Healthy Design

American Public Media’s Caitlan Carroll for Marketplace examined the efforts of one hospital in San Diego to “improve health by design”.  As the story goes, Sharp Memorial Hospital is taking a new approach to keep their patients healthy and shorten hospital stays by utilizing innovative architectural, interior and process design.  Implementing design elements one might expect in a 5-star hotel in hospital waiting rooms or practical details like laundry hampers in patient rooms improve everything from employee workflow to a patient’s state of mind.  The hospital expects real results in patient recovery time, employee morale and, yes, even their bottom line.

Read Carroll’s complete story here.

So who wouldn’t benefit from this emphasis on healthy design?  We tend to take the everyday design elements around us for granted.  But if better design works to improve our well-being and productivity, isn’t it time we all reexamine the spaces in which we live and work?

That rationale should apply to our virtual environments as well.  According to Mashable.com, the average person spends 68 hours online every month.  What if all that time was spent in frictionless virtual endeavors.  All our searching would result in meaningful findings (bing anyone?).  All our tasks would culminate in productive exchanges. We can derive a list of best design practices from the flood of analytics and metrics available.  So how is it so many websites make it difficult for internet users to purchase/participate/donate/volunteer?

By promoting good design online, we can create healthier and more productive online communities/users/consumers… and, as a result, healthier online businesses.   Here’s to a new Design Revolution!

Don’t Take That Tone With Me!

If the 3 rules in real estate are location, location, location then the 3 rules of marketing are audience, audience, audience. ProBlogger Kelly Diels recently posted “Do you hate your customer?” and examined what can happen when contempt replaces a deeper understanding of your audience. Kelly reminds us that no one does business with companies “that don’t even like them.” Take a look at your own blogs and marketing messages. Do they express a thinly veiled disdain for the values of your audience? If so, you may be ostracizing the very people you hope to attract.

Need to move fast! Wish we had…

Need to move fast! Wish we had wheels on our shoes. Heelys maybe?

Remember When a Pre-Owned Vehicle Was Just a Used Car?

During a recent interview segment on American Public Media’s Marketplace program, the guest, novelist John Lanchester, used the term “re-branding” to describe a contributing factor in our economic meltdown.  Here’s the quote, in context (emphasis mine):

Kai Ryssdal (host): That’s a great word, actually, frictionless-ness because that’s really sort of what happened to cause this whole thing. I mean, money was moving all over the place and nobody really knew it.

John Lanchester: Yeah, I think that is it. It’s strange how easy it is for that to seem natural. It’s almost a trick of re-branding. They didn’t so much call it money, they call it credit. Once upon a time credit used to be called debt, which is what it is. But if you rename money as credit, and give people the idea that access to credit is something that is almost a right, it’s something that should be easy, that should be freely available, that shouldn’t really have consequences, I think it becomes much easier to jam people with all the debts that they got stuck with.

This “trick” of simply calling something by another name, can be powerful.  Remember when a “pre-owned vehicle” was just a “used car”?  Wouldn’t you rather get behind “revenue enhancement” than a “tax increase”?   Or does “climate change” sound more benign than “global warming”?  Taken to the Orwellian extreme, this manipulation of language results in people believing “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery”, and “ignorance is bliss”.

As with any trick, it helps if it plays into what the audience wants to believe.  And it seems you can never go wrong by appealing to self-interest and/or baser instincts.  Therein lays the power of substituting the word “credit” for the word “debt”.  It changes the focus from the consequences to the reward: instant gratification.

But does this constitute “re-branding”, or is this simply “spin”?  And what’s the difference?  First, it may help to define what we mean by “brand”:

According to Seth Godin,

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.

The genius of changing “debt” to “credit” goes deeper than just the words.  Indeed, our whole perception has been altered.  What was once a mark of weakness and shame (you can’t afford to pay for that?) or even a crime (debtors prisons operated in America until 1850) was transformed into a mark of status (do you carry a green American Express?  Gold? Black?)   The amount you could owe became a source of pride and power.  Who knew that people would actually spend money that they didn’t have, and probably would never be able to earn?  Or that our bankers and financial institutions would do the same? Yeah, right.

Looked at in this light, it is easy to see why the growth of our credit culture qualifies as a true re-branding.  Additionally though, it is a reminder that we need to be more discerning about the way we process and the way we use words.  As brand signifiers, carefully chosen words can be the front line of the re-branding cascade.  This kind of re-branding may become more difficult in the Internet age, where peer-to-peer communication, social networks and instantaneous access to information had led to increased value for authenticity.  But then again, maybe not.  Just look at some of the examples in Frank Luntz’s book, Words That Work.  If you notice “energy exploration” replacing “drilling for oil” in public discourse, you can blame Frank.  “Spin” — a simple choice of words or turn of phrase — can be the seed of re-branding.

