Six of the Best: Name appropriation edition

Photo: susanlk74 (Flickr)

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. Including this story about my name once again being used without my specific consent:

1) Prime Minister's Brain Going Into Receivership: Daily Mash
What is with my name? First it was Sneakers where Martin Bishop was the alias for a computer hacker played by Robert Redford and now it's the UK's Daily Mash. So far, it's paired me with Gordon Brown twice, once as an Official Receiver (for his brain) and here, as the Head of pension rows at the Institute for Studies in a story about him refusing to give up his pension. I seem to going downhill, professionally speaking. Somehow I should be getting something for this. What's my angle?

2) Is your market soft, or has it shifted? - Newspaper failures: The Phoenix Principle
After 150 years, the Rocky Mountain News has closed down. Adam Hartung thinks a similar fate will come to many other papers as well. They just aren't figuring out how to stay relevant and how to make money in this digital world. For them, the recession is only accelerating what was going to happen anyway. In a different direction, Ben Kunz posts a video tracing the final, few days for the paper and the human cost.

3) Tropicana gets Squeezed: Ries' Pieces
Everyone was all abuzz this week about Tropicana's u-turn over its design, apparently driven by Twitter-seething loyalists. In addition to Laura's post, there was this one from David Kiley which was more targeted at Arnell (yes, the same Arnell at the center of the Pepsi logo document which caused an earlier blog storm).

4) The Dirtiest Hotels in the World: Made to Stick
I got the same email from TripAdvisor about its latest promotion and had exactly the same reaction as Dan Heath. Brilliant! I'm not going to be staying at the Hotel Carter in New York anytime soon, that's for sure.

5) Sir Humphrey teaches questionnaire design: Mind Hacks
"Classic British TV comedy Yes Prime Minister has important lessons for those who want to interpret questionnaire data. This clip shows two civil servants discussing a policy suggestion. Bernard Woolley, who we see first, thinks the public are in favour of the policy - the minister has had an opinion poll done. Luckily senior civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby is there to set him straight. Fans of cognitive biases, note that Sir Humphrey uses at least three in his illustration of a biased questionnaire: framing, priming, and acquiescence bias."



6) Wolves (and Likely Dogs) Poo in Prominent Places: Discovery Channel
"Wolves do not do their business in any old place, but they instead choose locations that maximize visual impact and odor distribution, according to a new study that may also help to explain why dogs frequently relieve themselves on fire hydrants and other prominent urban landscape features." And later: "Like a person pumping up their chest and muscles to look big and impressive, highly placed urine could suggest the individual may not be one to reckon with."

That's it. See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Quote of the Day: Getting people to follow

Photo: Enzo Molinari (Flickr)

Is this going to be a thing? I don't know. But, like last week, I have a quote from an interview on NPR's Fresh Air (which I don't even listen to that often).

This time it's Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Doubt. (He lost but, in attending the event in a beanie hat, developed a new fan base.) In this part of the interview, he's talking about his preparation for Capote, the movie where he did win an Oscar.

He's explaining the challenge he faced with Truman Capote's voice because it was so different from his own. He knew he didn't have to have a perfect impersonation but that he had to get close enough to get people to follow or buy in to his performance. Transcribed as accurately as I can:

"I just started training in a way--to get as close as I could a sense of his behavior, you know, because all you've got to do is really get close enough--to get a sense of something and the people, if they get a sense of something and that there is real acting going on, they'll give over--they want to give over because what they are watching is true. The impersonation is really not interesting anymore. It's really about your belief in the circumstances of this character and what they are going through and that you buy that story and that character's journey. As long as what you are doing is honest. So that was just me doing the best I could to facilitate that transfer of belief, that leap of faith for everybody in the audience."

So, last week, Joss Whedon was saying that the essence of art was to create something that has the ability to touch everybody but does it differently for every person. And this week, Hoffman talks about doing just enough to let people make a leap of faith and "give over." I feel I'm just this close to connecting these thoughts together, linking them to branding and saying something profound. But not quite. Any helpers?

Vive La Difference: Building/killing brand loyalty

Photo: Whole Wheat Toast (Flickr)

Want to raid a few brand loyalists from the competition? Here's how. Focus on the similarities between your product and theirs. If you want to keep your fans loyal, focus on how you are different.

