This is brilliant social commentary (if you're aware of The Black Eyed Peas and their song "My Humps").  Made possible by YouTube.  Traditional MTV would never play this.  Why not?

Had the latest Carl's Jr. Spicy Buffalo Chicken Sandwich viral web promotion emailed to me a few days ago.  Had a couple thoughts.  First off, try it out, it's pretty fascinating stuff in the vein of subservient chicken.  What's interesting about it is that it begins to show you how technology will enable us to customize brand messages for each consumer.  How long until your TV commercials start saying your name (assuming TV commercials still exist in 10 years)?  How long until it's not just which ads I see, but which versions?  And then, the ability to track results based on ad content ("oh, this guy actually buys things when there's a pretty blonde in the ad")...

Also, the women in my life were upset that this ad didn't come in a "hunk" version.  I hear ya.  Unfortunately, Carl's Jr. is going after that same Burger King consumer - the 17 year-old male.  Eating machines, every one of them.

Brilliant post on Creating Passionate Users included this picture, which just slays me.

Some people pontificate.  They sit in their Aeron chairs and think of ideas they want to share with the world.  To some extent lately, I've felt more reactionary.  I have a great time conversing with people about their specific challenges or needs.  To that end, if you can frame your question or challenge in 2-3 sentences, I'll try to address it here in the blog amidst the regular pontification.  And now on to more of that:

If you're not uncomfortable, you're not doing anything all that interesting.  It's a simple idea, but let's face it - most people in senior management at established companies are fairly comfortable.  Or at least, they're a lot more comfortable than the guy starting the next YouTube right now.  Instead of always looking for the feeling of hitting a homerun, of banging on all cylinders, look for the feeling that's one step closer than that.  The feeling of risk.  Do something that makes you uncomfortable every day (use some common sense here) and see what happens.

I love the word webinar.  It's fun to say.  Sometimes, they're fun to watch.  Our friends over at Umbria promise that this one will be worth it:

Webinar on Mining the Blogosphere for Brand Insight

Umbria, a market intelligence company that specializes in blog research and consumer generated media for market insight, is sponsoring an American Marketing Association (AMA) webinar, "Look Who's Blogging: Tapping into the Blogosphere for Brand Insight” on February 22 at 1 pm EST.

More information about the webinar can be found by visiting the Umbria homepage at http://www.UmbriaListens.com or enrolling at the AMA website: http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast334.php 

As a former JetBlue customer, I got my letter today... my apology letter.  JetBlue had some trouble this week.  Big time.  So, am I going to kick them off the list?  No.  Why?  Because I got an apology letter, and a good one at that.  I actually believe poor David.  I think he's really shaken up about this whole thing, mostly because it's so unlike them to get this far off track without a plan.  Here's the letter:

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue's seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President's Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.
  
Sincerely,

David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways 

Hey, at least they're trying.  That's one of my new soapboxes - are you even trying to not be evil? 

A long time ago, I wrote a post recommending that brands create an "idea collector" - a person whose job it was to listen and respond to consumer ideas for product innovation and improvement.  Not so much for negative feedback (although that's important), but for those great ideas just waiting out there.  Thanks to Josh Spear, I found out today that Dell (and others) are doing this in a digital way.  Check it out.

In Zoolander, Ben Stiller's character can't turn left.  In many industries, it's the same with the competition - they only know how to do things one way... the current way.  This year at fashion week, an up and coming brand called Trovata turned heads when instead of paying to produce a show, they created two fictional characters that attended all the other shows in Trovata clothing.  Read the WSJ article about it here.  So good.  What I like about this is it speaks the whole casual Trovata lifestyle.  They're party crashers.  They're too cool for school.  I love it.

There is a company spamming my blog right now, in an attempt to grow their business.  This is not uncommon, but today I've decided to give them some publicity.  I think my title says it all.  When will people learn that to get real buzz, you have to do something interesting, something remarkable?  You absolutely can't buy it, or fake it.