Brand Fragility in the Age of Twitter

UPDATE 2/1/10: Amazon has capitulated to Macmillan’s terms.  See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html

Amazon’s Statement:  “We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles,” Amazon said. “We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.”

Amazon continues to position itself as being on the side of consumers in this dispute.  But in the age of Twitter, this kind of half-truth gets torn to shreds by consumers and bloggers at lightspeed.  It’s all about Kindles and a bigger piece of the pie for Amazon, and any halfway interested consumer could sniff this out with one quick search.

Original post (1/31/10):

As I write this, a firestorm of controversy is lighting up the net.  A dispute between Macmillan publishing and Amazon over pricing for Kindle e-books has resulted in Amazon pulling all Macmillan-published titles, both electronic and physical copies, from its store.  As reported on BoingBoing.net (emphasis mine):

“The New York Times quotes an industry insider as saying that Amazon pulled these books in retaliation for a demand from Macmillan to raise the price of Kindle books from $10 to $15. Presumably, Amazon perceives the $10 price-tag as a way of encouraging people to buy its Kindle platform, which itself is a kind of roach-motel for books: the license terms and DRM on the books in the Kindle store prohibit you from reading your Kindle books on competing devices. So books check in, but they don’t check out. (I believe that Amazon’s terms, patents and trade-secrets also prohibit its rivals from making software that converts or renders Kindle books for that purpose. I have asked Amazon whether this was true on more than ten occasions over the past several years, in my capacity as a writer, publisher, and columnist for the Guardian and Publishers Weekly, but they refuse to answer.) If the NYT’s report is true, then this is a case of two corporate giants illustrating neatly exactly why market concentration is bad for the arts: * If true, Macmillan demanding a $15 pricetag for its ebooks is just plain farcical. Although there are sunk costs in book production, including the considerable cost of talented editors, copy-editors, typesetters, PR people, marketers, and designers, the incremental cost of selling an ebook is zero. And audiences have noticed this. $15 is comparable to the discounted price for a new hardcover in a chain bookstore, and it costs more than zero to sell that book. Demanding parity pricing suggests that paper, logistics, warehousing, printing, returns and inventory control cost nothing. This is untrue on its face, and readers are aware of this fact.

Update: not to say that all ebooks should cost the same. But they should be cheaper than print editions. * If true, Amazon draping itself in the consumer-rights flag in demanding a fair price is even more farcical. Though Amazon’s physical-goods sales business is the best in the world when it comes to giving buyers a fair shake, this is materially untrue when it comes to electronic book sales, a sector that it dominates. As mentioned above, Amazon’s DRM and license terms on its Kindle (as well as on its Audible audiobooks division, which controls the major share of the world’s audiobook sales) are markedly unfair to readers. Amazon’s ebooks are locked (by contract and by DRM) to the Kindle (this is even true of the “DRM-free” Kindle books, which still have license terms that prohibit moving the books). This is not due to rightsholder-demands, either: as I discovered when I approached Amazon about selling my books without DRM and without a bad license agreement for Kindle and Audible, they will not allow copyright owners to modify their terms, nor to include text in the body of the work releasing readers from those terms.”

You can see similar statements of outrage being expressed by other prominent writer/bloggers all over the net.  Examples can be found here, and here.

From the first link above, John Scalzi says:
” If nothing else, this bit of asshattery on the part of Amazon has well and truly cured me of any desire to ever get a Kindle. If Amazon is willing to play chicken with my economic well-being — and the economic well-being of many of my friends — to lock up its little corner of the ebook field, well, that’s its call to make. But, you know what, I remember people who are happy to trample my ass into the dirt as they’re rushing to grab at cash. The money I don’t spend on a Kindle will mean more to me than it does to Amazon, but I’m fine with that. The money I don’t spend on electronic books bought from Amazon over the next couple of decades will also probably mean more to me than Amazon, but I’m okay with that too. I’m not really trying to make a huge statement about it, and I’m not suggesting anyone else join me. Enjoy your Kindle if you have one. Buy my books for it if they ever come back to it. All I’m saying is: I remember how I’m treated and for what reasons. And you know, I do buy a lot of books.”

You can bet their tribes are listening, and spreading the word.

In fact, a quick search of Twitter for Amazon, Macmillan, or Amazon/Macmillan gets you a host of similar sentiments and a lot of links to these blogs and many, many more like them.  The tribes are restless.

What does this all mean?  Well, first, that these kinds of disputes and business moves can no longer be made to disappear simply by trying to bury the move late on a Friday afternoon.  The online world is never sleeping, and news spreads at an exponential rate.  Second, that a certain segment of the devoted Amazon tribe will feel betrayed.  Amazon, in their eyes, will have violated a part of its agreement with consumers and fans in a cynical attempt to make money rather than to serve its customers and its mission.  Macmillan doesn’t have much of a brand identity, and will probably not suffer much.  So Amazon will “win”, but at what cost?  How many will abandon the service for good, decide not to buy Kindles, and encourage others to do the same?  A betrayed follower could be even more fervent in his vocal dislike of the brand than he was in his evangelism when he was a happy member of the tribe.

