It's Not Just a Bag

Anything that reminds people about your organization is a representative for your brand.

Hence we have logos - visual representations of the corporate identity of a brand. We have advertising campaigns, carefully planned to accurately convey a brand's identity and proposed value to consumers. We have colors, fonts, store designs, soundtracks, and even smells that are strategically chosen for what they say about their respective brands.

But other things speak for your brand as well:

          Your partners (I blogged about that last week).
          Your product packaging (I blogged about that two weeks ago).
          Your facilities (how tidy are they?).
          Your corporate vehicles (how often do you wash them?).

          Your shopping bags.

Shopping bags (and other distribution packaging) have great - and often underused - potential as branding tools. Well-designed and attractively-branded shopping bags provide two marketing tactics in one:

• First, they serve as free advertising - distributing your logo, willingly, through the hands of every customer.
• Second, they serve as social proof - every customer seen with your shopping bag indicates support of your brand to those around them. And as Robert Cialdini would tell us, observing the approval of others towards a brand gives permission to new potential customers to try the brand, too.

Bloomingdales does an outstanding job of using shopping bags as branded items. People notice the cute, clever "Little Brown Bags" with which Bloomingdales customers leave their stores. The more customers shop at Bloomingdales, the more those Little Brown Bags are seen by others, and the more other people see public approval of the Bloomingdales brand.

FedEx also uses their "shopping bags" (aka their boxes) well. Every time you receive a package via FedEx, you see the FedEx logo, and are given another example of a customer who used FedEx for their shipping needs.

Start-up companies can use branded shopping bags to great advantage as they work to build brand recognition. Each time a customer carries out a branded shopping bag, the organization receives another instance of free advertising in the community, and another testimony of a [presumably satisfied] customer.

And to be remarkable, shopping bags need not be simple plastic bags stamped with a logo (although they very well could be). Why not use your shopping bags as another opportunity to exhibit great design? Why stick with a one-color print on plastic? Why not make your shopping bags something that are fun and attractive to carry around? Something that reinforces your brand's personality?

So, how are your shopping bags representing you? Do they speak your name in a clever, fun, innovative, or attractive way? Or do they speak your name at all?

Why Do We Do What We Do?

Gary Chapman would say that my love language is words of affirmation.

As such, few things brighten my day more than when someone pays me a sincere compliment or gives me a word of encouragement. In my work, I seldom feel more satisfied and useful and fulfilled than when a boss or a client or a coworker tells me that I've done an excellent job.

But sometimes, I find myself beginning to do things solely for the prospect of receiving praise for my work. Instead of giving 110% to a task simply because giving 110% is the right thing to do, I begin to give 110% because I want to impress my client, or because I hope that one of my dearest mentors will notice.

As marketers, do we act the same way?

Do we begin to strategize ways that our organization can be amazing, just so that our organization can achieve recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth?

Recognition and media coverage and positive word-of-mouth are wonderful and worthy things, no doubt, but they should not be the reason why we do what we do.

Instead, we should strategize ways to be amazing, just because being amazing is the right thing to do. Because having radical customer service is the right thing to do. Because being dedicated to good stewardship of natural resources is the right thing to do. Because improving the lives of people is the right thing to do. Because designing innovative, aesthetically-pleasing, useful products is the right thing to do. Because creating a wonderful place to work and shop and do business and live is the right thing to do.

When we do amazing things out of a sincere conviction that those are the things we should do, then the recognition and awards and good press and outstanding brand reputation will follow.

When we do amazing things simply because we are pursuing those accolades, then our heart isn't right. And when our heart isn't right toward the things we are doing, sooner or later the facade will break down. Sooner or later customers will realize that our customer service doesn't really care about them the way it is reputed to. Sooner or later our brand experience won't match up to the stunts we pulled, and our customers will become disillusioned - and leave. Sooner or later we will cut a corner or two, and the media will find out, and the bad press will more than destroy the good reputation we had built.

Be exceptional in what your organization does, simply because being exceptional is the right thing to do. When you choose to be exceptional for the right reasons, the real praise and the real devoted customers will follow.

Empty Restaurants and Dying Malls

Recently, some friends and I decided to have dinner together at an Italian restaurant in our town. This particular restaurant was a local favorite; however, I had never eaten there before, and my friends had not eaten there since it moved to its current location one year previous. So all of us were quite excited about our dinner plans.

Until we got to the restaurant.

We walked into the restaurant shortly after 6:00 on a Thursday evening; the place was empty. As is, zero customers. None. Zilch. The lights were on, the tables were set, the servers and chefs were there and ready to go. But my two friends and I were the only non-employees in the place.

