Category Archives: Marketing

How a Brand Says Goodbye

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How does a business say farewell? Family is showing us how: with grace, humanity, and gratitude. On January 5, Family Video went out of business. All its brick-and-mortar stores closed. But the brand is still alive — ironically in the digital world that helped usher in the company’s demise.

Family Video’s corporate Facebook page is something to behold. On Facebook, Family Video continues to share tributes from customers and ex-employees saying farewell. Keeping the digital lights on and letting letting the Family video community comment openly on social media is a branding masterstroke. Here are some sample posts:

  • “I’ll never forget how it felt to walk through a video store and pick up some rentals along with some food and drinks for a special movie night with your family. It was an irreplaceable nostalgic feeling… A sense of awe and wonder in my childhood when I would go to the video store.”
  • “I used to go to my local store every Sunday after work, met some great people who worked for the company and bought hundreds of movies.”
  • “My husband and I met working at your Fond du Lac, WI location. We dated for 5 years, and have been married for almost 8, and have a 4 year old son together. We are together because of FV.”
  • “We will miss Family Video and the employees that we became friends with!!!!!”
  • “I spent 8 great year with family video and 6 of it as an assistant manager. I’ve shared so many memories with my children and many others in my community. To this day everyone who sees me, reminds me how much they miss me and the store, almost like were one in the same, apparently.”
  • “So appreciated the free kids videos when my kids were young and I was young and poor! Sad to see you go.”
  • “The 10 years that I worked for and managed Family Video stores were some of my favorite years. I formed many friendships that I still have to this day . . . Thank you for all of those years. They have helped me become the manager and person that I am today.”
  • “We had our ten year vow renewal photos taken at Family Video. True story!”
  • “We had our engagement photos taken at Family Video. True story!”

Common themes emerge:

  • Family Video meant tradition. Going to the store, stocking up on movies, and buying other goodies for movie night made the movie watching experience special in a way that flipping on the TV and watching movies on demand through a streaming service does not. And the availability of streaming services does not always mean availability of a movie you want to see. The Family Video inventory mattered. You could find popular movies and also some more obscured choices in back catalogue.
  • Family Video was about connecting people with each other. This was certainly true of my experience. I always got a kick out of talking with the dudes behind the counter who reminded me of the stoner surfer Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. You cannot connect like that with someone on Zoom.

But all those advantages that made Family Video special were doomed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Going to the video store and being with other people became, well, outright dangerous in 2020. And Family Video never recovered.

The Family Video Facebook also continues to share content such as movie-related posts and crowdsourced memes, cartoons, and even some humor that pokes fun at its own demise.

The brand is consistent, too: on socials such as Instagram and Twitter, Family Video cross-promotes customer stories and comments itself actively with the same grace and sense of humor:

And I’m going to guess that selling Family Video merchandise will perpetuate a retro vibe with the cool kids:

The Family Video business is dead. Long live the Family Video brand.

Why Kanye West Is Running for President

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Kanye West is possibly the most polarizing celebrity alive. He is also a billionaire capitalist, with a clothing line and music to promote. Creating the moment, a tactic Kanye has perfected, serves his business aspirations well. That’s exactly what he was doing July 4 when he tweeted that he is running for president:

Whereupon:

  • Elon Musk tweeted his support.
  • Journalists everywhere, no doubt cranky about interrupting their Independence Day, dutifully covered the announcement. Within a few hours, everyone from The Los Angeles Time to USA Today covered the news.
  • Social media exploded, including speculation that West, who cozied up to Donald Trump in 2019, is trying to siphon the Black vote away from Joe Biden. It was as if Kanye provided a welcome distraction from a somber Independence Day amid a pandemic and social unrest.

In other words, Yeezy did what Yeezy does best: create the moment. It’s a skill he’s mastered for years.

