Looking Good.

We arrived in nearly total darkness, which didn't really matter because we didn't know where we were anyway. I had heard rumors of the Army training crags on Mount Yonah and Richard and I decided to check it out for ourselves. And so, with a thin rack of climbing gear and sub-standard camping supplies, we hopped in his pickup truck and drove to the desolate gravel road outside of Helen, Georgia.

The mountain campsite looked like BarterTown from "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome". Drunken country kids lit moonshine as they spit it out of their mouths. There was a loud Charlie Daniels Band sing-along. I'm pretty sure at least two fights broke out.

The next morning we got directions and started the walk up to the climbing routes. After a brief period of getting lost, we walked out onto a small rock shelf that served as the base of the face. I looked up the chunky routes and realized that these were far easier than the scant faces of California featured in all the rock climbing books we had been reading. We roped in, shuffled up the routes and were bored in no time.

I complained about my boredom to one of the regulars who informed me of a few more challenging routes just at the end of the face. "Foxy Lady" had a difficulty of about 5.8 and was a tiptoe up some acorn-like protrusions until you reached a narrow crack that walked you up the finish. It was harder than I expected, but it was nice to complete. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, I set my sights on the adjacent climb, "Afternoon Delight," for the next day.

"Afternoon Delight" was an awkward climb pretty much the whole way up. I started by shimmying up a massive plate of disjoined granite to where I could stand on top. "I don't see where I'm supposed to go," I yelled down to Richard, who was belaying my line.

"Go up," he responded.

I have never seen a better belayer than Richard. His knowledge of the technical aspects of the climb combines perfectly with an ability to instill confidence. He also has a cunning ability to know the proper moment to yell, "Quit being such a bitch".

He was right. I was being a bitch. I was bitching about the fact that I could not see where the next move was.

All I could see was the slightest banana shaped indentation about collarbone high. And this situation only called for one move and I didn't want to do it. A mantel is where you pull up and over a hold and then quickly shift your arm to palm down over the hold. Think about getting out of the pool, without the stairs or the ladder.

The cherry on top of this maneuver was that the next hold, a body's length above the banana, was a little dime-sized extrusion. "Put your face into it," Richard yelled. He was right. Unless I could get my body weight directly over the banana, I would slip out and down. I pulled up and stuck my face right against the rock. In the same movement I shifted my arm and hauled my feet up into the banana. Without using any handholds, I stood up. Before I peeled away from the ledge and sailed down, I reached up and dug my fingernails into the tiny little hold. I was stable.

I looked up for the next move. Again, nothing. I thought I might sit a while and ponder but the hot sun made my hands and climbing shoes greasy. I was sliding off my holds.

"Those cracks to your right, start traversing straight right," he said.

I looked and saw what he was talking about. Three rungs of thin cracks made their way like a ladder just off to my right. I tiptoed over and did three pull-mantel-no-handed stand ups to the top. I should have been ready to celebrate. I felt like vomiting.

Had I been there by myself like Stallone in "Cliffhanger", I would have failed. Had I a belayer who didn't give me direction and encouragement, I may have quit at the banana.

Good belaying is about communication, understanding and mutual success. When you are the lead climber, your belayer tells you where the route goes and helps beef up your confidence. If you are the following climber, the lead climber belays you up the same route and tells you where most of the issues are in a closer sense.

Plenty of companies sure could use someone belaying them like Richard. They need a better view of the path ahead rather than just what lies directly in front of them. They need that safety line of someone who is at least tied into their same fate. They need someone to tell them to quit being such a bitch. Yet many companies try to go it alone without a rope and we see their bloodied corpses on the rocks below.

After a few trips up and down the mountain, I have seen what makes a good company belayer. So spit in your hands, pull up your tights and chalk up. Let's go climbing.


First, start with a good rope.

Or maybe a good thread, to be exact. The lifeline that customers often offer and so many companies refuse is the line of communication. Customers want to be involved or, at the very least, acknowledged. With today's technology, it's easier to get in, and stay in, touch with customers.

And there's something else to consider. The relationship between belayer and climber is not one of formal register. Consumers want to have a brand as a friend and, therefore, should be treated like friends. The more corporate hogwash you throw at them the less they'll want to hold the line for you.


Make sure you have a bonfire at the summit.

I'm always surprised how rarely companies engage their customers in any formal discussion about products and brands. The common attitude is that the company is somehow above the customer and, therefore, whatever the company dictates, the customer should do.

This is a lot like thinking the lead climber is somehow in charge just because he or she goes first. In truth, the lead climber and belayer both play essential roles. Having a dismissive attitude as the lead climber may prevent the belayer from telling you about the falcon's nest you're about to stick your hand in.

I suggest all companies use a customer council to ask questions, get insight and charge up your biggest fans. Considering how much money gets spent trying to build a stronger connection with clients, this should be a no-brainer.


Share the beta.

In climbing terms, beta is advance information concerning the climb. Even a beginning climber learns early on the benefits of sharing the beta. For starters, sharing beta with the other climbers you like means they will also share beta with you and you will all know more.

But perhaps the most important part about sharing beta is that each time you convey it, it begins to resonate more with you. Think about it. Every time you recite some directions or retell a story, you get better at it. Sing your company's beta to your coworkers and colleagues and you might actually start remembering it on the climb.


Looking good. Just ignore those bees.

Having the right partners and treating them like partners can keep you from falling in this business. A good belayer can really help you see beyond just your site. A great belayer can give you the needed information and confidence that you're going where the route is intended.

