I finally watched Moneyball over the weekend. I’m not a big baseball fan but it held my interest, partly because it was based on a true story and partly because the movie really wasn’t about baseball at all. It was about old thinking vs. new thinking, about industry politics vs. the heresy of innovation, about dinosaurs desperate to hang on to a failing model that sustains their livelihood even when that model is clearly broken, ineffective and no longer relevant.
The scenes in which Oakland As’ general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) locks horns with his cadre of coaches and scouts over how to do more with less, about how to break the cycle of mediocrity plaguing their organization, about how to get results again is brilliant, not because of the writing or the acting but because it is spot on target. How do I know this? Because I have been in that meeting hundreds of times. Well, not that particular meeting, but in others exactly like it. And every week that goes by, I find myself sitting in that meeting again and again and again.
In the US, in Europe, in Asia, the same meeting goes on almost daily. The conference table is always basically the same, the fluorescent lighting too. The players, they’re the same as well, everywhere I go. Only the vocabulary changes, the industry lingo, but the meeting, it’s the same and it goes pretty much like this:
Billy Beane: Guys, you’re just talking. Talking, “la-la-la-la”, like this is business as usual. It’s not. Grady Fuson: We’re trying to solve the problem here, Billy. Billy Beane: Not like this you’re not. You’re not even looking at the problem. Grady Fuson: We’re very aware of the problem. I mean… Billy Beane: Okay, good. What’s the problem? Grady Fuson: Look, Billy, we all understand what the problem is. We have to… Billy Beane: Okay, good. What’s the problem? Grady Fuson: The problem is we have to replace three key players in our lineup. Billy Beane: Nope. What’s the problem? Pittaro: Same as it’s ever been. We’ve gotta replace these guys with what we have existing. Billy Beane: Nope. What’s the problem, Barry? Scout Barry: We need 38 home runs, 120 RBIs and 47 doubles to replace. Billy Beane: Ehh! [imitates buzzer]
What we see in this scene is a roomful of insiders with a century and a half of industry experience between them, and yet they haven’t figured out that their model is outdated, that their “experience,” is no longer enough to keep moving forward. They carry on day after day, season after season, doing the same thing over and over again, half-expecting a different result, but then again, maybe not. Worst of all, most of them have no idea what the problems plaguing their organizations actually are. A lot of it is just operational myopia. Some of it is also ego: they couldn’t possibly be wrong. All that experience and intuition, the entire industry’s decades-old model… how could things have changed that much, right?
And yet they are wrong, the model isn’t working anymore, and instead of listening to the guy in the room who sees it and knows how to fix it, they treat him like a punk. When he wants to do something about it, they push back. Hard. In Moneyball, he’s their boss. Imagine when he is just a Director or a VP, or even just an account manager. Imagine how quickly he gets overruled then. I’ve seen amazing people get shut down and pushed out of organizations over this sort of thing. I could give you names and dates. I could make you ill with true stories of stupidity and petty politics, of wasted opportunities and complete operational failures that turned what could have been huge wins for companies that needed them (and customers who demanded them) into case studies in wasted potential. And as tragic as these stories would be, they are no different from the opportunities that will be wasted this week, and the next, and the one after that, always for the same reasons, always because of the exact same thinking and business management dynamics.
I see that scene, that meeting, that discussion being played out almost everywhere I go, especially when it comes to social media and social business: guys sitting around a table, treating social like it is just an extension of the same old traditional digital marketing game they all understand and desperately want to stick to. And so they make strategy decisions based on models that don’t apply at all to the social space, they insist on using measurement schemes that aren’t the least bit relevant to it or the business as a whole, and worst of all, they make hiring decisions that absolutely make no sense at all for the new requirements of social communications. Why? Because even though the game has changed, no one in the room wants to accept that it has. No one in the room wants to adapt. No one in the room wants to look reality in the eye and do what needs to be done to actually win. Talk about it, sure. Use cool new words like earned media and engagement, definitely. But actually change anything and adapt to a new model? Nope. Not happening. The change management piece that comes with social business integration, the piece that is absolutely vital to it actually working, that piece is still DOA.
Here’s another conversation that also goes on “offline” at every company (agency or brand) around the world right now in regards to hiring decisions that touch on social media management. Here it is again, through the filter of Moneyball:
Peter Brand: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. And this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize. Billy Beane: Go on. Peter Brand: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You’re trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who’s worth seven and half million dollars a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is… is… an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy’s got a great glove. He’s a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases. But is he worth the seven and half million dollars a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No. No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. And if I say it to anybody, I’m-I’m ostracized. I’m-I’m-I’m a leper. So that’s why I’m-I’m cagey about this with you. That’s why I… I respect you, Mr. Beane, and if you want full disclosure, I think it’s a good thing that you got Damon off your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.
Every company has a Peter Brand either on staff or sitting in a stack of CVs. Not necessarily in the sense that they are geniuses with statistics but in the sense that they see the forest from the trees, that they see what needs to be done, but every time they open their mouths, they get shot down. Worse, if they open their mouths too much, they’re gone. And if their CV doesn’t have the bullet points and keywords that hiring managers were trained twenty years ago to find relevant, they don’t even get considered for the position.
If I see one more social media leadership position go by default to candidates with “big agency digital experience” or “big brand digital experience,” I am going to throw my pencil at somebody’s head. There is the medieval thinking in action, right there. There’s the primary reason why almost every social media program on the planet is failing to produce results, why three fourths of companies still can’t figure out how to calculate the ROI of their social media programs, why most brands see less than 1% of engagement from their followers and fans after the first touch, why “content is king” is failing, and why increasingly, “social media” strategy and budgets are shifting to ad buys on social networks. That’s right: For all the talk about earned media and engagement and conversations, social media account roles are starting to go to media buyers now. (Here’s some insight into it.) Everyone loves to talk the talk. Almost no company is willing to actually walk the walk. That sound you’re hearing is the banging of traditional marketing hammers pounding nails into social business’ coffin.
You want to know why most big brand social media programs aren’t gaining real traction? Why they don’t work without a constant influx of ad spending? Why nobody sticks around when the “free iPads for likes” promotions are gone? Start there: no one in the room gets it. No one in the room wants to get it. And when someone in the room does get it, he or she doesn’t keep their job for very long. You think most companies are going to hire, promote and support change agents all on their own?
So the real question is this: Do you want to actually score some real wins or do you just want to spend big marketing budgets and play at being a digital big shot?
It’s a real question. In fact, it’s the most important question you might ask yourself all year. Because the answer to that question will determine whether or not you still have a job in two years. No wait… I misspoke. The answer to that question will determine whether or not you have the job you want in two years, and yes, there’s a difference. A big one.
When you find yourself looking for your next gig (and you will eventually,) do you want to just be the guy who was SVP digital at (insert big brand/agency here) or do you want to be the guy who took (insert big brand/agency here)’s theoretical social media and social business programs, and turned them into the new industry standards, into the business model that everyone will be copying and basing theirs on for the next decade? It’s a real question. Which guy do you want to be? The dinosaur or the pioneer? If the answer is the latter, then are you going to have the huevos to go against the grain? To take chances on whom you hire, what kinds of programs you launch, where and how you invest your budgets? Are you willing to stick your neck out and do it right? Or is it more likely that you’ll just play it safe, hoping that the system will just carry you for another decade or two, that the CEO or CMO you will interview with next won’t notice that your job was basically to spend ad dollars and shuffle digital board pieces for the CEO’s monthly show-and-tell meeting?
