Many people remember the scene in the movie This is Spinal Tap where the character played by Christopher Guest, Nigel is explaining to Rob Reiner that his amplifiers have the ability to be louder than any other amplifier, showing him that they go to “11” on the dial instead of the usual ten.  Rob Reiner asks why they don’t just adjust each notch on the dial so each is just a little louder and have it just go to ten like everyone else, and Nigel looks at him as if he’s a complete idiot (a moment of thick irony) and reminds him “but these go to eleven.”

So when I recently saw this blog entry “25 logos with hidden messages” out at graphicdesignblog.org, I saw the FedEx logo that I often talk about with the hidden arrow, and I also saw the new logo for the Big Ten college sports conference I couldn’t help but laugh a little.  And I expect Nigel would also crack a grin.

I am a medium sports fan, so I was aware that Penn State was added to the Big Ten conference making a conference of eleven, and I remembered thinking it would just become the big 11, no big deal.

Not so much according to this blog posting.  Evidently they felt there was so much brand equity in Big Ten they couldn’t change to Big Eleven (I actually think it would be written Big11 if they were to follow Strunk and White).

So their idea of a solution was to put the number 11 in the middle of the logo, almost like columns holding up the “T” in ten. Umm.  Really? Wow.  That’s “truth is stranger than fiction” funny.

Luckily, Penn State is a big program, so I am sure there was no debate about fractions, like a Big Ten and a Half, but to have eleven schools in a group that is honestly all about the schools, I think it sends a pretty bad message all around about the intelligence of the conference.  I vote they rethink the name and have it be Big11.  Otherwise it’s the conference of 11 schools known as the Bit Ten, and that’s just not thinking.

Maybe we should ask Nigel what he thinks.

-Ric

This morning I was reading my trusty New York Times and I came across a full page ad for the Jay Leno Show.  Hoping to post an image of the ad in this post, try finding an ad like that in an internet search . . . Anyway, right in the middle of the page it reads  “DVR-PROOF programming year-round” and immediately started wondering where NBC is going with this.  First of all, it’s an ad aimed at advertisers, and if that weren’t obvious from that line, the next line “Live ads in Leno generate 152% higher brand recall than similar branded content in primetime,” well that removes any lingering doubt.  Second, and more importantly, the DVR-PROOF label is an obvious reaction to the popularity of TIVO and other Digital Video Recording devices that are in many ways the evolution of the VCR.

I have seen a number of articles about how the success of the DVR means more people are able to fast forward through ads, and the advertisers are not only not getting the “impressions” they are paying for and that makes it hard to get to their customers.

So it’s a clear case of needing to rethink “how” to connect with the customer.

Some marketers have resorted to integrating their products into the programs, where the stars are using the products, and that seems pretty smart to me.  Recently the American Idol program had the remaining contestants on the show do a spot for Ford that aired on the show, and that seemed like a good idea, but not DVR-PROOF.  I am a little surprised some haven’t experimented with ads that work in both fast forward and regular speed – you could have a large stationary picture of the product (like a Pepsi billboard) in the background so when the person fast forwards, the person still gets the impression, and there are probably even more clever ways than that.  I think that would be clever and effective.

But DVR-PROOF sounds like NBC is trying to keep TV in the 20th century and we have seen a number of efforts like that in the past (like forcing YouTube to remove their content) and that is just not smart.  There may be some calculated gamble that the kind of people who will watch this new show aren’t really the DVR crowd, but the simple point is that they shouldn’t resist the DVR trend, denying it won’t make it go away.

NBC needs to figure out how to help their advertisers get to their markets in a post DVR world.

That’s what I think.

-Ric

Abraham Lincoln is quoted with saying “I would have written a shorter note if I had time.”  Twitter is in some ways forcing that shortening habit.

Having recently, reluctantly, joined the ranks of Twitter, and only very recently begun to wrap my brain around this phenomenon, I have to wonder if Twitter, and to a lesser effect Facebook are going to transform a major “how” we do something in the workplace.  E-mail.  And while I am still no fan of Twitter, my guess is that this Twitter effect is a mostly positive one.

I distinctly remember long conversational e-mail discussions ten or more years ago.  From time to time I still see a long e-mail, but even then it is broken up with bullets and indentations making it look more like a PowerPoint slide than a letter.

Twitter only allows you to type 140 characters, and while most people also put a link to a longer blog entry (or mad or something) so they can give you at least an entire thought, and Facebook also has some limitations on characters in some of their message formats, I think the “good” change is that it forces people to condense their message into a small space. To think before you just spew text into an e-mail.

It has to be enough of a hook to at least get people to click on the link.   Forcing people to boil their idea down into 140 characters is a good skill to build and I honestly think it will end up making e-mail communication more efficient (though Emily Post would barf on the spot if she witnessed our modern day e-etiquette).

That’s what I think.  Now I am off to host a birthday party for an eight year-old boy on a BEAUTIFUL sunny day in Seattle.

-Ric

P.S. Yes, I was tempted to confine this blog post to 140 characters, but like Abe I didn’t have time.

The other day I was talking with my friend Heidi and she declared “flat is the new hockey stick!” talking about how many companies will be delighted to have the same profit they had last year, compared with just a year ago when we all still talked about hockey stick (angled) growth.  I thought that was a pretty smart observation.

So yesterday when Wal-Mart Stores  announced yesterday that for the first quarter ended April 30, it had a profit of $3.02 billion, or 77 cents a share, compared with $3.02 billion, or 76 cents a share for the period a year ago, it dawned on me that Heidi isn’t just smart, she’s wicked smart. Exactly the same profit yet it exceeded Wall Street expectations.

