In engineering, the angle of repose is defined as “the maximum angle of slope (measured from horizontal plane) at which loose, cohesionless material will come to rest on a pile of similar material.” Put more simply, if you’ve ever slowly released a handful of sand from your hand into a pile, you’ve observed that the height of the sand pile continues to diminish until that moment when the grains stop sliding down from their apex, and the pile of sand comes to rest. The slope of that pile is its angle of repose. Out of the multiplicity of possible heights, this is those thousands of grains’ ideal height. Repeat this exercise a hundred times, and you’d, largely, get the same result.After reading an article in this months Harvard Business Review “Authenticity: Is it Real or Marketing” I returned to this ongoing dialogue I’ve had with myself about this idea, and how it applies to our clients’ brands.

We all have our ambitions, professionally and personally. I imagine those grains of sand do too–they’d probably like to stand much taller than they can– to be the biggest pile of sand on the block–the pile against which all other piles are measured! But, in fact, the pile can only be as tall as its physics will allow–the height at which it is naturally stable. So it is with brands. The sooner a brand comes to find and accept its angle of repose, the sooner it will become its most effective self. It’s most authentic self. Ultimately, where it, the company, the employees, and the people who purchase their goods and services will be most comfortable.

Apple is a brand that will soon test its angle of repose. Part of Apple’s cult like appeal has been the size of its market share. It was able to be the rebel precisely because it was not The Man. So now, as its market share grows and white earbuds fill sidewalks like iPhone commercials fill airwaves, Apple’s very essence: exclusivity, rarity, antiestablishmentarianism* is being threatened by its popularity. At a certain point, “The Computer for the Rest of Us” will be all of us. The company that urged us to “Think Different” may come to represent similarity.

In many respects this will be good. Apple makes beautiful products that perform beautifully, and having more people buy them and enjoy them will result in increased revenues, increased shareholder value, more products, more stores, more enterprise penetration . . . more, more, more. Until, more becomes less. Until the brand has found its apex, and its base can support no higher heights, and it comes to rest at its angle of repose. Beyond this angle, Apple’s brand equity will begin to erode, and will require a fairly radical repositioning.

Toyota seems to be respectfully approaching Scion’s ideal slope. Their conscious restraint of the brand’s ambition offers many lessons on how to create an authentic brand. Their patient optimizing for a loyal, niche, cult-like following has created admirable success achieved by minimizing mass media, and delivering unique, innovative brand experiences for owners and potential buyers. By slowly and patiently releasing the grains of their brand, observing what happens, and aiming only for their optimum height, they’ve built a brand foundation that can endure.

There are many other brand examples ranging from to Threadless.com to Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon: who understand that there is an inverse and proportional relationship between availability and devotion: more of one creates less of another. That creating scarcity through restraint of production, mass advertising . . .creates exclusivity, while ubiquity leads to disaffection. To my eyes they appear content with their angle of repose, find comfort in it, and in doing so create dividends for their brands and the people that love them.

In the end, few brands can grow to be mountains, and shouldn’t try to. Be true and authentic to the physics of your brand–aim not for height, but for greatness that resonates with your audience. There’s nothing wrong with being a most excellent hill.

*Oh God, why couldn’t we be playing Scrabble!

Posted: February 27th, 2008 under Branding Theory.
Comments: none

We’ve had lots of interesting conversations following our recent post From Idiot to Genius: My First 7 Days on Twitter This data visualization from Le Monde (click to enlarge the graphic) is further evidence of the growing opportunities social media is offering brands on a global scale.Note Twitter has yet to achieve a scale that merits inclusion, but we believe they’ll will continue to rise in prominence given their remarkable growth over the last 12 months. This article, “Social Networks, from the 80s to the 00s”provides an excellent overview of the evolution of the space. While this digest from Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester, is a compendium of relevant “web usage” statistics and articles.

Casual observation tells me adoption rates of social media are high among early adopters, and while we’ve got a ways to go before a broader population tipping point is reached, that point is in sight, and we’d all do well to prepare ourselves for the summit.

