The Politics of Involuntary Branding

It’s Friday, so if you happen to be in New York City you may want to take advantage of the entertainment offerings at the 5th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. This year’s festival has 174 feature films and 100 shorts, so you ought to be able to find something to engage you.

The festival is sponsored by “Founding Sponsor,” American Express, and a slew of other brands that includes AMC movie theatres, The Tribeca Grand Hotel, and the I Love NY Film Board, all desperate to be associated with the event. For these sponsors you ought to be able to see the natural “fit” between their brands and the Festival as a marketing venue without much difficulty.

But that’s what effective branded entertainment ought to be, of course, an entertainment offering that reinforces the sponsoring brand’s strengths. That way consumers will “see” the brand, “experience” the brand in a different, better light, and will, ultimately, behave more positively toward the brand. That’s the theory, anyway, but done correctly it can work wonderfully.

But what happens when a brand hasn’t voluntarily entered in to the branded entertainment exercise? What happens when it is pretty clear that the unwitting brand’s strengths are likely to be eroded?

That question was posed to us by Mark Skertic, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. Mark noted that the Festival was going to be opened by "United 93," the film that tells the harrowing story of one of the four airlines hijacked on September 11, 2001. United Airlines wasn’t – obviously – a willing participant in either event, and Mark wondered what the film was going to do to the United Airline brand.

Every American and every viewer is likely to carry an opinion with them into the theater. But politics notwithstanding, the situation is worthy of discussion. As marketers are looking for every engagement opportunity for their brands, we are of the mind that they ought to have gauged the effects every branding circumstance will engender before they sign on the bottom line.

The Engagement Code

White hair does not necessarily engender wisdom.

You may be asking yourself why I would make that statement, and that would be a reasonable question to ask. Oh, and it has nothing to do with the picture accompanying this note.

The reason it came to me was despite the fact that while there is nothing on heaven or earth that is going to stop “The Da Vinci Code” movie from being a hit, certain issues regarding viewer engagement have been raised recently in Hollywood.

Nothing along religious, or ethical, or legal lines. Not Opus Dei or jealous authors threatening the movie premier. No, they’re comments regarding Tom Hanks’ hairstyle in this movie.

No, really, his hair.

Apparently Hanks grew his hair long for the role of Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist, who is summoned to the Louvre Museum to examine a series of cryptic symbols that ultimately relate to Da Vinci's artwork. There’s been a whisper campaign going on in Hollywood about how unattractive it is. How people will hate it. How people will hate the movie. Really.

Anyway, so now you can add “the hairstyle” to the growing list of engagement touch-points marketers have to worry about. Will they or won’t they engage?

Only the hairstylist knows for sure!

XM vs. Sirius

A new report indicates that apparently not all celebrities are created equal when it comes to satellite radio services.

Both XM and Sirius have been busy signing celebrities in an attempt to differentiate themselves from one another and to engage listeners. But there are apparently dramatic differences in public opinion regarding each company's celebrity talent pool. The study indicated that XM's talent has far more universal appeal, while the talent at Sirius is far more polarizing. This insight received a great reception around our shop.

Recent findings from the 2006 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Index signal that the celebrities (a component of the category loyalty driver “Range of Programs”) has the second highest level of expectation among satellite radio listeners (just behind “Best Equipment with Clear Reception”), and that XM is rated better than Sirius on that dimension.

Radio, it turns out, is not so much art or industry or technology as it is a mirror that reflects the values of its listeners. It might be well for the folks at Sirius to remember real radio engagement involves something more than dissonant messages delivered in the presence of listeners.

The Scenery in the Play Was Beautiful, But the Actors Got in Front of It.

We have always defined “engagement” as the consequence of a marketing or communication effort that results in an increased level of brand equity, i.e., the degree to which a brand meets or exceeds consumer expectations for a specific category, for products or services. We’ve discovered that loyalty metrics give us a really good yardstick for measuring engagement and that there’s a very, very high correlation between increased brand equity and actual profits.

