Tom Fishburne: Brand Camp cartoonist and marketing guy

gDiapers

I came across gDiapers in WholeFoods last year, but just rediscovered them courtesy of a friend.  These are the first eco-friendly flushable diaper.  They come with a fashionable, washable shell and a compostable/flushable insert. 

What I love the most is how they combine style + substance to tell the story.  In a NYT article, they say that a "consumer might be drawn in by gDiapers’ fashionably bright colors, comfort or perhaps just the novelty factor, and then learn that, P.S., they save the planet."  It's not the typical, boring crunchy granola approach.  Instead, they make them trendy and desirable like the bugaboo.

They don't skimp on the substance story either.  Here's a pretty compelling video to drive that part of the story home.

I always like philosophy-based companies, and I like how gDiapers articulates their philosophy as fair dinkum:

"Fair Dinkum is an Australian expression that means being genuine and real with everyone you encounter. Well put. That is our philosophy toward our business, our people and the planet."

have we met ü yet?

A bit of blogging radio silence this last week.  I took advantage of Thanksgiving to have some holiday time with the family around London, and let my kids fill up my cartoon sketchpad with crayon drawings of puppies and flowers and princesses. 

That said, I couldn't resist snapping this photo of the cute little Gü stand that sprouted up in front of the Natural History Museum, just next to the winter ice rink.  I've blogged about Gü before.  They make delicious chocolate puds (think warm chocolate souffles), and have extended into other chocolate delectables, including brownies and ice cream. 

I met Amelia, their head of sales, at an event a few months ago, and she told me that sampling was their top marketing activity.  And, the product really does sell itself.  It was smart to plant themselves next to an ice rink, and I'm sure they won quite a few converts.  They were offering a free hot chocolate with every skate rental and generously gave us a couple extra brownies with our hot chocolates.  Really memorable impact for a small brand.

This sure beats the usual in-store sampling with someone who may have been shlepping dog food the day before.  And, they may actually make money at it.

dance of the silos

When I heard Doug Hall speak recently, he talked about challenge of launching new products in companies with deeply separate functional silos.  It can take a peace treaty to get a product through this system, so the "safest" products win.

Too often, I think, it ends up like this cartoon, with too many puppeteers at odds.  And the consumer gets the same old, same old.

Of course, the best products are strongest because of the diverse teams that work on them.  I think Apple is one of the best at this: bringing structural design, ui design, licensing, etc. all together in a coordinated way.

blog marketing experiment

I've quite enjoyed keeping this cartoon blog.  And I've been inspired by how some of the brands I admire keep blogs to show their authenticity, chat one-one-one with consumers, and market from the inside out.

So, we're starting a little experiment with a new blog for our fledgling UK office of method.  I've already been sending little updates and photos back to our San Francisco office since our launch in April, so I'm using all of that as a starting point.  We plan to update it a few times a week with what we're doing.  It'll keep us on our toes and hopefully help us connect with consumers in a more personal way. I'll post from time to time here on how it's working.

Here's our last post on hand-shipping samples to consumers.  Would love any thoughts or suggestions you might have.

merry jones

   

Over Thanksgiving 2003, Jones Soda boldly went where no holiday pack had gone before, with a limited edition Turkey & Gravy soda.  Delicious.  They produced just 6,000 bottles, only offered it online, and sold out in a couple hours.  A few days later, bidding on eBay was up to $63 for a two bottle set.  Along the way, they scored a slew of free publicity.  Not bad for the cost of 6,000 bottle-run. 

They've followed that up every year since, and just announced two Christmukkah packs.  Their Chanukah pack features Chocolate Coins, Applesauce, Latke, and Jelly Doughnut sodas.  Their Christmas pack features Christmas Ham, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog, and Sugar Plum sodas.

The next time someone tells you your idea is "polarizing", just point them to Jones.  To compete in the cola wars, they have to be polarizing.  Yes, that means some hate it.  But, it also means that some love it rampantly (just look at all of the Jones stuff on eBay).  What they can't be is ordinary.

