Moleskine misstep miffs most-loyals

Committing social media suicide by upsetting your most loyal fans is something of a trend. Netflix blazed a trail. And now it's Moleskine, maker of the "legendary" notebooks so beloved by the designers, following along.

With apparently no sense of a design community hot button issue, Moleskine thought it might be kind of cool to organize a competition to design a new logo. In other words, to crowdsource it. That's, to say the least, not going down too well with one-time Moleskine lovers, now turning into Moleskine haters. Here's a comment posted on Moleskine's Facebook page by Seth Johnson which is representative of the aggrieved point of view:

"Count me as another designer who has purchased and loved your products for years but feels slapped in the face by your shortsighted attempt to crowdsource a logo. No more will I be purchasing or using your products; no longer will I advocate for your brand."

Maria Raudva, in another post, points out that the inserts in each notebook say: "Moleskine notebooks are partners for the creative and imaginative professions of our time." She thinks the competition is more about plundering than partnering.

One way to measure your level of engagement with your customers is to see how much of their free time they spend with you on social media. Brands with strong customer relationships benefit from a steady stream of user-generated content that might be comments or videos or statements of their love and affection. That's probably what Moleskine hoped to tap into with its competition. But there's a big difference between giving up some of your free time and giving up some of your professional time for free.

Crowdsourcing has worked for some brands. It's worked well for Doritos who've used competitions to generate Super Bowl ads. I'm sure the professional community doesn't really like that competition either but they represent a miniscule part of the Doritos customer base. Not so with Moleskine, as it's finding out to its cost.

(If you are interested in a comprehensive perspective on rights of authorship in new media and how free contributions are leading to our collective impoverished future, read this interview with Jaron Lanier, published at Edge.)

Photo

Newman's Own tribute

"We celebrate the inspirational life of our founder Paul L. Newman and honor his legacy with our dedication to the continued success of Newman's Own."

Quote of the Day: "Politics is to branding what fruit flies are to genetics"

Jonathan Salem Baskin takes on the "Hillraisers," those so upset with Hillary Clinton's loss to Barack Obama that they are now planning to vote for John McCain instead.

Another great quote from the same post: "These nutty Hillraisers are like consumers with terrible, if not deadly body odor who, when the grocer sells out of their favorite deodorant, choose to ignore the counsel, warnings, and potential legal liabilities to forgo all other deodorant options, and simply reek instead."

Read the full post here.

Hertz values (mostly) represented by LAX bus driver

Hertz has a rather typical and bland mission statement on its website. "Our mission is to be the most customer focused, cost efficient.....shared-value culture of.... strategic investments in...."
It also has a list of aspirational values such as: passion, integrity, accountability, transparency, commitment, teamwork.

So, it was refreshing to hear a Hertz driver at LAX trying his best to live up to those values by making the following announcement (as best I could record in my note book) to his passengers as they got on his bus:

"Several of you have complained about the long wait for this bus. I'm sorry about the service. I admit it was pretty disgusting. When the new management took over the company, they made lots of changes. They fired 15 drivers. They took the customer complaint cards off the buses. They just don't care about you. Or about us. Welcome to LA!"

Let's see: Passion: check. Integrity: check. Accountability: check. Transparency: Definitely. Big check. So, a little bit of work to do on teamwork but otherwise more or less perfect.

Conviction makes reality

An extraordinary piece on NPR today about the power of the placebo effect. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted a study to see whether just a person's perception of how much exercise they were doing could impact actual results of how their body looked.

She chose, as her research group, hotel maids who spend most of their day engaged in physical activity but who didn't think of themselves as exercising. She divided these maids into two groups, telling one group that their hotel work met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestlye. The other group wasn't given any information.

One month later she analyzed the two groups and found that the group that now believed they were involved in an active lifestlye had significant, measurable differences in their physical appearance and other key measures, such as a 10% drop in blood pressure.

Just believing that what they were doing was physical activity was enough to create these changes even though their actual activity hadn't changed. It shows that the power of conviction can be strong enough to make reality.

