How does a company develop brand, grow into a sector powerhouse, and become the corporate behemoth that they are so ardently trying to subvert in this age of disruptive this and startup that?  

In other words:  How do you get people to fall in love with you and your company?

While we’re here I’d like to take a moment to state how much I think that the terms “disruptive” and “startup” have been over used, beaten to death to the point where they no longer have signal strength.  They have become just so much a part of the noise and, as such, no longer deliver the message they once offered.  Aside from that, the term “disruptive” also carries a negative connotation, i.e. “disruptive children”, while “startup” has become shorthand for:  “We have a baller idea, no assets, and are looking for funding.”  A company would be better served, startup or otherwise, if their messaging tended more towards the positive and proactive with a resolute focus that inspires the recipient to dreams of “What Ifs” and “Why Nots”.  I suggest we write new code or mine from ancient code to create our own brand of meme that immediately sets us apart from the rabble.  Using terms like “innovative” or “evolutionary” and “genesis” or “igniter”, while conveying the same information, has an immediate positive affect and better cuts through the noise to deliver your signal to audience.  It also shows that you are not part of the herd of disruptive startups – that you strive to deliver something unique, additive, a distinctive product that really is the genesis of an innovative evolutionary igniter.

Enough with the ranting, back to the subject at hand:  If we can find a new drummer we’re going to get the Brand back together.  

Mind Hacking is a relatively straightforward process that can provide determinable reactions based upon known quantities of human action and interaction, i.e. “What’s the best way to engage a person for that eight to twelve seconds you have before their mind wanders?  Ask a question.” or “If a person is upset never tell them to calm down, that will only make them more angry.”   I used to buy into all of that as the be-all end-all but, of recent, have come upon a more comprehensive holistic approach, Human Hacking.  It’s the difference between hacking software code and rewriting the BIOS.  It incorporates all of the tricks of Mind Hacking yet also allows for subtleties not processed, initially, by the brain.  We’re talking glandular and the fighting five senses.  As example I give, Love.  

With this in mind we set our sights towards what it takes to create Brand.  Building a Brand seems an “equatable" task on the face of it so let’s try to determine the elements that make up this math while utilizing the Human Hackometer.  

Human nature has it that we all strive to be the best at what we do, to inject the essence of quality in our work, our product, our business so that it ripples outward in a positive manner to our clients and customers which in turn ultimately reflects back upon us in good will and loyalty.  It’s a competitive thing – trying to be better than the next person.  So we will count Quality as one ingredient in this algebra aggregate.

Another item on the sensory gratification list is that we like to feel what we do has purpose, is necessary to the greater good which makes us feel we have contributed to the betterment of the community.  It gives us a sense of justification for getting up in the morning.  With this we add a dollop of necessity to this potluck proof.  

We also like to create things that are better, an improvement on what has come before.  As technology has grown it has allowed for innovation in sectors that, for all intents and purposes, had hit innovative walls from prior mindsets and technologies – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.  We’ll call this:  The “Have It Your Way” Generation Strikes Back.  We chalk innovation onto the board for this calculus computation.

Form and function seem destined to go hand in hand.  How we perceive something and how we interact with it are two sides of the same coin that goes a long ways towards leaving an indelible impression on our satisfaction glands.  Again, human nature has us hard wired to seek out beauty and the sublime if for no better reason than the propagation of the species.   And I believe that we all know how intriguingly well that function works.  So form and function get interjected into this mathematical matrix.

What we end up with is a formula that looks like this:


Q (+n±√I)/2f=Brand

 
What that equates to is anybody’s ballgame.  It’s mostly there to mollify the MBA’s and give them something to stick in their spreadsheets while we go out and sit around the campfire creating mythologies.  

At this point I should tell you to create a list from the items above and check them against your business/product, but I won’t, because I know you’ve already done it long ago and come up with a rationalized affirmative for every box.  This is all just superficial stuff, child’s play, but hang on, we’re about to get to the meat of the hack.  We’re digging deep, moving past BIOS and taking up residence in chipset architecture – the land of Tron. 

The question we really need to ask here is:  “How did a second rate apelike creature way down the pecking order from king of beast come to rule the world?”

The answer to this question will give you the overarching logic of what motivates human beings.  Will give insight to color of human emotion.  Tap into the frequencies of rationalization.  Explain Love.  Make your whites whiter!

