SOTB: Getting cranky edition

Six of the Best goes all cranky this week:

1) Susan Boyle Goes Bad? MTV UK
How quickly the story changes. Earlier in the week, I was dissecting the Susan Boyle phenomenon to try and figure out how come she had done so much better than the similarly attractively-challenged Paul Potts. Then, bam, it's: "The 48 year old, named the ‘hairy angel’ wasn't so holy after losing her temper at two people who had started to ‘wind-up her up’ in the hotel lobby. Boyle is thought to have shouted: “How f**king dare you! You can’t f**king talk to me like that!" And that was followed, the next day, by another 'f'-laced interlude. She's now apparently holed up in some hotel so she can't lose it again. Will Su-Bo still make it? Or has her moment passed?

2) Enlightened Stupid Marketer Nalts (via Church of the Customer)
The times are right for Kevin Nalty and his brand of humor. Here he is asking marketers whether they are stupid or enlightened stupid? He claims enlightenment reporting that: "I like to stick with proven offline strategies to drive awareness. It's not that digital marketing isn't proven, it's that I can't conduct a thorough ROI. No. I don't do ROI on the rest of my media mix but that's because they're proven."



3) The Vendor Client relationship - in real world situations: zeorge497 on YouTube (via Fresh Peel)
Frustration coming through loud and clear in this video. Unseemly tactics from the world of vendor/client negotations translated into real life: "You got to work with me," "Show us how you made it," "We didn't budget for this" and others



4) Brand Management From The Field: Branding Strategy Insider
The English football coach, Brian Clough was the ultimate crank. But he was incredibly successful in his early years and took teams with very average players to astonishing levels of performance and success. Mark Ritson uses the opening of "Damned United," a movie that covers his tumultuous 44-day reign at Leeds United FC to reflect on what the Clough School of Management can still teach all marketers about marketing. Lessons that include his views about working with the cards you've been dealt: "I used to look at what a team had got. I was a great believer in getting out of them what they had got. I never harped on about what they hadn't got."

5) Ads for discount retailer call big spenders ‘disgusting’: JWT Anxiety Index
Marian Berelowitz reports on "luxury shame" and new ads from sister companies Marshalls and T.J. Maxx in which: "women literally shame a friend who 'always pays too much for designer labels.' In one of these “interventions,” a woman chides the over-spender: 'Everyone thinks it’s disgusting!'" Perhaps a little O.T.T? Marian suggests that a better approach would be to focus on the opportunity cost — what to do with the money saved not paying full-price. She points to a new study in The Journal of Consumer Research that found that most shoppers will consider opportunity cost if it's made explicit and it can then be a strong influence on purchase decisions.

6) No Payments and No Interest Until...Uh-oh: Harvard Business Review
The "scariest thing you'll see this week" and something that should make you feel cranky. A graph that shows that: "If an average family spent all of its income paying its debts starting right now, not leaving a penny for anything else — not food, clothes, birthday parties, grass seed, pedicures, nothing — it would take that family 1.3 years, about 16 months, to pay off its debt. In short, the American lifestyle is largely borrowed." What this will likely mean is a record number of consumer bankruptcies and most companies are highly over-exposed to this risk.

And so it goes! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

What do you think about the Baked! Lays' makeover?

Baked! Photos: Twig and Thistle

Baked! Lays is celebrating its 15th year with a packaging design makeover. We could debate the merits of the design but that's been done already by those who are more on the ball than I am (the new design was announced in March).

What I'm more interested in is what you think about the product architecture. Specifically, the fact that there's no more dispute: It's the Baked! line of products and Lay's, Cheetos and the rest now play the role of, essentially, ingredient brands. Take a look at the before and after for Doritos to see what I mean.

