Helene Venge

° Welcome

2012-01-25T12:13:00.000+01:00

It's hard to read the label when you're inside the jar. But seeing the opportunities hidden in the wider view is critical to grow any business today.
I run a niche management consultancy who works with ambitious clients to build their brands and grow their businesses. Through a joined-up approach, we help companies harness brand strengths and market changes to drive strategy and growth, and deliver key market-driven initiatives.

15 years of management in diverse market-leading corporations such as Lego, Levi's, Sony and Telenor has equipped me with apt experience to help other companies. Find out more in the sections to the left and feel free to browse the blog below with views on 21st century business challenges and other stuff. I look forward to take on these challenges with you.

Widespread paradox

2012-01-25T12:12:00.003+01:00

Companies with the most data about their customers find it most difficult to use it.

Think big, think different - and then do it

2011-10-12T09:27:00.000+02:00

"The purpose of this design is to create a low-cost portable computer so useful that its owner misses it when it's not around – even if the owner isn't a computer freak..." This is how the vision of the Macintosh was described in an internal Apple memo in January 1980 (Source: Rolling Stone, 1984).

Funny enough, this is exactly how I felt about my Macintosh a few years later - and still do, by the way. It wouldn't have passed as a 'proper' positioning or mission statement at most companies yet it's obviously so much more precise and useful.

Key to the success is of course also the fact that the Apple team was able to actually execute against it. It was never 'just words'.

Why Steve Jobs was the model CEO

2011-10-10T14:15:00.001+02:00

"Steve Jobs did what a CEO should: Hired and inspired great people; managed for the long term, not the quarter or the short-term stock price; made big bets and took big risks. He insisted on the highest product quality and on building things to delight and empower actual users, not intermediaries like corporate IT directors or wireless carriers. And he could sell. Man, he could sell."
(Walt Mossberg on Steve Jobs, AllThingsD Oct 5, 2011)

But there is one more thing: He was like a focus group of one, he thought like the ideal Apple customer, only he was always two years ahead.

All that for a 1$ annual salary.

We will forever wonder what else he could have done.

What Steve Jobs and Michelangelo have in common

2011-10-05T20:59:00.000+02:00

According to Fast Company Steve Jobs gave the following business advice to Nike a few years back when they launched the iPod/Nike collaboration: "Get rid of the crappy stuff".

"I expected a little laugh," Nike president and CEO Mark Parker says of the exchange. "But there was a pause and no laugh at the end."

Jobs' comment is akin to one of my favorites, namely Michelangelo's when he was asked how he could create a sculpture as magnificent as David. He said, “I carve away everything that isn’t David.”

(This post was originally published in April, 2010)

The core of strategy

2011-07-04T14:48:00.002+02:00

"The core of strategy work is always the same: Discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of co-ordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors."
From Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. No more, no less. Brilliantly put.

Choose also what not to do

2011-02-02T10:32:00.012+01:00

Just read a brilliant article on the essentials of strategy: Ditch the To-Do list and start a Not-To-Do list. Distinguish between To Do and To Die For. We tend to forget that strategy is not only about choosing what to do, but also about choosing what not to do.

The article is written with an innovation perspective but the principle applies to all kinds of strategy. Remember what Michelango answered when asked how he could create a sculpture as magnificent as David: "I carve away everything that isn't David".

It also applies to how we approach our work in general. I've worked with a performance consultant over the years when I was at Levi's and also at Lego, and I'm still inspired by his approach.
One of his principles is that potential - interference = performance. Interference can be many things but often it's dressed as a hell-bent focus on tasks. We buzz around all day at the office busy doing tasky stuff, when what we should be focusing on is the purpose and objectives, the bigger goals.

Stephen Covey and others promote the important/urgent matrix and that's a good tool to create awareness of just how much time we spend on disproportionately time-consuming tasky stuff. But ultimately, it's the mindset that matters. Gerry, the consultant, would always challenge us to get clear on the purpose of our job and the business and whether a given task was aligned with the purpose. If it was not, bye-bye task.

It's really hard to do! It's like taking a leap into the unknown, a leap of faith. What if I don't do this task, what will happen, what might I miss, will the earth stop turning, will the sun still rise?
And it's just as hard to choose what not to do as part of a strategy. But it's among the most important choices we can make. Create a clearing so you can see the forest in there between all the trees. And start chopping.

Read the full article in Business Week here.

Vækstdagen 2011

2011-01-30T16:53:00.006+01:00

To my Danish readers: I will be speaking at the annual Vækstdag February 10 in Copenhagen about Brand As Strategy and why Branding is dead while the Brand is very much alive. More info and registration at Vækstdagen 2011. For an immediate view on the topic, pls read the post below.

Branding is dead, long live the brand

2011-01-30T16:18:00.016+01:00

Branding is dead, long live the brand. What do I mean by that?

All companies are building their brand(s) every day, it's inevitable. But many don't realize it and have no plan or system for it which can have dire consequences. Perhaps even worse, many think that building the brand has to do with simply raising awareness of it and spending a lot of $$ on campaigns, and much less with delivering value to the customers in a specific and consistent way.

The word 'branding' has come to mean slapping a logo and a cute name on an expensive piece of packaging and then promoting the bejesus out of it. It has come to mean something we do at the end of the product development process, when we are about to launch. It has become superficial, disconnected from the product, the company and the people behind it. This saddens me so, because when approaching the brand this way, we cannot leverage it, we cannot maximise its potential, we cannot serve customers, and we cannot create or develop a business around it.

This is why I say that 'branding' is dead. The brand, however, is very much alive, and in fact more important than ever.
But does brand really matter these days, you might ask, when more and more marketing takes place between people eg on social media networks?

Why yes. Indeed, in a me-too marketplace where everybody has access and can express themselves about any brand any time (and this openness, in my book, is a great thing), the importance of developing and managing a highly differentiated brand - which starts with delivering distinct and superior customer value consistently - is more critical than ever.

We can only do so by putting the brand at the heart of our business strategy. Apart from simplifying the complex, making objectives clear and realistic, and giving direction for everyone in the company, putting the brand at the center ensures that everyone understands the brand promise and works on delivering this to customers every day. And it helps broadening yet clearly specifying the options for business development and growth.

The brand is what people buy. The product, the promise, the experience, and the conviction behind it. Meet and exceed customers' expectations and maximise business potential by putting the brand at the heart of your business strategy.

NB. To my Danish readers: I will be talking about this at the annual Vækstdag February 10 in Copenhagen. More info at Vækstdagen 2011.

Business in the 21th century

2011-01-28T08:18:00.002+01:00

Think global, act social.

New words for 2011

2011-01-05T17:23:00.002+01:00

This post has nothing whatsoever to do with business, strategies, brands or any of the fancy stuff this blog tends to focus on. It's simply good old fun that made me laugh a zillion times today - it's a list of new words for 2011. I can recognize myself in several of 'em, eek!

TESTICULATING
Waving your arms around and talking bollocks.

BLAMESTORMING
Sitting round in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

SEAGULL MANAGER
A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

SALMON DAY
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

SITCOMs
Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage.

PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE
The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

GOING FOR A McSHIT
Entering a fast food restaurant with no intention of buying food, you're just going to the loo. If challenged by a pimply staff member, your declaration to them that you'll buy their food afterwards is known as a 'McShit with Lies'.

404
Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message '404 Not Found'.

MYSTERY BUS
The bus that arrives at the pub on Friday night while you're in the toilet after your 10th pint, and whisks away all the unattractive people so the pub is suddenly packed with stunners when you come back in.

BEER COAT
The invisible but warm coat worn when walking home after a pub crawl at 3:00am.

You don't need a social media strategy

2010-12-17T10:57:00.024+01:00

"You don't need a social media strategy - you need a brand strategy that leverages social media. Don't get off the brand strategy just because there's a new communications channel, that's how you lose the plot as a brand. Technology is the tail, not the dog." (Chris Kirubi, Chairman of Coca Cola Nairobi via Tim Sanders).

This quote made my day today. Not just beacuse I agree - we always like to know that our own brilliant thinking is shared by others - but also because I've seen the shiny objects syndrome at play only too many times. We get so caught up by new possibilities and 'so ein ding müssen wir auch haben' that we take our eyes off the ball; this tendency is particularly prevalent when it comes to new technology, media and communications vehicles.

When I was European digital director at Levi's I would, among many things, work closely with the country marketing teams to plan and execute digital programs. I was met time and time again with all sorts of ideas from the teams on new stuff/things/apps/widgets/gadgets etc that somebody - often a local agency - had suggested.
While I really appreciated the creativity, my main role in these conversations quickly came to be Chief Sense-Making Officer, ie challenging them to test the ideas and their validity against the digital brand strategy - which of course was in place to support the overall brand strategy.
At some point, I developed a simple litmus test tool for the teams called 'Testing Your Idea', with the sentiment that all good marketing starts with an idea, however, not all ideas make for good marketing and with the purpose of encouraging strategic thinking. (I think I'll post this tool in a blog post soon, it's still pretty good!)

Anyway, as the digital protagonist in the company I was somehow expected to jump at and promote any new tech thingy that would pop out of the blue and often the teams just didn't get why I was so, in their eyes, conservative.
And this is why I love Chris Kirubi's quote above. Because it isn't about all the new shiny objects. It's about sticking to the brand strategy, having the courage to do so in the flurry of all things new, clever, cute and seductive, and having the judgement to filter out what isn't relevant and to frame within your strategy what is.
And btw, I'm not saying that social media isn't important, it's extremely important. But first and foremost the importance for a brand lies in finding the relevant and sustainable way to make use of it, whether for communications, research or other purposes.

Tim Sanders himself says it brilliantly: 'Don't let social media glam you out, causing you to waste time and money on keeping up. Confirm your brand promise and how you fulfill it, and find ways that social media can complement it. It's about being human, not techy.'

More about social media on my blog, click here for the post 'It's the mindset, not the media'.
About being human as a brand, click here for the post 'Brand-bonding'.
And to read a terrific article on the strategic use of social and other media in Harvard Business Review, click here - 'Branding in the Digital Age'.

Attention all media folks

2010-12-14T20:03:00.005+01:00

Brilliant article in Harvard Business Review, Branding In the Digital Age, on the new and necessary approach to media spend and paid vs owned vs earned media, among many many interesting things.
All media folks should read this. Brand and marketing folks may knock themselves out, too.

Steve Jobs' way of handling customer relations

2010-12-14T19:58:00.003+01:00

What other CEO than Steve Jobs has a whole presumably 3rd party website dedicated to divulging and scrutinizing his emails to Apple customers?
Pls find an excellent analysis of Jobs' customer email approach on one of the Harvard Business Review blogs here.

Brand-bonding

2010-12-14T18:24:00.007+01:00

Brand-bonding is the new brand-building. Where 'building' is a one-way thing, something the brand does on its own and for its own sake, 'bonding' denotes a relationship that involves participation from both parties and for the good of both parties.

And no, don't mistake bonding for bondage - that's exactly what we do not want to do. It's tempting to tie our customers as closely to our brand as possible, I know. Like telcos. Like where customers can't break the ties to the brand no matter how hard they try.

Rather, continuously give customers a good reason or better yet, several good reasons to stay with the brand out of their heart's content and bond with the brand over time. There's nothing more important than to be human, and that goes for brands too.

