ChaosScenario

What is "The Fun Theory" really worth?

A couple of people took note of VW's campaign "The Fun Theory." Most recently Corley suggested it "further's VW's corporate social responsibility." Ultimately, I believe she is correct in saying that, but it's a broad statement begging to be unpacked.

To be sure, this campaign isn't about VW being socially responsible. It's about VW wanting others to associate the word "Fun" with VW.

The campaign is simple, unexpected, concrete, and each of the demonstrations have the trappings of a story, and presumably the effort is designed to get people excited about the possibilities (emotion). Together, all of these are components of a sticky message (PDF).

But is it credible?

Let's take a look at some of the videos that are currently on their website.

One is the piano. The question is "How do we get more people to take the stairs instead of the escalator." According to VW, the answer is to make the stairs FUN, of course.

I guess that's one way to do it, if you have $40K (or whatever) to spend on labor and materials. The problem, in this case, is that the owners of the stairs get no benefit from such an investment.

Additionally, their efforts may actually lead to injuries due to people trying to play a song on the stairs. There's no fun in that. I'll bet VW won't post any videos of anyone falling down the stairs.

The other, more cost-effective way to do it, without unnecessarily increasing the temptation to be careless on the stairs, is to turn off the escalator. It doesn't cost a thing (it actually saves electricity), and the number of people who use the stairs instead of the escalator increases to 100%.

It reminds me of something I read from Roger von Oech. I'll do my best to not butcher it in my retelling.

Villagers of a certain town were horrified to discover evidence that they had been burying people alive. Exhuming a coffin, they found that the lid had been clawed by the (currently) deceased. Upon this discovery, they exhumed a few more graves and found many others with these same characteristics, letting them know that it was a normative problem.

The elders were gathered together to figure out how to deal with this. They came up with two ideas.

One idea was to run a string into the grave with the person believed to be deceased. One end of the string would be tied to the hand of the one they buried. The other would be tied to a bell in the graveyard. If the grave keeper heard the bell, he'd discover its source and save the person buried alive. The focus of this effort was to ensure no one was buried alive.

The other idea was to build a large spike into the coffin top, so that when it was closed, it pierced the heart of the body in it. The focus of this effort was to ensure that everyone buried was dead.

As I mentioned to Corley, the issue I have with the effort is that some of them are impractical, and I suspect VW knows that. What they're trying to do is give people a reason to think of "fun" when they think of VW. Regardless of whether the association has validity with respect to their automobile choices, if people believe it to be true, it may as well be.

However, if this effort gets people thinking about the ways they can increase the "fun quotient" in their user experience, they can increase adoption rates. This is laudable not only from a social standpoint, but also from a business standpoint.

Notably, it doesn't have to be an investment of tens of thousands of dollars unless there is a corresponding financial benefit for making the investment.

Whatever the case, I'm interested in seeing other entries in this campaign. Keep track with me at TheFunTheory.com, or enter one yourself. - Cam Beck

A Case for Moral Selfishness

"[H]aving lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment of others." - Benjamin Franklin

I am a skeptic.

To an outside observer, my skepticism may look a lot like cynicism. I don't just believe people and companies are motivated by self-interest, I've seen it with my own eyes.

A person doesn't simply buy a book from Amazon because they believe it will help Amazon make money or employ more people. They buy it because they want or need the book for themselves -- either to inform, improve, or entertain. This is most often true when people realize that they're spending their own resources - they tend to spend it in a way that benefits them, not others.

If they're spending other people's money, they tend to be less careful with it.

This doesn't make everyone manifestly selfish, necessarily, because self-interest can indeed be naturally reconciled with service to others, without requiring one person to pick another's pocket to do so.

For instance, recently I bought and read A Project Guide to UX Design because I believed it would make me better at my job. Continuous personal improvement improves my marketability (self-interest), but only if my improvement leads me to help others get what they want (service to others).

I also get a lot of joy (self-interest) by making a tangible and substantial contribution to the financial success of other companies (service to others), their employees (service to others) and the satisfaction of their customers (service to others).

