More on Marketing

My "Director of Communications" ID photo.  Yes, this was posted in public.  For a year. 

Writing the Sweet Pepper Panini post dredged up memories of my year-long stint as Marketing Director for a campus events organization.  There were four of us heading up the organization; three event directors plus me.  We were a great team, obviously.  My job consisted of designing and executing month-long ad campaigns for each of their events.  I managed a team of volunteers who did a lot of the actual production work.  Embarrassing confession:  I didn't create any of the posters we hung.  I didn't even hang them up.  I just oversaw all the people who did that.  Don't judge; you have no idea how astronomically all-consuming management work is.  But I'm digesting.  And digressing. 

Anyways, as Director of Communications, I learned several interesting little things about marketing, and at the end of the year, I transcribed each of those little jewels of wisdom into a handbook for my successor.  It ended up being a 15 page manuscript.  Awesome.  I hope it gets read by at least one person someday.  Maybe I'll pass it on to my children, like an inheritance or something ... sorry, digressing again. 

One of these supposed gems was the concept of "branding," the crafting of a positive image or brand.  Also known as the prompting of subconscious visions of unicorns/Lamborghini's/happiness within the mind of anyone who encounters our logo.  Here's a censored version of what I wrote about "branding" in my book of wisdom: 

Advertising is not just about getting people to attend SAC events; it’s also about building up a good name for SAC on campus.  This is called branding, the crafting of a positive image or brand. 

Ergo, the second goal of SAC advertising is to be so awesome that whenever a student encounters a SAC ad, they immediately RECOGNIZE it as a SAC ad and ASSOCIATE happy things with the SAC ad.

Positive association is accomplished either by the popularity of SAC events or by the popularity of the SAC ads themselves.  As Director of Communications, you don’t have much control over the popularity of the events, but you do have control over the popularity of the ads.  If SAC ads are always clean-cut, graphically appealing, and accurate, then students will begin to view SAC as a clean-cut, appealing, and on-top-of-it organization. Seriously, people, you're reading this blacked-out stuff?

The quality of the product was out of my control.  But the quality of the ad was within my control.  So I  concentrated my positive-association-building efforts on the ads themselves.  In retrospect, I think I was following the Geico model, in which ads resemble SNL sketches more than standard product-based PR.  Essentially, the marketing becomes a product to be "bought" (so to speak) alongside the actual product/service.  This is a very interesting marketing phenomenon, and it's picked up a lot of speed lately, judging by the popularity of the Geico gecko.

My question is:  is this a more honest way to do marketing?  Is it better for marketers to openly acknowledge that they're creating an attractive but essentially fake perception, and therefore abandon any attempt at product-relevance?

Maybe that's being too radical ... but seriously, I would appreciate any commercial that's like, "Hey, pay attention to us!  Not because this cereal is awesome ('cause let's be honest, it's decent stuff but it's not The Most Awesome Oat-Based-Mush Deal of the Millienium, so let's not lie and call it that).  Instead pay attention because we are funny!!  Hahaha!!!  Thank you for giving us your time/attention; here's a clip of a cute kitten, with a sarcastic punchline to boot.  Thank you, come again!  And if you ever can't decide which brand of equally adequate cereal to buy, kindly think of us." 

One more thought:  this whole Random Commercial plot is like watching a DVD in which the audio is off by a few seconds.  It totally calls attention to the fact that you're not actually on the ship with the pirates; you're just watching a movie about pirates.  A pirated movie about pirates, probably.  Film is such a  facade.  Marketing too.

I'm not saying it's all a lie.  I'm just saying that marketing, like a photograph, is never the actual object itself.  It's a recreation of the object.  A representation.  Which means, no matter how honest you are, you're never going to 100% accurately represent the object.  No matter what angle you shoot the photo from, you will always be bound to a singular perspective - the lens frame.  That doesn't mean marketing/photography/representation is inherently evil (contrary to whatever Plato may have said in Book X of The Republic).  It just means that it's limited.  And so "accuracy" is a super nebulous criterion to judge by.  Therefore; crazy piknicked photos (aka random but terribly funny commercials) would seem to be an equally valid advertising technique.

In a way, entertaining commercials provide a free service to the public.  You do something kind for a stranger, hand him your business card at the end and walk away, no pressure.  Maybe he'll look you up later, maybe he won't.  Either way he got a good chuckle and you got exposure.

Oh my goodness.  I just realized that this "new," "revolutionary," "never-before-seen type of advertising" is actually ... just another very sneaky form of PR.  (Public Relations defined as slapping a logo on something - anything - and then giving that something away to the masses.)  No, nonononono...

*internal mental explosion, like in Inception*
*wreckage/debris reigns down*
*hand emerges from beneath the rubble, salesperson crawls out*

Anyone wanna' buy my handbook?

Anyone wanna' read my handbook?

The Sweet Pepper Panini

Introducing "Chili," the Barbie that will teach kids everywhere to enjoy spicy foods of all kinds.  Remember, you heard it here first.