Music and Branding #7

2010-12-14T17:11:00.009+01:00

Justin Timberlake got $ 6M in 2003 from McDonald's to promote the tagline 'I'm Lovin' It'. Unfortunately the crowd didn't love the collaboration at all, despite the seemingly shared youthful, energetic and broad appeal. The athletic Timberlake was not considered a credible McDonald's fan, his fans felt he was being downgraded and McDonald's brand image didn't improve either.
Rolling Stones have on several occasions agreed to lucrative tour sponsorships from big league brands like T-Mobile. Some Stones fans find that the band focuses too much on profit, as they aren't showing any interest in, goodwill towards or shared values with the brands they make deals with.
Take That worked with Marks & Spencer on their 2006 come-back tour where they posed as models in M&S campaigns and openly thanked the retailer at their gigs. This was very well received by the fans.
Paul McCartney's collaboration with Starbucks from 2007 onwards means that Starbucks operates as McCartney's record label. Indeed, some McCartney fans didn't approve, nevertheless his first album with Starbucks, 'Memory Almost Full' from that year, entered the Billboard top 200 at #3.

So, what can we learn from all this? That we cannot take much for granted; that what might seem obvious and right isn't always; that we can't just follow our gut instinct; and that we need to deeply understand not only our brand but also the reactions of the target audience before we start using music for brand building purposes.

Previous columns:
Music and Branding #1
Music and Branding #2
Music and Branding #3
Music and Branding #4
Music and Branding #5
Music and Branding #6

What is marketing (not)

2010-12-13T18:40:00.002+01:00

Marketing is not science, it is informed judgement.

Music and Branding #6

2010-11-30T18:50:00.013+01:00

This is a translation of the column I'm writing for Danish industry publication Markedsføring (Marketing). Music and Branding deals with the trinity of brands, bands, and fans. It looks at how brands use (or don't use) music as part of their brand building efforts and how bands collaborate with brands.
This column (# 6) was published in issue #14 out Nov 30th, 2010 and focuses on brand fit and relevance. Please find links to the first five columns at the bottom.

In the previous column we looked at the barriers that seem to exist for brands working more strategically with music as part of the brand building. We concluded that immaterial rights management, measuring effect, and professional objectivity are three major barriers that are keeping brands from working wholeheartedly, systematically, and strategically with music.
I actually think that professional objectivity is the biggest issue. How do we ensure that the selection of music is done on the basis of pragmatic and strategic considerations rather that unfounded feelings about what we personally like?
We know that values match between brand, music and target audience is critical for success - fit and relevance. That's what we'll look into in this column.

There needs to be a purpose
A 'brand' is not something we attach at the end of the marketing process when we're, say, launching a new product; it's the starting point for the entire strategic planning. 'CSR' is not something we do once in a while; it's something we are as a brand and company, all the time. Similarly, music needs to have an equally meaningful role for any brand that wants to use music in its brand building efforts.
By 'brand building' I don't mean the individual campaigns and advertising. I'm talking about the continuous effort internally in the organisation and externally in the market involved in positioning, differentiating, and maximizing the brand and its value for the company, owners, customers and all other stakeholders.
There's nothing more cringeworthy than a brand that comes up with a CSR activity which they then run as a campaign, and which by the way has nothing to do with the company's area of business. That's as bad as a brand with music glued onto it without any apparent coherence with whatever the brand is delivering in the market, or with its inherent values.
It makes sense if Best Buy is associated with music. Does it make sense if Whole Foods is? It makes sense that Tuborg is associated with music. Does it make sense if Danish Crown Bacon is? It makes sense that Apple is associated with music. Does it make sense if Google is?

Brand, band, context - does it all fit?
Rather than starting out with genres - our brand is 'jazzy', our brand is 'rock-ish' - start with target audience match and values match. What's the brand's target audience, what are the brand values, what music holds these values - and is there a match with the target audience?
The choice of music also needs to go hand in hand with the context in which the music will be used and what's practical and appropriate for that particular touch point.
Copenhagen's biggest and most enduring department store, Magasin du Nord, hosts a juice bar at its bottom floor called Joe & the Juice. It's right next to, or part of, the make-up and perfume department. Joe & the Juice have a habit of playing very loud club type music which seems out of place for the intimate and quiet make-up and perfume department, and for the fact that most people more than anything come to the juice bar to vegetate after a hectic shopping safari. Joe & the Juice's lack of sensitivity reflects badly on themselves, and on Magasin du Nord.
These decisions on coherence should not be taken randomly according to a moment's gut feeling and what 'I kinda feel like today', but be based on insights.
And when we dig deeper and look at collaborations between individual artists and brands, the coherence becomes even more important.
For example, I was a bit confused by the collaboration between Danish dance duo Infernal and McDonald's some time ago. On the surface it seemed just right and bang-on: Brand and artist share target audience and the values of joy and energy. But when one part of the duo is a declared health nut, then I struggle to see the point. It's as if both parties just hadn't quite thought it through.

Fragmentation requires facts
Music is a lot more complex to associate a brand with than eg sports. This is due to music's strong inherent emotional dimension which can have a different effect on different people.
Music is more fragmented than sports as far as genres and segments go, and one of the biggest pitfalls for a brand is lack of research into how or if a music activity - eg a sponsorship or the music played in the stores - is congruent with 1) the target audience of the brand and 2) their perception of the brand in the various markets, at that point in time.
For any music initiative started, driven or sponsored by a brand, sincerity and authenticity is crucial. And if we don't know what that means to our target audience from deep immersion into the culture we as a brand represent - ie their culture - then we better find out, and fast.

But how do we find out what our target audience likes and which values are associated with which genres and artists? How do we find out what makes sense?
In 2007, a group of agencies in the UK incl. Millward Brown and Mindshare did some research into these exact questions. In the next column, we will look at what they found.

Previous columns:
Music and Branding #1
Music and Branding #2
Music and Branding #3
Music and Branding #4
Music and Branding #5

What great companies continuously ask

2010-11-25T14:11:00.000+01:00

'Can we save money here, can we charge more there? Great companies don't do that. They ask, 'How can we make it easier, simpler, more fun to do business with us?' They look at the whole experience (Vernon Hill)

What's an influential brand in the UK vs in the US

2010-11-19T11:49:00.002+01:00

Interesting comparison between the top 10 most influential brands in the UK and ditto in the US, posted on Treehugger' site here.
Not only does it show the growing importance of the ethical brand, it also shows that national brands - still - play an important role, despite globalization.

Music and Branding #5

2010-11-17T13:31:00.005+01:00

This is a translation of the column I'm writing for Danish industry publication Markedsføring (Marketing). Music and Branding deals with the trinity of brands, bands, and fans. It looks at how brands use (or don't use) music as part of their brand building efforts and how bands collaborate with brands.
This column (# 5) was published in issue #13 out Nov 9th, 2010 and focuses on how brands are using music and to what extent they are dedicating the resources to make it a success. Please find links to the first three columns at the bottom.

In the previous column in Markedsføring #12 (column #4 here), we looked at the link between the interest of brands for using music as part of their brand marketing and the resources that they dedicate to it. And found that in fact there isn't much of a link.
Many brands want to use music and think it's important for brand-building but don't invest risk, time, money, hands, skills, or thinking to do it properly, ie in a purposeful, value creating way. In this column we will investigate the reasons for this. What are the barriers?

Rights management
Rights management, in this case intellectual property rights (IPR), is an area of increasing importance and ditto complexity when working commercially with music. Not only is IPR fundamentally complicated, new digital platforms and tools, the fragmentation of sales and distribution channels, and the difference in national legislation increase this complexity.
There really is a lot to be aware of and be buttoned-down about, and we can't blame brands for saying 'No thanks, we'll pass'. After all, commercial use of music is not their core business.
When I was European digital director at Levi's - where music is in an integral part of the brand marketing and a central element in consumer engagement - I had good use of our in-house lawyers who are IPR specialists. But even their insight and my experience from the record business wasn't enough - quite simply because music IPR is so intricate and because new opportunities emerge constantly which the legislation hasn't quite caught up with yet.
Many brands try to manage the IPR stuff themselves or ask the ad agency to do it. But a layman is a layman, and the consequence often is that the brand fails to secure all necessary exploitation rights, and fails to clarify liability. Both can be very costly.
At Levi's we would work with external experts to assess rights costs, formulate and negotiate the deals and manage payment to the various rights societies etc. I strongly recommend doing it this way.

Measuring effect
Another barrier for brands to using music strategically is measuring effect or ROI. How do we know if the investment comes back, how do we measure it? And this is just the right question to ask. But it starts with establishing the right objectives. Without objectives, there's nothing to measure against.
The reality often is - as previously described - that the brands haven't clarified for themselves why they want to use music. What is the purpose and what do we want to achieve? See column #3 for more about music strategy.
So before you start whining about the difficulties of measuring ROI, get your success criteria in place, find out what you want to measure and why.
As we saw in the previous column (#4), precious few brands have customer loyalty and even fewer have sales as objectives. There is a lack of commercial focus which really is the place to start. When you have your objectives and success criteria in place, you establish the KPIs and then you start tracking them, just you do with the other marketing activities.

Objectivity
Rights management and measuring effect is stuff you can do something about pretty easily. It's much more difficult with the third barrier.
The third barrier is this nonchalant or random approach to the use of music. An approach deriving from bias and personal opinions within the marketing departments and/or the agencies. In other words: Objectivity is still a scarce resource.
It's as if music is not viewed as a credible, serious and valid strategic brand-building tool: Professionalism is allowed to put its feet up and relax, while decisions on music is taken on the basis of personal points of view and not according to what's appropriate for the brand and the target audience.
But as with any other marketing activity it's necessary to be concscious of the effect that our messages/activities - in this case, the music - will have on the brand as well as understand the target audience's preferences and possible reactions.
We might think to ourselves that we're one kick-ass fabulous music guru, but it's not our knowledge of music that makes us a good music marketing strategist - although some interest in music and music culture obviously helps. What makes someone good at using music strategically for brand-building purposes is the ability to place music in the bigger brand picture in a way that consistently benefits the brand and supports its strategic goals.

In the next column we will focus on the important objectivity and take a closer look at relevance and brand fit, ie the part of a music strategy that deals with values match.

Previous columns:
Music and Branding #1
Music and Branding #2
Music and Branding #3
Music and Branding #4

Why we 'like' a brand

2010-11-02T14:08:00.003+01:00

This report which can be found on PSFK's website looks at why Facebook users choose to 'like' a brand on Facebook. The bad news is that most people do it to get a discount or other price offer, the good news is that just as many do it to show their support for the brand in question.

The last reason people list for 'liking' a brand on Facebook is 'to share ideas, provide feedback'. Interesting, considering Facebook is a social network where people meet to share ideas and provide feedback.

But (still) not in a commercial context, it seems. Or maybe the brands just (still) aren't good enough at using Facebook in a way the benefits both brand and consumers.

