A compelling interview recently on National Public Radio (read/listen to it here) got me thinking about the power of language to influence the way we think. Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist at Stanford, asserted a connection between the language that we use and the way it makes us perceive the world around us. Her experiment involved testing how separate groups who spoke German and Spanish used verbs to describe a bridge. The German speakers, in whose language a “bridge” has a feminine gender, used words like “beautiful,” “slender” and “elegant,” while the Spanish speakers, in whose language a “bridge” has a masculine gender used words like “strong,” “sturdy” and “towering.”

To further test her hypothesis that people’s thoughts were impacted by their language, Boroditsky invented a language called Gumbuzi. Her findings indicated that people’s grammatical understanding did affect their sense of the world around them.

This is a developing area of science and there are a number of viewpoints on this topic. For marketers, it does raise the issue about how we can use language as part of our copy messaging to arouse or induce certain unconscious perspectives in our target audience, especially where regional dialects may be in play. I’d be interested if you copy writers out there have any experience or opinion of this phenomenon. Let me know …

In January we delivered our “Brand Bailout” stimulus presentation to the local Young Presidents Organization. One of our key assertions was that now, during depressed economic circumstances, is precisely the time to invest in and nurture your brand. Consider that one valuation of Coca-Cola’s business comprises 60% attributable just to the brand value.

As one Coca-Cola executive is quoted as saying:

“If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would [survive]. By contrast, if all consumers were to have 
a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola the company would go out of business.”

I was recently asked if the first instinct of businesses to cut marketing and brand budgets was wise. Our opinion we now know accords with that of Walmart and their results as articulated in this February 17 New York Times article are illustrative. (more…)

Confession number one is that last night was the first time that I had ever bothered to watch an Oscars ceremony, and I rather enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the couture commentary from my fashion maven wife. Confession number two is that we have not owned a television for more than a decade, so I found myself riveted to the advertisements as well as the show.

It is a little early to comment on effectiveness of the TV spots, which must await a few months, at least, of consumer impact and business results. Clearly, even with typical media buy costs being slashed, several companies felt the buy not to be a good return on investment or an appropriate media placement. However, in this post I can offer up just a few subjective thoughts on the day after.

I really enjoyed the TrueNorth TV spot stories, especially the one about The Inspiration Café serving food, support and advice to Chicago’s homeless. Unfortunately, I found the transition from those amazing stories to an image of snack food to be disconcerting. I assume the intention was to create some indelible connection between those illustrations of charitable community selflessness and the brand for a bag of nuts. However, the message as presented seemed discordant to me rather than harmonious. (more…)

Great article in the New York Times today (Do you want to “Friend” a Detergent?). It speaks to the difficulty for brand managers of using social media to promote their brands … or their incompetence in doing so and, in fact, of trying to do so.

Ted McConnell, the manager of interactive marketing and innovation at P&G, is quoted as saying “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand. Its just stuff.” McConnell’s suggestion is, by and large, that brands frequently assume that the large number of people on Facebook and other like social media applications can be segmented into their customer base or target audience and approached via that medium. However, they seem to ignore the reason why their consumer or target audience is on Facebook in the first place, which is to maintain a conversation with their real friends. It is not to be talked at by brands.

Of course, some brands align neatly with social media as a mechanism for brand expression and conversation. But many don’t. Its just another bad attempt at brand extension, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

That, in a nutshell, is the creative direction of a lot of current advertising. Make a conscious effort over the next few weeks to watch the TV, listen to the radio or review online or print ads through this analytical lens and see how often marketers have used base stereotypes of gender differences in their advertising.  As household and discretionary expenditure has become increasingly controlled by women, marketers have pandered to this primary source of purchasing power. Men are being presented on the one hand as lovable and cuddly, but also prone to acting like a cute dog that doesn’t know better. On the other hand, men are being presented as misogynists. (more…)