Dancing with the Pols

I give you the Obama/McCain Dance-off. Funny, freaky or both?

Focus vs. Inclusion Part IV

Okay, last political-related post...

Much was made about last week's Obama infomercial. From a marketing (not a political) perspective, I thought it was a great example of both brilliant techniques and missed opportunities.

To be honest, what I expected was a standard live "speaking from the desk" speech. Speechifying is one of Obama's strengths, after all, so one would assume that the leading candidate would stick with what works.

My initial reaction was a bit of a cringe. It was obvious from shot one that this was going to be a slick, scripted production. Given the fact that Obama raised eyebrows spending millions of dollars on the airtime alone, I thought it was a mistake to also make such a high-production-value piece. For some reason, it called to mind the practice of nonprofits printing their marketing materials on recycled paper in an effort to look like good fiscal stewards, even though that paper is actually more expensive than its glossy cousin. (For all I know, the production company shot Obama's piece pro bono. It doesn't matter. It looked expensive.)

Then I was impressed when Obama said in his opening remarks that he was going to feature the stories of three "ordinary Americans." This turned everything around, because now the candidate was spending millions of dollars to give prominence not to himself, but to other people (and thus, of course, himself). That, I thought, was an innovative idea--and a great example of using credible surrogates to back your message.

Trouble was, that's not how the piece played out. I expected three stories, roughly seven minutes each, with a pitch for the candidate as a "call to action" at the end. Instead, it turned into a classic choice of inclusion over focus. To be fair, when you're making one piece and broadcasting it on the big networks, you have little choice but to throw in the kitchen sink.

And that's what it was. Stories of people, mixed with photos and video of Obama, mixed with people talking about Obama, and Obama talking to the camera. As expected, the people featured were in swing states and represented a racial cross-section. Yes, it focused exclusively on the economy, which was smart. But when you have the candidate doing the voiceover, as if he's your host, and then you cut to shots of the candidate himself, or people talking about him, it opens up the "vanity" door, which I thought was risky.

(McCain countered well by going on Saturday Night Live, pretending to buy airtime on QVC, and quipping, "I'm a true Maverick: a Republican without money.")

We'll see if any of this makes a difference in the election (editor's note: it didn't). I suspect that it won't, except that infomercials will now become standard practice. But the marketing lesson is this: Focus beats inclusion. It's better to customize different infomercials for different stations (coming in 2012, a Sarah Palin Spanish-language infomercial exclusively for Univision!) than to be all-things-to-all-people on the big networks.

Change, Part II

I was driving down Washington Ave. in downtown Minneapolis when the radio guest made an interesting point. When asked why the electorate doesn't care more about the facts in political campaigns, and why false and misleading ads are often effective, the founder of FactCheck.org said:

When you falsely portray a candidate in a way that goes against the grain of people's preconceived notions, it doesn't work. But when you do it in a way that reinforces the myth already in the ether, it often does work.

See? That's why every Republican is a greedy warmonger who pals around with bloated CEOs, while every Democrat is a tax-and-spend wimp who pals around with terrorists! The two parties have gone to great lengths (and spent millions of dollars) to create these perceptions over several decades. They're very hard to undo.

But what about something like TankGate, the famously ill-conceived photo of Michael Dukakis posing in full military garb inside an M1 Abrams tank? This wasn't a tactic of his opposition; it was the stupendously misguided brainchild of his own campaign. It failed miserably, because it tried to change perceptions overnight. Call it branding "shock and awe," as if McDonald's had suddenly announced that it was trading beef for tofu. It went against the grain, and it was an instant laughingstock.

A month ago, Bill Maher asked why the Obama campaign hadn't tried to "swiftboat" John McCain. Because they're smart, I thought. They know that swiftboating John Kerry worked because it went with the grain, but doing it to McCain would fly in the face of his solid image as a war hero. Is it fair that a Vietnam POW is bullet-proof, while a Silver Star and Purple Heart recipient from the same war is vulnerable to attack? No, but that's the way it is. Don't fight it.

Months ago, I sat in a meeting with a VP of sales who was exasperated that, despite months of indoctrination, many of his reps still described their employer as a "distributor," rather than a "solutions provider." There were probably many reasons for this (including the inertia of longer-standing employees who are always resistant to change). But is it also the case of an "against the grain" internal branding move?

We'll find out.

Good Change/Bad Change

Political season is almost over, and it's time to talk about change. Good change, bad change, and the fact that we might all soon be standing on a street corner begging for change.

A funny thing, this concept of "change." When it comes to marketing, particularly in politics, it's a good thing (when times are bad, the challenger has two basic rules: run on "change" and tie your opponent to the current unpopular president). But it occurs to me that there's one kind of change that nobody likes: a candidate that seems to change during the course of the campaign.

