I was reminded of this recently when evaluating a couple different bottle designs. One was incredibly unique and differentiated, but inefficient all the way through the supply chain to the retail shelf. Another was über-efficient, but, not surprisingly, too close to the rest of the category. 

In the end, we kept at it until we found a middle road that pushed the boundaries without being too disruptive. It was the type of collaborative compromise that’s part of innovation in the trenches. But compromise can sometimes be a wet blanket to good ideas. The hard part is compromising without sacrificing. How do you make an idea stronger, not weaker, by the diversity of thought that went into it? 

Walking down the grocery aisle sometimes reminds me of the “Little Boxes” theme song from Weeds: 

“There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same”

Design has many masters. Efficiency is constricting one. How disruptive can you be when you’re innovating in a very small box? 

Think about how much design thinking is put into the last 5-seconds at shelf, as opposed to the whole lifecycle when you’re actually using the product. Shapes are chosen for efficiency on shelf (not taller than the shelf height, not too wide to take up two facings, not too deep that you can’t fit enough on shelf). Because the shapes end up so similar, the graphics overcompensate by shouting “Buy me!” Design decisions are often made by eye-tracking tests. 

Yet, when you get the product home, do you really want it shouting at you? Do you really want it to be a little box made out of ticky tacky that all looks just the same? 

Last year, I toured the ginormous warehouse of Ocado, the leading web grocer in the UK (think Webvan, but their business model works). Because of this warehouse model, shoppers only discover and shop brands through a web interface, never a retail shelf. So, the last 5-seconds at shelf constraint simply doesn’t exist. 

Down the road, when more and more shopping is done this way rather than the retail shelf, what impact will this have on product design? 

Instead of farming for efficiency, it could allow us to farm for what is most remarkable.

If we carved jack-o-lanterns the way we design products, we would probably carve by committee. And, whenever something is designed by committee, it's in danger of "Feature Creep."

With “Feature Creep”, the idea gains extraneous features until the project loses focus and momentum.  It becomes a peace treaty.  By trying to appeal to everyone, it misses what it set out to do. A series of bad compromises can strip away what was remarkable about the original idea.

In a way, "Feature Creep" is closely related to “A Death by a Thousand Cuts”. But instead of cuts, the idea becomes more and more bloated.

So much of the art of innovation relates to the ability to hold true and defend the original idea. Through all of the twists and turns in product development, the successful innovations are the ones that can shield against the cuts and resist the temptations of creep. 

That’s not to say that ideas should be developed in silos. Ideas should be made stronger by the diversity of thought that goes into it. But, it’s an essential skill to pick and choose which direction to incorporate, which to ignore, and which to delay until later. 

Here’s another cartoon I drew on “Feature Creep” a few years ago.

In the last two weeks, there’s been a lot of chatter about the role of the "brand manager" and marketing organizations generally, after Jack Neff at Ad Age previewed a Forrester research report in an article called "Why it’s time to do away with the brand manager."

"Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers are the real arbiters of brand meaning, and it's become increasingly outmoded in today's two-way world. That's why a new report is going to recommend changing the name "brand manager" to "brand advocate," and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age."

Denise Lee Yohn picked up this thread in a fascinating post on the CMO’s Dream team and advocated for the role of “brand operator”. David Kiley at BusinessWeek argued for the role of “brand editor” with an interesting story of the McDonalds CMO thinking of its brand as editorial. 

These musings on the role of brand manager inspired this cartoon. The role of "brand manager" implies a certain level of power and control. From inside the marketing ivory tower, it’s easy to see yourself as a puppeteer for the brand. Ultimately, though, it’s the consumers who determine what your brand means. 

