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The desire to be ‘big’ has been an all-consuming focus in the business world. The predominant thinking has been that big leads to better and that big equals more profit. Anyone who questions the validity of this concept is condemned as a heretic. It’s so entrenched as a business mantra that it seems that ‘big’ is the foremost business purpose. THE objective, rather than an outcome of a well-crafted plan and consistent delivery of ‘better’.

In the last week, there have been three specific stories that brought this issue to the forefront and made me think about the effects of the ‘drive to bigness’.

In a February 14 internal memo, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz criticized a number of decisions that have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience.

“Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”

He goes on to list what he sees as the underlying issues they need to solve and to take his share of responsibility for those decisions. Many initially questioned the authenticity of the memo, but according to a story in AdAge the company confirmed it as authentic.

Whole Foods is another example where the quest for big has caused a drift toward the middle, thereby losing some of what made it successful in the first place. In a story in today’s New York Times, it says some people believe the chain is “not living up to its core values — in particular, protecting the environment and supporting organic agriculture and local farmers. In interviews, some of the customers who describe themselves as committed to these values say they have become disillusioned and taken their business elsewhere. “They are at such a level you expect the best from them, and if you don’t live up to it, people notice,” said Todd Hale, a senior vice president of consumer and shopper insights for Nielsen, the market research company.”

Whole Foods has grown from a small business to a mega-chain with 193 stores, and just last week announced a deal to acquire the 110 stores of its largest rival, Wild Oats.

In the Advertising Agency business, an industry already under intense pressure and scrutiny relative to the efficacy of the full-service agency business model, Forrester Research further added to the pain with the release of a rather bleak report entitled “Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency”. The report says clients are dissatisfied, but for no clear reason that data can back up. (Just think of what happened with Cramer-Krasselt late last week.) Instead it’s a vague disenchantment and disappointment that value is not being delivered at a meaningful enough level.

Today’s struggle may be a result of sins of the past — the way in which the agency industry grew. In the quest for ‘bigger’, agency holding companies purchased lots of diversified companies and specialty services groups in the belief they could create an integrated offering by virtue of having these ‘units’ that their full service agencies could call on as needed. The logic was that because it was all under the same holding company banner (keeping the money in the family) it could integrate the offering while still allowing these specialized units to have their own clients/projects thereby avoiding the competitive conflict problem. Seems logical on the surface. The media agnostic pitch to clients worked well for a while because the story made sense. Agency holding companies got real big.

But, the approach didn’t deliver real integration or integrated thinking on a holistic level (in part because of P&L lines that worked against collaboration among agency sister companies and in part because of the infamous above the line/below the line mentality). At best, it delivered a multi-channel marketing capabilities set. Without the thinking, you can’t create an integrated solution or deliver a customer-centric or user-oriented approach that is in sync with today’s media/consumer scape. So now agencies are desperately trying to fold these capabilities and units into the main agency body and reworking their process and operations, as well as changing internal mindsets to get to a more integrated and accountable service deliver. (On top of scrambling to keep up with the quickly changing media landscape.) It’s a difficult predicament, but one that we need to find innovative solutions for in order to thrive and maintain value as a strategic partner. Because as one anonymous CMO was quoted as saying: “Client-side marketers are better at managing integrated campaigns and being media-agnostic.”

There are a lot of people doing some heavy-duty introspection and that bodes well. Personally, I find it refreshing that Schultz is doing some soul searching about Starbucks and like this post in TomPeters.com “I was beginning to wonder whether another great experience was going to surrender to the short-term gains of operational excellence, Howard Schultz gave me faith.”, I too have hope that if someone as revered as Howard Schultz gets it, maybe others will too. The upside of pushing the question to the forefront is that if we truly look at and understand the realities and effects of the all-out quest for ‘big’, perhaps we can create ‘better’. As Howard Schultz is famous for saying, “success is not an entitlement.” It has to be earned over and over and over.

Wow! When I saw these via Adrants, I was awestruck by how incredibly powerful they were. Hard to watch.  Because they feel so real.  They definitely get their point across.

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Someone should create a powerful spot like this where the driver is on a cell phone and distracted to illustrate the potential consequences. Maybe they could get the cell companies to pony up some cash to do a little advocacy advertising to educate their users to stop the dangerous behavior before it gets any worse.

Powerful stuff. Produced by Denmark based Locomotion for the Danish Road Safety Council.

Major yuck! I’ve completely lost my appetite.

This from a Yahoo news story:

“News video showing about a dozen rats running around a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant in Greenwich Village was widely disseminated Friday on TV stations and the Internet.

The footage, taken from the sidewalk through a window, showed the rats running around the floor, between counters and tables and on children’s high chairs. The establishment was not open at the time.

