Should old acquaintance be forgot...

So it was a tough year: My mother died, I moved into a new house (a good thing, but stressful), and work was crazy. My blogging fell off, but nonetheless I cobbled together this list of my top posts last year in terms of page views:

1. What We Can Learn From America's Hat:  Unlike the American version, the Canadian definition of public relations includes an emphasis on relationships. Damn socialists.

2. Frankly My Dear, We Don't Give a Damn: In which a once-adored but declining amusement park tells customers with food allergies to go pound sand. 

3. And You Do What For A Living? Speaking of defining PR, in this post I reviewed the leading contenders in the PRSA's effort to eke out a new definition for our ever-evolving craft. 

4. The Medium is Still the Message: It turns out people trust "owned media", like a brand's web site, over paid media like advertising even though the source of the information is ultimately the same: the brand itself.

5. What's in a Name?  Faltering brands that think a new name and new logo will change their fortunes are sadly mistaken.

Happy New Year!

The House the Mouse Built

Last month I talked about the reasons behind Disney's buying spree, from a marketing perspective: With a diverse range of properties, there's less likely parents and kids will suffer Disney fatigue. Here is why it makes sense from a financial perspective, but from the marketing view as well. It all comes down to that old chestnut: Content is king:


The acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm will also bolster the company's theme parks as well. Iron Man, Hulk, Indiana Jones, and Darth Vader provide a draw for a wide range of age groups that will visit the parks and cruise lines each year. And it's big business.

Parks and resorts are Disney's second-largest business, generating 30.6% of the company's revenue in the past fiscal year. The studio entertainment segment generated just 13.8% of revenue and just 7.3% of operating income. If we assume that studio entertainment's $722 million of operating income continues, it would take 21.3 years to pay for the three acquisitions highlighted above, so Disney clearly thinks there's money to be made elsewhere and parks and resorts are a likely key.

Then of course there's that other old warhorse of capitalism, the middleman. With so many varied properties in its portfolio, there's less need for it to partner in the long run with third parties to distribute that valued content:


I think that Disney is beginning to position itself as a multidimensional provider of content that will have a lot of bargaining power in the future. The company recently shut down Disney Movies Online, a movie streaming service that never quite had the features consumers demanded. But the service was largely outsourced, and sources say that Disney is developing Disney Movies Anywhere, a service that will have more access across multiple devices.

So, let's assume that Disney creates a way to download or stream Disney content on your tablet or smartphone. There now becomes less need for Netflix, Disney could bypass iTunes, and even cable companies could lose a lot of bargaining power. WatchESPN is already available with your cable subscription; what if Disney offered that on its own?

The bottom line is that Disney has a lot of flexibility as our digital media future unfolds and the addition of popular content gives the company that much more bargaining power.

All I know is that this company will likely be liberating my dollars from my wallet for years to come.

No mor chickin?

Readers of this blog know that I'm a big fan of Chick-fil-A and have even extolled its marketing and social media prowess in this space. Now the company finds itself embroiled in controversy after its president said what many people already suspected: Homosexuality conflicts with the restaurant chain's brand of conservative Christianity and it does not support marriage equality.

Naturally, this has provoked calls for boycotts from liberal-minded Chick-fil-A lovers. I posted this counter-argument on my Facebook page, casting about for a way to continue to take my children there with a clean conscience. After all, the company treats its customers well, and I don't even know where many of the places I shop stand on the issues that are important to me.

But the veil of ignorance, once lifted, cannot be lowered again. An effective brand makes you feel good about using its products, even if those products aren't particularly good for you -- like fast food. Part of Chick-fil-A's appeal is that it makes you feel good taking your kids there. The food may not be much healthier than other fast food but it seems of good quality, presented with great service in clean, well-maintained facilities. Even if you don't share the company's religious faith it's hard not to appreciate that Chick-fil-A doesn't shove Hollywood tie-ins down your kids' throats. The place feels wholesome.

Or at least it used to. Chick-fil-A has always marketed its values alongside its chicken. Maybe its customers should have understood all along what those values were. They won't get fooled again.

