Volkswagen Relies on Amnesia

One of the questions I get asked by clients and media alike is the perennial, "How often should we freshen up our brand?" Just asking the question is enough to reveal how little most people really understand branding. The fact is that brands -- real, well-structured brands -- never require "freshening up," because real, well-structured brands are designed for the long haul. And as I relentlessly drone on in my book, The Revenge of Brand X, the whole point of a brand is not to change over time. The purpose of a brand is to remain stable so that it cultivates trust with its users. Think about it: If a brand were to change with the weather, nobody would ever know what to expect from it, which means nobody would ever trust it.

From the brand's perspective, constant -- or even occasional -- change isn't a good thing, either. After all, having to re-build trust every few years is expensive, requiring all sorts of marketing efforts that hit the bottom line and reduce profitability.

So anyone who tells you that "your brand needs to be freshened up" is also telling you he/she knows little, or more likely, nothing about branding at all.

However:

One of the most common errors I see brands commit is confusing product with brand. This, too, is because too few people know what branding really is. For those who find it confusing, let me offer this:

Branding is the promise; products are the proof of the brand's promise.

Simple, right? Sure. So before I get too far into this, let's all agree that Volkswagen's "freshening up" of its line of Beetles is a product story, not a brand story. And that's what I suspect you'll find very interesting.

In 2012, Volkswagen is introducing - yet again - a reborn version of its Beetle. This is not the first time VW has gone this route. All told, VW has been down this road, so to speak, at least three times. And each time, the company has completely repositioned the model in a completely different fashion. Take a brief look at the Beetle's history and you'll see what I mean:

In war time Germany, none other than Adolf Hitler commissioned the design of the "people's car" (the literal translation of "Volkswagen") as an affordable mode of transportation for the master race. From its inception, the car was perceived as "Hitler's car," and in the post-war United States, few Americans were willing to touch it. If you have trouble conceiving that, imagine al Qaida exporting a car to America ten years after 9/11 and you'll pretty much get the idea. Nobody wanted a VW, yet barely a decade after the destruction of the Nazi war machine, Beetles were beginning to crawl across the fruited plains.

An entire generation knew the Beetle as Hitler's until the next generation arrived. Young people having a tendency not to care about what happened before they were born never knew the Beetle as Hitler's car because they didn't live through Hitler's reign of terror. To Volkswagen, the hearts and minds of American youth were a clean slate, ready to accept anything Volkswagen told them about the Beetle.

And so it came to pass that intensive marketing led to the Beetle becoming the Sun Bug, usually yellow, often a convertible and frequently driven by a young blonde girl. As such, the Beetle transitioned from Hitler's gas-stingy, never-say-die, reliable mode of cheap transportation to a chic, cute gosh-isn't-it-a-great-day-out-there statement of female freedom. By the 1980's no self-respecting American male could be caught dead in a Beetle: it was a girl's car.

By 2012, Volkswagen shifted gears once more. By this time, another generation had been born and grown up. By 2012, anyone born in the 1980's was either thirty or close to it. Once again, Volkswagen saw the blank slate of youth and took direct aim, draining all the estrogen out of the cute little Sun Bug and replacing it with testosterone, in hopes of attracting young men who buy into the notion that you are what you drive.

So in three generations, Volkswagen has managed to refresh the Beetle at least three different times, to three different audiences. But the fascinating aspect is that Volkswagen hasn't done it with slick marketing or effective advertising campaigns. In fact, Volkswagen hasn't done it with any type of pro-active effort at all.

The genius of Volkswagen lies in its sly observation of the consuming public's short attention span. VW knows that young people are born with amnesia. It relies on the fact that as far as history before their birth, most young people don't know or don't care -- and quite possibly, both. And that's the reason why it can continue to re-introduce the Beetle to every new generation with such ease.

Volkswagen never changes its brand. It always changes its products. But never before a new generation changes its mind.

The Business of Social Media

Unless you've been in outer space the past ten years, you must know something about social media. Well, you must have at least heard about it. For my money, social media is nice, but no big thing, really. It's just doing what people have always done, except now they can do it faster because of technology.

