speaking in clicks

[March 12, 2011]

In my previous post, I talked about the interplay between content and context as it pertains to content distribution theory. I concluded that an anchoring Web site was essential—if content was to retain its brand identity in a variety of contrasting environments.

Yet, the more I think about the future of digital content development and distribution, the more I realize the definition of “Web site” must also evolve. As programmers continue to discover new possibilities, I believe it’s time we re-imagine the digital experience from the ground up.

Now, given the increased flexibility and mutability to come with the full rollout of HTML5 in 2014, you might think I’m calling for a flashier, richer integration of social networking, entertainment-engagement strategy and branded merchandising on the Amazon.com up-sell model.

But rather than envision a grand, neo-Wagnerian media synthesis, I think the best thing emerging technologies might do is make the Web tinier.

Discrete. Focused. Fast.
My train of thought begins with a simple observation about social space. While brands value social space for its potential to generate tight-knit communities of brand advocates, there’s another factor contributing to its impact: Each unit of input into social space is discrete, focused.

It’s a photo of your dog in a Hallowe’en costume; it’s 140 characters of irony; it’s your current location piped in from your phone, or your latest remix of Machu Pichu dubbed into scenes from The Last Airbender.

It is, in other words, one thing at a time: a single, focused point of engagement.

With that in mind, imagine a home page consisting only of a branded menu. To be clear, this menu would appear in a browser very different from any available now. My imaginary, “Tiny Web” browser would function more like a light box or, in a general way, like an old-fashioned, carousel slide projector.

If the menu topic was diabetes, you might select a diagnosis link and call up a limited number of separate content modules devoted to diabetes diagnosis. For example:

• an expert video
• an interactive risk assessor
• a search tool for specialists in your area

The menu would fade out to a holding area and the modules you chose would appear on your monitor, side by side. You’d view each one at a time, and the focus of the display would shift as you moved from one to the other. Having experienced these modules, you could re-engage the menu and move on.

Metaportals
Now imagine a similar makeover of BestBuy.com. Of course, BestBuy already offers rudimentary content sorting and selection. You can, for example, visit a camera page or a computer page. But you can only call up one at a time.

In this new digital environment, you could place a camera module and a computer module side by side. Plus, each module could be split into sub-modules—like a camera comparison chart, an expert video from Photographytv.tv, or a direct feed from several manufacturer’s Facebook pages. Get bored with cameras, and you could switch focus to computers or any other BestBuy module without losing your camera selections.

Obviously, a similar vision must have inspired tabbed browsing. But as Web technology becomes faster, more agile and more touchable, tabbed browsers—along with Safari’s Top Sites view, or link-sorting tools like pearltrees.com—start to feel like stopgaps. So what would a reformatted Web model look like, feel like?

An out-of-screen experience.
For starters, it’s time we stopped thinking in screens. The screen, after all, dates back at least as far as the centuries-old shadow-puppet scrims of Indonesia, China, Thailand or Malaysia. It’s a display mode for unfolding linear narratives. As such, our screen-based approach clashes with the inherently non-linear, dynamic, multidimensional nature of digital space.

By contrast, a screen-free, Tiny Web experience would enable users to live in the moment. No longer boxed in by bulky Web pages, they would find it easier to absorb content in any medium. Naturally, this out-of-screen experience makes even more sense for smartphone access.

Sites unseen.
Now imagine an utterly site-free environment. Users would call up stacks of content blocks from any number of sources and collect them within a brand-neutral digital frame. By cross-linking these stacks, people could create a customized network, a tiny web to serve their ever-changing interests.

Should the idea of “stateless” content conflict with your concept of branded communication, keep in mind the impact a carefully conceived menu could have. Of course, as a home base for branded imagery, voice, culture and environment, it would need to make a much more direct emotional connection than many a conventional home page today.

It would be the end of mechanical, logo + tagline + headline structure. As we’d soon realize, the ability of each menu page to brand itself in an emotionally compelling way would determine the level of audience engagement in our branded content.

The freedom to reframe.
Yet the promise of Tiny Web is really about freedom and choice, two things consumers constantly crave and rarely get from brands. By allowing users to see only the content they want—whether one lone text block or a baroque garden of different media formats—you’d give them the peace of mind they need to hear your message at their own pace, retain it and act on it.

And all because, at last, they had the freedom to receive your message in the context of a frame of reference they had chosen for themselves.

[March 6, 2011] 

For a few years now, a theory of distributed content has made the rounds of digital marketing and PR firms. Typically, the discussion revolves around one of two scenarios: Doomsday, as in “The End of the Website” or Millennial, a vision of a hyper, mega, enriched website based on a distributed content model.

