The Credibility Branding Blog

The Importance of a Marketing Driven Corporate Culture

Part 2 – of “Focus on Business and Marketing Strategy”

I mentioned in the previous post this notion of corporate culture, whether it is sales-driven, engineering-driven or marketing-driven. Why is this so important?

Following are some descriptions of two fictitious examples, one that emulates a sales driven culture and another that is engineering driven. Please note these are extreme in their description to make a point, but nuances of these examples will show up in just about any corporate setting.

The Corporate Climate

The Sales Driven Culture

Three top salesmen run the show. What they say goes. These sales reps myopically focus on the sale, sometimes at any cost. There is little no overarching business strategy, or product road map they act from what is in front of them at any given moment. These are not lazy individuals; on the contrary these employees make things happen. They are on the phone building relationships making deals and negotiating with management to ensure they can close the sale. They give management and product managers the inside scoop of what customers are saying about their products and the competition. They really do sell a lot, so it is hard not to listen to them or have them start taking over many of the marketing and product management systems within a company.

The challenge is this sales-driven culture creates an extremely subjective view of the world, specifically from inside the mind of a sales focused individual.  The sales mindset is generally focused narrowly on who they can sell what to in the fastest time.

How many times have the trainers who are installing the products and customer support representatives had to back track and bring management in to save a sale after the fact.  How many times have you heard this: “the sales rep told the customer that the product could do many, many things it was never designed to perform” or “end users have not been able to achieve the results they were sold.” In addition the “insider information” retrieved by sales staff are often based on their single minded focus to make a case for closing the sale. Sales reps are not bad, or dumb or evil, they are amazingly good at selling and that is what they will do both within the company and outside to customers. And while they deliver the revenues there is a cost, and that cost is focus and strategy and eventually a frenetic corporate environment created by each sale and the “crisis customer,” meaning “we won’t get this sale if we don’t bend over backwards; discount; change the product etc. The results is a company that is more or less run “by the seat of the pants” moving from one customer crisis to the next.

Engineering Driven Cultures

The CEO started the company working out of his garage and living room inventing some remarkable technology or engineering feat that will establish a new paradigm in… you name it. They toil and patent, make new discoveries and patent, innovate and patent. They are brilliant and can tinker and tweak forever. However, this type of mindset is great at product development and creation but generally not so good at selling. Engineers are also awesome project mangers, they really know how to get things done, yet they are generally not the best strategists.

If you want a technology product to be done to a set of specifications (that another engineer generally created), then no problem, the engineer will deliver. The problem is the specifications are based on the engineer’s way of thinking and often not on the customers. The product may be complete but it might not meet the market need. It will meet what an engineer perceives to be the market need which, if you have worked with many engineers, is quite different than the needs of a majority of everyday customers.

What both sales and engineering also have in common is a focus on the attributes and features, the “what it does” of the product not on the benefits or the “what pain it is solving”. This is a fundamental challenge that every company will face at some point in its lifecycle, developing a business and marketing communications strategy that will ensure that all constituents understand how they will benefit by working with or buying from this company.

What an engineering culture will create is a well made product that is never done. The product development could continue forever as the engineering mind gets yet another idea of another feature to add. There is also a certain bull-headed stubbornness, and a sense that the engineer with his/her clear thinking linear mind sees more clearly than everyone else and is therefore “right.” This mindset is important to the creation of the product but when it comes to marketing and selling what seems obvious and even easy to an engineer might in reality take much more time and creativity than a project management mindset can embrace. Also when an engineer is right it also means everyone else is wrong and eventually this engineer becomes frustrated with others “not doing their jobs.” In turn the employees get frustrated for not being able to do their jobs properly because of unrealistic expectations and knowing that it isn’t as linear a process.

Sales- and engineering-driven companies are less strategically focused; they spend a lot of time on reaction and on tactics, without a clear plan for what they are doing and why. These companies are often at the mercy of market conditions instead of creating them.

