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Are the days for 100-calorie packs numbered? Brandweek reports that sales of most 100-calorie packs are down. Oreo Thin Crisps, for example, are off 31 percent versus last year. The "mini munchie" craze started back in 2004 with Kraft launch of Oreo Thin crisps, Wheat Thin Minis, and Nabisco Mixed Berry Fruit Snacks. And seeing the success, General Mills, Frito-Lay, and others all jumped in with their own products.

The article points to several possible reasons why: the recession, issues with taste, and wasteful packaging. "The Supermarket Guru" Phil Lempert is quoted as saying that newly frugal consumers have figured out how to measure out 100 calories by themselves. Or maybe it's that portion control is now out of favor and everyone's on to the next thing to help us stick to a reasonable diet.

I think that all these factors have played a part but I'd like to throw in one more—the product architecture. A couple of weeks ago, I was having a discussion with myself (and others) about Frito-Lay's Baked! line of chips. I could see the logic in promoting Baked! to lead status on the packaging, but I wasn't sure that leading with a generic name and relegating the "real" brands—like Cheetos—to secondary status was the right way to go. Even more so with the 100-calorie packs. Another generic name, this time being used by lots of different manufacturers as a descriptor for a category of products.

You can see from the photo the consequences of leading with "100 calorie" versus Oreo, Ritz, etc.—there's a strong billboard effect but the packaging design looks generic. Contrast the 100-calorie packs from Nabisco with Pepperidge Farm's alternative approach with Goldfish (also in the photo) which places the 100-calorie message as secondary (more in the tradition of fat free or lite). Less billboard but more branding. (For an in-between approach, see here for the way that Pepperidge Farm has added "100 calorie" to its line of cookies.)

I wonder what would have happened if the 100-calorie message had been softer-pedaled? Perhaps less initial success but a longer-term future?

From Brand Mix

There's a big difference between simplicity and simplistic. Simplicity is good: it's important and according to da Vinci it's, "the ultimate sophistication." Simplistic is bad, shallow, and lazy.

When someone throws out a K.I.S.S. (as in: Keep it Simple, Stupid) do they mean that you've got to work harder to make something less complicated, more uncluttered, and more useful for others? Or do they mean that you can get away without much effort or attention to detail, making it easier for them? It's important that you don't fall into the trap of using the pursuit of simple to be an excuse for dumbing things down.

Garr Reynolds explores the question of simplicity in this post which includes a link to a speech he gave on the topic at a recent Synergy Conference. One quote buried deep in the speech, from Dr. Koichi Kawana, sums up the good type of simplicity:

"Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means."

From Brand Mix

...when it comes to internal brand engagement in a time of recession.

As we entered the recession last year, we all had to take stock.

From my clients’ point of view, it was about rethinking their suddenly slashed budgets. Priorities had shifted, and it was "back to basics" for nearly everyone in marketing and branding, with little appetite for anything seen as an extra.

From my own point of view, I had to think about how internal brand engagement could continue to be useful to my clients in a very different context. The benefits of internal engagement are certainly tangible when you see how it can impact the customer’s experience, but it does take time and effort to see that return on investment. And many of my clients no longer had the luxury of time.

We needed to get pragmatic—and quickly.

What matters most? Implementation, implementation, implementation.

The best advice I can now offer is, quite simply, to put your implementation plans on steroids.

It’s obvious that new or repositioned brands must be implemented—a necessary evil for budget holders. So use any internal "deployment" activities that would need to happen anyway, and make them work twice as hard for you.

Here’s how:

• Hijack. Use every internal communication, launch event, or "identity guidelines training workshop" as an opportunity for people to learn not just about the new logo or ad campaign, but also about how they can deliver on the brand promise above and beyond identity guidelines and visual implementation.
• Influence people. Start a debate about what would be on-brand and off-brand for your business, and let people try it (the brand) on for size themselves. Use tangible examples drawn from the experience you give to customers—which could include sponsorship, customer service, products, retail, web experience, merchandising, PR, and more—and let people play.
• Prioritize. Now is not the time for psychobabble about involvement and inclusiveness. Accept that not everyone in the business needs the same degree of engagement, and put your time and effort where it matters. Obviously your marketing teams are key. But be sure to think about who, beyond marketing, has the most power to impact the brand experience and talk to them first. Is it research and development, new product development, call center managers, or even IT, legal, and finance?
• Win friends. Find (or create) one or two things that will tell your story in the most powerful way, capture people’s imagination, and create buzz (because there won’t be budget to put 25,000 employees through an "engagement process"). We call them internal "power applications." This could be something physical in the work environment that represents the values of the brand itself, like Google’s outdoor volleyball court for employees. (Google says that just as it puts users first when it comes to online services, it also puts employees first when it comes to daily life in its offices.)
  
