Blink: You're A Chart. He's A Sail.

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink makes a book out of how people create instant impressions of others.

That's great. But what do you do with the information?

My team recently had great success and great fun with the Topsail Personality Profile created by Steve Norcia and Alex Szabo.

In our roles in new product development, we are constantly meeting inventors, licensees, teams of corporate types, sales people -- you know all those who represent a lot of your business transactions.

Our challenge always is how do you quickly decide what someone is like and establish a good relationship. The Topsail Personality Profile let us do that in a blink of an eye.

The personality profile divides people into four types:

• Chart: Low Assertive, High Responsive
• Sail: High Assertive, Low Responsive
• Keel: Low Assertive, Low Responsive
• Signal: High Assertive, High Responsive

These tools let you assess the personalities in order to quickly establish good relationships.

What this means is that

• Sails give you 90 seconds to explain your business results.
• Signals give you 5-10 minutes to establish a personal, social relationship.
• Keels give you 20 minutes to establish a personal, loyal relationship.
• Charts give you 5 minutes to detail your business experience.
  

The indicators are fun even when you apply them to voices on the telephone, e.g. tone of voice, verbal inflections, speech pace and message.

Which is more important after all: good understanding of the facts and great chemistry or good chemistry and a great understanding of the facts.

If you want to play "let's make a deal," I would choose the chemistry first.

Vegas Show Girls Strip Tesco

Religiously, in England, every Sunday after Sunday school, my daughters demanded to go to the High Wycombe Tesco for tea (the village pub being closed, of course, until later). Then, after they had their scones and darjeeling, we filled the trolley with our weekly necessities.

Now, I read that Las Vegas is going to get its Tesco. So Vegas show girls will soon have their own opportunities to stop for crumpets and coffee after a long Saturday eve. And it's not just Vegas. Clearly, Tesco sees the wild American West as their manifest destiny. Stores are planned for Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles.

Edward Kelly, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said that he believes Tesco's U.S. stores will be a hybrid, bridging the gap between traditional grocers, such as Kroger Co. and specialty supermarkets such as Whole Foods Market Inc. and privately held Trader Joe's, while adding the appeal of mass market stores, such as Costco Wholesale Corp., Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Well, Mr. Kelly has managed to squeeze every single notable retailing format into a single observation. But surely Tesco cannot fill that gap, whether it is as big as the Grand Canyon or as narrow as Jerusalem's proverbial Eye of the Needle gate.

Tesco confirmed last week that its stores would be just 10,000 square feet, making them much smaller than a traditional 45,000 square-foot grocery store. The stores, which are smaller than supermarkets or mass market stores, are to start opening later this year. Hmmnn, sounds similar to the Tesco Metro format in the UK.

How can you be successful in this kind of format? Focus. Focus on what the customers in your geographic really need and really would love to have. Tesco's house has many mansions, and you can bet that, like any very smart builder, they will tailor their offerings. Take a look at Tesco's web site (www.Tesco.com). They sell everything. Their challenge is ensuring they have the right things in their small format. Here is where CPG manufacturers can provide a value-added benefit to their retailing partner, demonstrating their own savvy.

Last September, I wrote about CPG manufacturers letting drug retailers control the shopping souk, pointing out that meeting consumer demand trumps promotions and the use of merchandising forces to supplement poor retail executions on the part of retailers.

I doubt that Tesco will suffer poor execution. I can't see Tesco lurching around the American West and making, at once, both naive and egotistical mistakes like the larger-than-comic-life English Berrybender family in Larry McMurty's eponymous trilogy. Though Tasmin Berrybender is hotter and smarter and tougher than any Vegas showgirl.

Tesco's challenge to CPG manufacturers is for those manufacturers to be able to recommend the right sku's are in the right geography (both in town and on the shelf) for Tesco. Data on placement, turns and inventory won't be enough. CPG manufacturers need to think about the shopper, the shelf and their leadership. In this case, strategy is a plan for resource allocation decisions that will determine the nature of success on the shelf.

