However, I’ll admit that putting down ‘brand with a worldview’ into a generic framework is a rather challenging. But I have seen quite a few examples – personal experiences as well as larger campaigns – that highlight various aspects of this approach. The new POTUS has in fact, provided quite some fodder for this. Hardly surprising, since his usage of extreme stances contributed majorly to his victory. 

Uber: The recent #DeleteUber campaign, triggered by the company’s response to a taxi strike at JFK airport that was protesting Trump’s immigration ban, showed a glimpse of how Uber is perceived by its customers. Lyft was even able to overtake Uber for the first time in daily app store downloads, though Uber tried some fire fighting by throwing money at the problem. This might have been a blip in the larger scheme of things, however, it mirrors my sentiment. If there was an app that could functionally match Uber, I would switch in a blinkbecause, thanks to conversations with drivers who aren’t treated very well, their callous attitude towards queries, and despite their very agile, local, cause based marketing campaigns, I am quite convinced that the brand’s worldview is “don’t care”.

Starbucks: When Starbucks took a stance and committed to hiring 10000 refugees worldwide, Trump followers began the #BoycottStarbucks campaign. Absolutely polarising stuff, as #DrinkStarbucks also gained momentum, and I saw blog posts such as this coming out in support of the brand. While it might have some repercussions in the short term, I feel the worldview will do more good than harm for the brand in the long run.

If you managed to see the Super Bowl 2017 ads, many of them had political stances either overtly or covertly – Budweiser, AirBnB, Google to name a few. (see) The interesting one though was 84 Lumber, a construction supplies company. Its original ad took a direct swipe at Trump’s Mexican wall but the NFL refused to run it and the company toned it down. But it didn’t end there. Their CEO walked back and not only claimed that it had nothing to do with politics but declared support for Trump’s policy! In terms of worldview, starting a fight you can’t finish is probably worse than not having a stance.

I find these particularly interesting because the stance is related to politics. Society at large has a keener interest because it the brand is actually making a judgment on their voting choices and these actions could potentially have a political impact. There is more column space and interest in this than say, and environmental or worker condition stance. That also means polarisation which would have both immediate and far reaching impact on brand health, revenue etc. A Havas research shows that users want brands to “help on big social issues” (slide 44). The same study shows national identity as a very important consumer sentiment. (slide 15) However, there are nuances and examples in the US that show that many people do not want political lessons from their brands. (Racked has an excellent read on this)

If I try to be objective about this, I think what all this does reiterate is that in our consumption, we are largely irrational creatures, and absolutely prone to confirmation biases. We’d love our brands to echo our world view. Once upon a time, brand research used to be restricted to activity and perceptions/perspectives in the domain. But the worlds are colliding. Smart money would be on brands that can use data to glean consumer sentiment beyond domain, and leverage that understanding when forming a world view.

In other news, brands are increasingly becoming content producers and using means of distribution that are far away from the traditional media outlets. GigaOm had a post on why, with even more new features, traditional media should be very afraid of Twitter. (assuming they weren’t already)

So, the zeroth law and the third place. The way I see it, the always on internet (across various platforms – tablet, mobile, laptop, desktop) has become the zeroth place, and whether it is through content creation and (other) usage of social technology, brands (and the various related agencies – example) have started getting a move on. It isn’t just Starbucks, take a look at this awesome app from Ford (to showcase Keyfree login) that uses bluetooth to automatically login to to social platforms when you approach your computer. The increasing challenge of the brand custodian is to get a bird’s eye view and work out an all encompassing approach. Arguable, whether that’s even possible in this era of mega fragmentation.

until next time, square zero

PS: If we replace ‘robot’ with ‘brand’ in the 3 laws…..

All through last week, after the Bloomberg report, in which a Forrester analyst phrased it as “But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar“, I’ve been reading post after post proclaiming the demise of what has been called f-com. (Facebook Commerce) It finally made me tweet this

So, expert comments now indicate that social commerce == facebook storefronts. No longer funny

— manu prasad (@manuscrypts) February 24, 2012

I realised later that a similar statement had already been made – “Opening a storefront does not mean you have a social commerce strategy…” ~ Justin Yoshimura. In fact, f-com itself should only be one part of a brand’s larger Facebook strategy. The advice being given to brands, along with the news of the demise, is that they should make their own e-com sites more social. Fair enough, but what I don’t get is the mutual exclusivity. Indeed, if brands have adopted an f-com strategy that basically allows users to buy the same things available at their e- store, I wonder why they thought users would flock there. Yes, it does give the brand visibility, proximity to the customer, use of the social graph (like, recommend, share) etc but to the user, there’s really no value. In fact, f-com checkouts are apparently much slower.

