Ad Fail: Dramamine Ads Cause Air Sickness

The cacophony of new media now fully surrounds us. There is no longer an advertising free privacy. (Gosh I miss the good old days.) So we have to get used to complete lack of personal respect from advertisers. But even then there should be limits.

Here’s how the fail goes… My USAir flight to Denver today left at 7:40 am EST so that means I leave the hotel blurry eyed at 6 am with little patience for distractions and noise – including visual noise. (All this is made worse by the bad night of sleep typical for me on the East Coast.) In other words, I’m a typical traveller.

The middle seat is empty on my flight so I’m pretty relieved. Until I drop the tray after take off. Instead of the peaceful neutrality of airline decor I’m hit with a relative cacophony of color. Certainly it could be worse. But for an airplane, this is a brutally noisy ad that is really, really ugly when you are condemned to live with it for 3 hours and 10 minutes. And the surface is slick, so we are worried about that latte dumping in someone’s lap or laptop. (Dumb production of the ad physicals.)

It gets worse. The ad is for Dramamine and the message is about motion sickness. (See photo.) Now I haven’t had a weak stomach in 30 years filled with business flying. But with this ad in front of me, the suggestion of airsickness makes my stomach feel queasy even as our flight is level and smooth.

Airline Tray Noise

Even contextually this is a fail. IF I needed Dramamine, its too late. At 40,000 feet it’s hard to purchase Dramamine. And someone with a weak stomach might have spent their flight tortured by the fact they hadn’t taken it.

In the end, I was disgusted with Dramamine. And someone with a weaker stomach might end up physically sick about the ad…and fighting mad.

USAir should have refused the ad – aware of the violation of passenger space and psychology. And the makers of Dramamine should have been far wiser. But neither were.

Was this the brainchild of someone with too much enthusiasm for the mythology of contextual advertising? If so, they fully lack awareness and enthusiasm for humanity in communication.

Wallpapering our travel environment with visual noise is not good. Even escalator handrails at O’Hare have become opportunities to condemn the inmates of business travel to torture by visual noise.

This fail starts with it being Dramamine. But assuming the airlines have to sell that space, then different creative is required. The reality is that we spend about 5 seconds with most magazine ads. Here, they used that same visual power on a seatback tray we’re condemned to see for 3 hours. And it turned decent magazine creative into a crime against the consumer.

And so we can ponder: what airline seat back ads are next? Adult diapers? Diuretics? Deodorant for smelly travelers?

Trust me. It will happen. Airlines and airports have yet to show that they’ve figured out a sensitivity for their travelers. And companies like Dramamine look like they will buy anything. So buckle up. The noise has started and the volume will only increase.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Mobile Advertising Not All It’s Been Cracked Up to Be?

So, how many more of these arguments for new media do we have to put up with? Remember when the airplane seatback was going to be the ultimate advertising? Or the gas pump? Or the subway? Or, social media? Or…

Well, for years we’ve had to put up with the same drivel about mobile advertising. But the reality is that people want more privacy in their mobile lives. The latest mobile ads on my iPhone are as ghastly and intrusive as the worst of hard sell ads.

In truth, mobile advertising has the tonality of a 3rd world airport – where we’re pestered by people selling rides, luggage hauling, tours, and many more things.

Now, a new survey out of the UK shows tremendous dissatisfaction from consumers on the topic of mobile ads. (Link here.) I hope no one is surprised. Because if you are, then you’re not paying much human attention to how your phone works.

There clearly is commercial value on mobile devices – no question. Is the biggest potential with advertising? That’s not clear. Especially if you pay attention humanly to advertising.

And so, the cycle of hype and under delivery from new media continues. New media advocates, though, would be wise to be more accurate and honest about their media’s potential. If they are, they just might develop a superb base of long term clients who reap financial reward from their use. Otherwise, they’ll follow the cycle of sweetly profitable spike in the beginning followed by a desperate search to find advertisers who will pay for their services.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

The Tyranny of Creative Correctness in Advertising

Let’s define a new term: Creative Correctness. In other words, the tyrannical pressure from a specific view of artistic perfection that turns advertising from a powerful advantage into failure.

Creative correctness is a disease. And it’s one the ad business needs to fight. Because forcing advertising to live up to any one group’s specific flavor of art takes advertising away from truly human communication.

