Customer First

fly with flyBE

 

flyBE is a UK based regional airline flying out of Birmingham and other UKcities. It has become the first airline to visibly brand its aircraft with the ubiquitous energy rating certificate. At six foot two, my experience of getting into an Embraer 145 has always been akin to climbing into my fridge freezer or tumble dryer. Now this experience is made complete, more resonant of Band Q rather than BIA (Birmingham International Airport). Come on BA and Virgin I dare you to do the same on your 747s and 777s. Thanks flyBE for making my environmental impact part of the travelling experience.

Logic, argument, reason …and lying

 

Marketing often employs poor argument and relies for its success on the consumers’ lack of reason - wrapping products in a valid argument that is based on false premises or using true claims in an invalid argument. The marketing people wearing white hats use valid reasoned argument based on sound premises that are true. On the other hand… lying – using claims that are untrue or arguments that are invalid exploits the consumers’ insecurities and vulnerabilities to a tea...

It is a fact emotion clouds our ability to reason.

The more emotionally vulnerable people are, the more easily they are manipulated. The vulnerable are not only the down trodden, or as obvious as the buyers of lottery tickets. They are people in power too, they can lack the ability to reason – and most of them are men. Women have known this since the time of the cave. Men may be physically stronger but are ten times more emotionally vulnerable and their denial fuels the power of the yin, the dark, the deep, the feminine, the emotional. And Plato had a point.

A seminal moment for me was a number of years ago making a presentation to a company board and I began to discuss the relevance and importance of emotion in the functioning of business. The CEO stopped me in my tracks to claim that there was no place for emotion in business and that my line of thinking was wasting time, pointless and beginning to annoy him. It was at that point that I became acutely aware that the board members, including the CEO were wearing Ralph Loren shirts, writing with Mont Blanc pens, using Rolex time pieces and a look out of the window revealed top of the range BMW’s in the executive parking bay. In their denial they seemed to be making some pretty unreasoned emotionally based decisions outside of the boardroom and that despite, or maybe because of their power they were exceptionally vulnerable.

When we are vulnerable reason goes out the window just when we need it most. When we most desperately want to believe we suspend the need to be rigorous in our thinking. Or we delude ourselves with complex premises that appear true but are based on falsehoods. If the current state of the world economy is anything to go by it proves that the powerful are as vulnerable as the weak – maybe more so.

So in difficult times like now, when the stakes are even higher, before making a decision it pays to check both the truth of the premises and the validity of conclusions. That is unless you enjoy being deceived – as a consenting adult it is often fun to see how far the fantasy can go, and pay for it gladly.

What makes a conclusion truthful is not the validity of the argument but the truthfulness of the claims. For example the argument ‘Only frogs wear snorkels, this animal wears a snorkel, therefore it is a frog!’ – a valid argument that is untrue. Marketing often employs a slight of hand which presents valid argument with false claims. We understand the validity of argument we just don’t check the claims. Worse – we want to believe the falsehood even more when it taps into our insecurities. Untruthful claims stick and even though the consumers of them know they are duped, if enough people believe the lie it becomes a group truth. Sorry to reveal it here but sadly Nike does not make you a winner (based on a valid argument ‘only winners wear Nike, I wear Nike therefore I am a winner…) Red Bull does not give you wings, and Volvo is not the safest car.

When in the good times we can afford to play with our vulnerabilities, we have the extra cash. Now is not a time for poor decisions swayed by emotion, now is the time for reason, for logic. And in decision making logic trumps emotion every time and it is the lack of logic and reason that marketing communications try to exploit, and with unbridled success. If the recession brings benefits I hope that improved reason and logic be one of them.

To find out how logical you are try this fun test at http://www.think-logically.co.uk/lt.htm

So type-ically Italian

I was struck by this picture - no unfortunately not in Milan but in a chip shop in Cheddar Gorge (...great place by the way - the gorge and the chip shop...) The type really is quintessentially Italian and I was reminded that it is not only the image and the words that convey the semiotic message it is the choice of typeface too that enriches the communication.

