Unexpected Marketing Lessons from a Ubiquitous Red Hat

[Note: This post originally appeared in Silicon Prairie News on December 8, 2016]

With the election of Donald Trump, lots of things we thought were tucked away on the dusty shelves of history appear to be back in vogue, and lots of things we thought we knew and understood to be true have been pretty much turned upside down.

Let’s set aside the politics of it all for a moment and look at this campaign purely from a marketing lens.

There’s a clarity in politics that other markets simply don’t have. If you’re selling, say, body wash or gluten free granola bars, you have marketshare and a host of other metrics to try to gauge winning and losing.

In an election, it’s much more definitive. Trump won, Hillary lost. That kind of clarity can perhaps help shed some light on the effectiveness of their respective marketing efforts.

There are no doubt a multitude of reasons as to why the outcome was what it was, but marketing was certainly a factor and there are some takeaways for those of us who do this for a living.

There was a weird, dreamlike quality to this campaign, with its logic and flow requiring a constant suspension of disbelief.

Hillary Clinton ran a campaign that reflected her own personal brand – serious and wonkish, with 35-point plans and shifting slogans that sounded like they’d been developed by committee and filtered through a PowerPoint generator.

Likewise, Donald Trump’s zig-zagging, free-wheeling campaign felt like the embodiment of his personal brand, so much in fact that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began.

It was also a campaign featuring by far the two most disliked major party candidates, in terms of favorability ratings, in the history of Presidential politics and yet none of us could get enough of it.

It was both a train wreck and a ratings bonanza.

Advertising from another era?

There was also an oddly throwback feel to Trump’s message. “Make America Great Again” was, of course, in itself a plea to return to an undefined bygone era.

But the way in which it was used also felt like it came from a different time. That simple phrase repeated over and over felt reminiscent of the old Unique Selling Proposition (USP), a
tool created in the 1940s that dominated product advertising for decades and never completely went away, like a Swanson’s TV dinner pulled out of the basement freezer.

The simplicity and repetition of the USP has an easy appeal. You start with the product, its features and benefits, and figure out what’s the claim you can make that none of your competitors can.

Then you drill it into consumers’ heads until they can repeat it in their sleep.

The USP eventually fell out of favor in the ad world for a few reasons.

One was that it felt inherently backwards. The USP starts with the product and how you want to sell it rather than with understanding the consumer and what she or he needs to hear and feel in order to buy.

The USP tool isn’t particularly complex or nuanced. It doesn’t reflect a sophisticated understanding of the modern consumer.

I happen to believe that consumers are not and never have been the 2-dimensional simpletons that advertisers took them to be for decades, especially not now in the digital age.

Then again, I’ve seen firsthand countless examples of the creative process getting a little too clever for its own good.

The simplicity of the USP can be effective in the same way a bad jingle can stick in your head; it’s an ear worm.

Filling in the blanks

Was “Make America Great Again” an example of a USP?

Sort of, but not exactly. I think there’s more to it.

Nowadays, we marketers like to talk about advertising and brand building as a storytelling exercise.

Hammering home a product benefit might be good salesmanship, but it doesn’t make for much of a story. You need characters and conflict, rising and falling action and some kind of conclusion.

To really hit home, you need texture and oftentimes subtlety. You have to trust your audience to fill in some of the blanks.

“Make America Great Again” actually works on this level even though it might not seem like it should.

It’s why some people found it so maddening, preposterous, maybe even deeply offensive. And it’s why others connected with it instantly.

It is deceptively layered. It implies that there was a time when America was once great, that that time has passed, and that there is some new path that can take us to the Promised Land again.

The slogan begs a lot of questions. Like, what does any of it even mean? What does it mean to be “great” and when, if ever, did we meet that criteria? How are we not measuring up now? Finally, what do we need to do to get back on track?

These are questions perhaps reporters and debate moderators could have asked.

Whether it was intentional, random, or just good luck, the real power of “Make America Great Again” might be that none of those questions were ever answered. It was all left completely blank, open to interpretation.

The consumer, in this case the voter, got to fill in the details.

What goes unsaid

When we’re tasked with telling a brand story at The New BLK, we start by searching for something authentic, something real that we think an audience will connect with and feel something when they see it, read it or hear it.

It’s easy to forget sometimes the impact of what goes unsaid. Perhaps it is fitting in this era of the 140 character limit and a candidate who couldn’t get enough of it that brevity and simplicity in telling a brand story would be a winning formula.