Here's part of the sign up page for Digg.com.  It made me laugh, and usually typing in those numbers is a downer.  Yes I am human.  Hear me roar.

I don't even have to go read my blogs to know what people are saying.  The Superbowl ads this year sucked.  The age of amazing and expensive Superbowl ads is passed.  Yep.  That about covers it.  This year I've decided to be proactive and ask myself, "what can we do to fix this?"

Problem 1) The ads are too expensive, so many savvy companies are spending their money elsewhere.

Problem 2) The not so savvy companies are still buying Superbowl ads and they're not very good.

Solution: This is just an idea.  But I think the Superbowl should partner with YouTube to create a set of parallel Superbowl commerical channels.  Here's how it would work:  Underneath whatever CSI or generic ad was currently running would be a news feed like CNN.  It would repeat the same message.  If you're 18-24 visit YouTube.com/Bowl1 to see some groundbreaking advertising... If you're 25-35 visit YouTube.com/Bowl2 to see some groundbreaking advertising... And so on.

If you're a web user and you loved watching great ads when you were younger, you can visit your YouTube channel to see some uber-targeted, uber-savvy advertising.  And here's the kicker - the cost per viewer would be orders of magnitude less, but the attention and focus of the viewership would be orders of magnitude more.

I'm sure there's room to massage this idea.  I'm hoping some other smart  blogs will do that massaging... 

One thing that's interesting about blogging, especially in our space, is that you're expected to be brilliant every day.  Even the most prolific of minds may find it difficult to find a "new" observation or idea that is worth sharing (an idea novel to blogosphere, I know) every day.  In fact, that's probably not what blogging is for.  It's for getting to know other people's minds and situations.  About finding the connections between seemingly disparate activites, people, and topics.  About sharing your mindset at a specific point in time.

With that in mind, I thought I might intersperse some old posts from my former blog with new ones on this blog - the same way an author releases a 2nd "updated" edition of a book.  If I see a post worth revisiting on there, and I have something new to add to it (or take away from it), you might see it show up here.  Just thought I'd throw that out there so I'm not accused of plagiarizing myself (gasp).  As if that's possible.  I think it'll be interesting to revisit thoughts from a year or more ago and see what's changed.  Me, or the world.  Or neither.

I've been reading some branding literature lately that very much based on research.  And, while I think that research is a great thing, and often helpful, I want to believe that we're perched on the precipice of a new zeitgeist in branding.  What I mean by this is, maybe what worked in the past (Ford for example) isn't a good predictor of what will work in the future. 

I also mean that the definition of "worked" is changing for a lot of consumers and entrepreneurs.  Does Wal-Mart work?  Sure it does.  They make a lot of money and push people around.  For the old guard, maybe that's enough.  For the new guard though, I think much more is required.  Philanthropy.  Sustainability.  Actually caring about one's employees - to the point where a union is a waste of time.

I think if researchers looked at a shorter time frame - what has worked well in the last 5 years say, some interesting entrants would come up.  What do you think?  Do you think we can use the past as justification for how we run our brands?  Or do you think it's time to redefine what works?

One final example... three of the Good to Great companies are Wells Fargo, Kroger, and Walgreens.  I've got to tell you, I think it's great that they made a lot of money in the last 15 years.  But I don't believe that many customers or employees are leaping out of bed every morning jazzed to go to these brands.  They don't move the needle on the passion meter for me.  And ultimately, that's the measure of greatness... isn't it?   

A concept came up in a workshop today that I thought would be worth sharing... 

Currently, the range of "personal touch" for both website-based business and service businesses in general is wide.  There are companies that are completely automated (iTunes), somewhat automated (PrintingforLess.com), and even completely personal (your local tailor).  But increasingly, I think we'll begin to see companies move to the edges of this bell curve, or even operate simultaneously on both sides of it.

