The Art of Einstein

Oh How I Wish Again That I Was in Michigan - but especially Ann Arbor

Even though I'm a copywriter I’ve always been fussy about type, layout, readability, the sound-track, the voice-over and the message they send.  Because, the non-verbal components of a message really are the body language of a brand.

Some people do a superb job of getting it right.  IBM has a long history of obsessing about design, initiated by Thomas Watson Jr. who hired Paul Rand, Charles and Rae Eames, and other first rank designers to make sure everything about IBM looked better than the competition.    At Apple,  Steve Jobs, to his credit, has been a maniac about design and monitored the details for 30 years.  In both cases, attention to esthetics has paid off at the box office. 

However web designers, with few exceptions, seem to be lousy at body language.  I have loved the simplicity of Google’s landing page from day one.  Malcolm Gladwell’s site is also a treat.  Much of the rest looks like a dog’s breakfast. 

Which brings me to this week’s good news/bad news body language story. 

Betty Crocker's Recipe For A Perfect Website

You may think Betty Crocker is a little "old school."  Think twice.  Betty was created 88 years ago “to respond to customer inquiries  in a more personal manner”  She was, by the way, invented by a small company to talk about a commodity product, baking flour. 

Betty and her mission came to mind the other day as I looked at a friend’s website.  I shall call my friend Tim and fudge some of his business details to protect what has always been a cordial relationsip.  

Tim is smart, honest, and focused.  He sells quality things.  Shake his hand and you know he’s a person you want to do business with.  Like most companies, what’s unique about Tim’s isn’t what’s on the shelves.  It’s his values, policies, and people that set Tim’s company apart.   Unfortunately his website does not convey this competitive advantage.  The site lacks what I call humanility - that combination of humanity and personality that elevates communication beyond features and benefits and into the realm of the intangibles that differentiate one business from another. 

There’s no recipe that applies unconditionally to every business - but Tim’s website could be a lot better if he followed what I think of as Betty’s recipe.

What's changed? How about everything!

My friend George Parker, advertising bad boy blogger, lobbed in an email the other day.  Seems he’s been tapped to chair a panel  here in NYC all about how the business has changed in the past umpteen years, what’s wrong and what can we do  to fix it.  George asked if I’d join the fun.  Alas I will be otherwise disposed on August 20^th.   But his email got the juices flowing.  What has changed?  What can we do?

So much has changed that it’s hard to figure where to begin.  We have new tools, new media, the Internet, new emphasis on measurement and accountability, no more commissions and on and on and on.  But advertisings folk are resilient and figure out how to deal with this newness eventually.

However, I were able to be on George’s panel I would make several observations.

1.     1.  The ratio of good to terrible is about the same as it used to be.  The 80/20 rule still applies though in reality I think it’s more like 95/5.   (While we may remember “it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” we forget “this invisible shield protect’s me”)

2.     2.  Where ‘no idea’ used to hide behind production values it now hides behind computer graphics

3.     3.  The impulse to tune out advertising today is driven by the fact there’s so much more of it.  (TV commercial time has gone from about 6 minutes an hour in 1975 to about 20 currently)

4.  4.  Advertising has lost the talent for telling interesting, believable, compelling stories.

5.. 5.  Measurement rules.  It keeps client and agency from taking chances on new ideas. 

The biggest development by far, however, l is the change in the basic nature of persuasion.  

Not so long ago the marketplace was fairly simple.  You had a handful of products to choose from.  They were sold in a relatively few places.   All we ad weasels had to do was write some ads that ‘sell’.  That was no problem, and results at retail, coupon returns from direct mail, and coupons in magazines confirmed us often enough to support an occasional 3-martini lunch.

Wham.  Bam.  POW!!!  There’s no more peace in happy valley.  The marketplace has become chaotic.  Choice, for practical purposes, is now infinite.  The job an ad must do is help the consumer wade through a cornucopia of options - product and shopping venue.  Selling is no longer about persuasion.  It’s about resolving complexity - a much more difficult job.   

Ads must help consumers work their way through the noise, find what you're selling, and make a choice in your favor.  All this, knowing that they've been researching your category on line, reading reviews, and asking their friends for advice.  And they're tuned in to your selling game.  They smell phonies mile away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Digress, momentarily

I have just posted a couple of new favorites to the Must Read list at right.  Julie Klam, blogger and Facebook diva, is a hoot.  So is George Parker.  I enjoyed both, vastly.

Julie writes about growing up, falling in love a couple of times, shopping, shopping, shopping, living in NY and her daughter Violet.  May sound ordinary but it's anything but.

George, the worlds most blasphemous  advertising blogger, writes a very funny history of the rise and fall of advertising in the 50-some years since Vance Packard wrote "The Hidden Persuaders". 

(Full disclosure - Julie grew up around the corner in Katonah.  I have known George since forever)

Random Acts of Blindness

Why do I get the feeling that the marketers I deal with wear blindfolds, like kids playing pin the tail on the donkey?  

The letter I got from my Volvo dealer last week says it all.  His database wanted to be sure everything was going swimmingly with the wagon I bought a few years ago.  But his database (who I’ve never met) had no way of knowing that I haven’t owned that Volvo in years. 

The same week someone from BMW sent a letter wishing me happy birthday.  The BMW is long gone, too.

I wonder why these geniuses don’t ask some of the sales people, who sit around waiting to ignore the next person who walks through the showroom door, to man the phones.  Call customers.  Have a conversation.  Build a relationship.    

Last week’s mail also brought a ‘personalized’ letter from an audiologist.  Someone had sold him a list of generation H (hearing aid) types.  The letter promised benefits that would “greatly effect (sic) my life”.   (When I typed the previous sentence even my grammar checker caught the mistake),

These letters don’t build relationships.  What’s more they really piss me off.

They make the senders look stupid, too.  And the underlying premise, that they can save money giving a human being’s job to a computer, is highly questionable. 

Computers have zero street smarts.  They’re great at crunching numbers but not much good at building relationships.   After 50 years of intensive work, the artificial intelligence community will tell you there’s still no computer that can recognize you when you walk into the room – much less judge your mood by your expression, tone of voice, etc. – signs that human beings decode very well.

People are expensive, I suppose.  But so are :30 TV spots, NASCAR sponsorships, Catalog mailings, Customer Relationship Management applications and other methods designed to win friends and influence people.

I am not a Luddite.  I’ve been using PC’s  for 30 years and I am lost without my Mac.  But I find people delegating tasks to computers that defy common sense.

Isn’t it curious that the best internet marketers are also the ones who best understand how to involve people in the process of dealing with customers.   More about them in my upcoming series “Heroes of the Internet”

 

 

Birth of my Blog

I don’t know whether or not you’ve ever heard of Jamie Kitman.  I believe he was trained as a lawyer.   I know him as a columnist for Automobile magazine – a publication I’ve read since David E. Davis Jr. birthed it in 1986. 

Davis is long gone, and Kitman is now the main reason I go back to Automobile every month.  His commentary on cars and the motor trade not only tickle me – they’d also pass muster in The New Yorker if the magazine carried a cars column.  Kitman has a sense of humor, an automotive worldview, and is dotes on cars long past their prime.  My kind of pundit.  And a bit of a grump