Often, clients and journalists ask about “loyalty programs,” and most of the time I tell that they are not talking about “loyalty,” but “continuity.” “Loyalty” is the real thing. Continuity may make you money, but when it’s gone (I’ll define “it” in a bit) the money stops, and that ain’t loyalty.

So just in time for the weekend, the Broadway show, Three Days of Rain, starring Julia Roberts, opened on Wednesday to not-so-great reviews. The New York Times’ Ben Brantley wrote “one of the three stars. . . is Julia Roberts, who is making her big-time theatrical debut. And though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia. Ms. Roberts is the sole reason (“it”) this limited-run revival, which ends on June 18, has become the most coveted ticket in town.”

So here are some questions to ponder: The show is going to make money, which is (or should be) the ultimate outcome of engagement. Is the show engaging or is it just Ms. Roberts who’s engaging? Is casting someone like Ms. Roberts akin to selecting a media vehicle that reinforces an advertised brand’s values? Recognizing that there is no empirical theory or test for “good taste,” should it matter that a play only flourishes because the audience is engaged with one of the actors (Anyone who invested in the show should disqualify themselves from answering this question)?

Just some thoughts worth considering. Engagement is as complex a strategic platform as it is a process. Sir Ralph Richardson once noted that “acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.” Somehow we’d like to believe that real engagement is something more.

The Demand For On-Demand

A good many of our clients have had chats with us regarding the effects that video-on-demand will have (can have?) on engaging viewers. We’ve heard that by the end of the month ABC will provide free content on-demand on-line.

This kind of access could be a major turning point in the evolution of content distribution. But as access on-line won’t have a fast forward button to skip ads, it will be interesting to see how long it takes before it gets hacked or ignored completely.

The thing to keep in mind is that for every new iteration of content distribution, consumers will also find new ways to
Zap it, discount it, or just plain ignore it!

Data Tartar

Today’s blog introduces a new monthly feature illustrating one of our favorite Brand Keys’ mantras: always avoid excellent answers to meaningless questions!

By that we mean information that has been rigorously collected, sliced, diced, stared at, thought about, turned into colorful PowerPoint charts, and placed into equally colorful and attractive binders (that are then put on a shelf and left there – hence the designation “shelf research” for such efforts).

These answers generally have nothing to do with understanding how to best engage customers, and although there’s an awful lot of it out there, we’re only going to do this once a month!

This month’s offerings:

Twenty-five percent (25%) is the proportion of Detroit’s total landmass that consists of vacant lots.

On average, an American eats 8 grilled cheese sandwiches a year

The mpg for a 1908 Ford Model T was 13 city, 21 highway.
The mpg for a 2006 Ford Explorer is 15 city, 21 highway.

Waffle House restaurants serve 3.2 million pounds of grits a year.

A study of the most popular TV soap operas for the past 10 years found that 64 of the characters had fallen into comas.

Do with these what you will and remember avoiding excellent answers to meaningless questions will prevent putting your engagement efforts into a coma!

And The Lord Said, "Let There Be Pre-Easter & Passover Sales"

Easter, celebrated the world over to mark the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and Passover, a holiday that commemorates the Israelites' exodus from Egypt and release from bondage, are both coming up this week and weekend.

Both holidays have been commercialized to a large extent by companies manufacturing holiday related goods, and toys, and greeting cards, and candy, and I think that it’s fair to say you don't have to be a zealot, or even particularly pious, to conclude that the commercialization of religious holidays has gotten slightly out of hand.

For Christians there’s a forest of chocolate bunnies, a barnyard of marshmallow chicks, egg dippers and brightly painted eggs, and baskets of jellybeans and brightly painted (plastic) eggs. Dressing up? Forget Easter bonnets. There’s Jesus makeup and costumes, so you can, according to the ad copy, “say a prayer of thanks for the guy who endured so much to save mankind.” For Jews, there are blow-up matzah balls and fabric toy Seder plates with matzah that 'splits' with Velcro, so children can create their own afikoman. It comes with instructions. Also available (my hand to whatever God you believe in) is the always popular “Plagues in a Pouch”!

