A tale of misdirection and (literal) corporate suicide.

Today the Differ heard that a company named Huawei was setting up shop in his home town. He needed help placing the brand in his head. But when he clicked “About Us” on Huawei.com, all he found were meaningless words. And human remains…

Looking for clarity.

Now, dear readers who are smarter than me, of course you know that Huawei is actually a $21.8 Billion dollar (US) Chinese mega-corp – a Fortune 500 company, the world’s third largest telecommunications company after Ericsson and Nokia Siemens, and  a growing behemoth that is aggressively stealing market share from the European and American telecom titans.

So you’d think they could spend some time and maybe marketing dollars figuring out a simple, clear message for schmoes like me who didn’t know that (but wanted to). Instead, this is what I found when I visited their About Us page:

Huawei is a leading telecom solutions provider. Through continuous customer-centric innovation, we have established end-to-end advantages in Telecom Network Infrastructure, Application & Software, Professional Services and Devices. With comprehensive strengths in wireline, wireless and IP technologies, Huawei has gained a leading position in the All-IP convergence age…

I’ll be merciful and stop there. But if you’re really a glutton for punishment, feel free to read the rest. I didn’t. I did what I always do when I get stonewalled by a company’s internal jargon: I looked them up on Google and Wikipedia.

And guess what I learned?

• Their founder and CEO compares himself to Chairman Mao.
• They have an “earnest, if eccentric, personality” that includes a strange 20,000 employee campus in Shenzen province – the “Las Vegas of China” according to the New Zealand Herald.
• They’ve been accused of bribery and serious labour abuses
• In 2008 a worker jumped to his death from a Huawei office tower – becoming the most highly publicized of the six “deaths by suicide or mysterious circumstances” in two years and rumoured to be the 37th worker suicide at the “employee owned” company since they were founded in 1988. (leaked online photo above)

So what story are you going to remember?

So ask yourself what message are you going to remember after reading Beg to Differ today?

• Their corporate story: “Huawei has gained a leading position in the All-IP convergence age”.
• The easy-to-remember story: “Huawei employees jump out of windows.”

Not hard to choose is it? But the ironic thing is, I never would have learned that stuff if they had just helped me out on their Web page.

Think about that. By just visiting the About page, I gave the company a gift: a chance to tell me about their brand on their terms. But without giving me a single solid “memory hook” to help me understand who they really are, they gave up the spotlight and allowed other, less sympathetic voices to tell their story.

So brand managers: how often do we make the same mistake? Every page on every site, every customer visit, and every “spotlight question” we answer needs to tell the same story in a way that helps people understand and remember.

Which one do you like best?

Well the Differ is on vacation this week, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to look back at some of our favourite header graphics from the last year (in no particular order with no particular rationale). But we’d love to hear from you. Which of these is your favourite? Did we miss one you like? Comment away!

Taking the tiger by the lips.

Last week, the Differ analyzed Google’s chronic failure to find any lasting success in Social Media. Since then, we have been pondering Dr. Fritzenhoffer’s closing remarks about whether the problem was actually Google’s corporate “nature” or their cultural “nurture”. How about you tiger? Can you tell the difference in your own company? Here’s a quick guide.

The stripes are Nature. The kiss? Not. Natural. (photo from the Telegraph)

Tooth & Claw or Kumbayah?

So which of these powerful forces is more important for entrepreneurs and brand managers to consider? Well, of course, the answer is the same as it was in freshman Psychology or Zoology: both.

But because Nature and Nurture emerge and operate in very different ways within a company, it’s important to figure out which traits of your organization fall into each category, and treat them accordingly.

Corporate nature

Your corporate nature is made up of all the “hard-wired” attributes of your company that are so deeply ingrained, they will not change without massive trauma to – and possibly the death of – the company itself.

They’re like the genetic DNA code that determines that a tiger will have stripes, claws, nasty teeth, and the strength to kill other creatures with shocking ease. Joe Tiger may wish to become a kinder gentler beast, dress like a gazelle, enrol in yoga classes (downward feline anyone?), but nature has determined that Joe Tiger will never look that way.

In corporate terms, over time any moderately successful company will seem to have developed their own version of “teeth and claws”. I run into such “DNA codes” every time I try to rebrand a company or a product. There are always a set of deeply entrenched non-negotiables – fixed points that you end up having to navigate around if you want to make any change at all.

The good news: that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Those traits have evolved for a very good reason, which is also why they resist change: they have helped you succeed at your particular role within the corporate jungle. But they also make it very hard to adapt to new roles in new environments.

