Humpty Dumpty

The Adrants blog is more direct in their criticism of the Intel brand change than I was, and extended this criticism to the commonnesss of the new egg-shaped logo: http://www.adrants.com/2006/01/intel-joins-three-billion-other-ovallogoe.php.

All the Kings men and all the kings horses can't put this one back together again..."Thanks to Hurt Elbow, we now have visual proof the new Intel logo leaps ahead of nothing and simply joins the 'logo ovalation' crowd. Check out all the unoriginal, copy-cat insanity here in one gigantic, orgasmic ovalistic circular logo-fest that either proves originality is dead or that all these brands used the same focus group"

In the interest of full disclosure, I oversaw the development of the new Intervoice logo in 2002 and armchair pundits criticized the use of the overused 'swoop'. I argued that it's not a 'swoop'. It's a 'Golden Bridge of Communication'. That wasn't a particularly compelling retort in their view so I just moved on...

Medical Miracle

It’s a miracle – though it’s gone largely unnoticed. It’s a miracle of modern medicine that has nothing to do with a new medical device or accidental pharmaceutical breakthrough. No herbs or acupuncture, cryogenics, genome mapping, or aromatherapy.
It cures almost all ills. It prevents many more.

The ‘miracle’ is change.

80% of our national healthcare budget is spent on addressing behavior-related illnesses, according to Raphael Levey of the Global Medical Forum. Yet few of us can avoid excessive smoking, drinking, eating, and stress, or find the time to exercise. And even after coronary surgery when such changes are necessary for life itself, fully 90% of patients cannot make the choices that would prolong their life, according to recent studies.

So what makes you so certain in a change management endeavor that you will inspire these same fallible creatures to work smarter, be more committed, and work as a team to save such an abstract concept as a company, even if their livelihoods are at stake? John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and author of many books on the subject reminds us in a recent article, "The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people."

Why is change so difficult for us? What is it about how our brains work that resists change? Why do we fight our own interests? Conventional wisdom says that crisis is a powerful motivator for change. But this doesn’t seem to be the case, so true to a Strategy180 tenet, we must challenge known absolutes.

The answer is that you cannot frighten people into change. You must instead appeal to the better angels of their collective nature, that is, speaking to people's emotions. Even in organizations that are focused on quantitative measurement, and those who think of themselves as smart in an academic sense, an appeal to emotions is most effective. In successful change efforts, leaders find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.

Unfortunately, that kind of emotional intelligence doesn't come naturally to engineers, accountants, managers and other leaders who pride themselves on analytical thinking. There is solid science behind the psychology of change but its insights often seem less than strictly logical.

Consider the cardiac patients asked to change behavior. The best medical minds at have for years been trying to motivate patients with the fear of death, but in the end death was just too frightening to think about, so they'd go back to their old bad habits. A far more effective method, it turns out, is addressing the issue as not a fear of death but a joy of living… considering not the length, but quality of life. Instead of a 90% backslide, patients exposed to this approach only return to bad habits 23% of the time. Joy is more powerful than fear.

When leaders are addressing people who have a similar mind-set and shared values, the message needs to be positive, inspiring, and sincere. Charts, graphs, and compelling strategies have their place. But even when the issue is truly life and death, the gut-check is emotional, not rational.

‘Inside’ Intel’s ‘Leap Ahead’

News item: Intel changes logo and slogan ('Intel Inside') to new design and slogan ('Intel. Leap Ahead.')

Intel is “Inside” more products than ever these days. So why does “Leap Ahead” seem like a "stumble forward"?

Intel purports that their new logo and slogan is a way to convey that their chipsets are used in more ways than just PCs. But if Intel is ‘inside’ more than PCs, does it make sense that 'Intel Inside' has run its course? Or is one of the world’s most well known brands and slogans now dated? And does the new slogan, 'Leap Ahead', really accomplish an association with cutting edge devices?

For a technology component company, the fact that the Intel brand has as much visibility as it does is quite an accomplishment. No other B2B (business to business) brand is in the top five in studies of brand recognition. So to tinker with success is brave, and in line with my earlier post regarding constantly re-evaluating ‘known truths’. Changing up such a successful branding effort, took skill, bravery, and likely, an incredible internal sales job. So congratulations to CMO Eric Kim on making the effort to stay relevant. Still, at what cost? 2.5 billion to start, according to Businessweek. That's the cost of the brand launch campaign and related new product campaigns.

