Experience the Message

WHAT IS GARFIELD SMOKING?

I like Bob Garlfield. Though I have never met him, I have read his countless columns and heard him on PBS. I usually like his wit and introspection. Until his latest salvo in Ad Age.

Bob goes out of his way to praise a telemarketing cold call. Yes, that's right. In the age of consumer empowerment (which he has written about and praised) and at a time when commercial intrusiveness is at an all-time high (which he has bemoaned in many editorials), Bob decides to laud one of those calls you get at dinner time, only to discover when you answer that IT'S A FRIGGIN' COMPUTER RECORDING!!!!!

You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Not content to hire real people to bother you, marketers just throw a recording on the computer, press play and walk away. A machine does all the rest -- meaning, a machine intrudes on your quality time, ruins your serentity, wakes you up, disrupts your life, and actually destroys the concept of time.

Bob says that a novel telemarketing recording is actually pretty good, because it's clever and creative.

As unsolicited intrusions go, this stuff is pretty engaging. This is thanks to the writing, and especially the acting, by an improv-comedy troupe called the New York Subway Alligators.

Screw that! The key word isn't engaging (which is an experiential imperative), the key word is INTRUSION. The foremost directive for experiential marketing is to conduct it when and where the consumer is most responsive to it. Is dinner a good time? How about first thing in the morning? Is there any good time for an "unsolicited intrusion" into our lives? No, of course not. So why is Bob so keen on it?

The stunt also demonstrates some media ingenuity. Till now, recorded phone messages had been the province of politicians and other cheap hucksters, bothering you mainly at home with the hardest of hard sells. The notion to use the phone as a business-to-business medium for produced spots is inspired. Also, by the way, inexpensive.

Furthermore, the agency name and phone number are repeated twice in each bit. Which isn't so fancy, but certainly completes the connection.

Oh Bob. What are you smoking? Whatever it is, I'll just say no.

GREAT BLOG SITE!

If you haven't yet come across Coolzor, I strongly encourage you all to check it out....here. The writing is crisp, the examples are spot-on and the breadth of international experience is excellent. I enjoy Miel's postings thoroughly, and he provides me a window on the rest of the world that usually remains curtained-off here in the US.

I'M NO VIP

After reading prior posts on this blog, it would seem obvious that I am a big fan of MediaPost. I name drop them like rappers name drop Benzos. So it was with a pleasant surprise that I received an email this afternoon from Media Post inviting me to their 2006 Email Insider Summit. Here's what it said, in part:

Dear max (sic),

I would like you to be our guest for the 2006 Email Insider Summit. As a Summit VIP, the cost of your airfare, hotel accommodations and conference registration will be paid for by MediaPost.

The Email Insider Summit Advisory Board has identified you as a senior level marketer or agency executive decision maker within your company. You are among a select few to whom we are extending this special VIP opportunity.

The purpose of the Email Insider Summit is to bring the best minds in the industry together to share leading edge information and experience on email marketing in a think-tank environment, while exploring new technology, strategies and tactics for effective campaigns....

Awesome, I thought! I'm a VIP. I mean...I do blog and I have written a book and, well, maybe I am getting a bit of a presence "out there." Cool! I'm gonna go!

Then a few hours later, I get this email from Media Post:

Dear max (sic):

We apologize if you received an email from MediaPost earlier today inviting you as our VIP guest to the Email Insider Summit. That email was intended to be sent to a list of 50 top brand marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event. The email below is the email that you were intended to receive. If you would like to be a part of the inaugural Email Insider Summit please read below about the summit and how to register. Again we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience that error may have caused you.

Register now for MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit so you can surround yourself with the most-thought provoking minds in the industry as they school you on the new modes of enhancing your email marketing campaigns....

...The Email Insider Summit registration fee is $2,495 and includes access to keynotes, general sessions, workshops, meals, cocktail parties and networking functions for three days.

Please click here to Register for the 2006 Email Insider Summit.

Don't miss your opportunity to be a part of the industry's most thought-provoking conference and take your email marketing to the next level.

Wow! I went from all-expense-paid VIP to $2.5K chump. Ha!

So, an email for an Email Insider Summit was sent out to the wrong people! That's quite an email marketing strategy. Get folks excited, then screw them with a follow-up. "Sorry, we didn't mean to stroke your ego. We just meant to massage your wallet."

Is this what they mean by an exploration of "new technology, strategies and tactics for effective [email] campaigns?" I hope their own campaign to hype the conference doesn't get presented as a case study.

I still love Media Post. But this experience has left my confidence in them a bit shaken.

