Agnotologically Speaking

Tell the truth and shame the internet.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the modern age is that technology which was created to propagate knowledge is used so often, and so effectively, to spread lies.

Tech aside, our species has always had a complicated relationship with the truth. In laws both religious and secular, truthfulness has never been categorically mandated. Specific types of lies are proscribed, such as bearing false witness or shouting about a nonexistent fire in that proverbial movie theater. But in no canon are we told we must always tell the truth, no matter the circumstances. Take it a step further–many Americans would claim that their right to lie is enshrined in the First Amendment, providing the lie wasn’t violating any other enumerated laws. And there’s an almost universal tolerance for the “white lie,” the harmless falsehood told as an expediency or to spare someone’s feelings.

Given that history, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when humanity is given bigger and better soapboxes, bigger and badder lies spew forth.

Technology, then, has always been an enabler. The dawn of broadcasting, radio and television, brought mass audiences, and before long, mass deception.

In the mid-1990s we the people first began accessing a fast-growing computer network that had been built for purposes almost directly antithetical to the duplicity of which we speak. The internet began as a resource for universities and researchers to share data and ideas.

Once it morphed into a more public forum, the sadly inevitable happened. Disparate groups took to the medium to spread untruths, half-truths, and self-serving fabrications. Their motivations have varied–politics and prejudice, conspiracy-mongering and the proliferation of crackpot ideas. But arguably the most common reason is also among the sleaziest: the pursuit of the quick buck.

The phenomenon is familiar enough that it’s spawned its own field of study: agnotology. The word was coined by Stanford historian Robert Proctor, based on his review of the tactics employed by the tobacco industry in the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s to sow uncertainty in the public’s mind about the health risks of smoking. It refers to the deliberate, deceitful act of spreading doubt, or agnosis, usually for material gain.

And although this dark discipline came to the fore in the Reagan era, Proctor and his fellow agnotologists agree that our present information age marks the maturity of mass deception.

Make no mistake, these developments are every bit as grim as they seem. But take heart in this glimmer of hope: the very tools that are used to delude us can be leveraged for the sake of veracity.

By this we mean: the truth is in here. Despite all efforts of the dissemblers, the ‘net fulfills its purpose of sharing knowledge–sharing truth–but it is incumbent upon the seeker to find that truth.

Look then, for credible sourcing. Look for multiple sourcing. Consume content discerningly, and operate under the credo that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Trust your instinct to know when you’re being led down the garden path. Rest easy in the knowledge that although they may lie to you, you can control whether or not you’re misled.

It’s a crying shame that we are where we are, that such a powerful resource for human connectedness is being used for such inhumane deceit. But crying never solved anything, did it? The only solution is our joint resolution to reject guile and hypocrisy, and to reclaim the global conversation, in the name of the truth.

The C4:
1. Lies are as old as mankind. We could try to excuse or rationalize that, but there’d be no truth in it.

2. Instead, by necessity, we’ve learned to live with the lies. They’re like viruses: undesirable and unhealthy; we convince ourselves they’re rarely lethal, and that they’re unavoidable.

3. If that is so, then we have here in the digital realm the most welcoming petri dish imaginable for perfidy. The information age might well be remembered as the Golden Age of B.S.

4. Liars gonna lie. We can’t put this poisonous genie back in the bottle. But rather than abandon the internet to the liars and the cheats, we can arm ourselves with the truth. We can become integral to the solution rather than contributing to the problem. Help us, please. A more honest internet–a more honest world!–depends upon us all.

Fractal Hunting

The human search for pattern

It took a mathematician to tell us why we love the art of Jackson Pollock.

That the subject is under discussion is evidence, we suppose, that not everyone is as enamored as we with the work of the great mid-century action-painter, expressionist. Where we see a hypnotic and original style of painting, others see disordered dribbles and splashes of pigment, more suggestive of a studio mishap than deliberate art. Why, one philistine of our acquaintance even threatened to haul his oft-used, crusty drop cloth out of the basement, forge Pollock’s signature to it, and try his luck selling it to MoMA.

Cretins like that aside, Pollock’s body of work is celebrated world wide by lovers of modern art. And art being art, it almost seems antithetical to examine the reasons why.

But there’s a hidden logic to aesthetic rules or at least guidelines that govern what we find pleasing to the eye or ear, even though we’re often quite unaware of it.

In the case of Pollock, there’s no overt symmetry or pattern we can cling to which would seem to explain the allure. Or is there?

Fractals are a relatively new (or newly recognized) family of geometrical designs, defined as patterns that repeat themselves at any scale. The most familiar ones, such as the Mandelbrot set, are purely imaginary, existing as computer models and born from complicated mathematical formulae.

But then fractal hunters noticed something amazing: Fractals do exist in the real world, and they’re far from rare.

Look at that tree outside. The trunk sprouts limbs, from which sprout branches, then twigs. Zoom in on any of those twigs, and see how it mimics, in its abbreviated way, the propagation of the greater tree.

Or pick up a rock, one no bigger than your fist. Bring it in close and get a good look. Then try to imagine what would distinguish it from a multi-ton boulder sitting a few yards away.

The scales change. The patterns do not.

Which brings us back to Pollock. The man shuffled off his mortal coil back in 1956 so we can’t be sure if he was aware of it, but turns out, he was making fractals too.

Dr. Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon’s Department of Physics was the first to demonstrate this back in 2011. Lacking the ability to mimic Pollock’s technique by hand, he built a paint-spattering rig (he calls it the “Pollockizer”) that fairly accurately reproduces this signature style. And he found that what makes a Pollock a Pollock is the depth of saturation. And the randomness? It’s illusory. Patterns assert themselves. Perhaps most importantly, like fractals, they do so at scale. Slice out one square inch of a Pollock canvas (actually, please, don’t)...enlarge it, and compare it the original. You’ll find they’re twins.

There is indeed a point here, and it’s as relevant to business and human nature as it is to art. We are pattern-seeking creatures. Unlike most mammalians our olfactory prowess is pretty feeble. Our hearing likewise leaves a lot to be desired. We rely instead on sight. We depend upon our eyes to provide timely input on whether that face down the block is a familiar one, and whether it belongs to a friend or foe. We need to know if a vague shape in the leaves where we’re walking is a stick, or a deadly viper.

This has evolved into an amazingly versatile faculty. We’re not just able to see shapes and faces floating in the clouds, we can find revelation and courses of action hidden in reams of raw data. We can wade through noise, through chaos, and find that no, it’s actually information.

Savants like Jackson Pollock need not understand the theory behind the pattern-making. Neither do we. This is our natural element. And just as easily as he dipped his hands and splashed the paint, we too can dip into the seeming tumult, and make sense of it.

The C4:
1. Chaos Theory (a close cousin of fractal theory) tells us that chaos itself is a rare bird indeed. Nature abhors randomness. Order asserts itself, even when, on the surface, disorder seems to abound.

2. Just knowing this offers an advantage—in the business realm, certainly, but just as certainly in every other realm of human endeavor.

3. Finding signals in the noise takes a bit of a knack, perhaps, but no special training or aptitude. All it really requires is the willingness to try, and the conviction that doing so will be worth it.

4. Jackson Pollock (Jan. 28, 1912 - Aug. 11, 1956) was an American painter and one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. He may or may not have consciously pioneered the aesthetic use of fractal design. Does it matter? You can lose yourself in his Full Fathom Five without ever needing to know exactly how he created it.

