Looking for something salty to get rid of my daughter’s cramps during competition I came upon this “healthy” snack. Yup, Multi Grain Pringles. Baked Doritos and Cheetos have been around for awhile and I sneered at them too, but somehow the Multi Grain Pringles really blew my mind.

I suppose that I should be thinking “Wow, I can have my Pringles AND the added benefit of fiber too.” But instead I’m thinking “Who is Pringles trying to fool?” These are are starch filled, molded, salty beyond belief, “crisps” in a can. Any benefit that fiber they have added is going to give me will be a negligible health benefit compared to the salt and empty calories.

Now I’m an organic shopping, farm share subscribing, sometime vegetarian daughter supporting kind of guy. So from my point of view this is an invalid brand extension, but what do you think? Is this a valid addition to the brand? Does this enhance the product or is it just lame? Let me know in the comments.

Lipstick On A Potato Chip is a post from: Trumblog

I’ve written before about the danger of becoming a helicopter brand. The way to avoid this of course is to constantly deliver on your brand promise and then over deliver when you don’t.

Case in point:
This week I’m in Atlanta chaperoning my daughter and one of her friends at the Us Fencing Summer Nationals. They are performing well, but I cannot say as much for the hotel where we are staying.

Before my trip I was told that the hotel had been overbooked for the first night and that they were moving us to a different hotel for that night at no cost, plus an additional free night at the correct hotel as well as covering the necessary taxi rides and free breakfast for all. Yes, an inconvenience, but they made good. They wanted to put us in a hotel at the airport, but we negotiated for a room in town.

Unfortunately when we arrived at the hotel that we agreed upon we were told that they had no rooms and that we were supposed to be at the airport hotel. When we got there our rooms we were told that our rooms had been canceled. Some negotiations and phone calls and we weren’t sleeping on the streets of Atlanta.

Once we got to our hotel the next day we found out that the refrigerator that we requested was not available and that the rollaway bed that we reserved would not fit in the room, which resulted in needing a second room though they knocked one night off our stay in that second room. They then delivered breakfast vouchers that they promised only they left 1 out meaning another trip to the lobby to ask for what we were promised.

Checking out of that room and into another one I happened to leave stuff behind, which turned up in their lost and found and retrieving it was perhaps the most pleasant experience I’ve had resolving a situation with my stay.

Now here is what could have happened: I could have been inconvenienced on the first night of my stay, but raved about how well they took care of me. I could be writing about how the Omni does a great job of not nickeling and dimming it’s guests for wifi and just asking for some contact information, rather than complaining that their IT support staff couldn’t get my laptop online. I could be telling the story of a hotel that found the stuff that I stupidly left in my room. I could be raving about how clean the hotel is or how close it is to the venue, but instead I’ll pass on that the smell of the cleanser was over powering and that bad layout of the elevators and floor levels confused everyone. I could have had a great experience with the Omni hotel, but they did everything that they could to avoid that.

So, a few lessons from this fiasco.

1. Keep your promises.
2. Screwing up is ok as long as you make good.
3. Make sure that you do not screw up a second time when making good.
4. If you screw up a second time you need to doubly make good.
5. Do not make people ask for you to deliver on a promise to make good on a previous screw up.
6. There are many opportunities to make people happy, don’t blind your customers to those moments because you dropped the ball too many times before.

Update:
This blog post and a tweet about my wifi connection issues got a response from the Omni, first via Twitter and then a call offering additional IT support. By that time I’d worked around things with my BlackBerry and iPad and preferred to watch my daughter compete than be on the phone with the hotel IT department. Then when I returned to my hotel room at 11PM on the last night of my stay there was a table laden with snacks and drinks as well as an apology note. I appreciate the thought from Omni, though we ended up rolling the table to a friend’s room since there was no possible way that we could consume all of the drinks and snacks ourselves nor in the 7 hours we had left in the room. The sentiment was right, but the delivery a little off.

Screwing Up The Brand Experience is a post from: Trumblog

The most interesting trend in the development of the Internet is not how it is changing people’s ways of thinking but how it is adapting to the way that people think.

- Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Author, The Stuff of Thought

What viewpoint do you have?  Are you changing the way that people think or understanding their expectations and building a message that suits them? They are polarizing ideas. Do you develop strategies that encourage people to act in the way that you want or acknowledge how people act and support them? Force or pander? Proprietary system or open platform? One true vision or constant iteration?

There are lots of knee jerk reactions to these two ideas, but does a single minded subscription to one of these ideologies really achieve your end goal? Apple or Google?  Facebook or Twitter? In each of these examples we can see the benefits and drawbacks of each ideology.  I’m more of an understand the audience and provide them with the tools and media they are hungry for kind of guy, of course what I lose there in terms of consistent experience, maintaining customer touch points and general lack of control.  But that it’s not always the best or even a possible option and changing peoples way of thinking becomes the objective.   Know your prejudices and mindset then challenge them for the benefit of the project at hand.  That’s what leads to the best possible experience.

Changing People Or Adapting To Them is a post from: Trumblog

I’m actually not in the office this week, I’m working from the US Fencing Summer Nationals in Atlanta where I am cheering on my daughter. But I realized that I didn’t mention that I switched offices a couple weeks ago away from the producers and coordinators so that I’m now surrounded by geeks like me the digital team. Not only that, but I got a window out of the move, though the view is nothing like what I had back in Cambridge.

Switched Offices is a post from: Trumblog

A couple weeks ago I wrote about coffee enhanced with the essence of bacon. Then I found this new blend of coffee that can deliver an enhancement that that is even more compelling than the flavor of bacon. What could that be you ask? Why sex of course.

Yes, Magic Power Coffee is a special blend that awakens both your mind and body. Not only does it taste great, but will also “increase the romance, passion and satisfaction in your love-life” for both men and women. Of course this isn’t just your basic cup of Joe, it’s a “combination of natural herbs, vitamins and minerals” including goji berry, American ginseng and of course “horny goat weed.”

No, I’m not making that last part up.

Coffee AND Sex is a post from: Trumblog

Last week there was some hubbub over Eiso’s calendar of pinup girl X-rays. Some thought they were very creative in using a common product calendar subject (think Perelli tires) in a unique way that suited their product. Others thought that it was just a new take on a stereotypical image. I guess that I agree with both camps.

Then the other morning I found out that an X-ray of Marilyn Monroe’s chest was auctioned off for $45,000. I don’t know which came first nor if one influenced the other and I don’t really care. I just like the serendipity of the two events.

Marketing Imitates Life (Or Vice Versa) is a post from: Trumblog

Unlike what you were probably taught in school atoms don’t actually look like a miniature solar system with the nucleus surrounded by electrons in perfect little elliptical orbits. The electrons actually form a cloud around the nucleus where the electrons “could” be at any time. In other words those electrons are not in a standard orbit, they do what they like.

In marketing, the core brand message has supporting media and touch points orbiting around it. It’s nice to think of these opportunities for engagement to be orbiting in tidy paths for customers to interact with in exactly the way that we planned, but of course it doesn’t really work that way. Consumers do what they want, how they want, when they want. They want online and offline media. They want it at this very moment and in the future when they’ll have time, they want to lean back with it and make it their own or share it with friends. Clearly then, prescribed interactions on demarcated paths are going to lose large sets of your intended audience.

Lately I’ve used the image of an electron cloud to describe the marketing tactics needed to allow customers and brands to interact most fully. It requires content and opportunities for engagement across multiple channels often duplicated so that customers’ interaction is customized to their unique use case. Allowing customers then to engage on their own terms increases opportunities and relevancy.

Only a subset of your customers will run into a roadshow event or have the time to stop and check it out. But a social media presence can help more customers become aware of it so it becomes a destination. A microsite makes the event findable by the curious, but time strapped. Social media again can be harnessed to spread the event beyond the location and moment so that while it is experienced by fee it is then shared with many. This also provides new opportunities for brand interaction by monitoring these channels and directly engaging the brand advocates via these channels, thanking them, answering questions and generally welcoming them into the experience brand. It’s the Event Social Agent facilitation that I’ve written about before.

So how are you marketing? Are your touch points on specific paths where you hope people will run into them? Or are they a cloud where your customers and brand advocates can find them wherever they are and can use them in the way that best suits their needs?

