Presidential politics is a great laboratory to study branding and naming. Take Hillary for example. Fortunately for her, the name Hillary isn’t as common as Sharon or Kathy or Laura. So we don’t need to use her last names anymore. Rodham or Clinton. After so many years of free media to brand it, Hillary gets to own “Hillary”.

Hillary played it smart. When she moved into the oval office she took Rodham with her. It was a good insurance policy in case the “Clinton” thing didn’t work out. (She knew the risks.) With her Senate win and the preservation of her husband’s good name (for the most part), she was able to phase out the clunky Rodham. Now she only needs one name. It’s like when a successful law firm or ad agency drops the extra dead partners’ names to simplify their brand and make it easier for the junior associates to remember where they work. If Hillary can just be Hillary it should help soften her edges and warm up her persona–make her a little more Oprah-like.

Barak Obama is an interesting case. So far it looks like he’s Barack Obama. Not Obama. Not Barack. Barak Smith could be just: Barack. If he was John Obama I could see dropping the John and just being Obama. But when you are Barack Obama what are you going to drop? Initials don't work at all. No one wants B.O.

LBJ, JFK and FDR. These initials are securely implanted memes representing great Presidents. George W is just W, but W the President has to share it with W the Hotel. The president gets a zillion bucks worth of media, PR and word-of-mouth so he has an advantage over a little hotel chain. (But a Google search returns the hotel #1, W the magazine #2 and George W. third.) Nixon is Nixon. He doesn't need Dick, and neither do we. Bill, Jerry, Jimmy and the other George are just…. guys.

Recently I met with an accounting firm who was once known by the three three partners' names. The firm hired a consultant who spent a year and charged plenty of cash to re-brand them as three letters and an ampersand. (I can never remember the letters. One of them is a B, I think.) The new typeface is nice enough, and I’m sure their happy clients can remember the B and the other two initials better than the names they stood for. (And better than I can.) This accountant’s business will no doubt continue to grow because they do great work, but this firm, and so many others who try to own bits of alphabet, is going to have a hell of time creating a meme. “Give’em hell FB&P!"

Jeff

One of the great things about working with smart young people is that they alert you to cool new things. Like when Sarah and Will introduced me to Pandora.

I talk to a lot of business owners who are quick to boast about what “great service” they provide. They invariably think that “service” distinguishes them from everyone else who does the exact same thing. Pandora is an amazing web application that plays music based on what you like. You put in a song, or an artist, you like and it streams high-quality music based on the characteristics of the music. As you’re listening you can click the thumbs-up button to tell Pandora that you like the song they chose. If you click thumbs-down it skips the song. The program uses artificial intelligence to learn what you like. It’s easy to use and it works really well. It’s open 24/7. And it’s free. If you don’t want ads on it then you can pay a reasonable fee to get it clean. This is what young people consider great service. Nobody ever calls them. They don’t have a “relationship” with anyone. Nobody knows them by name or what they take in their coffee. “Great service” is getting something exceptional for a price that’s reasonable with as few barriers as possible.

We shouldn’t always think about service in terms of human interaction. Sometimes removing people increases the quality of service. But not always. This afternoon I stopped at a The Turtle Bread Company, a trendy bakery in Minneapolis, for a cookie and a cup of coffee. The cookies and the coffee were self-serve but I had to pay at the counter. So I got a cookie and then I had to wait in line to pay. After I paid I had to serve the coffee myself. (And it ran out halfway through filling my cup.) So psychologically I felt like I'd done all the work but they took my money. It would have been a more rewarding emotional experience if they poured the coffee, gave me a cookie, and then let me self-pay.


Jeff

Kids grow like weeds; we all know that. But when I ordered my daughter's exact size the other day on swimoutlet.com, I hadn't realized that Speedo's run small and she runs tall. So I was stuck -- stuck with a frantic trip to the post office to return the wrong size; stuck with an inconvenient trip to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy another suit; and, most of all, stuck in a pinch with no suit for my daughter's swim meet.

Or was I?

A quick log-on to the live chat feature on swimoutlet.com this week put me in touch with Lynn, probably an understanding working mom like me, who walked me through the easy return policy, waived the shipping fee on sending the new size, and gently insisted she help me order the new size today so it can be on its way before we need it for the meet.

What's this little size snafu have to to with today's marketing? Well, according to Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, "One active PTA mom recommends more products in a week than any club hopper." "Talkers," Sernovitz tells us, are step 1 of his Five T's of Word of Mouth Marketing. The medium of word of mouth marketing is real people.

So what's this real mom going to do? Tell all the other mothers I meet on the swim team and at camp and at work and at the grocery store, etc... about the superb service of swimoutlet.com. I'm happy to send more new customers to swimoutlet.com. Can your customers say the same of you?

- Susan

There’s an expression I learned from Mel Schneck, the pioneering merchandiser and specialty retail visionary with careers at AMC and Lord & Taylor that spans the past four decades of retail's glory days. It goes like this: "Today a peacock; tomorrow a feather duster." There's no better description for what has apparently happened to Kuhlman. Kuhlman is the Minneapolis-based specialty retailer known for brightly colored shirts and trendy fashions first for men, then expanded to women. According to today’s Star Tribune, Kuhlman is about to collapse.

