Pherotones: A case study in Viral

Sony and PS3: Why the PS3 Bombed

Source:
Youtube

Synopsis:
Nice music video describing why PS3 bombed.

Video

List of Blogging CEOs*

*OK so I know this is not really a case study, but I've been asked, "Which CEOs blog?" many times before. I figure a list here might be helpful to other people.

List:
David Neeleman (of Jet Blue)
Bill Marriott (of Marriott Hotels)
John Mackey (of Whole Foods)
Jonathan Schwarz (of Sun Microsystems)
Bob Parson (of GoDaddy.com)
Mark Cuban (of the Dallas Mavericks, and others)
Gary Kelley (of Southwest Airlines)
Bob Langert (VP of McDonalds)

Recommended Reading
Adweek

Home Depot: Hactivism

Source:
MSN Money - Original Article
MSN Money - CEO's Response
Fallon Planning Blog

Synopsis:
After readers flood MSN Money's message boards with tales of lousy service, Home Depot's new top executive says change is on the way.

Articles
Original Article

Sixteen years ago, I sent my wife a love note. It went like this:

Carolyn: I've gone to Our Store. Be back soon. Love, Scott.

We called Home Depot (HD, news, msgs) "our store" because we spent a lot of time there back in 1990. We're house freaks. Wherever we go, we imagine living there, owning a house or a condo. We like to remodel houses. In the past 16 years we've done major work on three houses in Dallas and two houses in Santa Fe, N.M.

But I have a confession to make. I still love my wife, but we don't shop much at Home Depot anymore. Indeed, we generally try to avoid it and grieve for the loss.

We're not alone. Last month Home Depot announced a whopping 28% decline in earnings for the fourth quarter. Even more striking, same-store sales were down 6.6% from the previous year. This had never happened before, not in all 28 years of company history. Once a growth darling, "the new Wal-Mart (WMT, news, msgs)" and a stock that sold at twice the market multiple, Home Depot is now widely discussed as a potential private-equity buyout candidate because it earns 22% on shareholder equity and has lots of assets to hock. Today it sells at a below-market multiple of 14.4 and offers an above-average dividend yield of 2.2%.

• Talk back: Does Home Depot abuse its customers?

Much of the recent disappointment in the stock is due to the slowdown in housing and the reassessment many are making of homes as an investment. With home resale prices flat to declining, many homeowners are reconsidering the kind of home-improvement projects that make for multiple visits and big spending.

Home Depot rival Lowe's (LOW, news, msgs) reported an earnings drop of 12% for the fourth quarter.

Some of the less recent disappointment in Home Depot shares is due to the egregious compensation of its former CEO and his high-handed treatment of shareholders.

Consistent abuser of customers' time

But I'd like to suggest a much bigger reason that Home Depot has become a troubled and unloved company. I call it time abuse.

Home Depot is a consistent abuser of its customers' time. Let me explain.

Back in 1990, when my wife and I loved Home Depot, the stores were staffed with well-trained, knowledgeable and helpful people. If you had a question, even a silly one, it was easy to find someone who knew the answer. Home Depot had an amazing inventory. It also had a staff that helped you access that inventory and make choices.

Though it didn't have employees waiting at the door, as do high-service stores such as Elliot's in Dallas and Big Jo in Santa Fe, you could make a purchase quickly at Home Depot.

But that was then.

Today, it is difficult to find a staff person at a Home Depot. Personally, I've left the store empty-handed after a hopeless wait. During one long wait shortly before Christmas, I commented to a worker that the store was so busy they must be getting lots of overtime.

"No way," the employee said.

at she has taken her business elsewhere.

I know we're not alone. One of my friends started to seethe when I mentioned Home Depot. He'll buy things almost anywhere, except Home Depot. He hates having his time abused.

Add people to the payroll

That's what Home Depot does by short-staffing. It abuses our time. We can't get the help we need, and we can't make our purchases quickly. The result is that a once iconic, wonderfully American store has become an aggravation rather than a blessing. (Home Depot, e-mailed for comment, didn't respond.)

Home Depot is not unique. Many supermarket chains and some of the large department stores appear to have decided that short-staffing is the way to meet their profit plans, hoping to drop more dollars to their bottom lines by stealing our time at the checkout counter or elsewhere.

My bet is that a few years from now someone will give this a clever name, like "millennial myopia" or some other phrase suitable for the Harvard Business Review. Until then, the investment bankers will be working on different ways to solve the share price problem with financial moves.

Let's hope the board of directors at HD takes the time to learn what's obvious to ordinary people who do a lot for themselves and need to make good use of their time.

The solution is to add people to the payroll rather than reducing both.

CEO Response
Editor's note: Last week, MSN Money published a column by Scott Burns that focused on customer-service problems at Home Depot (HD, news, msgs). The response was overwhelming: Thousands of readers posted messages on our boards and more than 10,000 e-mailed editors here to share their own stories of time wasted at Home Depot's stores. In response to that outcry, Home Depot’s new CEO, Frank Blake, posted his own message here. Below is a copy of that post.

I'm Frank Blake, the new CEO for The Home Depot. I've read a number of the postings on the MSN message board (unfortunately, there were a lot of them), and we've dispatched a dedicated task force -- working directly with me -- that is ready and willing to address each and every issue raised on this board. Please give us the chance.

There's no way I can express how sorry I am for all of the stories you shared. I recognize that many of you were loyal and dedicated shoppers of The Home Depot . . . and we let you down. That's unacceptable. Customers are our company's lifeblood – and the sole reason we have been able to build such a successful company is because of your support. The only way we're going to continue to be successful is by regaining your trust and confidence . . . and we will do that.

We've already taken steps to cure many of the ills discussed on this message board:

• We will be and already are increasing our staffing in the stores.

• We're also in the early stages of launching a nationwide program to recruit and hire skilled master tradespeople to staff our stores so that our customers receive the kind of service and expertise that made The Home Depot great.

• We're investing significantly in the appearance of our stores to make them an easier and more fun place to shop.

• And we're making it clear to all our associates that nothing is more important than you, the customer. Every associate knows that his or her number one job is to make you smile and to help you solve your home improvement problem … no matter how big or how small.

But the real judge of all of these changes we’re making is you. All I ask is that you please give us the opportunity to win you back. When you enter our stores, you should receive a personal greeting. After that, you should encounter a helpful associate who will walk you to find the tools, material or service you need. If you don’t, please let us know . . . just like Scott Burns did.

I'd like to thank Scott -- his column about our company was insightful and revealing. You can easily tell that it struck a nerve with me. Scott, we'll do all in our power to again make The Home Depot the store you and your wife, Carolyn, once referred to as "our store." I'd also like to give my thanks to the many people who posted comments on this board. We want them. We need them . . . to enable us to keep getting better. We're committed to being the company that helped set the standard for customer service excellence in home improvement. Please continue to hold us accountable.

Finally, message boards of this type do not allow us to respond directly to each poster, so please give us the chance to fix the many issues discussed on this board by writing to wehearyou@homedepot.com. You have my personal assurance that every effort will be made to address your concerns.

The Home Depot was built on great customer service, and we hope to rebuild your trust on that same tradition -- just give us the chance!

Motorola RAZR: Niche Products Can be Mass Successes

Source
CNN.MONEY

Synopsis
This article is about how a team of engineers and designers defied Motorola's own rules to create the cellphone that revived their company.

Article
(FORTUNE Magazine) - Hundreds of Motorolans jammed into a company auditorium in Schaumburg, Ill., last December to mourn the sudden death of their storyteller-in-chief.

It was a bittersweet moment for Motorola (Research). Geoffrey Frost, the 56-year-old marketing genius responsible for the company's snappy "Hello Moto" ad campaign, had died in his sleep of a heart attack two weeks earlier. Thanks in no small part to Frost's dramatic flair, the proud but humbled company was on the upswing for the first time in years.

CEO Ed Zander, who eulogized Frost that day, had promoted him to executive vice president only hours before he died. Frost, you see, had become a symbol of Motorola's resurgence as an unexpectedly stylish technology powerhouse.