#Kanye2020

This is not the first time Kanye has talked about running for president. In 2015, he announced his #Kanye2020 bid at the 2015 MTV Music Awards, and the reaction was just the same as it is now: social media lit up, and everyone with access to a keyboard (including me) fired off an analysis. At the time, I wondered how Kanye was any different than Trump, as both were (and are) known for their erratic comments and actions. This is what I wrote in 2015:

. . . the media coverage of #Kanye2020, which has put Kanye West on a platform alongside Donald Trump, forces you to ask: why is the white guy with the big mouth a real presidential contender gaining in polls, whereas the black guy with the big mouth is, at best, a farce? When Kanye disrespects Taylor Swift or Beck on TV, he is scorned. When Donald Trump makes disparaging remarks about women, insults Mexican immigrants, and kicks people out of press conferences, his popularity seems to rise. If Kanye were white, might he be treated seriously as a real candidate as Trump is? If Trump were black, where would he be in the polls?

Not much has changed since then, has it? And yet everything has changed. This, after all, is 2020, and anything goes. Trump has demonstrated that the Kanye approach — create one outrageous distraction after another, each one more outrageous than the last — builds loyalty among his core base. So what is Kanye’s rationale to announce a presidential bid, even though he’s missed the filing date to run as an independent in many key states?

First off, it’s useful to view the announcement in context: it’s the latest of many “look at me!” moments dating back many years. Within the past two years alone, Kanye has been all over the map, appearing with Minister Joel Osteen to announce that he’s both the greatest artist who ever lived and a servant of God, wearing a MAGA hat, referring to President Trump as his brother, and, most controversially, referring to slavery as “a choice.” Meanwhile, his business empire has expanded because of the popularity of his Yeezy line of sneakers. His new gospel musical has received mixed-to-lackluster reviews.

What does Kanye want? Is he serious about running for president? This much I know: for Kanye, being outrageous usually means he’s got something else to promote. Unlike Trump, Kanye uses outrage to build visibility even at the risk of alienating his core fans. So what’s Kanye selling these days? Let’s look at the two things he’s most serious about: being respected as an artist and as a business person. As to the latter aspiration, he said in 2015, “One of my dreams was to be the head creative director of the Gap. I’d like to be the Steve Jobs of the Gap.” Well, guess what: he’s just about getting his wish. He just signed a deal to bring his Yeezy line of clothing to the Gap in 2021, and as part of the relationship, he’ll have creative input into the merchandising. His financial stake in the deal is worth about $100 million.

But the Gap is in financial trouble as COVID-19 rages on. Kanye has every reason to promote the deal. And part of promoting the deal is drawing attention to himself. How does he do that? Through the art of outrage, a tactic that has worked well for him in the past. The numbers speak for themselves; Forbes recently announced that he’s officially a billionare, with his Yeezy sneaker line generating $1.3 billion annually in revenue. Kanye needs that Gap deal to work if he’s going to bring Yeezy clothing to the masses through the Gap.

As to Kanye the artist? Check this out: Kanye has new music out, a collaboration with Travis Scott known as “Wash Us in the Blood,” and he has announced a new album coming, “God’s Country.” He also said he will join his longtime Kid Cudi to voice characters in an animated show inspired by their 2018 album Kids See Ghosts. He’s also badly wanted respect for his forays into gospel (read more about that in my post, “Kanye West and Al Green: The Sacred and the Profane”). With music, it’s all about relentless promotion, especially when you’re taking your sound in a different direction, as Kanye has been doing with gospel (traditionally a niche form of music at best and hardly a money maker). When Kanye cozied up to prosperity minister Joel Osteen to raise awareness for Kanye’s gospel in 2019, the two talked seriously about going on tour together in 2020. COVID-19 put an end to that talk. Kanye running for president is Kanye’s solution. He gets the stage all to himself, and he can rely on digital aggressively as the two current candidates are doing.

Now it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Kanye has irons in the fire. And the fire needs stoking. Kanye has created his moment once again.

