Great quotes

"Too many marketers try to build buzz instead of engagement. My mom has zero buzz, but if she says something, I'll listen."

Tony Hsieh,
Zappos CEO

Do what you love

 "There's too many people right now doing stuff they hate. Please stop doing that! There is no reason in 2008 to do shit you hate".  Please watch this presentation. Gary Vaynerchuk is so brilliant and he is absolutely right!  Let me tell you a story to show why Gary is right.

Facebook is such a great tool to understand what the hell is going on out there. I'm from Portugal, and in Portugal during August almost everyone is on vacations. What I noticed a lot this year was that many of my friends wrote stuff on their facebook saying how happy they were because they finally were on vacations. Some were even counting the days left until they were finally on vacations. When they were back to work, they wrote messages like "back to work :( "

This made me think: why the hell does this happen? The only obvious answer I can find is: they probably don't love what they do. They probably are in pain because they are probably underpaid, probably stressed out following orders and doing something they probably don't really love. Our society, in Portugal and all over the World, is struggling because during times of change the last thing you need in your Company and on your team is having unhappy people. We need original people, people who care, people who can think for themselves and feel part of your cause. And you can only find people who care if they love what they do, and especially if they believe in WHY they do what they do and what you do. Simon Sinek's message Start with why explains clearly that what matters is why you do what you do. Why do you get out of the bed every morning? As Simon says "If you don't know why you do what you do and people respond to what you do, then how will you ever get people to be loyal?" The goal of your company should be not to hire people who need a job. The goal should be to hire people who believe what you believe. Or if you are looking for a job your goal should be to find a job at a place where you believe in the cause, the purpose, the WHY of the place. As Simon says " If you hire people just because they can do a job, they will work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they work for you with blood and sweat and tears." Or as Gary Vaynerchuck brilliantly says on the presentation I just shared:

 "If you for a second don't believe in what you are doing, whether it's your personal brand, or the product you represent you need to get out now."

Manipulation Vs. Inspiration

Whether you are a politician, a brand, a charity or any other type of organisation there are only two ways to influence human behaviour: manipulation or inspiration. Examples of manipulation in business:

- Manipulating your price: If you drop your price low enough people will buy your product.
- Fear: probably the most fantastic manipulator out there. You can convince people to do all kind of things if you scare them. Remember how George W. Bush was re-elected?
- Peer pressure: 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it. Peer pressure tries to make us fear that we are being left out of something.   
- Sales promotion: Buy 2 books and get your 3rd free. It's basically giving away things for free to reduce the risk so that people buy what you sell.

Inspiration is the alternative. Simon Sinek's message Start with why explains clearly that it doesn't matter
what you do and how you do it, if you don't start by answering to the question: why you do what you do? True leaders, true brands and all their marketing efforts are only effective when they start with a clear vision, with a purpose. When they start with WHY. Manipulation works, but it does not bread loyalty or trust.  Conversly, if we start with a deeper vision or purpose, a Why, we are talking directly to your lymbic brains, attracting those who are inspired by our message.

Let me tell you a story as an example of this. Let's think about Charities. The other day I was walking in Carnaby Street in London, when this lady asked me if I wanted to help her charity. I can't recall the name of her charity, but basically they help children in Africa. She started listing me a bunch of facts about poverty and the needs of poor people in Africa, and through manipulation she tried to convince me to make a donation. To help her charity, I would have to fill out a form providing loads of private information including my bank account number because the donation would be something like 30 GBP per month during at least one year. It was hard for me to say no because it was for a good cause, but the bottom line was I didn't like her approach, and she wasn't convincing at all because she didn't try to inspire me with the vision of her charity.

Now let me tell you another story about another Charity. About a year ago or so, I saw this incredibly inspirational movie on a blog I follow. The girl effect is a charity, and they start with Why. Check out their message:

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO IS NOTHING SHORT OF REVOLUTIONARY

There are 600 million adolescent girls living in poverty in the developing world. By giving one of these girls a chance, you start the girl effect. When girls have safe places to meet, education, legal protection, health care, and access to training and job skills, they can thrive. And if they thrive, everyone around them thrives, too.

This Charity has a clear and inspirational vision and It's all about the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate. I was so inspired by the message that I ended donating money for a project called Save the Children Empowering Girls in Bangladesh.

In conclusion, the message here is: when inspired, people move into action. They are more likely to donate money to your charity, or more likely to buy your products, tell their friends, advocate, and the best part, be loyal to your cause.

Corporate culture matters

In June I flew from Detroit to Chicago on Southwest Airlines. The plane was just like any other plane from any other airline, but there was one thing that made it a great flight: the crew and the pilot. If you've ever flown on Southwest, you'll know that humor is part of Southwest's corporate culture. When you fly with these guys it´s likely you will hear the pilot or the flight attendant tell a joke or just having fun over the public address system. At Southwest they are being true to their culture of having fun, and that's what makes it such a great experience to fly with these guys.

