Barbie. X. Brand Shorthand

Lorraine goes off on a few topics including the Barbie movie and the move by Twitter to rebrand as X. It's no holds barred. Then Mark shares how he arrived at the podcast name of Brand Shorthand and why it makes so much sense given the line of work we find ourselves: advertising. Learn how your brand can reach the nirvana of a shorthand and what that really means.

Spend 30-ish with Mark and Lorraine to learn more about advertising, marketing, and positioning.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:36 Barbie Movie
• 4:12 Twitter to X
• 13:34 How did Mark arrive at Brand Shorthand name?
• 30:53 Outro

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift:

Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me is the famous and infamous Lorraine Kessler. Thing one, what is up today?

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, feeling more infamous than famous. So, what's up today? Well, I think I'm looking at some topical things. You know, there's been a lot of controversy over this Barbie movie. And so, a lot of people have got their underwear scrunched up over this. The feminists are all for it. The anti-woke are all against it. I would have to say this, it's consistent with the brand. The movie is completely consistent with the brand. The doll was created 60 years ago. So, I was seven years old at the time, between seven and eight. It was revolutionary. It was revolutionary in the doll market to have what we consider as I consider as a child, an adult doll that I could imagine having a career or a life driving a car, going up her elevator in her magic house, living this Beverly Hills lifestyle, that this kind of fantasy lifestyle. That was extremely differentiated and it was really feminist in its way. So, to move this along with where the culture is moving, I think is appropriate, and I'm sure it upsets people. But it's part of the heritage. We just talked about heritage in our last podcast. It's part of the heritage of the Barbie phenomenon. They only brought Ken along as a kind of a ride along later. I mean, it was first Barbie.

And there was no talk about her having babies or any of that. She actually was like, created without genitals if anybody remembers the dolls they weren't, and that was never part of it. So in fact they created Midge - she was supposed to have children and all and that became kind of a that was kind of a one Of their failures. So, you know, they've really been on the right track. They have now been about inclusiveness They have 35 different skin colors in their dolls. They have nine different body types so presenting Barbie at the forefront of really pushing the uncomfortable women's agenda. I think perfectly fits the brand and the heritage and those who don't like it, and a lot of them are men, well, it wasn't for you anyway. So, you know, it's a good move. 

Mark Vandegrift:

Tell me more about, tell me more about Midge. That sounds like Pat from Saturday Night Live. What was Midge all about?

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, somehow they got the feeling that they were, that they needed to bring maybe Barbie into actually being able to be both kind of a free spirit and then a career woman and a mother. So they created Midge. But what happened is there was backlash that they thought Midge, who was pregnant, was promoting teenage pregnancy. So that was the end of Midge in that vein. Then there was a guy named Alan that was supposed to be Midge's boyfriend. And he was always kind of … I don't know what to call him, but he was a loser, although they tried to bring him back a couple of times. So, they've had some, they've had some failings along the way, but I think that the, the original Barbie was a very differentiated, revolutionary concept from Mattel at the time for little girls who didn't have any identity with women outside the house who could live a fun, adventurous career. or not just being Paris Hilton life. And all of a sudden we could have that. And so, I identified with that. I thought it was great. I think a lot of people in my generation did. So, the fact that they're moving, I've moved to this other part with the culture, I think is, it's part of the heritage. 

Mark Vandegrift:

Yeah. Good. Well, you know, a headline I saw and I think is everyone is on everyone's mind right now is Twitter and no longer tweeting, but Xeeting. And what this whole X thing is about being that everything app? That just kind of boggles the mind. What's your take on it?

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, I think it's an egregious ego decision on the part of Elon Musk. And I could be wrong, but I'm just looking at this purely from the lens of positioning. When you say that you want to be what? The everything app, and that means you're going to cross from audio, video, messaging, banking, finance, who knows what. You have now entered the very perilous world of brand extension if they're all just X-branded. And he's already lost $44 billion in market value. And I don't rate market valuations that highly, but they're out there since he made the purchase of Twitter. That's kind of what they're saying, those who study that stuff. 