Either way, the idea involves treating digital content like a surreal mash-up of a cinderblock and a fashion accessory. One moment a chunk of text, a video, a still image or interactive-widgety-thing is a structural module, unfolding the brand narrative. The next, these same digital nuggets are mere baubles, added value to create the illusion that so-and-so’s home page really delivers.

Like so much confetti, marketing theorists are eager to toss content this way and that, shuffling it back and forth, dissociated from its original context. In fact, what this poorly conceived free-exchange of digital content ultimately points to is the USA TODAY-ization of digital space:

• Here’s an item!
• And here’s another!
• Watch this!
• Share that!
• “Like” them all!

Much as I admire such forward-thinking zeal, it’s clear no brand can ever hope to influence what consumers will share. Marketers who believe they can make a video “go viral” are only a quarter-inch away from believing they can dial-up sunny weather for Memorial day. Get it through your head: The mere reposting of existing content adds absolutely nothing to its potential appeal.

Popularity is subjective. Deal with it.
That’s because the sharing and tagging habits of our emerging cyber species are subject only to subjective forces. Clicks can’t be bought, sold, or coerced; they can only be earned. And if there’s one thing the digital revolution hasn’t changed, it’s that audience interest is fickle, elusive and beyond calculation.

Now, to be clear, I’m not saying the distribution mavens are wrong. I agree: a better distribution strategy is a vital part of the future. It’s just that the majority of chatter on this topic suffers from a confusion of cause and effect. The brands who snag the golden fleece of digital marketing will not be the ones with the biggest tree-graphs.

They will be the brands who create a defining context around their content—a meaningful array of culturally, intellectually and emotionally compelling symbols that help consumers map branded content to relevant experiences in their own lives.

No frame of reference? No meaning.
It’s context, after all, that creates empathy, shock, surprise, elation or any of 1000 other adrenaline-inducing sensations that make content memorable. From that perspective it’s clear that, far from ringing the death knell for our Web sites, we should be inventing ways to strengthen them. As home environments for our branded content, we must make our Web sites more vital, more impactful and as rich in meaning as possible.

Only by endowing our content with a distinct, inimitable voice, a voice growing organically from such a home environment, will our content be recognizably ours when it pops up here and there across a distributive network.

Wolf in new media clothing.
Otherwise, branding, as such, will disappear. Any content we distribute will be subsumed into whatever environment it lands in. While this may appeal to the “death to copyright” crowd, anyone with an ounce of brains knows better. Content with no obvious branded source is ripe for intellectual property theft. And make no mistake, the repackaging of stolen content is manipulative thuggery, perpetrated by a cynical lot, eager to prey on our better natures.

Sure, copyright laws need to be revised and updated. But the fundamental principal behind them need no revision: Content created in any medium is the result of skilled work with a defined value. If you take my music, my novel, my painting, my stage play, screenplay, choreography, my… whatever…and repackage it without compensation and my express permission, don’t you dare pose as an advocate for “free access.” You’re no different from the criminals who stole my wife’s jewelry 15 years ago. In fact, you’re worse.

At least those thugs didn’t leave me a haughty TED video about the ways my “possessiveness” was choking their creativity. And by the way, I’m still waiting for my share of Larry Lessig’s residuals for his public lectures. What? He owns them…? So old media.

To the extent that content distribution helps brands spin their narratives to a wider audience, it’s a good thing. To the extent that it erases brand identity, denies intellectual property or otherwise rewrites the history of ideas, it’s destructive.

All the more reason to give every bit of content you post the deepest possible roots in a branded home environment. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself enslaved to a cartel of media hypocrites—whose defining mantra reads “Theft is Freedom^®.”

[February 27, 2011]

Time was, the traditional definition of branding seemed irrefutable: A consistent, reliable presentation, conveying a consistent message about core values. It was a message delivered in a predictable, measured cadence. “You expect more from American [Oil Company], and you get it,” ran a typical tagline from those times. Only a few years ago, it still felt like a standard.

But lately, my opinion’s been shifting, now that the concepts of consistency and of identity themselves have become more fluid. Sure, there are still plenty of people who will answer the question “Who are you?” with their occupation, as if they drew their identity solely from their careers. But it’s a mechanical answer, held over from a time when the expression “permanent job” could be uttered without quite so much irony. In the emerging world order, people must adapt and re-adapt to an ever-changing menu of survival strategies.

You are what you watch.
And that’s just one way of many our identities fluctuate. We don’t stay married, we leave our hometowns, we get a “makeover,” or at least daydream about it, as we jump from one technology fad to another. And all the while, the entertainment industry keeps tempting us to try out a new state of being. One minute we identify with an alien race of blue giants, the next with a gaggle of misfit toys, next with sinister cadre of dream-invaders and next with a troop of sulky vampires trapped in an eternity of bad hair days.

