Be like Tony.

I was cleaning out my desk this morning, sorting through the hundreds of business cards I've collected over the past year or so (yes, people do still hand them out and you should, too.) when I came across this one.

Tony Swan, who passed away last year, was a writer, driver, racer, editor, bon vivant, and curmudgeon. I'd met him early in my career when I was an intern at Car and Driver magazine but came to know him a bit better over the past few years as a member of the Midwest Automotive Media Association. Some who read this blog may know that when I'm not helping companies with marketing, communications, and new product development, I write about cars for several websites including my own, Rides & Drives.

Tony was famous for many things, one was his personal motto...

"Drive fast. Take chances."

While Tony applied it to his time on the track and work at the word processor, it's easy to see how this simple phrase is crucial in business today.

The "Take chances" half of the equation is a no brainer. Business is all about risk, taking it and managing it. Without taking chances, ignoring the doubters, pursuing a novel idea, there is no progress. At some level, every decision we make requires a leap of faith no matter how many consumers we talk to or how may prototypes we test. That's where the "Drive faster" part comes in.

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, moving faster is a necessity. But it's not how just quickly you can get your product to market. Accelerating your time to profitability is crucial in a day where disrupters can enter the market from any direction and change the game seemingly overnight. That means a different way of innovating. Moving quickly with minimal investment, using MVPs to test the market, make adjustments, and move on.

This takes a clarity of vision, a commitment to strategy, decisive leadership, and an agile team. If you're mired by stages and gates, waiting for executive review committees, and fielding massive quantitative studies before making decisions, the market will pass you by.

It's time to run your business as Tony lived. Drive fast. Take chances.

NeverWet may soon be nevermore

When I saw this spot for Rust-Oleum's new NeverWet spray, I thought. Cool. Now I never have to worry about bolognese sauce ruining my white polo ever again.

But then I did a little research.

Apparently according to this review on Gizmodo, NeverWet's label explicitly states "Contents contain a chemical known to cause cancer and birth defects." Hmm. That's something I don't want anywhere near my skin or mouth.

Strike one.

Geek.com says the spray leaves a "frosted white coating" on whatever it's applied to. So unless your putting it on a white surface, NeverWet will be visible. Apparently it rubs off pretty easily as well.

Strike two.

This demo video that's been viewed over four million times on YouTube shows it being applied to several items (electronics, clothing) their own website clearly states NeverWet should not be used on. And since it causes cancer, I'm not sure I'd want it anywhere near my beer.



Strike three.

So this amazing product is poisonous, can ruin electronics, and discolors whatever it's applied to. Those are probably three things they need to work on in version 2.0. But based on the way they've marketed this version there probably won't be a version 2.0 because people will be so disappointed after trying it, they'll never buy anything from Rust-Oleum again.

Just a little tip when you're launching a new product. Be honest about it. Nothing kills a bad product faster than great advertising. If you're product doesn't perform as promised, the long term effects on your brand will be cancerous.

Features do not differentiate brands

As product developers, we are obsessed with features. What can we add to our product and service to make sure we have everything the customer wants and needs – even those features they never knew they needed until we added them?

Features are great. Features are important. Features lead to benefits. Without relevant features there's no reason for anyone to buy our products.

But features do not differentiate brands.

You can get adaptive cruise control on a $25,000 Ford Fusion and a $205,000 Bentley Flying Spur.

You can get vibrating bristles on a $4 Oral-B toothbrush and a $100 Sonicare.

You can get a 15-inch HD display, Intel i7 processor and 500 GB of storage on a $1,300 HP Spectre and a $2,800 MacBook Pro.

The difference isn't the feature. It's in how each brand executes that feature. It's in the design, the materials, the experience, the positioning.

When Volvo touts its all-wheel drive system, it does so by saying that it makes you safer.

When BMW promotes all-wheel drive, it does so by saying it improves driving performance.

Features do not differentiate brands.

Brands differentiate features.

Super branding

The hardest thing a marketer has to do is change someone's opinion about a product or brand.

Imagine how hard that is if your product is chemotherapy and your target is children.

