jan zlotnick

What is it about brands you trust, brands you don’t trust, and brands you don’t even give a thought to? How do you feel when you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’…and been wooed to bring it back?

“The Republicans flipped the script,” Mike Shields of MediaWeek wrote today. “After watching President Barack Obama dominate online media in 2008, Republican Scott Brown ran circles around his Democratic opponent Martha Coakley on the Web…,” Shields wrote.

“…the Brown campaign deftly employed online advertising, search marketing, social media and text messaging….Starting last Thursday (Jan. 14), Brown ran a massive ‘network blast’ on Google’s Content Network, soliciting volunteers with 10 different localized ads targeted to 10 different regions.

From Thursday until Election Day, when the campaign shifted the messaging to ‘get out the vote’ ads, Google delivered 65,553,323 ad impressions for Brown in Massachusetts alone…’This was a groundbreaking use of the Google network,’ said Galen Panger of Google’s Communications & Public Affairs team.”

Let’s review The Media Plan
1. Solicit volunteers with 10 different localized ads targeted to 10 different regions
2. Use (groundbreaking or not) of the Google network
3. Aggressive buying of traditional keyword ads on Google
4. Tying both network and keywords to searches for his still-unknown name (brand) AND to his opponent Coakley– something the Coakley brand did not do.
5. Pulling nearly every single lever Google had to offer:
- search and network placements
- InStream video ads on YouTube
- ads within Gmail
- leveraged Google Voice for its Election Day hotline—set up to aid voters at the polls.

Results
- Google tracked twice as many searches for Brown than for Coakley according to its internal data.
- 65,553,323 ad impressions for Brown in Massachusetts alone.
- Victory locally, regionally, nationally, and indeed globally.

Hey, this is not to say that mood, social movements, and just the general mashup of the political-cultural cosmos didn’t factor into this vote. Yes, the post-game analysis of metrics will shed some more spotlighted trends and theories of why this worked. But there was a strong degree of upfront trust going on here. A feel for the individual and collective stories that moved things ahead in untraditional — aggressively untraditional — media choices, without the certainty of every metric deliverable.

“I just had to look at 10 different spreadsheets,” said Robert Willington, Brown’s online campaign strategist, about how he found the volunteers to fuel the groundswell.“In a different election, we might have focused on persuasion strategy,” “But with a special election, the mission is to turn out voters. January is an unusual time for voters to vote, so we needed as many volunteers as possible.”

My CMO translation: “We had an unusual opportunity to win with voter-to-voter persuasion…not our own ‘manufactured’ one.”

Whether Brown’s victory was driven by strong advertising, candidate novelty, or the general unrest of the electorate, decisions had to come fast and furious. But in its own way, I think the core strategic-creative thinking was slowed down just enough to strip away all the noise and give rise to the brand-mantra-cum-headline-cum-tagline: “It’s the people’s seat” which itself emerges from the efficient strategic statement-cum-manifesto: “It’s not the Kennedys’ seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

Now, that takes UPS’s consumer-focused idea of “what can Brown do for you?” to a world-shaking level.

Most CEOs, COOs, Presidents, and CFOs, are aware of these facts:

It took the telephone 45 years to penetrate half the homes in America; radio, 20; color TV, 15; computers, 10; cellphones, eight; …Internet, a mere six. And most likely, the c-suite is already aware that:
- Five years ago Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Hulu and iPhone didn’t exist.
- Today Facebook has 350 million members; Twitter boasts 30 million.
- Hulu is the second biggest “channel” in America, having surpassed Time Warner Cable.
-  Technology has an unrelenting impact on consumer behavior and brand loyalty.
- Democratization of information is resulting in commoditization  (purchase decision via lowest price).
-  Technology can alter the purchase cycle, give rise to powerful third-party influencers, counterbalance paid media’s ‘management’ of the purchase cycle.

But, in a recent Ad Age article, Avi Dan, of Avidan Strategies, argues that marketing departments barely adjusted their approach. “While investment in digital advertising has crept up some, roughly 90% of budgets is still spent on traditional channels,” Dan said. “The marketing narrative needs to be rebooted and the architecture of brand building re-engineered.”
Dan asks us to consider:
- Ten years ago, consumers spent 30 minutes online. Today it’s four hours, not including emailing.
- In this decade broadband expanded from 3% to 66% of American homes.

