Category: Marketing

How to save Occupy Wall Street

The ‘return of our capital’ for the 99% might be the greater principle over ‘return on my capital’, but we face a quandary if taken too far: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Winston Churchill

The success and rapid ascension to the world stage of the Occupy Wall Street movement has forced the enterprise to realize it is a brand that needs investment and funding is paramount; so much so they could no longer be functioning within a month! But is their something more fundamentally wrong with “Occupy Wall Street” that if strategically corrected could boost their sustainable appeal and help provide the movement momentum and much needed funding?

Plato wisely said, “Necessity, is the Mother of invention” therefore, words before “but” are redundant. Skeptics and ehadists belie capitalism has deliberately created a disproportionate deluge and in its wake it punishes, intoxicates and behaves like a despot in the world’s markets, radically debilitating infrastructure and diminishing local economies both to work and provide for themselves and forcing upon all an ever-increasing sense of imperceptible vulnerability.

Capitalism is like a sow with nine teats and 15 babies: crisis is the price of capitalism, that’s the core of the problem. And what created it needs to be fundamentally improved. That we agree. OWS has a role, but it will be a vague memory without cash. Many current interpretations of OWS, (like some of their perceptions of capitalism) are malicious, mischievous, and ill informed. Demonstrably OWS brought people together and out of our frustration, sense of injustice and hope they helped start a world wide movement. That’s OWS: a platform for change. That’s truly great, but getting $50 out of someone is a lot harder.

Without a brand reinvention and clarity of purpose I cannot see OWS playing the role it deserves to play. To build trust, OWS need to reinvent themselves including changing their name. Entrepreneurial lore states that a new ‘brand’ may have 3-4 strategic revisions before it finds it’s rightful place. Occupy Wall Street carries with it an excessive amount of uneasiness if looked at literally by the public. Every inch of media has exposed OWS in a revolutionary light and edged it out on the fray: a brand declines when it’s no longer sublime. To come to the center, OWS need to shift OWS and therefore, OWS need to review their brands architecture that has spawned across cities and countries and seek to find a ‘public facing’ solution that suits the needs of a sustainable fund raising  ‘brand’ i.e., wake up running.

The Email Spring

As the festive Yule tide tasted, we all enjoy abundant salt, sugar, fat and phosphates, fried chicken, ribs, hamburgers, ice cream, pop, pie…and email: they’ve all become embedded into our wastes and our way of life.

Trillions of emails (80% of which are junk or spam) engulf our precious time on and off the job, including after work email alerting us innocent recipients much more thought time ‘off the job’. Business is a daily war and takes one-third weaponry and two-thirds moral: shareholder value is a result of satisfying customers by a business that’s working well due to its people being on top form. In the case of VW in Germany, there was a growing litany of complaints that staff’s work and home lives were becoming blurred, so, Volkswagen agreed to stop routing emails 30 minutes after the end of employees’ shifts, and then start again 30 minutes before they return to work. Henkel implemented a similar strategy for the festivitie period. German innovation aside, are we about to witness an “Email Spring” in 2012?

Smart phones and PCs are endemic in our society and the wiz, bang, wallop world of ecommerce zips through us literally. What’s in a few company emails? Recent studies reveal that over 65% of us open work emails at home and on vacation. Understandably, workers are suffering from the ever-increasing problem of ’email stress’ as they struggle to cope with an unending onslaught of messages they feel ‘invaded’ by. This is causing employees becoming agitated and frustrated after monitoring company messages that keep interrupting them as they try to relax from work: a senior manager can spend over 4 hours per day handling email.

According to researcher, Karen Renaud of Glasgow University, “Email is an amazing tool, but it’s got out of hand. Email harries you. You want to know what’s in there, especially if it’s from a family member or friends, or your boss, so you break off what you are doing to read the email. The problem is that when you go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your chain of thought and, of course, you are less productive. People’s brains get tired from breaking off from something every few minutes to check emails (e.g., people working on a computer can check 40–60 times an hour). The more distracted you are by distractions, including email, then you are going to be more tired and less productive.”

The NIOSH report cites that 75% believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. No one said life was going to be easy, but people are the long-term asset value to a business. To achieve an intellectual profitable capital management program there’s a little known fact that if you can impact 10% efficiency in any aspect of your business development process you can experience up to 20% margin increase. Seizing the moment, Thierry Breton, chief executive of the French information technology services giant, Atos has recently stated that workers at his firm were “wasting hours of their lives on internal messages both at home and at work.” He is embarking on a ‘more’ radical strategy of banning internal email altogether from 2014. Less is more, but more is not less.

Lessons From The Best Interaction Designs Of 2011

Interface is the key touchpoint for many brands:

  • Don’t look for breakthroughs
  • Embrace the mundane
  • Don’t buy into the hype
  • Look past the screen
  • Video is the only shortcut

Brands are frightened they’re losing touch with consumers.

An established cone shaped customer journey model has been shattered and diffused into a myriad of touch and reference points, where it’s hard to stand out and word of mouth is through the roof as the number one purchasing motivation. Additionally, brands have become too internally focused by screen type and mapping ROI, churning out extensions that has created diffused brand strategies and identities existing across multiple channels and customers are pushing back on campaign style messaging. Or are they? Perhaps we have all become brand sophisticates, similar to digital natives, aware of the brands, the times and the veils we’ve witnessed these last few years as the thin blue line of the law wrestles with the youth of tomorrow’s working generation.

A movement requires fear, a sense of injustice and hope. 2012 might not be the chaos the Mayans predicted, but there will be a movement against companies who purport to be brands and have been found wanting. It’s already beginning to look like a scrap heap out there – a mixture of has been, hopefuls and could have been. Here’s to preparation meeting opportunity and customer experience becoming a delightful reality.

