Classic

Patrick OShaughnessy

I can talk to vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish and can check on their health

Bad Branding Choice

Plus it is from Fukushima.  And no Jess, it’s not Fhappy either.  It is safe for work though.

It's not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

Aimee Mann

Tell you a story like it’s a horror story

The drooping grandmothers, the crying babies, the continuous, raucous, unintelligible squawk of the loudspeaker, the constant push and jostle of new arrivals . . . make bus terminals look like luxury . . . . Almost all U.S. airports are utterly barren of things to to. The dirty little lunch counters are always choked with permanent sitters staring at their indigestible food. . . . The traveler consigned to hours of tedious waiting can only clear a spot on the floor and sit on his baggage and, while oversmoking, drearily contemplate his sins.

Fortune magazine, 1946

Seth Godin has a post that is spot on.  When you have a monopoly, milk it.  Pretty soon we’ll be done with the airport BS and just stop going.

I realized that I don’t dislike flying--I dislike airports. There are so many things we can learn from what they do wrong:

1. No one is in charge. The airport doesn’t appear to have a CEO, and if it does, you never see her, hear about her or interact with her in any way. When the person at the top doesn’t care, it filters down.
2. Problems persist because organizations defend their turf instead of embrace the problem. The TSA blames the facilities people, who blame someone else, and around and around. Only when the user’s problem is the driver of behavior (as opposed to maintaining power or the status quo) things change.
3. The food is aimed squarely at the (disappearing) middle of the market. People who like steamed meat and bags of chips never have a problem finding something to eat at an airport. Apparently, profit-maximizing vendors haven’t realized that we’re all a lot weirder than we used to be.
4. Like colleges, airports see customers as powerless transients. Hey, you’re going to be gone tomorrow, but they’ll still be here.
5. By removing slack, airlines create failure. In order to increase profit, airlines work hard to get the maximum number of flights out of each plane, each day. As a result, there are no spares, no downtime and no resilience. By assuming that their customer base prefers to save money, not anxiety, they create an anxiety-filled system.
6. The TSA is ruled by superstition, not fact. They act without data and put on a quite serious but ultimately useless bit of theater. Ten years later, the theater is now becoming an entrenched status quo, one that gets ever worse.
7. The ad hoc is forbidden. Imagine an airplane employee bringing in an extension cord and a power strip to deal with the daily occurrence of travelers hunched in the corner around a single outlet. Impossible. There is a bias toward permanent and improved, not quick and effective.
8. Everyone is treated the same. Effective organizations treat different people differently. While there’s some window dressing at the edges (I’m thinking of slightly faster first class lines and slightly more convenient motorized cars for seniors), in general, airports insist that the one size they’ve chosen to offer fit all.
9. There are plenty of potential bad surprises, but no good ones. You can have a flight be cancelled, be strip searched or even go to the wrong airport. But all possibility for delight has been removed. It wouldn’t take much to completely transform the experience from a chore to a delight.
10. They are sterile. Everyone who passes through leaves no trace, every morning starts anew. There are no connections between people, either fellow passengers or the staff. No one says, “welcome back,” and that’s honest, because no one feels particularly welcome.
11. No one is having any fun. Most people who work at airports have precisely the same demeanor as people who work at a cemetery. The system has become so industrialized that personal expression is apparently forbidden.

As we see at many organizations that end up like this, the airport mistakes its market domination for a you-have-no-choice monopoly (we do have a choice, we stay home). And in pursuit of reliable, predictable outcomes, these organizations dehumanize everything, pretending it will increase profits, when it actually does exactly the opposite.

Seth Godin

You want to know what its like to be on a plane for 22 hours? Sit in a chair, squeeze your head as hard as you can, don’t stop, then take a paper bag and put it over your mouth and nose and breath your own air over and over and over.

Lewis Black

People come back from flights and tell you a story like it’s a horror story. They act like their flight was like a cattle car in the 1940s in Germany. That’s how bad they make it sound. They’re like, ‘It was the worst day of my life. We didn’t board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.’Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?’

Louis C.K.

Beware Buzzwords

An Adobe ad…

Today’s Deal

To say that obesity is caused by merely consuming too many calories is like saying that the only cause of the American Revolution was the Boston Tea Party.

Adelle Davis

I hardly think so.  (comfort, wisdom, and tested techniques?)  Missed the mark on targeting interested customers.  Nothing like a Type 2 diabetic hawking lemon pie, cakes, and other carb fest concoctions.  No wonder that diabetics make up almost 12% of the population – and headed to 20%.  CDC.gov

Marketing and data is becoming creepy.  See: Daily Mail

Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No -- no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.

Irving, Washington

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Mark Twain

As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise. 

George Will

I don’t really care for Obama, Perry, or anybody else.  I do know that I definitely don’t like the change we ended up with. 

This post is not directed at the political types.  If you can get past Obama or Perry - from a marketing and presentation approach, what is your evaluation of this ad for Perry?

Effective, not effective, indifferent?

Tis the season.  Should be interesting…

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising?  Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

Norman Douglas

Me?  I think it’s PD effective.  Nothing like using your own words with images of failure and hypocrisy.

Don't tell my mother I work in an advertising agency - she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse. 

Jacques Seguela

Focus, Focus, Focus

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Steven Wright

Paula posted an excellent article last week.  Check out the link at the bottom.  I am still working out the dichotomy of unique selling and stop selling though…

How can you make sure that your company will be one of the recession success stories? Position, Position, Position.

It’s time to hear the message that your target market has changed the way they make their purchase decisions. If you want to make the most of the economic rebound (such as it is), you better be ready. What should you do?

• Define your USP. (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Focus on the value you provide.
• Stop selling!

Words at Work

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Steven Wright