blog

Last night I was paging through a couple of my favorite mags devoted to things I rocket for: Raw Vision (outsider art) and Fly Fisherman (fly fishing, of course). I recalled how, prior to getting into the creative side of the ad biz, I was in public relations. Big time. I once co-owned a small PR firm and I once managed a PR department at a sizeable agency. I remember how one of my PR mentors used to love to hold up a magazine and suggest to clients that people bought and read them for their content, the editorial, and not the ads. It was a PR guy’s not-so-subtle suggestion that the advertising was simply filler. His point of view made sense to me at the time, but not any longer. As much as I enjoy the articles in my favorite mags, I love looking at the ads, too. They speak to things I have or hope to have, alert me to new products and upcoming events and give me something to look forward to. In short, they help remind me why it is that I like what I like. While certainly not all or even most, many of the ads in such specialty publications are particularly well done because they speak at a very emotional level to me and others who rocket for the things and experiences in those mags. In my mind, a smart ad can be every bit as rewarding (and insightful) as a well-written article. And the ads are a lot easier to digest too.

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.

Managing technology for Barefoot, I get frequent questions from clients and colleagues about Rails, and why we’ve invested time and energy in using it. “Isn’t just it the flavor of the month?” “Isn’t it just popular because it’s open source?”

Because I am such a fan of the technology, it would be easy to dismiss these questions with the same disdain you’d see when asking a Mac zealot why a Mac’s better than a PC. But the question is legitimate. There are hundreds of technologies and platforms out there, and all of them promise something, so why Rails? There are tons of reasons to love it, but as an agency, there’s one strength in particular that just fits:

Rails excels at relationships. In fact, I’d venture to say that’s what it does best. And when it gets down to it, that’s what Barefoot does for its clients. We try to make it easy to see the relationship between Dawn and saving wildlife, Mickey’s Fine Malt Liquor and irreverance, and hell, when you think about Barefoot, we want you thinking about trading up.

Rails makes relationships easy. Yesterday, the long-awaited launch of Rails 1.2 happened, and with it, realtionships are even easier. Gone are the days of writing tons SQL joins like this one:

SELECT d.document_id
FROM documents d
LEFT OUTER JOIN parties p
on d.document_id = p.document_id
WHERE p.party_id is null;


In Rails, we set up relationships in plain English. A blog has_many posts. An author belongs_to a blog post, and a blog post has_many comments. With these kinds of relationships established, getting to all the posts by a particular author is easy: @author.posts

Whether you understand the code or not is irrelevant; the point is this: Rails makes creating, using and extending relationships easy. As an agency we strive to do the same. As it should be.