Rob Frankel - Branding Expert

Volkswagen Relies on Amnesia

2012-04-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I get asked by clients and media alike is the perennial, "How often should we freshen up our brand?" Just asking the question is enough to reveal how little most people really understand branding. The fact is that brands -- real, well-structured brands -- never require "freshening up," because real, well-structured brands are designed for the long haul. And as I relentlessly drone on in my book, The Revenge of Brand X, the whole point of a brand is not to change over time. The purpose of a brand is to remain stable so that it cultivates trust with its users. Think about it: If a brand were to change with the weather, nobody would ever know what to expect from it, which means nobody would ever trust it.

From the brand's perspective, constant -- or even occasional -- change isn't a good thing, either. After all, having to re-build trust every few years is expensive, requiring all sorts of marketing efforts that hit the bottom line and reduce profitability.

So anyone who tells you that "your brand needs to be freshened up" is also telling you he/she knows little, or more likely, nothing about branding at all.

However:

One of the most common errors I see brands commit is confusing product with brand. This, too, is because too few people know what branding really is. For those who find it confusing, let me offer this:

Branding is the promise; products are the proof of the brand's promise.

Simple, right? Sure. So before I get too far into this, let's all agree that Volkswagen's "freshening up" of its line of Beetles is a product story, not a brand story. And that's what I suspect you'll find very interesting.

In 2012, Volkswagen is introducing - yet again - a reborn version of its Beetle. This is not the first time VW has gone this route. All told, VW has been down this road, so to speak, at least three times. And each time, the company has completely repositioned the model in a completely different fashion. Take a brief look at the Beetle's history and you'll see what I mean:

In war time Germany, none other than Adolf Hitler commissioned the design of the "people's car" (the literal translation of "Volkswagen") as an affordable mode of transportation for the master race. From its inception, the car was perceived as "Hitler's car," and in the post-war United States, few Americans were willing to touch it. If you have trouble conceiving that, imagine al Qaida exporting a car to America ten years after 9/11 and you'll pretty much get the idea. Nobody wanted a VW, yet barely a decade after the destruction of the Nazi war machine, Beetles were beginning to crawl across the fruited plains.

An entire generation knew the Beetle as Hitler's until the next generation arrived. Young people having a tendency not to care about what happened before they were born never knew the Beetle as Hitler's car because they didn't live through Hitler's reign of terror. To Volkswagen, the hearts and minds of American youth were a clean slate, ready to accept anything Volkswagen told them about the Beetle.

And so it came to pass that intensive marketing led to the Beetle becoming the Sun Bug, usually yellow, often a convertible and frequently driven by a young blonde girl. As such, the Beetle transitioned from Hitler's gas-stingy, never-say-die, reliable mode of cheap transportation to a chic, cute gosh-isn't-it-a-great-day-out-there statement of female freedom. By the 1980's no self-respecting American male could be caught dead in a Beetle: it was a girl's car.

By 2012, Volkswagen shifted gears once more. By this time, another generation had been born and grown up. By 2012, anyone born in the 1980's was either thirty or close to it. Once again, Volkswagen saw the blank slate of youth and took direct aim, draining all the estrogen out of the cute little Sun Bug and replacing it with testosterone, in hopes of attracting young men who buy into the notion that you are what you drive.

So in three generations, Volkswagen has managed to refresh the Beetle at least three different times, to three different audiences. But the fascinating aspect is that Volkswagen hasn't done it with slick marketing or effective advertising campaigns. In fact, Volkswagen hasn't done it with any type of pro-active effort at all.

The genius of Volkswagen lies in its sly observation of the consuming public's short attention span. VW knows that young people are born with amnesia. It relies on the fact that as far as history before their birth, most young people don't know or don't care -- and quite possibly, both. And that's the reason why it can continue to re-introduce the Beetle to every new generation with such ease.

Volkswagen never changes its brand. It always changes its products. But never before a new generation changes its mind.

The Business of Social Media

2012-04-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been in outer space the past ten years, you must know something about social media. Well, you must have at least heard about it. For my money, social media is nice, but no big thing, really. It's just doing what people have always done, except now they can do it faster because of technology.

In the pre-internet days, nothing traveled faster than bad news. No matter where you were in the world, it didn't take long to hear about catastrophes. The worse the disaster, the quicker you heard about it. Plague. War. Ships sinking. Airplanes crashing. Regressing through the years before the web, there was television, radio, newspapers. You get the idea. Go back far enough and eventually you get to bell ringing town criers shouting out the evening news as regularly as CNN, CBS, NBC and FOX do today -- only with less drama or special effects.

As a news/gossip pipeline, social media is great. Where else can one fan the flames so that millions of viewers can sit before their devices mesmerized by some stupid cat video? Where else can we so quickly confirm the death, arrest or latest sexual innuendo about some inconsequential celebrity? Whether your choice is Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest or another one of this week's digital darlings, social media is really little more than the old-fashioned party line of the Not So New Millennium, where everyone simultaneously jumps on the phone to spread the news about everyone else.

That's all fine and good. If it's entertainment you seek, by all means, have at it. In fact, if raising awareness for your cause is your thing, social media might be the right tool for you. But the minute you let marketing people into the party, things start to spoil faster than three day old flounders. And by the time they're done with it, social media will likely endure the same fate as so many other digital hula hoops.

Let me explain.

While there's no question social media links people together 24/7, it really only does it for social reasons. Keeping up with your boyfriend, your Uncle Ned, the Class of 2006 -- whatever -- is perfect for sites like Facebook, Vimeo and Picasa. But when marketing people try to leverage social media for business, the results aren't quite so good. Sure, you're going to hear a lot of advertising and marketing people hawk the virtues of social media, but if you look really, really closely at their claims, you'll see why it's called social media and not business media.

One of the first myths about social media is the benefits of linking people together. Yes, social media certainly does connect people, including those you thought you'd never have to hear from again. But it's a major mistake to assume linkage of people translates into actions of people, which is what I hear a lot from social media experts. Don't get me wrong, I'm a branding guy and getting more people to evangelize my brand is a good thing. On the other hand, having a million people "like" my brand's Facebook page doesn't add anything to the bottom line.

And that, in my humble opinion, can be a huge waste of resources.

Yes, it's flattering to get fifteen million views on YouTube, but until and unless you can convert those hits to sales, what's the point? Having a million viewers on Pinterest sounds really slick. But when the smoke clears, can you really connect the dots from views or downloads to increased sales?

Marketing people do all they can to distract from this discussion by employing terms like engagement and awareness. It makes them feel good, but not as good as when they get their clients' heads nodding in agreement, even though nobody can tell what, if anything, a social media campaign is doing for the brand. If you don't think that's a problem, recall a while back when Burger King launched its ill-fated "de-friending" campaign on Facebook. It was an unmitigated disaster that actually cost everyone business.

The truth is that marketing has devolved into a science of excuses, fraught with first world problems that have no real significance in the marketplace. Engagement? Really? Have we drifted so far from the purpose of business -- making money -- that entire campaigns can revolve around efforts which have no direct relationship to revenue generation? Is "an uptick in the public attitude of our brand" going to have any bearing on next quarter's sales?

I think not.

Look, I have nothing against social media. Used properly, for the right jobs, I think it's terrific for socially oriented issues. When I hear marketing people attempting to leverage social media for business purposes, though, I always ask the same question:

What kind of real, bottom line results can we expect from this?

To this day, I haven't heard an answer.

Why Oprah Ain't No Brand

2012-03-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

The problem with success is that nobody knows exactly why it happens. All kinds of pundits will spout all kinds of aphorisms telling you about how success is built on failure. Or persistence. Or talent. The truth is that nobody really knows why success happens. Just as often, mere luck plays into it.

For example, you could be the smartest, most affable, nicest creative guy on the block, but if you don't know the right people, none of your ideas could ever materialize into huge personal fortune. On the other hand, you could be the winner of the Lucky Sperm Club, born into a well-moneyed family whose days' concerns fall somewhere between where to have lunch and which golf course to play. I knew a guy like that. His fabulously successful "career" consisted of nothing more than generating sales for companies by making a few well-placed phone calls. Six brief calls to six old frat brothers and his sales quotas for the year were fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the rest of this guy's life wasn't as successful. Beset by family, social, psychological and medical problems, his life remained moneyed but miserable, prompting him to question why the rest of his life wasn't as successful as his business life. After all, he just assumed he had the Midas touch. He figured if he were successful in one area of his life, he ought to be just as successful in every other.

Well, I'm here to tell you it doesn't work that way. Not for him, you, me -- or Oprah Winfrey.

Years back, the entire entertainment industry subjected the viewing public to a crudely orchestrated display of crocodile tears as Oprah announced -- a full year ahead of schedule -- that she would be ending her famous talk show. Amidst the blubbering hugs and moans were consistent announcements of the imminent launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), where viewers would be able to nurse their Oprah addictions by watching All Things Oprah all day long. Mind you, Oprah herself wouldn't be in the room. The network would simply be the product of stuff on which Oprah bestowed her blessing -- and presumably, her own Midas touch.

But it was not to be. In fact, to this day, media and marketing pundits across the land are lifting their gaze from their navels and scratching their heads as to why OWN is such a consistent loser. The channel stumbled out of the gate and has never done any better since. How could this happen -- to Oprah?

The answer is simple: Oprah was not a brand then and is not a brand now. Oprah is simply Oprah. People watch Oprah, but a true brand would be capable of expanding products under the Oprah aegis, and the OWN clearly is not capable of doing that. The Oprah Book Club succeeded because it was hand-held by Oprah. Not so with OWN. Which means as long as Oprah is in the room, stuff works. But when Oprah leaves the building, everything falls flat.

This is a pure brand strategy problem, stemming from the common misconception of what a brand really is. When OWN began, everyone was yakking about how "Oprah's brand can't fail." The problem is that Oprah has never had a brand. The reason why OWN isn't working is because it, too, has no brand strategy. It can't survive on its own. Nobody knows what he should expect or why OWN "should be perceived as the only solution to his problem." Consequently, everything there is hit and miss -- mostly miss.

Can OWN be saved? Yes. Will it be saved? Probably not, because nobody at OWN really understands how brand strategy works, so they have no means of setting or delivering expectations to its audience. Oprah's people might know entertainment and media, but not branding. And until they do, viewership isn't going to get better any time soon.

I mean, let's face it: Even Oprah can't buy viewers by giving every one of them a car.

Political Brand Strategy - Obama 2012

2012-02-23T09:22:00.001-08:00

There are relatively few times that I'll write something with a strict time value. But sometimes the conditions are so fascinating that only a Trappist monk could resist the urge to opine. This is one of those times, because just as they can in business, the political stars are aligning, presenting a compelling set of circumstances that not only would see President Obama re-elected, but riding into a second term in a landslide.

As a strategist, this is just too good to ignore. So here's one branding guy's take on what could happen over the remainder of 2012:

THE ECONOMY: No rational person could blame Obama for the economic recession he inherited. Sure, they can argue about the repair work he's done, but it all comes out in the wash on the bottom line: If the economy were to improve, the voters would approve; but were the economy not to improve, Obama would be, to coin a phrase, "a one term president.."

