Sarah Palin is the new Billy Mays

The summer of 2009 is likely to be remembered as the Season of Celebrity Death. Even discounting the pervasiveness of new media, I can't recall a time in which so many died so quickly in so short a span of time. I need not list all the celebrities who went on to meet their maker. You already know who they are.

The most notable and over-exposed passing had to have been Michael Jackson, a sad and pathetic caricature whose talent was the only real thing we ever knew. The least announced and mourned was the death of Sarah Palin's career. While Jackson's demise was prolonged to include everything from an American Idol-style tribute show to a fairly tasteless promotion of his father's new record label, far less attention was devoted to the mystery that is Sarah Palin, specifically, why is she quitting -- and where does she go next?

I'm sure all the media talking heads will speculate as to the plans of the not-even-one-full-term governor of Alaska. In her rambling, somewhat incoherent resignation announcement, Palin herself gave no clue as to her plans. The news media "analysts" claim she has a shot at launching her own talk show, in the same manner as Governor Mike Huckabee has done on FOX. Others have put their money on speaking tours, insisting she has the ability to draw huge crowds and substantial speaking fees. Amazingly, there are still a few Republican hold-outs -- true Olympians of denial -- who continue to rearrange the deck chairs on Palin's Titanic and insist she will run for President in 2012.

The answer, at least in my opinion, is the proverbial "E. None of the above."

Palin has squandered what little political capital she ever had in a brilliant two step process. First, she tanked the McCain presidential campaign by violating Benjamin Franklin's sage advice, "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." In that race, Palin demonstrated how Americans can be charmed by charisma but not fooled by lack of intellect. From the very first pre-written lipstick joke, it was clear that Palin's talents were not the stuff of great statemanship.

Second, Americans will forgive just about anything: sex scandals, tax problems, you name it. What they won't forgive is a quitter, especially one who rants about not being a quitter while she's resigning from less than a full term in office. This is America. When the going gets tough, the tough get going -- but not out the back door. As far as Palin is concerned, the only thing she can run for is the midtown bus.

What, then, is left for Sarah to do? Those who hope to see her on the lecture circuit will be profoundly disappointed as she proves to be the political equivalent of Octo-Mom, likely with the same career half-life. People with short attention spans can only stand to hear the same one-note sonata springing from her lipstick hockey mom mouth for a certain amount of time.

And this is why the world needs more brand strategists. See, Palin has talents and attributes. They're just misplaced. She's engaging, fun -- and perfectly shallow. In the right circumstances, she actually could be a mega-star. It's just that politics is the way wrong theater. The right place, however, has been providentially carved out for her and laid at her feet:

Sarah Palin should be the next Billy Mays.

You think I'm kidding? I've been taunted for less, you know. But if you add it all up, it makes perfect sense. Sarah Palin could never sell Americans on health care or tax reform, but I guarantee you she could move boatloads of Pocket Fisherman or Mighty Putty. She's likeable enough to be a guest on a talk show, but doesn't have the chops to last longer as a host of a talk show. Regrettable as it is, the death of Billy Mays leaves a vacuum to be filled: a likeable, fun, get-in-and-out-in-60-seconds pitchman whose primary connection is with the primary telejunk-purchasers that are the heart and soul of QVC and HSN: housewives and working moms.

There's lots of doubt in my mind about Palin's ability to sell foreign policy, but none whatsoever about her ability to sell wrinkle remover and gun polish. In fact, there's nothing in the combined QVC and HSN inventory that Palin couldn't charm out of the wallets of an unsuspecting American public.

Where I come from, you leverage your strengths and mitigate the weaknesses. Sarah, if you're listening, there's a truckload of vegetable slicers with your name on it.

Beheading General Motors

Now that the other shoe has dropped, the world continues to speculate about the prospects of General Motors, the recently crashed-and-severely-burned mega-enterprise that was once considered "too big to fail." Pundits on the right claim the government has no business being in business. Liberals on the left cry that the government isn't doing enough. Unfortunately, both sides are way off course, not even close to where the real problems are.

The problem with General Motors isn't down on the factory floor. It's not even in their operations or dealerships or research & development. In fact, those guys are doing pretty well. The real problem with GM is right up there, on the top floor of their executive offices, where the empty suits are destined to repeat the very same mistakes that got them into this mess.

