Campbell on Branding and Innovation

I Love Gadgets, Widgets and Apps

I caught the tail end of a Harley-Davidson Christmas spot the other day. I didn't get to see the whole thing and, as anyone in advertising knows, once you try to catch a spot you'll never see it and the ones you don't want to see keep showing up. So I was super happy to come across the spot on the Harley gadget on my iGoogle page. It turns out that it's on the h-d.com site as well but I didn't think to look there, it's easier when it's pushed to me. Here's the gadget with the spot:

I think it's pretty good, fits the brand and I like the pipes being left under the tree. Whaddya think?

Anyway, I was just sent a Harley Naughty List gift on Facebook based on the holiday campaign from a buddy of mine. I also just became a fan of Patagonia, Dr. Pepper and Willie Nelson on Facebook. I know when Seth, Tom or David post something new thanks to my Bloglines acount. I've been to 87 cities in 12 countries thanks to the TripAdvisor "Cities I've Visited" app. I know there's 72 days, 23 hours and 39 minutes until Daytona Bike Week thanks to the Harley Countdown to Daytona Google Gadget and I can find a Starbucks and arrange a meeting at the closest one thanks to the "Meet Me at Starbucks" gadget.

Whether it's RSS feeds from your site or blog, gadgets and apps, an offer via Twitter, or basic opt-in, relevant and respectful e-mail, this is where it's at - permission marketing. Finding fans and letting them participate on their terms. I love it. I'm much more likely to learn about new Patagonia Spring products through my Facebook feed or their catalog (which is the original permission marketing vehicle) than through print or TV. If I have a meeting with someone, how much easier is it to set something up through Starbucks - I now know where one is that works for everyone involved in the meeting and can schedule it. And the cost. The cost! It doesn't reach 600 million Americans (which is impossible since there are only 300 million in the US but that's what reach and frequency from your media team or the pass-along rate from your PR team will claim) but it's impactful, relevant, respectful and cost efficient.

So to Scott B., Debbie G., Katia H. and Sean S., keep the Harley interactive goodness coming. And start sending me more gadget content and more Facebook news feeds. After all, I'm offically a fan. :)

My path to the Institute of Design

Today is the second day of the Fall recruitID, where great companies from all over attend. It’s a fantastic opportunity for students to meet with companies and design consultancies. One question I’ve been asked during interviews is how I ended up at ID. I have been meaning to write on this every since Jamey commented on this blog a few weeks ago.

Jamey wrote:

“Jon - 
David Armano turned me on to your blog. I'm facing the same dilemma it seems you have gone through. I'm considering the my career and agree that design is key to the future of business for innovation and development. I've been exploring MBA versus MDes and will be looking at the MDM program you're involved with. As a fellow Milwaukeean, it looks like Chicago is the location that is leading the way via IIT or Kellogg to achieve that type of education.
I'll be curious to follow your posts and get a better idea of how you reached the decision to go the MDM route and what you feel the future value for you and your career will be.”

So I thought I would share my “journey” to the world of design thinking. Here it goes.

I was working at Cramer-Krasselt as an ad account executive in 2004. At the time, the agency was working on a lot of TV and print and I felt there had to be better ways to engage people than shouting to them through TV spots and cluttered magazines. Media fragmentation was making “mass” media less massive and as you know it’s only getting worse. The end was coming for the Advertising Industrial Complex.

I was working on the WD-40 Company account and we were doing some fantastic work on their core hardware products – WD-40, Lava and 3-IN-One oil. Starting with a clean slate, we went from ideation sessions and concept evaluation to ethnographic research, prototyping through marketing communications program execution. It was incredible! We developed with WD-40 the Smart Straw, solving the number one customer complaint of losing the little red straw, the Lava Pro line and 3-IN-One Professional. There was nothing that got me jazzed like walking through a Lowe’s or Home Depot and seeing a customer putting a product I helped bring to life into their shopping cart.

I came across Seth Godin’s Purple Cow in the Fall of 2004 which helped generate more interest for me. If you haven’t read it, the premise is largely based on the idea that you can’t just yell out marketing messages about a product anymore. You have to build the marketing into the product, make it remarkable from the start.

I got the opportunity to join Harley-Davidson and felt that working on the client side for a while would give me the opportunity to implement some of this thinking since I would be looking at the full business rather than just touching the marketing communications slice of the pie.

I kept reading and talking with people about design and innovation and then in Spring 2006 attended the Wisconsin Innovates conference where Tom Peters was the keynote speaker. During a breakout session I asked Tom, a frequent critic of MBA programs, what his thoughts were on going back to school for an MBA, for design or to keep working. His recommendation was to stay in the workforce and do something remarkable or, if I wanted to go back to school, that something unique like design would be the way to go because you learn to approach problems differently and find solutions in other ways.

