Rob Frankel - Branding Expert

The AIDS of Social Media

2012-01-03T10:48:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Political Brands: Mitt & Herman

2011-09-26T10:52:00.001-07:00

At the time of this writing, there's more than a year left before the 2012 presidential elections, which means that the political brand strategies - or more accurately, the lack of political brand strategies become most apparent to the American voting public. With Barack Obama barely holding on to his presidential perch, all kinds of Republicans from various walks of life have jumped into the freak show, causing more head scratching than serious consideration.

I won't burn your time with the usual ignoramus-bashing. I'll leave that to the shallow-thinking media pundits who usually manage to misinterpret even the most obvious political ploys. Besides, I'm a branding guy. I'm surrounded by the mediocre, mindless meanderings every day. They don't interest me. What does interest me is the increasingly rare instance in which there seems to be at least a modicum of strategic thought. That's what makes the difference. And that's why I find two of this year's political brands so fascinating.

Forget the old school perspective. The days of qualified candidates went out the window with Y2K. What we have now is more along the lines of American Idol, where audiences applaud the best quip quoted in a nationally-televised public forum. Candidates speak less from knowledge than they do from their media coaches, each battling for the next day's most aired soundbyte.

Okay, I can deal with that. Times change. Empires crumble into dust. I get it. In fact, I can embrace it. Which is why you may want to consider the only imaginable Republican ticket with any kind of brand strategy behind it: Mitt Romney and Herman Cain. That would be Romney as president, Cain as Vice President, simply because Romney has some political experience and Cain is more of the "can do" guy who admittedly lacks any political experience. Neither have much foreign experience, but that's what Secretaries of State are for.

Forget your politics for a moment. Here are two brands that are not only compatible, but effective in getting elected. Think I'm off track? Think again:

1. Romney and Cain are the only two Republicans with any semblance of brand strategy. Romney champions himself as "the only candidate with both private and public experience." Herman Cain promotes himself as a self made businessman, priding himself as a Washington outsider. In an environment of sustained economic recession, that's the kind of news Americans are asking for. Private sector guys who have created jobs. Even the Clintons didn't have to get beaten over the head too many times to learn, "It's the economy, stupid." Just like the Clintons, Obama squandered his newfound political capital on health care instead of the economy during the initial phases of the recession. Two business guys will be able to call him out on that, big time.

2. This time out, the Salt & Pepper factor works in Republicans' favor. Long hampered by the Republican party's "old boy, all white male" reputation, a Romney/Cain ticket is - sure, I'll say it - a white guy and a black guy running against a black guy and a white guy. It's balanced. When John McCain tried to crack the code, the best he could come up with was a train wreck called Sarah Palin. His choice was clearly a political ploy. But Cain's got the chops. This is no pander job. He's got what the public wants.

3. Both candidates are clearly defined, resulting in both Romney's and Cain's ability to speak in specifics while other candidates merely spout generalities, slogans and meaningless platitudes. If you notice, whenever Romney gets questioned, he lists a "seven point plan" in which he rattles off specific tactics along with the rationale for each. That's brilliant, considering that nobody - other than Cain - has managed to package his proposals in a clear and understandable manner. For his part, Cain promotes his "999" plan the way he promotes pizza toppings. Hokey, sure. But who cares? It's sensible, if not overly simplistic, and for once, avoids the old "baffle them with bullshit" serenade.

4. Both men are gregarious and centered, with Cain showing human traits of humor and self-confidence. Cain's appeal is in direct contrast to the icy, detached stage fright that most other candidates exude. For his part, Romney knows how to zig while other candidates zag: By allowing the other monkeys on the stage to jump about and pander to whatever political fad happens to be sweeping the nation this week, Romney merely stands calmly, allowing them to chase the right wing, which gives him the appearance of appearing moderate.

Put them all together and the combination of Romney and Cain isn't as far fetched as it may have seemed a month -- or evena week ago. And if you think that's too bizarre to happen, recall two other events that seemed even stranger:

Despite the conventional wisdom about "American racism," Barack Obama we resoundingly elected the first non-white president of the United States --and that Sarah Palin came as close as anyone feared to becoming its vice president.

Saving the Economy 1-2-3

2011-08-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

At the time of this writing -- well, let's face it, at any time anyone whines about government, taxes and debt-drowning economies spiraling out of control, the air suddenly gets clouded with smoke and fog rather than clear cut solutions. The year 2011 will no doubt go down in history as the Year of Fear, wherein every western country had to deal with severe economic panics. Once great civilizations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Japan have been rocked by economic chaos. The international community has been plagued by fear and speculation, climaxing in Standard & Poor's unthinkable downgrading of the United States' credit rating, due mainly to America's unacceptable handling of its national debt.

The downgrade was shocking. Unacceptable. But not, as it turns out, completely unavoidable. Because it turns out there's a way to solve all of our economic problems quickly. Permanently. And with no need to raise taxes at all. No cuts in services are required, either. In fact, if you do this right, medical and social services could actually increase without even breaking a sweat.

Of course, if you ask the dolts in Washington, D.C., they'll tell you it's impossible to balance the budget without cutting more and spending less. But I'm a branding guy. I have no political constituency to lose, so I can dare to be bold. And I'm here to tell you that it can all be solved as easily as one, two, three.

The first issue to accept is that the problem isn't taxes or what we spend. The real problem is the underground cash economy that avoids taxation. If you think that's a small number, think again. Search anywhere on the internet and you'll find that everything from minor labor to illegal arms deals to backyard marijuana sales are generally exchanges of under the table, untraceable cash transactions which are never taxed.

There are generally two reasons for cash transactions, depending if you're transacting legal or illegal business. In the illegal market, paying tax on drugs, contraband and the like is tantamount to a one-way ticket to prison. It's an admission that you actually did pay for something the government forbids. In the legal market, people do cash transactions to avoid taxation. After all, what the government doesn't know about, the government can't tax. And at any tax rate higher than a few points, all tax rates do is motivate people to find a way not to pay them. This is why the pudgy guy with the five o'clock shadow and green teeth at the car lot will sell you that used Chevy for $2500 plus sales tax -- or $2000 if it's all cash.

Lest you think the American Underground Economy is trivial in stature, let me state that the average internet search (where such things are discussed) puts the annual figure somewhere in the trillions of dollars every year. That's a trillions of bucks on which the government collects no revenue at all. Nothing. And it slips out of the public coffers every day for just one reason:

They're all cash or barter - untraceable - transactions.

But what would happen if we eliminated cash completely? What if everyone were given debit cards and little swipers they can attach to their smart phones (which by the way, is already in wide use out there)? Here's what would happen: Every single transaction would be tracked and reported. Who paid it. Who received it. And even if it didn't expose the people involved, the system could automatically tack on the appropriate tax before approving the transaction.

It's not as nutty as you think. Merchant Service Providers (MSP) already do that when they verify every single credit card transaction they process. This is just one more nano-second stop along the way. But here's the real kicker:

With far more revenue exposed to taxation, every single local, state and federal authority could actually lower its tax rate. And I mean really lower it. In fact, I'd recommend doing away with the entire tax structure in favor of a 1-2-3 plan:

One percent of each transaction goes to the local government.

One percent of each transaction goes to the state government.

One percent of each transaction goes to the federal government.

That's a total of 3% on any transaction anywhere in the United States, applied to any and all transactions, collected at the moment it's paid. Add the 3% on the underground economy's trillions to the 3% of the legitimate market's trillions, and to paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, pretty soon you're talking serious money. Crisis-solving money, with corporate and personal taxpayers alike rejoicing because the days of double digit tax brackets are gone. If I haven't lost you yet, consider this, too: Because everything is tracked, reported and paid in real time, there's no more need to file income tax returns. No more Internal Revenue Service. No more audits. Just pay as you go government. How cool is that? What's the worst that could happen - the illicit drug culture turns to the Euro for its commerce? Please.

Fairer taxation. Lower tax rates for you and me. Higher revenues for the government with less government bureaucracy. It just doesn't get any better for this.

Unless you're an income tax preparer. In that case, you'd best be dusting off that resumé.

Technology Causes Recession

2011-08-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Some years from now, this article will probably be woefully out of date. Well, the point of the article won't be out of date, but this particular instance will have long since been relegated to the history books, just one more exhibit in the freak show known as Modern American History.

At this writing, the world economies are in chaos. Major nations around the globe are watching their credit ratings melt. People are rioting in the streets. Budgets are being cut. Unemployment is very high and morale is very low. It's a tough time for optimists.

Among the strangest behaviors we're enduring are wild, mega-swings in global financial markets. Whereas a daily 20 point rise or fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was big news in the 1970's, swings of 400 to 600 points - in either direction - have become more commonplace. One explanation is that there are simply more shares and more people to trade them. Another is that we now have the technology to trade those shares much more rapidly than ever before.

It doesn't take a genius to do the math. When a micro-chip can observe, analyze, deduce a result and execute a trade order for millions of shares from hundreds of companies in less time than it took you to read this sentence, you know things are moving at a pretty brisk clip. It's not surprising, then, that market actions and reactions would occur with ever-increasing rapidity.

But that's not the real culprit here. The demon you want is hiding just below the surface, affecting far more than the price of today's stocks. As I've written here previously, technology speeds up just about everything except for human nature. As a result, it's technology, more than anyone realizes, that's adding to - if not causing - our recessionary times. Let me clarify this:

Unless you've been hiding under a a very large rock since 2008, you no doubt have heard about or painfully felt the very real effects of the global economic recession. If you're been fortunate enough to be spared the financial pain, I doubt you've escaped the unending re-hash and faux analyses by television "experts" whose simplistic explanations pass less for truthful explanation than they do for furthering political agenda. Most of those pundits draw their opinions by citing "similar situations" throughout history, including expansions and contractions dating back to the Great Depression of the 1930's. Although there are some similarities to be compared, there's one giant difference that, for some reason, negates just about all of their relevance to today's issues:

Technology. And here's how:

While technology can move data at nearly the speed of light, it does nothing to speed up human behavior. In the old days, both human behavior and data moved at the same speed, because both were powered by humans. For example, if you wanted to buy a stock, you called your stockbroker, who in turn called his floor trader, who placed the trade. The transaction could take hours or days. Same thing with selling. Today, however, there are fewer brokers and traders because everything has been reduced to a simple point and click.

So a huge problem arises when a political administration announces a long term plan to aid economic recovery, mainly, an economic plan takes time to be assessed, implemented and resolved. However, speculating on the viability of a long term plan takes less than a millisecond, which means unlike the days of yore, speculation moves at a far greater rate than real information, which in turn dooms all markets to higher risks of failure because technology is manipulating it based on fear rather than any wisdom borne of financial strategy.

That last part is something not to to be considered lightly. In the end, technology may speed up action but completely ignores wisdom, which means that market decisions - and the plans designed to affect them -- must incorporate technology's need for speed or face a higher risk of failure than necessary. This week the Federal Reserve took an unprecedented step by announcing its interest rate level would be maintained at low levels for the next two years. It's a hugely historic tactic, in that it's the first economic pronouncement designed to destroy the effect of speedy speculation by providing a base of stability for the long term. Previously, the Fed had encouraged speculation by offering only short term announcements. By removing the speculative data from its announcement, the Fed has effectively diffused at least one factor of market instability, which technology cannot distort -- and we need more of that.

The old days of deliberation are long gone, no longer a factor in the eye blink world of the microchip. No matter what your business, know that it's moving at a faster clip than you are -- and unless you manage it, it will mange you. If one truth remains, it's that bad news travel fast and doesn't often wait for wisdom to catch up.

Why Most Gurus Aren't

2011-07-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

I don't know what I was was thinking when I became a branding consultant. I had no idea it would get this involved. I mean, I totally knew that the world had no idea what true branding was about. Most of the planet dismisses brand as little more than identity: a name, a logo - and if you're one of the screaming hordes of lemmings - maybe a social media plan a la Facebook. These days, I find myself spending far more time educating clients as to what branding is, and isn't, long before we even start building their brand strategies.

Sigh.

Unlike what most "gurus" will tell you, brand strategy isn't there to give you a good feeling or even inspire customer loyalty. Brand strategy is there to power a company's financial success. Period. In reality, they may pay it politically-correct lip service to the media, but no management staff really cares how much its end users "value the relationship" if there's no business to be had from it. Let's face it, the only relationship that really matters is between the company and its cash register, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll derive those exact benefits from your own brand strategy.

Of course, having become the buzzword of the millennium, branding has been perverted by all kinds of hack, frauds and poseurs, each claiming they know what brands do and how they can make yours sparkle. The only trouble is that when you hold their feet to the fire, none of them seem to be able to connect the dots to the bottom line.

It's easy to publish books or point a video camera at yourself and spout platitudes about relationships, social media and conversations with your end users. What's not quite as simple is providing real tactics in real time that produce real results on a very real income statement. Unfortunately, that's precisely the problem I have with all the various New Age Gurus out there who have more press agents than they do clients.

My own formula for hack detection goes something like this: The number of books, tapes and seminars a "guru" hawks is inversely proportional to the actual number of clients he's helped succeed. So before you fall for the latest buzz-driven hype, make sure you're getting the real thing when you read, hear or hire a brand strategist. Being the humble, helpful guy that I am, I've prepared a little checklist for you:

1. Does the guru have any clients in the real world? You'd be amazed at the number of "gurus" out there who have, surprisingly, no clients at all. That's because they make their livings selling books, seminars and theories that sound great but have never been tested in the marketplace.

2. What results has the guru achieved for those clients? If the results can't be measured in real dollars and cents, you can stop right there. "Raising awareness" for a brand doesn't put bread on the table, Jack. Who cares how many people know or love your brand if none of them are willing to pay for it?

3. How have those results been measured? Don't be taken in by statistics you wish were true. Remember that a company that has one sale on Monday "doubles their sales in less than a week" if they sell just one widget by Wednesday.

4. Are his recommendations based on rationale or socially popular intangible "fun facts," i.e., "All the kids are doing it!"? Are his strategies pro-active, or simply reactions to the latest social media reports?

5. How long does the guru stick around after picking up his fee? Is he a "drive-by consultant" that tosses a ten pound report on your doorstep on his way out the door or does he help you implement his recommendations?

6. What was the guru doing before he decided to become a guru? Anyone can call himself an expert. Hey, Dog The Bounty Hunter passes himself off as a top gun TV star, but before that, he spent far more time as a drug-addled, incoherent loser. That's not to say that people can't change, just that you want to kick the tires before you take them for a test drive.

I could go on, but you get my drift. For every guy out there taking advice there are ten willing to give it to him - most of them at over-priced rates. Be careful out there: what you see -- or think you're seeing -- isn't always what you get. Unless of course, he's a "guru," in which case you know exactly what you can expect.

Never Sign Your Name

2011-07-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

"It's probably the reason I'm here today. It probably saved my life," mused the man as he reached for a well-deserved toast to his ninetieth birthday. Here he was enjoying a bright, birthday afternoon in the comfort of his own backyard garden, musing over a decision he'd made roughly seventy years earlier, which turned out to be of huge consequence. Sitting among four generations of family and friends, I once again marveled at the seeming randomness of life. Some people make it. Some people don't. Sometimes, it seems as if life is just one giant crap shoot.

Then again, it may just seem as if life is a giant crap shoot. In reality, the closer you look, the more it appears significant events have less to do with luck than genuine, strategic thought.

"There were forms, official registration forms, you were supposed to fill out so that the government knew who you were and where you lived," man continued. "But something about them didn't seem right. So I just never filled mine out. And from that point on, I made sure to never sign my name."

The forms themselves were fairly benign, not that much different from what you and I fill out every day on the internet. Your name, where you live and various personal data that's supposedly guarded to protect your privacy. Of course, there were other personal details, but nobody paid much attention to them. And because the forms were distributed by official-looking people posing with official-looking authority, most people filled them out completely and promptly, complete with their signatures on the bottom line.
"I knew it wasn't right. Something just felt wrong," repeated the man.

It wasn't too long after that, returning from his job in another town, that the twenty-something man discovered there was no more family to come home to. Everyone was gone. Family. Friends. Even strangers he knew by face but not by name. All of them vanished, never to be heard from again.

All of them had one thing in common: they'd filled out their forms and signed on the bottom line.

Realizing the gravity of his brush with fate, the man grabbed what he could and left his home town, his country and whatever history he'd grown up with. By way of Swiss refugee camps and liberated France, he eventually made his way to America. He never looked back, pursuing a life, career and family the result of that one, single determination:

"Never sign your name."

It makes you think about what you do with your own personal information today. Who has it? Who owns it? What will they do with it? How smart is it to fill out that form and sign your name?

When the man tells me his story, I realize how quick thinking not only saved his life, but by even greater odds, is responsible for my own.

The man is, after all, my father.

Arnold, explained

2011-06-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

A branding strategist like myself has only to wonder why things happen the way they do. More often than not, I find that the solution to a problem is usually found within the problem itself. I look for patterns. I turn over possibilities to find what motivates people to do the things they do. That, after all, is where branding really lives: deep down in people's hearts, right next to where their most sacred -- and sometimes nefarious -- dreams reside.

So it was with great interest and something more than a little morbid curiosity that spurred me to observe and report on the strange, perhaps bizarre case of one Arnold Shwarzenegger and the revelation of his recently announced extra child. For some reason, the media seems shocked and appalled by the ex-Governator's most recent revelation. But now that the media hype has died down, it seems the careful observer should never have been surprised at all. It really boils down to one, simple word:

Sociopathy.

Please don't leap to the commonly-held myth that the term sociopathy implies anything criminal. It doesn't. Sociopaths are not necessarily criminals, although many criminals are sociopaths. In fact, you probably know more than a few. Sociopaths have a few unmistakable traits they wear like the mark of Cain, the most prominent of which are these:

1. A very low, even non-existent self-image.

2. An absolute lack of awareness of anyone else in the room, or for that matter, in life.

There are more, but these are the two biggies. Because they have such low opinions of themselves, sociopaths spend all their energy trying to prove to everyone else that they do indeed have some basic human worth. That's why so many highly successful, high-achieving people are indeed sociopathic: they know that if they can just grab enough props of success, people will have to think they're worthy. Sociopaths can just as easily become CEO's of large corporations as serial killers, because what they are is always hidden behind what they do.

The second hallmark of a sociopath is not only a complete disregard for others, but a total refusal to admit others even exist. It's not that other people don't have feelings; it's that there simply are no other people in the room. When your self-esteem is incredibly low, the one thing you want to avoid is getting hurt. And the best way to avoid receiving pain is blocking out those capable of inflicting it.

With me so far? Great. Now you can understand everything you need to know to make sense of Arnold the Great.

By far, the most commonly-asked question about the illicit Shwarzenegger Domestic Child Affair has got to be this: Jesus, this guy could have any woman in the world -- why would he be having an affair with HER? It's a reasonable question. In fact, rumor has it that Arnold has had lots of beautiful women in his life, so it does seem odd that he'd choose to have an ongoing relationship with a woman so ill-matched to his image.

Unless you consider the model I've outlined above.

If you begin with the assumption that Arnold has always had low self-esteem, the pattern becomes pretty clear. He started life as a weak youngster, perceiving himself to be somewhat of a loser. His solution to that problem was to transform himself into something else. In a feverish, brutal competitive fashion, he bulked himself up to the top of the body-building world -- his first prop to show others that his new, manufactured image was his real persona. But a sociopath's needs are insatiable. As they fortress themselves behind their artificial props, their biggest fear is discovery. And so they continue to add, build and create believers with each additional piece of evidence they're driven to acquire. Arnold's next prop was a Hollywood career.

It's no accident that Arnold would choose to become an actor. Actors make their livings pretending to be someone else. Actors also rely on others' approval to measure their success. A man with low self-esteem craves constant approval. Living with the constant stress of being found out who he really is only drove him harder to keep his real persona secret.

Arnold could have married anyone. But he chose a Kennedy. If you look at the pattern, why he chose Maria Shriver fits right in: If he married a Kennedy, it would fortify his circle of deception. Marrying into the Kennedy clan, in his mind, certified his legitimacy: Now everyone would have to accept him. And it worked - to a point.

The problem with sociopathy is that the sociopath never knows when to stop. At some point, with their fortresses of fantasies in place, the sociopath becomes secure, safe within the walls of his self-made deceptions. Because he's walled out others from his life, he has no sounding board for reality. He becomes delusional, lost in his own version of reality. He simply doesn't know when to stop.

Not content with a physique, a career and a Kennedy, Arnold pounced - in typical sociopathic, opportunistic style - on a one-in-a-million chance to become governor of California. This was perhaps the greatest prop of all: legitimization by popular vote. Of course, what happens on the outside of a sociopath's brain never matches what's never changed on the inside. Inside, he still needed to continually prove to himself and others he was no pathetic loser.

Which brings us back to Arnold and the maid. Why her? Simple:

The sociopath never loses his feelings of inferiority. His is a constant, driving need to express his power over others with props. The maid was not pretty. Or sexy. Or even highly talented or intellectual. In fact, the only thing the maid was, was right under Maria's nose. The thrill of carrying on an affair with the maid for over ten years without Maria even suspecting gave Arnold the feeling of power and superiority. Every day, he could look at the maid, look at his wife and think to himself, "I'm even smarter than a fucking Kennedy."

Of course, you can only build a house of cards so high. Eventually, the winds of truth blow the whole thing apart and the world sees what it's always seen: a weak, pathetic person with a low self-image and a high social and personal casualty rate. At this writing, all of Arnold's much-hyped post-political deals have been placed on hold. The divorce lawyers are lining up. All those years of deception are about to go public.

Sociopaths aren't nearly as uncommon as you might think. They're easy to spot. The tough part is having to courage to call them out.

The Third World War

2011-01-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a brand strategist has less to do with branding than it does strategic planning. After all, when you’re building a longstanding symbol of trust with end users, it helps to get a handle on what’s coming down today, tomorrow and well into the future. That’s where your brand will be living. And if you’re really good, where it will be thriving. As I’m fond of telling clients, the best brands are built from the outside in, which means it’s paramount to look at everything that exists within your brand’s environment.

When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, believe me, everything becomes a strategic challenge. The techniques learned in my field appear to transfer easily to others – including geo-political history, past, present and future. Which makes for some interesting speculation as to the future of our own existence – and it’s not as bleak as the media might think.

Of course, it does involve a minor World War.

The book that started me thinking is Tom Reiss’s The Orientalist, which centers around regions such as Azerbaijan, Russia, Germany, Turkey and France around the turn of the twentieth century. Among other things, it's a fascinating account of how and why the world changed so radically and why each faction rose up the way it did, resulting in two world wars. For me, it’s the first work to put all the missing pieces together, linking the decline of end-of-century monarchies with the rapid rise of popular – often mob-ruled - republics that grew wildly out of control, way too fast.

Russia replaced its Czar with Bolsheviks, Germany converted to nationalism, the Ottoman Empire essentially evaporated. Entire nations imploded, taking their cultures down with them. It was, for the most part, a social vacuum. A political wild west with no real leadership structure – and no real strategic planning at all, which led to roughly 30 years of progressively antic Euro-Asian chaos.

It was an important transition then, and if you understand it, puts a lot into perspective when you look at what's happening around the world right now:

See this map? Click on it. Get to know it. Because this, by some account, could be the map of World War Three. All of the countries surrounding the main focal point are at just about the same political point that they were a century ago: Lots of political unrest, aggravated by religious fervor, because so many of them have no political voice. There’s your political leadership vacuum. But there’s more:

A few things to keep in mind when it comes to international volatility:

1. Nationalist strategy ALWAYS requires a "common enemy" to unite its forces into militarism. Bolsheviks had the Czar; radical Islam has the West. One look at the region tells you there’s no shortage of social differences capable of motivating entire countries to war.

2. The region contains the city of Baku, which a century ago was the #1 oil producer in the world -- just slightly north and west of the central convergence point of this map. There’s your commercial motivation.

The fuse is probably Kashmir or somewhere in that region, a traditional flashpoint between India and its unstable nuclear neighbor, Pakistan, but actual ignition could happen anywhere nearby. With that stage set, here’s how one scenario unfolds:

After the initial shots are exchanged between two nuclear-capable nations (likely India and Pakistan), Russia, China and India immediately mobilize their forces in the name of “national security.” From the north, Russia patiently waits for the region to collapse, then rushes in to capture oil facilities and ports. From the east, China moves west, justifying its occupation and finally crushing Tibet. From the south, India rolls into Pakistan, virtually wiping the Pakistani state off the map.

And while this is happening, nobody in the west will say a word, for very simple reasons:
1. Russia will have done the dirty work of “regional stabilization” in exchange for oil and ports.
2. China will gain more land and unquestioned borders in return for being the world’s banker.
3. The USA will finally have found its only way out of dealing with its tenuous, often duplicitous relationship with Pakistan, finding many of its cultural relationship issues solved without ever having commit one troop to active duty. In fact, this could be the impetus for removing American troops from the region even faster.
4. The rest of the Middle East will quickly run to Western allies for fear or Russian domination. Iran will fall back into western hands, as well, as the Russian threat becomes all too real for them. And all you Israel fans, take heart: the real world threats aren’t on the coast of the Mediterranean. They’re firmly embedded in Central Asia, far to the east.

So much for the potentially bad news. Now here’s the potentially good news:

Both Russia and China have joined the USA by accepting the world as a market-driven economy. The days of centrally planned failure are over. But the big dividend for the USA -- and the world economy -- is the end of religiously-driven terrorism. The unwritten agenda of World War Three is the elimination of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, which currently undermines the security of a free market system and provides the common enemy which unites all three factions.

I know. It’s not politically correct. But then, history rarely concerns itself with that sort of thing.

This scenario plays out much like the finale of World War Two, which was essentially a land grab, but this time is a much easier to sell to the public. In this scenario, instead of the defeat of evil Nazis, the threat of terrorism is removed for good. People get on airplanes without being patted down. It’s all good, because the “peace dividend” allows less time and money to be spent on security and more on productivity.

It’s just like the old days - except that everything gets divided BEFORE the first shot is fired. And great news for western economies, because let’s face it: someone has to get into those war torn regions to rebuild them after the shooting has stopped. Usually, those are contractors from the west, looking for projects to pump their balance sheets - and resolve the world's economic recessions.

Think it can’t happen? You could be right. After all, this is just one strategic scenario. There are bound to be hundreds.

Then again, you may want to avoid any vacation plans you may have had for Central Asia over the next few years.

The Rifle Shot

2010-12-29T05:49:00.000-08:00

At the time of this writing, the national unemployment rate in the United States is well over 10%. In my home state of California, the rate is hovering around 12%, with no short term improvement on the horizon. It's not, in Dickensian terms, the best of times.

But I'm a branding guy. To me, life revolves around the ability of perception to influence reality. As opposed to most branding hacks and posers, I'm careful to make sure those perceptions are grounded in reality, rather than fantasy. To me, a brand isn't some made-up notion of fancy; it's a real, four-on-the-floor, kick-the-tires argument using real facts to explain why the brand is "the only solution to its prospects' problems."

So when I see a dumbing down of important social issues, either by over-simplification or sheer ineptitude, my alarms go off. And that's what I think we've got going here.

Before I get too far into it, let me disclaim any suspicions you may have regarding my sensitivity to the unemployed. Believe me, I've suffered through tough times just like everyone else. I know what it's like to rob Peter to pay Paul only to find out that Peter went broke long ago borrowing from someone else. I'm hunting a completely different animal here. I'm going after the popular acceptance of inaccurate and misleading statistics that drive people like you and me into making decisions that can literally derail people's lives. It's important to businesses and individuals alike, because decisions are what determine our eventual successes and failures. And if you base those decisions on faulty data, there's a whole lot more of the the latter than the former.

Increasingly, I'm seeing an increasing number of bad decisions being made in public and private lives based on broad, sweeping -- and more often than not, misleading -- data than ever before. Take those statistics at the top of this article. Those are hefty numbers, to be sure. But more often than not, they're applied in the wrong context. While macro statistics might be of interest to some, they have no place among the micro world, where each individual has to play to the context of his own situation.