In the pre-internet days, nothing traveled faster than bad news. No matter where you were in the world, it didn't take long to hear about catastrophes. The worse the disaster, the quicker you heard about it. Plague. War. Ships sinking. Airplanes crashing. Regressing through the years before the web, there was television, radio, newspapers. You get the idea. Go back far enough and eventually you get to bell ringing town criers shouting out the evening news as regularly as CNN, CBS, NBC and FOX do today -- only with less drama or special effects.

As a news/gossip pipeline, social media is great. Where else can one fan the flames so that millions of viewers can sit before their devices mesmerized by some stupid cat video? Where else can we so quickly confirm the death, arrest or latest sexual innuendo about some inconsequential celebrity? Whether your choice is Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or another one of this week's digital darlings, social media is really little more than the old-fashioned party line of the Not So New Millennium, where everyone simultaneously jumps on the phone to spread the news about everyone else.

That's all fine and good. If it's entertainment you seek, by all means, have at it. In fact, if raising awareness for your cause is your thing, social media might be the right tool for you. But the minute you let marketing people into the party, things start to spoil faster than three day old flounders. And by the time they're done with it, social media will likely endure the same fate as so many other digital hula hoops.

Let me explain.

While there's no question social media links people together 24/7, it really only does it for social reasons. Keeping up with your boyfriend, your Uncle Ned, the Class of 2006 -- whatever -- is perfect for sites like Facebook, Vimeo and Picasa. But when marketing people try to leverage social media for business, the results aren't quite so good. Sure, you're going to hear a lot of advertising and marketing people hawk the virtues of social media, but if you look really, really closely at their claims, you'll see why it's called social media and not business media.

One of the first myths about social media is the benefits of linking people together. Yes, social media certainly does connect people, including those you thought you'd never have to hear from again. But it's a major mistake to assume linkage of people translates into actions of people, which is what I hear a lot from social media experts. Don't get me wrong, I'm a branding guy and getting more people to evangelize my brand is a good thing. On the other hand, having a million people "like" my brand's Facebook page doesn't add anything to the bottom line.

And that, in my humble opinion, can be a huge waste of resources.

Yes, it's flattering to get fifteen million views on YouTube, but until and unless you can convert those hits to sales, what's the point? Having a million viewers on Pinterest sounds really slick. But when the smoke clears, can you really connect the dots from views or downloads to increased sales?

Marketing people do all they can to distract from this discussion by employing terms like engagement and awareness. It makes them feel good, but not as good as when they get their clients' heads nodding in agreement, even though nobody can tell what, if anything, a social media campaign is doing for the brand. If you don't think that's a problem, recall a while back when Burger King launched its ill-fated "de-friending" campaign on Facebook. It was an unmitigated disaster that actually cost everyone business.

The truth is that marketing has devolved into a science of excuses, fraught with first world problems that have no real significance in the marketplace. Engagement? Really? Have we drifted so far from the purpose of business -- making money -- that entire campaigns can revolve around efforts which have no direct relationship to revenue generation? Is "an uptick in the public attitude of our brand" going to have any bearing on next quarter's sales?

I think not.

Look, I have nothing against social media. Used properly, for the right jobs, I think it's terrific for socially oriented issues. When I hear marketing people attempting to leverage social media for business purposes, though, I always ask the same question:

What kind of real, bottom line results can we expect from this?

To this day, I haven't heard an answer.

Why Oprah Ain't No Brand

The problem with success is that nobody knows exactly why it happens. All kinds of pundits will spout all kinds of aphorisms telling you about how success is built on failure. Or persistence. Or talent. The truth is that nobody really knows why success happens. Just as often, mere luck plays into it.

For example, you could be the smartest, most affable, nicest creative guy on the block, but if you don't know the right people, none of your ideas could ever materialize into huge personal fortune. On the other hand, you could be the winner of the Lucky Sperm Club, born into a well-moneyed family whose days' concerns fall somewhere between where to have lunch and which golf course to play. I knew a guy like that. His fabulously successful "career" consisted of nothing more than generating sales for companies by making a few well-placed phone calls. Six brief calls to six old frat brothers and his sales quotas for the year were fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the rest of this guy's life wasn't as successful. Beset by family, social, psychological and medical problems, his life remained moneyed but miserable, prompting him to question why the rest of his life wasn't as successful as his business life. After all, he just assumed he had the Midas touch. He figured if he were successful in one area of his life, he ought to be just as successful in every other.

