March 22, 2006

Feel Good TV

Tonight's the TV Land Awards, and there's certainly something wonderfully comforting about this cable channel that plays the best of the classic TV series. If you've been biting your nails over Jack Bauer on Monday nights, TV Land is the perfect antidote.

But TV Land isn't just about classic TV shows. The channel also produces some original programming, and - in honor of Black History Month - they recently produced three one-hour specials called "That's What I'm Talking About." This is television at its best...a free-flowing unfiltered conversation about the Black experience in America, with a wide range of participants ranging from Spike Lee to DL Hughley to Diahann Carroll.

TV Land proves that it's possible to entertain and make a difference.

We are proud to have worked with TV Land in developing its Family Table initiative which encourages more families to share meals together.

Life After 30

I spoke with a client this afternoon who is in New York for a conference on what happens after the 30-second spot.

One thing that's happening - if not after the 30-second spot, certainly in combination with it - is the great surge in product placements.

Watch "American Idol" on any given night (and it seems to be on virtually every night!) and you are likely to see an average of more than 83 product placements per episode.

But "American Idol" isn't the biggest product placement venue. "The Contender" (appropriately named) holds that title. That reality show logged more than 7,502 individual product placements during its 2005 season. That's an average of 500.9 individual occurences of product placements per episode.

Product placements on television increased 32% last year. Ad-skipping technologies, accelerating audience fragmentation, the increase in the number of cable channels, commercial clutter, and the decreasing length of commercials are all reasons contributing to this boom.

March 14, 2006

On Authenticity

All research indicates that what matters most in messaging today is authenticity.

We see it work for Dove (with its real-sized women). We see it work with Nike. And we're about to see it work for the Post and Courier.

Our creative team has produced some wonderfully refreshing spots for the Post and Courier newspaper. They feature real people telling their own true reasons for reading the paper. And, before you get glazed over thinking "Oh sure...another set of testimonial ads. Snore!!" you just need to see these spots. They've got such life and freshness and - as Charleston's own Stephen Colbert would say - "truthiness."

My guess is they'll sell papers too!

And speaking of papers, the New York Times reported today that they'll stop listing stock prices some time in the next couple of months. They'll provide all of that information on the web. Natural move. A wise recognition of the realities of today's life. When will other papers follow?

Now, here's a longer thought about authenticity and truthiness.

Last night Chris Matthews reported on some Republican hoedown over the weekend that included most of the potential Presidential candidates for 2008. He said that the focus was less on the candidates than it was on the issues. And the number one issue was marriage...the importance of every child having a mother and father. I guess this is what people refer to as "the sanctity of marriage," although I'm not at all sure what that means...and I doubt that it means the same thing to different people.

Anyway, it seems that the Republicans are fixated that the only way to provide a healthy life for a child is to have a child reared by a mother and a father...and that's issue number one for them.

Well, as I mentioned recently, my friend Fred Golding produced a brilliant documentary called "Love and Marriage," in which he followed four couples over a one-year period. There was a young midwestern couple with four kids, a couple getting a divorce (they had two daughters), a couple in which the wife is a high-powered magazine editor in New York and the writer husband is a house husband looking after their one daughter, and a gay couple (two men) who live in a suburban development with two adopted African-American children.

The documentary is non-judgmental. You get to know the couples pretty well, though, and - as far as my wife and I were concerned - the couple (and family) that treated one another with the most love, respect, wisdom and humor was the gay couple with two African-American adopted children.

If the "love and marriage" were a game, this couple would be the winner.

That's Exhibit One.

Exhibit Two is a friend of mine who - at age 60 - has just had a baby daughter. He worked on this for two years. He is divorced. He worked with California doctors to be the father of a child with a genetic mother and a gestation mother. He is ideally suited to be a father. He is smart, caring, stable, has high ethical values, and can provide well for a child in every possible way.

But one California doctor turned him down, saying he was too old. And California is the only state in which it is legal to do what he has done. So it isn't easy, even with planning, resources, desire, and suitability.

Those two lovely African-American children don't have "a mother and a father." And this beautiful little baby girl that just came to Charleston from California doesn't have "a mother and a father" either.

And yet I would argue that their respective families are as authentic or more authentic than any fantasy Ozzie/Harriet/Ricky/David combination anywhere in this country.