Borrowing equity from heroic characters who fight through pain and adversity in their comic adventures, the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Sao Paulo, has given the process a context that helps kids through the pain and adversity of cancer treatment.



While it doesn't make chemotherapy less painful, the branding and repositioning of the medication changes the expectations of the youthful patients, and that helps them become more willing participants in the fight against their disease.

The lesson here: if you can't change the product, reframe the context in a way the focuses on the benefit.

I love it when marketing is used to champion the forces of good.

ESPN can't ignore the competition

Last Thursday, Disney CFO Jay Rasulo had this to say about the emerging competition ESPN faces from the new 24-hour sports networks from Fox, NBC, and CBS.

"People are going to spend a lot of money, they're going to step up to bid on a lot of rights, and they're going to wind up a distant No. 2. So I feel pretty confident about our hand there."

Great leaders don't dismiss their challengers, no matter how insignificant and undermanned they seem to be. American industry is littered with examples of shattered companies who took their competition too lightly. GM ignored Toyota. RCA was too busy diversifying to worry about Sony. And Blockbuster scoffed at Netflix.

Great leaders use any and all challengers as a excuse to examine every potential weakness and sharpen their competitive edge.

ESPN would be wise to do the same.

Why Facebook mobile is stuck in neutral

Facebook may rule on the desktop, but they still haven't figured out mobile.

The apps for Android phones and tablets are terrible. I know this from personal experience. According to reviewers, the new Facebook Home app works great unless you want to use your phone for its primary intended purpose, a phone. And now comes the news that AT&T will be dropping the HTC/Facebook phone from its lineup because they've sold only 15,000 of them in the past month. For context AT&T sells 300,000 Android phones every month.

How do they keep getting something so important, so wrong?

Let's start with this premise by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"You're going to be able to turn your Android phone into a great social device. Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around."

It's all about context and control.

All the features and functions that work on the desktop where I can focus almost exclusively on Facebook become overwhelming in a mobile environment where I may have only a few seconds to check my wall on phone. In order to make order out of the chaos and randomness that is my timeline, Facebook should give me more control and make it easier to for me select the features I prefer in a mobile environment.

They're so busy worrying about "people" they're not thinking about the individual users and how we might want to customize the experience to get the information and content we're looking quickly and easily.

The minute they cede control to the users is the moment they'll begin to succeed in mobile.

Audi keeps on trekking

30 years ago, when you thought of European luxury car brands, there were but two: Mercedes and BMW, the former owning a position of superior engineering while the latter differentiated through performance.

Somewhere around that time, Audi asked the question, "How do we get a piece of that sweet, sweet high margin, luxury market?"

Building on their signature feature Quattro, Audi decided to differentiate through technology, which either by luck or incredible foresight aligned nicely with the rise of our gadget-obsessed generation.

So it only makes sense that when Audi goes to the movies, they do so in technology focused films. Thus, the Audi R8 is the natural choice of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3. And, it is only logical that Audi is the official vehicle of the latest incarnation of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series.



That's the beauty of a well-defined brand. Not only does it inform product design and development, it makes it easy to align promotions, placements, endorsements and other marketing activities.

And that's why Audi is on a roll.

It's all about the McBrand

According to this story in Ad Age, McDonald's is introducing a new sandwich, the McWrap, to attract the demographic known as the millennials – or as we humans call them, 18 to 32-year olds.

It seems that McDonald's executives are distressed that their restaurant is not one of this group's favorite restaurants. To that, I have just one question.

Outside of the 4 to 10-year old demographic, is McDonald's anyone's favorite restaurant?

McDonald's has grown to massive proportions exactly because it is no one's favorite restaurant. Mickey D's is the vanilla ice cream of restaurants: almost everybody likes it, but nobody loves it.

McDonald's is convenient, consistent, and cheap. That's how they've managed to serve billions.

Of course they should adapt their menu to provide options that will keep the chain relevant and cars lined up at the drive-through. Of course, they should consider other policies that appeal to this and other generations of customers. But if any of those changes get in the way of convenient, consistent and cheap, there will be trouble ahead.

McDonald's faces one of the great challenges of branding, how to adapt without changing.

