• Deadlines out the wazoo, but staying busy is great.
• Recently discovered the relaxing beauty of Celestial Seasonings’ Sleepytime Vanilla tea…a must-have to de-stress.
• Excited about my personal marketing efforts being distributed in Dubai, UAE.
• Loved the warmer weather the last couple days…gave me a chance to do some outdoor photography without my fingers falling off.
• I miss the old split image focusing screens that were in my old cameras and can’t wait to get an after-factory one installed in my new camera.
• Kohen goes for his four month appointment on Friday…”little” guy already weighs 20 pounds.
• Excited about my new hobby — golf.  Not sure if it will be long-lived, but at least we’ll try.

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Do I like standing in an express line for twenty minutes? Do I like never being able to find an associate when I need one? No. So why do I keep going back? Because Walmart knows its customers. They understand the inbred laziness of their primary (i.e. American) consumer, and they capitalize on it. Sure, we might complain to friends or rant in blog posts about our discontent. Yes, you can find a number of products elsewhere for cheaper. But in the end we endure what we believe to be necessary evils for the convenience of the one-stop-shopping experience, and Walmart’s knowledge of this has put them on top of world. Even standing in line for twenty minutes is more convenient than the time it would take to go elsewhere.

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Next year, capitalize on this confusion by creating a miniature escape for your customers. Don’t hit them with a sales pitch or price gimmick; go against the norm, whether it’s giving away a free product or service, providing peace of mind or simply letting them know that they mean more to you than a dollar sign.

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Merry Christmas!

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1) NBC GOES ALL LENO ALL THE TIME
Edsel … New Coke … Lenovision.

NBC has joined the immortals of marketing stupidity. This year the molting peacock network and president Jeff “Have They Fired Me Yet?” Zucker decided to turn five of the primest pieces of prime-time real estate — the hour between 10 and 11 PM from Monday through Friday — into the Jay Leno hour.

The result? A 28% drop in viewership (through mid-November). This has not only killed network revenues but done in affiliates who have no lead-in for their late news casts.

Despite this, Jeff “10% Of Americans Are Unemployed and I’m Not?” Zucker recently said that all is going according to plan. “Right now, in terms of its performance on the television network, at NBC, in terms of ratings it’s doing exactly what we thought it would do.” Comcast recently bought NBC in what must have been an attempt to copy the government’s cash for clunkers program. Comcast shareholders can now only hope they are being lied to. The worst case scenario is that Mr. Z believes what he is saying.

On the plus side:

1. It is now possible to buy every ad slot during the Leno show for less than the cost of a house in Detroit.
2. The federal witness protection program is using guest slots to hide people.

2) TIGER, TIGER BURNING BRIGHT
(Originally #9 — Who knew?)

Because I have a really limited imagination I thought the big celeb marketing mishap story of the year would be Michael Vick’s failed attempt to become a spokesperson for PETA. Then along came Tiger who prefers women with bad nose jobs to the Swedish bikini model he is actually married to. The story broke on Nov. 27th, when Mrs. Woods apparently decided to prove her own golfing expertise. This was unfortunate for Accenture which two days earlier had kicked off its annual Tiger campaign. A print ad which ran in the Nov. 30th Wall Street Journal featured Tiger Woods walking in the rough under the headline: “The road to high performance isn’t always paved.” And watch out for the trees and fire hydrants. Accenture has since declawed its Tiger connection.

UPDATE: File this under “Pull the other one, it’s made of wood.”

“We decided several months ago to discontinue Gatorade Tiger Focus, along with some other products to make room for our planned series of innovative products in 2010,” Gatorade spokeswoman Jennifer Schmit said in an e-mailed statement.

3) BANKERS CUT BONUSES, INCREASE SALARY & BLAME JESUS
First the banking industry made a big show of cutting the obscene bonuses it was paying itself for going on the dole. Meanwhile they hoped no one would notice the allegedly eliminated bonuses were now being paid as plain old salary.

But wait … that’s not all!

Apparently still feeling that their efforts to destroys the economy were still underappreciated, bankers started claiming Jesus wanted them to do it.