CONSUMER GENERATED MEDIA

There's an excelllent cyber-discussion going on on the Soflow site about Consumer Generated Media. It was started by Steve Hall, of Adrants fame. Check it out here, and make your opinion heard.

STAR-STRUCK TIC TACS

Celebrity culture is becoming obsessive. The rise of celbu-gossip and film-whoredom may be a subtle response to the lack of interest and/or engagement that people have with marketing. (But that's a topic for another post.) We, as both consumers and humans, are becoming increasingly star-struck and pop culture savvy. See the previous post.

So it was no surprise to come across a page inside the site for Tic Tacs -- yes, those noisy little mints in different colors. The page, found under the Fresh Entertainment portion of the site, lists all the films and TV shows that have featured Tic Tacs in the script.

In effect, it is a celebrity page for Tic Tacs...kind of like getting your own page on www.imbd.com. It's an homage to product placement, and Tic Tac is proud of the legacy.

From Seinfeld (to combat The Sidler) and The Simpsons, to Chicken Little and Home Alone...by my count, Tic Tacs features in 34 movies and TV shows.

And Tic Tac wants us to know it. Cool for Tic Tacs. Even brands can get a little star-struck. Or do they have star ambition? Is Tic Tacs the Madonna of the mint world?

BRANDS HAVE JUMPED THE SHARK

It's been 10 days since I last posted. I'm terribly hyper-aware of this short-coming, and will not repeat it. To say that I was busy and traveling doesn't quite cut it, anyway. We are all busy, and we all travel. As Henry David Thoreau quipped, we are all tools of our tools. Anyway, transcendentalism is not the subject of this post.

Last time, I headlined a post "McDonald's Goes Out of Business," because the NA prexy said that the burger behemoth was in the bsuiness of following trends. To me, that meant that Mickey D was in the business of going out of business.

I'm still not at my point. The point is this: that headline got me a lot of emails, of folks asking me where I had heard or read that McDonald's was going out of business. The idea that the third or fourth largest advertiser, and the proud banner-holder of branding gone ballistic, could go out of business was...plausible. The notion had a chance. Folks thought that it could be true.

Wow. What a statement about the emasculating strength of sonme global brands. Is it an affirmation of the death of brands? Has branding "jumped the shark?" I'm reminded of a passage from my book using this exact phrase:

"Not many are familiar with the phrase jumping the shark. It has yet to make it into the Oxford English Dictionary. But it’s certain to make its mark soon as it speeds through the Internet to the tipping point where the OED will take notice. Case in point: it won’t be long before tipping point is added to the OED, after the huge popularity of Malcolm Gladwell’s book and the Internet buzz that comes from it. In fact,the expansion ofthe World Wide Web has contributed to the more than ten thousand new words and phrases added to the OED. Similarly, jumping the shark has its roots in the Internet, with an eponymous Web site dedicated to this weird and catchy saying.

The site defines it as “a moment, a defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on . . . it’s all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it jumping the shark. From that moment on,the program will simply never be the same.”

The best example of this moment, and the reason the term was invented in the first place, comes to us from the television program Happy Days. Although pop culture pundits can point to many moments during the sitcom’s run that could be construed as the climax of the series, the jumping the shark moment came when Fonzie – the uber-cool greaser in a leather jacket played by Henry Winkler – waterskied off of a ramp actually to jump a shark (never mind that Happy Days was based in Milwaukee).

Some viewers knew that from that absurd moment on, the show was going nowhere but downhill and would simply never be the same again.

Marketing as we know it jumped the shark in 2004. Most marketers didn’t even notice. Indeed, a jumping the shark moment doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s obvious ,or that the moment will have immediate repercussions. In fact, Happy Days aired for many more years after Fonzie put a life preserver over his black leather jacket and flew over a Great White.

Indeed, jumping the shark is a moment perceptible to few, and it may take years if not decades before the occasion is recognized by the rest of us. But for those who do see it immediately, the moment can signal a profound revolution.

So how did marketing jump the shark in 2004? To answer this question, I need to posit two paradigm shifts in the marketing industry, which have been alluded to often throughout this book:

• Mass media no longer serves – nor holds – the interest of the enlightened and highly empowered consumer.
• The industry paradigm of the propagation and sustain- ability of “brand” and “brand essence” is over.

Wait a minute: Corporate obsession with the brand is passé? Mass media like television, radio, and magazines are soon to be relics of the past? Well, yes . . . and no.

The corporate blind drive for branding, and marketing’s dependence on mass media, won’t disappear immediately, but the existing paradigms are certain to be permanently altered if not totally jettisoned in the near future. Our view of marketing will never be the same again. The sharks have been jumped."