Convenience ipod

 

How about that an ipod vending machine. Packet of crisps, mars bar, pepsi ... and an ipod. Snapped this in Houston last week.It's an ipod vending machine. The apple brand folk do it again. Not only is the product innovative but the brand promotion too.

In favour of difficult behaviour

If we are to believe recent press reports there is a highly visible epidemic - ADHD and dyslexia and all manors of ‘special’ needs. It is well documented that these difficulties often present themselves through challenging behaviours.

According to Darwinian laws, if dyslexia inhibited survival it would not be present in the gene pool and yet it is. The incidence of dyslexia in western society runs at a consistent 10% of the population ranging from 4% seriously affected to mild symptoms. It seems difficult people have a purpose. And ‘special needs’ can mean ‘special gifts’. Certain groups have increased predisposition to dyslexia and ADHD – entrepreneurs, creative services and sports requiring super fast visual processing… Being loosely wired can for some be a positive advantage. If dyslexia is related to creativity then we can assume that society naturally needs 10% of the population to be dyslexic it follows that a healthy and functioning group should employ 10% dyslexic people… But there’s a problem, anxieties associated with the presentation of these psychological and behavioural symptoms are reaching an all time high. Society is begging the question – ‘How can we cure these people before they seriously threaten us…?’ These children are ill. We must fix them up. A society populated by ‘special needs’?  What a terrifying prospect?

So, we are galvanized to cure these problems – with drugs wherever possible! Let’s turn these ‘wrong’ behaviours off and homogenize these dysfunctions, sanitize and subdue – “ahh that’s better,” we say…

Maybe ADHD or dyslexia is not the scary thing – but, it is society’s response and the denial associated with the proposed treatments which is terrifying.

It’s a weird thing to consider that at a time when allegedly we have more freedom than ever (particularly in the areas of conspicuous consumption i.e. we can happily indulge ourselves - or is that gorge ourselves…- to death) we are conversely less free than ever to explore and express ourselves as individuals and that this repression is manifesting itself in increasingly neurotic behaviour – like overcrowded rats our creative drives, desires and passions become destructive. We can eat and fuck what we like; and we can buy anything off eBay, but we are more controlled than ever in what we can think, say and do. It is a gratuitous fatuous freedom within high-voltage conformist electric fences. Step over the line and be hospitalized, sued or charged.

Do parents live in fear of their neighbours, their children’s peers and friends? Is playing in front of the computer accepted as somehow safer than playing in the street, or across the fields. Children can eat excessively but they can’t go out to play. Things are getting dangerously out of balance.

Our children are restricted psychologically, emotionally and physically. Ultimately it is their creative drives that are suppressed and this repression must contribute to the psychosis which presents itself as excesses of introversion or extroversion. At the most prosaic level, it must be mad that children are banned from exploring the creative arts of paper aeroplanes and conkers because of ‘health and safety’ and yet they are free to express themselves creatively by hurling rocks and knives at each other during the lunch break – a true story, my sister is a teacher and she is unable to open the window in case little Jenny or Johnny feel the urge to throw themselves out. Creative energy must be liberated or it becomes a destructive psychotic force.

Put simply the psychology of some people is more predisposed to creative function and psychosis than others – we must accept that some brains are more loosely wired.

This is the context for many current behavioural dysfunctions that are presented as psycho clinical conditions. This is not to say that these conditions do not exist but the repressive environment we find ourselves in, made worse by masquerading as freedom goes some way to explain why our children and the wider society is suffering. And the more we try to control the situation with medication the worse it is likely to become.

Societies value sameness and wish to ‘cure’ and suppress difference.

