Brand Musings
The Ad-Free Netflix, Davos, Shaving, Simon Sinek's Bathroom, Sustainability Data and TV Advertising's Left-Brain Problem Edition
Each week, Brand Musings takes a look at some recent stories from the world of branding and culture.
Davos Report
The meeting of the world’s elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland closed last week, and there were some interesting highlights…..
The author of Sapiens Yuval Noah Harar issued a series of warnings to delegates,
On Jobs- Now there are new jobs in designing software or in teaching yoga to engineers – but how does a fifty-years-old truck driver reinvent himself or herself as a software engineer or as a yoga teacher? And people will have to do it not just once but again and again throughout their lives, because the automation revolution will not be a single watershed event following which the job market will settle down, into a new equilibrium. Rather, it will be a cascade of ever bigger disruptions, because AI is nowhere near its full potential. Old jobs will disappear, new jobs will emerge, but then the new jobs will rapidly change and vanish. Whereas in the past human had to struggle against exploitation, in the twenty-first century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance. And it is much worse to be irrelevant than exploited.
On Jobs- Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new “useless class” – people who are useless not from the viewpoint of their friends and family, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system. And this useless class will be separated by an ever-growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.
On the Surveillance State- Just imagine North Korea in twenty years, when everybody has to wear a biometric bracelet which constantly monitors your blood pressure, your heart rate, your brain activity twenty-four hours a day. You listen to a speech on the radio by the great leader and they know what you actually feel. You can clap your hands and smile, but if you're angry, they know, you'll be in the gulag tomorrow.
Nick Thompson of Wired wrote about a panel on deep-sea mining he moderated which, forced some serious thinking about the topic.
Sylvia Earle. She’s now 84 and she stood up, a little frail, and came up from the audience to the stage. She spoke about the magic of the deep sea and of how little we know. And then she noted that minerals we seek to mine aren’t just rocks. They’re the accretion of living things, built up over millions of years. Who are we to yank them from the ground, through a process we don’t understand, in the service of growth we may not need? I left the room persuaded that, at the very least, we need a long moratorium on this technology and a sprint toward trying to figure out if there are ways to build the batteries of the future without cobalt, polymetallic nodules and the other treasures of the deep ocean floor.
Why Netflix won’t Take Ads
In the company’s most recent earnings call- Reed Hastings explained clearly why Netflix does not want to be in the ad business.
“We want to be the safe respite where you can explore; you can get stimulated, have fun and enjoy – and have none of the controversy around exploiting users with advertising,”
Netflix executives also got to talk about the real benefit of winning awards.
….you'll see that if we further our reputation for doing well for content, sorry for talent by being one of the best in the world at winning awards for our talent then the business benefit is that we will win deals that we wouldn't have otherwise won for incredibly entertaining content. So think of all of our awards work as a really smart way to make us the best home for talent in the world.
Procter Makes Progress in Grooming
Naysayers love to point fingers at P&G for having its shaving business disrupted, but the company’s recent quarterly report Q2 2020 suggests the tide might be turning.
Our Grooming business strengthened in the quarter overall, we were up 4% and that's the third consecutive quarter of growth. Importantly, we grew global market share point three points, which is very encouraging. Shaving within that was up versus year ago, not as much as – I mean not as much as the dry shave business, but the wet shave business did grow. And we've seen pretty strong response to our investments both in products in and communication. Encouragingly, we've added 18 million new users to our brands over the last 12 months. SkinGuard is contributing to category growth; it's doing well and continues to expand. In the US, for example, razor value share on SkinGuard is now 9%, which is a third largest for a P&G sub brand. And we're building unlike most of our competitors our shave business online. We're pretty excited about the Billie acquisition. That's something that obviously needs to pass regulatory clearance. And we need to remain separate from that business until that happens. But there's a real unique set of skills, experiences and knowledge between Billie and P&G that we think has the potential to create some real magic. Clearly, they've created very effectively a fresh new brand that extends across several categories. And they've done it and we can benefit from their experience on this in a digital fashion with one-to-one mass marketing, which is something we're continuing to increase our focus on and capabilities related to. We have innovation capability across the majority of their categories. We have best in class manufacturing across the majority of their categories. And we have a go-to-market presence, both online and brick-and-mortar, certainly in omni channel that can accelerate the growth in that business. So we're very excited about the potential and are working through the clearance process
Can You Back up Your Sustainability Claims?
The Financial Times published a fascinating story about VW’s analysis of the environmental impacts of its Diesel Golf vs. the E-Golf and one would expect that there would be no contest. Still, VW’s data shows it does not support the notion that the E-Golf is substantially better for the planet.
As the FT explains….
The most striking thing is that, due to the energy intensive nature of battery production, it takes roughly 120,000 kilometres of use for the e-Golf to have a lower emissions.
Finally, they get around to the perception vs. reality thing.
Sure, owning an electric car may make you feel good. That you’re doing your bit for the planet, but as it turns out, unless you’re planning to drive one to obsolescence, while using clean power sources, they might not be the best option to ensure Mother Earth’s survival today.
Another significant point here is that some in-depth analysis has been done to examine the impacts, which is probably something that not every brand who makes a sustainability claim has the discipline to undertake.
Simon Sinek on The Container Store, Success and Bathrooms
On the Jordan Harbinger podcast, master strategist Simon Sinek explains how he owes his success to TEDX and his exposure to the masses (40 million views) from big TED. He also explains how The Container Store is a brilliant example of a company playing the Infinite Game (see below) and why and how his bathroom looks like the chalkboard in the movie A Beautiful Mind.
Simon talks about how The Container Store handled the last recession very differently from other companies.
When the recession hit after, as you said, 20 percent compounded growth over the course of 30 years, all of a sudden, everything plummeted by 13 percent and they weren’t used to that. And so, like many companies, they looked into cost-cutting because they had to get through these rough times, but they did not lay off a single human being. They did not look to layoffs as the means to cost cut. But what they did do is they went around the company and said, “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. We need to tighten the belts.” And they had some ideas, and spontaneously, people started taking it upon themselves to find more opportunities
Lemon Takes a Look At Advertising’s Left-Brain Problem
Orlando Wood over at research company System 1 has produced a fascinating book - Lemon that examines the creativity crisis in advertising. Wood’s analysis looks at the rise of left-brain cures in TV ads over the more emotional right-brain cues. The kicker isn’t just that the left-brain signals are becoming more prominent, but Wood also proves the ads are less effective.
Wood will appear on the Inspiring Futures podcast soon.
Other News
Italian confectionery giant Ferrero is a very-successful privately-held company that paid a dividend to its owners of $714 million. In other Italian news- the heirs to the empires of Moncler, Prada, Diesel, and others are starting to get their feet wet with some serious positions inside their parent’s companies and also making significant investments in other brands. India has a single-malt whiskey industry. Lexus just produced a report on the future of luxury. Ben Shaw over at BBH wants Powerpoint dead. Now is the time for Peak Everything- from youth to cars, to oil and on and on. Thas Naseemuddeen former CSO of Omelet (and a Drum Person of the Year for 2019() and now CEO was a recent guest on my podcast Inspiring Futures
Final Word
This Spring in NY - Sigrid Jacob and I will be organizing a Photography Bootcamp for Strategists. The idea is to spend a full day learning about and exploring through practical exercises, the intersections of the two disciplines. The camera becomes a conduit to help you see the world and people differently, and in so doing, change your perspective about the world of human insight and strategy. For more information, please contact me at edcotton1@gmail.com or Sigrid at sigridjakob@gmail.com