Alekperov and Putin in 2006, working closely.

Five years ago, it dawned on me how I never buy gasoline at a Lukoil station. I sampled my Ukrainian friends and members of my family — all answered the question “do you ever buy gas at Lukoil?” the same way.  ”Never!”

Why is that?  Probably because they’re Ukrainian and don’t appreciate remnants of the old Soviet Union, of which Lukoil is one. Nearly all my Ukrainian friends are refugees or children of refugees, who escaped from the Bolsheviks after The War. Of course we remember the Holodomor, the Stalin-ordered genocide of 7,000,000+ in 1931-33.  Add the forced Russification of Ukraine over the centuries and you’d have to agree with those who bypass Lukoil gas stations when given the choice.

But is this reason enough to cause so many Lukoil stations to be so quiet that you’d think they’re not open for business? The only ones who seem to get any business at all are the ones co-located with Dunkin Donuts. In Edison, a Lukoil station on Route 1 was so slow I was amazed at how long they held out before surrendering.

A decommissioned Lukoil gas station on U.S. Route 1 in Edison. It was once a busy Mobil station.

Are there that many Ukrainians (and other post-Soviet ethnics) in New Jersey to make that kind of difference? I don’t think so. I think it’s just poor marketing on the part of Lukoil.

A Mobil station was distinctive and consistent with the brand.

When Exxon settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 1999 to complete their acquisition of Mobil, they agreed to sell all the Mobil stations in New Jersey. Lukoil and Valero were among those who bought or rebranded many of those stations.

Lukoil came out with advertising around the slogan “We ♥ Cars,” with help from Arnold Worldwide of Boston. The agency’s goal was to make the brand “likeable.”  That didn’t last long and I personally did not see them “moving the needle” much as far as brand awareness is concerned. In a story on Lukoil’s sports sponsorships in Philly, a Wharton professor had the best quote…

“Lukoil’s done an excellent job introducing their brand here and deserves points just for getting that done in [Philadelphia-headquartered] Sunoco’s back yard,” said Scott Rosner, a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and associate director of the school’s Sports Business Initiative. “Gasoline purchase decisions are generally based on price and convenience, but when a driver’s away from home, brand-name recognition is a big factor.”

Really? The brand was introduced? Branding is much more than a logo and a slogan. What does it stand for? Who’s behind it? What makes customers feel good by doing business with these brands? Where’s the experience? I have a hunch the good people at Arnold had a limited budget with which to work — both for creative and media.

A former Mobil station, re-skinned as a Lukoil station. Looks the same, only red.

Valero took a different approach. They overhauled their stations with distinctive architectural detail, welcoming convenience stores and good lighting. As a result, their gas stations are always busy. Customers fill up and come inside the retail shop and spend more money. The resulting point-of-sale “experience” is favorable and helps build loyalty. They may not believe in the brand, but they do appreciate the experience.

Mobil had a great brand and their marketing was top-notch. It was my favorite gasoline brand — I’d go out of my way to buy Mobil. They had a unique selling propostion (USP) with “the detergent gasoline.” With Herb Schmertz, they had an opinion, including and an ad every Thursday on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Their advertising stood out. Imagine if Lukoil took a similar approach. How would their corporate “personality” be changed if they had come out with an ad like this?

It’s a shame that Lukoil, responsible for more than 2% of global oil production, would squander a chance to make their brand a leader in the U.S., where there are more Lukoil stations than any other country outside of Russia. Good distribution is critical to making a brand a complete success. In this case, it seems good distribution can’t get enough quality brand support.

Eugene Selznick passed away last week. He was one of the greats who helped popularize volleyball in the U.S.  Go ahead and read his obit in The New York Times, which contains this beauty of a quote:

On his 75th birthday, Selznick told an interviewer how he had become interested in volleyball, and beach volleyball in particular. “I liked all sports,” he said. “But volleyball was much nicer, because we played on the beach, and there were lots of girls in bathing suits. Those other sports didn’t have that.”

