Is Your Company Run Right Or Left?

Now that the left brain linear thinkers have come in and rewired all of your systems for maximum efficiency and cleaned out all of the right brain people who are impossible to valuate and are thus expendable, what is left for your ability to maintain the creative connection between your brand and your primary consumer?  Placing a real value on that creative link is very difficult without some hard metrics and I think we are now getting closer to having the numbers which justify right brain approaches and staff.  HBR has articles going deeper on the topic and this article from MediaPost really does speak to the absolute necessity of not only maintaining but growing this creative connection for your brand.        Garry Leigh at Snafu
Media Metrics: Hate to Burst Your Bubble
by John Gerzema, Monday, December 1, 2008, 12:00 AM

As if sub-prime mortgages, failing hedge funds and institutional bailouts were not enough for 2008, there is yet another crisis brewing on Wall Street. Only in this case the assets cannot be traded away or hedged against inflation. The financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them think they are worth.

We examined brand and financial data from “BrandAsset Valuator” (BAV), the world’s largest study of consumer perceptions of brands. We’ve invested more than $ 115 million dollars and each year we interview 500,000 consumers in 44 countries. We’ve tracked consumer perceptions of around 40,000 brands since 1993.

And the numbers tell a story of Main Street offering a very different view of brands than Wall Street. While brand value increased 80 percent in three decades, among 2,500 brands we studied across 14 years of data: brand awareness declined 20 percent; brand quality eroded by 24 percent; trust in brands declined by a staggering 50 percent. And 85 percent of brands were either stagnant or declining in brand differentiation.

Looking outside our research, we saw signs of the Brand Bubble in other studies. Jack Trout and Kevin Clancy’s research for the Harvard Business Review found that 90 percent of 42 product categories had lost differentiation over time. Leonard Lodish and Carl Mela, also writing for HBR, reported that consumers are 50 percent more price sensitive than 25 years ago. Further signs of this worrying disconnect emerged as we examined the extent of the gap between business and consumer perceptions of brand value. Among Interbrand’s top 100 most valuable brands, 45 percent were actually declining in consumer perceptions according to BAV.

This isn’t a brand problem, it’s a business problem. Shareholder value is at risk. Today, brands account for 30 percent of the market capitalization of the S&P 500, or almost $4 trillion dollars. The 250 most valuable brands are worth $2.197 trillion dollars, which exceeds the GDP of France. Even the world’s top 10 most valuable brands are larger than the market capitalization of 70 percent of U.S. public companies.

Why does the Brand Bubble exist? I believe the changing nature of media and technology has caught brand management off guard, while at the same time the importance of creativity has risen among consumers, raising their expectations of brands.

Blowing Up

In the span of just six years brands have come up against a convergence of forces.

First there’s the fragmentation of everything – of channels, choice, modes and mediums. The highest rated show in America, All in the Family, had a 34.0 HH rating in 1972, compared to 14.6 for American Idol in 2008. This means not only are there a myriad of new competitors, it’s no longer possible to build a brand on the back of mass media, the way we did in previous decades. Brands must now aggregate audiences through micro-communities and tailor their appeals through bespoke channels.

Second, because of social media (collaboration, communication and sharing, social networks, applications and consumer generated media), consumers trust each other more than brands. A Mediaedge:cia study found that 76 percent of people rely on what other people say versus 15 percent on advertising, and 92 percent of people now cite word-of-mouth as the best source for brand information. Universal McCann found that 74 percent of global Internet users write reviews online, while 75 percent of people consult blogs before they buy, according to Bazazarvoice. Brands have nowhere to hide.

Third, personalization (of products, experiences, mass customization and micro-addressability) means there are no USPs anymore. A brand has a myriad of potential appeals and avenues to be personally relevant. This new paradigm is still difficult for many marketers to grasp, but micro marketing will be paramount to future competitive advantage.

And finally, portable content (RSS, podcasts, video, widgets/gadgets, mobile, slingbox) creates a redefinition of place. Enabled by unlimited storage capability, content is now instantly accessible and easily shared, meaning that consumers no longer distinguish an off- and online world. Marketers have not caught up to understanding this fluidity. Active listening and response is difficult in most organizations that are not yet “marketing nimble.”

All of these forces accelerate the decay in brand equity. As the power has shifted from institution to individual, brands are commoditized in compressed periods of time. Consumers are simply quicker to punish uninteresting and stagnant brands.

