Detroit Without the Platitudes

For decades, we’ve heard the platitudes coming out of Detroit: Detroit renaissance. Detroit pride. The new Detroit spirit. They aren’t wrong, and they’re not necessarily unhealthy, but over the years, they’ve rung a little hollow.

But I’ve recently experienced three occasions which demonstrated that those well-intentioned but at times vacant Detroit rah-rah platitudes are really no longer needed. The creative, smarter, and innovative Detroit I see is genuine.

The three things I saw which reinforced my understanding of the Detroit vibrancy all occurred within the past month. All three involved vision and energy, but most importantly, they proved to me beyond any doubt that there are many, many brilliant and creative minds working in and around Detroit, Michigan.

My first experience of new inspiration was the TEDx Detroit conference on September 29th at the Detroit Institute of Arts. (www.tedxdetroit.com) Literally a mini TED conference, this day-long annual event was filled with famous, semi-famous, and unknown minds, all presenting brilliant and creative ideas, many of which orbited around the prevailing vitality of Detroit. (And all  to be absorbed and enjoyed without the $6000 annual membership fee of the national TED conference.) Presenter after presenter demonstrated, explained, preformed, described, delighted, and inspired. By the end of the day, my note pad was full, and my brain was beyond full. (By the way, the most inspiring presentation of the day was by Steve Kahn, director of Wayne State University’s Math Corps, a program bringing Detroit public middle school and high school students into a college setting to study and become enthralled with mathematics. Check out www.mathcorps.com, and keep an eye out for the video of his TED speech, hopefully soon to be posted on the TEDx Detroit web site and on YouTube. You will laugh and you will cry. Most importantly, you will learn about kids’ lives being changed in one way you probably never considered.)

Then, on October 9th and 10th, I attended WordCamp Detroit (www.wordcampdetroit.com), a 2-day conference on the WordPress web platform for local designers and bloggers. I was tremendously impressed by all of the high-tech brainpower found in Metro Detroit, and by the extraordinary knowledge of both the speakers and the attendees. (Personally, I felt like the most ignorant person in the room, but I left with a lot more energy and knowledge than I came with.)

(One does not have to travel to New York to Chicago to experience a great conference. They frequently take place in our own back yards. If you want to get inspired by attending cool local conferences and events that generate ideas, one way to start is to search for local upcoming events on EventBrite (www.eventbrite.com), sometimes referred to as the Ticketmaster of idea events.)

My third experience providing evidence that we can forgo the Detroit platitudes occurred this past week. I had a meeting in Downtown Detroit at the SmithGroup, the 7th largest architecture/engineering firm in America. What a treat. First, their offices are on the 17th floor of the Guardian Building, arguably the most beautiful 20th Century Skyscraper outside of New York City. The lobby of the Guardian Building is stunning, and if you’ve never seen it, make the trip. And when one gets off the elevator on the SmithGroup’s floor and turns the corner, you see the results of great creative thinking: Their “me” wall is giant three-dimensional 30-foot model of downtown Detroit (mounted vertically) with every building, from the riverfront to north past the Fisher Building represented. (Many of the structures in the model appear in a different shade…Comerica Park, Ford Field, the Penobscot Building, Hart Plaza, etc.…they’re the ones that SmithGroup designed.) The meeting was productive, but the heartening moment came by looking out the windows. Not a run-down ruin in sight. What one sees when looking out the windows of the 17th floor of the Guardian Building is true city vitality, traffic, commerce, and stunningly beautiful architecture.

These three experiences infused me with new energy and a new healthy dose of creativity. And that energy and creativity is available to everybody in Metro Detroit, all you have to do is seek it out.

We all know that the Detroit area has more than its share of problems. But perhaps our biggest problem is a national misconception that Detroit is nothing more than a giant run-down ruin. We—the ones who know—know that nothing could be further from the truth. The way to change minds, especially the minds of people who form their opinions about Detroit only from what they see in the media, begins with fewer platitudes and more stories. All of us who know the real Detroit must consciously and deliberately share our experiences and understanding of Detroit and the region with those who are ignorant. A platitude rarely convinces. But a first-hand experience or story, related by a friend, almost always does.

Guardian and Buhl Buildings last week, both designed by Wirt C. Rowland

Sensory Overload at Comerica Park

Last week I went to a Tigers game in Detroit at Comerica Park. I played hooky from work and went alone, because I really wanted to watch a good baseball game without non-baseball related conversation and distraction, even from friends. I had a great time, the weather was beautiful and the Tigers won. (Final score: Tigers 8, Nationals 3.)

