Today, I was asked what effect Donald Trump’s supposed presidential run is having on his personal brand.

In my opinion, Trump’s flirtation with the presidency doesn’t impact his brand value one way or the other.  This is because – whether he originally intended it or not – Trump has had a bifurcated brand for years.

Trump has a business side and a farcical side. The farcical or “personality” side is what’s enabled him to create (and – hello – publicize) entertainment properties, because it drives him to behave in an entertaining way.  In his real life, he’s a paunchy, weird-haired real estate guy, so to be entertaining, he needs to be over the top.  Brad Pitt can just stand still and attract attention; Trump cannot. Donald’s got to jump up and down to draw interest.

This means that people expect to see Trump behaving in an outlandish sort of way, so his “presidential bid” isn’t new news: it’s just The Donald being wacky again.

Therefore, his recent jaunt through Kookytown (a) doesn’t impact people who expect it (and that would be everyone by now), and (b) wouldn’t put off anyone who actually wants to do real business with the Trump Organization (those who ignore stunts and would be interested only in the deal they were getting), so… this is Donald Trump status quo.

Let’s clarify: I loathe what’s happening and agree with The New Yorker’s David Remnick regarding the reasons for Trump’s behavior.  But that wasn’t the question and, unfortunately, our pseudo-celebrity culture – in which many don’t think any deeper about a person’s character than what dress she wore to court – will simply bump along the surface before moving on to its next source of amusement.

One of the new business friends I’ve made on Twitter is an agency in Pittsburgh called Fitting Group, run by Andrea Fitting. Check them out at http://fittingroup.com. We found each other based on our mutual interest in and work with challenger brands, or big category-leading companies who need to change and can learn from challengers.

Anyway…  Andrea wrote a blog post referring to a January 2011 Fast Company article, “Mayhem on Madison Avenue.” In “Mayhem” (and numerous articles just like it) the author essentially explains how and why digital marketing – particularly social media – will precipitate the extinction of advertising agencies.  And while she did spend four years at an ad agency (during which time I’m sure she saw plenty of function and dysfunction), the writer has never been a client, let alone a CMO.

Andrea called her blog post “Calling All Chief Marketing Officers (or Those Who Play Them on TV)” and asked several CMOs to read the magazine article and offer our points of view. Here’s mine (as posted on the Fitting Group site).

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Personally, I think the hype about social media being different, experiential, never finished, “perpetual beta…” is hooey. Or rather, the process of smart learning for a CMO is – at a high level – unchanged.

Every channel, every communication vehicle, every media outlet and interaction capability… each has its own ways and rules. TV had its own ways and rules we CMOs had to learn. Email. Radio. Whatever. Now it’s today’s version of social media – it is a living channel with its own characteristics, feedback loop, expectations, organizational demands – all new to the channel, but not a new way of approach to assessment and action for the good CMO. For the great CMO, everything we do lives in a state of constant learning and improvement – it’s how we work with our CEOs, CFOs and teams every day.

And as with all things new, a CMO will always seek real experts and advisors who understand the organization in which s/he operates, can help build a case for new initiatives, can help shorten the organization’s learning timeframe and get sustainable initiatives up and running. Oh, and help the CMO look and feel smart and confident.

The problem is NOT that ad agencies SHOULD be moving toward extinction. It’s quite the opposite: CMOs need and welcome the help. The issue IMO is that too many analysts and agencies are stalled in the shiny object phase, where social media is new and exciting and OOH! look at that Facebook page, and see how smart I am, etc. etc. – as opposed to truly understanding the client’s brand, objectives, operating environment, organizational/budget limitations, the various stakeholders whose concerns must be addressed… all the factors that make an agency a true partner vs. a hit and run “guru” who has no real interest in the less flashy parts of the world in which the CMO operates.

Agencies that can do that will be in business forever – whether the topic is social media or the next big thing or the next one after that.

Is social buying practicing its shark jump already??  Such was my thought (and mild sense of alarm) when I opened this month’s new Harvard Business Review and found a serious-looking article on the phenomenon titled, “Why Employees Can Wreck Promotional Offers.”

The piece is written by an associate professor of marketing at a reasonably prestigious U.S. university, and it profiles his research into the administration of group buying offers from the likes of Groupon, BuyWithMe and LivingSocial. 