He was also big on “Old School Volleyball,” which I love:

• Don’t hit into the block.
• Don’t miss your serves.
• There is no next time.
• Be ready to defend the area you left.
• Creep then fly.
• Block by grabbing the ball.
• Any set above the net is good.
• Help your teammate.
• Be ready to hit the worst set.
• Get your hand up and hit the ball down.
• Don’t stop hitting.
• Don’t stop playing.
• Go outside.
• Serve cross court.
• Don’t set in front of the blockers.
• Don’t trap your hitters.
• Learn to read.
• Don’t stand behind the block.
• Follow the ball and be ready to defend and attack (anticipate)
• A setter can only lose a game, can’t win it.
• Footwork, Footwork, Footwork

In honor of MCA’s passing, one of the Beastie Boys. Like me, from Brooklyn.

Very influential — and always recorded very loud.

Of all of today’s big music stars, I’ve always thought Lady Gaga could sing. This duet with Tony Bennett proves my point.

“Big band” and jazz singers don’t have the benefits of new electro-tools such as Auto-Tune, so the next time you hear a pop song, listen carefully and see if you can tell the difference. I think I can. If not, I ask my daughter — she knows.

Excellent post by Kathy Sierra on gapingvoid.com, “Pixie Dust & The Mountain of Mediocrity.” If you’re in marketing, then you simply must read it…

So, why are people still so convinced that social media and all related buzzwords are The Answer? It has always appeared that if the product is truly crap, “your social media strategy won’t save you.” Even the social media gurus agree on that one. But it seems the opposite end is true as well… If the product makes the users awesome (at whatever the product is helping them do), no special secret magic pixie dust sauce is needed either.

Oh, social media does play a massive role in the success of a product that people love, but it is not the product-to-users “engagement” that matters, it is users-to-users (and users-to-potential-users). If people love what a product, book, service let’s them *do*, they will not shut up about it. The answer has always been there: to make the product, book, service that enables, empowers, MAKES USERS AWESOME. The rest nearly always takes care of itself.

Thanks to Brian Reich for the heads-up.

Recollecting some of my college years the other day, there were courses you took because you had to and those you wanted to. Part of the program at Fordham University’s College of Business Administration required quite a few liberal arts courses, including theology and philosophy. Sandwiched in between “Statistics I & II” and “Theology of St. Francis of Assisi” was “Political Economy of Poverty,” a political science course I found surprisingly interesting. “Money & Banking,” not so much.

Ideally, you learn something to help you tap the memory later in life. The poverty course comes back from time to time, just as it did today while reading somewhat contradictory reports from the Consumer Electronics Association and Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett (reported by Variety).

The CEA study (PDF) concluded:

American households are not cutting their pay television service. CEA research finds only one in ten households (10%) report they are either “very likely” or “likely” to cancel their pay television service. In addition, despite increasing options for viewing content, the television remains the standard CE device for most Americans. However, the growth of options for viewing television content – from televisions to computers to smartphones – will only help content providers expand viewership.

Craig Moffett’s report points out the alarming number of Americans living in poverty, concluding…

…the media industry has not a faced a macro environment like this before — or so many alternatives. No one would argue that the entertainment choices offered by Netflix are better than what’s available on cable, and neither of those offered by Hulu, or YouTube. But when faced with a choice of pay TV or a third meal, will some customers choose to make do with a back catalog or off-the-run TV shows and movies? Of course they will.

People make entertainment choices. If it costs $70 per month for TV services, I’d have to agree with the latter opinion. As broadband connections move closer to being either an entitlement or an absolute necessity, I can see people dropping traditional pay TV services and watching either online or via Netflix.