A Nice Guy Tells His Story in “Wise Guy”

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Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, author, and all-around business rock star Guy Kawasaki has succeeded the old fashioned way: by working hard and having uncompromising standards. 

He’s well known for what he’s done and how he’s done it. He changed the way businesses practice marketing through product evangelism. At the same time, Guy has been an advocate for the importance of exercising values and behaving with grace and dignity – an ethos that has influenced business leaders such as Gary Vaynerchuk. In his new book Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life, Guy Kawasaki shares some of the lessons he’s learned throughout his life. Wise Guy is not a biography in the linear sense. Combining a self-effacing sense of humor with clear-headed analysis, he tells stories about people who have taught him something and about incidents that have shaped his life (and continue to). 

You quickly learn that although he has accomplished a great deal in his life, his childhood was pretty ordinary. He did not overcome poverty to cure cancer by age 15. In fact, as a college student, he was interested in dating girls and someday owning a nice car. He tried out for football and quit. He studied law and quit. In other words, he grew up a lot like many of us do – which makes him more human and his story more relatable.

In the business world, though, he experienced epic adventures. For instance, at Apple he famously worked for Steve Jobs. And Wise Guycontains some fascinating stories that will make you grateful that you never worked for Steve Jobs. His career as an Apple product evangelist (he popularized evangelism as a marketing approach) and later as a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist makes for some engaging stories and lessons learned.  And there are many in Wise Guy. But for me, the most memorable and telling details in the book are not necessarily the most glamorous. (And I’ve read the book twice – an early draft for which I was privileged to provide feedback, and then the published version.) For instance: 

  • He once read the entire Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover. And let me tell you – The Chicago Manual of Style isa massive book with some excruciating details about the finer points of the English language. Why did Guy read such a book? Because a demanding high school English teacher instilled in him a respect for minding the details of the English language. If you’ve ever worked with Guy (as I have), you know he continues to apply high standards today and does not hold back with constructive criticism. Lesson learned: there are no short cuts to doing the job right. You have to understand every nuance of a skill to master it. 
  • He left a fortune on the table by leaving Apple— and then left a bigger fortune on the table by turning down a chance to interview for the CEO job at Yahoo! Guy freely admits he left Apple too early, long before it became one of the world’s most valuable brands – a decision that cost him tens of millions of dollars. And taking a pass on the Yahoo! opportunity probably cost him billions. In both cases, he did not grasp how big either company would become, something that still bothers him. But he does not regret why he chose something else over Apple and Yahoo! With Apple, he left to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. “[I]f I had stayed at Apple,” he writes, “my life would have been less interesting. I wouldn’t have started companies, become a venture capitalist, advised dozens of entrepreneurs, spoken at hundreds of events all over the world, and written fifteen books.” With Yahoo!, he chose time with his family over the demands of being CEO. “What price can you put on being around when your kids are growing up?” he asks. Lesson learned: stay true to yourself and your values. 
  • He learned ice hockey at age 48. And then he learned how to surf at age 62. These are not the easiest sports to learn at any age. In fact, Guy says that surfing is one of the most difficult challenges he’s ever tackled. There’s an obvious lesson learned here about continuing to push yourself no matter where you are in life – highly relevant as our population ages. In addition, his determination to learn is a tribute to hard work and the value of learning for the sake of learning. “The acquisition of skill is a process, not an event, and the process itself can be the reward,” he writes. “My path to surfing competency was the same as my path for speaking, writing, and evangelizing: grit, repetition, and hard work, not ‘natural talent.’”
  • Steve Case once honored a handshake agreement even though he didn’t have to. In the early days of AOL, Steve Case asked Guy to do some consulting for $2,000 monthly plus stock options. Guy agreed, and the arrangement lasted a few months. Many years later, he saw Steve Case, who asked him if AOL had ever given him his stock options. “I told him I hadn’t done much work, so the company wasn’t paying me, and I had never gotten the stock,” he writes. “I told him to forget about it.’” But Case insisted that he get options for two thousand shares. The options mushroomed into a lucrative payday. Lesson learned: be honorable in all that you do.