The Electron Cloud of Marketing is a post from: Trumblog

Over the last few months at Jack Morton I’ve been working with the team producing videos for Gillette to be posted on YouTube and a variety of other social video sites around the web.  Well, they are finally wrapped, posted and generating millions of views.  Watch and enjoy.

What’s the Perfect Length for Your Man?

How Often Do You Do It?

How Do You Like It Shaved?

Show Some Skin at Work

Shaving Scenarios Gone Social is a post from: Trumblog

A few short short notes on what’s up here on the Trumblog.

First, I updated to WordPress 3.o.  It was uneventful, except that in order to use the auto-upgrade I needed to deactivate all of my plugins and then re-activate them all again once the upgrade was complete.  It was a good excuse to review my plugins, deactivate a few and tweak some settings so I’m not complaining.  Otherwise the update is stable and without any problems that I have noticed.  I haven’t explored any of the new features in WordPress 3.0 yet, so I won’t offer a judgment except that any upgrade that doesn’t break anything is a good upgrade.

Second, I switched my lifestream page over to the Lifestream WordPress plugin.  My old lifestream page had been down for awhile, I wasn’t keeping up with the tweaking that was necessary and I worked out the issues with some of the feeds in the lifestream and I’m pleased with the layout and functionality of the page now.

Finally, I haven’t been keeping up with my blogging and social media schedule that I had hoped to.  Things got busy. I stopped putting in the effort. The next thing that you know a week or two passes without blogging.  I have a new tool that should support my blogging both through technological support and topics to blog about. The second half of the year is almost upon us and I’ve got renewed energy to publish.  I hope that you find the results enjoyable.

Programming Notes is a post from: Trumblog

The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.
- Paul Watzlawick

Not a week goes by when I’m not talking with someone who makes a sweeping generalization about how people act based solely on their own personal experience.  I know that I get caught up believing that the world is made of urban, middle class, college educated, liberal 40 year olds who are fluent in online social media and have 2 bilingual teen daughters. As easy as it is to believe that the rest of the world spends evenings eating milanesas con papas before settling down to watch Dr Who reruns on Netflix through their Wii while updating Facebook and Twitter from their laptops  it turns out that my family is pretty unique, as are those of my neighbors, friends and co-workers.

It is known as the “focus group of one” and it’s hard to avoid.  Do your parents in their 60s not use the internet, email or Facebook?  Then all people over 60 must not (despite the fact that this segment of the population has the highest rate of internet adoption I still get this a lot).  Do your kids live online, are digital natives and run the technology in your house? Then all kids must be like that (though I have one teen daughter who can barely figure out the remote control to our TV and I was on Faceboook before any of them).

It’s critical to remind yourself that there is no normal, there is no everyman, and you are certainly not them.  Assuming that that the way you act and how you do things or want things to be is a good guide to how others will want it is a viewpoint that leads to failure in strategy. Here are some ways that I avoid it and maybe they will work for you.

1. Identify the other – My father used the internet for business, as a government contractor, before I did.  My mother just got a home computer a couple years ago.  These are two opposing lifestyles, but both are valid.  Identify a friend or relative with an opposing world view from yours and use them as a persona when considering strategy.
2. Follow the 5% not the 80% – When looking at data the  majority is seductive.  What are most people doing, let’s cater to them.  But how about the outliers?  The 5% of people.  Are they the trailing edge or the early adopters.  Why are the doing what they are doing rather than going with the herd?  People do things for a reason; take the time to understand theirs.
3. Acknowledge that people do things for a reason – Remember that day when you realized that people aren’t just evil to be evil and that they wrongly thought that they are doing the right thing?  I know that it was a whole new way of thinking about Darth Vader.  Anyway people typically don’t do things for no reason.  They do things because of some benefit, no matter how small.  They do things because they are a little easier than doing something else.  They do things because it is a habit.  Find those reasons and walk a mile in those shoes for a new experience.

Give those a shot and see if they don’t help you avoid the most dangerous of delusions and in the comments let me know if you have other ways of avoiding the “focus group of one.”

The Most Dangerous Of All Delusions is a post from: Trumblog