Brand managers: Social Media is here to stay. Deal with it.

Beg to Differ gets asked three related questions all the time: should brand managers really care about this Social Media thing? Isn’t it just a flavour-of-the-month fad? Does it really change anything in the branding universe? The answers: Yes. No. Oh merciful heavens: YES! Here’s why.

Sea change: just another great turning point (Turner's Trafalgar)

1) Push marketing is dead (along with the other P’s)

Remember the old “Four P’s of Marketing” – Product, Promotion, Price, and Placement? They’re dead. Or rather, they all still play a role in marketing, but the big assumption behind them is dead – what I call the “Silent Fifth P”: PUSH.

It’s just not enough to buy a gazillion dollar ad on the SuperBowl and just watch your earnings roll in (although to be fair, it never really was). With the massive proliferation of content sources and the corresponding death of the old “big media” model, you just have to work harder today than you ever did before.

The trick for brand managers: learn to stop pushing and start listening to the real owners of your brand: your customers.

2) The owners are speaking; can you hear them?

Last month, Senior VP of Marketing Clyde Tuggle summarized the big lesson learned from the New Coke fiasco 25 years ago: “You don’t own your brand; your customers do.” (Great summary here).

If that was true then (and it was), it is painfully obvious now, as the owners of your brand have a louder and more sophisticated voice than ever. And when things go wrong for a brand like Toyota or United Airlines, you don’t have time for old fashioned PR damage control: these bad vibes are travel at the speed of human thought.

The trick for brand managers: make sure you are using Social Media to build a) communities of support and b) the capability to respond.

3) Crowd-sourced creative is changing the game

There is a lot of hand-wringing in traditional advertising and design circles about this stuff – witness this blow-up from our favourite brand design blog Brand New or the comments on this 2009 Beg to Differ post.

The dirty word being used here is “spec work” – that is, companies that should be able to pay a professional to do this stuff are instead using contests or other means to get creative work from a broader range of players. And while I’m a big believer in paying people for a good day’s work, I also think that the debate sounds a bit too much like the music industry going after 12-year olds who download MP3’s. It kind of misses the point.

The trick for brand managers: how can you use the power of crowd-sourcing (without burning too many bridges)?

4)  Open-source branding will change research

But the idea of  crowd-sourcing goes way beyond getting a logo from 99designs.com. It is actually changing the raw DNA of brands by throwing open the gates of the branding process to all interested members of the brand’s audience.

It’s similar to the Open Source movement in software – except the “code” being exposed is the values, character, and passions of your customers for your brand. (Great summary from Ryan Anderson here).

A couple of recent examples: this Google research cleverly packaged as a YouTube viral video, the A Brand for London project, or Fluevog.

The trick for brand managers: how can you tie open source ideas into your brand management routines? (Hint: call these guys for ideas).

5)      Humility is sexy again

Have you noticed the new tone in advertising lately – led by the newly humbled auto industry? It seems like companies are racing each other to out-humble each other. And that can only be a good thing.

The trick for brand managers: maybe it’s time to stop telling your customers how great you are. It doesn’t work on a first date, and it certainly doesn’t work in a relationship. The alternative? In the immortal words of Otis Redding: Try a Little Tenderness.

Now that the Vancouver 2010 Olympics are over, we take it all back

In which Beg to Differ eats crow on behalf of the whole nation of Canada, and proposes 10 truly Canadian Vision Statements to replace Own the Podium.

Hey world,

How’s it going? This is Canada here. And look, you know that whole “own the podium” thing? That thing where we 1) claimed we were going to kick butt in Vancouver 2010, and then 2) actually kicked butt by winning more gold medals than any country has ever won at an Olympic Winter Games – like, ever?

Well, that was totally rude of us.

I know, your athletes came to Canada hoping to win, but then you had to watch Canadians win, and win, and win. You wanted to hear your national anthems, but then you had to listen to ours over and over: you must have thought, “Oh Canada, here we go again”.

We know how that feels; we’ve been there (i.e. at every other Olympics).

And then, beating the Americans at ice hockey for gold not once, but twice… okay, we don’t take that back, but you get the picture.

And then the actual words: “Own the Podium”. Ah, that little three-word Vision statement. Did you know that was actually written by a government agency? Weird eh?

It set a simple, audacious goal that everyone clearly understood, and that we could hold the Canadian Olympic Committee accountable for. It was oddly bold, clear, even unapologetic.