Think about Stella Artois. For years, the beer carried an advertising slogan of "Reassuringly Expensive". Yet, in the UK, the common slang nickname for the beer is "wife beater" (because of its high alcohol content). Patrons are even known to order a "wife beater" for short in the pub. Years of marketing position statements and heavy advertising couldn’t shake the nickname that consumers gave the beer. Stella finally dropped the "Reassuringly Expensive" slogan in 2007 and are the in the midst of repositioning themselves, including the launch of a lower strength beer to try to counter the meaning attributed by consumers. 

It’s important to remember that most consumers have probably never even heard the term “brand manager” yet alone think about the brand in the same way that marketers do. 

Rather than draft brand positioning statements in language that has meaning for other marketers, how inspiring it would be to talk in terms than real consumers can understand. Better still, to turn it into a actual two-way conversation with consumers.

At the DO Lectures last month, Duke Stump gave a remarkable talk about creating something he called "bonfire brands." In his first day as CMO at Seventh Generation, he addressed the office and said: 

“I don’t know anything about marketing or branding. Here’s what I do believe. The purpose of what we’re here for is to optimize the resonance and relevance for those we serve. That’s how I hold this whole term of marketing. What’s really going to make us great is if we create a bonfire brand. A brand that people are actually drawn to. Where there’s a conversation. And they’re partaking in your conversation. They’re evangelists for your brand. They’ll defend your brand. They’re also your most ardent critics. It’s a beautiful thing when you can sit around a campfire with those you serve and they can tell you everything that’s great and everything that’s not so great. Instead of holding it as a brand, hold it as a bonfire.”

Back in 2001, BMW created an internet-only series of short films called The Hire directed by big name directors like Guy Ritchie and John Woo. All of the films featured a pre-famous Clive Owen driving a BMW in different assignments around the world (my favorite involved Clive driving around Madonna). 

Over four months, the films were seen 11 million times and spiked BMW sales by 12% (and helped launch Clive's career). They effectively pioneered viral video marketing. I remember seeing these films in 2002 and marveling at how a brand could create content that interesting and compelling. 

Viral video marketing has exploded in the years since (and you no longer need Guy Ritchie to direct them). Along the way, there have been some great standouts like Smirnoff's Tea Partay, but also a lot of complete rubbish. 

This year, it feels like every marketing plan features viral video as a tactic. Yet, many brands treat these videos in the same dull way as placing a grocery cart ad or staging an on-pack promotion. They feel like infomercials. These brands assume that if they build it, viewers will come (and watch, and share). 

Brands sometimes forget that videos become viral, not by how interesting the content is for the brand, but by how interesting the content is to the viewers. They also forget that "viral" is, by nature, unpredictable. 

I thought that Volkswagen struck the right chord with its launch of The Fun Theory last week. VW created a clever series of videos around the simple principle of creating change for the better by making them more fun. They communicate a lot about VW and their environmental approach, but in a way that is not heavy-handed. 

Another personal favorite is David Mitchell's Soap Box series, put on by Bulldog, a young 5-person brand of men's natural grooming products in the UK. I had lunch with Simon and Rhodri, the two Bulldog founders, last week. They compete against the largest CPG businesses on the planet, and need to find ways to break through the clutter and level the playing field. In this video series, they commissioned David Mitchell, a well-known British comedian, to riff on a variety of 3-minute topics. Here's one I enjoyed that pokes fun at some of the language in traditional marketing.

Breaking the Rules of Traditional Retail from Tom Fishburne on Vimeo.

Whenever I need a marketing wake-up call, I listen to the classic Tom Waits' song, “Step Right Up.” It is an anthem for bad marketing.  In this brilliant song, Tom Waits cobbles together every cliché marketing pitch.

"We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale
And a smoke-damaged furniture, you can drive it away today
Act now, act now, and receive as our gift, our gift to you
They come in all colors, one size fits all
No muss, no fuss, no spills, you're tired of kitchen drudgery
Everything must go, going out of business, going out of business
Going out of business sale
Fifty percent off original retail price, skip the middle man
Don't settle for less
How do we do it? how do we do it? volume, volume, turn up the volume
Now you've heard it advertised, don't hesitate”

Toward the end, he quips, “you got it buddy: the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

It’s a striking reminder that this is how most consumers perceive marketing. And for good reason. Even though consumers are savvier than ever and resistant to marketing clutter, most marketing communication still falls in this huckster camp.