One of the best definitions ever of a great brand

2010-10-17T14:11:00.003+02:00

Some 10 years ago or more I came across this way to describe what a great brand is. Scott Bedbury came up with it (wish I had!) and my friend Alan Webber wrote about it in Fast Company:

A great brand is in it for the long haul.
A great brand can be anything.
A great brand knows itself.
A great brand invents or reinvents an entire category.
A great brand taps into emotions.
A great brand is a story that's never completely told.
A great brand has design consistency.
A great brand is relevant.

One of the terrific things about Bedbury's 8 rules is that they are void of tactics and executions, like 'A great brand uses social media', 'A great brand focuses on CSR', or 'A great brand has distinct packaging', a tail-wagging-the-dog trap that a lot of folks fall into.
Not that any of these tactics are necessarily wrong, they're just not what you start with. Bedbury stays at exactly the right level of abstraction while being very concrete.

Read the full story here.

Who needs TV?

2010-10-15T16:22:00.006+02:00

Facebook is the new mass media. Nike's CMO Davide Grasso says, "Facebook is the equivalent for us to what TV was for marketers back in the 1960s. It's an integral part of what we do now."

Why yes, Nike's latest video, a three-minute commercial called Write the Future, was launched on FB and passed on from friend to friend. The clip was played and commented on more than 9 million times by Facebook users and helped Nike double its number of Facebook fans from 1.6 million to 3.1 million over a single weekend.

Eyeballs, participation and advocacy all in one package. Getting the ad onto Facebook cost a few million dollars. Anyone who's ever worked with ATL knows this is a good deal.

Music and Branding #4

2010-10-15T11:54:00.010+02:00

97% believe that music can strengthen their brand
76% are actively working with music
68% believe that music is important to build a unique and consistent brand, also in future.

So music is deemed pretty important. But, and here's the paradox, the study also shows that:

7 out of 10 brands spend less than 5% of the marketing budget on music
4 out of 10 brands have defined a music profile
2 out of 10 have a sound logo.

That's not exactly impressive. And the study didn't even look at the place music is given in the bigger brand organizational context.
Because money isn't enough. There has to be people in the organization to manage a music strategy. People with the right skills to carry it out or manage an agency who does it; who are placed close to where the decisions are made; are part of the brand team; and who have music and brand building as part of their job description and KPIs.
So really, where should the finger be pointing when the marketing director states that 'our music strategy has failed, we're getting no ROI, we're dropping it'. That's right, you have to give something to gain something.

Lack of commercial focus
Seemingly forgetting that brands must be prepared for dedicating resources in several ways to the project and over a longer period of time, means that they miss out on the benefits of strategic use of music.
And this might well be the reason why we see so much tactical and short-term oriented use of music.
Thus, it isn't surprising that Heartbeats Intl's study shows that the brands here use music primarily as complementary marcoms element:
The majority use music in TV ads, followed by music on website. On the 3rd place we find music in stores and showrooms, and only on the 4th place we have artist sponsorship/collaboration. Then follow events, radio spots, music products (promo CDs, ring tones) and coming in last is sound logo. It's worth mentioning that sound logo has gained significantly since 2008 but the others are more or less static.

The study also asked the 70 brands in what way music is important. And reveals that the majority (68%) believe that music is important for brand image and differentiation purposes. Only 20% mention customer loyalty and a measly 12% mention sales. Obviously, if there isn't a clear commercial objective with the marketing efforts incl music marketing efforts, then it's pretty darn difficult to advocate.

Altogether we can conclude that there's quite a bit of road to be traveled before we get to a systematic, useful and sustainable approach to using music.
But in many way this is the wonderful thing about it - there is so much potential still in the relationship between brands and music. It just requires awareness and a dedicated effort to be part of it. Or as the Beatles so simply put it in 1969: 'And in the end, the love you take / is equal to the love you make'.

Next time we'll look at some of the concrete barriers that brands experience as fas as working strategically with music is concerned.

Previous columns:
Music and Branding #1
Music and Branding #2
Music and Branding #3

Good brands

2010-10-14T10:01:00.000+02:00

"Being a genuinely good brand in 2010 takes more than a widely used product and an ubiquitous global presence. Though there is no precise formula, what the ten good brands on our list have in common is a penchant for imagination, innovation, environmental responsibility and social consciousness".
So says PSFK's new Good Brands Report 2010 which apart from listing their top 10 brands, provides 10 key learnings about what helped these brands obtain a place on the list. Highly recommended reading.

Music and Branding #3

2010-10-06T17:30:00.008+02:00

This is a translation of the column I'm writing for Danish industry publication Markedsføring (Marketing).
Music and Branding deals with the trinity of brands, bands, and fans. It looks at how brands use (or don't use) music as part of their brand management and marketing efforts and how bands collaborate with brands.
This column (no. 3) was published in issue #11 Sept 28th, 2010 and focuses on the importance of having a clear purpose for the use of music as part of the overall brand framework and a strategy for fulfilling that purpose (column no. 1 and 2 is here and here).

In the previous column (issue 9 of the magazine) we looked at how music influences our emotions and physical well-being as well as encourages social interaction. We established that music provides a variety of options for strengthening the emotional relationship between brand and consumer. And we concluded that this is the reason why brand managers must decide and define the role - big or small - that music should be playing within the overall brand strategy.

Eliminate the danger of too many options
Music is both media and content. Music delivers the broadest array of touch points than any other entertainment category and is hands down the most-consumed category across the board. So the opportunities for both reach and engagement are almost countless.
Exactly this fragmentation increases the risk of grasping at these opportunities arbitrarily. The best case scenario of which is an incoherent experience. This way, we obviously don't leverage the potential of music to build the emotional bond to the consumer, nor to deliver ROI.
So in order to achieve the desired return, we need to take a more considered approach. Just like we have a portfolio strategy, product strategy, distribution strategy, pricing strategy, marcoms strategy etc as parts of the overall brand strategy, we need to define the music strategy. And how do we do that - what is a music strategy?

Music strategy 101
The elements of a music strategy are the same elements as in any other strategy:

It's about relevance, not what we personally like
As you can see we do not start by saying 'What kinda music do I like'. Neither with musical genres although most people intuitively start there by saying that the brand is 'jazzy', 'hiphop-y' or 'rock-ish'.
Brands are not defined this way, rather by values like 'safe', 'modern' or 'edgy'. Hence, the brand values are usually best expressed across genres. Danish fashion label Noir are consciously using classical as well as German 70s soul in their shows.
The values match is essential for a music strategy but it's only one out of a number of key components and must never be defined on the basis of personal preferences.

Start with the music profile
We cannot and should not all be Starbucks, Apple or Levi's who have invested many years and $$ in their music association. A practical place to start is by establishing a music profile (step 2 on the music staircase, see column 1).
When we have that in place, we have the creative framework for all subsequent activities and media in which music will be used.
A music profile is the sound dimension of the brand, just like a graphic profile (aka visual identity) is the visual dimension. A music profile defines the unique tone of the brand and is used in all touch points where sound plays a role, eg TV/radio/online ads, stores, showrooms, website, presentations, and IVR/waiting tune.
In addition, a music profile defines each component of the total profile (eg sound logo, 'tag music', riffs or other specifics parts/fragments, number and types of music pieces, sound scape), the hierarchy between these components, and where the profile and each component is to be used and not used.
There's plenty reason to spend some time defining the brand's music profile - remember that brands with music that matches their identity boast 96% higher recall rates than brands with mismatching or no music.

In the next column we will look at the state of the nation as far as brands' use of music as brand building tool is concerned, and their dedication to making it a success. No doubt, brands love music as much as consumers. But are they dedicating enough energy to make the love grow?

Previous columns:
Column #1
Column #2

This is design thinking

2010-10-06T14:23:00.008+02:00

Met up with my old friend, Wickie, today and discussed approaches to business and organizational transformation and progress. One of the hot approaches these days is 'design thinking'. I've always had an issue with the term because:

Like so many other specifically coined terms, it becomes a buzz word that covers everything and nothing, and in the end no one understands what it is. Like 'experience economy', 'social media' and 'user-driven innovation' which have become very misunderstood (see my posts about the latter two 'It's the mindset, not the media' and 'What is user-driven innovation - and what is not').
The spokespeople for design thinking tend to - as with all buzz things - describe it in long, very unconcrete terms that leave me none the wiser about what exactly design thinking is and why I should care.
Design thinking fundamentally consists of elements that are very well-known from disciplines like brand management and web/IT development, so what's new?

I prefer to call a spade a spade. Tell me in brief layman's terms what it is. So Wickie, who is trained as a designer and works with design as a mindset, and I tried to sum up in the simplest possible way the core elements of design thinking:

A holistic, cross-disciplinary approach to problem-solving that uses
... a prototyping, iterative process in order make stuff (change, processes, things, plans)
... tangible very quickly.

See, now I get what design thinking is. I hope you do, too.

The evolution of error pages

2010-10-04T15:04:00.008+02:00

Ten years ago, in 2000, Levi's did the controversial 'Not Found' online campaign where 404 error pages were over taken by the brand and inhabited with various brand messages.

This made me think how the nature of error pages has evolved from basic, somewhat cold, and sometimes downright frightening messages to fun, friendly pieces of communication (one of my favorites below, simple, fun, makes me chuckle).

I wonder if anyone has looked into this, and I'm thinking it might make for interesting, cool and no doubt amusing reading. A look into the evolution of branding and communication on so many levels.

K Forum in not accessible at the moment due to technical problems. We apologize for the inconvenience. Kind regards, K Forum

Marketing is also about the experience

2010-10-04T14:04:00.012+02:00

So I'm reading this really useful and relevant article in Harvard Business Review about Unleashing the Power of Marketing. I applaud anything and anyone who promotes the principle of marketing as strategy driver and translator of customer insight into the next growth idea.
But I don't applaud when marketing isn't also paying attention to the customer experience. Like on the very site where I'm perusing the article. Here, I've just experienced the most irritating online ad so far - and I've seen a lot during the past 10 years.

At the bottom left is a square IBM ad that pops up immediately - and won't go away. There's no x or 'close' button. The ad is effectively blocking my view so I can't read the copy. Only when I scroll down, can I return to my reading - while the ad unfortunately stays on the site throughout.

C'mon - I get that your KPI is CTR and all of us annoyed users will click on the ad in a knee-jerk reaction to make the sucker go away, and lo-and-behold you think you have achieved your ROI target.

But this is a bad, bad experience. Dear IBM, HBR, and online ad agency, have you not tested this and realized how this lack of respect for the users most of all reflects badly on you? Maybe this post should be called 'How to turn Return on Investment into Throwing Your Investment Out the Window'.

PS. Here are a couple of additional contextual display ads gone wrong, courtesy of e-Consultancy.

Design vs decoration

2010-10-01T12:04:00.001+02:00

There's a difference between design and decoration. It's called substance, longevity, and relevance. Or as they would say in Jamaica: Don’t confuse sound systems with mobile discos – one can rock a real party, the other is useful for weddings.

