As we near the end of the school year at the VCU Brandcenter, I held my final Strategic Brand Concepts class in the school’s outdoor classroom, a large patio overlooking Downtown Richmond. Our special guest was Brandcenter professor, Charles Hall, a gifted creative director with experience at places like Wieden + Kennedy and Nike.

In the session, the students discussed their own assessments of their successes and failures with remarkable candor. The ability to follow any effort with an objective review of what went right and wrong is a talent that the best people in the business have cultivated. Let’s hope they take these lessons into their work going forward.

Special thanks to Scott Witthaus for the photographs!

Recently my Strategic Brand Concepts class at the VCU Brandcenter welcomed a fantastic guest speaker, Elizabeth Talerman, who was recently the VP, Senior Director of Marketing, Merchandising for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Elizabeth walk the students through the art and science of crafting a brand platform and bringing it to life, using her recent launch of a new Martha Stewart line at Macy’s as an example.

Elizabeth’s combination of words and images to build a compelling manifesto set the tone for creative executions to follow, which included both traditional media and unconventional acts like changing the awnings at Macy’s 34^th street flagship, Martha Stewart blue.

I’ve collaborated with Elizabeth for many years on the VCU Brandcenter board and I’ve seldom met anyone who brings more creativity to the art of brand building. Her strategic work has helped shape powerful brands like IBM and Yahoo! But her real gift is to simplify complex subjects and demystify the sometimes-murky world of brands. This talent made it easy for students to grasp the steps involved in the process of building a great strategy. A special gift to our students, wrapped up in a tasteful blue ribbon.

Landscape painting with my son, Conor O’Keefe

Each fall, I get a welcome reminder of the vital role that cultural inspiration plays in the work of communicators. I teach a graduate course on cultural exploration at the VCU Brandcenter. The curiosity to seek out culture, from opera to hip-hop, Rembrandt to graffiti artists, is a trait that most successful marketers exhibit. A grounding in culture provides the context for communication. Besides, it’s a fun course to teach. In past years our explorations have covered topics like homelessness, russian painting, truck drivers, carnies, army wives, NASCAR, and many other topics from high culture to popular culture.

In each case, the course is built around direct immersion. So when we learned about homelessness, we spent time with homeless people in a city park. (Instead of PowerPoint, the student presentation was scrawled on pieces of scrap cardboard.) 

Keep an eye on this space come September to see what we’re up to. 

I’ve had the pleasure of working with some great clients over my career, but few have had more passion and potential than the radio industry. I’ve enjoyed helping the marketing teams at the RAB and NAB with their efforts to move the radio brand forward. So when David Martin, whose N=1 blog provides one of the most thoughtful dialogues in the radio industry, contacted me to comment on the work. I was happy to comply. You can read all about it here: Radio Heard Here

Here’s an excerpt:

“Like anything, radio can be better, and the industry should be tireless in its efforts to make it so, but there is a great pool of positive equity that should not be squandered based on the rantings of a few critics.”

We just completed months of work for ESPN’s X Games with big presentations to marketing leaders, Robert Zajac and Kevin Kirksey, from ESPN. We were also joined by Steve Sanders and Rob Schapiro from The Martin Agency. Earl Cox and I coached 12 teams of passionate gradate students competing in the intense competition. Each team was required to conduct primary and secondary research, develop brand positioning aimed at growing viewers and increasing the cultural relevance of the brand, and finally executing a creative campaign using a broad array of consumer touchpoints. 

And the results are in: Every team did an outstanding job with their work and the ESPN and Martin Agency teams were excited by the quality of thinking, the originality of the creative solutions and the professionalism of the presentations. And I was blown away too. These teams identified key insights that mirrored the client’s own work, and they attacked the problem from a variety of interesting angles. I couldn’t be more proud of their work. 

