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The Consumer's Role in the Personal Experience Factor

In the past week, my partner Mike Dandridge wrote a great post on his blog about the role of the consumer in the personal experience factor (PEF), http://businessturnaround.blogs.com.  He writes that his wife called to let him know that she'd just gotten a free Diet Coke at Jack in the Box ... and he's right ... that's the kind of service that makes consumers talk about you or your business.

But he also admits that his wife is an eternal optimist, believing that "the universe is always conspiring to help her, and interestingly, it seems to be doing just that." 

In Alain de Botton's book, The Art of Travel, he shares the story of Xavier de Maistre, a Frenchman who wrote Journey Around my Bedroom in the spring of 1790.  Xavier built a large pair of paper wings he was going to use to fly to America.  He didn't succeed; but he did fly in a hot air balloon for a few minutes before crashing into a pine forest outside his home of Chambery, at the foot of the French Alps.

DaVinci's Mechanical Wing Device ca.1485 www.flyingmachines.org/davi/html

Journey Around my Bedroom suggests that "the pleasure we derive from a journey may be dependent more on the mindset we travel with than on the destination we travel to."

A key to that mindset - receptivity, Botton says.  "Receptive, we approach new places with humility."

Some people, like Mike's wife Frances, are born with this gift and never lose it.  Others become so hardened by circumstances and events, that nothing can soften their insight.  Some of us lose it and have to fight to win it back.

Everything we do is a journey ... a trip to the store, a trip to the drive-through for a Diet Coke, a trip around our bedroom, a trip around the world.  Sure, successful retailers and restaurants help to create an experience for us.  But, the adventure is up to us.  That's why it's called the Personal Experience Factor.

And, when I think of Xavier, the adventurous twenty-seven year old Frenchman, and the dream of the paper wings that would carry him across an ocean, I think of the lyrics written by Guy Clark on the latest Asleep at the Wheel CD (Reinventing the Wheel).

"He's one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith, spread your arms, hold your breath, always trust your cape."

 

 

Find Yourself a New Enemy

A friend just returned from a conference where Colin Powell spoke.

Powell recalled a Kremlin showdown in 1989 with Mikhail Gorbachev, who suddenly smiled and said: "General, you are going to have to find yourself a new enemy."

Another woman was visiting Moscow in 1989, Sarah Anschutz Hunt.  Her father's collection of art, The Anschutz Collection, was traveling worldwide as the West, West, West Exhibition.

Earnest Blumenschein's Indian in a White Robe

Sarah was able to see the Soviet Union's response to the collection and wrote, "the Soviets responded to several of the key themes that bind the collection together -- the notion of expansion into a rugged frontier, the idea of individual struggle against the elements, and a sense of overcoming adversity -- that is as much a part of their heritage as it is deeply ingrained in the American soul."

Sarah's honest reaction may show a hint of surprise.  But, during The Cold War decades, we had been taught time and again, the Soviets were different and were to be feared.

Philip's collection of western art represents many of his core values. And, a large part of the collection was found in a basement in Chicago ... the basement of the Santa Fe Railway headquarters.  At the time there wasn't much interest in western art, so, for the rights to purchase some of the pieces, he and his friend Wolf Pogzeba offered to go through the Railway's basement and catalog their findings.

Philip acquired 82 paintings and two large murals, the majority of which were excellent examples of the Taos Society and Santa Fe School.  Works from all 6 of the founding members of The Taos Society were represented in his purchase:  Bert Phillips, Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Sharp, Oscar Berninghaus, E. Irving Couse and W. Herbert Dunton.

When the Santa Fe Railway's spur opened rail travel to Santa Fe in 1880 -- the Battle of Little Bighorn was less than a five-year memory. 

When the artists and writers began arriving in northern New Mexico, (about 1898), the "savages" were still terrorizing the nation.  When artists and writers began living among them, understanding their culture and sharing their art, music, ceremony and stories, something changed.

