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...

I Can Smell Garlic on You.

My wife and mother-in-law have two interesting (and some might say contradictory) characteristics. First, my mother-in-law has a sense of smell that bests a bloodhound. If you've been chopping onions...say...a state away, she can smell it. She's a pretty good cook, so I imagine the enhanced sense of smell comes in handy.

Here's the rub. My wife's special talent is that if she eats garlic or onions or shallots she smells of them. I know someone smelling of a little garlic when they eat it is not too uncommon, but with Maura, it is nearly instantaneous. Obviously, we have little fear of vampires.

The whole situation has become a bit tense. My wife, self-conscious of the fact that she smells like garlic, gets annoyed when her mother asks who has been eating garlic. My mother-in-law is just annoyed that someone smells like garlic.

As I stated, while impressive, my wife's feat is not so unusual. I've heard that if you drink too much carrot juice you'll turn orange. Only after I learned that tanning beds also turn people orange did I reverse my assumption that our college cheerleaders drank too much carrot juice. My friend Blake claims that if you drink a particular brand of beer from a can it will make you smell like metal, though I am unclear as to whether he is describing the elemental metals or the musical genre popularized by hit band Metallica.

Mr. Slim Goodbody says you are what you eat and I believe him. The things we eat begin to show on us. That's why I have a corkscrew tail, Ho Hos for fingers and a keg for a stomach. But what about companies? Do the things they ingest seep through the skin? Can a company's internal state penetrate its exterior? Let's dive a bit deeper into this.

A good friend of mine turned me on to a training exercise to get employees, stakeholders and friends of a brand to live the brand's essence. I bet you think that's a bit campy, but I have to disagree. It was actually nice to sit in a boardroom and hear people from all rungs of an organization talk about the company's values and how those values inform decisions. In a training I conducted, I once heard lower level employees actually chide the management for not "living the brand" in their decisions. It was awesome.

But should you really live the brand? In a skin-deep sense, I think many managers would agree that it's a good idea. But should living the brand escape the few cubicles that make up the marketing department? Now that's a whole different ballgame. Plenty of people are willing to live the brand by hanging a banner in the lunchroom, but when it comes to living the brand when dealing with suppliers, Wall Street and other non-marketing associates the oft response is, "These are serious business matters not left to the quacks in marketing".

So my bigger question is this: When your company fails to truly live the brand, can consumers smell it on you? If a company tells you they are "raising the bar" or have "higher standards" and then they leave you on hold or talking to someone who cannot pronounce your name (or the company name, for that matter), can you smell it?

This raises another common business question. How many of the things we say we do in marketing do we actually do? If we say we believe in a certain value, would our employees disagree? Do we live what we say or is it just fodder for the sale?

A brand essence and corporate culture seeps through to the outside via customer service, employee conversations, publicized decisions and every other leak in a company's ship.

I am reminded of a story brought to me by a great intern. He had read that a particular car company had announced that it would be repositioning one of its brands to take on the luxury market, hoping to chase down higher margins. In the same article, the company said part of its plan was to build the soon-to-be-luxury brand using parts from one of its several anything-but-luxury brands. My intern was confused and asked me for an explanation. I asked him, "Who would be excited about the prospect of trying to sell a car for more while using cheaper stuff to build it?"

"One group," he answered, "Wall Street".

We found humor in that this car company seemed aloof to the fact that consumers would be reading the declaration as well. Who wants to buy a car built with cheaper parts for more money? Who believes this company's claim of luxury when we now all know it's built with a plastic engine? Who smells like garlic?

So what does your company smell of? Do you truly live your brand? To steal a few words from Gatorade, "Is it in you?" Do you live it or just say it? Here are a few questions to jump start your thinking.


1. What exactly do we stand for?
2. What is our brand's position in the market?
3. How do our values and brand essence inform non-marketing procedures?
4. How good have we been at communicating our brand inside of the organization, but outside of the marketing department?
5. Do we allow people to participate in the brand and make suggestions for improvement and evolution?

To see how your company is living its brand may take some poking and prodding. The whole concept may be a bit ethereal to some hard-nosed managers. You might dig and find the wonderful spirit of your brand's values. Then again, you might find that your organization's commitment to brand values is a bunch of BS. In which case, imagine what you might smell like to prospective consumers. Because you don't need a nose like my mother-in-law to smell BS.

Steve's Advice.

Steve is a man among men. When it comes to reliability of advice, Steve gives my lawyer and accountant a run for my money, both of whom have plenty of my money to run with.

Steve is not my life coach, yoga instructor or some guru helping me center my chi. Steve is oft our waiter at the famous Five and Ten in Athens. Whenever we go there, we request Steve and he makes a special effort to get us a good table in his section.

A few years back Maura and I were having dinner at Five and Ten when we had a question about a particular wine. Steve made a recommendation. Then he brought us a sample. Then he retrieved a dusty old book from the back detailing growing region, good years and recommended pairings.