Simply put, the fact that the country or the state as a whole has a high unemployment rate actually has nothing to do with each individual's chances of employment. In other words, while the greater masses may produce a statistic that titillates politicians and media pundits, in your own world, where you live, breathe and raise your kids, statistics mean nothing. They rarely even reflect the true nature of your own environment, but can actively distort your view, steering you into some pretty bad, fateful decisions. I call it the Rifle Shot Strategy and this is how it works:

Back in the Jurassic Period, when I was starting out in the advertising world, there was no way to get hired into an agency, especially for a writer. Art directors had schools and programs; writers didn't. After a year of searching, the only chance I had to get hired was a long shot: A national ad agency offered a training program in which new kids could get hired off the street. In Los Angeles, the agency had one slot for over 80 applicants, all of whom were formally educated in various aspects of the advertising business. To make a long story short, I beat the odds and nabbed the slot. A nearly 1% chance of success. However, had I listened to the pundits, I never would have even submitted my application. After all, who bets on an 80 to 1 shot?

I'll tell you who bets on it: Individuals who recognize they don't need to beat the odds, they only need to win one place for themselves. It's like my pal once told me when we considered buying lottery tickets. "How many are you going to buy?" I asked. "One," he answered. "You only need one to win!"

More recently, I'm pummeled with the haranguing of helicopter parents, too lazy and inept to guide their kids by anything other than the questionable advice offered by expensive college advisory services. Every one of these parents seems ready to pony up big fees to preparatory services whose main achievable goal seems to be exacting big fees from lazy and inept parents. Yes, it helps for kids to have good grades and test scores. Yes, it's true that top achievers often get into top schools. But no, it isn't true that attending any particular school is going to guarantee your child's success in life. Nor is it necessarily true that any of these services will actually improve your child's test scores. In fact, the only thing that is true is that most of these lazy parents buy into the sweeping, generalized, misapplied statistics because it's easier for them to write a check than it is to educate their children as to the realities of life; teaching their kids to determine their own specific fates based on their own abilities and talents.

Analyzing each individual's particular opportunities and challenges is what determines that person's success or failure. Despite what the national statistics say, throughout his own personal adult life, the college Johnny attends has far less to do with his success than the kind of person Johnny is. It's the decisions Johnny makes on what's best for Johnny that determines his ultimate success or failure, not national trends.

So what does all this have to do with branding? Simple: Businesses are no different when it comes to the Rifle Shot. Just because some airheaded academic points to a PowerPoint slide may not -- and more likely does not -- have any effect on your businesses. Largely generic numbers, charts and graphs are far less the results of usable data than they are the basis for analysts' paychecks. There's good money in marketing fear.

Don't get me wrong, good data is great. Good data applied incorrectly is disastrous. Make sure you know what's applicable to your specific situation before going off half-cocked. Choose the rifle shot over the shotgun blast and you'll hit your target every time.

Google Eats Your Brain

2010-09-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

Some people would call me curmudgeonly, but the truth is that I have a deep resentment for arbitrary authority. I'm one of those old-fashioned guys who doesn't like anyone at any time telling me what I should or shouldn't do. After all, I went through school. I went to college. I've lived a little bit so I know what's going on.

I seriously believe that after several decades on the planet, I know what's good and what's not so good for me. I'm ready enough to take on almost any situation because I spent the better part of my youth being educated in all kinds of stuff. I can quote philosophers and physicists, or hold up my end of just about any political conversation. I know enough about art, religion and music to bluff my way past even the most pretentious snobs. I read. I watch. I observe. I remember.

I think. I know, that's something of a lost art, but I really happen to enjoy it. I ponder. I query and, not unlike John F. Kennedy, ask "why not?" I enjoy thrusting and parrying in conversations, most of the time not even caring about which side I argue. I just like the sport of it.

Of course, to be able to enjoy this kind of life requires possessing more than a fair amount of general knowledge. You not only have to know a lot of stuff, you have to enjoy knowing about a lot stuff. You have to look forward to each day for the amount of new things you're about to learn and be somewhat disappointed if you fall asleep having not learned anything worthwhile.

Too bad that this is probably the last generation who will ever know that pleasure. Because as we speak, Google is removing it from your brain.

This week, Google clumsily announced a new means of searching the internet called "Google Instant." Priding itself on its blindingly speedy technology, the mental fascists have created a technology that finds just about anything so that you don't have to know about it. Its "predictive technology" will begin searching for results as you type in a few keystrokes.

I found it somewhat depressing listening to Google's Chief of Human Destruction gleefully describe how fast and accurate her new product was. Pushing a button, it would seem, could supplant your own need for knowledge -- after all, why learn anything when you can just Google it?

I'll tell you why. And you'd better listen up:

What the public doesn't seem to understand -- because most of them came of age after the internet did -- is that Google is slowly eating their brains. As they give up their privacy for a few free products, the public doesn't seem to notice that Google knows everything about them. Google Street can show you a photograph of where they live; Google Search can tell you just about everything else if you know where to look. And now, Google Instant will tell you everything Google thinks you should know.

What's frightening is the big picture, in which Google, which claims to want to be the "sum of all knowledge" is creating a huge dependency for any human who knows how to point and click. But what happens the day the power goes out? What will humans do when there is no Google to query? Where's the human backup for knowledge no longer stored in human memories?

Even more frightening is the notion that Google may choose to store and serve only knowledge it deems appropriate. And what happens then? You don't have to be George Orwell to understand that he who controls knowledge controls the world. Sure, it may sound paranoid, but think it out for yourself: What if Google chose not to store any information about 9/11? Or the Holocaust? Or chose not to display any references to the bombing of Hiroshima?

Still not convinced? How about this: What would happen if Google decided to omit any references to you? I'll tell you what would happen. You'd cease to exist, because the standard by which your existence was measured -- presence on Google -- wouldn't show anything about you. And because human memory no longer held any currency, you'd be certifiably non-existent.

Think it can't happen? Ever experienced credit theft? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

There are those who would call me an alarmist. Fine. I've been called worse. But at least I know that when and if the plug ever gets kicked out of the wall, I'll be able to survive without pointing or clicking. Now take a look at the gamer moron sitting next to you, texting his girlfriend. What chance has he got?

The Bunny Bites Back

2010-07-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting interview on MarketWatch Radio the other day. After years of pummeling, Playboy announced that its venerable founder, Hugh Hefner, was seriously considering taking his publicly-held company private once again. Hef had reason to be serious. After decades of mismanagement, beginning with his own daughter, Christie, at the helm, what could arguably be called one of the planet's most recognizable and potentially valuable brands has been decimated to a shadow of its former self.

It wasn't always that way. There was a time when Playboy was the gospel of Modern Western Man. Readers could look to the pages of the magazine to develop their tastes in music, fashion, lifestyle, alcohol, automobiles -- and yes, fine-looking women. Of course, it was the fine-looking women that grabbed most of the headlines, but the actual Playboy brand was far more than that.

What people tend to forget is that Playboy was originally launched to compete with the likes of Esquireand other gentlemen's magazines, most of which were outgrowths of young men's primers from east coast colleges. Knowing how to hold your fork or which wine is simply not served with fish was crucial to every aspiring young man's rank and reputation. Discerning the differences between 12 and 18 year old scotch was as important back then as an M.B.A. degree is today. Yet while magazines like Esquireprofessed to be "man at his best," Hefner was able to see what none of his competitors could:

All the other publications assumed that men at their best was the same after the second world war as it was before the war. And every one of them was wrong.

From the outset, Hugh Hefner knew that every generation from the 1950's would never look back or aspire to be what their fathers were. The post-war mass production economy had far fewer media channels than we have today, and its affluence -- for the very first time in world history -- afforded lower-class men a chance to move up on the status bar. All of which allowed Playboy to become the sole medium for young men to find what they were looking for.

Sure, a few bare-breasted babes helped increase circulation, but for decades, far more pages of Playboy were devoted to social discourse than sexual intercourse. It's no coincidence that the series of James Bond movies found huge success after the success of Playboy; for all intents and purposes, James Bondwas the quintessential Playboy man who knew all the right moves in all the right places.

There was a time, in fact, when a Playboy subscriber carried a Key Card, allowing him access to a number of Playboy clubs across the country. Each club featured a bar, restaurant and well-packed Playboy bunny waitresses that understood -- and enjoyed -- their place in the Playboy world.

It was all good until the 1970's, when political correctness and gross brand mismanagement hit the bunny like a sledgehammer. The rise of feminism unwittingly took Playboy as its prisoner, preferring to project the brand as offensive to women, when in fact, Playboy was at the forefront of most, if not all, causes of sexual freedom and equality. However, Playboy took less of a hit for its sexual content than it did for its celebration of masculinity, which media pundits of the time found to be oppressive, an extension of their all-thing-white-and-male-are-part-of-the-problem mentality. To be a man, all of a sudden, was not a good thing. This is the time in which the Emasculation of America began.

Playboy continued its downward spiral when Hefner's less-than-intelligent daughter, Christie, took the helm. Among Christie's colossal catalogue of ineptitudes was her complete and total ignorance of the Playboy brand, which she understood to be less about men and more about sex. As a result, she allowed the brand to be consumed in the now famous "pink wars" where magazines like Penthouse battled on the newsstands to see which publication could expose more female genitalia without getting arrested.

Throughout her tenure, Christie -- like so many denial-driven CEO's -- believed that the bunny could never die. She had no idea how to nurture it back to health and watched the brand disintegrate from her glassed-in office in her ivory tower. Playboy finally dumped her, but not before a huge amount of damage had been done. Playboy stock, once a high flyer, traded as low as $2 per share in early 2010.

Which is exactly when I bought it.

I loaded up on Playboy stock because it fit my financial model: I buy strong brands, figuring that someone, someplace knows an under-valued brand when they see it. Fortunately, Hugh Hefner is still alive to see it, too. His announcement to take the company private doubled the stock's value in less than two hours. With any luck, he'll attract the right management this time and restore the Playboy brand to what it is and always has been:

The celebration of being a man.

Myth of the Sin Tax

2010-04-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

Writing at a time when the Great Recession's darkest days have passed, I'm constantly reminded that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is still a luminescent dot for most folks. On this date, the Los Angeles Times states that "44% of the unemployed have been without work for six months or more." That's a lot of hungry, crestfallen people. That's a lot of pain.

But working men and women aren't the only ones getting squeezed. Public services and institutions are feeling the heat, too. In California, where I live, it's now commonplace for any given city or state office to be closed during the week due to "furloughs" which is government-speak for "unpaid office closure." Universities can't accept as many students, and those who are accepted face extended careers because fewer classes are offered.

When there's widespread pain, you can always bet on the finger-pointing to begin. It's no different here, where a gubernatorial race is in its embryonic stage. "Insider" candidates claim "outsiders" have no experience, while ""outsiders" lambast "insiders" for messing things up in the first place.

What neither side realizes is that the solution to our problems isn't politics; it's money. We need more of it. The question is where to find it.

Californians are fond of pointing out that were it an independent country, the state would be home to the world's fifth largest economy. It's true. There's a lot of money generated here. And where there's revenue, there's a tax base just waiting to be tapped. Unfortunately, there's one source that goes completely untapped and that, of course, is the state's leading agricultural crop, marijuana.

Now before you get all worked up about it, this is not your typical plea for legalization. Personally, I don't care what you do as long as you're not endangering anyone else in the process. But I do care about stuff that works and solves problems. It's what I do for a living. And this is why legalization probably would go a long way to injecting billions into state coffers:

Sin taxes don't work.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a sin tax is an archaic form of moral imperialism, in which products and services are levied with heavy taxes on the theory that if the sin becomes too expensive, fewer people will be able to afford indulging in the sin. This is the reasons why cigarettes and alcohol are as expensive as they are. Were there no state or Federal sin taxes, most tobacco and alcohol products would retail for a fraction of their current prices.

As a matter of record, sin taxes have never done much to deter sinful practices. The wealthy simply pay for their vices; the poor simply steal to sustain their habits. And illegalizing controlled substances doesn't seem to slow its growth, if the daily beheadings in Mexico are any indication. Truth is the taxing authorities actually count on the sin tax to not work, because if it truly did deter usage, there would be no revenue to be gained from imposing it.

There are lots of people who smoke. And lots of people who drink. Trust me on this next one: There are lots of people who smoke dope. Which means that usage isn't affected by taxation or legality. It's a myth, supported by political theorists who spend more time alone with their cats than they do on the streets.

An increasing number of states are getting sucked down the budgetary rat hole, while their political caretakers sit idly by, their feet staying dry atop their moral soapboxes, providing no leadership or solutions. All of them pledge no taxes, because they think that's what the people want to hear. That's not what the people want to hear. People don't mind paying taxes -- as long as you're taxing the right stuff.

Apple Jumps the Shark

2010-03-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

If you're as antique as I am, you can measure a great deal of your life by phases in which the "demise of Apple Computers was assured." There was the Two-guys-in-a-garage phase. There was the Their-market-share-is-shrinking phase, followed by the John-Scully-In-Steve-Jobs-Out phase, which handed off new definitions of failure to the How-much-faster-can-Gil-Amelio-destroy-it phase. It got so bad that at one point, sitting in a meeting with Regis McKenna, a celebrated Silicon Valley public relations man, I listened to him tell of how he advised Steve Jobs to simply license the Apple logo instead of running a company.

Of course, that was in the early 1990's. A lot has changed since, and most to Apple's benefit. Apple stock is way up. Its success is astounding. New products and services have revolutionized entire industries. Even non-tech people know and use iPods, iPhones, iTunes and maybe even iPads, not to mention a whole line of Apple desktop and laptop computers.

It's been a great ride for Apple. The happy band of rebels that take pride in "Thinking Different" have achieved success in just about every arena they've entered. Not to be overlooked, every one of those victories came the added-but-rarely-verbalized pleasure of sticking it to Microsoft.

But now we come to the point where Apple may have jumped the shark.

Every upstart brand, from rock bands to retailers, goes through it: Beginning as an underdog, the little David takes on the well-entrenched Goliaths. The early adopters -- half out of pure contrarianism and half because they just want to be cool -- bless the new brand with eager acceptance. They evangelize the new brand while castigating the huge, old, evil ones. Within a short time, their followings swell, usually embraced by throngs of young kids whose own agenda of pubescent rebellion fits snugly into the brand's.

Riding the Culture of Cool, the brand gains critical mass and begins to attract the attention of market makers and venture funds, who stoke the financial coals into a real, fire-breathing revenue machine. As the brand gets bigger, it generates more influence. Sales skyrocket. The brand goes mainstream. Everyone is happy.

And then, something happens. Imperceptibly, at first. But it's there nonetheless.

One day, at corporate headquarters, memos begin appearing dictating the rules of corporate culture. Lawsuits begin emanating from the legal department, defensive at first, but very soon pre-emptive, as the brand stakes its claim on its entrepreneurial turf. The brand then begins to lose its sense of self, feeding on a generation of cultural inbreeding which gradually mutates from camaraderie into full-blown paranoia, if not downright xenophobia. In its final stages, megalomania sets in, with the brand completely intoxicated with its own sense of power, success -- and hubris.

It can happen to anyone -- especially those without a clear and concise brand strategy. It happened to Microsoft. It happened to Yahoo. It's happened to Google. And if you watch carefully, you can see it happening to Apple.

You think Apple has a successful brand? You're right. You think Apple has a good brand? You're wrong. To this day, Apple has no articulation of their brand strategy. Yes, they're stock is at an all-time high. But gone are the days of the happy band of rebels. These days, Apple -- the brand associated with creativity and freedom -- arbitrarily decides which of its iPhone apps are morally offensive or inappropriate. Its mind set has become one of a fortressed company.

Think I'm wrong? Does the name Michael Jackson ring a bell?

To be sure, Apple's brand is not going away any time soon. To be just as sure, Apple's brand has jumped the shark, It's only a matter of time until the next David loads his slingshot.

The Tipping Point of Terror

2010-01-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

How many times have you heard someone casually toss out this question: "Are there really more gay people or does it just seem that way?" Usually, the responses fly back and forth, ranging in veracity from the utterly ridiculous to the somewhat plausible. My answer, however, is always the same:

Yes. Of course there are more gay people.

The reason there are more gay people, however, is not due to some dark, cabalistic conspiracy to steal your children and train them in the arts of homoerotic lifestyles. It has nothing to do with environment or genetics, either. The plain, simple reason there are more gay people is that there are simply more people in general. If you take a percentage of say, seven per cent of the population as being gay, then you naturally would find -- in real numbers -- more gay people in America's current population of 300 million than you would in, say, 1910, when its populace numbered closer to 100 million.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? That's because it is simple. Simple math. In the early 20th century, there might have been 7 million gay people; in 2010, that number would probably be closer to 21 million.

Our society is built on an economic system of enterprise in which growth is an essential element. Without growth, markets can't expand and the quantity of consumers stagnates. So to the American economy, specifically that of its human population, growth is a good thing.

But that growth comes at a huge social cost.

When a population is small, its social values are created, upheld and enforced by popular consensus. Let's face it: America's founding fathers left England because they wanted to live in a place where they could live by their own standards. It pretty much worked, as it always does in the initial phases of social creation: The smaller the group, the stronger its members' adherence to its morals and ethics.

But that usually doesn't last very long.

Unfortunately, while growth is the archangel of economic engines, it happens to be the arch enemy of social conformity. The larger a population grows, the more differences evolve among its members. A small group of homogenous English refugees, for example, rapidly morphed into a nation of millions, which in a century's time saw its differences culminate in The War Between the States.

Combine population growth with a capital-driven economic engine and something else happens over time: Its small criminal element begins to grow alongside all that prosperity. Even if criminals and/or terrorists were to represent only two percent of a population, in 2010, that would translate to something like six million criminals and/or terrorists in America alone.

But let's say I'm wrong. Let's say that criminal percentage is lower. Much lower. How about, um, one half of one per cent? That would make the count in 1910 roughly fifty thousand hard core criminals/terrorists. By 2010, however, that number would have grown to 150,000.

Why does that matter? Because when you look at the absolute numbers, you find an interesting phenomenon: In the early stages of growth, when a population is very small, its criminal element - in real numbers - is also very small. Which means criminal acts are rarer, which in turn creates the perception that those criminal acts are anomalies. At some point, however, the real number of criminals rises until their activity ceases to be an anomaly. There are simply too many criminals. There numbers are too large; their crimes become so regular as to no longer shock us.

Put them all together and what you've got is a world whose population has grown so large that its rebels, rejects and revolutionaries abound in numbers too big to ignore. They own a place in society because there simply too many of them now. And that means only on thing:

The old social rules no longer apply: These guys are here to stay.

Ours is no longer the safe, small world it once was. It never will be again. But not because one day some civilian airliners dive-bombed some skyscrapers or a suicide sociopath strapped some dynamite to his chest. The simple truth is that there are just too many people. And while terrorists as a percentage of the population may remain the same, their real numbers have grown alongside the rest of the world's population.

In real terms, our vulnerabilities may not be due as much to cultural and economic differences as they are to simple math.

What Chief Branding Officer's Don't Know

2009-10-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going to attempt to write this with as much sensitivity as I can muster. After all, it's not without foundation that I've been labeled as much for my brutality as irreverence. What can I say? I'm a guy who calls 'em like he sees 'em and sometimes I don't like what I see.

I recently had a conversation with a very high level branding officer of a very high profile Fortune 100 company. I don't want to step on any toes here, because truth be told, this person was very kind and extremely genuine. Totally well-meaning and, judging by the tenor of our conversation, a true believer in New Age marketing. For the uninitiated, New Age marketing is that which places a premium on engaging with end users through social media, surveys and megatons of research.

You know, stuff for which agencies are totally unaccountable.

The purpose of my conversation with this Chief Branding Officer (CBO) -- code-named Jordan to keep things anonymous -- was to find out if the company had any real brand strategy to speak of. Actually, the purpose was to find out if the company even had a brand strategy. Most don't, which is why I call them. It's what I do. But that's another story.

Jordan was very amiable, asking me why I would ask a question like that. "Because I'm on your web site right now, and for the life of me, all I see is a logo. Not even a tagline. No reason for anyone to choose your brand. Nothing. Is there a brand strategy?"

Keep in mind that I'm talking to a CBO -- the highest level there is in this type of corporation, which happens to be international in scope and service. A Wall Street darling. A major player in its field. And with all that, this is the answer I get:

"Our branding agency will be presenting the brand strategy to us in the coming weeks."

When I got back into my chair, I couldn't help but inquire as to who that agency might be. It was, as I suspected, a major international hack branding agency whose failing works I've previously lambasted here. Who else would have the cojones to string along a powerhouse client -- for years -- with absolutely no tangible deliverables while charging the client millions for the privilege?

I've grown accustomed to the millions-for-hackery branding scams that go on in the boardrooms of corporate America. But the real shocker was that Jordan couldn't even come close to expressing what the company's brand strategy was. Not even a hint. Jordan wouldn't even take a shot at it, which could only mean one thing: Jordan had absolutely no idea what a real brand strategy is. One look at the company's materials only reinforced my suspicion: Logos were everywhere, but no place could one find any message conveying why the company should be perceived as "the only solution to its prospects' problems."

I'm often asked about high-level, Fortune 1000 clients. "Aren't they more knowledgeable and sophisticated when it comes to branding?" The answer, sadly, is no. Not by a long shot. In fact, when it comes to branding -- real branding -- I'm consistently dismayed to find that in general, the bigger the name, the less they know about branding. But when you think about it, it makes sense:

When you're small and bucks are sparse, you do everything you can to establish and protect your market share. You make sure people know you for the right reasons, whenever and wherever you communicate with them, because losing market share means losing the food off your table. But when you're big -- really big -- you get fat. Really fat. You get so fat that you forget what it's like to be hungry; you pay people to be hungry for you. Instead of thriving on grit and determination, you order lattés and conference reports. You become detached from who you are and why you are because, win or lose, you know you can always fire the agency, but you'll never go hungry.

When you're that high up in the ivory tower, the denial gets so thick that you can barely see your way down to the golf course. It's happened to so many big brands that I've lost count. It's happening to brands like Kodak and Maytag and Yahoo and so many others I've written about here.

Now the long, slow decline will begin to take its toll on Jordan's Fortune 100 company. I suppose the good news is, as with all degeneratively diseased patients, Jordan won't even realize the impending doom until it's much too late -- and the stock in the pension plan is worthless. But Jordan doesn't believe that. The company, it would seem, is too big to fail.

Meg Whitman Stumbles Again

2009-10-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

If you live in California as I do, it's impossible to sit in your car, mired in traffic without listening to your radio. Sure, most of us are plugged into our iPods precisely because we hate what's on the radio, but after a while, even your favorite New Age trance music gets boring. Sometimes, you just gotta hear what's happening out there, beyond the wall of glass that divides you from the other morons crawling along the eight lane highway at five miles per hour.

Sometimes, you just gotta hear the news -- or at least what passes for news.

At this writing, California's richest ego-maniacs are beginning to jockey for position to become the state's next governor. So far, just about all of the announced candidates are from the northern part of the state, a nod to the monumental amount of wreckage left in the wake of the last southern-based governator's bid to fool all of the people all of the time. The first two candidates off the line are a millionaire and a billionaire, Gavin Newsom and Meg Whitman, respectively.

Sigh.

Gavin is the well-heeled mayor of San Francisco, whose ethics and morality qualify him to serve as a role model for all Californians, if you call sleeping with your best friend's wife "qualified." The big question is not whether Newsom supports gay marriage (he does) or can appeal to Californians in the south (Gavin who?), but whether he can stock enough hair-styling mousse to last throughout an arduous, mud-laden campaign. Nobody has ever accused Newsom of being a particularly deep or thoughtful person. Judging from his early campaign efforts, I see no reason why this would change any time soon.

Meg Whitman, on the other hand, may be able to do something in California that neither the Republican or Democratic party has been able to do since eighteenth century France: Govern a state while in complete and total denial. In case you don't know who she is, Meg was the CEO of EBay, fostering its growth until a series of bad decisions (can you say "Let's buy Skype!") suddenly angered enough shareholders to motivate her to switch careers. Fast.

You would think that being in Silicone Valley, Meg would be hip, slick and in touch with what's going on out there. Well, you'd be wrong. In an homage to Marie Antoinette, Whitman's first radio spots go directly at where California's problems aren't, proving she's just another rich candidate that's hopelessly out of touch.

Here. Take a minute and listen to this:

Wait a minute. Banks are failing. Insurance companies are defaulting. Bernie Madoff is rotting in prison for scamming billions. The media is hoisting Wall Street on its own petard -- and Meg Whitman is telling voters that what they need in the governor's office is another business person?

Wow. Talk about denial. Where is she getting her brand strategy, WalMart? I mean, this woman can buy just about anything she wants, which I suppose includes stupid advisors. Of course, you have to remember this is the Republican party, the party which drove John McCain's campaign into the earth with genius advice from the likes of Carly Fiorina (who nearly destroyed Hewlett-Packard). These are the same voices that shouted their approval for that-one-lipstick-away-from-the-Presidency pick, Sarah Palin.

Do I sound a bit too negative? Maybe so. After all, these are just the first two horses out of the gate.

Meet you at the glue factory.

Yahoo: Money for Nothing

2009-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to the folks at Yahoo. No matter how many chances they're given, they keep tripping over themselves. I've been watching Yahoo ever since they were knee-high to a modem. In that time, they've gone from the powerhouse of search engines to the Jerry Lewis of the internet.

It's companies like Kodak and Yahoo that make me such a strong believer in the economy of the United States. Where else could major, publicly-held institutions keep failing year after year and still bluff the public into investing even more millions into their eventual demise?

Yahoo is the typical modern American tragedy: A first mover in a category which it dominated for years, Yahoo watched in dismay as Google ate its lunch in record time. Under what could only be called the denial-driven dictatorship of Jerry Yang, Yahoo coughed up any and all dominance it once held by simply refusing to brand itself. Nobody knew why they should stay loyal to Yahoo, so nobody bothered to.

Nobody was quite as confused about Yahoo's brand as Terry Semel, the showbiz CEO who took over Yang's mission of driving the company into the ground. For some reason (speculated in past issues of this blog), Semel had visions of Yahoo becoming the center of internet entertainment. It was a grand, totally naive dream, however, that failed every single opportunity given to it. In the end, Semel left Yahoo users even more confused, and its shareholders even more destitute.

With Yang finally being given his walking papers, Carol Bartz assumed command of Yahoo's sinking ship. Suddenly, new hope abounded. Maybe, just maybe, Bartz could right the brand that never was. Unfortunately, the hope sank quickly as it became apparent that Bartz's dog and pony show was actually the same old song and dance. Even a joint program with Microsoft did little to enthuse anyone; two high-awareness non-brands joining together did nothing to raise the hopes -- or stock prices -- of either one.

Now comes word that Yahoo is launching a $100 million ad campaign -- glaringly mislabeled as a "re-branding" -- which further illustrates its incompetence:

Once again, the adage proves true: When you try to be something to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. Once again, by not articulating what Yahoo is, or why it should be "perceived as the only solution to its prospects' problems," Yahoo is spending millions to actually say nothing at all.

Am I missing something here? Does anything in these ads say anything at all to you about why you should use Yahoo? Or how Yahoo offers you something you can't find anywhere else? Is anyone at Yahoo aware that they could run these ads in Braille and they'd have the same effect?

A lot of people maintain I'm a harsh guy. I'm not a harsh guy. I'm just a guy who hates to see mediocrity and failure being passed off as professional success. I call 'em as I see 'em. And from what I see, Yahoo's future is looking bleaker by the minute.

Why Technology Never Trumps Humans

2009-08-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a good idea: Build a fun, flirty iPhone app that generates millions of custom pick-up lines on the fly, simply by tapping in specifics of a situation:

A user enters the place, time of day and characteristics of his intended date, hits a button and chooses a line ranging from clever to clumsy. And just to keep things under control, we allowed the user to choose between lines that are either Safe or Sexy.
The app is called LittleWingman and it tested through the roof.

It's an equal-opportunity application, generating pick-up lines regardless of gender or orientation, which means it spews out lines for men to women, women to men, men to men and women to women -- all on the fly. And because it contains no graphics, no profanity and no abusive language of any kind, we knew it was a cinch to gain approval from Apple's iTunes Store.

