No news there, I know.  But sometimes the sheer force of this truism overwhelms me.  There are two issues in the news around my home province these days that are drawing more attention than H1N1, if you can believe that.  The first is the proposed sale of our provincial electrical utility to a neighbouring province’s; the second is a proposed by-law in the city of Dieppe that would force business owners to make exterior signage bilingual.

Let’s examine the first one first.  I won’t pretend to be an expert on all the nuances, but essentially the facts as I understand them are as follows:  Hydro Québec wants to pay about $5B for most of the assets of NB Power.  NB Power has not been well-managed in the last few years, including a couple of well-publicized and expensive screw-ups like a botched purchasing arrangement of orimulsion fossil fuel from Venezuela and an $800M+ cost overrun on the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station refurbishment.  NB Power is also carrying $4B+ in debt.  Why would Hydro Québec want such an albatross?  Well, for one reason, it is fundamentally a sound infrastructure, despite the recent woes; but more importantly, our (NB’s) transmission grid is the only way to get power from the vast hydroelectric projects in Labrador into the lucrative New England market (other than through Québec itself).  So we have something they want (access), and they have something we want (money and proven management strength).  Sounds like a good deal, right?

When it was first announced a few weeks ago, it came with another perquisite – the new utility would lower industrial power rates by 30% (arguably creating jobs), and freeze residential power rates for 5 years.  I figured it would be a slam-dunk for public approval, with that one-two punch benefit to people’s wallets.  Except it hasn’t been – the paper today said that 60% of citizens are AGAINST the deal.

The reasons for this are, as the title of this post implies, in my opinion, irrational.  They range from, “we can’t give control of our power to a Frenchy separatist foreign bohemian province-state,” to, “they’re OUR dams/coal-burners/towers/wires/jobs – what will we sell next?   The Bay of Fundy?”  I haven’t heard a single argument that says it’s a bad business decision, only ones that lean on these emotional triggers.

The second brouhaha going on is Dieppe City Council’s stated aim to pass a bylaw that would require all NEW exterior business signage to be bilingual, or optionally, French-only.  A bit of background for non-NBers:  Dieppe is about 70% francophone.  It is part of the Moncton metropolitan area, which also includes Moncton (about 30% francophone) and Riverview (about 10% francophone).*

To my feeble mind, it seems like a harmless, and perhaps even beneficial move.  It would incur no cost to anyone, except for the incremental paint expenditure for a new business owner.  It would add to the Acadian pride of the community, and make it a more charming destination for Americans.  For God’s sakes, there are already French-only signs on some businesses (Croissant Soleil, Restaurant L’Idylle), and nobody has had a life-threatening episode so far.

But for some reason it is bringing to many people’s minds the L’Office de la Langue Française, Bill 101, and the “Language Police” in Québec in the ’80s.  Which is a totally inaccurate analogy – Bill 101 was about eliminating  a language from public view; Dieppe’s move is about promoting  a language.

I feel sorry for the politicians that are trying to reason with the populace about these issues; because the ones that are raising a ruckus are beyond  reason.  If I were marketing these messages to the public, I would ditch the rational arguments and create some emotional ones.  How about, “We’re not selling our utility; we’re using our unique geographic position to screw the Québecers out of 5 billion dollars!  That’s over $7,000 for every man, woman and child in New Brunswick!”  And, “We’re not imposing language legislation, we’re creating a tourist attraction!  The continent’s only bilingual sign city!”

* Numbers made up, but probably accurate ± 5%.

When I was in France last month, I noticed something that was different from here.  Well, actually many things, like for instance everybody spoke French, but this post is about just one of them: when you push the “Close Doors” button in elevators there, the doors actually close!  Immediately!  I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the same is not true here in North America.  As far as I can tell, pushing the Close Doors button here has absolutely no effect on when the doors actually close.  (Although the “Open Doors” button works just fine.)

I’m sure there’s a good reason for this – probably somehow safety-related or something.  But if the Close Doors button is useless here in North America, why even have it?  My theory is that it gives the elevator rider the illusion that they have control.  Being in control is a very good feeling, and one that marketers would do well to try and provide to their audiences.  Unfortunately, most marketing up until now has been about taking control away  from the audience.

