An associate rented a car from National for a week for about $125. She needed to extend the rental for a second week and that week alone was quoted at over $300. Wait. Not as stupid as it gets.

After much discussion of how such a discrepancy could exist, she asked what if she picked up a different car, same class for the second week in a new rental? The surprising answer was that if she extended her current car for a week, the bill was over $300 for the new week, but if she drove the first car back to the airport and rented the same grade but a different car for the new week, the cost would be only $100.

I am not sure who looks the most stupid here, the National Rental brand or the work associate who drove 30 miles back to the airport and traded cars and another 30 miles back to where she was working, and still stayed with National.

She does however report that the brand loyalty and connection she once felt for National is now reduced to a relationship based purely on price.

Her change is not in the best interest of the brand, National, which just slid back from Loyalty to one choice within her evoked set of several other companies, to be chosen in the future solely on price.

This was probably what is known as a “context” buy, where an ad is placed within articles with related content to what is being sold.  In this case the computers that placed the ad got related context, but it was negative.

Not as bad as naming a brand of luggage Amelia Earhart on purpose years ago, but a mistake never the less.

It seems that most of us have two great fears.  The first is the fear of failure.  The second is the fear of success.

By most people’s standards, I have led a life of success.  I am educated, can jitterbug well at the company picnic (good on my feet), am persuasive, not stupid, passionate about ideas, and have translated my passion into president of publicly traded company at 34, and made enough money to make most people happy.  AND YET I AM PLAGUED EVERY DAY BY FEAR.

First, I am afraid to fail.   But worse, I sometimes behave as if I am afraid to succeed.  That may be the value of a partner for me.   IN a partnership, my goals are committed to someone else besides me.   Whatever, I always do better with a partner, and I have found that making success worth more to my partner (51%+) than it is to me works well for me also.

How have you dealt with the fear of failure or the fear of success?

First of all, the situations, Gordon Ramsey hired for a Christmas party, and another I meant to remember for this post but cannot at the moment, are worst case scenarios of borrowed interest in that they are a far stretch from the Acura cars being sold, and secondly because the borrowed interest situations take up over half the spot before one has any idea what is being advertised.  NOTE:  I looked that second situation up, and it is Bette Midler hired to do your caroling.  No wonder I forgot it

I recommend that an advertiser NEVER resort to borrowed interest.   Find something interesting about what it is you are selling and then find an execution of that idea that makes the ad interesting.

The Acura idea here, “doesn’t have to be complicated,” offers many ways to make it interesting without bringing in situations that have nothing to do with cars.    Really bad advertising from my point of view.  I want to think that I would never have approved this advertising.

We don’t just have jobs.  We generally have a job because it helps someone else so much that they willingly pay for the product of our work.  Once at Neutrogena we figured that if we lined all the teenagers up whose acne was cured by Vehicle N, all of whom would want to thank the people responsible for the product, the line would stretch from our plant in LA to 161 miles east of Amarillo, Texas.   This was a very motivating mnemonic for our employees.  Much more meaningful than “double digit stockholder growth.”

Bringing employees in touch with grateful customers is a good idea for the morale and meaning of life for both parties.  In today’s world, no need for separation, even if done digitally.   I love the GE story and this ad.  Makes me feel good about GE for sure.

The brand campaign defies belief in that adults would never have such a good dance party without alcohol, but the party, the music and the editing makes me want to believe it and more so, it makes me want to drink Dr. Pepper which I have done because of the campaign.

The intro commercial for Dr. Pepper TEN gets the point across and features a very interesting positioning.  “It’s not for women.”   First time I saw TEN in the cold case, I immediately remembered the ad and bought one.   (Even though the package design is really bad.)   TEN tasted different and it did seem like it was a diet alternative for men.   KUDOS.

Should be noted that I am not a regular drinker of Dr. Pepper, and both campaigns made me try it.