I know, you think I’m off on some anthropological sociological rant that has nothing to do with building brand, but trust me, this is what everyone paid to come and see.

What it distills down to is this:  Humans were able to learn how to believe.  

No, not in themselves, I believe most humans rarely give themselves a second’s thought except when asking:  What’s in it for ME?

They came to believe in story, narrative, mythology, the abstract.  They banded themselves in tradition of belief that created tribe and state, money and religion.  This sheathed them mentally in colors of team that allowed for organization across barriers of distance and familiarity – to defend a complete stranger based upon a similarity of belief in an abstract.  More importantly, it was a flexibility of organization that allowed for banding and disbanding of humans to meet specific needs, building, fighting, migrating, creating social structures that allowed for human rights – another abstract taken on faith.

No group of creatures before or since has developed this ability to such a degree.  Chimpanzees will organize in small groups of less than ten but only with other chimps that they know, never with strangers.  Ants and Bees work in a very rigid organized manner regardless of familiarity but are lacking for any flexibility or spontaneity – they’d never overthrow their queen and set up a republic.

It is humans alone that will believe anything you tell them, as long as you tell it in the right way.  For a company developing its Brand this means creating a story, a mythology with all of its own shamanistic totems and talismans, sorcerers rituals and rights because, when it comes down to it, shaman and sorcerers were basically the tribal storytellers of their epoch, creating unity of brand, tribal team spirit – today they would be marketing geniuses.

That’s great, but just how does this translate into useful steps for marketing a new thingamabob in 2015?

Another tidbit of Human Nature is that we cannot formulate a substantial question without knowing the answer, or at least the answer we want to hear.  As example I give; hypothesis and Douglas Adams’, “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” wherein the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything was revealed to be “42” – we had to figure out what the specific question was to have it make sense.

How does this all translate into boots on the ground, practical apps for building your Brand?  I’ve supplied some of the answers above and the fundamental architecture behind their universe, now it’s time to figure out the questions.  To do this a company need find someone who can decode the right questions that lead to the creation of their specific narrative.  Once you have that narrative then everything that you do flows in a positive, compelling, forward motion, the weight of which constantly cycles to build your Brand.  Just stick to the story.  What companies should really be looking for is a C level hire with the title of CSO – a Chief Shamanistic Officer – someone who can sit around that campfire and spin the tales that will lead their tribe to fall in love with their product and their Brand.  Because, the best type of marketing is ground up, grass roots campaigns proselytized by a fervent band of acolytes to any and all.  

What’s the answer?  It doesn’t matter.  It’s the question that counts.  Once you have the right questions then you can build your narrative that cements your Brand and creates that elusive emotion – Love.  

Customer service is really about customer satisfaction and in this peripatetic world of instant commerce and rootless transaction; keeping track on customer satisfaction can be a Sisyphean endeavor.  It is only when something goes awry that a feedback loop is created to give signal to the noise.  The customary response to situations as this is reactive and defensive as, like a biological host would when confronted with a deficiency, methods are imposed to root out the problem and in doing so destroy some of the good along with the bad.  Backward thinking corporate mindset in regards to customer service can be, just as in western medicine, reductionist to say the least – attacking the outcome not the cause.  Whereas a forward thinking company will take a more holistic approach to its customers and their service by creating a synergy, a partnership if you will – if everyone has a stake in the company they are less likely to storm the gates at the least provocation. 

So, how does one grow an environment that allows for customer collaboration?

Let’s start by time lining Customer Service. 

Back when people were breaking it old school and technology was in its infancy, customer service had a decidedly retro style – take it back to where you bought it and they would repair or replace while throwing in some hot tips on best use practices.  A smile and a handshake went a long way towards building a brand loyalty that could project out generations.  A great example of this is Craftsman Tools and their no nonsense lifetime guarantee – you break any of their tools they will replace it free of charge – no receipt, no explanation, no problem.  Simple and to the point, it built Craftsman into the go to brand for all things implement related. 

As technology grew, call centers began to spring up like acne on a teenager and the distance between the customer and the company expanded.  No longer was there a face behind the product, just some amorphous entity that may or may not address the issue, but first you will have to send it in at your expense so we can see if your warranty has been voided.