That seemed rather odd, since it was already an hour into dinnertime, on a not-quite-weekend night. And at a well-known local restaurant. There was no explanation for it - the room had not been reserved for a large party. It was simply a regular evening. With no customers.

After consulting for a moment or two, my friends and I bade a polite goodbye to the hostess and decided to patronize another restaurant for the evening.

Why? Why did we decide to leave?

Robert Cialdini would explain it as a principle that he calls "social proof."

Social proof is the idea that we as human beings - and especially as consumers - infer truths about a situation based upon how others act in that situation.

You attend a get-together at the home of some new acquaintances, and notice that all of the other guests have removed their shoes as they entered the front door; you presume that removing shoes is the policy in this house, and so you remove yours, too.

You walk down the street and notice numbers of people gathering at one particular location and staring up into the sky. You assume there must be something unusual to see in the sky, so you stop and look up, too.

Social proof tends to be especially strong in unfamiliar situations in which the proper behavior is unknown. When we are not sure how to act, we take our cues from the actions of people around us.

In the case of my friends and me at the restaurant, we took our cues from the absence of people around us. We thought it unusual to find a restaurant empty at 6pm on a Thursday; and while we didn't know of anything specifically wrong with the restaurant, we presumed that there must be some reason for customers to be staying away. For lack of better answers, we felt it safer to stay away as well.

Social proof can be a powerful force, for good or ill. If you are a new business, and you give free t-shirts and hats to your all of your customers for the first six months, others who begin to see your logo everywhere will likely infer that you must be a good brand (everyone is going there, after all), and be prompted to investigate and learn more about your company. If you have an excellent product or service and all of your customers continually rave about your brand to their friends, those friends will likely try your product the next time they have a need which your product might solve.

Conversely, if you are a restaurant with zero customers in the middle of a given night, then those potential customers who arrive may likely decide to leave. If you are a shopping mall with 20% of your storefronts empty, then mall shoppers (and potential tenants) may likely infer that something about the mall prevents it from attracting enough customers to make the retailers profitable, and may likely stay away themselves.

How can your organization noticeably provide excellent experiences to all of your customers, such that others will be positively affected by their social proof?

A Few Favorites, and Merry Christmas

I write this post from Terminal C of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, as I await the magical metal bird that will carry me home for the holidays. Tonight I will not be sharing any profound marketing wisdom with you, other than this:

Whatever holiday you celebrate, take some time this December to spend it with people who care for you. Shut down your laptop, disable the wireless connection on your iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, or what-have-you, and devote time to really matters: the people in our lives. You can't be a good marketer without first being a healthy person.

That said, below is a brief selection of some of my personal favorite (read: funniest) marketing efforts that I've seen in the past month. Evaluate their effectiveness on your own.

Enjoy! And merry Christmas!

Volkswagen New Polo - Rumour commercial

Last year's viral video from JCPenney, "Beware of the Doghouse"

And the recent sequel, "Return to the Doghouse"

Last but not least, take a moment to call the Nestle Crunch hotline at 1-800-295-0051. After the prompt asks you to press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, wait 10 seconds. What you hear next is worth it! (Friendly commenters, please don't spoil the surprise!)

Innovative Boost to Tourism

Need to boost tourism in your corner of the world?

Try this: Pick the most distinctive thing about your location. Hire somebody to take, essentially, a six-month vacation in that place, doing all of those fun, distinctive activities, and blogging about it for six months. Don't search for this fortunate fellow in just your local area. Instead, place classified ads in newspapers around the globe, inviting anyone to apply for the Best Job in the World. Require them to submit their applications via online video. Invite the top applicants to fly to your site for interviews. Pick the best one and set him to work.

And get $98 million (USD) of publicity for your location in the process.

That's what the tourism board of Queensland, Australia did with their "Best Job in the World" campaign this year. In January 2009, they announced their position with classified ads stating this:

The Best Job in the World

Position Vacant: Island Caretaker
Location: Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia
Salary: AUD$150,000 six-month contract
Responsibilities: Clean the pool, Feed the fish, Collect the mail, Explore and report back
Applications close: 22 February 2009 Interviews: 4 May 2009 Announcement made: 8 May 2009
Work begins: 1 July 2009

Anyone can apply.
www.islandreefjob.com


The website received over 34,000 applicants. 15 finalists spent four days together on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef, taking tests in snorkeling, swimming, eating island barbecue, and blogging. The winner, Ben Southall, 34, a charity worker from Petersfield, UK, began work 2 July 2009.