Who do you want to be? What do you want to build? Do you want to just wear the jersey or do you want to win? Hold that thought. Here’s another key piece of dialogue from the movie, after Billy Beane’s gamble has paid off, after he has started turning some wheels in a big way. He responds to an invitation from John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, who tells him this:
John Henry: I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall. It always gets bloody, always. It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.
And a couple of years later, they did.
So let’s talk about our world again for a minute. Let’s talk about what’s coming, about tipping points, about momentum: Ford not only hired the right guy (Scott Monty) a few years back but gave him the authority to build a solid program there. The result: some serious wins on just about every front, from customer perceptions to purchase intent to customer loyalty and recommendations. Even car design was impacted in 2010 by the importance of social communications in the Ford organization. Edelman Digital seems to be doing something similar (I keep running into some pretty solid folks there, notably Michael Brito and David Armano). Want to see something cool? This is one of the things they’re working on. Starbucks caught an early train with that too. So did Dell. What sucks is that in 2012, virtually no one else has even tried to keep up with them. For all the money being spent and all the “case studies” being pushed around the conference circuit, most companies are still fighting it, still refusing to accept that the game has changed – worse, trying to keep playing with old methods, with old thinking, with old, outdated skills and CV bullet points. But there will come a day when someone will be given the authority to build out this new model, when it will blow everyone out of the water, and when the blindfolds will have to come off. That day is coming. What side of change do you want to be on then?
Old thinking will not score wins here. Old tactics, old hiring, old measurement, they’re all wrong for these new marketing, communications and business models. They just don’t work anymore. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Keep watching your margins erode. Keep watching your digital dollars go to waste. Keep laying people off and outsourcing every last business function you can’t afford to keep in-house anymore. Keep pretending the world is the same today as it was five years ago, and that what you were doing five years ago will still be relevant five years from now. Whatever makes you feel better. Keep doing the same old thing that used to work, back before people carried smart phones and iPads. Keep thinking that the guy you just hired because he spent ten years managing digital for a fast-food brand knows fuck-all about building capacity and traction for a social media program, let alone produce concrete business results for you. Keep coloring the same old boxes with the same old crayons and see how far you’ll get.
_ Okay good. What’s the problem?
We need to fill a VP Digital role.
_ Nope. What’s the problem?
All right… Whatever. We need to fill a VP social media strategy role.
_ Nope. What’s the problem?
We need to hire someone with proven global digital management experience, Billy. Someone with Disney or Nike on their CV. Someone with serious digital campaign experience.
_ Nope. What’s the problem, Barry?
The problem is, we’re not growing our Facebook community fast enough, and our content isn’t seeing the numbers we want. We need a…
_ Nope. [Imitates buzzer]
Get unstuck. Watch Moneyball and let the light bulb go off in your head. Then go find your Peter Brand and hire the shit out of him before someone else does. If you’re lucky, you’ll save both your career and your company in the process.
* * *
Here it is. A whole book on how to make social media work from a business standpoint. ROI is covered, along with a lot of process elements that tie back to it. If your favorite social business “expert” doesn’t seem to get this stuff yet, don’t feel bad about sending them a copy. Knowledge is never a bad gift.
This post is about movies, but it isn’t. Just bear with me.
What movies can teach us about mass market products vs. game-changers.
Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, 2010, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, Pulp Fiction, Boondock Saints, The Machinist, Kill Bill, Fight Club, 300, Eyes Wide Shut, Moon, and now Sucker Punch.
What do these movies have in common? I’ll tell you: People either love them or hate them. Though some of them achieved mainstream status (in some cases years after their initial run at the box office), many failed to find as broad an audience when they first released. This, compared to sure-fire blockbuster movies like Transformers, Spiderman 2, Shrek 3, Terminator 4, or Fast 5 (the fifth installment of the Fast & the Furious franchise) which have come to be the new model of success for Hollywood: Franchises safely bring in the numbers, even if they often turn once original ideas into hollow shells of creeping mediocrity.
The truth though, and the numbers don’t lie, is that “simple” is safe. Franchises work.
Line up the remakes, sequels and mashups. They mean box office gold.
How many Marvel and DC comic book superheroes are headlining movie studio franchises these days? Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Thor, Captain America, The X-Men and Wolverine, Jonah Hex, Ironman, Hulk, Green lantern, Daredevil, The Losers… The list keeps growing. Transformers and G.I. Joe didn’t escape the great 21st century rehash of pop culture childhood icons. Charlie’s Angels, Starsky & Hutch, The A-Team, Mission Impossible, Green Hornet, and scores of other popular “classic” TV series are being given the same red carpet treatment in Hollywood, and for obvious reasons: Familiar titles sell. Ask anyone associated with the Harry Potter universe. Or Shrek. Or Star Wars. Or Toy Story. In fact ask any movie producer today how much easier it is to get your sequel funded, versus getting a yet unproven original idea funded.
The reality of most businesses is that money talks. Return on investment, for better and for worst, usually trumps creative or UX considerations when it comes to funding a project. There is an accepted success model in every industry – something many of us who try to push organizations beyond their comfort zones and break through stagnation refer to as the status-quo. That ROI should be a key factor (and often the central factor) in business funding decisions isn’t the problem. The problem is an often blind belief in “the safe bet.” The accepted model. The brainless PG13 sequel to the blockbuster or the formulaic movie adaptation of the comic book, complete with merchandising deals. This at the expense of relevance and long term survival. (Ergo: Long term profitability.)
Using the movie industry as a platform, we can make the case that neither studios, directors nor actors can be successful if they focus solely on creating game-changing films or solely on contributing to endless tepid franchise vehicles. Success in the film industry (as with every other industry) comes from being able to balance both. Too much of the same thing pigeon-holes you as either a corporate sellout or a fringe indie eccentric. If you are Daniel Craig, you can get away with filming Bond film after Bond film, only if you also regularly work on projects like Layer Cake and Flashbacks of a Fool. If you are Johnny Depp, you can’t build a career on The Libertine, From Hell, and Chocolat without also signing up for Alice in Wonderland and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Steve Jobs could have decided to stick to his franchise: Computers and software. Instead, he gambled on iPod, iPhone and iPad, and it paid off. JJ Abrams could have stuck to television, but he didn’t. The result: Almost cult-like excitement for every new big screen project he produces. (Super 8 comes out soon.) Steven Pressfield, in deciding to follow The Legend of Bagger Vance (a book about golf) with Gates of Fire, a historical epic about Spartans at Thermopylae, went against the grain, against the accepted model of success in the publishing world: He jumped categories. The gamble paid off, but at the time, industry professionals cautioned him against the move – which they saw as… ill advised.
The lesson here is that success isn’t just a question of repetition. Success is a process of opportunity creation through experimentation. Before you can have a franchise, you have to give yourself the chance to either buy or create a basis for that franchise. Buying it is expensive and limiting. Creating it is riskier, but the payoffs are immeasurable.
image courtesy of Dreamworks
Planting the seeds of mainstream success: Investing in success incubators.
There is nothing wrong with mainstream success, whether it is in the world of movies, TV shows, books, music, games, cars, clothes or electronics. Not every movie needs to change our souls or blow our socks off. Even dumb sequels with mildly entertaining jokes have their place, especially given their role in the cycle of profitability – which makes bolder experimental projects possible: Big successes mean big profits, big profits fuel big budgets, and big budgets often allow for experimental projects and products to be funded.