Posted: February 27th, 2008 under Get Social.
Comments: none

Twitter . Heard of it? Sure you have–it’s that inane social network where people post random 140 character entries about what they’re eating for lunch, or listening to, or how their kids are running amok . . . right? The very definition of a productivity killing black hole with little to no business value, right?

That’s what I thought too, and was the sum and substance of most discussions we’d had in our offices as we pondered wading more deeply into our exploration of the social media sphere.

(This concludes the “Idiot” portion of the article.)

In fact, if you were to take Tweeter at its face value–what you see in the stream of twitter consciousness on their home page–my idiot pronouncement would be true. Here’s an actual transcript below, or check it out for yourself.

serena: @DougH: That’s awful (the redeye, not client meetings). Welcome back to LA. At least the weather cleared up! less than 5 seconds ago
Darnhall Observing: space (17:24:07 +60:58:47) www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb… less than 5 seconds ago
tightsweater: knows there is work to be done!..but is feeling oh-so-daunted! A Clay Aiken pick-me-up is needed. <3 less than 5 seconds ago
bybtwit @g10r3 che link metti su twitter che poi @bybtwit li apre e vede i finley e sta male less than 5 seconds ago
ks1234_1234 つええな日経平均。先物序盤は「CMEなんで低いの? いっち まえ」「あ、配当落ち忘 れてた」みたいな動きだが、無事に保ってる。わし まっさかさまを覚悟してたのに。 … less than 10 seconds ago

See what I mean?

But, patience, grasshopper. Judging Twitter by its homepage is book : cover stuff. What’s really happening is this (and hold on because the “genius” part is just around the bend):

When you sign up for Twitter, you must form a community or else you’ll end up talking to yourself. So, one-by-one you select people to “follow” while you gain “followers” (those whom you choose to follow often return the favor.) In the seven days since I began, I’ve chosen to follow 65 people, and 31 people are following me. Among those 31, I know only one person from my actual life: Thom. The most popular Tweeter is Leo Leporte who has over 65,000 followers.

(This marks the beginning of the genius part.)

A PhD Level Crash Course
If you choose to follow a herd of 16-year olds you’re likely to be fed a steady diet of OMGs and Britney references (not that there’s anything wrong with that). On the other hand, if you choose to follow some of the brightest minds in the marketing and technology industry, like those included on this list or this one you’ll be in the middle of the world’s coolest virtual coffee house, reading and often engaging with people you’d likely never encounter unless you’re on the new media A-List. Um, I’m not.

I’m currently following/being followed by and have had exchanges with: Guy Kawasaki, Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, Maki, and one helluva bassist, Jeff Schmidt.

Genius Point 1: regarding your need to stay abreast of new media and branding opportunities, building a Twitter community of experts can accelerate your understanding of the social media space with remarkable speed and efficiency.

Brands in the Conversation
As community is built, relationships are formed, and trust is established. In my seven days I’ve observed a remarkable amount of social intimacy and respect among my small group. And it’s in this context that brand recommendations are freely shared and trustingly accepted. So, imagine six months from now that I’ve got several hundred followers (which is not uncommon) and I start singing the praises of my Neorest toilet, telling my fellow Twitterers “it’s like having a Ferrari in my bathroom”. I would suggest that my endorsement of that product, made within a social context, among people who’ve grown to respect my opinions, is far superior to any other single impression in a traditional advertising medium.

I’ve observed this dynamic on many occasions with people Twitting:

“I’m heading to Amsterdam next week, where should I stay?” A hotel recommendation was offered and accepted within minutes.

“I need to replace my old Treo, what’s the best new smart phone for me to get?” Several suggestions and micro reviews posted within minutes

. . . and these scenarios are happening thousands of times a day on Twitter alone.

Genius Point 2: Want to hear what people are saying about your brand when they think no one else is listening? Do a Twitter search for your brand’s name and you’ll see. What if no one’s talking about your brand at all? Maybe you need to begin that dialogue.

