Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (35 page)

But it goes far beyond that.

There’s clearly a Google mythology and a Starbucks one as well. We feel different about brands like these than we do about, say, Maxwell House or Random House.

Why do Santa and Ronald McDonald have a mythology but not Dave at Wendy’s or the Burger King?

Let’s try Wikipedia:
Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests.

So, if I were trying to invent a mythic brand, I’d want to be sure that there was a story, not just a product or a pile of facts. That story would promise (and deliver) a heroic outcome. And there needs to be growth and mystery as well, so the user can fill in her own blanks. Endorsement by a respected ruler or priest helps as well.

The key word, I think, is
spiritual
. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can’t find on our own … or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own mythology on.

People use a Dell. They are an Apple.

This can happen accidentally, but it often occurs on purpose. A brand can be deliberately mythological, created to intentionally deliver the benefits of myth. Casinos in Las Vegas have been trying to do this for decades (and usually failing). But talk to a Vegas cab driver about Steve Wynn and you can see that it’s been done at least once.

There’s a mythology about Digg and about Wikipedia, but not about
About.com
. The mysterious nature of rankings and scores and community ensures that we’ll be paying attention to them. It doesn’t hurt that Digg and Wikipedia both have public figures—heroes—at the helm.

It’s easy to confuse publicity with mythology, but it doesn’t work that way; there’s no Zune mythology, for example. It’s also easy to assume that mythology will guarantee financial success, but it didn’t work for General Magic, a company that successfully leveraged the heroic reputations of its founders, created a very hot IPO, but failed to match the needs of the larger market.

It did, on the other hand, work for Anderson’s, an ice cream stand in Buffalo (!?) that has a line every single day, even in January.

Hard to explain, difficult to bottle, probably worth the effort to pursue.

I just got a spectacularly insightful and honest email from Scott. Here’s the money quote:

We’ve “tried everything,” by which we mean we’ve tried a few things that everybody else has done, as long as they didn’t involve doing anything different from what we normally do.

Juxtaposition matters. And so does surprise.

Most marketing is intentional. In this ad I will advertise this product.

So is most writing. A knitting blog writes about … wait for it … knitting.

Our minds are prepared for what we are about to receive. If it’s a sales pitch, we’re ready to ignore it. If it’s on a familiar blog, we’re ready for it to be familiar.

Real memories are created by surprises.

Real change is created by unexpected juxtapositions.

Time
magazine used to work (when it worked) because an irrelevant and slightly loopy article about some unusual idea was right between an article on Israel and one on welfare.

And New York City works, when it works, because the zoning is so mixed up. Right in the middle of the meat market district, there’s a high-end clothing store.

Most marketers, probably you, are busy putting your round pegs in the round holes that have been given to you. What if you did the opposite?

The secrets might surprise you. The most successful B2B organizations, in my opinion, understand the value of:

• Patience
  
• Promises
  
• Being centered
  

We worked very closely with Brian and his team at Viget for many months, building the initial architecture of Squidoo. There are plenty of shops that can do Web programming, plenty that claim they can do UI work, and plenty that are even hipper than you. There are very few that manage to pull off the kind of work that Viget does. They were on time and on budget, and most important, they didn’t cause anyone to lose sleep.

The very things that I look for as a consumer (surprise, fashion, edginess) were in short supply here. Instead, Viget went out of their way to never overpromise. They pushed the hard decisions early in the process so that the thrashing was early, not late. In fact, the end of the process was the most delightful part. Because they know who they are and are clear about it to themselves and to their clients, the chances of making an honest connection with their clients are much higher than they would be with someone who is trying to be all things to all people.

Drew Dusebout, a broker/financial planner I know at UBS, is the same way. Drew doesn’t make vague promises about financial returns, and he doesn’t get all excited at the latest gimmick. Instead, he’s honest with himself and his colleagues about the world he works in, and his clients always get exactly what they expect. Sure, this is a more difficult way to grow (at first) because you can’t seduce the people who are the most likely to jump ship. You can’t promise some shortcut that gets you the quick clients. But in the long run, I don’t know of any other way to market a service like his.

Here’s the hard part about this: if you’re very good at what you do, you won’t grow. Because
lots
of people are good at what you do. No one is going to be busy referring you and sending you business just because you’re very good. Sorry.

The only way to consistently grow in B2B is to be better than very good. In fact, the only way is to find something that organizations need and be the very best in the world at it. Hopefully, that thing is something that organizations in your sphere are eager to talk about among themselves. If it is, you win. There’s a line at your door for years to come.

A few months ago, I heard an interview with one of the leading metal-baseball-bat manufacturers. They were lobbying hard against regulations that would require Little League players to use wood bats.

Today, Chris points us to a Reuters article, “Automakers Challenge Vermont Emissions Law.” The car makers continue to lobby hard, or even sue, over emission rules. Wendy’s, as previously discussed, is working hard against a rule in New York requiring that they post calorie counts. It’s common wisdom that government regulation is bad for business, and especially bad is regulation that requires change.

I don’t get it.

A few years ago, the FTC changed the law about how wide apart the bars in cribs for children had to be. Cribs with wide spaces between bars end up strangling kids and breaking arms. The law applied only to home cribs, which meant that hospital cribs weren’t covered. Hard Manufacturing, my favorite hospital crib company, took the regulation to heart and alerted every hospital in the country that the cribs they were using weren’t deemed safe for home use—so why use them in a hospital? What do you think happened to crib sales? It was a huge few years as the cribs were replaced (and the kids ended up safer).