And let's not forget, at times we all need someone to tell us to quit being such a bitch

My New Running Shoes.

My birthday was approaching and I am the very definition of the guy who has everything. For Christmas I got a keyboard to accompany my electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, violin, banjo, ukulele and bagpipes. I play a lot of musical instruments; my parents refused to pay for cable when I was a kid.

So I really had to search my mind for what I wanted this year. Though my wife Maura is an excellent gift buyer, even she was at a loss for what to get me. Since exercise had become our new thing, I started thinking of what could make the grind of 6 a.m. workouts just a bit easier. And then I realized there was something I had needed for a while: new running shoes.

In the past I would just go to the mall and pick out a pair in my old size. Now, however, I'm a bit pickier and slightly more accustomed to being handled, so we went to the New Balance store for a custom fit.

The guys in the store winced in pain when they saw my existing running shoes. They were a size tight and way too narrow. Having been a wrestler and a rock climber, I had always believed that shoes should be tight enough to break something. Think about it: when you are using your feet to pose on a rocky ledge or on the neck of some idiot from Norcross High, you don't want your feet to slip around inside the shoe.

The New Balance guy had me stand on a machine which measured my feet and made a recommendation. I was in no position to disagree with the shoe he suggested and the only real decision to make was the color. But this was harder than it sounds.

Throughout college, everyone wore grey New Balance running shoes (that is, when they weren't wearing their redneck work boots). And not necessarily for running. Just 'cause. And I'm not sure what the reasoning was. Perhaps because the grey 991s were amongst the more expensive shoes on the market and rich never goes out of style. Maybe it was because they were so understated, what with other manufacturers putting out shoes in electric blue with florescent mucous-colored accents. Even as I started to make the sounds of "Gggrrreee..." I stopped with an abrupt, "I'll take the blue ones". Maura asked me in the car why I choose blue over the old stalwart. "Because I don't want to be stuck in college". She knew exactly what I was saying, but the truth is we're all stuck in college.

Maybe not college per se, but there is a period in life where your sense of style begins to crystallize and you will use that point of reference to craft your style from there out. It's why my grandpa wears shirts with suspiciously large collars. He also wears velour jumpsuits. It's why you always see that group of people who look like they're dressed to go on a hike. That was the campus style in the early 1990s, and they've been on the trail wherever they go ever since. Your style gets locked in and, even though you may try to fight against it, it's difficult. And you may emerge looking a little odd. We've all seen that guy who tries to dress like a pro skateboarder or the mom who thinks she's a backup dancer for Britney Spears. It's just sad.

Why do we get locked in? It's comfortable, like grandpa's jumpsuit. And since our peers seem to be doing it we figure it can't be all that far from fashionable.

Businesses have their college years. They shed the old duds from high school and start looking fresh and successful. Like all of us, almost every business can point to that period known as "the days" and at least something from "the days" has persisted. And there's nothing wrong with remembering the past. Heck, sometimes our old style becomes retro fashionable, renewing our vitality while garnering us the credential of an originator. The problem is when we need to break with the past but are unaware or simply don't know how.

Some giant businesses were the big man on campus back in their day. Sears might have been the biggest. Talk about good looks and likeability. But today Sears is a shadow of its former self. What happened after graduation?

From a strategic standpoint, Sears failed to age gracefully. The "get it all here" approach was successful so long as boutique and specialty shops stayed at bay. But them Home Depot came and took their tools. Best Buy took their TVs. Bed Bath & Beyond came and took the softer side of Sears. And everyone else came and looted clothes, tires and financial services. Yes, if you didn't know, you used to be able to buy financial services at Sears.

What should have happened? Sears really has great customer service. If you haven't shopped there (and they still exist when you read this book) you should really go. The people are polite and know what they are talking about. The cornerstone brands (Die Hard, Kenmore, Craftsman) have really great quality. Sears really does provide a great shopping experience.

But they don't leverage that experience. They don't say, "Come to Sears because we know what we're selling and you will get great quality". They say what they have always said, which is, "We have a bunch of stuff...come buy it". Their failure, metaphorically, was not getting a new color shoe. What worked in the past was successful in the past. It is no longer the past.

So how does this happen? I believe it is simply a function of great strategies and their lifespan. I believe that when a truly great strategy is conceived, the proponents of this strategy go about selling it up and down the organization. If they are successful in getting buy-in and the whole company exudes the same strategy, assuming the strategy is good, I would expect wild success.

But then time happens. And though great strategies, like great styles, can have an inhuman lifespan, they are never immortal. The progenitors of the strategy retire to the palm coast. And everyone left has been taught that the way we succeed is by following Ol' Man So-n-So's time-tested and time-worn strategy.

The people now in charge do not necessarily attempt to birth new ideas. They were raised through the company ranks by following someone else's progeny. And if they disagreed or had critiques, they probably did not last to be in charge of much. I'm not saying this is always the case. I'm not saying this is the case with your company; that's a question only you can answer. What I'm saying is that maybe you should ask the question of whether or not you're wearing yesterday's clothes.

In other words: Have we evolved how we market our product in the right way or are we using yesterday's strategy to address the requirements of tomorrow's market?

This is normally the part where I list some bullet points or conversation starters, but that's not what I'm going to do. This kind of inquiry is far too complex and subjective for a few mere questions. Instead, I implore you to ask a few tough questions of your own with the goal being to understand the root of your company's competitive strategy. No matter what you find, I think you'll at least find value in having a better perspective of where you are now as an organization and where you are headed.