Call it luck, timing of the markets or just good strategic implementations, all economic data seems to indicate that after several long, painful years, the economy is indeed improving -- just in time for a national election. By the time November, 2012, rolls around, the American economy won't have fully recovered, but barring any force majeur, Obama will be able to claim a sustained record of improvement, which is all he really needs to show. Unemployment down, jobless claims down, corporate profits up...you get the idea.

THE WORLD: As Bill Clinton discovered, "it's the economy, stupid," but that's actually a defensive tack Obama can use to push back against his Republican detractors. The true offense plan is the world stage, particularly Iran. At the time of this writing, the "main threat" perceived by western media is "the Iranian quest for a nuclear bomb." Despite its Iranian claims to the contrary, most nations seem certain that Iran's true intent is to arm itself with nuclear capabilities so that it can pursue its own agenda, most notably, "wiping the state of Israel off the map." This threat, understandably, has alarmed the state of Israel to the point of publicly considering a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear capability before any such devices could be built.

President Obama, having pledged to "bring all combat troops home," isn't about to risk another military engagement overseas. But my guess is that he will do whatever he can to support Israel's strike. See if you agree with this scenario:

1. The Defense Department recently re-commissioned the U.S.S. Ponce, a massive aircraft carrier that was originally scheduled to be de-commissioned this year. Instead of mothballing the vessel, it's been converted to a "floating air base" near the Strait or Hormuz, within view of the Iranian coastline. This would put the Ponce in a perfect location to aid, assist and coordinate Israeli aircraft.

2. Obama can eat up the clock by publicly urging Israel to "show restraint" in dealing with Iran -- at least until a few weeks before the election, at which time he can point to a record of attempts where the United States, the United Nations and Israel have tried and failed to negate the Iranian threat through diplomacy.

3. On or about, say, October 23, 2012 -- or at least a few days before that week's Jewish Sabbath -- I'd expect Obama to appear on national television, informing the American people that, "at 2:30 PM Eastern time, Israeli forces, with the full support of the American armed forces, launched a pre-emptive strike we believe to be morally justified as a move to protect the world from a rogue power intent on inflicting terror on the world and the destruction of our friend and ally, the state of Israel. No American troops are engaged in combat, nor will any be deployed to do so. However, the American people, in our quest for a peaceful, freedom-loving world, stand by our friends and allies -- and the state of Israel ranks among our greatest friends and allies. We stand by their side, ready to help in any way we can."

With a recovering economy and major demonstrations to the American people of his resolve against a nuclear Iran and his support for Israel, all occurring a week before the election, it would seem impossible for anyone to stop the Obama train.

See you at the inauguration.

The AIDS of Social Media

2012-01-03T10:48:00.000-08:00

This being early 2012, the media has finally dispensed with the annual cavalcades of the previous year's events, allowing them to turn their attention to doing what they do best: spreading fear and doubt about our collective future. Personally, I'm an optimist. I'm the guy who walks into a room full of horse manure determined to find a pony. So while I choose to look beyond the press's propaganda in search of sunlight, I fully understand that the road to redemption can take you through some pretty dark places.

At the moment, the darling on everyone's dance card seems to be social media, the phenomenon which is really nothing new save for its technological ability to intrude on your privacy, increase the rate of human polarization and destroy people's ability to form real human relationships while simultaneously compromising access to your bank account.

Sure, Facebook is enjoying all kinds of popularity right about now, but something tells me its success has less to do with its inherent benefits and more to do with the laggard economy: After all, if you've been out of work for a few years, Facebook is a wonderful way to fill your spare time. What happens when the economy fully recovers is yet to be seen, but for my money, I'm betting Facebook takes a serious dive the minute the employment rate takes a substantial leap.

Until then, however, millions of people follow the Facebook faithful, like lambs to the slaughter, completely unaware that every keystroke is recorded, saved and searchable even after they think every one of them has been deleted. Like those tattoos of a foolish, carefree youth, bad data never really goes away. It sticks around for life and pops up in the oddest, ill-timed places. Background checks revealing other-than-laudable photos and stories continue to derail the most promising employment interviews. But that's not the worst of it. This just might be:

I'm watching an entire generation of digitally-dominated young people completely stranded by social polarization. The technology that contends to "bring people together" in fact does just the opposite. Not too long ago, for example, people actually socialized and were motivated to do so. There was no internet, so there wasn't nearly as much to keep you home, exploring the world from your video screen. If you wanted to meet someone, you called them on the phone and talked to them in real time. If you hoped to meet someone, you went to a library where people didn't download books. If you wanted to thank someone, you sent a real, handwritten note through the mail. And if you wanted to see someone, you made plans to go do something together, rather than chat about it through a video screen.

Thanks to digital technology, nobody has to do anything with anyone else any more. You can download books to your Kindle and movies to your own living room, eliminating the need to sit in a crowded theater. Sadly, the chance for bumping into that romantic stranger you've been dreaming about has been eliminated, as well. In fact, the more you look around, the fewer opportunities you can find for genuine human interaction. You can thank social media for that. You can also thank social media not only for an increase in lonely, depressed people, but for propagating a culture in which those poor, unfortunate saps are raised without any idea of how to interact with other people in real life. Newsflash: Real human beings don't react to your pointing and clicking.

I live in a world where thousands of false prophets spread gospels about the deliverance of social media. They point to the Arab Spring as evidence of social media's great benefits to mankind. Well, I'm calling all those prophets out with a prophecy of my own that spells the doom of social media's dominance. And it goes something like this:

History has proven repeatedly that among nature's greatest forces, few compare to the power of the human heart. There are a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of unfulfilled people out there, yearning to feel the warmth of others, but who remain too enslaved to the intimidation proffered by technology, specifically social media. So they remain in their designated cubicles, writhing in their loneliness, yearning for a reason to justify an escape. The problem is that two entire generations have been undermined in their attempts to seek personal fulfillment. They've been led to believe that social media is an acceptable substitute for genuine human interaction.

Well, it isn't. Not for the high school kids waiting desperately to go out on a date and not for any of my clients, each of whom continues to insist I visit them in their offices rather than "do the meeting by Skype."

So where and how does this all end? The way most social dynamics do: Catastrophic fear.

Most people, for example, believe that AIDS is an easy-to-contract, 100% fatal disease. Ask any knowledgeable medical authority, however, and he'll tell you that AIDS, in terms of contagion, is actually more difficult to contract than a great number of diseases. That's not to say you shouldn't be careful with what you do and with whom you do it. What it does say, is that what really powered the efforts to control and hopefully eradicate AIDS was the fear it's been tagged with. Gonorrhea and syphilis are far easier to contract than AIDS, but neither are fatal, so they don't get as much air play. But AIDS is a "killer" that scares the hell out of people. Everyone knows someone who's died of AIDS, so its story always gets on the front page.

My point here is that these days, for things to really change, they have to be tagged with serious fear. And that's what's going to bring down social media. It's only a matter of time until Facebook (or something similar) becomes massively infected with one or more viruses that will devastate hundreds of millions of users' accounts, and accordingly, their lives. In a relatively few short seconds, all of the "sharing of data" guarded by supposedly "secure technology" that "stores its data in the cloud" will turn into just so much digital sludge, infesting and mutating data with effects that reach far beyond users' Facebook pages. It's not hard to imagine bank accounts, real estate records, medical data, personal information and more either damaged, destroyed -- or worse yet -- made publicly available to anyone, anywhere, any time.

That's the kind of nuclear meltdown that changes people's habits. That's where social media will hit the wall. And hopefully, that's when human beings will take back their lives and relationships. Not because they want to, but because they'll finally have a reason to justify wanting to.

Think it can't happen? Fine. Keep denying your humanity and entrusting your life to unsupervised algorithms. But you've been warned. And wearing a condom isn't going to save you.

Branding Rescues America

2011-11-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

As the United States of America continues its journey through its dark, dreary depression (I know, it's technically a recession, but I'm actually referring to its citizens' states of mind), it seems no political, economic or social leaders can come up with any practical solutions to our problems. By practical, I mean something other than a scare tactic or a distraction. Let's face it, terrorism, illegal immigration, Obama's birth certificate and global warming are all grist for the tabloids' mills, but when you get right down to it, the fundamental solution to America's problems is jobs -- or the current lack thereof. And no matter how many sex scandals or scare tactics you throw at them, the American public isn't buying any of it. They need work.

One doesn't have to cite John Maynard Keynes or Adam Smith to know that if people don't have money, people don't spend money. And if people don't spend money, nobody makes money. But if you're going to increase jobs in America, there are two important lessons you're need to learn:

The first lesson is that capitalism and businesses run rationally on cold, hard numbers. Businesses do what they can to lower costs - especially human labor - in order to maximize profits and undercut their competitors' prices.

The second lesson is that the first lesson is usually false. And here's why:

While it seems intuitive that businesses obey the first law, the truth is that most businesses - and certainly the American consuming public - are anything but rational. As I often tell my clients, if every business decision were entirely rational, all purchases would be determined by price. What American businessmen, policy-makers and politicians overlook is that most decisions made by humans are non-rational in nature. This would explain, for example, why dopes stand in line for hours to pay double retail for Apple iPads and iPhones when dozens of other competitive products do far more at substantially lower prices.

Of course, my being a branding guy, you must know where this discussion is headed. But if you don't, keep reading, because it makes a lot more sense and can be deployed with the real results everyone wants but nobody seems able to deliver. Bear with me and see if this doesn't add up for you:

Consider that, as I've published, branding is getting your prospects to perceive you as the only solution to their problem. If you accept that the purpose of branding is to create the perception that there's no place else to shop, your brand becomes the only game in town. You can charge whatever you like for whatever you sell. If you're branded properly (and that's a big "if"), you should be able to place two identical products on a table and have consumers buy yours at a 20% premium -- simply because it's your brand they're buying.

Now consider this: What if an entire country had a brand strategy? What if "Made in USA" were developed into a true, actionable brand strategy (rather than hacked together by some feel-good political cronies)? I'll tell you what would happen: American businesses could sell American products and services at higher prices, simply because they were American. Those higher prices could afford American labor, which would keep jobs here in America, because after all, to be "made in the USA," you have to be, well, made in the USA. Think it can't work? It already has. And I can prove it. Just ask yourself this one simple question:

Which country commands the highest price for a wrist watch?

Apple: A Second Generation Brand

2011-10-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

Now that the other shoe has dropped and Steve Jobs is gone, we can expect the predictable onslaught of media rehash and overhype regarding Apple, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the future of the world as we know it. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked about "Apple without Steve Jobs."

So for those who still wonder, here's what I expect is going to happen to Apple, now that Steve Jobs is gone:

First, before anyone gets too hard on Apple's management heirs, let me begin by reaffirming my position that Apple's brand jumped the shark way before Steve Jobs' demise. In fact, in 2010's Apple Jumps The Shark, I pointed out exactly why the bloom was off Apple's rose. The seeds for Apple's descent were sown into Apple's long range plans.