How to sell more bread - letter to my bakery

2010-09-30T11:28:00.018+02:00

This is an email I recently sent to one the bakeries where I buy my bread. 'Lagkagehuset' is an excellent bakery chain in Copenhagen who has become very successful with their baked goods and retail concept.
But a crucial component is missing which not only annoys me every time I go there but also would help them sell even more:

Dear Lagkagehuset,
I love good bread, therefore I buy a lot of it at your bakery. I also love to know what's in the bread - after all, it's the ingredients that determine which bread(s) I buy.
Unfortunately there is no information in your stores or on your website about this. So I have to ask the shop assistant every time. They don't always know what's in the various breads, it takes time to ask and (perhaps) get answers, and this just makes the queue behind me even longer.
Thus, I often don't ask - I hate to waste the other customers' time - and the result is that I sometimes come home with a 'wrong' bread because I've just chosen the nearest one. This is a great annoyance. Most likely I'm not the only one who's experiencing this.
So here's a few ideas on how to solve that issue, using your greatest asset and your two primary customer touch points:

Talk about the bread on your website - tell us about them, what's in them, why, and what makes each of them special. You'll delight your customers, and you'll also create more interest.
Same thing goes for your stores. Use them to tell us about what you're selling. Don't put up tiny little signs at each type of bread - the customers can't see what's written anyway. But you could develop small hand-outs, like set cards, about the breads which the customers can read in the store and/or bring home. Use them as bagstuffers, too. Customers will happily put it on their fridge at home if it's handy, stylish, and interesting enough and voila - instant in-home advertising 24/7.
You could also consider large nicely framed posters in the stores that introduces each bread. Put on the right wall in the customer area where everyone can see it, it'll not only look good, it'll make for interesting reading and passing of the time as customers wait for their turn. Need I mention, they'll be prone to buy more and be happier with their purchase.

All this spells differentiation, increased revenue, smoother store traffic, customer satisfaction, and advocacy, at a low cost - what's not to like? I hope you will consider these or other ways to inform us about your otherwise excellent bread - thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Helene Venge

The purpose of companies

2010-09-30T10:26:00.006+02:00

The general wisdom contends that the purpose of a company is to create shareholder value. I say it is to create and keep customers. If done well, this helps to increase profits, which then increases shareholder value. Focusing squarely on shareholder value is a short-term perspective, leading to short-term results.
The goal is long-run value - and the customer is the source of that value. So the customer must be the primary focus of any business, not shareholder value. By shifting the focus, you open up a broader range of opportunities that you otherwise just can't see.

It's what we do that makes the difference

2010-09-20T07:57:00.008+02:00

We are what we repeatedly do (Aristotle). In other words, if you want to be something else, do something else. Yes, this also goes for companies and brands. If your customers are experiencing your company in ways you are not happy with, you have to change your company's behaviour.

It's the mindset, not the media

2010-09-05T20:03:00.050+02:00

A friend of mine told me the other day of a roundtable he'd been in with a number of the biggest companies in Denmark to discuss business issues. He told me that one of the most prevalent issues among these companies was: What do we do with social and digital media?

In this post, I will put forward my humble take on the issue, based on my experience working with business and brand strategies over the years including the elusive answer to the above mentioned question. The thing is, the question is actually wrong. It's not a matter of media but of mindset. Let me explain.

Why are we still discussing this?
You see, I was surprised by the prevalence of the issue. And then again not. Surprised because we discussed the issue already back in 2005 and surely we are pretty clear by now, aren't we?
Not surprised because indeed big companies are built by complex structures that complicate the strategic utilization of social and digital media and all other activities that are two-way between company and consumers. I know this from having been in several large corporations, including one of the Danish companies participating in the roundtable.
The very same day I came across this recent TED talk which concludes that:

The bigger the corporation/brand the more force is required to change it (think Titanic),
While it takes time to build a brand, it can be quickly dethroned (think BP),
While many marketeers lie sleepless at night at the thought of consumers gaining control of the brand, the (for marketeers entropic) brand energy that consumers create is actually a good thing (think Lego).

The TED talk is good, solid, and funny. And I agree with everything that's put forward in it. But I'm also surprised that the 3rd point is being received as new. Like I said, we've discussed this since 2005 if not before.

But then I need to remember the 1st point. Or as John Lennon put it: 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans'.
He wasn't talking about business but often this applies to corporations, too. So busy planning their business that they lose sight of what's happening and they find themselves being distanced from real life, their consumers' life that is.
And this is probably part of the reason why social and digital media is still an unsolved mystery for many of them and why they're uncertain and unsettled about embracing it. And why, unfortunately, many are downright scared of opening up to their consumers, thinking of the risk of quick dethroning - the 2nd point. Well, we only have to fear it if we've got secrets to hide.

I went back into the annals and dug out a conference talk I did in, that's right, 2005 - excuse me one second while I dust it off, achoo.
It was an IPA conference in London, and as European Digital Director at Levi's I was asked to talk about how we used digital media to build the brand and cut through the clutter. I ended up talking about how to harness your consumers' engagement in the brand - or distributing brand energy as the TED talk would call it.
Let me re-state a few key points from the talk which I believe hold true today and maybe, hopefully, they can be useful to you.

1) The way we talk about it shapes our perception and thus our reality
When I prepared my talk back then, I was puzzled by the language that the conference programme was using. It talked about:

“Advertising is on its deathbed and will not survive for long”

“A fatal case of new technology”

“Confronting the challenge”

“As the reality of opt-in sets in”

What is this, the emergency room? Or are we at war? Are we all about to die? Should we pull out the first aid kit? What's going on? Clearly, digital and social media was seen as a curse, something to fight so that 'we' could survive.
That's problem no. 1 right there. It's not a 'we vs. them'. It's not a fight. But if you keep putting on those glasses, that's what you'll see.

2) If the mountain won't come to Moses...

Companies exist to fulfill a consumer need. Consumers pay companies to fulfill it. Herein lies the symbiotic relationship. Interestingly, there's a number of opposing forces within this relationship that makes it difficult for companies and consumers to get along, summed up in the brand paradox:

As responsible managers we align with company policies, governance, processes, and planning cycles because they are there so that the company can operate. It's just that consumers don't really give a hoot about this and why should they. And because they now have a voice, or rather a lot of voices, we need to also align with their way of doing things. Indeed, Moses needs to come to the mountain.

3) Social and digital media are means, not an end
It's not about using social or digital media or not. It's about whether your company is willing and able to open up to its consumers. A Twitter stream does not make a company more open or cool (or social or digital). Saying 'We believe we can learn from our consumers and we want to thank them for buying our products and show them respect by being transparent and honest in everything we do' and behaving accordingly does.
Once you've decided that you're ready to do this, are clear on the purpose and what you aim to achieve, understand the implications, and have a strategy for doing it - then you can start defining the tactics. Among these tactics may be social and digital media, but they are not the strategy and should not define your objectives. Be very careful of the tail wagging the dog.

4) Join up and align the touch points
Social and digital media enable a faster and more efficient roll-out of your strategy towards more openness and of building that deeper relationship with your consumers.
But by all means, don't think that openness and a deeper relationship means 'Let's have that creative young fellow in the digital marketing dept create a Facebook page for us, and maybe a Twitter stream and then he can write some stuff when we launch the next product'.
Don't forget that 'the new openness' must also manifest itself in internal communication and information-sharing and similarly in all external contact points. You can tweet all you want but if your customer has a bad experience with a sales rep, it doesn't really help.
The internal information flow must be constant, efficient, and substantial so the left hand knows what the right hand is doing: Customer service, sales/retail, product quality, legal, marketing, research, and so on, they all need to have the same (detailed level of) information about the happenings in the company and about the consumer in order to support the openness objective.

5) It isn't easy but the returns can be great
Don't worry, be happy. See social and digital media as a blessing. Understand that social and digital media allow your consumers to engage with your brand and your company in ways that were impossible before. Think of it this way:

As consumers take (more) control, we can create meaningful collaborations with them on both parties’ terms. If meaningful enough for them, they will do the marketing for you.

There will be lots of comments out there that you won't like and that you feel are huge misunderstandings, but see them as a reflection of your company's behavior and adjust so your consumers experience you the way you intend.

6) Learn from the learnings
As a final note, a few Do's and Dont's and remember that the democratization of media is here to stay, so you might as well get used to it, with all its challenges and opportunities:

Music and Branding #2

2010-09-01T15:02:00.015+02:00

This is a translation of the column I'm writing for Danish industry publication Markedsføring (Marketing).

This column (no. 2) was published in issue #9 August 24th, 2010 and focuses on the importance of taking an informed stand on music and branding, even if it means choosing not to include music as part of the brand strategy (and column no 1 is here).

In issue 7, I introduced 'the music staircase' from Swedish Heartbeats Intl - we resist the temptation of calling it stairway to heaven. It's a simple model used to assess how sophisticated a given brand is in terms of working with music as part of its strategy. On the first step, music is used unconsciously and entirely ad hoc. On the final step, music is an integrated part of the brand strategy.
But why is it so important for brands to deal with and have a clear view on music?

Music appears to be more important than sex

In 2008, the research agency Millward Brown et al conducted a study of the relationship between music, advertising, brands, and consumers, "Bands & Brands, How Music Communicates With People". The study shows that:

Our consumption of music has never been greater. Music has become ubiquitous.
Music is something all of us love or like a lot. No one dislikes music.
Our senses, brain, and body is influenced by music. Music can influence the beating of the heart and our emotions.
Music can communicate atmosphere and 'transport' us to places, we've been, and to moments in our lives.
60% listen to music every day.
61% say that music changes their physical wellbeing.
85% say that music changes their mood.
Music is the thing most people won't live without. Music beats computer, mobile phone, TV, and even sex.

If this isn't enough reason to consider music as a fixed component in the brand strategy, then this might help: A study by professor in music psychology Adrian North and professor in psychology David Hargreaves shows that brands using music that match their identity have 96% greater recall than brands with mis-matching or no music.

Tired of ads, not of music

Are you still doubtful, consider this: Tens of thousands of brands are launched every year and only few last. We are exposed to an increasing amount of messages each day, let's say 5,000. We remember 10% of these at the most, compared to 33% 50 years ago. In fact, we are so cleverly designed that the more ads we're exposed to, the fewer we remember.

Not so with music.The more music available to us, the more we engage in it. Today, an iPod can host 40,000 songs compared to the few tunes we might be lucky to hear through a lifetime 100 years ago. According to the Millward Brown study, today we consume music through on average 6 different devices, from the TV to the mobile. We never get tired of music, perhaps not counting the neighbor's party on a week night.

People create music, music create people

We don't get tired of music because it arouses emotions and influences our physical feelings. Human beings are born with rhythm and music in our bodies. Scientific research has shown that out of the 5 senses, hearing is developed first in the fetus. Already by the 18. week the fetus is able to hear the heartbeat of the mother.

Music follows us through life and plays a role at all big events and milestones. In many cultures, music is used to awaken the gods and the forces of nature. Music is an element is us human beings.

We use music actively to get in a certain mood. We use music to express our choices, identity, and own personal brand. Music creates energy and on a group level it engages people across age, gender, and culture and encourages social action, interaction, and transaction. Just have a look at the programme on national TV DR2 'Songs that Changed the World'.

Does this sound familiar? Isn't all of this exactly what us marketing folks are so keen to achieve with the brands we manage on behalf of the shareholders and consumers? Maybe not change the world, but then change at least the individual consumer's world in a big or small but certainly positive way? If not, then what's our reason for doing what we do?

