We may indeed believe we’ve mastered the skill of multi-tasking, but have we really? Are you able to send a text message while you’re in a meeting, while at the same time engage in the conversation and also take in what’s being said? Your instant response is undoubtedly a resounding ‘Yes’, but in all likelihood the truth is an unfortunate ‘No’.

Let’s try a simple experiment. It will only take a minute. Begin by visiting here. Then, when ready, simultaneously read the following clause while listening to my speech. When you’re done, I’ll get you to answer a few simple questions.

Let’s go…

An average consumer is exposed to two million TV commercials before reaching the age of 65. That’s equivalent to watching eight hours of TV commercials, seven days a week for six years. If you feel this is excessive, look at Japan. In Japan you’ll discover that the average Japanese consumer watches seven years worth of TV commercials. The interesting fact is that as the number of TV commercial hours increase, so the success rate of new brands falls.

Today we know that 8 out of 10 new product releases in the western world fail within the first three months. In Japan, the statistics tell us that 9 out of 10 new product releases fail. In Europe, a brand new product will survive on the shelf for 10 weeks, whereas in Japan it will only last two. To further complicate things, the innovation time for a new product in Europe is on average 16 months but in Japan it’s only three! Let me not forget Korea. There you’ll discover the fastest innovation time in the world – with an average of only 10 weeks.

The speed to market not only reflects a steady increase of technology, it also a sign of the increasing consumer demand for instant gratification. We simply don’t have the patience to wait forever for a new product. We want it now! In the same way, we expect a reply to our emails within 24 hours, and as for our text messages – we want that within minutes.

Your time’s up! Here are the three questions:

1. How many TV commercials are we exposed to before we reach 65?

2. What is the average product innovation time in Japan?

3. My speech mentions an increase in a woman’s heartbeat when she sees a blue box from Tiffany’s. By what percentage?

Before I reveal the answers, let’s revisit the results from an identical experiment we conducted only weeks ago. When people only read the above text without listening to my speech, 92% were able to recall the correct answers. (If we added another question to the written text, the success rate would fall to 84%.) However, when adding the multi-tasking component to the experiment, only 31% were able to answer all three questions correctly – a dramatic drop from 84% to 31% – despite the the fact that all three questions represented the essence of the message.

Now it’s your turn. The answers:

1. Two million

2. Three months

3. 22%

How well did you score?

Every study conducted on multi-tasking demonstrates how bad we are at it. Our brain is simply not wired for it – and now matter how hard we try, we’ll lose the game. The reason is actually quite simple. Take for example our reading of the copy above, our brain has to shut down, reset and start again if we’re to capture the second message happening at the same time. There is no way we can keep two tracks open at once and take in the information from each simultaneously. Furthermore, as we shut down the brain we not only lose data from the first task, but we also lose on the second. In other words, the combined knowledge we take in while multi-tasking is substantially less than if we just focused on one task.

And this fact of life is the primary adversary of the advertising industry. An average kid takes in 26 hours of content over 24 hours. Despite the ungodly hours kids keep, they’re generally exposed, on average to at least two information sources at any given time. What this means is that they tend to only remember a fraction of what’s said – ‘fraction’ being the operative word.

Even though recent studies indicate the brains of young children have begun to adapt to this multi-channeling phenomenon. And for this very reason, the concept of simple, needs to be further simplified. The word count in ads must be reduced, the messages minimized, and the language, pictures, music and sounds completely aligned. Forget the notion of three messages in one ad. Forget about a logo, a pack shot, a web address and a slogan on the end frame in your DVR.

Let’s insure your communications remain relevant for the future.

First, does your brand own one word – one truly unique word?

I say ‘cowboy’ and you say ‘Marlboro’. I say ‘safety’ and you say ‘Volvo’. How is your brand stacking up? Is it claiming its own territory or is it melting into the generic

One where there’s any number of companies laying claim to ‘quality’, ‘worldwide’ and ‘service’ – to name just a few.

Second, do your messages consistently communicate and support that single word?

Take for example any Apple ad. Simplicity, design and innovation are words or values consistently communicated in every aspect of the product, from the packaging to the commercials. Select any aspect of an Apple ad, and I’m sure you’ll agree that at least one of the above words are communicated. Can your product bear similar scrutiny?

Third, let it become a somatic marker!