To be clear, being concerned about creative correctness in no way lets up on the drive for advertising excellence – it enhances it. Creative correctness is dysfunctional – focused on a specific and one-dimensional vision of artistic purity rather than a rich understanding of moving humans to action through communication.

Interestingly, this means advertising’s new radicals – those seen as “out of step” with best practices – are those who defy the call of creative correctness to create, instead, campaigns that are far more powerful by delivering meaning in ways consumers receive best.

This year’s Superbowl ads were littered with creative correctness. Where to start? Audi’s fantastic zombie movie makes the point that this $80,000 car has nice headlights. What a fantastic waste of money. But it is fully acceptable under the tenets of creative correctness.

Or Chevy’s “Happy Grad” ad with a bunch of meaningless celebration from which it was extraordinarily hard to get the message followed by a full negative close when the celebrant finds out he didn’t get that yellow blob in the back of the picture. (Was it a Chevy? Maybe a Camaro. Maybe a Corvette.)

And that’s just two that I can remember – the vast majority don’t even stick in my brain.

Another good example of creative correctness surrounds the Burger King ads. Check out this quote justifying these ineffective ads:

“The BK ads from CPB may not have moved the fast food middle child ahead in sales but the work was interesting and conversational.”

In other words, this elite individual is able to savor the work just like an art exhibit and then tells us that means it is good work. They claim it has clear impact because it is “conversational”. Too bad conversations aren’t profit.

Burger King had, in fact, only one reason to advertise: “move ahead in sales”. I’d agree that there’s tremendous grey area between moving ahead today and moving ahead over 5 years. But either way, profit is the only way to evaluate advertising.

Creative correctness thrives because too few people believe you can identify advertising’s business impact. The agencies who suffer most from creative correctness also quite often back their clients into corners where nothing significant is measured. And generally this is justified with the argument that nothing can be measured.

Worse, quite often they bully their clients into accepting their ads arguing, essentially, “if you don’t put this ad on air, you don’t have the guts to be a big time marketer – so don’t force us to fire you as a client or go to AdAge with our displeasure”.

But ad impact can be measured and estimated. It’s tough. And it always involves estimates and hunches. But it can be done.

Creative Correctness drives creation of “A” grade artistic values which cover up communication that gets a “D” to “F”. And that leaks out in interesting ways today.

Humor. Far too many ad professionals believe that the best ads are humorous. Interestingly, the most effective ads are generally not humorous. But there are studies showing that generic ad recall is high with humor. Yet, ads which say something meaningful are remembered WITH their product.

Edginess. Creatives are told to “push the edge”. And, we see the results in things like the Audi commercial noted above – edgy and extreme, but all the focus on edginess means complete loss of meaning for the consumer. In fact, the new edgy is to avoid edginess. Funny, huh, how edgy becomes the norm and, frankly, quite boring.

Beauty. I hate living rooms that are so beautiful you don’t feel comfortable sitting in them. Ad agencies need to remember that with consumer communication. A friend of mine observes that “neatness prevents engagement”. It’s very, very true.

Just like it’s political correctness counterpart, creative correctness started for good reasons (here, to raise the quality of advertising). But it has ended up killing exactly what it hoped to create.

One knee jerk approach fights back with “call this instant” aggressiveness that poisons any good long term value that could come from the ads. On the other hand, the airwaves, internet, and magazine pages are filled with highly creative drivel that achieves very little.

But there is a third way that fights creative correctness without losing long term impact. This approach starts with the messages & meaning that drives business results rather than the drive to make movie theater creativity. Interestingly, I’ve found that one of the things creative correctness has killed is product. The vast majority of advertising focuses on nebulous brand values that are usually devoid of connection to the product.

Worse, when product shows up it’s with earth shaking ideas like “an Audi has headlights” or “a VW can be started remotely” mentioned 10 years later than the rest of the world. In other words, features without significance. But because of the best creative wrappings, this pathetic work becomes the examples the creative elite worships.

This is very unfortunate – brands ONLY build through products (or services) and product experience. After all, it’s product that consumers experience – not brand.

So, go forth and advertise. But do so with a true independence – willing to shake off the shackles of creative correctness in order to deliver more long and short-term business impact for your clients.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.