I would recommend that manufacturers take the time to study and to develop shopper insights and cogent strategies for working with Tesco. In that way, a real relationship that can build into a real mutually beneficial partnership can be established with the chain and its future shoppers.

This would also provide a wonderful reason to do store checks in the UK in advance of meeting with Tesco's US management. But not for me. I am heading for Las Vegas. After all, Tesco (at this point) is calling its new U.S. stores the "Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market."

Moses' Management Consultant

The other week I commented on the snake's role in the Garden of Eden in regard to addressing his target audience: women.

This week, I got an email from Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz of the Jewish Theological Seminary, commenting on Moses' management consultant. Rabbi Berkowitz writes that, Moses' father-in-law, watches his son dispensing judgment for the Israelites while they are in the desert after leaving Egypt for Canaan. He sees that Moses has established himself as a true leader amongst the Israelites, and he has become the victim of his own success. As a result of failing to establish clear and workable boundaries for himself, he opens himself to the potential for prophetic “burn-out.”

Now Jethro, the “corporate consultant,” helps Moses to change the dynamic. He quietly observed his son-in-law at work, then he issued his critique in the form of a question: “What is this thing that you are doing to the people?” (Exodus 18:14). Jethro’s question forces Moses to be reflective. Moses recognizes the burden before him, namely that the people are coming to him to seek God, and he is their judge for both large and small decisions. After hearing this response, Jethro wisely proposes a plan for success: Moses will appoint "good" (and I do mean "good," after all this is the Bible) assistants who will judge the common cases while Moses will continue adjudicating the major disputes.

The lessons from this story are to be (1) open to the work of knowledgeable consultants, (2) deliberate and sensitive in our critiques, and (3) like Moses, open to the possibility of change and innovation.

Maybe McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, BCG, et al can adopt Jethro as their patron saint.

Dr. Spock Rides To The SuperBowl on Colts and Bears

There have been a number of good articles about the management styles of Tony Dungy, coach of the Indianapolis Colts, and Lovie Smith, coach of the Chicago Bears.

(Public disclosure: I went to the University of Chicago, so I'm rooting for Da Bears.)

It is noteworthy that both of these coaches are African-American, guaranteeing that this year an African-American football coach will win the SuperBowl for the first time (don't you love these win-win scenarios).

Also noteworthy, as my wife points out, is their management styles. We have two coaches (with Smith an offshoot of Dungy's coaching tree, having worked for Dungy in Tampa Bay) who are not chest-thumping, tough-guy screamers. Both men believe that they can direct, lead and motivate their team by calmly giving directions and treating players with respect.

That's like Nelson standing at the Battle of Trafalgar, taking a cannon shot and still leading the navy to victory.

Football players are smart, operate well within systems, make fast decisions and move to close on a point with speed. They seek to differentiate themselves and gain competitive advantage. So, is there really a need to verbally or physically slap these guys upside their heads? Or isn't more effective to get into their heads in the same way that this generation of athletes and executives was raised?

Remember that pediatrician who coached your mom on how to raise you? Dr. Benjamin Spock was the first pediatrician to use psychoanalysis to understand children's needs and family dynamics. To crip from Wikipedia, his ideas about childcare influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals.

Mmmnnn. Sounds like Dungy and Smith. Sounds like good managers who have empathy, know what is right, try to understand their employees' needs, direct them with the best strategies for success and provide appropriate goals and measures. And a good situational leader will change their style and approach depending on the readiness of individual employees.

For a generation of professional football coaches and senior managers raised on Dr. Spock, the lessons their parents brought to the crib are the same lessons that can elevate the performance of the team. Now internalized, those lessons remain some of the best ways of improving productivity, creating a prosperous work place and realizing success.

As I have led my teams and worked with them to achieve our goals, I have seen the personal and real value of listening, respect, dialogue, strategy and result. What seems new in these coaches is what we have been instructed and coached on since the nursery. And if we can bring those lessons into the workplace, we will have achieved a true work-life balance.

Which Stage, Coach?

What a brilliant ride Coach is having.

According to Reuters, Coach Inc. reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday, helped by higher full-priced sales of its handbags during the holiday season, and raised its full-year earnings and sales outlook.

