YOUR BROWN EYES ARE MINE

Eye Makeup for Brown Eyes6
Nice brown eyes. You owe me $20.

So, apparently, the venerable Borghese family, a family of 1000-year-old Italian aristocratic lineage, is being sued by Borghese, Inc., a company founded by one of them, Princess Marcella Borghese, in the 1950s to sell some foofoo water under the brand name, Princess Marcella Borghese. This brand and company was sold to Revlon in the 70s, who turned around and sold it to M&A conquistadora Georgette Mosbacher in the early 90s. Now Mosbacher is suing the family for having the temerity to use its family name to make a further living. Mosbacher is claiming she owns all uses of the family name, Borghese.

Ho hum, I know. When the 1% have a cat fight, it’s so much fun.

Aside from the obvious lack of merits in the case (at least to me; I’m no lawyer, of course, but does one member of a family have the rights to sell the family name in the first place?) this feels like just one more example of companies behaving like bullies, at the expense of their own brands. Borghese, Inc. is not giving love. Violation of Rule #6.  Also Rule #2: Perception is Reality.

Imagine if McDonald’s or Disney or Ford were to sue anybody with those family names (and there are probably millions) to stop them from using them. Those companies are anything if not hyper-vigilant trademark enforcers, but they stop at the unreasonable and ridiculous. They’re also savvy to the value of brand loyalty and imagery. They know it’s not smart to be a jerk. Not Georgette Mosbacher though. That’s now her personal brand. (Incidentally, I just registered the name Mosbacher with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, so she’d better lawyer up.)

As the NYT article linked above referenced, there’s also been the case of bad-PR-magnet Chick-fil-A suing some little silk-screener in Vermont for daring to use the phrase “Eat More Kale” on his homemade T-shirts, which CfA apparently thought was way too close to its unique “Eat Mor Chikin.” Yes, CfA, that imperative sentence (with its adorable misspelling) has never, ever been used in the English language in any variation before your copywriters thought of it and your copyrighters trademarked it. Just before the gay-bashing misunderstanding of last summer, the fast-food chain had already covered itself with bullying glory with this let’s-pick-on-the-little-guy lawsuit. Chick-fil-A (or is it Chik-fil-A?) seems to go out of its way to give us reasons to boycott them.

The Patent Parasites

And then there are the patent parasites; genetic and software companies who lay claim to the rights to things discovered in the natural world (like your genes) or ideas so obvious they aren’t even ideas (like backing up your files online, a claim by Intellectual Ventures of Silicon Valley).

There was a victory for common sense in this regard, however, when the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Myriad Genetics could not enforce patents it claimed it owned on the discovery of certain genes responsible for breast or ovarian cancer in women. This was such a forehead-slappable ruling (they even had Clarence Thomas write the opinion) on a blatantly evil ploy by a company to try and make an extortionary buck off of the suffering of millions of women, that it amazed me the plaintiffs had the gall to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. But greed has no shame.

It did, however, dash my own nefarious plans to become the richest man in the world. I have noticed, over decades of meticulous and exhaustive study, that a majority of human beings have brown eyes. This is my life’s work. I don’t think anybody else noticed this before. So I’ve filed a patent to claim brown eyes as my intellectual property. If approved (and before the High Court’s clearly anti-free-enterprise ruling, I had every expectation it would have been), I would have been able to charge licensing royalties to anyone on earth possessing brown eyes…brown eyes I discovered. I wasn’t going to be greedy, though: I figured a low, annual licensing fee of $10 per eye very affordable and reasonable, possibly a buy-one-get-one promotion or with a family plan for big savings. But multiply that by the estimated billions of brown eyes on the planet…well, let’s just say I would have been able to afford the legal army to enforce my patent forever (with surgical spoons if necessary). But now the activist, anti-innovation, anti-capitalist Supreme Court has rendered my life’s work and investment worthless. Thanks again, Clarence Thomas.

You can win the battle and lose the war.

Companies that indulge in bullying (aside from law firms and equity ventures), making IP lawsuits against individuals who pose no threat to them, seem to be stuck in the narcissistic notion that their right to own something because they saw it or thought of it trumps what the public thinks of them–that same public they want to win over and keep as loyal customers.  It is just plain stupid. At least from a branding point of view.

The article in the NYT quotes an IP legal specialist, Kenneth Port, a law professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in Minneapolis, “We’re seeing a growth because trademark owners are finding that the more kind of bullying conduct they do, the more the trademark is worth. They think they have to act like a bully to get the trademark stronger.”

I would respectfully submit that this is thinking like a lawyer, not a marketer. Since your brand really only thrives in the minds of its perceivers, to poison those minds with bad karma poisons your brand. Your brand means “bully.” Sometimes the best defense is no defense.

This may be showing my 20th century psych-major prejudice, but it seems that the people who make these patent/trademark suits (from Georgette Musbacher® to the ironically named Intellectual Ventures) have, somehow, become stuck in what Freud described as the oral phase of early childhood development. Everything they see they want to stick in their mouths, to ingest the whole world into their bodies… like The Blob.