In fact, when you add up the number of different personas Americans willingly emulate, whether embedded in film, pop-music, grass-roots political movements or their on-again-off-again embrace of religion, you might begin to wonder if we’re witnessing an epidemic of multiple personality disorder.

In light of this propensity for chameleonic identity-shifting, I have to wonder whether the static brand image is now as anachronistic as the word “anachronistic” itself. Maybe it’s time we learned a lesson from Eddie Murphy.

Empathy and observation.
Because, come to think of it, that’s when my branding belief-system started to quake—one Saturday afternoon, while watching Coming to America on DVD. No, I’m not talking about the creaky plot, the fairy tale evocation of post-colonial Africa, or the tired satire of American business ethics. I’m talking about the actor’s whole-hearted embrace of characterization. Murphy’s portrayals of several distinct characters grow from a careful observation of human nature.

Of course, those observations are trotted out for laughs in a highly stylized way. But rooted as they are in empathy—an uncanny ability to see himself in other people—Murphy’s personas are light-years away from the stiff, unyielding brand-characters presented by long-standing companies.

A Plasticine ethos from the Pleistocene era.
Take American Express, for example. In 2011, I have a hard time believing that the Centurion emblazoned on its products has any resonance for American consumers. At best it’s quietly ignored—except by a small minority of military historians, classicists and people with a rare form of factoid obsession who blog about digital marketing.

From that vantage point, it’s easy to see how limiting the mannequin gaze of traditional branding can be. In an era dominated by instantaneous communication, many brands take longer to open their mouths than most people have time to listen.

Embracing the flux.
How much better, perhaps, to offer a brand persona as variable and responsive to its immediate environment as is a brilliant character actor on a film set—or as people are in real life. After all, as you adopt different roles throughout the day, you never doubt you’re the same person. It doesn’t matter whether you’re slaving at work, taking your niece to see Never Say Never, or “Liking” the retweet of a Facebook comment on your BFF’s Flickr post. You never forget who you are.

My question is, why should a brand message that aspires to move you be any different? Why shouldn’t it be as variable, as adaptable as you are and based, ultimately, on empathy, the outgrowth of thoughtful observation?

Allowing a brand to take on a more fluid, variable persona, especially across different media or audience segments, need not alienate consumers. Quite the opposite. By embracing the flux, a brand will be more human, more believable and far less likely to get voted off the island—by the growing number of consumers who mutate with every tap of their touch screens.

[February 19, 2011] 

What’s a copywriter’s job?

Take a casual poll of your office mates and “to write,” is the likely statistical winner. Or if you’re blessed with a colleague whose wonkometer is in overdrive: “To motivate consumers to take the desired action, with strong, research-tested language.”

That’s strong, as in “Act Now” or “Our office products are the fastest around. Bar None!”

Only slightly less deluded are those who believe a copywriter’s job is mostly wordplay. At times, the lust for a snappy, innuendo-laden one-liner leads to incurable creative paralysis. At least on the part of those with the final say.

The cure for paralysis? As I’ll explain later, I heartily recommend a leisurely ride in an elevator.

Meanwhile, let’s contemplate the depth of this delusion. Because even if you agree that the goal of copywriting is to produce “great lines,” you’re still bound by a simple truth: There are no great lines without a great thought process. That pithy summation of your brand value can only arise from a true coherent strategy—a train of thought encompassing the value you deliver to your audience. Headlines with ‘tude are only a means to an end. Great copy arises from great structures.

Writer? Master builder.
On the large and small scale, a copywriter’s job is to create such structures: smooth-running channels that allow a branded message to flow effortlessly into a consumer’s consciousness. Sure, you can doll up your channel with glamor, sex, data, savings or exclusive rewards. You can pimp it out for dramatic effect, for a thoughtful appeal, a tug at the heart, or a tickle of irony.

But it’s a structure, nevertheless. Nine times out of ten, if someone’s “not crazy about” the copy, it’s not because of grammar or style. Either the train of thought is missing or, excuse me, derailed. Trouble is, writing without a coherent strategy is more akin to laying down carpet than rousing bored consumers to action.

It’s also the very mistake that wrecked the direct marketing industry as, year-by-year, the original impetus to move an audience with a compelling story degenerated into a ritualized fan dance above a flaming call to action.

“Isn’t there a better way?” asked the tried-and-true problem summation from two generations ago.

Today, the answer’s still affirmative, though not quite as succinct as it was in the veg-o-matic era. In this case, the better way is an interrelated series of process steps that grow from a single premise: Structure first. If your agency’s creative process begins with setting the due date for “delivering the comps,” this may take some getting used to. But the rewards will show themselves immediately, in a drastic reduction in nitpicking and a downturn in the scornful rejection of an honest day’s work.