Whoa, did we mention we’re sorry?

Seriously, that kind of cocky self-assurance was totally un-Canadian of us. We are SOOO sorry, and we’ll just go back to being Canadian again, eh?

So, in the spirit of re-capturing the old Canada you all knew, loved, and mostly ignored, here are:

10 possible replacements for “Own the Podium” that we think you’ll like better:

1 ) “Earn the podium.”

2 ) “Share the podium please.”

3 ) “Own the snow (except in Vancouver, where we’ll own the drizzle).”

4 ) “Owned the podium; but dude, you can have it back now.”

5 ) “Own any podium that involves pucks.”

6 ) “No matter how well we do, we will always suck at ski jumping.”

7 ) “Own the floor beside the podium where the 4^th place finisher stands.”

8 ) “Own the bouquet, but donate the medals to poor American families who can’t get health care (sorry).”

9 ) “Own the right to collectively agonize, apologize, and fail to recognize those areas where we actually are awesome.”

10 ) “Un-the Podium” (in which we basically write a Vision statement that is more typical of a government program):

“Our Un-the-Podium Truly Canadian Vision: Continuously improve world-comparative indicators of success in a wide variety of fields of athletic endeavour, and demonstrate greater-than-incremental improvements across events using Target Excellence Peak Indicator Data (TEPID), as determined by Canadian Olympic Performance Optimization Utility Thresholds (COPOUTs).”

Whew, that feels much better.

Postscript: SARCASM INTENDED. Thanks world for an excellent two week party. Let’s try this again in a couple years okay?

A collection of the most influential diagrams explaining Social Media

After we needed to explain to a client (again) the difference between “Social Media” and Twitter or Facebook, Beg to Differ went out looking for diagrams to show the range. And boy did we ever. The SlideShare deck below includes the 6 examples we found including entries from consulting heavyweights like Brian Solis and Robert Scoble…

Social Media: apparently it's pretty complicated...

But be warned: these diagrams are pretty geeky

So if you have a low tolerance for dense, logo-heavy graphics with more than a smattering of techno-speak here are the take-aways:

1. “Social Media” includes a huge and growing range of Web-driven conversation tools;
2. As Social Media gets more diverse, sub-genres are defining – and re-defining – themselves;
3. There are many ways of viewing this universe; but
4. There’s still a lot of noise… clarity is hard to find.
5. But it is possible. See example #6 below.

The true job of “packaging” (hint: it’s not just to wrap stuff)

Beg to Differ is focusing on a great blog post today by Seth Godin which asks a question we all need to ask ourselves: “does your packaging do its job”? But of course when Beg to Differ (and Seth)  thinks about “packaging” we don’t mean a disposable wrapper…

Image (uncredited) from sethgodin.typepad.com

Mmm. The Land of Chocolate.

Okay, I don’t always agree with Seth. Actually I almost never agree with him when he talks about product naming (Squidoo?!?) or brand architecture (Apple’s  iMac / iPod / iPhone convention sloppy?!?). But today he’s dead on in his assessment of the packaging for the chocolate product above, from the company Madécasse (pronounced mah – DAY – cas).

Now, you may look at it and say to yourself: hey! That’s not bad. It’s actually really well designed. And you’d be right: it’s a simple, elegant design that looks like craft-made – and probably expensive – chocolate. And again. You’d be right. You’d also be right if you noticed the effective use of repeated elements across the packaging, the solid little icon, and the nice differentiating touch of the little ribbon tied at the top.

You might also guess that this is fair trade chocolate. And again, you are a smart reader.

All very nice. All very professional. Yay.

So what’s wrong with a nicely-designed package?

Nothing wrong. That is, there’s nothing wrong *if* the design also helps customers to find you quickly in a store full of high end chocolate bars – which is where these bars would be most  likely to be sitting.

Nothing wrong. If your attractive design doesn’t actually act like camouflage – hiding you from their eyes.

Nothing wrong. If your design doesn’t also hide the fact that your product has a very different story (Madagascar chocolate! Made in Africa by Africans!) that could create an emotional bond – if only people could see through the wrapper to you.

Nothing wrong. If you listen to Seth for a moment:

I don’t think the job of packaging is to please your boss. I think you must please the retailer, but most of all, attract and delight and sell to the browsing, uncommitted new customer. – Seth Godin

How about you?