For a few engineers and industrial designers attending the memorial service, though, Frost represented something more.

The celebration of his life drew attention to their greatest accomplishment, the creation just two years earlier of the ultrathin, superhip RAZR V3, the hottest Motorola phone in nearly a decade. Frost had been the phone's cheerleader; he'd come up with its catchy four-letter name. He also had spun an appealing narrative about how Motorola was cool again, and a myth about the slick downtown Chicago design studio where the phone had taken shape.

The story behind the RAZR's creation

What the unsung team of heroes knew, however, was that the actual story of how the RAZR came to be is even more compelling than, if not quite as glamorous as, the version Frost had peddled.

In reality, the RAZR - a play on a code name the geeks themselves dreamed up - was hatched in colorless cubicles in exurban Libertyville, an hour's drive north of Chicago. It was a skunkworks project whose tight-knit team repeatedly flouted Motorola's own rules for developing new products.

They kept the project top-secret, even from their colleagues. They used materials and techniques Motorola had never tried before. After contentious internal battles, they threw out accepted models of what a mobile telephone should look and feel like. In short, the team that created the RAZR broke the mold, and in the process rejuvenated the company.

The mood inside Motorola was grim in early 2003. Nokia (Research), whose "candy bar" phone designs were all the rage, had snatched Motorola's No. 1 worldwide market share, and wireless operators were decidedly underwhelmed by the models Motorola had to offer.

The outlook was equally gloomy for a veteran Motorola engineer named Roger Jellicoe. An Englishman who'd lived in the Chicago area for nearly 20 years, Jellicoe had worked on numerous Motorola phones, including the StarTAC, the company's last monster hit, in 1996. But Jellicoe, 50, who sports a pale-brown salt-and-pepper goatee, had recently had a project yanked out from under him, a high-end phone targeted for overseas markets that had been reassigned to a Motorola design center in Beijing. He was, quite literally, between assignments.

Fortunately for Jellicoe, another project was percolating. Engineers in Motorola's concept-phone unit had mocked up an impossibly thin phone - at ten millimeters, it was half the girth of a typical flip-top - and Rob Shaddock, a senior wireless executive, was casting about for an engineer to lead the team that would commercialize it.

Jellicoe aggressively promoted himself for the job and in the spring of 2003 maneuvered a dinner with Shaddock to make his case. They met at Ferkin's, a cheerful pub in downtown Libertyville with better-than-average food and 24 beers on tap. In advance Jellicoe had drawn up sketches of what the phone might look like (drawings that bear a striking resemblance to the RAZR today). Midway through the meal, Shaddock told Jellicoe the job was his.

Create a jewel

Jellicoe's instructions were to create the thinnest phone ever released - and to do it within a year. The goal was to make a splash at the next year's Academy Awards, on the last day of February 2004. Celebrities would be seen clutching these new prizes, and publicity would rain down on the company.

The phone was supposed to be something beautiful, like jewelry - a pricey gem in the $500 range at retail, rather than a mass-market staple. Motorola needed a reputation builder, badly. The moneymaker phones would come after, or so the plan went, piggybacking on the company's restored allure.

For a Motorola lifer like Jellicoe, this task, while daunting, was also liberating. If the phone was never meant to be a blockbuster - if it was in essence a high-end toy, judged on its wow factor more than its sales - that gave him license to take some chances.

To design the innards of a telephone takes a team of specialists. Jellicoe, an electrical engineer, turned to an old pal, Gary Weiss, a mechanical engineer with whom Jellicoe had once designed a phone over a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

The project's appeal proved to be a talent magnet within the company, and the two quickly assembled a team that grew to as many as 20 engineers. The full group met daily at 4 P.M. in a conference room in Libertyville to hash over the previous day's progress as they worked down a checklist of components: antenna, speaker, keypad, camera, display, light source, and so on. Scheduled for an hour, the meetings frequently ran past 7 P.M.

CIA-level secrecy

The "thin clam" project became a rebel outpost. Money wasn't an object, but secrecy and speed were. Normally Motorola consults closely with the wireless companies that sell the phones to try to integrate whatever favorite features they request. It also conducts "mall intercepts" to gauge consumers' reaction.

Not this time. Jellicoe hid the details of the project even from company colleagues.

"Anytime you've got something radically different, there will be people who feel that we should be putting our resources on other stuff," he says.

For cover, Jellicoe relied on Shaddock, who says, "It was a kind of lock-the-door-and-put-the-key-beneath-it approach to product development."

Digital pictures of the project were prohibited, so nothing could be inadvertently disseminated by e-mail. Models of the phone could leave the premises only when physically accompanied by a team member.

As Jellicoe's engineers focused on the inside of the slender phone, a soft-spoken industrial designer named Chris Arnholt was envisioning what it would look like on the outside.

Arnholt, 30 at the time, had joined Motorola two years before from a design boutique in Rochester, N.Y., called KEK. Ponytailed and usually dressed all in black, Arnholt carries two checkbook-sized notebooks, one for writing down things to do, the other for observations he doesn't want to forget.

"Design is really about communication," he says. "Sometimes my ideas are tough to communicate."

Arnholt was the yin to the engineers' yang. Where they calculated radio frequencies, he pondered the curve of the phone's "knuckles," or hinges. While they bounced around one another's workstations at the office, Arnholt escaped to his tranquil apartment in Highland Park, a lakefront suburb near Libertyville, where deer sometimes wandered into the backyard from a nearby forest.

The phone that became the RAZR owes many of its most distinctive elements - from its smooth aluminum finish to its backlighted keypad - to Arnholt's obsession with what he called "rich minimalism."

To conceptualize his design ideas, he'd bring home prototypes made from sculpted cornstarch, and then fashion and refashion their appearance, using masking tape to adjust previous versions.

"Chris is excellent at working the details and then refining the hell out of them," says Jim Wicks, Motorola's chief designer.

Arnholt would then render his designs onto the page. Another designer would translate them into three-dimensional computer graphics. And from that program, model makers in Libertyville would craft a plastic mockup of the design.

Collaboration between style and physics

Applying the laws of physics to Arnholt's stylish sketches was an exercise in collaboration, and not always a seamless one. Through the late summer and early fall of 2003, the engineering and design teams began combining their work, a back-and-forth process that mechanical engineering chief Gary Weiss aptly calls the "dance."

Arnholt began attending the daily 4 P.M. meeting, as each roadblock thrown up by the engineers was translated into an endlessly tweaked design. As the team contemplated each feature of the phone, every decision had a snowball effect on another feature. An antenna in one place meant an earphone connector had to go someplace else. The team members - and often their bosses - repeatedly haggled about what the phone should and shouldn't have in it.

Nearly every argument came down to the trade-off of functionality vs. thinness. Shaddock, for instance, was willing to jettison the caller-ID display on the outside of the flip phone, believing it added unnecessary thickness. Jellicoe felt otherwise: All other high-end phones had that feature. But what might have to go to make room for it?

Two key innovations allowed the team to make quantum leaps in thinness. The first was a Jellicoe brainstorm: placing the antenna in the mouthpiece of the phone instead of at the top. An innovative idea, it was also a technical challenge.

Jellicoe set up a competition among five of his engineers to see who could come up with the best design. Tadd Scarpelli, a then-32-year-old engineer who likes to take apart and rebuild car engines in his free time, devised the most elegant solution.

The second brainstorm was rearranging the phone's innards, primarily by placing the battery next to the circuit board, or internal computer, rather than beneath it. That solution, however, created a new problem: width. Motorola's "human factors" outfit had concluded that a phone wider than 49 millimeters wouldn't fit well in a person's hand. The side-by-side design yielded a phone 53 millimeters wide.

But the RAZR team didn't accept the company's research as gospel. The team made its own model to see how a 53-millimeter phone felt.

Says Frank Stone, a mechanical engineer who worked on the battery placement: "People could hold it in their hands and say, 'Yeah, it doesn't feel like a brick.' " In the end, the team members decided for themselves that the company was wrong and that four extra millimeters was acceptable.