A brand by any other name

When I first saw this article arguing that companies spend too much time thinking about brands, my initial thought was:  Here we go again. Someone is attacking a useful marketing/PR concept instead of criticizing those that apply it incorrectly.

But Brian Millar's article is more thoughtful than that, though it might be summed up more succintly by invoking my boss's definition of brand: A brand is not what you think of your product, but what your customers think of it. Too wit:

Brands were...a by-product of having great products and communicating them well to people. ...When was the last time Apple did a pure brand ad? Fifteen years ago? Apple went from a challenger to a leader when it stopped focusing on its brand and made its products the heroes of its communications.

True enough, though I would argue that Apple is an example of a company that not only understands that its brand is dependent upon the quality of its products, but also how to apply that brand in new areas. (Something that Millar takes Coca-Cola to task for failing to do.) Think of how Steve Jobs revived Apple with the iMac and how that computer came to define the brand: The seamless intergration of software and hardware, easy to use, a simple yet elegant design. So what was Apple's next act? The iPod, which could be described exactly as I just described the iMac. Apple focuses on the product, but the product always represents the brand.

It's interesting that Millar compares the concept of brand to two-dimensional maps that allow us to navigate terrain while representing it poorly. And yet, maps are indispensible in helping us get where we need to go, and also helping us understand where we came from. If that's all a brand is, well, then that's pretty damn good.

The Spin Cycle, 6/25

A round-up of recent happenings in the world of PR, marketing, and other things I find interesting.

Maybe They Should Put Claritin in Happy Meals: One of the most socially irresponsible kids' movie tie-ins yet comes from Merck, hawking Claritin with characters from Madagascar 3. They could at least come up with a better excuse than this old chestnut: "The advertising is directed to the parents of children viewing the movies, not to the children themselves."

My Adidas: Adidas has mastered the art of the non-apology apology, as the shoemaker's reaction to the furor over its shackle shoes demonstrates:

"The design of the JS Roundhouse Mid is nothing more than the designer Jeremy Scott's outrageous and unique take on fashion and has nothing to do with slavery. We apologize if people are offended by the design and we are withdrawing our plans to make them available in the marketplace"

There should never be an "if" in an apology. And instead of humility, the basis of any sincere apology, Adidas brags about its designer's "outrageous" and "unique" tribute to slavery and prison. Try again, guys.

The Pope's PR Guy: The Vatican hires a Fox News reporter to be its communications advisor, on the heels of an announcement that the U.S. Church wants to ramp up its own PR efforts. Greg Burke won't be the Holy See's official spokesperson, a job that belongs to a priest -- an arrangement similar to what I observed as a reporter who occassionally wrote about religion in Pittsburgh back in the late 1990s. The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh had a lay PR guy on staff who actually had little interaction with the public, deferring nearly every media inquiry to a priest whose duties included media relations. Not what I call a plumb job, but perhaps a lapsed Presbyterian is the wrong guy to ask.

What do I have to do to get you to read this blog post today?

Sir James Dyson, the world's most eloquent vacuum cleaner salesman, apparently doesn't believe in "brand" despite having spent millions building one, as writer Patrick Hanlon puts it in a recent Forbes article.

Perhaps Sir Dyson is confused about what 'brand' or 'branding really means, the term being a dumping ground for so many things: corporate identity programs, tricky advertising, the nexus of corporate manipulation, and so on.

Hanlon expounds on what a brand really is, and why Dyson fits the bill. My guess, though, is that when Sir James hears "brand" he thinks "marketing" and when he hears "marketing" he thinks "selling" and, as a newly published book explains, people have a deeply ambigious relationship to sales, despite the fact that nothing is more crucial to the functioning of a free market economy:

Yet in American corporations today there is a "class division," ... Many people in business "are clueless about one of the most vital functions, the means by which you actually generate revenue." Salespeople are viewed as some sort of breed apart.

The way I see it, there are three types of people in this world: salespeople; people who are close friends with or related to salespeople; and people who hate salespeople. The majority of us probably fall into the third category, whether or not we care to admit it. (And some of us are glad to admit it.) We stiffen when a salesperson approaches us while we browse through a rack of clothes.  We regard people who sell cars, insurance, and real estate as obnoxious con artists. We may desire a product, but when someone tries to sell it to us, suddenly the whole thing seems...a little dirty.