It brings to mind the legend of the greatest six word story of all time: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

In this “post-facts” world, it’s also worth noting that the story was falsely attributed to Ernest Hemingway but hardly anyone ever remembers that part.

What the Cubs Can Teach Us About Branding

[Note: This post originally appeared in Silicon Prairie News on November 3, 2016.]

I’ve had the word “rebrand” on the brain a lot these days. It’s becoming a borderline obsession.

Maybe it’s because we’ve had a few rebranding projects come through the shop recently. But, more than anything, I blame the Chicago Cubs.

Let’s talk about those Cubbies for a moment and what their brand is all about.

If you’re a fan, which many of us at The New BLK are, you pretty much know what you’re signing up for. It’s got layers, but there’s not a lot of mystery to it. You go in eyes wide open, knowing full well that you’re opting into an ongoing cycle of dreaming big then discovering new and exciting ways to lose, each time more ridiculous than the last.

You’re also choosing to buy into the idea that you are cursed.

It all goes back to 1945, the last time the Cubs were in the World Series. Game four. Dude named William Sianis brings his pet goat, Murphy, with him to Wrigley Field. All was hunky dory for William and his trusty goat until some nearby fans started complaining about the smell, presumably that of the goat.

And so on comes the goat police and out goes Sianis and Murphy. But not before Sianis uttered his infamous parting shot: “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.”

And, then the next 70 years happened, with a bounty of how-can-this-be-happening-again moments, from an untimely ground ball between Leon Durham’s legs to an unfortunate catch by Steve Bartman.

But, there’s another part of the Cubs brand experience: The “Lovable Losers.”

That’s the part that isn’t really about what happens on the field. It’s about the ivy on the walls at Wrigley Field, Harry Caray’s cartoonishly large glasses and the 7th inning stretch. It’s about rooftop bleachers, Chicago style dogs and ice cold Old Style in a can.

It’s about the Wrigleyville neighborhood, standing out on Waveland Avenue trying to catch a Sammy Sosa home run and bellying up to the bar at Murphy’s Bleachers on the off chance that you might bump into a few of the players after the game. It’s about singing “Go Cubs, Go” and flying a W flag after a win.

Wrigley’s genius

None of this is by accident. It’s the brainchild of one of the greatest marketing geniuses of all time, Philip K. Wrigley, owner of Wrigley Chewing Gum and the Chicago Cubs from the 1930s to his death in 1977.

Wrigley noticed something right after he took over the team, at the moment when the once dominant Cubs started losing: The worse you’re doing in the standings, the fewer fans you’re going to draw.

So rather than hitch his bottom line to wins and losses, Wrigley set out to change the paradigm, to find a way to sell a brand experience wholly independent of the team’s performance.

He planted ivy in the outfield, gave away the broadcast rights for his games for free, and doubled down on advertising that highlighted everything about the baseball fan experience other than the game itself.

And damn if it didn’t work.

The new Cubs

We spend a lot of time thinking about sports at The New BLK. Our clients include teams, fan groups, and sports equipment and apparel brands. We love the drama in sports, the colorful characters and rituals, the passion and the emotional pull. It’s ripe for the kind of storytelling we like to do.

From a branding standpoint, however, it’s tricky. When it comes to sports teams and their brands, the market is particularly volatile. You can get your fan base fired up, but ultimately how the team performs on the field is the single biggest factor in how well they fare in the market and ultimately how they are perceived.

That is, unless you’re the Cubs.

That potent brew of cursed souls and lovable losers has made for a pretty powerful brand and one that crushes it year after year in ticket sales, media reach and merchandise. It’s a juggernaut. So, why change?

That was the longstanding rap against the Cubs. But then a funny thing happened.

The front office took a radical turn and started charting a very different long range course. From scouting to player development to trades and free agent signings, they transformed the culture.

This new Cubs team is one that plays a beautiful and highly entertaining brand of baseball. They have power pitching, tremendous defense, a balanced lineup and loads of depth. They are young and athletic, with ear to ear smiles and a swagger in their step.

When brands evolve

See, this what can happen with brands: They evolve. It makes sense that they would, as our collective knowledge base and perspectives take major leaps forward, and as new technologies are introduced and customers start demanding totally different things.

Sometimes this kind of change feels profound enough to prompt a deliberate rethinking of how to best present yourself to the world.

Committees are formed, RFPs are drafted, budgets are set aside. It’s like calling a really long timeout, to take stock of the brand from top to bottom and to scrutinize it in ways you normally wouldn’t.

But other times the market decides for you. And when that happens, it’s a stark reminder that your brand is not completely yours and really never was to begin with.