Authenticity isn't something that is on a piece of paper. It's something deep in the soul. The young woman enthusiastically saying "Buy the paper! Get the paper!" isn't reading a script with someone else's words. She's expressing her own feelings in her own words.

We should never be afraid of the freedom to act out one's good feelings. That's what that woman is doing. That's what that gay couple is doing. And my friend, the new father, is doing it too.

They are living out their true feelings.

In the last months of her fatal cancer, my mother discarded most of her personal papers. But she kept one small piece of paper on which she had written a quote from Pablo Casals. It's framed on my desk and it is several lines long. But the last line reads, "Do we dare to be ourselves? That is the most important question."

March 13, 2006

RX for Business

Arguably, our biggest domestic issue is healthcare. We spend more on it than we spend on food. Healthcare insurance costs - which uniquely in this country are principally paid by employers - are skyrocketing and endangering the future of American businesses large and small. And, if you really look at how the healthcare insurance industry works, you can see that the crisis is only going to get worse.

It's a complex issue. We know more about it than we did a decade ago. The rational way to solve it is clearer. But the political barriers to solving it are more daunting than ever before.

Is there a way for those of us in marketing and communications to use our skills to convey the problem and possible solutions and try to contribute to more responsible thought and action on the part of our elected officials?

The answer to the challenge of these painfully rising costs seems to be a universal system of public insurance, such as one finds in several European countries. All the evidence points to this kind of system providing better coverage, coverage to all, and more economically efficient coverage.

For example a study conducted by the Urban Institute found that "per capita spending for an adult Medicaid beneficiary in poor health would rise from $9,615 to $14,785 if the person were insured privately and received services consistent with private utilization levels and private provider payment rates."

One distinct advantage of public health insurance is lower administrative costs. That's because private insurers spend so much trying to identify and screen out high-cost customers. In 2003, for instance, Medicare spent less than 2% of its resources on administration, while private insurance companies spent more than 13%.

The fragmentation and private component of our system is preventing us from controlling these runaway costs. A nationwide public health insurance program would reduce costs, lift this enormous burden off of businesses, and provide coverage to the tens of millions of people who are uncovered today.

Everyone 65 or over is covered by Medicare. But, of those below 65, only 5.3% buy health insurance for themselves. Another 63.1% receive health insurance through their employers. That leaves 31.6% with no health insurance coverage at all.

As costs skyrocket, the number of companies providing health insurance is diminishing. And, among those continuing to provide coverage, many are regularly reducing benefits. More and more Americans are becoming uninsured or underinsured.

We have a crisis. Our citizens are in danger. And our businesses are on the ropes. Elected officials may recognize it, but they won't solve it...at least without some powerful communications from their constituents. Can't we help with those communications?

When You've Run Out of Ideas

Everyone is blasting Mastercard for its lame commercial in which it asks people to come up with a commercial for the seemingly endless "priceless" campaign.

While the idea may have come out of some group grope about how to play into our culture's obsesssion with interactivity ("Hey, here's an idea. Why don't we let the people out there create their own spot for us?!"), it seems to me like interactivity gone awry.

One of the beers did this with an outdoor campaign. They encouraged consumers to submit quotes about why they liked the beer, or even to come up with ad slogans. It was Amateur Night, to be sure. The results were so lame that they were embarrassing.

While consumers most certainly like to have their say, and they like to have things "their way," they don't want to do our work for us. We need to pull our own weight and give them plenty of reasons to be engaged. "Write me a spot," doesn't do it.

Racing for the Women

NASCAR merchandisers are focusing on women (with - for example - a NASCAR crock pot and a Daytona 500 fragrance from Elizabeth Arden), because women represent 40% of the NASCAR fan base.

The purchasing power of women never ceases to be amazing. For instance, women make 77% of the wine buying decisions and 80% of the home improvement buying decisions.

March 8, 2006

But, Does that Benefit Matter to Your Customer?

There's a great article in the latest Harvard Business Review on the subject of Customer Value Propositions.

The article addresses the importance of being disciplined about understanding your customers, so you can make smarter choices about where to allocate scarce resources.

We all fall into the trap of telling our customers about all of our benefits, when - in fact - only a handful of benefits may really matter to them.

