Pink Air

Soft reset

A useful but clunky way to define planning is "interestingness management". Interest and time are related in many ways, some fairly linear (boredom) and others less so (nostalgia). Keeping a brand interesting means steering its storyline through time. And sometimes an interesting, emotionally satisfying plot twist requires a change in character. The trick is to make changes that enrich the brand, that are developmental rather than just different.

By going backwards to the beginning, Casino Royale brings the 007 brand forward in this way. The most interesting Bond film in maybe forever, it dispenses with the cloying, happy-go-lucky playboy of the past 30 years in favor of the "ironical, brutal and cold" character that Fleming originally conceived. But the real interest-generating aspect of the movie is not just the novelty of a new Bond, but the revelation of an earlier, unfamiliar Bond who makes emotionally satisfying sense of the flip, emotionally vacant character we've grown (over-) accustomed to.

After watching "Bond 21", I'm pretty sure that when Bond 22 comes out in two years, I'll pay the $32 for a ticket. I'll forgive it its predictable annoyances (egregious Sony product placement, the odd Bruckheimian fireball). I'll think about how it enriches or enfeebles the franchise and try to convince you that it's interesting in either case. All of which adds up to a fairly comprehensive description of the behavior a strong brand is supposed to generate.

Disinterestingness

We have seven family mottoes at our house, most of which are variations on the idea that things are often not what you expect. Number five, for example:

Everybody is deep. But some people are deep and straight while others are deep and crooked.

Everyone has depths, parts of themselves that are hidden, maybe even to themselves, but sometimes the depths are relatively predictable: Most extroverts have a shadow introvert side. Most  neat freaks nurture a remote field of disorder somewhere. That's deep and straight.

Deep and crooked is no more deep, but is less predictable, more puzzling and therefore more immediately interesting: what does this have to do with that? How do an interest in medieval cookery, a four-year stint in semi-pro hockey and a paralyzing fear of mannequins combine to make a person?  Our desire to form stable, integrated pictures of people (including ourselves) and things (including brands) is a powerful motivation and provides the fuel for interestingness. Which means that a certain amount of apparent chaos, of disintegration, is necessary for something to be interesting.

So I enjoyed responding to Kevin's tag request for "five things that no one knows about you". It makes me more interesting to myself.

1. I'm terrified in the presence of things that are very big and very old. I thought I was going to black out at the temples in Prambanan. My sister has the same fear which she discovered in Greece. Could something that specific be genetic?

2. A number of unlikely songs make me weepy, including Life On Mars, I Dream Of Wires and Once In A Lifetime.

3. I've been interested in the Black Death since I was eleven.

4. I used to be a nanny.

5. I have a friend (well, more friend of friend) who's a zombie.

I ❤ Fry's (even if it doesn't ❤ me)

If ever a business reflected its customer culture, it's Fry's Electronics. From the idiosyncratic product selection (I just need to grab a gigabit adapter card and some Cat 5, a thousand melon-flavored jawbreakers, a foot massager and some anime porn.) to the single-thread multiprocessor checkout system designed to avoid the techie bête noire of inefficient cashier allocation, Fry's is The Store That Geeks Built.

Sure, they've got the ambiance of a warehouse. And when they do attempt interior design, it's more or less what you would expect from techies: flying saucers and giant mutant ants. And sure, they're kind of confusing and uninviting (If you people would just RTFM you wouldn't need any handholding.) But the fact is that the people who take characteristically sedulous and well-documented offense at the sometimes high-handed service simply don't recognize their own culture when it's reflected back to them. (Replace "customer" with "user", Mister IT Guy, then ask yourself whether he's always right.)

Which is what makes Fry's interesting. It's a store that serves and reflects the geek lifestyle rather than a "lifestyle" store designed to flatter customers with an aspirational and false image of themselves.