Time for a haircut?

A little while ago, I wrote here in statistical terms about a trip to my local supermarket.

1 item every 60 seconds. $5 every minute.

And even a brief browse through Freakonomics or their blog will quickly reveal just how much statistics relate to our everyday lives.

All of which brings me to the fact that I got my hair cut the other day. Not a particularly glamorous or extravagant event, as evidenced by the fact that it was a mere snip at $13.

I entered the barbershop at 8.03am.

I was seated by 8.04am.

And I was on my merry way by 8.17am.

$1 a minute.

Not so long ago, I used to get my hair cut at a salon. And, it used to cost me $47 and take about 45 minutes.

Also, $1 a minute.

And when I think about how long my beautiful wife will tend to spend at the salon when she has her hair done, it's generally a 3-hour exercise at a rough cost of $200.

Close enough to $1 a minute.

I'm sure by now you get my point, or at least my hypothesis. That there is no such thing as a cheap or an expensive haircut, only a long or a short one (at an approximate cost of $1 a minute).

My Sunday shop, statistically speaking

Last Sunday, I became the Main Grocery Buyer in our family for a day.

It's true that I spend a fair amount of my week with my head in the world of retail, but I have to admit that I rarely ever get the chance to experience a store as a happy-go-lucky, Sunday shopper.

Thinking about doing something is never quite the same as actually doing it, a point well-proven recently by a good friend who used his blog, Brand Habits, to dabble in the world of crowdsourcing with $150 of his own money – you can read about the highs and lows of that experience here.

And so it was that the whole experience was a real eye opener for me.

Quite literally, seeing as I spent most of the shopping trip feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that was being pumped to my brain by my eyes. So much so that my brain is still compulsively processing much of the data, and every so often I feel my hand reach out in front of me to grab what it thinks is a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese or some other sundry item from a shelf in my mind's eye.

But as much as I was pretty overwhelmed, I was equally amazed by the fact that I didn't return home with a single incorrect item (although I did forget a few things and/or ran out of time as my 18-month old son ran out of patience). However, as I scoured the shelves for what looked like stuff that usually turns up in our fridge and freezer, cupboards and drawers – without a shopping list, I should add – shapes and colours were the things that invariably guided me to the right item.

In fact, those semiotic design cues are the only reason that a shopper can make it through a supermarket in anything like a reasonable amount of time – and I give my full sympathy to any label readers out there for the amount of time it must take them.

As for my trip, I was in the store for 90 minutes.

In which time, I bought 98 items.

Which means, on average, I was putting into my trolley 1 item every 60 seconds.

No wonder I was feeling overwhelmed, that's quite a workout – mentally and physically – but one that would be impossible if it weren't for the role of design.

But that's not all.

In total, my shopping came to a total of $464.96.

That's over $5 for each and every minute I spent there.

Which strikes me quite a high amount for something that is meant to be built around a low service, value model. Imagine spending $5 a minute at a cinema or restaurant, experiences where service comes at a premium. (As an aside, feel free to check out this post I wrote about Paul McCrudden and his 6 Weeks project to read an interesting take on the value of the time you spend with brands.)

For me, those two statistics say it all.

On the one hand, the supermarket shopping experience is fast and furious, a flurry of split-second decisions as you charge up and down one towering aisle after another.

On the other, it's hardly a cheap way to spend your time with a brand that typically provides barely more than a large warehouse full of commodity-priced produce – I admit that is something of an over-simplification, but you get my drift.

As I write this, both Coles and Woolworths are locked in what looks like shaping up into a mammoth battle for our time and money after years of dominance by Woolworths. What's more, the launch of Thomas Dux by Woolworths and the store renewal program at Coles are both strong signals of what's to come.

After years of stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap, they are now becoming far more interested in how we spend our time, not just our money.

Nature or nurture? (*conditions apply)

One of the eternal struggles in our society is the tug of war between nature and nurture. It's the fundamental question of human behaviour, and the extent to which we are the product of our innate qualities from birth or our personal experiences as we develop.