Back to the poverty class: the one thing peculiar to the poverty cycle is children born into poverty have a disadvantage (e.g. malnutrition contributes to slower development in school). One thing they will use for entertainment is TV, so I’m not surprised by the CEA study. However, I’ve seen a prime example: a family of six that’s never had pay TV, living in suburban New Jersey, with broadband Internet, and they don’t care for mobile broadband or handhelds (“why do we need that?” they ask).

It’s an interesting scenario and worth following, from both a social and marketing/business perspective.

I placed 3rd in my age group in a NASTAR race on Saturday. First time in a couple of years. I was stuck in the bronze medal category for some time —  not anymore. I’m back in the silver category.

Thanks to my brightly-colored jacket, the photographer had no trouble finding me. He was ready.

When skiing, it’s important to stay on your skis and lean forward. Just as it is in marketing: stay ready for anything you come across down the slope.

I found NPR Cosmos & Culture blog contributor Stuart Kauffman‘s piece fascinating: “The Fruitful, Unprestatable Adjacent Possible.” It centers around Yusuke Ohki’s idea behind Bookscan in Japan.

I begin with a true, whimsical and lovely tale. Recently a Japanese man living in a tiny apartment, perhaps in Tokyo, with his 2,000 books felt utterly crowded. He scanned his library into his new iPad and sold the used books. But THEN: It dawned on him that this was a new business opportunity, and he is now offering “iPad library scanning” services as his new way of making a living.

I love it. Notice, to be a bit technical, that his “iPad library screening” business is a technological complement to iPad, as screw and screw driver are complements, creating value together.

Obviously the “iPad library scanning” business could not have come into existence prior to iPad’s invention and reasonably widespread sale.

What is the whimsical new “functionality” of this business that is the iPad complement? Screening libraries of those in tiny Japanese apartments crowded by books.

Then given the invention and widespread sale of iPad, the new “iPad library screening” business was in what I keep calling the Adjacent Possible of the evolution of our economic and technological web. The little example above demonstrates the ever innovation of new “complementarities”, that is new functionalities i.e., “screening libraries of those in tiny Japanese apartments crowded by books”, made POSSIBLE by what exists now.

So there are four huge implications: First, the Adjacent Possible is fruitful. There are myriad new Adjacent Possibilities, given the current Actual economy.

Second, we simply cannot PRESTATE what lies in this Adjacent Possible. Who would have thought of “screening libraries of those in tiny Japanese apartments crowded by books” as a part of the Adjacent Possible. Who would have thought, as I have blogged before, of the World Wide Web, eBay, Google, and Facebook, 30 years ago? We live in a fruitful world of ever new possibilities that we cannot prestate. As I keep writing, not only do we not know what WILL happen, we do not even know what CAN happen.

But the third implication is profound for today’s world. So, third, we cannot prestate the relevant strategy space of, say, the burgeoning economy becoming into its Adjacent Possible, so we CANNOT OPTIMIZE with respect to that BECOMING.

And the fourth implication is, I think, deeply empowering. iPad ENABLED THE POSSIBILITY of “screening libraries of those in tiny Japanese apartments crowded by books.” This new Adjacent Possible economic niche is not random, but not deterministic. Therefore we truly create the very possibilities we become. The same is true for the evolution of the biosphere where new species create non-random adjacent possible empty niches where the biosphere may/will evolve, then create ever new Adjacent Possible empty niches.

These issues are deeply important. Many people, including our elites, think we can prestate the possibilities, hence can optimize given a “figure of merit” and a set of expectations over those possibilities.

The new Japanese business is a tiny, profound, demonstration that this belief is just wrong. Sometimes, in confined conditions, we can optimize. Hence our aim is not only our limited prediction, optimization and management, it is enablement and adaptation.

I find this very empowering.

Think different, indeed!

I love my mountains (Catskills), and all the others I’ve been to.  And I consider myself lucky to not have to suffer the consequences of mountaintop removal, so I was especially gratified to to hear the documentary “The Last Mountain” got a standing ovation at Sundance the other day.