Heart and Soul: Two car manufacturers’ touchdowns at the Superbowl.

So much for every car commercial looking and sounding the same. Well, done, VW and Chrysler.

And thanks for treating your audience with respect rather than trying to merely seduce us with eye candy. I hope other advertisers will follow your lead.

Advertisements

Read Full Post »

Artifacts of Influence: grassroots movements, familiar strangers and the power of the social media daisy chain.

On Grassroots and cracking the notion that power influencers drive product acceptance in the market:

“Why have Google and Apple done so well in the last [few] years? Because the grassroots love them. That’s the power root of the industry. Ideas here don’t come from the big influencers and move down. No, they start on the street and move up. Anyone miss how Google got big? Not by throwing a press conference.”

– Robert Scoble, via Johnnie Moore’s blog back in 2006.

Before I side with Robert, let me throw in a little word of caution: I know that the conversation has been geared in this direction for a few years now, but looking at cause : effect / influencer : influencee dynamics as a top-down model only seem fairly limited in scope. “Influencers” (whether they are “key” or “big” or “power” influencers) aren’t just at the top of their respective subcultural family trees. Sometimes, the masses themselves can be the power influencer.

Here is an example: When it comes to bottom-up and lateral impact, the street has always been a source of influence on culture, fashion, musical tastes, language, and political change. Urban fashions didn’t start on a runway in New York or Milan. “Gangsta” culture wasn’t designed in a Soho creative studio and then packaged and sold to rap superstars. It came from the street and was then commercialized. This same bottom-up and lateral mechanisms are true of punk rock, skateboarding, surfing, and just about every “culture” or “subculture” you can throw a cat at, from triathlon, to amateur photography to the country-club lifestyle. Influence starts at the bottom, not at the top. Top-down influence comes later and plays a very different role (touching on validation and scale).

Appealing to a grassroots base – which essentially consists of recruiting your 1-percenters to drive your campaign and influence their own lateral peer networks has always been smart. Politicians know this, which is why they are essential to the success of every campaign. Grassroots programs are militant in nature. They are infectious and viral in the true sense of the term. They feed on momentum and quasi-exponential growth. They may very-well be the most virulent form of Word-of-Mouth movements you will ever encounter. Why? Because they drive more than awareness and preference: They drive action.

If you are reading this and aren’t so sure you agree, that’s okay, but consider this: Every revolution in our history was the result of a grassroots movement. Every single one. Look at the American Revolution. The French Revolution. The fall of the Berlin Wall. More recently, thanks to the availability of cell phones, text messaging and the organic nature of social networks, the 2001 revolution in the Phillippines and the 2002 presidential elections in South Korea. Grassroots movements hold a staying power inversely proportional to the short-lived attention most marketing campaigns spend so much on.

For many of us, true influencers aren’t just celebrities or the upper stratum of a subculture. The way we become participants in the growth of a trend or the success of a product isn’t necessarily tied to product placement on The Apprentice, CSI, or whatever blockbuster is crushing the box office. We don’t necessarily buy clothes from D&G or Ray-Bans because Taylor Swift or Brad Pitt are seen sporting them in Cannes. Influencers are also our neighbors, our best friends, our co-workers, our parents, our kids. More than ever, they can also be familiar strangers on social networks, or a mob of people demanding the same thing you always wish you had the power to ask for yourself. Most of the time, these folks, NOT celebrities and so-called “thought leaders” are the true influencers in our lives.

It is human nature to seek safety, familiarity and validation both in the people we know and in numbers – which is why, from a corporate standpoint, large crowds (including virtual crowds) also tend to hold more power than a handful of so-called “influencers” conveniently picked by a marketing firm. Yet this insight into social networks (and social media on the whole) is one that a surprisingly large number of marketing, advertising and PR professionals trying to apply their trade to the social web still seem oblivious to.

We could go off on a major tangent here, but for now, consider the impact that this argument might have on the importance we attach to say… Klout, and to the “influencer” religion some marketing professionals are attempting to force into the social media discussion. (See left-hand model in the image below.) The problem, before you misunderstand me, isn’t Klout or its algorithms. I like Klout, actually. The problem lies in the worth we assign to the notion of top-down “influencers” – these magical people who, we are told, can get thousands, even millions of people to click a button, buy a pair of shoes, or go see a movie through a mere act of will… or a tweet.

