On Emma Sullivan vs. Sam Brownback: A marketing case study

This post has been cross-posted at Feministe, which is a good place to go for more about Emma Sullivan and her shameful tweet.

Okay, so the biggest screwup out of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's office of late is easy: tattling on an 18-year-old to her high school for some juvenile comment she made on Twitter during a Youth in Government field trip to the capitol. I mean, seriously: Emma Sullivan says, to her mob of 60 whole Twitter followers, "Governor Brownback sucks." Brownback's staff runs to YinG and Sullivan's school to say, "Waah! Your student is being mean!" And supposedly Sullivan is the immature one.

One thing Brownback's office didn't do wrong, although they're taking some flak for it, was monitoring Twitter for mention of Governor Brownback. This isn't creepy or paranoid--it's actually marketing best practice. Online social media offers people, businesses, and organizations unprecedented access to the feelings and opinions of their target audiences. If you hear that people are criticizing you about a certain issue, you're now able to reconsider your stance on it, make a note to address it publicly in the future, or even communicate with aggrieved individuals directly. Or if you see that some high-school student has tweeted that you suck, you can roll your eyes and say, "Nice. Really mature" and move on. (Or show some respect to a constituent and reply, "I'm sorry you feel that way. Why do you think the governor sucks?" Or be silly and reply, "No, YOU #blowalot… for tweeting about the governor when you could just ask him yourself. What can we do for you?" There are a hundred ways to handle it before you get to tattling.)

But there's one comment from Brownback's director of communication, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, that makes me think she's completely ignorant of the functions of her own job:

That wasn't respectful," responded Sherriene Jones-Sontag. "In order to really have a constructive dialogue, there has to be mutual respect."

1. When someone tells you you suck on Twitter, she's probably not attempting to start a constructive dialogue--she's probably just venting. And/or goofing around with her friends.

On the plight of small-bootied women

Okay, so I thought it was a portent of badness when, on my first day of the new year, I got to mop up dog puke, thus nearly concussing myself on the inside of Dave's crate and missing the morning staff meeting. It turns out I was right, because I find, when I get to work, an e-mail directing me to a product that addresses that most vital of womanly concerns:



1. I can't really speak to the usefulness of the Booty Pop, because, as a woman with a sufficient abundance of booty, I'm not the target market. But the women in the video seem ready to weep in the ladies' room and cut themselves at their lack of booty, and they seem orgasmically elated at the new addition of booty, so I guess the product is a winner.

2. We all know how I feel about the word "booty." Shudder.

3. I'm concerned about the woman in the ad who is speaking animatedly with her friend as the third woman comes out of the dressing room to show off her brand-new ass. I know that my friends and I have been known to say to each other things like, "Wow, your ass looks great in those jeans," but it never really goes further than that. We certainly don't discuss it with a third party while the owner of the ass in question preens in the mirror. This woman may well be saying something like, "God, she's already such a slut, even without an ass. With that thing, she's going to be through both of our boyfriends by lunchtime. God help us if she gets a ShapeChanger too."

4. The popping sound as the women's butts go from flat to fabulous strikes me as unhealthy.

5. The whole thing makes me think about the scene in Bridget Jones's Diary where Bridget is deciding which knickers to wear on a date.

Major dilemma. If I actually do, by some terrible chance, end up in flagrante, surely these [lacy knickers] would be most attractive at crucial moment. However, chances of reaching crucial moment greatly increased by wearing these scary, stomach-holding-in panties very popular with grannies the world over. Tricky. Very tricky.

There's also the concern that, in the heat of the moment, when the Booty Pops come off, your male admirer will feel a victim of false advertising.

Use in conjunction with the Invisible Tummy Trimmer to completely disguise the shape of your shamefully natural body and cut off all circulation below the waist.

(h/t Holly)

On rebranding (not the kind that involves actual fire, although sometimes it feels like it does)

Okay, so I am, of course, just a little bit of an advertising nut, and branding fascinates me. That's why I loved this link from @BirminghamWorks, where Fortune magazine looks back over a dozen old branding efforts and their updated looks. It follows Apple from its Isaac Newton logo through the rainbow-striped disco fruit to the current, sleek chrome apple and Starbucks from its naked siren to its more stylized, less-naked siren.

The piece also looks at questionable brand renovations. The new Kraft logo, note the writers, is kind of nebulous and devoid of real meaning and also resembles the Yoplait logo, which is a General Mills product. The new "smiley" Pepsi swoosh could be a loser, and the Tropicana glass of orange juice was such a loser that they changed everything back just two months after its debut. The biggest stinker, they seem to feel, is the new Blackwater logo--they say it looks kind of sinister and spy-ish. I guess I can see that a little, particularly if you know what Blackwater (now "Xe," pronounced "zee," which everyone's definitely going to figure out on the first try) does, but to me, it looks more like a computer company. My first instinct is to wonder if they offer netbooks. Blackwater has a lot of bad press to overcome, but I don't really know where they're trying to take the company now, and this logo certainly doesn't give any clue.

Mentioned not in that article but in one from the beginning of July is Sci Fi's rebranding effort into... ugh, "Syfy." When I first read the press release that announced the change, I thought it was a clever prank designed to horrify viewers and marketing professionals alike before coming clean and giving everyone a relieved chuckle (and maybe an affectionate, "Oh, you're so bad."). And yet no. Now known as "seefee" around my household, the network hasn't really changed its programming--just its name, really. It's still, for the most part, a mix of Science and Fiction. They've added shows like "Warehouse 13," which is "a human story--about relationships, about isolation" that is also about... a warehouse full of supernatural relics. And shows like "Caprica," which is... a futuristic other-planet prequel to space-wars show "Battlestar Galactica." "It isn't about abandoning our dedicated fanbase," says Chris Czarkowsi, ad and sales rep for Seefee. "It's about including all those people who don't realize Syfy has anything to offer them. The point at which we change identity is when people don't see us so narrowly."

And the answer is a new, weird-looking brand that still doesn't tell people what the network has to offer?

I'm not promising that the new brand won't work out; the article reports that Seefee has drawn 12 new advertisers in the first quarter and that the rebrand did well with focus groups. But the question remains: How well will the brand do at attracting the new viewers, the ones who don't self-identify as sci-fi fans, to their programming? My biggest concern is that "Syfy" doesn't mean anything. It doesn't tell me anything about the shows they offer, the fact that sci-fi has been going mainstream for quite some time (Transformers, The Matrix, etc.), the fact that many of its shows are just as character- and plot-driven as they are techy or fantastical. It's just... seefee.

My instinct would have been not to convince potential viewers that seefee is the kind of TV that they want to watch but to convince potential viewers that sci-fi is what they've been watching all along anyway. A marketing campaign could easily push the more human tilt of some of its more human-tilted shows (the kissy bits from "Battlestar Galactica," the teary bits from "Primeval," the bits from "Sanctuary" that--wait, no, best to leave out "Sanctuary") to demonstrate the more human tilt of the network without having to rebrand it entirely. But maybe my instinct is wrong. The answer will be borne out in future viewership and advertising figures. But I hate waiting.

In the meantime, I'm sticking to my guns: A good brand needs to give some indication of the nature of the product or service you're offering, because you won't always be around in person to decipher your new logo for confused customers. The UK's "Consignia" lasted all of 14 months before switching back to a far clearer "Royal Mail." Where did Cingular go? Back to AT&T Wireless. And what the hell is an Altria?

Hint: It may or may not be Phillip Morris's attempt to escape Congressional-hearing notoriety; it's almost certainly not a beaver-looking critter with the tail of a rat.