The archetypal marketing-driven culture from a sales and/or engineering perspective would be one of slickness and spin. They often see it as a culture of manipulation through airy fairy tactics with little to no hard evidence they work. In reality the marketing driven corporation is making all business decisions based on the impact on sales, lead generation and communications to current clients. Let me give you an example of a marketing-driven decision. This is an excerpt from my book The Credibility Factor:

I was working with two clients that offered complex technology solutions. We were charged with generating press articles for them to increase the credibility factor and attract customers. One company had done very well with sales and garnered a decent volume of customers. The other had one customer. Now, who do you think got the most press coverage? You would think it would be the one that had a volume of customers, right? It would make sense that more people were buying from that company, so it would seem to be more successful and thus have more credibility. In fact, the client with one customer received the most press articles. That was because that company had a board of directors that had industry luminaries on it, it brought in a CEO who was well known in the industry, and its one customer was one of the top 10 brand names in the world. Having this well-known customer added tremendous credibility. “If that brand-name company will buy it then it must be good” is the thinking that tool place in the market.

The company that had the one marquee customer made a marketing driven decision, namely to pursue that one customer to garner the credibility by association. The other company was typical in its attention to “going for the sale at all cost” and focused almost entirely on the features of the product and not the points of credibility or the benefits (what pain it is solving for its customers). Marketing-driven decisions really mean business-driven decisions; look past the sales to the strategy and how the sale would enhance the brand.

The next posting in this series will discuss how to differentiate through sound messaging: “Clear differentiation from competition (creating a brand message that is embraced by all constituents).”

Focus On Business and Marketing Strategy Not Tactical Business Challenges

What are the business challenges that many companies are facing today?

Most companies would say:

1. Increasing sales
2. Getting the sales person to close the sale
3. Getting the right products to market at the right time
4. Overcoming competition
5. Reduced margins

While these are very real challenges they are quite tactical in nature. When a company is consistently overhauling these tactical challenges it may be symptomatic of a lack of strategy, or describe a culture that is either driven by a sales persona or an engineering mindset.

Instead companies would be more successful and efficient if they were focused on the underlying issues that, when addressed, can almost instantly solve the tactical challenges mentioned above. These might include:

1. Clear differentiation from competition (creating a brand message that is embraced by all constituents)
2. Ensuring a market position and supporting messaging that establishes trust and credibility (communicating the benefits all the time and delivering those benefit statements at the right time)
3. Delivering a product the market wants (establishing a clear product roadmap and creating a product that delivers a clear return on investment)
4. Establishing the right infrastructure of influencers (leveraging influencers to enhance the credibility of the company and its products and accelerate the sales cycle)
5. Focus: product focus, market focus, focused strategy (a continuing focus on the companies core competency)

Over the coming weeks I will outline each of these strategies in more detail, but for now this should offer some good food for thought.

The Power of Consumer Spending – Changes White Bread Brown

What is going on in the world that you can capitalize on? What unique consumer or business-to-business trends can you leverage from a marketing perspective and also from a new product or product improvement perspective?

Consumers are gaining more power; attracting their dollars is more about listening than ever before.

The turning point for me in witnessing the recent increase in the power of the consumer spending occurred when the archetype of American dietary habits, Wonderbread, changed their recipe abut two years ago.

Fiber has become an important lexicon in our dietary vocabulary and it is changing the way we look at the food we buy. Large multinational packaged goods companies are changing their products to comply with new consumer demand for more fiber in their diet.  This is an example of the power of consumer demand, and that companies are listening.

In the past these huge packaged goods companies had almost complete control over what we ate. Their focus and attention was to their shareholders and profits (as well they should) and NOT to how additives and lack of fiber in our food not to mention the large volume of sodium and sugar were contributing to a growing nutritional health crisis. But new nutritional science has educated consumers and these companies are being forced to change.

