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If you held the original patent on the modern slide rule (first introduced by a French artillery lieutenant in 1859), for more than 110 years you had a license to print money.

Over the years, the slide rule got simpler, more colorful, slimmer and even more specialized. In the 1930s, for example, the revolutionary E6B model was released–a circular slide rule created specifically for airline pilots. In 1952, the Swiss watch company Breitling took the E6B a leap further by embedding a circular slide rule into a pilot’s wrist watch.

The Texas Instruments TI-30, circa 1976

More than 100 years of iterations, based on the same basic technology.

Then the ceiling caved in. In 1976, Texas Instruments released the TI-30–a $25 scientific calculator that rendered 100 years of slide rule technology obsolete.

Okay, so enough with the slide rule history lesson already. What this story really demonstrates is how most “innovation” comes in the form of incremental improvements. And to the outside observer, those incremental improvements were just what was called for. The world didn’t need (and wasn’t looking for) a new technology to replace the slide rule for calculating trig equations or logarithms. But when the pocket calculator came along (which was more or less a “repurposing” of off-the-shelf technologies that made the transistor radio possible), well, 100 years of ”new and improved” slide rules weren’t worth the wood they were made of.

Such is the dynamic of “disruptive technologies.” They seemingly come out of nowhere, but are mostly just a reimagining of existing technologies, harnessed for a specific new purpose.

Disruptive technologies have been with us for a long time. Flushing toilets, electric lighting, frozen entrees, the iPod. These are a few not-so-distant examples. Of late, it seems every time your pick up the paper (though today it’s most likely a tablet), you’ll read about yet another long-standing technology that’s been banished to the history books. Be it record stores, travel agencies, film cameras or “snail mail.”

The photo to the right gives us a snapshot of how personal technologies have evolved in just the last two decades.

ABOVE: 1993 Technology BELOW: Same Technology 2013

With “disruptive” technologies now coming at us faster and faster, what can industry do to make sure they’re not on the same track as the slide rule? A few things come to mind:

1. Develop a “flanking strategy.” Just because you own 90% of the market doesn’t mean you always will. No matter your market share, you are potentially one technological advance away from being out of business. So rather than stay “fat and happy” with your situation, invest 10% of your profits towards a flanking strategy. Call it your “what if” fund. Create a division whose only job is to look at new technologies in other categories and ask “what if we could harness them in our category.” Xerox did this in the 1960s, and ended up patenting many of the technologies that are now commonplace in our personal computers. Tech companies live-and-die by flanking strategies. They are under continual pressure to innovate or die. Borrow some of this imperative for your category.
2. Whatever you do, continually add value for your customers. Some breakthroughs are of the truly mundane variety. It’s just that no one had applied them to certain industries before. Southwest did it when they understood they were in the hospitality business as much as they were in the travel business. So they went all-in on recruiting the friendliest people, training them, and giving them the freedom to create great experiences for their customers. This at a time when most carriers saw themselves as “ways to get from point-A to point-B.”
3. Understand your customers’ pain points. Actually go out and “live in your customer’s shoes” to see what she sees, experience things the way she does. You’ll find out rather quickly that your offerings are a mere blip in her existence, and that there are things you may be able to do to make her life easier elsewhere. For example, understanding how important the commodity of “time” is to modern families, a “60 minute guarantee” or something similar in a category that might not seem time-sensitive could be worth testing.

One thing is for sure. Technology is going to be with us, and it’s going to change change things quickly. By staying as knowledgeable about your customers, and being as relevant as possible for them, you’ll keep yourself on the “calculator” track.

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Might not sound sexy. But it just might be the formula to your future success.

In a world that’s getting more complex, more complicated and more unpredictable, Fast, Simple and Consistent offers an oasis to the harried consumer. It removes anxiety, adds reassurance and becomes something he can “count on.”

Let’s face facts. Consumers today don’t have the time or temperment to learn one more set of instructions. Or spend any more minutes navigating a phone tree. Or learn the intracacies of a new version of software. Or figure out why, if something is “new and improved,” it doesn’t do some things as well as the version you just killed off. Yet often, all this becomes the price for innovation.

As much as consumers prefer fast-simple-consistent now, it will be even more important in the near future. The Millennial generation (born between 1982 and 2001) is poised to become the marketing “sweet spot” for a lot of marketers. They are projected to surpass Boomers as the dominant consumer market (64 million U.S. households by 2020). And guess what their number one driver is? If you said “fast-simple-consistent,” then make your way to the head of the class.