New research in the Journal of Consumer Research explores the differences between consumers who have strong brand loyalty and those that show very little commitment. It finds that loyalists focus on differences betweeen their preferred product and its competition whereas the non-commital focus on the similarities. The study also finds that it's possible to disrupt someone's typical way of processing information about products. By asking brand loyalists to focus on the similarities between "their" brand and another and asking the non-brand loyal to focus on the differences, the researchers were able to influence the perceptions of both groups.

Interesting to think about Private Label strategy in light of these findings. The me-too approach of many Private Label brands (like Wal-Tussin) is very much in line with the idea of emphasizing similarity. By making their product as similar to the better-known brands as possible, they aim to eat away at those brands' loyal user commitment. However, more recent initiatives appear to be going in the other direction. Perhaps reflecting that the Private Label brands now have a critical mass of their own loyalists?

Meanwhile, there's an AdAge story today about how Private Label is winning the battle of the brands. One of the points it makes is that national brands are helping the cause of Private Label brands by focusing on price discounting. In essence, they are helping make the Private Label brands case that they are similar.

Details:
The Effect of Brand Commitment on the Evaluation of Nonpreferred Brands: A Disconfirmation Process by Sekar Raju, H. Rao Unnava, and Nicole Votolato Montgomery in the Journal of Consumer Research vol. 35, no.5 (February 2009)

Six of the Best: Internet/Technology edition

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. All in the rough and general area of technology and the Internet:

1) Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever." The Consumerist
Story/furore of the week came from the Consumerist which reported that Facebook had changed its terms of service to allow it to do what ever it wants with your content. This unleashed an entirely expected torrent of criticism including this cartoon from All Things Digital. Facebook has now reversed course and gone back to its old terms and that led to the most interesting post on the whole saga: Josh King wondered how Facebook could have failed to anticipate the reaction and did not have a plan to weather the storm (apart from capitulation)

2) The Social Media Starter Kit: altitude
Recommended by Olivier Blanchard in this post, Altitude Branding's Amber Naslund Social Media starter kit describes the "nuts and bolts" of social media including recommendations on smart phones, Twitter desktop clients and blog platforms. This is just one of a series of posts on social media. Others cover subjects such as Facebook and LinkedIn and the "whys."

3) Is Google search usage falling? Thought Gadgets
Is the sky falling too? Ben Kunz has some interesting analysis that suggests that people may be using Google's search engine less than they used to. He's take an array of common search terms (like florist) and shown, using Google Trends, that their search volume is down over a five-year period. Even terms like "financial services" which you'd expect to be higher. It's not a completely scientific approach and, for me, a plausible explanation is that people are just getting more sophisticated in their search strategies, using more complex search word combinations. But still...

4) What Would Micropayments Do for Journalism? A Freakonomics Quorum
Whether Google has peaked may be a matter of debate but there's no questioning the decline of newspapers and the challenges they are having finding a new business model to take the place of the old one. Most papers have given their online content away for free, cutting out one revenue opportunity. This quorum is a very interesting discussion about the possibility of using micropayments to generate revenue for journalism content. The general consensus: Not much hope, especially since the genie is already out the bottle.

5) Fabled City of Atlantis Spotted on Google Earth? The New York Times
As I reviewed (for free) the technology section of The New York Times, I came across this story. It reports: "British aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford sighted a mysterious grid of undersea lines while browsing through Google Earth’s new underwater search tool. The strange pattern was spotted off the western coast of Africa, apparently near one of the possible sites of the legendary island." Google says "No" -- it's just the remnants of the sonar of boats looking for the city.

6) The results are in and the winner is . . . a clear eye
Tom Asaker lists the innovations that Nightly Business Report say have changed the way life is lived and the way business is done since its premiere in 1979? Top of the list is the Internet, followed by PCs, mobile phones and email. The whole list is here. What's up for the next 30 years?

Bonus video: Boom Goes the Dynamite on Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something. Did you catch Will Smith saying that at the Oscars when he screwed up a line? See 2:30.



That's it. See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Can Saturn be saved?

The very first Saturn rolls off the assembly line in Spring Hill, Tenn: Saturn on Flickr

Amidst all the doom and gloom coming out of Detroit, perhaps a spark of hope?