When you think about all the “packaging” around your product, service, or person-brand, are you just following the “nice design” conventions? If so, your package may be actually hiding you from your customers.

Instead, think about how the outer packaging acts as a transparent window to the really important differentiators that for the heart and soul of your product.

Or in Seth’s words:

And like Seth did, I’ll end by wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day. Why not celebrate by sharing a fair trade chocolate bar with someone you love? Even if it’s not well-packaged and clearly differentiated (yet), it’ll make you feel great!

Seriously. It’s an awesome story. Here’s why I never tell it.

Beg to Differ wonders: is the story of your company or product worth telling? Maybe it is, but will anyone ever listen? Or more to the point, tell? Take some lessons from my best-ever story of travel disaster.

Image from Falcon Puzzles - The Wasgij Express www.puzzlegallery.com

My best-ever story

Okay, so I’ve got this killer true story from when I was backpacking in Eastern Germany back in the early 90’s. Truly epic. Rich with wacky characters,  exotic locations, humour, truly stupid blunders by me, and once-in-a-lifetime coincidences.

10 highlights from my best-ever story:

• A dead body that stops a train.
• A dozen angry skinheads with big dogs.
• An unlikely partnership between a Kurdish refugee, a giant Russian, and a hapless Canadian (that’s me)
• An interrogation by burly East German police officers (see dead body above).
• A midnight train to Moscow.
• A great line: “Who do you think you are? The president of the United States?”
• A helpless German girl in distress.
• A leap from a moving train.
• A night on the streets of Berlin.
• A touching lesson in brand authenticity.

Sounds unbelievable but it’s all true. Trust me. The few people I’ve told it to over the years have said that I need to write a novel or a movie script or at least a really really long blog post…

Maybe some day. Just like some day I’ll finish those five Great Novels I started in university.

But for the moment, if you want to hear it, you’ll have to buy me a beer when you have an hour or more to kill. Because, as great as it is, I never tell my story any more.

Here’s why I don’t tell my story

1. The whole story takes time. And the dedicated time to sit and listen to one person tell long stories  is a luxury most of us don’t have.
2. The story has mixed messages. Like real life or art or the story of a dream, it’s a sprawling narrative without a single theme and lots of ambiguities. The point is unclear. It asks you to think hard but without the clear “payoff” of a joke or a shorter story.
3. Most people don’t care: I don’t mean that in a bad way. My friends, family, and colleagues a caring  people, and they care about me. They just don’t necessarily care about my big long story at the point where I might want to tell it.
4. There are great little stories within the big story. I’ve found that the best way to use this experience is to pull out smaller, more focused anecdotes. I break my big story down to simple messages that fit the conversation.
5. In a social setting, people want to be participants not an audience. This is the biggie: if I’m in a group of people having dinner or a glass of wine, or heaven forbid, at a business meeting, it would be pretentious to start telling my story because it is so long and involved. Why?
   Because it’s a conversation, not my personal soap box.

Hard truth: a great story isn’t enough

As a guy who helps companies and charities tell their stories, I run into clients all the time who have a fascinating story of their founding, evolution, or the inspiration that drove their early success.

That is, the story is fascinating to me, because I take the time to ask, listen, and prod for details.  But that’s cheating, because I’m getting paid to care.

The trick is translating that into a simple brand story  for customers. And that always involves keeping it simple. Then, if the listeners are interested, they’ll ask for more.

So how about your story?

In your marketing, are you trying to monopolize the conversation with a story that’s too complicated? Are you listening to other people’s stories? Are you finding the right bits of your story for the right moments?

Tell me your story. I’m listening.

An open letter to PETA from your target audience (I think)

Hi PETA. Yes you, the “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals”. It’s your target audience here. Or at least I think I might be your target audience. I’m not sure you actually know anymore. Which is why I’m writing. I think you guys have “jumped the shark” and thought you might like to know why.

Jumping the shark - Fonzie learned it the hard way. Will PETA?

Why am I your target market?

• You had me at “ethical treatment of animals”: when I hear that name, I think: cool! I’m one of you! I’m a person in favour of that – I mean, who wouldn’t be right? It’s a hard concept to argue with. Animals need someone to speak up for them. Yay.
• I’m a social-justice-minded guy: I’m a “soft lefty” who believes in equality, justice, and the environment, so ideologically, we should be able to speak the same language right?
• I’m a dad: you know, influencing the choices of the next generation (when they listen).
• I’m  a blogger: when I speak, literally dozens listen. Okay it ain’t thousands a day, but it’s something.
• I’m a heterosexual: and despite my better intentions, when I see nice-looking semi-naked woman, you get a free pass to a bit of my attention. So yeah, all those early “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaigns against fur did catch my eye, and because they were clever and fairly well executed, and (read this line twice please) there was a clear connection between the creative and the message they actually did make me think twice about the fur trade.  So congratulations.