This is why it's so important that brands find out how they should associate themselves with music. Not all brands need to or ought to get all the way to the final step of the music staircase. But all brands need to - as a minimum - develop a conscious and well-informed view on and a systematic approach to the use of music. Also if this means choosing not to use music at all.

The opposing forces of every business

2010-09-01T09:22:00.003+02:00

"Every business faces the opposing forces of the pull for more growth against the pull for more profitability; the demand to show profit today against the need to invest in the company’s future; and the call for optimizing the whole against the tendency of individual parts to maximize their own performance. The three performance tensions — growth versus profitability, short term versus long term, and whole versus parts — provide fundamental energy that can be harnessed to deliver superior, sustainable results."
(Ken Favaro and Saj-nicole Joni in "Getting Tensions Right" in Strategy+Business 24 Aug, 2010)

Try before you buy

2010-08-19T18:22:00.003+02:00

Adidas has launched a new shoestore in Japan, in fact it's a shoe store and and running club in one, Adidas Runbase. Besides perusing and purchasing gear experienced and rookie runners can borrow shoes, get tips from running experts, take the shoes out for a run, shower after your run, etc. The ultimate try-before-you-buy experience.

Ikea economy

2010-08-06T13:10:00.003+02:00

We know about Apple economy, ie other companies creating businesses off Apple products (eg iPod accessories).
Here's Ikea economy: http://springwise.com/weekly/2010-08-04.htm#ecomodernism. A company that covers the part of the value chain that Ikea doesn't.

Walk the Talk

2010-07-28T10:21:00.003+02:00

Quote of the day: "Advertising is sexy, PR is influential, and design is uplifting; but it's the substance of what you do that matters most" (Nicholas Ind and Majken Schultz in Booz Allen's Strategy+Business, 26 June 2010).

Organizations, you need to get on board with this if you aren't already. Branding is about the whole organization and its stakeholders, not the campaigns and the marketing department.

Music and Branding #1

2010-06-07T12:51:00.010+02:00

This is a translation of the column I'm writing for Danish industry publication Markedsføring (Marketing).

Music and Branding deals with the trinity of brands, bands, and fans. It looks at how brands use (or don't use) music as part of their branding and marketing efforts and how bands collaborate with brands. Some do it well, others badly. Others just really boring. It also looks at new ways and models for collaboration.
This column was published in issue #7 June 1st, 2010 and deals with the state of music and branding in Denmark, both client and agency side.

From beer to consulting
What does Avenue Hotel, Royal Beer, and Copenhagen Consulting Company have in common? They all use music as part of their identity and market communication.

Each week, Avenue Hotel in Copenhagen hosts the Yellow Lounge, a club night featuring DJs playing a combination of electronica and classical music - they also put out a CD series by the same name.
Royal Beer runs competitions to win tickets to select summer festivals that they sponsor and - perhaps more interesting - collaborate with Danish rock band Kashmir to find the support act for Kashmir's upcoming tour.
Copenhagen Consulting Company (CoCoCo) give away corporate CD compilations with the title 'Everest Within' and featuring a Stephen Covey quote inspiring us to always make our best team effort, like they do.

All of them use music as association and borrow a little coolness in order to differentiate from the competition (CoCoCo) or get closer to the customer (Avenue Hotel, Royal Beer). In the case of Avenue Hotel they also seek to deliver a different hotel experience altogether, and Royal Beer to provide the coveted 15 minutes of fame.

All in all pretty good - and pretty common - examples of how brands use music as a means to support or strengthen their identity.

Lost in music?
Using music as a branding tool is not exactly new. Actually, it is as common as free newspapers in the metro. But just how sophisticated are we in Denmark in this area?
If we take a look at UK and Sweden, it would appear that there is a much greater interest - and ambition - not just for brands and music but brands and music strategies. Look at specialist agencies like UK-based Citizen Sound, New Music Strategies, BrandAmp, Frukt Music, Musically and Swedish Heartbeats International.

They don't just create sponsor programmes, sound branding, and product placement opportunities. They cover the entire value chain from strategic planning, market analysis, music identity, music strategy, concept development, social/viral media, instore, mobile apps, digital media, evaluation, reporting etc. And they research and share their knowledge through workshops, seminars, symposiums, newsletters, blogs, and books.

In other words: These agencies don't just maintain the field of music and branding, they expand and evolve it.

I know a lot of agencies in Denmark who work with one or more parts of the value chain, but none that cover more than just the usual stuff or proactively seek to influence and educate the market. And from a brand perspective, the picture is equally sad - only Tuborg can claim to work with music systematically, strategically and longterm.

From ill-fitting waiting tune to strategic platform
Heartbearts in Sweden have created a simple way to illustrate how brands and agencies work with music - the music ladder. It has 4 steps:

Unconscious use of music. Here, music is used accidentally and with no thoughts as to why, how and what music is used. Best case scenario is confusion as to what the brand stands for.
Conscious use of music. Here, the brand has developed a music identity, a sound associated with a set of values. Music has become a branding element. CoCoCo is an example.
Involved in music. The brand is actively involved in music activity, typically through promotions/competitions or sponsorships/collaborations. Royal Beer s an example.
Strategic music platform. The brand owns a position in music culture and a platform from which it develops the brand, the fans and the music. Tuborg is an example. Heartbeats mention Red Bull Music Academy. Levi's, where I was marketing head for a while, owned music as association for a number of years in the 80s and 90s.

The music opportunity
In Denmark we see all too few examples of step 4. Ironically, except Tuborg probably the super markets are the ones working most strategically and research-based with music! But why?
Is Denmark just too small a market? Are we satisfied with things the way they are? Do we not believe in the potential, the opportunities of music branding? I don't know but I'd love to hear your opinion.

Music is the form of expression and cultural art form with the greatest appeal. Only sports attract the same amount of people and appeal on the same emotional level. Music accepts no limits, it ties us together across borders, age, sex, culture, class, religion and any other preference.

Must this potential, this power, really be reduced to a buy-and-get promotion or an ill-fitting IVR tune - when there are so many other opportunities?

What companies need to focus on

2010-05-20T12:37:00.010+02:00

Fifty years ago, Peter Drucker said that "any business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions: Innovation and marketing".

It's unfortunate that so many companies still struggle with both; the good news is that there is so much potential for improvement and progress.

Quality is a means, not an end

2010-05-20T08:30:00.001+02:00

Quality is often the main message brands want to convey. However, this is not an effective branding message because quality is relative and even expected. Quality is not your end-game, but the beginning, and should be treated that way.

Loosen the reins

2010-05-14T18:53:00.010+02:00

"We have to strike the right balance between being in touch and being in control. The irony is, the more in control we are, the more out of touch we become."

A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble, on brand management. He actually said this already in 2006 which just makes it all the more true. We had a lot of these discussions at Levi's, my stance being that strong brands only get stronger by facilitating that consumers can talk about it (the brand), rather than constantly saying 'look at me, I'm a great brand and don't you dare say anything different' which, honestly, just comes across as desperate.

Feel good branding

2010-03-08T11:31:00.007+01:00

The other day I received a letter from my storage company. I rent a box there where I keep all sorts of stuff that I have no room for a home. I was so delighted to get this letter. Not only was it not the annual invoice, it was one of their newsletters which they send to all their customers a few times a year.

This newsletter always delights me. It's a paper newsletter, two pages stapled together, 'designed' with a basic dtp program, not particularly well written, full of little stories about the team, new services, free ice cream, their flower pots, the colour of the gate, with corny pictures and illustrations (Easter chickens at Easter, xmas stuff at xmas), almost naïve in its look and content. So why does this newsletter delight me?

Because it makes me feel good. I get a smile on my face when I read this newsletter. Here's a local office of this fairly big storage company chain who really wants to do a good a job for its local customers. They are only 2 or 3 people but boy, do they make an effort to give personal, friendly service and surprise and delight their customers. And what's more, they're proud of their trade and their work and it comes through in this newsletter.

In all its old school-ness, this newsletter makes me feel warm and fuzzy. It's excellent branding and they don't even know it.

Today's links

2010-02-25T10:50:00.003+01:00

Wired's take on Google's (past-present-future) approach to music.

Today's links

2010-02-22T15:48:00.011+01:00

The 10 most addictive sounds in the world, non-branded and branded (acc to Martin Lindstrom, anyway).
On the idiocy of sharing your whereabouts info.

Free your mind and your assets will follow

2010-02-20T22:07:00.008+01:00

Jon Bains has written an insightful and entertaining post on his blog about media-neutral marketing. Well, actually it's about looking for inspiration beyond the immediate, un-terming familiar terms, and breaking the habits while retaining the DNA of the brand. He titles it Analog to Digital Conversion and here it is.

Jon co-founded digital creative agency Lateral in the mid 90s and I had the pleasure of working with him and his crew for several years when I was at Levi's.

Wu Tang Clan vs The Beatles

2010-02-05T15:10:00.013+01:00

"Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers" is a remix album incorporating Wu Tang Clan a capellas and Beatles songs, and produced by Tom Caruana.

So, not unlike the Dangermouse Grey Album which of course mixed Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' White Album.

But - unlike the Grey Album - this one features remixes/covers of Beatles songs, not originals. I love The Beatles and this is a really cool combo, with great vocals by Kelis to boot. The album can be downloaded for free at the record company's website.

Honesty, passion, competence

2010-01-29T10:27:00.008+01:00

Honesty, passion, and competence. These were the three values that underpinned the Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page tells us in the documentary It Might Get Loud about the three guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. To me, it sounds like many corporations and organisations could learn something.

Will it do or die?

2010-01-13T09:23:00.004+01:00

Tell me what you think: Is this old hat and will Octone vanish when the sales do the same or is it a different approach that will survive in the industry? The Plan To Save the Music Biz.

Thinking man

2010-01-09T15:32:00.006+01:00

Last night I watched a program on TV where a sociologist was asked about the characteristics of the 2010's man. She said well-rounded, comfortable with both the 'male' and 'female' sides of himself, sensitive and also not afraid of cutting through whenever necessary. She names Obama as an example of this type of man. I agree.

But I think she's missing a key attribute which Obama possesses in abundance: Intelligence and the ability to think - and being very comfortable with that. And isn't this about time? After all, we're homo sapiens.

2009-12-14T13:50:00.003+01:00

"Berlusconi gets away with everything because he thinks he's going to. That quality is difficult to teach and even harder to cure". Stanley Bing in Fortune Magazine, Dec 2009.

I guess you asked for it

2009-12-08T14:46:00.006+01:00

Exchange between abrasive and wooden-legged TV show host Joe Pine and very long-haired musician Frank Zappa on Pine's show in the late 1960s:

Pine: I guess your long hair makes you a girl.

Zappa: I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.

Today's links

2009-12-02T09:05:00.003+01:00

Innovation: Why Failing Is OK. Or why 'Fail Fast Forward' should probably be the 6th criteria for successful innovation in organizations as laid out in my post here.

5 criteria for successful innovation in organizations

2009-11-29T16:56:00.020+01:00

My old acquaintance Wickie and I met up for coffee the other day, and as we both have an interest in the intersection of organizations and innovation, we discussed our various experiences in this potent field.

At one point she asked me to name the 5 key criteria for successful implementation of innovation projects within an organization.

Many wise books and articles have been written about this and I can only humbly suggest my own perspective which has been shaped by working with 'new stuff' in large corporations the past 15 years.