Think I'm kidding? Watch this:

More of the same old, tired promises we've always heard from the American car industry. More hot air from the tailpipes of the Deutsch Agency, GM's tried-and-failed advertising vendor who believed tagging Saturn as "a different kid of car company" actually meant something. Of course it didn't. Saturn has failed, too. But failure never seemed to matter to the brass at GM. In fact, reality never seemed to matter to the brass at GM. If it did, they'd be doing things a whole lot differently than in the past.

The first thing they'd do is shut the hell up. Brands rely on trust, clarity and credibility. If your brand promises something, you've got to deliver on it. If you don't deliver on those promises, your brand's credibility is crushed like a '62 Corvair in the wrecking yard. General Motors has been failing on the bulk of its promises for decades now. The last thing anyone wants to hear are more "feel-good" messages from guys with a bad delivery track record.

If GM were smart, they'd just go quiet. Stop all the talking and let the public wonder what they really are up to. In fact, if they could just shut the bullshit valve for a month or two, people would start wondering what the hell really is going on over at GM. They'd stop rejecting GM precisely because the bullshit stream had stopped flowing.

If we could just get GM to shut the hell up, all that quiet could generate industry buzz about the delivery of goods GM has teased us about. The folks over at Apple are masters of this, publicizing nothing other than an appearance at some consumer electronics event where they "plan to make a big announcement." For months prior to the event, nerds and geeks keep the internet buzzing with speculation and theory -- and they do that for free.

Then GM should just deliver the Volt. No amount of masturbatory media can compare to simply delivering the goods. Just rolling out the proof of what they've promised would turn people into believers.

Why isn't GM doing that? Why not stay silent and maybe drive a prototype Volt down Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, allowing just enough time for some yutz to capture it on his cell phone and post it to the web?

I'll tell you why: Because the boys in the penthouse, despite having the heads handed to them on Capitol Hill, still have those heads firmly buried in the corporate sand. What the government -- and just about everyone else -- doesn't realize is that General Motors doesn't understanding branding at all. Want more proof?

In the 1960's, the Pontiac brand was roughly 92% testosterone. If the brand were any more masculine, the cars would have had hair on them. Across America, young, virile men roared down the highway in GTO's, Firebirds, Bonnevilles and Trans-Ams. Rock bands composed odes to their Pontiacs. Top 40 hits like Little GTO were played at parties and dances at every high school, college and beach. Ever watch Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit? Yup. That's a sleek, shiny black Pontiac TransAm, baby, built to kick the ass of any southern sheriff stupid enough to chase it.

Of course, that's the TransAm from the 1970's.

By the 1980's, the geniuses in GM's penthouse decided that the Pontiac brand was too strong to die, and began replacing their macho machines with smaller, foreign gas-powered roller skates that never had a chance of delivering on the brand's original promise. All over the country, people were disappointed to be getting Perez Hilton when they'd been expecting Burt Reynolds.

Yuck.

I really hope General Motors succeeds. I'm convinced that the country does, too. But it's not going to happen by firing workers -- unless the workers you're talking about are the boys up in the penthouse.

The Recession is Good for You

I've never been the odds-on favorite to win any popularity contests, and I doubt this particular epistle is going to win me any more. Of course, my beat is branding. It's what I do. But I don't do it in a vacuum. In order for branding to work, it has to resonate with the people to whom the brand is aimed. I need to tap into the collective consciousness. Really dig into peoples' hearts and minds, because that's where the hot buttons are. I spend just as much time delving into human nature as I do the brand strategies with which they engage. In that vein, I humbly submit the following:

The recession is good for you.

Strange as it may seem, and likely counter to the prevailing wisdom, the hardships imposed by the worldwide recession are a boon to most Americans and citizens of the western world. That's not to say I'm in favor of people losing their homes. Nor am I going to rehash the sermons on fiscal responsibility. No, the recession is good for you for reasons that nobody else seems to care about -- but are vitally important.

Clearly the most damaging factor of an economic downturn is the shortage of cash. People simply can't afford as much as they once could. That much is obvious. What may not be so obvious is whether not buying as much as they could have is such a bad thing. And before you reject that notion completely, think about these:

True story: A kid shows up with a minor skin growth. Probably a common viral wart. Before the recession, the solution is a trip to the doctor ($85) and likely medicine ($50) and probably at least one more follow-up visit to the doctor ($50), for a total of $185 out of pocket. But during a recession, the solution is taking a look, walking to the drug store and picking up a bottle of salicylic acid (essentially liquid aspirin, $5) and a box of BandAids ($3) for a total of $8 out of pocket.