Well, I'm here to tell you it doesn't work that way. Not for him, you, me -- or Oprah Winfrey.

Years back, the entire entertainment industry subjected the viewing public to a crudely orchestrated display of crocodile tears as Oprah announced -- a full year ahead of schedule -- that she would be ending her famous talk show. Amidst the blubbering hugs and moans were consistent announcements of the imminent launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), where viewers would be able to nurse their Oprah addictions by watching All Things Oprah all day long. Mind you, Oprah herself wouldn't be in the room. The network would simply be the product of stuff on which Oprah bestowed her blessing -- and presumably, her own Midas touch.

But it was not to be. In fact, to this day, media and marketing pundits across the land are lifting their gaze from their navels and scratching their heads as to why OWN is such a consistent loser. The channel stumbled out of the gate and has never done any better since. How could this happen -- to Oprah?

The answer is simple: Oprah was not a brand then and is not a brand now. Oprah is simply Oprah. People watch Oprah, but a true brand would be capable of expanding products under the Oprah aegis, and the OWN clearly is not capable of doing that. The Oprah Book Club succeeded because it was hand-held by Oprah. Not so with OWN. Which means as long as Oprah is in the room, stuff works. But when Oprah leaves the building, everything falls flat.

This is a pure brand strategy problem, stemming from the common misconception of what a brand really is. When OWN began, everyone was yakking about how "Oprah's brand can't fail." The problem is that Oprah has never had a brand. The reason why OWN isn't working is because it, too, has no brand strategy. It can't survive on its own. Nobody knows what he should expect or why OWN "should be perceived as the only solution to his problem." Consequently, everything there is hit and miss -- mostly miss.

Can OWN be saved? Yes. Will it be saved? Probably not, because nobody at OWN really understands how brand strategy works, so they have no means of setting or delivering expectations to its audience. Oprah's people might know entertainment and media, but not branding. And until they do, viewership isn't going to get better any time soon.

I mean, let's face it: Even Oprah can't buy viewers by giving every one of them a car.

Political Brand Strategy - Obama 2012

There are relatively few times that I'll write something with a strict time value. But sometimes the conditions are so fascinating that only a Trappist monk could resist the urge to opine. This is one of those times, because just as they can in business, the political stars are aligning, presenting a compelling set of circumstances that not only would see President Obama re-elected, but riding into a second term in a landslide.

As a strategist, this is just too good to ignore. So here's one branding guy's take on what could happen over the remainder of 2012:

THE ECONOMY: No rational person could blame Obama for the economic recession he inherited. Sure, they can argue about the repair work he's done, but it all comes out in the wash on the bottom line: If the economy were to improve, the voters would approve; but were the economy not to improve, Obama would be, to coin a phrase, "a one term president.."

Call it luck, timing of the markets or just good strategic implementations, all economic data seems to indicate that after several long, painful years, the economy is indeed improving -- just in time for a national election. By the time November, 2012, rolls around, the American economy won't have fully recovered, but barring any force majeur, Obama will be able to claim a sustained record of improvement, which is all he really needs to show. Unemployment down, jobless claims down, corporate profits up...you get the idea.

THE WORLD: As Bill Clinton discovered, "it's the economy, stupid," but that's actually a defensive tack Obama can use to push back against his Republican detractors. The true offense plan is the world stage, particularly Iran. At the time of this writing, the "main threat" perceived by western media is "the Iranian quest for a nuclear bomb." Despite its Iranian claims to the contrary, most nations seem certain that Iran's true intent is to arm itself with nuclear capabilities so that it can pursue its own agenda, most notably, "wiping the state of Israel off the map." This threat, understandably, has alarmed the state of Israel to the point of publicly considering a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capability before any such devices could be built.

