegrown signage, advertising, or integrated marketing.
   
2. There’s no reason some of them can’t be marketing savants. No reason some of them can’t be plain lucky. Pro-am advertising occasionally pays off.
   
3. Consistency is what we’re competing on. That and experience, confidence, and dedication.
   
4. Truth told, it’s win-win for us either way. Either the amateur yields to the pro, or he makes him shine in contrast. 

Do We Always Stand Still When We Do Nothing?

Activity does not always equal action.

What sort of challenges and tribulations were waiting for you when you showed up for work this morning? Weren’t there leftover problems from yesterday, all mixed up and merged with the new ones that cropped up overnight?

Managing that never-ending flow of issues might not be fun, but what choice do we have? Can you even imagine a world of smooth-flowing business and a lack of crises? It might sound utopian, but surely you must realize: it would be a little eerie.

Maybe even a little boring.

So this is the business model we’re stuck with: problems arise, we address them, then we await the next problem. C’est la vie. Viva la business.

But here’s one of the dangers of being the habitual problem-solvers we are: We come to think that action, any action, in the face of challenge is virtue. Action, we think, is always preferable to inaction.

It calls to mind the scene of the man searching for his keys under the light of a streetlamp. He’s fairly certain that’s not where he dropped them, but that’s where he’s searching, because that’s where the light is.

We’re in danger of acting just as irrationally when we jump to our feet, thump our chests and wave our arms in the air at the first sign of trouble. We’re driven to act, or more accurately, to react, because a leader must confront problems. That imperative can be so all-consuming that sometimes we forget to ask the most elementary leadership questions, like Is action even necessary at this point?

Action requires a plan. A plan requires fully understanding the problem and what a successful outcome looks like. Activity may make things worse. Action is better. Sometimes doing nothing helps the drama to subside so the real problem can be assessed. Never confuse activity with action.

It goes against the grain, but sometimes the best response is to do nothing. Or at least, wait until the sun comes up, and then search for the keys where they really might be.

The C4:

1. Business, like everything else, is governed by inertia. That’s great for growth and upward trajectory, but it instills a mindset. It leads us to think that activity is action, and that all our actions drive us forward.
   
   
2. No, sometimes it’s just busywork. Just the spinning of wheels. Sometimes we force ourselves to act, in response to events or sometimes in response to nothing at all, without stopping to wonder if inaction might have been the better course.
   
   
3. Your business may be in motion (of course it is) but that doesn’t mean you always have to be in motion, too. Your acumen, instincts, and best judgment might well advise you to take it slow, to be deliberative, to keep still and wait to see what happens. If that’s what your inner voice is telling you, then listen.
   
   
4. Yup, it comes down to a judgment call. You decide when to jump, and when to sit still. Sorry hoss, but that’s the gig you signed up for.

AoR or À la Carte?

Think before you hold the onions.
À la carte can be great, but it doesn't always translate.

Choose wisely.

You like it à la carte? Then these are exciting times for you, neighbor, because you can get it à la carte.

And by “it” we mean just about everything. These are the days of ordering off the menu, and of selecting only those bits, bytes, and bargains that work for you. From your entertainment content to your purchased commodities, you’re empowered to skinny down your bill-of-goods to only those items you really want.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Well, maybe. We’re most qualified and most comfortable talking about the marketing field, where we’ve seen the undeniable proliferation of à la carte empowerment. And although there’s nothing we like better than an empowered client, we must warn that the outcomes of à la carte marketing aren’t always what the clients go looking for.

Agency-based marketing, the traditional model, is about a lot more than advertising and business-card design. It’s about relationship-building. It’s a team of creative consultants and business-growth experts getting to know your company, becoming part of your team, and leveraging their skills, craft, and connections on your behalf.

On the à la carte side, you get freelancers and online print mills. You get low, low prices and fast turnaround. You get exactly what you ask for, nothing more and (hopefully) nothing less.

But you don’t get a relationship. You don’t get an Agency-of-Record to build the consistency and persistence which create marketing synergy. You don’t get motivated members to augment your team.

In this à la carte world, that choice is yours. No one can make it for you. Maybe, if you examine your marketing needs rationally and dispassionately, you’ll find that the no-frills, no-attachments providers are right for you. More power to you, we say.

On the other hand, perhaps you’ll see you need experience, tenacity, and collaboration. Maybe you’ll agree that you need a team.

If so, give us a call. We’ll show you how a collaborative agency creates a long-term marketing strategy. We’ll show how your business becomes our business.

And if you start missing that à la carte mindset, never fear. We’ll take you out for lunch; feel free to order off the menu.