Your brand, like every other brand, has a life of its own. After all, what is a brand other than how people experience it?

Which Cubs now?

In 2016, the Chicago Cubs won 103 games during the regular season and led their division by a mile the entire way.

They won the division series against a Giants team that had won three of the previous six World Series.

Then they beat a Dodgers team featuring one of the greatest pitchers of this generation to win the National League pennant and earn a trip to their first World Series since 1945.

As I write this, the Cubs have just won game six of the World Series and now stand one win away from their first World Series title since 1908.

The W flag, which dates back to the 1930s as a low-tech way of communicating across the city when the Cubs won, has taken on a new life as a trending hashtag and the hottest selling item in Wrigleyville.

Winning will do that.

Maybe the best way, indeed the only true way, to rebrand isn’t through an ad campaign or a new logo but through rethinking everything that you do, reimagining what’s possible and executing a game plan to change the very product you’re bringing to the market.

It takes foresight, discipline and a willingness to accept fundamental change. Whenever I talk baseball with a non-Cubs fan, this subject inevitably comes up. If the Cubs win, won’t Cubs fans forever lose their identity? What will we do without the curse and the lovable losers label?

Honestly, I don’t know. The logo won’t change, the uniforms will stay the same. Wrigley will still be Wrigley. But what will the Cubs brand be?

By the time this article posts, the World Series will be over. Maybe the Cubs will have made history and won it all or maybe they will have just come really close.

Regardless, their rebrand is already underway.

5 Tips for Telling Your Brand Story

[Note: This post originally appeared in Silicon Prairie News on October 10, 2016]

1. Make sure your story is actually a story

As Ernest Hemingway once observed: “All our words from loose using have lost their edge.” Have you noticed how the words ‘story’ and ‘narrative’ are seemingly everywhere these days, from mass media to casual conversations at the water cooler? Software developers, for example, call the issues and bugs they’re fixing ‘stories.’

For brands, the good news is all this talk of story has elevated our awareness and appreciation for something that has been fundamentally true forever, that people remember ideas expressed in story form. Stories are sticky. Our brains are hard-wired for them so we should have no trouble recognizing what is and what is not a story. Trust that instinct. There’s more than one way to tell a story, but you do need at least some of the core elements: characters, setting, conflict, plot, theme.

2. Speak like a human

Find your voice, and when you do, gut check it to make sure it sounds like how a real, live human being might speak and not the voice of Siri reciting the minutes from a marketing committee meeting. How would you tell your story if you were tucking your kids into bed or sitting around a campfire or pitching it as a movie script?

You can be funny, sincere, dramatic, laid-back, intense—whatever personality that comes through, above all else, make sure it’s real. Be authentic, which is altogether different from being air quotes “authentic.” Authenticity is another word Hemingway would have shoved in your face just before taking a shot of rum and wrestling a grizzly bear.

3. Find your hook

You’ve got only a few seconds to grab your audience’s attention, even if they sought you out, even if they’re trapped in a room and have no choice but to sit there until you’ve finished rambling. The hook is like the part of a pop song you find yourself humming, it’s the meme that made you laugh and then click ‘share.’ There could be more than one hook, but you need at least one. Look for the unexpected, the cool little detail, the thing that ties it all together. Give your audience a reason to care.

4. Hold the cheese

The stories we remember, share, and make our own are ones that strike an emotional chord. They move us in a real way.

A common mistake is to take shortcuts and give the appearance of emotions without actually earning them. Think how soaring violins and two characters running towards each other in slow motion make us think – look, they’re in love, I should cry now.

You’re fooling no one. Put the sledgehammer down. Subtlety, nuance, and finesse are your friends. Stay true to your story and the essence of what makes your brand special and channel how you genuinely feel about the brand into the narrative. If it doesn’t pass the sniff test, go back in and rework it.

5. Accept that you’re not starting at chapter one

This movie has already started. It’s playing right now—the real, everyday experiences of your customers, employees, and everyone else who interacts with your brand. Your story is happening on a conscious, rational level, and it’s happening below the surface too. It’s your people, what they say, what they do, and what they don’t. It’s your products and services, your environment, your culture, your vibe. It’s the pass-along conversation that inevitably occurs each time a customer or prospective customer walks away after touching and feeling your brand. It’s the aggregate of all of that and more.

As you prepare to tell your story, it’s important to first recognize that you’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper. Your story has a back story. Own it, shape it, steer it and know that even your final output will only be one draft of many.

Note: This post originally appeared in Silicon Prairie News