Category: Simple Minded

Should AI Help People Stay In Touch?

7/1/2025

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing -
author of Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

When was the last time you spoke with your mom or dad? For adult children with their own families and demanding jobs, time between conversations with their aging parents can quickly become days or weeks. At a time when there seems to be a technological solution for every problem, it’s not surprising that there’s an app for that, but do we really want our moms and dads chatting with AI instead of with us?

InTouch is an internet-based subscription service that allows customers to enlist Mary, a pleasant and engaging AI agent, to have phone conversations with their aging parents. AI Touch s.r.o., a Czech Republic company that appears to own InTouch, offers several sample conversations on its website.

The site also provides some compelling rationale for the service, such as:

Stimulating the loved ones’ minds
Supporting their emotional well-being
Strengthening family connections

The company adds, “We go beyond small talk, discussing family, hobbies, memories, and even brain teasers to keep [the older parents’] mind active and spirits lifted.” The firm also promises to provide a short summary of each call so the subscriber can know how their parent is doing, or if they didn’t answer the phone.

Ultimately, inTouch aims to address a customer pain point that’s increasingly common for a particular generation of people who often must care for two sets of loved ones simultaneously: their own children and their aging parents. The caught-in-the-middle phenomenon has spawned the fitting term "the sandwich generation."

The age cohort that’s currently most likely to find itself in the middle is Generation X, whose members, born between 1965 and 1980, are 45 to 60 years old. Studies have shown that the pull of two-way caregiving places unique strain on Gen X’s time, as well as on their financial and mental health.

I am one of those Gen Xs who recently lived the sandwich experience. My father passed away less than four years ago, and my mother a little more than a year. Given a variety of physical challenges as well as worsening dementia, my mom required a particularly great amount of care in the years leading up to her passing.

At the same time, my wife and I were not yet empty nesters, and we both had demanding full-time jobs. Often it was difficult to balance the competing demands placed upon us.

Although that time was not long ago, AI agent-based services like InTouch didn’t exist then, or at least I didn’t know about them. If InTouch has been available to me, should I have used it to interact with my mother?

As just mentioned, I have firsthand experience similar to that of inTouch’s target market, which helps me envision the service’s pros and cons. However, I’m not an expert on older adults or the multifaceted social and psychological dynamics surrounding the aging process, so I reached out to someone who is.

Dr. Raeann Hamon is Distinguished Professor of Family Science and Gerontology at Messiah University. Her meaningful research, impactful writing, and influential leadership over several decades have gained her international renown. Moreover, she’s a thoughtful and compassionate person who wants the best for others.

I shared inTouch’s website with Dr. Hamon and asked if she would offer her perspective on the service. She graciously agreed.

Dr. Hamon acknowledged inTouch’s “great sales pitch” to time-strapped adult children who feel the challenge of caring for older family members, including engaging in what can be long, repetitive conversations. She pointed to the website’s promises to stimulate the mind, support emotional well-being, and reassure and connect you, which she said on the surface seem like positive applications of AI.

However, Dr. Hamon’s overriding reaction to InTouch was one of sadness and concern about AI replacing real human interaction with older family members. She explained her unease:

“The problem for me is that connections between aging adults and their adult children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and caregivers are irreplaceable. It’s not possible to duplicate them with machines, nor should we try. In my opinion, humans need to prioritize togetherness and share the depth of feelings possible in direct relationship with each other.”

At the same time, she was circumspect, recognizing that there are unique situations that might warrant special consideration:

“Perhaps there are older adults who are socially isolated and have no extended family. Maybe this would be useful for them. But even then, I would argue that such a situation offers an opportunity for neighbors to reach out to make connections. What would we say if busy parents employed a similar AI application for interacting with their children? Where does it end?”

Ultimately, she maintained that if there is a place for a service like inTouch, “it should be for the benefit of the older parent, not the adult child.”

Dr. Hamon’s reflections resonated with me. I’m sure I speak for my sisters when I say that as we cared for our aging parents, it was always with the goal of making their later years as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. From what our parents said and showed, a large part of that enjoyment came from being with and talking with us.

In the month before my father died, I had several opportunities to drive him around the areas that used to be his sales territory for the promotional products company he started, which became our family business. As his mind was still very sharp, we had many great conversations that included fond memories of the places and people we knew.

My mother’s situation was different. Because of worsening dementia, she experienced many years of progressive mental decline that eventually challenged her to recall even the most basic facts about herself and her family. Still, she maintained a very positive attitude through her final days and continued to cherish conversations with her loved ones.

My sisters and I also treasured those times and talks with our parents. We didn’t know then how long they would last, but we realized they were limited, which made them priceless then and now.

Dr. Hamon feels the same way. Beyond her professional roles, she’s a person who has experienced many of the familial dynamics she researches, writes about, and teaches. As a daughter she says, “I would never trade a minute with either of my parents.”

These experiences of mine, my siblings, and Dr. Hamon lead me to believe that even as inTouch offers an arguably helpful service to time-strapped adult children, it may be doing a disservice to them by taking away some of the most important and meaningful interactions of their lives: time-bound, person-specific experiences and that no technology can replicate or replace.

Each day, AI gets better at imitating human interactions. As it does, more people likely will allow daily discrete chatbot inquiries to “morph into companionship.” Such an evolution seems like a precarious path for humanity.

In many ways inTouch’s intentions are noble, but as Dr. Hamon suggests, the service seems like a step down the precarious path of technological relationships replacing human ones – a course that in this case is charted by Single-Minded Marketing.

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out the book, Mindful Marketing: Business Ethics that Stick

4 Comments

Has Gatorade Diluted its Brand?

4/1/2024

1 Comment

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

For companies thirsting for earnings, new product lines and brand extensions are often great sources of cash flow. The world’s foremost sports drinks maker has won with such strategies for decades, but does adding bottled water to its product mix develop or dilute Gatorade’s iconic brand?

Over the last 10 years, the market for sports and exercise-related rehydration has burst open. Dozens of companies have added new pre- and post-workout drinks infused with everything from electrolytes, to minerals, to protein. Among the leading competitors are Body Armor, Powerade, PRIME, and Electrolit.

Still, in the saturated sports drink market, Gatorade’s annual revenue of $7 billion represents five times the sales of its closest competitor. Much of that success comes from the company’s skill in creating new products labeled with its valuable Gatorade name. Among its branded offerings in the sports drink category are:

Gatorade Thirst Quenchers
Gatorade Zero Sugar Thirst Quenchers
Gatorade Thirst Quencher Powder Packets
Gatorade Electrolyte Beverages
Gatorade Fit Electrolyte Beverages
Gatorade Protein Shakes

In addition, the company has attached its world-renowned name to a number of non-liquid, or solid, goods including:

Gatorade Protein Bars
Gatorade Sports Bottles
Gatorade Shaker Bottles
Gatorade Sports Towels
Gatorade Bottle Carriers
Gatorade Bottle Carts
Gatorade Ice Chests
Gatorade Coolers
Gatorade Cups

Despite all the hydration help Gatorade has offered athletes and others since its invention at the University of Florida in 1965, the company hasn’t had a Gatorade-named offering in the most basic thirst-quenching category – water.

The global market for bottled water is already voluminous and is expected keep growing: Some estimated it to represent $302 billion in revenue in 2022 and anticipate an increase to over $503 by 2032.

Why wouldn’t Gatorade want to take a sip of those sales? Plus, Gatorade’s parent company, PepsiCo, is familiar with bottled water, producing the very successful brand Aquafina. Its annual U.S. revenue of $1.3 billion make it the best-selling non-private-label brand water in the nation.