If you were in control of your web experience, would you have pop-up ads?  If you were in control of your e-mail, would you ask for 100 Viagra emails per day?  If you were in control of your TV, would you have commercials?  Most of us would say, “no,” and that’s why we have pop-up blockers, spam filters, and TiVo.

But if we can make our message so compelling that people will ASK for it, and search for it, and come and get it, then we’re doing our customers a service, not annoying them.  We’re letting THEM push the button, and we give them what they expect (or more) when they do it.

A slightly-related, probably apocryphal story:  Apparently, in the early days of skyscrapers, a man who was building one visited the nearly-complete structure.  He rode to the top floor on the elevator and said to the project engineer, “This is unacceptable!  That trip takes far too long!  Make this elevator go faster!”

The engineer puzzled over how to overcome this challenge.  It was unsafe or prohibitively expensive to actually make the car speed up.  Nonetheless, when the building owner visited the site the following week, he found the ride to the top noticeably shorter and complimented the engineer.

The engineer had made only one change to the elevator – he had installed mirrors on the walls.

DRM, for those of you who don’t know, stands for digital rights management.  It is technology that limits the copying of digital media like movies, music, e-books, etc.  Some people think it’s necessary to preserve the royalty stream for the artist and artistic integrity of the piece; some people think it throttles the spread and availability of art.  I will not weigh in on the issue in this post, as I have addressed it before.

No, this post is some advice for the anti-DRM crowd.  You should take a lesson from both sides of the abortion battle.  When the people who are against abortion started calling themselves, “Pro-Life,” what were abortion proponents supposed to do?  Call themselves “Anti-Life?”  Of course not.  Similarly, the other side won’t win any popularity by calling themselves, “Anti-Choice.”

So the people who believe in the free spreading of media shouldn’t say they’re “Anti-DRM.”  That’s saying that you’re against “rights,” and everyone know rights are good, right?  Human rights, right of way, Bill of Rights (US), Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada).

So the anti-DRM people have to find something to be “pro” about.  Like “Pro-Sharing” (weren’t we all taught as children that sharing is good?).  Or “Pro-Proliferation of Art.”  Or “Pro-Fans.”  Those will be tough for the DRM crowd to fight – who wants to be known as ”anti” any of those things?  AND, they’ll have trouble playing the same game – what could they be “pro?”  “Pro-Celine Dion gets more money?”  “Pro-You can only enjoy the stuff you paid for in the way we allow?”

Wow – the air sure is thin up on this high horse…

Last night during House, I saw an ad for a new (well, new since last summer) cellphone.  It’s called the Jitterbug.  The ad featured sepia-toned young couples, dressed in 1950s fashions, dancing the jitterbug.  The Jitterbug cellphone’s main feature is that it doesn’t have any features.

It hasn’t got a camera, it hasn’t got video, it hasn’t got an MP3 player, it hasn’t got an address book, or a world clock or games or complex settings to configure.  What does it have? 

GREAT BIG HONKIN’ BUTTONS.

It also has a loud speaker and a background noise reduction feature and a well lit, large screen with text that appears in a big font.  Who would these features appeal to?  Perhaps people with failing vision and hearing?  Perhaps people who came of age around the time the Jitterbug was a popular dance?

It’s no secret that our population is aging, but it seems to me that marketers are slow to respond to this shift.  Most of the the ad spend still goes toward the coveted male 29 to 40 demographic.  Shouldn’t we be trying to lock in loyalty with 60- and 70-somethings now and try and keep them ’til they croak?

A bar could do this now by eschewing loud music and mud-wrestling nights.  By being a place to have a pint and a chat instead of hooking up with a hottie or getting pie-eyed on Jager shots.  Maybe even start a subtle campaign to be the preferred location to host a wake?  Or is that too grim…

Yesterday, my wife taught me a valuable lesson about marketing.  We were skiing with another family (our daughter and their daughter pictured); and we were wondering when/if the girls would be ready to leave the bunny hill and ride the chairlift.

My daughter’s friend had ridden a chairlift previously, but that was two years ago.  My daughter had never been on one.  The adults were taking turns going on the “real” trails while one or two of us stayed behind on the learner slope with the young’uns.  I mentioned to my wife that I thought it was time to try them on the big hill, and she said something that was brilliant:  “It will be time for her to go on the chairlift when she is PLEADING to do so.”

