The Father of Invention

I had a lovely surprise today.  

Let me start with a little personal history.  I was born into the Marketing Agency business.  Literally.  My father, Irving Woolf, was one of the pioneers of promotional marketing services in the US, part of the so-called Chicago School of Promotion, alongside greats such as William Robinson and Bud Frankel.  I literally grew up surrounded by Jim Beam motion POS, Miller Brewing concept boards, Keebler promotions, and Encyclopedia Britannica display racks.  My first ‘paid’ job was preparing a promotional mailer for FW Means Services, who did industrial dry cleaning.  The mailer was intended to show how they can clean any sort of garment, and was illustrated with a small bag containing items which would typically appear in a businessman’s shirt pocket.  Sign of the times:  businessman.  Other sign of the times:  the items included a paper clip, and tobacco filaments.  The fact that I went on to not only work with Dad, but then head overseas (and back again) to work in the agency business is testimony to the marketing brainwashing I had from an early age.

To cut a long and glorious life story short, my father left this world in December 2009.  His loss left a huge gap in my life – prior to December of that year, we spoke daily.  He advised and counseled me in good times and bad.  If you’ve got a close relationship with a parent, and actually worked alongside them, you’ll know what I mean – you benefit from both personal and professional advice.  And usually it’s appreciated.

But today, in a moment of quiet, I remembered something:  he’d mentioned in one of our conversations years ago about having filed a patent.

And sure enough, within 10 seconds today, courtesy of Google, I had a copy of his patent application for a display unit from 1967.  Pretty amazing, not only that I could so easily get the drawings and write up, but that in that decade, much of promotional marketing relied on finding new ways to do things.  It was the Gold Rush era of promotional marketing and merchandising, when literally having knowledge of materials and construction techniques could make a savvy agency a small fortune.

Have things changed?  I think not.  With social media, mobile apps, experiential marketing, sophisticated data management, and other techniques and tools at our disposal, the opportunity to create new (patentable?) ideas and apply them to help our clients solve business problems has never been greater.  Imagination is the only limit … well, imagination and budget …

Like I said, a lovely surprise.

Can you pass the ‘ethics’ test?

Once again, the NCAA is investigating a rules infraction at a major college sports institution.  As many of you will be aware, the OSU coach, Jim Tressel is under investigation over his alleged violation of NCAA rules in failing to report his knowledge of player transgressions in selling merchandise when he was questioned by NCAA investigators.  What I’ve heard so far is that Jim, who received a relative slap on the wrist from the University, is up for much bigger slaps from the NCAA.  And just like Barry Bonds, who allegedly never knowingly took performance enhancing drugs, the truth will eventually out him and potentially permanently stain his reputation and legacy as head coach of one of the premier US college football programs.

The whole sorry saga raises an interesting point for brand and marketing management:  if you know something is ‘wrong’, how do you respond?  With that in mind, take my devious little 5 question quiz and see how you end up.

1.  You’re a lowly Assistant Brand Manager, just got the job in fact, and you take a field visit to your brand’s Far East factory.  At the factory, you uncover a number of workers who assemble your product that appear to be underage.  Do you:

a.  Do whatever you can to stop production, and try to explain to your boss and all the executives up the line why you need to stop manufacturing until the problem is resolved … along with sales, retailers, and others.

b.  Quietly start an internal investigation to stop the practice, and hope the media doesn’t get their mitts on the story.

c.  Leave the firm for the ABM job at Nike.

d.  Other

2.  You run an ad agency, part of a big network, which has hit a few financial hurdles.  You have an opportunity to get, on a plate, a huge account that will get the ‘big wigs’ at corporate HQ off your back.  It also happens to be a competitor to your largest current account – and who the new account doesn’t know you work with.  Resigning the current account in favor of the new account is a zero gain proposition – you’ll still be in the red for the fiscal year.  Do you:

a.  Take the account, try to keep Chinese walls, hope that the exec assistant doesn’t email the wrong account with the budget breakdown.

b.  Set up a satellite agency to handle, reducing profitability and potentially causing an issue with the ‘new’ account who were not aware that their major competitor was a customer of the ‘main’ agency.

c.  Walk away from the business opportunity, and risk getting hauled over the coals and losing your job over failure to hit targets.

d.  Other

3.  You’re in charge of marketing for a pharma brand which cures ED.  You read on a Facebook posting that your ED medication caused someone to lose all bodily hair.  Do you:

a.  Ignore it, on the basis that it lacks all the prerequisites of an adverse event.

b.  Investigate further, commission studies, alert management of a potential problem, and potentially pull the drug until you’re satisfied the posting was a ‘one off’.

c.  Look for the alternative marketing opportunity as an alternative to waxing or laser hair removal.

d.  Other

4.  You market a newspaper, and have seen circulation and ad revenues falling faster than Villanova’s ranking in men’s college basketball this year.  You’re approached by an advertiser for a porn empire, offering you mega-bucks which could save your publication, if you agree to feature her ads on the classified section for various chatlines, dubious websites, and other services.  Do you:

a.  Tell them forget it, and risk going out of business

b.  Accept the cash, create a classified “Over 21” section

c.  Rename yourself ‘The Sun:  USA Edition’, convert your page 3 to having a topless model, and see how it goes.

d.  Other.

5.  You run a marketing agency, and discover that the direct mail samples you sent out for a major client have a tiny error in the pack – the wrong photo was put in place.  The mailing hasn’t dropped yet, but the client is demanding you get it out ASAP as it’s highly time critical – so no time for a re-print.  Do you:

a.  Tell the client, and accept the decision on ‘go’, ‘no go, reprint’ … as well as their fury that your team dropped a ball.

b.  Keep it from the client, and dummy up some ‘correct’ samples to send to them for their records.  And hope a lot.

c.  Pull the mailing, make the correction, send the mailing … and hope the timing delay isn’t too great.

d.  Other.

Comments welcome as to how you’d tackle these challenges.  Was thinking of offering merchandise I bought at a Columbus, OH tattoo parlor, but thought better of it.