There's an interesting chart in the article describing three kinds of value propositions:

One kind consists of all the benefits that customers receive; one communicates the benefits that represent points of difference with the competition; and the third is called "resonating focus," because it concentrates on the one or two points of difference that will deliver the greatest value to the customer. This last value proposition is most powerful, but it obviously requires customer value research.

It's so easy to get caught up in benefits. "What about this?" "Did we tell them about that?" "Hey, we have this that noone else has?" "And don't forget this!"

But all that matters is what matters to customers. Find out. Keep finding out. And then focus on those specific benefits. That's where the action is. And the profit.

Retreat Reflections

We had a Culture Retreat yesterday. We reviewed the values of our firm and discussed them in context with each individual's values. It was a wonderful way to reaffirm what we stand for, and to get to know one another better.

Our guide through the process, Sheila Campbell, provided several stimulating exercises, one of which was that each of us drew a "crest" in which we illustrated what we value. She often does the same exercise having people construct collages.

Our business speeds along. We are forever fighting deadlines and rushing to accomplish something better than anything we've done before. We work very closely together and know what each of us brings to the table and relish the opportunities to share our skills and collaboratively come up with smarter, more creative solutions.

But, who are the people who hold and share these skills? Yesterday's exercises - and the entire day - gave us insights about each person. And I think we all came away even more grateful that we get to work with one another every single day.

March 6, 2006

Nonsense Car Talk

A car dealer tells me that it's like clockwork: for every 100 people who come onto the lot, 20 will buy a car. It doesn't matter how the people are treated, the percentages never significantly vary.

I don't believe that. And there are several car dealerships written up throughout this country that have demonstrated not only the value of treating a person right when they come on the lot, but also treating them right once they've bought...because then they'll buy again...and again.

It drives me nuts when someone essentially thinks people are idiots...that they will act the same, regardless of how their treated.

I recently read some of the rules of marketing of a successful retailer who competed (and beat) some very stiff (and much larger) competition. Here are some of them:

1. Always tell the truth.
2. Always surprise the customer by giving them more than they expected.
3. Find a lot of little ways to make doing business with you a little better.
4. Never in any way embarrass a customer or make him feel ignorant.
5. When you don't know, say so. Never make things up.
6. Never pressure anyone into anything.

Looking at this list, I'm reminded of the time my partner and I visited several Oldsmobile dealerships in preparation for pitching a regional dealers' account. One dealer sold Oldsmobiles and Chevrolets. "What's the difference between an Olds and a Chevy," I asked. "Oh," he exclaimed, "the difference is that Oldsmobiles are better because they are hand made."

Mmmm.

Always tell the truth? Never make things up?

Get real!

One of the things that's great about the world of marketing today is that people have so many choices that they don't need to buy your product or service. There's always another one ready to take their business. And that puts a premium on smart marketing...the ability to provide straight talk, complete information, and genuine service customized to each individual's needs.

Anything else is nonsense.

March 5, 2006

Good as Gold[ing]

Tonight is the Academy Awards, and I'm thinking about a wonderful film made by Fred Golding for MSNBC. It's called Love and Marriage, and it follows four couples over a year's time...exploring the dynamics of love and marriage...what makes them work; what makes them fall apart.

There are many extraordinary aspects of the film (which was shown as three one-hour segments). You really got to have a sense of these couples. The filming and editing were so brilliant that even by spending a relatively short time with each of them, you got to know them and you got to understand how they got where they are and - probably - where they were going.

But, for me, there were two aspects that really stood out.

The first was that Fred (who happens to be a good friend of mine) made the film very personal. Coming off a divorce himself, he put himself right into the movie. He narrates very personally throughout...we see him in therapy sessions, we see him interact with the four couples...and his presence adds a raw quality that makes the movie so much more real and immediate. Rather than get in the way of the couples' stories with his own, he amplifies them. As he is candid, they are candid.

It made me recognize again how important and powerful authenticity is in effective communications.

The second aspect that really stood out for me was that of the four couples - (one was a happily married midwest couple with four young children...one was a divorcing couple...one was a couple in which the woman is a high-powered executive and her writer husband is a stay-at-home dad...and one was two gay men with two African-American children) - the couple that, in my mind, most clearly had the healthiest relationship was the two gay men.

I do not think this was intentional. Nor do I believe that everyone would come to the same conclusion. But it does say something about the severe limitations of the prejudices our society holds on to...and the adviseability of letting them go.