Changing Accepted Terms is Annoying "Inside Baseball"

Promulgating a new term, getting a name or acronym to become generally accepted, is often an important goal for an organization. Sometimes, the term in question constitutes an annoying exercise in branding or euphemism (think "gaming" for gambling), of course, but often, a generally accepted term is a useful addition to the collective vocabulary. Thus, it annoys me is when some insider constituency attempts to unilaterally alter the usage of a generally accepted term.

A couple of examples that I have noticed recently:

MEA is an abbreviation for the Minnesota Education Association. It is also shorthand for the two-day teacher's conference/fall break throughout the state of Minnesota. Everybody with school-age kids, or who went to school in the state, knows exactly what someone means when they say "Oh, I'm taking off next week for MEA". It's a great example of deep branding. So what does the Association do? They rename their conference to "Education Minnesota Professional Conference". Everybody still calls it "MEA".

GLBT/LGBT. Sometime in the past decade, the acronym GLBT took hold as an umbrella term, covering the overlapping concerns of Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Trans-gendered persons. It was actually quite an achievement to get this to become an accepted term, given both the political disagreements involved, and the lingusitic un-loveliness of the term. But it succeeded--even people with hostile to the general thrust of the GLBT "movement" would recognize, and probably even use, the term. So then, seems like a couple of years ago, those in the know suddenly starting using "LGBT". 

It's not hard to imagine this is a well-meaning nod toward equality, within a constituency that is probably extra-sensitive to anything that smacks of inequality and unfairness. But it is just too soon, and too arbitrary. What's next--BTGL? Bi-annual rotation of the letters, until all 24 permutations have been covered? This change is just too silly, and too much "inside baseball"--especially for a movement that is likely already suspected by some to be obsessed with "political correctness".

UPDATE 01/25/14: Moving toward parody, apparently the latest is "LGBTQ".

There are some techniques for evolving a publicly accepted term or brand:

• Combine the old and new, to form a transitional compound. E.g., "MEA--Teachers' Professional Conference". 
• Retain the initials, making them vestigal--e.g., KFC, 3M.
• Or, if it can be pulled off, change the meaning but keep the acronym--"Minnesota Educators Annual Conference Weekend", would work as "MEA Weekend" for short..

Catchy Names for Products

As I've said before, a key ingredient in having a successful consumer product is finding a really catchy name. Some more examples:

• Bit Torrent
• Chromecast
• Flavorizer Bars

University naming rights for prison controversy--how it will end

A university sells stadium naming rights to a for-profit prison operator, now dealing with fallout.

This feels like an easy one to predict. Tactics of the university president Mary Jane Saunders--who comes across as under-informed, bought and paid for: brush the whole thing off as a done deal. Let me go on record spelling out the predictable "I've seen this movie" outcome: 

• Continued controversy
• Further "revelations" that cast the prison operator, GEO Group, in an unfavorable light
• Not guaranteed, but likely, additional revelations about how cozy the university president and/or administration is with GEO Group
• Writing on the wall for all to read, and the parties mutually agree to cancel the contract
• In canceling, Saunders misses the opportunity for a full-throated apology
• Calls for president's resignation
• President does not resign as an immediate outcome (unless a true smoking gun is found), but her tenure is substantially foreshortened

It all seems so obvious. If Saunders could just bring herself to do the right thing and reverse course, she could easily survive this. The fact that she seems to be sticking it out suggests to me that either there is more to implicate her, or she is just very tight with GEO Group and their president, and can't bring herself to ditch a friend. Ironically, though, she would be doing both parties in the friendship a huge favor if she did just that. We are dealing with students here. Even if they weren't in the right--which I think they are--this is just the kind of thing youth protest thrives on. It is a no-win for the university to try to tough it out.

(PS this brouhaha highlights two deplorable trends: The phenomenon of "naming rights", and the outrageous cost of higher education.)

Amazon needs to do some advertising

I think Amazon needs a mass-media ad campaign. In particular, they should promote the more mundane items that they carry--packaged foods, health & beauty aids, stuff you normally might get at Wal-Mart. I buy a lot of this kind of stuff at Amazon. Not strictly for price, though it is usually very competitive. But also for convenience. Instead of having to put it on my Wal-Mart list, then hope I remember when I got there for my monthly shopping spree--I just put it in my car, now. It gets ordered as soon as I hit the low, low $25 threshold for Super Saver Shipping.

Another thing they can promote are the benefits of their reviews. Never buy a consumer durable without getting a virtual test-drive, courtesy of the reviews.

T-Mobile Marketing vs Verizon

6 years ago, both Tmo and Verizon had big corporate-image ad campaigns. Those are the kind of ads that don't sell a specific product as much as they sell the company. Verizon had their memorable "Verizon network" ads, that trumpeted the reliability of the nationwide Verizon network, and showed an army of technicians prepared to stand behind it. T-Mobile had somewhat goofy commercials explaining their "Faves" feature, which was unique at the time.

6 years later, Verizon is still reaping the rewards of those memorable, well-targeted ads. Of course, it does help that they really do have superior network coverage, if not necessarily superior reliability.

