Branding is Cool

Now and again, I’m prone to sending out some surveys via Facebook. I use Facebook because it’s an easy way to spread information quickly to a targeted group of people. It certainly helps me get people to take my surveys.

I like to put surveys together, because I genuinely just find them interesting. I like throwing a question out there and seeing how people respond. That is the first thing I like. The second is that I am able to take a question that I was interested in and interpret the data I gather.

I enjoy looking at the numbers and the results that occur from the questions I pose. Obviously, before every survey I give out, I always have a hypothesis of some kind. I suppose one of the motivators behind my surveys is to try and get a more comprehensive answer. Additionally, it also acts as a check on my own logic. Just because I believe something to be true doesn’t mean that the masses will agree with me. My surveys get to the bottom of this.

There is a minor drawback to the surveys I send out to my friends on Facebook; their agitation. I have great friends and I’m glad that they support me in my endeavors, however, when they receive a lot of survey requests via Facebook, they get a little annoyed. I feel poorly about this, but as I said earlier, Facebook is really helpful in spreading information quickly. People always have the option of declining participation in the survey. Unfortunately, this is the trend of the majority of people who I send my surveys out to, so I don’t always get the sample sizes I would like.

Anyway, my most recent poll that I have interpreted to date has been Those Answers Inc. Survey on Cool. Those Answers Inc. is the parent company through which MiParadox is its blogging subsidiary. The surveys that I run are always through Those Answers Inc. I encourage you to visit the website and see the types of activities it is involved in. Currently, they are running a survey on Fortune 500 Companies.

Well, I thought I’d finally disclose the results that I got regarding the survey on Cool.

• Results
  

The impetus behind this surveys was actually fueled by a friend of mine who is working for Axe Marketing this summer. That is a really sweet gig if you ask me. Axe has some of the best marketing for my demographic (18-35 males), and it’s cool that he is contributing to their ideas. Quite simply, he asked me what brands I thought were cool and why?

I figured it would be easy for me to list a couple of my favorite brands, and why in fact I enjoyed them, however, I felt like I would be doing him an injustice. So, in a sense, I went through this process to do a little market research for my buddy. It is probably way past due, but better late than never you know.

To clarify, the definition of cool was pulled from Wikipedia, and it states, “Cool is an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control (cf. the OED definition) and often is used as an expression of admiration or approval.”

Respondents were asked how much they agree with the definition, and this group had an average score of 3.00, which represents the statement, “I agree.” So, when we think about what “cool” means for this survey, we have to look at it through the scope of the definition, and it is warranted that this group generally agrees with the statement given.

Here are the results of the Cool Brand portion of the Survey:

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

There was a wide array of Brands that people could choose from; 13 options in all. If we break it down, Under Armor was considered the “coolest” brand. It received 7 of 26 votes, or 26.9% of the votes. Under Armor was followed by Nike with 6 of 26 votes, 23.1%, and in third place was Adidas with 19.2%.

Looking closer, the reasons people chose Under Armor to be the coolest brand can be summarized in four distinct points:

• Personal Use
• Growth of Company
• Image
• Originality/Pioneers of the Industry

People cited Image most frequently in choosing Under Armor as the coolest brand. This points heavily towards the influence of marketing. Marketing agencies work hard to develop an image for their product so that people will like it and hopefully think it is cool.

This information runs counter to some other results from the survey. The respondents were also asked in the survey, “who determines cool?” The respondents could pick one of five choices: television, magazines, radio, friends, and family. Overwhelmingly, the respondents replied that friends were most important in determining cool; over 69% of all respondents agreed with this.

However, in describing why the brand they chose was cool, no respondents made a reference to their friends, and only 2 respondents alluded to the fact that the people around them wore that particular brand.

This raises an interesting argument about who actually defines cool. Although people may think that their friends are what determines cool, perhaps they need to look at who or what determines cool for their friends.

In this exercise it appears as though the power of advertising and marketing really outshine the impact of one’s confidants. It is important to be aware of the significant role that advertising plays in our lives.

We are surrounded by it almost constantly; while driving on the street, while watching TV, or even reading a magazine. Marketing agencies are hard at work dreaming up ways to catch your attention for a millisecond, infiltrate your mind with images and concepts that are intended to reorganize how you think and feel about a particular object so that you will use your money to buy their product.

Mitt Romney explains this concept of advertising very succinctly in his book, Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership, and the Olympic Games, when he says, “Branding has become a big buzzword these days. The idea is straightforward: I think back to the time when I couldn’t care whether I got a Coke, Pepsi, or an RC Cola. They were all the same to me: sweet delicious, and, because my Mom frowned on caffeine drinks, rare. At the soda machine, I would have selected whichever was closer to my pointer finger.

Over the years, I began to associate Coke with all sorts of things I like: smiling young people, sports, music, the Olympics, and recently, polar bears. Those associations make me ‘feel good’ about Coke, a lot better than I do about RC Cola (are you still out there RC?). So when I pick up a twelve-pack at the grocery store or step up to a soft drink machine, I’ll push the Coke button even if it costs a little more.”