Coach, which sells its signature leather handbags, accessories, shoes and jewelry in department stores and its own stores, said net income for the fiscal second quarter, ended Dec. 30, rose 30.6 percent to $227.5 million, or 61 cents per share, from $174.2 million, or 45 cents per share, in the year-ago period. Analysts, on average, had been expecting 58 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Lew Frankfort, Coach's chairman and chief executive officer, said the latest results were helped by better conversion, meaning that more of its store's visitors bought merchandise. Together with more customer traffic and higher average transaction prices, quarterly sales jumped 29 percent to $836.4 million. Analysts were expecting sales of $800.1 million.

Check out that wonderful statement on better conversation: more store visitors bought merchandise. Why? Let's break down the components because this Coach is riding with a team of great horses:

- Range of price points

- Excellent design

- Line extensions using different, less costly materials combined with great design supporting that range of price points

- Expanded distribution through new retail stores.

Just think of that -- less costly materials, wider range of price points, more items, and still Coach maintained the integrity of its name.

Contrast that with Tiffany's, which has seen a deterioration in its financial situation because it has been pulling back on its cheaper silver jewelry (you know those bracelets and necklaces that every 14-year-old fashionista had to have) to protect its name and to better serve that truly upmarket customer.

Coach has truly steered itself down the right path. Kudos to management.

But this is the same ride, the same reins, that everyone uses. Why did Coach do it better?

Because they weren't afraid when it came to design. They didn't fear pay-for-lower price materials. They smartly managed line extensions, discontinuing skus when they reached their sell-by date. And they made leaps in their innovations.

That's a road that really successful marketers travel down.

The Snake Knew His Target Audience

Out to create a little trouble? Out to sell a product? Want to distribute product information? Decided that sampling is the better way to gain trial and purchase?

Yes, I bet that was what the snake was thinking in the Garden of Eve when he saw Eve coming his way. He got his target market right. He got the first sale. And Mankind lost the Garden of Eden and it has been the world of commerce ever since.

So why is taking marketers so long to wake up and the smell the primroses?

According to Martha Barletta, author of Marketing To Women, women control or influence 80% of all purchases of both consumer and business goods and services. They have joint or sole ownership of 87% of homes and buy 61% of major home-improvement products. They account for 66% of all home computer purchases and 80% of all health care services. They carry 76 million credit cards, and they start 70% of all new businesses.

Now I hate to be a snake in the grass, but I don't think I would waste a lot of my time talking to men if I was trying to figure out how to move major product purchases.

Particularly in healthcare. Not only do women consume a significant amount of health-related goods and services, they are also the gatekeeping purchasers for their male "wards" and for the seniors above them and the children below them.

When I was recently looking at the 50+ market, it hit me like a pan in the face. Forget about men. For anything, spend a lot of time with women, understand their frustrations, their hopes, their needs, their dreams. Isn't that how good relationships grow?

Tailor your products to those desires. And get them talking about it.

If you don't understand the woman consumer first, nothing else matters. It's not sociological. It's not anthropological. It's biblical.

Now That Other Guy Blinked

Some people may remember when Coca-Cola changed its flavor profile to match Pepsi and embarked on the disastrous launch of New Coke. That was when Pepsi took out full page ads that damningly said, The Other Guy Blinked.

Well, I guess it's Pepsi's turn now to be rescued from its glaucoma.

Changing the design of its cans for a new look every three to four weeks?
To attract teens who are always looking for something new?

You've got to be kidding me. What happened to CPG Marketing 101 about the sanctity of packaging design? Did those marketing geniuses at Pepsi get brain freeze at the Dairy Queen?

When I was brand manager of Wisk laundry detergent for Unilever, we agonized over changing the red on the label. Look at the Tide bulls-eye, still there. Same for Dove.

Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) move through the minds of teenagers at nano speed. They will forget that Pepsi can faster than their next sip of Mountain Dew.

Brands are supposed to gain value over time (look what J&J paid for 120-year-old Listerine) and their packages are what helps them stand the test of time. Otherwise, how do you really know what's inside?