That was the “corporate DNA” argument many people were making about Google – that the Google beast had evolved for success in the anti-social world of search marketing, and therefore was doomed to failure in a different ecological niche…

Cultural nurture

If “nature” is the hardware, nurture is the “software” of a company  - the conscious behaviours in a corporate culture that can, and do, change over time.

These are the habits our pal Joe Tiger will learn, based on deliberate decisions – like trying a cool new way of clawing the jugular of prey, or being trained to kiss a human (although hopefully not at the same time). They also form habits that can be shared with new generations of tigers – although unlike human organizations, tigers can’t e-mail their learnings or create PowerPoint training decks for like minded tigers around the world.

In a company, these habits can actually be quite deeply ingrained as well – and may heartily resist “unlearning, like a cricket player trying to play baseball. So when a company launches a new product, partners outside of its comfort zone, or is forced into a merger, it is often like a tiger being thrown into a new ecosystem – while it can never change its stripes, it must adapt its habits and tactics if it is to survive.

And in Google’s case, perhaps the recent setbacks in Social Media can be “nurtured out” in subsequent generations. Only time will tell.

The big question: how do you tell the difference?

For this, I could just say hire my branding company. But what I mean is: whatever you do, don’t ask the tiger.

Usually, employees can’t even see the difference between ingrained traits and negotiable behaviours. And even if they can see them, they often can’t speak out about them because of internal politics or vested interests in the status quo.

If you are really serious about figuring out what can change and what shouldn’t, you need outside input – ideally experts who couple customer insight, a clear sense of the market you’re in, and a good sense of outside-in brand logic.

And you need to adopt two different strategies for each category and be careful about the promises you make from a branding perspective:

If you try to sell the tiger as a harmless vegetarian, you will fail.

But if you mind the claws, you might teach him to kiss without slashing your jugular vein. And trust me, everybody will be happier – particularly the customers who pay for the show (and want to keep their lunch).

How about you?

I’d love to find out your experiences with “Nature” versus “Nurture” in your company – and particularly efforts to change that may have failed because of them. Please leave comments below!

Secret transcript of Google’s visit to the psychoanalyst.

So with yesterday’s mercy killing of Google Wave, can Google actually succeed at social media? Should it even keep trying? Shel Israel says yes (and a great debate there) while others like Om Malik say emphatically no. But at Beg to Differ, we wondered: what’s going through Google’s own head? Well, weren’t we lucky to stumble across this secret transcript…

August 6th, Office of Dr. Frederich Fritzenhoffer, near Menlo Park California

Doctor: (in an outrageous German accent) Zo, Google. It has been a long time since your last visit. Please, sit on zee couch. How are you doing?

Google: (Uncomfortable) Oh pretty good Doc. You know. Pretty good.

Doctor: Really?

Google captured by papparazzi arriving at doctor's office.

Google: Okay, okay. Dude. Not so good. That’s why I’m here. Sorry Doc, I know I should see you more regularly. But things were going so good. Like, life was lookin’ awesome. Stocks good. Brand equity climbing. Until…

Doctor: Until what?

Google: Say, is that a new painting? I could index that for you…

Doctor: Stop avoiding please! So. What is zee problem? You haven’t decided to “be evil” have you?

Google: Hell no! I still believe in “Don’t Be Evil”. Um. Well, let’s say I’m… comfortable with my level of relative evilness. I even pulled out of China. On principle!

Doctor: (writing notes) Hmm. And zee search results?

Google: Still best in the business dude!

Doctor: I see. Able to keep zee profits up?

Google: Whoa! Now what do you mean by that?

Doctor: Just a simple question. I sense hostility.

Google: Sorry Doc. Yeah. No problems in the old “profit department”. Still raking in cashola, keeping expenses ridiculously low for the billions of dollars I make every quarter.  It’s, like, magic awesome money outta the air. Poof.

Doctor: But it’s not magic. You worked hard for that. Don’t you feel you’ve earned your success?

So, tell me about these search results....

Google: Oh sure… sure. Yeah. In the early days, I built a lot of great algorithms and stuff so everybody would do their searches through me, and they did. I even became a verb in the dictionary. I can pull that up for you…

Doctor: That won’t be necessary. Go on. Everybody was Googling this, Googling that?

Google: Yeah. And like, every time they did, I found a way to get more money from somebody else who wanted their eyeballs.

Doctor: Very impressive. And zee family?

