Now that people have started using the word “recession” in a positive context, while praying that it doesn’t become replaced with the dreaded “D” word…as in “depression”… here’s a bit of Marketing Wisdom.

As a marketing business, my own personal recession began a couple of years ago, when the more prudent, or petrified, of my clientele began to cut back on their marketing and promotional budgets. Now – I’m glad to say – I see some signs that more forward-thinking businesses are tiptoeing, albeit gingerly, back into marketing.

Despite this ray of hope I believe the future of marketing will not be a replay of the past. This week, the Wall Street Journal says that the stock market is at 1997 levels. Investors – well everybody – is hunkered down for the long haul thinking, “Maybe things will turn around in 2010…maybe not.” So, how does a business communicate with a world of people who are expecting things to get worse, while praying that they don’t?

For starters, I would tell anyone who wants to connect with future customers, or reconnect with current or past customers, to “Be Real.” Coincidently, as I was musing about this I checked in with Brandchannel.com and came across this article: Get Real, by Claire Ratushny (March 2, 2009 issue). You can find it at www.brandchannel.com / brand features / brandspeak, or click on this link: http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp?bs_id=213.

In point of fact, “reality,” that is to say a connection with a genuine, profound personal need or concern, should be the basis of an enterprise’s brand in the best of times. Unfortunately more and more “me-too” businesses searching for some sort an edge over their “me-too” competition have seized upon the idea of a brand as a differentiator, with the result that a great deal of branding has slowly retreated from being a meaningful expression of a company’s value into just more advertising hype.

Still, as long as one is still standing, there is always opportunity to repent and rebuild. And, with that in mind, I suggest that your communications begin to reflect four qualities – if you will – the Four H’s of Reality. Okay, okay, I wish I could have made them the “3 R’s of Reality,” but these will do.

Honesty – Tell the truth in a clear and direct manner. Communicate the “who,” “what,” and most importantly the “why” of your product or service in plain language. If your message lacks the “magic” that you hoped would disguise the fact that you’re just one among many, and then perhaps your candor can make the connection with the reader or viewer.

Humanity – Appreciate that you’re most likely better off than a lot of others and as such you’re in a position to offer some help. Next, figure out a way to do so, whether it is a price roll-back, added value, or a real person who speaks English, lives in this country and actually understands the product to answer customer concerns.

Humility – Recognize that we’re all in the same boat. In other words, you customer is not a “them,” he or she is you. A reality with generic businesses (Who of us really unique?) is that they need their customers more than their customers need them.

Humor – Lighten up. Very few of us who labor in commerce are selling essentials. This current recession points up the fact that most of us were selling and buying discretionary stuff – otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to cut-back so quickly and – in view of the impact on our economy – so disastrously.

A profound piece of Marketing Wisdom is that when the marketing environment is the most intense, the ones who succeed are most likely those who figured out how to lighten up. “Are you nuts?” I hear a pinched voice squawk from the back row. “But it’s really scary out there. We can’t afford to mess about with our measly marketing budget. We need to be careful and prudent.” Hmmm… What being “careful and prudent” really means is that if (most likely, when) your tepid efforts fail to move the needle, at least you won’t be criticized for doing something stupid.

All I can say, is, “Lighten up!”

By way of example here are three campaigns that have impressed me with the relevant silliness, by which I mean the campaigns are light-hearted but the humor is based on the brand premise.

Faux Mini Cooper campaign – Counter Counterfeit Commission. When the revived Mini-Cooper brand scooted on to the market some years back a number of serious-sounding consumer advisory commercials appeared on TV drawing the view to this website:

http://www.counterfeitmini.com/detect_a_fake.php

The premise of the campaign was brilliant. Call attention to this Dinky Toy on steroids by warning consumers about hucksters who by means of some half-baked racing stripes are attempting to pass off rust bucket clunkers as Mini-Coopers.

Duck Brand Tape – Stuck At Prom Contest. According to Wikipedia, Duct, or duck, tape was developed during WWII to seal ammunition cases. It went on to be used to repair almost everything else including jeeps, planes and weapons. In the last 60 or so years, the vinyl-backed fabric tape has acquired an almost mythic reputation as an all-purpose solution for fixing just about anything. The folks at Duck Brand Tape hit upon a wonderful way to highlight the often-absurd uses folks have for their product. Every year they encourage high school students to make the Prom outfits from Duck tape and submit photos. Check it out.

http://www.stuckatprom.com/contests/prom/

Best Buy – Geek Squad. I love this mostly because the brains at Best Buy took what was once a derisive term and while not making it cool, made it relevant and useful. The distinctive black and white VW Beetles and the geek garbed techs make the in-store service, or house calls seem unusual and – dare I say it – hip. If you need to be reminded go to:

http://www.geeksquad.com/

Okay, okay, so let’s say that I’ve convinced you that wacky creativity will make your molehill marketing budget look and act like a mountain of moolah. Before you tap into your inner creative genius here are a couple of cautionary guidelines.