Some years ago the concept of somatic markers was founded. A somatic marker is essentially a bookmark in our brain. It’s often created by an event so dramatic that you’ll never forget it. Think 9/11, or the death of Princess Diana…now remember where you were when you first heard about it. No doubt you will also remember who you called or who you were with. By comparison odds are that you’d struggle to remember what you ate for dinner two days ago. That’s the difference between a somatic marker and a non-event.

Great communication establishes powerful somatic markers – it establishes something dramatic enough that makes it memorable. Can you remember the BlendTech viral ads which showed a person blending an iPad. How can you forget such a ridiculous notion? Or the one about the Spanish toy chain called Imaginarium, which always features the two doors into their store – a large one (for the adults) and a small one (for the little ones). I bet you’ll never forget the store either once you see it.

What about you? Does your ad have the power to create a somatic marker in the brain.

Did you manage to check all the boxes? Or even one?

Time’s up. You’ve now spent five minutes reading this article and here’s the good news: You didn’t multi-task at all – well done! Here’s the bad news – you’re probably the only person on Earth concentrating on one message only.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Customer Experience Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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81-year-old Tahakasa Omi, a Japanese grandma of four, had spent her day excitedly anticipating the arrival of a package from Do-Co-Mo. Do-Co-Mo, the largest operator of mobile phones in Japan, if not the world, had spent the last two years developing a concept for people just like Tahakasa Omi. It’s not hard to understand why. Japan has the oldest population in the world – and it’s a market worth an estimated $120 billion.

Tahakasa Omi’s package didn’t contain a flashy new mobile phone – what arrived was a picture frame. With a simple click on the side, the frame would immediately connect to the nationwide Do-Co-Mo mobile network and in turn connect with Omi’s four kids. The moment one of her children took, say a photograph of a grandchild, they could press their ‘Grandma’ button, and within a few seconds the photo would appear on the frame in her living room. The 1,200km physical barrier separating her and her children, seeming to vanish in an instant. And, by the way, the picture frame was free.

But this is far from the full story, since there’s more than pictures appearing on the screen. The Do-co-Mo invention is the latest in an ongoing stream of initiatives from mobile operators from Japan – all seeking to explore new advertising channels.

Advertising penetration in Japan is by far the highest in the world – with the average Japanese consumer watching eight hours of TV commercials, seven days a week for seven years! That’s one whole year more than Americans. Step outside any Japanese doors and you’ll see that every space, every square centimeter, contains a commercial message. When you stroll down the streets of Tokyo, even the air is pumped with thousands of sound messages from every display, point-of-sale counter or store.

With Do-Co-Mo’s picture frame the ads have not only moved inside the home onto the mantelpiece beside the TV screen, they’ve also managed to achieve what the television set has so far failed to do – a steadily growing, in-depth insight about its users. They not only know the users network of friends, but they know that full attention will be paid to each picture when it arrives. Not only that , the cost of the images are all paid for by the mobile phone users – like Tahakasa Omi’s four kids. But even they have a choice – they can elect to receive commercial messages instead.

The picture frame is by no means the only commercial initiative on offer from the telecommunication giant. Geo-position based advertising has become a reality – allowing advertisers the opportunity to push messages to their audiences according to their demographic. Contextual Branding, as I dubbed the concept when the technology first appeared in Japan some years ago, is now offered to every major advertiser. Companies can now communicate with all Do-Co-Mo’s subscribers who opted for the lower subscription rate. And these advertisements are of course targeted directly to the recipients’ profiles, as well as the where they are at any specific time of day.

Do-Co-Mo is not the only company to branch out from conventional communication and distribution channels – the home Gecko is the latest invention converting homes and offices into retail stores. Imagine a hotel mini-bar – then place it in your office instead. The mini-bar is stocked several times a week with new product innovations. So, for the staff who arrive in the morning the mini-bar is stocked with new coffee products from Nescafe, then at lunch there’s the latest Maggi product and as the afternoon wears on, the mini-bar is restocked with energy drinks and snack bars. Every product in the mini-bar is straight out of the test kitchens, and they are distributed to specifically target the description of the office workers they are catering for. Furthermore, the companies are then in a position to determine exactly how their spanking-new product is received, all paid for courtesy of the users.