Often, when marketing to people, you are trying to get them to do something that is strange, new, or even slightly intimidating.  Like riding a chairlift for the first time.  Rather than cajoling or reasoning with them, why not take the Tom Sawyer approach?  Make the activity or action you’d like them to undertake appealing, but slightly out of reach.  If they want to buy badly enough, then when you finally supply it to them, they’re be grateful  to you for taking their money.

There are many examples for where this happens already.  Anything that people (voluntarily) queue up for would qualify, like concert tickets or iPhones.  How could you do this in a bar?  Here’s an idea:

Buy a bottle of extremely expensive scotch.  Put it prominently behind the bar and price it appropriately, like $50 a shot.  But clearly indicate that not just anyone can sample this heavenly elixir.  Put some kind of qualification process in place: perhaps you have to be able to differentiate between two lesser liquids in a blind taste test.  Or take a brief examination demonstrating one’s knowledge of distilleries and single malts.  And of course, when they do achieve the status necessary to spend $50 for a shot, celebrate the occasion.  The act of them giving you a lot of money will then become an accomplishment they are proud of.

BTW, the girls DID plead to go up the chair, and were riding to the top of the mountain regularly and didn’t want to stop at the end of the day.

I can remain silent on this issue no longer.  Those of you who live in Canada have probably seen this news, for you others, here’s the story.  Basically, about a year ago, the principal of a small school here in New Brunswick was asked by a couple of parents if they could stop playing O Canada  in the classrooms first thing every morning.  It seems that, for religious reasons, their children were uncomfortable with it.  So the principal complied, and reserved the playing of the national anthem to school assemblies and the like.

Then, last month, some other parents found out about this, and all hell broke loose.  The principal started getting hate mail, radio call-in shows were swamped, letters were written to editors, and finally the provincial minister of education stepped in and drafted legislation  that the tune must be played every morning in all NB schools.

I’m not even going to bother sharing my opinion of which side is right, mostly because neither is.  Those who think they are being patriotic are actually betraying the basic principles upon which our country is founded: tolerance and freedom.  And those who think we should bow to the religious beliefs of a tiny minority of the school population should be asking themselves, “What kind of religion says it’s wrong to listen to a song?”

The patriots should chill, and ensure that students are taught  the sacrifices of those who have fought and died to protect us and how fortunate we are to live here – taught in lessons rather than having to endure a scratchy PA version of the same song every day for 12 years.  And the people who think the principal did right have to think about where the line should be drawn: what if a student’s religion requires them to flagellate themselves every day at noon?  Or slaughter a lamb?

All this is actually leading to a marketing lesson:  I have observed that on many hotly debated issues like this one - another perfect example is Québec sovereignty – 90% of the population couldn’t care less.  But it’s the 5% pro and 5% anti that go at it tooth and nail, and it’s THEIR voices that get heard and amplified.  So if you want YOUR message to get spread, you need to engage the zealots, not the masses.

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A couple of weeks ago, I wondered why Electrasol, the dishwashing detergent, was changing its name to “Finish.”  Yesterday, a reader from Australia left this comment:

Here in Australia, Finish has been a brand name of dish machine detergent for as long as I can remember (and I’ve never heard of “Electrasol”), so maybe they are starting corporate alignment with a parent company or something?

I have no idea if it is the same stuff, but then they wouldn’t be the first company to have the same name for different things in different parts of the world; or different names for the same thing for that matter.

And I replied with this:

There certainly are a lot of branding differences between North America and Australia. The one that was most frustrating for me was when I had a headache in Melbourne and tried to buy some “Tylenol,” which is our brand name for acetaminophen. I can’t remember what you call it there, but it took me a while to get some. Same thing with “Sultana Bran” (we call it Raisin Bran) and “Rice Bubbles” (we call it Rice Krispies).

Here’s proof:

Now, Sultana Bran makes sense, since what we call raisins here are known as sultanas in Australia.  But why Rice Bubbles?  I mean, there’s nothing inherently wrong  with it, but why bother with the two different names?

There’s a whole raft of stories about companies marketing their wares in foreign markets under inappropriate brand names.  The most famous is probably the Chevrolet Nova, which didn’t sell well in Latin America because “no va” is Spanish for “doesn’t go.”  This story is actually not true, BTW, the Nova in fact sold quite well in Latin America, surpassing expectations in some countries.  Check Snopes.