A brand is a brand is a brand

I'm currently working on a brand strategy project for a global business-to-business conglomerate and in the process of researching other global b-to-b brands, I've discovered something.

They're all the same.

They're all producers of quality products.

They're all solutions providers.

They're all innovative.

They're all changing the way you think about [insert product category here].

They're all focused on sustainability.

They're all about ethics.

They're all promoting diversity.

They're all building a culture of collaboration and respect.

They're all providing opportunities for their employees.

They're all strengthening the communities they serve.

All these issues are relevant and important to their customers, regulators and channel partners. I get it. But by focusing only on what's relevant, they're missing the second part of creating a great brand: being different.

Yes, it's hard to be the first to step out of the pack, but there are great rewards for those that take the risk. Because, while rational thinking and functional benefits matter in business decisions, just because someone is sitting behind a desk doesn't mean he checks his emotion at the front door. You're still talking to people with hopes, fears, needs and desires.

Great consumer brands are built on emotions. There's no reason great b-to-b brands should be any different.

Just a bit off the mark

Here's a tough one.

You make a product that's hot. So hot that you can't keep up with demand given current capacity. You have a choice, alter the product in an almost imperceptible way so you can stretch your supply or leave sales on the table. Maker's Mark choose the former and the outcry was as loud as it was predictable.

After sales increases of 14% in 2011 and 15% in 2012, last week it was announced the Beam Inc. super premium bourbon brand would lower the alcohol content of its product from 90 to 84 proof in order to have enough to meet the burgeoning demand. While they claim there was no discernable difference in taste, regular Maker's drinkers saw it as an attempt to "water down" the product. They shared their displeasure with the decision through Twitter, Facebook and email and within days Bill Samuels Jr., the Chairman Emeritus of Maker's Mark reversed the decision.

So why didn't Maker's do what other companies do when demand exceeds supply and just raise the price? Beam uses the popularity of Maker's as leverage to get distributors and retailers to carry its other brands like Basil Hayden's, Booker's, Bakers, Knob Creek, Laphroaig, Connemara, Ardmore, Effen, Sauza and more.

In essence they're saying, "You can't have our most desirable product, unless you carry a full line of our other products."

It's a good strategy until you kill the lead dog and the rest of the pack has no one to follow.

So what could Beam have done? It takes six years to make a batch of Makers at its current strength so they can't distill more and have it on the shelf tomorrow. In this era of social media and transparency making the change unannounced would have been a flat-out disaster.

In this case the best course would be to take the long view and build the business through a combination of activities. First, increase production capacity so in six years Maker's can meet the global demand. Second, select other bourbon or spirit brands from the portfolio and invest in them, creating additional leverage points with distributors. Given the fickle nature of trends in this business, that strategy also has the added benefit of providing options if and when consumer tastes change. While there's no guarantee of creating a blockbuster like Maker's out of the other brands, at least they wouldn't be devaluing any of them.

Ultimately the lesson here is: more sales aren't always good sales.

Innovation is risky enough

Here's a tip for food marketers and product developers.

If you have to issue the following statement when introducing a new product, you may want to rethink things.

We have carefully reviewed FDA requirements and believe our product is in compliance with current regulations for food ingredients.

With all the recent news surrounding high-caffeine energy drinks this may not be the best time for Frito-Lay to launch Cracker Jack'd, a line of "energy snacks" targeted at young adults.

Yes, the FDA may say they're safe. They may be exactly what consumer's are asking for. But if just one over-caffeinated kid collapses after eating a bag of Cocoa Java Power Bites, it could put the whole company in jeopardy.

Remember: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

The king is confused

In an effort to end the slide of the Budweiser brand, Anheuser Busch will be introducing yet another new beer next year, probably on the Super Bowl as it did last year with Bud Light Platinum.

Budweiser Black Crown Golden Amber Lager appears to be yet another attempt by the brand to crack into the still growing and profitable craft beer segment defined by such brands as Samuel Adams, Bell's, Rogue and others.

That's not to say that Anheuser-Busch InBev doesn't already compete in the category with their full or partial ownership of, or distribution alliances with brands like Shock Top, Redhook, Goose Island, Widmer Brothers, Old Dominion and a few others. This has been a solid strategy since the master brand has no credibility in craft brewing – which is what makes this new line extension a little baffling.