  Or it might be about overtly connecting the brand to a business initiative in progress that shows people just how serious you are about delivering on the brand promise. Dell’s IdeaStorm website tells a powerful story about its commitment to customer-driven innovation.

These are just a few pragmatic, focused ways to get engagement started. It may not get you all the way to brand nirvana, but it will certainly get you going in the right direction.
 

Back a long, long time ago when I was in school, we had a teacher who stood in as school nurse for a while. He had no medical training and, whatever our ailment, he prescribed a Strepsils throat lozenge. He had a big tub of them so it was very efficient and great as long as we weren't actually that sick.

I was reminded of that story when I received this tweet from Nescafé after my Brand Mix post about its latest advertising campaign:

NescafeUSA @martinjbishop We liked your blog post! Have you gotten a chance to try the Nescafe stick packs yet? 10:50 AM Jun 10th from web in reply to martinjbishop

A response that just didn't connect back to what I had been writing about (which was whether Nescafe's advertising response to the launch of Starbucks VIA instant coffee was a good idea or not).

If you take a look at @nescafeusa, you can see what's going on. There's only a narrow range of tweet types:

1. Approval (or RTs) for anyone who mentions Nescafé positively
2. Suggestion to try Nescafé stick packs for anyone who mentions VIA
3. Occasional chipper "morning everyone" tweets

This, I think, shows the dilemma that Twitter poses for companies like Nestle (which owns the Nescafé brand) that have traditionally had a very cautious relationship with the outside world (media and consumers). They want to join this new social media thing but they worry about how to engage safely and how to keep control. Better not give the probably-relatively-junior member of the brand team who's "in charge" too much leeway, they think, lest he or she says something that will get us into trouble. And we can't expect our senior marketers to take on this job—they've got enough on their plates already, and they're not that interested.

So they end up with this rather bland, occasionally ill-fitting, half effort where the toe has barely touched the water. Contrast this with the beyond-expectations response I got a few weeks ago from Irritrol, a much smaller company that hasn't even decided what to do with Twitter yet, but who is already using the medium more effectively.

From Brand Mix

Take a walk. A desk is no place to think.

Some organizations understand this perfectly well: when they need to think big, they take a walk. This is what a couple of top managers at Syngenta did when they needed to crack a new strategic vision for their company after a series of mergers. They hiked in the Swiss Alps for a week and came up with the solution.

This confirms my personal belief: walking is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world, but leaves us free to think without being fully lost in our thoughts. The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking and helps connect thoughts and clarify blurry ideas. Walking is much more than a practical way to travel between two locations.

I’ve turned to this wanderlust technique in a couple of creative workshops lately, asking participants to go for a short walk with a question in mind. Better than a coffee break, where one ingests bad calories and caffeine, a short walk with a topic in mind and a problem to solve can do wonders. It also has a positive effect on your energy level and helps tired participants relieve stress.

Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.
So let’s take a walk around the block, down the road, and up the hill—to refresh our mind, and irrigate our thoughts on a regular basis.

And it's free, too!
 

The current buzzword in the U.S. financial industry is “green shoots:” hopeful early signs of a wider economic recovery, emerging like crocuses from the recession’s wintry landscape. It caught on in the financial press after Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, used the phrase in an interview with journalist Scott Pelley on the classic U.S. television newsmagazine 60 Minutes in March:

Bernanke: “We are seeing progress in the money market mutual funds, and in the business lending area. And I think as those green shoots begin to appear in different markets—and as some confidence begins to come back—that will begin the positive dynamic that brings our economy back."

Pelley: "Do you see green shoots?"

Bernanke: "I do. I do see green shoots. Not everywhere, but certainly in some of the markets that we've been functioning in. And we've seen some improvement in the banks as well, certainly in some key cases.”