Driving Traffic to Your Website
Forward thinking marketers are establishing their own branded Twitter accounts. Jet Blue, for example, announces limited offer airfares to its followers, Carnival Cruise offers sales and news, while the Dell Outlet offers checkout coupon codes. Your brand’s opportunity to engage in this medium is only limited by your imagination.

Genius Point 3
The front in the battle for consumers hearts and mind is constantly shifting, and you need to follow them to where they’re congregating. As the graph below shows, Twitter’s growth is remarkable, and as it succeeds, other micro-blogging sites will appear, offering the same kinds of opportunities for brands to participate in the social dialogue. Now would be a great time to begin exploring this opportunity with the goal of becoming, at a minimum, more fluent in this emerging medium.

(credit: twitterfacts)

In closing, I’m still awed by how completely wrong I was about Twitter. My ignorance of Twitter nearly prevented me from discovering a brand communications channel that is nothing short of ingenious. I encourage you to get a Twitter account for yourself and see if you agree with me.

As we continue to explore the future of branding in the social media space, I look forward to sharing my Facebook experiences and insights with you in our next “Get Social” post.

Addenda: Jeremiah Owyang just posted Social Media FAQ #3: How Do I Measure ROI? that offers an excellent overview of social media analytics. Make sure and read the Comments–Sam Lawrence’s links, in particular, are illuminating.

This recent BusinessWeek article also serves notice that social media is approaching critical mass.

And, of course: follow me, and I’ll follow you.

Posted: February 25th, 2008 under Get Social.
Comments: 9

Recent research calls into question click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called “Natural Born Clickers,” the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior. The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks.

Heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44, and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers spend four times more time online than non-clickers, and their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage.

Further, preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

“Natural Born Clickers” shows us that we can’t count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads.

“While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.”

Comment: We’re surprised by these numbers, but familiar with the phenomena. We’ve often been left scratching our heads in wonder as what we considered prime on-line display creative creative performed far below expectations.

Another variable that must be taken into consideration is environment. From a design/user experience perspective, not all sites which present display advertising are created equally. Cluttered and visually noisy sites are less likely to engage users to click any of the content presented–advertising or editorial–resulting in poor CTR perfomance.

Be sensitive to the design environments into which you’re investing your marketing and branding dollars.

Photo credit: tia_inspirativa

Posted: February 20th, 2008 under The Best of.
Comments: 1

What is a “Brand”? Some intangible abstraction? The ethereal composite of vision, sound, touch, and emotion? Brands are that, but they are more. Recent research in neurobiology suggests that ideas are more than vapor. They are tangible and have physical residence in our brains. And now, scientists (and you) are actually able to see what the physical structure of an idea is.

In layman’s terms, nerves are comprised of branch-like struc­tures called den­dri­tes. Each den­drite branches in­to twig-like pro­tru­sions called den­d­rit­ic spines–up to 10,000 of them. These spines are formed by your real-life experiences, so that if one is consistently exposed to similar experiences they literally grow and take shape within our brains.For example, from the moment you were first born, you had millions of micro experiences you called “mother”: her touch, her voice, her eyes, her skin, her warmth, her spirit. . . everything good, bad, and indifferent that you have ever experienced about her resulted in a unique dendritic structure in your brain that is the repository of the idea, Mother. When you hear the word “mother”, your brain goes to that dendrite to retrieve “her”. So it is with “love”: a dendrite composed of your joys, your pain, your dreams, your disappointments . . . and, scientists postulate, all other ideas.Including brands.

Exactly how dendrites learn and memorize is still not clearly understood, but great progress is being made. Even at the relatively primitive level of our current understanding, we can apply two basic, yet profound principles to branding and marketing.

Just as we burn files onto CDs, memories are burned into our neurons. But these basic units of memory, “memes”, must be constantly recycled so that the memories remain there. Brand building and retention requires two primary components:

1. Consistent presentation of a branded experience: frequency over time.

2. A consistent experience of the brand: continuity.

Inconsistency in either component will lead to either memory decay, or cognitive dissonance: people will simply forget about your brand, or become too confused about what it means, resulting in dendritic atrophy. Essentially, use the dendrites (and use them well) or lose them.

