No need to wait to watch Superbowl spots.

Sunday is the Superbowl. Since I'm a blogger and not making any money from my blog, I can actually say the word Superbowl without worrying about the NFL sending me a cease and desist order for unauthorized trademark use. I always find it funny when certain television networks and radio stations refer to "Winning tickets to the BIG GAME" in their promotions because they don't have (and cannot get) permission to say Superbowl. That usually has a good bit to do with how much cash the advertiser has spent.

Since 1984, the Superbowl has been the coming out party for the great ads of the year. Each year advertising and marketing people wait in not-so-patient anticipation for the new spots. And I'm confident, since this is an all East Coast Superbowl with New England and New York, the cost per minute of air time will be the highest it has ever been.

While I love advertising, I don't have the opportunity to watch a lot of television. So the Superbowl is always a great opportunity to see some of the best spots of the year. But now, there's a new (and FREE) way to watch all the best spots. It's called Firebrand.

Firebrand is a new Web site and cable television show (on Ion TV) that shows the best television spots made. Now, instead of waiting to hopefully see spots within television content, you can go directly to Firebrand.com and see then any time.

You might think it strange to purposefully spend time watching television commercials. But the fact is, watching and analyzing great spots is an excellent way to be a student of the business. When you view a well-produced spot, it is often very easy to understand the strategy that led the creative team to the solution. If the strategy is not apparent, then the spots certainly are worth the talk value they create — which also helps people hone their skills and be students of the business.

I'll still watch the Superbowl. But I'll be watching Firebrand, too.

Is the market ready?

There are lots of client/agency discussions about new product launches, new marketing strategies, focus, market segmentation, metrics and a host of other important topics. But there is something bigger than all of those topics. Something that has more to do with whether or not you and your product and company will be successful than anything you can determine within the walls of your organization.

Is the market ready for your product?

If the market is ready, then telling your story and getting people to come along for the ride is relatively easy. If, on the other hand, the market isn't ready, then you may find you're simply pushing rope.

The market was ready for Target. The discount shopping experience was awash in K-Mart and Wal-Mart. Neither company was catering to the upscale discount shopper. Target stepped in and filled the niche.

The market was ready for Chick-fil-A. You can find a chicken sandwich in almost every fast food joint in America. But Chick-fil-A perfected it. They focused and found a whole market full of people willing to go out of their way for the best chicken sandwich.

The market was ready for Google. You may not remember a time before Google, but there used to be all kinds of search engines competing for the consumer's attention — Ask Jeeves, Dog Pile, MSN and Yahoo! to name a few. And while these search engines are still around, their combined daily search visitors don't equal one day of Google visitors.

If you are working for a company that is struggling against a market leader, then sit back and ask why the market was ready for that company. What was it in the market place that made that company look so attractive? You would like to think the company molded itself to fit the market, and that may have happened. But it is just as likely the company, at least initially, happened to find itself in the right place at the right time.

What market is ready for your company? What is it that you do that makes you worthy of having a group of people flock to your door? The market will tell you, but you have to do two things first:

You have to ask. Then, you have to listen.

The Pain of Change

How hard is it to affect change in your organization? On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being akin to moving a mountain with an ice cream scoop and a wheelbarrow, how hard is it for your company to make a truly different decision and act on it?

Let me give you an example. What if, within your senior staff, someone began authoring a blog. Then someone else began blogging. Soon, a handful of people within your company are posting to their blogs on a regular basis. In fact, you find there is a good bit of social media interaction on these blogs. Your company is in a hot category and people are talking about key industry issues.

Knowing the situation, would your company have the courage to author a corporate blog? Would you put yourself out there in the uncertain world of social media and be willing to take a stand? What is the risk? What's the potential reward?

Here's another one. What about altering your channel marketing strategy? What if you determined you needed to narrow your distribution focus — which means you will no longer be using 20% of the distributors you once used. Would you make the change? Would you risk losing business in order to gain market share?

Rarely do minor adjustments net noticeable changes. Fine tuning may make the existing marketing marginally more effective, but most companies are not looking for marginally better results. They want big improvements.