It's remarkable how often those things go hand-in-hand, when you work in a service industry, when regulations do not unnecessarily restrict your abillity to operate freely.

Once you realize that no one is more important to individuals than themselves, you tend to require stronger evidence that supports others' claims of all the great things you'll get if you just follow their lead.

A personality or "brand" may persuade you to be either less or more stringent with your requirements for evidence, which is just another way of saying that you trust those people and companies who have previously delivered on their promises, to the best of your knowledge.

However, healthy sketpicism, in light of moral self-interest, will allow the evidence to lead you wherever it may, even if it contradicts what you previously believed.

As a skeptic, I'll be the first to admit that the process is sometimes uncomfortable, but it also allows you to be less judgmental of other people's errors in thought and deed (which are intertwined), because you will realize that, in pursuit of your self-interest, you've managed a few whoppers yourself.

However, if there is a self-interest that should transcend all others, it should be the pursuit of the truth, which requires being capable of contradicting yourself when you find  your thoughts and deeds to be erroneous. Do not let love or hate of either personalities or brands to stand in the way of your dedication to think critically. - Cam Beck

Your Brand is Not My Friend: SXSW Extended Content

Awhile back I nominated Alan Wolk's seminal work on branding through social media for a panel at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. They selected his topic for inclusion into their extended content.

The panel is moderated by AdWeek's Brian Morrissey.

Panelists, besides Alan, are Ian Schafer, Noah Brier, and Michael Lebowitz.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to embed the video directly, so I'm just providing a link to it from here. It's less than 20 minutes, long, but well worth the time.

Check out the SXSW Panel Discussion (Extended Content): Your Brand Is Not My Friend. - Cam Beck

Branding is Character. What Does Your Character Show?

Stuff happens.

So does branding. This is true whether you call it "branding" or not. As it turns out, branding has less to do with cutesy creative and clever themes than it has to do with your ability to consistently keep promises of your company -- to build your company's reputation as a firm of good character.

Not all promises are created equal, and all people do not assign equal value to all promises. This is why it is so difficult -- and increasingly useless -- to build a brand that pleases all people, all of the time.

Before all else, know who you are and what you stand for. Only then can you focus on making extraordinary promises to an audience that places a high value on those promises -- and then over-deliver. - Cam Beck

3 Ways to Build a Good Reputation

1. Do something notable.

Today.

If you wait until tomorrow, someone else will have done it, and your doing it won't be as notable.

Who was the second person to walk on the moon? The third?

By any measure, just breaking the earth's atmosphere is quite an accomplishment, but we give extra credit to those who impress us first.

2. Do something good.

Each day. Every day. For a lot of people.

Add value to each person you come in contact with. Don't worry about what they can do for you. Assume nothing. What can you do for them?

3. Fail.

Someday soon, if not earlier.

It's inevitable. You're going to fail. But take heart: A little failure (or even a spectacular one) can be a good thing.

Failure is a great instructor. It builds perseverance. It teaches us different ways to look at things. It necessitates developing alternative solutions.

It also brings us humility, which keeps us from being so confident in our beliefs that we can't see other perspectives. We can empathize with those who disagree because each person may, in Benjamin Franklin's words, "doubt a little of his own infallibility."

But don't give up just because you failed once. Or twice. Or three times.

Or even 6,000 times. Like Thomas Edison's successful invention of a marketable incandescent light bulb, your next try might produce the breakthrough you seek.

- Cam Beck

Insights: Are Your Customers Lost? Because You're Lost Without Them.

Findability is one of the most overlooked tools of marketing. There's just no glitz in making things easy to find. Yet, in nearly every case your customers and potential customers  come to you, they aren't seeking out a "brand experience." They're looking for a solution to a problem or an answer to a question. If they can't find it on your website, often they will simply look elsewhere.

Making sure they can find what they're looking for is the first step in making yourself approachable -- a trusted resource.

In this week's column at the Click Here blog, I wrote about 5 Ways to Ensure Your Online Customers Never Get Lost.

It's not likely to happen by accident. First you have to plan for it. - Cam Beck

Don't Panic. Just Lead.