Oh, and I remember now the reason I had such a hard time getting my Tylenol.  After a request for Tylenol was met with a blank stare at the chemist’s, I (very cleverly, I thought) used the chemical name, acetaminophen.  The trouble is, there’s ANOTHER way to refer to that chemical compound: paracetamol.  And that’s the one they use in Australia.

Anyway, back to Bubbles.  I did a little digging, and it turns out Frosted Flakes are called Frosties in most non-American English-speaking countries.  But Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, and Special K are all called the same thing down under.  Any speculation as to why Kellogg’s goes to this trouble?

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This is a map of the word people use to describe carbonated soft drinks in the different parts of the US.  Clicking on it will take you to a much more legible version.  It’s very territorial:  in the northeast, right in the middle around St. Louis, and in the southwest, people call it “soda.”  In the north and northwest, it’s “pop.”  And in the south and southeast, no matter what brand or flavour you’re referring to, you say, “coke.”  (Except for right around Miami – I guess the snowbirds have transferred “soda” down there.)

I wonder if the folks at Coca-Cola in Atlanta think of this.  We’ve all heard that it’s bad for your “brand” to become genericized like Xerox or Kleenex.  But in those states, if you were running down to the corner store, and someone said, “Grab me a coke,” and you didn’t know what their preference was, you’d get a Coca-Cola, because that’s clearly different from, say, Sprite.  It would be another matter if they asked you to grab some Kleenex – you know that all facial tissues are essentially the same, but soda isn’t.  So I think they’d be happy about this instance of genericization.  (Word?)

Anyway, reminds me of a story.  I was sitting in a bar in Auckland, when a nice American girl walked up and ordered a “7 and 7.”  The bartender looked at her quizzically, saying he didn’t know that one.  (It’s rye and 7-Up, jigged into a fancy name by the folks at Seagram’s Distilleries, makers of “Seagram’s 7″ rye.)  Now, in New Zealand, they call clear soda like 7-Up, “lemonade” (I never did find out what they call what we  call lemonade…)  So I said to the bartender that what the girl was asking for was Canadian Rye Whiskey and Lemonade.   She said, “Eww, gross – I don’t like whiskey and I wouldn’t want it mixed with lemonade!”  I assured here that that’s what a 7 and 7 was, and said I’d pay for it if I was wrong, so she acquiesced and was pleased with the result.  But the thought left in my mind was, how can you drink something without knowing what’s in it?

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This is an interesting British anti-cocaine ad featuring a dead dog as narrator.  Need I say more?

Notice that in order to get through all the clutter and reach their target audience, they had to make this message both funny AND scary.  That’s the nature of interruption marketing.

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Aha!  Once again it has been experimentally proven that the majority of people actually prefer  less expensive wine to pricier vino, when they don’t know the price.  BUT, when they do  know the price, they prefer the more expensive plonk, and not only consciously, but physiologically, too.  The study about negative correlation between price and preference is here, and the one that shows we are physically  affected by knowing the price of something is here.

There are three important lessons here:

1. I am a genius, because I wrote about this months ago.

2. People value your product or service based at least partially on how much it costs.  Otherwise, the maxim “you get what you pay for,” would have never been born.  Interestingly, though, this is only true in the “real” world: less expensive things are viewed as lower quality, and “free” things with outright distrust.  On the internet, though, where “things” are actually just bits and bytes, “free” is becoming the expectation.  But that’s a whole other discussion.

3. Marketing affects people physically.  Isn’t that a little freaky?  That what you communicate to people can actually change the way their brain functions? 

Scott Adams writes frequently at his blog about how we are all “moist robots,” preprogrammed to react in a certain way to any given situation, and that no-one really has “free will.”  This would tend to support his argument – the fact that if you are convinced something is better, you will enjoy it more, whether it really is better or not.

Of course, the key word there is “convinced.”  If I simply tell you, “You will prefer this wine,” then the brain effect probably wouldn’t happen, because you may doubt my motives or expertise.  But an unbiased  indicator, like the free-market value of a particular wine, will sway your neurons.

So what does that mean for marketing?  That telling people things is nowhere near as effective as letting them find about by themselves.  That’s a hard concept for someone raised to think of “marketing” and “advertising” as meaning the same thing, but it’s the new reality.

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