To let the client have the last word, here’s a quote from Robert Zajac, Associate Director, Brand Development, ESPN:

“it was both energizing and inspiring to see such a great pool of talent put so much effort, insight and passion into our brand. The ideas were sharp and the presentations were very professional. it was a real pleasure being a part of the final presentations and we hope it was a great learning experience that they can build on to continue developing as marketers, creatives and strategic thinkers”
  

The team at IHaveAnIdea.org are hard at work preparing for their 6th Portfolio Night on May 8th. Portfolio Night is billed as “the single largest single largest simultaneous career speed-dating night in the world” and VCU Brandcenter board member, Bob Scarpelli, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer of DDB Worldwide calls it “one of the most important events of the year for the advertising industry.”

This year it features thousands of student portfolios from around the world. And if you’re a student interested in a few tips, you can follow this link to get words of advice from Brandcenter faculty.

“Collaboration” is one of those business buzzwords that’s been used and abused so much it’s gone out of style. And yet in today’s ever-changing, increasingly interactive media world it may now be taking on a whole new meaning. That’s because the marketing world is now captivated by a new business buzzword: “consumer-generated content.

Some say it will be the death of marketing, as we know it. They say just get out of the way and let the consumer tell your brand’s story. Yes, the consumer will be telling brand stories more and more in the future, but the last thing marketers should do is get out of the way. Word of mouth has always been powerful. With the aid of consumer-accessible technology (the Internet, pod casting, video production, etc.) it’s now on steroids.

In fact, to succeed in the coming years when consumers have more influence with other consumers than marketers have, marketers will need to develop a new perspective and a new skill set. Those who do will be hailed as tomorrow’s innovators. Those who don’t will be labeled with the dreaded T-word: “Traditional.”

The Age of Co-Creation For those who can loosen their grip on their brands and openly and honestly enter into a true partnership with their consumers, amazing things will happen. But this is about a lot more than just listening to consumers. In the future, our job will be, dare I say, to collaborate with our consumers to co-create content and co-design the brand experience in all its forms.

This will not be without perils and pitfalls. Marketers’ tendencies to manipulate consumers will be met with disdain and distrust. But those who are willing to hear the bad with the good and empower consumers to express themselves will be met with a kind of customer relationship the likes of which marketers have only dreamed of. And if it’s done right, marketers just might bridge the divide of distrust between skeptical consumers and the corporation that has so marginalized marketers’ efforts for so many years.

The Rise of Consumer Catalysts Marketers, their agencies and particularly planners will need to retool, repurpose and reinvent their skills, transforming their efforts to understand consumer needs into an uncommon alliance. They must now not only engage, they must enable.

I don’t know if there will be a job title in the future called “Catalyst for Co-Creation,” but there most certainly should be a job function that takes the brand/consumer relationship to a whole new level of equality and mutual respect. This is a game-changing time that requires a new job description: A consumer ally and advocate who can be in constant contact, searching for ways to extend consumers’ creativity directly into the marketing process in real-time, all the time. At The Martin Agency, we’ve developed a technique to do just that called “The Brand Exchange”, where consumers, the agency and our clients are equal participants in “Blue Sky” ideation sessions.

Today, examples of co-creations include: Doritos’ consumer-created spots and Chevy’s student-created spot for the Super Bowl; Dove’s real women campaign, now running commercials conceived by and starring real women; UPS’ blog for their “Race the Truck” NASCAR sponsorship and GEICO’s Cavemen Crib website. And, now there’s even a Cannes competition for consumer-generated ads sponsored by Yahoo.

How such partnerships come to life in the future will be as different as consumers and their relationships with brands. Relationships that are sure to have a unique and profound impact on our clients’ businesses.