They ended up reaching a similar conclusion about the ten-millimeter-thickness target: Ultimately, they were able to construct a phone with all the features they wanted that measured 13.9 millimeters at the beam, exceeding the target by a little more than an eighth of an inch. Still, that was 40 percent thinner than Motorola's slimmest flip-top phones. Everyone agreed it was more than thin enough for the statement Motorola was trying make.

An oppressive mood in the company

As the thin-clam team made progress in combative isolation, the mood at Motorola had gone from bad to worse. In the fall of 2003 the company lacked enough camera lenses to supply phones for the coming holiday shopping season. The stock plunged 5 percent in September when word came out about the camera-phone snafu.

That same month the board asked CEO Christopher Galvin, a grandson of the company's founder, to retire. In December it further humiliated senior management by hiring an outsider, former Sun Microsystems president Ed Zander, to run the company. Zander started at Motorola on the first business day of 2004 without unveiling a strategy but promising to rid the company of its hide-bound ways. He didn't let on publicly, but early in his tenure he got a look at the ultrathin phone. He liked what he saw.

He wasn't the only Motorolan beginning to sense that this trim phone was something special. Tom Lynch, head of the cellphone division at the time, recalls Rob Shaddock becoming obsessed with it.

"Every time I saw him he had it in his hand, whether it was in a staff meeting or having a beer," says Lynch, who has since left Motorola to become CEO of Tyco's electronics business. "He was constantly flipping it open and turning it around and rubbing it."

The phone team did have its troubles. It became clear, for instance, that it would miss the February 2004 deadline. Perfecting the materials and appearance of the cool-blue "night signature" of the keypad was such a sticking point that Chris Arnholt traveled to South Korea to work with the supplier chosen to make keypads for the phone. An Oscar debut would have to wait.

The RAZR debuts - and explodes

By the summer, almost a year after Arnholt had begun playing with prototypes at his apartment, the phone was ready for its close-up. The thin clam had acquired a formal code name early on. Jellicoe wanted to call it the siliqua patula, which is Latin for "razor clam." That bit of geek humor was too much for the team's project manager, Bill Kastritis, who insisted on calling it the Razor, as in razor thin.

The initial marketing plan labeled the phone the V3, in keeping with Motorola's naming convention. (Previous phones were the V300, V500, and V600.) Enter Geoffrey Frost, the marketing chief who had paid close attention as the phone project progressed.

He was enamored with what the phone could do for Motorola but couldn't bear the thought of such an elegant device going out into the world with such a pedestrian name. Borrowing from the team's code word, he hit on an eye-catcher: the four-letter RAZR.

Frost also orchestrated the phone's first public appearance. Motorola had privately shown models to a handful of network executives in backroom presentations at trade shows early in 2004. But in June, Frost's team started feeding the hype machine by offering a sneak peak at a gadget fashion show for design-oriented journalists at Copenhagen's Arken Museum of Modern Art.

As for the official unveiling, it is industry tradition that new phones are released at a wireless conference. Zander insisted that, once again, the plan be different for the RAZR. Inspired by the attention Steve Jobs gets each time he debuts a new toy, Zander launched the RAZR in a splashy presentation at Motorola's annual meeting with financial analysts in Chicago in July.

The new phone was a hit, shipping first in Asia and then with Cingular Wireless in the U.S. Yet even at that stage it was positioned as a niche product. In the fourth quarter of 2004, out of the 29 million handsets Motorola shipped, RAZR accounted for an impressive though hardly astronomical 750,000.

It was a new executive, Ron Garriques, who took over the cellphone division that September, who pushed for Motorola to go large with the RAZR.

"I looked at the budget for 2005, and we were planning two million," recalls Garriques, who previously had been head of European operations. "I said, 'We need to build 20 million.'"

How right he was. The company sold even more RAZRs than that in 2005, and projects it will sell its 50-millionth RAZR this month.

"That's one-tenth the time it took the StarTAC to get to that level," notes Garriques.

Zander favors a different comparison. "We'll sell more RAZRs this year than Apple will iPods."

Last July several key players from the RAZR development team were asked to appear at a meeting of top executives at company headquarters. They weren't told why.

"Even when we were sitting in the room waiting to be called in, nobody was really quite sure what was going to happen," says Tadd Scarpelli, the young engineer who designed the RAZR's antenna.

Then, as the team members filed in, the executives awaiting them rose in applause, delivering a standing ovation - followed by news that the team members would also be rewarded with a boatload of stock options.

"It was surreal," says Scarpelli, who to this day approaches strangers in airports and asks them if they like "his" phone. Successful rule breakers, after all, have certain privileges.

McDonalds: The Slow Death of an Icon

Source
Mark Ritson (PDF)

Synopsis
This article is a lighthearted exploration of McDonald's schizophrenic marketing communications that is as confusing as its claims are unbelievable.

Fiji: Depending on Celebrity Endorsements

Source
Mark Ritson (PDF)

Synopsis
This article takes a lighthearted look at Fiji water who has grown in popularity not with marketing campaign and messaging architecture, but by natural celebrity usage. Also an interesting case study in leveraging "the exotic."

Research: What people say they like and what they actually like don't match

Source
The Fruits of Imagination
New York Times
Pew

Summary (Quoting Jason at The Fruits of Imagination)

[There are] times when what people say they like and what they actually like are completely different. Of course this happens all the time, which makes it scary how many decisions are still based on researching people's opinions.

There was a good example of this from an article on whether US voters value experience in the New York Times this weekend.

"In surveys, voters profess to value experience. For instance, the Pew Research Center reported last month that... one of the most important traits a candidate can possess is that he or she “has been an elected official in Washington for many years.” Only being Christian or having military service was more highly regarded...

But the picture becomes vastly more complicated when voters are asked about specific politicians. For instance, of the six major Democratic candidates, those with the most experience have the least appeal to voters... Experienced Washington Republicans face the same problem.

Dig deeper into the numbers, and experience seems to be even less important to voters, at least at this very early stage of the campaign. Pew asked poll respondents for snap impressions of the top six candidates (Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney).

For five of those candidates, the overwhelming majority of impressions clustered around personal qualities rather than experience or ideology. The divide was particularly wide for Mr. Obama: 65 percent of the respondents talked about his personal traits (“good,” “intelligent,” “honest,” etc.) while only 14 percent were about his experience (mostly his lack of it). The spread was a whopping 75 percent to 8 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 39 percent to 17 percent for Mr. McCain. Voters consistently mentioned only one candidate’s experience — Mr. Giuliani’s."

It's also worth mentioning that "having military service," the claimed highest value in a candidate, didn't fare well in practice either. Out of the top six candidates, only John McCain has served in the military.

Starbury: Low Cost but Highly Prized

Source
Brand Republic (free registration)

Synopsis
Stefan Marbury designs and sells his own basketball shoe, which - unlike other superstar brands - sells for under $15. Oh yeah, they fly off the shelf. Substory is an interesting one of "corporate" citizenship - Stefan wants to help a consumer base that often has their priorities wrong: "We are allowing kids to become more educated (but they) are not allowing themselves to see the big picture,' he said. 'The big picture is not having a $200 pair of sneakers when your mother's income is $15,000. When you walk into a store, you are not being held hostage any more. So it's an outlet for the people, especially from where I come from."

Article
Mark Ritson on branding: Sport brands get a $15 realitycheck
Marketing 22-Nov-06

The first time I saw Stephon Marbury was in 1997.

I had just finished my PhD and was starting a job as a 'rookie' professor at the University of Minnesota. Marbury had arrived in Minneapolis in 1996, joining the Minnesota Timberwolves as part of the NBA draft. My new university had season tickets for the Wolves' matches and Marbury very quickly became my favourite player.

He was much smaller than the other players, barely reaching 6ft 2in - minuscule by the NBA's usual standards. He played point guard, a position that is usually characterised as being the selfless playmaker for the team. Guards start the move and then pass to the big guys, who get the baskets. But this was far too predictable a role for Marbury, who, even when one of his giant team-mates was open, was just as likely to take a shot himself, leading to howls of derision from fans and players alike.

