Welcome to

There are days when I kind of wish that, rather than going into marketing, I’d gone into a beloved and ethical profession. Maybe should’ve been a lawyer, for example.

According to the November briefing at Trendwatching (which is a trend identification company– kind of a cool-finder), one of the new trends to watch is something they refer to as ‘Generation Z’.

Now, yours truly is Gen X. And the video-game playing web 2.0 billionaires slacking their way through high school as we speak are Gen Y. So what’s Gen Z?

It turns out… babies. We’re talking about pre-toddlers! Consider:

Consider this research nugget: a Swiss study has found that when sufficiently exposed to child-friendly brand jingles, tunes and spoken messages during pregnancy, up to 77% of all newborns not only recognize these brand markers, but develop a brand preference that could last until puberty, and probably into adulthood (final results are not yet available as the project only started two years ago). Furthermore, an astounding 23% of infant participants could indicate at least 9 out of 12 favorite brands using rudimentary hand signals.

I was reading through this thinking ‘how insightful’ and ‘how brilliant’. Then it hit me: how sick! I actually checked the article date to be sure I hadn’t inadvertently stumbled on an old April Fool’s Day post. Apparently not. They’re serious.

So get with it people, start targeting toddlers. Your customers of tomorrow. And here’s the best news: copywriting just got a whole lot easier, since your target consumer can’t read!

There are 2 types of people these days: those with some sense of cellphone etiquette and propriety, and those who would leave their phone on at a funeral. And take the call.

After stewing in their misery as runaway inconsiderate cellphone usage has ruined movies, meals and concerts, those who prefer to occasionally have some quiet time have some options now. Cellphone jammers can effectively end any cellphone calls and prevent new connections from being made by broadcasting a strong signal which disrupts the phones’ communications. Only thing is, this is illegal. For 2 reasons, it seems:

1. Indiscriminate use of these jammers could possibly wind up interrupting communications of emergency crews (fire, ambulance, police). While the odds of this happening seem pretty low, it certainly could have tragic consequences.
2. Cellphone companies pay big bucks to the FCC for access to certain frequencies. Jammers would essentially block them from getting what they paid for. Now this is the real reason behind the law. Do they have a point? Sure, but their products are also responsible for disrupting the lives of non-users’. So it’s a little hard to feel bad for them if you’ve ever had to bear someone relaying intimate details of their life over the phone on the subway.

This all came up because of an article in the New York Times - Devices Enforce Cellular Silence, Sweet but Illegal. Apparently, more and more people are sourcing cell jammers from outside the US. Pocket models appear to be popular, since a user can ‘zap’ conversations of people around himself if he finds them annoying. Vigilantism? Sure. Is it satisfying? I bet it is.

Stay tuned for the first case of cellphone-blocked-signal-rage, and the court case which follows. 

How do you know when you’re done with designing a product? I have a suggestion– don’t let the designer decide. Otherwise, you might turn gray and die while the designer continually iterates through improvements of increasingly diminishing benefit. I think there’s something to be said for a) deciding up front the big picture essence of what you want the product to be, b) picking a date for rollout and building a schedule around it, and c) sticking to it. The only way you blow the launch date is if the product isn’t delivering the primary objectives you chose in step a). Will there be minor issues or room for improvement? Sure, but you’ll be on the market, and you’ll be able to start gathering user feedback to iterate into the ‘phase 2′ design cycle.

To paraphrase someone I met recently, “you might have the best thing since sliced bread, or you might have a flop, and the only way to know is to put it on the shelf and find out.” I read that Google’s product design strategy operates around ‘fail fast’, ie. if it’s not going to work, find out as fast as possible so you don’t waste your time. No need to spend 2 years polishing poop if it turns out that’s what you have.

Any other opinions?

So where do the big ideas come from where you work? Do the apples fall out of the tree and occasionally conk someone on the head, or do you have a system?

Can you, in fact, organize and control brainstorming? The whole idea might initially sound link an accountant’s folly, some way to put some reigns on a wild horse. But while you can’t necessarily create a system that guarantees the generation of a breakthrough idea every 17 minutes, you can at least set things up to improve your odds.