The Rise of Creativity

At the same time these forces have also unleashed a marketplace thirst for creativity. Today, consumers are not only citizen journalists, they’re amateur filmmakers, art critics, design mavens and content syndicators. In this creative renaissance, where consumers expect even inexpensive products to be “cheap chic,” they demand that brands continuously surprise and delight them. That’s why brands with what we call “energized differentiation” (continuous movement, momentum and direction) – outperform the S&P 500 by almost 30 percent in our modeled fund.

What’s interesting is these energized brands are blue chips like P&G, GE and Colgate, who are innovating beyond advertising, such as in product development, corporate social responsibility and sustainability. And there are low interest category killing brands like Geico, Simple Human and Method, who are effective at layering messaging and creating an ethos out of a seemingly commoditized product. There are high-energy brands effectively utilizing design and environments such as Pinkberry, Muji and Uniqlo. And there are brands like Zappos, Innocent and Ikea, for whom creativity in attention to corporate culture and core values resonate with consumers, who see them as more innovative and offering higher quality products and services.

The Brand Bubble is very real and yet, at the same time, it is avoidable. As researchers, economists and planners, our team concluded that brand value is dividing along the lines of creativity: A smaller number of highly creative and innovative brands are creating disproportionate value in our study. What’s their secret? Each is unleashing a continuous stream of marketing creativity, product and service innovation, design, advertising, social media mastery, media experimentation and CRM. They teach us that today, everything is marketing and only creativity matters if a brand is to hold its value in this rapidly transforming and unforgiving marketplace.

New Music Merchandising On Display

OK, so we all are embracing new ways to expose new music and make it available for purchase at a time and in a way most convenient for the music fan.  I’m impressed that some of the oldest school companies on Earth are really getting creative in deploying assets to expose and monetize those exposures.  We should all be gathered around the conference table regularly brainstorming with “those people” to gain new momentum?  How about credit for just trying some new things and seeing what sticks?  Investing in new channels and giving them the time necessary for their viral spread to begin changing the users habits (parts of the program have been around a long time)!  By the way, when you get your sales reports weekly, do they tell you there was a huge AXE push with a particular artist and that may skew that figure?  Is there a way for you to now that and interpret the sales info from that perspective? Does it matter or is it just great for the industry that we are willing to experiment in these areas?

Take a look  at this AdAge article and let me know what you think….. Garry Leigh     Snafu Consulting

Walmart, Unilever Up Partnership in Retailer’s Music Site

Marketer Promotes Its Products on Soundcheck With the Likes of All-American Rejects, Nickelback

by Jack Neff

Published: December 29, 2008

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — As a means to sell more music and attract more visitors to its music microsite, Walmart has teamed up with Unilever for an entertainment- and shopper-marketing program that appears to be gaining momentum.

Bands like The All-American Rejects are featured alongside Unilever’s products on Walmart shelves as well as the retailer’s sponsored music portal, Soundcheck.

In the latest incarnation of the partnership, Unilever is merchandising its new Axe Hair lineup of hair-care products for the cheeky men’s brand in stores alongside CDs from All-American Rejects, Gym Class Heroes, David Cook and Nickelback, while simultaneously sponsoring Walmart’sSoundcheck microsite, which has been backed by the marketer’s personal-care brands since earlier this year.

Backed Beyonce’s new album
In similar fashion, Unilever backed the launch of Beyonce’s “I Am Sasha Fierce” CD last month with displays that promoted the album alongside Suave products, as well as promoting another release from Beyonce’s sister, Solange, who also had an exclusive interview on Soundcheck sponsored by Caress.

Unilever’s Suave also sponsored interviews and exclusive video performances by Beyonce on Soundcheck in November. And Axe sponsored a studio concert performance and a free MP3 download by All-American Rejects earlier this month.

For its part, Dove in October sponsored a “Women in Music” program on Soundcheck featuring videos of nine artists, including Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson and Faith Hill, at the brand’s self-esteem workshops for girls.

Walmart’s Soundcheck initiative dates back to 2006, when it primarily focused on exclusive concerts played on the retailer’s in-store TV network operated by Thomson’s PRN. Procter & Gamble brands such as Gillette Fusion and Venus sponsored exclusive content on the microsite last year.

Program takes off
But the online program appears to have taken off considerably this year in terms of viewership and in-store merchandising support, as Unilever has featured it in programs with most of its major personal-care brands. Unilever and Walmart have gotten mentions about its promotions and exclusive content on Soundcheck in the blogosphere, using a giveaway of a Danity Kane CD and Degree products, for example, on one blog this spring.

