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Creativity – That Lightbulb Moment is Actually a Process

At some point throughout our lives, we lost our way. We lost our ability to dream, to take risks, to fail. With all of life’s responsibilities and an effort to protect some type of image that we’ve built, we lost our creativity. It reminds me of the movie Hook when Peter Pan gets old and fat and completely loses his imagination. There is a scene in the movie where Peter Pan meets Rufio and the Lost Boys. Well, he doesn’t really meet them because, at some point, they knew each other until Peter Pan lost his way.

In this scene, the Lost Boys are told he is Peter Pan, but they don’t believe him. At one point, Peter says, “I want to speak to a grown-up,” to which Rufio replies, “All grown-ups are pirates.” Accurate…

Later on in the movie, he doesn’t transform into the “real” Peter Pan until he uses his imagination. Once he starts using his imagination, he can alter the world around him. This movie is an excellent metaphor for how our responsibilities and stresses in life shape us into a version of ourselves that is quite different than our potential. Unless we nurture it, creativity, and our ability to believe in our creative ideas, tends to fade. We replace creative ideas with ideas and processes that have worked in the past. It’s the reason the joke exists of asking why something is done a certain way, and you will invariably get a response of “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Settling for good enough solutions to problems is easy, and many executives have a long to-do list. However, just because it’s easier doesn’t mean it’s better. For really complicated issues or systemic issues, it’s usually not. That’s why most of the top universities teach a customer-centric, empathy-focused, design thinking approach to solving problems. While this isn’t an article on design thinking, many of the steps in the creative process overlap with a design thinking model. Much like design thinking, the more you use the creative process, and the better you understand why creativity operates the way it does, the better you will get at creatively solving problems.

Creativity is a Process

Creativity doesn’t come from a magic ether where musicians and artists are the only people who have the right spell; it’s actually a process. More specifically, it’s a macro process that involves several micro-processes. Although the details of the macro process differ, the most famous example was developed by Graham Wallas in 1926. This four-stage process involves preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification[1]. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these steps in the creative process.

Preparation

The preparation step of the creative process is where you collect information and think about the problem. Since everyone can be creative, this could be anything. It could be researching a customer segment with primary data. It could be reviewing industry trends. It could be constructing empathy maps or buyer personas. In many cases, it can help for the preparation phase to define the problem that you are trying to solve. As many design thinkers will tell you, a well-defined problem is one that is half-solved.

Incubation

Although this is the easiest step, it’s often one of the most challenging parts for many people in decision-making positions to allow. Creativity rarely happens in the board room. It rarely makes appearances in team meetings. It often occurs at really strange times, usually when you are not even thinking about the problem. That’s because creativity requires an incubation period. You have to walk away from the problem and do something entirely different for your neural network to build linkages between other parts of your associative network.

Do you get your best ideas when you are out for a walk or driving home or in the middle of the night to the point where you can’t get back to sleep? That’s the incubation period. It takes time for your brain to fully digest and comprehend the problem to solve it. It’s why I recommend working on large and important projects one piece at a time with a more measured approach rather than working as much as you can until it’s off of your to-do list. You will have better ideas along the way, and you won’t stifle your creativity by not allowing for proper incubation periods to set in.

Illumination

Illumination is the part of the creative process that most people think of when they think of creativity. This is the aha moment. It’s the part where you get the creative idea to solve the problem. You suddenly know what you will do, and you’re kicking yourself for not thinking about this sooner. You may have had this experienced this feeling two days after a meeting, thinking about what you should have said or thought of a better way of doing something that is already done. Regardless of the situation, this is the illumination stage of the creative process.

However, this part doesn’t happen without the other parts. Without the right information or enough, this part doesn’t happen. There’s no magic creative ether. There’s no one type of person that is creative; everyone is creative. Everyone can, and does, go through this process with any complex problem; you probably just don’t realize that you do.

Illumination happens because we’ve allowed the first two steps to start building an associative network. An associative network is our brain’s way of connecting different things.[2] Our brains have a way of categorizing and associating different things together. It’s the reason that when you think of jelly, you probably think of peanut butter, or when you think of cereal, you also think of milk. These linkages in our brains are also helpful in connecting two previously unassociated items to now be associative, and voila, you’ve got creativity. At some point, we’d never associated computers with phones or satellites with navigation, but at some point, somebody joined them in their associative network. Creativity is all just one big process of connecting the dots.

Verification

I hate to break it to you, but your creative idea might be crap. I know, I know…I just spent a lot of time telling you that ANYONE can be creative, and it’s a simple process. Well, it is, but the thing that can hang many people up is the last step in the process, verification. Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and great creative ideas require adoption from other people. Each person has a unique worldview, and while on the one hand, all the freaky people make the beauty of the world, on the other hand, a great creative idea has to have appeal to more than just you to be successful. Not only does it need to appeal to you, depending on the technology, but it might also be something people need to change their behaviors to adopt.

Luckily, we know a lot about how product adoption works too. I’m not going to get too much into this because it deserves its own post. Still, the cycle of product adoption follows a five-group cycle with the innovators, followed by the early adopters, then the early majority, then the late majority, and finally the laggards. Product adoption can vary from continuous innovation, which doesn’t require consumers to adopt new learning, to discontinuous innovation, which could require considerable new learning to adopt a product. In the creative process, the verification of your idea will be dependent on your degree of innovation, the size of your market, your positioning, and a whole lot of other things that are involved with a product rollout.

Everyone Can Be Creative

Let me reiterate this point; everybody can be creative. Well, I guess unless you are in accounting, that’s just called fraud. Creativity keeps everything moving. It keeps things interesting. It allows you to solve problems you might have thought were not solvable. Our creativity adds so much to our lives and will enable us to think in ways that enrich our own lives and the lives around us. The next time you have a complex problem, instead of defaulting to your typical behaviors, try running through the creative process and see what kind of outcome that you can create.

[1] Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

[2] http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/associative-networks/#:~:text=Associative%20networks%20are%20cognitive%20models,may%20become%20linked%20in%20memory.