Setting Reasonable Expectations for Online Video Power

New media has found one more shiny new bauble – this time it’s online video. Let the exaggerations and over-statement begin! (Oh, wait, they have…)

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a video enthusiast. And our work ranges from TV spots for Kobalt brand tools from Lowe’s to 1/2 hour infomercials, web videos, in-store videos, and video send by direct mail.

But I think that gives me a reasonable position to suggest we shouldn’t sell online video services by dramatically exaggerating their potential impact.

What Is Being Said. Right now we’re bombarded with promises that you can “beat your competitors with online video” and that you need to jump onto the bandwagon now so you’re not “left behind”. We’re even told that online video is the solution to all your communication needs implying that online video will take the place of traditional TV. (And who can count the number of lists we’re seeing of 10 things or 12 things that are the “keys” to online video success.)

We’ve heard these messages before. First, when we were told that the internet would destroy retail (it didn’t). Then, when we were told that online advertising would be more powerful than traditional (it isn’t even close). And lately it’s been all about how social media would be a powerful playground for brands (except most consumers don’t want to be your friend – no matter how “engaging” your brand might be).

My 2% to 8% View. Let me suggest that for planning, “2% to 8%” is a realistic estimate of the maximum average power (best of circumstance) that online video brings to companies. (These percentages increase dramatically if you create video that might be used online, but is also pushed out through direct mail, television, point of purchase, and any other medium you can find.)

Improvement in this range is not to be ignored – that’s why I’m a strong proponent of wise online video efforts. But this is not “beat your competitor” strength.

The Challenge for Online Video. There are many challenges to online video success and plenty of experts who will tell you they’ll solve them all with a list of 10 steps. But here’s some challenges that don’t often appear on their lists.

1. You have to create your own audience. Traditional TV’s strength is that you can reach out to a known, very large audience. But online video has no guaranteed audience – and creating an audience is YOUR job. I can’t put enough emphasis behind this truth.

2. Few agencies know how to make online video valuable. Agencies create online videos that are little more than extended TV spots. And, for consumers, these are generally yawners (with few exceptions). Even if the online agency video’s are funny/quirky (aka Old Spice), the push to drive viral connection usually washes out all communication value so their end impact is to create an audience of non-consumers.

3. Video Impact vs. Video Clutter. Some companies are cluttering their consumer world with vast databases of video. While more might seem to be better, that’s often not true. A smaller collection of the “right” video’s will have far more power than a huge library of ineffective ones. (Certainly, there are those who love nothing more than to browse these big libraries – but it’s generally a tiny portion of your consumers.)

4. Significant Video is a Rare Find on the Web. Vast quantities are posted. Little proves valuable enough to be watched. In truth, you generally need outsiders to critique your video to determine whether it makes a different or just consumes your disk allotment.

One Important Myth to Debunk: Saying it in Video is more Emotionally Powerful. This argument sounds quite persuasive. But we need to stop. Because there’s a more complex set of truth.

If consumers don’t get hit emotionally the minute they arrive at your website then you’ve blown it in a way that video can never recover. (Note how fully this “emotion” argument ignores the ways great printed/web work delivers emotional experiences.)

Even worse, video whose primary goal is “emotional” had better be damn short – 10 to 15 seconds. Because video online requires higher commitment from consumers than your web page. So they demand that video deliver more value than merely emotion.

Step, but Step Cautiously. Online video has fortunately arrived. But TV, video, and film producer’s are aggressive salesmen. And now they’re turned lose with the venture backing that always accompanies an online advertising effort.

So take care. Set realistically aggressive expectations. Make sure you know how you’ll create an audience. Go create the important video. Then execute. And enjoy the extra juice the right online video work brings to your marketing.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

No Sign of TV Problems in This Year’s Superbowl

For a threatened medium, TV sure draws the viewers. The overnights are in and it turns out yesterday’s Superbowl set a record as the most watched TV in history – ever.

But wait. I know you skeptics out there will want to be certain. So, in local markets the share/rating numbers were also exceptionally high as noted, for example, in this market in New Hampshire.

And what’s particularly interesting is that if anyone thought it might be the ads that were drawing people, this is the second year in a row where the advertising was remarkable only for its near-complete lack of viewer value. (Nobody can even claim that the bulk of it was entertaining.)