To achieve marked improvement, significant change must occur. And since there is never enough money to do everything you want to do, you must focus on doing fewer things, better.

Focus requires sacrifice. Perhaps it means attending fewer trade shows in the coming year. Or not launching a product until you have a better idea of the market's interest. Or narrowing your media spend to reach the heavy users only.

When you focus. When you concentrate your resources into a more narrow framework, you will see results. This is when you can truly affect change.

If you believe change is needed for your business to see marked results, then the only option is to focus your resources on those things that will truly have an impact. Failing to do so will give you exactly the result you had before. And that means you're standing still.

Emotional Connections - StoryCorps

If you've ever listened to Morning Edition on NPR, you may have heard of StoryCorps.

StoryCorps is an audio recording project initiated by David Isay to capture the stories of everyday Americans. It began shortly after 9/11 as a way of capturing the rich stories embedded in our culture. People interview their parents, their favorite teacher, the barber down the street, an important coach — whoever has been important in their lives.

Two years ago, Julie, the Roo and I traveled to New York City for a long weekend. As we were planning for the trip, Julie suggested we visit the StoryCorps booth in Grand Central Station. She thought it might be good for the Roo to interview me about her mom and her brother, Michael.

The StoryCorps recording booth is relatively tiny. There's just enough room for the two participants, the recording engineer and in our case, we also wanted Julie in the room. So four people squeezed in to about half of a walk-in closet, and we began.

The Roo had prepared a long list of questions. She was nine when her mom died. And now, at 16, she was old enough to ask some of the questions that a teenage daughter wanted to know about her mom. "What was she like in high school?" "What were her study habits?" "Tell me about some of the funny things you remember about her?"

Then there were the questions that surrounded Rhonda and Michael's cancers. It was a poignant interview. Lots of emotion. Lots of wonderful memories. And in doing the interview, I knew we were creating our own memory. It was a very special moment.

At the end of the interview, the audio technician gave us a CD with our interview, she saved one for StoryCorps and the other went to the Library of Congress to be archived with the rest of the StoryCorps interviews.

This year, we learned our story has been featured in a new book titled, Listening is an Act of Love. It's the first book published by the StoryCorps project. It highlights 50 of the 15,000 stories recorded to date by the StoryCorps project.

On January 31, the founder of the StoryCorps project, David Isay, will be in Kansas City for a presentation and book signing sponsored by Rainy Day Books at Unity Temple on the Plaza. He will also be on Steve Kraske's Up to Date show at 11 AM on KCUR that Thursday. And, I learned last week, I will be a guest on the show. So please tune in to 89.3 FM on January 31 to learn more about the StoryCorps project.

The stories in Listening is an Act of Love are simple, touching reminders that what matters to us are emotional connections. And it matters not whether these are personal or business. Emotional connections bind us together.

Focus requires sacrifice

While driving around in the 9 degree temps of Kansas City today, we came across this sign. We actually drove past a couple of them before the potential blog post registered with me.

The Wood Rot Company. What a great name! It's the ultimate in positioning. Every homeowner, sooner or later, will have some wood rot. If they Google wood rot, or see this sign, they're highly likely to give them a call.

If, on the other hand, the sign had said, Carpentry Company, it would not have differentiated the company at all. There are hundreds of carpenters in Kansas City.

Now you might say that positioning this company as only interested in wood rot is too narrow. If you think about it, wood rot is not something people talk about every day. But if a home owner has wood rot, it is likely one of those back-of-the-mind things they know they should fix but just have not gotten around to it.

With a company focusing on wood rot, the home-owner-wood-rot-sufferer now has a clear choice to make. He doesn't have to pick a random carpenter out of a Google search. Nor does he have to rely on referrals. He has a clear mission and a definitive number to call to fix his wood rot.

Of course, the Wood Rot Company has carpenters on staff. And it is highly likely these carpenters can fix everything from wood rot to installing a new hardwood floor. The value of focus is that it gets you noticed. It gets you in the door for a conversation. From that point, any decent sales person can identify other needs and sell them to the customer.

As we drove past this sign, I was so thoroughly impressed with the focus of the message. But as I walked through the snow and dodged cars on an icy street to photograph it, I noticed the small print.