But The Blob didn’t exactly have a great brand, and it ended up being frozen and dropped in the Arctic. Something that will happen to Chick-fil-A, Intellectual Ventures, Georgette Musbacher®, and any company that acts like a bully…if they aren’t nicer.

But this isn’t to say you should never defend your trademark or your patent. In fact, I would recommend that you do so zealously. But with common sense. Pick your battles. If someone seems to actually be trying to steal the equity in your brand to enrich themselves, or sell fake Oakley sunglasses, by all means go after them with your SEAL Team of IP lawyers.  Just think about the context, though, and what the cost to your own image (not to mention the cost of the lawyers) that would do. Don’t pick on the little guy (sometimes just a friendly personal phone call can do more wonders than a lawsuit). And don’t be a jerk.

Still, you do have such pretty brown eyes. Twelve billion of them.

 

 

POOR PHARMAS

Pizza-Wallpaper-pizza-6333801-1024-768
May cause some rectal bleeding and blurred vision.

Wait a minute, let me get this straight, did you just say that your drug may cause testicular cancer and some brain liquification? Well, in that case, what’s that 1-800 again?

I was watching cable over the Memorial Day weekend, and amid all the Salutes to our Fallen Heroes (mostly involving John Wayne movies), came an overdose of drug ads. Each one seemed to be 90 seconds long. I clocked a couple to make sure that it wasn’t just the time-slows-down-when-you’re-bored-out-of-your-skull effect. The first 30 seconds of each was taken up with the drug’s benefit, though not too specifically, to be inferred not claimed. Over half of these spots seemed to be a solution to my low testosterone problem. (It’s uncanny how they knew. Is it because men with Low T watch a lot of John Wayne movies?)

But then, after the 30 seconds of pitch, came 60 seconds of the mandatory FDA disclaimers. Yikes. Or, in one of the appropriate uses of a bang, Yikes!

These disclaimers were truly hair-raising (and not in the Rogaine sense), especially since they were delivered in the same, soothing tone as the benefit parts of the commercial. And since there were typically so many mandatories, it usually took over a minute to get them all in. So after the announcer talked about how this drug with the mellifluous brand name (like Cyllexify ™or Allurexa™) can solve all your libido-depression-incontinence-fatigue problems, she then started to tell you in the same comforting voice how it can also cause impotence, suicidal urges, birth defects, infertility, bowel impaction, breast/uterine/ovarian/testicular cancer, loss of memory, and bleeding from all the orifices. At the end of this litany of horrifying side-effects, the announcer always responsibly concluded by encouraging you to ask your doctor about Allurexa™. The last impression you have is that the pretty name may turn you and your whole family into flesh-eating zombies (some anthropopahagy). But hey, that’s a small price to pay for…uh…what is it supposed to do for me again?

Drug companies need a hug.

Now, I recognize that these disclaimers are required by the FDA for drug companies to market their fine products. And that no marketer would, without being forced to do so in such a “nanny state” as the United States (or any other modern democracy), voluntarily include these in their copy. Unless they were stark-raving mad (funny I should mention that; there’s a drug that can help).  So we should have pity on the poor pharmas who are discriminated against in a way that no other responsible company is.

I’m sure the marketing executives of the drug companies feel the inherent injustice of the straight jacket they are forced to wear while they watch how the insidious purveyors of food, cars, airlines, cell phones, toys, and every other product are allowed to advertise without having to mention the lethal dangers associated with their wares. Why aren’t car companies, for instance, required to spend 60 seconds in every commercial telling you that 34,000 Americans die horribly mangled in car crashes every year? Or why isn’t McDonalds required by the FOOD and Drug Administration to inform you that their Chicken McNuggets® (the 20 piece menu item, not the Happy Meal® size portion) may cause congestive heart failure? Or that Papa John’s be required to tell you that their Double Bacon 6 Cheese Pizza™ can cause colon cancer? Hmm? Why not? Double Standard™, that’s why not.

I feel you, drug marketers. It isn’t fair.

The whole issue reminds me of  how overreaching government interference squashed the success of Happy Fun Ball. I really wish that product still existed. It was more fun. Damned FDA. (Or maybe it was the Atomic Energy Commission.)

Not to be a doubter…

I do wonder, though, about some of these drugs. Now bear with me, I don’t want to come across as an anti-capitalist and an enemy of freedom. But if, for instance, the purpose of erectile-dysfunction or testosterone enhancement drugs is to increase the desire to get nearer to your loved ones in that special way (wink-wink-nudge-nudge), why is there a warning not to get near those loved ones if they happen to be female? Or I’m confused about the utility of an anti-depression drug that may increase the risk of suicide. Isn’t suicide one of the symptoms of depression? And if I’m supposed to ask my doctor (since she’s the one who has to prescribe it), shouldn’t I just go to her with my problem and ask about possible solutions instead of suggesting solutions to her? That’s why she spent all those years in medical school, after all.  Of course, I’m living in a dream world.