So, consider how the new human condition is a surging reality in the marketing-sales condition. And what it all means to your company’s own evolving customer base and prospect universe, whatever your brand, industry, category, and culture.

10 things that make today’s CMO welcome at today’s c-suite table:
1. CMO who recognizes that the speed and scope of change demands a dramatic, swift revamp of the marketing ecosystem.

2. CMO who injects value in all agencies, not just digital, being technologically savvy.

3. CMO who consults procurement in evolving its scoring of intellectual-property vendors to include technical expertise.

4. CMO who brings resolve to the c-suite for mutuality and non-partisanship in brand stewardship — to rethink ROI of marketing silos and move to integration.

5. CMO who brings savvy about migration of media agencies to play unique role at the intersection of creativity and technology.

6. CMO who inspires internal changes and recognizes that technology is no less a marketing tool than market research.

7. CMO who injects innovation vigor, pushing technology into all facets of company operations, to ensure brand’s “customer-facing” relevancy.

8. CMO who sees value of the human capital of the company, working closely with HR to hire people who are inclined toward technology and accept change as a given. Not necessarily IT experts, but curious, adapt easily, and inclined toward collaboration and social media.

9. CMO who sees counterintuitively: that the best technologies reinforce very old-fashioned values of brand building. Such as using Twitter to reinforce remarkable customer service.

10. CMO who is prescient about technology replacing the obsolete, and that a brand can hold its positioning while modifying the technological delivery platform.

The problem CMOs face with mastering technology, and with the Internet, is simple:
- There is so much going on simultaneously and things change so quickly that no one, absolutely no one, can know everything that’s going on.
- Ten years ago a marketer needed to know maybe 100 things to be effective: some aspects of positioning, some aspects of media, some media research, some pricing, some distribution.
- Now that number is in the thousands. And whereas technology used to advance incrementally, it now evolves exponentially.

This requires a CEO and c-suite to make a new-era CMO leadership leap
that may go against traditional left-brained tendencies. Brand leadership that requires a CMO who can think differently, think anew, make conceptual leaps beyond category experience (that is swiftly obsolete anyway) and commoditized data. A new-decade CMO who can do more, more powerfully, with less.

Psychologists and behavioral economists are getting a picture of why it is we tend “to put off until tomorrow what could be enjoyed today,” reports John Tierney in the New York Times.

It’s not about delaying what’s unpleasant. It’s about “the strength to cash in your gift certificates, drink that special bottle of wine, redeem your frequent flyer miles and take that vacation you always promised yourself.”

This explains why locals typically see fewer landmarks in their first year in a new city than tourists see during a two-week stay.’

Huh? and Wow! My sales and marketing antennae are all up and pointy to make this knowledge relevant to my particulars…

What we’re talking about here is a principle economists call “pleasure procrastination” and that marketers apply to “save billions of dollars annually from gift certificates that expire unredeemed.”

The issue is largely this: If we don’t have an immediate deadline, we assume we’ll have more time to enjoy ourselves more, later. Of course, we’re just as busy later. Wharton marketing professor Gal Zauberman calls this “resource slack,” or our attempt “to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained.” Most of us are not very good at this. Compounding matters, once we start down this path of “procrastinating pleasure, it can become a self-perpetuating process if you fixate on some imagined nirvana.”

We’ll never open that special bottle of wine because the moment is never sufficiently special. We’ll hang onto frequent-flier miles for so long that they expire before we ever get to take that big trip. The solution is obvious and simple: If you have miles, use them and if you have a special bottle, open it. Because as Maya told Miles in Sideways: “The day you open a ‘61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion.”

Don’t know about you, but I’m having some counterintuitive ideas already about how to get customers to make TODAY their special occasion.

Even if your brand isn’t Apple or Nike, even if it’s what others might call dry, your company, your brand, your products and services, can benefit from the life stream of social technology.

After all, a financial technology company that captures unique reporting and reduces investment risk is hardly dry to a hedge fund manager or administrator.

Point is, your brand, your research and innovation, your sales teams, can benefit from the surging life of social technology. The trick, says Josh Branoff of Forrester (Groundswell) is “borrowed relevance” — creating an application that’s about your customers’ problems and then tapping into that application.