“The injunc­tion of Jesus to love others as our­selves is an endorse­ment of self-​interest,” Goldman’s [inter­na­tional adviser Brian] Grif­fiths said Oct. 20, his voice echo­ing around the gold-​mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s finan­cial dis­trict. “We have to tol­er­ate the inequal­ity as a way to achiev­ing greater pros­per­ity and oppor­tu­nity for all.”

How much LSD do you have to take to interpret Scripture this way? However much it is, it is certainly being passed out at all the best financial institutions. Two weeks later, Barclays CEO John Varley spoke at the venerable St. Martin-in-the-Fields and tried to wrap the Bible around his bonus.

“There is no conflict between doing business in an ethical and responsible way and making money. We make our biggest contribution to society by being good at what we do. Profit is not satanic.”

I guess it all depends on who gets to determine how we define ethical and responsible. Perhaps Varley could have gotten away with this specious argument had he not added this gloss to the text after the service: “Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes. And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.” (Not a good sign when a banker can’t even get his verb and subject numbers to add up.) Hey John, can we parse the word “fair” for a moment?

I believe the renowned 20th century theologian Ray Price put it best when he asked, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on His television show?”

4) GM EXPLAINS AWAY ITS “LITTLE PROBLEM”
In the face of the greatest single corporate collapse in the history of the world, GM rolled out an ad that inadvertently explains the company’s failure.

It is a veritable symphony of weasel words.

Let’s be completely honest, no company wants to go through this.

By the end of that first sentence it is clear this ad has no intention whatsoever of living up to that initial clause. You can tell because the final pronoun is never made specific. That “this” covers billions of sins. It implies we all know what has happened without saying what that was. It is everything to everyone and thus means nothing. Is “this” an utter failure of leadership? Or is it an inability to have even the vaguest understanding of the needs of the marketplace? Sadly, I suspect “this” is “an economic calamity no one could have foreseen” – the preferred phrase of everyone from Alan Greenspan to, well, the Detroit-based car makers. There is no taking responsibility anywhere in this ad just as there has been no taking responsibility at GM for decades. (Read more here)

5) VOGUE: BLACKFACE IS THE NEW BLACK
The October issue of French Vogue had a photo spread of the very Caucasian Lara Stone painted head to toe in dark make-up. Vogue went with the old “I’m sorry if you found my words insulting” defense and told the Daily Mail “it was unaware it had caused offence, but said it could not give any further comment.” (Worth noting: Italian Vogue’s issue for the same month was filled with actual Black women.) In a keeping up with the KKK move inflight magazine EasyJet ran a photo spread featuring brooding generic models dressed in black POSING IN FRONT OF BERLIN’S HOLOCAUST MONUMENT.

Fortunately for me marketers just can’t seem to figure out that Nazi = Bad. This years examples:

• A wax museum opening in Thailand put up posters of mass murder Hitler with a slogan that said: “Hitler is not dead.”
• Two German coffee companies ran (and then pulled) an ad campaign featuring a slogan almost identical to one used at Buchenwald.
• Red Bull marketing mag calls Werner von Braun a “hero”

LATE BREAKING STUPIDITY UPDATE: NYT runs gift guide with special section devoted to:

“Somali fashion, do-it-yourself henna kits, children’s books that draw inspiration from the lives of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor: it’s not hard to find gifts created for and by people of color this holiday season.” (emphasis added)

Why it’s almost like they’re real people!

6) CHOCOLATES SHAPED LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA & MORE
CandyExpress said its commemorative Barack Obama heads would only be available for a limited time, unfortunately it wasn’t limited enough. Off the top of my head I would say there are three things Mr. Obama should not be used to advertise: Chocolate, fried chicken (a German company did it), watermelon (that’s a yet). However, the Russians came up with a bunch of things I’d never thought of. They used our President to advertise a tanning salon, a dental clinic and pre-packaged ice cream with the slogan “Everyone’s talking about it: dark inside white!” The bars have a chocolate-flavored center embedded in a layer of vanilla.