This is not a new phenomenon but it is made worse by our increasingly chaotic post modern age. The more our boundaries breakdown – globalisation, internet, and technology – the more we will desire control and yet the more elusive that control will become. It’s ironic that the creative drives that fuel the development of urban, production based civilisation creates societies populated by peoples expected to perform within a given repeatable ‘spread sheet’. The tools that have been created to serve us, to make our society predictable and controllable are now fragmenting it. As we strive for more control our technology and urbanisation has the undesirable bi-product of increasing our chaos.

Paradoxically in chaos creativity thrives. We should embrace it not control it. Now here’s a thought - maybe these children we vilify so much in the media they do not threaten us but provide us with our hope. Potentially these are the creative people that can show us the way.

We cannot be absolute – in any community there must be significant levels of conformity to function and process things, to repeat and scale-up functions to create wealth. In organisations and businesses and groups conformity helps everything fit together and provides competitive advantage – things and people conform and get along together.

“When we find ourselves in groups we inevitably find ourselves in the minority occasionally. Generally speaking, we will feel a little uncomfortable with that situation, which explains why we generally seek out groups with interests similar to our own. Imagine, though, that you are in a group where you are sure you are right and everyone else is wrong…”

If we were all different all the time we could not repeat things with any degree of success, society or a business can not function with excessive experimentation. There needs to be sameness so that groups can coagulate to perform as communities. But we have gone too far – in the past the Brits were renowned for celebrating the eccentric, the outsider, the innovator – not now.

As established boundaries break down and chaos increases the quest for conformity won’t save you. It is difference that you need. Different ideas, different approaches delivered by different minds. Are we recognising difference and the important role it plays in a healthy society or are we subduing and repressing it?

The creative mind could be being seen as disruptive rather than valuable and the more we control the more the psychosis of repressed creativity becomes evident – ADHD and dyslexia. These behavioural challenges are more often viewed as illnesses to be cured rather than indications of special gifts and talents. They are judged as weaknesses to be overcome not strengths to be nurtured. To celebrate them rather than fear them would be a challenge to our modern view of the world. In our modern times unstructured creative behaviours are more taboo than ever. It takes the most visionary parents or the strongest character to survive outside the accepted spectrum of ‘normality’.

Maybe it is not so strange that surveys of dyslexia for the prison population and among entrepreneurs are similar:

For the first time, new research shows that entrepreneurs are five times more likely to suffer from dyslexia then your average

UK

citizen and this has major implications for this Government’s key aim of creating a more entrepreneurial British society through initiatives such as this week’s National Enterprise week.

The research carried out by Simfonec, a science research centre based at Cass Business School, found that 20% of entrepreneurs (business owners employing at least one person) studied were dyslexic whereas employed managers (those who supervise at least one person) reflected the UK national dyslexia incidence level of 4%.

The research also found that 70% of dyslexic entrepreneurs who participated in the second, more in depth stage of the research, did not succeed at school. Researcher and Director of Simfonec, Dr Julie Logan notes that some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs such as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Alan Sugar, Anita Roddick and Sir Norman Foster allegedly suffer from dyslexia and says this research not only links dyslexia and entrepreneurship for the first time but it also has fundamental implications about how entrepreneurship should be fostered.

A 1996 study by the National Probation Service found that 52% of prisoners in London

exhibited signs of dyslexia. A study earlier this year by the British Dyslexia Association and the Youth Offending Team in Bradford found that over half of the young offenders were dyslexic. Cass BusinessSchoolLondon 2006.

Are the indicators of dyslexia and ADHD problems a reflection of their sick minds or does it reflect societies inability to embrace, understand and nurture the special creative talents of this minority group. Dyslexia and ADHD can often present itself as disruptive and even anti-social behaviour undoubtedly, but is it right that the reaction is to cage it and cure it rather than nurture it.