When I first heard the news that Saturn dealers were going to try and save the brand, I was only half-listening and I just assumed that they were going to try and do some buy out or try and find private equity (a la MG Rover) . ºDoomed to failureº, I thought.

But now, as I read this report, I think that well maybe this plan might work. The deal, still being negotiated, would spin off Saturn's distribution network and open it up to products from other automakers.

"The goal - from a product perspective - would be to find future vehicles that match the Saturn brand: fuel-efficient, safe, reliable and affordable," Jill Lajdziak, general manager of Saturn, said in the memo sent to the dealers.

Now, on the one hand, we're not exactly short of dealerships right now and everyday there's news of dealers closing up shop. On the other hand, it's the dealership experience that has always been the true differentiator for Saturn ever since it opened up back in 1990 with its "no hassle" flat price promise. So to create a new business that focuses on the dealerships and allows them to source cars from different manufacturers makes a lot of sense. It plays to the real strength of the brand's equity.

It certainly seems a lot more promising than Saab's approach. It has just filed for creditor protection and will be leaning on the government to protect the jobs of its workers. Here GM's failure to invest in the brand is much more damaging because Saab is all about performance and having a technological edge, something that can't easily or quickly be restored.

Trader Joe's Extreme Brand Architecture

Photo: √oхέƒx™ (Flickr)

A post on Freakonomics reminded me that Trader Joe's goes to quite some lengths to disguise its ownership. For example, in its FAQs, its response to Question 8. Is Trader Joe's publicly traded? is the rather unhelpful "No. Trader Joe's is a privately held company." According to the Freakonomics post, employees are also in the dark.

So who does own the chain? It's Aldi, the discount grocery chain from Germany, whose spartan stores make other discount food stores look like opulent palaces. Although some aspects of Trader Joe's are quite in keeping with the Aldi ethos (the commitment to low prices and Private Label/brands that no-one has ever heard of), clearly the company has decided that its reputation as a stylish, fun, eclectic, neighborhood market would not be enhanced by association with its parent.

There are many examples of companies that choose not to leverage their corporate brand and endorse their products or separate business operations. But perhaps none are more aggressively dissociated as Aldi is from Trader Joe's. It will be interesting to see, now that Aldi is planning a major expansion of its own stores in the U.S., whether this strategy will continue to be workable.

Quote of the Day: The BYO Subtext

Joss Whedon is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the much-praised online music-comedy Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring super-villain.

In an interview on NPR's Fresh Air to promote his new show Dollhouse, he made the following observation about the byo subtext that is at the heart of art (transcribed as accurately as I can):

"It's got to touch everybody in a way that's totally personal. I think the problem with a lot of mass art, a lot of, you know, the studio stuff is that they think that means that you want to hit everybody in the same way--you want a four-quadrant movie--old people like it, young people like it, men, women. You want to homogenize the experience.

But, in fact, if it's really working, if it's really art, it is touching everybody and it's doing it differently for every person. Because what they are doing is that they are incorporating their story into it."

Six of the Best: Real or Fake? edition

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. This week it's stories that, one way or another, fuzzy the boundaries between reality and fakery:

1) Breathtaking: Arnell Group (maybe)
Pretentious twaddle or window on creative genius? Who could not be amazed by this document supposedly from the Arnell Group outlining the design strategy behind the new Pepsi logo? I say "supposedly" because ownership has yet to be claimed and there's a chance that it's a spoof or a deliberately-planned viral campaign. It's been a red rag to the marketing and blogging world all week with the following just some of the many commentaries: (Ad Age, Fritinancy, brandXpress, brandflakesforbreakfast, Thought Gadgets)

2) India to launch cow urine as soft drink: TimesOnline
Meanwhile Pepsi is soon to have some new, highly differentiated competition in India. India's Hindu nationalist is planning to launch a new soft drink made from cow urine. Called "gau jal," the new drink's USP will be that: "It's going to be very healthy. It won't be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins," according to spokesman Om Prakash. Perfect for The Amazing Race (premieres Sunday, by the way).

3) Starbucks Poised to Launch 'Soluble' Coffee: AdvertisingAge
Scarcely more believable than the cow urine story is the news that Starbucks is going to launch a soluble coffee. As an ex-brand manager of Taster's Choice, I can only welcome the entry of Starbucks into this category where driving quality perception was, to say the least, an uphill battle. But which is the most likely result? The category will get a boost or Starbucks will take a hit? Or both?

