Birth of a tagline

Yeah, we consultants make up taglines... Client needs a new one... gotta fit the strategy... express the personality... want something like "Just do it" or "Where's the beef?"... I looove creating taglines... It's my bread and butter, my rice and beans. And I've had my share of hits. Like my line for Brasstown Beef: "Real beef, raised right." Oh yeah, raised right.

But look, great taglines also emerge from the frenzy of the moment. Remember when guards dragged an obnoxious student out of a John Kerry meeting...? The student yelled out, "Don't tase me, bro... Don't tase me!" In a flash T-shirts were emblazoned with that plea. It captures both a victim's agony and the sheer gall of a guy who gratuitously asks for trouble.

Okay, on to the frenzy of this moment: Stanford kicks USC's butt yesterday -- running up the score to 55 against the glamorous Southern Cal coach Pete Carroll, shown at left. Check out the amusing account of Carroll's anger here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/15/SPM01AKL8P.DTL

As for the new tagline:

Angry and humiliated, Pete Carroll greeted winning Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh with an outraged, "What's your deal? What's your deal?" ...to which Harbaugh eloquently replied, "What your deal?" ...prompting waggish SF Chronicle commentator Ray Ratto to proclaim next year's marketing slogan: "Stanford football: What's your deal?"

Heck, I'm good at this stuff, but hats off to one fine tagline. "What's your deal?"-- I love writing it: "What's your deal?" You talking to me? -- Yeah, what's your deal? I've got insights to share... What's your deal?

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McGraw-Hill’s Lesson in Irony

I was excited to see in a recent BusinessWeek that McGraw-Hill backs a plan for “bringing financial literacy to those who need it most.” Now that’s what I’m talking about! Teach benighted bankers a thing or two about credit. Financial literacy for those who brought us the chaos of 2008. A shout out to McGraw-Hill!

You see a lot of companies wasting charitable dollars on tedious, never-ending cancer research or putting laptops in the hands of dirt-poor Africans, and you think, “Dang, where are our priorities? Who's teaching bankers how to read a balance sheet?”

So McGraw-Hill is doing it, re-training those ignorant fellows at AIG who lost billions by insuring someone else’s company’s bonds. And taking those rating agency guys – the ones who gave A-pluses to bonds backed by piles of dead leaves – and teaching them the ABCs of folding money. Talk about people in need of “training in financial literacy.”

But wait a sec. I started reading the fine print of the BusinessWeek advertising supplement and…. hold on! Harold McGraw III – CEO of McGraw-Hill – is aiming his lectures at – get this – ordinary Americans! That’s right. He says that, “Every American’s ability to provide for our families…and contribute to the broader economy is dependent on our ability to understand how money works.” Our ability to understand?

McGraw says that of all the lessons from the current economic crisis, “none is more important” than this: “That financial literary is critical to our economic well being” and that “we are not making the grade.” That’s a key lesson?

He concludes by declaring that if we emphasize our children’s financial literacy as much as reading and writing, "we will go a long way toward helping them realize their dreams, enjoy higher standards of living and achieve a secure financial future.”

Now I was confused. I would have thought that a more secure financial future might start with teaching the staff of the SEC what P-O-N-Z-I spells. Next, we might re-train the staff of – hey, isn’t Standard & Poor’s one of The McGraw-Hill Companies? Didn't S&P experts give triple-A ratings to bonds backed only by the full faith and credit of Uncle Leo’s dog-fighting bookie? Train them, not us.

I concur that it’s a good idea to teach financial literacy "to those who need it most.” But advice to M-H: Keep the curriculum. Put AIG and S&P fannies in the seats. Then give your money to One Lap-Top Per Child.

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Best book on brand naming

Best book on brand naming is still Alex Frankel's Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business (2005). Recounts the creative and procedural provenance of Blackberry, Accenture and other storied names. Ruminates on the value and power of brands. Packed with insight into the malleability and impact of words.

Would Blackberry have been as successful if the device had been marketed under its original, working name "PocketLink"? Think it over. And see a list of alternative names once considered by the creators of Blackberry – in Wordcraft. You'll laugh, you'll cry.

By the way, ever suspect that names aren't that influential? Here is the last word on that debate:

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Pro sports brands

Thriving brands reflect their cultural environs. America’s pro sports – so brilliantly played and packaged – face corruptions from the very culture that supports them. The NFL, like our lives, has become rule-bound and legalistic. The NBA has slowed to the tempo of corporate bureaucracy. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the major league brands? Herewith our rankings:

1 NFL

Brand delights

Balletic violence

Military strategy and rifle-armed QBs

Potential trouble

Public’s aversion to concussions and obesity among employees

Rules as complex as ant-nest tunnels

Strategic advice

Bigger, padded helmets and limits on body fat

50% fewer rules and reviews – i.e. Let ‘em play!

2 Major League Baseball

Brand delights

Vast green field and absence of play clock

Pitcher-batter duels / Close plays at home

Potential trouble

Over-specialization – DH, middle-relief, "set-up man"

Strategic advice

End the DH and ban all mention of pitch-counts.