Does this mean that cultural icons like Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Fry, Kanye West and even Glenn Beck are not influencers? No, it doesn’t. Top-down influencers are real. They exist. Kim Kardashian, Leighton Meester and Justin Bieber help sell whatever they get photographed wearing. Drew Barrymore and Queen Latifah sell makeup. Leonardo DiCaprio sells Tag Heuer watches. Top-down influence is scientifically documented and relevant in the world of Big Advertising and Madison Avenue. But this type of influence, racing into 2011, is now a) increasingly limited and narrow in scope, and b) not immediately relevant when applied to complex, real-time, laterally-driven social networks.

If there is a lesson here, it is this: When combining your traditional marketing activities (regardless of the medium – print, TV, radio, web, mobile, POP, billboards, etc.) with your activity in the social space, look beyond traditional marketing dogma. Think beyond top-down influence. Consider the impact of lateral networks and organic word-of-mouth. Blend vertical and lateral forces.

Who really influences you to be a Mac or a PC? Who influences you to crave a Starbucks latte in the middle of the afternoon? Who makes you decide whether to shoot Canon or Nikon SLRs? Who influences your decision to choose one restaurant over another? “I want to be like Mike” still works, but the media landscape has changed considerably in the last few years – as it will continue to change still. Influence in the mass media space no longer fits the traditional marketing and advertising model, because mass media itself is no longer a top-down model.

Practical Advice: Next time you find yourself listening to a digital strategy that approaches a “social media marketing” campaign with a predominantly top-down “influence” model, stop, regroup, and consider a more mature perspective on influence – one that involves a carefully balanced combination of top-down, botton-up and lateral mechanisms.

Cheers,

Olivier.

 

 

 

 

Pre-order Social Media ROI:  Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech/Pearson) on Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com, or recommend it to someone today.

 

Read Full Post »

How Marketing is choking the life out of social communications and social media – Part 1

Back in the day, social activity was a handshake on the sales floor. It was a beer after work. It was a cup of coffee or afternoon tea. It was a tennis match or a game of chess. It was lunch. It was a conversation at a party. It was a friendly hello on the street. None of it required a monthly subscription, a marketing firm, a guru or a content strategy.

Forget the “media” for a second and focus on the “social.” Focus on the word social.

What makes social media different from TV, radio, print and traditional web? More to the point, what is it that you as a company could do with social media that you cannot do via mass media?

Think. Think back to the way that friendly store manager made you feel about shopping there. Think about the impact that being friends with your auto mechanic has on your loyalty to his repair shop, about the degree to which positive experience, familiarity and trust impact your purchasing decisions every day. Would you rather do business with strangers or people you know? Would you rather do business with people who genuinely care about you and look after your every need, or companies whose employees couldn’t care less if you are happy with them? Think about this carefully. Do you look at Facebook and Twitter as merely new marketing channels, or as rich ecosystems where you and your customers can interact in ways that enhance your value to them and in turn helps you develop them into outspokenly loyal customers?

The companies that use social media correctly, the ones who see ROI from their activity there have already figured out that the social nature of channels like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare and others makes them radically different from traditional channels. Are they using social media channels for marketing purposes? Sure. But is that all they are doing? Not on your life. Check out the breadth of activity being managed by Starbucks, Ford and Best Buy, for starters. Marketing is only a small piece of the pie when it comes to the type of activities these companies engage in when it comes to the social web, and for good reason: Social media is not marketing media.

There are two things I want you to think about before we tackle Part 2 of this post. The first is this: If a company focuses its social media efforts on marketing, what is it not focusing on? Answer: Online reputation management, customer service, consumer relations, user groups, technical support, and consumer engagement, for starters. Yes, you read right. I used a social media buzzword. En-ga-ge-ment. Except that when I say it, I know what it means. I am not talking about marketing posing as engagement. I am not talking about content, contests and entertainment. I am talking about real engagement. The kind that feels like a handshake, like a conversation over coffee, the kind that develops trust, preference and loyalty in consumers. The real brick and mortar that companies can build their bridges with rather than the house of cards they are overpaying agencies to piece together for them. Social should feel like a handshake, not like a marketing message. Not like “content.” Not like a sales pitch.

The second thing I want you to think about is this: There are three clear phases in the customer life-cycle. They are acquisition, development, and retention. You’re a business and you want social media to work for you? Great. Your social media activity has to focus on all three phases, not just the first.