By Earl Cox
Adjunct Professor at VCU’s Adcenter
Partner, Chief Strategy Officer
The Martin Agency

At the beginning of each year, I like to take stock of the big branding mistakes made by well-known brands. You can find articles about this in various publications, but I’m including the full release here:

2007 Brand Blunders, By Kelly O’Keefe

“As we surveyed the year’s most notable blunders, we saw an unusual pattern emerging, some of the biggest slips were coming, not from perennially-challenged brands like Ford, but from consumer favorites like Apple, Nordstrom and Starbucks. Can a powerhouse brand like Apple appear on our annual list of blunders, when they are having their best year ever? Absolutely! “

“What better way to remind brand managers that even the best of brands can make dumb mistakes,” O’Keefe said. “Whether these mistakes lead to long-term trouble or a momentary blip depends on how quickly and effectively the brand responds. The fact that some of our favorite brands are vulnerable to slips should serve as a reminder to marketers everywhere: Brands are dynamic and ever changing. Every encounter with the consumer is important, and the loyalty of your fans never should be taken for granted.”

Number 1: Cartoon Network – What started out as a guerrilla marketing campaign ended up crippling Boston when Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network tried to promote its show Aqua Teen Hunger Force and its upcoming movie by littering the city with Lite-Brite-like gadgets that were mistaken for bombs. Cartoon Network’s head Jim Samples resigned over the stunt, and Turner and its marketing firm shelled out $2 million to pay Boston for its troubles. Oh, and the Aqua Teen movie flopped, grossing $5.5 million at the box office. “This is a perfect example of a market leader that just made a bad move,” O’Keefe said. “No brand benefits from being positioned as irresponsible. This was guerrilla marketing gone awry at its worst.”

Number 2: Apple – Apple spent months building hype surrounding the launch of its iPhone. But after a highly successful debut, Apple geared up for the holidays by slashing the price of the iPhone by 200 bucks, alienating its tried and true supporters who were the first to purchase the new gadget. Apple quickly apologized and offered early adopters credit. “Apple is having its best year ever, and its overall brand actually grew stronger this year,” O’Keefe said. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t slip here, especially in the eyes of its most loyal fans. This blunder cost the company $100 million. It could have been much worse had Steve Jobs not admitted to the mistake almost immediately and apologized for its gaffe.”

Number 3: American Sports – Lying and cheating were the constant themes in American sports in 2007, with each superstar bigger and each sport as embarrassed as the next. Star quarterback Michael Vick* denied involvement in dog fighting and was in jail by year’s end. Slugger Barry Bonds* – and the rest of baseball – Olympic hero Marion Jones* and Tour de France winner Floyd Landis* continued to be plagued by allegations of steroids (Jones actually pleaded guilty to lying about steroid use and returned her five medals from the Sydney games). NBA referee Tim Donaghy* was busted by the feds for allegedly making calls that changed the games he was working. And, the New England Patriots’* pursuit of perfection was deemed imperfect with allegations of using video to steal signals of its opponents. “Sports teams and athletes themselves are powerful brands, and there’s never been a year when bigger names in sports have tarnished their brands so badly,” O’Keefe said. “It’s tragic to see how the mighty have fallen.”

Number 4: Facebook – Internet darling Facebook made headlines again when it introduced Beacon, a feature that uses e-mail addresses to track the purchasing habits of its members and publishes that info for friends to see – and allows advertisers to target them by the preferences. But it came under scrutiny from privacy advocates, who argued users couldn’t opt out of the feature then argued more loudly when the Web site disclosed that even non-members’ personal information could be shared. Founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the site, “We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.” “Owning up to a mistake is a great first step, but Facebook may have to deal with members and advertisers it may have alienated,” O’Keefe said.

Number 5: Whole Foods – CEO John Mackey had an alter ego for the past eight years. Posting messages as Rahodeb (an anagram of his wife’s name), Mackey posted messages about his company and competitors, including Wild Oats, which he repeatedly trashed before his company acquired it. The SEC is investigating the postings, and the grocer implemented a new policy on postings late in the year. “There’s nothing wrong with a CEO being a cheerleader for his company – Southwest Airlines, for example,” O’Keefe said. “But this reeked of hubris. With everything else the company was dealing with, the last thing it needed was a CEO acting like a kid.”