Building around customers’ problems means you can accomplish goals including:
1. generating research insights
2. energizing fans (every brand in every category  of every industry has ‘em)
3. getting customers to support each other, or even crowdsourcing your marketing

But no matter the objective, the key is to:
Recognize that leader brands create a long-term asset, not an advertising campaign.

Whatever your current marketing culture is now, or has been, seek out and hire the whole-minded marketing talent that gets the value of social technology to your sales and profits. And knows how to put it into a properly balanced plan of action for your particular objectives.

See what makes you and your customers happy. And how it can lead to greater sales. From Gladwell and Seligman to McCloud and Ueli Gegenschatz. Great thinkers rethinking the art and value of happiness.

Below, Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti and happiness…(hint: don’t rely on your customers knowing exactly what makes them happy!)

Below, Stefan Sagmeister on designing happiness…

An insane music video to make you happy without thinking about it…

Don Norman on the design of happiness (getting the idea that happiness and good design kinda go together?)

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want…

Martin Seligman on happiness…

Scott McCloud as only he can happily do it…

Daniel Pink talks to Oprah (yep, Oprah)…

Carl Honore on the happiness of slowness (quick, haven’t much time!)

Maira Kalman’s deliciously off-kilter take on happiness and life…

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the flow…of happiness

Ueli Gegenschatz flew to the heights of his own happiness…you can skip to his film at 5:40, but his presentation itself touches us. Ueli died in a soaring accident this past November (2009). I include this here as a memorial to his passion and pursuit of happiness…

The business metrics of ROI are changing in ways even successful management may not be aware of, especially if historically it has been left-brain dominant. But, successful management can use its left-minded logic to resolve that something new is happening that requires something new to keep ahead and succeed.

In Daniel Pink’s two recent books, “A Whole New Mind, Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future,” and “Drive,” the author hits on themes I’ve inherently felt as a hybrid left- and right-minded marketing director. He makes salient points on the business values of employing a different kind of individual and company mindset than what fueled success in the past era of “left brain” dominance (law, accounting, software, data+knowledge-based innovation) — the Information Age that the left-brain era engendered.

In our landscape-changing world, the new analytics for ROI are shifting to “right-brain” qualities – inventiveness, empathy, meaning – to complement, not replace, left-brain logic and technical prowess to solve a different set of business challenges that require pattern recognition, connecting the dots, and making high-concept leaps of innovation and performance. Hence, there is a pressing need to re-calibrate how we motivate our new, whole-minded organizations:

1. Rethink everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people — the old “carrot-stick” approach just doesn’t work like it used to.

2. High performance and satisfaction today come from
- the deeply human need to direct our own lives to learn and create new things
- to do better by ourselves and our world

3. There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does for motivating people for today’s challenges.

4. It’s a given, a base expectation, for employees to be incentivized by salary, bonuses and stock options. But for a company to out-think, out-innovate and outperform its competitors, the new motivation it needs to trigger come from three new hot-response areas:

Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives.

Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters.

Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

CNBC is on my newsfeed. I am finding gold nuggets, sometimes whole treasure chests, in their business programming. At some point down the road, I will get around to editing this into segments sans commercial interruption, as I did the Google show (see my blog, “google this: how can company culture create greater sales?”). Meantime, enjoy in its entirety.

NO, YOU’RE NOT GOOGLE, BUT the relevant business questions are, what can you learn by rethinking your own particular culture, your own internal and external relationships, your own marketing objectives, to create and cultivate a distinct brand leadership and ROI? Below, I’ve broken down into bite-size segments a rare inside look into Google. Each CNBC segment has a very brief intro sponsorship but no further interruptions. Get inspired, and start your own conversations on how this story might inform yours….






1. How might you rethink your own culture to create greater sales?










2. Just what is the business justification for a remarkable culture?










3. What is your core product? How can you maintain and build on it?










4. How are you upping the ante on category innovation?










5. How are you simply, positively changing your customer’s world?










6. How does knowing you’re “one click away” from losing, help you win?










7. Is your promise of innovation trusted over your competitors’?










8. How fast, accurately and remarkably are you engaging prospects?










9. How can innovation leverage brand leadership, trust and sales?

Below is a post of the highlights of the New York Times article, “Why Twitter Will Endure” by David Carr http://bit.ly/4sli08

I can remember when I first thought seriously about Twitter. Last March, I was at the SXSW conference, a conclave in Austin, Tex., where technology, media and music are mashed up and re-imagined, and where Twitter first rolled out in 2007. As someone who was oversubscribed on Facebook, overwhelmed by the computer-generated RSS feeds of news that came flying at me, and swamped by incoming e-mail messages, the last thing I wanted was one more Web-borne intrusion into my life.