Now intuitively that seems all wrong to me. Even if this new hierarchy works from a design perspective and resolves the previous mess, should a generic name that's already used by many of its competitors and can easily be adopted by store brands take prime position away from the iconic brands like Lays and Doritos? Surely not. But, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

The advantage of this new hierarchy is that it allows Frito Lay to put more distance between the Baked! snacks range and other Frito Lay products. This allows it reposition the range, move it further into healthy snack territory and focus on women as the primary consumer target. With market and legislative trends putting pressure on regular snacks, the development and growth of healthier products is a strategic imperative for the company. This explains why it has backed up the repositioning with a new marketing campaign: Only in a Woman's World which connects Baked! to the other healthy snacks in the portfolio (Flat Earth and Smartfood). (Whether this marketing is effective or not is a matter of another debate with comments I've read both on FL's own Snack Chat site and elsewhere mainly critical.)

But I'm still left with the vague feeling that something's wrong with this new architecture. What do you think? Thumbs up or down? What do you think of this U.S. solution vs. the solution that Frito Lay came up with in the UK (where it markets under the Walkers brand it acquired back in the 90s)?

Photo: Brand New

The Susan Boyle phenomenon dissected

Better quality version here

Before Susan Boyle, there was Paul Potts. He was the winner of Britain's Got Talent in 2007 and a viral success in his own right. (The various videos of his first performance have over 52 million views.) But Susan Boyle is something else--a global, viral phenomenon not just on YouTube but in the mainstream media too, even in countries like the U.S. that don't air the show. Why?

The contestants have a lot in common. They are both attractively-challenged and they both emerged from obscurity (Susan Boyle, living with her cat in a small village in Scotland, and Paul Potts, working as a mobile phone salesperson in Wales). Both having seemingly impossible dreams to be professional singers and both setting up negative expectations with the judges and the audience that they then completely demolished with their performance. No doubt this was by design--I'm sure that Paul Pott's success in 2007 had the BGT team looking for a repeat performance. So, once again, why Susan Boyle?

Let's start with the judges explanation (after her semi-final performance):

Reality vs. expectations: This was where Simon focused: "I want to apologize because of the way we treated you before you sang the first time. You made me and everyone else look stupid." Although Paul Potts delivered an equally unexpected performance, the show did a better job this second time around of setting up and capturing the expectations of the judges and the audience.

Context (these hard times): When Paul Potts won the competition we were still in the sub-prime and derivatives-fueled boom-boom times. Now we're in a recession so, as Piers said: "When the world was going through a pretty tough time and was looking for a bit of hope and inspiration, Susan Boyle was there to deliver."

Some other ideas:

The song: "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables (Susan Boyle) vs. Giacomo Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" (Paul Potts). An advantage for Ms. Boyle. Not only because musicals are more familiar and accessible to the general population than Italian opera but also because the theme of her song mirrors her story. ("I dreamed a dream in time gone by, when hope was high and life, worth living.")

The back story: Another factor in favor of Susan Boyle. She really seems to have come from complete obscurity vs. Paul Potts who had had some professional experience prior to the show. Whereas he had sung with the Royal Philharmonic in front of an audience of 15,000, her experience had come from singing in church and karaoke in the local pubs in her village.

Practice makes perfect: I think that Paul Potts' success perhaps caught the show a little by surprise and they didn't take full advantage. No mistake this time round as they figured out every (camera) angle and every other way (cutting to Ant and Dec as the crowd gasps etc) to maximize the impact. They were ready.

So, there's five reasons but have I missed anything here? As I look at this list, I think it shows the importance of timing, the need for a deep and consistent story and how small details matter a lot.

One final thought--what about next year? I guarantee that the show will be scouring the nation's backwaters for more well disguised talent. But how are they going to avoid appearing like they've gone back to the well one too many times? Could Susan Boyle's great success actually be the beginning of the end for the show itself?