Google: Still growing like crazy – last few years especially.  The birth of Chrome, Picasa, Maps, Earth, Gmail – all healthy, growing. Then of course the adoptions: Blogger, YouTube, Feedburner – they’re doing great too. And now even mobile stuff like Android. My head spins.

Doctor: It all sounds very happy. Very idyllic…

Google: (distant) Sure… One big happy, productive, profitable family….

Doctor: But there’s something else. Something you’re not telling me.

Google: Um…. well… it’s a tough question…

Doctor: Shall I prod some more? Look Google. I do read zee newspapers…

Google: Yeah? Me too. I scan them all every day in every major language and Swahili too. So what?

Doctor: Very well. If I must play zee hard ball…

Google: Oh please, no baseball metaphors. I’ve had it to here with the…

Doctor: YOU KILLED YOUR BABY YESTERDAY!!!

(long pause)

Oh Wave logo. We hardly knew ye

Google: Yes. (gulp) I pulled the plug… on… little Google Wave…

Doctor: (Gently) It was quite young.

Google: Less than a year…

Doctor: And you were so proud when we last spoke.

Google: It was… time, okay?

Doctor: Ah yes. All apps must die some day. But zis was no mere app. It was paradigm shift! New way of working! Zee future of collaboration!

Google: It was! It was beautiful! It was like e-mail meets productivity software meets real time chat meets So… So… Soc….

Doctor: Social Media? Is that so hard to say?

Google: NO! Dude! I can say it any time I want!

Doctor: Hmm. All right. Then try this. Say “Twitter” or “Facebook”, maybe “LinkedIn”.

Google: Twi… Twi… Twi…

Doctor: Something easier? Surely you can say “MySpace”? “FriendFeed”? Nobody even uses those anymore.

(Google, defeated, shakes head, chokes back tears)

Doctor: I see. How about “Buzz”?

(Google begins to sob)

Doctor: Not even “Google Buzz” – another one of your own children!?!  (pause) All right. Enough. I can see we’ve found zee problem.

Google: Yes. Oh God. (wailing) Why doesn’t anybody want to be so… so… social with ME?!? I’m Google! For years, they’ve searched the Internet with me, e-mailed their friends with me. I let them browse, blog, surf porn, and now even phone with me! I thought they loved me! But when they want to just hang out and have conversations, they go running to those other guys!

Doctor: I see. You feel a bit used?

Google: What is it Doc? Why won’t they be social with me? What do those other guys have that I don’t have?

Doctor: Well. At best I would say that you are socially awkward. At worst, if you kill any more applications, we may have to classify you as a sociopath…

(Old fashioned alarm clock bell rings)

Doctor: Oh. Time’s up.  These are all wonderful questions that we will have to discuss next time. In zee meantime, perhaps you should ask yourself a couple of questions:

• Is my problem my nature – that is, am I genetically hard wired toward non-social transactions on zee Internet and so I cannot understand or think in a way that allows people to be truly social?
• Or is it nurture - that is, have I cultivated a culture and an audience that simply won’t accept me – the Search tool – in this new world – where sharing and interacting are the key?
• Can I overcome my nature or my nurture and succeed in this space - even though I have the money, the desire, and the ability to generate all this hype, is it worth pursuing this goal in the face of so many failures? Or should I just accept that a “Google” will never fill the same role in people’s lives as a “Facebook”?
• Can I solve this problem with another baby – the much-rumoured Google Me? And doesn’t even that name show how deeply I miss the point of social media – that it’s not about Buzz, it’s not about a Wave, and it is definitely not about ME?

RIM launches the “Blackberry Torch 9800″. But is it one brand too many?

Beg to Differ has been struggling how to deal with the launch of the new Blackberry – the much ballyhooed “iPhone Killer” – from Canada’s tech brand darling Research In Motion (RIM). But after writing – and discarding – a long, thorough (and mildly bitchy) brand strategy critique, the Differ found the perfect lesson for RIM from watching a street performer named The Fire Guy.  Hey RIM: this guy juggles Torches, but manages not to get burned.

The Fire Guy performs on Sparks Street at the 2010 Ottawa Busker's Festival -Photo by Dennis Van Staalduinen

The Blackberry Show so far

So far the history of the RIM / Blackberry show since the first Blackberry was introduced in 1996 has been a string of skillful maneuvers, lucky breaks, great timing, and – just like any great circus act – the proven ability to draw a massive spellbound audience very quickly. And even with the massive challenge posed by iPhone and Android, much of the audience is still with them – as this poll from today’s Guardian newspaper indicates.