So, to me, this is, he's losing a core part of his audience. He has to recultivate, but more than that, he's losing all the good equity that's been built up. I mean, when you buy a brand, you're particularly a brand like this, a product like this, a service, the brand is a huge part of the market capitalization, right? Coke's market capitalization is more driven by its brand name than it is by its manufacturing plants and the formula. And certainly for something like Twitter, the brand value is really the greatest part of it. So, you're losing the bird, you're losing the tweet, which is a pneumatic and a word, and you're going to an X, which is strange. And I know he loves X, because we have SpaceX, right? He likes to put Xs on stuff. Now, is there hope? for this, I think this is a terribly flawed strategy, particularly if everything's under X. 

So, there is some hope if you were to do kind of what Meta did with, you know, Meta, Facebook created Meta, the company, but it's still Facebook, right? And then Google Alphabet became Alphabet as the company, but they still have Google and YouTube. So, the product names, that's what people are tied to. more than the company names. The company names are for investors. That's a big audience for these tech companies and I get it. So, they want to see the alphabet portfolio. They want to see the meta portfolio. They want to know what's next in your brand portfolio. But consumers buy products. And so, if the ultimate strategy is to create a product strategy, then underneath this X corporation, there's maybe some hope. But I don't know why I would X out the bird and the tweet and that to me is like your most valuable asset. So, it's a really strange move and it certainly is one that will remain to be seen, but we do know right now that advertising revenue since Elon Musk took over Twitter has dropped 50%, so, you know, he's got a lot of. He's got a lot of makeup to do. Someone said this could be a history record story about how someone devolves a brand.

Mark Vandegrift:

Well, I'll tell you what… these big corporations are making weird moves. I don't know if you knew this, but Elon Musk, before he sold PayPal, was hoping to do this. His idea was, he actually owned x.com, and when he sold PayPal, he sold x.com with that, but he bought it back years later. And obviously now that's playing out, I'm sure x.com is where we're going to see Twitter land. And it boggles my mind that when you have ego and more money than God, basically, I mean, losing $44 billion, can you even comprehend that? I get worried losing $44.

Lorraine Kessler:

Yeah, me too, and more so now.

Mark Vandegrift:

I don't know. We always say you can't be all things to all people. That's the opposite of positioning. So maybe he's going to invent something that we don't know about. I mean, you can't argue with the guy's success. I just don't know how this is going to play out. It doesn't feel right.

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, and the problem is who's going to speak truth to the emperor? I mean, you know, this is the I think truth needs to be spoken to him that, as we said, you know, categories divide. Companies combine, categories divide. And so, for him putting all these categories, particularly if they're under x.com or x whatever, is just the customer he's trying to reach can’t think clearly about that brand if it's all under one umbrella. They just don't get a clear focus. And you're asking way too much of the average mind to do that. And so, to me, that's why it's a fatal mistake. And I'd like to go back to his childhood with the childhood psychologist and figure out, why is he so married to this x? X marks the spot. Did something happen in his early childhood reading? I don't know.

Mark Vandegrift:

There's already videos out there of how the whole X logo is Mark of the Beast and all this other stuff. It's like, it doesn't take long for this stuff to get pushed out there yet. And that the X is the Unicode font, and the Unicode is the Mark of the Beast, and it has three ones in it, which if you go to Strong's Concordance, has to do with the Antichrist. I mean... It's crazy how you can get so, it's crazy about something that someone does. Now, if we were counseling him and he was insistent on this everything app, wouldn't the more logical approach be keep Twitter the way it is right now, work on your X app, and when it's ready to deploy, just deploy it? I mean, if it's doing financial things and communication things and you-name-it things, that's going to be differentiated enough from Twitter anyhow that you should be able to come out with it as X and just leave Twitter where it is, let it do its thing and earn what it earns. And I don't understand why he had to replace that. That's what's kind of mind boggling.

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, that's why I think it's ego. It's ego driven and And so, you know, hey if he if he's successful he can say see, you know. 

Mark Vandegrift:

That's true.

Lorraine Kessler:

But I'm just going from classic positioning training which has been tried and true He's expanding way too far even now. I'm very confused. I don't know if you are I get very confused because there's this partnership with Apple and Amazon. It's very confusing in my billing and some things that have happened to me. And I'm like, is that Amazon? Is this Apple? What does this Apple pay? I mean, I think people are just overwhelmed with all of this fractionization that's gone on all under Apple. So, what is Apple now? It's like all these things. And it's just become very complicated for the consumer to figure out. And they don't want to. When you’re frustrated, you turn off.