The fact that one of the best known white bread brands on the market is now including (or should I say putting back) whole wheat into their breads illustrates the power of consumer spending. Customer demand can contribute to changing pretty much anything. The companies that are winning are those that are listening or better yet exploring the industry and consumer trends and anticipating the new pains that can be solved with their products.

The Power of Word of Mouth Marketing - Through Customer Service

Word of Mouth marketing is a new art in marketing and PR, they have their own association (WOMMA), there are new businesses that have grown around it BzzAgent, and Nielson’s BuzzMetrics are two well known ones. What is it?

At its foundation it is leveraging customers as the ideal influencers. Customers as influencers and purveyors of word of mouth advertising has been around for decades if not centuries, now it is being actively leveraged. The credibility branding model offers a way to examine this phenomenon; it is called “the customer acquisition value chain.” The idea is that there are different kinds of customers at different times in a corporate or product lifecycle (the lifecycle is outlined as the “trend,” “reality” “success” and “habit” stages, and can be found in the book, The Credibility Factor). The “promoting customer” is the evangelist in the group and embraces the product early, telling everyone around them who will listen about it. “The motivated customer” is motivated by what is starting to be the new cool hip thing and they in turn evangelize from that perspective. Following is a graphic that outlines the model.

In the final analysis, your brand is in part established by word of mouth, and that word of mouth can be managed in a number of ways. The best way is through listening to them and part of that is through customer service. Customer service is one of your best brand ambassadors.

Following is an article written by Peter Shankman, CEO of The Geek Factory. He outlines the importance of customer service and its impact on word of mouth marketing.

Company Beware – You Mess Up, It Is On The Internet In 30 Minutes!

Ever been denied a flight somewhere, even though you had a ticket with your name on it, and a seat assignment for you and your matching luggage? What’s the first thing you do? (After complaining and getting rebooked, obviously?)

You call someone and tell them about it. I don’t care if it’s your boyfriend, Grandma, or everyone under “M” in your mobile phone. The fact is, when we get screwed, we love nothing more than to tell the entire world just how badly screwed we got.

Keep in mind, though, it works the other way, too. When I get to the airport and find that my frequent flier status has gotten me a free upgrade, you can bet that I’m sending out text messages galore, describing every inch of my first class seat.

We’re a species of talkers. And if we can complain about something, (or more infrequently, be thrilled about something) it doesn’t mean anything unless there’s someone (or a multitude of people) to hear about it, and how cool Continental was for getting me into it.

Yet for some reason, very few companies think about this when planning their marketing or customer service guidelines. They don’t think how easy it would be to go online and register “thiscompanysucks.com” and blog about their awful experience. And this will usually nail them to the wall, over and over again.

Customer service begins at the lowest levels. Who’s dealing with the customer on a daily basis? The Director of Marketing? Doubtful they even know how to SPELL “customer.” It’s the customer service rep, the kid behind the sales counter, the cook frying up the burger. They’re the ones the customer sees. How many people can name where McDonald’s is headquartered? But how many can name exactly which McDonald’s, on exactly which corner, screwed up their order and didn’t put cheese on their burger?

Viral campaigns start this way, too, you know. When two business travelers were denied a guaranteed room at a DoubleTree hotel, they created a PowerPoint called “Yours is a very bad hotel.” By the time it’d wound up on the front page of USA Today, DoubleTree was humiliated, their PR department were downing Tums like they were candy, and reputations had been sullied. One smarter front-desk clerk would have avoided all of this.

When it comes down to it, customer service should always be a part of your marketing strategy, and we should assume that every customer has a camera/video phone, every client has a blog, and every user has a legion of fans waiting to hear the latest. Companies need to mesh together and be one on this commandment, from the CEO on down to the guy who chops the lettuce. In the end, the mantra has to be for the customer.