And it did. Eventually.

Nine gruelling months after it was originally submitted.

Why was LittleWingman constantly rejected? As it turns out, not for any specific objectionable words or graphics -- it doesn't have any. In fact, LittleWingman may be the first and only app ever rejected purely for the sexual ideas it stimulates in users' minds.

Are phrases like "tight-fitting jeans" and "legs" objectionable? Not to most people. But when LittleWingman composed them into the following line, iTunes had a big problem with it:

"I'm tonight's official legs inspector. I'm going to have to ask you to remove those tight-fitting jeans."

At first, we thought iTunes objected to words like "breasts" and "ass" -- two commonly used words in many other apps. So we replaced those with "casabas" and "tush," only to be rejected again. Within a week or two, the same canned message came back with the same canned rejection:

At 5:51 PM -0800 3/5/09, devprograms@apple.com wrote:
Thank you for submitting LittleWingman to the App Store. We've reviewed LittleWingman again and determined that we still cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:
"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."
If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that LittleWingman does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

We combed through the content again, looking for any profanity or objectionable content. But we couldn't find any, because there wasn't any. It was the application that was writing the content by itself, based on what the user had chosen.
For example, LittleWingman generated this line for user who finds herself at a wedding:

"Think any of the rabbis at this ceremony can lend us some personal lubricants?"

Random? Funny? Hardly objectionable as a flushing toilet, upskirt shots or jiggling breasts you'll find in other iPhone applications, yet iTunes rejected that generated line flat out.

The correspondence flew back and forth, with LittleWingman getting rejected for combining innocent phrases like "kiss" with innocent body parts like "lips" into pick-up lines that resulted wonderfully appealing ideas as to what things people might actually kiss with their lips.

Each time, the App Store returned the same canned response, with no guidance as to fixing the problem, mainly because there was no problem there to fix. Unlike the now-banned "baby shaker" app, LittleWingman was pure, positive pick-up lines -- and healthy ones, at that.

At six months, we thought we had a breakthrough: iPhone 3.0's 17+ adult rating was just the ticket to get us past our non-existent objectionable content. We re-submitted. And got rejected. Again.

The maddening, automated responses were finally disrupted when, after seven months, a real, breathing App Store human being actually left a voicemail at our offices. We began the dialogue which, two months later, resulted in LittleWingman being approved -- with only the two word changes from its original submission. And that, as it turns out, is the main problem with technology: it lacks human judgment, which cost us time, energy -- and nine months' of sales.

It's been nine months of nuttiness. But at least now the world doesn't have to struggle with how to approach that blonde at the end of the bar.

You can download LittleWingman directly from Apple's iTunes Store by clicking this link.

Why We Stimulate Cars & Banks

2009-08-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

No matter where I go, it seems as if everyone is complaining about something. Sometimes it's the weather. Sometimes it's relationships. Somewhere along the line, complaining seems to have replaced baseball as our national pastime. If you're a reader of this blog, you may recall that I'm on record that this recession, the deepest economic ditch since the Great Depression, will not last nearly as long as any of the talking heads have predicted. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, the conditions under which we find ourselves are profoundly different than any other economic setback this country has ever experienced. The speed of communications today renders many of the problems -- and their solutions -- practically obsolete. This time around, everything is happening for different reasons.

In years past, for example, restoration of trust and faith in the financial market would have taken years. Months to develop recovery programs, months to approve them, months to announce them and months to execute with no guarantee of success or failure.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, the quickest means of announcing recovery programs was radio -- and not everyone had one. The next quickest was print -- and not everyone read them. While it's true that bad news travels fast, prior to the Digital Age, all news traveled slowly, which meant reaction times -- in fact, reactions themselves -- occurred and behaved according to totally different algorithms. As late as the 1980's, most stock trades were performed by real humans. Slow humans. And the slower they were, the more time there was for doubt and risk.

Today, one click sends the order that joins millions of others in nanoseconds, not days. We know the reactions to a political or financial program within minutes of its announcement. We see the results of capital infusions within hours. Things move faster than they ever have.

And that's the main reason why this recession is going to evaporate a lot faster than your cable news talking head would have you believe.

A second reason why this recession is like no other is that its root cause isn't a mystery. There's only one reason for the markets collapsing: a shortage of cash. When there's no cash, nobody can borrow. When nobody can borrow, nobody can pay. When nobody can pay, people lose their jobs. The solution is as simple as the problem: Someone has to lend the system money to prime the pump with the cash that makes things work. The only entity that can do that is the government, who is also the only entity able to create and administer the recovery programs we have.

Which leaves me wondering why everyone is complaining so much. Sure, it's easy to dismiss the efforts required of economic recovery with a cavalier remark. But you never hear any of the whiners come up with a plan as entertaining as their soundbytes, a favorite of which seems to be "Why are the banks and car companies getting the money?"

The answer is pretty basic: Because that's where the money does the most good, for the most people in the least amount of time.

The fundamental reason why the recovery is going to work a lot faster than you'd expect is that the Obama administration correctly understands that it takes money to make money. If you believe that America -- and the world's -- economy is driven by finance, you have to empower the professionals to distribute it to the enterprises that require it. That means you pay the professionals whatever they need to get the money into the system as efficiently as possible. Yes, these are many of the same creeps and criminals that brought the system down the first time. But think about it: who else would you have doing the job, the government? A postal worker? A second lieutenant from the Marines? In times of crises, you don't bring in neophytes. You bring in professionals who know how to get the job done -- and know you're watching their every move.

So the first chunk of money has to go to the guys whose job it is to get the money out there. And that's why the banks are getting $385 billion (at last count).

Of course, that doesn't stop the malcontents from crying about the auto industry. Why should they be rescued? Also a simple answer: Cars require a whole bunch of people and equipment to make the business go.

Think about just one part of your car: the lowly seat belt. A factory has to weave the belt material. Someone has to design the strap, and sample the various weave patterns which they then have to test for strength. They have to import raw materials. Someone has to select the proper fibers and then submit it for safety testing. A different company has to design the buckle, complete with blueprints. They not only have to import raw materials, they have to fabricate the machinery for production to press the metal components for the buckle. that buckle gets tested, too. Someone has to pay the labor to attach the buckles to the straps. Someone has to inspect the assembly. Someone has to clean the parts and pack the proper number of proper lengths of belts into the proper shipping containers, while someone else has to make sure the shipment is forwarded to the proper place at the proper time. And so on.

And this is just for the friggin' seat belt. The same thing happens for gas pedals, door locks, side mirrors, shift knobs and everything else you can see -- and not see -- in and on the car you drive. Cars have thousands of components and assemblies, whose production is often contracted out to thousands of smaller businesses throughout the world that employ millions of people. There are paint manufacturers, lubricant suppliers, fasteners, coils and filter vendors. The list is almost as endless as the names of the employees on these companies' payrolls.
Virtually no other industry, at least to my knowledge, employs so many people in so many ways as does the auto industry. And I haven't even gotten to the aftermarket folks. Remember all those steering wheel covers and custom spinners with the sixteen inch rims? Well, small companies have to manufacture and assemble all the parts for those, too.

If you're going to prime the economy's pump, you've got to get the money out there fast, where it will do the most good. That means banks and cars.

And if you think I'm kidding, check the chart out for yourself. Look at the stock prices for Citibank, Bank of America and just about every other major financial survivor since the depth of the recession in February, 2009. Notice a pattern? Wake up, you whiners. Jump on the wagon and ride this one to the recovery. It's going to be here sooner than you think.

Sarah Palin is the new Billy Mays

2009-07-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

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.

The Bernie Madoff of Brands

2009-03-03T23:35:00.000-08:00

A day doesn't go by when someone, somewhere corrupts the notion of branding. I should know. I live the stuff. I have to deal with designers who really think that selecting a new font constitutes re-branding. I have to endure warmed-over ad agency rejects who peddle new campaigns to clients under the guise of increasing brand awareness.

Charlatans though they may be, none can quite match the sheer larceny that passes for branding as created and perpetrated on the public by Peter Arnell.

In this day of Bernie Madoff, AIG, GM, Chrysler and a host of failing banks, I suppose the average man on the street doesn't care much about Peter Arnell or even know who he is. But I'm a branding guy. I care. Because he's the man that's crippling the branding industry much in the way Madoff has scorched Wall Street.

Let me begin by saying I don't know Arnell personally. He might be a great guy. But there are those who think Robert Nardelli is a sweetheart despite nearly tanking Home Depot as its CEO. What I do know about Arnell is that he's a soft-spoken guy who runs a multi-million dollar design firm that passes itself off as a branding agency. You may know some of his clients. And if you don't, allow me to introduce you to a few:

Pepsi is one of Arnell's clients for whom he designed a new logo. That the logo communicates no brand strategy would be criminal enough, if it weren't for the million dollar fees the agency charged to Pepsi for such a weak mark. Add to that the agency's now much-ridiculed, over-indulgent and just plain stupid supporting document (download the PDF for yourself) and you've got the makings of a modern day pirate.

Of course, everyone is entitled to one misstep. But Arnell didn't stop there. In a stunning display of mediocrity, his company re-branded -- in fact, re-packaged Tropicana's orange juice package and did such a horrible job that not only did the public mistake it for the local store's generic juice, the client reversed itself and pulled the design after spending millions on design fees, production and distribution.

Can you imagine what a million dollar designer would have to say for himself after this kind of thing? No? Well, you don't have to. Here's Arnell himself, attempting to explain what he was trying to do with his Tropicana design:

Okay, you tell me. Does any of that makes sense? Squeezing the cap relating to the emotional value of a mother hugging her kids? I'm not sure what he was smoking at the time, but it's a fair bet he must have passed plenty of it around for the chiefs of Tropicana to buy into it.

Arnell isn't alone. The masterminds behind Gatorade's recent switch to calling itself G are just as guilty. After years of running indecipherable television spots, I suppose the agency couldn't keep itself from following suit with the packaging. Either that, or none of the designers felt the market was literate enough to actually read the entire brand name on the label. Oh, to be a fly on the wall the day the account execs pitched the boys at Gatorade:

"Think of it, fellas -- we'll own the letter G!"

Almost as inspiring as when United Parcel Service embarked on their legendary quest to own the color brown. And in case you were wondering, yes, that, too, earned a million dollar payday.

You think insurance companies taking billion dollar bailouts is bad? Can't fathom how big time banks go belly up? Still not certain why American auto companies burn cash like kindling?

It's not hard to figure out. There's no accountability. The high-flying few have ruined it for the rest of us. There are bankers out there who are the backbone of their communities. But we'll never see them, because their shining points of lights barely twinkle in the shadows of mediocre monoliths.

Mediocrity, it seems, is now the law of the land. Sadly, it's as true in the branding world as anyplace else.

Meg Whitman's Losing Bid

2009-02-16T14:32:00.000-08:00

Living as I do in California, I'm acutely aware of what the world thinks of Californians. I know that the other 49 states snicker and gossip about the disproportionate amount of attention the media showers on the Golden State. Like jealous siblings, other states begrudge us our successes and rejoice in our failures.

Being the honest guy that I am, I can't say that I really blame them. The taxes are mostly high. The breasts are mostly silicone. And the politicians are mostly, well, strange. Where else but California would voters seat a rich movie actor with no political acumen as governor? When he rode into office on the wave of discontent that flushed out former governor Gray Davis, Arnold Schwartzenegger flexed for the cameras, boasting about how he was going to kick some ass in Sacramento.

Now, saddled with a $42 billion budget gap and the state flat on its financial back, fans aren't so sure they made the right choice. Which happens to be terrific timing, considering that the first announced Republican contender for Schwartzenegger's job went public recently. And Meg Whitman, former CEO of EBay, says she's ready to rock.

I personally have no axe to grind with Whitman. I have real issues with her handlers, however, who seem to be hopelessly out of touch with the voting public.

In the first place, Whitman is a billionaire CEO. Read the paper lately? Have you found any good press about billionaire CEO's in say, the last three years? Corporations are dropping like flies while CEO's earn the wrath of just about everyone for million dollar bonuses -- and this is how they merchandise her?

Strike one.

Another issue dooming Whitman's brand is her stand on gay marriage. Kinda against it, but kinda for it: she likes civil unions, opposes gay marriages, but thinks the gay marriages that have been performed deserve to stay valid. Right. Got it. Her favorite color is plaid, on an issue that could be the most volatile of the coming election. An issue that Democrat Jerry Brown has made no bones about taking to center stage.

Strike two.

Did I mention how vain Californians are? Have you noticed that our governor got elected because he was a movie star? Maybe capped teeth, styled hair and a cinched waistline don't mean anything to you, but on the west coast, they're absolutely essential to getting a choice table at a restaurant -- you think claiming the governor's title is any different? Hey, if Hillary Clinton could undergo a makeover, you'd think that Meg's handlers would package her up a tad more professionally. Think I'm kidding?

Ever watch the Kennedy Nixon debates from the 1960's? Uh huh. Don't tell me that looks don't count.

Strike three. You're out.

Yeah, sure, there's the subject of gender. Meg is female, but that's no big deal. Both California senators are female, so that's no saving grace when she's facing all those other negatives without the campaign having even started.

Like I said, I have no idea if Whitman would make a good governor. I do have a suspicion that judging from her current brand image, she's not really good at selecting handlers. But then, she's Meg Whitman from EBay. Maybe she's using the lowest bidders.

Ginsburg Launches Obama Era

2009-02-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

I'm fond of telling people that "life is a branding problem." Branding changes history. Let's face it, whether you're a lord of the Dark Ages converting legions of serfs to Christianity or Procter & Gamble converting legions of housewives to laundry detergent, you're still telling everyone to use your product and wear your logo. History, to a large degree, is determined by brand association and conversion.

Armies wear insignias. Automobiles wear hood ornaments. But you'd be wrong to assume that brand association occurs merely in the visual world. Brands flourish in the conceptual world, too. And a large component of a brand's viability is timing. Such is the case of the new era of "brand Obama," which many mistakenly believe occurred in November of 2008.

While it's true that Barack Obama's somewhat vague theories of change were enthusiastically embraced by the American voting public in November, 2008, the truth is that nothing of substance really occurred that day. Symbolic as it was, the next day was business as usual in the Bush administration. The excitement throughout the country was palpable, though, and lingered until the next theoretical target date: Inauguration Day.

On January 20, 2009, Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. Millions of onlookers braved the fierce frigidity of Washington, D.C. to witness the spectacle. Millions more tearfully viewed it on television. It was a great moment for the country. A great moment in history. But that's all it really was. A great moment, perhaps, but not the true beginning of the Obama era.

I can't help it. I'm a branding guy, but I'm a results-driven branding guy.

From where I sit, the true beginning of the Obama legacy actually begins on February, 5, 2009, the day Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced she'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Although Justice Ginsburg has survived a previous bout with cancer, and this occurrence was diagnosed early, her prospects at this point are -- at the very least -- going to make it difficult for her to fulfill her obligations. As anyone who knows a cancer patient can tell you, the treatments often drain the patient of energy and drive. It often sidelines them from work.

Which, from a branding perspective, means Obama got elected just in time.

Brand Obama's first great opportunity for real change will not come in the form of a stimulus package. Or a social program. Or a deal that rebuilds the country's roads and bridges. Obama's legacy of change will stem from the very real, inevitable, history-altering occasion on which he appoints Justice Ginsburg's replacement. Too many voters forget that prior to November, 2008, the Supreme Court was teetering dangerously toward a one-sided viewpoint on just about every issue brought for its consideration. Had John McCain been elected, the ensuing replacement justices would have tipped the balance of a branch of government -- designed to be impartial -- into a far-right dominance that would have lasted at least one generation and possibly longer.

So while everyone else seems to be missing the boat and silk-screening images of the President onto everything that soaks up ink, the true effect of "brand Obama" begins on February 5, 2009. The day America woke up -- hopefully -- to realize just how close it came to seeing its brand of justice go over the cliff.

Expectations of Obama

2009-01-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

The new day everyone has been expecting has finally arrived. Personally, I suspect that even the most ardent Bush/Cheney supporters were, for the most part, ready to see them go. Enough was enough. But now we've got a new guy in the driver's seat. And there's a big branding lesson to be learned.

More than anything else, branding is about setting expectations. Contrary to what most gurus and pundits tell you, you never let the consumer set the expectations of your brand. You set them. That way, you can control what you can and cannot deliver. You control what you can and cannot promise. When you control expectations of your brand, people can't make up their own expectations of you. As a result, more people end up having their expectations of your brand fulfilled.

Of course, when you fail to articulate those expectations, things can go sideways.

Take race, for example. Many people felt that Obama's being half-black would prevent him from winning the presidency. As it turns out, it had no effect and that's a good thing. What's not a good thing is the public's misinterpreting Obama's political victory as the eradication of racism.

If anything, the racial victory here might signal the end of politically correct tokenism, which has plagued this country since the mid-twentieth century. The oddly placed black guy at the all-white country club and the carefully-cast wheelchair-bound athlete in the lifestyle montage are, hopefully, a thing of the past now that an American of African heritage has become the leader of the most powerful, freedom-loving nation on the planet.

Maybe now we can get by all the apologies and start working as the proverbial team. But I'm concerned that expectations have gone awry, there, too.

While Obama's message of inclusion has been generally well-received, the bad news is that it's been largely misread by the public as there's something in it for me, as opposed to none of you is going to escape the pain. And when people's individual expectations of inclusion don't match Obama's, boy are you going to hear about it.

Look, I'm a consultant. I know as well as anyone that when you're hired to fix a situation, the chances of success are pretty good, because there's nowhere else to go but up. But how well you eventually do depends on how good you are, along with how well you've set your clients' expectations so that they can tell how well you've done. Obama and Biden have a huge mess to clean up. I just hope America's expectations are in line with theirs.

Right now, everyone's feeling pretty good. The question is how well everyone feels after they wake up the morning after the Inaugural Ball.

Great Moments in History

2009-01-10T09:03:00.000-08:00

Israel Finally Spins it Right

2009-01-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Years ago, when someone asked me what would be my dream client for branding, I responded in an instant: "Lebanon." I'd get this quizzical look, followed by the response, "Really? What do they make?" I was, of course, talking about the country of Lebanon, which was -- and still is -- perfectly positioned for re-branding. The last three generations only know cities like Beirut as bombed-out, war-torn spoils infested with terrorists. But there was a time when Beirut was the jewel of the Mediterranean.

Lots of potential there. Unfortunately, lots of radical militants, too, so the assignment still hasn't arrived in my In Box.

I bring this up because since that conversation, the whole Middle East situation has become increasingly influenced by media spin. Sure, there's always been war propaganda, but most of the previous stuff was limited to direct disinformation: leaflet bombings and radio broadcasts aimed mostly at demoralizing enemy combatants. Today, it's a whole different story. Thanks to technology, enemies no longer need focus on soldiers on the battlefield, or even the innocent citizens through whose neighborhoods those soldiers patrol. They simply create and post their cases to the internet for everyone to see.

Without question, the masters of internet spin have been radical muslim and Palestinian militants. Forget your politics. I don't care which side of the conflict you support. The fact is that a tiny, almost microscopic faction has succeeded in tweaking the planet's nose and spinning its case so successfully as to dominate world attention for their cause.

That's good news for the power of the internet. Bad news if you don't know how to spin it for yourself.

The genius of radical muslim and Palestinian militants has not been limited to their use of the internet alone. It begins with an amazing use of tools like Photoshop and video editing tools, giving them the ability to control the tone, message and apparent legitimacy of their data -- sometimes altering the data to accommodate their own viewpoints. Beyond that, they are fast with their tools. They flood the air waves and web sites with instantly downloadable clips that are easy for people to pass along -- never bothering to check the veracity of what they download.

That's pretty slick. And effective. Because the combination of tools and tactics gives the radical muslim and Palestinian militant movements that critical air of transparency that unknowing and unsophisticated folks accept as truth. And before you jump all over me for appearing biased, let me just say that I know everyone does it. I'm just lauding the guys who do it best.

Well, let me take some of that back. Everyone doesn't do it. Take Israel, for example. For decades, the Israelis have won the ground and air battles, but lost the propaganda wars because they continued to shroud their tactics in secrecy, opening up only when pressed hard to do so by the public. This tactic has kept Israel on the defensive for years, playing a defensive strategy in the media and world courts.

No more. Israel has finally wised up. With the retaliatory responses in Gaza, Israel has pro-actively made its case to the world on the web and everywhere else. And it's working. With hours of its actions, the Israel Defense Forces post videos of raids on YouTube, pre-empting any Palestinian rumors, myths or charges before they can be broadcast. The Israeli Defense Ministry has even gone so far as to create its own Twitter accounts, in order to respond to anyone, anywhere, any time.

Sort of like knocking out your boxing opponent during the referee's instructions.

Look, I'm just a branding consultant. And Consultant's Hell is defined as "supplying answers to clients who never implement them." Someone has given Israel the answers and Israel has finally listened.

Anyone have Lebanon's phone number?

Saturn Orbits the Drain

2008-12-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

What can you say about the state of the American automotive industry other than it being a gargantuan exercise in denial? As far back as the 1970's, when the arab oil embargo ignited the country's interest in fuel efficiency, American car manufacturers have done everything they can to ignore reality, preferring instead to play golf while their markets deteriorated.

Now, sadly, body parts of all three car makers lie strewn about the economy. Oldsmobile is gone. Plymouth is poof. And all of American Motors brands, save Jeep, were buried long ago. Apparently, the next major brand with its head on the block is Saturn, which is too bad, because General Motors had long been touting it as "a different kind of car...a different kind of car company."

As it turns out, Saturn was anything but a different kind of anything, subject to the same kinds of denial and bloat that are bringing the Not So Big Three down to their knees. And that's really too bad, considering that Saturn could have been -- should have been -- the hallmark of a new era for GM. The country had been waiting for a new kind of American car since 1973 -- longer than most of you reading this have been alive. Even at that time, the Japanese knew what was up. Prior to 1973, Datsun (now Nissan), Toyota, Mazda, Subaru and others were barely a blip on the automotive radar.

Now, they own the radar.

I might add that the Japanese didn't succeed primarily because they made better machines. Look back and you'll find plenty of Mazdas that averaged 10 miles per gallon and Toyotas whose transmissions dropped out. No, the real reason why Japan succeeded is that American automobiles failed, becoming progressively worse in quality and responsiveness to the public's wants and needs.

In other words, more whistling past the junkyard.

Saturn was supposed to change all that. But it didn't, mainly because GM treated its "new" concept with its "business as usual" attitude. In case you're wondering how such highly paid incompetents could mismanage billions of dollars over decades, you have to look long and hard at the one thing they don't like to look at: reality.

The reality of the situation is that the chief executives of these companies are no smarter than you or me. In fact, they're not terribly bright at all. Oh, they look smart in their expensive suits and such. But believe me, there's not a lot of horsepower in those engines. Secluded in their old white boy networks, they reinforce each others' psychoses, assuring each other that there simply has to be more fat in the land on which they can live. Don't believe me? Then ask yourself how anyone in his right mind could hire Robert Nardelli as CEO of Chrysler.

Nardelli, as I've written here previously, is the clown prince of mismanagement, gaining just about all of his employment through the old boy favor network. Never one to leave a company better than he found it, it was Nardelli who nearly drove a once hugely-profitable Home Depot into the ground -- and then left with a $210 million severance package.

Just how dumb are these managers? Well, the firm that privatized Chrylser (itself a dubious decision) brought Nardelli aboard to "turn Chrysler around." Amazing. That's like hiring Osama bin Laden to conduct Yom Kippur services. Chrysler got what it paid for, though. And there's Nardelli, sitting in a crater across from Congressional bean counters, begging for money.

So Saturn, the brand that should have -- and could have -- gotten the American auto market back on the road, will likely get its plug pulled, while the guys whose plugs should have been pulled will live to see another day. Probably at another American company who can't get enough of that good old American Old Boy Ineptitude.

Recession Ends -- or Maybe Not

2008-12-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

As America leads the way into the economic dumper, a host of whiners continue to cry out into the night, bemoaning the fact that things just aren't what they used to be. No, things definitely are not what they used to be -- and for good reason. Old white men, as we have seen, no longer enjoy a stranglehold on positions of status and leadership. The game's open to just about everyone now and while that may upset traditionalists, those same traditionalists just have to accept that if old, white men were still capable of genuine leadership, the 44th president of the United States would be John McCain.

In much the same vein, I hear lots of folks complaining about the demise of the newspaper as a media source of information. "The internet has taken over!" they wail, as publications like The Los Angeles Times continue to wither away on newsstands. Once great and proud, the Times barely resembles its former self. Thin, gaunt, with fewer pages and even fewer real news stories, the Times increasingly reminds one of a sickly patient who refuses to eat regardless of how much food is placed in front of him.

The Los Angeles Times, and papers like it, are in fact dying. And for good reason: It's not the internet at all. They simply suck at delivering the news.

The stewards of the Times, much like the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdiz have been so depressed, so unfocused and so reckless in their management of the Times that they've actually forgotten what a newspaper is supposed to do: Deliver independent perspective and impartial reporting of news events. Instead, like so many other devolved institutions, the Times no longer reports as much as it regurgitates information.

And most of its expectorant isn't news at all, as evidenced by the headline dated December 2, 2008:

"Recession Could Last Until 2010." How's that for a non-news story? Look closely and you'll find absolutely nothing factual -- or even close to factual -- in that headline. The recession could last until 2010? Okay, does that mean the recession might not last until 2010? Or that it could end next Tuesday, say about two thirty-ish?

I supposed I could accept this kind of inanity if it were produced by sixth grade elementary students, except for the fact that even sixth grade elementary students have the same resources from which they draw their news as does the Times: the internet. The Times has lost focus on its own brand; what it once was and no longer can sustain. It's a classic example of Caretaker Management Syndrome, where the descendants of the founder know only his fortune without ever knowing how he created it.

That's the reason why newspapers across the land are failing, by the way. It's a branding thing. We all still expect the curmudgeonly, sardonic, skeptical newspaperman to tilt his hat back on his head and clack out his scoop with a cigarette dangling from his lip. We want to believe he's out there, fighting for the common man, driven to expose the truth to a freedom-loving society.

Well, that was then. This is now. And these days, all you get for your home delivery is rehashed, groundless speculations that serve no purpose other than to sensationalize rumors and panic the public. And even then, they never do their own digging or support their stories with hard, cold facts. Everything is hedged, either for fear of attracting a too-hungry lawyer or in-house accountant.

No wonder so many people have stopped subscribing. If they can get the same garbage over cable television or the internet, they can get it all for free, in vibrant living color -- and if they're really lucky, from a really stacked blonde in a tight angora sweater.

McCain as Obama's Defense Secretary

2008-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

I've been on this planet a long time now. Long enough to notice how rarely the stars all line up in perfect harmony, converging to produce a fate that more romantic writers term "destiny." Such is the case with America's 44th president, Barak Obama. I doubt that anyone, anywhere could have more gracefully surfed the ups and downs of current events and landed in the Oval Office without getting his feet wet. The election of 2008 was, in common parlance, the perfect political storm.

I could cite all kinds of reasons why and how Obama managed to ace each challenge of the campaign. In the end, however, it all boiled down to one simple strategy: I'm not Bush. The I'm Not Bush strategy fared well on two platforms: First, it provided the foundation for Obama's message of change. Second, it allowed him to point to John McCain, who as a Republican, found it much more difficult to scrape George W. Bush from the bottom of his shoe.

The McCain/Palin ticket was so weighed down by its association with the Bush administration, that all Senator Joe Biden had to do in the Vice Presidential debate was stand there and be a class act. Which was tough, considering how tempting it must have been to cut Sarah Pailin off at the knees. But like Obama, Biden knew he needed to do nothing more than stand there while Palin self-destructed.