I know it’s a really cool patent for whatever this molecule is, and the holders of it spent a lot of money on researching, developing, lobbying,  legally protecting, and marketing it. But maybe we should pop an Abilify® (aripiprazole), take a deep breath, and  look one more time at the social wisdom of selling this stuff if it takes twice as much time to read the warnings as the benefits. Either that, or maybe an increase in lobbying investment is warranted…you know, to compete with the lobbyists for McDonald’s and Toyota. Let’s level the playing field, as they say on K-Street.

I’m not a doctor or psychiatrist. So I probably don’t know what I’m talking about. I should just stick to marketing.

Never mind. I never brought this up. Ask your doctor about Tabularasa™, “For a clean slate.™”

 

DON’T BORE YOUR AUDIENCE

Pimsleur
Imagine this going on for an hour. And you can’t stop it.

Learn a language in just 30 minutes a day! Sound too good to be true? It is!

Out of curiosity, I just clicked on a Facebook ad promising to show me the Secret Language Professors Hate–because, as we all know, and the video literally claims, Language Professors just want to get your money. But not Pimsleur. They don’t want your money at all; they just want to use up the 35+ minutes of your time to argue with you.

And that’s what this incredibly dull video does. Before you even know what it’s trying to sell you, it spends the first five minutes arguing with you (putting your straw man objections in your mouth for you, since there is no interaction). After that, it spends more precious minutes in which the perky narrator shares with us her own story of how hard languages were for her to learn in high school. Fascinating. Go on! (She does..and on, and on.)

All the while, the visuals are nothing more than a repetitive series of patronizing animations of adorable French mimes in berets,  cute camels in fezzes representing Arabs, and angry girls with steam coming out of their ears, all drawn on an imaginary whiteboard, with the salient copy points written at a helluva speed by a static hand with a Sharpie. What an original and economical creative technique! I could watch that all day.

I don’t know about you, but the very idea of a whiteboard is enough to make me nod off and wreck the car.

As I said, this tedium goes on for at least 35 minutes. It may go longer since there is such a thing as “longform” of up to sixty minutes, but I shut it off, even though I was curious to see how long it could go…and if watching my fingernails grow might be more exciting. But I just wanted to gnaw my leg off to get away from it. There is no interaction. No way to pause the thing. No way to jump to buy the product (even if you were sold in the first 10 minutes). No controls at all. Just shut up and listen…oh, look, a cute kitty!

Shooting Themselves in the Foot

This is what’s wrong with most Direct Marketing. Apparently, it seems to believe its mandate is to bore its audience to death. It presumes, going in, that there’s going to be resistance to the sale, so it wastes endless time listing those imagined objections and smacking them down.  It has no confidence that there might be an inherently attractive benefit to the product. And it takes forever to get to that benefit, giving its audience way too much time to rethink their initial interest…that is, if they hang around that long.

In the case of Pimsleur, an old and well-established language learning technique and brand, this is a ridiculous marketing approach. The inherent benefit of learning to speak and understand a new language quickly (versus writing or reading it) is self-evident. You’d think it would require no argument. But the rules of Direct Response say otherwise. Those rules mandate that you always go in arguing with your customer. That’s the way you make a sale. In fact, though I was intrigued about the Pimsleur technique, after the first ten minutes of listening to the straw man arguments against it (incredibly), the video actually started to sell me off the idea. It brought up objections I hadn’t even thought of. It was that good.

The other problem with this model of selling is that, even if I’d been sold on the product to begin with, they make it so hard to cut short the pitch and just buy it.  There is no pause button, no fast forward, no controls whatever. It won’t take “yes” for an answer. The link to the Add-to-Cart doesn’t show up for nearly 20 minutes. Who knows how many potential buyers don’t have the patience to wait that long and just give up? They might just go to Pimsleur’s site directly via an organic search, but then the DR company would have lost its commission, not getting credit for the sale.

Whoever produced this for Pimsleur was actually probably chasing good customers away. But you can’t tell them that. They’ve been producing longform DR videos for generations and they know “what works.”

As a know-it-all who has been selling stuff to people via advertising for…well, a long time…I’m going to open my heart like the selfless person I am and give some free advice.

Free Advice to Direct Marketing

1. Don’t hide the 1-800 number or the Add-to-Cart. Run it the entire time. There’s no conceivable reason not to. It’s not like they don’t know it’s a sales pitch. If your customer is ready to give you his credit card info, don’t get in his way.

2. Don’t argue with your customers. Concentrate on the product benefits. When you start arguing and putting anticipated objections into people’s mouths, you just piss them off. And a pissed-off customer is no longer a customer.

3. Don’t knock the competition. Especially if the competition are earnest and underpaid language teachers. This is really bad karma. And it has the other unfortunate side-effect of reminding your audience that there is competition. So you might, inadvertently, be advertising for them. The Pimsleur video takes several minutes telling you how expensive competition Rosetta Stone is, but also how it involves visual interaction…hmm, I should look into that.

