When your dreams are a crock.

I wasted some time today to complete an estimate for a modest-sized potential client today.

Kind of a waste, because I’m doing it out of obligation for someone for whom I know will not buy it. It didn’t take too long, so I’m not bothered, but I thought it blog-worthy because for the umpteenth time, its another boot-strapped start-up that I know they’ll stick to their dream instead of facing reality.That reality is that dreams require sacrifice.

Experts will tell you that most start-ups fail due to under-capitalization. I suggest that that is a symptom of a greater issue: Common Oprah pabulum encouraging your dreams. I know, what a downer. "No one ever got anything without dream

s!" Whatever.

Nothing wrong with dreams. “Go get ‘em, Tiger!”

But dreams are only useful when you understand the reality. Not only the plan for when the dream is realized, but also the plan for when it fails. As a mentor to entrepreneurs, I’ve sat through plenty of VC presentations. 70% of the presentations never addressed the Plan B. Never have I seen an initial plan lacking a discussion of risks ever make it past the initial presentation.

The idea of having one’s own business, building one’s new widget, being one’s own boss is too great a draw to allow concerns about the costs, (time to market) runway, and the outside help that is needed to see it through impact your decision, because,

“Follow your dreams!” said Thoreau*.

So off they go.

So when the dream becomes work, when the risks become higher, when set-backs become more common than anticipated, the fledgling entrepreneur takes shortcuts.

Extends credit to the unworthy.

Buys services from the cheapest comer.

Plays Three Card Monty with incoming invoices.

And when the reality of the present overwhelms the dream they had in mind, they hold tight to that dream because in spite of the unpreparedness, in spite of the lack of planning, they

“Hold tight to the dream”. Because that’s what the poster in their office says.

But too often in the self-absorption common to mere mortals, we forget that our dreams are not others’ dreams. And dreams, to paraphrase Ayn Rand, are not claims on reality.

So my rates aren’t in your budget. (As if I believe you ever created a budget.) Yes, Billy Bob was cheaper. That’s fine, Billy knows what he’s worth. Or maybe Billy Bob is chasing his dream too, blind to the reality that you, too, are looking for the easy way out. Life is not a Successories poster.

So I’m not going to lower my rates for your dream. I’m not going to extend you credit for your dream. I’m not going to trim off the preliminary steps I think are critical to success with the project.

I have my own dreams.

*Thoreau never said this.

6 Marketing Lessons from Charlie Sheen

I know that the conventional wisdom would be to create a blog entry that talks to all the massive PR mistakes Charlie Sheen has made over the past few weeks, but what interest is there in that? You don’t need me to point out what self-destructive tool the guy is. However, for all his past and present mistakes, there is wisdom in his peculiar and colorful dictums of late. Here are just six of the ones that have occurred to me recently:

1. "I have one speed, one gear ... go!"
For many marketers, a successful campaign, event, or launch is followed by a congratulatory cocktail, a week off, and too often, months of coasting. Successful marketing is not an isolated activity, but an on-going, kinetic, dynamic motion of experimentation, execution, strategy, and analysis. There is no ‘N’ on the marketing gearbox.

2. "My motto now is you either love or you hate, and you must do so violently."
Trying to position a product or a company to appeal to the largest number of consumers is the surest way I know of becoming invisible to the market. If you want to build a brand with voraciously loyal adherents, you need to expect a number of voracious haters as well.

3. "I'm tired of pretending like I'm not special."
Misplaced (and often insincere) modesty, an ‘aw shucks’ brand that focuses on countering criticism instead of building on its strengths will have a hard time retaining long-lasting brand loyalty among its users. Consumers of a product want reasons to stay loyal, not a dismissal of their preferences. This is a common issue among large entrenched incumbents in esoteric markets who see this positioning as a defensive posture - mostly so they are not seen as all-powerful behemoths. It can lead to overlooking challenges from smaller players who leverage that positioning to illustrate their own brand’s superiority.

4. "I am on a drug; it's called 'Charlie Sheen.' It's not available 'cause if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off, and children will weep over your exploded body."
While Charlie likely meant this to be interpreted differently, it serves as a reminder that a company ‘on its own drug’ is susceptible to hearing only the sound of its own voice while ignoring the voices of the consuming public. It’s good to recognize your own successes, but its also helpful to listen to the market once in a while and not be ‘drugged’ into hearing only the echoes of your own glorious past.