But that’s where you’re losing me

State of the union: uncomfortable; unfocused; unethical; unfair to our intelligence

Last week, I made the mistake of clicking on your “PETA State of the Union Undress” and suddenly I felt like I was on water skis heading straight for the shark pool.

Yes PETA. I get it.  That’s “State of the Union Undress” –  like “address” but naked (snort snort, chortle). And apparently this is your third annual installment, timed to coincide with the US President’s State of the Union speech.

The video features a speech by a model who strips down, not just to her knickers or cleverly concealed naughty bits, but to full frontal nudity (you’ll notice I’m not linking to it. Feel free to Google away, but trust me, you’ll feel sleazy afterwards).

Almost worse than that, the performance is awful. The speech is rambling and badly written. The subject matter is all over the map, from seal hunts to chicken farms to  ”promoting healthy vegan lifestyles”.

Save the SuperModels!

But how about when you top it off with exploitation of human beings? Surely that’s even worse than (gasp) eating eggs.

What really got me was the baby seal look on the poor model’s face. She just looked profoundly uncomfortable – like she’s not sure why she signed up for something like this, and she’s hoping her mother and / or future non-porn-industry employers aren’t watching.

Basically, she looks unethically treated.

And that’s what got me thinking. Who among us speaks up for the poor, oppressed, fabulously-rich and beautiful?

My new organization:

All joking aside…

PETA, just be aware that when you put together extreme lack of focus with  sensationalism all you get is noise. Just noise.

If you want me back, just work on these two things:

1. Focus on issues where you can actually make a difference. I might be convinced to stop wearing fur or eat less meat but if you tell me never to buy leather or drink a glass of milk, you’ve lost me.
2. Try subtlety. Seriously. It works. You can tease and be playful, but make sure there’s a solid, audience-friendly point at the end. And make sure it never crosses the line into titillation and sensationalism for their own sake.

Because while you might “reach” your audience, trust me: they won’t be listening to what you’re trying to say.

How about you readers: has PETA lost their edge? Am I being fair?

Thoughts on Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw – part 2

Beg to Differ is riffing on thoughts inspired by Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his new book What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. Today we reflect on his essay The Ketchup Conundrum, with strategies for smart branders in all kinds of pickles.

From the "Club Heinz" web site

Essay:THE KETCHUP CONUNDRUM - Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties.Why has ketchup stayed the same?

In this essay, Gladwell asks a pretty basic question about ketchup: why are there “No Other Kinds?” That is: while there are a handful of ketchup manufacturers, there is really only one variety of ketchup that has ever gained any market traction.

But along the way, I see three different brand-building strategies that apply to all kinds of markets as well.

Mustard strategy

The mustard universe used to look the same way as ketchup. In the old mustard universe, there was just plain old yellow mustard (a la French’s).  But then, along came the game-changer: Grey Poupon. With brilliant advertising (see YouTube clip below), premium pricing, and an exotic taste, Grey Poupon created  a “high end” in the mustard market, and voila! Faster than you can say “pardon me…” consumers began seeking out and buying other kinds of mustard.

All it took was for one smart new product to change the rules of the mustard world.

Spaghetti-sauce strategy

Gladwell shows that the spaghetti-sauce market underwent an even larger transformation, but in this case there were already two dominant varieties: Ragú with a thin sauce, and Prego, with a thicker, richer sauce.

Gladwell tells the story of Howard Moskowitz, the food industry guru who convinced Prego to try not one, not two, but three different varieties of sauce under the same Prego banner. Suddenly, consumers were delighted to “fine tune” their spaghetti sauce by choosing plain, spicy, or extra chunky.

The result: Prego became number one, and an arms race began in the pasta aisle, that continues to this day.

Ketchup strategy

But before you run off to re-write the brand strategy for your product: consider ketchup.

Many companies have tried to play the Grey Poupon and Prego tricks with ketchup. Gladwell narrates the efforts of one such upstart “World’s Best Ketchup” and shows how such contenders have utterly failed to create a “second wedge”.

