Publicity by Pranking Victoria's Secret

While reflecting on how a colleague is trying to "Cross the Chasm" with his startup, I naturally reflected on basic marketing principles for customer development, such as reputation building, free PR, and testimonials. There are other principles, but I'll focus on those few since they came to mind when the topic of my undergraduate school's small size yet excellent academic reputation came up as a comparison.. And that's when I thought of Victoria's Secret.

My undergraduate education was earned at Harvey Mudd College (HMC), a small engineering focused school in southern California. It has consistently ranked in the top 3 for top engineering schools and for a brief time was ranked as the top undergraduate institution by US News and World Reports. Sure, we had more PhDs per capita than CalTech at the time, but for every one person who knew that, ten would ask "Harry Mudd - that guy from Star Trek?" Before geek was cool, and before there was a "Big Bang Theory" on TV, it was difficult to get recognition for my small, young, but rigorous school.

I and my classmates continue to fight that uphill battle, silently rejoicing when Harvey Mudd is acknowledged for any reason. Sure, we've had math champions, CS champions, famous faculty, and even the school President is on the board of Microsoft. The problem is that only a few "in the know" would assign weight to those facts, despite my personal bias that HMC President Maria Klawe is a recognized leader and lends additional credibility to the school. No, it would take a hilarious prank on Victoria's Secret to make me really happy.

In one act (many small ones, really), students from the school banded together to dominate a contest to win Victoria's Secret lingerie. The prank leveraged student technical know-how to beat voting protection systems to not only make it seem like Harvey Mudd had over 1 million students and alumni, it also spelled out school phrases, and catapulted other Claremont colleges into the top rankings. The prank on Victoria's Secret was covered in news sources all around the web, and an article in Yahoo voices can still be seen here.

Now back to my original comment about reputation building, free PR, and testimonials - this small, but meaningful prank demonstrated a few key points that could help attract new students and make alumni proud:

• Reputation building: The student body self organized to pull off a technical feat. You can bet the school is both technically skilled and has a tight community.
• Free PR: HMC did not have to spend a dime to advertise that the students were skilled technically or that there's a creative, if not "puckish", personality of pranks at the school.
• Testimonials: Tthis prank was acknowledged by many online sources and shared via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and became virtual lore at the alumni meetings that followed. This also led to follow up discussions where fellow alumni suddenly started talking about the pranks they did or others did while at school. 

In short, sometimes communication and reputation can be assisted by events, people, and tools that tell a story about a school or product that has merit, but can be amplified by leveraging the goodwill of another brand. It helped Harvey Mudd, and it may help others looking for increased visibility.

The Truth Behind Food Styling Can be Viral

Since when does a video exposing the marketing tweaks to a product  go viral and reach over 5 million views? The McDonald's Canada video on "food styling" just did. You'll find the video on the top video viral chart there.

I try to look at business videos applying 3 main filters to understand it's influence and potential for spread:

• Is it relate-able or use an archetype?
• It it relevant/timely
• Is it memorable

Is it relate-able?

There's a resounding "YES" here. Nearly everyone I've known has asked the question answered by this video. Who hasn't wondered why fast food has never looked as good in person as it does in the photos - would be a better question. The premise is good and it draws people in.

Is it relevant? 

I'd say yes, but not in the usual way. Normally, when something is relevant, it is connected with your current needs or interests. In this case, there are few people who are particularly interested in this question. The real relevancy is two fold: 1) universally relate-able topic, and 2) market concern over "pink slime" and fast foods.

Suffice it to say that a universally relate-able topic always has some relevance, but add that to the recent concerns over "pink slime", and people are more interested in what goes on or in their fast food. I'll admit that I wondered if there was any real-world air brushing or special chemicals applied to the burger, and that kept me watching.

Is it memorable?

If one of life's mysteries was answered for you, would you remember? Of course. The revelation in the video, of course, isn't so appealing, but having worked in the film industry and marketing, I came in with some expectation of staging. Sure, I've staged products, I've staged homes for sale, and even created special demos that avoided known bugs. In this case McD's gave us the tour of how it takes hours of prep, staging, and even some photoshop to make the burgers look as good as they do in the photos. 

This video hits all the key points for me, and it's no wonder that the video went viral.

C.E.O. Pay Is Rising in Effort to Spite the 99%

I was sent a article from the NY Times about how CEO pay is skyrocketing in spite of efforts of the "occupy" movement to raise awareness of the disparity between CEO pay and rank and file workers. This article made me wonder "How often do CEOs jump ship for larger pay?"

Shouldn't CEO's get paid every cent they're worth? That's a vague statement, as a quote from the article stuck out from front line workers "Why should I kill myself to get a 2 percent raise if the C.E.O. is going to get a 20 percent raise?"

The main justification for the huge pay increases is that it keeps CEOs in place and prevents them from jumping ship. This may be true in some cases, but shouldn't there be a published study about the topic before corporate boards make wild assertions that glorify huge packages for CEOs and imply a level of worthlessness to the average worker? 

A study of this topic should answer a few questions:
1) How often do CEOs jump ship for larger pay?
2) How successful are the companies who land CEOs who repeated jump for higher pay?
3) When CEOs jump ship for higher pay, does the industry matter or do they jump anywhere to make more money
4) Do CEOs jump to go to a better company or a chance to make more money?
5) What is value creation equation when setting pay for CEOs? 
6) When is it financially prudent to let a CEO jump since the pay required no longer makes sense?

My guess is that there will never be such a study, as there is no accountability for the people setting the pay package. When there's a bad hire, it's easy to say "we didn't pay enough for the right talent" than to answer some harder questions.

That said, a brief thought experiment is in order.  What if CEO pay was capped at $5M or even $1M/year plus unlimited discretionary options for long term restricted stock? You could have the potential for unlimited pay, but remove the incentive for jumping ship. Would you still see CEOs jumping around? Would you see longer tenures when the shorter term incentives are reduced?