In the early decades of the 20th Century, as Gorbachev stated nearly a century later, we would have to find "a new enemy."  Or, even worse -- maybe during the period of Manifest Destiny -- we were the enemy.   

And the art that touched both centuries, was the art made possible, in great part, by the financial foundations provided by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and The Fred Harvey Company.

It may touch and restore many more generations.

PS.  For those of you who don't know, the Santa Fe Railway's Advertising Director purchased over 600 works of art, primarily from the Taos Society and Santa Fe Schools, from 1900-1933.  These works formed their advertising images that were used in depots, in window displays, in their advertising, on their menus and on their famous Santa Fe Calendars -- which would be one of their key promotional tools for nearly  86 years (1907-1993).

New Mexico and the Fred Harvey "Indian Detours" would be one of their cornerstone destinations ... over 12,000 Santa Fe employees became ambassadors for the state.  The Santa Fe New Mexican stated this about William Haskell Simpson, advertising director of the Santa Fe Railway from 1900-1933 -- "It would be quite impossible to estimate how much New Mexico owes him for its progress during that period."

And, I have designed a 20-minute presentation that defines the elements of their brilliant execution, how it maximizes all seven of the key benefits of "art as a tool of marketing" and shows the power of their Return on Investment over the 1900-1933 period.   E-mail me if you'd like to know more.

Of Trash Collectors and Art Collectors

I read an article in the March 2005 issue of Art News about a series of new art appreciation classes being formed for the trash collectors of Frankfurt, Germany.  The classes were formed because the sanitation crews had (disassembled and) "collected" sculptures created by Michael Beutler, who was working in conjunction with the Frankfurt Arts Society.

My favorite version of the story so far is from The Armchair Garbageman (Lift with your Legs!):

January 20, 2005
Garbagemen must attend an art appreciation course
From the BBC and the good people at RobotJohnny.com

" 'It was one of about 10 sculptures, placed all around Frankfurt,' the sculpture's creator, Michael Beutler told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.  'This one was in the east end of Frankfurt, on a traffic island, an area where you can see a lot of trash flying about.  But this sculpture didn't look like trash.' "

The Armchair Garbageman continues:

"Yeah it did ...

Beutler explained that the sculptures are all made from yellow plastic, used for construction, such as for pouring concrete into buildings.  So it was bunches of construction material left in various locations, like parks, around Frankfurt.  Kind of like the piles of illegally dumped material that waste collection crews and municipal workers encounter on a daily basis ...

God help us all if this guy does installations in Toronto.

Actually ... maybe this is the answer to our garbage and litter problems.  We can just label every errant piece of trash with a Magritte-esque "Ce n'est pas détritus" .... (this is not rubbish) ...."

 

 

 

One of Michael Beutler's Sculptures

From Art News, March 2005 article by Tania Ralli, about the missing sculptures, about 3 of 10 in all:

"The sculptures were explicitly not marked as art in order to preserve the material's character," says Katja Schroeder, the project's curator. 

One was beneath a highway bridge, and another was placed near a soup kitchen.

Peter Postleb, the director of the Clean Frankfurt task force said, "It's my job to keep the streets clean and not ask a lot of questions."

Peter -- you shouldn't have to ask questions.  Maybe you should consider offering the kind people at the arts society, with all due respect, classes in communication skills, etiquette, public/community relations and the power of narratives in art.  I'll even teach it for you.

By the way, how did you like the classes? 

And, you know, your efforts increased the name recognition and visibility of Michael Beutler's work, and the efforts of the Frankfurt arts society to a new, international level.

A New Concept of Art and Science

These are the very intelligent words of artist Joseph Beuys.   

"Creativity isn't the monoply of artists.  This is the crucial fact I've come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art.

When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. 

All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created. 

But our idea of culture is severly restricted because we've always applied it to art.