Point guards are also supposed to be the coach's main contact on the field. But Marbury, who played with a constant scowl, hated his coach and everyone else he came into contact with on the court. Nobody really knew what he would do next. While his team-mates were perfecting the anodyne media skills beloved of all US athletes, Marbury's post-game interviews were as frank as they were dispiriting and inevitably made headlines the next day.

His 10-year career is now drawing to a close, but this season has already proved to be his most eventful. During the last off-season, Marbury worked with shoe designers and a major sporting goods retailer, Steve & Barry's University Sportswear, to release a basketball shoe. Nothing unusual there. Ever since the days of Michael Jordan, most top basketball players have been paid millions to endorse top-of-the-range shoes that sell for $100-$200 (£50-£100).

But Marbury once again made his own moves. His new shoe, named the Starbury One, is a sleek, impressive-looking product with one big surprise: the price. The shoe sells for $14.98.

This is no promotional gimmick. For Marbury, who grew up as the sixth of seven children in the impoverished projects of Coney Island, the Starbury's low price is an attempt to make the shoes he endorses affordable for the lower-income African American boys who buy most of the basketball shoes that are sold in the US.

'We are allowing kids to become more educated (but they) are not allowing themselves to see the big picture,' he said. 'The big picture is not having a $200 pair of sneakers when your mother's income is $15,000. When you walk into a store, you are not being held hostage any more. So it's an outlet for the people, especially from where I come from.'

The marketing team behind Starbury One has also played a very smart game by taking a low-cost, authentic approach to the launch using PR, interactive and Marbury's own direct involvement. Much to the amazement of the basketball media, Marbury spent a month touring the US signing his shoes for kids. He started the season in October wearing his $15 shoes and has pledged to wear them in every single game. Many commentators are now reappraising their view of the player, with one journalist going as far as to claim that the once-surly Marbury has adopted his brand's characteristics: accessible, conscientious and humble. 'Who is this man?' he asked.

The Starbury One has sold out all over the US. As soon as it comes back into stock, every single pair is snapped up almost immediately. Other Starbury shoes are in development and more than 50 other low-priced sportswear items now carry the Starbury logo. One of the US' most unlikely sporting heroes has just become the architect of one of its weirdest and most wonderful new product success stories.

30 SECONDS ON ... STARBURY ONE
- The Starbury One shoe was designed by Steve & Barry's University Sportswear, which began as a collegiate apparel store at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985 and aims to provide quality merchandise at a reasonable price.
- Steve & Barry's currently has more than 150 stores in 33 US states and plans to expand to 200 by the end of this year.- Stephon Marbury travelled to 40 US cities in 17 days to promote the shoe. So far, about 3m pairs have been sold.
- The US athletic footwear market is worth about $8bn (£4.2bn)
- Other NBA 'signature' shoes include Nike's Kobe Bryant Huarache trainers (priced about $120), Converse's Dwayne Wade sneakers (priced about $100) and - the 'daddy' of sneaker endorsements - Nike and Michael Jordan's Air Jordan line (about $180 a pair). The first Air Jordans went on sale in 1985.

Heinekin: Branded Environments

Source
Reveries.com

Synopsis
Following in the branded experience steps of Starbucks, Heineken is creating branded bars in airports.

Article
"If you go into this thinking your brand is going to be the experience, you are dead in the water," says consultant John Hosking, about Heineken's intentions to become the Starbucks of airport pubs, as reported by Jeffrey A. Fowler in The Wall Street Journal (3/16/07). So far, Heineken has opened just one Heineken Bar at Hong Kong's international airport (pictures here), but plans are to start opening others just like it at airports on five continents. The strategy follows the success of Heineken's La Amsteleria bars in Spain, which reportedly "sell about 10 times as much beer as the average bar." Putting Heineken bars in airports does make sense, given that beer is the second-most frequently consumed beverage at airports, after coffee. In addition, travelers are often bored and open to trying new things.

Of course, one question is whether Heineken -- which decided on its airport strategy precisely because it considers itself to be the leading global beer brand -- is anything new to most people. Heineken's familiarity factor does make its proposition different from Starbucks' -- not that Starbucks isn't familiar, but its image was largely built not on the basis of an existing brand identity or product but the idea that coffee could be exotic -- not just in terms of the beans used but also the way it is served (espresso, cappuccino, latte, etc.). Also unlike Starbucks, Heineken makes its branding ubiquitous: "Bar stools reflecting green neon match the Heineken-logo T-shirts for sale. TV screens show Heineken ads and sports events sponsored by the company."

You can buy other brands of beer there, but "only Heineken-owned brands are on tap. "Heineken's Erik van de Ven does draw a Starbucks comparison, though. "With Starbucks, people are looking for a familiar brand. This is what we are trying to roll out for beer," he says, adding that he thinks beer has a certain something that coffee doesn't: "Beer moments are more social and exciting than coffee moments." But John Hosking remains skeptical, noting the difference in the way Guinness approached branded pubs, specifically that Guinness did not impose any branding standards on its franchisees. "The secret is that they created a really strong consumer proposition, tying together Irish hospitality and service with an environment carefully built for drinking," he says.

Craigslist. How to not sell-out.

Sources

• Wall Street Journal -Zen and the Art of Classified Advertising

• Brandchannel.com -Craigslist classified

Synopsis
Starbucks' current woes point out a critical trade-off which all brands inevitably face as they expand: Deciding between growth and the integrity of the brand experience.

As Seth Godin aptly put it, "In order to be big, they have to give up stuff."

If Starbucks lost its soul because it never questioned the sacrifices of growth (until now), Craigslist is a shining example of a brand on the opposite end of the spectrum. Through the years, it has remained focused on "value-to-consumers" over "value-to-investors," even if that meant millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Starbucks: Anatomy of a Fallen Star

Source
Adage
Starbuck's Gossip - Howard's Internal Memo

Article
#1 To speed service, stabucks added flavor locked packages that killed the fresh-ground-coffee-aroma, not to mention the sound of beans being scooped and ground on site.

#2 Starbucks went of ubiquity over uniqueness, at the airport, the grocery store, the hotel on every corner: Omnipresence = common.

#3 Installing automatic espresso machines solved speed and efficiency but destroyed in-store ambiance

#4 Trying to do it all created an indentity crisis: is Starbucks mass or mass luxury? Are customers hooked on the caffeine, the convenience or the circus?

#5 Once a cozy respite from reality, it traded in comfy chairs for plastic, and every square inch is selling products, such as games, instead of an authentic coffee experience.

#6 Who has time to French-press a steaming cup when there's a line out the door for multi-syllabic beverage orders, egg sandwiches, gifts cards and movies?

#7 Fighting fast food by adding prepackaged deli foods and day-old pastries flies in the face of it's cafe culture.

In the wake of the Starbucks "Memo Shot Round the World" from Chairman Howard Shultz on the looming commoditization of its brand, we asked the experts how they would restore the mythical Starbucks Experience.

Joseph Michelli, author of "The Starbucks Experience: Five Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary": "They can make sure the sensory experience at Starbucks is rich" by bringing back coffee aromas with fresh grinding and reinforcing the notion of affordable luxury by making sure knowledgeable baristas French-press coffee. It also means nixing plastic chairs and bringing back the living-room feel. "It is all the details of the physical environment."

Seth Godin, author of "Small is the New Big": "They have to bring the audience with them as they move the masses back to authenticity," starting with "fixing the coffee and figuring out how to sell something you can eat." He said the bigger question is: "Should Starbucks be willing to take a short-term stock and market-share hit in order to return to its authenticity?" When it comes to brands, "shareholders, in the long run, are always wrong," he said, adding: "In order to be big, they have to give up stuff."

Mark Gobe, chairman-CEO of Desgrippes Gobe and author of "BrandJam: Humanizing the Brand Through Emotional Design": Starbucks should ask its consumers why they went there in the first place and what is missing now, he said. The chain needs to decide whether it is mass or luxury mass. "Brands have to find their limitations. ... You have to know where you're going to disconnect from consumers."

