CapsuleBlog

Your brand needs you

Rational reasoning is a necessity for business. The more we make a case and use words like we use numbers, the more we can rationalize our decisions in business. This pushes words like "feel" and "believe" out to the edges of our corporate language, because they can't be proven or rationalized. So, if you can't beat them, join them. Let's rationalize the importance of brand. BusinessWeek offers us the fundamental metrics for now.

Think of your brand as a $1,000,000 piece of machinery on the manufacturing floor, or a multi-million dollar hotel property, or any other seven-figure asset in your organization. Brand assets like Coca-Cola have been estimated to reach 70% of current market capitalization. And, on the other side of the spectrum, brands like GE at 25%. Pull out a pencil and do some cocktail napkin math, get to a range of what your brand could be worth. Got it?

Now look around and ask yourself, what do we know and who knows it? Does your agency of record know the most? As a shareholder in your organization, I hope not. They are accountable to another board. Who should know the most about your brand assets? You. Not the marketing department or the sales department or the operations group, but you, the employee. You the director, chief officer, or manager of important aspects of your organization.

If you've spent enough time understanding the concept of brand, you know it’s intangible and yet a very real asset to an organization. As an asset it requires management, consideration, and plenty of thought. Now, here's where it gets interesting. As an asset that doesn't appear on the balance sheet, it can be leveraged for revenue without all the other considerations. But it also needs the oversight of your board and should be important to your shareholders, if its asset value is of any significance. Because if you leverage your brand incorrectly and damage it, the rest of the organization suffers.

The FUSE conference offers the best blend of content, covering the spectrum of current brand and design subjects (in my humble opinion). If you think you know everything, there's no hope for you. But, if you have a philosopher’s view of the world, you know the pursuit of knowledge doesn't end at the graduate school doors.

If you need a numbers-based argument, take a look at the full price of attending FUSE. What is the percentage of your napkin calculation of brand asset value? If there are more than two zeros to the right of the decimal point, you should sign up immediately. Your shareholders will thank you.

Get smarter about brand management, both the rational and emotional aspects.

Aaron Keller

 

Doc Martens: an ailing relic.

A recent piece in The New York Times about the opening of a new Doc Martens store in Soho prompted some hazy reminiscing on my part. I went back to 1994: the year that Reality Bites came out. I wanted Winona's short, choppy hair. I wanted her shapeless floral dresses worn with ratty cardigans. I wanted to be best friends with Janeane Garofolo.

Oh the nineties. Grunge, Kurt Cobain, Marc Jacobs, Ace of Base, Glo Worms and Pound Puppies... you were a fairly flat decade really. No social revolution of the 60s, no disco sexuality of the 70s, no excess and Michael Douglas of the 80s. You were without identity. And, you'll also forever be associated with Doc Martens.

Or, in reverse: Doc Martens, you will always be associated with the 90s. Perhaps for some people that's a good thing. Either reinvent yourself. Or, wait a really long time until the 90s somehow become cool.

 

Time to turn to Martha

I've written about Martha Stewart before, and as the leaves slowly begin to change in Minnesota I'm thinking of her once again as my holiday decorating instincts kick in.

How's she been doing since we last spoke of her, back in October 2009? Well, her television program has moved to the Hallmark channel. The magazines are steady. Her empire has blossomed into the Home Depot with a line of carpets and other stuff, and pet products at PetSmart. Her stock has been shaky with the economic fragility of the past year, but so has everyone else's.

Something that always baffled me was her partnership with Kmart. Michaels for her crafty stuff, I get. Macy's makes sense. PetSmart is, well, smart. But Kmart just seemed like such a mismatch, which is why I guess it was no surprise that the contract was not renewed at the end of 2009. According to AOL Daily Finance, Martha blamed the parent company of Kmart, Sears Holdings, for letting her line deteriorate in recent years.

"It has been kind of ripped off. I would say it has been diminished. The quality is not what I am proud of," she said.

Then she ripped into the stores themselves. "Have you been in a Kmart lately? It is not the nicest place to shop." Ouch. Don't worry Martha, as if we thought you really shopped in a Kmart. I wonder what's next for Martha? A line of custom butler robots, perhaps?

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P.S.

I can't blog about Queen Martha and not include this absolutely awesome excerpt from an interview with BusinessWeek:

Are you hard to work for?

I don't think so. I have people who've worked for me for 25, 26 years. I have cats who are 19 years old. They're still hanging out there.

That's different.

No, they work for me every single day. They pose for pictures. They'll do anything I want them to do. My animals are also employees, actually. Tell the IRS that. Franchesca and Sharkey, my French bulldogs, have their own blog. And they are brilliant at it.

Do you yell?

Not very much. I used to probably yell more. I have to yell at one employee because she's deaf. Sometimes if she's in the room I'm accused of yelling. It's because she has a cochlear implant and a raised voice helps her hear better.

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I'm speechless.

Big claims for a small pencil

I arrived at work the other morning to find a mysterious item on my keyboard. It was unavoidably placed as if someone could not let me begin my day without seeing it. But why?

What could the message be? What is the significance of an empty box previously resplendent with the "Dixon Ticonderoga World's BEST PENCIL", now with Microban?

My first guess was the illustrious Mr Keller. He likes to leave cryptic calling cards and I enjoy the challenge of figuring out the intended purpose. Like Dan Brown, I believe there is symbolic meaning in the most mundane of things.

Fast forward to the end of the day. I have queried everyone that has strolled past my desk as to the origins of the World's BEST PENCIL box. Each individual claims ignorance... until I spy the aforementioned managing partner of Capsule. Aha. The veil of mystery is thrown back.