However these are just idiocy, the sheer stupidity award goes to Beanie Baby maker Ty. First they decided to sell two new dolls named Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia. Then they tried to deny they were named after America’s First Kids.

“[We] chose the dolls’ names because “they are beautiful names,” not because of any resemblance to President Obama’s daughters, said spokeswoman Tania Lundeen. “There’s nothing on the dolls that refers to the Obama girls,” Lundeen said. “It would not be fair to say they are exact replications of these girls. They are not.”

Sorry dear, but in order to get away with a lie like that you have to be a bank.

7) STUPIDITY? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
The word of the year really should have been app. The ubiquitous iPhone has spawned an industry of companies trying to market their wares by providing allegedly useful and/or humorous apps. To paraphrase Pogo, this confronted Pepsi with an insurmountable opportunity. The company released an app called Before You Score for its Mountain Dew AMP brand. The app gives you 24 different types of women (sorority girl, etc.) and offers “appropriate” pick-up lines for each type and other similar information.

Not to be outdone, LawFirms.com, a legal referral site, decided to get attention with a campaign featuring the (fictitious) app iCoyote. It “packs all of the features of a real immigrant smuggler into the iPhone. Using GPS, navigate through the patrol packed desert without worrying about that pesky Border Patrol.”

The app included a variety of features such as:

• iWife. It “will take care of finding marriage prospects for you. Aggregating and analyzing data from a variety of online sources [to] match you up with only the most promising US Citizen candidates.”
• iLawyer. “Homeland Security is Cracking down. Not to worry. With iLawyer, you can find an attorney to convince the immigration court to grant Asylum Protection. A Green Card is a finger swipe away.”
• Weather Monitors. “The desert can get hot, and trying to cross it when it’s 120 degrees is not fun. Get up-to-date weather forecasts to pick the right time and ensure your trip to the US is comfortable and fun-packed.”
• City Statistics. “San Antonio? Albuquerque? Tucson? San Diego? Not sure which is best? Get unemployment statistics, current average wages, cost of living expenses and more. Get the job you want, at the right wage, tax free!”

AMERICAN GIRL SELLS “HOMELESS GIRL” DOLL
Your child can learn that the homeless are just like real people once you spend $95 to buy her a “less fortunate” playmate for her other American Girl doll(s). The latest addition to the American Girl line of how-do-you-justify-it-ly expensive dolls is Gwen Thompson. Ms. Thompson

and her mother Janine fell on hard times when her father lost his job; they later lost the house as they were unable to keep up payments. Soon after, Gwen’s father left them and they became homeless the fall before the start of the book’s events. Initially, Gwen’s mother has them live in their car until the winter comes; she then takes them to Sunrise House, a place for homeless women and children. Sunrise House helps them get on their feet and eventually get a new apartment.

And should you also want to teach the kid that the disabled are people too, American Girl also sells a wheelchair for $30.

9) KFC UNDERESTIMATES OPRAH’S POPULARITY
Why would you pay to have Oprah endorse your product if you didn’t know what the result be? In May the chain formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken paid Ms. Winfrey to discuss its new grilled chicken on her show. (This is part of an ongoing effort to rebrand KFC as someplace that serves something besides FC. By the time it’s over KFC will be Rhode Island Clam Shack. But I digress.) In addition to giving product to her audience — and how pissed were they? Other folks got a new car and they get a food experiment – viewers could go to a website and download a coupon for up to four free two-piece chicken meals with two sides and a biscuit. If there’s one thing the US loves more than Oprah, it’s Oprah and free food.

You’ll never guess what happened. OK, so maybe you will.

Several bajillion people downloaded the coupon and sprinted to the nearest KFC. Well, the food disappeared faster than a dollar bill on the floor of the Senate. As a result somefranchisees started refusing to accept the coupon, some told people the promotion was over for the day, some quickly pointed to the “while supplies last” clause, the more creative said that coupons with barcode numbers ending in “1234″ are not valid. Look closely at the barcode below to see what that meant.