It’s good news that there weren’t any big fails. But the ads were so lukewarmly uncommunicative that my 14 year old son decided that NBC’s ads for its own programming were about the best ads we saw. (He did like the Chevy Truck Apocalypse ad and the Dorito’s dog and baby ads.)

Personally, I loved the filmmaking in the Clint Eastwood ad – what a great statement. Except, that didn’t make it a good ad. I struggle with what appears to be Chrysler’s big lie. Chrysler cars aren’t really made in Detroit (a lot of Chrysler cars are made in Canada). And, while Detroit is thankfully having a bit of renaissance, it’s from economic recovery by diversification. This is poor strategic thinking at Chrysler that will catch up with them some day.

Anyway, dickering about advertising quality aside, these results are damn fine for a medium that’s supposed to be failing. Of course, if you read my blog you’ll know that I believe TV is far more vital and alive than it’s ever been.

And these Superbowl numbers are just more evidence of that vitality.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Award Show Skepticism: An “Effie” for Old Spice?

I wasn’t entirely shocked to see that the Old Spice social media video campaign had won an Effie – a lot of people in the ad business seem to have decided this campaign was the grand epiphany of social media effectiveness. Except, I’d done some reading about the effectiveness of the campaign and found its results entirely unclear.

So let’s consider the “Effie” award from the American Marketing Association. Their website tells us:

“The Effie Awards were founded in 1968 by the American Marketing Association, New York Chapter, as an awards program to recognize the most effective advertising efforts in the United States each year.”

Great description. They must be better evaluated than the curated art shows that most other awards have become (like Cannes, Clio’s, and most others).

What led to awarding the 2011 Old Spice Campaign? Here’s a link to the Effie PDF about the campaign (click here). The PDF regales us with statistics claimed to reflect effectiveness. Mostly they are the usual big online numbers. And I notice:

1. They claim the total cost of the campaign was less than $500,000. Guess they didn’t think it was important to mention the $3M to $10M spent creating the first spot and airing it in spring of 2011 starting with the Superbowl. (TV is highly effective at driving social media action.)

2. Old Spice sales for the product line had already gathered tremendous momentum in 2010. Their brief claims sales were up over 60% in 2010 vs. prior year. Hmmm. That’s a nice starting point for more growth.

3. They report all the expectedly big social media numbers. But I’ve written elsewhere my skepticism about accepting big numbers just ’cause they’re big. (Link here.)

4. Then there’s complete chaos. They claim Nielsen says UNIT sales were up 125%. But they offer a graph with units on the side but which labels the 125% increase as “YouTube Responses”. Huh? Which was it? What’s really going on here? That’s far too sloppy to evaluate “effectiveness” and I’d drop one of my students most of a letter grade for that kind of mistake.

5. The last line caps it all off. Question: “Anything Else Going On That Might Have Affected Results?” Answer: “No other factors”. No mention of the TV campaign, the coupon campaigns, co-op ads or specials at the store? Riiiiiight.

Except, there is this article in AdAge. (Link here.) This article concludes that the Old Spice Q2 sales increase was attributable to the coupon campaign – not social media.

While the social media campaign was on, P&G also mounted a significant coupon campaign for the product (guess they forgot about that when submitting for an Effie). In the end, the Old Spice increase was roughly the same as increases of competitors who had mounted the same type of coupon campaign. And competitors (like Axe) who hadn’t used coupons hadn’t grown.

In other words: Coupon appear to be responsible for the product line growth – not social media efforts. And this means any claim of superior effectiveness needs a huge asterisk right next to it.

What Can We Conclude About the Old Spice Campaign? Clearly:

1. The brief is wrong when it suggests there were “No Other Factors”. Old Spice is part of a highly robust market with co-op ads, coupons, and a lot of retail action. Nothing – NOTHING – operates in a vacuum.

2. The brief is meaningless without a picture of the competitive environment and relative growth during this period.

While I don’t know what process led to the award, it seems realistic to suggest that the award should have caveats – if its not pulled entirely. At least, this is what an award show that cared deeply about effectiveness would do.

What Can We Conclude About the Effies? Not much. This is a single award and campaign. However, they didn’t do serious fact checking (it’s not like AdAge is a tiny and unimportant advertising publication). And they published a write up that is factually incorrect.