Now the office Gecko is moving home. There are 20 million people concentrated in the city area of Tokyo, and Gecko is becoming part of many of these homes. Suddenly they all have a mini-bar to supply the latest products. This is by no means a new concept in Japan. For more than 100 years, Japan’s largest pharmacy chain has kept a small cupboard in Japanese bathrooms all stocked with headache tablets, band-aids, and liquid disinfectants.

For brands this means more than another distribution opportunity – it means instant feedback on what works and what doesn’t. Whereas most brands in the West rely on research data, focus groups and interview sessions to access the success of a product, Japanese companies have realized that there’s nothing more real than the real thing. They allow the consumer to experiment with their product in their home environment. There are no one-way mirrors or questionnaires to be filled in. If they like the product, they’ll buy it.

This trend is transforming the entire nature of research in Japan. Restaurants, cafes and even bars are offering companies to sample their products in real environments with sophisticated “behind the scenes” monitoring tools. Concepts like SampleLab and SampleCafe – offers thousands of brand-hungry consumers the opportunity to enjoy a cup-of-something while testing the latest anything – from beer to chewing gum. The consumers are aware of it , but are perfectly willing to participate since they are given access to the latest gizmo.

Next week it’s Thakas Omi’s 82nd birthday. She eagerly anticipates what new stuff Do-Co-Mo will deliver. The advertisers are keen too.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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Let me ask you a difficult question: How on earth would you build your brand on a canvas smaller than a matchbox? What if you could use only one color (say black on a green background), you had no scope for graphics, and the consumer was paying for every second it took for you to send him or her a commercial message?

Welcome to the new world of m-branding. Now, more than ever, creativity and discipline are needed for preparing a branding platform. Why? Because everything is telling us that the WAP-enabled (Wireless Application Protocol) cell phone will soon be bigger than the World Wide Web we know today.

“Soon” is three years from now, according to AC Nielsen. Do you believe this? I do. Just think back to 1995 when the World Wide Web was born, and then think about the criticism the Net weathered at that time. Yet look at the Net’s onward growth today.

Knowing how fast this next branding revolution could arrive, you’d better be ready and start preparing for wireless branding. Excuse me for comparing this with a cigarette brand, but I can’t stop thinking about Silk Cut, an English cigarette brand which, in the ’80s, prepared for a government ban on cigarette commercials for all media.

All the cigarette companies knew it would happen, and they had plenty of time to prepare for the restrictions, but only a few used the time well. So when the day finally arrived, Silk Cut was able to continue its marketing campaign where its competitors’ hands were tied. Silk Cut maneuvered around the legislative constraints by eliminating its brand name from all publicity.

Silk Cut became recognizable as an image: Luxuriously rumpled purple silk with a gaping slash through it communicated the identity wordlessly. Color and image became the communicators: Racing cars in the distinctive purple livery, as well as billboard advertisements, were just two vehicles that carried the message to the community. And the interesting thing was that no one really noticed that the name was gone. The branding was intact.

Marlboro was another brand which, through its clothing line, escaped into the new advertising reality. The cigarette retained its smokers and communicated with potential smokers by promoting its “Marlboro Country” clothing brand.

So what’s the connection with m-commerce and m-branding? Being limited to using a matchbox-sized display, with no colors and no resolution, is like running a Silk Cut campaign without being allowed to show your logo or your brand name. It demands creative, disciplined planning for the branding platform.

Yes, you can show your logo, but consumers are paying for every second you take up on their mobile display. So what would you do? One technique might be to work on product placement: to ensure that your brand is exposed whenever it’s relevant on the news, in movies, and so on.

Another method would be to develop your brand’s language – to use phrases that the consumer can recognize as being the voice of your brand. Some brands have already developed brand phrases. Just think about Coca-Cola which has been heavily promoting the word “Enjoy.”

The connection to m-branding is apparent, isn’t it? Such a simple word, yet, through disciplined brand use, so charged with meaning that its exposure on that tiny mobile display will say a thousand things to the consumer in a split second.

Think about Intel Inside’s melody and imagine how easy it will be for that brand to broadcast its signature melody via the cell phone. Both companies have created identifiers around their brands which can, independent of the brands’ logos, names, and images, remind the consumer about the brand and all it stands for.

But many, many more brands haven’t been as inventive yet. M-branding is all about using very few tools in a very creative way. If you don’t have any tools, create them fast. Because the race for branding real estate on the cell-phone display has already begun. And I can tell you, there’s not much space left.

The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Loyalty And Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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I know we can all be cynical and see through this ploy, but it works.