Those teens will be adults some day. Do you think they will still remember that cool Pepsi can from 20 years ago. The best antidote for Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) isn't Aricept. It's branding.

Guess which brand tops the BusinessWeek/Interbrand survey: Coca-Cola.
Guess which brand isn't in the top 20: Pepsi.
Hmmmnnnn.

The issue isn't the package. The issue is the type and quality of product you deliver consistently over time to meet consumer needs. The package is the signpost, the flag, kind of like those flags the samurai warriors follow in the Akira Kurosawa movies.

The risk for Pepsi is that, next month and for the next decades to come, they have those teens mindlessly running all over the place, occasionally bumping into Pepsi, occasionally bumping into other things. That's what teens do anyway -- until they grow up. And then they buy the brands they know and trust. The brands that have always consistently been there.

Okay, Coke, now YOU can say the other guy blinked.

Match Points: A Real Work/Life Balance

Many of colleagues from Pfizer are currently looking for new positions due to J&J's recent acquisition of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. While I will reserve comments about the sale and the value of acquiring brand assets and getting healthy ROIs through synergistic cost cuts, I do want to put one note out there about the recruiting and searching process.

I was re-reading George Bradt's The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, and I was struck by his opening comments about looking for a job. I want to replay them for my friends who I know are reading this blog.

Bradt writes that there are only three real interview questions:

1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you love the job?
3. Can I stand working for you?

Or, alternatively,

1. Strengths
2. Motivation
3. Fit

That's what it comes down to. My Pfizer friends are looking for new jobs in marketing and sales, but they are also looking at consulting, teaching, social work and nursing. Go for it. As I wrote in my last post, don't enervate. Leap.

For recruiters, their clients deserve the best they can hire. For my friends, they deserve to be the best they can be: using their skills, waking every morning loving what they do and enjoying who they are working with.

In a way, it can be a lot simpler than life or work ever is.

And yes, this may be another way we talk about work/life balance.

Enough for now. The next post is back to Marketing and Management.

This New Year: Don't Enervate. Leap.

In beginning Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes, "What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations?"

A great word, enervate. It means the opposite of what it sounds like. It means: deplete.

What fails for Thoreau is the flaccidity of thought in his world. Once, for him, it meant that: "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."

That same flaccidity of thought is what affects current consumer product thinking about innovation. Every CPG company worth its salt or soap or detergent or food or cosmetic touts its Innovation Initiatives.

Thousands of employees are marched through innovation processes and told they too possesses the innovative capabilities that led Edison to invent the light bulb or DaVinci to codify his many inventions or took Franklin out into a rainstorm of brilliance with a kite and a key.

What flattery. What brilliant chest-beating. But now here's a true innovator's dilemma. No, not what Prof. Christensen described as the pressure for continual innovation. This innovation dilemma is more insidious. It is enervating because it really depletes the ability and the desire and the realization of true innovation. It pays lip service to progress and only results in incremental activities.

Here is how Thoreau characterized the innovation processes used by so many companies today: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

In all too many instances, the results of these innovations are, in reality, merely line extensions of existing brands or services. Nothing truly novel. But gosh it really feels good to sit for hours with colleagues, playing games, free-associating and dreaming up the Simple Pleasures of Tide detergent.

Now Vanilla & Lavender Scented Tide laundry detergent probably sounded novel in that innovation session in Cincinnati. But Europeans have putting those scents in their pockets ever since they wanted to hide the fact that they were suffering from Plague. (Remember the Ring Around A-Rosy rhyme? What do you think those pockets full of posies were for?)

No, the real innovation was the discovery of Tide itself and synthetic laundry detergent in 1946 when P&G scientists added sodium tripolyphosphate. We end 60 years later with a scented line extension.

So, for beginning the new year, let's make a promise. No more innovation, if innovation only means progress by increments. Let's try and make this year and every year, a leap year, wherein we make "a sudden lively movement" that means real progress and real growth.

Hot Tip: Clean Your iPod with Dove Soap

My Body = My Software

Here is how I think about these products.