For example, after taking off from Detroit one of the flight attendants said something like: "Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing and if You can light 'em, you can smoke'em." After landing in Chicago, when everyone was gathering all of their belongings before leaving the plane the flight attendant said "Last one off the plane must clean it". Everyone laughed. Everyone was smiling and seemed happy. It was the end of a fun experience. Southwest Airlines truly sees the value of creating an experience and adopting 'humor to enhance the time we spend on the plane.

Last week I flew from Lisbon to London on TAP Portugal and it was the total opposite. The flight was delayed, for unexplainable reasons the crew had less flight attendants than regulations require and therefore, no meal or even drinks were served. Bottom line: the crew did the minimum that was required to be considered service. Ok, they didn't have enough flight attendants but the ones who were there did not make any effort to create a different experience to enhance the 2 hours we were going to spend on the plane. Anyway, this wasn´t a surprise at all to me as it´s not part of TAP's corporate culture to provide a different brand experience to their customers. TAP thinks that to be successful they just need to provide the same kind of service British Airways, Iberia or most of the other boring Airlines out there provide.

The point is: corporate culture matters, and it matters a lot. You need to know why you are different, and why your customers are loyal to you. If you make no effort on this, over the long-term you won't have loyal customers, and you will have to spend more on your marketing budget to try to attract more and more customers.

Southwest Airlines has always been profitable, and their corporate culture is definitely one of the main reasons of their success. When Rollin King and Herb Kelleher decided more than 38 years ago to start Southwest, they decided to start a different kind of airline. They began with a simple notion: if you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make sure they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline. You know what? They were absolutely right!

One of the greatest missed branding opportunities ever

The other day I was reading the truly fascinating book "Brand Sense- Sensory secrets behind the stuff we buy" (the revised and updated version) written by the legendary branding guru Martin Lindstrom and I was amazed by  a fact Martin shared. I bet you didn´t know this: many centuries ago carrots came in every color but orange. What's that?! Carrots weren't orange?! That's right! They actually were red, black, green, white and even purple. Then, sometime in the sixteenth century, Dutch growers decided to be patriotic and give this root vegetable a dutch edge. Using a mutant seed from North Africa they started developing an orange variety in honour of William I "The Prince of Orange", the first King of the Netherlands, or by other words the guy who led them to independence against the Spaniards. So, after Netherlands gained independence, a country with an orange flag now had as well its very own orange carrot. This is probably one of history´s most incredible successful branding exercises, however one that mysteriously was never capitalized on by the dutch, as very few people are aware that orange carrots were in fact a dutch creation. This is one of the greatest missed branding opportunities of all time. Interesting isn't it?

Why saying you're the best doesn't work

I am interested in people and in what, how and why they think what they think. This is one of the reasons, advertising as a marketing communication tool used by brands to communicate with consumers simply fascinates me. Advertising due to media fragmentation isn´t as powerful as it was in the past, but if correctly used it still has the potential to create an emotional impact in consumer´s minds. 

We live in a World where so many brands offer very similar products, so it is very difficult to sell stuff based only on logic and rationality. Here is where advertising can help. Advertising helps creating an emotional impact, or as Seth Godin would say, advertising helps brands build symbolic meaning through a narrative (but it needs to be bold and audacious) that captures the imagination of the key audience grabbing people emotionally and making them want to be involved with the message. However, most of the brands out there seem to not understand this and they use advertising (or whatever other marketing communications tools they use) really in a wrong way. 

Every single day, as consumers we are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages and most of them unfortunately tend to assume our behaviour is rational. This is why we see so many brands stating they are the best, they offer the best service in town, or the best quality products, listing us complex information like features and benefits, or facts and figures. This is a wrong approach and biology can explain why so many brands don´t have a clue of what they are doing and why they are doing it. Here is why. The explanation is the human brain and how it works.

The human brain is basically broken into 3 major different components: the neocortex and two middle sections, our lymbic brains. The neocortex is the structure of our brain responsible for our rational and analytical thought, and is also involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of our motor commands and language. The lymbic brains are responsible for our feelings, stuff like trust or loyalty so important for brands. It is also responsible for human behaviour. Our decision making process has no room for language as it is driven by our emotions, or by other words, it is driven by our lymbic brains. So why do brands seem to prefer to talk to our neocortex (remember, the neocortex doesn´t drive our behaviour) by saying they are the best in what they do and listing us a bunch of rational stuff like features and benefits rather than talking directly to the part of brain that controls our behaviour with inspiring messages that create emotional impact on us? This is a huge mystery to me! 

For instance, let´s look at a successful brand like Bang & Olufsen. Have you ever thought about why B&O is so successful? If your answer was it´s because of their design, you aren´t exactly right. The right answer is:

it´s because they know why they do what they do. They have an inspiring philosophy and they clearly communicate it straight to the lymbic brains of their target audience. Everytime B&O introduces a new product, the danish brand causes a similar stir and it´s all because of their philosophy: creating audio concepts that combine in such a brilliant way authentic sound quality with simple yet surprising design and a touch of magic.So that living with it becomes a truly special pleasure.It´s such a powerful message isn´t it? Much more powerful than if they would go the other way round by stating just like everybody else that they offer the best audio concepts, and the best design, with the best features of the market, etc. Do you notice the difference?