Archive for the ‘Brand Promise’ Category
An Open Letter to Best Buy: Teach Sales to Hear
It’s Counter-Intuitive, but Listening May Actually Clinch a Sale
It’s OK to veer off script
Hubert Joly, I know you are trying hard to be more than Amazon’s showroom and believe me, we’re behind you! I can’t speak for everyone (hey—why let that stop me?), but all of St.MinneapolisPaul wants the Blue Shirts to win! We like you! (except, ahem, for those who don’t, of course).
Would you entertain a suggestion? I spoke to a kindly Blue Shirt yesterday about another obscure, jury-rigged set of applications that keep my Microsoft products talking together. I’m just looking for ways to get away from the fussing that enshrouds my mobile use of Microsoft. I asked open-ended questions seeking new solutions. Mr. Blue Shirt started his spiel about features and benefits—a reasonable place to begin. I drilled down with explanation and more questions. I could tell he was not catching my drift, so I searched for the key words that would help him see why his banter did not fit. The recently abandoned “activesync” turned out to be the word that unlocked introductions to the Microsoft rep hanging around 100 yards away. This gentleman ran with “activesync” and provided answers that seemed to fit my situation, but still with enough unanswered blank spaces that I knew I needed more research.
I May Be A Tough Customer
I may want more detail than other people because of my quixotic quest to make Microsoft work across my devices. I may have had too much experience with sales people saying whatever they must to make the sale (AT&T, take note). It is also possible that I need to read things to believe them. Granted.
Here’s My Point
What I need is help with complicated products. Or solid advice to give up my foolish Microsoft quest. Is that the kind of thing of I could expect from a quick conversation on the Best Buy floor? Maybe not. But if you had someone who listened, who knew what was available and who could step away from features/benefit sales script—that would be worth something to me. I’d make an appointment with that person—like I did at the Microsoft store (I’m not optimistic).
I know my cult-of-Apple friends are punching their faces now and saying “hopeless.” I’m not quite ready for the Apple tattoo on my…wallet. Ok?
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Widerøe: A Most Winsome and Persuasive Airline
Have you ever seen a more organic selling proposition?
This quote, via the Bill Bernbach fans over at Sell!Sell! seems appropriate for this piece of communication:
Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
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Americans: Large Mass. Small Memory.
Hey Media: That’s not the Bill Clinton I remember
Is this we’ll how we’ll be remembered? The people who enjoyed the fat of the land but couldn’t remember what happened from year to year? If anyone reads through our newspapers in 100 years, surely that will be their conclusion.
Even before Bill Clinton’s celebrated speech last night (I have yet to listen to it, but I will—Bill Clinton is a great speaker), we learned from various media outlets that he was a popular president and how both Democrats and Republicans remember fondly his tenure.
Really?
I remember him as the president known for oral sex with an intern. Who then lied about it on camera. I remember him as the president who allowed me to explain oral sex to our kids innocently listening to the radio news. He is the man who was impeached and a national disgrace. The man who was a running joke for late night comedians for several years.
I’m all for grace and fresh starts. And I’ve got my problems—I’m not judging, only remembering.
Bill Clinton a popular president? Yes, for the media and comedians. Maybe today if you look only at the economy during his time in office. But for me: my memory is decidedly mixed. At best.
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Image Credit: Keith1437 via 2headedsnake
A New Tone to Grind from Axe?
Fear No Susan Glenn
Discharge smelly spray across your torso and watch angels fall from heaven. Or spray and wait for women’s clothing to spontaneously come undone. Why do you find that cause and effect so hard to believe?
The Axe/Lynx brands always and forever illustrate teenage male fantasies (“Chicks dig me.”). But this. This is different. Beautifully photographed and polished, this is a believable reminiscence rather than a teenage fantasy. Maybe it’s Kiefer Sutherland’s narration that sets off the nostalgic lighting. Did the older brothers of the junior copywriters at BBH find the creative brief lying around and decide to take a shot at the account? Nice job changing the tone, Peter Rosch & BBH New York.
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Or. What is it good for?
Absolutely Nothin’
[January 13, 2014: looks like the video was made private. Here’s a Vimeo version: http://ispot.tv/a/7ktx ]
Nice consumerist retooling of an anthem from my childhood.