The Budweiser brand has some outstanding assets: distribution muscle, nearly 100% awareness, the crown symbol, "The King of Beers," a heritage in American light lagers, and more. What the Bud brand doesn't have are craft beer credentials. 

What reason do people who drink craft beers have to switch to Black Crown? What reason do current Bud drinkers have to put this into their rotation? That this is the winner of a competition between its 12 brewmasters isn't going to do it.

If InBev really wants the Budweiser brand to play in this category, they should use their size and strength to enter the category with a complete line of beers that create a cohesive presence at retail and on premise. They should create a story behind the brand that gives the new line a purpose. And, they should show how this new line complements their current portfolio. Dipping their corporate toe in the water with one beer, no matter how good it is, won't grow the brand.

This beer will only create more complexity for a brand that's already too inconsistent and confusing.

Time is money

Back in 1986, when the watchmaking industry was undergoing a revolution thanks to the explosion of cheap timepieces featuring quartz movement, Franck Muller and Vartan Sirmakes got together and began making incredibly expensive watches famous for their "complications."

Today, they make forty thousand watches a year with prices ranging from a few thousand dollars to $2,400,000 for the Aeternitas Mega 4.

I'm not sure how many of these they sell each year, but it really doesn't matter – it's a brand statement. An engineering and design masterpiece with 1483 components and 36 functions, it is the ultimate demonstration of what makes Franck Muller "The Master of Complications."

So while Rolex positions itself on performance and Patek Philippe on tradition – two very important benefits in luxury watchmaking – by owning a secondary benefit and crafting a very good story, Franck Muller found another way to differentiate his brand and create a lot of value in an already extremely crowded category.

The right way to innovate

Because I've been lucky enough to work with a lot of companies in developing new products, I'm often asked, "what's the best way to innovate?"

My answer, though seemingly flippant, is always "the way works best for you."

There's no secret formula for coming up with new ideas and getting them into the market. There's no one process that will guarantee success. If there were, do you think large companies with very smart people and lots of resources would have created these products: Microsoft Zune, Crystal Pepsi, Quikster, Disney's John Carter?

Developing new products requires an understanding of consumer needs, an idea that provides a better way to fulfill those needs than anything that's available now, and flawless execution of the idea in the end product or service. In this day and age, you also have to do it quickly while simultaneously developing a breakthrough communications plan, so you can launch your idea and own the space in the consumer mind before your competition quickly follows your lead.

It's not easy.

So the best way to develop a new product is the way that's most natural for your company and your culture.

For Apple that was a very top down approach driven by a relentless visionary leader. It's something they seem to be struggling with now that Steve Jobs is gone. Many have said they never would have released the flawed maps app in the iPhone 5 under his watch.

Google uses a collaborative approach where scientists, engineers, designers and researchers work together to solve problems and create new products.

Open innovation is all the rage now, where companies like Frito Lay are asking their customers and other experts to help them with the development of new products.

So how should you innovate?

Know your culture and design an approach that fits based on the scale and scope of the project.

Asking Microsoft to innovate like Apple would be like asking Rob Schneider to play Hamlet. Sure he can read the lines, but you're not going to like the result.

The problem with advertising

Advertising can create awareness.

Advertising can stimulate curiosity.

Advertising can set expectations.

Advertising can open new markets.

Advertising can generate trial.

Advertising can accelerate the acceptance of new and better products.

What advertising can't do is make a bad product good. It can't make an old product new. It can't make ordinary service special. It can't make an ugly car beautiful. It can't improve the quality of something that's shoddily built. It can't transform a me-too product into something innovative. 

If you're trying to solve a product problem with advertising, you might as well be using a hammer to drive a screw.

In this era of abundance, when you can choose from over 30 mid-size sedans, nearly 100 smartphone models, thousands of flatscreen televisions, millions of mobile apps, good enough just isn't.

Do the research. Brainstorm solutions. Design better products and experiences. Engineer more elegant interfaces. Build things with impeccable quality.

