As a kid, I was skeptical when my mother gave me something green and ugly to eat.  It took much more than sticking it on my plate and saying “eat this” to get me to comply.   I needed a valid reason or compelling consequence. 

I came across an article recently that discussed six principles of human persuasion and how we, as marketers, can use them to get consumers to buy our brands or ‘join our cause’.  These principles were very credible and familiar to me not just as a marketer but because these were the same tactics of persuasion used by my mother.   

I suddenly remembered how she’d convinced me that my homemade jeans were way cooler than the premium ’Jordache look.’   – no small task given I was surrounded by a bevy of popular girls in tight jeans with cool swirly logos on their back pockets.  I realize now my mother was more than a resourceful housewife who could create a Jell-O mold out of just about anything…She was a natural marketer. 

Let me illustrate how these principles can be used by Marketers as well as how they were vastly used by my Mom (and probably yours too)…

These principles can be used to analyze your brand’s current situation as well as that of your competitors.  

Which are being used in your category currently?  Which would your target be most receptive too?  Which are your competitors using or not using?  Is there white space in relation to this?

And yes, my mom continues to use them too (mostly on her grandchildren).

So if you work in the world of brands, I challenge you not to get entirely sucked in by this little site, created by the smart Noah Briar and taking the blogosphere by storm. It's popping up everywhere. Thanks to PSFK for the original link, but I've found reference to it here, here and here. It's even been picked up by the Wall St. Journal. Based on the simple truth that brands exist as constructs in our heads, whatever you associate with a brand, is essentially that brand. The site pulls up a logo and you just enter a word or phrase that comes immediately to mind. It then generates a big tag cloud of associations with that brand. Register on the site and have a play. Hard not to get drawn in, especially to the bit that lets you guess the brand based on the tag cloud.  

We blogged about Banksy about a year ago and he continues to be an inspiration for innovation with new ways to provoke and involve.  For those who are not familiar, he uses street art to make a statement about society, cleverly blending images with their environment. His work is mainly in the UK, but some of his international work (such as this in Gaza in 2005) is equally, if not more provocative.

His latest showpiece is called the "Cans Festival" and instead of simply featuring his work, it involves other artists to paint in a disused train tunnel near Waterloo station in London. It's all stencil art, but more collaborative. Some artists were selected, but anyone else could add a stencil, like the person who simply sprayed "Banksy why don't you reply to my emails"?

Like other established artists/actors/musicians, Bansky is becoming a brand…as much as he'd hate that. People have expectations of him now, which for an artist is death. The reason I like his Cans Festival is that is that it's not the expected route for an artist who is known for his isolation and mystery (no one knows what he looks like). It's collaborative, involving and open. He didn't show up and get his hands dirty with all the others of course (or did he?), but he made his work even more involving than it had been before.  In a sense he's extended his relationship with his "consumers" to a completely new level - it's deeper and more meaningful now that they have taken part in it's creation. What next..? maybe accompanied Bansky vandal-alongs.

Since the epic Good vs.Evil spot from 1996, Nike has done a great job with its football ads, using stars from around the world to promote it's connection to the beautiful game. My mate James at AMV in London sent me a link to this latest spot, directed by Guy Ritchie, where we are transformed from being mere observers to actually being participants.  While other ads (and movies) have used the "protagonist POV" technique to engage and draw people in, this spot does so in a dramatically effective way - and does a fantastic job of showing first hand how fast, skillful and physical soccer can be. All the big names are there, Ronaldo, Rooney, Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldinho, but you are right in the middle of it, alongside them, rather than just outside looking in.  It's authentic, involving and different.  What do you think? (click the image to play)

The other day I had a mini-epiphany.  I walked past a Volvo wagon (in my defense, it was a "sportier" Cross Country) and thought "I would be OK driving that".  Maybe it's the impending second child, maybe it's the fact that I've already been driving a full-on dadmobile for 4 years anyway, but suddenly the Volvo seemed like a good fit.  Certainly, part of the switch in my head is due to their age-old message of safety being more relevant to me now than in the past.  While I could professionally appreciate the amazing work done for years and years by AMV/BBBO, I never found it really relevant to me. However, I must admit being immensely impressed by Volvo's recent announcement that they are aiming to prevent any injuries or deaths in Volvo vehicles by 2020.  Now that's an impressive claim and a new way to take their promise of safety to a new level.  I may, of course find myself in a Volvo before 2020, with the same hope.   But it made me wonder what other brands have made such bold pronouncements and actually lived up to them?

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist working at MIT.  He studies how people make decisions and has recently published a book about how irrational we all are.  Dan's book suggests that we are not randomly irrational, but rather our irrationality has patterns and themes that make it entirely predictable.  So for instance, why do home buyers often place their first offer much lower than the sale price on a house?  (The answer is that existing ownership of something creates an intrinsic "value gap" between seller and buyer).  Another brilliant example is how easily and irrationally we are influenced on price & value by the context of how something is sold, rather than a supply/demand/quality equation that we have in our head.  Expensive wine should be good, right? Or a ripped t-shirt sold in a fashionable LA boutique is "reasonably priced" at $100, because the jeans on display next to it are $450.  Anybody who works in the consulting business should read the chapter about pricing different offers - you'll never price a proposal the same way again.

It made me question a lot of my recent purchase decisions, from investing in an uncertain market, to buying property, to purchasing a coffee at my local Starbucks. In an effort to becoming more less predictably irrational, I'm going to try to immunize myself through awareness of these irrational behaviors. I'm going to attempt a week of no irrational behavior. Let's see how that goes.