OK, I have 2 kids, so I know that it's difficult to get them to sit still long enough to explain why these are among the most hallowed days on both the Christian and Jewish calendars, let alone get them to worship appropriately. You want to engage them somehow, but “Plagues in a Pouch”? Jesus makeup!?

I don’t have a solution, but I think that it’s important that in all the commercialization of these very important festivals, one does not forget the meaning of these holidays. I suppose that you can avoid this challenge by declaring yourself an atheist. But it turns out that to do that takes a lot of faith too!

We’ll be back at this blog on the 17th. Happy holidays – however you and yours celebrate.

Extra! Extra! "Read" All About It!

In the middle of the last century when I was in elementary school we had this annual class event. One of the fathers, who worked for the New York Daily News, came in to talk to us about newspapers. He did this every year but the only thing that I remember now was being taught how to fold a newspaper so you could read it on a bus or subway without having to spread out your arms, annoying the rider next to you. I got to thinking about that this morning as I juggled my newspaper and read a statement much like this one: “A newspaper is just an increasingly obsolete delivery platform. Get rid of it, or start a new 'paper' without it."

Well, it’s not news that newspapers are in trouble, and as I have 3 delivered each morning I'm certainly not cheering their demise. But it’s pretty clear that the Daily Planet model of newspapers is on its last legs. But it's not too late for newspapers to save themselves. Here are some thoughts:

1. Skip the "paper" part. Paper is just an increasingly obsolete delivery platform. It's expensive, and seems to be on the way out. Much as I enjoy the rustle of the pages (they did away with the bouquet of the ink years ago), I base this on a statement made to me by a 29-year old neighbor who says she (and all her friends) only get their news from a computer screen.

2. Have a broader range of competency of your personnel: equip reporters with digital cameras, and video cameras. Have them all shoot photos and clips of video that could be placed on a website along with their stories.

3. Get readers more involved. Incorporate readers and bloggers into the reporting, fact checking, and revision of news stories. Use readers with special expertise in particular areas and create a roster of those people and use them as color commentators on stories in their areas.

4. You need a POV, but people don't like being preached to, or manipulated, and they are increasingly unwilling to pay for that now that they have alternatives. So stop and give them the news, with as little bias as possible, reporting news accurately and well.

Do that and newspapers will still be around for my kids mid-this century. I think that would be super!

PLAY1NG TH3 NUM83R$ GAM3

An industry publication reported this week that “1Q’06 cable winners,” meaning networks that reported double-digit ratings gains for viewers aged 18-to-49, included BET, E!, FX, TV Land, USA Network, and VH1. Other networks also reporting gains were Biography, Style Channel, and WE. The 1Q’06 “losers” (I suppose you have to call them that) were Comedy Central, Lifetime, Sci-Fi Channel, Spike TV, and TNT. They were all down in that “key demographic.”

This report raises an interesting conundrum. On one hand, advertisers want real engagement. On the other hand, their view of success is entrenched in demographic data of the last century. Instead of insisting on metrics that matter, they continue to rely on measures that don’t generally matter anymore – especially given that locating segments of targets isn’t really the challenge it was a couple of decades ago. This is not, perhaps, the most efficient way of going about 21st Century media planning.

I suppose that you can’t blame the cable networks for celebrating such “wins.” They’re businesses after all. They’ll use any tools available to them, and if that means old-fashioned demographics, well then, 18-to-49 it is! Given the absence of anything else, Lord only knows what those networks that have lost in those demographics will do!

Perhaps they should talk to Rainbow Media. They recognized the need for real engagement metrics a couple of years ago and built them into how they assess real competitive advantage. They can show advertisers how to more cost-effectively engage consumers and successfully turn demographic targets into paying customers. Validity studies and all.

So it appears that for marketers continuing to rely only on demographics from which to plan, the future will be exactly like the past. Only far more expensive.