The same holds true with most any product; associate it with enough goodness, and you’ll hook the average person in every time.

• Auxiliary Results

Within my study on cool brands, I also asked about other things that are cool, but didn’t really have an idea as to the outcome. I just did it to fill a little space and seek some more information out that I could look at.

I asked respondents to answer the coolest in the following categories: Sports, Business, Politics, Music, and Late Night Television. Along with these, I also asked for reasoning why, but confined their choices to the following factors: persistence, creativity, luck, aggression, faith, planning, humor, style, and advertising.

• Sports

The Coolest Athlete was determined to be Tiger Woods. He received 52% of the votes. Second was Tom Brady with 24% and third was Kobe Bryant with 16%. I have to take in minor responder bias here as Tiger Woods was going on a rampage during the survey, ultimately winning the US Open Golf Tournament in dramatic fashion.

The reason for being cool is most attributed to Style for athletes, gaining 56% of the votes. Advertising was attributed 16% of the time.

• Business

The coolest businessman was won by an absolute landslide. Eric Schmidt of Google Inc. collected 81% of the votes. I find this quite astonishing, as most people don’t even associate him with Google automatically. This honor typically goes to Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The rest of the field was completely insignificant aside from Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, who got 8% of the votes. This really tells you a lot about how people define a cool business. Those that are tech based and innovative, as Google and Microsoft are, win the day.

This is further warranted by the reasoning of the respondents. 53% attributed their choice to creativity and 21% based their decision on style. I guess that’s what it takes to run a thriving company these days.

• Politics

As far as the coolest politician, this was probably the tightest field. A friend of mine actually came up to me the day after I opened up the survey and said that none of the politicians were cool, which I found quite amusing. Anyway, the coolest politician happens to be Sarkozy of France. He just narrowly beat out Bush, who was just a single vote ahead of Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe who has come under a lot of fire recently. I don’t know if I’d call Mugabe’s current actions cool necessarily.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**

To be a cool politician, you must have Style and Planning, the two highest voted categories for politics.

• Music

The music industry continues to be run by Jay-Z. He received the most amount of votes, narrowly beating out Kanye West and the Beatles.

Similar to being a good businessman, you have to have both style and creativity to be cool in the music industry. This reminds me of quote by Jay-Z himself, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business…man.”

• Late Night Television
  

Jon Stewart and Conan O’Brien tied to take this category. I would agree with the results of this survey. They are both really edgy and fun to watch. Not surprisingly, the most important factor to be a cool late night television host comes down to humor. Be funnier than the next guy and you got the job it appears.

Finally, I asked what the coolest country was. The USA won this portion of the survey, but I’m going to cite this as responder bias, as most people were probably from America who took the survey. Australia came second, Denmark third, and Brazil fourth. Not a bad bunch of countries if you ask me. I have personally been to Denmark and it rocks!

• Conclusion

Anyway, here was a little insight into what people think is cool these days and why they think that. The auxiliary results are fun to look at, but the meaning behind this survey is really contained within the brand results.

People generally regarded the “image” of a brand as the most important concept in thinking it is cool. This, however, conflicts with how people think they interpret cool; via their friends.

This sheds enormous light on the powerful impacts of marketing and advertising, and how it can distort and manipulate views to elicit a certain response. Remember to always be critical and think about the stimuli within your environment. It shapes you.

Outsmarting The Great Facebook

I typically have two tabs open on my FireFox when I'm browsing the Internet. The first is my Gmail, because I am very adept at keeping up with correspondences, and who doesn't enjoy procrastinating once in a while. The second tab is Facebook, in my opinion, the king of social networking.

Facebook is a tremendous site and it continues to get better and better. It constanly adds new features; most recent is the instant messenging (IMing) that you can do with all of your Facebook friends when they are online at the same time as you. That's just brilliant. It brings you to the site, and keeps you there. This has got to make advertisers very very happy. They've also had their fair share of problems with the addition of new features. Who can forget when Facebook added their controversial News Feed.

This feature addition provoked an uproar by the Facebook community and even elicited a public apology by Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and creator of Facebook. However, for the most part, I would say Facebook keeps their users happy and content. I continue to use their service everyday (multiple times a day), because it's the best means of keeping in touch with people and also now with the addition of applications, video, pictures, etc., the best means of representing something about you to the world and the people you know. Your Facebook can say a lot about you, beware.

I, like a lot of people probably, also like to think about how to improve and use Facebook better. What can Facebook do to make my life that much easier? The funny thing is that every time I think something up that would make Facebook better, I login the next day and see that they've already done what I was just thinking about.

This actually just happened to a friend of mine. He was thinking about a new way to transmit news, where the Internet gives the power back to the people and takes it away from the large media giants like BBC, CNN, etc.