4. Don’t cheapen your product. People will think something’s wrong with it. If you start comparing what you could spend for it, and then offer a price that is unbelievably low, people get suspicious. Did it fall off a truck? Is it defective? The Pimsleur video tells you Rosetta Stone costs $700, a language course at a university or night school can cost thousands, and a year abroad in a total immersion experience can cost as much as $100,000 (if your year abroad is in Dubai). But now you can get Pimsleur not for $30, not for $20, but for the unbelievable price of just $10. Unbelievable is right. What’s wrong with it?

5. Don’t insult your customers’ intelligence. The gratuitous use of the word “Free”, for instance, is insulting (the title of this section included). The Pimsleur video describes itself as a “Free Presentation.” And I ask myself, does a sales pitch usually cost money? Also insulting are unfair comparisons, like saying you could spend hundreds of thousands and decades learning a new language, only to fail, when you could master it in just five hours (in 30 minute increments) for $10. That’s insulting.

6. Don’t be dull. People need to be entertained. Show them love for stopping to listen to your pitch by making them laugh (and cartoony French mimes don’t do it). They are not duct-taped to a chair with their eyelids pinned open like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. They can get up and leave. Or click off. Or fast forward (if DVRing). So give them a reason to listen.

Apologies to Pimsleur

I’ve been picking on Pimsleur and their direct marketing vendor. They were just the most handy example, and, so as not to be a complete dick to them, I’ve linked to their site by way of apology (click on the screen-grab at the top–yes, I am a dick in that I’m going to make you scroll back up to the beginning). It may be, in spite of what their pitch may lead you to believe, worth looking into.

But the problems I saw in the Pimsleur video, I’ve seen rife in the whole DR industry. There is no reason, no constitutional amendment, no statutory injunction, no FTC ruling, and no mother’s warning preventing DR advertising from following all the Rules of Marketing. Just because it’s direct, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be creative, or show love, or be simple, or have a compelling message, or reflect positively on the client’s brand, or do all the other things that “mainstream” advertising should do. To the people looking at it, it’s all advertising. They don’t distinguish. So you shouldn’t either.

By the way, I can teach you conversational Marketingese in just ten minutes. What would you pay? $1 Million? $2 Million?

 

 

TO SERVE MAN

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No, Eric, it doesn’t make you look douchy at all.

Okay, aside from the dorkiest thing to have come along since the fanny pack, Google Glass promises to be one of those things that will have tremendous unintended consequences.  You get the feeling that the developers have gotten so carried away with solving the universal problem of people looking down at their smartphones while walking into traffic (or bears) that they probably didn’t anticipate that they were opening up a whole new can of chili. And not just fashion chili.

Google Glass is another example of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Like X-ray glasses (a technology that  kids from my generation are still waiting for). Or rocket packs. Or robotic lawn-mowers. Or helicopter-cars. Or the morning-after pill for men.

An old friend of mine used to call it the Neatness Counts rule of product development; “That’s neat! Let’s do that!” But just because it would be neat, doesn’t mean you should not think about the implications. It would be neat to have a nuclear powered motorcycle between your legs. But should you?

So what could possibly be wrong with it?

Here are the various, salient objections to Google Glass so far:

  1. They are a further violation of privacy, inasmuch as everyone, all the time, would now be Big Brother, recording everything you do or say and uploading it to a gigantic server in the black heart of Google Mountain.
  2. They are, in their current iteration, highly susceptible to hacking.
  3. They are still a distraction to driving, walking,  operating heavy machinery, and running into bears.
  4. They are clamping a non-ionizing radiation transmitter to your temple, like sticking your head into a low-watt microwave for days at a time (like who wouldn’t do that?).
  5. That they would accelerate the social alienation that smartphones have already started in society. But this time, just because someone seems to be looking at you doesn’t mean they are looking at you. Or listening to you.
  6. That they are the ideal stalker device.
  7. That they could be used to illegally record copyright-protected performances.
  8. That they could be used to upload pictures of you or (more sinisterly) your kids to the Internet without your knowledge.
  9. That they could be used to cheat in casinos (in fact, most casinos have banned them already, and they aren’t even on the market yet).
  10. And a whole bunch of Homeland Security issues I’m not at liberty to discuss with you.

There are other objections I’ve been reading, but I don’t want to lose my train of thought (oh, that was one, too: 11. That you’d lose your train of thought, and walk right into a bear).

To most of these complaints, I’ve read gushing enthusiasts and Google spokesbots just say “pfft.” One even said that he had heard no objections to his wearing his beta version from any of his colleagues, even when he follows them into the restroom. And Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said (and I’m not kidding): “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” If ever there was an Orwellian statement, it had to be that doozy.

Don’t be evil, Google. Remember?

It makes you wonder if Google’s initial slogan, “Don’t be evil,” has really been directed at us, the customers, all this time and not to themselves. Maybe we’ve been misunderstanding it, like that in that classic Twilight Zone episode in which the seemingly benign aliens bestow on earthlings a book entitled “To Serve Man”…which turns out to be a cookbook. (Ooops, have you not seen that episode? I’m so sorry.)

