Being Peter Kim

Trend School - Austin, Nov 3

Archrival - our compadres who got the world searching for Red Bull Stashes, mess with high speed cameras, and have Honey Badger on their after-hours answering machine - are partnering with experts from the Intelligence Group to bring Trend School to Austin on November 3rd.

If you need to keep up with the latest in emerging entertainment, technology, fashion, lifestyle, and marketing trends - and want a good excuse to visit Austin - you can get more information and register here: Trend School Austin.

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Forward With Ford

I spent a couple of days last week with Ford in Dearborn as part of an event for the social press/media called Forward With Ford.

In hindsight, it's difficult to imagine another company that could pull off what Ford did. For starters, the automotive industry occupies a spot within the American psyche. Ford products are a natural fit for a broad range of consumers - no need to force fit with slick advertising. And the company has a strong social media presence, providing a platform for effective engagement. Most importantly, the event wasn't experimental in the sense that the topics were unrelated or new to the brand - you can see Ford's communications consistency for example in this TED talk by Chairman Bill Ford.

Let me tell you about the people who were there. I met individuals representing interests including green living, mommy bloggers, Latino publishing, consumer electronics, and of course automotive enthusiasts. Key Ford representatives were Marisa Bradley, Lifestyle Marketing Manager who masterminded the event; Scott Monty, head of social media; Sheryl Connolly, head of Global Trends and Futuring; and Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who greeted the group at an opening dinner.

Ford hosted our broad cross-section of social media interests to learn about trends impacting the auto industry with overlap into the rest of our lives: emerging technologies, aging population, living green, safety and security, global design convergence, and engaging the senses. Accordingly, Malcolm Gladwell delivered a pre-dinner talk on macro trends drawing heavily from his October 2010 New Yorker article, The Talent Grab. The conference closed with Joel Garreau, bookending an action-packed two days of discussions and hands-on experiences.

On site, we were taken in-depth to see where Ford creates the future.

• In the design center, I saw a massive HD screen where car designs are reviewed, at a size reminiscent of the massive Dallas Cowboys stadium jumbotron.
• Ed Begley Jr. was on site to lead sessions on sustainability. I sat next to him at the opening dinner and we chatted about the Hydrogen Highway, windmills in Tehachapi, and personal solar power.
• On a tour of the labs, we met employees who were eager to share about "noise vision", horn tuning, seat comfort, the "human occupant package simulator", and smell jury. Unlike the Zappos tour, we didn't encounter any employees dancing with synchronized Shake Weights, but we did hear from engineers and scientists who clearly love their jobs.
• At Ford's test track, we were presented with eight experiences: off-roading in an Explorer to test all wheel drive responsiveness; skidding around with a professional driver on a wet track in a Mustang to demonstrate traction control; riding along in a demonstration of wi-fi enabled cars which can help prevent accidents; an eco-driving challenge to maximize fuel economy in a Fusion hybrid on the test track oval (mine was awful); drag racing F-150 trucks (I won); reviewing in-car technologies like voice, nav, and music; and driving a sensor-equipped Focus around an obstacle course for accuracy (me = perfect score).

I could go deep into how the FordTrends event is a manifestation of Social Business, but let me be brief and say that social business is business. Kudos to Ford for investing in an event to socialize the brand with an audience outside of the traditional gearhead set.

For more on the event, read CC Chapman's take, view the official photos on Facebook, and browse #FordTrends on Twitter.

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A little too familiar?

Do these gates look familiar? They're the entrance to a popular store you've see in almost every suburban shopping mall, just a bit different in this particular outlet.

Destinations have changed. The proliferation of global brands make this difference ironically apparent, making foreign cities both comfortingly familiar and unfortunately similar. Almost everywhere you go, you can have a Coke or Starbucks coffee, buy an Apple product, or get outfitted in Nike gear. Whether this is good or bad depends on your personal preferences.

"In countries where protests against globalization were common a decade ago, American retailers are being welcomed by screaming fans and their credit cards."

- American Retailers Try Again in Europe, New York Times

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Brand Texas

I get the feeling that Texas is as much of a brand to people far removed from it, as much as it is a real place.

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Do luxury brands need social media?

I was reading Steve Rubel's latest thoughts on Social Luxury Is Personal, which left me wondering if luxury brands need social media.

Luxury brands are defined in part by their exclusiveness and inaccessibility; social media rebalances power and control via its inclusiveness.

• I was walking down a London side street with my CFO yesterday and we paused to admire a Maserati drive past. Ford and GM are running influencer outreach programs; Maserati is not.
• A couple years ago, I delivered a speech at a Google reception for luxury brands. Afterwards, I spoke with representatives from Bulgari, Cartier, and others who felt that my remarks weren't applicable to them given the presence of brands like Coach and Ann Taylor in the room.
• When I ran global digital marketing at PUMA, I worked with our Black Station group on co-branded presences with Philippe Starck, Neil Barrett, Christy Turlington, and Yasuhiro Mihara. At the time our comparison sites included Prada, which was forever just a single picture, and Helmut Lang, which was a list of links. Forget any usability or even worse, drive to sales.