Sweet Pepper Panini.  That was today’s lunch special at the coffee shop.  I sold loads of the delicious things.   Here's a reenactment of the lunch hour:

Customer walks in.  I bound up to the service counter:  “Hi there!  What can I get for ya’?”  Customer realizes our menu is quite large and the font is quite small.  Fumbles with words.   

    “Uh, I think I’m going to need a minute.”  I slowly back off, still smiling.   

    “That’s fine, and we do have a special today, the Sweet Pepper Panini.”  I wave my hand towards the white board.  Their eyes lock in on the slightly larger handwriting of the Specials Board.  They step closer.

    “What’s a Sweet Pepper Panini?”  I quickly glance at the description on the board:  Cream Cheese, Peppers, Cheddar Cheese.  My inner chef screams “Mucho muy delicioso!!”  But how to express that in English?  

    “Well, it’s a Panini, so it’s on Foccacia, which is this really hearty, soft bread brushed with basil and olive oil.  And then we spread cream cheese on the inside and sprinkle some basil on it, and stuff it full of sweet peppers and cheddar cheese, and then grill it up.”  Blink innocently at customer.  Customer smiles, relieved.

    “Ok, that sounds good.  Yeah, I’ll do that!”  I grin and traipse over to the register.  

    “Alrighty, that’ll be 7.21, sir.”   

Boom.  Bam.  Done.  The funny thing is I unequivocally hate peppers.  All types, all forms, all colors.  Even tried one today, just to make sure.  The test results came back Negative Infinity.  

However … this sandwich is seriously appealing to me.  It just sounds so creamy, so crisp, so fresh!  But I know I would hate it.  So I indulge vicariously through my words.   Which works well for business, I guess.  Because sometimes it’s not about selling the sandwich, it’s about selling the idea of the sandwich.  

When I was younger, I used to hate Sloppy Joes.  And to this day, I’m still not a huge fan of them.  However, I distinctly remember playing with my Barbie dolls and thinking “Sloppy Joes are just awesome.”  I’m not sure how or why I got this idea, but it was somehow connected to my Barbie’s yellow Sloppy Joe Maker.  As Barbie served up Sloppy Joes under my direction, I realized that Sloppy Joes were actually pretty cool.  So I asked Mom to make them for dinner.  She was shocked.  But she agreed.  (What kind of mom wouldn’t agree to make a cheap, easy, all-American meal like that, especially when it was her Picky-Eater who requested it?)

The next day while she made dinner, I played “Sloppy Joe” with Barbie and fanaticized over how awesome dinner was going to be.  Never mind that I had hated the taste, the texture, and the color of Sloppy Joes for years.  Not to mention the smell.  But I ignored all of this, and sat down for dinner, fork in hand.  (Well, not literally, because you don’t eat Sloppy Joes with forks, but ya' know what I mean.)  

It only took four bites to remind me why Sloppy Joes are not awesome.  

But I continued to think they were a nice idea.  Romantic, even.  Which made it easier to become a Joe-eater later in life, once we finally found a recipe I could handle.  Again, sometimes it’s about the idea of the sandwich, not the sandwich itself.  Basic marketing principle.

This makes me nervous because how many things have I bought (or ate) simply because I liked the mere idea of them?  How many marketing campaigns have I been a sucker for?  Am I completely delusional about my life, do I truly like what I think I like?  Or do I just like the idea of what I think I like?  What if I don’t actually like coffee, but I just like the idea of being a mature adult who drinks coffee?  What if I subconsciously hate set life, but have convinced myself its cool because it’s part of the film industry?  What if single-shot lattes are just a placebo (and actually don’t give me a caffeine boost) and all my self-restraint against the Venti White Mochas has been in vain?  What if I’m ADOPTED?!?!?!  Needless to say, the paranoia escalates quickly. 

Until I remember the disgusting pepper I ate this afternoon.  Thank the garden gnomes, a touchstone on reality!  I guess that makes the pepper my totem.  Same with the Sloppy Joe I ate when I was nine. 

Because underneath the ideas and the fantasies and the marketing campaigns are the taste buds.  I know when I hate something and I know when I love something.  Everything else is middle ground, and I’ll leave it to the commercials to do battle there.  After all, I enjoy a good show, a good yarn, a good fairytale.  So, go ahead, Marketers, try to sell me something I don’t really care about.  I’m settled on what I do care about, and I don’t mind being entertained over the rest of it.

(Plus, I'm kind of miserly with my money, heh-heh!)

The Panini Grill of Death (plus Dolphins!)

The mini Panini-maker I use at home.  Looks safe, attractive, and inviting, right?  Don't be deceived - it's nothing but a heinous grilling machine, with the devious hand-eating instincts. 