So do Effies have any connection with effectiveness? They might not. The Old Spice campaign was very clever, highly unusual, a new application of social, etc…. But none of that matters when you call your award an “Effie”.

The Sad Award Truth. Effies aren’t alone – they just claim to be better. Truth is, there is NO way to create an award that credits effective advertising.

Awards start to fail at one of advertising’s first critical steps: targeting. Effective advertising targets an end consumer. Judges are NOT those consumers and they never view award submissions within the reality in which consumers consider the ads. (Only industry associations for vertical markets can have any hope of judging target market impact.)

Once this failure starts, there is no way for awards to be anything more than they’ve always been: the more carefully crafted ones are curated art shows and the less well crafted are mere popularity contests. To create an award that is anything else would require judges to dedicate hundreds of hours of their time and be supported by a staff dedicated to developing independent judgement.

Still, the Effies could have done better. This campaign might still get an Effie if they’d had a complete submission that showed more effectiveness insight. And perhaps there was data submitted that wasn’t made public. But the public release showed egregious gaps. There’s no way those should be rewarded.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

There Is No “ROI vs Brand” Dilemma When You Know Your “Profit Horizon”.

Far too many “smart” (aka self-conciously cool) agencies these days proudly seek talent from anywhere EXCEPT business backgrounds. They believe, they say, that these fundamental skills for understanding arcane concepts like “profit” get in the way of true creativity. (More on this mis-direction in a future post about an ad biz culture I call “creative correctness”.)

But this outright avoidance of business skills in the agency business has led us to the endless (and frankly silly) discussion about deciding between “ROI” and “brand”.

Bunkum. There’s no contradiction between these two – not when you think like a business. The needs of your business must be met – and that means creating advertising which brands AND delivers ROI.

ALL advertising must return an ROI. Brand is meaningless if it doesn’t generate profit. I don’t care when you need it, at some point brand MUST return an ROI or you shouldn’t be building a brand.

Sadly, this means that all those arcane sociological wonderment theories surrounding brand ONLY have value if they help create profit. Otherwise, they are lovely little theories that agencies use to get their next work – but which clients should ignore.

Of course, it can be tricky to craft an ironclad calculation of ROI. And the reality of a vitally active market makes it difficult to separate an unchallenged advertising profit out of numbers affected by a wide range of efforts. But that’s no excuse. You must create a reasonable approach for estimating ad profit.

ROI Proponents are Also Wrong. It seems that the primary reason we talk about ROI these days is that online enthusiasts are desperate to find a way to steal budget from brand efforts.

As a result, massive venture capital investments have funded a plethora of content claiming that ROI oriented efforts trump long-term brand work. But they don’t. Brand building is extremely valuable.

“Profit Horizon”. A More Useful Construct. As agencies, we need to plan our every activity with a clear understanding of what I’ll call our client’s “profit horizon”.

In other words, if they spend $X today, when and how must profit from revenues driven by that spending cover the cost of the advertising and how much additional profit must result?

There are different types of simple approaches to this…

1. A few companies must have an instant profit horizon. Think of the traditional DRTV phone sales plays. Or, the direct mail instant profit needs. But also, a great many retail situations require advertising to drive immediate sales via store traffic.

2. Quite a few more companies will have a 6 to 24 month horizon. If they spend the money in this year’s budget, it must turn a profit soon. Not in 5 to 10 years, but in the next x months.

3. Very Large Companies May Be in a Position to fund long-term brand development. In these cases, full profit may not need be returned for 5 to 10 years. But even in this case, we should be developing ways from the first day to estimate profit created through advertising.

More Complicated Profit Horizons. Agencies and their clients will be far more successful if they can look at more complicated scenarios – perhaps like this:

Must recoup 30% of advertising cost within 6 months.
Must recoup another 30% of ad cost within the following 12 months.
Remaining ad cost plus a 40% profit on the revenue driven by advertising must be recovered over the following 2 years.

The advertising business serves companies with a 6 to 24 month profit horizon worst. These companies know that their long term health will be better if they step away from hard sell advertising. But as soon as they offer this wiggle room, agencies snooker them into failure. Perhaps agencies refuse to accept business reality. Or, too many agencies may know only one type of advertising. In either case, agencies recommend to these companies the same type of work they’d deliver for Budweiser and Coke – long term branding. And if the company agrees, then they usually go out of business.

