sushi sense

One lazy Saturday afternoon, I found myself in Coney Island, one of the oldest theme parks in America.   Surrounded by massive colorful rides that had seen better days, costumed barkers hawking their games to a disinterested public, a very empty freak show and horror house, I felt an overwhelming sense of melancholy.  Strolling down the boardwalk between the beach and the theme parks, I realized that all around the place was a sense of desperation.  Coney Island is a relic of the past, hopelessly fighting for relevance.  In a way, it is willing to do anything— frighten and shock you, fling you through the air, defy gravity, just to get your attention.  As I was hanging 150 feet off the ground on the Wonder Wheel, it occurred to me that the advertising industry is in a way, facing the same struggles, and at certain points, may even be likened to a freak show.  (Watch re-runs of American Horror Story: Freak Show for full effect)  

We are not solving real world problems anymore, rather the industry’s creativity is being held hostage by internet fame (or infamy).    Clients have become so obsessed with vanity metrics—the shares, likes and views.  The very definition of great work has now become whether the work has gone viral.  Real-time marketing, always-on are buzzwords often thrown around, in lieu of a social media strategy.  

In today’s era of content oversupply, human attention is the most scarce.  Because of this, brands are focusing on attention instead of brand memorability.  Not unlike carnival freak shows, they resort to stunts, antics, and social experiments that seek to shock, scandalize and titillate, all for the sake of attention.  Imagine this, casting global mega-celebrities like Justin Timberlake is apparently no longer enough.  He has to appear as a giant sad, washed-up lime-head.  What about brands making short films? Pffffft…that’s so 8 years ago unless it’s a sexually explicit one  (as if there wasn’t enough smut already).  Just ask adult retailer brand Coco De Mer that just recently unveiled their handiwork.    

The industry’s fate had been sealed by the likes of Volvo’s epic split and Red Bull’s  stratosphere jump.  These works pushed advertising to new heights (pun intended), towards the territory of awe and disbelief.  What some industry professionals tend to overlook, however, is that both of these ‘out-of-this-world’ executions were firmly grounded on a clear brand narrative.  The jump was a powerful demonstration of Red Bull giving you wings, and the epic split was made possible only by Volvo’s safety and flawless engineering.  

But then we get spots like Hyundai’s Message to Space, where a girl from Houston sends a message to her astronaut dad in space via an aerial photograph of the script written through tire impressions on the sands of a dry lake in Nevada.  Sounds convoluted?  Perhaps it is.  While it was interestingly novel, and mildly touching, I could not remember what brand it was for, nor was I clear about what it wanted to say about the car.   The whole execution, epic as it were, was just gratuitous.    

Or think about the launch of Sony’s water-resistant camera in NZ.  Their gimmick was to train an octopus to take pictures of visitors to the Sea Life Aquarium. The clever octopus did a fantastic job, earning media coverage with the headline ‘the first octogrpher.’  Pushing this seemingly ‘clever’ idea of animal photographers further, Nikon also recently came to town with a similar idea, except that the camera was mounted on a dog, and there was a sensor linked to the dog’s heartbeat, so that pictures are taken only when the dog gets excited.  The idea’s link to the brand?  Who cares?  It had all the ingredients of a viral story: a cute dog, a camera, wearable tech, and ‘gopro-ish' type of camera shots.  Now, contrast these ideas against Samsung’s launch of it’s smart camera in Korea.  The brand organized a photography workshop for blind children culminating in an exhibition that showcased the photos the children took with the help of their sense of smell and touch.  The work not only created awareness for the camera, but also a sense of connection between the general public and those with visual impairment by showing that we are all the same in our ability to sense and appreciate the essence of beauty.  This is not meant to do unfair comparisons, rather it is to demonstrate the possibilities within the category.

We often hear marketers say that content is king and brands nowadays should be behaving as entertainers and publishers.  This is true, but we must also remember that entertainment is not the end goal, but a means to an end.  In the same vein, vanity metrics are but stepping stones toward brand consideration and purchase.  To achieve this, entertainment alone is not going to cut it.  We must put across a relevant message or thought, at its finest, a point-of-view about the brand and its relationship with the people and their world.  

Uber, as most of you know is the most recent unicorn to take the start-up scene by storm.  Its breakneck speed growth and persistent media presence has had venture capitalists spinning with a bad case of ‘FOMO.’ So much so that the company is now valued at a jaw-dropping $50B.  