Do this, and customers will perform your marketing FOR you. You think I wear a shirt that says “Skydive The Ranch” because they pay me? No! I wear it because that’s where I learned to skydive. They took care of me, and I have an allegiance. If it was a bad time, you can bet that not only would I not be wearing their shirt, but I’d also have www.shydivetheranchsucks.com and would be linking the hell out of it. Fortunately for Skydive The Ranch, that didn’t happen, because they took care of me, and made me want to tell my friends.

Good or bad, companies have to assume that anything that happens is going to be on the Internet, or even worse, on TV, within 30 minutes of it happening.

Because 9 out of 10 times, it will be. And when it is, don’t you want it to be good news?

Peter Shankman is CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., and author of "Can We Do That?!: Outrageous PR Stunts That Work- And Why Your Company Needs Them." For more information, please visit: http://www.geekfactory.com you can also check out his blog at http://www.prdifferently.com/ 

Marketing Through a Crisis

What is the natural behavior that shows up during a crisis? People either retreat or take charge. During a business crisis, meaning anything that could go wrong in business, from ecoli to crashed sites, the same energies show up. The marketer is the first person that an executive team will pursue to manage the situation. They will want to be told what to do. So what do you do? First don’t panic, look at the situation and establish what the worst potential outcome could be and what would be the best potential outcome, and start your response plan from there. The worst is to retreat and not address it; you will lose many, many customers plan and simple. The best is to be up front and address the issue head on with honesty and sincerity. It is the same as nurturing any relationship, own up to the mistake and reverse it while explaining what you are doing along the way.

Here are a couple of check list items to perform when a crisis occurs:

1. Identify worst and best case scenarios, develop the plan and materials for the worst case first so you are prepared and have thought things through. Don’t ignore the worst, it is human nature to try to focus of the best, but a marketer has to plan for the worst.
2. At the same time you are working on the plan for the worst, put a message on the home page of the site immediately with a paragraph or two describing the situation and if possible some information on solutions being developed.
3. Put together a web site, the domain could be specific to the crisis or establish a page on your regular web site. Even if you never turn this site on have it ready ASAP to publish when appropriate.
   1. Have several versions of the web site ready to go: the “it is resolved” version, the “it is in process of being resolved” version and the; “stand buy for more updates on the timing for the resolution” version. In each version be up front and honest, sincerity is the name of the game here.
4. If it feels appropriate put out a press release, nip any media criticism in the bud before it happens. When you put the release out you manage and mold the messaging.
   1. The release should be succinct and to the point: what happened; how did it happen; what is being done to resolve it; and any other relevant information that can help guide customers and vendors to personal solutions.
5. Contact the influencer bloggers and industry influencers and apprise them of the situation. By personally letting them know they become an ally.
6. Contact your best customers and apprise them of the situation, don’t let them hear it from somewhere else.

By being proactive on all fronts you are managing the message –you have it, it doesn’t have you. When you resolve a mistake/crisis in this manner you usually come out the other end better than you went in. Your quick action and open dialogue likely created more very loyal customers than less. Just as in life, how you handle you errors and life’s challenges is more important than the error itself.

Following is a blog post from Giovanni Gallucci on his blog, The Agency Blog. It talks about a crisis that occurred this past weekend to the MyBLogLog folks. This is a great example of how to manage it. I think raw and current is better than lawyered and manicured. Their response was real and the blogging community in particular responds to real. In a large corporate situation a slightly different tone might apply. At the end of the day, be a marketer and know you audience and know how to speak to your audience. The MyBlogLog  team did just that.

Following is Giovanni’s blog post, or click on the link to go direct to the his blog. http://www.theagencyblog.com/the_agency_blog/2007/02/mybloglog_hercu.html 

MyBlogLog's Stellar Support

By Giovanni Gallucci

Hats off the Eric, Scott and the rest of the MyBlogLog team at combating the inevitable issues that crop up when you launch a service that grows faster that one could have every hoped for.

Over the weekend the service was hammered by a hacker/spammer that found an exploit in their code-base whereby the hacker could invite someone to be a co-author to their blog but also approve them w/o the author's knowledge.