Purple Gain

Sincere mourning or more pall than we can bear?

Prince passed away on April 21 of this year.

It was a sad but remarkable day, wasn’t it? Remarkable in the way that the feelings of shock and loss were very nearly universal. People who hadn’t realized how much they enjoyed the Paisley Park sound were suddenly and sadly aware: We were all Prince’s fans, and none of us were ready to see him go.

Prince was an extraordinarily talented performer, who’d wielded outsized influence on pop culture since the early 1980s. This is perhaps why his death felt so much like a watershed, a moment in time, indelibly marked. WWE personality Chyna passed away the day before, and we lost Merle Haggard just a couple weeks earlier. Both events were notably sad, yet neither somehow felt as ground-shifting as Prince’s death. Prince himself would have been unlikely to claim that his life was worth anything more or less than anyone else’s, yet his death was more of a world-wide event, felt by all.

There’s a tendency, maybe even a need, to reach out during such events. Always has been. The difference now is that we have the ability to reach out much more quickly, to a much wider audience. Another consequential development is that businesses, corporations, and brands share that ability, and they tend to exercise it with the same kind of individualized voice as do the rest of us.

Which is generally a positive thing–we’ve examined before the value of vibrant social-media brand presence. It’s fairly straightforward in ordinary times. But in extraordinary circumstances, such as the death of an icon, some brands perform better than others.

Our vigilant friends at Adweek did a roundup of the best and worst brand tributes to Prince; we won’t rehash it here except to say the companies that temporarily purpled their mascots, or tweeted some shaky connection between Prince and their product, did themselves no favors. The ones that emulated the millions of regular people who took to social media simply to share their grief were on the mark.

Brand social-media presence is about selling, sure. If it were only about that, though, we’d replace the retweet link with a “Buy Now” button. The true, overarching goal is to make connections and engage in conversations. People connect with brands in which they detect a relatable human face. This means being entertaining, informative, and approachable on a day to day basis, and being solemnly empathetic when the worst happens.

Look at it this way. If a great tsunami were to wipe out a major city, causing unspeakable loss of life, would you try to slip in there and leverage it for a promotional opportunity? Most of us wouldn’t but don’t be naive, plenty would. Assuming you’re one of the good ones and would never contemplate such a thing, that same sense of social conscience is all you need to guide your social-media presence. The analogy works because every death is a tidal wave for someone.

There aren’t many hard and fast rules in marketing, and the rules that exist are frequently broken. We could tell you that your social-media activity should be something like 70 percent conversational, 30 percent promotional. Maybe that’s the right mix for you, maybe it’s not.

But we’ll stake our reputations on one absolute and irrevocable rule, which we’ll never break and we’ll encourage all others to follow faithfully: Do not market on the back of a tragedy. It’s doesn’t just look bad, it is bad. And the damage it does to your business does not compare to that done to your very humanity.

The C4:

1. It’s been long postulated that tragedies bring out the best and the worst. We can all testify to the truth of this in terms of social media. In the worst of times most of us go online to discuss and console and commiserate. And then there are those other people.

2. Corporate and brand social-media presences are rarely offensive on purpose. Usually, in the worst cases, they’re merely tone deaf. They’re driven to leverage their presence for self-promotion, and they’re liable to do so at the most inappropriate times. People notice this, and their resentment lingers.

3. Promotion has its place and its time. That time is not when people are grieving. At times like those forget about selling, and just be another voice in the conversation. Or stay quiet.

4. This harsh lesson comes our way from a death we still mourn, and really are still trying to process. Rest in peace, Prince. You gave us decades of fantastic music, and we appreciate it, but we know now it wasn’t nearly enough.

The Most Interesting Lawsuit in the World

Staying thirsty has been numero uno since 2006.

The judge stands when he enters the courtroom. Opposing counsel submit motions to recognize his coolness. He brings his own gavel, and no one minds when he uses it.

He doesn’t always drink beer, he doesn’t always fly to Mars, and he doesn’t always file suit. But when he does any of these things, he makes them very interesting. 

He’s the most interesting TV pitchman in the world. His name is Jonathan Goldsmith, but you have known him as the dashing, silver-bearded guru who called you his friend, and encouraged you to stay thirsty. His 10-year, wildly successful run as Dos Equis Beer’s Most Interesting Man in the World recently wrapped. He left, epic as ever, on a one-way solo mission (he made it look more like a jaunt) to Mars. It was a compelling end to an awesome ad campaign, but the question must be asked: Was the iconic character allowed to fade away gracefully, or was he forced out due to a rancorous series of lawsuits and countersuits lobbed between Goldsmith and his erstwhile talent agency?

Like many a nasty breakup, this one has a fiscal component. The agency, Gold-Levin Talent, allege that they haven’t received their contractual commissions from Mr. Goldsmith’s work since 2014. Goldsmith retorts that Barbara Buky, the agent who landed him the Dos Equis gig, never worked for the agency in question, and she’s in fact now married to Mr. Goldsmith (how could she possibly say no to his proposal?). His countersuit contends that the agency violated a confidentiality clause, and damaged his reputation by disclosing elements of his contract.

Heineken USA, owners of Dos Equis, called the legal contretemps, “a personal matter for Jonathan that does not concern” the brand. Off the record, and before the announcement that the campaign was ending, sources close to the company struck a cautious note, saying that since the legal fight is a business matter only, not a “salacious lawsuit,” they were holding out hope against any brand blowback.

Just weeks later The Most Interesting Man was on his way, some might say exiled, to Mars.

Although it seemed at first that the brand was standing by their Interesting Man, it very well could be that the suit and countersuit (and more importantly, the press thereby generated) was an unacceptable risk. These brand managers, like most, are smart enough not to buy into the dubious “any publicity is good publicity” theory (just ask Chipotle how accurate that trope is).

Under the circumstances, and given that in a lot of people’s minds Jonathan Goldsmith is Dos Equis, they’ve probably made the right call. But the position they found themselves in demonstrates the lurking peril hiding deep inside every successful advertising campaign: Associating your brand too closely with any one person, place, or idea means that your brand rises and falls with the fortunes of the same.

The C4:

Uno. Actor Jonathan Goldsmith represented Dos Equis beer as The Most Interesting Man in the World from 2006 to 2016. It has been one of the most successful TV advertising campaigns of the 21st century, and has made Goldsmith’s character one of the most recognizable in modern pop culture.

Dos. What could possibly go wrong? Well, quite a lot, actually. Dos Equis hitched its wagon to Goldsmith’s star (it’s usually the other way around in advertising). Once the brand was indelibly linked with the visage and personality of The Most Interesting Man, any negative publicity for him equaled negative publicity for them.

Tres. And not to be terribly insensitive, but the incomparable Mr. Goldsmith is in his late seventies. Lawsuit or no, could the campaign have gone on much longer? Had it not ended gracefully, would the future have brought us a parade of comedians in fake beards reprising the role, a la KFC and Colonel Sanders? Good lord, no.

Quatro. This curtain call for The Most Interesting Man might have come in the form of some testy lawsuits between an actor and his talent agency. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, and amounts to little more than a pixel or two in the big, big picture. But it was news, and that starkly demonstrates how easily one person can come to stand for an entire brand. Let that be a lesson to all of us who’d try to tame the twin beasts of brand management and public opinion. 

Adios, amigo. The cerveza won’t taste quite the same without you.

