John Winsor

The Perils of Research

Johnnie Moore wrote a great post about the Perils of Research on BrandShift today highlighting three interesting issues:

1. Avoidance, not curiosity

2. A fake conversation

3. Obsession with the explicit

An interesting dialogue has ensued. Come join the fun!

Philanthropic branding

Rob Walker wrote an interesting piece called Wave of Support in his Consumed Column in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about A/X Armani Exchange’s offer to sell shirts to support the tsunami relief effort. After doing some work for Patagonia over the years I’ve been intruiged by the notion that some of their customers look at buying a Patagonia product is a way of giving back to the planet. Certainly, companies like Patagonia, have a core value of giving. Can giving back be good for your customer, the world and your brand?

Co-creation Rolls On!

Wow! We've having a great time over on BrandShift hashing out some great stuff on Co-creation. Likewise, I am going to join Johnnie Moore to host a Podcast on the subject on February 24th. More details when I get them.

On another note, did anybody see the February 14^th cover of Forbes with the title of “Why Companies Need Your Ideas?” The article, “Have It Your Way,” is an example of  what Jennifer Rice coined as“shallow” co-creation.

What is Co-Creation?

We’ve been having a great discussion about what co-creation is all about on the BrandShift blog. Co-creation is not based on market research. It is about trying to understand and be in sync with your environment. Esho Funi, a central tenet in Japanese Buddhism does a good job of describing this syncronicity. The term means that a person or company is at one with his or her environment; where they actually become indistinguishable from his/her environment. Nichiren Daishonin, the 13th century Japanese sage, expressed it in one of his writings: “Environment is like the shadow – and life, the body. Without the body there can be no shadow. Similarly, without life, environment cannot exist, even though life is supported by its environment.”

Esho Funi suggests that we are not simply conditioned by our environment, including our customers and the marketplace. We are actually compelled to live our best within it; because there is no essential difference between our lives and our environment, our lives affect our environment and vice-versa. Hence, to survive companies must engage with the environment around them and be open to learning and co-creating. The BrandShift blog has been a great forum in its short life. Come join us.

The People Win

My fellow Radarite, Ethan Decker, pointed me to a Business 2.0 article entitled "101 Dumbest Moments in Business." And the winner is...Kryptonite. In an entry entitled, "Defrauding investors is sooooooo 2002. These days it's all about hosing your customer," Here's what they had to say:

"When you're a bike-lock maker whose slogan is "Tough World, Tough Locks," it doesn't get much tougher than finding out that most of the locks you've been making for the last 30 years can be picked with a Bic pen. That is what happens to Ingersoll-Rand subsidiary Kryptonite in September, after bloggers begin posting videos showing just how easy it is to pop open the company's ubiquitous U-shaped locks. The company agrees to exchange the locks, at an estimated cost of $10 million, but says in December that the process is taking longer than expected. In the meantime, many dealers receive no shipments, costing Kryptonite as much as $6 million in sales."

The power of the people to express themselves today is not the kind of co-creation that any company would bring on themselves willingly. With people's new found freedom to share stories about how they use and react to products companies must get out from behind the veil of their brand and interact in a dialogue.

Brandshift

I'm participating in a great dialogue with Jennifer Rice, Johnnie Moore and Andy Lark over at Corante. Come join us at Brandshift. It should be fun!

Izze's Little Secret

I wrote a post a few days ago about how Todd and Lance over at Izze really get the idea of co-creating from the bottom-up. Well, they've done it again! Lance got some Izze placed on the Heinkin Super Bowl ad. Here's what Lance had to say in a note he wrote to me:

"Thought you'd be interested in this. Over the past 6 months, I've been working on getting IZZE into art departments at commercial production and film production companies for some "less is more" product placement. We had a nice success with director, David Fincher, in his latest Heineken commercial, which aired during the Superbowl. Brad Pitt opens his fridge to about 6 bottles of IZZE and an empty Heineken carton. Here's the spot. LG"

Way to go Lance! To read more about it, check out Jackie Huba's post.