So here we go, my view on 5 criteria for successful innovation within an organization:

1) Senior management support and advocacy

This is old hat, really, but true nonetheless. If the innovation project hasn't got the support and enjoys active advocacy from upstairs, then forget it.

Be it a new business process, a ground-breaking product, a different set of performance metrics, an untried department structure, a novel view on strategy planning, an unfamiliar business model, a new business unit - it has to be backed by the CEO and his/her management team and explicitly supported and encouraged by them.

If you want to try and go it alone, be my guest - I've done this myself on more than one occasion - but there will be a limit as to far you'll get.

2) The right people

Often, you'll have only few headcounts dedicated to the innovation project so you have to be certain that they're the right people. You can't afford to make hiring mistakes or to lose people in this situation - hiring the wrong person means losing capacity, losing people means losing vital knowledge.

With the right people, you can move at high speed and to high standards, because they create the kind of synergy that make the whole bigger than the sum of the parts.

Not only do people working on innovation projects have to have superior technical/formal skills in more than just their own immediate area. They also have to possess certain personal skills:

High capacity for learning new stuff and for applying new knowledge, constantly.
Comfortable with the unknown and with making decisions based on limited information.
Ability to fly with the eagles and crawl with the ants, meaning keeping the big perspective while getting deep into the engine room.
Creative thinkers, able to problem-solve and to generate options.
Driven and with a relatively high level of energy.
Communication skills, open to and comfortable with a lot of feedback and dialogue.

3) An easily understood plan

Forget complicated, long-winded reports and poetic, flowery vision statements. 'A woolly plan means a woolly idea'.

To get buy-in, the plan needs to be concrete, communicated in basic terms and describe your constituents' role in it. Is it also possible to describe what's in it for them, great, but sometimes there isn't anything in it for them directly, other than a nod from senior management. And actually, that counts for a lot for a lot of people.

4) Stick to the plan

Your plan lays out the goals and how to achieve them. This is worth nothing if you don't stick to it. It's tempting to throw in a new idea that you just heard about from a colleague, your well-meaning boss might have some new thought that would really add a great dimension to the project, the sales guys might want you to please a big customer, and so on and so forth.

Listen to them, take it in, and then tell them why you will stick to the plan. Of course, there might be internal or external developments that force you to take a slight detour or swap the timing of key building blocks, but stick to the overall course and at all times relate everything you do back to the key objectives.

5) Understand where in the innovation process you are

All innovation projects consist of a number of phases that each have certain characteristics, set of activities, focus, and operating mode. Some call it Storming, Forming, Performing, Re-forming. Others call it Proof-of-concept, Proof-of-business, Growth, Scale. Others call it something third, but it all means the same thing, really.

The point is to understand each of these phases, in which phase your innovation project is, and when it needs to shift from one phase to the next. It's not unusual that the project owner or team firmly believes that the project has concluded, say, the proof-of-concept phase and is well into the proof-of-business or even the growth phase. This can be detrimental because focus is on a set of activities that are wrong for the project at that particular time.

For example: A new business unit might assess that it's the right time to start heavily marketing the new service and is overlooking that key business processes are not firmly in place - which would mean that the increased demand would bring the back office to its knees, disappoint customers, and make you unpopular with your supply chain and customer service colleagues.

These criteria, I propose, are the 'high five'. If you have other views on key criteria for successful innovation projects, please don't hesitate to comment on this post or drop me a note.

Celebrating Drucker

2009-11-23T08:40:00.008+01:00

Peter Drucker would have been 100 years old today. His ideas are more relevant than ever; such as the idea of the modern corporation as an opportunity for community-building and providing meaning for the people who work in them. More about Drucker's ideas in this Business Week cover story from 2005 when he sadly passed away. Also, check out the November issue of Harvard Business Review which is dedicated to Drucker's ideas in the Drucker Centennial.

Today's links

2009-11-22T10:13:00.008+01:00

Why Marketing Does a Terrible Job of Marketing Itself - and why it's no longer about controlling the brand but about guiding it through its network of users, no longer about managing the marketing budget but about inspiring marketing excellence throughout the organization, and no longer about being a sales enabler but about being a value driver across the enterprise.

What is user-driven innovation - and what is not

2009-11-12T12:31:00.048+01:00

Have you noticed the surge in user-driven innovation? Or rather - the surge in companies and consultancies who say that they do user-driven innovation?

Well, I have and it's causing me a great deal of concern. Why, isn't user-driven innovation a good thing, you might ask. Yes, it is. Only most of these companies and consultancies aren't actually doing user-driven innovation. And this is creating problems for the real user-driven innovation, ultimately watering down the concept and its value.

User-driven innovation (UDI) means that a firm involves its users directly in the product creation process ('innovation' could also be innovation in eg processes or eg communication through user-driven content or facilitation of peer2peer communication, but in this post I will refer to UDI as products/services development). There are three main ways of doing that:

Co-creation - inviting a number of specific users, often lead users, to create new products with the company's own designers. Example: LEGO Mindstorms.
Customization - facilitating that the user can design his own product based on a number of features and material combinations that the company makes available. Example: Nike ID, LEGO Design By Me, Timbuk2.
Crowdsourcing - outsourcing product design entirely to the users. Example: Threadless.

There are lots of hybrids of the three categories above but for the sake of simplicity, let's stick with these. The point is that with UDI there are levels of user-involvement - and reversely, levels of brand control - but all involve direct user participation in the product creation.

And certainly, embarking on any of these three requires full understanding of the strategic, operational, and intra-cultural implications and a plan and desire to deal with them.

For companies born as UDI based companies, like Threadless, this is less of an issue since their entire business is engineered towards facilitation of UDI - it simply is their business model.
For established companies, like LEGO where I headed up the customization and co-creation business unit for a while, UDI represents issues pertaining to virtually all parts of the company. From sourcing policies, supply chain processes, IT systems, forecasting methodology, product quality standards, legal and IPR matters, corporate culture and HR, success criteria and KPI definition, to brand control policies, marketing principles and so on and so forth.

Simply put, UDI represents a different way of doing business.

But what seems to be happening is that UDI is being reduced to either the upstream research or the technology platforms that enable mass-participation. Let me explain:

Lately, I've run into more and more consultancies and agencies who position themselves as UDI companies. But what they do is research on behalf of a client that involves asking users what they want and coming up with product concepts based on this input.

But that is not UDI. That's market research. 'Oh, but we go out and ask the users in their own environment and study how they use the products and bring back their input', they say. That is not UDI either. That's anthropological market research. Something that most companies ought to do on a regular basis, yes, but UDI it ain't.

Anthropological research does not equal UDI any more than a cat and a dog equal a zoo.

Same thing with the tech platforms. Just because a software firm develops a CMS or a set of apps that enable user participation does not mean that this firm 'makes UDI'. In fact, no agency or consultancy actually 'does' UDI. Only companies whose users are directly involved in the product or service creation can claim that they 'do' UDI.

We have to understand that UDI is a business model and requires a business system and a company culture that underpins it.

We have to understand that it means measuring success differently, designing new processes for the product development, figuring out new reward systems, applying new principles to marketing and branding of the products, changing ERP systems and data flow, aligning the internal interests - and, if we're talking about established companies, perhaps also considering whether UDI should be an integrated part of the company or be developed as a separate entity that operates entirely with its own value chain set-up.

UDI requires sticking one's hands deep into the engine room to understand the operational model that is and the model that needs to be, as well as loosening the grip on the brand and allow its users to bring their interpretation forward. It can seem a bit scary but the better you know your business and the more confident you feel as a brand, the easier it is.

The rewards come in the form of happier users, more loyal users, higher-value users, users that will spread the word. And in the form of ongoing market and user insights, and - if you do it right - more streamlined internal processes, a more agile business operation, and a more change-ready organization.

These rewards, however, only come if we understand that UDI involves the entire value chain and corporate culture, not simply upstream research, as user-centred as it may be, product concepts derived from it and a software platform to facilitate it.

Today's links

2009-11-08T13:07:00.012+01:00

Why the Boss Is a Great Boss - generating loyalty and commitment not so much with use of positional power and formal authority, but with authenticity, integrity, and creativity.
The Role of the Conceiver in Organizations - they're difficult to deal with but figure it out and the returns will be plenty. Start by earning their respect.

On Point

2009-11-01T13:11:00.017+01:00

Went to see This Is It the other day and then I went to see again the day after. These are 111 minutes that feel like 11. Once the film ends, the audience actually stays to watch all the frames that accompany the credits and you wish it would start over again.

Michael Jackson is on point, beat and groove, embodying rhythm and soul in every movement, syllable and expression - nothing short of inspiring.

And to quote Ice-T who with usual precision sums it all up to NY Daily News: "The main thing you get out of the movie is that the dude was still very much alive. It was a cold shot, man. You gotta see it for yourself."

Today's links

2009-10-31T16:03:00.003+01:00

At Last, the Web Goes Truly World-Wide

Today's links

2009-10-30T10:42:00.009+01:00

Female Forces

2009-10-24T16:21:00.020+02:00

I've been having a conversation recently with a psychologist to help test a program he's working on. A program that leverages the concept of role modelling to help people define their goals and values.

While very interesting, there is a lack of women role models represented in the program, in fact Madonna so far is the only one. When asked why, the psychologist said that she was the only input he'd gotten when he asked other women about who they thought should or might be represented.

How strange. Because it's not that there aren't any. So allow me to come up with a few suggestions across discipline, culture, and time - fictional as well as real:

Alicia Keys
Amelia Earhart
Angela Davis

Anita Roddick

Anne Frank

Annie Lennox

Aung San Suu Kyi

Benazir Bhuto

Billie Jean King

Cleopatra

Coco Chanel

Eleanor Roosevelt

Evita Peron

Florence Nightingale

Golda Meir

Gro Harlem Brundtland

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Helen Keller

Hillary Clinton

Indira Gandhi

Jeanne d'Arc
Josephine Baker

Katarina the Great

Katherine Graham

Leonora Christina Ulfeldt

Madeleine Albright

Madonna

Margaret Thatcher

Marie Antoinette

Marie Curie

Marta Stewart

Martina Navratilova

Mary Queen of Scots
Maya Angelou

Mother Theresa

Nadia Comaneci

Oprah Winfrey

Patti Smith

Pocahontas

Princess Diana

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Victoria
Scarlett O'Hara
Virginia Woolf

Whoopi Goldberg

Today's links

2009-10-23T10:11:00.013+02:00

I'll start posting links to stories that (I find) are particularly interesting. Some days there'll be a lot of links, some days there'll be none.

Google and Bing race to search social media
Local businesses in Denver ranked by their social benefit
Volkswagen to rely solely on iPhone app for GTI launch (credit to my friend Ronnie Rocket for this one)

Mind The Gap

2009-10-07T00:17:00.015+02:00

Recently, the Danish music industry was granted 9.4 million kroner (1.26 million euros) by the Ministry of Commerce to develop music talent, export, insight, technology solutions, and new business models. As a business professional with a strong music association, I applaud this.

Indeed, one of the major challenges is bridging the gap between the music community and the business community. There is a lot of potential for brands and artists to use each other to develop their respective identities and relationship with their users (fans). So far, though, neither camp seem to understand the other particularly well.