4) A Chronology of Brands that got Punk'd by Social Media: Web Strategy
A list of brands that have been blind-sided by the internet. Jeremiah Owyang recalls many of the notorious ones. Remember the story about Kryponite locks that can be broken into with a Bic pen story (2004) or Dell Hell (2005)? Commenters to the post are adding even more. All real stories but some show the unreal influence that can be wielded by the well-connected.

5) Trader Joe's Ad: Carlsfinefilms


Not a real ad although some have suggested that Trader Joe's should adopt it as its own. Shows the good, the bad and the peculiar of the Trader Joe's experience (as well as some seemingly fake non co-operation from a store manager).

6) Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain: The Onion
OK. Obviously fake. Just included to recognize and celebrate Mr. Darwin's 200th. Happy Birthday!

That's it. See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Peanut spreads

Photo: jmacphoto.com Flickr

According to NPR, Peanut Corporation of America, the company that made the salmonella-tainted peanut products that have sickened at least 575 people, only accounts for 1% of the market. But because many companies source ingredients from multiple manufacturers, 1,790 different products have had to be recalled and the list keeps growing.

Although manufacturers like J.M. Smucker and ConAgra have tried to reassure consumers of the safety of their own products, they have been swept up in the crisis as well, reporting sales down around 25%.

It occurred to me that these peanut problems have a certain similarity to the problems in financial services. They are both about spreading. Source spreading in the case of the peanut industry (for purchasing power and efficiency) and risk spreading in the case of securitization in financial services. In both cases, the potential costs were not given enough consideration vs. the more obvious benefits.

By the way, if you need to get really mad at someone today, this guy seems to be worthy of consideration.

The first lesson of brand health....spend, spend, spend?

I'm reading a book called: Brand Immortality- How brands can live long and prosper by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field.

Its basic premise is that no brand need die, if loved and nurtured properly. Can't disagree with that, previous post about the usefulness of disposable brands designed to die nothwithstanding.

Pringle and Field believe that many of the best-known and widely accepted theories and tools of marketing unfortunately work against brand immortality rather than for it. Coming in for the harshest criticism is the Boston Matrix with its cash cows quadrant clearly informed by a life cycle theory of brands.

In writing the book, Pringle and Field analyzed over 1,000 case studies of best practice in advertising and marketing submitted to the UK's Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) for its Effectiveness Award. These cases involve some of the best-known brands (Nike, Sony...) and each case is supported by a lot of data detailing the impact of the marketing campaign. The richness of the data allows for robust empirical study.

Here's a quote, based on this analysis, I found interesting:

"The sobering truth of marketing is that, broadly speaking, what you get back in terms of market share growth is related to what you put in, in terms of share of voice (SOV)... for most brands in most situations, if they are not investing adequately in marketing share of voice then the future doesn't look bright."

Depending on your perspective, you can look at this quote one of two ways. 1) It's a POV that's hopelessly dated in this time of social and fragmented media and proves the danger of using historical data to make forward-looking conclusions. 2) It's a salutary reminder that, despite all theories and noise, in the end it's all down to dollars spent (assuming a certain level of quality).

Or, perhaps there's a sitting-on-the-fence position?

Mad as hell and lashing out in all directions

Photo: Archie McPhee Seattle (Flickr)

In "AAAGH!", Y&R's Simon Silvester analyzes the likely consumer impact of the recession and describes a 5-stage process that investors will go through as they grieve for their lost money.

Recent news headlines suggest we have collectively started to move from #1: Denial into #2: Anger. "Public flogging for bailed-out marketers" headlines Advertising Age as it talks about public criticism of the marketing activities of GM, Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. With some politicians only too happy to lead the charge and people on the look out for someone to blame, this is an extremely tough environment for marketers.

Wells Fargo got caught up in all this last week as it was forced to cancel what had been dubbed "employee junkets" to Las Vegas. Rather than accept this and move on, the company decided over the weekend to go on the offensive, taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times to call the media stories about this event misleading: "These one-sided stories lead you to believe every employee recognition event is a junket, a boondoggle, a waste, or that it’s for highly-paid executives. Nonsense!”