I go to Planet Fitness. I climb on the elliptical trainer, preparing for a journey of miles while staying in the spot. I put my white earphones on. Then I'm off on Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

Somewhere past U2's Where The Streets Have No Name and Soul Asylum's Runaway Train, I look around and I see that the vast majority of my sweating, straining, traveling compatriots are wearing the same white earphones.

But they are listening to the Beatles or Bach or Blige.

Each of us is doing the same thing on the exact same hardware but, for each of us, the music of our journey is unique to us because, for each of us, our tastes, our emotions, our desires and dreams fill our individual worlds.

From the Dove Soap web site: Dove believes that beauty comes in different shapes, sizes, and colors and that real beauty can be genuinely stunning.

The soap (great soap!) is the same for everyone. But what Dove realizes is that this mass market product cleans and moisturizes a world of individual beauties.

The hardware is the same. It is the application of that software that makes each consumer's use of and appreciation for that product special to them.

Are the products you use or make special to someone else? Are you capturing that specialness?

Excuse me, it's time to get back the trainer.

A Rose By Any Other Word Is My Cellphone

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."
- Juliet, Romeo and Juliet

"A rose is a rose is a rose."
- Gertrude Stein

What do you call that battery-operated device you carry around in your hand that lets you talk to other people, listen to music, watch videos, locate yourself and your friends, watch televised media and pay for your lunch?

Here's the flash: Whatever you call it, Motorola has sold in the last two years, 50 million Razr units almost EQUAL to the number of Ipods sold by Apple.

In the December 4 Business Week article on Upward Mobility, Motorla calls it the "device formerly known as a cellphone." Nokia calls it a "multimedia computer." Samsung says they are "mobile information terminals."

This is a lot like Adam, who, in the book Does G-d Have A Big Toe?, called a bear that "big, brown, furry two-eyed big-clawed, loud, scary beast." And he used that term only after he realized that he couldn't just assign a number to each of the animals in the world. Hmmmmnnnnnnn, kind of sounds like the electronics industry. And Adam called the bear a bear after the bear told him what he wanted to be called.

Do we really need a Carolus Linnaeus of nomenclature to figure out what to call one of the most potentially useful and profitable devices created by man? Maybe it is easier to name G-d's creatures than it is to name Man's devices.

And we all know what happens to Man when he is left up to his own devices.

This is the kind of mistake that is made by many technical industries. You get breath-taking technical breakthroughs but it takes years for the breakthroughs and consumers to catch up with each other.

Remember the billions that European wireless carriers paid to purchase G3 bandwidths?

Basically, it comes down to three simple things: Talk, See, Buy.

Within those dynamics, a myriad of permutations and services will be developed and offered to consumers -- and the risk, the huge risk, is continuing confusion that will force developers to under-deliver.

If you can't name it simply, then how can you simply use it? This where I would spend a lot of time and conversation upfront talking to consumers, understanding their needs and desires and price parameters -- and this has to be done holistically. If each developer only looks at what they are developing, they are missing the bigger picture of the choices that consumers can make and what their competition is offering. It isn't easy. And it is certainly a bear of a problem. But if you can't tell the difference between a bear and a rose upfront, you run the risk of either being a beauty or someone's supper.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Raymond Carver, in his eponymous short story collection, goes not just for the concept of love but for how we think and feel about love. I like Jayne Anne Phillips characterization in her review of the book: we speak not of love itself, but of the delicate structures and distortions that support love.

That's why I was struck by the Advertising article in the NY Times today by Louise Story on W-O-M, word-of-mouth marketing. She notes how a new word-of-mouth firm, the Keller Fay Group, seeks to demystify consumer conversations about brands. Keller Fay asks people to keep a diary of conversations that mentions products or brands and later asks them for the details. She quotes Ed Keller as saying, "When you talk about engagement, as a lot of marketers are, people talking about your brand is the ultimate engagement." On average, Story writes, Keller Fay finds that people discuss dozens of brands each day.

Keller Fay is doing great work that can be very valuable to marketers. The challenge, though, is how do you go deeper to understand what those brand mentions mean. Like Raymond Carver's short stories, how do you understand the structures and the distortions that support the dropping of brand names?