Next, probably the biggest shot in the foot ever managed by the corporate mindset, customer service was offshored.  Circadian rhythm deprived foreigners were rapidly becoming, if not the face, at least the voice of whatever brand had cycled through to their phone.   This created, in the mindset of the customer, a subtle product schizophrenia where “Made in America” began to lose its cache and with it customer satisfaction.  It also made the customer feel isolated, alone in this world with no one to trust – it wasn’t xenophobia – it was corporate phobia - corporphobia.  The business model had become koyaanisquatsi.

The advent of the Internet helped to restore some semblance of equilibrium to the equation as people were able to interact, if not face to face, at least face to pixel and therefore regain a bit of control over the process. 

Then, with the upsurge of social media, the consumer was able to become a part of the conversation as opposed to what they had been – the butt of the joke.

None of this addresses the real infrastructural contagion in the soup that is customer service.  If we deconstruct we find a couple of areas of liability in the foundation:  First, CS gets crumbs when it comes to budget – it is not a definable revenue stream, so it’s an expense which cuts into the bottom line.  Therefore it doesn’t show well on the books.  Secondly, and this is the important one, customer service is designed and implemented by the engineers of a company – and we all know what it is like to talk to an engineer, they’re brilliant, but they speak a different language.  And if that is the language that is being used for the conversation with your customers…  I’m sure you can connect the dots here.

The ideal would be to have engineering build CS and then have marketing run the operation so normal people could engage in the conversation and not come away frustrated.  Of course, the holy grail of examples for this is Apple.  They are the blueprint for a holistic approach to customer service.  They have done so many things right with their CS that, well, one could write a book.  The Genius Bar – sheer genius.  Through product design and marketing driven customer service they have become a juggernaut and not only allowed the customer to be in the conversation, but to be the conversation and by that, fiercely loyal partners.  And they did this by continually asking themselves one simple question:  If I were the customer how would I want to be treated?

So remember these words, and try not to get caught up in the oxy that is moron, as you setup and budget for your customer service because:

Your call is important to us – please hold.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press he revolutionized the written word by democratizing the medium.  To understand the magnitude of what he did, try to imagine something like a worldwide network of information that anyone could access – oh wait, that would be the Internet.  Of course when Gutenberg invented his press there was ninety-five percent illiteracy in the world so it really didn’t open up the markets he had hoped for, but it did set the stage for the eventual devaluation of words.  Now before the Gutester came along books were only afforded to the realm of the very wealthy – it took rooms full of monkish scribes daily toiling to craft the tomes of the times by hand.  So, as an author, if you had a printing run of, say, seven you were on the best sellers list. 

Now your average plague pestered villager had not the least inkling of what a book even looked like so, if they did chance upon a misplaced volume it would most likely end up as a portal impediment rather than a conveyance for illumination or entertainment – said villager not comprehending that said doorstop was actually worth more than his village and the six surrounding villages combined.

Moving forward along the timeline we can see words steadily losing their retail value in relation to advancements in transmission.  As example, one need look no further than the almost complete decimation of the once vaulted Fourth Estate as a profession of wordsmiths.  Yes, the Internet, while on the one hand allowing me instantaneous research on varying subjects and, praise be to God, spellcheck as I write this essay, has created the hundred monkeys in the room with typewriters scenario – only nobody’s coming up with Shakespeare.  We have gotten to the point where there is too much noise and not enough signal.  Everything a rapid-fire 140 character at a time brain swill avalanche of nonsense about the latest kitten video making the rounds.  Well, I say neuter all kitten videos! 

It has gotten to the point where the medium is directing the message.  You try thumb typing on one of these micro keyboards for any length of character over a hundred and forty and see if your opposables don’t give up the ghost.  Our language is becoming abbreviated and symbolized in an attempt to convey the most with the least, because it is too hard to write it out.  Emoticons are now used prodigiously to convey emotion in otherwise sterile text – a sort of shorthand for the expressively challenged.  We can easily surmise a future where our technology interfaces become radically different from our current old-school methods to the point where it becomes too cumbersome to write out words on our tablets and we end up using nothing but symbols – an image is worth a thousand words. 

Don’t buy any word futures.

