Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

Somebody's Listenin'

They swear that they didn't read this here post about post-speech tokens of appreciation, but I guess somehow, someway the word got through.  Good karma, perhaps.

To explain, following last week's talk for the Canadian Hotel Marketing and Sales Executives in Toronto, I was presented with the following certificate:

One ton of greenhouse gas emissions?  Insert joke about me being full of hot air here:

__________________________________________________________________

Seriously though, a way better take away than another keychain or flashlight.  Keep it up!

Cheeses Christ Almighty!

Okay.  So you know I love Surprise in all its ways, shapes and forms.

But sometimes...sometimes...sometimes...

Case in point for my head-scratching is The Orange Underground.

I dunno.  There seems to be something wrong and way too forced when the Frito-Lay company is channeling the spirit of underground anarchy (including terminology like "Fight The Man!" and "Join The Revolution") to push--wait for it--Cheetos.

Random Acts of Chaos to sell cheesy snacks?  Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the other five must be rolling in their graves.  (Ask your parents, kids.  Or click here.)

Maybe I'm old school, but tossing a handful of the orange poofs into someone's white wash load doesn't seem to be  the best way to make me wanna munch a bunch of the stuff, but maybe that's just the point...who said we have to eat it?

I guess if Q-tips can be used as a paint brush or "precision tools," then I guess it stands to reason that Cheetos can be used as a weapon.  Coming up: potato chips as a torture device and death by cotton candy.

The campaign apparently reaches a zenith on 04/01/08...better known as April Fool's Day.

UPDATE:  I ain't alone in my views.  Check this out from Advertising Age.

P&G D-lites

FOPs (you know, the ones to whom I don't have to explain the acronym means Friends of Pow!) know by now the fixation that Surprise Central has with P&G's always Surprising CEO A.G. Lafley.

Here's another reason why.  This from The Game Changer, an upcoming book (available April 8) that Lafley co-wrote with management guru and serial author Ram Charan, where Lafley explains his approach to consumers:

"Three billion times a day P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world.  Our goal is to DELIGHT consumers at two 'moments of truth':

"First, when they buy a product and second, when they use it."

Theory 18--Digital Love Vs. Physical Gifts

Taking three vacation days off this week the best way I know how--speaking to people who actually want to listen. 

Like last year's Spring Break when I spoke alongside Tony Robbins, Vicente Fox, Jim Fannin, Kenneth Cole and others, this week I am off to Halifax to celebrate innovation with the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (lock up the lobster folks, Andy's back in town!) and then onto Toronto where the Canadian Hotel Marketing and Sales Executives are subjected to my ranting and raving.

That said, here's something that's been on my mind for a while.

As all faithful FOPs know, I public speak often,  and each time I do, the kind people for whom I do usually express gratitude by loading me up with well-meaning branded gifts like t-shirts, business card holders, digital clocks, tote bags and the like.

And while these tokens of appreciation are indeed appreciated, I have two confessions to make:

1) I don't need them.
2) I don't want them.

And I suspect most other speakers would say the same about the parting gifts imparted upon them, as well. 

Harsh?  Perhaps, but stay with me for a second. 

Let's face it, despite my gratitude for my hosts' kind offerings, there aren't enough days in the year to wear all the promo clothing I get from these engagements, I have more business card cases than I do business cards...well, you get my drift.  So if I may be so bold, to all those for whom I will speak in the future, may I suggest the following:

Show me the love.

What I mean by that is instead of giving me a tangible tchotchke, give a donation to a charity of my choice.  Or one of your choice.  Or one at random.  Whichever way you choose, people continue to benefit from my words and your fine decision of sharing them with your audience.

Wait.  I'm not done. 

Not to be greedy, but in this digital day and age, you can continue to spread warmth by sending some link love my way.  Tell your email list what a great job I did (if I did).  Share the news about the exciting breakthroughs at Airborne Mobile on the front page of your website. Post some photos of our time together and send your folks to learn more about me at either Airborne or right here.

Everybody wins.  You keep your costs down, I get to interact with your logo and company spirit long after a t-shirt would've frayed into nothingness, and buzz builds for all of us.

