Tom Fishburne: Marketoonist

post-production

(to instantly license this week's cartoon, click here)

If you're ever on a video shoot, you'll no doubt hear someone say, "we'll fix it in post-production".  This usually happens toward the end of a long day, when everyone is tired and there's a sticking point preventing everyone from going home.  Sometimes the client hasn't seen what they're looking for.  Sometimes there's a stalemate on art direction. The promise to fix "in post-production" allows everyone to break and address the problem later.

But it's usually an empty promise.  Post-production isn't a magic wand.  It can fine-tune, but it can't resolve fundamental differences of opinion.  It also can't fix massive mistakes. When there's a real sticking point, it's better to buck up, make another pot of coffee, and do another take.

Contrast that approach with this 2003 Honda advert, Cog.  It's a 2-minute advert where disassembled pieces of a Honda Accord are laid out on a floor and an elaborate chain reaction is set in motion by one transmission bearing.  What's particularly stunning is that the team forced themselves to make the ad in two uninterrupted 60-second takes, without CGI.  This required accuracy to a 16th of an inch and they had to overcome changes in ambient temperature and settling dust.  It took 90 minutes just to get the first transmission bearing to roll correctly into the second.  The whole piece required 606 takes, but the result is pure magic.

This ad wouldn't have been nearly so remarkable had they faked it.  Partly as a result of their exacting discipline to get it right on set, this Honda ad received more awards than any commercial in history.

In a general sense, businesses often operate as if there is post-production to rely on. There is a manufactured wall between how a business operates internally and how it is designed to be seen by the outside world.

I once heard someone say that working in the best businesses was like working on live TV. There's no opportunity for post-production so you'd better be authentic the first time around. Remarkable things happen on live TV. The best brands brand from the inside out. And consumers are increasingly savvy enough to figure out the difference.

the caged bird tweets

I found an interesting study about social media in the workplace, called “Whistle but don’t tweet at work.” The poll reports that 54% of companies ban social networking entirely, even for business purposes. 

Organizations are clearly struggling how to address social media. Many start with the premise of social media as a threat, rather than an opportunity. The emphasis is on limiting liability, often with Draconian command-and-control policies (like the muzzle and cage in this cartoon). 

Counter that approach with what a recent Harvard Business post advocates as “The Über-Connected Organization”. It gives some good pointers on how to embrace social media within an organization. Large companies like IBM and Toshiba are connecting employees globally and driving mass collaboration through social media tools. 

Those case studies speak to the potential of über-connections within an organization. But the greatest opportunity involves the über-connections between an organization and its customers. More than ever, consumers are seeking organizations with a human face. 

Yet, the corporate social media crackdown is hamstringing those types of meaningful interactions. These new policies are bolstering the “Corporate Firewall” I cartooned a few months ago. 

It’s time to tear down that wall. It’s time to acknowledge that the command-and-control model no longer works. It’s time to encourage the organization to engage more freely with the outside world. 

If there’s nothing to hide, then the risk should be low for social media tools to enable more transparent conversations. If there is something to hide, then the effort should be placed on cleaning up those skeletons in the closet so that the organization can truly brand itself from the inside out. 

Time is far better spent there than on devising over-protective social media policies.

the corporate firewall

I recently stumbled across the cluetrain manifesto again.  It had a big impact on me when I first read it ten years ago.  At the time, I was building web sites for big companies and it gave voice to a lot of the frustration I felt trying to get these companies to really embrace the potential of engaging with consumers directly.

I worked with an airline that refused to handle any consumer inquiries generated by their web site.  They actually had an in-house call center for reservations, but didn't even want their phone number listed on the site (let alone an email address).  For them, the web site was a cheaper way to book reservations, and they were trying to lower transaction costs, not increase consumer loyalty.

This was particularly odd because the airline prided itself on in-flight customer service.

Reading the cluetrain manifesto, I was struck by the metaphor of the "corporate firewall": "Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall."

This airline (and many companies) had erected a strict corporate firewall that barred the majority of consumer interactions and only let out carefully scripted marketing messages. Loyalty was achieved through frequent flyer miles: essentially buying loyalty rather than earning it.

Ten years later, the 95 theses of the cluetrain manifesto feel prescient now that the tools for social media are commonplace.  Social media is part of every marketing plan.  Yet, I question how much the corporate firewall has actually changed.  

Using social media without first re-evaluating the corporate firewall feels like the same old window dressing.  It's today's brochureware.  It doesn't achieve the potential that these tools were designed to achieve.

There is an opportunity for companies that tear down (or at least reevaluate and modernize) the corporate firewall.  For those that don't, the cluetrain manifesto offers this caution:

Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.

the fishbowl

We all work in a fishbowl.

I was thinking about how my favorite brands are marketed from the inside out.  There's a philosophy at the core that becomes ultimately reflected through everything they do.  These brands view everything as marketing and everyone in the company as working in marketing (even if they work in the mailroom).  When consumers poke and prod, it all hangs together consistently.