The difference goes far beyond the $177 savings. And that's why the recession is good for you.

The recession is good for you because it pries you away from an over-dependence on a service economy for which there is no real need. Besides saving a boatload of bucks, you get to discover the joy of solving problems yourself. A boost to your self-worth that's continually undermined when you pay someone else to constantly solve your own issues.

Think it's a minor problem? Think again:

A major by-product of our fattened economy has been the removal of individual responsibility. Instead of doing research to apply for college financial aid, you can now pay a service to ferret out the information. Instead of planting your own garden and literally enjoying the fruits of your own labor, you can pay a landscaper. Instead of using your own common sense to burn away a wart, you can visit a doctor who -- more often than not -- can't come up with a better solution than your own.

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with relying on paid professionals; I have a big problem with over-relying on paid professionals. Everywhere I look, I see more unnecessary services being foisted on the public, relentlessly pounding their self-images into submission by declaring their own judgement isn't good enough. Over the last few decades, I've watched as an entire nation has allowed itself to be transformed from a once-proud monument to self-sufficiency into a national nursery of whiners who feel the only way out of their problems is to pay someone else to do it.

But a recession can change all that. It actually can force you to take matters into your own hands. And once you succeed at that, you're hooked. It only takes one time to grind your own beans before you decide Starbucks isn't worth it. Discovering how to shut off the water to swap out a faucet not only saves you hundreds, it makes you feel pretty darn good about yourself.

Somewhere along the line, there's a Sunday school lesson about a guy who believes that if you feed a man a fish, he'll be hungry again tomorrow; but if you teach a man to fish, he'll never go hungry again. Grab yourself a fishing pole. The recession is good for you.

Why Personal Branding...isn't

One of the things I love about Twitter is that it lets you jump in and out of its members' collective consciousness. At any time of the day or night, you can witness or participate in a limitless number of conversations on any number of topics. There are moms who blog, academics who teach, hacks who pitch and probably millions more.

It being the global conversation pit, Twitter is open and online 24/7, welcoming anyone's input without fear or censorship or distortion. It really is the ultimate in free expression, which makes it so interesting. On Twitter, you are who you are, unplugged and unfiltered. I think that's really cool.

Lately, though, I noticed something disturbing.

I'm a branding guy. I spend a lot of time debunking myths and realigning expectations of what branding is and what branding is not. It being the buzzword of the new millennium, the word branding has become subverted by just about anyone associated with design, advertising, public relations, identity and just about anything else that will get a vendor's foot in the door. I've actually seen printers try to pass themselves off as having "branding capabilities."

Okay, I can deal with all that. After all, when the design, advertising, public relations, identity guys -- and printers -- are finished and haven't improved the client's business, my phone still rings. In fact, the only issue that irritates me about the co-opting of the word branding is the phrase personal branding. But not for the reasons you may think.

If you're a student of history and know anything about marketing, you also know that somewhere along the line -- generally around the 1960's, when mass media firmly sank its teeth into the insecurities of the public -- advertising radically changed. Prior to that time, ads mainly leveraged consumers wants and needs. They needed it. Advertisers sold it to them.

About the time color television appeared, the main thrust of advertising changed from we have what you want to you're not good enough unless you buy what we're selling. In a heartbeat, the media presented men, women, boys and girls with images of perfection to which no consumer could possibly live up. Cosmetics, clothing, cars, wine, food -- you name it, and unless you owned it, you couldn't be as good as the guy next door because he was buying even more of it.

It's been three or four decades since that time. Enough for several generations to grow up thinking they just aren't good enough being themselves. And if you look closely, that's where you'll find the origins of "personal branding."

The grave of personal branding's great grandaddy is located near the drug culture of the 1960's, when Dr. Timothy Leary challenged kids to "turn on, tune in, drop out." Leary wasn't actually advocating dropping out of society, by the way. He was advocating more people reject society's dictates and look within themselves to define who and what they were without some media-driven commercial lens distorting their view. In the 1970's and 1980's, people were taking fewer drugs, but buying lots more books. How To Be Your Own Best Friend; I'm Okay, You're Okay and a host of "self-help" titles fed a hungry public answers to the one question that had been hammered into them (and by now, their parents) since birth: "Why am I not good enough?" The books, for the most part, did little more than give their readers permission to be themselves. Millions of titles -- all variations on the same theme -- continue to sell.