The dilemma of museums and other cultural institutions stems from the fact that culture is such an isoloated field, and that art is even more isolated: an ivory tower in the field of culture surrounded first by the whole complex of culture and education, and then by the media which are also part of culture. 

We have a restricted idea of culture which debases everything; and it is the debased concept of art that has forced museums into their present weak and isolated position. 

Our concept of art must be universal and have the interdisciplinary nature of a university, and there must be a university department with a new concept of art and science."

- Joseph Beuys, (1921-1986)

Installation Artists and Art,  www.the-artists.org

Circles of History

Art must take reality by surprise.

                            - Fransoise Sagan, 1958

Pompeo Coppini, Italian Sculptor (1870-1957), probably would've hated that quote.  He believed in realism and authenticity.  He's the creator of "The Spirit of Sacrifice" Cenotaph (from the Greek word kenos for empty and taphos for tomb) at Alamo Plaza in San Antonio.

Photo Courtesy Lori Martin

The monument was erected to honor the heroes of the Alamo (March 6, 1836), and reads:  "They chose never to surrender nor retreat, these brave hearts with flag still proudly waving perished in the flames of immortality that their high sacrifice might lead to the founding on this Texas."

Although trained in Italy and spending time in New York and Chicago, he spent much time in Texas and built an art academy in San Antonio, which still exists ... the Coppini Academy of Fine Art ... dedicated to representational art.

His works are represented throughout the nation ... 36 Public Monuments, 16 portrait statues and about 75 portrait busts.  His Texas works extend from the Panhandle of the Plains Museum in Canyon, to the Hall of State at Fair Park in Dallas, to the the grounds of the Capitol in Austin and on the UT Campus, plus more. 

Two of Coppini's works in Austin caught my attention -- Terry's Texas Rangers Bronze and The Littlefield Fountain at UT Austin.

Photo courtesy of Brent Allen Thale

There's an interesting link between the two.

In 1861, Texan Benjamin Franklin Terry helped organize a troupe of about 1,000 Texans to fight in the Confederate army, they were known to the Southerns as the Texas Rangers, not quite accurate, but the Texans didn't mind.  They were valuable to the effort and one of the officers was George W. Littlefield (1842-1920).

Littlefield came back to lose everything and become prosperous again as a banker, cattleman and loyal servant of the University of Texas.  The Littlefield Fountain was made possible by Littlefield, and the creator Coppini had envisioned a fountain surrounded by bronzes of the men who made the North and South whole again and had died together in World War I.

The Littlefield Monument at UT/Austin.

 

"... after Littlefield's death in 1920, a power struggle at the university transferred control of the memorial to the university's master architect, Paul Cret.  Cret took it upon himself to dismember the thoughtful plans laid out by Coppini, rearranged the memorial and left it, as Coppini wrote in his memoirs, 'meaningless of any concrete conception.' "  

- http://utsouthmall.tripod.com/indexzaira.html

I'm looking forward to touring the Coppini Academy in a few weeks.

I've always visualized history as a flat time-line; maybe history is more like a circle ... continuing to spiral decade after decade, day after day, and life continues to "take reality by surprise."

The Art of the Loo

When my partner Dave Young mentioned on brandingblog.com that he'd been eavesdropping in the Cabela's restroom, it made me think of a conversation and another story I'd just read.

It reminded me of the conversation I had with a friend about the new Kona Grill that just opened at the Shops at La Cantera in San Antonio.  I asked her if it was worth the trip ... she said the food wasn't that great, they had a cool aquarium ... "but you've got to see the bathroom!"

Later I was doing research on the innovative use of art programs at Kohler when I read they'd won the distinct honor of having one of America's Best Restrooms in 2004.

Kohler's 2004 Award-Winning Restroom at The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin 

There's a similar organization, the British Toilet Association in the UK, awarding the same honors (The Loo of the Year Awards).  In fact, they're much more sophisticated ... they award in 50 distinct categories and in 3 different countries.