I love seeing ways that Davids successfully compete against Goliaths.  Another cool thing Jones does is make all of their labels from random pictures that fans have sent in.  They've had 748,578 photos posted by consumers so far, most available on their gallery.  And you can bet that when your picture is chosen, you tell everybody you know.  Really smart.

lululemon

Interesting story in the New York Times on the danger of making empty and exaggerated claims.  A trendy clothing company called Lululemon claims to make premium workout clothes from materials like bamboo, silver, charcoal, coconut, soybeans, and seaweed.  They linked the seaweed fiber to all sorts of health benefits (anti-stress, anti-bacterial, detoxifying, etc.).  Kind of an intriguing proposition, and Lululemon has been able to command a nice premium. 

But, a laboratory test commissioned by the New York Times has showed there is no seaweed fiber in the clothing (even though the label claims a rather specific 24%).  The founder's response: "if you actually put it on and wear it, it is different from cotton. That's my only test of it."  What a terrible answer.  I think it'll be hard for them to recover from this credibility blow. Consumers have been paying a premium for authenticity (just check out their well-written manifesto).

sisyphus revisted

I'm giving a little talk to a group of marketers at Pepsi tomorrow.  When they originally asked me to speak, we talked about one of the dilemmas of innovation in a large company.  Senior management want to be included in the decisions, but they don't have enough time to really be in the loop.  By the time they have a moment to swoop in, the team has already moved on.  This often leads to "decisions" being "re-decided".

I've been feeling a little bit of this dynamic lately too, now that I'm in a satellite office eight time zones away from the home office.  The age-old centralized/decentralized pendulum. Mulling this over, the Sisyphus metaphor popped to mind.

smarter wine

 

I've been a fan of gapingvoid cartoonist Hugh MacLeod ever since I read his essay on "How to be Creative".  He's a former advertising copywriter who started doodling incendiary cartoons on the backs of business cards and then gained a loyal blog following posting them online.

He advocates what he calls "The Sex & Cash Theory" that says "the creative person basically has two kinds of jobs.  One is the sexy, creative kind.  Second is the kind that pays the bills.  The tense duality will always play center stage.  It will never be transcended."  Hugh advises to keep your day job, and let if fund your creative projects.

So, I was interested to discover his groundbreaking marketing work at Stormhoek, a small South African vineyard.  All the Web 2.0 stuff he learned from his cartooning + blogging, he's applying to Stormhoek.  In late 2005, he created a "100 Blogging Dinners in 100 Days" event, with this brochure, and sales doubled in less than twelve months. It's now increased five-fold, with this series of marketing milestones, including wine labels that feature his cartoons.  I like how he frames his approach to marketing in this Smarter Wine manifesto. 

It looks like Hugh found a way to transcend that "tense duality" of Sex & Cash he wrote about earlier.  As another cartoonist who works in marketing, I find this inspiring. 

howies dohboy

What does a t-shirt maker have to do with bread?  Well, when you're a philosophy-driven business, a lot.  I was interested to learn that howies was opening up a shop in London, so I popped over there to scout it out.  The entire shop brings the howies philosophy to life in an inspiring way, but I was intrigued by this toy parked on a table next to jeans and t-shirts.

I learned it was the dohboy, which comes in a re-usable breadbox.  The inside of the box tells the dohboy's mission, which is to go after bread manufacturers for adding too much fat.  Three slices of bread have as much fat as a chocolate bar apparently.  The web site has more detail of this stealth campaign to raise awareness. 

howies is the classic David against Goliath.  They gained early fame by taking on Levis when the Levis legal department tried to bully them.  So, this fight against bread manufacturers is in a similar vein.  But, an oddly peripheral one.  It intrigues me, because it's just so removed from their actual products.  But, I respect that their philosophy is so entrenched that they can take on an issue like this.  I respect that they think of the role their brand can play in the broader world around them.  And I respect that they'll go through the trouble of creating a toy to creatively raise awareness on something important to them.  Even if it doesn't sell a single t-shirt.

wall street cred

I haven't worked in a public company for a while, but I definitely remember that fish bowl feeling.  I was emailing with someone recently about public CPG companies, and the growing sense that innovation is just as important to Wall street as it is to consumers.  "Street cred" was used to describe the intent of more and more NP initiatives.  I found this concept very funny.