The relationship between marketing and sales is one reason that old-school PR types draw a bright line between their shop and marketing, even though this undermines an organization's effectiveness and alienates the public relations side from business goals. (No wonder the big kids never let us play with them.) But the same technology that has rendered salespeople in many fields obsolete -- allowing consumers to buy products directly and to acquire knowledge once brokered by salespeople -- is forcing the rest of us to take on the role that salespeople traditionally played.

For example, I've made sure that my contact information is easy to find at my university's web site, so that a reporter who needs to find me doesn't give up in frustration. But that means that anyone can find out how to reach me, so I find myself fielding calls from time to time about class registration, financial aid, sporting events, etc. After all, the word "public" is my title, so people expect me to be able to help them, or at least direct them where to go. Many organizations have become flatter and more transparent -- the smart ones have, anyway -- which means that it is harder for us to hide from the people who buy what we are selling.

As far as marketing goes, we've all spent a lot of time ruminating on the crumbling walls between PR, marketing, and other strategic communication fields. Again, technology, and in particular social media, is the driving force. In a way, we are all salespeople now, and I'm not the least bit ashamed to say so.

The Spin Cycle

A round-up of recent happenings in the world of PR, marketing, and other things I find interesting.

Pepsi Sees Dead Pop Stars: Pepsi's decision to launch a marketing campaign employing the image of the late Michael Jackson provoked a visceral reaction in critics, who observed that you can draw a line from Pepsi to Jackson's demise, given that his dependence on painkillers apparently started with the burns he received while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. I doubt many consumers will take the connection that far, but certainly the incident in which Jackson's hair caught on fire remains the strongest association between Pepsi and the King of Pop. To me, it's unseemly because Jackson, despite how much he profited from his talents, and his own responsibility for his behavior, was a man exploited from a young age by people who should have taken care of him, something that continued all his life -- and now unto death.

Apple Pays Less in Taxes than Warren Buffett's Secretary: Well, not really, but the House that Jobs Built has found legal ways to avoid paying ton billions in taxes, and the Flack thinks their response has been rather tone deaf. But unless they plan to change their behavior, or lobby for changes in the tax code -- which the Flack suggests might be in order -- how else are they supposed to respond? It may be time for people to finally come to terms with the fact that Apple, whatever its cultural cachet, is just like any other large corporation, doing what it can to maximize profit. We need to treat them no better, nor any worse, than any other corporation that does the same.

Coke and Pepsi Want to be Your Friend: The cola wars are moving to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, which to me raises a question: Do consumers really want to engage with every brand out there? I just want to drink soda. That's about where my desire for a relationship ends. I realize that if more and more live much of their lives on social media, a brand can't be invisible and survive for long. I find, however, that not long after I like a brand on Facebook, or follow it on Twitter, I end up regretting is soon after. Maybe it's just because no one has done it right yet.

The Purpose-Driven PR Agency: I'm wrapping up with this item about Edelman's new corporate responsibility practice as a follow-up to last week's item about Penn State hiring the PR giant to help it be more transparent in the wake of the Sandusky scandal. Maybe they hired the right guys after all. Time will tell.

Do you have an item for the Spin Cycle? Send me a reply or DM on Twitter to @jepotts.

Dead is the new black

As I'm about to demonstrate, the best way to start cheap conversation is to declare something dead -- an industry, a technology, a hallowed way of doing business. The web is dead. The phone call is dead. The press release is dead. (Hell, the press release dies more often than a Spinal Tap drummer.) Why are people so eager to declare something not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead?

I know, I know. Repeating that line from The Wizard of Oz is dead, just like declaring things dead is dead, as some of the commenters on this article about Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts declaring marketing being dead have noted. Hell, this isn't even my first post lamenting it. And yet, people like Kevin Roberts keep doing it, and this latest incarnation, if you will, is so absurd that I can't help but pay it the ridicule it so richly deserves.