Siding, Windows, Doors & More

Okay. So the Wood Rot Company got the headline right. But then succumbed to what so many companies fall to — try to be all things to all people. I'm sure the CEO or the sales manager piped up in the final minutes before these signs went to press and said, "But we do more than repair wood rot. Let's tell them what else we do."

Not a fatal flaw in this case because the name of the company is so prominent and so defining.

Wood Rot Company, I give you 4.5 out of 5 stars. Nice work.

Puppy Cliché

There's an old cliché in advertising that goes something like: "If you want a sure-fire way to capture an audience's attention, put a cute kid or a puppy in the ad."

And while it is cliché, it does serve to make a point. People need an emotional connection with a product before they will purchase. Puppies and cute kids have been a favorite for over 60 years. Remember the Coppertone Girl? They got puppies and kids all in one in that ad.

Fortunately, advertising has matured well past the old school clichés of the 50's and 60's. Today, we look for bigger ideas that come from deeper insights into the mindset of the customer.

Not to say that puppies aren't cute. They are. This was Boulder on her first trip to the vet. I mean, seriously, this dog could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

Don't settle for advertising that lays flat on the page. Don't settle for ads that rely on borrowed interest or puns. Don't settle for advertising that is cute or clever. Invite your agency to surprise you with authentic, engaging advertising that captures your brand. Your customers will resonate with that kind of advertising. And they'll show it with their wallets.

Puppies are wonderfully cute, and they may sell a refrigerator in the short-term. But they don't build brand equity. And if your not building something more than a short-term gain, why bother?

Doc Com Meets Dot Com

Each year I do my best to schedule an appointment with my doctor for a routine check up. And each year, it seems harder and harder to do so because I have to go through appointment desk Hell at St. Luke's Internal Medicine. Actually, it's really not that bad. Or, perhaps I should say it's no worse than setting an appointment at any other doctor's office.

You call. You get an automated answering service. They run you through the English or Spanish version. Then you get the endless list of options which leads to another list of options which then winds around to the person in the back hall closet who finally sets an appointment for you sometime three months away from today.

I had been going through this process for a number of years. Then, in 2000, my doctor, Chris Perryman, chided me for not having my check up on a regular basis. My response back to him was, "Well, if your appointment system wasn't so archaic, perhaps people would set appointments on a more regular basis. Why don't you move to a Web based system?"

He smiled and told me their group was looking into that idea. And, since he was the managing partner of the medical group, I figured within a few months to a year, they would have this system up and running.

Today, eight years later, I set my first online appointment on the St. Luke's Internal Medicine Web site. Actually, it was on an ASP site called RelayHealth.com. I had to register, and then I entered a few days/times when I was available. The site sent an email to Perryman's clinical assistant and within the hour, I had my appointment set.

Certainly not real time, but a whole better than the previous system.

My question is this. Why would a system as simple as this take eight years to implement? I mean, I understand HIPAA regulations and all that, but seriously. Eight years?

I had a friend in high school who moved slowly. Ed was his name. He was laid back. Nothing ever seemed to phase him. My dad always said that you had to drive a stake next to Ed to see if he was moving.

I understand the need to be thorough in the evaluation stage of new technology. I understand the importance of privacy in the medical profession. But taking this long to make a decision is corporate constipation. And being a medical group, I'm guessing they could find a treatment for that.

Intentional Incompetence

Ever thought about the first person to taste a tomato? Imagine it. There's this group of cave men standing around the camp chiding one another for letting that tasty mastodon get away in the afternoon hunt. So here they are. Standing around a camp fire wondering what's for dinner.

Soon, Ernie shows up with this plump, red, semi-firm thing he found in the glen by the forest. Having nothing else to eat for dinner, Ernie takes a bite. The rest of the cave men watch with anticipation. Ernie seems fine, so the rest of them pick the red fruit and begin eating.

I'm guessing that's how many of our everyday foods were found — trial and error. Of course, there were a number of unlucky cave men who didn't live to tell their story — but fortunately, their friends did.