Wait a minute!  This all reminds me of something.  Could it be?  Let’s move backwards on this timeline of words – back before Gutenberg – to a time when words held so much value that only kings could afford them.  At that time the medium was stone and you needed a bunch of chiselers just to get your message out – usually on the side of some monument you just had erected on the backs of slaves in your honor – it’s good to be king.  Because stone was a difficult medium, symbols were developed to convey complex thoughts in a sort of shorthand – you try writing something out with perfect syntax on a stone tablet and see how soon you start inventing little smiley faces to get the point across.  Just to clarify, what we have here is a bunch of hipsters, because the scribes were the hipster class of their generation/epoch – what with their ironic facial hair and funky hats – walking around imputing things onto tablets.

And so, hieroglyphics/emoticons were born and born again and they have been confounding mankind ever since with their meaning.  We’ve come full circle.

In the final analysis we have to ask ourselves:  As words lose their retail value are they also losing their mystical value – their power to compel?  It was said that – this was way way back in the day – if you could speak the true name of God you would be instantly enlightened.  How much would that word be worth to you? 

Pssst!  Hey buddy, wanna buy a word?

In doing research on what the latest and greatest in media codec has to hold for us with the advent and application of 4K, 6K, 8K or whatever K you want to bring to the table as far as video resolution, it became increasingly apparent whatever standard or standards become the standard really doesn’t matter against the very large mastodon walking all over this web browser – that the cable industry as a business model, just as the landline base telephone industry, is doomed to extinction in its current form. 

Bold statement?  Not really.  The writing has been on the cave wall for some time, there just haven’t been any asteroids large enough, or in proximity close enough, to set the countdown sundial until now.

The asteroid in question is a confluence of factors rapidly reaching a maturity that will all but cement this coming tethered media extinction.  With the application of Wide Range Gigabit Wireless Networks coupled with some amazing new video compression schemes you will never have to turn your cable box on again.  Content creators will be able to launch their own portals, or channels if you will, to stream their product.  Consumer will no longer be tethered to “Channel Packages” that the cable companies have so thoughtfully contrived to sell an unwitting and captive consumer class.  Gone will be the days of 300 channels of excrement on the TV to choose from (to paraphrase Pink Floyd)– now there will be 3000, yet, you will be able to decide for yourself exactly which ones you want to subscribe with.

However the new business model or models shake out there are a couple of things that are certain:  The technical quality of the content (i.e. How it looks and sounds) is going to be head and shoulders beyond anything that cable is currently delivering and the consumer is going to have a lot more control over what and how and, especially, where they consume that content.

Ok, just a couple of more things about UHD, compression, streaming, benchmark people, and how numbers dictate everything and don’t mean anything.

Way back in the day, when the motion picture industry decided to give this new fangled talking pictures thing a try, they had to make some changes to the process.  The biggest change, (to the pocketbook of the Producers), came when it was decided that the jerky 18 frames per second that silent film was recorded and exhibited at would not be simpatico with this new synchronized sound format.  So what did they do?  Did they gather all of the greatest minds together and ask for a consensus on what would bring the greatest quality and therefore the most enjoyable viewer experience?  Possible, but if they did, they immediately ignored the findings and went with: “What’s the least frame rate we can get away with to make the action look smooth and synchronize the sound?”  That answer was 24 frames per second recorded with each frame within that 24 being projected twice within the given second for a total of 48 views a second.

Why’d they do that?  Money.  By moving to a 24 fps rate they had increased their elemental costs by 33%.  That was a lot of money in the day.  They didn’t want to go any higher, remember, there was a depression starting when all of that transpired.  Add on to this the extra size and weight that 33% more film added into the distribution methods of the day, plus, to mention the fact that projectionists, back in this time, made more money than plumbers and had very strong unions that didn’t look kindly on extra workloads for their members and you come up with the businessman’s algorithm: Q / $ = LCD or Quality devided by Cost equals Lowest Common Denominator.

What does that have to do with media today?  Now we are focused on file size and bandwidth not film rates and union work rules. 

Well, it’s exactly the same thing.  If you look at film as a storage system, which it is – you can collect and store data, which can then be retrieved – the essence of WORM – plus, the old school distribution and projection is identical to bandwidth and bit streams.  I mention this colorful exposé as analogy to show that human nature, like water, will always take the path of least resistance, especially when it comes to spending money.  Remember the formula:  Q / $ = LCD?  Well, that’s going to ultimately dictate what the numbers will be in the compression/distribution scheme for UHD.

Now, what are those numbers?

