There's no such thing as a safe brand

In the late 1960's, Xerox ran a print campaign that was both strategic and brilliant. It was before my time, but I remember seeing it in the awards books. The headline was something like, "There's no such thing as a Xerox."

With those simple words, Xerox both protected its brand legally (by telling people to stop using the word as a noun or verb), and reminded everyone that Xerox really was a noun and a verb.

Few brands ever reach the point where their name is so strong they own the category. Kleenex is one. Google is another. It's what we strive for in marketing, the ideal position to be in. What could be better than owning a category?

Then I saw the new Xerox campaign, which aired during this year's U.S. Open Golf Championship. A perky woman walks around a staged set and gushes over all the things that Xerox does besides, well, Xeroxing. I won't bore you with the details of the ad. Suffice it to say that the company's executives have apparently decided that the copy machine, that cash cow that fed the company for decades, is beginning to look like a different animal altogether. In the age of mobile communications, the old brand has become an albatross.

So Xerox is trying as fast as it can to get away from the category it has owned for decades, but now wishes it didn't. No doubt they had to do it, and this probably isn't the first time they've tried.

They got it half right. Like the original ad, the new campaign is very strategic. But it isn't very brilliant.

And the "Most Mundane Tagline" award goes to...

Several years ago I wrote a blog about a tagline that I considered one of the least inspirational I'd ever come across. It was for Delta Airlines, and the line was: "We get you there."

Why did I think it was bad? Because it conveyed the minimum possible value to the customer. True, "getting there" is the point of a plane flight, and it's far better than not getting there. But couldn't the airline have suggested some added value? For instance, you could get there in comfort. Or you could get there on time. Or you could get there with all your bags. But no, with Delta, you could get there. Period.

I assumed we'd never see such a mundane tagline again, but I was wrong. A similar line has recently surfaced underpinning Toyota's shiny new ad campaign. The slogan is (drumroll, please) "Let's go places."

Like the airline tag of years before, Toyota's line expresses the basic point of getting in a car. Namely, to go places. But also like the airline tag, the line conveys the least possible value. You won't go places in comfort, or style, or with a high degree of reliability, or anything else worth wanting. You'll just go places. Apparently, the journey will be "aspirational" and will involve "enriching lives." How is that better than a horse? You can go places on horses too. For that matter, you can go places by hitchhiking, riding with a friend, calling a cab, getting on a train, riding a bicycle, or just walking.

More to the point, you can go places in a Chevy or Ford or Honda or any other make of car, and that's the real problem with the tagline. All it really says is, "We let you do what every other car brand lets you do."

And that's not saying very much.


Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

What Watson can't do

People are still talking about how IBM's Watson supercomputer destroyed two Jeopardy champions over a recent three-day contest.

Watson was impressive in its ability to understand complex, nuanced statements, and then search text databases to assemble the correct questions. Even the silly mistakes it made, like naming Toronto in a question about U.S. cities, seemed somehow charming.

It made me think about how many tasks computers have replaced over the last 20 years or so. The best chess players are made of silicon. Assembly line workers are now Walmart greeters, their jobs replaced by manufacturing robots. Photo retouching was once a craft and fine art, practiced by a select few using "air brushes"; now photo retouching is what our kids do to a photo before they post it on Facebook. Kindles and iPads may replace books before long. I've been reading that Watson may soon appear in hospitals, helping to diagnose patients.

And does anybody have just a phone anymore?

Yet fortunately for writers such as myself, there is one thing that computers are not much better at than they were 20 years ago, and that is writing. I believe that is because writing is an extension of thought itself, and for all their marvelous powers, computers cannot think. At all.

Watson, like its close kins Google and Bing, has an uncanny ability to find relevant results. But it is still a GIGO device (garbage in, garbage out). For thinking about a problem, identifying what needs to be discovered, and phrasing the right search query, human thinking is still required. And thinking is exactly what is required of writers, as well as marketers, product managers, sales directors, and all the other very human endeavors of business.

I take comfort in knowing that, despite IBM's supercomputer technology, years of research and teams of AI experts, Watson still cannot come close to doing what most of us do every single day. Write a simple letter, in plain English.

I can see Ken Olsen in the Cloud

The other day, I drove by the old, abandoned headquarters of Digital Equipment Corporation, that one-time technology giant since swallowed up and dismantled by rivals. I started my career there as a writer, just as the company was on the ascendancy, and later I worked for the ad agency that handled the account. I wrote the first Vax ad, and probably the last one too.

It's been three decades and more since Ken Olsen and Digital revolutionized computers by making access both interactive and distributed. Ironically, he couldn’t see that personal computers were going to take over the desktop, even though, in some ways, they were an extension of his own idea.

But PCs were also very different from Mr. Olsen's vision. PCs distributed more than access. They distributed the computer power itself, the processing and the applications. As a result, over the years, we the users have accumulated an enormous overhead and duplication of local computer power and cost.

