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60 Minutes recently ran a segment on Denmark, which once again ranked first in the world in terms of the happiness of the population.

Morley Safer interviewed a number of Danes to determine why they thought ranked consistently as the most happiest people in the world, and particularly why they thought it might be that they were happier than Americans. Their answers basically centered upon the idea of having more realistic expectations from life, so that they were less frequently frustrated or disappointed. A piece of advice they proffered up to Americans was not to be so “preoccupied with the American Dream.” They also attributed their happiness to the amount of value they place on friendships, family, and spending time with both.

The role that meaningful relationships with family and friends plays with regard to personal happiness was validated in an interview with Tal Ben-Shahar, a professor at Harvard, who teaches a course on Positive Psychology — basically a primer for his students on how to be happier today.

Tal espouses that as a society too many of us are willing to sacrifice happiness today with the hope that we’ll be happier in the future. We’ll be happier once we get that bigger house, that bigger car, that promotion, etc.

No surprise to us here at Barefoot, but that is simply not true. You need to choose to do what makes you happy today, but importantly, not at the expense of being happy tomorrow. That would not be happiness, that would be hedonism.

I won’t change my tune.

I still love my iPhone.

But I think with a premature $200 reduction in the price of the iPhone, Apple has alienated their most loyal consumers, and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to why people were willing to trade-up in the first place.

When people stretch and spend more than “they should have” for a luxury item, they find Reasons to Rationalize® their purchase. As for my $600 iPhone, my Reasons to Rationalize included the ability to finally have one stand alone device that allowed me to leave my macbook behind, the iPod functionality, the visual voicemail, etc.  That was how I was able to rationalize spending $600 on a phone.

As of today, I can no longer do that. Now I can rationalize $400 of the purchase to get those features, but Apple has put me in an indefensible position (in my mind) of having spent an extra $200 due to what can only be seen as a completely irrational (or childlike) desire to be first. Essentially I now have paid $400 for a phone, and $200 to have it a few weeks before everyone else. That does not remotely feel good or engender any positive feelings toward the Apple brand.

Another of the key tenets of how you market a trading-up product is how you treat consumers after purchase. After purchase, a purchaser constantly searches for post-purchase cues that they’ve made a smart decision. Up until today, the media/blogosphere was filled with positive reviews all working to reinforce that an iPhone purchase was wise. And then Apple makes a move that completely undoes all of that positive post-purchase feedback in one fell swoop. Now the blogosphere is full of people enraged with their premature purchase.

Net, instead of looking and feeling smart about my iPhone purchase, I feel sheepish for rushing out and not delaying gratification for a few more weeks.

To be clear, I assumed we would see the price drop as the holidays drew near to drive additional iPhone sales, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they would cut prices by $200 (with no reduction in features) in 2 months.

The lack of regard for their best customers is really impossible to fathom.

The odds of me ever buying anything in the first 6 months of an Apple new release?  Zero.

Way to go Steve Jobs. You’ve just proved you’re not the “in-touch-with-the-consumer” genius people thought. Apparently you forgot how much your success has depended on riding the backs of millions of misguided Apple evangelists.

There will be one less back to ride in the future.

There’s a great article by Sarah Mahoney on Mediapost’s Marketing Daily that highlights the spending power controlled by low-income households. The article is in response to the findings of a recent study published by IRI that showed:

These consumers–about 40% of the U.S. population–actually outspend more affluent types, and will shell out $85.3 billion on consumer packaged goods in 2007. In the next decade, IRI estimates this group will generate an additional $84 billion in incremental spending on packaged goods.

The article highlights that with the recent boom in luxury spending, marketers have been ignoring lower income consumers and that there is a clear risk in doing so.

Mahoney quotes Sean Seitzinger of IRI who points out that not all retailers have ignored this segment and he highlighted Target’s efforts as being spot on:

Certain of the dollar-store formats, he (Seitzinger) says, have gotten the formula right. And Target has also nailed it, managing to straddle a market position that not only welcomes middle-class shoppers willing to trade down for occasional bargains, but also entices lower-income shoppers to trade up. “These lower-income people go to Target to buy their nicest outfits,” he says.

But it’s also got an “understanding that the dialog with lower-income shoppers isn’t just about price,” he adds. Target’s Choxie chocolates, for example, cost far less than Godiva, but are a lot more interesting than a bag of M&Ms: “It’s offering lower-income shoppers a high-end indulgence in a form they can afford but still makes them feel luxurious.”