So, given the massive market opportunity and the company’s great familiarity with food and beverages, it seems to make sense for Gatorade to lean again on its staple strategy of brand extension. But by naming the new entry “Gatorade Water,” has the company gone to the well once too often?

There were some good reasons that PepsiCo called its bottled water Aquafina and not Pepsi Water. First, Aquafina is a creative name that evokes relevant positive perceptions for the brand. Perhaps more important, though, Pepsi Water would be a branding oxymoron – a contradiction in terms and problem for value proposition perceptions.

When people hear “Pepsi,” they probably think of words like cola, soda, sweet, fizzy, and caffeine. They might also associate Pepsi with parties, special occasions, and splurging. All of these adjectives and nouns are pretty much the opposite of what most people associate with water.

The same perceptual disconnect likely exists between water and Gatorade. When people hear “Gatorade,” they probably think salty, sugary, energy, and colorful (yellow/green, blue, red). Again, words that are pretty much the opposite of water.

H2O was around before human beings were. Ever since, people have been hydrating rather successfully with water. Still, researchers at the University of Florida created Gatorade because they believed they had improved on the classic element by developing “a drink that contained salts and sugars that could be absorbed more quickly [than water].”

Since its invention, Gatorade’s unique value proposition has been its relative advantage over water, as the sports drink’s development affirms:
“Drawing on research into rehydration, the team developed an electrolyte-carbohydrate solution, a mix of salts and sugars designed to provide the athletes with energy and necessary chemicals for physical and mental performance. Plain water could not move through the body quickly enough, nor restore its chemistry.”

So, Gatorade Water should make one wonder, “If water works, is traditional Gatorade really necessary?” Or, the new product may create the cognitive dissonance for consumers suggested above and lead to the philosophical question: “What exactly is Gatorade?”

To be fair, Gatorade Water isn’t just H2O. It also contains electrolytes, but the company’s own website suggests the purpose isn’t performance, rather its water is “electrolyte infused for great taste.”

To avoid possible brand confusion, marketers might suggest that PepsiCo should have used individual branding, which gives significantly different product lines their own branding, rather than family branding, which puts the family name on all a company’s products.

Apple is a great example of family branding: It leverages its highly esteemed name and graphic icon for its AirPods, MacBooks, and iPhones, among other products. In contrast, Procter & Gamble (P&G) may be the biggest consumer products company that most consumers don’t recognize because it individually brands its products, including Pampers, Bounce, Downy, Tide, Bounty, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Pantene, and Old Spice.

Should PepsiCo have individually branded its sports water instead of family branding it? Actually, the company already tried the individual branding strategy, which is why there’s Propel.

Propel is an individually branded PepsiCo line of “fitness water” that contains vitamins B3, B5, B6, C and E. What makes its branding even more interesting, if not confusing, is that Propel is also infused with “Gatorade Electrolytes.”

Gatorade in Propel represents another branding strategy – ingredient branding. It’s what Duncan Hines uses when it promotes that its cake mixes contain Hershey’s syrup, or what Dell uses when it says its laptops have Intel chips inside them.

Ingredient branding is a very viable branding strategy, but in the case of PepsiCo, it just ads to the bottled water brand confusion. For instance, it may be clear why some consumers would choose Propel instead of Aquafina, but why would they chose Gatorade over Propel when Propel ‘contains Gatorade’?

It seems like its countervailing branding strategies have set up PepsiCo to be an example of another not-so-favorable marketing concept, cannibalization, which is when a corporation’s own brands compete with each other more than they do with the brands of other companies. General Motors experienced this problem many decades ago with brands like Buick and Oldsmobile.

Gatorade is one of the world’s most highly regarded brands in any category, especially in hydration. However, on this particular play-call, the sports drink icon and its parent PepsiCo seem to have dropped the ball. Though well-intentioned, ‘video evidence’ will likely later confirm that Gatorade Water was “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

1 Comment

What's to Like about Twitter's Rebrand

8/6/2023

11 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

“There’s nothing I like about it,” said a family member after seeing a large brown sun sail I bought to shade our backyard patio. I actually appreciated the blunt assessment because I also had misgivings about the tarp-looking sail, which fortunately was easy to return. Many have similarly bemoaned Twitter’s unexpected rebranding, which won’t be as easy as the unappealing patio shade to retract, but are there actually things to like about “X”?

Like a quick-moving summer thunderstorm that seems to emerge from nowhere, Twitter’s announcement that it was replacing its acclaimed name and famous bird with the moniker/graphic “X” seemed to catch even the most astute business analysts by surprise.

In reality, the curious move was several months, if not years in the making. This past April new-owner Elon Musk formally changed the company’s legal name to X Corp. He also had gained ownership of X.com six years earlier, which makes one think that the rebrand was more of a long-term plan than a knee-jerk reaction to Musk-revival and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent launch of Threads.

Regardless the timing or the reason, to say the response to Twitter’s rebrand has been critical is certainly an understatement. Some of the criticism has included:

‘”Completely irrational’: By changing Twitter’s name, Elon Musk is wiping out $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value” – Fortune

“This sudden transformation poses a significant obstacle for marketers who had been relying on the platform as part of their social media strategies.” – Digiday

“It’s rare for corporate brands to become so intertwined with everyday conversation that they become verbs. It’s rarer still for the owner of such a brand to announce plans to intentionally destroy it.” – AdAge

“I am concerned that Musk will continue to make random changes to the platform, either alienating more casual users of the service who tend to be people my company would market to, or change the advertising tools that allow us to target users.” – Brian Chevalier-Jordan, CMO at National Business Capital

All of the above seem like valid criticisms; however, the last one appears to have forgotten the remarkable number of successful business innovations Musk has to his credit:

The Boring Company
Neuralink
PayPal
Tesla
SpaceX

In addition, Musk founded OpenAI in 2015, and more recently he launched a new AI company xAI.

All this to say, Musk and those who work with him are likely extremely competent people. You can’t build the world’s leading brand of electric vehicle and launch people into space without having significant engineering and business acumen.

Given Musk’s elite team members and track record, maybe the rebrand from Twitter to X is some kind of marketing rocket science that’s beyond the ability of casual observers and even most marketing professionals to understand.

I have no inside information on Musk’s strategy, but here are a few considerations that may have gone into the surprising decision:

1) Appeal to Gen Z: Overtime, virtually every brand loses followers simply because its core demographic’s wants and needs change as it gets older and those consumers age out of the market. So, companies constantly need to be making inroads with the next generation, which is about to age into the market.

As someone who works with many Gen Zs, my sense is that Twitter has been falling out of favor with them, not unlike Facebook has with this young age cohort. Maybe a younger, hipper feeling brand would help them reconsider.

2) Restore Relevance: Even consumers whose needs haven’t changed can grow tired of a brand over time. Most of us experience this kind of satiation effect whether it’s with the music we listen to or the food we eat.

To avoid stagnation or worse, customers switching to other firms’ products, brands sometimes will attempt a refresh so they’re perceived as new and exciting, like Jell-O did recently for the first time in ten years.

Aside for some minor tweaks, it didn’t seem like Twitter had changed much over the last decade, so maybe a major brand refresh was in order, not just for Gen Zs but for every user who was growing bored with the brand.

3) Regain Attention: Brands want to be top-of-mind, which helps in their ongoing efforts to retain and grow business. When consumers stop hearing about them, they may stop thinking about them and purchasing from them.

Simply slipping out of the news cycle is bad enough; it’s even worse to be replaced by a competitor, which is what happened to Twitter thanks to Meta’s new Threads.

These three are realistic reasons for Twitter to consider rebranding, but as the earlier criticisms implied: Was this refresh worth the very high costs?