The C4:

1. These are great days to be a consumer. Providers are gearing almost everything they sell for personalization, or for the à la carte buyer. “Don’t want the full dozen? Never fear — we’ll break bulk just for you.”
2. As cool as that is, we advise caution. À la carte isn’t for everyone. And it is not ideal for all industries.
3. Take marketing (please!). There’s no shortage of bargain-priced vendors. You can create business cards from online templates in minutes, and have them shipped in days, for a pittance. À la carte marketing is absolutely an option. You just need to ask yourself — is it the right option?
4. The value of the traditional Agency-of-Record is that it works. The business cards we create cost a bit more because they’re part of a synergistic whole. Your AoR builds marketing programs, geared to your business, monitored and managed in real time. You can’t get service like that à la carte, but we guarantee: You get all you pay for and more.

Icarus Paradigms

A jinking target requires calm resolve.

Modern-day sages tell us to subvert the dominant paradigm, or dominate it, or otherwise bend it to our will (or much more likely, bend ourselves to it).

Whatever we do with it, the prerequisite is to grasp it. Not as easy as it sounds, with this moving, jinking target. Economic and cultural forces are rolling on the crests and troughs of seismic waves, turning over again and again as one upheaval or another transforms our world, ever more rapidly.

Think you got a handle on the dominant paradigm? Are you sure you’re not hanging on to a vanished reality from two or three paradigms past?

This is a world where information is currency, and industrial construction takes place on the nanometer level. A world of unrelenting connectedness, of data democratization, and of technologically enabled personal empowerment.

But don’t dwell too much on that world, on this paradigm. Because it’s changing again, right in front of you.

It’s easier, perhaps, to focus on what’s gone — to recognize the dinosaurs that have gone extinct. And there’s value in that, to a degree. There’s value in knowing what no longer works.

But we’re not really reactive types, are we? So how do we become proactive about this rapidly changing world? Simple — we change this world to suit our needs.

That’s not as arrogant, or as delusional, as it sounds. What is a paradigm, after all? It’s a pattern. It’s a pattern of behaviors, customs, interactions — that define how we work, play, live, and love. The patterns form from societal influencers, and they flourish because we accept and build upon them.

We excel at pattern recognition, but we’re even better at pattern creation. We are absolutely empowered, through technology and personal courage, to create new patterns, and thus new paradigms.

Easy? Nope. It’s much easier to go along with whatever the rest of the world is doing. Rewarding? Now you’ve got it. The reward for courage and tenacity is a world, or maybe just your little corner of it, that is patterned after your own ideals.

The C4:

1. We speak of paradigms and patterns. They’re one and the same. They’re the collective norm, the way most of us view the world and interact with it and each other.
   
2. For a myriad of reasons, the patterns are shifting faster and more dramatically than ever before. For most of human history, the patterns and paradigms recognizable in any one person’s lifetime were almost indistinguishable from those of their great-grandparents, or their great-grandchildren. Now our world shifts before our very eyes.
   
3. Do not despair. This isn’t future shock, it’s opportunity. The same seismic forces that roil our outlook also empower us. We can harness the agents of change to create patterns and paradigms that are worthy of our courage, our tenacity, and our noblest hopes and dreams.
   
4. “The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.” — Napoleon Hill

We Love A Great Interface

But not instead of face-to-face.

Here’s the next great mobile app that needs to be developed: you point your phone at someone else’s, push a button, and instantly beam them a message that says “Hey, I’m over here! Please look up and talk to me!”

We’re the same as you — we love our phones. They’re like mini-offices we carry around in our pockets. They’ve elevated our productivity to stratospheric heights. They’ve made us more connected than we ever could have imagined.

But paradoxically, they’ve also disconnected us from this analog life. There’s a bright, 3-D world going on all around us, full of wonder, beauty, and face-to-face interaction, which we ignore every time we turn our attention to that tiny screen. 

Marketing blogger Christina Childers shares an instructive anecdote about an industry trade show she attended where the vast majority of the vendors were only interested in playing with their phones.

How many customers walked away unacknowledged? How much business went undone? Maybe more importantly — how many simple, invaluable human connections were missed?

We’re not trying to turn back the clock here. We know that the digital lifestyle, the ubiquitousness of handheld devices, is here to stay. And we’re more than fine with that. We revel in it.

But we revel also in a simple, good old-fashioned conversation. We like eye contact. We live for smiles.

So we ask you to ask yourself: are your screen-gazing habits interfering with that? Are you checking your messages more often than you’re checking your surroundings?

If so, the solution couldn’t be simpler. Just put that thing down for a moment, look up, and give us a smile.