We don’t really have any practical application numbers yet to work with, as the technology is in its infancy but we can draw from some parallels.  Blu-ray DVD is the HD standard disc distribution system and H.264 has been the de facto codec for compression of media to that format.  A 90-minute HD film encoded to Blu-ray could have a file size of 20GB.  A UHD version of that same film, encoded with H.264 could easily have a file size of 250GB or more.  That same film encoded with H.265, based on a compression scheme that runs about 60% of H.264, you have a file size of around 150GB or more.  These numbers are in any way hard and fast, merely used as reference points to an ever changing and completely unsettled, at this point, playing field.

To the question of bandwidth and streaming, again, Q / $ = LCD.  I’m sure there are idealized numbers out there in some utopian media world where everything streams at 120fps and full bandwidth without any buffer under runs, but here in the real world it’s going to come down to the guy in the projection booth dialing up the speed of the projector all the while asking the guys out front, though the squawk box:  How’s it look now?  At present there are neither comparative numbers nor scenarios to go by in this area.  The numbers currently being bandied about in regards to UHD streaming are 10 to 15 Mbps.  Again, the problem lay not in our stars, but it the newness of the infrastructure – to paraphrase Shakespeare badly.

NETFLIX AND BENCHMARK PEOPLE

Is 15Mbps Good Enough?

Netflix recently started test streaming some of its product in UHD or 4K to some very good results.  And they did it with one of their top shelf shows, House of Cards.  Whether or not they realized it, this was the perfect show to use because the success of these tests gives us a very definitive answer to that question: 

Yes, 15Mbps is, not only good enough, but should exceed everyone’s expectations as a broadcast rate. 


To clarify, one need look at the creator/show runner of this series –

David Fincher began his career as a cinematographer who moved into directing commercials (a standard move for cinematographers) and finally into feature filmmaking and now, whatever strikes his fancy.  His profile rose when he made some running shoe commercial and he was given his first opportunity at big-time filmmaking with one of the “Alien” sequels – which he infamously almost bankrupted by going way over budget on production trying to get the “perfect shots”.  He was quoted as saying at the time, whilst in a war with the producers, one of whom was a friend of mine, that I am trying to create shots here that maybe 10 or 11 people in the world will understand what I am doing – to me that’s worth it.”  Of course the film was finished and it was beautiful and Fincher went on to create a great portfolio of other beautiful films.  I relate all of this to show that, in Hollywood, David Fincher would be considered a Benchmark Person.  Someone who has set a standard for quality that will not be compromised.  In his case, especially when it comes to the question of quality images.  So, if he signed off on 15Mbps then you know, with a certainty, that the image going out was more than acceptable.

We should start an awards program for BenchMark People!  I can think of several right off the top of my head.  And you’re not one of them – unless, of course, you are.

The general consensus is that marketing is about developing a message behind a product or brand and then broadcasting that message, in one form or another, to a targeted audience and beyond.

That’s old school thinking.

We want to break that mold by developing a more holistic campaign dynamic that feeds its channels out of an elemental singularity of concept derived from a distillation of narrative that resonates outside projected receptors.

Basically, I just said the same thing twice. 

Why?  Because, write this down, there is nothing new in marketing.

Since the dawn of time, when humankind first set foot on the planet, we have, all of us, been marketing experts – it was either that or die.  Life has always been all about the marketing – from proliferation of the species by making ourselves more attractive to the opposite sex to dodging death by making ourselves less attractive to carnivores – we have been doing the marketing shuffle.  That’s why sex and death are the underlying motivators in modern marketing – they’re the only two things we really understand – motivationally speaking.  They are at the core of our existence.

How does a thoroughly modern marketer tap into those elemental core motivators?

Easy!  No, I lied it’s not easy.  As humans have developed society and insulated themselves from the harsher realities of the natural world, one has had to develop a more sophisticated approach towards cracking that marketing code – yet it still comes down to a basic element.  It’s all about telling stories.  The first thing to do is discover and develop the narrative of your client, their company, their product, their brand – make their story.  Once you’ve created that then you need to distill this narrative down into its most base component.  From that you grow the message.  And the message is:  This product/service makes you look good or makes your life easier – sex or death, baby - that easy.

Now comes the hard part.

Who is your audience?