It's a hotly debated topic – and one that is yet to be conclusively argued one way or the other – but there can be no doubt that our behaviour is shaped over time by the world around us.

You only need to take a quick flick through Jane Fulton Suri's book Thoughtless Acts to see all those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking – the result of her work as a partner at groundbreaking design and innovation firm, IDEO.

And so it is that we act instinctively (nature) or we are conditioned over time (nurture) to respond to our environment in intuitive ways.

One of the ways in which we have been more aggressively conditioned is the concept of fine print, a perennial bane of the modern world that allows businesses to make grand offers in ways that attract you, while at the same time limiting these offers in ways that suit them. We're used to having to read the fine print wherever we see the ubiquitous *conditions apply, and to ignore them is often perilous to say the least.

But last week, the tables were turned when Grill'd, the burger chain, seemingly forgot to include the fine print on this ad promoting 2-for-1 burgers for university students.

As it turns out, what they had intended to include was a disclaimer that limited the offer to the readership of the Uni Times publication in which it appeared. However, it wasn't long before consumers took advantage of the great deal on offer and starting making their way to their local Grill'd.

And that's when the real problems started.

Grill'd realised their error and naively tried to pass it off as a simple oversight. They wrote on their blog that they hoped all of our customers can appreciate the good faith in which the offer was released. But as you can read for yourself in the comments that follow, their customers held them fully accountable.

As it turned out, Nando's then dived in to exploit their competitor's error of judgment by offering to accept the vouchers at their own restaurants.

And only then did Grill'd apologise (finally! – with a message from the founder on their homepage), and agree to accept the 2-for-1 vouchers.

Ultimately, Grill'd failed in their bid to have customers overlook their error. Not simply because they refused to take responsibility and apologise, but more so as a result of the years of conditioning by corporations that have nurtured us to read the fine print.

*Because when any society is exposed to such a sustained effort to nurture our response in a particular way, it isn't too long before it switches from nurture to become second nature.

The worst salesman in the west (and other tales from the financial frontier)

The ANZ branch on the corner of George and King in the Sydney CBD is a grand, olde worlde affair. Cavernous ceilings, wood panels, and lots of columns. I love this type of classical architecture, even if it can be a little formal.

A couple of months ago, set against the swarming crowds just beyond the doors on George Street, it seemed I wasn't the only one taken in by my surroundings. Pretty much everyone there explored the space with a quiet chorus of eager eyes as they patiently waited their turn.

Eventually, my turn came and I made my way to the counter – feeling a little like an extra in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. (Okay, so I have a fairly wild imagination.)

I handed over my deposit, the teller followed the usual process, and he then handed me my receipt.

But, once he'd done so, events took a strange turn.

The teller took a furtive look left, then right, and then leaned carefully across the counter towards me.

I wondered what this was all about and my brain instinctively offered up the following options:

1. He was about to offer me illegal drugs.

2. He was going to ask me if I knew of any good job openings.

3. He wanted to let me know that Butch and Sundance were standing right behind me, their guns loaded.

(Yes, I know, a very wild imagination, but believe me, this is exactly how it happened from my point of view.)

As it turned out, I was wrong on all counts.

The ANZ teller leaned carefully across the counter, looked me in the eye and asked if I had considered an ANZ credit card. With 55 days interest-free. In fact, there was even a special offer that waived the joining fee. And finally, he offered a second card at no extra price.

I took the receipt for my deposit and headed straight for the huge doors and into the anonymity of the lunchtime crowds, still swarming in the midday sun.

What had been a very pleasant, swift and efficient exchange up until that point had taken what I considered to be an ugly turn. I had gone to the bank to deposit my money as quickly and simply as possible. And I had all but done that when the teller slipped into what had to be one of the clumsiest and most ill-timed attempts to cross-sell me that I have ever encountered.