Start with a blueprint.
What everyone involved in preparing a creative brief needs to understand is that words, on their own, say absolutely nothing. If you need proof, take the elevator test. Ride the elevators of a large American office tower, preferably one housing several unrelated businesses.

In the course of a day, you’ll hear countless sentences in fluent, contemporary English—and have no idea what your fellow travelers are talking about. With no knowledge of the conversation’s backstory, you’ll catch only a few strands of comprehension:

“…and that was Jim’s whole thing, that we have to be more,
like [facial expression] with the legal department…”

“Yeah, except Sally’s really the one who has to say, ‘Hey’…you know?”

“So true.”

Context, anyone? Meaning? Yet we frequently send writers off to their iPads without the basic materials they need to build a communication channel: an appreciation of the larger context the brand inhabits and the meaning the brand holds for consumers. That makes as much sense as asking them to pave a sidewalk with lime Jell-O. No surprise the squishy mess fails to support the global brand strategy, despite desperate hours poring over reams of pointless revisions.

Why are such revisions pointless? Without a solid strategic foundation, it doesn’t matter how many paragraphs you convert to bullets, how many lines of “approved copy” you insert, or how often you misquote Mies van der Rohe. Your copy will still read like a conversation overheard in an elevator going nowhere.

[February 14, 2011]

As truly widespread access to some form of digital interface reaches its second decade in the United States, it’s safe to assume most children’s first experience with a digital medium is either passive entertainment or active gaming. As people born in 1990 and later become adults, it won’t be long before, as a cultural artifact, a computer screen will be indelibly linked to vivid, engaging fun.

For now, an older generation is still more liable to associate a computer screen with traditional media. Hence the expression “e-book,” which reminds me of analogous expressions from the last century, including “horseless carriage” in reference to the automobile.

But just as the time came when we no longer framed cars in terms of older modes of transportation, before long we’re sure to drop either “e” or “book” from whatever we call our reading material. At that point, no one will remember a time when we framed our at-screen experience in terms of books or any other non-electronic medium. At-screen experience will be framed solely on its own terms.

Instead of marveling at a book they can read without flipping pages, people will balk at the idea of a Web presence that doesn’t fulfill expectations they formed as a child: That anything encountered in digital space should be an entertaining experience. An experience, moreover, that one navigates and controls with the intuitive logic of a digital game.

Now, I’m not talking about the Second Life scenarios currently adopted by a handful of corporate conference centers. While that too-literal approach will surely find a following, the solution I seek lies elsewhere.

It’s where your audience lives.
It lies in a deep dive into the inner world of the game-raised, entertainment-fed species that makes up an ever-larger share of your audience. You’ll recognize that world as the home of the third or perhaps the fourth generation brought up to believe learning is fun—without the qualifying message that the fun results from the hard work involved.

It’s also a world inhabited by people adapted to the associative logic of the game, the liberating feeling that anything is possible—including infinite do-overs and limitless power-ups. And cynicism aside, this mindset’s most recognizable trait is that it enters digital space to do stuff.

People with this mindset want a digital experience with a distinct goal, whether it’s destroying the domiciles of egg-sucking pigs or busting up an evil cartel in a galaxy-spanning, post-human corporatocracy. A gamer mindset wants “powers,” abilities hard-won or innate, that make simply navigating the inner world of a game an adventure in its own right. But above all, the inner world of gamers is all and only about themselves.

Now compare this dopamine-drenched state to the experience delivered by your garden variety Web page, whose only mode of engagement is the phrase “Click here,” and its mutant offspring “Learn More” “Get the Facts,” “Find out…”

Even if your client has decided to spend the big bucks and ordered-up an interactive BMI calculator (wait for it to load) or a downloadable recipe widget—you’ll have to forgive me if I question the aptness of such a Web page for this emerging audience.

For it’s an audience, you must realize, with an average of 2–3 IM windows, a Newgrounds game, a Skype transmission and PopUrls vying for attention. Did 35 of your customer’s Facebook friends comment on a retweet of a comment on a bit.ly from @aplusk? You might not get that PDF downloaded after all. Unless, of course, you have something more seductive to offer.

What’s real is virtual. What’s virtual, real.
It’s time, that is, to stop whining about attention spans and stop devising academic theories of how people read Web pages. What’s needed is a way to present digital content that’s actually in line with the way an ever-larger swath of your audience is conditioned to absorb it. That is, through narrative continuity, an immersive design environment and the ability to interact in real time to shape onscreen events.

Not that it’s easy. For one thing, this new digital order will mean the death of Design School’s most treasured object: The box. I know, it’s hard to let go of old friends. It’s the same tug of the heart I felt the day I gave up my blanky.