I don't know but let's leave the final word to Susan Boyle herself lest, by this dissection, we forget the bigger picture:

"All my life, I've always striven to prove to myself--that I can be accepted--that I'm not the worthless person that people think I am--that I do have something to offer...I just want that chance to perform in front of the Queen." Susan Boyle

SOTB: Minimalist edition

A streamlined Six of the Best edition today for those diehards who have not escaped for the long weekend and still want to keep up-to-date with all the latest and greatest:

1) Branding: The Next Generation: Branding Strategy Insider
From USPs to HSPs (Holistic Selling Propositions). Martin Lindstrom proposes that: "HSP brands are those that not only anchor themselves in tradition but also adopt religious characteristics at the same time they leverage the concept of sensory branding as a holistic way of spreading the news. Each holistic brand has its own identity, one that is expressed in its every message, shape, symbol, ritual, and tradition -- just as sports teams and religion do today."

2) Dramatic Changes in Marketing and Media: ToddAnd
Ah! For those simples times of yore. A cute video from Scholz and Friends about how marketing used to easy and now isn't:



3) Real Social Media R.O.I. – Part 4: FRY Metrics: The Brand Builder
Olivier Blanchard has been considering Social Media ROI all week culminating in this post that brings it all together with F.R.Y. (Frequency/Reach/Yield), the >"ultimate app. for R.O.I. measurement.

4) rubberduckzilla is the friend of water haters: brandflakesforbreafast
Darryl Ohrt is a reliable source of the weird and fantastic and this Oasis ad is both:



5) Supremely bad T-shirt acquires narrative, meaning; becomes top-seller: Murketing
Sometimes being the worst works just as well as being the best. (Further analysis on the branding opportunity for being dead last from eyecube.)

6) Cheapotle.com... It's WAR: The Denver Egotist
The Denver Egotist is waging a war against Chipotle's new advertising and marketing direction with an anti-campaign designed to: "do something that really draws national attention to this crap." The Cheapotle.com site includes a "Gallery of Hate" with spoof ads. Comments are running pretty even for and against whether this is valid criticism or sour grapes.

That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Big lips, big hips & other signs of luxury branding

Ryan Murphy, creator of Nip/Tuck, talking to Terry Gross on Fresh Air about the waning interest in Hollywood for breast implants and those "big, over-inflated, horrible lips:"

"I think that the culture has turned against that look...Plastic surgery, in its day, was sort of seen as a luxury item and a status symbol but now it's so affordable and it's so cheap and anybody can get it--you can get it at a strip mall--that it's no longer, I think, like wearing the new Chanel sweater or carrying the new Dior bag. It's taken on a different, tacky vibe."

Which reminded me, for some reason, of an evening meal in the South of France, many years ago. A meal presided over by the chef de famille, a man of huge girth, entertaining his and our family. His size, I was told, corresponded to his status. Today obesity has also taken on a different vibe and is no longer seen as an indicator of wealth. Even further back in time, aristocratic Elizabethans used lead paint as a face-whitening make-up to distinguish themselves from those who had to work outdoors.

So, there's a long history of people going to extraordinary and sometimes painful lengths to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi. Buying luxury goods may be less painful but the same principles apply. As Seth Godin says in a recent post:

"Luxury goods are needlessly expensive. By needlessly, I mean that the price is not related to performance. The price is related to scarcity, brand and storytelling. Luxury goods are organized waste. They say, 'I can afford to spend money without regard for intrinsic value.' That doesn't mean they are senseless expenditures. Sending a signal is valuable if that signal is important to you."

For luxury, inaccessibility for average folk is the first ingredient for success. Lose that and you lose the whole point.

SOTB: Pandemics, meltdowns and other catastrophes edition

A week free of Twitter storms. Star Trek stayed at the top of its trending topics all week and there no Motrin/KFC/Domino's-like incidents to report. But there will be no rest. Let's use this quiet Twitter week to talk about real catastrophic events, the fear they generate and the consequences for marketing. First the financial crisis, now a flu pandemic.

