PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

I was in New York recently listening to some focus groups on enterprise security. The people on the other side of the glass oversaw the safety of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. They were smart and articulate (and God bless them, they also liked our creative). When we came to the channel survey portion of each group, it was striking how many subjects enthusiastically supported the idea of a one-minute video or even a one-minute podcast as a call to action.

“Sure,” one of the more cranky executives said, “I’d give a minute of my time to hear more.” (more…)

This intriguing question comes via a media colleague, who found it in a Columbia Business School ad.

Clearly, we will be building mass brands and niche brands in the future, but what sort, with what tools and with what kind of partners?

I thought Kevin Maney’s perspective on this question was pretty interesting in his new Portfolio piece, “Free for All.”

When you look at the tectonic shifts in the music industry that have taken place since 1999, those days of paying $9.99 for a new B-52s album and $28 for a ticket to see them live seem like 200 years ago. For example:

* Radiohead lets the user choose the price for In Rainbows

* Nine Inch Nails releases its latest album only to its Web site (though, like Radiohead, you could pay a huge premium for a deluxe edition, both of which have sold out)

* Timbaland has cut an exclusive music deal with Verizon Wireless

* 99% of all downloaded music in China is illegal, and 85% of all CDs sold are pirated

* Concert revenue is surging ($3.9 billion in 2007), CD sales are cratering. If you’ve purchased a concert ticket lately, you know that all too well.

So what may be coming?

* All musical content becomes free, with a mass brand paying seven figures to give the CD away free with its identity and messaging associated with it. (Or to quote Maney, “Any day now, I expect to find a flash drive with a Radiohead song on it inside a specially marked box of Cap’n Crunch.”)

* Groups make money only from sponsorship and touring, using their music as the content play. (Since when did anyone ever pay for a music video, or a CIO for a white paper?)

* Lots more experimentation, “like a teenager’s goth phase.” To this list add Elvis Costello’s Sundance Channel talk show, U2’s 3D movie, and any number of endorsement deals, commercials, and merchandising plays assembled from industry fragments as the music labels begin to crash and burn.
In the end, it’s about giving away the perfect format of the artist’s brand for free (why not? It can be produced and sold for virtually nothing) but exacting a premium for the non-reproducible, thrilling, experience of the artist’s brand.

Does anything here apply to brand building in our world?

If the future of brands is about stepping beyond the perfect print and TV ad proscenium into the human experiential, I’d say just about everything.

I was reading an interview this week with the incoming president of RISD, a 41-year-old named John Maeda who has never run an institution of higher learning. When he was asked why he decided to leave MIT Media Lab, he said:

“I’d been at MIT for quite a while, but I was a bit tired of technology. I think all of us are. We have so much of it, more of it every day, and we’re not sure why we’re buying so much of it. It’s kind of like a summer movie – except it lasts too long.”

The day after I read this I lost my cell phone (”Lucky you,” quipped a colleague) and decided I wanted to downgrade from a smart phone to something a little less brilliant: a Motorola Razr is what I was hankering after. I expected this swap to be a simple process since I have cell phone insurance, and even to be complimented, at least in a backhanded way, for choosing simplicity.

The mobile phone insurance rep was having none of it. “I’m sorry, sir. You’re not allowed to downgrade. We can only replace the phone that you lost.” He was immediately on to his next activity screen with me, but the whole thing set me to wondering: At what point are we using too much technology in our lives? Will we even know when we’ve passed the overload point?

The Economist had a wonderful special report recently on the rise of technology nomads (if you’re reading this, it’s a fair bet you are one) and how cell phone technology has strengthened our ’strong bonds’ with immediate family but further deteriorated our ‘weak bonds’, the ones we have with strangers, acquaintances, contractors, neighbors and so on. If we’re always attached to a piece of technology, are we really reachable? Are we really living in the moment?

What’s the link to PJA? On a weekly basis we see plenty of marketing programs that use a scattershot approach to technology. One prospect recently showed us a series of YouTube videos he’d posted about his company. Vaguely interesting, but they weren’t attached or tied into anything, and therefore had few hits and almost no impact.

On the other end of the spectrum, I continue to see many case studies on the continuing power of opt-in email marketing. Fast Company recently highlighted the enormous boost Barneys New York has realized with Sheldon Gilbert’s startup Proclivity. The big secret: use predictive algorithms to tune an email program, and realize 10-fold response rate increases.

I wonder if my wireless carrier and their insurance company could have seen the sales opportunity within my service request: give me a simple piece of technology that suits my needs, and I’m likely to use it more.

Maybe next contract.