March 6, 2005
authentic voice hell
Nice wee post from Evelyn Rodriguez about the Nike brand losing its edge.
Starts off with Colleen, a recovering copywriter, posing the question:
What happened to Nike *after* its heyday? Did they stop listening? Stop deep listening?
I so well remember clients begging for “Nike work.
So Evelyn, being the “Authentic Voice” uber-goddess, implies to us the obvious (at least, obvious if you read Evelyn a lot, not so obvious if your head’s still stuck in the 1990s).
Nike lost their authentic voice. And with that, lost their brand.
Though I have nothing but warmest respect for Evelyn and her ideas, I see a virus about to happen, and it’s not a nice one.
I see loads of second-rate Evelyn wannabes reading her blog, getting fired up, then going off and setting up shop as “Authentic Voice Brand Evangelist Consultants” or whatever. I can already hear “Be your brand’s authentic voice!” echoing painfully in the corporate hallways.
The thing is, the “Authentic Voice” meme is very simple to understand. I get it. You get it. We all get it, already. So why bother hiring the ersatz Ev at $2000 a day?
You’re right. There is no reason. Cheaper to download the PDF.
The Nike product slipped, then the Nike brand. Not the other way around.
It’s childishly simple: Authentic Voice only really comes out when your product is the best in the world, or failing that, world-class. Once Nike ceased to be as good as they could be, their words started sounding empty. Hello, Inauthentic Voice.
The whole thing is ripe for parody. Imagine an Authentic Voice machine ala the translator engines that turn any webpage into Snoop Dogg speak or Pirate Speak. Take a corporate press release and run it through the Authentic Voice translation engine and it turns the dry press release into an Authentic Voice blog entry.
Maybe a bit of proactive parody can head off the virus before it gets epidemic.
Hmmm. I dunno Hugh, you’ve said this kind of thing before and I think it’s a bit sweeping.
I wonder if you’re thinking of anyone in particular who you see as faking Evelyndom, and if so, will you name names?
Name names? Nah.
It hasn’t happened yet, to my knowledge. But my fertile imagination has been busy today, imagining Dilbert-like scenario’s.
I just love Ev’s stuff to pieces. Would hate to see it diluted in the hands of lesser beings
Of course the product slipped — like (almost) every large company in the world, the passion that first stirs the company (or more often, the LEADER of the company) to greatness sinks under the weight of shareholder demand, marketing dipshits, and half-a-ton of MBA’s running the show.
The Passion for Money buries the Passion for Making Great Stuff.
I personally think it’s the result of decades of teaching in our schools, and in our markets.
The most dangerous idea arising from that is that *GASP* maybe what’s good for the market ISN’T always what’s good for the society.
Gee, ya think?
I’ve only just begun the “so what happened to Nike” conversation. First by looking at what “heyday” was really like.
On the Evelyn wannabe: I’ve already warned people against copying tactics unless they’ve adopted the whole underlying mindset too. Or it just plain explodes. In a recent post I said: “Whatever your underlying mindset and approach to life will surely will be reflected in your marketing — no matter whom you try to outwardly imitate and emulate.”
Coke, Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch entered the energy drink market with limited results though they attempted to mimic Red Bull
Geez, I forgot to mention I’m significantly cheaper than $2000 a day — those sound like 1999 rates
My background is skewed toward product management and development rather than product marketing/communications and branding. Hence, I think the most important time for marketing is the earliest front end — at the market selection, listening to market and product conception stage. (I do agree with Bedbury that both product and market communications need to evolve in tandem.)
Yay! 1999 rates!
Chase the regulators, then it’s like one big 1999 Y2K .com fest the whole time. Right now Banking and Pharms are the ones getting it badly, but there must be others. Incomprehensible badly drafted legislation that no-one knows how to enact. Tidying up after big government and their incontinent law-making, it’s the wave of the future…
And in new Expanded Europe we have ten countries facing a Euro conversion. Sigh. It’s like being a dog that got dropped into the three legged cat home.
Authentic Voices
I don’t have the same personal dissatisfaction with Nike or its product, but Hugh makes a good case about how brands actually
We Are All Zen Students, We Are All Businesspeople
That’s also the title of the first chapter of Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration, by Marc Lesser (haven’t perused it…yet). Zen is the Japanese word for meditation — being mindful, being wholehearted. There was a time — January 2001 -
Jon : “The Passion for Money buries the Passion for Making Great Stuff.”
Hugh: “Greed Yay!”
A less pejorative way of expressing the idea: “The need to make money limits the attention we can devote to creativity/spirituality/meaning”.
But there is a greater conflict here. The notion that conversations and authenticity sell more effectively than hype and slick slogans is clearly a threat to a lot of people. Does Lexus need Kevin Roberts? For how long will Thomas continue to need Hugh? What is the thematic difference between the two relationships? Couldn’t both clients just “download the pdf”?
Ambassadors versus Brand Evangelists
I went back and forth between Cuba and the United States a lot at the end of the ‘80s, when very few people were doing so, and I always felt that one good thing I could take to Cuba was