Margaritaville Redux

Tommy Bahama, purveyor of tropical-themed leisure attire to men who otherwise wear pleated Dockers and golf shirts featuring the logo of the resort that hosted their last sales meeting, is now getting into the liquor business. On the way into work this AM, I saw a full-page ad on the back of someone else’s paper for Tommy Bahama rum.

Clever brand extension, given that the whole Tommy Bahama brand image is tied up in a more affluent version of a Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville lifestyle. And so using TB rum (ouch, that’s a tough abbreviation) to make your piña coladas while wearing your TB pseudo-Hawaiian shirt and shorts, makes a lot of sense for the target.

Sort of like Ralph Lauren coming out with single malt scotch or Munsingwear coming out with an ironically blue collar beer.

Social Networking For People Who Work

The future of social networking, as I've predicted, seems to lie in catering to professionals who want to get in touch with each other. Whether to network for job, discuss business issues, or just share information. Without having to see pictures of each other playing beer pong or learning what songs their professional contacts are listening to.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal affirms this belief, with an article about the growth of professional social networks, including one for our industry called AdGabber, that I'd never heard of, but seems to be a subset of AdRants, and which seems to be more of a traditional message board than a LinkedIn-esque networking site.

Though the article doesn't make a clear distinction between message boards and blogs and actual social networking sites, the line between them is getting blurrier by the day. But bottom line is that the ability to reach out to colleagues from all over and discuss issues related to work is something that continues to have great appeal.

Your Brand Is Still Not My Friend

Via AgencySpy, we learn that Wal-Mart's attempt to put up a page on Facebook turned into a fiasco as over 300 people left anti-WalMart messages on the page, including this one from a Janine Carmona, who succinctly states the "Your Brand Is Not My Friend™" credo

Facebook should take the number of negative comments on this page as a note that we don’t support this company [for] its use of a space for social networking. This space is for people talking to other people. Facebook, get your priorities straight.

Lazy Links

Hey, it's the last week of summer.

More "CGC" That's Not From "Cs"
Adverganza's always astute Catherine Taylor has a great post about the Heinz "CGC" (that's "Consumer Generated Content" for the uninitiated) TV spot contest, and how all of the alleged "Cs" clearly know their way around a pack shot and then some.
She tells it much better than I can.

Even Lowbrow Brit Humor Doesn't Translate
Interesting article in today's Times about the differences in British and American humor with some good quotes from relevant Hollywood types.

Why Good Agencies Go Bad
AdPulp's Danny G. has a really insightful piece on how great agencies are started and why they so often wind up failing.

The Others

One of the more interesting things about the August vacation period is that it provides a rare opportunity for upper middle class New Yorkers and Angelenos to leave their bubbles and come into contact with The Others: that great mass of middle and working class America they otherwise insulate themselves from during the rest of the year.

The contact, worthy of a re-read of Paul Fussell’s seminal work, Class, often occurs at places like Disney and other theme/water parks their offspring have managed to drag them to. Beachside resort towns run a close second, though rising prices have managed to keep all but the upper end of the upper middle classes out of more easily isolated places like Nantucket and the Hamptons.

The initial reaction, especially in a hotel-like setting, is always the same. Mr. and Mrs. Senior Vice President realize that there are a number of families by the pool where the father is wearing jeans shorts and sporting decidedly non-tribal tattoos, the type commemorating the birth of a child or a friend killed in Iraq. There’s the whispered “This place costs $450 a night. How do those people afford it?” Followed by a reassurance that they must either have won some sort of contest or be putting the whole thing on a credit card that they’ll spend years trying to pay off.

What the Senior VPs don’t realize is that they’ve likely bumped up against the Upper Blue Collars: all those plumbers and electricians and contractors who’ve grown rich installing Brazilian cherry wood cabinets, recessed lighting, Tuscan stone tile and the like in their houses. And that those people, whose incomes are often way north of six figures, represent a very different America than the one they live in.

So the Senior VPs will watch in horror as the Upper Blue Collars suck down a six pack of domestic beer at 11 in the morning, scream at their kids for wanting the pink straw instead of the purple one (the Senior VPs inclination being to demand the waitress produce a pink straw, ASAP) and let their unacceptably corpulent bodies bake in the sun without benefit of several layers of designer SPF 100 sunscreen.