I would recommend building on this initial research by seeking to understand the psychological and cultural nuances beneath the structures of the words. Wal-Marting in Texas is certainly different from Wal-Marting in New Jersey, especially when, from town to town and from state to state, the income levels and the needs of those customers can vary widely.

How do you contrast the power of highway billboard with that David Ogilvy-inspired long ad copy in The New Yorker?

Building up the context is critical in really getting to the heart of how consumers think and feel about your brand. Word-of-Mouth is a powerful tool. When I put together the marketing plan for Listerine Pocketpaks (and this was before Gladwell's The Tipping Point), I knew that no 30-second ad was going to convey the power of the product. My whole plan was predicated on buzz and sampling.

As marketers have become more sophisticated about using word-of-mouth to launch and build brands, the challenge is no longer how to surf along on the cresting waves of conversations. I think Keller Fay is doing a great job and providing a needed service. The goal should be to dive deeper into that sea of chatter and to understand what consumers mean when they talk about their brands. That is when you will get pearls of wisdom.

Muddy Waters: Who do you trust (online)?

Ain't that right? Muddy Waters singing Who do you trust? It's perfectly clear.

The Wall Street Journal published an article last week noting that the web site for Wal-Mart is in the top 5 for online retailers and that the growth rates for pure online retailers will be lower this Christmas vs. last Christmas. They noted that many consumers are using the internet to vet their choices for information before they go into the stores, and, if they want to buy online, they are more and more trusting the web sites of bricks-and-mortar retailers.

For many marketers, that big Directions for Use sign is becoming increasingly clear. Consumers want to buy from "trusted advisers" who also offer worry-free shopping experience.

The challenge online is in becoming that trusted adviser. The need is there to bundle together:
- Packaging information
- Advertising and promotion
- Frequent buyer programs
- Consumer education
- the Virtual User experience
- Friends and Family and Word-of-Mouth endorsements.

Five-star guarantees go to the best and the brightest in communications this holiday season. And it is up to many manufacturers and retailers to pay extra attention in how they communicate to earn that customer's trust.

One of the best ways of determining your success is hosting online site research, allowing real people to provide real-time reactions to site design, information and purchase experience.

There is so much unfiltered, diluted and poor information experiences, that those brands that stand out in terms of how they put out their products will be the real winners not just this season but for seasons to come.

The Power of Altering Perceptions

Last night I attended a reception for Equal Access, a non-profit organization. Equal Access provides information and education about healthcare and social issues through radio in developing countries. The organization is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Kathmandu, Nepal; Kabul, Afghanistan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and New Delhi, India. It was founded in the belief that people everywhere are entitled to Equal Access to information and education and should have the opportunity to join the dialogue as both recipients and contributors of that information. The organization's radio programming focuses on healthcare issues like HIV awareness, women's rights, youth issues, teacher training and migration.

I have done some advising for Equal Access, and you can learn more about the organization by reading my Wikipedia article on Equal Access.

The reception was particularly noteworthy because it featured a reading by the Pulitzer-prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. I was struck by the fact that Equal Access is all about providing people in rural areas with information that will help them change their perceptions of themselves, while, the characters in Ms. Lahiri's book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, are changed by the discordant knowledge of how they see themselves and how others perceive them.

This is the truest impact of insight. Whether it is about how you think about brands, evaluate your health or perceive your status in society. Good communications possess the power to alter perceptions and drive growth.

Is Personal Care Geared For Boomer Gadgets?

Boys love gadgets. Girls say they don't but they do. Do either boys or girls want a straight edge in their hand that vibrates like a razor with Parkinson's? Let's go beyond the Fusion and move to Mach 50.

The number of US Boomer Consumers over age 50 is going to increase 25% from 89 million to 111 million by 2016, while the number of 18-49 year old consumers is going to remain flat at 135 million.

Have you seen those razor studs electronically trimming those whiskers like a hot knife through melted butter leaving their skin soft and smooth to their woman's touch? Or the women enjoying a glide as smooth as Botticelli's Venus rising from a sea shell?

