But now it gets interesting. Monsanto faces a difficult business problem: how do you survive in a postpatent environment? To play this game requires certain table stakes. You have to stand for something, that's for sure. There must be good reasons why a grower chooses Roundup, and those reasons have to go deeper than the glyphosate--Roundup's active ingredient--in the jug.
Howell is explaining how Tattoo extracted information from Roundup customers (that is, farmers) during the initial audit. Asking the right questions at this stage is everything, so you "get to the emotion people feel about your brand," Howell says. What makes a brand powerful is the emotional commitment of its customers, and uncovering those feelings is where Tattoo does some of its most surprising work. Tattoo associates asked some mindblowers, such as, What would a world without Roundup be like? What would be on Roundup's epitaph if it died tomorrow? Or they'd put a bag of Roundup in the farmer's hands and ask if it felt hot or cold. To hear a French farmer talk about genetically altered herbicides as a "postcard to myself from the future"--well, you get the idea. "That's partly why I hired Tattoo," Howell explains. "The way they obtain information is as unique as what they do with it."
He wants to know if I've seen one of Tattoo's "slide-show things, with music and pictures." (Oh, Lord, Enya's back.) Howell loves the collages and says they capture the spirit of the project and its results like nothing else. "Then I take that spirit and dial it into a print ad," he says, "because Tattoo helps you identify what's motivating your customers and what a commercial should speak to."
Mother Jones wants to reach the next generation of readers, idealists in their midtwenties to early thirties, a generation Marwah believes is "the most progressive we've seen in a while. We've been talking, and they've been doing." Mother Jones is going to create new generational buzz by engaging the younger generation, a strategy that evolved from Tattoo's research and from responses to wacko questions like, If feminism were a restaurant, what would it look like? OK, now if Mother Jones were a restaurant...
If Tattoo were a restaurant? Its number would be unlisted; you'd have to know somebody to get a table. It would be high concept but unsnooty. Once you got in the door, you wouldn't mind the inevitable wait, because the food is divine and the wine list is so vast that you could spend years on either. None of the silver would match, and neither would the chairs, but it would all work. Tattoo-the-restaurant would be famous for its spicy, exotic soups (secret recipe, natch): mulligatawny, bouillabaisse, and bird's nest would be the house specialties. Of course, you could order off the menu, and the chef would cook the most scrumptious meal you can imagine.
Your only real problem would be finding the place.
Nancy K. Austin is the coauthor, with Tom Peters, of A Passion for Excellence.
Read the companion piece " Buzz" by Nancy K. Austin in the May 1998 Inc.
How They do it
To tap into pure, undiluted buzz, Tattoo uses some unorthodox methods to uncover what brands represent to consumers. Tattoo's researchers hit the streets with minicams and record what people have to say about a certain brand name. For a famous retailer, the most natural place for those impromptu dialogues isn't a focus group or even the sidewalk; it's the closet. People dug through their wardrobes and explained, on videotape, why they wear what they wear. The tactic was hugely effective.
Buzz Boys
Vishwa Marwah, Tattoo's founder, possesses abundant charm, a little mystery, and a cool intelligence. Marwah has also resolved that Tattoo will always do the very best work imaginable. More than anyone else, Hans Gallas creates Tattoo's signature look and style. And for Sterling Lanier, all talent and energy, every day is different.
Inside Tattoo
Tattoo is very clear about its own brand identity. It has a hip logo, stenciled smack in the middle of its slightly trapezoidal business cards and again on the cover of its "Credentials & Philosophy" book--an album, really--about the same size as the ones favored by autograph hounds. Stainless-steel nuts and bolts perforate a wavy ribbon of corrugated metal on the left side of the book, clamping the whole thing solidly in place. It looks nonconformist and steadfast, like something put together by an artist who happened to drift into a metal shop one day. Tattoo's album stakes out its competitive territory in lower-case, haikulike prose:
My overall impression is that it's all just so much cutting-edge Zen, but Tattoo means every word. Nothing floaty about it. Like the firm, Tattoo's little book is both workhorse and knockout, and it says something important about growing a company and creating buzz: your story had better be good, and the way you package it is everything.