All brands today are thinking about social. But do luxury brands need social media? Yes, but not in the way many would think - this isn't about making the Burberry plaid into a uniform or seeing every kid on the corner wearing an Armani Exchange cap. Luxury brands can benefit from social CRM - which leads to more effective business and better understanding of consumers, but not necessarily Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. For more on social CRM, attend my webinar tomorrow.

Luxury brands can benefit from social business. But significant differences lie within operationalization and by all means, please don't confuse "true" luxury with what premium or mass brands should do...that would be quite gauche. :)

Pricing the emperor's new clothes

In the aftermath of the holiday gifting season, here's some insight into the effect of pricing on brand.  The bottom line isn't good.  Jonathan Salem Baskin illuminates the illogic of sales over at Dim Bulb.

If losing brand equity through consumer training isn't bad enough, The Boston Globe offers evidence that only 5 of 52 items tracked through the holiday season were actually cheapest on Black Friday. But don't tell that to these people.

Be careful that your brand isn't overexposed for the sake of short-term gain...

Why the London 2012 logo is a HUGE success

OK so the initial controversy over the London 2012 logo has died down.  Somewhat.

My feed reader is kind of quirky sometimes and I just got retreads on posts from Mack and David on the subject.

Despite all of the negative takes on the logo, I think it's a success.  Why?

1.  The event is five years away and people outside of London are buzzing about it. Since when did the general public care about the Olympics anymore?  I used to work for a sporting goods company and I remember the day that our running marketing manager gave us a hard time about this.  Unlike football (i.e. soccer), which people care about every day, all year and which gets much more funding.
2.  Can you recall what the last Olympic logo was?  Do you even remember where it was held?  Can you recall ANY Olympic logos?  I remember 1996, because I was living in Atlanta at the time.  I remember 1988, because I went to Seoul the year before.  Otherwise...?
3.  [Proper form would have me make three points to support the argument, but in this case I think the first two suffice.]

As Oscar Wilde said, "there is only only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Google-juice goes prime time

Front page article in today's WSJ:  "You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well."  The concept behind this has been around - think Classmates.com, which powers its marketing with cyber-stalking principles.  There are even consultants who can help you increase your google juice, offering suggestions like changing your name.

As the web grows (BTW is there a Hubble's law for internet expansion?) and search algorithms change, placing well in search results gets more challenging.  When I started this blog about a year ago, a Google search for Peter Kim yielded 27.8 million results.  Today, the same search yields 43.9 million results!

I think I speak for everyone named Peter Kim out there when I say we're relieved that the result for "Peter Kim: Gay or Asian?" has dropped quite a bit in the rankings.  But my favorite search result of all doesn't show up:  The Official Peter Kim Group on Facebook.

Chasing Cool

Hey, I'm not special enough to be in the Nikon D80 blogger program (which I could actually benefit from as I've been seriously contemplating a camera upgrade - you can see that my pics are taken with a Canon SD550 or Nokia N73 - but I digress), however from time to time people send me interesting things to read.

Steve sent me a copy of Steal These Ideas.  Andy sent me a copy of Word Of Mouth Marketing.  This week, I got a copy of Chasing Cool by Noah Kerner and Gene Pressman.  Read it on the flight from Boston to Minneapolis (where I visited the Mall of America - if Harajuku is an epicenter of cool, this is its antithesis).

These guys know what cool is and how to harness it in a business, as evidenced by their experience.  The problem is that many people don't and will read this book hoping to find a secret formula for coolness.  Let me save you the trouble - you won't find it here.  Or in any other book for that matter. 

I've been lucky enough to see cool from two perspectives, working at two brands in the footwear industry on opposite sides of the fence.  One was cool.  The other was chasing it desperately.  The problem with the latter is captured perfectly in the quote above the image at left.  The secret of the former was its authenticity.

As RHCP sang, if you have to ask, you'll never know.  So stick with what you know and have a passion for - that's what will make you cool.

Branding and business sense: Delta Air Lines

It's good to hear that Delta Air Lines has emerged from bankruptcy.  I've flown a lot of miles and many of those have been on Delta (I was a management consultant based out of Atlanta).  As part of their re-birth, they're making some branding changes...which they shouldn't.

I see the importance of making a new start, psychologically.  I also see the importance of operating a fiscally fit business and some of the rebranding just doesn't make sense to me.  First of all, hiring a consultancy to design the money wasn't free.  Or cheap.

The cost of repainting the planes comes in to play.  Delta will save costs by phasing this in over four years - more than enough time for the excitement of the brand's relaunch to die off.  Other airlines like American don't even paint most of the plane which helps them save in an even more critical area - fuel costs.

There's also the need to extend the brand identity across operations:  uniforms, airport signage, stationery, vehicles.  If you've ever run the numbers on an M&A deal (I have), you know that these are non-trivial expenses.  (see more concepts here)

And ironically, Delta is using more red in their color schemes.  As a company emerging from bankruptcy, I'd think they want to use more black.  Maybe they do have some customer empathy, or just a sense of humor, reflecting the emotion of their customers for so much of the recent past.  Nowhere in their bankruptcy exit statement does Delta say, "we listened to customers."

Beyond all the money spent on imagery, I'm hoping that two things change:  pricing (lower) and service (better).  Otherwise, it's just a question of when, not whether, Delta comes back to this stage of airline industry samsara.