To spread the word about your brand, this is the marketing clutter that that you have to break through. You won't break through by turning up the volume. You break through with remarkable products, disarming authenticity, and not sounding like hawkers and hucksters.

Tom Waits had it right 30 years ago. Here’s a vintage 1979 live performance:

I recently stumbled across the cluetrain manifesto again.  It had a big impact on me when I first read it ten years ago.  At the time, I was building web sites for big companies and it gave voice to a lot of the frustration I felt trying to get these companies to really embrace the potential of engaging with consumers directly.

I worked with an airline that refused to handle any consumer inquiries generated by their web site.  They actually had an in-house call center for reservations, but didn't even want their phone number listed on the site (let alone an email address).  For them, the web site was a cheaper way to book reservations, and they were trying to lower transaction costs, not increase consumer loyalty.

This was particularly odd because the airline prided itself on in-flight customer service.

Reading the cluetrain manifesto, I was struck by the metaphor of the "corporate firewall": "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall."

This airline (and many companies) had erected a strict corporate firewall that barred the majority of consumer interactions and only let out carefully scripted marketing messages. Loyalty was achieved through frequent flyer miles: essentially buying loyalty rather than earning it.

Ten years later, the 95 theses of the cluetrain manifesto feel prescient now that the tools for social media are commonplace.  Social media is part of every marketing plan.  Yet, I question how much the corporate firewall has actually changed.  

Using social media without first re-evaluating the corporate firewall feels like the same old window dressing.  It's today's brochureware.  It doesn't achieve the potential that these tools were designed to achieve.

There is an opportunity for companies that tear down (or at least reevaluate and modernize) the corporate firewall.  For those that don't, the cluetrain manifesto offers this caution:

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

A few years ago, I worked on a business that routed packaging artwork by hand to get reviewed and approved. They had a traffic department that managed this process and they marked artwork by the level of urgency so that you knew how quickly to review it.  Over time, I learned that lowest urgency was marked "Hot!", medium urgency was marked "Hot! Hot!" and highest urgency was marked "Hot! Hot! Hot!".

In this era of doing "more with less" where urgency ranges from "Hot!" to "Hot! Hot! Hot!", everyone has more pots to stir.  My desk sometimes feels a lot like this cooktop.  It's tempting just to spend time firefighting.

But that path leads to Busy Fools Syndrome.  What goes hand in hand with trying to do "more with less" is learning what to take off the priority list.  What's more important than having a "To Do" list is having a "To Don't" list.

I've been trying to manage less by urgency and more by priority lately.  I certainly don't always have the right balance, but I've learned a bit from reading Tim Ferriss.

Watching some businesses and brands grapple with social media reminds me of that classic expression, "putting lipstick on a pig".

I stumbled across this Marketing Week article a few months ago called, "Reckitt Benckiser makes an online push to connect with young consumers."  As part of a social media campaign backed by online advertising, the cleaning products company launched a Facebook fan page to reach "the online chattering classes" and "be automatically seen to be in the top three global FMCGs".  

One of the best parts of the article was the sole comment it attracted:

"A fan page on Facebook? You'd have to be very sad to join that. I'll be surprised if it connects with young people. Will they really manage to get a 20 year old student \(or worker) interested in connecting with Vanish?".

Many businesses treat social media tools the same dropping an FSI or placing a grocery cart ad.  It becomes just more superficial window dressing.  I think it would be far better to apply that investment toward actually making the brand and products more interesting and remarkable.

I touched on this theme last year with Poser Marketing too.

My friend Adam at method asked if I could contribute a cartoon to a post he wrote for TreeHugger this week called "For design to create change, we must all become designers."