Experimental projects are, to put it simply, talent and technology labs. More to the point, they are success incubators. As such, they don’t usually exist on the same plane as deliberate blockbuster efforts, nor should they be expected to. Let’s not forget that before Shrek became a franchise, it too was an experimental concept. An original idea. A gamble.
Even within the world of commercial success, different types of products can yield wildly different types of results. Movies with niche audiences also have their place, not only as talent incubators but as gateway products for narrow (and deep) market bandwidths more interested in quality and nuance than quantity and noise. Tom Ford’s A Single Man was an outstanding film (especially for a first time director) but it could not be expected to experience the same kind of success (sales volume) as Sex And The City, for example, or even Ironman 2.
Yet judging by the sudden appearance of tightly tailored suits and Michael Caine-like glasses on the red carpet following the release of the movie, it not only impressed its audience but even impacted the way men began to dress and accessorize after seeing it. Compare Colin Firth’s look in the movie with Sam Worthington’s choice of eyewear at the Oscars just a few months later, where Ford’s movie was nominated for several Academy Awards.
image courtesy of The Weinstein Co.
image courtesy of Google
Uncanny, isn’t it? Sometimes, the impact of a movie or product – its value to the company taking a financial risk to create it – transcends the cash register. As a movie producer or a CEO, you sometimes have to see beyond the immediacy of sales. You have to take a step back and not only see the entire field, but make sure you allow yourself to see the bigger field.
Yet the low hanging fruit usually wins: Pitch the next Batman sequel against an completely original script which has no basis in popular literature or existing franchises, and the outcome of box office sales is pretty much a foregone conclusion: The familiar blockbuster franchise will almost always win. Hollywood producers know this. Distribution companies know it too. And so do movie theater operators.
Historically speaking, Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and Chris Nolan come to the table with a much stronger sales pitch than, say, David Fincher, Zack Snyder and even Quentin Tarantino, which is why the former’s movies typically find their way to the most coveted summer release dates, while the latters’ films often see themselves released in the fall, winter and spring rather than just in time for 4th of July weekend. I won’t even get into the difference in same theater screen percentages between a Michael Bay release and a David Fincher release.
Art films and so-called “foreign films” (like The King’s Speech) notwithstanding, there is a world of difference between franchise-driven blockbusters and courageous gambles on “concept” movies that aim to provide a certain portion of the movie-going populace with something more original than the usual fare. Directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Copolla, Stanley Kubrick, and even Luc Besson (back when he still made good movies) have given us cult classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, ET, Jaws, Schindler’s List, Terminator, Avatar, The Fifth Element, Psycho, North By Northwest, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Nikita.
It is worth mentioning that Besson’s Nikita, which inspired an American remake and two separate TV series, still churns out revenue two decades after reinventing a genre on the big screen. The technical aesthetic of Kubrick’s 2001 still influences set design for sci-fi movies to this day, and will probably continue to do so for decades to come. Like most of Spielberg’s work, many of Cameron’s movies were enormous box office hits in spite of the fact that they were not extensions of existing franchises. Tarantino, for his part, has built his entire career on making completely original films… even though each set piece is an homage to not particularly original motifs deeply rooted into our pop culture consciousness. Before these guys became the big names of mainstream cinema, they were revolutionary film makers. Rule breakers. Rebels. They were the wild cards of their respective studios.
image courtesy of Miramax
If mainstream success grows out of cult projects, why does funding rarely fund success incubators?
When Tim Burton Chris Nolan and David Fincher aren’t taking the reins of sure studio bets like Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland, Batman or an Alien sequel, they give us completely original movies like Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Mars Attacks, Memento, The Prestige, Seven, and Fight Club. Copolla, Kubrick, Besson, Hitchcock and Spielberg are still, to this day, some of the most influential movie directors of all time, and some of their most celebrated movies were not necessarily their biggest box office successes. Burton, Nolan, Fincher and Tarantino are among the next batch of directors future generations of movie-makers will spend endless hours studying and emulating. What is important to note is that they are not influential because they have huge box office successes under their belts. That came later. They are influential because they either reinvented genres or created entirely new narratives. Their true contribution to the world of movies isn’t sales numbers. It is originality. They provide for movie audiences the cinematic equivalent of what Apple’s Steve Jobs provides technology enthusiasts and Zappo’s Tony Hsieh provides shoe shopping enthusiasts (and the online shopping model, for that matter). This is where the catalyst of mainstream success lives: Not in scale and breadth first, but rather the exact opposite: In a chronic devotion to core fans, core users, core customers. Focusing on narrow but deep bandwidths is where lasting mass market success truly begins.
The byproduct of truly original ideas translated into a valuable product – like a movie, a gadget or a UI – is a cult following: A core of ardent fans who absolutely love it, sometimes in spite of mainstream scorn. In some cases, that cult following scales (as it has with Apple) and sometimes, it doesn’t. Nevertheless, the power of the cult classic is not something to be underestimated. Out of cults grow communities, then movements, and these can become the building blocks for broad mainstream success further down the road. Before Apple was the biggest technology in the world, it was the proverbial underdog. The David to Microsoft’s Goliath.
Don’t underestimate the importance of funding and fostering talent and success incubators. Pixar, Lucas Film, Imagine Entertaiment, Microsoft, EA Games and Apple get it. There’s a key success lesson in this. Remember what we said earlier about franchises and commercial success: You can either buy into it or create (incubate) it.
Buying into success should not be your first choice.
Most companies, by the way, neither fund nor actively pursue talent and success incubators. Look around. There is a reason why so few companies produce win after win.
image courtesy of 20th Century Fox
The tax for being first is often scorn, criticism and hostility: Pioneers shouldn’t expect a mainstream praise… yet.
When David Fincher’s big screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club first hit theaters, it was destroyed by critics. They tore it to shreds. If you go to RottenTomatoes.com and look at ratings and comments now, you will see a very positive 81% on the tomatometer and a 95% overall approval rate by viewers. Back in 2000, when the movie opened across the US, the picture wasn’t so bright. At the time, Fight Club had one of the lowest tomatometer scores I had seen on the movie review site. People called it mindless and needlessly violent. Most of the reviews looked like this:
“An unhinged mess of a movie, with potentially dangerous ideas handled in a winking, cynical manner.” – Nitrate Online
“David Fincher’s dumb and brutal shock show of a movie floats the winky, idiotic premise that a modern-day onslaught of girly pop-cultural destinations (including but not limited to IKEA, support groups, and the whole Starbucks-Gap-khakis brand-name axis) has resulted in a generation of spongy young men unable to express themselves as fully erect males.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Bloody mess of a guy film loses its battle to have any real meaning.” – Detroit News
“When you see good actors in a project like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering.” – Roger Ebert / At the Movies
You get the idea. It got killed. Was it because Fight Club was a bad movie? Was it because the book it was based on was bad? Neither. And more than a decade later, now that fans have had time to find the film and make it their own, its early mainstream rejection seems ridiculous and outdated. It just wasn’t mainstream enough when it was first released, nor was it intended to be.