From a strictly branding point of view, for example, Apple's lack of stated brand strategy allowed it to become a fashion brand, in which its primary brand value relies on its coolness as defined by its user public. And the using public, as we all know, is very fickle when it comes to defining what's cool.

Simply put, the more people embracing the brand, the less cool it becomes. And if all you've got is cool, that means you're on the clock -- it's only a matter of time until you're no longer cool.

This is not to take away from Apple's wonderful technology and design and all that other stuff over which media pundits gush like pre-pubescent schoolgirls. Sure, I like that stuff, too. I'm a Mac guy. But from a brand perspective, there's trouble in paradise.

Second, with the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple now becomes a Second Generation brand, with a Caretaker Manager at its helm. As I've written here previously, brands often follow the same trajectory of the Three Generations of Wealth: The first generation (its founder) creates it; the second generation (his heirs) spends it; the third generation (his disconnected drone grandchildren) loses it. As pointed out in Apple Jumps The Shark, the brand had already lost its vision somewhere around the time when Jobs had begun transferring authority to Tim Cook, his heir to the throne.

Far from its original rebellious roots, the brand has become fortressed, secretive and severe to the point of bullying its competitors - along with its users - in the marketplace.

Apple's increased rate of required upgrades, dependency on proprietary services and, perhaps worst of all, nudging its hardware and software toward "cloud usage" all speak to a ruthless corporate soul revealed as the baton was being passed to new leadership.

And then there's Tim Cook. Poor Tim Cook.

His is not an easy task. Forever being compared to Jobs, he immediately took his first misstep by introducing the iPhone 4S in a presentation far too similar to Jobs' format. Had he been more brand-aware, he would have taken steps to ensure "there's a new sheriff in town" and created his own personal style rather than remain tentative for fear of rocking Apple's stock price. By taking the Caretaker Manager's road, Cook has ensured himself a place under the microscope, doomed to the same fate suffered by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer when he took the reins from Bill Gates. And the longer Tim Cook allows the media to define him as Steve Jobs' Caretaker Manager, the worse it will be for everyone involved.

Yes, Apple will survive. No, it will not be the same brand.

Steve is gone. Get over it.

Political Brands: Mitt & Herman

2011-09-26T10:52:00.001-07:00

At the time of this writing, there's more than a year left before the 2012 presidential elections, which means that the political brand strategies - or more accurately, the lack of political brand strategies become most apparent to the American voting public. With Barack Obama barely holding on to his presidential perch, all kinds of Republicans from various walks of life have jumped into the freak show, causing more head scratching than serious consideration.

I won't burn your time with the usual ignoramus-bashing. I'll leave that to the shallow-thinking media pundits who usually manage to misinterpret even the most obvious political ploys. Besides, I'm a branding guy. I'm surrounded by the mediocre, mindless meanderings every day. They don't interest me. What does interest me is the increasingly rare instance in which there seems to be at least a modicum of strategic thought. That's what makes the difference. And that's why I find two of this year's political brands so fascinating.

Forget the old school perspective. The days of qualified candidates went out the window with Y2K. What we have now is more along the lines of American Idol, where audiences applaud the best quip quoted in a nationally-televised public forum. Candidates speak less from knowledge than they do from their media coaches, each battling for the next day's most aired soundbyte.

Okay, I can deal with that. Times change. Empires crumble into dust. I get it. In fact, I can embrace it. Which is why you may want to consider the only imaginable Republican ticket with any kind of brand strategy behind it: Mitt Romney and Herman Cain. That would be Romney as president, Cain as Vice President, simply because Romney has some political experience and Cain is more of the "can do" guy who admittedly lacks any political experience. Neither have much foreign experience, but that's what Secretaries of State are for.

Forget your politics for a moment. Here are two brands that are not only compatible, but effective in getting elected. Think I'm off track? Think again:

1. Romney and Cain are the only two Republicans with any semblance of brand strategy. Romney champions himself as "the only candidate with both private and public experience." Herman Cain promotes himself as a self made businessman, priding himself as a Washington outsider. In an environment of sustained economic recession, that's the kind of news Americans are asking for. Private sector guys who have created jobs. Even the Clintons didn't have to get beaten over the head too many times to learn, "It's the economy, stupid." Just like the Clintons, Obama squandered his newfound political capital on health care instead of the economy during the initial phases of the recession. Two business guys will be able to call him out on that, big time.

2. This time out, the Salt & Pepper factor works in Republicans' favor. Long hampered by the Republican party's "old boy, all white male" reputation, a Romney/Cain ticket is - sure, I'll say it - a white guy and a black guy running against a black guy and a white guy. It's balanced. When John McCain tried to crack the code, the best he could come up with was a train wreck called Sarah Palin. His choice was clearly a political ploy. But Cain's got the chops. This is no pander job. He's got what the public wants.

3. Both candidates are clearly defined, resulting in both Romney's and Cain's ability to speak in specifics while other candidates merely spout generalities, slogans and meaningless platitudes. If you notice, whenever Romney gets questioned, he lists a "seven point plan" in which he rattles off specific tactics along with the rationale for each. That's brilliant, considering that nobody - other than Cain - has managed to package his proposals in a clear and understandable manner. For his part, Cain promotes his "999" plan the way he promotes pizza toppings. Hokey, sure. But who cares? It's sensible, if not overly simplistic, and for once, avoids the old "baffle them with bullshit" serenade.

4. Both men are gregarious and centered, with Cain showing human traits of humor and self-confidence. Cain's appeal is in direct contrast to the icy, detached stage fright that most other candidates exude. For his part, Romney knows how to zig while other candidates zag: By allowing the other monkeys on the stage to jump about and pander to whatever political fad happens to be sweeping the nation this week, Romney merely stands calmly, allowing them to chase the right wing, which gives him the appearance of appearing moderate.

Put them all together and the combination of Romney and Cain isn't as far fetched as it may have seemed a month -- or evena week ago. And if you think that's too bizarre to happen, recall two other events that seemed even stranger:

Despite the conventional wisdom about "American racism," Barack Obama we resoundingly elected the first non-white president of the United States --and that Sarah Palin came as close as anyone feared to becoming its vice president.

Saving the Economy 1-2-3

2011-08-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

At the time of this writing -- well, let's face it, at any time anyone whines about government, taxes and debt-drowning economies spiraling out of control, the air suddenly gets clouded with smoke and fog rather than clear cut solutions. The year 2011 will no doubt go down in history as the Year of Fear, wherein every western country had to deal with severe economic panics. Once great civilizations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Japan have been rocked by economic chaos. The international community has been plagued by fear and speculation, climaxing in Standard & Poor's unthinkable downgrading of the United States' credit rating, due mainly to America's unacceptable handling of its national debt.

The downgrade was shocking. Unacceptable. But not, as it turns out, completely unavoidable. Because it turns out there's a way to solve all of our economic problems quickly. Permanently. And with no need to raise taxes at all. No cuts in services are required, either. In fact, if you do this right, medical and social services could actually increase without even breaking a sweat.

Of course, if you ask the dolts in Washington, D.C., they'll tell you it's impossible to balance the budget without cutting more and spending less. But I'm a branding guy. I have no political constituency to lose, so I can dare to be bold. And I'm here to tell you that it can all be solved as easily as one, two, three.

The first issue to accept is that the problem isn't taxes or what we spend. The real problem is the underground cash economy that avoids taxation. If you think that's a small number, think again. Search anywhere on the internet and you'll find that everything from minor labor to illegal arms deals to backyard marijuana sales are generally exchanges of under the table, untraceable cash transactions which are never taxed.

There are generally two reasons for cash transactions, depending if you're transacting legal or illegal business. In the illegal market, paying tax on drugs, contraband and the like is tantamount to a one-way ticket to prison. It's an admission that you actually did pay for something the government forbids. In the legal market, people do cash transactions to avoid taxation. After all, what the government doesn't know about, the government can't tax. And at any tax rate higher than a few points, all tax rates do is motivate people to find a way not to pay them. This is why the pudgy guy with the five o'clock shadow and green teeth at the car lot will sell you that used Chevy for $2500 plus sales tax -- or $2000 if it's all cash.

Lest you think the American Underground Economy is trivial in stature, let me state that the average internet search (where such things are discussed) puts the annual figure somewhere in the trillions of dollars every year. That's a trillions of bucks on which the government collects no revenue at all. Nothing. And it slips out of the public coffers every day for just one reason:

They're all cash or barter - untraceable - transactions.

But what would happen if we eliminated cash completely? What if everyone were given debit cards and little swipers they can attach to their smart phones (which by the way, is already in wide use out there)? Here's what would happen: Every single transaction would be tracked and reported. Who paid it. Who received it. And even if it didn't expose the people involved, the system could automatically tack on the appropriate tax before approving the transaction.

It's not as nutty as you think. Merchant Service Providers (MSP) already do that when they verify every single credit card transaction they process. This is just one more nano-second stop along the way. But here's the real kicker:

With far more revenue exposed to taxation, every single local, state and federal authority could actually lower its tax rate. And I mean really lower it. In fact, I'd recommend doing away with the entire tax structure in favor of a 1-2-3 plan:

One percent of each transaction goes to the local government.

One percent of each transaction goes to the state government.

One percent of each transaction goes to the federal government.

That's a total of 3% on any transaction anywhere in the United States, applied to any and all transactions, collected at the moment it's paid. Add the 3% on the underground economy's trillions to the 3% of the legitimate market's trillions, and to paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, pretty soon you're talking serious money. Crisis-solving money, with corporate and personal taxpayers alike rejoicing because the days of double digit tax brackets are gone. If I haven't lost you yet, consider this, too: Because everything is tracked, reported and paid in real time, there's no more need to file income tax returns. No more Internal Revenue Service. No more audits. Just pay as you go government. How cool is that? What's the worst that could happen - the illicit drug culture turns to the Euro for its commerce? Please.

Fairer taxation. Lower tax rates for you and me. Higher revenues for the government with less government bureaucracy. It just doesn't get any better for this.

Unless you're an income tax preparer. In that case, you'd best be dusting off that resumé.

Technology Causes Recession

2011-08-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Some years from now, this article will probably be woefully out of date. Well, the point of the article won't be out of date, but this particular instance will have long since been relegated to the history books, just one more exhibit in the freak show known as Modern American History.

At this writing, the world economies are in chaos. Major nations around the globe are watching their credit ratings melt. People are rioting in the streets. Budgets are being cut. Unemployment is very high and morale is very low. It's a tough time for optimists.

Among the strangest behaviors we're enduring are wild, mega-swings in global financial markets. Whereas a daily 20 point rise or fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was big news in the 1970's, swings of 400 to 600 points - in either direction - have become more commonplace. One explanation is that there are simply more shares and more people to trade them. Another is that we now have the technology to trade those shares much more rapidly than ever before.

It doesn't take a genius to do the math. When a micro-chip can observe, analyze, deduce a result and execute a trade order for millions of shares from hundreds of companies in less time than it took you to read this sentence, you know things are moving at a pretty brisk clip. It's not surprising, then, that market actions and reactions would occur with ever-increasing rapidity.