Since the job began, Ben has been staying in a multi-million-dollar three-bedroom beach villa with pool, exploring the island, snorkeling the reef, posting photos, videos, and blogs, and earning AUD$150,000 (USD$134,000) in the process.

With 34,000 applicants alone (not to mention other visitors to the site and followers of Ben's blog) and estimated USD$98 million in free publicity from news media around the world, I would imagine that Tourism Queensland will be doing pretty well for quite a while.

To see a video recap of the campaign, visit http://adage.com/u/lvfdVaM.

Viral Marketing Failure du jour

As a general rule, I shun Facebook applications. I dislike the way they clog up your profile, and I dislike the way they require you to allow them to access all of your Facebook information (which is usually unnecessary, and is not used for reasons that benefit the end user).

But today I saw in my News Feed that a friend had taken a Facebook quiz entitled "What Does Your Day Mean?" which purported to report the implications of being born on a particular day of the week. It sounded interesting (though I would never take it seriously). I was curious. I decided to add the application and take the quiz myself, just for kicks.

As was to be expected, the application required me to allow it to access all of my Facebook information. Okay. But then, an epic viral marketing failure: before it would allow me to take the quiz, it asked me to invite my friends to add the application, too.

Forget it.

The creators of the application are making an attempt at viral marketing by asking people to tell their friends. But they are going about it all wrong. You cannot force someone to recommend your product. And you cannot expect someone to recommend your product if they have not yet tried your product. You would not expect someone to recommend a movie they have not yet seen, or recommend a clothing designer whose clothes they have not yet tried, or recommend a restaurant at which they have not yet eaten.

You must let customers experience your product first. And their experience with your product must be remarkable enough that your customers want to talk about it. They cannot help but talk about it. Talking about it benefits their friends, and builds coolness points for themselves. (Thanks, Seth Godin, for your great book on ideaviruses like this.)

If you force people to talk about a bad product, the opposite happens. They hurt their friends; they hurt their trust with their friends; and they hurt their coolness points. People do not want to do that.

I did not want to invite my friends to add the application, and, in so doing, to stamp my recommendation on a product I had not yet tested. Neither did I want to spam my friends with one of the Facebook application invitations which I so despise. (Disclaimer for my friends who have sent app invitations to me: I still love you. You are forgiven.)

Granted, this application did have a "skip" button to the "invite your friends!" plea, for those users who take time to search for the button. But the inconspicuousness of the button makes the invitation stage seem unavoidable. And if the user does skip the invitation stage, they will likely never recommend the app to their friends.

If these Facebook application creators truly want to enhance their viral marketing, they need to save the "invite your friends!" request until the user has already completed the quiz, or joined the cause, or played the game, or done whatever the app does.

Let the user experience the product first. Then give them an easy way to invite their friends. If they like the product, they will often be more than happy to tell people - especially through the click of a button on a social media site like Facebook.

Can Art on a Billboard Still Be Called Art?

Palisades Car Insurance is making an apparent effort to beautify the highways of New Jersey, its home state. How? Not through the Adopt-A-Highway program. Not by planting trees and shrubs. No, Palisades is making its contribution to society by displaying art - fine art - on billboards.

The campaign, which began on July 13, is called "Drive With a Smile," from the company known as "The Nice New Jersey Car Insurance Company." According to a recent New York Post article, the goal of the campaign is three-fold: 1) to give drivers something pleasant to view while stuck in traffic; 2) to showcase the work of local New Jersey artists; and 3) to promote the scenic locations of New Jersey. The first two billboards are already on display (see photos below); the art for the remaining billboards will be selected by online vote from New Jersey scenes submitted by local artists. Art submissions, viewing, and voting takes place at drivewithasmile.palisades.com




The question on the table is this: can art on a billboard still be considered art? If a billboard displays a painting, can it still be seen as an eyesore? Or does the painting succeed in beautifying the signage?

I think that Palisades' campaign sounds like a great thing - it sounds like a community service, turning the highway into an art gallery. Beautifying the road. Benefiting society. But, based on the photos above, it seems that Palisades only made a half-hearted effort at their corporate social responsibility.

With the Palisades logo and "Got a Nice Piece?" tagline taking up so much space, it seems that drivers would hardly be able to get a good look at the art. The view seems comparable to looking at a thumbnail of a photo online, without having the luxury of opening the full-size version. Or, if the highway were an art gallery, visitors would be examining an 8" x 10" painting from across the entire length of the room.

I agree with mep's comments on the subject from a discussion on ArtBistro.com: "if you are going to put a landscape painting on a billboard then make the whole 'canvas' just that." Palisades ought to relax their ego and remove the logo and tagline. Let the art fill the entire billboard. Let the billboard truly be art, and truly bring joy to drivers. They ought to build the Palisades brand through the free publicity Palisades would get (both through news channels and through viral marketing), not with a logo that crowds out the art and ruins the effort.