Ever tried having a logical and rational argument with an angry person? It doesn't work so, whatever the merits of its case, Wells Fargo is only likely to generate even more anger by this approach. One comment on the news story starts: "rediculous (sic)..... they should not be going on these recognition events and we the tax paying citizens have to foot the bill, send them flowers, that is enough..."etc

So what should marketers, especially those working for companies that have taken some public assistance, be doing? It's going to be tough for a while but ideas worth considering: Focus on value, reduce complexity, keep on innovating and try and figure out a path towards restoring trust. Eventually, customers will work their way all the way to #5: Acceptance and then you need to be ready.

Meanwhile, perhaps we marketers need some reassurance that what we are doing is not, as it has been described, manipulative, deceptive and intrusive but is, in fact, an engine of value creation with noble intentions. Or, as Peter Drucker put it: “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only these two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.”

Just in the nick of time, then, comes Harvard Business School professor John Quelch with an article called "In Praise of Marketing." He makes a strong case for marketing, builds on Drucker's thoughts and considers marketing's positive influence on our quality of life. Worth printing out and keeping close by to read when needed and as necessary.

Six of the Best: Week 6, 2009

Here's my summary of interesting things I read (or saw) this last week. No theme this week:

1) Brand Assets: Egg Strategy
Beckham wants out of LA. His 2 year mission to transform soccer in America hasn't gone that well. He's been injured a lot and the Galaxy are a mess. Now he wants to stay in Italy and play for A.C. Milan permanently. (He's on loan at the moment.) Egg Strategy points out that, if that happens, the MLS brand gets a double shot in the guts brand-wise. Bet it does.

2) Lazy Marketing: Tom Asaker
Many people commented one way or another on Denny's Super Bowl ad and follow-up grand slam breakfast giveaway. Tom points out that some the measures used to describe the promotion as a "success" are lazy at best. Yes, 2 million people free breakfasts were served but was this a good return on the $5 million spent? Did they have a good experience? Will they go back again? Tom doubts it. For a more upbeat assessment, see here.

3) brand you? denise lee yohn
Not surprisingly, given the times, personal branding is a hot topic again. Denise worries that some of the self-described personal branding experts don't really know what they're talking about and will contribute to what's already a high level of misunderstanding about what branding is. She takes her own stab at translating her definition of branding to the realm of individuals. Meanwhile, I spent some of this week going the other way i.e. trying to apply personal branding back to the realm of business. Results soon!

4) How I'm trying to change the world now Bill Gates



Bill Gates, speaking at TED about malaria, unleashed mosquitoes on his nervously-laughing audience. "More money is put into baldness than malaria" he points out. For comment on his first foundational letter, see here.

5) On bathroom signage: Made to Stick
Dan Heath saw a sign in a coffee shop that read: “THE BATHROOMS HAVE BEEN LOCKED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE.” Although this appeared to be self-serving and not convenient at all, it turned out that there was a perfectly good reason. By not sharing this real reason, the coffee shop kept Dan at arm's length and let him jump to the wrong conclusion. Better to give them a glimpse of reality rather than obscure it.

6) Monday morning quarterbacking: Almost everyone ('cept me!)
Tons of opinions about the Super Bowl ads. In case you haven't read enough already, here's a selection (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Freakonomics points out that, in fact, the best Super Bowl ad strategy is to get your ad banned. That way you get the PR and YouTube boost without having to pay $3 million. PETA succeeded with that strategy this year with this ad.

That's it. See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

What's the best way to stop a penalty kick?

Photo: ratterrell (Flickr)

According to a team of Israeli scientists, the answer is "Do nothing: Just stand in the center of the goal and don't move." The chances of stopping the ball are highest if the goal keeper stays in the center.

As reported in the New York Times Magazine, these scientists found that goal keepers, in fact, dived to the left or right 94% of the time. Why? They theorize that the goalies are afraid of looking indecisive. "They want to show that they are doing something," says Michael Bar-Eli, one of the authors. "Otherwise they look helpless, like they don't know what to do."

Which is interesting because typically, when faced with a tough problem, people tend to prefer to do nothing. Better to do nothing and hope the problem goes away.

Bar Eli suspects that leaders trying to solve the financial crisis are like goal keepers. The spotlight is on them so they have to do something even if staying the course might be the right answer. As an example Bar Eli says: "I know an investment manager whose clients will be calling him on the phone saying: 'Do anything! Just do something! I cannot sit and look at how my shares decline!'"