But the rewards are enormous—in this case, a fully mature design environment for digital space. Integrated with social space, combining real-world responsiveness with the freedom of the infinite do-over, liberated from the tyranny of the wireframe and incorporating seamless transition to video feeds, it’s an environment destined to put the “home” back into “home page” precisely because it feels like a welcoming space.

Welcoming, I hasten to point out, to the people you’ll need to reach in the next nine decades.

[February 6, 2011] 

When a category-changing product appears on the market, it’s only natural to expect its marketing materials to echo the excitement it creates. In a previous post, I discussed this issue in terms of the Apple iPad, whose messaging strategy continues to be a thoughtless mishmash of narcissism and stale leftovers from the ’90s. In the case of the Nissan Leaf, however, innovative product technology finds an agreeable parallel in a Web presence utterly idiomatic to the rapidly-evolving language of digital space.

Brimming with life from the moment it zooms into view, the site greets you with a genial dynamism, showing the car in a revolving 360° sweep, before settling down into a resting state that rewards interaction with reaction. Click through “Charging,” for example, and see the stylized fireworks, as site elements slam and jam into place, then stand ready for your next move. “Stand,” that is, in the same sense that a Taekwando master stands ready to counter your best shot.

Response time is fast, even with home DSL service and makes exploring the site feel like play. And while I usually recommend against sound effects, the vibraphone-like tones that ring out quietly from time to time make their own kind of understated logic.

Tempting…
Now, having just given up my last car for all kinds of reasons—not the least being I live in Manhattan—I’m not even in the market for a motor vehicle of any kind. And yet, the spirit the site exudes is so infectious, I’m already cobbling together an excuse to buy a Leaf for my non-existent garage. Crackling with energy, the over-arching message couldn’t be clearer.

The Leaf’s brand promise is a car with power, responsiveness and good-natured fun—that by the way, is socially responsible. And it conveys that message without the hollow pretensions so commonly foisted on a new product launch by members of the Marketing Anxiety Corps. In the absence of on-the-nose headline signage (“Looking for an Alternative Energy Car that Really Zooms? Look No Further!”), the site itself is a perfect metaphor for that brand promise.

Fluent in Digitalese.
Dig deeper in the site and that message never flags. On the small scale, there’s the side-scrolling main nav that orients itself to your mouse. At a larger level, there’s the colorful array of flash animation the site uses to elucidate even the nerdiest details:

• The New Exhaust
• The New Vroom
• The New Torque

…all of which deftly branch off from the flash-intro headline “Say hello to the new car.”

Yet for all that this site conveys, the interface is as intuitive as any I’ve seen. And from the singularly fussy POV of a copywriter, the obligatory Facebook connection blessedly avoids saying “Follow us on Facebook,” at least until you hit the footer.

How does it get away with that? By being so fluent in every other in-the-moment digital trend, you just know. Digital native or not, you know there’s a Facebook connection front and center on the home page. If it takes you more than 10 seconds to find it, you’re probably still driving a 1969 emerald-green Oldsmobile.

Can’t get a charge out of it.
In contrast, the home page opportunity for Chevy Volt was clearly missed.

“2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year” says the self-congratulatory subhead lying just under “It’s More Car Than Electric.” And less electric, I gather from this site, than a blind date with a three-toed sloth.

“The future is here and America is back in the game,” reads the next big, eye-catching phrase. So here we are, neck and neck with “the fold” and the only things on this Web site’s mind are Motor Trend magazine and America.

While the Nissan Leaf site was about me and what I could get from an innovative marvel, Chevy Volt’s Web presence doesn’t even seem to be about the Chevy Volt. In its desperate grab for external validation, this messaging strategy leaves me stranded with the bitter taste of Nyah-nyah-told-ya-so defensiveness.

Once the proclaiming is done, you can find a more or less attractive array of manually operated slides. Stripped of its creaky marketing envelope, the Volt looks as if, maybe, it might offer a serious alternative to the combustion engine status quo. Trouble is, by the time I reach that conclusion, I’m more than halfway down the home page, and more than three-quarters of the way to my Nissan dealer.

[January 29, 2011]

Selling is hard work, even if some people make it look like breathing out and breathing in. Beneath that polished surface, a sales rep toils, selling you solutions to problems you never knew you had. Including, that is, your weakness for flattery. We all think we’re above it, yet most of us are easy prey. Far more subtle than praise, however, an intimate, conspiratorial sense of belonging can have a hypnotic effect.

“We know better, we the worldly wise,” goes the subtext. From there on, plenty of people willingly abandon long-cherished beliefs just to retain membership in this exclusive club. That’s where the secret of sales lies: in a knack for forging an intimate bond. We’ve all seen it in action, having experienced seduction in many different contexts. Its impact grows from a single seed: a concise answer to our “snake brain’s” ceaseless question:

What’s in it for me?