But that's not the real culprit here. The demon you want is hiding just below the surface, affecting far more than the price of today's stocks. As I've written here previously, technology speeds up just about everything except for human nature. As a result, it's technology, more than anyone realizes, that's adding to - if not causing - our recessionary times. Let me clarify this:

Unless you've been hiding under a a very large rock since 2008, you no doubt have heard about or painfully felt the very real effects of the global economic recession. If you're been fortunate enough to be spared the financial pain, I doubt you've escaped the unending re-hash and faux analyses by television "experts" whose simplistic explanations pass less for truthful explanation than they do for furthering political agenda. Most of those pundits draw their opinions by citing "similar situations" throughout history, including expansions and contractions dating back to the Great Depression of the 1930's. Although there are some similarities to be compared, there's one giant difference that, for some reason, negates just about all of their relevance to today's issues:

Technology. And here's how:

While technology can move data at nearly the speed of light, it does nothing to speed up human behavior. In the old days, both human behavior and data moved at the same speed, because both were powered by humans. For example, if you wanted to buy a stock, you called your stockbroker, who in turn called his floor trader, who placed the trade. The transaction could take hours or days. Same thing with selling. Today, however, there are fewer brokers and traders because everything has been reduced to a simple point and click.

So a huge problem arises when a political administration announces a long term plan to aid economic recovery, mainly, an economic plan takes time to be assessed, implemented and resolved. However, speculating on the viability of a long term plan takes less than a millisecond, which means unlike the days of yore, speculation moves at a far greater rate than real information, which in turn dooms all markets to higher risks of failure because technology is manipulating it based on fear rather than any wisdom borne of financial strategy.

That last part is something not to to be considered lightly. In the end, technology may speed up action but completely ignores wisdom, which means that market decisions - and the plans designed to affect them -- must incorporate technology's need for speed or face a higher risk of failure than necessary. This week the Federal Reserve took an unprecedented step by announcing its interest rate level would be maintained at low levels for the next two years. It's a hugely historic tactic, in that it's the first economic pronouncement designed to destroy the effect of speedy speculation by providing a base of stability for the long term. Previously, the Fed had encouraged speculation by offering only short term announcements. By removing the speculative data from its announcement, the Fed has effectively diffused at least one factor of market instability, which technology cannot distort -- and we need more of that.

The old days of deliberation are long gone, no longer a factor in the eye blink world of the microchip. No matter what your business, know that it's moving at a faster clip than you are -- and unless you manage it, it will mange you. If one truth remains, it's that bad news travel fast and doesn't often wait for wisdom to catch up.

Why Most Gurus Aren't

2011-07-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

I don't know what I was was thinking when I became a branding consultant. I had no idea it would get this involved. I mean, I totally knew that the world had no idea what true branding was about. Most of the planet dismisses brand as little more than identity: a name, a logo - and if you're one of the screaming hordes of lemmings - maybe a social media plan a la Facebook. These days, I find myself spending far more time educating clients as to what branding is, and isn't, long before we even start building their brand strategies.

Sigh.

Unlike what most "gurus" will tell you, brand strategy isn't there to give you a good feeling or even inspire customer loyalty. Brand strategy is there to power a company's financial success. Period. In reality, they may pay it politically-correct lip service to the media, but no management staff really cares how much its end users "value the relationship" if there's no business to be had from it. Let's face it, the only relationship that really matters is between the company and its cash register, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll derive those exact benefits from your own brand strategy.

Of course, having become the buzzword of the millennium, branding has been perverted by all kinds of hack, frauds and poseurs, each claiming they know what brands do and how they can make yours sparkle. The only trouble is that when you hold their feet to the fire, none of them seem to be able to connect the dots to the bottom line.

It's easy to publish books or point a video camera at yourself and spout platitudes about relationships, social media and conversations with your end users. What's not quite as simple is providing real tactics in real time that produce real results on a very real income statement. Unfortunately, that's precisely the problem I have with all the various New Age Gurus out there who have more press agents than they do clients.

My own formula for hack detection goes something like this: The number of books, tapes and seminars a "guru" hawks is inversely proportional to the actual number of clients he's helped succeed. So before you fall for the latest buzz-driven hype, make sure you're getting the real thing when you read, hear or hire a brand strategist. Being the humble, helpful guy that I am, I've prepared a little checklist for you:

1. Does the guru have any clients in the real world? You'd be amazed at the number of "gurus" out there who have, surprisingly, no clients at all. That's because they make their livings selling books, seminars and theories that sound great but have never been tested in the marketplace.

2. What results has the guru achieved for those clients? If the results can't be measured in real dollars and cents, you can stop right there. "Raising awareness" for a brand doesn't put bread on the table, Jack. Who cares how many people know or love your brand if none of them are willing to pay for it?

3. How have those results been measured? Don't be taken in by statistics you wish were true. Remember that a company that has one sale on Monday "doubles their sales in less than a week" if they sell just one widget by Wednesday.

4. Are his recommendations based on rationale or socially popular intangible "fun facts," i.e., "All the kids are doing it!"? Are his strategies pro-active, or simply reactions to the latest social media reports?

5. How long does the guru stick around after picking up his fee? Is he a "drive-by consultant" that tosses a ten pound report on your doorstep on his way out the door or does he help you implement his recommendations?

6. What was the guru doing before he decided to become a guru? Anyone can call himself an expert. Hey, Dog The Bounty Hunter passes himself off as a top gun TV star, but before that, he spent far more time as a drug-addled, incoherent loser. That's not to say that people can't change, just that you want to kick the tires before you take them for a test drive.

I could go on, but you get my drift. For every guy out there taking advice there are ten willing to give it to him - most of them at over-priced rates. Be careful out there: what you see -- or think you're seeing -- isn't always what you get. Unless of course, he's a "guru," in which case you know exactly what you can expect.

Never Sign Your Name

2011-07-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

"It's probably the reason I'm here today. It probably saved my life," mused the man as he reached for a well-deserved toast to his ninetieth birthday. Here he was enjoying a bright, birthday afternoon in the comfort of his own backyard garden, musing over a decision he'd made roughly seventy years earlier, which turned out to be of huge consequence. Sitting among four generations of family and friends, I once again marveled at the seeming randomness of life. Some people make it. Some people don't. Sometimes, it seems as if life is just one giant crap shoot.

Then again, it may just seem as if life is a giant crap shoot. In reality, the closer you look, the more it appears significant events have less to do with luck than genuine, strategic thought.

"There were forms, official registration forms, you were supposed to fill out so that the government knew who you were and where you lived," man continued. "But something about them didn't seem right. So I just never filled mine out. And from that point on, I made sure to never sign my name."

The forms themselves were fairly benign, not that much different from what you and I fill out every day on the internet. Your name, where you live and various personal data that's supposedly guarded to protect your privacy. Of course, there were other personal details, but nobody paid much attention to them. And because the forms were distributed by official-looking people posing with official-looking authority, most people filled them out completely and promptly, complete with their signatures on the bottom line.
"I knew it wasn't right. Something just felt wrong," repeated the man.

It wasn't too long after that, returning from his job in another town, that the twenty-something man discovered there was no more family to come home to. Everyone was gone. Family. Friends. Even strangers he knew by face but not by name. All of them vanished, never to be heard from again.

All of them had one thing in common: they'd filled out their forms and signed on the bottom line.

Realizing the gravity of his brush with fate, the man grabbed what he could and left his home town, his country and whatever history he'd grown up with. By way of Swiss refugee camps and liberated France, he eventually made his way to America. He never looked back, pursuing a life, career and family the result of that one, single determination:

"Never sign your name."

It makes you think about what you do with your own personal information today. Who has it? Who owns it? What will they do with it? How smart is it to fill out that form and sign your name?

When the man tells me his story, I realize how quick thinking not only saved his life, but by even greater odds, is responsible for my own.

The man is, after all, my father.

Arnold, explained

2011-06-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

A branding strategist like myself has only to wonder why things happen the way they do. More often than not, I find that the solution to a problem is usually found within the problem itself. I look for patterns. I turn over possibilities to find what motivates people to do the things they do. That, after all, is where branding really lives: deep down in people's hearts, right next to where their most sacred -- and sometimes nefarious -- dreams reside.

So it was with great interest and something more than a little morbid curiosity that spurred me to observe and report on the strange, perhaps bizarre case of one Arnold Shwarzenegger and the revelation of his recently announced extra child. For some reason, the media seems shocked and appalled by the ex-Governator's most recent revelation. But now that the media hype has died down, it seems the careful observer should never have been surprised at all. It really boils down to one, simple word:

Sociopathy.

Please don't leap to the commonly-held myth that the term sociopathy implies anything criminal. It doesn't. Sociopaths are not necessarily criminals, although many criminals are sociopaths. In fact, you probably know more than a few. Sociopaths have a few unmistakable traits they wear like the mark of Cain, the most prominent of which are these:

1. A very low, even non-existent self-image.

2. An absolute lack of awareness of anyone else in the room, or for that matter, in life.

There are more, but these are the two biggies. Because they have such low opinions of themselves, sociopaths spend all their energy trying to prove to everyone else that they do indeed have some basic human worth. That's why so many highly successful, high-achieving people are indeed sociopathic: they know that if they can just grab enough props of success, people will have to think they're worthy. Sociopaths can just as easily become CEO's of large corporations as serial killers, because what they are is always hidden behind what they do.

The second hallmark of a sociopath is not only a complete disregard for others, but a total refusal to admit others even exist. It's not that other people don't have feelings; it's that there simply are no other people in the room. When your self-esteem is incredibly low, the one thing you want to avoid is getting hurt. And the best way to avoid receiving pain is blocking out those capable of inflicting it.

With me so far? Great. Now you can understand everything you need to know to make sense of Arnold the Great.

By far, the most commonly-asked question about the illicit Shwarzenegger Domestic Child Affair has got to be this: Jesus, this guy could have any woman in the world -- why would he be having an affair with HER? It's a reasonable question. In fact, rumor has it that Arnold has had lots of beautiful women in his life, so it does seem odd that he'd choose to have an ongoing relationship with a woman so ill-matched to his image.

Unless you consider the model I've outlined above.

If you begin with the assumption that Arnold has always had low self-esteem, the pattern becomes pretty clear. He started life as a weak youngster, perceiving himself to be somewhat of a loser. His solution to that problem was to transform himself into something else. In a feverish, brutal competitive fashion, he bulked himself up to the top of the body-building world -- his first prop to show others that his new, manufactured image was his real persona. But a sociopath's needs are insatiable. As they fortress themselves behind their artificial props, their biggest fear is discovery. And so they continue to add, build and create believers with each additional piece of evidence they're driven to acquire. Arnold's next prop was a Hollywood career.

It's no accident that Arnold would choose to become an actor. Actors make their livings pretending to be someone else. Actors also rely on others' approval to measure their success. A man with low self-esteem craves constant approval. Living with the constant stress of being found out who he really is only drove him harder to keep his real persona secret.

Arnold could have married anyone. But he chose a Kennedy. If you look at the pattern, why he chose Maria Shriver fits right in: If he married a Kennedy, it would fortify his circle of deception. Marrying into the Kennedy clan, in his mind, certified his legitimacy: Now everyone would have to accept him. And it worked - to a point.