Why? Turns out that the definition of “Ketchup” is much narrower in the consumer’s mind, and once you cross that line, it’s not ketchup at all anymore.

Or as Howard Moskowitz himself shrugs at the end of Gladwell’s article: “I guess ketchup is ketchup.”

So brand managers,what does your market look like?

The basic truth in Gladwell’s article is this: all markets are different, and therefore, the path to success in each will be very different. So whether you’re trying to create a brand in robertson screws or facial tissue, network servers or off-road vehicles, the key is to learn the peculiar mindset of customers in your industry:

• Mustard Markets: there’s room for a “Grey Poupon” to show people that another option can a) fit the definition, but b) take the category in a whole new direction. Your job: find the wedge, and push it hard – and a bit of class with a sense of humour won’t hurt either.
• Spaghetti Sauce Markets: there’s room for a lot of variety under the same category umbrella, and customers are hungering for choice (even if they don’t know it yet). Your job: find out what “chunky style” looks like in your spaghetti bowl.
• Ketchup Markets: sorry to say, your product category is very narrowly defined in customer’s minds, and there’s not a lot of room for competition with established players. If you “break the rules” too much, you’ll never get very far. Your best bet here is to compete on “non product” benefits like service, price, or clever branding. Or maybe try the salsa business instead.

Malcolm Gladwell at TED on Spaghetti Sauce

The classic Grey Poupon ad

Apparently iPad has been enhancing feature sets for a while….

So of course, Beg to Differ was riveted on Wednesday by “The Big Speech”. No, not the State of the Union Address: it was the unveiling of a new product by Apple that had our attention. And apparently, we weren’t the only ones watching: so were trademark lawyers for several other “iPads”. But will any of it matter for Apple? Read on.

Trying to pad the feminine market?

On Wednesday, our big question was not “what will this miraculous new product be?” Everybody knew that already. It was leaked long ago that it would be a tablet device that would look something like a big iPod or iPhone.

We were watching to see what they would call it.

The “i” naming convention was a given with iMac, iTunes, etc. But would this one become iSlate? iTablet? iShtar? Surely not <gasp> “iPad”?

Nope, iPad it was

The Fujitsu iPad product

Now, we’re fans of Apple branding in almost every possible way, and we lauded the return of Steve Jobs in a previous post. But instantly upon the announcement, we watched the media and the Twitter universe light up with criticism, and some really off-colour humour, about the name sounding like a feminine hygiene product (see the MadTV clip at bottom).

Even more shocking: it turns out that the hygiene connection was just the beginning. Neither the name itself, or the association with products aimed at females, were unique.

Fujitsu has already filed suit based on its own iPad product (above), and several others are out there.

But the one that jumped out at us was the “iPad” product sold by a small Canadian company called Coconut Grove Pads Inc.. It’s a bra insert like the one shown at the top of this post.

But will any of this matter?

In a word: no.

Let’s be clear: I would never advise a smaller client to go with such a name. There are just too many risk factors, as the media have been gleefully pointing out.

But Apple knows this. And they went ahead in spite of it because, well, they’re Apple. Their market awareness is just too big, and the new product just too smart, for any of this to matter.

They will settle with Fujitsu after some posturing by both parties, the Twitter wags will get their “Maxi” giggles, and the bra company will get its moment in the sun.

But most importantly, the name “iPad” will quickly lose its association with MaxiPads and other feminine products.

Why? Because we will all take ownership of the name as the way to refer to the Apple device – which will push all other uses to the back of the collective consumer brain bus.

And in the branding game, that’s what really matters.

What do you think? Are we artificially inflating our opinion? Let us know in the comments!

Bonus: MadTV scooped Apple on the iPad name in Nov. 2007

NOTE: This is very funny – but mildly gynecological humour might be a bit “edgy” for more conservative work environments, so view with caution.

Thoughts on Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw – part 1

This week, Beg to Differ is savouring the new book by Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. It’s really, really good (duh, it’s Gladwell). All the essays are from New Yorker Magazine, and in typically Gladwellian style, every page sets off fireworks in your neurons, lighting up a new part of your brain with every thought. So, since we’re thinking about this stuff anyway, we thought we’d share some thoughts. Today: is there really such a thing as “intellectual property”?

Cover image "borrowed" (stolen?) from the Australian edition of What the Dog Saw

Essay: Something Borrowed. Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life?