…wrapped in an envelope of inclusion with The Beautiful, the Potent and the Savvy.

“Megan Fox couldn’t pull that off, but on you? Fabulous. And it’s so affordable…”

So goes the button-pushing ritual which, when led by someone of sufficient charisma, can erase the last shred of indecision and motivate us to buy, donate, vote for—and so on into the night.

If you’re with me so far, maybe you’re as perplexed as I am by the limitless ocean of really awful Web sites. Where, for example is the seductive added value at HolidayInn.com?

“We’ve made big changes,” reads the start of a welcoming message spread out over four jerky slides.

When form follows dysfunction…
Excuse me, but that’s like saying, “Wanna go out? I’m not as obnoxious or dirty as I used to be.” Granted, this is a functional site, built to capture reservations, but that hardly matters. Contrary to popular belief, “functional” is not a synonym for “ugly.”

In fact, a half-hearted Google search instantly produces a company specializing in Web design for the travel industry. And while this is hardly the last word on the subject, ease of access to a gigantic community of creative insight makes the unbelievably hideous HolidayInn.com absolutely inexcusable.

In a similar way, the people at Utz snacks host a Web presence that’s…well, maybe a bit too crunchy. Ironically, the producers of some of the most seductive junk food on the planet have served up a singularly unappetizing experience. Seriously, with a sales pitch like that, you couldn’t sell sausages to a schnauzer.

“We have snacks” the site tells us with a blank stare, “and you can buy some now. We use the freshest ingredients.” Right. I suppose Brand X uses wood shavings from the local prison. And what could be more tempting than a group photo of the executive team? Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fine company, doing an honest business, populated by hard working, dedicated employees. But Dude, you need a makeover.

…you risk more than money, by design.
Now, I’m no one to talk. I’m pretty sure my annual expenditure on fashion accessories is less than $0.47 a year. And yet, even I wouldn’t turn up at a sales meeting in the suit I wore to my high school graduation. And that’s the point. I’m not suggesting the folks at Holiday Inn, Utz or TGI Friday’s spend millions on Web development. They just need to get back in the DeLorean and revisit the 21st century.

It’s not about money at all, really—rather a shift in perception. Today, a brand can no more present itself online with a ratty assortment of archaic design elements than a U.S. President can sell health care reform without a coherent positioning statement.

Or rather, the brand that accomplished such a feat would simply demonstrate a fundamental principal of successful sales: Making your customers feel smart, respected, beautiful and rich in every way that “really matters.” Deliver that gift and you’ve given your customers the one added value they prize most—a renewed pride in their cherished aspirations.

Should the throng of Authenticity advocates wish to cast doubt on that thesis, I would only ask what they intend by commissioning influential bloggers to pitch their wares—and where they think the source of that influence lies. Facts? Honesty? Integrity? You must be joking.

It’s all and only about that winning personality, whether it wraps itself in a horse blanket of folksy directness or shimmies itself into the most transparent form of flattery of all: An intimate grasp of a customer’s unspoken desires.

[January 14, 2011]

Even though everyone’s talking about the recent sea change in advertising,  two delusions about the field persist. That’s because they still satisfy deep-seated desires. One, to see advertising as a quantifiable science, the other, to see it as an art form.

Press a follower of that advertising-as-science creed and you’ll find the definition of “quantifiable results” is remarkably fluid. If their monetary goal can’t be met, there’s a drawerful of ready-made substitutes: awareness, word of mouth, conversation density…and so on into the wee hours of the morning.

Now, given the global economic outlook, it’s easy to understand why brands demand a Day of Reckoning for every campaign. Trouble is, audience response is much easier to analyze than predict.

That leads a large contingent of marketing professionals to insist on a narrow, rules-based, approach derived from “scientifically-tested techniques.” And yet, after years of using the same scientific methodology, you can still hear Direct Marketing experts salivate over conversion rates in the 2–5% range.

Lately, many results-seekers have shifted their quest to the pages of social networking sites. The assumption is, any incursion into the realm of technoconnection will instantly validate their product, service, identity, authenticity, etc., etc.

“Whew,” says the middle manager, fearing replacement by a digital native, “We’re part of The Conversation now.”

This is a result?
Well, it’s better than admitting you don’t know what to say to your audience. That’s the flaw with the ROI delusion: It confuses motivating communication with the execution of programs, technologies and strategies.

Great, you texted every phone in America, added an ugly LIKE button to your Facebook hub, started your CEO on a Twitter rampage, stuffed mailboxes, plastered billboards, ran a TV spot featuring yesterday’s sitcom stars and blew your budget on a giant flat screen POP display.