After a few years, people came to know the tomato and trust it to be good. They became competent in their knowledge of a number of tomato varieties — the Roma, the Heirloom, the Beefsteak, the Cherry — tomatoes of every size, shape and flavor.

People develop competencies. In the Industrial Revolution, people were rewarded for being competent. Think about where Henry Ford would have been if the people on the first assembly line were incompetent? He may have accidentally built and Edsel twenty years earlier!

Over the past hundred years or so, our entire economic system has been based on rewarding people for being competent. Find efficiencies. Come to understand how to do the job over and over so that economies of scale may be achieved.

People in offices, factories, schools, hospitals, government and the military have been rewarded based on their competencies.

But there's a downside to competency. Once someone begins to feel competent, they begin to lose the desire to take risks. I mean, the lack of competency inherently means someone must take a risk, otherwise they would never achieve a level of competence.

The world is filled with competent people. And candidly, we need competent people on a daily basis. But we shouldn't mistake competent for comfortable.

I want my airline pilot to be competent — extremely competent, in fact. However, if during his daily work, she sees a way to improve the customer experience, then by all means, I hope she tells someone who can make that experience a reality. Is that risky? Yes, it is. The extremely competent pilot is completely happy flying the plane. To see something that is out of the realm of their day-to-day duties, and to mention it to someone else, is taking a risk.

Competency can lead to complacency. It can lead to comfort. And comfortable people don't take risks — they don't want to risk their comfort.

I learned many years ago that managers should delegate the things at which they are most comfortable. Give their subordinates the opportunity to do something that will stretch them, while the manager takes on work that will put them in an unfamiliar situation — something uncomfortable.

What if you were to practice intentional incompetence. Seek out new ways of thinking. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Be curious.

Competent people are comfortable people. And comfortable rarely leads to breakthrough thinking. And without breakthrough thinking, most companies are destined to do the same thing they did the previous year. And in doing so, they'll likely get a similar result.

Achieving the Dream

Clients have dreams. Sometimes they disguise them as goals, objectives, assignments, engagements, initiatives and opportunities. But in fact, they're dreams.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago how to help clients see their dreams. To do that, first they must define the dream. What is it they really want to accomplish? What is their real pain? Not the surface answer they normally give to anyone who asks. The dream has little to do with profit or growth goals. It has everything to do with why the business got in business in the first place.

With that defined, the question persists. How do we help clients see their dreams?

Be positive.

Sounds simple, doesn't it. Almost too simple. But the fact of the matter is, most people get discouraged on the way to achieving their dreams - whether business or personal. And occasionally, what is needed is someone who believes in their dream.

I have a favorite quote from Helen Keller on this subject: "No pessimists ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

We all have the ability to pass on amazing strength to our clients, our associates and our friends by being positive. I'm not suggesting reality should be ignored - no way. The challenge is always knowing you will be successful while acknowledging the brutal facts of your current reality — the Stockdale Paradox.

But in a busy world, it is very easy to focus on the reasons why something cannot be done and significantly harder to focus on what may be possible. David Ogilvy, in his book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, implored his company to rid itself of sad sacks as soon as possible for they brought down the entire agency. Sad sacks will never see the dream - and they'll bring down anyone who does.

One last quote on this subject. This one from the venerable Leo Burnett: "When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a hand full of mud, either."

It is great fun to help clients achieve their dreams. It is never easy, but anything worth doing rarely is.

Risk or Mistake?

I finally had to change my email address this year. After ten years of sam@meers.com, I simply couldn't take the spam any longer. It was somewhere north of 200 spam messages a day.

Back in the day, we didn't understand the problem with listing a live email address on a Web site. So for a number of years, my sam@meers.com email was right there on meers.com for spy-ders to grab on a daily basis. Hence, spam.

This past summer, we added new email addresses to our domain. Now they are first name, last initial at meers.com. But not wanting to potentially lose any email messages, I kept my old email address active for a while.

But one Monday evening, while working late, I was sifting through all my spam from my former email address and decided it was time I did something about it. So I opened up a browser window, logged on to our email account, and changed my preferences in order to catch more spam.

It was a great feeling. I didn't have to ask anyone for support. I just went to the email control panel and began tightening down the spam filters. Almost immediately, I saw the decreased volume in spam. I was elated.