But a couple of things stood out during the game that made me start wondering about the value of the huge advertising expenditures at Comerica Park. One was the fact that so few people seemed to be concentrating on the game. Many people, as one would expect, were deep in conversation with one another, and not really taking time to glance at the scoreboard (and the ads next to the scores), or to watch at the game, (and the ads posted on the edges of the field), or to just look around (and seeing the ads everywhere). Many people were focused with their own pods of friends, having a great time among themselves, rather than taking-in the world around them.

The other thing I noticed was the unbroken chain of noise. Crowd noise is to be expected, but every moment between innings was filled with audio messages over the public address system, as were most of the moments leading up to the game. I had to wonder if the intended audience just tends to shut it all out, and how seriously, if at all, sensory overload is taken into consideration by advertisers who pay for messages at the ballpark.

In baseball’s golden era, advertising was as much part of the experience as the Crackerjack. But instead of hundreds of ad messages to absorb, there were dozens, at most. And they didn’t rotate, blink, or share space with other messages. And they were probably very, very effective at selling.

A media buyer today might argue convincingly that with millions of sets of eyes even just glancing at a logo during the season, or millions of pairs of ears hearing an ad over a summer in the ballpark, the ad buy is effective. And with so many smart people making such buys, it’s hard to argue that ads in ballparks are indeed not good buys. But as each message at the ballpark is watered-down buy other competing and beautifully designed sensory messaging, I’m not sure there aren’t better buys elsewhere. When it comes to advertising exposure, attending a professional baseball game today is a bit like attending a trade show, where booth after booth is competing for your attention until in the end they all seem to blend together in your head.

There has always been advertising at baseball games, and always will be. But I have to wonder if the advertising in the old baseball parks (signs in the outfield, and maybe a few scattered other messages during the game) was more effective than the cascade of ads and the constant barrage of sponsored messaging of today. With so much distraction and so many competing advertising messages in the American ballpark of 2010, are the advertising expenditures at the game a great value, or less than completely effective?

Bad Names for Good Movies

Okay so I’m a naming fiend. I believe that a good name (or title) is one of the simplest ways to quickly communicate purpose when it comes to a project, a meeting, an undertaking, or any group endeavor. The right project name or meeting title or report heading allows participants to understand intent and to buy-in to the activity.

This week I was also thinking about wrong names. As important as the right name is to any group venture, a bad name can be disastrous. And I remembered two examples from the world of motion pictures.

In 1994, Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption was released by Castle Rock Entertainment. The movie was an adaptation of the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and starred Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as prisoners in the fictional Shawshank Penitentiary in Maine. (The movie is one of only three Stephen King NON-supernatural stories turned into films, along with Stand By Me and Misery.)

The Shawshank Redemption is a great film, and one of my top ten favorite films of all-time. On its release, reviews were almost universally positive, and it remains one of the highest-ranked movies ever in IMDB. Yet no one saw it. In fact, even I, its biggest fan, failed to see it when it was released in theaters. The reason? A horrible name. I’m convinced that audiences stayed away from The Shawshank Redemption because it didn’t have a name that was exciting (The Great Escape, The Bridge on the River Kwai) or intriguing (12 Angry Men, Chinatown), or enchanting (Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives). Shawshank is a word that sounds a little goofy and mostly just causes blank stares. And it’s probably reason No. 1 why you’ve never seen this beautiful, uplifting, and completely fulfilling motion picture.

Eleven years later, Ron Howard produced and directed Cinderella Man, a wonderful movie staring Russell Crowe, Renée Zellweger, and Paul Giamatti. It told the moving story of boxing champion James J. Braddock during the Great Depression. And although  Cinderella Man depicted a powerful story, had a great script, received outstanding reviews, and was nominated for many motion picture awards, audiences stayed away in droves. Why? My guess is the lousy name. The title Cinderella Man simply does not make you want to see the movie. It doesn’t reflect the content of the film well, it doesn’t match audience desires when selecting a film to see, and it doesn’t captivate. And it’s a shame, because it really was a good movie.

Creating a good name is hard because it must be both brief and comprehensive. (Just ask a good news headline writer.) And failure to name is almost always a missed opportunity. Worse yet, and regardless of the quality of the product behind the title, a bad name can be disastrous when it doesn’t match expectations or audience hankerings.