URLfan.com now ranks Soundcheck in the top 1% of the 3.7 million sites it tracks in terms of blog mentions, averaging a mention about one every three days. A preview of Beyonce’s Suave-sponsored Soundcheck appearance last month has drawn about 844,000 views on YouTube, and a Soundcheck appearance by the lesser-known Danity Kane, sponsored by Degree deodorant, has garnered more than 400,000 YouTube views.

Why Are We Here?

No, I mean here, not Here.
When we all started out in Radio or Records, I don’t believe any of us saw ourselves in the positions we currently hold or certainly not doing the things we do every day.  How did we get here?  Did we aspire to do nine jobs simultaneously, often with diametrically opposed philosophies that tap into our areas of weakness as well as our strengths?  Did we see the need to spend a great deal of time trying to work on weaknesses which are there precisely because they are areas in which we have absolutely no interest or passion?  I don’t want to be an accountant and worry about all those little categories you people create for the money that we are spending.  I want to be an artist and create a real communication of passion in areas of man’s greatness, not crunch numbers for some Vice President of Numbers Games dealing with Wharton people all day.  We were born to break rules, or at least stretch them as far as they would stretch, and now we are required to not only write the rules but then enforce them upon the people we used to be.  What the hell?

“The purpose of life is to fight maturity.” –  Dick Werthimer

Hmmmm.  Do you think Dick went to Wharton? No, my bet is he played guitar way too loud and way too late with way too many friends around.
In small business I totally understand the need to accomplish tasks not of our liking because that’s the nature of small business.  We hire contractors to do the things we can’t or don’t want to do and focus on the things that put us in the position to open a business in the first place.  Right?  So what’s the deal with BIG business and the BIG picture people making us all move to the left brain when we are demonstrably good working from the right side?  STOP IT!
Today, let’s try harder to draw on people’s strengths and support them in every way we can to further develop those strengths.  Go with people who are passionate in their area of expertise and make it safe for them to go there while respecting the same of those around them.
I have always loved management retreats precisely because each of us on the team had very different strengths and we could get away and learn about each other’s passions and then try to do a better job of drawing on them in the future.  That’s part of what makes a good team better and in simplest terms why some companies have great leaders and why some never rise above good.
Take the team out and encourage them to express why they are passionate about their department and where they would take it if they could.  My bet is you’ll see the rest of the team pitch in and cover their weaknesses so they can each better utilize those individual strengths and focus more on Why We Are Here!
Garry Leigh

Starving Artists?

Unfortunately, it looks like consolidation at the record label level will continue for sometime, with fewer labels and even fewer promotion professionals evangelizing for new artists, creating a collapsing universe in the traditional sense and a big bang in the non-traditional media levels.

I must say that I really appreciate the multifaceted nature of the dilemma facing us all in radio and records, but much like the automotive industry is looking for alternatives to their failing business model, and the airline industry is reconfiguring it’s offerings and core products, so must we all.

Here is the headline from Advertising Age China today:
Record labels hope advertisers can offset royalty losses  Embracing change comes hard for industry used to having control  Music execs are scrambling to monetize digital music in China, where service providers like Baidu and China Mobile, the big bad wolves of China’s music industry, are pocketing profits. Record labels hope marketers such as Pepsi, which backs artists like Wu Ke Qun, are one solution. Are advertisers partners, or rivals?

All of us in entertainment are either evolving or extinct in a very short time frame, and one of the key concepts for survival is continually rethinking and reassessing our partnerships.  The unthinkable is, in some cases, inevitable.  Enemies are in the same research, review, retool, re-launch process too and may well find a new strategic alliance is not just viable, but preferred.

On the other hand, that means our close relationships with some may now well be detrimental to our new business model and require change.  Not extricating ourselves from failing and dated business relationships may well leave us with a permanent association to them, and a perceived lack of relevance today.

Answers are difficult and elusive, but for all of us trying new directions and different paths to the audience, we are destined for many failures and a few great successes.  Reengaging a generation with the need to compensate artists for their work is well underway and I think answers are closer than we think.

Here’s to those who support trying non-traditional distribution channels and the entrepreneurial spirit necessary to continually try to reach, and occasionally win, new audiences for the artists we work with!  We do it for the love of the art and the challenge of sharing it with larger and more diverse audiences – and we need to remember that through the sometimes painful cycles our industries take.  Keep supporting those who support the artists and, as Doug Lee would say, “See ya on the corner”!