Why the change? Intel itself is changing. Instead of remaining focused on PCs, the ‘new’ Intel looks to play a key technological role in a many fields, including consumer electronics, wireless, and health care. Beyond microprocessors, Intel wants to create chips and software to create platforms. This moves them up the food chain and while still not a consumer brand (you can’t by ‘an Intel’ at Circuit City) it is getting closer to the consumer… especially through new entertainment and other third party alignments that will serve to produce content and applications for devices using Intel's new platform (particularly 'Viiv') over those of their competitors.

Still, the first rule of doctors, marketers and change agents: "First, do no harm." So does this major strategic shift really require a shift in branding?

In a word, yes. When a strategic shift is made, changing the brand identity is critical in not only the new identity created with it, but to get tongues wagging – like mine. It’s a signal to the market that something has changed, and such high profile change spurs conversation.

So with this change and the resultant discussion, can Intel really enhance their consumer-level brand identity through slogans and logos? Not entirely of course. We have to assume product performance, pricing strategy and application relevance will be equally considered. Given Kim’s success at Samsung we can assume those elements of the strategy will be well-covered. But while Samsung remains a successful ‘change marketing’ story, their brand still lacks definition. So what hath Kim wrought at Intel, specific to brand identity?

I think the past work for Intel was brilliant – no controversial statement, that one, given Intel's place in the market as essentially a non-consumer, consumer brand. The challenge is that any follow up would seem at best a bit tepid. So, let’s use a ‘bakery and bedpans’ comparison. How likely is it that bakers and bedpan manufacturers can claim the same slogan? ‘Leap Ahead’ is broad in the same way ‘Intel Inside’ was very specific. ‘Intel Inside’ essentially said, ‘if you love your device then you’ll want to know it is because of Intel’, thus creating demand via pull-through. Can that now be leveraged to trust Intel for an entire platform? Does ‘Leap Ahead’ really convey their role in cutting edge technologies? And critically important, if it does work, will device manufacturers be willing to share ‘ownership’ of the customer’s relationship with the device or content provider? That’s a long term distribution and partnership challenge, as has proven to be the case in the telecom space with customers shared - and fought over - among wireless providers, device manufacturers and content providers.

So, back to our test: Could a baker or bedpan manufacturer use ‘Leap Ahead’? Unlikely. But a host of other technology focused firms could, and for a component marketer, differentiation is critical, thus ‘Leap Ahead’ feels, well, as I warned before, tepid. Intel gets an E for effort. Their new direction required a new identity. But direction requires an objective, a focus, and as much as they’ve articulated that in strategy, ‘Leap Ahead’ is too much a blank page to reflect it in practice. Its fails, in my opinion, to inspire any sort of association with the new technology Intel will be bringing to market. It serves as an uncertain articulation of a far more certain future for this technology leader.

Preventative Maintenance

All too often, management uses the rationale that 'things are not so desperate as to require a change agent' or review of practices - this is particularly true when market share is slipping but the marketplace is growing, shrouding the problems. Yet equally as often, by the time it is clear that help is required, after more cash is burned and more talent has exited the company, the problems are far more difficult to address.

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." - attributed to John F Kennedy

Look at what Staples CEO Ron Sargeant discovered, as quoted in Fast Company:"The economic slowdown has caused Staples to reexamine every aspect of its business. Over the years, we started catering to the more casual customer. But that's not where the money is, and that's not what we're really good at. Now we've stopped carrying about 600 items that appealed to the casual customer and added 650 to 700 items that appeal to the small-business customer instead. We've improved the quality of the merchandise we offer, because businesses have different needs than the casual consumer. Instead of advertising as much in the Sunday circulars, which businesses don't respond to, we put more into direct marketing, upgraded our Web site, and doubled our direct-sales force in four months. We took the money that we originally put into advertising and reinvested it in training for our associates, and we added more staff to our stores to provide better service. These are important changes. In some ways, I'm not sure we would have looked in the mirror so carefully if not for the slowed economy."

Don't wait until a slowed economy or slowed business model. Make a committment now, at the corporate, departmental and individual level to re-evaluate all the "knowns" and challenge conventional wisdom. Evaluate and focus on core strengths. Look to outsourcing, or look to take services inside. Seek new unexpected areas for growth or divestiture, new target markets. Fire customers by qualifying the most and least profitable accounts. Reset the organization, compensation, performance rewards, costs structures, vendors, payment and contract terms, and personnel policies. In short, have crucial conversations and make necessary changes today, before the clouds move in.Then rinse and repeat... after all, as well stated by another American President, Thomas Jefferson: "Every generation needs its own revolution."