Number 6: JetBlue – JetBlue’s attention to the customer made it a favorite among airlines and a brand to be reckoned with. Then came a February snowstorm that exploited the airline: Thousands of flights were postponed, and questions were raised about JetBlue’s infrastructure. Worst of all may have been the plane full of passengers that was stranded on a runway at JFK for nearly 10 hours (and a You Tube video that chronicled one passenger’s 43-hour plight to get home). Prior to the debacle, JetBlue shouted on the front page of its Web site, “Our promise: to continue to bring humanity back to air travel.” That quickly disappeared after JetBlue’s struggles. However, the company later introduced its customer Bill of Rights as a response. “There’s nothing wrong with making a brand promise, but the big thing is that you have to keep it,” O’Keefe said. “JetBlue slipped but seems to have recovered nicely with its new Bill of Rights. Its actions in response to chaos went a long way with customers and should help its brand regain its luster.”

Number 7: Starbucks – The coffee king built its empire on word-of-mouth marketing and the thought of one cup of coffee at a time. The past year saw Starbucks’ stock price plunge by more than 33 percent and same-store sales fall by almost 40 percent. Market saturation has become a huge concern, and losing a Consumer Reports taste test to McDonald’s didn’t help. Late in the year, Starbucks – whose Chairman Howard Schultz once wrote that “national advertising fuels fears about ubiquity” – introduced its first national advertising campaign. “Starbucks is one of the truly great brands, but it appears to have responded to weakening sales with a knee-jerk reaction to advertise nationally,” O’Keefe said. “Rather than signal strength as hoped, it is signaling weakness. For a company that has prided itself on providing an intimate experience no matter the location, Starbucks’ recent actions contradict the very fabric of what made it so fabulous.”

Number 8: Nordstrom – Nordstrom, long revered for its exceptional customer service and quality, has attracted and entertained shoppers with live piano music for more than 20 years. Stop the music. The upscale retailer has begun letting its nearly 160 stores phase out the piano man in favor of canned music even though a company spokesperson said it wasn’t a cost-cutting measure. “Shopping at Nordstrom is about the experience,” O’Keefe said. “The piano music is a big part of what makes Nordstrom unique, and it faces the very real possibility of fixing something that isn’t broken, which could be dangerous for the brand.”

Number 9: Unilever – For the past few years, Unilever has been the parent to children taking different paths in life. On one hand, there’s Dove, the pure, wholesome brand known for classy ads and its Campaign for Real Beauty and Self-Esteem Fund. On the other, there’s Axe, the immature, sleazy brand known for its sexist ads and Bom Chicka Wah Wah campaign. The family hypocrisy grew in 2007 when Unilever released a viral Web video called Onslaught that takes the beauty industry to task; a You Tube responder answered with a video (viewed 80,000 times) that replaced sexist images from the Onslaught video with snippets of Axe commercials. In addition, the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood’s Ax the Axe campaign that demands that Unilever can its sexist ads targeted at teens. “Kept separate, Dove and Axe could possibly co-exist, despite the despicable nature of the Axe ads,” O’Keefe said. “But Unilever goofed by chastising the ‘beauty’ industry for the very same tactics it uses in its Axe ads. As consumers find that the company behind the Dove campaigns doesn’t share the values portrayed, it could be seen as a betrayal.”

Number 10: FEMA – Just when you thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stopped its self-inflicted agony, an October “press” conference made news for all the wrong reasons. FEMA gave the media 15 minutes notice for a press briefing about the California wildfires. Despite the fact that no media attended on such short notice, the “press” conference went off without a hitch, except for maybe deputy administrator Harvey Johnson calling one of the “reporters” in the audience by name. The truth was that the “reporters” actually were FEMA staffers posing as reporters and asking “softball” questions. Homeland Security Department head Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post that the stunt was “one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I’ve seen since I’ve been in government.” “You could make a great case that this could be ranked much higher, but in all honesty, it’s what we’ve grown to expect from FEMA,” O’Keefe said. “FEMA has stumbled enough trouble the past few years to know that this was a preposterous idea. The real comedy is that it actually thought it might get away with it.”