News crews flocked to the scene, and onlookers gave a play-by-play as the rodents moved about. When one rat came close to the window, a person on the sidewalk said: “He’s coming for his close-up.”

Though it’s just one small franchisee shop in New York, the story has spread like crazy. This all started Friday morning and by Friday night, the rat story was seen worldwide. Nothing like this stays isolated. Just type “rats at KFC” in the search field on Technorati and you’ll see over 1400 blog posts. There are thousands of stories on Google.

The only statement I found from YUM was this: “This is completely unacceptable and is an absolute violation of our high standards,” Yum Brands said in a statement.

Maybe they don’t feel they have to do much since it was a franchise and not a company owned location, but they seem to forget that this is their brand that is being affected. They should probably be a bit more stand up about this. It will be interesting to see how badly the brands are damaged by this very gross situation.

JetBlue’s valentine was anything but sweet. As most everyone knows by now, an East-coast storm combined with some operational stumbles stranded thousands of JetBlue passengers on Valentine’s Day. Toilets overflowed when nine planeloads of JetBlue Airways passengers sat on the tarmac for six hours or more at JFK in New York. Tempers overheated as the carrier canceled a quarter of its flights over the President’s Day weekend. Resulting in some very pissed off and frustrated customers and lots of bad press.

But, I’ve been impressed with some of the steps they’ve taken to own up to the mistakes including the “customers’ bill of rights” unveiled Tuesday. I’ve been particularly impressed by the stand up nature of JetBlue CEO David Neeleman. He’s taken all the blame for the Valentine’s Day operational meltdown. No finger pointing or hiding. He has apologized in e-mails, in news reports, on JetBlue’s website, on a YouTube video and even on “Late Night With David Letterman.” And it feels like a genuine, heartfelt apology. Most airline executives (or any executive for that matter) are more inclined to hide beneath their desks and let their minions handle the angry mobs. But Neeleman has been standup enough to be not only the face of the problem, but is earning credibility as the face of the solution as well.

Its clear JetBlue takes its hard-won brand fame seriously, and from the video and triage response it seems like they are making real, fundamental changes on behalf of their customers. That’s encouraging and impressive. That kind of humility and transparency about the problem goes a long way to mitigate customer frustrations. Every company and everyone makes mistakes, but too many try to “spin” their way out of it by trying to offload blame on circumstances or finger pointing at others. Owning up to it and taking this kind of genuine approach will help JetBlue restore confidence and ensure their evangelists remain loyal.

Have the people at Career Builder lost their minds? What the hell kind of Kool Aid are they drinking over there? They can’t possiblity be that stupid can they? In what has to be the most absurd of all reasons ever uttered publically, CareerBuilder put its account up for review today saying that the Cramer-Krasselt Super Bowl ads failed to rank in the top 10 in USA Today’s viewer poll. Yes, that’s what they said to C-K. The USA Today poll for God’s sake. A stupid poll that no one gives a rat’s ass about. That doesn’t reflect results, sucess or anything of any meaning whatsoever. But, because they didn’t make the top 10, they are putting the account into review. Lunacy!

Cramer-Krasselt president, Peter Krivkovich immediately resigned the account. (Good for him!) And sent out at an internal memo, summarizing his take on the split. According to AgAge, his memo reads in part:

“To our amazement, to our total astonishment, all that astounding business success was less important than one poll,” reads part of Mr. Krivkovich’s memo. “C-Kers, we have to tell you — in our entire history, hell in the history of this crazy thing called advertising, I’m not sure there has ever been any thing as baseless or as unbelievable as that. It’s so ludicrous and they are so serious about that poll it’s almost funny.”

“They wanted us to make them famous; we did that in spades (brand awareness up by 64% — even Millward Brown, the venerable research firm, said their brand-building model couldn’t explain such incredible growth). But the TV ads did not make the top 10 in the USA Today poll — a poll that everyone knows doesn’t mirror results (see the continuing Bud sales decline for one!) — they just told us they will do a creative review.”

“‘Wait a minute,’ we said, ‘what about the incredible growth that is going on, the shares, the revenue, the awareness, the two best internet sites ever, the massive buzz, etc, etc.? What about all of that? That’s huge.’

“‘Yes,’ they responded, ‘but you [C-K] didn’t get the top 10 in the USA Today poll.’ ‘Hold on … we crushed every possible business metrics/barometer for success. Out of all the metrics and polls, it’s all about this one? You have to be F’ing kidding, right!?’”

“‘No, that’s it. It’s because of the poll.’ That was about the extent of the conversation.”

In the ideal world the agency industry would take notice of this lunacy and just say “NO” should the Career Builder folks come knocking at their door. Sadly, given the millions that CB spends, that won’t happen. But it would sure be nice if the industry had some balls or even self respect.