As marketers, it’s in our nature to approach problems with a mindset of “more.” More features, more colors, more sizes, more niche variations, more uses, more brand spin-offs, more capabilities. We think we’re doing it as a way to give the consumer what she’s been asking for and what will keep her satisfied. But in a lot of cases, what we’re really doing is making it harder for her to work with us.

We need to break free of the “more mentality” and filter new initiatives and decisions by asking “Is this making life easier for our customers?” We need to start equating “innovation” with “simplicity.” And most of all, we need to live life in our customers’ shoes so we can experience what she experiences, pain points and all.

In fact, if you defined your brand personality right now as “the company that’s easiest to work with,” you’d be on the path to success.

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These have hardly been salad days for the sugary drink category.

According to a report released this month by Beverage Digest, consumers are swilling less soda, leading the category to decline for the eighth straight year. The amount of soda consumed worldwide in 2012 is down to 1996 levels. Here in the U.S., it has fallen to 1987 levels. In fact, the only brands that haven’t experienced a significant sales drop are Coke, Sprite and Diet Dr. Pepper (sales of these brands were flat–at least they didn’t lose ground).

The reasons for this category-wide dip are mainly over health concerns. With two-thirds of American adults now labeled as “overweight to obese,” the major soda companies have been held up as major culprits.

This seems to be one problem the category isn’t able to spend its way out of. Ad spending for major brands is at an all-time high, In fact, PepsiCo’s global ad spending for the first quarter of 2013 is up a staggering 11%. Yet the snack and beverage giant’s profits have fallen 5% for the same period.

So what are the soda companies to do? They have mountains of cash at their disposal. Their brand names are some of the most recognized in the world. And distribution? They’re about as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Both Pepsi and Coke are acknowledged leaders in both mobile and social media (Coke, in fact, has the most Facebook fans of any brand–more than 61 million).

For clues as to what might help them and what probably won’t, let’s look at what the category’s two biggest players are doing.

Pepsi has doubled down on tying the brand’s future to well-known celebrities. The takeaway from its advertising and promotion seems to be “if you like this celebrity, then you’ll like Pepsi.” This strategy worked like gangbusters in the 1980s. Celebs like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Michael J. Fox and others made Pepsi the “cool” soda choice. Today, however, their much-publicized “creative partnership” with Beyonce is proving to be a multi-million dollar dud. What’s more, the brand’s big-money forays into social media promotion have yet to cause a sales ripple (more on that in this post).

Coca Cola on the other hand is taking a different tact. They are associating the brand with the mantra of “happiness.” The brand’s advertising is “including” users, not talking (or performing) at them. Associating a brand with a positive emotion is going to be more effective every time.

Another interesting tact Coke is taking is its attempt to be more transparent, and actually address the obesity issue head on. The world’s most valuable brand has openly acknowledged obesity as “the issue of this generation.” It launched an ad campaign aimed at “reinforcing (its commitment) to finding meaningful solutions to the complex challenge of obesity.”

Will this approach work? It definitely has proven to be somewhat controversial. Critics claim it’s no more than an attempt to distract from the real issue. My view is that it never hurts to acknowledge the truth (at least the truth most people accept). So long as there is a meaningful commitment to improve things.

We’ve yet to see how Coke intends to follow up its ad campaign. As a next step, I’d implore Coke to put its money where its mouth is, by creating and supporting events and promotions that reward people for lifestyle changes. Even if it means they drink a few less cans of Coke a week. Don’t simply treat this as a “health initiative.” Tie the health aspect into the whole “happiness” hook the brand has latched on to.

Even if effective, will such a program work to reverse the trend of faltering soda sales? Highly unlikely. However, even declining categories have their “good guys,” and Coke is primed to be that company.

Committing to help people address the “challenge of a generation” will, I believe, do more to promote the brand that a halftime concert at the Super Bowl.

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If you were hobnobbing at a cocktail party, and asked anyone there what business they were were in, most likely you’d get an answer of the functional variety. “We’re in the tire business.” “We manufacture airplane parts.” “We’re a high-end steak house.”

What you’re not likely to hear is “We’re in the business of creating amazing experiences for our customers.” And in these days of information overload, categories bleeding into one another and seemingly endless consumer choices, creating an amazing experience should be Job One for successful marketers.

Rather than focus on what they do, successful marketers focus on why customers would be attracted to them.

Positive experiences are viral. Customers talk about them. They get spread across the world wide web. They take on a life of their own, without involvement from the marketer. And for most consumers, reading/hearing of others’ experiences carry more weight than what they hear from the companies themselves.

Positive experiences can be pre-emptive and remain a constant in categories of ever-changing variables. And more often than not, they can scale.