The C4

1. We won’t claim to be without fault here. We look at our phones a lot. They’re nifty little devices that streamline our communications, our business practices, and (let’s admit it) our entertainment. So yes, we look at 'em...probably more than we should.
2. But if you ever catch us ignoring our clients, our friends and co-workers, or our families in favor of pixels, please remind us how unspeakably inappropriate that is.
3. A lot of folks need just such a reminder. We all know this is true.
4. It shouldn’t be that way. Normal interaction shouldn’t suffer because of technology. And it doesn’t have to. Just think it over every time you reach for your phone. Ask yourself if now is an appropriate time to look at it. If the answer is no, then put it away.

Of Novas & Manatees

...and unintended messages.

Not trying to be alarmist here, but advertising can be dangerous.

The danger lies in sending out so many messages, each designed to elicit good feelings, goodwill, and great sales, that cut across so many societal and cultural boundaries. It’s true our world is shrinking, and culture is more unified than ever before. But still, the risk of crossed messages and misunderstandings increases with every campaign.

You’ve probably heard of General Motors' giant misstep back in the ’60s, when they introduced their popular muscle car, the Chevy Nova, to Latin America. If you haven’t heard the story, we can sum it up quickly, and leave it to you to surmise what their Nova sales were like, south of the border...

“No-va,” in Spanish, means “No go.”

The Nova story is one of the great cautionary tales in marketing, and we’d be happy to believe that all our peers have learned from it, and such an avoidable mistake can never happen again.

Sigh.

Target has recently introduced a line of plus-sized dresses. One of them comes in a particular shade of gray. A similar dress, available in standard sizes, names that same exact hue, “Dark Heather Gray.” For the plus-sized dress, however, it’s advertised as “Manatee Gray.”

To Target’s credit, they’ve moved quickly to correct the problem, and to apologize to their customers. They blame the mistake on a couple of buyers who simply didn’t communicate with each other.

Fair enough. Lack of communication, internal and otherwise, is an eternal challenge. Good for Target for recognzing that, and (hopefully) moving to alleviate it.

Still, couldn’t this have been prevented? Couldn’t just one Target employee — just one — have looked at that color description, and sent up a warning of bad things to come? Similarly, we’ve always wondered, wasn’t there just one GM exec with primary-school Spanish skills?

Is there a lesson here? There sure is.

Every marketing endeavor, every customer communication, should be put in front of as many eyes as possible, internally, before going external. And the question should be asked — not just "Ain’t this creative? Aren’t we swell?” But also, “Think hard. Do you see any way possible this can come back to bite us on the butt?”

The C4:

1. Target had a no-good, very-bad week, when they used “plus-sized” and “manatee” in the same sentence. We won’t pile on. Target is a great retailer, offering sweetly priced fashion for every body type. They made a mistake, and they moved to correct it. Target shoppers, we urge you to give ’em a second chance.
    
2. The good news is, second chances are earned because such mistakes rarely happen twice. Chevrolet renamed their export Nova “Caribe,” and it sold great. Target will probably now review every word in their marketing vocabulary for sensitivity and unintended impact. As well they should.
    
3. Even better news: we can all learn from Target’s example, and avoid such headaches for ourselves.
    
4. Always remember this: Your marketing material is going to be seen by diverse people, with diverse backgrounds, and infinitely diverse perspectives. Every word and every image you put in front of them is going to be filtered through those lenses. Once your words are published, it’s probably too late. You’re self-saving window of opportunity, then, is narrow indeed. By all means, use it.

Are You At The Tipping Point?

Here's a tip for you.

It's gracious to leave a gratuity. It’s tactful to tip. The word itself was derived from "to insure promptness."

Tipping is a cultural marker. Our European friends are sometimes a bit bemused by the amount of brain sweat we expend in calculating just the right amount to leave for our restaurant servers, our hotel porters, and our coffee-crafting baristas.

But still, it’s central to our culture. It’s built into the way we do business and recreation. Offshore outsiders might look in and shake their heads, but from our perspective it’s an ironclad clause in our social contract.

Tipping is not optional. It simply isn’t.

You know that nationwide, the average hourly wage for restaurant workers is adjusted down to something like $2.13, with the assumption that tips — which must be shared among the entire front-of-house staff — will comprise the majority of the employees’ take-home. Still, even with tips, the median earnings for non-fast-food restaurant workers is less than $9.00 per hour. That’s less than poverty level for a worker supporting a couple of kids.

This report demonstrates how technology is coming to the aid of one chronically under-tipped class — coffee-shop workers. DipJar, a card-swipe-enabled electronic tip jar, allows patrons to quickly authorize preset fund transfers in increments starting at $1. It’s been rolled out to a few independent coffee counters across Manhattan, and is expected to spread nationwide.