Is marketing dead? Well, is selling people things dead? What, Amazon doesn't employ marketing? Apple doesn't use it? I get it. Consumers are more savvy and sophisticated than they used to be. All that means is that marketing has to be more savvy and sophisticated as well. Read this article about Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Patagonia sounds like exactly the kind of company that Kevin Roberts extols. You think what they do isn't marketing? Then you need to read more carefully.

But it's not enough for Roberts to declare marketing dead. He's like a business school butcher. Management is dead. Strategy is dead:

“Strategy is dead. Who really knows that is going to happen anymore in this super VUCA world? The more time and money you spend devising strategies the more time you are giving you rivals to start eating your lunch.

“Management is dead. To win today you need a culture and an environment where the unreasonable power of creativity thrives. Ideas are today’s currency not strategy. Martin Luther King did not say ‘I have a vision statement’ did he? He had a dream. You have to make sure you have dreams and your brand also needs a dream.”

I'm not a CEO, but strategy strikes me as nothing more than identifying your goals, how to measure them, and tactics you will employ to achieve them. As for MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, I've actually heard it described as a mission statement. The best mission statements, the ones that actually make an impact for organizations, set forth measurable objectives. And while what King called for in his speech was somewhat ephemeral, it was a blueprint for a very specific legislative agenda. In other words, you can be dreamy and strategic, all at the same time, despite what Mr. Roberts would have us believe.

But I digress. What is it with people prematurely declaring death like some unethical transplant surgeon? For one, it makes them sound more enlightened and with-it than the rest of us. Two, it relieves them from doing the hard work that goes along with the traditional ways of doing things. The challenge is not in deciding between the old tools and the new ones. It's that we have to use both, which isn't easy. And third, giving all these would-be coroners the benefit of the doubt, they want to bury practices that they see being misused, or done poorly, or in ways that bring discredit to an entire profession or industry. It's not press releases that are dead, it's bad press releases. It's not marketing that we want to kill. It's lousy marketing that insults our intelligence.

To that I say, hear hear. The king is dead. Long live the king.

The myths we live by

I like what author Douglass Rushkoff is saying in this Q & A with Fast Company, and what's not to like if you are a PR guy?

What will marketing organizations look like in the future?

It will be companies that figure out how to communicate the non-fiction story of a company, so it’s going to look a lot more like a communications company than a creative branding agency. It’s going to look a little bit more like PR, in some sense. It’s going to be people who go and figure out what does your company do and how do we let the world know about that? There’s going to be a lot of psychology involved, except instead of it being psychologists turned against the consumer, it’s going to be psychologists going in and trying to convince companies that what they’re doing is worthy. It’s breaking down this false need in companies to hide from the public what they’re doing--except for the ones that do (need to hide).

What Rushkoff says dovetails nicely with what I and others have written about brand journalism (a.k.a. currated content) in which an organization tell its story without salesmanship and provides value to its audience in ways that do not merely serve its own needs. I like the hard question that Rushkoff asks of companies: “Well, are you proud of what’s going on inside your company? Are you proud enough to pull up the shades and let people see inside?”

I do take issue with Rushkoff's use of the word "mythology." Myths are not merely stories that are untrue. They are allegories, stories that may not be true at face value but which convey a deeper meaning, a deeper truth. Often myths convey our values -- as cultures, as nations, as organizations. As organizations we need to mine our myths for the values that lie beneath. These are the values upon which we build relationships, and they should endure, even if, in the age of transparency, the myths do not.

Held hostage

Holman Jenkins had a recent column in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) describing the symbiotic relationship between junk-food brands like Pepsi and McDonald's, and the activists that protest those brands' products and marketing. It includes this gem of a line: "To build a brand is to create a hostage."

In context, Jenkins refers to the fact that activists who protest a brand rely on the brand's value to help them promote their cause. But I find the line a useful reminder that as organizations, we do not truly own our brands. We build them, we cultivate them, we are their caretakers; but our brands actually belong to the constituents we serve, whether they are customers, donors, members, etc. The corollary to this is something that my boss has said time and again: Your brand is not what you think it is. It is what the public thinks it is.