This is an important issue for most companies. The world of competitive marketing is changing. Strategies and tactics need updating. The way companies view and interact with consumers will always be changing. Time is running. And right now it might have on blue running shoes.

Now with Live, Active Cultures.

I was into live, active cultures before live, active cultures were cool. Back then, nobody even heard of Bifidus Regularus (and isn't that name a little ridiculous? It's one step beneath "poopest nowest"). Whatever, I knew all about the bowel healing power of yogurt far before people in spandex started talking about it on TV.

It was Easter and I headed to my Dad's house for dinner. One thing you should probably know about my family is that we are food centric. My step-mom likes to celebrate God's most wonderful gift by cooking many of his other gifts and serving them with horseradish or mint jelly. She's also from Pittsburg, which means she even fries the butter. The meal is big enough and greasy enough to make you want to funnel Maalox.

This particular year, my beloved nephew got sick in a way not to be discussed around food. He had the Norwalk virus (which was a hip illness back then, like Hypoglycemia) and the result required a bath. After his bath we assumed he was clean and so, like with most babies, we all played with the little bio terror. About 11 p.m. that night I threw up from the toilet into the tub. Even in such discomfort I had to pause and laud this achievement because I am male. It was impressive.

If you are not familiar with the Norwalk virus (now officially known as norovirus), go rent that terrible movie Dream Catcher. That part where the guy poops out the alien that looks like a three foot long barracuda? It's a lot like that. Plus you vomit and your head might spin around.

My Cirque dus O'toilet exercise was enough to give my roommates the virus (three guys in a 1950s house. Lysol? Yeah right.). The next two days we all sat in bathrobes chasing chicken soup with orange juice watching that movie with Clint Eastwood and the sassy monkey that wears a T-shirt. (Editor's note: the two films are 1978's Every Which Way But Loose and its 1980 sequel Any Which Way You Can, starring Clint Eastwood and an orangutan named Clyde.)

In time, the virus passed and I began to feel a little bit more normal. But a problem loomed. My appetite waned and I still got nauseous when I ate. I called mom, who knows all about viruses and puking since she raised four boys. Mom said the key to getting your stomach back to normal is to eat yogurt. And not that whipped chocolate moose junk. Real yogurt with live cultures. Now, when I hear someone complain about their stomach, I interrupt them and say, "Oh, you need yogurt. And not that whipped moose junk. You need active cultures. Give me five dollars".

Your stomach has to have some bacteria to break down all that junk food you eat. Doritos and Ding Dongs don't digest themselves. Well, most of the time, anyway. Live cultures help build the right environment for your digestive tract.

Richard probably knows better than most about cultures and the often resulting poop. He worked for a cheesy dot com that never had an actual useable product and touted their success in how much venture capital money they could obtain and spend. It was the nineties and the "look how cool we are" culture craze was in full effect. I visited Richard at work and he gave me the tour. "Here is our pool table that nobody uses. One guy used it once but the VP of Development of something glared at him. Now the only time it gets used is when we give tours to investors and prospective employees to show them how hip we are". How sad.

But it was not rare. All round the ATL and in every tech city, mountains of ping-pong tables, bean bag chairs, razor scooters, hacky sacks and hockey sticks just sat around for show. The old, stiff investors were so impressed with this youthful thing we call the Internet that they encouraged everyone to pretend to be wacky.

This notion of the live, active culture persists today. Marketing service firms not only encourage their employees to be fun and vivacious, they whore them out for it. On more then a few websites of marketing firms have I seen pictures of some staff person kayaking or running a marathon or playing guitar at a local Earth Day celebration.

Listen, I'm not trying to Norwalk all over fun cultures. I mean, Richard has a collection of different canned and packaged meats on a shelf in his office. When it comes to being zany, we run with the best. But why should companies care about the culture of their marketing people? Like with so many other things, we feel we should care, but don't really know why or how we even started caring in the first place.

You shouldn't have to catch Norwalk to learn about active cultures. I've had it a few times and you can learn from my disgusting experience.


Fun is creativity, right?

Nope. Fun is a bottle of whisky, a minigun and a chandelier store. Of course, that's just my opinion. You can substitute whatever you might find fun in that section. But fun is often mistaken for creativity. You walk into your ad agency and you see a group of people sitting on the floor yelling about headlines or photos or whatever. Later you see them throwing pumpkins off the parking garage roof and you say, "What fun, creative people!" But what you are mistaking for creativity is what people will do when the rules are relaxed and creative's trying to blow off steam so they can stop your tagline about "single source solutions" from ringing in their heads.

Fun, right? But does it increase creativity? Our gut says maybe, but I think that's just indigestion. Honestly, people may have an active brainstorming session and still be terrible at brainstorming. And creative people will blow off steam even if the concepts are a joke. What's worse is that agencies have been trained to appear fun and zany even if their work is sub-par. Clients delight in the off-the-wall approach and mistake it for something innovative.


Diverse interests means that you bring a broad perspective?

I love seeing firms pitch how vivacious and interesting their people are. I'm always amazed to see so many people into running and scuba. Here's the problem: most of this country does not compete in triathlons or cook gourmet food. Have you ever noticed how much media and advertising seem obsessed with a lifestyle that the rest of the country does not live or even want to live? When 95% of the people who work on your marketing are into emo rock and sushi, how representative of the do-it-yourself mechanic market do you think that will be?