Think back to the Gore-Bush debates. Back in those heady times, when we were blissfully unaware of the terrorist attack, wars and global recession soon to come, we had the luxury of fixating on eye rolls and sighs. After Al Gore showed much of both in his less-than-stellar first debate performance, an interesting thing happened: His handlers sat him down in front of a TV and made him watch Saturday Night Live's Darrell Hammond do his Gore imitation. "See?" the handlers said. "People see you as stiff and uptight. You have to change that."

And what did Gore do? He started wearing earth tones, doing morning-show interviews while sitting in an easy chair, and most notably, seeming to do his next debate performance on Xanax.

I remember thinking that it was a horrible decision. Sure, if we had never seen the other Gore, this Gore might seem more pleasant. But more important, people saw that Gore would change based on their perceptions of him. That's far worse, because it shows weakness. (His handlers blew it even more by leaking the SNL sit-down story to the media.)

In the next election, what was the angle that the Republicans introduced early and rode to victory? "Our guy is resolute; their guy is a flip-flopper." Hillary Clinton refused to change when it came to her initial approval of the war in Iraq, but what really hurt was the perception that she changed her personality on the campaign trail almost weekly. And McCain, who as of this writing is down eight points nationally, has always had a tough time convincing people that the current self-proclaimed "maverick" is the same guy as the media-dubbed maverick of 2000. (In the final presidential debate, most people saw one angry guy and one guy who remains calm under attack. They preferred the latter.)

Before you make any radical changes to your product, service or entire corporate brand, think about whether it's change that people want, rather than change you think they need.

Words Matter

Paraguay?

I've been on record as saying that I think Starbucks and McDonald's are trying too hard to become one another. I said it nearly a year ago after Starbucks started selling breakfast sandwiches and McDonald's announced it was creating barista bars to hock its McCafe gourmet coffee products.

I'll stand by the prediction that neither experiment will last, although it's pretty clear who's doing it better: McDonald's. When I try to think off the top of my head of an ad campaign that is truly succeeding (meaning, it's memorable, people talk about it, and you remember whom it's for), I think of the McDonald's McCafe spots. You know the ads. There's one with two guys, one with two women. Each follows the same "unmasking" formula: Closeted regular folk remove their veils of snobbery under the reverse enlightenment of the golden arches.

Because my biggest pet peeve about American culture is the latent hostility toward curiosity and intellect that emerges during each presidential election, it pains me to admit that these ads are very good. Why? Because they fit the brand. McDonald's isn't actually trying to be Starbucks (and it's not; the iced hazelnut coffee I tried a week ago was god-awful). It's saying that its products are low-attitude.

The ads are memorable because they're expertly written, acted and edited. People talk about them because they're funny and they strike a universal chord (all people feel the pressure to act contrary to their true natures in some way every day). And you remember whom they're for because their ultimate message travels with, not against, the grain of how we already perceive McDonald's.

True, I'll be surprised if the barista bars are still around in 10 years, but until then, well done, Ronald.

Robot in a Wheelchair

I've been a member Think Tank Thursdays for several years now. T3 isn't your typical writers' group, which is exactly why I go. Instead of a group of dour novelists "workshopping" their prologues to death, it's a good-humored cabal of screenwriters who pitch their script ideas. The point is to see how good your concepts are before you ever put 12-pt. Courier font to virtual paper. There is no "workshopping" involved.

Having given and received many a movie pitch, I've figured out the hallmark of a truly good one. It isn't the pitch that draws silence because it's so airtight (like the one about a rogue Israeli soldier and Palestinian terrorist who jointly conspire to bring peace to the Middle East by threatening to detonate a nuclear device if the two sides don't hash out a peace deal in 48 hours). Nor is it the ones that leave people speechless because they're so awful (like the one that started as an interesting tale of corporate fraud, only to degrade into the author's personal conspiracy theory of Paul Wellstone's death).

No, the pitches with real potential are the ones that make people talk... the ones that provide such an appealing and versatile platform that they start chiming in, "Yeah, and then you could do this..." because they instantly want to make the movie their own.

Sure, this can annoy the pitcher, because the new ideas often conflict with his or her own. But if you accept the fact that film is by far the world's most collaborative art form, it's absolutely the best outcome. What you want, ultimately, is for a producer, a director and some actors to want to make your project their own. Barring self-financing, that's the only way your movie will ever get made at all.

Another long-winded analogy for marketing campaigns? Yes. The era of making your campaign completely airtight and closed off is pretty much over. Younger generations have grown up expecting to take any piece of creative work and make it their own, whether it's remixing their favorite song, shooting their own ad for your product, or re-editing the trailer for your movie. In short, everything has become film. Everything is a collaboration. And the quicker you accept that, and more you care more about authoring a good platform instead of taking credit for every product that platform generates, the better off you'll be.

P.S. Why "Robot in a Wheelchair"? In my favorite all-time pitch, a 20-something guy outlined his idea for a sitcom including the character of a robot in a wheelchair. I just thought it was funny.