PICK ME ... PLEASE!

Right before the 2012 holidays, Pepsi nabbed Beyoncé as its brand ambassador in exchange for a 50-million-dollar paycheck. 

She’ll be more than window dressing, say the marketers, partnering with the beverage giant to create content and drive fan engagement.  One example:  At Super Bowl halftime, fans got their 15 minutes of fame in ad photos by shouting, head bopping, and feet tapping, solicited in advance. 

This kind of high-powered deal is rooted in the mid-2000s, when will.i.am joined Intel as director of creative innovation, deals that then branched out to include Lady Gaga’s effort with Polaroid and 50 Cent endorsement of Vitamin Water in song and in ads.

Yet how much more credible and authentic are these celebrity endorsements than the Pizza Hut and Southwest Airlines and Overstock.com employees who’ve appeared in their company ads?  In this skeptical age, most viewers, for one, know that a Sofia Vergara or a Brad Pitt aren’t true brand ambassadors; rather, they’re paid advocates for the product (or service).  Sure, they’ll drink the soda, even wear the perfume, and don the apparel. But how knowledgeable are they, really, about the product attributes, its fit with the overall brand, primary consumers and their emotions, and so on?  Do they field customer complaints (and compliments), understand supply chain issues and opportunities, and/or struggle with IT/IS problems? 

[No sour grapes here.  Any one of us would jump at the chance for a million-buck endorsement, let alone 50 times that number!]

Instead, companies looking for ambassadors – including the CPG stalwarts – might do well by scouring internal files to uncover soon-to-be stars.  Even today, when engagement is reportedly at an all-time low (Forrester noted two years ago that a high percentage of employees would not perform stand-ups for their employers), the deep credibility and trust that real people engender among consumers new and old is simply not to be dismissed. 

We’ll stop … with one more question.  Hey, new Coca-Cola Ambassador Taylor Swift:  Does Diet Coke truly understand you just because it’s in your frig?

STORIES FROM THE FRONT: What we learned at retail

Been a regular devotee of Communicating By Design?  Then you’ll know we’re passionate, even batty about visual therapy; we go shopping often to get a regular dose of ideas and (in)sanity.

No kidding.

Our latest Eureka! emanates from the year-or-so-old retail tempest, called “showrooming.”  It’s an activity by a consumer who visits or calls a bricks and mortar outlet to check out products, then goes home, clicks, and buys online. 

At least one august b-school research claims that move is all about price.  Sure:  “Who’s got it cheapest” is definitely a motivator for many would-be buyers.  Other surveying institutions attribute the trend to less-than-satisfactory in-store customer service.  [And who among us can’t throw a stone, even at some of the best in the business?]

Target, for instance, has countered by pulling Kindle Fire and other Amazon products from its shelves. Some merchants add services or special deals to entice in-store buying.

Now it’s time to turn that topic inside out and relate it to our issues:  How many candidates or potential employees showroom your Web site?  Or surf the Web, even read print media and ask friends and family to check out your company and the deal it offers to its associates?  What does vault.com (or other online evaluators) say about working at Company XYZ?  What kind of “customer” service do prospects receive when contacted about a position … even when they’ve advanced to being a high-potential candidate?  How well do they understand what the company’s all about … if they’ve only clicked through your Web presence?

Yes, countering this slightly different form of showrooming is the province of human resources.  It should also be the territory of marketing and branding and design and communications, in partnership with the CPO.  Because no one function, no one department owns 100 percent of the real estate that attracts (or not) new employees. 

We all cover the front.

SAD AND GLAD ... AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

With Valentine’s Day in the recent past, we were musing about expressions of like and love in these e-days.  If not before.

Few realize that, even before Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee was born, Morse Code and Puck magazine and satirist Ambrose Bierce all talked about love and kisses and vertical emoticons and snigger points.  Though a Carnegie Mellon University student might have proposed the idea in the 1980s, today, emoticons – and their Japanese smartphone cousins, emoji – have become world-wide substitutes for saying how we feel, digitally.   Teens we know use these pictographs extensively in texts (in fact, often without words).  And yes, we’ll admit a guilty pleasure in occasionally using a smiley or frowny or LOL symbol when we’re e-talking with good friends and colleagues.

Think with us, though.  How frequently do these symbols truly portray what we’re up to emotionally, in the moment?  Is it easy to show our concerns or fears within our smartphones or Outlook or Lotus Notes?  Have your colleagues misunderstood your intent within the message’s content?  And if so, how long did it take you to explain what you meant?

That’s been the task lately of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, charged with interpreting political sentiments of Twitter feeds.  The most difficult analysis, says a spokesperson, is determining sarcasm.  The computer does so in a unique combination featuring human and data-mining services, but not always successfully.

Remedies run from adopting new pictographs (yet another visual to remember!) to avoiding the sentiment altogether.  One reason to discontinue these pictures:  Researchers have discovered that millennials and younger tweeters use emoticons sarcastically as well as to show a lack of feeling altogether.

No surprise:  But why don’t we, as the ultimate communication and marketing professionals, set the new standard?  Like picking up the phone.  And meeting face to face. 

THE ART OF TALK

These days, conversation just might be the 2013 version of texting. 

Then, again, a second talk trend seems to contradict that. 

One positive we’ve noticed, personally and in the media:  Encouraging, even engaging all around the table in hearty dialogue during mealtimes. “The family that converses together, stays together” is how the adage might play out. And families and couples, from the Obamas to, yes, Joe the Plumber and his peers, tune up the conversations at dinner.  Some focus on more meaty subjects, like politics and the state of the green world.  Others, simply on sharing the day’s events.  There’s no right or wrong way, say proponents, to talk.  Just do it.  Minus the television, cell phones, video games, and other tech distractions.

Trend two:  Casual restaurants (Applebee’s, Chili’s, even P.F. Chang) are installing mini-screens at the tabletop, offering diners the options to order, play games, and pay.  And not communicate.  Quite a few of these pilots claim great success in driving more frequent table turns, increasing dessert orders, and helping determine if the kiosks will become more permanent profit centers.  Parent reactions are mixed; waiters, even more so.  In this not-so-giving economy, we get it:  It’s time to continue seeking additional sources of revenue. 

We as proponents of the art of talk aren’t thrilled with the advent of diningIT.  There are good and valid reasons for eating outside the home, whether it’s a choice of more Top Chef-like menus (sorry, Mom!) or simply a relaxing escape from daily cooking.  Inserting technology into the experience negates personalized service offered by wait-persons and eager-to-serve counter people and, most important, limits our human interactions.

We know it’s hard enough to get managers and employees to talk casually and meaningfully with each other about work that matters.  So advocating that anyone adopt another tech-y habit is akin to endorsing “no talk zones” … everywhere.  Or is it enough to endorse the art of dialogue, as does Robert Louis Stevenson?  “Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health”?