Insights

American Police need a brand refresh

Do little kids still want to grow up to be police officers in America? By the time they’ll be old enough for the job, they’ll have seen a constant stream of news of police officers making major mistakes and causing significant damage to their professions reputation.

If Police in America were a major airline, which killed random customers daily and “accidentally” do you think they’d still be “flying the friendly skies?”

Reputation management is something we do at The Next Wave. This would be a major challenge, up there with getting kids to stop smoking, or people to trust a brand again after a major fail. We believe we need a national conversation to take place about what it means to “serve and protect” and being an “officer of the peace” looks like in 2021.

One thing we’re certain of, showing up in military gear to a legal protest is probably not the best way to diffuse the situation. We put together a series of posters/memes to try to show how ridiculous this has become. Note, we don’t own the rights to these photos, nor do we have permission to use them. However, since it’s educational and for public criticism of the new “trade dress” of police in the US- we believe it falls under fair use.

Cops no longer dress for sucess. They dress to kill

Are police making a fashion statement? Jonathan Bachman for Reuters

If you think you need an MRAP to serve and protect you've already failed your job

If this is how far the balance of power has shifted, police have failed. Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Does this look like "the pursuit of life liberty and happiness"

Fear is a horrible motivator. Photo by Roscoe Myrick | Flickr/CC BY 2.0

We believe it’s time for a national re-training of the police in this country, It’s time to re-examine what service police are here to provide and it’s value and values. When protesters say “No justice, no peace” what does that mean?

Can you honestly tell little kids that being a police officer is still a desirable job when they will hear stories of police shooting people in their garages, holding a subway sandwich, or in a raid in the middle of the night, or even when an officer comes “home” to the wrong apartment and shoots it’s occupant? The common thread- is the victims are Black. I’m not linking to any of these stories or naming names, because to do so is actually minimizing the scope of the problem. It’s happening way too often, way too frequently, and that’s the basis of our call for a rebrand and some reputation management.

It starts with public perception. It starts with how you come dressed to the party. It’s time for reform.

 

 

Your business livestreamed

This remote working brought on by the global coronavirus crisis has turned everyone into a video star. Be it Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, Teams, WebEx, GoToMeeting, Mikogo or any of the other platforms, all of a sudden, you’re expected to give sales meetings, presentations, seminars, workshops with a webcam that’s usually worse than the camera in your phone. There’s also public meetings- from city commissions and school boards and really important things like the NFL draft. We’ve seen broadcast TV go from huge productions with live audiences to Chris Cuomo in his basement.

The advantages of livestreaming can be immense. Our audience is only limited to places within reach of the Internet, no travel required. Instant feedback and group discussion can become part of any production. When we consider that the average current iPhone has more power in it than a multi-million dollar video production truck circa 1990 when The Next Wave began, it’s only fitting that we’re also on the leading edge of the livestream revolution.

We did our first livestream for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau back in 2012, using proprietary tools from uStream, to later doing livestreams with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) and Youtube. We’ve recently added a live switcher/keyer/streaming board to our video production toolset, allowing us to switch as many as 4 video sources at once including flying keys, graphic overlays and picture in picture.

A client who was supposed to do a 2.5 day live training in person, recently hired us to help her make her WebEx look better. One of the first things we learned is to leave a space on your Powerpoint slides for a picture in picture of you, because no one wants to stare at a slide while listening to you talk about it. Another tip- bigger text on slides, since some people may be participating with small screens.

When you combine professional lighting, sound along with top quality video cameras and a dedicated producer, you take your corporate communications to a whole new level. If you need advice, help or a complete broadcast production package, please consider calling The Next Wave to help you take your production to the next level.

A livestream setup for WebEx

How to take your WebEx seminar to the next level with pro video

When will the NAACP rebrand?

Today, Pepsi Co, the parent of Quaker Oats decided to finally toss in the towel on the Aunt Jemima brand of pancake syrup after 131 years. The brand hearkens back to 1889, but, they only just woke up to realize they were embodying a racist stereotype.

We’re seeing a new found awareness, with statues being toppled, discussions of renaming places named for slave owners, members of the confederacy and even Christopher Columbus is finally being outed as a fairy tale of white privilege.

Which brings me to the recent firing of Ohio State Senator Dr. Steve Huffman who lost his ER job for saying “colored population.”

Yet this appears:  Ohio NAACP President Tom Roberts, a former state lawmaker who previously represented Huffman’s district said, “It is just unbelievable he would ask that kind of question or use that kind of terminology.”

NAACP stands for “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. An organization founded in 1909.

As professionals in the naming and branding field, we offer a bit of advice, it’s time to change your name. Instead, try the National African American Coalition for Progress. Same great initials and a whole lot better imagery. If Aunt Jemima can do it, so can you.
We’d love to help work on this powerful change.

thumbnail of NAACP respositioning

Click on image to download 11×17 PDF suitable for printing.