Of course, I go on to write in the book how the sharks have been jumped. But now I'm at my point. When a brand like McDonald's is perceived by the so-called "influencers" as able to go away at a moment's notice, you really have a problem on your hands. Perhaps when CEO Larry Light declared that "mass marketing is a mass mistake," he was already too late to save the sinking ship.

IS THIS A GOOD REVIEW?

I'm torn. I can't tell if this is a good review for Experience the Message, or a total dis.

My agent tells me it is a so-called "mixed review." The only thing mixed that I like is a Jack and Coke.

My friend and fellow blogger Craig Silverman thinks this is the best I could hope for, since the publication (Vancouver-based The Georgia Straight) is a lefty boradsheet that hates all things corporate or marketing. What do you think?

Is your enemy’s enemy your friend? In the looking-glass world of modern marketing, why not? Max Lenderman, a Chicago-based marketer with a message and then some, definitely believes he’s on the consumer’s side in the on-going battle pitting mega-advertisers against shopper civilians.

Lenderman argues that advertising has lost its way, attempting to prop up mass-market delivery methods (the 30-second TV spot in particular) that are on the verge of extinction because of technology—like TiVo—and excess competition. “Thirty years ago, the average American was targeted by 560 daily ad messages. Today, the average consumer is exposed to between three thousand and four thousand marketing messages.…There’s too much commercial noise in our lives.”

To break through, Lenderman calls for a revolution: “We need to market personally, because the marketplace has become individualized and better connected at the same time.” We need, he argues, advertising based on consumer experience rather than old-fashioned top-down evangelism. Nor is he alone. Alongside such primary books as The Cluetrain Manifesto and The Experience Economy, for which Experience the Message: How Experiential Marketing Is Changing the Brand World serves as a primer, he quotes McDonald’s global chief of marketing, Larry Light, one of the most influential advertisers in the world: “Mass marketing today is a mass mistake.”

Lenderman believes in taking the message to the people, one shopper at a time. He points to companies like Starbucks and Nike, which allow consumers to customize their experience—i.e., the Starbucks two-pump extra-hot half-dry, et cetera, ad nauseum, and Nike’s modular DIY shoe—and to others, such as American Apparel, that sell a lifestyle alongside their product. He urges marketers to go out where the shopper is, through practices like “leaning” (attractive volunteers loudly ordering specific brands in bars, for example) and flash mobs (groups mobilized to act in concert through text messaging).

Is all this good news? Lenderman believes we are increasingly equipped (through peer-to-peer dialogue like blogs and such sites as Epinions.com) to resist unwelcome or inauthentic messaging. He suggests that by shifting away from one-to-many communication—toward branding events for positive memories, introducing product-centred video games to children (!), freeing brands the way open-source software allows any user to rewrite it—advertisers can engage their customers as equals.

Experience the Message is at times riveting, always opinionated. But whether a paradigm shift is truly under way or advertisers are merely tailoring their tone to ape larger social shifts remains unclear here. More case studies and less sermonizing would help. (Lenderman certainly takes advantage of his bully pulpit to repeat himself, evangelize, advertise his own business, and commit manifold grammatical and spelling errors.) It will inspire, though—be it creativity in ad execs or fear in consumers. And fear we should: Lenderman wants to save us from advertising carpet-bombing; he prefers a kill where they see the whites of our eyes.

Wow. The "whites of our eyes." I had no idea I was such a bad-ass. And for the record, I never ever advocated "introducing product-centered video games to children." That's outright libel.

A MAGICAL EXPERIENCE

Well, I managed to avoid the ubiquitous "year-end" and "best-of" postings that have inundated blogs and inboxes for the past week. Gosh, it was tempting. I've been polishing up on my snark and sneer, just for such an occasion.

Instead, I've been busy doing nothing and hitting some museums. There's a lot to learn for a marketer there. I've also been hanging out with my nephews a lot over the holidays. They're a cool bunch of lads (4 of them) and always a source of inspiration. There's a lot to learn for a marketer when hanging out (not focus-grouping or video-taping) with a gaggle of kids.

So it was cool to read this story on Reveries titled "Santa Calling." Here's an excerpt:

"Given a choice between meeting Santa at the mall or chatting with him by telephone, more kids — and their parents — apparently are choosing the latter, reports Shaila Dewan in The New York Times. “She didn’t want to have anything to do with the big fat man,” says Cindy Richards, referring to her 3-year-old daughter’s response to a real, live, retail Santa Claus.