5. "We are high priest Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom! Print that, people!"
Make sure your positioning statement, your marketing messages, your promotional materials, the overall impression you leave with prospective customers is dynamic, memorable, and thoroughly differentiated. Charlie has done that in spades.

6. "I've got magic. I've got poetry at my fingertips."
Charlie has magic, a winning smile, and a couple of goddesses.What do you have? Trusted vendors, a quality team? An unbeatable product? Recognize your own resources and make certain you are leveraging each for greatest impact.

So if you follow these six tips from the Warlock, You’re more likely to find yourself in the marketing equivalent of “…a tsumani … riding it on a mercury surfboard."

Product placement as a White Collar crime

I am a proponent of product placement - the 'placement' of 'product' into popular entertainment - movies and television shows mostly. To have characters use real products in the programs can make it more realistic (no one drinks a 'cola' beverage) is less disruptive to the viewer, and is arguably an effective marketing tool.

However, not since the 1950s, when soap operas had housewives offering one another a cup of Folgers, instead of coffee, has product placement been so irritatingly obvious and disruptive. Recently I had to ask myself if Ford so desperate - and show producers so greedy - as to kill the golden goose with far less than subtle product references?

The USA Network basic cable buddy cop show White Collar aired an episode this week that was so overtly pandering as to nearly change my attitude on product placement. It used to be that cop shows would accept a fleet of Fords to chase bad guys. A billboard at the end of the program and a passing glimpse of a logo during a chase scene was all that was required. However, imagine the suspension of belief required to accept this exchange, during a climactic chase scene when a kidnapped FBI agent's life is in danger and a murderer is about to escape:

Good Guy 1, glancing at dashboard as driver (GG2) weaves in and out of midtown traffic: "You have a tree on your dashboard."
Good Guy (Girl) 2: "Yeah, its a hybrid. (ed. note: Really, the FBI in hybrids?) Those leaves tell me how economically I'm driving."
GG1: "Yeah, well, you're dropping a lot of leaves. You sure aren't driving very economically."

Seriously, Jeff Eastin? Racing through traffic after kidnapped FBI agents and a murderer and this is the banal script Ford forces on you? That kind of writing and overt product placement should be a crime. A White Collar crime.

Related articles

• Apple reigns supreme in product placement (news.cnet.com)

The New, New Frugality.

Once again, an opinion in an earlier blog entry was reinforced through research from Booz, Allen and Company. In this report, Booz suggests that the age of frugality in America is a permanent state, much like I suggested here. The reason I bring this up is because, frankly, I like to be right. I also bring it up because I am in the middle of a project for a client who has historically marketed their products on the promise of more for less.

Besides the suggestions I laid out in the earlier post on frugality among consumers, the latest Booz report reminds me that as more marketers get on the bandwagon of frugality, marketing messages and product development, even merchandising and certainly pricing strategy will again equivocate as all marketers take such positioning and make it so much table stakes. So for my client and others like them who applied a value message as a key brand value, it becomes less and less of an effective differentiator.

Note that the New Frugality doesn't mean that everyone is looking for the lowest price, or even the best value. What it does mean is that consumers - including businesses - are looking for reasons to defend the purchases they do make, whether to colleagues, bosses... or themselves.

As marketers, that's the job New Frugality requires of us. Defending our brand and its market positioning. Just like the good ol' days. Again.

Deja vu all over again

In this concise epilogue to the BP spill in the gulf, Fast Company points out that:

1. "...it’s clear that in the age of social media, a company can’t spin and rebrand its way out of a mess like it used to."
2. "...it's what companies do, not what they say, that really matters."
3. "...BP is an example of how companies' misfortunes are going to unfold going forward with all the tools and weapons the Internet and social media afford."
4. "Companies screw themselves when they let perception get ahead of reality..."

Gee, where, I humbly ask, did

1. You
2. See
3. That
4. Before?
   

A Shot of Convenience

I got my annual flu shot today. It is only September and I live in a warm climate, so it’s usually approaching November before the local news guilts me into making a trip for the vaccine. They do this of course by warning me repeatedly of the pandemic cataclysm sure to occur if I alone remain the diseased zombie carrier of the latest flu strain named for a farm animal or obscure Asian nation.

