The United States Postal Service lost $8 billion last year and warns that it will be insolvent in just a couple of years.  I guess “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” assumes there will always be enough money to pay our postal carriers. Though the Post Office has no official motto, the preceding statement had become the marching orders and battle cry since at least 1912 when it was inscribed on the James A. Farley Post office in New York City. Though true to a point, the Post Office has and continues to fail to live up to the sprit of that statement.

First off, I do not think that the Post Office has done a poor job in delivering the mail. I simply do not use the Postal Service. I have no need. Bills get paid online and letters that I once wrote are now sent electronically complete with movies, pictures, and sounds. We at Stealing Share use the Postal Service to send out new business information from time to time, but I never think of using the Postal Service to send packages. Although it does send packages, it is not in my considered set.

And this is what leads me to the USPS confusing what it does with what it sells.

Going back to the unofficial motto, there is one segment of it that must be noticed: “…completion of their appointed rounds.” It does not say, “completion of their appointed door to door mail route.” It says “appointed rounds.” As a branding company, this is exactly the kind of single-minded proposition we work to get clients to adopt. It is focused and easy to understand.

More importantly, it gives the brand the ability to grow as it is purposive instead of prossesive. Taken as a whole, the statement says, ‘Nothing will stop our people from delivering your message, no matter what kind of message it is.”

For the history of the Post Office, this simply means “We’ll get you the mail.”

The simple truth is that the Post Office has confused delivering the mail with what it really sells – getting customers what they need no matter what. It is only now that it understands the mistake and I fear it may be too late. It is a common fallacy for business to be so literal about what it thinks it is selling that it misses the opportunities right under its nose. While there is merit in saying focused on what you do, tunnel vision can be the death knell of a business and, unfortunately, the USPS is now coming to that reality.

In a spirit of full disclosure, I want to preface this opinion by stating that I am a non-smoker and lost my Mother years ago to lung cancer.

Most of the recent turmoil over the package warning labels on cigarette packaging has died down — and has certainly dropped off of the first page of the news. All of the controversy and media sound bites really got me to thinking… what is all the fuss about?

Let’s take a journey down memory lane for just a bit, because most of the controversy over the graphic warning labels is coming from the tobacco industry itself. I think I understand their perspective. Oh, not the protestations about regulating commercial packaging or first amendment rights. I’m not a lawyer and profess to have no expertise in the law. What I am is a brand strategist and I think what the tobacco companies are doing is BRILLIANT. From my perspective, it is a perfect example of slight of hand.

The tobacco companies are pretending to be furious over the packaging warnings. They want us to believe that these graphic images will hurt their business. That way we will not spend any resources on actually developing a campaign to stop the adoption of tobacco among the young. We believe their protestations. To paraphrase Shakespeare “The tobacco lawyers doth protest too much, methinks.”

Stealing Share is expert at changing behavior. That also means we have deep understanding of what will not change behavior. When I look at the proposed imaging, I am looking at the later not the former. If I were a tobacco industry exec, I would love all of this diversion. As a matter of fact, I believe it might just encourage trial, usage and subsequent addiction. Why? Glad you asked.

Kids start smoking to impress their peers with their own desire to look grown up and flirt with the forbidden. In other words, they like to think they look grown up by taking chances, by living dangerously. Shoot, it would not surprise me if these images became trading cards amongst the most impressionable.

If you want to discourage tobacco use, go right to the source. Attack the very belief that early tobacco use signifies — being grown up, mature and rebellious. Instead of showing the long-term effects of tobacco use, just tell the young smoker the truth — that they simply look insecure and immature when they light up a cigarette. That everyone knows they are just an insecure baby. It is the highest emotional intensity for the age group. Take away the payoff (look how grown up I am) and isolate the habit as an example of insecurity. Watch how fast the trial drops off. We don’t need labels for that. We just need to be smarter then the tobacco lobby believes we are.

This week saw a swift drop in the stock market as Standard & Poor’s threatened to cut the U.S. credit rating amid talks that the debt ceiling will not be increased possibly resulting in the U.S. defaulting on their loans.

It was the effect that this statement had on the stock market that hammered home the concept that when it comes too the permissions of a brand, the job of maintaining those permissions is much easier when a large amount of trust is unquestioningly granted by the customer.

With regards to Standard & Poor’s, it was not that long ago that they told investors that mortgage backed securities were an AAA investment.  This has since proved to be quite  the contrary.  At the end of the day, no one has a crystal ball and much like a weatherman who tells you it will be sunny and it rains or there will flurries and it blizzards, S&P’s rating system is only their opinion based on a variety of factors they have deemed to be important. And like with the weatherman, we continue to tune in, to listen and to dress accordingly.