The next afternoon, I headed to Chicago for a meeting. When my flight landed, my phone was ringing. It was Ky, our creative director. His exact question to me was, "Did you change the preferences on the email server?"

I responded "Yes."

His response: "We need to change them back. No one is getting the email they should."

I had made a mistake. I thought, when I went to the email control panel, that I was only adjusting the filters on my email client. In fact, I adjusted the whole agency's.

If I had talked to a few people in the office about tightening down the criteria a bit, and then moved forward with altering the spam filtering, it would have been a calculated risk, but it would not have been a mistake.

"Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from poor judgment," said Will Rogers. That's true, as long as you take the time to ask all the right questions up-front. Then you're taking a measured risk. Otherwise, without thinking it through and asking the right question, you're likely headed for mistakes.

I often talk about taking risks in marketing. But seeking information which leads to insight is typically the difference between risk-taking and mistake-making.

Any Landing is a Good Landing

My uncle Marty was a pilot. He served in the Air Force in the 1950's and 60's and came to love flying.

At age 10, while visiting him in suburban Chicago, he invited my brothers and me to join him for a flight in his Cessna. Of course, we jumped at the chance. None of us had ever flown before and were quite eager to see the world from a different perspective.

I was intrigued by flying. Even at that young age, I had read about Wilbur and Orville Wright and their flights at Kitty Hawk. I had studied all kinds of planes from WWI and WWII. But studying flight, watching planes and seeing the view from a plane on television just didn't quite do it. I wanted to fly.

My uncle housed his plane at a hanger in rural Illinois. His plane held four people, so my two older brothers and I jumped in and within a few minutes, we were headed down the runway.

I distinctly remember the moment the wheels left the runway and I realized we were airborne. It was completely exhilarating! We flew all over the area. We saw farms, cows, trains, rivers. We watched clouds come and go. It was everything I thought it would be.

The great thing about flying is that, unlike a car ride, the experience lasts right to the end. When you make the decision to return the airport, there are still plenty of things to see — because you're still flying. Even landing is an experience — watching the ground move toward you and go past faster and faster until the wheels touch down.

That's exactly what the landing experience was like with my uncle's plane. Except, when the wheels touched down, we didn't slow down. Within a second or two, my uncle let us know we didn't have any brakes.

Not having flown before, I suppose I was somewhat unaware of the importance of brakes. My uncle seemed fairly occupied in the cockpit. He was shutting down the engine, trimming the prop, lowering the flaps and, I'm sure if I could have heard him, saying a few prayers.

While I don't know the ground speed when a Cessna lands, I know that without brakes, it was going much faster than it should have been.

As we sped down the runway, I could see something that, fortunately, I've never witnessed on a commercial flight — the end of the runway.

We came to the end of the runway and jumped off into a clover field. Within another hundred yards or so, we had slowed enough for us to turn around and head back to the hanger. While the flight was great, it was nothing compared to the landing.

That day in June 1970, I got to see the world from a completely different perspective. And at the end of the trip, I got to experience a reality check.

That's what good advertising should do. It should give you a completely different perspective on how to tell your brand's story. And, when done correctly, in the end you should have the results that give you a reality check — without the scary end-of-the-runway stuff, of course.

Lemon Juice, Whiskey and Honey

I was a disc jockey in college. It was a great job. After working on the farm for all those years, an air conditioned job where I could play music (and get paid for it) was just about the best possible job scenario.

While it was a cushy job, there is one thing every DJ hopes never happens. (No, it's not getting fired. That is almost inevitable.) No, the thing that send shivers up the spine of all radio announcers is losing their voice. And in the winter of 1981, I did.

I'd had a cold. And when the cold came to an end, so did my voice. First, it began cracking — reminding me of a pubescent 12-year-old. Then, the next day, it was gone. I would open my mouth and nothing but air would come out. Some might look at this as an opportunity to take a couple days off to recover. I, however, was trying to make a few bucks and needed every hour on the air possible. So I immediately began seeking out remedies.

I didn't have to go far. My future father-in-law had done his share of television and radio work. In fact, he taught it in college. He suggested a concoction of lemon juice, rye whiskey and honey. He said it would fix me right up.