All this brought new meaning to the chain’s horrible new tagline: “Unthink What You Thought About KFC.”

Another chain, El Pollo Loco, moved smart and fast and sent out a twitter saying they’d accept the coupons on Mother’s Day. Soon Oprah was having to apologize for the stupidity and KFC issued rain checks to the disgruntled.

All of which goes to prove that whatever you have to pay Oprah, the ROI is REAL!

10) (tie) BLACKWATER, NIGERIA & SWINE INDUSTRY LAUNCH REBRANDING EFFORTS

• In an attempt to change all the nasty connotations that go along with being mercenaries, Blackwater Worldwide changed its name to Xe. That’s pronounced zee, as in “zee idiots in marketing thought of it.”

Blackwater president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees the new name reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security. “The volume of changes over the past half-year have taken the company to an exciting place and we are now ready for two of the final, and most obvious changes,” Jackson said in the note.

That exciting place seems to include a lot of lawsuits.

• Tired of being thought of as the world’s foremost manufacturer of email con jobs, Nigeria decided to tackle it’s massive corruption problems with that most modern approach: Marketing. Its new slogan: At least we’re not AIG.

“At international airports, in trains, in shopping malls, and almost everywhere, every Nigerian is a marked person,” Dora Akunyili, information minister and self-styled chief image maker said at the launch of the re-branding campaign this week. “We are pulled aside for questioning. We are seen as potential drug pushers or fraudsters. We are unfortunately denied the benefit of the doubt.”

• Swine flu is no laughing matter. Especially if you’re the American Pork Association. They went into overdrive screaming about how it was hurting their sales and enlisted Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin who constantly referred to the “so-called swine flu.” Unfortunately humor trumps branding every time. Thus we got headlines like:
  • Pork Industry Has Beef With Swine Flu (NPR)
  • Swine flu not kosher in Israel (Reuters)

“We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, a black-garbed Orthodox Jew, told a news conference Monday, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases.

CIO writer and friend Al Sacco came up with this: Swine flu isn’t a scary enough name. It needs a slogan, too: “Pork Plague, the (Other) White Death,” for example.

To check out some honorable mentions, click here.

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1) Seth’s Blog
website: sethgodin.typepad.com
rss feed: Click Here
Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and avid agent of change. Godin is the author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world. This is his personal blog, where he riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.

2) Duct Tape Marketing
website: www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog
rss feed: Click Here
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide”. His Duct Tape Marketing Blog was chosen as a Forbes favorite for small business and marketing.

3) The Marketing Minute
website: www.drewsmarketingminute.com
rss feed: Click Here
Drew McLellan gets branding and marketing and he desperately wants you to get it too. So he tells stories, asks questions, and milks sacred cows. All to help readers discover their brand so they can create authentic love affairs with their customers.

4) I Believe In Advertising
website: www.ibelieveinadv.com
rss feed: Click Here
I Believe In Advertising offers up one of the best blogs about advertising and marketing around the globe, updated daily. It is a great point of reference for advertising professionals and advertising agencies alike.

5) brandflakesforbreakfast
website: brandflakesforbreakfast.com
rss feed: Click Here
Brandflakesforbreakfast is a blog devoted to news, ideas, design, branding and gossip. It’s brought to you by the guys at Plaid – the self-described “greatest creative agency in all the land.”

Have your own list of blogs that you regularly read? Post them in the comments below!

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As Seth states, marketers (and business professionals in general) need to be in the business of building trust. One good example that I saw recently was in the movie Miracle on 34th Street (yes, it was the first time I have watched it) when Kris tells parents where they can purchase various Christmas presents for less than at the Coles deparment store. On the surface it initially looked like a foolhearty gesture, but it established trust among the customers. When Coles embraced this approach their sales shot up because of the confidence and trust that was established.

While communicating with a potential client today about one of their upcoming projects they had expressed some uncertainty about several factors involved. Unsure of whether or not they would be able to work with me on the project they inquired as to how much I would charge to refer them to another source or recommend an alternative solution. I told them I wouldn’t charge them anything! Yes, I would like the account. Yes, I would like the extra revenue. But my goal is not to create an imaginary monopoly on the types of services that we offer – it is to help further the best interests of our clients.