For example, let's say I've decided to shop for a new range for my kitchen.  I'd love to be able to visit a website that had TOTAL automation - meaning I could sort, view, read reviews, watch product videos, even virtually cook on the range of my choice - and when I was ready, I could order a range and have it delivered problem-free.  I want the site to do EVERYTHING I need it to do, without me having to get out of my bathrobe or talk to anyone...

BUT (and this is a big but), if I have a question, or want a personal opinion, or just need that human touch, I want to be able to pick up the phone and receive the best, most personal, most engaging service available.  I want the person on the other side of the line to sweep me off my feet.  Or I want to be able to go to their retail store and see the range in person, and have an expert coach me.

These are the two poles of this "touch" continuum - leave me alone and/or sweep me off my feet.  Increasingly, I find myself wishing that brands would live on these poles and stay out of the middle.  Either be highly personal, or be highly automated... or the holy grail - be both.  This idea is still marinating for me, but there's something here...  Do you live/work on the poles?

I've been thinking... KBCO (the clear channel version) probably has only 800-1000 songs in heavy rotation.  Maybe another 1000 in their back pocket.  And the vast majority of those songs don't change for years.  So, for a couple grand, I could BUY the station.  I mean, who needs all those transmitters and DJs and such?  Many radio stations don't even make a profit.  But I could listen to KBCO commercial-free forever.  I could "share" my iTunes version of KBCO with my entire office. 

It makes you wonder about leverage in the digital age.  I mean, a radio station is basically 800-1000 songs with a bunch of plumbing and contests and stock investing advertisements crammed in between them.  My iPod is just that without the ads.  You can buy the vast majority of a major radio station's "intellectual property" for the price of a cheap used car.  I know that's not profound.  But, that's weird.  Isn't it?

Here's a well-documented fact: most magazine subscribers get their copy of the magazine several days later than the newsstand.   It's well-documented because it happens to me and my girlfriend Brittany every single month with 6-12 different magazines.  And it's painful.  You see the new Fast Company on the rack.  The cover article looks intriguing... really intriguing.  You want to read it.  Now.  What do you do?  You can buy it and give them another $5, or you can wait until you get your copy like a second-class citizen. 

I'm sure there's a reasonable, systemic reason for this discrepancy.  But here's the thing: I don't care!  I went through the trouble of supporting your publication.  I'm the dedicated user.  You should send me the magazine two weeks before it gets to those filthy non-subscribers.  Sure they pay more for each issue, but they don't LOVE you like I love you.  

Reward your loyal customers.  At the very least don't punish us. 

For those of you that didn't see this in the back of your Fast Company or on the Blogosphere, this is what it sounds like when a company puts values on par with revenues.  Sure, you can probably poke a few holes in it - since Mackey has about 2 billion dollars in stock, but still, I don't hear many other CEOs talking this kind of game. 

The following message from John Mackey was distributed to all Whole Foods Market Team Members on November 2, 2006.

To All Team Members,

I want to announce a couple of significant changes regarding compensation at Whole Foods Market. First, as you know, we have a salary cap policy which limits the total cash compensation that can be paid to any Team Member. The Board of Directors has voted to raise the salary cap from 14 times the average pay to 19 times the average pay, effective immediately. Why is this change happening? We are raising the salary cap for one reason only—to make the compensation to our executives more competitive in the marketplace. With our tremendous growth and success there has been an explosion in interest from our supermarket competitors in virtually everything we are doing. From copying many aspects in the design of our stores to selling more organic foods of all types, other supermarkets are studying and emulating us in dozens of different ways in their attempt to compete more aggressively against us. One of their competitive strategies has also been to aggressively seek to hire several of the executive leaders in our company. Everyone on the Whole Foods Leadership Team (except for me) has been approached multiple times by "headhunters" (Executive Search Firms) with job offers to leave Whole Foods and go to work for our competitors. Raising the salary cap to 19 times the average pay has become necessary to help ensure the retention of our key leadership.