For those of you who don't love wine, this might seem like a bit much. But you should understand this situation in context. Five and Ten is a restaurant for people who love food. The menu is incredibly inventive. The atmosphere is classy yet homey.
Steve's actions were those of a person who truly lives their brand and it made an impression on us.

In subsequent trips, Maura and I always asked Steve's opinion. We trust him because he has earned our trust. To us, he is as much of the brand as anything else.

When I started writing this, I had originally thought of writing it about customer service or living a brand's values. While I have written about the latter subjects, however, I have neglected to write about what I believe to be one of the most crucial people in the success of a brand. Like Steve, these brand champions embody their brands and carry them out with enthusiasm and joy. Their actions may seem over the top. Their dedication to the brand might seem obsessive. But they inspire great things like loyalty, creativity and communication, just to name a few. They are the tipping point for a brand success. They are the inspirational brand managers.

Perhaps the best, and definitely most entertaining, way for me to tell you about inspirational brand managers is for me show some contrasts between good marketing management and tomfoolery. With these examples drawn in negative space, you might begin to see the potential of a positive figure.

We all have a story or two of blunder and high jinx on the high seas of industry. I once had a brand manager who was an executive assistant before "leading" the marketing department and whose job was more to cover incompetence than to market anything. Her best sell was the idea that she knew what she was doing, which was still unsuccessful as it failed the maxim of truth in advertising. I had one manager who pingponged between our firm and the client's 12-member marketing committee, whose only standing commitment was to agree to disagree about everything. Before that job she had been in charge of setting up special events and, in a rare moment of agreement by the marketing committee, that was the job to which she promptly returned. I once had a client rep, working as the brand manager, who spoke as if he was dictating a memo. Honestly, few things I've experienced in client relations are as marginalizing as someone saying, "Jeff...Subject: Quarterly sales result...Participants: You, me, my assistant Susan...Conducted: via conference call". I thought he was perpetually whacked out on psychotropic mushrooms.

Then again, I've also had some great ones. I've had a few brand managers that after meeting them for five minutes you want to be part of their team, because whatever they do will be innovative and successful. I have worked with brand managers who make and maintain perfect teams, where they foster great collaborative work and in which they participate, rather than looming from above. I have had a few marketing managers who have walked through fire for their people, ideas and company. It is truly something to see when you witness a marketing manager stand up, look down the boardroom table and tell the CEO, "With all due respect, we're right about this".

I don't know if great marketing leaders are born or made. Of the truly great ones I have met, their education did not play a dominant role in their success. Every great one I have worked with had a particular uniqueness about them that bordered on eccentric. Every single one has an excellent sense of humor. They always have raucous stories about seemingly innocuous things and I suspect their keen interest in people and situations makes such possible.

To detail out the characteristics that made my favorite marketing leaders so great is impossible for me. But what proves helpful is looking at a few similarities they share. And perhaps through understanding these interesting people, you and I might better equip ourselves and our companies with their approach.


More egghead than blockhead.

My favorite marketing directors are all voracious consumers of information. They read about trends and case reviews and techniques. They use information as leverage and the upper hand they often get on a competitor might have been gleaned late one night from a book rather than some grand strategizing on the 60th floor. That's not to say they aren't great at strategy; they are. But their approach to strategy formation is always evolving, which is how they bring fresh perspective to each effort. For at least a few of them, I have wondered what remarkable professors they might have been or one day be.


Quarterback, head cheerleader and coach in one.

I have always been amazed at how great marketing directors can help facilitate a discussion, participate in it, and yet also lead it, all at one time. The truly great ones make leadership something that their team desires rather than resents. And when you have worked for a great marketer, you're tempted to follow them wherever success might take them.

This team member/leader role empowers others to give the best of their abilities. When a staff member feels valued and respected, they can create approaches that stretch beyond competitors' restraints because they no longer fear irrational reprisals from their team leader.


Want to be paid with success.

I have never met a great marketing director who works solely for the money. Great marketers want to succeed and I have seen them get very angry when things unnecessarily get in the way of achievement. Those who hire great marketers are wise to not try to put them in a box of outdated constraints. Sure, a place exists for people who go about doing what always got done. That place, however, is not for great marketers. Great marketers are driven to achieve and they will go where they feel the best opportunity is to do such.


From good to great.

I think we can all learn important things from great marketers. The affectionate relationships they build with customers and the loyalty they inspire from their teams are things that every business needs more of. Through them, I have learned the power of creativity. I have learned the value of solid team members. I have learned that winning is everything when you define winning the right way.

And I've learned that the first step in a great marketer/consumer relationship is not quality or value, but a mutually respectful relationship. Once you truly respect the customers and their needs and their perspective, everything else needed for a great relationship seems to follow.