And then there was the name. Twitter.

Beyond the dippy lingo, the idea that something intelligent, something worthy of mindshare, might occur in the space of 140 characters — Twitter’s parameters were set by what would fit in a text message on a phone — seems unlikely.

But it was clear that at the conference, the primary news platform was Twitter, with real-time annotation of the panels on stage and critical updates about what was happening elsewhere at a very hectic convention. At 52, I succumbed, partly out of professional necessity.

And now, nearly a year later, has Twitter turned my brain to mush? No, I’m in narrative on more things in a given moment than I ever thought possible, and instead of spending a half-hour surfing in search of illumination, I get a sense of the day’s news and how people are reacting to it in the time that it takes to wait for coffee at Starbucks.

Some time soon, the company won’t say when, the 100-millionth person will have signed on to Twitter to follow and be followed by friends and strangers. That may sound like a MySpace waiting to happen, but I’m convinced Twitter is here to stay.

And I’m not alone.

“The history of the Internet suggests that there have been cool Web sites that go in and out of fashion and then there have been open standards that become plumbing,” said Steven Johnson, the author and technology observer of a seminal piece about Twitter for Time last June. “Twitter is looking more and more like plumbing, and plumbing is eternal.”

Really? What could anyone possibly find useful in this cacophony of short-burst communication?

Well, that depends on whom you ask, but more importantly whom you follow. On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.

The most frequent objection to Twitter is a predictable one: “I don’t need to know someone is eating a donut right now.”

But if that someone is a serious user of Twitter, she or he might be racing ahead with a clear, up-to-the-second picture of an increasingly connected, busy world. No matter what business you are in, imagine knowing what the thought leaders in your industry were reading and considering. And beyond following specific individuals, Twitter hash tags allow you to go deep into interests and obsession: #rollerderby, #physics, #puppets and#Avatar, to name just a few of many thousands.

Like many newbies on Twitter, I vastly overestimated the importance of broadcasting on Twitter and after a while, I realized that I was not Moses and neither Twitter nor its users were wondering what I thought. Nearly a year in, I’ve come to understand that the real value of the service is listening to a wired collective voice.

Not that long ago, I was at a conference at Yale and looked at the sea of open laptops in the seats in front of me. So why wasn’t my laptop open? Because I follow people on Twitter who serve as my Web-crawling proxies, each of them tweeting links that I could examine and read on a Blackberry. Regardless of where I am, I surf far less than I used to.

At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while. Much of what I need to know is in that cup: if it looks like Apple is going to demo its new tablet, or Amazon sold more Kindles than actual books at Christmas, or the final vote in the Senate gets locked in on health care, I almost always learn about it first on Twitter.

The best people on Twitter communicate with economy and precision, with each element — links, hash tags and comments — freighted with meaning. Professional acquaintances whom I find insufferable on every other platform suddenly become interesting within the confines of Twitter.

Twitter is incredibly customizable, with little of the social expectations that go with Facebook. Depending on whom you follow, Twitter can reveal a nation riveted by the last episode of “Jersey Shore” or a short-form conclave of brilliance. There is plenty of nonsense — #Tiger had quite a run — but there are rich threads on the day’s news and bravura solo performances from learned autodidacts. And the ethos of Twitter, which is based on self-defining groups, is far more well-mannered than many parts of the Web — more Toastmasters than mosh pit. On Twitter, you are your avatar and your avatar is you, so best not to act like a lout and when people want to flame you for something you said, they are responding to their own followers, not yours, so trolls quickly lose interest.

“Anything that is useful to both dissidents in Iran and Martha Stewart has a lot going for it; Twitter has more raw capability for users than anything since e-mail,” said Clay Shirky, who wrote “Here Comes Everybody,” a book about social media. “It will be hard to wait out Twitter because it is lightweight, endlessly useful and gets better as more people use it. Brands are using it, institutions are using it, and it is becoming a place where a lot of important conversations are being held.”

Twitter helps define what is important by what Mr. Shirky has called “algorithmic authority,” meaning that if all kinds of people are pointing at the same thing at the same instant, it must be a pretty big deal.