Do You Struggle With Imposter Syndrome? You’re Not Alone

Have you ever doubted yourself? Have you second-guessed your achievements? Do you look at other people’s work or achievements on LinkedIn and get depressed? If so, you may be experiencing the ever-pervasive imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is not a diagnosis, but it is a known psychological condition. When a person has persistent self-doubt about their accomplishments, it is accompanied by the fear of self-doubt despite ongoing success. [1] Unfortunately, the odds are that you actually will experience imposter syndrome, as 70% of people experience this feeling.[2] While I know from experience that this is a problem with creatives, it can show up in really any line of work. Before I get into this further, let me be clear that I am not qualified to give any type of mental health advice. I’m just trying to give you a little perspective and talk about a few items that have helped me through imposter syndrome. I’m not a mental health professional, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express prior to the world turning into a trash fire.

Types of Imposter Syndrome

According to Dr. Valerie Young, there are five different types of imposter syndrome.[3]

The Perfectionist
The Superwoman/Superman
The Natural Genius
The Soloist
The Expert

Let’s look at each of these a little more in-depth.

The Perfectionist

The perfectionist is probably the most common subtype of imposter syndrome. The perfectionist is the type of person that needs to make sure that every last detail is taken care of to their standards. Notice that I pointed out “to their standards.” Since perfection doesn’t exist, what could tend to happen is the perfectionist is unable to relinquish any type of control to anyone else. They then carry a more significant workload, and when they make a mistake, the cycle of self-doubt starts to circulate, which creates the process of imposter syndrome over again. It’s also been found that treating intolerance of uncertainty of obsessions could lessen the distress of perfectionism.[4]

The Superwoman/Superman

In this type of imposter syndrome, the person tries to take on as much as they can in an effort to try and keep up with their colleagues. The term workaholic is often associated with this group. Think of the person that is the first one in the office and the last one to leave. They like to take on any and every challenge thrown their way. The problem that can occur with this type of thinking is that all of your validation comes from your work. You can lose your sense of self and get stuck in continual burnout because you don’t know when to stop taking on new challenges.

The Soloist

Are you afraid to ask for help? Maybe you feel like you can or would instead handle everything on your own. You might have trouble as a soloist. The problem with trying to take everything on your own is that you are likely to burn out. Also, as a soloist, your accomplishments are always only as good as your work. When you can work with others and delegate, your achievements are magnified by the amount of influence you have to effect change.

The Natural Genius

Do you thrive under pressure? Maybe you make great decisions in the moment with little research or effort into studying the problem. You might just fall into the natural genius category. A natural genius may have trouble when they encounter an issue or series of problems that do not fall under their area of expertise. They may not attempt challenges that make them look like they are struggling with a topic.

The Expert

Do you feel like your worth is derived by how much you know about a subject? Are you always trying to understand and learn more about that subject to try and justify your worth? While the expert is still incredibly knowledgeable about a topic, their insecurities lie in that they feel like they don’t and will never know enough.

I Hope My Continual Struggle with Imposter Syndrome is Relatable

Although I’ve drifted back and forth between imposter syndrome categories, I would describe my overarching feeling a little differently. I’d describe it as more of an underdog type of theme throughout my career. My marketing journey was unconventional, and I often get crippling instances of imposter syndrome, especially when I compare myself to others that started with a more traditional path. In undergrad, I studied music and was in a program centered around the music business. Not only that, but I entered this program in the worst possible time in the history of the world to join a music business program, right as Napster had launched. So Napster upended the industry, but I was stubborn and decided to go for it anyway. I applied to just about every internship that I could find, and in 2003, I found myself with two concurrent internships in Nashville. One of those internships involved helping Colin Hay’s career (yep, the guy in Men at Work). I wrote about that whole experience here.

Upon graduation, I used my experience to land a job at a small Bluegrass record label. I was 22 and thrust into a position where I immediately had responsibilities over the P&L, hiring, contract negotiations, and vendor relations. I had no experience in any of those areas and barely touched on any of these subjects during school. The only framework I had on how to run a record label came from a three-month unpaid internship. I did the best that I could, and I ended up hiring a couple of my friends from college. Somehow we made it work, won a couple of awards, signed new artists, and secured a record distribution agreement with Sony.

After a couple of years, I wanted to get out of the music industry and grow my marketing experience. I had no idea how to do this and I just kind of turned into a loose cannon applying to any and every job that I could. That didn’t work, so I zeroed in on the idea that if I wanted to learn more about marketing, I needed to join a marketing agency.

I connected with an agency that was close to where I grew up, got an interview, and got a job selling their marketing services. I was 25 years old, and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. There were people at this agency that had deep relationships with some pretty big clients. There was also someone I worked with, who was super intimidating, that had a Ph.D. Here I was with an education heavy on subjects like ear training, recording studio techniques, and performance and I was expected to perform at the level of people with 10+ years of formal education. Every day I felt like a rudderless ship, so I tried to read every book that I could find on marketing techniques and leaned on other people in the agency’s experience. At that job, I had a major failure with a client that literally got me yelled out of the room. It made me want to quit, but somehow I was able to dust myself off and go back and win the business. Through it all, I felt like I was just faking it the entire time.

After my agency experience, I joined a company that distributed 6,500 different products. I was in charge of 11 different private-label brands and helped develop and launch a $20MM electronic cigarette brand that ended up being sold in Sam’s Club and Walmart. From day one, I had key decision-makers of the company asking me what we needed to do on everything from packaging design to pricing. I felt like I was completely over my head. I had zero distribution experience, zero retail experience, and the largest company I had ever worked for, to that point, was maybe $4-$5MM in annual revenue. Now I was expected to make critical decisions for a $200MM company with customers worldwide. I ended up working a lot of hours and trying to learn as much as I could from everyone that would give me the time. I always had a seed of doubt that maybe I wasn’t cut out for making big decisions throughout my time.