Via Adland.TV
How to Pitch a Medical Device Company #5: Be Amazed
We had just hired a new advertising agency to help rejuvenate the brand of our chronic back pain therapy. I had been sitting in a meeting with several team members of the agency. After a couple hours where I and a few others described how the therapy worked and talked about the outcomes, the science behind it, the competition and the main messages and positioning, we broke for questions.
“Wow,” said the creative director. “That is cool. You guys are doing amazing stuff!” And between the lines that team communicated to me a kind of respect for the work our corporation had been doing.
Was this enthusiasm real or feigned? Yes. The agency had already been hired, so there was no need to pretend. And since advertising agencies typically run on enthusiasm, the comment was not unexpected.
But neither was it expected. Whether real or fake, their enthusiasm hit home. It was a refreshing meeting in a sea of corporate meetings ranging from dull to throat-slitting painful. Life in a medical device company—like most any company—can seem like slow-motion meetings followed by mad rushing to fulfill promises before the next slow-motion meeting. During that rush you forget your company does something exceptional.
I’ve sat on the other side too, where the product manager is telling details and showing outcomes. Even if they start subdued with facts and charts, their excitement grows as they talk through the story. A good creative team picks up on this excitement because it is contagious. New and possibly extraordinary things happen when every member of the team gets the contagion. But it cannot be an act: because feigned excitement is hard translate to the customer.
An amazed creative team can become a set of cheerleaders. This makes the internal champions of the product feel surrounded by allies—especially when the cheers are in the language their customers speak. But the amazement has to be real. The key is to find the amazing thing.
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Image Credit: itsraininghens via 2headedsnake
Tattoo U: Reading Those Who Take Required Courses
Painted along her spine and
Shouted from the pitch of her neck:
“What’s the least I can do?”
Eyes closed her gentle snoring:
“This is boring.”
Doodled maze focusing attention down
And in and away from the other:
“Why bother?”
Just another required class
My parents are funding
Or deepening my debt.
Whatever.
This posture a tattoo
A rhetoric of being
A one person drama
An act that snaps to real
Not easily shrugged off
After the definition-jail of school sets sail
Where topics contain in rigid compartments
While practices secretly wash from stem to stern
Habits inked
Minute by hour by week
Quarter by semester
Cleansed only after years of toil
Digging from the depths of whatever
Where no one pays your fee
Or your debt.
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Image credit: via Falcons on the Floor
Abilify Commercial: Now with Extra True-ishness
The genre of pharmaceutical commercials tend to show happy-faced users with their lives coming together after having taken the chemical compound. Happy faces also take center-stage while the disclaimers and side-effects roll on the screen and in the background voice-over. What I like about this commercial is that the dark shadow never goes away—which is more true to what I understand about clinical depression.
That the shadow remains in the animation is a powerful credibility-booster in my mind. I’m guessing the product manager and agency had strenuous talks about whether to keep the shadow in and what that shadow does to the brand promise.
This is something we’ve been talking about over at Details Have a Public Face.
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Occupy Everything: Every Group Forms Around a Promise
Anarchists organize for anarchy while pacifists plot their war on war. A church may promise a club-like space where everyone knows your name or it may work out the day-to-day look of those ancient texts that call for justice, mercy and rightness with the Creator.
Optimist/Activist Professor Reich
At the moment, Occupy Wall Street is a BYOP (Bring Your Own Promise) event. But commentators and talking heads are showing up to frame up their version of the promise. Also showing up: opportunists, would-be pornographers, and anybody with a beef. Robert Reich took to the bullhorn Wednesday at Occupy San Francisco with his version of the promise: “I really do believe we are on the cusp of a fundamental change,” Reich said.
Maybe so.
Maybe Occupy [whatever] is this generation’s 1968 moment. Maybe the greedy will be shamed into… what? Backing away from the system that hands out checks for the way they risk other people’s money? Maybe we are simply shining light on the scurrying rats of a corrupt and corrupting financial system. We also shine the light on our own culpability in a corrupt and corrupting system
The single, binding promise has yet to emerge. But certainly our conversation is different today. And that feels like progress.
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Image Credit: SF Examiner
conversation is an engine 