In most instances once a brand wrongs its target audience, maintaining and recovering the permission that the brand once possessed becomes a difficult, sometimes impossible, task.

There is a team trust exercise in which a person falls back into the arms of their teammates. It is an exercise in which you only need to be dropped once to lose trust forever. In the case of Standard & Poor’s, their consumer’s have granted them what appears to be more permission leeway than is granted to the average brand.  They need to acknowledge this granted tolerance and remember that while they have permission now, the village eventually did let the wolf get the boy who repeatedly made a fool of them.

The ability to influence behavior is directly related to the degree in which belief systems are understood. The decisions that we make are a complex web of precepts, or internal belief systems, that we have about ourselves.  These precepts are generated emotionally and then reinforced by rational reasons we always seem to make work. If the objective is to affect change and generate a desired outcome, the outcome of that endeavor is one that will be directly dictated by the degree to which these emotional triggers are discovered.

Precepts are something that are often overlooked in messaging today and, in listening to the news this week, I was reminded of how this is exemplified in the ongoing turmoil in Libya and the desire for Muammar el-Qaddafi to secede power.

What sparked this connection was news that Qaddafi’s accounts were being frozen. I can understand the reasoning behind the overall idea (let’s not support Qaddafi), but it’s not in line with the precepts that someone like Qaddafi would identify with to promote such an outcome.

For Qaddafi, if the tangible security of money is non-existent, the only semblance of power that remains is to fight to the end. In many cases, the best result is simply the lesser of two evils and this instance is no exception.

Those with the power to influence the situation must ask themselves what the desired objective is. The concept of leaving Qaddafi powerless and penniless, which is what he would become, seems too drastic to promote action. He seeks power and money and, without power, all that’s left is money. A proposition that includes no room for the desired outcome to take place is a proposition that is a purely anecdotal existence. If Qaddafi does not perceive the terms of his departure as aligned with his belief system, then the process could become a very lengthy one.

And I’d rather see him outta there.

The news is awash with stories about the dwindling funds for higher education.  As a matter of fact, there is a battle raging for all public funding in just about every sector you an imagine. So, it is not surprising that colleges and universities, especially public institutions, are engaged in plans to help the institution garner a greater share of available funds.

This morning, NPR had an interesting story about just this subject. The summary of the article from the NPR website follows: ”More and more states are looking to link college budgets to schools’ performance — such as number of degrees produced and the ability to graduate challenging students. The idea has been tried before, but now many states say tough finances make it more important than ever to get something for their investment.”

Now, universities and colleges have a serious brand problem and I worry that this new move will just make matters worse.

Most everyone in business today recognizes that the students that knock on their doors seeking a job are completely unprepared to do almost anything. They lack the ability to communicate clearly, they have supped on pop culture and are not well read, they write poorly, can’t seem to problem solve, believe they can multi-task and, on top of it all, are convinced of their own self-importance and worth.

For those of us who hire, the brand of colleges and universities means very little. A degree in just about anything simply means the applicant has great debt and few skills. They have been coddled and spoon-fed by educators and intellectuals that have as much experience and understanding as…well, those of you who recognize this scenario know exactly what I mean.

My dad used to say that a college degree today was the equivalent to a high school degree in his day. I think he was correct. College was not for everyone and those lucky enough to attend had to work their butts off.

Today, it seems everyone goes to college (even if they don’t graduate). Rather than a university representing a major step along the intellectual search, it has become a four (or five, in many cases) years of respite from responsibility, punctuated by binge drinking, non-stop partying, and video games. (My apologies to those to of which this does not apply, but this just proves the power of a brand and how all brands are judged by its common denominator.)

Many believe this erosion of the brand of higher education has been due to more open enrollment, remedial class work and a hunger by the university and college administration for bigger enrollment and a larger student body (and I’m not talking about the Freshman 15). They may be right. College as not meant for everyone, but it has become just that.

So does a focus on rewarding colleges for a higher graduation rate promise to fix the problem? Considering “no child left behind” and the propensity of education to make everything a process, I doubt it.

So tell me, if a college or university stands to lose funding if a student fails out of that university, what do you think the chances are of that university actually flunking that student? If we have learned anything in our lives it is that you cannot legislate hard work and achievement. You can’t incentivize it either from external sources. You either have the drive or you don’t. If you don’t, then maybe college isn’t for you.