Look in the mirror.  If you can’t sell it to yourself why would anybody else buy?  You’ve created this new narrative that you want other people to absorb into their narrative – that’s right, everyone has got their own narrative –and believe me, they are the stars of those narratives and very protective of them as well.  To do this you need to disrupt their flow of narrative momentarily with something that is attractive enough they can’t help but weave it into their own story.  It’s all about getting them to make your story part of their story and if it’s a tip on how to get laid or avoid the grim reaper then they are probably going to pay attention.

Where are your clients’ customers?

It doesn’t matter.  That’s the easy part.  Finding an audience is like a lion looking for lunch – find the right watering hole and wait.  The particular animal you are looking for is bound to show up.  You should really be asking:  Where are your clients?

That’s a 30 for now.

How can we create Brand Loyalty?

Indoctrination.  Let’s take a page from a company that I believe most people have a passing acquaintance, Starbucks.  The success that Starbucks has achieved: Coming straight out of Seattle and growing to ubiquitous world domination that will most likely see its morphing into a chain of upscale sit-down Bistros that no longer serve coffee, is truly amazing.  

Yet their success is based upon simple brain hacks that led to the creation of what could be termed “The Cult of Starbucks”.  (And, along the way, ruined a perfectly good 25¢ cup of “Joe” – free refills, with a $2.00 cup – sans refills) This was accomplished by using a term substitution reprograming method – Tall, Grande, or Venti anyone?  You ever notice how they patiently, and subtly correct anyone who ordered small, medium, or large – as if we were all children?  All by design.  Once you know the language you are already part of the culture.  But, there is more to it than just that.

To further amplify the Starbucks strategy I have inserted below a section from another piece I wrote that delves into the subject.  Several years ago I was creating this character, a disillusioned film school professor, and story over a series of blog post – chapters, if you will.  What follows is an exert from one of these posts as he discusses the success of Starbucks.


“Of course all my students want to know what makes a film successful – monetarily – critically they don’t give a crap – this is the show me the money generation and they’re going to get theirs – come hell or high water.  So we look at the latest box office bonanza’s to try and figure out the common thread.  But they are too close to their subject to formulate any kind of rational observations beyond the technique.  So I suggest to them that we pull back – re-establish our point of reference – look at the bigger picture – and that takes us to Starbucks for a mocha-frapa-latte grande.

So, after we all order our steaming hot milk foamed caffeinated beverages from – I always delight in pointing out to these vapid Terrantino’s – some of my former students now happily ensconced in the rat race of their destiny – we sit and ponder the great mystery of life – how to make a shitload of money.  I ask them what they think it is that makes Starbucks the success that it has been.  Brilliant marketing plan – filling an untapped market – seductive indoctrination into a cult-like situation with brain programming word sets that redefine objects with alternate language – What?  Marketing major – go figure.

I tell my teaching assistant to get me one of those maple scones – I swear they’ll be the death of me – while I ask this group of excuses for sentient beings what their first memory is – the one buried deep in foundation of their misfiring synapse.  I won’t bother with the myriad answers – all incorrect – it’s good to be the professor – that geyser forth from this mob of miscreants.  Their first real memory is of that fleshy orb – bloated and heaving – the directions clearly marked with a dissimilar color – protruding bull’s-eye – rushing heaven-sent towards the visage – docking naturally – a perfect fit – with the oral cavity.  Ah sweet nectar – life’s sustenance – this honey of the gods.  And that’s what made Starbucks the success it is today.  Breast-feeding.  They are speechless – dumbfounded – they thinkest me offest my rocker.  My teaching assistant returns with a blueberry scone – they’re out of the maple.  I throw a fit – she flips me off and eats the scone.

Settle down everybody – let me explain.  Look at what’s in the cup you’re holding – a little coffee and a whole lot of warm frothy milk in a perfectly designed container – the lid of which has a little hole to suck out the contents within.  Now, let’s look at mother’s milk – the remnants of this mornings caffeine fix – courtesy of the blood stream – and a whole lot of warm frothy milk – courtesy of the aerobics workout mom just finished – all neatly delivered in a perfectly designed container with a little hole to suck out the contents.  I tell you its genius – while we were all out searching for our inner children to give them the eviction notices they deserve – the bastards at Starbucks plotted to give aid and comfort to the enemy within by feeding us and feeding off our most base desire – to be nurtured – to suckle once again – to regain that precious innocence.  And, of course, we fell for it – stupid inner child.