There are tons of social psychology studies that show that sparking an emotional response in customers not only serves as a “trigger moment” where the buying decision is made, but is also what drives customers to take “ownership” of the product or brand, and see it as a part of their little world.

Sounds pretty aerie-fairy in this world of spreadsheets, analytics and focus groups. But it’s the one thing that can help elevate you above the plethora of competitors that are out there.

Just ask Apple, Amazon or Nike.

While these may be considered extreme examples, nevertheless their businesses have been built by creating amazing experiences (just look at the number of “Apple Unboxing Videos” you’ll find on YouTube).

What makes companies like these stand out is not necessarily the functionality of what they sell. It’s their undying commitment to providing positive (and unique, and often times surprising) user experiences.

Which leads to the question, how can a company or business go about “manufacturing” a positive experience? While the formula will likely vary category to category and business to business, there are three things that are universal:

1) Find out what your most loyal customers appreciate about you, and put that on steroids. Figure out how every customer or prospect can experience that part of you.

2) Figure out your category’s customer “pain points” and see what you can do to either eliminate or minimize them for customers doing business with you.

3) Perhaps most importantly, surprise customers with something they weren’t expecting and can’t find anywhere else. This not only provides a unique and memorable experience that will be easily shared, but it also helps compensate for areas in your value chain where you might not be the best.

The success of marketing can be summed up in this statement: “It’s not about what you say. It’s not about what you do. It’s about how you make them feel.”

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Of the 56 national commercials that were broadcast during the Super Bowl, how many do you remember?

There are those that have been much talked about: The Dodge Ram “Paul Harvey” spot, Bud’s heart-string tugging “Clydesdale” spot, Samsung’s “Brainstorming” spot, Doritos “Goat 4 Sale.” And yeah, you probably remember the disgusting Go Daddy “Kiss” spot (for the wrong reasons). But how many others can you name off the top of your head?

Chances are you won’t be able to name more than three or four more unprompted, despite the fact that we’re less than a week removed from the Super Bowl. Not exactly good news for the other 40 to 45 advertisers who shelled out a cool $3.8 million to appear in the, uh, super bowl of advertising (sorry).

While some may say the reason for this is that this year’s crop of spots wasn’t the best. And that Super Bowl ads have become somewhat formulaic (being brash and being different makes you just like everybody else).

To make matters worse, the link between getting an ad on the Super Bowl and achieving actual marketing goals is getting more and more nebulous. A recent study from eMarketer.com revealed that while 75% of the audience finds the spots entertaining, only 10% view them as being “persuasive.”

In other words, they do a poor job of selling. Even the top-rated spots don’t really hero the product (okay, Tide’s “Montana Miracle Stain” DID sell Tide). Take the (way too many) car commercials for example. Audi made a high school dweeb “more courageous.” Hyundai featured The Flaming Lips in a commercial I still don’t understand. Kia’s “Space Babies” had to do with making up stories for your kids (it did sell voice command for its sound system. Yeah, that oughta sell a bazillion cars). Even charmers like the Toyota “Genie” and the aforementioned Ram spot were short on “reasons why” (let’s see, the Rav 4 doesn’t have a spare tire, and Rams are for farmers). And last year’s hit, VW’s “Darth Vader” spot? If memory serves, it focused on the vehicle’s remote start.

A few weeks before the Super Bowl, Jonathan Salem Baskin penned an article for Advertising Age titled “The Super Bowl is a commercial for what’s wrong with advertising.” Baskin writes, “A beauty pageant isn’t marketing, and it distracts ad makers from their real purpose. The ‘best’ spots rarely correlate with any real-world success…instead prompting clicks and ‘likes’ about the ads themselves.”

He then cites statistics that show how brands have suffered in recent years: 25% of all brands’ reputations with the public have cratered; less than half of consumers trust advertising (down 25% from 2009, according to Nielsen); and customer loyalty is down in almost all categories, with brands more and more having to fight for customers on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

In other words, other than creating a masturbatory experience for the brands that run the ads and the agencies that create them, it’s hard to find any other tangible benefits that come from an ad presence in The Big Game.

So where does the ad industry go from here? My guess is not much will change in 2014. It’s harder to jump off a bandwagon than jump on one.

But if you’re not selling the soda, beer, or snack food that’s generally consumed at Super Bowl parties, you’d be better off banking your wad and get back to doing some REAL brand advertising.

To view the entire batch of this year’s Super Bowl commercials, click here.

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Too many communications strategies are developed by first asking, “What do we want people to think we are.”