The classic form we all came to know and call "Blackberry"

But it’s a dangerous and fickle time. So perhaps a good time for RIM to heed the lessons of the street performer.

The Chops Lesson: nail the fundamentals

The Fire Guy says it best in his opening patter about what a teacher once told him: “Get good at one thing, and learn to do that really really well”.

Only by mastering one skill – or one brand niche – can you start to branch out into others with authority. The “one thing” RIM mastered was actually the hardest skill in consumer technology: juggling.

They managed to get three things moving simultaneously: 1) the device called “A Blackberry”: a great human-oriented design for a text device that always put the priority on on the QWERTY keyboard rather than a flashy screen; 2) the system called “Blackberry”: less sexy, but equally important, they built a rock solid back end in the form of a secure network and the server infrastructure to allow corporations and governments to manage it securely; and 3) the Blackberry brand…

And that, dear audience, is where things get really hot.

The Cred Lesson: don’t just juggle ‘em. Light ‘em up!

Once you hone your juggling skills, congratulations, you’re like a thousand other performers who have the same skills. Now you’ve got to find a way to package them in a fresh way. The Fire Guy takes “table stakes” skills like juggling, devil sticks, and balancing, and adds fire to really “burn in” a unique impression that he reinforces at every opportunity.

The Blackberry brand doesn’t dominate its street corner because RIM was so good at engineering (although they certainly were, are, and need to be). As a matter of fact, if they had just called the whole thing “Research In Motion” or even RIM, they would just be another technology company.

Their “Fire Guy” moment came in one word: Blackberry.

That memorable, high-character name allowed them to pull the same feat the “Apple” brand had pulled years earlier in personal computing – by standing out in a phone market dominated by the techno-geeky branding ugliness of Motorola, Nokia, and their ilk. The Blackberry name was something you could love, and it visually related to the product – which was reinforced by the Blackberry logo which hinted at both the shape of a blackberry fruit, and the thumbkeys that were a key differentiator.

By uniting the great product and the powerful brand, they created the legend of the highly addictive “crackberry” .

The Turf Lesson: protect your niche

Cool gadgets. But they're not Blackberries.

Okay, you’ve got a brilliant gimmick that’s a proven crowd-pleaser. Now it’s your job to make sure that you remain THE Fire Guy, not to become JUST ANOTHER  Fire Guy. You won’t draw a crowd if there are five guys juggling flaming torches or jumping skateboards through a flaming hoop – especially if some of them are actually better than you at certain skills.

So if others come along who are trying to “drink your milkshake“, you have three choices, 1) Diversify to become Fire Guy plus: start doing other, non fire related stuff to win crowds with other tricks; 2) Match them trick for trick – but be better: work hard on catching up and then blowing the other guys away (if you can);  3) Out-hustle them: market yourself louder, work on building your name and reputation to paint them as not-the-real-Fire Guy.

In the face of intense competition from Apple’s iPhone and more recently Android smartphones,  Blackberry has been struggling with how to protect its turf. After several years of diversifying into some devices that are cool looking –  like the cell-phone-ish Blackberry Pearl or the touch-screen Storm – but which nobody would call “a Blackberry”, RIM has moved to trying the “me-too” feature approach – with their upcoming “Blackpad” product as an example. But as the Loop Insight blog said:

“Trying to get to where Apple is puts you at least two years behind where they are going. If your goal is to get what Apple has, you’ve already lost.”

The Real Deal Lessson: be true to expectations

Finally, RIM is (kind of) learning not to do this. - from Flickr LoozrBoy

If there’s one thing Fire Guy did wrong, it was when he stuck a balloon in his nose then pulled part out of his mouth. The problem wasn’t that it was a bad trick  (the audience applauded) or that it was gross (it was). It’s just that the trick left us wondering: “why is the Fire Guy doing that?”

The blessing of a strong brand is also its curse: the expectations you set in your audience will also limit what people will accept from you in the future.
Fortunately, with more recent devices, and now with the Blackberry Torch, RIM seems to be slowly learning how to not stick new devices up its brand’s nose – so to speak.  That is, most of the recent Blackberries like Bold, Curve, and Tour, along with the 8800 series, actually look like Blackberries.

And now finally the new “marquee player” the Torch,  stays true to Blackberry traditional keyboard with a “slider” while offering touch screen options as well. And according TG Daily, the Torch is actually a really cool little device with lots of Apple-beating features.