This will be the third time we have raised our salary cap since we created one about 20 years ago. The original salary cap was set at 8 times the average pay. It was raised to 10 times the average pay in the early 1990's and raised again to 14 times the average pay in 2000. This increase to 19 times the average pay remains far, far below what the typical Fortune 500 company pays its executives. As you can see from the following chart, the average CEO received 431 times as much as their average employee received in 2004, while the Whole Foods Market CEO (me) received only 14 times the average employee pay in cash compensation.

Most large companies also pay their executives large amounts of stock options in addition to large salaries and cash bonuses. However, this is not the case at Whole Foods Market. As the chart below indicates, the average large corporation in the United States distributes 75% of their total stock options to only 5 top executives with the remaining 25% going to everyone else in the company (actually most of the remaining 25% goes to the next level of executives below the top 5). At Whole Foods, the exact opposite is true: the top 16 executives have received 7% of all the options granted while the other 93% of the options have been distributed throughout the entire company with all Team Members eligible for a grant after 6,000 hours of service to the company.

The second part of today's announcement has to do with my own compensation. While it has become necessary to raise the salary cap at Whole Foods to help ensure the retention of our key leadership, this is not true in my case. The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I'd have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness. I continue to work for Whole Foods not because of the money I can make but because of the pleasure I get from leading such a great company, and the ongoing passion I have to help make the world a better place, which Whole Foods is continuing to do. I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart. Beginning on January 1, 2007, my salary will be reduced to $1 per year and I will no longer take any other cash compensation at all. I will continue to receive the same benefits that all other Team Members receive, including the food discount card and health insurance. The intention of the Board of Directors is for Whole Foods Market to donate all the future stock options I would be eligible to receive to our two company foundations — The Whole Planet Foundation and The Animal Compassion Foundation. In case there is some technical, tax, or legal reason why these stock options cannot be given to our two foundations, then I will retain future option grants and will pledge to donate 100% of the gain from those options to the foundations. This donation of future options received doesn't apply to the stock options already issued to me prior to January 1, 2007.

One other important item to communicate to you is, in light of my decision to forego any future additional cash compensation, our Board of Directors has decided that Whole Foods Market will contribute $100,000 annually to a new Global Team Member Emergency Fund. This money will be distributed to Team Members throughout the company based on need when disasters occur (such as Hurricane Katrina last year). The money will be placed in a special account and any money not distributed in any particular year will roll over and be added to the following year's contribution. We are still working on the exact way Team Members will be able to access this money. The first $100,000 will be deposited on January 1, 2007.

With Much Love,

John Mackey

A little while ago, I blogged about how the video game console market is a perfect brandscape.  The wireless industry on the other hand, is lackluster at best.  Anyone who can tell me a meaningful difference between Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, and everyone else (besides reception) gets a toy surprise.  The fact is, it's a parity industry, with each player trying to out shout the next about their newest phone or better service.  Nobody really stands for anything (with the exception of Verizon kind of standing for a reliable network). 

Helio is going to shake things up.  For starters, their messaging explicitly states:

The reason is pretty simple.  They see the cell phone becoming more than a phone.  It's a texting device.  It's multimedia.  It's navigation.  It's music.  What can't it do?

The Helio brand stands for the mobile lifestyle.  They get it.  That's why it's unlimited texts, unlimited minutes, and unlimited everything else.  That's why it has built-in GPS that lets you see where your friends are at the touch of a button.  That's why video games, and multimedia, and web browsing are standard.  All this plus 500 minutes for $65 bucks a month.  What teenager (or college student for that matter) isn't swooning?  Heck, if they offered a PDA (and if Apple hadn't just announced their uber-phone) I'd be a customer.

It's nice to see a brand in this space decide to care about something (making mobile lifestyle an affordable reality) and act on it. 

Here's a relatively new blog from a buddy of mine, Ryan Marle.  It's good stuff.  Enjoy.

Brand Alchemy