That idea, first formally put forward by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their landmark book from 1981, Positioning, is built around the paradigm that there are consumer needs that aren’t being met (either functionally or emotionally) in any category, and if you can identify one that resonates with people, and “sell yourself” as the solution, then your brand will take off like a rocket. “Positioning” was primarily about communication. The idea was “control the communication, and you can control the customer.” And since what the customer “knew” about your product or brand is what you told them, way more thought went into advertising, PR, etc. than went into the actual experience with the brand.

The fundamentals of “Positioning” worked to perfection if the “unaddressed need” identified by the brand was what that brand truly delivered; in many cases, however, the “brand’s solution” didn’t live up to the promise. Either it was mere “window dressing” and wasn’t what the brand was really all about, or it was something the brand didn’t do noticably better than most other performers in the category.

Here, 30 years later, we’re working with a totally different marketing paradigm. The advance of the Internet, social networks and 24/7 peer-to-peer connectivity has made transparency a must. You can no longer be what you say you are; you are now what your customers say you are.

When a brand spots an opportunity in the marketplace, it’s important to not just say you’re the solution (either because it sounds good or it’s who you’d like to be), but to prove that you are the solution, in every action, every customer touch point and every communication–operationally as well as in marketing and communications.

A better question to ask when developing a brand strategy is “Who are we, in the eyes of our most loyal customers? Why do they keep coming back?”

Then ask, ‘How can we demonstrate this so that all customers and prospects experience this?” Not just through communications, but by “living it” top-to-bottom in the organization.

While it’s important for a marketing strategy to be “aspirational,” it’s even more important that it be true. At its best, a marketing strategy is not just a blueprint for selling stuff. It is a blueprint for how you will create a relationship with your customer.

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With the Super Bowl looming just around the corner, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the “Grand-Daddy of Today’s Super Bowl Extravaganzas”–Apple’s “1984” commercial.

Folks in our business tend to view “1984” with an almost religious reverence. They’ll say “This is the spot that made Apple the major player it is today!”

While I hate to rain on a good story, this is a bit of revisionist history.

While most would agree that piece of advertising was brilliant in just about every sense of the word, the spot reflected who Apple is now, not who Apple was then. In 1984 (and for several years afterward), MacIntosh was derided as a “toy” computer that wasn’t practical for business purposes, despite sporting cool new features like the mouse and the graphic user interface, Hardly any software was created for it. It was grossly underpowered. And it was way more expensive than IBM’s or Compaq’s rival PCs.

Truth be told, it wasn’t until the rise of the desktop publishing era later in the decade that the Mac found its niche.

It’s important to note that while Apple initially didn’t deliver on the promise of “1984,” over time it definitely did. The spot was pure aspiration. It was a line in the sand, a gauntlet thrown down, a true “vision statement” for the company and the brand. The spot basically communicated, “Apple is the company that produces technology products built around the user’s needs. Apple stands for technology you WANT to use.”

In many ways, the vision of Apple from the mid-80s, given its products’ capabilities, was quite audacious. It is precisely this audaciousness that can keep an organization and a brand moving in the right direction.

The aspirational aspect of building a brand should never be underrated.

And on a strictly personal note, go Niners.

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Rather than cook up yet another “year-end list” of one sort or another, we at The Quisenblog thought we’d curate for you the most interesting marketing/advertising lists we’ve come across over the last few weeks. Our hope is there’s something here you’ll enjoy.

The best digital campaigns of 2012 (Slideshow with video).

From Gangnum Style to Red Bull’s “Stratos” space jump to the “Invisible Mercedes” get a peek inside the top-performing digital campaigns of the year.

Five Social Media Marketing Campaigns of 2012 to inspire your 2013 strategy. (From Content Lead)

Case study examples: The Obama Presidential Campaign (segmentation), The Dollar Shave Club (web video), Totino’s Pizza Bites (Twitter hashtags), Nike’s Olympic Run (promoted Tweets), Sephora Beauty Products (Pinterest). Ideas for how you can use these platforms in 2013.

From Tampons to Tablets: Best/Worst names of 2012. (From Marketing Profs)

Microsoft Surface. Chase Liquid card. Doritos Jacked. (The good) Pepperidge Farms Jingos! Parrot Zik. Qsymia. (The bad) These names and others are dissected in this post.

5 Smart marketing habits for 2013 (from OPENForum)

OPENForum is one of my go-to sources for timely management intelligence. This article is a classic.