While media pundits belabor the Herculean economic tasks set before Obama, none of them seem to be aware of the president-elect's penchant for living under a lucky star. With a nation in turmoil and an economy tanking, the media has chosen to play down Obama's secondary message to the American public, that being unification. They shouldn't. Because unification is, I suspect, going to be the big brand strategy of the Obama administration. Remember how he opined that we were not red states, not blue states, but the United States? Well, folks, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Rumors may be flying about Hillary Clinton as Obama's Secretary of State, but I suspect there are even bigger, more media-stunning events in the offing. And one of the biggest I can think of would be Obama naming John McCain as his Secretary of Defense. Sound obtuse? Do the math and see if it adds up for you.

In the first place, nothing unifies a group more than the victor choosing to embrace his opponent rather than vanquish him. Obama, who's viewed as a class act by the general populace, would gain grandly by offering his former rival a seat at the Round Table. You want a guy to put his money where his mouth is? This would be the move.

Secondly, throughout the campaign, Obama's position was that McCain was a good soldier, but that a president needed to be more than that. Fine. Now he has a good soldier acting as the soldier in charge of all the other soldiers. Nice.

Third, for all those folks who thought Obama would be soft on military issues, placing McCain at the top of Defense immediately assures the military sector that they've got a friend in the Obama administration. Everyone from those uniformed boys and girls on foreign front lines to contractors cranking out bombers and missiles will breathe a sigh of relief knowing that one of their own is running the show.

Fourth, what better way to show the rest of the world that Americans are united in their purpose and passions, than to create a team that really can rise above partisanship for the greater good of its country? Do you see any Shiites and Sunnis breaking bread and forming any kind of working team in Iraq or anywhere else? Me neither. If McCain were to join Obama's cabinet as Secretary of Defense, the world would learn in one quick lesson that Americans fight it out, then stick together. A lesson that governments throughout the world need to hear after eight years of Bush/Cheney-inspired factionalism.

Finally, appointing McCain as Secretary of Defense would achieve one more goal that Obama has enjoyed throughout his campaign: A spectacular event like this -- naming a formal rival to a cabinet post -- has never been done before as far as I know. The media value alone is worth it.

Is there a downside to offering McCain the Defense post? Only one I can think of: It may prompt Sarah Palin to nag for a post of her own. Commissioner of Moose Hunting would be nice.

Obama as the new Reagan

2008-11-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

Now that the election is finally over, you've got yourself one happy branding guy. Maybe now we can get back to real business, turning our attention to making our lives better, as opposed to burning away productive time on idle chatter. Among the last issues to be reconciled is what impact Obama's election will have on the image of the United States of America.

It's a good question. And here's my take on it:

The news is all good for Obama, because it's the perception of the United States that requires the most repair. Whether or not anyone agrees or disagrees with Bush/Cheney policies, the election of Obama proves to the rest of the world that the people of the United States are no longer supporters of Bush policies and that to a large extent, American citizens have been misrepresented by Bush and Cheney for many years (a feat made possible only by the dearth of able, alternative Democrats).

In other words, while American strength remains, the Culture of Fear is, for the most part, over.

One of the main reasons why Obama won -- and the Republicans lost -- so decisively is that Bush and Cheney (like so many corporate brand managers) allowed the brand of Reagan Republicanism to wither and die. In 1980, Republicanism was the voice of optimism, largely based on the failures of Jimmy Carter's disastrous administration. That optimism, like Obama's, was real and resonant. It was so powerful, in fact, that Reagan himself penned his own epitaph, which is engraved on his gravestone at the Reagan Museum:

"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

Not exactly what the nation equates with Republicans, is it? Well, the sentiment that propelled Ronald Reagan is exactly the same as those that helped Obama connect with the masses. A new start. A breath of fresh air. A respite from crippling fear and ominous threats.

This is the new brand strategy that Obama can bring to the world. As such, this new perception of the United States should provide all countries a new opportunity, a clean slate if you will, to approach the USA's newer, more genial mind set. Even long-standing enemies of America will no longer have the "racist white imperialist" propaganda at their disposal.

Of course, that doesn't mean the man won't be tested -- and sooner than you think.

I'm betting that Obama's first test with the international community will likely be his reaction to a pre-emptive strike by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities. World leaders, including heads of many arab states, who are sitting idly by and waiting for someone to do something about Iran's growing nuclear capabilities, will look to Obama for his endorsement or condemnation of the action.

Should this occur, Obama should endorse the action as a stabilization move in that region, a move which arab countries would likely favor. Should this scenario unfold in this manner, it will go a long way toward stabilizing the middle east. Both Israel and its arab neighbors will understand that Obama is more like Reagan in another, more important way:

He believes in peace through strength.

Windows 7, Microsoft 0

2008-10-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

The newspapers are filled with the story. The airwaves are saturated with the drama. Everywhere you look, the story of the century is about to drop on us. You know, the story? THE STORY? No, not that little presidential election thing. Not the global recession. I'm talking about the real scoop of the century:

Microsoft's unveiling of Windows 7. Yawn.

Just how deep into denial does one have to be to even begin hinting at a major product launch at a time when everyone's mind is on survival and nobody's future is certain? About as deep as our friends from Redmond, who believe that Windows 7 is akin to the Second Coming, or more appropriately, its Seventh Coming.

What makes this story so interesting is that Microsoft is a brand that's never really been a brand. Sure, it's a very successful company, but as I've written previously, there's no brand there. Even Microsoft fans can't agree on why Microsoft is their brand of choice, unless you corner them in a dark alley, where they'll admit they use the stuff because everyone else does. That's not brand loyalty. That's brand coercion.

More proof that Microsoft is an identity with no concept of brand was revealed as the behemoth introduced its successor to Vista, ignobly christened Windows 7 . What's wrong with that name, you may ask? Plenty, unless you're a company that's grown so large and so imposing as to believe it can function autonomously, totally without regard for the rest of the world's opinion.

In the first place, the nomenclature deviates wildly from its predecessor's, namely, the ill-fated Vista. Microsoft, never one to publicly admit its gaffes, still hasn't copped to the less-than-ecstatic market embrace of Vista. What it has done is decide to name the new product with absolutely no reference to Vista, a passively aggressive nod to the notion that Vista's performance was something less than stellar. When you're really happy with a branded product, you launch line extensions the same way a proud papa names his sons: There's Dad, Dad Junior, Dad the Third, and so forth. Hey, if it can work for the Kings of England, it can work for software.

But the dopiness doesn't stop there. While good product names are always born from good branding strategies, the converse is also true: Horrible names hail from non-existent brand strategies. Such is the case with Windows 7. If you doubt that, try asking anyone -- including Microsoft users -- if they recall Windows 6. Or Windows 5. You're likely to get that puzzled dog expression, because nobody recalls them. But Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, rationalizes the name by gazing deeply into its own navel and pulling out the fact that the system is indeed the seventh incarnation of the Windows platform.

Anyone care? I doubt it. More to the point, does the name carry any significant importance to anyone, about anything, other than the Microsoft honchos?

If you really want to know how Windows 7 got its name, I can venture a pretty good guess: There they were, standing in front of a focus group -- probably many focus groups -- asking the participants questions like, "What kind of feelings do you have about Windows? About Vista?" And then they asked the question they hated themselves for asking:

"Who does a good job of naming their software?"

You can guess whose name came out on top: Apple. With their System 6, System 7, System 8, System 9 -- and in a sensible progression that conveyed the dramatic shift of platforms -- OS X. Once again, Microsoft, arguably one of the world's largest and most successful companies found itself playing catch-up to a competitor who can barely claim a 7% share of market.

Makes you really look forward to Windows 8, doesn't it?

Bush's Socialism Shortens the Recession

2008-10-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

I know I'm just a branding guy, but you have to remember that a big part of branding is about the linkage between how the brand is perceived and what the brand delivers . I constantly tell my clients that "Brand is not product. Brand is brand. Products are proof of what the brand promises.

Which leaves me somewhat confused regarding everyone's misperception of what Socialism actually is and is not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer that the business of America is business. As far as I'm concerned, if General Motors and Bank of America go down, you might as well use your dollar bills for kindling after the power goes out. The American economy is way too important to the entire planet to be allowed to falter and die. The global economy is, to the chagrin of some, far more global than anyone really cared to admit. It being the most coveted market in the world, if the United States goes down, it takes the fortunes of every off-shore enterprise with it. Flushed along with your domestic job are thousands of foreign dependents, knocking out the foundations of other countries' economies, the strongest of which barely hold their own even in good times.

So it makes sense to me to help things along. Just as a father instills character in his kids by providing matching funds for their cars instead of simply buying them, I see no real issue with bolstering support for a national economy that drives the international economy. I especially have no problem when (as has happened in the past) the government program turns a modest profit for its taxpayers. What could be more capitalistic than that?

Yet there are Conservatives out there who object to the program as Socialism. In one sweeping move, they decry any means of injecting a speedball into our national economic arteries as socialistic. Curiously, the Socialism to which they object carries over to tax increases, but doesn't attach itself as easily to tax cuts. Aren't both products of government intervention? Even if you subscribe to this latest definition of Socialism, shouldn't it apply equally across the board?

More to the point, if Conservatives insist on calling the bailouts Socialism, aren't they labelling George W. Bush, arguably the most conservative president in American history, a Socialist?

I can't answer that one just yet, but one thing I can tell you is that this "recession" isn't going to last nearly as long as anyone in the media thinks. Despite the volatility of the stock market, there's still plenty of money out there. And it's the smart money guys that are going to make sure this recession doesn't last long. You want to know why? Because it's way too huge a profit opportunity, that's why. Here's the proof:

You may have read about all the vanishing wealth from this economic turbulence. Really? According to Reuters, October 24, 2008, it hasn't vanished at all. It's simply been diverted from commodities like oil into real estate:

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose 5.5 percent last month, the biggest gain since July 2003, and the inventory of unsold homes fell, a hopeful sign for a housing market mired in a long slump...The National Association of Realtors said on Friday that sales of existing homes rose to a 5.18 million-unit annual rate from the 4.91 million unit pace set in August. Economists had expected sales to rise to only a 4.93 million unit rate.

Still think I'm nuts? Check back several blogs ago, when I went on the record to state that gas prices at the pump would start falling just as soon as the market manipulators grabbed their profits from that little panic. Never before have oil prices jumped as high and then fallen as fast as they did in 2008 -- totally according to plan:

Hmmm. Where can we put all that money, do you suppose? Why, in foreclosed real estate , of course! It's next on the buy-low-sell-high circuit. And as soon as all that capital quietly snaps up all those foreclosures, guess what's next? Institutional stocks. Banks. Industrials. All those companies that the smart money boys need to rehab and finance those foreclosures they just bought.

Housing prices recover. Companies start hiring again. The consumer economy breathes new life. And Joe SixPack gets his home equity back, enabling him buy that 60 inch plasma television which, after five years, will be paid off at twice the price it should have cost.

And who do we have to thank for this quicker recovery? America's first Socialist president, George W. Bush.

I mean, it was his idea, right?

Obama/Biden Taps Glinda

2008-10-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

In October, 2008, there are really only two issues that anyone is interested in discussing. One is the global economy (or lack thereof) and the other is the campaign for the presidency of the United States of America. I'm no economist, but I've lived through enough up markets and down markets to know that civilization as we know it simply can't exist without a global economy. I also know that as long as greed ranks within the top three human vices, no economy can stay bearish forever.

Besides, the media likes to harp on "the worst economy since the Great Depression." What more could I possibly add to hype like that? Especially when half of the talking heads were five years old during the 1987 market correction?

Of course, what those talking heads are experienced in, all they've ever known, is what the rest of us like to call the Culture of Fear. This is why they continue to "report" every news story as if it were the next Black Death. They simply don't know any better. I've written quite a bit in this blog about the Culture of Fear. For those of you who aren't familiar with its effect, it's the reason why people switched from marketing their goods with "Be the first on your block" to "Don't let is happen to you!"

Living in fear is an awful thing. You're afraid of eating the wrong thing. Saying the wrong thing. Doing the wrong thing. In a fearful environment, terrorists are always just around the corner. The other driver is never careful. And politicians aren't who or what they seem to be.

This is why negative campaigning has, until recently, been so effective in politics. It's a whole lot easier to cast suspicion on the other guy than it is to work hard on being a better alternative to that guy. I suppose negative tactics work to an extent. After all, nose-diving jetliners into American real estate is enough to add credibility to just about any perceived threat. But decades of xenophobic fear-mongering does take its toll. Which is the secret to Barack Obama's latest brand surge.

If you look carefully, Obama and Biden have chosen their tactics quite judiciously. The closest they ever get to disparaging McCain and Palin is by associating them with Bush and Cheney. And even then, they don't bring out the warning lights. They simply let the truth speak for itself: "If you actually like where Bush and Cheney have brought you, they maintain, you're going to love McCain and Palin." Other than that, neither Obama nor Biden have done anything to strike fear into the hearts of Americans. In fact, they've striven to do just the opposite.

Just as Glinda the Good Witch reassures the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, Obama and Biden have replaced the fear factor with reassurance, positioning themselves as the messengers of good news:

Come out, come out, wherever you are,
and meet the young lady, who fell from a star.
She fell from the sky, she fell very far
and Kansas, she says, is the name of the star.
She brings you good news.
Or haven't you heard?
When she fell out of Kansas
A miracle occurred.

Okay, so Glinda was off by one state. But by enlisting the perspective of Glinda, Obama and Biden become the harbingers of the best news possible: At last, we have someone in control who can solve our problems. The accusations and finger-pointing to which the American public has become numb is being displaced by two guys who are actually offering up answers and suggesting positive solutions. It almost doesn't matter if their solutions don't work. The fact that they're not fear-based is new, fresh and something for which the voting public has been aching.

And, unfortunately, something of which neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin seem to be aware.

Palin's Perception of Pain

2008-10-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

There's no question that the only Vice Presidential debate of 2008 was a ratings bonanza. The latest media audits report that well over 70 million people watched the 90 minute match-up between Alaska's Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden. I'm not going to bore anyone with who won or lost. The last thing America needs is one more analysis of an event that clearly needed none. As far as I'm concerned you can justify your vote whichever way you wish. After all that's what everyone else is doing.

And that's the part of this election that bugs me the most. Immediately after the debate, notoriously conservative FOX News was polling its own in-house studio audience as to who won the debate and, not surprisingly, found for the Alaskan governor. Not long after that, left-leaning MSNBC had poll figures indicating that among undecided voters, the senator from Delaware was winning by a two-to-one margin.

The winner, it would seem, was determined by the political agenda being driven by any given medium reporting it.

In this, perhaps the first not-only-white-men-get-to-play election, a curious development has occurred, where even the appearance of respect for the office has been displaced by a supreme lack of appropriate behavior by the people running. Believe me, I'm thrilled that the election of 2004 was the last of the all-white-men-only contests. What doesn't sit well with me is the degeneration of the contest into a fad-frenzied spinfest, centered totally around people and personalities, instead of on the offices for which they're campaigning.

Can any student of history imagine Lyndon Johnson winking and mugging at his audience? John Kennedy dodging questions from a moderator? Abraham Lincoln preserving the union with a "shout out" to his third grade elementary school? At what point do we reconcile a candidate's inappropriate behavior with his or her qualifications to hold office?

It's not terribly difficult to pick away at both candidates for their political views. But I'm not a political analyst. I'm a branding guy. And as anyone who knows me can tell you, I'm all about the perception that people, products -- and yes, politicians -- send out to their consuming public. A big part of that perception has to do with consistency and credibility. In other words, what you say has to jibe with the way you say it.

When you're second to the leader of the free world, people need to hear straight answers to the questions that are put to you, not those for which your media trainer has coached you. When your finger is one heartbeat away from the button, people need to know that you've got something more than a wink and wisecrack driving your decisions.

When you're staring down Iranians, Russians and North Koreans, light-hearted references to Joe Sixpack don't quite cut it.

Personally, I think it's great that the election of 2008 broke the white/male barrier into a million little pieces. And I'm glad that a conservative Senator like John McCain considered a woman to be his running mate. Too bad McCain chose the wrong woman without considering her public perception.

It will likely prove to be the deciding factor in race...the losing one, of course.

Obama/McCain's Anti-Bradley Effect

2008-09-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

Much has been made of the race card in the current American presidential elections. There are those who contend that America is ready for a black president. There are those who insist that America needs change, but not that much of a change. And there are those who believe that John McCain is about as much change as any nation can reasonably handle.

If you're a fan of change, this election is for you. But if you're a student of history, you may be interested in a seemingly minor phenomenon with potentially huge consequences. The media has termed it The Bradley Effect, in reference to the mayoral elections in Los Angeles, California of the 1960's. At that time, a decidedly pro-white incumbent mayor by the name of Sam Yorty was running for his political life against a black ex-cop named Tom Bradley. Mind you, this was barely a few years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Think Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, hippies, peace signs, protest songs, marches on Selma and that sort of thing.

Going into the election, all the polls had Bradley winning hands down. When the smoke cleared, however, it was Yorty who emerged victorious, holding on to his seat for another four years. Clearly, what voters on their way into the booths told pollsters they were going to do differed drastically from what they actually did in the voting booth. Lots of people said they'd be voting for Bradley, but once behind the curtain, couldn't bring themselves to vote for the black guy. That was decades ago. Or was it? In early 2008, pollsters had Barack Obama sweeping the New Hampshire primary election. But by the next morning, Hillary Clinton had sewn it up.

Now, however, there may be a new wrinkle to the old Bradley Effect and it goes like this:

What if all those McCain supporters secretly can't stomach what's happened to the Republican party? The free market, conservative party, supposedly opposed to socialism, that's engineering the biggest Federal bail-out of all time? The party responsible for the war in Iraq? The credit meltdown? High unemployment? The sinking dollar? What if all those Republicans, thoroughly disenchanted with Bush and Cheney, decide to get into that voting booth and stick it to the party that let them down -- by voting for Obama?

It's a lot more possible than you might think. Just ask the angry supporters of Bob Barr and Ron Paul and Ralph Nader. There may be millions of poor Democrats that are mobilized to vote, but you can bet your ever-sinking dollar that pissed off Republicans have much higher percentages of voter turnout. And these are exactly the people who tell pollsters one thing while doing exactly the opposite in private.

Other reasons why the Anti-Bradley Effect could work: The Sarah Palin stunt is, for the most part, over. After the theatrics and media events, there's simply no way she can hold her own against the likes of a Joe Biden. In the public eye, Palin is an easy target for parody -- truly a second generation Dan Quayle -- and things aren't getting better for her. Between public gaffes ("in a Palin-McCain administration....") and the strict management of her few, unscripted public appearances, all indications are that Republicans aren't exactly lining up behind her in legion force.

Hillary supporters lining up for McCain? You're dreaming, pal. That scenario may have been a nice wish, but wasn't even close to reality after Obama took the nomination. And with Palin as McCain's idea of a capable running mate, that dream is fast becoming a nightmare.

Finally, let's play the race card. The question nobody wants to ask is exactly the question that everyone should be asking. Because despite the conventional wisdom, the truth is that non-whites have no problem voting for a non-white candidate; and if you piss enough of them off, white people will vote for a non-white candidate, too.

You want to learn something from the polls? Try not trusting them. It seems to work.

Banking as Child's Play

2008-09-18T09:01:00.000-07:00

As America wades its way through the financial muck, you can be sure that media pundits will be doing everything they can to point fingers and assess blame for what is widely perceived to be the meltdown of the richest country on the planet. Rumors of the meltdown, by the way, are greatly exaggerated distortions of the truth. They're not even close to the truth. Because the real problems facing the financial markets have little to do with finance. The real problems go much, much deeper.

If you're a loyal reader of this blog, you may recall a recent post of a similar nature, in which I pointed out how the price of gasoline had absolutely no relation to the supply and demand of oil. I'm happy to report that within a few short weeks of that post, the price of a gallon of gasoline in America dropped from almost five dollars a gallon to roughly three dollars and change -- presumably with less gasoline on hand. Duh. Clearly, there are other effects in play here. And just as with the price of oil, the current financial "crisis" is due to the very same problem:

Our country is being run by children.

Make no mistake, these kids are all in their fifties and sixties, but that just means they're bigger kids with grayer hair and more wrinkles than your garden variety little leaguer. If you take a long, hard look around, you'll see what I mean. Try finding a reporter who asks pointed, important questions along the lines of Edward R. Murrow when he took on red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy. In fact, try finding any reporter that asks any kind of piercing, intelligent questions that haven't been vetted by his teleprompter. These aren't reporters. These are kids playing on television.

But that's not the worst of it. They say that thirty is the new twenty. Boy, have they got it wrong. It's closer to the truth to say that forty is the new twelve, with supposed adults acting like children: Pursuing their own selfish goals without giving any thought to the public good. You want to know why there are no good, worthy leaders? Because leaders understand the concept of greater vision. They're able to take the long view for everyone's benefit, rather than immediate self-gratification.

Want to really get freaked out? Ask anyone today why they'd run for public office and more often than not, the answer you'll get is "it's a great way to make business connections." Mind you, given the meager pay of most public servants, I have no problem with serving time and then reaping private benefits. I have a problem with serving public time to get the private benefits.

The kids are invading every nook and cranny of our lives. And the scary part is that as real adults die off, these old kids are moving into positions of real responsibility. They're piloting your airplanes, judging your court cases and as all of America is painfully finding out, destroying your banking system. Pity poor Hank Greenberg, the man who spent forty years building AIG, watching his billion dollar net worth evaporate over the course of a few weeks. When Hank left AIG, his fortune was intact. But once he left -- under a murky cloud of circumstances, it's true -- the kids stayed at home with no babysitter to watch them. And they did what kids do best: act irresponsibly.

Well, America, you don't demand accountability, you don't get accountability. What you get is lots of kids, caught with their pants down, pointing blame at one another. Real adults don't do that. In fact, real adults have enough wisdom, foresight and discipline to understand their responsibility to current and future generations.

I've been saying it for years, but nobody has been listening. So now, instead of listening, everyone can feel the pain. Grow up, America. Realize that you can't fight terrorism with loud, fast jets. Understand that oil prices rise because they're driven by market makers. Wake up and smell the coffee -- if your parents will let you drink it.

Palin Pandering Pops McCain Bubble

2008-08-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

While I realize that it's not the panacea to the world's problems, as our society becomes increasingly saturated by media, it really is true. Life is a branding problem. And nowhere can you find better proof of that than in the American presidential elections. In the latter part of the twentieth century, strong presidents (Reagan) developed strong, clear brand strategies that connected with the American public. In the first elections of the twenty first century, it was the lack of brand strategy that confused the American public.

The election of 2008 is subject to the same effects. In this case, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has a clear brand message. But with the revelation that John McCain has chosen Alaska governor Sarah Pain as his vice presidential running mate, it would seem evident that the race is now over.

Your new president is Mr. Obama. And here's why:

While neither candidate has a clearly stated brand message, only one candidate has a strong brand message. That would be Mr. Obama. For as I've written here, while there isn't an Obama fan within a hundred miles that can articulate any of Obama's policies, Obama has succeeded in motivating an uneducated -- and seemingly undemanding -- public into action. In branding terms, Obama is the Nike of politics: "Just do it" sounds as if it means something, but when you think about it, nobody has any idea what it means. So it is with Obama. But there's a big difference in the political branding space:

Where Obama surpasses McCain is that Obama's marketing efforts are pro-active, while McCain's efforts are decidedly reactive. And for smoking gun evidence, you need look no further than McCain's surprise choice of Palin as his running mate.

You can say what you want about Obama's vague chants of change, but McCain's choice of Palin is clearly the result of pollsters' panderings to the public, hoping to attract the Hillary Clinton supporters who -- in McCain's dreams -- would rather vote for a Republican woman than a Democrat man.

Okay, a Democrat black man. There. I said it.

But McCain's advisors are wrong here. Big time. In the first place, Palin is no Hillary. In the second, if you had any doubts about Obama's experience, you ain't seen nothing yet. Palin, at 44, has little experience outside her home state. Third, Palin is a confirmed pro life/anti-abortionist. Need I go on? To paraphrase the Florida Senator, "She's no Joe Biden." She's more like a Dan Quayle. In a debate, that will become a public disaster.

What McCain's team has completely missed is the fact that the American public is probably more than a little tired of the right-leaning agenda of the past two administrations. While remaining non-specific, Obama has succeeded in pulling back the curtain on the Bush administration, exposing it as a cavalcade of failures. The current economic slump doesn't hurt him, either.

In the end, McCain's foolish attempt to pander is what kills all brands. It reflects an inability to lead, an abdication of authority by playing to the crowd instead of inspiring the crowd. As Abraham Lincoln so aptly said, "You can fool some of the people some of the time." It's just that this ain't one of those times.

Microsoft launches Seinfeld Bomb

2008-08-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

There are times when life is unfair. And then there are times when life is juicy and rewarding. The unfair times are when seemingly stupid hot chicks make tons of money for nothing other than looking hot and being stupid.

But then there are the rewarding times. Like when a huge, rich corporation thinks it can buy its way into the hearts and minds of the public, simply because it happens to be huge and rich. Such is the case of Microsoft having announced its paying once-hip-now-just-wealthy-through-television-syndication comedian Jerry Seinfeld something like $10 million to pitch its bloatware.

Talk about the other guy blinking. Clearly Microsoft is more than a little irked at Apple's ability to claw its way back into the market. Where the Gates gang once boasted of Apple's continually dwindling market share, it now seems that Jobs and company have managed to steadily increase their share of market. In fact, some reports have Apple's MacBook laptops as the first choice of students throughout the United States.

Whether Apple's success is due to their iPod, MacBooks, AirPorts, iTunes or any one of their other revolutionary and elegant technological solutions is up for debate. One thing for sure: Apple's smarmy "Mac versus PC" television spots have connected with its audience -- and seemingly, with Microsoft's lower jaw. Years of ribbing have finally baited Microsoft into an "I'm hipper than you" war, with someone, somewhere, so totally clueless as to think that Jerry Seinfeld is the right man for the job.

Jerry Seinfeld? Excuse me, but aren't we just a few decades late on that call?

This is the exact reason I counsel clients to avoid celebrities like the plague. Forget the fact that a perennial prop on the Seinfeld show was a Macintosh (it was always on the desk against the wall of his apartment) or that hardcore fans can list the episodes which featured Apple's 20th Anniversay Mac. We're talking about a formerly single guy whose wit and charm has been largely replaced by jowls and cigars. The man has been a veritable ghost since the last, desperate season of his sitcom. But Microsoft thinks he can turn things around and make its brand hip, cool and relevant.

Let me go out on a limb here and make a prediction: This campaign is not going to make Microsoft relevant. This campaign is going to be the biggest bomb since Hiroshima.

Think I'm kidding? Okay, which does your kid prefer, an iPod or a Microsoft Zune? Uh huh. That's what I thought.

The fact is that no cheap campaign is going to change Mircosoft's brand image, because Microsoft has no brand strategy -- and never has. But Microsoft does have money. And influence. And the one thing that goes with both of those: A keen sense of denial.

McCain's Strategy of Age

2008-08-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Over the last week, I've gotten a fair amount of media calls regarding the McCain-Obama election, mainly from a branding point of view. Is McCain out of it? Is Obama unstoppable? You know -- the usual stuff. I find these questions fascinating, if only because it reminds me of the incredibly brief attention span of a nation that seems increasingly ADHD. One minute they're impassioned about global warming; the next they're up in arms over higher gas prices. Go figure. The big question over the last weeks has been, "Is it over for McCain?" To which I reply, "Hardly." And here's why:

While youth is sexier and more robust, it doesn't always win out. In fact, it seldom does. And if you're paying attention, you're seeing one of the more intriguing public brand strategy battles happening in real time.

Everyone likes to dump on McCain for being older. What they don't want to acknowledge is that he may be a tad wiser in ways the American media really doesn't understand. Just as when the media wrote of his primary campaign, they're writing him off now. But if you look closely, there's a pretty smart plan in play. McCain is using a classic strategy of leveraging his opponent's strength to his advantage. And it's working.

Not only has McCain realized that Obama is a rock star, he's playing that very asset against Obama. Think differently? Okay, consider Obama's recent world tour that was designed to promote his international credibility. Lots of energy. Lots of talent. Lots of video. And lots of sellout crowds across the continent. Ostensibly, that huge effort should have worked. It should have pushed McCain into the shadows. But it didn't. McCain didn't fight Obama for media attention at all. In fact, he let Obama play out his tour. But then McCain took down Obama's entire effort with a well-placed comment about Obama's acting presidential when he's not the president. The massive whooshing sound that followed was the wind being sucked out of Obama's sails. Within one soundbyte, Obama went from "potential international statesman" to "publicity-seeking rock star."