However, that article also points out the one area where RIM is weak. Marketing, messaging, and yes, branding.

Which brings us to the big one.

The Keep-It-Simple-Stupid Lesson: you can only juggle so much

So what's a Blackberry? All of the above. The whole baffling line-up.

Great performers  and great branders know that humans have limits. Juggling two things is easy – whether objects in the hands or brands in the head. Three things requires a bit of practice, but it’s achievable for most people (even I can do that). Four is tough and begins to stretch the boundaries of most people’s skills, while five and beyond is for experts only.

In the early days, a Blackberry was a Blackberry – a concept reinforced by branding. Individual handsets didn’t get fancy names, just transparent model numbers like 7250 – which were hard to differentiate and harder to remember, but that didn’t matter. The fact that they were all “Blackberries”and part of the “Blackberry” brand family was what mattered.

But now, in addition to “Blackberry” (which is all customers should really care about) you now have 6 other high character, non-descriptive names we’re supposed to juggle in our heads if we want to make sense of your product line.  Um, which one was the “Curve” again?!?

No clear naming convention gives customers a sense of either function, form, relationship of products to each other, or how much they can expect to pay. But even worse, you’ve still got the product numbering convention operating at the same time.

So the new product actually has four identities:

• 1) Blackberry (the one that matters),
• 2) Torch (which is a strong name, but is fighting for brain-share with both Blackberry and all those other product names)
• 3) 9800 (mostly meaningless to customers since there’s only one Torch so far), and
• 4) Slider (which used to be the development name of the phone, but still lingers as a descriptor in some Blackberry marketing messaging).

The Bottom Line.

What makes the Fire Guy memorable and valuable is not the tricks he knows. It is this: only he is the Fire Guy.

RIM needs to learn that the golden goose that is / was the Blackberry brand is only valuable as long as it is totally and unapologetically Blackberry. If you split the goose, downplay the goose, or apologize that it isn’t some other goose, you can forget about golden eggs; you’ll just bleed. Your brand equity and customer attention will keep going to Apple and Google, the two biggest brand-building behemoths in the world.

I learned this lesson the hard way at Corel, when we inherited a similar “golden goose” named WordPerfect, which was still narrowly leading the PC word processor wars against Microsoft Word. But rather than stay true to the core values that made believers of WordPerfect users, we tried to make it like Microsoft Word – while also trying to make it “Corel” at the same time.

Blackberry is trying the same trick in both trying to catch up from the front and creating something new in the Torch.

It shouldn’t be a “Torch”, a “Smartphone”, or, heaven forbid, a wannabe iPhone. All of those are other-people’s battlefields.

The only street corner you want to claim on is the one you already own: it’s a BLACKBERRY.

What do you think?

Would a telecom megabrand create intentional confusion for customers?

So Wednesday another new cell phone brand was launched to the Canadian market, and the public response? Deafening. (cue loud cricket noises) Well, Beg to Differ thinks you should care.  Not about the service, but about the brand strategy logic behind it – and maybe even get a little bit angry. Because this is a case of brand managers using their awesome powers for evil. On purpose.

A bit of background

For those who may not be familiar with the Canadian Cell Phone market, the landscape has long been dominated by three hulking gorillas – Bell Mobility,  Rogers Wireless, and Telus Mobility – and more recently, more than two dozen smaller “discount” monkeys – including the range of products below.

The big three Gorillas - in their matching monkey suits.

Some of the rest of the monkeys including Chatr.

Confused yet?

If you’re not, there are a few highly paid brand managers who will be sorely disappointed. That’s because many of the biggest “stand-alone” brands above are actually wholly owned and operated by the big three – Koodo by Telus, Solo by Bell, and Fido by Rogers – but are branded to hide or obscure the relationship with the parent company.

And now Rogers is doing it again with their new Chatr brand – which launched this week into mall kiosks in Canada’s biggest cities, with no availability in Rogers outlets or any explicit Rogers branding.

CBC notes that Chatr is supposed to become the “low end” of the Rogers line, with Fido as the middle, and Rogers own services as the Cadillac of the line. And according to Chatr’s senior vice-president Garrick Tiplady “The company isn’t afraid of cannibalizing existing Rogers business, since (Chatr) caters to different market segments, much like the Fido and Rogers brands have done for years.”

But isn’t choice good?

If you read the Differ, you’ll know that the answer is: No! Not always!

The first problem is VOLUME of choice: Humans can only handle so many choices before they go “tharn” (see Beg to Differ the Great Brain Freeze for more).