Hmmm...virtual tokens of appreciation.  Perhaps that's a topic for a new speech... 

 

And Speaking About Speaking...

...remember the notorious appearance at the McGill Cultural conference I have referred to often within these here posts?

Well, now you can watch the whole thing.  I'm up second, after Moya Balfour.  The CPAC network captured the event in its entirety.  Catch it by clicking HERE...if you dare.

Don't say I didn't warn ya...

If Marketing Is a Game...

...then my friend Nick Rice is one of its head coaches.

Nick is a marketing consultant in Kentucky, and last week sent me a copy of his latest oeuvre "The Seven Principles for Attracting More Clients."  While the doc itself is intriguing and well-written (and downloadable by clicking the link above), what really struck me was his analogy of "our game" (which he calls Marketing Ball) to that of what was once called The Great American Pastime (which some still call baseball). 

Says Nick:

"Marketing Ball is built on the simple premise that everyone who is now a client was once a stranger and that the purpose of marketing is to build a relationship with a prospect until they feel comfortable doing business with you."

Or, put in a more visual manner...

Simple, isn't it?  Gives a whole new meaning to "Getting to First Base," I suppose.  Well worth your while to check out the rest of what Nick has to say, particularly his Pow!-worthy "ONEconditional Money-Back Guarantee" at his website. 

Sucks In The Title

Antony Bruno is a man of his word.

The Executive Director of Billboard's Digital/Mobile Conferences took a gamble last fall with a free-form, no-holds-barred panel at the semi-annual CTIA convention (a mainstay for us folks at Airborne).  The result was a blast (see re-cap here), and I wondered aloud if he--and his parent company--would have the guts to continue this type of programming.

Well, link away to the agenda of next month's Billboard Mobile Entertainment Live! event and see that the hits just keep on coming.  Well, at least on the panel discussion that I'm moderating at the event later this month.

The panel is called "Creative Conundrum: What Sucks and How Do We Fix It?"  and its objective is not just to speak aloud all the things we folks in the mobile media industry say in the privacy of hallways and on the phones, but to make the poor drones in the audience pick up their eyes from their laptops and Blackberries and pay attention for a change.

Joining me will be:

Russ Cox of Turner Broadcasting/The Cartoon Network
Jeremiah Zimm of MTV
Rob McDermott, manager of Linkin Park
and former Fox Mobile President Lucy Hood

All have been instructed to yell, scream, interrupt and make their points loudly.  This ain't no kiss-ass, agree-with-everyone-to-be-polite benign industry panel.

The bar has been set high, and I hope we pull it off.  But at least the inspiration is there at the start--when was the last time you went to an industry conference session with the word "Sucks" in the title,  not just in the evaluation?

Biz Books Bite Back

On the back page of this month's Fast Company, Elizabeth Spiers takes venomous aim at Business Books, which she calls "the modern era's second-worst literary promulgator of intelligence reduction." 

"Contrary to what your parents and teachers told you." she jabs, "reading does not necessarily make you smarter."

Ouch.

As a perhaps-too-fervent reader (and sometimes writer) of the said literary works,  I would be incensed if I only knew what "promulgator" meant.  Okay, I kid. 

While Elizabeth has a point (indeed many biz books are repetitive, uninspiring and propagate theories that are obsolete by the time you plod through the volume), it's unfair to tar the entire genre with the same poisonous brush.  Like the diverse array of novels at our reach (which Elizabeth is about to delve into with the release of her first "And They All Die In The End"), the biz book shelves are stocked not just with the regrettable and forgettable, but the well-intentioned and the classics.  Giving up on them would be like abandoning the drinking of wine after being disappointed by a few five-buck bottles of plonk.

But I came here not to bury Elizabeth, but to praise Jospeh Jaffe, Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton, three biz book authors who do the field proud.  And for different reasons.

Joseph just released Join The Conversation, his second great thought-provoker (following in the footsteps of "Life After the 30-Second Spot").  There are those in the biz book world who regurgitate the current jargon; Jaffe helps create and add relevance to it.  He's a different kind of smart. 