1) Don’t steal.  I have been present at a number of “brainstorming” meetings where the client’s hot flash was to co-opt an idea that he’d seen the night before on TV. In one case the client wanted to create viral videos using the Trunk Monkey idea. Never mind that the idea came from a series of syndicated commercials created by an agency that derives its primary revenue from licensing them to car dealers all over the world. (Thank you again Wikipedia.) Suffice it to say, had we proceeded, the agency’s legal team would have been in immediate contact. 

2) Run your ideas by an impartial jury. Perhaps you’re the funniest guy down at Red’s Recovery Room and your jokes have them falling off their bar stools at happy hour. Still, when you come up with a sure-fire marketing concept, do yourself a favor and run it by one or two of your more sober friends. Better yet, run it by your mother-in-law. If she likes it, you’re solid. Here’s an example of someone who didn’t screen his idea before hiring the sign company. Bad Ass Coffee is the name of a strip mall coffee shop not far from where I live. Every time I drive by I can’t help wondered why anyone would want “ass coffee” even if it were good.

3) Hire someone who creates for a living. Honestly, there are folks out there who make their living thinking up ideas for other people who need the help. Compared to the cost of the damage one can inflict on business with homemade creativity these professionals are a bargain. Some years back I was working on a brand of varietal grape juice. It was non-alcohol wine made from appellation grapes, in other words, sophisticated juice. The brand’s owner wanted us to shoot a TV spot featuring an airline pilot addressing his passengers in one scene and the parents of a teenaged driver addressing a car full of kids in the next. Both were to turn towards the camera and say, by way of recommending our client’s product, “Get Juiced.” Fortunately for him we were able to dissuade him from producing that concept, but he was never convinced that he wasn’t a creative genius.

By the way, if I have to tell you why his suggestion was possibly the worst advertising idea I’ve run into, perhaps you are that undiscovered creative genius.

Oh, and before I forget, what do feral cats have to do with marketing wisdom? A few days ago a particularly aggressive telemarketer called to promote a once-pervasive but recently irrelevant book full of ads of businesses and their phone numbers. When my always polite wife politely declined their offer, the voice on the line demanded to know what sort of marketing we did. My wife replied that we trap feral cats, stencil our logo on their fur, and release them back into the wild.

Connoisseurs of Marketing Wisdom, whether regular readers of this blog or devotees of more august authorities, will be familiar with the argument that anyone who prizes quality will get a better result from an experienced, professional resource.

I was reminded of this truth while reading an article titled NFL Mascots Get Meaner written by Darren Everson in the January 23 edition of the Wall Street Journal. If you’re interested you can search it on www.wsj.com.

The author postulates that unsuccessful NFL teams might trace their recurring failure to team mascots that don’t look angry enough. As evidence, he sites the Arizona Cardinals who tweaked the bird on their official logo in 2005 to give it a meaner countenance. Some thought the original bird not only resembled a parakeet more than a cardinal, but that it also looked more doubtful than resolute.

Flash forward to 2009 one finds the Arizona NFL franchise making their first-ever Super Bowl appearance. Everson then sites several other NFL teams who reached (and in some cases won) Super Bowls following team mascot makeovers: Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. In the authors’ words all the new mascot designs are “meaner,” or at least more aggressive than their predecessors.

Perhaps the new team mascots are more menacing but I don’t believe that’s salient difference. What all the new mascot logos really are…are better designs: crisper, bolder and more professionally executed. I attribute this difference between the old and the new mascots to the teams in question hiring better designers the second time around. My guess is that the first time around spending money on a character mascot was not a priority for the team management. Quite possibly the job was delegated to the marketing assistant who was told not to spend a lot of money.

Furthermore, I believe that new logos are less a causal factor in the teams’ success and more a symptom of the team management realization that a winning attitude reaches beyond the locker room – even into the team’s brand identity, and that a semi-professional execution of the teams marketing image wasn’t sufficient to represent a professional execution on the field.

While I wish every success next Sunday to the Cardinals, my point here is really about the value of a professionally conceived and executed brand mascot, or logo for that matter, to any enterprise that wants to win and sees the importance of motivating the team and energizing the fans.

As these NFL teams seem to grasp, an amateur effort is for an amateur team. Any team or business that is serious about what they do should reflect that attitude in all the ways they express their message – even in something as potentially whimsical as team mascot.