Jury is still out on whether this is a bubble or the real deal, but one thing’s for certain, these guys sure know how to get the party going.   From auto rickshaws in India, Lamborghinis and Maseratis in Singapore to helicopter taxis in Cannes, they’re all about demonstrating the breadth of their ability to move you from point A to point B.  This is when they’re not busy delivering food or kittens (yes, those adorable fur balls) to your doorstep, with no cash ever exchanging hands.  If Uber were on tinder, he would most likely be the dude with photos of himself on a dog-pulled sleigh with the Aurora Borealis at the background, enjoying a glass of Armand de Brignac with his model friends.   But even this cool guy has his share of douchebaggery.  There were allegations of their rather unethical practices in poaching drivers,  privacy issues regarding their users’ data, unreliable background check on drivers, among other things.     
I’ve used the service a few times, but was not really a big fan.  At least not until last weekend.  I was going to the artists flea market in Williamsburg with some friends when I found out that the L-train that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn was not running due to routine maintenance.  What this meant was that a 15 minute train ride would now take an hour, with multiple transfers.  Apparently, it was not a one-time thing.  Service disruptions were to happen on weeknights from March 24th-May 22nd, and on certain hours of the weekends for about six weeks.  Needless to say, New Yorkers were more than a little vexed.  For a city whose lifeblood is its flawless transport system, this was a big deal.    

Uber to the rescue. What they did was to offer Uber Pool rides along all the stops of the L-Line for a bargain price of $2.75—this is cheaper than the $3 subway ride I would have taken.  And they are running the program throughout the entire period that the L-train is out of commission.  The only catch was that you had to ride with strangers who are on the same route.  But hey, you do that on the train anyway.  So we booked the ride from Chelsea to Williamsburg, and got into the car with less than 5 minute waiting time. The car was pristine inside and out, and the driver gracious.  All for less than the price of a hotdog sandwich.  

This whole experience got me thinking about how some marketer and communicators approach brand building.  For instance, we often hear the experts preach the importance of brands being ‘always on.’  These days, the concept has sadly come to mean having a constant stream of content on social networks, and brands rabidly vying for vanity metrics such as like shares, likes and follows.  

But what if, instead of being ‘always on,’ brands were to be selective in their presence, choosing instead to be ‘there when you need it most?’  I had never particularly cared for Uber before, least of all, their social media activities, but that single encounter turned indifference into affection.  How? By being there for me when I needed it most, solving a real problem that i had, at the right time.    Being present at a moment of need magnified the value of Uber’s service in a way that no form of story-telling or messaging could equal.  Other brands have done this in the past, for instance Tide, as early as 2005, provided free laundry service for the victims of hurricane Katrina.  Ikea lent their flatpack expertise to the UN in the creation of ‘instant’ homes for refugees.  These are amazing efforts, but the brilliance in Uber’s tactic was the application in people’s everyday lives.  This isn’t really the first for Uber.   Their partnership with Breathometer to help inebriated people get home safely, was cut from the same cloth.  They focused on a very specific moment of need to dramatize the value of having a personal uber driver—driving home the message that it’s not just for comfort, it can save your life.  

In my view, there are two ways a brand can deliver value to consumers: one is by enhancing an experience, and the other is by eliminating unpleasantness in our everyday lives.  These days, usefulness has become a basic expectation in marketing/ advertising brands.   Just consider good old billboards.  Now you can find ones that dispense everything from juice to beer, show a movie, rid the air of pollution and even generate solar energy for schools.  With every brand trying to be useful, the choice of context could make all the difference.  Brands would do well to ask themselves, not only what problems can they solve for people, but also when is the most meaningful time to do it?

Another thing that I found interesting in Uber’s action was the fact that they leveraged a clever persuasion technique, which the author Robert Cialdini talked about in his classic book Influence.   The rule of reciprocation is simply that people, across societies and culture feel duty bound to return the favor done to them by others.  This is the powerful force that drives politics, where candidates spend most of their early careers currying favors among people who are in a position to help them fulfill their ambitions much later.  This also explains the financial boom of the Eastern religious sect Hare Krishna in the 1970’s.  They’ve figured out that offering a small gift to people beforehand (a single flower) made more willing donors.  Uber has grown their emotional bank account with the commuting public with their generous gesture.  What kind of favors can you pull for your customers?  

The experience has also served as an affirmation of what we’ve known earlier on…that the linear conversion funnel of walking people through from brand awareness to brand love is dead.  Instead of obsessing about beautifully crafted stories or message spread across big media, brands should think about how they can pole vault their way to brand love through simple but useful actions, when people need them the most.

The MayPac fight was one of the most anticipated event in boxing, nay sporting history.  Not since the Thrilla in Manila has any battle kept the world riveted.  Non-boxing fans, and even those unsympathetic to the sport could not resist.  It was the most-watched PPV event of all time.  I do think, however that only a few people came to watch two athletes battle it out in their sport.  What the world really came to see, was how the story of vice vs. virtue and guts vs. greed, would end.  

While it turned out to be a disappointing match, it at least provided lessons in how to tell a good story which brands and marketers can learn from.

Think about this.  From a performance and technical skill standpoint, Mayweather was the clear favorite among seasoned boxers and experienced analysts alike.  Betting stacked the odds at -200 Floyd and +170 Manny in the MGM Grand books. Interestingly however, the public sentiment was the exact opposite of this, 60% pro-Pacquiao, 36% pro-Mayweather.  The world knew that Mayweather was the better boxer, but they got in to Pacquiao’s corner anyway.  Saturday Night Live even declared Manny the victor (LOL).   We have reached a unique point in sporting history where social media has parted the curtain that separated the athlete from the man.  What the world saw on the Pacquiao corner was a humble, God-fearing, generous man who transformed himself from a street urchin to a world-class athlete, legislator and country folk-hero.  Over on the Mayweather side, what they saw was a misogynistic, egoistic brute whose self-love is eclipsed only by his money-worship.