It’s a lovely, optimistic image of “natural” regrowth, and a message that has seemingly helped rally the markets. Yet it seems U.K. government minister, Baroness Vadera, tried using the same phrase in January and was immediately criticized for being out of touch. Perhaps she spoke too soon, or perhaps the British public felt the suggestion of anything sprouting in the dead of winter just lacked credibility. Now that (a terrifically rainy) spring here in New York City is almost over, one wonders what the summer might bring in the way of extended pastoral metaphors for global economic recovery.

While waiting for greener financial pastures, a new, recession-friendly shopping concept has literally made a name for itself: the groupon. Launched late last year by a privately funded “platform for collective action” in Chicago via their website (groupon.thepoint.com), groupons can be redeemed for deals—sometimes up to 70 percent off—on professional services and other items offered by local proprietors in several major cities around the U.S. The nature of a groupon means that it can only be redeemed if enough people sign up, though—thus putting the “group” in the coupon, and showing the usefulness of collective buying power. Workers of the world, redeem.

Do you hate making decisions? Do you find yourself having to make big and small decisions every day—at work and at home? Do you wish there was an easier way to quickly make decisions that were true to your intrinsic value system? If you’re answer to any of these three questions is a resounding “yes” then you must read Suzy Welch’s new book called 10-10-10.

10-10-10 is an easy-to-grasp framework that will help you make a sound decision every time by forcing you to think through the consequences of your decision in the next 10 minutes (right now), 10 months (short-term), and 10 years (long-term).

Start by framing your dilemma as a question: Should I promote a junior member of my team? Should I start a Facebook community for my brand? Should I quit my job?

Then collect all the information you need to make the decision. Either mentally or physically list the impact of each decision in the three time frames. What will happen right now if you decide to quit your job? Does the scenario change in 10 months? And when you think of 10 years, what do the consequences look like? Are there any pieces of information missing? (For example, you may not immediately know how your 401k plan may be impacted by your decision to quit, and that is something you will need to find out from your company.) List any other such information that you don’t have at your fingertips and need to seek out.

Once the information is collected and you have a clear picture of how your decision is going to play out in your life, think long and hard or quickly and easily about a “yes” or “no.” Remember that your decision should be one in which you are the master and not the victim of your choices. To do this, you need to be clear about the values that you live by. In the book, Suzy helps you arrive at your core values by having you answer three questions:

1. What would be your life's regrets at your seventieth birthday party?
2. What would you want people to say about you when you are not in the room?
3. What do you love and hate about your parents' lives? 

I read the book about a month ago and have literally been using 10-10-10 almost every day since then to help me make decisions on a wide range of problems in my professional and personal life. I find that it clarifies my thinking process and also ensures that I am not shooting from the hip every time. Now, every time I face a problem, I like to 10-10-10 it. Thanks Suzy!
 

Kai Ryssdal, of NPR's "Marketplace," interviewed Doug Palladini, Vans' vice president of marketing about the secret of his brand's success. It's a classic story of a niche brand sticking to what it knows best—in this case, for 40 years.

After receiving a huge early boost when Sean Penn wore his own pair of Vans playing the character Spicoli in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Vans has mainly kept its focus on its thick, rubber-soled, canvas-topped, cool shoes. Whenever it wandered too far from its home base, it got burned. This was the key exchange:

RYSSDAL: How do you keep going with this brand, that has evolved really not very much in the last 40 years, right? I mean it was cool shoes then, and it's cool shoes and some other stuff now.

PALLADINI: What we always try to do is dive back into what makes us original and authentic. And it's almost going back that allows us to move forward. You know, we've had times in our past, and we've been through bankruptcy where we've tried to reach beyond who we are as a brand. We've made wrestling shoes, clown shoes, skydiving shoes. We did a whole running thing... It is that Southern California culture of music, art, action sports, street culture all wrapped together around this basic-looking shoe. That is really what it is.

If you want to know more, the company has just published a book about its history called: Vans: Off the Wall: Stories of Sole from Vans Originals.

From Brand Mix

We remind our clients that the best brands are single-minded—that they stand for something special and unique. We warn them not to attempt to be all things to all people, that tradeoffs must be made when creating a powerful brand.