Putting comic possibilities aside for a moment (and believe me, it’s tempting to keep running with this) the point here again is one of Toad’s Tirades: Not Everyone Is An Upscale Urban 30something White Male Hipster. Because whether it’s an Upscale Blue Collar family at a Cape Cod hotel or an Actual Blue Collar family on line at Disney World, there’s a lot more of them than there are of us. All too often advertisers and marketers ascribe our narrowly focused tastes and desires to the mass of Americans: I don’t think Tim Allen is funny, ergo no one does. I would never eat at a chain restaurant, ergo people only eat there because they have no other choices.

Wrong.

We sell things for a living. And to sell them, we must be mindful of who we’re selling them to. Now I am not giving you a license to go out and do banal, insulting work because people in The Flyover Zone love Home Improvement and The Olive Garden. No. It’s a much harder task, actually. Create something that you’re proud of that they’ll actually like as well.

It is possible.

Hilton Gets A Clue

File this under "Things Corporate America Is Doing Right"

Most of us have had the experience of traveling to a city too small to support a major hotel. And for years, the only option was staying at some really horrible small chain or local inn where the benefits of even a Marriott were clearly evident.

But over the past 3-4 years, chains like Hilton Garden Inn, Doubletree Inn and Hampton Inn (all of which are owned by the Hilton empire) have taken a tip from boutique hoteliers like Ian Schrager and chains like the W, and made tremendous improvements in the quality of their hotels.

Little things matter. And so better quality sheets and towels, toiletries that don't look like they'll cause a nasty rash, free WiFi (something many five star hotels might want to emulate) and updated, modern-looking furnishings all make a huge difference. So do HVAC units that operate off a wall-mounted digital thermostat rather than a series of red and blue knobs on the actual unit. And showers with either adjustable sprays or rainwater heads or something other than the rust-stained workhorses of yesteryear.

They've turned staying at these hotels from a hardship post to a pleasure. (Okay, maybe not a full-on pleasure, but close.) It's so rare that corporate America actually does something right, that they actually listen to consumers and give them what they want, that I felt compelled to give them a shout-out. The fact that Hilton has managed to do something cool at all three chains is particularly noteworthy.

Outreach Program

New Business Buzzword Alert: "Reached out" as in "I reached out to the client and they said they'd get back to us tomorrow."

First time I heard this I figured that there was some sort of problem, hence the account person was "reaching out" to the client. But no, it seems it's now business speak for "called" and/or "emailed."

You know, for the sort of people who have "action items" and "deliverables."

High School Musical, Again

Today’s Times has a front page story on High School Musical 2. The Times, which has an unerring knack for discovering trends long after they happen, goes on to talk about how Disney and its marketing machine have swept the underserved tween (Times says 9 to 14 year old; I’d say closer to 6 to 12) market.

Two things of significance to those of us in advertising and marketing:

1. A television show actually served as a touchpoint for a generation. Much as we trumpet the death of television and its disbursement into a million little specialty networks, High School Musical is going to be something this generation remembers as part of their childhood, much as we remember The Brady Bunch. Disney doesn’t do a whole lot of online promotion other than on their own site, and that site didn’t have a particularly robust selection of High School Musical offerings. Why? Well mainly, I’m guessing, because the intended demographic is (technically) not allowed online without their parents. But also because Disney has figured out that Your Brand Is Not My Friend™. A marketer trying to insinuate itself into areas of the interweb where kids socialize would be clearly creepy (as opposed to a marketer trying to insinuate itself into an area where adults socialize, which is more annoying than creepy.)

2. I mentioned The Brady Bunch before. That was a network TV show that was aimed at and acceptable for, kids. One of the parents interviewed in the Times’ article noted that “In a regular teen movie, they’d be jumping all over each other and you’d have to bleep things out.” That is huge. I mean other than certain reality shows (e.g. American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance) there’s precious little on during prime time that tweens can watch. Most sitcoms—even those on at 8PM—feature a healthy dose of sex (real or implied), and morality issues aside, a leer-com like How I Met Your Mother just plain isn’t all that interesting to kids. Disney figured this out a few years ago and now they’re sitting back and reaping the rewards. There are many underserved markets out there which can yield similar results, the trick is identifying them and talking to them in a language that suits their aesthetic-- not yours.