3 LPGA

Brand delights

Astounding golfing skills

Short skirts

Potential trouble

Foolishly frilly logo meant to play-up femininity

Strategic advice

Re-draw logo to emphasize athletic skill.

4 PGA

Brand delights

Tiger and Phil rivalry

High-lofted balls landing on the green and spinning to the cup

Potential trouble

Non-stop commercials about men going to pee or not being able to get it up

Strategic advice

Forbid advertisers from portraying men as victims.

5 NBA

Brand delights

Best athletes on the planet

Potential trouble

Grindingly slow pace of play

Pro-wrestling exerience of screaming announcers and canned “music”

Strategic advice

Given today's huge, wide players, play four-on-four to put a premium on speed.

6 NHL

Brand delights

Fist fights and Neanderthal fans

Unnatural agility of humans on ice

Post-game interviews with toothless players

Potential trouble

You can’t see what the heck is going on

Strategic advice

Make puck and nets bigger for easier viewing and higher scores

Ban fights or score them (1 point per tooth, 2 for knock-out).

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Siegel+Gale's 40th anniversary

Last night hundreds of current and former colleagues gathered at the New York Public Library to celebrate Siegel+Gale’s 40^th anniversary. Alan Siegel’s wife, Gloria, the firm’s co-directors, Howard Belk and David Srere, and the veteran head of the naming practice, Jeff Lapatine, took to the podium to thank those who had made Siegel+Gale an enclave of creative brilliance.

All eyes were on Alan – who circulated, spoke and presided – prompting, as always, questions from the rest of us, his lifelong retainers and personal hoplites. How is it possible to achieve such success? For a man to be so admired and envied? To be such a jock and also to have such an artist’s eye? How can this deeply conservative man take dramatic risks in life – and wind up adored by this throng?

Who can assemble talent from all disciplines – poets, ad guys, search firm executives, programmers – and weld them into a company that grows over four decades into a citadel of simplicity, clarity and expressiveness?

And that personality! How can a man be so cavalier with trivial facts (he once told a prospect that we had worked for 500 insurance companies and then, after the coffee break, that we had worked for 1000) and be so true to his friends? – and unfailingly true to the principles on which he runs his firm?

How can a man roar with frustration and anger over a missed train (Okay, Alan, I was the one who mis-took the Southbound departure time for the Northbound time) and in a flash drop the issue and wait on the platform in the sunshine discussing the Nicks and Nickelodeon?

Who is so impatient that he tosses your paper aside after reading one sentence – half a sentence – and then on a four-hour flight peppers you with detailed questions about your life and views?

I dimly remember that the Ancient Greeks pondered the definition of happiness… Did it entail wealth... fame... peace of mind?

Let’s ask again: How can a man achieve a happy life? You look across the room – the marble halls of the Public Library – and you see Alan in a dark jacket accompanied by a noble and loving wife, surrounded by hundreds of talented people he has brought together through will and charm – and the key to happiness becomes plain: Caring.

Whatever the activity, whoever the actor, however it turns out, Alan Siegel is curious about it, critical of it, and by some magical instinct, truly caring of all its participants.

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HSBC values values

You may know HSBC's brand-building efforts from walking through airports. The bank's quirky graphics and cryptic captions catch your eye while you tromp to and from planes. In recent months the bank has invested in a dramatic endorsement of local values – and the bank's ability to embrace and respond to them – and benefit from their variety.

Is this true? Can a bank value values? Can it not? Is this stance sheer hypocrisy coming from the octopus that gobbled up local banks around the world and obliterated their quaint local names? The head spins.

I refrain from opining at length and refer you to the excellent financial brands website run by Jeffry Pilcher, who comments here from time to time: http://thefinancialbrand.com/2009/07/06/hsbc-brand/

I am tempted to condemn this stuff as overweening pretense. But gee, it's so beautifully done and reassuringly humanistic. I might run out and find an HSBC branch and festoon it with emblems of my own values – a photo of Alan Siegel, defaced Merrill Lynch logo, quotation from Herb Schmertz and, from my raggedy garden, the last rose of summer.

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Is fall a brand?

[As requested by Gretchen Steen: This piece appears every fall since October 2008.]

We are entering the heart of fall, when the air is chilly in the shade… and the sunlight a blessing on the skin. Manhattan elevators smell of mothballs as the older folks bring forth sweaters. The park smells of earth. New England trees are splashed with orange and gold.

However you define “brand” – as perception, as experience, as promise – the fall season has characteristics of a brand. Fall is crisp, a blade with a sharp edge. It has depth, a rustling deep in the forest. Fall is a time to prepare… for evening performances… for contemplation… for winter’s onslaught… for the implications of dying leaves.

What – to you – is fall’s “brand essence”? Vigor renewed? Time to take stock? Each of us has a unique fall feeling… but all of us share awareness of the bright sun casting long shadows, of yellowy lights in the early darkness... of the urge to buckle down.

Fall is not a brand, of course. No one shapes its image. Fall is not a brand experience. It is inscrutable nature’s most serious season… and thus its most human.

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