Bob Goldin, exec VP of food consultant Technomic: "The company needs to better understand how the customer point of view has changed" in the past decade. While he isn't convinced McDonald's will supplant Starbucks as the place for Gen Y consumers to park their laptops on a Saturday night ("That place smells like french fries"), he does agree Starbucks needs to make "significant improvements" to its food program, including managing its ubiquity and push for turning out specialty beverages at a rapid pace.

Larry Wu, VP-consumer strategist food and beverage, Iconoculture: Of all the experts we polled, perhaps Mr. Wu knows the brand best. A former director of research and development for Starbucks, he said, "It used to be about great service, knowledgeable expertise and love of coffee. Now it's about love of profit, margin and growth." He said stores are too small and understaffed: "That's why [baristas] make shortcuts now." The chain "should look at capacity instead of just speed." Finally, he said, Starbucks "should pull back on the food and make coffee the core again."

David Aaker, VP of Prophet and professor of marketing at University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business: "This is a portfolio problem. Once you get into supermarkets, it's not easy to pull back." But he said it's possible. "One option would be to create a sub-brand for an upscale Starbucks." It's an idea much like the Hallmark Gold Crown concept, where the chain could create an experience around the original Starbucks for customers who want that level of service vs. the grab-and-go business the company has developed.

Bryant Simon, professor of history and director of American studies at Temple University, who visited 400 locations to research his coming book, "Consuming Starbucks": "There's no reason not to put a semi-automated machine in the drive-thru," and then push its notion of authenticity and coffee theater in its flagship stores. "Give up some of the volume and, like Nike, make it a [showroom] store about coffee."

Recommended Reading
Brand Autopsy discussion of this

Jet Blue: Inside a PR Crisis

Source
Adage - Background of the event
Jet Blue Hostage Blog - a jet blue passengers take
Youtube - Jet Blue CEO's response
Dave Nottoli - examination of PR repsonse
37 Signals - Examination of PR response
CNN - Ripple effect

Synopsis
This is a collection of links and analysis of the Jet Blue debacle that left passenger stranded on runways and airports for 10 hours.

Content
From Youtube



From Dave Nottoli's site:
This is how good companies take a mistake and turn it into a marketing opportunity. They...

Take responsibility

"we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences."

Offer compensation for their mistake

"we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation."

Tell customers exactly the steps they're taking to improve

"we have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future."

Remind people of their brand promise

"This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us."

Create a symbol that gives customers a reason to believe in their promise

From 37 Signals:
Here are some communication lessons learned from the fiasco:

Put all your soldiers on the front lines. Jet Blue’s corporate offices are located near JFK so they brought in a bunch of people who normally work there to help out at the terminal. They wore Jet Blue vests and/or badges and wandered around the terminal answering questions, directing customers, and listening to complaints. Granted, a lot of these people didn’t know much more than the passengers but, hey, at least they were there. A lot of customers just wanted to vent and know someone was listening. You need boots on the ground to do the little things. I saw one rep ask an irate customer for a business card so he could follow up with him later. A small step, but it just might save a customer.

Be the guy with the megaphone. The PA system by the gates was pitiful. The volume was feeble and you could barely make out the thin announcements (which were similar to the unintelligible conductor announcements on the NYC subways). People were desperate to know what was going on. Enter megaphone man. Rumor was that he actually worked as legal counsel to JetBlue. He went to each gate with a megaphone and updated all the passengers with the latest info. Then he’d walk toward the rear of that gate and repeat the info again for those who hadn’t heard the first time. It wasn’t always good news. But at least an actual person was there, communicating something clearly.

Have an operator reserve force. A lot of the JetBlue reps on the scene encouraged passengers to call (800) Jet-Blue for more info. The problem was the phone lines were so jampacked there was no way to get through. This forced already irate customers to wait in lines for hours in order to find out information that easily could have been shared over the phone. The result: Anger builds and the people onsite had to deal with it.

Take it personally. When people are stuck on board a plane for eight hours with no clean toilets, they take it personally. And when your company promise is to “bring humanity back to air travel,” you better take it personally too.

The founder and chief executive of JetBlue says he’s “humiliated and mortified” by what happened. He’s taking responsibility and promising real changes. That’s what customers want to hear.

Mr. Neeleman said he would enact what he called a customer bill of rights that would financially penalize JetBlue — and reward passengers — for any repeat of the current upheaval. He said he would propose a plan to pay customers, after some amount of time, by the hour for being stranded on a plane…He says knows he has to deliver. “I can flap my lips all I want,” he said. “Talk is cheap. Watch us.”

Your site is a PR weapon. Neeleman’s emotional response was nowhere to be found at JetBlue.com though. The latest JetBlue news at the site is the addition of 3 blind moose Merlot and Chardonnay to flights. Hmm, is that really the big JetBlue news right now? And the last entry at the CEO’s blog at the site has the title “2007 Takes Off in the Right Direction.”

Granted, there’s a link that says “Operational Interruptions” in the site’s header but it only takes you to a bunch of sterile, boilerplate text (e.g, “JetBlue continues to experience cancellations and delays as a result of Wednesday’s ice storm in the Northeast. Please check the status of your flight online before proceeding to the airport.”)

The site needs to become the online version of the guy with the megaphone. There should be a letter from the CEO. There should be an apology. There should be details about changes that are going to happen to prevent this from occurring again. If they can’t easily make changes to the current site, they should set up a special crisis site to deal specifically with this debacle. As it is now, the company’s online presence seems disconnected from reality.

Saturn and the Power of Sharing

Source
New York Times

Synopsis
GENERAL MOTORS is borrowing a tradition from an unlikely source — the National Hockey League — to help recreate the warm and fuzzy feelings consumers had for its Saturn division more than a decade ago. The commercial is here.

Article
Saturn is inviting owners of its new Aura midsize sedan to “share” the North American Car of the Year award it won in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. G.M. bought from Tiffany five replicas of the five-pound leaded-crystal trophy, and is inviting people who purchased Auras before it won the honor to borrow an award for a day or two.

The owner then returns the trophy to General Motors, which sends it out to another owner. (G.M. pays for the shipping, about $30 each way, using FedEx.)

Some owners, like Bob Sim in Hollywood, Fla., who bought a pewter bronze Aura XR, get to keep the trophy over a weekend.

“I had several neighbors who came over and asked, ‘Well, how did you get that?’ ” Mr. Sim, who operates the Robert W. Sim accounting firm, said in a telephone interview. “And I got a couple of pictures.”

“It made me kind of nostalgic,” said Mr. Sim, who is 62. “When I got out of the Army, the first car I bought was a 1967 Mercury Cougar that won a car of the year award.” He was right; the Cougar received the award from Motor Trend magazine.

It is just such emotions that executives at Saturn hope to evoke with the promotion, which is reminiscent of how the members of the team that wins the N.H.L. championship each season share the Stanley Cup.

The promotion is featured on the Saturn Web site (saturn.com), where 15 Aura owners offer testimonials in video clips. The promotion is also described in an offbeat television commercial created by the new Saturn agency, Deutsch. The spot began running during the Academy Awards broadcast on Feb. 25.

“Not long after the Saturn Aura won the award,” an announcer says in the spot, “we decided to give it back” to the owners “who chose the Aura before it won.”

The goal is to create a contemporary version of the image that Saturn enjoyed in its heyday in the early and mid-1990s. A campaign from the first Saturn agency, Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco, helped earn the brand a reputation for being customer-friendly, reliable and a quirky.

The Riney campaign carried the theme “A different kind of company. A different kind of car.” The ads celebrated G.M.’s decision to sell a domestically produced car intended to compete against imports like Honda and Toyota with policies that included no-haggle pricing and free doughnuts at dealer showrooms.

Saturn was once renowned “as the consumer’s automobile, with everything direct and honest, no frills,” said Robert K. Passikoff, president at Brand Keys, a brand- and customer-loyalty research company.

But after years of less distinct, prosaic advertising, Saturn has become “the ubiquitous automobile that people know but have forgotten what they know it for,” he said.