It was no surprise to me. A couple of years ago, when I discovered Kuhlman, I thought it was great. It had a simple story: All the shirts were the same price: $50. Bright colors, noticeable quality and distinctive European style. It was a place where a dull accountant could be cool without feeling like a fool. It took about three minutes to buy a shirt. They had buzz. I don’t like buying clothes that much. In fact, I really don’t like dressy clothes at all. But I liked Kuhlman. They made it easy for a jeans-enthusiast to turn into a dandy in one quick and easy trip. The first time I wore a Kuhlman shirt, an associate complimented it and asked with enthusiasm: “Is that a Kuhlman?”

I'm not sure what it was but something changed, and I never bought another thing at Kuhlman.

The last time I passed the current store in the mall I noticed it’s not small any more. And the selection is more diverse. They mix men’s and women’s clothes now. A few months ago they opened an outlet store across from my bank. The shirts are only $9. I’ve wandered in several times and walked out with nothing -- even at that price. This morning I remembered that I had a coupon for a free shirt. I've had it for a year and I’ve yet to cash it in. They can't even give me a shirt. Kuhlman stock is $.04 a share. What happened?

It wasn’t a decline in quality that stopped me from going back. I didn’t even know the quality had declined. It wasn’t the fast growth of stores that kept me away. No doubt there were many factors that sunk this retail ship but maybe one reason is that a peacock is all flash and not much flesh. Which is why there are very few peacocks, but lots of turkeys.

- Jeff

I’ve endured many passes through airport security, but it never crossed my mind to put advertising on the platic bins. According to today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, Newest Ad Spot to Try Men’s Soles, there are two companies who did think of it, and they're competing for the opportunity to bring this new media to the Twin Cities.

One of the companies, SecurityPoint Media, thinks they "create a very nice environment." They have a patented system to put advertising in the bins we use to pass our laptops and penny loafers through those scary X-ray machines. There’s no doubt that unlike many other interruptive out-of-home advertising spaces, this media is pretty hard to ignore. The impressions will be solid, and it’s very measurable. That’s good right? But how do people feel when they are being rushed through an airport security line? Whose brands will benefit from an association with waiting in a long line, enduring the stares of uniformed guards while putting your shoes through an X-ray machine and being frisked or scanned with an electrified wand? When I go through these lines I’m usually anxious and annoyed. And I can’t help thinking about 9/11, the “shoe bomber” or when the next “shoe will drop” so to speak.

It reminds me of the movie Clockwork Orange, where Alex, the main character, is forced to watch horrible and violent movies while listening to Beethoven’s 9th. Then every time he hears the music he becomes sick to his stomach. I don’t think General Mills is going to want put Cherrios in the bin. I can’t see Stapes putting their Easy Button in this space. And it’s surely not the place to think about a Target.

But there might be some brands that would fit well into this emotional context. Prozac perhaps. I’d might recommend it to a video conferencing client. Maybe Greyhound and Amtrak should look into it.
-Jeff

Everyone knows by now that a message from any given company about how great they are may or may not have any validity. Nobody believes what they see on TV or in a magazine – it’s all just marketing, right? If you see a billboard for Some Store You Haven’t Heard Of, you may drive right past without a second thought. But, if your best friend, whose fashion sense you have always envied, tells you she got a great pair of jeans at Some Store You Haven’t Heard Of, then that is powerful enough to make you want to check it out.

That seems to be the way blogs work for me. I have happened upon a couple email opt-in blogs, the kind where you get a handy tip in your inbox each day about home improvement, online sales, green living, or whatever niche you may be interested in. Those emails become to me just like a quick note from a trusted friend. “Hey – just thought you might be interested in this…” Since it’s a third party, and most of them disclose whether or not their mention of a particular product is paid for by the company, I see their opinions as more real than the company’s marketing message, because really - I work at an agency, I know how it all works!

Sarah

Labels: blog marketing, word-of-mouth marketing

Suppose you were in the market for a new mattress. If you saw a Mattress Giant commercial it might make you consider going there to look around. If you need directions or you want to learn more about the store before you go you might Google“Mattress Giant”. I did that today and the second organic result was a review posted on epinions titled, “Mattress Giant Strikes Again If you see a Mattress Giant, run quickly in the opposite directions.... read full review, Very Helpful ...” The same article comes up number 7 on a Yahoo search. Just after this result from 2004: “Rip Off Report:Mattress Giant ripoff, deception and/or fraudulent Plano Texas.” Number ten is a repeat of the negative epinion in number 7. What’s interesting is that this negative posting is from July of 2001.

Not everyone is perfect, and a large chain of retail stores is bound to have a few disgruntled customers now and again. But Mattress Giant has had five years to fill the internet with glowing reviews and marvelous tales of wonderful service and happy transactions that would have buried these old negative posts. One can only imagine how much money Mattress Giant has spent on color newspaper inserts, TV commercials, radio spots and sales commissions over the last five years. But who googles “Mattress Giant Commercial” when they are looking for a new mattress? It's another example of how Giants can stumble when they forget who really has the power in this new jungle we inhabit.

These days you have to make an effort to manage your online reputation, so if a determined disgruntled customer goes after you, you have the strength of your passionate fans to offset it. Being a giant isn't enough.