It's also a strong validation of brand engagement principles. The more that employees believe that they are the critical to the company's success and understand what's "on-brand," the more potential they have to deliver a powerful competitive advantage.

Meatball Sundae Thought #2: Get your story straight

In his new book, Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin identifies 14 trends that he says are ushering a new era of marketing. Trend 3: Need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases. As he points out: "Saying one thing and doing another fails, because you'll get caught."

Let's take a look at this values statement:

Respect
Our Associates are our greatest assets. We expect every Associate to demonstrate that they respect and value others for their efforts, their knowledge, and the diversity that they bring.

First of all, there are lots of companies that say that their employees are the greatest asset but there's certainly fewer of them that actually behave as if they mean it. But this particular statement comes from Circuit City's values and this company beats all others in 2007 for saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As Dean Baker reports in his Beat The Press post, Circuit City decided earlier this year to fire all its senior salespeople and replace them with cheaper, new hires. The math looked great just as long as they didn't assign any value to the experience and knowledge of the people that were let go.

Dean refers to this Washington Post article that shows that this decision has not helped Circuit City's performance, although it has financially helped senior executives because they've all been given up to $1 million retention awards to encourage them to stay on through this difficult period.

Now the company has is seeking "to rebuild our selling culture," according to chief executive Philip J. Schoonover. Good luck on that.

What are you fighting for?

A couple of quotes (as close as I can remember them) from Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post on "It's your World." He was talking about the Iraq war but, at least in my car ride home, it seemed that they apply to the business world too.

"You can't win a war for your values by undermining them"

(In describing a difference between Iraqi troops and insurgents): "They don't know what they are fighting for"

Back from Brazil

For the first time for quite a long time I got to visit a new country this last week with a business trip to Porto Alegre in Brazil. Actually a new continent too, now that I think about it.

It was a flying visit (and it sure takes a lot of flying to get there) so I didn't get to see that much although we did get out for a traditional Churrasco meal one evening and then got back in time to see Brazil pound Ecuador 5-0 in a World Cup qualifier.

So far, the only Brazilian brand that has made a big impression on the rest of the world is Brazil itself. And when you visit the country you can see why. This is definitely a case where the employees (or, in this case, citizens) are all strong evangelists and believers in the brand and its important elements: multiculturalism, samba, joie de vivre, carnivale, passion...

Local vs. Global

I've been on both sides. Cursing the corporate marketing people in Europe who just didn't get it and had no clue about our local needs. Laughing out loud in the corporate headquarters as we got yet another elaborate rationale from a market that wanted to do things their own way.

It's just human nature for us to see things from our own perspective. Hopefully, I'm not the only one who gets mad at cars when I'm cycling and mad at those crazy cyclists when I'm in a car.

Often these local vs. global disputes become a never-ending series of battles where the winners are those with the most political clout rather than the best case.

In my experience there's two ways that can help reduce these type of turf wars:

1) Strong brand differentiation and engagement: The clearer the brand story, the more common the understanding and the stronger the passion for that story, the more likely that everyone will see things from the same perspective
2) Respect: The more people get to know each other and work together the more likely they will increase their level of trust and respect.

Once you know someone and know that you are both supporters of the same cause you are much more likely to figure out common ground whenever you do see things differently.

Vodaphone's three "Rs"

I love the way that Vodaphone energizes its employees across the globe with its internal motto "red, rock solid and restless".

As reported in the Brand Strategy Magazine Blog:

"David Wheldon from Vodafone talked about how the brand is underpinned internally with certain values - ‘red, rock solid and restless’ that it uses to help business units that are acquired in other regions feel part of the company. He discussed how it was important to get the emotion behind ‘Vodafone behaviour’ across to people so they understood why they were expected to act in a certain way. The alliterative phrase is intended to make people remember to be passionate (red), reliably good (rock solid) and always aiming to do better (restless). Wheldon explained this was not an external branding campaign, but an internal motto designed to help people understand how the Vodafone brand ‘thinks’.

Getting your own employees fired up and pointing in the same direction can be a powerful business driver but one that's often difficult to execute. For every "red, rock solid and restless" there's many more "we make the very best" (or similar)