Of all the brands with whom we’ve worked, none has ever practiced these principles more artfully, intelligently, and consistently than Coke. It is safe to assume that a significant portion of the world’s humanity has a dendrite parked in its collective brain called “Coke” whose branches represent the color red, the contour of the bottle, the burn at the back of the throat, the logo wave, and the emotion of “happiness”– sensory experiences their branding efforts have consistently recyled through our synapses over the course of our lives. I encourage you to practice this same wisdom in a way that is true and authentic to your brand.

Finally, while I’ve been writing here about branding, there is a much larger story being told. It’s the story of the mechanics of our humanity, the awareness of which must be accompanied by responsibility. As marketers and branders, our work does, in fact, truly live in the brains of its recipients. Let’s make the most of this opportunity by growing healthy and positive dendrites in the form of great ideas, imagery, sound, and experiences that feed and enrich–leading to profit for both our clients and their consumers.

p.s. Everything is everything.

Photo composite (L-R) : 1. Dendrite 2. Dendrite close-up 3. An elm tree in winter 4. A street map of San Francisco, 5. Satellite photograph of the Mississippi Delta.

Posted: February 19th, 2008 under The Big Picture, Branding Theory.
Comments: 10

After 25 years of creating everything from songs to branding campaign assets and strategies (and everything in between), I’ve come to accept that dry spells are inevitable. At some point you’re going to find yourself staring at a blank page, terrified at the prospect that there’s no way you’re going to be able to fill it with something meaningful-something with the potential to produce powerful results for you, your company, or your client.

Here are seven ways to create breakthrough ideas. I’ve used every single one of them multiple times, and have lived to write this story.

1. Scare yourself

One of the best ways to loosen up creativity is to read The Brief, The Research, The Mandatories, the whatever the ” You’re Supposed to Do This” document is. Absorb it, own it, then throw it away.

Now the fun begins. Explore ideas that are appropriate to the goal, but which you believe the decision maker will never go for. What ideas are so absurd that after you’ve presented them, they’ll think you’ve been hitting the bottle, or the bong, or the bottle and the bong? Now you’re in unfamiliar territory, and that’s where fresh ideas live. Your uncertainty, your fear, is a good sign that you’re stretching into new space, and that’s what creativity is all about. This approach is also good for giving your ego a smack down.

Too often great ideas are abandoned because we’re worried about what people will think of us. Listen, our work shouldn’t be about keeping our egos in their happy place, it’s about results, about positive outcomes for others-focus on that, and tell your ego to go play in the street.

Now that you’ve scared yourself, proceed to scare the decision maker. I honestly believe if we don’t make our clients at least slightly uncomfortable when seeing concepts for the first time, we’ve failed. Familiarity breeds comfort, and if our clients are too comfortable, their target audience will be too. Comfortable ideas rarely have breakthrough potential, and that’s unacceptable.

2. Wet your pants

If an idea can’t make you laugh or cry, or whatever your target emotion is, it probably won’t make others either. When you’re working on an idea, don’t try to sell yourself with, “People will think this is ______ (fill in the blank with whatever emotion.)”

If, after reading/hearing/seeing your concept, you haven’t wet your pants laughing, or don’t have tears rolling down your cheeks or, aren’t feeling inspired to go and climb the nearest mountain, your audience won’t either. You simply must require of yourself that your work produce an emotional effect on you. You are your own Guinea Pig, and you must trust that if your idea truly resonates with you, it will with others.

So, pick an emotion, focus on it, truly feel it, then begin assembling an idea that reproduces the authentic experience of that emotion.

3. Lock the doors and board the windows

This is one of our very favorite techniques for achieving breakthrough ideas: cut off your usual routes of escape. As creative thinkers we return too often to familiar paths. Instead, get off that familiar and safe path-take a machete and start hacking a new one in the jungle.