But, just as he dreamed it up, he checked through the Internet for a little and came across, iReport, which is published by CNN and was essentially his idea already formed.

This doesn't discredit my friend's idea though; it is impressive that he was able to think something up ahead of time that CNN has gone through the trouble to develop and put in place.

That being said, this time I'm going to be one step ahead of the Great Facebook. It is no joke, they are great, and they have an army of 70 million to prove it. I think that there is one critical feature that they are lacking that would make the service that much more desirable to users (or perhaps just me), and to Facebook as well.

We have to understand one thing first, though. Facebook is a business. They are doing very well. Facebook is in the business of Marketing and Advertising.

Facebook does not have any reason to change anything on its website at the moment if it doesn't further their business; they are doing fine enough as it is. So, if there is upside from a Marketing or Advertising perspective, then Facebook should add a new feature, but not before.

Quite simply, Facebook should add a "RANDOM FRIEND," link somewhere on their page. When a user clicks the "Random Friend," button it takes them to a random profile page of one of their Facebook friends. The location of this new feature doesn't really matter. It could be on the left panel below the "Applications," or across the top bar by the "home," "account," "privacy," and "logout" hyperlinks.

I don't care where they put it really, but they need to add it, and the sooner the better. If you want a prototype of this idea, I suggest checking out the "Random Article," link on Wikipedia.

• First, I'll explain why this is an awesome and necessary feature, and second I'll explain why Facebook should do it to help their business.

The "Random Friend," link is a really helpful tool to Facebook users, because it makes their browsing less active and so much more passive. By the simple click of a button, one can be whisked off to a new Facebook friend's profile without even having to think about it. There are several ways that I find my friends today on Facebook that, in my opinion, take far more work than the simple, "Random Friend," button. I can:

1. See a NAME or PICTURE on the News Feed
2. See who's STATUS has been updated
3. See who is CURRENTLY ONLINE
4. See which friends have RECENTLY UPDATED
5. Click on friends who have written on my WALL
6. Click on friends who have commented on my PICTURES

These are all excellent ways of finding your friends and visiting their profiles. However, I'm often pleasantly surprised when I see someone's name pop-up on my News Feed who I haven't spoken to in a while.

I visit their profile, look at their pictures, then usually write them a message or post on their wall. This helps me keep in touch with them which is, or should be, the primary function of Facebook. I feel like it is easy to fall into a loop of seeing the same people's profile over and over. In that sense, Facebook is making our world smaller, rather than enlarging it as it could.

By having the "Random Friend," link, I will be better able to stay in touch with my friends, because I may more frequently, or at least once in a while stumble upon their profile.

I think that this is also a necessary feature for Facebook to add, because it has gotten to such a size where certain members have accumulated 200, 500, or even 1000 or more friends on Facebook. According to Buzz Canuck, a blog on viral communication, the mean number of Facebook friends a person has is 164.

At such a size, it becomes hard to track all of those people. When discussing social networks, people will often cite the Dunbar Number, which explains the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships: the kind of relationships that go with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person."

That number isn't exactly known but it is often referenced at 150. That means that beyond 150 people, based on evolutionary psychology, anthropological findings, and sociological studies (not to mention a reference in The Tipping Point), human beings have trouble maintaining stable social relationships.

The beauty of Facebook, I believe, is that it can make this Dunbar Number larger. However, we are wired in such a way currently to have this 150 capacity. Facebook can help us develop our own social skills by broadening our horizons, rather than trapping us in the same social loop.

Facebook would also want to add this feature to help their own business. There are two things that advertisers are looking for when they decide to publish an advertisement on a web page. One of the first things they look for is, how long people stay on that web page. This is critical, because it indicates how much exposure the advertiser is getting and how much time their advertisement is likely to be seen.

Facebook has done this tremendously well with their newest IMing feature. People are going to stay on Facebook for obscene amounts of time now, because they can chat with their Facebook friends easily. That will keep people at their computers.

The second thing that advertisers look for when publishing on a web page is the amount of impressions or visits a page has. This is important, because it suggests how many people your advertisement will be exposed to and how frequently that will occur. This second concept is improved by the "Random Friend," link.

**Click the Image to see it more clearly**
Now, I realize that Facebook's advertisements, usually on the vertical ones on the left hand side below the "Applications" section refreshes every time you go to a new page.

What I'm more interested in, however, is how many pages I and the rest of Facebook users go to on a regular visit to the site. This will impact overall page views for the entire website.

What is interesting to note is that even with all of these incredible new applications and new features that have been put on Facebook, according to Alexa.com, a web information company, in the past 3 months the number of unique pages viewed per user per day for Facebook has declined 20%. Facebook still receives an obscene amount of unique pages viewed per user per day, around 20, but Facebook is a business, and if a component of their advertising allure (page views) declines by 20% in a quarter, no one is going to be happy.

Quite simply, Facebook needs to add a "Random Friend," link in order to maintain and potentially improve their very successful site.