The article first caught my eye because of its anti-worker title, frankly… and then I read it.  The key insight to be gleaned from this academic research is that employees – not just offers – can have a huge impact on the creation of a “positive customer experience.”  Employees’ behavior, the professor says, can even cause the offer to “backfire” if managers fail to prepare employees properly or there is some other reason (e.g. a diner does not tip on a Groupon restaurant offer) that workers may cause a consumer’s initial interaction to be a poor one.

“In fact,” he says, “preparing employees for upcoming promotions and obtaining their buy-in is the most important factor influencing a Groupon promotion’s success”… “or any promotion['s], for that matter.”

Are we at the point in the shiny-object lifecycle where critical thinking is to be set aside and any piece of content with the word “Groupon” in it can (a) pass as “research,” and (b) make it into legitimate academic journals?

I hope so.  I say that because if, instead, it’s a revelation in our universities’ classrooms that customer service and positive employee engagement are the keys to marketing success, we’ve got a much bigger problem on our hands.

I suspect it is the former, so this too shall pass.

Branding gets a bad rap.  I’ve always thought this was fascinating because – without branding – there would be little else in the world of consumption.  That’s because a “brand” can be defined as what a product, place or person means to you: it’s the place in the mind occupied by our real or anticipated experience with that person or thing.  And it drives many of our decisions. 

Think of it this way.  You get up in the morning.  The soap and toothpaste you use, the cereal you eat, the car you get into or the subway stairs you descend, the maker of your briefcase or backpack or handbag, the coffee shop you favor (or avoid), the newspaper you pick up, the particular vacation spot you research when you get to your desk: your real or perceived experience with each of these things drives your choices.  That’s brand.  You can’t (and don’t) live without it.  It’s all over, all the time.

And man, there’s a lot of competition.  And distraction.  And price pressure.  And etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So if this is the case, then it’s the job of a brand owner to create positive associations – a positive experience – associated with the person, place or thing in question.  Life is hard: great experiences are priceless and they’re something  you want to share with others.

Thanks to my Twitter compatriots David Ansett (@brandamentalist) and Story Worldwide (@storyworldwide), I came upon this wonderful NY-based company, Improv Everywhere,  which describes itself as an organization that “causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places.”

What does that mean, you ask?  It means that Improv Everywhere creates “missions” that create an attention-getting public event that creates positive buzz – a positive experience – that is very unexpected and equally as impactful.

Here’s one that got a lot of press in NYC: “Star Wars Subway Car” (if  you cannot see the video below, click HERE):

The one that made the biggest impression on me was “High Five Escalator.” The video was shot literally on the escalator/stairs of New York City’s E/V/6 subway stop at 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue.  Now, this stop is a friggin nightmare during the morning commute: you’re squished, it’s hot, it’s unpleasant… just a major potential misery at 8 or 8:30 in the morning.  But on this particular morning, a few Improv Everywhere “undercover agents” got 2,000 people to smile and give a “high five,” and many more just had a great experience on their way to work (if you cannot see the video below, click HERE):

Here’s an interview with Charlie Todd, the founder of 9-year-old “prank collective” Improv Everywhere (if you cannot see the video below, click HERE):

Improv Everywhere says that it takes on commercial clients only here and there, and that this is what allows them to keep doing what they’re doing.  But while Improv Everywhere “works to live,” if you will, hasn’t it cracked the very essence of the brand manager’s job?  What if your brand was associated with such a positive, memorable experience? 

This guy’s on to something.

P.S. I’ve signed up to be an Improv Everywhere undercover agent, so – the next time 200 people freeze in the middle of Grand Central – look around…

Pringles has a new funny online campaign that skewers folks who “overshare” on Twitter and Facebook.

A key feature of the campaign’s website – http://www.helptheoversharers.com - has a ”Best of” Twitter feed that streams some classics: “My arm is itchy,” “Cleaning the kitchen,” and “New shower gel – hooray!”

Amazing: “hurray” is just the utterance I was planning – too bad P&G got to it first.