In other words, Google isn’t interested in what the objections are. This thing is so neat. And the reviews are just fulsome with praise. And they can’t wait to get it out there. And we can’t wait to strap it to our foreheads and start cooking our pre-frontals.

Besides, they can’t stop now to reflect; they’ve sunk so much into this thing.

One of my favorite comedians, Eddie Izzard, has a running gag he calls, “But we’ve come all this way.” In one bit, he describes how the Crusades got out of hand. A Crusader is hacking and hewing at the Muslims in Jerusalem:

Crusader: “I hack and kill you in the name of Jesus.”

Saracen: “No! No! Jesus is a prophet in our religion. We kill you in the name of Jesus!”

Crusader: “Do you?…hmmm….I didn’t know that.  …well, I kill you for your dark skin. Jesus was a white skinned man… from Oxford.”

Saracen: “No he wasn’t. Jesus was from here. He was dark skinned, such as we.”

Crusader: “Really?…hmm [reflecting] … but we’ve come all this way.”

I think that’s the dilemma Google finds itself in. It’s come all this way in developing this amazing new technology–a little temple-mounted computer–that they can’t stop now to reflect on the societal, health, and legal implications. Inertia is carrying them forward. This thing is so neat.

Wait a minute…what’s this button do?

WINDOWS OF PERCEPTION

iPhone 5I couldn’t help noticing the new iPhone 5 commercial from TBWA/Chiat/Day. It features a montage of pretty, young people taking pictures of all kinds of pretty things with their iPhones. Very pretty. Lots of appetite appeal (as we say in the biz). Lot’s of demonstrations of zooming, and cropping, and panorama-inginging-ing. It’s accompanied by pretty piano music with a simple chord and beat, like you’d expect from Chiat/Day and Apple. Very pretty. Altogether it is a quintessential example of clean, simple advertising.

Years ago, when I was going to Art Center to learn how to be an ad creative,  I was fortunate to take a rare class from Chiat/Day legend Lee Clow. (As far as I know, it was the only class he ever taught there…and with good reason.) Clow was the CD behind the historic “1984” Macintosh ad. He inspired us to keep things simple, to go for the heart, and to make things elegant. You can certainly see his influence in this new iPhone ad. He was one of the main reasons I decided to make a living in advertising…instead of neuro-ophthalmology.

The only copy in the ad is also simple, coming at the end where a voice over announcer says, “Every day, more photos are taken with the iPhone than with any other camera.” Very strong. Very simple. Very Clowesque.

Only it’s a fairly outrageous statement. Is it true? Are more photos taken with an iPhone than any other camera? With the Apple iOS continuing to lose market share to Android-based mobile OS, you have to ask yourself.

According to industry reports, last year Apple iOS had fallen to less than 20% global market share to Android’s 70%. And in an article in Fortune this week, iPhone is projected to drop to 9% from a high of 22% just six months ago. So either iPhone owners are taking pictures much more frequently than anyone else (like Samsung Galaxy III owners, or Canon or Nikon owners) or it’s just…oh, what’s the nice word for it? You know; when someone represents something that is different from reality. It’ll come to me.

I think, listening to my friends who are loyal Apple owners (whether Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod), that they are so in love with the brand and the product that they must believe that the whole world is pretty much Apple-based now. Why else would you have any other brand? Apple is frequently reported in the press as being the world’s largest company (at least in terms of market cap), even though it’s a long way from being the actual largest company, too (see Fortune’s list of Fortune 500). So doesn’t that mean that more people have iPhones, iPads, and Macs than any other similar appliance?

Nope.

I was looking at the stats on a client’s website yesterday and a curious datum hit me: Under “Page Views by Operating System” 72% were from Windows OS (which would include everything from Windows 8 back to, I guess, Windows 95), but just 7% were from Mac OS (it didn’t parse out the versions). If you add the mobile iOS , the total Apple share of this activity was less than 19%.  The balance was from Linux and Android.

I was surprised. This doesn’t seem like the world’s largest company. These numbers seem about consistent with Apple’s market share 20 years ago.  Not a whole lot of movement in the 29 years since Mac was introduced in 1984. By the end of that decade, Mac penetration into the personal computer market was also in the single digits. Like today.

In an article from last fall, ZDNet’s tech reporter Adrian Kingsley-Hughes headlines: “Mac OS X Overtakes Windows Vista in Global Market Share.”  The numbers don’t lie:  a whopping 7.13% for Mac to a pathetic 6.15% for Vista (never popular to begin with and by last year already on its way out). Further down in the article (you’ll notice, with a hilarious graph) he concedes that total Windows share has been unchanged for years at 92% to Mac OS X’s  7%.

So how can more people be taking pictures with an iPhone? And Apple be the largest company on earth? And everyone be using a Mac? It certainly seems that way whenever you go into a Starbucks and try to find an open table without that bitten apple staring at you.