You'll be surprised how much more effective your advertising is when it's promoting an exceptional product.

The eyes have it

75% of the U.S. Population, including me, wear some form of corrective eyewear. I'm pretty sure 100% of us have complained about how much our glasses cost.

Go into your neighborhood optical center and even without an exam, you can easily walk out the door having spent $400 or more for a well-designed pair of specs.

My question has always been, "Why?" What is in those few ounces of plastic and steel that make them worth so much?

Of course we know why glasses manufacturers charge so much for so little – because they can. This has created an opportunity for a disruptive new company, Warby Parker.

Bucking conventional wisdom, this 2011 start-up designs and manufactures its own glasses using the same materials and factories as the big boys, Luxotica and Safilo designs. Unlike those companies, Warby Parker sells their glasses online for $95. That price includes prescription lenses, free shipping and returns.

How good an idea is this? In just three weeks they met the entire sales goal for their first year.

It's working because they realized the opportunity was not to offer cheap glasses – there are websites that sell glasses for less than $95 – but to offer a limited collection of stylish glasses for a reasonable price.

So instead of feeling cheap and wondering if the glasses you purchased from a discount website are an appropriate expression of your personal brand, you feel smart.

Nice insight. Nice innovation. Nice brand.

There is no safe path

You can't know everything there is to know.

You can't predict everything that must be predicted.

You can't plan for every contingency.

You can't reach your destination quickly by taking small steps.

If you want to achieve greatness, if you want to lead, if you want to change the world, sooner or later you have to leap.

The chasm is never as wide nor as deep as you believe. Success is probably closer than you think. Failure will hurt less than you imagine.

Stop worrying. Start doing.

There's no such thing as a target market

Marketing, like life, is all about perspective.

How someone views a product, brand or ad all depends on where he or she views it from.

As marketers there is nothing more important than understanding how our customers and potential customers see their world and how our product fits in that world.

The problem is that everyone's perspective, and therefore everyone's world, is different. Individuals may be in the same demographic, they may share attitudes, they may watch the same television shows, bookmark the same websites and read the same magazines, but they are not the same.

Each person is at the center of his or her own universe.

Marketing research has always been designed to put people into groups which leads us to one-size-fits-all, lowest common denominator thinking. 

If you want to create a product or service that's truly special, stop thinking about 'the market' and start thinking about the individuals who make up the market. 

Fix the product first

I love this comic. It gets right at the heart of why a lot of products and services fail. 

Too many companies keep doing the same old things while expecting a new marketing campaign to save their bacon.

As a copywriter who understands the power of great communications, it pains me to say this (but only just a little). If you truly want to create a successful business, make your product interesting, unique and better, then call the ad guys. Otherwise you're just setting your customers up for disappointment.

Whither the web

Today one of my favorite marketers, Seth Godin, has written a long (for him) explanation of the difference between magazine ads and web ads and why ads on the web will win in the end. You can read the entire post here, but I think the following paragraph sums up his position pretty well.

"Until advertisers start to value the focused, memorable, impactful opportunity they have in buying the right ads in the right place for the right audience, web users are going to be stuck seeing irrelevant ads on sites that don't respect their time and attention as much as they should. We have salespeople and investors and agencies and buyers that come from a world of mass and scarcity, and the opportunities of focus and connection and abundance are taking a while to sink in."

While I don't disagree with the theory of his argument, in practice what he's hoping for is a world I'm not sure will ever exist.

To achieve the kind of pinpoint accuracy Seth envisions requires people to give up massive amounts of data – or marketers to practice data mining on a scale that no privacy advocate would ever allow.

This marketers' nirvana where consumer purchase history, online behavior, GPS location, attitudes and other discoverable data are all compiled, analyzed and employed in the service of connecting a single consumer with a tube of toothpaste, or some other product, just isn't going to happen.

At least not in any world I want to live in.

Marketing has been and will always be as much an art as a science, because a great number of consumers will be increasingly careful with the data they share and continue to be unpredictable in their actions.

Anyone who thinks they have a handle "the science" of online marketing need only look at the plummeting value of Facebook (its IPO price was set based on its speculative value as a marketing vehicle) to see how scientific it really is.