The problem with sociopathy is that the sociopath never knows when to stop. At some point, with their fortresses of fantasies in place, the sociopath becomes secure, safe within the walls of his self-made deceptions. Because he's walled out others from his life, he has no sounding board for reality. He becomes delusional, lost in his own version of reality. He simply doesn't know when to stop.

Not content with a physique, a career and a Kennedy, Arnold pounced - in typical sociopathic, opportunistic style - on a one-in-a-million chance to become governor of California. This was perhaps the greatest prop of all: legitimization by popular vote. Of course, what happens on the outside of a sociopath's brain never matches what's never changed on the inside. Inside, he still needed to continually prove to himself and others he was no pathetic loser.

Which brings us back to Arnold and the maid. Why her? Simple:

The sociopath never loses his feelings of inferiority. His is a constant, driving need to express his power over others with props. The maid was not pretty. Or sexy. Or even highly talented or intellectual. In fact, the only thing the maid was, was right under Maria's nose. The thrill of carrying on an affair with the maid for over ten years without Maria even suspecting gave Arnold the feeling of power and superiority. Every day, he could look at the maid, look at his wife and think to himself, "I'm even smarter than a fucking Kennedy."

Of course, you can only build a house of cards so high. Eventually, the winds of truth blow the whole thing apart and the world sees what it's always seen: a weak, pathetic person with a low self-image and a high social and personal casualty rate. At this writing, all of Arnold's much-hyped post-political deals have been placed on hold. The divorce lawyers are lining up. All those years of deception are about to go public.

Sociopaths aren't nearly as uncommon as you might think. They're easy to spot. The tough part is having to courage to call them out.

The Third World War

2011-01-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a brand strategist has less to do with branding than it does strategic planning. After all, when you’re building a longstanding symbol of trust with end users, it helps to get a handle on what’s coming down today, tomorrow and well into the future. That’s where your brand will be living. And if you’re really good, where it will be thriving. As I’m fond of telling clients, the best brands are built from the outside in, which means it’s paramount to look at everything that exists within your brand’s environment.

When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, believe me, everything becomes a strategic challenge. The techniques learned in my field appear to transfer easily to others – including geo-political history, past, present and future. Which makes for some interesting speculation as to the future of our own existence – and it’s not as bleak as the media might think.

Of course, it does involve a minor World War.

The book that started me thinking is Tom Reiss’s The Orientalist, which centers around regions such as Azerbaijan, Russia, Germany, Turkey and France around the turn of the twentieth century. Among other things, it's a fascinating account of how and why the world changed so radically and why each faction rose up the way it did, resulting in two world wars. For me, it’s the first work to put all the missing pieces together, linking the decline of end-of-century monarchies with the rapid rise of popular – often mob-ruled - republics that grew wildly out of control, way too fast.

Russia replaced its Czar with Bolsheviks, Germany converted to nationalism, the Ottoman Empire essentially evaporated. Entire nations imploded, taking their cultures down with them. It was, for the most part, a social vacuum. A political wild west with no real leadership structure – and no real strategic planning at all, which led to roughly 30 years of progressively antic Euro-Asian chaos.

It was an important transition then, and if you understand it, puts a lot into perspective when you look at what's happening around the world right now:

See this map? Click on it. Get to know it. Because this, by some account, could be the map of World War Three. All of the countries surrounding the main focal point are at just about the same political point that they were a century ago: Lots of political unrest, aggravated by religious fervor, because so many of them have no political voice. There’s your political leadership vacuum. But there’s more:

A few things to keep in mind when it comes to international volatility:

1. Nationalist strategy ALWAYS requires a "common enemy" to unite its forces into militarism. Bolsheviks had the Czar; radical Islam has the West. One look at the region tells you there’s no shortage of social differences capable of motivating entire countries to war.

2. The region contains the city of Baku, which a century ago was the #1 oil producer in the world -- just slightly north and west of the central convergence point of this map. There’s your commercial motivation.

The fuse is probably Kashmir or somewhere in that region, a traditional flashpoint between India and its unstable nuclear neighbor, Pakistan, but actual ignition could happen anywhere nearby. With that stage set, here’s how one scenario unfolds:

After the initial shots are exchanged between two nuclear-capable nations (likely India and Pakistan), Russia, China and India immediately mobilize their forces in the name of “national security.” From the north, Russia patiently waits for the region to collapse, then rushes in to capture oil facilities and ports. From the east, China moves west, justifying its occupation and finally crushing Tibet. From the south, India rolls into Pakistan, virtually wiping the Pakistani state off the map.

And while this is happening, nobody in the west will say a word, for very simple reasons:
1. Russia will have done the dirty work of “regional stabilization” in exchange for oil and ports.
2. China will gain more land and unquestioned borders in return for being the world’s banker.
3. The USA will finally have found its only way out of dealing with its tenuous, often duplicitous relationship with Pakistan, finding many of its cultural relationship issues solved without ever having commit one troop to active duty. In fact, this could be the impetus for removing American troops from the region even faster.
4. The rest of the Middle East will quickly run to Western allies for fear or Russian domination. Iran will fall back into western hands, as well, as the Russian threat becomes all too real for them. And all you Israel fans, take heart: the real world threats aren’t on the coast of the Mediterranean. They’re firmly embedded in Central Asia, far to the east.

So much for the potentially bad news. Now here’s the potentially good news:

Both Russia and China have joined the USA by accepting the world as a market-driven economy. The days of centrally planned failure are over. But the big dividend for the USA -- and the world economy -- is the end of religiously-driven terrorism. The unwritten agenda of World War Three is the elimination of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, which currently undermines the security of a free market system and provides the common enemy which unites all three factions.

I know. It’s not politically correct. But then, history rarely concerns itself with that sort of thing.

This scenario plays out much like the finale of World War Two, which was essentially a land grab, but this time is a much easier to sell to the public. In this scenario, instead of the defeat of evil Nazis, the threat of terrorism is removed for good. People get on airplanes without being patted down. It’s all good, because the “peace dividend” allows less time and money to be spent on security and more on productivity.

It’s just like the old days - except that everything gets divided BEFORE the first shot is fired. And great news for western economies, because let’s face it: someone has to get into those war torn regions to rebuild them after the shooting has stopped. Usually, those are contractors from the west, looking for projects to pump their balance sheets - and resolve the world's economic recessions.

Think it can’t happen? You could be right. After all, this is just one strategic scenario. There are bound to be hundreds.

Then again, you may want to avoid any vacation plans you may have had for Central Asia over the next few years.

The Rifle Shot

2010-12-29T05:49:00.000-08:00

At the time of this writing, the national unemployment rate in the United States is well over 10%. In my home state of California, the rate is hovering around 12%, with no short term improvement on the horizon. It's not, in Dickensian terms, the best of times.

But I'm a branding guy. To me, life revolves around the ability of perception to influence reality. As opposed to most branding hacks and posers, I'm careful to make sure those perceptions are grounded in reality, rather than fantasy. To me, a brand isn't some made-up notion of fancy; it's a real, four-on-the-floor, kick-the-tires argument using real facts to explain why the brand is "the only solution to its prospects' problems."

So when I see a dumbing down of important social issues, either by over-simplification or sheer ineptitude, my alarms go off. And that's what I think we've got going here.

Before I get too far into it, let me disclaim any suspicions you may have regarding my sensitivity to the unemployed. Believe me, I've suffered through tough times just like everyone else. I know what it's like to rob Peter to pay Paul only to find out that Peter went broke long ago borrowing from someone else. I'm hunting a completely different animal here. I'm going after the popular acceptance of inaccurate and misleading statistics that drive people like you and me into making decisions that can literally derail people's lives. It's important to businesses and individuals alike, because decisions are what determine our eventual successes and failures. And if you base those decisions on faulty data, there's a whole lot more of the the latter than the former.

Increasingly, I'm seeing an increasing number of bad decisions being made in public and private lives based on broad, sweeping -- and more often than not, misleading -- data than ever before. Take those statistics at the top of this article. Those are hefty numbers, to be sure. But more often than not, they're applied in the wrong context. While macro statistics might be of interest to some, they have no place among the micro world, where each individual has to play to the context of his own situation.

Simply put, the fact that the country or the state as a whole has a high unemployment rate actually has nothing to do with each individual's chances of employment. In other words, while the greater masses may produce a statistic that titillates politicians and media pundits, in your own world, where you live, breathe and raise your kids, statistics mean nothing. They rarely even reflect the true nature of your own environment, but can actively distort your view, steering you into some pretty bad, fateful decisions. I call it the Rifle Shot Strategy and this is how it works:

Back in the Jurassic Period, when I was starting out in the advertising world, there was no way to get hired into an agency, especially for a writer. Art directors had schools and programs; writers didn't. After a year of searching, the only chance I had to get hired was a long shot: A national ad agency offered a training program in which new kids could get hired off the street. In Los Angeles, the agency had one slot for over 80 applicants, all of whom were formally educated in various aspects of the advertising business. To make a long story short, I beat the odds and nabbed the slot. A nearly 1% chance of success. However, had I listened to the pundits, I never would have even submitted my application. After all, who bets on an 80 to 1 shot?

I'll tell you who bets on it: Individuals who recognize they don't need to beat the odds, they only need to win one place for themselves. It's like my pal once told me when we considered buying lottery tickets. "How many are you going to buy?" I asked. "One," he answered. "You only need one to win!"

More recently, I'm pummeled with the haranguing of helicopter parents, too lazy and inept to guide their kids by anything other than the questionable advice offered by expensive college advisory services. Every one of these parents seems ready to pony up big fees to preparatory services whose main achievable goal seems to be exacting big fees from lazy and inept parents. Yes, it helps for kids to have good grades and test scores. Yes, it's true that top achievers often get into top schools. But no, it isn't true that attending any particular school is going to guarantee your child's success in life. Nor is it necessarily true that any of these services will actually improve your child's test scores. In fact, the only thing that is true is that most of these lazy parents buy into the sweeping, generalized, misapplied statistics because it's easier for them to write a check than it is to educate their children as to the realities of life; teaching their kids to determine their own specific fates based on their own abilities and talents.

Analyzing each individual's particular opportunities and challenges is what determines that person's success or failure. Despite what the national statistics say, throughout his own personal adult life, the college Johnny attends has far less to do with his success than the kind of person Johnny is. It's the decisions Johnny makes on what's best for Johnny that determines his ultimate success or failure, not national trends.

So what does all this have to do with branding? Simple: Businesses are no different when it comes to the Rifle Shot. Just because some airheaded academic points to a PowerPoint slide may not -- and more likely does not -- have any effect on your businesses. Largely generic numbers, charts and graphs are far less the results of usable data than they are the basis for analysts' paychecks. There's good money in marketing fear.

Don't get me wrong, good data is great. Good data applied incorrectly is disastrous. Make sure you know what's applicable to your specific situation before going off half-cocked. Choose the rifle shot over the shotgun blast and you'll hit your target every time.