That brings me to where I’ve been for the past decade, leading the marketing for a company that sells and refurbishes private jets. When I joined this company, I was concerned by how technical the products are and how segmented and small the audiences were. Some of the key audiences only have less than 500 potential customers in the entire world. I was also expected to drive in leads pretty early after joining the company. I felt like I needed more time, that I needed to learn more, and I was afraid I would fail. The company participates in many more tradeshows than I had ever coordinated before this job, and many customers were influential CEOs of large organizations.

Imposter syndrome nags at you. If imposter syndrome nags at you as much as it nags at me, you never quite feel comfortable. You’re always chasing an impossible feeling of validation. As with any problem, you have to deal with it, and the first step in dealing with the problem is acknowledging that it exists. And as any student of design thinking will tell you, a well-defined problem is half solved, you can start to take steps to resolve imposter syndrome.

I am certainly no expert on managing these feelings, and I would never claim to know what can help other people manage through this struggle. I can only let you know what I have done to help mitigate the feelings of imposter syndrome.

game tricks play cheats — Photo by Negative Space on Pexels.com

Here’s what I’ve done:

Take well-defined breaks from work. Responding to your email in the middle of the night should not be how your employer measures your value. It should be more about how you create and add value to the organization.

Grow a network of like-minded individuals. Too often, many people go through different phases of their life and never hold on to the people that have made a difference in their life. I recently started an MBA networking group with people within my school that I enjoyed meeting. I’ve got another 25 years left in my career, and it’s easier to work through issues with the help of others.

Move on from mistakes. I hate making mistakes. When you’re in marketing, your mistakes are typically pretty amplified because you are the organization’s external (and sometimes internal) communications arm. It happens, and you letting a handful of mistakes get in the way of years of good work can lead to the toxic trap of imposter syndrome.

Exercise every day. I cannot emphasize the importance of exercise on my mental health and creativity enough. On a rainy day, I can feel the impact of not getting outside. Many studies link exercise and mental health, but the effect that it’s had on my creativity is something that I always use. Creatively solving a problem doesn’t happen spontaneously. It needs an incubation period, and exercise is a perfect time to let your mind wander and connect your neurons in a way that you wouldn’t just sitting at a desk.

Try the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique is a way of time blocking that keeps you focused on completing one thing for 25 minutes and then gives you a purposeful 5-minute break. This is the only way that I’ve been able to get through grad school with a baby while working full time and writing 3,000-word articles every other week. If I can find 25 minutes, I’ll take it and try to apply it to something on my to-do list. This has also allowed me to focus on my daughter because I don’t have one eye on her and one eye on work or school.

Don’t compare yourself with others. I don’t know any other way of saying this that doesn’t sound cliché, but your life and career journey are unique. They’re part of your overall life story. In most instances, the best part is that the journey’s not over yet. You might have many years to continue to write this story, and all good stories have twists and turn within a plot. A problem that arises when we compare ourselves to others is that we’re not typically comparing ourselves to one other person. With social media, we’re comparing ourselves to everyone. That’s an unwinnable mental battle.

The Social Media Trap

Remember the days where you had to go to someone’s Facebook page to find out what they were posting? Social media, really any type of social media, is a highlight reel of people’s personal and professional lives. The problem gets compounded when not only are you viewing someone else’s highlight reel, but you’re viewing EVERYONE’s highlight reel. Go ahead, pick a social media platform and start scrolling. Unless you’re getting into many arguments on Facebook or seeing many people “double-tapping the image” on LinkedIn (PLEASE STOP DOING THIS), for the most part, you are seeing things that everyone that you’re connected with want you to see. It’s sort of like talking to someone that is a compulsive gambler. They’ll always tell you about all of the times they won and never tell you about the times that they’ve lost.

Many of our mentors challenge us to make sure we’re not the smartest person in the room. If you follow this advice and you’re ambitious, you may be connected to many people on LinkedIn: CEOs, heads of departments in large companies, or successful entrepreneurs. If so, your feed will be a highlight reel of people you aspire to be, which could ultimately harm your mental health and well-being. Studies have shown that comparing yourself to others who are seen as “doing better” than you on social media leads to envy and depression.[5]

So What Can Be Done?

Again, I’m not qualified to give advice, and I’d never claim to know what could help, but I can reiterate what I did that has helped me over the years. I am the type of person that feels empowered by knowledge. Before I knew that imposter syndrome existed, all of these emotions would just really be fragmented in my mind. Now that I know that this is a problem, and not only that, it’s a prevalent problem that many different people struggle with, I find it easier to walk away from the feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and frustration that tend to accompany imposter syndrome. Again, it goes back to design thinking and fully understanding and defining a problem. Just defining imposter syndrome allows for efforts to solve the problem.

The other difficulty is the way that imposter syndrome hits creative people. I’m not necessarily talking about people in a typical “creative” field like graphic design or advertising; I’m talking about real creative people. Creativity is all about connecting the dots between problems and solutions. Creativity can be found in just about every field, except maybe accounting. That type of creativity is called fraud… When you are creative, you take risks. You step outside of your comfort zone. You are not afraid to lead the way and offer your opinion on how to go against the status quo in an effort to make your organization a better place. When you do this, you are invariably going to make a mistake.

As a creative person, your mistakes will be more public than others that are comfortable just doing what they’re told to do. Making decisions is mentally challenging. Because you are not always going to make the right decision, you are probably spending more time reflecting on yourself and your abilities than non-creatives. Although self-reflection is typically healthy, it is also an opportunity for imposter syndrome to creep in through self-doubt. The next time this happens, realize that it’s more than likely just imposter syndrome trying to derail you from your path forward.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/impostor%20syndrome

[2] https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/IJBS/article/view/521

[3] Young, Valerie. 2011. The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It.