Perhaps no cost loomed larger than this one AdAge and others identified: Abandoning the verb to “tweet.” Very, very few organizations are ever so fortunate as to have their brands turned into verbs, e.g., Google, Photoshop.

Of course, firms need to be careful that their brand names aren’t used generically to represent the entire product category (e.g., calling any brand of tissue a Kleenex), which can lead to a firm losing its legal trademark protection.

Still, there is tremendous value to having so much mindshare with consumers that they turn the noun of a company into an action. It’s hard to imagine that any or all of the three refresh reasons would warrant Twitter abandoning that extremely unique competitive advantage.

There’s also a perceptual disconnect between what social media typically stands for and the psychological meaning of “X.” Social media such as Twitter, tend to be about connecting people and having conversations, whereas “X” often represents the opposite. For instance, an “X” is often a person with whom one no longer associates, e.g., X-spouse, X-roommate, etc.

Ironically, “X” is also the tiny symbol that people often click on to close a webpage or an app. In fact, if someone says, “X out of that,” we know they’re giving a command to close something digital. In short, changing people’s existing interpretations of “X” from negative to positive is a very tall order.

Musk is among the most talented entrepreneurs of this generation, and he may deserve to be counted among humanity’s most innovative thinkers, but even business savants sometimes make mistakes, for instance:

Henry Ford’s first automobile firm, the Detroit Automobile Company, failed miserably, leading him to bankruptcy.
Walt Disney was fired from his job at a newspaper because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple, the company he co-founded.

Perhaps hindsight will prove 20/20, and history will exonerate the Twitter/X rebrand a few years or more from now. Now, though, it looks like it may go down as one of Musk’s bigger mistakes and an unfortunate instance of “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

11 Comments

Movie Ticket Madness: Should Choice Seats Cost More?

3/12/2023

4 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

When you need to get away from others for a little alone time, there’s a place you can go: the first few rows of a movie theater. Soon, however, those neck-wrenching seats may be occupied as the nation’s largest movie theater chain implements premium pricing for its cinemas’ more coveted seating. But, is it right to suddenly charge extra for something that’s been free to audiences since Garbo and Gable graced the silver screen?

Many moviegoers are likely giving a two-thumbs-down rating to AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, for its recent announcement that it will charge higher prices for more sought-after middle-of-theater seats.

It’s natural for anyone who pays their own hard-earned money for things to dislike price increases, especially when there seems to be no reason beyond a business’s realization, “We can charge for that.”

Movie theaters, however, have endured very hard times over the past decade. First, streaming services and home entertainment centers lured away from theaters many who realized they could enjoy a cinematic experience in the comfort of their own homes. The pandemic’s quarantines and social distancing exasperated that trend. Most recently, inflation has caused many consumers to monitor more carefully their discretionary spending.

To call these events “challenges” is like calling Tom Hanks “some actor.” Rather, they’ve been existential threats, as Cineworld unfortunately knows. Last September, the world’s second largest movie theater chain and owner of Regal Cinemas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Maybe premium-priced seating is something movie theaters must do to stay solvent. In many other industries, such variable pricing is a staple of their revenue streams:

Live theatre, concerts, and sporting events have long charged more for better seats.
All kinds of service providers, from car washes to hair salons, demand more for higher levels of service.
Many goods producers charge more for their premium products and more sought-after brands, for instance, automakers are well-known for various trim levels (DX, LX, ELX, etc.) and some, like Toyota, offer higher-end vehicles under a different brand, e.g., Lexus.

Ultimately, most product pricing decisions come down to supply and demand. Whether they’re from Gap or Gucci, products that are in greater demand tend to cost more. As price rises, quantity demanded decreases, helping ensure that supply can keep pace.

In free markets, businesses decide what they want to sell, and consumers choose what they want to purchase. No one has to go to a movie theater or when there, purchase a premium seat. It’s their choice to do those things, which makes it hard to argue that AMC is in any way acting unfairly.

So, charging more for certain cinema seats probably isn’t unethical, but is it really an effective business strategy?

A main problem with the premium approach is likely consumers’ perceptions ingrained from years of cinematic experience. For more than a century, moviegoers have freely chosen their theater seats, including those in the center. It’s hard to suddenly start charging for something that people have been getting for free, especially when an upcharge seems unwarranted.

In contrast, the seats in the very front of the theater seem like they should cost less. In fact, why do theaters even have those close-up seats that few people choose and that have been mocked in sitcoms like Seinfeld. Of course, theaters need to cover substantial retail space leases and other expenses, which means fitting in as many paying patrons as possible. However, to demand the same admission price for such suboptimal seating is a big ask.

Here’s what movie theaters should consider instead:

Raise ticket prices slightly, across the board: Again, no one likes price increases, but people who want a true cinema experience can tolerate a modest increase. Moreover, they can understand the need to do so, given the unique pressures theaters have been under, outlined above, and because they see many other organizations doing the same.
Discount the close-up seats: As just mentioned, these seats are significantly less valuable than any others in the theater. Other events often offer discounts on seats with obstructed views, etc. Movie theaters could do the same, or they could get creative and give patrons who sit in those seats something extra like a coupon for a free small soft drink or a popcorn-size upgrade. Consumers may even perceive such incentives as more valuable than a small ticket price discount, and the freebies could be less costly to the theater companies.

In a free market, it’s not inherently unethical for AMC or other movie theater chains to charge more for choice seating, but such a strategy probably won’t sit well with consumers, who have chosen those middle seats for free for so long. For that reason, the ending of this cinematic story will likely be “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

4 Comments

When AI Goes After Your Job

2/26/2023

7 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Competition is an inevitable part of life: Each day people contend for everything from parking spaces to produce, but perhaps the most intense competition occurs when one’s livelihood is on the line. It’s hard enough to get and keep a job versus talented humans, so what happens when AI comes calling on our careers? That just happened to me!

With marketing and PR firms increasingly turning to AI to create images and write content, I shouldn’t have been surprised when a friend who reads my writing made a request of ChatGPT that hit close to home: He asked the bot to write a Mindful Marketing article.

I’d recently written a couple of pieces about AI and ethics based on some extended conversations I’d had with ChatGPT. In those discussions I probed the bot’s moral mind, asking it almost any ethical question I could conceive. I stopped short, though, of asking the AI to explain if a particular marketing tactic was both effective and ethical, i.e., to apply the concept of Mindful Marketing.

Part of the reason for not making such a request may have been fear – concern about how good the bot’s answer might be. If it could write a compelling Mindful Marketing piece, who would need me?

However, I also was eager to see how ChatGPT would respond since I’m always interested in Mindful Marketing applications, whoever makes them. My friend created the good prompt below, which is followed by the bot’s detailed response:

Write a blog post about the mindfulness of Pepsi advertising, using the "Mindful Matrix" criteria established by the website www.mindfulmarketing.org/mindful-meter--matrix.html. Provide an assessment on whether their marketing is Mindless, Single-Minded, Simple-Minded, or Mindful.

“In today's world, advertising has become a critical tool in promoting products and services. Pepsi, one of the world's leading soft drink brands, has adopted different advertising strategies to promote their products. But how mindful are they in their advertising? In this post, we'll assess the mindfulness of Pepsi advertising using the mindful matrix criteria established by mindfulmarketing.org.”

“The Mindful Matrix is a tool that assesses how mindful an advertisement is, based on four categories: mindless, single-minded, simple-minded, and mindful. Let's examine how Pepsi performs in each category.”

“Mindless: Mindless advertisements lack any mindfulness or intentionality, and their sole purpose is to sell products without any regard for the consequences of their actions. Pepsi's advertisements do not fit this category since they are designed to promote their products, but not to the point of being entirely mindless.”

