Big Secret Pizza Party

Everything communicates - even how you listen.

(cross-post from House of Naked - I am a lazy piece of crap, I'm sorry.)

I was reading Alive this weekend (the story of those rugby players who crashed in the Andes in 1972). Obviously, they consciously fantasized about food a lot while they were trapped,  but a recurring hallucination of one of the guys who was suffering most - Rafael Echavarren - was of going to the store to get a Coca-Cola.   

The night before Rafael died, he kept telling the other survivors he was walking to the store to get a Coca-Cola, and asking if anyone wanted to come with him.   Makes sense that his mind would subconsciously go there during his last hours - Coca-Cola is certainly a comforting drink for a lot of people, and that feeling is probably magnified about 10 million times when you're freezing in the fuselage of a plane crashed in the mountains.  

The thing that I thought was really interesting was that he wasn't simply asking for a Coca-Cola.   The experience of the trip to the store to get the Coca-Cola was included in his hallucination, and it got me thinking about a conversation I recently had with a friend, about the rituals around certain products.  (We talk about this a lot here at Naked, especially regarding Coca-Cola - ask Pak if you want to know more).   

When we think about product rituals, especially around beverages, most of that ritual is literally centered around the product itself, and the situation it's consumed in.  For Coke, these things include the temperature, the bottle shape, and all that imagery you see in their ads - fishing around in a red cooler for a cold Coke, smiles, and the "aaaahhh" after the first sip.  

You can speculate a little on what the ritual around desire for that product is (like, working up a thirst, obviously), but some things in a product ritual are beyond our grasp as marketers, or purveyors of goods.  There are contexts and meanings we can't possible engineer with branded materials or ads, and it's these meanings that make a brand part of someone's life. 

The fact that these organic points of connection are out there just proves that the most important thing a brand can do is listen to it's customers and fans.  That's where the amazing stories are, and it's the only way for brands to truly know how the things they make affect people's lives in real ways.   It seems so simple, but  there are marketers out there that don't even have a Google Alert set for their brand name. 

I realize this is sort of a trite observation in light of all the other things to be take away from such an inspiring story, and I hope I haven't offended anyone with it.   I guess it was just amazing to me that in his last moments of life, a time when you'd assume people thought of their parents, or their homes - certainly not a soft drink brand -  Rafael's mind took him to the comfortable and happy ritual of walking to the store to get a Coca-Cola with his friends.   

If you haven't read Alive, I definitely recommend it.  I also read a lot of other mountain disaster/climbing type books, if you're looking for recommendations. 

Sometimes a bike isn't just a bike

(this is a cross-post from House of Naked, but I thought it was relevant to pretty much anyone, so I decided to post it here too).

Around Valentine's Day, I noticed a few stories pop up about some displays in Macy's stores that featured bikes painted white.   Their similarities to Ghost Bikes -- bikes painted white, and installed as a permanent memorial to bikers killed on city streets -- were the topic of debate, and reactions ranged from incredibly offended to indifference.  (DKNY had a simliar installation - bikes painted neon orange around the city, but their was intended to support cyclists).      If you live in New York, you've probably seen Ghost Bikes around town - for me, the visual of a bike painted white is synonymous with mourning and sadness now.

White painted bike at Macy's

ghost bikes posted by Flickr users from around the world

I was going to post back then about the insensitivity of the Macy's displays, but I figured that maybe their visual display people didn't live in a city, or didn't know about Ghost Bikes, so I should give them the benefit of the doubt.   (If you want to read a great, intelligent debate over the matter, the comments on this Gothamist post - where the image above came from -  are very interesting). 

Then, just today, I was walking by Madewell on Broadway, which is owned by JCrew, and I saw that they had some bikes painted white as part of their window display.  At first,  I was just surprised that their visual merchandisers - whom I would imagine pay attention to what other stores are doing - put the white bikes in their windows after Macy's was taken to task for doing it.  

Then, I started to think about the fact that as marketers, we have to pay attention to loads of stuff that doesn't directly concern us, just so we're familiar with the cultural zeitgeist.  Ghost Bikes do not only exist in New York.  In fact, they are present in almost every major city in America, and in countless other countries. Including most of the cities that have Madewell shops.   It's not a small movement, it's a pretty big one, in fact.  

Seeing the full picture - not just in the sense of looking at problems from a few steps back, but in the sense of being aware of what's going on outside our own circles of reality -- is essential to staying in touch with what consumers are thinking, feeling and doing.  

If brands want to do all the things they say they do - connect with real people on a meaningful level,  strengthen consumer affinity for their brands beyond just their products,  be a positive part of people's lives - then the first step is to observe what's happening out there, each day.

Another of our Naked Truths also applies here, in terms of how brands process and reference what they find out there in the wide world.  People are our Partners, which we means we should not only be in touch with what's out there, but also that we need to understand that some of these things are already rooted in meaning, and that meaning should be respected.    Not everything should be co-opted as a creative idea for brand communications.  

FedEx on fast forward

I was watching The Simpsons on Hulu last night (a very Lisa-heavy episode, unfortunately) and FedEx, the sponser of the show, reduced the usual 15 second wait-time until the show resumed by running their commercial on fast-forward.

(I find Lisa Simpson very annoying)

The voiceover of the ad was basically that FedEx recognizes that it's more helpful for them to get you back to what you're watching faster then to tell you how awesome FedEx is for 15 seconds. 

I wrote a little while back about brands trying to get sponsorship around Hulu content right for the audience and vewing experience, and I have to say, this FedEx ad is definitely getting there.    They created a brand message that was appropriate for the medium, and acknowledged the viewers wants and needs. 

I guess you might be thinking that if their intentions were truly to just bring you your show without interruption, they wouldn't have run an ad at all - but that seems unrealistic, and from the perspective of a FedEx brand manager, a pretty dumb idea.

I wonder if we'll start seeing more ads on sites like Hulu that acknowledge the fact that all people want to do is get to their content faster.

(I tried to find the spot online, but I couldn't - if you see it, give me a heads up!)