 

Never admit you’re losing: positioning in a pandemic

A local state university president, already facing a budget deficit, is quoted in the paper suggesting that “more cuts are needed” and that the Coronavirus is destroying their ability to enroll students. This is not the message to send, even if it may be true. There is no urgency in her plans, because she assumes the university will survive, will be bailed out, she’ll have another job. The future is not something we can control, but it’s also inevitable and it’s your job to adapt and plan to win, not to admit defeat and attempt to manage.

Need proof? Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 and the company was on it’s death bed. New products, including the innovative iMac were a year away. The first thing he does is look for a new ad agency. Chiat\Day, which had been the agency that gave him the iconic “1984” spot introducing the Macintosh had been off the account for 10 years when they were invited back to pitch. Now, one of the hottest shops in the country, the plan for Lee Clow and Rob Siltanen was not to pitch- to walk away if asked, so when Jobs demanded spec work, Siltanen was ready to walk, but Clow said they’d be back.

The campaign they came back with, “Think Different” didn’t show photos of computers. It wasn’t even grammatically correct, and Jobs had said he didn’t want TV, but they came back with a rip-o-matic rough cut of a 2 minute spot showcasing famous folks who walked to the beat of a different drummer set to the song “Crazy” by Seal. Only problem was, it was 2 minutes long and they needed something more compact. After Siltanen did his best to write a new voiceover- Jobs trashed his work and alienated him. Another writer was brought on, Ken Segall., and he gave us the final script for “Here’s to the crazy ones” which was as much an ode to Jobs as to the people featured in the campaign. It was the right bet, and set the stage for Apple’s comeback. The string of products, from the iMac, to the iPhone to the iPad changed the world- all as predicted by the campaign which was as much manifesto as it was aspirational, because Apple was down, and almost counted out. Jobs wasn’t throwing in the towel, he was focusing his brand on attaining greatness, which is the exact right thing to do in a crisis.

With the whole world in shock over the Coronavirus crisis, many leaders (and university presidents) have thrown in the towel. Most have directed their agencies to do ads that all sound the same “in these unprecedented times” and “we’re all in this together” kumbaya bullshit.

“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” — General George Patton

It’s so bad, you can cut them all together and get- well, someone already did:

This is not the answer. Ever. Doing what everyone else is doing is exactly the point that “Think different” railed against. Now, of all times, is the time to launch your brand with a new message, a new way of doing things, a new commitment to reach new heights. It’s called adapting, and it’s critical to evolution. We were adapting before the crisis- to the new gig economy, to software as a service, to a new media landscape where “fake news” was somehow acceptable.

The pandemic was just a unforeseen misdirection to most. Yes, Bill Gates saw it coming, but didn’t do a good enough job of raising the alarm. Now, the question is, will you rise to the challenge? Will you adapt, overcome and succeed? The PhD flails and fails, the college drop out swings for the fences. It’s easy to be a “leader” when things are predictable- but the true test is when they’re not.

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” — President Theodore Roosevelt

The funny thing is, Steve Jobs was inspired by Nike’s advertising and looking for his own version of it when he came back to the sinking Apple.

“The best example of all, and one of the greatest jobs of marketing the universe has ever seen is Nike,” Jobs explained. “Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, they don’t ever talk about their products. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do? They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are, that’s what they are about.”

He wanted to do the same for Apple’s brand. “The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds. It’s not to talk about MIPS and megahertz, it’s not to talk about why we’re better than Windows,” Jobs said.

Jobs went on in the talk to announce Apple’s newest ad campaign, which used the tagline “Think Different,” and featured pictures of legendary thinkers like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King and John Lennon. The ads didn’t describe Apple computers’ specifications or functions, but instead gave a sense of the company’s mission.

Source: Nike’s ads inspired Steve Jobs for Apple’s ‘Think Different’ campaign

And when you want to see a company give the right response in troubled times, Nike, with their agency for life, Wieden+Kennedy, get it right, right now:

Because, once you admit you are down, if you don’t start talking about a comeback, you will never have one.

“We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

We’re not saying we have the answers for the Coronavirus crisis you are facing, but, we’re here to help brands find a voice that is uniquely theirs and projects hope for a better future. This is what advertising does- it creates lust, evokes trust- and triggers an emotional response. If your campaign doesn’t inspire folks while they are desperate for a comeback, don’t even consider running it.

When the “Think Different” campaign launched, Apple immediately felt the boost despite having no significant new products. Within 12 months, Apple’s stock price tripled. A year after the “Think Different” launch, Apple introduced their multi-colored iMacs. The computers represented revolutionary design, and they became some of the best-selling computers in history. But without the “Think Different” campaign preceding and supporting them, it’s likely the jellybean-colored and gumdrop-shaped machines would have been viewed by the press and general public as just more “toys” from Apple.

Source: The Real Story Behind Apple’s ‘Think Different’ Campaign

“We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.” — General Omar Bradley

Apple showed us how it’s done. Are you ready to Think different?

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