But back to the "America's Best Restroom Awards," the fact that the award is sponsored by Cintas, is no accident (oops ... no pun intended).

Cincinnati-based Cintas provides highly specialized services to over 700,000 businesses across America, and some of their product lines include entrance mats, restroom supplies, first aid and safety products.

Kirk Kirssin, Cintas Director of Marketing says "People form perceptions about the way companies do business based on a simple trip to the restroom.  That's something we help thousands of customers manage." 

(It affects the customer's experience.)

Cintas is serving their culture, their community and doing it in a relevant and innovative way.

By the way, if you'd like to see the 2006 finalists and cast your vote for this year's Best Restroom ... you have until March 31st. 

Starbucks Snow

Traveled to San Angelo, Texas and stopped at a (the) Starbucks.  Was bored and noticed there was writing on the side of the cup.  I'd always ignored it before.

"True story:  Recently I eavesdropped on a conversation between two twenty-something employees at a local Starbucks.  I listened as they barista mused about his taste in music.  Then the cashier asked him if he had ever heard the song Strawberry Fields Forever.  After a pause, the barista answered, 'No, I can't say I ever heard that one before.'  That's when I knew there really was such a thing as a generation gap."

- Mary Chapin Carpenter, Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter.  Her songs can be heard on Starbucks Hear Music station, XM Satellite Radio Channel 75.

D***, I just read an ad for XM Satellite Radio, Starbucks AND Mary Chapin Carpenter!  They were so sneaky ... I fell for it.

This week my founding partner, Roy H. Williams, wrote:

"Most ads never arrive at the Emerald City of Working Memory because they were dragged under by the poppy field of Broca's Area. Remember that field of poppies in The Wizard of Oz? After a long journey, Dorothy and her friends finally catch a glimpse of their destination. The Emerald City is in view. They need only to cross a field of flowers and then they'll enter the city and meet the mighty Wizard. But the poppies cause them to fall asleep halfway across the field.

The Emerald City is Working Memory, conscious awareness. If we do not reach it, we cannot speak to the wizard.

The Wizard is the prefrontal cortex of your customer's brain, that center of decision-making, planning and judgment.

Dorothy and her entourage are your message.

The Poppy Field is Broca's Area of the brain, ignoring – subduing – erasing every sensory stimuli that was predictable.

The Snow that re-invigorates your message is any element of the elegant unexpected... the chilling delight of surprise… particle conflict… elemental dissonance... incongruence… It's the last thing Broca would ever suspect...

And the last thing most advertisers would ever consider."

Starbucks considered it.  It was snowing.  But somehow I felt manipulated, cheated ... not delighted.  The same way I feel when I go to a movie that starts "at 6pm" and sit through 20-25 minutes of advertising before the movie begins.  So, why don't you just tell me the movie starts at 6:30pm?

What gives you the feeling of eating yellow snow?   

 

 

After going to the site mentioned on the cup, www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit, I learned the program is designed to stimulate conversation, to surprise ... and contributing authors represent a wide range of interests and ideas.  Most are not ads for XM Satellite Radio.  (I guess that was just the Venti cup for February 2006).

Isolation

        "The Answered Prayer" by Gerald Cassidy

Do you remember seeing your first, live theatre performance?

When I was a little girl, I remember the time my Dad invested in season tickets to Garden City's Hope Auditorium's summer season.   Garden City, with a population in the 1960s of about 20,000, was 25 miles away.   

Let me explain why this was such a big deal.

Although I wouldn't change a thing, I was wistful about growing up in the middle of nowhere.  Colorado Springs, Colorado and Wichita, Kansas, were about 5 hours away (to the west and east, respectively).  We were in the middle of nowhere.