Branding master-class with bin and Porsche

 

Apple provides us all with a master-class in branding. The apple logo is so well recognised it brands our very psyche. The iconic logo is just everywhere. Apple helps their cause and gives away logo stickers with every new computer and punters stick them on almost anything from the sublime – here’s an Apple Porsche, courtesy of colleague Rich Claridge – to the ridiculous – here’s an Apple waste bin from our studio. One of the first rules of branding states that ‘visibility leads to favourability’ and Apple gets it.

 

Primark hits the marketing sweet spot.

 

It was recently reported that Primark is the only retailer to increase their profits continuously over the last 6 months as all the other retail brands made losses. Primark has taken a position that appeals to image conscious celebrities and fashionista who provide the budget brand with legitimacy for cash strapped middle-class consumers, giving them permission to shop down market.

Primark achieves an outstanding win win – providing the budget solution for shoppers on a budget and manages to turn off the snobbery of those who would never be seen dead shopping on a budget.

Like the positioning of Harry Potter that transcended age segmentation, Primark transcends socio demographics. If this has been a considered strategy it is genius. If it is a happy accident, a consequence of timing and converging circumstances, Primark benefits uniquely from the current economic mayhem.

If you are lucky enough to find a position with a broad appeal that is also uncompromising you can make a killing. In marketing terms products are more often focused on narrow segments, Primark turns this on its head – a rare breed indeed.

Failure is not an option – it is essential

If you are going to fail it pays to fail spectacularly. Failure itself has value and when truly glorious, failure brings with it equal success.

Would Scott have been more famous if he had succeeded in reaching the South Pole first? In the UK Scott is more remembered than Amundsen. Shackelton*, similarly enshrined, didn’t do too well either with his ship the Endurance sinking at the first ice flow. His failure to cross the southern continent was actually trumped by his success; to preserve the life of his men.

Who remembers the winner of the ski jump competition at the Calgary Olympics in 1988? We all know who came last. The competition that year entertained both the greatest ever winner Matt Nykanen** from Finland who won three golds in the competition and the greatest ever loser Eddie the Eagle*** and it was Eddie who was feted with a private jet and chat show celebrity status. By all accounts Eddie was both brave (with serious short sight and bottle-bottom glasses that steamed up so badly he couldn’t see. Every jump could have been his last - that took guts) and humble; an all round good bloke, a plasterer from Stroud who held both the British ski jumping and stunt jumping records and 9^th in the world rankings of amateur speed skating (106 mph). Getting to the Olympics had been an overwhelming success and his failure was just success in disguise and the spirit is summed up by this reference from Wikipedia - At the closing ceremony the president of the Games singled him out for his contribution: "At this Games some competitors have won gold, some have broken records and one has even flown like an eagle." At that moment, 100,000 people in the stadium roared 'Eddie! Eddie!'. It was the first time in the history of the games that an individual athlete had been mentioned in the closing speech.

Which Apollo mission became a movie? Was it the Apollo 11 successful lunar landing? Nope it was the Apollo 13 mission that failed that made it to celluloid celebration. Apollo 13’s success was not landing on the moon it was getting the astronauts back to earth all in one piece.

If we suffer a failure, we can find a success within it if we redefine our terms of reference. Don’t indulge in failure, failure is not defeat because in every failure there is a success we just have to find it. It is a rule. Take heart. Look at your failures afresh and revaluate them for their success. The thing about failure is it means you had a go, you tried and to paraphrase the well known saying “…it is better to have tried and failed, than never to have tried at all”

If you are going to fail, fail spectacularly! Avoid the wishy washy, half baked failure – an anonymous failure has no value what so ever. This is the kind of failure we fear and it is this fear we project to make the glorious failure enshrined by a few, into an outstanding success.

No. A great failure needs PR, a well marketed failure made visible becomes part of our urban myth and is celebrated. To be a successful failure get yourself a big stage and fall off it! Climb to the heights and as Buzz Lightyear said if you can’t fly “… fall with style!”

