She 1: “Hi! Haven’t seen you in awhile.”
He: “Open your eyes…”
She 2: “There you are! Where have you been?”
He: “Busy, busy…”

As a MarCom person my antennae are always up in retail outlets, checking out how employees carry the flame of branding –a job usually ascribed to the media savvy folk rather than those on the shop floor.

Take a guess where I overheard the above conversation?

This was at a Starbucks. The Baristas were unfailingly picking out customers by name and product type.
Later, at the milk-and-sugar counter, I commented to Mr. Popular Starbucks Customer that he’s pretty notorious around these parts. “Maybe I should come here in disguise,” he retorted.

Isn’t it amazing how invisible you are in, say, a grocery store that you visit every week (armed with your loyalty card!) We could be disguised as Elvis, for all they care. Nobody notices if we skip a week, shave our goatee, or suddenly begin buying sugar-free products instead of the weekly box of doughnuts. The data is probably there stuck in a silo, gathering cobwebs.

I say this, because I am working with a variable data digital printer, who tells me that there is no shortage of information available for marketers to use very creatively, if they could only spend a little more time getting to know the people behind the database!

Of course, Starbucks has invested in the most advanced CRM software solution a company can ever want –its employees, who carry their ‘variable databases’ in their heads.

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No, not the viral, Subservient Chicken kind! This time it’s ‘guerilla butterflies’ by courtesy of MSN.

Madison Avenue appears to be taking P&Gs Jim Stengel’s think-outside-the-idiot-box gospel to heart. This story on how MSN prodded the TV upfront media buyers with this message captures the new tone of MarCom:

“Friendly reminder: Consumers view multiple screens. Don’t spend it all in one place. An integrated marketing plan isn’t integrated without advertising online.”

Speaking of integrated marketing, and multiple screens, check the story of Nike’s Operation 6543 stunt in New York a few days ago. As for multiple screens, have you ever watched kids instant messaging each other? They can effortlessly chat on multiple windows!

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If any of you in PR/Advertising/Marketing hasn’t read Howard Rheingold’s “Smart Mobs,” this mind-expanding book will give you a bigger jolt than Al Reis’ death knell: “The End of Advertising.”

Rheingold touches on two areas that I am currently working on :

1. REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
In the intro, ‘discussing reputation systems’ he observes that the online trust brokers are the equivalent of those in the offline world. In his Alvin Toffler-like purview of the future, he sees reputation systems and gossip intertwined. Ask anyone in Asia how the gossip/rumor connection works. It brings down governments, creates havoc in markets (ask Sonia Gandhi’s party!) and sometimes messes with products (ask Coke about Dasani’s ‘tap water’ story and Bromate problem in England!)

This point was driven home to me when I found this FUNDRACE site that allows you to check people’s U.S. campaign contributions by zip code! That’s right, this is public information, but now searcheble. You can even search by people’s last name! (There is only one person who turns up under a search for ‘Fernando’, but several pages of people with the last name of ‘Bush’ or ‘Heinz’)

2. ‘PROSUMERS’
He doesn’t use this term (I think it was Toffler who coined it) but he says how the reputation business is impacted because “the consumers are also the producers of what they consume” in these cyber markets. Famous examples are Ebay, Amazon consumer reviews etc. But what about bloggers?

Reminds me of a line from an IBM TV spot: “the game of business changes.”

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Remember how bad this year’s Super Bowl commercials were? The flatulent horse et al…There is suddenly a vigilante movement out there making marketers aware how bad things are:

Bob Garfield of Advertising Age was noticably unhappy about Bob Dylan’s appearing in a Victoria’s Secret ad. he said:

“Folk rockers who burst into our consciousness singing war protests should not be doing lingerie commercials in the middle of a war.”

I usually like reading Garfield wacky take on advertising, even though he if off base a lot, but it’s hard to imagine why he wishes there to be a higher standard for lingerie comemrcials, of all things, just because there is a war.

There is a report in the ‘Adages’ section of AdAge that the Percussive Arts Society protested to ESPN about a print ad in USA Today, that had this headline:

“Your kids could learn how to play the drums.
(But then they would know how to play the drums.)

The accompanying visual is that of a youngster swinging a golf club. ESPN cancelled the ad.

This is not of the same magnitude as the offensive Nike Air Goat ad which ran ‘edgy’ copy making fun of people in wheel chairs. See the ad that spoke of a “drooling, misshapen, non-ectreme, trail-running husk of my former self forced to roam the earth in a motorized wheelchair..” Also, check the controversy here.

Bottom line: marketing is about forging partnerships. Not making enemies.

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Things are really sliding for the Bush PR campaign, especially when people as varied as the Howard Stern, and John McCain, and Michael Feldman (a different bunch from those Michael Moore spoke of at the 2003 Oscars) take pot-shots against the present administration’s policies.

Speaking of ABC, The New York Observer reports that the station has been contemplating a John Kerry interview, with Howard Stern on the other side of the Mike. The Kerry campaign has apparently declined.

Perhaps Kerry doesn’t need Stern at this time. (Rumsfeld is radioactive enough to make most of Kerry’s weaknesses disappear from the day’s news line up.) But it appears that Stern is the equivalent of a one-man anti-Bush campaign.

As Jeff Jarvis writes in The Nation this week, in an article titled F*cked by the F*CC Stern’s attack on the religious right, has become “the liberal talk-show star the left has been dying to hear.” He cites MTV News as saying Stern, rather than Ralph Nader, could be a big influence on the election.