In this essay, Gladwell begins by discussing a strange case of “plagiarism” involving an earlier article he had written for the New Yorker.  Seems a  Broadway play called “Frozen” by British playwright  Bryony Lavery “borrowed” lines, ideas, and biographical detail from his profile of Dorothy Lewis – a psychiatrist who studies serial killers. The similarities between the play and Gladwell’s article, and by extension, Lewis’s life, are extensive and unmistakable.

But is this a case of plagiarism? Lewis thought so – enough to take legal action against the playwright. And originally so did Gladwell, who quotes a letter he faxed to Lavery:

I am happy to be the source of inspiration for other writers, and had you asked for my permission to quote—even liberally—from my piece, I would have been delighted to oblige. But to lift material, without my approval, is theft.

I know how he feels (in my tiny-blog-kind-of-way). This was my response a few months back when a blogger informed me in the Comments to my 10 Brand Strategy Lessons from Princess Bride post that she had copied the entire text of my post to her blog:

But for Gladwell, as he thinks it through, and especially after reading, then going to see the play himself, begins to waver before ultimately retracting his objections.

Why? Because, as Gladwell puts it: the play is “breathtaking. I realize that this isn’t supposed to be a relevant consideration. And yet it was: instead of feeling that my words had been taken from me, I felt that they had become part of some grander cause.”

And that’s the problem with “Intellectual Property”

So here’s where I insert my own original content, lest you think I’m simply summarizing Gladwell for the entire blog post. (Malcolm: my fax machine is broken buddy. If you must protest, just leave your comments below).

Gladwell’s genius, here and everywhere is that he challenges all kinds of intellectual extremism. Where somebody else would assert that a thing is black or white, Gladwell shows us how it is not just gray, but a fascinating spectrum of intertwining shades of “off gray”. And then he helps us understand the patterns that emerge, which, like great art, are never quite as clear-cut as we might wish for, but all the richer for it.

In this case, he points out the extremism of our “intellectual property” conventions.  or as he puts it:

“So is it true that words belong to the person who wrote them, just as other kinds of property belong to their owners? Actually, no.”

The playwright Byrony Lavery took Gladwell’s words and made something beautiful and new out of them, and in the process, taught Gladwell a valuable lesson. But is it a lesson we’re willing to hear?

So branders: how about brand names, patents, and logos?

This is where I throw the ball to you. I believe in brand management – how could I not?

But I also believe that the brands we create enter the public domain the moment we create them – or there wouldn’t be any point. I also think we invest too much time on policing supposed brand “infringements” and not enough proactively cultivating positive expressions of our brands.

What do you think?

This morning, I was talking to a client and mentioned my “newborn son“. But almost before the words left my mouth, I realized they weren’t quite true any more. At some point over the last 8 weeks, he crossed an invisible line from a “newborn” to just being a “baby”. My 3-year old isn’t a “toddler” any more. My 5 year old gets very angry if you call her anything but a “big girl”. But how do you know when a child – or a product – has crossed such a line? The short answer: it’s really hard…

"New" Raquel ad for Coke - not looking so new anymore (from www.kitschy-kitschy-coo.com)

Meet the new boss. Same as the other new boss.

Back in 2006, the media and political junkies in Canada were surprised to find that our newly elected Conservative minority government was calling itself “Canada’s New Government”. From a positioning standpoint, this was actually a brilliant way of distancing themselves from the scandal-tainted previous government. But even then, it rang a bit hollow, since the “newness” was just a group of new (and very inexperienced) bosses. Over the intervening years, as the government became more and more entrenched, the term gradually faded from view.

New Coke is of course another Classic example. But when I asked a class full of university business students on Monday whether they’d ever heard of New Coke, only one hand went up. It may have had a huge impact 25 years ago, but it ain’t “news” anymore.

You might object that “New York” “New Zealand”, and “Nova Scotia” have all kept their “New” labels. Yes. But how many people still associate these places with their precursors? Go ahead, ask any New Yorker how their city is like the York in Toronto… er… England. See? Even there, the “newness” is lost in the mists of history.

And that’s the problem with “new”

Or rather, that’s the problem with any time-sensitive descriptor that you attach to something. It only has so much shelf time before it will have to change.

So be careful in choosing to be “new” “modern” “updated” or “improved”. And if you’re a brander who is already stuck with such a moniker, probably time to look for alternatives.

May I suggest “classic”?