Hitting the target

We recognize that many, many people are disturbed by America’s gun culture. But still…Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul Barrett contains some instructive lessons in marketing.

Ironically, “America’s Gun” was the brainchild of a quirky old Austrian guy, Gaston Glock,  who perfected the gun at night and on weekends while working out of his garage.  He made headway in the US market by targeting key influencers – specifically, police departments.

The company also used some marketing jujitsu and turned very negative media coverage to its advantage.  When the notorious Muammar Gaddafi allegedly tried to purchase large numbers of Glocks, it actually ended up buttressing the notion that Glock was the gun for you if you were a seriously bad dude.

Barrett describes some of the consumer-centric “events” that helped to create a strong brand community, especially among the ranks of law enforcement. The Glock headquarters near Atlanta became kind of a playground for visiting police department officials.

This isn’t a corporate culture anyone would want to emulate.  Glock himself is…ummm…let’s say “eccentric.”  And he filled his upper management ranks with more than a few unsavory characters.  But the company has thrived despite all the dysfunction.

Here is a New York Times review of the book from January.

How smart are you, really?

Jerry Olson sends along an article from Forbes about various forms of intelligence and their influence on our actions and behavior.

There are marketing-related applications to these insights, of course.  The narratives that we have flowing through our brains at an unconscious level can have a significant influence on how we see the world, our place in it, and the products and services we use to meet the resulting needs.

Howard Gardner (developmental psychologist from Harvard)  has written an excellent and easy-to-read book about this topic – it’s entitled Frames of Mind.

 

Imagine your staff as a flock…

Here is a cute, little blog entry about “How Angry Birds Made Me a Better Manager.”  The point is that using a metaphor can open up new ways of thinking about a problem.

 

Dueling firsts

Almost everyone has a good story about their first car.  Mine was a 1982 Buick LeSabre.  It was like driving a sofa.  I wrecked it at least three times, once sideswiping another car (driven by a large, angry man) in a parking lot, once wrapping it around a telephone poll, and finally driving it into the corner of my grandparents’ house.

Subaru has rolled out a promotion for its Impreza model, in which it invites people to visit their website and share stories of their first car.  Sounds like a good idea, but as this critique points out, the promotion doesn’t do a good job of tying into the Subaru brand.

On the other hand, Toyota is doing something similar on its website; however, they don’t care about your first car.  They want stories about your first Toyota Camry. 

Advantage, Toyota?  What do you think?

Art and science

James just finished The Age of Insight by Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel.  Kandel has conducted extensive research into the workings of human memory.

In this book, Kandel focuses on how unconscious mental processes affect how we see and interpret works of art.  He discusses how sensory images can stimulate emotional reactions, the science of how we perceive faces and colors, and works his way up to the conclusion that art is a human universal with evolutionary value.

It is a long book and parts of it are heavy on the nuts-and-bolts of brain science.  Nonetheless, it is written in clear and compelling language and contains valuable insights that are highly relevant to understanding how people think and interact with the world.

Here is a review. And you can hear Kandel discuss his book here.

Where did you place the product?

So many companies and brands are concerned with how to utilize social media these days, it can be easy to forget some of the older, but still extremely important methods of stealthy advertising. This article reminds us of the importance of product placement in shows that reach a huge numbers of households.

With the increase in viewers who stream shows online or fast forward through commercials on a DVR, product placement seems to be gaining in importance. Numerous marketing textbooks (such as this one) detail the importance of product placement with the changes in how we watch television.

And any Modern Family fans out there can attest, Apple could not have gotten better advertising than Phil’s iPad episode if it tried .

Dress for success

Enjoy this New York Times article about the theory of embodied cognition (with some additional juicy details here)

The writer mentions a couple of well-known examples (e.g. if you are holding a warm drink, you will rate other people as being personally warmer) but focuses on new research that suggests that your clothing can affect mental performance.

If you believe the white coat you are wearing is a doctor’s coat, you will perform better on a test of mental acuity than if you believe that coat belongs to a painter.  But if you believe you’re wearing the painter’s coat, you become more creative.

Like Proposition Joe said on The Wire, “Look the part, be the part.”

Where the money goes, now and then

Where did all my money go?

 

It’s an age old question, and the answer has changed over time. This piece investigates how Americans spent their money in 1949 as compared to now. The single biggest difference is how much less we spend on food, followed by how much more we now spend on housing. But there are interesting explanations for those and other changes in the article.

Angry cats and sweaty buns

Larry Dobrow at MediaPost.com has provided an insightful analysis of Columbia Sportswear’s “Great Moments in Trying Stuff” campaign.  The viral videos from this campaign are funny but still product centric and they say something important about the brand attributes.

You can see a few examples of the videos here.

 

When a brand really is your friend

Over the past few years the use of corporate mascots had waned as agencies were trying to roll out more sophisticated campaigns, but it seems Facebook and other social media are changing that. With the ability to friend or follow these mascots on social media comes a newly dynamic relationship between the consumer and the brand, and it seems to be translating into increased sales for at least some companies such as Progressive with its “Flo” character.

This is a really fascinating article on the topic.  And here is an interview with the writer.