Another burgeoning tip-trend, a somewhat less positive one, is that of customer shaming. Servers are snapping pics of less-than-generous receipts and sharing them online. The results have been ugly: reputations have been ruined and people have lost their jobs.

It’s a shame it stoops to that level. Because — let’s say it again together — tipping is not optional. It’s an indelible line item expense for a night out. Or at least it should be.

It’s just this easy: 20 or 25 percent (You can figure that in your head!) for most restaurant bills and cab fares; a buck or two to your bartender, barista, or porter. Do it because it’s the right thing to do, and an irreplaceable part of their wages.

Or do it for the stick rather than the carrot. Tip because you are being judged. You might escape public shaming, but your dinner partners — family, friends, maybe even business associates — are watching. “Character is how you treat those who can do little for you,” goes a currently popular refrain. Demonstrate due consideration for the workers who’ve taken good care of you and your guests, and you’ve demonstrated enviable character.

People notice that sort of thing, and they remember it.

The C4

1. People use all sorts of excuses to under-tip, or to skip tipping altogether. “They don’t tip in Europe,” they say, or “A night out is expensive enough as it is.” True, perhaps, but irrelevant.
2. Because in our society, a proper gratuity is part of the expense of going out or receiving certain services. We have some leeway in how much we choose to tip, and true enough, we can choose not to tip. But even though we have the freedom to choose that option, we never should.
3. The servers and workers who rely on those tips are hurt financially every time folks like us decide not to tip. These are people already living on the margins of wage stability, yet they greet us with warmth and smiles and they do their best to make us feel at home. It’s a crime not to reward that with gratuity.
4. And if that doesn’t convince you, maybe fear will. You don’t want to be tagged as a bad tipper, do you? Stiff a server and maybe you won’t make the news, but someone will notice. And that someone will think a bit less of you. In the end your reputation and your self-respect are really all you have. Take this tip and preserve those things, by doing what you know is right every time.  

Follow Us On Instagram

And get a glimpse into our world.

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Should We Differentiate?

If you can, yes, but it may be short-lived.

We may be your favorite marketing gurus, but we’re probably not your only ones. And we’re probably not the only ones hitting you up with this familiar bit of advice: “You’ve got to differentiate yourself from the competition.”

Which is, generally speaking, true. But within generalizations hide a minefield of caveats and exceptions. To whit: what if you’re engaged in one of the countless industries where differentiation is well-nigh impossible?

Within several blocks from the office in which we toil, there are several full-service mechanics to be found. While they’re in no way identical, the differences between their prices, services offered, guarantees, etc. are narrow enough to be almost unquantifiable. Clearly, their customers are choosing them for some other reason than, “This mechanic is utterly unlike all the rest.”

Similarly, even those companies that do have the ability differentiate themselves, certainly don’t have the ability to sustain that advantage forever. Success inspires copying. And copying erodes differentiation.

Some businesses choose to tilt at windmills, by way of fighting that. Their lawsuits and cease-and-desist attempts might, if they’re lucky, scare off the most skittish of copiers. But there are always less-skittish competitors lined up to take their place.

So differentiation, while often important, can’t be seen as a viable tactic for everyone, nor a long-term strategy for anyone. The solution, as always, is to be the best at knowing your business. Know where and how differentiation is possible — and know, likewise, if and when it’s not.

If you can differentiate yourself, do so. But do so with the knowledge that it’s a short-term proposition at best. If it’s not possible, or if it’s run its course, find other sustainable competitive advantages that keep you in the forefront of your customer’s consciousness.

Competition is challenging. It’s among the few true zero-sum games that real life throws at us. With stakes that high, it’s just good business sense to rely on a toolbox’s worth of advantages, rather than cliched, one-size-fits-all ideas.

The C4:

1. Differentiation is a marketing buzzword. There, we said it. It does make sense for some of our clients — maybe even a lot of our clients. But like most buzz-concepts, it’s over-used and over-relied upon. It’s time to correct that.
   
2. Because, let’s face it, differentiation isn’t possible for everyone. There are products and services — commodities, mostly — that will bear little differentiation in the marketplace. To try to force it upon them looks absurd. Do not look absurd in the eyes of your customers.
   
3. But maybe you don’t sell commodities, and maybe you’re well positioned to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Great! By all means, do so. But every dollar you make from that strategy is a dollar’s worth of incentive for your competitors to copy you. Differences don’t last, is what we’re saying.
   
