by STEPHANIE FIERMAN

Ed Note: As the numbers trickle in and retail analysts debate the success – or lack thereof – of this holiday season, Trustmeister Stephanie Fierman asks the key question…

Is Santa the best marketer ever?

Think about it.

Long-term reputation management: No Tiger Woods problems here. Ever. Do you think that Coca-Cola worries that it might go to sleep one night and wake up to find a sex tape of Santa on the Web? Have you ever noticed that the whole “Mommy kissing Santa Claus” business never seems to go past a certain point (paging Charlie Sheen…)? Nope, not gonna happen. Santa is one reliable dude.

Brand promise and channel integration: No matter where you go, you receive the same disciplined message. Movies, television, email, radio, social media, Web, snail mail, music, retail… You get the same message everywhere and each channel builds upon and reinforces the others. He’s big, he’s fat, he wears a red suit and he gives you what you ask for on Christmas Eve. Not December 23. Not December 25. It’s December 24. Every year.

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Ed Note: From time-to-time we re-post a classic from the trustmeister archives. This one’s fun — and instructive for marketers looking to understand the world they find themselves in today. We wrote this back in 2007 and it holds true today.

JARVIS CROMWELL

The funny, short video below says a lot about the state of relations today between marketers and customers. It’s a break-up scene. Ms. Consumer wants a divorce from Mr. Advertiser. And just like the dissolution of many relationships, trust has broken down.

Some of “Ms. Consumer’s” grievances:

“You’re saying you love me, but you’re not behaving like you love me. You’re not genuine.”

“You do all the talking…. It’s not exactly a dialogue.”

The video exposes a fundamental issue for companies looking to build trusted customer relationships: We now live in a “show me” marketplace where our words are increasingly disbelieved.

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by STEPHANIE FIERMAN

Here at the Garage, we believe that a more measured approach to bank and investment advertising is probably a positive development.

After all, hadn’t all the ads begun to look the same? Could every company and every investment have possibly offered the best return, and the most Morningstar stars, and the biggest retirement homes in paradise? Unlikely. Outside of just a few stalwarts, such as Vanguard with its slow-and-steady point of view and Bogle-esque approach, many of the siren calls in the newspaper, on television and online had all taken on a surreal and undifferentiated patina. That’s not effective.

Now it appears that all the bulls have stampeded in the opposite direction.

Consider the list of firms advertising in one issue of The Wall Street Journal this past week, along with text pulled verbatim from their ads: Continue Reading

by JARVIS CROMWELL

Back in 2007 we quoted renowned free-marketeer Milton Friedman on the pages of this blog as follows:

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business,” Friedman wrote back in 1970, and that is to “engage in activities designed to increase profits.”

Friedman’s viewpoint ultimately became the guiding principal of an era: profitable self-interest would be viewed as the only reliable endgame by most businesses.

The costs were higher than anyone imagined.

We read today that there is increasing consensus that there will be a 15-25% drop in the standard of living around the world (more in some especially beleaguered regions) as a result of the current crisis. Wow. And some corners are now arguing that 2008 was to capitalism what 1989 was to communism. Is this the demise of free market capitalism as we know it? Or is there a way out of this place?

The optimistic view is that our current sorry state of affairs will herald a new era of free market capitalism that fellow trustmeister Dr. Sri Raghavan and I have termed “Trust Metric capitalism.” The idea is that management teams must demand that their organizations better measure what truly matters for the long-term health of the system. To achieve that, organizations will need to look at metrics beyond short-term profit — the kind that measure the underlying health and vitality of their organization, transactions and markets. The pessimistic view is that leaders will hunker down in a tough market, continue with an agenda that is both short-term oriented and bubble-prone, and generally fail to lead us into sustainable profit and growth.