I wonder if Starbucks changed the color of their cup lids to a pleasing shade of brown might that boost sales. What does this have to do with money making films you ask - I haven’t got a clue - I just wanted to get some joe…

I’ll have two Vente Cappuccino’s to go, please.”


And that is a part of the Starbucks success formula – another other is, they make a darn good cup of coffee.  

How do these observations translate out to your enterprise? 

Easy, if you have a quality product and you can create a culture to surround it you can engage your customers in ways that make them care about the culture and the product.

A fresh approach!  That’s right, just as the best pizza is created with the very finest of fresh ingredients, a great creative marketing campaign in this age of hyperbolic media bombardment is one that can rise above that fray and present itself in a fresh and compelling manner reaching, in varying forms, across multiple media channels with content that ultimately act as shiny lures to capture your audiences’ attention and convey your message.

Plus, with the Zombie Apocalypse fast approaching it’s never too soon to find the perfect marketing creative.  As a matter of fact, if you act now you will be insuring that, when the horde does lay siege, your brand will be positioned to not only survive but to grow into the epoch.

Don’t fall prey to the old:  “It takes a zombie to market a zombie.”

You’re going to need nimble, out of the box ideation.  Something that breaks through the beige with a big splash of crimson – and not just from zombie brains.  You are going to need a marketing samurai – a paladin questing across the media wasteland in search of the ultimate campaign.

Think of it this way: 

If you hire someone who was in charge of marketing for the past ten years at McDonalds what do you get?  

You get tens years worth of McDonalds marketing.  In other words, you get very conservative corporate messaging; because big corps can be loathe to do anything that isn’t tried and true – since they’ve got brand to protect.  What you don’t get is disruptive messaging – something that gains the attention of the short attention span masses, or zombies.  You also don’t get that startup mentality that really is the framework for this new economy.

So, even if your company has been in business for a bunch of years, now is the time to reboot and kick start your business into this new millennium with some disruptive marketing.

What is marketing, disruptive or otherwise?

Marketing is an enigma wrapped inside a riddle – like a big calzone.  If anyone tells you that you need to adhere to some ancient tome of rules to marketing you should run away as quickly as possible.  Rules imply a confinement, a rigidness that seems the very antithesis of what great creative marketing should aspire to become.  I am not advocating anarchy here, there are guidelines – formulas, if you will – that one can utilize that will go a long ways toward producing the desired effect – engaging your audience.

Let’s face it; in this age everyone is a marketer.  People have tried to label this as the age of the celebrity – ultimately, I feel it will be deemed the age of the marketer, because isn’t that really what all these so called celebrities are doing?  I’m marketing myself right now. 

What is the easiest and most effective way to engage an audience with your content?

Ask a question.  That’s right, human beings are hardwired to want to try and prove themselves worthy so they will go out of their way to engage and either prove that they know the answer or learn the answer for the next opportunity.   It’s a brain hack.  I bet you can’t tell me the next best way to engage.  Yes, issue a challenge.

Great marketing is all about creating compelling narratives that inspire your audience.  The most basic of narrative formulas goes as:  Present a problem, reveal a solution.  This could easily translate as:  “Don’t want to cook dinner tonight?  Get the Zombie Brain Pizza Special at The Pie Place.”  It is this distillation of messaging that has become a requirement within this media bombarded short attention span society. 

Great marketing is also about taking risks.  This piece of writing for example – I could have been conservative and made it all about the mechanics of marketing but, instead I went out on a limb with the whole zombie angle.  For my money it is much more compelling this way – more disruptive – more artistic.

What is the difference between a picture and a work of art?

A work of art is the distillation of a narrative down into its most singular form, whereas a picture is just that.

Put some artistry into your marketing.

What’s it take to create Brand in the realm of popular culture?

Cementing a brand into the zeitgeist of a culture is not that easy yet, not an insurmountable task either – it just takes a little science and magic. 

There are some key ingredients that, although they will not alone guarantee success, will set a sturdy foundation with which to build success from. 

The first, and most important, (taking a page from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) is ‘Quality’.  If you lead with Quality then no one can fault your efforts.  Add to this, ‘Uniqueness’, which separates your brand from the hoi polloi of corporate beige and you are well on your way to building a distinctive brand.  The third, and most elusive, ingredient is, ‘Desire’, which, if you can capture it, will create a product loyalty that turns your noun of a brand into a verb. 