4. What’s the solution? There isn’t a single solution, and that’s precisely the point. Differentiation might be a useful marketing tool for you. Then again, it might not be. All we can tell you at this point is there are a slew of strategies and tactics that are right for you. Walk through our door, sit down and talk with us, and we’ll discover your unique story, together.

Making The Mark

It could have happened to any of us.

Any among us could react to a short-term emergency with a long-term mistake. Monday-morning quarterbacking aside, it's easy to make the wrong call when you're in that position. It's easy to grasp for the simplest solution while taking your eye off the long ball.

In the case of Maker's Mark, it was a problem of supply and demand — too little of the former and too much of the latter. The way MM handled that problem shows they forgot, somehow, that the "demand" part of that equation was a complement of the highest order, and an admonition to "don't ever, please" mess with the recipe.

The reduction of Maker's Mark from 90 to 84 proof was an attempt to stretch supply and meet demand. It was not intended to deliver a body blow to an elegant, successful brand. But that's what it did.

Any among us could make that kind of mistake, but not all could recover like Maker's Mark has. They did so by falling back on the most basic tenet of business: listen to your customer. After a week of uproar the company announced their reversal with this tweet:

You spoke. We listened. ow.ly/hN3kC
— Maker's Mark (@MakersMark) February 17, 2013

Did they really save their brand that easily? Listen — they're still Maker's Mark. They're still 90 proof of bourbon perfection. Dipped in wax to seal the magnificence inside.

And that brief run of 84 proof bottles? Collector's items now. Maker's Mark lovers who were just last week cursing the brand now can't buy that stuff fast enough.

The C4:

1. Maker's Mark Manhattan: shake together a shot and a half of MM, a half shot sweet vermouth, and a dash of bitters. Chilled glass, cherry garnish, and good, good times.
    
2. Maker's Mark Old Fashioned: mix a part and a half MM with a half part club soda and a teaspoon of sugar. Serve over ice, sip it slow.
    
3. Maker's Mark on the rocks: just like it sounds, but somehow so much better.
    
4. The Maker's Mark takeaway: When the customer speaks, listen.

Is It Your Category?

Then kill it!

The march toward excellence brings its own rewards. Sometimes it also brings a really cool name.

For instance: category killer. Even if you’re unsure of the definition, you have to admit that’s a pretty awesome phrase, in a gritty film-noir kind of way.

"Category killer" comes to us from the world of retailing. A category killer is a specialty store, one that so dominates its category of offerings, that it effectively “kills” the competition in that area. The competition surrenders that category of merchandise, knowing that the “killer” has it all sewn up.

The Henry Bierce Company of Tallmadge has since 1910 been playing in one of the most competitive sandboxes imaginable: hardware and home improvement. Since the rise of the big-box hardware stores, family-owned stores like Bierce’s have been endangered and dwindling toward extinction.

But Henry Bierce is a category killer. The category is masonry. Oh, they have every other type of hardware you’re looking for, to be sure. But bricks and blocks, trowels and mortar tubs, along with the skills and experience that go with them — Bierce owns that category. There are no viable masonry competitors for miles around. There probably never will be, as long as there’s a Henry Bierce Company.

There are many disreputable, dishonest, even illegal ways to crush the competition. There’s one laudable and estimable way to do it, and it’s how Bierce did it: domination through excellence. Killing the category by being best at it. Showing your competition that it’s folly to take you on.

As we’re sure you’ve guessed, we’re not just talking retail anymore. Anywhere there’s a category of commerce, there’s an opportunity to kill it. If you’ve got competition of any kind, if you’ve got a category of any kind — you can assert your domination by claiming the title of “best.”

And that’s nothing less than what you were already going for. Right, killer?

The C4:

1. Retail is where we all go for Selling 101. No matter what sort of commerce you’re engaged in, you can learn a lot about the theory and application of marketing from the folks who set up shop to do it every day.
2. The pinnacle of that retail world is the category killer. This is the seller who knows his category so well, who can sell it and service it like none other, that effectively shuts down the competition through the force of his own awesomeness.
3. Anyone can be a category killer. Anyone. And everyone should be striving for it.
   
   
4. Next time you’re building a wall (or wanting to gaze upon a category killer), drive down by Tallmadge Circle and visit our friends at Henry Bierce. Conventional wisdom says Lowe's and Home Depot killed their category, so Bierce is the tottering dead and just doesn’t know it yet. Don’t believe it, Bierce will outlast us all. Bierce shows how you pick your category, work hard, pay your dues, and own it. Do that and your title couldn’t be more apt: Killer.

Big-Game Advertising

The hunt for market share starts early.

Super Bowl Sunday is nearly upon us. That's gratifying on so many levels.