The second problem is when the choice only seems like a choice but really is not a choice at all (we’ve called out Telus and Google AdSense on this one before).

And third is when choice is designed to confuse.

That’s the most serious and the least ethical: Rogers is intentionally creating confusion in the marketplace and making life more difficult for consumers.

Does that sound like wild-eyed conspiracy?  Nope just unpacking the “flanker brand” strategy they have said they’re using – where a large dominant brand “flanks” itself with smaller phantom brands to create the illusion of choice in a market where smaller players may be beating the big guy on price, service, or general non-evilness – or all three in this case.

This is a calculated move to undermine competition (and damn the consumers). And we’re not alone in saying so:

Globe and Mail The so-called “flanker” brand is supposed to complement Rogers’ existing brands, Fido and Rogers Wireless, by targeting a lower end of the market. But some analysts suspect that it is designed to muddy the crowding market with yet another brand, in an attempt to fight back against new competition.

CBC: Mobilicity chair John Bitove has said… ”We welcome competition, but it’s the way they’re competing that we object to,” he told CBC News recently. “It’s right in the Competition Act.… You can’t create flanker brands to try and defeat the competition.”

MyCellMyTerms.com: While Rogers’ intention is offer more choice I believe that this adds to the confusion in the marketplace and consumers will be thoroughly confused with all these brands.

And what’s worse, rumour has it that both Telus and Bell are intending to do exactly the same thing in very short order. So like it or not, more artificial choice is coming your way.

So what do you think?

Is this added choice good for consumers? Is Rogers evil for using accepted brand strategy practice to muddy the water around its slower, more nimble competitors?

Inspired by the 2010 Mitsubishi City Chase

You’ve heard entrepreneurship compared to a race – likely a running or a horse race, where one highly specialized skill always wins. But in real life, business and brand-building is actually much more like CityChase – an urban adventure race that happens in dozens of cities worldwide. Last weekend, the Big Differ was in just such a race, and offers you some insights.

Shawn De Raaf (left) and the Differ Dennis Van Staalduinen (right) after crossing the finish line.

Um. We didn’t win

Let’s get this straight: I’m going to talk about how to win from the position of a non-winner. As you’ll see from these results, my teammate Shawn and I came in sixth place in the Ottawa race this year.

Before the start. Some of the 800 people that raced.

Not bad with 400 other teams in the race, and certainly better than my previous results of 22^nd, 11^th, and 12^th (see last year’s blog post), but not top of the field.

However, we were close enough to the top that I delude myself into thinking we could have won, which means I desperately want to figure out how the actual winners win, and maybe, someday, we can.

So, these are my 6 steps to winning – told from the position of an almost winner who is thinking about how to win. And brand-builders, how many of us aren’t in that same position in that other race: business?

The six steps to victory

Lesson 1) Take a moment to think about strategy – but just a moment.

In the CityChase, you’re given a clue sheet at the beginning of the race with 30 “ChasePoint” challenges spread out over the city, of which you have to complete ten. So at the beginning, you have to take a few moments to scan the clues, get a general feeling for where things are, and figure out where you’re going to go. Kind of like those business strategy meetings I host for clients.

Information is critical to victory, as is strategic planning, so only a fool strikes out blindly in the absence of any information.

But the trick here is the same as with corporate strategy: if you take enough time to get all the information, it’s already too late to win. Read that again. And one more time.

Bottom line: the race doesn’t go to the one who has the most information; it goes to those who can act most quickly on the information at hand.

Lesson 2) Keep moving.

In the CityChase, you can get around to your ChasePoints in two ways: by foot, or public transit. But guess what? The winners almost never wait for a bus. The top teams keep moving at all times, taking buses when they offer tactical advantage, but just as often, running to stay ahead of the buses. This means you have to have a certain level of fitness to be among the top teams. But more importantly, you have to be willing to keep going for the several hours of the race.

Bottom line: don’t forget plain old hard work.

3) Play with the team.

This is teamwork. Really.

In the CityChase, you run as a team of two. Both members do all the challenges together, and you have to cross the finish line together, so a lone superstar doesn’t win if they don’t have a solid teammate.

You also need to be able to face a variety of challenges. This year for us, these included breakdancing, military bootcamp, whitewater yak-rafting, changing a bicycle tire, and lots of mental puzzles. This meant both Shawn and I had our chances to shine – he’s a far better athlete; I brought the race experience – but neither of us would have done as well without the other.

