Description:
Marketeer David Wolfe's journal about ideas, people and events in the Marketing Revolution.
Contents:
Season's Greetings from the World’s Largest Plant
(This is a reprint of an essay I have run before, usually at this time of year. As we leave the Winter Holiday Season and head off into a new year, I think this essay has special significance for what we face in 2009. The year is beginning amid the most unsettled conditions in generations. Many are predicting further decline in equity markets and consumer confidence is at its lowest...
How Japanese Marketers Aim to Increase Sales in Older Markets by Changing Human Nature
While America’s economic wizards try to figure out how to extricate us from the worst economic downturn in seventy years, their Japanese counterparts are trying to change human nature in an attempt to restore vigorous health to the Japanese economy. According to an article in the Washington Post this week, a push is on in Japan to reverse the buying behavior of “elder boys.” For a dozen consecutive years Japanese...
The Roots of My Optimism
Nature endowed our frontal lobes with the ability to look beyond the present moment into time ahead. However the farther cognitively removed we are from the present, the more likely our predictions about the future will prove wrong. This is especially true when some disruptive event explodes in our midst to nullify our customary way of seeing things. The printing press did this over five centuries ago. The Internet did...
The Financial Meltdown We're In Was Made Inevitable 35 Years Ago
“As the percentage of the older population increases, and especially as young adults decline in absolute numbers, fewer, not more, dollars will flow into the economy. “For the first time since the end of World War II, residential real estate will begin to depreciate on a national basis – a phenomenon which might come to be called the Great Real Estate Recession. (A study by the National Bureau of Economic...
The The Hobgoblin of Lazy Marketing and Research Minds
For those who don’t click through to comments on yesterday’s post, I feel I must repeat here Ronni Bennett’s comment about the use (and misuse) of generational labels: This is a topic that irritates me at the other end of the generational divide. Elders - by which I mean anyone older than Boomers - have been erased from existence by the media which have been using "boomer" as a synonym...
The Mythology of Millennials
I just finished reading a posting on the corporate blog of a research firm that I really respect. But this posting did nothing to extend that respect. It was more drivel about Millennials, surely the most confusedly-defined generation of all. Before getting into the details of why this posting was so disappointing, it’s worth sampling the wide variations in how Millennials are defined. On the first page of a Google...
Why Lemmings Drown Themselves and Companies Go Bankrupt
Everyone knows that overpopulation turns lemmings toward the sea to correct the problem. That’s kind of what happens in stock markes from time to time. When irrational exuberance lifts stocks to unsustainable levels, investors destroy value by dumping stocks so fast that supply far outpaces demand and prices precipitously plummet. Too much of anything triggers correction in due course. It must be a law of nature. No one would attribute...
We Know Less about Our Motivations than Consumer Research Commonly Supposes
We’ve seen some strange ideas about the sources of human behavior coming out in the mainstream press over the past few years. More and more it seems, our hallowed concepts of volition and self-awareness are appearing to be as much an illusion as the apparent flatness of Mother Earth. Gary Klein’s provocative Sources of Power destroyed the Defense Department’s illusion that people under fire in the battlefield reason through their...
Say It Ain't So, Dove
I am stunned. I feel cheated. I am mad. Damn mad! For several years I have been touting Dove’s Real Beauty campaign as a high-minded example of authenticity in consumer marketing. Imagine my dismay, then, when I discovered in the May 12 issue of The New Yorker that the real beauties in Dove’s Real Beauty campaign are not real. The success of the Real Beauty campaign still validates my original...
The Silent Generation Revisited
Reader Anita Landis of the GlynnDevins ad agency in Overland Park, Kansas sent me the URL to an article on the Silent Generation that ran in the June 29, 1970 issue of Time. I found the article by Time Associate Editor Gerald Clarke fascinating from several perspectives. First, it was written by a member of the Silent Generation who had bought into the idea that it was every bit as...