Here are a few thoughts and tips:

1. Do good group brainstorming. That means separating phase 1 (where you create ideas) from phase 2 (where you evaluate ideas). It also means encouraging people to spout off ideas, no matter how wild, without putting themselves at risk of ridicule. It also means recognizing that anyone, including the janitor, could conceivably have the holy grail idea at any moment, so everyone’s input (especially in phase 1) should be valued. Put the bullies and the know-it-alls in the broom closet.
2. Practice brainstorming. In various creative ventures, I have consistently found that the more you work at generating creative ideas, the faster they come. I think that most adults have long since closed off the creative portion of their brain, too often believing it lost value once they turned 9. Good creativity means being able to encourage the 8 year old in you to speak right up. So work at it.
3. If you need a breakthrough idea, don’t bother looking in the box. Everyone else has the same box you have. All the good ideas have been taken out of it already. So go find a new box.
4. Accept that some days (most days, really), you might not create anything of value. And that’s perfectly ok, as long as you’re learning the entire time, and not continually rewalking the same path.
5. If you’re problem-solving, make sure you’re really dealing with the root cause, and not a symptom. Unless, of course, your insight is that you’re specifically going to solve the symptom (coughing, sneezing, fever) and let everyone else figure out how to solve the root cause (the common cold).
6. Create a ritual. I think a ritual can play a role in putting you in the right mental place for creativity.

Here’s a good article on idea generation I came across a few weeks ago. They make you register on the site to get at it, but it’s worthwhile since MarketingProfs has a lot of good content:

 The Demystification of Idea Generation

In a post the other day, I mentioned my soft spot for the ‘New Coke’ conspiracy. A few moments of googling turns up an analysis of the whole New Coke fiasco, as well as the rise of conspiracy theories as to whether Coke planned it to fail in order to drive sales of Coke ‘classic’.

So read up on the New Coke fiasco, and then later we’ll discuss if it was in fact Dr. Pepper out there on the grassy knoll.

Perhaps you’ve read about one of various new products starting to appear which offer wireless power. That has to be one of the coolest things ever. I’m no scientist, it sounds like magic to me. In googling the term to learn a little more, I came across an explanation at How Stuff Works. Apparently ‘freakin’ magic’ is not the key technology, as I had assumed.

This strikes me as something that would be incredibly cool to market, kind of like bringing fire to the cavemen.

Just a sample of one of the products involved can be seen here: http://www.splashpower.com/. Imagine a day when power courses pervasively through a room, kind of like wireless internet. We’ll probably all slowly cook our brains, but at least we won’t be tangled up in cords anymore.

This is the third in a series of posts pointing out a few interesting products I saw at the 2007 CES (Consumer Electronics Show).

Seth Godin has written online and in print on the value of being remarkable,  recently posting 10 thought-provoking suggestions on ‘How to be remarkable’. As I was reading through that, I started thinking about the flipside of Remarkable, which would be Non-remarkable, or Ordinary. I think it should be somewhat logical to observe how hard it is to succeed by being Ordinary. But that certainly doesn’t stop legions of companies from storming the ramparts with products ‘10% superior to the competition’.

These are the Me-Too Guys. The Knock-Off Artists, the Incrementalists. On the other side of the spectrum from this crowd stand the Free Thinkers. These are the people who make waves, who make interesting things happen.

Sometimes their efforts fizzle (see: Apple Newton), sometimes the value is questionable (see: Pet Rocks), but sometimes they redefine the rules, and they change the paradigm (see: Mr. Bell’s telephone).

CES had plenty of representatives from all of the ‘types’ cited above. Lots of news was made by Panasonic for its new 103” HD plasma screen. And it sure is cool, but let’s face it, it’s an incremental improvement by definition, and it will be noteworthy only until someone else’s incremental improvement surpasses it.

It’s fun to look for free thinkers among the little guys, since that’s where they most often emerge. Here’s one – it’s not going to change the world, but it’s a rethink of a common product. We all know what a power strip looks like, right? It’s long and rectangular, with a power shutoff button on one side. If you plug in one or two wall-wart plugs, you quickly block most of the empty plugs, at which point you go off to find an extra power strip.

This is the first in a series of posts pointing out a few interesting products I saw at the 2007 CES (Consumer Electronics Show).

I’m a little bleary-eyed, and my feet are aching. 4 days of the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show have come and gone. What a madhouse, with over 2,000 companies vying for attention. At a certain point walking around the show, you get brain overload and just can’t process any more data.

Amidst all of this visual mental clutter, it’s really hard for anything to stand out. That’s why the products which do stand out have earned their keep.  A few of the items which did stand out for me essentially weren’t even there…

Over in the Intel booth, they were touting their latest mega-processor. Processor stats go over my head really quick, and that industry changes so fast they’re obsolete within minutes anyways. But what did stick with me was the air mouse.