Ouch.

This reminds me of when I was in my twenties on the racquetball court, and a man in his late fifties (now that's old) challenged me to a game. I couldn't believe the old fart had that stones to take me on. It was no contest, so I accepted. I had better speed, more agility and more endurance. Twenty one points later, the guy had whipped my ass, because he knew I had better speed, more agility and more endurance. So he stayed in one spot and hit the ball where I wasn't. At the end of the game, I was a losing heap of sweat and he was a winner, grinning calmly and coolly.

In the later stages of his career, Muhammad Ali used the same tactic on his younger opponents, applying his "rope a dope" strategy. He'd let the morons charge and punch and pound him in the early rounds -- and then won in the later rounds by pummeling them when they were too tired to fight back. It's the same thing with McCain and Obama. The young buck is out there, spending a lot of energy, getting lots of press. The old guy is just hanging back, waiting for his shot.

Maybe political pundits should take a look at the true definition of what experience means in this race. Perhaps it's not as important to have spent a lot of time on the Senate floor as it is to have spent a lot of time out there on the street.

The tragedy of the Olympics

2008-08-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

As the world gets ready to view the 2008 Olympics in China, it's worthwhile taking note of why this edition of the historic games is likely to be among the worst in modern times. It's not as if there's just one reason why the Olympics simply aren't what they used to be. It's that they've become just about everything the Olympics weren't supposed to be.

For one thing, the Olympics have always supposed to be about amateur athletes. The up and coming guys. The promise of the new generation. Check your history and you'll find that in days of yore, none other than American great Jim Thorpe was denied his Olympic medals for accepting something less than $50 associated with one race in his career before his participation in the Olympics. Talk about playing by the rules. In those days, the Olympic committee showed no mercy. Any kind of gift -- cash, stock or trade --was considered remuneration, which defined you as a pro and out you went.

Not today. If anything, you have the exact opposite, with clowns like Kobe Bryant prancing into spotlight yet again, robbing the global public of the Olympics' true purpose. Hey, if I want to see Kobe jumping around on TV, I can turn on ESPN, or alternatively, any hotel room's closed circuit television tapes. He's already made his bucks. He already has his endorsements. And he gets more than his share of media attention. Does nobody care about the unsung amateur hoopster, somewhere out there, practicing endlessly in hopes of getting his shot at fame? Now that all the professionals have crowded out the amateurs, what's left for them?

What would have happened if an amateur Cassius Clay had been bumped to allow a professional Sonny Liston to compete in the Olympic games? I'll tell you what would have happened: you wouldn't know who Muhammad Ali is today.

The Beijing Olympics are going to bomb out for another purely non-Olympic reason: politics. Hey, I don't care what your opinion of Tibet is, but it has nothing to do with track and field or women's volleyball. Take it outside the building, we're trying to play ball here.

You know, there was a time when people weren't media hogs. You could actually go to the Academy Awards and see genuine professionals accepting gratitude from an adoring public who benefited from the celluloid escapes provided by movie studios. That all changed in the 1970's, when Marlon Brando dispatched an Indian chick to the stage in his stead, in order to dramatize the plight of Native Americans. Nice sentiment, and one swell peach of a way to destroy a fun, carefree celebration by dragging people into the depths of depression with a misplaced, selfish agenda.

Look, I can understand the implied statement of Jess Owens' victory against Hitler's Aryans in 1936. That was a pure, unspoken moment in world history that everyone understood without anyone mentioning a word. Watching Hitler storm out of the Berlin stadium said it all.

But in 1968's Mexico City Olympics, we had to endure the public spectacle of black medalists raising their fists as America's national anthem was played to celebrate their victories. It may have been effective, but it was shameful -- and I might add, ungracious. After all, they were there to represent all of us, not just a few of us. Four years later, in 1972, mentally-defective pro-palestinian terrorists invaded Munich's Olympic village and murdered the majority of Israel's athletic representatives. The games haven't been the same since.

If you want to kick back and watch corporate America foist even more unnecessary fast food between replays of professionals you've watched a million times before, have at it. As for myself, I'm going to download all five seasons of Get Smart.

The Slimy Truth About Oil Prices

2008-07-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

You've simply got to love the over-simplified, under-reporting modern day media. Just when you think they've managed to dumb the news down, they find a way of dumbing it even, um, downer. My favorite dumb news story of the year has to be the continuing saga of oil prices, with every pundit proclaiming his or her theory as to why you're paying twice as much for gas as you did two or three years ago.

Some of these wiseguys peg the pricing to a mythic relationship between supply and demand. "We're using up oil faster than we can produce it," they whine. "What we really need to do is drill or more oil. That way, there will be more supply and the prices will drop."

Um, no. Hate to tell you this, but it doesn't work that way and hasn't worked that way for several decades. If you really want to know why the price of gas and oil has broken through the roof, you can blame the screen on which you're reading these very words. Yup, it's not supply and demand that's messing up your driving vacation.

It's technology. And this is how it happens:

First, understand that half of any solution is in identifying the problem. Once you figure out what the problem is -- and I mean really identifying the problem as opposed to accepting what drools out of any talking head, you're going to find that there's plenty of oil out there. Tons. Thousands of tons. Millions of barrels. Check out your history books and start looking up the last time the world's major oil suppliers actually reduced their output of crude. While you may find one or two events, you'll find plenty more instances in which the members of OPEC who cut their production were undercut by other members who increased production to make up the difference.

Second, if you look at the price of oil from 2006 to 2008, you'll see a massive increase in the price, but no major difference in the amount of oil produced. Starting to smell something funny? If supply and demand were really to blame for oil price increases, wouldn't the amount of oil being delivered throughout the world be shrinking?

Well, it's not. In fact, the Saudis just turned the spigot by something like a half million barrels a day and prices actually went up.

So if supply isn't affecting anything, and demand isn't affecting anything, how would technology affect anything? Easy: Because it's the job of technology to transmit and manipulate information, it's technology by which market makers choose their actions. And since the technology is interpreted and manipulated by humans, what appears to be raw, technological data is actually raw, human emotion at work.

Consider the fact that the average barrel of crude is traded back and forth ten to twenty times before it ever reaches its refinery. That's a lot of people buying and selling, speculating -- and hoping -- their investment goes up. Which means the oil market itself is driving up the price of oil. Not the oil companies. Not the arabs. Not OPEC. It's good old American free market capitalism, powered by nano-bits of data and genuine human greed -- and panic -- that determines the price of oil.

Think I'm out of line? Let's switch from the sticky stuff and go for the green. Throughout July, 2008, the most battered sector of the stock market was the financial sector. Prize stocks like Bank of America (BAC) and Citibank (C) got taken to the cleaners. Bank of America, perhaps the strongest banking organization in the country, saw its stock slide from the mid-30's to $19 a share. Why? Did all of BAC's investments and value suddenly evaporate? Of course not. But you'd never know that if you watched the market -- and the media -- panic about the future of financials. Those of us who prefer truth to tantrums quietly bought more BAC at $20 or $22 and saw the stock climb back into the low 30's a few days later.

Same thing is happening to oil. It's not the people who produce it or refine it or drive Escalades and Hummers that are driving up the price of oil. It's the guy glued to his trading screen, basing his calls on what other traders looking at their screens are doing. It's the internet, baby.

And all this time you thought it was for downloading free porn.

Jesse Jackson's Branding Meltdown

2008-07-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

When you've been around the business as long as I have, you get to see a lot of great brands being born. The only trouble is, you get to see a lot of great brands die, too. Actually, that's not the only trouble. The real horror is watching once-mighty brands decay. To see one breaking down in real time, one need look no further than to the midwest, where we join the meltdown of Reverend Jesse Jackson, already in progress.

There are some of you reading this who never knew a life without online access. There might even be a few of you who can't remember life without fax machines and MTV. But I assure you, there once was a time before technology kept prompting you to look over your shoulder. There was a time when nobody had a cell phone to capture police beatings, upskirt shots or air show disasters.

Of course, even before the age of invasive video, there were such things as TV cameras, microphones and sheer human stupidity. This would be about the same time that one American electrified black audiences and terrified more than a few white ones with his ability to raise political awareness in direct proportion to the volume of his rhetoric. That man was Jesse Jackson.

To you Obama fans, the off-air/on-mike racist comments of an old, tired black social leader is no big deal. So what, you might say, if this ancient relic from the sixties dished out some street trash in the studio. But you'd be missing the big story here. Back in the sixties and seventies, Jackson was a political and social icon. The man mobilized millions, instilling African pride in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, fighting for justice wherever he could and for publicity whenever he could. Okay, he was a showboat. But he presented America with the first legitimate image of political black power.

It was Jackson who launched the first credible effort to elect a black president -- and he did it more than one time. In fact, it might be fair to say that if it hadn't been for Jackson's shouting, Obama wouldn't be waxing quite so eloquently today.

But just like General Motors, Maytag, Kodak and a host of other great American brands, Jackson reached the point at which he no longer felt he had to nurture and sustain it. He came to believe his own invincibility and his hubris began to eat away at his virtuous image.

He fathered children out of wedlock. His political and social movements deteriorated into shakedowns of private and public enterprises -- one of which resulted in a lucrative beer distributorship for one of his sons. Jackson soon turned to the dark side, forsaking his conscience for personal gain and losing his following until all he had left were his greed and ego.

This week, Jackson was caught off the air (but on mike) threatening Obama's own social programs and referring to his own people as niggers. Not the hip-hop "niggah" that still sends a shiver down my spine, but the real, old-fashioned boy-is-that-racist term.

And this from the guy that stood by the side of Martin Luther King.

People might be thinking about how to punish a guy like Jesse Jackson, but I assure you, he won't get anything near the treatment they gave Don Imus. In the long run, there's really no need to punish Jackson anyway. He's suffering enough, doomed to live in the past for the rest of his life.

GM = Gross Mismanagement

2008-07-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's me getting older or the country getting dumber, but I couldn't believe my eyes when the Associated Press unleashed this article on its unsuspecting public:

"GM said to consider more cuts as market shrinks," read the headline, followed by this bit of journalistic genius:

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. may get rid of some brands, speed the introduction of small cars from other markets and make further white-collar job cuts as it tries to deal with a shrinking U.S. auto market.

Let's just take a moment to reread that headline very slowly. GM is considering more cuts because the market shrinks? I don't think so. The market for cars isn't shrinking at all. The market for outdated, denial-based automobiles sure has, which is why GM stock is at a 50+ year low -- even when you adjust it for inflation.

A more accurate headline would have been "GM finally gets its ass kicked after generations of denial." Not because GM makes a terrible car. They don't. In fact, my whole family drives GM cars and every one of us loves them. The problem with GM is the same problem we have in boardrooms across this country:

Too many decisions are being made by people who don't feel the effects of their decisions.

That's no slap at anyone in particular, it's just the way life is. Carl Icahn is famous for pointing out the folly of rewarding highly paid CEO's like Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide or Bob Nardelli of Home Depot for failing at their jobs. This is pretty much the same thing. After all, if Nardelli or Mozilo actually felt the consequences of their decisions, their enterprises might still be thriving today. But they don't. Mozilo never lost his home due to a deceptive loan practice and Nardelli never got laid off from the Gardening Department. We're talking about decision makers who take down tens of millions in annual pay even before they get fired. A five or ten dollar hike in gasoline prices has no effect on them. It equates to something like a tenth of a cent hike for people like you and me.

Those of us with more than a few strands of gray running through their forelocks can recall the first arab oil embargo of the 1970's. People waited in long lines for hours for the chance to fill their tanks at what were then record high prices. Supply was so short, that for the first time since the Second World War, gas rationing became the standard. You could only fill up on certain days of the week depending on whether the number on your license plated was odd or even.

Since that time, all the talk has been about the oil supplies running lower and global climates running hotter. Do the math and that works out to something like forty years of oil scarcity being at the top of the public's mind. Forty years is a long time to simply ignore reality. Hell, even the army retires you after twenty.

With all its resources, General Motors should have seen the writing on the wall and gotten its act together way sooner. The truth is that they did see the writing on the wall, they just conveniently decided to forget how to read. They could have kept their gas guzzlers in production for the steadily dwindling proportion of buyers. But at the same time, they could have been leading the way in the design and production of smaller, alternative cars.

They didn't. And now GM is said to be considering selling off some or all of its brands. Brands like Hummer "should be going for a cool billion dollars," according to GM. When they open their eyes, however, they're going to find the brand selling for less than that. A whole lot less.

GM is getting what it deserves for ignoring the basics of smart business. They bluffed their way for years and now the market has called their bluff. The only cards GM has left, as the saying goes, are jokers -- and nobody is laughing.

Conservatives Love Gay Marriage

2008-06-17T09:31:00.000-07:00

There's probably nothing wholly original in this piece, but sometimes, circumstances just get so out of whack that someone has to blow a school yard whistle and bring everything to a screeching halt. Sometimes, you just have to stop everything it its tracks in order to re-calibrate reality. And this week's legalization of gay marriage in California seemed like one such occasion.

In case you've been out of the solar system, it is -- for the short term, at least -- now totally and completely legal for gays and lesbians to legally marry. That's right, the ceremony that has been idealized for generations has now undergone a somewhat radical change in that it is no longer the exclusive province of one man and one woman.

Well, that's not entirely true. If you go back in history, you'll find all sorts of marriages between men, my favorite being among Roman emperors who seemed to possess a pronounced inclination toward (and actually married) well-oiled musclemen. But I digress.

Today, the most noticeable effect of gay marriage isn't between gays and lesbians who marry each other; it's among the people who disapprove of gays and lesbians marrying each other. Typically, these are bible-thumping folks who devote their days to disrupting the lives of others in the name of Jesus, God, Allah or whatever name by which they refer to The Invisible Giant. Most of these people call themselves "conservatives", but in truth, they are the farthest thing from it.

If you're really a Conservative, you espouse the basic theory fundamental to all Conservative theory, that being pretty much the following:

The government is here to defend my civil and physical freedom.

See, the whole point of Conservative philosophy is to not get involved in other people's affairs because you don't want anyone meddling in yours. Even if you're the most religious guy in the world, completely secure in the knowledge that your neighbor is going to eternally burn in hell for whatever people burn in hell for, Conservative theory states you have no business, obligation or standing in your neighbor's decision.

If you're a true Conservative, you believe that as long as nobody hurts anyone else, everyone should be free to do what they can in order to better their own lives. That means you can't tell anyone what to eat, whom to date or how to hold their fork at dinner. It's their individual choice. And what could be more American than that?

In stark contrast to Conservatism is Liberalism, which believes that government owes its citizens far more than defense of civil and physical freedoms. Liberals believe in social responsibility and helping those less fortunate, because in the real world, everyone is not created equal. Some people are born with birth defects; others into a racial or economic class from which there is no escape. Liberals believe there's nothing wrong in assisting reality in order to level the playing field and give everyone a shot at a better life.

Of course, there's a trade off with Liberalism: In order to get stuff, you have to give up stuff, most notably, your personal freedom. Which brings me to the weirdest question of all:

If gay marriage conforms to the Conservative ideals of government protecting individual freedoms, why would so-called Conservatives be against it? If anything, Conservatives should be its most ardent defenders, beating back the prying eyes and ears of a government whose founding articles are based on individual freedoms. If anything, the opponents of gay marriage should be Liberals, whose philosophical platform actually endorses a government's right to intervene amongst individuals' affairs.

Personally, I don't care who you marry or how or why. Just make sure you don't leave your trash on my lawn, eh?

Fedex dumps Kinkos for good

2008-06-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

Wherever I go, whenever I speak to groups, invariably the question comes up: "So Rob, which brands do you think are doing a good job?" In my book, The Revenge of Brand X, I have a list of brands that I happen to think are doing a swell job of branding, but the one you'll find close to the top of the list every time is Federal Express, or as they're now known, FEDEX.

I like FEDEX for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that they subscribe to my tenets of branding without even knowing who I am. That's neat. I like how even from the beginning, FEDEX branded themselves from the outside in. While all their competitors were puffing about their airplanes and trucks, FEDEX focused on the one reason why overnight delivery was invented:

They covered your ass.

It's true. While everyone else was primping for profit, FEDEX was making sure your career was safe and secure by working on your behalf, getting the package where it had to be, "absolutely, positively overnight." Sure, they've changed their taglines over the years, but the brand strategy has always remained the same. FEDEX even introduced their innovations smartly: Yes, their pre-printed shipping labels cut down shippers' costs, but they also increased FEDEX's efficiencies but cutting down the amount of time it took sorters and drivers to read your handwriting. Their shipping boxes were free, too, but that's how it looks to you because FEDEX wanted you to see the benefit. The real story is that standardized packaging allowed FEDEX to make much more efficient use of their shipping containers.

Get the idea? These guys are smart. And when they acquired Kinko's, they were just as smart.

Recognizing that small and micro-businesses were a nascent, high-growth sector, they cleverly snapped up Kinko's copy and office centers in order to expand their client base. They did it smart and they did it fast (beating United Parcel Service to the bunch, leaving UPS to acquire an anemic also-ran in the form of Mailboxes Etc.).

This week FEDEX made another smart decision: They decided to drop the Kinko name from their operation. And even though it's going to cost them something like $869+ million, they did it for a very good reason: Kinko's brand sucks.

Hey, Kinko's has all the assets for which it was purchased. Unfortunately for FEDEX, all that fixed capital came handcuffed to the developmentally disabled legion of humans known as Kinko's employees. And before you get all politically correct on me, think about your own experiences at Kinko's.

No, let me rephrase that: Think about all those infuriating, exercises in frustration at Kinko's.

Whether it was waiting in line too long, printing a job on the wrong paper, not knowing the simplest answers without checking with the manager, Kinko's -- a great business success story despite its people -- has a brand more aligned with incompetence than the brand strategy borne or FEDEX. If FEDEX were more like Kinko's, their tagline would have been, "Package? You had a package?"

I'm sure that Wall Street pundits will pummel the decision for the short term, but from where I sit, the FEDEX decision train just keeps on rolling. And the sooner is rolls over Kinko's the better.

Political Brands: John McCain

2008-05-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

Although it doesn't really seem over, the media pundits have proclaimed that it's all over but the Monday morning quarterbacking. They would have you believe that come November, 2008, the two finalists challengers for America's Presidential Idol contest are John McCain and Barack Obama. I've written enough about Obama, except for two minor items that I feel are worth mentioning at this point:

1. His wife is utterly obnoxious.

2. His political agenda seems to be nothing more than the same old stuff we heard from middle of the road Democrats circa 1970.

The good news about this election is that it will energize an entire electorate, whereas previously only half the electorate bothered to vote. This is because unlike the last two elections, this time, the entire country will be casting their votes for "anyone but Bush." Yes, Virginia, it's true that even most Republicans are disgusted and looking forward to the day that Bush, Cheney and their entourage have completed pillaging the country's moral and financial riches.

But that's another story.

What intrigues me at this point is the political branding of John McCain and the huge, spear-laden tiger trap he has set out for Senator Obama. In case you hadn't noticed, McCain is keeping very quiet on his association with the previous administration. It is only now, as the finalization of the Democratic nominee nears, that he is beginning to tip his hand in our direction.

And he's holding a bunch of, um, really good cards. Here's the deal:

McCain is no dope, but the people analyzing him sure are. They're so focused on what they think he's going to do that they're totally ignoring what options the man has before him. Sure, his people will trot out the prisoner of war stuff. They'll trumpet the patriotic montages. And they'll tell the softer side, too, including the fact that McCain and his gazillionaire wife adopted an abandoned baby as their own. That's pretty good material. The stuff of which public relations guys can only dream.

But it gets better.

The heat on Obama increases in direct proportion to his proximity to the nomination. As he nears his coronation, he's increasing his direct attacks on McCain, nibbling at the bait -- he knows his best shot is handcuffing McCain to eight years of the Bush administration. He also knows the time is getting near when he's going to have to lay out his eventual agenda with specifics instead of slogans. What Obama doesn't seem to realize is that he's feeding John McCain's agenda the political equivalent of human growth hormones.

The clearer Obama's proposals become, the more they're going to appear to be the same old Democrat policies from the 1960's and 1970's. And if you're reading this and thinking, "Oh, he means Obama is going to be perceived as a liberal", you're half right. Because the real perception is on the other end of the stick: With Obama being cast as a middle-to-left leaning liberal, McCain is now free from pursuing and pandering to the far Christian right. I mean, where else is the conservative right wing going to go? Libertarian? I don't think so.

So with the infamous Christian right wingers in the bag, all that's left for McCain to do is convince disenchanted Republicans and Reagan Democrats of his disassociation from the Bush administration. And if you're a fan of facts over fiction, you'll find that's exactly how McCain's resumé reads. In fact, anyone seriously examining McCain's record would likely surmise that if there ever were to be a "third term for Bush", McCain would probably be out in front with Joe Lieberman opposing it.

The media previously publicized the death of McCain's campaign once before. No doubt, they'll do it again. But like I said, you'd have to be a fan of fact over fiction to see this one play out. That's fine. There aren't many good movies out now anyway.

Wrapping up Ted Kennedy

2008-05-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure why it happens, but for some reason, the only news we
hear about the Kennedys is bad. You can read all the books you want;
every single tome is less a biography than a series of unfortunate
events, featuring plane crashes, premature deaths and social diseases
that stretch way back into the early twentieth century. Now we hear
the tragic news of Senator Ted Kennedy's inoperable brain cancer,
sending shivers down our spines and text messages through the gossip
mill.

It's a horrible fate to imagine. Even more horrible is the manner in
which the media and politicos are going to package it.

The first wave of messages will be hardly surprising, driven mainly
by morbid curiosity. What kind of tumor? Is it malignant? Followed
by the ever-present, "How long do you think he really has?"
We'll get the usual, "he's a fighter" and "if anyone can beat this,
Ted Kennedy can." We'll watch the interviews with his lifelong
friends. Given the media mentality of what now passes for American
politics, however, there's sure to be a second and third wave of
messaging that sinks way lower, deep beyond the previous limits of
bad taste.

This being an election year, I suspect that anyone with an agenda
will be soon be invoking the Kennedy name in discussions more often
than Jesus Christ in church. The Kennedy brand, at once as romantic
as it is tragic, will descend upon the Democrats at the convocation
of their national convention. In a twisted attempt to package this
year's nominee as the torch-bearer of the Kennedy legacy, Ted
Kennedy, viewed as "the last of the real Kennedys", will have his
final movie moment, waving to the crowd during a tearful, emotional
fifteen minute standing ovation after delivering his last keynote
address, nominating whichever Democrat that has managed to steal
enough votes.

Democratic strategists, like the infamous Howard Dean, will be
packaging Ted Kennedy as the New Age Gipper, with plenty of upshot
camera angles and slow-motion dolly moves that will be cut into the
eventual documentary film. It will be a glowing, Kennedy moment.

"Win this last one for me."

While the Kennedys have always enjoyed media popularity, reporters
are already writing Ted Kennedy's obituary. They're using words like
"patriarch" and "icon," which when you think about it, is true: Ted
Kennedy is an icon for a entire generation as the first public figure
to abdicate all responsibility for his personal behavior and without
any sort of public accountability. But that, as they say, is water
under the bridge.

As far as the Kennedys are concerned, their myths have always been
larger than life, and so in keeping with that tradition, I have
little doubt that party movers will manipulate Ted's final time with
masterful self-interest. I suspect that in the coming days, we'll
all hear and see the same talking heads bobbing and chattering and
speculating about "who dares to assume so great a mantle" as left by
Ted Kennedy, while anointing their candidate of choice in hopes of
spurring a generation of nostalgic baby boomers into the voting
booths.

It's a genuinely sad time for the Kennedy family. It's potentially
even sadder for America if the Democrats commercialize his ill
fortune for their own selfish gain.

H.L. Mencken said it best: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating
the taste of the American public." You just watch what happens with
the merchandising of Ted Kennedy.

And pray that I'm wrong.

Let's Play the Race Card

2008-05-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting aspects of branding is the manner in which most people approach it. Because they focus so much on what they like to sell, they tend to forget about the reasons their customers actually buy. I often point this out to clients with the example of selling Porsche automobiles. Ask Porsche why men buy their cars, and they'll tell you it's because those men appreciate a finer automotive machine. Ask those men, however, and you'll find the answer to be somewhat different:

They find that with a Porsche, they can get hotter chicks.

Nothing really new there, except for the realization that things don't always happen for the reasons we think they do. In fact, one of the most common misconceptions players face in the competitive arena is the assumption of a level playing field. Nowhere could this be truer than in the mega-hypocritical, politically correct stadium known as the American presidential election, where the Los Angeles Times recently reported on the battle between Democratic contenders Clinton and Obama.

In its article predicting the demise of Hillary Clinton, the Times reported the following:

Other Democratic officials said Wednesday that they feared the political damage to the party if Clinton were to succeed in using the party apparatus to take the nomination from Obama, who has energized black voters and many other Democrats.

Seems innocuous enough, eh? Really? Try reading the same lines with the details reversed and see if it plays the same way for you:

Other Democratic officials said Wednesday that they feared the political damage to the party if Obama were to succeed [against] using the party apparatus to take the nomination from Clinton, who has energized white voters and many other Democrats.

Same story, but written from the politically incorrect point of view. Just imagine if any candidate, Democrat or Republican, were to be lionized for their efforts in galvanizing the white vote in America. As we say in my own home, "Boy, would there be yelling."

Think I'm being too clinical here? Well, you may want to ask yourself why it's perfectly okay to bash the "Christian right", while everyone cries foul for referring to Obama by his full name -- Barak Hussein Obama. Nobody has a problem with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Or Richard Milhous Nixon. Or even Lee Harvey Oswald. Call the Senator from Illinois by his full name and the next thing you'll be calling is the riot police.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any particular agenda here. I'm all for changing what America has become and I think that change could happen with just about any candidate. The only question would be what kind of change you'd be looking at, which is what free and fair elections are all about.

I'm currently writing this from the truly democratic country of Denmark, a country that prides itself on its ethics and freedoms, including the freedom to freely -- and fairly -- disagree. There's surprisingly little yelling here, although there's plenty of debate. There's no political correctness here because the Danes understand the value of truth.

Just like America used to.

Presidential Snake Oil

2008-04-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

If you're anywhere near a television these days, it's just about impossible to avoid some flack's political promotion for his or her presidential candidate, hawking their modern day snake oil as the panacea to the world's problems. Beyond the sheer opportunism, it's almost embarrassing to see how readily the public consumes the same boasts, promises and revelations spewed forth by politicians. But even more ridiculous is the public's acceptance of those boasts, promises and revelations as being entirely new.

Think your candidate is promising you new solutions to old problems? Maybe you should think again:

Would you like to see a Constitutional Amendment outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, pregnancy or medical condition? Yeah? Well, surprise! It's been law in the United States since 1964, known officially as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

How about a Federal law that protects job applicants and employees who are over 40 from employment discrimination based on age? You like that? Here's the news on that one: The Age Discrimination in Employment Act has been in effect longer than its youngest beneficiaries have been alive. That's right, the ADEA has been on the books since 1967. Not a whole lot new there, either.

If you're in a wheelchair, blind or otherwise disabled, the Americans with Disabilities Act has been in force since 1990, which is just about the time all those good parking spaces vanished.

Think women deserve equal pay for equal work? Apparently, so has the Federal government -- since 1963. Your basic politician wouldn't tell you this, but the Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender for similar work performed under similar conditions. Which means Gloria Steinem was still a Playboy bunny when this legislation was hammered down and finalized in every state of the union.