With the new millennium, the spin is now called personal branding, but there's really nothing "branding" about it. If you believe as I do, that branding is about getting people to perceive you as the only solution to their problem, you might also consider the fact that of the six billion humans on the planet, no two of them are identical. In other words, there's no need for "personal branding," because every person is already unique.

Your looks are unique. Your opinions and talents and abilities are unique. And given the chance, your character is unique. It's just that things like character development and critical thinking have gone by the way side, in favor of more expedient solutions that Tweet round the globe in a nanosecond.

Here's a newsflash: You can't download character with a mouse click. You can't buy personality with a credit card. It takes time and introspection -- both of which are free.

Hey, if you believe in personal branding for people, pets or interstellar alien life forms, knock yourself out. It's not my purpose to discredit your views. What I'm on about is the tragic circumstance in which generations of people live and grow with such low self-esteem as to feel the need to adopt a personal branding program to define and project their own self-worth. People seem to have forgotten that great men and women all began as ordinary men and women, just like you and me, who were raised to be the best person they could be, believing in their own value regardless of anyone else's assessment.

Heck, George Washington didn't need a personal brand and he managed to do pretty well. I'm betting your father, great-grandmother or uncle Phil did, too. Yet Twitter is abuzz with lots of people who seem to feel the need for their own "personal brand".

Doesn't anyone just look in the mirror any more?

Tears in Starbucks Coffee

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may recall that in 2007, I tried to warn Starbucks of why their company was tanking. At that time, nobody wanted to hear it. They were all convinced that Starbucks was one of the country's best brands.

Wrong.

Despite the stock's swan dive well before anyone had even sniffed any kind of recession, all the telltale signs were there. Sure, everyone knew Starbucks. The problem was that nobody knew why they should evangelize Starbucks. Today, they still don't. And likely never will.

In a desperate attempt to right his listing ship, Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, has been trying all kinds of really, well, strange tricks. Earlier, he introduced the concept of Via, an instant coffee product sold in bags. Via pretty much got a frigid reception, especially from Starbucks' most loyal users, who avoid instant coffees like the plague. Old Starbucks fans became confused -- and by all indications, felt somewhat betrayed -- by their caffeinated ideal's capitulation to mass market tactics. Starbucks sold out, losing the loyalty of its users who by now are questioning whether Starbucks stands for anything at this point.

It's a good question, considering that Schultz himself recently admitted in the Los Angeles Times that "we've allowed other people to define us."

Yes, Howard, you have. And good for you for recognizing that. What's not good is that nowhere do we see signs of you rectifying the problem. As I've been telling you for the last decade, they don't know if you don't tell them. And nobody -- including Starbucks management -- can tell you why the brand should be perceived as the only solution.

So, what's going to happen with Starbucks? If history is any indication, Schultz will probably hire some hack "brand identity" or advertising agency to apply some oblique, short-term media-driven solution. We still won't know why we should insist on, or pay premium for Starbucks. The company will continue to slide and everyone will keep wondering what went wrong.

Except for McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts, of course.

Landor Dumbs Down SciFi

In the never-ending battle between giant, over-priced hack "branding" agencies, Landor took a vicious swipe at the Arnell agency's latest Tropicana fiasco by "re-branding" cable television's Sci-Fi Channel with a hopelessly stupid and - you should pardon the pun - incredibly alienating new moniker: SyFy.

Wow. It's hard to tell where to begin to describe just how clueless this effort is. But what the heck. I'll give it a shot.

Clearly, the entire project was commissioned, planned and executed by teams who had no idea of what appeals to science fiction fans - or how to drive a corporate brand into the hearts and minds of its target audience. According to the New York Times:

“We couldn't own Sci Fi; it’s a genre,” said Bonnie Hammer, the former president of Sci Fi who became the president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. “But we can own Syfy.”

Here's a newsflash: Who would want to own SyFy? You want it? It's yours, lady. Take it. Because nobody, and I mean nobody, wants a dumbed-down, stupid play on a phrase-of-the-week that's doomed to irrelevance when the term "wi-fi" expires. And that includes current SciFi viewers who are vocally expressing their displeasure at this latest exercise in fan condescension. Fans - or should I say ex-fans of the channel are rightly angry at the brand for surrendering the very "geek" qualities that originally attracted them to their favorite mode of entertainment.