Perception is Reality

This is Rule #2 of the Unbreakable Rules of Marketing. And Apple really does a bang-up job obeying it. Their ads, their brand, even their loyal customer base, all speak with one voice to control and cultivate that perception. There is only one choice in terms of computers, smartphones, tablets, and media players; and it’s Apple. So the iPhone ad can confidently state that more people take pictures with an iPhone than with any other camera, and nobody’s going to question it. It sure seems that way; so it must be true. The perfect sophistry.

Apple has done such a good job at synonymizing the iPhone with smartphones in general that when we see crowds of people holding up their little rectangles to take a picture at an event, we all assume they’re holding up iPhones. It’s hard to tell a Samsung from an iPhone at that distance, anyway. If we see someone using a tablet in public, we also assume it’s an iPad. In fact, no one uses the generics “smartphone” or “tablet” to describe these things; they’re iPhones and iPads. They’ve become the Kleenex®, Bandaid®, Aspirin®, Xerox®, and Coke® of electronics…without the ®s. That’s brand nirvana (except to the trademark attorneys).

Will anyone stand up for Windows? Anyone?

Of course, no one’s going to challenge Apple’s claims of brand superiority. You don’t have loyal gangs of Windows users coming to the defense of Microsoft. People who use Windows (including me), don’t feel particularly religious about it. It’s pretty much a generic when it comes to operating systems, even though each iteration does pretty much the same thing each new generation of Mac OS X does. But we’re not going to leap at the throat of someone who complains about Windows. Try criticizing a Mac or an iPad to an owner, though.  Those people are fanatics. (I can’t wait for the reaction to this post.)

It’s not because Apple products are so much better. It’s because Apple branding is. Just look at its market cap (#1 at $500 billion) versus its actual size (#55 at $108 billion). Apparently, people are five times more likely to buy Apple stock than Apple products.

Steve Jobs has been described as a visionary, a genius, an inspiration to all who seek to create heaven on earth. Of course, none of the innovations with which he is credited did he actually come up with first; the personal computer, the WYSIWIG graphical interface, the laptop, the smartphone, the tablet, the touchscreen interface were all developed by other people at other companies before his muse visited him. What he was a genius at, and what Apple continues to excel at, is brand marketing.  Nobody does it better.

Okay now, Apple owners. Bring it on.

WHEN AWESOME ISN’T

Mass extinction onestarbucks-latte

 

 

 

 

One of these two pictures is of something awesome.
Can you spot the difference?

There are some words that have been overused and abused and lately one of them is “awesome”. No, the word itself isn’t awesome…well, it is…but it isn’t, especially when it is used as a malaprop. I don’t need to clarify, right?

Oh, okay…if you insist:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first definition of “Awe” is

“Awe: 1. Immediate and active fear; terror, dread.”

So unless that pizza you  took a picture of with your phone (a phrase that is guaranteed to confuse a time traveler from the past) to put on your Facebook Page is about to smother the surface of the planet in a tsunami of molten cheese, causing a mass extinction event not seen in 65 million years, it probably isn’t awesome. Neither is the vente soy caramel no-whip latte your barista pronounced as an “awesome choice” (except in its tsunami of planet-smothering adjectives).

The OED’s definitions of “awesome” itself are:

1. Full of awe, profoundly reverential.
2. Inspiring awe; appalling, dreadful, weird.
3. a. In weakened sense: overwhelming, staggering; remarkable, prodigious. colloq. (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
b. In trivial use, as an enthusiastic term of commendation: ‘marvellous’, ‘great’; stunning, mind-boggling. slang.

Note the third and last definition, “In trivial use…”

What bothers me, a writer, about the overuse of words like “awesome” is just this trivialization. Words like “awesome,” “passionate,” “content,” and “engagement” are used so frequently and without thinking that they soon lose all meaning, all the life sucked out of them. They end up like packing peanuts, bulking up our language without adding anything of value.

My grandfather, a farmer, used to say that a weed is any plant that’s growing where it doesn’t belong. Some words are like weeds, choking weeds. And “awesome” is the Himalayan blackberry of adjectives. Of course, if the Himalayan blackberries engulfing my backyard continue at the current rate, they are liable to become awesome.

My friends and family recognize this as a running joke with me (and roll their eyes). My co-author and business partner Cathey Armillas now uses the word “awesome” just to tease me (as she does with gratuitous exclamation points, another peeve of mine). And I, in retaliation, put two spaces after a period, which drives her crazy. We know how to goad each other. Other friends and colleagues also use “awesome” too much, but now, when they post or e-mail me, they put a smiley face behind it and tag me.(See? It’s a self-marketing device.)

So at least I’m getting them to be more conscious of it. (A ploy to get people to change their thinking and behavior–also marketing.)

English is a dirty language.