But did you manage to say something useful, valuable and emotionally satisfying?

Which brings me to the second persistent delusion: That advertising is an art form. To get to the heart of this delusion, you have to understand the difference between art and craft—a thorny topic in its own right. As I see it, art grows out of inner necessity, the pressure a creative imagination feels to make a statement about the human condition for its own sake.

A craft, no matter how “artful,” exists to solve a problem. The works of your favorite artist don’t do anything except, presumably, inspire you. That lovely ceramic sugar bowl you bought at a crafts fair last summer? It holds sugar. And yet, it gives you a smile every time you use it.

Ambiguous, no? That’s where the confusion lies. Because no matter how clever, ingenious, inventive or even moving an ad campaign can be—it only exists to get something done. It’s a craft.

Embracing ambiguity.
As a craft, advertising is ambiguous. You can’t define its impact any more than you can define why that sugar bowl makes you smile, or quantify the compliments it gets from your friends. Yes, like any craft object, the sugar bowl is functional—but it adds value to your life in ways impossible to measure. What metric can predict what other household object will evoke the same emotion, have the same perceived value?

Can’t be done. Functionality, craftsmanship and a modest amount of data analysis have simply come together. Would you recommend the crafts fair you attended? Would you recommend the potter? That might count as ROI. But how did the potter and the crafts fair achieve that effect?

It was, I believe, a melding of science and craft: the former with its eye on function, the latter with an ear for the music of cultural iconography. You can’t have one without the other. A vase by Picasso might still hold flowers, but you wouldn’t acquire it just to stuff it full of gladiolas.

On the other hand, you can’t interest me in the vase currently on sale at KMart. While the latter is a paragon of “smart pricing ” and “targeted product development,” you’d have to pay me to buy it.

[January 7, 2011]

[This post reflects the state of the site discussed at the time. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of digital messaging strategy in the US.]

Who I’m talking to

• What’s their problem
• How do they see my brand in relation to that problem

The minimum they want to know

• How my brand solves their problem

The minimum they want to accomplish

• What to do
• How to do it

The first step

• What I want them to do now

How this communication will be staged

• What creative platform
• What media
• Over what initial time period
• Within what lifespan

Over the course of a marketing campaign, the items on the list above usually get addressed—one way or another. I supposed the list could serve as a skeletal model for a creative brief, with one reservation. A creative brief is already a working document, one step removed from the 30,000-foot view we need to maintain. 

Otherwise, our work becomes a haphazard assemblage of the trendy, the safe and the prescribed. In fact, it’s this very ideological hodgepodge that drives clients to focus on communication media instead of communication.

“We want a mobile campaign, a website, and a social app,” says the brand manager with an underutilized budget. And right away, a cash-starved agency is only too eager to adopt a manufacturing model and “get them out the door.”

Not that there wasn’t, at some point, a group hug in a conference room over the agreed-upon annual marketing strategy. Trouble is, the themes of that strategy are usually forgotten by the time the deli sandwiches and pasta salad are half way to their eternal reward.

Within hours, the focus has shifted from selling a brand message to manufacturing a series of branded objects. In the short term, this scattershot approach initiates a vicious cycle of brand burnout. 

When one badly conceived ad-object doesn’t yield results, we lob another and another, retelling the story in the same way each time, in a misguided stab at integration. Yet, the long term impact of this kind of thinking runs deeper still.

Where the ploys are.
In the rush to show tangible results, we often forget our top priority: to actually solve a real person’s real problem. The results of that lapse can be seen everywhere. JennyCraig.com is a case in point.

On the surface, you might think I have no case. There’s lots of stuff to click on, and it’s all about weight loss.

Except, it’s too much of a mediocre thing. Now, I’d never dial up such a site if I didn’t think I had a weight problem. But given the choice of confronting that dense wall of promotional messages or eating more celery, I know what my choice is. 

Ironically, in the face of reasonably convincing evidence the program might work for me, I’m completely turned off. The site has nothing to do with me. It’s about “LEARN MORE NOW” and “METABOLIC MAX.” Despite the promise of a program “Tailored to Your Needs and Lifestyle,” I still feel left out. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been to a tailor since the 80s and the phrase is lost on me.

But ultimately, it’s about all that shouting. Can we have a quiet talk about my growing embarrassment about my growing belly? Can we skip over the micro-branded product names and talk about nutrition? Yes, I know I can “Speak to a Jenny Craig consultant today—FREE!” but that’s not going to happen; Jenny Craig has turned my personal problem into a commodity.

Now, the thought has crossed my mind that I’m not in Jenny Craig’s target audience, even if Jason Alexander is.