[4] Reuther, E.T., Davis, T.E., III, Rudy, B.M., Jenkins, W.S., Whiting, S.E. and May, A.C. (2013), INTOLERANCE OF UNCERTAINTY AS A MEDIATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PERFECTIONISM AND OBSESSIVE‐COMPULSIVE SYMPTOM SEVERITY. Depress Anxiety, 30: 773-777. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1002/da.22100

[5] Wei Wang, Mingzhu Wang, Qian Hu, Pengcheng Wang, Li Lei, Suo Jiang,

Upward social comparison on mobile social media and depression: The mediating role of envy and the moderating role of marital quality, Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 270, 2020, Pages 143-149

One-Minute MBA Concepts – The Law of Demand

Economics is all about scarcity, and scarcity drives pricing. Most people have a general understanding of the interplay of supply and demand without really knowing how it works. As one half of the supply/demand interplay, the law of demand states that the quantity demanded rises as price falls. This takes into account two items, the substitution effect, which indicates price changes relative to another good, and the income effect, which says that the change in price changes disposable income.

If the demand curve is linear, the relationship can be estimated with the demand curve formula Qd=a-b(P), whereas Qd is the quantity demanded in number of units, a is a constant which represents the demand determinants (this is the X intercept), b is the relationship between Qd and price, which is a negative (inverse slope of the demand curve), and P is price.

The demand curve slopes downward on a graph. This is because consumers are always willing to buy more goods at a lower price. Typically, demand shifts from demographics, prices, income, and consumer tastes and trends. Firms with market power can also impact demand with advertising.

Keep in mind, this formula is only used as an estimation of demand, as real-world applications are not linear.

The Best Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns from the last 20+ Years

Back around 2005, I was reading just about every marketing book I could get my hands on and the hottest topic was guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is really hard to define, but the best way I can describe it is doing something really strange and unexpected to get attention. Think publicity stunts, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be related to traditional publicity. At the time, I was working for a record label and we didn’t have much of a marketing budget, so the idea of doing things differently was about all I could do to help differentiate my company and our artists from the competition.

For one record, we basically bribed DJ’s to play a particular song to try and get it to chart. We ran a contest in conjunction with Gibson (which sponsored one of our artists), where every time they played the song, the first caller could win a chance to win a Gibson Dobro. Well, it worked. We ended up getting 50+ radio stations from around the world to participate and ended up giving the Dobro to some guy in Chicago. That song went #1 and that artist won “Dobro Player of the Year” that year. Cool. We also had an album titled “New Tattoo” where we got temporary tribal tattoos printed. We sent them to DJ’s with the promo records. We had a band named Wildfire, and we printed album art on a book of matches. When you opened the book of matches, it had the track listing. I think I still have a book of those matches around here somewhere… I don’t really think any of those examples really qualify for guerrilla marketing, but they were inspired by all of the crazy guerrilla marketing that was going on at the time.

For a while, guerrilla marketing was my jam. Although it’s not really something that I do much anymore, I’ve got a serious appreciation for people that can pull this off well. Guerrilla marketing is still a kind of nebulous term. It’s one of those things where you know it when you see it. Regardless, I’m taking a look back at the past 20+ years to hand-pick some of my favorite guerrilla marketing campaigns.

Burger King Liking Old Tweets

Burger King was my first non-farm job. At the time, I was an incredibly sheltered 15-year old and wow, did working at a Burger King open my eyes to the world. I’ll save those stories for another time, but damn, their guerrilla marketing has been on point for a LOOONNNNGGGG time. They’ve got the King. They cancelled the Whopper. They had the Subservient Chicken (I’ll get to that later). Let’s start off with an example from 2019. I love this one because it’s about the simplest and cheapest thing they could have ever done.

So, in December of 2019, Burger King started liking tweets. However, they didn’t just start liking random tweets, they started liking tweets of pretty big influencers. The catch? The tweets that they started liking were from a decade earlier. Unless you live under a rock, you understand that when someone likes a tweet, you get a notification. These people naturally got a notification that Burger King liked their tweet…from 10 years ago. Like any living, breathing human being, they were like, “WTF is Burger King doing liking a tweet of mine from 10 years ago. That’s weird AF,” and they naturally tweeted something to that effect.

So why is this important? Well, they just got someone with millions of followers to tweet about them. They were not only tweeting about Burger King; they were starting a conversation about Burger King. Conspiracy theories swirled and people started talking. Brilliant.

I love this campaign because it is so stupid. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. Honestly, I’d love to be the person that had to go into the board of directors to pitch this idea. Who am I kidding, I bet they just did it and never told their boss until it worked. What did they have to lose? It’s about as low risk as they could get. The only hard part would be trying to beat that ROI.

Red Balloons Tied to Sewer Grates

So, this one is kind of creepy. For the reboot of the movie “It” in 2017, a team in Sidney, Australia tied some red helium balloons from sewer grates throughout the city. Near the grates were notes stenciled in chalk saying, “It is closer than you think #itmovie”. If you know anything about the movie It, well, he lives in the sewer. He also is pictured with red balloons…a lot. This campaign was simple, creepy, and got a lot of attention all over the world, not just in Sidney. Then, people just started doing it all over the place. Why? Well, because…people. That’s why.

Ikea Guerrilla Manhattan

In 2006, Ikea decided to give Manhattan a makeover. But it just wasn’t a little makeover. It involved 600 city blocks and 670 individual tactics. It involved products in subway trains, makeovers of bus stops, furniture at payphones (yeah, those used to be a thing), plates and outdoor seating at food trucks, dog water bowls, random hammocks, and a whole lot more. Each tactic had a sign that said, “Good design can make the every day a little better.” They also had a website, the now-defunct everydayfabulous.com which featured every exhibit and where you could find them.

Domino’s Filling Potholes

Domino’s is famous for telling everyone how their pizza used to suck. And yes, it did sort of suck, and yes, it is definitely better. Well played, Domino’s, well played. However, in 2018, they took on a more philanthropic tone and decided to take on an infrastructure project by sponsoring the filling of potholes all around the US. They called the campaign “Paving for Pizza”. Why? Well, when you hit a pothole transporting a pizza, it can mess up the pizza. They even (still) have an interactive tool on their website with a camera inside a pizza box to see what happens in extreme conditions.