A New Impression of Renoir

The Power of Crowdsourced Evaluations

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919) was one of the most famous artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and is considered one of the founders of the French Impressionist movement. His paintings form the cornerstones of some of the most prestigious modern-art collections, including those at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the British National Gallery, and the Louvre.

We might think it safe, then, to assume that a noble and enduring legacy has been sealed for the artist who once said,

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

But...no. Renoir could turn a phrase, but a small, very vocal minority is convinced, and they want us all to know, that Renoir sucked at painting.

And this sentiment isn’t lukewarm; it isn’t mildly griped about over wine and arrays of fine cheeses. Oh no. This has brought people into the streets.

Renoir Sucks At Painting (they’re so angry with the man they’re still slagging him in the present tense) is perhaps the most fervent art-critique movement of our lifetimes. It is the brainchild of citizen-critic Max Geller, who sparked the revolt on Instagram before it morphed  into an IRL picket-line phenomenon.

“Aesthetic terrorism,” is how RSAP partisans refer to the various Renoir collections. Actually, that’s one of their more civil epithets. The somewhat less generous “empty calorie-laden steaming piles” has also been voiced.

As a prolific Impressionist pioneer, Renoir did indeed develop a distinctive, unconventional style. We’ll leave it to others to determine whether that style deserves veneration or Geller-esque vitriol.

What we’ll comment upon, instead, is the supremacy of perceived value. And actually, that qualifier is almost redundant: Value is always perceived. Renoir is a Very Important Artist, whose paintings regularly sell in the eight-figure range, because popular perception has made it so. The same is true for Monet, Manet, and Matisse. And the same principle explains why it feels about right to pay two bucks for a tube of toothpaste, and twenty grand for a new car.

Consumer revolt has a place in this paradigm, as a way of counteracting the tendency for costs to outpace value. Toothpaste vendors would love to hike their per-tube profit, but shoppers will stand for only so much of that. Value disintegrates just as soon as consumers decide that the worth of the product is no longer equal to their dollars spent.

Few of us will ever shell out for a Renoir original, at whatever going rate they might be fetching. But it’s important to understand we still, nonetheless, contribute to Renoir’s valuation. Our patronage at museums, purchases of reproductions, even our opinions and discourses in the public spaces will help determine whether Renoir’s body of work maintains a lofty spot in art hierarchy, or is relegated to the level of flea-market Elvis-on-black-velvet.

Max Geller and his boisterous band of Renoir haters may or may not succeed in pulling poor old Pierre-Auguste from his posthumous pedestal, but they’re determined to make their voices heard. And in doing so, they’re reminding us all that value, or lack thereof, remains a decision we make together.


The C4:
1. Renoir Sucks at Painting. Or does he? This is infinitely subjective but you wouldn’t know it by checking out the collections of the world’s major art museums. Curators seem to have made our choice for us: Renoir rocks.

2. But for every dictum, let there be backlash. Max Geller looked at Renoir, and did not like what he saw. Others agreed. They groused online, then moved outdoors. Anti-Renoir demonstrations raged earlier this year on the steps of museums in Boston and New York.

3. Beyond art and aesthetics, this is about value. Renoir paintings have sold for as much as $78 million. This can only be so because a critical mass of consumers believe Renoir is worth that kind of dough. Should Geller’s fellow-travelers reach a comparable mass, then your average Renoir will be worth its weight in garden mulch.

4. So where do we stand? As always, we honor and respect popular opinion. We salute Max Geller and his folk for their commitment, yet we understand and appreciate Renoir’s importance in art history. That said, he sure did make this kid look funny, didn’t he?

Does This Ring A Bell?

Don't shoot yourself in the foot just before inserting it into the mouth.

 

Brands have stopped talking at us. That alone is a wondrous leap forward in how marketing gets done.

The fact that brands are now talking with us is not so much an intentional branding evolution, as it is the direction that contemporary technology has taken us all. Living in the digital age means instant and nearly unlimited communication. Three billion of us are online now, and each of us has more or less equal access to this ongoing global conversation.

That might spell cacophony, and it often does, but compelling voices sometimes rise above the din. Beautiful people (and beautiful brands) seem to have a natural advantage here–an out sized body of social-media followers that hangs on their every post. But the rest of us—people and brands perhaps a bit less gorgeous—can duly earn notice and global attention, fleeting though it might be.

And there are no occult tricks to this; just be timely, topical, interesting, or witty. If possible, be all the above.

The truly remarkable thing is that these rules-of-thumb are universal – they apply as equally to you and your Twitter-tantrums as they do to the massive cross-platform social-media feeds of the the world’s biggest, brassiest brands.

So how does that play out? There’s literally no limit to the possibilities...but one fascinating trend we’re tracking is the wacky online cross-talk between brands, and some irreverent interactions between brands and consumers.

The brief exchange of Tweeted one-liners between Old Spice and Taco Bell screen-capped above is one of our favorites–they each say their bit, we all laugh, and that's that. The interplay seems a little edgy, a little snarky–but look closer. Doesn't that banter seem more like a bit of verbal horseplay between two old friends?

It surely helps, of course, that the participants here aren’t competitors. We haven’t seen much online interaction between direct rivals, because the results would be predictably ugly. Brand managers rightfully keep a pretty tight rein on social-media messaging, and they know that any posts or exchanges that can be construed as petty or whiny will turn people off. Some small, voyeuristic minority of us might enjoy watching a real-time flame-war between big-brand adversaries, but the rest would disgustedly will a pox on both their houses.

Because fun is fun, and edginess can be entertaining, but at the end of the day it is adult behavior we respect and admire. Big brands, celebs, and even we little folk can log on and quip and banter all day long, and there’s no small chance we can gain some notice in doing so. But doing so in the manner of a petulant child is bound to bring notice we never wanted, and will never be able to erase.

The C4:
1. The ways in which marketing communication has changed in our lifetimes is voluminous (feel free to scroll through a few dozen C4 pages for an ongoing enumeration). But perhaps the most exciting aspect is the phenomenon of reciprocity. Twentieth-century advertising was unidirectional: from the marketer’s megaphone directly into your brain. In the 21st century we have conversations.

2. We’re well into our second decade of this new reality now, and behold the unintended consequences: brands have voices that are instantaneous and under constant observation. Their social-media presences can and do pump out unedited content 24/7. The results can be marvelous, or they can be analogous to shooting one’s foot right before inserting it into one’s mouth.

3. We’ve gone on record advocating for civility and constructive behavior in online discourse. Consider this our corollary: Boorish banter is brand suicide.

4. But highbrow, clever banter? Bring it on. Any conversation is a bit brighter with a few well-wrought quips thrown in. Think you’ve got some of that to add to the planetary chat? Then by all means do so, and reap your due rewards.

S-S-Sellin' To My Generation

Divergent Pitches to Boomers, Xers and Millenials

The more things change...

Generational divides are nothing new. But they’ve never been as problematic for marketers as they are now.


Back when TV was black-and-white and “doctors” pitched cigarettes during Uncle Miltie’s commercial breaks, selling was simple: just follow the money. The money was in the hands of dad and mom, who were resolutely suburban, and invariably aged 30-45. Look back on the ad campaigns of the day, and you’ll see that the vast majority of them were targeted laser-like at this precise demographic.

Oh, but how times have changed. Advertisers must still follow the money, but that money has dispersed beyond all expectation. Three distinct generations–boomers, Xers, and millennials–are holding purse-strings these days, and sellers are making divergent, concerted pitches for all three.