At age 21, I was a bit skeptical of this suggestion. First, I'm not a big fan of lemon juice or honey individually. And candidly, other than a little Southern Comfort, I had not been introduced to whiskey — rye or otherwise. But I was desperate. I would try anything.

He disappeared into the kitchen. In a few minutes, he returned with the elixir in a high-ball glass — no ice. "Try this," he said.

Lifting the glass to my nose, I could smell all three ingredients. All I could think of was that scene in the movie Rocky when he puts the raw eggs in that drink and slurps it down.

Again. I was desperate. I hefted the glass and shot it down.

"Not bad," I thought to myself. I sat there for a few seconds, hoping for the miracle to be true. I opened my mouth to speak and...

It worked! I could speak! And while my voice wasn't exactly back to normal, it was certainly normal enough to work the next day. I went home, got some sleep, and the next morning my voice was back to normal.

Not every marketing recommendation is that effective. However, there is a direct relationship between the level of concern the client has about their business and the success of the recommended marketing or advertising initiative. Why? Because scared clients take chances. And companies who take chances stand out from those that do not take chances. Their products are remarkable — and so is their advertising.

Brand Stewardship in the Neighborhood

A few years ago I accidentally wandered into a section of Kansas City I had never seen. It was a small residential neighborhood near Westport. The homes were beautiful. They were older, not huge in any respect, but incredibly restored.

The homes were painted every color you could imagine. Orange, pink, purple, green, red — but not in a gawdy manner. They all seemed to fit the neighborhood.

That evening I mentioned my experience to Julie. She said, "Oh. You were in Nutterville."

Nutterville is an urban restoration project initiated and sponsored by James B. Nutter Mortgage Company in Kansas City. In fact, their national headquarters office is less than a block away from Nutterville. It's an amazing example of what urban renewal can look like. You can learn more about Nutterville here.

Nutterville came to mind after I had lunch with my friend Diana this week. She had commented that she likes to take different streets to work in the morning just so she can see different part of the city. And on this particular morning, she was driving down, what some would normally consider a not-so-good part of town — the Paseo.

At one time, the Paseo was a marvelous boulevard in Kansas City. Beautiful tree-lined streets with nice homes. Over the years, the neighborhood has changed. But on this day, Diana noticed that every once in a while, often nestled between a number of somewhat run-down houses, was a home that was well-kept with nice landscaping. And it caused her to pause and ask why. Why would someone in a relatively poor neighborhood make the special effort to take care of their home? What about their mindset motivated them to do so?

Then she made a mental leap. "Perhaps it is the same reason some companies take better care of their brand than others," she said.

I think she may be right.

Four Days for Forethought

I like these four-day weekends. The one over Christmas was great. And then this past weekend, another one! It was like a mini vacation — times two. The first one I took as vacation. I didn't think about work. Just enjoyed time at home with family. The second weekend, though, that was fun too. But for a whole different reason. I took time for some forethought.

Heading in to a new year is always a bit daunting for me. As a business owner, I can look back on the previous year and take away the necessary learnings from the successes and failures. But looking forward — that's the challenging part. How do we avoid the mistakes of the past? How do we navigate the unknown challenges of the next 12 months?

Will Rogers said, "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgment." Is that enough to get through the challenges of the coming year? Have we learned from our mistakes?

Yes. We have. But it is how we apply that learning that matters. Here are some of the thoughts I had over the past four days. Revelations? Probably not. But some good food for thought as we enter the new year.

Grow with intention
Work with clients with whom we have alignment. If we are not a good fit for them, then help them find an agency that is the right fit.

Focus on adding value
How we think about our clients' business is equally important to what we create to help our clients' businesses grow.

Challenge one another regularly
Ask hard questions. Expect thoughtful answers.

Demonstrate humble confidence.
It's okay to not know the answer. It's not okay to fail to find one.

Constantly push yourself to a higher level of performance.
Those around you will likely push themselves, too.

Like I said, not necessarily revelations. But a good way to start as we head toward a new 12-month period of opportunity and uncertainty.

Welcome to 2008!