They initially took nominations for what cities and roads needed their potholes filled. They got over 130,000 nominations in all 50 states. The campaign got a ton of national press and had over 30,000 organic mentions on social media in just the first week. The campaign was so successful, they extended it to have a stated goal of filling potholes in all 50 states. They filled hundreds of potholes and put up photos and info on their paving for pizza website. For the states where they didn’t hire someone to fill potholes, they gave $5,000 grants for road improvements.

User Tesla First Impression Autopilot Videos

Tesla is one of those companies that will probably never need to do much marketing. Their marketing is building innovative products. It’s their keynote presentations. Like him or not, it’s their eccentric CEO. When you have a company this disruptive, people will do the advertising for you. They’ve essentially taken the money that most companies would use for advertising and put it toward product development. Well, that and strapping a car to a rocket and launching it into orbit, which I’m sure cost more than I’ve ever spent on advertising budgets in my 16 years combined…so there’s that. However, because of their product innovations, they’ve been able to create a series of loyal, raving fans. This was especially apparent when Tesla launched their autopilot feature.

So, Tesla’s autopilot feature is so revolutionary that people upload videos of themselves experiencing the system. There are videos in heavy LA traffic, videos of people sleeping while the car is driving, and an empty car going through a drive thru. Some of these videos have over 12 million views. Here’s one, check it out.

The Subservient Chicken

Burger King again? Okay, maybe my perception is a little skewed from my formative first job, but in my opinion, no one does strange marketing tactics like Burger King. Originally launched in 2004, at the now-defunct subservientchicken.com, this was intended to reiterate their slogan of “Get chicken just the way you like it”. This one is…weird, but if you know anything about marketing, you know about the Subservient Chicken. Dreamed up by Burger King’s long-time partner in strangeness, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the Subservient Chicken was well…this online chicken. Okay, it really wasn’t a chicken. It was a guy in a chicken suit. And it wasn’t like it was a normal guy in a chicken suit. It was a guy in a chicken suit in a creepy dark apartment. On the website, you could type in what you’d like the “chicken” to do. He’d moonwalk, lay an egg, be an airplane, fight, watch TV, hide, breakdance, do the splits, pushups, cartwheels, headstands…300 commands in total.

The campaign was so successful that they brought it back 10 years later to launch another chicken sandwich.

The Blair Witch Project

Do you remember the Blair Witch Project? Do you remember your friends telling you that it might be “real” or a “true story”? I was in high school when this came out, which was the perfect demographic for falling for the brilliant marketing trap that this movie set. The Blair Witch Project was one of the first movies to use the internet and the marketing was intended to make people believe that it may be a true story or a found footage horror film. Their website had fake reports and sightings, as well as fake interviews. IMDB had the actors listed as “missing – presumed dead”. The mystery was so strong that the website had 20 million visitors (in 1999) before the film was even released.

Offline, instead of movie posters, the movie studio put up “Missing Persons” posters around college campuses. Creepy. Weird. And the movie? Meh. It was okay I guess. However, The Blair Witch Project will always be remembered for the weird marketing that only could have worked at the time.

Wrapping Up

I don’t know if guerrilla marketing campaigns have lost their charm, if companies see them as too gimmicky, or if I just don’t pay as much attention as I used to. However, great guerrilla marketing campaigns are fun. They’re interesting. They’re different. They get people talking. They’re based on doing something unexpected. Next time you are looking for a way to stand out from the crowd consider the element of surprise with some guerrilla marketing tactics.

Build a Brand That People Hate

Think of a brand that you hate. A brand that every time you think about it, you have a visceral reaction. You wish you could exist in a world where that brand does not exist. The Real Housewives perhaps? Maybe the Kardashians? Maybe you hate the entire Bravo TV or E networks? How about Microsoft, or Apple? Ford or Chevy? Peloton? How about the New England Patriots? If you really start to think about brands, I’m guessing that you could come up with more brands that you really hate than brands that you love.

A strong brand attracts a lot of haters. Why? Because it stands for something. Many brands get so concerned catering to everyone’s thoughts, emotions, and concerns that their brand becomes a boring, watered-down brand that doesn’t really mean anything to anyone. Kmart is a great example. While other department stores seemed to find a niche (Walmart for low prices, Target for trendy retail), Kmart has been in a tailspin for years. At the time of this writing, there are only 34 stores left in the US. Kmart was never really a leader, they were a follower.

Does Anybody Hate Kmart?

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Kmart never really found an identity. They had some stores that were named Kmart, some that were named Super Kmart Center, some that were named Big K, some that were named Super K, and that was all just in the early 2000s. They’ve been in a decline for over 20 years and it’s partially because they could never find their identity. Do you hate Kmart? Did you ever hate Kmart? The only thing I ever remember about it is that it kind of smelled like mothballs. Other than that, I never really cared much about Kmart. I’m guessing that most people never really cared either.

GM Tries Not to be Hated

car chevrolet automotive vehicle — Photo by Raduz on Pexels.com

In my opinion, a similar thing happened to GM’s portfolio 30+ years ago. GM has what’s called a “house of brands” strategy. This basically means that the parent company has many different brand names under the umbrella brand. GM has Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC. Among others, they also used to have Pontiac and Oldsmobile. The original plan that existed in the ’60s for this house of brands included a really smart segmentation strategy that positioned their brands perfectly for their target audience. The Pontiac brand was exciting they had the slogan “We Build Excitement”. They built the GTO and the Trans Am. The Cadillac brand was strictly top-of-the-line luxury vehicles.

The bigger GM grew, the more they tried to create economies of scale. Basically, how could they do things more efficiently? GM started platforming their vehicles. They took the same chassis, and even the same or very similar body styles and tried to market them to different audiences. One common combination they introduced is what is known as the G-body. G-body cars included the Buick Regal, Chevy Monte Carlo, Pontiac Grand Prix, Chevy Malibu, Pontiac Bonneville, and a few others.