At MPDailyFix, Beth Harte related a story about how a friend of hers, who is a senior-level marketer, was offered employment with junior-level pay. She goes on to explain some of the reasons this is happening and why she believes it will become more commonplace if marketers don't show their value. She's right. But if I can add my own perspective here, the problem Beth identifies can be understood economically and solved in the same terms.

Unemployment means there are too many people for too few jobs. In other words, there is a surplus of labor.

Surpluses tend to drive down prices.

The price of labor is measured in wages. Thus, when there is a labor surplus in any industry (like marketing), it tends to depress the wages of the people in that industry.

This is especially true when the hiring manager believes it doesn't matter from which part of the labor pool he chooses. One person is just as good as another -- or in Beth's words -- a commodity.

Being good -- being great -- these things don't matter unless we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the pack. It is the perception of our expertise and effectiveness that will enable us to demand higher wages.

Actual expertise can help drive perceived expertise, but it does not guarantee it. Now, more than ever, a marketer must be both good and an excellent self-promoter.

Doing this effectively is about all the things Beth mentioned. Among them:

• Be a leader.
• Measure.
• Document.
• Foster and nurture relationships.
• Continuously improve.

However, this effort shouldn't resemble a campaign -- which is temporary and smacks of insincerity. In order to assure others of our value, we must first strive to be valuable. We must both improve the product and promote the improvement.

Luckily, in our cases, the act of successfully promoting the improvement, in some ways, actually helps to improve the product -- especially when we're willing to make mistakes and learn from them.

Instead of curse the conditions that led to this difficulty, we must embrace it as an opportunity to revolutionize the way we practice marketing. And we can apply to our clients the wisdom we gained from the experience of practicing it on ourselves.

I'm afraid that this won't guarantee a happy ending for everyone -- even a lot of the good ones. However, being a jack of all trades (and more importantly, being the sort of person who can adapt to changing circumstances) all but promises that we'll find someplace to be of use. - Cam Beck

Who are you calling a sell-out?

Awhile back, I wrote about Anthony Bourdain's criticism of Rocco DiSpirito for what some of Bourdain's fans called "selling out." (Anthony Bourdain: Hypocrite ... or Genius?). I asked a Bourdain fan, who (about a year after I wrote the piece) came to criticize DiSpirito and praise Bourdain, exactly how "sell-out" is defined. His answer is revealing.

...but at one point he [DiSpirito] was a serious chef making good food ..then he made the decision of saying i want to become a "star" and ill do anything i can do get there. but i wont do it through my food, ill do it through a marketing machine...

This, he said, qualifies DiSpirito as a sell-out.

I thought about this conversation again when Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania switched parties because, in his own words, he did not think he could win as a Republican.

I am unwilling to have my 29-year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.

He also added, "I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,"  but if that's the case I wonder why it took him so long to discover what the rest of the GOP has known for decades.

Like DiSpirito, Specter has been accused of being a sell-out. But also like DiSpirito, Specter simply made a calculated decision to do something that was in his own self-interests.

That alone doesn't make either of them a sell-out.

Even Specter's 2001 suggestion that representatives not be allowed to change parties between elections doesn't make him a sell-out. If you're tempted to call him one, it just means you have to better identify the principles that motivate him, not the principles that you think he should have.

Alan Keyes, the former Reagan diplomat, political candidate, and occasional contributor to WorldNetDaily, deftly points out the hypocrisy of Michael Steel, the RNC chairman, to denigrate Specter's action as entirely self-serving. [pargraph breaks added for readability]

Steele has no problem sacrificing principle in order to keep politicians like Specter in the GOP ranks. He sees them as the key to victory and he has made it clear that, as far as he's concerned, winning is the only thing that matters.

Unfortunately for him, Specter's switch is entirely consistent with that principle.

Specter has rightly concluded that Republican primary voters will reject him in 2010, as they would have in 2004 had it not been for the help he received from Rick Santorum and others who put party loyalty above their commitment to the nation's fundamental moral principles.