If the higher education community cares at all about its brands, those responsible should remember that the basis of all value is scarcity. The more common anything is the less it is desired, rewarded and valued.

Brand is all about self-identification. The more we personally identify with the values a brand represents, the more we associate with it and provide an important place in our lives for it.

Today, I want to step back a moment and talk about my admiration and place of personal importance for a person, not a brand. Sure, we all have brands, but this is more personal and yet comes to my mind as a powerful brand and one that felt impeccably maintained by a foundation of truth.

So, I say farewell to Elizabeth Edwards today. No, I never met her and yet I hold a special place for her and, yes, her brand. Elizabeth represents all the best things that I could ever hope for myself or those that matter to me. She was a symbol of dignity in a world of indignities. She was a vision of strength and purpose in a world ravaged by uncertainty. Elizabeth Edwards was a winner, not a victim. We all are better off for having had her in the world. We are all a little less for having lost her.

The question I ask is not, “Is Microsoft too late in the smartphone market?” That is what all the technology pundits and Wall Street analysts are asking. Instead,  I ask a more fundamental question, the answer to which will determine Microsoft’s success or failure in this endeavor.

Does the Microsoft brand have brand permission to even have a smartphone?

Let’s think for just a moment about the three leading brands of smartphones currently. The Blackberry, iPhone and the Droid. What do the two fastest growing brands have in common (Droid and iPhone)? Worldclass industrial design, elegance, simplicity, intuitiveness, and something harder to pinpoint — Elan.

The Blackberry has some of those attributes and an entrenched enterprise userbase. On a recent flight, the fellow sitting next to me was speaking on his iPhone4 with a Blackberry in his lap. When he finished his conversation, I asked him why he had both?  He said he was a Federal Government employee and the Government did not yet support the iPhone and he had to use the Blackberry for the enterprise server. He added that soon the US Government would support Apple devices and the only folks who were against it were the government IT guys, whom he added would be out of a job if it happened.

So, as a brand, which one of these attributes do you think Microsoft owns and has permission to leverage?

1. Worldclass industrial design
2. Elegance
3. Simplicity
4. Intuitiveness
5. Elan

The answer, of course, is none. What about innovation? I think Microsoft reminds me a lot of Kodak, a great and powerful relic of the past that will be attempting a rebrand of sorts in the coming weeks. Rebranding is a difficult challenge, much harder than a brand launch. It can be done because change can be your brand’s best friend.

You might find this little movie entertaining. But it is very much on point. It is a funny look at what would have happened if Microsoft had created the iPod packaging

Microsoft iPod

Brands have the greatest impact when they touch an emotional nerve. When the brand message reverberates on that emotional nerve, three very interesting and important phenomena takes place.

1) The brand is remembered and noticed. When an emotion is struck, it is felt, by definition, and is virtually impossible to ignore

2) The brand is placed. By this I mean it is provided with an emotional context that allows us to understand where the brand belongs in the flood of ideas and messages that come our way every day. Being able to “place” a brand message is the first step in understanding the brand’s meaning. It is the route every brand must take if it is striving for acceptance and new customers.

3) The motivational ideas transform themselves into equity markers. This is an important transformation because equity markers are the “things” we witness (see, here, taste, and feel) that seem to belong to that brand. When we experience these markers, we are instantly reminded of that brand and because the brand has been placed, we are able to file all of this information and feeling into the cubby hole that our brains now reserve for that brand

If you think this is just the ramblings of a brand theorist, I want to share with you exactly what brought these ideas to mind this morning, and why it matters to all of us.

I was driving to the office this morning and I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition. In the course of 10 minutes, I heard three equity markers mentioned and expounded on, and all three of them belong to the Republican Party. They spoke of Grizzly Moms, Obamacare, and the Tea Party.

This is not a dissertation on ideology. (You would be hard pressed to guess my political bent.) It is simply a brand guy seeing a political party that uses its brand capital well.

The Republicans have not only defined the political agenda in the US, they have defined the language in which the debate is framed. Brand genius? Might well be.

I have to think hard to find a political equity that the Democratic Party has defined and used. I’m not talking about slogans like “Yes We Can.” Slogans have short lifetimes and feel “authored.” Equity markers are carefully designed ideas that resonate and become part of the vernacular.

If brand is any indicator, the Democrats have a tough road ahead of then in November. That is, unless they can revive New Deal or Great Society.