Hopefully they're going to guess the right way.

How do you get to your Carnegie Hall?

Photo: NYCArthur (Flickr)

The story goes that a New Yorker (Arthur Rubinstein, in some versions) is approached in the street near Carnegie Hall, and asked, "Excuse me sir, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?" He replies, "Practice, practice, practice."

There's another version of that story that I once saw in an ad (I can't remember for what). The question was the same but the answer was: "Well, I wouldn't start from here."

As I read Anu Gawande's article in The New Yorker about health care reform, titled Getting There From Here, it was this second version of the Carnegie Hall story that I remembered. Gawande's argues that pragmatic reform of the health care system built around the mess we have is preferable to any of the start-from-scratch proposals on the table (single payer or free market).

No-one can accuse him of having a rose-tinted perspective as he summarizes: "Yes, American health care is an appallingly patched-together ship, with rotting timbers, water leaking in, mercenaries on board, and fifteen per cent of the passengers thrown over the rails just to keep it afloat. But hundreds of millions of people depend on it...There is no dry-docking health care for a few months, or even for an afternoon, while we rebuild it. Grand plans admit no possibility of mistakes or failures, or the chance to learn from them. If we get things wrong, people will die. This doesn’t mean that ambitious reform is beyond us. But we have to start with what we have."

Gawande bases his argument on the idea of path dependence. Shouldn't I already know about path dependence? I don't know. Anyway, it describes how decisions today are influenced and limited by decisions made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant or optimum. Witness the QWERTY keyboard still going strong today even though it was designed originally to slow people down so they wouldn't jam the typebars on their typewriters.

In path-dependent processes, early events play a critical role in the market outcome. Take America's transportation system. Early decisions to base it on gasoline-powered automobiles (as well as a few well-timed interventions by the auto makers) have created an entire infrastructure that make it very difficult to do things differently.

What path dependence tells us it that, when people have devoted a lot of time and resources into a particular way of doing things and they have become efficient organizing themselves around a system, it can be really difficult and counterproductive to try and start from scratch. Applied to health care that means building on our flawed current system. Applied to business that means choosing business model evolution over reinvention (except when your industry is hit by a massive asteroid).

Such thinking doesn't need to lesson our ambition. We all can strive to get to our own Carnegie Hall. But we need to get try and get there from where we are now instead of where we might wish we were.

The cult of accountability (#6 in the Death by tools and metrics series)

Photo: jecate (Flickr)

Although there are some things that each financial crisis has in common (e.g. a bubble in a commodity that bursts spreading problems across the whole economy), each crisis also has its new elements.

Jerry Muller, writing in The American, says that what's new about this particular crisis is the role of "opacity" and "pseudo-objectivity." By opacity, he's referring to the complexity of financial instruments designed to reduce risk but which, instead: "created a fog so thick that even its captains could not navigate it."

By pseudo-objectivity, he means the search for standardized measures of achievement as a way to supervise and coordinate activity across large and disparate organizations. His thoughts on this fit with the themes I've explored in earlier Death By Tools and Metrics posts (see below).

Here's how he starts his critique on this "cult of accountability": "Its implicit premises were these: that information which is numerically measurable is the only sort of knowledge necessary; that numerical data can substitute for other forms of inquiry; and that numerical acumen can substitute for practical knowledge about the underlying assets and services."

He continues: "Attaching a number creates a belief that the information is more solid than is actually the case..... In each case, it is a response to what (to recoin a phrase) one might call alienation from the means of production, the attempt to substitute abstract and quantitative knowledge for concrete and qualitative knowledge."

He gives, as an example, pay for performance compensation. This, he says, creates tremendous incentives for executives and traders: "to devote their creative energies to gaming the metrics, i.e. into coming up with schemes that purported to demonstrate productivity or profit by massaging the data, or by underinvesting in maintenance and human capital formation to boost quarterly earnings or their equivalents."

As I said in an earlier post in this series, there is an inherent "risk of relying and focusing on things that can be measured rather than things that matter." And focusing on the wrong signals in a thick fog, well that's a recipe for disaster.

Earlier posts in the Death by Tools and Metrics series:
1) Discounted cash flow
2) The P&L
3) Same store sales
4) ROI
5) Treating the numbers