In the end, Macmillan books will probably end up back on the Amazon store sooner rather than later.  But Amazon’s brand has taken another beating in a series of recent mini-scandals, this one coming on the heels of last summer’s controversy over its de-listing of sales figures for gay and lesbian books, which resulted in the coinage of the term “AmazonFail.”  How many more AmazonFails can the brand sustain?  The tribe is watching.  And growing restless.

The New Phone Books Are Here!

“Page 73: Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this everyday!”

— The Jerk

That was 30 years ago. Today? Well…not so much.

Yet, more than 200 publishers still produce over 7,000 different titles of Yellow Pages, including competing industry-specific, ethnic-targeted, and “underlay” or neighborhood-specific titles. The total annual distribution of 540 million is 200 million more directories than the entire population of North America.

That’s a lot of landfill. And that’s where they mostly end up, because they are difficult and/or impossible for you to recycle. Most communities do not accept them for recycling curbside. And commercial recyclers are reluctant to invest in the heavy-duty conveyers and shredders they require.

From a marketing/advertising standpoint, the story is equally appalling, for at least five reasons:

1. Numbers. The increasing shift toward landline-free households means a significant decline in HH reach. Unless, of course those households are victims of what the yellow pages industry refers to as “saturation distribution”. In which case, they are, indeed, reached, but they object to receiving an unwanted, unnecessary, resource-gobbling publication. For many businesses, that means their most desirable customers — younger, connected, environmentally conscious customers — are virtually unreachable in the YELLOW PAGES.
2. Context. As has been the case since its inception, your yellow pages ad will reliably appear surrounded by those of our competitors. The consumers who contact you will most likely make their buying decision on the basis of price, proximity or urgency. Perfect, if you are not concerned about margin, or not being perceived as a commodity.
3. Targeting. If your business wishes to select for an aging population lacking Internet access, the yellow pages may be the perfect choice.
4. Flexibility. Only if you take the VERY long view. Perhaps some find it comforting to know their ad will be exactly the same a year from now, even though consumers’ habits are changing daily due to technology.
5. Price. An average display ad in a print yellow pages directory could easily cost thousands per year — or thousands per MONTH — depending on ad size, color, number of categories, and number of books.

Despite all this, yellow pages’ advertising still generates an estimated $13 billion in revenue annually, according to a recent story on NPR’s Morning Edition — more than all magazines combined. The industry, desperate to save their business and make up for their lack of foresight (they could have OWNED online search) are trying to divert the torrent of dollars fleeing their print products into their online “yellow” directories — as though no one has ever heard of Google, Yelp, Craigslist, etc.

I used to say that, for urgency-driven products and services with little or no repeat cycle — plumbers, personal injury attorneys, heating and air conditioning services — the yellow pages was a good choice. Now, no matter your business category, there are better ways of investing your advertising dollars. But be forewarned: many yellow pages contracts have what is referred to as a “negative renewal clause”, meaning that unless you take action to cancel the contract, it may be automatically renewed for another year, sometimes at a predetermined rate increase!

For consumers, unless you need more booster seats, garden mulch, doorstops or risers for your computer monitors, the decision is easy. First, sign the petition to require publishers to switch to an on-demand system of distribution, where only those that request a book get one.

If you have phone books and yellow pages that you’d like to recycle, you can visit Keep America Beautiful to find a recycler near you. You’ll find a lot of nice platitudes cranked out by the yellow pages PR machine about how “green” they are. Those that believe this #%&* could use a lesson from Navin’s dad about the qualitative differences between excrement and shoe polish.

You can opt out of delivery of phone books from the major publishers at Yellow Pages Association .com.

Or, you can call them at the numbers below and let them know you want to opt-out of delivery:

AT&T/YellowPages (formerly SBC and Bell South):

1.866.329.7118

Verizon (Idearc):

1.800.888.8448

Dex:

1.877.243.8339

Yellow Book:

1.800.373.3280 or 1.800.373.2324

Clarity, Transparency & Simplicity

I hate being deceived. I think we all do.  Yet, we tolerate intentionally deceptive, misleading, and inaccurate language in  documents ranging from legislation to loan agreements.  This is often also true of marketing communications and advertising, where cleverness substitutes for imparting useful information, and entertainment directs our attention away from troublesome shortcomings of the product or service.  That’s not to say that you can’t be clever and communicate real, differentiating value at the same time — just look at the oft-cited Mac vs. PC ads.  The growth of online social networks, and the enhanced power of consumer-to-consumer, one-to-many communication may yet lead us toward more responsible, clear, useful and simple advertising.  Those companies that realize this and respond first may have an advantage.

Thanks to Valeria Maltoni for bringing this item to my attention via her site, Conversation Agent.