As we project our desires on others success we project our anxieties on others failures. Celebrity adorns outstanding failure just as it kisses success. There is a small but significant caveat, a warning to those who are in pursuit of failure’s success; the celebrity of failure is enhanced by death. Colin Campbell’s failed water speed record in Bluebird was both sublime and fatal. It pays to try and not be a dead failure and miss out on failure’s rewards. 

Vincent Van Gogh was singularly the most unsuccessful artist of his generation and the Van Gogh Museum is in effect a temple to failure. Before failing as an artist Vincent had already failed as art dealer, school teacher, and missionary and most significantly in relationships. Vincent couldn’t be anything. His self doubt drove him on. In Vincent’s own words in a letter to his brother Theo “I hope that the products of failure may be success.” Visitors to the museum indulge and gorge on the painter’s failure a feeding frenzy of often misguided exaltation, not of the man’s work but his profound inadequacy which at some subliminal level touches there own so they can shudder and move on thankful that their failure is not as absolute as his. And yet they miss the point – their fear of failure is really just their fear of success.  

Unlike his contemporaries; Cezanne, Matisse, Gauguin, et al Vincent was un-painterly and challenged every artistic convention - it wasn’t likeness or even impression, it was expression - which made his work profoundly unattractive to potential buyers and in his life he only ever sold one painting. Paradoxically it is this commercial failure that has made his catalogue one of the most complete and the museum is stuffed with his work.

As mentioned before, don’t be a dead failure. The sad part of the Vincent story is that the profound depth of his failure in life is balanced by the profound recognition his work has achieved in death. In 1987, one hundred years after it was painted Irises was sold to Alan Bond for $60 million.

To fail isn’t an option it is essential. Success is always built in, we just have to find it and wait for it.

*Reference Harvard Gazette  He was an Antarctic explorer who never got near the South Pole. A mariner whose ship sank miles from its destination in some of the world's most hostile seas.

Yet Ernest Shackleton and his ill-fated Antarctic expedition have much to teach modern business leaders, says Harvard Business School (HBS) Professor of Business Administration Nancy Koehn. She has created and taught a business case called "Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance."

"How he did what he did is very instructive," says Koehn of the now celebrated explorer and leader of a heroic expedition that saw all 28 members survive despite several years of harsh conditions and devastating, potentially deadly, setbacks. "It has both inspirational lessons and things we don't want to do." It's this duality, she says, that makes Shackleton such a compelling case, knocking him off a mythologized pedestal and into the messy stew of humanity, where good and bad, success and failure coexist.

What's more, as movies and books have demonstrated in the past decade, the voyage of the ship Endurance makes for a grippingly good story.

It is 1914, the peak of Europe's fascination with polar exploration and the eve of Britain's involvement in World War I. Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set out to be the first to traverse Antarctica. They head south from

South Georgia Island, a whaling outpost, despite warnings of pack ice, and within a month, the

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'Part of what the Shackleton story is about . . . is leading under moments of great uncertainty when the game is changing, and may change on a dime.'

- Nancy Koehn, HBS Professor of Business Administration

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Endurance is frozen solid in ice. Although Antarctica is within sight, the ice floes carry the Endurance off course, away from land. Ten months later, in October 1915, the ship suffers irreparable damage by the massive ice floes and sinks; Shackleton and his crew abandon ship and camp on the ice. With his men's survival, not Antarctica, as his new goal, Shackleton mounts several failed rescue attempts, the last of which gets his crew to uninhabited Elephant Island

. From there, in April 1916, he and five others travel in a lifeboat back to South Georgia Island, where they cross the uncharted interior to secure help at a whaling station. After several attempts and four months, they return to rescue the remaining 22 men, all of whom are alive.

** Reference Wikipedia At the 1988 Calgary Olympics, Matt Nykanen ( Finland) produced the greatest performance in Olympic ski jumping history. Nykanen stormed the field to win the 70m and 90m events, then led Finland to the first-ever team gold and became the first ski jumper ever to collect three gold medals in one Olympics.