By running as a Democrat, Specter feels that he stands a better chance of winning the general election. As far as principle goes, the only difference between Specter and Steele is that Specter will now reach for victory while being true to his leftist views.

Meantime, the Michael Steele Republicans, as they fume over his desertion, further demonstrate their willingness to seek victory by betraying the party's supposed conservatism.

Similarly, DiSpirito's decision to sell something besides the food he personally cooks doesn't make him a sell-out. It just means that he is interested in doing something other than what some people (like Bordain) want him to do.

That's his freedom. That's his right. And certainly in DiSpirito's case, it's entirely harmless.

To be sure, no one on this earth always live up to the principles they say they hold dear, 100% of the time with 100% consistency. One can make a mistake with respect to those principles -- or a series of mistakes -- and not be a sell-out.

But be warned: If you disappoint or mislead people who mistakingly ascribe certain principles to you, you will sacrifice your own credibility with those people, and you may not recover from it.

It's risky to be transparent and authentic, but hopefully the risk will just motivate us to be a better people who can act, more often than not, consistently with principles we've promised we have. - Cam Beck

P.S. For a great piece on branding and authenticity, I suggest this letter from Mike Rowe of The Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.

FAA vs. NYC: A Federal Case Against Narcissism and the Abuse of Power

Like a lot of people, I was outraged by the presidential airplane "photo op" that frightened a lot of New Yorkers. In spite of professed knowledge that the stunt could stoke the fears of residents and visitors, federal officials demanded secrecy and even threatened federal sanctions against the city if the secret got out.

Think about that for a second.

This wasn't a matter of national security. It was an attempt to get a cool looking photograph to put in publicity materials.

In other words, it was a "branding" exercise -- or at least what passes as branding in some circles.

Still, federal officials had the hubris to threaten peacekeepers and representatives with the full force and weight of the federal government for being so dastardly as to try to prevent the public from panicking.

(This, by the way, makes a strong case for diligently protecting individual liberty, for it is the peculiar nature of granting the power to incite and destroy that leads it to its intolerable abuse.)

The cost for this photo shoot, not including the time spent on damage control after the fact, was already $328,835, and according to an FAA memo, they knew it would cost that much. On a federal scale, $328,835 isn't a lot of money -- at least, when you're not concerned about whose money it really is.

But if they were committed to wasting taxpayer money (and I've never been alive to witness a time when the government wasn't so committed) they could have at least wasted less of it.

A decent painter -- or even a Photoshop expert -- could have simulated the event for much less.

Heck, with all the Obama sycophants out there, they probably could have found someone to donate their time to the cause of promoting him or the office he now holds.

It's true that the terrible memories of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are still alive in New York. Given the repercussions of forgetting history, we can all be glad of that.

I suggest we follow New York's example by learning a lesson from this:

No matter how brightly we think our star shines, we cannot fool ourselves into thinking that our wants are more important than those we're supposed to serve. That is a foolish trap. Branding is a farce if we make it all about us. When we do that, it's not branding at all -- but narcissism. - Cam Beck

Insights: The Case for Use Cases

Website design to some people is a little like a secret, magic box. You tell someone what you want and then presto-change-o, out pops a website, champagne falls from the heavens, and you win all sorts of awards and are gratified by the applause of your peers and colleagues. It never works that way.

It actually takes a lot of foresight and planning to build a website that meets the strategic needs of an organization. At the risk of oversimplifying, doing this requires understanding:

• what the organization's needs are (and hopefully what they should be),
• what their audience's goals are,
• figuring out where the two meet,
• how to make sure the audience knows about it, and
• how to ensure an easy, mutually satisfying transaction

This week, in my second-ever Click Here blog post, I wrote about one of the methods used to plan a website that accomplishes these goals.

If you're on the agency side, hopefully it will give you some ammunition for explaining to clients the time and effort it will take. If you're on the client side, this may give you a little peek into the magic box.

They say a magician should never reveal his secrets, but happily, as this article will clearly show, there's no magic to what I do. - Cam Beck

Related Blog Posts:

• Only The Fools Brand Lightly
• Can't I Just Get Ads and a Website?