Are consumer brands dead? Of course not!

On February 25, 2018 at her Speechwriter-Ghostwriter blog Jane Genova pontificated about Consumer brands – end of that era (beginning in 1930s at P&G). She began by quoting from a 2017 book by Scott Galloway 2017 that had claimed:

“Google signaled the end of the brand era as consumers, armed with search, no longer need to defer to the brand…”

But 12 days earlier she had posted about Doritos and Cheetos that Orange is new cool at PepsiCo. Quarterly sales from their snack business let them top Wall Street forecasts even though sugary drinks had declined. Those brands clearly were alive and well. And in 2016 there was a book by Mark Schatzker titled The Dorito Effect: the surprising new truth about food and flavor.

On February 27, 2018 Jane had blogged about Alexa et al. – voice tech eliminating traditional brands, consumer choice. She again referred to Scott Galloway who said when he needed to buy AAA batteries the Alexa app for an Amazon Echo just referred him to the AmazonBasics brand. 

But that reminded me about how I last bought batteries a month ago. The 9V alkaline backup battery in one of the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors had begun warning me at 2:00 AM by repeating the annoying voice message phrase “low battery”. That kept me from nodding off. I got a ladder from the garage and replaced it. But I knew that batteries in all the other detectors also would need replacement very soon, and I didn’t have enough on hand to do them all. So later that morning I went to a nearby shopping center with a Lowes and a Walmart and bought a package of four Rayovac ones (the cheapest national brand).

Would I ever buy batteries from Amazon? Probably not. I don’t even have an Amazon Echo. On December 10, 2017 I blogged about Use the right tools (visual aids) to give a great speech. In that post I described how I usually carry around a pocket-sized Nikon Coolpix L110 camera which uses 4 AA batteries. I keep a spare set in the console of my car. Every year or two I stop at Costco for a giant package of 48 Kirkland AA batteries.

I still consistently buy one ancient P&G brand – Ivory soap. When I run low, on my next grocery shopping trip to Winco, I grab another pack of three bars to use in the shower.      

       

Boring subject, or just a boring speaker?

Five years ago Patricia Fripp said that: “There is no such thing as a boring subject, only a boring speaker.”

Two decades ago I stumbled over a wonderful series of columns in Lubrication Engineering magazine. They had the curious title of Love Letters to the Lubrication Engineers, and were written by Dr. Shirley E. Schwartz.

Shirley worked as a chemist at GM research and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000. She has a knack for simply and clearly explaining her subject: how the oil behaves in the engine of your car. Her January 1999 column on The Calibrated Eyeball begins with:

“The connoisseur swirls the small glass containing a dark fluid. He looks for body, flow, any unevenness in the fluid. He waves his hand over the glass and takes a whiff. Fine wine? No. Engine oil.”

Many of her columns can be read on the web. Her June 1998 column is I am an engine’s camshaft. The November 1999 column is I am your engine’s oil defoamer. Her September 2001 column about No time to think, describes where to finally find a quiet place at work to plan a presentation.

My all-time favorite is her October 1996 column, The Sludge Queen Says. As The Sludge Queen she is the Dear Abby of dirty engine oil. She hilariously replies to three letters signed Old-time driver (who never ever opened the hood to put in any oil), Forget-me not (who forgot to change the oil, and let it turn to tar), and Perplexed (who noticed that in winter the oil on his dipstick looked just like a vanilla malt). This column does not seem to be posted on the open web, although you can find it on a magazine database at an engineering library. There also is a book with a collection of the columns.

Why is your audience nodding off?

Any speaker would prefer his audience to be alertly nodding rather than nodding off (and snoring like hibernating bears).

I recently found an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that discussed the Incidence of and Risk Factors for Nodding Off at Scientific Sessions. It identified the following ten risk factors in a table, (and reported their odds ratios in decreasing order of significance as follows):

1) Monotonous tone (6.8)
2) Tweed jacket (2.1)
3) Losing place in lecture (2.0)
4) Poor slides (1.8)
5) Failure to speak into microphone (1.7)
6) After mealtime (1.7)
7) Dim lighting (1.6)
8) Warm room temperature (1.4)
9) Early morning (1.3)
10) Comfortable seating (1.0)

Monotonous tone topped the list for obvious reasons. However, I would not have expected that tweed jackets would be second.

They also provided a curiously detailed figure illustrating how the number of nodding off events per lecture varied with the length of the lecture. When you look carefully at the figure, you can see that it represents the head of a sleeping audience member in silhouette:











The tabulated risk factors should be taken with a very large grain of salt, since the article just is a rare example of scientific humor about presentations.

Yesterday on his Overnight Sensation blog James Feudo discussed Three Painless Ways to Avoid the Boring Talk.