Some people are defensive about “awesome” and challenge my complaint with the argument that language evolves and the current usage of the word means, “something pleasant.” You know, democracy overcoming meaning. I’m not challenging that. After all, the current meaning of the term “terrific” means “wonderful” where it once meant “filled with terror.”  And the term “fag” once meant bundle of sticks, then cigarette, then a demeaning name for a homosexual, and now just a jerk, regardless of his orientation.  Or how the word “literally” which used to mean “in the exact, actual sense; not figuratively” now  also  means “intensely” or “figuratively.” English is terrific that way (in both senses of that word). Yesterday’s “decimated” (reduced by 10%) has come to mean reduced by 100%. Definitions are now crowd-sourced (see the many entries for “awesome” on Urban Dictionary).  And democracy always wins.

In fact, English is itself an impure language. It is a living, dynamic means of communication and evolves all the time. It’s a mongrel tongue.  In a way, it’s a hyper-creole. As it exists today, the majority of English words are not English at all (in the original Anglo-Saxon sense) but French, Hindi, German, Japanese, West African, Spanish, Dutch, or just made up by Shakespeare (an alien). The OED estimates that there are over a quarter million words in the modern English vocabulary. English just gobbles up other innocent languages and digests them, growing and growing to engulf the world. It’s the Himalayan blackberry of languages.

But that’s good because it means we have, on the tips of our tongues, a vast resource of expression. If language is power, we have one of the most powerful languages that has ever existed. So we should use it wisely.

Tiny vocabulary. Tiny thoughts.

George Orwell’s theory of language was that a limited vocabulary leads to limited capacity for feeling, or thought, or ideas. At least that’s what he has one of his characters say in 1984. The character, a word-destroyer in the Ministry of Truth, explains that “…the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word.” Like “awesome” for instance. Not being a psycho-linguist, I can’t answer to the validity of this theory, (well, I could, but I’m too lazy to look it up), but as a premise, it has persuasive appeal.

One problem with having just one default adjective for the whole range of positive feeling is that when it’s a word like “awesome” you’ve got no place else to go. If your pizza is awesome, what word are you going to use to describe a mass-extinction event? Or even just something a little nicer than that pizza? (I know, but it could happen.) You’re already bouncing against the ceiling of potential human reaction, like an escaped party balloon. You’ll just have to pop when the shock wave hits you. Speechlessly.

But this gets me to my real point. Finally. I’m not decrying the promiscuous use of the word “awesome” based on some Grandpa Simpson in-my-day crankiness. What I’m decrying is the laziness of people’s speech. And this is nothing new to this or any generation. With a quarter million words to choose from, why is it that so many people can only think of one adjective to describe something pleasant, or delightful, or tasty, or refreshing, or exciting, or invigorating, or comforting, or inspiring, or even terrifying? English is a pretty versatile toolbox of ways to express nuance, scale, complexity, abstraction, and feeling. And a lot of us are smarter than Frankenstein’s monster grunting “Food goooood! Fire baaaad! You awesome!”

So we should use all of our words. They’re free after all. And we should collect more and use them (correctly) in sentences.  ‘Kay?

 

 

 

Cafe Wi-Fi: No good deed goes unpunished.

No-WiFi zone
Bless her heart. Wonder how this is working for her.

Caféteurs* are facing a marketing dilemma. The ubiquitous availability of WiFi connections has made it almost as standard a requirement for a café’s amenities as restrooms and a full thermos of half-n-half. People need to be able to surf the Internet on their tablets and laptops while they enjoy the fare. Or they’ll just go someplace else. But the dilemma comes when those people won’t leave. Long after they’ve done with their coffee, they’re still there, taking up a table. It’s just rude. And new customers, coming in at peak times, see that the place is full and turn right around.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

One frustrated chain, Panera, has tried limiting access. An innovative company, Panera was one of the first café chains to offer free WiFi, long before Starbucks.  And they’re one of the first to suffer the flood of WiFreeloaders.

The original marketing idea was to attract more customers, looking for faster connections than they get at home. But lately it’s starting to backfire. Customers won’t leave. Some won’t even buy drinks or food. They just come in, plop down, open up their laptop, and hog a table for hours. To discourage this, Panera is experimenting with a new policy: You now get 30 minutes of WiFi and then you’re cut off. This clears the tables, but it also pisses off regular customers, who always have a sense of entitlement from their weekly $1.47 coffee order.

I myself experienced this when I was meeting with a client at a Panera. We lost our connection in the middle of some online research we were doing, abruptly closing our meeting. It was like being kicked out of a conference room at Intel. My client was steamed and swore he’d never patronize Panera again. I suggested we move to the Starbucks across the street (no, that other one–no not that one, either, the one next to it) where we picked up where we left off on their free WiFi. But he still kept glaring back at the Panera, plotting his boycott.

Other solutions

An entrepreneur in Moscow, with Tsiferblat Café,  is trying something radical (What? Radical? in Russia?) by charging for WiFi access but offering the food and coffee free. This is a riff on the old Las Vegas marketing model in which the drinks are free while you’re busy throwing away your kids’ hope of ever going to college. Of course, that model is based on the fact that drunks are more reckless about making wild bets, the life blood of any casino. We’ll see how well the Moscow marketing experiment goes.