1) The Age of Pandemics: Larry Brilliant
"In 1967, the country's surgeon general, William Stewart, famously said, 'The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States.'" How wrong he turned out to be. Instead, Larry Brilliant argues, we are entering a new age of pandemics and it's only a matter of time before a flu or some other disease, natural or man-made, wipes a lot of us out. Maybe it won't be this swine flu but something's coming. So, even when we finally emerge from this recession, there's plenty more to fear around the corner.

2) Brand Building in the Face of Fear: Branding Strategy Insider
"What do guns, burglar alarms and condoms have in common? Their sales have all boomed in 2009." But why? Martin Lindstrom's explanation is that, in the atmosphere of fear started by the financial crisis and now fanned by the media, we have reverted back to our more basic needs and instincts. He believes that you can't build brands in a recession unless you are able to manage fear. That's what he thinks was so great about Hyundai's "Buy any new Hyundai, and if in the next year you lose your income, we'll let you return it" offer. Sales of Hyundai shot up while the deeply discounted U.S. cars continued to fall. Hyundai addressed people's fear for their job while American car manufacturers thought that price alone would be the answer.

3) Why Anxiety Matters: JWT Anxiety Index
JWT has created a site specifically designed to help brands navigate consumer anxiety. It includes a monthly anxiety index, a monthly report of the anxiety of different nations (Japan, the most; Brazil, the least). As they say: "Anxious consumers look for brands that can give them a sense of control over their lives, whether that means staying within their budget at the supermarket or finding cheap alternatives to going out. Navigating consumer anxieties is not about exploiting fear. It’s about finding better ways to connect with consumers looking for trust, credibility and answers."

4) ‘What Happens Here Stays Here’ is here to stay: JWT Anxiety Index
One of JWT AI's recent posts shows that knee-jerk price cuts to deal with the recession sometimes backfire. Las Vegas' successful "What Happens Here Stays Here” theme was dropped last year for a new message that focused on affordability. The new message bombed because, it turns out, people still like the idea of Las Vegas as a place to indulge. The old theme has now been revived with just a wink to the recession:



5) Angry Ads Seek to Channel Consumer Outrage: New York Times
How are other marketers reacting to the fear dynamic? According to the NYT: "The mad men of Madison Avenue are really mad these days, creating a spate of angry advertising campaigns that seek to channel the outrage, frustration and fear felt by consumers hit hard by what some are calling the Great Recession." From Harley-Davidson that deplores “the stink of greed and billion-dollar bankruptcies” to (even) Post Shredded Wheat cereal, which declares in new ads that “Progress is overrated,” companies are going for brutal honesty responding to the climate of fear and worry.

6) The Upside of Fear: Pamela Slim
Not everyone thinks that fear is such a bad thing. Here's Pamela Slim recorded at an Ignite Phoenix event. Rather than "power it out" or "let it wash over you," Pamela believes that we can learn a lot from fear. The storm around us gives us the chance to grow in new and different ways.



(Thanks to Tom Asaker for sharing the tip about how to resize these videos so they don't spill into my right-hand column. If you're having the same problem, let me know and I'll pass the tip along. )

Jennifer Senior provides a similar perspective in her recent Recession Culture article in New York Magazine. She find that the reduced focus on money in NYC has its plus side perhaps making the city a touch more neighborly and civic-minded.

That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Why do popular brands have such incredible staying power?

Photo: atomicjeep (flickr)

Why is Tide so popular? Why is Heinz Ketchup still so popular in Pittsburgh? These questions, posed by Tyler Cowan on his Marginal Revolution blog, generated lots of interesting answers. I'll give you a summary in a minute but, first, the set-up.

Tide: It has a 44% share of the market and has held this market lead for decades even though it's more expensive than its competitors. Heinz: Launched in Pittsburgh in 1876 still has a better share in its hometown than in other cities. Tide and Heinz are just two examples. There are countless other longtime packaged goods market leaders and many other brands that have their best share in their home market* Why?