This is spot on with what we’ve learned and are applying at Barefoot. Trading-up is not limited to the affluent, and rocketing is a behavior that applies to everyone regardless of income level.

Pamela Danziger of Unity Marketing has just published an article summarizing a new study on the luxury consumer which underscores the power of Barefoot’s positioning and the premise of the whole area of “Trading Up.”  The article is called “Luxury Marketers:  What if Shoppers Just Aren’t That Into You?” Here’s an excerpt:

The second quarter Luxury Tracking Report, based on a survey of some 1,000 luxury consumers (average income $155,500 and who spent an average of $15,283 on luxury in the second quarter of 2007), reports fully one-third of the affluent consumers surveyed said that while they have been fortunate to enjoy luxuries in their life, that “luxury is not a part of my lifestyle.”Another 27 percent admitted to scaling back on some purchases in order to afford luxuries in areas that really matter to them, but for these occasionally indulgent affluents, high-end luxury living is not a part of their every day life either. This means that three out of every five potential luxury consumers is able easily to walk past the high-end stores and brands calling their name.  

This excerpt highlights a couple of points that I want to elaborate on. The first is that even when someone can afford to be a luxury consumer they don’t choose to be a luxury consumer in every category. The second is that even affluent consumers will cut back in some areas to indulge in others. That “rocketing” behavior is no surprise to us at Barefoot, and understanding that dynamic is key in how you talk to these consumers about your brand.The last part of the article draws the following conclusion:

“Instead, marketers need to convey to the reluctant luxury customer why their product or service is a smart choice as that occasional treat. They need to emphasize the superior quality, workmanship, materials, or service that they provide and work hard to make customers see why it is worth “trading up” to their brand of luxury item,’ Danziger concludes.  

Those familiar with how we approach these consumers will recognize that as perfectly describing what we call Reasons To Rationalize®. You can’t just expect a high-end or luxury brand name to create the desire and the purchase, you have to help the consumer understand and rationalize why your product or service is worth the extra investment.It’s great to see a study validating the path we’ve chosen to pursue as an area of growth for our agency. Thanks Pam!

It’s taken a while. Many, many years actually. But I’ve finally gotten to a place where I can enjoy myself while I’m away from the office on business. I’m talking about the occasions where I’m staying at an amazing locale, or engaged in one of those “business” trips that while required, seem primarily like pleasure to those who stay behind. It’s a good thing, because my travel schedule the past couple of months has been brutal, but softened by the places I’ve been visiting and staying so there’s no need to feel sorry for me.

From mid-March to the end of April here was my schedule.

I started by going to San Francisco for a AAAA’s Forum Meeting. We stayed at the Campton Place Hotel for our two day meeting and while there were lucky enough to visit two of the country’s hottest advertising (or interactive) agencies: AKQA and Butler Shine Stern & Partners. It was a great trip from a learning standpoint, and a chance to see inside two agencies I admire.

Right after that was a personal trip (Spring Break with the family) to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. We stayed in a villa managed by Caribbean Villas called Hawksbill. The villa was awesome and we had a great time visiting with friends that traveled with us. We ended up spending much of our time at the beach at the local Westin. Our villas overlooked the resort and it was just minutes away. While I absolutely have no guilt about vacationing with my family, this trip was worth mentioning as it happened in the middle of a bunch of somewhat cush business trips.

Immediately upon returning from St. John, I took off for Jacksonville (FL) to visit one of the franchise locations of one of our newest clients: Freedom Boat Club. While this trip involved staying at a very average hotel for two nights, it was on the ocean, and we ended up spending some time out on one of our client’s boats to get a firsthand feel for the experience. That didn’t suck.

I was back home for just a few days, and then it was back to Florida, this time to Naples for the AAAA’s 2007 Management Conference which took place at the Ritz-Carlton. Unfortunately, this year’s conference’s content wasn’t as helpful as in year’s past, but it did give me some time to contemplate Barefoot and where we’re going. I came back convinced we’re on the right path, but I did identify a couple of key opportunities, so the trip was time well spent.

The next trip was to the American Express Publishing Luxury Summit 2007. This is my second year attending the Luxury Summit. It is a great opportunity to spend time with some of the preeminent brands and services that consumers rocket for in their “Pursuit of Happiness,” and this year it was held at The Breakers in West Palm Beach. My wife Becca attended this conference with me as it took place over our anniversary weekend. Great conference. Great learnings. And for the most part a great location.