While this line of cars was incredibly successful, and in my opinion, created some of the most memorable American cars ever built, the prevailing idea of platforming started to create brand dilution for the GM brand. As the ’90s came around and SUV’s and minivans changed the vehicle landscape, GM didn’t properly maintain a strong segmentation strategy. Most of their brands had a minivan. Every brand had an SUV. Every brand had a luxury vehicle, a sports car, a cheap compact. Their brands had had something for everybody, and they didn’t really stand for anything.

About the Real Housewives

close up photo of martini in cocktail glass — Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

So you probably didn’t hate Kmart or GM, but how about something like “The Real Housewives”? I’m guessing if you don’t hate this franchise, you know someone who does. If you’re not familiar with the show, first off, congratulations, and second, even eight years ago, it was a half a billion-dollar franchise.[1] It’s a show that, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty much about rich women getting drunk and fighting. This is why people hate the brand. This is also a big reason why people love the brand. There’s a percentage of viewers that tune in just to hate-watch, which is this weird phenomenon where people watch shows just to talk about how much they hate it. This term is so prevalent in society that it’s on dictionary.com. This brand is so powerful that people watch it just to hate it and by doing this, it increases ratings and ad revenue. This only fuels the brand’s success. If people didn’t care so much, it wouldn’t be such a strong brand. If people didn’t hate the brand as much as they do, it wouldn’t be worth a Billion dollars.

It’s Not For You

For this discussion, I want to make clear that I’m suggesting building a brand that people hate which is different than a brand that fails, like a product that breaks easily or a brand that has poor customer service. It’s easy to hate a brand that doesn’t perform to expectations, and a brand that is hated for this reason will ultimately fail. The type of “brand hate” I’m describing is essentially hating a brand that is not for you. The reason you don’t like it is that it’s aimed at a different target audience. Their message is intended for someone else. If you find yourself hating a brand, chances are that a ton of people love that brand. You don’t have to like it. The creators of the brand were able to build something that really connected with a particular group of people. These brands probably don’t impact your daily life, so if you really want to show your dislike for a brand, just forget about it. It’s really no big deal, some people love a brand you hate, and our strange differences are what makes us amazing.

Building a brand so strong that people hate it involves “niching down” to a point where it connects so well with one or two target audiences that anyone outside of those groups doesn’t get it. In these instances, you build a connection so strong that the in-group becomes so rabid about the brand that the out-group is upset that they don’t understand. Slogans like “It’s a Jeep Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand”, and “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” come to mind. The creators of Billy Bass seemed to have nailed this concept when they identified the novelty Christmas gift segment, likely for males that were even loosely into fishing when they created a product that seemed to have the fastest trajectory from funny to annoying of any product that has ever been created.

People Hates Crocs

Crocs is a brand that people seem to love to hate. There are videos of people burning Crocs, people cutting up Crocs with Scissors, at one point, there was an IHateCrocs.com. Yep, people hate the brand so much that they buy the product just to destroy it. They spend money and time buying domains and producing content just to protest the brand. Just Google “people hate crocs” and you’ll see how people spend their time hating a brand. As I described earlier, this likely only fuels the brand’s success.

Do you know who loves everyone’s hate for Crocs? Crocs, that’s who. After selling 700 million shoes, they’ve built a brand off of being one of the most distinctive shoes of a generation. At the height of their popularity, they had tons of standalone retail stores, a massive distribution network and so many products that veered out of what they were known for: those weird-looking clogs. They started trying to be everything to everyone and like just about every company that tries to do this, they failed. But they didn’t let a little brand dilution get in their way, the refocused and made a comeback.

Crocs had a resurgence with a fashion trend called “ugly fashion”. Ugly fashion is not just a clever name, it’s, well…it kind of reminds me of “Saved by the Bell”. Mismatched clothes, plaid suit jackets, loud colors, oversized shirts, ugly fashion, and Crocs were a perfect match. The company saw this trend, realized their failure of trying to go mainstream and doubled down on their clogs. Now you can get all sorts of crazy Crocs. You can get Goth Crocs, KFC Crocs, bacon and egg Crocs, donut Crocs, you can even get Grateful Dead Crocs.

About Nickelback

I’d be remiss if I spent the time to write an article about brands that people hate without touching on Nickelback. Nickelback hate is real. They’re possibly the most hated band on the planet. Why? Well, I don’t really know. Let me be clear, I don’t like Nickelback. I think they suck, but I think there are objectively worse bands on this planet. I’ve also heard first-hand accounts from people that say they were really good to their fans when they met them in person. So why all of the hate? I’d like to think that I know, but there are people waaaaaaaayyyyy smarter than me that have tried to figure this out. Some explanations include that they lack any type of authenticity, they don’t really stand for anything, they are only trying for commercial appeal, etc.

These explanations sound to me like a band that is trying to be everything to everyone. As I explained, this is typically a bad strategy as it lacks brand direction. But as I also explained, a strong brand is a brand that some people hate. What if a TON of people hate the brand? Well, maybe that’s what we’re seeing with Nickelback. Are people “hate listening” to Nickelback? Is there a Nickelback “silent majority”? I’m guessing that 50 million record sales into their career, Nickelback is okay with people hating their band. If you build a strong brand, you should be okay with all of your haters too. If you hate Nickelback, it’s okay, they’re not for you. Your hate is just fueling their success. You could just forget about them.

So, How Does This Work?

To build a brand so strong that you have haters outside of your target audience, you need to build an amazing brand. So how do you do this? Well, unfortunately, there’s no one formula or process that you can follow that will immediately create a strong brand. Anyone that tells you any different is either lying to you, trying to sell you a book, or more commonly, both. Anymore, they’re more likely to be trying to sell you an online course on how you can create a strong brand for the low, low price of only $199 and if you act today, they’ll throw in a side of snake oil. There are so many shifting factors to consider like economics, changes in consumer behavior, other entrants to the market, and competitive pricing pressures.

Good brands don’t exist in a lab. They’re living and constantly evolving in the real world. There are, however, a few best practices that we know help.

Know Thyself

Although it sounds really basic, many brands struggle with an identity crisis (see GM or Kmart examples referenced earlier).