It was another reaction entirely when Santa rang her up by phone, however. Little Cassidy Richards “froze in giddy shock, the phone locked to her ear … ‘I love you Santa,’ she whispered.” For some kids, the experience is so riveting that it quells any growing doubts that Santa is not for real. For their parents, it’s a really neat way to avoid standing in line at the mall, only to find their children too terrified to say a word to Santa.

In fact, the conversation is just about guaranteed when Santa calls, because telephone Santas are fully briefed on what to say. Parents first fill out a questionnaire “about a child’s habits and achievements and other personal details.” So, when Santa calls, he not only knows what’s on the child’s wish list but also “the names of siblings, friends and teachers, favorite vacation spots and what was under the tree last year.

Santa can even be Mom and Dad’s little helper, breaking the news that a puppy just won’t fit in the sleigh or gently reminding youngsters to clean their rooms.” Some of these Santas add an extra touch of realism by asking “the child to hold while they scold Rudolph for coming into the house with wet hooves.” And because the kids can’t see these Santas, they can be younger and “more fluent in sports, cartoons and videogames.”

I love this story because it is as experiential as it gets. It reminds me of a chapter entry in Experience the Message, referring to the experiential services performed at Disney resorts.

"By customizing the experience, and by staging a series of them that speak directly to the individual consumer, companies can escape the me-too trap and begin delivering meaningful marketing experiences. “When you customize an experience, you automatically turn it into a transformation.”

If done right, a personal marketing experience will leave the consumer different from before. She would be delighted, touched or inspired. Their perception of the brand or company will be transformed, because she herself has somehow been transformed also.

A quick reference to the hotel industry can shed some light on the needs and successes of personal, customizable and highly experiential marketing tactics. For instance, the housekeeping staff at the Walt Disney hotels transforms a child’s stay into a special experience. Each day the staff will reposition a child’s toy – whether it was brought by the child or bought at the Disney store – throughout the room.

One day, a Mickey Mouse is seated in front of a television, with the channel set to the Disney Channel (of course). The next day, Mickey will be repositioned again, this time in the bathroom with a toothbrush nearby. Adults may understand that it’s the staff that’s doing this, but for the kids it’s nothing less than magical."

When is marketing going to be magical again?

MAKE 'EM FEEL GOOD

From AdPulp comes this entry:

Popular speaker and author, Tom Asacker, weighs in on some things he's been thinking about lately.

People believe that they are better than they really are, and they want YOU and your people and your business model to validate those feelings. If you're really smart, you'll make them feel even better about themselves and their decisions.

I wonder why, no matter how many times or in how many ways I explain this to clients, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Here it is again: Harley Davidson does not sell motorcycles. They sell identity. They sell esteem. They sell belonging. Ditto for Apple and Starbucks and the rest of the best.

Did you hear what one college woman said when asked why she kept buying her coffee at Starbucks even after the professor agreed to purchase it for her (exactly the way she desired it)? Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Here it is:

"They'd miss me at my regular Starbucks if I didn't stop in."

Self-worth . . . only $5 a cup.

Isn't this what consumer engagement is all about? Isn't this what respect in marketing is all about? Isn't this the underlying basis of experiential marketing?

Am I drinking my own Cool-Aid here, or is there consensus?

BOOK NEWS!

Good news to my peeps in Canada!!!

My book called Experience the Message has been released by venerable publishing house McClelland & Stewart. You can pick up a copy (or multiple copies...it is the season of giving after all) at Chapters or Indigo stores, or on Amazon.ca. The US version -- to be published by Avalon Publishing -- will be coming out in about a month.

If you'd like to check out a sample of the intro, go here and happy reading!

And here are a few endorsements that have come in so far:

“Experience the Message is an uncommon marketing book. Most marketing books get tiresome after the first few chapters. Not this one. It's a cover-to-cover read on a subject that is the future of marketing. Besides being a substantive contribution to marketing literature, Experience the Message is a damn good read.”

• David B. Wolfe, internationally acclaimed expert on consumer behavior and author of Ageless Marketing

“Max Lenderman’s new book will prove to be seminal in our understanding of how the world of marketing is radically changing and how to successfully make that transition. Experience the Message is a must-read for thoughtful marketing executives.”

• Karl Moore, Associate Professor, Marketing Strategy, McGill University, Columnist for Marketing Magazine

“I took Experience the Message to the gym and read the whole thing at once. I was on the stationary bike for 4 hours and I feel like I've lost 5 pounds. Perfect. Great read.”

• Billy Melnyk, On-Premise Marketing Manager, Bacardi Canada