Here's one that should open your eyes: Think all those illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs? What do you suppose is the solution to illegal immigration? If you're the United States Congress, it's the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which makes it unlawful for any employer to hire any person who is not legally authorized to work in the United States. It actually requires employers to verify and prove their employees' legal status, but forbids discrimination based on national origin or lack of citizenship. And this was law of the land years before the first fear-based "terrorist threats to America" became the driving force behind everything we do and say today.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? The youngest of these pressing political solutions has been proposed, accepted and ratified by every state in the union for over 20 years, yet for some reason, political candidates seem to think they need to bring something new to the party. Here's a really novel idea:

How about saving everyone a lot of time and money and just enforcing the laws that are already in place? Duh.

There is a reason, of course, and this is it: The American public has no idea these issues have already been addressed. Most can't recall their civil rights, even when prompted. And a survey conducted in the late 1990's found that when read to them, most respondents felt the Bill of Rights was too radical to be adopted into the United States Constitution.

In a word, clueless.

In politics, as it does in branding, the first step in developing a solution is understanding the problem. Maybe if people really want solutions that work, they shouldn't be looking for them in the empty, hack stunts and slogans of politicians. Perhaps they should be looking more closely at the people who vote for them.

Jimmy Carter, Still Stupid

2008-04-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

There are a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of people who currently believe that George W. Bush is among the stupidest presidents ever unleashed on the American people. He's not . Bush may not be Einstein, but he's not even close to being the stupidest. The press has always had it out for him, the same way they bent their biases against Richard Nixon.

Let's face it, Bush is an easy target. He's easy to mimic and well, his resumé doesn't exactly reflect a lifetime of victories.

History, however, has a different way of looking at things. It takes its time. Mulls things over. It factors in the value of hindsight and summarizes effects as viewed in terms of the greater good. Nixon was perceived as Evil Incarnate by just about everyone in the world in 1972. Pummeled in the press for his domestic "enemies list", inflation and of course, Watergate, he rated at the bottom of every presidential poll taken at the time.

Not so today.

Read any current history book of your choosing and you'll find fading references to Watergate. Nixon is far more widely recalled for ending the war in Vietnam and opening China to the western world. In fact, much of what you buy at WalMart today is due to Nixon's far-sighted recognition of China's potential. Without Nixon's invitation to join the western world's economy, Ronald Reagan never would have been able to ask Gorbachev to "tear down this wall", which reunited Germany after almost 50 years of Communist divisions.

In 20 years, I imagine that Bush's image will mellow, as well. Probably something along the lines of "being the first to actively engage the threat of radical islamic terror when previous presidents would not."

Where history is concerned, it's the long view that counts, it seems, with one exception: Jimmy Carter.

Sorry, the title for Stupidest American President is already taken.

Here's a guy whose list of screw-ups begins with his election in 1976 and spirals downward to this day. For those of you who don't recall -- or weren't alive -- when Carter was elected, it was a strange time, reminiscent of Andrew Jackson's "people's inauguration." A time after Nixon and Ford, when populist fervor overtook party politics, restoring a corrupt White House to a humble peanut farmer from Georgia. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.

And then reality hit. He wasn't a humble peanut farmer; he was stupid peanut farmer.

In what could only be described as a scene from The Beverly Hillbillies, Carter proceeded to embarrass and degrade the USA from every conceivable angle. Under his short stint as president, Jimmy Carter managed the following:

• Drove domestic interest rates up over 20%, effectively destroying the national economy for a number of years.
• Undermined the brand image of the United States, by demonstrating inconsistent hand-wringing instead of decisive actions, which allowed second and third world nations to challenge -- and wrest -- American moral and economic influence the world over.
• Allowed American hostages to languish in Iran for 444 days
• Tolerated his drunken brother's behavior, which included, among other escapades, public news conferences calling for an American abandonment of Israel because "there's more Arabs than there is Jews [sic]"

The list goes on and on, but you get the idea. The man may have earned a degree in nuclear engineering, but don't forget that the first astronaut was a monkey.

Even if you spot Carter the Camp David Accord, his record of historical accomplishments isn't exactly stellar. Sure, the man can swing a hammer for humanity, but there's a reason for that: he's good at it. It's where he belongs. In a nice, quiet field, knocking nails into walls where he can't hurt anyone and hopefully, has gotten over being America's single biggest mistake. Were you to doubt that last statement, consider the fact that Carter, after publishing his last book in which he comes closest to admitting his own anti-semitic views, now seems intent on "visiting with leaders of Hamas" on his next trip to the middle east.

That's nice. Your tax dollars going toward the protection of a clearly senile man, on his way to display even more of his inimitable buffoonery to a terrorist organization whose sworn mission is the total destruction of Israel, the only stalwart ally of the United States in the middle east. This, from a guy who really thinks he is Jesus Christ and probably has robes in his closet to prove it. A guy whose Alzheimer fog has him touting himself as the better side of the American people.

Um, not exactly the kind of guy I want representing me, any time, anywhere -- for any reason.

You think Bush is bad? Sorry to disappoint you. When it comes to undermining the brand that is America, Carter is the winner, hands down. He's as stupid today as he was back in the 1970's and no doubt history will remember him as such.

Branding Torches China

2008-04-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

Man, I love the free market system. It's so much more fun and exciting than, say, a centrally-planned economy, where everything is predictably boring. When the central government runs the show, everything is slower, duller, lower-quality and subject to committee-driven criteria. Sometimes I think that's why the Soviet Union collapsed. Not because of a political yearning of their citizens to be free, but more because they were increasingly bored with buying soap flakes in the same gray boxes.

One of the last, large centrally-planned economies left on the planet today is China. And despite what you may read in the papers, including political oppression and downright domination, there's an aspect to China that's profoundly fascinating. Here you have perhaps the most hard-knuckled government clamping down on its population for the better part of a century, primping and swooning at Western civilization's temptations dangling in front of their eyes. For every student of Mao's Little Red Book ("avoid wearing underwear that's too tight") there are thousands of Asian teens writhing and squirming, aching to taste one more lick of Britney Spears.

Kind of reminds me of all those devout muslim terrorists who visit strip joints and order adult videos the night before they board airplanes in their efforts to strike a blow to American decadence. Weird.

What I find most interesting, however, is the panic with which Chinese economic force is met here in America. For years, we've been hearing about forced Chinese labor driving down the price of imports far below any level possible for American manufacturers to meet or beat. Were you to believe what you hear, you'd think that it's all but over for the American economy, dislodged from its global pre-eminence by Chinese under-bidding.

But you'd be wrong. And here's why:

As I'm fond of saying, "Life is a branding problem." And even when you ignore your brand, it doesn't mean you aren't branded; it means you're letting everyone else define who and what you are, which means that there's no way on God's green earth you'd ever be able to meet or exceed every one of their expectations. The end result is that nobody, anywhere, would agree on anything about your brand, other than their common disappointment in it.

Enter China. No brand strategy, which means (like corporate and personal clients), they are hanging out there, left to be judged by media reports of their words and deeds -- most of it not really good. Go ahead: scour the internet for the good news on China, and you'll see for yourself that not a whole lot comes up, especially when compared to all the bad news on China. Recognized as the leader in lead-based children's toys, China is also gaining ground on the state of Florida as the most corrupt economy in the world. Chinese food products, for both man and beast, is delivered fresh and fully-laden with poisons that cause real injury and deaths. Chinese soldiers put down any sort of free expression regarding Tibet and have even been accused of manufacturing false evidence to frame the Dalai Lama, a guy in a robe that -- last I heard -- doesn't carry a gun.

In short, left to the rest of the world to define, China is in a heap of bad yogurt, heading for an Olympics in which the main events would seem to be protest and boycott. Not exactly the kind of "Guys-I-Want-To-Hang-With" kind of brand. In fact, this is the kind of stuff -- the qualitative, human aspect of brand -- that motivates people to bypass a cheaper fellow's goods in favor of the folks with whom they feel good about doing business.

You know, the guys who don't imprison their laborers for posting letters of disagreement on the internet.

In light of China's brand neglect and inability to articulate who and what they are, you can expect to see more Americans arrive at their own conclusions, choosing to buy American, even if the price is a bit higher.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once remarked how, "you cannot legislate the hearts and minds of men." He was right. The Chinese threat will not be undone by tariffs, tirades or trade policies. It won't be undone by us at all. It will be undone by the Chinese themselves, as their centrally-planned consciousness collides with a free-thinking society capable of making up its own mind -- and speaking it with their wallets.

Yahoo Had It Coming

2008-04-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

For anyone who subscribes to my weekly FrankelTips column, you knew this was coming. The demise of Yahoo was never in question. It was just a matter of time until someone, somewhere, figured out that were the company in even worse shape, it would have simply collapsed years ago. Now, ever the predator, Microsoft sniffs the blood. Like a hyena, Steve Ballmer is circling its wounded prey, watching and waiting for its simpering victim to buckle and surrender.

Unfortunately, the death of Yahoo is not going to be quite as quick or painless as one would hope. Nor does Yahoo deserve it. Years of brand neglect, reckless management and just plain stupidity have finally caught up with the company who owned, then fumbled and lost dominance in the internet space.

On paper, the deal makes sense: Even at Yahoo's current stock price -- inflated nearly 35% by the prospect of a Microsoft takeover -- Yahoo is hardly underpriced. Its market cap is roughly $37 billion, although when the drugs wear off, it's actually closer to $20 billion (if that). If you're into stock analysis, you might also be interested to know that Yahoo's price to earnings ratio is astronomical, causing nosebleeds at something around 59. The company has never paid a dividend. It has never had sane management. And now, Yang, Bostock and company are whining about how Microsoft's offer is too low.

Please.

If anything, Microsoft's offer is too high. The mere fact that previous to Microsoft's offer of $31 a share Yahoo stock was languishing in the high teens should be enough to tell you that this company was going nowhere fast. One look at the history books should be enough to show you that Yahoo once owned the search market. If you really want to know why Yahoo will quickly succumb to Microsoft, consider the old Machiavellian adage:

The quickest ascension to power is through a vacuum.

The truth is that Yahoo got there first, and like most first-in-the-space players, enjoyed considerable success. It got big fast because there really weren't any other serious competitors. But like other successes whose good fortune is more a result of good timing than good thinking, Yahoo's managers began to believe their own press. As I've written previously in this blog, they hired a show business guy who knew nothing about the web as their top gun. His ineptitude set Yahoo on its precarious, downhill course and the company never recovered.

Actually, Yahoo never had a chance because they never had a brand. Sure, they had an identity, but nobody -- not management, not employees, not developers nor users -- could ever tell anyone else precisely why they chose Yahoo as "the only solution to their problem." Sure, they recognized the now-famous yodel on the radio, but what of it? Who cares?

As it turns out, nobody cares, which is why nobody is weeping to see Yahoo slowly getting sucked up by Microsoft, itself among the least well-received brands on the market. But the news isn't bad for Yahoo. It's probably the best thing they could hope for.

In the first place, as the Dark Force consumes Yahoo, you can bet that it will do what software engineers do best: restore discipline to clearly-focused deliverables. Yahoo could do well with a healthy shot of discipline. After wandering aimlessly about, never knowing who or what it was supposed to be, a good trip to the strategic wood shed could help it restore both functionality and purpose.

Second, Microsoft would have to be pretty stupid to completely abandon the Yahoo identity. Although there's no value beyond its identity, there is brand awareness, which means that if (and this is a real big "if", considering that Microsoft has no brand value, either) Microsoft can define why Yahoo is worth using, they might be able to quietly avoid questions as to why MSN is such a terrific failure in the hearts and minds of the public.

Hey, if you can't make it, buy it.

Finally, Microsoft has always been financially successful. There really isn't much more to this story than the old-fashioned "buy low, sell high" strategy. With all the hype about hostile takeovers and Microsoft buying Yahoo, nobody ever said that Microsoft had to buy and keep Yahoo. At these bargain basement values, they could turn the old "pump and dump" trick and spin off Yahoo in a few years at a healthy profit.

Personally, this whole affair reminds me of a classic Hollywood thriller. No, not Wall Street. More like Dumb and Dumber.

America Online or Flatline?

2008-03-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. One minute, you're thinking that your hero can do no wrong. The next minute, you find your hero has feet of clay after all. Sadly, you watch as a former stalwart crumbles due to its own weaknesses.

What -- you thought I was talking about Eliot Spitzer? Nah. That's your basic, run of the mill, politician's sex scandal.

The story I'm talking about is America Online, or AOL. That's the real tragedy that's hurting more people than Spitzer's sex drive ever will. According to the New York Times, the once high-flying leader of the internet is now stumbling around on the floor like a drunken sailor looking for pocket change. What was once the belle of the ball is now the old, dried up hooker that nobody wants to admit to sleeping with.

For those of you with short memories, let me remind you that as recently as 2000, AOL stock was selling for close to $100 a share. Then it split. Then the dot bomb era hit and since 2003, the stock never really managed to keep its head up over the $20 level. In fact, it's not even really listed any more. You have to track it via Time Warner (TWX). Of course, it would have been easy for everyone at AOL to blame the dot com implosion for AOL's price drop.

But they are wrong. Plenty of dot com companies weathered the online meltdown and clawed their way back to respectable values. Amazon.com, for example. Not my favorite company in the world, but after the market took it to the woodshed, they climbed back on to the horse to regain an appreciable amount of their former value.

Not so with AOL. AOL has always been a company with no brand. No purpose. No direction. No plan. There's no leadership -- never has been. In fact, urban legend has it that management installed a revolving door on the executive suite to save everyone time.

According to the New York Times "On Tuesday, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Warner, AOL’s parent company, acknowledged weakness in the business and said he was open to combining AOL with another company — " 'whatever configuration makes it the strongest and the most valuable.' ”

Now there's something you don't see everyday: The CEO of a company publicly throwing up his hands and claiming the equivalent of, "Ya got me -- I haven't got a clue what to do with this thing -- maybe someone reading this article will have some ideas!"

The truth be told, Bewkes is just one in a long line of AOL victims who simply don't get it. After running through a succession of executive blowhards and posers, AOL is even worse off now than when it booted out Steve Case a while back. While the company has always had high awareness, it has never had a real brand -- one of the reasons why even AOL employees could never agree on what the company is or should be. Once more, according to the New York Times, "Several recently departed executives contacted this week described the climate at AOL as acrimonious. They said there had been confrontational meetings of employees as well as screaming matches in offices, as senior executives worried about making their aggressive quarterly ad sales goals."

Ouch.

To top things off, AOL's much-heralded-but-hardly-effective tactic of shifting emphasis to advertising sales has, in a word, blown up in its face. Following their tradition of shooting first and aiming later, the company has tried and failed to buy their way out of their problems by purchasing and absorbing several online advertising companies. Nice try. All that ended up accomplishing was more in-fighting among the "absorbed" executives, each playing "king of the hill" until the last man standing was a woman -- Lynda Clarizio -- whose portrayal in the media is alternately described in animalistic terms: one minute she's a mother hen, the next, a barracuda.

Where does all this leave the once flying high and mighty? Just about where you'd expect: Spiraling downward toward an inevitable crash into obscurity.

And no, I'm not talking about Eliot Spitzer.

Obama Chooses Orwell

2008-03-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

No matter which way it's decided, the presidential election of 2008 is bound to go down in history as one of the most exciting and well, different national events of our time. Sure, I could re-hash the usual media tripe, gushing like a schoolgirl over the effects of the internet and the electricity which seems to have shocked previously apathetic voters into political action.

But that's nothing new.

Actually, this election isn't so much different as it is scary. Not scary in the traditional manner, mind you. This one has a creepiness all its own. Throughout the past, for example, politicians scared the populace with what they've said. This election grips me for what is not being said. It should scare you, too. And here's why:

In 1949, George Orwell rattled the post-war world with his seminal Nineteen Eighty-Four, a thinly disguised treatise about the Soviet communist threat to the free world. Back in the days when reading was valued as more than just a brief glance at People magazine while sitting on the toilet, Orwell's book was a staple for young minds, introducing them to the concept of critical thinking -- and the lack thereof. One of Orwell's literary devices deployed throughout his stern, thought-controlled vision of the future was the concept of Doublespeak, in which the authoritarian Big Brother constrained and confused the weaker minds of the working class with epithets like these:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

By gradually decreasing the mass's vocabulary with Doublespeak, the public's ability to articulate their thoughts and dissent eventually dissipates, until even those with contrarian ideologies have no means to express them. Which brings us back to the election we now face.

I note with particular horror the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, whose president efforts are comprised entirely of Orwellian Doublespeak. Look closely at his placards and you'll find a hauntingly similar theme that Orwell described in his 1949 novel. There are no specifics. No articulations of thought. Just brief, mono-syllabic words that express, well, whatever you'd like them to express. Hope. Change. Yes we can.

Hope for what? Change to what? Yes we can do what?

If you scrounge around long enough, you'll find a bit or two of real information there. You can, for instance, point to Obama's much-heralded vote against the Iraq war. Nice soundbyte, except that anyone can trumpet their hindsight. What I want to know is his answers -- specific answers -- about questions of the future?

You would think that with all this Obama-mania, at least some of his followers (if not himself) would be able to articulate his positions on the issues of the day. Yet in my experiences, voter after voter is unable to describe or defend any of Obama's positions on just about any topic. What they can do is parrot what they've "heard on TV."

And that, perhaps, is the most frightening aspect of all.

The Homeland Security Hoax

2008-02-08T10:03:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time analyzing, articulating and -- well, let's face it -- just plain bitching about brands, branding and brand strategy, the general lack of which forms the basis of all the miscommunication in the known universe. Okay, that may be overstating it a tad, but to a great extent, I find the reason why so many people don't understand what other people are saying is due to the fact that the people initiating the speech aren't really saying anything to begin with.

Sure, there are taglines and slogans and catch phrases designed to sound as if something important is there. But more often than not, once you peel away the verbiage, there's absolutely no content of any real value. Barack Obama can chant all about change as much as he wants, but I have yet to meet an Obama supporter that can articulate even one aspect of those changes Obama claims the nation so dearly craves.

And it's not just him. In fact, it's not just politicians. In my book The Revenge of Brand X, there's a section I call Saying Something, Meaning Nothing that explains all of this. I don't have to bore you with it here. What I would prefer to bore you with is the tactic I use to pierce the puffery to which the American public at large is exposed on a daily basis.

The tactic is as simple as it is old: Never judge people -- or their brands -- by what they say as by what they actually do.

Now that two centuries of good old American optimism has been undermined by our Culture of Fear, it seems that no matter where you look, there must be some kind threat. Indeed, I've been witness to the profound shift in marketing from Be the first on your block to Don't let this happen to you. Fear is a great motivator, but it's even better at debilitating and freezing people in their tracks, lest they make the wrong move which leads to their demise.

The move from "can do" to "better not" has crippled our notion of risk, with fewer people thinking they can realize their dreams and more people thinking of how they can be sued if they try. And nowhere is this more telling than with our very own Department of Homeland Security.

If you're as big a fan of the truth as I am, the first thing you have to question are the inconsistencies of a brand's claim. The Department of Homeland Security would have you believe that there's a terrorist hiding under every American's bed. The truth, at least according to a well-known Israeli terrorism expert, is that there are fewer than 10,000 active terrorists on the planet. To put that into perspective, there are over 6 billion human beings here. Which means the chances of you -- or anyone else -- bumping into one of these terrorists is less than your chance of getting zapped by lightning over ten times on the same day. Way less.

But maybe you're not one who fancies the statistical argument. Maybe you're more skeptical of numbers that can be manipulated to prove an argument. Alrighty, then, let's take it down a notch. Let's take the threat all the way down to where you and I and every other ordinary citizen can feel it: Let's go to the United States Post Office.

Assume, for the moment, you want to ship a paperback book weighing two pounds (32 ounces) to someone across the country. If you're like most people, you would wrap up the book, slap on the appropriate postage and drop the package in the mailbox. The only thing is that within a day, the package wouldn't arrive at your friend's mailbox, it would arrive in yours, because owing to the Department of Homeland Security's edict, any package weighing over 13 ounces must be hand-delivered to a United States Post Office and handed to a mail carrier. You can't just drop it in a mailbox. The reasoning is that any package over that weight could be "suspicious."

Okay. I can accept that someone, somewhere on the government payroll abstracted the numeric equivalent of a mail bomb to be anything over 13 ounces. But here's what I have trouble with:

If anything over 13 ounces is considered a viable terrorist threat by the Department of Homeland Security, why is it that Federal Express, DHL, UPS and just about every other overnight delivery service has no such requirement? Every one of these companies is just as American as the United States Postal Service. Just as big a target. But Federal Express, DHL and UPS don't have the one thing the United States Postal Service has: subordination to a bloated government agency of questionable authority.

With any of those other services, I just drop my package in their drop boxes. No bomb threats. No extra hassles. No superfluous fanning of unwarranted anxieties.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that the United States government protects me around the clock. I'm glad they keep AWAC planes and electronic surveillance and lord knows what else up and running on a 24/7 basis. That's their job. That's why I pay my taxes.

What I don't need is their play-acting and promoting a culture of fear that's designed to spur a security industry that has no real problem to solve and doesn't even begin to solve the true threat at hand: the elimination of the perpetrators of that culture.

If you want to look at a brand's credibility, don't listen to what they say. Watch what they do. And pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

Obama's Fatal Endorsements

2008-01-28T10:58:00.000-08:00

One of the most often misquoted phrases in American culture originates with H. L. Mencken, who once observed that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." What many think Mencken said was that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

To look at how the presidential election of 2008 is shaping up, the misquote is a far more accurate observation.

I may be just a branding guy, but a big part of branding -- even political brands -- is the strategic element that drives the executions of the campaigns. And while everyone in the media is crowing about Barack Obama, you may want to take a more intelligent look at what's really going on...and why the victory cries are just a tad premature:

A significant part of brand value is derived from endorsements. In other words, you can tout yourself all you want, but when it comes to credibility, there's nothing quite like third party endorsements. When actual users of your product stand up and cheer for your brand, you've literally achieved branding nirvana. After all, that's the whole point of branding: to turn users into evangelists; customers into a sales force.

It works as well for votes as it does for soap, believe me.

Of course, the one thing that everyone seems to forget is that the endorsements aren't nearly as important as the people doing the endorsing. Sure, it's really great when the unwashed masses can make the connection between the guy using your brand and your brand itself. The right brand in the right place can really move the needle. But what about those times when the right brand ends up in the wrong places?

What happens when the wrong guys rally around your brand? I can tell you this much: it's not pretty.

You wouldn't want O.J. Simpson endorsing your kitchen knives. Or Michael Jackson on your package of baby wipes. Years ago, Anita Bryant -- former Miss America and personal representative of Jesus Christ -- nearly brought down the Florida Orange growers with her vicious anti-gay remarks. And someone, somewhere, thought she was just what the growers needed to sell more juice. Clearly, it was someone who felt homosexuals lacked heterosexuals' daily need for vitamin C.

You get the idea. The wrong guy's endorsements can kill a brand just as quickly as the right guy's can launch it. Which brings us to the latest endorsements of Barack Obama.

A short time ago, the press was all abuzz with the story of how Senator John Kerry -- that's right, the ex-presidential candidate tagged as the sorriest loser of 2004 -- gave his ringing endorsement to Obama. Wow. A former losing candidate, likely to be foot-noted by historians as the flip-flopping dunce who bungled a 15 point lead in the polls just months before the national election, losing to an even-less qualified candidate.

Yeah, THAT'S the guy whose endorsement is going to stampede voters into the booths. Sure.

Today, we hear that yet another perennial blowhard is backing Obama in his bid for national leadership: Senator Ted Kennedy. Someone, anyone, please tell me what value a bloated, outdated, never-was like Ted Kennedy can bring to Barack Obama? It's been over 40 years since the golden days of Camelot. And to quote the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen, "Senator, I knew John Kennedy...and you're no John Kennedy."

What, if any value, does Ted Kennedy bring to Barack Obama? A worn out faded dream of potential, never-realized optimism? A visual image of failed alcoholism and privilege afforded by inherited wealth? I don't think so.

If you really want to know the value of an endorsement, try looking at it the other way around: Two over-the-hill, aging and irrelevant politicians rubbing up against the media's newest sensation. Just as some older men buy red Corvettes and young trophy wives, Kennedy and Kerry make fools of themselves by donning Obama T-shirts, hawking the baseball caps and hoping, praying that network television will grant them one last hurrah as the old Glory Boys they once hoped they could be.

Not really the kind of ringing endorsement the media would have you believe it to be.

Sad, really. For everyone except, perhaps, the Clintons.

The McCain/Lieberman ticket

2008-01-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

I'm a branding guy. I see everything in life as a branding problem, driven by strategic reasoning -- and more often than not -- the human factors that data-driven pollsters and pundits choose to ignore. A while back, for example, CNBC asked why domestic WalMart stores were under-performing when the economy was doing so well.

Expert after expert brought in their charts, numbers and data -- all with no real explanation. When the moderator turned to me (the video clip is at my website), I simply offered up the human side of the story:

"To shop at WalMart is to be reminded that you're poor. And people don't like that. So the minute their economic picture improves, they shop elsewhere. One reason is because they can, but the more important reason is because it certifies their own progress. They are no longer forced to shop at a place that reinforces their sense of failure."

The moderator sat stunned for a few seconds, until my analyst friend Richard Hastings piped up, "You know, I think Rob may be right."

A while back in this blog, I used the same type of analysis to make the case for a 2008 Al Gore presidential bid. This time out, I want to propose why the only Republican ticket with serious possibility of winning could be John McCain and Joe Leiberman.

It doesn't take much for any plugged-in person to deduce that the race for the presidency is a wide open brawl. Yes, there are leaders and poll grabbers, but as the race drags on, there are very few consistent indicators. Of those, the most consistent political marker is "change". Change is the engine that has propelled Obama into contention. It's worked for him, as noted by the day after the Iowa caucuses, where everyone from Hillary Clinton to -- of all people -- Mitt Romney latched on to the phrase in their "on to New Hampshire" rhetoric.

Change sounds really good. But all it takes is a short trip down memory lane to recall how the very same strategy vaulted -- and then destroyed -- the presidential candidacy of one Senator Gary Hart back in 1988. Back then, Hart was touring the country, picking up support with his "we need New Ideas" pitch. Like Obama, however, nobody ever got to hear any specifics on Hart's New Ideas. It took one nationally televised debate for Walter Mondale to pull the rug out from under Hart's campaign by asking, "Gary, like they say in those TV commercials, 'Where's the beef?'"

Hart was stranded like a deer in the headlights. A short while later, he was caught with Donna Rice, a sexy blonde who wasn't his wife, on a friend's boat. History promptly buried Hart, along with his presidential ambitions.

I bring up that story because there's only one declared presidential candidate who preaches change and has a long history of challenging the administration -- even when that administration was dominated by his own party. And that's John McCain. In other words, while Obama, Clinton and the rest are whining about change, McCain -- rightly or wrongly -- is the only guy who actually has put his money where his mouth is.

That makes McCain more than a hype-master for change. That makes him an agent of change, which is exactly the brand message the public is looking for.

If McCain is known for being a maverick, there's only one guy who's more renown for "reaching across the aisle" of the Senate during his long career, and that's Joe Lieberman, the senator from Connecticut. Lieberman is the guy known best as a conservative Democrat, who ran and won his last term as -- and this is important -- an independent candidate. In late 2007, Joe Lieberman came out publicly to endorse John McCain, a Republican, for president. Which means the country potentially has what it's been asking for:

A potential President/Vice-President ticket composed with two experienced people who have track records of change.

McCain has always been the Republicans' choice for those who were never crazy about George Bush. Lieberman had enough appeal to win the Vice Presidential candidacy with Al Gore in 2004. Both guys are known for their ability to think independently and work cooperatively, despite party affiliations. And both have track records to prove everything they say that they've done or tried to do.

The country has never, at least in my recollection, ever elected a "split ticket" presidency, and if that ain't what real change is, pal, I don't know how else to sell it to you.

Is the public ready for that kind of change? Well, from everything I can tell, they're not ready for a woman leader and, judging by New Hampshire, they might tell pollsters they're ready for a black president, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they don't seem to vote that way.

Praying for Oscar's Death

2008-01-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

As I clack out this article, the Writers Guild of America stands resolute in their strike against the motion picture and entertainment establishment, pacing the picket lines in their fight to achieve a greater financial stake in future payments for their efforts.