That's why the Cloud is on the horizon. Built on the Internet, the Cloud will allow us to decouple our information access from our information technology. Our storage and applications can all float in the Cloud, and we can focus on what we really want to do--communicate and use information.

Mr. Olsen disagreed with PCs on one important point. He didn't think people needed computer power as such, they just needed the access. And on that point, it turns out he may have been right.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

Brand New

By now everyone knows about the Gap branding fiasco.

For some reason, the company decided it was time for a new logo. The public revolted against the mediocre design, and after attempting to "crowdsource" a new logo on Facebook, the company gave up and scrapped the whole thing.

Something similar is reported to have taken place at General Motors this summer, though nobody outside the company has seemed to notice. According to online articles, the Chevrolet division was trying to drop the name "Chevy." Henceforth, only the complete name "Chevrolet" would be used. One article reported that employees had to put a dollar in a jar every time they used the name Chevy.

The day after reading these articles, I watched a Chevy commercial on TV. Yes, a Chevy commercial, about Chevy trucks. For more information, visit www.chevy.com.

Luckily for GM, the Chevy brand is so strong, not even the worst marketing decisions can kill it. It's in our culture for pete's sake ("Drove my Chevy to the levy"). Chevy is living the dream of every company trying to build a brand. So why in the world would they want to change it?

Most brands aren't Gap or Chevy, of course, instantly recognizable around the world.

On the other hand, every company has managed to make its name in the marketplace with whatever name and logo it happens to own. Every ad, press release, pdf and business card has been quietly building a brand that people know and remember. That's a sizable investment no matter how you look at it, and the cost of changing it can be enormous--in dollars, distractions and possibly public embarrassment.

Even when brands are suffering--high fructose corn syrup or BP, for instance--they can't easily get away with a name change in today's instant media world.

The moral of all this, I believe, is that a brand is not just a design or a word that you can change because of this year's marketing numbers. It's who you are.

More often than not, brand old is better than brand new.

Stop the presses

A funny thing has happened to marketing in the last few years. The cost of production has almost disappeared.

Today, marketers routinely post their brochures as PDF files on their websites, to entice visitors to download information and perhaps fill out a form to do so. There often is no plan to print the collateral at all, except for occasional on-demand printing in low quantities for trade shows and sales calls.

And with the economy still floundering, email, pay-per-click and other online media seem a lot more attractive than printed direct mail. Webinars instead of seminars. Twitters instead of newsletters.

Suddenly everything is free.

As a result, the value of traditional marketing services has been plunging across the board. Remember when you had to pay hundreds for typesetting, before type became free thanks to computers? Now the same trend is happening everywhere. Why pay thousands to have a brochure designed, if you're not going to spend thousands more printing it? Why pay for custom photo shoots that eat up half your budget for the year? Ink and paper are disappearing from marketing, or at least becoming far less important. It's the same phenomenon that's happening to newspapers and magazines. And to CDs and probably books before long.

The local Blockbuster video store in my town just closed up shop. A few weeks earlier, the FYE store down the street went under. Design firms that built their business on deep expertise in ink and printing are struggling or disappearing.

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." Not anymore. The medium is disappearing. Now the message is the message.

In a virtual world, content isn't just king. It's the only thing.

Learn more about my writing and editing services at www.westcopy.com.

If you want leads, make an offer.

In politics, it's a timeless truth: "If you want people to vote for you, ask for their vote."

The same principle applies to website lead generation, quite literally. In asking people to take any kind of action at your site, especially contacting you or making a purchase, you are asking for their vote of confidence, not to mention their time and money.

The best way to get them to cast that vote is to offer something of value. Much has changed in direct marketing since the Internet, but this has not. People will take notice if they can get something they want. What kind of offer has value? That depends on your customers, your marketplace and your competitors. In many business and technology markets, a white paper will generate good quality leads. In a more consumer market, don't underestimate the power of a free T-shirt.

You should follow a few rules when making an offer on your website:

• Highlight your offer on the home page. Why not?
  
• Make sure the offer is appropriate for your brand. Never offer anything that is "beneath" the image you want for your company. You can trade up, but never trade down.
• Make the offer relevant to your business. The closer your offer is associated with what you do, the better. For instance, a light bulb company can offer a white paper about energy reduction. A paper company can offer a beautiful print of a striking image. A web development company can offer "10 Rules for a Great Web Site."
• Ask for a LITTLE information. When they click on the offer, you can use this opportunity to gather information about your prospect. Ask for their name, email and company. Get their phone number if you can. The better your offer, the more you can ask. But don't get greedy and ask for too much or they'll click away.
• Connect the offer to a sales visit if possible. If your object is to get in the door, this is your chance. Get them while they're hot. Many companies follow up leads within a week or two with phone calls. Hiring a telesales firm to do this for you may be a good idea.
• Have a long-term follow up plan. Use an automatic customer contact system or assign someone inside to do it, but make sure you stay in touch with the people who contact you, through a vehicle such as a regular e-newsletter.

You have to invest a little bit to make good offers on your home page. But by following these steps, that investment should pay off in site performance and, better yet, in sales.