Mark Vandegrift:

Yeah, I think they're all trying to own a piece of the pie. And sometimes because of the merging of technology, you're crossing from one territory to another territory. And that's great for the consumer because it's seamless, it's frictionless. But once you do that, the corporations are out there, “well, hey, I want my piece of the pie.” So, I get that they're fighting because they are beholden to making revenue and, and achieving whatever they have to achieve for Wall Street. But I think that's what's happening now. We're seeing a merging of technology more and more. There's not as many discrete applications. So, from that standpoint, I get trying to be the everything app, because that's where it feels like it's headed. We might have a watch on our hands someday and it does everything that we need, that we have 50 apps for today. But again, I don't know why you would throw Twitter into that category thinking that's going to become the everything app. That just doesn't, that's nonsensical to me.

Well, we're halfway through the podcast already and we haven't gotten to our topic, but I think that was all wonderful. I had a question come up, like, where'd you get the name Brand Shorthand? Someone asked me how I came up with that name. And Lorraine, this will ring true for you. I remember a while back coming up with this concept because someone said, for about the thousandth time, they came in and said, “Oh, I want a logo like the Nike swoosh.” And of course, we do the eye roll thing. What they're really saying is they want a brand as powerful as Nike without the need to invest billions, maybe trillions of dollars to get their swoosh to mean all it means about the Nike brand. And I get it, to me, the swoosh is the shortcut-iest shortcuts to brand meaning you can get. When you see that Swoosh, what do you think? Well, you think Nike and the performance apparel that just lets me do it. There aren't too many brands out there like that. Maybe Disney's logo, Apple's logo, Microsoft's logo, Google's logo. You know the Nike story, Lorraine.

Think about that. What does it really take? Give us all the history and the resources that it takes to get all that meaning wrapped up into a singular symbol that I would call a brand shorthand.

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, first we have to start with the education of what a brand is not. So, a brand is not a logo. You need a logo because that's an identifier for a brand, but it is not the brand. It is not the sum of the brand. A brand is not a tagline. Right? That's an advertising line that can be catchy or not. A brand is not the colors, although those are identifiers. Again, these are identifiers. What a brand is, is a meaning that you create that is symbolized by these identifiers over time. A meaning that is highly relevant to a target audience and differentiates you from competition. So... Ultimately, it is a strategic idea. 

And so you make meaning, you make money. Now these things, again, the logo, the colors, the tagline, these are identifiers that help people then connect with that meaning or they convey the meaning, if you will. But the second thing we have to get people not to think about is that they can do this without money. That they can have some kind of, our brand shorthand isn't about us giving you a simple shorthand to... becoming like Nike by just giving you a logo. 

Just giving you a logo doesn't do anything. Just promoting a logo. I mean, as if to say that if all we put in a piece of paper or an ad was a logo, people would want what you sell. So, you know, that is just fantasy thinking. It's dangerous thinking. And the problem is that we often have is most of the clients that we deal with, 90% of businesses in the country are small businesses. So, small businesses are the ones who are looking for branding help and looking to grow and expand. You can't operate your business from the extreme and say, “I want to go from where I am today to be a Nike tomorrow,” without resources, without money, without the time and energy that was put into the campaigns that Apple, Nike, Disney, Microsoft, Google have done over time and with great ubiquity. You just can't get there. 

So, you know, I can give you a logo. What do you think that's going to do for you? That's what you have to ask. 

Mark Vandegrift:

Well, I like how you've always used the word is with apologies to Bill Clinton, what is is, but you always say brand equals meaning.

And we want that equation. So Google search engine, FedEx overnight delivery, BMW performance car or ultimate driving machine. So that's the shorthand, right? And whatever that brand, however it is executed. So Nike, Performance Apparel, they've gotten it down to that shorthand of that Swoosh. And that is an ultimate goal that people should want to have, but you don't do it by just coming up with a clever logo. If you think about the swoosh, is it really all that unique or sexy? I mean, think of how many swooshes are out there as logos. So I like how you always are able to reduce the discussion to give us your is. X equals X. And speaking of Twitter, Twitter equals X. No, I'm kidding. Nike equals performance. Innis Midori equals positioning.