This basic premise alone is a powerful lesson for brands: performance is not everything.  You may have the best product in the category, but this all for naught, unless you capture the public’s heart with the right narrative.  The Pacquiao mythology does pack a punch.  There’s a lot going on in there, and presents a good study in various narratives and character archetypes that resonated with people.  So, let’s try to unbox it…

Story #1: ‘The Struggle to Change One’s Destiny’

It’s easy to sum it up as the quintessential ‘Cinderella, rags-to-riches’ story, and it is, to a large degree.  But it is also much more than that.  What I believe resonated across cultures were the monumental struggles that Pacquiao had to go through to change his destiny.  

Struggle brings out grit.   We may be living in a world of ‘immediacy’ and instant gratification, where everything is done at the touch of a button, and entrepreneurs become billionaires before they hit 30.  Yet, clearly, it is still the drama of struggle amidst adversities, the blood, sweat and tears, metaphorically captured in the ‘violent dance’ on the boxing ring, that makes our hearts beat faster.  In societies that are dominated by the  culture of winning, ‘having made it’ is celebrated, but it is often the ‘getting there’ that catapults an individual to the pantheon of legends. The Johnnie Walker brand knew this long ago when they repositioned the ritual of enjoying whiskey from ‘reward after having made it’ to ‘a celebration of the journey’, hence the exhortation to ‘Keep Walking.’    

The world likes winners, but they love those who went through hell and back to get there.   Brands might want to ask themselves: ‘what’s my story of struggle?’

Story #2: ‘Fall from grace and redemption’

Pacquiao was far from perfect.  His episodes of womanizing, heavy gambling and run ins with tax authorities were just as publicized as his triumphs.  The more important thing, however, was not the fall, but how he got back up and set his path straight.  Instead of taking away from it, this moment of weakness actually strengthened the Pacquiao myth by showing that he is just like ‘every man,’ with his own vulnerabilities.

Brands, like people, are bound to make mistakes, and very public ones at that, thanks to social media.  The question is, what are you going to do with it?  How will you ‘jujitsu’ your way and use the negative to regain people’s empathy?  

Story #3: ‘Innocence amidst savagery’

Pacquiao’s child-like disposition in the sport is about as incongruous as NFL athletes doing pirouettes in tutus.   He dominates in the most savage sport, yet he exudes an aura of joyfulness and deep spirituality.  His sense of humor is just as powerful as his punches, making him a favorite in Jimmy Kimmel’s show and hilariously entertaining ads.    

There are two lessons to be gleaned here.  First is the resonance of the theme of ‘innocence’ in a savage world.  Our world is more screwed up than ever before.  Violence, enmity, poverty and greed permeates our society.  One need not look further than the rise of dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies, like Hunger Games and Interstellar to see our societal trajectory.  People are looking for purity amidst this tragedy, a sense of lightness to rise above all this, the way Pacquiao rose from rock bottom and beamed positivity through the darkness of his past.  

The second is a lesson in contrast.  It’s been called many things: zigging when everyone else is zagging, disruption, being unexpected, among others.  Pacquiao captured the world’s imagination because he broke every mold, and ran contrarian to every expectation: a ferocious beast in the ring, yet a funny, likable, even child-like chap outside.  He plays in what many think to be a dirty sport, yet he’s exemplified virtuous sportsmanship and integrity.  He’s achieved great success and been put in a pedestal, yet he walks humbly like ‘every man.’    

As the fight for public attention continues to get tougher, brands should ask themselves, what kind of stories can we craft, that would enable people to live and participate in utopic ideals in our dystopic society?  What conventions can we meaningfully shake-up and run contrarian to, in order to earn the public’s interest?  

Story #4: ‘Fighting for something bigger than yourself’

Perhaps the most powerful narrative among all of these is Pacquiao, the brave warrior archetype, fighting for God, country and family.  His fight in the ring was the Philippines’ earnest fight for respect and recognition in the world stage  It represents the fight of every working class to provide for their families.  It is the fight of keeping our faith alive amidst the temptation of greed and abject materialism.   And this is why despite the overwhelming odds against him, the world wanted him to win, because then it would have been the triumph of everything we cherished as human beings.  


Learning from this, brands should ask themselves, what do I stand for, beyond the physical product I produce?  Better yet, what am I fighting for?  Dove champions beauty without artifice, Patagonia is on the corner of mindful consumption, Warby Parker fights for every individual’s right to see the world clearly, GE stands up for scary, new-to-the-world ideas, so that they won’t get turned away for being too different.  A brand with a clear point-of-view, easily provides a common ground for people to stand on.    