Regardless of Approach, Agencies Must Learn Business. I heard a former W+K guy speak a few years ago and suggest that the problem in advertising is clients don’t “get” creative. So he recommended that clients need to learn all the creative subtleties he espoused. In truth, he just sounded frustrated that clients won’t approve just anything – that they ask for results.

I think the opposite: Agencies need to learn how to plan and speak in business terms. And, they should modify their operations in two ways:

1. Add “Profit Horizon” to Creative Briefs. It’s not always easy to describe or calculate. But it must begin to live in the mind-space of your creative and account teams. And that means adding it to the brief.

2. Start Hiring Trained and/or Experienced Business People. Your agency will never succeed at viewing Profit Horizons unless you can engage a healthy discussion about business, with businessmen and women. And that requires being able to read a P&L while talking in terms that the business understands.

Fortunately, when your advertising returns better business results, your agency business should grow. And that helps us all.

Copyright 2012 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

“Dude. It’s Not Our Problem”: ThinkGeek.com Blows their Brand This Time

It would make sense that oddity website ThinkGeek.com would be intimately familiar with de-motivator posters from Despair.com. It’s just sad that today’s customer rep picked the one that says “We’re not satisfied until you’re not satisfied”.

I just got off the phone from my worst customer service experience in…well…a long time. And this catalog that tries to look advanced and clever made the most fundamental customer service mistake: they rambled extensively out of their way to dodge responsibility.

The Order. Planning enough pad for shipping time, my wife placed an order with Think Geek on December 14th which included Minecraft T-shirts for my son and my nephew – both Minecraft enthusiasts. Think Geek finally processed money from our account on order December 19th. (Huh? Five days later AND a Sunday? Clearly a bad sign.)

By late evening of December 21st we hadn’t seen the order so we went to track it. Except, it wouldn’t track. The US Postal Service website gave us a message saying essentially “We have no record of physical contact with that order.” This was…um…somewhat concerning so I called them.

Calling Think Geek’s Customer Service. I was encouraged when the phone was quickly picked up. But that was the end of encouragement.

After explaining the situation, the representative put me on hold. Then he comes back and tells me they don’t know anything about the order. Because: “The Post Office loses orders all the time so it’s their fault. I work in shipping and know they’re pretty bad.”

My Head Starts to Explode. It’s the holiday. Things happen. Everyone is stressed. And we manage similar customer service on behalf of branded clients. The idea of an order problem isn’t foreign to me and they probably couldn’t have had a more understanding customer on the phone.

Except they responded with: “not our problem”.

Of course its your problem. If it’s true that a shipping company loses orders all the time, then you shouldn’t offer that option. Or, you could warn that “using this shipping option may cause your order never to arrive because we use a really unreliable supplier”.

The Explosion Goes Nuclear. I ask, “What are you going to do.” Here’s the various levels of the response:

“We can resend most of the order. But, between when we told you we sent an order and now, we ran out of Minecraft t-shirts. So, we’ll just refund your money and call it good.”

“Hey, look, it’s the Post Office that lost the order. So it’s not our fault and that’s all we can do. Why don’t you call the Post Office.”

I responded: “I know how shipping happens and this tracking information doesn’t guarantee it ever reached the Post Office. It might have fallen into a crack in your facility or off the palette before it reached the Post Office. So it is quite concerning that (a) you blame the USPS and (b) all you want to do is give my my money back.”

To which my representative replied “what do you want me to do”. When I explained that most operations offer something to indicate that they really value their customers, he replied “we don’t do that and this is all I can do”.

At which point I resort to: “What part of ‘these are Christmas presents’ don’t you understand? Their value is far higher than their cost.”

The B52 bomb bay doors open and, in my best Major ‘King’ Kong impression, I climb onto the bomb and yell “yee haw” as it sails into the air. (This nonsense might make more sense if you, check this link. Or not.)

Let me suggest two rules to help your customers avoid exploding heads:

1. Never ever say its not your responsibility. Your company made all the choices. Therefore, it IS your responsibility – no matter what you may want to think.

2. Brands build when you have a clear policy for making customers happy when the process screws up. There will be problems. And you can’t make everyone happy. But nuclear fallout was easily avoided in this situation had he immediately acknowledged responsibility and suggested Think Geek go slightly out of their way (not hugely – just something to show they took responsibility).