Despite general perceptions that the DVR and video on demand were the nails in the coffin for the traditional TV model and the :30 spot, a new report from Nielsen Media shows that almost a quarter of the ads recorded by DVRs actually get watched.

I’ll admit it surprised me. I’ve had TiVo for years, and in my house we skip right through the commercials. But a Nielsen Media Research study showed that:

“During the first 27 hours after being recorded, primetime broadcast commercials gain 16% in ratings among viewers age 18-49 in households with DVRs, with the total increase reaching 22% after seven days. This compares to a 35% increase in ratings for broadcast programs during the first 27 hours after the original telecast and a total increase of 47% after seven days.”

So it’s not all gloom and doom for the traditional television advertising model, which is good news considering that DVRs are gaining in popularity.

eMarketer estimates that over a third of US households will have the devices by 2010.

Bank of America is ditching their branding approach and slogan (Higher Standards) and launching a new approach. It will be unveiled this Sunday during the Academy Awards broadcast.

Why?

From the New York Times:

“It was part of our DNA and a great foundation,” said Catherine P. Bessant, who introduced the “Higher Standards” tagline four years ago when she served as Bank of America’s chief marketing officer. But in the last year, the company, based in Charlotte, N.C., installed a new marketing chief and hired the Omnicom Group as its principal advertising agency.

New CMO and new agency…new stuff. Sad. But the peeing on the turf thing is nothing surprising, but how’s this for strange justification.

“The new slogan most likely reflects those changes, as well as the bank’s belief that the phrase had become too ingrained in the company’s culture and needed to be refreshed.“

Huh? Too ingrained? And that’s a problem how? Especially when the mantra was “Higher Standards.” When the most important thing a company can do is “live” their brand and deliver on that experience day in and day out with customers, how can there be such a thing as too ingrained?

Same song, new verse. New CMO comes in and the “not invented here” and “I’m new, and must condemn everything that came before me” syndrome sets in.

In this case, Jeff Herbert, Aflac’s first CMO (a classically trained package-goods marketer) plans to ditch the duck even after he said he wouldn’t back in October. Instead he plans to focus more marketing on what Aflac does — supplemental insurance — while expanding its offerings and growing the category. Ohhhh, makes me tingle to think about that exciting content. A tip Jeff…insurance is an avoidance category, a complicated and confusing category. It’s not a packaged good and certainly not an impulse buy.

Maybe a duck does not directly sell insurance, but he has become a well-recognized and liked icon. Why on earth would you abandon that equity? Getting rid of the duck dilutes the brand and makes it like all other dull, forgettable insurance messages. People know, love and remember the duck. It gives the company some emotive character. It makes Aflac approachable and likeable. Use it.

Your goal should be how to use that to your advantage to deepen and target key messages…not, “we need to start phasing him out.” Smart marketers use these situations to their advantage. They don’t try to cram 10 pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag try to market an avoidance category as compelling. When we consumers need to purchase insurance we either start the study process by going to your web site or we turn to a trusted agent or advisor for the in-depth details. We don’t make purchase decisions based on the content of your ads. Your persona created by your marketing simply gets you into the considered set or not.

24 months from now, I bet we see a “change in strategy” yet again.

UPDATE:   This according to a press release from Aflac…“Contrary to recent media reports, Aflac has no intention of abandoning its use of the Aflac Duck.” Herbert said, “Like all of America, we love the Aflac Duck. It is as central to our marketing efforts today as it will continue to be going forward.”

Apparently there was lots of reaction from duck fans.  Many (including myself) read the media stories and walked away with the impression that Aflac was killing the duck.  Instead it sounds like Herbert’s intent is just to make him less prominent.

In The passenger, Nokia shows a new way for users to control and interact with video on the web. This live-action driving game, shot on film in the dark streets of Paris, put you in the drivers seat to navigate around the city to specific destinations. It was created to support Nokia’s push to be part of the growing in-car communications market with the Nokia Multimedia Car Kit CK-20W.

It’s a pretty engaging and lifelike experience that demos the product well in a James-Bond-in-Paris sort of way. If you drive the wrong way, you’ll find yourself insulted by the the rude Femme Fatal in your passenger seat. Despite driving way to fast and taking 90 degree corners I didn’t crash the car although I was subjected to a few insults from my passenger.

Put together by Hyper Happen, Fuel Industries and Karbon Arc.

Other than the fact that you use your hands to hold the beer in order to drink it, I’m not sure what the direct corelation is with Guinness, but this web site is pretty visually mesmerizing and fun to play with nonetheless. From what I understand, it’s a slightly different take on the “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait” tag. Dramatizing the wait for a pint in a new and quirky way. And the Serbo-Croat style folk music adds to the experience. You can create your own film short and set it to a music clip you pick from the available selection. It looks like good ones get placed onto the front page for all to enjoy

There’s a “hands” TV spot that starts running this week in the UK.