(I was going to use ‘Exceptionality’ instead of ‘Uniqueness’ so I could do a whole riff on QED, but then thought the better of it…)

Quality and Uniqueness are elementals and, as such, can be defined, measured, replicated, and therefore fall under the heading of science.

The magic comes from Desire, as it is an emotion, which can be far more difficult to manifest and hold on to as it resides in an ephemeral realm.

(I could go into a whole thing here about how Apple has exploited these three ingredients to massive success, but I think we all know that story)

Let us assume that your product or service has the first two ingredients, Quality and Uniqueness, in spades! 

Now…

How can we capture Desire?

We go back to school.  Someone once said: (I think it was me) “Real life, with all of its cliques, hierarchies, and social dramas, is just college without the campus.”  One thing that college does better than any Madison Avenue marketing firm is build Desire for Brand – in this case, the football team.  Schools are known for their sports teams over any other aspect of legitimate curriculum – reaching the realm of Icon.  Teams are rallied around and players worshipped – it’s tribal in its nature, creating us versus them fervors tapping into fierce primordial protective veins that can carry on throughout life.  

Imagine if you could foster that same emotional Desire – that loyalty – with your customers.  What would you give to have your customers painting your logo on their chest?  You could get rid of the marketing department – oh, wait…

How do we achieve that level of customer commitment?

I’m not going to go into all of the Jedi mind tricks and team building exercises that play out and into building a schools’ team loyalty because, in the real world, things need to be adapted to a more diverse and dispersed audience.  What it distills down to is building loyalty by engaging the customer and making them feel as if they are partners with you in your product – in your Brand.  You make them part of the team.  Make them want to defend the Brand and, in doing so, promote the Brand.  Because they know that it is the best and, by virtue, they are the best.

Pie in the sky stuff is great, but what about practical apps?

The best content is the content that users supply!  Youtube and Ebay are two examples of a user supplied content business model showing extraordinary success.  Now your business model may be set to a different frequency – you provide a service or sell a product, yet the basic concept of user supplied content can still work to your advantage.  With Social Media now in heavy rotation, customer loyalty and customer engagement campaigns are now easier than ever to execute and with minimal budgeting by allowing for a USC program.  And by utilizing this approach you are well on your way to building a team with your customers.

How can we make a “Viral Video”?

You can’t.  Anyone who tells you they can create a viral video should have a great deal of distance put between them and you.  They may make a video that goes viral, but… you get the idea.

The term “Viral Video” in this instant gratification society has come to replace more moderate terms like; commercial, video, marketing spot, etc.  Sure, it’s full of hope and glory that whatever content you are creating is going to set the Internet on fire yet, its ubiquity of use has rendered it meaningless. There is no magic formula to creating a “Viral Video”, no holy grail.  Now, there are videos that go viral and most of those have content that contains cats or epic fails or are of a salacious nature.  Rarely does their material come anywhere close to a quality and substance, or provide a messaging that one would want to relate to their brand.

There are some guidelines that can be used in creating compelling content that will, if not make a video viral, produce messaging to engage and compel your audience in ways that really matter – actionable results and brand development. 

Keep it simple.

The best content has a clarity of voice that conveys concise messaging to a targeted market.  It knows what it is and what it wants to achieve.  It doesn’t try to be all things to all people.  It is precise in its motive and execution because it is better to reach 100% of your market than it is to reach 10% of the Internet.

Keep it short.

Small is good.  It has been noted that the attention span for just about everyone has shrunk considerably – to the point where it is now around twelve seconds.  So how do you get someone to make the commitment to watch a video that has some length to it – sell popcorn?  The best messaging is such that has been distilled down to its elemental ingredients – in other words, stay on message with a singular call to action.

Keep it entertaining.

Compelling content allows for the unexpected.  In this mad-dash din of a hypermedia world where everyone is trying to sell everyone else it can be a challenge to elevate above the horde and amplify messaging to an audience.  When you do connect, its best that your content be entertaining.  One way to achieve this is to inject an element of the unexpected –add some whimsy.  Make it so that your audience reaction is:  Hey, that was cool.  Doing this will leave a positive and memorable impression.  And, isn’t that the goal here?  To have your audience remember you – your brand.