On Sloppy Scholarship and the Silent Generation
Sloppy scholarship sometimes makes me mad. I especially get upset when it shows up in a widely esteemed newspaper like the New York Times. Why? Because many people in important positions will take on faith claims made in the great gray lady of U.S. journalism irrespective of their accuracy or lack thereof. Last Sunday’s editorial section carried such piece. It was titled, “When the Time Make the Man." In it,...
The Most Mythologized Generation in History
Surely the boomer generation, if not the greatest generation, is the most mythologized generation in history. Interestingly the boomer generation was not named until former People magazine editor Landon Jones did so in his 1981book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation. By then, the oldest boomer was 35-years-old – well past his or her hell-raising years of youthhood. The term “boomer” has been a buzzword bigtime in marketing...
10 Ideas That Are Changing the World We Live, Work and Play In (Part 3a)
World-changing idea #3: The Ebbing Value of Expertise (Part 2a) Objectivity is supposedly the superior cognitive stance to take in searching for truth. But is that always the case? How often do we hear experts battling it out in courtrooms over two contradictory propositions based on alleged objective analysis? The ubiquity of communications in our lives – including news and talk shows 24/7 – contributes to shaping an uncertain picture...
10 Ideas That Are Changing the World We Live, Work and Play In (Part 3)
World-changing idea #3: The Ebbing Value of Expertise “I’m being objective!” Surely, you’ve had someone you’ve been arguing with scream that at you. Perhaps you have even yelled those words yourself on occasion. I remember – always with a smile on my face a self-styled “left brain” account shouting at me in disagreement on a point, “God damn it! I’m being objective. You are being emotional,” as he pounded a...
10 Ideas That Are Changing the World We Live, Work and Play In (Part 2a)
Ego Transcendence: Perhaps the biggest world-changing idea on the planet today, Part 2 Imagine what advertising would look liked if 65 percent of consumers were teenagers. (Of course, sometimes advertising does look like most marketers believe that most consumers are teens.) What would prevailing fashions look like? How would retail centers look – and sound? The answers to those questions don’t require a Ph.D. in consumer psychology to arrive at...
10 Ideas That Are Changing the World We Live, Work and Play In (Part 2)
Ego Transcendence: Perhaps the biggest world-changing idea on the planet today. For more than 3,000 years, values rooted in the masculine soul dominated the civilized world. Polio vaccine discoverer Jonas Salk, who called those values ego values, took note of this in a paper he wrote shortly before his death in 1995. Ego values, which fuel the competitive spirit in men, have been a driving force behind humankind’s cultural and...
The Elder Storytelling Place: A Gold Mine of Insights into the Older Mind
A friend and former creative director at Young and Rubicam, now working independently and specializing in second half markets, called me the other day to get my thoughts on a campaign he's working on for a nonprofit org that has a large second half constituency in the older age ranges. During the course of our conversation it came to me that there is a really good source of insights into...
BBDO's New Campaign for New Balance: Catastrophic
My friends and fellow bloggers Tom Asacker and Michele Miller just ruined my day yesterday. Within an hour or so, each sent me news of a potentially catastrophic personally change in sneaker maker New Balance’s brand. Imagine walking down the street one day when you suddenly see an old friend named Alex coming toward you. Your heart pounds, a smile covers your face and you quicken your pace to get...
A Neueroanatomist's Strange Journey through Her Own Brain
As my regular readers know, I am perpetually fascinated by the brain. Speaking as a marketer, I don't know how anyone in the business of trying to influence others to buy a product or service could not be fascinated by the instrument they must convince of the worthiness of a purchase. Yesterday, a friend sent me the URL to a startling engaging video that poignantly demonstrates that we have not...
10 Ideas That Are Changing the World We Live, Work and Play In (Part 1)
The Socialization of Business: The Biggest Change in Capitalism Since Adam Smith In my last post I promised you a list of 10 ideas that I believe are doing more to change the world than the 10 ideas Time listed in its March 24 edition. You may recall my intention to draw my list from the same categories Time used. However, once I went to work on my own list...