This helps to explain, in marketing and PR terms, the reaction of Penn State alumni to the firing and recent death of legendary coach Joe Paterno, who lost his job in the wake of the Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Whatever you think of Penn State's decision to Paterno (unfortunate but necessary) or the manner in which its board went about it (graceless and unprofessional) there is something startling -- and troubling -- to those of us outside the Penn State bubble in the rabid manner in which the loyalists have defended Paterno to the very last.

And it's not just surprising to me. I think it caught the current administration, including the board, off guard as well. It's become clear to me that, despite the great education that Penn State appears to provide, alumni of all stripes clearly believe that Penn State's brand was Joe Paterno. Not just football, which was what the institution was clearly trying to protect in its failure to address the accusations against Jerry Sandusky, but JoePa himself. When the board quickly and bloodlessly fired Paterno, they trashed the brand in the eyes of the faithful.

Pennsylvania State University, in other words, did not own Paterno, so to speak, nor did they own the football program he led for so long. Paterno belonged to everyone who considered themselves a Penn Stater. When they say, with such tremendous pride, "We Are Penn State" they mean it quite literally, in ways that the people now charged with leading the institution seem scarcely able to comprehend.

“My responsibility is to teach the organization something they’re not willing to learn"

From www.briansolis.com

Paying more for less

My first post back after a long hiatus isn't even about public relations, but it is about one of the four p's of marketing: price. I was stunned to learn that the iPad's competitors cost more without delivering enough extra features to justify the higher price.

I was surprised for two reasons. One, Apple's computers have traditionally cost more -- sometimes a lot more -- than PCs. The Mac is more elegant and easier to use, but with a PC you get a lot more computing power and memory for your buck. Given how expensive the iPad seemed in comparison to, say, a PC netbook, I assumed that tablet competitors would also be much cheaper.

Second, and this is the big reason I expected the iPad to be the most expensive tablet computer, is that the iPad hit the market far ahead of its competitors and appeared to be as successful as the iPhone and the rest of Apple's market-crushing devices. So naturally I assumed that competitors would want to price their tablets below the iPad, since it seemed unlikely they would beat its design or operating system.

The Mac has been eating away at the PC's far larger market share for years, but many consumers, including yours truly, hung on to PCs simply because they are cheaper, and we were willing to sacrifice reliability for affordibility. But if Apple's tablet competitors can't beat the iPad on quality or price, then this game may be over before it has really begun.

I give D+ a C

Drake University has raised some eyebrows with the logo for its new Drake Advantage campaign -- D+, which, for an academic institution, carries a bit of a bad connotation:

Drake’s branding folks weren’t exactly seeking this reaction. When viewed in context, the “D+” is meant to be part of an equation, suggesting Drake + you equals something, well, awesome. That said, Drake officials aren’t running away from a campaign they say they knew was “edgy” for the very reasons some are now criticizing it.

“I’m not surprised by the buzz. Our intended audience loves it,” said Tom Delahunt, vice president of admission and student financial planning. “The 15- to 17-year-olds think it’s great. They get it, and I’m not surprised people are having a little fun with it too.” (link)

I give Drake credit for zeroing in on their target audience: perspective undergraduate students. Universities serve many constituencies, and their failure to prioritize those audiences is why so many institutions produce bland, boring marketing campaigns and confusing web sites. Colleges and universities also are very risk-averse, so Drake deserves kudos for going out on a limb. If it's testing well with the target audience, then who am I to complain?

That said, I'm not a fan of D+ or the larger campaign, at least what I've seen of it so far. According to the Inside Higher Ed article linked above, “'The D+ was not designed to stand alone or represent a grade. Instead, it was designed to be paired with prose and draw attention to the distinctive advantages of the Drake experience.'” But logos should not require an explanation. And other than the unorthodox choice of the logo, the web component of the campaign doesn't appear to convey anything that sets Drake apart from any other university. That's another great sin of university marketing campaigns -- they all look the same.

While I'm at it, it's a bit of a concern to me that faculty were caught by surprise when they learned of the campaign. We're gearing up to launch a new brand campaign soon where I work, and we've spent time sharing the details with large groups of faculty and staff. The reaction has been positive because the campaign reflects the university's distinctive culture, and while our target audience also is high school students (and those that influence them), the brand must speak to everything we do as an institution.

In other words, we live the brand.