The YouTube Experience via 37 Signals

Another nice post from the fine folks at 37 Signals.

Army Strong, McCann Worldgroup Rich

Taps gently plays for “Army of one” the U.S. Army’s tagline for the past five years. While the Army, which achieves many of its goals by ensuring operational effectiveness through the suppression of individual identity for a group identity, Army of one was not a good slogan. Be all you can be still sounds pretty good to me. In comes, the less articulate “Army Strong.” The new slogan, which apparently was a result of qualitative research with Dr. Bruce Banner after he became very angry, is from McCann Worldgroup. The Army account is valued at $200 million annually.

“There’s strong, then there’s Army Strong” claims the new campaign. The Army missed recruiting numbers two years ago and bounced back to exceed its goal of 80,000 soldiers. But as Lee Corso likes to say, “not so fast, my friend. AdAge points out, to hit the numbers, the Army engaged in some Army Dumb (lower aptitude tests) and some Army Misdemeanor (arrests and drunken driving), plus some Army Coin (greater financial incentives) to make sure the Army (is) Strong.

From an identity campaign, this may be the shiny lure to get young recruits to bite, but does this help America feel good about their military or does it help Army alums to continue to feel a part of the symbolic community of the U.S. Army?



From AdAge:

The ads were unveiled today as the Army released year-end recruiting numbers showing it exceeded by 635 its goal of recruiting 80,000 soldiers, a 7,000-soldier increase in the Army's target from last year. The Army has added a number of recruiters and offered bonuses to students for entering the Army.

The Army said 2,600 of the new recruits came in as a result of lower aptitude standards, and there was a slight increase in the number of recruits accepted under waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems, including misdemeanor arrests and drunken driving.

Pontiac & The Paradox of Choice

Pontiac, one of the struggling brands, under the GM umbrella has launched a new campaign to support the “Build Your G6” effort makes a surprisingly silly claim. I caught the commercial three times during a college fottball broadcast yesterday. I had to listen carefully the second time, because I couldn’t believe what I heard the first time. Pontiac says that you can customize your Pontiac and that it "offers more combinations of options and accessories than there are drivers in America." I don’t dispute the claim (mix in a lot of unimportant things or smaller items and yes, lots of selections – by the same logic, Burger King could have hundreds of options to mix and match a whopper), I just wonder why you’d pack that piece of brand destroying language into a thirty second spot.

That’s not going to help you turn around your company or positively build your brand. Too many choices are not going to help. Please see my earlier post about choice or go read Barry Scwartz’s The Paradox of Choice.

I’ve said this before, but I believe in the not to distant future GM will make a great case study of what not to do with your brand. Remember, they’re paying companies big money to help them destroy their brand. You would think that brief for this project would have been "drive a commodity mindset for Pontiac and its potential customers."

Social networking sites are getting "older"

Apparently, when it comes to social networking, twenty-five now constitutes "older."

Clarity in language and design

Matt, over at the 37 Signals blog Signal vs Noise, has a great post about jargon in language and Chartjunk (Tufte) in the presentation of concepts.

The folks over at 37 Signals are doing a great job on focusing on simplicity and function.

The Clotaire Report: Cracking the Code

I recently read The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way To Understand Why People Around The World Live And Buy As They Do by Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille is a French-born psycho-analyst, anthropologist, and marketing consultant. Rapaille is also a bit of philosopher in his latest treatise on culture. However, I don’t think that he’ll be celebrated in his home country among the pantheon of great French philosophers. Then again, I don’t think you’re reading this blog to discuss Camus, Sarte, Foucault, or Bourdieu. Although, Bourdieu’s “Language & Symbolic Power” is a great read and his work on symbolic capital is insightful, as we work to deconstruct what it means to live in a symbolically created reality.

Back to Clotaire Rapaille and Culture Code. I was intrigued by Rapaille after seing The Persuaders on PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/ Rapaille’s description of the reptilian brain is useful in conducting research and audience segmentation – essentially, we don’t need to over-think why one likes our dislikes something. The reptillian brain is why we have Humvees in Manhattan - you can't really explain it logically, but emotionally, well that's another story. For Rapaille it’s either on code or off-code. And the code is simple, or should be. In his opioinin, it should be one word. I feel that some of his descriptions are over-simplified and sound more like an opinionated drunk. To his credit, his discussions of different cultures (in his book he compares and contrasts Italian, U.S., French, German, and Japanese cultures) help illustrate key differences in how culture influences meaning, motive, and identity, as individuals make purchasing decisions.

Qualitative researchers may be interested in his research methods which are built around a three-tiered interview structure. Rapaille tries to get to the deep meaning and emotion behind products and services by structuring his three-hour, in-depth interviews around the following questions:
1. How would you explain this (product/service) to me if I were an alien from outer space seeing it for the first time?
2. Utilizing magazine pictures, which pictures depict how you feel about this product or service?
3. What’s the emotional code – what’s your first memory associated with this product/service?

Those questions, while not exactly novel, help cut to the emotional connection and code associated with a product or service. I dare say its too simple, and not in a good Occam’s Razor kind of way. But, it can be effective.

Overall, Rapaille is doing some interesting work, but his opinions cloud the value of the research.

Now, look back at our picture of the author, from the book jacket and the Random House page for the Culture Code, is that on code or off-code?

Publishing Plug

I wanted to let readers know that you can now subscribe to Sanctioning Agent’s Notes from the Field. If you’re so inclined, to subscibe, please do so. I’ve added publishing chicklets for Feedburner, Google, Yahoo, Bloglines, and Technorati under the “Field Links” section of the blog.

I hope it helps you keep up-to-date with Notes from the Field.

End transmission.

Lovemarks and agency as commodity

More on LOVEMARKS. Hoag Levins and Ad Age editor, Jonah Bloom, discuss Kevin Roberts, his book LOVEMARKS, and the ad agencies as commodities, in the lastest edition of Why It Matters.