There are of course no limits to the ways of doing that, but it’s interesting to note that one method in particular is being used across that entire spectrum: an appeal to nostalgia.

We’ve told you recently about brands from the baby boomers’ yesteryears being brought back for profitable reprises.

But nostalgia, it seems, has no definable shelf-life, and marketers seem willing to leverage ever more recent memories in hopes of moving product.

If you, for instance, loved the Eighties then MillerCoors is betting you’ll also love its retro Miller Lite packaging, last seen in stores in the late 1970s. For over a year now they’ve been re-dressing their premier low-cal beer in the same cans and bottles they wore when introduced way back in 1972. The beer itself hasn’t changed––Miller Lite is still brewed according to the same recipe used since day one. It’s the packaging alone that has evolved, then devolved, all in the name of nostalgia.

And nostalgia can be even more late-model than that; here’s one for the millennials. Coca-Cola is reintroducing Surge, an iconic ‘90s-era citrus concoction that disappeared a mere 12 years ago. For many of us that’s hardly enough time to have even noticed it was gone.

We may scoff, but in the end the proof of all these gambits will be in the pudding. If consumers are buying, then selling to their nostalgia must be an efficacious idea. But it seems to us there has to be a point of diminishing returns here. If not, then we can only take this strategy to the extreme: Once any product starts to falter, just take it off the shelves for a few weeks, then bring it back to great fanfare and shouts of “You missed us, right?!”

Let nostalgia be true nostalgia, is all we’re saying. Forcing it, especially before its due time, seems desperate and desperately artificial. Consumers might not be seeing it this way...yet. But trust us, if this hand is overplayed consumers will notice and they’ll start equating commercial nostalgia with distasteful manipulation.

And hey, it’s not like there aren’t alternatives. There’s one time-tested method for winning over any buyer of any age: offer them what they want, with quality and value. That’s a selling proposition that a boomer, an Xer, and a millennial can truly get nostalgic over.

The C4:
1. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are now 75.4 million baby boomers, 82.1 million generation Xers, and 83.1 million millennials. That’s 240.6 million adult (or young adult) consumers. Marketers are tasked with endeavoring to steer that consumption.

2. But marketing requires a targeted approach, and your approach might vary if your target is 18 versus 80.

3. It is certainly not out of bounds to appeal to nostalgia. Emotion, after all, is an aspect of the buying decision, and nostalgia is emotional. But can it be overused? Maybe so. When we start turning yesterday’s fad into tomorrow’s nostalgia, then definitely so.

4. When in doubt, just remember that each of those 240.6 million consumers are looking for value, and expecting to be treated with dignity and respect. There’s no magic bullet or killer app in honest marketing–there is only the unassailable recognition that the buyer is the boss.

It's Alive! The Case for Resurrected Brands

If you brand it, it will sell.

That’s hyperbole of course, but it’s also the Cliff’s Notes version of modern marketing theory: Find a unique and irresistible offering that you can hang a price tag on, build around it a memorable and endearing story (a brand, by any other name), and let the buying public’s sentiment become your partner in unbridled sales.

Of course, “Cliff’s Notes” is another way of saying “oversimplification,” and all of our treatises unto you, up to and including this one, are other ways of saying “there are no shortcuts in brand-building.”

Except, you know, sometimes there are.

So picture with us a scenario where the brand-building is done for you...maybe even long before you were born. You still offer that unique and irresistible thing; you still deliver quality and exemplify customer service. But the indelible sentiment that makes your brand a familiar friend? That work’s all been done.

It's alive! Brands find power beyond the grave!

Lacking an industry buzzword, we’ll go ahead and coin one: resurrected brands. You’re probably familiar with the concept, maybe without even realizing it. Indian Motorcycles is a fine old American company, famous for manufacturing sought-after motor-scooters between 1901 and 1953. The brand was idle for over half a century, but one quick visit to a vintage-bike swap meet would have told you all you needed to know about its enduring popularity. It was resurrected to great fanfare in 2006, and has been in production ever since. Currently a division of Polaris Industries, Indian has been restored to its well-deserved spot as a premier American sport-bike brand.

And here’s an example closer to home (and close to our heart)—Norka (it’s Akron spelled backwards!) was Summit County’s very own soda brand, a local favorite from the 1920s to the early ‘60s. And now it’s back! A team of plucky Akronites have rescued it from the beverage-brand boneyard, with both original and updated recipes. It’s already on your grocer’s shelves.

There are plenty of other case studies, but you get the point. The point is, there are brands so beloved they can transcend a business’s natural life cycle. Bankruptcy or the passing on of the principals are irrelevant to the brand’s legion of fans. If it’s gone, they pine for it. When it comes back, they flock to it.

What’s even more interesting is what a diverse opportunity this is. You could be motivated by nostalgia, or you might simply be looking for an unexploited angle. Either way, the potential upsides are almost unlimited. The marketplace head-start, in terms of re-releasing a brand that’s already known and appreciated, cannot be overstated.

But of course, this alone isn’t a recipe for success. Creating a brand is just the first step; maintaining it is the never-ending second. Resurrect a brand and you’ve taken on the responsibility for maintaining its perceived value...in perpetuity. Let quality slip, even a little, and your customers will notice, will be offended, and they will be gone.


The C4:
1. Marketing 101: In retail business, you build success by building a brand. Enter the marketplace with a unique product or service, then position it in people’s consciousness with an appealing and memorable personality.

2. DO NOT deviate from Marketing 101! (Unless, ahem, you can.)

3. The rare opportunity might present itself in which you won’t need to build a brand, but only defibrillate one. Nostalgia is a growth industry. Find yourself a dormant (yet available) brand name, one that the people remember fondly, and you just might find yourself a goldmine.

4. But heed the cardinal warning of shortcuts: they never get you all the way home. To resurrect a brand is to assume a legacy. Betray that legacy at your peril. Whatever your business, whatever your brand, your success is dependent on quality and customer service. This is even more true with a resurrected brand, because your customers are comparing you to an idealized memory. Measure up to that, or the brand shall die a second death.

Are We Creating the Clutter that We're Trying Hard to Break Through?

Let's elevate the conversation.

All these advances, the ones bringing our world more closely together, they’ve given us so much. But just as surely, they taketh away.

And perhaps it’s always been that way, particularly with revolutions in how we communicate. The invention of writing, some eight or ten millennia ago, gave us our first non-wetware capability for information transmission. But it also spelled the end of the nearly supernatural feats of memory exhibited by the shamans and storytellers, who’d been keeping and sharing the tribal legacies since the Stone Age. And likewise, with the coming of the printing press, away went the gorgeous handcrafted product of the calligraphers and scriptoria.

The communications revolution we’re living right now is arguably (or maybe barely arguably) the
most profound thus far. Starting with desktop publishing in the nineties, then on to the World Wide Web and the social media explosion as we know them today, we’ve been effectively handed a global, instantaneous platform for spreading information and sharing ideas. Non-local communication is no longer the purview of the elite, but rather the birthright of nearly all of humanity.

And what, pray tell, might that taketh away?

Novelist and copywriter Robert Cormack warned recently of a coarsening of society, of a “vulgarization”, as he called it. He points an accusatory finger at the advertising industry, perhaps not unfairly, calling attention to our command of mass media and asking us to examine our motives and commitment to the higher good.

They’re questions worth asking, to be sure, and we certainly call upon ourselves and our colleagues to let our consciences be our guides.