A Bad Day in “Nameville”

One of the most important elements of any marketing or communications project is the assignment of a precise name or title for that project. I frequently run across situations with clients in which several people are working away on an important but nameless project. Frequently, all involved have a slightly different perception (or opinion) as to what the project is actually all about. And because those involved are not always on the same page, the focus of the project tends to be a bit scattered. Sometimes this is not a big deal, but at other times, it’s a major (although mostly unrealized) reason for some degree of disappointment. Naming the project is not the most exciting way to kick things off, but I believe it’s a key first moment to point the project toward success (and much preferred over discovering later that some of the goals and perhaps even the purposes of the project were unclear…due to differing notions of what those involved were working on). Most nameless communications projects are nameless simply because giving the project an official title does not occur to those leading the endeavor. Perhaps the idea of a precise, descriptive, comprehensive name is just too simple a concept. In more than a few meetings, I’ve been met with bemused looks or raised eyebrows when I ask the simplest of simple questions: “By the way, what’s the name of this project?” Why is a name so important? Most communications projects involve meetings, lots of emails, and more than a few documents. Each person working with these materials assumes he or she knows what the project is all about. But without an official project name, each team member may think of the project in his or her own way. The project leader may consider the task to be all about “X,” but because “X” is not the project title, other team members may consider the project to be mostly about “Z.” Without a proper name, everybody involved may be working under a different core set of basic assumptions. While a proper name may seem too inconsequential to spend any time on, most communications assignments—from creation of web sites, to advertising campaigns, to e-marketing initiatives—will be aided tremendously by putting thought into a good, simple title. The right designation helps to focus your team members’ thinking about what it is they’re working on, and helps to keep everybody moving in the same direction. How to use the name Use the project name everywhere. It should be seen on the covers of documents, in the names of meetings, in email subject headers, and should be used in discussions. The more the project name permeates the process, the better the chances that the communal task stays on track. Of course a good project name is not a substitute for a creative brief, or the Big Idea, or a good marketing plan, but precisely naming the project is a key element in improving team concentration, and bettering the overall chances of success. Name it, publish it, use it. The bad news Properly naming a project is not easy. In fact, it can be frustrating, and may require several iterations. Boiling-down a major undertaking into just a few key words is hard enough, but making those words accurate and comprehensive can be both frustrating and taxing (and a common reason projects go nameless). Moss Hart once wrote to his editor Bennett Cerf, complaining that his assignment to write the jacket copy blurb for the marketing of his new book was much harder than writing the book itself. Condensing anything into a few words is hard. Condensing an entire project into a single, precise title is extra-hard. But not doing so early in project can be more exasperating in the long run. Conclusion Sometimes communications projects fail to reach maximum fruition because the team members involved see the purpose and goals of the project differently. Laying the groundwork for how a project is to function—or even exactly what the project is—begins with a descriptive, unambiguous, and precise title. It may seem like a no-brainer, but the correct name is perhaps the most critical simple element for a project’s ultimate chance of success.

The ‘Employee’s Friend’ Button

I collect items from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. (Actually, I should say I used to collect such items, before they became astronomically expensive.) Of the few dozen or so pieces in my collection, my favorite item is a small, fairly nondescript “pin-back” button, not quite three-quarters of an inch across. It contains the same words and artwork of the other five or six ’39 World’s Fair buttons I have, but this one says something unique: “Employee’s Friend.”

Why would the World’s Fair organizers of 1939 issue such a button? I suspect the simple answer is because it made the owner of such a button feel more important. Although I can’t say for sure, I think the intent of the button was purely marketing: To get people interested in coming to the fair by making them feel unusually special.

The marketing tactics used in 1939 can also apply today. People always like to feel they’re the recipient of special treatment. The best customer relationships come about when the customer has the impression (hopefully true) that greater attention is being paid to him or her than might normally be expected. Perhaps your organization doesn’t need to act as blatantly as the somewhat self-centered “Employee’s Friend” concept of 1939, but here’s a Bidlack suggestion: Every now and then, do something special for a couple of members of your audience, creating the impression and suggestion that they’re much more important than just a name on a list.

Obama’s Branding Problem

As the Democrats and Republicans in Washington continue to battle one another over health care reform, here’s one piece of branding advice I’d give to President Obama and the Democrats: Stop using the term “health care reform.” Instead, refer to it as “health insurance reform.” Democrats are not pushing to make changes in how doses of medicine are to be administered, or what doctors are supposed to say to patients about eczema or psoriasis. In the end, Democrats would argue that they are not out to change health care. What the Dems want to enact are changes to the American health insurance system, mostly by making changes to things involving coverage issues and cost issues. If the Democrats in Congress and the White House would consider rebranding the debate by referring to the issue as health insurance reform, I suspect that they would find that convincing their constituents would be easier and their problem of public persuasion would diminish. Corporations savvy in marketing technique know how this works. And it’s not complicated. Breakfast cereal manufacturers want you to focus on the cereal, not the spoon. Car advertisers want you thinking about the car, not the pavement. And Democrats would enjoy greater success if they were to get people to focus on their own insurance plans (or lack thereof) rather than on their doctors.

Bidlack Creative Group is a premier business and education marketing resource, providing intelligent communications strategy and design for organizations just like yours. We’re inspired designers, visionary planners, and meticulous project managers. We’re also small business devotees, creative strategy fanatics and academia advocates. These talents and passions yield truly effective work that wins more than awards. It wins your audience’s attention…and hopefully their heart.