Lastly, every hero needs an anti-hero.  The ‘Money Man’ Mayweather,  was more than happy to oblige.  The public’s response to his personal brand is a cautionary tale on the narratives that brands and communicators should be wary of.  Hedonism and conspicuous consumption was left, long ago in the 80’s, and although musical icons from that era are recently making a comeback, the welcome clearly does not extend to the debauched lifestyle.  Unless you’re a brand that wants to exclude everyone else other than a very specific male archetype, Machismo is a sure death knell for you given the growing support for gender equality and women’s rights.  

The values and symbolisms represented by our hero are made urgently meaningful when it is confronted by the anti-hero. So, brands should start asking themselves: ‘Who is my enemy?’  ‘Who or what do I need to overcome?’  The villain is often not your competitor brand.  It can be a mind-set, beliefs, practices, symbolisms, that prevent us from furthering our brand’s cause, or point-of-view.  Most of the time, it won’t be as obvious as Mayweather was, but it’s there, waiting to be called out.  

One fine day a couple of months back, I found myself in a novel store in Chelsea.  My friend Layla was so enamored by this place that I just had to check it out. Story’s retail concept is fascinating in that it is like Cirque Du Soleil that combines features from various sources of inspiration.  Like a gallery it, showcases carefully curated merchandise in collaboration with artists and other brands under a specific theme.  Like a magazine, it changes the featured products every 6-8 weeks.  And like a regular store one can conveniently score a purchase.  That day, the theme was [Your] Story —a nod to how people express themselves and create their own personal mythologies in the digital world.  Their co-curators were the stars of Youtube’s AwesomenessTV, each one offering a very distinctive collection running the gamut of fashion, books, jewelry and decor.  [Story] not only earns from consumer purchases, but also through the brand collaborations where the store functions like ‘media,’ providing space for the brand’s story to unfold.  in this case, it was promoting YouTube’s AwesomenessTV channel and its celebrities.

I found this shop to be an interesting study on how brick & mortar stores should re-think its role to effectively adapt with the changes happening in the retail landscape.  The stats say it all: worldwide total retail will continue to grow between 5-6% through 2018, but e-commerce will be on steroids, growing between 13-25%.  This might even be understated considering the innovations in e-commerce: among others, Amazon’s Dash lets your thumb do all the buying, drone deliveries are looming in the horizon, and companies like Olapic are promising e-commerce conversion as the next wave in social media. Meanwhile, companies like Joyus, Net-a-Porter, and Thrillist are blurring the lines between content and commerce, making it so easy and intuitive for people to turn from content reader to product buyer.  

Doomsday sayers have talked about the extinction of brick & mortar stores.  Not true.  Google’s data shows that mobile search in fact led to in-store visit, and while it brought down the frequency of visit, it increased the purchase value as a result of a more purposive and targeted visit.   I belong to the optimist group who believe that on-line and real life shopping can happily co-exist.  For instance, think about how a wonderful in-store experience can protect brands from commodification that usually results from comparative on-line shopping.      

However, brick & mortar stores must re-evaluate the role it plays in the shopper journey to be able to provide the right experience that will create synergies with their e-commerce efforts.  This brings us to the anthropological underpinnings of this life-sport.    The act of shopping goes beyond functional transactions.  It fulfills a much deeper need for identity and belonging.  When we buy, we are in fact constructing and validating the myths or stories we tell about ourselves.  The choice of one brand over another, a particular design and color is an assertion of our identity and ideals.   We can be eggheads, provocateurs, tarts, iconoclasts when we forage for artifacts. The act of shopping also allows us to participate in cultural rituals that make us feel part of our ‘tribe.’  These are needs that are still best-fulfilled by brick & mortar stores, and this is an advantage that stores must exploit.   How?    

#1 Stimulate the Senses:  People shop to be part of a myth, and the best way to tell a story is to engage all the senses.  Given this, shops must operate more like workshops/ ateliers or play labs, inviting people to feel, smell and hear.   Labbrand, created a ‘Fragrance Bar’ in Sephora’s flagship store in Shanghai.  At the bar, shoppers learn about the different emotions and occasions associated with various types of perfume through a tablet.  Perfume diffusers emit the scent that accompanies each of the stories on the tablet.  

#2 Serendipity: With digital shopping being predicted by algorithm, the thrill of discovery and finding a gem off-the-beaten is an experience that real-world shopping can more effectively provide.  If the act of shopping is getting in touch with one’s personal values and beliefs, finding something unexpected and delighting in it becomes an act of happy self-rediscovery.  Fashion store Anthropologie is a master at this.  As one blogger put it, walking into one is like getting lost in your cool grandmother’s closet.  There’s a breathtaking surprise in every nook and corner.  Unlike most stores that shout about their sale events, Anthropologie does not, and instead allow their shoppers to fortuitously stumble upon it.