You're a sports fan? Check. You're awed by outsized spectacles? Check. Got some kind of connection to Baltimore and/or San Francisco and/or New Orleans? Check, check and check.

You're intimately immersed in the advertising industry? Che — wait a minute...you're probably not, are you? Those other 364 days, you probably don't consider yourself a real big fan of advertising. More's the pity.

Ah, but come that blessed Sunday, you find yourself on our team. You not only watch the Super Bowl commercials (and enjoy them, and talk at length about them at work on Monday), you analyze and dissect them. You track the per-minute air-time rates, and you keep score as to which companies and industries are making best use of their Super Bowl advertising dollars.

And if you're anything like us, you're rooting for the home team. That is, you're watching for the local advertisers who've made their play in the Big Game.

No, they're not shelling out $4 million for a 30-second spot like Chevy or Budweiser. But they're probably making their single biggest ad buy of the year. And they're spending that money wisely, since they're capturing a plurality of eyes in their hometown markets.

This year, the local advertisers seem to realize there's more to Super Bowl marketing than shooting the spot and signing the check. There's looped-feedback, or synergy, in this kind of advertising. Just becoming a Super Bowl advertiser imparts gravitas, or maybe street cred.

How do advertisers leverage that? In any number of ways. In the weeks prior to the game, press releases are flying and leaks abound. Some advertisers tease their upcoming commercials, some preview them in their entirety. This year, one of the national advertisers (and only one), is staying completely mum about their commercial. And even that leverages the gravitas, because it has us talking about it. What's the big secret, M&M? We and a few hundred million of our closest friends can't wait to find out.

Seems like there's only one wrong way to do this, and that's to rely on the commercial alone. That's like having a baby without throwing a blowout shower or handing out cigars.

So — we hope our beloved local advertisers take note. You can release your commercials early, or coyly hint about their content. Or you can loudly proclaim the whole thing's super-secret, and tell everyone who'll listen that you have nothing to say.

Just be sure to do something. Leverage that time in the spotlight. The spotlight itself flares and fades fast. It's up to you to make the most of it — before, during, and long thereafter.

The C4:

1. Super Bowl XLVII kicks off Sunday, Feb. 3rd at 6:30pm EST. The beautiful, resilient city of New Orleans is hosting the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. Will we be watching? You bet.
    
2. You can also bet we won't just be watching the gridiron action. The Super Bowl is the world championship for advertisers. Super Bowl commercials are the standards against which all others are measured. From a professional standpoint, we watch them to keep our fingers on the pulse of our industry. From a personal standpoint, we enjoy them just as much as you do.
    
3. We take this opportunity to salute the local marketers who'll be making their pitch during the big game. While the usual national advertisers are paying more than $3.6 million for 30 seconds of airtime, our local sellers are investing less, but still quite a lot, to gain attention and market share all across Northeast Ohio.
    
4. May they make the most of it. The commercial itself is over in half a minute. It has the potential, though, to keep reverberating. Their options for building hype are limitless — they can release bite-sized teasers in advance, or they can post the whole thing to their website. They can create "behind the scenes" or "the making of" videos...or they can figuratively wink and nod and say "just watch the game." In any case, there's force-multiplying synergy there for the taking. We hope they take it.

A New Icon Is Already Up In The Air

American takes off. Again.

Before & After

There’s much more to the art of branding than symbolism and iconography. But then, without the symbols and icons, there is no brand.

That’s why changing those elements brings such risks. There’s risk in staying stagnant, of course. There’s risk in living in the past. But in updating, in revamping, there’s danger of the noble past being erased.

There might be no more noble brand than American Airlines, and not just because their name co-opts the vision of a society and the ideals of a people. This company, aloft since 1934, helped create our global dominance in aviation. They’re a legacy of Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes. They’ve survived the most momentous age not just of flight, not just of travel, but of human experience.

They’ve also been in bankruptcy for more than a year, and have been held up as an example of the decline of airline customer service. If ever a company might benefit from rebranding, that company would be American Airlines.

Yet somehow, we can give only the most hesitant endorsement of American’s recently unveiled image, in the form of a new logo, company colors, and airplane livery. The look is bold, modern, and very striking. The aircraft livery is gorgeous. There’s little to quibble with here.

But there was little to quibble with in American’s old look, which dates from 1968 and was created by the venerable, honorable design house of Massimo Vignelli. For a brand image that’s pushing a half-century in age, Massimo’s design remains powerfully contemporary. It’s also one of the most recognizable trademarks on earth.

For all that, we won’t say that American’s rebranding was a mistake. For a company as stricken as American Airlines, maybe a rebranding was necessary to break with the past, and to start writing a newer, better narrative.