Examples of ‘inherently social businesses’ (entertainment, music, games) are being taken as exceptions to the closure trend. IMO, every business (arguably) is inherently social, the trick (actually the hard work) is in finding the social context. Many brands have created value through fan-exclusives, (Heinz) CRM initiatives (Starbucks) free sampling (Pantene) etc. I can understand that coffee is probably social, but shampoo and ketchup?

Part of the fault is to do with the astronomical predictions on the kind of sales these Facebook storefronts were going to generate, part of it is to do with the trigger-happiness that unfortunately shadows most of everything on social platforms.  If brands learned to also pay attention to interest graphs on the network, and create scenarios that use the inherent (and phenomenal) social graph and new features like friction-less sharing better, Facebook can play an excellent role in the overall e-com strategy. As always, the answer is in focusing on user behaviour and experience and not allowing technology and fads to create a myopic vision. The old adage holds – Fail fast. Learn fast. Fix fast.

until next time, f-c’mon

Pepsi began proceedings with its new logo, accompanied by a tagline “Every generation refreshes the world”. You can catch an entire set of creatives in this New Year video. On an aside, the (yet to be proved conclusively) brief for this campaign has caused much amusement. You really have to take a look – it is bizarre and includes everything from gravitational pull and thr relativity of space-time to Mona Lisa and the Bible!! (via psfk) Meanwhile, Coke rolled out its ‘Open Happiness’ campaign a few weeks later, complete with a massive campaign and 2 new Super Bowl spots, prompting the question “Who smiled first“. The answer turned out to be Obama, but Pepsi claimed that finally Coke was following them. Coke pointed out that it had started using smiley logos six months back.

Critics have been skeptical about Coke moving away from the ‘Coke side of life’. Pepsi, they say, having always been a youthful brand has been able to bring out a more buoyant and less laboured campaign. In India, they’ve decided to be totally Youngistan, with SRK no longer a brand ambassador, leaving us stuck with Ranbir Kapoor’s adventures. Some respite recently from Dhoni and gang, with the baap connection.

Meanwhile, these campaigns also made me wonder whether typical mass media communication and feel good campaigns are indeed the way to connect during such troubled times,  more so when I read this article by Tom Martin in AdAge. It talks about “the simple human need to connect to others.”

And that brings me to a brilliant campaign I’ve seen (virtually) – froth brand this time, instead of fizz- Starbucks’ “I’m In” campaign, (in association with ‘Hands On Network’) “ an initiative to make it easy to participate in the President-elect’s call for national service.” The campaign allows a person to pledge five hours or more of community service toward a local volunteer opportunity of choice. It rewards the person with a free coffee. The goal is to raise pledges in excess of one million hours of service from all over the country. You can catch the results here. This is what is correctly described as ‘marketing with meaning‘ – which includes several facets – social, personal, storytelling, disruptive, responsible, each of which gives individuals different sets of incentives to be part of the campaign. Starbucks timed the campaign brilliantly – Obama’s inauguration week, and got itself an Oprah Effect. It has all the ingredients required to make a consumer want to be associated with the campaign, and has used the social web very well.

Now I’m not sure of Coke/Pepsi in the US have tangible renditions of the happiness theme on ground, but I know several campaigns in India which have paid lip service to excellent themes/ideas and have ended up looking superficial. In the times and circumstances we live in, there are excellent opportunities for brands to genuinely do good to society within the sphere of their category, and thereby increase their equity in the consumer’s mind.  (Jaago re is a great example) I wonder how many brands will see this.

until next time, a lot can happen over coffee

PS. While on fizzy stuff, did you hear about the RSS launching cow’s urine as a soft drink? Called gau-jal, its undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”. Sumant suggests Mo (rarji) Desai in low riding jeans, basketball jersey and bling, as brand ambassador, and I suggested the tagline Pee yo! Wonder if Coke and Pepsi are pissed