I have an easy recommendation. Instead of getting people who are supposedly interesting, get people who are interested to handle the marketing of your product. When you are working on marketing a product or service the most important thing in the room should be that offering and not the account executive's surfboard collection. I like interesting people, but when it comes to working on a marketing issue I like interested people more.


Yogurt. Now with new made-up cultures!

What's the difference between real, active cultures and cultures that are invented for marketing purposes? Well, a few things, first of which is respect. Strong cultures foster real, mutual respect. They respect and have empathy for each other. They respect the client. Respect that can only cite the chain of command is not a strong culture.

Next is confidence. Strong cultures empower their teams. They do not need constant oversight. Conversely, lack of confidence in people leads to a firm throwing its own people under the bus. And if an agency will throw its people, their careers, their ideas, their reputations all under the bus for a check, you better think twice about believing what's written beneath their logo in the lobby.

Put simply, they have a house of cards based on a fake culture. They play creative company, but you'll get your hand slapped if you actually ride the razor scooter. It is a culture celebrating the illusion of creativity rather than celebrating and encouraging actual creativity. The problem is many clients cannot discern between the two.

Third is diversity, but maybe not in the way you think. Some cultures look like they picked through the box of crayons on purpose. The result looks like a college brochure. This is neither empowering nor productive. There is a humongous difference in empowering/engaging diversity and the more common promotion of diversity. I believe diversity should be embraced because of the value it brings to solving a problem fully rather than using it for promotional use only. If we use diversity as a way to broaden the scope of how we see an issue, that's a good thing. Otherwise, it's an pool table that no one ever uses.


Feeling a bit irregular.

I realize I may be irritating the colon of the organizations who believe in leveraging their culture. Please don't misunderstand me, I believe in strong, active cultures. I just believe in real ones rather than fake ones. I believe in actually living out those statements of "what we believe" that so many marketing services tattoo on their websites. I believe in real, active cultures and not that whipped chocolate moose junk.

A great culture can be the perfect environment for creativity and problem solving. A great culture can reduce the stress in the normally high stakes part of business. And perhaps the best thing about a great culture is that it is infectious and when you catch it, you can't help but spread it so everyone has it.

The Super Trooper.

The Isuzu Trooper was my baby. We called it the Super Trooper. And boy, it was super. I bought it a few years into school when everyone went all country and I could no longer try to be country and drive a Nissan Maxima at the same time. The Trooper was like a giant dumpster with windows and wheels. I think if I would have bolted a giant piece of plywood to the bumper, it might have improved the gas mileage. This was an SUV from an era when SUVs were actually sport utility vehicles.

It was a 4x4 in every sense of the term. You had to get out and lock up the hubs, guaranteeing you'd slip and fall in the mud. We used to go bogging out along the Oconee River because it was like a cheap trip to the amusement park and because the girls liked it so much. It made them feel rustic, which is hard to do in the 'burbs.

One afternoon we decided to go get muddy and I gassed up the Super Trooper and picked up the girls at their house. We roared down the old jeep trails and through the mud pits until not a speck of the Trooper's white paint was visible. And then came the monster. The monster was a pit of mud 20 feet across, 4 feet deep, with a slanted bottom. When we rolled up on it, two Jeeps were already stuck side by side. Bryan was trying to plug the hole in his Jeep's floorboard as muddy water shot through like Old Faithful. Cory was standing on the hood of his Jeep, hopeless. We sent another vehicle around to the other side to pull them out.

I don't know what I was thinking. I just got in the Super and drove right in. The Trooper lunged to the side and I saw muddy water crawl up the passenger side widow. The engine shut off and I heard the people outside yelling. They were holding onto the roof rack to keep two of the tires on the ground so I wouldn't tip over.

They pulled Super out of the pit with a tow strap and I took her home to wash her. I thoroughly got my 75 cents worth at the local car wash when I noticed it. Just a little rainbow in the suds. Getting bigger. An oil leak.

I hypothesized the worst. The bottoming out of the Trooper in the muddy pit hit the transmission hard enough to weaken the rear main seal. I knew from people who had the rear main seal repaired how expensive it could be. I took the Super to the shadiest mechanic in Athens and he confirmed my suspicion. The cost to repair old Super was as much as I had paid for her.

Over time, the leak got worse. It got to where I would drive around with a case of oil to fill her up every hundred miles. Eventually, I bought a new car and parked old Super. Once in a while, I'd go out and wash her or just let the engine run a bit.

Then Maura and I bought a house and we had to move. The Trooper had fallen into enough disrepair that she could not be driven. I had her towed to a mechanic recommended by a friend to fix the things so at least we could drive her. The mechanic called and said, "I found a brake caliper and a few hoses for that power steering line cheap so don't pee yourself over the price. I should be able to get all this installed by the end of the week. Oh, by the way, I tightened down the head so you shouldn't be leaking anymore oil".

Tightened down the head? What happened to the rear main seal? I've been leaking enough oil around rural Georgia to rival the Valdez. You mean it was a few loose bolts?
I was tempted to go punch that first mechanic in the throat. However, I was so happy that Super Trooper's oil leaking days were over. For now. Until she sprung another leak, as vehicles with 220k miles often do.

I have paid a lot of money to mechanics for the wrong diagnoses. I've had mechanics ignore what I brought the car in for and fix something else entirely. I've paid for a fix that lasted about as long as it took to leave the mechanic's driveway. Shade tree mechanic does not come close to some of the fools I've hired. My mechanics would cut down the shade tree into logs, stuff some of the logs in the trunk and say they fixed that pull in the suspension. They're just plain shady - no tree required.