“Single-minded: Single-minded advertisements concentrate on a single idea, concept, or message. They have a clear and direct message, which can be easily understood. Pepsi's advertisements, such as their Super Bowl commercials, focus on a particular theme or message. For example, their 2021 Super Bowl commercial emphasizes the idea of bringing people together and celebrating the joy of the moment. This single-mindedness helps to make their advertisement more impactful and memorable.”

“Simple-minded: Simple-minded advertisements focus on one central idea, but their message is too basic or too straightforward. Pepsi's advertisements do not fall into this category since they typically have a unique storyline or message that stands out. The company's campaigns, such as the Pepsi Generations campaign, emphasizes the company's historical connection and the evolution of the brand over time.”

“Mindful: Mindful advertising is intentional, purposeful, and mindful of its impact on society. It seeks to connect with people on an emotional level and offers a positive message that resonates with them. Pepsi's advertisements often include cultural and societal themes, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, that demonstrate a social conscience. Additionally, Pepsi's "For the Love of It" campaign aims to provide a positive and uplifting message that resonates with consumers on an emotional level.”

“Overall, based on the Mindful Matrix, Pepsi's advertising is mainly single-minded and mindful. The company's advertisements are engaging, meaningful, and mindful of their impact on society. They often use storytelling and cultural themes to resonate with their audience, making them a more mindful brand. By understanding the Mindful Matrix, Pepsi and other brands can make more intentional and impactful decisions with their advertising efforts.” [end]

At first glance, ChatGPT’s response seemed pretty good. The bot had a decent sense of Pepsi’s advertising to which it methodically applied each quadrant of the Mindful Matrix. However, a closer reading revealed significant deficiencies, which I described to my friend:

The bot’s answers kind of remind me of how some less-than-well-prepared students answer essay questions: They unnecessarily rephrase the question and regurgitate some readily available definitions of terms, but they provide very little in terms of thoughtful analysis that answers how and why.

It’s nice that ChatGPT tackled each quadrant of the Matrix in responding to the Pepsi prompt, but on whole the applications are rather weak and incomplete, for instance:

Mindless: What specific evidence is there that Pepsi’s ads have “regard for the consequences of their actions”? The assertion sounds good, but is their specific support for it? Furthermore, assessing consequences is just one facet of ethics. Arguably more important are moral principles, which should lead to the question of whether specific Pepsi ads uphold universal values like decency, honesty, and fairness.
Single-Minded: ChatGPT really misinterpreted the nature of this category, which doesn’t mean to “concentrate on a single, idea, concept or message”; rather, Single-Minded means to focus on marketing success to the exclusion of ethics. The bot says that Pepsi’s ads have emphasized the idea of “bringing people together and celebrating the joy of the moment,” which is good in that the support is a little more specific; however, it’s actually the opposite of Single-Minded and is more in keeping with Mindful Marketing.
Simple-Minded: Again, ChatGPT doesn’t appear to understand the nature of the category, as “one central idea” isn’t the idea: Simple-Minded means neither effective nor ethical. In contrast, “Basic” and “straightforward” are good things that often make marketing tactics effective. To its credit, the bot does provide somewhat specific support here in referencing the Pepsi Generations campaign, but it’s an old reference that I believe first dates back to the 1960s and was last rebooted five years ago in 2018. What about Pepsi’s Super Bowl ads that aired a few days ago, featuring Steve Martin and Ben Stiller?
Mindful: ChatGPT does well at affirming the definition of this aspirational category of the quadrant – at first – but then it adds elements that don’t necessarily mean Mindful, for instance, connecting with people “on an emotional level” may be good but also might be immoral if it means playing on their emotions in a manipulative way, such as a salesperson feigning friendship in order to get a sale. Likewise, demonstrating a social conscious can be great, provided that it’s genuine. Interestingly, Pepsi was skewered for the wokeness of its 2017 ad featuring Kendall Jenner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvAgDCOdU4

In sum, ChatGPT’s analysis lacks depth, currency, and in some cases, accuracy. Granted, the prompt was somewhat general, but the bot doesn’t do much in the way of drilling down into specific ads’ content and using those words and images to support why certain elements are ethical or unethical.

So, if I were grading ChatGPT’s analysis, I’d give probably give it a “C.” It’s a nice effort with some marginally good applications, but the misinterpretation of several matrix quadrants wouldn’t be acceptable.

My friend then shared my reply with ChatGPT, which offered another very interesting response. Note that ChatGPT refers to itself in the third person:

“Thank you for sharing your thorough assessment of ChatGPT's responses to the mindful marketing prompt and the assessment of Pepsi's advertising using the Mindful Matrix. I agree that while the bot's responses may seem decent at first glance, they do lack depth, currency, and accuracy.”

“I appreciate your breakdown of the issues with ChatGPT's analysis in each quadrant of the Mindful Matrix. Specifically, I agree that the bot's assessment of Pepsi's advertising as having "regard for the consequences of their actions" in the Mindless category needs more specific evidence to support its assertion. Additionally, the bot's understanding of the Single-Minded and Simple-Minded categories needs clarification.”

“Regarding the Mindful category, I agree that ChatGPT does a good job of affirming the definition but falls short in providing examples that demonstrate genuine social consciousness. The criticism of Pepsi's 2017 ad featuring Kendall Jenner is an excellent example of how companies can be criticized for their attempts at mindful marketing that come off as tone-deaf and insincere.”

“In conclusion, your assessment provides valuable insights into the limitations of AI-powered chatbots in providing in-depth analysis and specific examples in response to a prompt about mindful marketing. While the technology is improving, it still has room for growth in its ability to understand complex ethical issues and provide nuanced analysis.” [end]

ChatGPT’s response to my critique of its Mindful Marketing article is impressive! At a time when intellectual debates often devolve into reckless disregard for truth and personal attacks, the bot offers a masterclass in civil dialogue by:

Genuinely listening: It repeatedly and accurately references specific points of my critique.
Thinking logically: It offers a well-organized and rational reply.
Demonstrating humility: It acknowledges more than once, deferentially, that it didn’t get things right and it needs to do better.

So, does AI have the potential to take my job or yours? It certainly does. It’s already replacing some human work-hours, and this Mindful Marketing has offered further evidence of its capabilities, including the three competencies just outlined.

However, AI also has a few Achilles heels that give motivated human job candidates who prioritize four things more than a fighting chance:

Accuracy: Beyond what this exercise found, I’ve often heard others bemoan chatbots for playing loose with facts. No person can compete with AI in terms of pure information processing, but people are capable of exercising better judgment.
Depth: In keeping with the last point, AI seems to value information quantity over quality. An array of superficial data is not helpful when what’s really needed is a deep, analytical dive in a specific area of analysis.
Currency: AI trains on information that is always dated to some extent, so even though it’s constantly learning, it can never quite make it into the present and take into account data that’s not yet been digitized, as humans can.
Context: Just as AI is unable to use the most current information, it also can’t read the room, meaning, it can’t take into account things like organizational culture, individuals’ personalities, social dynamics, or how these and many subtle situational factors are affecting the climate of the moment.

Throughout history, technological innovations often have replaced human labor, usually in ways that have helped people work more effectively and efficiently. As AI continues to evolve, we all must adapt our competencies accordingly. Right now, however, a belief that absolutely an occupation can be outsourced to AI is a foundation for “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

7 Comments

Is Netflix Content 'Good Enough'?

4/23/2022

12 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

How old were you when you made your first solo shopping trip? If you’re a Boomer, Gen X, or Gen Z, your answer might be 8, 12, or even 18. Japanese youth apparently run errands much earlier—as in age two—to the amazement of many Americans who are now streaming the cultural curiosity. Whether toddlers should be by themselves on road-trips is a worthy question, as is why people a half-world away are watching a decade-old television show.