It's a few years old, but I recently read Masaru Emoto's book "The Hidden Messages in Water" - quite an astonishing read.  In it, Dr.Emoto experimented with how water crystals were formed when they were "stimulated" by different words or music.  He found that when beautiful music was played (e.g. some Chopin , or "Yesterday" by the  Beatles) as water was crystalizing, the actual crystals formed were complex and gorgeous.  When heavy metal was played, the resulting crystals were a mess.  Another experiment involved typing words on paper and wrapping them around a bottle of water.  When the water was cooled to freezing point, Emoto took the crystals and examined them.  Crystals formed from the stimulus of words like "wisdom", "let's do it", "I'm sorry" or "I love you" were perfectly formed and lovely.  When the water was shown phrases like "you fool!" and "you make me sick", no crystals were formed or they were unrecognizable.  Amazing stuff, especially if you think that we're made up of more than 60% water.

But as I flicked through the different experiments conducted, I found myself wanting to see one which stimulated the crystals with different brand names.  Would crystals stimulated by "Whole Foods" or "Kashi" be beautiful and lovely and ones stimulated by "Exxon" or "Marlboro" be all deformed and gnarly?  We're frequently being challenged by clients to come up with new research methods….how about "Brand Crystalization Research"?  

It’s Brita vs Fiji a prize fight matching two water titans in the endeavor to prove to the American public that one is more green than the other. 

Brita comes from the left, urging people to leave the disposable bottles alone and instead refill a bottle with purified Brita filtered water. 

Fiji is now countering with a right hook claim that, with Fiji,  ‘every drop is green’.  

For me, this provokes 2 questions: 

First, I question the wisdom of this tagline for a bottled water company and fully expect to see it in Jay Leno’s Headlines by the end of the week. 

Second, I question the ability of this company to live up to the claims of the push for greenness when their fundamental business is transporting a commodity, which this country has in abundance, thousands of miles, encasing it in plastic and selling it to those discerning Americans who thirst for a more exotic and colorful filtered water product.   

With every company scrambling to put out a green message, we are starting to see a flow of eco-friendly claims that just aren’t believable no matter how loudly and emphatically they are proclaimed in the pages of Vanity Fair.  

Who will be the green referees who point to the winner when the bell rings?

Eggs aren’t the only ones who blog regularly. Now even the maker of the Egg McMuffin is online with its very own internal blog. In an industry where regular communication between headquarters and thousands of locations across the country is notoriously tough, McDonald’s hopes “Station M” will improve two-way dialogue by giving all employees the chance to get online.

“Station M” allows bloggers from crew to corporate to kick off discussions and post comments or questions in three languages. In the QSR biz, the only communication that usually takes place between the restaurant support center and restaurant teams is quick round-table discussions to get input about product performances after market tests, and newsletters from corporate with instructions about the latest promotion. For the first time, McDonald’s will have real-time feedback from the frontlines.

The blog has other possibilities beyond internal communication and branding too. If restaurant teams really do post their opinions with day-to-day happenings, it could be an insider’s perspective of daily consumer insights. It could also enhance McD’s culture of innovation, since the entire organization can post new product ideas.

However, plenty of other companies have tried posting intranet portals as idea or update boards. The typical problem is, the number of ideas or entries and the willingness of anyone to wade through them is usually inversely correlated. And the boards and blogs that start out as great ideas often aren't leveraged at all. 

Every company faces challenges with internal communication. And any headquarters with as many nationwide locations as McDonald’s has a tumultuous time trying to spark dialogue. McDonald’s new model with internal blog could revolutionize this type of relationship. That is, if anyone actually uses it…

What is truth?  And will we even recognize it if we see it?

You probably thought it was weird when you found out your best friend’s dog, Mr. Scruffles, had his own MySpace page. 

Did it seem even stranger that he has 500+ canine friends he socially networks with online while your most thriving web-based relationship is with Citibank.com? 

Well now it appears that even inanimate objects can network online and be way cooler than you and me.

Like my new friend, Fred. 

He’s hip. 

He’s smart. 

He's got alot of pals.

He’s got a MySpace page, a Facebook page, his own website, a blog and a Flickr account. 

He’s a bottle of spring water.

I’m enamored with his effortless, unpretentious packaging.  There’s no babbling brook.  No fancy, made-up French words.  Just a simple, clear, flask-shaped bottled with an unassuming logo cradled in a plain blue carton.   Obviously, he doesn’t need to dress to impress.

Now, keep in mind, I haven’t even tasted Fred’s natural velvety water (freshly tapped from the Catskill Mountains) and already I’m a fan…albeit a slightly jealous one.   

He’s doing what many companies wish they could do – successfully promote a product using social media.  Moreover, it’s a commodity.  It will hydrate you, yes, but so will sticking the garden hose in your mouth.  And while that may get your friends and neighbors talking about you, I doubt they’d pay money to watch you ever do that again.

Curious?  Go ahead.  Meet Fred. 

www.fredspot.com

Apple Computer is taking on…the entire city of New York. 

Apparently, what has now become a knee jerk reaction for the computer company, they have taken Mark protection to the streets of New York, claiming that the new GreeNYC campaign’s visuals infringe on the Apple logo.

Am I crazy or is this is too far?  I am pretty sure that New York was called ‘The Big Apple’ long before the microchip was dreamed up even in the minds of the most clairvoyant science fiction writers.   I am almost positive that these two entities do not compete and will never compete in the same business (unless Apple really does plan to take over the world, presiding over its benevolent Cool-ocracy from sunny San Jose.)  And, let’s not overlook the fact that the two Marks look nothing alike.

I consider myself a reasonable person, -though arguably, many may refute this assertion - and I cannot imagine any other reasonable people confusing these logos and accidentally attributing Apple Computer with elevating the social conscience of jaded New Yorkers.

Personally, I want the tax money that will be spent deciding this case back.