Bottom line: find teammates who both complement and challenge you to be better.

4) Share information relentlessly… with everyone.

I learned early on to “open source” my race. There are many secrets, surprises, and puzzles as the 800 people / 400 teams run around town doing the Chase, and every team is trying to figure out at the same information at the same time. So by swapping tips and clue details as much as possible when I get the chance, I’ve managed to save myself a lot of wrong turns over the years.

There are many teams that seem afraid to talk to other teams – lest they give someone else an advantage. There are others that lie to misdirect opponents. I get that. It’s a game after all. It’s just that as a strategy, it doesn’t seem to work.

Bottom line:, hoarding information just slows you down. Learn how to share.

5) Avoid the bottlenecks.

Hard work: Soaking wet after the whitewater challenge - we had to carry our boat back uphill.

The biggest time wasters in the Chase are the line-ups that form around many of the Chase Points, especially in the mid-race. So the winning teams figure out quickly where these are likely to be, and if the Chasepoint is mandatory, they get there early – before the other teams get there. If it’s not, and they encounter a line or a slow-moving challenge, they move on to a different Checkpoint.

In business, the bottlenecks are the business tactics, product features, and branding habits that form in a given market – where a “crowd” of competitors are all trying to do the same thing at the same time.

Bottom line: if it’s important, get there first; if it’s not and everyone else is already there, find another way to accomplish the same goal.

6) Have fun. It’s your biggest competitive advantage.

The picture of me that appeared in Sunday's paper. Photo: Jana Chytilova, The Ottawa Citizen

In the CityChase, I like to be competitive, and I like to go hard. And in a lot of ways I take it more “seriously” than a lot of people do (I’m writing this aren’t I?) But as someone I love once said about soccer, it’s just a game. And if it ever loses its lustre as a fun activity, there are plenty of other games.

In business, if you aren’t creating an enjoyable environment where people can be themselves – creative, funny, and human – maybe you should think about trying something else.

Bottom line: life’s too short to not enjoy what you do.

Ancient storytelling secret: characters are more interesting

Beg to Differ was reminded by this cartoon from the wise and funny Tom Fishbourne, that all great stories are driven by compelling characters – and that’s as true in the branding world as it was around the ancestral campfire. So is your brand a hero, a helper, or a Jack of all Trades?

Read Tom’s blog on the cartoon here.

Quick plug: if you’re interested in branding at all, subscribe to Tom’s blog. He not only packs amazing insights into the cartoons, but then blogs about the topic with wit and clarity. You will never be disappointed.

A few thoughts on storytelling and metaphor in branding:

Archetypes – they’re not just for English class anymore

The idea of building your brand around one of the strong, powerful figures that recur throughout world literature might seem like a stretch, but as Tom points out, the greatest brands can be clearly identified with those figures – like Nike as the hero brand / Harley Davidson as the Outlaw / Patagonia as the Adventurer, etc.

And I don’t just say that to justify my outrageously expensive English degree (but it helps). When you translate these into brand elements and a tone of voice, they SOUND more natural. So the heroic statement “Just Do It” is intuitively more compelling than “Maximize your Performance” – even though both mean much the same on the surface.

Going deep into the human psyche can feel dangerous. But that's why it's so powerful.

Better the wrong character than no character at all:

In counseling companies on new directions for their brands, I always have to present tangible metaphors to help them “get” the direction I’m suggesting. And these almost always take the form of a character – or occasionally a creature. I’ve used a veteran soldier, a wise sage, a master craftsman, a banker / money changer, and a dangerous deep sea monster (see graphic at right), among others.

Those will also happen to sound familiar to anyone who reads any kind of literature, since you’ll find the same figures in everything from Homer to the Bible to James Joyce.

Be the leviathan: it feels dangerous, but it works:

When designer John Kaldeway presented the cartoon graphic of the monstrous angler-fish above to our client as the symbol for their data recovery company – which I had named “DeepSpar” – we were all a bit shocked.  In the board room it seemed just a bit… too much.

But the image, and more importantly the attitude it embodied (ruthless, driven, even a bit predatory) turned out to be exactly the right approach to differentiate DeepSpar in a very small market dominated by very technical, geeky products and customers who were men (and gamers) that saw the symbol as a bad-ass reinterpretation of their own struggles.

Suddenly, our client was both much more memorable and consistent, and they were also coolest vendor at the trade show. Hard to give away a hat with XRP-7000 on it.

Branding is not about “messages”; it’s about character.