President Obama, having pledged to "bring all combat troops home," isn't about to risk another military engagement overseas. But my guess is that he will do whatever he can to support Israel's strike. See if you agree with this scenario:

1. The Defense Department recently re-commissioned the U.S.S. Ponce, a massive aircraft carrier that was originally scheduled to be de-commissioned this year. Instead of mothballing the vessel, it's been converted to a "floating air base" near the Strait or Hormuz, within view of the Iranian coastline. This would put the Ponce in a perfect location to aid, assist and coordinate Israeli aircraft.

2. Obama can eat up the clock by publicly urging Israel to "show restraint" in dealing with Iran -- at least until a few weeks before the election, at which time he can point to a record of attempts where the United States, the United Nations and Israel have tried and failed to negate the Iranian threat through diplomacy.

3. On or about, say, October 23, 2012 -- or at least a few days before that week's Jewish Sabbath -- I'd expect Obama to appear on national television, informing the American people that, "at 2:30 PM Eastern time, Israeli forces, with the full support of the American armed forces, launched a pre-emptive strike we believe to be morally justified as a move to protect the world from a rogue power intent on inflicting terror on the world and the destruction of our friend and ally, the state of Israel. No American troops are engaged in combat, nor will any be deployed to do so. However, the American people, in our quest for a peaceful, freedom-loving world, stand by our friends and allies -- and the state of Israel ranks among our greatest friends and allies. We stand by their side, ready to help in any way we can."

With a recovering economy and major demonstrations to the American people of his resolve against a nuclear Iran and his support for Israel, all occurring a week before the election, it would seem impossible for anyone to stop the Obama train.

See you at the inauguration.

The AIDS of Social Media

This being early 2012, the media has finally dispensed with the annual cavalcades of the previous year's events, allowing them to turn their attention to doing what they do best: spreading fear and doubt about our collective future. Personally, I'm an optimist. I'm the guy who walks into a room full of horse manure determined to find a pony. So while I choose to look beyond the press's propaganda in search of sunlight, I fully understand that the road to redemption can take you through some pretty dark places.

At the moment, the darling on everyone's dance card seems to be social media, the phenomenon which is really nothing new save for its technological ability to intrude on your privacy, increase the rate of human polarization and destroy people's ability to form real human relationships while simultaneously compromising access to your bank account.

Sure, Facebook is enjoying all kinds of popularity right about now, but something tells me its success has less to do with its inherent benefits and more to do with the laggard economy: After all, if you've been out of work for a few years, Facebook is a wonderful way to fill your spare time. What happens when the economy fully recovers is yet to be seen, but for my money, I'm betting Facebook takes a serious dive the minute the employment rate takes a substantial leap.

Until then, however, millions of people follow the Facebook faithful, like lambs to the slaughter, completely unaware that every keystroke is recorded, saved and searchable even after they think every one of them has been deleted. Like those tattoos of a foolish, carefree youth, bad data never really goes away. It sticks around for life and pops up in the oddest, ill-timed places. Background checks revealing other-than-laudable photos and stories continue to derail the most promising employment interviews. But that's not the worst of it. This just might be:

I'm watching an entire generation of digitally-dominated young people completely stranded by social polarization. The technology that contends to "bring people together" in fact does just the opposite. Not too long ago, for example, people actually socialized and were motivated to do so. There was no internet, so there wasn't nearly as much to keep you home, exploring the world from your video screen. If you wanted to meet someone, you called them on the phone and talked to them in real time. If you hoped to meet someone, you went to a library where people didn't download books. If you wanted to thank someone, you sent a real, handwritten note through the mail. And if you wanted to see someone, you made plans to go do something together, rather than chat about it through a video screen.

Thanks to digital technology, nobody has to do anything with anyone else any more. You can download books to your Kindle and movies to your own living room, eliminating the need to sit in a crowded theater. Sadly, the chance for bumping into that romantic stranger you've been dreaming about has been eliminated, as well. In fact, the more you look around, the fewer opportunities you can find for genuine human interaction. You can thank social media for that. You can also thank social media not only for an increase in lonely, depressed people, but for propagating a culture in which those poor, unfortunate saps are raised without any idea of how to interact with other people in real life. Newsflash: Real human beings don't react to your pointing and clicking.