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I am no big fan of the double-spread ad, simply because they almost cry out to the reader to flip past the page and ignore it.

But this one, I could not miss. A very-expensive 4-page spread today, for Sprint’s “Fair and Flexible” plan.

The details of the plan are pretty neat, but it is the visual communication that’s very impressive.

Opening headline: “What if the rest of the world were like the wireless industry?”
(This reminded me of that famous joke: “what if Microsoft designed automobiles?” so I read on.)

Inside 2 pages: There is no copy, save the “Playground rules” sign on a fence that 4 kids scrutinize. It reads:

Rule 1: You have to guess how many minutes you’re going to use the ball –for the next two years. Don’t guess too high or too low, or you’ll be sorry.

Rule 2: Whoever is new on the playground is more special. It’s just the fact. Therefore, new kids get the new things. Old ones don’t.

Rule 3: There will almost never be anything cool and exciting to play on. If there is, it’ll be really tricky to get it to work.

Rule 4: If you don’t like the rules, try another playground. It’ll be exactly the same.

If I was to reverse engineer the strategy here, I can almost see the client brief requesting the agency to:

a. Stress that the plan adjusts to the user, not the other way around.
b. Reposition other cell phone carriers as being a trap, intent on penalizing the customer.

At which point the agency warns that it would also be admitting that Sprint’s previous plans were user-unfriendly. To which the client then responds, it’s a worthwhile risk! (Agencies love that. They often quote the line about not taking risks being the greatest risk of all..)

What I particularly liked was Rule #2. I am at the end of my plan, and asked Sprint (yes, them!) what they can do for me, and they practically said nothing, ta ta, bye bye. The last time I adjusted my plan to take advantage of lower minute usage during an upcoming vacation, they renewed my contract without telling me! I swore I would ‘try another playground.’

I am surprised I’m even saying nice things about their new campaign!

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Franchise Times magazine has just published my article on Schlotzsky’s, the Austin, TX based sandwich deli that is rolling out Wi-Fi. What was amazing about this chain, is that they were willing to go out on a limb, and offer Wi-Fi access free in the restaurants (and not just in restaurants, as I discovered.)

I interviewed the PR Director for this, and she was very convinced that the restaurant experience is much more than the product you buy over the counter. There is another story in here (my article was from a technology perspective) about bundling an intangible service with a tangible product, and creating brand equity.

Speaking of which, I just experienced the branding that no ad, and no TV commercial can achieve on another Texas product: Southwest Airlines. The flight attendant, after some mandatory landing announcements, asked those who were from a particular company to raise their hands. He then announced that these wonderful folks were being flown in to San Diego, as a reward for achieving a sales goal. The passengers broke into applause, as they often do on SWA.

It struck me that there was probably nothing in the employee handbook to say a flight attendant should or should not give another company a plug in front of some 200 passengers. But because of that little gesture, there is a high probability that a lot of us passengers flying for business reasons, would be booking our flight on that airline again.

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The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece on may 7th, by Daniel Henninger (“The only player not in spin game is the U.S.A.”) about using PR to “appease the chorus of moral umbrage.” The basic argument is that the U.S. media are spinning the Abu Ghraib story –a kind of ‘with friends like these who needs Al Jazeera?’ attack on the prison coverage. He then goes on to say that the govt isn’t spinning enough, and isn’t in the game of shaping world opinion –ergo it is taking a hit.

I don’t agree; in fact I wish it took PR more seriously –as opposed to sporadically. Not as a counter-spin to the alleged media spin, but as a way of communicating at all times. Not just in a time of crisis, either.

Does anybody remember that infamous brand-building exercise with a catchy title, the ‘Shared Values Initiative’ spearheaded by Charlotte Beers? It comprised TV commercials, print ads and radio spots, with the tag-line “Freedom. Appreciate it. Cherish it. Protect it.” Where did the ‘initiative’ disappear? Remember ‘Open Dialogue?’ If you look at the site, the ‘what’s new’ section doesn’t appear to have been updated since Ramadan 2002! Beers left the job, but does that mean the communication stops?

Too may times, PR is considered spin or counter-spin. A task, no different from running an ad or injecting a press release. There is another word for that: propaganda. Maybe PR does have a PR problem, after all.

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You know that people are more powerful than all the slick marketing, when a news report begins with the line “Battered by resistance from farmers…”

This is the latest in the story about Monsanto ‘pulling the plug’ on a GM product for wheat.

Before anyone dismisses people-power as typical of the ‘environmental wacko’ lobby, consider how more organized groups also use this tactic to get the press they want. In this case, the report that begins “A group of independent Apple computer retailers protested…” is about how indie Apple retailers are making Cupertino listen up. Check their site at TellOnApple.Org and see pictures of how they took to the streets.

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Remember Honda’s TV commercial, ‘cog,’ that won several awards last year? See it here. It was widely acclaimed for its brilliant ‘big idea’ even while not employing the standard humans, street shots or wacky auto-humor. Sort of a storyline featuring parts of a car. Talk about the product being hero, and all that.

The hilarious spoof of ‘cog’, called ‘car,’ features two scraggy actors, who propel the car part story line, in a Mr. Bean-esque carricature. Definitely worth a visit!. Find it at this link to a site called “The 118-118 Experience.” (Click on the TV screen on the top right to play the video.)

What’s 118-118? It’s a directory service in Britain. This was the viral ad that captured people’s attention last year. In the light of the new batch of viral ads for Ford, Mazda, and Burger King, how successful is this wacky humor and method of distribution?

Email me and tell me what you think.

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