We just hope the American executives realize that a fresh brand won’t write that narrative on its own. The challenges that American Airlines faces are systemic, not symbolic. A fresh brand might bring a reappraisal from consumers, but only a better way of doing business, and a new commitment to service, will bring those consumers on board.  

The C4:

1. American Airlines has just rolled out a new brand; with a thoroughly modern logo, eye-catching aircraft livery, and even new company colors. (Don’t worry, they’re still American, so they’re still red, white, and blue. They’re just a slightly different red, white, and blue.)
2. This is a company that’s been in bankruptcy since November, 2011. They’ve struggled to present a workable plan for re-emergence. They’ve gained a reputation for abysmal customer service. So yes, perhaps this is a company that could benefit from rebranding.
3. But we’ll miss the old brand, created 45 years ago by superstar designer Massimo Vignelli. Few corporate images that old can remain so appealing, so contemporary.
4. Nevertheless, the die is cast. We hope the redesign serves American well. We also hope the company realizes that now that the designers have done their jobs, it’s up to every employee of American, from baggage handlers to executive officers, to create a strong new airline, worthy of its bold new brand.

Dreamliner’s Nightmare

Did Boeing rush to market?

Can you imagine the pressure? You’re already two and a half years behind schedule, with your product hotly anticipated by your customers, your company’s shareholders, your global supply chain, and the world at large. Every problem you encounter with design, every hiccup in your production process, is an instant headline. Designing on the cutting edge is difficult enough. But doing so with the whole world watching? It must have been torture.

That’s what Boeing’s commercial aircraft division was faced with as they rolled out their first new jetliner in decades — the 787 Dreamliner. The Dreamliner was created to be the definitive twenty-first-century passenger jet — the first with a weight-saving all-composite design, the first to replace hydraulics with an electronic fly-by-wire system, the first to power its electrical systems with lithium-ion batteries.

And if you’ve been following the news lately, you know that last item might be a fatal (or at least fateful) Achilles’ heel.

The Dreamliner is now grounded worldwide as Boeing engineers try to figure out why those batteries are overheating. In at least one case, a Dreamliner battery sparked a fire on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan Airport, which took firefighters 40 minutes to extinguish. In a couple of other cases, pilots initiated emergency landings after smelling smoke or receiving automated warnings about electrical problems.

There have been no crashes as a result. No one has been hurt or killed on a Dreamliner. This is the good news.

The bad news is that Boeing’s reputation, and maybe even their ultimate destiny, is caught up with those forlorn grounded jets.

Was there a rush to market? We don’t want to rush to judge. But recognizing that intense pressure, in 2007, 2008, and 2009, as Boeing announced delay after delay, we have to wonder what shortcuts were taken. We’d like to think none. We hope that’s the case.

Boeing has been around since 1916. Their iconic Flying-Fortress and Stratofortress bombers helped save the world from fascism. Their commercial jetliners, from the early 707 to the ubiquitous wide-body 747, have defined the modern age of travel. Air Force One has always been a Boeing aircraft.

It’d be all the more tragic, then, if the Dreamliner failed and brought Boeing to ruin. And it would be tragedy multiplied if we learned it could all be traced to a rush to market.

The pressure to produce can be overwhelming. That pressure can lead to hurried work and imprecision. Depending on the nature of the product, the result can range from embarrassment and financial loss — to the truly horrific.

We honor Boeing and wish them the best. We hope for a perfected Dreamliner and prosperous days ahead for this great American company. Most of all, we hope they’re not fated to become just a cautionary warning, reminding us all to take our time and to get it right.

The C4:

1. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner rolled off the drawing boards in 2007 and flew for the first time in 2009. It entered commercial service in October 2011.
    
2. In the last half of 2012, Boeing started receiving reports of electrical problems with deployed Dreamliners. At least one caught fire. No injuries or deaths resulted, but in January, 2013, Dreamliners were grounded around the world. They remain so at the time of this writing.
    
3. As Boeing engineers focus on problems with the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries, the question is being asked: Did Boeing rush this product to market?
    
4. We don’t know. We hope not. We hope Boeing solves this issue and moves beyond it. Regardless, we’re reminded that rushing is rarely good business strategy. We know that pressure can be hard to resist, but that methodical problem-solving is how masterpieces are created. If Boeing’s designers didn’t realize that when they built the Dreamliner, they’re surely realizing it now.

Joe, Java, Black & Steamy

The bean buzz that gets it started.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could pour yourself a cup of creativity? Or share a mug of teamwork? How about brewing up a steaming pot of productivity?

It’s not nearly that simple, but we try, don’t we?