The book is a breezy read, filled with brand-name examples (both widely well-known and uniquely personal) and pertinent illustrations.  But what sets it apart from the type that Spiers rails against, is the depth of its subject matter (marketing as conversation and vice-versa), and the way it exploits it to explain it.  In other words, the book itself is more a conversation than a lesson, a list of rules, a pedantic Harvard treatise or a self-obsessed rant.  And the way in which Joseph has chosen to market it--reaching out to the marketing community and harnessing the social media power of his connections--shrewdly proves his hypothesis.  Prophecies have rarely been this self-fulfilling.

Followers of his popular blog JaffeJuice or clients of his innovation agency crayon may find some of what's inside Join The Conversation somewhat familiar...but unfortunately, not everyone reads marketing blogs or has the guts to hire a guy like Joseph.  This is one of those books that will pop the eyes of newbies, allow us usual suspects to follow along with a wink of recognition...and perhaps give Elizabeth Spiers second thoughts.  You can pick it up by clicking here.

But even if Spiers has a most carbonized hard-ass, she has to find a bit of love in her heart for the work of Drew and Gavin.  Last year, they launched The Age of Conversation (that's a heckuva lotta conversations on the bookshelves, dontcha think?), a collective of 103 marketing writers from 12 countries (including a most honored yours truly), where everyone contributed for free and donated all proceeds of the project to Variety , The Children's Charity. 

Well last week, the most dynamic of duos announced The Age of Conversation  2: Why People Don't Get It, which has attracted close to 300 potential authors to its swelling pages.  Details on release date et al will be coming soon, so check this space. 

In the meantime, if you STILL haven't picked up your copy, I'm urging and imploring you to HOLD OFF until March 29th, when the authors and friends are gathering together for a Bum Rush on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and other book retailers.  The Bum Rush was initiated by Chris Wilson of freshpeel, so I think it's only fitting to send you and some link-love over to him to find out the greater details and reasons why.

So there we go, Elizabeth.  We biz folks may not be writing War and Peace, but with initiatives such as The Age of Conversation, at least some of us are trying to end the former and bring about the latter.

Clutter Cutter

So, last week I end with a great Surprise quote, this week I begin with one.

But this one's a little more esoteric and heady, so put on those thinking caps.  It comes from Gavin Potter a.k.a Just A Guy In A Garage), a brilliant British consultant who is now working towards his PhD in Machine Learning (I learned about him the old-fashioned way, reading about his quest to win the Netflix Prize in Wired).  His words of wisdom:

"The 20th century was about sorting out supply.
"The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand."

What's the Surprise relevance?  Well, as per the Wired piece, "The Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers."

And, uh, what's one of the best ways to get pro ducts known?  Pow! You got it, kids.

The paper towel brand Bounty is known as the Quicker-Picker-Upper.

That said, based on Potter's quote, I guess we could consider Surprise the Quicker-Clutter-Cutter.

My next call--A.G Lafley at Procter & Gamble...

A Real Surprise Sale

Ahh...the power of Surprise once more rears it head in the off-price retail  space.

Over a year ago, I laid down this post about Costco being a "retail treasure hunt."  Well, Canadian discounter Liquidation World is going one step further by playing the Pow! card to the max in its new multi-media "brand-building" campaign.   As per Marketing Magazine:

"The campaign revolves around market research Liquidation World conducted a couple of years ago...(which) revealed that the chain’s customers go to browse and explore, which is why the store focused on promoting the experience of finding an unexpected deal rather than price."

The company's TV commercials end with the tag line:

“Come Find Something Unexpected"

...while its in-store posters are shout out:

“Even We’re Surprised by What People Find in Our Store”

and

“Find Exactly What You’re Not Looking For”

As I've said many times before here, shopping isn't necessarily about searching for something, but discovering something...hence the value of pushing Surprise.  Ironically, it's the discounters who seem to understand and exploit this far better than their high-falutin', regular-priced brethren.

Fresh New Answer

Had a great time speaking about Surprise Marketing at McGill U's Graduate Business conf last week.  Although I closed a long day loaded with content, panels and keynotes, the audience stayed attentive and focused, and kept me there past the 5:00 p.m. shutdown (on a Friday yet!) with sharp questions about the relatively un-academic topic.

