Edgy Characteristics
Yet another great Seth Godin post - The caricature of your brand - got me thinking today about the brands I'm familiar with and how they admit (or hide from) their most telling characteristics. These are the things that people talk about, the thoughts that enter the room before they do, the points that our constantly-sorting and redefining mind choose to remember. Here are a few of my thoughts:

Gold's Gym
Gold's has a charicature in its logo - that intensely developed bodybuilder, holding a barbell that bends under its own weight. Gold's was a gym before there were gyms, and tells of its early days on Venice Beach, California. Everything points to the brand being for muscleheads - but they firmly attach themselves to the general gym-going public. In a recent mailing to me, the facility I'm a member of touted its new coat of paint as a customer service benchmark. While the walls look nice, they're not exciting, and certainly not mentionable. What if Gold's went all the way with the bodybuilder image? Not to alienate themselves from their membership (most of whom do not look like bodybuilders at all), but to create a place that people would talk about. Have you ever heard anyone say "I just love going to my gym?" What if Gold's designed its facilities to take advantage of a retro-California-beach image? What if you entered the gym and you suddenly felt like you were inches away from sun, surf and sand?

Dentists
Think of a dentist and what comes to mind? Little Shop of Horrors? Dentists get a bad rap all the time. They're usually the worse-case scenario in many a conversation: "I wanted to travel to that meeting about as much as I wanted a root canal." Some are fighting back, acknowledging the fear of pain in potential patients by rebranding their offices with spa services and decor. What I wonder is, why doesn't the ADA take this a run with it?

Atlantis vs. RSVP
In the extreme-niche of Gay travel and vacations, Atlantis and RSVP are the two best-known companies. Both offer sea and land excursions. And recently, Atlantis bought RSVP. In their news release, Atlantis stated that they would keep the RSVP brand and continue to offer vacations through that label. But they never said exactly what that brand is. My friends and I have pondered the difference between the two. . RSVP was the first to offer gay vacations. Atlantis came in and... well, offered the same thing. But the caricature of an Atlantis cruise is tons of buff bodies, all night disco parties on the top deck, stunningly gorgeous men and slightly better ships. RSVP? TanDog (who's been on both) put it this way: The difference in eye candy between an RSVP cruise and and Atlantis cruise is the difference between an atom and the Universe.

4-H
Everybody who's ever been to a county fair knows the green clovers with the H's on each leaf. 4-H brands itself as the nation's largest out-of-school youth education organization. They know their caricature: Kids, Cows, and Cooking. Still, they've spent years playing down this image, in favor of chasing after more modern visuals and trying to convince the non-familiar that it's sophisticated and cutting-edge. But people love cows, and cooking (not so sure about kids).

Washington, DC
I've written about DC's image problem before - and suggested that the city embrace some of the aspects it's known for...

I can understand why companies and organizations would want to play down their most prominent features. Just look at how many people go for plastic surgery to "fix" what they feel isn't perfect. We all have a huge desire to blend in, not be noticed for what we're ashamed of. But we also want to stand out. Trouble is, we can't have it both ways (although we try and try and try.) Organizations that capitalize on their possibly-unpopular images could do themselves some damage, but could also be branded with a sense of humor.

I Want To Pump You Up!
Getting Gold's to Stand By Their Brand

Gold's Gym emailed me their newsletter the other day. I think this was the first issue, because all I recall getting from them in the past are messages that their workoutwear and gym bags are 15% off. I was surprised. When I opened it, however, I was disappointed. The first article was about celebrity sightings at their gyms across the country. Bruce Springsteen seen hoisting in New Jersey. Lindsay Lohan seen treadmilling in Utah.

I know what they're trying to do here. I can hear someone saying in the head office: "Celebrity always sells. Let's go with celebrities in our gyms for the first item in the newsletter. That'll get us the eyeballs!"

How can Gold's improve their newsletter?

1. Go core.
Gold's, you're not a Hollywood nightclub, the E! channel or a red-carpet runway. You're a gym. People go to work out. Why else would they go? Certainly not to see stars. Just check out the noontime crowd at the facility I frequent, and tell me any of those guys (and girls) care about Al Pacino and Brad Pitt. If you want to feature celebrities, feature your staff and customers.

3. Go local.
You expect your managers and staff to deliver the monthly and quarterly figures to your bottom line - why not let them deliver the content to the customers? Give them more control over that. And if there's no one at a particular gym with the time or talent to create and maintain the newsletter, then contract with one of your customers to deliver the goods.