The Steve Case story is the most important. Guy Kawasaki writes and speaks often of acting with values, and treating people as you would have them treat you. In fact, he wrote an entire book about the business value of enchanting behavior, Enchantment. I think his legacy is that being a decent person in business is not only honorable but sensible – which is more important than being a marketing guru, an engaging author, or an exciting speaker. Wise Guy is Guy Kawasaki’s lasting statement. I recommend you buy Wise Guy — and learn from it.

Gillette Tries to Be the Best That Companies Can Be

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Gillette sure knows how to create a controversy. The company’s “We Believe” short video, which challenges men to hold each other accountable for toxic behavior, has quickly become a polarizing example of the emotional firestorm a business can ignite when it dips its toes into the volatile world of cause marketing.

The video has been reviled and praised — accused of being being preachy, phony, and ham-handed, and praised for taking a stand against the evils of sexism and bullying. Some consumers on social media have called for a boycott against Gillette products. Others have taken to social to back Gillette. As comic book writer Ron Marz tweeted, “If you have a problem with the #GilletteAd, congratulations, you’re the reason they made the #GilletteAd.”

What interests me from a marketing standpoint is what will happen once the controversy over the video subsides. So much attention has focused on the “We Believe” short that I think many have overlooked the fact that “We Believe” is much more than a video. “We Believe” is a broader redefinition of Gillette’s core brand ethos, from “The Best a Man Can Get” to “The Best That Men Can Be.” In a press release, Gillette announced the company is committed to a long-term effort to uphold the values of respect, accountability, and role modeling. Per Gillette:

RESPECT — Demonstrating respect and fostering inclusivity for all, including genders, races, religions and orientations.

ACCOUNTABILITY — Ending phrases like “Boys Will Be Boys” and eliminating the justification of bad behavior.

ROLE MODELING — Inspiring men to help create a new standard for boys to admire. We want boys to see and admire traits like honesty, integrity, hard work, empathy and respect — words that people across the U.S. use when describing what a great man looks like.

Gillette said it will hold itself accountable to these values by:

  • Donating $1 million annually to causes designed to help men achieve their best.
  • Ensuring that its public content reflects respect, accountability, and role modeling.
  • Keeping a conversation about male behavior in the public eye through social media.

Gillette has put a stake in the ground. If Gillette truly lives those values in its actions and in its message, Gillette will succeed. In fact, Gillette may gain customers who identify with those values, especially with millennials, who are more interested than baby boomers are in brands whose values align with their own. In addition, Gillette may very well be happy to cut loose of the kind of customer who boycotts a company for challenging men to hold each other accountable for their behavior.

What happens next all comes down to Gillette demonstrating its commitment to its brand values. You don’t simply bake a new set of values in the oven and serve them to the public. It takes time to build emotional trust and belief through actions and reinforcement of your message. Gillette has just begun a long-term journey toward being a better company, not just a famous brand that makes a lot of money selling razors. Let’s see how this journey plays out.

Why GDPR Isn’t Coming to the United States

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Will draconian privacy laws ever come to the United States as they have in Europe in recent days? The question is reasonable in light of ongoing news stories about Facebook’s cavalier treatment of user data. Now that the European Union has enacted General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we now have a template for stronger protection of consumer privacy, with businesses being held to more stringent privacy standards and facing steep fines for failing to uphold those standards.