But given that mass media is now truly massive, and that we’re all content creators, we think it’s wise to cast a wider net, and to plead for communal responsibility, for leadership from the trenches.

Every single one of us can decide, each time we mount our digital soapboxes, whether we’re about to contribute to an elevation of the global conversation, or to its lowest common denominator. We can choose whether the content we create—be it a ten-thousand word blogifesto or a dashed-off tweet—makes people think, or makes them cringe.

This colossal platform of ours invites unexpurgated input, but it also permits anonymity and it winks at uncouthness. This all can, and does, lead to an erosion of the dialogue into something that’d never happen when people meet face to face, when they open their hearts, and when they share their thoughts.

We’d like us all to remember this—that no matter what sort of interface and no matter how great the distance, it’s still a conversation we’re engaging in. We hope we can approach all our conversations, digital and otherwise, with the respect and civility they deserve.

We’re committed to honoring our role as global citizens and communication leaders. And we very much invite you to join us.

The C4:
1. Advertisers have gained a reputation (not entirely undeservedly) for using our media leverage in the pursuit of dishonesty and a dumbing-down of the collective conversation.

2. Reputations can only be rehabilitated by action. It’s up to us to reform from within and to gain back any esteem we might have lost. We’re on it.

3. May we humbly submit, though, that we no longer command (if we ever did) the tenor of the media and the trajectory of societal discourse? The fact is, we’re all creators, and we all share responsibility for the integrity, or lack thereof, of the content we share.

4. We’re not saying cool it with the cat pics (you can haz cheezburger!), and we love a viral vid as much as anyone. We’re just saying that this global conversation is ongoing, and we can choose to make it constructive, or to let it become toxic to us all. We’re aiming for the former. How about you?

Le ROI, c'est Morte

What do we measure, and how the heck do we measure it?

Are you a data person? If so, you are no doubt happy to be alive. You’ve got data in spades, don’t you? It’s at your fingertips, it’s accumulating in the cloud, it’s compounding by the second. You can slice it, dice it, collect it, collate it, and endlessly compare it to past performance and industry benchmarks. If you’re one to drive your decision making with quantifiable data, you’re living in a world primed and pumped to make that happen.

In marketing, our gold standard, data-wise, has long been ROI, or Return on Investment. ROI seeks to quantify the results that can be directly attributable to marketing initiatives. It’s why, back in the salad days of direct advertising, every new version of a sales letter solicited response to a different P.O. box, and every infomercial used a different toll-free number. Consumer response could be directly tracked, and winning (or losing) sales pitches could be easily identified.

Nowadays, with so much of our sales taking place online, data is even more immediate, and immediately available. Click-throughs and page-views are easily trackable in real time, can be traced back to particular IP addresses, and can be compared against exhaustive records on evolving consumer behavior. If you’re engaged in digital marketing, you might think you’ve got a better handle on ROI than has ever been possible.

Please – think again.

The dirty little secret about twenty-first century ROI is just how misleading those numbers can be. So your hit counts and individual impressions are sky-high and climbing even higher whenever you up your Google Adwords bid. Is that translating to sales? Is it resulting in money in the bank? Take as cautionary the latter-day parable of the seller who’s dazzled by the real-time reportage from his digital marketing manager...both of them trying their darnedest not to think about the inventory gathering dust out there in the warehouse.

Those numbers? They can be gamed. People click on banner ads and follow links – not always because they want to buy, but sometimes just for the heck of it. If you’re advertising on a popular website, its followers (or even its publishers) might be clicking on your ad just to keep them in business.

Andy Frawley at AdAge recently tackled this conundrum in his article, “ROI Is Dead.” He argues for a new, updated metric, one he calls ROE2 (return on experience times engagement), which would quantify the experience your audience has with your outreach, and how they engage with it.

Amen, we say. All we’d add is that we cannot, must not, shalt not discount the incontrovertible gospel of sales. If product isn’t moving, then our marketing is faulty – no matter what the other metrics say. Our solution is to join marketing and sales at the hip. Let their functions be separate, but let them sing from identical hymnals in terms of consumer engagement, product offerings, and the unique solutions we provide to customers. Consistent messaging always gets results, regardless of the format.

In the abstract, ROI will always be relevant. If you make an investment, sure, you’re more than a little curious regarding the return. It’s how you quantify it that matters. If you’ve been doing it wrong your choices are clear: Keep going on down that well-trod primrose path, or pivot to one that might actually get you where you need to go.

The C4:
1. ROI is the king of marketing metrics, for pretty good reason. Marketing ain’t cheap, and decision makers need to know if their marketing dollars are well spent.

2. But metrics are malicious if you’re measuring the wrong thing. We’ve all had a particular approach to digital ROI, ever since Berners-Lee flipped the www switch. It’s dawning on us, perhaps slower than it should, that this approach might be all wrong.

3. Hit counts and click-throughs and eyeballs-on-the-page are interesting, but they tell us diddley about sales. Sales tells us about sales. Digital marketing, like all marketing, has to be about consumer engagement and consistent messaging. The rest will take care of itself.

4. Le ROI est kaput. Off with its head. If history teaches us anything, it’s that nothing is so replaceable as a king who’s outlived his usefulness.

So, you think there's no power in advertising?

You may want to lather, rinse and repeat.

“Don’t leave home without it.”

“Taste Great. Less Filling.”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Where’s the beef?”

We’ve just thrown at you four unforgettable examples (we could add dozens more without breaking a sweat) of the enduring power of mass-media advertising. Just take a second to appreciate the stickiness of these ear-worms. They’re representative of campaigns that ended years, sometimes decades ago; yet, unless you’re hearing them here for the first time (in which case you’re a hermit or a youngster. Or both?)...then they’re every bit as familiar to you as they are to us. More than that—you can probably hear or see, in your mind’s eye at least, the original flight of ads that embedded them in your consciousness, and in our collective unconscious.

And that’s exactly what happens to these classics, wouldn’t you agree? Eventually, they belong to all of us. They become cultural markers, very often evolved beyond, in due time, the corporate identity from whence they came: “Bet you can’t eat just one” “Have it your way” “Would you like fries with that?” “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

These are the phenomena that we hold up as rebuttal to those who say that advertising has no relevance. And we reference them to rebuke, as strongly as we can, those who claim advertising has no power. We humbly submit that advertising like this, lines like these, surpass marketing and mercantilism, and become part of our popular imagination.

“It’s the real thing.”

“Good to the last drop.”

“What’s in your wallet?”

You must realize, then, that this is an ongoing process. That even as the ad-memes of yesteryear endure (“My bologna has a first name!”), contemporary ones are implanting themselves today (“So easy a caveman can do it!”). The cycle repeats.

So what’s the takeaway? For most of us, it’s that our culture is alive, vibrant, ever-changing—replete with not just art, music, and literature, but also with the provocative creativity found in our popular media. With advertising.

And for a select few of us: marketers who’d love to harness this collective chorus, the takeaway is imperative and pithy: Just do it.

The C4:
1. A diamond is forever.
Succinct and catchy advertising slogans endure. They make the jump from media to imagination, and they stay there.

2. Plop plop, fizz fizz.
Repetition is key. Marketers jumpstart this phenomenon by harnessing all available channels to spread the message.

3. But I’m worth it.
Don’t forget value and quality. What you’re selling must be worthy of the consumer’s attention.

4. Time to make the doughnuts.
It takes hard work, and it takes time. Stick to it and you’ll gain customers, move product, capture
market-share. And who knows? Maybe you’ll create that one catchy line they’ll still be raving about a hundred years from now.