Instead, “Think” Became “Don’t Think”. I will be cautioning my son about purchasing any more items from Think Geek. They proved unreliable and – yes – flakey. (Maybe it’s branding – aren’t Geek’s are supposed to be flakey?) My wife and I will never again purchase from them for a birthday or holiday – because we can’t rely on delivery.

In the end, they are sending the in-stock items with some level of expedited shipping (snarkily referred to by my rep as “more reliable than USPS” – like it was our fault for choosing one of the options they offered). They will refund payment for the two Minecraft t-shirts (the things we cared most about). And, will give us a $7.95 gift certificate which is the amount of the standard shipping. (It took an extended argument on my part to get this to happen – an argument that cost them hourly wages and loss of brand value.)

My rep fully executed the Demotivator. He seemed happy. And I’m definitely not.

But I don’t think the story is over. My experience may have been an aberration. So I’m going to send them a link to this post and offer them the option of replying with a comment. And I’ll even amend this post if there’s something useful to offer.

So stay tuned…

Addendum December 26, 2011. I have received new information from ThinkGeek.com. Jamie Grove (listed in his signature as VP, Evil Schemes and Nefarious Plans (aka Marketing)) send me a solid response on Christmas Eve after my complaint was forwarded.

His email responds well for a company under these circumstances. Apparently what I was told on the phone was wrong. Rather, the order was submitted after the date for last Christmas delivery with standard shipping (a reality that wasn’t clear to my wife when she placed the order).

For the moment, we await it’s post-Christmas delivery. I’ll update my thoughts further once we have confirmed this is the case.

Addendum #2 January 2, 2012. So, we have received the items that were re-sent by the phone rep. The original order may be lost in the ozone. As a patient consumer, I’ll wait until the end of the week and wrap this up. But, the hope offered in Mr. Grove’s email is wearing thin at this point.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

Cable Cutting & Self Righteous Attacks on TV

I get pretty miffed when the “cable cutter” enthusiasts try to argue that online video will drag society out of the depths of depravity found in TV programming.

After all, what are most teens watching online? You can bet it’s NOT Masterpiece Theater or Nature. More likely they’re watching video’s of guys becoming eunuch’s when skateboard tricks land them on handrails.

This attack in TV is nothing new. I remember making it a few times in youthful enthusiasm while in college. Still, proponents of new media too often sound like sci-fi books — promising a “glorious future” where the internet changes mankind. (They are, of course, merely the latest to claim to remake humanity in thousands of years of such movements.)

What they forget is the history of human entertainment. Let’s do a quick review, shall we?

- 1900 years ago, the penultimate entertainment venue was the Coliseum – do you prefer Christians eaten by lions, life & death ship battles, or live gladiatorial murder? Yup. Pretty enlightening.

- During the middle ages, public execution seems to have been quite popular. I don’t have the Nielsen’s, but from what I read most families found it difficult to skip such gruesome events.

As life progressed, public entertainment continued in this vein until quite recently (when you consider mankind’s long history).

In other words, TV might just be the PINNACLE of mass human entertainment – NOT it’s nadir. After all, it’s clear humanity can find some pretty base things entertaining.

Today’s TV isn’t so bad (unless you want to suggest Glee is similar to live gladiatorial contests taken to the death). Certainly we continue to see life/death drama – except now it’s without loss of life or limb.

Is the web better? Or is it worse? You can find some enlightening viewing on the web just like you can find enlightening viewing on TV (I’d argue TV economics create more of it and of better quality).

But the web lacks the constraints of network, government oversight, and societal moral imperative – so far too often it turns back the clock to real life loss of life and limb.

Maybe literature is far more enlightening. Have you looked at what passes for “sophisticated” reading these days?

Cormac McCarthy novels like “No Country for Old Men” revel in brutality that can even include cannibalism.

The highly popular Dragon Tatoo series is filled with sadistic rapes and other brutality (primarily toward women).

The most popular reading for younger (and older) women these days is Twilight where vampires are featured in teen love and full blood baths.

I think I’d rather watch some episodes of Grimm.