The likelihood of GDPR-style regulation coming to the United States was one of several topics I discussed with a panel of journalists and industry practitioners recently. The panel, hosted by Chris Heine of the Bateman Group, focused on the many possible impacts of GDPR. Participants ranged from Gartner Analyst Andrew Frank to Kevin Scholl, director of digital marketing and partnerships at Red Roof Inn. My take: GDPR isn’t going to come to the United States anytime soon – especially during the Trump administration. Here’s why:

  • Data privacy is not a priority at the Federal level. We’ve already experienced the mother of all data breaches – and nothing happened. Remember Equifax, whose failure to protect user data affected millions of Americans? If ever there was a reason to usher in more serious privacy laws, Equifax handed it to the administration on a platter. But in fact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau actually scaled back its investigation of Equifax. And Americans moved on. Meanwhile, influential businesses such as Alphabet and Apple have too much lobbying power for GDPR regulation to take hold widely. (Google alone spent more than $18 million on lobbying efforts in 2017.) The corporate-friendly Trump administration will likely place the adoption of widespread privacy measures low on the priority list.
  • The American won’t demand widespread regulation anytime soon. We may claim we care about privacy when we are asked– but our actions say otherwise. For example, the brutal Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal created a #DeleteFacebook spasm, which died away. It’s not that we want to give businesses unfettered access to our data. But we don’t have the time and energy to police them. Who really takes time to read the mind-boggling user agreements we are periodically asked to review when we update our Apple operating system or when LinkedIn or some other platform revises its practices? (Here’s LinkedIn’s privacy policy. I’m sure you’ve reviewed it carefully because you care about privacy, right?) In addition, and perhaps more importantly – big tech has the upper hand. We’re hooked to our devices and platforms. They fuel our lives. We’ve given them permission to manage us – which is a big reason why #DeleteFacebook died. We may be annoyed with Facebook the brand, but we want Facebook the community.

A more likely scenario: Facebook will take the fall. The company will become subject to more regulation and scrutiny, thus reframing a potentially more widespread issue as the problems of one company. Instead of inspiring Federal action to regulate privacy more broadly, Facebook’s failures will instead marginalize the issue. We’re already seeing Apple capitalize on Facebook’s problems by attempting to demonize the social media platform.

Tougher privacy laws may take hold at the state level, but don’t hold your breath waiting for a dramatic change to occur nationally.

For more insight into our panel, check out:

Adweek, “4 Big GDPR Concerns for Brands, Agencies, and Vendors,” Chris Heine, May 9, 2018.

Bateman Group, “Here Are 4 Big GDPR Concerns for Brands, Agencies and Vendors,” Chris Heine, May 23, 2018.

CNBC, “People will forget about data privacy issues soon — at least, that’s what ad experts expect,” by Michelle Castillo, April 12, 2018.

DMNews, “7 Ways GDPR Will Affect Your Marketing Efforts — According to Top Marketers,” Hillary Adler, May 28, 2018.

Blessed Are the Change Agents

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Years ago, an agency asked me to define its target buyer as part of a brand repositioning. My client wanted to do business with companies eager to innovate. I recommended that my client stop thinking of its buyer in terms of a formal title such as CMO and instead seek out a persona I referred to as the change agent — which I described as a leader who is in a position to effect behavioral change needed for a business to grow and innovate. Find the change agents, I reasoned, and you find the wellsprings of innovation inside a company.

So I read with interest a new report from Brian Solis, The Digital Change Agent’s Manifesto. It turns out that over the past few years, Brian has been interviewing about 30 change agents (with a focus on digital change agents) to better understand them – and to provide a road map for change agents to flourish.

A Revelation

Brian’s report is a revelation. Here is a report that helps businesses identify change agents inside their own organization and set them up for success. His report is also a rallying cry for people who believe they are change agents or on the path to becoming one. Brian maps out the attributes of a change agents, calls out stumbling blocks to success, and identifies 10 mandates for change agents to prosper. Although he focuses on digital change agents — because of the distinct challenges and opportunities digital presents — the report is a manifesto for change agents of any type.