If you visit Fruit Towers (the headquarters for innocent), which they invite you to do on every bottle, it feels exactly as you'd expect from them.  And everyone you meet seems like a voice of the brand.

This is different from historic branding and marketing, where a brand persona is concocted for a 30-second spot, often by an ad agency.  Or a brand architecture is written to be shared with other marketers and marketing agencies only.

When I worked on Green Giant years ago, I stumbled across a thought piece that someone from Leo Burnett had written back in the 60's on the mythology of the Green Giant.  It was fascinating, with lots of intriguing stuff about how the Green Giant was related to the old pagan gods, etc.

No wonder these ads were so meaningful to consumers in a world of 30 second spots.  And most American consumers over the age of 50 can finish the theme song, "up in the valley of the Green Giant..."

In today's hyper-connected world, consumers choose how they interact with your brand, not the other way around.  And they're more apt to look through or around the brand "persona" to the real deal.  And then share what they find with others in blogs or other social media.  We're all in a fishbowl now, and we're all held up to a different standard.

Which is why it's important to think of everyone in the company as working in marketing.  And to be authentic about it.  How refreshing if a brand architecture were written not just to be shared with other marketers and marketing agencies, but with the whole company.  It would cut out all the incomprehensible lingo and make it easy to understand for everyone.  So that everyone can be a voice of the brand.

Not just the one guy in the equity costume.

truth in labeling

I love going to factories.  Putting on the hard hat and lab coat and seeing where the magic happens.  It makes me feel like Willy Wonka.  Massive humming machines.  Thousands of containers whizzing by on conveyer belts.  Ice cream plants are particularly cool.

But, the inner workings of a plant always seem like a stark contrast from the persona put across on the label.  Particularly if the brand has any kind of provenance.  Ingredients just don't look as premium when you see them in jumbo totes.  The "family recipe" doesn't seem so homey when it's being blended by a guy wearing a beard net.

A few years ago, I helped plan a Food Network special with Haagen-Dazs, and it was a real challenge finding a way to film in the plant that kept the premium cache.

Anyway, I was listening to a talk by Malcolm Gladwell on TED (I'm totally addicted to the TED talks, btw), and he was tellilng the story of spaghetti sauce in the US.  Actually a pretty riveting story.  At one stage, he talked of one brand connoting the old-world values even though it was really being made in a plant in New Jersey. 

It reminded me of that whole contrast, and made me think it would be funny if a label told the "real" story, from the vantage point of the producer.  Instead of an old-world grandmother stirring a saucepot, a guy in a beard net.

the wizard of ad

I recently joined a group called the Marketing and Sustainability Steering Committee, which is trying to come up with standards for green marketing in the UK.  The UK Marketing Society asked me to me their delegate, which was nice.

On Friday, I met everyone else for the first time (kind of an eclectic mix of non-profits, academics, and agency people -- surprisingly I was the only one from the brand side).  Someone in the group was talking about company transparency, and how reluctant many companies are to reveal their inner workings.  The traditional approach is to concoct a persona via advertising and point to that instead.

Yet, more and more consumers seem to be looking for the company behind the curtain.  They're no longer as swayed by the concocted brand image of advertising.  Instead, they want to know who's behind the products they buy.

I found myself scribbling cartoons of Dorothy and Toto in the margins of my notes.  I'm sure the guy next to me was wondering what was wrong with me.  I hope I get asked back.

the authenticity makeover

I read a quote somewhere that "authenticity cannot be cooked up after the fact".  It struck me at a recent natural products show how many up-and-coming brands are peddling "authenticity" as their key brand asset.  I then strolled a typical supermarket, and saw many of the big, mass-market brands trying to do the same thing (particularly in relation to the environment), even if the actual nature and history of the brands didn't really support that.

Also, I always loved that Ghostbuster scene with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  I later learned that character was inspired by the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Michelin Man.  Gotta love equity characters.  I think it would be fun to have the job of coming up with equity characters like these guys.

one night brand

Have you ever experienced customer service so unsettling that you had to write a letter about it?  Well, my therapy was this week's cartoon.  I won't go into details (it's too painful to relive in full), but I think that "vonage" should be a new verb in Webster's to denote a really bad customer service experience (as in, "Arggh, I've been vonaged")  If Google can become a verb, why not Vonage?

Anyway, it made me think how epidemic bad customer service is.  When you think about how much money and effort is spent on finding and reaching consumers, it seems crazy to throw it all away by not respecting them enough to provide good customer service.  In the early days of smoothie brand innocent, they had a "banana phone" (literally, a phone shaped like a banana) in the middle of their office that would ring with consumer calls, and staff would literally fight over the privilege to answer the phone when it rang and talk to a consumer (anyone in the company could answer the phone).  How refreshing would it be if every brand had a "banana phone" that was actually answered by someone who cared or truly worked with the brand?