Beyond the throbbing networked intelligence, there is the possibility of practical magic. Twitter can tell you what kind of netbook you should buy for your wife for Christmas — thanks Twitter! — or call you out when you complain about the long lines it took to buy it, as a tweeter on behalf of the electronics store B & H did when I shared the experience on my Blackberry while in line. I have found transcendent tacos at a car wash in San Antonio, rediscovered a brand of reporter’s notepad I adore, uncovered sources for stories, all just by typing a query into Twitter.

All those riches do not come at zero cost: If you think e-mail and surfing can make time disappear, wait until you get ahold of Twitter, or more likely, it gets ahold of you. There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on.

But in the right circumstance, Twitter can flex some big muscles.

Think of the heavy travel period in 2009 marked by a terrorist incident. As news outlets were scrambling to understand the implications for travelers on Saturday morning, Twitter began lighting up with reports of new security initiatives, including one from @CharleneLi, a consultant who tweeted from the Montreal airport at about 7:30 a.m.: “New security rules for int’l flights into US. 1 bag, no electronics the ENTIRE flight, no getting up last hour of flight.”

It was far from the whole story and getting ahead of the news by some hours would seem like no big deal, but imagine you or someone you loved was flying later that same day: Twitter might seem very useful.

Twitter’s growing informational hegemony is not assured. There have been serious outages in recent weeks, leading many business and government users to wonder about the stability of the platform. And this being the Web, many smart folks are plotting ways to turn Twitter into so much pixilated mist. But I don’t think so. I can go anywhere I want on the Web, but there is no guarantee that my Twitter gang will come with me. I may have quite a few followers, but that doesn’t make me Moses.

Left-brain thinking — logical, sequential, lateral, data/knowledge-based thinking — has ruled the last century. But data and knowledge has become abundant and thus less valuable. Left-brain thinking is yielding answers that are too easily mastered and made digitally commoditized. This problem of parity has caused traditionally left-brain dominant businesses and institutions to rethink how to supplement (not replace) left-brain emphasis. From business schools (where the MFA is the new MBA) to medical schools (where narrative medicine is the new life-saving medical skill), to businesses that are seeing the business necessity of art and design over sheer technology (think iPhone).

In “A Whole New Mind, Why Right Brainers Will Rule The Future,” author Daniel H. Pink lays out a lawyerly case. I got a lot out of the book. But, meantime, here are two videos…on the first one below, skip to 42:56…

Once you click on the video below, skip to 42:56 on the timeline…

…and here, below, is the whole TED presentation on the surprising new motivators in a new era of right-brain innovation…

How does this little box of cookies imported from England in the late 1800’s inspire new brand rethinking for a 21st century multbillion-dollar global high-technology brand? For any brand for that matter? Quite simply, because Barnum’s Animals Crackers is beloved by the “clients” who buy it, talk about it, share it, and buy it some more.

To Be Loved or not to be loved? That’s a branding question to discuss with one’s c-suite. And I think Animals Crackers can be instructive here for our global sales goals for 2010 and beyond.

See if you can imagine why these factoids about Animals Crackers are worthy of the highest-level marketing and sales brandstorming…

- Barnum’s Animals Crackers are sometimes called “Circus Crackers,” other times simply “Animals”
- Each bakery makes its own version, in limited supply, to meet the demands of customers in the immediate area
- The innovative idea of attaching a string to hang from the Christmas tree
- Originally sold in bulk or in large tins
- With each generation, there have been some changes in the number and variety of animals caged in that colorful little box
- In total, there have been 54 different animals represented by animal crackers since 1902
- There will probably always be lions and tigers, bears and elephants. But the dog and jaguar have fallen to the hyena and gorilla
- The Koala is the newest addition, voted on by consumers, beating out the penguin, walrus and cobra
- Although the circus box has gone through updates and changes over the years, it still remains true to its origin — bright, colorful and fun
- The unchanged purity of ingredients. Flour, sugar, shortening, corn flour, whey solids, salt, leaving (sodium bicarbonate), and oil-of-lemon combine to make a not-too-sweet-cracker/cookie
- By installing rotary dies, bakers actually engraved details onto each cracker, creating a much more intricate design
- A part of everyone’s childhood, written about, sung about and probably dreamed about by millions
- Just as popular today as they were at the first Christmas in 1902
- More than 40 million packages sold each year, in the U.S. and exported to 17 countries
- That string handle again: … it just seems to fit a youngster’s hand to a tee.