This created quite a bit of angst for the network's users and owners. So how did the MyBlogLog team handle the situation? They jumped in over the weekend and started patching the code. No big deal on many levels. You'd expect them to do just that. But they also blogged about the situation in detail and kept the user-base updated on the situation. Their response was perhaps one of the better ones I've seen lately in such situations. The Flickr.com team tends to do a good job at this also. The commentary on the MyBlogLog Blog was honest, raw and up to the minute:

Oh. My. Gosh. This weekend sucked. No doubt about it. But we've beaten things back and we have a plan for making things better still. I'm going to tell you all about that in a minute.

Well done indeed. It wasn't polished. It most likely wasn't vetted by legal or PR. Raw, honest, simple and to the point. PR/Marketing pros can learn from this.

Who is your marketing influencer?

Question: How do you influence the influencers?

Answer: Figure out who they are.

And you might be surprised that they aren’t just a celebrity or a CEO… they might be in your own backyard (or city block as the case may be). The following blog entry from Mike Sansone author the ConverStations blog, is a simple case for what and who an influencer might be.

A Blogger, a Baker and a Relationship Maker

Working with business owners looking to boost their bottom line, a lot of our conversation centers around their marketing plans and practices.

Last month, I had a new restaurant owner ask my thoughts on who he should network with. I suggested he find a cab driver, a hotel front desk clerk and a bartender. Each one of these professionals are already in the habit of sharing their opinions. Become best business friends with those folks.

That said, if you're blogging and want to build business, create a few relationships (offline and online) with people that touch your target AND are in the habit of sharing their opinions.

If my target is retailers, I'm looking to hook up with a manufacturer, a distributor and a like-minded vendor.

If I'm a pet-sitter, find me a veterinarian, a pet store and the HR dept of the largest employer in the county.

If I sell sporting goods, team me up with athletic directors, coaches and distributors of apparel.

Think a bit outside of your target customers - on the fringe. If they blog - that's a big plus!

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That is the article. When you think about it this marketing stuff is really pretty straight forward. If you want this article from the source go to  http://www.converstations.com/2007/02/a_blogger_a_bak.html 

Marketing and Credibility Strategies – Using What You’ve Got, Inventing What You Haven’t

This is another excellent example of credibility branding in action. KnowledgeStorm has leveraged a great tactic to increase the credibility factor, namely a survey. But they didn’t just put a survey together they partnered with high profile publications, engaged credible resources to field the study, and used alternative mediums to get the results out. Smart, interesting and a good example of using the points of credibility and credibility driven strategies to increase awareness and revenues. Congratulations KnowledgeStorm.

KnowledgeStorm Emerging Media Series Campaign

Overview

Atlanta-based KnowledgeStorm is the Internet’s top-ranked search resource for technology solutions and information. KnowledgeStorm’s customers are B2B technology vendors located throughout the globe. Since 2000, KnowledgeStorm has offered programs that help customers reach potential technology buyers online and convert them into Web leads, including content distribution throughout the KnowledgeStorm Network, a network of 230 business and technology-related Websites, custom e-newsletters, site advertising and more. 

Challenges

KnowledgeStorm needed to build a platform of credibility to increase brand awareness as a thought leader in the online marketing, content distribution and lead generation space. The company also wanted to validate demand for two proposed new blog and podcast service offerings. KnowledgeStorm did not have a large budget to work with and wanted to find a way to raise its visibility and generate revenue opportunities quickly.

The Emerging Media Series campaign was developed to tie in objective research and a multi-faceted marketing effort to promote the KnowledgeStorm brand and its positioning as a thought leadership in the online marketing, content distribution and lead generation space. 

Solution

In order to position itself for market credibility, KnowledgeStorm engaged with an expert resource to validate the study data. KnowledgeStorm partnered with well known media service firm Universal McCann to help develop the questions and field the three studies on emerging media types and how B2B business and technology decision makers utilized these mediums as part of their purchasing decision process.