Some of the most common traps that I typically see are:

Trying to be who they want to be instead of who they are
Trying to be their competitors

Knowing what you do well is critical and positing those brand differentiators is key. If you’re not doing that, your message is NEVER going to connect. Think of this extreme example. If a brand like KFC discovered that all of their competitors were becoming really successful with selling salads they might want to get into the salad game. Even starting to sell salads seems a little strange for a brand that is known for fried chicken, biscuits, and mashed potatoes. However, if they REALLY wanted salad market share and started neglecting their core business to focus on salads, they would struggle. They’d be facing an identity crisis, which many brands struggle with daily.

Most brands just don’t completely change direction like in the KFC example, it happens more gradually. This often happens when a company continually introduces new product lines without the proper support. With economies of scale approach, most administrative staff would typically handle both new and existing initiatives. When this is done without bringing in the proper additional support personnel, existing product lines can get diluted, new product launches don’t get the proper attention, and a company can lose sight of its foundation. In many cases, this takes years and the support erodes so slowly that the team that is managing the product or products don’t even realize the impact until it is too late. As I pointed out earlier, it happened to GM, it happened to Kmart, it happens everywhere. Knowing your strengths and “niching down” to really connect with your target audience is key. Be different. When your competition zigs, you should zag, otherwise you’ll just be another Kmart.

Know Your Customers

woman wearing maroon velvet plunge neck long sleeved dress while carrying several paper bags photography — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Just as important at knowing yourself is knowing your customers. Have you built a customer profile? Do you know your customer demographics? Do your customer psychographics? Do you know what impacts their decision on whether or not to buy your products or buy your competitors’ products? Do you know their typical buying journey? How long is their sales cycle? What problems can you solve? How can you be of service? It’s likely that if you have more than one product, this is different for every distinct segment of your market.

Do your products fall under the category of low-effort consumer behavior or high-effort consumer behavior? Although brand awareness is critical to both types of behavior, knowing how the brain processes these decisions is key to help map out your buyer’s journey.

A customer’s needs are constantly changing and evolving. Their buying behaviors and preferences are always developing. Are you keeping up with their needs and wants? If not, you will quickly find yourself outside of the category of a brand people hate and into the category of a brand no one cares about.

Don’t Suck

Another thing to consider are the elements of your brand. Your name, logo, URL, packaging, taglines. Make sure these don’t suck. They don’t need to resonate with everyone but make sure they resonate with your target audience. Also, make sure your products and customer service don’t suck. If not, people will hate your brand for all of the wrong reasons. Make sure you attract haters for all of the right reasons.

Encourage Your Haters

The next time you think about your own brand, think about how many people hate your brand. It could help you discover and embrace the people that love your brand. To your brand, those are the people that matter. That audience is going to make your brand strong enough for people to hate.

You can find out more about niche marketing here.

[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/real-housewives-bravo-andy-cohen-cover-278072

These Seven Creepy Ways Advertisers Know Everything About You Will Make You Cringe

Digital advertising has changed the ad landscape. As an advertiser, I can not only target you based on past behavior, but I can know when you are going to make a purchase using AI. Advertisers know some pretty creepy things about you and technology makes it all possible. To do this, they need the currency of the future: your personal data. This data is a goldmine and ad tech companies will do just about anything to get it.

Your Browser

Noting to see here, right? I mean, it’s just your browser. A browser can’t reveal much about you, right? Oh boy. I’m sorry to tell you, but a browser knows your software, hardware, your battery level if you’re on a power supply, your download speed, social media sites where you’re logged in, and more. Don’t believe me? Click here to see for yourself and be really creeped out. So, how is this related to advertising? Well, if you’re not reading this article on an app, I’m guessing you’re reading it on Google Chrome. You know, Google? The same Google that’s the largest advertiser in the world. They also know your cookies, browsing history, when you log on, when you log off, and probably just about everything that goes into your Gmail account. I hope you’re not ready to go full tin-foil-hat mode yet. We’re just getting started.

Ad Retargeting

person using a macbook pro on a white table — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

You know when you look at a pair of socks online and the entire internet tries to sell you back that same pair of socks you were just looking at? Well, that’s called retargeting. It’s pretty simple, really. Let’s say you visit my website and I’m running one of these campaigns. I’ve got a piece of code on my site that identifies you as a user of an advertising network that I pay to track you. Now, for the next 90 days, or however long I set the ad contract when you leave and visit a website that is affiliated with my network, you will see my ads.

Even though the simplest form of retargeting involves you visiting my site, there are other ways to do this. You can do this through a related search. Let’s say you are searching for a muzzle for your dog because you can’t stop him from barking. I could serve you an ad from my online dog training course in an ad targeting network to try and stop you from doing something like putting a muzzle on your dog. Yay! Now you bought my awesome services, you bonded with your dog, and you have a better understanding of why he was barking so much in the first place. My creepy ad just made the world a better place. There’s nothing wrong with these ads, right?

Then there’s predictive targeting. What is that? Well, it’s basically AI trying to figure out what you are going to buy in the future based on past behavior. Predictive targeting takes all of your past browsing behavior and uses AI to predict what you are going to be shopping for in the future. Let’s go back to the socks example. A simple way to explain this is if you’ve been shopping for a lot of socks, maybe your next purchase will be shoes. Or maybe some toenail clippers. I’ll admit, so far, still not super creepy. Hang on, it gets worse.

Email

computer desk electronics indoors — Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

Email can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, come on, it’s email. It’s been around forever. In the internet timeline, it’s a dinosaur. I hate to break it to you, everything you do and interact with on an email is tracked. I can track if you skimmed or read my email, what parts of it you liked and clicked on, how many times you opened it, and I can even infer if you forwarded it to someone. From there, well, who knows. I could do some follow-up targeted emails based on your interests.