Benetton: UNHATE Campaign

How to save the Tiger et. al.

This is far too simple a solution to holt the extinction of wild life – and surely this must be happening already?

Gates and Buffet have the 21st Century wrapped when it comes to power, money, fame, and world respect (and memory) of CEOs and billionaires. Therefore, apart from the spectacular lifestyles, sponsoring philanthropy and the arts, the remaining 398 Forbes billionaires will be forgotten and/or will have nothing in comparison to the legacy that Gates and Buffet have secured themselves.

When you’ve reached the .001% there’s a way that you can be remembered forever. Animals. It’s like a modern day version of Noah’s Ark and for a similar cause. Could Larry Ellison donate $1bn and save the “Ellison” Tigers, or the Koch Lions. The list is enormous and affords the donor  (enforced in the sponsorship) incredible publicity and endearment for many years – if we can keep the animals from extinction – not the donor sadly.

Penn State: Crisis Begs a Bold Response

In this disconsolate period, Penn State needs to respond boldly and with precision. Marshaling a crisis team and a response plan are critical, including weighing the need for autonomy over the preferred unified leadership approach because “the manual” is not going to help the Dean and his cabal. The web crawlers are in frenzy over this story that has T1 pipes rattling with all the feeds. Therefore, decentralized decision-making is best for the voracious appetite of the media blogosphere. The problem isn’t resources; it’s about managing the crisis with a can-do culture and strong values of trust and no lengthy procedures that unified leadership can inflict.

When you need to be impactful, strong and rapid to entice massive support from the public, hide nothing and tell all is the key lesson. “It’s not about the why it’s about the moment and what you do in that moment” Gandalf (played by Sir Ian Mckellan) wisely imbued on Frodo Baggins who was panicking over the looming catastrophe, and his role in “Lord of The Rings” where the key lesson of leadership is about holding other people’s fears. Joe Paterno had shepherded those fears for over 40 years. Now his reputation is shattered, US media is rabid, Penn State’s in tatters, the state’s in rage, communities are split, families bicker and 18 children have been abused. And the unconscionable public displays and statements of defiance and reluctance we’re witnessing from the likes of Sandusky belie what must be an invidious reminder of a widening sense of despair and desperation.

Decontaminating the Penn State brand from a situation that’s base, low, ominous, nasty, and pernicious – what can mitigate the circumstances and reinvent Penn State’s brand? So pervasively huge is the scandal that reinvention is the only path for Penn State and the firing of President Graham Spanier was a wise beginning, but the deference must be bold.

Brands decline when they’re no longer sublime. Therefore, in a crisis that deracinates your heritage, it’s essential to know what makes you special, wrap up the past and blast in to the present: People often don’t know what they want until you show it to them. To be important, the response from Penn State should not aim to change the world. Many pundits are tethered to an old regime (if it bleeds if leads) and can’t innovate rapidly onto an associated story that’s positive– Penn State is unique and no one should be able to take away what they have achieved and, more important, what they can achieve.

The Penn State brand has relied on its authenticity. Now that’s been scuttled there’s a need for a flash incarceration of publicly shown material, references and photographs of Sandusky and his cadre. Call it synaptic pruning to make the blast radius less encircling on campus. The successful legacy of the team makes that extremely difficult. However, people are more likely to change behavior in response to swift and certain actions rather than waiting for severe ones that likely won’t be peremptory.

In Penn State’s advantage, brands who immediately admit they’re not invincible tend to fall lighter or not lose their reputation so dramatically. Therefore, the Penn State brand is compelled to distance itself from Paterno and begin to reinvent itself by boldly stating it’s doing so. This does mean killing a powerful part of the story of Penn State’s heritage and what has made the brand so special, but it must happen now (at great expense if need be). The momentum of the initiative, helped by the campus, will aim to help people feel more on top of a worsening situation of morality.

A glorious past of winning has enabled Penn State to have successfully created an authentic community that has played an anchor role in Penn State’s recognition nationwide. Now they must celebrate the team, the individuals, the students and the fans. Penn State needs to reinvent that legacy and the ties that are entwined. The need for distance should spur many organizational management decisions and brand strategies that will aim to transition the “Paterno” affair away from the Penn State brand. This is relatively easy if applied ruthlessly, and rest assured, brands can change their approach, leaders, workers, and products and perform better as long as the core idea of who the brand is remains relevant.

Dragged into a war Penn State did not create, its history needs an injection of tomorrow and that needs to happen today to ratify who they are and what they believe longer term. The sense of integrity that encircled Joe Paterno must be cut away and kept alive with added depth, credibility and magic in the Penn State halo. This is a sinister moment for Penn State to be ambitious, a moment where we will see what they’re made of; leadership is not about making friends, besides nothing but cold contempt is required for those involved in this horror story.

To stay alive it is hard for established brands to reinvent while they remain true to their vision. Look at the past and see the future. Victory conditions do not need to be unachievable. Penn State needs to turn the hard into the possible with an ambitious, audacious “public” program to find the compass for bold new growth and reinvention with the help from as many as he can muster. Hopefully he has instructed already set up a special crisis group that has no ties or involvement with the case and it’s “no comment” rules, i.e., their focus is solely on the publicized efforts of Penn State’s reinvention symbolized by an entirely revitalized brand identity and communications system that catapults the new Penn State movement for every part of the journey, including the team shirts.

It’s not all vituperative; Penn State needs a “hail Mary pass” to find their True North that will grow new, bold and exciting ways to entice the people back into a “Penn State” way without all the morass of information and chatter. It’s easy to lose sight of strategy: Joe Paterno must be jettisoned and Penn State needs to choose a lane: recalcitrance or reinvention. Let’s play ball.

 

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