Another benefit of the new name is that it is not “throwing the baby away with the bath water,” she added, because it is similar enough to the Sci Fi brand to convey continuity to “the fan-boys and -girls who love the genre.”

Ms. Hammer and her successor as Sci Fi president, Dave Howe, said they had sat through many meetings over the years at which a name change was debated. The principal reason the idea kept coming up, Mr. Howe said, was a belief “the Sci Fi name is limiting.”

Did you read that last paragraph? They actually had many meetings over the years to come up with this? What's next, a musical Hannah Montana version of Close Encounters?

Take a look at some of the other logos that appealed to SciFi viewers over the years and you'll find that all of them are driven by core attributes of the science fiction aficionado: intelligence, curiosity, imagination and more than a touch of prideful geekdom. See, what Hammer doesn't get is that sci-fi fans actually dig being geeky. They get as much of a rush from being geeky as she might from, say, a new Prada purse.

Landor, the hack agency that created the name and logo, has once again proven its ineptitude, by charging big bucks for a logo that was probably the result of a junior designer spending an hour or two rendering a 3D line of text in Carrara Pro, completely draining the mark of any values to which sci-fi fans could relate. What you've got there, friends, is a soccer mom's version of what the people at Landor think science fiction ought to be.

If science fiction logos were cars, this one would be a mini-van. Yuck.

To be fair, this isn't all Landor's fault. Much of the blame should be placed at the feet of SciFi's corporate managers, who obviously have no concept of what branding is or does. The big clue is that the spokesmen for corporate are all based out of the channels sales department. Which, I suppose, is fitting. After all, they're the ones who are going to be feeling the pinch the hardest.

Obama's Logo Failure

One of the topics I get into with clients and audiences is the list of elements that go into a solid brand. Invariably, they list the wrong things: Awareness. Identity. And the most dreaded of all, the logo. Don't get me wrong, logos are a big part of brand identity. But they're hardly the main component of a brand.

For a brand to be really effective, it has to engender trust and credibility. That means people have to do more than just know who you are. They have to know why they should care about who you are. That means your brand has to do more than just announce itself. It has to set the public's expectations about what they're getting and what you're offering. Once you have all that stuff down, you can begin to craft your brand strategy.

And once you have your brand strategy, then you can get started on a logo.

The misunderstanding of logos was continued recently, with the Obama administration's unveiling of its graphic emblem representing its recovery efforts. The mark is, to put it plainly, an absolute failure, for a few reasons:

First, just as with any failed brand strategy, the emblem merely describes the entity, instead of depicting how it's the only solution to the prospect's problem. This is bad. Really bad. If all your logo does is communicate what you are, you're permitting everyone who views it to set their own expectations of you. That's hugely dangerous, because in a heartbeat, everyone viewing the logo applies it to their own, personal agenda. With 300 million people looking at one emblem, you can see how that might cause more than a little disappointment.

Second, the logo depicts the wrong information. Sure, it shows symbols of economic sectors, but so what? It leaves out more than it includes. More to the point, it's actually a graphical list of problems instead of solutions. I don't care how well you draw, that's the wrong message to send to a nation that voted for sea change.

Third, because of the first two points, the mark comes across as just another government office here to serve you. It simply doesn't inspire anyone to get up off his couch and be part of the solution. Recall the only phrase anyone remembers from John F. Kennedy's administration: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." JFK had it right: get people involved. This mark - and the strategy behind it - is far more comfortable on the side of a government service vehicle than on the front of a banner at a public rally.

Look at Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs if you want a taste of inspiration. Every one of his programs were just as "socialistic" as they come, but they inspired a country to get back to work.

Of course, what you're really seeing here is the same lack of true brand understanding in Obama's administration as you do say, at General Motors. Before Obama's election, hack, frauds and pundits were bandying bits about "brand Obama" as if there really was something to it. Surprise: There never was. "Brand Obama" was actually a half-baked message of change. The big question was always "Change to what?" And that question was never answered.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for changing course from where America was headed. And I kind of like the new captain of the ship. What concerns me is that even if everyone gets on board with this new logo, we're setting sail without a map.