Maybe it’s not so surprising that I would strongly endorse the new name for the most influential school in advertising. After all, I’ve deliberately avoided the “advertising” moniker since I formed O’Keefe Marketing in 1990. On the other hand, I’ve been associated with the Adcenter since its formation. Aren’t we turning our back on the principles that made this organization great? Thankfully no.

I took a little walk through time on the Internet Archive (better known as the “WaybackMachine“). Here that I found an article in CMYK heralding the launch of a new advertising school. The article quotes visionary leader, Diane Cook Tench, in saying the need for the school arose because:

“While advertising education has stagnated over the last two decades, the ad industry has not.”

The quote reminds us that the sole reason for the Adcenter’s formation was that other schools failed to change and adapt to a turbulent industry.

When industry leaders gather for our semi-annual board meetings, they seldom question whether the school is changing too much. Instead, the conversation is rightly focused on whether we are changing enough. Are we keeping up with the astonishing growth of new technologies, new techniques and new mediums? Are we opening our door to a diverse population that reflects the globalization of commerce? Are we immersing ethics and responsibility into the subjects we teach?

Thankfully, the school that Tench brought to life and Rick Boyko now stewards has not falling into the stagnation trap. The new logo is the school’s fourth. There have also been four directors of the school. The Martin Agency’s Mike Hughes is the only remaining member of the original board. (Sadly two of the three board members pictured here have passed away.)

When I think to my childhood impressions of Mr. Whipple, they are not very positive. Mr. Whipple is the television icon who made Charmin toilet paper famous, and Dick Wilson, the actor who played the character for five decades, died this week. Whipple was the unchallenged king of the real-life ad icons, lording over weaker figures like the Maytag Repair Man and the Ty-D-Bol Man. We fondly remember his contribution to advertising folklore, but my own memories are characterized more by fear than fondness.

The fact is that Mr. Whipple was kind of a jerk. He was the cranky, old manager of a grocery store where innocent shoppers were repeatedly badgered to keep their hands off the toilet paper.  As a child watching these commercials I always felt badly for the witless toilet paper squeezers when they got caught and scolded by the fearsome authority figure. (Never mind the strangeness of the image of throngs of adults, clustered around a stack of toilet paper, lost in the act of affectionately squeezing the rolls.)

Over the years, Whipple’s longevity made him a familiar face and his smoldering hostility was part of his appeal, which brings me to a clever observation made by Lenore Skenazy, a reporter for The New York Sun and Advertising Age. Lenore called me yesterday to talk about an article she was writing about Mr. Whipple and his brand-icon friends. She observed that old-time icons were generally older, more out of shape, and had more complex personalities than today’s characters.

I had to agree with her, having also noticed this disturbing trend. Mr. Peanut is soft and round, The Green Giant has given way to Lil’ Sprout and Colonel Sanders has been denigrated into a cartoon character worthy of a Care Bears film. Compare the new Maytag Repair Man to the old one and you’ll find that he’s gone from a chubby, old humbug of a slacker to a tall, bland male of average age and physique.

What does this mean for our culture? Perhaps a worrisome trend away from real personalities, like cranky Clara, the Wendy’s lady, stoic Colonel Sanders, macho Brawny Man, and, well crazy, Crazy Eddy. Look at a progression of Betty Crocker icons and you’ll see that she’s evolved from a grey-haired grandma, to middle-aged mom, to somebody’s sister.

When even our ad icons have to become young, fit, attractive softies it may be a symptom of a culture that’s read one too many self-help books. As for me, I think the fact that Mr. Whipple has character made him a character who will be missed. Let’s hope his passing doesn’t prove to be a harbinger of a society gone squeezably soft.