#3 Space: In a way, shopping is an ‘escapist’ activity, and the best way to do this is through a fully immersive experience.  Stores must think about their spaces not as display shelves but as temples of wonder and delight.  The Nike Stadium at the Bowery, for instance, looks like a sophisticated pantheon of surf, skate and sport culture.  Commes de Garcon’s store in Chelsea looks like a gritty, hole in a wall, in keeping with the brand’s eclectic mix of mystery, playfulness, Japanese peasantry and urban grit.  

#4 Seamlessness: Brand’s online and offline stores must think the same way: omni-channel conversion.  Neither should care where the sale happens.  Instead, both should focus on creating a seamless journey, providing the relevant experience throughout the shopper’s path, from inspiration, exploration, comparison, though to check-out and post-purchase validation.  Mobile search must lead people in-store by integrating local inventory information.  In the same way, stores must not be afraid to open digital gateways in the stores.  For example, Klépierre, a European specialist in shopping center properties created the Inspiration Corridor: a personalized window shopping experience to advertise multiple brands available in its shopping centers simultaneously.

“Five years from now, we may be sorting our laundry based on whites, coloreds and wearables.”—one of the panelists in the MobileWeek conference quipped.   It is an interesting, and certainly not a far fetched assertion if the uptake of the Apple Smart watch were any indication, which reportedly generated as much as 2 million pre-orders.  

Several factors are helping fast-track the trajectory of wearables.  From the supply side, computer chips are becoming smaller, as well as cheaper and faster to produce, as good old Moore predicted.  Parallel breakthroughs in its close cousins— IOT (Internet of Things), data and cloud computing are serving as catalysts in wearable tech innovation.  But my personal theory is that if there’s one thing that would ultimately push this overboard into the mainstream, it is simply necessity for brands and marketers.  The fact is, the real estate for visual and audio communication is almost completely saturated.  A study by the San Diego Supercomputer Center projected that by 2015, the average person will be exposed to 6.9 million-million gigabytes of information, that would take roughly more than 15 hours a day to see or hear.  That means exposure to information every minute of every waking hour.  At this rate, brands who want to compete for airtime would have to find a way to do it in our sleep.

Or, they could venture forth and find new lands—welcome to the next frontier of wearables.  

When we think of wearables, the default association for most people is bands and watches.  No big surprise since the technology was first popularly adopted in these formats.  But, when I think about the potential for wearables, what excites me most is the idea of seamlessly integrating it in our clothes—the articles that are closest to our bodies.  I personally like Billie Whitehouse’s definition as pieces of clothing that are imbued with intelligence so that they can serve a greater purpose.  Billie is touted as the Elon Musk of fashion for the breakthrough work that her company, Wearable Experiments is creating.  They are trading big, clunky and unnatural wearable tech products for ones that are subtle, organically designed, washable and truly wearable.

What excites me most about the promise of this kind of wearable technology?

One important reason is that it will help bring people back to the here and now of the physical world.  While mobile technology is enabling us to be efficient, productive, and more connected, it is also sucking us into another world, relentlessly stealing our attention from the present. With the notification function of smart watches for instance, we wouldn’t need to be glued to our phones the entire time, so we can focus our attention on where we are and the people we’re with.  We can be proper human beings again.  In effect it is freeing us from the shackles of hyper-connectedness and the fear of missing out.  Another innovation along this line is Wear:Ex’s Navigate blazers.  It is a wearable navigator powered by Google maps that gives you the signal  to turn left, right, or stop with a tap on your shoulders.  This way, instead of burying your head down on your phone to follow google’s instructions, you can now pay attention to your surroundings.

Wearable fashion will provide a previously unexplored and untapped dimension in how we we communicate— through the sense of touch.  If we think about it, touch is the most primal of our senses.  Scientists have found that even before birth we’ve already been receiving tactile signals in the form of our mother’s heartbeat amplified by amniotic fluid, laying the foundations of the mother and child bond.  Our skins are like finely tuned barometers of emotions, changing in temperature, color, texture, suppleness when we’re angry, happy, excited, afraid, embarrassed, guilty, in-love even.  It gives us insights into our emotions more powerfully than the spoken word ever could.  

Executed right, wearables can tap into the power hepatic communication, and the best part is, it can do it even from a distance.  Imagine a mother who is still able to caress her baby to sleep while she’s away from home with a vest that translates her gestures on her mobile phone to a sensorial output.  That’s just my badly put idea.  If you want an actual product, just take a look at Wear-Ex’s Alert Shirt.  It is a jersey that is able to transmit the player’s sensations to the fans from a tackle to a nervous penalty kick, redefining what an immersive experience means.  Or think about about the Fundawear—undies with special vibrating zones developed with Durex to enhance adult playtime (I’m sure you get the picture.)      Given how our connections through various platforms multiply exponentially, fulfillment will be measured less by latitude and more by the depth of our experiences.

Exciting developments are happening in the scientific and design fronts.  A scientist in Sussex is conducting experiments in how human emotion can be transferred by technology that stimulates different parts of the hand without making physical contact with your body, and just using bursts of air.  Meanwhile a student at  Umeå Institute of Design is exploring how “interaction designers can leverage and embrace the sense of touch to develop interfaces and experiences that go beyond traditional visual and form-based aesthetics.”