Mr. Passikoff said he watched the new commercial during the Oscars and “thought to myself, ‘That was so smart.’ ”

“They are really going back to their roots,” he said. “It resonates with the values that used to be Saturn’s.”

That assessment, needless to say, would please Saturn executives.

“We thought it was time to reacquaint people with the Saturn brand essence and rekindle that love affair people had with the brand,” said David Koziara, advertising manager for Saturn in Detroit.

The decision came after more than a year of running ads that focused on telling consumers that, after long stinting on new models, Saturn was finally bringing out products like the Aura sedan, a crossover called Outlook, a convertible named Sky and a redesigned Vue sport utility.

The hope was to offer “a more contemporary expression” of the Saturn persona of the ’90s, Mr. Koziara said, “and put a fresh face on what human, personal, thoughtful and customer-centric mean today” — all in a manner that would be “very Saturn-like, not boastful.”

After Aura won the award, Saturn executives asked their creative agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group, for a campaign to promote it. The agency has produced ads for Saturn since winning the assignment in 2002 from the original Saturn agency, Riney, now known as Publicis & Hal Riney, part of the Publicis Groupe.

But the Saturn executives did not like the ideas from Goodby, Silverstein and asked Deutsch, another G.M. agency, to lend a hand; creative employees there came up with the concept of sharing the award.

“ ‘Stanley Cup’ was what we called it internally,” said Eric Hirshberg, co-president and chief creative officer at Deutsch L.A., which is the Marina del Rey, Calif., office of Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group.

“There’s something inherently chest-beating and self-congratulatory about promoting an award you’ve won,” Mr. Hirshberg said. “But saying the award doesn’t go into a trophy case, but to those who contributed to winning it, will help Saturn get back that sense of community, that sense of connection, the brand had.”

The Saturn executives liked the award idea so much that they dismissed Goodby, Silverstein and named Deutsch L.A. as the creative agency of record for ads, with spending estimated at $200 million.

The logistics of sharing the award proved somewhat challenging. What was finally worked out was to send e-mail messages inviting participation in the promotion to about 3,500 of the estimated 15,000 people who bought Auras from Aug. 1, when they were introduced, to Jan. 7, when the award was presented.

So far, Deutsch L.A. said, about 350 owners are taking part. Mr. Koziara said the promotion would continue “for at least several months.”

The TV commercial is meant to represent the promotion rather than document it. For instance, it appears to show owners sending the award to each other, rather than G.M. sending them. And the packages in the spot bear the Postal Service logo, not FedEx markings.

One aspect of the commercial does seem faithful to reality: the trophy comes carefully packed.

When Mr. Sim opened the box he received on March 1, he found the trophy “wrapped in tissue and then bubble wrap, several different ways, in two boxes.”

In rewrapping the trophy before he went to FedEx on Monday to ship it back, he added, “I tried to remember exactly how it was done.”

Hasbro Toys: Giving Games a Shot in the Arm

Source
Wall Street Journal (subscription Required)

Synposis (provide by Reveries)
"Games are math puzzles with a thousand details, but what you want customers to feel is that they're getting magic in a box," says Rob Daviau, a senior game designer for Hasbro, reports Carol Hymowitz in The Wall Street Journal (2/26/07). For Hasbro, that magic is all about keeping its place within the changing lifestyles of today's busy, busy consumers who don't have time to sit down and play games like Monopoly for three hours. So, the magic for Hasbro are games that can, for example, be played in 20 minutes, and which consumers want -- specifically, "express" versions of Monopoly, Sorry and Scrabble.

"We have an unbelievable heritage with our brands," says Philip Jackson, head of Hasbro's games division, "but we have to keep them relevant to customers. " In other words, Hasbro has to be innovative, which, for them, is all about taking the best of its past and making it work for its consumers today. Hasbro's approach involves spending a lot of time dusting off discontinued games, such as "a dice game called Can't Stop" that dates back to the 1980s. "We dug it out of our archives and it's so much fun, we can't stop playing it," says Rob Daviau. Pun intended, presumably.

The company also employs "a global network of game inventors," conducts "surveys of customers and observes thousands of children and adults playing games developed in a lab called GameWorks." In addition to the "express" updates, "Hasbro makes versions of its board games that can be played on laptops, cellphones or in video formats." Perhaps most pointedly, Hasbro has changed its classic "Game of Life" board game to take the emphasis off of money as the sole target by adding quadrants called "live it, love it and learn it" in addition to "earn it." This much is clear: Hasbro is certainly "earning it," as sales in it "games unit rose 11 percent last year."

Recommended Viewing
Richard Tait speech on his board game Cranium (PC or Mac)

Recommended Reading
Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun (in PPT form, book, blog)

Chipotle's Burrito Buzz: Growth without Advertising

Source Businessweek

Synopsis This article discusses how Chipotle keeps sales climbing with a minuscule marketing budget.

Article It is deep-freezer cold outside—just 5 degrees—and the snow is coming down hard. Never mind. Trey Parrott has just trudged up Chicago's Michigan Avenue to Chipotle Mexican Grill for lunch. Parrott, 25, figures he has eaten at Chipotle every week since a friend first took him to one seven years ago, when he was a high school senior in Kansas City, Mo. Over that stretch, he has also reversed roles: Today he has brought along a couple of co-workers who've never been in a Chipotle before. Their snap review? Two thumbs-up.

Most fast-food chains drum up traffic by barraging consumers with mass-media ads, trumpeting their newest product or latest deal. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. (CMG ) plays by different rules. The Denver-based company eschews TV commercials and most other traditional advertising. In fact, it spends less in a year on advertising than McDonald's Corp., its former parent, (MCD ) spends in 48 hours. "Advertising," declares M. Steven Ells, Chipotle's founder and chief executive, "is not believable." Instead, Chipotle banks on customers to spread the word. And like Parrott, who works for Citigroup's (C ) Primerica Financial Services, they routinely do.

This all-volunteer army has helped make Chipotle one of the hottest properties in the restaurant industry. Same-store sales jumped 13.7% in 2006, its ninth straight year of double-digit increases. The 573-unit chain ranked tops among quick-serve Mexican places in a just-published national survey of consumers and tied for fourth out of 2,400 brands overall. Chipotle can also brag about the biggest bang of any initial public offering in 2006: Its share price has nearly tripled, to 60, since January, 2006, when McDonald's began its spin-off, which was completed last October.

Fittingly, Chipotle is also generating buzz for word-of-mouth marketing. These days the typical consumer is exposed to so many paid pitches—estimates range from 600 to 3,000 a day—that people tend to tune them out. People also dismiss almost anything that comes from big companies, notes Dan Buczaczer, senior vice-president of Denuo, a new-media consulting division of Publicis Groupe (PUB ). But if people hear the same message from a friend or even a stranger, he adds, they'll probably believe it since the tipster has nothing to gain. "Chipotle so far has got it nailed," Buczaczer says. "You have people evangelizing the brand because they love it."

What advertising Chipotle does is mostly on billboards or radio, touting the ample size or fresh ingredients of its burritos and tacos, though with a dash of irony. But its marketing budget is minimal. Over the first 11 months of 2006, McDonald's spent $818.9 million on traditional media advertising in the U.S., while Yum! Brand Inc.'s (YUM ) Taco Bell unit spent $252.4 million, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Chipotle's outlay over the same span: $4.5 million. Looked at another way, Chipotle spent less than 1% of its full-year revenue of $882.9 million on ads vs. 4% or more by its larger rivals.

The thriftiness goes back to Chipotle's start in 1993, when Ells opened a cramped outlet in a Denver storefront. With only $85,000 to cover everything, he recalls, even a single ad seemed too costly. Besides, Ells, a white-tablecloth chef who trained at the Culinary Institute of America, thought customers should be swayed first and foremost by the food. So instead of telling people about Chipotle's burritos he gave them away. When dozens of reporters were camped out in Denver in 1997 as Timothy J. McVeigh was tried for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Chipotle regularly delivered free food to the courthouse.