From ‘Stanger Things,’ to ‘Bridgrton,’ to ‘Squid Game,’ tastes for Netflix series change like the seasons. Now, one of the streaming giant’s popular properties is an unlikely reality series that comes courtesy of East Asia and the 1990s.

‘Old Enough!’ is a documentary-style television program in which Japanese parents send their toddlers on their first independent errands. Camera crews capture the highly cute and often humorous action, while witty narration added in editing gives viewers a window into what the tots may have been thinking at the time of their adventures.

In light of today’s often hovering helicopter parents, it’s refreshing to see young people given real responsibilities and freedom to act independently. However, it’s also kind of unnerving to watch a kid, who’s still wearing diapers, wander by himself more than a half mile to a grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner.

In terms of social skills, these parents are placing their children far ahead on the developmental curve. Given what these kids are doing under age four, there’s no telling what they’ll be capable of by the time they’re 10 or 20 . . . if they live that long!

In terms of safety, there’s likely little danger to the children. Camera crews are filming them the entire time, so in some sense they’re safer during shooting than they may be any other day. However, no camera operator could intervene in time if a three-year-old suddenly skipped off the sidewalk, into the path of a moving vehicle.

Another issue to consider any time children are placed in media roles is informed consent. How can a child under the age of five possibly understand what they’re doing: the risks they’re incurring at the time and the implications their ‘celebrity’ may bring in the future? Most fathers and mothers pursue their children’s best interest; yet there are always unfortunate cases in which parents become blinded by their offspring’s potential popularity and prosperity and intentionally place them in harm’s way.

This potential may be even more of a concern in today’s social media infatuated society. Now any parent with a smartphone can capture their child doing ‘something special’ and broadcast the clips or stills to anyone in the world.

All the above are real moral concerns; however, it’s hard to paint ‘Old Enough!’ as irresponsible entertainment. Most parents who aggressively promote and profit from their children probably have never seen the show. Also, given the series’ longevity and apparent track record of ‘safe success,’ the show seems like acceptable diversion.

So, back to the second question posed at the outset of this piece: Why have so many Americans suddenly been smitten by a decade-old Japanese documentary featuring toddlers running errands? ‘Seinfeld’s George Costanza’s gave a reason for watching ‘a show about nothing’ that may help answer the question: “because it’s on TV.”

Of course, there’s sarcasm in that answer, but there’s also truth. Although the increasingly competitive streaming market is saturated with shows, after spending 18 months or more homebound in a pandemic, many people feel they’ve already seen everything worth watching on Netflix, which has left the company scrambling for new content—scouring space and time for entertainment that will keep people from unsubscribing.

Speaking of subscriptions, during the first quarter of 2022, Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers and even more staggering, it expects to lose 2 million more by July—an announcement that has precipitated a decline in the company’s stock price of more than 30%.

During video rental era and in the early years of streaming, competitors had largely the same video libraries, so cost and convenience were key to attracting customers. Now content is the most important differentiator, as evidenced by the rapid rise of relatively new competitor Disney+, which has ridden the popularity of proprietary shows like ‘The Mandalorian,’ ‘The Beatles: Get Back,’ and a long list of Disney movies.

Netflix needs original content. Over the past five-to-seven years, it’s certainly had success creating content, but subscribers burned through that content with a flurry of pandemic-prompted binge-watching. Creating compelling original content takes considerable time, money, and expertise, but even then, there are no guarantees it will be well-received.

These reasons are likely why Netflix acquired the streaming rights for ‘Old Enough!’—a show the company could make available immediately to a subscriber base that, by and large, had never seen it, but would find it at least a little entertaining, since reality TV still resonates and people like cute kids.

Netflix also probably didn’t overpay for those rights. True to the show’s name, the 20 episodes now on Netflix were produced in 2013, nearly a decade ago, giving ‘Old Enough!’ a double meaning and likely meaning that the series was a bargain. Unfortunately, inexpensive does not necessarily mean good.

My wife and I are not representative of all Netflix subscribers, but after watching three episodes of the grocery-toting toddlers, we had our fill. The children were cute, and the scenarios were kind of funny, but reading the subtitles made the entertainment feel a little like work. Even though a fourth episode promised a different kid in a unique situation, it didn’t seem like we’d really see anything new.

Perhaps ‘Old Enough!’ has outperformed Netflix executives’ expectations. Still, the show can’t be more than a bandage on the company’s expanding wound of subscriber attrition, which will only be healed by a more drastic strategic prescription.

Interestingly, Netflix is now looking to incorporate advertising. Such sponsorships could help contain, if not lower, the cost of the platform; however, people won’t stay subscribed just because rates don’t rise, any more than they'll watch shows ‘just because they’re on TV.’ Subscribers of any streaming service must believe there’s enough new, engaging content to warrant whatever amount they’re paying.

There are no serious moral concerns over a show about toddlers ‘doing nothing,’ but there’s also little economic upside for a streaming giant that desperately needs more compelling original content. For these reasons, Netflix’s ‘Old Enough!’ is good enough to be “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

12 Comments

Mascot Madness

3/27/2022

4 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

When people mention products they see advertised all the time, “insurance” is often top-of-list. Insurance ads are virtually inescapable and stick because of clever humor and silly brand characters. One lesser-known competitor now claims to be better because it forgoes such foolishness, but is throwing shade on the big players’ branding the way to ensure it wins?

Today, the mascots of insurance companies are better known than those of many colleges. To test that claim, try the following two-part quiz. The answers appear a few paragraphs below:

1) What are the mascots of the five largest U.S. public university campuses by enrollment?

Texas A & M University
University of Central Florida
Ohio State University
University of Florida
Florida International University

2) What are brand characters of the following insurance companies?

Aflac
Allstate
Geico
Liberty Mutual
Progressive

If you’re like me, you know more on the second list than the first. Granted, I pay more attention to commercials than most people do, but I’m also a significant fan of college sports who works in higher education, which are good reasons why I should know list #2 too.

So, here are the answers:
1) Aggies, Knights, Buckeyes, Gators, Panthers
2) Duck, Mayhem, Gecko, Emu, Flo

The point of this exercise is to underscore how effective many insurance companies have been at familiarizing us with their brands’ personalities.

Despite the old adage, “You can’t argue with success,” one insurance provider is doing just that, making a very public case that all the time and energy its competitors spend building brand characters is wasted.

Unlike Geico or Allstate, the company with the hot take is not a household name for most people. It’s New Jersey Manufacturers Casualty Insurance Company, or NJM.

NJM began in 1913 by providing worker’s compensation to New Jersey businesses and a couple of decades later started to offer commercial and personal auto insurance and homeowners insurance. Over the last 100+ years it’s expanded its offerings even more, while extending into other states.

Only recently, though, did the company decide to redefine the acronym that’s represented its name for more than a century. Now, at least for the purpose of some contrarian marketing communication, NJM purportedly stands for “No Jingles or Mascots, Just Great Insurance.”

Why would NJM want to throw shade on several of America’s most successful insurance providers? The easy answer is it wants to be big like them but believes that its path to greatness must come not by copying their recipe for success but by being different.

NJM is a sizeable insurer; however, it’s scope and scale are small compared to the mascot-using competitors mentioned above. NJM only markets its products in New Jersey and five nearby states. Similarly, while NJM has about $8 billion in assets, the other firms boast much bigger asset totals:

Aflac: $165 billion
Allstate: $126 billion
Geico: $71 billion
Liberty Mutual: $145 billion
Progressive: $64 billion

Positioning against the brand, as it’s called, is not necessarily a bad idea. Avis succeeded with the strategy in the early 1960s, using the tagline “We try harder,” –a clear slight against the number one car rental company at the time, Hertz. Similarly, in 1967 Seven-Up tapped into countercultural sentiment by branding itself as the “Uncola” versus the soft drink “Establishment” that was Coke and Pepsi.