If Palisades simply cannot bear to post a billboard without the Palisades logo, they could place the logo in a corner of the full-sized art. Or, better yet, simply print the website URL, drivewithasmile.palisades.com, along the bottom of the art.

Palisades is almost-but-not-quite there on corporate social responsibility and viral marketing. Hopefully they will change the layout before they post the remaining billboards.

Marketing a Cause: Mandela Day

On July 18, in honor of the 91st birthday of the social activist and former South African president, the Nelson Mandela Foundation is hosting Mandela Day. The day itself will feature a grand concert in New York City's Radio City Music Hall, with performances by folks like Stevie Wonder, Queen Latifah, Josh Groban, Aretha Franklin, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Emmanuel Jal, and more. But the goal of Mandela Day is not so much a one-day celebration of a great man, but a re-commitment of people around the world to follow Mr. Mandela's lead by making a difference in their own communities.

To spread word about the event, the Nelson Mandela Foundation (with the help of ad agency Gotham - part of Interpublic Group) has launched a viral campaign. What a better way to inspire people toward a cause than to get passionate individuals to spread the fire to their friends?

TV, print, online, and web ads are being used to point people to the mandeladay.com website, where they can learn about Mandela Day, include themselves in a Mandela Day video, join the Imprint Wall (where they post their plans for serving their communities), read the Mandela Day blog, follow @MandelaDay on Twitter, join the Mandela Day fan page on Facebook, see Flickr photos of the Mandela Day art installation in NYC Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall, and watch videos of celebrity support of the event. (Celebrities currently featured include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, and more.)

I have not yet seen whether the Nelson Mandela Foundation has done much to take Mandela Day mobile, other than allowing people to submit messages to the Imprint Wall via text message. Are there any iPhone apps? A mobile site? Could the Foundation develop a mobile e-card from the Imprint Wall, allowing folks to send an image of their own Imprint to friends?

People can use their phones to record their own Mandela Day videos; I don't know how streamlined it is to upload the video to the Mandela Day site from a phone.

I was surprised that I could not find a link to the Mandela Day YouTube channel on the Mandela Day website; the channel features quite a few videos about the event (with some starring various celebrities).

I do hope that these interactive strategies succeed in helping word about the event to go viral. And I hope that Mandela Day inspires people to make the difference of which they are truly capable.

A Return to Soap Operas?

We are seeing a welcome shift in the marketing world - a move away from trying to capture customers by shouting at them with ads and commercials, and a move toward gaining fans by creating simply excellent content. Certainly we are still inundated with traditional "interruption marketing" (to borrow the term from Seth Godin) in magazines and newspapers, on tv and billboards and the Internet. But more and more marketers are letting great content speak for itself. They are doing and creating remarkable things that get people talking. (To learn more, read Seth Godin's Purple Cow, if you haven't already.)

I think the rise of smartphone apps and customer-created media (a la YouTube) has aided this trend toward remarkable content. Marketers are communicating via things that can be enjoyed as entertainment even without a brand message.

There is Gillete's uArt iPhone app that lets you add facial hair to a photo of yourself, then shave it into designs of your choice. There is the microsite for Coke Zero, which is really a video game in disguise. And how many company-created YouTube video phenomena do we see now? Like the Frosty Posse from Wendy's.

I see this trend, and I like it. This model inspires us to deeper levels of creativity. It makes me wonder whether we will soon see a huge reinvention of traditional advertising, such that we no longer see magazine ads and billboards and tv commercials as we have them today. Instead, will we see pure content - art, music, videos, games, short stories, poetry, etc. - "sponsored" by companies? For example, instead of tv commercials between our programmed viewing, will we see fun, 60-second short films with a simple, one-line message at the end: "brought to you by [insert brand name here]"?

It would be as if advertising (at least tv and radio) were coming full-circle, returning to the soap opera model. Soap operas got their name because a consumer products company (i.e. Procter & Gamble, who may have been the first?) would sponsor the radio or tv show. They would promote their cleaning products (i.e. Ivory soap); hence the name. If we see more pure content coming from marketers, it will be like a return to our roots.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see where advertising heads in the future. With the rise of the Internet and other "new" media, there has been talk of whether traditional advertising is on its way out. I can still see television, print, and radio ads as having a place alongside (instead of being replaced by) interactive, social media, viral marketing, etc. But these traditional advertising media may look very different in just 5-10 years than they do now.