Proper Propaganda

<< How to push the boat out and keep your idea afloat >> On Monday I wrote a spicy post about working with CEOs who say they want bold ideas but don’t have the cojones to pull it off. It felt good to vent but I fear my splenetic outburst wasn’t very helpful. As a brand strategist, 80% of your work effort goes into selling your idea. Laptops the world over are packed with transformative ideas that never saw the light of day because the ‘seller’ failed to get them across the finish line. Where your creativity meets your livelihood, this is the only thing that matters. Many factors can conspire to nix the ‘sale,’ but I want to focus specifically on internal client politics. No one likes to deal with it, but it’s tragic when brilliant work is strangled at birth because of it. Bickering founders, interfering boards, gormless GMs and muzzled middle managers. Hubris, delusion, nepotism, narcissism. I’ve seen it all. It took me years to realise that the strategy that goes into navigating safe passage through an organisation’s political minefield is no less a part of 'the process' than coming up with the Organising Idea itself. Over time I’ve developed an MO for successfully running the gauntlet and coming out the other end with the Organising Idea intact. (Most of the time.) It’s a complex calculus, too much to cram into a single carousel, so I'll unpack this into a few posts. Needless to say, no two org environments are the same, so I’ve done my best to approach this thematically. #brandstrategy #leadership #organisingidea #brutality #charm #orgpsychology #agency

Dear Nickel-and-Dimers, You are the worst kind of client. (But I am gonna do you a favor with a little love letter). Here are a few impacts of being a Nickel-and-Dimer who battles agencies over tiny sums of money or nitpicks usage of small increments of time: 1) Your agency invariably loathes you. Most Nickel-and-Dimers don't care about this, but, at least in North America, it has a major impact on how work gets done. 2) As a Nickel-and-Dimer, you are micro and short-term by nature. It's bad way to be, in general. And it is compounded by the fact that Nickel-and-Dimers tend to manage agency relationships via coercion and threats around killing contracts early. What happens when caprice reigns? A bunch of bad shit. One certainty is that your agency is constantly scheming on ways to use its weakest and cheapest labor on your account, because it knows your business is tenuous. 3) Agencies will, on occasion, keep some Nickel-and-Dimers around if they happen to be sexy or useful to the agency's biz dev efforts. In this scenario, you are effectively a show pony. And while there is some merit to this, it's a house of cards in terms of the nature of the relationship. The moment the agency can find a nicer, prettier, little pony to show, it will ditch you. At that point, your cheap ass will run headlong into the economics of switching costs. How fun! Money matters. It needs management. But nickel-and-diming an agency is a fool's game. One with profound consequences. Merry Christmas, Jackson

In 10 years of serving clients at CES, the best tactic we've used to get press for a client involves avoiding the show. Counter-intuitive, I know. We've always found that, when possible, showing new tech to one or two highly influential outlets just BEFORE the show in a one-on-one scenario works best. This is not at media showcases like Showstoppers or Pepcom or CES Unveiled, which all have value, but are, like CES itself, inherently less-than-perfect because of the volume of shiny objects and one-to-many format. Here are a few keys to making the pre-event play work: -- The demo is a genuine private show-and-tell of new tech. Do not try this with your older products. -- Use an embargo that lifts the day before the show. -- Deal with a large media outlet that syndicates heavily and a reporter known for their in-depth knowledge of a category. The syndication part is CRITICAL. ALSO KNOW THAT... -- This play gets more juice when coverage is accompanied by a cool asset (one year we had a video of a robotic suitcase rolling around a New York subway station by itself) that you and the target media outlet co-engineer. Like all things, this blueprint is not 100 percent perfect. But it has been good to us and our clients. When this works you see: -- A lot of buzz and follow-on coverage at the show. -- A lot of action at the profiled company's booth (many people actually cite the coverage in conversation). This approach is not hard to pull off. Make it yours.

Here's a dirty little secret I learned from my seven years working at the Indianapolis Star (and having access to all the analytics data within the USA TODAY Network): People don't like good news. They say they do. Time and again they swear to us that they'd read SO MUCH good news, if only we'd publish it. So newsrooms roll out a new feature series, a cozy video brand, even just a nice photo. And no one reads them. Meanwhile, the story with a warning that it contains graphic details of a crime shoots to the top of the pageview charts. I won't go so far as to say people lie about what they want. I believe the audience belives they want good news. But behavior tells a different story. Just like we all intend to eat salad and devour a burger instead. And that's why analytics are king.

Bad actors in the new market your consumer tech company wants to enter have so many options: -- They can steal, or reverse engineer, your IP. -- They can patent troll you. -- They can go kamikaze and undercut the hell out of your pricing. On top of it, since the US is probably a market you are thinking about, Trumpian tariffs may be coming to blow up your low-cost play. Brand is the only thing they cannot copy, undercut, steal or tax. And while your actions, products and people influence your brand, how it is perceived ultimately rests in the minds of others. In these stormy times, it's your safe harbor. The over/under is that 2025 is going to be the year that drives home the immense protective power of brand. Are you investing in yours?

>> What makes a winning tagline? << I’m up to my eyeballs in them at the moment. A recent working session with a client revealed lacunae in their understanding of what a tagline is, what makes a good one, and how they work. Google famous taglines and you’ll find a thousand listicles and almost as many golden rules ‘they’ say you ought to follow. But even a cursory glance at a dozen outstanding examples shows they all work their magic in different ways. Put simply - there are no rules, only guidelines. Following the aforementioned session - and in preparation for other upcoming C-suite showdowns - I decided to put together some slides to demystify taglines and set the record straight. Hopefully somebody finds this useful. #brandstrategy #taglines #slogans #copywriting #organisingidea