A universal symbol of self-aggrandizement

Middling actress Jane Seymour is desperate to extend her brand, such as it is (hey, she was Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman - she was a Bond girl - she played the president in The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell), and I'm sure it's hard work trying to become the Grade B Martha Stewart.

But I'm not sure I can get through the holiday season hearing her new Kay Jewelers commercial where she talks about her Open Hearts design, telling us that she hopes it "becomes a universal symbol of hope...and love."

It's one thing to try to wedge your cooking, and your style, and your romantic living into the Stewart space; I'm sure it's hard to make more than a few million bucks trying to compete with the Martha empire. Is it really necessary to try to wedge your ego in as well? I'm not sure how you make a "universal symbol," though it helps if it's something like a stop sign. But your little jewelry thing, Jane? Just sell 'em, don't tell us what it symbolizes.

I enjoyed it, anyway

I really don't want to belabor the deal over my former school changing its name after a big donation; I said (perhaps too much) everything here. But I wrote a comment to a post that talked about it at another site, and I thought I'd recreate the comment here:

It took this last post to Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely if I cling to my notion of what the name should be. If Dean Ted says, “I Want It That Way,” I’ll accept that he has Quit Playing Games With My Heart. More Than That, I’m now fully on board with the name change; Dean Ted, I Just Want You to Know that I’ll Never Break Your Heart As Long As You Love Me, I’ll go Anywhere For You, and, next time you ask me for money, give me The Call, expect All I Have to Give. Otherwise, I’ll be Incomplete and Inconsolable. Chicago Booth, or Booth, Get Down You’re the One for Me. We’ve Got It Goin’ On!

I won't explain it any further; if you care, you can figure it out.

Booth, just Booth

I suppose there may be limited interest for you, Gentle Reader (and don't we miss Isaac Asimov?), in hearing news about my erstwhile educational institution, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, whoops, that's wrong, isn't it? But, hey, it's been five whole days since I wrote anything about it, so bear with me.

As I wrote last Friday, the school, if I may call it that, has changed its name in response to a $300 million donation. I'm always a little wary of those contribution-fueled name changes, mainly because I fear that subsequent donors will give more and insist their names be added to the masthead, conjuring the specter of the University of Chicago Booth-Gates-Buffett-Ellison-Mittal-Slim-Kamprad-Albrecht School of Business, and I have enough trouble keeping my resume to the ordained one page as it is. Since that doesn't seem to have happened elsewhere, other than the occasional dustup over a name change, I guess I won't lose a lot of sleep over that.

But my complaint wasn't with the gift, which is most generous, nor with the name change itself, but with the mess about branding that was the heart of the Dean's letter to us, one that featured an impressive but disappointing spate of buzz words and nonsense, and failed even a minimal logical test. One example was Dean Ted's stating that "we can build an identity that has no limitations," which would be meaningless standing alone; when juxtaposed with a school that has been around 110 years and done quite well, it's pretty well moronic.

Apparently, there's been some confusion or controversy over the name, because Dean Ted has sat down, put pen to paper, and sent out another missive to the "Community." I will reprint the text in full, because I wouldn't want you to miss anything:

Our announcement of David Booth's very generous and powerful vote of confidence in our business school and our rebranding the school The University of Chicago Booth School of Business have been nothing short of historic. The feedback has been as extraordinary as the gift and the naming of the school itself.

To clarify, there are three ways to refer to our school:

• The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
  
• Chicago Booth
  
• Booth

The rebranding of the school has empowered us to move away from a generic description, Graduate School of Business or GSB, to Chicago Booth, which has the potential to become a world class brand befitting this world class institution. Our goal is for Chicago Booth to be the best business school in the world and to be recognized as such.

We believe that referring to the school by name rather than by its initials will go a long way in helping us achieve this goal. We would like to elicit your support and help in successfully launching our new brand. When referring to your school, please use The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago Booth or simply Booth. Please resist the temptation to call the school the BSB or the Booth School of Business.

I am confident that propelled by David’s record breaking gift and the amazing press coverage we've already received, your thoughtful stewardship of the Chicago Booth brand will be just what we need to achieve unprecedented levels of broader recognition, familiarity and respect exceeding that of any other business school.

Thanks for your help and support.

I could parse (or, in Internet terminology, fisk) this letter endlessly. The early hyperbole ("The announcement...have [sic] been nothing short of historic" - "The feedback has been...extraordinary") that leads one to believe that Dean Ted has missed his true calling of writing blurbs for Extra ("Coming up, we look at a five-year-old photo of Brad Pitt, only on...Ex-tra!"), this may be excusable - I might be a little giddy myself if someone gave me $300 million to play with.

And I may be a little oversensitive to the fascistic tendencies of telling graduates, who, after all, paid a lot of money to go to the school, exactly what they can and cannot call it, though Dean Ted might want to pick up his Orwell sometime.

No, it's this ongoing "brand" nitwittery which offends me, the idea that changing a name changes the substance, and the implication that what has gone before is somehow inferior, mainly because we didn't have a way cool brand.

At its essence, a brand is an attempt to create value where there is none, to imbue a thing with qualities that it almost certainly can't possess. Coca-Cola is not a touch of home, with Grandma and Grandpa and Spot, it's sugar water. John McCain is a Republican and, except around re-election time, a pretty reliable one; his "maverickiness" is a brand, nothing more. Charmin' may or may not be a better bathroom tissue, but the name alone, no matter how familiar and comforting when you see it on the shelves, does not guarantee quality.