Brands - and often their agencies - treat music as a tactical add-on at best. The artists - and often their record companies and managers - treat brands as a sponsor, rarely as a collaborator, and sometimes just as a wallet.

Brands need to learn how to leverage music strategically, as a powerful dimension and a path to a strong(er) emotional bond between them and their users. Artists need to learn what's on a busy marketing director's agenda, what s/he considers success criteria, and why music often simply isn't a priority. Both need to learn how to create great fits, and also recognize when there is no fit at all.

A coordinating body, Musikzonen (the Music Zone), has been established to manage the 9.4 million kroner from the Ministry of Commerce and facilitate the most effective use of this money. And today, they hosted a kick-off conference to introduce the Musikzonen initiative and provide some inspiration to cross-disciplinary and commercial partnerships. A great conference, and a great idea. Only, the audience was all music industry folks. Apart from one of the co-speakers and me, there was no one from the business community, no consumer experience manager, no brand director, no ad agency executive. The Musikzonen board informed that they'd received a lot of interest from the business community about the overall initiative. Excellent, but then why weren't they there?

And why wasn't one of the speakers a grumpy marketing manager with no interest whatsoever in music but with a desire to look good in front of senior management, hence thinking only of hard KPIs that prove ROI down to the penny? These are the folks that ultimately need to be influenced, if the aforementioned gap is to be bridged.

There's a lot to be said - and done - about the relationship between brands and bands (and fans). The relationship between culture and commerce, between mainstream and new stream. I look forward to the conversation.

There's pole dancing and then there's pole dancing

2009-09-17T23:38:00.016+02:00

Today, I went to a pole dancing class. I didn't actually know it was a dancing class, much less a pole dancing class. It was advertised at my fitness center as a "Steamy Windows" event - I guess I should have read the signs. Actually, I think it's called 'pole fitness'.

Anyway, there I was and why not get the most out of it. And it wasn't actually about throwing ourselves around a floor-to-ceiling pole, rather it was holding a 1.5 m long bar and then tossing it about and dancing around it.

It's worth mentioning that anyone who knows me will have a hard time imagining me doing any such things and those who can will have a laughing fit (but hey, glad to be of some entertainment value to y'all).

After a few steps left, right and center, striding around the bar (pole), and shifting it around I felt I was kind of getting the hang of it. The music was funky salsa, which helped give the whole thing a down-to-earth kind of vibe, not taking ourselves very seriously. I mean, we were doing Britney Spears-y hip thrusting and pole caressing and the music really needs to be fun, innocent and upbeat for these ridiculous movements to be about dancing and not about lame, carnal display.

Then the instructor changed the music. We went from fun salsa to macho poodle rock - and the whole vibe changed. WTF?? I suddenly felt like the dancing was about dancing not for my own delight but for putting on a sex show.

All of sudden, I just couldn't take the hip thrusting on our knees and slithering around with the bar as anything but clichés but worse, the fun had gone. The movements in conjunction with the testo guitar delirium and shrieks about 'tight action, rear traction' gave the whole thing a much darker edge and prompted thoughts about women as sex objects, putting themselves on crude display.

My point with all this isn't about our society's sexification of women, but rather about experiencing in an extraordinarily direct way how music can entirely change a vibe, atmosphere, perception and physical sentiment. It altered everything. And I'm not even that much of a salsa fan...

Bye bye blackbird

2009-07-06T18:21:00.101+02:00

Yesterday, I went to see the new film Public Enemies with Johnny Depp. I like most films with Johnny Depp and had decided I was going to see it at some point. I went to see it yesterday, though, because I needed to shake off the sadness of Michael Jackson's death.

I was never a fan of Michael Jackson per se - I don't own any merchandise, didn't follow his life in the press, don't have all his albums etc. But it's now 10 days after his death and I'm still moved by it much more than I'd thought I would be.

There's nothing new that I can say about Michael Jackson, nor can I add any profound analysis on his life. But I somehow need to express a few thoughts and feelings of my own about what to me is a tragic event that happened much too soon.

MJ phase 1: In 1983-84 I was living in the US as an exchange student where I was a senior in high school. One of the things I found fascinating about my American friends was that they had a very versatile music taste. They liked both Van Halen... and Michael Jackson. Both ZZ Top... and Michael Jackson. Both LL Cool J... and Michael Jackson. Both Yes, John Cougar Mellencamp, Cyndi Lauper... and Michael Jackson.

I had not come across MJ before; the Thriller tsunami had not really hit Denmark by the time I left for the US in 1983 or at least I hadn't noticed as I was much into new wave at the time. So while I thought my high school friends simply had a broad music taste, rather this was evidence of MJ's phenomenal cross-over ability.

I also remember the Thriller album cover vividly, talking about it; kids wearing the red MJ jacket; and the airing of Thriller on MTV ('like, it's 14 mins long...!'). And I remember seeing on TV Eddie Murphy's brilliant take on MJ in his Delirious show in 1983. But I don't think I realized just how massive MJ was already then. Maybe my Danish reservation for anything overly extravagant prevented me.

MJ phase 2: The second MJ phase of my life was around 1990/92. Bad had come out, of course, and Dangerous too. My best friend at the time surprised me by really liking these two albums - he was usually more into acid/prog rock type stuff.

Again, an example of MJ's total command of his potent cocktail of genres and sounds that crossed boundaries. We went to see MJ at Gentofte Stadium in 1992.

MJ phase 3: This occurred while I was working at Michael Jackson's record company Sony Music during the time 1996/98 when he released HIStory and Blood on the Dancefloor. I remember that we found the statue thing, shall we say, a tad over the top certainly for Denmark.

But of course there was mayhem around the releases and more so around the two concerts in Parken in June 1997. It was his 39th birthday so it was arranged to have the Tivoli Guard play for him on stage - something he was genuinely touched by and later included in his documentary Michael Jackson's Private Home Movies.

Since 1999/2000 I haven't really paid that much attention to Michael Jackson. Of course I listened to some of the songs regularly and they became a staple on every party track list I've ever put together (about a month ago I was thinking to myself that Billie Jean is still the tightest piece of pop music ever created). I also found myself relieved when he was acquitted, although mystified by his behavior; and a bit sad when Invincible flopped (by MJ standards, that is). And from time to time thinking 'I wonder how long he will go on'. You know, the usual stuff that everyone would think now and again.

But I wasn't prepared for the reaction that hit me when he died. For me, it was delayed a few days. When he died I was travelling and way outside the circuit of friends, internet and news feed. I heard about his death very early Friday morning via someone else and while I was immediately shocked, due to a busy schedule and the lack of access to any news, the event somehow got parked.

It was only when I returned June 28 that it started to sink in and only 2 days ago I thought to myself ‘But you had your iPod with you on the trip, why didn’t you listen to his music?’. Maybe because this kind of event and the grief that comes with it needs to be experienced with other people who have – like me – been infused with MJ since we were teens. It’s difficult dealing with it alone. We need that cathartic experience. So that’s what I’m doing now. MJ phase 4.

Michael Jackson had the ability, consciously or unconsciously, to mystify us. He was a walking oxymoron – child and adult, black and white, introvert and extravert, innocent and savvy, sexy and asexual, intelligent and foolish, humble and excessive, in control and out of it too.

There’s a video clip from an interview in 1982 done by Tom Joyner in a break on the set of the Beat It video shoot, and he’s sitting there wearing that red jacket and tee amidst the cameras, lights, crew, and general turmoil.

He goes in this soft whispering voice "I don’t know much about the street. I get afraid of people sometimes. Friendship is something I’m just learning about, I don’t really know anything about that, I was brought up on stage, that’s where I’m comfortable".

Eventually the interview ends and he walks off to finish the video about gang members and street violence and – as we know – delivering it so convincingly and breathtakingly. Talk about complexity.

His person prompted so many questions. How can someone so shy be so vibrant when performing? How did he become so extraordinarily talented? Why, when so attractive and with that amazing smile, did he undergo those plastic surgeries? Did he behave inappropriately among young boys? Would his music career have been different if he'd continued to work with Quincy Jones? Did his voice stay so high pitched because of hormone in-take or 'simply' vocal training? How did he channel his sadness through his music and dance while loving it so much? How, what, where, why??????

One of the Danish newspapers wrote yesterday that now we would finally find out the truth about Michael Jackson. But you know, we never will.

We will continue to ask those questions and the only answer we’ll ever get is 'If they say why, why - tell ‘em that is human nature'. And maybe here lies some of the explanation to the cross-cultural, cross-gender and cross-generation fascination with him. He embodies human nature in its most extreme form.

Who hasn’t been shy and vulnerable? Who hasn’t dreamed of doing great things and achieving great fame? Who hasn’t wished they had some unique talent to unleash? Who hasn’t felt alone? Who doesn't long to be loved? Who hasn’t thought about being someone else?

These feelings are universal. Only, Michael Jackson seemed to have them more than anyone else, seemingly sucking all mankind's hardship, experiences and eternal blues like a hypersensitive sponge. Above all, he acted on these feelings, enabled by his wealth and access, but certainly also driven by some extraordinarily powerful inner force. While shy and insecure he was also known to be stubborn and extremely focused, something that usually comes from a deeply rooted drive to succeed and to 'show the others’ - in his case, the whole world.

Without this drive you can be very talented and yet not get anywhere. He had the drive, he'd been wired to have it since he was a small child and it was this which, with his extraordinary talent and his intelligence, got him to this off-the-scale level.

But it was probably also this drive, along with - most certainly when at that level as an artist - a ruthless industry that prevented him from stopping before it got to the extreme.

I'm listening to Michael Jackson. Discovering elements in his music, singing and moves I haven’t noticed before.

The introductory ‘Oooooh’ of Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough that is the distilled sound of simultaneous restrain and explosion. How the song Streetwalker that wasn’t originally on the Bad album sounds like a mix of Billie Jean and The Way You Make Me Feel. His blue, jazzy crooning on Fly Away which frankly isn't a great track but his vocal is. The way he works his voice on Wanna Be Starting Something like a musical instrument. The almost scat-like 'You're-one-of-ua-ooh-us' on Another Part of Me. And a lot of other sounds I can’t even put into words.

The way he moves, like there’s electricity running through him, sizzling, stirring, shifting, never still. The fully charged yet fully controlled intensity in every movement and every syllable, catapulting, darting, punching like projectiles of expression and emotion.

There’s a video clip where Michael Jackson is instructing Michael Jordan in the dance moves for the Jam video. This is funny, you can imagine, but there is one particular moment where Jackson genuinely seems to move at the speed of light, and then he patiently explains to Jordan "You have to put all your energy into your feet so, you know, it goes POW!"... Pow indeed.

At the end of the Public Enemies film Johnny Depp’s character, the mythical outlaw John Dillinger, is shot in public by a group of FBI agents and falls to the ground. As he takes his last breath, he whispers to one of the agents to tell his girlfriend Billie (sic) something. He says ‘Tell Billie for me… Bye bye blackbird’.

So there it is. Bye, bye blackbird and thank you for all the trills and thrills as vibrant as ever as on this 1987 live performance of Thriller. You kept us on our toes.