This point is driven home in this great blog post from 2008 by Olivier Blanchard (@TheBrandBuilder) – which Tom also links to.  Olivier argues for using archetypes as a way of breaking out of the usual heady, analytical way of thinking about branding – which is most obvious in the “messaging” process – and instead using powerful metaphors to touch the customer in a deeper way

I’ll finish with a quote from him:

If the brand you create is powerful enough – inside and out – then messaging is barely frosting on the cake. Heck, it’s little more than the colored sprinkles on the edges. The messaging is nice and it dresses things up a little, but… Using archetypes in your brand development process can help you tap into the raw nature and identity of a brand better than any brand pyramid, onion, pie chart or whatever cookie-cutter technique you are currently using.

I’d love to hear your stories – maybe examples of brands using strong metaphors, or archetypes that pop to mind when you think of certain brands. Comment away.

Is it “just a game”? Ask the guys in the picture below!

You might have guessed already from his fourteen-letter last name, but the Big Differ Dennis Van Staalduinen is rooting for the Netherlands “Oranje” Team in Sunday’s FIFA World Cup final. And he’s getting a bit weird about it.

Yes it’s just a game.

Last week, someone in my family (who shall remain nameless) who is not a soccer / football / futbol fan, asked me this question when I sheepishly admitted I was going to take the afternoon off to watch the Dutch Oranje team beat Uruguay in their semi-final match.

My dear relation said: “What’s the big deal? It’s just a game?”

And you know what? She was right. Objectively speaking, it’s just a game.

Which is why it probably seems odd to my clients and friends that for the past few weeks, I’ve been doing odd things like wearing orange socks to business meetings, obsessively checking my iPhone for the latest scores, and rearranging my meetings to make sure I can be at a friendly pub at 10:00 a.m. on a business day to catch my team playing, what is, after all, just a game.

From that perspective, the flags on cars, the jerseys everywhere on streets half a world away from the tournament, and all those honking horns in certain parts of town when a given team wins, they all must seem very odd to the non-fan. It’s just a game.

But what a game!

On the other hand, saying that a World Cup match is “just a game” is kind of like saying that Halloween is “just a day”, or a wedding feast is “just a meal”, or that Mardi Gras in Rio is “just a parade”. All accurate statements, but they miss the point. All of these things are festivals, pageants, epic plays – where people come together, wear different clothes, act silly, go through strange rituals, and celebrate mundane things like a day, a meal, a walk down the street – or 90 minutes of grown men kicking a little ball.

And it is the very weirdness and counter-intuitive logic of it that makes it such a special occasion. A celebration is powerful because it doesn’t make sense.

Unless you are human.

So once every four years, I become part of a soccer tribe. I wear my orange. I honk my horn happily and wave at people wearing the same colour. I seek out other like-minded people. I celebrate the weirdness.

And you know what? I do this even though I’ve never been in touch with the actual Dutch football club. I’m not in their database, I’m not their Facebook fan. I have no direct “relationship” with the brand in classic marketing terms. I just want to be part of it.

How about you?

Enjoy the game. Just a game. A beautiful, beautiful game

Rain, Snow, Sleet? To Infinity, and Beyond

In visiting the site for the US Postal Service, Beg to Differ was surprised to find that the characters from Disney Pixar’s Toy Story 3 had the Postal Service totally surrounded (see the screen capture below). And we wondered: is this kind of promotional co-branding the future of marketing for government agencies? And is that such a bad thing?

It’s not flying; it’s  falling with style

Here's a screen grab of the whole USPS home page with the Toy Story gang around it.

But it goes beyond the full Toy Story wrapper around the Web site (although that’s the one that really surprised me):

“The US Postal Service is also using an integrated campaign to tie its products to the family friendly Disney film. Disney agreed to produce the USPS’ springtime consumer-focused campaign, based on the Postal Service’s commercials starring “Al the Letter Carrier” promoting its Flat-Rate boxes. The push includes TV, print, direct mail, a website, banner ads, search, e-mail and in-store signage. USPS’s agency Campbell-Ewald worked on the campaign.” (from Brands Want Summer Film Magic at DMNews.com)

Here’s more info from a very promotional (non-critical) article.

But what do you think?

How much co-promotion is too much? It seems pretty benign tying public brands to universally-loved and family friendly movies like this.  But how far can tis go?

Please weigh in with your comments!

Toy Story 3 – US Postal Service ad

Toy Story 3 with Lego

Toy Story 3 for Visa with Morgan Freeman voice over