So anyway, the website offers tips for recovering oversharers, a plug-in that allows you to “shame a friend with just one click” (very popular, I’m sure) and even an interactive video into which you can drop some of your favorite inane comments.  And you can buy a t-shirt with a dopey tweet on it.  Of your choice.

The site is accompanied by a utility on Facebook that Pringles’ 3 million fans (and anyone else who feels like it) can download and use to label boring Facebook updates.

To me, the campaign feels a wee bit derivative of Burger King’s 2009 ”Whopper Sacrifice Challenge,” which offered a free Whopper to anyone willing to unfriend 10 people on Facebook. That campaign was semi-criticized for being an “anti-social” social campaign – a page that Pringles appears to have torn out of the fast fooder’s playbook. And there have been a number of other brands – like Nestle and Skittles – that have leveraged the riskiness and “nowness” of featuring a live Twitter feed in their promotions.

But so far, this has been a conversation focused on techniques and tools – a plug-in, a feed, interactive videos and custom t-shirts.  I love tools just as much as the next marketer, but… what does the Oversharers campaign have to do with Pringles’ persona and the ultimate goal of selling more product? 

If there’s a second phase of this campaign that ties the downside of oversharing online to oversharing your Pringles (because you want to eat them all yourself?), P&G better get moving. It seems like that’d make sense… but I’m guessing and this connection isn’t made at the moment.

So from a business point of view, I don’t get it.  You’re the Pringles brand manager: what consumer insight led to this campaign? What are you trying to communicate? What differentiation would motivate trial, or make an existing Pringles eater feel good about the brand?

Don’t “overshare” social media tools because they’re cool.  It’s tempting – and I recommend social media experimentation all the time – but all of the standard rules of branding, communications and marketing (and revenue and market share and shelf space) apply.

Last week, I attended Columbia Business School’s Brite Conference 2010. “Brite” stands for brands, innovation and technology, and the event is sponsored annually by the school’s Center on Global Brand Leadership.

The two-day happening gave me enough material for quite a while, but let me start here.

There was a real mix of speakers.  On the first day, one of these presenters was Miky Lee (Mie Kyung Lee), Vice Chairman of CJ Entertainment & Media, the entertainment division of Korea’s CJ Corporation.

I know – I never heard of it, either.*

Ms. Lee carefully read her prepared remarks in English, sprinkling her comments with video clips from Korean films, cable television, games, recording artists and the like. 

While watching what appeared to be the Korean version of American Idol, I began thinking of my grocery list and wondering if the conference organizers had planned the session to seemingly wander off this way.

The Q&As came.  Ms. Lee answered a few questions here and there.  She was gracious and considerate.  Then an audience member asked if CJ was going to try to break into the United States.  The speaker wasn’t nasty or arrogant; he was simply saying that – to be truly successful - CJ would need to access the American culture market.

Ms. Lee stood oddly frozen at the podium until until one of the event moderators jumped in to say that Korea was far – far far far - past the U.S. in terms of digital sophistication and social media in all its forms.  Facebook, for example, is pre-historic news in Korea, where a vastly superior social networking site, Cyworld, has been operating since 2000. 

Clearly relieved, the polite Ms. Lee thanked the moderator for his comments and then proceeded to explain that the U.S. is no longer the center of the cultural universe in Asia.

“Having grown up in the 50s,” Ms. Lee said that she and her friends worshipped American music and celebrities.   American culture was the center of their universe.  No more. Today, Japan is the center of Asian life.  Kids look to Japan for what’s cool, hip and trendy.

At this point, Ms. Lee was on a (respectful) roll.

She shared a few details about Korean’s online lifestyle. Did you know that Korea is #1 in the world for broadband penetration in the home? This 2009 article puts that percentage at 95%. Ms. Lee said 98%.  They’re probably both right.  And the United States? As of 2009, we were 20th with 60%.

20th.  That’s 2-o-th.  Behind Singapore (88%), Taiwan (81%), the Netherlands (85) and others.  Estonia has higher in-home broadband penetration than we do (62%). Did you know that Estonia, a country with a population the size of Idaho‘s, has an extremely sophisticated information technology sector?  I didn’t.  How about the fact that the creators of both Kazaa and Skype came from Estonia? Nope, ‘hasn’t come up in the line at Starbucks recently. 