Yet at times, in the spirit of achieving excellence through teamwork, organizations "overcollaborate" internally when generating big ideas. In doing so, they run the risk of developing average (literally) results, ideas, and products. Great brand ideas become ordinary, with smoothed-out edges, when we try to incorporate everyone’s input. Without a doubt, brainstorming and cooperation among teams is essential in the development of big brand ideas. But if overdone or not managed correctly, they can diminish the final product. Several suggestions:

Incorporate formal brainstorming and ensure that sessions are led by expert facilitators. Structured brainstorming is key and there is a lot of information available on the subject, but some principles come immediately to mind. For example, throwing as many ideas on a wall as possible to see what sticks is only one form of an ideation session. Early on in the process, yes, cast the net wide. Later on in the process, use brainstorming to go deep—really build out that single idea. At the end of the day, make sure you and your team know what the objective of the session is. And establish what is open to debate and what is not; what the core idea is, and what ideas will best illustrate or extend that core idea.

Remember that consensus and collaboration do not mean compromise. As you hone in on a solution, use input wisely and don’t feel obligated to include everyone’s contribution if it doesn’t improve the product. Ask yourself and ask the team—does this input make the idea better? Or just different than it is now? You may have to agree to disagree.

Own it. Too often people enter into collaborative sessions and toss around underdeveloped ideas, come unprepared, or repackage familiar solutions. Assign homework, do your homework, seek out new sources of inspiration and arrive with fresh, strong ideas.

Challenge your colleagues. Engage in spirited, but professional and positive, debates about brand ideas. Defend them, argue against them, put them through the proverbial obstacle course! These exchanges will pressure test ideas and make them stronger as well as weed out the weak.

Let average ideas die. The leadership team would much rather see two fantastic solutions than four ordinary ones, regardless of what the project plan states.

Get some alone time. Develop, research, and refine ideas outside of brainstorming sessions. Sequester yourself in finalizing the big idea and packaging it for leadership consumption. Use teammate feedback to “disaster check” at this point or obtain very specific input.

Being a “creative,” I guess I should be used to cognitive dissonance. But admittedly, I suffer the greatest bouts of crisis whenever I see the graphic work of American Eagle Outfitters. After spending my life in desperate search for any bit of visual innovation—which usually started by purposely exploring “wrong” directions—to see avant-garde tendencies fully embraced by such a mass-market brand certainly makes me stop and reassess my preconceptions.

I suppose we could give American artist Robert Rauschenberg most of the credit for creating a unique aesthetic of mistakes and slapdash reproduction. Beginning in the mid-1950s, his assemblages, known as “combines,” elevated the casually placed, random image fragment to a particular, and oddly precise, technique. As one of his many followers, I can attest to the work involved in making something look perfectly random.

Besides this approach being an aesthetic, there was a matching ethic of permission to break conventional rules of placement and framing. Work didn’t have to look as messy as Rauschenberg as long as it had a similar anarchic attitude. For example, the late painter Steven Parrino’s technique of unstretching his minimalist paintings, crumpling them up and then putting them back with all the wrinkles lovingly preserved, has a similar disregard for proper edges and placement.

In the mid-1990s, I first noticed designers misplacing words and pictures on art catalogue covers, which seemed a logical place for it to appear. A title of a book, laid out so the title began on the back cover and wrapped around to the front, treated the type as both information and as gesture. The idea was too big, too wild to obey the rules of “everything on the front cover.” It was audacious.

Then several years ago, I noticed fashion designers like Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela taking a similar approach to silkscreened graphics—to the point where it became an identifying sign. If a T-shirt’s graphics are placed over the neck hole so they appear around the collar and inside the back panel, a fashionista would think of Margiela.

And now that aesthetic has worked its way through the system so well, and become so pervasive, most folks would think of American Eagle Outfitters. Thus, my disconnect.

I didn’t know much about American Eagle until I started watching the VH1 program Scott Baio is 45…and Single. That’s all he wore on screen, in glorious product placement. Here was television’s beloved Chachi from Happy Days—the definition of mass-market entertainment—wearing T-shirts with an avant-garde edge. And after that, as I began to see logo fragments on Coca-Cola cans or the Sundance Channel’s type bleeding off the screen, I felt the burden and the continual cycle of seeing once-radical ideas widely adapted. And the stinging realization that I need to reassess my relationship to the aesthetics of my design training.

This reverent disregard toward placement and framing used to represent rebellion, but its assimilation now represents status quo. Its meaning has changed and with that, designers now need to clarify what they’re trying to express when they run a logo off the edge of the page. Regardless of the message, the eternal requirement is that such a decision be done consciously.