One query really hit home:

How do you keep people Surprised when your brand has a long-standing and strong identity?  Wouldn't radical change negatively affect the equity built-up over the years?

Whoa!  My answer was that the Surprise didn't have to be radical, just unexpected, and being unexpected doesn't always mean starting from scratch. 

Not bad, but not as good as it would've been had I read Ted Matthews's book "Brand: It Ain't The Logo."  In it, he (and co-authors Greg De Koker and Andris Pone) really nail the balancing act a Surprise marketer must perform with this explanation:

"New happy creatives may or may not realize that coming up with something fresh is actually a lot harder than dreaming up something new. 

"Being fresh requires that you always work in a single, unchanging context: what the brand actually stands for. 

"New, on the other hand, means the freedom to start over on a clear canvas every time.

Uh, that's what I MEANT to say...

Pow!'s New Heroes--Improv Everywhere

They call it:

"Scenes of chaos and joy in public places."

I call it the living embodiment of the spirit of this blog.

Check out the wonderfully devious work of the renegades who call themselves "Improv Everywhere."

It's everything I'd want in a Surprise--brilliant planning, flawless execution, over-sized impact and the catalyst for stories that will generate word-of-mouth and more footage for the Highlight Reel of Life. (Jeez, that's two Highlight mentions in less than a week!)

Given my position at Airborne Mobile, my fave has to be the Mobile Desktop operation. Just check out the delight on the faces of some of the Starbucks client bystanders.

This ain't just frivolous fun; Improv Everywhere is being taken very seriously by old media and New Museums.   And I'm sure, somewhere, marketers are looking in to see how they could capitalize.  Hold tight,  IE-ers!

Underground Mountaintops

Love this one big time. 

The province of Alberta is trying to muster up some tourist traffic to its ski and snowboard resorts, and while they're no Whistler or Vail, Alberta's own Lake Louise and Banff destinations are nothing to sneeze at. 

So, instead of the standard beauty shot of whitecapped mountains or promise of promiscuous parties (I mean, how else do you sell snow vacations?), Travel Alberta International has launched a unique, interactive out-of-home campaign, designed by the Venture Toronto agency.

Check it out below--in subway stations throughout Toronto (and sadly only there right now), the public can actually be part of the ads by sitting on benches blended into ski-lift murals behind them and planting their feet into skis painted onto a floor-laid birds-eye perspective of a hill.

The brilliance of this is its simplicity--the benches are part of the existing subway infrastructure; the only "add-ons" are the wall and floor graphics.  Yet they create a boundary-breaking fourth-dimension illusion, a spirit and an audience touchpoint that most advertisers can only dream of.

When you get potential clients to be part of your ads without succumbing to begging them for user-generated content , you're doing something not just right, but freakin' special.

Best of the Worst

The biggest rise Stephen King has given me since that hand in Carrie came in last week's Entertainment Weekly, where the maestro of horror captured a whole slew of Pow! moments in his back-page column.

The subject of the piece, recalling your worst-ever entertainment moment, was a compilation of stories he received after putting out the query on his own website a few weeks prior.  The results were not just hysterical and easily-relatable, but a perfect example of what I mean when I espouse The Highlight Reel of Life. 

Like the zombies and viruses that King has written about on numerous occasions, great Surprise stories live forever and spread fast & wide.

Do yourself a favor; kick off your week by reading the column here, then check out the trove of stories on his site. 

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

Well, once again I'm back speaking at McGill today, closing off my ol' school's Graduate Business Conference.  Details to come...

And while we're on the subject, the ruckus I raised at the "Are We American?" conference of two weeks ago (see photo below)  has been unleashed on the event's website.  You can listen in by clicking here.  My rant starts at about the 15:35 mark and lasts a mercifully short (or a tortuously long, depending on if you're friend or foe) four minutes or so.  More merriment ensues during the Q&A session, at about the 45-minute mark.  Most definitely a Pow! moment...and all in jest folks, all in jest!