Google Eats Your Brain

2010-09-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

Some people would call me curmudgeonly, but the truth is that I have a deep resentment for arbitrary authority. I'm one of those old-fashioned guys who doesn't like anyone at any time telling me what I should or shouldn't do. After all, I went through school. I went to college. I've lived a little bit so I know what's going on.

I seriously believe that after several decades on the planet, I know what's good and what's not so good for me. I'm ready enough to take on almost any situation because I spent the better part of my youth being educated in all kinds of stuff. I can quote philosophers and physicists, or hold up my end of just about any political conversation. I know enough about art, religion and music to bluff my way past even the most pretentious snobs. I read. I watch. I observe. I remember.

I think. I know, that's something of a lost art, but I really happen to enjoy it. I ponder. I query and, not unlike John F. Kennedy, ask "why not?" I enjoy thrusting and parrying in conversations, most of the time not even caring about which side I argue. I just like the sport of it.

Of course, to be able to enjoy this kind of life requires possessing more than a fair amount of general knowledge. You not only have to know a lot of stuff, you have to enjoy knowing about a lot stuff. You have to look forward to each day for the amount of new things you're about to learn and be somewhat disappointed if you fall asleep having not learned anything worthwhile.

Too bad that this is probably the last generation who will ever know that pleasure. Because as we speak, Google is removing it from your brain.

This week, Google clumsily announced a new means of searching the internet called "Google Instant." Priding itself on its blindingly speedy technology, the mental fascists have created a technology that finds just about anything so that you don't have to know about it. Its "predictive technology" will begin searching for results as you type in a few keystrokes.

I found it somewhat depressing listening to Google's Chief of Human Destruction gleefully describe how fast and accurate her new product was. Pushing a button, it would seem, could supplant your own need for knowledge -- after all, why learn anything when you can just Google it?

I'll tell you why. And you'd better listen up:

What the public doesn't seem to understand -- because most of them came of age after the internet did -- is that Google is slowly eating their brains. As they give up their privacy for a few free products, the public doesn't seem to notice that Google knows everything about them. Google Street can show you a photograph of where they live; Google Search can tell you just about everything else if you know where to look. And now, Google Instant will tell you everything Google thinks you should know.

What's frightening is the big picture, in which Google, which claims to want to be the "sum of all knowledge" is creating a huge dependency for any human who knows how to point and click. But what happens the day the power goes out? What will humans do when there is no Google to query? Where's the human backup for knowledge no longer stored in human memories?

Even more frightening is the notion that Google may choose to store and serve only knowledge it deems appropriate. And what happens then? You don't have to be George Orwell to understand that he who controls knowledge controls the world. Sure, it may sound paranoid, but think it out for yourself: What if Google chose not to store any information about 9/11? Or the Holocaust? Or chose not to display any references to the bombing of Hiroshima?

Still not convinced? How about this: What would happen if Google decided to omit any references to you? I'll tell you what would happen. You'd cease to exist, because the standard by which your existence was measured -- presence on Google -- wouldn't show anything about you. And because human memory no longer held any currency, you'd be certifiably non-existent.

Think it can't happen? Ever experienced credit theft? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

There are those who would call me an alarmist. Fine. I've been called worse. But at least I know that when and if the plug ever gets kicked out of the wall, I'll be able to survive without pointing or clicking. Now take a look at the gamer moron sitting next to you, texting his girlfriend. What chance has he got?

The Bunny Bites Back

2010-07-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting interview on MarketWatch Radio the other day. After years of pummeling, Playboy announced that its venerable founder, Hugh Hefner, was seriously considering taking his publicly-held company private once again. Hef had reason to be serious. After decades of mismanagement, beginning with his own daughter, Christie, at the helm, what could arguably be called one of the planet's most recognizable and potentially valuable brands has been decimated to a shadow of its former self.

It wasn't always that way. There was a time when Playboy was the gospel of Modern Western Man. Readers could look to the pages of the magazine to develop their tastes in music, fashion, lifestyle, alcohol, automobiles -- and yes, fine-looking women. Of course, it was the fine-looking women that grabbed most of the headlines, but the actual Playboy brand was far more than that.

What people tend to forget is that Playboy was originally launched to compete with the likes of Esquireand other gentlemen's magazines, most of which were outgrowths of young men's primers from east coast colleges. Knowing how to hold your fork or which wine is simply not served with fish was crucial to every aspiring young man's rank and reputation. Discerning the differences between 12 and 18 year old scotch was as important back then as an M.B.A. degree is today. Yet while magazines like Esquireprofessed to be "man at his best," Hefner was able to see what none of his competitors could:

All the other publications assumed that men at their best was the same after the second world war as it was before the war. And every one of them was wrong.

From the outset, Hugh Hefner knew that every generation from the 1950's would never look back or aspire to be what their fathers were. The post-war mass production economy had far fewer media channels than we have today, and its affluence -- for the very first time in world history -- afforded lower-class men a chance to move up on the status bar. All of which allowed Playboy to become the sole medium for young men to find what they were looking for.

Sure, a few bare-breasted babes helped increase circulation, but for decades, far more pages of Playboy were devoted to social discourse than sexual intercourse. It's no coincidence that the series of James Bond movies found huge success after the success of Playboy; for all intents and purposes, James Bondwas the quintessential Playboy man who knew all the right moves in all the right places.

There was a time, in fact, when a Playboy subscriber carried a Key Card, allowing him access to a number of Playboy clubs across the country. Each club featured a bar, restaurant and well-packed Playboy bunny waitresses that understood -- and enjoyed -- their place in the Playboy world.

It was all good until the 1970's, when political correctness and gross brand mismanagement hit the bunny like a sledgehammer. The rise of feminism unwittingly took Playboy as its prisoner, preferring to project the brand as offensive to women, when in fact, Playboy was at the forefront of most, if not all, causes of sexual freedom and equality. However, Playboy took less of a hit for its sexual content than it did for its celebration of masculinity, which media pundits of the time found to be oppressive, an extension of their all-thing-white-and-male-are-part-of-the-problem mentality. To be a man, all of a sudden, was not a good thing. This is the time in which the Emasculation of America began.

Playboy continued its downward spiral when Hefner's less-than-intelligent daughter, Christie, took the helm. Among Christie's colossal catalogue of ineptitudes was her complete and total ignorance of the Playboy brand, which she understood to be less about men and more about sex. As a result, she allowed the brand to be consumed in the now famous "pink wars" where magazines like Penthouse battled on the newsstands to see which publication could expose more female genitalia without getting arrested.

Throughout her tenure, Christie -- like so many denial-driven CEO's -- believed that the bunny could never die. She had no idea how to nurture it back to health and watched the brand disintegrate from her glassed-in office in her ivory tower. Playboy finally dumped her, but not before a huge amount of damage had been done. Playboy stock, once a high flyer, traded as low as $2 per share in early 2010.

Which is exactly when I bought it.

I loaded up on Playboy stock because it fit my financial model: I buy strong brands, figuring that someone, someplace knows an under-valued brand when they see it. Fortunately, Hugh Hefner is still alive to see it, too. His announcement to take the company private doubled the stock's value in less than two hours. With any luck, he'll attract the right management this time and restore the Playboy brand to what it is and always has been:

The celebration of being a man.

Myth of the Sin Tax

2010-04-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

Writing at a time when the Great Recession's darkest days have passed, I'm constantly reminded that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is still a luminescent dot for most folks. On this date, the Los Angeles Times states that "44% of the unemployed have been without work for six months or more." That's a lot of hungry, crestfallen people. That's a lot of pain.

But working men and women aren't the only ones getting squeezed. Public services and institutions are feeling the heat, too. In California, where I live, it's now commonplace for any given city or state office to be closed during the week due to "furloughs" which is government-speak for "unpaid office closure." Universities can't accept as many students, and those who are accepted face extended careers because fewer classes are offered.

When there's widespread pain, you can always bet on the finger-pointing to begin. It's no different here, where a gubernatorial race is in its embryonic stage. "Insider" candidates claim "outsiders" have no experience, while ""outsiders" lambast "insiders" for messing things up in the first place.

What neither side realizes is that the solution to our problems isn't politics; it's money. We need more of it. The question is where to find it.

Californians are fond of pointing out that were it an independent country, the state would be home to the world's fifth largest economy. It's true. There's a lot of money generated here. And where there's revenue, there's a tax base just waiting to be tapped. Unfortunately, there's one source that goes completely untapped and that, of course, is the state's leading agricultural crop, marijuana.

Now before you get all worked up about it, this is not your typical plea for legalization. Personally, I don't care what you do as long as you're not endangering anyone else in the process. But I do care about stuff that works and solves problems. It's what I do for a living. And this is why legalization probably would go a long way to injecting billions into state coffers:

Sin taxes don't work.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a sin tax is an archaic form of moral imperialism, in which products and services are levied with heavy taxes on the theory that if the sin becomes too expensive, fewer people will be able to afford indulging in the sin. This is the reasons why cigarettes and alcohol are as expensive as they are. Were there no state or Federal sin taxes, most tobacco and alcohol products would retail for a fraction of their current prices.

As a matter of record, sin taxes have never done much to deter sinful practices. The wealthy simply pay for their vices; the poor simply steal to sustain their habits. And illegalizing controlled substances doesn't seem to slow its growth, if the daily beheadings in Mexico are any indication. Truth is the taxing authorities actually count on the sin tax to not work, because if it truly did deter usage, there would be no revenue to be gained from imposing it.

There are lots of people who smoke. And lots of people who drink. Trust me on this next one: There are lots of people who smoke dope. Which means that usage isn't affected by taxation or legality. It's a myth, supported by political theorists who spend more time alone with their cats than they do on the streets.

An increasing number of states are getting sucked down the budgetary rat hole, while their political caretakers sit idly by, their feet staying dry atop their moral soapboxes, providing no leadership or solutions. All of them pledge no taxes, because they think that's what the people want to hear. That's not what the people want to hear. People don't mind paying taxes -- as long as you're taxing the right stuff.

Apple Jumps the Shark

2010-03-03T11:55:00.000-08:00

If you're as antique as I am, you can measure a great deal of your life by phases in which the "demise of Apple Computers was assured." There was the Two-guys-in-a-garage phase. There was the Their-market-share-is-shrinking phase, followed by the John-Scully-In-Steve-Jobs-Out phase, which handed off new definitions of failure to the How-much-faster-can-Gil-Amelio-destroy-it phase. It got so bad that at one point, sitting in a meeting with Regis McKenna, a celebrated Silicon Valley public relations man, I listened to him tell of how he advised Steve Jobs to simply license the Apple logo instead of running a company.

Of course, that was in the early 1990's. A lot has changed since, and most to Apple's benefit. Apple stock is way up. Its success is astounding. New products and services have revolutionized entire industries. Even non-tech people know and use iPods, iPhones, iTunes and maybe even iPads, not to mention a whole line of Apple desktop and laptop computers.

It's been a great ride for Apple. The happy band of rebels that take pride in "Thinking Different" have achieved success in just about every arena they've entered. Not to be overlooked, every one of those victories came the added-but-rarely-verbalized pleasure of sticking it to Microsoft.