I saw what I consider a “practical” last night for media planning.   Chick Filet ran an ad for breakfast at Chick Filet at 11:30 during the LSU telecast.   I thought immediately that I should go to Chick Filet for breakfast, then remembered it is closed on Sunday.   If  you are not open the next morning, how much sence does it take to not advertise breakfast the night before.   Six nights of the week it makes sense for Chick Filet to advertise breakfast but Saturday night is not one of the six.

I  suspect that the brands which were either form factors (Oreo’s), or named for form factors (Wheat Thins) or both (Alka Seltzer) will suffer the most from line extensions that departed from their original form factor.  I think the brand Alka Seltzer is already suffering.   As another instance, your grandchild will not know what an Oreo is.   I  bring this up because occasionally, a brand will introduce a line extension that is a very big stretch but is a very good product in its own right.

Such is Wheat Thins Flatbread.   This is an excellent product, so much so that flatbread sales may some day surpass original Wheat Thins.   That is when the brand dilution really begins, isn’t it?  If a new extension is off the shelf  in 9 months, very little damage accrues to the parent brand.   But when a new extension is successful,  brand dilution is inevitable.  The greater the stretch between the parent brand and the new extension, the greater risk for brand dilution.

This happened to us at Neutrogena 30 years ago.   Neutrogenal hand cream actually grew to have more users than Neutrogena soap, the parent brand.   It was important that the parent brand (known more for what it wasn’t that what it was) remain the leader in people’s minds.  So we started emphasizing Norwegian Formula as the name of the hand cream with Neutrogena clearly relegated to the background.   Over the years they began to act like separate brands and now each is vastly larger than they were together then, and importantly, neither detracts from the other.

The company taking the greatest risks with their brands seems to be Nabisco.   It will be interesting to see what is left of Nabisco when today’s generation of consumers are grown.   Of course the manager’s taking the risks with the company’s greatest resources, the brands, will be long gone by then.

What do you  think?

We have a relatively new employee, Jimmy Bogroff, a sales team leader who is the perfect example of an opportunity executive.  He sees opportunities under multiple rocks and goes after them and/or sees that someone else does.  He is fearless.   He is also young.

There is something about age and experience that turns us into operating executives.  It happens at every level.   Is it inevitable?  NO.  The CEO of this company, Rob Wight, is an example of someone with significant experience and in his fifties who is STILL AN OPPORTUNITY EXECUTIVE.

An organization needs both.  At SCJohnson Wax we used to call them Makers and Managers.   And we recruited and tried to layer them through each organization, having Makers report to Managers and Managers report to Makers.   It is not easy but it can work wonders.

If there is any doubt in your mind about which is which, Operating Executives like to cast doubt and often say “no.”  Opportunity Executives are more likely to say, “Wow, that’s a nifty idea.  Let’s pursue that!”  BTW, if you individually get really good and grow in the right ways, you can be both.

I recently realized that “FedEx Kinko’s” has now re-branded itself as “FedEx Office”.  This is the culmination of one of the great branding debacles of my lifetime.  When FedEx took over Kinko’s in 2004, Kinko’s was the go-to name for fax, print and copy shops North America-wide (at least in the extent of my travels, anyway).  It was a staple.  Even if you meant “go to a copy shop and fax it to me”, you would say “go find a Kinko’s”.  FedEx’s first move in this re-brand ‘plan’ was to come in and tag themselves onto the brand – “FedEx Kinko’s” – so far, so bad.

However, the real travesty came recently when they decided to do away with the powerful Kinko’s brand altogether.  Not only has FedEx Office got no brand power in my mind as a print/copy/scan location, but what’s worse is that their own FedEx brand can certainly only be diluted by this move!?  People used to similarly say “FedEx it to me”, meaning to send something by express courier.  Within a short while, will we even know positively what they’re referring to when someone says this?

My two cents.”

Shaun, I could not agree more.  Plus I see more and more dedicated FEDEX locations shutting down.  Sometimes very smart people do incredibly stupid things.  Try not to be one of them.