That sealed it for me. Here are Tom and I after the breakout session. Kinda cool I got a picture with him. I'm on the left. :)

I had read an article about ID by Bruce Nussbaum in BusinessWeek the year before and started researching schools that taught design with business and only found a couple – ID and Roger Martin’s Rotman School of Management – that really intrigued me.

So it took me a year from talking to Tom Peters to get up the nerve to apply to ID and then take the risk of quitting my job to do something I was passionate about.

And it’s been so super worth it. I’ve been able to interview with companies and design consultancies that get it and have been doing this for years. They understand that all the touchpoints that have been ignored for decades while mass media was the focus are where you create and reinforce brands – product/service development, environments like retail locations, employee dress and signage, interactive, packaging, collateral. All based on insights derived from user-centered research.

So that's my long-winded story, what's yours? Were you always in design? Are you just now getting into it? Are you still in the exploration phase?

Akon and the Essence of Brands

While I’ve always appreciated the power of brands, working for Harley-Davidson brought that to a whole new level for me.

In the book Results-based Leadership a Harley-Davidson executive is quoted as saying, “What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.”

That’s a clever, simple statement but it’s so much more powerful than that. The passion goes beyond tattoos, leather and customized bikes. There is a community around the brand that is incredible as I luckily got to witness at a dozen rallies in the last couple of years. I don’t know of any other product that brings people together like Harley, where an attorney or investment banker can talk bikes with an hourly worker at Home Depot and any differences in class and status and attitude disappear. It’s just two guys talking about what they love, excitedly explaining about new pipes, a custom paint kit, or a great strip of road to ride.

The music I listen to covers a full range and I’ve been listening to Akon tonight while doing some schoolwork. Akon’s hooks are incredible. They grab you right away and get you tapping your foot.

A brand’s essence, the passion people feel about it, is the hook. Car designer Freeman Thomas, who created the Audi TT and the VW Beetle, said, "The Prowler makes you smile. Why? Because it’s focused. It has a plot, a reason for being, a passion."

So in thinking about your brand, ask what the hook is. If a potential customer comes across your brand will she or he start tapping their foot? Is it clear to them what your reason for being is? Are they into it right away? If not, the brand either has no reason for being or it's not (or no longer) being defined in terms they care about. And that can't be resolved with a bunch of ads. You have to dig in there, pull the song apart, rediscover why it was created to begin with, and then lay the track down again. Not easy but it's been done before.

Thoughts on Marc Gobe’s Presentation, Part 1

Marc Gobe’s presentation during lunch today covered the importance of emotional branding using case studies from his consultancy and references from his new book, Brandjam: Humanizing Brands through Emotional Design. Toward the beginning of his presentation, he had a slide that read,

“Emotional branding is about moving from commodity to experience. Brands can create growth and relevance with consumers. Market share to mindshare.”

He provided a few examples of brands that are commodities and brands that have moved that commodity category into experience and emotion. These included Ivory soap vs. Bath & BodyWorks and Folgers vs. Starbucks.

A couple years ago I came across an AdAge article by John Battelle that basically says:

“Don’t fall victim to Old Railroad Disease - you thought you were in the train business while upstarts created new methods of transportation.”

When I read Battelle’s article I spent some time listing what I thought were Old Railroad companies (Marc’s commodity brands) and the disruptors/innovators (Marc’s experiential and emotional brands). The idea that CSX should have been UPS or Union Pacific should have become Delta.

Here is the list I made:

Corner coffee shops / Starbucks
FM radio / Sirius satellite radio
Compact discs / Apple iTunes and iPod
Ringling Bros. / Cirque du Soleil
American Airlines / JetBlue
Macy’s / Target
Hoover / Dyson
Palmolive / Method
GMC Envoy / Toyota Prius
Safeway / Whole Foods
Blockbuster / Netflix
Visa / PayPal
Allstate / Progressive
H&R Block / TurboTax

There are tons more examples. Pretty much anywhere you find large, cumbersome, risk-averse companies (just scan the Fortune 500) you’ll find natural opportunities they missed (Blockbuster and NetFlix), or outright passed on (Hoover and Dyson). What are other examples? Are they thinking they are in the train business or the transportation business? Curious what you think.

Harley Google Gadget

Here's the Harley-Davidson Google Gadget we did for Sturgis with great results. Thanks to Katia Holmes, Sean Scott and the team at Carmichael Lynch we were able to create the first live streaming gadget. Google had to even allocate more bandwidth on the first full day after launch because of the number of downloads. Since Sturgis we started updating it with new content including MY08 bikes and a 105th anniversary video.

It's been well-documented that interruption media can only do so much anymore and the future is looking bleaker by the day. I'm firmly in the camp that permission marketing, including using online tools such as widgets, is how you communicate with (not to) customers and prospects moving forward. This is only going to get more exciting.