The springboard for this week’s sushi was inspired by a good friend and fellow planner, Beau.  He also happens to be a big fan of Nike, so when their ‘Better for It’ campaign launched this week, he couldn’t help but share his two cents.  His main beef: the ad ran counter to Nike’s brand essence.  When I saw the spots, I had to agree with him.

Nike’s campaign is not so much about women, per se, as much as it is about the journey of physical fitness rookies.  However, I must say that for a brand that is the very essence of willpower, the spots felt strangely enervating.  Perhaps it is the way they portrayed the mental chatter, or her biting insecurity as she cycled with sexy models and actresses, or maybe it’s the patronizing way the ‘Superman’ theme faded in as she finally got her yoga pose right.  It could also be the fact that Nike has always been about absolute confidence and willpower, yet on their first major female campaign in a long-time, it decided to focus on the struggle and the moments of weakness.   

That said, the rest of this post is not so much about a discourse in ‘femvertising’ as much as it is about how brands should navigate when they involve themselves in social activism. Gender equality  became a natural choice of topic given that a lot of brands have been getting into this cause in the last 2 years, following Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty’s meteoric success.  Some of the brands that are getting into the action include Always, Under Armour, Verizon, Pantene, and even Chevy.  This is no big surprise considering women’s massive spending power.  As a Forbes article pointed out, “if the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female as women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence.”  

This post is also not to debate the morality of brands leveraging on important socio-cultural issues to market themselves, as I don’t think there is a positive resolution on this one.  Brands will continue to address these issues to maintain their cultural relevance, whether we like it or not.  So my point-of-view is simple: when they eventually do, they might as well do it right and positively contribute to the narrative.  

The way I see it, there are three levels at which a brand typically gets involved with socio-cultural concerns.  At the bottom rung of the ladder is when a brand shines a light on the issue and provokes conversations to put it in the collective consciousness.  These are usually branding campaigns, like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty when it started out.  Meanwhile, some brands put more skin in the game and integrate the cause among their key marketing pillars.  An example of this is Starbucks and their Fair Trade program.  And then at the top of the ladder are the brands whose social advocacies are firmly baked into their business and brand model.  A very popular example is Patagonia  whose marketing goals include ensuring consumers do NOT buy more Patagonia products, if they don’t need them, true to their philosophy of caring for the environment through mindful consumption.  

Most brands, as expected, operate on the lowest rung of the ladder, and there is no shame in this.  However, I do think that when they do put forward a point of view, it must be done with careful thought. And so, here are 3 learnings from the recent resurgence of the ‘femvertising’ trend:

#1: A brand must not stop at merely reiterating the facts of the situation. It has the responsibility of enhancing and deepening society’s understanding of the issue.  It must positively enlighten by presenting a new dimension or insight into the topic.  Always’ Like a Girl campaign managed to do this to some degree by putting forward the provocation that gender bias did not always exist—that as young girls, females started out having solid self-confidence.  It is only when they hit puberty and become more conscious of societal norms that the notion of women as the weaker gender sets in.  Always demonstrated this beautifully when they asked young girls to to show what it’s like to ‘do things like a girl’, and the girls did so with as much power and strength they could muster.  For me, what makes this piece interesting is that as it takes the audience through this insightful revelation, it also holds us all accountable.  In a way, it makes us feel responsible for making things right, and ensuring our girls do not grow up imbibing the gender bias rubbish that brings them down.

#2: Brands should focus on what could be, rather than lamenting the shortcomings of what is.  Advertising holds the power to shape norms, to legitimize ideas into the very fabric of popular culture.  The more brands continue to communicate codes of female subjugation, the more they validate these injustices in a self-fulfilling cycle. Pantene’s #whipit campaign that tackled labels against women won awards in various circuits.  I am not a big fan though, as I found that its very tonality melodramatically painted women as underdogs.   Under Armour’s ‘I Will What I Want’ is a good example of a brand celebrating ‘what could be.’  The most notable piece in the series showed ballerina Misty Copeland flawlessly performing a passionate routine  while a symbolic letter detailing the many rejections and failures she suffered was being read out.  Under Armour was able to enrich society’s understanding of what it means to be a woman by showing how we can also be incredibly strong and relentless against all odds.  It is true that gender equality still has a long way to go, but the world is making giant leaps—more women are in positions of power in business, politics and academia.  Brands must acknowledge this instead of defaulting to the underdog route.