However, there are two important factors that dilute NJM’s claim to be different by not using ducks or geckos.

First, there are plenty of other insurance companies that can make the same claim that they’re more serious about insurance because they don’t use mascots. In fact, they represent the nation’s five largest insurers:

Prudential
Berkshire Hathaway
MetLife
TIAA
AIG

To be clear, Berkshire Hathaway does own Geico; however, it also owns these mascot-less insurance firms: National Indemnity Company, General Reinsurance, and Berkshire Hathaway Life Insurance Company of Nebraska.

Also, in case you’re thinking that Snoopy is MetLife’s mascot, the dog is gone. The company dropped the beloved beagle more than five years ago in an effort to reflect “a clean, modern aesthetic.”

Second, in its television commercials trumpeting its decision to not use mascots, NJM uses, of all things, mascots!

To be clear, the mascots in NJM’s commercials are not its own but ones it’s fabricated for fictitious competitors. The commercial characters include an alpaca, a jingle-singing entertainer, an elephant-giraffe-eagle-horse-octopus, a big blue bear, a narwhal, and a ferret.

Again, none of the mascots belong to NJM, but by using them in its humor-infused ads, the company is not so subtly doing the same thing it accuses its competitors of doing—prioritizing playfulness over serious insurance.

It’s kind of like one person scolding another for their profanity by swearing at them, “You s#@% h#@%, you’ve got to stop the b*#&#% cursing!” The point, of course is if the words are bad, no one should be using them.

So, if mascots don’t make for serious insurance, why is NJM using them in its ads?

That question is kind of a rhetorical one, but I can’t resist trying to answer it. It could be that NJM suffers from some mascot-envy and may even be using its commercials as a way of auditioning characters to see if any stick.

More generally, NJM must recognize that using mascots in marketing works. This piece began by identifying several insurance competitors’ well-known characters. Over the years, organizations in other industries also have reaped similar branding benefits from their own creations, such as:

Energizer – Energizer Bunny
Keebler Company – Keebler Elves
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – Tony the Tiger
McDonald’s – Ronald McDonald
Michelin – Michelin Man
Pillsbury – Dough Boy
Planters – Mr. Peanut
Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean – Mr. Clean
StarKist Tuna - Charlie

Of course, characters aren’t good fits for every industry. We don’t see luxury brands like Cartier, Gucci, or Mercedes employing mascots because they want to be seen as elegant and refined—images that characters can undermine. Likewise, some organizations’ missions are simply too serious to be connected with anything that might come across as irreverent, e.g., the American Lung Association.

But for many companies, mascots serve helpful purposes like giving brands more personal connection and communicating whimsy. But even more basic, the characters often capture our attention, keep our interest, and help us remember what can be easily forgotten products . . . like insurance.

Given the quest for Mindful Marketing, the other important question to ask is whether mascot use is ethical. Two areas that demand special attention are how certain mascots portray people groups and how some characters are used in marketing to children. Otherwise, it’s hard to identify any broad prohibition of mascots for branding.

NJM’s claim that ‘We’re more serious about insurance because we don’t use mascots,’ doesn’t make much sense since its own ads have mascots. Some might call that use disingenuous or deceitful, but it’s unlikely there’s any ill intent.

No, NJM is just searching for a strategy that can lift it to the level of Aflac and Progressive, but such a leap won’t happen by using an eclectic cast of ‘other insurers’ mascots’ and talking more about what the company isn’t than what it is. This specific claim for positioning against the brand should be assessed as “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

4 Comments

Cutting Out Weight Loss Ads

8/15/2021

15 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

Have you ever felt self-conscious about your weight? Most people probably have, perhaps because of someone’s casual comment or from comparing their figure to those of their friends. Maybe an ad even contributed to the unease. Marketers increasingly seek to affirm all physiques but is their support of body positivity delivering an unhealthy message?

It’s hard to think of inclusiveness of physical form without remembering Dove. Through its 2004 “Real Beauty” campaign the personal care brand pioneered promotion based on the reality that beautiful people come in all shapes and sizes.

Since then, many other organizations have mirrored Dove’s body-positive approach. Retailers like Kohl’s and Old Navy, routinely include plus-sized models in their ads, while Target and Macy’s employ variously proportioned mannequins to highlight similarly sized clothing.

Last month, the picture-lovers site Pinterest took body positivity a step further by announcing it would ban weight-loss ads. The social media platform explained that its decision was in the interest of individuals “facing challenges related to body image and mental health,” especially those suffering from eating disorders.

The first major social media platform to take such action, Pinterest’s unprecedented decision quickly received wide news coverage ranging from Fortune to NPR.

Most media cast Pinterest’s ban of weight loss ads in a positive light. For instance, an NBC News opinion piece called the choice “a glimmer of good news” amid more typically troubling stories.

It’s very encouraging that people increasingly recognize that everyone is different and that those differences can be celebrated. But are all differences good differences? Aren’t there certain behaviors that are objectively better for people to do, and others to avoid? Furthermore, are some marketers, like Pinterest, encouraging people to celebrate differences that could actually be harmful to them and to society?”

These are difficult questions to answer in any context, and they become especially tenuous when treating a topic like body image, which so directly impacts everyone, both in individual, psychological ways and in social, relational ways.

In my early years, I was a somewhat ‘chunky’ child and experienced, more than once, critical comments about my weight, which were hard to hear. As I grew older, taller and became more active, I lost weight, or maybe more accurately, didn’t gain much more. Ironically, I now sometimes receive unsolicited comments about being thin, which admittedly are easier to accept; although, they still make me feel uncomfortable.

Despite, this personal experience, a middle-aged man like me is probably not an ideal person to offer insights about body image and the social norms that surround it. When I feel ill-equipped to tackle an ethical issue on my own, which occurs often, I reach out to others who have different and frequently more informed perspectives.

In this instance, I needed as much help as ever, so I contacted several people who I knew would expand my perceptions by hearing their thoughts about Pinterest’s ad ban. Here are highlights from three interactions:

1. A veteran registered nurse, and Baby Boomer, who works in adult primary care as a nurse practitioner posed two important questions that also have been on my mind: 1) How effective are weight loss ads, and 2) “Do they promote healthy behaviors or unhealthy ones?” In answering both questions, she pointed me to a study published in npj Digital Medicine, which found that “online advertisements hold promise as a mechanism for changing population health behaviors.”

She also referenced CDC statistics that show that from 1999 to 2018, the prevalence of obesity in the United States increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. In her work, she sees firsthand how the effects of obesity, including diabetes and hypertension, can lead to “even more life changing complications.” She added:

“Weight loss is usually part of the treatment, and avoidance of obesity is usually preventative. So, if clicking on weight loss ads is a behavior that leads to seeking out more information on healthy behavioral change, then by all means, keep the ads.”

2. A member of Generation Y who works in the food marketing industry had a somewhat different take on weight loss ads. She said that her online scroll speed increases significantly in order to avoid the ads, which she says, “feel more personal as they poke at my self-esteem.” However, she qualifies her aversion to the ads, adding:

“I believe that weight loss products/services deserve to be advertised, but maybe in a way that’s sensitive to the cultural climate of body positivity/neutrality. I’m hopeful that these organizations could use that mindset as a framework guiding their ads, in a way that’s still effective at stopping someone’s scroll but acts as an invitation rather than a confrontation.”