Who is Bill Cosby?

Is he America's funniest dad?

Perhaps he is a purveyor of fine puddings and delicious gelatin-based desserts? Or is he someone with decidedly more sinister secrets?

We don’t know the answer any more than you do, and we watch with resigned sadness as it plays out - we hope - to some kind of resolution. But this unfolding story illustrates a vital point, one we think is applicable to our personal lives, business lives, indeed to all of life, writ large.

Because the truth is, whether we’re talking about Bill Cosby, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or Billy the Kid, we have to realize that a public persona, or any persona, tells only part of the story.

Lives are complex. That seems simplistic, but it’s actually a truth so profound that it’s worthwhile to frequently ponder all its implications.

Think of it this way — what person, other than yourself, knows you the best? It could be your spouse, your closest friend, or very possibly the church minister or bartender down the block. Whoever they are, and however well they may know you, we feel safe to pronounce: They don’t know you completely. We don’t accuse you of hiding some part of yourself, anymore than we accuse ourselves of the same (this phenomenon is entirely universal). It’s just that we’re all different people, in ways subtle and distinct, depending on circumstances and surroundings.

If this is a truth we can stipulate for people, can we not also apply it to organizations? It seems to us that the complexity must compound when we’re looking at larger pools of personalities.

So — was Enron all bad? Is the Humane Society all good? We’re not taking any stances here (we’re willing to flirt with controversy, but please excuse us from full-on macking)...we’re just posing questions.

Whatever feelings you might have about individuals, organizations, corporations, or even your friendly neighborhood brand-management experts it may behoove you to remember that those feelings were born of isolated experiences. You might remind yourself they probably only represent one small part of a very complex picture.

The C4:
1. One hundred percent good and one hundred percent evil are caricatures. They’re the stuff of comic books and not-very-convincing fiction.

2. Real life is more about subtleties of gray, and of complex ranges of motivation and action. Might not be as satisfying from a dramatic standpoint, but mundane human existence rarely is.

3. It’s well-nigh impossible, then, for any of us to completely, intimately know the personalities of others. We think this is inescapable on an individual basis, and even more so with large groups.

4. Impressions, feelings, even the things you’re sure you know about the people around you and the the businesses you work with might just be incomplete. We’re not saying your impressions aren't valid. They surely are. We’re just hoping you can recognize that other impressions and contrasting truths could be just as valid in their own right.

Sales as Service

The collaborative experience your customers demand

While your attention was elsewhere, your customers became empowered. 

Maybe you were busy tweaking your website or learning new software or integrating your brand into the social networking sphere. No doubt you were confident you were keeping up with the times. Ironically, it’s those accelerating times, and the quantum technology leaps that come with them, that have handed the keys to your kingdom to the customers you serve.

Doesn’t really matter how you feel about that (and hey, it isn’t all bad - after all, you’re someone’s customer too, eh?) — it’s a simple, unavoidable reality. Resist if you like, others have certainly tried. Most of them have already shuttered their doors. 

Today’s buyer is better informed, better equipped, and better engaged than at any time in history. They avail themselves of this ubiquitous tech to compare prices and products and to hunt bargains. That’s the least they can do, with the puniest effort. If they apply themselves just a bit more, if they log just a bit more screen-time, they can learn nearly as much about your business as you know yourself.

Think you can best a buyer like that? Think you can even negotiate from a position of strength? Think again.

It’s time to give up the adversarial selling approach. It’s time to accept this new market reality. Time to transition into the role of collaborator.

Becoming the buyer’s ally is the best, last, and only refuge for businesses struggling to make headway in this evolved economy. It’s the one thing that can set them apart from their less evolved competitors. And it’s precisely what those empowered buyers demand and expect.

Understand that by the time your customer engages with you, their homework is complete and their purchasing decisions are made. Your traditional sales routines are thereby made redundant. What they’re looking for, at this stage, is a partner to help enact their decisions, to usher them through the closing formalities, and to provide the utmost level of back-end service and support.

Understand, above all else, that these are expectations. Your compliance is optional only in the same sense that the continuity of your business is optional.

There are a couple of generations among us now that have never experienced any other kind of market. They don’t know or care that some of us came up in the days when the ol’ hardsell came on hard, and could very much sell. 

That kind of selling is gone, class, and it ain’t coming back. The sooner we accept that—the sooner we turn selling into service, in other words—the sooner we succeed.

The C4:

1. The information age begat the information economy. An economy of information means a liberation of information. It means that information has become the great equalizer.

2. The greatest beneficiary of this has been the consumer—i.e. everyone.

3. Prior to making a purchase these days one has the ability; nay, the responsibility, to equip oneself with all available information to make the smartest possible buy. And the available information for doing so is encyclopedic. 

4. For the seller, the choice is clear: resist and perish. Or accept, adapt, and collaborate...and ultimately thrive.

Hold the presses. Hold the Mayo!

Can a boy do a mann's job? Not without a fight.

Never before has mayo—and the manifestly philosophical quandary of what is and isn’t mayo—been such trending news.

Surely you’ve heard about this. Call it the mayo wars. Or maybe it’s a David v. Goliath story, one of Big Mayo against a lilliputian “maybe” mayo.

In this corner, we have Just Mayo,  a Bay Area condiment upstart/startup, producing a sandwich spread that looks like mayo, purports to taste like mayo...but lacking eggs, it begs the existential question - Is it really mayo?

And in that corner, Hellmann’s, the mayo-magnate division of food giant Unilever. They’ve filed suit against Just Mayo’s parent company Hampton Creek, taking issue with nothing less than the condiment’s very name. If it doesn’t contain eggs, says Unilever, citing the FDA’s definition of mayonnaise’s proper ingredients...then Just mayo just ain’t mayo.

So what do we have here? At first glance we might have a corporation, a familiar brand, standing up for truth in food labeling—a boon for us all.

And we also might have a bit of self-preservation, certainly not a bad thing. A Unilever spokesman, commenting on the suit in early November, frankly admitted the case was not just about protecting the consumer, but “also our brand.” Hellmann’s is the #1 mayonnaise on the supermarket shelf, and there’s an argument to be made that Hellmann’s has a right to protect itself when a competitor enters its market with a fundamentally different product.

But hold that mayo. We’re willing to ask the questions that Unilever should have, but evidently didn’t, before they called in the lawyers.

First: does the truth-in-labeling argument hold water? From a legal perspective, sure it does. But no rational observer really thinks that Hampton Creek was trying to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes. Just Mayo lacks eggs because eggs tend to turn your arteries into pointy little sticks. Some folks don’t want that as a side-effect from their sandwich spreads. Other folks don’t worry about it, and will probably keep buying Hellman’s. But neither group is going to rush to thank Unilever for defending the cholestoral-centric definition of mayonnaise. Not a bit of p.r. cred will be had there.

And protecting their brand? We’ve always been the first to argue that a brand is the most precious of assets, and needs to be protected accordingly. But we also know that one must choose one’s battles carefully. So swatting that Just Mayo fly with a corporate-sized sledgehammer—is it worth it?

Before Unilever sued, we’d never heard of Just Mayo. Had you?

If Unilever wins, then Just Mayo changes its name. Maybe...Almost Mayo...or Just Mayo Minus Heart Disease—there are plenty of options (Hampton Creek: Call Us!). But in any case, the legal headache will go away. And in its aftermath? Just Mayo has received more free advertising than they could ever have hoped for.