#3 Impeccable authenticity is non-negotiable.  The goal of cultural relevance campaigns is to inspire belief, and truthfulness is essential to this.  Dove recently launched a campaign that polarized consumers and industry pundits alike.  In the social experiment execution, which has become a hallmark in some of their most successful work, they got women to choose between two doors: Beautiful or Average.  This did not sit well among some industry opinion leaders who felt it was contrarian to everything Dove stood for.  The dissent even came at a high price for some, particularly BuzzFeed’s writer who resigned after the editor-in-chief pulled out her scathing piece for fear of falling out of Unilever’s favor.  But that’s another story altogether.  The thing is, for a brand that espouses freedom from labels, and any such socially ascribed constraints, it is ironic that they themselves forced women to put a label on themselves.  Are you beautiful?  or average?  And since when did average become necessarily bad or undesirable?  Why does it have to be this black and white?  Says who?  And more importantly, what does one’s perceived level of beauty have to do with her self-worth as a human being?  If the universal accepted notion of being beautiful is indeed a ‘choice’ as the brand brandishes, then the whole world would not be as obsessed about the standards of beauty, as it were, and Dove’s disruptive thought on ‘real beauty’ years ago would have been nothing but preaching to the choir.  By creating these labels and forcing women to willfully put these on themselves, Dove violated its value of authenticity, with disappointing results.

Starbucks recently launched and quickly withdrew a campaign on racial harmony, called #racetogether.  The withdrawal was a result of a maelstrom of backlash on social media from baristas, customers, and the media alike.  According to Starbuck’s Shultz, the campaign was meant to be a ‘catalyst for meaningful conversations around racial equality,’ but people it seemed, did not want to be served up something so massive and serious a national issue with their lattes and frappes.  

Don’t get me wrong, this piece is not an attack on Starbucks.  I like the brand, and I think it has given marketers plenty to learn from over the years.   They’re smart innovators being among the very first to integrate payment and rewards program in a mobile app.  Now they are pilot testing their delivery service.  The fact that their coffee beans are sustainably sourced and that at $300 million, they spend more on their employees’ healthcare insurance than they do on their beans is not too shabby either.  

It feels a lot like a cultural strategy play gone bad.  In the groundbreaking book Cultural Strategy, branding gurus Douglas Holt and Douglas Cameron, identified iconic brands as those that went beyond functional and emotional differentiation, and instead engaged bigger cultural issues percolating in society.  These brands achieve iconic status when they succeed in mitigating these cultural anxieties by championing an ideology.  It would seem that Starbucks wanted to refresh its brand narrative on ‘conversations’ to take on a much bigger cultural relevance.  Seeing the recent resurgence of racial tension in the controversial cases of Micahel Brown and Eric Garner, the brand probably felt it could provide a credible voice to champion racial harmony in America.

I do think Starbucks had good intentions, but lost the beans on execution. There are three valuable lessons we can learn from this misstep:

#1 Cultural branding requires solid legs to stand on, and this means strong reasons-to-believe that people will embrace without question.  When Coca-Cola brought people from various races atop a hill and taught the world to sing in its landmark 1970s advertising, it was not just a sentimental gesture.  People accepted, without question, that Coca-Cola was the most democratized beverage in the world.  Andy Warhol said it best: “A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.  Because of this universality, and decades of telling the story of bringing people together, singing out a point-of-view on unity was a natural trajectory.  When Starbucks started the dialogue, the organization was unable to withstand the scrutiny.  People felt the brand had no real understanding of the issue.  Why?  An inventory of their senior management team came up with a predominantly white count.  They are predominantly in white neighborhoods, and wherever they went, gentrification followed.  Some called Shultz as a ‘white CEO who likes to play golf’, and to really take the cake in ‘insensitivity’, the hands holding the Starbucks cup in the ad were white.  It’s easy to see why people would question the brand’s sincerity.  

#2  The brand narrative needs to be told exceptionally well, leaving no room for misinterpretation.  People need to clearly understand the brand’s point-of-view.  Starbuck’s took the ‘cold open’ route, launching on social media with posts of two hands holding a cup with the hashtag #racetogether.  This raised a lot of questions, and the people, even their own baristas were unsure about the expectations.  Because they left too many blanks, the public jumped to their own conclusions.  The narrative was simply not told well.  

But more importantly, the brand’s point-of-view needs to add value to the societal narrative. It needs an insight to spark that elusive ‘lightbulb-in-your-head.  #racetogether fell flat on this—it was bereft of an insight to hold up an interesting angle.  Just saying ‘we should all come together regardless of our race’ is uninspired and worse, prescriptive.  

Apple was unequivocal in this when they said in the 1990s that it is the crazy ones who ultimately change the course of human history.   They didn’t just say ‘accept people who are different.’   There’s no spark in that.  Red Bull believed that when passion meets action, people can do extraordinary feats.  They didn’t just say ‘when you have the energy, you can do awesome things.  That’s just banal. Google Chrome believed that the internet is neither good nor bad, it is what you make of it—and ‘ding! ding!’ again, that flash of insight that gives an interesting angle.

#3 Timing is everything   I think this an important point, but often taken for granted.  Just because an issue is firing up news engines and social media hubs does not mean it is the right time for a brand to jump into the fray.  A brand needs to be sensitive and really understand the trajectory of society’s collective sentiment, then move when it is about to reach a  consensus.  In Starbuck’s case, the public sentiment was still very fragmented.  There is still a lot of anger, pain and finger-pointing.  They are not ready to stare this issue in the face, and definitely not before they’ve had their morning coffee.    