Then again, I've met some shade tree marketers as well. They change the oil hoping it will inflate the tires. They put washer fluid in the gas tank to save a few bucks and want to know why the engine won't run. They paint the inside of the car while sanding the outside and call that a long term strategy.

Making the right diagnoses of your marketing is a crucial but often overlooked procedure. We marketers could have meetings about planning meetings to plan something, but when it comes to discussing how to get the lead out we seemed more inclined to let the air out instead.

We need one of those diagnostic computers that mechanics hook up to the car so that it will tell you what is wrong. Sorry. They don't make anything like that for marketing plans. No, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Pop the hood and hand me that flashlight.


The best test of whether or not it will run is to try to start it.

The easiest test of a marketing plan is to see if it is doing what it is intended to do. Are sales rising? Are we making money? Sure, this is simplistic, but I ask you, if the marketing plan couldn't even turn over, is that not a good indicator that something might be wrong?


Work backwards from the starter.

Take the entire drive train of marketing and do diagnoses. Have you done things to build awareness? Are customers building enough interest? How are we helping customers gain knowledge or make a decision to buy? When they want to buy, how helpful are we? After the sale, do we reinforce their decision or run away laughing with the money, which, by the way, is what that first mechanic did.


Check for burning oil.

If the machine is in good running order, you should not only have decent efficiency, it should be getting better. As many marketing activities are cumulative, the cost incurred to make each sale should be decreasing either by an elevation in sales or a savings in costs due to ever-bettering practices. Unnecessary smoke is most often the use of price reductions and financial incentives which you can run on for a while but it'll run like crap and eventually clog your engine.


Check the gaps and the timing.

As consumers are made more aware of your offerings and you are constantly evolving your offerings with the consumer, the gap between their desires and your offerings should narrow. This should always be an ongoing process of improvement and refinement. The idea that if you just get it right once and it'll run forever is just as true as it is with cars.


Kick your tires for a change.

Every marketing plan is worth a little diagnosis if just to head off bald tires and poor alignment that is inevitable in every business over time. Regular maintenance helps ensure a long running machine and more enjoyable experience when driving. And you never know, you might have a leak that you can't even see yet.

The Trooper is still alive and hauling things on my in-laws property. There is a good reason for this. The oil leak meant the Trooper always had fresh oil and it was checked every 100 miles. Also, the spray of leaking oil coated a bunch of parts that would have otherwise rusted long ago. She self preserved like one of those ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber. It's pretty amazing. Well, we didn't call her Super for nothing.

What a Lamppost Uses a Drunk For.

A friend of mine told me that, though he received his law degree from Vandy, he had to do extra study at Harvard before he became a professor. I asked him why he had to go to Harvard and he explained that his bosses wanted to make sure that in a courtroom he could correctly identify who was the plaintiff and who was the defendant. So now you have your highbrow humor for the day. The appropriate reaction is a slight snicker.

My own education had its own gauntlet of sorts, though I imagine nowhere near as perilous as an LLM from Harvard Law. For me, it was two research classes required of all who studied psychology at the University of Georgia's very research orientated psychology program.

I took the first class, Research Design, in the summer, when I had quite possibly the sweetest living arrangement in town. I was a couple blocks from the building where I would be taking my one class for the summer, not paying for utilities and the cost...$50. No, that's not per month. That was the cost for the whole summer. And when you're saving that much money in rent, you have excess funds to spend on other college activities, like taking your best girl to the picture show and singing festive songs at the local orphanage. Yeah, right. We partied like the members of Motley Crue only wished they could.

The professor was one of those laid back PhD candidates who basically promised you'd get an A anyways, but please show up so his review board doesn't get suspicious. Despite our encouraged lackadaisical attitude, however, designing research was interesting. Between rising at the crack of noon and raucous summer bashes, we learned how to create studies, control variables and make comparisons. I wished my entire education would have gone just like that.

But then came the second class, Research Analysis. Our teacher was nice enough, although a bit strange. He was a PhD candidate who didn't really seem to like or be interested in people, an odd characteristic for a psychologist. The class was at dawn and by that time I had moved into a house miles away, meaning I had to fight the other twenty thousand students for the apparently 30 allocated parking spaces. And the class was horrible. With the analysis of research, all the energy and enjoyment of designing research was drained out into the nearby Oconee River. Instead of using research to investigate and solve problems, we now seemed to be finding ways to use research to create new problems, which solved very little. Except we could now point at the amazing complexity of the process we used to say nothing.

As I yearned for the summer days where we pontificated confounds and null hypotheses, I questioned why we were taught the process in two parts. It would seem more logical to teach the design and analysis of a research method, in addition to teaching a variety of methods, rather than break the process apart. Yes, to do that would have been logical. But to put windows in the psychology building with some regular pattern would have also been logical. Instead, the university asked professors if they wanted a window and if they said yes they got one. If they said no, no window and the resulting building looked like it was designed by 8 year-olds who just floated a keg of soda. Logic has nothing to do with it.

And so it often goes in the wild world of marketing research. The design of studies and the interpretation of results too often seem disjointed. And if that is not enough to question validity, many studies start out with no real defined subject, only to follow up the act with an ethereal interpretation designed to support a pre-existing notion. As the late, great David Ogilvy said, marketers often use research like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.

I routinely see studies designed to measure broad and barely defined aspects with a tiny population of participants with obvious confounds, such as an Internet survey to study people who don't use the Internet.