Here’s the way we frame it when we begin ideating: our competitors are reaching our target by walking through their front door. Let’s assume the front door is locked, and so is the back door, and all the windows have been boarded. Now what are we going to do?

Here’s a concrete example: We had a client who wanted to introduce a new large capacity washing machine, and asked us to create a print campaign to accomplish this. Well, for a myriad of reasons we felt this wasn’t the best approach, so to develop alternate approaches we imagined, “Traditional advertising media simply don’t exist-they haven’t been invented yet. Now how do we roll out this product introduction?”

The “front door” is always available, and your competition is in queue at the doorbell. Instead, go down the chimney, tunnel into the basement, cut a hole in the roof: create the element of surprise.

4. Cut off your thumb

Hold up your hand. Go ahead. Hold it up. See all those fingers? That’s what your typical brandscape looks like. Regardless of the product or industry, nearly everyone is saying the same thing-they’re clustered together like a pack of sheep. That’s why most automotive spots look and sound the same, why every ad for sunglasses has the same pouty profile of a model . . . cover the logo on most creative assets and then try to identify the brand. . . . see what I mean?

Now do this. Hold up your right hand and fold in your thumb. Now hold up your left hand, thumb only. That’s the brandcape you want to create-one with space between your brand and the competition. Don’t be a sheep. Be a goat. Create works with the goal of them being so unique a logo isn’t even required.

5. Procrastinate

A healthy dose of terror can be a good motivator. Occasionally I like to sit on ideas like they’re eggs, and only let them hatch just before the deadline. It’s surprising how much thinking goes on while we’re “doing nothing”.
This approach is definitely not for amateurs though. You need to have mad skills that can take a idea and make it look great quickly. Proceed with caution-late and bad is not a good combination.

6. Steal

Well, not really “stealing”. Let’s call it “paying homage.” I had a long career in music-one of the most expansive opportunities for creative expression humans can have, and, trust me, there’s little new under the sun. I feel confident you can apply this maxim to all other spheres of human activity as well . In the blues (the foundation for most popular music) musicians basically use three-chord progressions to produce millions of songs. To create lateral ideas, we’d take this basic structure, then begin “riffing” on it, playing with it, twisting it until we’d created our personal interpretation.

So, find an idea someone else has done, then begin riffing on it. But don’t just pick any old idea, pick the very best ones while remembering this: “Good writers emulate, great writers steal.” (I stole this quote from Hemingway-he stole it from TS Elliot, who stole it from Picasso.)

7. Peanut Butter and Sardines

Mashing up ideas is a great way to break through inertia. Unusual combinations of unlikely elements can often produce creative sparks. We once wrote a song that combined a hip-hop beat with a banjo, and a countrified rap. It was an object lesson in most of the suggestions from above: we were afraid to present it, it made us howl with laughter every time we played it, we refused to do something routine, and we waited until the 12th hour to record it. It ended up winning more awards than we could shake a stick at, and was a commercial people actually called into radio stations and requested.

So, throw a bunch of unlikely elements onto the table and begin making your own mash-up. Most often, the ugly freak you produce initially won’t be the final idea, but it can loosen you up to to get to the real idea in a novel way.

Good luck!

Posted: February 15th, 2008 under Brand Inspiration, The Best of.
Comments: 3

Certain brands thrill me–instilling the kind of rabid devotion to products or service that we aim to create among our clients’ consumers. So in the interest of understanding what makes a brand freak tick, here’s a self-dissection of one of my favorite hotel brands in the world, Andre Balazs’ Mercer Hotel in New York City.

Designed to Death

I’ve written before my belief that “beauty is a killer app”, and while your mileage may vary, for my taste, Christian Liagre’s modern, soulful minimalism captures the essence of SOHO chic in a way that simply makes my freak flag flap. The aesthetic is consistently applied throughout the property with hundreds of thoughtful, well-designed details that you just know someone sweated. Love that. Love the density of experience it creates. Love that someone wanted to thrill someone like me with their own rabid devotion to their brand.
Lesson: Don’t hire people who like your brand to work on it. Hire people who are passionate, bordering on obsessive, about your brand–their enthusiasm will translate into deeper brand experiences for your consumers.

