Shape of Things

You might have thought that the pressure to say the right thing, wear the right thing, do the right thing, left you in high school, but you’re likely wrong.

Studies cited in yesterday’s New York Times magazine (“Nudge the Vote” by Sasha Issenberg) show that peer pressure is the biggest single generator of higher voter turnout.  The article also punctures the myths of celebrity endorsements, four-color glossy mailings and robo calls (or almost any call for that matter).

Leave fingerprints behind

The findings are interesting for all marketers.  How can we use subtle (or maybe not so subtle) peer pressure to help sell products? Beauty and exercise products have used this forever, of course, but couldn’t it be applied to technology or informational products?

A finding that I found aligns closely with the sensibilities of engineers and other buyers of technology is that voters don’t want marketing dazzle, according to political consultant Hal Malchow.  His primary findings:

• E-mail and text messages from unexciting senders (such as “Election Center”) often do better than those with livelier “from” lines.
• Voters pay less attention to glossy four-color brochures than they do to spare envelopes containing simple letters like ones received from government officials.

“People want information, they don’t want advertising,” Malchow says. “When they see our fingerprints on this stuff, they believe it less.”

Voters are a lot like your audience

Other interesting snippets from the article:

• People are more likely to perform an action if they have already visualized doing it.
• In-person canvassing outperformed all other voter promotions by a wide margin.
• The most effective way to find what works is testing different messages with small samples and then sending the most influential ones to a much larger target audience.

If you think of the audience for your products — especially if you are in high-technology — chances are they are a close fit with voters: skeptical, disillusioned with marketing, and not convinced by displays of force or flash.

Conformity is a bit like heroin: comforting, but extremely addictive.

If your company or clients value conformity over creative, it’s your role to try to break the chain of addiction.  Then again, maybe you are the pusher.

About a decade ago, an innovative 3D graphics company I was working with was sold to a major computer company.  I was entrusted with preparing a brochure and poster that conveyed the excitement of a new product. It shouldn’t have been hard: the images generated by this computer were stunning, and its capabilities singular.

The challenge was overcoming the rigid standards of the parent company: Use one of two typeface choices and one of a few design templates. Exact color and positioning for the logo. Reference the company name in the exact same way all the time.

The pieces ended up looking and sounding fine, but they took three times as long to produce and involved four times as many people as they should have. And, they could have been much better. I vowed never to do a project for a company like that again; I’m glad to say I’ve stuck to that vow.

About five years later, what a relief it was to see Google snub conformity. Silly company name. Logo that it changed daily and had fun with — in fact, playing with the company logo became part of Google’s corporate identity and a subject of discussion.

Think about things you do to conform to some rules that were written years ago and might not be relevant, or are actually dragging down your corporate image. Like that boring standard paragraph at the end of your press releases.  Or the corporate-speak that saturates your marketing materials. Or those quotes from the CEO that sound like they came from an automaton. Or using trademarks when they aren’t needed. Or the staid design of your web site.

Conformity sends a message: “We’re like all the rest and we don’t care if you think so.”  Is that the corporate message you want? If so, fine.  If not, time to get the conformity monkey off your back.

I know I promised a “PR in Practice” posting on press releases this week.  But, just thinking about it put me off into some dangerous and angry mind currents. 

You’ve probably experienced this before: You’re at a party and someone you don’t know all that well (maybe a soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend or -boyfriend or a casual friend) says, “Well, the thing about Bob…” and proceeds to characterize you in a way that is unfathomable to you.  You’re angry, but your protests are too late – you’ve been third-party characterized.

In a bigger way, that’s what a lot of companies are doing – letting others tell their stories for them.  In the process, one of the most precious commodities of the company – its identity – is lost, misrepresented or compromised.  How basic  of a sin is that?  Yet, companies let it happen all the time.

They let poorly written press releases  and poorly informed PR people deliver watered-down, clichéd versions of their story.

They copy the stories of other, bigger companies, completely undermining the advantages of their uniqueness.

They tarnish their stories with hype and puffery.

They communicate with benign dishonesty, but dishonesty just the same.

They believe their own myths and foist them on the public.

They put all information dissemination in the hands of the media, even though they could likely tell the story better and more accurately if they spoke directly to their communities.

They don’t talk with their customers or use customers’ stories to help define the company and engender trust.

They never taint their company’s steeliness with an ounce of warmth or personality.

They concentrate on product positioning, engineering and false branding while kicking their central story to the curb.

O.K., I feel a bit better.  The end-of-the-week martini is about an hour away.  If you engage in the above practices, I hope you’re slightly uncomfortable.  But, probably not: Your story most likely left the building a long time ago.

If you have even a passing familiarity with advertising, you know David Ogilvy.  His ads for Hathaway shirts, Schweppes, Rolls Royce and other clients are legendary.  But, as a recent biography illustrates, Ogilvy’s biggest legacy is not clever headlines and ad campaigns (much of which are dated today), but how he built a brand inside his own organization, then spread it to the world.

As head of his own agency, Ogilvy spent most of his time building and refining the internal story. This wasn’t the yawn-inducing stuff of values, mission statements and goals, but an ever-evolving manifesto that united and excited Ogilvy and Mather employees across the globe.

After inculcating his agency’s story internally, Ogilvy shared much of his content with the world in the best-selling book, Confessions of an Advertising Man.  The book made him a household name and had clients beating a path to his door.

Few companies, of course, have a story (or a writer to document it) that will become a best seller.  But, every company has a story waiting to be told and spread – a story that uniquely identifies who they are and why they matter.

How the story is told doesn’t matter much: It can be a printed document, an online illustrated narration, a comic-book serial, a series of presentations or videos. Whatever the media, it should resonate with employees.

Your internal story should be perpetually alive, continually evolving with the company.  Get employees involved in contributing their insights and anecdotes.  Make the story an essential tool for orienting new employees and making sure established employees keep up-to-date.

Once you’ve established the story internally, push select portions out to the world at large.

Many companies work on their outside branding without having established a story within their organizations. That seems backward.  Think like Ogilvy and do it the inside-out way.