The film, like the book, were never meant to appeal to the millions of fans of Friends and Seinfeld looking for a light family-friendly comedy to take their kids to on a Friday night. It aimed for the exact opposite: Fight Club‘s target audience was deep, not broad, just like films like A Single Man, Black Swan, Memento, Pulp Fiction, Watchmen and Edward Scissorhands. Sometimes, movie makers turn to projects they know will appeal only to fans of a genre or style, a narrow bandwidth of potential core fans, at the expense of huge bankrolls and mass appeal. If they didn’t, all we would end up with is derivative “content” packaged as yet another sequel to an offshoot of a popular series remake. When does a copy of a copy of a copy finally lose its appeal? (I am not just talking about movies.) How many Rocky, Rambo, Shrek, Spiderman or Kung-Fu Panda sequels do we really need to put ourselves through before brain cells actually start shriveling up like raisins?
image courtesy of Dreamworks
If originality presents the biggest risk for the cash register, it also presents the only hope for evolution of any medium or industry. Risk aversion is a short-term investment philosophy. Risk aversion favors remakes of Clash of the Titans over the pursuit of technical achievements like Avatar. It favors CSI: and NCIS: (insert random city here) over shows like Arrested Development and American Gothic. It favors gray boxes still running Windows XP behind agrarian firewalls over a fully liberated and mobile workforce equipped with dynamic, collaborative social media ecosystems and iPads.
It isn’t enough to understand that risk aversion supports cultures of stagnation. In order to be able to do something about it, you also have to understand that expecting every project to be a blockbuster success creates and supports cultures of risk aversion.
Organizations and cultures that don’t take the time to not only fund and foster but also reward talent incubators are doomed to fall into vicious cycles of “same as” or “also in” mediocrity.
Remember what we established earlier in the post: Establishing a balance between cult and mainstream is crucial to long term success. Too much focus on one or the other, and the equation fails: Your product either becomes too “indie” to scale and succeed, or too generic, and so it ends up becoming commoditized and largely irrelevant.
In order for organizations to build long term engines of success, they must not only treat talent and success incubation projects with as much respect and interest as they do their mass market wins, they must also reward each based on realistic and appropriate expectations. An Avatar sequel may very well gross $1B before it is all said and done. An indie film about an injured athlete trying to put his life back together most likely won’t. Sliding scales are important when calibrating budgets, expectations and rewards along the broad spectrum of what qualifies as “success.”
image courtesy of Warner Bros.
The danger of judging cult and experimental projects as if they were mass appeal products.
When I first saw trailers for Sack Snyder’s latest CGI opus Sucker Punch, here is what I saw: A cult movie. The imagery and stylized visuals were clearly an homage to specific genres in popular culture, namely Japanese animé, steampunk, dieselpunk, heroic fantasy, comic books and video games. Take a look:
What I didn’t see was a family-friendly summer blockbuster. Twenty seconds into that trailer, you know this isn’t going to be Finding Nemo 2 or National Treasure 3. Sucker Punch wasn’t made for the Dancing With The Stars demo. It is, first and foremost, a visual extravaganza, an overflowing dish of eye candy, which is something Zack Snyder is known for. Ever since 300, his carefully manicured comic book aesthetic has become his trademark. Love them or hate them, Snyder’s films are beautiful to watch. The attention to detail he brings into every set, every costume, ever frame and every cut is impressive in its own right, even if his movies aren’t your cup of tea. Here, Snyder also rewards his fans with an impressive soundtrack featuring covers of “Sweet Dreams (are made of this)”, “Where is my Mind”, “Love is the Drug”, “Asleep” and “Tomorrow Never Knows,” though Bjork’s “Army of Me” and Emiliana Torrini’s “White Rabbit” are beautifully woven into the film.
For the cinematic experience alone, movie-goers in my demo (fans of the steampunk genre, comic book aesthetic, hyperbolic martial arts-inspired action sequences, wonderfully curated soundtracks and Zack Snyder films), the movie struck home. Even if the plot had been weak, the characters cliché, the narrative muddled and the dialog uninspired, Sucker Punch would have still been worth the $9 to a fan of beautifully crafted movie sequences.
There are a few lesson here about the importance of taking the time to occasionally make movies (and products) for fans rather than for general audiences:
1. It is how you build your audience, your reputation, and your core community of fans.
2. It is how you build towards the greater mainstream successes of tomorrow, how you progressively change the cultural landscape, one project at a time. It is how you shape it, mold it, evolve it. It is how you turn fringe into mainstream: By being there first, before something is popular. By taking the hits, the criticism, even the financial loss, knowing that somewhere down the road, having affected the currents of popular culture, the crowds will warm to your new ideas and aesthetics, and come back in droves when they finally get it.
The lesson about shooting for safe mainstream success and broad adoption without doing the core work is that you end up with a generic product. You end up with the kinds of products that satisfy but don’t inspire, like a meal that temporarily feeds your hunger but isn’t filling enough to keep you satiated for hours, or even memorable enough to revisit years later as a noteworthy gastronomic experience.
The truth is that in trying to appeal to everyone, you rarely end up truly appealing to anyone. You become the default choice rather than the inspired or enthusiastic one. The danger of turning this sort of dynamic into policy or standard operating procedure is that you end up creating cultures of average. Cultures of uninteresting. Cultures of differentiation through discounts rather than differentiation through outstanding, game-changing, category-changing original design.
Because of the trailer and reviews by mainstream critics, I went to see Sucker Punch this weekend with low expectations when it came to plot and script. I fully expected the movie to be an excuse for impressive visuals rather than a vehicle for them. As it turns out, I was wrong: Sucker Punch is actually a smart movie. A clever movie, even. One of the rare movies I have seen in recent years that makes extensive and unapologetic use of allegory and metaphor. It is bold not only in its style but in its use of narrative devices, which was a pleasant surprise. To have it compared to Inception (as it has been) is actually a bit insulting. Inception was simply a plot about dreams inside of dreams, which is easy enough to process. Sucker Punch goes further: It is a movie about metaphors inside of metaphors, which asks far more intellectual flexibility from audiences. Yes, in spite of its deceptively cliché animé imagery, Sucker Punch is actually the kind of movie that makes you think. It is in every way a genuine intellectual art film disguised as a formulaic blockbuster vehicle.
Anyone who tells you that Sucker Punch is simply a movie about muddled X-Box-fueled teenage fantasies failed to push through their own misconceptions and biases, and in doing so, completely missed the cleverness of this film. Metaphor doesn’t work well in the US. The average US movie-goer doesn’t want to have to think about what a giant ninja golem represents in the world of a young girl who feels utterly helpless and vulnerable in a desperately hostile world. They just want to know that the giant is bad and that it will lose the battle against the underdog heroine because she has superpowers.
Judging a movie like Sucker Punch with the same grading scale and intellectual lens as one would an equally desaturated and Kung-Fu superhero inspired The Matrix is a lot like judging 2001: A Space Odyssey using the same grading scale and lens as a film like Star Wars. It just doesn’t work.
image courtesy of Warner Bros.
The beauty of movies like Fincher’s Fight Club and Snyder’s Sucker Punch is that everything is a metaphor. Everything means or represents something. From the dilapidated house on Paper Street to Baby Doll’s flawless makeup. Sadly, superimposing genuine intellectual sophistication with deliberately gritty and purposely exploitative visual themes is also the initial undoing of movies like this: Too clever, too artsy, too cerebral often backfires when it comes to mass appeal and sales volumes. Fight Club took years to be understood (or at least accepted) by mainstream audiences. Judging from reviews on rottentomatoes.com (21% on the tomatometer and barely a 56% approval rating) Sucker Punch may be suffering the exact same fate.