Seems like Unilever just didn’t think this one through. We predict they’ll find themselves in the pyrrhic position of winning their lawsuit, but still getting egg all over their face.

The C4:
1.  Just the facts: according to the Food and Drug Administration mayonnaise must include “egg yolk-containing ingredients.” Just Mayo is made from canola oil, vinegar, and lemon juice. If you want to make the argument that Just Mayo isn’t, in fact, mayo...well, you’ll get no argument from us.
2.  Likewise, we got your back when you say you need to protect your brand. Business ain’t tiddlywinks. You’ve got to use every tool at your disposal (you’ve got to break some eggs, you might say) to keep your brand profitable.
3. Oh, but you’ve got to pick your battles, man. Do we really need to tell you that? Didn’t Old Mother Hellmann’s teach you that when you but a wee little jar?
4. Hampton Creek/Just Mayo are in the unique position of being very lucky to get sued. Unilever/Hellmann’s has pretty much turned Just Mayo into a household name. Don’t want to say this but we can’t seem to stop...Looks like the yolk is on them.

C is for Creativity

(Sometimes)

May we call your attention to the large and swoopy black and white capital ‘C’ we’ve placed prominently on this page? If you’ve even a passing familiarity with our company you know we prominently place that ‘C’ logo on all our pages, electronic and otherwise, not to mention abundantly throughout our physical environs. We’re closely invested in a lot of companies’ logos, but this one is pretty special to us. You can guess why.

Or can you? Chances are, if you’ve been blessed with that passing familiarity, you think you know what that ‘C’ signifies. And okay, you’re at least partially right.

But it also signifies so much more. There are the Core values, that we find in common with each other, and with our clients, and our community. There are the Connections which ensue. There’s Communication, the two-way kind (our very favorite), which we strive to build and nurture and propagate.

It’s about our Clients. Their Culture. Their Customers. And—their Challenges.

Hopefully you get the idea. And if you do, you’re probably wondering about another ‘C’—one you’re thinking must be our guiding star…

Creativity.

We can’t deny it. Creativity is our life-force—it’s the spark our team relies on to find innovative ways to tell our clients’ stories. It’s the tool we use to break through the static, to get attention, to stand out, and to get results.

Only thing is…that tool has to be wielded correctly, if the results attained are to be the ones we’ve aimed for. Creativity has to be targeted, according to the clients’ needs. Failing that, creativity can actually be counterproductive.

Marketing guru Drew McLellan raised that point recently, in a blog entitled, “Is Creativity Bad for Marketing?” He makes a fascinating argument, but we’ll go ahead and unleash the spoiler: the answer to his titular question is — No, creativity is not bad for marketing...with a few caveats.

Unrestrained, undirected creativity looks great on museum walls and in private collections. In a marketing portfolio, though, it just speaks of self-indulgence on the part of the agency, and wasted money on the part of the client.

This should be self-evident, but it remains a pox on our industry. How many billboards, TV spots, and glossy magazine ads have you seen that were breathtakingly creative…but did little or nothing to actually sell the product? Or worse — how many ads have left you perplexed as to what exactly was being sold, or by whom?

We are artists and writers who’ve taken on the vocation of marketing. Which means the creativity we wield is wielded for our clients. End of story.

If the messaging required by our client calls for us to dig deep in our creative wells, to compose some soaring prose and render images that’ll make strong men weep, then we’ll do so. Happily.

But if that client requires old-school, boiler-room marketing that spells out features, benefits, and contact info with no added fluff, then we’re on top of that, too. Just as happily.

For every client there is a correct marketing mix, and a correct way of presenting it. It takes savvy, experience, and yes, a certain amount of creativity to divine that optimum strategy. And then it takes a certain amount of creativity, an amount that’s commensurate with the strategy, to implement it.

That’s what we deliver: precisely the level of creativity needed to meet our clients’ goals. Doing so is always rewarding, no matter how inspired or unexpected or creative the work actually is.

Don’t worry about us, though. On those rare days when we haven’t flexed the creativity muscles quite as much as we’d like, we just go home and scribble on the walls. Works every time.

The C4:
1. We really like that big, beautiful “C.” It’s so forcefully, confidently rendered. It is balanced, delicate, yet demanding of one’s attention. It speaks to us. We hope it speaks to you too.

2. Its messages are myriad. It is more than an initial. It is a sigil, a messenger; shorthand for the characteristics and codes that are central to our collective.

3. It also stands for Creativity.

4. But creativity is a heady ingredient. Sometimes just a dash is needed. Sometimes even less.

Coda: We’re connoisseurs at calculating how much creativity is called for, and how cunningly it should be conveyed. Call us. Let’s chat.

Blown Away By Restroom Hand Dryers

Speak volumes with simple truths

Artists and designers tend to notice beautiful images, and beautiful imagery. That’s understandable — it’s a natural and irrepressible aspect of their being. You wouldn’t want to change that instinct, even if you could.

Writers, by the same token, have their feelers out for words, phrases, whole blocks of text, that for them typify the prosaic music that set their hearts to soaring. We’re all fans of our peers and colleagues, you might say.

Marketing writers are no different, except perhaps in one small way: we’re all on the lookout for that one perfect line.

You know what we mean. Or rather, you know it if you’ve seen it. Maybe it’s used in a marketing context, then again maybe it isn’t. It could be used in marketing, regardless of its actual utility, because it’s pithy, direct, and compelling: the very definition of powerful marketing copy.

Most marketing copy is, in fact, pithy and direct and is aimed to compel. But is it all emblematic of that one perfect line? Oh, if only that were so. Truth is, we’re all trying to create that line, that one line of textual punch that sets the tone and carries the banner for all the related marketing efforts that are to follow on.

And we create some pretty good stuff in the attempt. We’re persuasive and informative, and we’re as witty or as serious or as sophisticated as the occasion demands. Our words team with the designers’ images to deliver a multi-media message from our client, the marketers, to the audience they’re engaging with. And in that sense, all is well.

But in the midst of that conversation we’re not always delivering that one perfect line.

On the one hand, it hurts to admit that. But on the other it leaves us ample room to strive. And it gives due honors to the rarity and majesty of written perfection.

So where can you find that line? Expect to see it in the most unexpected places. Public restrooms, perhaps?

High-speed energy efficient hand dryers are now being used instead of paper towels.

Chances are you've seen that phrase so many times it’s become well-nigh invisible. You can no longer recognize, if indeed you ever did,  the elegant truth and beauty inherent in the words.

Shall we break it down? At first glance, it seems strictly utilitarian — a yawn-worthy public notice. There are layers, though, to this onion, this gem, this orchid. Thinking it over, you come to realize there’s a hint of hubris there: a subtle suggestion that hand dryers are on a march of conquest, supplanting paper towels all across the land.

But no, read it again. All that is claimed is that in some cases, in some places, there are hand driers. It is nothing less than the simple truth.

Inside that truth, however, lurks the suggestion that this place, wherein you’ve been lucky enough to find high-speed air and not paper towels, this is the place to be. Those other places, anachronistic hosts to towels made of pulp, they evidently haven’t received the good news about hand-drying efficiency. You might want to skip those places until they get with it.

Some genius writer or a team of them crafted those words, piled those layers, and they knew what they needed to spell out, and what could go unsaid. They knew what you know about the environment, about efficiency, and about the simple yet oh-so important act of hand-washing. They knew they had limited space and time to harness that knowledge and make a profound statement (and a profoundly subliminal one)...and they delivered.