I live in a world where thousands of false prophets spread gospels about the deliverance of social media. They point to the Arab Spring as evidence of social media's great benefits to mankind. Well, I'm calling all those prophets out with a prophecy of my own that spells the doom of social media's dominance. And it goes something like this:

History has proven repeatedly that among nature's greatest forces, few compare to the power of the human heart. There are a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of unfulfilled people out there, yearning to feel the warmth of others, but who remain too enslaved to the intimidation proffered by technology, specifically social media. So they remain in their designated cubicles, writhing in their loneliness, yearning for a reason to justify an escape. The problem is that two entire generations have been undermined in their attempts to seek personal fulfillment. They've been led to believe that social media is an acceptable substitute for genuine human interaction.

Well, it isn't. Not for the high school kids waiting desperately to go out on a date and not for any of my clients, each of whom continues to insist I visit them in their offices rather than "do the meeting by Skype."

So where and how does this all end? The way most social dynamics do: Catastrophic fear.

Most people, for example, believe that AIDS is an easy-to-contract, 100% fatal disease. Ask any knowledgeable medical authority, however, and he'll tell you that AIDS, in terms of contagion, is actually more difficult to contract than a great number of diseases. That's not to say you shouldn't be careful with what you do and with whom you do it. What it does say, is that what really powered the efforts to control and hopefully eradicate AIDS was the fear it's been tagged with. Gonorrhea and syphilis are far easier to contract than AIDS, but neither are fatal, so they don't get as much air play. But AIDS is a "killer" that scares the hell out of people. Everyone knows someone who's died of AIDS, so its story always gets on the front page.

My point here is that these days, for things to really change, they have to be tagged with serious fear. And that's what's going to bring down social media. It's only a matter of time until Facebook (or something similar) becomes massively infected with one or more viruses that will devastate hundreds of millions of users' accounts, and accordingly, their lives. In a relatively few short seconds, all of the "sharing of data" guarded by supposedly "secure technology" that "stores its data in the cloud" will turn into just so much digital sludge, infesting and mutating data with effects that reach far beyond users' Facebook pages. It's not hard to imagine bank accounts, real estate records, medical data, personal information and more either damaged, destroyed -- or worse yet -- made publicly available to anyone, anywhere, any time.

That's the kind of nuclear meltdown that changes people's habits. That's where social media will hit the wall. And hopefully, that's when human beings will take back their lives and relationships. Not because they want to, but because they'll finally have a reason to justify wanting to.

Think it can't happen? Fine. Keep denying your humanity and entrusting your life to unsupervised algorithms. But you've been warned. And wearing a condom isn't going to save you.

Branding Rescues America

As the United States of America continues its journey through its dark, dreary depression (I know, it's technically a recession, but I'm actually referring to its citizens' states of mind), it seems no political, economic or social leaders can come up with any practical solutions to our problems. By practical, I mean something other than a scare tactic or a distraction. Let's face it, terrorism, illegal immigration, Obama's birth certificate and global warming are all grist for the tabloids' mills, but when you get right down to it, the fundamental solution to America's problems is jobs -- or the current lack thereof. And no matter how many sex scandals or scare tactics you throw at them, the American public isn't buying any of it. They need work.

One doesn't have to cite John Maynard Keynes or Adam Smith to know that if people don't have money, people don't spend money. And if people don't spend money, nobody makes money. But if you're going to increase jobs in America, there are two important lessons you're need to learn:

The first lesson is that capitalism and businesses run rationally on cold, hard numbers. Businesses do what they can to lower costs - especially human labor - in order to maximize profits and undercut their competitors' prices.

The second lesson is that the first lesson is usually false. And here's why:

While it seems intuitive that businesses obey the first law, the truth is that most businesses - and certainly the American consuming public - are anything but rational. As I often tell my clients, if every business decision were entirely rational, all purchases would be determined by price. What American businessmen, policy-makers and politicians overlook is that most decisions made by humans are non-rational in nature. This would explain, for example, why dopes stand in line for hours to pay double retail for Apple iPads and iPhones when dozens of other competitive products do far more at substantially lower prices.