“The movie spins out of control, until it collapses in a heap, senseless.” – The New Yorker
“”Sucker Punch” is what happens when a studio gives carte blanche to a filmmaker who has absolutely nothing original or even coherent to say.” – New York Post
“The movie is like an arrested adolescent’s Google search run amok.” – Time Magazine
The same thing happened to Fight Club eleven years ago. And just like Fight Club‘s core audience of fans came to the film’s rescue, fans of Sucker Punch (call them early adopters of this new genre) have already begun pushing back against culturally outpaced critics still struggling to adapt to a creative world heavily influenced by comic books, MTV, anime, video games, and a century of cinematic influences from Akira Kurosawa to Miloš Forman. Mainstream critics, just like mainstream audiences, haven’t yet made the transition from yesterday to tomorrow. Zack Snyder and his fans have.
“To me it is a brilliant film. Yeah perhaps a bit over the top in the stylized world, but that is ZS’s style. […] I found this is a movie that requires multiple times watching to really understand and follow the symbolism that is there. SPOILER ALERT – For example, the little sister has a stuffed rabbit which becomes the mechanized rabbit. The stuffed rabbit could not protect, while the mechanized fantasy rabbit could. These kinds of things are all over in the movie.”
“I loved the film. I loved it for it’s fresh feeling, its visual beauty, it’s crazy story line and most of all, I loved it for being DIFFERENT. I’m amazed at the amount of passion from both sides… Hate or Love. With all the remakes and revamps, I fear people are getting used to the same thing over and over only told in a different way. Sucker Punch is unique, even those that dislike it admit that. Unique? Isn’t that something? Mozart was not appreciated during his life. Orson Wells died thinking the public hated his movies… Everything is relative. I enjoy visionary directors. I enjoyed SUCKER PUNCH. I must point out that Godzilla films were never considered GREAT FILMS, honestly they were kinda inept, yet they had a kind of hidden magic to them. When Baby Doll stands against the giant Dmajin Samurai Warriors, I was reminded of that “Magic”.”
“A film has only as much meaning as the viewer watching it can give it. When my fifteen year old son came home Saturday night after watching the film with his friends all I heard him talk about was how interesting the film mixed the action/adventure genre, with the asylum genre, with the prison genre, and with the pre code backstage musical genre of the early thirties like 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933; he talked to me about how the film’s structure advanced the narrative, setting up the asylum story, that eventually becomes a musical, only that the musical story doesn’t build up to singing and dancing set pieces but to big action set pieces; he told me the action set pieces payed homage to all of the great action genres: the samurai film, the war film, the medieval film, and the run-away vehicle chase films; he told me about all of the homages made to Citizen Kane in the beginning of the film, shots that mimicked Kane’s death in the protagonist’s mother’s death, and a few examples of depth staging being executed; and he discussed how the film’s end paid homage to films like One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Lord of the Rings, how in this film the Sam character is played by Abbie Cornish, and the Frodo character is played Emily Browning, the one who carries the burden that frees them all.
One of my son’s favorite parts was how the movie used creative ways in depicting death visually without all the blood and gore used in other films to maintain the PG-13 rating, like the burst of steam from the German’s gas masks whenever a German was killed. In essence the film is a prison film. My son doesn’t think it is an example of great film making, but he doesn’t deny the significance a film like this has on the landscape of contemporary film making. I think it’s too soon to describe Zak Snyder as an auteur, but he is certainly a much more interesting Hollywood director than Michael Bay, Robert Luketic, or Louis Leterrier. My point is, there’s always more to a film the explosions, effects, brawny women, and action sequences, and it is silly to think of them as just that, it only lessens the culture and the efforts of the filmmakers.”
Sucker Punch was never meant to compete against Kung-Fu Panda 2. It was never meant to bring in July 4th or Thanksgiving-size audiences. It was never meant to gross $100M in its first week. To expect it to measure up to box office safe bets is to misunderstand its place in the incubation process. A movie about a girl locked up inside an insane asylum was never going to draw big crowds, even if the desperate fantasy world she creates offers some of the most visually arresting set pieces yet seen on the big screen, and especially if every detail of these fantasies – from the way the camera cleverly travels in and out of mirrors in the brothel scenes to the choice of the bus stop’s color palette – carries a deeper meaning than the obvious. To see a project like this judged by critics against Hollywood’s typical linear three act action fares is disappointing but not surprising. A critic’s point of view is often driven and shaped by the expectations of his audience rather than a clear understanding of the culture of the industry he aims to be a part of. The same is true of tech bloggers, automotive reviewers, and anyone who sees himself as an industry influencer. Case in point, critic Christian Toto’s reaction to the film:
“Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch should send shivers down the spines of Superman fans.”
This in reference to the fact that Snyder is slated to direct the next movie iteration of Superman. (Yes, AGAIN. Talk about franchise overload.)
In spite of the fact that Sucker Punch – like Watchmen – is a niche movie while a Superman remake is a solid blockbuster bet, critics like Toto don’t seem to understand the difference. Critics aren’t necessarily industry analysts. Instead of grading and judging different type of movies with different sets of lenses, they default to their single mainstream lens.
This type of mentality echoes that of risk-averse, mainstream-focused executives who shun experimental talent incubation projects that cater to narrow but deep niches in favor of the mainstream status-quo. It is this brand of operational myopia that forgets to invest in relationships with core fans and users, preferring instead to focus on low hanging fruit “also in” product categories: The 3D animated adventure prequel. The 20th live action comic book superhero movie. The 38th flip phone in the catalog. The 53rd black flat screen TV. The other silver sedan. The other “other” e-reader or tablet.
The inability to understand the need for a different standard of success for bold niche products in a world of same-as mass appeal products stunts the growth of companies in every industry, and jeopardizes their ability to invest in their own successful future. It is as simple as that.
image courtesy of Warner Bros.
In conclusion.
So what have we learned today?
1. Incorporate experimental projects and success incubators into your company culture. Without them, you are merely surviving.
2. Fund them well.
3. Judge them through a different lens than you do mainstream successes.
4. Learn how to scale niche successes into mainstream successes, like Apple, Virgin Airlines, Zappos and Starbucks, for starters.
5. Depth first, then breadth. Not the other way around. .
6. Go see Sucker Punch… unless you aren’t into Zack Snyder movies… or visionary film-making.
Problem: You have an established global brand but it is tied to a specific category. Your expansion plans require you to move outside of that category. What do you do?
Solution A: Rebrand yourself in an effort to distance yourself from your core business and its ‘restrictive’ category. Become more generic in your focus while maintaining some degree of visual familiarity with an evocative but adaptable logo that can easily fit on anything, from laptops and wine glasses to media players and shampoo bottles.
Solution B: Create a hierarchy/structure for your company that allows you to expand into other categories while preserving your core business and successful brand anchors. Create a new logo if one doesn’t already exist to differentiate the corporate entity from consumer brands.