It's a good strike, having already cancelled more than a few events, crippling the 2008 Golden Globes Awards show and threatening the viability of this year's Academy Awards show.

Good for them. I hope they win. In fact, I hope they stay on strike forever.

I, for one, have had enough of our national obsession with celebrity and all the mental mind candy that rots the brains of Americans on a daily basis. Is it really important to devote air time to the physical and emotional collapse of Britney Spears? Do we really need to pre-empt regular programming to watch state troopers escort Paris Hilton to jail? And does George Clooney's selection -- yet again -- as Sexiest Man Alive really merit the front pages of our national magazines?

How many more dramatically-scored, thunderously-narrated television ads trumpeting the latest "tour de force" of some ridiculously bad re-make do we have to endure before the country wakes up and smells the coffee?

In the Age of the Soundbyte, truly important issues that affect the future of our world are sandwiched between airhead entertainment programs, stuffed into five-second statements that put the war in Iraq on equal footing with the latest box office earnings of whatever movie premiered this week. I mean, outside of a few hundred self-involved people in Hollywood, who really cares how much a movie grosses in its first week? I doubt that factory workers on the line in Akron, Ohio, spend their lunch break debating the marketing futures of movie studios. They're too busy devoting their time to real issues. Like putting food on the table, paying their medical bills and wondering if their sons and daughters are coming home safely from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Maybe it's just the sadist in me, but I get a chuckle knowing that Hollywood celebrities are paralyzed without a staff of writers stuffing lines into their otherwise empty heads. To paraphrase Billy Wilder's script from Sunset Boulevard, "Movie audiences don't know about screenwriters. They think the actors just make the lines up as they go." Well, now they sure don't. Now they'll get to see just how dopey these talking heads are.

Or maybe they won't.

After all, they elected one as governor of California.

Presidential Idiocracy

2008-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

There are those who say art imitates life. And there are those who insist that life imitates art. Over the years, I've found that the truth lies somewhere in between: What may start out as art actually can integrate into reality. People see things in art that they only previously imagined. But seeing them in art, particularly in pictures that move and talk, adds a dimension that bridges fiction into the possibility of becoming non-fiction. This is, according to industry pundits, the force behind "product placement" in the movies.

Whether it's James Bond drinking Smirnoff vodka or E.T. scarfing down Reese's Pieces, there's no question that most people fall into the "monkey see, monkey do" syndrome. If a product is perceived properly, it's amazing how it will affect people perceive it. Stranger still is the phenomenon where people will alter their behavior once they've watched how other people behave onscreen.

Such is the case with a film entitled Idiocracy. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a rental or, at the very least, an illegal download. The first three minutes alone (below) tells you everything you need to know, but if it's raining and there are no more errands to run, it's worth the extra 90 minutes to chuckle over the future de-evolution of mankind:

Essentially, the film concerns itself with a man of average intelligence who is frozen in an experiment that goes terrifically wrong. Instead of hibernating only one year, he wakes up after five hundred years, to discover a world dumbed down to its lowest possible depths -- and vaulting him to prominence as the smartest man in the land.

The strange thing about Idiocracy is that while billed as a comedy, its implications are staggeringly horrifying. The smart people, having limited their numbers to control population, have been bred out of existence, largely outnumbered by trailer trash bumpkins who multiply like rabbits, completely unconcerned about their environments or their futures.

When you watch the movie, you find yourself both disturbed and amused, recognizing that, in fact, art does imitate life -- and sometimes that reflection is sobering. Of course, the film takes its notion to the extreme, but the extreme, in this case, isn't so far off. A world in which nobody questions anything, accepts everything they're told, and is motivated only by its most primal, prurient needs. It's a hell, damned to eternal mediocrity.

In fact, very similar to the world in which we live today.

Think about it. Just about every TV show, music track and product pitch revolves around some kind of sexual message. Our drugs, clothes and health are designed, manufactured and marketed in a fashion that appeals only to man's most basic urges. Nothing is immune from the Dumbing Down or America. Including our presidential elections.

Mike Huckabee plunks his bass guitar. Bill Clinton blows his saxophone. Hillary Clinton stumbles through Soprano parodies. Barack Obama hosts Saturdary Night Live and bump butts with -- of all people -- Ellen DeGeneres, the mentally unbalanced comic whose idea of national tragedy is her inept breach of contract over an adopted dog.

In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't promote his candidacy for the presidency of the United States by mistaking the electoral process with a talent show. In the 1980's, Ronald Reagan didn't dismantle the threat of communism by chatting up Jon Stewart. These were the last leaders of a thinking generation, whose candidates were more concerned about policy than popularity. And yet, here we are, faced with presidential hopefuls who hope to lead the most powerful nation in history by pandering to the lowest levels they can.

While America's brand value hasn't plummeted this low since the dark days of Jimmy Carter, this year's crop of presidential candidates doesn't bode for better times. Instead of a strong hand delivering us from governmental confusion, we sit and endure a bunch of third rate showmen bent on getting a great big hand from an audience.

The movie is called Idiocracy. Look for it in the non-fiction section.

Political Brands: Mitt Romney

2007-12-12T14:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you've read it, but in The Revenge of Brand X, there's a section I call "Saying Something, Meaning Nothing." It essentially outlines the phenomenon where, due mainly to the over-lawyering of the country, American society seems less intent on saying what they mean than not offending anyone when saying it. In the old days, they used to call this kind of thing "doublespeak."

Today, we pretty much call it bullshit.

When you think about the taglines offered up by advertising agencies to their clients, you begin to get the idea: Toyota uses a phrase like "Moving Forward." As opposed to what, moving sideways? Nike says, "Just do it." Just do what? To whom? Does anyone ever think to ask what phrases and communications like this are actually supposed to mean?

It might be fine and dandy to sell candy bars and airlines and automobiles like this, but what about candidates for the presidency of the United States of America? Clearly, the political spinmeisters have no problem with this at all, as evidenced by the slick, empty packaging of Mitt Romney, the quintessential just-add-water-and-mix presidential politician.

In this media-driven age, Romney is a hype-meister's dream: Good looking, lights well for the camera and unlike John Edwards, keeps his hair styled and colored to the exact degree required to remain understated. Romney also lives the American dream, which is to say he's both good looking and rich. This makes Mitt appealing to American women, especially Republican women. The fact that he's white is probably what appeals to most Republican men. The fact that he's good-looking, populated by sons and reminiscent of the Kennedys probably tugs the heartstrings of conservative-leaning Democrats.

Truth is, Mitt Romney is a media man's dream before he ever opens his mouth. Backed by the Bush political machine, he could conceivably wrap up the Republican nomination without having to ever utter one word. The problem, however, is that TV broadcasts more that pictures. And when it comes to hearing from Romney, all the American really gets to hear is this Christmas card kind of ad:

If you need to run that clip again, feel free to do so. See if you can find any words that ring of any value to anyone in the country. There's not a sentence in the entire spot that does anything other than add a soundtrack to the Mitt Romney mirage. I suppose this kind of feel good stuff could sell cans of soft drinks, but how does anyone with Romney-sized resources miss the target by this huge a margin?

Worse than saying the wrong things, Romney chooses to not say anything, which leaves him susceptible to the likes of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, two populist paupers who have learned that Big Money Bullshit no longer passes muster with the American public. You may not like what either of them have to say, but at least you get to hear them say it.

No wonder that, despite his many millions, Romney is limping into Iowa this week, lagging by double digits behind Huckabee. Not that it matters much. Power brokers don't make their decisions based on public approval. They go where the money is. If they want Romney in, he'll get in. So why even bother with Romney's brand -- or lack thereof?

Because if Romney does get the nomination, and if he should get elected President, those very same power brokers are going to have to sell him to an American public. The very same public who bought into -- and got burned by -- the last one they sold them.

Political Brands: Fred Thompson

2007-11-23T17:07:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's me and the fact that I am, despite all my protests, getting old. Then again, maybe it's the dumbing down of America that's getting to me. Maybe it's both. But when I see the sorry lot of candidates running to become the leader of the free world, a shiver runs down my spine.

None of the candidates - Republican, Democrat or any life form in between - seems to have the brains of a bat when it comes to leadership. All of them seem to dismiss the notion that a leader is someone who leads, not panders. That's because my generation was the last to experience what following real leaders was like.

And believe me, it was a lot different than it is now.

People older than myself lament the loss of leadership by reciting a roll call of personalities from the Second World War. They'll talk about Roosevelt, DeGaulle, Chuchill -- and to some extent, Hitler and Mussolini. Sure, the latter two weren't exactly movie idol favorites, but each managed (mainly through sheer force) to drive their countries in new directions. It's just that the Axis powers were driven in the wrong direction.

In more recent American history, you hear the name Kennedy (John, not Robert or Teddy) bandied about as one of the last great leaders and no matter what your politics, you'd have to admit he was. JFK took bold moves, issued strong challenges and moved the country forward -- even while women were running naked through the White House.

The last great American leader, however, was Ronald Reagan. Forget his politics, for now. Focus on the last persona old enough to play the role of father to a massive, aging baby boomer population. You can say what you like about Ronald Reagan, but you can't take away his ability to inspire comfort, calm and assuredness to millions of Americans and foreigners alike.

If you don't remember his election, let me remind you that when Reagan took office, Jimmy Carter had driven interest rates up sky high (over 20%) and driven America's international image into the ground. By the time Reagan was into his second term, all of Carter's damage had been undone and then some: Soviet communism disintegrated without one shot being fired -- and this from the president whose detractors considered the most likely to push the button.

Not bad results for a clearly defined brand strategy.

Reagan's brand strategy -- like all good leaders -- was communicated effectively. And that's a big part of what great leaders do. John Kennedy made his visions clear, resulting in the country (and the world) following. Reagan tapped into the concerns of Americans, communicated them effectively and the world followed him, too.

Which brings us to Fred Thompson, a man -- like Reagan -- presumably with little in the way of traditional Presidential qualifications but whose communication qualities appear unrivaled. Take this 30 second piece for example:

Remind you of anyone? The toe-in-the-dirt, aw-shucks-folks-it's-so-simple approach designed to address American aspirations, hopes and dreams? There's a reason why Fred Thompson strikes such a major chord with so many Americans. And while his brand is never really articulated, it's his intuitive anti-branding that makes him so effective. Public relations people and competitive campaign advisors will snivel that Thompson's recurring role on Law and Order form the basis of his campaign power. Sure, it helps. But that's not what's going on here.

Thompson's ability to reach through the tube and not be like every other blowhard is what touches people. He never yells. He has no pretty boy looks. He just eases back and lets the voters discover his authority instead of hammering it into them, the same way DeForest Kelley did as Star Trek's Dr. McCoy when he protested on some distant planet in the future, "I may be just an old country doctor......" What Thompson projects is calm, credible, authoritative wisdom -- a quality totally lacking in his competitors. And he does it pretty well.

The question now is whether the actor has any idea that the role for which he's auditioning has real life consequences.

Starbucks Down the Drain

2007-11-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

One of the best parts about being an iconoclast is enjoying the naysayers who dump on remarks that are grounded in truth. I can't help it. I enjoy watching lemmings in denial jumping on the popular media bandwagon, only to tumble when the wheels fall off.

Such is the case with our friends at Starbucks, whose fortunes of late have been anything but fortunate. In case you're just tuning in, "everyone's favorite cup of coffee" has been dumping its value down the drain. In the twelve months previous to this writing, the stock that everyone continues to pronounce as "one of the best brands in America" has lost close to half its value.

Hmm. Why could that be?

Clearly, Starbucks' ever-rising prices over the last decade couldn't be nickel-and-diming its income statement to death. After all, if you're willing to pay three or four bucks for a latté -- or if you're cheap like me, a buck and change for a tall drip -- another quarter isn't going to change your behavior. Starbucks has been charging premium prices for its brew since well into the last century. We're used to it. We don't mind it.

Of course, if you were paying attention back then, there were telltale signs that Starbucks' high-flying days were numbered. Not because they couldn't purchase enough premium beans. And not because they couldn't hire enough young, overly-caffeinated baristas to process your order.

It was because Starbucks has no genuine brand. Never did.

Ah, I can already hear the whining of marketing and advertising people objecting to that last sentence. Here I am, blastpheming what posers and pundits have worshipped as a "great example of branding," when in fact I warned Starbucks publicly years ago that their lack of brand would eventually do them in. Nobody listened then. And nobody will listen now. But the truth will always out.

Here's the deal on Starbucks and its brand:

What everyone likes to call branding is, especially in Starbucks' case, nothing more than identity. When it comes to knowing who Starbucks is, there's no problem. But that's not a brand's - a real brand's - true function. That's advertising's function. Advertising is the means for raising a brand's awareness. But no amount of marketing or advertising or public relations can sustain a brand's growth if they raise awareness without making people understand why the brand is "the only solution" to their problem.

To this day, there is not one person who can accurately and consistently articulate why Starbucks is preferable to other competing brands. Not the average yutz in the street . Not the Vice President of their ad agency. Not even the CEO of Starbucks himself. And you can bet that if they can't articulate why Starbucks is "the only solution," nobody else in this great land of ours can, either.

And if millions of caffeine addicts can't articulate it, do you think the financial geniuses of Wall Street can? Of course not. They just look at the numbers and panic.

Which means that no matter how fast Starbucks dances, the Titanic will keep sinking. Sure, they'll try all kinds of cross-merchandising with all kinds of products they hope and pray will add to their coffers. But until they've defined why Starbucks is the only solution to their prospects' problems, Starbucks will keep playing hit-and-miss. There are only so many unemployed writers that can occupy floorspace with their laptops before a store's per-square-foot revenue sinks like a proverbial stone. And single women reading novels in hopes of getting a date don't do much for improving the bottom line, either.

When you put it all together, the picture isn't all that rosy for Starbucks. McDonald's will be coming out with high-priced coffee soon enough. Dunkin Donuts is already massing its troops along the border. And both of those brands have more to offer than the only thing Starbucks ever did -- a good cup of coffee.

Where there's no brand articulation, there is no strategy. And where there's no strategy, there's little chance of growth. Which means that while Starbucks may continue to brew a hot cup of coffee, their future is more than likely leave its investors steaming.

Redcoats and Terrorism

2007-09-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

There are all kinds of ways to learn things in life. Some people are good at memorizing facts. They look at a list, commit its contents to memory, show up for the test and ace the exam. The minute they walk out of the room, of course, every bit of memorized data detaches from their brains like leaves from a tree during an autumnal gust of wind. With those bits of data goes every bit of knowledge, because the main goal of the discipline -- to pass the exam -- has been achieved. They keep their little cheat sheets, though, just in case they ever have to memorize those facts again.

I've never been a memory learner. I've always been an observer of patterns. I look at situations and try to discern the commonalities they share. Once I see a pattern, I apply it to other situations to see how well the model holds up. It's an alternative way of learning, but it happens to be the way my brain works. I find that the more I understand why something happens, the easier it is for me to remember what happened. And because I've extracted the patterns leading up to, and through, each situation, I tend to string events together, making sense of the universe as best I can.

People who don't know me tend to dismiss my commentaries as somewhat cavalier, but I assure you they're not. I watch and listen. I observe things that some people find insignificant, but hold real value in stitching together patterns that, more often than not, reveal fascinating insights into everything from minor family events to major world political crises.

Take terrorism, for example. Everyone has been watching as the United States has deployed hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of billions of dollars into what we've allowed to be called The War on Terrorism, mainly the active military efforts to combat the forces of radical islam. We've been at this anti-terror thing for quite a while now, most noticeably in Afghanistan and Iraq, if you believe what you read in the papers. We've watched thousands of young Americans die and ten times that number return home wounded for life. Through it all, from the comfort of my armchair, I can't help but wonder:

Have we been all wrong in the way we're fighting the war on terror?

The way I see it, we've been led into these conflicts by memory learners. People who read a list of prerequisites, check off as many as apply to their situation and, having checked off the required number, launch into action. Don't get me wrong, I'm not selling the Joint Chiefs of Staff short here. I'm just Joe Average, with barely enough information on the Pentagon's decision-making process to even make an argument.

But what if the Pentagon -- which like every other governmental institution is driven by policy, rules and consensus -- are really memory learners? What if they really do react on a "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" basis? If that were the case, their reactions would likely follow the "we've been attacked, so we have to return fire" track. They'd do exactly what they've been doing: deploying formally-militarized units and supplies into the theater of war identified as the enemy camp.

And this is what concerns me. As a pattern learner, I've never thought the war on terrorism should be fought that way. When I look at the war on terror, I see the patterns that date back to the defeat of British redcoat soldiers. Whether in Africa or North America, the British faced armies of rag-tag, local militia (Americans and Zulus) who wore no uniforms. They blended into their environments and attacked the British in guerilla actions -- much the way radical muslims attack our own troops. The British further enhanced their own misfortunes by choosing bright red uniforms, making them easy targets for any sniper hiding in the woods or among the bush. The Brits marched in formation, signaling their approach with drums and bagpipes, tipping off their adversaries whose most successful tactic was the ambush.

See any similarities yet? See the patterns beginning to emerge?

I can't help but wonder why the Coalition Forces are sending in uniformed, organized military units to fight a stealthy enemy that knows no uniform or central command structure. Have we learned nothing from the past? Can nobody else see the patterns here? From the outset, I have never heard anyone in any position of authority put forth the argument as to how and why conventional military tactics simply don't apply to the war on terrorism. Is hubris so powerful a character flaw that we would have it risk our defeat?

I have no inside information. I have no White House connections. In fact, all I have is the hope that someone, somewhere deep inside the government has recognized the patterns evident here, creating counter terrorism units that move in stealth, applying the same tactics to counter terrorists as the terrorists use to attack the rest of the world. I hope they realize that every uniform worn by an American soldier is a 21st century red coat. A misapplied tactic woefully out of its place and time.

People ask me, "Are you for or against the war in Iraq?" Honestly, the only answer I can give them -- if they take the time to listen -- is that I've never supported doing anything stupid. I do believe that the threat terrorism has to be met and eliminated. I just don't see sending hundreds of thousands of easily identified targets as the smart move.

Red coats haven't been effective since the eighteenth century.

The Demise of Social Networking

2007-09-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

If you've been around the internet as long as I have (I didn't invent the internet, but I watched it being born), you get a sense of how it works. I'm not talking about the technology. That's kid stuff. I'm talking about the people who use, abuse and sell the technology.

Anyone who witnessed the internet meltdown of Web 1.0 remembers all kinds of statistics and theories that were supposed to propel the "new economy" through the fiber optic pipelines. Most of them were, in a word, ridiculous. Concepts like "lifetime value of a customer" inflated worthless companies' valuations beyond the stratosphere. Today, all but a few early-selling believers in those myths and legends (Mark Cuban, are you listening?) lost more than they ever hoped to gain.

As we wade into the muck known (typically) as Web 2.0, we are once again asked to believe in a new set of scams and paradigms. This time, it's Social Networking. And while social networking isn't nearly as fallible as say, "personalized start pages", these are the things of which Internet Bubbles are made.

Let me clarify:

The thing that makes Social Networking such a dangerous concept is the fact that its basis is fundamentally sound. The truth is, and always has been, that the web is a communal medium, given to aggregating humans around a central source. Anyone, from anywhere, can meet anyone else from anywhere else, establishing bonds that range from discussions of nuclear disarmament to the best motels for a kinky hook-up.

So far, so good.

But the problems with Social Networking far exceed their benefits. In the first place, simply gathering a bunch of dopes into one place with no specific purpose has the same effect as advertising a Giant Tractor Pull with no Giant Tractors. Sure, you'll probably meet up with some beer-swilling fans chugging the same tall cans of Miller, but after that, what value is left?

Second, with no structure, how long do you think people can tolerate each other? After you've finished that last can of Miller, what's left to talk about? I mean, there's only so much small talk one can manage during the course of the day. Which means the entire category is subject to the same fast fade every novelty item experiences: A small introduction, followed by a huge grassroots acceptance, fabulous usage, drop-off in interest and eventual extinction. For those of you old enough to remember them, Social Networks are the Digital Pet Rock.

Third, there are now so many Social Networks out there that nobody has the time to deal with them all. Especially since none of them have any stated purpose, the main topic of conversations among Social Networkers is no longer which music is hot. It's which networks to axe. These things are major time sucks.

Fourth, the dirty little secret about Social Networks is that all but one (yes, it's my own i-legions.com that's been profitable since 1998) have no sustainable revenue model. They rely too heavily on third party advertising. But what advertiser is going to pay for a network that's here today, gone tomorrow? Especially when even the hottest Social Networks of the day can't produce effective results? In case you haven't heard, all but one Social Network continues to produce results considerably lower than your basic direct mail rates -- and their sell-through rates are even lower.

Does this spell the demise of Social Networks like MySpace, Facebook and all the others that come online in droves? Yup. Not because people aren't using them. But because all but one are fundamentally flawed.

Think Rupert Murdoch can't blunder by paying $800 million for MySpace? Think Google is genius for paying $1.6 billion for YouTube? Think back to Web 1.0, when Netscape owned 90% of the browser market and Qualcomm stock was nearing $1000 a share.

That popping sound you hear ain't just in your ears.

Lucky Sub-prime Meltdowns

2007-08-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

Life is full of bumps and bruises. You can work real hard and nothing will happen. Or you can not work at all, be born with incredibly great looks -- and still, nothing will happen. And then there are those few, chosen people who haven't looks or talent, but succeed beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Those are the folks that have the one thing for which none of us are ever prepared:

Luck.

Everyone associates luck with success. I view it from a somewhat different perspective: Luck is just the flip side of the Randomness Coin. On one side, you have fame and fortune. On the other, you have meteorites plummeting from the sky, instantaneously immolating buses filled with school children who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's the same randomness. One is good, the other is evil.

When it comes to luck, I suppose I've had my share. But truth be told, I've never had the really great, change-your-life kind of luck. I've never won the lottery or been discovered on YouTube. Or been rescued by a government program the way politicians are now talking about with regard to the sub-prime loan meltdowns.

In case you haven't taken a good, hard look at the sub-prime meltdown situation, it goes something like this: The media's version tells you that lots of hardworking people were duped into home loans that went bad on them. The loans went bad because they either were "interest only" (which means you don't really buy the house at all, you just pay interest on it) or negative amortization loans (which means every time you pay the "low monthly payment" you actually increase the amount you owe on the house) or something just as bad. The media likes to portray these homeowners as innocent victims.

But they're not. They're suckers. Lucky suckers. Here's why:

If you've ever purchased a home, you know that everything having to do with anything even remotely connected to the purchase is put in writing, shoved in front of you to read and sign. Every regulatory, government and industry agency makes sure of that. And while the fonts are small enough to require reading glasses, every term and condition is outlined for the average eighth-grade-reading-level American to peruse and digest.

You and I both know that even though they can read and understand all those terms and conditions, the fact is that few of those lucky sucker ever actually read and and understand all those terms and conditions. They usually rely on the agent to scratch an "X" next to the places requiring initials and signatures. The papers get signed and the next sounds you hear are the jinglings of the front door keys.

What everyone explained to these homeowners, what every loan agreement disclaimed to them, was the less-than-traditional situation in which these people were signing on the dotted line. What buyers were told, but often chose not to hear, was that "interest only" loans and "negative amortization" loans were founded on the precarious hope of their property's value appreciating by at least 25%, as it may have in previous years. That's when the greed factor kicked in, with hundreds of thousands of paycheck-to-paycheck citizens decided to spin the wheel for the big money, betting on red that the real estate market would keep on rising. The plan was to ride the inflation, then refinance the current loan with a more traditional 30 year fixed -- and maybe even take out some cash.

At last, the Little Guy could rip the system the way he'd always heard the big boys do it.

Of course, that didn't happen. The property values didn't rise. They sank, and along with them went the hopes and greedy dreams of the homeowners. Many of them lost their homes and their jobs. Once again, the lottery didn't turn up their numbers. They were, to be totally honest, victims of their own foolishness. And yet, they remain lucky, as politicians begin clamoring for rescue programs to aid the "victims" of the sub-prime meltdown. Yes, your tax dollars could soon be at work bailing out the media victims of their own poor judgement, in much the same way that the Federal government bailed out Chrysler some years back.

See, that's what I mean. I never get that kind of luck. We recently lost a fair amount of money in a real estate deal. Turns out the general contractor was a felon, and a good one. Lots of people lost lots of money. We went into the deal with our eyes as wide open as they possibly could be. When we heard the contractor was in jail, we knew we'd lost it all. But not one politician came forward with a "rescue plan" for us. No tax dollars going to work for me. I don't have that kind of luck.

Of course, what we lost amounted to something in the thousands. Others lost hundreds of thousands and even millions. Now that I think about it, maybe there's some luck in that, eh?

Nardelli Gets Paid to Fail at Chrysler

2007-08-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An executive with no record of success is recruited by the Old Boys Network to spearhead the "turnaround" of a failing company. The company hires him at an outrageous salary, with ridiculous benefits and a golden parachute worth not millions, but hundreds of millions.

The guy gets it all, including a fat $200+ million payout for nearly driving the company into the ground. Got the picture? Think it can't happen? Well that's exactly what happened to Home Depot when they hired and then jettisoned Robert Nardelli as their CEO.

Nardelli succeeded where none before him could have: He drove the company in a vertical arc pointing straight down -- and then walked out the door with a $200+ million reward package for doing so.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you'll recognize this as yet another case of Caretaker Manager Syndrome, where companies who don't know any better hire CEO's who know even less. The classic Caretaker Manager scenario is a three year contract:

Year One: Get hired by suckers whose company is hemorrhaging cash and market share to the point that their desperation clouds their good business sense. The Caretaker uses this first year to make promises and "assess the situation."

Year Two: Caretaker begins sniffing out departments where he can "cut costs", drastically slashes budgets and tosses out the very employees who built the company. By cutting costs, he hopes to "restore profitability."

Year Three: The costs are cut, but the Caretaker has done nothing to increase revenues. While profits have increased, overall revenue is down and company infrastructure is devastated to the point where any hope of a real financial recovery is gone. But the Caretaker Manager doesn't care: His deal is done. And by the time the folks who hired him find out how much damage he's caused, it's too late. His recruiter has already landed him at another company where he can do the same damage all over again.

Don't look now, but it's happening to Chrysler. According to the Los Angeles Times:

In Nardelli, Chrysler is getting a former senior General Electric Co. executive, who was both credited with overhauling purchasing and technology systems at Home Depot and widely criticized for pay and severance packages seen as excessive.
"This is an interesting choice, and I'm somewhat perplexed by it," said Erich Merkle, an auto industry analyst with IRN Inc. "There are still things that Chrysler needs long term and I'm not sure Nardelli can provide them."

Yep. I'm just as perplexed at how anyone could hire a bumbler like Nardelli after his public debacle at Home Depot. But then, I keep forgetting. Corporate America doesn't pay executives to succeed. It pays them to fail. Which actually makes Nardelli the perfect man for the job, I suppose.

Macy's Bites the Dust

2007-07-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be an avid reader of this blog, but it sure would have come in handy had the management team at Federated Department Stores been reading it in September of 2005. If you weren't a reader back then, everything you need to know about Macy's today is all there.

In Federated, Filene's and Failure, I wrote that Federated's inability to comprehend brand strategy doomed their consolidation efforts from the outset. Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, it seems Macy's sorry fate is at last revealed:

Retail industry analysts said the company's tepid performance of late has made it vulnerable to an acquisition. Revenue fell 0.2%, to $5.9 billion, for its fiscal first quarter that ended May 5. Sales at stores open at least a year have slipped for the last three months.

The giant chain, with more than 820 stores nationwide, was forged by Federated Department Stores' 2005 acquisition of May Department Stores. The combined company then converted regional chains — including Robinsons-May in Southern California and Marshall Field's in Chicago — to the Macy's name, with mixed results.

"They wanted to build a national brand, and it wasn't working," said Eli Portnoy, founder of Portnoy Group Inc., a brand marketing consulting firm.

"There is no question Macy's didn't live up to the expectations," said Kurt Barnard, a retail consultant based in Nutley, N.J. "The company generated a great amount of animosity with consumers."