What kind of CMO mind grasps the counterintuitive patterns and big-picture concepts that might connect Animals Crackers to the marketing and sales challenges of a billion-dollar global brand? Call me to talk about it over some milk and a certain brand of cookies.

Social is what we are. Telling our stories, spreading the news, is what we do. Social Media is the best new technology for the oldest, most trusted way to sell and brand: word of mouth. Traditional media still dominate the metrics, but, as Joseph Jaffe said at Brandhackers the other night at Red Sky, traditional and social media aren’t an either/or, but an ampersand. Lots of ampersands…

When you read that book…see that movie…hear that music…taste that burger…you become the market trigger to instant brand gratification by sending it in one form & another.

You just want to, need to, share the love, in a text or tweet or update or photo or video or phone call or quietly in person at that new bar someone posted on foursquare…

It’s a busy brand beehive, this sweet pollination and social enthrallment. We’re wired to share, to document and validate our stories in a shifting, uncertain life. What are those four words we love to send?…

There’s a new groove of personal brand gratification going on here: I send, therefore I am. Social Media, as a listening and sending brand tool, is worth investing in right now, with commitment, not timidity for a big reason: It is authenticity you can take to the bank.

You need and ought to want to be an Authentic Brand in this vastly inauthentic marketplace. To increase sales by building consumer-generated trust with clients, through a wiki wondrous algorithm of Time (fast) and Consensus (open, transparent, uninhibited).

Think people in your market feel strongly and trusting and engaged enough by your brand to hit that send button? Rethink and start ringing true in building your authentic brand. And go ahead, send this to someone you wish were here…

Apps, or rather users’ response and use of Apps, show us a better, organic and authentic new way to be a leading brand. Apps, if we listen and are savvy to what we hear, teach us that it’s about Conversation between customers first and foremost, not between brands and customers. Next up: Courage in the C-Suite, to give the CFO, COO, CEO, et al, the data and numbers, the cost analysis to act now, to be led by a new-breed CMO to help ‘em make the necessary leap to Authentic Branding…which is simply being good, remarkably good, to our customers. We don’t have to UnBrand…we just have to be better brands, with a passion.

I sought out and spoke with designer Stefan Sagmeister when I first started The Zlotnick Group. I was blown away by his rethinking, and man, did he and his work ring true. Stefan’s designs for business cards alone were powerfully engaging brand stories. (And why shouldn’t one’s card be?) Anyway, it was very cool to see Stefan’s name and image on a featured video from TED. I had heard he took a full year off. Let’s see what that was all about, gotta be something inspiring…

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. the scope of TED has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

It has been reported that as people’s purchasing habits have changed from “wants” to “needs” in this new economy, their happiness has increased by 67%. Now, that’s counterintuitive. This video is a compelling hypothesis for why we could still find joy, regardless of our predicament. The speaker is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Dan Gilbert. The basic premise is this: We have an ability to synthetically create happiness….We learn to love the things we have and are essentially stuck with. That’s why:

- a lottery winner and a paraplegic can be equally happy
- people who are given the option to select and commit to a purchase…

are happier than those offered a return policy.

Gilbert says synthetic happiness is as powerful and profound as “found happiness.” He quotes Hamlet to make the point that “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Rethink how knowing more about happiness is another door to knowing more about yourself, your life, your brand, your customers.

Your brand is serious stuff. But if that leads you to be boring, you’re only disengaging your consumers. So, to be a player, rethink how your brand can play. To win. Nothing’s more fun than winning…

http://bit.ly/C1K5L

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Nobody really wants to be advertised or marketed to. So, rethink first how you might better develop authentic customer relationships — and an authentic brand — through the kind of refreshing, real stories customers love to share with each other. Then when you do remind them (vs try to lead them) with an “ad,” it has a better chance of winning their attention, trust, and purchase…

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Imagine you’re in the condom business. You wouldn’t rely on “marketing” or “advertising,” wouldya? You’d be all about building a real relationship with your customers…so they feel good about telling your story for you. Like this one below from Japan…

first, the documentary…

…and the TV ad that was produced from the event…in other words, the event was the communication…the ad was the result. Counterintuitive.

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…or this down-home, apparently unscripted viral video…imagine how this helped any ad he might have run afterward…