And what of Tmo? Not 2 years later, they abruptly discontinued the Faves program. They still have no consistent corporate them, other than, maybe a vague sense that they are cheaper. The coulda been the Android carrier.

Showrooming

I heard one industry analyst speculate that the future of retailing may be in a deliberate form of "showrooming"-- have brick and mortar to allow people to see the product if they wish, but expect most people to buy online. 

I'm not completely sure how that works, for many products. If I can go see it in person, and I like it, why not just buy it then and there? But there is one product this makes perfect sense for: the automobile. I have been advocating this approach for years. It's just so much leaner.

Apple Manufactuing Hype

From Apple's own website: Never before has this degree of fit and finish been applied to a phone. Take the glass inlays on the back of iPhone 5, for instance. During manufacturing, each iPhone 5 aluminum housing is photographed by two high-powered 29MP cameras. A machine then examines the images and compares them against 725 unique inlays to find the most precise match for every single iPhone.


It does sound ingenious (though if they really had their tolerances down, there wouldn't be any upside to painstakingly searching out mating parts with optimally compatible dimensional variation). It also sounds like it might e marketing BS. I bet they did this just to have something to talk about. People always fall for this kind of impressive, great-cocktail-party chatter that they don't necessarily understand, or know the importance of.

It wouldn't surprise me if this has minimal benefit, and Apple quits even doing it, after a decent interval has passed.

Catchy Name

I've written a couple of posts observing the value of a catchy name in branding. Here are a couple more examples:

Ruby on Rails
This one is particularly good. It marries nice, moderate alliteration with an extremely compelling, easily-understood image: anything "on rails" is rock-solid, and won't go astray. As in "we've got the latest project on rails...if anything, we are going to be done several weeks early."

Camel-Bak
Whereas most catchy-name examples involve a significant element of style over substance, this one is pure...the name perfectly captures both the form and the function of the product.

Gartner Analyst on "Laser Interactions" of Context Awareness

I heard a Gartner analyst speaking on "context aware marketing" the other day .He described the following scenario. The store knows who you are and where you are, when you walk in with your cell phone. When you pause briefly before continuing past the display of a kind of cereal you usually buy, the in-store camera notices, and immediately (within <1 second) sends you a coupon.

I see several problems with this:

1. All privacy issues aside, it will get intolerably annoying to constantly get pinged with coupons.
2. Is it even a good decision to "incent" a regular buyer with a discount, deus ex machina? If you usually buy the cereal, you will probably keep buying it. Maybe you didn't but it this time because you remembered you already had enough at home?
3. How long does it take before consumers figure out what is happening, and deliberately trigger the coupon-reward scenario (i.e., pause, fondle, replace and slowly walk on from each item they want to buy)?

I remain skeptical.

Clue 1 for Email Marketing

For years I have had a separate email address to give out to retail operations. I check it about once a week, or  when I have a reason. It is amazing to see how many emails even legitimate brick-and-mortar operations send out. Sign up for something on Tuesday, receive marketing emails on Wednesday and Thursday! If marketers weren't so abusively over-eager to send marketing emails, they might actually get better results.

Here is Clue 1 for email marketing--don't send messages any more often than weekly!

Google Giving Up on Selling Nexus One Direct

I never fully understood that move in the first place. There was a lot of talk about phones from carriers and plans--like they do with un-locked phones in Europe. That seems noble, and in many ways it could be good--cross-subsidies often mask inefficiencies. But, but, but...

First, it just seems too much like competing with your distribution channel. That's never a good thing--where would Android be without the relentless Verizon campaign for the "Droid"?? Second, T-Mobile, Google's closest Android ally, had already taken the step of offering the "Even More Plus" plans, that offer lower rates but no subsidized phones. Third, my comments about cross-subsidies aside, if you really want a new phone, it is often net short-term cheaper to get the subsidy[1]. Fourth, why in the world would it be available with only one very specific plan?! Probably in some way tied to the arms-length arrangement with Google (I'm not sure exactly how, but that is the only theory I can muster), but from a consumer point of view, what a colossal fail. 4 strikes, give up the game.

[1] I think cross-subsidies are distortive in two ways. One, they may save you money in the short-term, but they lock you in to the carrier for 2 years. Two, in some cases they may cause people to upgrade just because they can: spending $50 to get a new phone that retails for $200, when they never would have shelled out $200 for a new phone. That is clearly an economic inefficiency.

"Superphone" Term a Poor Marketing Tactic from Google

In my consumer cosmology, the more heavily promoted an item is, the more skeptical I become about its benefits and value proposition. It is a huge warning sign when a marketer tries to subtly re-name the product or service. For instance, an OCR vendor I dealt with tried to call it "ICR"--intelligent character recognition. I, not O--different than that old, crummy, never-accurate-enough OCR that you tried before. Except it was exactly like the old OCR that never worked well. Old wine in new bottle.

So when Google tried calling it's much-anticipated smartphone a "superphone", I smelled a rat. In this case, the rat wasn't a horrible sewer rat, it was more like a domesticated pet rat. The Nexus is by all accounts (I don't own one) a very nice Android phone, possibly/probably the best on the market. But nothing, absolutely nothing, about it is revolutionary, in a qualitative or quantitative sense.