The theories that don’t work (at least not completely)

1) Product superiority: Tide works better, smells fantastic. Heinz is thicker, has a secret formula. No doubt that actual product quality plays a role but it doesn't explain why Heinz does better in Pittsburgh than anywhere else. And is it possible that Tide has been market leader all these years just by keeping product advantage over the competition?

2) Buy Local: Local people support local brands and local brands support the local economy. Seems logical for Heinz which has always been active in a fiercely loyal community but it doesn’t explain why, for example, Milwaukee’s Miller Beer has always done so well in Chicago. (But maybe that’s, in part, because it’s at least not St Louis’ Anheuser-Busch.)

Consumer-based theories

3) Mother knows best/habit: Several people talked about how the purchase of Tide/ Heinz is a tradition passed down in the family from generation to generation. Buying products with this heritage is both reassuring and familiar and gives you one less thing to think about when you are at the store.

4) Conditioning: After a while, people get used to certain aspects of products that may be technically quite similar. The taste of Heinz, the smell of Tide, the thickness, the packaging, the color. Try to get a diehard Diet Coke drinker to drink a Diet Pepsi (or vice versa). We’re all sort of like rats in the end.

5) Decision set/habit: Another variation of mother knows best. “Jeff G” who worked on a competitive brand to Tide, said that his company’s purchase decision research had shown that the first decision was “are you a Tide customer or not” Then, if not, you typically believe ‘All are the same’/ ‘I am Poor’ and your decision is based on price.

Competition-based theories

Then there were a set of theories that spoke to the power and advantage that a leader enjoys and can leverage in what is less than a perfectly competitive market:

6) Distribution advantages: Market leaders become category captains influencing what gets on the shelf and benefit from being able to justify more skus than anyone else. That “wall of orange” tends to crowd out everyone else at the point of purchase.

8) Fixed costs: Many of the costs of doing business in the CPG are fixed. Trade ads, for example. These can be absorbed with much less P&L impact by Tide than by the smaller players giving Tide a continuing margin advantage that it can either bank or spend on other marketing activities.

9) Brand equity/Sunk marketing costs: One place that they can spend those extra dollars is building up brand equity and connecting the brand to the important category drivers. Years of marketing spending build a strong brand foundation that's difficult to undermine.

10) Competitors are followers: In large part, competitors have not tried or been able to disrupt the category by coming up with big enough product innovations. One comment notes that, in detergents, only All has made a determined effort to take on P&G with breakthrough ideas.

Another interesting point is that this phenomenon is more pronounced in CPG products than in other categories. Being one-time leaders hasn’t helped retailers like A&P, Sears and Kmart. And, in the online space, being a one-time leader like CompuServe or AOL is more of a disadvantage.

Perhaps that's because CPG products differentiate more by their identity than by physical factors? If consumers can’t differentiate between products (at least not in blind tests), they need to rely on other factors to make their decisions.

So, can anything dislodge a package goods market leader? There were some thoughts on that as well:

1) The leader falls asleep at the wheel: The #1 brand is well protected from the competition for the reasons described above. And usually such brands have time to recover even if they make a series of missteps (New Coke?). But protracted neglect and no marketing investment may give challenger brands at least an opportunity.

2) Big market changes happen that disrupt the model: Typically, the pace of change in CPG is relatively slow compared to other categories (like consumer electronics) and there's less chance of a leader being caught completely unawares of new trends. Changing demographics (e.g. the rising influence of the Hispanic consumer) can have an effect and certainly creates opportunities for brands that previously were considered niche to become more mainstream (e.g. Nescafe Clasico).

3) Category reinvention: What business is Heinz in? Just ketchup? All condiments? BBQ vs. other meal choices? In the end, the biggest danger for market leaders like Heinz may come from the declining relevance of their categories. If ketchup becomes a less important part of the American dining experience, Heinz will suffer even it stays the leader. And, today, all packaged goods are suffering from the center-aisle problem with fresh alternatives on the perimeter gaining ground.

