SCHMITTblog

The end has come

I started blogging seven years ago when it was “cool.”  More than 200 blogs later, I will stop.

Technology has moved on; thus, SCHMITT has to move on.  We will leave the blogging to the professor who discovered it just recently.

Please find (as long as these technologies last):

My videos at www.YouTube.com/MeetSchmitt.

My videos, photos, and text at www.facebook.com/MeetSchmitt.

My short views on things at www.twitter.com/MeetSchmitt 

And all sorts of information at my web site, www.MeetSchmitt.com

This blog will be left as a historical document.

 

Schmitt in repose

In London on business... I love the Sanderson ...I have stayed there many times. And the bar is still hopping, and the lobby is great for photo sessions (see, me in repose).  A terrific hotel experience. A classic.  Bravo Philippe.

Shameless Knock-Off

Just as I am stepping onto my flight from Munich to New York, I discover a print campaign in a German magazine that proclaims “Beauty is …” this and that.  It’s for Nivea. Some quick background research reveals that Beiersdorf, maker of Nivea, has launched a new campaign that is to run in 64 countries by middle of next year. The message: beauty is more than an ideal; everyone has their own view of beauty; beauty is individual. (View the web site video, complete with tacky music and images of all sorts of people, young and old, men and women, different races). 

Does this remind you of another campaign?

Knock-off’s (at times called “benchmarking”) happen all the time in marketing. But this is one of the most shameless I have seen.  Are Nivea’s marketing managers so uncreative that they can’t develop their own concept of “Real Beauty”?

I had been wondering how long it would take competitors to react to Unilever’s splendid Dove campaign. Now we know. On Wednesday, in class 1 of my branding course, I will talk about the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.  I wonder what my MBA students will have to say about these Nivea ads.

McDonald’s Euro Chic

While celebrity chefs have discovered the appeal of mass market food (case in point: foie gras hamburgers) some fast food makers have decided to go upscale.  And successfully so: In Europe, McDonald’s Golden Arches have received a stylish design make-over. I just visited one in Munich, although purely as a “design excursion.” (I still don’t trust the food.)  American readers can see a slideshow of these new stores at NYTimes.com.  The refurbished stores have rejuvenated European sales, which surpassed the US for the first six months of the year.

That’s why I am puzzled by some of the comments by the brand experts. “If you stretch the brand too much it can snap,” one is being quoted in the New York Times article.  As a general statement that may be right.  But stretching McDonald’s too far?  Should we really be concerned that a future battle in the stadium arenas of “Iron Chef” will be fought between Daniel Boulud and Ronald McDonald?

What is art?

I went to the Documenta a couple of weeks ago, arguably the most important contemporary art show, taking place every five years in a mid-size, utmost boring city called Kassel, located right in the center of Germany. Many have commented how bad the show is, and I agree. 

This year’s curator played a silly trick: He argued that the Documenta should not only exhibit and concern itself with contemporary art, but with any art that seems relevant at that particular moment in time.  So, there’s lots of stuff from the 1950s and 1960s by quite unknown artists, and even a Persian carpet from centuries ago--the latter, I take it, being one of those trivial stabs against the Bush policy.  (No, I am not a Bush supporter, but I don’t like the trivialities of the German left cultural establishment and media.)  So, the curator played that trick to cover up that there’s no great contemporary art, or that he was too lazy to find it.

And he played another trick: He said “art is everything;” sure, he put it in a more sophisticated, post-modern jargon, but that was the essence.  Thus, a poppy field installation (made of 90% corn poppy and 10% opium poppy) right at the Friedrichsplatz, alluding to the drug trade and the “socio-political” issues involving farming.  Let’s take the argument a bit further: If “socio-politically” inspired gardening is art, then certainly all the designer brands and casual apparel fashion (complete with “socio-political” imagery) that young hipsters display on the streets of Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, and elsewhere around the globe count as well!  In fact, that’s where art is created, and not on the canvases, sculptures and installations in the revered halls of a mid-size, boring German city that calls upon a left-elitist curator every five years to stylize itself as the “center of art.”

Cecilia has bad teeth

Let me begin by a disclaimer: I have been dragged into this controversy by my colleague Olivier Toubia (yes, he of King Kong fame) and Schmitt (yes, he of, ahem, smoothness fame) because those two are at odds over Cecilia Sarkozy's dress and U.S. views of France and the French.  I really didn't want to comment, but I've been reading cognitive psychology papers all day so I'm bored senseless.

Frankly, I think that the whole controversy has been drummed up by Schmitt as a way to draw attention to the Schmittblog in these dog days of summer when most people are out getting splashed by the cool jets from an open fire hydrant.  I don't give a hoot about who makes Cecilia's dress (Prada, how passe, it's Boateng or bust), and most self-respecting Frenchmen probably didn't notice because they were too busy planning the next strike to further reduce their work week to 22 hours down from the 25 hours plus ten weeks of vacances that they have now.  Yeah, Toubia, in addition to loving sex and violence, your fellow Frogs love to moan and groan and disrupt an already stagnant economy (take that, Frenchie!). 

My friends, the real issue is not Cecilia's dress (really, Schmitt, you disappoint me on this one).