So we have our “is.: But it's funny, I'm not sure younger folks know what shorthand means or is from the standpoint of the way we use it. Maybe it's like the rotary phone or the dial up, internet sound.

I first learned about it in middle school and knew it was used in court. So the court reporter could keep up with the conversation. And that's where it was formally called stenography. But anyhow, we have some of those remnant shorthand symbols in use today. If you think about the ampersand, the pound sign, or what we now call the hashtag, but it made me realize that our minds like shortcuts to a broader meeting. And when we see that Nike shorthand, there's a whole emotion and idea wrapped up in that single symbol. You know what I mean when I say that?

Lorraine Kessler:

But it wasn't just putting the symbol in a piece of paper and in ads. It was building the meaning through communication in terms of words and pictures and sounds that gave you that equation of what you're talking about. My brand equals this idea. And when that one goes to equal. When my brand stands for this idea, ultimate driving machine, curiously strong [mints] positioning. When my brand stands for that, if I ask someone who stands for positioning, they should be able to say in this majority. We hope. 

If someone you say who stands for the ultimate driving machine, they should be able to reverse engineer it and say BMW. That is the ultimate goal of all of all these other things to me are the devices we use the logo, the tagline, the colors, the way we do the advertising the people we have in our ads the approach we take in the ads. Is it going to be humorous? Is it going to be serious? Is it going to be shocking? All  of those are the devices By which we get to that ultimate end where people see that simple symbol and they think about all that stuff But you can't just buy a logo and think you're going to get there.

Mark Vandegrift:

Yeah, well, social media and texting are probably good proofs for this shorthand approach, because if you think about it, LOL or ROFL or WTH, what the heck, that's my cleaner version of WTF, by the way.

Lorraine Kessler:

It's your cleaner version of Lorraine. Let's just be clear.

Mark Vandegrift:

You know, with more clutter every day, the brain just has to go into this defense mode to filter out all the communication. I think we used to cite a stat that the average person consumes over 3,500 messages per day, but more recent stats say that it's over 12,000 messages per day. And that's just advertising messages. Imagine all the texts, all the tweets, all the TikToks, all the emails, all the… and on down the line that the mind has to consume and process. No wonder we have mental health issues. I mean, the amount of information flowing at us is incredible. So we say it frequently, but remind our listeners what it really takes to break through that clutter.

Lorraine Kessler:

Well, #1 is you need a clear strategy. the positioning strategy. What is it, what is your aim? What is the is that you're trying to create that will drive choice and value? So you get that strategy. #2, then you make sure that you understand what audience, customer audience, target audience, will really care a lot about that. You're not trying to boil the ocean, you're not trying to go after everybody, all moms for example, all car owners. You're trying to go after a particular specific car owner, a particular music appreciator, someone who likes crooners and big band versus hip hop and whatever. 

So, you've really got to define your audience in very specific terms, not get too greedy and stay focused and understand, get really intimate with what they care about relative to your idea. 

[#3]Then you need a really great creative staff and I think most ideas, there are some, I guess, it's always a blend, right? But great concepting often in the English, in the Americans, the United States, marketing, begin with words. Like there's a word concept. Because words, the English language is both auditory, but it also creates or evokes images in the brain. So, you have a word, a really great copywriter or art director, or copy director who could work together so that words and pictures come together. And I think in that, and you can dramatize the idea. 

And I think the other ingredient, this is where the magic happens. I always say this, it's when the magic happens, is the creative can be differentiated too. The more you differentiate how you say something or how you present it. then the more memorable it can be and it's then also separates you further from competition. You can have a whole bunch of people… what happens to categories, we've seen this and we fight it all the time. There's an orthodoxy that establishes in the category. Banking was a big one. Anything financial services, anything legal. For years, and we had to fight this orthodoxy that, oh, we have to look like lawyers. We have to look like bank bankers. We have to talk like bankers. We have, our messaging has to make us seem institutional. Well, the minute you do that, you are now copying. And when you're copying, you're not differentiating. And the urge to copy fights against this differentiation idea. 