25 Experts Predict the Future of Marketing. (from Exact Target)

Industry heavyweights like jay Baer, Geoff Livingston, Joe Pulizzi and Mark Schaefer share their insights in bite-sized forms, on topics from Cross Chanel Marketing to Email to Mobile and Social.

10 biggest ad stories from 2012 (podcast, from The Bean Cast)

The best/worst of 2012 advertising and marketing stories in one portable podcast. Stream or download.

That pretty much does it for 2012. If the world manages to make it to the New Year, we do hope you’ll check back.

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“How will we know that this will work?”

This is the logical question for marketers to ask when presented with a new advertising concept or marketing tactic. As much as they might like the idea–and as much as they are reassured by those who have created it–they yearn for some form of impartial information that will “prove” to them that the concept we’re presenting will outperform all others.

A decade ago, whenever a marketer asked that question of any ad creative presenting new work, the answer most likely was some variation of “trust me.” For support, we could point to consumer behavioral studies or similar case histories or previous experiences we’ve had with similar marketing problems. But at the end of the day, it came down to “Based on our experience, we believe this will work.”

Today, however, we in the creative industries have an unlikely ally: data. I say “unlikely” because for decades, creatives were trained to be skeptical of people bearing spreadsheets. Especially when it came to trying to apply hard numbers to emotionally-based creative concepts.

To be clear, there is a huge difference between “research” and “data.” “Research” is an undertaking to discover a specific answer to a specific question or concern (“Do viewers understand what the key message of this commercial is?”). Most research requires a fair amount of subjectivity to extrapolate precious few data points to form a conclusion. “Data,” on the other hand, are ongoing real-time streams of engagement metrics. Data provide “snapshots in time” that are based around action, not interpretation.

Today’s data are empirical, and can take much of the subjectivity out of the equation. For example, you can evaluate your email subject lines by seeing what your “open” rates are. You can measure how many more clicks Facebook ad “version A” got than “version B.” You can see where visitors are dropping off your web site. You can compare click-to-conversion ratios. You can quantify which content your audience has amplified or engaged with and which they didn’t.

Most importantly, today’s data make it easier to “course correct” during your marketing efforts, no longer forcing you to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and pull the plug on a concept, tactic or a program because a single element underperformed. Today’s marketing is less about “campaigns” that have a fixed beginning and end, and more about measuring and sustaining ongoing engagement from your audiences.

Let me tell you, as a creative, the “era of data” takes a lot of heat off. Not just when analytics prove the times we are right, but more importantly to give us insight into how we can make efforts we’ve launched better.

And rather than stifling creativity, my belief is that data can help drive it. Bold marketers, rather than casting about for reassurance when presented with a bold concept, are more and more likely to say, “Let’s run with it, then see how it does,” knowing that the knobs can always be tweaked down the road.

The basic tools required to get started in capturing data are free (or cheap) and are relatively easy to use (find out more about that in this post).

It was deparment store maven John Wannamaker who supposedly said about advertising, “I know I’m wasting half of my money. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

Today’s data and analytics might just help him figure that out.

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Would Twitter be as useful or popular if it didn’t restrict your messages to 140 characters? Would Groupon’s emails receive a better open rate if its audience didn’t know the offers were for 50% off? Would Southwest Airlines attract more business travelers if it served three-course meals during its flights? Would Jackson Pollock have sold more paintings if he did the occasional still life?

My answer to each of the above questions: not so much.

In each case, the marketer’s limitation serves a marketing purpose. It keeps the marketer from falling into the trap of being “everything to everyone.” It lets them hyper-concentrate on its marketing “sweet spot.” It helps the marketer occupy an important niche. The limitation is a key component in how its users view the marketer’s product, and in fact, is one of the reasons the audience finds it so useful and desirable.

In essence, these organizations’ limitations have become some of their biggest advantages.

Back to the Twitter example, there’s already a platform that allows for unlimited social conversation. It’s called email. Could you imagine the folly of “following” hundreds or thousands of Twitter voices via email?

While the limitations of the marketers mentioned here are more or less “self-imposed,” what about marketers who have their limitations thrust upon them? The mom-and-pop that’s forced to compete with a Big Box Store? The retail shop who doesn’t have the space to carry an exhaustive inventory? The small-market service business that’s competing against well-stocked big city firms for both business and talent?

I guarantee, within each limitation is a kernel of a pre-emptive advantage. It is incumbent on the marketer to recognize that kernel, and rather than paper it over, embrace it. Put it on steroids. Make sure everyone who does business with you recognizes that you’ve embraced your “limitation” and used it to provide something no other competitor can deliver.

After all, you’ll never be able to get a burger at Starbuck’s.

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