Let’s say I was trying to really narrow down niches within my customer base. Back to the sock example, let’s say I sell socks and shoes. If I really wanted to understand my customers’ interests, I could send them a simple, general email and see what they click on. Let’s say they click on shoes and nothing else. Wow! I’ve just identified them as a potential shoe buyer. Cool. I can put them in a “shoe” target email. They’ll get that email 24 hours later. That shoe email will have running shoes, hiking shoes, and walking shoes. The shoe email goes out, they click running shoes, boom! I’ve got a runner. Wow, let’s add them to the running list, so every time I have a promo on running shoes or publish a blog about running tips, they get the email. Depending on how active you are on social media, and how tied in and easy my ad tech platform can find your email, I might be able to find you there. And an advertiser can scrape that info pretty easily.

Geofencing

crown group modern motion — Photo by Burst on Pexels.com

So you know how all of your apps want to know your location? Well, from an advertising perspective, this data is really valuable information. An advertiser can set up a “fence” based on your GPS coordinates. Let’s say I’m trying to sell video game accessories. I could choose to target everyone that visits any GameStop store in the country.

An advertiser can get pretty specific. With hyperlocal Geofencing, I could target a specific aisle. Let’s say for instance I just wanted to target everyone that passed by or visited the video game section in a larger department store. Yep, that’s an option.

Your Smart Speaker

black amazon echo on table — Photo by Fabian Hurnaus on Pexels.com

In July of 2019, it came out in The Guardian, that Apple was paying contractors to listen to Siri conversations to “help Siri and dictation…understand you better and recognize what you say”[1]. Of course, Apple denied using this information for any nefarious purposes. But we should all trust a company that has a higher value than the GDP of Brazil, Australia, or Canada, right? While we’re on this train of thought, how about Alexa? Well, in May of 2019, the Washington Post [2] reported how Alexa records everything after it hears its name. Yep. Everything you say. Everything you do. Every noise that it can pick up. Neat. There’s also been a bunch of warrants to obtain the recorded data.[3]

Social Media

apple applications apps cell phone — Photo by Tracy Le Blanc on Pexels.com

Let’s not get into the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I’m guessing you know about that already. Let’s just start with the easy stuff. The first thing to understand is why social media exists in the first place, besides cat pictures. Okay, I’ll give, it also exists so you can argue with your aunt on who she is voting for. Actually, those are just residuals for the real reason that social media exists: data. Yep, as I said before, your data is super valuable. Most people just willingly give it up. They give their name, location, interests, and tons of other information when they first fill out their profile. But it goes deeper. You can be targeted by the pages you like. Did you happen to like a few posts about shoes? Cool, you’re lumped in my sock shoe store thing. Did you happen to share a few posts about grilling out? Congratulations, you’re a candidate for A1 Steak Sauce. Is your feed manipulated based on what you do? Well, let’s just say they call that “how the algorithm works.” Did you have the geolocation feature turned on? Cool. Now I know that you just grabbed a pizza, maybe I can serve you an ad for ice cream.

The Super Creepy

photography of person peeking — Photo by Noelle Otto on Pexels.com

So let’s get to the speculative. Well, sort of speculative. I’m sure you know something about the TikTok ban but maybe you don’t know why it was banned. Well, not banned. Well…sort of banned? Anyway, one of the things that TikTok does is access the iOS clipboard. Yep, Apple. You know, the company worth $2 Trillion that’s famous for their amazing security. The very same Apple. What does this mean? Have you ever cut/pasted information on your phone, maybe a password? Well, that goes to a clipboard. They’re not the only one that does this. CBS News, Accuweather, well, a bunch of others are or have been doing this too.[4] Not only that, TikTok’s own privacy policy says that they collect your mobile carrier, IP address, “unique identifiers”, and keystroke patterns.[5] So other apps are doing this, but the reason that TikTok is banned is because it’s Chinese? From what I can gather, yes.

So let’s get to the big question. You know how you had that conversation with your friend, whether via text, or on the phone, or even in person and you mentioned something? For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say it was Nike. You then pick up your phone, check a social media network and immediately see a Nike ad. You then call or text your friend frantically and say something like “OMG, you know how we were just talking about this, check it out”. So, is Facebook using your microphone and camera to spy on you, even when you’re not using the app? Well, they’ve repeatedly denied these allegations and try really hard to come up with explanations on why this happens. So are they? Good question.

Wrapping Up

Regardless of if you are now masterfully creating a pattern for a new tin-foil hat or not, creepy ads are here to stay. As a society, I don’t really see how we can go back. The only way they would go away is if they didn’t work. Maybe they would go away if we found out that many of the advertisers were committing fraud. Oh wait, we already did that. In 2019, Facebook paid $40 million because they lied about their video stats, [6] Google ran ads with a bunch of fraudulent traffic [7], oh, and about all of those fake clicks…[8] Maybe we’ll never learn.

[1] Hern, A. Apple Contractors ‘Regularly Hear Confidential Details’ on Siri Recordings, Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings

[2] Fowler, G. Alexa Has Been Eavesdropping on You This Whole Time, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/06/alexa-has-been-eavesdropping-you-this-whole-time/

[3] Epstein, K. Police Think Amazon’s Alexa May Have Information on a Fatal Stabbing Case, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/02/police-think-amazons-alexa-may-have-information-fatal-stabbing-case/

[4] Jones, T. It’s Not Just TikTok Spying on Your iOS Clipboard, Retrieved from: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/07/ios-clipboard-apps-spy-tiktok/

[5] Mahadevan, T. TikTok Responds After Reddit CEO Calls it Fundamentally Parasitic, Retrieved from: complex.com/pop-culture/2020/02/reddit-ceo-calls-tiktok-fundamentally-parasitic

[6] Gardner, E. Facebook to Pay $40M Under Proposed Settlement in Video Metrics Suit, Retrieved from: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/facebook-pay-40-million-under-proposed-settlement-video-metrics-suit-1245807

[7] Haggin, P. Google to Refund Advertisers After Suit Over Fraud Scheme, Retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-refund-advertisers-after-suit-over-fraud-scheme-11558113251

[8] Fake Clicks on Online Ads Costing Companies Tens of Billions a Year, Retrieved from: https://www.ft.com/content/8f0d4b98-21c7-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b

Category: Uncategorized

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