So, who are the ones that broke out, that broke through? If you go back and look at history, they're the ones who talk differently, who look differently, who broke that orthodoxy. So, I would look within the category to say, to the creative as a strategic goal for creative. How do we break with the orthodoxy of the category, kind of slap people out of this numbness that they've created to really sound and look as different as they are?

Mark Vandegrift:

Good, that's a good point. And then the final thing that you already touched on is resources. We got to put enough resources behind this to get the idea out of the boardroom. I always like to say, if you only tell us you have a hundred bucks, I'm not going to recommend a Super Bowl ad. So, you know, many clients, they want to hold that budget right here and they won't let us know what it is until we come back and say, well, to get this out in the market, you need X. 

Well, they're always half-X at the end of the day. And that's really close to another word, which is what their marketing ends up being. And it's sure as heck impossible to make your logo on par with Nike when your budget is almost zero. It takes an investment in a brand to make it a brand in the first place. And then to get to the grand scale of Nike, you're talking billions and probably, I don't know, maybe trillions by now. It'd be interesting to know how many years of billions of dollars they've spent to get it up there. but we haven't even mentioned the fact that most of us are walking around providing Nike free advertising every time we wear a piece of Nike clothing or an advertiser for them. I think we need to start asking for some ad fees. What do you think?

Lorraine Kessler:

Got to wonder if we could, you know, scrunch in Innis Maggiore, like way down. Like, just make it tight. Maybe it's a vertical, a vertical down like the whole shirt, and then around the back. That might work. We'll turn it over to the creative staff. 

Yeah, it's the money discussion with clients is the most frustrating. And how do you get them in all care for doing the best job for them to understand that we want the budget, not so we know how much we're going to make, but so we can appropriately size for them, or scale for them or narrow for them, their marketing launch. So it achieves ultimate success, even if it's staged success. 

And I think it comes down to trust. They have to completely trust that we are going to be the stewards, the good stewards of their money. And we're not just there to spend it, but we're there to make sure that the money they spend with us makes them money. And that's a trust relationship. 

I don't know an account person, including myself, who's really talked well with clients at that stage. And the problem is, and I hope some clients are listening, when you fail to reveal your budget, even what your tolerance is, like here's what I have or here's the maximum, what you are hampering is planning — and realistic planning — the reality planning that you need to achieve the goals you want to achieve. So, there's one or two things. If you don't, if your goals are too ambitious and you don't have the budget, then we have to figure out how to get those two more in a reality scheme. And we're doing that for the benefit of you. Without that, we can't strategically plan media or messages or anything.

Mark Vandegrift:

Yeah, it's actually we've wasted a lot of money of our clients because they don't tell us that and we go and we develop a marketing plan that in our mind is reasonable based on other market players and what we can see them doing. We have a tool now called Critical Mention that you can go out and see in general — I mean, it's not a perfect tool — but you can see how your competitors are spending against you. And we use that as a guide to figure out, okay, this is the size of plan we're going to do. Well, we do that, and as I've said, most of the time it ends up being half-X. So, if we come out with a $100,000 plan, they end up having $50k. Well, we've done a lot of planning and spent some money upfront to do that plan that they could have used to put toward media or something else. So I'm with you, it's a tough discussion to have because no one wants to talk money.

That's always a challenge, but it's being realistic because we are in business and every one of us has some level of budget. We have to budget for our own lives, let alone for our businesses. So I don't know, it'd be nice to somehow break through that and make the conversation a little easier. So, well, let's bring this to a close. Do you have any final thoughts on our topic today or anything else that you want to say before we close it up?

Lorraine Kessler:

Yeah, I have an idea for a new company that I want to start. And I want it to be the everything company that you ever wanted. And I'm going to call it, I'm going to call it Y.

Just the letter Y, which could also be the word “why” or a question mark.

Mark Vandegrift:

I love it! It's easier to say than X too. It plays out better. Yeah, why?

Lorraine Kessler:

I can because I wanted to.

Mark Vandegrift:

Yeah. Well, thank you Lorraine and thanks to our audience for listening. If you would please like our podcast, give us a like, a share, a subscribe, whatever you can do on your podcast aggregator. Then join us for the next episode of Brand Shorthand as we discuss the core concepts of positioning until then have an amazing day.