Mexico

I connected with Evelyn Rodriguez and spent some time on her blog. Evelyn posted my favorite story from the book. As I am in Sayulita, I always am reminded of this story.

       The story goes that an American businessman had just sold his business and was taking some time to think about his next business opportunity. He decided to head south and spend the season in a coastal Mexican village. One day, he was standing at the pier thinking about his next business move when a small boat with just one fisherman aboard docked at the pier. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied it was only a little while. The American then asked why he didn't stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, then stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos… I have a full and busy life, senor.” The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA, I’ve just sold my company for millions, and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, until eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York City where you will run your expanding enterprise." The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?" To which the American replied, “Not long. Maybe 15 to 20 years.” “But what then, senor?” asked the fisherman. The American laughed and said, “That's the best part. When the time is right you announce an IPO, sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions, senor? Then what?” asked the fisherman? The American said, "Then you would retire, and move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, then stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos."

       Branding is about having a dialogue with customers and being part of a community. While the fisherman might not be your average customer, he does act like most customers do. They’re living their own lives without staying up at night thinking about which laundry detergent brand will make them a better person or more popular with their friends. Yet, in the context of the businessman’s world, a customer is just that – a customer – rather than a person.  The problem is that so any brands today are out of touch with both their communities and customers. It always amazes me that companies act surprised when their customers get upset and suggest that they seem out of touch.

The End of Branding as We Know it (Part Tres)

After a hectic trip to Mexico I'm getting set up to get back to the job at hand, writing Spark. I have had so many great connections in the past week that I want to share and will be posting those insights and inspirations in the next few days. Until then, here's part three of The End of Branding:

         "People today expect the ability to co-create and lead innovation, forcing companies to devise creative solutions to be competitive in this new bottom-up age. Such an environment creates opportunities for companies who are creative and intimately listen to the cultures they are involved with; joining forces with other creatives including artists, journalists, filmmakers and musicians to create new ways of expression and creation. The resulting products that demonstrate a real understanding of their customers and the context of their customer’s lives will be successful. Instead of thinking globally and acting locally, the successful philosophy will be to think locally and act globally."

       "In the vast middle of the market, people will continue to treat brands as resources. These people do not have the time or the energy to be proactive in developing their own, relevant products. Instead, they will allow their peers to do most of the heavy lifting in creating new cultural materials – and then adopt those products as their own. Brands that connect with people’s imaginations, that inspire, provoke and stimulate, helping them interpret the world that surrounds them, will be successful. Brands that are able to make the transition to provide honest, original, cultural materials, offering space for co-creation will win. Proactive people will carefully weed out and broadcast those products, and companies, that they do not trust. Many companies have already discovered that being good corporate citizens can be good for their brands. In this new era, it’s the creative citizens of a community – the people and the brands – that will help companies survive by co-creating from the bottom-up."

The End of Branding As We Know It (Part 2)

Here's the second part of the riff from Beyond the Brand I started yesterday.

"When companies concentrate primarily on increasing their sales by using static top-down techniques, with only a secondary hope of developing deeper relationships with their customers, no agency or consultant can benefit them in the long term. To enact real bottom-up change in the marketplace, companies must incorporate their use of consultants and agencies, as partners, to help shape their brands and products based on their customers’ wants and needs – they must intimately know their customers at the front end of the process, not only as an afterthought. This ongoing engagement allows the essential space for co-creation.

The bottom line is that an intimate relationship with your customers has to begin before you offer them a product, brand, or service. Their insights, needs, and desires should be driving production from the bottom-up at the front end, and sales thereafter. As people grow more skeptical about common branding practices, and the presence of branding in the marketplace becomes more pervasive, let’s consider how some branding myths prevail, even as branding’s weaknesses are coming to light.

       Myth #1: Happiness Can Be Bought… and Sold

       Myth # 2: Brands are Empathetic

       Myth # 3: Labels Have Meaning

       Myth # 4: Companies Control the Conversation

       Myth # 5: The Vulnerability of Youth

       Myth # 6: The Myth of the “Consumer”