Back home, and then off to NYC a few days later for a quick trip in and out.

This post did have a point when I started, and if it seemed to evolve into a personal travelogue from an insufferable travel snob, bear with me for just a few more seconds.

The point is that in the past I would have felt guilty about any one of these trips, let alone all of them back to back in a relatively short timeframe. Yet these were all valuable business trips (including Spring Break actually) where I was either strengthening my understanding of our clients, meeting potential clients, or gaining insight into where we should be moving Barefoot to stay a step or two ahead of the rest of the agency world.

So how did I shake that guilt? First off, I realized that when other Barefooters are out on the road on cool projects, I don’t begrudge them joy, I’m happy for them. We’ve recently had team members coordinating conferences in Hawaii, shooting videos with Forrest Griffin in Vegas, attending SXSW in Austin, and attending the Miller Distributor Conference in Vegas. I’m happy for them. I know it has a legit business purpose, and I truly hope they’re enjoying themselves while they’re there (ummm, not too much though).

Realizing that I was happy for others in similar situations was probably the epiphany for me, but to be honest, I’ve also just come to grips with the fact that people are going to think what they’re going to think no matter what I do. So I do what I know is right for Barefoot, and have stopped worrying what others might think.

Net I spent the month of April traveling, enjoying myself, relaxing where possible, but working hard when duty called.

This Wall Street Journal article definitely caught my eye. And it opens with a pretty provocative thought. “We may have life and liberty. But the pursuit of happiness isn’t going so well.”

The gist of the article is that while we may (as a country) be richer than ever, we are no happier than we were 30 years ago. The author says the key problem is that we aren’t very good at figuring out what makes us happier. I’ve highlighted in previous posts that I think happiness is a state of mind. You can be happier if you decide to be happier, but I also believe that part of being happy is “the pursuit,” not the arrival. That’s why the things that make Barefooters happy by and large are things that are either constantly changing (technology, fashion, etc.), or experiences that you can continue to collect as you move through life (travel, outsider art, etc.).

So perhaps it is true that once you have everything you’ve been pursuing, your happiness may plateau and even go into decline.

The lesson? Pick things that will always keep you growing and going.

Conversely, the author of the Wall Street Journal article, Jonathan Clements, shares that experts think we’re not happy due to two factors. First, we’re not “Built to be happy.” We’re designed to survive and reproduce. Second, “we’re bad at forecasting.” We don’t accurately project what will make us happier. I’m not sure I agree.

I’m happy. I would not attribute my happiness to being built different than anyone else (other than rounder perhaps), and I would not say I’m a better forecaster. Perhaps I’m just lucky, but I think it’s because I’ve discovered the things in life that bring me joy, and I pursue them. More importantly, I’ve decided to be happy, and I think that is the most important thing of all.

I wanted to publicly congratulate everyone at Barefoot for having an amazing show at the Cincinnati ADDYs again this year. If you saw the article on cincinnati.com, you’ll know that Cliff Peale of the Cincinnati Enquirer prominently mentioned not only our Best of Show award for the Mickey’s site, but the fact that we won significantly more awards than any other agency. Not that anyone is counting, okay, maybe there is someone out there counting.

Allow me to tell you a little story. Along time ago (approx. 12 years) I attended my second Addy show, and after coming home with a wee bit of hardware (a great feeling then, as it is now), I dissected the Addy book. I counted who won what, and because I’m a bit of a dork - I also created a chart of golds, silvers, best of show, developed my own scoring system to give more weight to Best of show, etc. All of which was very obsessive/compulsive of me (I apologize to the National Association of O/C’s as I mean no offense, and neither did the snickers man-kiss ad or gm’s affront to suicidal robots everywhere). Jodi Greene was kind enough to remind me how mental I am/was Saturday night as I went on record back then saying I wanted to be the agency at the top of the list. Perhaps one of those things better kept to oneself, but apparently I said it aloud.

That was the beginning of our efforts to put Barefoot atop the local agency heap. And while I personally think we have been there for some time (talent and results, not size), it’s always nice to have the validation of talented advertising peers from around the country.

At any rate, Jodi had an interesting observation. She wondered if there was any 2 or 3 person agency out there today making that same list. Or if less mental than me, just vowing to topple us from our place as the best agency in the city? I bet there is, which means we’ll keep pushing to stay on top.