10 Ideas That Are Really Changing the World
Do you ever wonder how people come up with numbered lists like the Ten Sexiest Sons of silicon Valley orFive Ways to Get Even with Your _ _ _ hole Boss. This week’s Time cover story is about 10 ideas that are changing the world. I wonder how Time''s editors came up with that list. To save you the newsstand price of $4.95, here are the 10 ideas that Time...
Howard Shultz's Strategy for Dealing with the McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts Threat
There must be nearly as many definitions of what a brand is as there are people who offer one, but one world comes through probably more often than any other: promise. However, if one starts with the premise that a brand is a personality – and there is good reason to believe so, based on recent brain research indicating how the mind/brain complex processes a brand – then calling a...
Reading Recommendations Ahead of the Weekend
Take a look at this thought-provoking post, The Inversion of Advertising, as you start preparing for your weekend. If it doesn’t speak to you might think about hitching a one-way ride with Dr. Emmett L. Brown on one of his back-to-the-future time travels. Also, somewhat along the same lines, but in a much expanded and quite smart treatment is a recent Aspen Institute report on Web 2.0, The Rise of...
Our Brand Is Everything We Do
At one point I in a recent client meeting considerable discussion was being devoted to “What is our brand?’ Participants were trying to define the brand in terms of “the promise”, “its personality,” and “its meaning.” Then, some one got it: “Our brand is everything we do!” Starbuck’s Howard Shultz sees it that way. A year ago, he sent an email to Starbuck’s senior staff in which he lamented deterioration...
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Challenging Times
Strategic Action #5 for Surviving and Thriving:Operate with Transparency Last month millions were horrified by a clandestinely filmed video of animal abuse at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in California. The video showed cattle too sick to walk on their being prodded with electrical shocks and forklifts toward their place of slaughter. Under USDA rules no meat from animals unable to walk on their own can be lawfully sold for human...
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Challenging Times
Strategic Action #4 for Surviving and Thriving: Connect With the Zeitgeist (Part 6) Over the nearly four years I’ve maintained this blog I’ve talked about the psychological center of gravity hypothesis (PCG) several times. (Type “PCG” into the search box in the left column to get a listing of all references to the PCG in this blog.) The PCG hypothesis holds that people within five years of the adult median...
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Challenging Times
Strategic Action #4 for Surviving and Thriving:Connect With the Zeitgeist (Part 5) It’s 1921 in London. Everyone is talking about the new strange behavior of blue tits. All of a sudden the azure blue crowned scourge of aphids has taken to prying off paper tops from milk bottles waiting to be taken in from stoops all across the city. They then sip the milk down as far as their short...
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Challenging Times
Strategic Action #4 for Surviving and Thriving:Connect With the Zeitgeist (Part 4) The most influential idea in Western culture idea is that at the roots of our individual existence we are independent souls with vast powers of self-determination. This is so deeply engrained in our culture that most of us find it hard to embrace the idea that we are more completely defined by our relationships than by the properties...
Economic Woes Reveal a Long-Felt Unease
In the last post, I promised that my nextt post would talk about companies that have productively connected with the contemporary zeitgeist. However, I came across an Associated Press article that I wanted to share with my readers because it does a good job of describing the zeitgeist from an economic perspective. (I’ll keep my promise in the next post barring some other development that sets it back once more.)...
Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in Challenging Times
Strategic Action #4 for Surviving and Thriving:Connect With the Zeitgeist (Part 2) Discomfort in mind and body often triggers cravings for iconic palliatives. For a child, a soiled, battered but much loved cuddly may do the job. Around our house, such times are met with comfort food, such as chicken soup heavily laced with fresh garlic or Cousin Ruthie's hamburger, green bean and mashed potato casserole. Today, many are looking...
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