Why You Should Read Brian’s Report

Business leaders should read Brian’s report for one simple reason: at a time when digital disruption has become the norm, companies that can find and support change agents more quickly than their competitors will possess a distinct advantage. Companies that fail to nurture and support change agents will lose these visionaries to someone else who can. And change agents don’t exactly walk around wearing “Ask Me about Change” buttons.  In fact, they might be flying beneath the radar screen, by choice. Brian’s report will help a C-level executive find and uplift them.

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How and Why Businesses Are Adopting Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

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At the 2018 Consumer Electronics show, robots, voice assistants, connected cars, and even connected cities created buzz. Augmented reality and virtual reality – not so much, with the exception of augmented reality applications in the automotive industry.

But proponents of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) should take heart: the real action with AR and VR isn’t happening with consumer products, anyway. The compelling stories about AR and VR are happening on the enterprise side.

Throughout 2017, companies such as Audi, Ford, IKEA, Sephora, and Walmart shared examples of how they’re using AR and VR to run their businesses more effectively. For example:

  • Augmented reality simplifies the purchase decision for IKEA customers: IKEA released Place, an app that makes it possible for shoppers to see how IKEA furniture might look in their living spaces.

With augmented reality, users overlay simpler forms of content on to their physical spaces, usually by using their mobile phones. Niantic’s Pokémon GO and forthcoming Harry Potter games are examples. With Place, users overlay 3D models of furniture into their physical spaces to test for fit, which takes reduces the risk of buying a sofa or bookshelf before carting it home. Continue reading →

Four Companies Gobbled Up Immersive Reality Investments in 2017

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There is good news and bad news for the immersive reality industry, which consists of businesses that provide augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR) products. First the good news:

  • These investments occurred across 28 categories ranging from education to music, suggesting how wide-ranging immersive reality is.

Now the bad news:

  • More than half the investment came from just four major players: Improbable, Magic Leap, Niantic, and Unity. As Lucas Mateny of Tech Crunch noted, the actual deal flow for smaller immersive reality start-ups is getting smaller.

The largest category of investment was gaming, partly because of the $200 million received by Niantic, creator of AR sensation Pokémon GO the forthcoming Harry Potter AR game. The popularity of gaming apps underscores how immersive reality continues to be perceived as an entertainment phenomenon on the consumer side. But gaming accounted for only one tenth of the total investment into immersive reality for 2017, with hardware devices (such as smart glasses) and applications across many other fields accounting for the lion’s share.

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Three Predictions for Virtual Reality in 2018

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In the United States, only 9.6 million people use virtual reality (VR) at least once a month, and by 2019, VR will penetrate 5.2 percent of the population, according to eMarketer. And yet, the VR industry has already become a complex ecosystem. As the VR Fund’s VR Industry Landscape illustrates, the ecosystem encompasses a multitude of companies spanning applications/content, tools/platforms, and infrastructure:

When I recently did a Google search for VR, my top 20 search results revealed diverse uses of VR spanning architecture, entertainment, healthcare, pornography, retail, sports, and travel/hospitality. Why has VR spawned such a complex ecosystem touching many industries when so few consumers actually use it? A few reasons stand out:

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In Search of a New Rock Star

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The moment was freighted with poetic symmetry: I was on my sofa reading Joe Hagan’s newly published Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine when I noticed our postal carrier dropping off the latest issue of Rolling Stone. The cover of Hagan’s book features Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner standing in front of a gallery of rock legends such as Mick Jagger. The latest issue of Rolling Stone features Elon Musk on the cover.

Welcome to the new generation of rock stars. The giants of Wenner’s generation wanted to change the world with music. Today’s rock stars want to use technology to re-imagine how we live.

The contrast between the old and new felt stark as I read the first third of Sticky Fingers, when Wenner launches a magazine in 1967 as rock gods walk the earth. The first issue of Rolling Stone featured John Lennon. Think about that for a moment. You launch a new magazine with zero promise of ever succeeding and no credibility. And coming right out of the gate you land one of rock’s most influential artists ever. John freaking Lennon.

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