Now for the record, I have worked with some of the most fantastic researchers in the marketing business. Yet even with great research, I have seen managers cherry-pick the results and ignore a huge swath of important data. I have sat in the room and watched my friend Jim Nelems tell a company's leaders to their faces what the issues are, only to watch said leaders either try to discount the findings or ignore them altogether.

I am no research expert. But I am practical and I don't commission research unless I have questions I want answered. And when I do get data, I don't reengineer the questions to fit the results. In the studies I have been involved with, I have observed some amazing technique and skill and, while I could detail all the things I have liked, I think this subject is best addressed by the strongest lessons I learned. These few tidbits stand out to me either because they were not what I was expecting or because they fundamentally shaped the role I see for marketing research.

Better road map than treasure map.
One particularly terrible mistake marketers make is assuming research will predict the future. Sure, we test products and flavors and advertising and that gives us directions for where to put money, time and effort. But what research cannot do is control all the variables. In the lab, a consumer can tell you they prefer a flavor of cough drop. In the real world, you don't know how far the distance is from their house to the drug store that carries your cough drop. This is not to say the research is incorrect. You asked the consumers if they liked the flavor and they said, "Yes". There is a considerable difference, however, between liking the flavor and buying the product.

In my experience, research does a far better job of defining the problem rather than offering the solution. This notion should affect where marketers place the role of research. In at least a few efforts, I have observed marketers develop a product and then attempt to use research to affirm certain notions. Instead, well conducted marketing research should have informed the creation of the product to put it more in line with consumer preference. While some companies do this, the vast majority do not.


Better fairy godmother then magic genie in a lamp.
The genie gives you three wishes and goes back in the lamp until the next wisher happens along. Similarly, plenty of marketers rub their researchers and ask a few questions only to stuff them back in the bottle. Research, however, can advise and inform on all phases of a product's life cycle. Research can flush out attributes most desired by the consumers. It can test positioning strategies and communications. Why put the genie back in the bottle when it can grant all these wishes as well:

Allows benchmarking and testing of strategies in development.
Strategy testing all along the consumer marketing spectrum.
Verifies that strategy from research is aligned and has not skewed.
The better idea is to use your research as a fairy godmother. She exists more like a counselor, helping to inform decisions and granting the occasional wish when needed. Just don't ask for the world and then ignore her advice. She might turn you into a pumpkin.


Doesn't always have to be in a room with one-way glass and lots of M&Ms.
The best researchers can pull data out of anywhere. They can read the b-roll from your corporate videos. They can make inferences from the distribution of your brand magazine. The can diagnose issues from past efforts. I have seen focus groups take place at a customer's house. I have sat in a restaurant and observed customers for an upcoming in-store promotion.

The belief that research must always look like research is a self-imposed restriction. While the controlled setting has its value, one should not eschew the whole other world that is out there.

In today's marketing world, boundaries are falling. Sales and marketing departments have not only signaled a cease-fire, they are beginning to work together. Finance and marketing are beginning to teach each other a common language. And so, the world of research should drop the curtain and begin to better integrate into the whole workings of an organization. Research is a primary window into the life of customers. For the customer-led firm, research is not just an expense or luxury. In fact, a lack of research can be a liability.

They still teach Research Design and Research Analysis separately at the University of Georgia, despite plenty of complaints. I told them that methods should be taught alongside data analysis. I think I made a decent case for connecting the means of getting and understanding data. I put all my concepts on a survey of the course.

A survey, I imagine, nobody ever read.

Running for Senior Class President.

It might surprise you to know I was a shy kid in high school. Well, most of high school, at least. I came into high school having an older brother who was a bit of an ass-whooper. Not such a bad resource when you think about it. But once Chris was gone, I had to fend for myself, which meant I was pretty quiet. I was a decently small kid, weighing in on the Jr. Varsity wrestling team at about 119 pounds. Like Chris, I could be an ass-whooper, but only on the mat against opponents of similar weight. The halls of high school were not as fairly matched.

But something happened during the end of my junior year. Maybe it was the impending authority of being seniors. Maybe it was the fact I had managed to break 130. Whatever it was, I decided to no longer be the quiet kid in the back of the class. So I did what every kid does when they decide to come out of their shell: I ran for senior class president.

Senior class president is a worthless position which amounts to essentially two things: 1) You will be forever remembered as the one who peaked in high school; your old classmates will never think that you amounted to anything outside of the grand halls of the 400 building. 2) You get to pick the color of the balloons at prom, so long as you pick silver, black or purple.

The other kids running were the typical cast of characters. Two cheerleaders with poofy bangs. The odd kid who smelled like graham crackers. The overachiever girl involved in every extracurricular activity on the quest for the perfect high school resume. The guy with the nice car. And the guy known for really, really liking pot. (Distinct from someone who just smokes pot, this Mary Jane groupie felt a greater calling to promote pot through the wearing of pot-themed clothes, the displaying of pro-pot bumper stickers, the utterance of pot-themed catch phrases and the listening to of Peter Tosh.)

Teddy Grahams and Smokey Robinson were not much competition and nobody took the cheerleaders seriously, so I focused on Richie Rich and Valedictorian.
Richie Rich was a bit of a tool, but his parents were rich so he had some popularity. He hung out with the jocks, which made him vulnerable because nobody liked the jocks. I'm not saying that nobody ever likes jocks, but our jocks were terrible at their respective sports, a fact none of them seemed aware of. Plus most of them were juicers and liked to beat up freshmen during 3rd period lunch. Valedictorian was a slightly different problem, but not unbeatable. She had been doing everything since elementary school. School paper, yearbook, flag corps or team. All of which made her a nice target. The disdain most had for her was enough to unify the freaks, geeks, nerds, Goths, drama dorks and straight-edgers.

