Last week, messages started showing up in my Twitter stream with a birthday wish from @FarmerHaley (Mike Haley), an Ohio grain farmer and Simmental breeder. The wish: get the hashtag #moo into the top 10 Twitter trends at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 2. The reason: bring some much-needed attention to the economic plight of America’s dairy farm families, who are currently losing about 50 cents on every gallon sold at retail due to low milk prices and increasing costs of production.

In case you were unplugged this weekend, @FarmerHaley‘s wish came true! For about eight hours yesterday, #moo was one of the top 10 Twitter trends, rising as high as number 4 by my count.

I chipped in with thanks for my wife’s coffee cream and the wonderful cheeses that make up an enormous part of both our diets. I threw in a couple birthday wishes while watching the news, retweeted some important information while folding laundry and popped off a few tweets of support from the grocery store.

Turns out, about 1,500 other people were doing exactly the same thing. And once #moo started trending, even more people added to its strength with questions about the origins of #moo. California dairyman @RayLinDairy (Ray Prock) did a marvelous job getting inquisitive folks informative links about the trend and bringing light to the tough situation facing his fellow farmers.

It’s Monday now, and Twitter is mooing a bit less. But that doesn’t mean we should forget what’s happening on dairy farms (or hog farms, or ranches) right now. Support the folks helping feed your world. To read more, check out the following links:

Ray-Lin Dairy
Farm Bureau Voices of Ag
Gilmer Dairy

The best days are the ones where we come up with an idea that makes people scratch their heads and ask, “How the hell are we going to do this?” or, “Aren’t there any case studies that we can show?”

This job is about novel communications. When we do something that doesn’t have directions already written, that’s when I know we’ve done it well.

I’m off to be a case study – or a cautionary tale.

Cheers,

jae

At the moment, I’m acutely aware of my personal failings. Trying to quit smoking has a way of bringing it out. Maybe it’s all those quizzes they ask you to take to determine your triggers and the things you associate with smoking.

For instance, apparently I:

-Smoke as a pick-me-up
-Smoke as a reward
-Smoke when I’m stressed
-Don’t feel like I’m fully awake until I’ve had a cigarette
-Experience difficulty sleeping if I don’t have a cigarette before bed
-Have difficulty handling stressful situations without cigarettes
-Have difficulty handling boredom or slow points in the day without cigarettes
-Experience intense cravings to smoke before/during/after meal times or coffee
-Experience intense cravings to smoke when drinking alcohol
-Use cigarettes as a way to mark the progress of my day
-Feel cigarettes help my concentration
-Feel cigarettes help me relax

So, if they were grading my quiz, I’d definitely get an A for ADDICTED. (All caps are acceptable in moderation)

I guess that makes sense after more than a decade as a smoker. And, like I said in the beginning, all this time staring one of my biggest, baddest personal faults right in the face has put me in a fairly introspective state of mind. It has also made it really difficult to drag myself out of the doldrums and put together a blog post. Until today.

I got to thinking (a comma and quotation marks denote internal monologue), “What it would be like to live in a world where people confronted, acknowledged and attempted to rectify faults?” More to the point, what would it be like if brands did that?

I read a pretty good post by Peter Madden about taking a long, hard look at his own agency. Read it here. Maybe it was his candor – or the nicotine withdrawal, but either way I got on a tear about how best to handle bad brand behavior.

You could take the Terrell Owens approach, with a nod and a wink to the camera:

Or you could take the overtly scripted, stiff approach taken in so many ignominious public “mea culpas” by politicians and legal-department-approved press releases from corporations. I’m not going to link to any of those because it’s actually painful to read/watch that kind of contrivance.

If you’ve ever done someone wrong, you ought to know the best apology is one that comes with a future change in behavior. If you don’t plan to do that – or if you don’t even feel sorry – why bother apologizing at all?

So, if your company or one of your clients has engaged in some bad behavior, get that apology right. And please, please make sure you don’t do the same thing again.

Cheers,

jae

When I opened my eyes this morning, I realized I was already working on a project. The weird part is I’ve already done everything (and more) I need to before Tuesday. I just can’t turn it off.

Our agency is at our best when we start at the start, when we create a strategy based on solid market knowledge and understanding of the audience. When we get that entrenched in the material, it’s tough to shut it off, even for a long weekend.

That’s a sign of a healthy agency/client relationship. But for the sake of a healthy mind and body, I’m going to work it out of my system with a 20 mile backpacking trip. Work will still be here when I get back, and I can bring that new experience, and the accompanying endorphins, to bear on what’s waiting for me next week.

Cheers,

jae

This one’s going to be a series. A subject so widely misunderstood deserves some space and some dialogue.

Part 1 – The behavior model:
I’ve run across far, far too many people who think branding success can be boiled down to message recall. This misconception costs companies innumerable opportunities to do the actual work of branding.

Branding is not about words, not about sales and not about numbers. It’s about behavior. Seriously, think about that for a moment in the context of your own life. Do you judge the people around you based on what they say or what they do? Behavior will always say more than words about the character of a person, and the same is doubly true for a brand.

Brands boil down to the sum and total of their actions in the context of the world in which they operate. A brand that refuses to acknowledge changes in the marketplace seems distant and disconnected. A brand that insists on speaking exclusively in monologue will be perceived as robotic, disingenuous and inaccessible. A brand that attempts to dominate the conversation by talking over its customers will remind you of that guy you know from New Jersey who thinks there’s a direct correlation between the importance of what he’s saying and the volume of his voice.

Conversely, a brand that spends a greater balance of time listening and responding to real questions in real time feels relevant. A brand willing to go “off message” in order to engage its stakeholders is incredibly endearing and genuine. A brand that does things is more interesting than a friend who will talk at you for hours, but only gets off the couch to nuke a Hot Pocket and use the bathroom.

I’m not going to end this installment by pontificating on the issue any further. Different situations demand different approaches. Just try to think about what your actions say about who you are and who your brand is.

Tomorrow’s post depends on your comments. You can leave them here or contact me directly on Facebook, Twitter, or E-mail (jacob[at]jacobedenfield[dot]com).

Cheers,

jae