As many companies have found out, a brand only takes you so far, no matter how many advertising dollars you pour into it. General Motors is one of the great brands in the history of business, but that sure isn't doing a whole lot for it right now. Brands, being essentially ephemeral, are remarkably easy to destroy.

"Booth" isn't going to improve the quality of teaching in the U of C BSB (there, I said it, sue me, Dean Ted), which was quite spotty when I attended. It's not going to raise the starting salaries of the graduates, salaries which are in real question given the implosion of the financial industry. Even if you believe in the concept of this kind of branding, David Booth, generous man that he is, has been a real under-the-radar kind of guy, so invoking his name (despite the almost fetishistic fervor of Dean Ted to do so) is unlikely to connote much of anything - not like, say, the Warren Buffett School of Business (or "Buffett") would.

I'm not really sure how much "thoughtful stewardship" I'm going to be providing to the brand. I'm not even sure I can remember which names are prescribed and which are proscribed (maybe Dean Ted could send out wallet-sized cards, after all, he's got $300 million to play with). What I do know is that I grow tired of marketers trying to manipulate my impressions, trying to make me think that something is more than it is, working the brand instead of the product. That's true whether it comes from P&G or Dean Ted.

Where's my Shannon Carlson?

I don't want to turn this blog into an endless list of personal irritants. I'm generally going to do that only if I can find something a little larger to say about whatever it is that bothers me. For example, I think there is a larger point to be made about the unending decline in customer service, something about consumer focus on price, or lack of employee pride in work that isn't sufficiently "cool." But I want to find some useful hook into a subject before I'll write about it (though I reserve the right to lower the bar on the preceding terms "larger" and "useful" as the pressure of daily blogging grows).

Having said all that, I'm going to rant about a current TV commercial that's getting heavy play. It's the US Cellular spot in which an earnest young woman (shot off-center in that so cool five years ago style; I think it's supposed to engender trust by making us think that it's her boyfriend fraing the shot ineptly, so what she's saying must be from the heart) tells us that she was worried about leaving her dad and going off to college. Why? Apparently, Dad is illiterate and can't figure out how to pay his bills or, actually, to read any of the rest of his mail.

But there's a happy ending. Dad took his bill down to his local US Cellular store, and Shannon Carlson (and the actress says this name almost reverently, as if intoning some holy incantation) took the time to help him. Now Dad takes all his mail down to Shannon, who reads it to him in those moments she's not pushing overpriced phone service plans. The ad finishes with the daughter, even more off-center, looking at us sincerely and saying, "Thanks, Shannon."

I did a Google search to see if others had commented on this commercial; not surprisingly, I found several. What did surprise me was the number of bloggers who focused on the illiteracy in a harsh way, making fun of the father figure and criticizing the daughter for handling his mail for 18 years instead of teaching Dad to read. (I'll mostly withhold comment on the few bloggers who took this as a real story instead of advertising creativity; maybe it is based on a real letter to the execs at US Cell, but I wouldn't bet on it.)

I was surprised mainly because I grew up with TV movies that dealt with the problem of illiteracy, and they were immensely sympathetic. They all went something like, a middle-aged fellow is in an office where he has to fill out a form/has a chance at a promotion/has the opportunity to receive some money, he's strangely resistant, the attractive not-quite middle-aged woman sees his struggle and is confused but takes an interest in the reticent man, and after 45-60 minutes comes the dramatic scene where the man breaks down and admits, "I can't read." The woman teaches him how, he fills out the form (or surmounts whatever challenge there is), they fall in love, the redemption is complete, and we are all happy. I seem to recall movies like this with Dennis Weaver and Johnny Cash (though I'm not going to spend the time on IMDb to figure that out), and there were likely others as well.

Is the lack of sympathy for this gentleman's plight prevalent? Are there really massive numbers of people out there who are hard-hearted toward the illiterate? Maybe it's time for a new movie, updated for the 21st century, in which Patrick (Grey's Anatomy) Dempsey plays a man desperate to create a MySpace page, but he can't navigate his way through the simple instructions. The librarian, played by Ali (Heroes) Larter takes an interest, but can't understand why he can't slap down a background, upload a picture and some music, and (most importantly to her) fill out the box that says he's straight. 45-60 minutes in, in a scene underscored by swelling violins, Patrick turns to Ali and admits, "I can't read, or computer neither." You can write the rest.

So I'm not quite so bothered by the illiteracy angle, though it is hard to see how the target audience will identify with this family. What bothers me is that this is another in a long series of commercials in which a company tries to convince us that its customer service is above and beyond. Invariably, some front line sales clerk moves heaven and earth to satisfy the customer (Bob takes the dogsled through three feet of snow to make sure little Billy will have that bicycle under the tree).

The problem is that this level of service is unrealized in the real world. The CEO and Marketing Director look at the commercial prototype, want to believe that this is how their company is perceived, and sign off on the ad campaign. What they don't do is improve wages or working conditions for actual "sales associates." I'm betting that the real Shannon Carlson, whiling away her days reading Dad's mail to him, helping him with his bills, will lose her job once her anemic sales figures come in. I know she won't be getting a bonus, because I guarantee you US Cellular's incentive bonus plan has no category for "reading mail to customers."

The real customer, while not necessarily needing help with mail, will walk into a store and expect something more than minimal energy and competence. When that is what he gets, the gulf between expectation and reality will seem that much more vast, and that's how you harden customers against your brand.