I’m sure other caféteurs are trying different solutions to get these people who won’t leave to…well..leave. But also come back. Panera, according to some articles, is reportedly thinking of awarding free WiFi only to members of their frequent nosher program, MyPanera (don’t take the “my” literally). I can also see a promotion where you get a temporary log-in password entitling you to so many minutes depending on your “points” or the size of your tab. This would be a reverse of the 6th Unbreakable Rule; Give Love to Get Love–Get Love before you Give Love.  It would still rankle customers who are not yet MyPanera members.

You can also do like Lulu de Carrone did at her Lulu’s coffee shop in New Haven, Connecticut and just ban laptops and WiFI altogether. Everyone predicted that she’d soon go out of business, but, partially thanks to an APM Marketplace story on NPR reporting on her Luddite stand (yes, pun intended), she says she’s busier than ever–as a haven for fellow Luddites, presumably. Ironically, we couldn’t help but notice when we visited Lulu’s website; you can still order your coffee online…just not on the premises.

Of course, it’s just wrong, to my socialist mindset, that we should have to depend on some  retailers to provide WiFi at their own expense, even as a marketing ploy, for us iParasites.  Their margins are thin enough as it is. Why isn’t WiFi a public utility yet? In some cities in the world (Seoul, for instance, with its citywide IEEE 802.16e WiMax) it’s been one for years. And the growth of 3G has made at least mobile access independent of WiFi.  But until access truly does become like air–free–the burden of providing it is going to fall on the poor café operators.

Don’t abuse your host. Be a courteous guest.

But what can we, as customers do? Well, as patrons, we could just be more respectful of other people and not abuse the gift. This is part of the 6th Rule, too; giving love works both ways. When a restaurant starts to get crowded, we could look up from our screens and say, “Hmmm, maybe I should pack up and give someone else a seat.” Or if we were alone we could only occupy a small table instead of spreading out on a four-seater like I’ve seen a lot of people do. Or we could occasionally order another mocha or cookie.

Another thing we could do is something they’ve long done in Europe, the land of the rude waiter, where the tradition of the sidewalk café is centuries old. We could just sit down with strangers. If you’re at a table in a café in, say, Paris, or Venice, or Amsterdam, you’ll not be surprised when perfect strangers just sit down at the empty seats next to you. Of course, In North America, this just isn’t done. We respect each others’ space. That’s why our ancestors, with their anti-social genes, immigrated here to begin with; to get away from crowded, sidewalk cafés (and you thought it was for religious freedom). But there’s really nothing preventing us in the Seven Billion Strong 21st century from sitting down with a stranger who is only partially occupying a table. Given the North American tendency for being polite, the likelihood that person will get up and leave without causing a scene (we don’t do that either) is pretty high. We just don’t know how to confront rudeness like the self-respecting Parisian.

Finally, there’s always the effectiveness of the Full-Tray Hover. Try standing next to someone hogging a table with their iPad, passive-aggressively holding your full tray over them. They’ll get up and leave. You won’t even have to say anything.

*I’m taking a liberty here with this word caféteur. The French slang definition of “caféteur” is a stooly or squealer. But I don’t mean that; I mean a proprietor of a café, like a restauranteur runs a restaurant.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

ATT Video Bill 1I don’t know how many of you have received your AT&T Wireless bill as a video recently. I’m not kidding.  So now, what used to take, oh, 15-30 seconds to log on, scan your bill and pay it, now walks you through a playfully animated video that takes two-and-a-half minutes to endure enjoy. It’s so cool because there’s your own name, right there in the video and spoken so personally by Happy Lady Voice, (OMG! How’d they do that?  I absolutely love her! And now she knows my name!). And there are your actual charges, also animated (the miracles never cease!).  The cartoon runs you through all the exciting new features of your bill, features you might have had to once view statically, without flying colors and foot-tappable music. Oh, this brave new world we live in!

But I have to wonder; who sold them this? How is it supposed to be an advantage to view your bill as a video instead of just as a plain page with a “Pay Now” button? Does it make the bill more exciting? Does it make up for the high price, the surprise charges, the dropped calls, the slow download, the two year lock-in contract?

ATT Video Bill
This is not my actual bill. Don’t get excited.

I happened to be in a coffee shop when I checked my e-mail and up popped this video, blaring out of my mobile’s tinny speakers and annoying the people at the seat next to me while I frantically fumbled to mute it. (Heh, heh. Sorry.)  Do the marketers who embrace these new “customer engagement technologies”  think of things like that? That they might be annoying? That they might waste time? That maybe I don’t want their bill all wrapped up in dancing graphics with blaring music and read to me by Happy Lady Voice?

It’s still  a bill. Just give it to me.

If you  search on YouTube for a sample of this, you’ll notice that the “Dislikes” outnumber the “Likes” by four-to-one.  I hope somebody at AT&T is noticing that.

Just because you can do something with a piece of technology, doesn’t mean you should.