At work we have this thing called “The Panini Grill.”  It’s basically a gigantic cast-iron sandwich, in which the Panini’s are the meat/cheese/innards/whathaveyou.  So in order to operate this beast, you must “open the sandwich” and arrange the Panini on the bottom half of the grill, all the while hoping the top half doesn’t accidently slam down on your fingers and create a hand sandwich (not to be confused with a ham sandwich).  It’s a machine of death, I tell you.  Not that I have a deep fear of burning myself or anything.

Potholders aren’t even an option – they’re too thick and inefficient.  Planning is my only protection.  So I practice evasive maneuvers, such as pulling my hand away ASAP.  Should that not be an option (i.e. when it's coming down too fast), I’ve also practiced barrel-roll maneuvers, in which I flip my hand to the side of the Panini and flatten it, hoping the thickness of the sandwich will keep my hand from being seared by the two halves of the grill.  This is why I stuff my Panini’s thick with chicken goodness.  It has nothing to do with the satisfaction of the customer.  It only has to do with me not getting burned by the grill.

I hate burns.  I hate fire.  I hate heat!!  No wait, heat is good.  Especially in Minnesota during the winter.  Fire is good too, I guess.  Maybe.  Someone once told me I need to be more “fiery.”  Does anyone know what that means?  I don’t get it.  I assume it wasn’t a reference to my fear of fire, though I don’t see how one can be more “fiery” and avoid getting burned. But really, I don’t know what it means to be more fiery (fiery-er?  fierier?).  Perhaps they were referring to my incessantly hesitant personality.  *sigh*  I’ve been like this since I was a kid.  Careful.  Cautious.  Conscientious.  “Inhibited” perhaps.  “Shy” even.  Sum it all up with “self-conscious.” 

It’s not that I’m a passive piece of seaweed that just waves around with the current and has no backbone of its own.  I promise I have my own ideas – I’m actually pretty extroverted, with lots of thoughts, and a natural inclination towards leadership.  So with all these excellent personality traits, you’d think I’d be a piece of coral, unyielding and solid, bending the waters to my will, all the while maintaining a beautiful shade of pink.  Alas, ‘tis not so.  

I suspect an evil witch cursed me at birth with two additional personality traits:

1. I hate offending people.  Mainly because I hate rejection.  That’s a very painful burn.  Ouch, I cringe just thinking of it. 
2. I want to make the best, most efficient and effective choice possible.  BECAUSE I MUST WIN AT EVERYTHING!!  ;)

The problem is that life is messy and it’s not easy to determine the quickest route from Point A to Point B.  Unless you can fly or do Geometry.  Both of which are magical properties that aren’t options for people in the real world.

And you know what’s even messier than life?  People!!  They’re so subjective – at least Point A and Point B are objective!  I mean, humans aren't so bad when they just give you their money and take their cup of coffee and don’t say anything.  The problem is that it’s never that simple.  You can’t help but communicate with people – the very fact that they’re in your presence means that you’re automatically communing with them.  And communing begets communication.  The way you hand them their coffee.  The pitch of your voice when you bid them a good morning.  The speed at which they slam the door on their way out.

The problem with communication is that there are a MILLION ways to say something, and 500,000 of those ways could offend someone and cause them to hate you forever (depending on how they interpret it).  So there are billions of factors going into every instance of successful communication, for both the communicator and the audience.  And it takes a lot of analysis to figure out how to say what you mean in a way that will click with your audience’s interpretation grid (and avoid unnecessary rejection).

So, yes, I am hesitant when it comes to interacting with people.  *righteous indignation*  And yet I realize this is what impedes me from making quick decisions.  Because sometimes it’s not about being efficient or right, it’s about being convenient and fast.  Which is a difficult concept for a recovering perfectionist to understand.  But it is indeed a reality.  However, there’s a balance to it.  Like when I’m making people their lattes. 

Ideally, I’d like to hand a customer their latte in 4 minutes or less.  (Otherwise the caffeine-addict fangs begin to show.  Actually, that's not true; our customers are great.  I just start to get nervous and feel bad that they're having to wait so long.  Also I run out of things to say and feel awkward.)  At the same time, I want to do a good job and give them the most delicious/artistic latte possible.  (Because people automatically love you when you hand them something yummy.  Also lattes aren't cheap.)  Yes sir, there's a fine balance between efficiency and detail. 

So in conclusion, I need to figure out a way to be bold and decisive while retaining sensitivity to people’s needs.  Somehow I must become more coral-like.  Without accidently crushing poor, unsuspecting surfers/sailors/families from Switzerland.  'Cause there's nothing like a good shipwreck when it comes to miscommunication and eternal rejection.  Hmmm ... perhaps I should aim for Dolphin-Status.  After all, dolphins rescue people and they're friendly and perky - plus, they have BACKBONES!!!     *wink-wink*

Brown Eyeliner Update

This is a photo of the sparkly brown eyeliner referenced in the Ugly Duckling post of December 12th. 

I apologize, Cortney; this photo is way overdue.  However, it's a lot harder than it looks to take an effective photo of one's eyeliner.  I'm not even sure this one was successful.  Trust me, the sparkles are definitely there.

Le sigh