We had two radio stations to choose from -- country and pop.  After dark we could get rock from KOMA in Oklahoma City.  We got two television stations ... S2s from Wichita -- the ABC and NBC affiliates.  No DVDs, no Blockbusters.  I felt isolated.  I felt aloneness in a landscape where you could see 50 miles from Indian Mound, a long hike from our farm and ranch, and still see nothing.

So, when we went to our first live theatre performance, it was a big deal.  It was great.

When I read about this program which was started by Monsanto in 1999, something in me was touched beyond belief.  My founding partner says this about great advertising and great programs ...

"Creating an evocative art or civic program is exactly like building, or extending, a brand.

All you have to do is mirror the deep convictions that most people don't even know they have."

- Roy H. Williams, Founding Partner of Wizard of Ads

"In 1999 Monsanto collaborated with Metro Theater Company, St. Louis, MO, to create the Rural Residency Program - a touring theater program that benefits the arts, education, business, and the community by:

• Offering children living in rural communities and their parents opportunities to experience live theater performances - often for the first time. Metro Theater Company, supported by a major grant from Monsanto, established a one-week residency in 20 rural communities.  Among these activities were in-school and public performances presented in community venues, plus classroom workshops with members of Metro Theater Company, and opportunities for high school students to develop leadership skills and self-expression through theater arts.

• Providing special workshops for teachers to help them develop ways to incorporate the arts into the curriculum and to develop public programs featuring the arts in community centers and auditoriums.

• Encouraging Monsanto regional managers and local seed site plant managers to become involved with the project by suggesting locations, conducting advance visits, hosting events and serving as a liaison among the schools, community agencies and Metro Theater Company to help tailor the program for each community."

Source:  Business Committee for the Arts -2004 Awards 

This program won the Innovation Award in 2004. 

It's relevant.  It's authentic and real to the community it serves.

This is what I do ... help you create your own unique, individual and relevant footprint.

 

Lost Souls

In August of 2005, Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs.com interviewed Chris Maher, president of Fosforus.com of Austin, Texas.   Maher expressed his concern about the effect of "marketing and advertising on the human soul, and thinking about the longer-term implications for our culture and society."

In the article, Maher said, "Marketing does not exist in a vacuum, in some special compartment, isolated from the world of consequences.  Marketing is not a value-neutral activity.  The choices we as marketers make reflect (whether we are conscious of this or not) a worldview and a conception of those on the receiving end of our messages and campaigns."

It works both ways ... as my founding partner Roy H. Williams has said, "We invest our time and money because our choices remind us, and tell the world around us, who we are."

Values ... core values of corporations, have long been hidden assets.  These are the unrecognized strengths (or weaknesses) of the corporate soul.  And like it or not, every corporation has one.   

• Today's article in Ad Age, Tyson Foods Launches Faith-Friendly Marketing Campaign

- Free downloadable prayer booklets from the web site and 128 chaplins in 78 plants nationwide
- Expresses "faith-friendly values in a gentle, low-key way" says corporate spokesman

“People are not just buying our products, they’re buying us and they’re spending more and more time looking on the Internet and elsewhere to find out, ‘what does this company stand for,’ “ said Bob Corscadden, Tyson’s Chief Marketing Officer. Consumers researching Tyson are likely to find on the Net a chronicle of Tyson’s long history of accusations of labor violations and illegal political gifts"

The Ad Age article continues, "Chairman-CEO John Tyson is known to have battled against drug and alcohol addiction before becoming a born-again Christian. Mr. Corscadden acknowledged that Tyson’s own core values clearly stress the idea of striving to do better despite making some mistakes along the way."

• Today's article in Media Post's Marketing Daily reported, from a New York Times article, that Ford is pulling all advertising for Jaguar and Land Rover in gay publications.  The corporation met with American Family Association Chairman Donald E. Wildmon last week.  Ford says it a cost-cutting measure.   