2. Get pumped.
Give us the best info you can find, and not the same old stretching, menus and bench-press diagrams that everyone else runs. I scrolled down the newsletter and found stuff I've seen everywhere else. Most gyms just pretend to be about fitness, when they're really selling 5 minute abs and thirty second step classes (all to a disco beat.) You've got a huge reputation, pun intended. Be bold. Be funny. Be obnoxious. Be friendly. Be the terminator. Just don't be Bally's.

And check out this post titled Microsoft repositions to kick ass, from Eric Karjaluoto at Ideas - "a blog that invites dialogue on issues relevant to communication designers and brand strategists." Sure, he's talking about a computer behemoth. But he's also talking about all large companies and organizations as he states "Focus on core competencies and articulate your offering plainly and honestly."

Besides, do you really want to brand yourself so close to Lindsay Lohan?

Post-Cluetrain Rant

I finished reading The Cluetrain Manifesto yesterday. It's close to a decade now since it was first written, and I think it still has tons to say about our current and future online and face-to-face communications.

I caused me, also, to go on a rant. Here are my 12 theses in the spirit of Cluetrain's 95. Some of them carry explanations, while others sit there enigmatically. But I'd be please to explain my thinking to anyone who wants to start a conversation! And I will most likely expand on some of them in the days ahead:

Fluorescent lighting has to be the worst lighting in the world, and shouldn't be used anywhere except in hospitals and maybe restaurant kitchens.

CEOs of store chains: Look at your stores. Look at them!!!!

Do customers want to get in and out of stores quickly because they've got something else to do, or because the store's environment sucks?

CEOs of store chains: Look at your employees. Look at them!!!!

Everything, and I mean everything, speaks.

Retail, organization, and government leadership: Why aren't you worried about your the health of your employees and their families?

We have too much stuff. There are people in this country that can't get out of bed because they are so overweight. We have reformulated our plastic trash bags to stretch because we have too much trash to throw away.

Commerce: Surprise me. But not as I'm about to leave the store. And not as I'm walking in. Start with my "snail" mail box.

How dare you tell me I'm not worthy. How dare you.

Whatever you're doing, you're probably beating your head against a brick wall. You can stop. Now.

There's no excuse for dismal government office environments at any scale.

Nobody in the U.S. is more than an hour away from a better, more tranquil, more beautiful environment.

All About the Package
A study has found some small proof of what parents have known for years: that children prefer foods branded McDonald's over foods in unprinted containers. Researchers asked children which tastes better, fries, carrots or milk in a McDonald's wrapper or the same foods in everyday, non-corporate garb. They answered McDonald's, as reported in today's New York Times.*

I could have told somebody that. Growing up, I saw it happen in my family. But my anecdotes aren't scientific, double-blind investigations, so it's interesting to see this behavior supported by some statistics.

The article taps into my recent thinking about this whole food-packaging issue. Urged on by all the "green living" info available online, I'm considering an experiment to see if I can go a week only eating grocery store-available foods packaged as simply as possible, with minimal marketing ink used in helping them jump off the shelves. I thought it might be difficult.

But once I took a look at my weekly diet, I found I would have to make such small changes, it might not be worth it. From bananas, wrapped in nature's best natural marketing wrapper, through free-range chicken, olive oil, fresh vegetables et al, my usual food intake requires little coaxing from Madison Avenue.

I would allow "coelacanth packages" - like egg cartons, which have been around since the dawn of human time, are absolutely necessary, and can be easily retro-fitted* with pipe cleaners, goggle eyes and multicolored paints to resemble caterpillars. I would have to give up peeled baby carrots though, in favor of the less-processed, straight out of the ground kind.

So I continue to work out the bugs in the experiment idea. But leave it to marketing guru Seth Godin to expand our thinking about wrappers in a still-relevant Fast Company essay from March 2001 that begins "That wedding dress is the wrapper on your wedding day." Seth's words have stuck in my brain over the years, as he analyzes our need for packages, boxes or bags:

"At the same time that we're abandoning some traditional wrappers, some businesses are becoming ever more obsessed with the wrapper. They understand that their businesses are really about wrappers, and so they offer their T-shirts, their soaps, their teas -- even their computer workstations -- in wrappers and packages that satisfy our inner need for beauty."

As further proof of the article's relevance, it seems that even in 2007 we'll gladly pay for the same cookies over and over, as evidenced in The Consumerist article "Like Those 100 Calorie Packs? You're Paying Twice As Much."
_______________________________________________________________
*But not reported there first - CNN scooped the Times in early August, and Pronet Advertising posted an August 7 commentary on the study.

**Just find a bunch of kindergarteners and you've recycled, for a short time at least, months worth of trash; oatmeal boxes can become pigs this way too.

