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.