We know that your agency can get you lots of “likes,” follows and views. And as a company, you have paid the price for every single one. Now what? Did your digital agency, your marketing partner, your superstar consultant also factor in the rest of it? First question: What are you acquiring for all that social media spend – new followers or new transacting customers? Second question: Are you using your social media presence to develop these new customers into regular customers? Third question: Are you using your social media presence to further develop these customers into loyal customers, even ambassadors for your brand and products?

If all you are doing with your social media potential is handing it over to a marketing department, a digital department or an outside agency, you are not. All you are doing is spending money on reach and follower acquisition. Think beyond acquisition. What are you doing through social media to develop customers, to increase their frequency of purchases, the yield of their transactions? What are you doing to develop them from potential customer to new customer, from new customer to satisfied customer, from satisfied customer to repeat customer, from repeat customer to loyal customer, and from loyal customer to evangelist?

Move beyond the marketing/acquisition mentality or you will never get anywhere in this space. Later this week, in Part 2, we will dive a little deeper into what I mean by that.

To learn more about how to properly build social media programs that involve but are not limited to marketing:

Available now for pre-order on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com

 

 

Read Full Post »

Care or die: Because customer loyalty isn’t really rocket science.

If you don’t care about your customers (or as Gary Vaynerchuck would say, “if you don’t give a f*ck about your customers,”) you are wasting your time with social media.

Your customers aren’t wallet with legs. They are people, and here is the thing about people: People prefer to do business with people, companies and brands they like; people, companies and brands that make them feel good; people, companies and brands they trust; people, companies and brands they feel a connection with.

I don’t care how good your content is and how many people visit your site. Keep telling me how many fans and followers you have, and how many unique visitors your website gets. That all sounds great, and yeah, it looks pretty swell on paper. But the reality of your situation is this: If you don’t care about your customers, they will sense it, and they will return your apathy.

Do you know how to inspire loyalty in your customers? I’ll tell you: It isn’t by training them to expect 20% off or by sending them coupons in the mail. It isn’t by sending them rebate checks or making every tenth drink free. You inspire loyalty in your customers by demonstrating your loyalty towards your customers. That’s right: You have to give before you can receive. You, as a company, have to set the tone, and the only way to do that is to give a shit.

I walked into a Staples yesterday to buy a cartridge of ink toner. The plan: $22. I also walked out with an i-Omega portable hard drive and a few 4GB thumb drives for Red Chair. The outcome: $100+. You know how that happened? Simple: From the moment I walked into that store, its employees greeted me with smiles and treated me like they would a friend. They didn’t try to sell me anything, they didn’t push me towards any upgrades, and none of it felt contrived. They just seemed to care. Not only did the store increase its yield in this instance (and not by a mere 10-20%), it also ensured that next time I need something for the office, I will shop there instead of online or across the street at one of their competitors’ locations.

Staples loyalty verdict: Very high.

Compare that with my latest experiences at Bloom (a grocery store), where none of the people who work there even bother to make eye contact with me.

Bloom loyalty verdict: You must be joking.

Social media is not just another set of marketing channels for companies to push content and messaging. Sure, you can use it as a marketing channel (in moderation) but the power of the space is to scale those 1-1 interactions customers have around brands and the experiences they foster. Companies whose leaders and employees care tend to shine in Social Media. Companies whose employees and managers don’t care, even when they produce decent content, go nowhere in the space.

As a quick illustration of of what I mean, let us turn to Twitter: The marketing world’s 140-character “what the hell are we supposed to do with this channel” puzzle du jour.

I am going to show you two examples now. One of a beverage company that cares about its customers, and one of a beverage company that cares mostly about itself… and even talks to itself, though mostly to pat itself on the back for being like, awesome. You decide which is which.

Incidentally, it might be worth noting that one of these two companies has kind of struggled to acquire its 46,000 followers on Twitter over the last 2 years or so. The other has well over a million. Guess which is which. (Hint as to why: One focuses on customers and the other focuses on itself.)

Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, nothing says “I don’t really give a shit about you but heck, maybe you’ll buy something anyway” like an auto DM on Twitter. Don’t know what I am talking about? Here are some examples:

My favorite thing about those automated “hi, I really care” little nuggets of gold is the fact that so many of them get cut short: Look at the @Retail_City and @jobpsalms auto-DMs above. Okay, Job. I’ll “try to keep it REAL” if you d…

Way to make a good first impression in a SOCIAL medium. As executives, employees, brand ambassadors and representatives of your respective companies, do you walk around with a recording of yourself at parties and industry events? When someone shakes your hand, do you step aside so an assistant can hand them your card and deliver a 140-character sales pitch? When a client or customer walks up to you and says “hey, I’m glad I ran into you. I have a problem with the thing I bought from you,” do you respond by handing them a brochure and walking away? Of course not. So why is it that so many companies think that this is acceptable behavior in the social media space?

Give a shit. It really isn’t that complicated. If you just do that, if you start there, everything will fall into place. If you don’t give a shit, and you show it by monologuing with “content” and selling all day, guess what: You’ve already lost to the guy in your industry who takes the time to actually shake hands, and makes time for real dialog. It was always this way, but the integration of social media into the business world has amplified the effect: If as a company, you demonstrate daily that don’t give a shit about your customers, they will return the favor by not giving a shit about you. The implications are simple: The more customers care about you, the more likely it is that you will have a good quarter. The less they care about you, the more likely it is that you will have a lousy quarter. Some things, you can’t automate or outsource. Your relationship with customers is one of them. That applies to the web as well as the “in store” experience.

So here’s a thought: Instead of spending so much time working on your “content strategy,” your “digital strategy” and your “social media strategy,” why don’t you focus on your “we give a shit” strategy? Try that for a month and see what happens. Trust me, the “content,” “digital” and “social media” will take care of themselves. You will barely be able to keep up – and that will be a good thing.

Read Full Post »

Social Media and the Middle East: How technology, culture and shifting demographics will change the game in the next decade.

What if 50% of your market were under the age of 25, extremely mobile, social-media-savvy and brand-conscious?

What if you could turn back the clock a couple of years – knowing what you know now – and go back to the beginning of the social media “revolution,” only with mature tools and stable platforms at your fingertips?

Think about these two hypothetical situations and bring them together. How would you blend Social Media and digital communications into your business model? This is the question being asked by the business community in Dubai and the rest of the GCC – a region of the world finding itself on the cusp of a powerful marketing communications shift over the next couple of years, starting right now.

I shot a little video while I was there, just for you. If the video embed doesn’t work for you, watch it here.

The threat of failure: Companies (and their marketing partners and agencies) using social media merely as marketing channels through which to push traditional messaging, marketing offers and other noisy, low traction tactics. Traditional thinking is the enemy of progress in this instance.

The opportunity for success: Blend Social and Traditional tactics without making the same mistakes that companies in the west already made over the last few years. That is to say: Blend and mix social and traditional but do not confuse the two. Make full use of word-of-mouth (lateral forces) instead of relying on aggressive discounting to earn business. Watch where companies in western markets have succeeded and failed with social media (and why) before jumping into the space and making similar mistakes. (The US, Canada and Europe are outstanding labs for regions just now getting into the space. Don’t guess at it. Study what has been done and learn from it.)

Once again, the difference between success and failure rests on simple decisions being made by companies just like yours: Do we think this problem through both strategically and tactically, or do we just throw money at these new channels and hope for miracles? Some companies will reap the rewards of properly integrating social media into their business models while others will waste their time with poorly thought-through investments in the medium and see very little benefit from it. What is beautiful to me about the region though, is that it is still more or less virgin territory: None of these decisions have been made yet. The market is wide open for success. All I see is opportunity, not just there, but across the Muslim world, which constitutes a hefty chunk of the world’s population/markets. That is pretty energizing for someone with my kind of mindset. Yahoo is making big moves there. Most major European marketing firms and agencies were also well represented in Dubai last week. The momentum is building and for obvious reasons: The middle east is evolving fast, the region’s economies are looking beyond the oil boom (Dubai especially since it produces very little oil), and the population is increasingly young, connected, and modern. The shift is palpable when you are there. It isn’t theory or pie-in-the-sky. It isn’t all rainbows and unicorns (it never is), but the middle east is investing in its future, and its demographic profile is going to cause significant changes in its markets over the next two decades.

Eye-opening trip to Dubai on a lot of levels. Amazing place to visit if you get a chance, fascinating region, and LOTS of opportunities for great work to be done in the social space there over the next few years. Food for thought if you aren’t tied into a mortgage, your passport is giving you that disapproving look, and your suitcases have been begging for a little action.