The roadmap for promoting the study results included multiple marketing tactics, such as a media relations effort, KnowledgeStorm’s monthly customer e-newsletter, online advertising, podcasts and coverage in Executive Vice President, Jeff Ramminger’s blog “Marketers Anonymous”.

Between the three studies, KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann fielded surveys to over one million B2B business and technology professionals. The first study on podcasts was released in July 2006. The second study on blogs and RSS feeds was released in August 2006. The final study on online video, social networks and Wikis was released in November 2006.

KnowledgeStorm leveraged its relationship with BtoB magazine, the top magazine reaching B2B marketers, to secure the initial exclusive coverage of the studies.

KnowledgeStorm produced a podcast of each study and included the information in sales presentations and outbound marketing campaigns to drive leads back to KnowledgeStorm. All studies and podcasts were made available for free on the KnowledgeStorm site.

Results

KnowledgeStorm’s public relations efforts generated nearly 100 online and print placements, including two front-page articles in BtoB magazine and a speaking engagement.

The campaign succeeded in getting the company visibility in the media and delivered interest from both existing and prospective customers. Based on KnowledgeStorm’s current statistics around average sales cycles, percentage of leads to appointments and percentage of appointments to sales, the company expects to generate nearly $700,000 in sales from a $20,000 total campaign spend.

The surveys gave KnowledgeStorm the validation it needed to launch its new blog and podcast services. KnowledgeStorm launched podcast content listings in July 2006. Since then, customers have posted 40 podcasts on KnowledgeStorm. In October 2006, KnowledgeStorm launched FindTech Blogs, which included 22 blogs, representing 11 B2B technology blog categories. The content for both of these offerings is expected to continue to grow.

Marketers Lament "I get no respect I tell ya"

I think one of the biggest problems an internal marketing department has in managing a brand is the word “brand.” It is one of those overused marketing jargon terms that most people don’t really understand, even though they think they are supposed to. What do people do who don’t know something but think they should? They avoid, avert and run away. To them a new brand strategy is like a nit distracting them from there already busy, busy, busy jobs. It just doesn’t make sense to them… who cares why bother, I have way too much to do. “Those marketing guys and their high and mighty ideas about a new brand strategy, ugh.” That is a mountainous behavioral and attitudinal challenge to overcome. Where does a poor marketing person get the respect they deserve, how do they get the message across to senior management about the successful launch of sound brand strategies and the thousands programs that have changed companies from last place to huge brand leaders?

To start why don’t we stop shoving the word “brand” down peoples throats and take a page out of our own recommendations and reference a program by its benefits. That guy tied to his desk doing busy work is not going to support it unless coerced and threatened. While not impossible it is difficult and expensive to create an internal brand culture through “management by objectives” or by using incentives. In most cases these are the tried and true methods. However, the opportunity is there to use our own marketing principles and show internal constituents the benefits, how it will personally change their lives. By using benefits statements to name and describe the program as a business building program, there will more buy-in and more success.

What does that mean? Ok, I am the Senior VP of Product Management, my product is sound, and it seems to be humming along just fine. Why do we need all this brand “window dressing.” Well instead let’s not even call it branding. Let’s instead talk about the sales cycle and how a switch in the consumer conversation can help that consumer to decide faster, accelerating the speed of the sales cycle. That is something a product manager is going to be interested in. It is the same branding strategy but is now positioned as a business strategy. If marketing departments were the purveyors of business strategies not brand or marketing strategies there would be less effort getting many senior managers on board. This is not to say that we can’t all be proud marketers and brand creators, but just like we have to know our customers, we have to know our senior management audiences, and know that “marketing” and “branding” are not the first words to use to create buy-in.