3. A college student and member of Generation Z told me about his very significant weight loss: In just five months, this 6’ 3” young man lost 60 lbs., dropping from 260 to 200 lbs. Given that his accomplishment came mainly from “drinking plenty of water and exercising 4-5 times a week,” it’s not surprising that he emphasized the importance of approaching weight loss as a serious undertaking that requires perseverance:

“It is important to draw the connection between weight loss and hard work, the latter which must come first. It's about discipline, research, and taking your own personal initiative to develop an interest in personal fitness. You cannot simply buy a weight loss program and expect fat to magically remove itself from your body.”

Although he had no concern that society would suddenly become heavier if weight loss ads disappeared, he did express concern about any messaging that might normalize obesity:

“We will lose the idea of what is acceptable and what is not if we desensitize ourselves to what is normal. Being overweight is not a ‘normal’ state to be in, according to health professionals regardless of what ‘body-positivity experts’ have to say. It is common, but not healthy . . . It is ironic that the body-positivity movement promotes every body type more frequently than the ones deemed most healthy by scientists and health professionals.”

Of course, the opinions of these three people don’t represent the full spectrum of perspectives on weight loss and body image. They didn’t speak much to issues like anorexia and bulimia; however, I know each of them understands and empathizes with all who suffer from such eating disorders, as well as those who have been shamed because of their physique.

At the same time, these three voices have expressed important points that perhaps seem contrarian, probably because they tend not to receive the attention they deserve. For instance, they emphasized:

The right type of weight-loss advertising, that’s affirming and realistic, can be effective and beneficial.
Weight-loss is more a function of hard work and self-discipline than any quick fix.
No one should be made to feel bad about their body, but normalizing obesity is not helpful.
Although eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are fairly common (1%-4% of the population suffers from them), obesity is much more prevalent: As mentioned above, in the U.S., 42.4% of adults were obese in 2018. Also, unfortunately, the pandemic has seen an increase in obesity, with an average weight gain of 29 lbs., making people more susceptible to the dangerous effects of the virus, as well as other serious illnesses.

It’s unfortunate that we live in a weight-obsessed society. Some marketers bear responsibility for helping to cultivate that preoccupation, e.g., by promoting unhealthy lifestyles that lead to excessive weight gain. Others are culpable for perpetuating unrealistic physical ideals and impossible ways of achieving them.

Pinterest is right to act against specific advertising abuses that cause others to feel shame and that encourage eating disorders. However, in embracing body positivity, the social media platform and others should be careful not to inadvertently endorse what is objectively one of world’s biggest problems, obesity, as doing so weighs in as “Mindless Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

15 Comments

More Diversity Won't Mean More Dollars for Häagen-Dazs

6/5/2021

1 Comment

by Emilie Rush - digital media major and student director of The Pulse media hub at Messiah University

As a student of marketing and a person of color, Häagen-Dazs’ new diversity-driven ad campaign quickly caught my eye. It reminded me of a very different campaign from 2013 that featured actor Bradley Cooper seductively spooning vanilla indulgence from the same premium ice cream company’s pints. Unfortunately Häagen-Dazs’ recent move from ‘entice and excite’ to ‘racially right’ is unlikely to sweeten its bottom-line.

The firm was founded in 1960 by Polish-Jewish immigrants Reuben and Rose Mattus, who prided themselves in not cutting corners but rather using the purest and highest quality ingredients to make their premium ice cream. Häagen-Dazs has a history of authenticity, but the firm’s current ad campaign, which highlights people of color sharing what luxury means to them, comes across as artificial compared to the company’s own past social responsibility and branding, as well as to other organizations’ diversity initiatives.

In 2008, the company launched “Häagen-Dazs loves HB” (honey bees), a campaign focused on fighting Colony Collapse Disorder, a serious problem responsible for the decline in the global bee population. Given that bees directly impact Häagen-Dazs’ ingredients and the brand’s “all natural” value proposition, the campaign connected with consumers in a genuine way, while also being the first to put the ‘bee’ cause on radar screens. The campaign made sense, given the company’s values and goals.

Häagen-Dazs undoubtedly hopes its new #ThatsDazs diversity campaign will produce similar positive social and company impacts: building its brand reputation, reaching a wider audience, and connecting with younger generations. However, as Häagen-Dazs’ own honey bee campaign showed and as other organizations’ diversity initiatives illustrate, such strategies must have meaningful connections to the company’s products and overall value proposition.

As an example, Ben & Jerry's has been very outspoken on Instagram about causes like social justice, the support of black communities against police brutality, the school-prison pipeline, and white supremacy, as well as supporting other marginalized communities like LGBTQ+, indigenous people, and Asian Americans. It even created a social justice-inspired ice cream called Justice ReMix’d. The company also runs traditional product-focused ads, which perform better than its social issue posts. Still, the cause-related conversations stimulate significant audience engagement and overall support for the brand.

Other companies that choose to integrate inclusion and diversity in their advertising are often clothing brands, home decor product lines, and cosmetics. Compared to ice cream, these types of businesses have more obvious lifestyle-related reasons for showing diversity, as doing so lets people know that anyone can use their products and that no matter who you are, the brand has included space for “you” and your lifestyle.

For instance, many cosmetic companies have been publicly shamed for not offering makeup that suits darker and richer skin tones, making everyday products hard to track down for millions of consumers. Fortunately, a few brands like Fenty Beauty are known for their more inclusive product lines, so that when a customer sees Fenty in stores, they can feel confident that they’ll find something to suit them, just as those with lighter skin can.

Researchers and marketing professionals from Learn Hub, Black Girl Group, and Marketing Schools all agree that diversity marketing has more pros than cons, such as increasing brand loyalty and expanding customer bases, but because #ThatsDazs seems disconnected from Häagen-Dazs’ brand and doesn’t directly integrate with its products, it’s unlikely that the ice cream maker will savor any significant sales increase.

Instead of #ThatsDazs, a more authentic marketing campaign could aim to change people’s perceptions of the firm as being Scandinavian owned and operated and help them see Häagen-Dazs as more genuinely diverse, by showing the people of color responsible for creating its ads and making its products. It could also hold a contest for other creators of color, challenging them to create commercials that highlight why they love Häagen-Dazs.

A more deep-reaching diversity campaign can be great, but ultimately Häagen-Dazs must recognize that it’s an ice cream company that has established itself as a luxury brand. That positioning, more than its stance on diversity, may be hindering the company’s sales because people associate premium products with high prices, but many Häagen-Dazs products don’t deliver on that level.

So, is Häagen-Dazs too expensive? The most popular pints of ice cream in Target and Walmart are Ben & Jerry’s and Halo Top. These brands retail for about $4.50, while 14 ounces of Häagen-Dazs sells for $3.79. The other brands offer their ice cream by the pint, but by ounce their prices are virtually the same.

So why aren't people eating as much Häagen-Dazs? As the Bradly Cooper commercial illustrated, over the years the company has placed more emphasis on its plain ice creams, over their specialty creams with chunks and swirls. Vanilla Häagen-Dazs 14 oz. costs $3.79, while a 1.5 quart of Breyers vanilla (a regional brand) only costs $4.49. At less than ten cents an ounce for comparable vanilla cream, Breyers is the better deal.

Simply said, Häagen-Dazs ice cream isn’t the best on the market for the price and flavors it offers. Diverse ads can’t distract from those basic consumer economics.

As mentioned above, there are several strategies Häagen-Dazs could pursue to make its brand more desirable to consumers, especially those who value diversity. Although the company’s current inclusivity campaign is admirable, surface-level attempts at seeming diverse are always “Simple-Minded Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

1 Comment

When TV Commercials Wink

2/14/2021

14 Comments

by David Hagenbuch - professor of Marketing at Messiah University -
author of Honorable Influence - founder of Mindful Marketing

As a Seinfeld fan, one of my favorite episodes is when George’s eye catches a piece of flying grapefruit, causing him to confuse everyone with his involuntary winking. Such hijinks are funny for a television sitcom, but what happens when commercials use conflicting verbal and visual cues, particularly on TV’s biggest stage?