Starting tomorrow.

Today, I’m just going to be happy about how we did Saturday. I’ve often observed that when you’re pursuing something that’s very worthwhile, and incredibly important to you, you’re sometimes not sure what to do with it when you get it. In this case, I’m just going to enjoy it for a moment. We’ll renew our efforts tomorrow. And we’ll raise the bar higher. Our goal is no longer about being the best agency in Cincinnati (it hasn’t been for a while), or even the region. We want to be, need to be, striving to be one of the best, if not the best, agencies in the country.

Nights like Saturday just reinforce the progress we continue to make.

I just read a Fast Company article online titled “The Happiness Factor” and the article opens up with this thought:

“Today’s most successful brands promise to help in our pursuit of happiness. But too often, marketers fail to understand what brings us joy.”

Absolutely. And as a consumer that bums me out, as an agency positioned to help brands solve this very problem, I’m thrilled.

The article, which was penned by Tim Manners is dead on in my opinion, and he does an admirable job summing up the pros and cons of the relationship that exists between marketing and happiness. With a nod to the misery that too much of the marketing in the world gives us today. Give it a read.

Yes.

But you can also be happier without spending a dime. You just have to decide that you want to be happier.

I recently ran across an article which discussed research being done on the pursuit of happiness. One of the points made in the article by Caroline Adams Miller is that we can be happier just by thinking about the things that bring us joy each day. And to be honest, that’s how Barefoot came about originally. I decided I would be happier writing advertising. And more than a decade later, it’s how we arrived at our new positioning, “Marketing the Pursuit of Happiness.”

To be clear, we received some feedback on that positioning statement. And not all of it positive. Some folks question whether of not consumerism is even moral. That’s not a debate we (Barefoot Partners) had when we decided to pursue this positioning. We were on an island for an offsite (Georgian Bay, Ontario) to discuss how to differentiate Barefoot and increase our collective work happiness. We each ended up talking about evolving the agency to be one that worked in the areas that were dearest to each of our hearts. For one of us, it was travel. For another, technology. And so on. Quickly one thing became clear. The thing the categories or products we wanted to work on all had in common is that they were all associated with things we did for enjoyment. Things that made us happy.

As we discussed it more, we realized that our relationships with these categories/products were not that dissimilar, even though the categories were very different. We each actively sought out information in these categories, we each enjoyed sharing what we knew about the products with others, and we often found ourselves finding Reasons to Rationalize(tm) these purchases. We knew that they were oftentimes not logical purchases, but emotional. Each of us often spending far more money on something than we otherwise would of (rocketing), and sometimes justifying the purchase with the thought, “Well, if it makes me happy, it’s worth it.” When we returned from the Georgian Bay, we began to research this area and discovered Michael Silverstein’s book Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods… And How Companies Create Them which gave us terminology for some of the behaviors we had identified and discussed.

So back to the question: Can money really buy you happiness? Yes — but not on its own. The good news is that research is proving that you can change your level of happiness, you just have to decide to do so. And doing more of the things you love (with or without products and services) is the best place to start. Like going Barefoot.

There was an article in Barron’s this past weekend about the split in performance between the stocks of companies that serve the haves and those that serve the have-nots. They argue that the divide between the companies that serve high-income consumers and low-income consumers is increasing. I’d argue that the companies they identify as doing well are those that are actually positioned with products that consumers are willing to rocket for. Whether they be jewels from Tiffany (the allure of the robin’s-egg blue box crosses all income lines), bags from Coach, or water from Fiji — these companies are succeeding by offering access to the world of luxury across several income demographics. Tiffany has items under $100, not because the rich might want to save money (they might), but because it allows a broadening of the customer base in a way that doesn’t cheapen the brand image.

Understanding that the reason that these stocks are doing well is just not because of a growth in income at the highest levels, but because they offer luxury to more consumers is key.

The real gap that is increasing is the performance of stocks that have products “stuck in the middle.” Having a good “branded” product that is not the best value, nor worth rocketing for, is becoming an almost impossible place to be. Companies can either choose to serve consumers with price-driven, functional products where folks feel giving up a familiar “brand name” is worth the trade-off for price. Or they can design premium products and give folks reasons for trading-up for them.

Being average is clearly a below average solution. And Barron’s data seems to show it also leads to below-average stock performance.