Trash Future

The Waste Connections corporate slogan stared at me from the back of the big blue garbage truck: “Connect with the Future®.” It is also on the sides of the truck. The mud flaps, too.

“Connect with the Future.”

What it’s supposed to mean? Connect where? Connect how? This bland slogan is not paid off on the company website. Not in ads, what I can find of ‘em. It reminds me of the old Buckaroo Banzai offering, “Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: Where the Future Begins Tomorrow.” What is Waste Connections promising a consumer? A facilities manager? A building landlord?

Houston-based Waste Management, on the other hand, has a slogan that ties directly to the green corporate trade dress (“Think Green®”). In just two words, it’s kept on working hard on a variety of levels – consumer, community, corporate.

I want to ask CEO Ron Mittelstaedt just what we’re supposed to connect to? I think the question’s an honest one, since we’re going to be seeing more of these big blue Waste Connections garbage barges around here.

There’s a big shake-out in trash. California-based Waste Connections is profiting these days, so it’s buying up other outfits. Several may be familiar to you. There’s Harold LeMay in Washington State. (Never heard of that.) Oregon-based Sanipac? (Nope.) Aha: Republic Services! You’ve seen those trucks…kind of a red-brown.

Last year this time, Republic Services was America’s third-largest waste hauling firm. It then bought the nation’s second-largest, Allied Waste Industries. According to the well-known “Waste Age 100” list – latest version is 2007 – Houston’s own Waste Management (green trucks, right?) was Number 1. Allied was 2, Republic was 3…and Waste Connections was Number 7.

Today (I guess) Waste Connections is America’s second biggest hauler. The future of garbage in our country is compacting. Or consolidation. Perhaps that is what Waste Connections means – connect with the firm’s future. Because this outfit’s outlook is rather rosy. America’s garbage is a real good long-term business.

Even though this is a low-interest market segment, it would be worthwhile studying which corporation has a better image, on Main Street and on Wall Street. Waste Management with its forward-thinking two-word tag? Or Waste Connections?

I’ll never prove it but there’s a case to be made for good branding – even if it’s all garbage.

Deconstruction – Good

Deconstruction is not automatically bad (he said, continuing the thought experiment from yesterday’s post).

When should you deconstruct? How about when the brand (or the entire system) has become so unbelievably complex that it’s way past time the brand returned to its basics.

You know what I’m talking about. Think about the brand-name string that sounds like a trunk falling down the stairs. Car-makers are notorious for this; e.g., the Audi A6 Avant Quattro SE Sport 2.5 Tdi.

Talk a walk down the grocery aisles and take a look at the brand extensions…messages growing ever more crowded. Drug stores exhibit the same aggressive shouting matches among shelves full of products. Then, consider that I couldn’t create a better post than Creativity magazine (May 2008, Page 32) has already been written about Help Remedies:

Help Remedies, a refreshingly pared down new line of acetaminophen pills and adhesive bandages, provides a lesson for even the most established marketers: Reimagine what you’re selling, not just how you’re selling it.

A former brand development strategist from London, Richard Fine, came to the US from London and brought a hell of a headache with him. According to Creativity, he was:

…scared off by the chaotic, screaming products….He envisioned a softer, calm-looking option sans abrasive color schemes and shocking copy.

His vision, with help from packaging and graphic design firms (ChappsMalina and Little Fury, respectively), resulted in a new brand by deconstructing old-fashioned ones. The result is simplicity itself, and help I have a headacheTM is one of the brand’s products.

In fact, the entire company – and you can browse the website to your heart’s content – is constructed with this simplicity in mind. Another product: help I’ve cut myselfTM contains two sizes of bandages (and advanced eye relief) for the weary shopper who may have just suffered an injury.

I’d certainly highlight the new brand’s Web 2.0 features, like the simple approach to the Help company blog and the online store.

What Creativity called reimaging I would call deconstruction. True, in the case of Help Remedies, Fine and his colleagues have deconstructed an entire category (over- the-counter healthcare products). When your brand is heavy-laden, when it’s dragging its entire history of massive product/service slates and M&As through the first decade of the 21st Century, this is a good time to return to basics.

Deconstruct what the brand is all about and reimagine it in a simpler, more meaningful form.

Can you do that for your stakeholders? Would you make their lives and their connections to your brand cleaner and more direct? Among the benefits could be a clear, clean view of your business model as well as your brand – supposing, of course, that your company’s business model needs…help.

Deconstruction – Bad

Join me in a weekend thought experiment. Here’s a fairly notorious Nike outdoor board. Note the slogan, lower right: JUST DO IT – now 20 years old. Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy is widely credited with creating this famous theme line, which Advertising Age chose as one of the 20th century’s Top Five ad slogans.

Next, let’s presume that your team is assigned to construct a new Nike corporate brochure. In a creative session, one of the top designers says something like: Why don’t we do a separate two-page spread for each of the words? We could explain each word and detail what it really means. We’d carefully explain ‘JUST,’ then on the next spread we’d say what ‘DO’ really means. And we’d finished up with ‘IT’ as the final piece – then, when you see all three spreads, you’d actually see JUST DO IT.

Would you say – Yes! That’s a great idea. Or would you gently suggest that perhaps this process would destroy the intrinsic integrity of one of the Nike brand’s most critical components?

Deconstructing a slogan or a brand statement that has this much accrued meaning would, IMHO, be quite a Bad Thing. You’d spoil the mystique that the slogan has gained over the years, you’d take away all of the visualized meanings that Nike and its agencies have put into building a crucial brand element. In fact, one of the beauties of a slogan such as this is that it is never deconstructed.

Really, the designer’s suggestion is one legitimate approach to creating new concepts. I propose it’s just not a good idea in the case of a strong brand line that resonates deeply with stakeholders.

Deconstruction – as a tool for literary analysis – has caused much more harm than good since the concept was invented by Jacques Derrida back in the early ‘60s. It has destroyed professors’ careers and been the “philosophy of the moment” on far too many college campuses.

In marketing, I urge caution when you try to extend explanations of your brand elements in public media.

Treat your theme line as a unity, whether you’ve got a 20-year-old stunner like JUST DO IT or a more recent slogan such as KEEP ON TURNING (shown here and my thanks again to Wood Group for maintaining its currency). By deconstructing such a strap line, you could confuse rather than enlighten. When you’ve built a slogan that “works,” let your stakeholders envision what it means for themselves. Let them help you create your brand image and meaning – it’s part of the marketing conversation. No deconstructing here, please.

Above: 2006 Nike outdoor ad featuring England player Wayne Rooney. Everything related to Nike, the “swoosh” and the slogan belongum Nike – no poaching.