My question is, why not? It’s a weight loss program and I want to lose weight. But far from solving my problem, this feature- and benefit-driven site, replete with Strong Calls to Action, succeeds only in creating the one experience more unappealing than looking in the mirror. Though the site fairly oozes sales messages, it fails to sell me on the one thing that matters: the feeling I’ve come to the right place.

A smiling face, a warm embrace…
or a codependent relationship?
So I return where I started: A great message strategy grows out of an honest desire to talk to real people about their real problems as a real person. That is, not as a saccharine, yet ghoulishly parasitic brand persona, whose existence depends on forming a co-dependant relationship with your customer’s anxieties. 

OK, not to worry: Jenny Craig is doing fine with this approach. Between 600 centers in the US, a profitable food line and the $600M buyout from Nestle, you can insert your own joke about fat wallets when ready. My concern is not whether brands make money this way, but that this hyperactive marketing strategy is toxic, both to consumers and our industry.

Looked at from 30,000 feet, this kind of predatory advertising erodes people’s trust in branded communication. Brands who take this route are following the path laid out by the food industry. For now, food companies load their products with fat, sugar and salt and sales are up. But so is public awareness. 

Just as the day is coming when the food industry will have to adjust to meet consumer demand, advertising is already feeling the pressure to shed a few thousand pounds of cynical manipulation.

[December 30, 2010]

Lately, I’ve been struck by the vast complex of assumptions, theories, myths, belief systems, studies statistics, practices, disciplines and unadulterated horse-trading that goes into the production of everything we may loosely or strictly call “an ad.”

OK, I realize there are now entire schools of thought whose sole purpose is to posit that social media marketing and its PR offshoots are not advertising. But for my purposes, I’m going to just sweep everything with the same intent into one big pile.

Because that one unifying intent is motivation. The only reason brands contact consumers in any medium is to get them to take an action. The approach might be indirect, it might be conceived as part of a long-range strategy, it might not mention price points or features or benefits or sweepstakes or a free ballpoint pen refrigerator magnet [Your Logo Here]. But the goal is the same.

A simple goal, really. And that’s what started me wondering at the physical and intellectual gadgetry that has accreted around that goal over the last century—to make something somewhat less prized than the pearl secreted by an oyster, around a grain of sand.

Impact by association.
Many of these gadgets, whether it’s a free magnet, a BOGO offer, a hotel upgrade, a sweepstakes or a chance to “share your story with people like you”—grow out of the need to differentiate products that are essentially the same. Other, nominally more sophisticated, gadgets have been developed to associate particular products with emotions, cultural values, physical or psychological thrills.

That’s associate, not create. When advertising of any kind works, it’s not because it creates a demand, it’s because it successfully mirrors one. Of course, it helps if the product itself actually fulfills that demand and, as I see it, that’s where the bad blood begins flowing.

Because clearly, there’s an inverse relationship between the amount of gadgetry needed and the actual value of the product, let alone of the brand itself. I need only think of the extremes Gillette has gone to differentiate its razors. “The Best a Man Can Get?” Looking at myself in the mirror every morning, I’m pretty sure that campaign’s brand promise is way beyond the capacity of any disposable razor. That is, unless the handle contains a cashier’s check for 750 million dollars—or an all-powerful genie.

The perils of parity.
But what’s a manufacturer to do, when its product is as parity as water is wet? Can anyone reasonably suggest there’s a better way to move slivers of stainless steel encased in plastic?

Well, what if you just told the truth? You’d start by admitting your brand is only a silly millimeter better or worse than any other name brand product in the same category (not that this simple truth, as a concept, isn’t also subject to exploitation). You’d continue by addressing the product’s place in everyday life, but not necessarily on their Facebook page.

Your appeal to your audience might revolve around the percent of your profits that go, not towards a CEO’s offshore account, but towards developing a real, viable, global recycling system for, in this case, spent metal blades and cracked plastic handles.

You’d be selling, in other words, not what you make, but who you are.

Can’t handle the truth? Give us a chance to try.
Of course, selling that socially responsible persona means being that socially responsible persona. By the same token, soft drink manufacturers would do a lot better to actually lower the sugar contents of their fizzy bottles than “support access to exercise, physical activity and nutritional education programs, programs that motivate behavior modification, and programs that encourage lifestyle/behavioral changes.”

Because, chances are, any expert on nutritional education will tell you that ingesting 10 teaspoons of sugar in one sitting is never a healthy lifestyle choice.

The best way to sell an established product to an media drenched America, a country where, we’re told,everyone’s wise to advertising trickery? Produce a product that promotes health, demonstrate that your manufacturing practices contribute to sustainability and show us all the ways your profits go toward making real life more fulfilling for more people.

Do that, and you won’t need to make the risible assertion that a razor is “like having an angel by your side.” You’ll simply need to tell the truth.