I do know, however, that a moving van showed up at Sandra Bullock’s and Jesse James’ marital home last weekend. Whooo-eee! Come back later: my brain is full.

Anyway, Ms. Lee went on to explain how Korea has leapfrogged everyone else in the world with respect to broadband and mobile usage. Downloading full-length feature films at home or playing games and watching TV on a cell phone are run-of-the-mill activities. And then there’s Cyworld, that social network owned by SK Telecom, Korea’s largest wireless provider.  Ms. Lee described Cyworld as essentially a millionth generation of the sites we use in the U.S.: a sort-of Facebook meets MySpace meets Flickr meets IMing meets Blogger. Characterized by CNN as “a license to print money,” Cyworld is used by 90% of all Koreans in their 20s (but also across all age categories) and produces 3x the revenue per user as does MySpace.

And although perhaps she had a right to be, Ms. Lee wasn’t smarmy, or poke-America-in-the eye arrogant: her remarks came across as a 100% sincere call for us to get our *** out of our *** and realize that the U.S is no longer the singular epicenter of cultural or technological innovation.  Seek out what’s happening in Japanese culture, she told us, as well as several other sophisticated countries, including her own. Learn. See. Question.

So - wow. I was intrigued. Who was this woman who read awkwardly from prepared comments and seemed uneasy on stage? (You know what’s coming, right?)

I’m going to make this short so it’s not too painful: Lee received her MA from Harvard in 1986, and served as a teaching fellow there for three years. CJ Corporation – the parent company of CJ Entertainment – built the first and largest multiplex chain in Korea. It also operates the country’s #1 cable network. And CJ’s Mnet Media is the leader in cable music television, music distribution and live concerts.  Variety considers Ms. Lee to be one of the world’s leading film industry executives, and she was the recipient of the CEO of the Year Award from a prestigious business association in her country.  Prior to joining CJ, Ms. Lee was a director or cultural and educational projects at Samsung America. In perhaps her spare time (?), Ms. Lee managed to establish the Parsons School of Design in Seoul and likes to chit-chat with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (two CJ partners) about their mutual love of movies.

Oh, and of course there’s also the fact that she’s the first grandchild of B.C. Lee, the founder of Samsung Group, the LARGEST CONGLOMERATE IN THE WORLD by revenue ($173.4 billion in 2008), and owner of Samsung Electronics, one of the top 20 most valuable brands in the universe and the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics. CJ, you see, was originally a part of the Samsung world, although it specialized in some sort of foodstuffs before Lee and her brother transformed it into a media juggernaut.

This woman has seen, accomplished, hungered for and achieved things that only a tiny fraction of the world’s citizens ever will.

I… have no real end for this post, other to say that I’m still cringing a week later.  The world isn’t hanging on our every word and - in many arenas – has already pulled way out in front of the United States. 

And we’re going to use this to recognize that we must be more curious, more open, more interested in seeking out worlds other than our own, right? Right?

New Balance has created an online/social media campaign and (offline) line of shoes that marries both worlds in the most elegant way.

The 574 men’s and women’s collection is made entirely of left-over scraps of cloth in the company’s Lawrence, MA factory and, as a result, each pair is just a bit different – each has its own personality, you might say.  A very special, limited line deserves equally powerful promotion, and the company’s ad agency, Mother, knew it.

When you buy a 574 pair from one of ten boutiques in the U.S., there’s a special Polaroid photograph in the box.  The owner can then go to 574Clips.com, and match the Polaroid to a special mini-film about the shoe.  Once the film has played, the happy shoe wearer can add his/her name at the end of the film.  The film for 106Red appears to show a man dipping a carrot into the shoe (for dip, or course), while 115Green has a lovable furry muppet (with green nose to match) admiring a pair of shoes.  Each is very short and fun – check out one or two for yourself, and see if it doesn’t make you want to buy the shoes.

574Clips.com also features links to Facebook, MySpace, De.li.ci.ous and Tumblr, so buyers of these unique shoes can tell (and show) all their friends.  The campaign is also tied to sneaker culture blogs like High Snobiety and Nice Kicks.