But now we come to the point where Apple may have jumped the shark.

Every upstart brand, from rock bands to retailers, goes through it: Beginning as an underdog, the little David takes on the well-entrenched Goliaths. The early adopters -- half out of pure contrarianism and half because they just want to be cool -- bless the new brand with eager acceptance. They evangelize the new brand while castigating the huge, old, evil ones. Within a short time, their followings swell, usually embraced by throngs of young kids whose own agenda of pubescent rebellion fits snugly into the brand's.

Riding the Culture of Cool, the brand gains critical mass and begins to attract the attention of market makers and venture funds, who stoke the financial coals into a real, fire-breathing revenue machine. As the brand gets bigger, it generates more influence. Sales skyrocket. The brand goes mainstream. Everyone is happy.

And then, something happens. Imperceptibly, at first. But it's there nonetheless.

One day, at corporate headquarters, memos begin appearing dictating the rules of corporate culture. Lawsuits begin emanating from the legal department, defensive at first, but very soon pre-emptive, as the brand stakes its claim on its entrepreneurial turf. The brand then begins to lose its sense of self, feeding on a generation of cultural inbreeding which gradually mutates from camaraderie into full-blown paranoia, if not downright xenophobia. In its final stages, megalomania sets in, with the brand completely intoxicated with its own sense of power, success -- and hubris.

It can happen to anyone -- especially those without a clear and concise brand strategy. It happened to Microsoft. It happened to Yahoo. It's happened to Google. And if you watch carefully, you can see it happening to Apple.

You think Apple has a successful brand? You're right. You think Apple has a good brand? You're wrong. To this day, Apple has no articulation of their brand strategy. Yes, they're stock is at an all-time high. But gone are the days of the happy band of rebels. These days, Apple -- the brand associated with creativity and freedom -- arbitrarily decides which of its iPhone apps are morally offensive or inappropriate. Its mind set has become one of a fortressed company.

Think I'm wrong? Does the name Michael Jackson ring a bell?

To be sure, Apple's brand is not going away any time soon. To be just as sure, Apple's brand has jumped the shark, It's only a matter of time until the next David loads his slingshot.

The Tipping Point of Terror

2010-01-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

How many times have you heard someone casually toss out this question: "Are there really more gay people or does it just seem that way?" Usually, the responses fly back and forth, ranging in veracity from the utterly ridiculous to the somewhat plausible. My answer, however, is always the same:

Yes. Of course there are more gay people.

The reason there are more gay people, however, is not due to some dark, cabalistic conspiracy to steal your children and train them in the arts of homoerotic lifestyles. It has nothing to do with environment or genetics, either. The plain, simple reason there are more gay people is that there are simply more people in general. If you take a percentage of say, seven per cent of the population as being gay, then you naturally would find -- in real numbers -- more gay people in America's current population of 300 million than you would in, say, 1910, when its populace numbered closer to 100 million.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? That's because it is simple. Simple math. In the early 20th century, there might have been 7 million gay people; in 2010, that number would probably be closer to 21 million.

Our society is built on an economic system of enterprise in which growth is an essential element. Without growth, markets can't expand and the quantity of consumers stagnates. So to the American economy, specifically that of its human population, growth is a good thing.

But that growth comes at a huge social cost.

When a population is small, its social values are created, upheld and enforced by popular consensus. Let's face it: America's founding fathers left England because they wanted to live in a place where they could live by their own standards. It pretty much worked, as it always does in the initial phases of social creation: The smaller the group, the stronger its members' adherence to its morals and ethics.

But that usually doesn't last very long.

Unfortunately, while growth is the archangel of economic engines, it happens to be the arch enemy of social conformity. The larger a population grows, the more differences evolve among its members. A small group of homogenous English refugees, for example, rapidly morphed into a nation of millions, which in a century's time saw its differences culminate in The War Between the States.

Combine population growth with a capital-driven economic engine and something else happens over time: Its small criminal element begins to grow alongside all that prosperity. Even if criminals and/or terrorists were to represent only two percent of a population, in 2010, that would translate to something like six million criminals and/or terrorists in America alone.

But let's say I'm wrong. Let's say that criminal percentage is lower. Much lower. How about, um, one half of one per cent? That would make the count in 1910 roughly fifty thousand hard core criminals/terrorists. By 2010, however, that number would have grown to 150,000.

Why does that matter? Because when you look at the absolute numbers, you find an interesting phenomenon: In the early stages of growth, when a population is very small, its criminal element - in real numbers - is also very small. Which means criminal acts are rarer, which in turn creates the perception that those criminal acts are anomalies. At some point, however, the real number of criminals rises until their activity ceases to be an anomaly. There are simply too many criminals. There numbers are too large; their crimes become so regular as to no longer shock us.

Put them all together and what you've got is a world whose population has grown so large that its rebels, rejects and revolutionaries abound in numbers too big to ignore. They own a place in society because there simply too many of them now. And that means only on thing:

The old social rules no longer apply: These guys are here to stay.

Ours is no longer the safe, small world it once was. It never will be again. But not because one day some civilian airliners dive-bombed some skyscrapers or a suicide sociopath strapped some dynamite to his chest. The simple truth is that there are just too many people. And while terrorists as a percentage of the population may remain the same, their real numbers have grown alongside the rest of the world's population.

In real terms, our vulnerabilities may not be due as much to cultural and economic differences as they are to simple math.

What Chief Branding Officer's Don't Know

2009-10-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going to attempt to write this with as much sensitivity as I can muster. After all, it's not without foundation that I've been labeled as much for my brutality as irreverence. What can I say? I'm a guy who calls 'em like he sees 'em and sometimes I don't like what I see.

I recently had a conversation with a very high level branding officer of a very high profile Fortune 100 company. I don't want to step on any toes here, because truth be told, this person was very kind and extremely genuine. Totally well-meaning and, judging by the tenor of our conversation, a true believer in New Age marketing. For the uninitiated, New Age marketing is that which places a premium on engaging with end users through social media, surveys and megatons of research.

You know, stuff for which agencies are totally unaccountable.

The purpose of my conversation with this Chief Branding Officer (CBO) -- code-named Jordan to keep things anonymous -- was to find out if the company had any real brand strategy to speak of. Actually, the purpose was to find out if the company even had a brand strategy. Most don't, which is why I call them. It's what I do. But that's another story.

Jordan was very amiable, asking me why I would ask a question like that. "Because I'm on your web site right now, and for the life of me, all I see is a logo. Not even a tagline. No reason for anyone to choose your brand. Nothing. Is there a brand strategy?"

Keep in mind that I'm talking to a CBO -- the highest level there is in this type of corporation, which happens to be international in scope and service. A Wall Street darling. A major player in its field. And with all that, this is the answer I get:

"Our branding agency will be presenting the brand strategy to us in the coming weeks."

When I got back into my chair, I couldn't help but inquire as to who that agency might be. It was, as I suspected, a major international hack branding agency whose failing works I've previously lambasted here. Who else would have the cojones to string along a powerhouse client -- for years -- with absolutely no tangible deliverables while charging the client millions for the privilege?

I've grown accustomed to the millions-for-hackery branding scams that go on in the boardrooms of corporate America. But the real shocker was that Jordan couldn't even come close to expressing what the company's brand strategy was. Not even a hint. Jordan wouldn't even take a shot at it, which could only mean one thing: Jordan had absolutely no idea what a real brand strategy is. One look at the company's materials only reinforced my suspicion: Logos were everywhere, but no place could one find any message conveying why the company should be perceived as "the only solution to its prospects' problems."

I'm often asked about high-level, Fortune 1000 clients. "Aren't they more knowledgeable and sophisticated when it comes to branding?" The answer, sadly, is no. Not by a long shot. In fact, when it comes to branding -- real branding -- I'm consistently dismayed to find that in general, the bigger the name, the less they know about branding. But when you think about it, it makes sense:

When you're small and bucks are sparse, you do everything you can to establish and protect your market share. You make sure people know you for the right reasons, whenever and wherever you communicate with them, because losing market share means losing the food off your table. But when you're big -- really big -- you get fat. Really fat. You get so fat that you forget what it's like to be hungry; you pay people to be hungry for you. Instead of thriving on grit and determination, you order lattés and conference reports. You become detached from who you are and why you are because, win or lose, you know you can always fire the agency, but you'll never go hungry.

When you're that high up in the ivory tower, the denial gets so thick that you can barely see your way down to the golf course. It's happened to so many big brands that I've lost count. It's happening to brands like Kodak and Maytag and Yahoo and so many others I've written about here.

Now the long, slow decline will begin to take its toll on Jordan's Fortune 100 company. I suppose the good news is, as with all degeneratively diseased patients, Jordan won't even realize the impending doom until it's much too late -- and the stock in the pension plan is worthless. But Jordan doesn't believe that. The company, it would seem, is too big to fail.

Meg Whitman Stumbles Again

2009-10-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

If you live in California as I do, it's impossible to sit in your car, mired in traffic without listening to your radio. Sure, most of us are plugged into our iPods precisely because we hate what's on the radio, but after a while, even your favorite New Age trance music gets boring. Sometimes, you just gotta hear what's happening out there, beyond the wall of glass that divides you from the other morons crawling along the eight lane highway at five miles per hour.

Sometimes, you just gotta hear the news -- or at least what passes for news.

At this writing, California's richest ego-maniacs are beginning to jockey for position to become the state's next governor. So far, just about all of the announced candidates are from the northern part of the state, a nod to the monumental amount of wreckage left in the wake of the last southern-based governator's bid to fool all of the people all of the time. The first two candidates off the line are a millionaire and a billionaire, Gavin Newsom and Meg Whitman, respectively.

Sigh.

Gavin is the well-heeled mayor of San Francisco, whose ethics and morality qualify him to serve as a role model for all Californians, if you call sleeping with your best friend's wife "qualified." The big question is not whether Newsom supports gay marriage (he does) or can appeal to Californians in the south (Gavin who?), but whether he can stock enough hair-styling mousse to last throughout an arduous, mud-laden campaign. Nobody has ever accused Newsom of being a particularly deep or thoughtful person. Judging from his early campaign efforts, I see no reason why this would change any time soon.

Meg Whitman, on the other hand, may be able to do something in California that neither the Republican or Democratic party has been able to do since eighteenth century France: Govern a state while in complete and total denial. In case you don't know who she is, Meg was the CEO of EBay, fostering its growth until a series of bad decisions (can you say "Let's buy Skype!") suddenly angered enough shareholders to motivate her to switch careers. Fast.

You would think that being in Silicone Valley, Meg would be hip, slick and in touch with what's going on out there. Well, you'd be wrong. In an homage to Marie Antoinette, Whitman's first radio spots go directly at where California's problems aren't, proving she's just another rich candidate that's hopelessly out of touch.

Here. Take a minute and listen to this:

Wait a minute. Banks are failing. Insurance companies are defaulting. Bernie Madoff is rotting in prison for scamming billions. The media is hoisting Wall Street on its own petard -- and Meg Whitman is telling voters that what they need in the governor's office is another business person?