So… American Idol is horrible programming? Riiiiight. Everyone gets to dis-like things as a matter of taste (I particularly dis-like gore). But none of us should get high and mighty. After all, Survivor, Glee and Pawn Wars are far healthier for humanity than the vast majority of the video on the web.

And that means, never (EVER) try to tell me that “web entertainment is better”. 5 billion cat video’s. Kids nearly killing themselves. Horrible disaster filmed first hand. And people claim that web entertainment is healthier than 30-Rock, XFactor and The Daily Show?

Call me once you come down off your high horse. Until then I’m turning on the TV.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved

iPad 14 – Electronic Magazines Prove (once again) That Content Trumps Bells & Whistles

Here’s an important tech axiom: Developers have far more interest in applying application bells and whistles than people have in using them.

I learned this lesson on my first project out of college. In that project I designed a network of Apple 2′s to display wire wrap harness instructions for avionics assembly at General Dynamics. (Back then I was a software engineer with a couple of degrees in mathematics.)

People all around me were saying that “Apple offers color so this project needs to use it”. And, when I noted Apple’s spec that we lost half our resolution instantly, they responded with soft-logic theories that the increased information from color would make up for that loss.

But the spec wasn’t entirely honest. Once I decoded the Apple II display it turned out the spec was only accurate if we restricted ourselves to 3 colors (2 + black). But if we used 8, we would drop our horizontal resolution by 8 and vertical resolution by 4 to 16 times. (This rookie analysis apparently impressed my boss and we worked in green & black.)

More importantly, it was the right choice for the human equation we were working with. Wire harnesses for a cruise missile were assembled by people and required accurate connections for large bundles of wires. It goes without saying that making an interface that didn’t respect the workers just to apply the sexiness of color would have hurt product & reliability for…um… well…missiles tipped with powerful explosives (sometimes even nuclear).

Fast forward to the iPad. Throughout my career I’ve watched engineers struggle with this very same trade-off question (usually without the life & death implications). Now, magazine publishers are going right back over the same territory – this time with the iPad.

When released, there was a lot of hoo-hah about how cool magazines and illustrated books would be with the gadgetry available. (Spinning 3d models, integrated video, animated pages, etc.)

So I bought an iPad comic book. Found some neat wizardry. But when it came to enjoying what was on the virtual-page, the wizardry wasn’t a help. But then, I know I’m not really a comic book guy so I figured I might be missing something.

Always optimistic, I bought the first Wired magazine. Again, cool wizardy. And even better gizmo’s to impress my friends. But better readability? Not really. In fact, it was pretty hard to follow the articles with all these new options. When I wanted content, I got meaningless cool.

Apparently my experience is the norm — NOT the exception. Summarizing what, apparently, many magazine publishers have found, one publisher offers a carefully worded suggestion that the bells and whistles are a “secondary benefit” to consumers. Significantly, this reaction is the same for gadget magazine Popular Mechanics AND more human content magazine Good Housekeeping. (link here)

Taken literally this comment would imply: Write good content first. Add bells & whistles later.

But my suspicion is the better response is: Gizmo’s are only valuable to readers in exceptional circumstances. Otherwise, it’s all about content.

(To be fair, Martha Stewart’s empire claims that they’re finding their most sophisticated apps returning the best results. I’m not familiar with those apps, but can imagine that they aren’t trying to be magazines. Gizmo’s are a lot more useful in recipe books & how-to’s.)

Certainly, there will be exceptions. But I spent years in advanced technology companies. DEVELOPERS are the ones that want sexy gizmo’s. People only want them when they are the best way to get the value they want. (Being the best way for a developer to get their next job really isn’t enough.)

Incidentally, as a TV/video specialist, I feel the same way about video. Use TV and video when it’s important – when it is right for the job you have to do. Otherwise, use good photo’s, animation, and well written content. Browsing corporate websites, at most only 5% of online video has a valuable purpose. Most often, it’s video wallpaper which often inhibits consumer success on the website. (Ironically, the worst I saw last year were video’s create by YouTube to promote itself. YouTube may know a lot about hosting video, but it was – and may still be – clueless about using video as part of marketing.)

So guide your content work answering one critical question with honesty: Are the choices you’re making important to what the consumer is seeking from your iBook/iMagazine/website/app? If not, spend your money on something more valuable.

Copyright 2011 – Doug Garnett – All Rights Reserved.