 

 

Yahoo Middle-East's Ahmed Nassef at the Total Marketing conference

 

Read Full Post »

Why your social media marketing campaigns aren’t working.

Tip: Pushing your marketing campaign through social media channels isn’t “social.” It’s marketing. Nothing has changed.

Your marketing department or agency might be telling you that you have a social media program, but you don’t. You might be paying for “social,” but that isn’t what you are getting for your money. What is really happening is this: You are buying the same digital marketing campaigns you were buying five years ago, except now, they also include Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

You can call it “social” all you want, but it isn’t.

Want to know what else? This:

This (above) is a typical example of what happens in the course of a successful marketing, PR or advertising campaign. Best case scenario: You spend money on the campaign, the campaign generates attention while it is funded, people buy some of your stuff, and when the money runs out, things go back to where they were before the campaign started.

Now let me show you what happens when you incorporate social media into the same campaign mechanism. Ready? This is going to blow your mind. Here we go. A marketing campaign using social media:

Pretty wild, huh?

If you didn’t notice the subtle sleight of hand, let me illustrate the concept slightly differently. Ready?

Your campaign without social media:

And now the same campaign with social media:

See what happened here? Totally different thing, right? (Thanks to Daniel Agee for the clever visual subterfuge. Inserting a human head onto my body was pretty impressive photoshop mastery.)

So… right. In the end, it is exactly the same thing, just wrapped in a different skin.

If you are using social media channels for “marketing” and mostly for campaigns, no wonder you aren’t getting any concrete results: You are doing the same old stuff that already wasn’t working all that well five years ago, only it has been repackaged to sound hip with the times and include a few more channels. That’s it. The only problem is this: You aren’t doing “social.” You are still basically just creating content, pushing it out to potential customers, and hoping they will bite.

And that is why you are getting nowhere in social media, no matter how many people click “follow” or “like” on your stuff.

By the way, if you are gauging success by measuring retweets, followers, shares and “likes,” I guess you also gauge success by measuring website hits, right? Same deal. Same ridiculous, empty, diversionary metrics that mean absolutely nothing. People clicking on buttons on the internet is about as valuable to your business as counting how many cars drive by your office every day.

Want to see the difference between a company that takes its social media program seriously versus one that only uses social media for marketing campaigns?

Here is what a business that uses social media for marketing looks like:

Each one of those arrows represents a campaign. If you think of campaigns as microcycles of spend, attention and impact, the above diagram shows six subsequent campaigns and their long term impact on business growth. The orange line above the campaign microcycles illustrates temporary jumps in sales or business growth, which tend to wane between campaigns but remain relatively flat over time. This line shows anywhere between 0% to 10% annual growth.

Now let’s look at companies using social media more holistically:

Note that in the above example, social media is used for more than just campaigns. The business is using social media not only to acquire new customers or trigger a spike in business, but to retain customers as well, to develop them into active community participants, loyal repeat customers, thereby increasing their buy rate, transaction yield, and their reach into lateral networks through organic word of mouth. In this model, campaigns are merely marketing microcycles of attention in a larger growth strategy focusing on building customer relationships.

Another way to look at the process is this:

If you aren’t familiar with plateaus, the stair-like portion of the diagram illustrates what role the campaigns play in a model where social media is integrated into a business in every department: customer service, technical support, community management, product management, PR, HR, R&D, etc.

In this model, campaigns drive attention and participation, just as before. Social media activity, through community management, online customer service, customer engagement and other truly social modes of social communications help maintain (even stabilize) customer participation not only in dialog but in transactions as well. Social communications become the answer to the “now what?” question asked in the first two diagrams of this post: Use each campaign to get you to the next level of attention and activity, and instead of letting it all die back down once the campaign is over, maintain it through engagement. Once things settle at that level, get to the next plateau using another campaign.

This really isn’t rocket science.

If you want results, think. Use your head. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over again hoping for different results each time. Calling “marketing” by another name or adding “social media” to it won’t change what it is: Marketing. Just because your ad agency’s digital department has rebranded itself a “social media” department doesn’t mean anything has changed or improved. Same products and services, different skin. That’s it.

If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Just keep pushing marketing content out through social media channels and see where that gets you. As long as those budget dollars keep coming, digital marketing companies will eagerly sell you whatever services you want.