Have you seen Minority Report (pic at right), where Tom Cruise’s future policeman maneuvers a cursor on a wall screen by simply motioning with his hand? This is one of those predictive and powerful sci-fi images which has really seemed to stick with everyone who saw the movie.

Well, that’s kind of what Intel had. See the picture at right. You stick your hand into the mouse field, and use your hand to manipulate the cursor and open and close programs.  THAT is cool. I’m not even sure if it’s available for sale, since Intel was just using it to show off their computing power, but forget about the computer chip of the week… I think there are a lot of people who would love to get their hands on the air mouse.

Another product that wasn’t there was a keyboard. Well, it’s not a keyboard because there is no keyboard. It’s a light mechanism which projects a keyboard image onto the desk surface. You pretend the keyboard is there by pressing on the desk surface where the keys are projected, and the computer reacts as if you were actually typing on a keyboard. I’m sure it’s a little fussy to use, but wow. That’s something different.

Golan Technology, the company showing the i.Tech Virtual Keyboard, was universes away from Intel. Whereas Intel had a few thousand square feet of exhibit space, Golan had a tiny little kiosk. But both products were surrounded by people itching to try out the devices.

I was thinking about the larger meaning of gizmos like these, and what I came back to was the need to separate the user benefit from the need for your product. No one needs a keyboard or a mouse. They need to input and manipulate data. Thinking of yourself as a keyboard or mouse manufacturer would in the long run be a major mistake, because read the tea leaves… at some point, someone will come up with a better way of inputting and manipulating data, and then you’re toast. But if you think of yourself as a data input company, then the sky is the limit. Next thing you know, you’ve eliminated the need for the physical product. You’re selling air.

 Have you seen this commercial?–

I think of this as a great example of annoyance advertising, which I will henceforth refer to as annoyvertising. I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about Head On’s ad, and this ad seemed to be presented as a failure because it was annoying. I’m not so sure that’s really the basis for judgement… isn’t it possible for an annoying ad to be a success? Huge piles of telephone books adorned with ads from ambulance-chasing lawyers seem to say yes.

Advertising is tricky. Just because you like the ad doesn’t mean you will like (and buy!) the product. So the reverse must be true as well.

So how can you evaluate an ad’s effectiveness, after eliminating the subjective criteria such as ‘makes me laugh’? How about comparing the Head On ad against a few criteria for success:

• Ad calls attention to itself. Check. Annoying sure gets your attention.
• Ad is memorable. Check. See it once, you’ll never forget it.
• Ad calls attention to the product. Check. Not too hard to deduce that they’re selling something called ‘Head On’.
• Ad tells you what product is for. Here, we start to get a little iffy. I mean, the ad tells me what to do with the product (apply directly to forehead), but isn’t so clear on why or when I need to do that. Personally, I didn’t have trouble understanding from the first time I saw the ad that this was for headaches. But experience has shown that some people need things to be stated more explicitly (maybe the same people that the ‘don’t use hair dryer in bathtub’ stickers are intended for). There’d be a tendency to assume that there was some focus group testing of the ad to examine this point, but on the other hand, if you’re going to film a 15 second ad on a budget of perhaps $27.50, you probably aren’t going to spring for a focus group.
• Ad makes you want to buy the product. Now here’s the real moment of truth. The ad either drives revenue, or it doesn’t. Without the benefit of some focus group testing, this is the leap of faith for the advertiser… I know the product by name, but maybe I hate the ad so much I refuse to buy it. On the other hand, that’s just me. With this exact same factor applicable, millions of people still tune in to watch reality TV and talk shows week after week. Many of these seem to draw audiences specifically because the shows are annoying. Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera, for example.

With these thoughts in mind, I searched around a bit, and found a great article on the ad. Apparently, the company did actually do some focus testing, and found that the repetition was extremely effective. The company also claims to have allotted tens of millions of dollars to broadcasting the ad, so if they have any clue what they are doing, we can assume it must be paying off for them. I’d love to meet these people. I picture Rodney Dangerfield’s character from ‘Back To School’.

Bottom line: annoyvertising works. It just goes to show that every golden business rule can be broken to great effect, if done right. If everyone zigs, you should think about zagging. In this case, ‘don’t tick off the people you’re trying to sell to’, is turned on it’s head: ‘tick them off, and they’ll remember you’. It might not work for GM or Microsoft, but for an unknown company with a tiny ad budget, it seems to be a great way to leverage the dollars for maximum effect.

By the way, if you are interested, there is more on the Head On phenomena here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeadOn I particularly like the bit noting that the product is mostly wax. Ah, the power of marketing.