When Snacks Attack

It ain't easy being a snack food these days.  One one hand, the competition for shelf space is fierce, and on the other, you're being beseeched by health and fitness advocates and the government about how you're responsible for everything from rampant obesity to the downfall of America.

So I gotta give a lotta kudos to these two who are doing their damndest to cut through the clutter and the muttering.

On the "We Ain't That Bad" side there's Lesser Evil, who make "All Natural Kettle Corn and Krinkle Sticks" with no preservatives, trans fat, high-fructose corn syrup or anything else bad. 

Usually, these are code words for "tastes like hell," but this ain't health food the Tuckahoe, New York company is touting...just "better" than the usual bag of oily chips or popcorn.  And the retro packaging takes you back to a simpler time where things were healthier...or at least you didn't know how bad they were for you.

Also all-natural, the people at Robert's American Gourmet handle things a little differently.  These guys are the Jones Soda of snack foods, with flavors and gimmicks that grab attention...and cash (the company enjoyed a 38% dollar growth last year). 

Owner Robert Erlich throws a lot of SKUs up against the wall. Some--like Pirate's Booty and Moon Chips--stick; others--like the $50 bag of Caviar Potato Flyers, Bubble Tea Popcorn and St. John's Wort Tortilla Chips--don't, and for good reason. 

But with $50 million in sales, Robert's is flying and will keep trying (up next: 50-grain Stem Cell Chips. Yum!)., and will even let folks like us get involved and suggest his next snack hit.  Or miss.

Perchance to Dream

As a frequent road warrior, I find myself enamored with stories about improvements and innovation in the hotel trade.  Last week, Time had a great piece about how hotels are becoming centers for "sleep therapy."   

But what I really dug was the quote by Mari Balestrazzi, VP Design for the Morgan's Hotel Group, in the most recent Fast Company.  Seems she's more interested in keeping you awake.

"One of the company's original ideas was 'hotel as theater.' It's this whole notion of risk taking and creating environments that are unexpected."

Now if they could only mix the two...

No It Ain't

So, the city of St. Louis--a city that I happen to love, by the way--embarks on an expensive marketing campaign to tout itself to tourists.  A faithful FOP (Friend of Pow!) sent example below along, the ad where the city labels itself as "Surprising" (see the badge, right side in the middle).

Okay, so when you think of St. Lou, what do you think of?

• Budweiser Beer
• The Blues (the music...and perhaps the hockey team)
• The Cardinals (and maybe the Rams as well)
• The Arch

So, what do they show in the ad?  A bar scene with two-piano blues, Busch Stadium (killing the beer and sports reference with one picture), and a generic picture of the Convention Center/Casino.  That's about as Surprising as Florida sunshine or Denver snow.

Take away the words St. Louis and the Bud logo, and this could be an ad for any major city on the continent. (And that wishy-washy headline?  Let's not even go there for sake of my blood pressure.) 

Jeez guys, if you really want to take us on a walk on the Surprise side, you've got to go AGAINST the grain, not so blandly with it.

Pow! Gets A Spokesperson

After two years blogging about the element of Surprise, after hundreds of posts and comments, after two re-designs, I think it's about time for Pow! to crank things up a notch and engage its first high-powered celebrity spokesperson. 

Not only should said spokesperson coat this blog with a lustrous sheen and elevate its importance in the eyes of the marketing world, but in her very being, emulate the spirit of Surprise Central and promote the against-the-grain thinking that this blog advocates.

My choice?  Undisputedly, unanimously, Ladies and gentlemen, I present:

Ms. Julie Newmar.

Not that I've done the deal yet, but for three successive weeks, Julie's agent Scott Sander has placed the above half-page ad in Brandweek and who knows how many other trade publications.  As anyone my age remembers, Julie was our youthful fantasy as the sexiest Catwoman ever, whose charms were so alluring she even got Batman to dance the Bat-tusi...but I digress. 

Whatever this is gonna cost, it'll be worth every penny.  Julie's both a Bubby and a Babe, thus the girl for me. She puts the Meow into Pow!

Welcome to your new home, Ms. Newmar! Let's get crackin'.  We've got work to do.