It appears that Starbucks has opted for Solution A:
I would have opted for option B:
Incidentally, this has been done before, and with pretty decent success:
GM's lineup - circa not 2011
Starbucks already owns at east two brands that have distanced themselves – if not from Starbucks itself – from the Starbucks logo: 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, and Seattle’s Best. It stands to reason then, that Starbucks Corporate is perfectly capable (and willing) to manage more than just the Starbucks brand. Unfortunately, they are both coffee/coffee shop brands as well. Ideally, Starbucks should consider reversing its current model of branding various coffee endeavors under three different identities while trying to brand new business ventures under the Starbucks umbrella. The opposite – branding its coffee endeavors under the Starbucks Coffee brand while branding music, wine and everything else they experiment with as something non-Starbucks Coffee – would make more sense.
The question isn’t whether Starbucks should or shouldn’t expand into other markets – like music, wine, food, lifestyle products and even travel. Of course Starbucks should. Companies need to grow, and the coffee shop vertical simply won’t satisfy that need for the Seattle-based company. Starbucks therefore needs to expand elsewhere. Its successive attempts at creating extensions with music kiosks, wine and beer, candy, instant coffee and ice cream have all been good tests for the brand. The real question is: How does the coffee brand “uncoffee” itself enough to be able to transcend this category without diluting its brand – in that category?
Rebranding isn’t the solution. Removing “Starbucks Coffee” from the Starbucks Coffee logo isn’t it either. And making your biggest brand asset – the Starbucks cup of coffee – look bland and less than authentic isn’t it either. What this type of rebranding does is exactly what you want to avoid: It dilutes the brand, angers core customers, further increases the distance between consumers and the promise of the authentic Pike Street Starbucks experience, and does absolutely nothing to clarify Starbucks’ brand universe for consumers.
What you want to do is bring clarity to your brand environment and allow it to grow without disturbing your existing brands. You create something like this:
At the heart of the expansion puzzle for Starbucks seems to be the way the company views its own distribution channel: Starbucks coffee shops seem to have become labs for every “shift” idea. Overnight, coffee shops find themselves turned into music stores and sandwich joints and wine bars… and then back into coffee shops again when the latest idea doesn’t scale. This dependence on Starbucks Coffee stores is in and of itself a hurdle Starbucks needs to address in its quest for clarity. Truth is that if Starbucks wants to get into the wine business, Starbucks needs to start a wine business. If Starbucks wants to launch music stores, Starbucks need to launch music stores. What Starbucks cannot continue to do is dilute the coffee shop business with every new idea that comes along. This latest step – essentially “uncoffeeing” the Starbucks logo – further unanchors the Starbucks experience inside the coffee shops from the vital core coffee experience upon which Starbucks built its brand over the last 40 years. There is danger of diluting the brand in this way. Unfocused brands tend to lose relevance.
With the logo change, Starbucks’ brand narrative unravels itself into a loose brand extension grail quest: By 2015, will we still be walking into coffee shops or will we be walking into lifestyle emporiums of music, gourmet pizza, protein smoothies and wine tastings? Will Starbucks also sell bread, like Panera? Will it sell donuts like Dunkin? Will it go after McDonalds by also offering gourmet burgers for lunch? Which begs the question:
What is Starbucks if its coffee business is no longer about coffee?
The question is much bigger than a logo redesign.
In order to change, Starbucks needs to think beyond the obvious logo update. The puzzle here, while not difficult to figure out, is a little more complex than a bit of uninspired graphic design wizardry. The company’s strategic expansion model needs a little clarity and structure. Starbucks need a plan more than it needs a new logo.
Focus, Starbucks. Focus. We love you and want to see you succeed, but you need to think this through just a little bit harder. The logo should have been just a cool little detail, not the centerpiece of what comes next.
Starbucks is constantly changing their coffee packaging line to keep things fresh (pun intended?) However the changes are not drastic enough to confuse the consumer. Their design is highly illustrative which I’m sure appeals to all the designers out there. This illustrative style is carried out in the artwork they display on their store walls and the in store displays. – Niki Brown
In our next episode, we will look at how a company (like Starbucks) might want to manage its expansion into new product categories and business models, but today, let’s pull a quick little bit of conversation from our last post’s comments:
I think you missed the mark on this one, Olivier. I don’t think Starbucks is changing their logo just for the heck of it. As they move into the Middle Eastern and Asian markets (where their focus will be more heavily on teas), it makes sense for the logo to lose the English language words and “Coffee” moniker.
I also really enjoyed Spike Jones’s post about this topic – wherein he points out that only big brands can get rid of their names altogether.
Why didn’t you look at any of the brands that have had success with removing their names from their logos, such as Nike? Isn’t it possible that we’re simply uncomfortable with change? After all, it’s not a completely redesign, like the Gap logo. It’s simply an evolution of an existing logo. And logos should evolve as a brand evolves.
Good points from Holly. My response (edited and enhanced for clarity):
Fair enough, Holly. This is an opinion piece, nothing more. So… right or wrong could be argued all day long. But consider the following:
1. Nike and Starbucks have completely different logos. Nike’s is not symmetrical. Starbucks’ is. In Nike’s original 3 logos, the lettering looked pretty bad. It looked like an add-on. In fact, the 3rd iteration attempted to create some kind of symmetry by adding a red square. (It didn’t work.) Removing the word Nike actually cleaned up the design.
The letters on Starbucks mark, on the other hand, don’t break up the flow of the design. The outer circle anchors it and defines the brand. Comparing the two is a bit of an apples and oranges topic, from a design perspective.
2. Some would argue that the Gap logo was an evolution as well: The GAP lettering was liberated from the square in the same way that the Starbucks siren was liberated from the ring and lettering. Tomato, tomato. Pepsi got rid of its lettering too, and came up with a whole new logo. Was that just an evolution too? Nope. Fact is, it’s always a redesign. The term “evolution” in this type of context is completely subjective, unfortunately. (And for the record, the Pepsi redesign, IMO, though needed, wasn’t an improvement either.)
3. The reason why Starbucks is changing its logo – as I understand it – has more to do with branching off into new product categories than eliminating language barriers overseas. The current logo is the $6 principal latte’s selling point, and even Spike knows it. It’s what gives Starbucks its cachet. Otherwise, we would all just be getting coffee from wherever.
(See? The whole global thing can be addressed in much more clever ways:)
What’s more likely is Starbucks wants to diversify and needs a mark that doesn’t tie it to just… coffee shops. Like this:
Does this look like a coffee shop?
Flashback: Starbucks has already tried its hand at the music distribution thing, sandwiches and now beer and wine. Let’s not forget instant coffee and other Target-style retail products. I think it’s pretty clear that it wants to explore other business models. Removing the coffee anchor from the mark allows them to to just that. There’s your real motivation.
Does this look like a coffee shop?
But here’s the problem: It is both unnecessary and confusing to consumers.
It is unnecessary because Starbucks could have created this new logo for its corporate entity – the overarching, umbrella Starbucks brand – and kept the Starbucks Coffee mark alone. This would give it the freedom to apply the new mark to non-coffee business concepts without having to worry about associating them to their coffee biz. Not to mention the cost savings of not having to redo every sign in the world, reprint every menu and every cup, change all of the websites and collateral, etc.
The irony here lies in that Starbucks is already branding some of its new businesses outside of the “Starbucks Coffee” world. Its wine and beer experiment is called… wait… 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea. (Doh! Another coffee company!)