Before the recent big game, a friend graciously invited my analysis of the ads—You don’t have to ask twice for my opinion on advertising, especially Super Bowl commercials, so I shared thoughts about one particular ad that seemed strange.

Toyota’s “Upstream” commercial featured the adoption story of Jessica Long, a 13-time gold-medal-winning Paralympic swimmer. Long’s rise to success despite severe adversity was inspiring; however, there was also something unsettling about the ad.

Pushing against the positive verbal messages of parental love and athletic achievement was a literal stream of cold, dark water that ran through every scene, including the family’s home and other indoor places. That’s a disconcerting sight that can cause anguish for anyone, especially those who have experienced floods in their home, school, or work.

The negative visual of flood water worked against the ad’s affirmative verbal messages, significantly diluting the positive affect Toyota likely wanted for its ad, and making it “Simple-Minded Marketing.” The automaker certainly had good intentions, but I doubt the inadvertently somber spot did much to boost the company’s brand.

I remembered this ad partly because of its unpleasant aftertaste but also because I’ve studied such verbal-visual disconnects before. Several years ago, I did research on the same phenomenon found in pharmaceutical ads, which are probably the worst offenders when it comes to sending mixed commercial messages.

When we watch a prescription drug ad, we usually hear a list of the medication’s side effects, which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates. However, as a narrator recites those potential negative outcomes, the commercial often shows very pleasant visuals, like the ones seen in this ad for Lipitor. At about 33 seconds into the spot, a narrator starts to quickly read several serious warnings:

“Lipitor is not for everyone, including people with liver problems and women who are nursing or pregnant or may become pregnant. You need simple blood tests to check for liver problems. Tell your doctor if you are taking other medications or if you have muscle pain or weakness. This may be the sign of a rare or serious side effect.”

Ironically, the visual backdrop for these weighty words is a guy and his dog taking a pleasant walk through the woods and later jumping into a lake for some swimming fun. Yes, we hear the side effects in such ads, but are we really listening to and understanding their gravity, given that very positive visual scenes distract us from those negative verbal messages?

That’s the question I set out to answer through research that began with a group of students in an Advertising Ethics class I was teaching. In a controlled empirical study that involved commercials for fictitious pharmaceuticals, we found that people do indeed discount drugs’ negative side effects when shown positive “dissonant” visuals at the same time.

I presented those findings at the American Marketing Association’s Marketing & Public Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., where a member of the FDA commended the research and asked for a copy of the presentation. Health Marketing Quarterly later published the study.

So, one “Simple-Minded” Super Bowl ad failed to make effective use of reinforcing, or “redundant,” visuals—no big deal. Actually, several other $5.5 million+ spots made the same mistake in similar ways and in doing so conveniently completed the other three quadrants of the Mindful Matrix:

“Alexa’s Body” - Amazon claimed the steamiest spot in this year’s Super Bowl. For nearly sixty seconds, a female Amazon employee fantasized about handsome Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan, who replaced the smart speaker in her lustful daydreams, which included Jordan removing his shirt and joining her in a bubble bath for two.

The commercial was uncomfortable to watch in mixed company and may have posed problems for parents, but the real issue was the spot’s repeated sexual objectification of Jordan. Role-reversal (a woman mentally undressing a man) may have seemed funny, but no one should be reduced to their body parts or have their personhood downgraded to a “vessel.” Similarly, it’s dangerous to objectify men as doing so suggests that it’s also okay to objectify women.

The ad involved dissonant visuals in that images of a sexy superstar have nothing to do with voice commands about ‘the number of tablespoons in a cup’ or ‘turning on the sprinklers.’ The pairing of an A-list celebrity with Alexa probably has helped keep Amazon’s smart speaker top-of-mind, but all the gratuitous sexual innuendo made the ad “Single-Minded Marketing.”

“Happy” - In its “Ultra” light beer ad, Michelob employed an entire lineup of past and present all-star athletes. For instance, there were still shots and/or video clips of Serena Williams, Mia Hamm, Anthony Davis, Usain Bolt, Billy Jean King, Arnold Palmer, Wilt Chamberlain, Jimmy Butler, Peyton Manning, and more.

I wonder whether Michelob got permission from all these athletes, or their estates, to associate their images with its brand, but assuming it did, there’s still another problem that directly involves dissonant visuals: People don’t ascend to those kinds of athletic heights by downing much beer. There’s little to suggest that alcohol enhances athletic performance; in fact, alcohol has exactly the opposite effect: It reduces aerobic efficiency, impairs motor skills, decreases strength, disrupts sleep, and slows recovery.

Michelob’s suggestion that happiness helps athletes win may have some truth to it, but there’s clearly much more to athletic achievement, namely physical and mental discipline both of which alcohol easily impairs. For that reason, it was irresponsible of Michelob to show images of athletes in uniform, on their courts, fields, etc., along with alcohol-friendly soundbites such as, “fueling the run toward greatness” and “something more vital.”

How ironic and tragic it was that Kansas City Chief’s outside linebacker coach Brit Reid, son of head coach Andy Reid, caused a multi-vehicle accident days before Super Bowl, apparently due to alcohol impairment. The accident caused him to miss the game and left a young girl fighting for her life. Alcohol and athletics definitely don’t mix, and it’s doubtful that such precarious positioning will give Michelob’s brand much boost, which makes the beermaker’s ad “Mindless Marketing.”

“Get Back to Nature” - After the three commercials just described, it’s easy to be suspicious of all Super Bowl spots, believing that most played with consumers’ minds and sacrificed social mores. Thankfully however, the preceding ads were exceptions. Most of the commercials employed redundant, not dissonant, visuals that appropriately reinforced their verbal messages.

One of the best examples of such visual-verbal consistency was Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s 60-second spot that featured clips of ordinary people planning for and enjoying beautiful places in the great outdoors while hiking, fishing, camping, and more.

Sprinkled into some scenes was gear that one could probably purchase from the outfitter, but none of the product placement was overdone; rather, all subtly and artfully supported the simple call to experience nature. Consequently, viewers were likely both to remember the firm’s ‘enjoy the outdoors’ value proposition and to believe its closing promise, “We’re there for you.”

Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s commercial wasn’t the only advertiser to hit a home run in terms of verbal-visual consistency that was both effective and ethical. A couple of other best-practices ads belonged to Huggies for “Welcome to the World, Baby” and to Indeed for “The Rising.”

A wink is the epitome of a dissonant visual—it slyly states, “Don’t believe what I’m saying.” Advertisers shouldn’t ‘wink’ with their ads, i.e., use dissonant visuals that contradict their spots’ verbal messages. Instead, commercials should enlist strategically-chosen redundant visuals that reinforce the right verbal messages. In Super Bowl ads and in other communication, that consistency makes for “Mindful Marketing.”

Subscribe to Mindful Matters blog.
Learn more about the Mindful Matrix.
Check out Mindful Marketing Ads and Vote your Mind!

14 Comments

<<Previous

Should AI Help People Stay In Touch?

Has Gatorade Diluted its Brand?

What's to Like about Twitter's Rebrand

Movie Ticket Madness: Should Choice Seats Cost More?

When AI Goes After Your Job

Is Netflix Content 'Good Enough'?

Mascot Madness

Cutting Out Weight Loss Ads

More Diversity Won't Mean More Dollars for Häagen-Dazs

When TV Commercials Wink

Editor

Archives

Categories