I don’t know how many conversations I have had with fellow marketing execs; “they don’t get us.” “Marketing is always the first budget to get cut… can you believe how ridiculous they are?” “Those dumb a@@ execs just can’t get their heads out of a spreadsheet long enough to blah, blah, blah.” We all know that in many organizations marketing gets short shrift; this is a clear perception problem. So why don’t we change our own language to our internal constituents and start getting off our own “high brand horse?” When I started describing programs with “why we were doing them” in the same sentence, it received more respect. For example, “increasing revenues through media awareness” was our PR program, and “word-of mouth lead generation programs,” were how we talked about our feet on the street/street teams branding programs, with these descriptions people were at least listening to me. Start from the beginning of a project to name the business benefits and leave the marketing jargon behind.

In Marketing; Perception is Reality

Ryan Marle’s recent posting on his Brand Alchemy blog offers an excellent exercise in understanding the principle of “perception is reality." This allows you to take a good hard look at  your brand and how your customers might see it. I offer a whole workshop on just this… Ryan’s version great to do right now… and I would suggest doing it! Here is the blog posting (or click on title to go to directly to the blog):

Visualize Your Product & or Brand

By Ryan Marle – Brand Alchemy

This exercise will give you a very deep understanding of your own representation of your product or brand and is one of the more powerful things you could do with your team as well. If you're not working on a product or brand, you definitely work with another of your favorite brands.

Find a comfortable place to sit down and relax. Notice how you can easily take a deep breath and close your eyes. Now, form an image of your product or brand in your mind. You can just take a minute and notice all the details of that image in your mind.

1. Is it in black & white or color
2. Where is it located from you (if you could point at it)
3. Is it near or far
4. What size is it
5. Are you part of it or are you looking in from the outside
6. Is it bright
7. Focused or unfocused
8. Moving or Still
9. Amount of Contrast
10. 3D or Flat

Are there any sounds that go with it? Notice the details of the sounds.
Are there any feelings that go with it? Notice the details of the feelings.

Now, we have a clear understanding of your own mental representation of your mental representation that you work with everyday.
Now, if your customers were to do the same thing, where would they see it? Is it the same? Different?
                                                    END

For more information on my "Perception is Reality" workshop, check out my book, The Credibility Factor .

Marketing’s Bottom Line; Simplicity and Clarity

“Marketers don't want to spin us. They want to hold us perfectly still, so they can figure out who we are, what we want, and how to reach us.”

The blog Branding Strategy Insider recently posted an article from contributor and renowned marketing trend philosopher Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm articulately talks about The Spin Myth. He cites example of historical marketers and brings us to some of the founding models of marketing.

This elegant piece is a perfect example of what Malcolm mentioned in the article...  “Marketers don't want to spin us. They want to hold us perfectly still, so they can figure out who we are, what we want, and how to reach us.” Malcolm holds us perfectly still and explains spin and direct marketing like he is guiding youngsters out of danger without alarming them. I love his writing style and his dead on perspectives. This is also a great example of calm, knowledgeable writing that should reflect the calm knowledgeable marketing and branding that companies should engage in. Even though it looks like this was written during the Clinton administration, it is even more relevant now. Social marketing is confirming much of what Malcolm discusses here. Thanks Malcolm for being that voice of reason in a sales driven and spin engineered world.

Following is the first one third of the article, click here for the whole thing

The Spin Myth February 09, 2007

Are our spin meisters just spinning one another?

On Easter Sunday, 1929, the legendary public-relations man Edward L. Bernays rounded up ten carefully chosen women, put cigarettes in their hands,and sent them down Fifth Avenue in what was billed as the Torches of Freedom march. The marchers were given detailed instructions, including when and how their cigarettes should be lit. Spokeswomen were enlisted to describe the protest as an advance for feminism. Photographers were hired to take pictures. It was an entirely contrived event that nonetheless looked so "real" that the next day it made front-page headlines across the country, prompting a debate over whether women should be allowed to smoke as freely as men, and--some historians believe--forever changing the social context of cigarettes. What Bernays never told anyone was that he was working for the American Tobacco Company.