Of course, my being a branding guy, you must know where this discussion is headed. But if you don't, keep reading, because it makes a lot more sense and can be deployed with the real results everyone wants but nobody seems able to deliver. Bear with me and see if this doesn't add up for you:

Consider that, as I've published, branding is getting your prospects to perceive you as the only solution to their problem. If you accept that the purpose of branding is to create the perception that there's no place else to shop, your brand becomes the only game in town. You can charge whatever you like for whatever you sell. If you're branded properly (and that's a big "if"), you should be able to place two identical products on a table and have consumers buy yours at a 20% premium -- simply because it's your brand they're buying.

Now consider this: What if an entire country had a brand strategy? What if "Made in USA" were developed into a true, actionable brand strategy (rather than hacked together by some feel-good political cronies)? I'll tell you what would happen: American businesses could sell American products and services at higher prices, simply because they were American. Those higher prices could afford American labor, which would keep jobs here in America, because after all, to be "made in the USA," you have to be, well, made in the USA. Think it can't work? It already has. And I can prove it. Just ask yourself this one simple question:

Which country commands the highest price for a wrist watch?

Apple: A Second Generation Brand

Now that the other shoe has dropped and Steve Jobs is gone, we can expect the predictable onslaught of media rehash and overhype regarding Apple, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the future of the world as we know it. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked about "Apple without Steve Jobs."

So for those who still wonder, here's what I expect is going to happen to Apple, now that Steve Jobs is gone:

First, before anyone gets too hard on Apple's management heirs, let me begin by reaffirming my position that Apple's brand jumped the shark way before Steve Jobs' demise. In fact, in 2010's Apple Jumps The Shark, I pointed out exactly why the bloom was off Apple's rose. The seeds for Apple's descent were sown into Apple's long range plans.

From a strictly branding point of view, for example, Apple's lack of stated brand strategy allowed it to become a fashion brand, in which its primary brand value relies on its coolness as defined by its user public. And the using public, as we all know, is very fickle when it comes to defining what's cool.

Simply put, the more people embracing the brand, the less cool it becomes. And if all you've got is cool, that means you're on the clock -- it's only a matter of time until you're no longer cool.

This is not to take away from Apple's wonderful technology and design and all that other stuff over which media pundits gush like pre-pubescent schoolgirls. Sure, I like that stuff, too. I'm a Mac guy. But from a brand perspective, there's trouble in paradise.

Second, with the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple now becomes a Second Generation brand, with a Caretaker Manager at its helm. As I've written here previously, brands often follow the same trajectory of the Three Generations of Wealth: The first generation (its founder) creates it; the second generation (his heirs) spends it; the third generation (his disconnected drone grandchildren) loses it. As pointed out in Apple Jumps The Shark, the brand had already lost its vision somewhere around the time when Jobs had begun transferring authority to Tim Cook, his heir to the throne.

Far from its original rebellious roots, the brand has become fortressed, secretive and severe to the point of bullying its competitors - along with its users - in the marketplace.

Apple's increased rate of required upgrades, dependency on proprietary services and, perhaps worst of all, nudging its hardware and software toward "cloud usage" all speak to a ruthless corporate soul revealed as the baton was being passed to new leadership.

And then there's Tim Cook. Poor Tim Cook.

His is not an easy task. Forever being compared to Jobs, he immediately took his first misstep by introducing the iPhone 4S in a presentation far too similar to Jobs' format. Had he been more brand-aware, he would have taken steps to ensure "there's a new sheriff in town" and created his own personal style rather than remain tentative for fear of rocking Apple's stock price. By taking the Caretaker Manager's road, Cook has ensured himself a place under the microscope, doomed to the same fate suffered by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer when he took the reins from Bill Gates. And the longer Tim Cook allows the media to define him as Steve Jobs' Caretaker Manager, the worse it will be for everyone involved.

Yes, Apple will survive. No, it will not be the same brand.

Steve is gone. Get over it.