• Last week Home Depot's co-founder, Bernie Marcus, launched a dream.  The new Georgia Aquarium opened in Atlanta, thanks to Bernie's multi-million dollar gift, land from Coca-Cola and corporate support throughout Atlanta from leading, visionary corporations who understood what it would do for cultural tourism, education, architecture and Georgia's economy.

"Bernie Marcus knows The Home Depot would not have achieved its full potential without the incredible support of the citizens of Atlanta and Georgia, including customers, associates and stockholders. This is why he wants to give back to this great community, with a gift that reaches as many different lives as possible ... just as The Home Depot has touched the lives of a broad and diverse customer base."

It may be time to determine who and what you are, what you stand for ... your core values.  If you don't, people will see right through you.  Only then, can you use your values as the cornerstone of your culture, community and commerce.  People want to know "what your company stands for."

"What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly."  - Carl Rogers

The Art of Industry and Humanity

In 1927, Ford Motor Company hired artist Charles Sheeler to photograph Ford's masterpiece and contribution to the Industrial Age ... the River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.  Sheeler also created paintings from the photographs.  It was part of a multi-million advertising campaign to celebrate a plant that harnessed the power of self-sufficiency in mass production.  The plant had nearly all of the materials on site to produce Ford's automobiles; it was a suburban location, it was designed by noted architect Albert Kahn.

And  Henry's son, Edsel Ford, and the Detroit Institute of Arts collaborated to bring Diego Rivera to Detroit, producing works which would honor the life within the plant and the colors of diversity.   

But where do we see Henry Ford's love for art expressed?  At his home, where he dedicated art and architectural elements to honor his friends, his Master Mind group, the Four Vagabonds. 

The Master Mind group Ford relied on to achieve his dreams: his dear friends Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs and Luther Burbank.  (Although Luther was a part of the Master Mind group, it appears he didn't go on cross-country caravans with the Four Vagabonds.)

According to Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, (who first met Ford in 1908), a Master Mind involves two or more, and releases the power for an organized effort toward a definite end, in the spirit of perfect harmony.

They were unlikely friends, in many ways.   It's easy to understand the magnetism of Edison, Ford and Firestone's drive; but, John Burroughs was a famous author and naturalist, Luther Burbank was an inventor of over 800 strains and varieties of plants, a scientist and botanist.  What they all shared was a sense of wonder, curiosity and the spirit of innovation.

In the Ford Library at their historic Fair Lane estate are two sets of the complete works of John Burroughs.  Ford had the estate's designer build a tribute to his friend John Burroughs, a wildlife grotto made of rocks from Burroughs' boyhood home.

The English Room was the suite for their frequent guests, Mina and Thomas Edison.  When Mina and Thomas weren't at Fair Lane, they'd escape to one of their favorite winter retreats ... where the Fords owned the house next to them, in Ft. Myers, Florida.

The Field Room at Fair Lane contains wood carvings of each of the Four Vagabonds, in each corner of the room on the ceiling, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone as riflemen, Thomas Edison as a fisherman and John Burroughs as a cook.

And, at the Henry Ford Museum's Greenfield Village, is the Garden Office of Luther Burbank (built in 1906 in Santa Rosa, California).

The Master Mind group of Ford, Firestone, Burroughs, Edison and Burbank cradled the heart and soul of their dreams.  More importantly, it was the driving force that made each accountable to make their dreams a reality.

Ford said this of his first (1896) meeting with Edison,

"No man up to then had given me any encouragement. I had hoped that I was headed right. Sometimes I knew that I was, sometimes I only wondered, but here, all at once and out of a clear sky, the greatest inventive genius in the world (Edison) had given me complete approval. The man who knew most about electricity in the world had said that for the purpose, my gas motor was better than any electric motor could be."

Who will be carved in the corners of your Field Room, when you all realize you can make a difference?

Painting Above:  Charles Sheeler's American Landscape
Ford Quote from Edison As I Know Him, by Henry Ford, taken from the Detroit News Article, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison -- a friendship of giants, by Patricia Zacharias