Well, that's just fine if you want to target your product development and advertising to a consumer segment that is flat and your real goal in marketing is to steal share.

The last time I figured it men and women over 50 still shave, but who is taking the time to understand the changing dynamics of older skin care or older teeth or older hair.

Now there's a growth market that can be targeted by

- understanding the physical dynamics of body change
- adapting product performance to deliver superior benefits
- using built-in technologies to provide performance feedback
- offering clear, simple, "readable" directions
- creating design that excites and delights.

Every day 10,000 Boomer Consumers turn 50. If you captured those newly minted birthday boomer boys and girls via a promotion at Wal-Mart or Walgreen's, you would be thrilled with the incremental sales.

But if you gave them an small personal electric product that truly met their needs, looked good and felt good, they would be thrilled.

Now that's consumer satisfaction.

Hippes Hype Habits into Rituals

I listened to an interesting presentation by Jody Crane of New Solutions and Caroline Gibbons of Portico Research about how people adopt "new" habits for themselves.

They were making distinctions between habits, routines and rituals. I won't go into the details of their proprietary research, but here is what struck me about developing insights and pitching products to consumers.

Forget those Eisenhower-era marketing touts focused on functional benefits.

Those Hippies (now Baby Boomers) are more interested in the emotional benefits of products. Yes, they expect certain functional benefits, but functional benefits alone (those reasons to believe) are not enough in commodity product categories.

In an increasingly complex, threatening, multi-multi-media world, people want things that not only do good but make them feel good about using them.

Good design is an increasing cost of entry. And why not? Do you want a lime green tea kettle or a shiny, sleek Michael Graves tea kettle from Target? They cost the same. But which one makes you feel good about using it.

It all goes back to that Sixties revolution that asked for everyone to tune in. Today, the marketing translation of "tuning in" is an appeal to emotions. Eisenhower moms bought in to what worked best. Soccer moms expect that what they buy works; what seals the deal is the emotional appeal.

That soap in your shower. Lifebuoy, that gets rid of B(ody)O(dor) or L'Occitane's high-lather, citrusy Verbena soap. Unilever has got it down now with Dove. Real pampering soap for real women.

How do you transform your product from something that people use out of habit into something that becomes a ritual. Understand the emotions at play and play to them. Rituals operate at a higher level of involvement. That is where the premium play is.

The CEO Plaint: A Better 100 First Days

. . .that soul imprisoned in a body, itself a prisoner within that dungeon, and from out that double incarnation of flesh and stone, the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony . . ..
-- Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

I was struck yesterday by a book I was reading, George Bradt's The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, and an item in Business Week noting that 1,112 chief executives are gone this year and CEO turnover is on a pace to exceed last year's record 1,322 exits. So what do those 1,000 -plus new CEOs do to get themselves and their troubled assignments on the fast track?

In Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, Louis Gerstner, Jr. had a positively leisurely time going around talking to customers, senior managers and the rank and file before he came up with his strategy. In today's nanosecond business world, two Wall Street quarters go faster than a New York minute for troubled companies, and there wouldn't be a new CEO there if it wasn't a troubled company.

So I was struck by the single minded on-boarding focus of George Bradt. He's got it down. Like the pre-planning for Operation Overload's D-Day invasion of Europe, Bradt's approach comes from preparation (that T-minus D-Day planning), delivery and follow-through. He recognizes that the success of the CEO's team requires the alignment of people, plans and practices around a shared purpose.

It all sounds pretty simple. Bradt has a very clear approach on how to manage the different stages of on-boarding. I also checked out his website at www.primegenesis.com. He looks to increase the Tactical Capacity of the new leaders.

Interesting, huh. Tactical Capacity not Strategic Capacity. Oh yeah, you can have those long-night sessions to develop strategies or hire the top Big Think shops. The best strategies, though, can be written on a napkin in a bar or put together in forty-eight hours. Then what do you do in the next 2,352 hours (viz. 98 days)?.

