John Winsor

Is a Smile Just a Smile?

I’ve been re-reading Anontio Damasio’s wonderful book, Descarte’s Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, when I came across an insightful story about context. Damasio tells the story of the smile. It seems the way you smile in a “staged” situation, like standing in front of a camera when the photographer says “cheese,” activates one section of the brain while a smile created by a genuine experience turns on different section of the brain.

This example made me think about the lack of context that so much of market research contains. We’ve all heard the horror stories of focus groups. Damasio’s smile story can perhaps explain why they don’t work as well as other “in-context” methods, such as ethnogrophy. The problem is that “in-context” methods take more time. In my mind, the time is worth it when you’re relying on the research to make important strategic decisions.

So many times I see people wanting to try and enter a new market and desperetely want to understand a culture, like surfing, wanting to immediately jump into exploring the way a product or marketing campaign might work or be perceived.

It’s great to be excited about going out and getting the story, but without going slowly enough to understand the cultural context, things can go wrong very quickly. One of my favorite stories of such a case is one that I expereinced on the beach in Mexico.

I was getting out of the water after my morning surf session. That morning I was surfing with a friend who had been in the film industry for a long time. It was still early and the light was beautiful. We looked around and saw a photo shoot in progress. It seemed intriguing that such a thing was happening in our small fishing village.

There was a large group of folks including a couple of photographers, a make-up artist, an art director, the director, some assistants and several models. As we walked over and inquired what the photo shoot was for, a tattooed woman looked at us with disdain and said it was for the Buckle, a teen retailer in the U.S. for an instant it felt like we were in L.A.

It was obvious that the Buckle’s creative team decided to be sure their photos were authentic – so they jetted the team off to Mexico to enjoy a little of this authenticity. As we watched, the photographer directed a male model jumping around with a surfboard in his hand. The photographer was yelling out “Rub the surfboard! Rub the surfboard!”

During the action, my buddy said, “Watch this.” He quickly strolled over right behind the producer and said very quietly, “The surfboard’s upside down.” All of a sudden the producer started yelling, “Stop! Stop! The surfboard is upside down!” which sent everyone scrambling.

The creative team for the Buckle thought that they could prove an understanding of the culture by spending a ton of money on a Mexican surf experience. The problem was that the team didn’t know anything about surfing. Obviously they thought surfing was cool, so it became the theme for that year’s catalog. But they could have been way more authentic by really understanding the cultural context of surfing, driving to one of the amazing beaches in Southern California and hiring real surfers as models.

They would have saved Buckle a lot of money in the process – but missed a nice Mexican vacation on the client’s dime.

Appreciating the context is all about understanding what activates the authentic smile that Damasio talks about. There is no way to really understand it besides doing the hard and in-context research upfront.

Thanks, Rob!

Rob Walker's Consumed column in the NY Times Magazine continues to be a must read with last week's article, entitled Street Couture.

Co-creation

I was planning on writing a post today about the great Sunday New York Times article entitled, Here's an Idea: Let Everyone Have Ideas, written by Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company. The article, about Rite-Solution's internal co-creative innovation process, was covered so well John Moore at Brand Autopsy that there is not much more I can add to John's insightful post. Check it out. It's worth a read.

Porsche

I love Porsche. I used to own a 1974 911 Targa (until I totaled it). Yet, every time I see one on the highway I always have a negative feeling about the driver, wondering what they might be compensating for.

I’ve often wondered about this inconsistency. How can I love the experience of driving a 911 while having a negative feeling when one passes by me? Is it jealousy? Or, is it Porsche’s historical antiseptic marketing which focused on the features and benefits of the 911. These ads have always been so disconnected with my own more visceral experience.

Things started to make sense last week when I noticed an article in Daily Research News Online about some new research that D/R Added Value just did. They asked consumers their view of Porsche 911 drivers; as might be expected, only 27% of respondents declared them to be ‘cool’. In contrast, 89% agreed that, if given an unexpected chance; they would love to drive one.

This explained a lot. While I might rationally dislike some elements of the Porsche brand, I have a deep emotional connection with the Porsche product. The article continued that Added Value was beginning to use neuroscience to explore how people subconsciously feel about brands. After thinking about my own feelings regarding Porsche, it seems like exploring the emotional connection people have with brands and products could give a fresh and deeper understanding to marketers.

To my surprise this deeper emotional connection is reflected in some new Porsche ads created by Carmichael Lynch which caught my eye on Room 116. I especially like the Speaking German and Right Foot spots. In fact, after seeing the Right Foot ad, my right foot started to feel a little heavy!

The spots are a great example of Porsche trying to be more customer-centric by connecting more deeply with the emotional essence of what it means to be a Porsche driver instead of continuing to be brand-centric and talk about the many features and benefits of their cars.

Just Say No

Seth's got a great post today entitled: Q: How can we get our company funded? I couldn't agree with his answer more; Don't. After starting a handful of companies, all self-funded, I have always been scared half to death of losing control when the VC’s come calling with “attractive” valuations.  I guess I’ve watched more than one friend lose control of their company because they bought into a vision of what some VC thought the start-up company could do.

That's not to say that raising money, in some situations, is necessary. If you must wait until the last possible moment.