I huddled my campaign strategy team, which essentially consisted of a guy who could draw, the class clown and some crazed weirdo holed up in the guy-who-could-draw's basement. We discussed strategy. The key to winning would be to find the holes in my opponents' denim armor that corresponded with my strengths. We talked at length about how Richie Rich was really a dork who people pretended to like because he had money. We discussed how Valedictorian had pretty much alienated everyone because she always had to be in charge of everything. Then the strategy became clear. My strategy would be that I was not them. I had never thrust myself to the head of the Spanish club or yearbook committee. I was a normal guy who had to bum rides to school, owing to a lack of car (a common situation for a high school junior in those days).

My crack team set to making some fliers. We focused on me being a regular student that regular students could identify with. We focused on the fact that I had no touchdown record or National Honor Society membership. The competition had no recourse. The more they tried to say that they too were just normal students, the more ridiculous they looked. All through high school, their entire image was based on being better than the average student. To say that they were anything but above the rest of us went against the very thing they stood for. Their position was that they should be president because they were above us meager plebes. My approach took the wind out of their sails.

This is my favorite marketing tactic. I love it when we develop a brand that invalidates a competitor's position. You can almost hear them wince in the paralyzing indecision of how to move forward.

I worked on a campaign for a client once entirely rooted in the idea of "we're not them". We made fun of the competitor's staff, products and we even spoofed their commercials. Man, were they pissed. As our share steadily grew, I got word from media reps who said they saw the brass at a competitor's office watching and cursing our TV spots. It was awesome. We pulled off the marketing equivalent of a kick in the balls. There is no recourse. They simply fall to their knees and whimper.

And what can they do? They will have to come out with the marketing campaign themed, "Nuh-uhh!" If they face you head on with their existing strategy, they only amplify your position as the alternative. If they change strategy, two things happen. First, no one will believe them. Second, abruptly changing strategy puts a company off center. Another competitor might move in on their unguarded original strategy.

Some famous examples are out there of this phenomenon. My favorite was the rise of The Body Shop. In the ultra sleek and stylish world of cosmetics, The Body Shop came out with a position of health, natural beauty and conscientiousness. The fabulous set didn't know how to respond. If they followed The Body Shop into the realm of peace, love and coco butter, they would invalidate their existing position. The Body Shop, however, was robbing their market share based on a strategy of, "Hey, those people suck...and we're not them".

I cannot list all the specific ways to invalidate your competitor here. I do have, however, some quick criteria to get you started.

Want to kick your competitor in the balls? Ask these questions:
What is it that consumers put up with from our competitor begrudgingly and is that a position we can capitalize on?
What is the opposite of our competitor's position? For example, if they are high tech, can we be simple? If they are lavish, can we be humble? If they are the original, can we be the product for the new generation?
If our competitor does not have a clear position, can we give them one that consumers will believe and accept?
What prevailing consumer values has our competitor failed to adopt or convey?
What change to values, structure and our offering are we willing to make and are we able to put our whole effort into developing and maintaining this position?
How will we sell this up the ladder so the brass doesn't get all itchy?
What will be our competitor's reaction? What about other competitors? How will they react?
This list is by no means thorough. I encourage you to think about what else can be done to violate your competitor's position. If you have some good ideas, consider going to our blog and sharing with everyone else (Just your tips, not your strategies!).

And in case you're wondering, I didn't win the student election, but it was not from a lack of strategy. My heart wasn't in it. It turned out that I really was just a normal student. And, let's be honest, no normal student really cares if they go down in history as the person who got to pick the color of the balloons at prom.

Cowboy Up.

It's hard to grow up in the South and not have a redneck phase. It may never fully metastasize into full-blown hickdom, but the seed is always there. And even if its symptoms are brief before going into remission, it always starts subtle.

This is probably an appropriate time as any to make the distinction between a redneck and a Southerner. Most people you meet in the South qualify as a Southerner. They like the South's slower pace (it's because of the heat) and enjoy the fine things life in the South has to offer. They enjoy the land and appreciate the bounty that has allowed our ancestors to thrive in this part of the world.

Rednecks are something altogether different. Rednecks have two speeds: spit and fight. Unlike Southerners, who enjoy the cultured things of life, rednecks delight in the lack culture or manners. They might show up at a wedding in a T-shirt and then talk about it incessantly to distinguish themselves from what they perceive as uppity folk. If you need a further description of the things rednecks value most in the world, go to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, where the gospel of Larry The Cable Guy is held in high regard.

What's more, rednecks have what we who have worked in the packaged goods business might call differentiating packaging. In fact, the first step to being redneck is to look redneck. First, you get some boots. I'm not talking about flashy cowboy boots that '80s rockers wore over their spandex. I am talking about some basic work boots, boots that might slightly look like somebody who works on a farm might consider wearing.

Then comes the hat. While the subject matter of the hat has a wide latitude (beer, racin', Lynyrd Skynyrd, bass boats), the condition of the hat is without question. A new hat must have any supporting backing ripped out from behind the headband. This will allow the hat to crush and gives a "What the hell you lookin at?!" essence to the presentation. The brim should be squeezed narrow to obscure other viewpoints. The hat should be dirty and the occasional tear might need to be added to complete the look.

My redneck period actually occurred twice. In its nascent high school stage, I hung out with a few quality 'necks with whom I had played sports. We mostly sat around pickup trucks and talked about pickup trucks. Over time, I just got bored with the high school 'necks and quit hanging out with them, hanging up my hat and boots for a while.