It is difficult to appreciate how brazen Bernays's ruse was at the time. In the twenties, the expectation was that if you were trying to sell people something--even if you were planning to deceive them in the process--you had at least to admit that you were trying to sell them something. Bernays was guided by the principle that this wasn't true: that sometimes the best way to sell something (cigarettes, say) was to pretend to be selling something else (freedom, say).

Bernays helped the brewing industry establish beer as "the beverage of moderation." For Dixie cups, he founded the Committee for the Study and Promotion of the Sanitary Dispensing of Food and Drink. For the Mack truck company, he drummed up national support for highway construction through front groups called the Trucking Information Service, the Trucking Service Bureau, and Better Living Through Increased Highway Transportation. In a torrent of books and articles (including one book, "Crystallizing Public Opinion," that was found in Joseph Goebbels's library) he argued that the P.R. professional could "continuously and systematically" perform the task of "regimenting the public mind." He wasn't talking about lying. He was talking about artful, staged half- truth. It's the kind of sly deception that we've come to associate with the Reagan Administration's intricately scripted photo ops (the cowboy hats, the flannel shirts, the horse), with the choreographed folksiness of Clinton's Town Hall meetings, with the "Wag the Dog" world of political operatives, and with the Dilbertian byways of boardroom euphemism, in which firing is "rightsizing" and dismembering companies becomes "unlocking shareholder value." Edward L. Bernays invented spin.

Today, we're told, Bernays's touch is everywhere. The advertising critic Randall Rothenberg has suggested that there is something called a Media-Spindustrial Complex, which encompasses advertising, P.R., lobbying, polling, direct mail, investor relations, focus groups, jury consulting, speechwriting, radio and television stations, and newspapers--all in the business of twisting and turning and gyrating. Argument now masquerades as conversation. Spin, the political columnist E.J. Dionne wrote recently, "obliterates the distinction between persuasion and deception." Should P.R. people tell "the whole truth about our clients? No sirree!" Thomas Madden, the chairman of one of the largest P.R. firms in the country, declares in his recent memoir, entitled "Spin Man." In the best-seller "Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine," Howard Kurtz,the media critic for the Washington Post, even describes as spin the White House's decision in the spring of 1997 to release thousands of pages of documents relating to the Democratic fund-raising scandal.

This was the documentation that the press had been clamoring for. You might have thought that it was full disclosure. Not so, says Kurtz, who dubs the diabolical plan Operation Candor. In playing the honesty card, he argues, the White House preëmpted embarrassing leaks by congressional investigators and buried incriminating documents under an avalanche of paper. Of course, not releasing any documents at all would also have been spin (Stonewall Spin), and so would releasing only a handful of unrepresentative documents (Selection Spin). But, if you think that calling everything "spin" renders the term meaningless (if this is all spin, then what is not spin?), you've missed the point. The notion that this is the age of spin rests on the premise that everything, including the truth, is potentially an instrument of manipulation.

In "P.R. A Social History of Spin," the media critic Stuart Ewen describes how, in 1990, he went to visit Bernays at his home near Harvard Square, in Cambridge. He was ushered in by a maid and waited in the library, looking, awestruck, at the shelves. "It was a remarkable collection of books, thousands of them: about public opinion, individual and social psychology, survey research, propaganda, psychological warfare, and so forth--a comprehensive library spanning matters of human motivation and strategies of influence, scanning a period of more than one hundred years," he writes. "These were not the bookshelves of some shallow huckster, but the arsenal of an intellectual. The cross- hairs of nearly every volume were trained on the target of forging public attitudes. Here--in a large white room in Cambridge, Massachusetts--was the constellation of ideas that had inspired and informed a twentieth century preoccupation: the systematic molding of public opinion."

To finish the story (it’s worth it) go to http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2007/02/the_spin_myth.html