This cultural relic is in fact what some Minnesotan (and presumably beyond) schools are now requesting their students purchase. Kids no longer get a choose your own adventure list of supplies but now have to find specific brands.

So why the exotic Ticonderoga? Are today's kids really that filthy that they need Microban in everything their stinking little fingers touch? Perhaps it's because, as a tiny logo on the back reveals, this prime specimen has been approved by the Pencil Makers Association. WHO KNEW?

Crowdsourcing. What if the crowd isn't all it's cracked up to be?

From the oracle that is Wikipedia:

Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

At first, the crowdsourcing trend may appear to be cool. Democratic, unique and innovative. But behind the hype, is it really just mundane and mediocre? Find out more here.

Wow

So today I turn the ripe old age of 29. Last official year of being a twenty-something.

Thankfully, or should I say tankfully, Capsule's Becca organized to have Minneapolis' own Tank Goodness deliver some incredible deliciousness in the form of chocolate chip cookies. Warm and gooey, out of the oven exactly thirty minutes before they came to our door. Is there anything better?

These are the real deal, and being packaging design freaks we had to take some snaps before we ripped into the boxes. I could not recommend these more highly. If someone out there figures out the recipe, I'll pay good money for it. I love baking, I love local, and I love family businesses with a great story. Here is theirs.

Tanks guys!

 

So sue me

As it often does, the New York Times raised an especially timely issue yesterday. We've all heard the wonders of social media extolled almost ad nauseum. It provides opportunity at a level never before seen for brands to learn more about their customers and in turn, sell more of their particular product or service. In the reverse of the equation, it also enables consumers to access more information - and particularly more uncontrolled information - about the brands. If I'm left feeling significantly dissatisfied with an experience with a brand, and the brand has had the chance to make it right but didn't, you're dang right I'm going to get online to warn other people about it.

Case in point: there's a great story here from Ken Peters of the Think B.I.G. blog about his less than satisfying experience with the Nook reader device. Well worth a read.

But do you think Ken worried about being sued when he opined on his blog, and then saw his story reTweeted and referenced around the web?

The NYT article discusses the implications of this wonderful new world of transparency and free speech, profiling a disgruntled Kalamazoo student who founded a Facebook group to complain about a Michigan towing company. Within two days, the group had 800 members and the towing company well, freaked. In the form of a $750,000 lawsuit against him.

As America was founded on the principle of free speech, this seems more than a little ironic. Thankfully the law seems to agree. The NYT calls this an example of a "decades-old legal maneuver known as a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or Slapp". Perfect name, isn't it?

"The label has traditionally referred to meritless defamation suits filed by businesses or government officials against citizens who speak out against them. The plaintiffs are not necessarily expecting to succeed — most do not — but rather to intimidate critics who are inclined to back down when faced with the prospect of a long, expensive court battle."

Instead of viewing this an especially powerful opportunity to respond to the customer in question - in a public and powerful way - the towing company is being incredibly short-sighted about this by reacting with a good old-fashioned knee jerk. It is a towing company, after all. Perhaps we really need the social media titans - the Best Buys and Dells of the world - to keep setting the bar until the others catch on. Hopefully it's not too late.

Fuse Conference: Jamie Oliver: Naked Chef

Really looking forward to the Track 3 option with people from Jamie Oliver's company speaking with Pearlfisher. Certainly it will not be as inspiring as Jamie's speech at TED, but hopefully it will give us something to consider.

Jamie's TED Speech.

Enjoy as we do all that is TED.

A naming conundrum: toy giant LEGO versus small non-profit Project Legos

The last few weeks at Capsule have been intense as we wrap up another naming project. (We've written about our naming process before at The Dieline if you're interested.) So it's especially interesting to see a conflict about naming in the media at the moment; in this case, a small Minneapolis non-profit named Project Legos has found itself under the scrutiny of toy company the LEGO Group. From the Star Tribune: ... the lawsuit charges Project Legos with unfair competition, trademark dilution, deceptive trade practices and cybersquatting -- using domain names that are "confusingly similar'' to LEGO toy company. The suit asks that Project Legos stop using its name and Web domains, and that it pay LEGO attorney fees and other damages.

Ouch. Trademark law is a murkily complicated area, and although we definitely are not lawyers at Capsule we have to maintain an understanding of the key elements to ensure that the names we're presenting to our clients are as legally appropriate as possible. At the core of trademark law is something called likelihood of confusion, a subjective concept used to analyze trademarks for potential conflicts.

There are very obvious similarities between the name LEGO as applied to a toy brand and the name Project Legos as used for a youth empowerment non-profit; this is true despite the fact that in the non-profit's case, Legos stands for Leadership, Empowerment, Growth, Opportunity and Sustainability. It's unfortunate that an organization doing such good work locally is going through this disruptive process, of course; however, the LEGO Group must rigorously protect itself from any future potential naming infringements by taking a hard stance on this instance, no matter how insignificant a non-profit of six employees may seem by comparison.

We feel for the little guy. Hopefully this case helps future non-profits avoid the same mistake.

Farmville? Srsly?

Call me a rabid maniac, but I do not understand Farmville. I hide any friend's updates if I see they've found a wandering purple calf with five legs and a bad case of TB in need of care. I was kind of surprised to see that 82 million Facebookers disagree with me.

Microsoft's Bing just cashed in on the cow, according to Adweek, with an in-game offer of game cash to be redeemed for farm supplies in exchange for becoming a fan of Bing. Over 425, 000 fans were added in a single day. I'm speechless.