Anyone who watches Entourage (Episode 3, Season 6) knows how culturally important “sneakerheads” are – the (mostly) men who must have the hottest, most limited sneaker available tend to be heavy influencers and leading indicators of pop culture trends and information.  It’s a valuable and – in their own milieu – sophisticated crowd, and Mother has delivered an equally sophisticated communications plan.  The blending of manufacturing, blogs, web, community, video and product is exceptional.

And now I must sign off – I’m on my way to Reed Space: the only shop in NYC to carry the $75 shoes with the special Polaroid inside…

A new study released by Q Interactive indicates that – while women may be flocking to social networking – they’re not yakking about the favorite baby food or burgers.  While 52% of 1,000 women said that they’d become a “friend” or “fan” of at least one brand, 75% of women in the study overall say that social networks do not influence what they buy.

I had to smile when Q’s president scrambled to make sure that marketers (with money) didn’t interpret the results in a negative way: Q calls the “disconnect” a “huge opportunity” for marketers and says that brands need to catch up to the needs of women online. 

If I were an agency relying on clients, I’d say the same thing!

But what if that’s not true? What if the social media frenzy that’s been whipped up among advertisers is…  overhyped?  What if we find out that women love discovering new ideas and interacting with new people and new communities, but the commercial promise in these interactions isn’t there? What if online engagement doesn’t lead to sales?  What if talking just leads to… talking?

I’m going to watch for new news and information about how women are interacting with social media because – if Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and all the other social sites do not turn out to be a brand bonanza for advertisers, we could see a major reset in expectations, involvement and, most importantly, dollars.

Ah, the sweet satisfaction of being able to vent.  You know the feeling: you have an awful customer service experience and vow to tell every man, woman and child all about it until the day you keel over.

And so you do.

But how many people is that – 5, 6, maybe 10?  And how quickly did you stop telling anyone about it – a week?

Brands often still behave as if they live in that world when – in reality – that world is gone forever.  The “social media” phenomenon has seen to that.  And I preach this as often as possible, even making presentations on the topics of online reputation management, the implications of new sites and technologies for marketers and how companies need to adjust to survive.

But we all know that this doesn’t happen.  Three of my all-time favorite this-reputation-disaster-could-have-been-avoided stories are Jeff Jarvis’ Dell Hell, the recording of Vincent Ferrari trying for 15+ minutes to cancel his AOL account and KFC/Taco Bell doing nothing for hours and hours while local NY news crews shot video through the front window of a closed store while rats scurried here there and everywhere, thereby turning a gross story into a global event (not a good day for Yum Brands…).

Today, I share my latest fave: Sons of Maxwell creating an absolutely masterful video and song, “United Breaks Guitars,” about an awful experience it had with United Airlines.

It seems that the band, Sons of Maxwell, were on the tarmac in Chicago when some fellow United Airline passengers looked out the window and saw one of the bandmember’s $3,500 guitars being thrown by United baggage handlers. The guitar was severely damaged and unplayable.  United did not deny responsibility, but tortured the band for nine months until finally refusing to compensate the guitar’s owner, Dave Carroll, for the loss.

Mr. Carroll subsequently vowed to “write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.”  HERE IS THE FIRST of the three:

The video was viewed 150,000 times in its first 48 hours and several comments on the page are from those who say that the band’s experience has negatively impacted their opinion of United Airlines.  One person remarks that, based on the video, he shifted a group’s travel plans to another airline, thereby costing United about $10,000.

Now I’ve worked in plenty of places, and know that sometimes individual employees can be dimwits (the video dramatizes the apparent reaction three in-flight airline employees had when first alerted to the problem).  I also know that it’s a fact of life that a company can’t resolve every customer service complaint to a person’s satisfaction: some companies even calculate the likelihood and cost of getting sued, based on past experience, and consciously do not address costly errors.  History dictates that it’s more cost effective to take the risk of a lawsuit.  But this… is not that.

The guitar cost $3,500.  United Airlines does not deny responsibility.  By the time Carroll is finished, I predict well north of 1 million views of his videos: videos that will last forever and be ”rediscovered” from time to time.

We’ll see.  United says it has contacted Carroll, but first reports say that the airline likes the song (gee, thanks) but has not yet offered remuneration.

In the meantime, the band sold 40 albums on its website in 24 hours after releasing the video. It usually sells one per day.