Okay, let’s try that again… Starbucks also has another business that has nothing to do with the Starbucks Coffee brand. What is it again? Ah yes:
Doh! Okay, I give up. Where Starbucks should be branding all of its coffee shops as Starbucks Coffee and its non-coffee stores as XYZ Music/wine/beer/smoothies/socks/candies/ice cream shoppe/mopeds, it seems to do the opposite: Every new coffee shop is branded something else, but Starbucks’ forays into new and exciting verticals seem doomed to be strapped onto the back of its coffee shops. What Starbucks needs to do is the exact opposite: Consolidate its coffee business under one Starbucks brand and create fresh new identities for its other business ventures.
Aside from the wine, the beer and the music, there’s always all of this stuff too:
It is confusing because if Starbucks becomes a socks, sandwiches, music, video, candy bars, wine, beer, cookies, bananas and T-shirts company, are they now shifting from the coffee company we all know and love to… being something else? Is Starbucks morphing into a sort of upscale 7-11? A Cracker-Barrel type retail experience where you can by Starbucks brownies and board games on your way out of the cafeteria? Will I soon be able to buy Starbucks cheeseburgers in my local store’s frozen section? Should I go to their coffee shop to pick up some Starbucks pizza and pasta salad? Will the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet be available at all Starbucks, or just in select cities?
There is no doubt that Starbucks needs an overarching brand to tie all of its product categories and businesses together. But it also needs to establish clear branding for each of its new verticals, starting by preserving the integrity of its core business: Starbucks Coffee.
To that end, here’s what Starbucks should do:
1. Leave the Starbucks Coffee logo alone for now. It’s fine. People love it and it isn’t in need of an update just yet. This will no longer be Starbucks’ corporate logo. It will only apply to its coffee business.
2. Use the new logo, albeit a little more anchored (is it too much to ask for just one little ring around the siren? Really?) for Starbucks, Inc. Starbucks can print that sucker on socks, bottles of wine, candy bars, music CDs and toilet paper all day long. By doing this, Starbucks Coffee and Starbucks’ other business ventures can be separate.
Cheers, Holly. Thanks for the comment.
* * *
All kidding aside, in Part 2, we will look at a simple way to put some order into all of this, the point being to outline how a company like Starbucks might organize its expansion without a) diluting its core brand, b) creating confusion for consumers, and c) spending more money than it has to.
Here we go again. This week, another major consumer brand unveiled a new logo. This time around, it’s my beloved Starbucks.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Some logos do need upgrades. The original can and sometimes should be improved upon. Belk’s latest logo change – while not necessary – wasn’t actually all that bad, for example. People are still going on about the Pepsi logo redesign, the Tropicana incident is still used as a cautionary tale in design and brand management circles, and of course, there is the king of the logo redesign debacles: Gap:
Pretty awful redesign.
See? Not bad - minus the tagline.
Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of having its own logo redesign firebombed across the Twitternets by masses of disappointed customers and fans, Starbucks moved ahead to mark its 40th birthday with such an exercise, and the result is displayed below. Gone are the words “starbucks” and “coffee.” Gone is the familiar ring of green. The siren has been… “liberated.”
As a fan of Starbucks – something I routinely have to apologize for to my coffee snob friends – I have to admit that I am not thrilled. I mean… it isn’t bad. But it isn’t great either. Or even good. But I will get back to that.
First, from a brand management standpoint, I tend to look at rebranding projects like this one as exercises in futility: Starbucks didn’t need a new logo. Its current one isn’t hurting sales. It isn’t hurting the business. No one was complaining that it was ugly, old or ineffective. The Starbucks brand, in fact, relies on the familiarity and authenticity of its universally recognized logo to sell $5 cups of coffee. I would even venture to guess that the closer the logo brings a Starbucks customer to the original experience of being at Seattle’s Pike Street store, the more its perceived value will tend to increase. Changing the logo, making it more conceptual and less… rustic effectively increases the distance between the customer and Pike Street rather than shortening it. Thus, not only was the rebranding unnecessary in the sense that it will not increase sales or improve the business in any way, it also constitutes somewhat of a risk in that it effectively dilutes the brand for consumers. Not super clever when both McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts are making a strong push in the coffee retail world with decent coffee and lower prices.
From a business standpoint, the expense of now having to replace every logo at every store and change the logo on every bag, box, cup and mug – all for the sake of… change – can’t possibly be the smartest investment for Starbucks, considering that the impact on sales, on brand loyalty, and on business in general will be essentially zero. Sure, it will get a nice spike in online mentions. But there are better and more cost-effective ways of doing that. (I just hope that this “project” wasn’t the reason why Starbucks prices jumped up this month. That would be a bit disappointing for loyal customers like me.)
Finally, from a design standpoint, I understand the tendency to want to simplify a logo, to strip it down to its essence… but there is a point where stripping down just makes a logo look bland. Not so much when it sits by itself on a sheet of paper (it actually looks fine on its own) but when printed on a cup, it looks unfinished. It just doesn’t pop anymore. It just kind of sits there, missing the rest of itself. The new design strips the cup of its appeal, of its energy, and this is a serious problem for a brand whose image is so dependent on the look of its packaging.
One of the rare branding icons of the 20th century – not the Starbucks logo itself but the Starbucks cup of coffee – is what Starbucks is effectively destroying with this decision. I don’t know the extent to which Starbucks’ management realizes that the cup itself has always been at least as important to brand loyalty as the contents of the cup – if not more so. Look at the image of the different logos on the cups (above). Doesn’t the new cup just look… like something is missing?
Though the logo change has its fans, it seems that they are in the minority. One fan in particular expressed his disappointment on Starbucks’ Facebook page shortly after the announcement: “Was the Starbucks corporate office asleep through all of the Gap controversy when they tried changing their logo? Leave it alone! There’s nothing wrong with it.” (Source – CNN Money)
Others joined in the protest:
“Who’s the bonehead in your marketing department that removed the world-famous name of Starbucks Coffee from your new logo? This gold card user isn’t impressed.”
“I prefer the old logo. I’ve been a Starbucks fan since the late 80’s. I’m all for change…I think it’s great, but I’m not impressed with the new logo.”
“Removing the Starbucks name off your logo does not make any sense. I do not see the logic of your business development folks.”
“Your logo is what makes Starbucks, Starbucks. Whenever I’m in an airport or a mall, I look for that glorious green sign – it tells me that help is on the way! Anyone can draw a green mermaid. Having the mermaid without the Starbucks around it is incomplete. Do you really want us thinking “this is incomplete” when we’re consuming your product?”
“I’m very disappointed in the new logo. Simplistic logos and designs are great for many corporations but not yours… Very unimpressed.”
“Don’t fix what isn’t broken.”
“Looks like Starbucks is trying to pull a Gap move. FAIL. I hate the new logo.”
“Please keep the words. Don’t dumb down the logo.”
“Might as well hold a dunkin donuts cup if i am going to hold a cup with a POS logo.“
And my favorite: “Ew.”
I was hard-pressed to find a whole lot of comments on Starbucks’ Facebook page that were positive. I did find a few, but they seemed to be eclipsed by the preponderance of comments denouncing the change as a bad idea.