The coffee break, as practiced by our work-a-day culture, is really anything but a break. It’s a communal activity, a team-building retreat, one we can go on every day. And even if we really do "break" from work, for those 15 or 20 minutes, we never really leave. Problem-solving wheels are still turning and collaborative talk seems to naturally congregate ‘round the Keurig. When we return to our desks we’re amped (no surprise there), and much more able and ready to tackle the day’s challenges.

Of course, caffeine is a drug. Our legal-beagles tell us we cannot — must not! — advocate its use to anyone. It’s worth mentioning that our Keurig can just as handily brew decaf, tea, cocoa, hot cider and even soup. Sometimes it even does so.

So if you eschew coffee, well then, more power to you. We don’t really understand you — in fact, we’re not even sure you actually exist. But if you do, we respect your decision.

But sorry, we won’t emulate it. Our coffee time is magical. We hang out, serve each other, kvetch and commiserate.

And we create. Oh yes indeed we do. Sure, we share much creativity when we’re sitting at the brainstorming table or pitching for our clients. To be fair, though, there’s usually coffee within easy reach in all those circumstances.

But when we commune by the Keurig, we’re in a slightly different mindset. Somehow more relaxed, more egalitarian; just friends sharing a cuppa. We never set out to leverage those golden moments. But almost every time, without fail, someone suddenly looks up and says, “Hey! I got an idea…”

We don’t mess with that kind of success. It ain’t broke so we ain’t gonna fix it. We’ll go on seeing what gets brewed up on our coffee break tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

Speaking of which, hey look at the time. Please excuse us, we’ll be back in about 15…

The C4 (or Four C’s):

1. Coffee. We need it, man. Can’t get out of the house in the morning without it. But it’s not just a jump start. It’s a ritual. It helps build our team and fuel our creativity. If coffee had a face it’d be on our payroll.
2. Caffeine. Yes, it’s a stimulant. Yes, too much of it is a bad thing. But this isn’t just about the pep we get from a cup or 10. It’s about the time we spend chatting and laughing while the Keurig drips its precious elixir.
3. Cappuccino. We never turn down a cup of something fancy like a grande latte with soy milk, sprinkle of cinnamon and a shot of vanilla or Double-latte-foamy-half-caf-whatever. Sure, we’ll give it a try. But we think we can do just as well, and have at least as much fun, with a paper cup filled with the stuff from the gas station. The coffee supplies the jolt, and we bring the togetherness.
4. Culture. We’re not alone in this, are we? Western society was built on the back of the coffee bean, so to speak. Chances are, your workplace is just as java-centric as ours. Do you find your coffee breaks are as productive and as appreciated? Stop by sometime and let us know. We’d love to hear your story. We’ll keep the Keurig on for ya.

Weighted Down In The New Year

New Weightwatchers logo puts on some pounds.

One of the biggest decisions people worldwide make around this time is what to do in the New Year. The biggest resolution is always weight loss, but it seems like Weight Watchers — a major player in that particular arena — has put on some pounds with its new identity. The justification for the change sounds nice, but we fail to see “modern, open and energetic.” If anything it’s flat, not to mention squat and chunky.

New logo

Previous logo

We appreciate the attempt to illustrate a transformation by having the new logo gradate, but agree that isn’t necessarily the best way to do it. It’s a weight loss program — not an invisibility tonic. Weight Watchers offers a lifestyle change and an increase in health and vitality. By losing weight, you gain much more. We think that would’ve been more interesting — and valuable — to represent their brand image in their logo than what was used. Based on their primary audience (women) and how they try to make weight loss look fun and easy, the logo might also benefit from a more feminine, carefree look.

Color variations

It’s easy to get carried away with applying meaning when creating new organizational identities. But sometimes that’s the barrier you were trying to overcome all along — particularly when a company name itself has power. Jeff Halmos, a brand strategist in Toronto, may have summed it up best when referring to Microsoft’s recent brand changes:

“So the question, ‘What do you think of the new Microsoft logo’ is a futile one. You’re not supposed to notice, let alone ask. It’s not meant to be discerned. There is no story here. Nothing to talk about. That’s the point: ‘You have the word; it’s been around; everyone knows it; what’s the problem?’ Any implied or imparted meaning is now being defined by the tribe. Microsoft has no control over its brand anymore. The tribe owns it. The less Microsoft does to get in the way, the longer the tribe will feed.”

One of the main reasons we create identities is to make things easier. Clients shouldn’t have to spend time thinking about which iteration of their logo should be used in one application or another. Identity should simplify, not create more situations where people have to make decisions on color configuration, etc.

More colors mean more decisions, and more decisions mean more time spent not getting things done.