Bottom line: If you are a #1 brand in a CPG category, congratulations. You are in a strong competitive position for all sorts of reasons. Unfortunately, you've still got plenty to worry about. Retailers are scaling back shelf space for packaged goods to give more room to fresh products and, at the same time, they are launching own-label brands that are becoming more and more of a threat. That's, in the end, is where the real battle is these days.


* Current share in markets of origin for brands launched back in the late 1800s and early 1900s is 12 percentage points higher than their national share. Source: Brand history, geography and the persistence of brand shares by Bart J. Bronnenberg Tilburg University, Sanjay K. Dhar University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The ugliest laptop in the world?

Photo: My new Lenovo ThinkPad T500

I don't want anyone to think that I'm not grateful because I am. I really needed a new work laptop. The old one was giving up its will to live, struggling with simple chores and getting slower by the day. It's great to have a laptop that shows some energy and enthusiasm for the task in hand.

But, boy, is this one ugly (and heavy) piece of machinery. It’s aggressively ugly. Not one attractive feature. While colleagues delight in their ever-thinner and more elegant Macs, I’m happy to take a more industrial path. But do you have to make it this drab?

SOTB: Tastes Like Chicken Edition

Another week, another storm in the Twitter cup. This time it was KFC up-to-bat with a great idea, poorly executed. I didn't get my damn coupon so they are going to pay.....

1) KFC No Longer Honoring FREE 2 Piece Chicken Coupons: Frugal Living
Yes, what a great idea. But what a disaster in execution. Following the success of the Denny's Free Grand Slam Giveaway, KFC decided to get in on the act. Rather than use the Superbowl to promote its giveaway, it managed to get Oprah instead and she promoted the free coupon on the show. So far, so brilliant. But KFC had underestimated our insatiable appetite for free anything-- many people (ME!) couldn't get coupons and now KFC has even stopped honoring coupons from those who did manage to print them out, giving rainchecks instead. Follow the tweets.

2) What does KFC have against Moms? El Pollo Loco
A quirk of the KFC idea was that the coupons were not to be valid on Mother's Day. (This Sunday, in case you forgot, but not in the UK--that's another story.) El Pollo Loco saw the opportunity and jumped in:



3) KFC + Oprah = I Don't Get It: Brand New Day
David Kiley looks at another angle. What's Oprah doing? Isn't she the one who who's all about healthy eating? As David says: "How many shows has she done with doctors, fitness gurus, nutritionists over the years advancing the idea of mindful eating?" Not that there's anything/much wrong with the occasional KFC trip but, still, an Oprah endorsement seems like a big brand disconnect.

4) What FREE will get you: Brains on Fire
And here's another angle. How about the whole question of free? Spike says: "Free used like IHOP and KFC used it is a short-term tactic that wreaks of desperation. They got a spike in mentions and sales, and then the freeloaders are out the door and on their way, looking for the next sucker who might be giving a handout." By coincidence, and unrelated to chicken, Seth Godin also posted this week about "too much free."

5) Chicken: Low Art, High Calorie: Bad Banana Blog (via brandflakesforbreakfast)
Thank God for Google Reader search! Another story about chicken. In fact, a whole book of restaurant signs from independent fried chicken restaurants (who should all be honoring the KFC coupon too if they are on the ball).

6) Two meaningful campaigns that fall short: Marketing with Meaning
A while back, Bob Gilbreath reviewed the KFC initiative to repair potholes at no cost. At the time, he said that the problem with this initiative, worthy as it was, was that it had no link to the equity. Perhaps this week's coupon disaster was a valiant attempt to make the connection?

That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.