Time after time, when evaluating what makes service unique, I conclude it comes down to two simple factors: attention to the individual and a personal twist. Whether we admit it or not, we all love particular attention, to be treated as unique human beings. Especially these days, when corporate inattention so often makes us feel more like statistical details than people with names.

A while back, I wrote a post on how important it is to personalize a brand’s dialogue with the customer. One assumption was the more personal we make our brand’s voice, the more effective communication becomes. Well, a reader from Holland, Erwin van Lun, contacted me to tell me the assumption has been proven.

Dutch marketing journal Tijdschrift voor Marketing published some hot-off-the-press data showing the personal touch can be even more effective than anticipated.

According to their article, if you simply begin a missive with “Dear X” (inserting the recipient’s name), the response rate will be 42 percent. That’s compared to a response rate of 10 percent for letters commencing with the universal “Dear Reader.” These rates might vary from country to country, but they should make you think no matter where you work.

Please don’t start thinking your personalized communication strategy should stop there. The journal also illustrates the value of analyzing your audience, segmenting it, and making your communications more relevant, personal, and direct. Besides addressing emails to individual recipients and signing them with a real person’s name (rather than a departmental designation), try to reflect real events that affect the person you’re addressing.

Here’s a simple example. While preparing to move recently, one of my friends received an email offering advice on what to do to avoid problems with movers. Naturally, selecting the “best” moving company was high on the list of recommendations. The company said it received the information about my friend’s move from a government registry that, in that country, makes such information available to the public. What I liked about this email was not only did it come in a meaningful context (the right message sent to the right person at the right time) but it also offered realistic and useful advice most people would value.

Let’s be honest. We’re all sick and tired of spam. Spam is destroying the consumer’s attention span. As consumers, we do love personal, relevant attention. The best way to achieve this for your clients is to offer something free of charge, something relevant to their situation and customized to meet their needs. This might cost extra to produce; it might require you to do a bit more research; it will mean you have to prepare emails with extra care. In the end, I reckon this approach is the only way to build brands: to be relevant and to understand your customers’ needs.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

And this brings me to the point. I’m a big believer in the fact that the ultimate brand is like a real person. Needless to say no brand hardly reaches a stage where people perceive it as being a real person, but the fact is, that the more human components we associate a brand with, typically the stronger the brand is.

The times where I’ve been most amazed about a brand have often been where it did something human. Where the service was extraordinarily good – and had a “real” human touch. The cases where the emails I received as a reply on my question sent either in anger or just in curiosity – reflected that a real person, of real human blood – actually were answering my email. But not only that – that the writing – reflected that this person had the authority to be a true individual, either in the tone-of-voice, the writing style…you name it. You see as customers we expect a brand to deliver on expectations. It’s a minimum standard to expect a brand to answer back, often within 24 hours. But if the reply is everything but standard, if it had that special “glimpse in the eye” it added extra brand equity to my brand – perhaps making it my favorite brand.

But making this possible requires a human behavior.

And a human behavior is often reflected by mistakes. I don’t need to tell you that neither you nor I are perfect. We do make mistakes – well I guess its mantra that we do this now and then, but it also creates our personality. Brands should do the same. No – don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about messing up your account status, filling your emails and letters with spelling errors – but talking about making a brands behavior real. You see – a too perfect behavior creates a distance, as we know no one is perfect. When I look at these huge banks on the main street, dressed in steel and glass, with a huge corporate logo and people dressed in corporate black – it makes me feel like nothing. Corporations don’t need to go along that path; in fact I sometimes believe this is more a reflection of insecurity in senior management, creating these self-promoting statues – than actually a desire to create a stronger customer relationship.

And all this brings me back to Martha and her perfect image. Imagine Martha one day had pulled out her pudding from the oven and it collapsed. Imagine that the paintings she was framing were not hanging perfect above the sofa or imagine that she one day said she had a terrible hangover because she had a birthday party yesterday. That would have created empathy with her and her brand arming her for … well the day when a real mistake happened.

Remember one thing – the more perfect image we want to project our image towards the world – the more perfect the world expects us to be, however this is not necessarily to our benefit. So before you go ahead designing your website, your TV programs or commercials, your store decoration or whatever is generating traffic and revenue – think about the level of perfectionism you want to reflect – perhaps ‘being perfect” is not as perfect as we all think it is.