Wendy’s did the best when they were growing with the launch of salads. Not when they were copying McDonald’s over burgers. Change is their friend.

If I were a leading bat company, I’d formulate a “slower” metal bat that would be just as safe as wood—and unbreakable, too. What a marketing coup! Then I’d lobby like crazy for change.

If I were Ford Motor, I’d lobby as hard as possible for the strictest emissions regime in the world. If you’re losing the game, change the
rules. Start over. Be the only major car company to produce 100% pzev (partial zero-emissions vehicles) or hybrid cars.

Business as usual is almost always lousy marketing, because there isn’t a lot of room for growth. The opportunities kick in when an external force requires a brand new story, when consumers are choosing to pay attention because they’ve got no other choice.

It’s easy to argue against change. It disheartens shareholders and even employees. But external change is the most likely lever of growth, because it puts you back on the agenda of attention.

What’s a brand?

I think it is the product of two things:

[Prediction of what to expect] times [emotional power of that expectation]

If I encounter a brand and I don’t know what it means or does, it has zero power. If I have an expectation of what an organization will do for me, but I don’t care about that, no power.

FedEx is a powerful brand because you always get what you expect, and the relief you get from their consistency is high.

AT&T is a weak brand because you almost never get what you expect, because they do so many different things, and because the value of what they create has little emotional resonance (it sure used to, though, when they did one thing, they did it perfectly, and they were the only ones who could connect you).

The dangers of brand ubiquity are then obvious. When your brand is lots of things (like AOL became), then the expectations are all over the place and the emotional resonance starts to fade. If the predictability of your brand starts to erode its emotional power (a restaurant that becomes boring), then you need to become predictable in your joyous unpredictability!

If you want to grow a valuable brand, my advice is to keep awareness close to zero among the people you’re not ready for yet, and build the most predictable, emotional experience you can among those that care about you.

Being a pretty good receptionist is easy. You’re basically a low-tech security guard in nice clothes. Sit at the desk and make sure that visitors don’t steal the furniture or go behind the magic door unescorted.

But what if you wanted to be a great receptionist?

I’d start with understanding that in addition to keeping unescorted guests away from the magic door, a receptionist can have a huge impact on the marketing of an organization. If someone is visiting your office, they’ve come for a reason. To sell something, to buy something, to interview or be interviewed. No matter what, there’s some sort of negotiation involved. If the receptionist can change the mindset of the guest, good things happen (or if it goes poorly, bad things).

Think the job acceptance rate goes up if the first impression is a memorable one? Think the tax auditor might be a little more friendly if her greeting was cheerful?

So, a great receptionist starts by acting like Vice President, Reception. I’d argue for a small budget to be spent on a bowl of M&M’s or the occasional Heath Bar for a grumpy visitor. If you wanted to be really amazing, how about baking a batch of cookies every few days? I’d ask the entire organization for updates as to who is coming in each day. “Welcome, Mr. Mitchell. How was your flight in from Tucson?”

Is there a TV in reception? Why not hook up some old Three Stooges DVDs?

Why do I need to ask where to find the men’s room? Perhaps you could have a little sign.

And in the downtime between visitors, what a great chance to surf the Web for recent positive news about your company. You can print it out in a little binder that I can read while I’m waiting. Or consider the idea of creating a collage of local organizations that your fellow employees have helped with their volunteer work.

One amazing receptionist I met specialized in giving sotto voce commentary on the person you were going to meet. She’d tell you inside dope that would make you feel prepared before you walked in. “Did you know that Don had a new grandchild enter the family last week? She’s adorable. Her name is Betty.”

In addition to greeting guests, internal marketing can be a focus as well. Every single employee who passes your desk on the way in can learn something about a fellow worker—if you’re willing to spend the time to do it, they’ll spend the time to read it.

Either that, or you could just work on being grumpy and barking “name and ID please.”

Maybe the reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is …

… that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.

Marketers of all stripes are discovering that acquiring a reputation and permission to market to people isn’t as expandable as they might have hoped.

A PR firm, for example, might have some terrific clients. These clients give them credibility to talk to the media. Over time, the firm gains a reputation with bloggers and other media outlets. Emails get answered, press releases get read. The clients get ink, new clients show up.

The temptation is to grow the business. To take on new clients. To do the PR magic for an ever larger group of people.

Here’s the problem: the people who most want to be your clients are the people you should least want to represent. As you promote the unpromotable, the permission you have to talk to the media doesn’t go up, it goes down. Better to be the agency that represents only best-selling authors than to be the biggest agency.

In the long run, the pickier you are, the better you do. Same thing goes for online merchants, brokers, church groups, and just about anyone else who markets with permission.

Marine iguanas swim. They eat stuff in shallow water, which is surprising behavior for an iguana.

How is it possible for there to be marine iguanas?

Ordinary iguanas washed onshore of some of the Galapagos Islands a few millennia ago and quickly discovered that eating the way they were used to wasn’t going to work, because there wasn’t anything to eat. Most of them starved to death. A few, though, were lucky enough that they could tolerate foraging around on the edge of the ocean. Over generations, iguanas with this trait thrived, while those that were born without it died out. A new species evolved.

The interesting lesson for marketers is this: if iguanas had had predators and competition while this was going on, they never would have survived. The barren nature of their marketplace gave them the time they needed to evolve (or, as marketers with egos would say, “figure out”) a strategy that worked.