What's Brand Me?
Revisiting "Personal Branding" a Decade Later

Ten years ago this month, Tom Peters' article "The Brand Called You" appeared in Fast Company magazine, and an era was born. The term brand stopped being the exclusively property of cattle ranchers and breakfast cereal manufacturers, and started being our property too.

I remember reading the article, and finding the concept interesting. But I was too busy working full time, writing plays in my off hours, and managing my life (both the social and everyday upkeep aspects) to work at defining my personal brand.

I've got a much better idea of it now. Today, something moved me to read the article again. I not only found out it's ten years old, I could see how, even today, people would still a difficult time explaining who they are according to their brand.

Simply put, my personal brand is what enters the room before I do.

We used to call it "personality." Or "personal style." But simple doesn't mean it's easy. I'm sure you've had people tell you "I hate working on my resume" or "I hate developing my yearly performance appraisal."

That's because we're really bad, and hesitant, at thinking about ourselves in this manner. Here's a thought exercise I've found useful to get around that problem:

Think of a friend, waiting for you in a restaurant. You're meeting for lunch, drinks or dinner.

He or she is thinking about what the experience will be like once you show up.

Is your friend looking forward to:
- laughing because you always say funny things?
- exciting political conversation because you're always up on what's happening across the country?
- telling you some great personal news because you're always happy and congratulatory?
- a long afternoon because it's going to be all about you?

The person waiting for you is attuned to the experience he or she is going to have once you show up.

Now take it wider. Think of how others might view you at work.

Are you:
- always ready to lend a hand, when it's needed?
- someone who people tiptoe around?
- the go-to person when anyone has a problem?

All these thoughts and opinions are elements of your personal brand. They're the things people instinctively feel even before they see you. They're the things people expect from you.

They might expect:
you'll always be positive
you'll always be difficult to deal with (and so maybe they just don't and you're left
alone!)
you'll always be energetic at every moment of the day
you to be calm but kind of out of it until the coffee kicks in
you'll always be there.

It even goes to the work you crank out. They might expect that:
it's always nearly perfect
it's always missing something
it'll be delivered so quickly that they won't be ready for it
it's always delivered timely
it's something they'll have to fix later

It really helps if you have some examples of things you know people have said about you. Snippets of a conversation, or the positive things written about your work in your last performance appraisal.

Simply put, our personal brand is what enters the room before we do.

Once I started thinking about myself and "my brand" in this way, I started laying a foundation which I can build on quickly when I need to. Like, when I apply for a job. Or when I'm about to meet a bunch of people I've never met before. Or if I need to change something I'm doing in order to make the outcome better or surprising, instead of the boring old status quo.

I can't promise you'll end up happy working on your resume, but you might end up much happier with your results.

And read the Tom Peters' article (again, if you've read it before.) Reflect on how timely it still is, especially 10 years later (which is a billion years in cultural time.)

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Picture from The Arizona Ranch Web site.

Things You Can't Buy In DC
At the start of my previous cruise (late January), I stopped in a Miami drugstore to pick up a couple of items. I bought Purell Hand Sanitizer/Ocean Mist, as well as a bag of Cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers.

The Jolly Ranchers were intense! And I really liked the Purell scent. After the cruise, just the small amount I had left over put me back on the boat.

I looked for these items here in DC. But while I found Purell in unscented as well as aloe vera versions, and bag after bag of Jolly Rancher original flavors, I could not find Ocean Mist and Cinnamon Fire.

No matter where I looked.

Fast forward to last weekend. I'm in Fort Lauderdale visiting a friend. I stop in a Walgreen's to pick up some toothpaste, and followed up on a hunch. I'm in Florida - would Fire and Mist be readily available?

There they were. Both of them. Exactly what I've been looking for. So I bought up a bunch of each and packed them in my suitcase.

What I want to know is - why can't I get these in DC?

Customer Anti-Evangelists
I've been reading some of the fascinating stuff online about Starbuck's Coffee and CEO Howard Schultz's memo in which he states that the "cafes" he's spawned no longer offer the experience they once did.

Commentary on this that has floated to the top of my latte: that there's no place to sit nowadays at a Starbuck's since it's so crowded, and afficianados have to stand in line with soccer moms and teenagers hooked on frappucinos.

And I wonder: all this "Customer Evangelism" stuff, where we who love a product supposedly set out on missions to gain converts to the brand - what happens to the missionary when the company goes off without them?

Do we think twice about going gaga over the next cool thing? Do we emulate the once loyal parishioners who now hate the Catholic Church after they hid the pedophile priest problem and botched communications when the scandal broke?