In the same way that when I go to the supermarket checkout, I want to pay for my goods not buy some more, so when I go to the teller window in a bank to deposit my money, I want to reduce my debt not add to it.

And over the past few weeks since then, it's been happening more and more as banks mobilise their army of window watchers to sell anything and everything to whomever walks in the doors. What really destroys the whole experience – above and beyond the sheer nuisance value – is the fact that they don't appear to have had any training. At ANZ, the teller's demeanour was hardly that of a slick salesman, and more recently at NAB, they tried to offer me a savings account for any cash sitting in the account that offsets my mortgage, but at a lower interest rate and one that would in fact have put me in a worse financial position. And, again at NAB when I was there earlier this week, the teller skipped any sort of polite introduction and launch straight into a spontaneous list of products. Credit card? Home insurance? Car insurance? Car loan? And so on. It was as though he was trying to guess my star sign.

I know that banks have never been anyone's favourite brand. But it's not that I don't like them, I just wish they would leave me alone.

Just show me how to switch it on

In the past few months, I've been working on a few brand and product launches. From an agency angle, there's only so much you can do to influence the outcome as you tend to make recommendations more often than decisions.

Launching a brand is like giving birth. It's vital to remember that it's the start of something wonderful, not just the end of the most painful experience of your life.

But all too often when it comes to brands, people focus purely on the latter: let's just get it out there and hope everything will work out fine. Oh, and the quicker the better.

Job done.

But actually the job is not done, it has only just begun. Much like babies, brands do not function on autopilot. And it's not simply a question of switching them on.

Firstly, things change.

Constancy is a rare luxury in today's world, but too many people assume that tomorrow will be much like today. Call it myopic, call it a fear of the future, call it sheer stupidity, but change can often touch a raw nerve. "Launch a brand to last for the next 10 years" is a common cry, when what they actually mean to say is "design a logo and let's pray that nothing changes between now and the time I leave for my next job".

The reality is that change can provide overwhelming opportunities to carve out competitive advantage. Just ask any of the bank brands that have pounced on the weak and the weather-beaten to turn a bad situation into a better one. It goes without saying that the banks would have preferred constancy and that change has been forced upon them, but struggling against change is tough (if not impossible), and there is more to be gained from funneling the winds of change than trying to force them back.

Your industry will shift. Your customers will change. Your brand will mature. But will you evolve? Or will you simply stick to the brief, work to the deadline and, as soon as you have flicked the switch, put all your faith in fate and fickle fortune? I hope not.

Secondly, people have short memories.

It doesn't matter how many balloons fill the room at the launch party, pretty soon no one will remember the helium from the hot air.

Customers actually deal with change pretty well. They tend to take it all in the stride because they've seen it all before. The packaging has changed, there's a sticker screaming "new" and "improved", and all of a sudden, as a merchant, you've got a reason to score some extra shelf space in the supermarket.

But if there isn't a real and relevant reason to keep consumers interested, they will all too quickly switch off, or switch onto something more appealing. Brands need to keep giving people reasons to stay loyal and come back, not simply expect that past sales curves are an accurate reflection of future sales performance. The first impression that you make does count, but not quite as much as the last one that you leave them with. You only have to look at Nike to see how a brand can stick to the same story but retell it in so many fresh and different ways – and ways that not only stretch to new audiences but even reach out to new generations.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, brands live forever.

While a sale is simply a transaction, a brand is an experience. And experiences create memories – good and bad, fond and forgettable.

In fact, you don't really own your brand, your customers do. They are the ones who make the real decisions about whether you succeed or fail with every move that they make. They decide how loyal they will be, they decide between you or your competitors, they decide what they will tell their friends about you.

Your role is to influence their decisions. And it should come as no surprise that those decisions don't all get made at the very moment that you launch your brand. Far from it.

So that's it. You can't just switch on a brand one day and expect it to light up the sky the next. I know that sounds obvious, but then too often I see brands built to launch, but not necessarily last.