Bradt's got it down. You define your

• Imperative
• Milestones
• Early Wins
• Team Roles
• and Values

You execute like crazy. Heady stuff? Sounds too easy. Well, remember that 40% of new leaders fail in their first 18 months, according to the Center for Creative Leadership. And those men and women weren't stupid in the first place. They and the Boards that selected them thought they knew what they were doing. The cost of that failure is millions of dollars and possibly thousands of lives -- not just the life of the CEO.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins found that most CEOs don't get their businesses humming until their seventh year in office. Wow, if you're a new CEO, you better be good real fast. Those first 100 days could be a real agony of the soul for the toughest Al Dunlap. Good thing George Bradt's got it down because the best way better be up with some pre-planning and a sound tactical approach.

Postscript: Who's Looking In My Drawers

Truer than what I said the other day:

Today, the New York Times did a feature on Aleksey Vayner, an earnest 21-year-old Yale undergraduate who had sent a video of himself as part of his job applications.

According to the article, Mr. Vayner "submitted an 11-page resume and elaborate video clip to UBS. It then showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner’s athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.

Mr. Vayner is not amused. Instead, he said he feels like a victim. The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in certain cases, threatening him. Since the video surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Vayner said he has deleted at least 2,000 pieces of e-mail."

I rest my case.

Who's Looking In My Drawers?

There is a huge irony in the fears about privacy and identity theft and the rush to pose on the social networking sites of myspace, facebook, tagworld.

In the media, you read thousands of stories about people having their personal data stolen and the actions that major corporations are taking at the same time to get people to sign up with them while promising protection (uumm, sounds like a Mafia come-on).

Do you really want to bank online? Have a portable electronic wallet? Share your personal data? Sign up for massive online storage sites for photos and documents?

And at the same time, ensure that absolutely no one else has access to your personal vault of life, love, money and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, heck yes. (But what about those Citigroup commercials where the voices of thieves come out of the bodies of their victims?)

Most online-active adults over 35 years old want it both ways.

But what about those under-35? Social networking is booming. Murdoch pays a fortune for myspace. Facebook will eventually be sold. Tagworld is a start-up by serial entrepreneurs looking for a payday. YouTube (your face, your life, your antics) is bought by Google. They are waving their online underwear like flag signals on a 18th century Admiral's battleship. If you can decipher it, you will learn everything.

Do those people who sign anyway their offline lives for an online network really care about privacy and security? Maybe not because they don't have anything really stealable? Except who they are.

That poor page who was victimised by Mark Foley was outed by a persistent blogger because of an online data error.

So let's see how do we reconcile social networking with privacy and security with theft.

Maybe the only safe place to live is in Second Life. Or never put yourself online.

How many Angels on a Pin or Messages on a M&M?

I want my M&M's my way. The coupon came in the Sunday paper today and I can get my M&Ms personalized. Also, I don't need New York Times or Evening News with Katie Couric or MSNBC.com. I have my RSS feeds so my information is delivered, filtered and focused the way I want it. And my cellphone is my life. I call who I want, get no solicitors and V-Cast gives me music, videos, email and news.

To paraphrase e.e. cummings: How do you like your blue-eyed blue now, Mr. Marketer. Emerging technologies and the delivery of media continue to spell Mr. Death for mass marketers.

The irony is that TV networks still charge ever higher rates for declining viewerships because they still aggregate larger groups than the other less trackable, less aggregated modes of communication.

However, like the elegant empty posturing in Agnolo Bronzino's 1569 mannerist painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Lorzeno, guess what? You're still going to die.

The challenge continues to be marketers, media mavens and technical inventors to develop the research tools and approaches necessary to identify trends and understand and meet the needs of their consumers.

Consumer goods manufacturers get this. They recognize the need to identify true consumer insights that will let them adapt exisiting products and develop new products to meet the needs of their consumers and to grow their businesses.

If technical inventors and the media communicators can come together and develop new research approaches, learn to mine and convert consumer insights into tools and message, then they will reduce confusion, competing formats, fragmented tools and messages and provide efficient, focused, relevant and motivating media.

Saint Augustine asked how many angels can dance on the pin? In a world of nanotechnology, the answer is infinite but the question is if the messages are hitting home. Really, it should be as simple as personalizing your M&M.