The handouts are now part of Chipotle's strategy. When Chipotle came to midtown Manhattan last July, it gave burritos away to 6,000 people, some of whom stood in line for two hours. The stunt cost $35,000, figures James W. Adams, Chipotle's marketing director. In return, the company landed 6,000 new spokespeople. "You could spend that same amount on an ad in The New York Times and you wouldn't have that many people talking about you," Adams points out. "The response to the food is almost always positive. It's unique and it's tasty." But don't just take it from him; any Chipotle regular would probably say the same thing.

(RED) and Conscious Consumption: Do People Care?

Source
PSFK
PSFK questioning (RED) #1
PSFK questioning (RED) #2
(RED)'s respond
Update: Adage Article and Financial Times

Synopsis
PSFK questioned whether (RED) has been successful. (RED) responds to the article correcting PSFK's figures. This sparks an interesting debate on conscious consumption. If purchases are political, are people politically apathetic? Do enough consumers really care about helping other people around the world? Is this a brand enthusiasm that really helps the bottom line?

Recommended Reading
(RED) Manifesto

The Rise of Snack Culture

Source
Section of Wired
Minifesto of a New Age
History of Snack Culture

Synopsis
Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips - in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture.

Media snacking, as Wired calls it, has invaded every facet of our daily lives which has caused things like the death of the Music Album,

Minifesto
"It was round. It was tiny. It was delicious. And it was about to change the course of American culture. In 1991, Nabisco unveiled one of its greatest - and most influential - innovations: the Mini Oreo. Shrunk to the size of a quarter, the Mini Oreo offered a unique and tantalizing proposition: constant consumption without consequences. The downsizing of the iconic treat - eventually repackaged in supersize resealable bags - cemented Oreos place as number one in the $3 billion cookie market. A major phenomenon was born.

Replace Nabisco with Apple, the Mini Oreo with the iPod nano, and youve got a blueprint for the current boom in what might be called snack-o-tainment. Apples single-minded marketing campaign for the iPod (its tunes - not albums - in your pocket, after all) taught us the joy of picking the choicest cuts and shuffling them into individual hit pdes. The same with television: When the video iPod launched in October 2005, we were suddenly eager to pay $1.99 to watch a music video or a recent episode of Lost in a smaller, portable version of what was already available for free on that big square thing in our living room.

Music, television, games, movies, fashion: We now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips - in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. This is snack culture - and boy, is it tasty (not to mention addictive).

Neither Nabisco nor Apple was the first to distill things to their essence. Moses gave the world its first Top 10 list long before Letterman (on handheld tablets, no less). Old Farmers Almanac, Readers Digest, and CliffsNotes pared information down to pithy synopses. But cultural snacking isnt just distillation, its elevation. In 17th-century Japan, teenage poet Basho popularized the haiku, an early, lyrical version of the IM. Abraham Lincoln delivered his 272-word Gettsyburg Address in a YouTube-friendly two minutes.

Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our laptops. At work, we graze all day on videos and blogs. Back home, the giant HDTV is for 10-course feasting - say, an entire season of 24. In between are the morsels that fill those whenever minutes, as your mobile phone carrier calls them: a 30-second game on your Nintendo DS, a 60-second webisode on your cell, a three-minute podcast on your MP3 player.

Like Homer Simpson at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, we are capable of devouring whatever is in front of us - down to the plastic crustaceans - and still go fishing for Colbert clips at 3 am. (Mmm... truthiness.) But not all munchies are created equal. This 12-page menu lists the tastiest - and tiniest - offerings in movies, games, videos, style, tunes, tech, and much more. Dig in."

Examples
Online
In Music
In Culture
In Games
In Film/TV
In Business
Counter Argument

Transmedia and the Geico Caveman: Less Integration, More Interaction

Source:
Aweful Commercial (has a list of all the Caveman ads and branded content)
Youtube
Up with the Caveman
Caveman's Crib

Synopsis:
It started with a simple promise from Geico to consumers: "So easy a caveman can do it." Intentionally or unintentionally, the ads have elevated the Caveman characters to minor celebrity status.

Nothing this public enthusiasm, The Martin Agency has used the commercials and other opportunities to further explore the life of the Cavemen and their relationship with Geico.
The ads explore different story lines in each opportunity. This is an effort less about integration and more about the interaction of different parts coming together and leaves viewers interesting to see what happens next.

UPDATE: The Cavemen characters are now also being developed into a TV pilot for ABC. The copywriter behind the campaign is also writing the series; it's not mentioned if The Martin Agency or Geico are directly involved or will see any revenue from this. Read more here and here.

Recommended Reading
Transmedia (Jason, Jason, Henry, Henry, Faris)
Jeffre Jackson on Interestingness
Adweek on the history of the Caveman

Similar Examples
This is a loose example but interesting nonetheless: Count Chocula's LIe History

How Campaign for Real Beauty Came about and Why it Matters

Source
New York Times Magazine (must pay for the article)

Article (if you don’t want to pay)
“Fat or Fabulous?” asked a line on the cover of a recent issue of People magazine, underneath a small photograph of some of the “Dove Girls.” These are the young women appearing on billboards and other advertising on behalf of Dove Body Nourtishers Intensive Firming Lotion and related products; they are not the ultrathin fashion-model types common to advertising, and they are dressed only in underwear. They have become a minor sensation, sparking opinion articles in major publications (including New York Times editorial) and showing up as guests on the “Today” show. This is a rare thing and pretty clearly a publicity bonanza for the Dove brand.

The debate over whether these images of women are positive (because they are more “real” than many marketing or media depictions of women) or negative (because they are all well within typical beauty norms, practically naked and pushing a product) has offered few surprises. But lurking behind it is the more intriguing fact that it is a marketing campaign – not a political figure, or a major news organization, or even a film – that “opened a dialogue” (as one of the young women said to People). The buzziest pop artifact to dwell on the unthin female form in recent memory was the Showtime series “Fat Actress”; the Dove Girls ads seem almost intellectual in comparison.

Dove’s marketing director, Philippe Harousseau, says the campaign has been in the works for a couple of years. It began with a “global study,” commissioned by Dove (which is owned by Unilever) that posed questions about beauty to thousands of women in many countries. Among other things, the women tended to agree that “the media and advertising” were pushing “unrealistic” beauty standards. It seems likely that if this same not-so-original conclusion were reached by a university or a think tank, the impact would have been minimal. But a giant corporation with a huge marketing budget is not so easily ignored. Early pieces of the campaign, which actually started last year, included images of older women and women with stretch marks and such. But it was challenged the only-thin-is-beautiful stereotype that “really hit a nerve, ” Harousseau says, “Women were ready to hear this.”

Why they were ready to hear it from marketers is the puzzle. Maybe it is somehow inevitable that marketing, which caused much of the underlying anxiety in the first place, can offer up a point of view that blithely tries to resolve that anxiety. Moreover, as the entertainment side of the media fragments, marketing becomes the one form of communication that permeates everywhere – and is just as effective whether you’ve actually seen the campaign or you simply have an opinion about it based on what you’ve heard.

Finally, perhaps there is something here that’s a backlash against not just the waif-ing of American media culture but also the self-improvement imperative: enough counting cards, enough lectures from Dr. Phil, enough pressure to learn to dress well enough for the “Queer Eye” crew and achieve Martha-like aesthetic perfection in bathroom décor. The flip side of “Don’t you care enough to do better?” could be “Stop telling me how to live.”

Unilever will not get specific about the campaign’s effect on sales, but ultimately Dove products aren’t really the point. The Dove Girls could be selling pretty much anything, since what people are really responding to is the attitude they symbolize: an unapologetic self-shaky intellectual consistency of linking it to Firming lotions. In fact, maybe the Dove Girl’s next move should be to show up in a Burger King ad, enjoying an Enormous Omelet Sandwich, daring anyone to criticize them for it.

Dove’s survey is available on its “Campaign for Real Beauty” Web site, and among its other findings is that the top “attributes of making a woman beautiful” are happiness and kindness. In other words, they had nothing to do with physical appearance at all. But these encouraging to sell – and would have left everyone else very little to debate and nothing at all to buy.