Duh. Clearly, nobody was paying attention when the geniuses at Federated proposed the mindless plan to simultaneously destroy long-lived, valuable regional brands for the sake of standardization. It became more of the same old Let's-Cut-Costs-And-Ignore-The-Brand routine. The same problem that has brought down some of America's greatest, most valuable brands.

Even if Macy's is gobbled up by buyout behemoth Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, there's no great chance of ever turning back the clock. There is, however, a tiny glimmer of hope. Because at the time of this writing, the brands Federated attempted to kill off aren't really dead. They're simply comatose in the minds of their long-time loyalists, who like the most ardent Elvis fans, insist that the brands they grew up with aren't dead at all. They're just waiting for a comeback.

Those fans aren't altogether wrong. A major trend has been gathering steam in the branding world, where grandsons of brand creators are exhuming their progenitors' and re-launching them to the boomers who grew up with them. These guys are finding out that the weak brand management of the last few decades can't stand up to the staying power of their forefathers' creations. So they trim the hippie clippings from Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo and re-cast it as a sexually-enhancing hair care product. Boomers click with their nostalgia and ka-ching go the cash registers.

Gee, do you think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out what to do with Marshall Fields, Filene's Basement or any of the other brands' millions of dollars of brand equity torched out of existence by Federated? They may not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but you can bet this whole experience will leave Federated with plenty of egg on its face.

Dumping Semel, Yang and Yahoo

2007-06-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't hear the party horns on Wall Street, word is out that Yahoo's ill-selected, ill-fated and generally ill CEO, Terry Semel, has finally been ousted as Yahoo's CEO. That's the good news. The bad news is that his CEO slot has been filled by Jerry Yang, one of the able founders of Yahoo.

The worse news? None of it matters.

In the immortal words of Pete Townsend, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Just about everyone has the story wrong on this one. The Los Angeles Times quotes analyst Trip Chowdry of Global Equities Research as saying, "Any person less than 30 has never heard of Jerry Yang...They know the founders of YouTube. They know the founders of Facebook and MySpace." That may be true. But who cares? Nobody any age gives a rat's ass about who creates or manages an online entity -- certainly not Wall Street. Believe me, if a trained monkey sat in the CEO chair at Yahoo and produced Google-like numbers, nobody would care at all. They'd be happy, but they simply wouldn't care.

Jerry Yang, at 38 considered by some to be "over the hill" in internet years, thinks Yahoo's issues are all about absent talent. According to the Los Angeles Times:

Yang said on a conference call with analysts Monday that filling key management jobs would be among his highest priorities. "A company such as Yahoo is all about talent," Yang said. "We have positions we need to fill. We need to convince people that this is a great place to work."

Wrong-o-ritos, Jerry. The old "We Need To Get Talent In Here" is what guided Yahoo's ship on to the rocks back at the turn of the century when someone, somewhere, decided that Yahoo's future lay in entertainment and brought Semel in as its captain. If you want to read what a huge mistake that was, you may be interested in these two articles, which pretty much predict how and why Yahoo would and did find its way into this unholy mess.

Clearly, Yahoo's problems are not about management. They're not rooted in talent. Sure, those are problems that plague the company and contribute to its demise. But Yahoo's real issues begin at the bottom: Like Wal-Mart, Yahoo has an identity but no brand strategy. So it doesn't matter who's at the helm. It doesn't matter what kind of talent you bring:

If people can't articulate why Yahoo is "the only solution to their problem," they have no reason to choose, use and evangelize that brand. And that's the point that Semel, Yang and Wall Street simply don't want to hear.

Word on the street is that Yahoo's current CFO has her CEO training wheels, waiting in the wings to eventually step in to the CEO's chair. Personally, Yahoo is probably better off with Pete Townsend. At least he can see things clearly.

Second Life? Get a life.

2007-06-08T12:40:00.001-07:00

Every once in a while, I get a real boost out of witnessing a rectification of life's Great Injustices. That's what happened this week, when the everyone-is-talking-about-it-but-I-can't-figure-out-why website, Second Life, launched its mega-monied public relations campaign. If you buy into their hypet, Second Life is going to do to the internet what e-mail did for, well, the internet.

If you've never heard of Second Life, you're not missing much. Essentially, it's a web site where grown-ups -- or at least people old enough to know better -- pay good money to don a digital costume and play out the fantasy life that they've always dreamed of, but could never actualize in our regular, three dimensional world. If you're a fat guy, you can be a skinny girl. If you're a tall girl, you can be a rugged guy. You can be an animal. A shopkeeper. A fairy princess. You can even be a child molester, if you like. At Second Life, anything goes.

As an added bonus, Second Life allows you to interact in a variety of ways with other Second Lifers. Not only can you talk, date and fornicate, you can also pursue the goal of every other American website: spend your real-life, hard-earned cash. That's right, just check your credit card at the door and pay for everything from enhanced services to actual merchandise and you're set to go. One more useless venue at which you can drain your wallet -- and time -- for no real value.

If this scenario sounds familiar, it should. In the late 1980's George Lucas and the now-defunct Quantum Link experimented with avatar communities -- and failed. Of course, one could attribute that failure to simply being too far ahead of the online curve. After all, in those days, a 300 baud modem was considered "wicked fast." The same can't be said for Apple's ill-fated "e-world," however, which promised a fantasyland of people, shops and places for Mac users a bit later in the decade. E-world collapsed within months, though this time the culprit wasn't so much the public's inexperience as it was their realization that fantasy communities are, in a word, a gargantuan waste of their time.

Just ask anyone who's had any exposure to the people who play Dungeons and Dragons and you'll get an idea of what Second Lifers are like. Losers, mainly. People who, for the most part, spend their lives imprisoned in cubicles, wishing they were someone -- and somewhere -- else. To me, it's bad enough that a person can wither away his existence mired in the dissatisfaction that he doesn't live up to media-driven social ideals. But to leverage that kind of misery into financial gain strikes me as somewhat cruel. How, in good conscience, can a company take money and time from people by telling them their only shot at happiness is taking a different form and personality?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for escapism. I can indulge myself in all kinds of fantasies involving various voluptuous vixens tempting me to become a member of their websites for only $4.95 a month. But for all their temptation, I have to hand it to those vixens: All of them want my money, but not one of them ever asks me to become someone else. For all their prurience, they're willing to sell me their fantasies based on who I am, not how unacceptable I may be. They take me -- and my cash -- just as I am. Beyond that, everyone other than certified psychotics knows that healthy fantasies are measured in sessions, not lifetimes. Even a call girl charges by the hour. Second Life, on the other hand, knows no end. You can stay on for days, months, years -- and the more time and money you invest, the harder you're hooked.

To hear them tell it, Second Life is nothing less than the Second Coming. Huge Fortune 1000 companies have fallen for their hype, building million dollar Second Life presences, like online stores where they hawk their real-life wares -- and soak you for real-lifew cash. The media, ever-ready to jump on the latest Next Big Thing bandwagon, is ready to hype Second Life as the wave of the future for socializing and commerce.

At least, they were ready. Not so much any more. Because just as the big public relations push was supposed to be cresting, the folks at Second Life got pushed off the TV screen by the revelation that Paris Hilton was headed back to court, possibly to reinstate her jail sentence. No matter that the G8 conference was charting the future course of nations in Germany or that a striking new Israeli-Syrian peace plan had just been announced.

Nobody cares about that stuff.

I find that, in a strange way, to be somewhat comforting. I mean, if real news can't make headlines, than at least I can revel in the fact that one big media hype story got knocked out of the spotlight by an even more worthless media hype story. Media people will tell you that they're just giving the people what they want. But they're wrong. The media is giving the people what the media wants: cheap, quick worthless thrills. Brain candy with no intellectual nutritional value. Not exactly the stuff on which legends like Edward R. Murrow built his journalistic career.

To those of us who find no use for cell phones other than to make phone calls, I'm sure you understand. For those of you who don't, forget about Second Life. Try getting a life instead.

Don Imus, Rap Star

2007-04-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

Gosh, do I love the media. I especially love American media, where just about anything can make headlines, even when there's no real story. This week, the big non-story concerns that antique announcer of the American airwaves, Don Imus, and his faux pas remarks concerning a black female college basketball team.

Okay, let's be fair. The story isn't just about the basketball team. Or the women players. Or the fact that they're black. The story is about an old white guy using racially-charged humor. As the record will show, I've never been a big Imus fan. In the days they went head to head, I was always a Howard Stern guy. Imus always creeped me out. But that's another story.

This week, the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the world did what they always do whenever any kind of black/white issue hits the streets: climbed on the publicity bandwagon and called for the immediate firing or a complete boycott of the offender. It doesn't matter how grave or supercilious the offense, in the very same country where "forgiveness" and "rehab" are as commonplace as corner gas stations for good-looking white females, white male radio announcers are apparently exempt.

But there's something in this story that everyone in the media seems to be missing. Imus's crime isn't so much what he said as how he said it. If Imus were smart, he would never have uttered those incriminating words.

He would have sung them.

See, in America, you can't really say anything you want. Oh, sure, they teach you all about the First Amendment and freedom of speech in grade school. You can joke about stuff and express your opinion at any time, any place, as long as you don't infringe on the rights of others. Of course, the Founding Fathers never imagined things like pervasive media blitzes, political correctness or the recording industry. They never thought up the concept of racially-motivated boycotts or brilliant attorneys securing murder acquittals with courtroom jingoisms like, "if it fits you must acquit."

The fact is that in America, you really can't say anything you want. But you sure can sing just about anything or anyone you want -- even if it's not true. Take a few lines from rap's unofficial poet laureate, Dr. Dre. This song is called Bitch Niggaz:

Straight off the streets of chaos and no pity
The aggravated, makin these punk muhfuckers hate it
Compton is the city Im from
Caint never leave the crib without a murder wea-pon
Huh, I caint live my life on broke no mo
And most of these fools aint shit but cutthroats
They smile in a nigga face - and for what?

They got the game fucked up, and want my thang fucked up
I done learned a lot, seen a whole lot
The top notch nigga, Im fiendin for that spot
Now peep game on what six-deuce told me

Read those lyrics again. See anything really funny there? Any attempt at humor? In fact, is there anything there that stirs your soul and motivates you to become a better human being? I thought not. Yet nobody calls for a boycott of Dr. Dre's music. Nobody pickets outside Snoop Dogg's record company, demanding his contract be terminated.

For those of you too white to know, Dr. Dre is a major rap star. A black guy. A sweet guy. I know, because my kids have gone trick or treating by his mansion in his gated community near where I live. It's a really nice place. But it ain't Compton. And there are few, if any, black homies living near his crib. Dr. Dre made sure of that, moving his family deep into the white suburbs, far away from the hoods of which he sings. Dr. Dre sings about all kinds of Afro-American life, often referring to women as ho's and bitches. He thinks perpetuating negative stereotypes of black criminality is really, really cool.

Why is that? And how does it happen that an old white guy's wrong-headed attempt at being cool and funny lands him with a two week suspension, along with a call for termination?

I'll tell you why: it's because Don Imus said it. If he were really as smart as he pretends to be, Imus would have sung it.

Who knows?
By now it could have been #1 on the charts.

Al Gore Runs for President 2008

2007-03-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you may recall that I often reference the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 as two examples where branding -- or the lack thereof -- played a huge part in the eventual outcome. In those pieces, I outlined that simple brand strategy dictated the results:

The fact that neither candidate, either time, could be associated with any strong viewpoint meant that, to the American public, each was generically identical to the other. Since neither would commit to an opinion, the only choice left was for voters to "go with what they know" rather than opt for "go with what they don't know." In George W. Bush's case, they went with Jesus. In Al Gore's and John Kerry's cases, they went with George W. Bush.

But all that has changed. In case you can't read the tea leaves, Al Gore is running for President in 2008.

Oh, sure, he hasn't officially declared. But he's done everything else he needs to do. It's all over but the filing. And if you don't believe me, take a brief journey back with me to my old high school days and it will all become eminently clear:

When I was in high school, I gave serious thought to running for student body president. I wasn't popular. Few people even knew who I was. And I was a B+ student at best, with an anemic SAT potential, which meant that anything I could tack on to my college application was bound to help, including the title of Student Body President. Being as unpopular as I was, I had to devise some tactic to get my popularity up and running. The problem was that the regulations for school elections threw a few nasty curves my way.

First, rules prohibited campaigning for office at any time other than during the official two week campaign period. Second, all campaign materials had to be produced by hand; no photocopied or mechanically-produced tags, buttons or posters were allowed. Of course what the rules didn't prohibit was another matter, entirely. Nobody said anything about printing up non-campaign related items by a mechanical process, so a few months prior to the election, I created an alternative publication to the school newspaper. It was a humor magazine, aimed straight at the high school administration. The articles, cartoons and pictures were completely free of the school's journalism censor, which meant every kid off the bus was eager to grab a copy.

Distribution on school grounds was illegal, but that was no big deal: we distributed on the sidewalk in front of the school, where the First Amendment guaranteed that every student had total access to every one of our sophomoric jokes and articles.

Within two months and three issues, I was known throughout the school as "the cool guy who publishes that alternative newspaper." By the fourth month, school campaign season had opened. I shut the paper down to comply with school rules and officially declared my candidacy for office. The election wasn't even close. I rolled over all the other challengers, crushing them so badly that there was no need for a run-off.

That story is 100% true. I still have copies of the papers to prove it. And if this story sounds familiar, it should. It's exactly the strategy that Al Gore is following on his quest for the White House. If you notice, he's kept his political agenda safely distant from anything having to do with Iraq, health care, 9/11 or Katrina. He's taken the safe road that nobody else wants -- the environment -- and gained awareness by releasing a theatrical motion picture,
An Inconvenient Truth. By taking a page out of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ book, Gore has figured out that people will go to see movieslong before they ever watch Tim Russert on Face the Nation.

So in one smooth move, Gore has finally embraced a single, safe issue (the environment) and distanced himself from the critical issues that place the planet in peril. Nice. On top of that, he managed to secure himself another thirty seconds on the global stage during this year's Oscar ceremonies. Double nice. In thirty seconds, billions of people got to see a powerful American crusading for an issue that actually affects their part of the world.

Which means that now, everyone knows Al Gore as the almost American President whose main issue is to save the world, no matter which part of it you happen to be polluting, physically, philosophically or otherwise. And by standing in the shadows, he's allowing fools like Hillary, Obama and the rest to beat the hell out of each othe and run out of gas before the campaign season has officially begun. Wonderfully efficient. Beautifully calculated.

Now, tell me again how Al Gore isn't running for President.

Bono's Red Blunder

2007-03-05T13:10:00.000-08:00

As I've written here before, one of the best feelings you can have in this life is being right. And the only feeling that beats being right, is being right when everyone insists you're wrong. So it was with a whole lot of laughs and not too little vindication that I read this latest tidbit about U2's lead singer and top egoist, Bono's utter failure to move the masses with his Red campaign.

According to Ad Age magazine, over $100 million has been poured into the campaign and one year later, barely $18 million has been raised as a result. Not exactly a stellar performance, considering that the campaign was launched with as much hubris and arrogance as the star could muster.

Why was I giggling at the article? Not because I enjoy other people's failure. And certainly not because I don't endorse compassionate giving to those less fortunate. No, I was having a good laugh at the stupidity of the campaign, which I was only too happy to predict on the day of the campaign's official launch.

For those of you who insist on seeing the evidence, here's the video link:
"Closing Bell: "Bono's Red Brand...Just More Hype?"

If you're not into video, it wasn't exactly tough to call Bono's Red campaign dead on arrival. First, it was a classic example of the Lemming Factor, where the media and other sycophants latch on to anything and anyone that glimmers with the faintest of fame. The bandwagon could be chartered straight to hell, but they'd jump on it just as fast, in order to rub up against whatever - or whoever - they think is famous this week. It doesn't matter what they're famous for, mind you, it's all for bragging rights.

Usually, those bragging right turn out to be worthless, especially if the celebrity you're rubbing against is the next O.J. Simpson or Britney Spears. Even spotting them average mental health, too often, ill-conceived campaigns springing from egotistical minds like Bono's are the result of spending way too much time believing the hype their press agents spin out, instead of focusing on the issues at hand.

Somewhere along the line, Bono became convinced that because millions of gullible kids could be slick-marketed into buying his records, he can probably get them to believe he can really walk on water, raise the dead -- and launch a brand. And while I can't claim to know anything about walking on water, I can definitely tell you this guy was dead in the water from the word go.

First, Red was created as a marker on products, signifying that part of your purchase would go to a charity of Bono's choosing. Most people think the money would go to AIDS and Africa, but the fine print always stated that the beneficiaries were to be chosen by Bono. The idea was doomed to fail, because while Bono may be able to yell and wail through a song, he's not quite as good at figuring out business strategies. It plainly hadn't occurred to him that tagging products with a logo doesn't increase sales for the participating companies. In fact, it actually cannibalizes sales, since the people who buy Red products were going to buy those products in any case, Red or no Red. Apple took a hit on Red iPods, because kids were buying iPods. Nobody bought an iPod because some of the money would go to AIDS relief. The GAP didn't see any new customers, either. In fact, one could argue that Red was a business killer.

Second, the whole notion of linking charitable giving to conspicuous consumption is patently absurd, and reeks of pure naivete. Totally transparent and lacking in credibility. Bono aimed his unneeded purchases at his unsuspecting public's wallets instead of their hearts and minds. As a result, nobody cares about Red. Nor should they. From the beginning, it was a tragic kind of farce, more demonstrative of the greed and lack of true humanity by which this generation has been consumed.

Nevertheless, where Hollywood treads, reason fears to follow. Bono managed to sucker in tons of corporate dollars, most of whom are now ruing the day they ever signed on to this fiasco. The only Red they'll get to see is on their bottom lines.

Digital Denial Devices

2007-02-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

It doesn't take more than a casual perusal of the daily news to frighten the hell out of most people. Whether it's a war in Iraq, nuclear ambitions or Iran or the pathetic sabre rattling of North Korea, we can always rely on the media to bring us one more reason to declare life on earth at the edge of disaster.

If it's not a celebrity fiasco, it's a pedophile priest. If it's not the poison in your food, it's the newly-documented pseudo-science contradicting last week's "scientific study" on whatever was supposed to kill you this week. In an effort to fill their "all news, all the time" formats, networks have foregone journalistic impartiality and truth, opting instead for faux "news analyses": panels of "experts" who add little new information while pouring on lots of bias all in the interest of plugging their latest books. We get baseless predictions. Sermons. And lots of yelling. But no real news.

Not surprisingly, America has had enough pseudo-news. They're tired of it. And while any case involving the disappearance of a child is heart-rending at best, the fact that it happens in Orlando is, in truth, of no real consequence to anyone living in Seattle or Des Moines. There's simply too much unimportant news getting reported. And it's having a bigger effect on your brand than you might think.

As we speak, an increasing number of Americans are scurrying into their own little worlds, desperate to escape news that's always bad and usually irrelevant. They spend more and more time cocooning where they can find shelter from mass media, protected by Digital Denial Devices. -- or as I prefer to call them, D3's. No matter where you look, technology is enabling them, allowing to plug and play the things they want to hear and see, when they choose to hear and see them.

The internet is a fabulous D3. Not only do you get to hear the news when you want to hear it, you also get the news you want to hear. Far from delivering its early advocates promise of "equal access to information", the web has proven itself much more efficient as a propaganda tool. If you don't like the spin al Jazeera twists on Israel, no problem. Simply point your browser at debka.com for the pro-Israel viewpoint. Better yet, compose your Yahoo or Google start page with RSS feeds from only those news sources whose political viewpoints support your own. That way, you can start every day substantiating the illusion that you're in sync with the rest of the world.

Only you're not. And that's destroying your brand. Read on.

Cell phones and Blackberries are terrific D3's. It's now gotten to the point where nobody thinks twice of invading other people's spaces by "taking this call" and then yammering on for hours in their own self-interest as if nobody else is in the room. More complete disrespect for other human beings. More perfect denial. And it gets worse.

Parents throughout the country wake up every morning to drive carpools to schools. The cars are filled with kids, yet the car is strangely quiet. There is no conversation. No human interaction. There can't be, because the kids who used to talk to each other are all plugged into their iPods, each one listening to the kind of music that only they appreciate. There is no compromise. No recognition of other people's likes and dislikes. Just more denial of other people's existence.

The kids that aren't plugged into iPods have their eyes and ears locked in on their Gameboys, too busy to notice anyone or anything nearby. And thousands of families drive hundreds of miles on road trip vacations, but never without the DVD players built into the roof: Never mind what's out the window. It's what's on the screen that counts. The Suburban could drive past Mount Rushmore and nobody would so much as notice, because "this is the part where her throat gets slashed."

Don't get me wrong. I love technology. I think it's terrific. In fact, I couldn't earn a living without it. What's killing me - and the world - are these Digital Denial Devices. They're killing us because they give us the opportunity to not care about anything else around us. As long as our own needs are fulfilled, as long as we get the news, listen to the music and watch the shows that we want, we really don't care about anything or anyone else.

And that's bad. Bad for your brand. Bad for the world.

It's bad for the world, because when people cease to involve themselves with other human beings, they also fail to keep pace with other people's wants and needs. By sequestering themselves behind D3's, they create the illusion that all is well and that the rest of the world is in sync with them, rather than the other way around. Keep that up and not too long after, worlds collide. The next thing you know, westerners in denial wake up wondering why radical muslims from an equally closed society are pronouncing death sentences on Americans. In return, fortressed Americans gear up their defenses, sending hundreds of thousands of American kids to "protect our way of life."

The sad truth is that it's all fairly avoidable. If technology were used for inclusion and exposure, instead of exclusion and narrow focus, the world's population would be raised on tolerance for differences. They would accept differences among cultures as easily as they currently reject them, because they'd have been exposed to them on a daily basis.

That's not happening. In fact, marketers, media and advertising technology is pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Hailed in the name of efficiency, techno-dopes trumpet their talents for seeking out "only those an advertiser needs to hit", not realizing their efforts only further the trend of digital denial. That's not only harmful to humanity, it's harmful to your brand. Here's why:

For a brand to truly succeed, it had to be perceived as "the only solution to their problem." But for a brand to thrive, it has to be evangelized as "the only solution to their problem." People have to interact and share information. They have to communicate. If they don't, there's no way they can articulate and share information -- including how terrific your brand is.

Al Gore likes to claim that global climate change is the single most crucial moral issue of our time. He's wrong. What's the point of changing the weather, if there's nobody left to discuss it with?

More at http://www.RobFrankel.com

Britney, Anna and Branding

2007-02-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

So I'm having a perfectly wonderful Sunday lunch and the phone rings. It's a reporter from the New York Daily News. The big news flash is that Britney Spears has shaved her head. Holy cow, this is big. Never mind that over a hundred more innocent Iraqi citizens have become human jigsaw puzzles thanks to yet another crazed homicide bomber. Or that massacres still occur daily in Darfur. No, the big story in the good old USA is that Britney has gone G.I. Jane and buzzed off her locks.

Phew. For a moment there, I was beginning to think that the nation was going to veer off course and not solve the paternity of our latest celebrity corpse, Anna Nicole Smith. Fortunately, the Britney story only lasted a few days. Within a reasonable amount of time, we were back to the really important issues. Like whether Anna's kid was really fathered by yet another corpse -- her somewhat fossilized oil man husband.

No matter to the reporter. We had a great chat, because hers was the only interview in which even a semi-reasonable question was put forth: Was Britney going to lose her sponsors over this? What's the real message of her mental melt-down?

I'm glad she asked. Because the real point of this story isn't about hair. Or corpses. Or America's incessant morbid interests in all the wrong stories. The real point is why American business -- otherwise so incredibly risk-averse -- continues to trust their brands to human celebrities.

What has TrimSpa learned from Anna Nicole that they couldn't have learned from Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson, Kobe Bryant or, this week at least, Britney Spears?

The answer is simple: They don't think. You can tell, because if they did think about it, they'd come up with the reasons why the very last person you'd ever want to entrust with your brand is an attention whore. The worst person in the world you can tie in with is a celebrity, because these people are not only approval addicts, they're among the most mentally unstable attention addicts.

Put it this way: If you were to pit your own brand against a Hollywood halfwit whose entire purpose in life is to garner as much attention and approval as humanly possible, who do you think would come out the winner? Can't you just see the actors elbowing their way in front of the camera? And yet, even as they steal all that valuable media time from the products and services they pitch, actors continue to win sweet endorsement deals that rarely, if ever, pay out for the sponsors.

Think I'm wrong, do ya? Fine. Why did the Gap insist on driving down sales with Sarah Jessica Parker? And what was Chrysler thinking when they signed Celine Dion to hawk cars? And both of them got paid millions for campaigns that lasted about an hour. I've seen fruit flies live longer.

Let's get just a little more personal about it. How would you feel if the star you to whom you were paying millions of dollars to push your brand, suddenly were caught in the headlines accused of sacking out with underage boys? How about your weight loss queen waking up dead in a hotel room? Or your perfumed rock star undergoing a nervous breakdown in public?

How does American business -- among the most risk-averse managers in the world -- continue to pursue spokespeople with the mental and emotional stability of Jello to promote and associate with their brands? That's like letting Michael Jackson babysit your kid.

Personally, I have no axe to grind with someone shaving their head. But if Britney wanted to Yul Brynner look, why not stay home and have a party in private, out of camera view? I'll tell you why: Because even when they're completely wacked out, totally gone and around the bend, celebrity attention whores still can't get enough attention. Better to get attention while you're spiraling out of control than no attention at all, I suppose.

Everyone is so busy analyzing Britney's mental state. As usual, they're looking in the wrong place. The real mental problems aren't with the celebrities. The real mental problems are with the corporate managers who hire them.

Political Brands: Why Gavin Newsom is hosed

2007-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

If you're at all tuned into what passes for news, you could not have missed this week's most salacious item: San Francisco's city slicker mayor, Gavin Newsom, went before the cameras to admit that he indeed has been having a sexual affair. At first, the most shocking element of the story was that, San Francisco being what it is, the affair was heterosexual in nature. Newsom presented himself to the media with a grand mea culpa, admitting to his lapse in judgment and asking the good people of the city to stick by him.

Methinks not.

It's one thing to for a single man to mess his mousse every once in a while with a blonde or two. I don't think anyone has a problem with that. And since Newsom divorced his FOX news reporter wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle (a brunette), he's certainly free to play the field as he wishes. My hat's off to any straight male in San Francisco, even when he's dating actresses, Scientology converts or twenty-something restaurant hostesses.

I don't think the people of San Francisco have a problem with that.

The fact that Newsom admitted to doing the horizontal mambo with a married woman throws an interesting spin on things. Sure, some far-right conservatives will throw the Family Values book at him, but the nation as a whole will spot him on that one, especially those who have been married longer than five minutes. Man being the sexual animal he is, married to the sexual animals they are, I suppose that breaking the monotony by occasionally bedding a mayor can be tolerated. As a matter of fact, I'd be willing to bet that were Bill Clinton running for president today, nobody would really hold anything against him the way he held Monica against himself.

The thing is, there's no unforgivable sin attached to the sexual liaison between Newsom and his paramour, Ruby Rippey-Tourk - wife of Newsom's most trusted political advisor. They're two attractive people evidently sexually attracted to each other. If nobody had found out about their tryst, nobody would have gotten hurt. It happens every day, to millions of people across the country. A simple affair with a married woman won't kill your political brand. But here's what will:

The fact that it's a simple affair with the wife of your best friend.

Americans can forgive just about anything, but they won't forgive disloyalty. Not from their friends and certainly not from a politician. They won't tolerate an abuse of trust. And what Newsom did to his chief aide and pal, Alex Tourk, immediately ripped into the hearts and minds of every American who heard the story. They take this kind of stuff personally, as if it could happen to them -- because it could, or very probably, already has.

Nobody cares about Newsom dipping his wick. Everyone cares about deceiving and stabbing your best friend in the back. And if he could do that to his very best friend, it means he could do it to anyone, any time, any place.

That's why his political brand is completely bankrupt of any future value. He's done. Finished. And if the good people of San Francisco tolerate his deception by re-electiing him, they are, as Harry Truman once said, "a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are."