*** Reference Wikipedia Edwards was born in Cheltenham, England, and was working as a plasterer when he qualified, as the sole British applicant, for the 1988 Winter Olympics ski-jumping competition. He had previously represented Great Britain at the 1987 World Championships, and was ranked 55th in the world. Eddie began jumping under the watchful eye of Chuck Berghorn in Lake Placid NY, using his equipment though he had to wear six layers of socks to make the boots fit. Edwards was handicapped by his weight - at about 82 kg (181 lb), more than 9 kg (20 lb) heavier than the next heaviest competitor - and by his lack of financial support for training - he was totally self-funded. Another problem was that he was very short sighted, requiring him to wear his glasses at all times, even though when skiing they fogged to such an extent that he could not see. He finished last in both the 70 m and 90 m events. From the beginning, though, his legend was embroidered with falsehoods.

“	"They said I was afraid of heights. But I was doing 60 jumps a day then, which is hardly something someone who was afraid of heights would do." But he was afraid of jumping? "Of course I was. There was always a chance that my next jump would be my last. A big chance."	”
—The Guardian, 3 September 2007 [3]

However, his lack of success endeared him to people all across the globe. The worse he did, the more popular he became. He subsequently became a media celebrity and appeared on talk-shows around the world. The press nicknamed him "Mr. Magoo", and one Italian journalist called him a "ski dropper".^[4]

The widespread attention that Edwards received in Calgary turned into a large embarrassment for the ski jumping establishment. Many athletes and officials felt that he was 'making a mockery' of the sport. Shortly after the Olympics finished, the entry requirements were greatly toughened, making it next to impossible for anyone to follow his example.

At the closing ceremony the president of the Games singled him out for his contribution: "At this Games some competitors have won gold, some have broken records and one has even flown like an eagle." At that moment, 100,000 people in the stadium roared 'Eddie! Eddie!'. It was the first time in the history of the games that an individual athlete had been mentioned in the closing speech.

Two corporate advertisements –

    

BMI Healthcare - featuring an emotional cocktail: of attractive female image of customer saying “How do I choose the right private hospital for me?” Answered by a persuasive use of endorsement “Over 6,000 consultants choose to work with BMI” given depth through performance claims “Outstanding clinical teams, state of the art equipment … the largest private hospital group…” And clearly branded. This is a persuasive corporate ad.

Coca-Cola - mmmm powerful use of the iconic image of the branded bottle shape with unequivocal performance claims in red (brand colour reinforcement) capitol letters for emphasis “NO ADDED PRESERVATIVES. NO ARTIFICIAL FLAVOURS” reinforcing the strapline ‘The real thing’ since 1886, stakes the claim of provenance and leadership. A confident ad yet somewhat flaky – so full of sugar nothing survives (and isn’t refined sugar an added preservative?) and the flavours? Tastes pretty artificial to me. The strange thing is I bought a tub of diet Coke for the children this week… So whilst I think the ad sucks, it has affected my choice at Tesco. Bad ads can be as effective as good ones – visibility creates favourability

Airfix wins British Grand Prix

 

 

Borrowed interest is a proven marketing communications technique which can sometimes go further. Has Airfix missed a trick? The Lewis Hamilton ad campaign from Abbey appeals to all model makers – one can only assume they are looking for model male savers. Abbey’s integrated 8% interest campaign (web, event sponsorship, celeb. endorsement, advertising, point of sale etc) is slickly planned – punters see the ad, associate with Lewis Hamilton, watch the branding around the race track. Multiple touch points raise brand awareness in the target audience. The ad appealed to big and little lads alike. My son (age 11) doesn’t want a savings account he wants to build an Airfix McLaren F1 car. If only Abbey had integrated the campaign with a special edition kit from Airfix they would have cleaned up. Unfortunately the kit isn’t available – we asked.