The one perfect line isn't trivial, and it never addresses a trivial subject. It carries loads of information, subtle and overt. It is the pinnacle of the use of language in sharing ideas and swaying opinions. It is to be celebrated, in awe and yes, even envy, wherever it is found.

The C4:
1. We live in the era of one-liners and sound-bytes. Just about everyone is composing pithy zingers in support of their ideas, their ideals, and their hobby-horses of the moment.
2. Some are more successful than others. Some go viral. Most are nothing to Tweet home about.
3. Exceedingly rare exceptions pack a cerebral wallop in relatively few characters. They’re like Zen gardens in the form of words: every element carefully chosen, carefully placed, working together to create deep meaning.
4. Does that really add up to perfection? We’ll allow that perfection is subjective, and perhaps objectively unobtainable. Nevertheless we think there are uses of language that come as close to perfection as humanly possible. We know them when we see them; we admire them no matter who created them, or why. And they always inspire us to seek the same.

Can Creativity Come Out To Play?

The solutions to all your business woes lie right above everyone’s nose

It's not complicated — just let loose the creativi-whee!

Need solutions for ongoing business worries? Need great ideas for uncovering new business opportunities? No problem! The insights needed to conquer all these issues and more are right there, close at hand—locked up inside the heads of the good people you work with every day. All you need to do is find a way to shake the creativity loose. 

Exactly how much elbow grease will it take to liberate the genius that silently surrounds you? That is dictated by institutional culture; some groups just don’t have the history or inclination to suborn themselves to the ethereality of mind-magic.

While others, let’s face it, are just drunk on the stuff. These are the companies that eschew stairs in their office suites in favor of bouncy slides and fireman poles. They’ve got massage chairs in the power-nap room, and foosball tables on the ceiling. They reckon that a workday has to resemble a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, if you’re to have any hope of coaxing out the elusive creative mind.

And to some extent, you have to give them credit for success. This is arguably a proven formula for the creatives of the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, and, we can assume, the wizardly boffins at ARPA and DARPA.

But what about the rest of us? What if we haven’t the square-footage for an employee Romper Room in our leased storefront office spaces? Are we to be denied the fruits of creative labor just because we lack the budget or penchant for sumo suits for everyone?

A bouncy-slide salesman would never tell you this, but we will: Creativity isn’t that hard to coax out. Creativity is the child gazing out the window, desperately hoping for an invitation from the other kids in the neighborhood to come play. It wants to come out.

Start by fostering an environment where input and creative suggestions are universally understood to be welcome. Ask for advice and opinions, from everyone and on every subject. Ask lots of follow-up questions, to make them deeply examine their own ideas and thought processes.

For your thorniest issues only—don’t want to pull out the big gun too often—convene brainstorming sessions, peopled with as many of your SMEs you can fit in a room. Brainstorm your own way, there are endless ways to structure the sessions, but always follow the two cardinal rules of the storm of brains: No ideas are out of bounds, and no one gets criticized.

Lastly, don’t try too hard to control the creative process. Set it in motion, encourage it to continue…then get out of its way. Creativity will rise to the occasion, so long as it’s not stifled by close-mindedness. Your team wants to perform; they’re pining to put on their thinking caps. Sure, they’ll take a ride on the bouncy slide if one’s being offered—but if not, they’ll still amaze you with their creativity. All you have to do is ask.

The C4:

1. There are three ways to solve any problem and to unlock any door: Muscle your way through, buy your way in, or think your way around it. Can we all agree the third is preferred, if only for the bragging rights?

2. Leaders are accustomed to hogging all the thinking for themselves. That’s a habit we need to break. Intelligent, engaged people who want to lend their brainpower to the common cause surround us. Shame on us if we’ve got resources like that available and we’re not using them.

3. So, foster creativity in your workplace. Create an environment where deep thought and unexpected solutions are not just welcome, but expected.

4. Nothing against bouncy slides. If you’ve got the space and the budget, by all means bounce away. Just don’t think that’s where the creativity comes from. Slide or no slide, the creativity is already there.

Baader Meinhoff?

Baader Meinhoff!

Let’s start with a history lesson.

Once a new element is introduced,
our penchant for patterns makes something new,
seem not so new after all.

The Baader-Meinoff Gang, later re-branded the Red Army Faction, was a Marxist-Leninist urban terrorist group, active in West Germany in the seventies and eighties. They were named for two of their founders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhoff.

Of course, German communism is as outdated as Marx, Lenin, and West Germany itself, so this little trip down memory lane is probably irrelevant to you. But it might become relevant, maybe in a day or two, if the Baader-Meinoff Phenomenon holds true.

The Baader-Meinhoff Phenom gives appellation to some weirdness we’ve all experienced: You’ve just learned about something, or heard an odd word or term for the first time, then suddenly you find it cropping up again and again. Not surprisingly, the name was coined by someone who reported, in an online discussion forum, that they’d recently heard about the Baader-Meinhoff Gang…and then heard another random reference to the same, the very next day.

That thread took off, they say, because everyone can identify.

So is it as spooky as it seems? Is it some eerily specific type of synchronicity, diabolically designed to shoehorn ephemera like the Baader-Meinhoff Gang into our consciousness?

We kind of wish that were so. The truth is a little more pedestrian, but much more enlightening as to opaque workings of the human mind.

It’s called frequency illusion, and it’s related to the pattern-seeking bias we’re all programmed with. We’re creatures constantly on the lookout for recognizable patterns, even though we hardly realize it, because it’s a pretty reasonable survival strategy. After all, if you’re able to quickly, subconsciously espy a pattern within the willowy savannah grasses, one that suggests the lurking of hungry teeth, you just might buy yourself a valuable head start. These days the urgency isn’t quite as great, but the tendency remains.

Our brains are pretty good at editing, too. Via our senses we’re constantly bombarded with information and stimuli, most of which we instantly deem irrelevant, so we ignore it. But this tendency is at war with the previously mentioned one; within those terrabytes of ignored data patterns exist, or at least they seem to. And we’re watching for them. If some random bit of chatter makes it through the censor, like “Baader Meinhoff” for instance, we’re alert for that chatter to repeat itself—even though the whole process is happening outside our conscious awareness.

The truth is, we’re perceiving the world as persistent, mostly meaningless static. And you know how it is with static: you can either ignore it, or you can listen close. If you do, you can swear you hear within it creepy whispers. 

From a marketing perspective it’s intriguing, but not exactly an easy thing to leverage. Sure, we try to pierce the barrier of psychological editing with repetition and with uniqueness of message—and sure, it often works. But trying to predict which patterns (or more accurately, perceived patterns) folks will find meaningful is challenging indeed.

It’s just too bad the name Baader Meinhoff was already taken, and tainted. Because clearly, that one works like a charm.

The C4:
1. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang were very bad, no-good people. The less said about them the better.

2. But the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon is fascinating. It’s not supernatural, it only seems that way. It tells us a lot about the way we think, and the way we see the world.

3. It’s about pattern recognition, and it’s about thinking you’ve found patterns where none actually exist. It’s why you see faces in the clouds, and it’s why you’re certain to see a ’56 Packard the same week you find out your grandpappy drove one.

4. How useful is it? That remains unsure. We’re just kind of glad the Baader-Meinhoff Gang didn’t have a marketing department to harness their eponymous phenomenon. Those bomb-throwing twits might have been famous, rather than historical footnotes.