It's Cecilia's teeth.

Cecilia would be best saving her fourteen hundred plus Euros for some orthodontic work.  Look closely at the photo, and you'll see that her bicuspids look a little bashed in.  Not too hot for a French first lady (even the matronly Laura Bush has nice pearly-whites).   That's why I still believe in Segolene.  She might be 53, but she looks hot as hell in a bikini.  While Cecilia is futzing with her orthodontic retainer, Segolene is working on retaining her tan.  Vive la diference! 

Off to do some google searching...

Levav

Quel Scandale

What a scandal!  Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the new French President, and her husband have been seen shopping in a Prada store on Avenue Montaigne.  Italian brands for the French First Family?  What is next, driving a BMW?  The global mega-fashion brands, Prada and Gucci, count among Mrs. Sarkozy’s favorite fashion brands.  And she must know, having worked as a fashion model during her law studies.

The real scandal, though, is that a nation eager for scandals (“Quel scandale” is a favorite headline on tabloids) and quite nationalistic on top of it (“La Grande Nation”) does not seem to care much.  Are we witnessing the making of a global nation – shopping for global brands – right before our eyes?

Bravo, Mr Gelb; Welcome, Mr Mortier!

The first season of the Metropolitan Opera under the new Gelb regime has come to a close.  By all counts (ticket sales, reach-out to new audiences, new ventures) it has been a great success. Mr Gelb is thinking big.  The MET is quickly shaking off its old dust and making itself relevant to new audiences through high-def live MET opera broadcasts in movie theaters worldwide, through internet radio, and through fresh new productions (the Egyptian Helena was great, despite being one Richard Strauss's lousiest operas; Euridice et Orpheus was a treasure). 

But what was that donkey doing on stage in the new Barber of Seville?  Alright, the production had still been planned by Gelb's predecessor -- but I hope that animal nonsense (a horse during the Aida triumph scene etc) will finally come to a close.  We are in 2007 after all. There's hope; Gelb is on record for saying that he won't stage Rigoletto as The Planet of the Apes (alluding to a Munich Opera production that was far more cutting-edge than the MET would ever dream of; but then again rich New Yorkers, rather than German tax payers, guarentee the Met's survival.)

If that animal tackiness won't go, I may more frequently go next door, to  New York City Opera where Gerard Mortier has just been appointed as director. Now, that is a bold move! I still remember Mortier's last stunt at the Salzburg Festival from a few years ago, where he turned the champagne scene of Die Fledermaus (The Bat) -- that light Austrian showpiece  by Johann Strauss II -- into a cocaine party.  The host was played by a New York performance artist who blared his arias rather than singing them. And some of the waltz scenes were replaced by Schoenberg music. Welcome to New York, Mr. Mortier.  Keep up the shock value!

Chinese Brands Going Global

Branding is become a hot topic in mainland China.  Everyone’s asking: How can Chinese companies turn their brands into global brands? What does it take? When will we see the first few global brands coming out of the P.R.C.? And so on. Well, there are already Lenovo and Haier, and if you define a brand a bit more broadly, you can count in the Beijing Olympics and Shanghai, the city, as well.  But surely, the Chinese government and Chinese businesses have larger aspirations. So what’s holding them back? What are the constraints?

These were the issues debated at the inaugural Shanghai branding conference held today at Jiatong University, as part of the Center on Global Brand Leadership network that I have created over the last few years. The consensus: Chinese businesses know all about branding. What’s holding them back is not a lack of know-how, but financial and organizational issues. Plus, a huge local market--over a billion consumers in mainland China--that still offers significant growth without facing the challenges of entering new markets.  By comparison, Taiwan (a much smaller local market) is further along in pursuing global branding.  (Same reason that the Dutch speak better English than the Germans.)

However, as I witnessed at the Shanghai Auto Show (see picture above), certain Chinese industries – like automobiles – are fully geared toward international expansion.  Several Chinese car manufacturers are creating products for overseas markets, and some have already shown their brands at international car shows as well.

(Incidentally, the conference was a wild success, with an array of prominent speakers, some of whom appeared on Shanghai TV's hot Brainstorm show,  and attended by hundreds of invited guests; I’ll post a link soon to our official conference report.)

WHERE IDEAS MEET BEER

Just got back from a ten-day trip to Korea, China and Italy.  Before I left for the trip, I was holding the first SCHMITT OKTOBERFEST REUNION, an event for the Columbia executive MBA students that took my Munich seminar over the last three years. 

The theme of the reunion was “Where Ideas Meet Beer.” 

I have felt for a long time that the separation between ideas and beer is not only artificial but also unnecessary.  So, to set the record straight once and for all, I created the d’Wiesn Bierideen Lecture where – and I am quoting – “ideas are presented that lend themselves toward the consumption of beer and are best consumed under the influence of beer.”

The inaugural speaker was my colleague Don Lehmann who spoke on brand equity illustrating his ideas with lots of beer examples.  The speech was interrupted multiple times by toasts featuring the German drinking song “Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit.”  It is precisely this sort of Bierideengemütlichkeit that is key to innovation, as I will argue in my forthcoming book to be published by the Harvard Business Press next year.