Unexpected

A couple of examples:

My wife and I were celebrating an anniversary, and upon entering our (upgraded) room found a basket containing a bottle of Champaigne and fresh fruit, accompanied by a hand written note from the aptly named Philip Truelove, the hotel’s General Manager.

In early January I received a beautifully designed, letter pressed, card on 150 lb. stock wishing me well for 2008. Marketers can often get mired in the quantitative measure of impressions. This unexpected, and thoughtful gesture spoke to the depth of an impression, and the fact that this card is still in my briefcase is testament to the effectiveness of their tactic. Lesson: Well executed surprises delight. They also lead to deep bonds with brands.

Culture

Russell Crowe might disagree, but I’ve never received anything less than superior service at the Mercer, and in terms of brand perception, this is a huge differentiator re: their competition. When ordering breakfast, service is so fast you might think they already knew your order, and were cooking it to order outside your door two minutes before knocking. Fast. Efficient.

Ditto the concierge, bellmen, and building maintenance. The Mercer has a high performance culture that respects my needs–understanding that their business clientele are stressed enough in the rush-of-the-morning before heading out to slay dragons, and don’t need the additional frustration of waiting 45 minutes for a coffee and bagel. Lesson: Hire people who can manifest your brand’s experiential ideals, and then deliver them to your clientele consistently.

Exclusive

The first time I arrived at the hotel, the driver passed it three times before stopping. There was no sign announcing the name. That’s like having a Coke bottle without a logo! (hmmmm . . .) It created for me, a certain cache’ that suggested if you didn’t know how to find it you probably shouldn’t stay there; that staying at the Mercer was more like crashing at your friend’s fabulous loft than a commercial transaction (though your AMEX will quickly dispel that illusion) . It’s private, more personal, Secret Agent Branding™ that holds an allure for me in the mass-marketed, over-promoted, everybody-knows-our-name sphere of travel marketing. Lesson: Whispering is seductive.

There are a hundred other brand molecules that inform the gestalt of this wonderful place, but this will have to do for now. Honestly, a bit more research is in order.

The Mercer Hotel: http://www.mercerhotel.com/

Posted: February 13th, 2008 under Brand Freakology.
Comments: none

With the goal of simplifying life’s quandaries, I’ve had a long-held belief that in order to understand the large, examine the small–that the universe is generally constructed and behaves as atoms do–that one can learn the fundamental skills necessary to swim the English Channel in a lap pool. So it is with understanding the nature and influence of brands: examine the nature of your personal brand, and the essence of corporate brand psychology, positioning, tonality, and the influence of complementary brands becomes more apparent.

“But I don’t have a brand!”

Au contraire, we all do, and to prove it I invite you to complete a profile on a social networking site like, say, Facebook. Observe yourself as you answer each individual field: Political Views, Religious Views, Interests, Activities, Favorite Music . . . to see just how your brand is constructed, and the energy you’re likely to devote to insuring that You™ is perceived by Me™ accurately, flatteringly, and with a level of complexity and nuance that is likely to leave you slightly anxious and fatigued in the process–at least until you reach the point when (after more revisions than you’ll ever admit) you finally exhale and say, “Yes, that’s Me™.”

So what can you as a branding professional take from this? Try this: create a profile page for your company’s brand, answering the questions as though your brand were a person. What music would your brand listen to? What television show would she watch? Her favorite quote? Her favorite activities? Then find a picture of her. Share this profile with your colleagues, and use it as a point of reference for discussions related to how your brand is constructed and perceived by people vs. how you want it to be perceived. The ensuing discussions will likely be far less abstract and jargon laden than usual, and more human, which, finally, is what the most effective brands are: just like Us™.

Posted: February 11th, 2008 under Branding Theory.
Comments: none