Brand Autopsy: Williams’ Words of Failure

June 18, 2004

Williams’ Words of Failure

Sure, Paul has given birth to some nifty idioms ... but ... not all his coined terms have worked. I remember the vacant stares and the rampant shoulder-shrugging when Paul was deep into repurposing Star Trek terms into marketing/business language.

For example …

Level Three Diagnostic
In 1999, Paul was leading a TAZO tea promotion which called for coupons to be passed out to Starbucks customers in-store. Problem was … the coupons never arrived. Paul hastily convened a meeting where he demanded a Level Three Diagnostic be run to determine what went wrong. He kept asking Ensign Flannery to run the Level Three Diagnostic. Ensign Flannery (Paul’s words, not mine) was clueless and so was everyone else at the meeting.

Make it So
When leading cross-functional teams, Paul would never use the generally accepted practice of assigning action items. Instead, he would bark out next steps by saying, “Make it So!”

Number One
During this unfortunate phrase phase, Paul would constantly refer to his marketing specialist as ”Number One.” As in … “Number One, check with finance on those service recovery coupon redemption numbers. The reports from the field are that redemptions are not within expected parameters.”

Warp 9.1
To this day, Paul still says, ”Warp 9.1” when asking to fast track a Make it So action item.

Set Your Phasers to Stun
This is my favorite one. When implementing a minor marketing program, one that wasn’t expected to deliver outrageous results, Paul would say, “Team … set your phasers to stun.” Let’s hope Paul no longer uses that one.

Jun 18, 2004 4:53:13 PM | John's Freak Show of Thought