As stated in the article, this is an interesting take on the current economic situation. Much has been written about the mistakes that have been made, about how we got to where we are now, etc. Little has been made of the learning from those mistakes or how to best lead an organization in less-than-rosy times. Here are the lessons:

Confront Reality Always question whether the “halo effect” of a business or business situation is blinding you to what lies on the horizon. —Herbert Henkel, chairman and CEO of Ingersoll Rand

At Board Meetings, Put Strategy Center Stage The board has been heavily involved in strategy formulation with me, and we have a better strategy because if it. —Bill Nuti, chairman and CEO of NCR

Be Transparent With Employees The only way to address uncertainty is to communicate and communicate. And when you think you’ve just about got to everybody, then communicate some more. —Terry Lundgren, chairman, president, and CEO of Macy’s

Be Transparent With Investors Our policy is: “If in doubt, communicate.” We always want to conduct our business with integrity and forthrightness. —Ron Sugar, chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman

Build And Protect The Culture Stay focused on culture, people, and values: it’s the area most likely to get compromised in this environment. —Eric Foss, chairman and CEO of Pepsi Bottling Group

Keep Faith With The Future If you don’t invest in the future and don’t plan for the future, there won’t be one. —George Buckley, chairman, president, and CEO of 3M

While there is much to be learned from each of these lessons or principles, a subset of them resonated the most with me. First is the notion of transparency and communication. Especially in touch times (but at all times, really) there is ample opportunity for rumor and innuendo to take over. Communication (even over-communication) with stakeholders is critical to pushing forth an agenda and keeping the team with their eye firmly on the ball. Yes, it’s difficult to remain focused on the task at hand if I’m worried about losing my job. But communications from leadership of the organization about what’s going on can go a long way towards making me comfortable about the situation and about the folks who are leading the company through the challenging environment.

Another favorite is the confronting of reality. Addressing head-on the challenges of the day, whatever they may be, is not only more efficient but also more effective. I’ve been in corporate situations where the reality of the day (the forest) has been ignored (or perhaps set aside) while management focuses on something else (the trees) and the results have been more painful than needed. Especially in tough times, leaders need to take a good hard look at what’s in front of them and confront that reality however different, unexpected, or chaotic it may be. Only then can the organization truly begin charting its course through the situation.

Last is the point about the culture. In difficult economic times, it can be easy to throw out elements of company culture, reject company values, and lose sight of the people as you seek to swiftly control costs, for example. These short-term-focused actions, however, will have a profound effect on the company long term. A company is not just its balance sheet and income statement. In fact, a company is its people, the values that bind them together, and the culture in which they thrive. Short-changing that in difficult times will do much harm and impede the very recovery that management is trying to effect.

As I read that while sitting on a local train (I had missed the express train by a few minutes, much to my chagrin), it struck me as clever copy and even placement (I think that Conill handles their creative while MV42 does their media). The creative ties in nicely to the placement and to the product benefit (although the more strict grammarians among us would have requested the copy read “ir en el expreso” as the correct way to phrase it). It works nicely, in any language. Here’s a bad picture of the ad.

Continental Airlines Hispanic OOH

What was more interesting to me, however, was the tagline. I had never read the Continental Airlines tagline in Spanish before. It’s “Trabajar con Empeño. Viajar con Pasión.” The English-language tagline for Continental is “Work Hard. Fly Right.” which supposedly came from their CEO during an speech to employees and it was adopted as the tagline for the company.

In English, the tagline never said much to me. It felt obvious that it was a non-consumer statement being slapped on ads. I don’t feel it communicates much to a consumer. However, in Spanish, the adaptation of the tagline works much better. It loosely translates to “(To) Work with Determination. (To) Fly with Passion.” First of all, the choice of words really resonates with me and I think with consumers in general.

The word “empeño” is particularly interesting here. It’s a great word in Spanish and it means so much. It encapsulates the concept of striving, working hard, determination, insistence, and making an effort. To me that is a much richer concept than plain “work hard.” Then there’s the word “pasión” that is so relevant to Hispanics, but also so much more human, warm, and emotional for consumers in general that the English-language “fly right” (what does that mean, anyway?), at least in my opinion.

So, kudos to Continental Airlines. If I was your target, you got me. And by the way, how about working on that English-language tagline a bit?

As I was getting closer to the office, I spotted another example of Hispanic-targeted OOH. This one was a Bud Light billboard for its Bud Light Lime flavor. What was interesting about it is that Lime was adapted to “limón” in Spanish. It’s not that “limón” is incorrect. Au contraire, it shows  deep undersanding of the target consumer.

In the countries from where most US Hispanics hail, the small green citrus fruit is called “limón” and the larger more-elongated yellow citrus fruit is called “lima.” Go figure. Still, kudos to Bud Light for picking up on that.

Although at times the writing is uninspired and somewhat self-serving (the first third, for example, can be skipped), the authors make some interesting points about how advertising and DM have evolved in recent years. Traditionally, advertising was used as “air cover” or to “soften the market” by marching into the marketplace battleground with broadly distributed messages aimed at piquing the interest of consumers. Direct marketing, then, followed advertising, and targeted those interested folks with offers to convert that interest into actual sales.
Advertising was considered “top of the funnel” and direct marketing “bottom of the funnel” (referring to the purchase funnel). Advertising was supposed to hook them and direct marketing was supposed to get them onto the boat. Advertising affected their attitudes while direct marketing affected their behavior. You get the point.

As the authors argue in their piece, these days there is no such thing as a linear purchase cycle. There is no predictable, projectable flow of consumers from one stage (Awareness) to another (Interest) to another (Desire) to another (Action). Consumers today can go online and research brands and products on their own terms as opposed to those of marketer’s. And they do it much faster than before.

Where I disagree with these fine gentlemen is in the assertion that the two disciplines are the same. They are not. I agree that they are intertwined and that they no longer can work sequentially (but rather must work concurrently). I agree that direct marketing must play a much larger role in the marketing of a brand or product and that the role must be played throughout, not just at the end. But the same thing they are not.

The article discusses new roles for direct marketing (other than the traditional “closing the deal”). Direct marketing can improve a brand’s ability to listen to a consumer, react to the consumer, and learn from the consumer. Direct marketing allows a brand to personalize experiences and respond to a consumer’s needs more quickly and personally. Direct marketing allows a brand to take the conversation to the one-person level. All these activities and interactions contribute to the consumer’s perception of the brand and are therefore branding.

What the authors fail to address (and perhaps this is because they don’t want to get into this
conversation in public) is whether brand advertising per se is needed anymore. In this environment where (a) brand-consumer interactions are multiplied and accelerated, (b) more and more of those interactions are controlled by the consumer rather than the brand, and (c) consumers increasingly turn to peers and other “civilians” for information (and the truth) about brands, do we really need traditional brand advertising?

Traditionalists would tell you that people feel good about Nike or Apple because someone (marketers) told them how to feel. That they are good products, yes, but that all the goodwill surrounding strong brands was started by a marketer showering the masses with messaging painting the picture they wanted to be seen; telling the story they wanted to tell, the way they wanted it to be told.

From where I’m sitting, though, all that and much more can be accomplished by direct marketing, and it can be done in a more measured and managed manner, resulting in reams of actionable data that can be further leveraged in support of the brand. Perhaps that’s what the authors mean when they say that branding and response are the same. But I would say it differently. To me, branding is now just another function of direct marketing. Because doing brand advertising without a direct marketing framework these days feels irresponsible and dangerously disengaged from the real goal of all this money being spent: building the brand’s business by selling more.