Today, however, it was different. With my wife and son hunkered over his History homework, I myself made the weekly trek to our local hated and feared Wal-Mart to pick up a few staples. And there it was, near where I had twice exchanged my cart for one without a thumping or rebellious wheel: The Wal-Mart equivalent of the Mayo Clinic… a makeshift card table, folding chair, forms, syringes, gloves, and two disinterested phlebotomists. They were sandwiched in-between brightly colored plastic back-to-school dorm room accessories and the latest in Jacqueline Smith Signature sweatpants in size XXXL.

As I sat down to fill out the medical form, a small gnat flew between us. “That’s a bit disconcerting,” I mumbled.

Resignedly, the woman filling the syringe sighed, “It’s Wal-Mart.” We nodded silent acknowledgments and I rolled up my sleeve.

So why would I consider Wal-Mart, a discount mecca and focus of great derision by wanna-be cultural elites like myself, for a flu shot requiring sterile surrounds and capable professionals?

Because it was easy. The location was central, required no appointment, no long forms, no insurance hassles (though it was an option); the line was short, the procedure even shorter, and payment a breeze. I got a flu shot and they pulled in 24 dollars in less than a minute. That’s a win-win.

So it is with marketing. If in real estate, its location, location, location, in marketing, its easy, easy, easy. People will pay for convenience. A lot more. We routinely pay a 5000% + mark-up on tap water just for the convenience of a bottle. We’ll exchange good nutrition for the convenience of a drive-through window. And your last oil change involved $6 worth of oil but $20 worth of ‘high school kid with a grease gun’.

If you have an inferior or more expensive product, making it convenient to buy and to use still gives you a shot at success.

And speaking of shots, go get yours today. I hear rumors of a ferocious Tajikistani goat flu this season.

Twitter Quitter

I quit Twitter today. Oh, this isn’t going to be some minimalist manifesto, just a statement of fact.

I deleted my posts, all 1500+ of them, shared over the past two years or so. Some were moving, insightful. Most were fun. None were ever drivel. No one ever knew what I had for breakfast, I never foursquare’d myself into a virtual mayoral coup d’tat, no one knew when I was ill, and only occasionally did I mention the weather. I even gained a friend or two.

I just got tired.

I initially joined Twitter and other social media to remain up to date on the social media communities important to my clients. I even joined MySpace back in the day – closed the account when it became irrelevant to me.

I like to write, and Twitter and Facebook are good virtual water coolers for office at home types like myself. But they are an extension of me, that is, my personal brand, and before every tweet I’d have to consider that. That can be tiring, particularly for someone such as myself, given to dark humor and sarcasm – 140 characters is plenty of room for a zinger, but never enough for context.

So I’m not dropping out in some Luddite fantasy, I’m just lightening my load a bit. I can be distracted and Twitter is nothing if not a distraction. It was one more thing that took my time from things that were clearly more constructive, useful, profitable, enjoyable, important. Like all good business decisions when faced with limited resources (in this case, time) I had to determine if it was core to my business or life, and if I could justify the continued investment in it. The answer was clearly, no. It was not core, and there are other, arguably better ways to market myself and my ideas, and interact with others.

So my Twitter account is inactive. Of course, I’ll stay in touch, though my number of followers will undoubtedly fall sharply in the coming weeks (another invented preoccupation I'll not miss). I’ll follow the Twittersphere for news on how to leverage Twitter in marketing, and from time to time check on tweets from those I follow who continue to leverage Twitter expertly. The end of this relationship is amicable. I can tell you about Twitter. I can help you create a presence on Twitter. I can now see commercial purposes for Twitter I couldn’t see just a few months ago.

But for now, I’ll just be observing.

The Oldest Profession

In this excellent Advertising Age op-ed by Les Marguiles, he addresses the critical importance of the agency-client relationship, or increasingly, the lack of one.

I can boil my take on the piece by suggesting that those marketers who allow their companies to commoditize service companies' efforts deserve what they get in the shoddy product returned from those desperate firms who won a project based on costs and terms alone - and therefore see no long term opportunity with the client.

Conversely, and importantly, those service providers – agencies, consultants, what have you – who accept that their work can be commoditized and are therefore willing to forego basic standards of quality of service, creative, and responsiveness also deserve what they get from clients who take that unique value for granted.

I remind my small agency colleagues of the following exchange, often attributed to Winston Churchill:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are just negotiating the price.