Politics in America is in a quagmire. No matter which side of the aisle you sit on personally, we all agree with Will Rogers when he was asked many years ago what he thought about FDR if he got elected during his first run at the Presidency. “Well,” Will said, “if he gets elected and the White House catches fire and burns to the ground we will say at least he got something started.”

The reason nothing ever gets accomplished in the partisan politics of today has everything to do with the process (i.e., focus groups) by which the political parties ridiculously believe they understand the needs and wants of the populace.

Napoleon, who no one can doubt exemplified the ability to lead, once said, “Without doubt the first duty of a ruler is to do what the people want. But what the people want is almost never the same as what the people say. Its will and needs ought to be found not so much in the people’s mouth as in the ruler’s heart.”

Well said.

For-profit companies come to us to uncover what the people want. It is Stealing Share’s charter to uncover that knowledge and to identify the barriers to acceptance. We never conduct focus groups. We conduct meaningful research that is designed to uncover truths, beliefs, needs and wants. We then test these findings to make sure they are persuasive and move the brand into a position of power so it changes the market space and redefines the selling argument.

Maybe politics has not learned this lesson because the players are trading in votes and power and not real money (well not their money anyway). Companies that need to win and can’t afford waste or the wastefulness of a single move know better than to ask us to conduct focus groups.

Just this morning, NPR reported on President Obama as he sets off on a four-state, three-day political tour. According to NPR, the trip includes a big rally in Madison, Wis., aimed at mobilizing younger voters.

I have no idea where the insight into influencing the behavior of these “younger voters” came from, but the same report went on to quote Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. He said the insight has “the wrong answer.” According to NPR, Greenberg has been conducting focus groups for congressional candidates across the country. “He says the argument that things are slowly getting better might wash with professional economists, but it doesn’t fly with many voters.”

If Mr. Greenberg and the Democratic Party are basing their strategy on focus groups, I am stating with absolute certainty that he is wrong. Focus groups are never revealing and they are never projectable research. They are just a wasteful example of being process driven. That is, being satisfied by doing something even if what you do has little bearing on the job at hand. Will Rogers would applaud this sort of activity — even if all they get is the “White House catches fire and burns to the ground.”

The problem with focus groups is the idea of the “group.” People act and speak differently in a group then they do in the privacy of their own world. No doubt everyone but the Republicans, Democrats and Tea Party has heard of the group mentality.

Focus groups are led by leaders, including both the facilitator and the extremes of the participants. As a result, they reflect that leadership and not the individuals in it. Within that crucible, all sorts of ideas are possible and most of them are dead wrong. At their best, focus groups deliver ideas that are so vanilla that no one objects or, so extreme, that everyone gets more polarized.

Wait a moment. Sounds a lot like the rhetoric and strategy of all the political parties, does it not?

Leadership has a prerequisite — the willingness to lead. Real research, the kind we do here at Stealing Share and Resultant Research, is designed to sell products and ideas to those that currently have an affinity to a competitor’s idea or product. Maybe our “leaders” should get with the program and tell the focus group pollsters to try to peddle their wares to the competition?

I often state rather emphatically that purchase decisions are emotional choices and that brands need to tap into the highest emotional intensity if they hope to thrive, grow and steal market share.

The stock market is a perfect example of a brand whose growth and contraction is completely emotional. In the last couple of days, the market has grown (stealing market share from other methods of investment) and those purchase decisions were 100% emotional. The drivers were not rational in any way.

There are those that pretend to invest as a result of rational matrices and, yet, the value of their investment is completely dependent on the emotional and irrational swings of the rest of us.

Savvy investors always scorn the idea of “market timing.” They recognize that figuring out the correct moment to buy and sell is a mirage. Successful investors dollar cost average and buy at regular intervals so that their risk and success is not dependent on the irrational swings of a highly emotionally volatile marketplace.

So, the market is up because a few economists pronounced the great recession as having ended in June. While very little has changed in the economy, investors “feel better” and the emotional trigger causes the market to rise as more dollars compete for fewer equities.

The philosopher Alan Watts once wrote about the great depression and said, paraphrasing, that one day construction workers reported to a building site and the foreman told them to go home, that their labor was no longer needed because the economy had collapsed. The laborers asked what had changed? We have lumber, we have tools, we have nails and we have hours. To which the foreman responded, “Yes but we just ran out of inches.”

So, look no further than to the stock market to see examples of the emotional preferences of brands. Then remember that important lesson as you prepare to grow your own market share. Don’t stress the rational reasons. Stress the emotional reasons why customers should choose you.