Do I, as a loyal alumni of Atlantis cruises, cut way back on my influencing others to come along for the ride, for fear of the experience becoming too huge to handle, as the recent Freedom of the Seas cruise threatened to be? (although I did have a fantastic time this year and I've signed up for South America next year...)

Do we become Anti-Evangelists, like the Maestro:

KRAMER: Yeah, ya know you haven't been around for a while.
MAESTRO: Oh yeah, I've been at my house in Tuscany.
KRAMER: Oh Tuscany huh? Hear that Jerry? That's in Italy.
JERRY: I hear it's beautiful there.
MAESTRO: Well if you're thinking of getting a place there don't bother. There's really nothing available.

Maybe they could spend a little less money on advertising?
Had an epiphany the other day. I realized that television advertising does nothing to influence what products I buy, what vacations I take, what services I purchase, and what I eat. I took a look at an earlier list I posted - the brands I pay into for goods and services and/or associate myself with - and found I could not remember a single advertising spot they've produced. Nor could I say that TV ads influenced my decisions to purchase from them. I've even been paying more attention to commercials over the past couple of days, to find one spot that is either for something I buy, or would make me buy something. And while there are Comcast and Enterprise and Disney commercials, they never swayed my opinion and made me search them out.

So, maybe some of that money spent on producing ads and buying time and researching viewers could be spent on something a bit less fleeting.

How Can Gold's Change Your Life Today? Improving Customer Service At A Gym Near You

I've paid my membership fee every month to one gym or another for years - and none of them have ever asked me if I was happy. If asked, I'd offer these improvement ideas...

Don't just email me ads for merchandise. Publish an email newsletter with workout tips, science-based exercise physiology pieces, nutrition ideas, motivation tactics.

Turn members into personal training clients by offering training at reduced prices. Heck, offer longtime members one free personal training session a month. During off hours. My gym's empty at 10am, 3pm, and it may even be empty at 9pm.

Feature member training goals, stories, aspirations on your Web site. Start a blog if you need to. Gold's tried something like this - they asked me to write up a testimonial for their "Wall of Fame." That was over a year ago. It's still not up.

Show personal training clients how much you care by arranging personal appearances by local fitness guru, bodybuilder, athlete or sports figures. Gold's tried this too - they recently ran a nationwide contest for members to win a training session with John Cena. Who won? Search me. I never received an email, and there's nothing on their Web site.

Don't offer me discounts on clothing. Use me as a billboard. Set me up with a couple of t-shirts, or a cool gym bag, or a baseball cap. Something that fits. Gold's gave me a t-shirt when I joined. XL. Although they could see I'm a M.

Greet me at the front desk and say "so long, thanks for working out!" when I leave. Front desk staff are the velvet rope people - and your members are the rock stars. Don't let the front desk staff become the Maginot Line. And resist the urge to conduct staff meetings there.

If staff is "on the floor" (i.e., anywhere they can be seen by members), then they should act accordingly. I've seen too many staff at too many gyms sitting in front of computer screens, doing who knows what. At Bally's once, I took a weight off a bench press bar and leaned it against the bench itself, since the rack was all the way across the room and I was going to use the weight again. "We don't lean weights against the machines," a staff person told me. No, I thought, we just stand around being annoying.

Pay attention to what equipment gets used, and what doesn't. Why do all gyms have racks of 100, 200, and 300 lb dumbells? Do the weight manufacturers sell sets and require you to buy what you really don't need? Have you ever seen anyone use these monster weights? Just think what you could put there instead - more useful dumbells, or another flat bench. It might help this kind of thing from happening.

If you're a chain, make it simple for a member in one city to work out at your gym in another city. We don't care if you're wholly owned and operated, or a name-only franchise with its own membership rules. If you're name's on the door, it's your's. I'm still not happy with the way I was treated in Fort Lauderdale earlier this year.

Final DC Five
My last five ideas for DC:

16. Fire GSI as the downtown tourist food and souvenir vendor and hire Disney to make it over and provide better customer service.

17. Televise the 17th Street "Drag" Race on Bravo.

18. Take big chunks out of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials to make them more like ruins.

19. Knock down any public monument or sculpture that A) does not commemorate and immediately recognizable event or person; B) is the same size or smaller than the temperance fountain; and C) is, or has in it, a horse.

20. Do not market the 3 minute and 17 second Cherry Blossom Festival to anyone but locals.

New York, Paris, Rome, and... Washington?
Some more ideas to kick DC's butt in gear:

11. Have architecture graduate students from across the country redesign every street vendor van in the city using recycled materials. Allow only three to sell Georgetown University sweatshirts. Then have the students go to work re-facing K Street.