Ultimately though, none of this matters. If Starbucks wants to change its logo, it will. As bland and uninspired as it may be, it isn’t nearly as awful as The Gap’s redesign in 2010, nor is it the end of the world. So rather than ramble on about it, I thought I might suggest a little exercise in rebranding, à la Starbucks: What if we took other circular logos and… “freed the mermaid,” so to speak? What would happen to say… BMW, VW and other popular logos? Probably something like this:
BMW's Starbucks-style logo redesign
The Federal Reserve System's Starbucks-style seal redesign
The Obama For America campaign logo Starbucks-style redesign
The Volkswagen Starbucks-style logo redesign
Not exactly improvements either. (Please feel free to post your ideas somewhere and link to your beautiful work in the comment section.)
Not to end on a sarcastic note though (um… never mind), I want to close this post by turning to the future of 2021 and ponder what Starbucks’ 50th anniversary logo will look like. Maybe something a little like this…
(Forgive the really bad photoshop cropping. I was in a hurry.)
Better yet, this image I just pulled from Starbucks’ very own Facebook page:
Courtesy of Eliezer Silveira Filho
God bless user generated content.
At any rate, time for me to head over to Starbucks and grab myself a little morning courage – with the good logo – at least until March.
And who knows, maybe we will all eventually grow to like the new logo. In due time. Why not.
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.
Pop quiz: You own or manage a restaurant. A hotel. A coffee shop. A specialty goods store. A hot dog stand. A bank. A movie theater. A shoe store. A gym. A bodega. A hair salon. A sushi bar. A pub. A public park. A swimming pool. A museum. An art gallery. A city. Do you know who the mayor of your business is?
If you don’t, find out today. Right now. Here’s why: It could help your business grow pretty quickly if you play your cards right. More on that in a minute. First, here’s how to find out who has claimed the title of mayor on Foursquare: (Huh? fourwhat? Hang on. We’ll get to that too.)
Step 2: In the search box (top right) enter your business name.
Step 3: When your business information pops up, look to the right of the screen. You will see an icon labeled “mayor”. That’s who the mayor is.
The Now What:
Find out who they are, and you give them the royal treatment next time they come into your store. Let them know you’re paying attention to a) Foursquare, b) whom is taking the time to check in every time they come into your place of business, and c) who is sharing that information (that recommendation) with their friends on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.
Think about giving them a discount or a gift while you’re at it. Set up a “mayor parking” spot outside. Treat them like a VIP inside the store. Address them as “Mister Mayor” or “Your Grace,” when they walk in. It’s up to you. Have fun with it. Give them more reasons to like you. It never hurts to reward kindness with kindness, and remember that it is supposed to be fun and rewarding.
The Why:
If you aren’t familiar with Foursquare yet, here it is in a paragraph: It’s a game played on mobile devices. People “check in” to businesses and other locations, and try to accumulate points. In some instances, they win much coveted “badges” (see some examples below).
In other instances, if they are the most frequent visitor of a location (like your store), they are crowned “mayor” of that location. The game is free, works on a variety of mobile platforms, and players have the option to share their check-ins with their network of family and friends on Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook. It’s a silly game, sure, but it is powerful as well. Here’s why:
1. Frequency – Because checking-in is a game, it is fun. That, in and of itself, is reward enough. Mayorships and badges are also rewards for activity on Foursquare. What it means is this: Foursquare gives people an incentive to visit your store more often, just so they can check in. Especially if you are running a promotion aimed at your store’s mayor. As a business, you can thus easily use Foursquare to increase the frequency of visits to your store(s). That equates to more foot traffic, more mindshare, and potentially more sales. (While they’re in your store, they’ll probably buy something.)
2. Reach – In case you missed it earlier, when someone “checks in” to your location, they broadcast that check-in to their various digital networks. Right now, that is mostly Foursquare itself, Twitter and Facebook. This will probably grow over time. But consider that the average american has what… over 200+ “friends” on Facebook? Think about the power of having a single customer broadcast that they are in your restaurant, in your hair salon, in your pub to 200+ of their friends every time they come in. Now multiply that by ten customers. Now multiply that by 100 customers.
Though not technically “active” word of mouth, Foursquare check-ins are still de-facto endorsement of your business. In other words, it isn’t just a question of exposure. A check-in is an affirmation of endorsement. It might as well say “I am here, and I am proud to tell you all that I am doing business here. Come do the same.” That’s the context of a check-in.
Every time one of your customers checks-in and broadcasts that they are doing business with you, they potentially trigger a visit in an average of 200 other potential customers. (Either existing customers or potential customers.)
3. Yield – Of the three, this one is probably the toughest to achieve, but as a measure of loyalty, yield (average purchase amount) can be impacted by foursquare activity. As frequency of visits increases and loyalty follows suit, it is likely that a portion of your customers will escalate their purchase amounts as well. Loyalty can lead to a higher percentage of wallet share, not just through buy rates (frequency) but also higher price-point purchases.
A word on escalation: Take the example of a bike shop. A casual customer may come in once a month and buy some energy bars, a bike jersey and some socks. As this customer is developed into a regular, they start purchasing all of their energy bars from you instead of buying them from several different places. They may also start jonesing for that new pair of cycling shoes and that new helmet they will soon rationalize they need to replace their “old” ones with. If you treat them well and understand their needs, this escalation may lead to a higher dollar purchase like a race wheel upgrade, a carbon-fiber set of handlebars upgrade, a full bike tune-up, or even a brand new bike to start off the new season in style.
Result: In six months to a year, you could potentially turn a casual customer who only bought low-hanging-fruit items in your store to a loyal customer with a habit of dropping large amounts of cash on premium upgrades with you, instead of blowing them on something else.
Note: You cannot escalate yield if you do not have a relationship with your customer. There is no shortcut here. You have to get to know them. You have to become part of their world. This is not something you can do from a corporate office, or from the back of the store. Someone has to interact with them on a human level – both online and offline.
More thoughts on how to leverage Foursquare:
How your business can use Foursquare is up to you. Use your imagination. Try different things. Be clever. Have fun with it. Perhaps you can work with Foursquare to create badges for your business, the way that Bravo, Starbucks, SxSW, Marc Jacobs and several cities (San Francisco, New York, Brooklyn and Chicago) already have. Here is Starbucks’ very own Barista badge. To obtain it, players only need check in at 5 different Starbucks locations:
Imagine the same thing for your business, or banding with retailers in your area to create a badge players could unlock by visiting 5 of your combined locations. You could work with an organization or with a city even, to help promote your business through Foursquare. You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Perhaps you can also create promotions around Foursquare activity, like flashmobs (using your business and a particular sales event to help customers achieve both all-too elusive swarm badges (50 people checking in together and 250 people checking in together.)
Another fun idea: Procure some Foursquare Merit Badges and ceremoniously award them to customers who acquired virtual badges online (see below).
Whatever you choose to do, start at the beginning: Find out who the mayor of your business is, acknowledge that status, and reward it with warmth and gratitude, if not with product. Next: Create an account and get rolling. It’s your business. Take charge and participate. Welcome to a whole new world of marketing fun. If you’re lucky, you will beat your competitors to it. (Never underestimate first-mover advantage, especially in the age of twitter & facebook real-time word-of-mouth.)
Footnote: I spoke to two retailers yesterday who had never heard of foursquare. One didn’t know that dozens of customers were already checking into their store regularly, and I added the other’s venue because there wasn’t one yet. Guess what: One knows who the mayor of their business is today, and he has a plan now. The other will know as soon as someone becomes the mayor, and is already working on some promotions. We will revisit these two businesses in a few months to see how they fare.
Also check out Gowalla.com while you’re at it. Very much the same thing, and it too is growing.
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