Insightful articles on MJ's talent, voice, work, and life:

Jason King: Michael Jackson, an Appreciation of His Talent

Ernest Hardy: Michael Jackson, Bless His Soul

Oh! Industry: Smooth Criminals

How does marketing and CSR relate - and should it?

2009-07-02T15:19:00.013+02:00

Yesterday, I was talking with an acquaintance of mine, Ronnie. We were pondering the changed marketing landscape, and companies' and their marketing departments' changing role as a result; and he asked, kind of rhetorically, if marketing and CSR didn't kind of belong together.

I've always believed that every external action, every design component, every piece of communication, every product or service communicates and positions your company and determines whether your customers want to relate to you or not, and how.

Therefore, I also believe that there cannot be walls between marketing, corporate communication, customer service, product development or CSR for that matter. It's called brand management and it's called customer experience. Two sides of the same coin. This is old hat, really.

But the question about the relation between marketing and CSR specifically is an increasingly important one, not least because of the inherent conflict, or at least perceived conflict between the two, one being commercial, the other philantropic in nature. Perhaps there doesn't have to be one.

We'll ponder some more and - maybe - return with some thoughts on how to manage marketing and CSR symbiotically.

Music with a wink

2009-06-16T11:46:00.013+02:00

A great jazz lover or expert I am not. Yes, the occasional Miles Davis, Mingus, Brubeck and Grover Washington goes on the stereo but that's about it and I know very little about it. And my knowledge of Danish jazz is even more miniscule. But then I got these two compilations all with Danish jazz artists, out on Discowax/Warner and put together by DJ Collective Vibezone.

This is an abundance of poetic, up-beat, groovy, and extremely positive music, from jazz, latin and jazz funk to nu jazz and more. The compilations hold an impressive range of Danish jazz artists from heavy-weights Chris Minh Doky, Bentzon Brotherhood and Caroline Henderson to lesser known acts such as Carsten Dahl, Benni Chawes, and Malene Mortensen.

Nat & Dag 1 features a breath-taking rendition of John Lennon's Imagine by Palle Mikkelborg. On Nat & Dag 2 Danes will recognize 70s rock act Gasolin's Rabalderstræde, here titled Calle Raballero and performed by Mo' Green aka Morten Gronvad - just brilliant. My own favorite: Many, but Hometown Melodies by Jakob Bro is definitely one of them.

Good taste and good atmosphere through and through.

From cardboard and crayons to content and convenience

2009-06-11T13:03:00.035+02:00

"I know of a pharmaceutical company that only calls in a marketer when it wants to decide on the color for a new pill." (Philip Kotler in Business Week recently).

We have all been there, us marketing folks. Experienced the perception of 'Marketing, isn't that the department for cardboard and crayons?'. Marketing as campaign and event department, a tactical service function for sales or product management. This is an archaic view of marketing and an un-productive, even dangerous one, because with this view many gaps are not discovered, opportunities not explored, and value not captured.

Of course Kotler is right, marketing must act as strategic growth driver. And of course marketing must be able to set up meaningful metrics and demonstrate ROI against these metrics - it goes without saying.

What I think is not discussed enough here but is of increasing importance is the new meaning and hence emerging role of marketing. Kotler does advocate that marketing should probably prioritise developing useful and distinctive products over developing ad campaigns for (often) useless and non-distinct products. Kotler also argues that the role of marketing is to bring the voice of the consumer into the company's thinking and move from marketing to 'consumering'. This is all good!

But the thing is that marketing is something that companies do for themselves, not for consumers and it is therefore for the most part completely irrelevant for consumers. Consumers do not care about a company's marketing and why should they. Whether marketing depts need more or fewer right, left brained or two-brained people is perhaps not the question, when the key is whether they understand people deep down and empathetically, and therefore are able to grasp what really matters to their target audience. Influence is a matter of walking in their shoes. 15-20 years ago, psychology and anthropology played a role in marketing - where has it gone?

So in order for marketing to move from being a tactical service function to a strategic growth lever, it needs to come to terms with the fact that marketing needs to be relevant and add value to the target audience(s), not simply by making the ads funnier or the stores nicer-looking. But by giving far more than is expected, providing genuinely valuable content ie insight, knowledge, services that are free and convenient and extends the value - and use - of the product and brand far beyond what you paid.

It's time businesses realise that you really do just get what you give. Only, today you have to give so much more!

Still one of the best marketing books around is John Grant's 'After Image'. And Marshall Goldsmith's interview with Kotler in Business Week is here.

People have the power

2009-06-09T17:59:00.007+02:00

The music industry needs to listen to this, no in fact, they don't have to listen because it doesn't matter what they think or do much anymore: http://musicindustrymanifesto.com/the-manifesto/

"You can't read the label when you're inside the jar"

2009-06-05T09:42:00.009+02:00

What a brilliant way to express the conundrum of innovation from the inside. Courtesy of G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Viton - more here.

Twats on Twitter

2009-06-02T10:41:00.009+02:00

Like a lot of other people I twitter. I post little 140-sign statements on this, that and the other on twitter.com. Usually meaningless nonsense for most people but nevertheless I find I get new followers from almost every new post. However, many of these followers are not genuine people or interesting people or people who want to share. They are small businesses, organisations or in some cases individuals who pick up on single words in your posts, words that match with whatever they are selling, and then start to follow you, seemingly in the hope that you might get interested and check them out, become their follower or perhaps even sign up to their offers.

For example, I am reading 'The Game' by Neil Strauss which is about the time he was a pick-up artist and about the whole pick-up artist scene/environment. I post something about this book on Twitter, and lo and behold, I get a new follower which is the 'PUA app for iPhone' (PUA = pick-up artist).

Another example: I post something about fitness ball exercises and two seconds later I have several followers who are US fitness trainers.

This really bugs me. Yes, I know I can block them but that's not the point. The point is that Twitter is a space for sharing your thoughts, it is not a commercial market place where others can stalk people around and hawk their wares. Go away!

Life is so odd

2009-04-18T17:21:00.002+02:00

Went out to buy detergent and came home with new Paul Smith shoes, Chanel nail varnish, and 14 DVDs.

Today's plan

2009-04-13T10:00:00.002+02:00

I have a plan, a plan to catch up on all the Harddisken podcasts from January to now.

Musical intelligence

2008-11-04T16:52:00.017+01:00

As you well-informed readers know, there are severals types of intelligence. Visual, spatial, linguistic, mathematical etc. Now, I believe there's one more hugely important type of intelligence: The musical one.

This particular type of intelligence allows the individual to know an insane amount of songs, lyrics, publishing years, chart entries and performance, videos and their aestetics, labels, producers, and of course musicians, writers and composers.

It also allows the person to put all of this hugely important information into context and perspective, thereby being able to analyze for example the significance of the Dead Kennedys for late 70s punk vs the Birthday Party or the Black Seeds. Or the difference between Michael Jackson, Prince, Pharrell, and Justin Timberlake. Or how Patti Smith's style has influenced fashion. You know, all these culturally important things that help at least some of us understand why some things are the way they are and what they might or might not have been.

I say this because recently I had an appalling experience with Danish National Television (I am Danish so it's OK). Their national TV channel, DR1, is a good TV channel, akin to BBC. It's the only TV channel in Denmark with any form of at least semi-serious TV program about music (popular music, that is) - Boogie, it's called. So I watch it as often as possible.

This program has a young host, he's probably in his early 20s. One night recently, he invited a co-host, Martin Hall, a guy who is known in Denmark as an enfant terrible in the late 70s-80s, a cult-ish, alternative, multi-artist type, to comment on a bunch of new videos.

Our young host is very excited, here he is with the graceful, chisel cheek-boned godfather of the navel gazing, black, creative progressive punk underground and he, the host, has a bunch of great new noisy black punk videos to show this seminal figure, he thinks.

So he puts on video after video - the usual suspects of 30 Mins To Mars, Paramore, Linkin Park, Cinema Bizarre, Tokyo Hotel etc - excitedly suggesting to Martin Hall that 'It's like punk, right'. Hall diplomatically replies that punk is a bit different in attitude and expression and was much driven from a place of cold war, unemployment, despair and was a political response to the 60s generation in power, yet idealistic in its 3-chord DIY energy burst. He compares a few of the videos to Hanoi Rocks and Visage who our dapper young host doesn't know.

See, already here something suggests that our host does not have one nano drop of musical intelligence. Paramore is not punk and it's bloody obvious that Cinema Bizarre's video is straight-up Visage.

Our host continues with the videos, one is a new video with the Streets who he categorizes as hip-hop/rap and is flappergasted as Martin Hall places Mike Skinner as close to punk as you can probably get today. At one point, the host openly admits that he has no idea who the Sex Pistols are, and when he one more time tries to persuade Martin Hall that new Danish emo singer Celina Ree is punk ('she has black hair'), the program hits rock bottom.

Seriously, how can DR call Boogie a music program when the host clearly knows nothing about music? I'm sure he possesses a lot of intelligence but musical intelligence is not one of them. DR, you can do much better than that.

Modern latin

2008-11-04T16:50:00.002+01:00

Veni, Vidi, Velcro (I came, I saw, I got stuck).

Sorry, blog

2008-09-19T00:44:00.004+02:00

Dear blog,

I have neglected you. I am sorry. How can I make it up to you? Flowers? Breakfast in bed? A pampering spa visit?

See, this is the thing with blogs - you have to actually PUT SOMETHING THERE regularly. I discovered recently that my blog has a follower (welcome, Emilie, and thanks), so that makes it even more prudent to keep up.

Blog, I will try to do better, OK?

New broadcast communication: The telemegaphone

2008-08-04T11:31:00.003+02:00

In a time when marketeers are nervously contemplating how to get their (no doubt very important and life-changing) messages out and furiously chasing their agencies to come up with the next big thing in creative ideas and media planning, the casual and laid-back Norwegians have taken broadcast communication to a whole new level: Telemegaphoning.

What's a telemegaphone? It's a loudspeaker sculpture on top of the Norwegian Bergskletten mountain; you call a number, the telemegaphone automatically answers incoming calls and projects the sound into the immediate surroundings - in this case across the fjord and valley. More info here.

Now, I really hope that there are criteria for what kind of messages are OK to howl out into the beautiful Norwegian nature. Birthday greetings seem OK; a McDonald's promotion does not.

Steve Sleeve

2008-08-01T23:41:00.002+02:00

Have you seen this? The Steve Sleeve - fab, very clever and of course suited for MacBook Air.

Darts ahoy

2008-08-01T21:35:00.012+02:00

There's a new sport in Denmark: Dart canoeing. You plonk yourself in a canoe and then you paddle a short distance to then throw darts at a dart board. And then you paddle another short distance to throw yet more darts at another dart board. And so on and so forth. A bit like ski shooting (also an odd sport). More here (in Danish only).

I wonder how many people are passionate about both canoeing and darts?

Google invests in electric cars

2008-08-01T18:19:00.010+02:00

Fell over this interesting article the other day in Business Week. Google is investing in electric cars. Google and electric cars, you say? Google is spreading its investments beyond software however, there's a definite plan, in fact a vision that within the foreseeable future, transportation will be networked through not only software but also a power grid. Interesting stuff. California based Project Better Place which aims to create an electric car operator network is hopefully paying attention as there seems to be matching interests here.