The Return of The High Life Main Reflects Consumer Push Back

Source
Ad Age

Synopsis
After an ill-fated attempt to post it's oldest brand as a metrosexual, Miller Brewing relaunched the High Life Man. Relaunched in the core Midwest markets, Miller High Life is seeing double digit growth in Chicago. This failure of Miller H.L "Moon Girl" campaign and the rise in M.H.L. sales that accompanied the "High Life Man" Relaunch, beer reflects a growing consumer pushback against the pretension of "trading up."

Excerpts
"High Life Senior Brand Director Dan Henessey said the beer's resurgence reflects a alrger consumer pushback against the pretension that's often accompanied the widespread trading-up phenomenon."

"'You look at $5 for a cup of coffee, and there's a backlash,' Mr Hennessy said. "'Dunkin Donuts' [rising coffee sales] and High life are good examples of that."

A Walmart Analogy

Source
YouTube

Synopsis
An analogy situation of a typical seller and a smart seller (let's say..Walmart) in a business competition (Lemonade). I think it's a good video in depicting and comparing a competitive advantage.

Starbucks Uses the Giving Spirit as a Viral Opportunity

Source
Madison and Vine

Synopsis
In the ’06 Christmas season, Starbucks encouraged others to perform good deeds, like give up a subway seat for another person or buy a stranger a latte. They turned this encouragement into a viral effort centered on a “cheer pass.”

Article
“Starbucks is already in the spirit of giving. The ubiquitous coffee company is kicking off the holiday season by handing out free stuff, including ski lift tickets in Denver, skating passes in Toronto, MetroCards in New York, and movie stubs in Chicago. The goal: to encourage others to perform a good deed, like give up a subway seat for another person or buy a stranger a latte.

With each good act, the person receiving the kind deed is given a "Cheer Pass," a numbered card that functions as a tracking device to see if the viral marketing tactics actually worked, according to AdAge. The Seattle-based company wants the cheer-pass collectors to log on to its holiday site, www.ItsRedAgain, to explain how and where they received the pass. The company plans to dole out about 500,000 passes through the next eight weeks. People can download cheer passes from the holiday site to hand out to folks.”

The Evolving Notion of Status

Source
Trendwatching

Synopsis
It never hurts to remind yourself of the business you’re really in: providing your customers and clients with status, directly or indirectly, in whatever form or shape. While historically, status has been conferred by brand ownership (i.e Maserati, Breitling, Gucci), there is a shift in what “status” means today. Today, the status is accentuated not by what we own, but by what we can do, which yields the idea of “Status Skills.”

The article focuses on how entrepreneurs and brands around the world are already incorporating status into their customer interactions by highlighting entities that are exclusively dedicated to helping consumers to acquire skills
1. How brands are assisting consumers in acquiring skills as a way to make the most of their purchases from that brand (so-called ‘corporate classes’)
2. Ventures that enable consumers to show off their skills

Excerpts
"In economies that increasingly depend on (and thus value) creative thinking and acting, well-known status symbols tied to owning and consuming goods and services will find worthy competition from ‘Status Skills’: those skills that consumers are mastering to make the most of those same goods and services, bringing them status by being good at something, and the story telling that comes with it."

“Furthermore, 'skills' joining tangible, shiny things and mind-blowing experiences as providers of status is by no means the only shift to watch in the status space. What if a ‘doing the right thing’ lifestyle gains in appreciation? Where does leading an eco-friendly existence fit in, and the praise that one increasingly will get from that? Or the virtual world, in which one’s gaming skills, or one’s profile popularity (and number of friends), or even the appearance of one’s avatar determine how much praise or scorn is received?”

Similar Thinking
We are the Medici’s

Recommended Reading
Status Anxiety
The Progress Paradox

Ford Bold Moves: Brand Transparency

Source
YouTube
Ford Bold Moves

Synopsis (in video form)


Video (1 of 30+)

Being John Malkovich: Inside the Minds of YouTubers

Source
YouTube

Synopsis
A look into the YouTube community through a montage of uploaded video diaries. A little heavy handed, but there are some interesting comments and behaviors interspersed throughout.

Video

Web 2.0 Case Study: The Machine is Us/ing Us

Source
YouTube

Synopsis
A highly creative look into the what Web 2.0 means, how it works, and why it matters in under 5 minutes.

Video

Day of the Long Tail: The Rise of Free Choice and UGC

Source
YouTube

Synopsis
This video is a light-hearted look at the affect of Web 2.0, over-marketed masses, choice, free software, etc.

Video

Intel: Successfully Creating an Ingredient Branding

Source
Intangible Business (PDF)

Synopsis
Every month more than 4 million billion (4 x 1015) transistors are produced; more than half a million for every human on the planet. Most computer chips each comprise more than 7 million transistors.

Twelve years ago computer chips, in the eyes of consumers, were a generally unknown component of PCs - a commodity product. From a competitive standpoint, a computer chip is a typical commodity. Take one out, put another in, no performance difference. Chips are something most customers don't see, many don't understand, and large numbers don't care about.

But Intel has built a brand around a commodity. The company was founded in 1968 and went public in 1971. By 1997, it controlled 90% of the world’s market for personal PC microprocessors. Although the market is more competitive today, Intel is still the largest chip manufacturer in the world.

This PDF recounts how this commodity company built one of the most recognized brands as a brand equivalent to condiments (Kketchup, mustard, Ranch dressing, etc.).

MTV: How They Became the Masters of Exporting Cool

Source
Newsweek

Synopsis
MTV has mastered a nifty trick: exporting a brand, customized with local flavors, around the world. This article get’s inside its global game plan and discusses its tactics.

Excerpts
“Until recently, MTV International's formula has been to race into unchartered markets and be the first to plant a flag, through channels with broad regional appeal, like MTV Latin America and MTV Asia. Now it wants to turbocharge the strategy by expanding in a dozen key markets with more MTV Networks brands, like Nickelodeon, across a range of technologies, like cable, satellite, even over cell phones. ‘We just finished another plan ... and international is in the DNA of every sentence,’ says MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, who runs the business day-to-day for Freston. The key to pulling off the strategy, though, is sticking with the winning approach of mixing universal youth sensibilities with local tastes. All that helps MTV avoid coming across as a cultural imperialist. One example is the hit U.S. show, ‘Pimp My Ride.’ In Germany, it's ‘Pimp My Bicycle.’ MTV Indonesia airs regular ‘calls to prayer’ for its Muslim audience. Every outpost, which gets it own local stylized spin on the MTV logo, offers a window into that society. On MTV India, “you get a sense of the colorful street culture,’ says Bill Roedy, president of MTV International. ‘MTV Japan—a sense of technology edginess; MTV Italy—style and elegance.’”

“To crack new markets, MTV has learned through the years that choosing the right ambassadors to sell the brand is half the battle. For years, Freston and his MTV vets tried but failed to overcome regulatory inertia to launch a channel in Africa. But then everything seemed to come together, including democracy taking hold across the continent, and economies opening up, which in turn attracts multinationals seeking new audiences (sub-Saharan Africa, which MTV Base is targeting, includes 48 countries with about 675 million people, and more than half of them are 19 or younger). Add to the mix an eager young executive named Alex Okosi, a U.S.-educated Nigerian who had once peddled MTV to cable systems in Wyoming. Okosi, 30, is now MTV's top executive in Africa, and is pushing his lean staff to fan out across the continent in search of more distribution and music-videogenic talent. As an African, Okosi knew enough to avoid certain mistakes. He saw each African country as a unique entity, instead of treating the continent as a homogenous whole. Okosi called on old acquaintances for help. To gauge the Nigerian advertising market, he enlisted a friend, the daughter of the owner of Nigeria's largest ad agency. He put up with travel that was hardly first class. ‘I'd be on the back of a motorcycle trying to get to a meeting through Lagos traffic,’ Okosi recalls. ‘It got a little scary.’ By the launch, Okosi had already signed up a big advertiser, Nokia. It intends to pitch the cell phone as a digital downloading gadget.”

Recommended Reading
Lexus and the Olive Branch
The World Is Flat