Consumer Behavior: Tapping into the competitive element

Photo: Jeff Kubina (Flickr)

Unseasonal rain fell in California this weekend requiring us to put into effect the Emergency Indoors Plan to keep the kids occupied. Board games too optimistically stacked away on top shelves had to be brought back down. Wii Go Kart and computer games fired up.

Soon, my daughter (6) and I were locked in battle over Balloon Lagoon while my son (8) was off on a JumpStart adventure. Calm reigned briefly.

The power of games to motivate and shape consumer behavior is well known. Video game designers are, in fact, so good at doing this that it's easy for people to spend hours and hours lost in game play. But the consumer instincts that game designers tap into are not leveraged very often by consumer marketers. Why not? Can't some of these game mechanics be used to motivate consumer behavior in other contexts? Aren't there opportunities beyond the world of the promotional contest?

Rajat Paharia thinks so. He is the founder of Bunchball, a company that is beginning to tap into our competitive nature to reward and build loyalty. Bunchball has taken a look at some of the essential elements of games (points, levels, challenges, leaderboards etc) and started applying them to the non-gaming world. Its first application of these principles can be seen on NBC's DundlerMifflinInfinity site where Office fans can join the company and work their way up through the organization, earning Shrutebucks as they go.

As this Forbes article (written by Bunchball's CEO) describes, these applications are successful in their own right, driving big increases in desired behaviors such as time on site and ad pages consumed as well as in more traditional metrics like purchase intent and brand favorability. But I think there's potential for applications that move even further away from these gaming roots. One example used by Rajat: Couldn't Yoplait dump its old-fashioned mail-in lids promotion in favor of revamped program that would track total points in real time, use a leaderboard and build community engagement? (See pp 32 to 34 of this deck.)

Once you start looking, you can see elements of game mechanics being used successfully. Look at Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They all use the points/leaderboard motivator. That's why it's tough not to get sucked into playing the followers/friends/contacts game. It's powerful stuff and I expect that, as marketers look for new ways to engage with consumers, this will be a field that will start to receive a lot more attention.

Meanwhile, back in our house, as the Battle of Balloon Lagoon neared its conclusion, my daughter demonstrated her own mastery of gaming psychology. I had well-deserved victory in sight when she fired off: "Well if you win, we have to play again. If I win, we're done." After a couple of botched frog-jumps on my part, she was soon able to declare:

"I'M THE WINNER!" and give a little dance too. I'm going to win next time around.

SOTB: Has to be The Swine Flu Edition

I spent the week cocooned in a hotel on a long-hours training program. When I emerged back into the world yesterday, I discovered a pandemic panic. One of my colleagues on the program traveling back to Mexico City told me that there were only 17 people on the plane. Here are some of the stories I missed:

1) A Swine Flu By Any Other Name...Won't Fly: BusinessWeek
The pork industry is trying to convince media outlets to stop calling the swine flu “swine flu,” because of the impact on pork sales. David Kiley says: "Good luck with that." Perhaps they should sponsor a competition for a new name. NPR reports on the best ideas so far. One suggestion: Hamageddon - not that helpful from a pork industry perspective.

2) mmmm. lunchmeat illustration: brandflakesforbreakfast
Maybe this will help?

3) Swine Flu and the Economy: Freakonomics
Although the world is much better able to deal with the health effects of a pandemic, the economic effect could be disastrous. A report from Foreign Policy says that a mild flu epidemic would reduce global G.D.P. by 1 percent and a severe epidemic could reduce output by up to 12.6 percent. But some companies are lovin' it.

4) Flu Design: Design You Trust
How graphic designers feel about swine flu. One example here:

5) Flu sharpens tone of U.S. immigration debate: Reuters
Every pandemic brings its own search for scapegoats. This time it's provided an opportunity for some to target Mexican immigrants.

6) #swineflu: Twitter
One thing about the name--it's perfect for a Twitter hash. See all the latest here.

That's it! See you here on the blog or on Twitter (@martinjbishop) for more stories from the world of brand strategy.