In college, however, the contagion of 'neckdom became epidemic. Temporary redneckness in college had nothing to do with actually wanting to be a redneck. It had everything to do with girls. City girls came to the southern university looking for that country boy they'd heard about in country songs sung by Canadians and Australians. A boy who loves his Mama and his truck and his faithful Labrador, Gen. Robert E. KillYankee. It was very romantic.

The only issue was that the overwhelming majority of students at my college were from three zip codes, all a convenient 15-mile (2-hour) commute from downtown Atlanta. The whole situation created a new beast on the university campus dressed in farming jeans and carrying an unrivaled spending ability. Enter the Cobb County Cowboy.

The Cobb County Cowboy (CCC) drove a Land Rover (or a least a Tahoe) with a brush guard, external accessory lights, safari rack and roof mounted spare tire. He may or may not have an axe mounted to said safari rack. The CCC would admit he went to Pope High School, but claimed ancestral roots somewhere in South Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi. The act paid off. Girls flocked to the CCC like celebrities to a secluded drug rehab center.

And then, one day, the style deflated. When it was on the rise, CCC style infected every non-nerd to some extent, to the point where it was hard to distinguish the finance student from the poultry science student. Everyone looked like they were ready to slop the hogs. And that was the problem. As the trend became pandemic, there was no longer any differentiation in being a Redneck. Now, everyone was a redneck.

At its height, the redneck appeal neared cult-like proportions. I heard guys from Atlanta faking Southern accents. Even the girls tried to talk like Scarlett, particularly when drunk on Miller High Life. Our school mascot was nearly replaced with the chocolate Lab.

But eventually, the elements that had made up this redneck cult began to crumble. The CCC joke began to spread and we began to tease each other about whether or not they were going to try to plow the North Campus quad before sunset. The trend imploded and it was stark to see this roaring cult appeal become the brunt of a joke.

After finally swapping in my cowboy boots for wingtips and entering the working world, I began to study the similarities between trends and cults. As both inspire loyalty that has a mental or emotional award, I wondered, could the deprogramming methods used to wean cult members off of a dysfunctional loyalty also be used to break the bond between some ironclad brands and their most devoted fans?

In all honesty, many brands employ the techniques of acceptance, immersion and maintenance that help create cult-like devotion. I integrate many similar techniques into the construction of brands to help foster affinity. Brand loyalty is one of the few reasons why someone will pay you more than what your product is attributably worth. It goes without saying that brand managers have an incentive to explore any method that could offer such a return.

But can the reverse be true? If the techniques used by cults can be used to create brand loyal customers, what is keeping the techniques used to combat cults from being used to neutralize a brand? Because the truth is they can.

Brands are at least as vulnerable to deprogramming as any other trend or cult. When the nature of the brand's loyalty is revealed, countermeasures can be used to debunk positions and deprogram loyalty. So let's get a chair, a swinging bare light bulb and a room with no windows, 'cause we're about to start deprogramming.



1) Discredit the authority.

Go after actual sales claims. Point out the fine print. Do a side-by-side comparison. Just make sure that whatever you do gets mud in the competitor's eye. Are they using child labor? I think that begs a photo. Do whatever it takes to knock them off that high perch. Sure, it's a ugly business but if you think for a moment that they got to the top handing out apples and puppies, you are sadly mistaken.


2) Present contradictions.

If a brand claims to be the original, prove that it is not. If they claim to be a high-tech innovator, out them on stealing ideas and being a techie-come-lately. The idea is to sap their credibility. Whatever their primary claim is, find the flaw and exploit it. If, however, you are engaged in the same flaw, be careful. For example, if you are trying to discredit a competitor because their parts are made in Mexico and your parts are as well, don't expect the deprogrammed consumer to come calling.


3) Recognize the breaking point.

There will come a point when you'll start to have an audience for your competitor bashing. If your contradictions and assorted mud slinging are true, consumers will begin to question their loyalty.

When you start to make an impact, narrow in on a core group of consumers. Remember, these brand loyal people used to wax about the virtues of your competitor. Recruit them and you'll find they are worth far more than the ordinary Joe.


4) Allow the subject to self-express.

You'll know you have made some progress when former cult members begin to air their own grievances against their former masters. This is no time to cool off; allow your new brand lovers a forum to lash out against the cruel former dictator. Show them in commercials telling about life before this newest illumination. Give them a blog so they can e-hate.


5) Foster identification and transference.

Let's remember, the whole reason people joined these cult brands was for a feeling of self-expression and belonging. Now that they have voiced out against the competitor, an opportunity exists for them to find a new home with you. I know, I know, I'm essentially saying you should deprogram people from one cult brand so they can join your cult brand. Actually, that is exactly what I am saying. And there will even be a chapter in the upcoming book on how to program devotees...


I don't want to make light of the pain and loss of actual cult members and defectors. But we're not talking about poison Kool-Aid, black running shoes and polygamy. We're talking about brands and trends, so don't feel like you're being pushed to do something unethical. And while I feel that plenty of opportunities exist to do the wrong things with some of these techniques, marketers should subscribe to a level of ethics that would prevent them from abuse. That has a nice ring to it: marketers should subscribe to my school of thought. I know what is good for marketers and I want them to be empowered to do the things that they rightfully deserve to do. You can start right now by sending me $50,000 in non-sequential bills, your shoe size and the deed to your house. Welcome the Family...