So instead of trying to gain the almighty dollar, try gaining a little trust…

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All of us receive junk mail almost (if not) daily: useless coupons for the local hoagie joint, multiple offers from satellite TV providers, and the ever-popular “pre-approved” credit offers. There are times when I am almost willing to risk the loss of legitimate mail just so that I can throw all of it away.

While sifting through the mail today I came across an official-looking envelope that, in addition to having a professional seal and security imprinting, contained three words that made my heart jump: “Audit Documents Enclosed.” An official audit is not what the normal business owner hopes to have to face, myself included. I tore open the end of the envelope, and as I pulled out the enclosed document the words “Professional Audit Verification” lunged at me from the legal-looking paper. My heart began to sink as a huge wave of “Oh, here we go” washed over me.

Click to view full document

Was it an effective form of creative marketing? Yes, I will definitely give them that! But in addition to the relief that I felt after opening the envelope there was also a bubble of disgust that welled up within me. I mean, did you really have to? Stunts like this conjure up visions of weeping salesmen and, in my book at least, fall just below trying to sell life insurance by mailing out fake death certificates of loved ones. Will I take them up on their offer? Probably, but only because it will cost me nothing.

What are your thoughts? Should companies and marketers use strategies like this to emotionally manipulate customers (in addition to what we already do on a daily basis) into purchasing, testing, or otherwise engaging our products and services?

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What is Google Wave?

“Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” – Google

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

What can I use Google Wave for?

• Organizing Events Keep a single copy of ideas, suggested itinerary, menu and RSVPs, rather than using many different tools. Use gadgets to add weather, maps and more to the event.
• Group Projects Collaboratively work in real time to draft content, discuss and solicit feedback all in one place rather than sending email attachments and creating multiple copies that get out of sync.
• Meeting Notes Prepare a meeting agenda together, share the burden of taking notes and record decisions so you all leave on the same page. Team members can follow the minutes in real time, or review the history using Playback.
• Brainstorming Bring lots of people into a wave to brainstorm – live concurrent editing makes the quantity of ideas grow quickly! It is easy to add rich content like videos, images, URLs or even links to other waves. Discuss and then work together to distill down to the good ideas.

My experience with Google Wave?

After waiting for several weeks (maybe even a month or two, I can’t remember) I finally received my Google Wave Invite and jumped onboard to see what all of the fuss was about. I was pleasantly surprised by it’s relative ease-of-use, although I was somewhat disappointed that out of the limited number of invites that had already been sent out I was only able to locate a few people within my local area with which to “wave.” But since then I have been handing out invites to friends, family, and business associates and am steadily growing my network. (More invites to hand out….see below.) While I haven’t used Wave for many business-related purposes yet I fully intend to in the months ahead. For those of you who may already have Wave, look me up at “allenmowery@googlewave.com.”

What impact will Google Wave have on the business and marketing world?

Blogger Mitch Joel at TwistImage says:

“Imagine brands inviting their consumers into a Google Wave – be it for customer service, product development or simply to discuss brand evangelism. This could become the highly personalized online social network many of us have been waiting for.”

When asked whether Google Wave is good for marketers he responds:

It is way too early to tell, but there are some indications that if a platform like Google Wave does take off, it will fragment the concept of an online social network and splinter it down to a place where these areas are not used by masses to congregate and boast how many friends or connections they have, but perhaps the metric becomes how many waves individuals are engaged with and how active the conversation and collaboration is. The platform obviously creates much more targeted inventory for advertising with the Google AdWords model (much like it does over at Gmail), but depending on how open or private these waves will be, this could also be one of those moments in time where people shift from having their opinions out in public, back into smaller, cozier and more personal conversations in a Google Wave.”

How can I get Google Wave?

Request an invite directly from Google by clicking here.

Request an invite directly from me by submitting a comment (including your request) below.

What do you think?

Have you tried Google Wave? What were your thoughts?

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