Wow. Talk about denial. Where is she getting her brand strategy, WalMart? I mean, this woman can buy just about anything she wants, which I suppose includes stupid advisors. Of course, you have to remember this is the Republican party, the party which drove John McCain's campaign into the earth with genius advice from the likes of Carly Fiorina (who nearly destroyed Hewlett-Packard). These are the same voices that shouted their approval for that-one-lipstick-away-from-the-Presidency pick, Sarah Palin.

Do I sound a bit too negative? Maybe so. After all, these are just the first two horses out of the gate.

Meet you at the glue factory.

Yahoo: Money for Nothing

2009-09-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to the folks at Yahoo. No matter how many chances they're given, they keep tripping over themselves. I've been watching Yahoo ever since they were knee-high to a modem. In that time, they've gone from the powerhouse of search engines to the Jerry Lewis of the internet.

It's companies like Kodak and Yahoo that make me such a strong believer in the economy of the United States. Where else could major, publicly-held institutions keep failing year after year and still bluff the public into investing even more millions into their eventual demise?

Yahoo is the typical modern American tragedy: A first mover in a category which it dominated for years, Yahoo watched in dismay as Google ate its lunch in record time. Under what could only be called the denial-driven dictatorship of Jerry Yang, Yahoo coughed up any and all dominance it once held by simply refusing to brand itself. Nobody knew why they should stay loyal to Yahoo, so nobody bothered to.

Nobody was quite as confused about Yahoo's brand as Terry Semel, the showbiz CEO who took over Yang's mission of driving the company into the ground. For some reason (speculated in past issues of this blog), Semel had visions of Yahoo becoming the center of internet entertainment. It was a grand, totally naive dream, however, that failed every single opportunity given to it. In the end, Semel left Yahoo users even more confused, and its shareholders even more destitute.

With Yang finally being given his walking papers, Carol Bartz assumed command of Yahoo's sinking ship. Suddenly, new hope abounded. Maybe, just maybe, Bartz could right the brand that never was. Unfortunately, the hope sank quickly as it became apparent that Bartz's dog and pony show was actually the same old song and dance. Even a joint program with Microsoft did little to enthuse anyone; two high-awareness non-brands joining together did nothing to raise the hopes -- or stock prices -- of either one.

Now comes word that Yahoo is launching a $100 million ad campaign -- glaringly mislabeled as a "re-branding" -- which further illustrates its incompetence:

Once again, the adage proves true: When you try to be something to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. Once again, by not articulating what Yahoo is, or why it should be "perceived as the only solution to its prospects' problems," Yahoo is spending millions to actually say nothing at all.

Am I missing something here? Does anything in these ads say anything at all to you about why you should use Yahoo? Or how Yahoo offers you something you can't find anywhere else? Is anyone at Yahoo aware that they could run these ads in Braille and they'd have the same effect?

A lot of people maintain I'm a harsh guy. I'm not a harsh guy. I'm just a guy who hates to see mediocrity and failure being passed off as professional success. I call 'em as I see 'em. And from what I see, Yahoo's future is looking bleaker by the minute.

Why Technology Never Trumps Humans

2009-08-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a good idea: Build a fun, flirty iPhone app that generates millions of custom pick-up lines on the fly, simply by tapping in specifics of a situation:

A user enters the place, time of day and characteristics of his intended date, hits a button and chooses a line ranging from clever to clumsy. And just to keep things under control, we allowed the user to choose between lines that are either Safe or Sexy.
The app is called LittleWingman and it tested through the roof.

It's an equal-opportunity application, generating pick-up lines regardless of gender or orientation, which means it spews out lines for men to women, women to men, men to men and women to women -- all on the fly. And because it contains no graphics, no profanity and no abusive language of any kind, we knew it was a cinch to gain approval from Apple's iTunes Store.

And it did. Eventually.

Nine gruelling months after it was originally submitted.

Why was LittleWingman constantly rejected? As it turns out, not for any specific objectionable words or graphics -- it doesn't have any. In fact, LittleWingman may be the first and only app ever rejected purely for the sexual ideas it stimulates in users' minds.

Are phrases like "tight-fitting jeans" and "legs" objectionable? Not to most people. But when LittleWingman composed them into the following line, iTunes had a big problem with it:

"I'm tonight's official legs inspector. I'm going to have to ask you to remove those tight-fitting jeans."

At first, we thought iTunes objected to words like "breasts" and "ass" -- two commonly used words in many other apps. So we replaced those with "casabas" and "tush," only to be rejected again. Within a week or two, the same canned message came back with the same canned rejection:

At 5:51 PM -0800 3/5/09, devprograms@apple.com wrote:
Thank you for submitting LittleWingman to the App Store. We've reviewed LittleWingman again and determined that we still cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:
"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."
If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that LittleWingman does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

We combed through the content again, looking for any profanity or objectionable content. But we couldn't find any, because there wasn't any. It was the application that was writing the content by itself, based on what the user had chosen.
For example, LittleWingman generated this line for user who finds herself at a wedding:

"Think any of the rabbis at this ceremony can lend us some personal lubricants?"

Random? Funny? Hardly objectionable as a flushing toilet, upskirt shots or jiggling breasts you'll find in other iPhone applications, yet iTunes rejected that generated line flat out.

The correspondence flew back and forth, with LittleWingman getting rejected for combining innocent phrases like "kiss" with innocent body parts like "lips" into pick-up lines that resulted wonderfully appealing ideas as to what things people might actually kiss with their lips.

Each time, the App Store returned the same canned response, with no guidance as to fixing the problem, mainly because there was no problem there to fix. Unlike the now-banned "baby shaker" app, LittleWingman was pure, positive pick-up lines -- and healthy ones, at that.

At six months, we thought we had a breakthrough: iPhone 3.0's 17+ adult rating was just the ticket to get us past our non-existent objectionable content. We re-submitted. And got rejected. Again.

The maddening, automated responses were finally disrupted when, after seven months, a real, breathing App Store human being actually left a voicemail at our offices. We began the dialogue which, two months later, resulted in LittleWingman being approved -- with only the two word changes from its original submission. And that, as it turns out, is the main problem with technology: it lacks human judgment, which cost us time, energy -- and nine months' of sales.

It's been nine months of nuttiness. But at least now the world doesn't have to struggle with how to approach that blonde at the end of the bar.

You can download LittleWingman directly from Apple's iTunes Store by clicking this link.

Why We Stimulate Cars & Banks

2009-08-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

No matter where I go, it seems as if everyone is complaining about something. Sometimes it's the weather. Sometimes it's relationships. Somewhere along the line, complaining seems to have replaced baseball as our national pastime. If you're a reader of this blog, you may recall that I'm on record that this recession, the deepest economic ditch since the Great Depression, will not last nearly as long as any of the talking heads have predicted. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, the conditions under which we find ourselves are profoundly different than any other economic setback this country has ever experienced. The speed of communications today renders many of the problems -- and their solutions -- practically obsolete. This time around, everything is happening for different reasons.

In years past, for example, restoration of trust and faith in the financial market would have taken years. Months to develop recovery programs, months to approve them, months to announce them and months to execute with no guarantee of success or failure.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, the quickest means of announcing recovery programs was radio -- and not everyone had one. The next quickest was print -- and not everyone read them. While it's true that bad news travels fast, prior to the Digital Age, all news traveled slowly, which meant reaction times -- in fact, reactions themselves -- occurred and behaved according to totally different algorithms. As late as the 1980's, most stock trades were performed by real humans. Slow humans. And the slower they were, the more time there was for doubt and risk.

Today, one click sends the order that joins millions of others in nanoseconds, not days. We know the reactions to a political or financial program within minutes of its announcement. We see the results of capital infusions within hours. Things move faster than they ever have.

And that's the main reason why this recession is going to evaporate a lot faster than your cable news talking head would have you believe.

A second reason why this recession is like no other is that its root cause isn't a mystery. There's only one reason for the markets collapsing: a shortage of cash. When there's no cash, nobody can borrow. When nobody can borrow, nobody can pay. When nobody can pay, people lose their jobs. The solution is as simple as the problem: Someone has to lend the system money to prime the pump with the cash that makes things work. The only entity that can do that is the government, who is also the only entity able to create and administer the recovery programs we have.

Which leaves me wondering why everyone is complaining so much. Sure, it's easy to dismiss the efforts required of economic recovery with a cavalier remark. But you never hear any of the whiners come up with a plan as entertaining as their soundbytes, a favorite of which seems to be "Why are the banks and car companies getting the money?"

The answer is pretty basic: Because that's where the money does the most good, for the most people in the least amount of time.

The fundamental reason why the recovery is going to work a lot faster than you'd expect is that the Obama administration correctly understands that it takes money to make money. If you believe that America -- and the world's -- economy is driven by finance, you have to empower the professionals to distribute it to the enterprises that require it. That means you pay the professionals whatever they need to get the money into the system as efficiently as possible. Yes, these are many of the same creeps and criminals that brought the system down the first time. But think about it: who else would you have doing the job, the government? A postal worker? A second lieutenant from the Marines? In times of crises, you don't bring in neophytes. You bring in professionals who know how to get the job done -- and know you're watching their every move.

So the first chunk of money has to go to the guys whose job it is to get the money out there. And that's why the banks are getting $385 billion (at last count).

Of course, that doesn't stop the malcontents from crying about the auto industry. Why should they be rescued? Also a simple answer: Cars require a whole bunch of people and equipment to make the business go.

Think about just one part of your car: the lowly seat belt. A factory has to weave the belt material. Someone has to design the strap, and sample the various weave patterns which they then have to test for strength. They have to import raw materials. Someone has to select the proper fibers and then submit it for safety testing. A different company has to design the buckle, complete with blueprints. They not only have to import raw materials, they have to fabricate the machinery for production to press the metal components for the buckle. that buckle gets tested, too. Someone has to pay the labor to attach the buckles to the straps. Someone has to inspect the assembly. Someone has to clean the parts and pack the proper number of proper lengths of belts into the proper shipping containers, while someone else has to make sure the shipment is forwarded to the proper place at the proper time. And so on.

And this is just for the friggin' seat belt. The same thing happens for gas pedals, door locks, side mirrors, shift knobs and everything else you can see -- and not see -- in and on the car you drive. Cars have thousands of components and assemblies, whose production is often contracted out to thousands of smaller businesses throughout the world that employ millions of people. There are paint manufacturers, lubricant suppliers, fasteners, coils and filter vendors. The list is almost as endless as the names of the employees on these companies' payrolls.
Virtually no other industry, at least to my knowledge, employs so many people in so many ways as does the auto industry. And I haven't even gotten to the aftermarket folks. Remember all those steering wheel covers and custom spinners with the sixteen inch rims? Well, small companies have to manufacture and assemble all the parts for those, too.

If you're going to prime the economy's pump, you've got to get the money out there fast, where it will do the most good. That means banks and cars.

And if you think I'm kidding, check the chart out for yourself. Look at the stock prices for Citibank, Bank of America and just about every other major financial survivor since the depth of the recession in February, 2009. Notice a pattern? Wake up, you whiners. Jump on the wagon and ride this one to the recovery. It's going to be here sooner than you think.