Wal-Mart Stores, the company that had so many consecutive quarters of consecutive growth they practically had to build a longer measuring stick, and today people are happy with flat?

I think this is just the beginning and  a lot of companies will be nothing short of delighted with flat in this economy.

As it turns out I think this is really bad news for Wal-Mart.

Why? Because even though they are a low cost store, they are too broad to shoulder this flattened economy.  When you do an internet search on them in my home of Seattle alone (not exactly the sweet spot of Wal-Mart by any means), the location pins practically fill up the map.  In the chapters about ING DIRECT and Eclipse Aviation in the book Rethink I talk about this idea, and for so many companies, right now is the time to focus on specific customer segments and know who they are and what they value (price, quality, trust, speed, etc.) and don’t value and really knock the cover off the ball (or slap that puck in this case) in delivering that to them.

Part of that requires turning your back on some customers, and Wal-Mart is too big to do that, so I think their success is married to the health and wellness of the economy, “in sickness, and in health . . . .”  Not many companies are that big, so I think a lot of you can do this and do it well – but do it now.

Think about it.  Rethink about it.  And if you have some time, pick up a copy of the 1977 movie Slap Shot, the Hanson brothers are still very funny, and it’s a bargain.

-Ric

I am not even sure I can pronounce his name correctly, and I haven’t ever met him, but J. Ronald Terwilliger  just did something off-the-charts great, and not only is it great, the timing is perfect, and, AND it’s the perfect way for someone to give to a charity.

First of all, he just gave $100 million to Habitat for Humanity, which they say will translate into 60,000 homes.  That helps so many people at such a key time, it’s just incredible.  I am all for giving to the arts and other causes, but at a time when things are so bad, WOW WOW WOW, what an amazing gift.   I hope to some day shake the hand of Mr. J. Ronald Terwilliger.

So why is it the perfect way to give to a charity?  Because it’s so perfectly aligned with his brand, or more accurately the brand of the company that enabled him to amass his fortune, the Trammel Crowe Residential Company, a developer.  In the book Rethink I talk a lot about business value, and brand, and this is such an ideal way to give to charity that makes so much sense for someone from the world of housing to essentially give houses to 60,000 families who cannot afford them.

Years ago I was talking with my friend George who runs a branding and marketing company called Modo-Group and he talked about the relationship between brand and charity, he used to work for The Coca-Cola Company, and he said that Coke spends a lot of their charitable dollars on water purification in third world countries and it makes sense because water is such a core part of their brand (he informed me that Coke uses more water than any other organization in the world – which makes sense if you think about it).  He added that if Coke were to give money to something like the arts, like The Kennedy Center, even though it’s a great cause, for them that would be a really transparent way to just get some great seats at events for some executives and that would irk some people and not make any sense for their brand.

So today is official J. Ronald Terwilliger day.  I encourage you all to clap out loud for him, as I did this morning while I read the paper.

-Ric

At home, at work, in the paper, and on TV, there are conversations almost every day about the current climate.  I have heard some really smart people with some very insightful thoughts (often with language that might make even Rahm Emmanuel blush) about why we are where we are and who is to blame as well as some ideas about the path to the solution, “how” we get there, since “what” we want seems reasonably clear to most.

“Stupidity” is a word that has  been absent in the conversations about how we got here, “hard work” as well.  Whether people are talking about auto manufacturers or banks, or insurance companies, not once have I heard anyone say the decision-makers were stupid.  Most frequently, I hear people talk about greed (banks and insurance), and neglect (autos).

But greed and neglect are not new by any measure.   So why now, in the early stages of the 21st century have they brought the global economy to its knees?

My answer lies in the shadows of this obituary from last year.  William S. Stevens wrote a legal note in a law journal that changed the way people talked about laws, and he compared laws to the baseball infield fly rule.  The article describes this far better than I will, but basically, in many situations if a player catches a ball hit by a player on the opposing side, that player is out, but in some cases in the infield, it is easier to get more outs if the player drops the ball and then throws multiple base runners out. Even though it’s clever, it was considered unsportsmanlike, so the infield fly rule was added and it says that in the infield, the player hitting the ball is out whether the ball is caught or dropped, and that helped eliminate the temptation for some to be unsportsmanlike.   Stevens observed that each time a new law is added, it is often to close the door to the temptation for uncivilized behavior in much the same way the infield fly rule prevented unsportsmanlike behavior.

What does an obituary about baseball rules have to do with the recession?  A lot.  The greed and neglect that have been around forever have now run amok because these people have figured out that they can get away with it, even the Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC, and congressional oversight.  And when I hear about seven and eight figure bonuses getting handed to some of the greedy and neglectful executives of companies, that’s simply a reward for bad behavior.  So all of the spreadsheets that are being used to calculate bank debt risk start to sound like “all the kings horses and all the kings men” but we are obviously talking about a lot more than a broken egg.

So what to do?  There need to be strict rules about board accountability with clear enforcement provisions.  There have to be stricter laws about lending and passing more transparent credit worthiness ratings.  Banks have to disclose to shareholders and regulators what their risks are (like debt risk) in terms that are clear and simple (after all, it is really just math in the case of the banks).  The bigger piece is that with the auto makers and a lot of the banks and the insurance companies, I really think we need to be more open to the idea of letting them fail and go into bankruptcy, because really, if no one loses, then no one wins, and that’s not going to last.

So to get to the outcome of restored trust in banks and corporate America as whole, we need to rethink how we get there, and I talk about this in the book in a chapter about following the rules, but this is deeper than that – the behavior is now beyond the reach of the rules, and we need more rules.  Yes I know this post oversimplifies some things, but I am tired of people not dealing with the underlying greed and neglect that got us here.  So let’s get some more infield fly rules, and let’s play ball!

-Ric