Where is the Line?

Last night I was listening to NPR when an American Radioworks special called Logging On and Losing Out came on the radio. Billed as;

From TV tournaments to the World Wide Web, the poker revolution is sweeping America. Thanks to its glitzy presentation on television, and the millions in prize money, it's the pastime of choice for high school and college kids.

Mark Alden and James Silver do a masterful job of investigative reporting, diving into the connection online gambling companies are making at colleges and high schools to recruit new customers to their sites. The most fascinating part of the show was the disconnect between the rhetoric from the company executives, especially surrounding the ease of access for kids on to their sites, and the reality as discovered by Alden and Silver.

While I fully support the freedom of adults to gamble there is an ethical line that gets crossed when gambling games, like poker, are intentionally promoted to kids. However, there is a line that responsible marketers should not cross.

But, in this era of free market capitalism, where is the line?

In-Security

A friend, Pete Takeda, just passed along the Preface to his upcoming book about a recent trip he did the Indian Himalayan mountains to retrace the steps of a CIA covert operation in the 1950's above 20,000 feet. It's destined to be a great story.

To begin the Preface Pete used a Helen Keller quote to set the tone:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing.

Keller's words reminded me of the security we try to find in our relationships, whether it's someone we live with, work with or even a customer. Many times we gloss over the signs of change or danger, lured by a false sense of security. Every once and a while, before you realize that something is wrong, the paradigm has shifted. The relationship has soured.

Isn't it better to realize that a relationship with anyone, especially a customer, is tenuous, at best. Any relationship needs to be tended to regularly. Instead of taking it for granted, it needs to be explored constantly. When thinking about this need to explore a relationship in a deeper way I am often taken back to the words of the poet Ranier Marie Rilke:

Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will himself sound the depths of his own being. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity that drives those prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us.

We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us.

If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence’ something helpless that needs our love.

Can we all act with more beauty and courage when interacting with our customers?

Treating People as People

Guy Kawasaki has a great post on the importance of treating people well in The Art of Sucking Down. I can relate to Guy's story because I was just in Beaver Creek, Colorado this weekend and was surprised by the number of self-important people walking around barking orders at those that were there to make their ski vacation special. It didn't matter whether it was the maid at the hotel, the ticket seller or the ski instructor they were invisible to many of the self-absorbed.

I'm not sure if the cause of these bad manners is the fact that Beaver Creek is a place were real estate is approaching $1000 per square foot, causing some who visit to feel that they are more important than others or that the lack of manners is a result of today's harried society, where people have tried to pack so much in that they literally have no time to be nice. It is a sad state of affairs.

The highlight of the weekend for me was taking the talking to the maids cleaning our hotel room in Spanish. When the maids realized that I could understand them and had the time to ask them a few questions in their native tongue their eyes lit up. At times, it's hard to take the time to engage people in a conversation yet, I find it is always worth the effort when you treat everyone well.

Contrast in Philosophy

Someone just sent me this fun video of how Microsoft might try to rebrand the iPod if it was their product. It captures the different branding philosophies of Apple and Microsoft pretty well.

Power to the People!

It seems a hot trend these days is customer created advertising. Mastercard has been running its "Fill in the Blanks" priceless ad since the Oscars last week and has created a lot of buzz.

The ad asks viewers to visit priceless.com, where they can fill in the blanks as part of a contest. Winning words will appear in an ad televised later this year. While customers can create the words the agency is still controlling the images.

Likewise, Chevrolet is following up an appearance on this week’s Apprentice tv show with a contest inviting people to create their own spots for Chevy Tahoe. Visitors to chevyapprentice.com can win prizes for creating the winning 30-second spot for the Tahoe. Much like the Mastercard ads, Chevy's agency is providing the visuals and soundtrack and asking participants to provide their own copy.

While Mastercard and GM are dipping their toes in the co-creation waters to view the future turn your dial to Current TV.

Recenly Sony, Toyota and L’Oreal have connected with Current in a way that represents the future of co-created marketing. If the speech I heard from Anne Zehren, Current's president-sales and marketing, at the Boston Ad Club’s The Changing Face of Marketing Symposium is any indication these new relationships are going to rock the agency world. In her speech Zehren said, “Marketers grow up being brand guardians -- here’s the handbook, here’s the logo, here’s how we use it. Marketers now have to be brand hosts.”

The question is: can agencies make the transition?

To get a peak at of the future, check out the Sony ad that Tyson Ibele, a 19-year-old from Minneapolis, created last November. Ibele made the spot to help him get a job at a production company called, Make. He then posted the spot to his personal Web site. After the video became an internet hit Current tracked Ibele down. Current then showed the ad to marketing executives at Sony as an example of the future of marketing. They were blown away.

As Mike Fasulo, Sony’s chief marketing officer, told Advertising Age recently, “Agencies beware. It’s a great reinvention. ... These are the folks we want to tap into speaking to each other -- let’s put them to work on their terms, not ours.”

As I said in Beyond the Brand, “In this new era beyond the brand, it is the creative citizens of a community — the people and the brands — that will survive and thrive by co-creating from the bottom-up.”

Your customers are out there right now, playing with your brand. Their power is growing. What are you going to do?