Don’t be a sucker. Focus on results, not buzzwords and BS.

PS: Some of this stuff is covered in my upcoming book – “Social Media R.O.I.” available for pre-order on Amazon:

Read Full Post »

Political logos: The origin of the Republicans’ elephant and the Democrats’ ass.

I can tell from the ridiculous negative campaign ads and 3rd grade rhetoric that it’s election time again. Funny how the very process that helps define this great nation turns us into evil little farts every November. It never fails: The finger pointing, the name calling, the innuendos, the cheap shots. So and so didn’t pay their taxes on time. So and so lets rapists go free. So and so secretly hates Americans. So and so is corrupt. (Wow, really? A corrupt politician? No way! Where?!?!?!?!?)

As a political science major turned brand management guy, this time of year always makes me a little sad. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent in mass media campaigns to put some of the dumbest, meanest, most unremarkable shills on the planet in positions of relative power. This year’s selection is particularly painful to fathom, especially the bizarre band of quasi-illiterate anti-federalist nominees now refusing to “grant” interviews or take questions from the free press. My beef here isn’t political. I am neither Republican nor Democrat (or perhaps I manage to be both, depending on the issue or the context). But man, some of these people make me shake my head in disbelief. Strange that in a Republic that so values freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, so many of these “candidates” should refuse to work with the press, answer simple questions in an open forum, or address some of the batty statements they have made over the last six months leading to these elections. How did we get to a point where some of the dumbest, least educated, most openly racist people on the planet – people who seem to have no understanding of the very Constitution they seem so bent on “protecting” from the clutches of actual constitutional scholars, find themselves in a position to help decide whether the United States catches up to the rest of the world and gets back in the race, or veers off course to become the unfortunate fulfillment of a Margaret Atwood novel.

At any rate, while every other candidate is busy dragging his or her opponent in the mud and selling mindless buzzwords to their cheering fans, I thought I would inject a little culture and history into the whole process by sharing with you the origin of the Republican and Democratic parties’ emblems: The elephant and the ass (respectively). It won’t solve any of our economic and policy woes, but it might breathe a few little IQ points back into the overall political narrative. Maybe. (One can hope.) From From William Safire’s New Language of Politics, Revised edition, Collier Books, New York, 1972, via freerepublic.com:

 

The symbol of the party (the elephant) was born in the imagination of cartoonist Thomas Nast and first appeared in Harper’s Weekly on November 7, 1874

An 1860 issue of Railsplitter and an 1872 cartoon in Harper’s Weekly connected elephants with Republicans, but it was Nast who provided the party with its symbol.

Oddly, two unconnected events led to the birth of the Republican Elephant. James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald raised the cry of “Caesarism” in connection with the possibility of a thirdterm try for President Ulysses S. Grant. The issue was taken up by the Democratic politicians in 1874, halfway through Grant’s second term and just before the midterm elections, and helped disaffect Republican voters.

While the illustrated journals were depicting Grant wearing a crown, the Herald involved itself in another circulation-builder in an entirely different, nonpolitical area. This was the Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874, a delightful hoax perpetrated by the Herald. They ran a story, totally untrue, that the animals in the zoo had broken loose and were roaming the wilds of New York’s Central Park in search of prey.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast took the two examples of the Herald enterprise and put them together in a cartoon for Harper’s Weekly. He showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion’s skin (the scary prospect of Caesarism) frightening away the animals in the forest (Central Park). The caption quoted a familiar fable: “An ass having put on a lion’s skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings.”

One of the foolish animals in the cartoon was an elephant, representing the Republican vote – not the party, the Republican vote – which was being frightened away from its normal ties by the phony scare of Caesarism. In a subsequent cartoon on November 21, 1874, after the election in which the Republicans did badly, Nast followed up the idea by showing the elephant in a trap, illustrating the way the Republican vote had been decoyed from its normal allegiance. Other cartoonists picked up the symbol, and the elephant soon ceased to be the vote and became the party itself: the jackass, now referred to as the donkey, made a natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democratic party that had frightened the elephant.

Now you know.

Wondering if maybe political logos like the ass and the elephant are still the best emblems to represent political parties that neither look nor sound like they did back in 1874, I asked a few friends to suggest new emblems for the parties, and this is what they came up with:

Star Trek and beer. I may have to broaden my focus group just a tad.

Read Full Post »