12. Create (or appropriate) an indigenous, unhealthy, and therefore highly admired and much-in-demand food item. Allow only two establishments to serve it. Invent a long-standing conflict between the proprietors.

13. Plan a major world's fair for Anacostia waterfront, not for the crowds, but for the buildings that it will leave behind.

14. Turn DC’s current characteristics and icons (bureaucratic red tape, political sex scandals, hot and humid summers, The Exorcist) into marketing opportunities along the lines of Las Vegas's "What Happens Here Stays Here" campaign. Use humor if possible. If not, import it.

15. Re-imagine the Washington Coliseum as a semi open air farmer's market.

DC is Brand X
More ideas of improving DC's image to the world...

6. Hire a young, vibrant, charismatic conductor for the national symphony, and have him or her re-program the Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day concerts held on the Capital lawn – and ban Barry Bostwick, Charles Durning and the Solid Gold 1940’s dancers from ever showing up at these concerts again.

7. Stop mistaking the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and the Navy and Marine band concerts for home grown cultural entertainment.

8. Resurrect the trolley car system on the weekends as an alternative to the constantly single-tracking Metro.

9. Give city residents a tax break on owning and operating Smart Cars, and create low-cost underground and/or above ground parking for the vehicles.

10. Create a city-wide campaign to help the people of this city become either more A) friendly, well-mannered, beautiful, creative, and relaxed, or B) dynamically and colorfully rude.

...stay tuned for more tomorrow...

DC, DC, a ________ of a town...
You know, as a brand, DC rots. I just does. As a native who's lived here most of my life, I've seen attempts to get this city standing with the big boys, but most of them fell flat and disappeared. Once there was a song composed extolling the city's virtues – but it went nowhere. Union Station was refurbished for the bicentennial as the National Visitors Center, but attracted mainly the homeless. The city’s constantly making excuses for its lame image – "well, the monuments are pretty;" "no, there's not that much crime, if you stay in the right neighborhood…" "it's basically safe... in northwest... during the daytime;" and "what do you expect, when nobody's from here and everybody else just stays until the administration changes?"

It's time DC had an Xtreme Makeover. For the next few days, I'll be printing some of my ideas for what DC needs to do, after it does whatever it takes to eradicate poverty, crime and the homeless within its borders, and hires a kick-ass design and marketing firm and gives them free reign to imagine the city into the next twenty years. So, the first five (and they are all in no particular order):

1. Develop a significant and Macy’s-competitive parade for one of the following: Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, or Inauguration Day.

2. Pump some money into the gay pride parade and make it bigger than New York's. Stop relying on the gays to gentrify neighborhoods.

3. Create a major outdoor festival around a significant artistic individual who lived and/or worked here in the past (John Philip Sousa, Duke Ellington, Helen Hayes, or…?) Create and finance: a National Sousa Band with a yearly national patriotic march competition (with high school, college, postgraduate, and adult composer categories), a Helen Hayes center for the dramatic arts (with a Washington-DC artists theatre festival), and a Duke Ellington conservatory (post-high school) for music and performing arts.

4. Move the presidential inauguration into another season. Hold the actual ceremony indoors if you must for security reasons, but televise it live throughout the mall. Wait until Bush is out of office to do this so he is not president for a second longer than he has to be. Augment the inaugural balls with the 3-day national mall barbecue.

5. Have the president give weekly audiences, like the Pope.

Tomorrow – 5 more…

You Do The Math
Comparing two products that do essentially the same thing.

TODAY: Moleskine vs. Spiral Notebook

Used for: Jotting Things Down

Cost
Moleskine: $15
Spiral Notebook: $3.89

Paper
Moleskine: yellowish-brown
Spiral Notebook: bright white

Ruling
Moleskine: narrow
Spiral Notebook: medium

Used by celebrities?
Moleskine: Picasso, Hemingway, Chatwick
Spiral Notebook: Who knows? Probably.

Where to find:
Moleskine: Barnes and Noble in Georgetown
Spiral Notebook: Staples, Office Depot, CVS, etc.

If lost:
Moleskine: You’re out $15
Spiral Notebook: Pickup another one for around $5

Brand Image
Moleskine: Pretentious
Spiral Notebook: School work

Lays flat:
Moleskine: Only if you bend the binding back and forth a number of times.
Spiral Notebook: Upon opening.

Magically transforms your notes into amazing artistic money-making products:
Moleskine: No.
Spiral Notebook: Maybe.