Over a year ago the futurist Andrew Zolli wrote a piece in where he declared that the oblivious capitalist’s days are numbered. In this case Zolli cast his eye to the future and concluded that a host of global forces will force a remake of the playbook for business success. Business will profit by driving a wider social agenda and “the clinical, value-neutral capitalism of old” will fall by the wayside.

Let’s face it, whichever way you slice it companies have much work to do. That work includes reducing costs and preparing financially for a long winter. But beyond the very real financial constraints, this is a time of customer scarcity and increasing fear. Building trust must now become a central means through which companies will drive customer sales, loyalty and retention, employee engagement, productivity and, ultimately, long-term shareholder value. It is an essential metric to the survival of capitalism as we know it. Warren Buffett compared trust and confidence to the air we breath. We take it for granted until it’s gone.

What do you think? Are the days numbered for the oblivious capitalist — or will leadership rise to the challenge and institute a new set of performance measures to bring us back from the brink? Which companies get it, which don’t? We would like to know your views.

By Jarvis Cromwell for The Reputation Garage

“Eternally basic is how people live.”

This holiday season, marketers aspiring to be trustmeisters should think about the quote above from the late, great Ted Bernstein of The New York Times. His point was that any scrap of information, every communication, ultimately connects back to people and their lives.

At the end of the day, it’s all about us — NOT the product, market, basketball score, database, or holiday gift. Marketers call this an emotional connection, but somehow many have forgotten what that means.

Which brings us, strangely enough, to the next quote.

“Stay out of the doghouse this holiday season.”

Always good advise, and in severe circumstances what is often required is, well, diamonds.

Luxury goods aren’t easy to sell right now. The ways in which people are thinking about leading their lives in the current setting doesn’t make one bullish on diamond sales.

And it’s more than just consumer retrenchment. As noted in my 11/30 dispatch, Faith Popcorn sees a movement of anti-over-consumerism taking hold among consumers – a “we can’t afford it, so we might as well hate it” sentiment. Unfortunately, this is perfectly in sync with the low trust levels of our times.

Below is an approach that we think adeptly disarms the anti-over-consumerism backlash — a funny viral campaign from the jewelry shop at J.C. Penny titled “Beware of the Doghouse.” At 4 minutes it’s bit long, but totally worth the watch. It follows the foibles of, excuse the language, a dual-bag and uses humor to make a trust point: you live and die by your actions. Other positives in our view:

– The message deeply relates to the audience (or at least to a few of us guys here in the Garage)

– Great leverage of Facebook

– Viral power (it starts a fun conversation)

– Feels authentic

Fellow trustmeister Paul Dunay said it initiated that “damn I wish I thought of that feeling when I saw it.”

The true test of something viral is whether the recipient will “buzz it forward” to more than one person. If N > 1 it will go viral. If N = 1 or is <>

This campaign has N>1 written all over it. We hope it makes JC Penny some money this season.

Watch “Beware of the Doghouse” HERE. Enjoy.

Copyright 2008 by The Reputation Garage

Back in the year 2000 – shortly before 9/11, way before the invasion of Iraq, and way-way before the collapse of the global credit system – a serious debate raged. The central question was a profound one.

“Which economy are we in?”
Good question. What’s everyone think?

The year 2000 was the backside of the dot.com bubble, still bloated and ready to burst. Money flowed, valuations were generous, VC-backed investments were the rage, technology was everything, more people had more than they had ever had before. Which, I guess, meant people had lots of free time to think about exactly which economy they were enjoying so much.

Pundits said we were in the midst of the Internet economy, the technology economy, the Silicon-Valley economy, the dot.com economy, the wired economy – and the big kahuna of them all – the new economy. My personal favorite is the new economy – because it made so little sense, as if the all too human drivers of economic sustainability took a permanent vacation. Plus, the moment you anoint a new economy, it starts becoming an old economy. And as we are painfully learning today, sometimes an old economy can become barely an economy at all.

“So, again, what economy is this today ?
My answer is the same as it was in 2000. This is the Performance Economy.
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