About a couple of weeks ago, our mobile marketing class had Olapic’s BizDev director Luke Chatelain as a guest speaker. In a nutshell Olapic is a social media aggregator and curation service for brands and stores.  They pull visuals that people post on popular social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook and use them to advertise brands, and sometimes directly convert these visuals into e-commerce portals.  The whole premise is quite brilliant, actually.  It is estimated that about 500M photos are shared per day.  All they're doing is capitalizing on this infinite supply of content.  More important are the insights that power olapic—people trust other people more than brands when it comes to purchase recommendations, and they prefer, no, demand authenticity over artifice.  These, plus sweet algorithm that optimizes for conversion and you have a successful start up.  

For all intents and purposes, it is an awesome marketing tool that could result to a win-win situation for everyone involved.  It creates a seamless journey for the shopper, brands get the sale, and Olapic grows their biz.  Everyone happy, right?  But what about the people who uploaded the visuals?  Someone in the class actually asked Luke what Olapic gives these ‘amateur creatives’ whose work are now finding its way into native ads and e-commerce portals, and yes, making these brands lots of moolah.  The answer: a sweet thank you.  


This did not really surprise me, considering that we do not truly own the data we religiously upload on these social media platforms.  The “free access” to all these toys is the trade-off we willingly make everyday.  Fair enough, right?  Not really.  I guess it’s one thing to be part of ‘aggregated data’ that gets sold to the highest bidder, and quite another when a specific individual’s “intellectual and, in a way, creative property” is used for commercial purposes without monetary compensation.  True, its one picture of a cat among the gazillion, but it’s the picture that I took, and the one that happens to be optimal for selling more Friskies.  So, shouldn’t I and my cat be getting a tiny portion of the profits that Friskies and Olapic are making?     



This whole scenario reminded me of this most enlightening book from Jaron Lanier called, Who Owns the Future.  Jaron is one of the pioneers of Silicon Valley, and is often touted as the father of virtual reality.  In it, Lanier posits that the trajectory of the digital economy is leading to a new form of capitalism where the power rests on owners of what he called “siren servers” or the fastest computers with the most access to everyone’s information (Hint: Google and Facebook).  In this new economy, data is the most important currency, yet people are expected to give this valuable resource for free, under the internet’s banner of open access.  Yet, he further argues, a lot of people are loosing income from the ‘siren servers,’ and an example he gave was the nameless and faceless language translators whose work was processed by google translate yet did not see a cent.   He proposes that this ‘feudalistic’ relationship people have with the internet must end.  In his utopia, he talks about a couple who met each other though an on-line site and eventually got married.  In a world of fair compensation, the data derived from first couple’s compatibility which helped match up another couple down the line must amount to some royalty.

And so another brand just joined the body count of ‘so-called’ Real Time Marketing fails.  Budweiser Light recently sparked social media outrage when their #upforwhatever post on St. Patrick’s day was interpreted by some as sexist, and worse, a direct invitation for unwanted sexual advances.  

This is just one, and certainly not the worst of several social media meltdowns in recent history.  There’s DiGiorno who tried to sell pizza off the back of the issue on domestic violence.  Then there’s Kenneth Cole who seems to have a penchant for promoting their sale events through public riots in Egypt and Syria.  But perhaps the most cringeworthy was Epicurious honoring New England and Boston after the marathon tragedy with cranberry scones! (whole grain ones, mind you).

If Real Time Marketing had an official birthday, it would be February 3, 2013—the day Oreo made marketing history with their ‘dunk-in-the-dark’ tweet at the Superbowl.  While brands had been having everyday conversations with people on social media way before then, the impression Oreo made on popular culture was so instantaneous and memorable, it became the poster cookie for real time marketing.  I feel that this expectation,  is what’s driving the misplaced views on RTM, which in turn, is causing these big brands to make one hot mess after another in their social media kitchens.    

My take on RTM: 1. It’s not news-jacking.  It’s adding value to the conversation, through a point-of-view that enriches the narrative.  Salvation Army in the UK did this extremely well by adding a whole new relevant dimension to #thedress kerfuffle.

2. It’s not about that single ‘Oreo dunk in the dark’ moment.  It’s about continuous and consistent everyday talks. Skittles is a good example of a brand that has slowly, but surely, built a solid reputation on social media through its distinctively cheeky and funky brand voice that just does not fail to brighten your day.

3. It’s not about ‘mass reach’.  It’s about one-to-one interactions.  Magic happens and real affection for the brand develops when it truly listens to what their followers are saying and provides inspired responses.  Tesco Mobile converted a naysayer simply by giving him much needed attention.  If you do your listening well, people shouldn’t even need a #hashtag.

4. It’s not about being in all conversations.  It’s about being in the ones that matter to your brand, or where you can add most value.  Some of these fails could have been avoided if these brands kept quiet instead of quickly jumping into the trends.  When you have nothing worthwhile to say, just zip it.